Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police 9780228013600

Table of contents :
Cover
CANADIAN SPY STORY
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Maps and Figures
Acknowledgments
Timeline: 1782–1921
Prologue: “A Patriotic Irishman”
PART ONE REVOLUTIONARIES
1 “Such a Prospect of Success”: Ireland and America, 1858–66
2 “A Strange Fact”: History and Historiography
3 “Relatively Obscure Men”: Finding the Fenians in Canada
4 “The Foremost City of America”: St Patrick’s Day, Toronto, 1858
5 “A Regular Fenian Organization”: Extending the Brotherhood in Canada
PART TWO SECRET POLICE
6 “An Air of Mystery”: Intelligence Efforts, Intelligence Failures
7 “Imminent Danger”: The Threat of Invasion, 1865–66
8 “The Republic of Emmetta”: Fenian Designs on New Brunswick
9 “The Irish Army of Liberation”: Secret Operations and the Battle of Ridgeway
PART THREE REACTIONS TO RIDGEWAY
10 “Known Rebbles”: Challenges and Opportunities
11 “Best-Laid Schemes”: Infiltrating the Fenian Brotherhood
12 “Gang Aft Agley”: Charles Clarke’s Downfall
13 “Bitterness and Deadly Hatred”: The Crackdown on Fenians in Canada
PART FOUR INFILTRATION
14 “The Best ‘Card’ We Have Got Yet”: Henri Le Caron
15 “Practical Evidence of Our Sincerity”: Eccles Hill and Trout River, 1870
16 “His Wild Enterprize”: Red River
PART FIVE AFTERMATH
17 “The True and Faithful Few”
18 “Contrary to All Expectations”
Dramatis Personae
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

canadian s py s t o ry



canadian s py s t o ry Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police

 david a. wil son

m c gill-queen’s university press montreal & kingston

•

london

•

chicago

© David A. Wilson 2022 isbn 978-0-2280-1117-0 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-1360-0 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-1361-7 (epub) Legal deposit second quarter 2022 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Canadian spy story : Irish revolutionaries and the secret police / David A. Wilson. Names: Wilson, David A., 1950- author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220131058 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220131147 | isbn 9780228011170 (cloth) | isbn 9780228013600 (epdf) | isbn 9780228013617 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Fenians. | lcsh: Fenian Brotherhood. | lcsh: Spies— Canada—History—19th century. | lcsh: Secret service—Canada— History—19th century. | lcsh: Canada—History—Fenian Invasions, 1866-1870—Secret service. Classification: lcc fc480.f4 w55 2022 | ddc 971.04/8—dc23

To Peter M. Toner, Brandon Corcoran, and the students of smc 416 / his 1440, Irish Nationalism in Canada

Canada and British America have never known an enemy so subtle, so irrational, so hard to trace, and, therefore, so difficult to combat. ~ Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “Second Letter to Mr. Geo. Brown,” Montreal Gazette, 14 December 1866

The Fenian organization has gone to a very large & dangerous extent in Canada, although I said as little about it as possible … There is no intention of arresting people on suspicion, on the contrary I endeavour, as much as possible, to keep matters quiet. ~ John A. Macdonald to M. Hayes, 31 May 1868

I am a political prisoner … Lift your eyes and look across the atlantic, and see millions of souls writhing in misery, under the very same flag which you feel proud to live, and make the press of the dominion reeco with demands to concileate Ireland, such demands, would be more effectual in averting, or repelling a fenian invasion. ~ Peter Mahon, Guelph jail, to editors of Guelph Evening Mercury, 25 May 1868

Contents

Maps and Figures ix Acknowledgments xiii Timeline: 1782–1921 xix Prologue: “A Patriotic Irishman” xxvii

part one revolu tionar ies 1 “Such a Prospect of Success”: Ireland and America, 1858–66 3 2 “A Strange Fact”: History and Historiography 24 3 “Relatively Obscure Men”: Finding the Fenians in Canada 38 4 “The Foremost City of America”: St Patrick’s Day, Toronto, 1858 58 5 “A Regular Fenian Organization”: Extending the Brotherhood in Canada 74

part t wo s e c ret p o l i ce 6 “An Air of Mystery”: Intelligence Efforts, Intelligence Failures 103 7 “Imminent Danger”: The Threat of Invasion, 1865–66 124 8 “The Republic of Emmetta”: Fenian Designs on New Brunswick 145 9 “The Irish Army of Liberation”: Secret Operations and the Battle of Ridgeway 165

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part t h re e reac t ions to r id geway 10 “Known Rebbles”: Challenges and Opportunities 189 11 “Best-Laid Schemes”: Infiltrating the Fenian Brotherhood 208 12 “Gang Aft Agley”: Charles Clarke’s Downfall 221 13 “Bitterness and Deadly Hatred”: The Crackdown on Fenians in Canada 241

part four infilt r at ion i4 “The Best ‘Card’ We Have Got Yet”: Henri Le Caron 269 15 “Practical Evidence of Our Sincerity”: Eccles Hill and Trout River, 1870 293 16 “His Wild Enterprize”: Red River 308

part five after math 17 “The True and Faithful Few” 331 18 “Contrary to All Expectations” 362 Dramatis Personae 382 Notes 395 Bibliography 491 Index 513

Maps and Figures

maps 3.1 The Great Lakes. Map by Mark Sanagan. 47 8.1 The Atlantic Coast. Map by Mark Sanagan. 156 16.1 The West. Map by Mark Sanagan. 317

figures 1.1 James Stephens. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris, PH56664. 5 1.2 John Mitchel. In Michael Doheny, The Felon’s Track: or, History of the Attempted Outbreak in Ireland, Embracing the Leading Events in the Irish Struggle from the Year 1843 to the Close of 1848 (Dublin: M.H. Gill, 1951), 96. 8 1.3 John O’Mahony. In Michael Doheny, The Felon’s Track: or, History of the Attempted Outbreak in Ireland: Embracing the Leading Events in the Irish Struggle, from the Year 1843 to the Close of 1848 (Dublin: M.H. Gill, 1951), 256. 12 1.4 Fenian recruiting poster. Collection of the New-York Historical Society. 15 4.1 Edward O’Meagher Condon. In Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6, (1879), 538. 69 4.2 William Mackey Lomasney. Public domain. 72 6.1 Frederick William Ermatinger. “Lt. Col. Ermatinger, Montreal, qc, 1864.” McCord Museum, Montreal, I-10581.1. 105 6.2 Gilbert McMicken. In William Cochrane and J. Castell Hopkins, The Canadian Album: Men of Canada, vol. 3 (Brantford, on: Bradley, Garretson & Co., 1891), 18. 107

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7.1 Edward Archibald. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-cwpbh01474. 129 7.2 Fenian bond. Public domain. 133 7.3 James McCarroll. In James McCarroll, Madeline and Other Poems (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, 1889), frontispiece. 135 7.4 Francis Bernard McNamee. McCord Museum, Montreal, II-54968.1. 139 8.1 James McDermott. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, 2 August 1883, 13. 148 8.2 Frank Millen. In The Graphic, 19 May 1888, 522. 151 9.1 William Roberts. “W.R. Roberts, Prest. of the Fenian Brotherhood in the U.S. of America / J. Weisenbach.” Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-07477. 170 9.2 Thomas Sweeny. United States National Archives, Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes, 1921–1940, RG111, 111-B-6116. 171 9.3 John O’Neill. Courtesy of Tom Fox. 180 9.4 Samuel Spear. Public domain. 184 11.1 Charles Carroll Tevis. United States National Archives, Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes, 1921–1940, RG111, NWDNS-111-B-2716. 209 12.1 The Fenian Martyrs of Ireland. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-01474. 230 13.1 Thomas D’Arcy McGee. McCord Museum, Montreal, I-7383.1. 247 13.2 Patrick James Whelan. Library and Archives Canada, C-017572. 249 13.3 Michael/Ralph Slattery. Library and Archives Canada, John A. Macdonald Fonds, MG26-A, vol. 59/X1. 253 13.4 John A. Macdonald. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, LC-USZ62-122757. 257 13.5 Group Portrait of Fenians. McCord Museum, Montreal, M2017.130.3. I thank Alfhard Brandl and Sheila Hennessy for alerting me to this photograph. 258 14.1 Thomas Billis Beach. In Henri Le Caron [Thomas Billis Beach], Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy, 3rd ed. (London: W. Heinemann, 1892), frontispiece 271

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14.2 “The Fenian Volunteer.” Public domain. 276 14.3 Charles Coursol. Archives de la Ville de Montréal, BM1-5P0452-03. 278 14.4 Father John McMahon. National Library of Scotland, Crawford.EB. 3775. Reproduced with permission from materials on loan to the library from the Balcarres Heritage Trust. 287 16.1 Louis Riel and William O’Donoghue. Detail from “Riel’s Cabinet of 1869–1870.” City of Winnipeg Archives, i00039. 311 16.2 Adams Archibald. Library and Archives Canada, William James Topley Fonds, MIKAN 3214516. 325 17.1 Thomas Clarke Luby. In John Savage, Fenian Heroes and Martyrs (Boston: Patrick Donahoe, 1868), 316. 339 17.2 Thomas Francis Bourke. “Cabinet Card of Colonel Thomas Francis Bourke, Confederate Veteran of the American Civil War and Member of the Fenian Brotherhood.” Trinity College, University of Dublin, IE TCD MS 9649/48. 340 17.3 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division. 341 17.4 Jeremiah Gallagher. Courtesy of Marianna O’Gallagher. 353 17.5 Celtic cross, Grosse Île. “Foule autour du monument à Grosse Île,” [1900], Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Fonds J.E. Livernois Ltée, P560, S1, P1004. 355

Acknowledgments

Writing Canadian Spy Story has been a challenging and enjoyable experience. But the challenge has been lessened and the enjoyment increased by the immense amount of help that I have received along the way. For the past fifteen years or so, I have been teaching the joint graduate-undergraduate Irish Nationalism in Canada seminar in the History Department and the Celtic Studies Program at the University of Toronto, and I have benefited enormously from the engagement and enthusiasm of the students in the course. Some have gone on to write books or articles, some have helped out with the research, and some have written essays that were based on hitherto unknown or unused sources on Irish radicals and revolutionaries in Canada. All have been wonderful to work with. Among them, Peter Vronsky shed new light on Anglo-American diplomatic relations before the Fenian raids of 1866, transformed our understanding of the Battle of Ridgeway, and shared his research on the operations of the Toronto police force during the 1850s and 1860s. Shane Lynn tracked down information on suspected Canadian Fenians, searched through the Irish Canadian newspaper for references to women who were involved in the Fenian movement, pointed me to Canadian secret service files on Irish revolutionaries between 1916 and 1921, and took time out of his own research to photograph Foreign Office papers at the British Library. His research paper on Irish republican plans to attack Canada in 1848 – subsequently published in Éire-Ireland – helped me to place North American Fenianism in a longer historical perspective, and his comments on my work-in-progress were always appreciated. Other research papers from the seminar deepened my knowledge of Fenianism within Canada. Hugh Barnett’s analysis of the freelance Fenian attempt

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to link up with the Métis and trigger a revolution in the Red River Settlement of Manitoba was particularly useful in highlighting the links between William O’Donoghue, the instigator of the plan, and prominent Fenians in Buffalo and Rochester. Gina Clark’s investigation of Fenianism in Peterborough was an invaluable micro-study of Protestant-Catholic divisions and intra-Catholic tensions. Christopher Lawson’s work on Wellington County shed light on the social and demographic context of rural Fenianism. Bridget Hager’s essay on John O’Neill led her to correspondence between Frank B. Gallagher, a Fenian senator in Buffalo, and William Burns, an Irish revolutionary leader in Toronto – and thus uncovered the only extant inside account of a Fenian circle in the city. I also thank Jasmine Chorley Foster, Chiara Fallone, Samantha Sparling, Stefanie Wasyluk, and Livy Wren for their help at various stages of the project. I have been fortunate to have had two outstanding research assistants who played a substantial role in recovering the largely lost world of Fenians in Canada and the detailed operations of the secret police. Leigh-Ann Coffey spent many hours combing through newspapers from Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in search of references to domestic Fenian activities. Brandon Corcoran – another graduate of the Irish Nationalism in Canada seminar – did Herculean work with the secret police letters in the John A. Macdonald papers. He transcribed nearly 1,000 letters – some of them very long and many of them barely legible – did extensive handwriting checks to identify detectives who wrote under different pseudonyms, compiled lists of Fenian suspects, and traced the movement of individual detectives. His enthusiasm was unwavering, and our discussions and e-mails about the secret police – particularly about the career of Charles Clarke – were a constant source of pleasure. Without his work, this book would not have been the same. The task of identifying Fenians in British North America and assessing the degree of support that they received – a task initially undertaken by the secret police – was greatly assisted by Peter M. Toner, who shared his earlier research notes on Fenianism in Canada and gave me file cards on around 1,000 real or suspected Irish revolutionaries in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. Shannon O’Connor then ran the names through census returns to draw up a demographic profile of Fenians in Canada – most of whom turned out to be Irish-born Catholic adult males.

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In my efforts to assess the extent of Fenianism within the larger population of Irish-born Catholic adult males in Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City, William Jenkins and Sherry Olson helped me through the statistical minefield to arrive at a reasonably safe set of estimates. Since I can barely count my toes with my fingers, their assistance was deeply appreciated. A generous band of genealogists and historians volunteered to help with various points of research. In Halifax, the late Terrence Punch supplied me with detailed demographic information on every member of a Fenian cell in the city. In Quebec City, Joe Lonergan told me some good inside stories about the Sillery Cove Fenians. In Ireland, Barry Kennerk shared his unrivalled knowledge of Fenian assassination squads in Dublin during the 1860s, and Jerome Devitt provided me with materials related to the Fenian infiltration of British regiments. Among other historians who took an interest in this project, Padraic Kennedy guided me through primary sources in Ireland and Britain on the Secret Service Department of 1868, and Kerby Miller alerted me to the autobiography of the Quebec City Fenian Edmond Ronayne. Kerby also embarked on a quest to track down the elusive Miss Clapp (see chapter 12), ably assisted by Patricia Kelleher and Ellen Skerrett; the trail may have gone cold but not for lack of trying. I also thank Tom Fox for sharing his research on the much less elusive John O’Neill, the “hero of Ridgeway,” who was later president of the Fenian Brotherhood’s Senate wing. One of the advantages of writing about the past, it has been said, is that the dead cannot answer you back. Maybe so, but their great-grandchildren can. Fortunately, I have received nothing but enthusiastic assistance from the descendants of Canadian Fenians and from those who were connected with such descendants. Particular thanks go to Cindy Moynan, great-granddaughter of Francis Bernard McNamee; Travis Miscia, whose ancestors were connected to the McNamee family; Edward O’Shaughnessy, whose eponymous great-grandfather joined the Fenians in Montreal; Darren Coughtrey, who shared family stories about Michael Starrs, the proprietor of a Fenian hotel in Ottawa; and Sheila and Alf Hennessy-Brandl, who were friends of Betty Schroll and who passed on information about and photographs of Betty’s great-grandfather Patrick Doody – the Fenian leader in Montreal who was known as “the first martyr in Canada to Ireland’s rights and liberties” (see chapter 13).

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When I began writing this book, I was not sure of the “voice” that would most effectively convey the argument within the narrative, and I initially attempted to combine a style of historical fiction with the imperatives of historical accuracy – to write a book that read like a novel but was fully grounded in documentation. It was fun to try, but I needed to check the results with some of my fellow historians who had written for both academic and nonacademic audiences. Bob Malcolmson and Christopher Moore kindly and tactfully pointed out the problems with my approach, and I am grateful for their constructive criticism. Back to the drawing board, then. As the second draft got under way, Don Akenson, Liam Kennedy, Wilfred Neidhardt, Liz Smyth, and Seamus Smyth read parts of the manuscript and made helpful comments. Their feedback and friendship are deeply valued. Willeen Keough provided insights about Fenianism in Newfoundland, and Edward Macdonald shared his knowledge about Fenianism in Prince Edward Island. Phil Gurski, formerly of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, was kind enough to put me in touch with an agent who had monitored Irish Republican Army activities in Canada during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Peter M. Toner, who pioneered the study of Canadian Fenianism, gave me the benefit of his deep and wide knowledge of Irish nationalism in Canada. The generous comments of the two external readers will never be forgotten. To all concerned, I am immensely grateful. Most of this book was written while I was serving as the general editor of The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and I could not have had a more congenial and supportive environment in which to work. Special thanks go to Robert Fraser, Willadean Leo, Julia Armstrong, Chris Pennington, Jonathan Scotland, Loretta James, Mark Sanagan, Stephanie Abba, and Anna Peretiatkowicz. While I was trying to figure out the identity of the informer who supposedly tipped off the authorities in New Brunswick about Fenian invasion plans, Anna did some freelance detective work that helped me to crack the case. With unfailing enthusiasm and good cheer, Mark tracked down the illustrations, made the maps, and prepared the index, all of which saved me much stress and are deeply appreciated. Willadean, formerly the supervisory editor of The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, proofread the manuscript with her eagle eye and grammatical genius. Thanks also go to Robert Lewis for his equally excellent copy editing. In fairness to both Willadean and Robert,

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though, it must be added that whenever my sense of literary style clashed with the rules of grammar, the rules lost. My research took me to multiple locations in Canada, the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, and I thank all the archivists and librarians who helped to guide me towards the relevant sources. Such travel would not have been possible without a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as funds provided by the History Department at the University of Toronto. Among the many librarians who provided assistance, special thanks go to the one closest to home: Richard Carter, of the Kelly Library at the University of St Michael’s College, whose help in tracking down online sources was invaluable. From the time that the idea of writing this book emerged from my biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Philip Cercone of McGill-Queen’s University Press strongly supported the project – and displayed remarkable patience as the original deadline receded into the distance. I have never ceased to be impressed with mqup’s rigorous editorial standards, high production values, and astute marketing strategies, and it has been a pleasure to work with Joanne Pisano and Jacqui Davis. Throughout the project, my friends and colleagues at St Michael’s College have given me warm and welcome encouragement. Ann Dooley has been an inspirational force in the Celtic Studies Program, Jean Talman has earned a great reputation for her work in the university and with Toronto’s Irish community, Sean Conway’s enthusiasm is contagious, and Mark McGowan’s support has meant so much. I have been fortunate to work with such people. And on the subject of good fortune, my final thanks go to Zsuzsa Balogh, whose smile continues to brighten every room and whose love continues to make everything worthwhile.

Timeline 1782–1921

1782 Irish Volunteers win a measure of legislative independence for Ireland under the Crown; the Irish Parliament remains under Protestant control, and Britain still exerts enormous influence over Irish affairs 1791 Wolfe Tone founds the Society of United Irishmen Canada Act establishes the colonies of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) and Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) 1798 United Irish Rising 1801 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland 1803 Robert Emmet’s Rising 1812–15 War between Britain and the United States 1837–38 Rebellions in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario)

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Patriot Hunters formed in the United States; they aim to annex British North America to the American Republic 1841 Act of Union between Upper Canada (Canada West; present-day Ontario) and Lower Canada (Canada East; present-day Quebec) 1846–51 Famine in Ireland 1848 Young Ireland Rising Irish Republican Union formed in New York to support the revolutionary movement in Ireland; discusses diversionary attacks on Canada 1849 Failed attempt to rekindle the rising in Ireland 1853 John Mitchel reaches New York after escaping from Van Diemen’s Land 1855 John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny form the Emmet Monument Association in New York 1858 March: James Stephens founds the Irish Republican (Revolutionary) Brotherhood in Dublin March: Orange and Green riot in Toronto; Michael Murphy subsequently founds the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Toronto 1859 John O’Mahony founds the Fenian Brotherhood in New York

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1861 April: American Civil War begins November: Funeral in Dublin of Terence Bellew MacManus December: Britain and the United States on the brink of war over the Trent crisis 1862 Francis Bernard McNamee forms the first Fenian circle in Montreal 1863 January: Irish Canadian newspaper is launched, Toronto November: Fenian convention, Chicago November: James Stephens launches the Irish People newspaper, Dublin 1864 March–April: Irish National Fair, Chicago May: Toronto Orangemen harass a Catholic procession celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi October: Southern Confederates launch raid on St Albans from Canada November: Toronto Hibernians march in arms during Guy Fawkes Night; social panic spreads throughout the city and adjacent rural areas December: Canadian secret police force formed under the name of the Government Constabulary for Frontier Service 1865 January: Fenian convention, Cincinnati March: Toronto Hibernians invite Jim McDermott to speak on St Patrick’s Day April: American Civil War ends May: Thomas D’Arcy McGee delivers anti-revolutionary speech in Wexford September: Crackdown on the Irish Republican Brotherhood; closing of the Irish People; arrest of republican leaders October: Bernard Doran Killian meets President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward, reporting that they have agreed to “acknowledge accomplished facts” (see chapter 1) if the Fenians launch a successful invasion of Canada

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October: Fenian convention, Philadelphia, adopts the strategy of liberating Ireland by attacking Canada November: American secretary of state William Seward and British minister Frederick Bruce make a secret deal to contain the Fenians November: Canadian government sends Volunteers to the border November: Fenians establish a secret service corps to operate in Canada November: John O’Mahony comes out against the Canadian strategy December: Fenians split, the Senate wing continuing the Canadian strategy and the O’Mahony wing focusing on support of the revolutionary movement in Ireland 1866 February: Senate wing convention, Pittsburgh February: Toronto Fenians officially denounce the idea of invading Canada and align themselves with the O’Mahony wing February: Suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland March: Reports that the Fenians plan to invade Canada on or around St Patrick’s Day March: Canadian government sends Volunteers to the border March: O’Mahony wing decides to launch an expedition to capture Campobello Island in New Brunswick April: Attempt to take Campobello Island fails April: Arrest of Michael Murphy and seven other Toronto Fenians May: John O’Mahony resigns as leader of the Fenian Brotherhood June: Fenians under the leadership of John O’Neill defeat Canadian Volunteers at the Battle of Limestone Ridge (Ridgeway) before returning to the United States June: Fenians under the leadership of Samuel Spear occupy Pigeon Hill in Canada East (present-day Quebec) for two days before returning to the United States June: Suspension of habeas corpus in Canada September: Michael Murphy and his fellow Fenians escape from the Cornwall jail December: James Stephens is ousted as chief officer of the Irish Republic and is replaced by Tom Kelly

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1867 February: Abortive Fenian rising in Ireland March: Actual Fenian rising in Ireland July: Canadian Confederation established August: Charles Clarke’s cover is blown August: John Savage becomes president of the Fenian Brotherhood (the wing formerly led by John O’Mahony) September: Senate wing convention, Cleveland September: Rescue of Fenian prisoners in Manchester; killing of Sergeant Charles Brett November: Execution in Manchester of William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien November: Renewed suspension of habeas corpus in Canada December: Apparent Irish American plot to assassinate Queen Victoria December: Secret Service Department established in Britain December: Attempt to spring Ricard O’Sullivan Burke from the Clerkenwell jail results in an explosion that kills seven people and maims many more December: Thomas Billis Beach, alias Henri Le Caron, offers his services to the British Secret Service Department, and they are accepted December: John O’Neill replaces William Roberts as president of the Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing 1868 January: Charles Clarke and George Mothersill seconded to the British Secret Service Department April: British Secret Service Department disbanded April: Assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee; arrest of Patrick James Whelan on the charge of murder; crackdown on Fenians in Canada May: Canadian secret police force reconstituted as the Dominion Police Force June: Charles Clarke fired from the Canadian secret police June: Thomas Billis Beach, alias Henri Le Caron, joins the Canadian secret police September: Patrick James Whelan found guilty of assassinating Thomas D’Arcy McGee

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September–November: Remaining Canadian Fenian political prisoners released on bail November: Ulysses S. Grant elected president of the United States 1869 February: Execution of Patrick James Whelan December: Louis Riel establishes a provisional government in the Red River Settlement 1870 April: Renewed suspension of habeas corpus in Canada April: Canadian Volunteers ordered to the frontier May: Fenian invasion attempts at Eccles Hill and Trout River May: Canadian government passes the Manitoba Act, opening the way for Manitoba to become part of the Canadian Confederation July: The province of Manitoba is established July: The Canadian secret police force is disbanded 1871 January: Irish prisoners released from British jails begin arriving in the United States; among them are Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and John Devoy October: John O’Neill and William O’Donoghue lead an unsuccessful expedition into Manitoba, hoping to foment a Métis uprising 1873 Home Rule League founded 1879 Irish National Land League founded Constitutional, revolutionary, and agrarian components of Irish nationalism come together in the New Departure 1881 Bombing campaign in Britain begins Suppression of the Land League William Gladstone’s Land Act

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1882 Assassinations of the chief secretary and the undersecretary of Ireland John Costigan introduces his Home Rule resolution in the Canadian House of Commons 1886 Defeat of William Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill 1890 Charles Stewart Parnell ousted as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party 1893 Defeat of the second Home Rule Bill 1912 Third Home Rule Bill 1916 Easter Rising 1918 Sinn Féin victory in Ireland in the general election 1919–21 Revolutionary war in Ireland 1920 Self-Determination for Ireland League of Canada (and subsequently Newfoundland) formed Establishment of the Northern Irish state 1921 Establishment of the Irish Free State

Prologue “A Patriotic Irishman”

In January 1867, Cornelius O’Sullivan arrived at 706 Broadway in New York, the headquarters of what was known as the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood. An Irish speaker who sported a Fenian badge and wore a miniature pike on his tie, O’Sullivan introduced himself as a cattle dealer from Missouri and the leader of a Fenian circle in the town of Clinton, some 80 miles southeast of Kansas City. He was in New York at the invitation of a Fenian organizer he had met three months earlier who wanted him to meet the president of the Fenian Brotherhood, William Roberts, the man behind the attack on Canada the previous summer – when the Irish Republican Army under John O’Neill had defeated the forces of the Crown at the Battle of Limestone Ridge near Ridgeway in the Niagara Peninsula.1 During their meeting, O’Sullivan and Roberts discussed the prospects for another attack on Canada. The Fenians were not ready yet, Roberts told him; they needed around half a million dollars to finance the next invasion and were currently raising funds through the sale of Fenian bonds and uniforms. O’Sullivan bought one of the bonds and was impressed by the uniforms. They consisted of green jackets with yellow braid facings, blue pants with green stripes down the sides, grey overcoats, and standard-issue caps in the style of the United States Army, all for the price of $12. In Brooklyn, he met the person who ran the operation – Miss O’Grady, a “Fenian sister” – who employed four women at $7 a week and supplied them with sewing machines. He rather liked the idea of buying a uniform for himself.2 O’Sullivan also learned that the rival Fenian faction, now led by Tom Kelly, a former United States Army captain with a fearsome reputation, was sending Civil War veterans across the Atlantic to trigger a revolution in Ireland.3 Roberts believed that the entire enterprise was a massive mistake; a

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revolution in Ireland was bound to fail, with disastrous consequences for the cause. The real action, he insisted, must take place in North America, where Canada was a sitting duck and where serious damage could be inflicted on the British Empire. Before he left New York, O’Sullivan was given a list of Fenian contacts in Kansas and Missouri, along with a set of instructions for them, presumably about the importance of raising funds and making military preparations.4 When he returned to the city in March for the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, he reported on his activities in the West, told Roberts how strongly Mrs O’Sullivan supported the organization, and bought a $10 Fenian bond on her behalf. Thanking him, Roberts said that the cash would buy two more breech-loading rifles for the Irish Republican Army. The money was welcome, given the current state of Fenian finances. Roberts was looking exhausted, and his prediction about a rising in Ireland had proved depressingly accurate. Six policemen had put 600 men to flight, he told O’Sullivan, with considerable exaggeration; in the wake of such a humiliating defeat, morale was low and donations were dwindling. An invasion of Canada was still in the plans, but it would have to wait until the target of half a million dollars had been reached and until a well-trained and well-equipped Fenian army was in place.5 In June, on his next trip to New York, O’Sullivan brought with him a pony from Missouri as a present for Roberts’s eleven-year-old son – only to find that Roberts had left for Paris to confer with Fenian leaders from Ireland. But Mrs Roberts was delighted with the pony and deeply touched by O’Sullivan’s generosity. She invited him to attend Mass with her family and asked him to join them for dinner afterwards. Among the guests was General Samuel Spear, who had “raised the Green Flag” in Canada when the Irish Republican Army crossed the border into Canada East (present-day Quebec) from Vermont in 1866.6 O’Sullivan was getting to know almost all the principal figures in the Fenian Brotherhood. During his visit in January, he met General Charles Carroll Tevis, commander of the Irish Republican Army in Chicago and Milwaukee, who had been ordered to cross Lake Huron and march towards London, Canada West (present-day Ontario). In March, O’Sullivan spent his evenings with Rudolph Fitzpatrick, the Fenian assistant secretary of military affairs and a veteran of the Niagara Peninsula raid. Now, in June, O’Sullivan became fast

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friends with Lawrence Shields, the acting leader of the Senate wing during Roberts’s absence. Wearing on his watch chain a gold coin that he had taken from a British officer after the fighting in the Niagara Peninsula, Shields invited O’Sullivan to Niblo’s Theatre on Broadway, where The Black Crook was playing – a spectacular American musical that shocked and thrilled audiences with its “Pas de Demons” dance of seventy scantily-clad women. The two men had such a good time that they decided to see it again.7 Shields and Spear liked the newcomer from Missouri. He was a good conversationalist, he was committed to the cause, and he had acted with kindness to the Roberts family. They talked things over with Patrick Meehan, the editor of New York’s pro-invasion Irish American newspaper, and invited O’Sullivan to a special meeting so that they could express their thanks by presenting him with one of the Fenian uniforms that he admired so much. On 15 June 1867, the paper ran an article of appreciation: We had the pleasure of seeing, on Saturday, a beautiful gray pony, which was brought all the way from the West by a patriotic Irishman, Mr. Cornelius O’Sullivan, of Clinton, Henry County, Mo., as a present to the little son of Col. W.R. Roberts. Mr. O’Sullivan called at the Head-quarters, previous to his return home, and received there a full suit of uniform of the I.R.A., to show how the “Boys in Green” looked, to the Irishmen of Henry County, who, he said, had suffered much during the war for the Union, but had still a little left, which would be forthcoming to aid the struggle for the liberty of their native land.8 It was a fitting tribute to a model Fenian.

Except for one thing: “Cornelius O’Sullivan” did not exist. The man who arrived at the Fenian headquarters on Broadway was not a cattle dealer from Missouri, although he was an Irish speaker and he did wear a Fenian badge and have a miniature pike on his tie. His true identity was Charles Clarke, the “best detective” in the Canadian secret police force. The Fenian circle in Clinton, Henry County, Missouri, was actually an invention of the Canadian secret police, as a step in their strategy to infiltrate the upper echelons of the

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Fenian Brotherhood. The “beautiful gray pony” came from Canada, not Missouri, and was paid for by the Canadian secret service fund, as were the Fenian bonds that Clarke had bought from Roberts.9 Not only that, but two of the men Clarke was pumping for information, Charles Carroll Tevis and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, were actually informers on the British payroll. After the invasion attempt of 1866, Tevis had been severely criticized for his failure to mount an attack on Canada from Chicago and Milwaukee. Furious at his treatment, he decided to contact Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister at Washington. “He has quarrelled with the Fenian leadership,” Bruce told the foreign secretary, Lord Stanley, “and is now ready to do them as much harm as possible. He is anxious to be employed as an agent by H.M.’s Govt. He asks for £100 per month but perhaps I could reduce his terms.”10 Rudolph Fitzpatrick took a different route, joining a long line of Fenians who approached the British consulate in New York, working first with the acting consul, Pierrepont Edwards, and then with the consul himself, the Nova Scotia–born Edward Archibald. There were so many shady looking customers knocking on Archibald’s door that he never knew whether they were informers (to whom he gave the generic codename “Mr. Richard”) or would-be assassins. During long evenings when Archibald was closeted with Fenians, his family waited in dread for a pistol shot. Among all the informers, his daughter recalled, the “principal and most reliable” was Fitzpatrick, who as assistant secretary of military affairs knew the organization from the top down.11 Clarke, Tevis, and Fitzpatrick operated entirely independently of one another; when they had their conversations, none of them knew the secret roles of the others. Individually, they fed information into the three main sources of intelligence about the Fenians in North America – the Canadian secret police force, the British embassy in Washington, and the British consulates in American cities. There were other sources as well. From Dublin, the Irish Constabulary sent to the United States one of its leading detectives, Thomas Doyle, who signed his letters with the flimsy pseudonym “D. Thomas.”12 From Ottawa, the Canadian government encouraged carefully chosen freelance operators to pose as Fenian supporters and visit the headquarters in New York.13 And from London in late 1867, the career was launched of the “Victorian superspy” Thomas Billis Beach, under the alias Henri Le Caron, who

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would play a key role in organizing the invasion attempt of 1870 while keeping the Canadian and British authorities informed of every move.14 These men who led double lives – detectives who infiltrated the movement and informers who betrayed their colleagues – were operating in conditions of extreme stress. The traditional punishment was a bullet in the back of the head, sometimes preceded by torture, usually by a beating. Men such as Clarke needed a good cover story. Because he had actually lived in Kansas and Missouri, he appeared comfortable with those Fenians who knew the area well. And because he spoke Irish, he seemed at home with his countrymen, who would have been stunned to learn that he was not only a detective but also an Orangeman. An Irish-speaking Orangeman seemed like a contradiction in terms, but such individuals were less uncommon than one might expect.15 Still, when Clarke brought that pony to the Roberts family and attended The Black Crook with Lawrence Shields, he was terrified that his cover would be blown. As he was leaving the theatre with Shields and other Fenians, Clarke was greeted by an old friend from Canada. Trying to keep calm, he squeezed his friend’s hand tightly as a warning signal and introduced the man as an old acquaintance from Missouri.16 Although he survived that scare, a more serious threat appeared to be hanging over his head. The Fenian secretary of civil affairs, Daniel O’Sullivan, was rumoured to have been in Canada for the previous month, and Clarke expected him to return any day. Many Fenians in Canada West knew that Clarke was a detective. “If Sullivan returns from Canada with a description of me,” he told his handler, Gilbert McMicken, “my bread is baked.” Every day that Clarke stayed in New York only increased his anxiety. “In all my visits to the states,” he wrote, “I never felt the danger of my situation till this time. I dred Sullivan’s visit to Canada … I wish tomorrow and tomorrow evening soon were over and I safe from amongst the wolves.” When Clarke was invited to that special meeting with General Samuel Spear, Lawrence Shields, and Patrick Meehan, he must have feared that he was walking into his own execution. Instead, he was given his Fenian uniform and praised for his contributions to the cause.17 It was, or so it seemed, a major breakthrough for the Canadian secret service. And it was part of a much larger story, which has never been fully told.18

part one r e vo l u t i o n a r i e s



1

 “Such a Prospect of Success” Ireland and America, 1858–66

The men whom Charles Clarke and his fellow detectives were tracking belonged to a republican tradition that reached back to the 1790s, had been reactivated during the Young Ireland Risings of 1848–49, and now expressed itself through a transnational network of secret societies. What became known as the Fenian Brotherhood originated in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day in 1858 when six men met in the lodgings of James Stephens (Figure 1.1), a professional revolutionary who had taken part in the Rising of 1848. Their objectives: to end British rule in Ireland and to transform the country into an independent republic. Three of them, Thomas Clarke Luby, Garrett O’Shaughnessy, and Peter Langan, had participated in the aftershock Rising of 1849. Since then, Luby had spent a year in Australia, and O’Shaughnessy had taken temporary refuge in the United States; Langan stayed in Dublin and organized weekly drilling exercises in the hills outside the city. Two others, Owen Considine and Joseph Denieffe, had spent several years in the United States and had carried secret correspondence between the “Irish Revolutionary committee” of New York and Stephens in Dublin. On the morning of St Patrick’s Day, Denieffe returned from a fundraising mission to the United States with some much needed money and a letter from the committee affirming that Stephens would become the “Chief Executive of the Irish Revolutionary movement,” with “supreme control and absolute authority over that movement in Ireland.”1 That evening, confident of further American support, the six men swore allegiance to “the Irish Republic, now virtually established,” and pledged to do their “very utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity.”2 Canada was the last thing on their mind. This was to be an Irish revolution aided and abetted by “exiles” in the United States and entirely under the control

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of Stephens himself. If arrogance is a necessary attribute of a successful revolutionary, Stephens was exceptionally well qualified. “I have no hesitation in saying that I think very highly of myself,” he told Luby, who described him as “a seedily-attired personage, long-haired and of somewhat Bohemian cut.”3 The principal lesson that Stephens had learned from the failure of 1848 was the need for thorough and patient preparation. It was essential to establish a wellarmed, well-trained secret revolutionary movement, which would be ready to strike when the time was right – during a democratic revolution in Britain, perhaps, or an international war that would drag down the British Empire. After the Rising of 1848, Stephens had got out of Ireland by the skin of his teeth. With his fellow revolutionaries putting it about that he had been killed in action, he disguised himself as the servant of a family friend and made his way to Paris. Hard on his heels came another refugee from the rising – Michael Doheny, a sharp-tongued, hard-drinking, and quick-tempered lawyer who had planned to kidnap Prime Minister Lord John Russell and hold him hostage for the release of the Young Ireland prisoners.4 Joining them was John O’Mahony, a charismatic Gaelic scholar who had organized a guerrilla campaign in Tipperary and Waterford in September 1848 before fleeing to France.5 In Paris, they mixed with aging veterans of the Rising of 1798, immersed themselves in the city’s radical subculture, and studied the art of revolution. A probable source of inspiration was Louis-Auguste Blanqui’s Societé des Familles, with its pyramidal structure of secret revolutionary cells; the Fenian Brotherhood, with its circles and head centres, would follow suit.6 Another was Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy, with some 50,000 members who took a secret and sacred oath to fight for a free, independent, and republican nation.7 There was no shortage of Irish precedents, as well. The United Irishmen and their Catholic Defender allies had adopted a cellular structure during the 1790s, and a variety of agrarian secret societies in pre-Famine Ireland attempted to impose customary notions of justice on landlords, land-grabbers, and tax collectors.8 With their passwords, oaths, and rituals, as well as their patterns of intimidation, mutilation, and murder, these societies were primarily concerned with immediate local grievances. But under the right circumstances, specific social issues could be harnessed in the service of wider nationalist goals. In 1848, agrarian secret societies in south Tipperary had linked up with the Young Irelanders, one of whose leaders had formed a

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1.1 James Stephens (1825–1901). He was the founder in 1858 of what became known as the Irish Republican (or Revolutionary) Brotherhood.

similar alliance in County Sligo – none other than Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a future father of Canadian Confederation.9 England’s difficulty, ran the revolutionary mantra, is Ireland’s opportunity. Stephens and his fellow revolutionaries followed international affairs closely, watching for signs of conflict and hoping for war. The most likely source of England’s difficulty, they believed, was France. When the six men met on St Patrick’s Day in 1858, Britain and France appeared to be preparing for war, and the Fenians continued to search for signs of tension between the two countries during the early 1860s.10 But France repeatedly let Irish revolutionaries down; it had sought good relations with Britain in 1848 and had pulled back from the brink a decade later. There was always the possibility, however, that the United States would fit the bill. Anglo-American tensions over Texas

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and the Pacific Northwest had produced talk of war during the mid-1840s, British North America remained a standing contradiction to notions that the United States was manifestly destined to control the entire northern continent, and Anglo-American imperial rivalries might yet break out into hostilities. In the meantime, the United States had something else to offer: a large and growing Irish population with the potential to support the cause back home. Michael Doheny crossed over from Paris to New York in 1849, and John O’Mahony joined him in early 1854 – leading figures in a revolutionary cast of thousands. During the Famine, more than a million Irishmen and women, mainly Catholics, escaped to the United States. Many came through Canada, shook the dust of empire from their feet, and moved on to the industrial centres of the Great Lakes. Most landed in the East Coast cities and headed inland to look for work wherever they could find it – in construction, canals, railways, mills, mines, or domestic service. Some fulfilled the dream of possessing their own land; others wound up in some of the worst slums of the Western world. Those who stayed in the cities formed strong communal networks centred on the Catholic Church, the Democratic Party, and state militias. Ward bosses pulled the levers of patronage and brought out the vote. Wherever they were concentrated in numbers, the Catholic Irish became a significant political force.11 A backlash against Irish Catholic immigrants had already been under way before the Famine; now, it became even stronger. Well-worn stereotypes about the “wild Irish” – initially applied to Ulster Scots immigrants during the eighteenth century – were fused with equally well-worn stereotypes about Catholics in a volatile and unpredictable form of American nativism. Amid fears that Irish Catholic immigrants would undermine civil and religious liberty, destroy the common school system, and subvert the Anglo-Saxon character of the United States, American-born nativists – helped along by recently arrived Irish Protestant Orange immigrants – formed a plethora of organizations to uphold American values and protect the Protestant faith. Before long, they coalesced into their own political party, the self-styled KnowNothings. No one, they insisted, should have American citizenship until they had lived in the country for twenty-one years. By the mid-1850s, the KnowNothings were a party on the rise; they scored a series of electoral victories, and for a while it seemed possible that they would capture the presidency.12

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All these developments put Irish American nationalists in a deeply ambivalent position. In theory, the United States was their political model – an independent republic that had conducted a successful revolution against British rule. In practice, they were repelled by the “social persecution” of Irish Catholics, the “hell on earth” of Irish American ghettos, and the “hurricane force” of American nativism.13 No less disturbing was the impact of American materialism, individualism, and corruption on the putatively pure Irish character. “If I really thought that an Irish Republic would result in the degeneracy of the people to the extent that they have been degenerated here,” wrote Doheny, “I would prefer that Ireland should remain as she is.”14 Another refugee from 1848, Richard O’Gorman, was equally scathing in his condemnation; American politics, he declared, was “a filthy pool of shabbiness, falsehood and corruption.”15 That would not, however, prevent him from swimming in it. Irish American ambivalence and alienation fed into a sense of anger that could easily be projected onto the old Saxon enemy. Irish American nationalists easily persuaded themselves that dark English forces were behind the surge of anti-Catholicism in the United States. Driven out of Ireland by hunger and disease and now experiencing poverty and prejudice in their new environment, many of the Famine immigrants tapped into longstanding traditions of exile in Irish culture and adapted them to their own situation.16 Had it not been for British misrule, it was believed, the Irish could have lived happily at home and would never have seen the inside of a coffin ship or the guts of a New York tenement. If only the grain could have been kept in Ireland, ran the argument, there would have been enough food for everyone in the country; instead, it was exported to Britain under armed guard while the Irish people starved to death. No one put it better than the Young Ireland revolutionary John Mitchel (Figure 1.2): “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.”17 Mitchel’s viewpoint contributed to the construction of a powerful and memorable myth, which has echoed through to our own times. In fact, grain imports exceeded grain exports by a ratio of three to one during the Famine.18 Three million people in Ireland had depended on the potato for survival; the sudden and prolonged loss of the crop, together with the spread of contagious diseases, meant that widespread loss of life was unavoidable. There was no “Famine plot” to destroy the Irish people, and charges of an “artificial Famine”

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1.2 John Mitchel (1815–75). On the revolutionary wing of the Young Ireland movement, he was transported to Van Diemen’s Land, from where he escaped to the United States in 1853. He combined support for Irish freedom with support for black slavery and sided with the South during the Civil War.

are unsustainable.19 But it was the myth that mattered. And the myth was not entirely unrelated to reality. Irish grain had indeed been taken to the ports under armed guard, and such events had much more emotive power than import-export statistics. British relief policies were inconsistent, inadequate, and ideologically driven, costing many lives that could have been saved. Mass evictions became seared into the popular memory and were carried across the Atlantic amid denunciations of tyrannical landlords. In this atmosphere of anger and Anglophobia, the Young Ireland revolutionaries who wound up in the United States found a receptive audience for their views. Mitchel reached New York in 1853 after escaping from what he called the “living death” of penal exile in Australia.20 (In fact, as one of his biographers has pointed out, he had been “treated as a gentleman and given special quarters and privileges” during his transportation, and he had “hiked the local mountains, rode horses, and feasted on local cuisine” in Van Diemen’s Land. He also enjoyed kangaroo hunting, particularly because kangaroos were “becoming scarce all over the inhabited parts of the island.”)21 Combining extreme social conservatism with ultra-radical Irish nationalism, he lashed out at a variety of targets, including not only the English but also liberals,

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abolitionists, and reformers; if his wishes came true, he wrote, he would have “a good plantation well-stocked with healthy negroes in Alabama.”22 In Mitchel’s world, petty criminals would be hanged, disobedient slaves would be lashed, and the English would be beaten on the battlefield. Peace not only bred weakness and corruption but also produced a nation of cowards; war brought out the best qualities of men, and those who embraced it became pure and whole.23 His wife, Jane, the rebellious daughter of a leading Ulster Orangeman, had equally strong views. After her husband had been convicted of treason-felony by a packed jury in 1848, she argued that in future such trials should be met by shooting the judge, the attorney general, the sheriff, and the entire jury. Anyone who thought otherwise, she added, was a slave, not a man.24 Being a white Irish slave was bad; being a black African slave was good. “The negroes,” she assured a friend after the Mitchels had moved to New York, “are happier in their state of slavery than when they get their freedom.”25 In New York, Mitchel linked up with another Young Irelander who had escaped from Australia, Thomas Francis Meagher, a brilliant orator who gave impassioned Irish nationalist speeches in an upper-class English accent.26 With Mitchel taking the lead role, they started their own newspaper, the Citizen, which spread the gospel of revolutionary Irish nationalism.27 When news of the Crimean War reached America, Mitchel was ecstatic. “A war – a good, long, thundering war between the sovereigns of Europe,” he wrote in 1854, “is the agency by which the peoples of Europe are to be set upon their feet.”28 To seize the opportunity, he helped to found the Irishmen’s Civil and Military Republican Union, urged Irish Americans to buy rifles and revolvers, and advocated a filibustering expedition to Ireland with the objective of declaring a republic and redistributing land from landlords to tenant farmers.29 Later in the year, he visited the Russian ambassador in Washington, sounding out the possibility of aid for an American-based Irish revolution.30 Nothing came of the plans; the Russians showed little interest in helping, and the projected invasion never materialized.31 The Citizen’s sales plummeted after Mitchel launched an acidic campaign against the Catholic Church in general and against New York archbishop John Hughes in particular for supposedly siding with the forces of despotism in Europe and for being antiIrish.32 By the end of the year, Mitchel had given up on New York and moved to the American South – not, as it turned out, to a plantation in Alabama but

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to a farm in Tennessee. Unable to get decent servants, and disliking his poor white neighbours, Mitchel soon moved to Knoxville, where he started up the Southern Citizen, called for the reopening of the slave trade, and dreamed of wars that would separate the South from the North and Ireland from Britain.33 John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny carried on the struggle from their base in New York. In March 1855, they formed the Emmet Monument Association, a secret society inside the city’s Irish militia companies, and they continued to work for a Russian-backed invasion of Ireland. But Irish American nationalists were deeply divided over the invasion strategy, and with the end of the Crimean War in the spring of 1856, the Emmet Monument Association petered out.34 A hard core of physical force nationalists, including O’Mahony and Doheny, reconstituted themselves into a revolutionary committee. They established contacts with a loose network of veterans from the Risings of 1848– 49, including Stephens, who had returned to Ireland in 1855 and embarked upon his self-described “three thousand mile walk” across the country.35 Stephens assured Doheny that he could have 10,000 men ready for revolution within three months, provided that the Irish Americans sent him three monthly payments of £80 to £100; he also accepted Doheny’s offer to bring over 500 Irish Americans to join the struggle. On St Patrick’s Day in 1858, the stage was set, the oaths were taken, and the as yet nameless secret society was founded. “We shall have such a prospect of success,” Stephens predicted, “as has not [been] offered since – I cannot name the epoch of our history.”36 All that remained was to put the plans into practice.

And a hard time they had of it, on both sides of the Atlantic. After some initial success in organizing Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Cork, James Stephens and his fellow revolutionaries ran out of money. The funds from the United States failed to materialize. Joseph Denieffe was sent back to New York to find out what was going on and reported that Irish Americans had lost confidence in their leaders.37 There had been so many false promises and wild claims, along with so much infighting, that Irish nationalists in the United States saw no reason to throw good money after bad. They had filled the revolutionary coffers in 1848 after being assured that an Irish revolutionary army had slaughtered 6,000 redcoats in the field of battle, only to learn that the Irish rising had actually collapsed when a small band of rebels was dispersed by a force

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of fifty policemen.38 They had been told in 1855 that 30,000 Irish Americans would be invading Ireland that September, only to find that nothing happened.39 They had witnessed the leaders of different factions within the revolutionary movement accuse each other of being in the pay of the British Treasury.40 Facing a mood of weary cynicism, and operating in the context of an economic recession, the revolutionary committee in New York could barely scrape together £40 for the cause back home.41 In October 1858, Stephens himself crossed the Atlantic to sort things out, but he ran into the same problems and quickly came to view Irish Americans with ill-concealed contempt.42 Nor was he impressed with the United States itself, which he described as a “land of Self, Greed & Grab.”43 But he was able to assert his authority over the American branch of the movement and to ensure that John O’Mahony (Figure 1.3) became its head centre. O’Mahony gave the organization the name by which it became known: the Fenian Brotherhood. Drawing on Irish mythological traditions, he took the name from what he called the “Fiann na h-Eirenn,” bands of soldiers who defended ancient Ireland from foreign invaders.44 By the summer of 1859, O’Mahony had started up the first Fenian newspaper, the Phoenix, calling for Irishmen to “extirpate, root and branch from Ireland, the English garrison, English government, English laws, English land-tenure, and all the adjuncts of English usurpation.”45 Emphasizing the need for perseverance and persistence, the Phoenix carried articles on military preparations, watched for signs of international war, extolled the character of the “Celtic race” (even speculating that William Shakespeare was really a Celt), and looked forward to the day when patriotic Irish farmers owned Irish land.46 “Nothing,” declared O’Mahony, “can save Ireland now but armed resistance.”47 Invoking the memory of “Captain Rock,” the mythic figure who symbolized popular violence against agrarian wrongs, the paper endorsed the killing of land-grabbers and oppressive landlords, along with the “condign punishment” of informers and spies.48 Among the spies was Thomas Doyle, the Irish detective who had been sent to the United States in the autumn of 1859 to assess the strength of the Fenian Brotherhood. He soon concluded that only a “small fraction” of Irish Americans were involved in the movement. In the countryside, he reported, no one knew anything about the Fenians; in the large towns and cities, most people rejected their ideas as “delusive, or chimerical.”49 This view would be borne out by O’Mahony himself, who commented that the Brotherhood was “often

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1.3 John O’Mahony (1815–77). He was the founder of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States in 1859. When the movement split in 1865, he led the wing that supported direct action in Ireland rather than an invasion of Canada.

on the verge of extinction” in its early years.50 By late 1860, however, there were some signs of life; Doyle noted that the organizers remained active, that hundreds of men were drilling in Brooklyn and New York, and that everyone in the country had easy access to guns.51 The Brotherhood was also struggling to get off the ground in Ireland. In December 1858, the government arrested key organizers in Cork and Kerry. Things were so hot that when Stephens finished his tour of the United States the following spring, he sailed for France rather than Ireland. Alienating a number of potential supporters (most notably Mitchel) with his erratic style of leadership, failing to embroil France and Britain in war, and blaming his problems on the lack of American funds, Stephens appeared to be going nowhere.52 With the prospect of success receding, he settled in for the long haul, a strategy that generated its own contradictions and tensions. To attract recruits and raise morale, he had to maintain a highly charged atmosphere of

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impending action; but to avoid defeat, he had to pull back from the promise of revolution until Britain was actually engaged in war. Such a balancing act could not be sustained indefinitely. In the absence of war, his bluff would eventually be called, and “the Great Sir Hocus Pocus,” as Luby called him, would be open to the accusation that he was a fraud.53 The remarkable thing is that he was able to carry it off as long as he did. While Stephens remained in Paris, his organizers continued their recruitment drive in Ireland and established a firm base among the artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen of Dublin. By the time he returned to Ireland in the spring of 1861, the Fenians were attempting to seize the initiative from the broadly “respectable” nationalist leadership in the country. Their first major success came later in the year, when they took over the funeral arrangements for Terence Bellew MacManus, a Young Ireland revolutionary who had been exiled to Van Diemen’s Land, escaped to the United States, and died in San Francisco. At the behest of the American Fenians, plans were put in place to bury MacManus in Ireland, and his travelling coffin provided the occasion for patriotic demonstrations on both sides of the Atlantic. In Dublin, at least 8,000 people participated in the funeral procession, and thousands more lined the streets. Many of them were not revolutionary nationalists. But their sympathies were broad enough to respect the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought for Ireland.54

In the United States, everything had been transformed by the outbreak of the Civil War. Almost 200,000 Irish Americans, including many Fenians, were drawn into the conflict; rather than working together for Irish independence, they were fighting each other in the Union and Confederate Armies.55 In the North, Thomas Francis Meagher (after some initial equivocation) joined the 69th Regiment of the New York State militia and became the first commander of the Irish Brigade, which would suffer ferocious losses in some of the worst battles of the war.56 In the South, John Mitchel strongly supported the Confederacy and would lose two sons in the conflict.57 Despite their differences, Meagher and Mitchel both believed that the Civil War functioned as a training ground for Irish revolutionaries who could apply their military knowledge and experiences to the struggle back home (see Figure 1.4). Among the many Fenian sympathizers who shared their views was Peter Welsh from Prince

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Edward Island, who joined the 28th Massachusetts Volunteers in 1862. “This war,” he wrote, “is a school of instruction for Irishmen and if the day should arive within ten years after this war is ended an army can be raised in this country that will strike terror to the saxons heart.”58 The United States and Britain had already come close to war at the end of 1861. In November, a United States ship intercepted a British mail packet, the Trent, that was carrying two Confederate envoys en route to Europe. The envoys were arrested and imprisoned, amid widespread celebrations in the northern states. Regarding the American action as a violation of maritime law and an insult to the British flag, Lord Palmerston’s government issued an ultimatum to Washington that demanded the release of the prisoners by 26 December. Here, it seemed, was the opportunity for Irish revolutionaries to take advantage of England’s difficulty. As thousands of British troops crossed the Atlantic to Canada, Irish nationalists in Dublin proclaimed their support for the United States. “We are on the eve of a great crisis,” said Daniel O’Donoghue (better known as The O’Donoghue), “which will prove whether you are fit for liberty or the reverse.”59 In New York, the Fenians looked forward to the day when an American-based Irish Brigade would carry the war to the shores of Ireland.60 All would be deeply disappointed when the American government backed down and returned the envoys to a British ship. In the midst of these tensions, the Fenians in Ireland ensured that their moderate rivals – principally, the former Young Irelanders whom Stephens dismissed as “the Clique” – would not be in a position to turn the crisis to their own political advantage.61 The struggle for hegemony carried over into the following year and beyond as Stephens continued his efforts to secure a Fenian monopoly over Irish nationalism. Although the moderates generally had no objections to physical force in theory, they did not believe that it was a viable option in practice, given the power imbalance between Ireland and Britain. Fenian secret societies, in their view, alienated potential allies in the Catholic Church and were easily infiltrated by the government.62 The conflict between moderates and militants also had a class dimension. Assessing the situation in February 1862, the journalist Timothy Daniel Sullivan described the Fenian leaders as “two or three clever, dissipated, irreligious men, who keep themselves very much behind the scenes; the next rank to them are young lads, shopkeepers’ assistants in our cities and chief towns, who have a little smattering – often a very little indeed – of education.” These

1.4 Fenian recruiting poster. “Irishmen, you are now training to meet your English enemies!” First, though, the Irish in Michael Corcoran’s Irish Legion met their own countrymen in the Confederate Army.

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“young Jacobin shopmen and tradesmen,” he continued, were unequalled in their “self-sufficiency and shameless impudence.” They joked about the censures of the church, they sneered at literature and literary men, and they responded with “bitter enmity” to anyone who challenged them.63 During the early months of 1862, it was these men who were seizing the initiative. In the United States, however, the Civil War was absorbing the energies of the Fenian Brotherhood, and O’Mahony was meeting considerable resistance from most of the Young Ireland exiles.64 In April 1862, Stephens complained that the Americans had sent him only £113 during the previous twelve months.65 Lacking money and beginning to lose momentum, he sent Luby across the Atlantic at the beginning of 1863 to kick the American Fenians back into life. Luby spent five months travelling around the United States, only to return with just under £100.66 Unable to rely on American support, Stephens struck out in a new and unexpected direction: he decided to launch a newspaper that would provide a stable source of income for the movement and spread the Fenian message to a wider audience. With the establishment of the Irish People in November 1863, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, as the movement was now known in Ireland, embarked on a twin-track strategy of open political agitation and secret revolutionary organization – something that initially did not sit well with all its members. But the new approach rapidly expanded the appeal of Fenianism, as talented writers such as Luby, Charles Kickham, and John O’Leary penned articles advocating republican revolution, social egalitarianism, the separation of church and state, the abolition of landlordism, and the redistribution of land. Although the Irish People did not become the dominant nationalist paper in Ireland, it outsold its rivals in Britain, circulated in the United States, and was read by Irish nationalists in British North America.67 When the police raided its offices in September 1865, subscription lists from Fenian circles in Quebec City and Halifax, Nova Scotia, were found among its papers.68

While Stephens hoped that his newspaper would end his dependency on American funds, O’Mahony was trying to end his dependency on Irish control. Caught between Stephens’s “dictatorial arrogance”69 on one side and American demands for the democratization of the Fenian Brotherhood on

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the other, O’Mahony in November 1863 organized a Fenian convention in Chicago. After three days of debate, the convention established constitutional structures for the Brotherhood, declared its independence from Ireland, and unanimously confirmed O’Mahony’s position as head centre.70 The sense of unity, however, was more apparent than real. In the Midwest, particularly Chicago, Fenian leaders were becoming increasingly impatient with O’Mahony’s view that the Brotherhood should wait until the conditions were right. Instead, the self-styled “men of action” were arguing that the Fenians should create their own conditions for a rising. To speed things along, the Chicago Fenians organized an Irish National Fair in the city during the spring of 1864 and invited Stephens to attend. In a carnivalesque atmosphere, the organizers sold everything from pieces of Lord Edward FitzGerald’s coffin to Fionn Mac Chumhaill’s arrows and a toothpick that belonged to Daniel O’Connell, netting over $50,000.71 Immediately afterwards, Stephens embarked on a tour of the mid-western states, addressed Irish soldiers in the Union Army, and assured his audiences that the Irish revolution would take place before the end of 1865. The promise of imminent action had the desired effect: the number of Fenian circles increased dramatically, and funds flowed in as never before. But Stephens had also made the Brotherhood a hostage to fortune. If the revolution did not occur on schedule, the entire movement could fall apart. In the short run, his strategy worked, and his alliance with the “men of action” effectively short-circuited O’Mahony’s leadership of the American branch of the movement. At a second Fenian convention, held in Cincinnati in January 1865, the hardliners strengthened their influence within the Brotherhood. Among their recruits was William Roberts, who would become the leading proponent of the strategy to free Ireland by invading Canada.72 When the Civil War ended in April, everything appeared to be coming together. American anger about Britain’s sympathy for the South threatened to boil over into hostilities that could provide an opening for the Fenians. Funds that flowed across the Atlantic were being used to buy rifles for Irish republicans, the Brotherhood was infiltrating the British Army and British militia, and Stephens was claiming that 140,000 Irishmen were ready for action.73 O’Mahony, concerned that the Great Sir Hocus Pocus was engaging in his old pastime of revolutionary prestidigitation, sent several emissaries to look

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behind the curtain. They liked what they saw.74 By August, O’Mahony had swallowed his skepticism and issued the “final call” for Fenian money.75 It seemed that 1865 really would be the year of revolution. Yet the movement was not as strong as it seemed; the actual number of sworn Fenians was probably closer to 50,000 than the 140,000 of Stephens’s imagination, and most of them were without arms and ammunition. Although they had made significant inroads into the rank and file of the military, the Fenians remained a minority in the army, failed to draw large numbers of officers into the Brotherhood, and were hampered by the rotation of regiments.76 Had war broken out, they could indeed have mounted a serious challenge to British rule. But the United States government had no intention of declaring war on Britain, despite the bellicose rhetoric emanating from American newspapers, and the Fenians were not powerful enough to go it alone.77 In Ireland, the authorities were aware of Fenian activities in the military and knew that Stephens was planning a rising by the end of the year. On 15 September, they pounced. The Dublin Metropolitan Police raided the Irish People office, shut down the newspaper, and arrested the leaders. Stephens slipped through the net but was eventually caught in November – only to be sprung from prison twelve days later. His military council wanted to press on with the rising, but in the hope that the situation would soon improve, Stephens held them back.78 The revolution would be postponed until further notice. Despite assurances from Stephens that the movement in Ireland was still intact, the September crackdown prompted the “men of action” in the United States to seize the initiative. Their pressure resulted in a third Fenian convention, held in Philadelphia in October, where the constitution was once again revised, O’Mahony’s power was circumscribed, and the militants in the newly established Fenian Senate pulled most of the strings. The militants decided to strike out in a new direction – northwards to Canada.

If the Irish revolutionary movement was in difficulty, the militants reasoned, and if the prospects of an Anglo-American war had stalled, they must seize the initiative themselves. The idea of hitting Britain through Canada had already been mooted in Fenian circles; at the Philadelphia convention, it became official policy.79 “One main object,” the British consul in New York,

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Edward Archibald, learned from an informer, “is thus to breed a rupture between England and the U.S.”80 By drawing the United States into a “quarrel on their side,” reported Thomas Doyle, the Fenians hoped to trigger the war on which Irish revolutionary success hinged.81 O’Mahony, who felt like he was riding a “wild unbridled horse,” went along with the plan despite the risks involved; to resist the Fenian Senate would be to precipitate a split that could undermine the entire movement.82 “The Canadian raid,” he told John Mitchel on 10 November, “I look upon as a mere diversion, as far as regards our present action. Unless it drag the U.S. into war with England it can only end in defeat to those that engage in it. But it is worth trying in the hope that it may lead to such a war.”83 It seemed, in October and early November 1865, that there were good grounds for such hope. Shortly before the Philadelphia convention, the secretary of the Fenian treasury, Bernard Doran Killian, had discussed the implications of a raid on Canada with the Republican president, Andrew Johnson, and his secretary of state, William Seward. During the meeting, Killian subsequently informed the Fenian leadership, Johnson and Seward had told him that they would “acknowledge accomplished facts.”84 This report was exactly what the Fenians wanted to hear. If they invaded Canada with the tacit approval of the American government, their chances of success would increase exponentially, and Anglo-American relations would be plunged into crisis. British troops would be pulled across the Atlantic at the very time that Irish revolutionaries, inspired by Fenian victories in Canada, would launch their rising at home. By the time it was over, Ireland would be free, Canada would be either an independent republic or an American state, and Britain would be humiliated.

In fact, the American government did not have the slightest intention of acquiescing in a Fenian raid on Canada – although it did have good reason to appear to support the Fenians, given the importance of the “Irish vote” in the state and congressional elections.85 The need to avoid alienating Irish voters had to be balanced against the demands of Anglo-American diplomacy; Seward was seeking massive compensation from Britain for damages caused by British-outfitted Confederate ships during the Civil War and realized that any

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counterclaims for Fenian damages in Canada would weaken his bargaining position. On 18 November, during a dinner with Frederick Bruce, the British minister, Seward expatiated on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, the common interests of the United States and Britain, and his desire to tame the “wild aspirations” of the Fenians and annexationists – thus marking the beginning of an informal Anglo-American agreement to contain the Fenians.86 That same day, Killian wrote to Seward seeking confirmation of his views on the desirability of establishing a Canadian republic.87 Killian did not get the reply that he wanted. The United States government, Seward told him, would “maintain and enforce its obligation and perform its duties towards all other nations,” and it would not engage in any official correspondence with the Brotherhood.88 It is not clear what Killian made of Seward’s response, but shortly afterwards O’Mahony withdrew his already reluctant support for the invasion strategy.89 The “men of action” in the Fenian Senate, however, were determined to press ahead, with or without the support of the American government. To clear the way, they set out in early December to remove O’Mahony from the presidency and to replace him with William Roberts. O’Mahony stood his ground, ejected the Senators from Fenian headquarters, and reasserted the importance of focusing on Ireland rather than Canada. He received the full backing of Stephens, who denounced the invasion strategy as a “mad and traitorous diversion from the right path.”90 As each side accused the other of betraying the cause, and as the split deepened and widened, the Senate wing established its own headquarters on Broadway and began to prepare for the attack on Canada. It was, in the view of Roberts and the senators, a matter of urgency. The longer an invasion was delayed, the more likely it was that Irish American Civil War veterans would drift back into civilian life and that the opportunity would be lost. Getting men across the Atlantic to Ireland was fraught with difficulties; even if the logistical problems could be solved, they would still have to run the gauntlet of the most powerful navy in the world. But the Canadian border was porous, and it seemed relatively easy to hit Britain through its North American empire. At the Philadelphia convention, Michael Murphy, the head centre of the Fenians in Canada, had declared that British regiments in the country had been infiltrated, that more than 100,000 Irish Canadians were prepared to

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support an invasion, and that they “anticipated striking a blow before Christmas.”91 In early December, Killian informed John Mitchel that “arrangements are in progress between this body and a representative Society of French Canadians.” “I expect early fruit in that climate,” he added.92 One of the potential supporters he named was Joseph-Xavier Perrault, a member of the secret Club Saint-Jean-Baptiste; the previous month, Perrault had publicly condemned the “tyranny of England” in Ireland.93 Another was Jean-BaptisteÉric Dorion, who believed that annexation was preferable to Confederation and that, if a war came, the Canadian people would not fight as they had done in 1812.94 An Irish American invasion force, it appeared, would meet little or no resistance and would receive much active or passive support from Irish and French Canadians.95 All kinds of possibilities would open up. Even if an invasion lasted only a few days, it would still encourage and inspire the revolutionaries back home.96 If the country could be held for longer, British troops would be sent to Canada just as they had during the Trent crisis four years earlier, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood could exploit the military gap in Ireland. Canada would be held until the British government recognized the independence of Ireland, after which Canadians would vote in a general election on the question of annexation to the United States.97 There was also talk of moving against New Brunswick and turning it into a base from which to attack British shipping.98 Above and beyond all these plans, Irish Americans who had received their military training during the Civil War could fulfill the wish of countless Irish immigrants whose lives had been scarred by hunger, disease, eviction, and migration: to make Britain pay for the Famine.

This mood was captured perfectly by the journalist and politician John Francis Maguire, a constitutional nationalist, during his travels through Irish America in the mid-1860s. Everywhere he went, he found “the same feeling of passionate love, the same feeling of passionate hate” – love for Ireland and hatred of the British government, which was held responsible for “all the evils of Ireland.” Among the people he met was a sixty-year-old Irish farmer in the American West who had been evicted in Ireland: “His cottage had been assailed by the ‘crowbar brigade,’ and he and his wife had barely time to snatch their children from the crashing ruin of what had been their home; and in his heart

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he cherished a feeling of hatred and vengeance, not so much against the individual by whom the wrong was perpetrated, as against the Government by which it was sanctioned, and under whose authority it was inflicted.” The man’s sons shared the “vengeful feeling of their father.”99 Another man recalled how his father had died in a ditch after they were evicted: “I’ll never forgive the bloody English Government that allowed a man to be treated worse than I’d treat a dog,” he said. Wherever there were evicted tenants in America, Maguire commented, there were “willing contributors to Fenian funds, and enthusiastic supporters of anti-British organisations.” They were joined by descendants of the United Irishmen, “to whom their fathers left a legacy of hate.” Even the moral force nationalists who opposed Fenianism, Maguire remarked, would be likely to contribute to the Brotherhood if “matters really came to a crisis.” If the Fenians could hold Canada for a few days, he concluded, Irishmen from every state of the Union would flock to their standard.100 Similar sentiments were recorded by John Joseph Lynch, who became the Catholic bishop of Toronto in 1860. During his travels in the United States as a missionary after the Famine, he found “a deep settled hatred for England throughout the entire country.” “It is agreed on all sides,” he continued, “that monstrous grievances exist in Ireland. They are proved day after day, by the tens of thousands of poor people who arrive in this country [the United States] in rags and destitution, surrounded by squalid children, with tears in their eyes, and indignation in their hearts against those who have exterminated them, to give place to cattle. Those people and their children swell up the ranks of Fenians and propagate Fenianism or hatred for their former rulers.” “I look upon Fenianism,” he wrote, “as the suppuration of a deep chronic wound, inflicted on Ireland. It has caused and will cause yet great troubles.”101 Irish and Irish American revolutionary nationalism cannot be reduced to a reaction against the Famine. It had been a powerful force during the 1790s and remained a significant minority tradition during the early nineteenth century. Conversely, not all Irishmen and Irishwomen who had lived through the Famine became revolutionaries – far from it, in fact. But the Famine undoubtedly radicalized large numbers of people, created a deep well of anger and hatred on which the Fenians could draw, and intensified pre-existing Anglophobic attitudes. A particularly striking example is that of Jeremiah

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O’Donovan Rossa, who would organize a dynamite campaign in the 1880s with the intention of bombing Britain out of Ireland. As a young boy, he had been brought up on stories of English atrocities, and his parents and neighbours had rejoiced whenever they heard of a landlord being shot. During the Famine, his father died on the public works, his mother was evicted from their home, and he himself almost succumbed to fever. He recalled with shame the time that he bought a penny bun and did not share it with his family. O’Donovan Rossa would have been a revolutionary even if the potatoes had never rotted; his personal experiences made him determined “to destroy that tyranny that reduces my people to poverty and degradation.”102 And he was far from alone. If the Famine brought embittered Irish immigrants to the United States, the Civil War provided tens of thousands of them with military training and experience, and Canada offered them a target for revenge against the British Empire. In Ireland, wrote the Fenian secretary of war, Thomas Sweeny, “no definite plan of action had ever been adopted,” and the policy had been “to wait until something should turn up.” But in North America, things were very different. “Firm in my belief that we were strong enough to make the opportunity not to wait for it,” he wrote, “I determined to act at once, & in that quarter where the enemy was most vulnerable, & where victory would give us the most real & positive advantages; and I determined to attack Canada.” It was there for the taking. “From the opposition of the people of the Eastern province [Quebec],” he told Roberts in 1865, “we have nothing to apprehend, they were positively neutral during the invasions of 1775 & 1812, & the arrogance of British troops has only embittered the aversion which as Frenchmen they have always felt towards the conquerors of their forefathers. In Canada West the garrisons are small & widely separated & even the sympathy of their friends the Orangemen will be of but little real avail when cut off from all assistance from without. They must remain in their fortified towns, until compelled to surrender in detail, or they will be cut to pieces by our troops, whenever they attempt to move out, with a view to concentrate in the field.”103 That, at least, was the thinking.

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 “A Strange Fact” History and Historiography

The idea of liberating Ireland by invading Canada went back much farther than the time of the Fenians. During the War of 1812, expatriate United Irishmen marched northwards in their own militia companies to avenge Britain’s repression of the Rising of 1798 and to demonstrate their credentials as good American citizens. “This is the hour,” proclaimed an Irish American volunteer in 1812, “to humble the British tyrant in the dust, to complete the independence of America, and shatter into pieces the chains of poor unfortunate Ireland. Ireland will be rescued from British bondage on the plains of Canada.”1 The United Irishmen, like the Young Irelanders and Fenians who followed in their footsteps, found an inspirational figure in Richard Montgomery, the Irishborn revolutionary general who was killed during the Siege of Quebec in 1775 and was transformed into a symbol of Irish American sacrifice, courage, republicanism, and patriotism.2 All this cut little ice with early-nineteenth-century Irish Canadian immigrants, who refused to see the benefits of being liberated at Irish American gunpoint. A conspicuous exception was the opposition leader Joseph Willcocks, whose politics were an unstable compound of personal opportunism, Real Whig ideology, and United Irish republicanism.3 In 1813, he crossed over to the Americans and commanded a company of Canadian Volunteers “to assist in changing the Government of this Province into a Republic.”4 In honour of their leader, the Volunteers, most of whom had been born in North America, fought with green ribbons around their hats.5 Killed in action in 1814, Willcocks was reviled in Canada as a traitor and revered by Irish American nationalists as a martyr to liberty.6 The prospects of uniting Irish, American, and Canadian republicans appeared more promising during Canada’s Rebellions of 1837–38. Although most

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Irish Protestants and the Catholic Church in Canada were aligned with the Crown, a minority of Irish immigrants reached out in more radical directions. In Toronto, the excommunicated Irish priest William John O’Grady joined forces with William Lyon Mackenzie in a program that combined democratic politics with support for constitutional nationalism in Ireland and responsible government in Canada. During the rebellion, however, he made himself scarce and might even have become an informer.7 Farther east, the Montreal-based Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan attempted with diminishing success to establish an Irish-French alliance, in which Louis-Joseph Papineau was cast as a Canadian version of the Irish “Liberator” Daniel O’Connell.8 After the failure of the Rebellions of 1837–38, O’Callaghan and Mackenzie worked together in New York on Mackenzie’s British, Irish, and Canadian Gazette to “avenge Ireland and Canada’s wrongs.”9 The newspaper was full of praise for the United Irishmen and its leaders, such as Wolfe Tone; one of the subscribers was Tone’s widow, Matilda.10 In 1844, Mackenzie published The Sons of the Emerald Isle, which he dedicated to the “Irish friends” who had stood by him in his “time of trouble and difficulty.”11 Among those Irish friends was Edward Theller from Coleraine, who had emigrated to Montreal in 1826 and had moved to the United States the following year.12 During the winter of 1837–38, Theller linked up with Canadian exiles and American annexationists in the loose-knit secret society of Patriot Hunters. Supported by thousands of Americans from Maine to Michigan, the Hunters launched a series of incursions into Canada over the next four years, anticipating Fenian efforts to provoke an Anglo-American war that would break the British presence in North America.13 A “Brigadier-General in the Canadian Republican Service,” Theller was captured in 1838 and sentenced to death for treason. In his speech from the dock, he told the judge that Ireland was “suffering under the same cruel despotism that now blights the prospects of poor Canada.” “I can never forget,” he continued, “the wrongs my native land has endured from the British rule, portrayed in living light in her history, and transmitted as the precious legacy of accumulating national vengeance from sire to son.”14 Escaping from prison, he made it back to the United States, where he was feted by the United Irish veteran William James MacNeven and continued to work for Canadian and Irish independence.15

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In 1848, against the background of the Famine in Ireland and revolution in Europe, it appeared that the hour to rescue Ireland on the “plains of Canada” had come again. As the Young Irelanders moved towards revolution and called for Irish American support, their allies in New York formed the Irish Republican Union, raising money for the cause and discussing the possibility of hitting Britain through Canada, with Irish American veterans from the Mexican War in the vanguard. In what would become a recognizable pattern, an invasion of Canada held out the promise of pinning down British troops, avenging the Famine, wiping Britain off the North American map, and expanding the American Empire of Liberty.16 The strategy had significant pockets of support among Irish Catholics in Canada, notably in Montreal and Quebec City.17 At an Irish rally of around 20,000 people in New York during the summer, Bernard Devlin, a young firebrand lawyer from Montreal, asserted that Irish Canadians would welcome an American invasion force with open arms.18 In April and May, “monster meetings” of radical Irish nationalists – doubtless attended by many of the Famine migrants who had experienced the horrors of the “coffin ships” the previous year – had been held in Montreal and Quebec City. Placards appeared in Quebec City calling on Irishmen “to provide themselves with muskets and remember the famine,” and some Irishmen were letting it be known that their continuing loyalty to Canada was contingent upon British disengagement from Ireland.19 “By striking in Canada,” Devlin said, “we had an ulterior object in view: to aid Ireland indirectly by distracting the attention of the Government. We have entered on our duties already. In Quebec a number of guns have been spiked … I say it and repeat it: If 10,000 men invaded Canada they would walk through it in a week, and the Irish soldiers of whom there are thousands, would turn out to a man with us.”20 Shortly after his speech, three Irishmen were arrested for spiking artillery and carrying away cannon balls in Quebec City. One of them was John Hearn, the secretary of the city’s recently established Emmet Rifle Club, which was intended to “rescue the Land of their birth from starvation and slavery.” According to one account, the men had declared that they were going to “blow up the bloody cape.”21 After the news reached the United States in late August 1848 that the Young Ireland Rising had collapsed, the Canadian strategy was all that the Irish Republican Union had left. The British consul in New York, Anthony Barclay,

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feared that the leaders “may very probably resort to an incursion in to Canada … as the only course which may divert the resentment of the mass, for the sums of money of which they have been duped.”22 But the fire had gone out of the movement, and a growing number of Irish American revolutionaries reluctantly concluded that an invasion was no longer feasible.23 Charles Hart, a Young Ireland emissary in the United States, dissociated himself from what he viewed as a “harum-scarum expedition.” In October, his fellow emissary William Mitchel (brother of John) was sent into Canada to sound out the situation.24 In the absence of any Irish military organization on either side of the border, there was no chance of success. The last thing that the revolutionaries wanted was a humiliating defeat in America to match the failure in Ireland. When William Mitchel returned to New York, the invasion plans were quietly dropped. This outcome did not, however, prevent Young Irelanders in the United States from continuing to encourage revolution in Canada. Taking the lead was Thomas D’Arcy McGee, brimful of republican anger, who blamed the British government for the Famine (which he described as “2,000,000 ministerial murders”) and was determined to smash the British Empire to pieces. “Either Canada needs a revolution,” he declared, “or it needs nothing.”25 In response, the self-styled “Irishmen in Canada” from Montreal affirmed their “deep and terrible hatred of England” and their willingness to fight the British Empire on both sides of the Atlantic. “The green flag will be their banner,” they declared, “and their war cry, remember Ireland.”26 In Canada, the press generally mocked and marginalized such sentiments. Radical nationalists were treated as a lunatic fringe (quite literally, in the case of Hearn and his friends who were arrested in Quebec City), and their meetings were written off as poorly attended affairs that the “respectable” Irish had shunned.27 The general consensus, except for a few expressions of uneasiness, was that most Irish Canadians were moderate, sensible, and unconditionally loyal to the Crown.28 “As regards the invasion of Canada,” the Quebec Morning Chronicle wrote, “it is all fudge – sheer nonsense – and intended, no doubt, to stir up the ire of the Irish here, and coax them out of their money.”29 The Canadian authorities, however, could not afford to be so complacent. In April 1848, Governor General Lord Elgin, had been concerned about the attempts by Louis-Joseph Papineau to establish an alliance between the French and the Irish republicans in Canada East.30 Elgin also received “some alarming

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reports” that thousands of Irishmen in Montreal had joined secret oathbound societies, with plans to seize the arms depot at St Helen’s Island and to burn down military buildings.31 Noting the “present state of unquiet Feeling among the lower-classes of the Irish Population,” the commander-in-chief of the British Army in Canada, Benjamin D’Urban, put the garrison at St Helen’s Island on full alert and took precautions “against attempts which will probably be made to tamper with the Irish Roman Catholic Soldiers.”32 Rumours were circulating about the re-emergence of the Patriot Hunters in the United States.33 From Brockville, Ogle Gowan, the founder of the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America, reported that Irish nationalists and American annexationists based across the St Lawrence River in Ogdensburg were planning “an immediate and hostile invasion of this Province.” Canada, he had heard, was to be “invaded at several points simultaneously.” An American general who had fought in the Mexican War was supposedly preparing to lead 50,000 disbanded men northwards, and “many Repeal Bands” in Canadian border towns were ready to join them.34 More reports about links between American and Canadian Irish revolutionaries reached Elgin later in the summer. Despite D’Urban’s best efforts, it appeared that Irish Canadian revolutionaries had succeeded in infiltrating the British Army. A “person of great intelligence” informed Anthony Barclay in New York that “there are regimental clubs among the Troops at Quebec, affiliated with the clubs of the Civilians; that, in case of an outbreak, they have resolved to give us no quarters; and that the women of the rebels, like those in Paris lately, are prepared to act a ferocious part.”35 Monitoring the situation closely, and sending Provincial Secretary Robert Baldwin Sullivan into the United States to investigate “the designs of the Irish Party,” Elgin was cautiously confident that the threat could be contained. He soon realized that efforts to establish a French-Irish revolutionary alliance were going nowhere and that the stories about a powerful Irish revolutionary underground in Montreal were wildly exaggerated.36 In Washington, dc, the British chargé d’affaires, John Crampton, assured Elgin that there was no immediate danger of an invasion and that there was much more “swagger & bragging” than serious organization in the movement.37 A case in point was the visit to Montreal in July 1848 by the Irish Republican Union emissary Michael Thomas O’Connor, who claimed to have addressed

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6,000 Irishmen in the city. The Montreal Irish, he subsequently told a New York crowd, were willing to strike for Ireland’s freedom, “even should every house in Montreal be in flames.”38 In fact, wrote Elgin, the meeting was a “complete failure,” attended only by “some hundreds of persons” who were “speedily dispersed by a timely thunder shower.” Elgin took further comfort from the fact that “not a single individual of importance among the Irish Repeal Party was present.” Most Irish Catholic Canadians, he believed, were in the constitutional nationalist tradition of Daniel O’Connell rather than in the revolutionary camp of Young Ireland and the Irish Republican Union.39 Nevertheless, the possibility remained that some kind of diversionary action in Canada could be triggered by a rising in Ireland.40 Underlying Elgin’s unease was his conviction that Canadian allegiance to Britain was very thinly based. The commercial classes were “thoroughly disgusted” with Britain’s shift to free trade, he informed Colonial Secretary Lord Grey, while the French were equally suspicious of the British and the Americans, and the Irish “are here just what they are in Ireland” – hardly reassuring in a year of revolution. Canadians, wrote Elgin, switched their allegiance from Britain to the United States in much the same way that voters in Britain switched political parties. And he feared that the Irish in America would develop their military organization in the coming months, when “the disbanded miscreants who are now returning in hordes from Mexico with appetites whetted for all deeds of rapine & blood will be ready for any congenial job.” Still, he was certain that no matter what Canadians thought about annexation to the United States, they would not “fancy the taste of celtic Pikes or the rule of Irish mob law.”41 When he learned that the Irish rising had failed, Elgin breathed a large sigh of relief.42 As it became clear that the crisis had passed, his mood lightened; towards the end of September, he compared the invasion plan to “a red Fox Hunt.” “It may be,” he remarked, “that the love of sport does not encrease as it ought to do in a direct ratio with the danger attending it.”43 During the winter, when reports were still coming in about a possible attack on Canada, Elgin was irritated rather than alarmed; he just wanted to get the whole thing over with. “I only wish the scoundrels wd come,” he told Grey. “We would give them a proper thrashing, and put a stop for a while to the eternal talk about annexation which has well nigh sickened me.”44

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In almost every respect, the themes of 1848 anticipated those of 1865–70, when the Fenians menaced Canada; some of them would resurface during the struggle for Irish independence in 1919–21. For the Irish Republican Union in 1848, we have the Fenian Brotherhood of the 1860s; for the disbanded Irish soldiers of the Mexican War, we have the Irish veterans of the Civil War. We see the same republican confidence that the invasion of Canada was merely a matter of marching, the same kind of alliance between Irish nationalists and American annexationists, and the same conviction that a revolution in Canada would operate in conjunction with a rising in Ireland. Just as the Irish Republican Union was supported by Irish radicals in Montreal and Quebec City, the Fenians in the United States had close links with their counterparts in Canada. In both cases, a militant minority of Irish Canadians set out to suborn Irish soldiers serving in British regiments, and they planned to disrupt Canadian defences in the event of an invasion. And in both cases, that minority was drawn largely, but not exclusively, from the loosely defined “lower orders” of Irish-born Catholic immigrants. Equally striking was the recurrence of exaggerated hopes and fears, fuelled by rumours. The Irish Republican Union and its Fenian successors maintained morale through highly charged rhetoric that not only inflated the breadth and depth of their revolutionary organizations but also offered their members assurances of imminent and inevitable success. From the viewpoint of the Canadian and British authorities, it became very difficult to assess what was actually happening. One could easily conclude from the public speeches and fundraising drives that the entire enterprise was concocted by demagogues who were making money out of dupes and who merited nothing more than mockery and contempt. But one could just as easily conclude that strong action was needed to counter a potential threat. Along with the persistence of these patterns, there were continuities of place and personnel. From the Patriot Hunters through to the Irish Republican Union and the Fenian Brotherhood, American border towns such as Ogdensburg and Rouses Point were focal points of Irish nationalist intrigue and Canadian concern; the same places would figure in military intelligence reports about gunrunning during the Troubles of 1919–21. In 1848 and 1868, the munitions depot at St Helen’s Island in Montreal was a potential target for Irish Canadian revolutionaries. Many of the same individuals were involved

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as well, although some had changed places by the 1860s. John Hearn, who had been arrested for spiking guns in 1848 in Quebec City, shed his revolutionary skin and became a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly in Quebec, combining his own interests with those of his Irish constituents.45 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the self-described “traitor to the British Government” of 1848, had transformed himself into “one of the most eloquent advocates of British rule and British institutions … on the face of the globe.”46 Ogle Gowan, however, was writing the same kind of alarmist letters about the Fenians that he had written about Irish revolutionaries in 1848. Bernard Devlin, who had delivered that incendiary speech in New York in 1848, announced during an election campaign nineteen years later (against McGee, no less) that “I am the same in 1867 as I was in 1847” – a message that would not have been lost on his Irish listeners.47 Other individuals who were relatively unknown in 1848 would become major figures in the Canadian Fenian movement. One of them was Francis Bernard McNamee, who had supported the moderate Friends of Ireland in 1848 and whose father’s tavern was attacked by a loyalist crowd the following year. In 1862, he formed the first Fenian circle in Montreal.48 Yet for all the similarities between 1848 and the 1860s, there were three crucial differences. First, the promise or threat of incursions into Canada, which had been largely aspirational and imaginary in 1848, was very real during the 1860s; the Fenians in the United States, despite their shortcomings, divisions, and problems, were sufficiently organized to undertake three attacks on British North America between 1866 and 1870. Second, the radical Irish nationalist movement within Canada had become much stronger in the 1860s. An underground network of Fenian circles spanned all the major cities, many of the towns, and some rural areas. Canadian Fenians had their own newspaper and played an increasingly important role in Irish Catholic associational life and in St Patrick’s Day parades. Third, although there were spies and informers in 1848, there was no equivalent to the secret police force that emerged in 1864–65. Its members – men like Charles Clarke, alias Cornelius O’Sullivan – undertook extensive operations in Canada and the United States, made sustained efforts to infiltrate the Fenian Brotherhood, and attempted to assess the degree of danger that Fenianism actually posed to the Canadian state.

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As the activities of the secret police attest, the Canadian government took the Fenians very seriously indeed. John A. Macdonald, then co-premier and attorney general of the United Canadas (present-day Ontario and Quebec), expressed his concerns to Governor General Lord Monck in September 1865. “I am watching them very closely,” he wrote, “and think that the movement must not be despised, either in America or Ireland. I am so strongly of that opinion that I shall spare no expense in watching them on both sides of the line.”49 Macdonald’s papers contain around 3,000 items on the Fenians, consisting mainly of letters from detectives in the field to their handlers, from their handlers to Macdonald, and back down along the chain – a clear indication of the magnitude of the perceived threat. Yet as the raids of 1866 and 1870 receded into the distance, Canadian historians came to dismiss Fenianism with a shrug of disdain. This trend was registered by another John A. MacDonald, who had served on the Niagara frontier in 1866 and 1870 and who wrote a book on the subject in 1910. “It is a strange fact,” he remarked, “that Canadian authors and historians do not seem to have fully realized the gravity of the situation that then existed, as the event has been passed over by them with the barest possible mention.”50 This “strange fact” persisted into the late twentieth century. In textbooks on Canadian history, the Fenians were mentioned only in passing, usually with a brief nod to their ironic role in contributing to the cause of Confederation.51 The strategy of liberating Ireland by invading Canada seemed so bizarre that it provided Canadian historians with an opportunity for a little light relief, sometimes accompanied by traditional stereotypes about impulsive and impractical Irish Catholics. Donald Creighton (whose ancestors, perhaps not coincidentally, were Presbyterians from County Londonderry) warmed to the task. “Nothing could have been more characteristically ‘Irish’ in the broadest, most farcical meaning of the word than the conception and execution of this great enterprise,” he wrote. “With one or two significant exceptions, the leaders of the Fenian movement against British America were a crew of grandiloquent clowns and vainglorious incompetents.”52 Over and over again, in academic and popular literature, the phrase “comic opera” was used to characterize the Fenian raids. During the 1970s, Canadian historians began to rescue the Fenians from such views. W.S. Neidhardt led the way. Pointing out that “the Fenian threat

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was no joke to many inhabitants of British North America,” he attempted to get into the minds not only of the Fenians who had conducted the raids but also of the Canadians who had reacted to them. Although this was a much needed corrective to the comic opera syndrome, Neidhardt’s conceptual framework and central conclusions corresponded with those of earlier historians. He viewed the Fenians largely as an external force, whose main contribution to Canadian history was to stimulate a sense of nationality and hasten the work of Confederation.53 More recent studies have taken the argument further. Robert Dallison contends that the Fenian invasion scare in New Brunswick in April 1866 was of pivotal importance in the making of Canada. “Thanks to the intervention of the Fenians,” he writes, “New Brunswick was firmly set on the path to Confederation. Without New Brunswick, there would have been no Confederation, and without Confederation there could be no modern Canada. Canada is the real legacy of the Fenian crisis of 1866.”54 Not to be outdone, Peter Vronsky claims that the Battle of Ridgeway (also known as the Battle of Limestone Ridge) was “Canada’s Bunker Hill, down to its subtext of national identity flowering in battlefield defeat, tempered by a common resilience to fight another day – to never surrender. When Canada was being made, Ridgeway was the battle that made Canada.”55 Such an approach is part of a broader trend in the marketing of Canadian history – the elevation of important events into defining moments. Not only the Fenian designs on New Brunswick and the Battle of Ridgeway but also the War of 1812, the LaFontaine-Baldwin alliance of 1848, the Quebec Conference of 1865, the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, and the establishment of Medicare in 1966 have variously been put forward as the event that “made Canada.” In the hands of Dallison and Vronsky, the Fenian invasions have been moved to the mainstream and magnified out of all proportion. As an antidote to this treatment, it must be remembered that the United Canadas had accepted Confederation more than a year before the Battle of Ridgeway and that fear of Fenianism was far from the only factor in the defeat of the anti-Confederates in New Brunswick.56 But there is another problem both with the emphasis on Fenianism as an external force and with its framing within the context of Confederation: the relative neglect of the Fenian movement within Canada. An early foray into

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this field was made in 1934 when C.P. Stacey wrote an article on the Toronto Fenian leader, Michael Murphy. Although Stacey made some perceptive observations, he could not resist the familiar mocking tone. His story of Murphy was peopled by slightly mad Fenians, illiterate detectives, and hysterical country people who worked themselves up into a lather about something that was never a serious danger to the peace. We should, concluded Stacey, be grateful to Murphy “for supplying the raw material of one of the most amusing bits of political comedy played in the provinces in the era of Confederation.”57 It took another forty years until Fenianism in Canada was finally taken seriously, with the completion in 1974 of Peter M. Toner’s doctoral thesis, “The Rise of Irish Nationalism in Canada, 1858–1884.” Impatient with the prevailing view that “McGee was representative of the Irish in Canada, and that the few scattered Fenians who opposed him were a tiny group of fanatics who could be discounted,” Toner drew on a wealth of transatlantic sources to demonstrate that the Fenians were an important component of a heterogeneous Irish Catholic Canadian community.58 His work should have transformed our understanding of the Irish in nineteenth-century Canada and should have opened up major debates and discussions about Irish Canadian nationalism. Instead, it was rejected for publication on the grounds that he had overstated the strength and significance of Fenianism in Canada.59 When, four years later, Hereward Senior wrote The Fenians and Canada (1978), he made no reference to Toner’s dissertation and paid little attention to Irish primary sources. Senior’s book contained important insights about the dynamics of Fenianism and showed how the movement’s leaders had used the myth of an impending successful revolution in Ireland and invasion of Canada to galvanize popular support. “With the failure of the Fenian rising in Ireland in 1867 and the collapse of O’Neill’s raid into Canada in 1870,” he concluded, “the myth was dispelled and the movement it had sustained disintegrated.”60 His focus, however, was on the external threat and reflected his previously expressed view that “Fenianism never won more than a few hundred restless and relatively obscure men in the British provinces.”61 And so things stood for the next quarter-century as historians turned their attention to Donald Harman Akenson’s ground-breaking work on the Irish in Canada. Drawing on Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein’s analysis of the 1871 census, Akenson demonstrated that Irish Canadian Catholics, defined as an ethnic group, were remarkably successful in adjusting to Canadian

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norms.62 Most Irish Catholics lived in rural rather than urban areas, and their single most important occupation was farming, with only small differences in occupational success between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. From here, it was a short step to assuming that Irish Catholic social and economic acculturation was accompanied by political assimilation. “As far as Irish nationalism was concerned,” Akenson asserted, “few Irish Catholic Canadians could be bothered.”63 This view was modified by Brian Clarke’s detailed study of Irish Catholics in Toronto, which found that there was considerable support for radical Irish nationalism in the city during the 1860s. But such nationalism, he argued, had a narrow base of “probably no more than one hundred Fenians” and would soon be subsumed by the more powerful forces of Catholicism and loyalty to the Crown and British Empire.64 Taking the story into the early twentieth century, Mark McGowan confirmed that Toronto’s Irish Catholics cared much more about their religion than about Irish nationalism and that they gradually adopted a liberal imperialist Canadian outlook. Hence the title of his book: The Waning of the Green (1999). Despite the various differences of emphasis among historians, a broad consensus had emerged about Irish Canadian nationalism in general and about the Fenians in particular. Because Irish Catholics did reasonably well in Canada, they had no compelling reason to embrace nostalgic notions of Irish nationalism. Because they were dispersed throughout the countryside, they lacked the critical mass that was necessary for concerted political organization. And because most of them arrived before the mid-1850s, their children and grandchildren gradually became Canadianized. As for the Fenians in Canada, they were either bit players in a historical farce or a fleeting aberration in the longer story of Irish Catholic assimilation.

Such arguments have considerable persuasive power. People of Irish Catholic ethnicity did become acculturated according to the standard indices of occupation, occupational success, and geographical distribution. A process of “ethnic fade” did occur, and the Catholic religion did become more important than Irish nationalism, with many Irish Catholics becoming liberal Canadian imperialists at the turn of the century. The Fenians were a minority among Irish Catholics, even at their peak during the late 1860s.

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But the combined effect of this consensus has been to minimize and marginalize the various forms of Irish nationalism that have run through Canadian history. The argument that socio-economic acculturation undermines ethnic nationalism makes sense only if one assumes that Irish nationalism in North America is the product of alienation. Yet there are numerous examples in Canada and the United States of socially and economically successful individuals who enthusiastically embraced Irish nationalist causes. The notion that “ethnic fade” equals “nationalist fade” underplays the extent to which mothers and fathers transmit their views to the next generation. Again, there are abundant examples of this occurrence in Irish American and Irish Canadian history – and indeed throughout the Irish diaspora. If Catholicism became more important than Irishness in the identity of Irish Catholics, it needs to be remembered that religion and constitutional nationalism generally worked together and that there was also a strain of sympathy for Fenianism within the church. Although Irish Catholic Canadians gravitated towards liberal imperialism, this circumstance did not necessarily preclude support for Irish nationalism – and even, under certain circumstances, for its revolutionary variants. Although Irish Canadian nationalism generally operated in a constitutional framework – that is, in the tradition of Daniel O’Connell rather than that of Wolfe Tone – its revolutionary strand was much more durable and robust than the consensus view suggests.65 Rather than fading away, Irish Canadian nationalism waxed and waned in response to the rhythm of events in Ireland.66 When Irish nationalism was in the doldrums, as it was between 1891 and 1910, there was relatively little trace of it in Canada – although second-generation Irish Canadians such as Edward Blake and Charles Ramsay Devlin (a nephew of Bernard) played an important role in the Irish Parliamentary Party.67 Over the next decade, however, things were very different. Many Irish Catholic Canadians supported the Irish Parliamentary Party during the Home Rule Crisis of 1912–14 and continued to do so throughout the Easter Rising of 1916 and the war years. With the electoral victory of Sinn Féin in 1918 and the subsequent guerrilla war against loosely defined “forces of the Crown,” that support shifted to more radical forms of Irish nationalism. By insisting that Sinn Féin wanted for Ireland only the same degree of independence that Canada already enjoyed, and by emphasizing the rights of small nations to self-determination, Irish Catholic Canadians could combine their own Canadian nationalism and liberal imperialism with

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vitriolic denunciations of British actions in Ireland. In this atmosphere, a radical minority held out for an independent and united Irish republic.68 From this perspective, Fenianism in Canada was part of a longer Irish Canadian nationalist tradition that reached back to the early nineteenth century and that was carried forward into the early twentieth century and beyond. But never in Canadian history had there been as much support for its revolutionary variant as there was in the 1860s.

3

 “Relatively Obscure Men” Finding the Fenians in Canada

It is impossible to ascertain exactly how much support there was for Fenianism in Canada during the 1860s. The task of pinning down numbers is fraught with conceptual and practical problems, and anyone who tries is likely to come a cropper.1 But by avoiding false precision, examining the various numerical estimates made by contemporaries, and factoring in demographic data on Irish Catholics in Canada, it is possible to discern the vague shapes that emerge through the mist. It is also important to guard against the inbuilt tendency of authors to exaggerate the significance of their subject, if only to justify the effort expended upon it, and to demonstrate that it is not in fact a waste of everyone’s time. Anyone who has worked for several years on the Fenians in Canada is extremely unlikely to turn around at the end of the day and say, “Well, they didn’t amount to much, really.” A certain degree of compensatory skepticism is in order – especially when dealing with an organization that consistently inflated its own numbers and whose enemies often did the same thing for different reasons. Much depends on the definition of Fenianism. At the core of the movement were those who joined the Fenian Brotherhood, swore allegiance to “the Irish Republic, now virtually established,”2 and paid their monthly dues. Such a strict construction, however, excludes anyone who supported the use of arms to achieve Irish independence but who was unwilling or unable to take the Fenian oath. In practice, the lines between “official” and generic Fenianism were easily crossed and often deliberately ambiguous. Patrick Boyle’s weekly Irish Canadian newspaper, published in Toronto from January 1863, repeatedly denied any connection with Fenianism while publicizing the Fenian cause throughout the country. In one breath, it claimed that “of the Fenians we

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know little,” and in the next, it declared that because “the Fenians would free Ireland from misrule and oppression … we hail them with fervour, we wish them God speed on their mission, and we pray for their speedy success.” “If to do this is to be a Fenian,” wrote Boyle, “we are open to the charge.”3 Boyle would do more than simply pray for their success; he also sold Fenian bonds to provide more material assistance for the cause.4 Assuming apocalyptic proportions, his editorials at times claimed that the day of reckoning was at hand for centuries of English brutalities against the Irish people. The “English nation,” he wrote, had an unparalleled record of “cruelty and oppression, towards weak nationalities.” From this perspective, the Famine, the repression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the “inhuman outrages” perpetrated against the “poor down-trodden colored people” of Jamaica after the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 were all part of the same ugly story.5 The only way to defeat such an enemy was through physical force: “There is no peace save that which shall be purchased by war. The Saxon will not forego his hold, and we, what can we do? There will be storm and tempest and the red blood shall be poured out like water, before the long wished-for haven.”6 Not all his readers would have concurred, but it is reasonable to assume that many of them sympathized with his views – at least up to a point. “If by Fenians were meant those who objected to the oppression of Ireland and hated England,” commented Bishop John Joseph Lynch of Toronto, “those Fenians are everywhere.”7 In this sense, Fenianism was a state of mind rather than anything else. Asking the question “What is Fenianism, and who are its Members?” a Montreal correspondent of the Irish Canadian, possibly John McGrath, outlined the key features of that mindset: the belief that only physical force could release Ireland from the Saxon heel and that the goal was “to see the people of Ireland live at home, cultivate the land on which they were born, eat the fruits of their own toil, and die in peace, surrounded by all the consolations of religion and their own immediate families.” “The Fenians, or Irish Nationalists if the term suits better,” he concluded, “are synonymous.”8 In fact, this was far from being the case: most Irish nationalists in Canada and Ireland during the 1860s rejected what a self-styled “Real Friend of Ireland” called “the hard logic of material force.”9 Those who accepted that logic, however, can safely be counted as Fenians in spirit or in substance. And beyond them were men who were

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ambivalent about the use of physical force but who could be drawn into or pulled away from the movement as circumstances changed. To complicate matters further, Fenianism meant different things to different people at different times. Many Irish Canadians, such as Patrick O’Meara from Montreal, joined the Brotherhood when “there was no invasion of Canada contemplated by the members.”10 For these “first wave” Fenians, there was no necessary contradiction between loyalty to Canada and support for an Irish revolution, and they could easily rally behind the slogan “Canada for Canadians – Ireland for the Irish.”11 Some of them – either for public consumption or from genuine conviction – viewed Fenianism as a means of winning for Ireland the same kind of practical freedom that already existed in Canada, thus suggesting that they would accept a form of Home Rule for Ireland that fell far short of a separate republic.12 Others believed that the sooner Canada was annexed to the United States, the better it would be for North America, Ireland, and the cause of international republicanism in general. After William Roberts and his supporters broke with John O’Mahony in December 1865, Canadian Fenians, like their counterparts in the United States, were forced to choose: should they continue to support O’Mahony’s Irish strategy, or should they work with Roberts to aid and abet an invasion of Canada? The Toronto Fenians were vociferous in their support for O’Mahony and their denunciation of the invasion strategy. “We have no sympathy with those who would bring war and its attendant horrors amongst peaceable and unoffending people with whom our lot is cast,” declared Michael Murphy.13 Yet there are good grounds for believing that Murphy’s first loyalty was not to Canada but to O’Mahony himself. When, in October 1865, it seemed that O’Mahony was open to the idea of invading Canada, Murphy made his hyperbolic claim that over 100,000 Canadian Fenians were eagerly preparing for an invasion during the winter.14 When O’Mahony rejected the invasion strategy later in the year, Murphy moved with him. And when in April 1866 the O’Mahony wing decided to attack Campobello Island in New Brunswick, hoping to seize the initiative from the Senate wing and trigger an Anglo-American war, Murphy and some of his supporters were quick to answer the call. The public statements that he had made three weeks earlier about being “perfectly satisfied with the Government of this country” appear somewhat hollow.15 He could, of course, have pointed out that the Government of New Brunswick

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was not the same as the Government of Canada, but such an argument would not have been entirely convincing. In Montreal, the Brotherhood was divided between O’Mahony and Roberts supporters. When asked many years later how the Fenians had intended to help Ireland, Patrick O’Meara replied that “there had been so many splits between them that it was very hard to say how they intended doing it.”16 Yet there was some common ground among the leaders. According to Francis Bernard McNamee, the Roberts faction had a slim majority, but all were “personal friends and ready to ‘go in,’ for which ever party is in the field first.”17 How many Irish Canadians would have joined them, however, remains an open question.

