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Fenian Brotherhood | |
|---|---|
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| Founder | John O'Mahony |
| Founded | 1858 |
| Dissolved | 1880 |
| Preceded by | Emmet Monument Association |
| Succeeded by | Clan na Gael |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Ideology | |
| Irish affiliate | |
TheFenian Brotherhood (Irish:Bráithreachas na bhFíníní) was anIrish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 byJohn O'Mahony andMichael Doheny.[1][2] It was a precursor toClan na Gael, a sister organisation to theIrish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was aGaelic scholar, named his organisation after theFianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led byFionn mac Cumhaill.[3]
The Fenian Brotherhood trace their origins back to 1790s, in therebellion, seeking an end toBritish rule in Ireland initially for self-government and then the establishment of anIrish Republic. The rebellion was suppressed, but the principles of the United Irishmen were to have a powerful influence on the course of Irish history.
Following the collapse of the rebellion, the British Prime MinisterWilliam Pitt introduced a bill to abolish the Irish parliament and manufactured aUnion between Ireland and Britain. Opposition from the Protestantoligarchy that controlled theparliament was countered by the widespread and open use of bribery. TheAct of Union was passed and became law on 1 January 1801. The Catholics, who had been excluded from the Irish parliament, were promisedemancipation under the Union.[citation needed] This promise was never kept and caused a protracted and bitter struggle for civil liberties.[citation needed] It was not until 1829 that the British government reluctantly concededCatholic Emancipation.[citation needed] Though leading to general emancipation, this process simultaneously disenfranchised the small tenants, known as'forty shilling freeholders', who were mainly Catholics.[4]
Daniel O'Connell, who had led the emancipation campaign, then attempted the same methods in his campaign to have theAct of Union with Britain repealed.[citation needed] Despite the use of petitions and public meetings that attracted vast popular support, the government thought the Union was more important than Irish public opinion.[citation needed]
In the early 1840s, the younger members of therepeal movement became impatient with O'Connell's over-cautious policies and began to question his intentions.[citation needed] Later they were what came to be known as theYoung Ireland movement.[citation needed]
During the famine, the social class comprising small farmers and laborers was almost wiped out by starvation, disease and emigration.[citation needed] TheGreat Famine of the 1840s caused the deaths of 1 million Irish people and another million emigrated to escape it, with a further million over following decades.[5] That the people starved while livestock and grain continued to be exported, quite often under military escort, would leave a legacy of bitterness and resentment among the survivors.[citation needed] The waves of emigration also ensured that such feelings would not be confined to Ireland, but spread to England, the United States, Australia and every country where Irish emigrants gathered.[6]
Shocked by the scenes of starvation and greatly influenced by the revolutions then sweeping Europe, theYoung Irelanders moved from agitation to armedrebellion in 1848. The attempted rebellion failed after a small skirmish in Ballingary,County Tipperary, coupled with a few minor incidents elsewhere.[citation needed] The revolt's failure was much influenced by the general weakening of the Irish population after three years of famine, mixed with premature promptings to rise up early, resulting in inadequate military preparations in turn contributing to disunity among the rebellion's leaders.[citation needed]
The Government quickly rounded up many of the instigators.[citation needed] Those who could, fled across the seas and their followers dispersed. The last flicker of revolt in 1849, led by amongst othersJames Fintan Lalor, was equally unsuccessful.[7]
John Mitchel, the most committed advocate of revolution, had been arrested early in 1848 and transported to Australia on the expressly created charge ofTreason-felony.[citation needed] He was to be joined by other leaders, such asWilliam Smith O'Brien andThomas Francis Meagher who had both been arrested after Ballingary escaped to France, as did three of the younger members,James Stephens,John O'Mahony andMichael Doheny.
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After the collapse of the'48 rebellionJames Stephens andJohn O'Mahony went to the Continent to avoid arrest. In Paris, they supported themselves by teaching and translation work and planned the next stage of "the fight to overthrow British rule in Ireland". In 1856 O'Mahony went to America and in 1858 founded the Fenian Brotherhood. Stephens returned to Ireland and in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day 1858, following an organising tour through the length and breadth of the country, founded the Irish counterpart of the American Fenians, the Irish Republican Brotherhood.[8][9][10]
In 1863 the Brotherhood adopted a constitution and rules for general government.[11] The First National Congress was organised in Chicago in November 1863. It allowed the organisation to be "reconstituted on the model of theinstitutions of the Republic, governing itself on the elective principle".[12] Motions were passed to elect a Head Centre, with a Central Council of five elected members in 1863. This was extended to a Council of ten members at the second congress, held at Metropolitan Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio in January 1865, also with a President to be elected by the Council.[13] This established a more distinctive republican style of governance with a Central Council or Senate and a Chief of the Senate, as well as a Presidential role with limited powers; O'Mahony was made President.[14] Subsequently, this created a divided camp, as the Senate had powers to out-vote O'Mahony on future decisions.
In the United States, O'Mahony's presidency over the Fenian Brotherhood was being increasingly challenged byWilliam R. Roberts. Both Fenian factions raised money by the issue of bonds in the name of the "Irish Republic", which were bought by the faithful in the expectation of their being honoured when Ireland should be "A Nation Once Again".[15] These bonds were to be redeemed "six months after the recognition of the independence of Ireland". Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants subscribed.
