Wikipedia:WikiProject Irish Republican Army/Preparation/James Mac Guill

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James Mac Guill (Irish name Seamus Mac Guill; January 12, 1889 – June 3, 1953) came from a family (also written as Mag Cuill and Mac Cuill) associated for centuries with South Armagh and North Louth, in the north east of Ireland. He became a member of the Irish Volunteers in 1910, and later rose to the rank of Commandant of the Louth Brigade during the Irish War of Independence. During the war he spent a great deal of his time on the run or in various prisons both in Ireland and England, where he led numerous hunger strikes demanding, and obtaining political status. He narrowly missed the death sentence from an English Military Court in Belfast but his bad hand writing saved him as the signature on an IRA document could not be identified as his own. He was released but was eventually captured on another occasion by the Black and Tans on a raid on a safe house in Dundalk. He spent the rest of the War of Independence in Ballykinlar prison in County Down. He came back to Dundalk, now in the Free State and though unhappy with the Treaty signed by his friend Michael Collins worked with other IRA Officers to avoid a Civil War, efforts which unfortunately were unfruitful.