A broad profile of Canadian Fenianism can be constructed from a variety of sources: anxious letters from Canadian loyalists; the reports written by detectives in the Canadian secret police force; intelligence received from Fenian informers; articles in the Canadian, American, and Irish press; Fenian records in the United States; and subscription lists to Fenian newspapers. All of these sources present challenges. Letters from Canadian loyalists are particularly problematic since they were often driven by fear and were written by people convinced that Fenians and Irish nationalists were synonymous – ironically, the same assumption that had been made by the Montreal correspondent of the Irish Canadian. The chiefs of the secret police generally treated such letters with considerable skepticism – and with good reason. The reports of the secret police were themselves of uneven quality, especially in the early months, when the force was finding its feet. Some of the detectives were astute, others were gullible, and a few were incompetent; all found it difficult to sort out fact from fiction. There was also the possibility that they would exaggerate the strength of Fenianism to justify their employment and enhance their reputations. But the head of the secret service in Canada West, Gilbert McMicken, recognized that risk and was quick to discount anything that appeared far-fetched. His counterpart in Canada East, Frederick William Ermatinger, probably took the same approach, but the sources are too thin to tell. In any case, the less reliable detectives were gradually weeded out, and serious efforts to present accurate information were

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made by those who remained. Even so, the results were mixed, and not all those people who came under suspicion would have been Fenians – although many doubtless were. Similar difficulties arise in evaluating the reports of informers who approached the British consuls in New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Chicago or who contacted members of the Canadian government. There was no shortage of con men who would say anything that sounded plausible in return for cash. But there were also some key figures who supplied valuable information about the inner workings of the Fenian leadership. In assessing such intelligence, historians are in a similar position to that of McMicken, Ermatinger, and the British consuls, with the disadvantage of not knowing the informal conversations that took place and with the advantage of having access to a much wider range of written sources. Although Canadian, Irish, and American newspapers can reveal a great deal about popular perceptions of Fenianism, they oscillate wildly in their assessment of the movement. In many cases, journalists did little more than retail rumours, yet it is clear that some of them received inside information from politicians in the know. The Irish Canadian tried to pull off the conjuring trick of arguing that were hardly any Fenians in Canada and that most Irish Canadians (meaning Irish Catholic Canadians) supported the Fenian objective of a revolution in Ireland. Despite, and in a sense because of, its ambiguity, the Irish Canadian remains one of the best sources for radical Irish nationalism in the country. Equally useful are the letters written by Irish Canadians to newspapers such as James Stephens’s Irish People in Dublin and the proinvasion Irish American in New York; here, we get Canadian Fenianism with the lid off. These letters can be supplemented by American Fenian sources about clandestine operations in Canada. The papers of General Thomas Sweeny, for example, are particularly valuable for the activities of the Fenians who operated in the country before the invasion of June 1866. Although the letters from Irish Canadians to Fenian newspapers were usually anonymous, the names and sometimes the addresses of Canadian readers can be found in the surviving subscription lists. One of the most interesting cases is that of Edmond Ronayne, an Irish Catholic who converted to Protestantism during the Famine, moved to Quebec City in 1856, briefly joined the Orange Order, became a Freemason, and worked as a schoolteacher.18 In 1865, his name appeared in a list of Quebec subscribers to the Irish People.19 Given

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his history, it would be reasonable to assume that he read the paper simply to learn more about Fenianism, not because he endorsed it. But the list had been compiled by Patrick J. Power, the treasurer of the Quebec circle of the Fenian Brotherhood, who insisted that every member of his circle subscribe to the paper.20 In November 1865 – two months after the Irish authorities discovered the subscription list – the Quebec Mercury reported that Ronayne was the head centre of the city’s Fenian Brotherhood and had recently left for Philadelphia to “promote the interests of the order.”21 In fact, he wound up in Chicago, where he eked out a living by selling pictures of John O’Mahony.22 His memoirs, however, give no indication that he had ever been involved with Fenianism.23 Drawing on all these sources, interweaving them with a Fenian database culled from Peter M. Toner’s file cards, and exercising due caution, we can identify close to 1,000 actual or probable Fenians in British North America from the 1860s to the 1880s. Of those who were active during the 1860s, 133 can be traced through Canadian census records.24 Over 90 per cent were Catholic, and just under 90 per cent had been born in Ireland; the single largest group had been born between 1830 and 1839.25 Around 20 per cent of the 133 were labourers, and about 10 per cent were professional men; the remaining 70 per cent worked in a broad range of skilled and semi-skilled occupations. Almost all of them lived in towns and cities, with the largest single group being in Toronto; only twelve were farmers. Even if we allow for misidentification by detectives, recognize that in the census records the list for the 1860s is heavily weighted to Toronto, and remember that the regional distribution reveals as much about the survival of police reports and subscription lists as about realities on the ground, the pattern is still unmistakable: the vast majority of Fenians in Canada were Catholic men between their mid-twenties and their early forties who had been born in Ireland and who were in the middling ranks of urban society. As in Ireland and the United States, Fenianism thrived in a world of artisans, tradesmen, shopkeepers, and publicans, with a sprinkling of support from lawyers, teachers, engineers, and contractors – men who had the time and resources to become engaged in Fenianism.26 As the Irish detective Thomas Doyle noted in New York, “the hard worked Irish laborer has his time too much employed to attend to more than his work; it is those who have light work or no work, that give their time to ‘playing soldiers,’ as it is sometimes termed.”27

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The Fenians in Canada were not generally the poorest members of society, although about a fifth of them were labourers. After receiving three lists of people who attended Fenian raffles in Montreal and Quebec City – lists that were doubtless supplied by an informer – Thomas D’Arcy McGee noted in 1867 that, with a few exceptions, “there was not a man present of the least character or consequence.” “I am very far indeed,” he continued, “from reflecting upon day labourers, carters, or any other class of honest, hard-working men. I know there are in that order men as worthy of respect for their probity as in any other rank of life; but when it is a question of upsetting dynasties and overthrowing governments, I do not think that men of that class, as a general rule, ought to be held responsible for adopting the errors of those who ought to know, and to do, better.”28 Privately, he was less charitable, describing Canadian Fenians as “a few characterless desperadoes among the floating population of our principal cities.”29 In Toronto, the Globe made the same point, in connection with the Fenians who were arrested in 1868 under the suspension of habeas corpus: “There is not a man of position, wealth, or ability among them – not a single one that any person would ever have thought of looking upon as a leader of his countrymen in his neighbourhood. When such men are the leaders, the following – if there is such a thing – must be in the last degree contemptible.”30 Leaving out the snobbery, which is leaving out a lot, these observations were grounded in a recognizable social reality. Hereward Senior was right: most Canadian Fenians were indeed “relatively obscure men,” and that is precisely what makes them so hard to track down.31 The focal points were saloons such as Mathew Hart’s tavern near St Catharines, Owen Cosgrove’s Coachman’s Arms in Toronto (“a low tavern and notorious resort for roughs,” according to one account),32 Michael Starrs’s hotel in Ottawa, and Kate Scanlan’s tavern in Montreal. It was also part of a workplace culture, from the iron foundries of Toronto to the tailors’ shops of Ottawa and Montreal, from the stevedores of Quebec City to the canal workers of the Niagara Peninsula, and throughout the United Canadas along the lines of the Grand Trunk Railway. The comments of McGee and the Globe are also revealing in another way: the view that bad or contemptible leaders were misleading the people reflects the classic conservative assumption that popular movements consist of dupes who are manipulated by demagogues – an assumption that was widely shared by the enemies of Fenianism on both sides of the Atlantic.

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There is, however, another way of looking at the “demagogues and dupes” trope: the perspective that in the cities, towns, and villages where Fenianism took hold, there was a core of committed activists who could draw on a greater degree of support that varied according to time, place, and circumstance. In Toronto, the publican and cooper Michael Murphy was a key figure, along with the newspaper editor Patrick Boyle. In the Puslinch area south of Guelph, the farmer Peter Mahon was at the centre of Fenianism; in Cobourg, it was a young lawyer, Denis C. Feely. Peter Egleson, a merchant tailor, and his brother Patrick were among the leading Fenians in Ottawa. Another pair of brothers, Francis and Jeremiah Gallagher, were Fenian leaders in Quebec City; Francis was a teacher and Jeremiah was an engineer. The founder of Fenianism in Montreal, Francis Bernard McNamee, was a wealthy contractor. The majority of these men had been born in Ireland, all were Catholics, and most supported the invasion of British North America. It was local leaders such as these – and there were many others – who were the driving force behind Fenianism in Canada, derided as demagogues by their opponents and admired as “true Irishmen” by their supporters.

Whether one restricts the definition of Fenianism to sworn members of the Brotherhood or broadens it to include anyone who supported physical force to bring about the independence of Ireland, the Fenians remained a minority of Irish Catholic Canadians during the 1860s. Contemporary estimates varied greatly. Drawing on the Brotherhood’s published financial records, McGee concluded that there were 800 paid-up Fenians in Toronto.33 In the winter of 1865–66, the secret policeman Patrick Nolan identified nine Fenian circles in Toronto with 650 members. It cost $1.20 to join, he wrote, and 50 cents a month after that; with this income, as well as the money generated by various “Balls and Excursions,” they sent substantial funds to the New York headquarters, while keeping a healthy balance in the bank.34 In contrast, police chief William Prince reported in March 1866 that there were 174 Fenians in the city.35 To place this figure in context, the adult male Irish Catholic population in Toronto at this time was around 2,350, of whom about 1,600 had been born in Ireland.36 Outside Toronto, Nolan reported that there were seventeen Fenian circles in Canada West in December 1865, among which he named Hamilton,

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London, Stratford, St Marys, Oshawa, Whitby, and Cobourg.37 There were also reports and rumours of Fenian activities around this time in Sarnia and in the Niagara Peninsula, specifically Clifton, Drummondville, Thorold, Slabtown (now Merritton, part of St Catharines), and Port Colborne. In Ottawa, the police magistrate Martin O’Gara – “a Roman Catholic intimately acquainted with the class called Fenians, or rather … with the people from whom the body is formed” – reported that the Irish Catholic working classes sympathized with the Fenian movement.38 Over the next four years, the net widened to include Maidstone Cross, near Windsor in the southwest, and Smiths Falls, Kemptville, and Prescott, farther east; possible Fenians were also identified in Paris, Elmira, and Adjala. The reports were uneven in quality, and the exact number of circles in Canada West cannot be verified. Apart from Toronto, the focal points were Guelph and Ottawa, and the Fenians were particularly active in the border zones of the southeast and the Niagara region – in the latter case, particularly among Welland Canal workers. Outside these areas, there were scatterings of support that could coalesce under charismatic local leaders, such as Peter Mahon in Puslinch. The centres of Fenian activity in Canada East were Montreal and Quebec City. With the greatest numerical concentration of Irish Catholics in British North America, Montreal was a natural recruiting ground. The Brotherhood claimed that there were 2,500 “reliable Fenians in Montreal” – this in a city with some 5,700 Catholic Irishmen.39 McGee put the number of Fenians at 355, which is probably closer to the mark.40 Nevertheless, the fact that the heavily Irish Catholic working-class area of Griffintown was known as a “hot-bed of Fenianism” and that radical Irish nationalists were strong enough to take over the St Patrick’s Society are indications that Fenianism was a serious force in Montreal.41 In Quebec City, Irish Catholics constituted just over a fifth of the population, and the Fenians had a pool of around 2,500 men from which they could draw.42 McGee reckoned that there were 200 sworn Fenians in the city, but there is no way of corroborating that figure.43 There were rumours of a “great meeting” of Fenians in the Quebec shipyards in November 1865, and most of the sixteen subscribers to the Irish People in Francis Gallagher’s circle were from the working-class Lower Town, with a cluster in Diamond Harbour.44 One member of the circle, James Redmond, became secretary of Quebec City’s Hibernian Benevolent Society, which was founded in early 1866 at a meeting

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3.1 The Great Lakes.

chaired by a fellow Fenian, Michael Kelly. More than 300 people attended, and a quarter of the management committee were members of Gallagher’s circle.45 In May 1866, the Fenian emissary Richard Slattery was delighted with the response that he received when he visited Quebec City with the mission of swearing in new members to the Senate wing of the Brotherhood. “Everything is progressing rapidly in this district,” he reported. “We inaugurated the movement yesterday, and to-day I am hard at work swearing in members, &c. I have already about 50 volunteers and nearly 100 who are not volunteers, and before Sunday, the number will be largely increased.”46 Although these recruits were never put to the test, it is clear that a militant strain of Fenianism ran through Quebec’s Irish Catholic population and persisted well past the 1860s.47 There were probably pockets of revolutionary Irish nationalism in rural areas of Canada East as well, but the sources are sparse. When the Irish American Fenian general Samuel Spear crossed into Canada East on a reconnaissance mission in June 1866, he found “many patriotic Irishmen here in every circumstances, mostly farmers, who give me all information in thier power …

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they all say, – advance to beyond our homes and we will join you.”48 It would not be surprising if the network of Ribbonmen around Saint-Sylvestre during the 1850s included men who would become sympathetic to Fenianism.49 In 1883, nineteen men from the northern town of Maniwaki sent money for the defence of Patrick O’Donnell; he had killed an informer, James Carey, whose testimony had resulted in the executions of five men implicated in the murder of Ireland’s chief secretary and his undersecretary. The “real object” of the O’Donnell Defence Fund, asserted the British attorney general, Sir Richard Webster, was to “assist the warfare” that Irish nationalists were conducting against Britain.50 There was also a longstanding radical Irish nationalist tradition in the Gaspé region, although whether it embraced Fenianism in the 1860s remains unknown.51 Equally elusive is the Fenian presence in rural New Brunswick. There were oral traditions, now largely forgotten, of men drilling in the moonlight during the 1860s.52 The fact that fifteen men from St George, including farmers, shopkeepers, and a teacher, subscribed to the Irish American in 1868 suggests that there might well have been some substance to the stories.53 Even in the main urban centre of Saint John, evidence of Fenian activity is fragmentary. In 1849, in the context of Famine migration and economic depression, the city had experienced the worst Orange and Green riot in British North American history.54 Its long-term effects on Irish nationalism in the city are difficult to gauge, given Saint John’s high population turnover; only 10 per cent of the Irish immigrants who arrived in New Brunswick in 1846 were still there five years later.55 We do know, however, that there was a “small circle” of Fenians in the city in 1866. Among them was a surgeon, Edward Kelly. “I was compelled to leave St John N.B. on account of my political principles,” he told the Fenian general Charles Carroll Tevis (in the days before Tevis became an informer). Kelly offered to fight with the Senate wing Fenians and assured Tevis that the Saint John circle would “work well” with them.56 He was probably right. When the rival O’Mahony Fenians declared that they would support any rebellion in New Brunswick against Confederation and the British connection, the “Republican Committee of St. John” issued a handbill calling for the province to become an independent republic.57 If it was not the product of black propaganda by Confederates to discredit their opponents, as many antiConfederates believed, the handbill was almost certainly the work of Kelly’s fellow Fenians in the city.58

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The conviction that the authorities were exaggerating or even inventing the Fenian threat for their own purposes was by no means confined to antiConfederate forces in New Brunswick. In Prince Edward Island, as elsewhere, it is difficult to distinguish between popular fears and political manipulation, on the one hand, and the actual presence of Fenians and Fenian sympathizers, on the other. During the spring of 1866, social panic about a Fenian invasion prompted the government to introduce security measures that could be directed against not only the Fenians but also the Tenant League, which was trying to break the power of the wealthy proprietors who controlled over half the island’s land. At the same time, there is evidence of Fenian sympathies within the colony’s large Irish population and in the Tenant League. “The great mass of Irishmen – the Roman Catholic Irish – are taught to think of themselves [as] a wronged and oppressed people,” commented the Islander in March 1866, “and the Colonists, of the same nationality and faith, find it hard to think that the spirit of injustice has not followed them, and that they are not pressed into a position of social inferiority.”59 Such feelings could help to explain why Fenian ballads were being sold in Charlottetown, why there was a delegate from Prince Edward Island at the Senate wing congress in Troy, New York, in September 1866, and why the solicitor general, Thomas Haviland, declared that there were many Fenian sympathizers in the colony.60 In 1877, thirteen people from Charlottetown subscribed to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s Skirmishing Fund, which was intended to finance his bombing campaign in Britain.61 Something was going on beneath the surface. That is also true of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where there was a significant Irish Catholic presence, deriving mainly from the south and east of Ireland during the pre-Famine period.62 Beneath a middle-class O’Connellite political culture, there are glimpses of popular Anglophobia; during the Crimean War, for example, Irish Catholics in the city greeted every report of a British defeat with celebratory bonfires.63 Such anti-British feelings must have carried over to the 1860s, but they remained hidden from the authorities; there is hardly any sign in Nova Scotia newspaper reports or government records about Fenianism in the city.64 Yet we know from the seizure of the subscription lists for the Irish People that the paper had at least a dozen readers in Halifax, presumably the core of a Fenian circle. It is entirely possible that they were an unrepresentative minority. Nonetheless, radical Irish nationalists had good

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reason to keep their heads down and their voices low. As Bishop Thomas Connolly remarked, “a single word uttered here in case of a Fenian invasion would compromise our whole people and be attended by disastrous results.”65 Silence did not necessarily mean loyalty to the Crown. Three decades later, some fifty Irishmen in and around Halifax sent money via the Irish World in New York to the defence fund for Patrick O’Donnell, the man who killed the informer James Carey. One particularly active group from Emerald (now part of Halifax) accompanied its contribution with the call for “Death to all informers.”66 Sentiments that could be proclaimed loudly in the revolutionary Irish American press could only be whispered in Halifax but might have been held no less strongly for that. There was also a subterranean current of radical Irish nationalism in Newfoundland, which drew on eighteenth-century folk traditions of rebels and outlaws and which found its first expression in the abortive United Irish rising at St John’s in 1800.67 Although Irish immigration dwindled in the early nineteenth century, the colony retained close economic, religious, educational, cultural, and political links with Ireland. In St John’s, the only city in the Irish diaspora with an Irish Catholic majority, such Irish nationalism that existed was very much in the O’Connellite tradition, but there were also occasional signs of more radical views. In 1848, when John Mitchel was arrested for treason-felony, his admirers in Newfoundland raised £150 for his support fund. It is likely that the subscribers were among those who gave the Young Ireland leader William Smith O’Brien a warm welcome when he visited St John’s in 1859 and likely, too, that such sympathies persisted into the 1860s.68 Many Protestants in the colony feared as much. By early 1865, the prospect of disaffected Catholics linking up with Fenian invaders began to haunt loyalist minds. In Conception Bay, the language of Fenianism was grafted onto longstanding traditions of ethno-religious conflict; Protestants in Port de Grave, for example, believing that a Catholic demonstration in the town had been inspired by the Fenians, began to arm themselves to stave off an imagined Catholic massacre. Before long, “Fenian” became an all-purpose Protestant term of abuse to describe Catholics in the area, who themselves embraced the word as a symbol of defiance.69 The British consulate in New York picked up reports that the Fenians were shipping arms to Ireland through St John’s. According to an informer, they

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had “a large quantity of arms and ammunition stored away in a field at the back of the Bishop’s Palace, and also a very large quantity stored away on an island called Conception Bay where the vessels call and take them from.” The key figure in Newfoundland, the informer continued, was a brother of Stephen J. Meany, one of the leading Senate wing Fenians in New York, who in 1876 would become editor of the pro-Fenian Montreal Sun.70 There are good grounds, however, for skepticism; the British vice-consul who met the informer warned that “some allowance must be made for exaggeration,” and after making inquiries, the Newfoundland governor, Anthony Musgrave, concluded that the story was “entirely without foundation.”71 There may have been a connection between these reports and the presence of a Newfoundland delegate at the Senate wing congress in Troy, New York.72 It is just possible that the authorities did not know what was going on in their own back yard – or back field. But although some Irish Catholics in the outports flung the word “Fenian” in the face of their Protestant enemies, there is no evidence of organized Fenianism in the colony.

The general picture that emerges is that Fenianism, premised on the necessity of using physical force to establish an independent Irish republic, was spread throughout British North America but with varying levels of support. A reasonable supposition is that around 10 per cent of Irish-born adult Catholic males strongly supported the Brotherhood, whether or not they were actually in a position to join it. They were surrounded by a penumbra of fellow travellers, sympathizers, and those who turned a blind eye to Fenian activities; their numbers fluctuated over time and place, but they broadened the reach of the movement. It is possible that the Brotherhood attracted the direct and indirect support of one-third of the Irish-born adult Catholic males in the United Canadas and the four Atlantic provinces – a figure that would mirror the percentage of Orangemen among adult Protestant males.73 Fenianism found its strongest organizational expression in cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec, but it had the potential to exist wherever there were clusters of Irish-born Catholic males – from Griffintown in Montreal to Puslinch township near Guelph. Its social centres were taverns rather than Catholic churches, although its members could and often did move uneasily between both worlds. It was largely but not exclusively a

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working-class and artisan movement, in contrast to the constitutionalist O’Connellite nationalism associated with the more “respectable” Irish Catholic middle class. As in Ireland, class tensions within Irish Catholic Canada were often expressed through the medium of conflicts between radical and moderate Irish nationalists. Radical nationalists were quick to denounce their moderate rivals as “Kawtholics,” mocking their faux English accents and their social pretensions, and quick to praise the patriotic virtue of “the vulgar, plebian Hibernians.”74 In Canada East, these social divisions were accompanied by tense and sometimes hostile relations with French Canadians, despite the intermittent attempts of the American Fenian leadership to establish a supposedly natural alliance between Irish and French Catholics trapped in the British Empire. Although there were affinities between Quebec City’s Hibernian Benevolent Society and the St Jean Baptiste Society, Fenians and their sympathizers felt betrayed by French Canadians who had rebelled in 1837 but were now comfortably ensconced in power.75 With a few “honorable exceptions,” wrote an Irish Canadian correspondent to the Irish American, “the French Canadians as a body, are, and have always been, in our regard, mean, jealous and unjustly selfish.”76 “No people,” asserted the Ottawa-based radical Irish nationalist John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, “are more disliked in Lower Canada than our countrymen.” His somewhat dubious explanation for this state of affairs was that “some passions – mental diseases – like corporeal, are infectious; and that the French Canadians caught the contagious virus from their Upper Canadian neighbours.”77 Ethnic, religious, and linguistic rivalries proved more powerful than anti-imperialist solidarity, and even a moderate such as McGee could complain that French Canadians were subjecting the Irish to “a sort of Nativism.”78 More obviously, perhaps, the Fenians in Canada were hemmed in not only by unsympathetic francophones but also by hostile English-speaking Protestants – particularly among the increasingly powerful Orange Order, whose most militant members assumed that deep down all Irish Catholics were rebels. The Orange Order and the Fenian Brotherhood fed off each other in an escalating cycle of fear, anger, and conflict. “Orangeism,” McGee pointed out, “has been made the pretext of Fenianism, and Fenianism is doing its best to justify and magnify Orangeism.”79 At the same time, each organiza-

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tion had its own internal dynamics and could thrive in the immediate absence of the other.80 Orange levels of hostility to Irish Catholics varied considerably over time and place. At the local level, they were often intense, but in the Legislative Assembly of the United Canadas, they were attenuated by the pragmatic need for alliances with French Canadian politicians. (Orange politicians such as Ogle Gowan wondered why Irish Catholics could not be good loyal Canadians like the French.)81 However, although Orangeism could permeate Protestant culture through a common loyalism, the Fenians ran into severe opposition from the major institution within their own community: the Catholic Church. Deeply opposed to seditious secret societies, the church associated Fenianism with anti-clericalism, secularism, and a general undermining of faith and morals. Although some priests in Ireland and the United States, and doubtless in Canada as well, actively supported the Brotherhood and although the bishops differed in their attitudes and approach, the hierarchy regarded Fenianism as a threat that had to be contained and countered.82 In Montreal, Bishop Ignace Bourget issued a pastoral letter in 1863 condemning secret societies; the following year, the bishop of Hamilton, John Farrell, denounced the Hamilton branch of the Hibernian Benevolent Society.83 No one, however, surpassed the language of Thomas Connolly, the archbishop of Halifax, who equated Fenianism with “bloodshed, rapine, and anarchy, and the overthrow of God’s religion.”84 A rising in Ireland could not possibly succeed, he argued, and an invasion of Canada could end only in tragedy. “I cannot approve of the impossible,” he wrote, “and I abominate whining and screeching and bandying everlasting curses and contemptible unavailing threats against the Bloody Saxon. This is all the stuff that all Irish Politics are composed of usque ad nauseum with a set of venal Knaves & demagogues ready to dupe their countrymen.”85 The effect of such attacks is difficult to assess; if there was deterrence, there was also defiance. When, in September 1863, Father Patrick Dowd read Bishop Bourget’s letter from the pulpit of St Patrick’s Church in Montreal and endorsed its sentiments, some members of the congregation were overheard saying, “Oh, FATHER DOWD didn’t mean what he said; he only did it for policy-sake!’”86 Similarly, when Dowd insisted that all members of the city’s St Patrick’s Society affirm that they were “not members of any Secret Society,

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nor of any Society already condemned by the Catholic Bishop of this Diocese,” Fenians in the organization signed the loyalty test and then ignored it.87 In response to Bishop Farrell’s attack, the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Hamilton, Patrick Flood, declared that as good Catholics the Hibernians reverenced the Cross, but as true Irishmen they venerated the Harp. The church, in other words, had no business interfering in politics.88 The Toronto Fenian leader, Michael Murphy, true to form, went much further. In 1865, Farrell instructed his flock not to attend the Hibernians’ annual excursion to Niagara Falls. After a day of music, dancing, footraces, and Gaelic football, and after watching Harry Leslie, the American version of Charles Blondin, do his tightrope walk across the Falls, the excursionists returned to Toronto. When their chartered train stopped in Hamilton, Murphy addressed them about Farrell’s remarks. “Be these Saxonized threats be uttered by a Catholic Bishop or a renegade and a traitor,” he said, they would make no impression on true patriots.89 In response, Farrell excommunicated the Hamilton members of the Hibernian Benevolent Society. Even Bishop John Joseph Lynch, who had been trying to keep the Toronto Hibernians within the fold, ran out of patience and urged “all good Catholics to quit a Society that has fallen away from Catholic principles, and which is governed by imprudent men” – although he stopped short of excommunication and continued to insist that the Society was not connected to the Fenian Brotherhood.90 The church’s condemnations must have swayed some minds – Murphy in his speech referred to “the absence of many friends in Toronto, who formerly joined in the recreations of the Hibernians” – but they had little effect on committed Fenians and probably heightened their embattled minority consciousness.91 Nor did the repeated attacks of McGee seriously dent the movement; his strategy of polarization and isolation may well have backfired and strengthened Fenianism in Canada. Nevertheless, the fact remains that most Irish Catholics in Canada did not support the Brotherhood for a variety of reasons: indifference to political matters in general; a belief that a revolution in Ireland was neither possible nor desirable; a fear that any show of support for Fenianism would result in a Protestant backlash with devastating consequences for Irish Catholics; an adherence to the Catholic Church’s teachings that secret societies were contrary to the will of God; a commitment to some kind of Home Rule for Ireland within the British Empire, along the same

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lines as the system of government that prevailed in Canada; or straightforward loyalty to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its colonial possessions. As a minority of a minority, the Fenians in Canada could not in themselves mount a challenge to the state. In this sense, indeed, “they didn’t amount to much, really.” Considered as a percentage of the population as a whole, their numbers were small. Among Irish Canadian Catholics, however, they were a serious and significant presence, with their own newspaper, the Irish Canadian, their wide network of circles, and their communal activities. Above all, the fact that they operated in conjunction with a much more powerful American organization meant that they could punch well above their weight.92 There was, in short, a major imbalance between their numbers and their political importance.

Within those numbers, the overwhelming majority were men. Although there was a Fenian Sisterhood that emerged in the United States in 1865, it made no known inroads into Canada. On both sides of the border, women were shut out of the Fenian Brotherhood. At the Senate wing’s Fenian congress in Cleveland in September 1867, “the question whether women should be admitted to circles was answered in the negative, because of their inability to keep a secret” – this in an organization that had become riddled with male informers.93 On the few occasions when women were mentioned in the Irish Canadian, they generally appeared as makers of Hibernian banners, singers of nationalist songs, and spectators at St Patrick’s Day parades, with the primary purpose of inspiring and applauding the men.94 The women of Ireland, in Patrick Boyle’s imagination, were pure and faithful, their “breasts burning with patriotism and love for Ireland.”95 In striking contrast were the English women coming into Toronto as assisted migrants; instead of possessing “feminine beauty and cultivated ability,” they were “a lot of lounging, puny and half-grown workhouse spectres,” who were undermining the morality of the city.96 Even worse was the behaviour of women at Orange picnics, who lowered themselves to the status of racehorses by participating in the “incipient evil” of female footraces and whose shoulders could sometimes be seen. This was almost as bad as the “savage practice of

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indiscriminate bathing amongst the sexes,” something that was happening at “the suggestion of the devil himself.”97 In the midst of all this Protestant decadence, the paper reproduced, without comment, a letter from Ellen O’Mahony in January 1866 to the Fenian Sisterhood that called on Irish women to raise money to send arms in order “to sustain a revolution that will free our country.”98 Three weeks before the attack on the Niagara Peninsula, it printed an appeal from the head directress of Sweeny’s circle, Johanna O’Shea, asking the “Women of Ireland” to collect money for medical supplies to help the Fenian men who would be wounded in “the most just and necessary war” that was coming. “Where this is going to end we cannot pretend to say,” remarked Boyle, “but certainly the whole proceedings look for all the world like preparations for war.”99 The paper also registered the visit to Montreal and Toronto of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa, whose husband, Jeremiah, was serving a life sentence in England for treason. Conducting a reading tour of North America in 1869, she gave stirring renditions of poet Alfred Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and other readings not normally associated with radical Irish nationalism. The one in Toronto was poorly attended.100 But she doubtless spread support for Fenianism behind the scenes and must have inspired other women to take up the cause of Fenian prisoners in Canada as well as Ireland. Among those who were impressed by her was the anonymous “Quebec Girl” who wrote a regular column for the Irish Canadian between July 1869 and December 1870. “You must think it very strange to be addressed by one of my sex, and I may be called forward and unfeminine,” she began, “but I don’t care; my motive is a pure and good one.” Her principal cause was the release from English and Canadian jails of Fenian prisoners, whom she described as “living martyrs who are today draining to the very dregs the cup of affliction and cruel sufferings in the living tombs of the oppressor and destroyer of Ireland and my race.”101 Similar sentiments and similar prose pervaded her subsequent articles, in which she attacked Irish Catholic men for their complacency and urged her female compatriots to “begin the task of shaming their manhood into doing its duty.”102 The Irish in Canada, she asserted, would never have been “ignored, insulted and defied daily by every wretched caricature on humanity” if the men “had not turned squaws, to drudge and carry the packs, leaving us women to go on the war-path.”103 Occasionally, she took time off to denounce French Canadians for excluding

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the Irish from public employment and political power and for turning their backs on Irish suffering.104 A great hater with a black-and-white view of the world, she repeatedly contrasted an ideal image of Ireland with the sordid reality of Irishmen who kept letting their country down. In her final column, which appeared just before Christmas 1870, she combined calls for “kindness and humanity” towards widows and orphans with eager expectations of a holy war that would avenge 700 years of English slavery and make “proud, enduring, faithful Ireland a Nation again, with all her sons united under the glorious banner of their regenerated Fatherland.”105 The gendered language indicates that the “Quebec Girl” was still locked into male assumptions about society and politics. Her aim was an independent Ireland, not women’s suffrage; her approach was not to demand equal political participation for women but to assert more vigorously the domestic power of wives and mothers to ensure that their men would exhibit the qualities of discipline, courage, and self-sacrifice in the service of an imagined Irish nation.

The Irish nation, of course, could be imagined in a variety of ways. But it was “the Irish Republic, now virtually established,”106 to which James Stephens and his fellow revolutionaries swore allegiance on St Patrick’s Day in 1858, that would capture so many minds and provide the central dynamic of Irish nationalism during the 1860s. After an initial period of struggle, the Fenian Brotherhood gathered momentum on both sides of the Atlantic, appealing particularly but not exclusively to men with bitter memories of the Famine, benefiting from the concentration of Irish Americans in Civil War armies, and drawing on the inspirational myth of imminent action and inevitable success. Despite Stephens’s frequently erratic leadership, despite the British government’s crackdown on the Fenian Brotherhood in 1865, and despite the split between the O’Mahony wing and the Senate wing, the Fenians were the ones setting the agenda. In Canada, Irishmen and women increasingly defined themselves in terms of their acceptance, qualification, or rejection of the Fenian Brotherhood and in terms of their relationship to the state. To understand how this came about, we must return to St Patrick’s Day in 1858 – yet this time with the starting point not of Dublin but of Toronto.

4

 “The Foremost City of America” St Patrick’s Day, Toronto, 1858

While James Stephens was welcoming the founders of Fenianism to his lodgings in Dublin, Matthew Sheady was preparing for the St Patrick’s Day parade that was beginning at St Paul’s Cathedral in Toronto. Wearing a black satin vest embroidered with wreaths of shamrocks, he joined several hundred fellow Irishmen who were unfurling green and gold banners, placing green ribbons or sprigs of palm in their lapels, and listening to the marching bands.1 Organized by the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association, the parades had become a major feature of the city’s life over the past three years. The previous year, one Irish Catholic journalist wrote with happily mixed metaphors that there had been “a continuous stream of enthusiastic Irishmen … evincing in their looks and gesticulations the sacred patriotic fire which internally consumed them.” Father John Synnott, the “patriotic priest of Orillia,” had given a speech on “the never-failing themes of Ireland’s sufferings and miseries” and had reminded his audience that the Catholic Church was “the only true church of Christ.”2 On the British and Protestant streets of Toronto – King, Queen, Yonge, and Dundas Streets – Irish Catholics were asserting their presence and celebrating their homeland and their religion. Not everyone approved. During the Famine, the number of Catholics in Toronto doubled from 4,000 to 8,000, constituting over a quarter of the population.3 In 1856, reacting against a project to bring Irish Catholics from American cities into Canada, the grand secretary of the Orange Order, John Holland, delivered a blood-and-thunder speech to an audience of 3,000 people about preserving the Protestant character of the city and protecting it from “excitable and vicious” Catholics. “To be sure they have their uses,” he conceded. “They are our servants, they build our canals and railways.” But the

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costs far outweighed such benefits. “Wherever these people predominate,” he asserted, “there the peace and happiness and comfort of the community is destroyed.” “The citizens of Toronto do not want them here,” another speaker told the crowd; there was no place in Canada for priest-ridden, disloyal, and violent Irish Catholics from the slums of America.4 Orange and Green tensions had been growing. During the Twelfth of July celebrations in 1857, some Irish Catholics from Stanley Street – the hardest street in the city – had beaten up a special constable because he was wearing an Orange rosette. A city councillor, tavern keeper, and stable owner, Bill Lennox, had joined the other rosette-wearing policemen who arrested the attackers and had laid into the crowd that tried to set them free. Later that day, a group of Orangemen smashed the windows of St Michael’s Cathedral and the convent of the Sisters of St Joseph.5 Now, as the parade ended, Matthew Sheady and his fellow marchers mixed with the spectators at St Lawrence Hall, huddled against the cold wind, and waited for the speeches to begin. The wagon and cab drivers on the edge of the crowd were blocked off from their route and were starting to lose their patience. One of them tried to force his way through, only to be stopped, surrounded, and struck as he ran for cover.6 When another, David Ritchey, made an attempt, a section of the crowd chased him back along Colborne Street towards Bill Lennox’s stables.7 They ran straight into Lennox and his men, who stormed out to stop them. Exactly what happened next was lost in a welter of fists, charges, and countercharges. A stableman battered Catholics with a pitchfork handle until he was beaten to the ground. One of the Stanley Street men, Dennis Sheridan, threatened to rip out Lennox’s guts with a knife.8 Lennox produced a loaded gun from his pocket and swore to avenge the attack on his men. “I won’t see the night,” he supposedly said, “till I’m knee deep in Papist blood.”9 Sheady was in the thick of it, but there were no reports of him fighting anyone. On the contrary, when someone punched the deputy police chief, Robert Hutson, Sheady rushed to his defence, shouting, “Don’t strike the Deputy.”10 Seconds later, somebody struck him – a knife thrust upwards through the groin. He was rushed to a drug store, given some brandy, and put on a cart that jolted its way to the General Hospital, where the surgeon gave him opiates and applied leeches to his stomach. Slowly, over two days, the life ebbed out

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of him, familiar faces blurring into the distance: those of his wife, Johanna; his little boy, Paddy; his employer, James McMaster; and Father Thomas Fitzhenry, who gave him the last rites. He was a peaceable and inoffensive man, they said – the last person you would expect to see caught up in a riot. He rapidly became a powerful symbol of innocent Catholic victimhood at the hands of Orange violence.11 Immediately after the stabbing, the riot dissipated, but the day was far from over. During the afternoon, a Catholic priest was harassed and hit as he walked along Church Street.12 At Lennox’s tavern, Orangemen and their supporters were buying drinks and biding their time. Directly across the road was the National Hotel, where the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association would be hosting a dinner that night, with Thomas D’Arcy McGee as the guest of honour. As someone who only five years earlier had written a poem denouncing the Union Jack as a blood-drenched rag, and who more recently had attacked the Orange Order in the Legislative Assembly, McGee was a marked man. None of the people in Lennox’s tavern would have taken his declarations of loyalty at face value.13 Socially respectable and politically liberal, the diners at the National Hotel were hoping for a quiet evening in which they would celebrate their faith and fatherland. Farther down the road, at Platt’s Hotel, a group consisting largely of Irish Protestants were having a St Patrick’s Day celebration of their own. Their guest of honour was Ogle Gowan, the founder of the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America, who had moved into the political mainstream and had long since left the hardliners behind.14 Some of Lennox’s men probably hated Gowan more than they hated McGee. McGee was where he was supposed to be – part of the enemy without. But Gowan was seen as part of the enemy within, the traitor who had sold out the pure principles of Orangeism for the sake of power and personal gain. Towards the end of the night, the diners at the National Hotel sent a goodwill deputation to their fellow Irishmen at Platt’s Hotel. Returning the compliment, Gowan set out for the National Hotel, accompanied by his Catholic friend and fellow diner George Cotter, the newly appointed city coroner. As they were walking along Colborne Street, McGee was leaving the National Hotel. When he stepped onto the street, a cry went up from Lennox’s tavern: “Get the Griffintown Papist!” – Griffintown being the Irish Catholic heart of

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McGee’s Montreal constituency.15 McGee jumped into a cab and escaped from a volley of stones. McGee may have got away, but his supporters were trapped inside the hotel. “Kick the damned Papists to hell!” went the cry as a crowd of some 200 men began pounding the hotel with bricks, smashing windows, and trying to break down doors.16 From a second floor window, Mary O’Donohoe, the proprietor, saw Bill Lennox leading the attack; alongside him, she said, was a Toronto policeman.17 Someone in the hotel started firing shots. People in the crowd started firing back. Having walked straight into a full-scale riot, Gowan rushed to the defence of the diners. According to one account, he propelled himself through a ground floor window of the National Hotel to help them resist the rioters.18 George Cotter rushed back to Platt’s Hotel to get help. En route, he encountered a group of policemen and urged them to stop the riot. They refused, saying that they had orders not to move unless directly instructed by the deputy chief. At Platt’s Hotel, the diners decided not to get involved. Cotter ran to the police station and in his capacity as city coroner ordered the police to turn out; six or seven of them did so, with varying degrees of reluctance.19 As he returned to the riot, Cotter saw Lennox inciting the crowd. “Arrest that man,” he called to the police, putting his hand on Lennox’s shoulder. Lennox turned around and hit him in the face.20 No arrest was made, and the policemen with Cotter never saw the punch – or much else, for that matter, when it came to Orange violence against Catholics. When it came to Catholic violence against Orangemen, however, they proved to be more observant. Eventually, they brought the situation under control and persuaded the crowd to disperse, allowing the diners to leave the building amid the debris of bricks, stones, and shattered glass.21

The official inquiries began the following week. George Cotter was nervous; this was his first coroner’s inquest, and he had trouble keeping things under control. Dennis Sheridan, the Catholic labourer who had threatened Lennox, pointed the finger at John Howlett, an Englishman who worked in Lennox’s stables and who had charged into the crowd with a pitchfork. But Sheridan’s testimony was full of holes, and Howlett did not match the description that

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Matthew Sheady had given of his assailant. Cotter rejected Sheridan’s evidence, and the coroner’s jury concluded that it was impossible to tell who had murdered Sheady.22 While the inquest was under way, the police magistrate’s inquiry into the National Hotel riot opened its proceedings. In the chair was George Gurnett, a former Tory mayor of Toronto who fourteen years earlier had been punched and kicked to the ground while trying to stop an illegal Twelfth of July parade.23 Many of the police who appeared before him now were members or supporters of the Orange Order. They owed their jobs to local councilmen, such as Lennox, and they knew where their loyalties lay. They were unable to recognize a single Protestant rioter. The investigation went right to the top. Robert Hutson, the deputy chief, put most of the blame for the riot on the diners at the National Hotel for throwing rocks and firing shots at the crowd below. When asked whether he saw Lennox leading the crowd, he replied, “I did not see him do so.”24 Nor did he see a policeman participating in the riot. The chief of police, Samuel Sherwood, spent much of the inquiry chatting with Lennox and then swore that he had not seen Lennox at the riot.25 Sherwood was not a man to be crossed. He spent his spare time breeding and raising fighting dogs and liked nothing better than watching them maul each other on a pleasant summer’s day.26 To pay off his gambling debts, he had borrowed money from one of his men and rewarded him with preferential treatment. When seventeen policemen signed a petition of protest, they were suspended for two weeks without pay.27 Now, at the inquiry, he was unable to identify more than three people in the crowd, one of whom was a policeman.28 George Gurnett listened to all of this with a mounting sense of frustration. After two days of police stonewalling, he wondered aloud about their collective blindness during the riot. “It appeared most mysterious,” he said, “and certainly it did not reflect a great deal of credit on the perspicuity of our police.”29 “The entire investigation,” he commented after two more days, “seemed as if those persons whose paid business it is to discharge their duties to the public endeavoured to stifle inquiry.”30 By the end of the inquiry, he publicly declared what he had known all along: “other obligations” had prevented the police from doing their duty. There was nothing mysterious about it at all. Orange policemen were lying through their teeth.31

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His comment produced a storm of Orange outrage. First on his feet was John Holland, the grand secretary who had verbally attacked priests and Papists two years earlier, earning the applause of a large Protestant crowd. Mustering every fibre of moral indignation in his body, he declared that Gurnett’s comments could not possibly apply to the Orange Order since Orangemen were bound by their oaths to uphold the laws and support justice.32 Next up was Lennox, who handed Gurnett a copy of the Orangeman’s oath to prove the point; hard on his heels were a host of Orangemen determined to hurl Gurnett’s words back into his face.33 The storm continued when Gurnett ordered Lennox and three other Protestants to stand trial at the Spring Assizes for riotous behaviour. They need not have worried. All the charges against them were dropped. Things were rather different, however, for the four Catholics who had been arrested for their part in the Matthew Sheady riot. Three of them, including Dennis Sheridan, were convicted and fined for assaulting Lennox.34

For almost the entire Irish Catholic community, militant or moderate, rough or respectable, the events of St Patrick’s Day and their immediate aftermath epitomized everything that was wrong with the city. A Catholic had been stabbed to death, McGee had escaped within an inch of his life from an Orange crowd, and peaceful Catholic diners at the National Hotel had been attacked. The difficulties of sifting through the evidence at the coroner’s inquest, and the fact that the coroner himself was a Catholic, were deemed of little significance. What stuck in the mind was that an all-Protestant jury had discounted the evidence of Catholic witnesses and that the murderer had got away with it. During the police magistrate’s inquiry into the National Hotel riot, a predominantly Protestant and part-Orange police force had lied from start to finish. At the end of the day, not a single Protestant had been found guilty. Nor was this an isolated incident. During an Orange-Green election riot in Wellington County the previous winter, a Protestant named William Miller had killed John Farrell, a Catholic. The coroner’s jury had reached the verdict of willful murder and had referred the case to the Spring Assizes. But an allProtestant and part-Orange grand jury dismissed eyewitness testimony that Miller had deliberately shot Farrell, and it refused to send the case to trial.35

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Where, Irish Catholics asked themselves, would all this end? Protestant murderers were walking free while Orangemen were protecting each other; unless something was done and done quickly, there would be no end to the “reign of terror” facing Irish Catholics.36 But what could be done? In trying to answer this question, Toronto’s Irish Catholic community cracked in two.

For the middle-class, respectable Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association, it was essential to take the heat out of the situation in order to prevent an escalating street war between Protestants and Catholics. The worst possible response to Orange violence, police cover-ups, and biased juries, they reasoned, would be any form of retaliation or direct action. That would just add fuel to the fire – and as a vulnerable minority in English-speaking Canada, Irish Catholics would be the ones getting burned. Instead, Irish Catholic grievances needed to be channelled along peaceful, constitutional lines, with the application of political pressure to reform the police and ban Orangemen from the justice system. Shortly after the St Patrick’s Day riots, the effectiveness of political action against the Orange Order was put to the test. A bill came before the Legislative Assembly of the United Canadas that would have enabled the Orange Order to become an incorporated body – and thus to own its property rather than relying on the support of individual benefactors. Behind the legal questions lay a crucial symbolic issue: would the Assembly, by passing the bill, demonstrate its approval of the Orange Order? Thousands of Irish Catholics throughout Canada were determined that this must not happen and signed petitions against the bill. Inside the Assembly, a combination of French Canadians, Irish Catholics, and liberal Protestants ensured that it did not pass. Here, argued the moderates, was clear proof that constitutional forces could turn back the tide of Orangeism.37 At the municipal level, political pressures were mounting to bring about a radical restructuring of the Toronto police force. St Patrick’s Day was not the first time that Toronto’s police had put “other obligations” above their duty. Twice before, in 1855, they had been unable to identify Orangemen who were involved in riots. Members of the Reform Party, led by Globe owner George Brown, had long wanted to establish a professional, impartial police force, and in early 1859, they finally got what they wanted. Under the city’s new

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mayor, Adam Wilson, swift and striking action was taken. Sherwood and Hutson, along with half the force, lost their jobs. A new police chief with a military background, William Prince, was appointed. No member of a secret society – which in practice meant the Orange Order – was to be allowed on the new force. It was another victory for moderation. The old regime, it seemed, was dead and buried.38 Meanwhile, the parade organizers began to reconsider the whole idea of marching on St Patrick’s Day. During the inquest into Sheady’s murder, George Cotter had made his own opinions clear. “He had lived in Canada for a number of years,” ran the report of his summation, “and had always found that on the following mornings the police court[s] were filled with drunkards, and that in many instances, as well as in the case now before them, bloodshed had resulted, and he hoped that some means might be taken to stop these processions in future.”39 Reaching the same conclusion, the leaders of the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association decided that they would no longer organize any parades. There was to be no repeat of the violence of 1858; there would be no more Matthew Sheadys and no more ridicule heaped on Irish heads for drinking and fighting on city streets. Henceforth, St Patrick’s Day would be celebrated indoors in a rational and reverential manner and without a trace of triumphalism or party politics.40 Or so the moderates hoped. For many other Irish Catholics, the strategy of the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association failed to accomplish the key objective of equality under the law and actually amounted to a confirmation of their subordinate status in Protestant Toronto. The campaign against Orange incorporation was all well and good, but the fact remained that Orangemen could still serve as magistrates and sit on juries. The regulation that banned members of secret societies from serving on the Toronto police force proved impossible to enforce, with a third of the city’s policemen remaining in the Orange Order. And the suspension of St Patrick’s Day parades generated considerable resentment within the Irish Catholic community. Instead of standing up for their rights, the argument ran, the leaders of the St Patrick’s Association were cringing in the face of Orange power and were acting as though they were ashamed of their religion and their identity.41 People who thought and felt this way drew a very different lesson from the murder of Matthew Sheady, the National Hotel riot, and the collective amnesia of the Toronto police force: it was time to assert themselves and take back the

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streets. In the same way that militant Orangemen despised Ogle Gowan for supposedly betraying the pure principles of Protestantism, militant Catholics despised the St Patrick’s Association for supposedly betraying the true interests of their community. Patrick O’Neill, the editor of the Mirror in Toronto, savaged the association for going ahead with the National Hotel dinner after the riot earlier in the day. How could these self-styled gentlemen go out drinking and dining, he asked, while Matthew Sheady lay dying in agony? And why did they not react more vigorously against their attackers? It would have been a different story, he wrote, if the National Hotel rioters had assaulted plebeian Irishmen; then the Orangemen would have been taught a lesson that they would never have forgotten. Irish Catholics, he concluded, had to assert their constitutional rights and organize themselves for self-defence.42 O’Neill helped to circulate a petition with a direct challenge to the Legislative Assembly: unless there was a special commission into the failures of the justice system and unless Orangemen were banned from the magistracy and from all juries, Irish Catholics would be “obliged to arm in defence of their lives and properties.” Around 800 people signed.43 Some politicians in the Assembly, including John A. Macdonald, argued that the petition was misguided but constitutional and were doubtless relieved when it was thrown out on a technicality. George Brown’s Globe, the most widely read newspaper in English-speaking Canada, took a much harder line, denouncing it as violent and menacing.44 Over the previous decade, Brown had been engaged in a fierce battle with Irish Catholics over separate schools, which he had once described as “a dense medium of bigotry and superstition.”45 The Globe’s coverage of the riots had done nothing to improve Brown’s reputation among Irish Catholics; the paper speculated that Sheady had been stabbed by one of his fellow marchers and asserted that the justice system was working well. Not surprisingly, many Irish Catholics believed that Brown and his Reform Party were even worse than the Orangemen.46 In fact, Brown was less anti-Catholic than he appeared, and he would soon prove willing to compromise on the separate schools question if that was the price of getting his Reform Party into power.47 Some of the moderates in the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association had already sensed his direction and were moving towards an alliance with him.48 This was too much to stomach for the Toronto Irish Catholic newspaper editors who had been fighting him for years in a war of words, with wounds still fresh. In fact, they hated Brown and his

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Reformers so much that they urged their readers to vote Conservative.49 Here was something to watch: an unlikely alliance between militant Irish Catholics and a Conservative Party that also contained militant Orangemen. There were overlapping splits within the city’s Irish Catholic community between Reformers and Conservatives and between those who counselled caution and those who were gearing up for confrontation. Precisely because Irish Catholics were a minority, argued the militants, they must demonstrate that they would not be pushed around. Messages of support started coming in from Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. If you want to wind up as “white niggers,” wrote one correspondent, just keep listening to all those warnings in the Catholic press against the dangers of secret societies.50 If you want to know how to defeat the Orange Order, wrote another, look back to Ireland twenty years earlier, when Irish Catholics formed Ribbon societies that took the law into their own hands. Better still, look to Belfast, where Catholic gun clubs had been established to counter Protestant violence. It was time, surely, for such clubs in Toronto.51 Heeding this advice, and taking up O’Neill’s call for “an organization of honest men” that would defend Irish Catholics against Orange aggression, a group of radicals gathered at Michael Murphy’s tavern on the Esplanade with the aim of turning talk into action. Murphy, “a small man of slight build, sharp features, [and] dark beard,” was described by McGee as a charismatic figure “with much mother wit and great sturdiness of character.”52 By the end of the meeting, they had formed the Hibernian Benevolent Society, with the immediate purpose of patrolling Catholic churches, schools, homes, and businesses in order to protect them from Orange attacks. Within a year, the Society had opened the door through which the Fenian Brotherhood entered Canada.53

Not all the members of the Hibernian Benevolent Society became Fenians. But the attitude of defiance – the willingness to stand up straight and look the enemy in the eye – fed into the style and spirit of Fenianism. Over and over again in Ireland, the authorities commented on the “insolent swagger and defiant looks” of the Fenians and their refusal to defer to their social superiors, to bow the head, or to tip the hat. It was intoxicating and it was contagious. And now it was on the streets of Toronto, emanating from the Esplanade.54

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All this made the Hibernian Benevolent Society a magnet for radical Irish nationalists and a natural home for the first Fenian circle in Canada. Men with memories of the St Patrick’s Day riot still fresh in their minds started taking the Fenian oath. Some of them went on to become the most militant Irish revolutionary republicans in the Atlantic world. Among them was eighteen-year-old Edward O’Meagher Condon (Figure 4.1), who in June 1858 had signed a protest letter against the leadership of the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association.55 His family had left Ireland before the Famine, when he was two years old, and had arrived in Toronto via Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Condon joined the Fenian Brotherhood in 1859 while visiting John O’Mahony in New York.56 When he returned to Toronto, he spread the word in Murphy’s tavern and was among those who established the Fenian circle that met on its premises. Condon went on to fight with the Union Army during the American Civil War of 1861–65, serving under Michael Corcoran, one of New York’s leading Fenians. After the war, he returned to Canada and then crossed the Atlantic to participate in the Fenian Rising of 1867 back in his native County Cork – a revolution that was beaten almost before it started that March. Escaping to England, he became the Fenian commander in Manchester, where later that year he played a major role in rescuing two Fenian leaders, Tom Kelly and Timothy Deasy, from a prison van. During the rescue, the police sergeant in the van, Charles Brett, was shot and killed.57 Captured by the police, Condon was among the men convicted and sentenced to death for the murder. His speech before sentencing became an instant classic in the history of Irish nationalism: “I have nothing to regret, or to retract, or to take back. I can only say, god save ireland.”58 Timothy Daniel Sullivan, editor of the Nation newspaper in Dublin, set the words to an American Civil War song, “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching” – “God Save Ireland! said the heroes, God Save Ireland, said they all.”59 It became Ireland’s unofficial national anthem and remained so until it was overtaken by the equally unofficial “The Fields of Athenry.” Sullivan and his brothers were also inspired to publish in 1868 their Speeches from the Dock, featuring the defiant words of Irish patriots before British judges – a book that became a sacred text in the canon of political martyrdom.60 Condon himself would be deprived of full martyr status, however, when the government decided to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. He

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4.1 Edward O’Meagher Condon (1840–1915). He is best known for his role in organizing the escape of Fenian leaders Tom Kelly and Timothy Deasy from a prison van in Manchester in 1867 and for the speech that he gave from the dock after he had been sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted. His father, Thomas, provided information about the Fenians to the Canadian government.

was released in 1878 as part of a wider amnesty for Fenian prisoners, spent the rest of his life in New York, continued to work for a revolution in Ireland, and died in his bed in 1915, a year before the Easter Rising. Alongside Condon in Murphy’s tavern was Murtagh Moriarty, also eighteen years old, from Cahersiveen in West County Kerry – one of the areas hardest

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hit during the Famine.61 His family had left in 1849 and settled in Toronto. Like Condon, he became a leading Fenian organizer in Canada. When the New York Fenians wanted their membership cards distributed in the country, Moriarty was the man they used.62 Also like Condon, he gained military experience fighting in the Civil War. In April 1866, Moriarty set out to join the Fenians who were gathering in Maine for their projected invasion of Campobello Island in New Brunswick. But the authorities got wind of the plans, intercepted his train, and threw him and his fellow Fenians into the Cornwall jail.63 Five months later, the prisoners managed to escape; Moriarty made his way down to New York, hooked up with the Fenian leadership, and was given the responsibility of organizing the rising in and around Cahersiveen. Back in Ireland, he quickly acquired a reputation in government circles as “a very bad character” who operated in a wild part of Kerry where the “people were lawless” and “very backward in civilization.”64 The authorities feared that his mission was to cut the transatlantic cable that stretched from Valentia Island in Kerry to Newfoundland – which would sever communications between Britain and America and give the Fenians a free hand in Canada. This was not, in fact, part of the strategy. But Moriarty was coordinating revolutionary plans with the Fenian leadership in the area. Acting on an informer’s tip-off, the police arrested him en route to Killarney and put him in prison.65 The rising in Kerry never got off the ground; it consisted of some twenty to thirty men who raided a coast guard station, shot and wounded a policeman, and hightailed it into the mountains.66 Moriarty was found guilty of treason-felony. “Desperadoes from America who come here to delude simple-minded people and disturb the peace of the country must be deterred,” said the judge as he handed down a ten-year sentence. The bishop of Kerry, David Moriarty (no relation), wanted stronger stuff than that. “When we look down into the fathomless depth of this infamy of the heads of the Fenian conspiracy,” he said, with Murtagh Moriarty in mind, “we must acknowledge that eternity is not long enough, nor hell hot enough to punish such miscreants.”67 In West Kerry, however, the lawless and uncivilized people carried rather different traditions about the Rising of 1867. A song that can still be heard in the local pubs celebrates Captain Moriarty, curses the “dirty old spy” who betrayed him, and praises the bravery of his men who fought to the last against bayonets and redcoats:

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Then hurrah for the Fenians of Cahersiveen, No bolder nor braver in Erin was seen; No soldiers more true to the banner of green Than the true-hearted Fenians of Cahersiveen.68 As for Moriarty himself, he was released after four years in prison – six years less than his judge wanted and a lot less than the bishop had in mind. He returned to Toronto, where his house remained a centre of revolutionary Irish nationalism and a target for Orange crowds.69 Another regular at Murphy’s tavern, drinking and discussing politics with Condon and Moriarty, was William Mackey Lomasney (Figure 4.2) – seventeen years old in 1858 – the Irish-born son of a tailor who emigrated from County Cork to Toronto earlier in the decade.70 One of Condon’s closest friends, he signed up during the Civil War and returned to Cork in 1865 with revolution on his mind. There was no one else quite like him in the Fenian Brotherhood; a master of disguises, cool, determined, reflective, sallow, and unkempt, he talked with a lisp, never raised his voice in an argument, and never backed down. During the Rising of 1867, he helped to organize an attack on a police barracks. Afterwards, he conducted a series of arms raids in County Cork, hitting a coast guard station, a Martello tower, a gunpowder magazine, and a couple of gun shops in Cork City.71 The day of reckoning came in February 1868, when the police caught up with him in a back-street Cork pub. Trying to struggle free, he shot a policeman, who later died of his wounds. He was acquitted of murder on the grounds that the gun had gone off accidentally, but found guilty of treasonfelony. His speech from the dock was so moving, it was said, that even the judge was brought to tears – although that did not stop him from handing down a twelve-year sentence.72 Three years later, however, Lomasney was released through the same amnesty that freed Moriarty. While Moriarty returned to Toronto and had a relatively quiet life, Orange crowds notwithstanding, Lomasney moved to Detroit and thought about ways to continue the armed struggle. His answer was a campaign of “bloodless terrorism” in Britain. The campaign was to be bloodless because any attacks on civilians would produce an anti-Irish backlash in Britain and alienate supporters in Ireland, and it was to employ terrorism because blowing up buildings and destroying infrastructure

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4.2 William Mackey Lomasney (1841–84). A leader of the Fenian Rising of 1867 in County Cork, he subsequently participated in the dynamite campaign against Britain during the early 1880s and was blown up by his own bomb under London Bridge in 1884.

were the only ways to break the government’s will to stay in Ireland.73 The strategy of a bomb campaign in Britain, but without the “bloodless” part, was adopted during the early 1880s by the three-man executive, or Triangle, of the Clan na Gael, the Irish-American successor to the Fenians. The leader of the Triangle, Alexander Sullivan, had been born in Canada, and another member, Denis C. Feely, had been active in Irish nationalist circles in the Canadian town of Cobourg during the mid-1860s.74 After conducting experiments with explosives, fuses, and timers, Lomasney and two others (one of whom was his brother-in-law) left for London in 1884 on a bombing mission. Among their targets was London Bridge. On a December afternoon, they hired a boat, fastened explosives to one of the arches, and set the fuse. The bomb went off instantly. Not a trace of the bodies was left.75 All this was many miles and many years from Michael Murphy’s tavern. But the pattern is clear. Condon, Moriarty, and Lomasney were all Irish-born

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Catholics whose parents had come to Toronto. They were all in their late teens. They all joined the Hibernian Benevolent Society in the immediate aftermath of the Sheady killing and the National Hotel riot. They all became founders of the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada. They all went on to fight in the Civil War. And they all returned to Ireland as revolutionary leaders on the cutting edge of Irish nationalism. It would be wrong to say that their experiences of Orangeism in Toronto turned them into revolutionaries; much more was going on than that. Their family backgrounds were crucial in shaping their outlook. According to one source, Condon’s father had left Ireland under threat of eviction after refusing to testify against a priest who had given an incendiary speech about the local landlord.76 Moriarty’s family must have witnessed scenes of terrible suffering during the Famine in West Kerry. Lomasney’s father was a Fenian, and one of his great-grandfathers had been killed during the Rising of 1798.77 Such experiences and memories were formative. And the Civil War years also left their mark, figuratively and literally; Condon was severely wounded at Petersburg, and Moriarty had his nose sliced off by a Confederate sabre. Mixing with equally radical compatriots in the worst killing fields that the world had yet seen, they became determined to make full use of their hardbought military skills and to carry the fight back home. Yet their time in Toronto cannot be discounted either; it was there, after all, that they banded together and committed themselves to the revolutionary republican cause. Nor were they alone. As one Irish American nationalist put it in 1879, “Toronto stands, par excellence, the foremost city of America for the number of true patriots it has produced during the past twenty years, in proportion to its Irish population.”78 There was a good reason for that. It was easy to be a Fenian in New York or Chicago. You could be open about your politics, and you could present yourself as following in the footsteps of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. You ran no risks. But things were very different in British North America. If you were going to be a Fenian in loyalist Orange Toronto, and by extension in loyalist Orange Canada, you were likely to be a very serious Fenian indeed.79

5

 “A Regular Fenian Organization” Extending the Brotherhood in Canada

The Fenians spread their influence throughout Canada by stealth. In Toronto and Montreal during the early 1860s, there were occasional glimpses of the emerging Fenian underground, whose leaders gradually became confident enough to make open calls for revolution in Ireland. Such calls were generally justified not in terms of the republican tradition of the United Irishmen and 1798 but in terms of the Volunteer movement of 1782, which had used the threat of revolution to push for Irish legislative independence under the Crown – and thus, in effect, to attain for Ireland the same relationship to Britain that Canada would attain during the mid-nineteenth century. Canadian Fenians could argue that they were following in the footsteps of the Irish Volunteers by using the threat of revolution, and in this way, the threat of revolution in Ireland could be presented as being compatible with loyalty to Canada. Republican sentiments, however, were never far beneath the surface, manifesting themselves in support for Canadian independence or annexation to the United States and in celebrations of revolutionaries from Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet to Michael Doheny and John O’Mahony. Toronto continued to set the pace in Canada West during the early 1860s, and the Hibernian Benevolent Society rapidly attracted a large number of members through a variety of social and recreational activities. In November 1858, the Hibernians held the first of several rowing matches against Toronto’s Shakespeare Club.1 The four-man crew of the Hibernians’ Lalla Rookh, named after one of Thomas Moore’s most famous poems, consisted of Michael Murphy, John Murphy, James Law, and Daniel O’Halloran; the first three joined the Fenian Brotherhood, and O’Halloran’s sympathies are unknown. Spectators on the shore cheered them on and placed their bets; the two teams were evenly matched, adding to the excitement of the occasions.2 In February 1859,

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the Hibernian Rowing Club held its first annual ball; the captain was Michael Murphy, and his brother-in-law, John Mulvey, a fellow Irish nationalist, was the secretary.3 The Hibernians also organized thirteen-a-side football games on the grounds of the University of Toronto and hurling matches at Hoggs Hollow. On 17 March 1860, while the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association suspended its annual parade, a “large crowd” of Hibernians marched quietly through the streets of Toronto, after which an “immense number of spectators assembled to witness the national game of football.” One side was captained by Murphy and the other by his fellow Fenian Charles Burns. “There is hot Irish blood in Toronto,” reported the Phoenix in New York.4 That summer, the Hibernians held the first of their annual excursions to Niagara Falls. Some 550 people made the trip, which had been organized by the secretary, James Mallon, another revolutionary Irish nationalist; they enjoyed a hurling match between the Hibernians and a team from Buffalo and spent much of the day dancing to Irish music.5 By 1862, the number of excursionists had increased to around 1,500, who “all enjoyed themselves in the heartiest manner possible.”6 At the same time, the Hibernian Benevolent Society began operating as a mutual aid society. In much the same way that the Orange Order looked after its own, the Hibernians were “assisting as far as lies in their power their distressed members, attending them in their sickness, and, in the case of death, defraying their funeral expenses.”7 Responding to community needs, providing a sense of belonging in a sometimes hostile environment, and creating an atmosphere of conviviality, enjoyment, and excitement among the city’s Irish Catholics, the Hibernians were growing in influence. Many of the people who paid their dues, watched the rowing, football, and hurling matches, and went on the summer excursions had little or nothing to do with Fenianism. But the dominant figures in the Society had a great deal to do with it. And before long, they would inject their politics into the life of the city and its surrounding areas.

The political presence of the Hibernians was first registered during the visit of William Smith O’Brien to Toronto in May 1859. O’Brien’s leadership of the Young Ireland Rising of 1848 and his subsequent imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land made him an iconic figure among Irish nationalists of all

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stripes. By the time of his North American tour, he had become safely respectable; in Toronto, he was an honoured guest of the Legislative Assembly, which in 1856 had narrowly passed a resolution calling for his amnesty.8 With around 3,000 people assembled in front of the Rossin House to hear him speak, two established leaders of Toronto’s Irish Catholic community gave their addresses of welcome: James Moylan, the president of the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association; and Patrick O’Neill, the editor of the Mirror and a major figure in the amnesty campaign. Next up was Murphy, representing the Hibernian Benevolent Society. His speech was thoroughly conventional, praising O’Brien as an “honoured son of Ireland” and a “firm advocate of civil and religious liberty.”9 Indeed, so innocuous were his words that Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who was also at the Rossin House, had no recollection of ever meeting Murphy.10 But the symbolism of his appearance on stage was what mattered; the Hibernians were becoming an increasingly important voice in the city. Not surprisingly, the Fenian presence within the Hibernian Benevolent Society remained invisible to the authorities, although there was the occasional sense that something was going on beneath the surface. During a council debate in 1860 over whether members of the Orange Order could become policemen, alderman Robert Moodie “stated that he could prove there were men belonging to Hibernian and Ribbon lodges in the Police Force.”11 Moodie, who had a propensity to speak first and think later, failed to provide the proof that he promised – almost certainly because he did not have any. Six months later, the subject of Ribbonism came up again, this time during the trial of three Catholics who had been accused of beating up a Protestant after the Orange Day parade. One of the witnesses for the defence, John McGuire, would subsequently acquire notoriety for storing pikes on behalf of the Hibernians. Another, James Quinn, said that he had been “on patrol” that day to protect St Mary’s Church from Orange attacks – such patrols being a central purpose of the Hibernian Benevolent Society. During his cross-examination, prosecuting attorney R.M. Allen asked Quinn whether he was a member of a Ribbon lodge. When Quinn replied that he knew nothing about such things, Allen told the police magistrate that a Ribbon lodge was meeting in Murphy’s tavern. During a pause in the proceedings, Murphy, who was in the courtroom, threatened to punch Allen in the head and break his nose.12 The pugnacious side of Murphy resurfaced in 1861 during an election campaign that pitted John Crawford, a Conservative who supported improved

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separate school legislation, against George Brown, who did not.13 At a public meeting, described by one journalist as “a grand scene of confusion, of fun, jibes, groans, cheers and hisses,” Murphy’s men got into a brawl with Brown’s supporters. As the rival groups tried to take control of the stage, someone hit Crawford with a “murderous bludgeon,” and Murphy “struck Mr. Brown from behind, a heavy blow on the head with a cudgel,” and tried to hit him again while he was down. Neither candidate, it seems, was badly hurt; they left the building arm in arm, and Brown was able to deliver a long speech later in the evening.14 A few days later, Brown dropped his charge of assault after receiving an apology.15 But Murphy’s action at the meeting doubtless enhanced his reputation among the Hibernians; here was someone who had actually done to Brown what many of them must have felt like doing. By the winter of 1861–62, the Hibernian Benevolent Society was supplanting the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association as the dominant Irish Catholic organization in the city. The clearest indication of this change came when Murphy and Patrick Boyle persuaded Bishop John Joseph Lynch to revive the St Patrick’s Day parade, against the protests of the moderates in the community.16 For the next five years, the parades would be controlled by the Hibernians. They started off cautiously enough, and there was not a trace of “hot Irish blood” during the 1862 parade. Over 1,000 people – including two detachments of the Toronto police force – marched through the streets while the bands played and spectators crowded the sidewalks. “Every one in the procession,” reported the Globe, “conducted himself in an orderly manner, and all looked respectable and well dressed.” In his speech, Murphy asserted that the days when Catholics were insulted in the streets were over – not because the St Patrick’s Association had reduced tensions by cancelling the parades but because the Hibernians had faced down the enemies of their religion.17

In Montreal, Bernard Devlin agreed wholeheartedly with this version of events. The man who had once called for an American-based Irish invasion of Canada was now a well-established lawyer and an active figure in the city’s St Patrick’s Society. In his view, the suspension of the parades in Toronto was a disgrace that should never be repeated elsewhere. “Let Orange bigotry manifest itself in any form it pleases,” he wrote in 1859. “Of the Irishmen of Montreal it never, I trust, shall be said that they have, through fear or favour, shrunk

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from the accustomed celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.”18 And indeed, the parades in Montreal, organized by the St Patrick’s Society in close cooperation with the Catholic Church, remained a central feature of the city’s life.19 Manifestly loyal in tone and temper, the Montreal parades coexisted with widespread support for Irish nationalism – as evinced by the “enormous multitude” who turned out to hear William Smith O’Brien when he arrived in the city during his 1859 tour.20 Although there was no sign of organized Fenianism in Montreal at this time, radical nationalist sentiments that could not be openly expressed in Canada began to appear in the Irish American press. In March 1860, in the safe environment of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Patrick Black from Montreal delivered a lecture on the “Love of Country.” “From the manner in which he handled his subject and described the blessings (ha, ha!) of British Rule in Ireland,” commented one of his listeners, “I think he is a very loyal subject of Queen Vic.”21 The following year, a private in a Montreal militia company dissociated himself and his men from the loyalist speech of their commanding officer. “I can assure you,” he told the Phoenix, “that no body of men abhors British rule more than we do … We, Irishmen of Canada, cannot be so outspoken as Irishmen in the United States. We have to use some little policy to carry out our views. Had we hissed Capt. K’s speech, we would be dismissed. Our object is as much Irish as that of the Phoenix Brigade.”22 During the Trent crisis of November and December 1861, when the United States and Britain appeared to be on the brink of war, some militiamen in Montreal did start to speak out. A meeting called by McGee to discuss raising an Irish battalion to defend Canada from an American invasion was “systematically and violently” disrupted by a number of men in Bernard Devlin’s Prince of Wales Regiment, together with a contingent of Fenians from Vermont. One of the “leading disturbers,” according to McGee, was Owen Devlin, Bernard’s brother. Although most people at the meeting supported the resolution calling for an Irish battalion, a vocal minority of Montreal Irishmen had very different ideas about loyalty to the Crown and British Empire.23 Such a public display of disaffection, however, was very much the exception. When the Fenians formed their own organization in Montreal, they did so under conditions of secrecy. In the fall of 1862, Francis Bernard McNamee travelled to New York and received a warrant from John O’Mahony to found a Fenian circle in Montreal. After a regular meeting of the St Patrick’s Society,

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McNamee invited “some eight or ten people” back to his house, where they pledged “to assist Ireland in the revolutionary movement then in progress” and to follow the orders of the Fenian Brotherhood in New York. Under the name of the Hibernian Society, they raised money “to improve the condition of Ireland,” which in practice meant buying arms for an Irish revolution. The co-founders included John McGrath (a self-described “gentleman”), William Mansfield (who ran a “groceries, provisions, and liquors business” and became the first treasurer), and Daniel Lyons (a “trader”). Patrick O’Meara was the secretary, and McNamee himself was the president. They held their meetings at McNamee’s house and, as their numbers increased, at Owen Devlin’s law offices. A core group of about twenty-five men undertook fundraising activities and attempted to infiltrate the city’s St Patrick’s Society. Ignoring the loyalty test that Father Patrick Dowd and McGee had drawn up, they began “to talk treason and sing sedition, before and after business hours, in the hall.”24 The talking and singing were carried through to the Hibernian Society’s St Patrick’s Day dinner at the Exchange Hotel in 1864. Organized by McNamee, Owen Devlin, Lyons, McGrath, O’Meara, and William Linehan, and attended by “a large number of young men and some ladies,” it consisted of speeches that looked forward to the day when “Britain as a nation would cease to exist,” and “poor, down-trodden Ireland would soon be enabled to free itself from the iniquitous and accursed yoke of England.” One speaker predicted the advent of “a Fenian Brotherhood, to extend throughout the world – a universal body of united Irishmen, which would exclude all those from their society who, while claiming to be Irishmen, regarded the real proprietors of the soil of Ireland, to wit, the Roman Catholic Irish, as an inferior race, and their religion a system of idolatory.” The songs included a parody of “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean,” which featured Britannia as “the curse of the ocean, the scourge of the brave and the free,” and which concluded, “To hell with the red, white and blue.”25 This “orgie of sedition,” as McGee called it, was part of a larger pattern; by 1864, he wrote, there were “distinctly traceable at Toronto and Montreal and elsewhere systematic and continuous attempts to turn whatever pro-Fenian sentiment existed in the Province into a regular Fenian organization.”26

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Central to these attempts was the Irish Canadian newspaper, founded in January 1863 with Michael Murphy and John Mulvey among the provisional directors and Patrick Boyle as editor. Other radical Irish Canadian newspapers had been started before, in Montreal and Quebec City, but had not lasted long.27 During its first year, the Irish Canadian looked like it might go the same way. It halved its length to four pages, and Boyle admitted that “many of our own countrymen dissent from our doctrines and disfavor our publication.”28 But it weathered the storm and went from strength to strength during the rest of the decade. Its main themes, in the early months, were the need for Irish Catholics to attain their fair share of political and social influence in Canada, the importance of Irish Catholic unity, opposition to the Orange Order and to George Brown’s Reformers, support for an improved separate school system, and assertions of loyalty to Canada together with condemnations of British rule in Ireland. Canada may have been free, ran the oftrepeated message, but Ireland was in chains. As the Irish Canadian extended its reach, the Hibernian Benevolent Society set out to establish branches “throughout the length and breadth of the land.”29 Murphy went on this mission to Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City, spreading the Irish revolutionary gospel, forming connections with likeminded individuals, and advocating a Canada-wide counter-organization to the Orange Order.30 With every Orange attack on Irish Catholics, Murphy’s case became more persuasive. When in 1863 the St Patrick’s Day parade in Peterborough was broken up by some 400 armed Orangemen who blocked off the route and trained a cannon on the city’s Catholic church, the lesson seemed clear: Irish Catholics should organize themselves “into one mammoth association, acknowledging Toronto or Montreal as the centre-point.”31 Although the St Patrick’s Society of Peterborough remained within the O’Connellite tradition, there is evidence that the Fenian underground had penetrated the town by the mid-1860s.32 A man from Peterborough was among the Canadian delegates to the Fenian convention in Philadelphia in October 1865, and shortly before the invasion of June 1866, an American Fenian paid a visit to “our friends” in Peterborough, along with others in Hamilton, Toronto, Port Hope, Belleville, Brockville, and Prescott.33 As elsewhere, there were tensions between moderates and militants, and feelings could run very high. At a tavern in Ennismore, two Irish Catholics got into such a serious fight over McGee’s politics that one of them subsequently tried to kill the other.34

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While Orangemen in Peterborough were disrupting the St Patrick’s Day parade, Michael Murphy was flexing his muscles in Toronto. In sharp contrast with the studied caution of the previous year, Murphy now made the first public endorsement in Canada of Fenianism. Not that he mentioned the Brotherhood by name; instead, he referred to “an organization known to exist in American [sic], Canada, Australia and Ireland itself ” that would soon bring freedom to Ireland. Twenty thousand “thorough nationalists” in Canada “would not hesitate to sacrifice their lives if their country” – by which he meant Ireland – “would demand the offering,” he told his audience. “Ireland’s liberty must be obtained only by blood,” he continued, and “a million lives would not be sacrificed in vain to purchase her freedom.”35 When George Brown’s Globe condemned these “disloyal statements,” Murphy’s friend and ally Patrick Boyle opened up a stream of sectarian abuse against Scottish Protestants: they were “the very scum of humanity,” whose “scrubby creed” was the “offal of religion” that emitted a “moral stench which taints the atmosphere”; Brown himself was caricatured as “a disciple of oatmeal and predestination.” And when the Leader in Toronto condemned Murphy’s “treasonable utterances,” Boyle played the 1782 card: the Hibernians were following in the footsteps of the Irish Volunteers by using the threat of force to secure Irish legislative independence under the Crown. “The justice which Mr. Murphy sought,” he declared, “was simply that demanded and obtained by the Volunteers.” That was all well and good, except that the organization that Murphy referenced in his speech defined Irish freedom in terms of a separate republic, not an updated version of 1782.36 More branches of the Hibernians were formed over the next few months, although not all their members were Fenians. In August, members of the Hibernian Society of Dundas joined their counterparts in Toronto for an excursion to Hamilton; among the men from Toronto was William Mackey Lomasney’s father, who had become the secretary of the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society.37 Later in the year, another Hibernian Society was established in Richmond Hill.38 The Irish Canadian reported extensively and positively on the Fenian convention held in Chicago in November 1863, which included unnamed delegates from Canada. “These men but wait for an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom,” wrote Boyle, “and when that opportunity arises, terrible and sweeping will be their revenge.”39 By St Patrick’s Day in 1864, Murphy repeated his support for revolution in Ireland, while

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again asserting his loyalty to Canada. In Cobourg, Denis C. Feely was at pains to deny rumours that the town’s St Patrick Society was a Fenian front organization.40 It is not clear whether Feely was a member of the Fenian Brotherhood at this time, but he would certainly support its goals and methods later in the decade.

As the Hibernians gathered momentum and made public declarations in support of Fenianism, the Orange backlash became correspondingly stronger. This process was particularly marked in Toronto. With the election of a hardline Orange mayor, Francis Medcalf, in 1864, the city’s Catholics faced blanket accusations of disloyalty. “Roman Catholics are Roman Catholics all the world over,” Medcalf declared, “and we all know what these people are” – people who preached treason in their churches, their streets, and their houses and who reared up their children as “enemies of the country.” When the Sisters of St Joseph in May 1864 applied to use the city’s Crystal Palace to raise funds for the House of Providence, Medcalf turned them down: their real purpose, he asserted, was to pour their “vials of wrath upon everything British and Protestant.” He received strong support from several councillors, but after a heated debate, the motion in favour of the Sisters was carried by a “large majority.”41 Hard on the heels of this controversy, Toronto’s Orangemen learned that the Catholic Church was planning a procession to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. Medcalf immediately fired off a letter to Bishop Lynch. If the Host was carried through the streets of Toronto, he warned, this would constitute “a very serious breach of the peace.” Lynch replied that the procession would be held within church limits, but he also asserted the right of Catholics to carry the Host in public. To prevent any such possibility, a crowd of Orangemen assembled in front of St Michael’s Cathedral. As the procession began, they hurled insults at the marchers, tried to get through the gates, and fought with the Catholic men inside while the women and children ran for safety. The consequences were entirely predictable: Irish Catholic anger reached a new pitch of intensity; Lynch declared that unless the city’s Catholics were protected, they would take matters into their own hands; and the Hibernians reinforced their reputation as the defenders of their community. What that meant in practice became very clear later in the year.42

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In November, as rumours spread that the Orangemen were planning to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night by burning effigies of Daniel O’Connell, Pope Pius IX, and the Duke of Newcastle, the Hibernians decided to get their retaliation in first. “The city is in the hands of an Orange mob, aided in their work of blood and ruin by an Orange mayor,” wrote Boyle, reeling off a list of Orange attacks on Catholics dating back to 1856. “Again and again have Orangemen paraded the streets armed to the teeth,” he continued; if the city’s Catholics did not take back the streets, they would risk facing the kind of anti-Catholic rioting that had recently rocked Belfast.43 At midnight on 5 November, the Hibernians gathered at Queen’s Park, their numbers boosted by men who came in from outlying areas such as Richmond Hill. Carrying pikes and guns, they split into two groups; one marched east and the other marched west. According to the Leader, the marchers included “respectable shopkeepers,” a “goodly number of shoemakers,” “several laborers and moulders,” and “a few tavern keepers.” There were at least 120 of them and possibly as many as 400; contemporary estimates vary. Around 2:00 in the morning, men from each group fired a volley of shots to assert their power and presence in Toronto.44 In a city with around sixty policemen, a march of armed and putatively disloyal Catholics through the midnight streets struck terror into the Protestant population. Here, argued the Globe, was clear proof that Toronto “had within its very midst an organised, illegal, armed body of conspirators, who, at any moment of the darkness, might perpetrate deeds of horror and of bloodshed at the thought of which one’s heart sickens.”45 Such fears tapped into a deep well of Protestant Irish insecurity; memories of the 1641 massacre of Protestants in Ireland and of the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France bubbled to the surface.46 No Catholic, it seemed, could be trusted. “Papists,” asserted one writer to the Globe, “are masters of the science of secrecy.”47 Stories circulated that weapons were being distributed by Catholic customshouse officers and – in a familiar Protestant trope – that they were being stockpiled in churches, ready for use at the appointed time.48 Even more alarming to Protestant loyalists was the belief that the marchers were part of a larger organization. “The Catholic community it is true forms only a small proportion of the inhabitants,” wrote George Dickson from Richmond Hill, “but when their secret meetings has for its object the total overthrow of the British Government, commencing in Canada, aided by

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thousands who are leagued with them throughout the length and breadth of the Provinces and tens of thousands in the adjoining States it becomes a matter of serious import.”49 “It is well known that the Fenian organization has a network throughout the whole of Canada,” wrote a correspondent to the Globe, “and at a given time the corps will rise en masse and deal destruction to all Protestants.”50 Not coincidentally, the first rumours of a Fenian invasion arose at this time, with Mayor Medcalf claiming to have received “reliable information” from Buffalo that the Fenians were going to attack during the winter. The Irish Canadian responded with derision. What could be more “supremely absurd,” it asked, than a Fenian raid from Buffalo?51

Given such fears, the Guy Fawkes demonstration ran the risk of fomenting the very kind of anti-Catholic rioting that it was intended to forestall. Since the Hibernians viewed the Orangemen as savage animals, one could ask whether it was wise to poke them with sharp sticks. If the Orangemen had actually been marching on Guy Fawkes Night and if the rumours of the effigy burning had actually been true (they were not), the result would have been a full-scale riot. “If we admit the right of Fenians to arm for the purpose of suppressing the Orangemen,” ran one of the Globe’s editorials, “we must also admit the right of the Orangemen to arm for the suppression of the Fenians. Where would it all end?”52 Attempting to take the heat out of the situation, Bishop Lynch issued a statement describing the demonstration as a “foolish and unwarrantable act,” while asserting that the Orange Order was at the root of the problem. As long as Orangemen continued to menace Catholics, he wrote, counter-organizations such as the Hibernians were inevitable.53 His attempt to walk the middle ground earned him the enmity of militants on both sides. The Hibernians naturally rejected his condemnation of their march, and the Orangemen were furious that the blame had been shifted onto their shoulders. Orange marches, they countered, were peaceful, loyal, open, and unarmed; the march of the Hibernians was the opposite in every respect. The city’s Protestants, including many outside the Orange Order, noted that Bishop Lynch had said nothing when Michael Murphy had spoken in front of him on St Patrick’s Day and had insisted that armed force was necessary to break British rule in Ireland. All this appeared to vindicate the bedrock anti-Catholic assumption of Mayor

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Medcalf, who received a death threat when he opened the investigation into the march.54 At the investigation, the police produced a cache of twenty pikes that had been found in John McGuire’s house on Queen Street West, “where a lodge of Fenians are said to hold their meetings” – the same McGuire who had been a defence witness for the three men found guilty of assaulting a Protestant after the Orange Day parade four years earlier in 1860.55 It was not, however, illegal to own pikes, and the authorities had no choice but to release him – whereupon he promptly demanded the return of his pikes and threatened to sue the policeman who had taken them. McGuire never got them back; the pikes “mysteriously disappeared” in police custody. The law, complained the Irish Canadian, was being “openly sneered at and set aside by the administrators of that law.”56 While the Hibernians were criticizing the police for undermining the rule of law, Protestants were attacking the force from the opposite direction, fearing that it had been infiltrated by the Fenians. Their principal target was Patrick Cummings, the only Catholic sergeant in the force. Cummings had already been accused of partisanship the previous year during an investigation into a murder that arose from Anishinaabeg resistance to white fishers and settlers on Manitoulin Island. He had selected only Catholic special constables (including John McGuire) for the police mission to the island, and they apparently refused to arrest a priest who was supporting the Anishinaabeg. Although Cummings mounted an able defence, suspicions continued to hang over his head.57 Now, in November 1864, he was accused of concealing prior knowledge of the Guy Fawkes demonstration and of obtaining the release of a Fenian gunrunner in Buffalo. Again, he produced ample evidence to demonstrate that the charges were baseless, and he was duly exonerated. Medcalf was so incensed by the decision that he resigned in protest from the Board of Police Commissioners.58 “The police force was purged of Orangemen,” ran a Globe editorial. “It must be purged of Fenians too!”59 It would not be the last time that Cummings was thought to be in league with the Fenians.60 Just as things were beginning to settle, sectarian tensions turned upwards again after a break-in at an Orange hall on Yonge Street. The walls were smeared with excrement, lodge warrants were ripped to pieces, silk banners were slashed, the lodge bible was trodden into the ground, and a banner of Queen Victoria was speared with a piece of wood through her heart.61 Some

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of the more “hot-headed” Orangemen called for immediate reprisals against the Hibernians but “were restrained by their more prudent brethren,” reported the Leader. The “prudent brethren” included Mayor Medcalf and his allies on the council.62 Leading Irish Catholics denounced the break-in and dissociated themselves from the Fenians who had supposedly committed the crime. The vicar-general condemned it as a “shameful, cowardly act” – and it was about time that he did, according to the Globe, which had long felt that the Catholic Church had been quietly tolerating the militants in its midst.63 Patrick Boyle initially came out against the perpetrators, largely on the grounds that their actions would create only more “bad blood” between Protestants and Catholics. Before long, however, he began to describe the event as a “pretended outrage” and accused the Orangemen of wrecking their own hall to discredit their Catholic enemies. “The trick is an old one,” he wrote, “which has been rendered familiar by frequent repetition.”64 It is unlikely that his position did anything to improve Catholic-Protestant relations. Orange anger was channelled into support for the Canadian volunteer militia, and anti-Fenian and anti-Catholic sentiments found expression in song: There are Fenians in our Canada, the plot has come to light – Their bloody pikes they have prepared, to turn out in the night; A box of pikes, they have been found in the house of J. McGuire, Prepared for midnight massacre, for faggot and for fire. Unto the higher powers now for justice loud we call, The Fenians of Toronto they have robbed the Orange Hall, And on our robes and banners they have shewn the hellish spleen – With filth defiled the place, and stabbed the picture of the queen! God’s Holy Book they tore it up, and cast in on the floor, And in its leaves they wiped their filth, old Satan could do no more! From two hundred thousand Orangemen an angry cry arose, For vengeance for their hellish act upon our Fenian foes! … The only way to keep them down – I’ll tell you the best plan – Go, join the Volunteers, and take a rifle in your hand,

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Uphold your Constitution, your Government and your Crown, And then if the Fenians should arise, you’ll quickly put them down. The song also tapped into popular Protestant millenarianism, with a new twist on the Book of Revelation: The Fenians must soon disappear, for Popery must end god’s Holy Word declares the same, and on it we depend – In Sixty-six it is decreed that Antichrist must fall, Together with that prophet that deceived the nations all. Here’s success to the Orange cause – to the queen good health we toast – Three cheers to our brave Volunteers – they are our country’s boast: To confound the Papists and their plots, on Heaven we rely, Do put your trust in god, brave boys, and keep your powder dry!65 Many of them would indeed join the Volunteers and prepare to fight against the Fenians who attempted to invade Canada in 1866. The fall of Antichrist, however, remained on hold. With Protestant nerves on edge, a social panic spread through much of the province during the winter. “A very considerable apprehension has been aroused that the [Hibernian] Society is more widely extended and more formidable in its character than anyone had reason before to suppose,” ran a government memorandum. Reports came in from Sarnia, Hamilton, Guelph, Richmond Hill, Toronto, Picton, Cobourg, Georgetown, and Ottawa that Irish Catholics were gathering arms to “strike a heavy blow in Canada” and attack the Protestants. “People here are almost frantic,” wrote a terrified correspondent from Brantford; a Catholic servant had been overheard saying that “the protestants need not be so stiff, as they would have to beg their lives of their servant girls before long.”66 Rumours spread that the Fenians had risen in Mono township and were murdering people in their beds. The village of Arthur was supposedly next on the list, Listowel had been threatened with “utter destruction by the Fenians,” and there were fears of “a general massacre of the Protestants in Morpeth.”67 Protestants in isolated farmsteads began drawing into the towns for protection, and there were calls for vigilance

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committees to keep a close eye on the Catholics throughout the country.68 Some individuals tried to calm things down by pouring water on what one person called this “violent fit of Fenimania on the brain” and by preventing pre-emptive strikes on putative Fenians.69 But others, still convinced that there must be some fire beneath the smoke, insisted that the Protestants must be prepared for the worst.70 All this was happening in the context of rumours that the American Fenians were preparing to invade. A Fenian meeting in Jersey City had declared that 50,000 Fenians were ready to move into Canada, and more disturbing news came in from Boston, where Patrick Sinnott (originally from St George in New Brunswick) urged his fellow Fenians to “go and strike at the nearest point – Canada.” “I don’t mean,” he continued, “that you shall violate international law, or go to Canada in an organized body, but go as quiet travelers and passengers, and form a Fenian Confederation in that country. If you can’t reach the heart of England, at least dismember a portion of her frame.”71 “There is great apprehension entertained,” noted Solicitor General James Cockburn, and “though there may be much exaggeration there is still considerable ground for the feeling.”72

And then, more alarming news came in from Montreal. “I have been informed,” wrote the Globe’s correspondent from the city, “that it is known there are over 1,500 Fenians here, and their leaders are marked. In one volunteer corps two refused to be sworn and made disloyal remarks. An Irishman who took the oath was assaulted shortly after on his way home. Some carters were overheard boasting about what the Fenians would do when they invaded Canada.”73 This report was, as McGee was quick to point out, a wild – and in his view, an inflammatory – overstatement. Such stories only stoked religious fears and hatreds and prompted “nervous or mischievous magistrates” in Canada West to take drastic actions such as searching Catholic churches for pikes and guns and arming Protestants against their Catholic neighbours. Going to the other extreme, he declared unequivocally that there was no Fenian organization whatsoever in Montreal.74 In fact – as McGee later realized – the small group of Fenians in Montreal were gradually extending their influence and continuing their strategy of infiltrating and controlling the city’s St Patrick’s Society. A step in this direction

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was taken in May, when M.C. Mullarky and Henry Wall (neither of whom was in the Montreal Hibernians) introduced a motion in May 1864 that the St Patrick’s Society should subscribe to the Irish Canadian.75 The paper was already circulating in the city; six weeks earlier, it had denounced McGee as the “Goula of Griffintown” for his attacks on the Hibernians. Its popularity increased in step with its radicalism.76 “the irish canadian is eagerly sought for here,” wrote John McGrath shortly after the attack on McGee. “The hundreds of it that arrived this week were all sold yesterday.”77 After a heated debate, the motion passed by a majority of 25 to 11; disgusted with the decision, Thomas McKenna resigned as president of the St Patrick’s Society the following month.78 In September, McKenna tried to rescind the subscription; William Linehan and Patrick O’Meara led the counterattack. By a large majority, the St Patrick’s Society voted to continue the debate at the next meeting. The outcome was not recorded in the minutes, but it is clear that feelings were running very high.79 While this issue was being discussed over the summer and fall, Daniel Lyons and William Mansfield were quietly bringing their fellow Fenians into the St Patrick’s Society.80 In November, they nominated Felix Callahan, one of the most militant Fenians in the city, for a seat on the executive committee. He was squeezed out by one vote, after which Mansfield accused the scrutineers of rigging the ballot and left the St Patrick’s Society in protest. Whether or not his charge was accurate, it was clear from the vote that by November 1864 a quarter of the members had aligned themselves with a serious revolutionary Irish nationalist.81 The strategy of infiltration was beginning to work, but the Fenians were still a considerable distance from their goal of controlling the organization. Nevertheless, they were making their presence felt. During the winter, the St Patrick’s Society initiated a series of debates on Irish nationalism, beginning with the question of whether “Moral or Physical force” was “better adopted for the freeing of Ireland.” Making the case for physical force were Patrick O’Meara and a shoemaker named Henry Murphy, who would become “one of the principal Fenians in Montreal.”82 The next debate asked “Whether is a total Separation from English Rule or Independent Parliament under the protection of Great Britain the most beneficial for Ireland at the present time?” – neatly foreclosing any deliberations about reforms within the Act of Union. William Linehan and the moral force republican Peter J. Coyle spoke in favour

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of total separation.83 The results were not recorded, but the fact that the debates occurred in the first place carried its own significance: under the influence of the Fenians, politics were being injected into what had previously functioned as a fraternal association. In the St Patrick’s Society’s elections that spring, the winner was Bernard Devlin, whom the Fenians regarded as an ally. They remembered his radical past, admired his uncompromising opposition to Orangeism, and believed that he still sympathized with their cause – an impression that he did nothing to dispel. Devlin was not himself a Fenian and had long since abandoned any ideas about an American-based Irish invasion of Canada. But his brother Owen was in the movement and provided an important link between Devlin and the city’s Fenians. Not everyone seems to have been happy with the election result; shortly afterwards, twenty-eight members resigned from the organization. When a seat on the executive committee came open in June, Patrick O’Meara and Henry Murphy nominated Felix Callahan. This time, he was successful.84 The St Patrick’s Society gave no hint of these developments in its organization of the St Patrick’s Day parade. It invited the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society to attend, only to have the offer declined. At the evening concert, its members surrounded themselves with shamrocks, praised the Irish nation, and assiduously avoided the subject of Irish nationalism. Things were rather different at the Louis Hotel, however, where the Hibernian Society held its own dinner, at which 100 guests drank toasts to “Ireland an Independent Nation,” “the land of our adoption,” and the “Sons of ’98 and ’48.” “I hope I shall never die until I see Ireland a free and independent nation,” wrote one participant. “This is the prayer of every lover of Ireland; and the Irishman who does not endorse it – whether priest or layman – is not a lover of old Ireland.”85

In Toronto, where ethno-religious tensions continued to simmer, Bishop Lynch tried to persuade the Hibernians not to hold their annual parade – partly in the hope that the Orangemen would follow suit and mainly because the “pike excitement” of 5 November had created a dangerous environment. True, the Catholics of Toronto were constantly being insulted, he wrote, and

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people had jostled him in the street, thrown stones at him, whistled the “Protestant Boys” in front of Catholic houses, mocked holy symbols, and sneered at nuns walking on the streets. (He also complained that people dressed as nuns had been appearing on the city’s skating rinks.) But the Christian response was forgiveness, not marching with pikes. “Now you have committed an evil in his matter,” he told the Hibernians, “and [must] repair that evil by abstaining from the procession.”86 The Hibernians were split on the matter. Their first response was to announce that the parade was going ahead and to invite Irishmen from all over the country to join them. But after a special general meeting on the subject, they reluctantly acquiesced to the bishop’s request, while expressing concern that the Orangemen “will see in it but a species of submission.”87 Within days, however, the Hibernians hit upon a strategy that would combine obedience to the bishop with a maximum show of political defiance. They invited a young Fenian lecturer from New York, Jim McDermott, to speak at the Music Hall on St Patrick’s Day. The warm-up act was provided by Michael Murphy, who asserted that 40,000 Irish Canadians would willingly return to Ireland to fight for its freedom – cheerfully doubling the figure that he had given two years earlier. As McDermott stood up to speak, he was greeted with “vociferous cheers,” after which he expatiated at length on the superiority of the American over the British system of government. He received more cheers when he asserted that England held Canada “against the desire of the people” and even louder ones when he declared that Irishmen were ready to proclaim “a free and independent Republic on the ruins of the old kingdom.” “The Fenian Brotherhood,” he continued, “were resolved to try the only experiment that had not been tried – organized revolution!”88 His twin messages of annexation for Canada and revolution for Ireland not only received the “unbounded applause” of his immediate audience but were also in such high demand that the Irish Canadian sold out within hours of publishing the speech. It reprinted the lecture in its entirety the following week.89 Upon his return to New York, McDermott boasted that he had talked treason for hours while the authorities cowered in the face of 800 armed men who were prepared to secure his safety. He had met Bishop Lynch, who had supposedly “expressed himself highly favorable to the Fenian cause.” There was no need to invade Canada, as “that Province was already anxious for

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annexation to the United States” and would fall of its own accord into the American lap. Instead, McDermott concluded, the Fenians should focus all their attention on Ireland.90 For its sheer braggadocio, McDermott’s account of his visit to Toronto rivalled that of Michael Thomas O’Connor in Montreal back in 1848, when he bragged about drawing a crowd of 6,000 men and preaching sedition in front of authorities who were too scared to arrest him.91 Dismissing McDermott as “a crazy young man,” the Globe ridiculed his talk of 800 armed men as delusional and countered that he was allowed to deliver his lecture not because of fear but because Canadians believed in freedom of speech.92 The Catholic press in Canada rushed to deny McDermott’s claim that Bishop Lynch was a secret sympathizer with Fenianism. No one, wrote George Clerk in the True Witness in Montreal, should believe this “obscure brat of a boy from the groggeries of New York.” “Fenianism,” Clerk continued, “is essentially an anti-Catholic, or Protestant association, as much so as is Orangeism to which in many respects it bears a close family resemblance; only the former is a trifle the uglier and the viler of the two – the more loathsome in the eyes of every true son of the Church.”93 The Irish Canadian would have none of this. “There are many thousands of earnest and devoted Catholics, as earnest and devoted Fenians,” it replied.94 Nor were the Hibernians troubled by criticisms emanating from the likes of George Brown and the Globe. But McDermott’s speech, and his subsequent account of that speech, further polarized opinion within Irish Catholic Canada. The unprecedented sales of his lecture doubtless had as much or more to do with its sensationalism as with widespread agreement with his views. Nevertheless, his views tapped into a growing annexationist sentiment among Toronto’s Irish Catholics. In the aftermath of McDermott’s talk, the Irish Canadian ran a series of editorials on annexation, arguing that it would remove the threat of war with the United States, reduce taxes, and inject Canada with new energy, hope, and prosperity. Confederation, now the subject of serious discussion among the colonies, was dismissed as “mere fantasy, an empirical trick”; it was a utopian dream that was already being contradicted by realities on the ground, such as the election of Albert Smith’s anti-Confederation government in New Brunswick.95 Any sense of attachment to Canada among the Hibernians – and, indeed, among many other Irish Catholics in Toronto – cannot have

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been strengthened when Medcalf once again opposed a resolution to allow the Sisters of St Joseph to use the Crystal Palace grounds for a charity event. “Do we want to see Roman Catholic mass-houses and nunneries everywhere and make it a Catholic country at once?” he asked. “If the Council wanted Roman Catholic processions in the street, villages and towns filled with Roman Catholic institutions, then vote for the resolution.” The previous year, his attempt to block the event had failed; this time, in a heightened sectarian atmosphere, Medcalf succeeded by one vote. Liberal Protestants who were appalled by the decision began sending donations to the House of Providence.96 But the damage had been done, and it is not surprising that Bishop Lynch informed the Montreal Catholic editor George Clerk, “Annexation feeling is strong and general in Toronto.”97 Clerk registered the same sentiments in Montreal, where he noted that there had been talk of establishing “an Irish journal, to advocate Irish interests, and ‘Annexation.’”98

As Fenianism broadened and deepened in Canada, tensions over the meaning of loyalty began to heat up within the Irish Catholic community. Standing against revolutionary Irish nationalism and annexationism were newspapers such as James Moylan’s Canadian Freeman in Toronto and George Clerk’s True Witness in Montreal (Clerk was a Scottish convert to Catholicism), the entire Catholic hierarchy, and most priests and nuns. No one, however, played a larger part in countering Fenians and annexationists than McGee, who tried to cut through Irish Catholic ambivalence about revolution in Ireland and repeatedly asserted that the vast majority of Irish Catholics were unambiguously loyal to Canada. Central to his efforts was a speech that he gave in Wexford in May 1865, which attempted to shatter what he saw as destructive myths within the Irish nationalist tradition. One such myth was the image of the Young Irelanders as romantic revolutionaries who could inspire future generations to take up arms for their country. On the contrary, McGee dismissed them as a “pack of fools,” his younger self included, who failed to understand the basic realities of British power and Irish weakness. Another was the image of the United States as a place of refuge for Irish immigrants and a republican model for Irish nationalists. After living in America for some twenty years, McGee said, he knew from experience that most Americans despised the Irish and that

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republicanism went hand in hand with discrimination, demagoguery, and moral degradation. Irishmen and women should avoid the United States like the plague. Ideally, they should stay at home; but if they wanted to emigrate, they should go to Canada, where they would be treated fairly. As for the Fenians, they were merely “Punch-and-Judy Jacobins,” consumed by a “morbid hatred” of Britain, and ready to betray one another at the drop of a hat – “for as sure as filth produces vermin, it is the very nature of conspiracies such as this to breed informers.”99 McGee’s intention was to isolate the Fenians in Canada.100 But the fault line that emerged was not between an overwhelming majority of unambiguously loyal Irish Catholics and a tiny minority of diehard Fenians. Instead, McGee alienated not only the Fenians and their sympathizers but also many moderates who continued to admire Young Ireland, who rejected his negative image of the United States, and who had mixed feelings about physical force nationalism. Irish Catholics were split on the speech, and McGee and his supporters may well have wound up on the minority side. One thing, however, is certain: the Fenians were in the forefront of the attack against him. In Montreal, they gathered 600 signatures for a public disclaimer of McGee’s views – although it soon transpired that some of the signatures had been forged. Near the head of the list, and definitely not forged, was the name of Francis Brennan, an importer of woollen goods who would be described by an informer two years later as “the leading Fenian in Montreal.”101 Joining him were prominent members of the Hibernian Society, including William Linehan, Daniel Lyons, William Mansfield, Patrick O’Meara, Henry Murphy, Felix Callahan, and John McGrath. Also among the signatories were William Conroy, a contributor to the Irish Canadian, and Patrick Doody, who would subsequently be described by the Globe as the head centre of the Fenians in Canada.102 Of the 100 signatures that were published in the press, one-fifth came from identifiable supporters of revolutionary Irish nationalism.103 Not only did the Fenians organize the protest movement against McGee’s speech, but they also took the lead in denouncing the man himself. Some of their most vitriolic attacks appeared in the unpublished letters from Canada to the Irish People in Dublin – unpublished because they were too hot even for the most radical newspaper in Ireland. “Better for him that a mill stone were fastened about his neck, and cast into the sea, than he insult the honest

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hearted, but unsuccessful, patriots of 1848,” wrote Denis C. Feely from Cobourg. “He has committed a national crime, and as certainly as he dined with the Lord Bishop of Oxford, a national vengeance will fall on his head.”104 “In every honest, independant breast a show of indignation has already risen and has been sent forth which will sooner or later recoil on the Traitor with a tenfold vengeance,” asserted an anonymous Montreal correspondent. In the event of war between the United States and Canada, he continued, “the true Irish people’s voice of Montreal shall be heard, deafening with cheers for liberty and their countrymen Meagher, Sheridan, O’Mahony and others, the traitorous voices of McGee and cliques calling on them to take up arms in defence of the British empire.”105 “Glorious stars and stripes!” exclaimed another Montreal Irishman, writing from what he called “her gracious Majesty’s temporary dominions of British North America.”106 Particularly galling to many Irish Catholic Canadians was McGee’s positive image of their experiences in Canada – a place where, he said, they enjoyed equality, independence, and property, were well represented in politics, religion, law, and business, and received “full and complete justice.”107 In some key respects, McGee’s assessment corresponded with subsequent analyses of nineteenth-century census data.108 But it cut strongly against the grain for Irish Catholics who repeatedly ran up against varying degrees of Orange hostility, not least in Toronto – from the St Patrick’s Day riot of 1858 and the Corpus Christi riot of 1864 to the less visible but pervasive practice of employment discrimination against Catholics.109 Again, radical Irish nationalists led the protest. In Montreal, where Orangemen were thin on the ground, Edward Linehan asserted that the Irish were the poorest and most despised people in the city, and he reminded his readers of the grim legacy of Black ’47, the worst year of the Famine: “You will find the dust of 6,000 Irish immigrants lying in open, unconsecrated field, the victims of England’s policy.”110 From Ottawa, John Lawrence Power O’Hanly showed how the city’s wards had been gerrymandered to ensure that the Protestant minority controlled the municipal government, after which all Catholics had been dismissed from the council and replaced by Orangemen. Turning his attention to Canada West as a whole, and using the 1861 census as his guide, O’Hanly demonstrated that at every level of government, from the top to the bottom, Irish Catholics were either grossly underrepresented or not represented at all.111 In Cobourg, Feely sounded the same note: “In

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Canada, we have not justice … There are whole townships within twenty miles of where I write, in which ‘no Catholic dare set his foot’ … No Catholic servant will be employed as long as a Protestant can be found. It is almost impossible to get a Catholic into the Commission of the Peace. There is not a Catholic representative elected by any constituency in Canada, where Protestants are in a majority … Our priests are sneered at, our nuns insulted, and our most sacred rites ridiculed with impunity. The emigrants who come to Canada leave it as soon as they discover the bigotry and fanaticism which prevail.”112

In the townships with large Irish Catholic majorities, anti-McGee sentiments could comfortably coexist with Fenian sentiments. A Hibernian Society had been formed in Adjala township at the beginning of 1865, and it organized an anti-McGee meeting in Keenansville that summer. Although its leaders insisted that they were not Fenians, the fact that they invited Patrick Boyle as the guest speaker indicates that they sympathized with the movement and its goals.113 Shortly afterwards, they brought in a poet who went by the name of “Terry Fenian.” In Keenansville, he wrote “The Fenian’s Vow,” rejecting Daniel O’Connell’s moral force nationalism and calling for revolution: We’re well aware of Britain’s power, Her wealth, and strength, and vast resources; But we’re prepared at any hour, With will and might, to meet her forces. Our Isle has been, for centuries long, The scene of blood and desolation; But the Fenians vow to avenge the wrong, And swear their Isle must be a Nation.114 “Terry Fenian” was actually James McCarroll, a flute player, storyteller, and sometime journalist, who had previously written a series of satirical commentaries on Canadian political life under the name of “Terry Finnegan.” Born in County Longford and raised in County Leitrim, he moved with his parents to the Peterborough area in 1831 and may have been a member of the Orange Order in his youth.115 Working in the customs service, he moved to Toronto in 1856, where he became a well-known figure within the Irish com-

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munity, a kind of court jester with all the political licence that such a role implied. But in 1863, he was fired after getting into an acrimonious dispute with two customs commissioners, and he pinned much of the blame for his dismissal on John Sandfield Macdonald, the premier of Canada West, whom he had mocked in print.116 Eking out a precarious living as a freelance writer and musician, and supported by Michael Murphy and Patrick Boyle, McCarroll connected his personal experiences with anti-Irish discrimination in general and became increasingly embittered towards the Canadian state – all the more so when his appeals to John A. Macdonald for a position under the auspices of the new Liberal-Conservative government fell on deaf ears. His first “Terry Fenian” poem was published on the eve of Jim McDermott’s St Patrick’s Day visit to Toronto and was set to the tune of “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning”: One half million men, on some fine Monday morning, Will get all they ask and a trifle more too. With rifle in hand, They’ll make a demand – Our boys are impatient of further delay – The Stripes and the Stars, And the spirit of Mars! We’ll redress all the wrongs of our down-trodden People; A few trusty Pikemen will join in the fray; And we’ll run up the Sunburst as high as the steeple, And charge to the tune of St. Patrick’s Day.117 Before long, he would support not only a revolution in Ireland but also an invasion of Canada.