Large quantities of arms were purchased, and preparations were openly made by the Roberts faction for a coordinated series of raids into Canada, which the United States government took no major steps to prevent.[citation needed] Many in the US administration were not indisposed to the movement because of Britain's actions of what was construed as assisting the Confederacy during theAmerican Civil War, such asCSSAlabama andblockade runners smuggling in weapons.[citation needed] Roberts' "Secretary for War" was GeneralT. W. Sweeny, who was struck off the American army list from January 1866 to November 1866 to allow him to organise the raids. The purpose of these raids was to seize the transportation network of Canada, with the idea that this would force the British to exchange Ireland's freedom for possession of their Province of Canada.[citation needed]Before the invasion, the Fenians had received some intelligence from like-minded supporters within Canada but did not receive support from all Irish Catholics, as there those who saw the invasions as threatening the emerging Canadian sovereignty.[citation needed]
In April 1866, under the command of John O'Mahony, a band of more than 700 members of the Fenian Brotherhood arrived at the Maine shore oppositeCampobello Island with the intention of seizing it from the British. British warships from Halifax, Nova Scotia were quickly on the scene and a military force dispersed the Fenians.[16] This action served to reinforce the idea of protection for New Brunswick by joining with theBritish North American colonies ofNova Scotia,Canada East, andCanada West inConfederation to form theDominion of Canada.
The command of the expedition inBuffalo, New York, was entrusted by Roberts to ColonelJohn O'Neill, who crossed theNiagara River (the Niagara is the international border) at the head of at least 800 (O'Neill's figure; usually reported as up to 1,500 in Canadian sources) men on the night and morning of 31 May/1 June 1866, and briefly capturedFort Erie, defeating a Canadian force atRidgeway.[citation needed] Many of these men, including O'Neill, were battle-hardened veterans of theAmerican Civil War.[citation needed] In the end, the invasion had been broken by the US authorities' subsequent interruption of Fenian supply lines across the Niagara River and the arrests of Fenian reinforcements attempting to cross the river into Canada.[citation needed] It is unlikely that with such a small force they would have ever achieved their goal.[citation needed]
Other Fenian attempts to invade occurred throughout the next week in theSt. Lawrence Valley.[citation needed] As many of the weapons had in the meantime been confiscated by the US army, relatively few of these men actually became involved in the fighting.[citation needed] There even was a small Fenian raid on a storage building that successfully got back some weapons that had been seized by the US Army. Many were eventually returned anyway by sympathetic officers.[citation needed]
To get the Fenians out of the area, both in the St. Lawrence and Buffalo, the U.S. government purchased rail tickets for the Fenians to return to their homes if the individuals involved would promise not to invade any more countries from the United States.[citation needed] Many of the arms were returned later if the person claiming them could post bond that they were not going to be used to invade Canada again, although some were possibly used in the raids that followed.[citation needed]
In December 1867, O'Neill became president of the Roberts faction of the Fenian Brotherhood, which in the following year held a great convention inPhiladelphia attended by over 400 properly accredited delegates, while 6,000 Fenian soldiers, armed and in uniform, paraded the streets. At this convention, a second invasion of Canada was conceived. The news of theClerkenwell explosion was a strong incentive to a vigorous policy. At the time,Henri Le Caron, amole forBritish Intelligence, held the position of "Inspector-General of the Irish Republican Army".[citation needed] Le Caron later asserted that he distributed fifteen thousand stands of arms and almost three million rounds of ammunition in the care of the many trusted men stationed betweenOgdensburg, New York andSt. Albans, Vermont, in preparation for the intended raid.[citation needed] It took place in April 1870 and proved a failure just as rapid and complete as the attempt of 1866.[citation needed] The Fenians under O'Neill's command crossed the Canadian frontier nearFranklin, Vermont, but were dispersed by a single volley from Canadian volunteers. O'Neill himself was promptly arrested by the United States authorities acting under the orders of PresidentUlysses S. Grant.[15]
After resigning as president of the Fenian Brotherhood, John O'Neill unsuccessfully attempted an unsanctioned raid in 1871 and joined his remaining Fenian supporters with refugee veterans of theRed River Rebellion.[citation needed] The raiding party crossed the border intoManitoba atPembina,Dakota Territory and took possession of theHudson's Bay Company trading post on the Canada side. U.S. soldiers from the fort at Pembina, with permission of Canadian officialGilbert McMicken, crossed into Canada and arrested the Fenian raiders without resistance.[citation needed]
The Fenian threat prompted calls forCanadian confederation.[citation needed] Confederation had been in the works for years but was only implemented in 1867, the year following the first raids. In 1868, a Fenian sympathiser assassinatedIrish-Canadian politicianThomas D'Arcy McGee in Ottawa, allegedly in response to his condemnation of the raids.[citation needed]
Fear of Fenian attack plagued theLower Mainland ofBritish Columbia during the 1880s, as the Fenian Brotherhood was active in bothWashington andOregon, but no raids ever materialized . At the inauguration of the mainline of theCanadian Pacific Railway in 1885, photos taken of the occasion show three largeBritish warships sitting in the harbour just off the railhead and its docks. Their presence was explicitly because of the fear of Fenian invasion or terrorism, as were the large numbers of troops on the first train.
During the latter part of 1866 Stephens endeavoured to raise funds in America for a fresh rising planned for the following year. He issued a bombastic proclamation in America announcing an imminent general rising in Ireland; but he was himself soon afterwards deposed by his confederates, among whom dissension had broken out.[15]
The Fenian Rising proved to be a "doomed rebellion", poorly organised and with minimal public support. Most of the Irish-American officers who landed atCork, in the expectation of commanding an army against England, were imprisoned; sporadic disturbances around the country were easily suppressed by the police,army and local militias.[15]
After the 1867 rising, IRB headquarters in Manchester opted to support neither of the dueling American factions, promoting instead a new organisation in America,Clan na Gael. The Fenian Brotherhood itself, however, continued to exist until voting to disband in 1880.
In 1881, thesubmarineFenian Ram, designed byJohn Philip Holland for use against the British, waslaunched by theDelamater Iron Company in New York.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: McNeill, Ronald John (1911). "Fenians". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 254–256.| General |
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