The 1916 Easter Rising was heavily influenced by the men and women who had settled in the City of Springfield and the surrounding area. Much of the financing that took place for the 1916 Easter Rising came from the people of Irish descent living in western Massachusetts.
The 1916 Easter Rising began the process to British rule in Ireland. An armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, April 1916 was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule and establish an independent Irish Republic. The Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. The insurrection was organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members of the Irish Volunteers led by Patrick Pearse and the Irish Citizen Army led by James Connolly took control of key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic.
The focal point of the Gardens of Remembrances is a monument that includes life size typographical replica of the proclamation of an Irish Republic set in an Irish granite base. Behind the monument is a planting in the form of a Celtic knot. Three benches, flagpoles flying an Irish flag and an American flag complete the garden. Each bench gas a bronze plaque inscribed: 1916 GARDENS OF REMEMBRANCES. The typographical replica on the monument is inscribed:
POBLACHT NA H EIREANN
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THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMAN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State. And we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irish woman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provision Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government,
THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN MAC DIERMADA THOMAS MACDONAGH
P.H.PEARSE EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY JOSEPH PLUNKETT