When news leaked out from the Fenian convention of October 1865 that an invasion was being planned, tensions in Canada ratcheted upwards. Upon hearing that the Fenians were planning to strike during the winter, Ogle Gowan urged his Orange followers to take immediate defensive measures: wherever possible, they should join the militia; in areas without militia regiments, they should buy their own rifles and ammunition, and those who could not afford to arm themselves should be supplied by their local Orange lodges.118 Rumours

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quickly spread that the government was planning to distribute arms to the lodges – something that sent shockwaves through the Irish Catholic community, with the Fenians in the front lines of resistance. Patrick O’Meara helped to draft a resolution by Montreal’s St Patrick’s Society calling on the government not to arm the Orangemen on the grounds that such an action was not only insulting to all loyal Irish Catholics but also “a certain means of creating religious dissensions” in the country. The resolution passed unanimously.119 In response, the government did its best to reassure Irish Catholics that it had no intention of arming the Orangemen and that the defence of Canada would rely entirely on the army and the volunteer militia.120 But the “religious dissensions” persisted. Patrick Boyle drew no comfort from the government’s reliance on the Volunteers, arguing that in much of Canada West they were “exclusively Protestant and Orange” and describing them as “nothing more than a standing menace against peace and harmony amongst the communities in which they reside.”121 If the Volunteers enlisted the most anti-Catholic segments of society, dressed them up in uniforms, and gave them weapons, there was only one way for Irish Catholics to respond: by acquiring guns themselves and being prepared against “an outbreak of Orange enmity.”122 McGee redoubled his efforts to prevent a chain reaction of sectarian conflict. Behind the scenes, he criticized Montreal’s St Patrick’s Society for overreacting to unfounded rumours rather than trying to lower the sectarian temperature.123 At a public banquet in Montreal, he mocked the Fenians for their mad boasts about liberating Ireland and invading Canada and claimed that “999 out of a thousand” Irish Canadians were on his side.124 But his efforts to reduce polarization between Irish Catholics and Protestants only intensified the divisions within the Irish Catholic community. “I can see through you well, McGee, for you are as transparent as glass,” wrote J.J. Sullivan to him after the banquet. “The whole object you have in view is, to become popular (which you now are, among the ignorant Irish) and live at your dead ease. Now, in conclusion, I will inform you that I am a fenian, and I give you civil warning that, if you ever again speak of us, as you did the other evening, a few fenians, and I at their head, will give you something that you will recollect, and which will not go down with you quite as well as, the dinner that you received. Hurrah for Fenians!”125

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In Toronto, James Moylan applauded McGee’s speech and noted approvingly that its audience consisted of influential and respectable Irish Catholics, French Canadians, Highland Scots, and Irish Protestants.126 Patrick Boyle, in contrast, identified with the “poor Irish” and described McGee as “a panderer to Orangeism” who had “lost already his hold upon the credulity of the Catholic Irish.”127 On the streets of Montreal, intracommunal tensions occasionally flared into violence. When one of McGee’s closest friends, Lawrence Devany, confronted Francis Bernard McNamee and accused him of being an informer, McNamee smashed his head through a window. “This is a novel way of testing Fenianism on the brain,” Boyle remarked.128 As threats against McGee began to mount, he was given a police bodyguard; the Montreal correspondent of the Irish Canadian enjoyed reporting on the “tramp, tramp, tramp” of the twenty policemen who preceded one of McGee’s public appearances.129

This, then, was the atmosphere in the winter of 1865–66: there were Fenian plans to invade Canada, increased tensions between Irish Catholics and Protestants, and intensifying divisions within the Irish Catholic community, along with the split within Fenianism over whether to focus on Ireland or Canada. When Canadian newspapers printed stories about Fenian invasion plans, Boyle responded with ridicule and accused them of “frightening the people with nonsensical stories.”130 When he learned in November that the government was sending Volunteers to the border to deter the Fenians, he described the action as “laughable in the extreme.”131 And when, on New Year’s Eve, three boys were arrested in Toronto for singing Fenian songs outside the barracks, Boyle mocked the Volunteers for supposedly thinking that they had encountered the vanguard of the Fenian invasion. “Some, we presume, prepared for death to die like resigned martyrs,” he wrote of the Volunteers, “whilst others were prying out the most secure hiding places to conceal their precious persons till the storm blew over.”132 Yet much was going on beneath this dismissive attitude. As a close friend and associate of Michael Murphy, Boyle must have known that Murphy had attended the Fenian convention in Philadelphia that October – even as he denied any such knowledge. “We are … in the dark as to the ‘Canadian delegation,’” he told the Leader. “To use a saying much in vogue in Ireland,

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we are innocent of the matter ‘as the child unborn.’”133 And Boyle must also have also known about the convention speech in which Murphy said that 100,000 Irish Canadians would support an invasion and that they anticipated an attack by Christmas – this at a time when O’Mahony had acquiesced to the Canadian strategy. When O’Mahony changed his mind, his Canadian followers changed with him. An “official” Canadian Fenian statement emanating from Toronto in February 1866 unequivocally denounced the idea of invading Canada and insisted that Ireland should be the centre of Fenian operations.134 Nevertheless, towards the end of 1865, when O’Mahony thought that an attack on Canada was worth trying, Boyle focused on ridiculing the fears of his enemies rather than condemning the men who were trying to make those fears come true. There is little reason to suppose, throughout all this, that he was aware of the detailed plans that were under way: the invasion strategy of the Irish American Fenian general Thomas Sweeny and his disbursement of Fenian funds in November “for the purpose of organizing a secret service corps in Canada” to prepare for the invasion.135 Little by little, during the winter of 1865–66, Fenian agents started coming into the country, scoping out the terrain, and linking up with sympathizers who could aid and abet the projected attack. By the spring of 1866, they had recruited Fenians from Port Colborne to Quebec City, mapped out the topography of the Niagara Peninsula, discussed ways of destroying the Welland Canal, reported on the deployment of British and Canadian troops, and made plans to blow up bridges and cut telegraph lines as Fenian troops moved across the border.136 The Fenians, however, were not the only ones with a secret service corps.

p a rt t wo secret police



6

 “An Air of Mystery” Intelligence Efforts, Intelligence Failures

The formation of the Canadian secret police force had nothing to do with the Fenians. It was established not to prevent American-based attacks on Canada but to prevent Canadian-based attacks on the United States. In October 1864, while British North American politicians were meeting in Quebec City to discuss ways of coming together at a time when the Civil War was tearing the United States apart, a group of southern Confederates slipped across the border from Canada to Vermont and briefly took possession of St Albans. They robbed three banks, attempted to burn the town to the ground, and exchanged gunfire with its defenders, before crossing back into Canada. Their aim was not simply to hit the enemy but also to create cross-border tensions that would erupt into an Anglo-American war, forcing the Union Army to fight on two fronts. It was, in its way, a mirror image of the Fenian strategy that would be adopted the following year.1 An American general ordered troops to follow the raiders across the border if necessary; if his instructions had been carried out, the consequences could have been explosive. When the raiders – or most of them – were captured by the Canadian authorities, the issue of extradition assumed critical importance. If the Canadian government “does not do us justice against these robbers now in custody in Montreal,” asserted the New York Herald, “we shall be fully warranted in following them with an armed force and taking possession of them ourselves.”2 Much depended on the police magistrate who presided over the case. To ensure a satisfactory outcome, the government needed a safe pair of hands and thought that it had found them in Charles Coursol. But the defence successfully argued that magistrates had no jurisdiction over extradition cases, and Coursol duly released the prisoners – to the anger of John A. Macdonald, who called him a fool, and to the fury of the Americans, who called him much

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worse.3 A chorus of American newspapers argued that the military should go into Canada and seize the raiders, and at least two United States generals felt the same way. The American government, not wanting to fall into the trap being set by the Confederates, kept a tight leash on the military and put prudence over passion. But if more attacks from Canada were to occur, pressures would build up for strong countermeasures – anything from tighter border controls that would damage the Canadian economy to American military incursions that could culminate in war. To demonstrate its good faith towards the United States, and to pre-empt a potential cycle of Confederate raids and American reprisals, the Canadian government took immediate action. It ordered the rearrest of the St Albans raiders and netted five of them. It called out between 1,500 and 2,000 Volunteers to guard the border. And it established the innocuously named Government Constabulary for Frontier Service, a secret police force under the leadership of Frederick William Ermatinger (Figure 6.1) in Canada East (present-day Quebec) and Gilbert McMicken (Figure 6.2) in Canada West (present-day Ontario). Ermatinger had considerable experience with police work. The son of a fur trader and an Ojibwa woman, he had fought with the British Auxiliary Legion against the Carlists in Spain during the 1830s and was appointed superintendent of police in Montreal shortly after his return to Canada. Earning a reputation for the courage and skill with which he handled riots in and around Montreal – including the Rebellion Losses Bill riot of 1849, when a Tory-Orange crowd burned down the Parliament Buildings – he was put in charge of the newly formed Montreal Water Police in 1851. Initially with around fifteen constables, the Water Police was established to impose law and order on the city’s harbour and canals and soon expanded its activities to deal with civil disturbances in general. When the ex-priest and anti-Catholic speaker Alessandro Gavazzi came to Montreal in 1853, the Water Police helped to fend off the largely Irish Catholic crowd that attacked the church where he was preaching; Ermatinger was hit in the head with a paving stone while confronting the rioters. In 1856, he became the field inspector of the volunteer militia in Canada East, and when the Civil War broke out, his duties included countering crimps who were inveigling Canadians into the Union Army. After the St Albans raid, he had been given the task of rounding up the Con-

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6.1 Frederick William Ermatinger (1811–69). He was chief of the secret police in Canada East (present-day Quebec).

federates who had escaped to Canada. All in all, he was an obvious choice to lead the frontier police in Canada East.4 McMicken had no such background. He had moved from Scotland to Canada in 1832, when he was eighteen years old, and had settled in the Niagara region, before becoming involved in a variety of cross-border projects. Among

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other things, he worked as a collector of customs, helped to extend Canada’s first telegraph line into the United States, and joined the company that from 1850 to 1854 built the Queenston-Lewiston Suspension Bridge. At the same time, he was building up a political career, first as a municipal councillor, then as the mayor of Clifton, and eventually as a Liberal-Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of the United Canadas, where he formed a close connection with John A. Macdonald. The nature of that connection remains unclear, but something in their past had demonstrated McMicken’s loyalty to his leader: “I have borne contumely and reproach aye even imprisonment & Bonds for your sake,” he reminded Macdonald in November 1864.5 For his part, Macdonald viewed McMicken as “a shrewd, cool and determined man, who won’t easily lose his head, and who will fearlessly perform his duty.” With his close knowledge of the border, his good relations with the authorities in Detroit, and his high standing with Macdonald, McMicken was given “full powers to organize a Detective and preventive Police Force, for the purpose of watching and patrolling the whole Frontier from Toronto to Sarnia.”6 Although the threat of Confederate raids existed along the entire border, the sources are skewed heavily towards the activities of the secret police in Canada West. Most of McMicken’s Fenian correspondence is preserved in Macdonald’s papers, but hardly any of Ermatinger’s reports to Macdonald’s co-premier of the United Canadas, George-Étienne Cartier, have survived. As a result, our picture of the secret police is severely distorted, and the record of its operations in Canada East from 1866 to 1868 is largely filtered through the relatively few letters that Ermatinger wrote to Macdonald. We do know, however, that Ermatinger drew his detectives from the Montreal Water Police – men with whom he had already worked and who had previously expressed their appreciation for “his kindness to the Corps.”7 By the beginning of 1865, there were over forty men in the Water Police, around half of whom were policing the frontier.8 Several had served in the Irish Constabulary, and one of Ermatinger’s key detectives, Michael Burns, was an Irish-born Catholic.9 McMicken, in contrast, had to start from scratch. Since the secret police were to work with authorities in the United States, he met with Detroit city officials and secured their cooperation. McMicken then travelled to Toronto, where he received instructions from the chief clerk in the Crown Law Office, Robert Harrison, and spoke with Mayor Francis Medcalf.10 The key meeting, however, was with police chief William Prince, who recruited around a dozen

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6.2 Gilbert McMicken (1813–91). He was chief of the secret police in Canada West (present-day Ontario).

men for the force, all of whom had reported for duty by the first week of January.11 Most of them were in their late twenties, with a background in the police or army. Of the four Irishmen who had been selected, one had served with the Dublin Metropolitan Police, one with the Irish Constabulary, and one with the Toronto police. The fourth, Patrick Carey – the only Catholic among the recruits – had been in the army for nearly ten years, including a two-year stint in charge of the Military Police in Toronto.12 For the next six months, Prince’s recruits formed the core of the secret service in Canada West, although several others were brought in during the spring.13 Macdonald

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urged McMicken to ask the authorities in Detroit and Buffalo whether some of their detectives could be transferred to Canada; this was intended to be a cross-border operation, with a common interest in preventing any replays of the St Albans raid. The mayor of Detroit selected four men, but there is no evidence that they actually joined the force. Although McMicken aimed to enlist up to twenty-five men, the number of policemen in the Western Frontier Constabulary, as it became known, never exceeded eighteen during the first year of its existence.14 Their instructions were set out in “Special Order No. 1,” issued 31 December 1864, which was distributed to McMicken’s men when they enlisted; presumably, the same rules applied to Ermatinger’s detectives. “The chief duty of the Force of which you are a member,” it declared, “is to suppress and prevent all attempts at Raids being committed upon the Country and people of the United States.” Secrecy was essential; the detectives were to remain undercover, although they were issued with identity cards that could be shown to magistrates if necessary. A secondary role was to “observe and watch parties known as ‘Scalpers’ ‘Bounty Jumpers’ ‘Substitute Brokers’ &c whose calling it is to entice soldiers to desert from her Majesty’s service and to induce them and others of the people to enlist in the army of the United States.”15 The detectives were also instructed to watch out for “unlawful assemblages at which unlawful drilling of men is practiced.” All of this was framed within the context of the Civil War and Confederate activities in Canada; the Fenians were never mentioned.16 Nevertheless, the detectives were quietly encouraged to look out for Fenians in the course of their duties, and the injunction to investigate “unlawful drilling” could apply to Fenians as well as to Confederates in Canada – especially in light of the Guy Fawkes Night demonstration in Toronto the previous month. When McMicken met Medcalf, the mayor had been issuing warnings about a Fenian raid from Buffalo, and it is highly likely that he raised the subject during their conversation. What began as an informal spinoff from the central purpose of the secret police would eventually become its raison d’être.

From his headquarters in Windsor, McMicken sent his detectives to Sarnia and Amherstburg, to the Niagara Peninsula, and farther east to London, Brantford, and Guelph. They encountered “strong Southern sympathies existing among

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a small population” in the Niagara Peninsula, and they located “several Southern men in the area” but found no signs of an impending raid.17 “My men are reporting regularly from their stations – nothing suspicious observable anywhere,” McMicken informed Macdonald in January.18 The same pattern held for Ermatinger’s men in Canada East. Information about a Confederate plot to attack Ogdensburg in upstate New York, for example, turned out to have been invented by a Canadian who hoped to receive a reward from the American government. (The requested reward was a master’s degree from Yale University.)19 But if no further raids were being planned, there was plenty of other action along the border. The passport system that the American government had initiated in December was easy to evade; the passports had no description of the bearer and could easily be lent, bought, and sold. “A Reagiment,” wrote one detective, “may be taken across with Passports for ten cents each.”20 A host of whisky smugglers and scalpers plied their trade in the “low taverns” of St Catharines and other towns near the border. The detectives scored a few successes – some of the money stolen in the St Albans bank raids was recovered in a Windsor tavern, and a few brokers were arrested – but they were generally overwhelmed by the sheer scale of illegal cross-border activities.21 When it came to the Fenians, the secret police had little of substance to report. Commenting on the population of Amherstburg, for example, Detective William Black noted that “the majority are Roman Catholic but few if any Fenians.” Ten days later, he told McMicken about a strange bright light that had appeared just above the horizon: “The Romanists say it is the evening star. The Protestants say it is a Fenian signal.” It turned out to be a lantern that someone had attached to a kite. A few days later, he “heard a man from the country say that unlawful drilling was carried on near Maidstone,” but no further information was forthcoming.22 In London, Charles Spence was not doing much better. He met a man who had been told by another man that the Fenians were drilling in a barn in Biddulph, and he heard an unlikely story about pikes being found on a train from Stratford to Lucan.23 None of this intelligence came close to being sound, and most of it revealed more about Protestant fears than about Fenian activities. Patrick Carey reported from Guelph that three “Fenian lodges” were meeting in “orderly and well conducted establishments,” noting that some “suspicious looking Yankees are lurking about,” but that was all that he could discover.24 William Caldwell, stationed in Drummondville, learned in February

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that there were around fifty Fenians in the area, as well as lodges in Thorold and Hamilton. But his informant, who described himself as being “reddy to help to take Ireland from England at any moment,” refused to provide any details. “More he would not tell me,” wrote Caldwell, “unless I was a fenian my self.”25 His colleague Andrew Fraser suspected that Fenians in Thorold met on the 17th of each month at the house of a man named Battle. He watched the place for three consecutive months and recorded many comings and goings that lasted from dark to dawn (not least on St Patrick’s Day), but he had no idea what was happening inside.26 In May, Caldwell located a possible Fenian cell in Drummondville and was “almost certain” that there was a Fenian lodge in Clifton. “I will do all in my power to find out something about those fenians, the country is full of them,” he wrote.27 The only trouble was that he could not actually find any. The inability of the detectives to penetrate the Fenian Brotherhood and their limited effectiveness in countering the substitute brokers were hardly surprising given the conditions in which they operated. They had been rushed into the secret police force without any training, had no experience in undercover work, and were too thin on the ground. Making matters worse, they often went for weeks without pay. In one instance, a desperate landlady contacted McMicken to say that unless she received her arrears in rent, she would have to evict the not-so-secret policeman who was lodging with her.28 Towards the end of February, McMicken sent Macdonald an urgent request for funds. “I have raised what I could and made advances,” he wrote, “but it still leaves them unsatisfied and the consequence is their families suffer and the men are becoming dissatisfied.” “Prompt payment,” he added, “would greatly induce to their zeal and watchfulness, and add very much to their efficiency. It would also make my control more efficacious.”29 The problem, however, persisted into the spring and early summer.

“It is impossible for a stranger in a strange place to keep himself unknown,” remarked Andrew Fraser, “unless he has the means to do so.”30 Men short of cash yet not looking for work, who were hanging around railway stations and taverns and asking too many questions, were not hard to identify as secret policemen. The scalpers quickly learned to avoid them, and when the detectives got too close, things could get nasty. “I should be armed with a Revolver,

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knowing the desperate characters I will have to contend with,” wrote Edward Carr from St Catharines.31 The town was a hotbed of substitute brokers, who operated under the protection of a local magistrate, Charles Rykert. “We are already well known to all of them,” wrote William Black. “They mock, jeer, and hoot us in the streets and collect themselves in parties and try to create a disturbance with us. On Saturday night, Edward Carr was knocked down, beaten, and kicked while in the execution of his duty.”32 Within two days of his arrival in Port Colborne, Detective James Allen had his cover blown. “Every person here has a strong mistrust on me,” he wrote, “and I have heard three or four times that if I was caught out side doors there would be a bullet put through me.”33 Not only were the detectives threatening vested interests, but their very existence also contradicted popular views that spies and secret policemen ran counter to British traditions. For many Canadians, secret police forces were associated with the repressive machinery of European despotism and were viewed as being fundamentally antithetical to British constitutional liberty.34 During the debate in early 1865 over the Alien Bill, which was designed to deport any foreigners who were planning to attack the United States, the government’s opponents asserted that “it was anti-British to send stipendiary magistrates and detective police to the frontier.”35 In St Catharines, Charles Rykert took a similar position. Defending the men who had attacked Detective Carr, he “said before the court that Carr was a spy and every spy ought to be well kicked.” “I told him [we] were servants of the Government,” wrote William Black. “Our occupation was an honourable one and we ought to be protected. He answered that he did not care about the government.”36 None of these things – the threats and attacks, the arrears in pay, and the lack of training – were conducive to high morale. When the detectives operated alone, they felt isolated and vulnerable; when they worked together, personal tensions sometimes arose. Long periods of boredom (“nothing to report” appeared repeatedly in the letters to McMicken) and long hours in taverns meant that heavy drinking could become a problem. In April, Charles Spence complained to McMicken that Patrick Carey, who had recently joined him in London, “has been drinking ever since he got his pay and spending his time in barrooms with soldiers. He has made himself and me known to them. For the last two nights, he was so drunk that he had to be assisted up to bed. I would, Sir, be obliged to you if you would remove me to some other

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station for I don’t wish to stay here, the way Carey is going on, it is a disgrace to the force.”37 Spence himself was accused by William Caldwell of revealing his identity as a secret policeman – a charge that he vigorously denied.38 Caldwell also informed McMicken that two fellow detectives in Clifton, Robert Anderson and Donald Dallas, were “continually drunk” on duty.39 Informing, it seems, was in their blood. Although such specific charges cannot be proved, there is no doubt that the detectives varied considerably in quality. Of the original recruits, only Caldwell and James Allen, whom McMicken described as “zealous and reliable men,” remained on the force by the end of the year.40 In March, Allen had broken up a ring of bounty jumpers and crimps in Port Colborne – including a tavern keeper who had “two coloured men locked up and concealed in his house … for the purpose of enlisting them on the other side.”41 Equally active was Detective John Campbell, a “smart young man” who arrested so many substitute brokers in Brantford that he was threatened by “a crowd of rowdies” and had to fend them off with a borrowed revolver. Afterwards, he cut his hair short, shaved off his moustache and beard, reinvented himself as “John B. Henderson,” a “gambler and general fast man,” and tracked down brokers and counterfeiters in Woodstock and Hamilton.42 Other detectives were unimpressive at best. According to Caldwell, it had been a mistake to bring ex-soldiers into the Western Frontier Constabulary since they knew nothing about police work.43 He may well have been right; of the three military men in the original force, Anderson, Black, and Carey, none achieved very much, and two were accused of being drunk on duty. Other detectives got into varying degrees of trouble. John Wright was discharged after failing to conceal his identity as a secret policeman, and James Redfern was dropped after being investigated for misconduct. The worst case concerned Edwin Dent, who had joined the force in April. Six weeks later, McMicken received a telegram from Robert MacFarlane, a member of Parliament from Stratford: “Dent drunk abusing prisoners struck female prisoner in my presence without cause most disgraceful … It is outrageous.”44 Dent’s career as a detective ended immediately. By May 1865, there no longer seemed any reason to have a secret police force in Canada. With the defeat and surrender of the Confederacy, the crisis that had given birth to the secret police had passed, and the substitute brokers had moved on to other activities. “Every thing seems to be very quiet here since

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the recruiting stopped for the American army,” Spence reported from London. “I am keeping a strict watch in every direction but can see nothing going on.”45 Despite Caldwell’s conviction that the country was full of Fenians, neither he nor his colleagues could find any of them. In early August, almost everyone in the force was discharged. Only five men were left, and they focused on domestic crime such as counterfeiting and theft. One of the remaining detectives, John Armstrong, uncovered corruption in the Hamilton police force, where the chief of police was on the take from a gang of robbers.46 It was dangerous work. Later in the year, he was badly beaten up by another gang that he had been investigating.47

In September, however, everything changed. Amid growing rumours of a possible Fenian attack on Canada, Macdonald instructed McMicken to send detectives into the United States to assess the situation. A different kind of secret policeman was needed for this mission: ideally, an Irish Catholic – or, failing that, someone who could pass for one. At Macdonald’s request, McMicken made discreet inquiries about the suitability of Sergeant Patrick Cummings, the Toronto policeman who was suspected by some – including Mayor Medcalf – of being a Fenian. While “getting a good report of him generally,” McMicken decided that Cummings was too risky. “I found he was very intimate with and a real friend of Michael Murphy,” he reported, “also a very great friend & intimate of Father White, who is a great denouncer of everything British. Further, Cummings occasionally drinks, and might on such occasions be ‘leaky’ especially on a point so tender.” However, all was not lost. “I think I have one man of the five in my employment now if not two,” he told Macdonald, “who will answer the purpose.”48 The man in question was Patrick Nolan. He had been a patrol sergeant in the Toronto police force but was suspended in the spring of 1864 for refusing to answer questions about an alleged assault by one policeman against another. Shortly afterwards, he accused police chief William Prince of being drunk on duty – a charge that was backed up by two other officers. Five witnesses came forward in defence of Prince, and the Board of Police Commissioners believed them. Nolan was fired on the grounds that “he was no longer trustworthy,” but he managed to find work in Woodstock as a detective.49 In May 1865, he applied for a position with the Western Frontier Constabulary

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and joined the force in August, with the task of investigating gangs of burglars and pickpockets in Toronto.50 McMicken did not share the Police Commissioners’ negative image of Nolan – if indeed he knew about it. In his view, Nolan was “tolerably intelligent and so far as I can judge trustworthy.”51 Nolan, he informed Macdonald, “is a Roman Catholic but assures me he has never had anything to do with Fenianism in any respect and that he is entirely opposed to the movement” – unlike his brother John, who was the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society and a member of the Fenian Brotherhood. Patrick Nolan seemed to meet McMicken’s requirements and could be used to uncover information about the Fenians in Toronto as well as the United States. In the first week of September, McMicken sent him to Chicago, the heart of the pro-invasion section of the Brotherhood, where he operated under the name of Patrick C. Burton. Along with Nolan, McMicken selected one of his first recruits, John Campbell, who had impressed McMicken for the way that he had “completely deceived the counterfeiters in Brantford, and caused such a number of arrests amongst them.” He was “a protestant and can be relied upon,” McMicken wrote. “He has cunning enough to assume the Catholic Faith.”52 Campbell was sent to Cincinnati, the site of the Fenian convention earlier that year and a city whose Fenians had close links with their counterparts in Toronto.53 Adopting the alias “R.W. Grant,” Campbell set out to infiltrate Cincinnati’s Fenian circles. To avoid anything that might create suspicion, he advised McMicken not to “send any communications in large blue envelopes,” and he addressed his reports to “Mr. McElderry.” He began frequenting “some pretty hard ‘Irish Saloons,’” where he tried to win the confidence of his fellow drinkers and listened in on conversations. One of the first people he ran into was “a ‘papist,’ and a ‘Sub Broker’ and a great scoundrel” from Toronto named Terry Meehan. Although Campbell made some Fenian acquaintances, he failed to win their trust and was only picking up bar talk. Cincinnati was a tougher nut to crack than Brantford. “It is not so easy,” he wrote, “to work with 190,000 people as to work with 19,000.”54 His difficulties were compounded by the familiar problem of unpaid wages, and his letters to McMicken contained urgent requests for more money. After two fruitless weeks in the city, he asked to be reassigned or brought back to Canada.55 He hung on, however, until the end of the month so that he could attend a Fenian rally in the city. He had never experienced anything like it and was

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surprised both by the size of the crowd – between 2,000 and 3,000 men, women, and children – and by the intensity of the speeches. “I think your British blood would have boiled a little had you been in Mozart Hall, last night to hear a Methodist preacher denouncing the ‘British Government’ and the British People,” he told McMicken. “Had he been in Canada,” he continued, “I would have knocked him down, he is a dirty dog, and no man.” Campbell was equally troubled by what was not said in the speeches: there was no mention whatsoever of Canada. “I think that looks so much the worse,” he told McMicken. “The fact of their not speaking of it makes me think they intend doing something in that direction.” It would be prudent, he wrote, “to have our Militia ready for service at any moment.”56 And with that, he left the Fenians behind, returned to Canada, and resumed his earlier work against counterfeiters. His mission had not been a success. “I did not discover any thing worth communicating,” ran his final report. “Irish independence and liberty is all you can get out of them.”57 If Campbell was reduced to eavesdropping, listening to Fenian speeches, gleaning information from the Cincinnati Enquirer, and speculating from silences, Patrick Nolan quickly got in with the Fenians in Chicago. Becoming friendly with a captain in the Fenian Brotherhood, he moved into a boarding house with some twenty Fenians and attended their nightly drilling exercises.58 Chicago, he informed McMicken, was a staging ground for an Irish revolution; along with the drilling, the Fenians were supposedly raising money to buy a privateer, were sending men to Ireland (3,000 in the previous month, he had heard), and were buying large numbers of arms at cut-rate prices from the American government.59 “There is no use of asking the American Government to put a stop to it,” he wrote, “for the Government is helping them all they can in an indirect way.”60 Although they were focusing on Ireland, Nolan reported, the Fenians also had Canada in their sights. One of his companions told him that the impending Irish insurrection would be the signal for an attack on the banks in Canada, and another spoke of raids on Canada West from Detroit and on Montreal from New York and Vermont.61 The head of the Brotherhood in Chicago was claiming that they had sworn “nearly all the British army in Canada into the society.”62 Nolan advised McMicken “to warn the Government to call out the Militia & the Volunteers for you will not know the minute they will be into Canada.”63

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There is no doubt that Nolan caught the scuttlebutt on the street, but the objectives, strategies, and tactics of the Fenians remained elusive. When Nolan asked the captain he had befriended how the Fenians were going to get men and arms to Ireland, he replied that “not one of the order here knows [but] only the head here & he will not let it be known.”64 All that the rank and file needed to know was that the revolutionary wheels were turning and that the insurrection was coming soon. If Nolan was taken in, McMicken was not. “You will be able easily to detect the exaggerations in the above,” he told Macdonald after recounting Nolan’s reports, “and divine their origin and the motive – It is of course the plan of the Leaders to make the mass believe that the [American] Government are playing into their hands and also that they are well supplied with arms &c.” “I feel confident,” McMicken added, “that I shall get notice some time in advance of any movement they make on Canada if they should actually be so rash as attempt such a thing.”65 In New York, the British consul, Edward Archibald, was picking up vague stories that the Fenians were planning “a raid or raids for the purpose of plundering Banks and committing outrages in Canadian towns near the frontier” – St Albans in reverse.66 Faced with such reports, Macdonald instructed McMicken to appoint five or six detectives to watch the Fenians on both sides of the border. Along with the men stationed in Chicago and Cincinnati, they would be placed in the possible invasion points of Goderich, Sarnia, Fort Erie, and Clifton. James Allen, Charles Spence, and William Caldwell were reinstated immediately, with the promise of more detectives to come. Macdonald would take no chances; the secret police force was back in business.67

The Fenian leadership, however, remained impervious to penetration. Afraid that their mail might be intercepted, they relied instead on trusted emissaries to deliver documents and issued instructions by word of mouth whenever possible.68 To prevent any attempts to ascertain their financial situation, they bypassed the banks and deposited funds in their own safe.69 When it came to informers and spies, no quarter was to be given. Archibald reported that the leaders “threaten with death any of their party who may disclose to British officials the plans and proceedings of the Fenians.”70 The Fenian head centre in Chicago declared that if any “British spies” were found in the city, “they

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would not live 5 hours,” and he asserted that one of them had been “fixed” in St Louis.71 Afraid that he was falling under suspicion, Nolan left Chicago and returned to Canada around the end of September. During his debriefing, he insisted that the Fenian organization was “far beyond what we conceive of them” and that a rising in Ireland and an attack on Canada were being planned for 5 November.72 McMicken was sufficiently alarmed to travel to Chicago himself, partly to allay suspicions that Nolan was a spy by arranging employment for him and partly to sound out opinion about the Fenians. The Americans he met were contemptuous of Fenianism; one of them dismissed the movement as a “giant humbug.”73 By the time McMicken returned home, news had reached Canada about the September crackdown on the Fenian Brotherhood in Dublin, including the arrests of the leadership and the closing of the Irish People, aided and abetted by the informer Pierce Nagle. Macdonald responded with relief. The “early and vigorous action of the Home Govt in Ireland,” he told McMicken, “has burst the bubble,” and the danger of a November rising had now passed. But, he continued, “we must not relax our watchfulness,” and any news of “a rising or assemblage in arms of Fenians in Canada” was to be reported to him at once. If Fenians were found “assembling or drilling,” the authorities were not to provoke a fight; the best course of action was to wait until they dispersed and then to arrest the leaders. “There is no likelihood of you being called on to act in this way,” he added, “but think it as well to give you a general idea of what I think you should do.”74 To discover how the Fenians had responded to the repression in Ireland, McMicken set off for Philadelphia, where the Fenian convention was being held during the third week of October. Here, he enlisted another Canadian, Elon Tupper, whom he had been trying to bring into the force since April.75 Tupper was set to work going through hotel registers in order to identify the Canadians who were attending the convention. There were, he learned, four from Toronto, one from Peterborough, and around twenty from the vicinity of Montreal. But most of them had not signed with their real names, and his investigation did not get very far.76 From Philadelphia, McMicken continued to New York. There, using a false name himself, he booked into the Astor Hotel, where members of the Fenian

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Senate were meeting. His general impression was that no “definite plan” to attack Canada had yet been made, that the key decisions would be made by the Senate, and that the Fenians were generating enthusiastic support among Irish American Catholics. “The poorest willingly and cheerfully contribute,” he observed, “even to the poor servant girls.” What the Senate was thinking, however, was “very difficult and almost impossible” to find out. Almost but not quite. “One plan only presents itself to me and that is this,” he told Macdonald, “that one or two Clever Women whose absolute virtue stands questioned by the Censorious might be obtained who by address could get some of the susceptible members of the ‘Senate’ into their toils and thus as Delilah with Samson possess themselves of their secrets.” To assist this patriotic initiative, McMicken travelled to Baltimore “in order to see a woman of this stamp”; he added helpfully that he knew another woman “just suited for such an operation.”77 Macdonald never replied, and there is no evidence that McMicken’s strategy was ever carried out. Copulating for Canada was carrying things a step too far. While McMicken was making his inquiries, Archibald sent two men “in the guise of Fenians” to visit O’Mahony at the Fenian headquarters in New York. Again, they ran into a wall of secrecy, learning only that the September crackdown meant that the Irish rising had been postponed, that the Fenians were focusing on getting arms, money, and supplies, and that no definite plans had been made. Archibald surmised – correctly, as it turned out – that the reduced prospects of an insurrection in Ireland would increase the likelihood of an attack on Canada, “either with or without the co-operation of the Fenians in the Province.”78 According to Sir John Michel, the commander of the forces in British North America, the Fenians in the United Canadas posed little or no threat. “The Provincial Government have been using every exertion in their power to ascertain whether there is any organization of Fenians in Canada,” he told Edward Cardwell, the colonial secretary, “and they are of opinion that it can hardly be said to exist in Lower Canada, whilst in the towns of Upper Canada some traces of it have been discovered though very limited in extent.” This was an understandable assessment, given the patchy nature of the police investigations in the country, the conditions of secrecy under which the Canadian Fenians operated, and the fact that the Fenians in Canada were not in themselves strong enough to endanger the state – although it failed to consider

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the potential consequences of concerted action between the Fenians without and the Fenians within. “It is evident,” Michel concluded, “that all serious causes of apprehension lie in the United States.”79

In November, Macdonald sent nine companies of Canadian Volunteers to the border and ordered the rest of the militia “to hold itself in readiness.” He also instructed Charles Brydges, the managing director of the Grand Trunk Railway, and Thomas Swinyard, the manager of the Great Western Railway, to ensure that their rolling stock could not be seized by Fenian invaders and to break up the railway tracks if necessary.80 Michel drew up plans for the deployment of the militia in the event of an invasion. Anticipating that the Fenians would attack at several points simultaneously, and concerned that isolated militia companies could be picked off by superior forces, he wanted the Volunteers to fall back to Chatham, London, and Stratford, from where they could counterattack in strength.81 Upon learning of this plan, McMicken was horrified. If the Fenians were allowed to advance into the country, he believed, it would give an enormous boost to the Brotherhood in the United States, and large numbers of Irish nationalists would follow them across the border; this was exactly the point that the constitutional nationalist John Francis Maguire was making during his tour of Irish America. “My opinion,” wrote McMicken, “is that every prudent and possible preparation without creating an alarm should be made to prevent their obtaining a moment’s foothold on Canadian soil and for this end I am willing to do all and risk all.”82 McMicken’s approach could work only if it was based on sound intelligence. Calling out the militia was an expensive operation – Governor General Lord Monck had already expressed concerns about the cost of the November mobilization – and sending them to the border every time there was a Fenian scare was not feasible.83 But the Fenian Senate was protected by a carapace of secrecy, and Archibald did not trust the information that he was getting in New York. “There is such an air of mystery still hanging about the whole affair of Fenianism,” he wrote, “that it is impossible to form a satisfactory estimate of its capability for anything like a serious aggression upon Canada.”84 Things were no clearer in Canada, where McMicken had to deal with a growing number of people who offered to trade information about the Fenians for cash. Among them was David McKinnon, whose brother Hugh had

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been fired as the deputy police chief in Hamilton after Detective John Armstrong’s exposé of corruption earlier in the year.85 David McKinnon told John A. Macdonald that Hugh knew a doctor who said that he knew a priest who was supposedly a Fenian; the McKinnon brothers and the doctor volunteered to join the Brotherhood and to reveal its secrets in return for reward money.86 Under Macdonald’s instructions, McMicken met the men. It did not go well. David McKinnon had just been found guilty of banking fraud and refused to leave his house. The doctor showed up in a drunken stupor and “talked a great deal of nonsense” about the Fenians; McMicken described him as being “cracked,” and walked away from the proposal.87 On another occasion, when he learned that a man from Fort Erie had been writing to Macdonald about the Fenians, McMicken stepped in straight away. “I know him very well,” he told Macdonald. “He is apt to ‘magnify the elephant’ which elephant is sometimes his story and sometimes himself.”88 To add to his challenges, McMicken was getting mixed messages from his detectives in the United States. Nolan, back in Chicago with the cover of employment, had gradually come to change his mind about the Fenians; he now believed that Ireland was the real target and that it was “only a dodge about them talking so much about invading Canada.”89 In any case, he assured McMicken, there was no need to worry; if the Fenians did launch a raid, he would know about it well in advance.90 But in Philadelphia, the new recruit Elon Tupper appears to have believed Fenian claims that they were half a million strong, had raised $15 million in October alone, had a dozen ironclads to attack British shipping, and could take Canada within thirty days.91 Plans were afoot, he later reported, to capture Navy Island in the Niagara River and to use it as a base for further attacks – drawing on the precedent of William Lyon Mackenzie in 1838.92 Another recently hired detective, Thomas Oliver from Saginaw City in Michigan, was sent to Detroit. McMicken described him as “a Scotch Roman Catholic truly British well educated & very intelligent can speak Irish like a native sing an Irish song with anyone and as for drinking whisky ‘can’t be beat.’”93 Oliver duly spoke and sang and drank his way into several Fenian meetings, and after a “searching examination,” he was initiated into the Brotherhood. From inside the movement, he reported that the Fenians “talked strongly” of attacking Canada and were discussing the possibility of coming

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in through Sarnia when navigation of the lakes and rivers closed for the winter.94 This appeared to be borne out by the two detectives who were stationed in Sarnia, James Allen and William Caldwell, who also noted the troubling presence of strangers in the town – members of General Thomas Sweeny’s secret service corps, perhaps?95 If the Fenians did invade through Sarnia, the detectives added, the local militia were ill-prepared to resist them. “A number of the volunteers,” they wrote, “will not be worth much since they are drinking hard and going to bed drunk.”96 Because Thomas Oliver was on a two-month contract, McMicken needed someone to replace him. At the beginning of December, he found his man: Charles Clarke, alias Cornelius O’Sullivan, the supposed Missouri cattle dealer, who would become one of the most remarkable detectives in Canadian history – and who is almost completely unknown today. Controversy surrounded him right from the start. Earlier in the year, he had been dismissed from the Toronto police force, following what he called “a malicious charge of a Lewd girl (for having improper connection with her).” If the charge was indeed malicious, one wonders why he had been fired. And if it was not, one wonders why the police chief recommended him for the secret police and why Mayor Medcalf (hardly a friend of William Prince) agreed to provide a reference. Clarke had already attended a Fenian meeting while visiting Detroit and had learned the Fenian signs and passwords while on special duty in Toronto – or so he claimed. “I can talk the Irish Language,” he added, “so that I have no difficulty in working myself in amongst them.”97 After checking out his story with Prince, McMicken enlisted him in the force. Within a week, Clarke was an undercover agent in Detroit. On his first day in the city, he met a member of the Fenian “protection committee” – a body tasked with ferretting out spies and informers – and was introduced to the head centre, Miles O’Reilly. Other members of the committee included two deputy sheriffs and a detective in the Detroit police force. They told him about three policemen from Dublin who had come to Detroit, supposedly looking for an Irishman who was wanted for murder. Suspicious about their intentions, one of the deputy sheriffs had them followed, learned that they had visited an “English detective” in Canada, and realized that the men were actually there to spy on the Fenians. “If they could only have been found here when it became known,” the deputy sheriff said, “they would have

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been killed in no time.” “I only mention the above,” Clarke told McMicken, “to show you how cautious it behooves me to move there for though I may mix myself amongst them & act as one of them, they may nevertheless watch my movements.”98 While Clarke was working his way into the Fenian Brotherhood in Detroit and Tupper was moving between Fort Erie and Buffalo, Patrick Nolan had again run into difficulties in Chicago. Unlike Clarke and Oliver, Nolan drew the line at actually joining the Brotherhood, evidently perceiving his role as one of investigation rather than infiltration. Not surprisingly, his refusal to swear the Fenian oath brought him under renewed suspicion, and he got back to Canada while he could.99 McMicken’s other detectives, operating in Sarnia and the Niagara Peninsula, were feeding on scraps of information, and the force as a whole had only eight men in the field. At the end of November, McMicken learned that Macdonald wanted to broaden the jurisdiction of the secret police – presumably to cover domestic crime – and had consequently recommended the appointment of up to ten new police constables. Concerned that his intelligence operations would be diluted, McMicken urged that the force should be retained in its existing form; the possibility remained that the Fenians constituted a serious threat to Canada, and they were certainly a danger to his own men. McMicken himself requested permission to carry a pair of pistols for protection during his travels.100 In mid-December, news came in that the Fenian Brotherhood had split into the rival O’Mahony and Roberts factions – the former focusing directly on Ireland and the latter eager to attack Canada. Macdonald initially assumed that the Brotherhood was self-destructing. “It would seem,” he told a colleague, “that the Fenian Conspiracy has broken up altogether.”101 As with his earlier reaction to the September crackdown on the Fenians in Dublin, Macdonald’s optimism was misplaced. In New York, Edward Archibald had a better handle on the situation; the split might well weaken the movement, he thought, but the Fenians were so strong in the United States that an attack on Canada was still in the cards.102 “The Roberts party is gradually gaining the ascendant, – principally because it is the party of action,” he told Lord Monck. Roberts and the Fenian Senate were serious about attacking Canada, were receiving large amounts of money, and had considerable support

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throughout the United States. “If a portion of British Territory could be seized and held for only a day or two,” Archibald continued, “the report of the exploit would be telegraphed throughout the country and would, I fear, attract to the Fenian standard a number of outlaws who would perhaps not venture at first to embark in the fray.” The conclusion was clear: “It would be imprudent to relax, on account of these feuds, any precautions or preparations for repelling an incursion of Fenians.”103 Macdonald got the message. There would be no dilution of the secret police force. On the contrary, it would become more important than ever.

7

 “Imminent Danger” The Threat of Invasion, 1865–66

In line with Sir John Michel’s view that the Fenians in the United States, rather than those in Canada, constituted the greatest threat to national security, the secret police during the winter of 1865–66 focused their attention on the American side of the border. The fact that they were operating outside their own jurisdiction elicited no protests from American government officials at any level – in some cases, because they did not know and, in others, because they supported the objective of containing the Fenians. In Buffalo and Detroit, Gilbert McMicken’s personal connections and his efforts against Confederates and crimps had built up a fund of goodwill that was repaid in the fight against Fenianism. Leading figures in both cities kept McMicken informed about local Fenian activities; one such source in Buffalo, he commented, was “worth two or three paid detectives.”1 If cross-border cooperation was crucial to the success of the force, so too was the morale of its members. This was not only a question of overcoming the perennial problems of isolation, boredom, backbiting, danger, and drinking but also a question of establishing a relationship of trust between the detectives and their handlers. For this reason, McMicken wanted to ensure that his men reported to one person only rather than being bounced around between Crown attorneys and other legal officials. “It is extremely imprudent to say the least,” he explained to John A. Macdonald, “to place a detective working in secret in communication with too many he is apt to become demoralized – to think what he has to inform so many of is of little consequence and may be got up for the occasion – he loses the attachment as I may say that takes place between himself and the one person he deals in secrecy with. He fears for his own exposure and is apt to become careless & indifferent and in some cases the result might be a ‘change of base’ to save himself working with the enemy.”2

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Only by establishing a close connection with his men could accurate information be obtained: “The like observations apply to the asking too much from a detective – the more you require of him the more necessary he imagines it is to have a great deal to say. Quantity not quality of information becomes the object and end with him of his duty.”3 McMicken was well aware that secret policemen could easily be tempted to invent or exaggerate stories in order to demonstrate their worth and to maintain their employment. By making them feel secure, valued, and appreciated, he hoped to eliminate this potential problem. Another challenge revolved around recruitment. “It is a very difficult thing indeed to find a capable and reliable Irish Roman Catholic who will undertake such service,” McMicken noted – and such an individual was particularly valuable to the force. The Protestant John Campbell, whose detective work had been so impressive in the Canadian campaign against crimps and counterfeiters, failed to infiltrate the Fenians in Cincinnati, while the Irish Catholic Patrick Nolan met with some, albeit limited, success in Chicago. Irish-speaking detectives were the most effective of all, partly because they were well placed to win the confidence of the Fenians, partly because they were assumed to be Catholics, and partly because the Irish language was an effective method of communicating secrets and shutting out strangers. It is no coincidence that the two Irish speakers in the force, Thomas Oliver and Charles Clarke, were admitted into the Fenian Brotherhood. Other lessons had been learned, such as the need to pay the detectives well and regularly and the importance of setting them up with employment in the areas where they were working. But the fundamental challenge remained: to get to the top of the organization. That would require considerable time and patience, and both were in short supply during the winter of 1865–66; it was feared that the Fenians might make their move at any time. In the absence of top-level infiltration, and in light of Macdonald’s evident refusal to employ sex workers, the detectives’ reports remained fuelled by rumours. The rank and file in the United States were generally willing to talk openly about their commitment to the cause, but the leadership made every effort to keep tight control of key information, even as it discussed and debated its own strategies and tactics.

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A potential opportunity to unlock the door arose in February 1866 when the Senate wing was holding its convention in Pittsburgh. McMicken decided to send his two “best men” – Nolan and Clarke – to the city. Neither one knew about the other; the idea was to secure two independent sources of information that could be compared, contrasted, and evaluated.4 Charles Clarke had been continuing his undercover work in Detroit, where he attended Mass, met revolutionary priests, and established good relations with some of the city’s leading Fenians.5 By the end of January, he had found work and applied to join the Brotherhood. The Safety Committee was considering his admission – some had doubts about his story – when he received McMicken’s instructions to leave for Pittsburgh.6 Introducing himself as Sullivan, a cattle dealer from Missouri, Clarke smooth-talked his way into the confidence of the head centre in Pittsburgh, Neil Murphy, who fixed him up with accommodation at his brother-in-law’s house. Here, Clarke slept in the same room as three Fenian senators and two Fenian congressmen – not quite as intimate as McMicken’s proposed prostitutes but reasonably close.7 Among other things, he learned that the convention had discussed the possibility of attacking the West Indies to secure a base of operations against British commerce.8 But the main target was closer at hand. “Their full determination,” he wrote, “is to organize immediately and make a strike for Canada[;] if they can arrest the Governor General (Lord Monck)[,] D’arcy McGee and other Government officers[,] they will do it in lieu of the men that have been found guilty of treason in Ireland” – men such as Thomas Clarke Luby, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and Charles Kickham, who had been arrested during the September crackdown on the Irish People newspaper.9 General Thomas Sweeny, he was informed, had submitted his invasion plans to the convention with the intention of hitting Canada on or about St Patrick’s Day. “You may depend,” Clarke told McMicken, “that Canada will be attacked before the first day of May.”10 In contrast, Patrick Nolan came away from Pittsburgh with the conviction that the convention had been “virtually a failure both as regards numbers and their efforts to raise funds.” After his earlier experiences in Chicago, he had become exceedingly skeptical about the Fenians’ ability or intention to attack Canada. But, as McMicken pointed out, Nolan “could judge only by outside observation, he knew no one there and could not manage to get into the confidence of any person of importance in the Fenian ranks.”11 Clarke’s informa-

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tion appeared much more accurate – and St Patrick’s Day was less than two weeks away. Other reports were pointing in the same direction. During the winter, John Rose, a Montreal politician and close friend of Macdonald, heard that the Fenians were active on Quebec’s border with New York and recommended that “one or two ‘confidential’ men” be sent to investigate.12 Frederick William Ermatinger sent Detective Michael Burns to the area, who learned that the Fenians were enlisting men in their army and talking about “an outbreak on St. Patrick’s Day.” He did not think much of the recruits, dismissing them as “a lot of rowdies.” They did not think much of him either; two days after filing his report, he came under suspicion and had to be withdrawn in a hurry.13 In Buffalo, Detective Elon Tupper informed McMicken in early March that the Fenians were meeting every night, that 2,000 stands of arms had come into the city, and that an invasion of Canada appeared imminent.14 The reports were confirmed by Alexander McLeod, a Canadian who some twentyfive years earlier had been embroiled in a diplomatic controversy between Britain and the United States over his role in defending Canada during the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada.15 Before then, he had spent over three years in Ireland with the cavalry, imposing order in rural districts and raiding illicit whisky stills.16 In 1866, McLeod was living in Buffalo and working in the auction house of Patrick O’Dea (O’Day) – who just happened to be a Fenian senator and member of the Brotherhood’s secret committee of war and finance. From this vantage point, McLeod could see the arms coming into O’Dea’s warehouse and being distributed to the Fenians, and he could hear the talk about invading Canada. Describing O’Dea as “an ignorant little Irishman, pretty well off,” and noting that his wife was also a Fenian, McLeod informed the Canadian authorities in early March that the Fenians were moving onto a war footing. O’Dea had apparently offered “$1000 in gold to any one that will bring him D’arcy McGee’s head,” and attacks were being planned on a broad front from Detroit to Rouses Point – although McLeod, a former military man, doubted their ability to raise enough men for the task.17 At much the same time, Edward Archibald (Figure 7.1) was reporting from New York that there was “imminent danger of one or two more incursions into Canada.” As news arrived that the British government had suspended habeas corpus in Ireland, he informed Lord Monck that “the fever of Fenianism” was becoming “daily more virulent and more widely extended.”18 The

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temperature was rising; the O’Mahony Fenians organized a protest rally in New York that attracted a massive crowd, and Bernard Doran Killian privately commented that the suspension of habeas corpus was their salvation.19 In Archibald’s view, the rivalry between the O’Mahony and Senate wings was actually strengthening Fenianism as the two factions vied with each other in a competition of enthusiasm. While the O’Mahony Fenians were promising to strike in Britain and Ireland, he wrote, the Senate Fenians were sending arms to the frontier and preparing to attack Canada “very shortly after St. Patrick’s Day.” “If success attend their first movement,” he continued, “beyond question they will have reinforcements and support with, moreover, no small measure of American sympathy.”20 Faced with all these reports, Macdonald decided to take pre-emptive action. On 7 March, he called out 10,000 Volunteers. The response was overwhelming. Amid rumours that Prescott, Sarnia, Niagara, and Windsor were about to be attacked, that Bishop John Joseph Lynch was leaving his diocese, and that the banks were sending their specie to Quebec, men from a wide variety of backgrounds, including many Irish Catholics and French Canadians, turned out to defend the country.21 Not only did most Canadians reject the idea of being “liberated” by the Fenians, but large numbers of them were also prepared to fight to remain within the British Empire. Contrary to Fenian propaganda, Canada would be no pushover.

Despite this show of loyalism, questions remained about the internal security of the country. Above all, the government needed to ascertain the degree of support for Fenianism in Canada, the relative strength of its O’Mahony and Senate wings, and whether or not Canadian Fenians would assist an attempted Irish American invasion. In early December 1865, Archibald received detailed information from a Canadian in New York about Fenians in the Niagara Peninsula. They included an inspector on the Erie and Niagara Railway, some railway labourers, a discharged soldier, a shoemaker, a man named Sullivan whose “barn is a rendezvous for Fenian sympathizers; and is believed to contain arms,” and a tavern keeper named John McGwyn, who held meetings every Sunday morning in his kitchen.22 The list of names was passed on to McMicken, who recognized some of them – “especially McGwyn,” whom he considered a likely suspect.23 Elon Tupper, who knew the area well, was or-

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7.1 Edward Archibald (1810–84). The British consul in New York, he ran a network of spies and informers from his office. “I am fairly run down with informers,” he remarked in 1866. “I think I may say that I am bearing the brunt of the Fenian invasion.”

dered to investigate, only to conclude that nothing was going on at McGwyn’s tavern.24 On the one hand, the episode indicated the coordination of information between New York and Niagara; on the other, it demonstrated yet again the power of rumours. Other apparent leads went nowhere. A detective working for Archibald encountered a Fenian agent named Peter Cunningham, who described himself

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as “the head man of the Toronto Fenians,” named three Fenian organizers in Montreal, and claimed that there were over 2,000 Fenians in Toronto. The Toronto Fenians had no arms, he said, but were willing to cooperate with the invaders. Among them were “a great many in whom the Canadian government has confidence,” including “the second man in the Custom House at Toronto.”25 But there was no evidence of anyone called Cunningham in the Toronto Fenians, and his numbers were wildly exaggerated. The authorities knew that the real “head man” in the city was Michael Murphy, but they remained uncertain about the extent of his following.26 If anyone was in a position to find out, it was Patrick Nolan, the one Irish Catholic in the secret police force. “Nolan has a brother who is a Fenian in Toronto,” McMicken explained to Macdonald, “and he expects thro him to get at some facts.”27 Within days, Nolan discovered the names of almost everyone who had given money to Murphy, and he provided McMicken with a detailed breakdown of the Fenian organization in Toronto and the surrounding area – including numbers, names, and meeting places.28 He learned that the Toronto Fenians had been drilling regularly in a barn outside the city, were manufacturing their own pikes, and had “a lot of revolvers” hidden under the cellar of a man named Connell on Queen Street.29 Neither Nolan nor his Toronto handler, Crown attorney John McNab, thought that the Fenians should be arrested. It would be impossible to prove that anyone had donated money to the cause, they noted, and any repressive measures could provoke retaliatory action from the Fenians in America.30 Nolan also believed that the Toronto Fenians posed no direct threat to the Canadian state. “They are all O’Mahony men here,” he reported, and each circle had “voted to send all the revolvers to New York,” from where they would be taken to Ireland.31 Angus MacDonell, who had served with the Western Frontier Constabulary the previous year, concurred. Although the Toronto Irish had “a very strong feeling of sympathy” towards the Fenians, he wrote, they were against any attempt to invade Canada.32 In light of this information, fears that a Fenian invasion would be synchronized with a rising in Toronto began to recede. Nolan assured McMicken that all would be quiet on St Patrick’s Day, unless the Orangemen came in and made trouble.33 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, however, was disturbed by the optics of a church-sanctioned Hibernian parade in the current climate. The spectacle of Fenians in Toronto parading to St Michael’s Cathedral while the “cutthroat

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scoundrels from Buffalo, and probably Burlington [Vermont],” were planning to attack Canada, he believed, would have devastating consequences for Catholicism in the country. He sent two urgent letters to Bishop Lynch, imploring him to prevent the procession.34 In response, Lynch issued a circular exhorting the city’s Catholics to celebrate St Patrick’s Day through prayer and devotion and instructing them to conduct themselves as “pious Catholics and loyal subjects.”35 The bishop, however, had no power to stop the Hibernians from marching through the city streets, and Mayor Francis Medcalf was threatening to put down any such display with the Volunteers and British Army troops in the city. At this point, McMicken decided to take matters into his own hands. He travelled to Toronto, knocked on Murphy’s door, and opened up a conversation about the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Murphy assured him that the Hibernians would keep the peace; they would use the same flags and emblems as before, appoint stewards to ensure that the parade was orderly, and deliver speeches that contained no “improper language.” Armed with this information, McMicken met the mayor and the police chief and after a long and difficult discussion persuaded Medcalf not to suppress the parade. In the event, it passed off peacefully. McMicken reported that “there were only 532 in the procession”; William Prince counted 442, adding that “there were some in the procession who were no more Fenians, than I am one.”36 As it turned out, Murphy’s definition of “improper language” was rather different from that of McMicken. Although Murphy condemned the idea of invading Canada and declared that he had no fault to find with its government, he repeated his earlier assertion that 40,000 Irish Canadians “were prepared to shed their blood for the redemption of Ireland,” he described James Stephens, the Fenian leader in Dublin, as “the greatest Irishman now living,” and he adopted a neutral stance towards those who believed that Canada would be better off under the American system of government. The Globe and the Leader decided not to give Murphy the oxygen of publicity and ignored the speeches. In contrast, the Irish Canadian published them all but omitted Murphy’s references to Stephens and the United States. Just before St Patrick’s Day, Macdonald had instructed McMicken to gather enough material on Murphy to warrant an arrest. Could the speech, McMicken wondered, provide sufficient grounds for prosecution?37

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Although St Patrick’s Day had passed off peacefully, the threat of an invasion continued to hover over Canadian heads. The sense of uncertainty was heightened by the fact that McMicken’s key detective in the United States, Charles Clarke, had gone silent. “I am very much concerned about him,” McMicken wrote. “He never before was as long without writing me. I fear they have suspected him and he has got into trouble and has been foully dealt with.”38 Clarke had indeed got into trouble.39 After being admitted into the Brotherhood and issued with a travelling certificate, he came under suspicion when a Fenian in Pittsburgh’s telegraph office saw that Clarke had received two packages, apparently containing money, from James Bell in Windsor. Unbeknownst to the Fenians, Bell was McMicken’s secretary. At the next Fenian meeting, hard questions were asked. Why was this cattle dealer from Missouri receiving money from Canada? And why had he never mentioned the Canadian connection to anyone? Recognizing the risk of receiving Canadian money in American telegraph offices, Clarke had already prepared his cover story. He defended himself with a convoluted tale about a legal battle with his brother in County Galway and said that Bell was an agent of the New York lawyer who had been forwarding a disputed annuity to him. To substantiate his story, he produced two letters, supposedly from Bell, that Clarke had actually written himself. The Safety Committee deputed a priest to write to Bell and check out the story. Clarke rushed off a letter to Bell with the key information: that he was single, that he had never set foot in Canada, and that he had been sending Clarke the annuity for the past four years. At the same time, he informed Bell that recruitment into the Fenian army was continuing but that the soldiers did not know where and when the attack would take place.40 Upon learning what had happened, McMicken decided to pull Clarke out of the United States and bring him to Toronto, where he could gather more information about Murphy.41 But after his return, Clarke ran into trouble again; the word in Toronto had got out that he was a government spy, and rumours were circulating that a full description of him would appear in the Irish Canadian. “This effectively destroys Clarke’s usefulness here,” wrote McMicken.42 Taking the initiative, Clarke put on a Fenian badge, went round to the Irish Canadian office, and presented himself to Patrick Boyle as a fellow County Mayo man. After conversing about their home town of Newport (which may not actually have been Clarke’s home town) and the surrounding

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7.2 A Fenian bond. They were issued in the name of the (virtual) Irish Republic, to be redeemed six months after the liberation of Ireland from British rule, and were a key component of Fenian fundraising drives.

countryside, Clarke talked up the Fenians, praised William Roberts and Thomas Sweeny, and asserted that “Canada was the route homewards.” Boyle was not taken in and let Clarke know that members of the Toronto police force had revealed his true identity. Clarke came away from the meeting convinced that Sergeant Patrick Cummings, the Irish Catholic friend of Michael Murphy, had blown his cover. Boyle was left shaking his head. Clarke, he wrote, was “the sweetest mannered man that ever cut a throat.”43 McMicken’s initial plan was that Clarke, with his travelling certificate from the Brotherhood, would purchase a Fenian bond (Figure 7.2) from Murphy and thus establish grounds for prosecution. Armed with a list supplied by Patrick Nolan of thirteen men who had already bought bonds (and another fifty-five who were in arrears), McMicken could then charge Murphy and summon the men as witnesses; they would be put under pressure in the hope and expectation that some of them would crack.44 Now, however, it was more difficult than ever to secure a sworn statement that Murphy had sold bonds. Not only was Clarke out of the equation, but the Fenian leaders in Toronto, as McMicken put it, were “more wary than ever.”45 If challenged, they planned

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to swear that they were simply paying their dues to the Hibernian Benevolent Society rather than helping to finance a revolution in Ireland. In any case, McMicken doubted the wisdom of arresting Murphy. It might be better, he gently suggested to Macdonald, to treat the Toronto Fenians as “unworthy of notice” and to see how things played out in the United States.46

The key border point, from McMicken’s perspective, was Buffalo, where Patrick O’Dea’s auction house functioned as the staging ground for the Fenian military campaign. Here, Alexander McLeod continued to send detailed reports about the stockpiling of arms and the morale of the men. “These people are in earnest,” he wrote on 19 March, and they were working with Fenians from Canada.47 One of them was Barney O’Donohoe, an auctioneer from Toronto, whose brother John was a constitutional nationalist and close ally of McGee.48 Another was James McCarroll (Figure 7.3), the poet laureate of Canadian Fenianism. As a former customs officer with extensive knowledge of western Canada, he was able to provide the Fenians with information about the terrain and about the extent to which a Fenian army could rely on provisions taken from Canadian farmers.49 In desperate financial circumstances – McLeod described him as “a needy adventurer” with a chip on his shoulder – McCarroll simultaneously sought work with the Fenians while importuning Macdonald for money.50 Two years earlier, McCarroll had written polemical newspaper articles on Macdonald’s behalf; now, he wanted compensation for his services.51 As each letter went unanswered, McCarroll’s anger intensified. By March 1866, his support for an invasion of Canada was inseparable from his desire for revenge. McCarroll warned O’Dea and the Fenian head centre Frank B. Gallagher that McLeod was a dangerous man who should not be employed in the auction house. Gallagher was not worried, however. McLeod, he said, knew nothing about Fenian activities that was not already common knowledge.52 Interestingly, this was also McMicken’s assessment. “His means of information,” he told Macdonald, “I do not consider better than any ordinary observer of passing events, he communicated nothing that was not open to all who took any notice what was passing in Fenian affairs in Buffalo.”53 But McLeod’s information was more important than either Gallagher or McMicken realized. Some of his letters were passed on from Macdonald, probably via the British

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7.3 James McCarroll (1814–92). The poet laureate of Canadian Fenianism, he was a former customs officer who helped the Fenians in Buffalo in their plans to invade Canada.

minister Frederick Bruce, to Secretary of State William Seward in Washington and contributed to the intelligence that underpinned American efforts to enforce the neutrality laws.54 This sharing of information was very much in line with the informal agreement to contain the Fenians that had been struck between Bruce and Seward the previous November. The American government, anxious not to alienate Irish Catholic voters, would leave the Fenians alone unless they actually attempted to invade Canada, in which case military measures would be taken

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to stop them. The British government, anxious not to trigger an Anglophobic backlash, would refrain from criticizing the American government for its apparent toleration of the Brotherhood.55 By March, the information emanating from O’Dea’s auction house was used to make the case that the Fenians were indeed on the brink of attacking Canada and that the Americans must now honour their part of the bargain. The concern of the British and Canadian authorities was that the Americans were leaving things too late. Some measures had already been taken. On 12 March, Ulysses S. Grant, the general-in-chief of the United States Army, ordered his officers on the frontier “to use all vigilence to prevent armed or hostile forces or organizations from leaving the United States to enter British Provinces.”56 The commander of the United States Army in Detroit and Fort Wayne, General Edward Ord, had employed “a very able spy” to inform him about Fenian plans in the area and had established good working relations with McMicken.57 But American troops were spread too thinly to be effective; there were only 357 officers and men on the New York frontier, and there were none at all on the frontiers of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. “If an invasion of Canada is seriously attempted in any force by the Fenians,” General George Meade informed Grant, “I do not see how the Comdg Genl of the Dept. of the East, without very considerable re-inforcements, can offer any opposition.” Reinforcements, Meade was told, were not available.58

If the Americans were not in a position to secure the border, then the defence of Canada would rest largely on the British Army and the volunteer militia. At the Fenian convention in October 1865, Michael Murphy had declared – among other exaggerations – that there was a Fenian centre in nearly every regiment of the British Army in Canada and that “the members enrolled there were as true as steel.”59 In attempting to bring soldiers into the Brotherhood, the Fenians in Canada were adopting the same methods as their counterparts in Ireland, where Patrick (“Pagan”) O’Leary and John Devoy had made significant inroads into British regiments.60 At Joseph Whelan’s Marlborough Street public house in Dublin, for example, prospective recruits listened to Fenian songs, enjoyed a few drinks, and were invited into the back room, one at a time, where they were sworn into the Brotherhood.61 Because two witnesses were needed to secure a conviction for suborning soldiers, it was almost

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impossible for the authorities to take legal countermeasures.62 In Quebec, Joseph Whelan’s younger brother, Patrick James, was arrested in 1865 for attempting to administer the Fenian oath to a soldier; the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.63 Patrick James Whelan would later be convicted and executed for the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. Joseph, who attended the trial, was rumoured to have links with pro-invasion Fenians on the American side of the border.64 At the beginning of 1866, reports started to come in that the 47th Regiment, stationed in Toronto, had been infiltrated by the Fenians. In Chicago, deserters from the regiment claimed that most of its men would break ranks and fight with the Fenians when the invasion was under way. The British Army, they said, was “a cheap West Point Academy” for the Fenians.65 Shortly afterwards, two of McMicken’s detectives visited a Fenian saloon in Port Huron, where a deserter from the regiment stood on a chair and delivered a lengthy speech about England’s oppression of Ireland, the ease with which Canada could be taken, and the coming day of reckoning for “the English red coats.”66 William Prince took such stories seriously and remembered that “a strong company” of the 16th Regiment had marched with the Hibernian Benevolent Society during the St Patrick’s Day parade in 1864. “I often wish,” he told Macdonald, “that we had some Scottish Regiments in Canada.”67 But Sir John Michel remained confident that his men would continue to obey orders. “I have no grounds for believing that any disaffection exists amongst the forces under my command,” he wrote. “Rumours respecting disloyalty are easily circulated, and are incapable of absolute disproof but in my judgement such reports of Fenianism amongst the Regts in Western Canada … are entirely without foundation.”68

The volunteer militia appeared equally reliable, although the loyalty of Irish Catholics remained a matter of debate. A Canadian correspondent to the Irish American claimed that “there are not 500 Irish Catholics in Upper and Lower Canada in the Volunteers, and many have expressed the wish that they were out of them, for fight against their countrymen they will not.” A Volunteer from Canada West, he reported, had been court-martialled for declaring that he would “not serve the d—d British Government,” and when the Irish Volunteer Company in Quebec City was called out in March, only one man

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showed up.69 In Montreal, questions swirled around Bernard Devlin’s Prince of Wales Regiment in Montreal, with its heavy Irish Catholic contingent. At a council meeting in the city in March 1866, Thomas McCready asserted that some of Devlin’s men “had laid down their arms and refused to obey their Captains” and that “two other companies of his Regiment, all Irish Catholics, had stacked their arms.” Devlin, in response, gave McCready “one of the most astounding tongue-lashings that gentlemen ever yet did receive,” and McCready’s stories – which he had received from McGee – were denounced in the Irish Canadian as “stupid fabrications.”70 There may, however, have been something in them. Five years earlier, men from Devlin’s regiment had linked up with Vermont Fenians to denounce attempts to raise a loyal Irish battalion during the Trent crisis.71 And there is evidence that the Montreal Fenians were trying to use the militia for their own purposes. Shortly after the city council debate, Francis Bernard McNamee (Figure 7.4) wrote two letters to a Fenian in New York, addressed as Mr Christian, about the situation in Montreal. “We are in a full mess here with Fenianism,” he wrote in the first letter. “In fact, nothing else is talked of, from the pulpit to the stable.” Irish priests were “preaching loyalty,” and McGee was trying but failing to organize Irish Catholic militia companies for the defence of Canada. The loyalty cry was not working, the 350,000 Irish Catholics in Canada would offer no resistance to the Fenians, and the British troops were spread out too thinly to defend the country against Thomas Sweeny’s men.72 The following day, 25 March, McNamee met with other Fenian leaders in Montreal – Daniel Lyons, William Mansfield, Felix Callahan, John McGrath, and William Conroy – to plot their strategy. After some discussion, they decided to “use a little deceit on our enemies.” The problem, as McNamee explained in his second letter, was that “nine tenths of our people know nothing of the use of firearms,” and “very few of us know anything of drill.” The Irishmen who were already in the militia were “Fenian to the core,” but they were few in number. To get around this difficulty, the Fenians planned to feign loyalty, propose that they form their own regiment, and offer their services to the Canadian government. “If we are accepted, we get firearms, &c., &c., and [will] be well drilled,” McNamee asserted. “If refused, we can raise a hue and cry against the govt for doubting our loyalty, after we obeyed the holy church, &c., &c.; in either case we will have the govt in a fix, as also the loyal dogs who are yelping at our heels.” The Fenians would respond with moral outrage if

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7.4 Francis Bernard McNamee (1828–1906). The founder of Fenianism in Montreal, he was admired by his followers as a true Irish patriot and was distrusted by his detractors as a spy for the Canadian government.

their request was denied and would make more converts with the argument that the Catholic Irish were yet again being victimized by discrimination. If their request was granted, they would make for the front lines and join the Fenians as soon as the invasion began. “Be careful who sees this letter,” McNamee instructed Christian.73 On the face of it, McNamee’s letters seem to be a clear case of deception and manipulation to hoodwink the authorities and assist incoming Fenians.

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Yet it is possible that a double deception was at work – that while McNamee was telling the Fenians he was plotting revolution under the guise of loyalty to Canada, he was actually working with the government under the guise of loyalty to the Fenian Brotherhood. When William Mansfield, one of McNamee’s apparent co-conspirators, learned that McNamee had been writing to Christian, he rushed off a letter of his own. McNamee, he began, was a gentleman and one of his best friends, but he should not be trusted. “His cousin Thos. McCready is a magistrate and they are also the right hand men of Attorney General [George Étienne] Cartier and Thos. Darcy McGee,” he explained, “and the strange conduct of McNamee lately has induced myself and others not to put too much Reliance on him.” “Knowing that you are a Sweeny man,” Mansfield continued, “he will likely go in strong for the invasion of Canada so you will know to act don’t have a spy in the camp.” This was, of course, exactly what McNamee had done.74 For years, dark stories about him continued to circulate on the streets of Montreal – that he had been a crimp who drugged young Canadian men and sold them for service in the United States Army and that he was an informer who enlisted men in the Fenian Brotherhood and then “sold the information to the Government, thereby enriching himself.” In 1882, the Montreal Post’s editor, John Patrick Whelan, made these charges in print. McNamee promptly sued him for libel. In the trial, McNamee’s testimony about the formation of Fenianism in Montreal was evasive, contradictory, and characterized by convenient lapses of memory. But there was no hard evidence that he was an informer, in part because several witnesses failed to give the testimony that was expected – the implication being that they had been intimidated into changing their stories. Facing defeat in the court, Whelan desperately tried to cut a deal: he would plead guilty to libel, pay McNamee $500, and publish an apology. McNamee, sure of victory, refused. The judge’s charge to the jury hammered home the point: the defence, he said, had failed to substantiate Whelan’s accusations against McNamee. Yet the jury ignored all this and found Whelan not guilty of libel. It was a stunning verdict, prompting the Montreal Herald to declare that jury trials were “little better than a farce,” and it spoke volumes about popular perceptions of McNamee.75 If McNamee really was an agent provocateur, he left no traces behind him. Cartier’s papers are not extant, and there is no mention of McNamee in

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McGee’s surviving correspondence. Nor is there anything in Macdonald’s correspondence to suggest that McNamee was an informer. On the contrary, after learning in May 1868 that McNamee had recently met three Irishmen from New York on the American side of the border, Macdonald issued instructions to have him closely watched. Charles Coursol, who had taken over from Frederick William Ermatinger as the chief of the Water Police in Montreal, duly complied. In short, there is no evidence to substantiate the rumours that McNamee was a government spy. His plan to subvert the militia appears to have been quite genuine.76

The authorities were also concerned about Fenians among railway workers and within the regular police force. When the mayor of Montreal, Henry Starnes, imposed an oath of allegiance on all city employees, seven policemen refused to take it. Five of the seven were Irish, reported McGee, one of whom appeared at a Fenian meeting in Portland shortly afterwards, where he was greeted like a martyr.77 Taking the oath did not necessarily mean winning the trust of the secret police. As reports mounted in the winter of 1867 that McGee’s “life is not quite safe,” Ermatinger ensured that McGee’s house was “usually patrolled at night by two of the Government Police force, as the City police cannot be depended on.”78 More generally, it was feared that Irish policemen might leak information to the Fenians, particularly when drink was taken. Sergeant-Major Patrick Cummings in Toronto remained an object of suspicion for this reason. In Ottawa, the police magistrate Martin O’Gara, who was not under suspicion, revealed “important state secrets” about spies and informers to his friend John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, one of the most radical Irish nationalists in the city, and to Michael Starrs, whose hotel was a Fenian hangout.79 As far as we know, O’Hanly was not a member of the Brotherhood, but at the very least Starrs was a strong sympathizer. There is no evidence that they betrayed O’Gara’s confidences. But discretion was clearly not the police magistrate’s strong point. In the strategically important railway network, the managing directors of the Grand Trunk and the Great Western continued to cooperate with the government against the Fenians. The railway companies had their own sources of information, including their own detectives, and supplied information

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about the Fenians to Macdonald.80 In the spring of 1866, Charles Brydges of the Grand Trunk established a special defence corps among his workers and insisted that all his employees take an oath of allegiance. Around eighty Irishmen refused and lost their jobs.81 This event might explain another story concerning Francis Bernard McNamee. During the libel trial of 1882, his brother-in-law, Michael O’Reilly, testified in court that McNamee had offered him $500 to “put daylight through Mr. Brydges,” presumably as an act of revenge. McNamee vehemently denied the charge, but the jury sided with O’Reilly.82 At any rate, the large number of railway workers who were willing to face unemployment rather than swear allegiance to the Crown suggests that their loyalties lay closer to the Fenian Brotherhood than to Queen Victoria.

Attempting to work with the Fenian elements in the army, the militia, the regular police, and the railway workers, as well as in the myriad Hibernian societies, were Sweeny’s secret agents who crossed the border during the winter of 1865–66. We know a great deal about Gilbert McMicken and his detectives, but nothing at all about the Fenian spymaster James Durant, who was given a budget of $1,700 to operate the Fenian secret service in Canada.83 One of his men was John Canty from Buffalo, who bought a house in Fort Erie and found work as a foreman with the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railway. As McMicken later realized, Canty “came into Canada for the express purpose of carrying out Fenian designs” and was well placed to inform the Fenian leadership about transport and telegraph systems from Fort Erie to Brantford and Goderich.84 Also central to Fenian operations in the region were the McAndrew brothers, William and Patrick. In April, William crossed over from Buffalo to report on the canal’s defences and on the deployment of British and Canadian troops in the district. Patrick, who was living in Welland, told his brother that the Fenians in the town were “drilling at night with sticks,” and he explained how the whole canal could be destroyed.85 Shortly afterwards, Patrick was forced to flee to Buffalo in order to avoid arrest. He joined a Fenian circle in the city and reported on the state of Fenianism in the towns of Port Colborne and St Catharines. “The people there,” he said of Port Colborne – 18 miles from Buffalo and 8

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miles from the Canal – “hate O’Mahony & are eager for our movement.” In St Catharines, he continued, the man to contact was James McMullen, “a prominent member” of the Brotherhood. When the Fenian troops advanced, Patrick McAndrew said, the Irish in the area would rise immediately.86 The Canadian secret police had only the vaguest knowledge of such activities. In St Catharines, the mayor had “very strong suspicions” that the town contained Fenians with links to American circles, but it was only after the Battle of Limestone Ridge that he requested government help to “ferret them out.”87 The O’Mahony-hating Fenians in Port Colborne completely eluded McMicken’s men. In Fort Erie, Detective Elon Tupper surmised that John Canty was a Fenian leader but had no hard proof.88 When Tupper’s colleague John Armstrong talked his way into a Fenian meeting there in February, he heard its members talk about bringing arms in from Buffalo, and he learned that its leaders were two doctors named Wall and Elliott. Canty, however, was nowhere to be seen.89 McGee was picking up information about Fenian emissaries who were elsewhere in Canada. He learned that the chief organizer of the western states, a lawyer from Cleveland named McCormack, had approached Michael Murphy in March to discuss ways that the Toronto Fenians could assist an invasion. Once the Fenians had crossed the border and consolidated their position, the plan went, their Canadian supporters would “fire our towns and cities in order to distract the movements of our troops, and to occupy our people in various places simultaneously.” Not surprisingly, given his alignment with the O’Mahony wing of the Brotherhood, Murphy rejected the idea. Others in the city, however, wanted to carry it out. In Montreal, McGee learned, the city’s Fenians intended to trigger a run on the banks when the invasion began.90 According to John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, McGee got this information from intercepted mail between Canadian and American Fenians. To prevent the Canadian government from opening their letters, the Fenians in Canada entrusted them to railway workers, who mailed them from post offices on the American side of the border. Letters from Ottawa Fenians to New York, for example, would be posted from Ogdensburg. The government’s countermove was to employ spies in American post offices; the spies then sent either originals or copies of the letters to the “secret service bureau,” after which they were passed on to Macdonald and McGee. O’Hanly learned about this

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procedure from police magistrate Martin O’Gara, who himself had been told by Crown counsel James O’Reilly, “the custodian of all the incriminating documents and secret correspondence.”91 All the signs indicated that the Fenians were determined to turn talk into action. St Patrick’s Day in 1866 had passed off peacefully, but the arms buildup was continuing on the frontier, the Irish Republican Army – as the Fenian army called itself – was being organized, and Canadian Fenians who supported the Senate wing were preparing for action. During the third week of March, a former Confederate officer who was now in the Sweeny camp, one Colonel Wheeler, approached Edward Archibald to discuss a deal. Sweeny had employed Wheeler to undertake a recruitment drive on the American side of the border and had issued him with blank commissions to enlist captains in the Fenian Brotherhood. Now, Wheeler offered to provide a full report to the British – for a price. “He is a shrewd, though rather uneducated man,” Archibald wrote, “as are great numbers of the Southern planters.” Despite concerns about the cost, Archibald decided to go ahead. The main point of attack, Wheeler told him, would be from Rouses Point on the Richelieu River, aiming straight at Montreal, with feints elsewhere to draw off the defending troops. His information was accurate, as was his report that the Fenians needed more money before they could launch a full-scale invasion. “A sudden and successful dash would be an excellent financial lever,” commented Archibald, “but if it failed, there would be an end to Sweeny and the Canadian project too.” The gamble would probably be taken. “I still think,” Archibald continued, “that Sweeny will be compelled to make a movement of some sort soon, or lose ground within his own party.” General Charles Carroll Tevis had told Wheeler in mid-March that an attack on Canada was three or four weeks away.92 And then something happened that threw everything sideways.

8

 “The Republic of Emmetta” Fenian Designs on New Brunswick

On 17 March 1866, against the background of the largest St Patrick’s Day parade in the history of New York, John O’Mahony’s central council met to discuss an impending crisis within his wing of the Fenian Brotherhood. Pressure had been building up from the rank and file for “the inauguration of active war operations,” and frustration about the lack of action meant that many O’Mahony Fenians were either leaving the movement or switching to the Senate wing of William Roberts and Thomas Sweeny.1 Unless something was done – something dramatic – O’Mahony and his supporters risked drifting into political oblivion. As the meeting got under way, O’Mahony’s treasury secretary, Bernard Doran Killian, resurrected a plan that he had first raised in January: an attack on Campobello Island, just within New Brunswick’s border with Maine, at the entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay. Backing him up – and possibly initiating the idea – was Patrick Sinnott, the former New Brunswicker who had become, in Edward Archibald’s words, a “rabid Fenian Centre” in Boston.2 Despite his longstanding desire to dismember Britain’s North American empire, Sinnott had remained loyal to O’Mahony. He knew the northeast coastline well and believed that Campobello was both strategically vulnerable and politically valuable. Earlier in the century, it had been disputed territory between Britain and the United States, and old wounds might be reopened. Once the island had been captured, it could serve as a base for Fenian privateers to attack British commerce, and Irish revolutionaries in the seaboard cities would be inspired to follow suit. All this would plunge Britain and the United States into a diplomatic crisis, which could easily escalate into full-scale conflict. O’Mahony had mixed feelings. On the one hand, the prospect of seizing the initiative from his Senate wing rivals, taking direct action against British

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interests, and provoking an Anglo-American war had obvious appeal. On the other, an isolated attack on Campobello was not enough; it would have to be coordinated with a larger plan to outfit privateers and needed to be timed to coincide with an Irish American “descent upon Ireland.” Nothing should be done, he concluded, without the approval of James Stephens, who was on the run from the British authorities and expected to arrive in New York imminently. But, if O’Mahony’s own account is to be trusted, Killian and Sinnott immediately began to mobilize the New York circles for action, and the momentum became irresistible. “We all felt,” wrote one supporter of the strategy, “that if the Fenian Brotherhood could not accomplish this move on British territory visible from these shores, and that unfortified, that it could never organize an expedition formidable enough to cope with the English navy on its way to Ireland.”3 The Fenians had already bought a schooner, and O’Mahony was keen to put his “naval force,” such as it was, into service. James Stephens had not shown up. And so the call for men went out: Campobello it was.4

While O’Mahony and his central council were meeting in New York, Edward Archibald was writing reports to John A. Macdonald, Frederick Bruce, and the British foreign secretary, Lord Clarendon, about his efforts to gather intelligence on the Fenians in the United States and Ireland – efforts that were finally beginning to meet with success.5 During the winter and spring, he had been bombarded with offers from real or pretended Fenians to trade information for cash, punctuated by the occasional death threat. “I am warned by those, who think there is a real danger,” he wrote in January, “that some of the miscreants have agreed together to square accounts with me. They are troublesome enough already, without killing me outright.”6 By early March, the repeated letters and knocks on the consulate door were beginning to wear him out. “I am fairly run down with informers,” he remarked. “I think I may say that I am bearing the brunt of the Fenian invasion.”7 Most of the offers were rejected. Archibald had limited financial resources at hand, and he was not going to squander them on dubious characters who promised much but delivered little. At the beginning of 1866, there were only two men upon whom he relied for information. One was a “shrewd intelligent Detective” who had been previously employed by the American treasury department. The other

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was an informer inside the Fenian headquarters. “They will let me know what is obtainable, or worth knowing, in time,” he told Macdonald.8 The informer in the Fenian Brotherhood had approached Archibald in December, just as the movement was breaking in two. As the “confidential clerk of Genl. Sweeny secretary at war,” he was well positioned to reveal Fenian military plans, which he offered to do for £200 cash down.9 Archibald was initially skeptical. “This sort of individual is not to be fully trusted,” he wrote, and it was entirely possible that “this worthy may sell me as well as O’Mahony.”10 At their second meeting, the clerk made a more favourable impression, showing Archibald correspondence of the war department and coming across as “an intelligent young man.” The prospect of getting reliable information from the heart of Fenian operations was too tempting to ignore. After consultations with the British minister at Washington, Frederick Bruce, Archibald put the clerk on the payroll.11 But the results fell far short of expectations. The clerk’s information about Fenian plans to attack Canada was too general to be useful, and his promise to provide Archibald with the key to the Fenian cipher was of little value since such ciphers could be changed on a daily basis. The clerk did show Archibald a letter from Patrick Sinnott to O’Mahony, in which Sinnott set out plans to hijack a Cunard steamer, pack it with 10,000 muskets, and head for Ireland, but the date of the steamer’s departure from Boston was out by two months. He also presented Archibald with a ciphered letter to a Montreal Fenian named Patrick Butler.12 Archibald began to wonder whether the information was worth the cost, and he speculated that the clerk was spreading disinformation. “I do not believe it is possible to extract the truth from any of the parties inside or outside of Fenian Circles,” he wrote shortly afterwards, “and all opinions formed of the strength of the Fenians or their intentions and plans are necessarily vague and unsatisfactory.”13 The clerk was probably the same person “in O’Mahony’s confidence” who gave Archibald information in early February about plans to raise $250,000 that would be sent to John Mitchel in Paris for the purchase of arms and ammunition.14 After that, however, there is no sign of any further communication between the clerk and the consul.

Historians of the Fenians are in general agreement that the informer was none other than Jim McDermott (Figure 8.1), the young Fenian orator who had

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8.1 James McDermott (c. 1843–96). On the British payroll during the 1880s, he was widely – and wrongly – believed to have alerted the Canadian authorities to the planned Fenian attack on Campobello Island in 1866.

thrilled the Toronto Hibernians with his St Patrick’s Day speech in 1865 on revolution and annexation. The consensus is that McDermott continued to work for Archibald in 1866 and informed him about O’Mahony’s switch in strategy immediately after the St Patrick’s Day decision to attack Campobello. As a result, the argument runs, the British and colonial authorities knew what

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was going on, had time to prepare their defences, and ensured that the expedition would fail. Thanks to McDermott, it was beaten before it started. Everything about this interpretation is wrong, with the probable exception of the identity of the clerk. Eighteen years later, in 1883, the Irish nationalist leader Michael Davitt exposed McDermott as an agent provocateur who was working with the British government to subvert the dynamite campaign being organized by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. In the course of his investigations, Davitt was told by “an ex-official of the Canadian government, who served under Sir John Macdonald,” that McDermott had been an informer since 1865.15 Other prominent Irish nationalists reported that McDermott had long been mistrusted within the Brotherhood. John Devoy noted that he had been widely regarded as a blackguard who was “constantly fomenting trouble by lying stories which he put in circulation or told ‘confidentially’ to numbers of people, with the intention that they should be spread.”16 In 1864, James Stephens had warned O’Mahony that McDermott was a loose cannon whose hot-headed lectures could damage the cause, and another leading Fenian, Patrick Downing, had advised him to ensure that McDermott had “nothing whatsoever to do with the [Fenian] business and as little as possible with yourself personally” – advice that O’Mahony refused to take.17 Although the case is far from watertight – Archibald never revealed the clerk’s name, and it is dangerous to read back evidence from the 1880s to the 1860s – it would not be surprising if the clerk was indeed Jim McDermott.

At this point, however, the standard historical interpretation falls apart. It rests on the assumption that the clerk, McDermott or otherwise, continued to supply Archibald with inside information during the period when the Campobello expedition was conceived, planned, and executed. The key document that has been used to support this interpretation is a dispatch that Archibald sent to Lord Clarendon on 17 April 1866. In the dispatch, Archibald wrote that he had recently had several meetings with his “Special Informant,” who provided him with the inside story of the Campobello affair: the Fenians intended to trigger an Anglo-American war, O’Mahony had given his reluctant consent and now regretted his decision, morale was low and money had dried up, and there was no longer any chance of launching an expedition to Ireland.18 William D’Arcy, author of the first scholarly book on the Fenians in the United

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States, asserted in 1947 that the “Special Informant” featured in the dispatch was McDermott, and all subsequent historians in the field have followed his lead.19 Many of them have also shared the assumption that McDermott kept Archibald informed of O’Mahony’s plans at every step of the way.20 There are two difficulties with this argument. First, the “Special Informant” told Archibald about the invasion plans almost a month after the decision to attack Campobello had been made on 17 March and a week after the expedition had set sail. By the time he spoke to Archibald, the movements of the Fenians were already common knowledge. The value of the informer’s report lay not in any forewarning of events but in its description of “the present state and condition of the O’Mahony faction” – that is, its retrospective account of the Campobello strategy and its conclusion that O’Mahony’s plans to assist an Irish revolution had collapsed.21 Neither Archibald nor anyone else on the British and colonial side ever received any advance information about O’Mahony’s decision to move against Campobello. The second difficulty is that the “Special Informant” was not in fact McDermott. His true identity was Frank Millen (Figure 8.2), the former president of the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin and the provisional head of the Brotherhood for a brief period in November 1865 – a special informant indeed. A soldier of fortune from County Tyrone, Millen had begun his military career in Mexico, fighting with Benito Juárez’s liberal nationalists against their conservative and French enemies. In 1864, he had visited O’Mahony in New York and had offered his services to the Fenians. The following year, he was back in Ireland, assessing British defences in Dublin and preparing for the anticipated rising. After Stephens’s arrest in November 1865, Millen was selected to be his successor. Determined to retain his own authority, Stephens sent orders from his prison cell that Millen must return to the United States immediately and prepare the much-anticipated expedition to Ireland. In New York, Millen reported to O’Mahony and was placed in charge of the war department. But Stephens was not finished with him yet. Fearing that Millen had been trying to take over the movement, he directed O’Mahony to remove him as secretary of war – which O’Mahony reluctantly did. Millen was furious. He had already thought about leaving the Fenian Brotherhood the previous August. Now, he decided to get even. He would do his utmost to bring down not only Stephens but the entire organization, and he would be well paid in the process.22

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8.2 Frank Millen (1831–89). Briefly the provisional head of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, he became an informer in March 1866 and supplied the British consul in New York with detailed information about the revolutionary organization on both sides of the Atlantic.

Archibald must have hardly believed his luck when Millen walked into his office around 10 March and offered to provide detailed information about “the Fenian military organization in Ireland and England, as well as in reference to O’Mahony’s projects and plans.” In return, Millen wanted an initial payment of £200 and a guarantee that his identity would never be revealed. “I had, subsequently, two private interviews with him,” wrote Archibald to Lord Clarendon, “in order that I might test his sincerity and ascertain his usefulness.” The consul was left in no doubt: Millen knew all about the structure and strength of the Fenian military organization in Ireland and Britain, the safe houses in Dublin that Stephens used after his escape from prison, and the names of the Irish American Fenians in Ireland who were worth arresting. They struck a deal. Millen began a long career as an informer.23

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Millen’s deal with Archibald is well known to Irish historians. What is not known is that Millen was also the anonymous “Special Informant” of Archibald’s dispatch to Clarendon on 17 April. It is not surprising that historians have missed this fact; they have fallen victim to a clever piece of misdirection that was intended to ensure that Millen’s identity was protected. In the dispatch, Archibald wrote that “He [the Special Informant] acquaints me that General Millen, who has for six months past been acting as O’Mahony’s Secretary for War, has resigned and gone to his home in Tennessee.”24 In this way, Millen was presented as an object of the secret information rather than its source. Clarendon must have smiled to himself when he read those words. He understood very well that the “Special Informant” was Millen, and he realized that Archibald was throwing anyone else who saw the dispatch off the scent. Clarendon knew because Archibald had already told him in the previous paragraph that his source was “the Special Informant referred to in my despatch (No. 33) of the 20th March last.” Dispatch number 33, dated 20 March 1866, is unequivocal: it names Millen, describes his meetings with Archibald, gives background information about his life, discusses his break with Stephens, and outlines his terms. After sending that dispatch in March, Archibald never again put Millen’s name down in writing – not even in his secret correspondence with Frederick Bruce.25 Corroborating evidence comes from the letter that Archibald wrote to Bruce just after he completed his 17 April dispatch to Clarendon. “The special informant to whom I refer in my despatch,” wrote Archibald, “is the party from whom I obtained lengthy and detailed reports of all that took place & of the condition of affairs in Ireland.” In a postscript to the letter, Archibald told Bruce that he had just received another communication from “my Special Informant,” who “has sailed for Galveston & Mexico.” “I expect to hear further from him,” he added. “He is most anxious not to have his name known.”26 This can refer only to Millen, who was indeed heading for Galveston and Mexico; en route, he wrote a detailed history of Fenianism for the benefit of his new employers.27 The special informant was Millen, not McDermott, and Archibald learned about the Campobello expedition only after the fact. Because Millen had been removed as the Fenian secretary of war before 17 March, he was not privy to the switch in strategy that occurred that day. Only after he met

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O’Mahony again around the middle of April did he get the inside story, which he promptly communicated to Archibald. This opens up a series of questions. What did British and colonial authorities know about Fenian designs on New Brunswick, when did they know it, and what were their sources of information?

Rumours about a raid on New Brunswick began to circulate in November 1865 shortly after the Fenian convention met in Philadelphia.28 At the beginning of December, Frederick Bruce heard that some Fenians were contemplating hit-and-run attacks on the province’s frontier towns. He alerted Lieutenant Governor Arthur Gordon, who travelled to St Stephen, informed the local authorities, and organized a home guard to defend the area.29 As well as taking precautionary measures, Gordon had to scotch rapidly spreading stories that the Fenians were planning a full-scale invasion, with Saint John as their primary target. “I have received no such information,” he declared, “and I do not believe that any ground exists for such an apprehension.”30 But he wanted to guard against any possible attack on the city, however unlikely it might have been. If the Fenians procured a small steamship and came in numbers, he informed the colonial secretary, Edward Cardwell, they “might possibly succeed” in plundering Saint John and making their escape.31 It was essential, he told the commander of the Saint John Volunteer Battalion, to strengthen the city’s defences.32 More serious than a few border raids, in Gordon’s view, was the possibility that the perceived Fenian threat could reignite the sectarian violence that had burned through parts of New Brunswick during the 1840s. At one of the first public meetings that he called to organize the defence of the frontier towns, there were demands to exclude Catholic magistrates. It was ridiculous, he responded, to believe “that because some Fenians were Roman Catholics all Roman Catholics were Fenians.” On the contrary, “there was no class on whose loyalty and readiness to defend their homes and their country he could more certainly rely than Her Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects in this Province.”33 His message was reinforced by the priest of St Stephen, Father E.J. Dunphy, who delivered a sermon praising the moral force nationalism of Daniel O’Connell, denouncing the Fenians, and emphasizing Catholic loyalty.34 It is unlikely that most Orangemen in the province were impressed.

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Low-level sectarianism persisted and doubtless intensified; memories of the anti-Catholic backlash persisted into the late twentieth century.35 There would, however, be no repeat of the earlier Orange and Green riots. Meanwhile, Archibald sent the American detective in his employment to Maine to see whether there was any truth to the rumours.36 At first, the detective thought that he was on to something: a number of “hard looking fellows” from Portland had sailed to the strategically important town of Eastport, Maine, opposite Campobello Island. But it turned out that they were “mechanics and labourers with no Fenian connections.” Passing himself off as a Fenian, he travelled to Eastport himself and from there went to Calais, directly across the border from St Stephen. The Fenians were thin on the ground in the towns that he visited, but they could draw on wider support from unemployed men and backwoodsmen, “all imbued with strong anti British feelings, and many of them … very likely to engage in a predatory attack if well organized.” But no such attack, he reported, was being organized. The Fenian leader in Calais, Michael McNally, told him that the rumours had been spread “to draw off attention from a movement in Canada, which is being planned.”37 By this time, towards the end December, news had reached New Brunswick of the Fenian split between the wings led by Roberts and O’Mahony. If one thing seemed clear, it was that any renewed threat to the province would come from the Roberts wing. Thomas Doyle, the detective from the Irish Constabulary who was monitoring the Fenians in New York, reported that Roberts and Sweeny were planning to attack St Stephen, with the twin purposes of using New Brunswick as a base from which to disrupt British commerce and pulling the United States into war with Britain.38 In February, Archibald learned – how, he did not say – that during the Fenian convention in Pittsburgh, Roberts and Sweeny had spoken of attacking British ships from North American ports. “Although they do not specify places,” he told Gordon, “there is little doubt that they embrace New Brunswick in the contemplation of their scheme.” Either Saint John or St Andrews, he believed, would be the “most desirable localities.”39 All the attention was focused on Roberts and Sweeny, and there was every reason to believe that the O’Mahony wing, with its insistence that Fenian energies must be directed towards Ireland, posed no threat whatsoever to the province. After explaining the split to his readers, David Main, the editor of the Saint Croix Courier, reached the apparently obvious

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conclusion. “All anxious New Brunswickers,” he wrote, “will bless O’Mahony’s stars instead of Roberts’.”40

And here is the irony: the defensive measures under way in New Brunswick were all in response to false reports that the Roberts Fenians were preparing to attack the province. These reports were given more credence and more specificity at the beginning of March when Archibald received apparently reliable information that the “Roberts party” was discussing a movement against Campobello Island. The source of this story was Charles Beckwith, a member of the New Brunswick legislature and the owner of Campobello Island; he heard it from an acquaintance who had joined the Brotherhood. Beckwith’s information meant that serious consideration was now given to the defence of Campobello – two weeks before O’Mahony gave Killian and Sinnott the go-ahead to capture the island.41 The colonial authorities, on the one hand, and Killian and Sinnott, on the other, had this much in common: they both realized that Campobello was highly vulnerable to an attack. “The project is not improbable,” Archibald wrote after receiving Beckwith’s information, “and its sudden execution might be practicable.”42 Gordon instructed the officer in charge of defending the border, Thomas Anderson, to report on the situation in Campobello, where he was based. The people there “seriously anticipated an attack,” Anderson wrote, and with good reason: 100 men would be able take the island, which could, he thought, be defended only by a man-of-war.43 Because of its isolation from the rest of the province, Anderson moved his headquarters from Campobello to St Andrews, where he occupied a similar role to that of Gilbert McMicken and Frederick William Ermatinger in Canada: “I employed two men on secret service and received considerable assistance from them.” The men landed at various places on the United States coast and sent back detailed reports that were forwarded to the lieutenant governor.44 “Though I do not say so,” Gordon wrote, “(for then my secret would soon be no secret) – I know every move of the small Fenian circle in Calais and the names of all the members and have very good information at Eastport and Bangor also. At the former of these places they are mustering already though in no very great number.”45 Another officer, Lieutenant

8.1 The Atlantic Coast.

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Colonel Douglas Wetmore, was directed to “pick out a suitable man to obtain private information at Eastport. He must only inform you & you will report to me.” His information would be checked against that of the British vice consul at Eastport, Robert Ker.46 Along with this local information, Gordon received reports from New York that Saint John was now under threat. “I cannot think the conspirators are without agents in the City,” Gordon informed the chief of police. There had been suspicious activity outside the magazine at Carleton, and there was a Fenian circle in Saint John whose members supported an invasion.47 Gordon authorized the chief of police to hire five new men, permitted the force to carry revolvers “for any special occasion,” and drew up a list of suspects whose incoming and outgoing mail should be opened.48 With every new telegram from Washington and New York about Sweeny’s supposed designs on New Brunswick, the sense of urgency increased – although Gordon could take some comfort from the likelihood that the United States would prevent an attempted invasion, and he remained more concerned about a fear-driven run on the banks than an actual Fenian attack.49

By St Patrick’s Day, New Brunswick had faced four months of rumours and reports that Roberts and Sweeny were planning border raids or intending to seize Campobello and possibly Saint John. In response, a home guard had been created, the Volunteer units had been improved, the steam corvette hms Pylades had been stationed at Saint John, a rudimentary secret police force had been organized, and Gordon had tried to balance security measures with attempts to reduce Protestant-Catholic tensions and to avert a financial panic. And then, another irony emerged. At the very time that the O’Mahony wing was organizing an expedition to Campobello, Archibald came to realize that Roberts and Sweeny were not, in fact, planning anything for New Brunswick. “I can learn nothing further of an attack on Campo Bello,” he informed Lord Clarendon on 21 March, “and do not think any thing of the kind is now meditated.”50 He learned from a United States marshal that the O’Mahony Fenians were trying to purchase a steamer, but he doubted that they would be successful.51 In any case, he had no cause to link the attempted purchase with an attack on New Brunswick. Had not O’Mahony always said that the real target was Ireland?

