This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in
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A letter from Éamon de Valera (1882-1975). This letter was written after his dearth sentence had been relayed to him but before it was commuted. He is writing to an unidentified family friend advising him that he believes he will be executed - something he would find easier, were it not for his 'poor wife and helpless little ones'. He asks Jack to help his wife with decisions relating to the children in later life.Éamon de Valera had joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was adjutant to Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916), Dublin Brigade commandant. He went on to command forces at Bolands Mill during the Rising and was the most senior participant to escape execution. De Valera would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Ireland's 20th century.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).