James Dickey (1775/1776 – 26 June 1798) was a young barrister from a Presbyterian family in Crumlin in the north of Ireland who was active in the Society of the United Irishmen and was hanged with Henry Joy McCracken for leading rebels at the Battle of Antrim.

The Society of United Irishmen was formed in October 1791 by leading citizens in Belfast who sought a representative government in Ireland based on principles they believed had been modelled by the American and French Revolutions.

Tone argued that in Ireland the landed Anglican Ascendancy and the English-appointed Irish executive employed division between Protestants and Catholics to balance “the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both.”[1] Despairing of reform, and in the hope of French assistance, in May 1798, the United Irishmen took up arms against the Dublin government and the British Crown.

The initial plan met with success, as the towns of Larne, Ballymena, Maghera and Randalstown were taken and the bridge at Toome damaged to prevent the government rushing reinforcements into Antrim from west of the Bann.

"[5] However, a loyalist source hostile to the United Irish cause--Henry Joy of the Belfast News Letter—has Dickey on the scaffold recanting his commitment to the "brotherhood of affection" between Catholic and Protestant.