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The first sign that something was brewing in the O’Mahony wing came on 4 April when Killian gave a speech saying that the actors were getting into position, that the audience would not have long to wait, and that the performers should get to their places.52 On the following day, Archibald picked up a copy of the World, published in New York, and read an unlikely story that the O’Mahony Fenians were on the move and heading towards Campobello. After Campobello, the story ran, they would liberate New Brunswick from the yoke of empire and transform it into an independent republic – the “Republic of Emmetta,” named in honour of Robert Emmet, the leader of the failed Rising of 1803 in Ireland. The Republic of Emmetta would be divided, in imitation of Ireland, into four provinces: Mahonia, Killiana, Stephania, and Fenia. The New Brunswick authorities, the report continued, had known about the plans for the previous ten days; they had been tipped off by someone very close to O’Mahony, someone who was also “a most intimate friend of Thomas D’Arcy McGee,” and they had already sent volunteers and soldiers to defend the island.53 Archibald, who had been fed a steady diet of hyperbolic stories in the World, shook his head in disbelief. “No sane man,” he told Clarendon, “could for a moment give credit to such monstrous absurdities.” The only possible reason for such a report, he continued, was to play upon “the credulity of many of the Irish labouring classes” and to extort more money from them.54 He sent a reassuring note to Gordon, who of course had not been tipped off by anyone. The details in the World, Archibald wrote, were “so ludicrous that all here looked upon the reports as pure fabrications,” and stories in other New York newspapers that five Fenian steamers had left the city were equally unfounded. Still, something unusual was going on. Known Fenians in New York were missing from their workplaces, and an informer at the O’Mahony headquarters – Jim McDermott perhaps? – had told him that a steamer with 350 men under Killian had left for Ireland, with fifteen more steamers to follow. “I distrust all informers more or less,” Archibald added. “It is not impossible that a steamer may have slipped out,” he told Gordon, “but if so, instead of going to Ireland, I think it more likely she is gone to waylay mail steamers.” O’Mahony was anxious to “keep himself at the head of the organization,” Archibald continued, and was “mortally jealous of Sweeny & Roberts. He may, therefore, be willing to make a demonstration of some sort – a splurge – in order to maintain his ascendancy.”55

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The report in the World is certainly intriguing, in both senses of the word. Whomever the reporter paid for the story combined some knowledge of the actual “plan of operations” with sensationalist speculations about the Republic of Emmetta and the insinuation that Killian himself was the informer who had betrayed the Fenians to the British and Canadians. No one else in the Brotherhood was both close to O’Mahony and open to the charge of being an “intimate friend” of McGee. Killian had worked with McGee on the American Celt newspaper in New York during the 1850s, and rumours persisted that they were still on good terms. The World’s reporter implied that Killian’s actual plan was to undermine the Fenian Brotherhood by setting up an expedition that was bound to fail, thus discrediting the O’Mahony wing. At the same time, it would force President Andrew Johnson to enforce the neutrality laws, thus demonstrating to Roberts and Sweeny that the Americans would prevent an invasion of Canada and effectively sabotaging the Senate wing’s strategy. Before long, the conspiracy theory broadened to encompass the view that McGee and Killian had staged the whole thing to scare New Brunswickers into voting for Confederation.56 Like all good conspiracy theories, it seemed plausible enough. Writing to Clarendon a month later, Archibald remarked that “it seems difficult not to believe that Killian deliberately played the part of a traitor in order to break up the organization.”57 The Roberts Fenians certainly took that view, and O’Mahony quickly reached the same conclusion.58 There is no evidence, however, that any Canadian or British politician was in league with Killian. When, later in the month, New Brunswick’s pro-Confederation leader, Leonard Tilley, read reports that Killian and McGee had hatched the whole scheme, he penned an amused letter to Macdonald. “The Fenian excitement continues on our borders,” he wrote, “and you will laugh when you see that our antis are endeavouring to make the people believe that you Canadians have sent them here to aid Confederation.”59 Although Archibald recognized the story’s persuasive power, he told Clarendon that Killian’s real motive was to prevent Roberts and Sweeny from taking over the Fenian movement.60

Erring on the side of caution, Archibald telegraphed the British consul at Portland, Henry Murray, asking him to monitor the situation and to report any Fenian movements to Gordon in New Brunswick.61 Two days later, on 7 April,

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Murray informed Gordon that Fenians from New York and Boston were gathering in the city en route to Eastport in Maine.62 Estimates of their numbers varied, but by 9 April there were probably around 160, with more on the way; eventually, some 400 or 500 Fenians reached the area.63 They travelled without rifles (although many carried revolvers) so that they could not be charged with violating American neutrality. The plan had been to send arms and ammunition in advance to Eastport in the E.H. Pray, the Fenians’ schooner.64 Killian and his aides were already in the town, but there was no sign of the E.H. Pray, and the Fenians had no choice but to wait.65 On 10 April, the first batch of men joined Killian, who issued a circular urging them to bear with the “civic inconveniences” that lay ahead and reminding them of the “many downright hardships and sufferings necessarily undergone by our soldiers in the late war, – sufferings and privations lengthened and intensified owing to English Neutrality.” At a public meeting the following day, he and the other leaders offered to provide armed assistance to those New Brunswickers who were ready to fight against Confederation. The rising, they said, would be the first step in transforming British North America into an Irish republic.66 Watching all this closely were David Main of the Saint Croix Courier and the British vice consul in Eastport, Robert Ker. They stayed at the same hotel as Killian, shared a breakfast table with him, and tried to pick up all the information that they could.67 Both men were disturbed by the sight of the Fenian volunteers coming in from Portland; they were, wrote Main, “in appearance the most villainous cut throat individuals we ever laid eyes on, – men who would just be in their native element in the midst of rapine and murder.” He identified the local Fenian head centre as a man named Witherell and learned that the “point of attack was intended to be Campobello.” But because their arms had not arrived, they had been “to some extent frustrated in their designs” and did “not know what to do.”68 To boost morale, a small party of Fenians crossed over to Indian Island on the night of 14 April and captured the Union Jack that flew over the customs house. The act may have temporarily lifted Fenian spirits, but it rapidly became the subject of ridicule to those outside the assembled ranks: was this the best that they could do after all that bombast? “Up to the present time,” commented Archibald, “the exploits of the would-be-invaders may be summed up in the stealing of a British flag from Indian Island, by five armed

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men at midnight.”69 While the Fenians waited for the E.H. Pray, the British and colonial authorities consolidated their defences. hms Pylades had already reached St Andrews on 9 April; two days later, while Killian and Sinnott were delivering speeches about liberating British North America from colonial tyranny, it anchored between Campobello and Eastport.70 Another British warship, the Rosario, took over the defence of St Andrews, and four more were on their way. “By the third week of April 1866,” observes historian Robert Dallison, “the Royal Navy had an overwhelming presence in the Bay of Fundy.”71 Receiving wildly exaggerated reports that there were between 2,000 and 3,000 Fenians on the western bank of the St Croix River, and learning from Archibald that the Fenians in New York were trying to charter a steamer that would bring still more men into Eastport, Gordon sent an urgent message on 15 April to the commander-in-chief at Halifax, Major General Hastings Doyle. “The whole of the available volunteer force at my disposal is quite inadequate to meet any serious descent on this province,” he wrote, adding that regular forces must be brought to the frontier without reducing the garrisons at Saint John and Fredericton.72 Immediately, the same tension between political and military imperatives that had occurred in Canada was replayed in New Brunswick. Doyle, like Sir John Michel in Canada, wanted to let the Fenians cross the border and then attack them in force; Gordon, like McMicken, believed that the “moral effect” of sacrificing St Stephen and St Andrews would be disastrous for the province and, by implication, a great boost to the Fenians. Gordon won the argument, and Doyle decided to bring in an entire regiment, two batteries of artillery, and the Royal Engineers – “a far more considerable force than I had anticipated,” remarked Gordon.73 But the key factor in breaking up Fenian invasion plans was not so much the British show of force as the course of action eventually adopted by the American government. After Henry Murray, the British consul at Portland, had confirmed that the Fenians were preparing to attack New Brunswick, Frederick Bruce passed on the information to Secretary of State William Seward in Washington. The administration, anxious to avoid a collision with Irish voters, waited to see how events played out. If the O’Mahony Fenians were simply engaging in a grand theatrical gesture to boost their prestige, there was nothing to gain and much to lose by intervening. Six days after the first information came through from Portland about Fenian activities, however, it was evident that the Fenians meant business. On 13 April, Gideon

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Welles, the secretary of the United States Navy, sent the uss Winooski, under Captain George H. Cooper, to Eastport to ensure that the Neutrality Act would not be violated. Three days later, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered General George Meade to Maine’s border with New Brunswick. When the E.H. Pray finally reached Eastport on 17 April, Captain Cooper prevented it from unloading the arms and telegraphed Washington for instructions. A high-level game of pass the buck ensued. Seward, knowing that his enemies would blame him for losing the Irish vote, attempted to shuffle the responsibility to Stanton, who adroitly evaded it. Both men then tried to persuade Welles to take action; refusing to become the fall guy, Welles threw the decision back to the “civil authorities” in Eastport and to General Meade, who was expected to arrive there the next day.74 Just over a week had passed since the appearance of Killian and Sinnott in Eastport, and nerves were on edge in St Stephen and St Andrews. The Halifax regiment ordered into action by Major General Doyle was expected on 18 April, around the same time as the American General Meade. The Fenians were awaiting the release of their weapons from the E.H. Pray. If, despite the Neutrality Act, Washington ordered Captain Cooper to turn over the arms, the invaders might seize the opportunity to strike immediately. The home guard and the militia steeled themselves for action; the excitement in St Andrews, wrote Gordon, was intense.75 But the orders from Washington never came. When the buck stopped, the secretary of the treasury, Hugh McCullough, was left to issue the instructions: the E.H. Pray and its cargo would be detained until further notice. Shortly afterwards, the British flagship hms Duncan reached St Andrews, carrying Vice Admiral Sir James Hope, Major General Doyle, the British regulars, the artillery, and the Royal Engineers. When Hope and Doyle visited St Stephens on 19 April, they were welcomed with “the most exuberant demonstrations of loyalty and gratitude.”76

With the Royal Navy dominating Passamaquoddy Bay, British troops moving to the border, and the American confiscation of Fenian arms, the grand plan of establishing the Republic of Emmetta and revolutionizing British North America lay in ruins. The Fenians in Eastport clung on for another week in the hope that the rifles would be released, becoming more frustrated by the day. Some of them took out their anger by again crossing over to Indian Island,

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torching the customs house, and burning down the warehouses of an Eastport merchant who had stood up against them.77 Two others, after taking some drink, crossed the bridge from Calais in Maine to St Stephen, fired a pistol at one of the sentries, and beat a hasty retreat.78 By the third week of April, such futile gestures were all that remained. The steamers from Eastport back to Portland were full of disgruntled and disillusioned Fenians who damned their leaders and denounced O’Mahony as an imbecile.79 Killian tried to put the best possible face on a desperate situation. In targetting Campobello, he wrote, he had selected “the sensitive point in the relations between England and the United States.” Had not the terrified reaction of the British and New Brunswick authorities, along with the complications that were created in Anglo-American relations, demonstrated that the time and money spent on the expedition were worthwhile?80 It was hardly a convincing defence. O’Mahony, in contrast, publicly apologized for “this mistaken move of mine.” On 10 May, James Stephens finally arrived in New York. The following day, O’Mahony, looking “very much careworn and haggard,” tendered his resignation. It was accepted.81 In St Stephen, the defenders of the British Empire celebrated their deliverance from Fenianism with a banquet in honour of Major General Doyle and his officers. There were toasts to the queen, to the president of the United States, to the lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, to the British Army and Royal Navy, to Doyle himself, and to General Meade and the United States Army.82 The British regulars started pulling out of the province in early May, although Gordon requested that some be retained in case the Fenians initiated a cross-border guerrilla campaign.83 No such campaign occurred. The British and colonial victory was total, and the results of the Campobello expedition were the opposite of its intentions. Coinciding with the collapse of the anti-Confederation government in New Brunswick and the debate on Confederation in the Nova Scotia legislature, the threat of a Fenian invasion strengthened the hands of those who argued that a British-American union was the best way to protect loyal subjects from the forces of Fenianism, republicanism, and annexationism. “Fenianism has, I think helped Confederation in Nova Scotia where I am happy to see it has been adopted,” wrote Archibald on 23 April. “New Brunswick will now follow suit.”84 And follow suit it did. The Fenian invasion attempt may not have been the determinative factor, but it certainly assisted the cause of Confederation in both colonies.

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In Canada, the strategic lessons of Eastport seemed clear. Governor General Lord Monck spelled them out in a letter to John A. Macdonald: “The events of the last few weeks have satisfied me of three things which together deprive Fenian threats of their significance. They are 1st our power at very short notice to turn out a large body of effective troops and turn them on any threatened point – 2nd the certainty that the govt. of the U.S. will permit no invasion of Canada from their soil, nor any export of arms or munitions – 3rd the inability of the Fenian leaders to get together any number of men without our knowledge.”85 Knowing that Canadian defences were strong, realizing that the American government would enforce the neutrality laws, and recognizing that any mustering of men would be detected well in advance, the argument ran, the Roberts and Sweeny Fenians understood that an attempted invasion of Canada would end in the same ignominious and humiliating way as the “Eastport fizzle.” The danger had passed; the guard could be relaxed. One of the greatest achievements of the O’Mahony Fenians was that they were able to lull the Canadian government into a false sense of security and to present their Roberts and Sweeny rivals with the gift of a surprise.

9

 “The Irish Army of Liberation” Secret Operations and the Battle of Ridgeway

When the call went out for volunteers to join the Campobello Island expedition after St Patrick’s Day in 1866, Michael Murphy and his followers in Toronto had been quick to answer. On 31 March, telegraph operator Alex Hunter received a ciphered message that was intended for Philip Cullen, an employee of the Toronto Savings Bank. “Trg giragl fvatyr zra ernql,” it began. The code was easy to crack; the letters of the alphabet had been transposed, with A becoming N and the sequence following from there. “Get twenty single men ready for orders by Tuesday,” ran the full message. “Choose drilled and temperance men if you can – pack equipment and ammunition ready for expressing where directed – men to follow.”1 It was signed “X,” which translated to “K” – almost certainly Bernard Doran Killian. Hunter passed the message on to the authorities, who had never heard of Philip Cullen and had no idea where the men were supposed to go. Toronto police chief William Prince ran the investigation. Cullen, he learned, was a member of the Hibernian Benevolent Society and a close friend of Murphy. The two of them met every day and were joined on 6 April by three strangers who appeared to be from the United States. That night, one of them delivered a parcel to John McGuire, the man who had been brought before the police magistrate eighteen months earlier for storing pikes in his house. But that was all Prince could discover. “The means placed at my disposal,” he explained, “are wholly insufficient for such service, all my Police are well known and can be recognized immediately.”2 The next day, the Globe reprinted the story in the World that the Fenians were heading for Campobello, only to dismiss it as “a good dodge for raising money.”3 On 9 April, however, a railway detective on the Grand Trunk informed the managing director, Charles Brydges, that Murphy, Cullen, Murtagh

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Moriarty, and four others were on the train to Montreal and bound for New England.4 Brydges alerted John A. Macdonald, who immediately telegraphed Frederick William Ermatinger: “Send confidential man with them to Portland.”5 But co-premier George-Étienne Cartier and Minister of Finance Alexander Galt decided that it was too dangerous to wait and ordered their immediate arrest.6 When the train stopped at Cornwall, the mayor and 200 Volunteers were on hand to take Murphy and his men into custody.7 The passengers were carrying revolvers, dirks, around $1,000, and a cipher with the address of Thomas Sheady, the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society. An eighth man, Edward Keyes, was arrested the next day; it was also reported that fourteen others had left the train at Prescott and were heading to Portland via Ogdensburg. If that is correct, then Murphy got his twenty men.8 In overriding Macdonald’s instructions, Cartier and Galt had created a serious problem for the government.9 Had the men been watched en route to Portland, evidence could have been gathered that directly linked them to the projected attack on New Brunswick. But as things stood, there was no case against them; travelling in a train while carrying money, guns, and knives was not against the law. Unless it could be proved that they intended to aid and abet an invasion of British territory, they would have to be released – delivering a propaganda coup to the Fenians and embarrassing the Canadian authorities. Proof was hard to find. In Toronto, the police searched Murphy’s tavern, only to come away empty-handed. “The detectives,” remarked the Globe, “think that Mrs. Murphy was well prepared, and had her house fully ready to receive the visitors.”10 Similar searches were conducted in the houses of Thomas Sheady, Philip Cullen, and Barney O’Donohoe, with equally unsuccessful results. When Sheady’s papers were examined, it was discovered that all the pages of the Hibernian Benevolent Society’s books had been ripped out.11 Charles Clarke brought Sheady into custody, where he was held overnight without a warrant – an action that was clearly illegal, as the Irish Canadian lost no time in pointing out.12 The next day, while “a large number of his friends waited outside the Court House,” Sheady was charged with plotting “to move and stir divers foreigners and strangers, with force and arms, to invade this realm.” He was taken by train to Cornwall, where he would face trial with the others.13

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On the train with Sheady, and also under arrest, was Colonel Wheeler, Edward Archibald’s only informer within the Roberts wing. The previous month, Archibald had instructed Wheeler to visit upstate New York, discover as much as possible about Fenian arms deposits, and report anything of importance to the authorities in Toronto and Montreal.14 In Toronto when Murphy and his men were arrested, Wheeler was given new orders: he would be arrested for carrying Fenian invasion plans, join the prisoners in the Cornwall jail, and seek evidence that could be used to convict them.15 Sheady and Wheeler were placed in the same cell, away from the others. But to no avail; Sheady would not divulge secrets to a stranger, and the Fenians were wise to the tricks.16 The task of gathering evidence against Murphy was led by Gilbert McMicken, with the assistance of William Prince and the newly appointed Toronto police magistrate Alexander MacNabb. McMicken sent Charles Clarke to Hamilton, where he met with a wall of silence. Clarke then went to Oakville, only to learn that the primary suspect in the town had left for Michigan and that the treasurer of the local Hibernian Benevolent Society, “a man named Walsh,” had destroyed its records. But Walsh stated under oath that he regretted his connection with Murphy and that Murphy had asked him to buy and sell Fenian bonds. “If he was managed properly in the examination,” thought McMicken, “much more might be got out of him.”17 Another potential witness was Murphy’s brother-in-law, John Mulvey. According to one report, Murphy had told Mulvey in February that the Fenians were thinking of taking territory between Maine and New Brunswick. If he would repeat that in court, it would significantly strengthen the Crown’s case – especially since he had a reputation for honesty. Mulvey did not want to testify and had to be brought to Cornwall against his will.18 Among the other evidence that McMicken supplied to the prosecution were a reporter’s notes on Murphy’s St Patrick’s Day speech – the one in which he had said that 40,000 Irish Canadians were prepared to fight and die for Ireland – along with the Fenian cards sent to Murtagh Moriarty in 1863, which had never been picked up from the customs house. McMicken also attempted to “use money as a consideration for information,” but mouths remained shut. After a week of intensive investigation, he sent his report to Macdonald. “With all the exertions made,” he wrote, “the gleanings of evidence are so scanty yet

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considering the difficulties and the secrecy surrounding the matter much more has been secured than could have been expected.” But it fell short of the evidence that would be needed to secure convictions for treason.19 Realizing that the government had a weak case against them, and probably expecting an early release, Murphy and his men were in good spirits. Strains of the popular song “No Irish Need Apply” could be heard from inside the prison walls.20 The press and public were excluded from the examination of the prisoners, but word soon leaked out. Murphy was “very confident and talkative” – so much so that his defence lawyer, John Sandfield Macdonald, a former co-premier of the United Canadas, repeatedly tried to shut him up.21 Walsh did indeed testify about the Fenian bonds, but nothing more could be got out of him. Charles Clarke and fellow detective Charles Spence recounted Murphy’s St Patrick’s Day speech. Philip Cullen, the recipient of the coded telegraph, said as little as possible. Thomas Sheady refused to answer any questions that might incriminate him. Any hopes that John Mulvey would be the star witness were dashed when he declared that the Hibernian Benevolent Society was, as far as he knew, “a loyal institution, having been organized simply for the benefit and protection of its members.”22 Equally unhelpful to the prosecution was Francis Bernard McNamee, who was subpoenaed from Montreal after it was learned that he had met Murphy on at least three occasions the previous year. Clearly enjoying himself (“he seemed to delight in the exercise,” commented a reporter), McNamee declared under oath that he knew nothing about the Hibernian Benevolent Society, had never been a member of a secret society, had never been asked by Murphy to sell Fenian bonds, and had never discussed Fenianism with Murphy. Outside the courtroom, Charles Clarke was doing some lying of his own, pretending to be a Fenian sympathizer, drinking whisky, and speaking Irish with a local Fenian leader. He was told that the mayor, whom the Irish Canadian described as “a bitter Orange partisan,” would be one of the first victims of a Fenian invasion, but he got no information about the prisoners. To protect himself, Clarke was issued with a revolver and ammunition.23 As the examination drew to a close, it became clear that the government did not have enough evidence to prove that Murphy and his men were planning to join the Fenians in Eastport.24 Wheeler was “released” from prison and put on a train back to Toronto. With the Spring Assizes about to begin, and with no chance of securing a conviction if the case went to trial, the pros-

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ecution played its last card. On the grounds that more time was needed to gather witnesses, it requested that Murphy and his men be remanded in custody until the Fall Assizes. John Sandfield Macdonald objected strenuously. Keeping the men in prison, he said, would only perpetuate the “monstrous injustice” of arresting them in the first place. After a lengthy discussion, a majority of the magistrates ruled in favour of the prosecution: the prisoners would be held over until the fall.25 “The boasted liberty of British subjects is a sham,” declared Patrick Boyle; the government, he asserted, was bypassing habeas corpus and incarcerating men against whom it had only the flimsiest of evidence. In Toronto, the Fenian Brotherhood of Canada issued a manifesto spelling out the consequences of the arrests. The Fenians, it stated, had previously opposed an invasion of Canada, despite the possibility that it would aid the cause of Irish freedom, despite the aggression of Canadian Orangemen, and despite Canadian encouragement of the Confederacy during the Civil War. But what happened in Cornwall had changed everything. When the head centre gave the word, they would avenge the arrests, root out British tyranny in North America, and replace the Union Jack with “the emblem of an independent sovereignty or the starry flag of that nation which is the last hope of freedom, republicanism and Ireland. God save the green!”26 In supporting the men who had been going to fight for O’Mahony, the Fenians behind the manifesto were aligning themselves with the strategy of William Roberts (Figure 9.1) and Thomas Sweeny (Figure 9.2).

But what exactly was their strategy? Sweeny had originally planned to launch the invasion during the winter of 1866–67, when the Irish Republican Army, with 10,000 men and three batteries of artillery, would make the ice crossing into Canada. During a winter campaign, the British would be unable to bring in reinforcements; if the invasion took place in any other season, he would need double the numbers. Militarily, this strategy made sense; but politically, it was fraught with danger. As Roberts realized, if the Fenians waited until the winter, they would lose momentum, with diminishing revenues and declining support. After O’Mahony’s humiliation at Eastport, it was imperative to move quickly; continued delay would make them even more vulnerable to accusations that they were

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9.1 William Roberts (1830–97). He was president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood between January 1866 and December 1867.

all talk and no action. Yet Sweeny knew that if they launched an invasion before the winter, it was almost certain to fail. Roberts countered that it was better to make a dramatic gesture and demonstrate that Irish republicans would fight for freedom rather than sink into ignominy. Sweeny did his best to resist the “reckless pressure” for a premature invasion attempt, but faced with unanimous support for immediate action, he gave way. An “honorable failure in the field,” he reluctantly concluded, was preferable to “the disintegration of the organization.”27

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9.2 Thomas Sweeny (1820–92). The Fenian Brotherhood’s secretary of war, he developed the plans for the invasion of Canada in 1866. After the failure of the raids, he resigned from the organization.

Calls went out for more money, thousands of guns were bought from the US arsenal at Philadelphia, and the Fenian Sisterhood got ready to care for the wounded.28 Sweeny’s secret service sent its agents across the border to coordinate plans with Fenians in Canada. Richard Slattery combined his recruitment drive in Quebec City with an assessment of British defences there.29 Patrick McAndrew was instructed to move in advance of the Fenian troops, cut telegraph lines, and rally Fenians in Port Colborne and St Catharines to support the invasion.30 On the border with Canada East, the Fenian organizer

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John Fallon requested that ammunition be brought into the New York town of Chateaugay, and he sounded out the disposition of American troops in Plattsburg. “They have no orders that will interfere with us,” he reported, and there were Fenians among the ranks. Irish deserters from the British Army told him that there were 400 Fenians in the 21st Regiment, stationed in Montreal.31 The Fenian volunteers were instructed to travel in civilian clothing and to rendezvous at the border points where increasing quantities of arms and ammunition were being stored. Canada would be hit from three directions. The first move would take place in the west of what is now Ontario, where 3,000 men under the command of General Charles Carroll Tevis would sail from Chicago and Milwaukee to the east coast of Lake Huron, land in or near Goderich, and march on London. Twenty-four hours after they boarded their boats, General William Lynch would lead his men from Cleveland and Buffalo across Lake Erie to Port Stanley and Port Colborne; one column would head to London, and the other would move on Paris, Guelph, and Hamilton. British troops would be drawn into the west of Canada to counter the threat, leaving Montreal undefended. At this point, the Fenians in Canada would swing into action. “Our auxiliaries in Canada,” wrote Sweeny, “were organized and prepared to destroy St. Ann’s Bridge, at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers on the Grand Trunk Railroad. This would effectually cut off all communication between Upper and Lower Canada [present-day Ontario and Quebec].” Once that had been accomplished, the main force of the Irish Republican Army under General Samuel Spear would leave from Vermont and upstate New York for Montreal while another column headed towards Quebec City.32 Contrary to received opinion, the Senate wing was actually very good at keeping secret its overall strategy and the timing of the projected invasion. The only informer of note among them was Colonel Wheeler, and he was not close to the top of the organization. In New York, Edward Archibald had no idea about the inner workings of the Senate leadership, just as he had known nothing about O’Mahony’s decision to attack Campobello. “Fenianism in America – so far as regards any danger to British Territory – is all but exhausted,” he concluded on 17 April.33 Only the day before, the Roberts Fenians had persuaded Sweeny to set the wheels of war in motion.

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The politicians and diplomats may have relaxed their guard, but the Canadian secret police continued to investigate Fenian activities on both sides of the border. If an invasion were to take place, McMicken thought, it would probably come before the ice started breaking up, which usually occurred around the end of April. Much of his attention was focused on Buffalo, where Alexander McLeod continued to send reports to Macdonald from Patrick O’Dea’s auction house. The Fenians in the city were still active, McLeod wrote during the third week of April; they were drawing on the expertise of Civil War veterans, sending military men to the border, talking up their numbers, and counting on significant support in Canada. Their objective, he told Macdonald, was to take Hamilton and hold it while Irishmen from throughout the United States flooded in to support them; he had, indeed, seen one piece of a much larger picture. But McLeod reckoned that they had only half the numbers claimed and that they were wrong about Canadian support. Having recently visited a township in Canada West that had been “the hotbed of rebellion” in 1837, he had discovered that the former rebels “would turn out in mass to oppose the establishment of an Irish Republic in Canada.”34 That, however, was the last report that McLeod sent from O’Dea’s auction house. James McCarroll, now a captain in the Fenian army, was spreading the word that McLeod was “a thorough Canadian Tory, a Govt pensioner and no doubt a spy.” When he arrived for work on the morning of 25 April, a fellow clerk warned him that the Fenians were out for vengeance and that he should leave immediately – which he prudently did. McCarroll had safeguarded Fenian secrecy; Macdonald had lost a valuable source of information.35 McMicken, however, had his own man in Buffalo. Earlier in April, he had brought a new detective into the force, John McLaughlin, “a very intelligent Irish Roman Catholic,” who was a veterinary surgeon by profession and had served in the United States Army. “The Veterinary,” as he was known, reported directly to the British consul in the city, Henry Hemans, who kept McMicken informed about his investigations.36 McLaughlin was nothing if not keen. “He seems to be bent on breaking up the Brotherhood single handed,” remarked McMicken after learning that his new detective claimed to have prevented the formation of a Fenian circle in Lockport. McLaughlin needed reining in; “act less and watch more,” were the instructions.37 At the end of the month, as the ice was beginning to break, McLaughlin rushed to the consulate with the news that two or three Fenian companies were under immediate marching orders

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to a destination as yet unknown. Hemans telegraphed General George Napier, the commander of British troops in Canada West, and alerted McMicken. But it turned out to be yet another false alarm. After spending a few days in a “state of expectancy,” Hemans reported with relief that there was a “blank result.”38 The defensive measures of the British and Canadians, Hemans believed, were a powerful deterrent. Two more British regiments were coming into Canada, the Pylades and Rosario were sailing from the Bay of Fundy to the St Lawrence River, and paddle steamers were being converted into gunboats on the Great Lakes. Fenians who had thought that invading Canada was a mere matter of marching were apparently pulling back from the movement. Hemans learned that the leaders in Buffalo were complaining about the “cowardice of the rank and file,” and he reckoned that they could not get more than seventy-five men to fight.39 Chicago, however, was another question. Hemans had heard that it was “the great arsenal of the Brotherhood” and that war preparations were under way in the city. Could McMicken send a detective there to investigate?40 McMicken agreed and selected a “gentleman of integrity and capacity” for the task, Leonard Nightingale from Windsor. Nightingale met the British consul in Chicago, John Edward Wilkins, and learned that the Fenians had bought a couple of boats (“poor old craft,” he reported, “although they have been painted up, striped green to look quite smart”) with a view to landing in Goderich or Collingwood – another piece of the picture. Wilkins told him that they would probably use Milwaukee as their base, as no one was watching them there; Nightingale decided to check it out and reported back that they would be hard-pressed to raise more than fifty men from the town. The strength of the Fenians in Chicago was greatly exaggerated, he initially reported; they could raise no more than 500 men, “for the most part desperate characters, that would just as soon volunteer to make a raid on New York if there were any chance for plunder, as to make a raid on Canada.” As for their plan to hit Goderich or Collingwood, Nightingale had “no faith in their being able to carry it out” – an accurate assessment, as it transpired.41 After attending a public meeting of the Brotherhood, however, he began to change his views. A thousand people attended, along with two military companies that made “a very creditable appearance.” “They are really stronger than I supposed,” he wrote, “and their speeches all indicated their intention of making a strike at an early day.” There could yet be trouble, he concluded,

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while sticking to his original view that there was “no chance whatever of their eventual success.”42 Meanwhile, Charles Clarke and Colonel Wheeler had teamed up to check out rumours that the Fenians were bringing arms into Toronto.43 After drawing a blank, they were sent respectively to Ogdensburg and Malone to investigate reports of an arms buildup. It was a high-risk mission, given that Clarke’s true identity was known in Toronto and Cornwall and that Wheeler had been outed as a spy. But Wheeler still had the blank commissions that Sweeny had given him, and he filled one in for Clarke, who now passed himself off as Captain John C. Murphy of the Irish Republican Army. Clarke learned that the Fenians in Ogdensburg were furious about the arrest of Murphy and his men and that they were “all for Sweeny and Roberts.”44 After hearing rumours that six pieces of artillery were being shipped to Cornwall, he spent two cold and sleepless nights watching over the wharfs, the only result being an illness that kept him out of action for the next few days.45 When he recovered, he witnessed rifles being distributed to the local Fenians and heard that plans were afoot to spring Murphy and his fellow prisoners from the Cornwall jail. But he was not back in action for long; a Fenian leader recognized him, and he had to get out in a hurry.46 Wheeler stayed in Malone, but there are no records of his reports, if any, back to Canada. One of Ermatinger’s detectives, John Ryan, wrote that Wheeler – whom he thought was a genuine Fenian – had been given $30 by the head centre in Malone to cross the border and “test the feelings of the Irish people there with regard to Fenianism.” Wheeler was doing quite well out of the situation – a paid informer for the Canadian secret service who was being paid again by the Fenians to spy on the people for whom he was working.47

As he assessed the information coming in from the United States, McMicken reckoned that the threat was receding. The ice had broken up, the Fenians had not made their move, and the reports from Buffalo indicated that everything was settling down. “I can’t see any reason for alarm at all,” McLaughlin wrote on 10 May. “I myself consider these men harmless as children and will never fire a shot.”48 McMicken received the same message from Henry Hemans at the British consulate. Although Hemans had heard that more ammunition had been sent to Buffalo from New York and that Sweeny had been recruiting

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“with considerable success” in Tennessee, he thought that the “unexpectedly energetic interference” of the American government at Eastport had lowered Fenian morale.49 By the third week of May, McMicken and Hemans agreed that “Fenianism may be considered as virtually dead.” Hemans believed that the secret police force could safely be wound down; the authorities in Buffalo had their own detectives and would learn in advance about any Fenian movements. McLaughlin should be employed only for two or three days every fortnight, Hemans wrote, if indeed he was to be employed at all.50 Nor did the situation in Chicago give much cause for alarm. Nightingale’s reports indicated that the Fenians were better at style than substance; two clapped-out boats painted green to look quite smart seemed like an apt metaphor for the entire Fenian endeavour. A thousand men might turn out to a public meeting, and two military companies might make an impressive show, but there was a big difference between listening to speeches and enlisting to fight. “I think we will soon see the end of this thing now,” McMicken told Macdonald after reading Nightingale’s letters.51 All in all, there were few signs to suggest that an attack was imminent. Arms may have been distributed to Fenians in Detroit and upstate New York, but that kind of thing had been going on for months without any results. There was drilling in Cleveland but no indication that any Fenians were actually preparing to invade. McMicken’s detectives in Fort Erie, Sarnia, Goderich, and Lewiston were finding nothing. James Allen was getting bored to death in Sarnia and requested permission to leave.52 His fellow detective Richard Yeoward described Lewiston as “one of the dullest places I was ever in.”53 No wonder, then, that McMicken informed Macdonald that he had “nothing of importance” to communicate or that Macdonald wrote with relief that “all apprehension of a Fenian invasion is at an end.”54 Even Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the last person to lapse into complacency where the Fenians were concerned, now believed that “the prospect of a Fenian invasion of Canada has worn away to almost nothing.”55 In New York, however, Edward Archibald was starting to pick up very different signals. “Sweeny is really preparing for a raid,” he told Frederick Bruce on 23 May, “and I think he will attempt one.”56 Three days later, Hemans got word that the American government now had “good reason to believe that an expedition against Canada was meditated from Buffalo,” and he urged

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McLaughlin to provide the city’s authorities with evidence that the arms in O’Dea’s auction house were intended for an invading army. But McLaughlin refused on the grounds that if his information became public, “his detective value would cease.”57 There was also a good chance that his life would be in danger. McMicken despatched Detective Elon Tupper to Buffalo to see what was going on. Tupper had told McMicken two months earlier that a Fenian invasion was imminent, and he had been proved wrong. He was not going to make the same mistake twice. There was nothing to worry about, he assured McMicken on 28 May: “Everything about Buffalo and this place seems quite at ease, nothing doing of much interest, most of the men who used to be assembled with the Fenians are either gone away or are employed at work as it is evident that not half so many of them are loitering about.”58 Everything was in hand. McMicken had Buffalo under constant surveillance and was in regular contact with Hemans, who himself was being kept informed by American authorities. Nightingale was in Chicago, working closely with Consul Wilkins. Patrick Nolan was in Cleveland, where everything seemed quiet. Charles Clarke was in the Niagara Peninsula, trying to sniff out plans to destroy the Welland Canal and not finding any. Macdonald saw no reason why McMicken should stay tethered to his post at Windsor. Why not invite him to Ottawa for the grand opening of the new Parliament on 6 June?59 They were on the brink of one of the greatest intelligence failures in Canadian history.

It was McLaughlin, “the Veterinary,” who sounded the first note of alarm. “A great many strange military men” had been coming and going over the past few days, he wrote to McMicken from Buffalo on 29 May. “Something is not right.”60 The next day, Charles Clarke reported that “a number of strangers” had been arriving in Welland.61 Another report stated that 400 Fenians from Cleveland had arrived in Buffalo and “quietly dispersed throughout the city.”62 Hemans sent an urgent message to McMicken: “This town is full of Fenians.”63 McMicken telegraphed General Napier, requesting that he send troops to Port Colborne, 15 miles west of Fort Erie. Napier, whom Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley would describe as “quite useless at all times as a commander,”64

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ignored the telegram – if, indeed, he ever read it. According to McMicken, Napier was enjoying the company of a female friend in Toronto and apparently did not want to be disturbed by yet another alarmist report about yet another imaginary threat; he put the telegram in his pocket and never gave it a second thought.65 In Buffalo, McLaughlin stayed up all night to watch the men who were entering and leaving O’Dea’s office, and he registered the presence of greenshirted soldiers in the city. They were “a fine body of men,” he told McMicken, and they were keeping a low profile.66 He wrote again later in the day: there was plenty of movement, but it was hard to know what to make of it.67 Once again, Elon Tupper was sent to investigate. Once again, he saw no cause for concern. True, there were about 1,000 Fenians in the city. “But I do not believe they will try to come over to Canada,” he wrote. “They seem as though they did not know what to do with themselves.” Tupper had seen so many instances of Fenian exaggeration followed by inaction that he had become locked into a pattern of disbelief, even when the evidence for an imminent invasion was staring him in the face.68 But the word was spreading that the Fenians were on the move. During the afternoon of 31 May, the militia were called out, Cabinet ministers rushed to Ottawa, and telegrams started flying in all directions. Macdonald instructed McMicken to send copies of “direct news” to Napier, who presumably read them this time.69 Preparations got under way to bring more than 400 men of the Queen’s Own Rifles – many of them University of Toronto students – from Toronto to Port Colborne. Their professors, strange to say, were unable to join them. In Hamilton, members of the Volunteer Thirteenth Infantry Battalion were ordered to report the next morning, from where they would travel to Dunnville, west of Port Colborne. By the time they arrived, the Fenians had already crossed the border.70

The Fenians, much maligned for their braggadocio, their inability to keep secrets, and their stereotypically Irish organizational ineptitude, had pulled off something quite remarkable: a stealth operation that took the Canadian secret police completely by surprise until it was right on top of them. There had been so many false reports of imminent action, so many conflicting stories and rumours emanating from Fenian circles, and so much wild talk that it

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had become impossible to see through the fog. “I can gather nothing from any quarter at present of any thing being done, indication of a movement of any kind,” McMicken had told Macdonald on 17 May, “unless we take the absence of bluster and the unusual quiet every where as an indication.”71 The real giveaway was the silence; when the talking stopped, the worrying should have begun. Although the Fenians had succeeded in concealing their plans from the Canadian secret police, their strategy of a three-pronged assault on Canada quickly fell apart. The first move in the sequence was supposed to emanate from Chicago and Milwaukee, but only half the expected number of men turned up, and the transportation arrangements collapsed; the invasion of the west coast of Lake Huron and the march on London would never take place. On the Lake Erie front, General William Lynch failed to show up; in his absence, the Cleveland contingent was rushed to Buffalo, and a young Civil War veteran was given the command. Born on the Monaghan-Cavan border of Ireland in 1838, John O’Neill (Figure 9.3) imbibed a deep hatred of British rule from the grandparents who raised him; his father had died before he was born, and his mother and siblings emigrated to New Jersey shortly afterwards. His Anglophobia could only have intensified during the Famine, when his townland was hit particularly hard. In 1848, he left with a cousin to join his American family. At sixteen years old, he found work as a book salesman; two years later, he tried opening a Catholic bookstore in Richmond, Virginia. When the bookstore failed, he lied about his age, joined the United States Army, and headed west to participate in the so-called Utah War against the Mormons. It seemed like another false start; in August 1858, after a year of inaction and deprivation, he deserted and moved to San Francisco. But he was allowed back into the army two years later and served in California and Oregon. During the Civil War, he fought with the cavalry in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, earning a reputation for his courage in combat and rising through the ranks to become captain of the 17th US Colored Troops. When the war was over, he settled in Nashville, joined the Fenian Brotherhood, and sided with Roberts and Sweeny after the split from O’Mahony. The Tennessee regiment of Fenians left for Cleveland on 27 May and were ready for action in Buffalo three days later. O’Neill would have been one of the men whom McLaughlin observed going to and from O’Dea’s auction house.72

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9.3 John O’Neill (1838–78). After his victory over Canadian Volunteers in 1866, he became known as the “hero of Ridgeway” and was elected president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood in December 1867. In the face of much opposition from within the Brotherhood, he launched another attack on Canada in 1870. After its failure, he attempted an equally unsuccessful freelance Fenian operation against Manitoba the following year.

The Fenian secret service, led by the shadowy James Durant, had prepared much of the ground for O’Neill. John Canty, the spy who had been based in Fort Erie, was ready to accompany O’Neill across the border and provided him with information about the topography and the railway lines; it was probably Canty who supplied O’Neill with the maps that he needed. Equally important were the Fenians on board the uss Michigan, the one ship that could have stopped the flow of Fenians into Canada. On the night of the invasion, they plied the pilot with drink, set him up with a “lady friend,” and rendered

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him incapable of guiding the ship anywhere. The Fenians now had a free run into Canada.73 And so, in the early hours of 1 June, O’Neill took some 600 men across the Niagara River, with more to follow. His advance party, led by secondin-command Owen Starr, planted the Fenian flag on British soil amid cheers of defiance. “We come among you as the foes of British rule in Ireland,” ran the proclamation that Sweeny had prepared for the occasion. “We have no issue with the people of these Provinces, and wish to have none but the most friendly relations … We are here as the Irish army of liberation, the friends of liberty against despotism, of democracy against aristocracy, of the people against their oppressors.” And then came the call to his fellow countrymen: “To Irishmen throughout these Provinces we appeal in the name of seven centuries of British iniquity and Irish misery and suffering, in the names of our murdered sires, our desolate homes, our desecrated altars, our million of famine graves, our insulted name and race – to stretch forth the hand of brotherhood in the holy cause of fatherland, and smite the tyrant where we can.”74 Some of O’Neill’s men celebrated their arrival with a blowout liquid breakfast at Barney McNaney’s tavern, during which a number of the inhabitants, temporarily putting free drink above patriotic principles, joined in the festivities. “I regret to say,” McMicken would later remark, “the people of Fort Erie did not exhibit that lively interest in regard to the expulsion of the Fenians that they should have done.”75 After requisitioning as much food and as many horses as possible – and offering to pay with Fenian bonds – O’Neill and his men marched northwards to Frenchman’s Creek, where they set up camp. The site had probably been marked out by Canty well in advance.76

The nearest regiment of British soldiers was in Hamilton, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Peacocke. Placed in charge of the Niagara region, he drew up plans to encircle and defeat the Fenians. Members of the the Volunteer Thirteenth Infantry Battalion in Hamilton would link up with the Queen’s Own Rifles in Port Colborne, take the train towards Ridgeway, and march to Stevensville. Here, they would be joined by Peacocke’s regulars, coming in from Chippawa; together, they would push back the Fenian army to the Niagara River, where a Canadian steamboat would cut off their retreat to the United States.77

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In Port Colborne, Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Booker, a socially ambitious and militarily inexperienced auctioneer, assumed command of the combined militia forces. Late on the night of 1 June, he received reports that the Fenians at Frenchman’s Creek were drunk, disorganized, and there for the picking. Why not seize the initiative? He ordered his men onto the train, with the objective of recapturing Fort Erie; meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel John Stoughton Dennis of the Queen’s Own Rifles procured a steamboat and headed for the Niagara River. When Peacocke learned what was happening, he sent a countermanding order to Booker: stick to the original plan, and meet at Stevensville. Booker complied, but things soon began to go wrong. He left Port Colborne too early; Peacocke left Chippawa too late. Booker thought that he was expected to march from Ridgeway; Peacocke expected him to choose the departure point with discretion, after receiving information that the route was clear. When Booker was told that the Fenians were in the area, he chose to ignore the warnings. If the Fenians really were a drunken rabble – an earlier report that he did believe – easy victory and military glory lay just around the corner. Appearances were deceptive. The Fenian soldiers may have gone on a grand drunk when they arrived in Fort Erie, but many of them knew the hardness of war, and they were led by a shrewd and experienced commander. Possibly because of information received from Fenian spies or from intercepted telegraph messages, O’Neill had learned the basic outlines of Peacocke’s overall plan the night before it was to be implemented.78 Intending to confront the militia from Port Colborne before they could link up with the British regulars coming in from Chippawa, he marched his men from Frenchman’s Creek to Limestone Ridge – another location that had probably been scouted out by the Fenian secret service. O’Neill’s tactics were straight out the Civil War textbook. He placed skirmishers along both sides of Ridge Road, while holding his main force further back; the idea was to draw the militia towards open ground, where they would be decimated by rifle fire. As the Volunteers on either side of the road advanced, O’Neill realized that he himself was in danger of being outflanked, and he pulled his men further back; the militia had still not been drawn into the trap. So far, so good, for the Volunteers. But then, in the fog of war, everything went awry. Someone, either in the main Canadian column or among the skirmishers, thought that he saw cavalry, prompting Booker to take the

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classic defensive manoeuvre of forming a square – despite the fact that it would have been impossible for cavalry to traverse that terrain. When he realized that he was mistaken – that he had, in fact, exposed his men to Fenian fire – he ordered the column to re-form. Amid a confusion of bugle calls – to retire, to re-form the column, to advance, to retire – O’Neill seized his opportunity and ordered his full force to counterattack. The Volunteers scattered; the Fenians took possession of the field. It was the first victory of Irish soldiers over Crown forces since the Battle of Castlebar in 1798. Realizing that Peacocke was advancing from Chippawa with regular infantry regiments and an artillery battery, O’Neill decided to return to Fort Erie and take stock of the situation. If the Fenians in upstate New York and Vermont had begun their march on Montreal, he would carry on the fight, sacrificing his own men to pin down British troops and relieve the pressure on the main force of the Irish Republican Army. If no other incursions into Canadian territory had been made, he would cut his losses and return to Buffalo. More immediately, however, he had Fort Erie to contend with.79 Here, Dennis had landed his contingent of men – around eighty of them – and had started rounding up suspected Fenian stragglers. Some of them told him that the Fenians had been defeated in battle and were thoroughly demoralized. When Dennis received reports that a Fenian force ten times his size was heading towards him, he did not believe them. After the first shot was fired he ran away, leaving his men to conduct a house-to-house fight until they were overwhelmed. After taking around forty prisoners, O’Neill learned that the uss Michigan was back in action and that any further Fenian reinforcements from Buffalo would not be forthcoming. There had been no movement on the eastern front either. O’Neill had no choice but to recross the Niagara River. The United States Navy was waiting for him; on 3 June, the entire Fenian army was arrested midstream. Three days later, as some 5,000 Fenians were converging on Buffalo in the hope of continuing the fight, Andrew Johnson issued his Neutrality Proclamation: anyone involved in the “unlawful expedition” against Canada would be brought to justice. The Fenians on the border with Canada East were left stranded. The plan had been for 8,000 men to cross the border, with reinforcements to follow. But arriving at the front on 4 June, Sweeny had discovered that only 1,000 Fenians had reported for duty – far from enough to take on the British and

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9.4 Samuel Spear (1815–75). He led 1,000 Fenians into Canada East (presentday Quebec) in 1866, only to withdraw after a couple of days. Serving as the Senate wing’s secretary of war, he headed for the border again in 1870, only to arrive after the Irish Republican Army had already been defeated at Eccles Hill.

Canadian forces based in Montreal. The American government sent General George Meade to upstate New York and Vermont, with orders to confiscate the war matériel that was moving towards the border – just as he had done in Maine. On 6 June, the day of the Neutrality Proclamation, Sweeny was arrested. It seemed like the final blow. The diversionary movement to the west had fallen through, the number of Fenian volunteers had failed to meet expectations, the American authorities had seized Fenian arms and ammuni-

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tion, and now the Fenian commanding officer was in jail. Any chance of military success had evaporated. Despite all this, General Samuel Spear (Figure 9.4) pressed ahead the next day, leading 1,000 poorly fed and ill-equipped men from Vermont into the Eastern Townships (the southeastern area of present-day Quebec between the American border and the St Lawrence River). They took over four villages within a mile of the border, set up camp at Pigeon Hill, raised the Fenian flag, and raided local farms. The idea was to establish a bridgehead for Fenian volunteers coming in from New York and New England; failing that, the raid would at least serve as a gesture of defiance against the forces of the Crown. But the volunteers never arrived; the Americans had blocked them off at the border. Spear’s army lasted for two days on Canadian soil. On 9 June, with a combined force of British regulars and Canadian militia bearing down upon them, the Fenians rapidly retreated into Vermont, where the United States Army was waiting to relieve them of their weapons. As compensation for military defeat, they claimed a symbolic victory in their brief occupation of enemy territory and a captured Union Jack to be displayed at morale-boosting Fenian demonstrations in New York.80 Within those demonstrations lay a promise and a threat. They would be back. And the next time, they would get it right.

part three reactions t o r i d g e wa y



10

 “Known Rebbles” Challenges and Opportunities

After the repeated failures of Irish revolutionary movements – the United Irish Rising of 1798, Robert Emmet’s Rising of 1803, and the Young Ireland Risings of 1848–49 – the Battle of Ridgeway, or Limestone Ridge, assumed a symbolic importance that far exceeded its military significance. “For the first time in well nigh seventy years,” exulted the constitutional nationalist Alexander Martin Sullivan, “the red flag of England has gone down before the Irish green.” The news, he wrote, “fills our people with tumultuous emotions impossible to describe, impossible to conceal.”1 General John O’Neill, as he now was, acquired instant iconic status within the Fenian Brotherhood and used his popularity to push ahead with renewed invasion plans – a task that he would pursue with the obsessive drive of a monomaniac. There were more fundraising drives, more meetings and demonstrations, and more military preparations to break Britain’s North American empire. Along with such activities went a campaign to change the political balance of power in the United States. Charges of betrayal filled the air – even though it had become crystal clear after Eastport that the American government would not tolerate any violation of the Neutrality Act. But the Fenians remembered that Secretary of State William Seward had said – or was believed to have said – that the government would “acknowledge accomplished facts.”2 And they had been allowed to purchase vast stocks of surplus war matériel from the United States Army. Yet when it came to the crunch, President Andrew Johnson and William Seward had sided with the hereditary enemy and turned against revolutionaries who were trying to win for Ireland the same republican freedom that the United States had won for themselves. Had it not been for American interference, the Fenians believed, there would have been a full-scale Irish invasion of Canada. They were not the only ones who felt

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that way. Without “the energetic action of the American Govt. in the eleventh hour,” wrote the British consul in Buffalo, Henry Hemans, Canada would have faced “a most sanguinary struggle. Official semi-connivance and one substantial success would have swelled the Fenian raiders to the dimensions of an invading army.”3 If the only thing standing in the way of a successful invasion was the American government, reasoned the Fenians, then that government must be defeated. With congressional elections coming up in the fall of 1866, the Senate wing and the Radical Republicans in the United States formed a tactical alliance against President Johnson’s administration. Americans who wanted to annex Canada to the Empire of Liberty climbed on board the Fenian bandwagon. Politicians such as Nathaniel P. Banks, who a decade earlier had been in the forefront of the Know-Nothings, a Protestant political party opposed to Irish Catholic immigration, now tried to revise the neutrality laws in order to provide the Fenians with a clear path into Canada.4 These developments were watched with concern by the British authorities in the United States. From Washington, Frederick Bruce informed the foreign secretary, Lord Clarendon, that the Fenian movement should not be viewed as “a temporary madness which may be considered as extinguished by the late failures.” “On the contrary,” he wrote, “I dread it’s influence far more at the polls than I do in the field, and I only trust that the incapacity it’s leaders have shown, and the desire for action and excitement so strong in the Celtic race, will continue to blind them to the true course they ought to pursue here, with a view to embroiling the two countries.” In case the Celts were suddenly seized by a fit of Anglo-Saxon rationality, Bruce encouraged both the British and Canadian governments to pursue policies that would help Johnson and Seward to stay in power.5 In military terms, however, the situation remained unchanged. Beneath the inspirational impact of John O’Neill’s victory at Ridgeway, the fact remained that the grand Fenian plan to take British North America had failed. While O’Neill’s stock rose, General Thomas Sweeny’s fell. Three months after the raid, he was forced to resign as the secretary of war, the sacrificial victim of a military operation that had been thrust upon him and that he had known could not succeed. Lost in the celebrations over Ridgeway was the evidence that the Fenians could not in themselves match the combined strength of

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Canadian and British forces, that most Canadians had no wish to be liberated at the point of Fenian bayonets, and that attacks on Canada would do little or nothing to promote the cause of Irish independence. O’Neill’s victory directed Fenian energies towards unattainable objectives in British North America – although they were no less unattainable than those of the Fenians who wanted immediate action in Ireland.

Within Canada, the raids prompted inquiries into what had gone wrong at Ridgeway and Fort Erie, and new security measures were put in place to facilitate the arrest and trial of anyone involved in the attacks. In what appear to have been face-saving exercises by the government, the inquiries wound up exonerating Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Booker and Lieutenant Colonel John Stoughton Dennis.6 The new security measures, the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act and the Lawless Aggressions Act, were both passed on 8 June, when the Fenians under General Samuel Spear were still inside the Canadian border. With the suspension of habeas corpus, anyone who had participated in or assisted the raids or who was suspected of treason could be held in prison without trial for up to a year.7 The Lawless Aggressions Act sharpened the teeth of earlier legislation that had been drawn up in 1838 to counter the Patriot Hunters’ raids on Canada. Now, this legislation was extended to Canada East and amended so that not only foreign citizens but also British subjects (including anyone born in Ireland) who attacked Canada from the United States could be tried by regular courts or by courts martial. The penalty was death.8 When the legislation went into effect, there were some eighty-five suspected Fenians in the Toronto jail, with more being brought in by the day. Over half of them had been born in Ireland; of these, two-thirds were Catholic. Most of the prisoners did not fit the standard description of Fenian soldiers as battle-hardened Civil War veterans. Only thirty-two had fought in the Civil War, and only twelve of them were Irish-born.9 It is not clear, however, how many prisoners had actually been in the Irish Republican Army. After the raids, the net of suspicion was cast very widely, bringing in sightseers from Buffalo who came to visit the battleground, strangers in bars who seemed to know more than they should, and anyone else whose behaviour seemed out

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of place – including two secret policemen who were mistaken for Fenian spies, as well as a drunk man on a train who made jokes about the northwards march of the Irish Republican Army.10 Sorting all this out proved challenging for the authorities. “Owing to the indiscriminate manner in which arrests have been made and the loose manner in which the prisoners have been delivered at the gaol,” wrote the Toronto Crown attorney Robert Harrison, “I find great difficulty in progressing as I would desire.”11 Police chief William Prince concurred. “I trust that people will discontinue making absurd arrests,” he wrote to Macdonald. “There have been persons brought in here with no more evidence against them than there is against me.” When a new batch of prisoners arrived at the Toronto jail on 11 June, Prince reckoned that at least a third of them were innocent.12 A possible way of distinguishing actual from suspected Fenians was to repeat the approach that had been tried in Cornwall with Michael Murphy and his men – using the secret police to pose as prisoners and to acquire the relevant information. The Niagara sheriff staged the arrest of Charles Clarke for being “implicated in the late invasion” and locked him up in the county jail with nine prisoners. Three of them, Clarke reported, had fought with the Fenians.13 Upon his release, Clarke volunteered to deliver an encore performance in the Toronto jail. But he was too well known to play the part, and the most likely alternative, John McLaughlin, could have been recognized by some of the Buffalo men.14 In the end, the plan had to be shelved. Meanwhile, Elon Tupper was scouring the Niagara Peninsula for Fenians who had not made it back across the border. He had been in Fort Erie when the Irish Republican Army marched down Niagara Street carrying the green flag, and he had witnessed O’Neill demanding rations for 1,000 men. After trying to break through their lines to sound the warning, Tupper slipped onto the Buffalo ferry, doubled back into Canada, and linked up with Lieutenant Colonel George Peacocke at the village of Suspension Bridge, north of Niagara Falls. Following O’Neill’s retreat, Tupper arrested a couple of suspects in Fort Erie and a Catholic priest from Indiana who was burying the Fenian dead. Father John McMahon, it seemed, had not simply been performing his priestly duties but had aided and abetted the attempted invasion. When the prisoners were tried, he would be among those found guilty.15

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Charles Clarke had also been in the thick of things during the raid. When the Fenians reached Fort Erie, he was 20 miles away in Welland. He took the train that was carrying the first contingent of the Queen’s Own Rifles to Port Colborne, discussed the situation with John Stoughton Dennis, and set out to infiltrate the Fenian camp. Procuring a horse and passing himself off as a Fenian – presumably carrying the commission that Colonel Wheeler had given him – Clarke rode into the camp, spoke with a Fenian colonel, and assessed the size of O’Neil’s force. Reporting to Dennis later that night, he reckoned that there were 450 to 500 Fenian soldiers in the camp, with another 300 coming up to reinforce them. In the early morning of 2 June, he went to Ridgeway with the Queen’s Own Rifles and “took a soldier’s place” with them at the Battle of Limestone Ridge. “I thank God I am not hurt,” he told McMicken, “though men dropped by my side.” McMicken was impressed; in his report to Macdonald, he recommended that Clarke should be rewarded with a position in the customs service.16 After the battle, Clarke intensified his efforts to track down Fenians in and around Toronto. Many of them had already scattered, fearing that they would be arrested after the suspension of habeas corpus. Some went to Buffalo and Detroit, and over thirty of them relocated in Cincinnati.17 Among those who remained was Patrick Walsh, whose brother had been the treasurer of Oakville’s Hibernian Benevolent Society and a reluctant witness against Michael Murphy. On the grounds that Patrick Walsh was a “notorious Rebble” who captained a Fenian company and hired soldiers from the 47th Regiment to train his men in the art of drilling, Clarke arrested him on 11 June.18 But Walsh was let out on bail at the end of the month, and other “known Rebbles” whom Clarke located were not even being charged.19 John and Thomas Maguire were “noted Highbernians, or Fenians” who uttered “disloyal sentiments” and had been “absent from home” during the raid. An Irishman named Sullivan from the Norway district of Toronto (now the Upper Beach) had “cursed and damned the Government.” James Law, another “noted Rebble” (and a member of Michael Murphy’s rowing team eight years earlier) had declared that the soldiers who fought against the Fenians “all ought to be hung up on a tree and let hang there.” Another man had said, “To Hell with the Queen and the whole fraternity of the royal family.” Yet in all

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these cases, Clarke was not allowed to make any arrests. “I have spent over fifteen Dollars this last ten days getting information one way and another,” Clarke told McMicken, “and I now see it is all in vain … I do not find fault with the Government or its officers, but I do say that it is a pity that Rebbles are allowed to run at large.”20 It was no accident that rebels were being allowed to run at large. Macdonald wanted the suspension of habeas corpus to focus closely on those who had participated in or actively assisted the Fenian raids rather than to become a general means of suppressing any signs of disloyalty. On 21 June, he issued a circular to magistrates, warning them against “hasty and illjudged arrests” and insisting that all cases falling under the act be sent to his office for appraisal. “No arrests should be made on mere suspicion,” he declared. “Even if a party were known positively to belong to the Fenian organization it is not desirable that he should be arrested, as there is every reason to hope that late events will break up the whole of this illegal organization in Canada.”21 The circular, he told the conservative Catholic newspaper editor James Moylan, had been written “for the purpose of reassuring the Roman Catholics who were a great deal bullied … in several parts of Canada, especially among the Magistrates.”22 Macdonald continued to keep a tight rein on the magistrates and the detectives. In September 1866, he upbraided Judge Rolland MacDonald in St Catharines for arguing that people should be arrested “on mere suspicion of Fenianism”: Now this is a country of law and order, and we cannot go beyond the law. The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act gave no authority to the Government or the Magistrates of the Country to proceed without informations on oath. All that it did was to prevent any applications for bail or Habeas Corpus after first commitment … The consequence of allowing illiterate magistrates to arrest any man whom they chose to suspect (and that would be, in rural districts, every Roman Catholic) would be to drive all that class out of the Country, to ruin many a respectable family by forcing them to sacrifice their property; and to swell the ranks of the Fenian organization in the United States by every man who has been obliged to leave the province.23

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It was a remarkable display of restraint, grounded in both pragmatism and principle. Macdonald knew that widespread arrests of Irish Catholics would create a climate in which extreme forms of Fenianism and Orangeism could flourish. He had also been working hard to draw Irish Catholics into the Liberal-Conservative fold and did not want to lose their support. Besides, he reasoned, O’Neill’s retreat in the face of superior British forces meant that the Fenians in Canada did not constitute a threat to the state; cut off from their more powerful American allies, they could be contained. Such considerations coexisted with a genuine commitment to the rule of law; when he told the judge that “this is a country of law and order,” he meant exactly what he said. The result was that the government became a countervailing force against populist opposition to Irish Catholics and sought to unite rather than divide Canadians – leaving detectives such as Clarke in a state of intense frustration.

A similar display of restraint characterized the proceedings against the prisoners, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Immediately after the raids, pressure in Canada for swift and severe retribution was intense. Newspaper editorials were calling for rapid trials and executions, the chief justice of Canada West joined in the chorus, and family members of fallen soldiers wanted the extradition of Fenian leaders from the United States.24 The uncle of John Mewburn, a University of Toronto student who lost his life at Ridgeway, asked Macdonald whether the American government could be persuaded to hand over John O’Neill so that he could be tried in Canada for murder and robbery. “If my Nephew had been killed during a state of actual warfare between Canada and the United States,” he wrote, “the family of the deceased would not have uttered a word of complaint, accepting it was one of the natural consequences of legitimate warfare but this is a different case in point altogether.” “We have lost a noble boy,” he added, “beloved by us all and all who knew him.”25 In Washington, Frederick Bruce feared the consequences of a rush to judgment. Not only would executing the prisoners create Fenian martyrs and increase the likelihood of another attack, but it would also turn American public opinion against Canada and jeopardize the position of Johnson and Seward, whose informal anti-Fenian alliance with Britain was of critical importance.

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“The future relations of Canada with [the United States] and its deliverance from any chance of becoming the battle field of Fenianism,” Bruce believed, “will depend [to] a great measure on the tact & temper with which this question of the prisoners is managed.”26 “Let their trials be postponed as long as possible, in order to allow the present excitement to abate,” he advised Lord Monck. “If possible let no blood be shed.”27 As Bruce realized, the Canadian government had to take into account not only the “present excitement” but also the fact that Seward had let it be known that the American government would view with “serious concern” any severe measures against the prisoners – and if there was one thing that got up Canadian noses, it was the appearance of yielding to American demands. Asserting that “the course of justice cannot be interfered with at the dictation of a foreign Power,” Bruce insisted that he had reached his views entirely independently of Seward’s statement (which, he noted, was intended solely for domestic consumption), and he gave Monck permission to “quote my urgent representations” to the Canadian Cabinet.28 Among those urgent representations was a plea to “let these men be tried by ordinary forms of law” rather than by courts martial under the Lawless Aggressions Act.29 In Britain, both Colonial Secretary Edward Cardwell and his Conservative successor, Lord Carnarvon, agreed that courts martial would have terrible optics. It was much better, in their view, to have fair and impartial trials in regular courts, thus demonstrating the virtues of British justice and undercutting any American and Fenian accusations that the system was being rigged against the prisoners.30 The Canadian government got the point. Fully aware of the dangers of provoking the Fenians, alienating Irish Catholics, and angering the Americans, Macdonald and his Cabinet postponed the trials until October, four months after the Battle of Ridgeway. No one was tried by courts martial. Twenty-five men were found guilty and sentenced to death. All the sentences were commuted to twenty years in prison, and within six years, everyone had been released. As R. Blake Brown points out, this “relatively lenient treatment … stands in stark contrast to the experience of defendants in most state-security crises in nineteenth-century British North America.”31

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Beneath the world of high politics, the secret police were struggling after the intelligence failures of June 1866. “The [Fenians’] time and mode of attack,” wrote McMicken in August, “is of course kept entirely secret from the rank & file – it is confided to none but the Executive of the organization and it is more than probable that do what we may, positive and reliable information may not be obtained more than a day or two in advance, as was the case before.”32 Getting inside the executive seemed impossible, and the force was having trouble enough monitoring regular Fenian activities in American cities. Clarke had come under suspicion in Pittsburgh, and a “Fenian Sister” from Detroit had been making inquiries about him in Canada; if he were seen in Buffalo, he wrote, he “could not get away alive.”33 Patrick Nolan was also at risk in Buffalo, and John McLaughlin had been compromised by the indiscretion of Judge Rolland MacDonald in St Catharines – the same man reprimanded by John A. Macdonald for urging the arrest of suspected Fenians in Canada.34 In Chicago, Leonard Nightingale’s contract had expired, and a replacement was needed. “It is extremely difficult,” McMicken wrote, “to get men now who are capable of acting as detectives in regard to Fenian operations. My most useful men heretofore are rendered useless for further operations in the United States.”35 Among the new men, one appeared particularly promising. Somehow, Patrick Nolan had managed to turn his brother John, the former secretary of Toronto’s Hibernian Benevolent Society, into a spy. John Nolan had fled Canada after Michael Murphy’s arrest in April 1866 and moved to Troy, New York; he now agreed to work in Buffalo for the Canadian secret police. “He is entirely unknown to any other member of the Force except his Brother,” wrote McMicken, “through whom he is to communicate with me.”36 Very quickly, however, the plans fell apart. Patrick Nolan informed McMicken that five men had gone to John’s house in Buffalo, told him that they knew what he was doing, and said that they would shoot him unless he left town. Patrick also wrote that he himself had had enough, and he handed in his notice.37 McMicken did not buy it; there were no grounds for anyone to suspect John Nolan, and the story seemed like a “sheer fabrication.” Patrick Nolan, McMicken decided, needed to be watched, and Clarke was put in charge of the operation.38 What was actually going on is anyone’s guess. John returned to Toronto, continued his activities with the Hibernian Benevolent Society, and had nothing further to do with the force. Patrick seemed to change his mind

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about resigning, continued to send reports to McMicken until November 1866, and then dropped out altogether. Things did not go much better with the other recruits. On the recommendation of Clarke, McMicken hired Maurice de Courcey, a devout Catholic and an old soldier – “a fit man,” in Clarke’s estimation, “and well qualified in many respects if he could be kept sober.” De Courcey’s mission was to pass himself off as a deserter from the British Army, join the Fenians in Chicago, and offer his services as a drill instructor. But he evidently found it difficult to keep sober, made no effort to infiltrate the Fenians, and never sent any reports back to McMicken – and then he had the nerve to complain about not being paid. “I felt like kicking him,” wrote Clarke when the story came out.39 Worried about the silence in Chicago and fearing that de Courcey was in trouble, McMicken sent another detective, Edward Whitney, to the city. A Protestant Irishman who had fallen on hard times, Whitney was prepared “to act the part of a good (or bad) Catholic and join the Fenian Order.” But this was easier said than done. Unable to secure an invitation to join the Brotherhood, he was driven to dubious expedients, whether plying Fenians with drink in the hope that they would spill their secrets or plying their children with candy in the hope that they would reveal parental conversations. After a few months, he gave up and told McMicken that he was leaving for Indiana to run a brewery.40

Similar problems surfaced in Canada, where most of McMicken’s detectives were based.41 Their central tasks were to identify American Fenian agents and their Canadian contacts and to prevent any hit-and-run attacks on the Welland Canal. With these objectives in mind – and no doubt remembering that a key Fenian spy, John Canty, had been able to operate in the Niagara Peninsula – McMicken reorganized his force during the summer.42 Clarke, who had impressed him so much at Ridgeway, was appointed superintendent, and a new recruit, F.H. Burton, became his assistant. Based in Welland, Clarke visited the detectives in the field each week and sent his reports to Burton, with copies to McMicken.43 The organizational changes, however, could not compensate for individual inadequacies. Andrew Walsh and his son, who both joined the force in July, were dismissed for drunkenness in August; Joseph Schryer, who also signed on in July, was fired in September after being

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arrested for assault.44 McMicken also lost confidence in one of his longestserving detectives, John Armstrong, who had focused on corruption and counterfeiting cases but occasionally reported on Fenianism. Armstrong, McMicken reported, was not only “dreadfully expensive” but also employing “vile persons to instigate to crime just in order to bring himself eclat by detecting it.”45 That was the end of Armstrong’s career as a detective, although not of his correspondence with McMicken. “Do you think I am a man who will crawl to get in your favor?” he wrote, desperately trying to get back into his favour. “Don’t think that. I will not … I can do better.”46 Clarke himself was running into trouble. Elon Tupper, who had been passed over for promotion, refused to send any reports to him and went directly to McMicken instead.47 For his part, Clarke did not think much of Tupper’s detective work. As personal tensions came to a boil, Tupper penned a blistering letter to McMicken. Clarke, he wrote, had become “quite elevated with his position, so much so that many persons begin to entertain a perfect disgust for him.” He had been thrown out of his boarding house, “cannot talk without telling untruths or using profane language or insulting persons[,] females especially,” and was “nothing more or less than a living Blackguard.”48 At the same time, McMicken heard from John McLaughlin that Clarke had been “drinking heavily in Welland.” “As he is one of the best officers on the line,” McLaughlin added, “it would be a pity for him to lose himself.”49 Upon reading McLaughlin’s letter, McMicken immediately called Clarke to account. It was true, Clarke responded, that he had been “under the influence of liquor” in Toronto, but he knew what he was about. Stories that he had been getting drunk in Welland were completely false, although he did have the occasional glass of spirits. “I can call my god to witness,” he wrote, “since I grew up to be a man I never drank liquor to that excess I was incapable of performing any duty that I am fit for.” “I promise you as a man and a Mason,” he added, “that while I am in the force a drop of liquor I shall not taste, depend upon it.”50 Was he simply “telling untruths”? Lying, after all, was an integral part of his occupation. Did he keep his promise? Probably not. But he did keep his job. Clarke was indeed “one of the best officers on the line,” and given the other difficulties that McMicken had with his detectives, he was indispensable to the force.

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McMicken’s intelligence-gathering capabilities were circumscribed not only by his personnel problems but also by his inability to recruit reliable and wellconnected informers within the Roberts wing of the Brotherhood. It was not that he was short on offers; like Edward Archibald before him, he was inundated with letters from people who promised information for money, and like Archibald, he found the situation “perplexing and annoying beyond measure.” Almost all the stories that he heard were baseless, but there was always the danger that an accurate one might slip through. “I disliked being duped and made the medium of spending money needlessly and fruitlessly,” he told Macdonald, “while on the other hand I felt how blameworthy I might be considered if I did not avail myself of offered means of information that might turn out important and trustworthy.”51 Among those who contacted McMicken was A.F. Miller, who claimed to be an associate of John O’Neill and to have inside information about the timing of the next attack. But McMicken was skeptical, and he instructed Clarke to investigate. Miller was exposed as a fraud.52 Another approach came from Richard Keane in New York, who had joined the Roberts wing and who offered his services as a spy, cash in advance. McMicken went along for a while and received accurate information about the lack of preparedness for another raid: the shortage of funds, the insufficient number of guns, and the exaggerations that were made to prevent defections to James Stephens’s wing of the Brotherhood, with its emphasis on revolutionizing Ireland rather than attacking Canada. But when Keane demanded that he be hired as a government detective and insisted that he continue to be paid in advance, McMicken terminated the arrangement.53 Meanwhile, Solicitor General James Cockburn received an offer from the most unlikely of sources, Denis C. Feely, the Irish nationalist from Cobourg who in 1865 had called for “national vengeance” on Thomas D’Arcy McGee and who in the early 1880s would help to organize the Clan na Gael’s bomb campaign against Britain. After the Ridgeway raid, Feely had been “hounded out of Canada by the bigotry of a cowardly herd” and had taken refuge in Rochester. In September, he wrote to Cockburn, the member of Parliament for Cobourg, telling him about a criminal organization based in Boston that was planning to plunder Canadian border towns under the guise of Fenianism. (Pierrepont Edwards, the acting consul in New York, picked up the same story from a different source a few months later.) It was difficult, Feely con-

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tinued, to know what the Fenian plans and intentions were, but he would be willing to help the Canadians find out and had already received offers of money for information. Cockburn thought that the lead was well worth pursuing. Feely was “perfectly reliable,” Cockburn wrote, and although he strongly supported Fenianism in Ireland, he would “do all in his power to prevent an attack” on Canada. Why not, he asked Macdonald, employ him as a “secret informant” in Rochester? There is no record of Macdonald’s reply, but the invitation was declined; presumably, the risk of Feely becoming a double agent was too great.54

Faced with all these difficulties, McMicken was reduced to educated guesses about Fenian intentions. Neither Henry Hemans in Buffalo nor Lieutenant Colonel Peacocke were much help; both men, he concluded, were “too excitable, credulous and indecisive,” and Peacocke was incompetent as well.55 At the end of July, Clarke’s sources were saying that another raid was imminent, and fears were focused on the Grand Picnic that the Fenians were planning in Buffalo on 21 August. Could this be the front for an invasion? Tupper believed so, while McLaughlin thought otherwise.56 With a Canadian gunboat on the alert, McMicken crossed the border to see for himself. The gathering, he recorded with relief, was a fizzle; fewer than 1,000 men were in the procession, and only 250 of them were armed. No prominent politicians attended, and O’Neill did not say much in his speech – but acting, not speaking, was O’Neill’s strong point. McMicken kept prudently quiet about the main event at the picnic – a re-enactment of the Battle of Ridgeway, when the Queen’s Own Rifles ran away – after which the entire cast retired for celebratory drinks.57 In the Niagara Peninsula, the detectives continued to watch for signs of cross-border activity and pro-Fenian sentiment. Clarke and Tupper kept their eyes on the two doctors, Elliott and Wall, whom John Armstrong had named in February as Fenian leaders in the area.58 A new detective on the force, Samuel Amm, heard that a schoolteacher in Chippawa, Cornelius Sullivan, had been arrested in Ireland for Fenianism and was spending a suspicious amount of time in Buffalo; he was, according to Amm’s source, “a very dangerous man.”59 Also dangerous was the Shamrock Saloon at Suspension Bridge, with its “hard cases” and an owner who said that the next time O’Neill

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arrived, they would be ready to join him.60 Similar sentiments emanated from Mathew Hart’s tavern in Slabtown, where a Fenian circle consisting of canal workers met every Saturday night. If the Fenians had “got this far at the last raid they would have got plenty of help and would never have been driven back,” one of them told Detective James Allen. “Such a state of things,” Allen wrote, “I think should not exist under a Protestant Government.”61 More reports were coming in from farther afield. A lawyer in Sarnia damned the queen and declared that he would “help fight her tomorrow,” a labourer in Hamilton ran a Fenian circle out of his house in Wellington Square, and Fenians from Rochester were organizing Fenian circles in Lindsay and Peterborough. Macdonald received information that the Irish in Ops, Emily, and Ennismore Townships – the area northwest of Peterborough – were “in sympathy with the movement to overthrow British rule in Ireland.” When an attempt was made to raise a Volunteer force in Ennismore, the report ran, only five men out of fifty turned up, and most of the others took temporary refuge in the United States.62 Some of the stories can be dismissed out of hand. A Scottish Orangeman (who was briefly employed by McMicken as a detective) came up with the tale that nuns in London were stashing away Fenian guns in anticipation of the next attack.63 But the overall picture in Canada West indicates that Fenianism continued to simmer after the raids, and according to Elon Tupper, it was reviving in Toronto; the Fenians in the city, he told McMicken in December, “are as active as they have ever been and are better organized than ever they were.”64 Although Frederick William Ermatinger’s reports in Canada East have not survived, it is reasonable to assume that something similar was happening in Montreal and Quebec. One of Frederick Bruce’s informers told him that Canadian Fenians were planning to assassinate Sir John Michel, the commander-in-chief of the British forces in Canada, and to “fire the Public Buildings at Ottawa” when the next invasion occurred. Among the names that he gave were Francis Bernard McNamee and one Shamrock Murphy in Montreal, along with others in Toronto, Peterborough, and Smithville.65 Despite – or because of – the incursions into Canada, support for Fenianism in the country did not appear to be fading. William Roberts and John O’Neill had demonstrated that they were serious and that the struggle was far from over. In doing so, they gave hope to those Irish Canadians who felt that the Orangemen boxed them in, who believed that they would be better

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off if Canada were annexed to the United States, and who continued to support the goal of an independent Irish republic. At the end of June 1866, “An Irish Protestant” in Toronto wrote to the Irish American claiming that most Canadians wanted to join the United States and that if the country’s benighted population had only realized that “the object of Fenianism was simply the redemption of Ireland, and the overthrow of British rule in this colony,” they would not have stood in its way. Although he deeply regretted the loss of life at Ridgeway, he added, he was “fully sensible that every bullet fired upon the occasion was forged and provoked by English oppression which has so long subjected us to pestilence, famine, expatriation and the sword.”66 Such attitudes could be hardened by ethno-religious tensions. Although Macdonald pursued a policy of moderation, the raids resulted in increased suspicion of and hostility towards Irish Catholics in Canada, particularly towards those who had voiced Irish nationalist views, whether they were Fenians or not. One of the central reasons for Macdonald’s moderation was his awareness of the strength of popular assumptions that all Irish Catholics were closet Fenians. Irish Catholics who faced discrimination in the workplace, or whose friends had escaped Canada in anticipation of a post-raid crackdown, or who were themselves subjected to Orange taunts were good candidates for the Brotherhood. As a correspondent to the Irish Canadian put it, “the Orangemen of this Province are doing more in strengthening the cause of Fenianism than all the Fenian sympathisers in Canada, East and West. They will make us disloyal … and then upbraid us for our disloyalty.”67 Concern about the fate of the Fenian prisoners, together with anger that they included a Catholic priest, doubtless contributed to the process of radicalization. In Buffalo, Tupper picked up stories that a Fenian who had lived in St Catharines was “trying to organize a band to go to Toronto to break open the jail and liberate the prisoners.”68 According to Tupper, the Fenian head centre Patrick O’Dea had declared that if any of the prisoners were hanged, the judge and jury ought to pay with their own lives. “This of course is only talk,” Tupper added, “but it shows their feeling toward us.”69 There was always the danger, however, that talk could be the prelude to action. Crown attorney Robert Harrison, who played a leading part in the prosecution, received blood-curdling death threats from Fenians in Chicago and New York. His house was put under armed guard, and he prudently decided not to go out at night.70 The detectives in the Niagara Peninsula were put on full

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alert during the trials in case a Fenian faction launched retaliatory attacks on the Welland Canal.71 And Tupper learned in early December that discussions were under way in New York to send a raiding party across Lake Ontario to free the prisoners.72 If such a plan was indeed being considered, it is likely that Edward O’Meagher Condon, one of the founders of Fenianism in Toronto, was in the thick of it. Earlier in the year, Condon had been in charge of plans to spring Michael Murphy and his fellow prisoners from the Cornwall jail, but he had decided that the operation was too risky.73 As it turned out, Murphy and his men did not need external assistance to break out of prison. Over the summer, they had been digging a passage under the prison wall. During the night of 1 September, under the cover of a thunderstorm, five of them slipped past the sentries, found a boat, and sailed across the St Lawrence River to freedom. They travelled by rail to Buffalo and were greeted by enthusiastic supporters at every stop.74 Murphy stayed in the city, where he opened up a tavern, the Irish Arms; the double meaning would not have been lost on his patrons. Murtagh Moriarty went on to New York, before crossing the Atlantic to organize the County Kerry component of the planned Fenian rising – and to spend several more years behind bars. In Cornwall, a grand jury investigated the escape and were less than impressed with the jail. “We find it very insecure and inefficient for the retention of prisoners,” they reported, “and only wonder that we found any remaining there.”75 It may have been embarrassing for the government, but it got Macdonald off the hook; he was spared a trial that he knew the prosecution would lose. “I do not regret much the escape of Michael Murphy & others from Cornwall,” he told Lord Monck.76

While Murphy, Moriarty, and their fellow Fenians were tunnelling their way out of prison, Charles Clarke was heading to Troy, where the Roberts Fenians were holding their first convention after the raids. Clarke’s mission was to see whether the leaders had settled on a time for the next attack and to gather any other information that he could about the state of the Brotherhood.77 It was a highly dangerous enterprise. He was known in Toronto and Buffalo, had come under suspicion in Detroit and Pittsburgh, and had been recognized in upstate New York. If his true identity were discovered in Troy, McMicken told

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Macdonald, there would be “little chance of escape with his life.”78 Disguise was essential: he shaved off his whiskers, bought himself a “broad brimmed Rowdy hat,” and changed his appearance so much that even one of his fellow detectives did not recognize him. Reprising the role that he had assumed at the Fenian convention in Pittsburgh the previous February, he pretended to be the head centre of Henry County’s Fenian circle in Clinton, Missouri, and checked into Troy’s International Hotel as Cornelius O’Sullivan.79 Good liars need good memories, and Clarke’s failed him on this occasion. In one of his early reports from Troy, he told McMicken that he had met William Roberts and Thomas Sweeny in their private room, where they apparently told him that they planned to attack Canada immediately, while American political parties were bidding for their support. A week later, however, he wrote that he had met only Sweeny and had not spoken to Roberts at all.80 What McMicken made of this inconsistency is impossible to say. In any case, the fact that Sweeny was deposed as secretary of war during the convention meant that anything he might have told Clarke would have carried little or no weight. To test the various reports that he was receiving, McMicken sent his detectives to Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester to visit gunshops and find out how many rifles had been sold. There was no evidence that the Fenians were buying arms to send into Canada, and rumours that they were gathering in large numbers near the border were “totally void of truth.” A few emissaries had come into the country, McMicken reported, but they were not arming Fenian circles.81 Still, they were not simply making social calls either. En route to visiting the Montreal Fenians Francis Bernard McNamee and John Carroll, one of the emissaries, John Lennon, travelling under the pseudonym Reynolds, took notes on the armoury and Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, as well as the Ottawa and Prescott Railway. Michael Scanlan, the head centre of the Chicago Fenians, travelled to Toronto and Montreal. The Fenians may not have constituted an immediate threat to Canada, but there could be no doubting their long-range plans.82 The detective best placed to discover those plans was Charles Clarke. Although he had not covered himself in glory at Troy, he had at least covered his identity. His disguise had fooled one of the Fenian senators with whom he had roomed in Pittsburgh the previous February, and he was able to spend four undetected days at the convention. Unwilling to push his luck, he decided

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not to stay longer – even if it meant missing the much-anticipated appearance of Michael Murphy on the last day of the convention.83 Before leaving, however, he befriended two delegates from Brooklyn, Michael Mulligan and Jeremiah O’Brine, who took him for a “zealous Fenian”; they were the men who had introduced him to Sweeny. “I even had a shake hands with Gen. O’Neil,” Clarke wrote, “though seeing him in the Fenian camp nigh Fort Erie.”84 Clarke now had an entrée to Fenian circles in New York, the heart of the movement. He visited O’Brine in Brooklyn at the end of September and was immediately invited to give a speech to Mulligan’s circle. Introduced as a Fenian from Missouri, where “all the Irish men were ready to strike England in Canada,” Clarke spoke to over 150 Fenians about the need to strike a blow before the elections in November. The response was underwhelming; the Fenians in Brooklyn, Clarke reported, were demoralized, and if anything was being planned for the fall, they had been left in the dark. “I must say,” he told McMicken, “that the Fenians here are very different to what I have seen in Pittsburgh or Troy as they seem to be the very lowest kind. They are the poorest looking set of ragamuffins I ever seen.” The next day he went to Sweeny’s Hotel in Manhattan, a popular Fenian hangout, and much to his surprise encountered Michael Murphy and Murtagh Moriarty having some afternoon drinks. “They do not know me,” he assured McMicken, “and indeed I do not feel the least alarmed if they even did as I believe they are too cowardly to touch me in day light & I do not intend they shall get the chance after night.”85 Things were looking good for McMicken’s top detective. Back in Welland, Clarke met Abner Newcomb, “the head of the secret service for ny state,” who had come with another detective to extradite American counterfeiters in the town jail. Clarke and the American detectives quickly struck a deal: in return for intelligence that he provided about counterfeit rings in Buffalo and Brooklyn, they promised to give him “every information that comes within their reach touching the movement of the Fenians in the United States.”86 When he returned to Brooklyn in December, Clarke met Newcomb, who introduced him to William P. Wood, “the chief of the Detective Force of the United States.”87 On Newcomb’s advice, he bought “a German silver plate … with the following engraved on it Deputy U.S. Martial.” “I wear it on my vest on the left side, covered from view by my coat,” he told McMicken. “In case of being

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recognized all I would have to do would be to expose it to the men. It would bring to my assistance all that would be ne[ce]ssary for my safety.”88 With his insurance policy tucked under his coat, Clarke continued to work his contacts in New York. Through them, he fell in with a Fenian organizer by the name of J. O’Gorman, who worked closely with the leadership. On 3 January 1867, O’Gorman invited Clarke to meet General Charles Carroll Tevis, General Samuel Spear, and President William Roberts. Partly through luck and partly through judgment, Clarke had found his way to the top of the Fenian Brotherhood.89

11

 “Best-Laid Schemes” Infiltrating the Fenian Brotherhood

Detective Charles Clarke was not the only person who was transmitting information directly from the top of the Fenian Brotherhood to the intelligence centres of the Crown. One of the men he shook hands with during his first meeting in New York with William Roberts and the Senators had come there with the express purpose of selling Fenian secrets to the British government. In January 1867, Charles Carroll Tevis (Figure 11.1) had offered his services to the British minister at Washington, Frederick Bruce, and was now trying to demonstrate his worth. Bruce, who had had his fill of low-level informers, was suitably impressed. “The ordinary class of informers,” he wrote, “are ignorant and ill informed and think they increase their importance and value by reporting all the exaggerated rumours current among the ordinary members of the Fenian brotherhood among whom it is the interest of the leaders to foster delusive notions as to the strength and resources of the organization.” But Tevis was no ordinary informer; he was a military adviser to Roberts with inside information about the Brotherhood and its Canadian connections. His assessment of the military situation was the same as Clarke’s, perhaps not surprisingly since they based their reports on a set of common conversations: the Roberts wing did not have the funds to launch another invasion. “It is satisfactory to find that there is no immediate cause of apprehension with reference to Canada,” commented Bruce, before sending the substance of Tevis’s report to the commander-in-chief of the British forces in Canada, Sir John Michel.1 Similar information was coming in from Chicago, where George Mothersill had taken over from Edward Whitney. Recommended by Clarke and described by Gilbert McMicken as a “very active and promising young fellow,” Mothersill was an American-born Civil War veteran who had fought with the Union

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11.1 Charles Carroll Tevis (1828–1900). In 1866, he was given the responsibility of leading the attack on Canada from Chicago and Milwaukee but was unable to procure the necessary boats. Criticized for the failure, he sought revenge on the Fenian leaders by providing the British government with information about Fenian plans in early 1867. In the mid-1880s, he was back on the British payroll, plotting to undermine the Home Rule movement.

Army. Operating under the name of Philip Kavanagh, he infiltrated the McManus circle (“the most important one in the city”) and sent regular reports to Canada.2 On Christmas Eve in 1866, McMicken sent his assessment of these reports to John A. Macdonald’s political lieutenant, Alexander Campbell, who had assumed responsibility for the secret service while Macdonald was in England completing the negotiations for Confederation. The number of Chicago

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circles had gone down from fifteen to five, and Fenian fundraising efforts were faltering. “I trust that a few weeks will serve to satisfy us that the whole thing has gone down,” McMicken wrote.3 After assessing the intelligence from New York and Chicago and discussing matters with Michel, Campbell concluded that “the Fenian affair has dwindled into insignificance.” It was time, then, to order “the total withdrawal of the detectives employed in the United States” and to “reduce things to their normal state” within Canada.4 While Campbell was making his decision, McMicken was in New York gathering evidence for the British government in connection with the upcoming trial of Stephen Meany, a Senate wing Fenian who had been arrested the previous November while on a mission to England and charged with treason-felony.5 McMicken’s own inquiries about the state of the Brotherhood corroborated those of Clarke and Tevis; there was a wide gap between Fenian ambitions and abilities.6 Ever on the lookout to press home the advantage, McMicken discovered Roberts’s post office box number in New York and suggested to Campbell that letters from Canada to that address could be intercepted and opened. “With judgment, discretion and caution,” he wrote, “this might be an effective means of discovery in regard to parties implicated and to plans and projects.”7 More immediately, however, McMicken was facing the irony that the greatest success of the secret police – breaking into the upper echelons of the Roberts wing – was resulting in plans to shut the force down. If the cloak of illusion, delusion, and exaggeration had been torn away to reveal nothing of substance underneath – if Fenianism in North America had become little more than a scarecrow – then there was no need to spend so much time and money investigating it. The layoffs began immediately. All the American-based detectives – with the exception of John McLaughlin in Buffalo, whose contract expired in March – were either terminated or brought back home. In Canada, Samuel Amm and Andrew Coulter received their notice at the end of January; so too did James Allen, who had been in the force since its inception.8 Two further dismissals were planned for February, and Campbell wanted F.H. Burton, the assistant superintendent, out as well. Since his appointment the previous August, Burton had spent most of his time laid up with gout at his home in Port Huron, “without doing any duty whatever.” He could not, however, be removed without Macdonald’s permission. “It will be a scandal,” Campbell

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told Macdonald, “if it gets into the papers and I think you had better let us stop it.”9 Burton went, a scandal was avoided, and operations in the United States were wound down. McMicken assured Campbell that his reduced force “for present purposes is ample” and that his best detectives were still in the force. But his remaining men needed revolvers. “There were a number of good ones taken from Mike Murphy and his men at the time of his arrest – might they not be used?” he inquired. He also wanted to maintain the illusion of strength. “I have ordered from Toronto six metal badges of this form: Provincial Police No. 102 which the men will carry conspicuously attached to the coat on the breast,” he told Campbell. “I make the numbers run high for it is well the public should imagine and believe the force to be numerous – none of my force knows its strength but my clerk and the belief of its being strong is nearly equivalent to its actually being so without the expense.”10 It may have been a good dodge, but one is still left wondering why secret policemen would want to advertise their existence in this way.

All was quiet on the Canadian front, and nothing seemed likely to happen in Ireland. James Stephens, true to form, had repeatedly promised that there would be a rising in Ireland before 1866 was out, and in November, McMicken had voiced his concern that such an event could stimulate Fenianism in North America. If there were an outbreak in Ireland, he wrote, the damage could be contained by establishing a news blackout; nothing about an Irish rising should be transmitted by the Atlantic cable to North America, giving British troops time to defend the border before the news reached the United States by steamship.11 By Christmas, however, the danger seemed past: “A rising in Ireland is so utterly hopeless,” he wrote, “that I think we may abandon the idea of its being attempted – this once accepted generally Fenianism dies in America.”12 Yet again, the Fenian will to attempt the apparently impossible was being underestimated. An expedition against Campobello Island seemed utterly hopeless, but it had occurred nonetheless. Fenian attacks in Canada West and Canada East appeared the stuff of fantasy, but they had happened anyway – and now a rising in Ireland was being written off in the same way. Clarke had reported from New York in January that Irish American Fenian officers were

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returning to Ireland with revolution in mind, and Pierrepont Edwards, the acting British consul in New York, had received similar information.13 On both sides of the Atlantic, however, the reports were slotted into familiar assumptions about Fenian bluster. In the United Kingdom, the government was congratulating itself for defeating Fenianism and was preparing to lift the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, which had been passed in February 1866.14 In Canada, Clarke was back in Welland, working on ordinary decent crime, keeping an eye out for itinerant Fenians, and looking forward to the wedding of his daughter in Toronto.15 His connection with Roberts had served its purpose and could always be reactivated in the unlikely event that circumstances changed. The trouble was that the British and Canadians had been watching the wrong horse. Most of the attention in Canada was focused on the Roberts wing, for obvious reasons; in Ireland, all eyes were on James Stephens. But Stephens had failed to deliver on so many promises that he had finally run out of credit. At a meeting of the Fenian leadership on 29 December, the anger towards him was so intense that the Civil War veteran John McCafferty pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot him; by the time the meeting was over, Stephens had been deposed from the movement that he founded. Tom Kelly became the military leader – and Tom Kelly, like McCafferty, was deadly serious about launching a revolution in Ireland. In early January, Kelly sailed to France. With him were other prominent Irish American Fenians, as well as General Gustave-Paul Cluseret, a French soldier of fortune who had agreed to become the commander of the Irish Revolutionary Army. Arriving in Paris, they began their preparations; later in the month, Kelly and his fellow revolutionary William Halpin travelled to London to establish a provisional government of the Irish Republic, in conjunction with the provincial head centres in Ireland. But the Irish Americans who had arrived before them, in conjunction with Irish revolutionaries based in England, had plans of their own – developed by John McCafferty – to attack Chester Castle and seize its large quantity of arms and ammunition, take over the train to Holyhead in Wales, commandeer the mail ship to Dublin, distribute the war matériel to the Fenians in Ireland, and begin the insurrection on 11–12 February. Condemned by Kelly as a species of madness, the plan was aborted when the authorities were tipped off by an informer, John Joseph Corydon. But the Fenians in Kerry, Murtagh Moriarty included, did not get

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the message and went ahead with what they assumed was part of a general rising – with the result that Moriarty was arrested, and the Kerry Fenians scattered into the mountains.16 That was not, however, the end of the revolutionary movement. Kelly pressed on with plans to rise on 5 March; large numbers of men were to assemble at Tallaght Hill near Dublin, drawing troops out of the city and enabling Fenians within the city to take key strategic points. In the rest of the country, small bands of men would cut lines of communications and attack isolated forces of the Crown before melting away and regrouping for further assaults. Even had everything gone right, the chances of success were remote; significantly, Cluseret decided to go back home before the insurrection started. Everything did not go right. Thanks partly to Corydon and partly to lowerlevel informers, the authorities in Dublin knew the broad outlines of the plan and had prepared accordingly. To make matters worse for the Fenians, there was a ferocious storm on the night of the rising. Despite the wind, rain, and sleet, around 6,000 men assembled at Tallaght Hill, but in the face of shifting plans, poor communications, uncoordinated leadership, insufficient arms, and British military readiness, they were forced to disperse. In the centre of the city, Joseph Denieffe waited for orders that never came. The rising in Dublin petered out in confusion, with over 200 arrests and with two deaths during an attack on the Tallaght barracks. Elsewhere in the country, local outbreaks were suppressed by superior forces. Some 2,000 men turned out in Cork, where William Mackey Lomasney assumed a leading role – not least in the sporadic guerrilla campaign that followed their defeat.17 Desperate to rekindle the revolution, Kelly issued an urgent appeal to Irish Americans for men, money, and matériel. Answering the call, his supporters in New York acquired a ship, stashed it with arms and ammunition, and recruited around forty volunteers, most of whom had served in the Civil War. In April, the Jacmel, soon to be renamed Erin’s Hope, set out for Sligo. After a difficult and sometimes dangerous crossing, the volunteers learned that the rising that they had come to join had collapsed. Thirty-one men eventually landed at Helvick Head in County Waterford; within hours, twenty-eight of them had been captured. But there was an opportunity even in defeat. Irish-born American citizens such as John Warren and Augustine Costello presented themselves as innocent

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victims of British tyranny who had been imprisoned without trial simply because they espoused the principles of American republicanism. All American citizens, they insisted, must be treated equally, irrespective of birth. In contrast, the British government asserted that allegiance was perpetual: anyone born in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland remained a subject for life. Demanding that the American government take action to protect them, the prisoners generated significant support in the United States and succeeded in heightening Anglo-American tensions – but not to the point of war. The longer-term significance of their actions lay in a different direction: the passage in the United States of the Expatriation Act of 1868, which affirmed the right of men to determine the country to which they owed allegiance.18

In Buffalo, Henry Hemans was rattled by the planned attack on Chester Castle in February 1867 and by the reports that he was receiving from McLaughlin that the Fenians were secretly preparing an attack on Canada in the spring. The Canadian government was about to let McLaughlin’s contract expire, and McLaughlin was the only detective upon whom Hemans could rely – at a time when Fenianism seemed to be reviving. He sent an urgent letter to McMicken, asking him to make the strongest possible case to Campbell for having one or two detectives in Buffalo.19 McMicken was caught between the dangers of alarmism and of complacency. Other reports were coming in from Rochester and Chicago about an imminent raid, but they were all very vague, and the January reports from Clarke and Tevis in New York pointed in the opposite direction.20 McMicken conveyed Hemans’s concerns to Campbell and laid out his own difficulty: on the one hand, he was reluctant to suggest that Fenian surveillance should be discontinued, but on the other, he could not specify anything that warranted its continuation. “I shall await your instructions on the subject,” he concluded.21 While McMicken was waiting, news came through about the Fenian rising of 5 March. It cut both ways: the fact that it had failed could only demoralize those Fenians who were focused on Ireland, but the fact that it had been attempted might strengthen the determination of those who wanted to hit Canada. “It is easy to imagine with the excitement consequent upon the rising in Ireland,” McMicken told Campbell, “that funds will be more readily contributed.”22 Inclined not to take any chances, McMicken proposed sending

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Mothersill back to Chicago, Clarke to New York and Philadelphia, and other detectives to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. McLaughlin had already been told to keep on the lookout in Buffalo and was promised up to $500 if another raid occurred and he reported it beforehand. “This for a time will, I think, make him as watchful as if on a stated salary,” McMicken wrote.23 Campbell agreed to McMicken’s proposals. Events in Ireland had changed the situation; plans to scrap the secret police were shelved.

In New York, Clarke resumed contact with Roberts and came away with no doubt about the current state of affairs. The failed rising had strengthened Roberts’s conviction that “Canada was the only stepping stone to Ireland,” but it had also damaged fundraising efforts and pushed back the invasion plans by at least six months. “I am willing to risk the situation I hold from you,” Clarke told McMicken, “that you will not see a raid for some time to come.”24 Elsewhere, the Roberts Fenians were still active. From Chicago, Mothersill reported that a new circle had been formed and that he had been nominated as an officer in a Fenian company. He planned to decline the offer since “they will think more of me for my modesty.” The strategy worked; he was given charge of two companies and responsibility for drilling the volunteers. He also planned to attend a fundraising ball put on by Fenian sisters and was rather looking forward to getting “acquainted with them.” “I attended the Ball and enjoyed myself wonderfully,” he subsequently reported. But the fear of being discovered was never far from the surface, and he requested a revolver from McMicken.25 Examining similar reports from other American cities, McMicken was convinced that Clarke was right: the Fenians were numerous and willing, but the money was coming in very slowly, and Roberts would not move “until he really believes himself in a position to do something effectual.”26 Looking to cut costs, confirmed in his view that there was no immediate danger, but aware that the Fenians were unpredictable enough to need monitoring, Alexander Campbell decided in April to employ only two detectives in the United States – one in Chicago and the other in New York.27 In Chicago, George Mothersill had been working his way up the Brotherhood and had recently supplied McMicken with a detailed breakdown of Fenian circles in the city; his services would be retained.28 Casting around for a suitable detective

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in New York, McMicken hit upon William Montgomery, a former Toronto policeman and an Irish Protestant whom Clarke had recommended; he would operate under the name of William McMichael.29 Within Canada, the force was reduced to three: William Smith, Elon Tupper, and Clarke himself. Doubtless at Campbell’s insistence, McMicken began sending regular financial reports to Ottawa. The total monthly payroll was $500; American operations were usually around $300 a month but reached over $650 in June, when Clarke was hobnobbing with the Roberts family. Annual expenses for McMicken’s force came to around $7,500; assuming that Frederick William Ermatinger’s costs in Canada East were roughly the same, the overall annual expenditure in 1867 was one-tenth of the figure of $150,000 that is usually given. Far from rolling in money, the secret service was operating on a shoestring budget.30

In May, Macdonald returned to Canada, resumed control of the secret police, and asked for a report on Fenian activities in the United States. It was difficult to tell, McMicken replied, because of Campbell’s orders to cut back American operations, but all the evidence at hand indicated that the Fenians did not have enough money for another attack. Instead, they were spreading rumours that were intended to alarm the Canadian government, forcing it to spend more on defence and stimulating a “spirit of dissatisfaction” within Canada – especially among anti-Confederates in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Still, McMicken did not want to be taken by surprise again.31 He travelled to Detroit, where he met the father-in-law of the Fenian head centre from Chicago, Michael Scanlan, one of the men who had visited Toronto and Montreal the previous year. Scanlan’s father-in-law had lived in Canada and was an admirer of Thomas D’Arcy McGee; family gatherings must have been interesting. Nothing conclusive came out of the meeting, but McMicken still had an ace up his sleeve in the form of Charles Clarke. In June, after discussing various options, the two men agreed upon a plan: Clarke would travel directly to New York and present Roberts with a pony for his son.32 While the arrangements were in the works, Macdonald learned about another potentially valuable source of information. At the beginning of May, Rudolph Fitzpatrick, the assistant secretary of military affairs, contacted the postmaster at Fort Erie, who forwarded an offer to Macdonald: in return for a “fair salary” and a pardon for his part in the Ridgeway raid, Fitzpatrick would

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provide regular information about Fenian invasion plans and would supply “photographs of Fenian Organizers and Spies that are at present working in Canada.”33 At first, Macdonald ignored the offer. But as reports of renewed Fenian activity came in over the next few weeks, he decided to follow it up.34 By that time, however, Fitzpatrick had taken his wares elsewhere – to the British consulate in New York, where Pierrepont Edwards snapped him up. Within days, Edwards sent the Canadian authorities a photograph of the “Chief Canadian Organizer,” Michael Slattery, who had just returned to New York with $2,000 contributed to the cause by Canadian Fenians. His brother Patrick was a tailor in Ottawa and would subsequently be identified as the treasurer of a Fenian circle in the city.35 According to Clarke, who had gone drinking with Fitzpatrick in March, Fitzpatrick was expelled from his office “for swindling” in early June 1867, shortly after he had contacted the British consulate.36 If so, the expulsion did not last for long. Edward Archibald’s daughter described Fitzpatrick as a key figure in the intelligence network, and he remained at the Fenian headquarters for the next three years, except for a brief hiatus in early 1869.37 The plan hatched by McMicken and Clarke to infiltrate the top of the Fenian Brotherhood was going better than expected. When, in June 1867, Clarke returned to New York, he found that Roberts had left for Paris. But he met Mrs Roberts and delighted her with the gift of a “beautiful gray pony” for her son. Continuing to mix with leading figures in the Brotherhood, he was able to confirm his earlier view: there would be no invasion that year. His nerves, however, were being stretched to the limit; the stakes were high, and the stress of dissembling was wearing him down. When he was told that Daniel O’Sullivan, the Fenian secretary of civil affairs, had left for Canada three weeks earlier on a “secret mission,” Clarke was terrified. He had spent his evenings in March with O’Sullivan as well as Fitzpatrick; the Fenians in Toronto knew that Clarke was a detective. If O’Sullivan visited the city and got a description of Clarke, the consequences would be dire.38 Could the Canadians get Daniel O’Sullivan before O’Sullivan got Clarke? Rudolph Fitzpatrick had already supplied the British consulate with a photograph of O’Sullivan; it travelled from Pierrepont Edwards to Lord Monck to John A. Macdonald to Gilbert McMicken, who passed it along to his remaining detectives. Charles Spence, the former secret policeman who was now back with the Toronto police force, offered his assistance as well. But there was no sign of Daniel O’Sullivan.39

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What none of them knew was that O’Sullivan had only passed through Canada en route to Ireland. His “secret mission” was to prepare the ground for Roberts’s proposed meeting in Paris with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The objective of the meeting was to unite the Fenian factions under Roberts’s leadership, a plan that would coordinate a rising in Ireland with an attack on Canada. Despite the best efforts of spies and informers, the Senate wing could still be tight-lipped on some crucial matters. When Clarke asked his drinking partners what was going on with O’Sullivan, he received no reply.40

Upon his safe return to Toronto, Clarke had a long meeting with George Mothersill, who had come in from Chicago. With McMicken’s approval, they decided that Mothersill would go to Missouri, start up his own Fenian circle in Clinton, and get himself elected as the delegate to the Fenian convention in Cleveland that September. And so Mothersill headed west, arriving in Clinton at the end of June. Writing to McMicken (whom he addressed simply as “Uncle”), he reported that “there are a few here but uneducated and unsophisticated,” and he was optimistic about the plan. He stayed in Clinton throughout the summer, working as a horse trader. The arrangement, McMicken told Macdonald, was “working most satisfactorily.”41 While Mothersill was working his way from Missouri towards the Fenian convention, William Montgomery was attempting to do the same thing from New York. In early June, holding a letter of introduction from “Cornelius O’Sullivan,” aka Charles Clarke, he visited Lawrence Shields, the Fenian leader with whom Clarke had enjoyed watching The Black Crook, the Broadway musical with its seventy scantily-clad women. A recommendation from such a patriotic Irishman as Cornelius O’Sullivan carried a lot of weight, and within a week, Montgomery – or William McMichael, as he called himself now – was sworn into the Brotherhood.42 Before long, his first reports came through to McMicken: the Fenians were making a large number of uniforms, they spoke of “having the organization very strong in Canada,” and pressure was building for an attack in the fall.43 Montgomery was elected to the Safety Committee of his circle (tasked with screening out spies and informers), met General Samuel Spear, and participated in a meeting at Fenian headquarters.44 Cleveland looked in sight.

