One theory traces back to the visit from Irish freedom fighter and later President of the Republic of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who had been part of the 1916 Easter Rising and was imprisoned and sentenced to death. He was given amnesty, elected to Parliament and arrested by the authorities again. He escaped and slipped off to America to avoid recapture. Barnstorming the country, the future president of Ireland was welcomed as a hero at Notre Dame on October 15, 1919. Accounts in "Scholastic", a student publication, indicate that his visit tilted campus opinion in favor of the "Fighting Irish" moniker — though not completely. De Valera planted a "tree of liberty" as a memorial of his visit — only to have it uprooted a week later and thrown in one of the campus lakes by a student "of Unionist persuasion."