The late 1870s brought to the fore leading Irish nationalist, Michael DAVITT (1846-1906), born in Mayo into a family of poor Catholic tenant farmers. Like so many others, they survived the Famine only to be evicted. He migrated to England and found work in a Lancashire factory town. It was here that DAVITT, at the age of 11, lost his right arm in a factory accident. In his late teens he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and became its secretary in 1868. Arrested in the crackdown on the IRB following the Fenian Uprising, he served seven years of his 15-year sentence before being released in 1877. Eager to resume his nationalist activity, he immediately sailed for NY to foster support. The Land League agitation started by DAVITT was supported by Charles Stewart PARNELL (1846-1891). PARNELL was born in Avondale, Co. Wicklow and was a member of a wealthy, landed family. Educated in England and drawn into politics, especially the home rule variety, he won a seat in Parliament in 1875. Although a member of the Protestant ascendancy and a landlord himself, PARNELL had genuine sympathy for the plight of Irish Catholics and hostility toward English domination of Irish affairs. He joined with others in firmly linking the land question to the national question. As the League put it in its Declaration of Principles" -- "The land of Ireland belongs to the people all of Ireland, to be held and cultivated for the sustenance of those who God decreed to be the inhabitants thereof. Land being created to supply mankind with the necessities of existence, those who cultivate it to that end have a higher claim to its absolute possession than those who make it an artic! le of barter to be used or disposed of for purposes of profit or pleasure." In a country where 70% of the land was owned by only 2,000 people while 3,000,000 tenants owned none at all, this was a powerful and popular message. The League called for the redistribution of property from landlords (who would be compensated) to tenants. To bring this about, tenants began to withhold their rents. Some resorted to violence, destroying crops, maiming cattle, and in a few cases murdering landlords or their agents. The struggle became known as the "Land War" and its revolutionary potential sent chills through the Protestant Ascendancy. Another tactic employed in the Land War was social ostracism. Anyone who aided the landlord by collecting rents or carrying out evictions found themselves cut off from social contact. This was especially true for those "land grabbers" who took over an evicted farmer's holding. As PARNELL put it, "When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must show him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him at the shop-counter, you must show him at the fair and at the market-place and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone...by isolating him from the rest of his kind, as if he were a leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed." The most famous victim of his policy was the land agent for Lord ERNE's Mayo estate, Captain Charles BOYCOTT, whose name became a synonym for the practice. Shunned by locals, he needed over 1,000 British troops to harvest the estate's crops (at a cost of 10,000 pounds to the government.) -- Excerpts, "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History," Edward T. O'Donnell (2002).