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There were, however, bumps along the road. For one thing, Montgomery had “a great many little expenses” that needed covering, such as money for raffles, money for collections “for one object or another,” and the weekly dues. “It is the greatest system of swindling under the Sun,” he remarked. And then there was the money for drink. “I drink no liquor myself,” he added, “but I cannot refuse to do what every other member does.” William Montgomery may have been a teetotaller, but William McMichael had to drink with the boys. The major problem he faced, however, was that his head centre wanted to be the circle’s delegate at the Cleveland convention, and Montgomery could not push himself forward without arousing suspicion. His fellow Fenians were hyper-vigilant about spies, he noted, and some were “sharp as lightning.” The Brotherhood, he learned, had their own detectives who were tasked with tracking down government agents from Britain and Canada. To be effective, Montgomery would have to proceed slowly and work his way “as smoothly as possible.”45 For the time being, that meant helping with the preparations for Roberts’s return to New York, which was expected during the second week of August. Roberts had already written to the Fenian vice-president, James Gibbons, claiming that his effort to unite the Irish, British, and American Fenian Brotherhoods under his leadership had been a complete success.46 In fact, it was anything but. The Fenians in Ireland, demoralized after the failure of the March rising, were in no mood to countenance another takeover attempt from the United States. Nor were Tom Kelly’s Fenians willing to cede power to Roberts. The Supreme Council that emerged out of the Paris meeting wound up deciding to have no formal connection with either wing of American Fenianism.47 Back in Canada, McMicken remained on the alert. Daniel O’Sullivan was nowhere to be seen, but other Fenian agents were crossing into Canada. Colonel John Whitehead Byron, a Civil War veteran who had twice been arrested in Ireland for his revolutionary activities, was one of them. Edward Archibald got his photograph, doubtless from Rudolph Fitzpatrick, and sent it northwards.48 William Montgomery reported that Michael Slattery was continuing to move between Ottawa and New York, and he sent McMicken descriptions of every Canadian organizer he encountered.49 Clarke, who spent the summer in Toronto, kept a lookout for the emissaries. Apart from his success in infiltrating the highest level of the Brotherhood –

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and that took its psychological toll – he had been having a hard time of it over the past few months. He had gone down with a “bilious attack” in April, and his wife, Anne, had been seriously ill in May; for a while, it was touch and go as to whether she would recover.50 But recover she did, and as Dominion Day, 1 July 1867, approached, things were looking up. Clarke and McMicken were on the best of terms; the two of them even conducted a little private business on the side, selling kerosene lamp burners. To celebrate the birth of Canadian Confederation and to thank Clarke for his work, McMicken sent silk dresses to Anne and their daughter. “Your kindness to us,” Clarke replied, “will always be remembered with gratitude.”51 It turned out to be the high point of their relationship.

Celebrations aside, Canadian Confederation had no direct impact on the secret service. Things went on pretty much as they had before. The detectives, much smaller in number now, continued to report to McMicken and Ermatinger, who themselves reported to Macdonald and to George-Étienne Cartier respectively. Information from British consuls and the British embassy in the United States came to the governor general’s office and was passed down the line; the same procedure applied to information from the United Kingdom. The key difference was not organizational but operational. With Clarke’s penetration of the upper levels of the Brotherhood, with Montgomery’s rapid rise up the ranks in New York, and with the Canadian government creating its own Fenian circle in Missouri, the secret service was poised to crack open the Fenian Brotherhood. If Montgomery could not enter the upcoming Cleveland convention as a delegate from New York, Mothersill could from Missouri; if there were any blockages in information, Clarke could travel back to New York and resume contact with Roberts. The days of picking up bar talk had long since passed. A small number of shrewd and experienced detectives were running the show. The Cleveland convention was starting on 3 September. What could possibly go wrong?

12

 “Gang Aft Agley” Charles Clarke’s Downfall

It was Charles Clarke’s penis that did it. The man who befriended, deceived, and betrayed Fenians was equally adept at befriending, deceiving, and betraying women who were attracted to him. He had been fired from the Toronto police force three years earlier for “improper relations” with someone he described as a lewd and malicious woman, shifting the blame, as he often did when cornered, onto another. A Fenian sister from Detroit had been on his trail in Canada. He appears to have struck up a relationship in Pittsburgh with one Kate Murphy; the fact that she gave him a gold ring suggests that a promise of marriage was involved.1 And during his visits to New York, while he was lying to William Roberts and while his wife, Anne, lay sick in bed in Toronto, he was having “improper intimacy” with a woman by the name of Miss Clapp. Miss Clapp – there is no record of her first name – was a friend of Clarke’s niece, who lived in New York. Clarke probably began his relationship with her in March 1867 when he was hanging out with his niece’s friends.2 Some of them knew that Clarke was a detective; Miss Clapp evidently did not, just as she did not know that he had a wife and daughter at home. Before he left for what she thought was Missouri, Clarke exchanged rings with her and made promises that he had no intention of keeping; it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that she had become pregnant. She never heard from him again. When Clarke returned to New York in June, his niece was furious with him; Miss Clapp wanted to have him arrested for breach of promise.3 Finding out, presumably from his niece, that Clarke was currently living in Welland, Miss Clapp wrote to the town’s postmaster, explaining that she had been deceived and wanted to know his address. Much to Clarke’s embarrassment and anger, the postmaster began showing the letters to other people in the office.4

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In August, Miss Clapp wrote to the postmaster again. Gilbert McMicken picks up the story: “Like an old goon the pm [postmaster] wrote her twice giving her full information about Clarke and not until after he did this did he communicate with me on the subject. The woman thus informed posted to Fenian Head Quarters and so thoroughly described Clarke that they at once knew him as O’Sullivan.” Clarke’s cover was blown; months of painstaking preparations had been destroyed in an instant. “This is but to chronicle a great misfortune,” McMicken informed John A. Macdonald, “and what has been to me the most annoying and exasperating incident in my whole life. ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.’”5 McMicken blamed not only the postmaster but also Miss Clapp – everybody, in fact, except Clarke himself. Miss Clapp may have presented herself to the postmaster as an “artless innocent” who had been seduced and abandoned,” he wrote, but she was actually “at least 30, designing as Satan and experienced in human nature.” His sole source for this information was, of course, Clarke himself. In McMicken’s reading of the situation, a lonely detective, under great stress and far from home, had briefly yielded to temptation and was now being hounded by his seductress. Clarke, he convinced himself, was a victim rather than a perpetrator.6 But no matter how the story was viewed, its consequences were all too clear. Clarke, now operating in Ontario, was out of harm’s way. But the men he had brought into the Fenian Brotherhood, George Mothersill in Clinton and William Montgomery in New York, were compromised and potentially in great danger. “I have thought often the last week about Mothersill & Montgomery,” Clarke wrote on 9 September. “I pray god they may succeed and get out safe.”7 The word was out in New York. On 3 September, one of Edward Archibald’s informers – probably Rudolph Fitzpatrick – told him that a man going under the name of O’Sullivan and purporting to be from Missouri was actually employed by the Canadian government to watch the Fenians. “If this be so,” wrote Archibald, “I think, from all I hear of him that he is not over trustworthy.”8 A week later, Montgomery was told that “some of the Traitors in the organization here would smell gun powder when they least expected it.” He had mentioned his connection with Cornelius O’Sullivan at every possible opportunity to raise his credibility with the Fenians; now, all that name-dropping threatened to recoil on him. But, with remarkable coolness, he decided to stay

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put, say little, and prepare his defence. After all, Cornelius O’Sullivan had fooled them – surely they could understand that he, William McMichael, had been fooled as well?9 In Cleveland, the head centre of the Canadian government’s Fenian circle in Clinton, Missouri, George Mothersill, arrived at the convention as Philip Kavanagh. Knowing nothing about the events that had transpired in New York, he presented his papers to the organizers and was introduced to William Roberts. To improve his standing with the president of the Brotherhood, Kavanagh brought the name of his good friend and fellow Fenian Cornelius O’Sullivan into the conversation. The result was not what he expected. As McMicken put it, “the whole matter exploded.” Mothersill spent the next three days knocking on doors, pleading his innocence, and trying to get inside. With every attempt, Fenian suspicions only intensified. When he learned that the Fenians had “resolved on making away with him,” he got out in a hurry.10 Montgomery, however, remained in New York, quietly confident that he could allay any suspicions that he was a police spy. As it turned out, no one confronted him on the subject, and he did not sense any change in attitude towards him – although he did report that a major reorganization was going on in the headquarters and that “everything is kept more secret.”11 Nonetheless, he had learned enough to convey to McMicken two main features of the Cleveland convention: an attempt to unite with the rival Fenian wing, formerly headed by John O’Mahony and now led by John Savage, and a renewed determination to raise sufficient money for the next invasion.12 The former failed, but some progress was being made on the latter. The Fenians in New York, Montgomery reported in October, were “raising a great deal of money.”13 They were also bringing more rifles to the border. After a few weeks of restless inactivity back home in Oshawa, Mothersill joined Clarke on a mission to investigate the quantity, quality, and locations of Fenian arms in upstate New York.14 Wearing the forged “Deputy U.S. Martial” badge that the secret service chief for New York, Abner Newcomb, had recommended that he acquire the previous December, Clarke passed himself off as an officer of the law and obtained the records kept by the American Express agents who were handling the shipments. A major arms buildup was in progress, with hundreds of boxes of rifles coming into Watertown and Potsdam and being distributed across the frontier. Some were stored in small towns such as Norfolk and Madrid, while others went to Ogdensburg, Troy, and Buffalo. Patrick O’Dea

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was one of the main organizers, along with James Brennan, a leading Fenian and journalist with the Irish American newspaper. Clarke had to tread very carefully; as Cornelius O’Sullivan, he had spent an afternoon with Brennan, along with General Samuel Spear and Lawrence Shields, the previous June.15 According to one of Archibald’s sources in New York, Fenian arms were also coming into Canada. The conduits, ran the report, were two Canadian Fenians, Laffin and Burke. Described as the “centre of a Circle at Toronto,” Laffin claimed that some 1,500 rifles were being concealed in private houses in the city. More weapons were supposedly coming into Hamilton, Kingston, and Montreal. But it proved impossible to get the details; the source explained that he could not inquire about names and addresses without arousing suspicion. The information was passed on to McMicken, who promised to have both men watched.16 Clarke and Mothersill were tasked with finding the arms but failed to find any; the story was almost certainly a fabrication.

In fact, the pro-invasion Fenians in Toronto faced myriad difficulties, although they were straining at the bit for action and were more than willing to take extreme measures in support of the cause. The only “insider” account of a Fenian circle in the city dates from November 1867, when its secretary, William Burns, began to correspond with Frank B. Gallagher, the Fenian senator in Buffalo. To protect themselves from spies and informers, the two men used aliases – Burns called himself “James Osborne,” and Gallagher became “Charlton” – and they bypassed the regular mail system with the help of trusted emissaries. The initial contact point in Toronto was 68 Queen Street East, where a “patriotic lady friend” passed on Gallagher’s letters to Burns. She was literally a Fenian sister – Mary Harnett, a dressmaker, whose brother Daniel had been among the men arrested with Michael Murphy at Cornwall in April 1866 while en route to join the Fenians in Maine who were preparing to attack Campobello Island. In common with many of the men in Burns’s circle, Daniel was also a member of the Hibernian Benevolent Society. The circle was named after Thomas Francis Bourke, who during the mid-1850s had lived briefly in Toronto and in March 1867 had led the failed rising in Tipperary, becoming one of the most famous Fenians of his generation. Bourke’s sentence of death was commuted to life imprisonment, and he would be released under amnesty four years later.17

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If Fenian rifles did come into Toronto, the Thomas Francis Bourke circle never saw them. With a core group of around twenty men who met at Burns’s tavern at Queen and Beverley Streets, the circle was constricted by the circumstances in which it had to operate. No member knew more than eight others, and potential recruits had to be approached with the utmost caution; it was always possible that an informer, or simply someone who talked too much, might be drawn into the circle. Burns reckoned that without such constraints, they could have attracted close to 200 members.18 They used a dancing school as a means of bringing their “younger friends” together and selected those who were deemed suitable for the cause. “It seems to work well,” he reported – especially since the school included many Protestants and some Orangemen, making it an excellent cover.19 Keeping the circle together, however, proved challenging. Some members were expelled for nonattendance and nonpayment of dues, and the first treasurer was fired for reasons “numerous and grave”; embezzlement was a common problem for secret societies.20 Another member was expelled for defrauding a fellow Fenian; not surprisingly, the brothers said that they “would no longer trust their necks in his hands.”21 Still others left to find jobs. “We are working hard to fill our ranks with good, true and determined men,” Burns told Gallagher, “but unfortunately as soon as we get them in[,] want of employment or something else compells them to leave the city.”22 Despite these difficulties, they persisted in their plans to aid the next invasion, either by joining the Fenian forces in the field or by doing “destructive work” at home.23 To acquire the necessary military training, they contacted Irish soldiers in the Toronto-based 17th Regiment, swearing them into the Brotherhood in darkened rooms. One soldier was able to supply them with “a full list of the English army & their stations in Canada,” which Burns passed on to Gallagher.24 Another gave them his plan “for the blowing up of the magazines in the Garrison & the poisoning of the artillery horses both of which we have approved of.” All they needed was the word from Gallagher and a supply of matériel: explosives, fuses, shears for cutting wires, and the like.25 But the word never came, and the matériel never arrived. While they waited, the 17th Regiment was withdrawn from Toronto. Its departure, wrote Burns, “has upset all our arrangements about the barracks, magazine, cannon &c destruction of them I mean.” Fenian recruiters in Ireland had faced the same kind of problem.26 By the summer of 1868, the lack of direction from

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headquarters in New York was causing grumblings in the ranks. “It is very desirable,” Burns told Gallagher, “that we should know if it is the intention of the ruling powers of the organization to carry out this year the determination of the convention of last September. If not this year is there any real pure intention of doing such work at any future period & about what time.”27 Burns and his men were the ultra-Fenians in Toronto. They had nothing but contempt for Michael Murphy and Patrick Boyle, dismissing the former as a “swindler and deceiver” and the latter as having “neither energy nor pluck to do anything.”28 For his part, Burns had no shortage of energy. He participated in a plan to free the Fenian prisoners in the Toronto jail by attempting to smuggle in saws and files.29 He had no qualms about assassination, providing Gallagher with the name and location in the United States of a British soldier who had supposedly “abused the body” of a Fenian at Ridgeway and who “should not be allowed to live.”30 He helped to form a circle in Hamilton; “they are red hot there,” he reported, with some “very excellent men.” And he went on a mission to establish other circles in London, Brantford, Stratford, and Dundas.31 Constantly on the lookout for informers, he could be quick to throw out unfounded accusations. Citing a “most reliable source,” he told Gallagher that James McCarroll, the Fenian poet, was actually a “dangerous spy” who was in John A. Macdonald’s pocket.32 There is no evidence at all to substantiate the charge, and much to contradict it. Ironically, Burns himself would be accused of spying and was unceremoniously ejected from a Fenian meeting in Buffalo.33 Despite his vehement denials and the support of his circle, he was no longer fully trusted. He announced his intention of resigning as secretary and declared his willingness to leave the movement altogether if that was in the best interest of the Brotherhood – a different kind of martyr for the “holy cause” of Irish freedom. Morale within the circle was crumbling. “If the men in Canada cannot be of practical utility & benefit to the organization,” Burns wrote, “I can’t see much use in its continuance.”34 In fact, there was an informer in Thomas Francis Bourke’s circle, although his identity is unknown. In May 1868, the secret policeman Charles Fallis received the names and addresses of all the members who had attended the most recent meeting. Told that the next invasion was imminent, they had been fed a steady diet of false promises until they had lapsed into disillusionment or weary cynicism. The informer sold the information for £10.35

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Preparing for an invasion that was constantly being postponed and waiting for instructions that never came, Burns’s circle never had the support that a carefully coordinated cross-border campaign could have provided. But if the reports of Fenian rifles coming into Canada were false, evidence for the stockpiling of arms on the American side of the border was compelling. And although the organizational and financial obstacles to mounting another invasion in the immediate future were insuperable, Fenianism was experiencing a resurgence in the fall of 1867 for reasons that lay across the Atlantic. Edward O’Meagher Condon was a key figure. As Tom Kelly’s Fenians regrouped after the failed Rising of 1867, and after they had rejected Roberts’s takeover bid in Paris during the summer, Condon organized a convention in Manchester, during which Kelly’s leadership was confirmed. A few days later, on 11 September, a Manchester policeman arrested two men whom he believed to be burglars; they turned out to be Kelly and a fellow Fenian, Timothy Deasy. Almost immediately, Ricard O’Sullivan Burke, Kelly’s second-in-command, called a meeting to discuss ways of setting them free. Condon became the principal organizer of the rescue attempt, which involved intercepting the prison van that was taking Kelly and Deasy from the magistrate’s court to the prison. The plan succeeded but at the cost of killing the police guard in the van, Sergeant Charles Brett. Shortly afterwards, Condon and four others were arrested and charged with his murder. Several witnesses identified William Allen as the man who had pulled the trigger, but according to the law, all the members of the rescue party were deemed equally guilty. On 2 November, Condon and his fellow prisoners were sentenced to death.36 In nationalist Ireland and the diaspora, news of the rescue was greeted with the same kind of enthusiasm that had followed the Fenian victory at Ridgeway. But the death sentences triggered an equally passionate opposite reaction: shockwaves of anger pulsated throughout Irish Catholic communities from Moss Side to Melbourne. The day before the sentences came down, one of Archibald’s informers in New York, noting that “there is the greatest excitement around as to whether the government will hang the Manchester men,” predicted “an increase of the power of Fenianism in this country and the furtherance of its ends in the old country.”37 With the executions due to take place on 23 November, Condon’s father tried with increasing desperation to save his son. Currently living in Cincinnati, Thomas Condon had worked for the Canadian Board of Works and had

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been closely connected with Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservative Party. The year before the Manchester rescue, when his son was working with the O’Mahony Fenians in New York, Thomas was informing on the Roberts Fenians in Cincinnati. He would never betray the O’Mahony Fenians, he told Macdonald in February 1866 – they were, in his view, only trying to give Ireland the same liberty that Canada enjoyed – but he strongly opposed their rivals who intended to “disturb people who enjoy the blessings of a good Government.” “I will be more valuable to you,” he promised, “than all the detectives ever sent to America.”38 Now, he was looking for payback. The day before the executions, he sent an urgent message to Macdonald: for God’s sake, telegraph the British government to reprieve my son.39 The last-minute decision to commute Edward O’Meagher Condon’s sentence to life imprisonment was made independently of any pressure emanating from the Canadian government. In contrast to the three men who were hanged, William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien, Condon had not fired a gun during the rescue, and his life was spared on that ground.40 But Macdonald and several of his Cabinet ministers wrote character references for Thomas, pointing out that he had supplied them with information about the Roberts Fenians in 1866. Fourteen senators and thirty members of Parliament from Canada signed a petition asking the British home secretary, Gathorne Hardy, to give Edward’s case a “favourable consideration.” Hardy was not impressed. “He was the worst of the lot,” he scrawled on the file, “& was very lucky he was not hanged.”41 Appreciating the fact that he was getting support from the Canadian government, and doubtless realizing that he needed to stay in its good books, Thomas Condon decided to resume his past services. “You shall know as sure as I live,” he told Macdonald in January 1868, “any thing they [the Fenians] may have in contemplation concerning Canada being a great favourite with them since my Sons incarceration, I will have all particulars.”42 The father was informing on the Fenians who were supporting his son. “For pity sake keep my letters private as I would rather loose my life than loose my good name,” he wrote.43

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Faced with numerous reports that the Fenians were bringing arms to the border, recognizing that events in Manchester were breathing new life into revolutionary Irish nationalism, and doubtless aware that Fenians were assassinating policemen on Dublin’s streets, Macdonald decided to take precautionary measures at home.44 On 21 November, he announced in the House of Commons that his government intended to renew the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act. Although the threat of invasion was not as great as it had been in 1866, he explained, the Fenian Brotherhood was a “widely extended organization” that was engaging in violence in Ireland and England and that was becoming increasingly active on the Canadian border. The previous suspension of habeas corpus, he insisted, had not been “harshly or improperly used,” and its renewal was designed to “prevent parties from making undue raids upon our territory.” Despite some misgivings from two members of Parliament, Antoine-Aimé Dorion and Timothy Warren Anglin, the bill passed unanimously.45 Between the introduction and the passage of Macdonald’s bill, news came from Manchester that the executions had gone ahead. Condon had been reprieved, and another prisoner, Thomas Maguire, had been pardoned for lack of evidence. But Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien (Figure 12.1) became the first Irishmen hanged for a political crime since Robert Emmet in 1803. The fate of the Manchester martyrs, as they became known, ratcheted Fenian anger to new levels of intensity.46 “I learned to-day from [a] private source,” wrote William Burns to Frank B. Gallagher, “that the tyrant has executed three of the brave Manchester men. The man who received a respite [Edward O’Meagher Condon] is an old school mate of mine. I trust in God the day is not very distant when if for nothing else satisfaction can be had for this atrocious outrage.”47 The desire for revenge was palpable, reverberating throughout Irish nationalist communities. One such example became known to the Canadian government on New Year’s Day in 1868. In Toronto, a man named Christian Norman invited a couple of soldiers into his home for drinks. Calling himself “a true Fenian,” he told them about his reaction to the hangings. “He said he wished he had his throat cut the morning they were hung,” and he asked whether they would help him to burn down the barracks, one of the soldiers reported after arresting him. Norman was hardly a threat to anyone. “The prisoner appeared to be a very dissipated worthless character and not a man

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12.1 The Fenian Martyrs of Ireland. The executions of William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien sent shockwaves of anger throughout the Irish diaspora, where they were widely viewed as a symbol of British oppression and stimulated calls for revenge.

from whose genius much is to be feared,” remarked the police magistrate Alexander MacNabb. “I would respectfully suggest that he would be not a very dangerous [sic] if admitted to bail.”48 But the feelings that he expressed, widely and deeply held as they were, could be very dangerous indeed. It was in this atmosphere that Macdonald received a disturbing letter from Toronto on 10 December. The writer, who signed as George Kelly, described himself as Roberts’s orderly room clerk at Fenian headquarters in New York, currently visiting Toronto. He told Macdonald that thirty men armed with revolvers had left New York three days earlier on a Danish brig bound for Eng-

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land. Their mission: to assassinate Queen Victoria, the prime minister, and the lord lieutenant of Ireland, along with other leading political and religious figures. There were three leaders, who went by the names of Robert Emmet, Daniel O’Connell, and Edward FitzGerald; their plan was to land near Bristol and proceed in different directions from there. All of the assassins were skilled marksmen, and one was related to John Wilkes Booth. “So long as the Fenians contented themselves with playing at soldiers, I worked for them,” Kelly explained, “but since by a crime without example, they now begin assassination I shall leave. Please inform the authorities at home & put them on their guard. I shall resign after finishing my business at Toronto.”49 Macdonald immediately contacted Lord Monck, and the two men conferred over the letter’s contents. The story seemed too far-fetched to believe; it was highly unlikely, to say the least, that the ringleaders would use the pseudonyms of conspicuous Irish nationalists such as Emmet, O’Connell, and FitzGerald, and it was equally improbable that one of them was related to Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. But Macdonald and Monck could not afford to dismiss the letter out of hand; if there were any truth in it at all, the consequences would be catastrophic. After what had happened in Manchester, and with evidence that Tom Kelly had organized a “shooting circle” in Dublin to assassinate those who stood in the way of Irish freedom, anything appeared possible. “In ordinary cases I should certainly not attach much importance to the communication,” Monck told the colonial secretary, the Duke of Buckingham, “but after the experience you have had of the audacity of the Fenians I do not think such a warning ought to be neglected.”50 Monck telegraphed Archibald in New York. Who was Roberts’s orderly room clerk, and what did he look like? Which Danish ships had sailed for England the previous week? The replies came back quickly. There was no one by the name of George Kelly working for Roberts; the regular orderly room clerk had died the day before and had been temporarily replaced by John Whitehead Byron. The only people who worked on the same floor as Roberts were D.R. Shiel, as the acting secretary of civil affairs, and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, who was of course the source of Archibald’s information. Had there really been a plot to assassinate the queen and leading members of the government, surely Fitzpatrick would have called it in.51 But Archibald also learned that a Danish cargo ship, the Mercur, had left New York bound for Dieppe a few days

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earlier; it could easily drop off assassins at the Bristol Channel. The safest course of action, Monck advised, would be to alert the Royal Navy and to send a detective to Dieppe in case the ship got through.52 Making the situation even more tense and volatile, news of the possible plot to assassinate Queen Victoria and several political leaders coincided with an act of Irish revolutionary violence that shook Britain to the core. The previous month, the police in London had arrested Ricard O’Sullivan Burke, the Fenian leader who had presided over the plans to spring Kelly and Deasy from jail in Manchester. From the Clerkenwell jail, he began to organize his own escape. A group of Fenians would wheel a barrel of gunpowder to the prison wall, throw a white ball into the yard as a warning, light the fuse, and make their getaway with Burke after he emerged through the rubble. On the afternoon of 13 December, the plan was put into practice. It went horribly wrong. Tipped off by an informer, the authorities had kept Burke under lock and key in his prison cell; there was no chance that he would be rescued. But the security measures around the perimeter of the prison were inadequate, and the resulting explosion was far more powerful than had been anticipated. The houses behind the prison were destroyed, seven people were killed immediately, and scores more were maimed. No one in London had ever seen anything like it. A mixture of fear and rage coursed through the country, amid worries that Clerkenwell was the prelude to a systematic campaign of Fenian terror. Explosives were easy to obtain, railway stations and gas works were vulnerable to attack, and Fenian bombers could glide invisibly from one target to another. Tens of thousands of men volunteered as special constables to guard key installations, security was stepped up around police stations and public buildings, and Irish immigrants became objects of suspicion or hostility – although, as Brian Jenkins points out, many political and social leaders in Britain worked hard to prevent an anti-Irish backlash by contrasting the disloyal minority with the loyal majority of Irish Catholics.53 Against this background, the Colonial Office could take no chances with George Kelly’s letter. The fact that Monck took the threat seriously was in itself a source of concern. “He has never been an alarmist on Fenian matters,” Buckingham told Lord Abercorn, the lord lieutenant of Ireland.54 His office tracked down a representative of the firm that chartered the Mercur. “Any connection with Fenianism impossible,” came the telegraphed reply. But the

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representative also said that the ship would be calling en route at the Bristol Channel or Cork, which fitted with Kelly’s story. And it was possible that the assassins had inveigled their way onto the ship as passengers or stowaways. The order went out to the Admiralty: the Mercur must be intercepted and searched. If everything was in order, the ship would be allowed to proceed to Dieppe; if not, it would be taken into Cork. The fact that the order violated international law was irrelevant; if the queen’s life was in danger, extraordinary measures were necessary.55 Back in Canada, Macdonald and Monck were trying to track down the elusive George Kelly. In the hope of bringing him to Ottawa, Macdonald arranged to pay him $100 from the secret service fund.56 Doubtless realizing that he was onto a good thing, Kelly wrote three more letters to the government, explaining why the assassins would not be found. Rather than boarding a Danish vessel, he wrote, the Fenians had acquired their own brig, which had long been used in the smuggling trade. But it was unseaworthy and sank in bad weather 50 miles from the coast; the crew and passengers dumped their weapons (twelve cases of Snider rifles, he said) and were rescued by a passing ship. The operation had nearly bankrupted the Fenians, he added, and “nothing but enormous subscriptions will enable the Fenian cart to go upon the wheels again.” But the organization had taken heart from British Liberal Party leader William Gladstone’s reform policies, he wrote, and was planning to direct future operations from new headquarters in England. George Kelly also offered to visit Monck in Ottawa. Needless to say, he never turned up.57 While these investigations were under way, the Duke of Buckingham decided to tell Queen Victoria about the possible threat to her life. Her security had already been tightened, in light of earlier reports that militant Fenians were planning to attack the royal family.58 Buckingham also told the queen that Canada’s top two detectives were on their way to England and might be able to shed more light on Kelly’s story. Their names, he informed Her Majesty, were Charles Clarke and George Mothersill.59

The arrangements to send Clarke and Mothersill to England had been made independently of Kelly’s information. Earlier in December, after the Manchester rescue but before the Clerkenwell explosion, the British government had decided to set up a Secret Service Department under the leadership of

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Colonel William Feilding. From the perspective of the chancellor of the exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, and the Irish chief secretary, Lord Mayo, the Fenian Brotherhood was part of a wider threat to the state, encompassing militant trade unions, the Reform League’s campaign to expand the suffrage, and the shadowy activities of European revolutionary secret societies. The “revolutionary spirit of the times” demanded a radical response; traditional notions of the “freeborn Englishman” and hostility to the “continental despotism” of spies, informers, and secret police would not be allowed to stand in the way of state security.60 An immediate question facing the authorities was how to staff the new department. Richard Mayne, the commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, was singularly uncooperative; he was ideologically opposed to a secret police force, and he did not want others treading on his turf. So Feilding brought in the Dublin spymaster Robert Anderson and relied largely on detectives on loan from the Royal Irish Constabulary. But the shortage of manpower could also be filled from Canada, with its well established secret service and its experienced detectives. Accordingly, Lord Mayo put in a request to Lord Monck, who set the wheels in motion for Clarke and Mothersill to join the department. Now, in light of the apparent assassination plot, their arrival in England was a matter of urgency. Not only might they be able to provide more information about Kelly’s story, but they could also identify Irish American Fenians who were operating in England.61 Neither Clarke nor Mothersill, however, knew anything about a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria, the prime minister, and the leading figures in the Cabinet – not surprisingly, since no such plot existed. The more information that Monck received from Archibald, the less credible Kelly’s story appeared.62 And Kelly himself overplayed his hand; in another letter, he changed his story and added fantastical details about how it was actually another Danish ship carrying the assassins that had sunk. “I now think his whole story a fabrication,” Monck wrote. The conclusion was inescapable: “We had been hoaxed by Mr. Kelly.”63 The hoax was almost certainly an act of symbolic revenge by a Toronto Fenian for the execution of the Manchester martyrs. Unable to exact revenge on those who had sanctioned the “legal murder” of Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, George Kelly did the next best thing: he invented a story that he hoped would terrify the Canadian and British authorities and sow confusion in their ranks.

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In the context of the killing of Sergeant Charles Brett, Fenian assassinations in Dublin, and the Clerkenwell explosion, the plot turned out to be much more effective than Kelly could have imagined. “The Queen exults greatly at the denouement of Monck’s alarm,” commented the home secretary, Gathorne Hardy, doubtless with some relief.64 When the threat appeared real, she had been closely guarded and her movements had been restricted; Buckingham wrote of “the anxiety, not to say the annoyance thereby caused to Her Majesty personally.” Knowing that she was safe, she took out her anger on Monck; instead of rushing off alarmist telegrams about assassins, he should have waited until he received a full report from Archibald in New York. The situation was smoothed over with a story that exonerated everyone. Archibald had responded promptly to Monck’s request for information, but his detailed reply had been delayed by a week owing to a snowstorm. As a result, Monck did not get the full report until two weeks after reading Kelly’s letter, and he had no choice but to act on the information that it contained.65 All this was true enough. But it conveniently left out that Archibald had been sending regular telegrams to Monck, that Monck had been sending regular telegrams to Buckingham, and that all the major players – the prime minister, the colonial secretary, and the governor general of Canada – regarded the threat as credible until it was proven otherwise in early January. However, there was a postscript. In line with Monck’s recommendation, a detective was indeed sent to Dieppe to check out the Mercur. The detective reported that there was, in fact, an Irishman on board. But he had deserted the ship “without money or clothes” as soon as it landed and was never seen again.66

At the beginning of January, Clarke and Mothersill boarded a ship bound for Liverpool. They had been briefed by Monck and McMicken and had promised to make “their best efforts with all diligence & zeal to detect & discover Fenian emissaries & Fenian plots.”67 The Fenian uniform that Clarke had been given in New York was placed in a diplomatic bag and sent to London so that Clarke could use it to demonstrate his Fenian credentials in England.68 Monck also supplied Clarke and Mothersill with a cipher and an open letter, in case they were stopped by the police when they arrived at Liverpool,

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and he sent copies to Macdonald. “I have marked the letter for the former with C & that for the latter with M,” he remarked, “which I have no doubt, should the documents come into strange hands will be supposed to have some Cabalistic significance.”69 Although they could not have known it, Clarke and Mothersill were walking into a security nightmare. The London Metropolitan Police, headed by Commissioner Richard Mayne, set out to undermine the Secret Service Department right from the start. In what Lord Mayo called an “act of madness,” Mayne refused to let the department question Fenian suspects who were pulled in after Clerkenwell. Shortly afterwards, the police arrested one of Feilding’s detectives who was following a suspected Fenian.70 Nor did the temporary and experimental nature of the new organization help matters; unless and until the department was established on a permanent basis, Feilding argued, it could never do an adequate job. “The success of my present attempt,” he told Mayo, “appears to me so doubtful that were it not that my family have always been such staunch supporters of this Govt I would at once decline to proceed with it.”71 Initially, however, things went smoothly enough. After disembarking at Liverpool, Clarke and Mothersill travelled to London, where they had an enjoyable meeting with the Duke of Buckingham and reported for duty at the Secret Service Department. They were treated well, and Clarke was given a ten-day leave of absence to visit his family in Ireland.72 Mothersill was sent back up to Liverpool, and Clarke was sent to Southampton; both were to watch for Fenians arriving from the United States. But there was nothing to report; American Fenians were nowhere to be seen. After a few weeks, the government ordered Mothersill to Paris; he spoke some French and could probe possible links between the Fenian Brotherhood and European revolutionary secret societies. The Fenians, he reported, were “at ease” in Paris, but their organization was “much drained” in Britain and Ireland.73 While Mothersill was in Paris, Clarke was tasked with tracking down Tom Kelly, who was still at large after his escape at Manchester. Feilding reckoned that Kelly would stay at the Grosvenor Hotel in London and would attempt to reach Paris by train. Accordingly, Clarke was ordered to check in at the Grosvenor and to spend his days at Victoria Station. It was tedious and futile work. Kelly had disappeared, and no other Fenians showed up to alleviate the boredom. The longer he stayed in England, the more frustrated he became.

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His allowance barely covered his costs, he did not like the military ethos of the Secret Service Department, and he was eager to get back to his previous work. His handlers felt much the same way; their Canadian detective was spending too much money and had failed to come up with any useful intelligence. Besides, the Fenian threat appeared to have passed, and his services were becoming redundant. Feilding paid him his wages and gave him permission to spend a few weeks back in Ireland before returning to Canada.74 Mothersill became equally disillusioned with his bosses and resigned in April. They were mean with money, he wrote to McMicken, they had treated Clarke shamefully, and they had not the first clue about undercover work. He and Clarke had both tried to introduce Canadian methods of operation – which included infiltration as well as observation – only to be told that such things were not done in England.75 “They know just as much about their business as an Elephant does about rope dancing,” he concluded.76

In Ireland, and still smarting from his experiences with the Secret Service Department, Clarke visited his brother in King’s County (present-day Offaly) and his sister in Cornamara, East Galway. He had much more than a family reunion in mind. In Cornamara and nearby Clonbur, he put up notices of intent: “I Charles Clarke, late of Cornamona, but now of America, return after an absence of 14 years for the purpose of denouncing the Rev Jno O’Callaghan for having outraged the person of my wife.”77 John O’Callaghan was not someone to be accused lightly. A pillar of the Protestant community, a shining light in the bishop of Tuam’s diocese, and a member of the Irish Church Missions Society, he had trained for the priesthood at Maynooth before converting to Anglicanism and setting out to save Ireland from the superstitions of popery. Clarke’s attempt to bring down the powerful man whom he believed had raped his wife may have been the only honourable action of his life. His punishment would be severe. When the police saw the notices, they immediately assumed that they were the work of a Fenian who was exploiting resentment among the predominantly Irish-speaking Catholic population against a Protestant proselytizer. The public denunciation, they believed, was actually a blind for a Fenian rally. They brought Clarke in for questioning and were shocked to learn that he was actually a government detective who was carrying a letter from the

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governor general of Canada to verify his identity. To accuse such a respectable, God-fearing man as the Reverend O’Callaghan of rape was outrageous, unthinkable, unspeakable – and to do it while brandishing a letter from the governor general made matters even worse. A report of Clarke’s “unseemly conduct” was sent to the Duke of Buckingham, who passed it on to Lord Monck.78 When Monck and then Macdonald received the report in June 1868, they were deeply embarrassed; the apparently bizarre behaviour of a detective they had recommended highly to the colonial secretary cast a bad light on them and on Canada. Macdonald directed McMicken to remove Clarke from the force. McMicken regretted both Clarke’s “gross misconduct” and the “loss of his services” but agreed that there was no alternative. It appears that the intention was to suspend Clarke for a couple of months, but that was not the message that came across.79 Clarke was stunned by his dismissal. The man who had betrayed so many others now felt betrayed himself – and for seeking justice for his wife. He had become close to McMicken, beginning letters to him with the words “Dear Friend.” They had been in business together, and McMicken had promised Clarke that he would be provided for when he returned from Britain and Ireland. Instead, Clarke had been cast out, was in debt from his services in Britain, and was a marked man in the United States. “Now you are aware,” he told McMicken, “it is impossible for me to leave Canada, as I have made myself so unpopular in the States and elsewhere by the arrests I made and I am sure nobody knows more than you do of the risks I ran, the dangers I incurred in my efforts to serve the Government, not, you may be certain for the sake of the salary I was then receiving, but in the hope of obtaining some well paid settled employment in the future.”80 Back in Canada in June, Clarke continued to hope that McMicken would do his best to find him a position. But no word came. In September, he went to Ottawa to lobby directly for an appointment in the customs service and to remind anyone who would listen about his accomplishments as a detective. He met the deputy minister of justice, Hewitt Bernard, who did not appear particularly impressed with him. As Clarke waited to see James O’Reilly, the Crown counsel who was playing a central role in the government’s operations against Fenians in Canada, he wrote a letter to McMicken. Depressed, frustrated, and bewildered, he suspected that the authorities in Ottawa had “some-

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thing or other against me that I know nothing of.” Why was no one honouring the promise to reward him with a situation? The meeting with O’Reilly failed to produce an answer. But when Clarke went to Macdonald’s office, the reason became all too clear.81 Macdonald knew rather a lot about Clarke’s career – enough to know that he was dealing with someone whose sexual encounters had wrecked the carefully constructed plans to infiltrate the Fenian Senate and whose outburst against a respectable Protestant minister in Ireland had deeply embarrassed the Canadian government. Macdonald probably knew about Rudolph Fitzpatrick’s warning the previous year that Clarke could not be trusted, and he may have heard from McMicken about other examples of Clarke’s indiscretion: drinking binges during which he became belligerent and reports in May 1867 that he had been boasting about his success in befriending Roberts. Clarke had denied the reports, engaging in his familiar practice of blaming others; he had told only Crown attorney Robert Harrison, he said, and it must have been Harrison who was talking too much and who was telling others. This was manifestly untrue, and Clarke had been caught in the lie.82 Such behaviour could be overlooked when his services had been so valuable, but it counted against him after his exposure as a spy. Once the tight coils of Clarke’s secret life were loosened, he could spring out of control in any direction. Now, as Clarke entered Macdonald’s office on 22 September, the prime minister confronted him with new evidence of indiscretion. Three days earlier, in the Ottawa Times, Macdonald had read about the arrival in town of a detective who had joined a Fenian circle in New York and had been in “confidential communication” with Roberts; the report could only have been about Clarke.83 How did the paper know about Clarke’s secret work? The editor explained that he had learned about the detective’s activities in New York from an Ottawa merchant who had met Clarke on a steamer bound for England the previous January. On his way to join the Secret Service Department in London, Clarke had told a complete stranger about his infiltration of the Fenian Brotherhood. Not only that, but Clarke had told the stranger the name of the Fenian head centre in Ottawa (not named in the article but almost certainly Peter Egleson) and had identified Michael Slattery as a Fenian agent operating between Ottawa and New York.84 Here was a secret policeman who could not keep secrets. “I told him that I thought it was exceedingly indiscreet that he should have been so outspoken or allowed

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everybody to know everything of his antecedents,” Macdonald wrote to McMicken. “He speaks of writing to you on the subject. You will understand, however, that there is no re-engagement or recognition of him nor have we used him in any way.”85 Clarke was being turned into the nineteenth-century equivalent of an unperson. He did not take it well. In December, Clarke ran into fellow detective Charles Fallis, who had been engaged in preventing attacks on tourists at Niagara Falls. “I seen Clarke the other day in Toronto,” Fallis told McMicken, “and he commenced to ridicule your honor at an awfull rate.” In front of strangers, Clarke accused McMicken of doing some shameful things (which Fallis would not put down on paper) in Goderich and denounced his former chief as a “complete deceiver.” “He said he was going to raise the biggest stink about you in Canada that ever was known,” Fallis continued, in the best tradition of secret policemen informing on secret policemen. “Now then what do you think of your former pet[?]” “ps do not let on to Clarke you heard anything from me,” he added.86 And that is the last sighting of Clarke. The threat to blow the lid off McMicken’s supposed wrongdoings never materialized, and Canada’s “best detective” simply vanished from the historical record – an appropriate fate for a secret policeman, even one given to bouts of indiscretion. Neither he nor his wife can be tracked down in Canadian, American, or Irish censuses. Charles Clarke disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, his broadrimmed rowdy hat shielding him from further recognition.

13

 “Bitterness and Deadly Hatred” The Crackdown on Fenians in Canada

While Charles Clarke and George Mothersill were working for the Secret Service Department in Britain, undercover operations against the Fenians were continuing in Canada and the United States. At the British consulate in New York, Edward Archibald received information that the Fenian convention at Cleveland in September 1867 had passed a resolution to attack Canada in the spring, and emissaries were crossing the border to prepare the ground.1 Having learned from the Ridgeway raid of 1866 that the first signs of Fenian mobilization would occur far from the frontier, Gilbert McMicken decided to place agents in Memphis and Louisville – cities from where Fenians had travelled northwards in 1866. He also had William Montgomery working for him in New York, along with other detectives upstate in Buffalo and the vicinity of Potsdam Junction, as well as in Detroit.2 In the province of Quebec, Frederick William Ermatinger was sending his men into Vermont and upstate New York and monitoring Fenian activities in and around Montreal – which had taken over from Toronto as the most Fenian city in Canada. “When a movement is made on Canada,” McMicken predicted, “the Fenians in Montreal will as their first act of cooperation attempt to create distrust there and retain the troops from going to the front by destruction of property, fire raising, &c. This also may be expected in Ottawa and Toronto.”3 Also watching Montreal – and frustrated by the refusal of Ermatinger to share any information about Fenian activities on the frontier – was police magistrate Charles Coursol. Would it be possible, he asked Macdonald, to employ “one or two secret detectives” on the American side of the border in order to find out what was going on? Macdonald agreed, on the condition that Coursol would not tell Ermatinger: “We shall thus have the means of comparing information obtained by your employees and his.”4

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At the beginning of February 1868, apparent confirmation that invasion plans were under way came from a hitherto-unknown source: an informer using the name James Rooney, who approached the British consul in Boston, Francis Lousada. Describing himself as a distributor of arms and ammunition to Fenians in the border areas of Vermont and New York, Rooney supplied the names and in some cases the addresses of Canadians from Montreal who were working with them. None of the men were known to the secret police: Nicholas Hart on St Mary Street, the Jackson family on St Paul Street, Patrick Cashen on St Gabriel Street, John Ward in Griffintown, and two others whose first names he could not discover, Connelly and Hughes. At least four boxes of arms had been brought into Montreal, Rooney said, and plans were afoot to seize the artillery barracks on St Helen’s Island (between Montreal and Longueuil) when the Irish Republican Army crossed the border. Some government employees were in on the plot, and the keys to the arsenal were in the possession of a man named O’Brien, who was “all right.” “The Canadian men have great hopes,” he wrote, “and Ward said it will not be lost like the Papineau war.” If everything came together, the attack would take place on the night of 17–18 March.5 Lousada was initially skeptical, but he passed the correspondence along to the Canadian government, together with excerpts from Rooney’s diary. “It would be desirable for the present,” he added, “not to disturb any of the Parties named, as it might arouse suspicion & thereby perhaps cut off my source of information.”6 Macdonald directed Coursol to track down the men whom Rooney named in Montreal, and he instructed Ermatinger to make inquiries on the American side of the border.7 Coursol discovered that Nicholas Hart’s shop on St Mary Street was frequented by soldiers, “which looks rather suspicious.” Daniel Jackson’s tavern on St Paul Street was also a hangout for soldiers, but Coursol noted that the family had good reputations, with no known connection to Fenianism. Nonetheless, all were placed under “very special surveillance.”8 The chief constable of the Water Police, John McLoughlin, located Ward and Connelly, whom he described as “coopers by trade, wild characters,” and he identified Patrick Cashen as a labourer who worked on the coal barges. Their movements were closely watched.9 On the frontier, one of Ermatinger’s detectives, Anthony Sewell, confirmed that arms were coming into St Albans, Potsdam Junction, and Malone, and

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he reported that one “Mr. Hart” was a key distributor. Some of the arms were being stored in a house near Rouses Point owned by a man named Ward. Were these men the same Hart and Ward whom Rooney had described as Montreal Fenians? The general information provided by Rooney, Ermatinger told Macdonald, was “quite probable.” But, he continued, there was little that was new or surprising in Rooney’s report. Lousada, he maintained, “is only going over ground already reported on, and Rooney is only corroborating our own information.”10 What was new and surprising about Rooney’s information, however, was his assertion that the attack on the artillery barracks at St Helen’s Island was going ahead on the night of St Patrick’s Day whether or not the Fenians crossed the border. The military in Montreal was put on full alert, and defences around potential targets were strengthened. But things remained quiet on the frontier, and St Patrick’s Day passed without incident. A few days later, Rooney came up with his explanation: the Fenians had spies in Her Majesty’s service who had tipped them off that the authorities had been warned, so the attack was called off.11 Ermatinger tried to impress a very different lesson on Macdonald. “In most instances,” he wrote, “information given to the Imperial Authorities in the States though based on some truth is usually exaggerated and the information usually known and reported on by us, weeks before, especially that supposed to be in reference to our immediate frontier, where nothing can happen without the knowledge of our few but very intelligent detectives.”12 McMicken was even more dismissive: the reports that had alarmed the authorities in Montreal, he wrote, were “entirely baseless.”13 The “Imperial Authorities,” however, kept Rooney on the payroll. He provided them with the cipher used by Tom Kelly, who was back in New York after his violent rescue from the prison van in Manchester.14 In June, after attending a meeting of Kelly’s Fenians in New York, Rooney supplied Lousada with the names of emissaries whose mission was to revive the revolutionary movement in Ireland, and he offered to cross the Atlantic with them. Lousada passed on the names to the chief of police in Liverpool and gave Rooney a few dollars to defray the cost of the voyage. “Perhaps if he were on the ground and under surveillance,” Lousada wrote, “he might give useful information.” It is not clear, however, whether Rooney followed through; after his arrival in Liverpool under the guise of a pedlar of religious tracts, the trail goes cold.15

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While Ermatinger and Coursol’s detectives were investigating Rooney’s reports about Montreal Fenians who were in league with the Irish Republican Army, McMicken was tracking down pro-invasion Fenians in and around Guelph – “one of the Head Quarters of Fenianism,” according to Macdonald. In February, during a routine opening of undeliverable mail, the authorities stumbled across a letter from one John Turner in Guelph to Peter McNamara in Cleveland the previous September – the time and place where the last Fenian convention had assembled. Turner had placed the letters “cofb” after his signature – for Centre Ontario Fenian Brotherhood – and McNamara had travelled to Cleveland as a representative of the Fenians in Ontario.16 McMicken had never heard of either man, but he did have the names of three suspected Fenians who lived near Guelph: a sometime telegraph operator and theatrical performer named John Tyrell, a farmer from Puslinch named Peter Mahon, and a man whom he knew only as Murphy.17 “Great caution,” Macdonald wrote, “should be observed so as not to alarm the parties and let them know that we are on their track.”18 In March, passing themselves off as pro-Fenian American detectives who were searching for counterfeiters, four of McMicken’s men arrived in the area – including his son George, who had recently joined the force. They quickly picked up local gossip about Tyrell. During a recent performance in an Irish play, they learned, he had worn his green tunic with excessive enthusiasm and “acted the part with more than common feelings which was taken notice of by several here.”19 The previous year, he had visited Ireland for reasons unknown. It all seemed very suspicious. Or did it? Acting in a play and travelling to Ireland hardly constituted proof of anything, and rumours could easily take on a magnified life of their own. But in this case, they turned out to be right. When one of the detectives, William Smith, engaged Tyrell in conversation at his father’s hotel, he discovered that Tyrell supported the Fenian Brotherhood and was a close friend of Peter Mahon.20 Born in Canada of Irish parents, Mahon was a farmer in the southern part of Puslinch township, an area where his fellow Irish Catholics were thin on the ground.21 His family were known in the neighbourhood as a “hard lot.” According to the locals, his father had been arrested for possession of counterfeit money, and one of his brothers had been caught stealing horses. How much, if any, truth there was in such stories is impossible to tell. Mahon, De-

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tective Smith reported, was a “smart fellow” whose Fenian sympathies were shared by many of the Irish Catholics who lived in the northern part of the township. In September 1867, Mahon had left the farm, supposedly to visit a sick or dying brother – but actually, as Smith learned from Tyrell, to attend the Fenian convention in Cleveland.22 It took no great leap of imagination to realize that Turner and McNamara were aliases for Tyrell and Mahon.23 But the detectives found it difficult to track down McMicken’s third suspect, Murphy – hardly an uncommon name. They wound up following the wrong man, who had great fun driving them to distraction by tracing and retracing his steps and generally behaving in an ostentatiously mysterious manner.24 Meanwhile, Tyrell, probably smelling a rat, had joined a circus troupe and left for the United States.25 All that remained was to keep watching Mahon and to “inspect” his incoming and outgoing letters. The approach worked; before long, the government had found clear evidence connecting him with the American Fenians. He would probably have been left at large, however, had it not been for an event that prompted the government to use the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act against real or suspected Fenians in Canada.

As Canada’s most articulate and passionate enemy of Fenianism, Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Figure 13.1) knew that he was a marked man. “If I do not set an example of determination and vigour – of moral courage – in this case – how can I expect my friends, A, B, or C, – who have no especial responsibility in the public as I have, to fight the incoming evil, in their private walks of life?” he wrote in 1867.26 The price of his moral courage was high, and Ermatinger was well aware that McGee, who lived in Montreal when not attending parliamentary sessions in Ottawa, had been the target of numerous death threats. In January 1868, learning of reports that a number of “suspicious looking characters” were coming into Montreal, Ermatinger informed Macdonald that McGee’s “life is not quite safe,” and he ordered two of his men to patrol McGee’s house each night. “The City police,” Ermatinger added, “cannot be depended on.”27 But the guard was let down when McGee moved to Ottawa for the parliamentary session, and the secret police were taken completely by surprise when McGee was assassinated in front of his Sparks Street lodgings

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in the early hours of 7 April. Questions arose immediately: was this the work of a lone gunman with a private grievance, the product of a local conspiracy, or an authorized Fenian hit? All kinds of information and advice came pouring in. “Would suggest immediate examination retina of McGee’s eyes for reflection of murderers features,” one person wrote to Macdonald.28 Seek out a man named Johnson, urged another; his wife had supposedly been McGee’s mistress, and he was out for revenge.29 McMicken suspected that a former messenger of the Senate, James Ryan, might have been the murderer; Ryan blamed McGee for his dismissal after twenty-five years of service and held a grudge. But Ryan was quickly ruled out when it was learned that he was in Toronto at the time.30 In Sorel, Quebec, a schoolteacher overheard a conversation between a man and a “woman in man’s black clothes,” who had clearly been up to no good – could they, wondered the district sheriff, have been involved in the murder?31 Not surprisingly, suspicion fell most heavily on the Fenians. The chief of police in Montreal informed Macdonald that the Fenian head centre in Malone, Edward Mannix, had left the city for Ottawa just before the murder; Coursol immediately put one of his detectives on the case.32 Edward Clarke, a magistrate in Sherbrooke who doubled as a secret agent for George-Étienne Cartier, pointed the finger at “a desperate fenian and great enemy of McGee,” one Patrick Given, who had moved from Montreal to Ottawa. Clarke also suspected that Francis Bernard McNamee, “a great villian,” might have been involved.33 Another lead came from Richard Wright, who had been employed by McGee to get “into the Confidence of many of his Enemies” during his hard-fought election campaign against Bernard Devlin the previous year. “I have strong suspicions,” Wright told Macdonald, “that Mr. McGee’s murder might be concocted in Griffintown Montreal, from the bitterness and deadly hatred that I heard expressed against him.” Bernard’s brother Owen, thought Wright, might well know the assassin.34 If “bitterness and deadly hatred” towards McGee had been the motive, there was no shortage of suspects. Although most Canadians mourned his death, with some 80,000 people thronging the streets of Montreal for his funeral (which occurred on what would have been his forty-third birthday), some of his enemies sang and danced in celebration. “A man here openly expresses his approval of the assassination of Mr. McGee,” a Conservative politician from

13.1 Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825–68). A leader of the Young Ireland Rising of 1848, he subsequently repudiated revolutionary politics and became an uncompromising and outspoken opponent of Fenianism. His assassination in 1868 was almost certainly the result of a freelance Fenian operation.

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Prescott telegraphed Macdonald the day after the murder. “Should he be arrested?” To the contrary. “He shd be watched but not arrested,” Macdonald scrawled on the telegram. Reports came in of Irish Canadians who drank toasts to the assassin, described McGee’s killing as “hard but honest,” and declared that McGee had got exactly what he deserved.35

The first person to be arrested was Peter Egleson, the owner of a tailor’s shop on Sussex Street in Ottawa. Probably because McMicken had obtained William Roberts’s post office box number the previous year, the secret police knew that Egleson had written to Fenian headquarters in New York with information about the Ottawa delegate to a Fenian convention.36 Stories that he had visited the scene of the murder between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning, when hardly anyone had heard the news, drew more suspicion on his head.37 While Egleson was in jail, Detective Edward O’Neill of the city police continued to make inquiries. They led him to a tailor who worked in Egleson’s shop, Patrick James Whelan (Figure 13.2), known to his friends as Jim, who had moved from Montreal to the capital six months earlier, just after McGee had been re-elected to the House of Commons. Going to his room in Michael Starrs’s Ottawa hotel, well known as a Fenian hangout, the police found evidence that made Whelan the prime suspect in McGee’s assassination. There were several copies of the 7 March issue of the pro-invasion Irish American, which indicated that he was a local distributor of the newspaper. There were insignia associated with the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Toronto, the St Patrick’s Society in Montreal, and the St Patrick’s Literary Society in Ottawa, all of which had Fenians among their membership. There was an unsent death threat, written two months earlier; could the intended target have been McGee? And, most damning of all, there was a Smith & Wesson revolver that had apparently been fired recently – within the last twenty-four hours, according to Detective O’Neill. Whelan was taken to the Ottawa jail and charged with murder.38 “You must have been horrified by the news of poor McGee’s assassination,” Macdonald wrote to a colleague four days later. “He was a doomed man, his murder having been a deliberate decision by the Fenian organization. I think the police have secured the man who fired the shot.”39 The assumption that

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13.2 Patrick James Whelan (c. 1840–69). Charged with and executed for the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, he was almost certainly a Fenian and was present at McGee’s murder. Whether or not he was the man who actually pulled the trigger remains a mystery.

the assassination had been ordered at Fenian headquarters was understandable. During his election campaign against Bernard Devlin the previous summer, McGee had publicly divulged secret information about the Fenians in Montreal, who reciprocated by denouncing him as an informer.40 In Ireland, Tom Kelly’s assassination squad had been targeting informers, and in New York the Fenians had long since made it clear that informers would be shot.41

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Yet Macdonald was mistaken. John O’Neill, who had replaced William Roberts as president of the Fenian Brotherhood in December 1867, condemned the assassination as a cowardly and cold-blooded act that disgraced the name of Irishmen. “We will meet England openly and in fair fight,” he declared, “with arms in our hands, and we’ll whip her as we did at Ridgeway.”42 O’Neill’s public statements were corroborated by William Montgomery, McMicken’s detective in New York. “I have been in Company with numbers of the Organization especially at Head Quarters,” he reported. “There is no sympathy for him [McGee], but they repudiate any idea of the organization having anything to do with it.”43 With each day, however, it seemed more and more likely that Macdonald had been right to assert that the police had found their man. According to Alec Turner, who had lodged in Whelan’s house in Montreal the previous summer, Whelan had flown into a rage after reading McGee’s exposé of Fenianism during the election campaign and had threatened to “go to McGee’s house and blow his bloody brains out.” When McGee was re-elected, Turner continued, Whelan declared that “the bloody old pig won’t reign long, and I will blow his bloody old brains out before the session is over.” Another of Whelan’s lodgers gave similar evidence, as did one of Whelan’s co-workers in Montreal. Nor did Whelan help his own case: he spoke proudly to his fellow prisoners about his brothers who had participated in the Fenian Rising of 1867, and he sang, “It was with the greatest of glee, that I heard of the murder of D’Arcy McGee.” A few days later, Detective Andrew Cullen reportedly overheard Whelan declare from his prison cell that he shot McGee like a dog.44 If Whelan had possessed the means and the motive, he also had possessed the opportunity. Evidence emerged that he had been stalking McGee before the murder – making late night visits to McGee’s Ottawa boarding house, hanging out in Mary McKenna’s tavern across the road, and showing up in the House of Commons when McGee was speaking. Two weeks before the assassination, Whelan had carried a gun in his breast pocket when he went into the visitors’ gallery and acted in what one witness described as a “nervous and excited” manner. On the night of the murder, his behaviour was so menacing that a parliamentary messenger noted it in his diary, recording that when McGee was speaking, Whelan made threatening gestures, “lifted both hands up to his breast, and put his right hand inside his coat, as though feeling

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something there, and then nodded to his companion … The other party answered the nod, and also felt up and down his coat in the same way.”45 The “other party” was subsequently identified as James Kinsella, a close friend of Whelan who had moved with him from Montreal to Ottawa in November 1867.46 When the House adjourned, one witness testified, Whelan left through the main entrance and headed southwards – in the direction of McGee’s lodgings on Sparks Street.47 Although Whelan clearly had Fenian sympathies, his place, if any, within the Brotherhood remains a matter of conjecture. Reporters dug up the story that he had been arrested in Quebec City three years earlier for attempting to swear a soldier into the organization. His acquittal in the case was deemed less significant than the fact that he had been using an alias (Sullivan, his mother’s maiden name) and the fact that convictions in such cases were notoriously difficult.48 Some evidence suggests that he may have been more than a lowlevel operator in a Fenian circle. When he married Bridget Boyle in Montreal in February 1867, the name of his witness was Edward Condon. If this was the same Edward Condon who was subsequently sentenced to death (and finally reprieved) because he had organized the operation that freed Tom Kelly and Timothy Deasy from their prison van in Manchester, resulting in the death of Sergeant Charles Brett, then Whelan had Fenian friends in high places.49 In New York, Rudolph Fitzpatrick told Edward Archibald that Whelan was “the Delegate from Canada to the Cleveland Convention.”50 The informer James Rooney also located Whelan within the Fenian network. “I know and had seen this man Whelen several times in New York,” he told Francis Lousada in a letter of 7 May, “and had herd him express his wish to dispatch some of Her Majesty’s Subjects and friends in Canada. You remember I mentioned his name sometimes long before the murder.”51 Rooney, however, did not exactly have a stellar track record, and it should also be pointed out that Patrick James Whelan shared the same name with a “prominent Irish-American journalist” who had attended the Fenian convention in Philadelphia in October 1865.52 Still, Fitzpatrick’s information was generally solid, and it is unlikely that an Irish American journalist would be confused with a Fenian delegate from Canada.

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Whatever Whelan’s connection with organized Fenianism, there was no evidence that he was acting on orders from above. It remained possible, however, that he was working with a small group of men who were out to get McGee. Continuing his inquiries, Detective Edward O’Neill travelled to Montreal a week after the shooting and came away convinced that a conspiracy to assassinate McGee had been hatched at Kate Scanlan’s tavern the previous year.53 Shortly thereafter, three of Whelan’s drinking companions at Scanlan’s were charged with belonging to the Fenian Brotherhood and engaging in “treasonable practices.”54 Alec Turner testified that two of them, Thomas Murphy and Michael Enright, had joined Whelan on an all-night stakeout of McGee’s house during the 1867 election, immediately after Whelan had sworn to blow McGee’s brains out. John McGee, Thomas D’Arcy’s half-brother, testified that Thomas Murphy resembled a man who had accompanied Whelan on a strange and apparently threatening visit to Thomas D’Arcy’s house a few months later on the night of New Year’s Day.55 The third drinking companion was James Kinsella, a waiter at Ottawa’s Russell Hotel, who had been sitting next to Whelan in the House of Commons on the night of the murder. After the assassination, Kinsella left Ottawa for Montreal, where he reportedly “had consultations with different suspected parties” before his arrest.56 Even more intriguing – and the word is used advisedly – were the circumstances surrounding the arrest and imprisonment of Ralph Slattery (Figure 13.3) in Ottawa. At the police magistrate’s inquiry into the assassination, Slattery stated that he was a schoolteacher who had taught in Huntley township near Ottawa before moving to Pennsylvania in 1864. He had been back in Ottawa for a month and was staying with his brother, who worked as a tailor. His self-description matches an intelligence report that had been sent to Macdonald some eighteen months earlier. A man from Ottawa named Slattery, whose brother was a tailor, had moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, where he became a leading figure in the Fenian Brotherhood; he had left Titusville just before the Fenian raid in the Niagara Peninsula in June 1866. After the assassination, the man who supplied Macdonald with this information confirmed that the Slattery in question was Ralph.57 But the description also resembles that of Michael Slattery, whom Rudolph Fitzpatrick had identified in 1867 as the “chief Canadian organizer” for the Fenian Brotherhood. Michael, like Ralph, had a brother in Ottawa who was a tailor, Patrick Slattery, the treasurer of a Fenian circle in the city. Patrick was

13.3 Michael/Ralph Slattery. Through this blurred and grainy image, one can discern the face of the “chief Canadian organizer” of the Fenians. Slattery was clearly not a man to be crossed, let alone betrayed. It is a minor miracle that this photograph has survived at all; originally the size of a postage stamp, it was supplied by Rudolph Fitzpatrick to the Canadian secret police in the hope that they could track him down in Canada. Slattery was one of the men arrested in Ottawa after Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s murder.

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the only tailor named Slattery listed in the Ottawa city directory for 1866– 67.58 In September 1868, during his failed attempt to rehabilitate himself with Macdonald, Charles Clarke visited Ralph Slattery, who was still in the Ottawa jail. Clarke had with him a photograph of Michael Slattery that McMicken had given him in 1867. “The likeness you sent me about one year ago,” he wrote to McMicken on 22 September, “corresponds exactly with him.” Unless he had an identical twin, it seems that Ralph had been going under the name of Michael in New York – and was a key link between the Fenians in the United States and the Fenians in Canada.59 Whelan knew fellow tailor Patrick Slattery, at least by sight and possibly better than that. Attending the police magistrate’s inquiry on the day that Alec Turner was delivering his devastating testimony, Patrick had given Whelan a nod of support; Whelan subsequently told Ralph that his brother was in the courtroom. Also there were the “boys … from Gloucester and all around,” who were glaring at Turner. “I would not give sixpence for his carcase,” Whelan said.60 While walking on an Ottawa street a few weeks later, Turner was kicked, punched, and choked by three men, only escaping when a stranger intervened. Another man who had testified at the police magistrate’s inquiry, William Graham, received a death threat and was subsequently stalked by men believed to be Fenians. Shortly before Whelan’s trial in September, a government detective heard that the proprietor of the Ottawa hotel where Whelan had been staying, Michael Starrs – who had been arrested in April and released a month later – was working on a plan to “influence” the jury. One of his alleged accomplices was Patrick Slattery.61

Initially, the arrests under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act had centred on Whelan’s friends in Ottawa and Montreal. Before long, however, the government began using the legislation to incarcerate prominent Canadian Fenians who had been identified by its intelligence sources.62 In New York, Rudolph Fitzpatrick identified Henry Murphy as a leading Fenian in Montreal and reported that he had been in a five-hour closed-door meeting with John O’Neill the weekend before McGee’s assassination.63 When the police came to arrest him, his wife started swallowing Fenian bonds in an effort to destroy the evidence. But the authorities already had everything that they needed, including, to his astonishment, a roll call in his handwriting of the members

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of his circle. Among the names were Whelan’s friends Thomas Murphy and Michael Enright. In the cellar of his house the police made a couple of other interesting discoveries: an illicit whisky still and a Fenian uniform.64 Another target was Patrick Doody, who had been identified as the head centre of a Montreal Fenian circle. Suffering from tuberculosis, he had spent the winter in New Orleans on his doctor’s advice and had returned to Canada shortly before the assassination.65 Joining him in prison was Felix Callahan, the treasurer of Doody’s circle; three years earlier, Henry Murphy had nominated Callahan to serve on the executive committee of Montreal’s St Patrick’s Society, and Callahan had been one of the men involved in Francis Bernard McNamee’s plan to raise an Irish militia that would join the Fenians who were invading – or liberating – Canada in 1866.66 McNamee himself was not among those who were targeted, although Macdonald ordered Coursol to keep him closely watched.67 Also arrested was John Curran, a pork dealer who had been shadowed on the American side of the border by one of Coursol’s detectives.68 In early May, the government shifted its attention to Toronto. Having already threatened to prosecute anyone who sold American Fenian newspapers in Canada, it now moved against the Irish Canadian. The editor, Patrick Boyle, was arrested, along with his brother-in-law and co-publisher, Edward Hines (or Hynes). The effect, and doubtless the intention, was to shut the newspaper down.69 Because of his role in publicizing the Fenian cause, Boyle had long been in the government’s sights; Charles Clarke had gathered information that Boyle had been selling Fenian bonds, which confirmed the conviction that he was an active member of the Brotherhood.70 One of the recipients of Boyle’s bonds was the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, John Nolan, who had briefly served with his brother Patrick on McMicken’s force and who had dropped out under mysterious – and for McMicken, suspicious – circumstances.71 John Nolan had been under surveillance, as had Owen Cosgrove, who was described in a secret police report as “one of the greatest Fenians in this city at present.”72 His tavern, the Coachman’s Arms, widely regarded as a Fenian gathering place, would be attacked half a dozen times by Orange crowds over the next decade.73 Nolan and Cosgrove were sent to prison along with Boyle and Hines.74 Caught up in this net was Peter Mahon of Puslinch. “I am in for it now,” he said when arrested, “and it’s no use denying I have Fenian sentiments and he is no Irishman who would deny it but you can prove nothing against me.”75

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But the authorities had intercepted a letter that he had sent to the Fenian colonel John Hoy in Buffalo, one of the participants in the Ridgeway raid. The letter also led the detectives to the elusive Murphy they had been trying to track down: John Murphy, an eighteen-year-old store clerk, who was working to extend the Fenian organization into London. Mahon had also written to another John Murphy, a baggage man with the Grand Trunk Railway, exhorting him to advance the Fenian cause and providing information about passwords and countersigns.76 Both men were held in the Guelph jail, where, like Mahon, they were placed in solitary confinement.77 At least twenty-five people were arrested under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act. As had been the case in 1866, John A. Macdonald (Figure 13.4) kept a tight rein on the process and for the same reason: he did not want to create a social panic that would intensify feelings against Irish Catholics and exacerbate ethno-religious tensions in the country. “The Fenian organization has gone to a very large & dangerous extent in Canada, although I said as little about it as possible,” he confided to Michael Hayes at the end of May. “By the way you have some of them in Stratford. There is no intention of arresting people on suspicion, on the contrary I endeavour, as much as possible, to keep matters quiet.”78 The gap between Macdonald’s public downplaying of Fenianism within Canada and his private acknowledgment of its “very large & dangerous extent” is revealing – and, indeed, helps to explain why so many historians, drawing only on his public statements, have underestimated the significance of Fenianism in the country. The aftershocks from McGee’s assassination pulsed out in all directions. “Who is safe?” was a common question. “Who may not have on his track a wretch with a revolver in his pocket?”79 Amid continuing rumours that “a Fenian invasion upon a gigantic scale is maturing,” and against the background of an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, in Australia by a man shouting, “I’m a Fenian – God Save Ireland!,” Irish Catholics could easily be tarred with the brush of actual or threatened Fenian violence.80 Under the shadow of the arrests, the Ottawa Irish nationalist John Lawrence Power O’Hanly asserted that a “large portion” of Canadians wanted a “sectarian war of extermination” against Irish Catholics. He recalled that his son had come home from school asking, “Are all Catholics, Fenians?” “They say Catholics are bad people,” his son continued, “and will all go to h-ll.”81 After

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13.4 John A. Macdonald (1815–91). He established the Canadian secret service in 1864 and closely supervised its activities until its disbandment in 1871. Macdonald publicly underplayed the strength of Fenianism within Canada, while privately admitting its importance.

McGee’s assassination, it seemed that many Protestants wanted to speed up the Catholics’ journey into hell. “The universal themes,” O’Hanly wrote, “are Hang ninety nine out of every hundred of the ‘bloody Irish papists’; and it is pretty safe to conclude that the right one will be among the number.” Nonetheless, he viewed Macdonald as a force of moderation. “It is not often that I have a good word to say of that gentleman,” he told his fellow nationalist John Hearn, but “he deserves great commendation of the manner in which

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he has throughout resisted the pressure brought to bear on him on the side of persecution.”82

For the men behind bars, however, any talk of moderation rang hollow. “Under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act,” remarked Michael Enright, “they could be kept there until they were grey.”83 One of the prisoners, Patrick Buckley, fell into a deep depression; when he learned in September, five months after McGee’s murder, that he would be tried as an accessory, he broke down and wept. By April 1869, when his case came to trial, he “had the appearance of having undergone considerable suffering” and was thought to have “become insane since his incarceration.”84 Patrick Doody’s tuberculosis worsened in prison, and his wife, Eliza, feared that “further confinement will cause his death.” “I … humbly pray your Honorable body will be pleased to liberate my husband on Bail,” she petitioned the government in early June, “and so restore happiness to my poor broken heart and joy to my little family.” Signatories to the petition included the mayor and other elected representatives of Montreal.85 Her plea was ignored. Patrick Doody (Figure 13.5) died in January 1869, two months after his eventual release on bail. According to the Irish Canadian, some 10,000 people followed his coffin to the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.86 The monument over his grave asserted that he had died “from the effects of cruel and bad treatment while confined in the Ottawa prison for seven months on suspicion of Fenianism” and described him as “the first martyr in Canada to Ireland’s rights and liberties.”87 In striking contrast, a Globe reporter who, in May, visited the Ottawa jail – “one of the model gaols of the Dominion” – painted a rosy picture of the conditions: the men were doing daily exercises, some were playing draughts, others were reading, and Ralph Slattery was amusing himself by making calculations with mathematical equations.88 But to varying degrees, the uncertainty and insecurity were taking their toll – not only on the prisoners but also on their families. A friend of Henry Murphy (making sure to point out that he had “no simpathy at all for Fenians or Fenianism”) let it be known that “his wife is in very low spirits and change[d] in appearance, and thier youngest child is sic … She is anxious to know what of her Husband and when he may be expected in Montreal or if there is any serious charge against him.”89

13.5 Group Portrait of Fenians with Patrick and Denis Doody, Montreal, c. 1867. Patrick Doody (1834–69) is in the front row, second from the right, and his brother Denis (1823–99) is in the front row, first on the left. Patrick was among the men arrested in the wake of Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination; Denis organized a rally in support of the prisoners. Patrick had been suffering from tuberculosis, and his health deteriorated while he was in prison. He died shortly after his release and was described by his supporters as “the first martyr in Canada to Ireland’s rights and liberties.” Sitting between Patrick and Denis is Edward O’Shaughnessy (1848–1923). He told his descendants that he had been part of a group of Montreal Fenians who planned to attack government buildings and that he got out of Canada one step ahead of the secret police. O’Shaughnessy subsequently became a prominent member of the Clan na Gael in New York. The others are unknown, but they were probably all members of Patrick Doody’s Fenian circle.

The economic consequences of imprisonment were usually serious, sometimes devastating. Patrick Buckley was fired from his position as a messenger in the House of Commons.90 Peter Egleson’s tailor’s shop – which appeared to be part of a Fenian employment network – went bankrupt while he languished in prison.91 “I never saw a young man like him,” commented John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, “– so moral, exemplary and modest – so temperate, benevolent, unostentatious and obliging … Such is the first victim of persecution in the great Dominion. This is the class whom tyranny wishes to ruin

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and drive out of the country.”92 From the Guelph jail, the baggage man John Murphy wrote that “my wife, with my two young children of three and one year old, have been left without any means of support, and I have been kept out of my situation, and have no means of supplying bread to my family.”93 In a letter to Lord Monck, Peter Mahon pointed out that as a farmer he had suffered an “irrepairable loss” from being unable to sow his crops. “Such losses may seem trifling to men of state,” he added, “but they are important to a poor man.”94 “I am a political prisoner,” declared Mahon, in a letter to the editors of the Guelph Evening Mercury. He described how, with only a limited education, he had sought to form an intelligent opinion about the “great questions which adgetated the public mind.” Every man, irrespective of creed, colour, or nationality, he concluded, had “an inherent right to freedom” unless he violated laws made for the well-being of society. Yet in Ireland, those rights had been violated over centuries, causing “millions of god’s creatures to live in misery, and degredation, wrongs that has sent millions to famine graves, or to seek an asilum in a less fair but freer land.” “It is the duty of every Canadian,” he asserted, “to throw aside all prejudices to cease worshiping at the srine of mamon, and becoming intoxicated with the pleasures, or cares of this life, and liveing for yourself alone, let the world be the better of your haveing lived in it, lift your eyes and look across the atlantic, and see millions of souls writhing in misery.”95 The only remedy was the repeal of the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland so that Ireland could have “the same priveleges as canada.” Freedom, like a mountain stream, might be temporarily diverted or impeded by minor concessions but would eventually and inevitably “burst fort surmounting every obstackle in its headlong course, – england may be envolved in foreign difficulties sooner than most men might imagine, in such an event, Irish discontent would be a formidable enemy.” The wise course of action was to give Ireland its freedom now. A revolutionary war would be avoided, Canada would no longer be threatened by a Fenian invasion, and Ireland would take its place among the nations of the world. As things stood, men who loved Ireland – men like himself – were being consigned to dungeons. “I have endeavoured to give a brief outline of my opinions in the foregoing letter,” he wrote, “and if they are treason, or felony, all I have to say is, that they have got

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the author pretty tight, closer than necessary, but if ever prison walls enclosed a clear concience, mine is one.”96 Peter Mahon was the most articulate and impassioned Fenian writing from a Canadian prison. But he remained unheard. The sheriff asked Macdonald whether the letter should be sent to the Mercury. “It is not usual,” Macdonald replied, “to allow prisoners committed for felonies to discuss their case in the public press.”97

The longer the men stayed in jail, the louder the protests became. George Brown’s Globe, which had earned the bitter enmity of Irish Catholics for its opposition to separate schools, emerged as one of the strongest opponents of the government’s policy. The same liberal principles that lay behind Brown’s hostility to sectarian education were now being applied to individual liberty and the freedom of the press. There were also pragmatic reasons for his stand. The prolonged imprisonment of suspected Fenians, he believed, would “create a sympathy for them, and through them for the cause which they are held to represent.”98 The key point, for Brown, was that the Fenians in Canada could not act independently of their much more powerful counterparts in the United States – and in taking this position, he was substantially correct. If that was the case, Brown continued, the best way to defeat Canadian Fenianism was not by suspending habeas corpus but by adopting a strategy of deterrence and moving troops to the border.99 Such an approach would have been enormously expensive, but Brown let that point pass. During the summer, the Globe campaigned for the release of the prisoners and met with a measure of success, earning the appreciation of many Irish Catholics.100 In Toronto, Edward Hines, the co-publisher of the Irish Canadian, was released after three weeks; Owen Cosgrove was freed around the same time.101 In Ottawa, Michael Starrs was given bail a month after his arrest.102 Largely through the efforts of leading Irish Catholic Conservatives in Toronto (including James Moylan, editor of the Canadian Freeman), the one-time secret policeman John Nolan was let out in July.103 During the same month, Peter Mahon and the two John Murphys in Guelph were admitted to bail, “great care & concern being taken that it be of the most substantial Character.”104 When editor Patrick Boyle was released on a technicality, the

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government decided not to rearrest him.105 The Irish Canadian resumed publication on 5 August under the headline “still we live!” “Let our countrymen, in future,” Boyle wrote, “remember that, when Orange ascendancy and Tory bigotry and fanaticism shrieked in May last for there wholesale imprisonment under the provisions of the suspended habeas corpus, the Globe was the only journal in the Dominion which dared to throw its protecting shield between them and tyranny.”106 The men closest to the accused assassin, Patrick James Whelan – Peter Egleson, Thomas Murphy, Michael Enright, John Doyle, James Kinsella, and Patrick Buckley – were kept in jail, as were the leading Montreal Fenians Henry Murphy, Patrick Doody, and Felix Callahan, along with Ralph Slattery from Ottawa. Amid charges that Canada was reproducing the anti-Catholic oppression that Ireland had endured for centuries, the Montreal correspondent of the Irish Canadian – probably William Conroy – warned, “The first use men made of freedom is to avenge themselves on those who are slow to grant it,” repeating the statement twice more in case anyone had missed the point. He asserted that, with Nova Scotia on the brink of rebellion against Confederation and a Fenian army gathering on the Canadian frontier, the government had created an Irish enemy within – and “one enemy within is worse than a hundred outside.”107 Aware of the anger, and remembering the violent rescue of Tom Kelly and Timothy Deasy in Manchester the previous year, the government stepped up its security measures. Public buildings in Ottawa were put under armed guard, and the entrances to Parliament were strengthened.108 Thirty men from the Rifle Brigade were stationed opposite the Ottawa jail, which was patrolled day and night, and gas lights were put up around its perimeter.109 As the trial of Whelan approached, tensions rose. In Montreal, Denis Doody (Patrick’s brother) and his fellow Fenian Daniel Lyons organized a rally at Guilbault’s Gardens in support of the prisoners. Some 200 people showed up, only to find the gates locked and sixty armed policemen blocking the entrance.110 Detective James Allen reported that the Fenians in Detroit were “in an awful state of excitement” and noted that one of them was heading for Ottawa.111 Another of McMicken’s recruits, George Corry, learned that a Fenian from Buffalo was on his way to the city and was carrying a revolver in his case. Corry also noted that “a large number of fenian looking men,” probably from upstate New York, were going to Ottawa and Montreal.112 Michael

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Starrs’s hotel was full of visitors whose intentions were uncertain; things were quiet, but all that could change if Whelan was convicted.113 During the trial, James Allen joined the guards outside the prison. On the orders of Crown counsel James O’Reilly, he arrested “two very suspicious characters” who were attending the proceedings, but he found no weapons on them. “I am satisfied they were Fenians,” Allen told McMicken.114 The verdict came down on 15 September: Patrick James Whelan was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. “I swear to you before God, as my judge on earth,” he said in his speech from the dock, “that I never committed the deed, and I know it in my heart and soul as well.” The evidence against him, he continued, had been manufactured, and he was the victim of Protestant prejudice: “I am accused of being a Fenian. Every Irish Roman Catholic has to stand just the same imputation. Any man is welcome in England to say what he likes, but if a poor starved Irishman dares to lift his voice in favor of Irish liberty, he is seized[,] charged with assassination, hanged, drawn and quartered, or sent in chains to an English gaol, to a terrestrial hell – one of the living damned.”115 His words resonated with many Irish Catholics in Canada, including those who had nothing to do with Fenianism. The fact that O’Reilly – himself an Irish Catholic – had excluded his co-religionists from the jury strengthened the conviction that the trial had been rigged from the start. O’Reilly, commented the Irish Canadian, had “enrolled himself amongst the ranks of our worst and most rancorous enemies.”116 O’Reilly defended his action by referring to the “well-known sympathy on the part of many Roman Catholics in this neighbourhood with Whelan” – a telling point in itself.117 Anger that could be publicly expressed only within certain limits in Canada was completely unrestrained across the border. “My advice to the Fenians in the United States,” Felix Callahan wrote in the Irish American, “would be to rally round Gen. O’Neill … and furnish breech-loaders for 40,000 men, and come this way and wipe out this nest of vipers that pollutes the soil of America with its accursed presence.”118 When news of the verdict reached upstate New York, large crowds gathered in Malone to threaten retaliation. One of Coursol’s detectives joined them and heard people saying “that the time would very soon come when they would take Canada and rule over that little french country and that if Whelan’s life were taken they would take ten of our noted citizens’ lives for his.” The means to strike may not have been in place, but there was no doubting the desire.119

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Whelan consistently and passionately denied that he had shot McGee – to Detective O’Neill who arrested him, to his wife, Bridget, to Macdonald, to the judge who tried him, and to those who visited him in prison after his death sentence.120 He was executed on 11 February in front of a crowd of 5,000 people. Five days earlier, Mary McGee had sent him a letter via Michael Starrs and McGee’s friend James Goodwin, forgiving him for killing her husband. He told them that such forgiveness was unnecessary since he had not committed the crime.121 Two days before his death, Whelan made a striking confession to police magistrate Martin O’Gara and county attorney Robert Lees – that he knew the man who killed McGee and that he had been present at the murder.122 What happened on Sparks Street on the night of 6–7 April 1868 will never be fully known; historians are reduced to plausible speculation. With that in mind, here is a possible version that is consistent with Whelan’s statements that he did not shoot McGee, that he was there when McGee was shot, and that he knew the identity of the killer – although, it must be added, this version contradicts much of the evidence produced by the prosecution and the defence in the trial. As Chief Justice Robert Latchford remarked many years later, there was “doubtless much perjury” on both sides.123 Three times before – twice during the Montreal election campaign in September 1867 and again on the night of New Year’s Day in 1868 – Whelan had gone to McGee’s house with the express intention of assassinating McGee, the traitor and informer who deserved to die. On each occasion, Whelan had taken friends with him: Michael Enright and Thomas Murphy during the election campaign and Thomas Murphy on New Year’s Day. On the latter occasion, he had even gained entry into McGee’s home, under the watchful and wary eye of McGee’s half-brother John Joseph.124 But each time, Whelan lost his nerve; there was a wide gap between fantasizing about killing someone and actually killing someone. He moved to Ottawa and found work, and during the spring of 1868, he was steeling himself for another attempt – staking out McGee’s lodgings, going to the House of Commons when McGee was speaking, and keeping his Smith & Wesson at the ready. On the night of 6–7 April, he was ready to try again. He took some drink and went to the House of Commons with three friends: Richard Quinn, Reuben Lawrence, and James Kinsella. Quinn and Lawrence soon left, but Kinsella remained with him. These were the two men who were

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seen making threatening gestures as McGee was speaking.125 Kinsella was the first to leave the Parliament Buildings, and he waited for Whelan at a derelict house directly opposite McGee’s lodgings. As McGee was walking slowly along Metcalfe and Sparks Streets, aided by his cane, smoking his cigar, Whelan cut through the grounds to the back of the abandoned house and joined his friend.126 Whelan had the gun, but yet again he could not go through with the assassination. Kinsella had no such scruples. If Whelan did not do it, he would. He grabbed the gun, went up behind McGee, and shot him in the back of the head. Whelan would never betray his friend and would rather die than join the ranks of notorious Irish informers such as John Joseph Corydon, Godfrey Massey, and Pierce Nagle.127 Did it happen that way? Whelan took the secret with him. His last words on the gallows were “God Save Ireland!” – the Fenian rallying cry made famous by the Toronto Fenian Edward O’Meagher Condon, the man who happened to have the same name as the witness at Whelan’s wedding. Whelan wanted to be buried in the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery, next to Patrick Doody, dead of tuberculosis and Canada’s “first martyr” for Ireland. Many would see Whelan as the second. Fearing that the funeral could turn into a Fenian demonstration, Macdonald ordered that Whelan be buried on the prison ground. The priest who was to consecrate the grave backed off when the Fenians threatened to drive him out of town; they were determined that Whelan get a proper burial.128 He did not. His bones lie there still, in an unmarked grave, indistinguishable from those of other prisoners who lost their lives in the prison.

Three days after the trial, James O’Reilly recommended that James Kinsella, Thomas Murphy, Michael Enright, Peter Egleson, Patrick Buckley, and John Doyle be released on bail. The evidence against Kinsella, he noted, was of a “weak character.” Henry Murphy, the Fenian head centre from Montreal, played the part of a repentant sinner and was rewarded with his release in November; Doody, Callahan, and Slattery were also let out. By the end of the month, there were no political prisoners in Canadian jails.129 The trial of Patrick Buckley took place in April 1869; it lasted less than a day, and the judge directed the jury to give an immediate acquittal.130 All other cases connected with McGee’s murder were dropped.

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In explaining his decision to admit the prisoners to bail, O’Reilly wrote that the danger had passed. “Fenianism is dead in the United States,” he told Macdonald, “and the prompt action of our Government in making arrests last Spring has effectually stamped it out in this Country. It’s now perfectly harmless and no longer to be feared.”131 His statement took its place in a long line of premature obituaries for the Fenian Brotherhood, but it seemed quite reasonable in its immediate context. The secret police had information that the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States – although certainly not dead – was in no position to launch an attack on Canada in the immediate future. This information came from an impeccable source – someone who was a close friend of John O’Neill and who would rise to be the quartermaster general of the Irish Republican Army.

part four i n f i l t r at i o n s



14

 “The Best ‘Card’ We Have Got Yet” Henri Le Caron

On 28 March 1866, an obscure bonding agent and collector of poor rates in Colchester, England, sent an urgent letter to the secretary of state for foreign affairs, Lord Clarendon. My son is stationed with the United States Army in Nashville, ran the letter; he is “surrounded by Fenians,” he knows the Fenian secretary of war, Thomas Sweeny, and he has become close friends with a local Fenian leader named Captain John O’Neill. He had learned that the Fenians were going to invade Canada at the end of the month; they had 1 million men in their organization and $5 million that they were using to buy Springfield rifles. “Blood will be shed in a month,” the head centre in Nashville had said. If Lord Clarendon would like further reports, the writer continued, he would be happy to send them.1 It was one of hundreds of such letters that British and Canadian authorities received about Fenian activities in North America, and there seemed no reason to take this one any more seriously than the others. There was nothing here that would have surprised Edward Archibald and Gilbert McMicken, as well as much that was wildly exaggerated; talk of 1 million men and $5 million was simply a repetition of Fenian propaganda. Besides, the information turned out to be wrong; there was no invasion at the end of March, and no blood was shed. The letter was filed away, and no further action was taken.2 The bonding agent and collector of poor rates was John Beach. His son, Thomas Billis Beach, would turn out to be the greatest asset that the British and Canadian authorities had in their fight against Fenianism in North America.

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A year and nine months later, in December 1867, Thomas Billis Beach (Figure 14.1) came home to visit his parents. By this time, Captain John O’Neill had become General John O’Neill, the “hero of Ridgeway,” and was on the cusp of replacing William Roberts as the president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood. While Beach was in England, the country was rocked by the Clerkenwell bombing, with its aftershocks of fear and anger. Four days later, with the anti-Irish backlash in full force, Beach contacted Colchester’s member of Parliament, John Gurdon Rebow, to offer his services to the government. The undersecretary of state for the colonies, Charles Adderley, directed Beach to 65 Gloucester Street in Pimlico, London, the headquarters of the recently formed Secret Service Department, where he met with Colonel William Feilding, Captain Henry M. Hozier, and Robert Anderson – the same men to whom Charles Clarke and George Mothersill would report a month later. A deal was struck: Beach would supply information about the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States in return for £50 a month.3 Like many other transatlantic travellers, Thomas Billis Beach had reinvented himself in the New World. Colchester was too confining for him. Driven by a “wild mad thirst for change and excitement,” he had run away from home several times before winding up in Paris, where he mixed with members of expatriate British and American communities.4 In 1862, at the age of twenty, he decided to enlist with the Union Army in the Civil War. Assuming a new identity – more as a joke than anything else, he later wrote – he pretended to be French and sailed to New York as Henri Le Caron.5 He spent much of the war fighting with a cavalry unit in Tennessee, and in September 1864, he was promoted to lieutenant in the 13th US Colored Infantry, based in Nashville.6 It was at this time that Beach befriended O’Neill, who was a captain in the 17th US Colored Infantry in Nashville until his resignation that October.7 Beach carried off his new role with an accent that was unusual and possibly bizarre; it seems to have been a mixture of an Essex dialect and faux French. Edward Archibald remarked that Beach “passes here for a Frenchman & might easily be supposed to be one, owing to his foreign accent,” while the Fenian newspaperman John F. Finerty wrote that “he did not have a single trace of either French or English accent.”8 Whatever it was, it worked, as did the style that he cultivated: snappily dressed, courteous, charming, cheerful, and humorous, while rarely expressing an opinion but always paying attention.

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14.1 Thomas Billis Beach (1841–94). Operating under the alias of Henri Le Caron, he became the Canadian and British government’s key source of information about the plans of John O’Neill, the Fenian president. Appointed adjutant general of the Irish Republican Army in October 1869, Beach played a key role in undermining the Fenian invasion attempt of 1870.

Money was doubtless a factor. Despite his assertion that he never got rich from his work, when he hit his stride, Beach was triple-dipping: £50 a month from the Home Office, $75 a month from the Canadian secret service, and $100 a month from the Fenians. A love of adventure doubtless played a part; he was the kind of person who thrived on danger, and he became addicted to high-wire risk-taking. But his primary motivation was probably exactly what

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he said it was: a powerful sense of English patriotism that mirrored the equally powerful sense of Irish patriotism for which he had nothing but contempt. In his autobiography, he described how on one occasion he had been asked on short notice to speak at a public rally and how he worked the audience up to “the highest pitch of enthusiasm” by trotting out a series of platitudes about 700 years of Saxon tyranny, the holy cause of Irish liberty, and the noble work of John O’Neill. “I succeeded,” he boasted, “in hoodwinking the poor and deluded, together with the unprincipled, blatant, professional Irish patriots.”9 In private, he was even more scathing. It is a thankless task, he told his handler at the Home Office, Robert Anderson, when you have “night after night to speak & associate with a pack of low dirty foul mouthed beings – worse than niggers.”10 A sense of overwhelming intellectual and moral superiority to the people with whom he was mixing, compounded by casual and corrosive racism, was central to his long career as an informer. “I can admit no shame and plead no regret,” Beach wrote in his autobiography. “By my action lives have been saved, communities have been benefited, and right and justice allowed to triumph.”11 There were many in Canada who would have agreed.

Upon returning to the United States at the beginning of 1868, Beach kept in close communication with William Feilding at the Secret Service Department. “General O’Neill is determined to visit Canada this spring,” ran his first report, “and from what he said I do believe he will have the money men and influence to do so, and too without much opposition from [the American] Government.”12 Reaching the Foreign Office at the same time as James Rooney’s account of military preparations on the frontier, Beach’s information fed into British and Canadian fears that an attack was imminent. But although he was correct about O’Neill’s intentions, Beach was wrong to accept the Fenian leader’s assurances about the means to carry them out and about the position of the American government. At the British consulate in New York, Edward Archibald was getting better information from Rudolph Fitzpatrick, who had been in the game much longer. As Beach gradually came to realize, the Fenians did not have the resources to mount a successful raid in the immediate future.13

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In Washington, Edward Thornton, who had replaced Frederick Bruce as the British minister the previous autumn, contacted William Seward to sound out the American government’s position. It had not changed since 1866. The two men shared their secret sources of information, without revealing any names, and Seward assured Thornton that his government would “employ their best efforts to prevent any attack.”14 At the same time – also as in 1866 – American politicians with an eye to the upcoming elections were not shy about giving public and private “friendly words of encouragement” to the Fenians in the hope of winning the “Irish vote.” President Andrew Johnson himself told O’Neill that he would do anything that lay in his power to assist the Fenians. “What may be the practical value of any such assurances,” Archibald mused, “remains to be seen.” There would be no practical value. Once again, the Fenians were being played.15 It was a faltering start from Beach, who continued to share O’Neill’s conviction that the American government would tacitly support an invasion and who appeared to be taken in by some of O’Neill’s other statements – including the highly unlikely one that John O’Mahony and his successor, John Savage, from the rival Fenian wing, had promised to rally to the cause if the green flag was planted in Canada.16 Beach also erred in asserting that Patrick James Whelan, who had just been arrested on the charge of murdering Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was a long established Fenian from Buffalo who had been arrested “at the time of the Ridgway fight in Canada” and released for lack of evidence.17 But Beach’s closeness to O’Neill meant that he continued to be a valuable source of information about what the Fenian chief was saying, although not necessarily what he was thinking. And that value could only increase as Beach worked his way up the organization, becoming district organizer for Illinois in April.18

Initially, Beach’s reports reached the British authorities in the United States and Canada by a circuitous route: submitted to the Secret Service Department in London (and, after its disbandment in April 1868, to the Home Office), the reports were passed both to the Foreign Office, which contacted Thornton in Washington, and to the Colonial Office, which contacted Lord Monck in Ottawa.19 Recognizing the inefficiency of this arrangement, Beach asked

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the British government to provide him with “the address of some one in a confidential position in Canada with whom he may communicate direct in case of emergency,” and he was instructed to contact Monck.20 The need for rapid, reliable communication appeared all the greater after he read alarmist Canadian newspaper reports about Fenians massing on the border. “They must be very poorly informed in Canada of the true state of affairs,” he told the Home Office.21 As well as writing to Monck, Beach sent a letter of introduction to John A. Macdonald. Declaring that he could be of “great service to you,” Beach provided Macdonald with a brief sketch of his background: he had served with John O’Neill in the Civil War for two years, he had been offered a position on O’Neill’s staff, and he could supply a reference from the Home Office. Accounts of an impending Fenian raid, he added, were far from accurate. “If you wish me to come over you must pay my expenses,” he added; Beach was certainly not going to sell himself short.22 Two weeks later, Gilbert McMicken met him in Detroit and sent a glowing report to Macdonald. “What he stipulates is this,” McMicken wrote, “that he will enter the service as an organizer – will accept a position on O’Neil’s staff – will run the risk consequent upon any actual engagement on Canadian soil looking to his opportunity to escape or be taken as a prisoner, in which case provision is to be made for his safety.” Beach promised to supply the Canadian government with information about all the Fenian points of attack. “There can be no doubt of this person’s information,” McMicken added. “In him appears the best opportunity yet afforded of correct and timely information being had of the contemplated movement and if he renders the services he presumes he can I think his conditions are not at all extravagant.”23 Macdonald was more cautious. “A man who will engage to do what he offers to do, that is, to betray those with whom he acts, is not to be trusted,” he pointed out. If the terms of engagement were put down on paper – Beach wanted $100 a month – it was possible that he would show it to the Fenians to increase his standing with them and to discredit the Canadian government. All arrangements were to be made verbally; if the government decided to trust this man who called himself Henri Le Caron, then Le Caron himself must trust the government.24 Everything went smoothly; Beach accepted the terms. At the very time that the career of Charles Clarke, the original great hope for the secret service, was stumbling to an ignominious end, the Canadian gov-

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ernment had finally acquired a line straight to the heart of the Fenian Brotherhood. “I fully believe,” McMicken wrote of Le Caron, “he is the best ‘Card’ we have got yet.”25

Henri Le Caron came on the Canadian payroll three weeks after secret service operations had been given a new institutional basis through the establishment of the Dominion Police Force in Ottawa. The administrative reorganization made little difference to everyday operations, apart from the formation of a new section, comprising half a dozen men, with responsibility for guarding the Parliament Buildings. Gilbert McMicken continued to direct anti-Fenian operations from his base in Windsor, Ontario. Along with Le Caron, McMicken had two other men inside the Fenian Brotherhood: “J.W. McDonald” in Buffalo and William Montgomery in New York. The identity of J.W. McDonald is unknown, but he was rising up the ranks; in July 1869, McMicken observed him marching at the head of his Fenian military circle en route to a Fenian picnic in Buffalo and remarked that he was the best-looking officer in the parade.26 Since the time Montgomery had been sworn into the Brotherhood as William McMichael in June 1867, he had been steadily gaining the confidence of the Fenians in his Brooklyn circle. By November 1868, his stock had risen to the point where he was invited “to carry the flag that was carried at Ridgeway” in a “great parade” of Fenians in Philadelphia (Figure 14.2).27 In Ontario, McMicken had around half a dozen detectives who focused on Fenianism. Two of them, James Allen and William Caldwell, were veterans from 1865; another, William Smith, had joined in 1866. Three others, Frank Ritchie, David Milne, and George Corry, were newcomers. In Ottawa, Ritchie monitored the men who had been arrested under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act and subsequently released. A close watch was kept on Prescott, a possible invasion point from upstate New York, and on Port Colborne, a potential target for Fenians from Buffalo. When necessary, the detectives could be sent across the border to check the information coming in from Le Caron, Montgomery, and the British consulate in New York, where Edward Archibald was still receiving regular reports from the Fenians’ assistant secretary of military affairs, Rudolph Fitzpatrick. In Quebec, Frederick William Ermatinger was slated to continue his operations on both sides of the border, where detectives such as Anthony Sewell,

14.2 “The Fenian Volunteer.” Trampling the Union Jack, he liberates Ireland. In a Fenian parade in Philadelphia, the bearer of the flag that was “carried at Ridgeway” was actually a Canadian spy.

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Michael Burns, and John Johnstone reported on Fenian activities. But he took ill in the summer of 1868 and died the following January. “My poor husband’s continuing efforts to serve Government were never repaid,” his wife told Macdonald, “& indeed I say truthfully that his health during the fenian raids was greatly impaired still he worked on to the end.” Plunged into poverty, she wrote a heart-wrenching, desperate, and humiliating letter asking Macdonald for a loan of $30. He sent the money, but it seems to have been the only help that she got.28 Ermatinger’s responsibilities were taken on by Charles Coursol (Figure 14.3), who now had complete control over Fenian surveillance in Montreal and the border region of Quebec, New York, and Vermont. Putting all these sources together shows clearly that by the summer of 1868 the Canadian authorities were well placed to assess and counter the Fenian threat – in sharp contrast to the situation two years earlier. Beach was reporting on Fenianism in and around Chicago and was relaying O’Neill’s words, actions, and reports to Gilbert McMicken in Windsor and to Robert Anderson at the Home Office in London. Fitzpatrick was keeping Archibald informed about activities at the Fenian headquarters in New York, Montgomery had assumed a leading position in the Brooklyn Fenian circle, and J.W. McDonald had followed suit in Buffalo. The Dominion Police were monitoring the state of affairs on the border and watching out for Fenians inside Canada. In Washington, Seward had employed “a most intelligent and trustworthy person” to investigate Fenian activities on the border and had promised Britain that the American government “as presently constituted” would do its best to prevent a raid.29 As long as these conditions prevailed, Fenians had little or no chance of taking the Canadian government by surprise.

Over the next eighteen months, a recurring pattern set in. O’Neill remained fully committed to an attack on Canada but would not move until he had the men and matériel to provide a reasonable prospect of success. The stakes were high; as he knew very well, a repeat of 1866 would spell disaster for the invasion strategy. “We have learned wisdom in the hard school of experience, and we do not lightly sacrifice the advantages of our present position or risk the national cause on a rash venture,” he wrote in a secret address to Fenian circles that Le Caron copied and sent to McMicken. “I shall neither go myself

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14.3 Charles Coursol (1819–88). In 1868, he took over from Frederick William Ermatinger as head of the secret police in Quebec.

nor ask a single man to go to the field until such time as our preparations shall warrant success.”30 The logistical difficulties behind successful preparations were immense. Around 10,000 men needed to be recruited, trained, and armed, muzzleloading rifles had to be converted into breech-loaders (which could fire twenty shots a minute), vast quantities of ammunition needed to be procured,

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surreptitious supply lines had to be opened up to the border regions, and railway companies had to allow the transportation of Fenian volunteers to the staging grounds for the invasion. Such preparations hinged on large amounts of money, which were themselves contingent on the hope of victory. Without a sufficient amount of money, there would be no realistic prospect of an invasion; without a realistic prospect of an invasion, there would not be a sufficient amount of money. It was imperative to break this cycle. O’Neill proved to be an indefatigable fundraiser as he travelled from state to state with spirit-stirring messages. Fenian picnics, balls, and donation drives, impassioned speeches about the great success at Ridgeway, harrowing stories about the treatment of Irish prisoners in Canadian jails, promises of revenge for the Famine, assurances that the American government was on their side – all were pressed into service for the cause. Yet for all his efforts, the funds fell short of the targets. O’Neill faced the same dilemma that had confronted James Stephens in his work for an Irish revolution: he had to maintain morale by promising immediate action and then to deal with the fallout from repeated postponement. The more acute the tension between the desire for action and the need for restraint, the greater the divisions within the Fenian Senate over when – or even if – an attack should take place. The longer the gap between promise and practice, the greater was the possibility that O’Neill might risk everything on a desperate gamble: bringing a small force of men into Canada in the hope that they could hold their ground until Fenians from throughout the United States rushed northwards to join them. The intelligence reports coming in from Le Caron, Fitzpatrick, and Montgomery reflected the uncertainties and divisions within the Brotherhood, with the result that the Canadians kept bracing themselves for attacks that never materialized. When Beach signed on with the Canadian secret service in June 1868, O’Neill was telling the head centres that “the time for real work is fast approaching” and warning them that “British spies both male and female are very numerous.” “As it is feared that some of these spies have joined circles in several places and are very loud in their love of Ireland and denunciation of British rule,” he wrote, “the true men of the Brotherhood cannot be too much on their guard.”31 With plans under way for an attack in the summer, Le Caron kept McMicken closely informed of the unfolding events. In July, he reported, O’Neill

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had given him “positive assurance” that the Fenians would strike before the end of August and had appointed him inspector and military organizer for Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with orders to prepare for guerrilla warfare in Ontario. When the invasion began, he was to take 150 cavalrymen into the undefended territory around Goderich and to “raid through the country, attracting much attention, doing much damage & with the principal object to stay in the country, create a panic & prevent being captured.” It was, he added, “a very good idea as I know from experience during the late war.”32 The Fenians had “very complete maps & charts – both printed & written – of Canada, containing every road & almost every house in some sections of the country,” and more cavalry units were being organized. “It is coming, & a big thing too,” he wrote, “more so than I ever thought.”33 To make it even bigger, O’Neill and the Fenian Senators opened up negotiations with former Confederate generals, including P.G.T. Beauregard, Wade Hampton, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose presence within the Irish Republican Army was expected to inspire more men to join the ranks. Why would they be interested in working with the Fenians? Le Caron supplied the explanation: resenting their defeat in the Civil War, angry about the liberation of enslaved people, and furious about Radical Republican efforts to secure civil rights for Afro-Americans, they believed that participating in an invasion would “cause a Revolution in the Country, kill the Radical party, and as the Irish only want Canada for a time, think they can get control of it annexed to the U.S.” This was wild stuff, to say the least. But the Confederate generals would fight with the Fenians only if they were satisfied that sufficient funds had been raised. And when the financial figures for July came in, the money collected fell far short of the money pledged.34 The invasion date was now pushed back to September; the Confederates recognized the futility of pursuing this particular lost cause and went home. Faced with these setbacks, O’Neill and the Fenian senators went into fundraising overdrive. With the presidential election coming up, the fall seemed the best time to attack Canada. Not wishing to alienate Irish voters, the Democratic and Republican Parties would surely cheer the Fenians on while the boys in green crossed the border – or so it was hoped. For several weeks, McMicken was not sure which way things would go, but by early October, the fog had lifted. It was now definite, reported Le Caron; there would be no move until the spring of 1869.35 His information was corroborated by

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Montgomery in New York, who informed McMicken that O’Neill had told “a meeting of the secret circle” that the pledges had not been fulfilled and that the invasion had been postponed until the spring, by which time the money would have come in and the Confederate generals would be back.36

Armed with this information, the authorities in Canada breathed a little more easily; it was in this context that James O’Reilly concluded that Fenianism in the United States was dead and that the prisoners still being held under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act could be given bail. In New York, Archibald doubted that anything would actually happen in the spring. “The great body of the Fenians are tired of giving money, seeing the fruitlessness of all their past liberality,” he wrote, and the victory of the Republican Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election made it clear that “the U.S. Government will act promptly and effectively in suppressing any actual hostile movements.”37 Fenian morale was collapsing; “there has been a falling off in the organization of at least 25 per cent,” Le Caron told Robert Anderson. “Everyone is disheartened & consider the only favourable opportunity lost.”38 But neither Archibald nor Le Caron (who met each other in October) believed that O’Neill would give up. O’Neill, commented Archibald, was “a very vain man” who was “determined to do something, no matter how desperate, to signalize his devotion to the cause.”39 As a first step on the road to recovery, he held a Fenian convention in Philadelphia that November. It was thoroughly infiltrated by the secret service.40 There was, however, little to report. “All the same old buncombe,” was Le Caron’s terse summation.41 The only thing of note was a proposal to make a formal demand to the British government that it withdraw from Ireland – “the extremity of ridiculousness,” sniffed McMicken.42 By January 1869, it seemed that the movement was finally falling apart. The funds were going down, the leaders were quarrelling, and O’Neill said that he would resign if the money to launch an attack was not forthcoming by April. Operations at Fenian headquarters were pared to a minimum; among the staff who were laid off was Rudolph Fitzpatrick, Archibald’s man on the inside, although he was soon brought back into the fold.43 Le Caron, who had nearly been rumbled as a spy after making his interest in the names of Canadian Fenians too obvious, wondered whether Her Majesty’s government still

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needed his services.44 Could part of his reward, he asked Anderson, be a promotion for his father? “It would gladden my heart and repay me a thousand fold for all I have ever done or am likely ever to do for you,” he wrote. “He knows nothing of the request I am making.”45 Le Caron’s services, however, were still required. In February, the Brotherhood showed the first signs of flickering back into life. Meetings were being held in New York every night, and O’Neill was making yet another “last appeal.” The cycle was repeating itself: promises of action vitiated by lack of funds. April came and went, and O’Neill did not resign. In May, the newly promoted quartermaster general, John Whitehead Byron, assured Le Caron that the Fenians were “making preparations for a fight as quick as circumstances will permit – a fight is certain and you shall have due notice.”46 But circumstances did not permit, and before long Byron himself got tired of waiting. Much to O’Neill’s anger, he switched his attention southwards and in June led an abortive filibustering expedition to Cuba. “This defection from Irish to Cuban sympathy has been a serious blow to Fenianism,” remarked McMicken.47 Nothing, however, deterred O’Neill from pressing ahead with his plans. Two weeks after the Cuban debacle, the Fenian Senate informed the head centres of New York circles that, in Archibald’s words, “a movement on Canada has been positively decided on.” Efforts to convert rifles to breech-loaders were proceeding apace, and the call went out for each member of the Brotherhood to donate $10 to the cause.48 In New York, Montgomery reported that Fenian militia companies were drilling, and in Buffalo, J.W. McDonald anticipated an attack before the end of summer. Le Caron informed McMicken that the Fenians were almost out of money but were determined to attack anyway. “It is hard to say some times,” wrote McMicken, “what desperate men with arms and a little money may attempt.”49 By the fall, the Fenians were inhabiting a strange twilight world. Deadlines for the money came and went, militia companies drilled but were not called into action, and arms were being packed into boxes but not sent to the frontier. Tensions within the Fenian leadership were becoming more acute, and intelligence reports lurched from one extreme to another. In early October, Montgomery reported that a movement into Canada was imminent, while Le Caron was informing McMicken that a number of leading Fenians wanted to abort

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the plans and oust O’Neill from office.50 Shortly afterwards, Montgomery learned that the executive committee of the Fenians had ruled out an invasion until the fundraising targets had been reached.51 But O’Neill was refusing to wait any longer. As Le Caron put it, he “feels that he must move or die on account of so many promises made by him.”52 As the battle raged between O’Neill’s supporters and opponents, the Canadian government prepared for an attack. “We have reason to believe that the Fenian leaders are seriously contemplating another move,” John A. Macdonald told a Conservative journalist, Thomas White. “It would seem to be one of the most mad attempts possible, and it is hard to believe the information that we have received.” But, he added, “we cannot afford to despise it. We are taking precautions, even at the risk of being laughed at.”53 It was impossible to tell whether O’Neill or his enemies would prevail and whether the Fenians would move immediately or wait until the spring of 1870. Either way, the Canadians would be ready. “Our information,” Macdonald assured the governor general, “is so complete, that we will have the earliest intimation of any attack.”54 But that information indicated that it was not only the Fenians in the United States to whom the government should pay attention. A raid, Macdonald learned, would be preceded by attacks from Canadian Fenians on drill sheds and armouries to prevent the militia from defending the country.55 Countermeasures were immediately put into place, and the Volunteers were ordered to take their rifles home for safekeeping.56 “The organization is getting very strong about Montreal and all through Canada East,” reported Montgomery, “but all efforts to organize in the West have proved a failure.”57 His assessment corresponds with the comments of Patrick Boyle in a private letter to Martin O’Brennan, the former editor of the Connaught Patriot, who had twice been arrested in Ireland for sedition. Membership of Toronto’s Hibernian Benevolent Society, Boyle wrote in November 1868, had “dwindled down to a point at which it would be difficult to muster a corporal’s guard.”58 A major challenge in assessing Fenianism within Canada after the trial of Patrick James Whelan is that most of the extant sources focus on Toronto and western Ontario, while most of the action was going on in Quebec – where, contrary to James O’Reilly’s opinion, the Fenians had not been stamped out and rendered harmless.

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While O’Neill and the Senate Fenians were repeatedly planning and postponing their movement against Canada in 1868–69, their own secret service continued to send agents north of the border in attempts to penetrate the government’s counter-revolutionary activities. “They know what you are doing,” Le Caron told McMicken in October 1868, and they “know all about 4 officers being detailed to look after us & have copies regularly of all Telegrams sent from and to you.” Canadian Fenian telegraph operators were also intercepting Lord Monck’s telegrams, although it is extremely unlikely that they were able to crack those in cipher.59 At the same time, Le Caron was compiling a list of Canadian Fenians who had sent letters to the Fenian headquarters in New York. They included William Conroy in Montreal, who had been part of the plot to raise a Fenian militia company in Canada in 1866, and several men from Ontario.60 One of McMicken’s detectives, most likely J.W. McDonald in Buffalo, learned that Patrick O’Dea had forwarded money from Fenian headquarters to Patrick Boyle in support of the Irish Canadian.61 It was probably also McDonald who reported that three or four Canadian delegates attended the Fenian convention in Philadelphia in November 1868; their names, however, had been kept a closely guarded secret.62 According to Rudolph Fitzpatrick, the Canadian Fenians were among the strongest supporters of an early move into Canada.63 They had, after all, much to be angry about: the suspension of habeas corpus; the “martyrdom” of Patrick Doody, who had died from tuberculosis after being released from prison; the execution of Patrick James Whelan; and the continuing incarceration of the men imprisoned after the invasion attempts of 1866. In the Irish American, Felix Callahan described the death of Doody as an act of murder and claimed that all those who attended his funeral had turned into Fenians. “When the day of action arrives (which, I hope, will be soon),” he declared, “they will show that they can revenge that murder.” Another writer expressed similar sentiments about the fate of Whelan: “An innocent man is again to be sacrificed to the vindictive fury of English ascendancy; and Irish blood will again cry to Heaven for vengeance and justice.”64 Defiance was in the air, and Fenian symbols were on full display. When Martin O’Brennan came to Quebec in February 1869 at the invitation of the city’s Hibernian Benevolent Society, he was welcomed by the leading Fenians, James Redmond and Jeremiah Gallagher, and spoke in a hall decorated with

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portraits of Wolfe Tone and O’Donovan Rossa.65 On St Patrick’s Day, some 2,000 Quebec Hibernians marched under triumphal arches inscribed with “God Save Ireland” and “Allen, Larkin and O’Brien,” the men known as the Manchester martyrs. The principal speech was given by the lawyer John O’Farrell, a Ribbonman turned Fenian who was suspected by John A. Macdonald and others of being behind the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee.66 Next up was Jeremiah Gallagher, who was on a trajectory that would lead him to support O’Donovan Rossa’s bomb campaign in Britain.67 O’Farrell and Gallagher were together again in the summer, when they proposed and seconded the Hibernian Benevolent Society’s resolution not to welcome the governor general, Sir John Young, to the city. Young, who had replaced Lord Monck the previous February, was dismissed as the representative of a country that had ruled Ireland with a rod of iron, decimated the Irish population “by famine, the plague and the sword,” bribed men such as McGee, and excluded Irishmen “from every office of trust in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.”68 In Ottawa, the St Patrick’s Day concert took place against the background of illuminated transparencies not only of constitutional nationalists such as Daniel O’Connell but also of revolutionary ones such as John Mitchel.69 The continuing potency of Fenianism in Montreal was demonstrated by the election of Francis Bernard McNamee as president of the St Patrick’s Society.70 In Toronto, the St Patrick’s Day stage was shared by Patrick Boyle and the constitutional nationalist John O’Donohoe; the grand marshal was Owen Cosgrove, who had been arrested the previous year under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act.71 Revolutionary and constitutional nationalists eyed each other warily, with a suspicion that sometimes broke out into hostility. When middle-class moderate nationalists in Quebec City attempted to revive the city’s St Patrick’s Society, the “vulgar, plebeian Hibernians” responded with class-based contempt towards the “nice young men of genteel address and aristocratic bearing” who were more interested in social climbing than in the liberation of Ireland.72

There was, however, a key area where the constitutionalists and the revolutionaries made common cause: the continuing incarceration in Kingston Penitentiary of Fenians taken prisoner after the 1866 raids. Both sides wanted to improve the condition of the prisoners and to secure their early release, but

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many Fenians had another agenda: to stoke a sense of outrage that could feed into the fundraising drive for the next invasion. Stories were circulating in the Irish Canadian and the pro-invasion Irish American that the prisoners were being flogged until they could no longer speak, being put into solitary confinement on the slightest of pretexts, and being forced to eat rotten potatoes. One prisoner, it was reported, had been driven insane and put in a straitjacket for months.73 Particularly emotive was the case of Father John McMahon (Figure 14.4), the priest who had been captured after Ridgeway, found guilty, and sentenced to death for levying war on Canada – a sentence that was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment. Having a priest in prison touched a raw nerve with Irish Catholics in general, and the Fenians lost no time in portraying him as a religious and political martyr – “the victim,” as the Irish Canadian put it, “of rampant bigotry and a quenchless, self-consuming hate.” When, in July 1869, McMahon was released, the newspaper attacked Macdonald for trying to make political capital out of his pardon.74 The charge was accurate enough. “It will do me no harm,” Macdonald told James Moylan. “On the contrary I think it will prove to the Roman Catholics of Ontario that I have consulted their feelings in a matter, where, had I taken a contrary approach, I should have received the approbation of the Protestants of the Province, or a large majority of them.”75 But when it came to making political capital out of McMahon, the Fenians left Macdonald in the dust. In November 1869, in front of some 6,000 people at the Cooper Institute in New York, William Roberts welcomed McMahon to the land of liberty – the priest who had been “immured in an English dungeon for simply performing his duty as a minister of God.” (The assumption that “England” and “Canada” were interchangeable is in itself revealing about the Fenian mindset.) McMahon told his story: he had been on his way to visit his brother in Montreal, and when he was surprised to encounter the Irish Republican Army in Fort Erie, he was asked to be their chaplain. His only crime had been to save the souls of the dying on both sides – and for this, he was subjected to English injustice and ill-treatment. With the commutation of his death sentence to imprisonment, “the crown changed the mode of killing me by hanging to slow death by torture and starvation in Canadian dungeons for life.” The food was dreadful, there were rats in his coffin-like cell, and he was forced to take cold baths in the dead of winter – all because he was “an Irishman

14.4 Father John McMahon (1820–72). Captured by the Canadians after the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866, he was sentenced to death for his part in the raid – a sentence that outraged many Irish Americans. In the event, none of the prisoners were executed, and Father McMahon was released in 1869, after which he attended Fenian rallies in the United States and went to the frontier in 1870 with the intention of joining the raid into Quebec.

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born, a free man, an American citizen,” who performed his priestly duty towards the dying. It is not hard to imagine the sense of outrage coursing through the crowd.76 Father McMahon, however, was not quite as innocent as he claimed. To have readily accepted the request to become a chaplain of the Irish Republican Army as it was invading Canada suggests a considerable degree of pre-existing sympathy with and support for the Brotherhood. The Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati, John Baptist Purcell, told McGee that, in McGee’s words, McMahon had “openly aided and abetted Fenianism.”77 At any rate, his Fenianism was in no doubt after his release from prison. Shortly before the Cooper Institute meeting, William Montgomery reported from New York that McMahon “uses his influence when he has an opportunity in urging the members to go on in their good work and says that when they cross again he will be with them.”78 It is difficult to tell, given the propaganda war being conducted between the Fenians and the Canadian authorities, whether McMahon had in fact been singled out for vengeful treatment while in prison. After reading his Cooper Institute speech, the chairman of the Canadian Directors of Penitentiaries, Terrence O’Neill, wrote that McMahon had actually been exempted from prison labour and given light duties in the Catholic chapel because of his status. McMahon’s charges against the prison, O’Neill asserted, were the product of his “heated imagination” and emanated from someone who was “speaking for a purpose.” “The rats exist only in the poor priest’s dreams,” O’Neill continued. “The case of the bath is entitled to equal credit with the rat story.”79 The controversy extended to the conditions experienced by the other prisoners. In Kingston, the St Patrick’s Society leapt to the defence of one of its members who had been accused of abusing the Fenians while working as a prison guard; the story, it insisted, was “spiteful and unfounded.”80 Nonetheless, Bernard Flanagan, who had been a guard at the prison until the summer of 1868, wrote that Father McMahon was subjected to a variety of indignities, from being shoved, pushed, and tormented by Orangemen on duty to being “seated between two negroes at meals.” He also asserted that another prisoner had been given sixty lashes after he had been found reading a copy of the Irish American.81 In the midst of these charges and countercharges, Patrick Boyle and Francis Bernard McNamee decided to visit Kingston Penitentiary and assess the sit-

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uation for themselves. Given free access, they found, much to their surprise, that the Fenian prisoners were treated no differently from the regular inmates. Conditions, the two men reported, had improved under the new warden, James Moir Ferres, who took over in May 1869; his predecessor, Donald MacDonnell, had presided over a harsher regime in which the Fenian prisoners were indeed subjected to abuse. Their findings fitted with Bernard Flanagan’s description of the situation that had prevailed before he left the previous year but contradicted a major strand of the Fenian narrative, which portrayed Ferres as the villain of the piece. If conditions continued to improve, the martyr value of the prisoners would correspondingly decline. Whether they intended to or not, Boyle and McNamee had burst the propaganda bubble.82 The response was vitriolic, and McNamee bore the brunt. He was accused of whitewashing the condition of the prisoners in return for securing a government contract and was described as being “no better than the brutes for whom he has sought to apologize.” Defending himself in a letter to the Irish American, McNamee attempted to save his credibility by pointing to his opposition to Thomas D’Arcy McGee and by denying that he had received a contract from the government.83 When Macdonald saw the letter, he described it as “one of the most amusing I ever read.” “He writes in such a hesitating style,” Macdonald continued, “that it is quite clear he knows that he is in their power from some communication of his.”84 McNamee may well have been in precisely such a position. Some of the Fenians must have seen, or at least have been aware of, the letters that he wrote in March 1866 about hoodwinking the Canadian government and the follow-up letter from William Mansfield with its warning “don’t have a spy in the camp.”85 The possibility that McNamee’s letters might be used by the Fenians to destroy his reputation and credibility in Canada would not have been lost on him. In the event, he was accused of being a “government spy” who was “glad to have a country and countrymen to sell,” but no letters were produced. At the St Patrick’s Society in Montreal, opinions were split: if their president was telling the truth about prison conditions, then Father McMahon was a liar. There was nothing hesitant about the self-justificatory speech that McNamee gave to the St Patrick’s Society in December 1869: he had approached the New York Fenians the previous year with a plan to get the prisoners out of jail, but “the cowardly dogs were afraid to give me any assistance.” They

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were all talk and no action; “they never intend to fight,” he said, “but they will take our money.” Equally, there was nothing hesitant about Fenian reactions to his speech. In Montreal, Felix Callahan reminded everyone that McNamee had been a crimp during the Civil War, when he was tricking Irishmen into becoming “food for gun-powder.” And in New York, the Irish American asserted that the Irish in the city were “pretty well convinced that he is no better than a British spy.” “They have a very short way,” it added, “of dealing with such vermin.”86 John A. Macdonald rather enjoyed the spectacle of Fenians tearing themselves apart. “Boyle of the Irish Canadian & McNamee of Montreal,” he told James Moylan, “are in great disgrace with the Fenian body in the United States for the only honest act they ever did in their lives.”87

In late October, with the Canadian Fenians arguing among themselves and the American Fenians deeply divided over the timing of the next attack on Canada, Henri Le Caron was summoned from his home in Lockport to the Fenian headquarters in New York. There, John O’Neill promoted him to colonel and appointed him adjutant general of the Irish Republican Army.88 Ordered to make preparations for a movement in December, Le Caron threw himself energetically into the task. Within days, 5,000 breech-loading rifles had been sent to Vermont and eastern upstate New York, and Le Caron set about locating earlier arms shipments.89 Irish soldiers who deserted from the British Army base in Prestcott identified weak points on the Canadian side of the border and reported that there were unguarded stores of Snider rifles in Morrisburg and Huntingdon; plans were afoot to seize them when the raid began.90 While engaged in this work, Le Caron was relaying as much information as possible to the British and Canadian authorities, writing reports to Robert Anderson in London, and holding secret meetings with Edward Archibald and Gilbert McMicken in New York. He provided them with detailed information about the location of Fenian arms, ammunition, and accoutrements in Vermont and about the Ogdensburg-Malone region of New York – right down to diagrams of the farms, barns, and outbuildings where the weapons were stored and an inventory of the quality and quantity of the weapons in each location. He also presented them with the Fenian war plans: the feints from Buffalo, the

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main base of operations at St Albans, the attack on Montreal from Rouses Point, and the attack on Ottawa from Ogdensburg.91 It was a counter-intelligence goldmine. The question was, what would they do with it? One option was to alert the American government so that it could seize the arms and pre-empt the invasion. Such an action would, as Le Caron pointed out, “cripple and dishearten them so bad that no movement could be made for years,” but it would not prevent the Fenians from eventually trying again. It would also mean that his own usefulness as a spy would be over. “There is no other man living who knows, or rather will know of the start points of all the munitions of war, eastern division,” Le Caron reminded his handlers, “& therefore if I disclose, guide and have seized all these I am played out for then I must get out of the country.”92 In London, Robert Anderson added another point: there would be nothing to stop the American government from doing what it had done after the Ridgeway raid in 1866, when it had confiscated the weapons, threatened O’Neill with prosecution, waited a while, and then returned the rifles to the Fenians.93 And so the recommendation went up to the colonial secretary, Lord Granville: “A seizure of arms at present is not the most desirable course.”94 Le Caron envisaged a very different scenario. “If the movement would be allowed to take place & you are able to crush it and kill it,” he wrote, “I think that would be best.”95 This course of action presented its own risks; having informed the Canadians of the time and place of an impending invasion, Le Caron could be one of its first victims as he crossed the border with O’Neill. “He will do his duty to the utmost of his ability in what he has undertaken for the Govt,” McMicken told Macdonald, “and should harm happen [to] him trusts the Govt will remember he has a wife and two children without him penniless and helpless.”96 Another potential consequence of allowing the invasion to go ahead was that its defeat would finish off the Senate wing Fenians in Canada. Thanks to Le Caron and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, who was still supplying information to Archibald, the secret police had been able to identify the leading Canadian Fenians who were working with O’Neill. Some of them, such as Felix Callahan (who was going under the name of Felix de Chapelle), were already known; others, such as the “elderly man about 50” at Fenian headquarters by the name of Neville, were not. Charles Coursol’s inquiries in Montreal pointed to a fruit dealer named James Neville, who had strongly opposed McGee during the

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1867 election.97 A key link between the Canadian Fenians and their American counterparts was the assistant secretary of civil affairs, Frank Renehan, a resident authority on Canadian history. Britain’s control of Canada, he asserted, rested solely on conquest; this being the case, the Fenians had “as much right, if not more, to enter that Territory and establish a form of government there, as the power that now held it.”98 When Macdonald learned that letters from Canada to Fenian headquarters were being mailed to Renehan, he ordered the postmasters in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, and Toronto to let him know how many were being sent each week. He also instructed Coursol to put a detective on the trail of Felix Callahan so that his Fenian contacts could be traced.99 If the American Fenians attacked, they would be repulsed at the border; if the Canadian Fenians tried to disrupt the defence measures, their leaders would be rounded up. But McMicken still was not sure which way the ball would bounce. “With any other people than the Irish,” he wrote, “the organization would have ceased to exist ere now and whatever weakness appears in it at present is no criterion by which to judge of future action”; the lessons of Eastport and Ridgeway had been thoroughly absorbed. McMicken knew that internal resistance to O’Neill was increasing and that one Fenian senator had insisted that “it is a sacrifice of noble men’s lives and therefore it is a crime to move this winter.” But McMicken also knew that the “poorer class” of Fenians were answering the call for much-needed ammunition, that Father McMahon and several other priests were supporting an immediate invasion, and that O’Neill’s “determination and energy” were formidable.100 By mid-December, however, the pushback from the Senate against a winter campaign was too great for O’Neill to resist; images of 8 feet of snow, bitter weather, and Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow haunted Fenian minds.101 After calling a council of war, O’Neill arranged a compromise with his opponents: the projected attack on Canada would be put off yet again, this time to the spring of 1870.102 The Fenians appeared to be locked into the familiar cycle of promise and postponement. In a matter of months, they would finally succeed in breaking out of it.

15

 “Practical Evidence of Our Sincerity” Eccles Hill and Trout River, 1870

In January 1870, Thomas Billis Beach, aka Henri Le Caron, was back on the New York and Vermont side of the border, going under the name of J.R. Smith and sending reports to Gilbert McMicken as R.G. Sager. Having acquired two new aliases, he was under instructions from John O’Neill to distribute more arms in the region between St Albans and Ogdensburg. Within the Fenian Senate, O’Neill’s enemies, who were growing in number, opposed the mission, fearing that he was planning to ignore their agreement to wait until the spring and was determined to go ahead without them. Their concerns were well founded. As Le Caron informed McMicken, O’Neill intended to call a Fenian congress and council of war in February, ostensibly to address divisions within the Fenian Brotherhood but actually to trick everyone into assuming that no action would take place until after the meeting. Then, a few days beforehand, he would strike northwards with some 3,000 men, whom he believed could be mobilized within twenty-four hours. The Canadians, the Americans, and his opponents in the Fenian Senate would all be taken by surprise, the Irish Republican Army would hold its ground for a week or more, during which time Irishmen from throughout the United States would join the fight, and the Fenians in Canada would work behind enemy lines. As an adept in the art of betrayal and deception, Le Caron rather admired the plan. “This is the dodge to be carried out now,” he wrote to McMicken, “& as you see before very long & a good one it is.”1 To ensure that the arms would not be confiscated by the Fenian Senate, and to conceal them from Canadian and American detectives, O’Neill entrusted the entire operation in Vermont and upstate New York to Le Caron – making him “the only person who knows now all locations of material.” As O’Neill suspected, American detectives were on the case. Hamilton Fish,

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William Seward’s successor as secretary of state, ordered the United States marshal for the Northern District, Isaac Quimby, to investigate Fenianism on the frontier, and he shared his reports with the British minister at Washington, Edward Thornton. Quimby’s deputies, however, found no evidence to suggest that another attack was in the works. More successful were the men operating under the American general William Tecumseh Sherman, who had located two arms caches and were under orders to seize them at the first sign of a movement against Canada.2 O’Neill learned about the arms discoveries from two different sources: the Fenian head centre at Malone in upstate New York, Edward Mannix, and the governor of New York, John T. Hoffman, whose election had been aided by the city’s Irish political machine. According to Le Caron, the American government had asked Hoffman to call out the state troops if they were needed against the Fenians since the regular army did not have enough men near the border. Hoffman had pretended to agree but privately assured O’Neill that he would do no such thing. Le Caron passed the information on to McMicken; it was relayed to the Colonial and Foreign Office and from there to a deeply skeptical Edward Thornton in Washington, who decided not to raise the matter with Hamilton Fish. Still, Lord Clarendon, at the Foreign Office was concerned. “If the Fenian raid takes place,” he reminded Thornton, “it will be of vital importance to secure the prompt and vigorous action of the United States’ authorities to prevent reinforcements crossing the border and joining the raiders, who, it is trusted, will be effectually dealt with by the Canadian Troops.”3 Fearing that American detectives were getting too close, O’Neill directed Le Caron to relocate all the arms that he had previously hidden. Working by night, Le Caron carried out his orders, awaiting the opportunity to send the new information to Canada.4 Transmitting information from the frontier to McMicken was difficult at the best of times. If the need arose for rapid communication, it could become downright dangerous. To reduce the risk, Le Caron requested that “someone trusty” be sent to shadow him during his travels; such an individual could serve as a conduit to Canada and provide Le Caron with personal protection if necessary.5 McMicken agreed and directed one of his detectives, who went under the name of John C. Rose, to stay close to Le Caron. The arrangement worked for several weeks, until someone from Ottawa tipped off Edward Mannix in Malone that Rose was a detective. He

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was beaten up so badly that it took him months to recover. “I had, for political reasons,” recalled Le Caron, “to applaud their cowardly assault, and to denounce my brave friend.”6 By this time, Le Caron had provided McMicken with new lists of arms and ammunition, along with the names and addresses of the recipients. He also learned that O’Neill was now planning to call the Fenian congress for 19 April in New York – much later than expected. This decision meant that an attack was likely to take place not in February but sometime in late March or early April.7

In the breathing space that followed, discussions resumed about whether Canada should ask the American government to seize the arms if an attack was imminent. McMicken, who shared Le Caron’s view that the Fenians should be allowed to cross the border so that they could be beaten back by fully warned and well-prepared Canadian troops, thought not; in fact, he was rather annoyed by the activities of American detectives who were inadvertently making life more difficult for his top agent.8 Thornton, in contrast, emphasized the dangers of drawing the Fenians into Canada since “a slight success gained by the first party might bring them thousands of followers whom the United States Authorities might find it difficult to prevent from crossing the border.”9 The more Governor General John Young considered the situation, the more he came to share Thornton’s concerns. “I think,” he wrote to Macdonald, “the advice not to let the raiders come, if by any action of the U. States Govt they can be kept at home[, is] preferable to the risk of bloodshed involved even in the tiniest foray.”10 Although Macdonald had previously supported McMicken’s position, he found the counter-arguments persuasive. “We would never forgive ourselves,” he wrote, “if something went wrong afterwards, if we deliberately allowed the Fenians to invade us without taking steps in the way of prevention as are in our power.” There was a more pragmatic consideration, as well: “[The Americans] profess a desire to perform their duty and to repress any attempt at invasion, and have invited Mr. Thornton and the Canadian Government to give them early intelligence,” Macdonald noted. “Should we withhold such intelligence from them, and allow matters to take their course, England could not hold the United States responsible for any disastrous consequences that might

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occur.” Word went out from Ottawa that the Canadians would share their intelligence with the United States and would work with the Americans to stop an attack at the first signs that it was starting.11

The intelligence coming in to McMicken (now based in Ottawa) and to Edward Archibald in New York indicated three things: divisions were deepening within the Fenian Brotherhood, money was drying up, and O’Neill was determined to invade regardless. According to Archibald – who doubtless got the information from Rudolph Fitzpatrick – a growing number of Fenian senators were coming round to the position that “the idea of liberating Ireland by means of an attempt to conquer Canada is both absurd and impracticable.”12 McMicken’s agent in New York, William Montgomery, sent regular reports to Canada about increasingly vitriolic infighting between O’Neill’s supporters and enemies.13 Among his enemies, Patrick Meehan, who was both the publisher of the Irish American and the treasurer of the Fenian Brotherhood, was playing a prominent role. After a particularly acrimonious meeting on 28 February, O’Neill’s secretary of civil affairs, James Keenan, was so incensed by Meehan’s efforts to have him dismissed that he pulled out a gun and shot Meehan through the back of his neck. Somehow, Meehan survived. The following day, Montgomery visited Keenan in prison. “He feels,” ran his report, “as if he had done some commendable act.”14 In fact, the attempted assassination weakened O’Neill’s hand; his enemies in the Fenian Senate took advantage of the situation to relocate the upcoming congress from New York to Chicago, where O’Neill had much less support.15 The bad publicity did nothing to improve fundraising prospects, and Fenian finances were already in dire straits. “Seeing that [Meehan’s] office of Treasurer is becoming a sinecure,” remarked Archibald, “he might as well have been killed outright.”16 All this – the lack of funds, the shooting of Meehan, the “fierce dissensions” within the Brotherhood – made the British and Canadian officials increasingly confident that they could deliver “the coup de grace to Fenianism in America.” O’Neill had no intention of pulling back; he remained popular with rankand-file Fenians in New York, and his new secretary of war, Michael Kerwin, was preparing for an attack.17 His supporters, noted Archibald, showed little interest in arguments that Canada could not be conquered; they were, he

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wrote, “imbued with such hostility to England as to be regardless of all other considerations.”18 There was still talk of using Canada as a base from which to attack Britain, but the underlying motivation for many of O’Neill’s men was something more elemental: a burning desire to take revenge for what had happened to them and their country under British rule.

O’Neill and Kerwin continued their preparations, in conjunction with their supporters in Canada. In January, the leading Montreal Fenian, William Conroy, accompanied by one John Morrow and a man named Clarke who had been one of the Canadian delegates at the Philadelphia congress in 1868, travelled to Albany to coordinate activities with the leadership. There, they met Le Caron and gave him the name of the new head centre in Montreal, Frank Kearney.19 A month later, Montgomery reported from New York that “calculations are made upon important assistance being obtained from the organization in Canada.”20 In early April, one of Charles Coursol’s detectives learned that two Fenians from St Albans had left for Montreal “on some mission,” but its purpose remained unknown.21 Shortly afterwards, however, George Perkins Foster, the US marshal for Vermont, got more information. Foster told William Calvert, the US vice consul in Montreal, who went straight to Coursol’s office, that the Fenians intended “to either blow up an arch or tear down a portion of the Victoria Bridge and seize the boats at Lachine to prevent the troops concentrated at Montreal leaving.” Another idea was to “drop nitro glicerine so that the west train coming would explode it”; the loss of life would have been extraordinary. Not surprisingly, Coursol recommended that guards be placed on the bridge and by the boats.22 O’Neill was also banking on significant support from New England, where John J. Donnelly, a Fenian organizer for Rhode Island and Massachusetts, promised to supply 2,000 drilled men for the invasion. William Montgomery was unimpressed. Donnelly, he told McMicken, was “a Drunken Madman and during the session of Congress [in Philadelphia] he was drunk and threatening to beat somebody near all the time.”23 Among the Fenians in the border areas of Vermont and New York, proinvasion sentiment remained strong. In Ogdensburg on St Patrick’s Day, one of Coursol’s detectives reported that a priest looked forward to the time when

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the Fenians would “whip the Dominion” and that a painting of the Battle of Ridgeway was on display, with the implication that “it was not over with yet.”24 When O’Neill visited the region later in the month, he was “over delighted” to learn that the border Fenians would stand by him rather than the Senate. Buoyed by his reception, he decided simply to ignore the congress in Chicago that his rivals had called for April. If he did that, Archibald predicted, “you will find the whole military element take sides with O’Neill.”25 Thus encouraged, O’Neill embarked on yet another fundraising drive, accompanied by William Montgomery, who donated $25 of Canadian secret service money to the cause. In three days, they raised $1,000, and with Montgomery looking on in concealed disbelief, O’Neill assured his backers that he would put 7,000 men in the field.26 The Canadian government now had five separate sources of information on Fenian activities in the border zone: Rudolph Fitzpatrick at Fenian headquarters; William Montgomery in New York, working closely with O’Neill; the US marshal George Perkins Foster, employing “several intelligent and reliable men living within and near the Missisquoi valley”; Henri Le Caron, distributing arms in the field; and Coursol’s detectives, who had turned the Fenian head centre in Burlington, Vermont, and were searching for the arms that Le Caron was distributing.27 In early April, Coursol sent an excited report to Macdonald: not only had his men acquired detailed information about the storage of Fenian arms, but they had also identified the “principal organizer” – one “Colonel Henry Le Caron, whose travelling name is G.R. [sic] Smith.”28 The apparent redundancy of spies reporting on spies was fine with Macdonald and McMicken. When intelligence from separate sources converged, it was all the more likely to be accurate. And converge it did at the beginning of April. Defying the Senate, O’Neill announced that he was going ahead with his own Fenian congress in New York, scheduled for the original date of 19 April. As before, this was only a blind: his real plan was to launch an attack four days earlier, on 15 April, with the intention of taking and holding the town of St Jean in Quebec while Fenian reinforcements arrived.29 Upon receiving this information, Governor General John Young sent a ciphered telegram to Edward Thornton in Washington, asking him to alert the United States government.30 In Vermont, George Perkins Foster was worried: it would take American troops ten to twelve days to get to the front, and the Vermont militia had been “steadily filled up by Irishmen,” many of whom were likely

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to join the Fenians.31 In Canada, Macdonald called out four battalions of frontier militia and two troops of cavalry; he also fired off a letter to the colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, urging the imperial government to rescind its recent decision to withdraw British troops from the country.32 On 14 April, a bill to suspend habeas corpus was rushed through Parliament – for the third time in four years – with a view to arresting Fenian spies who came over from the United States.33

That night, William Montgomery attended a secret meeting of the officers and military officers of Fenian circles in New York. They were awaiting the arrival of O’Neill and expecting orders to mobilize for the front. “But to the Surprise of every one present,” he wrote, “when O’Neill appeared before the meeting he was beastly Drunk and unable to address the meeting.”34 After he uttered a few words and told them not to be discouraged, reported Montgomery, the meeting “broke up in disgust.” In light of the preparations made by the Canadian government, O’Neill had evidently decided to hold off for a few days; the Canadian militia, thinking that the danger had passed, would go home, and then the Fenians would pounce. The fact that the Canadians had discovered O’Neill’s plans sent questions reverberating through the Fenian Brotherhood. “There is no doubt here but some traitor is amongst us,” remarked Montgomery. There were, of course, several of them, including the adjutant general, the assistant secretary of military affairs, and the head centre in Burlington, Vermont. But, as happens so often in such circumstances, suspicion centred on the wrong man: Colonel E.C. Lewis of Vermont, who had opposed O’Neill’s earlier plan to attack Canada in December.35 McMicken was delighted by the news. “They lose in him,” he wrote, “the strongest individual they have in their ranks so far as any one can muster and inspire the Vermont men for the move.”36 In fact, Lewis was too powerful to be removed; if he were expelled from the Brotherhood, its support in Vermont was likely to plummet. No doubt, however, he was watched carefully, while Fitzpatrick, Montgomery, and Le Caron continued to do their work. The day after O’Neill’s drunken appearance in New York, he ordered his military commanders “to be ready at a very short notice to go.”37 In Troy on 16 April, he informed his principal organizers that the invasion was imminent.

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They were horrified. William Clingen, whose activities in western New York paralleled those of Le Caron to the east – and who was definitely not an informer – protested against the “madness and folly of such a movement in the face of the preparations that were now being made by the Canadian Government to receive us, also by this Government to stop us.” Colonel Lewis, also present, backed Clingen up, while Le Caron remained silent, as was his way. Faced with such strong opposition, O’Neill reluctantly agreed to postpone the attack for a short time. Having travelled to New York after the meeting, Clingen found “the excitement to its highest” and endeavoured to calm things down. “Little did I ever dream that I was ever to take such a prominent part in the History of our organization as to stand between it and destruction,” he told Frank B. Gallagher, “and for nearly an hour did I counsel these men to be patient and not to destroy Ireland’s only hopes.”38 “Rest assured no fight is in immediate prospect by any one but O’N,” reported Le Caron, “& he is dead for the present. Whether they will bring him to life again I can’t tell yet.”39 These developments meant that O’Neill would actually have to go through with the congress that he had called for 19 April but had never intended to take place. Its proceedings were closely guarded, but Fitzpatrick, Le Caron, and Montgomery were on the inside. The 155 delegates, they reported, discussed the possibility of fomenting a rising among discontented members of the Red River community in the Canadian North-West, but the most important topic was the upcoming proposed invasion. O’Neill told them that $50,000 and 10,000 men would be needed to overcome the extensive defence preparations in Canada. An all-out effort would be made to meet these requirements, and the invasion would take place within the next few weeks.40 If that did not happen, wrote Montgomery, O’Neill’s organization “will be gone to nothing.”41 As far as O’Neill’s enemies in the Fenian Senate were concerned, the act of calling a separate congress was tantamount to secession from the Brotherhood; within O’Neill’s ranks, there were also serious divisions about the timing of an attack. “Never since the organization of the Brotherhood did there exist such an ill feeling amongst the members as there is today,” wrote Le Caron. “The opposition that each party will receive from the other will be sufficient to cause a greater failure than even ’66.”42 The targets of $50,000 and 10,000 men proved as unattainable as the previous ones; nevertheless, in early May, Fenian military officers were told to

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prepare for immediate action.43 The days passed in silence and turned into weeks; here was yet another instance, it seemed, of false promises. Then, suddenly, on Saturday, 21 May, word came down that the officers were to bring their men to St Albans and Malone within the next forty-eight hours, with a view to launching the attack on the night of Tuesday, 24 May. O’Neill had told no one, not even Le Caron, until the orders went out. Le Caron had always expected to know about the time and place of an attack at least ten days in advance; although he knew about the place, he was caught off guard about the time. At the first opportunity, he sent the information to Ottawa; meanwhile, Montgomery contacted McMicken, and Fitzpatrick alerted Archibald. On Sunday, 22 May, the Canadians had the broad outlines of the plans: the main attack would come from Vermont; the Fenians from Buffalo had been ordered to Malone, from where a secondary assault would be launched; and there would be feints “by way of boasting noise” at Detroit, Buffalo, and Ogdensburg. But the Canadians got one potentially crucial piece of information wrong: they thought that the invasion was going to occur on the night of Wednesday, 25 May, a full twenty-four hours after its intended time.44 And they did not know that the Fenians intended to hijack the train from Malone to St Jean in Quebec on the morning of Tuesday, 24 May, and use it to take their troops directly into the town.45

Realizing that his greatest chance of success consisted in getting his men across the border before the Canadians had time to prepare, O’Neill based his strategy on secrecy and speed. Not realizing the extent to which the Brotherhood had been penetrated, he feared that if he allowed too much time for the mobilization of his men, word would leak out to the Canadians. He reckoned that he could get 1,500 volunteers to St Albans by the morning of Tuesday, 24 May, with another 2,500 arriving as reinforcements the next day. But, as McMicken’s sources had predicted, the turnout fell far short of the target. John J. Donnelly had promised 1,000 men from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Only 25 of them showed up in St Albans on Tuesday morning. Another 600 men were supposed to come from Vermont and northeast New York. Only 90 actually arrived. They joined 65 others who had reached St Albans the previous evening, bringing the total Fenian force to a mere 180 men.

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In part, the low numbers reflected the difficulty of mobilizing a sufficient number of men at such short notice. There was, however, another reason: there had been so many urgent calls for action followed by no action at all that this one seemed like yet another false alarm. The military officers had been told to be ready in late 1869, only to be stood down; the invasion was supposed to take place on 15 April, only for O’Neill to postpone it at the last minute. The previous two years had been full of calls for imminent attacks that came to nothing. Why should this one have been any different? “We had talked so much,” O’Neill would write, “and boasted so loudly, in the past, and had really accomplished so little that they would have nothing to do with us until we gave them practical evidence of our sincerity.”46 With such a meagre force, O’Neill had two options: to call the whole thing off or to improvise and hope for the best. The former would mean utter humiliation and the collapse of North American Fenianism; the latter had an outside chance of limited success. Improvisation, then, it would be. The plan to take a train from Malone to St Jean was dropped. All the Fenian forces, such as they were, would now be concentrated in Franklin, 19 miles from St Albans and 2 miles from the border between Vermont and Canada. They would cross into Canada when the next batch of men came in that night from St Albans, occupy a strong defensive position on Eccles Hill, 60 miles southeast of Montreal, and hold it until reinforcements arrived. Once his supporters had been given practical evidence of his sincerity, O’Neill believed, they would rush northwards to join the fight. From his base in Franklin, O’Neill sent Le Caron to St Albans on Tuesday afternoon, with orders to get the men coming from New York on the evening train to the frontier as soon as possible so that the attack could begin that night. Only 240 volunteers arrived, far below expectations. Perhaps not accidentally, with Le Caron organizing things, they did not reach Franklin as quickly as O’Neill had anticipated. One group, numbering around 70 men, got lost on the road and arrived at 5:00 A.M. on Wednesday, 25 May; the rest got even more lost and did not get to Franklin until 1:00 P.M. – by which time it was too late.47

The longer O’Neill waited for the New York contingent, the more time the Canadians had to prepare their defences. Armed with the intelligence that it had received from Le Caron, Montgomery, and Fitzpatrick, and knowing that

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American soldiers could not be brought to the border in time to stop the attack, the Canadian government decided to lull the Fenians into a false sense of security and then hit them hard. “It is urged upon me,” wrote McMicken, “that if all is kept quiet until Tuesday [24 May] without any note of preparation on our part getting to the public ear and a smart sudden dash made in upon them at the proper time most of their war material may be captured.”48 On the morning of Tuesday, 24 May, the Home Guards (also known as the Red Sashes), a group of men who had established their own informal militia unit, were watching the Canadian frontier near Eccles Hill. Having discovered from local sources in Vermont and from their own reconnaissance that the Fenians were about to attack, they sent urgent telegrams to the government requesting military support. To their astonishment, they were told that their reports were unfounded.49 If the government’s plan of taking the Fenians by surprise was to work, no one, including the Home Guards, could be told until the last possible moment. In fact, military preparations were already under way. That evening, detachments of the Montreal militia were sent by train to St Jean, and the frontier militia were called out.50 These defensive measures, however, were based on the assumption that the attack would occur the following night. In the event, the Canadian government was doubly fortunate: first, because the Fenians delayed the attack until more men could arrive; and second, because the Home Guards decided to take matters into their own hands. Under English-born Asa Westover, they lodged themselves on Eccles Hill during the night of 24 May, rifles at the ready. By the next morning, they had been joined by some forty militiamen, along with William Osborne Smith, the commander of the frontier south of Montreal, and Brown Chamberlin, the lieutenant-colonel of the Missisquoi Volunteers. The Home Guards, experienced marksmen, lay hidden at the foot of Eccles Hill, about 400 yards from the road that the Irish Republican Army would take.51 O’Neill knew that the militia were facing him, just as he knew that American troops were marching towards his camp. On 24 May, President Ulysses S. Grant had issued a proclamation condemning the “illegal military enterprises and expeditions” that were under way against Canada.52 The US marshal George Perkins Foster delivered it to O’Neill, who was unimpressed. Unless and until the words were backed up with American armed force, they would be ignored. At 11:30 on the morning of Wednesday, 25 May, O’Neill ordered his men forward – “the advanced guard of the Irish American Army for the

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liberation of Ireland from the yoke of our oppressors” – with the Vermont company in the vanguard.53

The result: total disaster. Within minutes, the Canadians opened fire, killing one man, wounding another, and scattering the rest. O’Neill attempted to rally his troops, without success. “If the men had been old soldiers, such men as I had at Ridgeway in 1866,” he later wrote, “I would have attempted a flank movement as soon as the skirmish line retreated; but many of them were mere boys, who had never been in a fight before, and showed evident signs of wavering at the first fire of the enemy.”54 At his base in a farmhouse just inside the Vermont border, he had little choice but to wait for the New York volunteers – many of whom were Civil War veterans – to arrive from St Albans. McMicken subsequently reported to Macdonald that Le Caron “delayed or caused the delay of bringing up the reserve force of Fenians some 400 strong to the support of O’Neill for about 2 hours instead of some 20 minutes and thereby contributed to the complete discomfiture of O’Neill and the collapse of the movement.” Le Caron also told McMicken that he had disabled the only piece of artillery that the Fenians possessed by removing and hiding its breech piece, “thereby probably saving lives and disaster to the small force of Volunteers then on the ground” – a story that, perhaps significantly, does not appear in his autobiography.55 Returning to the Fenian camp to rally the reinforcements, O’Neill was intercepted by Foster and arrested for violating the neutrality laws.56 By the end of the day, the Fenians had retreated, O’Neill was a prisoner, and the arrival of the first contingent of American troops had ensured that there would be no further incursions into Canadian territory.57 When the Fenian veteran of 1866 General Samuel Spear arrived in St Albans the next day, Le Caron told him that it was now impossible to acquire the arms and ammunition that had been hidden near the border. According to the Irish American, some 200 Fenians, desperate for money, had sold their rifles on their way back to St Albans, and Le Caron had encouraged local farmers to help themselves to the arms and ammunition that they had been storing.58 In any case, it was too late. After all the intense efforts by the secret police to penetrate the Fenian leadership, the near miss with Charles Clarke, the adroit placement of Wil-

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liam Montgomery in the Brooklyn Fenian circle, the intelligence received from the insiders Henri Le Caron and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, and the debates over whether or not to let the Fenians cross the border, it had come down to this: a small group of self-created Home Guards, acting on local intelligence and their own initiative, aided at the last minute by forty militiamen, had delivered what turned out to be the decisive blow against the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood.

However, it was not over yet. While demoralized and penniless Fenians limped back from Eccles Hill to St Albans, complaining bitterly that they had been “badly cheated,” the action shifted to Malone in upstate New York.59 Fenian volunteers were coming into the town, including some from St Albans, with their immediate sights set on the Quebec town of Huntingdon, which appeared vulnerable to attack. Among the arrivals from St Albans was John Boyle O’Reilly, who had escaped to the United States from Australia after being transported from Ireland for recruiting soldiers into the Irish Republican Brotherhood; he had combined the roles of journalist and participant during the Battle of Eccles Hill.60 In Malone, he met John F. Finerty, who had come in from Chicago to join the fight, despite his belief that it was “foredoomed to failure.” “That man, O’Neill, ought to have been put in a strait-jacket!” said O’Reilly, incandescent with anger about Eccles Hill. O’Reilly “was simply exasperated,” explained Finerty, “by the gross folly of an almost unprepared attempt to invade a powerful country with a totally inadequate force. In 1866, we had more men than guns. In 1870, matters were reversed; we had more guns than men.”61 Many – possibly most – of the Fenians gathering at Malone felt the same way, and their mood was not improved by the news that British and Canadian troops were heading for Huntingdon. But their leader, Owen Starr, who had fought with O’Neill at Ridgeway, was determined to carry on. The plan was to cross into Canada at Trout River, erect a barricade, and hope for reinforcements. It did not have a chance of succeeding, but making some kind of stand seemed preferable to simply packing up and going home. On the morning of Friday, 27 May, around 300 men followed him across the border and prepared their defences – at the very time that over 1,000 British and Canadian troops

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under Colonel George Bagot were approaching from Huntingdon. On the one hand, the Fenian barricade was well constructed – it was “a formidable bit of field engineering,” according to one historian – and provided a strong defensive position. On the other hand, the Fenians were outnumbered three to one. When Fenian gunfire failed to deter the advancing militia, Starr ordered his men back across the border; they had been in Canada for little more than an hour and a half. Among the wounded was Rudolph Fitzpatrick.62 Back at Malone, still more Fenians were arriving, and some voices were calling for yet another move into Canada. One of the loudest was that of Father McMahon, whose desire for revenge against Ireland’s treatment at the hands of Britain blended with his desire for revenge against his own treatment at the hands of Canada. But it was clear to almost all his listeners that the Fenian campaign to invade Canada had become utterly hopeless. The next day, McMahon was arrested by a United States marshal.63

The Senate Fenians tried to put the best possible face on the situation. The failure of the raids, they argued, only vindicated their warnings against premature action, and the efforts and energy expended by England only showed how effective a better-organized movement would have been and could yet become.64 Perhaps – but hardly anyone was buying it. Their attempts to retrieve the arms and ammunition distributed on the border met with little success, and this time – unlike in 1866 – the United States government would not allow the Fenians to buy back seized weapons. John O’Neill, behind bars in Burlington, Vermont, was denounced with the kind of fury that would not be out of place in the world of contemporary social media. “Letters are beginning to come from all parts,” wrote the Fenian senator James Gibbons, “with curses loud & deep on the ‘head of the traitor’ in fact it is fearful to read some of the letters … O’Neill would not be safe anywhere, what a mercy it was for him that the government took him in charge.”65 And no wonder: the anticlimax of Eccles Hill and Trout River, the glaring contrast between promise and performance, and the flight of Fenians in the face of Canadian militia and British soldiers had delivered a demoralizing blow to the Brotherhood, opened up its adherents to a withering mockery, and left the Canadian strategy in shreds. “Thereafter, for fully ten years,” commented Finerty, “the Irish National movement in America flagged. The heart

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was taken out of the movement by the fatal blunders committed in the name of patriotism.”66 The anger against O’Neill was carried right through to his death eight years later, when accolades to the pure-hearted Irishman who fought for his country were accompanied with the wish that he had “fallen in the first flush of victory at Ridgeway” – as a martyr to Holy Ireland – rather than becoming an embarrassment to the cause.67 He would, in the way that these things go, be rehabilitated as a folk hero farther into the future. But in the immediate aftermath of Eccles Hill, he may have been the most hated Irishman in the United States. None of that, however, would stop him from trying one more time.

16

 “His Wild Enterprize” Red River

In probing for ways to hit British North America, the Senate Fenians had not confined all their attention to Ontario and Quebec. Far to the northwest, the Red River region of present-day Manitoba appeared to be another, potentially more vulnerable, target. Among the roughly 10,000 people in the area, the largest community consisted of the Métis, most of whom were Catholic descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Indigenous women. They lived in an uneasy and sometimes tense relationship with the socially dominant Protestant English-speaking “mixed-bloods” who came from liaisons between mainly Scottish- and English-speaking fur traders and their Native partners. Generally hostile to both of these groups was the small but increasing number of Canadian settlers who were thrusting themselves into the area and demanding its annexation to Canada.1 The colony had long been controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, but in 1869 it was transferred to Canada – without any consultation of the people who lived there. Many of them were anxious about the future, fearing that existing land titles would not be guaranteed and that anyone without official title to the land could be dispossessed. With the appointment of the aggressively expansionist William McDougall as lieutenant governor and the arrival of a surveying team led by John Stoughton Dennis – the officer who had abandoned his men at Fort Erie during the attempted invasion of 1866 – a group of Métis took steps to protect themselves. Led by Louis Riel (Figure 16.1), they stopped the survey, prevented McDougall from reaching the Red River Settlement, and called for negotiations with the Canadian government. In December 1869, Riel and his followers established a broadly representative provisional government and drew up a list of rights, including guarantees for landholdings, bilingualism, and provincial status within Canada.2

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Well before these events, some Fenians had identified the region as the weakest point in Britain’s North American empire. “The so-called Red River settlement lies open,” wrote the Buffalo Fenian John Wilkeson to the Fenian senator Frank B. Gallagher in April 1868, “and could be occupied by a force of brave men, used to arms, not over two thousand and held against the whole power of England.” The seizure of the territory would not only humiliate the Hudson’s Bay Company but also insert Irish republicans into the heart of British North America – in effect, replacing British aristocratic imperialism with Irish republican imperialism, although Wilkeson did not put it quite like that. The plan, he contended, was much more practicable than a movement against Ontario and Quebec.3 When Wilkeson learned eighteen months later of the Red River Resistance led by Riel, he was taken by surprise. “You & I know that the Fenians have nothing to do with these troubles in Winnipeg,” he wrote to Gallagher. What they did not know, however, was that a man with pronounced Fenian sympathies was living in the settlement and working closely with Riel, the Sligoborn William Bernard O’Donoghue (Figure 16.1), a mathematics teacher who had been training for the priesthood and who would become the treasurer of Riel’s provisional government. Before moving to Red River in 1868, O’Donoghue had lived in upstate New York, and he personally knew two of the leading Fenians in the region, Patrick O’Dea in Buffalo and the Fenian senator J.C. O’Brien in Rochester.4 In November 1869, while a convention of francophones and anglophones in Red River was debating the best course of action after McDougall’s exclusion from the settlement, O’Donoghue made full use of these contacts. Writing to O’Dea and O’Brien about the rapidly unfolding situation, he requested Fenian support for the Métis resistance and claimed to be writing with Riel’s approval. Such a claim should not be taken at face value. Riel was publicly proclaiming his allegiance to the Crown and attempting to secure firm guarantees about Red River’s relationship with Canada. O’Donoghue, in contrast, was drawing parallels between Canada’s treatment of the Métis in Red River and British oppression in Ireland, and he was hoping to steer the colony into the arms of the United States.5 Vouching for O’Donoghue’s reliability, O’Dea and O’Brien passed his letters on to John O’Neill, who was duly encouraged. “The signs of the times are propitious,” he wrote. “Even the Savages of British North America are

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ready to assist us.” On the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the “savages” were to be incorporated into Ireland’s battle against the British Empire. The message went back to O’Donoghue that if he held out long enough, they would get him the money and the men that he needed. In New York, the Fenians began discussions about whom to send to the settlement; General Samuel Spear was the preferred candidate, but in the end a Fenian colonel from Missouri was given the task. There is no evidence that he followed through, but a journalist with the Irish American, James Brennan, did make the journey – one of the men responsible for distributing Fenian arms in upstate New York in the autumn of 1867.6 McMicken, who had never heard of O’Donoghue, received much of this information from the combined intelligence of “J.W. McDonald” in Buffalo, William Montgomery in New York, Rudolph Fitzpatrick in Fenian headquarters, and the ubiquitous Henri Le Caron.7 O’Donoghue, he thought, should be “strictly watched,” but it was not immediately apparent who could actually do the watching. The picture as seen through Fenian eyes was made a little clearer, however, when Brennan’s report was published in the Irish American. Brennan was surprised by what he found. The “savages” were not really savages at all but were “sturdy pioneers” and fine specimens of “free manhood” – men such as Riel, who only had “a little of the Indian blood” in him. O’Donoghue, whom Brennan must have met, was described as “a true and tried Fenian, a glorious ecclesiastic, who feels that in vindicating the rights of man against the arch enemy of human freedom he is serving the cause of true religion.” O’Donoghue and Riel personified “the alliance that has been established between the Irish and the native-born patriots” – an alliance that was symbolized by the provisional government’s flag, which juxtaposed the shamrock with the fleur-de-lis. The rebellion, asserted Brennan, promised to obliterate the last vestiges of British despotism in North America.8 Such statements revealed more about Fenian aspirations than about Métis objectives. But the situation in Red River was increasingly tense. In December, an attempt by the Red River Canadians to overthrow the provisional government resulted in some fifty men being imprisoned in Fort Garry (present-day Winnipeg). Even as most of the men were being released, a second expedition of armed men, from the community of Portage, advanced on the fort in midFebruary. Their effort failed as well, and a new batch of prisoners was taken. Among them was a young Orangeman from County Down, Thomas Scott –

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16.1 Louis Riel (1844–85), left, and William Bernard O’Donoghue (1843–78), right. Riel led the resistance to the Canadian takeover of the Red River Settlement in 1870 and became the leader of the provisional government that would eventually win provincial status for Manitoba. O’Donoghue served as the treasurer in Riel’s provincial government and wanted to establish a Fenian-Métis alliance that would bring the Red River Settlement into the United States. Relations between the two men had already broken down when O’Donoghue joined John O’Neill in an abortive raid on Manitoba in 1871. Métis support for O’Donoghue and O’Neill was not forthcoming.

“a violent and boisterous man such as are often found in the North of Ireland,” in the words of Lord Dufferin.9 Scott set out to make himself as obnoxious as possible to his guards, who were more than willing to reciprocate. By early March, his captors had had enough, and a Métis court martial sentenced him to death. Riel had been “constantly hurling death threats around the fort” during the previous weeks but had always pulled back. This time he did not. “We must,” he declared, “make Canada respect us.” His decision had precisely the opposite effect.10 While delegates from the provisional government were heading to Ottawa for negotiations, the execution of Scott unleashed a storm of anger towards Riel and his supporters. The Canadian government would have preferred a

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peaceful settlement but was already in the process of preparing a military expedition to Red River. “These impulsive half breeds,” wrote John A. Macdonald, “have got spoilt by this emeute and must be kept down by a strong hand until they are swamped by the influx of settlers.”11 In the United States, the pro-invasion Fenians sensed possibilities. At the congress that O’Neill held in New York on 19 April, the situation in Red River was a major subject of discussion. “It was determined upon to support the Insurgents with everything possible,” McMicken learned. If a Fenian emissary could raise recruits from Michigan and Wisconsin on his way to Fort Garry, a military alliance could be forged between the Fenians and the Métis – or so it was thought. Someone who spoke French would be needed for the task. Henri Le Caron seemed the right man for the job.12 But, as sometimes happened with O’Neill, reality intervened. The impending attack on Canada took priority, Fenian resources were already stretched thin, and Le Caron was needed in Vermont and upstate New York. Despite myriad rumours reaching McMicken about masses of Fenians preparing to invade Red River, no movement was made.13 Had any Fenian volunteers actually arrived in the settlement, they might not have liked what they found. On Riel’s orders, the Union Jack was flying over Fort Garry in April, despite O’Donoghue’s efforts to have it pulled down.14 Negotiations in Ottawa met the provisional government’s key demands, although the question of a general amnesty to cover Riel and his supporters for the resistance and the execution of Scott remained unanswered. The path was open for the Manitoba Act, passed by the Canadian government in May 1870 and ratified by the provisional government the following month. In July, the province of Manitoba was created. By that time, as Le Caron informed McMicken, the Fenians – already reeling from the disasters of Eccles Hill and Trout River – had “decided to give up the Red River expedition entirely.” “The reason assigned,” Le Caron explained, “was want of money and the great distance to be travelled.”15

The Fenians may have given up, but William O’Donoghue most certainly had not. Among the British and Canadian troops who reached the settlement in August, supposedly on an “errand of peace,” were Ontario Orangemen who were out to avenge the death of Thomas Scott. “Some of them openly stated that they had taken a vow before leaving home to pay off all scores by shooting

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down any Frenchman that was in any way connected with that event,” wrote the newly appointed lieutenant governor, Adams Archibald. “The great bulk of the French population having been, one way or other, concerned in the troubles, the feelings gradually grew to be one of intense dislike to the whole race, which was heartily reciprocated by the French.”16 Fearing for their lives, O’Donoghue and Riel crossed the border into Dakota Territory in August 1870. Shortly afterwards, one of the Métis who had played a prominent role in Scott’s execution, Elzéar Goulet, was the victim of a revenge killing by Canadian loyalists. In the face of continuing Orange attacks on the Métis and the absence of an amnesty, the longstanding divisions between Riel and O’Donoghue finally reached a breaking point: Riel wanted to secure redress within the British Empire, while O’Donoghue wanted the United States government to intervene in the settlement, with a view to its ultimate annexation. A compromise was cobbled together: a secret petition to President Ulysses S. Grant was drawn up that asked him to use his influence with the British government “against the course of perfidy and oppression pursued by Canada towards the inhabitants of Manitoba.” Despite the animosity between the two men – you were needed in the Red River Resistance only for the sake of your “God damned tongue,” Riel reportedly told his rival – O’Donoghue was entrusted with delivering the petition to the president. O’Donoghue changed the petition into an appeal for annexation and made his way to Washington.17 The president was not persuaded. He had learned about the doctoring of the document and had serious doubts about O’Donoghue’s account of widespread pro-annexationist sentiments in Red River.18 Having failed to make any headway in Washington, O’Donoghue travelled to New York. If the American government would not act, it was time to reactivate his earlier contacts with the Fenian Brotherhood. In February 1871, at Sweeny’s Hotel, he met with some of the city’s leading Fenians and made his pitch: the people of Red River had been oppressed by the Canadians and were ready to rise again; all they needed was external support. He had met the president and had received much encouragement from “several men in high places.” Failure was impossible, and the prize was the dismemberment of Britain’s North American empire. His listeners had heard it all before. “I tried to convince him,” said one, “that he was quite at sea in his notions of Fenian plans and prospects, and that he could look for no aid beyond our prayers in this quarter.”19

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There was, however, one man who provided him with a life raft. After his arrest in May 1870, John O’Neill had been put on trial for violating United States neutrality laws. Pleading guilty, he publicly renounced the invasion strategy and promised to use his influence against any further attempts on Canada. The hard school of experience had given him a new and different kind of wisdom, and he saw that a successful attack on Canada was futile. Unimpressed by this belated contrition, the judge sentenced O’Neill to two years in prison.20 His former rivals, however, took careful note of his words. If O’Neill now believed that the focus should be on Ireland rather than Canada, it would be worth visiting him in jail to discuss “the feasibility of a Union of all Irish nationalists claiming the name of Fenian.” A deal was struck: henceforth, O’Neill would throw in his lot with the Fenians who had stayed with John O’Mahony and who had been led since 1867 by John Savage. Only a few months earlier, before Eccles Hill, such a development had seemed unimaginable.21 More imaginable, however, was the fact that O’Neill never came close to completing his two-year sentence. In October 1870, Grant decided to pardon everyone who had been imprisoned for his part in the attack on Canada. Midterm elections were coming up; a show of clemency might shift Irish votes towards the Republicans. Besides, O’Neill had admitted the error of his ways, and keeping the men in jail any longer would only turn them into martyrs. Understandably, the Canadians did not see it that way and protested vigorously. “The pardoning of these men,” wrote Governor General John Young, “will, in my opinion, altogether fail in preventing the renewal of these illegal acts, but will, on the contrary, be a direct encouragement to their repetition.”22 Young had a point. O’Neill, in his speech from the dock, had repudiated the invasion strategy on the grounds that there was not “the remotest chance of success.” Less noticed, however, were the words that followed: “If there were, though I might go to the gallows tomorrow, I would tell my countrymen to go on.”23 Now, after meeting O’Donoghue, he came to the conclusion that the chances of success in Red River were anything but remote. With only a small number of recruits, he could march into an isolated and virtually undefended settlement, link up with disaffected Métis, and finally deliver the long-desired blow to Britain’s North American empire.

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O’Neill did everything in his power to secure the backing of the Fenian Council, only to be turned down. Angry and frustrated, he resigned from the Brotherhood and declared that he would go on alone. In the often heated discussions that followed, the ground rules were established: he would operate independently of the Fenians, and they would not stand in his way.24 The movement against Manitoba was to be a freelance operation, financed and equipped entirely by O’Neill and O’Donoghue and anyone who cared to follow them. The first order of business was to secure arms for the mission. In early May 1871, probably before O’Neill’s meeting with the Fenian Council, the Canadian government picked up reports that he was in upstate New York looking for rifles that had been stored there the previous year.25 Macdonald was not too concerned; Fenian factions, he believed, were simply scrapping over the leftovers.26 In any case, O’Neill was not meeting with much success. But O’Neill knew the one person who could help him out – the person who had concealed the arms in the first place: Henri Le Caron. “I cheerfully agreed to let him have 400 breech-loaders,” Le Caron recalled, “and accompanied him to the points where they were, for the purpose of their delivery.”27 Just as cheerfully, Le Caron contacted Gilbert McMicken to inform him about O’Neill’s activities and objectives.28 Le Caron’s information did not exactly send shudders down Canadian spines. “It is hardly to be imagined,” commented McMicken, “that these fellows can find either means or men to do anything.”29 O’Neill’s search for means took him on a fundraising lecture tour, and his search for men netted one of his former comrades-in-arms, General John J. Donnelly – the man whom William Montgomery had described as a “Drunken Madman” and who had promised to deliver 1,000 men for the Eccles Hill attack, only to bring in 25.30 More promisingly, O’Neill also secured the participation of the Civil War veteran Thomas Curley, who had been breveted brigadier general on St Patrick’s Day in 1865 for his service in the United States Army. In Manitoba, Lieutenant Governor Adams Archibald was not particularly worried. As he pointed out to Macdonald, the Red River Settlement was so far from the nearest railway terminus that only a “very systematic and thoroughly organized expedition” could succeed, and he doubted that “any movement of that kind could take place without abundant opportunity for warning and preparation.”31 Nonetheless, it paid to be prudent. Archibald dispatched

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a “confidential man” to the town of Pembina on the US side of the border to assess the situation, and he asked Macdonald to send a secret agent to the area.32 Macdonald had just the man for the job: none other than Gilbert McMicken, in the dual capacity of secret police chief and commissioner of Crown lands. “I cannot say I feel at all apprehensive about [O’Neill’s] present efforts or that any serious result will follow his wild enterprize,” McMicken told Macdonald just before setting out, “but the experience of the past few years affords the lesson that it is well to be upon our guard for any possible contingency of the kind.”33 En route, McMicken stopped off in Chicago to meet Le Caron, who informed him that O’Neill had passed the same way two weeks earlier, heading for St Paul. McMicken reached the city in late September, accompanied by his son George and the Ottawa detective Frank Ritchie.34 Here, he met one of Riel’s strongest opponents during the resistance, Alfred Boyd, now Manitoba’s minister of public works.35 Boyd told him that the Métis were “greatly dissatisfied and excited and not at all to be relied upon,” explaining that he would not be surprised if they linked up with O’Neill and O’Donoghue. This was disturbing news indeed; O’Donoghue and O’Neill’s band of men might not have amounted to much in themselves, but the prospect of a Fenian-Métis revolutionary alliance was a different matter altogether.36 McMicken’s fears were heightened the next day when he crossed paths with the Catholic bishop in Red River, Alexandre-Antonin Taché, who was travelling on church business to Quebec. According to Taché’s account of their meeting, he told McMicken that the greatest trouble in the settlement came from the Canadian settlers who had moved into the area and that the Métis had no intention of joining the Fenians.37 McMicken, however, drew a very different meaning from their conversation. The bishop, he told Macdonald, was concerned that the Métis had been provoked to the point that they might rise up with the Fenians, and he speculated that their most likely target would be the settlement at Portage, “so as to wreak their vengeance on the new settlers and the Orange party there.”38 The following night, McMicken reached McCauleyville, Minnesota, across the Red River from Fort Abercrombie. Here, he heard more disquieting news. A man named Bodkin had apparently sworn a number of Métis from Pembina into the “Fenian Military.” Not only that, but Bishop Taché had supposedly been closeted with two Fenians. One was an obscure gunsmith from Fort

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Garry, but the other was identified as Tom Kelly, the leader of the Fenian Rising of 1867 and “escaped Manchester convict.” “Three distinct parties” told him these stories, and McMicken had no doubt that they were true. Yet, for some strange reason, the bishop had said nothing about his meeting with these Fenians during his conversation with McMicken the previous day. “I cannot say there is anything wrong with it,” he told Macdonald, “but you could not convince any one here to the contrary.” And why, McMicken wondered, was the bishop leaving the province at such a critical time? Taché, McMicken continued, was “undoubtedly incautious and weak, and this is as far as I can allow myself to offer any remark.”39 Seventeen years later, in a presentation to the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society on the “abortive raid,” McMicken gave a slightly different version of that night in McCauleyville. Bodkin was still in the story, but the Fenian leader Tom Kelly was dropped from the narrative, as was the Fenian from Fort Garry. Instead, the bishop’s secret conversation was now with O’Donoghue alone. The “three distinct parties” were reduced to one, the hostess of the hotel, an intense Canadian loyalist, whom McMicken believed was telling the truth “pure and simple.”40 There was a good reason why McMicken made no mention of Tom Kelly; he had been nowhere near the area, and it is probable that the rumour mill elevated Tom Curley, Civil War veteran, into the similar sounding Tom Kelly, Fenian leader. And, if Taché is to be believed, there was also a good reason why the bishop never mentioned the secret conversation to McMicken: it never happened. The hostess, Taché asserted, had made the whole thing up; McMicken, hearing only what he wanted to hear, had been completely taken in. “I have no idea of how the secret police is conducted in this Dominion of ours,” Taché wrote, “but if on such lines as these it must be liable to many blunders.”41 At any rate, McMicken was now convinced that the situation was critical. He realized that Fenian numbers were small – there were only around fifty of them – but they were “a rough, hard looking set,” they were led by former Civil War officers, and they were already heading to the border, intending to link up with a Métis community whose loyalty was “not at all to be relied upon” and who might welcome the opportunity to “wreak their vengeance” on the Orangemen who had been persecuting them. It was imperative to warn Adams Archibald of the impending danger.

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For the price of $400 ($500 in a subsequent inflated account), McMicken secured a stagecoach straight through to Fort Garry, travelling by day and by night with no stops for accommodation. As he told Macdonald, and later the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society, it was an eventful journey. Despite warnings that he would be robbed and killed, they pressed on through a landscape devastated by the recent war between the United States Army and the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. Silhouetted against prairie fires, their faces blackened with charcoal dust, McMicken and his party narrowly escaped being engulfed by the flames. As they approached the Fenians who were ahead of them, McMicken shaved off his whiskers and changed hats to disguise himself. Some 30 miles before Pembina, they passed the Fenian wagons; on the last stage of their journey, their coachman turned out to be a “full blown Fenian” himself. With fewer than four hours of sleep in almost five days of travelling from St Paul, he finally reached Fort Garry, life and limbs intact, on 2 October. After an uncomfortable meal at the Davis Hotel – “nothing inviting, everything forbidding, dirt, discomfort and whiskey abundant” – he was taken directly to the lieutenant governor’s residence.42

Well before McMicken’s arrival, Archibald Adams had become increasingly apprehensive about the potential consequences of even a limited Fenian attack. In mid-September, he learned that O’Neill was in St Paul, where he had sought out a priest from Red River, Father Joseph-Noël Ritchot, and asked him how the Fenians would be received if they came to Red River. They would be welcomed as settlers, Ritchot replied, but they should expect “no encouragement from the French half-breeds” as invaders. O’Neill told him that they were coming anyway. Archibald had no idea of their numbers but feared that Irish workers on the Northern Pacific Railway might join the movement when their seasonal contracts expired. The situation was volatile, and his position was precarious. “I cannot count upon much, if any aid, from French half breeds,” he told Macdonald. “They have not, I believe, any sympathy with the Fenian movement, but, on the other hand the bitter denunciation[s] of the extreme English … have aroused the worst feelings in them, and they would probably not be very sorry if there were a little trouble.”43 To make matters worse, his defences were very thin. “We are in imminent danger,” he wrote to

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Macdonald only a few hours before McMicken reached Red River. “We have no Militia organization here and no person to put it in operation.”44 McMicken eagerly assumed that role. The real threat, he was convinced, emanated not from O’Neill and O’Donoghue but from the Métis within the province. Upon his advice, Archibald issued a proclamation on 3 October 1871 that called on “our … loving subjects, irrespective of race or religion, or of past local differences, to rally round the flag of Our common country.”45 Although the proclamation was ostensibly intended to combat the Fenians, McMicken’s unspoken goal was to deter the Métis from joining them. Within two days, 1,000 men answered the call, mainly but not exclusively from the English parishes. The Métis, McMicken reported, were holding back until they could secure a general amnesty that would cover all their actions during the previous year’s resistance. His conversations with Fathers Joseph-Noël Ritchot and Georges Dugas only strengthened that belief. The priests knew very well that O’Donoghue had spent the previous months trying to shake the loyalty of the Métis, he argued, but they had done nothing to stop him – “of this there is no doubt whatsoever.”46 They were not actually supporting the Fenians, he granted, but rather attempting to use the threat of a Fenian-Métis alliance to “press their interests & claims upon the government” concerning the land settlement and an amnesty.47 McMicken was also highly critical of the way that the recent settlers, with their strong Orange component, treated the Métis. “Many of our Canadians,” he wrote, “are most unreasonable, exacting and disagreeable.”48 The “Orange and other extreme people,” he noted, were equally hostile to the lieutenant governor for not taking a hard enough line against the Métis. “You have no idea of the difficulties of his position,” he told Macdonald, noting “the jealousy and suspicion with which every word and act is watched by the Metis on the one hand and the arrogance imprudence and violence of the Orange party and other extremists on the other – with a totally incompetent, unreliable and invisible cabinet.” Altogether, it “creates a position not very conducive to the display of the virtue of christianized human nature.”49 Maybe. But when push came to shove, it was the Orange and other extremists who rallied to the flag after Archibald’s proclamation, while most of the Métis, in McMicken’s view, were waiting to see which way the wind blew. If it looked like the Fenians had a chance of success, he believed, the Métis would

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rise up with them – “not so much moved by disloyalty, properly so called, but from an intense feeling of resentment of wrongs and insults real or fancied inflicted upon them by the English population.” If, however, it was clear that the forces of the Crown had the upper hand, the Métis would protect their position by feigning loyalty and belatedly joining the militia.50 From this perspective, the pivotal moment occurred on the night of 2 October when McMicken persuaded Archibald that even the Ontario settlers who were “malignantly antagonistic” to the government would respond to a call to arms and that such a call had to be made before the Fenians crossed the border. After that, there was no mistaking which way the wind was blowing.51 “I may say that it was a very fortunate circumstance that I resolved to push on and get in here when I did,” he told Macdonald. “I fully believe it was the means of saving the country. You have never known me to speak or write in this way before and I would not now were I convinced of the truth of the observation.”52 How accurate was McMicken’s assessment of the situation? There is no doubt that some Métis, particularly around the border region of Pembina, supported O’Donoghue. Among them were kinsmen of Elzéar Goulet, the man who had been killed by Canadian loyalists in September 1870; allying with the Fenians seemed the best route to revenge.53 But O’Donoghue – who was, after all, a blow-in from Ireland and New York – had nothing like the influence over the Métis that was possessed by Louis Riel, one of their own. And Riel, who was back in Red River, refused to lead his supporters into an alliance with the Fenians who were approaching the border. Riel had made his position clear to Bishop Taché the previous month.54 That is why the bishop felt that he did not need to stay in the province and could proceed to Quebec on church business – not, as McMicken supposed, because he wanted to extricate himself from a potentially explosive situation. Riel had consistently attempted to get better terms for the Métis within Canada, with its considerable French population, rather than opting for annexation to the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant United States. When, at the beginning of October, O’Donoghue invited Métis leaders to meet him in Pembina, they turned him down. Two of them, André Nault and Baptiste Lépine, broke ranks and made the journey to find out what was happening. O’Donoghue told them that he needed their support, pretended that he was well financed, and

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promised that he could eventually outmatch Canadian forces by five to one. His words made no difference. The Métis leaders had already voted overwhelmingly to reject the Fenians, and the report from Nault and Lépine did nothing to change their minds.55 Rejecting the overtures from O’Donoghue was one thing; actively supporting the government was quite another. In the absence of an amnesty, Riel could hardly come forward in defence of the province without running the risk of being arrested or even killed. Acting as an intermediary, Ritchot conveyed these concerns to Archibald, who agreed on 4 October to grant Riel a temporary amnesty.56 Once it was put in writing, Riel met with his leadership group to develop a plan of action. Half of them agreed that they should return to their parishes and immediately encourage the Métis to enlist with the antiFenian volunteers. The other half preferred to move more cautiously, given the mood of their parishioners.57 Métis who had experienced extreme provocation from hyper-loyal Canadians were hardly likely to rally round the flag with the same passionate intensity as “the Orange and other extreme people” in the province. Communal memories remained strong, and the attitudes and actions of hard-core Orangemen gave loyalty a bad name; Irish Catholics in central Canada knew a thing or two about that. The previous year, when Orangemen occupied land that the Métis had staked out and then renamed the adjacent Rivière aux Îlets-de-Bois as the Boyne – the Irish river that symbolized the Protestant victory over Catholics in 1690 – the reaction was entirely predictable. “Of course the half-breeds were enraged,” recalled Archibald. “They thought it bad enough to lose land they believed to be theirs, but in the new name they saw something worse – an insult to their religion.”58 Nevertheless, the parish meetings that were held on Friday and Saturday, 6–7 October, all yielded the same result: they would side with the government and join the fight against the Fenians. Riel, along with Ambroise Lépine and Pierre Parenteau, informed Archibald that several companies of Métis had already been formed. “Your Excellency may rest assured,” they wrote with remarkable frankness, “that, without being enthusiastic, we have been devoted.”59 McMicken had got it wrong. The majority of Métis had not been waiting to see how the battle between the government and the Fenians played out, ready to throw their weight to the stronger side. Archibald’s proclamation had not deterred the majority of Métis from rising up with O’Donoghue; they had never intended to join him in the first place. Riel had broken with

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O’Donoghue long before the Fenian wagons began moving towards Pembina, and most Métis leaders had already decided to support the government, despite their concerns that it might not honour the promised land settlement and the perceived promise of an amnesty. Once Riel had his temporary amnesty, they started to organize themselves in defence of the province. And they were doing that before they knew the outcome of the Fenian attempt to invade Manitoba.

The raid itself was a risible failure. In the early morning of 5 October, O’Neill, O’Donoghue, Donnelly, and Curley led around thirty men across what they thought was the border, seized the customs house, and took over the Hudson’s Bay Company post up the road. The Pembina Métis who supported them helped to conceal Fenian rifles and transport them to the front.60 Taking prisoners en route, the Fenians arrested a man who claimed American citizenship and demanded to be released. O’Donoghue complied; the man went straight to the United States Army post in Fort Pembina and alerted its commander, Captain Lloyd Wheaton, about the attack.61 A few weeks earlier, Archibald had told the United States consul in Fort Garry, James Wickes Taylor, that there would be no objection if American troops crossed into Manitoba to arrest the Fenians for violating American neutrality laws.62 Macdonald had been confident that the Americans would intervene. The Fenians, he wrote, “are in great disfavour at present with President Grant & his Government & the latter will make no bones of shooting them down if necessary.”63 Wheaton, who had been taken by surprise, hurried together a small force and headed for the Hudson’s Bay post. When the Fenians heard that the Americans were coming for them – a development that they had not anticipated – they made a run for it. O’Neill, Donnelly, and Curley were quickly captured; O’Donoghue evaded the troops but was later caught by a party of Métis and brought back to Fort Pembina. Yet again – as at Eastport, Ridgeway, Eccles Hill, and Trout River – the Americans had played a major role in the defeat of Fenian soldiers. Technically, of course, the men who marched with O’Neill and O’Donoghue were not actually Fenians. And technically, they did not actually cross the border: a revised survey had placed the customs house and the Hudson’s Bay Company on the American side of the line, unbeknownst to the invaders.64

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But to say that this was a noninvasion by non-Fenians, although true, is to miss the point; they – or their leaders, at least – were acting in the cause of revolutionary Irish nationalism and thought that they had actually entered Canadian territory, even if they left it more quickly. It is not clear when news of the Fenian defeat reached Fort Garry, but it was probably not until the night of Friday, 6 October, by which time most of the Métis had already begun organizing their own companies and a largely English-speaking force of 200 men had started marching towards Pembina. There were rumours of a secondary Fenian attack from St Joseph in Dakota Territory, but nothing came of it. On Sunday, 8 October, Archibald reviewed a company of Métis who had assembled in St Boniface, thanked them for their loyalty, and shook hands with their leaders, one of whom was Louis Riel. Back at Government House, Archibald breathed a large sigh of relief. “I dreaded the consequences of a civil war,” he wrote to Macdonald. “That was what O’Donoghue hoped and tried to bring about. With assistance enough to gain a lodgment on the soil by a few men from without, the position would have been serious. The masses of unemployed on the Minnesota Railroad would have rushed in here for plunder and I tremble to anticipate what might [have] been the fate of the country.” But the crisis had been averted, the Métis had dashed Fenian hopes, and the way was open to let bygones be bygones and to “bring about a better state of feeling in the different races of the population.”65

Things did not turn out that way. When news spread that the lieutenant governor had shaken the hand of Louis Riel and granted him temporary amnesty, a wave of outrage spread through English Canada. Everybody knew, argued the Globe, that Riel was a murderer and a traitor; he had put Thomas Scott to death for being loyal to the British Crown, and he and his followers “were accomplices in O’Donoghue’s and O’Neill’s joint enterprise.” More followed: “Robber, murderer, and traitor, – with his crimes unpardoned, unrelented, unatoned for – Riel received from the grasp of Governor Archibald’s hand a grand act of condonation.” Adams Archibald (Figure 16.2) was condemned as a miserable failure who was “blundering, gross and stupid almost beyond conception” and should be relieved of his position immediately.66 The lieutenant governor had no regrets. “I see nothing in the course I took that gives me any doubt as to its correctness,” he wrote three years later. “I

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16.2 Adams Archibald (1814–92). The lieutenant governor of Manitoba, he feared that the Métis might join the freelance Fenians who were planning to invade the province. His efforts to secure Métis loyalty to the government angered and alienated the province’s Orangemen. After the attempted raid fizzled out and the situation stabilized, he resigned – much to the Orangemen’s relief and no doubt to his own.

would take it again under the like circumstances. If the Dominion have at this moment the Province to defend, and not one to conquer, they owe it to the policy of forbearance.”67 But he realized that he had become a political liability to the government and offered his resignation two months after the raid; it was eventually accepted.68 One suspects that he was glad to get out. McMicken continued to operate as Macdonald’s eyes and ears in the province. In November, Macdonald asked him to make discreet inquiries about Riel’s connection with the raid and to keep Archibald in the dark about

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the investigation.69 McMicken, who did not speak French, found the task challenging, but he soon learned that Riel had been “credited by his countrymen with zealous and praiseworthy endeavours to restrain the French half breeds from joining O’Donahoe.” The praise, McMicken reported, was misplaced: Riel had attempted to dissuade the Métis from supporting the Fenians only after McMicken arrived in Fort Garry with the news that O’Donoghue’s army amounted to a “contemptible handful” of men. The very fact that Riel had to make zealous endeavours to prevent the Métis from joining O’Donoghue, McMicken added, proved the point that they had been willing to join him in the first place. Only after the Métis learned that the Fenians had been defeated, he continued, did Riel’s efforts meet with any success. McMicken never wavered from this position.70 When he gave his talk to the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society in 1888 – three years after Riel had been executed for his part in the North-West Resistance in present-day Saskatchewan – he dismissed Riel’s offer to assist the government in 1871 as an act of “hollow mockery.”71 McMicken’s report to Macdonald was a classic case of confirmation bias. He fitted the information into a preconceived framework in which the Métis, out to avenge their treatment at the hands of newly arrived settlers and prepared to join the Fenians to achieve that objective, pulled back only when they realized that O’Donoghue’s force was too weak to accomplish anything. The framework determined the interpretation of the information that he received, and the interpretation of the information confirmed the framework in a self-validating loop. O’Neill and O’Donoghue’s freelance Fenians were released from custody four days after the attack on the grounds that they could not have violated American neutrality laws since the customs house and the Hudson’s Bay Company post that they had occupied were actually in the United States. O’Neill’s stock plummeted even further among Irish American nationalists. “This time,” commented the Irish American, “the attempt was even more farcical than his performance of St. Albans,” and he had been “turned loose as being not worth the cost and trouble of detention.” The Fenians put as much distance between themselves and O’Neill as possible; O’Neill, the Irish American pointed out, “had been repudiated by all sections of that organization, and his movement was in no sense a Fenian movement.”72 For the next two years, he eked out a living on the lecture circuit, recounting his three attempts to invade Canada and blaming the “wealthy Irish” for constantly letting him

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down.73 Struggling with depression and drinking to excess, he ended his days while attempting to establish an Irish colony in Nebraska and founding the town of O’Neill. It was not a success. William O’Donoghue did not fare much better. He moved to Minnesota, found work as teacher, contracted tuberculosis, and died in poverty in March 1878, two months after O’Neill. O’Donoghue was thirty-five years old; O’Neill was thirty-nine.74 In Manitoba, three Pembina Métis were arrested and charged with “feloniously and unlawfully levying war against Her Majesty.” One of them, André Jerome St Matte, was subjected to severe and prolonged physical labour while awaiting trial. His treatment may have been a means to get him to name the leaders, payback for his reputed role as one of Thomas Scott’s guards, or a combination of both. He refused to talk and was eventually acquitted, as was his fellow prisoner Isadore Villeneuve. The third accused man, Louison (“Oiseau”) Letendre, was found guilty and sentenced to death.75 After a plea from Bishop Taché and a petition that included “a large number of the respectable Inhabitants of the place,” his sentence was commuted to twenty years in prison. Letendre would be released in January 1873 and banished from Canada for the remainder of his twenty-year sentence.76 Looking back on these events, Archibald believed that the trials of the three men and the conviction of Letendre “did good service by showing the halfbreeds that playing at treason was a dangerous game.” Although the general consensus was that the Fenian raid was an utterly absurd ploy that had led to yet another Fenian fiasco, Archibald had taken it much more seriously; O’Donoghue and O’Neill, he was convinced, could have triggered a chain reaction of events that would have culminated in civil war, during which the English settlers “would have suffered horrors it makes me shudder to contemplate.” Such a fate may have been avoided, but the Métis continued to suffer in a different, more sustained way. Faced with the continuing hostility of Protestant settlers from Ontario, and feeling like strangers in the land that they knew as their own, many Métis decided to cut their losses and move farther west. “A year or two of quiet, with such immigration as we were likely to have[,] was then all that was required to place the Province beyond the reach of danger,” wrote Archibald. “The English element is inevitably destined to prevail in Manitoba.”77 And so it came to pass.

part five a f t e r m at h



17

 “The True and Faithful Few”

Back in central Canada, different dynamics were in play. On Dominion Day, 1 July 1870, with Eccles Hill and Trout River five weeks behind him, Gilbert McMicken sat at his desk in Ottawa and took stock of the situation. He had every reason to be satisfied. In sharp contrast to the intelligence failures of 1866, his secret police force had succeeded in obtaining accurate information about Fenian finances, internal divisions, war matériel, arms distribution, and battle plans. Although the immediate cause of John O’Neill’s decisive defeat at Eccles Hill came from the local initiative of the Red Sashes, and although reports of the projected date of the attack had been off by one day, the Canadian government had known more than enough to ensure that the invasion would end badly for the Fenians. The secret police force had done its work so well that it could now be disbanded.1 The only task remaining was to distribute suitable rewards for the men who had made this result possible. Not surprisingly, Thomas Billis Beach, aka Henri Le Caron, was top of the list. “He has devoted himself to the service,” wrote McMicken, “and performed it (from my point of view) zealously, faithfully, and to great advantage for the public interests.”2 After the Battle of Eccles Hill, Le Caron had joined the Fenians who were congregating in Malone. Concluding that they were floundering, he made his way to Montreal, where he stayed overnight with Charles Coursol. The next day, en route to Ottawa, he was recognized as a Fenian agent by an itinerant preacher and placed under arrest in Cornwall. After revealing his true identity to the mayor (William Cox Allen, who had arrested the Toronto Fenian leader, Michael Murphy, four years earlier), Le Caron was allowed to continue under armed guard to Ottawa. The journey, he recalled, was “most disagreeable,” partly

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because his fellow passengers wanted to hang him and mainly because he was not allowed to smoke on the train.3 In Ottawa, he was reunited with McMicken, who put him up overnight at his local club. There, elated with success, having “an exceedingly good time,” and releasing himself from prolonged duplicity, Le Caron did something no secret agent should ever do: he began boasting about his exploits, telling a group of officers at the club that he was a “true hearted Englishman” who utterly despised the Fenians and had been a “great instrument of discomfiture” to them. McMicken was aghast. He had spent the past three years protecting Le Caron’s identity and was now witnessing “very excitable” behaviour that not only risked throwing everything away but could also have fatal consequences.4 The parallel with Charles Clarke is revealing; both men needed, at some point, to tell people who they really were and what they were actually doing. But Clarke blew his cover in the middle of his mission, while Le Caron jeopardized his after his work had been accomplished – a crucial difference, as far as McMicken and Macdonald were concerned. The officers at McMicken’s club did not spread the word, or at least did not spread it widely enough that it reached Fenian ears. In the United States, however, Le Caron was facing the same kind of criticism that the Fenians were levelling against O’Neill – coming under attack for his leading role in what had turned out to be a futile and self-destructive attempt to invade Canada. The fact that he was not an Irishman was used against him, as was the story that he had encouraged local farmers to help themselves to Fenian weapons after the defeat at Eccles Hill. The Irish American went further: Le Caron and Colonel E.C. Lewis (who had been unjustly suspected of treachery by other Fenians), ran one of its reports, were generally believed to be “men who would not hesitate a moment to sell the cause of Ireland for a trifling consideration, and their recent conduct shows that their characters were properly estimated; for who can doubt from the part they have taken in this unfortunate affair, that they were in league with the enemy to destroy the whole of the military stores on the Canadian frontier.”5 Even if Le Caron’s identity remained hidden, reckoned McMicken, it was extremely doubtful that he would ever be able to regain a prominent position within Irish American revolutionary organizations.6 He could not have been more wrong. Le Caron was paid an extra $2,000 for his services, with another $250 to cover the expenses that he had incurred after his arrest. (To put this into per-

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spective, blacksmiths and carpenters were earning around $2 a day in 1870.)7 William Montgomery came far behind, receiving $300 for his “valuable and faithful service” in New York. Brought into the secret police in 1867 on the recommendation of Charles Clarke, Montgomery had weathered the storm clouds of suspicion when Clarke was exposed as a spy, had displayed remarkable sangfroid, and had risen steadily through the Fenian ranks. Montgomery’s quiet work has been eclipsed by that of the flamboyant and self-promoting Henri Le Caron. But even had Le Caron – Thomas Billis Beach – never existed, Montgomery’s reports would still have given the Canadian government sufficient information about Fenian intentions and capabilities. McMicken felt that $300 was a “very moderate sum” in light of his accomplishments.8 The elusive “J.W. McDonald,” McMicken’s agent in Buffalo, whose true identity remains a mystery, got a closing payment of $200 along with an undisclosed bonus. Also in Buffalo, John McLaughlin, the veterinarian who had blown the whistle on the Fenians immediately before the Ridgeway raid, was given $150 for his more recent contributions to secret service operations. After O’Neill ordered his men to gather in St Albans and Malone, McLaughlin had travelled on the trains between Buffalo and Potsdam, sending reports to Ottawa about the Fenian turnout that enabled McMicken to “appreciate the great exaggeration of numbers given through other channels.” Henry Hemans, the British consul in Buffalo, was equally impressed, recommending that McLaughlin be generously recompensed for his “very energetic” work.9 Among McMicken’s other detectives, two were singled out for special praise. One was William Smith, who for the previous three years had displayed “an unflagging zeal and excellent and useful conduct” in his efforts to infiltrate counterfeiting rings and to monitor Fenian activities in Ontario. He was in St Albans when the Fenians began arriving there on 23 May, and through rain and storm, he rushed to St Jean and from there to Montreal, where he provided the British general James Alexander Lindsay with detailed information about Fenian plans and preparations. Then he recrossed the border to report on Fenian movements in upstate New York. For this work, wrote McMicken, Smith should be given an extra $100. The other detective just happened to be Gilbert McMicken’s son Alexander, who had overseen the secret police and had handled the agents in the field during his father’s “many and frequent absences.” For such service, McMicken suggested, Alexander deserved a bonus of $200.10

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All the accounts were settled, and all the counter-intelligence detectives in the force were laid off, with the single exception of William Montgomery in New York. It was always possible that the Fenian Brotherhood could recover or that some new organization could emerge, and it made sense to continue surveillance operations. If the Canadian government continued to employ Montgomery and if the British consulate retained the services of Rudolph Fitzpatrick, then each man’s information could be checked against that of the other. “We would thus,” commented McMicken, “obtain all the information that might be necessary for months or years to come.”11 Fitzpatrick had been very good at leading his double life. Never under suspicion – he was, after all, a hero of Ridgeway and had been wounded at Trout River – he appears to have still been working with the British secret service shortly before his death in 1907.12 After approaching the British consulate in 1867, he kept Edward Archibald informed about the Fenian agents who were being sent into Canada and about the Canadian Fenians who were meeting O’Neill in New York. Archibald passed the information to the authorities in Britain and to the governor general’s office in Canada, from where it was transmitted to the secret service. As a result, McMicken and his counterparts in Quebec, first Frederick William Ermatinger and then Charles Coursol, knew who in Canada needed watching. Because Fitzpatrick’s reports were filtered through Archibald’s letters, his direct role in Canadian surveillance operations has been blurred; there is no doubt, however, of its importance.

The decision to keep Montgomery on the force soon paid dividends. In September 1870, he reported that a new organization closely tied to the republican movement in Ireland was emerging: the United Brotherhood. It had actually been founded three years earlier by Jerome J. Collins in New York with the goal of tightening the secrecy of revolutionary nationalist operations and uniting the Fenian factions behind a strategy that focused on Ireland rather than Canada – thus bringing diasporic nationalism back to its Irish roots. Montgomery, who joined the organization, outlined its structure, which consisted of camps instead of circles, its identification of members by number rather than name, and its use of whispered passwords. Each camp was expected to organize a military company and to prepare for Ireland’s opportunity in the event of England’s difficulty. Montgomery’s camp, which had 300

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members, was one of eighteen in New York. “This new organization is said to be growing rapidly,” McMicken informed Macdonald, “and extending pretty generally within the United States and working its way into Canada.” It would become better known as the Clan na Gael.13 In Canada, as in the United States, the total defeat of the Fenians at Eccles Hill and Trout River had transformed the terms of Irish nationalism. Henceforth, as Henry Hemans predicted, the “objective point” would be Ireland and Ireland alone.14 The Irish Canadian was vociferous in its denunciation of O’Neill and his followers. “An attempt so despicable in the name of Ireland was never perpetrated,” asserted Patrick Boyle.15 Similar sentiments were expressed by Murtagh Moriarty and William Mackey Lomasney, the former members of the Hibernian Benevolent Society who had been imprisoned for their role in the Fenian Rising of 1867. Arriving in New York in 1871 after their release, they received an address of welcome from Boyle and Jeremiah Murphy (Michael’s brother), who praised their efforts on behalf of Irish freedom. They replied that the failure in 1867 had been caused in large part by the diversion of men and money from Ireland to the “Canadian movement.” Nothing could be more contradictory than to assert the right of people to choose their own form of government in Ireland while denying them that right in Canada by means of invasion. “We wish you to understand,” they declared, “that we never had, directly or indirectly, anything to do with that movement, but that, on the contrary, we entirely disapproved of, and unreservedly condemned it.”16 Such views set the tone for the future. Support for the “cause of Ireland” could run along constitutional or revolutionary channels, or a combination of both, but apart from O’Neill and his few remaining followers, it no longer involved hitting Britain through Canada. In the United States, the arrival in 1871 of Fenian prisoners from Ireland who had been amnestied by the British government – men such as John Devoy, Thomas Clarke Luby, and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, as well as Lomasney and Moriarty – ensured that revolutionary Irish nationalism would continue to set its sights across the Atlantic rather than north of the border. In Ireland, with the formation of Isaac Butt’s federalist Home Government Association (reorganized as the Home Rule League in November 1873), constitutional nationalism was in the ascendant, the aim being to establish an Irish parliament under the Crown, achieved through parliamentary means. Canadian Fenians such as Felix Callahan, who had cooperated with O’Neill

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during the winter of 1869–70, were forced to adjust to the new reality. He served as vice-president of the Montreal branch of the Home Rule League, while also joining the Clan na Gael and becoming the senior guardian of a United Brotherhood camp; the idea was to inject revolutionary politics into the constitutional nationalist bloodstream.17 Three years later, he established the Montreal Sun, the only daily Irish newspaper on the continent. Its editor was the radical Irish journalist and former Fenian senator Stephen J. Meany, and one of its strongest supporters was Francis Bernard McNamee.18 They may have given up on an invasion of Canada but not on the independence of Ireland. Other Canadian Fenians took a similar path. In Quebec City, the Gallagher brothers, Francis and Jeremiah, combined revolutionary nationalism with qualified support for the Home Rule movement. During the city’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations in 1872, Fenian symbolism coexisted with Home Rule iconography. Francis designed a green flag with the words “home rule” embossed in gold letters; on the obverse were “three stripes of Green, White and Orange, and from the Green and Orange extended hands, clasped over the White which typified the purity of the motives of those who seek to unite the Irish people.”19 The city’s Hibernian Benevolent Society found a voice in the Irish Sentinel newspaper, started in February 1872 by John O’Farrell. Its editor, James Gahan, described the paper as “an auxiliary in the great cause of Irish independence” and declared that its approach to Canadian politics rested on the assumption that “the People is King.”20 Among its articles was one on the “artificial famine” in Ireland, “which was brought about by the alien government for the destruction of a whole people.”21 Gahan believed that separation from this alien government was the best option for Ireland, and he was skeptical about the value of parliamentary agitation.22 Nevertheless, he thought that Home Rule was worth a try – a view that was shared by the Gallagher brothers and by the Hibernian Benevolent Society, which took the initiative in forming a branch of the Home Rule League in 1873. If the league succeeded, so much the better; if it failed, the limits of constitutional nationalism would be laid bare, and the cause of revolution would be vindicated. As the wheels of the Home Rule League continued to spin, Jeremiah, and probably Francis as well, joined the Clan na Gael; if legislative initiatives failed, they would be ready to support armed revolution.

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“I believe in common with many more here,” wrote one of their compatriots in Montreal, “that Rifle Rule is more effective than Home or Federal Rule.”23 Although Fenianism persisted in Canada, it remained a minority sensibility among Irish Catholics. In Montreal, the moderates were predominant in the Home Rule League, and Father Patrick Dowd was leading the counterattack against physical force nationalism; “he has either killed or emasculated most of the Irish societies of Montreal,” complained one correspondent to the Irish World. Despite striving to be “as Ultramontane as the heart could wish,” Felix Callahan’s Sun was unable to survive clerical disapproval, and James Gahan’s Irish Sentinel lasted less than six months in Quebec.24 In Toronto, once the cradle of Canadian Fenianism, many radical Irish nationalists had left during the 1860s. Archbishop John Joseph Lynch claimed that 7,000 Irish Catholics had been driven out of the city between 1866 and 1868 by Orange pressure – a massive exaggeration behind which lay a certain reality: Buffalo and Cincinnati were much more congenial places for Canadian Fenians than Orange Toronto.25 The Fenians who remained showed little or no interest in moving towards constitutional Irish nationalism. A meeting held in early December 1873 to establish a branch of the Home Rule League attracted fewer than twenty people, and subsequent efforts went nowhere.26 Patrick Boyle’s Irish Canadian continued to flourish, largely because its editor was shrewd enough to adjust his product to suit the market. The paper continued to support self-government for Ireland and occasionally showed flashes of its earlier radicalism, but most of its coverage concerned the eminently respectable causes of temperance, fidelity to the Catholic Church, and the need for increased Irish Catholic representation in Canadian politics, all within the framework of loyalty to the state.

As the context changed, so did the character of Canadian Fenianism. “The true and faithful few,” as they styled themselves, gravitated towards the terrorist tactics of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. If Ireland could not be liberated by attacking Canada, perhaps it could be liberated by attacking Britain – in the form of a dynamite campaign that would force the British government to the negotiating table. To that end, O’Donovan Rossa set up his Skirmishing Fund in March 1876. One of the first subscribers, probably Jeremiah or Francis

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Gallagher, came from Quebec City; others from Montreal soon answered the call.27 More money came in from Sillery Cove in Quebec, Saint John, Charlottetown, and even Muskoka in Ontario.28 “Use it to the best advantage in ridding mother Ireland of the hated Saxon yoke,” was the accompanying message of the Sillery Cove contributors.29 The number of Canadian subscribers was small. “I am sorry to say that the Irishmen here take but very little interest in the Skirmishing Fund,” wrote Patrick Sullivan when he sent the contributions from fourteen men, including himself, in Saint John; his words reflect a general trend.30 Yet the subscribers’ passion was intense, and they could draw on a large reservoir of sympathy for Irish revolutionary politics. Hardly anyone from Toronto donated to the Skirmishing Fund, but when its secretary, the Fenian exile Thomas Clarke Luby (Figure 17.1), spoke in the city in 1877, he was greeted by an “overflowing crowd” at the Grand Opera House, with its 1,323 seats. “If the people of Ireland wish ever to be free, let them go in for the sword,” he declared. “I would be willing to see Dublin, like Moscow, sacrificed to the flames if I but had Ireland’s freedom secured; and I would consider the blessing cheaply bought.” After he finished, there was “continued cheering, which was only interrupted by the fall of the curtain.”31 It was the same story when the one-time local son and internationally renowned Fenian Thomas Francis Bourke (Figure 17.2) returned to Toronto the following year. Before his talk, he visited the grave of the “grand old patriot” Michael Murphy, who had died in April 1868, four days after the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and whose body had been brought back from Buffalo to Toronto. In the evening, Bourke gave a talk that was very much in the tradition of Murphy’s St Patrick’s Day speeches. “I am willing to die for such a grand old land as Ireland is,” he said, to tremendous cheering. And he was prepared to kill, as well. “Speaking of Irish landlords,” ran the Globe’s report, “the lecturer said that he would not have the slightest hesitation in killing the man who would come and turn his parents or sisters out of the home they and their forefathers had occupied for generations.” He was not, Bourke continued, a sanguinary man, “but as a matter of sanitary regulation he thought that England would be the better of a deal of blood-letting.”32 Bourke’s talk, however, was just the warm-up act for the main attraction later that month: Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s (Figure 17.3) visit to Toronto on St Patrick’s Day, at the invitation of the Hibernian Benevolent Society and

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17.1 Thomas Clarke Luby (1822–1901). One of the founders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, he arrived in the United States in 1871 after serving six years in British jails. Working as a journalist and a lecturer, he promoted the cause of revolutionary Irish nationalism in towns and cities throughout North America, including Toronto and Montreal.

the Young Irishmen’s Catholic Benevolent Association. The presence of someone who was raising money for a bombing campaign against Britain was guaranteed to infuriate the predominantly loyalist population of the city. Everyone expected trouble. The army was put on standby, and the police were called out. The venue was changed to St Patrick’s Hall, capacity 200 seats, after the Opera House backed out, fearing for its windows. When the veteran Fenian

17.2 Thomas Francis Bourke (1840–89). When he was a schoolboy in Toronto, his friends included future revolutionary nationalists such as Edward O’Meagher Condon and the less wellknown William Burns, head of a pro-invasion Fenian circle in the city. Bourke, who repudiated the invasion of Canada, was sentenced to death for his role in the Fenian Rising of 1867 in Ireland. The sentence was commuted, and he arrived in the United States after serving four years in jail. He joined the Clan na Gael and supported violent revolution, but he opposed the dynamite campaign in Britain.

17.3 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831–1915). The defiant look after his arrest for Fenianism was a characteristic feature of his career. His speech in Toronto on St Patrick’s Day in 1878 occasioned one of the largest Orange-Green riots in the city’s history.

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John Devoy heard that O’Donovan Rossa was going to Toronto and needed money for a suit, he covered the cost and dashed off a note to the tailor: “He wants to get a suit of clothes to go to Toronto on the 18th to lecture and get them torn to pieces by the loyal Orangemen.”33 To save his suit, and possibly his life, O’Donovan Rossa jumped off the train before it reached the station and went into hiding before entering the hall through the back way. His speech was relatively moderate in comparison with those of Luby and Bourke; he spoke of his experiences in prison, of the brave men who fought for Ireland’s freedom, and of the need for his listeners to join “some society,” by which he could only have meant the Clan na Gael. Outside, an immense crowd pushed against the police cordon and hurled stones at the hall; his sentences were punctuated by the sound of smashing glass. After the talk, sections of the crowd “made a furious attack on the police” and set out for Owen Cosgrove’s hotel, well known as a Fenian hangout; according to the Irish Canadian, over 100 shots were fired, and the place was gutted. It was one of the worst riots the city had seen since 1858. There was, however, one significant difference: this time, the police were trying to protect the Irish Catholic targets, instead of turning a blind eye or actually joining the rioters.34 Luby, Bourke, and Rossa had previously visited Montreal, where everything passed off peacefully – so much so, in fact, that their talks were barely registered in the press.35 Their positive reception among Irish Catholics matched that of Toronto. “When men like O’Donovan Rossa and General Bourke come here to preach against English supremacy,” wrote one of their supporters – admittedly not an unbiased source – “the halls are filled to suffocation by Irishmen and women.”36

In part, the large turnouts for physical force republicans could be seen as an expression of ethno-religious solidarity, but they also reflected a genuine emotional identification with “the cause” and a deep admiration for men who had risked and sacrificed so much for Irish freedom. Yet attending lectures ablaze with fiery rhetoric also represented a relatively safe form of longdistance patriotism. “If eloquence, oratory, poetry, or music could have made Ireland free,” remarked Bourke in his Toronto talk, “she would have been free long ago.”37 His comment was greeted with cheers and laughter, but it also

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struck a nerve. It was easy to celebrate the heroes who had fought for Ireland, but it required a deeper level of commitment and certainty to actually join an organization dedicated to waging war on Britain or to send money to the Skirmishing Fund. Most of the listeners were fully prepared to join in the celebrations, but few were willing to take matters any further. As long as this was the case, Canadian authorities were not too bothered. Particularly telling in this respect is the response of John A. Macdonald to the suggestion of an Irish Catholic ally in 1871 that he should buy out the Irish Canadian and turn it into a Conservative Catholic newspaper. No, replied Macdonald, for Boyle would only start up another paper with “Fenian proclivities.” It made much more sense to buy out Boyle himself by offering him government contracts if he came over to the Conservatives. Such a change, Macdonald wrote, would have to come about by degrees to avoid suspicion, but it could easily be done on the grounds that the Conservatives were finally doing justice to Irishmen. The paper could continue to be as “factious as it pleased about Irish home politics, or even as to New York movements, for all I would care,” he added. “As long as it pursued that course it would keep up its present subscription list & influence.”38 Once the threat to Canada had diminished, the way was open to draw even the most “factious” of Irish nationalists into the Conservative fold. In fact, the Irish Canadian did change by degrees to support the Conservatives and was suitably rewarded with patronage, although that process would not occur until much later in the decade.39 With Irish nationalists no longer interested in attacking Canada, the subject of Fenianism faded out of government correspondence. By 1873, when Macdonald went down to defeat in the wake of the Pacific Scandal, it had disappeared altogether; his successor as prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie, was entirely untroubled by revolutionary Irish politics during his five years in office.40 Mackenzie was, however, troubled by the lack of accountability over the secret service fund that had been established in 1866. There was strong circumstantial evidence that Macdonald had dipped into the fund to support election battles on behalf of the Conservatives and for other purposes unconnected with Fenianism. When a parliamentary committee was struck in 1877 to investigate the matter, Macdonald argued that the imperatives of protecting secret operations overrode the normal principles of financial transparency. The Liberals did not push the matter too hard; the amount of money involved

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was small change in comparison to the massive amount that had sparked the Pacific Scandal, and there may also have been some reluctance to set a precedent that could compromise intelligence gathering in the future. Once they had succeeded in embarrassing Macdonald, they let the matter drop.41

As it turned out, more intelligence gathering would be required – and fairly quickly. In Ireland, nationalist politics were being re-energized during the late 1870s through the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell in the Home Rule movement and through the emergence of the Land League under the impetus of the former Fenian Michael Davitt. Against the background of severe agricultural depression, the Land League aimed to reduce rents, protect tenant farmers from eviction, and ultimately replace the landlord system with one in which tenants owned the land that they occupied. In 1879, the constitutional, revolutionary, and agrarian components of Irish nationalism came together in what was known as the New Departure. Parnell worked to create a disciplined, pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary Party and also became president of the Land League. Fenians in Ireland played a major role in the Land League, and Irish American nationalists – and to some degree their Canadian counterparts – supplied funds in support. The league waged an intense psychological war against landlords and their agents, with social ostracism as a major weapon; the word “boycott” dates from this period. Yet, in contrast to the league’s emphasis on moral force, traditional patterns of local agrarian violence began to reassert themselves in the form of threats, beatings, killings, and the maiming of animals. William Gladstone’s government responded with a mixture of coercion and concession. The Land League was suppressed in 1881, and both Davitt and Parnell spent several months in jail. At the same time, Gladstone passed a Land Act that gave tenants a greater degree of security, but it fell far short of the league’s objective of enabling tenants to own their farms. Coercion met with resistance, but concession split the movement between those who were prepared to accept Gladstone’s improvements to the Land Act and those who wanted to continue the struggle. Parnell was among the former; Davitt was among the latter. With many farmers prepared to accept the terms of the revised Land Act, agrarian violence had subsided by the summer of 1882. Hence-

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forth, Parnell would direct the energies unleashed by the agrarian unrest into the campaign for Home Rule.42 Political violence, however, did not disappear. In May 1882, a Fenian splinter group, the Invincibles, had knifed to death the newly appointed chief secretary and his undersecretary in Phoenix Park, and the following month a Catholic landlord was killed in east Galway. British politicians lived in fear of assassination, and Irish American bombs were exploding on British streets. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa – never a supporter of the New Departure – had split from the Clan na Gael, formed the United Irishmen, and in January 1881 launched his long awaited dynamite campaign. Its first victim was a sevenyear-old boy in the wrong place at the wrong time. At a secret convention in Chicago in August, the Clan na Gael decided to get into the act; the former Toronto Fenians Edward O’Meagher Condon and William Mackey Lomasney were at the forefront of those pushing for the new strategy.43 Over the next three years, bombs went off in railway stations, the London Underground, Scotland Yard, Whitehall, and the House of Commons – not to mention Lomasney’s failed and fatal attempt to blow up London Bridge.44

All these developments had repercussions in Canada. When Parnell visited Toronto and Montreal during his North American tour in 1880, he was given a hero’s welcome. Patrick Boyle, now aligned with Macdonald’s Conservative Party, gave the vote of thanks in Toronto; Francis Bernard McNamee, now also aligned with Macdonald, chaired the proceedings in Montreal, where a parade of 8,000 people welcomed Parnell to the city.45 Branches of the Land League were established in Charlottetown, Halifax, Saint John, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, with Fenians or former Fenians in the front line.46 As the land war intensified, the former detective George Mothersill heard – presumably from one of his previous contacts – that arms were being shipped from Canada to Ireland.47 The British minister to the United States, Edward Thornton, was getting mixed messages from his sources. Some suggested that members of the United Brotherhood, or Clan na Gael, were planning “disturbances” in Canada to draw British troops away from Ireland, while others indicated that no such plans were in the works.48 The British naval base in Esquimalt, British Columbia, was mentioned as a possible target.49

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And a ciphered message from the British embassy in Washington alerted the governor general, Lord Lorne, that Fenians in Philadelphia had discussed kidnapping him and holding him hostage for the release of Michael Davitt, then in Portland Prison.50 It was hard to know how much stock to put in these stories. Without an organized secret police force, Macdonald, back in power since October 1878, was forced to improvise. On the recommendation of Charles Coursol, he employed George Carpenter, a former member of the Montreal Water Police, to check out a report that arms were being hidden in Montreal; “nothing of importance” was found.51 Freelance investigations were undertaken by an enterprising sixty-five-year-old woman from Carleton Country near Ottawa, Ellen Forrest.52 She travelled to Buffalo to visit an old school friend who had married one of the city’s leading Fenians. He told her that plans were in place for diversionary attacks in Canada and Britain when the Irish rising occurred and that the Fenians had agents throughout Canada – information that she passed on to John O’Connor, the member of Parliament for Russell.53 Her next operation was in Ottawa, where she helped to break up the city’s branch of the Land League by “working on the fears of the wives of the leaders in the movement.”54 She then went to see a friend with Fenian connections who lived in Watertown, New York, heard much talk about the general desirability of putting bullets through Gladstone and Lorne, and listened to a local priest encouraging his congregation to “buckle on their armor” for Ireland.55 Moving on to Brooklyn, she persuaded her nephew to join the Fenians and report back to her. She also met Parnell’s American mother and heard O’Donovan Rossa speak on the efficacy of the dynamite campaign.56 All these reports testified to the intensity of feeling among Irish nationalists in the United States but did not provide the government with the specific kind of information that it needed. Ellen Forrest was not put on the payroll. Instead, Macdonald turned to more familiar sources: Edward Archibald, still at the British consulate in New York; and Henri Le Caron, living in Braidwood, Illinois. In March 1881, Archibald reported that the United Brotherhood, or Clan na Gael, was buying arms and building up its strength until an opportunity arose for a revolution in Ireland but that it had no desire to imitate “the folly of the Fenian fiasco of former years.”57 Closer to the top, however, was Le Caron, who in 1875 had joined the Clan and rejoined the British secret service.58 (To get around the Clan’s rule that only Irish-born or Irish-

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descended people could become members, he would add yet another layer of deception to his alias and invent an Irish mother.)59 In February 1881, McMicken, visiting Toronto from Winnipeg, was requested to stop in Chicago on his return journey and to resume contact with Le Caron. “Don’t mention to any one, in or out of the Government, that you are acting in this matter,” ran his instructions.60 The old firm was briefly back in business. Le Caron’s initial information was alarming. “Matters more important than expected,” McMicken cabled after their meeting. Something serious was going to happen in Canada, and the United Brotherhood had set aside $40,000 for the operation, whatever it was to be. In what looks suspiciously like a nineteenth-century version of clickbait, Le Caron charged $75 for his services, dropped dark hints that the Fenian leadership was “capable and determined upon giving us great trouble in Canada,” and procured a regular salary of $100 a month but never came up with anything specific. In August 1881, he attended the Clan na Gael convention in Chicago, reporting to both the Canadian and British governments and being paid by each. After receiving the circular that the Clan issued after the convention, McMicken concluded that there was “nothing startling” about the proceedings and no sign of anything that would threaten Canada. McMicken evidently missed the larger point – not explicitly stated in the circular – that the Clan was about to begin its dynamite campaign in Britain.61

Canada, it seemed, was in the clear – at least for the time being. But the possibility remained that the Clan na Gael or, more likely, O’Donovan Rossa’s United Irishmen might turn their attention northwards if circumstances changed. Macdonald and Lorne’s awareness of that danger was clearly revealed in 1882 when a Conservative member of Parliament, John Costigan, successfully moved a resolution in the House of Commons in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. Most historians have focused on the way that Macdonald watered down Costigan’s original resolution and blocked off any potentially more radical amendments.62 But the more interesting point is the relationship between the resolution and the perceived Fenian threat. “The rejection of the address,” Macdonald wrote to Lorne, “would have greatly irritated the majority of the Irish Catholic population and we should probably have seen a renewal of the Conspiracies between the Fenian element here and

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the Irish Americans of the United States from which we have already suffered so much.”63 Lorne believed that Home Rule for Ireland along Canadian lines would be a “misfortune” and that a better model would be the relationship between the federal government and the provinces. Still, he continued, “these opinions and others may be held in Canada, but must remain matters of abstract Philosophy, except in so far as they may shield Canada against renewed Fenian Raids.”64 That Costigan’s resolution could function as a prophylactic against Fenian designs in Canada was a key factor behind Macdonald’s support. A renewed Fenian raid was out of the question, pub talk excepted, but new intelligence indicated that the kind of conspiracies that Macdonald feared were already being hatched. Thomas Cunningham, a strong supporter of O’Donovan Rossa and a founder of Montreal’s Skirmishing Club, approached his fellow Fenians in the United States with a plan to kidnap Princess Louise, the wife of Lord Lorne and daughter of Queen Victoria, and to hold her hostage for the release of Irish prisoners in Britain and Ireland.65 “The devils are mad enough to try anything,” Lorne wrote when he learned about the plot. Lord Cavendish, the chief secretary of Ireland, whom the Invincibles had murdered the previous month, had been his cousin; the threat against Princess Louise could not be treated lightly. The Fenians, remarked Lorne’s secretary, Francis De Winton, were nothing if not unpredictable. “The more wild & preposterous the idea,” he remarked, “the more feasible & practical does it appear to the Irish mind.” With a mixture of genuine fears and stereotypes about “the Irish mind” ringing through Canadian heads, the princess was guarded closely, and extra precautions were taken for her upcoming trip to British Columbia.66 She arrived safely. Another potential target was Lord Lansdowne, who replaced Lord Lorne as governor general in 1883. Lansdowne’s Irish estates had been singled out for special attention by the Land League, and he had received numerous death threats before he came to Canada. As Lansdowne was sailing to Halifax in October 1883 to take up his new position, Macdonald received information that a “dynamitard” from New York was on his way to the city. The Halifax police, put on full alert, soon tracked down two recently arrived Irish Americans, James Holmes and William Bracken. They were discovered with 100 pounds of dynamite and rubber swimming gear; Holmes also had two loaded revolvers, an alarm clock, wires, fuses, and a copy of the Irish World in his pos-

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session.67 “If the Dynamite story from Halifax be true, it may bring some trouble,” commented the outgoing Lord Lorne. “One of the most efficient means of preventing such things, and for their discouragement wd be a popular demonstration against the ‘fiends.’ Cd not the people be influenced to threaten the men with lynching? This wd produce an excellent effect on them, & others of their kidney.”68 Despite Lorne’s willingness to countenance such vigilantism, the rule of law prevailed. The men were found guilty of “creating a nuisance by having dangerous explosives in their possession” and were sentenced to two years in prison. No Fenian connection was proved in court, but a thick cloud of suspicion hung over their heads.69 With bombs going off in Britain and assassination threats in Canada – directed not only at Lansdowne but also at the visiting English chief justice Lord Coleridge, who had presided over the trial of members of a dynamite cell in Britain – Macdonald’s government had to keep on guard.70 There were so many vague stories about Irish revolutionary machinations in Canada that Macdonald began to experience Fenian fatigue. “Irish doubtless intriguing everywhere,” he wrote on 27 February 1884. “Useless to notice.”71 He had no choice, however, but to notice. On the same day, he instructed the authorities in Halifax, Fredericton, Quebec City, Toronto, and Victoria to protect all public buildings on St Patrick’s Day in the following month.72 “There seems to be much activity in dynamite circles all over the world,” remarked Lansdowne, no doubt with the recent assassination of Tsar Alexander II in mind.73 When, later in the year, an explosion damaged the Quebec legislature, it seemed entirely possible that O’Donovan Rossa’s men were responsible – although why they would choose that particular target remained unclear. Shortly before the explosion, the vice-consul in New York, Pierrepont Edwards, had been told that a group of dynamiters were heading to Canada; a few months later, he was able to identify one of the suspects in the “Quebec outrage,” a man named Short.74 Similar stories surfaced about possible Fenian connections with Louis Riel’s establishment in 1885 of a provisional government to protect the Métis of the Saskatchewan Valley, many of whom had moved into the area from the Red River. As in 1870, the Fenians played no part in the resistance, but there may have been some tentative connections. According to one report, Riel’s secretary, William Henry Jackson, had approached John F. Finerty in Chicago in the hope of acquiring arms for the Métis but was rebuffed because the Fenians

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suspected that he was an agent provocateur.75 Gilbert McMicken, who was in New York when the rebellion broke out – “I feel like a caged bird” away from “the excitement and trouble at home,” he told Macdonald – offered his own assessment of the Fenian position. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had been interested in helping the rebels and had sent two men out west to monitor the situation, he wrote, but its leaders concluded that the “the scene of Riel’s operations is too far out of their reach to give them any hope of accomplishing anything.”76

In Irish Canada as a whole, constitutional nationalism was still very much in the ascendant, but revolutionary cells remained active during the 1880s. There were probably no more than half a dozen United Brotherhood, or Clan na Gael, camps in the country, with a membership of around 200 people. In 1888, British intelligence learned that one such camp operated in Hamilton and that Edward O’Meagher Condon had come back to Canada on a mission to establish others in the vicinity. As Peter M. Toner has pointed out, the United Brotherhood was more interested in attracting a small core of committed activists than in creating a broadly based movement; the idea was to shut out spies, protect the organization from informers, and support revolutionary activities in Britain and Ireland. In the Canadian context, that meant raising funds by drawing on broader support for physical force Irish nationalism. According to James Monro, the head of the Special Branch in the British Home Office, “one Gallagher” in Quebec – either Jeremiah or Francis – raised $1,000 for the Clan na Gael, “to be used for the ‘appliances of civilization’ i.e. explosion, and outrages.” How much the other camps raised remains unknown.77 Along with such clandestine activities, public expressions of Irish nationalism, including its revolutionary variant, persisted into the 1880s. In Montreal, for example, the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benevolent Association – probably a Fenian front organization – invited Condon to speak in the city.78 The constitutional nationalist William O’Brien received a warm welcome from former Fenians – and a hostile one from the Catholic hierarchy and from conservative Irish Canadians – when he came to Canada in 1887 to continue his attacks on Lord Lansdowne for “carrying out a most cruel and inhuman system of evictions” on his Irish estate of Luggacurran. In Toronto, the Orangemen turned out in full force to disrupt O’Brien’s speech, and he

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was attacked the following evening by a stone-throwing loyalist crowd – yet another chapter in the city’s history of ethno-religious rioting.79 Yet it was also the last chapter, at least as far as Irish Catholics and Orangemen were concerned.80 Both external and internal circumstances were changing in ways that not only weakened all strands of political Irish nationalism in Canada but also pushed the Fenian tradition almost completely out of sight for the next two decades. Constitutional nationalism in Ireland was reeling from the failure of Gladstone’s 1886 Home Rule Bill, from the Katharine O’Shea divorce case, which had ruined Parnell’s reputation, from the splitting of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1890, and from the decisive defeat of Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill in 1893. In the United States, intense divisions within the Clan na Gael, reflected and reinforced by the murder of Dr Patrick Cronin in Chicago in 1889, meant that physical force republicanism lost much of its momentum.81 These external changes coincided with a demographic shift within Canada. The backbone of Fenianism had been Catholic men born in Ireland during the 1830s; those who stayed in the country were now in their sixties, and there had been relatively little Irish immigration over the previous twenty-five years. There is no doubt that the immigrants transmitted their political and religious values to the next generation. As Bishop Lynch noted in 1866, those who had survived the Famine “relate to their children born in this country, scenes of horror & woe and in those long winter nights instruct them in Irish history & Irish songs. Often do the children go to bed weeping for their relations in Ireland. Irish tales, songs, Irish newspapers reproduced here, Irish patriotic speeches at school exhibitions, keep up the spirit of Irish nationality.”82 Nevertheless, the experiences of the sons and daughters were very different from those of their parents, and in the absence of revolutionary stimuli from Ireland and the United States, they were much more likely to support Home Rule, join the Ancient Order of Hibernians (an Irish Catholic fraternal organization, not to be confused with the Hibernian Benevolent Societies pioneered by Michael Murphy), and embrace the cultural nationalist revival than to become members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.83 Irish nationalist sentiments continued to run strongest in Montreal and Quebec City, as evinced by celebrations of the Rising of 1798, commemorations of the soi-disant Manchester martyrs, the warm welcome given to the Irish Parliamentary Party’s leader, John Redmond, when he visited Montreal,

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and the money raised for Home Rule through the United Irish League in the province.84 Although there were Fenians in the mix, revolutionary republicanism found no institutional expression in Canada at the turn of the century. The South African War of 1899–1902 failed to trigger a resurgence of Fenianism along the lines of “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity,” although the Hibernian Knights in Montreal invited the leading figure of the Clan na Gael, John Devoy, to the city in January 1900, where he gave a pro-Boer and proFenian speech, after which he was treated to a banquet.85 In contrast, many Irish Catholics who had initially opposed the war gradually reversed themselves as the conflict continued and Canadian soldiers headed for the front.86 The attempt by Fenians to blow up the Welland Canal in 1900 – with potentially disastrous consequences for the nearby town of Merritton – would have done nothing to endear revolutionary Irish nationalism to the vast majority of Irish Canadians.87 In Toronto, the new reality was captured by a painter and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Patrick Rankin, who came to the city in 1913. Patrick Boyle’s Irish Canadian had long since gone, replaced by the Catholic Register – a telling indication of the shifting balance between Irish nationalism and Catholicism. So too had the city’s St Patrick’s Day parades – not banned by the authorities, as the popular myth goes, but cancelled through lack of interest. Rankin’s Toronto was a pretty dismal place for a man of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. All cigarette and chewing gum machines were removed from the streets on Saturday nights, and the only music on the Sunday streets came from the Salvation Army band. Sports were banned on Sundays, and the six Gaelic football teams and four hurling teams that he organized wound up playing in the evenings. “There was no I.R.B. Society or anything near it in the city,” he recalled. “The only live Irish organisation there was the Ancient Order of Hibernians, but as I did not belong to this order, I got no support to organise anything better.” He took some comfort from the fact that the Ancient Order of Hibernians protested against playwright J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, which was performed in the city in April 1914, but that was about it. After suffering through a year in the city, he left for the more congenial climate of Philadelphia.88 Patrick Rankin would have been more at home in Montreal and Quebec City, but even there Fenianism generally operated from oblique angles. Jeremiah Gallagher (Figure 17.4) became president of the Quebec City branch

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17.4 Jeremiah Gallagher (c. 1838–1914). One of the leading Fenians in Quebec City, he supported the Clan na Gael’s dynamite campaign during the 1880s and played a leading role in the erection of a Celtic cross commemorating the Famine migrants who died at Grosse Île in 1847.

of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and began raising money for a Celtic cross on Grosse Île in memory of the Famine migrants who died in their thousands on the island in 1847 (Figure 17.5). The unveiling of the monument in 1909 was attended by prominent Irish Catholic Canadian politicians, the Irish Catholic chief justice of Canada, the papal delegate to Canada, and the archbishop of Quebec, among others. A panel on the cross commemorated the

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“devoted Roman Catholic priests who ministered to the sick and dying,” pointedly excluding Anglican ministers who had done the same thing. It was all very Catholic, eminently respectable, and a far cry from the Fenian world of the 1860s. But there was a Fenian subtext nonetheless, supplied by Gallagher himself with the help of a Gaelic scholar from the United States, Edward McCrystal. Of the trilingual inscriptions on the cross, those in English and French delivered a primarily religious message, stating that the migrants came to Canada to preserve their faith. The inscription in Irish, however, had a very different meaning: “Thousands of the children of the Gael were lost on this island while fleeing from foreign tyrannical laws and an artificial famine in the years 1847– 1848. god bless them. This stone was erected to their memory and in honor of them by the Gaels of America. god save ireland!” It was a message from the mind of John Mitchel and the defiant speech of Edward O’Meagher Condon, a message that had motivated Fenians throughout the world, a message conveyed to the initiated beneath the veneer of the “Faith and Fatherland” theme of the event – and one that was not necessarily incompatible with that theme. As such, it is emblematic of the way that the remnants of Fenianism manifested themselves in Canada some forty years after its heyday in the 1860s.89 Everything changed, however, with the Home Rule Crisis of 1912–14, the Easter Rising of 1916, the victory of Sinn Féin in the general election of 1918, and what is misleadingly called the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21.90 Ethno-religious polarization in Ireland was matched by ethno-religious polarization in Canada, with large numbers of Irish Protestants holding meetings and raising money to keep Ireland within the United Kingdom and large numbers of Irish Catholics holding meetings and raising money to get Ireland out of the United Kingdom. There were some cross-currents. In Toronto, the Orangeman-turned-republican Lindsay Crawford formed the Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom, although the organization appears to have had little traction. Much more important was the Self-Determination for Ireland League of Canada and Newfoundland, established by the imperialist-turnedrevolutionary Katherine Hughes. Ostensibly demanding nothing more or less than the right of the Irish people to decide their own future, maintaining that Ireland wanted to be on an equal footing with Canada inside the British Empire, and sometimes claiming that a Sinn Féin victory would actually

17.5 The unveiling of the Celtic cross at Grosse Île in 1909.

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strengthen that empire, the league was actually operating in the service of Irish separatist republicanism. Brilliant and energetic organizers, Hughes and Crawford established branches of the league throughout the country and brought out large crowds on their speaking tours – although they also encountered much impassioned opposition along the way.91 The remarkable revival of Irish nationalism in Canada during this period has received significant and welcome attention from historians in recent years.92 Less noticed has been the concomitant revival of secret police activity to monitor any potential threats to Canada from Irish republicans inside or outside the country. After the defeat of O’Neill’s Fenians, the Dominion Police had focused more on guarding public buildings and countering criminal activities than on undercover intelligence-gathering operations. When threat levels increased, such operations were resumed but only on a temporary basis in response to specific circumstances. In 1883, during the dynamite campaign, the outgoing governor general, Lord Lorne, asked Macdonald to consider reestablishing a permanent secret police department, only to have his request declined. Instead, Macdonald relied largely on intelligence reports from British consuls in the United States, although he did authorize the employment of secret policemen on short-term contracts for purposes of investigation and infiltration. One of those men, George Carpenter, had worked with Charles Coursol in the 1860s; the identities of the others are unknown.93 Superintendent Percy Sherwood sent some of them into the United States to report on “the various secret meetings of these various dynamite conspirators,” but there is no record of their results in Macdonald’s papers.94 Two years later, in 1885, Sherwood would be appointed commissioner of the Dominion Police, a position in which he remained until 1919 – presiding, among other things, over the internment of “enemy aliens” during the First World War.95 It was not, however, the Dominion Police but the Department of Militia and Defence that assumed responsibility for intelligence connected with revolutionary Irish nationalism during and immediately after the war. In the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising, the chief of the General Staff of the Canadian militia, Willoughby Gwatkin, received information from within Canada – his sources are unknown – that Irish and German Americans were planning to launch a series of cross-border invasions, “not in the hope of success but merely to cause trouble.” In language that echoed that of McMicken and Macdonald half a century earlier, he noted that “the Irish plan was such

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a mad one” that it was not being taken seriously. But he had good evidence that the plan was under discussion, and by way of precaution, he sent troops to guard the Welland Canal, the power plants at Niagara Falls, and the border bridges. Apparently, the plan broke down partly because of Canadian preparations but mainly because the Germans and the Irish could not get their act together. “At the private meeting,” ran one intelligence report, when “the Germans urged the Irish to do something against Canada now, the reply was ‘Do it yourself, look what we have got in Dublin’, or words to that effect.”96 As the Self-Determination for Ireland League of Canada (and subsequently Newfoundland) got under way in 1920, the Department of Militia and Defence kept a close watch on the movement. Reprising the role played by Frederick William Ermatinger and Charles Coursol in relation to the Fenian Brotherhood, Lieutenant-Colonel G.E. Burns, the district intelligence officer for Montreal and Quebec City, planted an agent in the Montreal branch of Sinn Féin. What the agent discovered struck very familiar notes. “There is no doubt that Sinn Feinism is very active in Montreal and Quebec at the present time,” ran one of the first reports in September 1920.97 It became even more active the following month when news came through that the revolutionary republican lord mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, had died in prison after a seventy-four day hunger strike. During his last days, when it became clear that he would not be released, anti-British feelings were running high, especially among the younger generation. Shouts of “to Hell with the King” rang through one league meeting; at another, there were proposals to ban the flying of the Union Jack in Montreal and to replace “God Save the King” with “O Canada” as the national anthem. “Somebody proposed they all sing the latter then and there,” reported Burns, “but the Chairman would not have it as he doubted if anyone knew it well enough.”98 When MacSwiney died in late October, around 10,000 people in Montreal joined a demonstration in his honour, and memorial masses in Montreal, Quebec City, and Sherbrooke attracted large crowds.99 The Montreal branch of the league claimed 6,000 members, with a small core of Sinn Féiners operating behind the scenes. A principal organizer was the revolutionary socialist F.W. Gerrish; among his closest allies were a Canadian Expeditionary Force veteran named W.E. Collier and the seventy-five-year-old Henry Joseph Stafford, who had been a member of Montreal’s St Patrick’s Society during its Fenian phase more than fifty years earlier.100 Stafford was running guns

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from Canada to Irish republicans in the United States. Motor cars had replaced horse-drawn wagons as the vehicles for arms and ammunition, two women accompanied him on his journeys to provide cover, and the pickups occurred in the familiar location of Rouses Point. When British spies started watching American ports, the direction was reversed; weapons were brought into Canada from Rouses Point and then shipped to Ireland from Montreal and Halifax.101 Another leading figure in Montreal – the leading figure, according to the agent – was Frank J. Burns, the owner of an automobile repair shop. His activities included selling Irish Republican bonds and running guns.102 By the end of November 1920, $37,000 worth of bonds had been sold, “principally among Irish working people” whose intense Irish patriotism was only matched by their intense Anglophobia.103 But half the money disappeared, amid blamepassing, accusations of embezzlement, and meetings that almost ended in blows. After an investigation revealed that there were no books of receipts and expenditures, and thus no way of accounting for the money, Stafford and Burns were suspended from the league.104 Younger people within the movement were straining for less talk and more action. G.E. Burns’s agent reported that the “young hot-headed Irish” were “ready for any escapade of a revolutionary character.”105 Many of them would have been the grandchildren of Irish immigrants, testifying to the influence of generationally transmitted beliefs and attitudes, as well as reflecting longstanding patterns of conflict between the caution of the old and the radicalism of the young within nationalist traditions. Gerrish and Collier attempted to harness the energies of the “young fighting Irish men” and to draw them into a revolutionary movement that embraced not only Irish nationalism but also international socialism.106 In the latest iteration of a strategy that reached back almost a century, Gerrish decided to approach the Sinn Féin leadership in New York with a proposal to coordinate internal insurrection with an Irish American invasion, breaking the connection with Britain and establishing an independent Canadian republic.107 The idea had already been publicly mooted at a league meeting by a Montreal customs officer named Todd, who declared that “the U.S. Irish helped to attack British rule in Canada in 1866 & that today there were more of them and there was greater sympathy for the cause among U.S. citizens

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and there was every reason to believe there would be very active assistance when it came time to strike in the present crisis. Besides there was a better organization in Canada than in 1866.”108 But when Gerrish arrived in New York, the Sinn Féin executive turned him down, rejected his request for more funds, and upbraided the Canadians for doing nothing except holding a few meetings and losing a lot of money under unexplained circumstances. It would be much more practical, he was told, to “blow up public buildings and harbour in Montreal, also the Bridges across the St Lawrence and destroy property by fire.” Gerrish, replying that there was no one in Montreal who could do the job, asked for Irish American help. It was not forthcoming.109 By the spring of 1921, Canadian intelligence officers had concluded that the most radical elements within Sinn Féin were floundering and that the Montreal branch of the league was running out of momentum. Rumours that some of the organizers were using the funds to line their own pockets were making it difficult to raise more money, and donors who had been misled into thinking that their contributions were going for relief rather than for revolutionary purposes began to pull back. “Nothing of a serious nature has developed,” reported G.E. Burns in March. Two months later, Brigadier General Charles J. Armstrong decided to wrap things up. The Department of Militia and Defence would no longer monitor Sinn Féin activities in Canada. Any future operations, if they were needed, could be handled by the recently formed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp), which had absorbed the Dominion Police.110

No such operations would be undertaken for many years, although of course the rcmp had plenty of other targets, from the Communist Party of Canada to the Front de libération du Québec and many more besides.111 The events of 1920–21 seemed to be the last cycle of a recurring pattern: the expression of passionate radical Irish Canadian nationalism in the context of conflict in Ireland, fundraising through Irish republican bonds, a core of revolutionary leaders within a wider movement, and gunrunning for “the cause” in Ireland. Some of the plans within that pattern were too wild in 1920–21 to warrant serious consideration. The idea of an Irish American invasion of Canada now belonged to the grotesque, unbelievable, and bizarre, but not unprecedented,

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category of political behaviour. And it was hard to see how blowing up public buildings and bridges in Canada would have helped Irish revolutionaries to win international hearts and minds. Over the next fifty years, with the establishment of the Irish Free State, the partition of Ireland between the largely Protestant north and the overwhelmingly Catholic south, and the declaration in 1949 of the Irish Republic, comprised of twenty-six counties, Irish nationalism in Canada lay dormant. In 1951, the Irish ambassador to Canada, Seán Murphy, reported that it was “very difficult indeed to work up any interest in Canada on the partition question. Even amongst Canadians of Irish origin, there is very little interest.” This observation, he continued, also applied to “those who were active in the SelfDetermination League days thirty years ago.”112 The same note was struck by one of his successors, Thomas Kiernan, who pointed out that most Irish Canadians were of Protestant origin; Protestants and Catholics alike had merged into the general Canadian population, and they had little contact with Ireland and little or no access to Irish news. Such nationalism as did exist among them, he added, was Canadian in character and primarily defined itself against the United States.113 And so matters stood until the Troubles in Northern Ireland: the civil rights movement of 1967–68, the loyalist reaction, riots in the streets, the entry of the British Army, the emergence of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (ira), and thirty years of a conflict that would result in more than 3,600 deaths and fail to achieve the republican objective of a united Ireland.114 Under these circumstances, both Irish republicanism and Ulster loyalism would assume a renewed presence in Canadian life, largely hidden from public view but no less significant for that. As in the 1860s, recent immigrants played a dominant but by no means exclusive role in Irish Canadian revolutionary republicanism. As in the 1860s, Irish republican pubs were informal but important meeting places; some of their owners helped to provide shelter for ira men on the run. And as in the 1860s, the key activities of Irish republicans in Canada were fundraising, arms running, and publicizing the cause. Montreal, Toronto, and southern Ontario were focal points, just as they had been for the Fenians. In another familiar historical pattern, Irish republicans constituted a minority of Irish Canadians, but prominent figures such as Gerry Adams commanded large and enthusiastic crowds on speaking tours. When Adams visited Toronto in 1994, he spoke to a packed Convocation Hall and received a standing ova-

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tion – part of a long line stretching back to the visits of Thomas Clarke Luby, Thomas Francis Bourke, and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, only without the vociferous Orange crowds protesting outside. As in Fenian times, the secret police were watching. After a thirty-month joint investigation by the rcmp and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – a modern day example of the cross-border cooperation of the 1860s – two men from Toronto were charged in November 1992 for attempting to buy a Stinger missile for the ira.115 A retired vice-president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Denis Leyne, was charged with transporting detonators to the ira. One of the men who testified against him at the trial was Richard D. Garland, an agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (csis). Leyne was acquitted, along with others, on the grounds that the evidence was largely circumstantial.116 More generally, the rcmp and then csis drew information on Irish Canadian revolutionaries from community sources, newspaper reports, physical surveillance, informers, and infiltrators. According to one former intelligence officer, detonators for ira bombs were procured from northern Alberta by an Irish-owned company east of Toronto and were transported to Ireland. On the occasions that csis knew about the shipments – the agent said that they had a good handle on the situation – the detonators were intercepted, rendered inert, and sent onwards to their destinations.117 The secret history of Irish Canada and the Troubles cannot yet be written – there are too many shadows – but there are likely to be many parallels with the past. “Everything,” as historian A.T.Q. Stewart has put it, “is older than we think it is.”118

18

 “Contrary to All Expectations”

It is easy to be seduced by the story. Against the backdrop of the Famine in Ireland, the Civil War in the United States, and Confederation in Canada, Irish revolutionaries in North America search for ways to undermine the British Empire and to secure Irish independence. Some want to focus their attention directly on Ireland by raising money, running guns, or returning to help their fellow revolutionaries. Others believe that the best route to Irish freedom is through Canada by launching an invasion, triggering an AngloAmerican war, annexing Canada to the United States, and inspiring the revolutionary movement back home. Members of each side view the others as traitors to the cause – so much so that in some instances, men who reject the Canadian strategy are willing to inform on their rivals. What they all share, though, is a passionate Irish patriotism and a passionate hatred of British rule in Ireland. Historians can argue about underlying motivations – whether Irish nationalism in North America was driven by a quest for acceptance in the host society, was brought over on the boats, or some combination of both – but sometimes it is worth listening to what people actually say and taking it seriously. The messages from Irish republicans in North America are clear and emphatic: a foreign government rules our country, an alien aristocracy possesses our property, our once fair and free land has been ground down under the Saxon heel for the past 700 years, and this state of affairs cannot and must not be endured any longer. The Great Hunger offered further proof of British malevolence. It was “the Great Hunger,” not “the Famine,” because in this version of history there was no real famine in Ireland; there was enough food to feed everyone, but the landlords sent the grain out of the country, and the government let the Irish starve to death, glad to see that the “surplus

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population” was being reduced. This was the worldview that was most famously articulated by John Mitchel, and it saturated Fenian discourse, from pubs to speeches to clubs to family gatherings. It was transmitted to the next generation through songs, as well as stories told by old men or learned at a mother’s knee, and it has resonance to this day. All the revisionist scholarship in the world cannot dent it; it has the imperviousness of religious orthodoxy. Open up any popular book on nineteenth-century Irish American history, and you are likely to find an introductory chapter that compresses 700 years of English oppression into seven pages and a conclusion in which a history of failed Irish struggles for freedom ends with the redemptive power of the Easter Rising of 1916 and a new beginning, albeit with business left undone. These messages matter. Now, add in the fact that many of those men who became Fenians and their families who supported them had harrowing experiences of the Famine, of evictions, of the terrifying voyage across the Atlantic, and of the challenges of coping in a strange and unfamiliar world. And many of those who did not have such experiences knew people who did. Imagine the feelings of guilt – the young Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa eating his penny bun without sharing it – the feelings of helplessness and despair, the anger, the blame, and the desire for revenge. If we are looking for motivation, it is surely here that we must look. We underestimate the emotional power of these direct experiences and that worldview at our peril. The “poor servant girls” who gave their pennies to the Fenian Brotherhood were not ignorant and deluded dupes, as their detractors claimed; they were trying to do something, however small, to rectify what they saw as terrible wrongs. There were fools and knaves among the Fenian head centres, no doubt, and there were chancers and con men who were quite prepared to line their own pockets at the expense of others. But the movement was given direction by leaders who shared the feelings and attitudes of the rank and file and who sought to give them strategic meaning – even as they fought over what that meaning was or should be. That the fight could become so bitter only testified to their belief that the stakes were so high: they believed that the future of Ireland hinged on their decisions and their actions. In Canada, the Fenians were in a tougher position than their counterparts in the United States – although no tougher than those in Ireland, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. In the United States, being a revolutionary republican

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ran with the grain, at least in theory. In the British Empire, it cut against the grain, in theory and practice. If you wanted to be an Irish nationalist and a good Canadian, you had to follow the path of Daniel O’Connell, as did Thomas D’Arcy McGee. For Irish Canadians in the tradition of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and John Mitchel, life was anything but easy. You risked losing your job, your place of business could be targeted, and you were hemmed in by hostile Orangemen on one side and by a disapproving Catholic Church on the other. You lived your life with one eye over your shoulder, discreet or defiant when outside your community and free to be yourself when within it. It was not a course that you would choose lightly. No wonder, then, that places such as Toronto produced some of the most militant Fenians in the Atlantic world. No wonder that Patrick Boyle, editor of the Irish Canadian, publicly claimed to know nothing about Fenianism while spreading the message in his newspaper and privately selling Fenian bonds to raise money for the cause. And no wonder that Fenian circles operated under the cover of Hibernian Benevolent Societies and other organizations with innocuous names. They could hardly have done otherwise. Most Canadian Fenians – those who stayed in the country, at any rate – supported direct action in Ireland rather than an invasion of Canada, although it is hard to imagine them having sleepless nights over the possibility of annexation to the United States. Michael Murphy, the founder of Fenianism in Canada, remained loyal to John O’Mahony, the founder of Fenianism in the United States. When O’Mahony supported an invasion of Canada, Murphy was right behind him. When O’Mahony pulled back, Murphy pulled back. When O’Mahony issued the call for men to capture Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Murphy answered it. In his first speech at the Fenian convention in Philadelphia in 1865, and in his St Patrick’s Day speeches in Toronto, Murphy variously declared that 100,000 Irish Canadians were ready to rise up with an invading army, that a million Irish lives would not be sacrificed in vain for Irish freedom, and that 20,000 – no, make that 40,000 – Irish Canadians would gladly give their blood for the cause of Ireland. Such language was part of a broader hyper-charged pattern of republican rhetoric. In 1848, Michael Thomas O’Connor had assured a New York audience that the Montreal Irish were prepared to see their city go up in flames for the cause of Irish independence. In 1865, Patrick Boyle wrote editorials about storms and tempests and blood pouring out like water before Ireland

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would be free. In 1877, Thomas Clarke Luby told a packed audience in Toronto’s Grand Opera House that it would be worth burning Dublin to the ground if that was the price of Irish freedom. It is doubtful that most people receiving such messages took them literally; the rhetorical rules of the game were understood by both speaker and listener, and hyperbole was built in to Irish political discourse, Orange as well as Green. But the metaphorical meaning was clear: only physical force could get the British out of Ireland; the struggle would be long and hard and would demand sacrifices; and peace, freedom, and happiness would come at the end of the day. If you were true to your country, you would follow this road; if you refused to follow, you were at best a false friend and at worst a traitor. Pugnacious, sharp-witted, and charismatic, Michael Murphy not only spread the word but also helped to connect Fenianism with Irish community life. Sport was very much part of this world. The Hibernian Benevolent Society’s rowing team, consisting largely if not entirely of Fenians, was cheered on from the shore; hurling and Gaelic football games attracted enthusiastic crowds. The annual excursions to Niagara Falls were highlights of the year, with music, dancing, drinking, and the nerve-racking sight of Harry Leslie tightrope-walking over the cataract; on one occasion, the ride home was remembered for Murphy’s passionate denunciation of an anti-Fenian Catholic bishop. The Fenians who were behind the Hibernian societies provided social services for their members, helping those in need, contributing to the costs of funerals, and generally looking after each other. These things mattered, too. And when Murphy showed his fists, so much the better; here was someone who would not be pushed around. Punching George Brown, the editor of the Globe, including hitting him when he was down, was how you won respect. Had Brown not verbally punched Irish Catholics and hit them when they were down? For many, he had it coming, and Michael Murphy was the man who gave it to him. Even those who had serious reservations about his Fenianism could admire Murphy’s commitment to his community and assure themselves that his heart was in the right place. After he died in April 1868 at the age of forty-two, and was brought back to Toronto for his funeral, a large crowd met the train that carried his body, and the streets were lined with supporters as his coffin was carried to St Michael’s Cathedral.1 He was remembered. The founding father of Fenianism in Montreal, Francis Bernard McNamee, was an equally powerful and pugnacious figure. You never knew quite where

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you were with him; some thought that he was a revolutionary pretending to be a loyalist, and others thought that he was a loyalist pretending to be a revolutionary. Either way, he was generally regarded as a slippery customer, the uncertainty lying in the cause that his slipperiness served – the Fenians, the Canadian government, or Francis Bernard McNamee himself? He was a dangerous man when crossed; you were likely to have your head put through a window. Some of the Fenians with whom he worked did not trust him but were prudent enough to say so behind his back rather than to his face. If he was a secret agent feeding information to George-Étienne Cartier, as one of his friends believed, there is no trace in extant government records. One of McNamee’s obituaries, though, noted that he was a great admirer of Cartier, which raises the possibility that they were indeed working together.2 Against this suggestion, his own brother-in-law testified in court that McNamee offered him $500 to assassinate Charles Brydges, the managing director of the Grand Trunk Railway, who had fired Irish employees for refusing to swear an oath of loyalty to the Crown. If the testimony was accurate, McNamee was deadly serious about supporting Fenianism. Later in life, he combined his Irish nationalism with support for the Conservative Party, securing major contracts for his engineering firm along the way. When he died in 1906 at the age of seventy-seven, he was described as “a strong adherent of Sir John A. Macdonald.”3 Other radical Irish nationalists had moved in the same political direction. Among them was Patrick Boyle, who had died five years earlier. Another was John Hearn, who as a young man had been arrested for spiking artillery in support of an anticipated raid into Canada. No one, though, was more difficult to read than McNamee; the closer you look, the harder he is to find. Macdonald once remarked that he was far too shrewd to be caught in a conspiracy.4 And so, indeed, it would seem. By 1867, Montreal had taken over from Toronto as the pacemaker of Canadian Fenianism, but Quebec City was not far behind, and there was a lively Fenian subculture in Ottawa as well. Of the Quebec City Fenians, most is known about Jeremiah Gallagher – someone who, like McNamee, had a successful career as an engineer and played a prominent role in open and clandestine Irish nationalist organizations. There, however, the resemblance ends. McNamee supported – or appeared to support – an Irish American invasion of Canada, while Gallagher wanted to focus Fenian attention directly on Ireland. Nor was Gallagher ever accused of being an informer. He was

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once entrusted with an assignment to “deal with” a suspected spy but could not bring himself to carry out the mission. He had no problem, though, with long-distance violence and strongly supported the dynamite campaign in Britain during the early 1880s. A gregarious man who played the flute and loved recitations – “Who Fears to Speak of ’98?” was his favourite – Gallagher had a “fiery temper” and harboured “extreme anger” over Ireland’s condition. On one occasion, when a friend called him to rejoice on St Patrick’s Day about how well the Irish were doing, he ripped the phone off the wall in a fit of rage.5 Such anger, like that of so many others, was sharpened by memories of the Famine. It is not surprising that a spy who encountered Gallagher at the Clan na Gael’s “dynamite convention” in Chicago in 1881 described him as a “violent Fenian.”6 Nor is it surprising that Gallagher initiated the campaign to erect a monument to the Famine migrants who died at Grosse Île in 1847 – or that he concealed a revolutionary message in the Gaelic inscription on the Celtic cross commemorating the dead. Gallagher died in 1914, but his influence remained strong. His son Dermot, who had a reputation for being “a great Irishman,” added an “O” to the family name and passed on his passion for and interpretation of Irish history to his daughter, Marianna. Although she did not share her grandfather’s predilection for dynamite, she continued his work by ensuring that Grosse Île became a memorial specifically for Famine victims rather than a Parks Canada site commemorating Canadian immigration in general. In 2002, she received the Order of Canada for her efforts. Her story exemplifies the transmission and transmutation of Irish nationalism in Canada through three generations over 170 years – from 1838, around the time that Jeremiah was born, to 2010, when Marianna died.7 In Ottawa, such lines of influence are hard to trace, although they must have been passed down within families.8 The Fenian subculture that was centred on Michael Starrs’s Ottawa hotel and Peter Egleson’s tailor’s shop never fully recovered from the crackdown that followed Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination. Key figures such as Ralph Slattery and James Kinsella disappeared from the historical record. The mantle of radical Irish nationalism in the city was taken up by someone who was not a Fenian and whose writings focused more on the Irish in Canada than on the Irish in Ireland. John Lawrence Power O’Hanly – yet another engineer – documented systemic discrimination against Irish Catholics in Canada and fought a lonely battle for

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political reform. Because they had suffered from government oppression and “the relentless law of might” at home and abroad, he asserted, Irish Catholics had become “pre-eminently the great reformers of modern times,” whose fundamental principle was “to ignore self, to put the public good before all earthly considerations.”9 Agreeing with that principle, but interpreting it in a very different way, was Peter Mahon, the farmer from Puslinch who had attended the Fenian convention in Cleveland in 1867. His unpublished prison letter to the editors of the Guelph Evening Mercury is a powerful example of Fenianism from the bottom up, written by someone who may have had little education but who had thought long and hard about the principles of politics and the condition of Ireland. A man of broad sympathies and deep convictions, Mahon believed that human rights should apply “to every man, irrespective of creed, colour, or nationality” and that the well-being of society should take precedence over the pursuit of wealth. Under British rule, he wrote, Ireland had become “the most miserable spectacle among modern nations”; independence would mean freedom, while releasing Canada from the threat of invasion.10 For obvious reasons, he did not add that he himself was aligned with those who were making that threat – doing what he could to show that the denial of Irish independence came with a cost to the British Empire. In the end, the government decided not to prosecute him; intelligence gathered from undercover work and intercepted mail was hardly likely to stand up in a court of law. Mahon’s reputation among local Irish Catholics does not appear to have been damaged by his arrest and imprisonment; if anything, his standing rose in the community. He was elected as a councillor in 1873, helped to establish the Farmer’s Institute in the township, and remained active in local affairs until his death in 1895 at the age of fifty-four.11

And then there were the men who set out to stop the Fenians – the spies, informers, and secret policemen, controlled principally by Gilbert McMicken in present-day Ontario, Frederick William Ermatinger and Charles Coursol in present-day Quebec, and Edward Archibald in New York. The detectives operated in a high-wire culture characterized by risk-taking, betrayal, sex scandals, and alcoholism. When one of McMicken’s men, James Allen, sought

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alternative employment with the Toronto police force, he was rejected on the grounds that members of the secret service were so “degraded in vice and drunkenness” that they were not fit for regular police work.13 One can see why. In the early years, half the members of McMicken’s force were accused of intemperance, misconduct, and assault, and the detectives began informing on each other. Ironically, Allen had a clean record but was nonetheless found guilty by association. Gradually, the offenders were weeded out, and McMicken came to rely on a small coterie of trusted men; quality, in this business, was much more important than quantity. McMicken himself proved to be as cool, shrewd, and determined as John A. Macdonald had described him. There remain some intriguing mysteries in his life. Was he once Macdonald’s fall guy, going to prison to protect his chief? And what was the dark secret in Goderich that his one-time top detective, Charles Clarke, threatened to expose? Evidence might eventually surface to answer the first question; what happened in Goderich will probably never be known. When it comes to McMicken’s work as a spymaster, though, the picture is much clearer. He understood the psychology of undercover work and the importance of making his men feel valued and trusted; if that trust was broken, he could be swift and ruthless in his response. He also took a creative approach to intelligence problems, recommending the use of sex workers to learn the secrets of Fenian senators and suggesting a transatlantic communications blackout in the event of a rising in Ireland. Neither was tried – the latter, at least, was impractical – but other initiatives were put in place. Discovering the post office box number of the Fenian president, William Roberts, enabled the Canadian government to intercept Canadian mail going to that address. And when McMicken’s force dwindled to only six men, he was able to create the illusion of strength by giving them badges that began with the number 102. His grand plan was to infiltrate the Fenian leadership – an objective that was all the more important after the intelligence failures preceding the raids of 1866. The breakthrough came when Charles Clarke succeeded in befriending Fenian leaders in New York and won the trust of William Roberts. Another detective, George Mothersill, established a Fenian circle in Missouri as a base from which he could rise through the ranks. And Clarke was able to initiate his fellow detective William Montgomery into Brooklyn’s Fenian circle.

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All seemed set fair for success – until Clarke’s cover was blown by the woman he had seduced, betrayed, and abandoned, Miss Clapp. Only Montgomery survived the wreckage; Mothersill had to get back to Canada in a hurry, and Clarke could never return to New York City. No wonder that McMicken described the collapse of his plans as one of the most exasperating moments of his life, even as he put the blame on Miss Clapp herself, whom he viewed as an evil temptress. Clarke is one of the most remarkable characters in the cast called onto the stage by the Fenian raids and the Canadian response: his story has the makings of a film or a novel. An Irish-speaking Catholic from the East Galway Gaeltacht, he is converted to Protestantism, joins the Orange Order, and becomes part of the community established by the pillar of the Irish Church Missions Society, John O’Callaghan. Clarke and his wife, Anne, leave for the United States and eventually wind up in Toronto, where he joins the regular police force. He is drummed out on charges of sexual misconduct but is snapped up by the secret police, who need someone exactly like him – an Irish-speaking Orangeman with experience in law enforcement. He is sent to Detroit for undercover work, joins the Fenian Brotherhood, and has one hair’s-breadth escape after another. In Pittsburgh, he hangs out with Fenian senators and congressmen, promises marriage to another woman, and leaves when the Fenians learn that he has received packages of money from Canada. In Toronto, he gathers evidence against Michael Murphy, but someone in the city’s police force tips off the Fenians that he is a spy, and his usefulness there is over. He goes to upstate New York to investigate the buildup of Fenian arms but is recognized and has to get out quickly. And this is only the first act. He is relocated to the Niagara Peninsula just in time for the Fenian raid in June 1866. He actually enters the Fenian camp near Ridgeway, passes himself off as a Fenian officer (with the card to back up his claim), and reports back to the Queen’s Own Rifles in Port Colborne. The next day, he joins them in the Battle of Limestone Ridge and sees men shot alongside him. Afterwards, his arrest is staged so that he can join the prisoners in the Niagara jail and learn which ones were actually Fenians. Back in Toronto, he fumes with anger when he is not allowed to arrest the “known rebbles” and traitors he has tracked down. For his services, he is appointed superintendent of the secret police in Canada West, thus earning the hostility

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and jealousy of a colleague who reports that he is throwing his weight around and drinking heavily. Clarke next appears at a Fenian convention in Troy, under disguise and calling himself Cornelius O’Sullivan. He ingratiates himself with two delegates from Brooklyn and uses them to get in with the Fenians in New York – giving a speech to a Fenian circle, hanging out at Sweeny’s Hotel, meeting William Roberts, giving his son a pony, going to Mass with his wife, and being presented with a Fenian uniform. All the while, he fears that he will be rumbled. Then comes the Miss Clapp affair, and everything falls apart. Fortunately for him, he is in Canada when that happens. He has one more mission in upstate New York, where he passes himself off as a United States deputy marshal and learns about the distribution of Fenian arms. But Clarke has burned so many bridges that his usefulness to the Canadian secret police is just about over. At this point, the story takes a twist. He and George Mothersill are seconded to the newly formed and short-lived British Secret Service Department; their names are mentioned to Queen Victoria, who has been in lockdown at Balmoral Castle because of a Fenian threat, emanating from Toronto, to assassinate her. But Clarke’s time in England is miserable; he feels underpaid and underused, and he gets bored to death waiting around Victoria Station for Fenians who are travelling to and from France. Before returning to Canada, he visits his relatives in Ireland and calls a public meeting to denounce John O’Callaghan, whom he accuses of raping his wife fourteen years earlier. The police think that the meeting is a blind for a Fenian rally and then discover that Clarke is a secret policeman from Canada with a letter from the governor general in his pocket. They let him go, but when news of his behaviour reaches the colonial secretary and the Canadian government, the authorities wash their hands of him. To make matters worse, Macdonald learns that Clarke was shooting off his mouth about his undercover work while on the boat to Ireland. That is it: all hopes that he has of being rewarded with a position in the customs service have been dashed, McMicken disowns him, and Clarke is persona non grata. He is last heard of cursing McMicken and threatening revenge. Then he just disappears. Some story, that. But it is rivalled by that of the man who replaced him as the most important spy in McMicken’s force: Thomas Billis Beach, aka Henri Le Caron. Unlike Clarke, Le Caron was not addicted to sex and drink, although

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both men shared an addiction to adventure – as well as a deep contempt for Irish nationalism and a desire to be recompensed for their services. Le Caron’s greatest asset was the accidental one of being a long-time acquaintance and apparent friend of John O’Neill – “the most egotistical soul I ever met in the entire course of my life.”13 Le Caron’s timing was perfect. He signed on with the British Secret Service Department shortly after the Clerkenwell bombing in December 1867 and just before O’Neill became president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood. In May 1868, he approached the Canadian authorities and fell into McMicken’s lap. After the collapse of Clarke’s mission, the Canadians had exactly what they wanted – someone right at the top of the Brotherhood who could keep them closely informed about Fenian plans and capabilities. As the Brotherhood lurched between the desire to act and the fear of failure, Le Caron sent regular reports to McMicken. But the constant tension between promise and performance meant that Fenian intentions remained difficult to discern. What O’Neill said and what he thought were not necessarily the same thing, and Le Caron’s intelligence reports often depended on his reading of the leader’s mind. As a result, the Canadian government remained in a state of uncertainty about Fenian plans. O’Neill told Le Caron that the next invasion would take place in the summer of 1868, the spring of 1869, the summer of 1869, the autumn of 1869, the winter of 1869, and the spring of 1870. The Canadian government had learned from the experiences of 1866 that nothing could be ruled out, and it feared that O’Neill might risk everything on a desperate gamble – a fear that was shared by his growing number of enemies within the Senate wing. There were, after all, only so many times that he could raise – and disappoint – expectations. The breakthrough came in October 1869 when Le Caron was appointed adjutant general of the Irish Republican Army. In this capacity, he distributed arms in the border areas of Vermont and New York, while sending detailed reports about their numbers and locations to the Canadian government. No movement could take place without Le Caron’s knowledge, and he expected to get at least ten days’ notice of an attack. In the event, and after several false starts, O’Neill issued his battle plans only three days before he went into action in May 1870, and the Canadians had to scramble for their defence. While that was happening, Le Caron was doing his best to subvert the Irish Republican

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Army’s operations by delaying the arrival of Fenian troops at the frontier. He received by far the largest reward from the Canadian government. Although it seemed that Le Caron’s career as a spy was now over, it was in fact only just beginning. He joined the Clan na Gael later in the decade, had clandestine discussions with Charles Stewart Parnell in April 1881 about combining the parliamentary campaign for Home Rule with armed struggle, and participated in the Clan’s “dynamite convention” that August – all the while sending reports to his contact in London, Robert Anderson. In 1889, he was a key witness in the Special Commission investigating the connections between “Parnellism and Crime,” after which he went into hiding and wrote his autobiography. Despite the best efforts of the Clan to assassinate him, Le Caron, now going under the name of Dr Howard, died of natural causes in 1894 at the age of fifty-three. Le Caron’s story, marked by his transition from secret agent to internationally best-selling author, has eclipsed those of other spies, such as William Montgomery in New York, who also supplied the Canadians with information about Fenian activities. The key figure in that city, however, was Edward Archibald, who turned the British consulate into a hub for running informers. No one had a better handle than he did on the Fenians; again and again, his assessments turned out to be accurate. On the few occasions that he was wrong, it was because the information that he had received seemed too farfetched to be true – as in the World’s report of Fenian plans to turn New Brunswick into the Republic of Emmetta. Threatened with assassination or being taken hostage, and frequently overwhelmed with work, he never lost his dry, sardonic sense of humour. Generally, he viewed informers with extreme skepticism, but he was adept at separating the wheat from the chaff. In the O’Mahony wing, his greatest asset was Frank Millen, who blew open Irish Republican Brotherhood operations in Ireland but who was out of the loop about the designs on New Brunswick. In the Senate wing, Archibald had a direct line to the war office through Rudolph Fitzpatrick, on the British payroll from May 1867, who was particularly valuable as a source of information about links between American and Canadian Fenians. Both Millen and Fitzpatrick would continue to work for British intelligence for many more years – Millen until the year before his death in 1889 and Fitzpatrick until shortly before his death in 1907. Each was given the funeral of a Fenian hero.

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All good stories need surprises, and for historians of the Fenians, this one has plenty of them. Who has ever heard of Charles Clarke? He never made it into the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and in the few studies that have been published about the Canadian secret police, he gets only a passing mention. Who knew that the Fenians had their own secret service, with its own budget, cross-border operations, and emissaries with instructions to coordinate invasion plans with their Canadian supporters? Hardly anyone, with the notable exception of Peter Vronsky. For that matter, who knew that the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada had, in the words of John A. Macdonald, expanded to a “very large & dangerous extent”?14 Peter M. Toner figured it out in the early 1970s, but very few historians took his work seriously. Other surprises lay in store. There were Francis Bernard McNamee’s letters to a pro-invasion Fenian in the United States outlining the tactics that the Montreal Fenians were discussing to assist an invasion – and the followup letter from a close friend asserting that McNamee was actually a spy. There were the letters from William Burns, the secretary of the ultra-radical Thomas Francis Bourke circle in Toronto, to Frank B. Gallagher, the Fenian senator in Buffalo – letters revealing the extreme measures that his members were willing to take in support of an invasion and demonstrating the severe difficulties of organizing in the city. And there was the bogus plot, almost certainly hatched by Toronto Fenians, to assassinate Queen Victoria – resulting in the Royal Navy being put on full alert and the queen being confined to Balmoral Castle. Equally surprising are the Canadian contributions to British secret service operations. In this sense, as Gregory Kealey puts it, the empire really did strike back.15 The secondment of Charles Clarke and George Mothersill to the British Secret Service Department in January 1868 not only highlighted Britain’s need for experienced detectives but also illustrated just how different the approach to undercover work was at that time in each country. In Canada, the name of the game was infiltration; in Britain, it was observation. Later, against the background of the Phoenix Park murders and the dynamite campaign, the authorities in Britain again turned to Canada for help. In September 1882, John Rose – who had been Macdonald’s minister of finance during the late 1860s and who was now living and working in London – drew up a memorandum explaining how Canada had infiltrated the Fenians in North America. The key to success, he wrote, was to establish “an efficient de-

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tective system” supported by “a very free use of secret service money.” In fact, the detective system was not nearly as effective as he claimed – it had not “obtained a knowledge of the proceedings of nearly every Fenian Lodge in the United States and Canada” – and the use of secret service money can hardly be described as “very free.” But it was the ideal that Rose emphasized, not the degree to which the ideal had fallen short of reality. It was essential, he continued, to work closely with the British consul in New York – someone with the skills of Edward Archibald, then on the cusp of retirement, who had the ability to evaluate information. “A great many unreliable or even fabricated stories,” Rose noted, “will be constantly brought before him from over zeal, credulity, or too frequently for the purpose of getting money.”16 The other thing that was “specially necessary” was to “secure the cooperation of the Federal Government,” just as the Canadians had done during the 1860s. Hamilton Fish, the secretary of state under Ulysses S. Grant, had been particularly helpful; the British would be well advised to cultivate similar relations with Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, his current counterpart. With the approval of the American government, the Canadians had been able to make agreements with state and city authorities, including local police forces; the British should follow the same approach.17 Rose’s comments about cross-border cooperation were well taken. The Fenians had hoped to manipulate the Americans into war with Britain, but it was the Americans who wound up outmanoeuvring the Fenians. American nods and winks to Fenians were given entirely for the purpose of winning (or at least not losing) Irish votes; the realpolitik of Anglo-American diplomacy was much more important than helping Irish revolutionaries. The view held by some historians that Andrew Johnson’s government wanted to use a Fenian invasion to pressure the British government into paying millions of dollars in compensation for the Alabama claims is not only wrong but also the very opposite of the truth.18 Damages incurred by Canada as a result of a Fenian invasion could have been used by Britain as a counterclaim against American demands for reparation, and the secretary of state, William Seward, wanted to avoid that possibility.19 In any case, the American government was not going to risk war with Britain to satisfy potential Irish voters. Another surprise lies in the extent to which the Canadian, British, and American governments shared information to counter Fenian plans. And every time that the Fenians attacked or attempted to attack British North

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America – Campobello Island in April 1866, Ridgeway and Pigeon Hill in June 1866, Eccles Hill and Trout River in May 1870, and Manitoba in October 1871 – the Americans either stopped them or prevented them from bringing in reinforcements. Sometimes, they did so with the reluctance of a dog having a bath, but they always came through in the end. As A.T.Q. Stewart notes, the phrase “contrary to all expectations” runs through all fields of human inquiry and is particularly relevant to Irish historiography.20 Historians have been certain that the Fenian Brotherhood was riddled with informers, and at one level, that is true; the men heading towards the British consulate in New York were in danger of tripping over each other in the dark. But in the period between the Fenian split in December 1865 and January 1867, the more salient point is that the Senate wing was extremely effective at withholding information from the British and Canadian authorities. The Senate wing accomplished this feat in part by making the costs of informing very clear and in part by spreading so much generalized morale-boosting information to the rank and file that it was impossible to discern what was actually happening. Some patterns persist. The former Irish taoiseach Garret FitzGerald once remarked that in Anglo-Irish negotiations during the 1980s, the Irish could not fathom the British position because the British said so little, and the British could not fathom the Irish position because the Irish said so much.21 The only crack in the Senate wing’s secrecy in 1866 came in March when Colonel Wheeler crossed over to the Canadian side; a month later, however, his cover was blown when the Canadians used him in an unsuccessful effort to gather evidence against the Toronto Fenians who had attempted to join the expedition against Campobello Island. It was Charles Clarke who finally broke through the wall of secrecy in January 1867, and through the breach entered William Montgomery, who continued to operate as a mole in New York’s Fenian Brotherhood after Clarke’s self-destruction. Add in the defection of Rudolph Fitzpatrick to the British and the arrival of Henri Le Caron, and the Senate wing became an open book. But in the key year of 1866, it remained almost completely closed. The expedition against Campobello Island furnishes another example that is “contrary to all expectations.” The story of the failed Fenian raid is so well established, and has been told so many times, that there seemed nothing left to say: Jim McDermott of the O’Mahony wing approaches Edward Archibald at the British consulate and reveals the plans to attack New Brunswick;

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Archibald informs the lieutenant governor of the colony, Arthur Gordon, who prepares the defences; the Fenians are doomed to defeat. Yet what actually happened was very different: no one, McDermott or otherwise, had alerted Archibald in advance; the defence measures in New Brunswick resulted from false intelligence that the Senate wing was planning an attack; and the colonial authorities realized what was happening only when the British consul in Portland, Henry Murray, reported that Fenians from Boston and New York were in the city and heading for Eastport in Maine. It was ten days after the alarm had been sounded when Archibald finally received internal intelligence about Fenian plans and objectives. His source of information was not McDermott but Frank Millen, who was reporting a recent conversation with John O’Mahony. There were many reasons for the failure of the Fenians in New Brunswick, but information supplied to the authorities by Jim McDermott was not one of them. Those Fenians who offered to work with the Canadian secret service and the British consuls in the United States are now generally well known to historians of the Fenian movement. They include Frank Millen, Jim McDermott, Rudolph Fitzpatrick, and Charles Carroll Tevis, all of whom had long careers as informers. But there were two others whose identity comes as a complete surprise: Thomas Condon, the father of Fenian leader Edward O’Meagher Condon; and Denis C. Feely, a lawyer from Cobourg who would become an architect of the Clan na Gael’s dynamite campaign against Britain in the early 1880s. The motives of Thomas Condon were primarily to take the heat off the O’Mahony Fenians in Toronto and to hasten the release of his son from prison. His first reports in 1866 asserted that most Toronto Fenians would follow the lead of their bishop in standing against an invasion, and his subsequent offer to spy on the Fenians in New York – the friends and supporters of his son – was intended to cultivate good relations with Canadians who might have some influence with the British government. Feely’s objective was to shaft the Senate wing Fenians, whose Canadian strategy was diverting men and money from the cause of revolution in Ireland. Both Condon and Feely had good reasons for acting as they did. Still, given the venomous hostility within Fenian culture to anything that smacked of informing, their willingness to cooperate with the Canadian government runs “contrary to all expectations.” It is not surprising that Thomas Condon wanted his letters to remain secret and asserted that he would rather have lost his life than his good name.

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Beneath the stories and the surprises lies a deeper question about the relationship between state security and civil liberty. A revolutionary minority among Irish Catholics was working with an international movement to subvert the Canadian state through violent means. The ultra-radicals planned to blow up bridges, burn down buildings, destroy telegraph communications, infiltrate the militia and army, and seize hostages in the service of an anticipated Fenian invasion. Their general failure to put these plans into practice stemmed partly from the security measures taken against them but mainly from the rapidity with which the invasions were beaten back and, in 1870, from the rushed nature of the attack. Yet all this only became clear after the event. From the moment that the Senate Fenians broke with O’Mahony and set their sights northwards, the possibility of violence from their supporters in Canada appeared very real. The Canadian government faced a dilemma: how could it isolate and defeat internal and external revolutionaries without alienating the moderate majority in their ethno-religious group? The key figure was John A. Macdonald. In grappling with this dilemma, he initiated a series of measures in the name of state security that clearly violated civil liberties. Habeas corpus was suspended three times between 1866 and 1870, with most arrests occurring after Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination in 1868. Suspects could be and were incarcerated without trial, often at great personal cost; some, without doubt, had nothing to do with Fenian invasion plans. Macdonald also used the suspension of habeas corpus as a means to close the only pro-Fenian newspaper in Canada; by arresting Edward Hines and Patrick Boyle, respectively the co-publisher and editor, the government ensured that the Irish Canadian would cease to operate, at least for a time. On Macdonald’s watch and with his approval, the secret police not only spied on the subjects of the Crown but also intercepted and opened the mail of suspected Fenians. In a cat-and-mouse game, Canadian Fenians relied on verbal communications and trusted couriers, and they gave letters to railway workers with instructions to mail them from post offices just inside the American border. For their part, the secret police acquired William Roberts’s post office box number and paid American postal workers in border towns to inspect and copy suspicious letters that had been hand-delivered from Canada. Both sides sent telegraph messages by code. But while the British and Canadians used a sophisticated system that could not be cracked without a cipher (not even an Enigma machine could have broken it), the Fenians used codes

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that were ridiculously easy to break. To send a telegraphed message that read like gobbledygook was to advertise secrecy; and when the code consisted of a simple letter-substitution system, it could be deciphered within minutes. Along with the suspension of habeas corpus and the opening of mail, Macdonald authorized the secret police to establish their own fake Fenian circle in the United States. Detectives were supplied with secret service money to donate during Fenian fundraising drives – helping the Fenians to buy weapons that were intended for use against Canada. Secret policemen posing as Fenians were also placed among real or suspected Fenian prisoners with a view to gathering evidence against guilty parties. None of these activities can easily be reconciled with the principles of civil liberty. Yet the Canadian government was facing revolutionaries who planned four invasions in five years and actually attempted two of them. It was also confronting the assassination of one of the country’s most prominent politicians. We know what happened 100 years later, when the Front de libération du Québec kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross and Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte. When asked how far he would go, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously – or notoriously, depending on your point of view – replied, “Just watch me,” and he followed up with the War Measures Act, which resulted in the detention of nearly 500 people. How far did Macdonald go? Not as far as might be expected. One of the most striking things about his leadership is that Macdonald made serious efforts to ensure that the infringement of civil liberties was kept within tight limits. Immediately after the first suspension of habeas corpus in June 1866, he warned magistrates not to make arrests based on hearsay and insisted that all cases be sent to his office for appraisal. Even those who were known to be members of the Fenian Brotherhood were to be left alone, unless there was good evidence that they had actually broken the law. When he learned that a queen’s counsel had been advising magistrates to arrest people who were thought to be Fenians, Macdonald told him to stop; Canada was a country of law and order, and the suspension of habeas corpus did not mean that it was open season on suspected Fenians. Charles Clarke wanted to arrest Irish Catholics who damned the queen and who said that Canadian soldiers who fought against the Fenians should be hanged; much to his frustration, his requests were rejected. And when many Canadians, with Orangemen at the fore, called for draconian

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measures against Irish Catholics after McGee’s assassination, Macdonald resisted their pressure – although he did use the opportunity to close down the Irish Canadian for several weeks. Rather than allowing mass arrests, Macdonald took a targeted approach, with the result that around twenty-five people were detained under the suspension of habeas corpus. All were released within six months, some much earlier. As Reg Whitaker, Gregory Kealey, and Andrew Parnaby have pointed out, such selectivity was made possible by the clandestine work of the secret police.22 The same pattern of relative restraint appears in Macdonald’s approach to opening mail and infiltrating the Fenian Brotherhood. Anything that went beyond his own strictly controlled operation was shut down immediately. “Write this man at once, that this is contrary to law,” he wrote when he learned in September 1866 that someone had been searching packages that were being sent to “suspected individuals.”23 Some of the mail associating Irish Canadians with Fenianism was actually discovered in dead letter boxes – the Fenian membership cards sent to Murtagh Moriarty in Toronto, for example, and the letter sent to Peter Mahon from Guelph when he was attending the Fenian convention in Cleveland. Once it became clear that Mahon was a pro-invasion Fenian, however, his subsequent letters were deemed fair game, even though opening them was “contrary to law.” As for efforts to infiltrate the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, there were limits beyond which Macdonald would not travel – although at times McMicken appeared quite willing to make the journey. Detectives did indeed contribute to Fenian fundraising drives, but there is no evidence that they were ever instructed to act as agents provocateurs. The fake Fenian circle in Missouri was established to propel a detective into an upcoming Fenian convention, not to entrap its members. And hiring sex workers to seduce Fenian senators was definitely out of the question. Macdonald believed that Canada was a country of law as well as order and that the law must not be broken except under extraordinary circumstances. There were also compelling pragmatic considerations behind his position. He knew that Orange-style repression would alienate moderate Irish Catholics, whose vote he had been cultivating, and drive them into the welcoming arms of the Liberals – an outcome obviously to be avoided. He realized that severe measures would further antagonize the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States and increase the likelihood of future raids – hence the need to rein in

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anti-Catholic magistrates and to commute the death sentences given to the Fenians who had been captured after the raids of 1866. And he was anxious to avoid a populist backlash against Irish Catholics that would intensify ethnoreligious divisions and fuel the politics of extremism – which is why he deliberately downplayed the extent to which the Fenian Brotherhood had taken root in Canada and instead projected its dealings almost entirely onto the United States. This combination of principle and pragmatism meant that Macdonald took measures that he believed were necessary to safeguard the country, while attempting to ensure that the extraordinary powers of the government were not abused. Significantly, one of his strongest Irish Catholic political enemies, John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, credited Macdonald for acting with moderation and calming the situation. It may not have been entirely coincidental that after the Fenian invasion threat had passed, some radical Irish Canadian nationalists gravitated towards the Conservative Party – yet another example of something that runs “contrary to all expectations.” The relationship between civil liberty and state security is an issue that will haunt us for many years to come, with the rise of populist and religious extremism, the politics of polarization, and the continuing threats of domestic and international terrorism. Depending on the level of fear – whether based on reasonably accurate assessments of unfolding events or exaggerated in the service of power and profit by demagogic politicians with supportive media ecosystems – there are likely to be calls for draconian security measures. On one side will be those who, taking a principled stand, wish to uphold the rule of law and to preserve civil liberties under all circumstances. On the other side will be those who insist that there can be no real freedom without security and who will seek refuge in a form of protective authoritarianism. Perhaps, in considering these issues, we can learn something from the experiences of the 1860s, when the Canadian government attempted to steer a middle course between the imperatives of liberty and the demands of security – and, for all its missteps and mistakes, went some way towards realizing that objective.

1

 Dramatis Personae

nationalist heroes – revolutionary and constitutional Robert Emmet (1778–1803). The leader of a failed insurrection in Dublin in 1803, he is best known for the speech that he gave after being sentenced to death for treason: “When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not until then, let my epitaph be written.”1 He became a romantic hero to generations of Irish nationalists at home and abroad. Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847). Known as the Liberator, he secured Catholic Emancipation in 1829 (enabling Catholics to sit in Parliament but at the price of more restrictive property qualifications for voting), and he campaigned for the repeal of the Act of Union from 1843 until his death four years later. An advocate for moral rather than physical force, he was a central figure in the Irish constitutional nationalist tradition. Wolfe Tone (1763–98). He founded the Society of United Irishmen in 1791 with the aim to unite Protestants and Catholics behind a program of reform and ultimately of revolution in the service of an independent Irish republic. After a brief period of exile in the United States, he attempted to enlist French aid for a rising in Ireland. Captured on a French ship, he was brought to Dublin and sentenced to death for treason; he committed suicide rather than be hanged. Tone was an inspirational figure for subsequent Irish revolutionaries, not least the Fenians.

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Patrick Boyle (1832–1901). Editor of the Irish Canadian newspaper, he denied any connection with Fenianism while disseminating the Fenian message throughout Canada and secretly purchasing Fenian bonds. He was born in Newport, County Mayo, and came to Toronto in 1846 when he was fourteen years old. A supporter of the John O’Mahony wing, he strongly opposed the attempts to invade Canada. He moderated his Irish nationalism after the 1860s and subsequently allied himself with John A. Macdonald’s Conservative Party. Edward O’Meagher Condon (1840–1915). From near Mitchelstown, County Cork, he lived in Toronto during his teens and played a key role in establishing Canada’s first Fenian circle. After joining the Union Army in the Civil War, he was based in Cork during the Fenian Rising of 1867 and planned the rescue later that year of his fellow Fenian Tom Kelly from custody in Manchester, during which a policeman was killed. Sentenced to death, he gave a speech that was long remembered for its closing words, “God Save Ireland!” – which became a rallying cry for Irish revolutionaries.2 His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released in 1878. He supported the dynamite campaign in Britain, until his close friend William Mackey Lomasney blew himself up while planting a bomb under London Bridge. Denis C. Feely (1829–1901). Born in Ireland, he studied law at Victoria College in Cobourg and became active in Irish nationalist politics. “Hounded out of Canada by the bigotry of a cowardly herd” after the Fenian raid on Ridgeway,3 he moved to Rochester, New York, from where he offered to inform on the Senate wing Fenians. His offer was not accepted, and he subsequently became a member of the “Triangle” within Clan na Gael, organizing a dynamite campaign in Britain during the early 1880s. Jeremiah Gallagher (c. 1838–1914). From Macroom, County Cork, he became a leading Fenian in Quebec City. Believing that the Fenians should focus on Ireland rather than on an invasion of Canada, he raised funds for the revolutionary movement back home and supported the dynamite campaign in Britain. As president of the Quebec City branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, he played a prominent role in the erection of a Celtic cross on Grosse

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Île, commemorating the migrants who had died there in 1847, and he ensured that its Gaelic inscription described the dead as victims of “foreign tyrannical laws and an artificial famine.”4 Tom Kelly (1833–1908). Born in Mountbellew, County Galway, he emigrated to New York in 1851, moved to Nashville, and fought with the Union Army during the Civil War. Joining the Fenians in 1865, he stayed with the O’Mahony wing, which focused directly on Ireland, and would become the head of its military wing in December 1867. He led the Fenian Rising of March 1867, was arrested the following September, and was rescued in an operation led by Edward O’Meagher Condon. The Dublin authorities believed that he had organized a special Fenian circle for the assassination of police and informers. Bernard Doran Killian (1836–1914). From Rostrevor, County Down, he became a journalist in the United States and in the mid-1850s assisted Thomas D’Arcy McGee with the American Celt. He became treasurer of the Fenian Brotherhood in 1865 and sided with John O’Mahony after the split that December. In March 1866, he persuaded O’Mahony to authorize an attack on Campobello Island in New Brunswick; the following month, he was in Eastport, Maine, preparing for battle. After the failure of the raid, his detractors believed that he was working secretly with the Canadian authorities to undermine the Fenians; there is, however, no evidence to substantiate this conspiracy theory. William Mackey Lomasney (1841–84). Born in Ireland (not Cincinnati, as is usually assumed), he was part of the Fenian circle organized within the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Toronto. After serving with the Union Army during the Civil War, he returned to Ireland, helped to organize the Fenian Rising of 1867 in County Cork, and conducted arms raids in and around Cork City. He received a twelve-year sentence for treason-felony and returned to America after his release in 1871. Supporting a campaign of “bloodless terrorism” in Britain,5 he was killed in 1884 when the bomb that he had planted under London Bridge exploded prematurely. Peter Mahon (alias Peter McNamara) (1840–95). An “active, intelligent, determined young fellow,”6 he was a farmer from Puslinch, Ontario, who em-

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braced Fenianism and attended the Senate wing’s convention in Cleveland in September 1867. Arrested in May 1868 under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act, he wrote impassioned letters from the Guelph jail, insisting that justice for Ireland was the best defence against a Fenian invasion of Canada. He was released that September and rapidly reintegrated into the community, becoming a town councillor and a co-founder of the local Farmers’ Institute. James McCarroll (1814–92). The poet laureate of Canadian Fenianism, he was a Protestant from the County Leitrim–County Longford border who came with his family to the Peterborough area of Canada in 1831. Well known for his storytelling, his satirical writings, and his flute playing, he worked as a customs officer until he was dismissed, possibly for political reasons, in 1863. Increasingly embittered towards the Canadian state, he moved to Buffalo, where he wrote for the Fenian Volunteer newspaper and provided Fenian leaders with advice and information to assist the planned invasion. His subsequent novel, Ridgeway: An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada (1868), described the invasion as one of the most “daring or chivalrous” events in history.7 Francis Bernard McNamee (1828–1906). From Cavan in Ireland, he came to Montreal in 1839 at the age of ten. Known as an aggressive public figure, he combined a career as a successful contractor with a secret life as the founder of Fenianism in Montreal and an apparent supporter of the Senate wing’s invasion strategy. He was also active in open Irish nationalist political circles, serving as president of the city’s St Patrick’s Society. Many contemporaries were convinced that he was actually an informer, but there is no extant evidence to support their suspicions. John Mitchel (1815–75). A radical Irish nationalist writer, a brilliant polemicist, and the son of a Presbyterian minister with a congregation in Dungiven, County Londonderry, he played a leading role in the Young Ireland newspaper, the Nation. Calling for revolution in 1848, he was prosecuted under the Treason Felony Act and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. He escaped from Van Diemen’s Land in 1853 and continued his career as a journalist first in New York and later in the American South. A strong supporter of slavery, he backed the Confederacy during the Civil War. His view that the British created

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an artificial Famine to destroy the Irish has become an article of faith for many revolutionary Irish nationalists; his views on slavery have not gone down quite as well. Michael Murphy (1826–68). He was the head centre of the Fenians in Canada. Born in Cork, he came to Toronto in his youth, worked as a cooper, and operated his own tavern. After the St Patrick’s Day riot, he established the Hibernian Benevolent Society, which became a front organization for the spread of Fenianism in Canada. A loyal supporter of John O’Mahony, he answered the call to join the Fenian expedition to New Brunswick in 1866 but was arrested en route. He escaped from prison that September, moved to Buffalo, and became the proprietor of the Irish Arms Hotel. Upon his death, when his body was brought back to Toronto for burial in 1868, a large crowd turned out to show their respect. John O’Mahony (1815–77). He was the founder of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. From the Mitchelstown area of County Cork, he joined the Young Ireland movement, participated in the Rising of 1848, and sought refuge in Paris, where he became close friends with James Stephens. He left for New York in 1853, remained active in Irish revolutionary circles, and established the Fenian Brotherhood in April 1859 as an American counterpart to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Although he rejected the strategy of liberating Ireland by attacking Canada, he reluctantly agreed to support an attack on Campobello Island in New Brunswick in the spring of 1866. The failure of the expedition resulted in his resignation from the leadership that May. John O’Neill (1838–78). He was the “hero of Ridgeway” who defeated the Canadian Volunteers in June 1866. Born in Drumgallon, County Monaghan, he moved to New Jersey at the age of ten, joined the United States Army in 1857, and fought for the Union in the Civil War. He succeeded William Roberts as president of the Senate wing in December 1867, pursued the goal of invading Canada with single-minded intensity, and led unsuccessful attacks in 1870 and 1871. “In his belief,” commented Thomas Billis Beach, “the Irish cause lived, moved, and had its being in John O’Neill.”8

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William Roberts (1830–97). He was president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood from January 1866 to December 1867. Born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, he moved with his family to New York in 1849 during the Famine. Believing that the best way to liberate Ireland was by attacking Canada and provoking an Anglo-American war, he split from John O’Mahony in December 1865 and presided over the Fenian raids in June 1866. He was arrested but not prosecuted by American authorities, and he continued to work for another invasion of Canada. After an unsuccessful attempt to unite American Fenians and Irish republicans under his leadership, he resigned as president and became increasingly preoccupied with American politics. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831–1915). From Rosscarberry, County Cork, where his nationalist family suffered during the Famine, he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1858 and became the manager of the Irish People in 1863. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1865, he rebelled against prison discipline and was subjected to severe reprisals by his jailors. He was released in 1871 on condition that he leave the United Kingdom for the duration of his sentence and settled in New York, from where he raised money to finance a dynamite campaign in Britain, which began in 1881. His followers set off several bombs in Britain and may have planned to kidnap Princess Louise (one of Queen Victoria’s daughters) and to set off bombs in Canada. His funeral in 1915 occasioned one of the pivotal orations in Irish republican history, during which Patrick Pearse declared that Ireland unfree could never be at peace.9 Samuel Spear (1815–75). Born in Boston, he joined the United States Army at the age of eighteen and was a brigade commander during the Civil War. He became a major general in the Irish Republican Army and led the Fenian troops into present-day Quebec in June 1866. He served as the Senate wing’s secretary of war but reached the Canadian border just after the Irish Republican Army had been defeated at Eccles Hill in May 1870, and he was highly critical of John O’Neill’s leadership. James Stephens (1825–1901). He was a co-founder and the “provisional dictator” of the Irish Republican (Revolutionary) Brotherhood. Born in Kilkenny, he participated in the Rising of 1848, escaped to Paris, and returned to Ireland in 1855. After forming the Brotherhood in March 1858, he visited the United

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States in 1859 and 1864 on fundraising missions. His promise to launch a revolution in Ireland in 1865 failed to materialize; he was arrested in November but broke out of jail two weeks later and arrived in America in May 1866. He regarded plans to invade Canada as a “mad and traitorous diversion from the right path.”10 After failing to revitalize the revolutionary movement in 1866, he was ousted from the leadership at the end of the year. Thomas Sweeny (1820–92). He was the architect of Fenian plans to invade Canada in 1866. From Dunmanway, County Cork, he came to the United States at the age of twelve, rose through the ranks of the United States Army, lost his right arm during the Mexican War, fought against Indigenous peoples during the 1850s, and rose to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. He became the Fenian Brotherhood’s secretary of war in 1865, joined the Senate wing after the split in December of that year, and was pressured by the leadership to launch the attack on Canada before the requisite preparations had been made. Blamed for the failure of the invasion, he resigned from the Brotherhood later in 1866. Patrick James Whelan (c. 1840–69). He was accused of, charged with, and executed for the murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. He claimed to have been born in Edinburgh but was actually from Tipperary, he denied that he was a Fenian but almost certainly was, and he insisted that he did not shoot McGee and may actually have been telling the truth. But he admitted that he was present when McGee was shot and said that he knew the identity of the assassin. His execution on 11 February 1869 is often mistakenly described as the last public hanging in Canada.

spies and informers Thomas Billis Beach (alias Henri Le Caron, J.R. Smith, R.G. Sager, and Doctor Howard) (1841–94). He was the ace in the pack for the Canadian and British secret service. Seeking adventure, he moved from Colchester, England, to Paris in his late teens, changed his name to Henri Le Caron, and travelled to the United States to join the Union Army during the Civil War. In Nashville, he befriended John O’Neill, the future Fenian leader. A British patriot who had nothing but contempt for revolutionary Irish nationalism, he offered his ser-

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vices as a spy to the British government in December 1867 and signed on with the Canadian secret service in June 1868. O’Neill appointed him inspector and military organizer for Illinois in July 1868 and promoted him to adjutant general of the Irish Republican Army in October 1869, with responsibilities for distributing arms and ammunition along the Vermont and New York borders with Canada. Le Caron kept the Canadian and British authorities informed of Fenian plans and played a key role in undermining the invasion attempt of 1870. Later in the decade, he joined the Clan na Gael and kept the British government informed about its plans. In 1889, he broke cover to testify to the Special Commission investigating the connections between “Parnellism and Crime”; three years later, he became famous – or notorious – as a Victorian superspy upon publishing his autobiography, Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy (1892). Charles Clarke (alias Cornelius O’Sullivan and John C. Murphy). He was described by Gilbert McMicken as the best detective in the Canadian secret police. His early life is largely unknown, but he lived in the East Galway Gaeltacht, converted to Protestantism, and moved to the United States before joining the regular Toronto police force. He was fired in 1865 after charges of sexual misconduct but was hired by the secret police later that year and operated in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Toronto. He infiltrated the Fenian camp at Ridgeway, participated in the Battle of Limestone Ridge, and was subsequently promoted to superintendent. Through contacts made in Troy, New York, he befriended the Fenian president, William Roberts, and other leading Fenians in 1867, but his cover was blown after an affair with a friend of his niece. Seconded to the British Secret Service Department in January 1868, he became frustrated with surveillance work and resigned. He returned to Ireland that April and publicly accused a respected Protestant minister of raping his wife fourteen years earlier. As a result, he was fired from the Canadian secret service. He was last encountered in December 1868 cursing and issuing vague threats against McMicken; after that, the trail went cold. Rudolph Fitzpatrick (1847–1907). Born in Cork, he came to the United States as a boy and fought in the United States Navy during the Civil War. After joining the Fenians, he served as John O’Neill’s aide-de-camp during the Ridgeway raid of 1866 and subsequently became the assistant secretary of military affairs

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in the Senate wing. In May 1867, for reasons unknown, he offered his services to the Canadian and British authorities and became the key source of information for the British consul in New York, Edward Archibald, about Fenian designs on Canada. He fought with the Senate wing at the Battle of Trout River in 1870 and was wounded. Described by the Fenian newspaperman John F. Finerty as the “ever brave Major Fitzpatrick,”11 he continued to work for the British secret service into the early twentieth century. Jim McDermott (c. 1843–96). A close ally of John O’Mahony, he delivered a pro-Fenian St Patrick’s Day speech in Toronto in 1865. He was probably the “confidential clerk” who supplied Edward Archibald with information about the O’Mahony wing between December 1865 and February 1866. He did not, however, supply any information to Archibald about Fenian plans to attack Campobello Island in New Brunswick. He subsequently worked for British intelligence as an agent provocateur during the dynamite campaign of the 1880s. John McLaughlin (aka “the Veterinary”). An Irish Catholic who had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, he joined the secret police in April 1866 and operated in Buffalo. He reported to the British consul in the city, Henry Hemans, as well as to Gilbert McMicken. After initially underestimating the ability of the Fenians to attack Canada, he alerted the British and Canadian authorities about the movement of Fenian soldiers into Buffalo three days before they crossed into Canada on 31 May 1866. He was retained on a payment-by-results basis; if another raid occurred and he reported it beforehand, there would be a substantial financial reward. In 1870, he monitored Fenian movements in northern New York and passed the information to McMicken. Frank Millen (1831–89). A soldier of fortune from County Tyrone, he joined the Fenian Brotherhood in New York in 1864 and became president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council in Ireland. When James Stephens was arrested in November 1865, Millen took over as the provisional head of the Brotherhood – until Stephens ordered him to return to the United States immediately. Upon learning that John O’Mahony had appointed Millen secretary of war in the Fenian Brotherhood, Stephens insisted that O’Mahony remove him from the position. Seeking revenge, Millen approached Edward

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Archibald in March 1866, struck a deal, and supplied the British government will a detailed account of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military organization in Ireland and Britain. He also gave Archibald information about the immediate consequences of O’Mahony’s attempt to invade Campobello Island in New Brunswick. In 1880, Millen resumed his work for British intelligence, operated as an agent provocateur, helped to disrupt the Clan na Gael’s dynamite campaign, and attempted to implicate Charles Stewart Parnell in Irish terrorist activities. William Montgomery (alias William McMichael). An Irish Protestant and former Toronto policeman, he joined the secret police in May 1867 and was brought into the Fenian Brotherhood in New York by Charles Clarke, who was operating under the alias Cornelius O’Sullivan. After Clarke’s exposure as a spy three months later, Montgomery managed to maintain his position within the Brotherhood, and during a Fenian parade in 1868, he was given the honour of carrying the flag captured at Ridgeway. Two years later, he accompanied John O’Neill on a fundraising drive to finance the planned attack on Canada in May 1870. One of Gilbert McMicken’s best sources, he supplied the secret service with information that was checked against the reports of Rudolph Fitzpatrick and Henri Le Caron. George Mothersill (alias Philip Kavanagh). An American who had fought with the Union Army during the Civil War, he joined the secret police in October 1866 and operated first in Port Colborne and then in Chicago. In the summer of 1867, he formed a Fenian circle in Clinton, Missouri, with the objective of being elected to the Fenian convention in Cleveland that September. When his fellow detective Charles Clarke was identified as a spy, Mothersill came under suspicion and left Cleveland after his life was threatened. In January 1868, he was seconded (along with Clarke) to the British Secret Service Department and was sent to Paris to investigate possible links between the Fenians and European revolutionary secret societies. Disillusioned with the Secret Service Department’s approach to undercover work, he resigned and returned to Canada in the spring of 1868. Patrick Nolan (alias Patrick C. Burton) (b. 1839). An Irish-born Catholic, he served with the regular Toronto police force, rising to the rank of patrol

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sergeant, but was fired in 1864 after he accused police chief William Prince of being drunk on duty. The following year, he joined the secret police and was sent on a mission to Chicago and Pittsburgh. Thanks to information received from his brother John, who was the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, he acquired detailed knowledge of the Fenian organization in and around Toronto during the winter of 1865–66. He resigned from the secret police in the summer of 1866 under circumstances that remain unclear but probably because his work was becoming too dangerous. Elon Tupper. He joined the secret police in October 1865 and operated mainly in Buffalo and the Niagara Peninsula. Sent to Buffalo on 31 May 1866 to investigate information that the Fenians were about to attack Canada, he did not believe that an invasion was imminent; early the next day, the Fenians crossed into Canada. He was in Fort Erie when the Irish Republican Army marched through the town, but he managed to escape to the British and Canadian lines and to report what he had seen. After the battle, he arrested suspected Fenians, including Father John McMahon. He had a low opinion of his fellow detective Charles Clarke and refused to send reports to him. Tupper remained in the secret police until 1868.

politicians, policemen, and spymasters Edward Archibald (1810–84). He was the British consul in New York. Born in Truro Nova Scotia, he served as the attorney general of Newfoundland before his appointment as consul in 1857. From the mid-1860s until his retirement in 1883, he ran a network of spies and informers from the consulate, received numerous death threats, and supplied valuable information about Fenian activities to the Canadian and British governments. His key informers were Frank Millen, who helped to break open the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland, and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, who helped to break open the Senate wing Fenians in the United States. Charles Coursol (1819–88). A lawyer and police magistrate, he earned notoriety for releasing the prisoners who were held in connection with the Confederate raid on St Albans in October 1864. Succeeding Frederick William Ermatinger

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as head of the Montreal Water Police, he monitored suspected Fenians in Montreal and ran agents across the border. After Ermatinger retired owing to illness in 1868, Coursol took over as the head of the secret police in Quebec and along with Gilbert McMicken was appointed commissioner of the Dominion Police. Frederick William Ermatinger (1811–69). He was chief of the secret police in Canada East (present-day Quebec) from 1865 to 1868, reporting principally to George-Étienne Cartier. As the former head of the Montreal Water Police and the field inspector of the militia in Canada East, he brought considerable experience to his work. “His health during the fenian raids was greatly impaired,” wrote his wife, “still he worked on to the end.”12 John A. Macdonald (1815–91). The principal architect of Canadian Confederation and Canada’s first prime minister, he established the Canadian secret police force in 1864 and maintained close control over its operations until its disbandment six years later. He suspended habeas corpus in 1866, 1867, and 1870 but tried to ensure that encroachments on civil liberties were kept to a minimum. A pragmatic Conservative, he was known as the “Machiavelli of Kingston.” Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825–68). Born in Carlingford and raised in County Antrim and Wexford, he was a supporter of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal movement during the early 1840s, a revolutionary republican in 1848, an ultraconservative Catholic journalist in the United States during the early 1850s, a Liberal-Conservative Canadian politician in the early 1860s, and the youngest and most intellectually gifted Father of Canadian Confederation. Having shed his earlier radicalism, he became an uncompromising opponent of Fenianism. As such, he was generally regarded by Fenians as a traitor and apostate. He was assassinated in April 1868, almost certainly in a freelance Fenian operation. Gilbert McMicken (1813–91). He was chief of the secret police in Canada West (present-day Ontario) from 1865 to 1868, after which he was appointed, along with Charles Coursol, commissioner of the Dominion Police. McMicken

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arrived in Canada from Britain at the age of eighteen, became involved in a variety of business ventures in the Niagara region, and joined the LiberalConservative Party, led by John A. Macdonald. Described by Macdonald as “shrewd, cool and determined,”13 he recommended and adopted some creative methods to infiltrate the leadership of the Fenian Brotherhood – and although he failed to accomplish this goal in 1866, he had succeeded by 1870. The following year, Macdonald sent him to Winnipeg, where he assisted Lieutenant Governor Adams Archibald’s efforts to ensure that the Métis did not join the small invasion force led by John O’Neill. McMicken stayed in Winnipeg, played a large part in its political and social life, and dined out for the rest of his life on the story of his epic journey to Red River in 1871 to forestall the Fenians. William Prince (1824–81). Born in Cheltenham, England, he became a captain in the British Army and fought in the Crimean War before becoming the chief of police in Toronto in 1859. He reorganized a previously undisciplined police force along strict military lines, although he seems to have had disciplinary problems of his own when it came to alcohol. Working closely with Gilbert McMicken, he helped to find early recruits for the secret police, and he monitored Fenian activities in Toronto – although the fact that his men were well known in the community limited their effectiveness.

Notes

abbreviations arcat bl

Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto British Library

cua

Concordia University Archives

lac

Library and Archives Canada

nai National Archives of Ireland nli

National Library of Ireland

nypl

New York Public Library

panb

Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

tna unba

The National Archives (United Kingdom) University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections

prologue 1 Gilbert McMicken to Alexander Campbell, 7 January 1867, lac, Macdonald Fonds, MG26-A (hereafter Macdonald Fonds), vol. 239, 105475–7; Charles Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51. On his knowledge of the Irish language, see Clarke to McMicken, 4 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 101031–2; and Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866; on the Fenian badge and the miniature pike, see Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866. The best account of the Battle of Limestone Ridge is Vronsky, Ridgeway. 2 Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51; and 4 January 1867, vol. 239, 105458–9. 3 Clarke to McMicken, 4 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105458–9. 4 Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51.

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5 Clarke to McMicken, 20 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105763–70. See also Clarke to McMicken, 26 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105787–9. Roberts’s description of the failed Fenian Rising of 1867, staged in March, was a gross caricature of the events; see Takagami, “Fenian Rising in Dublin.” 6 Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, 1:00 A.M., Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 101014– 20; and 8 June 1867, evening, vol. 239, 106021–4. On the attempted invasion of Canada East, see Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 109–29; and Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 76–84. 7 Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51; 26 March 1867, vol. 239, 105787–9; and 8 June 1867, 1:00 A.M., vol. 239, 101014–20. One of the most popular musicals in American history, The Black Crook was five and a half hours long and had a fifteen-month run in a theatre that held more than 3,000 people. See Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 15, 108–17. On Fitzpatrick’s and Shields’s roles in the invasion, see Vronsky, Ridgeway, 44. 8 Irish American, 15 June 1866. 9 McMicken to Macdonald, 4 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105989–92; the receipt for the pony, dated 7 June 1867, is in Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106048. 10 John Smith [Tevis] to Bruce, 7 January 1867, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 104–7; Bruce to Lord Stanley, 8 January 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A250. 11 Archibald, ed., Life and Letters, 166–70. See also Edwards to Stanley, 13 June 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A279; and Archibald to Stanley, 29 June 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A280. 12 “Reports by Sub-Inspector Thomas Doyle from usa, with Newspaper Extracts, 1859–61,” nai, Fenian Police Reports; his later reports are in nai, Fenian A Files. 13 Among them were the Catholic Conservative politician Richard Scott and the Montreal contractor James Goodwin. See J.L.P. O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” [1865], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 14 For Beach’s memoirs, see Le Caron’s Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy (1892). The book was a publishing success, quickly going into multiple editions. A scholarly biography of Beach, checking his claims against the available evidence, has yet to be written. In the meantime, faute de mieux, see Cole, Prince of Spies; and Edwards, Delusion. 15 On Clarke’s background, see McMicken to Campbell, 6 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105820–3. There is some evidence to suggest that he had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism in Ireland; see below, 237. In his examination of the manuscripts of the 1901 census, Peter M. Toner discovered that the majority

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of reported Irish speakers in New Brunswick were Protestant; they included several Orangemen, one of whom was a deputy provincial grand master. Although illness prevented Toner from pursuing and publishing his research, he passed along his data to a graduate student, who broadened the study and encountered still more Irish-speaking Orangemen, including two Orange Lodge masters. See Gaunce, “Challenging the Standard Interpretation.” 16 Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106025–8. 17 Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, 1:00 A.M., Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106014– 20; 8 June 1867, vol. 239, 106025–8; and 8 June 1867, evening, vol. 239, 106021–4. Patrick Boyle, the editor of the Irish Canadian, outed Clarke in Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866. 18 For an excellent introduction to the subject, see Whitaker, Kealey, and Parnaby, Secret Service, 19–37. Other studies include Keshen, “Cloak and Dagger”; and Crockett, “Uses and Abuses.”

chapter one 1 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 75. 2 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 25. See also nli, Luby Papers, MS 331, 5–8. 3 For Luby’s view of Stephens, see nli, Luby Papers, MS 331, 3–5. 4 On the plan to kidnap Lord John Russell, see Doheny, Felon’s Track, 140. 5 Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 47–167; on the guerrilla campaign, see 102–14. 6 In theory, the Brotherhood consisted of circles, each led by a head centre. The head centre was known only to nine officers below him, who were designated with the letter “B,” each “B” officer commanded nine officers designated with the letter “C,” and the “C” officers were known only to nine “Ds,” who constituted the rank and file. In this way, the organization attempted to insulate itself against informers. See Comerford, Fenians in Context, 47–8. 7 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 57–62. 8 See, for example, Curtin, United Irishmen; and J. Smyth, Men of No Property. 9 Owens, “Popular Mobilisation”; Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “A Personal Narrative,” Nation (New York), 28 July 1849. 10 Comerford, “Anglo-French Tension,” 154–5; Phoenix, 4 May 1861. 11 The literature is vast, but the quickest way in is through Kenny, American Irish. A particularly perceptive but surprisingly neglected study is Byron, Irish America. 12 See, for example, Knobel, America for the Americans.

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13 American Celt, 2 April 1853, 5 April 1856; New Era, 14 November 1857. 14 Doheny to William Smith O’Brien, 20 August 1858, nli, O’Brien Papers, MS 446, 3058. 15 O’Gorman to O’Brien, 1 January 1859, nli, O’Brien Papers, MS 446, 3082. 16 K.A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles. 17 Mitchel, Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), 219. 18 This ratio has been demonstrated by, among others, Bourke, ‘Visitation of God’?; and Solar, “Great Famine.” 19 The Mitchelite view of the Famine has been perpetuated by Coogan, Famine Plot. Antidotes include Donnelly Jr, Great Irish Potato Famine; and L. Kennedy, Unhappy the Land, 81–124. 20 For Mitchel’s “living death” comment, see John Mitchel to Miss Thompson, 4 October 1852, in Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, vol. 1, 340. 21 McGovern, John Mitchel, 88, 91. See also Mitchel, Jail Journal, 282–5. 22 Citizen, 14 January 1854. 23 Quinn, “John Mitchel.” 24 Jane Verner Mitchel to John Martin, 17 July 1848; and Jane Verner Mitchel to [John Martin?], [1848], Columbia University Archives, Meloney-Mitchel Papers. 25 Jane Verner Mitchel to Mary, Brooklyn, 20 April 1854, Columbia University Archives, Meloney-Mitchel Papers. 26 On Meagher’s career, see Hearne and Cornish, eds, Thomas Francis Meagher; and Wylie, Irish General. 27 Meagher’s role was largely nominal; Mitchel’s principal assistants were John McClenahan and John Savage. Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, vol. 2, 39–40. 28 Citizen, 25 March 1854. 29 Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 174. See also Citizen, 12 August 1854. 30 Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, vol. 2, 51–2. 31 Mitchel, Jail Journal, 377–9. 32 See, for example, Citizen, 21 January, 11 March, 17 and 24 June, 1 July, 12, 19, and 26 August, 2 and 9 September 1854. 33 McGovern, John Mitchel, 145–69. 34 Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 175–91. 35 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 64–9. 36 Stephens to Doheny, 1 January 1858, quoted in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 159. 37 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 28. 38 Compare the euphoric reports of the supposed resounding Young Ireland victory

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over British forces at the Battle of Slievenamon in New York Daily Tribune, 21 and 22 August 1848, with the reality of the rebel defeat at Ballingarry. 39 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 3. 40 See, for example, Citizen, 15 December 1855. 41 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 28. 42 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 88–9. 43 Diary of James Stephens, 4 February 1859, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, D/518/1. 44 See his explanation in Phoenix, 4 June 1859. 45 Ibid. 46 On military preparations, see Phoenix, 24 December 1859; on the superior virtues of the Celtic race and the possible inclusion of Shakespeare within it, see Phoenix, 10 December 1859, 21 January 1860; and on returning the land to the people, see Phoenix, 10 September 1859. 47 Phoenix, 22 October 1859. 48 On the Rockite movement, see Donnelly Jr, Captain Rock. 49 Doyle to Inspector General [John Stewart Wood], 8 October 1859, 12 and 20 January 1860; “Reports by Sub-Inspector Thomas Doyle from usa, with Newspaper Extracts, 1859–61,” nai, Fenian Police Reports. 50 Quoted in Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 220. 51 Doyle to Inspector General [John Stewart Wood], 9 October 1860, “Reports by Sub-Inspector Thomas Doyle from usa, with Newspaper Extracts, 1859–61,” nai, Fenian Police Reports. 52 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 91–102. 53 nli, Luby Papers, MS 331, 20; Comerford, Fenians in Context, 68. 54 Bisceglia, “Fenian Funeral”; Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 112–23; Comerford, Fenians in Context, 74–9. 55 On the Irish in the American Civil War, see Bruce, Harp and the Eagle; Samito, Becoming American under Fire; and Gleeson, Green and the Gray. 56 Callaghan, Thomas Francis Meagher. 57 McGovern, John Mitchel, 155–85. 58 Peter Welsh to Patrick Prendergast, 1 June 1863, in Kohl with Richard, eds, Irish Green and Union Blue, 103. 59 Nation (Dublin), 7 December 1861. 60 Irish American, 7 December 1861. 61 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 123–6.

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62 Comerford, Fenians in Context, 89–91. 63 Sullivan to McGee, 18 February 1862, cua, McGee Collection, P0030, HA253, folder 5. 64 O’Mahony to [unknown], 19 November 1861, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 65 Stephens to O’Mahony, 7 April 1862, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 66 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 140. 67 Ibid., 140–59. 68 “List of the Irish People, up to July 14th [1865],” carton 5, envelope 18, Business Papers, nai, Fenian Briefs. 69 O’Mahony to Kickham, 19 October 1863, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 70 Fenian Brotherhood, Proceedings of the First National Convention. 71 Griffin, “‘Scallions, Pikes’”; Morgan, New World Irish, 55–62. 72 Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 267. 73 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 166–71; Semple, “Fenian Infiltration,” 39–63; Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 60–8; Comerford, Fenians in Context, 124. 74 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 171–5. 75 Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 272–4. 76 Semple, “Fenian Infiltration,” 82–3, 170. 77 Comerford, Fenians in Context, 121–2. 78 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 191–2. 79 Edward Archibald had been informed in January 1865 about “the collection of arms & drilling of men to take part in an attack upon Canada, & to cooperate with Fenians in that province”; see Archibald to Russell, 9 January 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A6. In September 1865, Archibald picked up rumours that the Fenians were planning to “create disturbance on the Canadian frontier”; see Archibald to Monck, 16 September 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-1, vol. 1. For accounts of the secret proceedings of the Philadelphia convention, see Charles Kortright [the British consul in Philadelphia] to Russell, [October 1865], nai, Fenian A Files, A40; and “Report of Statements Made on Recent Occasions to Charles E.K. Kortright … by an Intelligent Member of the Fenian Brotherhood,” 26 October 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A45. 80 Archibald to Russell, 31 October 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A45.

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81 D. Thomas [Thomas Doyle] to J.S. [John Stewart] Wood, 30 December 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A75. 82 Quoted in Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 273. 83 O’Mahony to Mitchel, 10 November 1865, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 84 This, at any rate, is O’Mahony’s version of events, as he recalled them in Irish People (New York), 15 February 1868. See Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 291–2. 85 As Peter Vronsky points out, the objective was not so much to win Irish voters for the Republican Party as to keep in power those Democratic congressmen who supported Johnson in his conflict with Republican radicals over reconstruction measures in the South. Vronsky, “Conspiracy Theory.” See also Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 52–60; and for an overview, B. Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations. 86 Vronsky, “Conspiracy Theory,” 14–15. 87 D’Arcy, Fenian Movement in the United States, 85. 88 Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 30–1. 89 There are some grounds for assuming that Killian kept quiet about, misrepresented, or simply refused to believe Seward’s reply. At the end of November, Edward Archibald reported that O’Mahony was still suggesting that the American government was encouraging the Fenians; see Archibald to Michel, 27 November 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. In early December, Killian informed John Mitchel that in Washington “everything portends an advance in our relations”; see Killian to Mitchel, 4 December 1865, Columbia University Archives, Meloney-Mitchel Papers. For his part, O’Mahony continued to maintain that the American government had betrayed the Fenian Brotherhood; see his account of Fenianism in Irish People (New York), 15 February 1868. 90 Stephens to the Members of the Fenian Brotherhood, 23 December 1865, in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 207–8. 91 “Report of Statements Made on Recent Occasions to Charles E.K. Kortright,” 26 October 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A45. 92 Killian to Mitchel, 4 December 1865, Columbia University Archives, MeloneyMitchel Papers. 93 Irish Canadian, 8 November 1865. See also Hudon, “Perrault, Joseph-Xavier.” 94 Globe, 11 March 1865.

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95 See also G. Dunn to Sweeny, 13 March 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 96 See the intelligence reports reaching Edward Archibald, in Archibald to Michell [sic], 1 November 1865, and Archibald to Monck, 19 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10. 97 “Report of Statements,” [October 1865], nai, Fenian A Files, A40. 98 Archibald to Michel, 13 December 1865, 22 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10. 99 Maguire, Irish in America, 603–4. 100 Ibid., 606–9. 101 Lynch to Thomas Connolly, 1 February 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.10. It should also be pointed out that Lynch supplied information to John Francis Maguire about Irish attitudes in North America. Thanking Lynch for his help with the book, Maguire wrote that “no man in America contributed more towards its best materials than did my honoured friend the Bishop of Toronto.” Maguire to Lynch, 8 March 1869, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.19. 102 O’Donovan Rossa, Rossa’s Recollections, 115–22. 103 Memorandum from Sweeny to Roberts, 1865, nypl, Sweeny Papers.

chapter two 1 Shamrock, 26 September 1812. See also Wilson, United Irishmen, United States, 77–95; and Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 75–99. 2 Montgomery was invoked by United Irishmen such as Denis Driscol and by Young Irelanders such as Thomas D’Arcy McGee; see Augusta Chronicle, 8 August 1807; and T.D. McGee, History of the Irish Settlers, 49–52. Irish militia units from Charleston to New Orleans named themselves after Montgomery, as did Irish Confederate units during the Civil War; on the latter, see Gleeson, Green and the Gray, 45, 47–9. On United Irish support for the invasion of Canada as a means of hitting back at Britain and strengthening the American Republic, see John Caldwell, “Particulars of History of a North County Irish Family,” 5, 154, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, T/3541/5/3; and Shamrock, 29 August, 19 September, 28 November, and 19 December 1812. See also Murphy and Mannion, History of the Society, 13, 230. 3 See the conflicting interpretations of Graves, “Joseph Willcocks”; Jones, “Willcocks, Joseph”; and Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 94–9. 4 Quoted in Graves, “Joseph Willcocks,” 42.

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5 Ibid., 47–8; Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 240. 6 Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 399–400. For Willcocks’s reputation among Irish American nationalists, see the Shamrock, 19 November 1814, where he was reinvented as a member of the Society of United Irishmen during the 1790s. In fact, he had opposed the Rising of 1798 and did not come to support the United Irishmen until several years later; see Jones, “Willcocks, Joseph.” 7 Fahey, “O’Grady, William John.” 8 Verney, O’Callaghan, 23–153; Jackson, “Radicalization of the Montreal Irish”; Finnegan, “Irish-French Relations”; McGaughey, Violent Loyalties, 167–99. 9 The newspaper described itself as Mackenzie’s Gazette on the masthead and as Mackenzie’s British, Irish, and Canadian Gazette on the inside pages. The first issue was published on 12 May 1838; O’Callaghan assisted Mackenzie before the newspaper moved to Rochester at the beginning of 1839. Verney, O’Callaghan, 167–70. The quotation comes from Mackenzie’s Gazette, 26 October 1839; for other examples, see the issues of 6 April 1839 and 28 March 1840. 10 Mackenzie’s Gazette, 28 September 1839. 11 Mackenzie, Sons of the Emerald Isle, iv. 12 Read, “Theller, Edward Alexander.” 13 The Patriot Hunters await a modern scholarly study. On their exploits, see Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots; Kinchen, Rise and Fall; and S.J. McLaughlin, Patriot War. Neither Mackenzie nor O’Callaghan joined the Hunters. On the legal ramifications of the raids, see B. Miller, “Law of Nations.” 14 Theller, Canada in 1837–38, vol. 1, 211. See also “General Theller’s Address to the Irish and American People,” Mackenzie’s Gazette, 23 June 1838. 15 Read, “Theller, Edward Alexander”; Theller, Canada in 1837–38, vol. 2, 254. 16 For the immediate context, see Senior, Fenians and Canada, 28–32; Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 15–18; Belchem, “Republican Spirit”; Belchem, “Nationalism, Republicanism and Exile”; and Kinealy, Repeal and Revolution, 168–77. 17 The best account of Irish Canadian reactions to the invasion plans is Lynn, “Before the Fenians.” 18 The speech, delivered on 21 August 1848, was reported in the New York Daily Tribune, 25 August 1848; for other speeches at the 21 August meeting, see New York Daily Tribune, 22 August 1848. 19 For the placard, see Quebec Mercury, 11 April 1848. For meetings that expressed conditional loyalty to Canada, see Quebec Chronicle, 12 April 1848; Montreal Pilot, 11 May 1848; and Quebec Mercury, 12 May 1848.

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notes to pages 26–8

20 New York Daily Tribune, 25 August 1848. 21 On the Emmet Rifle Club, see Quebec Spectator, 28 June 1848. On the arrests, see Quebec Spectator, 25 August 1848, quoting the Quebec Emigrant. The Spectator insisted that this account was untrue. 22 Barclay to Robert Baldwin Sullivan, New York, 25 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. See also Belchem, “Republican Spirit,” 58. 23 In mid-September, Barclay noted that “since the news arrived of the suppression of insurrection in Ireland, the sympathizers here have become very quiet” – although he also noted that “they continue, however, to drill their ‘Irish Brigade.’” Barclay to Elgin, 14 September 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. 24 Diary of Charles Hart, 16 October 1848, in Ó Cathaoir, ed., Young Irelander Abroad, 36. 25 On McGee’s pre-Canadian career, see Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, vol. 1. For his view of Famine deaths as mass murder, see the Nation (Dublin), 24 April and 21 July 1847. For his views on the necessity of revolution in Canada, see the Nation (New York), 9 December 1848, 20 January 1849, 31 March 1849. 26 Nation (New York), 28 April 1849. 27 The Quebec Gazette wrote that John Hearn and his friends were “subjects for a lunatic asylum” and that the Irish in Quebec should not be judged by “the doings of a few madmen.” Quoted in the Quebec Mercury, 26 August 1848. For reports of poorly attended meetings, see Montreal Gazette, 10 May 1848; Montreal Pilot, 11 May 1848; and Quebec Mercury, 23 June 1848. 28 For expressions of concern, see Quebec Spectator, 14 August 1848; and Montreal Gazette, 10 and 28 August 1848. 29 Quebec Morning Chronicle, 1 August 1848. 30 Elgin to Grey, 26 April 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 145. 31 W.C.E. Holloway to Benjamin D’Urban, Montreal, 22 April 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 150–1; Elgin to Grey, 26 April 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 145. 32 D’Urban to Major General Charles Gore, Montreal, 27 April 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. 33 Elgin to John Crampton, 20 May 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. 34 Gowan to Major David Campbell, Brockville, 7 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. “Repeal Bands” were clubs that had been formed to support repeal of the Act of Union of 1801 between Britain and Ireland. 35 Barclay to Sullivan, 26 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16.

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36 Elgin to Grey, 4 May 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 148–9; Elgin to Grey, 23 May 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 177. 37 Crampton to Elgin, 4 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16; Elgin to Grey, 16 August 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 224. 38 Newspaper clipping appended to Crampton to Elgin, 4 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16, See also Senior, Fenians and Canada, 30. 39 Elgin to Grey, 18 July 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 210. On the “respectable” Irish, see Elgin to Grey, 4 May 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 149; Elgin to Grey, 18 May 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 166; and Elgin to Grey, 16 August 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 223. 40 Elgin to Grey, 18 May 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 166; Elgin to Grey, 18 July 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 209. 41 Elgin to Grey, 16 August 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 224–5. His concern about Irish veterans from the Mexican War came from information supplied by John Crampton; see Crampton to Elgin, 4 August 1848, lac, Elgin Fonds, MG24-A-16. 42 Elgin to Grey, 24 August 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 226. 43 Elgin to Grey, 21 September 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 241. 44 Moore to Elgin, Boston, 26 December 1848, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 281; Elgin to Grey, 4 January 1849, in Doughty, ed., Elgin-Grey Papers, vol. 1, 280. 45 For Devlin’s comment, see Montreal Herald, 12 July 1867. On Hearn, see Grace, “Hearn, John.” Hearn was among the subscribers to the testimonial fund for Patrick Boyle, the radical Irish nationalist editor of the Irish Canadian newspaper; see Irish Canadian, 13 January 1869. 46 Boston Pilot, 21 October 1848; Daily News, 14 April 1868. The description of McGee as an eloquent advocate of British rule and British institutions was penned by the chief secretary of Ireland, Lord Mayo. 47 Montreal Herald, 12 July 1867. 48 Montreal Pilot, 10 August 1848; Nation (New York), 5 May 1849. On his role in bringing Fenianism to Montreal, see Montreal Herald, 27 and 28 September 1882. 49 Macdonald to Monck, 18 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 511, 221–2. 50 J.A. MacDonald, Troublous Times in Canada, 5–6. 51 See, for example, Bourinot, Canada, 378–9; Wrong, Martin, and Sage, Story of Canada, 209–10 (where we learn that the Fenians planned to invade New

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notes to pages 32–5 Brunswick from Vermont); Lower, Colony to Nation, 321–2; and Bothwell, Penguin History of Canada, 210, 213. See also Stacey, “Fenianism and the Rise.” C.P. Stacey points out that the Canadian Parliament had already approved of Confederation before the Fenian threats of 1866. The thrust of his argument is that those threats “lent impetus to a movement already underway” (254) and made it impossible for opponents of Confederation to “arouse popular sentiment against the scheme” (255).

52 Creighton, Road to Confederation, 304. On Creighton’s Presbyterian roots, see Wright, “Creighton, Donald.” Creighton’s great-grandfather converted to Methodism. 53 Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, x, 131–5. 54 Dallison, Turning Back the Fenians, 110. 55 Vronsky, Ridgeway, xxxiv. 56 See, in this respect, Donald Creighton’s verdict on the impact that the Fenian invasion scare had on New Brunswick: “Fenianism would unquestionably injure the Anti-Confederate cause; but it could not deal it a mortal blow. The movement’s chief disability was caused, not by any external force, but by its own inward deterioration – by the doubts, uncertainties, and contradictions that distracted and inhibited it.” Creighton, Road to Confederation, 374. 57 Stacey, “Fenian Interlude,” 133, 139–40, 154. See also Stacey, “O’Neill, John”; and C.P. Stacey, “The Fenian Paladin,” University of Toronto Archives and Records Management, Stacey Fonds. 58 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 398–9. 59 Similarly, Robert McGee recalled that when in the late 1960s he proposed to write his master’s thesis on Fenianism at the University of Ottawa, “the response was less than enthusiastic.” R. McGee, Fenianism, viii. 60 Senior, Fenians and Canada, 148. 61 Senior, “Quebec and the Fenians,” 28. 62 Darroch and Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Occupational Structure”; Akenson, “Ontario”; Akenson, Irish in Ontario; Akenson, Being Had; Akenson, Small Differences. 63 Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 41. This was a conclusion that I shared. See Wilson, Irish in Canada. It should be noted that Akenson generously supplied most of the material for this booklet. Ten years of immersion in the world of Thomas D’Arcy McGee changed my mind, and Akenson now agrees that Irish nationalism had a much greater appeal than we previously thought. 64 Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 170. Clarke’s estimate was based on the assumption

notes to pages 35 –40

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that had there been more Fenians in the city, it would have been easier for the authorities to discover evidence against them in legal proceedings. The consensus view was also held by Robert McGee, who argued that the city’s Fenians had only limited support, which collapsed in the aftermath of the Ridgeway raid. R. McGee, Fenianism, 484. 65 On this last point, see Lyne and Toner, “Fenianism in Canada 1874–84”; and Toner, “Fanatic Heart of the North.” 66 See Mannion, “Contested Nationalism”; and Mannion, Land of Dreams. 67 On Blake, see Schull, Edward Blake. On Devlin, see Reford, “Devlin, Charles Ramsay.” On both men, see Morash, “Canada and the Campaign.” 68 Ó Siadhail, “Self-Determination for Ireland League”; McEvoy, “Canadian Catholic Press”; R. McLaughlin, Irish Canadian Conflict; Ó Siadhail, Katherine Hughes.

chapter three 1 See, for example, Sheppard, “‘God Save the Green.’” To calculate the number of Fenians in Canada West, George Sheppard began with a police report that within Toronto’s Fenian circle, there were nine lodges with an average membership of 65 people. He then applied this figure to Fenian circles in other communities, arguing that any possible overcounting would be corrected by the existence of more than one lodge in some of these communities. From this basis, he concluded that there were 1,690 sworn Fenians in Canada West. There is no evidence, however, that other communities had more than one lodge. And even if one accepts the premise that the Toronto police report was accurate, his attempt runs into the problem of false equivalency. Canada West was not Toronto writ large, and there is no reason to suppose that each rural or small-town lodge had 65 members. 2 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 25. 3 Irish Canadian, 23 November 1864. 4 Charles Clarke to Gilbert McMicken, 10 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105922–6. 5 Irish Canadian, 14 March 1866. 6 Irish Canadian, 15 February 1865. 7 Leader, 14 August 1865. 8 Irish Canadian, 5 April 1865. The letter was signed J.M. 9 Irish Canadian, 27 September 1865. 10 Montreal Herald, 28 September 1882.

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notes to pages 40–5

11 Irish Canadian, 5 April 1865. 12 See, for example, Irish Canadian, 2 September 1868. 13 Irish Canadian, 21 March 1866. 14 “Report of Statements Made on Recent Occasions to Charles E.K. Kortright,” 26 October 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A45. See above, 20–1. 15 Irish Canadian, 21 March 1866. 16 Montreal Herald, 28 September 1882. 17 McNamee to Mr Christian, 24 March 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 18 Miller and Skerrett, with Kelly, “Walking Backward to Heaven?” 19 “List of the Irish People, up to July 14th [1865],” carton 5, envelope 18, Business Papers, nai, Fenian Briefs. 20 Patrick J. Power to the Editor of the Irish People (Dublin), 28 July 1865, carton 2, envelope 4, Letters to the Editor, Irish People, 1864–65, nai, Fenian Briefs. 21 Quebec Mercury, 10 November 1865. I thank Joseph Lonergan for locating this article and sharing it with me. 22 Miller and Skerrett, with Kelly, “Walking Backward to Heaven?” 94. 23 Ronayne, Ronayne’s Reminiscences. 24 Peter M. Toner generously gave me his file cards, which he had compiled during the research for his 1974 doctoral dissertation on Irish nationalism in Canada. Shannon O’Connor and Shane Lynn found census information on over 300 actual or suspected Fenians, including the 133 who were active during the 1860s. Terrence Punch tracked down the origins, occupations, and ages of the Halifax subscribers to the Irish People. 25 Of the 133, 37 were born between 1820 and 1829, 52 were born between 1830 and 1839, and 28 were born between 1840 and 1849. The oldest of the group had been born in 1795 and the youngest in 1849. 26 Comerford, “Patriotism as Pastime.” 27 Doyle to Inspector General [John Stewart Wood], 9 October 1860, “Reports by Sub-Inspector Thomas Doyle from usa, with Newspaper Extracts, 1859–61,” nai, Fenian Police Reports. 28 Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 29 McGee to Mayo, 4 April 1868, lac, Murphy Fonds, 21586. 30 Globe, 13 May 1868. 31 Senior, “Quebec and the Fenians,” 28. 32 Cincinnati Enquirer, 19 March 1878. 33 Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. McGee simply divided the city’s monthly

notes to pages 45– 6

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Fenian remittances by the membership dues, which he assumed were 25 cents a month; in fact, they were probably twice that amount. See Patrick C. Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 20 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103185–6. Moreover, McGee made no allowance for money raised through dances, raffles, and the sale of Fenian bonds, failed to consider that a handful of wealthier members could have subscribed a disproportionate amount of money, and ignored the possibility that the remittances included money collected from outside Toronto. 34 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 31 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103110–13; and 20 January 1866, vol. 237, 103185–6. On the one hand, Nolan was well-placed to assess the strength of Fenianism in the city since his brother was a leading figure in Toronto’s Hibernian Benevolent Society, which was closely connected to the Fenian Brotherhood. On the other hand, some of his earlier reports about Fenianism in Chicago were prone to exaggeration, and his calculation of Fenian numbers in Toronto literally does not add up – a point made by Fallone, “Just Another Spy.” 35 Prince to McGee, 19 March 1866, Toronto Metropolitan Archives, Chief Constables’ Correspondence. Prince’s estimate almost certainly understates the number of Fenians. As he told McGee, his policemen were “so thoroughly known” that their intelligence gathering abilities were limited. 36 I thank William Jenkins and Sherry Olson for their advice in extrapolating from census data the estimate of 1,600 Irish-born adult Catholic males and 750 adult Catholic males of Irish ethnicity in Toronto during the mid-1860s. 37 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 31 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103131–4; and 20 January 1866, vol. 237, 103185–6. 38 Charles Armstrong to John Michel, 26 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22549–50. 39 Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. The figure of 5,700 Irish Catholic adult males is derived from Thornton, Olson, and Thuy Thach, “Dimensions sociales de la mortalité infantile”; Olson and Thornton, “La croissance naturelle”; and Olson and Thornton, “Challenge of the Irish Catholic Community.” See also Linteau, Histoire de Montréal depuis la Confédération, 76, tableau 3.1; see also 85, tableau 3.2. 40 Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 41 Richard Wright to Macdonald, 10 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341,155926– 30; Wilson, “Fenians in Montreal.” 42 There were 11,214 Catholics of Irish ethnicity in a total population of 49,463. See Grace, “Irish in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada,” 278, table 4.7. I am assuming

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notes to pages 46–8 that half the Irish Catholic population was male, that 45 per cent of the males were over the age of twenty-one, and that the Fenians recruited overwhelmingly from the male Irish Catholic community.

43 Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 44 On the meeting, see Quebec Mercury, 10 November 1865; for the subscription list, see “List of the Irish People, up to July 14th [1865],” carton 5, envelope 18, Business Papers, nai, Fenian Briefs. 45 Irish Canadian, 7 February 1866. Compare Irish Canadian, 7 March 1866, with “List of the Irish People, up to July 14th [1865],” carton 5, envelope 18, Business Papers, nai, Fenian Briefs. 46 Slattery to Sweeny, 9 May 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 47 Grace, “Irish in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada,” 609–38; Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism”; Wilson, “Fenian World of Jeremiah Gallagher.” 48 Spear to John Meehan, 8 June 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 49 Emerging from sectarian conflict in the north of Ireland, Ribbonism denotes Catholic agrarian secret societies that operated as a counterweight to Orangeism and that used violent means to protect tenants against evictions and land enclosures. It resurfaced in rural Canada East in the context of local conflicts between Irish Protestant and Catholic immigrants. See Barlow, “Fear and Loathing.” On the relationship between Ribbonism and Fenianism in Ulster, see Ó Luain, “‘To get up an anti-Fenian society.’” 50 For Webster’s comment, see Great Britain, Parnellism and Crime, 211. On the killing of Carey, see McCracken, “Fate of an Infamous Informer.” See also Irish World, 1 December 1883; and Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 372–3. Twenty-six people from Maniwaki also contributed to the Land League (see below, 344) in 1882; see Irish World, 18 February 1882. The leading figure in the town appears to have been Charles Logue, who became a wealthy merchant there. 51 Grattan O’Leary recalled that during his youth, the Irish in the region “had less than love for England” and cheered for the Boers against the British. To his “elders who lacked schooling,” he read aloud articles from papers such as the Irish World that were “calling for the dynamiting of everything English,” and he noted that in his family the “wrongs and sorrows of Ireland” were given more attention than the politics of Canada. See G. O’Leary, Recollections of People, 2–5. 52 As remembered by Peter M. Toner, such traditions prompted him to write his doctoral dissertation on Irish nationalism in Canada.

notes to pages 48– 5 1

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53 Irish American, 1 February 1868; Toner, “Research Notes 1971–74.” 54 See, Riots in New Brunswick. 55 Houston and Smyth, Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement, 25. 56 Kelly to Tevis, 9 April 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 57 Montreal Gazette, 20 April 1866. 58 For the view that the Fenian attempt to invade New Brunswick was the product of a conspiracy to undermine opposition to Confederation in New Brunswick, see Morning Freeman, 21 April 1866. 59 Islander, 23 March 1866. 60 E. MacDonald, “Who’s Afraid of the Fenians?” On the Fenian delegate at Troy, see the Irishman, 22 September 1866. 61 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 335–7; Irish World, 15 December 1877. Toner compiled a list of thirty-one Fenians from Charlottetown. Toner, “Research Notes 1971–74.” 62 Punch, Irish Halifax, 3–15. 63 Thomas Connolly to Lynch, 12 March 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.14. 64 In March 1866, the Halifax police found handbills calling for a “Fenian Rally,” but no place or date was given, the handbills were torn down, and no rally took place. See Islander, 16 March 1866. 65 Connolly to Lynch, 12 March 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.14. 66 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 373; and Irish World, 3 November 1883. See also Toner, “Research Notes 1971–74.” 67 O’Hara, “‘Entire island is United …’”; Byrne, “United Irish Rising of 1798.” 68 For an excellent overview of the subject, see Lambert, “Far from the Homes of Their Fathers.” She demonstrates that between 1840 and 1886 the city’s Catholics were generally “not very active” in support of Irish political causes (376) and that their identity as Newfoundland Catholics was much stronger than any vestigial Irish nationalism. Constitutional and revolutionary varieties of Irish nationalism did exist, but their manifestations were sporadic and their influence was limited. The situation was very different, however, during the Irish Troubles of 1919–23; see Mannion, “Contested Nationalism.” 69 Keough, “Ethnicity as Intercultural Dialogue.” 70 Meany was arrested in London for treason-felony in December 1866 and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment but was released in 1868. See Pierrepont Edwards to Thomas Larcom, 4 June 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A273; Edwards

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notes to pages 5 1–3 to Lord Stanley, 12 June 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A278; McGee and McCabe, “Meany, Stephen Joseph”; Lyne and Toner, “Fenianism in Canada 1874–84,” 35–6. The “island called Conception Bay” could have been Bell Island or Kelly’s Island.

71 Edwards to Dennis Godley, 3 June 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A277; Monck to Buckingham, 24 July 1867, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 3. 72 Irishman, 22 September 1866. 73 Houston and Smyth, Sash Canada Wore, 90, 190. Note that their estimate of one-third applies to all Protestant adult males, not just the Irish. 74 See, for example, Mirror, 13 August 1858; and Irish Canadian, 8 September 1869. 75 On the one hand, in the summer of 1869, the president of the St Jean Baptiste Society joined the city’s Hibernians on their annual picnic. Irish Canadian, 4 August 1869. On the other hand, the Quebec City correspondent of the Irish Canadian lambasted former French Canadian rebels for refusing to extend to Fenian prisoners the mercy that they themselves had received in 1837. Irish Canadian, 8 September 1869. 76 “Blackwater,” Irish American, 4 September 1869. 77 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” [1865], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. Lower Canada is present-day Quebec; Upper Canada is present-day Ontario. 78 McGee to James Moylan, [September 1859], lac, Moylan Fonds, MG29-D-15. 79 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “The Irish Position in British and in Republican North America,” Montreal Gazette, 6 March 1866. 80 Houston and Smyth, Sash Canada Wore. See also Kaufmann, “Orange Order in Ontario.” 81 See “Mr. Ogle R. Gowan’s Defence of Orangeism and the Present Administration,” New Era, 10 October 1857. 82 Rafferty, “Fenianism in North America.” 83 On Bishop Bourget’s pastoral, see Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. For Bishop Farrell’s denunciation of the Fenians, see Irish Canadian, 25 May 1864. 84 “The Letter of Archbishop Connolly,” newspaper clipping, [1866], arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 02.07. 85 Connolly to Lynch, 12 March 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.14. 86 McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867.

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notes to pages 54– 8 87 St Patrick’s Society Roll Book, 1, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026; McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867; Wilson, “Fenians in Montreal,” 114–15. 88 Irish Canadian, 25 May 1864. 89 Irish Canadian, 26 July 1865. 90 Lynch to Farrell, 12 August 1865, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.08; Globe, 17 August 1865; Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 191–3. 91 Irish Canadian, 26 July 1865. 92 As pointed out in Toner, “‘Green Ghost,’” 46. 93 World, 11 September 1867.

94 See, for example, Irish Canadian, 29 March 1865, 21 March 1866, 18 March 1868. 95 Irish Canadian, 16 August 1865. 96 Irish Canadian, 21 April 1869. 97 Irish Canadian, 2 September 1868. 98 Irish Canadian, 3 January 1866. Ellen O’Mahony was the sister of John O’Mahony. 99 Irish Canadian, 9 May 1866. 100 Irish Canadian, 22 September and 6 October 1869. See also Lehne, “Fenianism – A Male Business?” 33–5. 101 Irish Canadian, 28 July 1869. 102 Irish Canadian, 17 November 1869. In the same column, the “Quebec Girl” equated Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa’s work on behalf of her husband with the efforts of “the true-hearted women of Canada” to secure the release of Fenians in Canadian jails. 103 Irish Canadian, 12 January 1870. 104 See, for example, Irish Canadian, 15 December 1869, 14 September 1870. 105 Irish Canadian, 21 December 1870. 106 Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 25.

chapter four 1 For the weather and the route, see Mirror, 19 March 1858; for Sheady’s attire, see Michael Murphy, “The Hibernians and the Globe,” Irish Canadian, 21 December 1864. On the role of the Young Men’s St Patrick’s Association in organizing the parades, see Cottrell, “St Patrick’s Day Parades,” 61–4. This account of the style of St Patrick’s Day parades in Toronto also draws on the Globe, 18 March 1856.

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notes to pages 58–61

2 Mirror, 20 and 27 March 1857. 3 Not all of this increase was the result of Famine migration; natural increase and in-migration from rural areas would also have been contributory factors. 4 Globe, 11 February 1856. 5 On the assault on the constable and its aftermath, see the Globe, 15, 16, 17, and 18 July 1857; on the attack on St Michael’s Cathedral and the convent of the Sisters of St Joseph, see the Mirror, 16 July 1857. 6 Testimony of Robert Hutson, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 23 March 1858. 7 David Ritchey emphatically denied this version of events; see his letter to the Leader, 22 March 1858, and his testimony at the coroner’s inquest in the Globe, 27 March 1858. But several witnesses, including the deputy chief of police, Robert Hutson, and the tavern keepers Owen Cosgrove and Michael Scott, testified that Ritchey had attempted to force his way through the crowd and had been driven back. Other witnesses testified that he was involved in the riot, was wielding a pitchfork, and was bleeding from a fight. See reports on the coroner’s inquest in the Globe, 23, 24, and 27 March 1858, 1 April 1858. 8 Testimony of William Lennox, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 24 March 1858. 9 Testimony of Mary Lavelle, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 24 March 1858. 10 Testimony of Robert Hutson, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 23 March 1858. 11 Coroner’s inquest into the death of Matthew Sheady, Globe, 23, 24, 25, and 27 March 1858, 1 April 1858. 12 “City Police,” Globe, 23 March 1858. The assailant, George Watson, was given the maximum fine possible. 13 For McGee’s description of himself as a traitor to the British government, see Boston Pilot, 21 October 1848. His poem “The Red Cross Flag” was so incendiary that his loyalist admirers later tried to suppress it. His enemies, however, were happy to use it against him; see, for example, Globe, 28 August 1863. For his speech in the Legislative Assembly, see New Era, 6 March 1858. 14 On Gowan’s career, see Senior, “Gowan, Ogle Robert”; and the swashbuckling semi-fictional account in Akenson, Orangeman. 15 Testimony of John Walsh, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 29 March 1858. 16 Testimony of Richard Rickaby, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 27 March 1858. 17 Statement of information by Mary O’Donohoe, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 25 March 1858. 18 Leader, 18 March 1858; Globe, 19 March 1858. 19 Testimony of George Cotter, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 27 March 1858;

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see also the testimony of Sergeant James Hastings, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 5 April 1858. 20 Testimony of George Cotter, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 27 March 1858. 21 This account is taken from the police magistrate’s inquiry, which was covered extensively in the Globe, 25, 27, and 29 March 1858, 2, 5, 6, and 8 April 1858. 22 Testimony of Dennis Sheridan, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 24 March 1858; George Cotter’s summary, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 1 April 1858. 23 Globe, 16 July 1844. 24 Testimony of Robert Hutson, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 2 April 1858. 25 On several occasions, the prosecuting attorney asked “Why is the Chief [Sherwood] speaking with Lennox?” and remarked that Sherwood was “in communication with the prisoners all the time” – the prisoners being Lennox and four others (including a policeman) who were charged with attacking the National Hotel. See Globe, 5 April 1858. 26 William Wilson, quoted in Globe, 6 April 1858. 27 Globe, 16, 20, and 23 March, 6 and 8 April 1858. 28 Testimony of Samuel Sherwood, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 6 April 1858. 29 Globe, 29 March 1858. 30 Globe, 5 April 1858. 31 Globe, 8 April 1858. 32 Globe, 9 April 1858. On Holland’s earlier attack on Irish Catholics, see the Globe, 11 February 1856. 33 For Lennox’s comments, see the Globe, 10 April 1858; for other, equally negative, Orange reactions, see the Globe, 14 April and 12 May 1858. 34 On the arrests and charges arising from the Sheady and National Hotel riots, see the Globe, 8, 10, and 24 April 1858, and the reports on Toronto’s Spring Assizes in the Globe, 12 and 17 May 1858. 35 For coverage of John Farrell’s murder, see the Globe, 28 and 29 December 1857; for Irish Catholic perceptions of the event, see New Era, 12 January, 27 March, and 1 April 1858. 36 New Era, 1 April 1858. 37 On the campaign to prevent the incorporation of the Orange Order, see New Era, 3 April 1858; and True Witness, 14 May 1858. 38 On the reform of the Toronto police force in 1859, see Kealey, “Orangemen and the Corporation”; Rogers, “Serving Toronto the Good”; and Vronsky, “History of the Toronto Police.”

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notes to pages 65– 7

39 George Cotter’s summary, coroner’s inquest, Globe, 1 April 1858. 40 Globe, 18 March 1859. See also Cottrell, “St Patrick’s Day Parades,” 64. 41 On Irish Catholic demands that Orangemen must be barred from the magistracy and juries, see the Mirror, 9 and 23 April 1858; on the limitations of police reform, see Rogers, “Serving Toronto the Good,” 124–5; and on opposition to the cancellation of the St Patrick’s Day parade, see True Witness, 25 March 1859. 42 Mirror, 2 April 1858. 43 The petition is in the Mirror, 16 April 1858. 44 On the debate in the Legislative Assembly, see the Globe, 22 April 1858. 45 Globe, 21 February 1857. See also Walker, Catholic Education, 188, 213. On Irish Catholic hostility to Brown, see virtually every extant issue of the Mirror and the Catholic Citizen during the late 1850s. 46 Brown’s views on the events and aftermath of the St Patrick’s Day riot can be found in the Globe, 22 April 1858. 47 Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 1, 266–9. 48 Cottrell, “Irish Catholic Political Leadership,” 61–72. 49 Brockville Recorder, 27 May 1858. See also the Mirror, 11 and 18 June 1858. 50 Anonymous letter from Quebec, 14 April 1858, published in the Mirror, 23 April 1858. 51 Letter from “H.T.,” originally published in the Ottawa Tribune and reprinted in the Mirror, 30 April 1858. The author did not recommend that Ribbon societies should be introduced into Canada but liked the idea of gun clubs. 52 The description of Murphy’s appearance comes from the Conservative politician John Crawford; see Globe, 25 June 1861. For McGee’s description, see Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867. 53 O’Neill made the call in the Mirror, 2 April 1858. The location of Murphy’s tavern as the birthplace of the Hibernian Benevolent Society and the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada is inferred from two things. First, Murphy was the driving force behind the Society and the Fenian movement in Canada; and second, in the police magistrate’s inquiry into an attack on an Irish Catholic, Robert King, on 12 July 1860, the lawyer for the defence stated that “a Ribbon Lodge meets in Murphy’s tavern”; see Globe, 17 July 1860. A word of caution: Kealey, “Orangeman and the Corporation,” cited above, places the Hibernian Benevolent Society on the Toronto streets in July 1853. Unfortunately, he has misread a report in the Globe, 12 July 1853, about a riot that actually took place in Greenwich Village. 54 On the anti-deferential style of Fenianism, see Newsinger, “Fenianism Revisited.”

notes to pages 67–7 1

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The observation about the Fenians’ “insolent swagger and defiant looks” comes from Willison Macartney to Lord Claud Hamilton, 28 November 1866, enclosed in Claud Hamilton to Abercorn, 5 December 1866, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Abercorn Papers, D623/A/307/19. 55 Mirror, 11 June 1858. The sketch of Edward O’Meagher Condon’s life draws on the Irishman, 13 March 1869; Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6 (1879), 539–43; and O. McGee, “Condon, Edward O’Meagher.” 56 On Condon’s meeting with O’Mahony in New York in 1859, see the Irishman, 13 March 1869. 57 Condon’s role in the Manchester rescue is discussed in B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 104–8, 133, 136. 58 Quoted in “Rescue of Kelly & Deasy,” 22. 59 Sullivan, “God Save Ireland,” 14–15. 60 Sullivan, Sullivan, and Sullivan, Speeches from the Dock. Condon’s own speech was not included in the volume. 61 On Murtagh (Mortimer) Moriarty, see Savage, Fenian Heroes and Martyrs, 207– 17; and Ó Concubhair, ‘Fenians Were Dreadful Men,’ 86–124. See also the Irish Canadian, 15 March 1871, where he is described as an honoured former member of Toronto’s Hibernian Benevolent Society. 62 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103568–74. 63 For a report of his arrest en route to Eastport and Campobello, see the Irish Canadian, 18 April 1866. 64 The description of Moriarty as “a very bad character” comes from carton 1, envelope 9, Fenian Papers, nai, Fenian Arrests and Discharges. For the depiction of Cahersiveen and environs as wild, lawless, and backward, see H. Lloyd to Thomas Larcom, 22 March 1867, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Abercorn Papers, D623/A/304/11. The inhabitants could take some comfort from Lloyd’s additional remark that they were “eminently capable of improvement.” 65 For local press coverage of Moriarty’s arrest and trial, see the Tralee Chronicle and Killarney Echo, 15 and 19 February, 9 and 13 August 1867; and the Kerry Evening Post, 10 and 14 August 1867. 66 Ó Concubhair, ‘Fenians Were Dreadful Men,’ 86–119. 67 Bishop David Moriarty’s sermon was delivered at Mass on 17 February 1867 and was published in the Tralee Chronicle and Killarney Echo, 19 February 1867. It rapidly acquired international fame or notoriety, depending on your viewpoint. 68 The song can easily be accessed on YouTube. It was part of a long tradition. In the

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notes to pages 7 1–3 summer of 1868, the police in nearby Killorglin arrested men who were “marching and singing seditious songs,” and in Farrantoreen they were singing rebel songs such as the “Sean Van Vocht” and “The Green above the Red.” Ó Concubhair, ‘Fenians Were Dreadful Men,’ 119.

69 An Orange crowd attacked Moriarty’s Toronto home during the visit to Toronto of the revolutionary Irish nationalist Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1878. Clarke, “Religious Riot as Pastime,” 119. 70 Most sources assert that Lomasney was born in Cincinnati of Irish parents. Only one article places him in Toronto, stating that he met Condon, Moriarty, and Murphy in the city. See “Some Account of the Trial, Conviction, and Execution of the Manchester Martyrs, with Mr. Condon’s Speech from the Dock,” Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6 (1879), 539. According to the United States census of 1880, he was born in Ireland. His father, William Lomasney, is listed as a tailor living at 55 Elm Street, Toronto, in 1859 in Caverhill’s Toronto City Directory for 1859–60, 118. A sister, Julia, was born in Canada – almost certainly Toronto – in 1858; see Ancestry.com, “1880 United States Federal Census,” https://www.ances try.com/search/collections/6742/. William Mackey Lomasney was described in the Irish Canadian, 15 March 1871, as a former member of Toronto’s Hibernian Benevolent Society. 71 This account of his personality, appearance, and revolutionary career is based on Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 210–12, 239; O’Brien and Ryan, eds, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 4–12; Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 100–2; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 217–21; and McGee and McCabe, “Lomasney, William Francis Mackey.” Contrary to Owen McGee and Desmond McCabe, there is clear evidence from American Civil War pension lists that Lomasney served in the Civil War with the 99th and 179th New York Infantry Regiments. 72 Lomasney’s speech after being convicted in 1868 of treason-felony was included in Sullivan, Sullivan, and Sullivan, Speeches from the Dock, 231–6, where he appears under the name of Captain Mackay. In the speech, he refers to his “old friend” Edward O’Meagher Condon (236). 73 O’Brien and Ryan, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 9–10. 74 On Alexander Sullivan, see Whelehan, Dynamiters, 180; and G. O’Brien, Blood Runs Green. On Denis C. Feely, see below, 383. 75 Campbell, Fenian Fire, 156. 76 Irishman, 13 March 1869.

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notes to pages 7 3– 6 77 McGee and McCabe, “Lomasney, William Francis Mackey.” 78 Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6 (1879), 539.

79 This point has also been made by Stacey, “Fenian Interlude”; and more recently by Toner, “Fanatic Heart of the North,” 34–5.

chapter five 1 Globe, 10 November 1858; Patriot, 17 November 1858. 2 Globe, 9 July 1860. John Murphy was named in a list of Fenians compiled by Detective Charles Fallis in 1868; see Fallis to McMicken, 21 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106927–31. Jim Law was described by Detective Charles Clarke as a “noted rebble” in 1866; see Clarke to McMicken, 19 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104159–62. During the first race in 1858, the Shakespeareans (on the boat What You Will) took in water at the start and asked for a rerun. The Hibernians refused and took the honours, such as they were. In 1860, the shoe was on the other foot. As the race started, the oar slipped from the first Hibernian’s oar lock, sending him backwards into the second rower, who fell backwards into the third rower, who fell backwards into Michael Murphy, who fell headlong into the lake. He swam to retrieve his oar and managed to get back into the boat, to the applause of the audience. But in leaning on the side of the boat to haul himself up, Murphy tipped it enough for water to get in. And even more got in when his heel cracked the bottom of the boat. But the Hibernians carried on anyway, zigzagging across the route instead of taking a straight line, to the surprise of the onlookers. (It established a pattern: the Fenians never gave up.) The Shakespeareans, now on the boat As You Like It, won easily. This time it was the Hibernians who demanded to scratch that one and race the next day, on the grounds that because they had not actually started, a race had not actually taken place. The Shakespeareans refused and took the honours, such as they were. 3 Patriot, 5 February 1859 4 Phoenix, 24 March 1860. See also Globe, 17 March 1860. 5 Globe, 31 July and 1 August 1860. Mallon’s politics are inferred from his subscription to John O’Mahony’s Phoenix; see Phoenix, 3 March 1860. 6 Leader, 12 August 1862. 7 Irish Canadian, 11 March 1863. 8 Globe, 29 April 1856. The motion, which also called for granting an amnesty to the

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n ote s to pag e s 7 6–9 Welsh Chartist John Frost, was presented by William Lyon Mackenzie, who commented that, among other things, O’Brien had “formerly viewed this country with feelings of affection.”

9 Globe, 5 May 1859. 10 Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867. 11 Globe, 31 January 1860. 12 Globe, 17 July and 18 October 1860. 13 On Crawford, see Swainson, “Crawford, John Willoughy.” 14 Leader, 20 June 1861; Globe, 20 and 25 June 1861. 15 Globe, 5 July 1861. 16 Sixty-five Irish Catholics signed a petition to Bishop Lynch that recorded their “unanimous protest” against the proposed revival of the procession. See “To the Right Reverend Dr. Lynch, Bishop of Toronto,” 1867 [sic: 1861], arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.17. 17 Globe, 18 March 1862 18 True Witness, 25 March 1859. 19 Trigger, “Irish Politics on Parade.” 20 William Smith O’Brien to his daughter [probably Lucy Josephine], 16 May 1859, O’Brien Papers, nli, MS 446, 8653, folder 33. 21 Phoenix, 31 March 1860. 22 Phoenix, 18 May 1861. The writer signed with the initials J.M.G. and may have been John McGrath. See also Phoenix, 4 May 1861. 23 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867; Montreal Herald, 25 December 1861; True Witness, 27 December 1861. The Irish battalion was not actually raised. 24 Montreal Herald, 27 and 28 September 1882; St Patrick’s Society Roll Book, 11, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026; Mackay’s Montreal Directory for 1865–66, 217, 204; McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 25 Montreal Gazette, 19 March 1864. On the organizers of the dinner, see McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. McGee named “J.J. O’Mara,” which would appear to have been a mistake for Patrick (or P.J.) O’Meara. 26 Canadian Freeman, 21 March 1864; McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867. Among the young men attracted to the ideas of the

notes to pages 79–82

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Hibernian Society was Edward O’Shaughnessy. He joined a Fenian circle that was planning to attack government buildings when the Fenians launched their invasion attempt. The circle was infiltrated by a spy, and O’Shaughnessy fled to the United States, where he subsequently became a leading member of the Clan na Gael in New York. I thank his great-grandson Ed O’Shaughessy for this information. 27 Daniel Tracey’s Montreal-based Irish Vindicator was launched in December 1828; in March 1831, it was taken over by the Patriotes and renamed simply the Vindicator. The radical Quebec Spectator, edited by Michael McCoy, lasted only six months, from May to October 1848. 28 Irish Canadian, 13 January 1864. 29 Irish Canadian, 11 March 1863. 30 McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 17 August 1867. 31 Irish Canadian, 8 April 1863. See also Irish Canadian, 25 March 1863; and Peterborough Review, 20 March 1863. 32 The fact that the St Patrick’s Society invited McGee to speak in November 1863 indicates where its loyalties lay; see Canadian Freeman, 13 December 1866. 33 Elon Tupper to McMicken, 4 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102958, where the man is identified as N. Shaw; [unknown] to Frederick Bruce, 11 May 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. Another source, of dubious reliability, has more than 200 Fenians drilling in and around Peterborough in the spring of 1868; see J.G. Bowes to Macdonald, 23 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106769. 34 Clark, “Fenians and ‘Fenia-phobia’,” 18–21. 35 Irish Canadian, 18 March 1863. 36 Irish Canadian, 25 March, 17 June, and 21 October 1863, 17 February 1864. 37 Irish Canadian, 12 August 1863. 38 Richmond Hill’s Hibernian Society was listed as “branch No. 7”; see Irish Canadian, 16 and 23 December 1863. 39 Irish Canadian, 11 November 1863. 40 Irish Canadian, 23 March 1864. 41 Globe, 17 May 1864; and Irish Canadian, 18 and 25 May 1864. For immediacy, I have switched Medcalf ’s words into the present tense. 42 Irish Canadian, 1 June 1864; Globe, 30 May 1864; Radforth, “Collective Rights,” 521–3.

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notes to pages 83– 7

43 Irish Canadian, 9 November 1864. The Duke of Newcastle was included among the effigies because he had shunned the Orange Order while organizing the tour of Canada by the Prince of Wales in 1860. 44 Leader, 8 November 1864. 45 Globe, 24 November 1864. 46 See, for example, the letter from “not a fenian,” Globe, 19 November 1864; and “Resolutions of the Toronto County Orange Lodge,” Leader, 19 December 1864. 47 Globe, 26 December 1864. 48 “not a fenian,” Globe, 19 November 1864. 49 Dickson to Monck, 15 November 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22216–7. 50 “not a fenian,” Globe, 19 November 1864. 51 Leader, 15 November 1864; Irish Canadian, 23 November 1864. 52 Globe, 10 November 1864. 53 Globe, 12 November 1864. 54 On the death threat, see the Globe, 9 November 1864: “For the sake of your own life stop these proceedings … There is men from buflow hear staying to watch you … I tremble wen I contemplate the Afull perel.” 55 Globe, 8 and 9 November 1864. 56 Irish Canadian, 7 December 1864. See also Irish Canadian, 16 November 1864; and Leader, 16 November 1864. 57 Leighton, “Manitoulin Incident of 1863”; Globe, 24 November and 2 December 1863. On McGuire, see the Globe, 9 November 1864. 58 Leader, 14 November 1864; Globe, 15 November 1864; Irish Canadian, 16 November 1864. The man in Buffalo was named Murphy but should not be confused with Michael Murphy. 59 Globe, 12 November 1864. 60 See below, 133, 141. 61 For a detailed account, see the Leader, 6 December 1864. 62 Leader, 6 December 1864. 63 Leader, 7 December 1864; Globe, 7 December 1864. 64 Irish Canadian, 7 and 14 December 1864. 65 “The Orangemen and Fenians,” Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Collection, Broadsides and Printed Ephemera. 66 Memorandum, Quebec, 17 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22219–41. Although dated 17 December, the memorandum included reports written up to 20 December 1864.

notes to pages 87– 9

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67 Globe, 20 December 1864; Anonymous to E. Merritt, 28 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100831. 68 See, for example, the Globe, 20 December 1864: “We are informed that numbers of families on the town line of Maryborough and Mornington had deserted their dwellings, and had taken up lodgings with their more courageous neighbours.” On the call for vigilance committees, see the letter of Billa Flint, Globe, 17 January 1865. 69 Letter of D.D. Hay, Globe, 4 January 1865. 70 Globe, 20 December 1864, 17 January 1865. 71 Globe, 20 December 1864; Leader, 26 December 1864. 72 James Cockburn, 20 December 1864, in Memorandum, Quebec, 17 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22219–41. 73 Globe, 4 January 1865. 74 Globe, 14 January 1865; Canadian Freeman, 19 January 1865. 75 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 2 May 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 76 Irish Canadian, 30 March 1864. 77 Irish Canadian, 20 April 1864. 78 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 6 June 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. In protest against the attack on McGee, McKenna cancelled his own subscription to the Irish Canadian; see Canadian Freeman, 14 April 1864. 79 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 1 August, 5 September, and 3 October 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 80 By tracing the process of nominations, it is possible to identify otherwise unknown Fenians in the St Patrick’s Society. For example, in June, Lyons and Mansfield proposed Callahan McCarthy. In August, they proposed James McCaffrey, Edward McMahon, and William Shaughnessy; at the same meeting, Mansfield proposed Jonathan Whelan and James Walsh. In September, Felix Callahan and Mansfield proposed J. McCaffrey; Lyons and Mansfield proposed Thomas McGooley; William Linehan brought in Henry Murphy; and Callahan and H. Heaton (who became the Montreal agent for the Irish Canadian) proposed Jonathan Morrisy. The following month, Mansfield proposed James Goodwin (almost certainly not the Ottawa businessman with the same name) and Louis Hughes. See St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 6 June, 1 August, 5 September, and 3 October 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. On Heaton, see Irish Canadian, 9 August 1865.

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notes to pages 89– 93

81 The two seats that came open on the committee were contested by three people; the first got 57 votes, the second got 30, and Callahan got 29. 82 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 5, 19, and 23 December 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. For the description of Henry Murphy, see Edward Archibald to Lord Stanley, 9 April 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343. 83 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 2 and 16 January 1864, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. For Linehan’s arguments in favour of “total separation,” see Irish Canadian, 15 June 1864. 84 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 1 May and 5 June 1865, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 85 Irish Canadian, 29 March 1865. For the invitation to the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society (which was passed unanimously), see St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 6 and 15 March 1865, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 86 Irish Canadian, 8 February 1865. On the skating nuns controversy, see Globe, 10 March 1865; and Irish Canadian, 15 March 1865. 87 For the initial response, see Irish Canadian, 15 February 1865; for the climb down, see Irish Canadian, 22 February 1865. 88 Irish Canadian, 22 March 1865. 89 Irish Canadian, 29 March 1865. 90 Globe, 29 March 1865; True Witness, 7 April 1865. McDermott subsequently denied that he had ever discussed Fenianism with the bishop; see Irish Canadian, 19 April 1865. 91 See above, 28–9. 92 Globe, 29 March 1865. See also Globe, 18 March 1865. 93 True Witness, 7 April 1865. The view that Fenianism was essentially a “Protestant” movement was a standard trope in Catholic anti-Fenian writings. 94 Irish Canadian, 12 April 1865. 95 The editorials ran on 29 March and on 5 and 12 April 1865; the quotation is from Irish Canadian, 12 April 1865. 96 Irish Canadian, 3 and 17 May 1865. 97 Diary of George Clerk, 18 December 1865, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Clerk Fonds, P701. 98 George Clerk to Bishop Horan, 22 May 1865, Archives of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Horan Papers, D12 C33/17.

notes to pages 94–6

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99 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “Twenty Years’ Experience of Irish Life in America,” Dublin Evening Mail, 16 May 1865. 100 Wilson, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s Wexford Speech.” 101 Charles Carroll Tevis to Frederick Bruce, 7 January 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A250. 102 Globe, 18 April 1868. 103 Among the signatories, Michael Lawlor and Michael Mullarkey subscribed to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s Skirmishing Fund. See Irish World, 10 November 1877. Patrick Gleeson, Michael Kelly, Patrick Kenny, Thomas McManus, and Michael Ryan subscribed to the O’Donnell Fund. See above, 48; and Toner, “Research Notes 1971–74.” Michael Enright was identified as a Fenian during the investigation into McGee’s assassination in 1868; Edward Linehan’s letter on McGee’s speech in the Irish Canadian, 28 June 1865, defended John O’Mahony from McGee’s attacks; Edward Tobin was involved in a variety of radical Irish organizations into the 1880s; and John Sullivan may have been the “J.J. Sullivan” who declared himself a Fenian in a threatening letter to McGee. J.J. Sullivan to McGee, 23 November 1865, lac, McGee Fonds, MG27-I-E9. 104 Carton 2, envelope 4, Letters to the Editor, Irish People, 1864–65, nai, Fenian Briefs. 105 “Ophelia” to the Editor of the Irish People (Dublin), 8 June 1865, carton 2, envelope 4, Letters to the Editor, Irish People, 1864–65, nai, Fenian Briefs. 106 Fragment of letter, 18 July 1865, carton 3, envelope 8, nai, Fenian Briefs. 107 McGee, “Twenty Years’ Experience,” Dublin Evening Mail, 16 May 1865. 108 See, for example, Darroch and Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Occupational Structure”; and Akenson, Irish in Ontario. On the subsequent debate, see Toner, “Lifting the Mist”; Toner, “Occupation and Ethnicity”; and Darroch, “Half Empty or Half Full?” 109 On Orange discrimination against Catholics in public employment in Toronto, see W.J. Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada, 117–53. See also O’Hanly, Political Standing. 110 Irish Canadian, 28 June 1865. 111 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “D’Arcy McGee refuted,” [1866], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. O’Hanly’s analysis was subsequently incorporated into his Political Standing of Irish Catholics in Canada: A Critical Analysis of Its Causes, with Suggestions for Its Amelioration (1872). 112 Irish People (Dublin), 28 July 1865.

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notes to pages 99–1 00

113 Irish Canadian, 9 August 1865. 114 Irish Canadian, 20 September 1865. See also Irish Canadian, 16 August 1865. 115 Canadian Freeman, 14 May 1868. On McCarroll’s career, see Peterman, Delicious Mirth. 116 Peterman, Delicious Mirth, 210–32; Irish Canadian, 9 September 1863. 117 Irish Canadian, 15 March 1865. 118 Gowan’s address to the Orangemen, written on 1 November 1865, was published in Irish Canadian, 8 November 1865. 119 St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 6 November 1865, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. The resolution was drawn up jointly with H.J. Clarke, who had no Fenian connections. 120 See the letter to Provincial Secretary William McDougall and McDougall’s reply, St Patrick’s Society Minute Book, 15 November 1865, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 121 Irish Canadian, 22 November 1865. 122 Irish Canadian, 29 November 1865. 123 This criticism is evident from his comments in McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 22 August 1867. 124 Canadian Freeman, 23 November 1865. 125 J.J. Sullivan to McGee, 23 November 1865, lac, McGee Fonds, MG27-I-E9. 126 Canadian Freeman, 23 November 1865. 127 Irish Canadian, 22 November 1865. 128 Irish Canadian, 6 December 1865. See also Irish Canadian, 27 December 1865. 129 Irish Canadian, 24 January 1866. 130 Irish Canadian, 1 November 1865. 131 Irish Canadian, 22 November 1865. 132 Irish Canadian, 10 January 1866. 133 Irish Canadian, 25 October 1865. 134 Irish Canadian, 14 February 1866. 135 “Received of Genl. T.W. Sweeney, Sec. of War F.B. the Sum of Fifteen Hundred Dollars for the Purpose of Organizing a Secret Service Corps in Canada, James Durant,” receipt, 16 November 1865, nypl, Sweeny Papers. See also the similar receipts of 18 January, 3 May, 10 May, and 14 May 1866. 136 A.L. Morrison to Sweeny, 13 May 1866; Richard Slattery to Sweeny, 9 May 1866; John Fallon to Sweeny, 23 and 27 May 1866; William E. Leonard to Sweeny, 9 April 1866, all in nypl, Sweeny Papers.

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notes to pages 103–7 chapter six 1 The St Albans raid and its aftermath are discussed in Winks, Canada and the United States, 295–336. 2 New York Herald, 1 November 1864.

3 Macdonald to Robert Harrison, 16 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 510, 55–7. 4 W.B. Stewart, Ermatingers, 98–131. See also Senior, “Ermatinger, Frederick William”; and Montreal Transcript, 20 December 1864. 5 McMicken to Macdonald, 22 November 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 246, 110637–8. 6 Macdonald to Thomas Swinyard, 19 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 510, 70–1. 7 Quoted in W.B. Stewart, Ermatingers, 122. 8 Ibid., 125; “List of Expenses Incurred by the Men of the Montreal Water Police While Employed on Duty on the Frontier from 1864 to 1866,” lac, Government Constabulary for Frontier Service Fonds, MG26-I-J2A. 9 Senior, “Ermatinger, Frederick William.” On Burns, see lac, Census of Canada, 1881. 10 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100814– 7; see also Harrison to Macdonald, 20 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 2218. After meeting McMicken, the mayor of Detroit wrote a letter of introduction to the mayor of Buffalo, in which McMicken was described as “the right man in the right place”; see K.C. Barker to William Fargo, 23 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100822. 11 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100824. The first recruits were Samuel Allen, Robert Anderson, William Black, John Campbell, Patrick Carey, Edward Carr, Andrew Fraser, William Lambert, Richard McCormick, James Redfern, James Smith, Charles Spence, and John Wright. Most, but not all, appear to have been recommended by Prince. See “List of Agents, Frontier Police,” [1865], Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103114. 12 Of the other three Irishmen, Samuel Allen had served for five years with the Irish Constabulary, Richard McCormack had been in the Toronto police for five months, and Edward Carr had been a constable in the Dublin Metropolitan Police. See “List of Agents, Frontier Police,” [1865], Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103114.

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notes to pages 107–9

13 James Allen and William Caldwell joined the force in January; Donald Dallas, Edwin Dent, Angus MacDonell, William McEwan, and Richard Yeoward joined in April; and Peter Schram joined in May. Three of the original recruits, William Lambert, Richard McCormack, and James Smith, dropped out almost immediately; a fourth, Samuel Allen, left sometime in the spring. 14 Macdonald to McMicken, 24 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 510, 113–14; McMicken to Macdonald, 29 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100833– 5. Although McMicken wrote that one detective from Detroit had enlisted, there is nothing to indicate that he actually served with the force. 15 “Scalper” was slang for “bounty jumper” – someone who enlisted in the Union Army, deserted after receiving his bounty, and then repeated the process by reenlisting in a different part of the country. As the name suggests, “substitute brokers” profited by finding substitutes for men who had been drafted into the army. 16 “Special Order No. 1,” McMicken to James Bell, 31 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100856–8. 17 Fraser, Caldwell, and James Allen to McMicken, 7 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100926–7. 18 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100982–5. 19 Ermatinger to Macdonald, 30 March 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101721. See also Winks, Canada and the United States, 358. 20 Black to McMicken, 2 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100874. 21 Carr to McMicken, 6 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100908–9; McMicken to Macdonald, 14 February 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101296; James Redfern to Macdonald, 24 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101102; Campbell to McMicken, 1 March 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101444–6; James Allen to McMicken, 4 March 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101473. This was an enduring issue in Canadian-American relations. See B. Miller, Borderline Crime. 22 Black to McMicken, 4 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100887–8; 14 January 1865, vol. 234, 100994; and 18 January 1865, vol. 234, 101055. Five years later, McMicken would write that Maidstone “is an Irish R.C. settlement and has always been supposed to be largely in sympathy with the Fenian cause.” See McMicken to Macdonald, 21 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109723–5. 23 Spence to McMicken, 13 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100987. 24 Carey to McMicken, 14 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101004; and 17 January 1865, vol. 234, 101027.

notes to pages 110– 13

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25 Caldwell to McMicken,15 February 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101311. 26 Fraser to McMicken,18 February 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101349; 18 March 1865, vol. 234, 101625; and 18 April 1865, vol. 235, 101897. 27 Caldwell to McMicken, 10 May 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 102081; and 13 May 1865, vol. 235, 102113. 28 Martha Phelps to McMicken, 5 April 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 101776. 29 McMicken to Macdonald, 23 February 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101389. 30 Fraser to McMicken, 4 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100890–2. 31 Carr to McMicken, 6 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100908–9. 32 Black to McMicken, 11 April 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 101815–6. 33 James Allen to McMicken, 20 February 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101356–8. 34 See, for example, Porter, Origins of the Vigilant State; and Porter, Plots and Paranoia. Yet it also needs to be emphasized that whenever the British state was perceived as being under serious threat, it utilized secret police to defend itself – as in the 1790s and again in the late 1860s. See Durey, William Wickham, Master Spy; P. Kennedy, “Secret Service Department”; and below, 233–4. 35 Globe, 1 February 1865. 36 Black to McMicken, 11 April 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 101815–6. 37 Spence to McMicken, 28 April 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 101974. 38 Spence to McMicken, 5 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102877–8. 39 Caldwell to McMicken, 29 August 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102766–7. 40 “List of Men Now Employed as Police Constables by the Appointment of and within the Jurisdiction of Gilbert McMicken, Police Magistrate,” 5 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 101050–2. 41 James Allen to McMicken, 4 March 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101473. 42 Fraser to McMicken, 11 January 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100969–70; Campbell to McMicken, 1 March 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 101444–6; 4 March 1865, vol. 234, 101473; and 5 April 1865, vol. 235, 101768–70. 43 Caldwell to McMicken, 29 August 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102766–7. 44 MacFarlane to McMicken, 16 May 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 102130. 45 Spence to McMicken, 26 May 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 102212. 46 Dundas True Banner and Wentworth Chronicle, 15 and 29 June 1865. The police chief resigned. 47 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103048. 48 McMicken to Macdonald, 4 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102782–3. Father White was William J. White, who was ordained in 1862. I thank Mark McGowan for this reference.

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notes to pages 113–1 6

49 Globe, 1 and 15 March 1864, 5 and 8 April 1864. See also Campbell to McMicken, 9 May 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 102083. 50 Nolan to McMicken, 12 May 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 102103; 10 June 1865, vol. 235, 102344; and 30 August 1865, vol. 236, 102739. 51 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102868–9. 52 McMicken to Macdonald, 6 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22286–7. 53 These links are evinced by frequent references to Cincinnati in the Irish Canadian. During the repression that followed the Ridgeway invasion attempt in 1866, at least thirty-four Toronto Hibernians moved to Cincinnati. See “To Mrs. Michael Murphy,” Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868. 54 R.W. Grant [Campbell] to McElderry [McMicken], 10 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102791–3; and 13 September 1865, vol. 236, 102800–2. 55 Grant [Campbell] to McElderry [McMicken], 16 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102808; 20 September 1865, vol. 236, 102815–6; 22 September 1865, vol. 236, 102823–4; and 23 September 1865, vol. 236, 102828–9. 56 Grant [Campbell] to McElderry [McMicken], 28 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102853–5. 57 Grant [Campbell] to McElderry [McMicken], 30 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102863. 58 Patrick C. Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 14 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102806. 59 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 9 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102786. 60 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 22 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102820–1. 61 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 9 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102786; and 18 September 1865, vol. 236, 102812–3. 62 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 18 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102812–3 63 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 22 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102820–1. 64 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 9 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102786. 65 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102797– 8; 23 September 1865, vol. 236,102833–4; and 25 September 1865, vol. 236, 102838–9.

notes to pages 116–19

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66 Archibald to Monck, 16 September 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 67 Macdonald to Monck, 18 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 511, 221–2; McMicken to Macdonald, 25 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102838– 9; and 26 September 1865, vol. 56, 22283–4. 68 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22294, and vol. 236, 102868. 69 Archibald to Sir John Michel, 27 November 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 70 Archibald to Monck, 16 September 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 71 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22292. There is no evidence that any such “fixing” actually took place. 72 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22295; and 2 October 1865, vol. 236, 102868–9. 73 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102885–7. 74 Macdonald to McMicken, 12 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102889–91. 75 Tupper to McMicken, 1 April 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 235, 101750–1; and 4 November 1865, vol. 236, 102957–9; McMicken to Macdonald, 3 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102940–2. 76 Tupper to McMicken, 4 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102957–9. The names that he got were “O’Lery” from Montreal, “O’donahoe” and “Hadigan” from Toronto, and “N. Shaw” from Peterborough. The most likely candidate for “O’donahue” was Barney O’Donohoe; see below, 134. 77 McMicken to Macdonald, 3 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102940–7. 78 Archibald to John Michell [sic], 1 November 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. Archibald’s assessment replicated that of his predecessor, Anthony Barclay, after the collapse of the Rising of 1848; see above, 26–7. 79 Michel to Cardwell, 6 November 1865, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1335. Michel made this assessment after consulting with McGee, who assured him that “there is no organization in Canada of Fenianism, that they are in small numbers, except at Toronto, and there not in sufficient force to excite alarm” – in striking contrast to McGee’s views the following year. See Michel to Arthur Gordon, 16 November 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 7.

432

notes to pages 119– 2 1

80 Macdonald to Brydges, 14 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 512/1, 2; Macdonald to Swinyard, 14 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22580–2. See also Globe, 14 November 1865. 81 Michel to Macdonald, 16 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22310–2; MacDougall to McMicken, 30 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102928–31. 82 McMicken to Macdonald, 3 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102949– 51; for John Francis Maguire’s views, see above, 22. Similar debates had occurred in Ireland during the Rising of 1798 and would recur in 1866, when the chief secretary, Lord Mayo, wanted the widespread dispersal of troops to put down the first signs of an insurrection, while the military commander, Lord Strathnairn, wanted to concentrate troops at strategic points. See B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 72–4. 83 Monck to Macdonald, 10 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 74, 28821–4. 84 Archibald to Michel, 20 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 85 Hamilton Spectator, 15 November 1865; McKinnon to Macdonald, 6 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102963–5. 86 McKinnon to Macdonald, 6 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102963–5. 87 Hamilton Spectator, 15 November 1865; McMicken to Macdonald, 17 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102991–6. 88 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103000. 89 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 4 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103029. 90 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 9 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103053. 91 Tupper to McMicken, 4 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102957–9. 92 Tupper to McMicken, 16 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102988–9. 93 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 September 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102797. Oliver was not mentioned by name in this letter, but there is no doubt that McMicken was referring to him; see McMicken to Macdonald, 8 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103050. 94 Oliver to McMicken, 14 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102984; and 17 November 1865, vol. 236, 102998; McMicken to Macdonald, 17 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102991–6. 95 James Allen to McMicken, 30 October 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 102919; James Allen and Caldwell to McMicken, 13 November 1865, Macdonald Fonds,

notes to pages 12 1–6

433

vol. 236, 102978; and 21 November 1865, vol. 236, 103002–3. The speculation about the Fenian secret service is mine, not theirs. 96 James Allen and Caldwell to McMicken, 8 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103044. 97 Clarke to McMicken, 4 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103031–2. See also McMicken to Macdonald, 8 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103051–2. McMicken mistakenly believed that Clarke was Catholic, probably because Clarke could speak Irish. 98 Clarke to McMicken, 12 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103058–63. 99 McMicken to Macdonald, 15 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103066. 100 McMicken to Macdonald, 5 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103034–7. 101 Macdonald to George Crawford, 14 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 512/1, 34–5. 102 Archibald to Michel, 13 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 103 Archibald to Monck, 19 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1.

chapter seven 1 McMicken to Macdonald, 12 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103242–4. See also Merrill Mills to McMicken, 13 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103340–1; and McMicken to Macdonald, 14 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103356–8. 2 McMicken to Macdonald, 12 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103242–4. 3 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103127–9. 4 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103258. 5 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 6 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103141–2; 9 January 1866, vol. 237, 103151–3; 17 January 1866, vol. 237, 103176–7; and 25 January 1866, vol. 237, 100804–5. 6 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 10 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103249–50; McMicken to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296–9. 7 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 28 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296–7, in McMicken to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296–9. Clarke signed his letters to McMicken with the words “Clarke Sullivan.”

434

notes to pages 126–8 It is extremely unlikely, however, that he would have used “Clarke” as his first name while posing as a Fenian.

8 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 3 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103283–4. 9 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 25 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103297–9, in McMicken to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296–9. 10 Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 25 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103297, in McMicken to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296–9. 11 McMicken to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103296. 12 Rose to Macdonald, 13 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 258, 116508–11. 13 Burns to John McLoughlin, 27 February 1866, in Ermatinger to Macdonald, 3 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103277–8; on his withdrawal, see Ermatinger to Macdonald, 5 March 1866, vol. 237, 103288. 14 Tupper to McMicken, 4 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103286–7. 15 Rea, “McLeod, Alexander.” 16 McLeod to [unknown], 26 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22843–4. 17 McLeod to John Simpson, 28 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22697– 22701; McLeod to [unknown], 12 March 1866, vol. 57, 22725–8. 18 Archibald to Monck, 3 March 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 19 New York Herald, 5 March 1866; Killian to John Mitchel, 3 March 1866, Columbia University Archives, Meloney-Mitchel Papers. See also D. Thomas [Thomas Doyle] to J.S. [John Stewart] Wood, 2 March 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A109. 20 Irish People (New York), 10 March 1866; Archibald to Monck, 3 March 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1; Archibald to Clarendon, 6 March 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A112. 21 Burton [Nolan] to Sir [McMicken], 8 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103303–4; Diary of George Clerk, 9 March 1866, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Clerk Fonds, P701; Globe, 9 March 1866. The Globe also reported that “one hundred and twenty young unmarried men of our coloured population” volunteered for service. 22 Archibald to Michel, 30 November 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol 1. 23 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103046.

notes to pages 129– 31

435

24 Tupper to McMicken, 12 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103163-4. 25 Archibald to Michel, 22, 28 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. The men named in Montreal were Patrick Butler, John Gorman, and Anthony Kearney. The assistant outdoors surveyor for the Customs Department in Toronto, James McCarroll, had become a Fenian but only after he had been dismissed from the service. In any case, the detective reported that the first name of the Toronto customs officer was “Aaron.” 26 Lest anyone think that the detective encountered Murphy travelling under a pseudonym, his description of the man he met does not match that of Murphy. See Archibald to Michel, 22 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 27 McMicken to Macdonald, 27 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103084–5. 28 Nolan to McMicken, 31 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103110–13. See above, 45–6. 29 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 6 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103145– 6; 20 January 1866, vol. 237, 103185–6; and 27 January 1866, vol. 237, 103200. A Dennis Connell, labourer, lived at 318 Queen Street West; see City of Toronto, City of Toronto, and Gazetteer, 84. 30 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 31 December 1865. See also Peter M. Toner’s argument that the Canadian government was reluctant to take strong action against Fenians in the country on the grounds that repressive measures could provoke cross-border attacks. Toner, “Green Ghost,’” 46. 31 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 8 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103303– 4; and 10 March 1866, vol. 237, 103318–20. 32 MacDonell to McMicken, 5 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103235–8. 33 Burton [Nolan] to Sir [McMicken], 15 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103367–8. 34 McGee to Lynch, 7 March 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAF 03.08; and 14 March 1866, LAF 03.09. 35 “Circular to the Clergy of the Diocese of Toronto,” 9 March 1866, Lynch Papers, LAE 02.12; John Joseph Lynch, “To the Reverend Clergy of the City of Toronto,” 15 March 1866, newspaper clipping, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.15. 36 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103398–403; Prince to McGee, 19 March 1866, Toronto Metropolitan Archives, Chief Constables’ Correspondence.

436

notes to pages 131–6

37 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103398–403; Irish Canadian, 21 March 1866. 38 McMicken to Macdonald, 14 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103357–8. 39 James Bell to McMicken, 17 March 1866, vol. 237, 103390. 40 Sullivan [Clarke] to Bell, 13 March 1866 Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103342–9. See also Sullivan [Clarke] to Bell, 15 March 1866, vol. 237, 103372–4. 41 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103398–403. 42 McMicken to Macdonald, 25 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103425–7. 43 For Clarke’s account of the meeting, see Sullivan [Clarke] to Macdonald, 31 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100866–8. (This correspondence is misfiled under “McMicken, 1864.”) For Boyle’s account, see Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866. 44 Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 27 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103431– 9; McMicken to Macdonald, 28 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103442–3. 45 McMicken to Macdonald, 23 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103416–9; and 25 March 1866, vol. 237, 103425–7. 46 McMicken to Macdonald, 25 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103425–7. 47 McLeod to Macdonald, 19 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22795–8. 48 Fenian Raid at Fort Erie, 29; W. Jenkins, Between Raid and Rebellion, 184. 49 McLeod to Macdonald, 25 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23036–9. 50 McLeod to Macdonald, 19 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22795–8. 51 McCarroll to Macdonald, 19 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 298, 136725–8; 18 February 1866, vol. 339, 155022–3; 21 February 1866, vol. 339, 155024; and 18 March 1866, vol. 339, 155043–50. 52 Recounted in McLeod to Macdonald, 19 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22795–8. 53 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103498–500. 54 Of particular importance was his letter of 19 March to Macdonald. See Vronsky, “Conspiracy Theory,” 24–7; and McLeod to Macdonald, 19 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22795–8. 55 Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 52–60; Vronsky, “Conspiracy Theory,” 14–18. 56 Grant to George Meade, 12 March 1866, in Simon, ed., Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 16, 107–8. 57 McMicken to Macdonald, 23 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103416–19; Monck to Bruce, 20 April 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1337, 186.

notes to pages 136–40

437

58 Meade to Grant, 31 March 1866, in Simon, ed. Papers of Ulysses S.Grant, vol. 16, 108–9; Ely S. Parker to Meade, 5 April 1866, in ibid., 109. 59 Quoted in “Report of Statements Made on Recent Occasions to Charles E.K. Kortright … by an Intelligent Member of the Fenian Brotherhood,” 26 October 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A45. 60 Semple, “Fenian Infiltration.” 61 Dublin Special Commission (April 1867), box 9, no. 6 (a), nai, Fenian Briefs; County of Dublin, “Alphabetical List of Cases Connected with the Fenian Conspiracy,” nai, Fenian Arrests and Discharges. 62 B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 55–6. 63 Testimony of John Wyld, police magistrate’s inquiry, Globe, 10 April 1868. 64 Francis Ritchie to McMicken, 17 August 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107362–4. 65 Statement of Francis Simonds, enclosed in Michel to Edward Cardwell, 19 January 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 2. 66 James Allen and William Caldwell to McMicken, 4 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103223–5. 67 Prince to Macdonald, 4 January 1866, enclosed in Michel to Cardwell, 19 January 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 2. 68 Michel to Cardwell, 22 January 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 2. 69 Irish American, 14 April 1866. 70 Irish Canadian, 4 April 1866. 71 See above, 14. 72 McNamee to Mr Christian, 24 March 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. In fact, the people of Irish Catholic ethnicity in Canada numbered around 260,000; this figure is extrapolated from Akenson, Being Had, 84, 88. 73 McNamee to Mr Christian, 26 March 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. McNamee’s letter mentions “Francis Callaghan,” which I assume refers to Felix Callahan. See also the column from Montreal by “D’Arcy’s Friend” in Irish Canadian, 4 April 1866: “I am informed that several of our young men have banded themselves together, and are about to organize themselves into a company, under the leadership of Messrs. Coyle, Callaghan, Curran, McNamee, and Devany. I trust that they shall succeed in their good work. This is a time when every one should know how to use protective weapons.” 74 Mansfield to Mr Christian, Montreal, 9 April 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers.

438

notes to pages 1 40–4

75 Montreal Herald, 27, 28, and 29 September, 3 October 1882. See also Montreal Post, 23 December 1881, in McNamee to Macdonald, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 379, 177498. 76 See W. Williams to Macdonald, 4 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 24069–72; Macdonald to Coursol, 7 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/3, 705; and Coursol to Macdonald, 8 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106842 – all of which indicate that neither Macdonald nor Coursol thought that McNamee was working with the government. 77 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 78 Ermatinger to Macdonald, 13 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106391. 79 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” [1865], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 80 See, for example, Thomas Swinyard to Macdonald, 30 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22552–4; G.B. Ward to Brydges, 31 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22905–7; and Brydges to Macdonald, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22904. 81 Irish Canadian, 4 April 1866; Irish American, 14 April 1866; McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 82 Montreal Herald, 27 and 29 September 1882. 83 Receipt, “Received of Genl. T.W. Sweeney, Sec. of War F.B. the Sum of Fifteen Hundred Dollars for the Purpose of Organizing a Secret Service Corps in Canada, James Durant,” New York, 16 November 1865, nypl, Sweeny Papers; Receipt, “Received of General T.W. Sweeney Sect War F.B. Two Hundred Dollars Secret Service Money, James Durant,” New York, 18 January 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 84 McMicken to Macdonald, 4 August 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 952; Somerville, Narrative of the Fenian Invasion, 21. 85 William E. Leonard to Sweeny, 9 April 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 86 Quoted in A.L. Morrison to Sweeny, 13 May 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 87 Thomas Burns to McMicken, 6 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103965–6. 88 Tupper to McMicken, 7 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104015–6. 89 McMicken to Macdonald, 6 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103239–40. 90 McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 91 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” [1865], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 92 Archibald to Bruce, 17 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, vol. 45, 203–7a, R977-1582-9-E; Archibald to Monck, 22 March 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1; Archibald

notes to pages 1 45– 7

439

to Michel, 29 March 1866, lac, Governor General’s Correspondence, 1866–70, vol. 26, RG7-G-14.

chapter eight 1 John O’Mahony, “Address of the Head Centre,” Irish People (New York), 12 May 1866. On the scale of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, see Archibald to Macdonald, 17 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22786–9; Archibald to Bruce, 17 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1582-9-E, vol. 45, 203–7a; and Archibald to Clarendon, 17 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336/5. 2 O’Mahony, “Address,” Irish People (New York), 12 May 1866; Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. For a pen portrait of Sinnott, see Irish People (New York), 20 January 1866. 3 [William H. Grace], “Letter from a Prominent Fenian,” Boston Post, 26 April 1866, newspaper cutting, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 231. 4 Irish People (New York), 12 May 1866. 5 Archibald to Macdonald, 17 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22786–9; Archibald to Bruce, 17 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1582-9-E, vol. 45, 203–7a; Archibald to Clarendon, 17 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336/5. 6 Archibald to Macdonald, 3 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22561–5. 7 Archibald to Bruce, 10 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1579-8-E, vol. 45, 186. 8 Archibald to Bruce, 9 December 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R997-1562-3-E, vol. 45, 118–20; Archibald to Macdonald, 3 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22561–5. 9 Archibald to Bruce, [December 1865], lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1561-1-E, vol. 45, 114–16. 10 Archibald to Bruce, December 1865, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1561-1-E, vol. 45, 115; Archibald to John Michel, 13 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 11 Archibald to Michel, 20 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 12 Patrick Butler had also been identified as a leading Montreal Fenian by the American detective whom Archibald employed. In late December, fearing arrest, Butler

440

notes to pages 1 4 7–52 fled to Burlington in Vermont. See Archibald to Michel, 22 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG-7-10, vol. 1; and Michel to Cardwell, 28 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG-7-10, vol. 2.

13 Archibald to Bruce, December 1865, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1561-1-E, vol. 45, 115–16; Archibald to Michel, 20 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1; Archibald to Michel, 22 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 56, 22545–7. 14 Archibald to Clarendon, 6 February 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A123. 15 Davitt, Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, 427–34, 429 (quote). 16 Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 269–70. 17 Stephens to O’Mahony, 1864, in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 185–6; Downing to O’Mahony, 20 April 1864, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 18 Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 19 D’Arcy, Fenian Movement in the United States, 96–7 and index; Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 101–2; Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 26; Senior, Fenians and Canada, 92; Dallison, Turning Back the Fenians, 22; Ryan, Fenian Chief, 202–4; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 62; Campbell, Fenian Fire, 131; O. McGee, “McDermott, James”; Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 320. 20 See, for example, Senior, Fenians and Canada, 92; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 62; and Campbell, Fenian Fire, 131. 21 Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 22 Archibald to Thomas Larcom, 13 March 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A123; Archibald to Clarendon, 20 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336, 324–8; nli, Anderson Papers, MS 5964; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 19–26; Sayers, “John O’Mahony,” 305. 23 Archibald to Clarendon, 20 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336, 324–8; Archibald to Larcom, 13 March 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A123. For his detailed account of the Fenian Brotherhood’s military preparedness in Ireland and Britain, and for his list of O’Mahony’s Fenian circles in the United States, see nai, Fenian A Files, A124. 24 Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. Millen also appeared in the third person in the report

notes to pages 152–3

441

that he presented to Archibald on the condition of Fenianism in Britain and Ireland; see nai, Fenian A Files, A124. 25 Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1; Archibald to Clarendon, 20 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336, 324–8; Archibald to Bruce, 17 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-15829-E, vol. 45, 203a: “I do not like even in this note, to mention his name.” Archibald did mention Millen’s name in his earlier communication to Thomas Larcom, the Irish undersecretary, 13 March 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A123. 26 Archibald to Bruce, 18 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1610-X-E, vol. 45, 321–4. In this letter, Archibald told Bruce that he had written the dispatch to Clarendon on the same day, which was 18 April. The dispatch, however, is dated 17 April. The obvious explanation is that Archibald began writing the dispatch on the 17th and completed it on the 18th. 27 Millen to Archibald, 9 May 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338; Pierrepont Edwards to Bruce, 22 November 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-6-1-E, 517–24. For Millen’s account of the Fenian Brotherhood, see nli, Anderson Papers, MS 5964. 28 Davis, “Fenian Raid on New Brunswick,” 318. 29 Bruce to Gordon, 2 December 1865, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1 RS558/D/1b. The message was in code, but its meaning is clear from Gordon’s reactions and subsequent statements. See, for example, Saint Croix Courier, 9 December 1865; Gordon to Cardwell, 15 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 12; Gordon to James Hope, 15 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 16. 30 Gordon to the Mayor of Saint John, press clipping, 7 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 12. 31 Gordon to Cardwell, 15 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 12. 32 Gordon to Robertson, 15 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 16. 33 Gordon to Cardwell, 15 December 1865, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 12; Saint Croix Courier, 9 December 1865. 34 Saint Croix Courier, 16 December 1865. Bishop Thomas Connolly also wrote to Gordon, thanking him for his declaration and reaffirming Catholic loyalty. See F.J. Wilson, “Most Reverend Thomas L. Connolly,” 57.

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notes to pages 154–8

35 Peter M. Toner, communication with author, 8 February 2019. 36 Archibald to Bruce, 9 December 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R997-1562-3-E, vol. 45, 118–20. 37 Archibald to Michel, 13, 20, and 22 December 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1; Archibald to Gordon, 27 December 1865, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1 RS558/D/1b. 38 D. Thomas [Thomas Doyle] to J.S. [John Stewart] Wood, 28 December 1865, nai, Fenian A Files, A74; and 30 December 1865, A75. 39 Archibald to Gordon, 21 and 27 February 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 8. 40 Saint Croix Courier, 3 February 1866. 41 Archibald to Monck, 3 March 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. See also Vesey, “When New Brunswick Suffered,” 199. 42 Archibald to Monck, 3 March 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 43 Anderson to Gordon, 24 July 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 9. 44 Ibid. 45 Gordon to Hastings Doyle, 14 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17. 46 Gordon to Wetmore, 16 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17. See also Anderson to Gordon, 24 July 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 9. 47 Gordon to Doyle, 14 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17; see above, 48. 48 Gordon to Marshall [Chief of Police, Saint John], 14 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17; Gordon to T. Howe, 14 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17. The list has not survived; the only suspected Fenian mentioned in the correspondence is a man named Mullin. 49 Gordon to Colonel John Ambler Cole, 15 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17; Gordon to Cole, 16 March 1866, MHG 12a, box 3, file 17; Gordon to Hood, 16 March 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17. 50 Archibald to Clarendon, 21 March 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A126. 51 Archibald to Gordon, 28 March 1866, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1, RS558/D/1b. 52 Irish People (New York), 7 April 1866.

notes to pages 158–6 0

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53 World, 5 April 1866, republished in Globe, 7 and 12 April 1866. 54 Archibald to Clarendon, 7 April 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A133. 55 Archibald to Gordon, 7 April 1866, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1, RS558/D/1b. See also Archibald to Bruce, 5 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1598-2-E, vol. 45, 277–80. 56 Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, vol. 2, 271–2. 57 Archibald to Clarendon, 8 May 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A143. 58 Globe, 12 April 1866; Irish American, 21 April 1866; Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 59 Tilley to Macdonald, 21 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 51, 20190; for the conspiracy theory, see Morning Freeman, 21 April 1866. 60 Archibald to Clarendon, 8 May 1866, nai, Fenian A Files, A143. 61 Archibald to Bruce, 5 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1598-2-E, vol. 45, 277–80. 62 Archibald to Gordon, 11 April 1866, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1, RS558/D/1b. 63 The Globe, 9 April 1866, reported that 70 had come from Boston, and Millen told Archibald that 80 to 90 had left from New York; see Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. Charles Brydges received information that the total in Portland was 200; see Deposition of Charles Brydges, 9 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22946–8. David Main of the Saint Croix Courier reckoned that about 80 to 100 arrived in Eastport on 10 April and that another 60 to 80 came two days later; see Saint Croix Courier, 14 April 1866. 64 The E.H. Pray was mistakenly called the “Ocean Spray” by the secretary of the United States Navy, Gideon Welles, and historians have generally followed suit. However, as Harold Davis and Michael Ruddy have demonstrated, Patrick Sinnott, the Eastport Sentinel, and the customs collector at Eastport all called the schooner the E.H. Pray – and they were in a much better position to know than was Welles. See Davis, “Fenian Raid on New Brunswick,” 326n59; and Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 285–6n55. 65 [William H. Grace], “Letter from a Prominent Fenian,” Boston Post, 26 April 1866, newspaper cutting, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 231. One of Killian’s aides was named McDermott. David Main described him as “a rough Irish lad, evidently lacking in brains, judgment and experience, as quiet as a mouse in the presence of his master, but garrulous and bombastic when the

444

notes to pages 160–3 latter is out of sight”; see Saint Croix Courier, 14 April 1866. Contrary to the speculations of historians such as Harold Davis and Robert Dallison, this was not Jim McDermott. Jim McDermott had been promoted to major general and appointed “Chief of Supplies”; see World, 5 April 1866, quoted in Globe, 7 April 1866. As such, he was needed in New York, and the Irish People (New York), 14 April 1866, reported that Jim McDermott was still in the city during the Campobello expedition. The more likely candidate for the “rough Irish lad” was John McDermott, who would later be involved in a fracas with New Brunswick border guards on the bridge between Calais and St Stephen; see Saint Croix Courier, 28 April 1866; and below, 163.

66 Saint Croix Courier, 14 April 1866. 67 Ibid.; Archibald to Bruce, 11 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1603-2-E, vol. 45, 295–7. 68 Saint Croix Courier, 14 April 1866. 69 Archibald to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 70 Anderson to Gordon, 24 July 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 9. 71 Dallison, Turning Back the Fenians, 84. 72 Gordon to Doyle, 15 April 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17; Archibald to Gordon, 14 April 1866, panb, Records of the Regular Military, RG1, RS558/D/1b. 73 Gordon to Cardwell, 18 April 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 13. 74 Bruce to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 195–200; B. Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations, 136–9; Davis, “Fenian Raid on New Brunswick,” 326–8; Dallison, Turning Back the Fenians, 78–9; Bruce to Clarendon, 12 April 1866, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 192; Bruce to Clarendon, 17 April 1866, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 195–200; Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 2, 486. 75 Gordon to Cardwell, 18 April 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 13. 76 Gordon to Cardwell, 20 April 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 2, file 13. 77 Ibid.

445

notes to pages 163– 6 78 Saint Croix Courier, 28 April 1866.

79 Saint Croix Courier, 28 April 1866, 5 May 1866; [William H. Grace], “Letter from a Prominent Fenian,” Boston Post, 26 April 1866, newspaper cutting, tna, Foreign Office, Embassy and Consulates, FO 115/453, 231. 80 Saint Croix Courier, 19 May 1866. 81 Irish People (New York), 19 May 1866. 82 Saint Croix Courier, 5 May 1866. 83 Gordon to Doyle, 3 May 1866, unba, Stanmore Papers, MGH 12a, box 3, file 17. 84 Archibald to Bruce, 23 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1612-3-E, vol. 45, 327–30. 85 Monck to Macdonald, 29 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23046–9.

chapter nine 1 [Killian?] to Cullen, 31 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22952. 2 Prince to Macdonald, 7 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22954–61; Prince to McMicken, 7 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103488–9. 3 Globe, 7 April 1866. 4 The others were Edward Kelly, Michael Stafford, Thomas Hanton, and Daniel Harnett. Hanton had been named by Detective Patrick Nolan on 31 December 1865 as the head centre of the second Fenian circle in Toronto; see Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 31 December 1865, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 236, 103110–3. Daniel Harnett would subsequently join the most radical Fenian circle in the city; see chapter 12, note 17. 5 Macdonald to Ermatinger, 9 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22916. 6 Cartier to Macdonald, 10 April 1866, vol. 57, 22923; Galt to Macdonald, 10 April 1866, vol. 57, 22924. 7 Globe, 11 April 1866. 8 W.C. Allen [mayor of Cornwall] to Macdonald, 10 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22919; Globe, 12 April 1866. 9 On Macdonald’s disapproval of their actions, see Allen to Macdonald, 10 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22918; and Macdonald to Allen, 11 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 512/1, 163–4. 10 Globe, 11 April 1866. 11 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103568–74. 12 Irish Canadian, 18 April 1866.

446

notes to pages 166– 72

13 Globe, 12 April 1866. 14 Archibald to Bruce, 29 March 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1591-X-E, vol. 45, 249–52. 15 Alexander Campbell to Macdonald, 13 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 194, 80709. See also Globe, 14, 17 April 1866; and Archibald to Bruce, 18 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1610-X-E, vol. 45, 321–4. 16 William Allen to D. McIntyre, 20 September 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15; Irish Canadian, 9 May 1866. 17 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103568–74. See also Clarke to McMicken, 13 June 1866, vol. 237, 104110–11. 18 McMicken to Macdonald, 16 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103545–6; 17 April 1866, vol. 57, 22997; and 18 April 1866, vol. 237, 103568–74; Bethune to McMicken, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103558. 19 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103568–74. 20 Globe, 17 April 1866. The song “No Irish Need Apply” was written around 1862. On its popularity and its place in Irish nationalist culture, see Jensen, “‘No Irish Need Apply,’” esp. 407–9. 21 Globe, 12 April 1866. 22 Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866. 23 Ibid.; McMicken to Macdonald, 18 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103568–74. 24 Jacob Pringle to Macdonald, 20 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23015. 25 Irish Canadian, 2 and 9 May 1866. 26 Irish Canadian, 25 April 1866. 27 “Official Report of General T.W. Sweeny, Secretary of War,” September 1866, in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 255–6. 28 Ibid., 256–7; Irish American, 28 April 1866; Irish Canadian, 9 May 1866. 29 Slattery to Sweeny, 9 May 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 30 A.L. Morrison to Sweeny, 13 May 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 31 Fallon to Sweeny, 23 and 27 May 1866, nypl, Sweeny Papers. 32 “Official Report of General T.W. Sweeny, Secretary of War,” September 1866, in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 259. 33 Archibald to Bruce, 17 April 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1609-3-E, vol. 45, 318–20.

notes to pages 17 3–6

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34 McLeod to Macdonald, 25 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23036–9; and 30 April 1866, vol. 57, 23053–4. 35 McLeod to Macdonald, 25 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23036–9. 36 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103498–500. 37 Hemans to McMicken, 20 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103583–5; McMicken to Macdonald, 26 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103616. 38 Hemans to McMicken, 30 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103626; and 9 May 1866, vol. 237, 103683–5; Hemans to Napier, 30 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23056. 39 Hemans to McMicken, 17 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103554–7. On British and Canadian defence measures, see Cardwell to Monck, 7 April 1866, lac, British Military and Naval Records, RG8-I, vol. 185, 37–8; W.G. Romaine to Sir Frederick Rogers, 13 April 1866, lac, British Military and Naval Records, RG8I, vol. 185, 48–54; J. Hope to Monck, 1 May 1866, lac, British Military and Naval Records, RG8-I, vol. 185, 72–5; “Report of Steamers Hired and Fitted as Gun Boats for Service in the St Lawrence,” n.d., lac, British Military and Naval Records, RG8-I, vol. 185, 123. 40 Hemans to Macdonald, 12 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22976–7; Hemans to McMicken, 17 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103554–7. 41 Nightingale to McMicken, 21 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103601–2; and 25 April 1866, vol. 237, 103613–5. 42 Nightingale to McMicken, 27 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103618–9. 43 Prince to McMicken, 27 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103621–2. 44 Clarke to James Bell, 3 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103636–7. 45 Clarke to McMicken, 8 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103671–3. 46 Clarke to McMicken, 11 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103703; 15 May 1866, vol. 237, 103739; and 18 May 1866, vol. 237, 103755–7; McMicken to Macdonald, 17 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103745–7. See also Mcneil Clarke to McMicken, 12 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103749–50. 47 Ryan to L. Martin [Ermatinger?], 25 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 23091. 48 McLaughlin to McMicken, 10 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103692–4. See also McLaughlin to McMicken, 11 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103705–8; and Tupper to McMicken, 11 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103711. 49 Hemans to McMicken, 9 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103683–5. 50 Hemans to McMicken, 19 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103761–3.

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n ote s to pag e s 1 7 6 –8 1

51 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103607–10. 52 James Allen to Macdonald, 7 May 1866, McMicken Fonds, vol. 237, 103662–3. 53 Yeoward to McMicken, 8 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103675–6. 54 McMicken to Macdonald, 17 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103745–7; Macdonald to Thomas McConkey, 21 May 1866, vol. 512/1, 236. 55 McGee to John Wodehouse, 25 May 1866, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Archive of John Wodehouse. 56 Archibald to Bruce, 23 May 1866, lac, Correspondence of Sir Frederick William Augustus Bruce, R977-1616-0-E, vol. 45, 341–3. 57 Hemans to McMicken, 26 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103799–801. 58 Tupper to McMicken, 28 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103809. 59 McMicken to Macdonald, 29 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103816–7. 60 J. Wilson [McLaughlin] to McMicken, 29 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103819–20. 61 Clarke to McMicken, 30 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103826. 62 Harvey Prentice Dwight to McMicken, 30 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103830. 63 Hemans to McMicken, 30 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103829. 64 Quoted in Vronsky, Ridgeway, 79. 65 McMicken to Macdonald, 10 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104063, where he dated the telegram to Napier 31 May 1866. In a later letter to Macdonald, 11 July 1866, vol. 58, 23255–9, McMicken dated the telegram 30 May 1866. 66 McLaughlin to Macdonald, 31 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103838–45. 67 Ibid., 103846–53. 68 Tupper to Bell, 31 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103859–60. 69 McGee to McMicken, 31 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103855; Macdonald to McMicken, 31 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103854. 70 Vronsky, Ridgeway, 60–80. 71 McMicken to Macdonald, 17 May 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103745–7. 72 Fox, John C. O’Neill; Stacey, “O’Neill, John”; John O’Neill, “A Report of the Battle of Ridgeway,” in O’Neill, Official Report, 37. 73 Vronsky, Ridgeway, 37–8, 49. 74 [Thomas Sweeney], “To the People of British America,” quoted in J.A. MacDonald, Troublous Times, 30. 75 Gregg and Roden, Trials of the Fenian Prisoners, 90–1; McMicken to Macdonald, 11 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 587, 23255–9.

notes to pages 181–9 2

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76 J.A. MacDonald, Troublous Times, 28–9; Vronsky, Ridgeway, 53–8. 77 This account is based largely on Vronsky, Ridgeway, 60–200, the best and most comprehensive history of the battles at Limestone Ridge and Fort Erie. 78 O’Neill, Official Report, 38. 79 Ibid., 39–40. 80 On the Fenian incursion into Canada East, see Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 76–84; Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 109–29; and Klein, When the Irish Invaded Canada, 110–30.

chapter ten 1 Nation (Dublin), 16 June 1866. 2 See chapter 1, note 83. 3 Hemans to McMicken, 16 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104137–8. 4 D’Arcy, Fenian Movement in the United States, 182–90; B. Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations, 175–214. 5 Bruce to Clarendon, 18 June 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338, 214–17. 6 Vronsky, Ridgeway, 204–54. 7 Wright and Binnie, eds, Canadian State Trials, vol. 3, 590–2. 8 Brown, “‘Stars and Shamrocks,’” 39–40. 9 Nine of the Irish-born had been in the Union Army; the other three – including the only Protestant in the group – had fought with the Confederates. See “Description of Fenian Prisoners Arrived in Toronto,” lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2 , vol. 15, 601. 10 See, for example, John McNab to Macdonald, 29 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 759, and the files of Thomas Dennison, vol. 15, 758, and David Hamill, vol. 15, 639; Burton [Nolan] to McMicken, 6 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103986–7; and Allen to McMicken, 7 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 103989–90. 11 Harrison to James Cockburn, 11 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 601. 12 Prince to Macdonald, 13 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 638. 13 Clarke to McMicken, 13 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104110–11; Sheriff Woodruff, 13 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 627.

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notes to pages 192–6

14 Harrison to McMicken, 12 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104100–02; McLaughlin to McMicken, 19 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104163–5; Harrison to McMicken, 27 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104207–8. 15 Tupper to McMicken, 7 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104015–6; 11 June 1866, vol. 237, 104087; and 22 June 1866, vol. 104179–83; Gregg and Roden, Trials of the Fenian Prisoners, 84–138. 16 McMicken to Macdonald, 10 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104063–8. 17 Oliver, ed., Conventional Man, entry for 14 June 1866, 278; Irish Canadian, 13 July 1866, 29 April and 19 August 1868. Archbishop John Joseph Lynch would later claim, with considerable exaggeration, that 7,000 Irish Catholics had fled the city between 1866 and 1868; see Lynch to William Walsh, 27 May 1887, Dublin Diocesan Archives, Walsh Papers. 18 Clarke to McMicken, 13 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104110–11; and 19 June 1866, vol. 237, 104159–62. 19 Daly to Macdonald, 1 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23241–3. 20 Clarke to McMicken, 19 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104159–62. John Maguire was not the same person as the John McGuire who had stored pikes in 1864; McGuire the pikeman had been arrested on 9 June by the order of Crown solicitor Robert Harrison. Oliver, ed., Conventional Man, entry for 9 June 1866, 277; Irish Canadian, 13 June 1866. 21 Crown Circular, 21 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 667. 22 Macdonald to Moylan, 19 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 512/2, 457–8. 23 Macdonald to Rolland MacDonald, 29 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 533, 188. 24 Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 94–5; Irish Canadian, 6 July 1866. 25 Chilton Mewburn to Macdonald, 16 June 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 658. 26 Bruce to Monck, 11 June 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338, 130–2. 27 Bruce to Monck, 13 June 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338, 222–6. 28 Bruce to Monck, 15 June 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338, 228. On Seward’s statement, see B. Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations, 156.

notes to pages 196–9

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29 Bruce to Monck, 13 June 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1338, 222–6. 30 Carnarvon to Monck, 7 July 1866, in Correspondence Respecting the Recent Fenian Aggression upon Canada, 79; see also Cardwell to Monck, 30 June 1866, 78–9, and Carnarvon to Monck, 24 November 1866, 82. 31 Brown, “‘Stars and Shamrocks,’” 35. 32 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104548–9. 33 Clarke to McMicken, 2 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104725–8. On the Fenian sister, see Sullivan [Clarke] to McMicken, 31 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 234, 100866–8. 34 McMicken to Macdonald, 22 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104614–7. 35 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104548–9. 36 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104338–40. 37 Nolan to McMicken, 23 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104353–4. 38 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104371–4; Clarke to McMicken, 6 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104485–7. 39 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104338–40; and 16 November 1867, vol. 239, 106298–301; Clarke to McMicken, 18 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106310–13. 40 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104338–40; Whitney to McMicken, 16 July 1866, vol. 238, 104308–11; and 1 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104721–3. In fact, Whitney wound up staying in Chicago. 41 “Statement of Detective Force Employed” and “Memorandum of the Present Strength, Station and Pay of the Provincial Detective Force in Upper Canada,” both in McMicken to Macdonald, 20 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104334–7. 42 On Canty, see Tupper to McMicken, 7 June 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 237, 104015–16; and McMicken to Macdonald, 4 August 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 952. 43 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104548–9; and 22 October 1866, vol. 238, 105099–102. 44 Clarke to McMicken, 18 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104598–601; and 23 August 1866, vol. 238, 104624; Clarke to Schryer, 24 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104867.

452

notes to pages 199– 202

45 McMicken to Campbell, 27 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105410–3. 46 Armstrong to McMicken, 29 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105573–5. See also W. Smith to McMicken, 9 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105619. 47 Clarke to McMicken, 16 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104299–302; 24 July 1866, vol. 238, 104356–9; and 25 July 1866, vol. 238, 104377–80. 48 Tupper to McMicken, 5 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104482. 49 McLaughlin to McMicken, 2 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104457–60. 50 Clarke to McMicken, 6 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104483–4. 51 McMicken to Macdonald, 29 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104941–4. 52 McMicken to Macdonald, 25 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104894– 9; and 29 September 1866, vol. 238, 104941–4; Clarke to McMicken, 13 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105058. 53 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104714–7; Keane to McMicken, 1 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104449–50; 8 September 1866, vol. 238, 104755–6; 10 October 1866, vol. 238, 105042–4; 25 October 1866, vol. 238, 105107–9; 19 November 1866, vol. 238, 105209–12; and 17 December 1866, vol. 238, 105362–4; McMicken to Campbell, 14 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105506–9. 54 Feely to Cockburn, 19 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23534–7; Cockburn to Macdonald, 24 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23531–3. See also Pierrepont Edwards to Dennis Godley, 20 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23772–5. 55 McMicken to Macdonald, 28 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104661–6. 56 Tupper to McMicken, 3 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104474–6; McLaughlin to McMicken, 2 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104457–60. 57 McMicken to Macdonald, 22 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104614–7; Irish American, 1 September 1866. 58 Clarke to McMicken, 8 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104272–5; Tupper to McMicken, 31 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104699–700. See above, 143. 59 Amm to McMicken, 15 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104802–3; Burton to McMicken, 1 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104959–65. 60 Amm to McMicken, 3 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104470; Clarke to McMicken, 24 July 1866, vol. 238, 104356–9.

notes to pages 202– 5

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61 Allen to McMicken, 26 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104338–9; and 3 August 1866, vol. 238, 104466–8. 62 John Murphy [Clarke] to McMicken, 30 November 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105266–9 (on the lawyer, whose name was Michael Sullivan); Allen to McMicken, 21 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104842 (on the labourer, whose name was Bill Davis); P. Maguire to Macdonald, 12 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23505–6 (on Fenian organizers in Peterborough and Lindsay); Aaron Maguire to Macdonald, 24 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23627–31 (on the mass refusal to join the Volunteers). 63 James Muir to McMicken, 18 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 1048346. See also Muir to William Draper, 27 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104649-52. 64 Tupper to McMicken, 4 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105195–7. 65 Bruce to Monck, September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 74, 28945–51. 66 Irish American, 4 August 1866. 67 Irish Canadian, 20 July 1866; see also 13 July 1866. 68 Tupper to McMicken, 24 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104891–2. 69 Tupper to McMicken, 31 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104699–700. 70 Oliver, ed., Conventional Man, entries for 5 and 20 November 1866, 285–6. 71 McMicken to Macdonald, 22 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105099–102. 72 Tupper to McMicken, 4 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238 105195–7. 73 Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6 (1879), 540. 74 Globe, 3 September 1866; Canadian Freeman, 6 September 1866; Irish Canadian, 7 and 16 September 1866. 75 Grand Jury, 17 September 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 15, 516. The three who remained – Daniel Harnett, Edward Kelly, and Edward Keys – did so only because they believed that they would eventually be released and wanted to stay in Canada. They made the right decision; after being brought to Toronto in October, they were quietly released without trial. 76 Macdonald to Monck, 17 September 1866, lac, Monck Fonds, MG27-I-B1. 77 McMicken to Macdonald, 28 August 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104661–6. 78 McMicken to Macdonald, 7 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104745–7. 79 Clarke to McMicken, 2 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104725–8; and 11 September 1866, vol. 238, 104763–7. He signed his letters to McMicken “Clarke Sullivan,” but the events that followed indicate that he was going by the name of Cornelius O’Sullivan.

454

notes to pages 205–1 0

80 Compare Clarke to McMicken, 5 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104729–30, with Clarke to McMicken, 11 September 1866, vol. 238, 104763–7. 81 McMicken to Macdonald, 29 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104941–4. 82 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 22 August 1867; Nolan to McMicken, 15 November 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105201. 83 Clarke to McMicken, 7 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104738–44; McMicken to Macdonald, 7 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104745–7. 87 Clarke to McMicken, 11 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104763–7. 85 Clarke to McMicken, 2 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104977–80. 86 Clarke to McMicken, 24 October 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105103. 87 Clarke to McMicken, 22 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105385–8. Newcomb did not reveal to Woods that Clarke’s mission was to infiltrate the Fenians. 88 Clarke to McMicken, 28 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105414–16. 89 Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51.

chapter eleven 1 John Smith [Tevis] to Bruce, 7 January 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A250; Bruce to Lord Stanley, 8 January 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A250; Clarke to McMicken, 3 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105448–51. 2 Mothersill to McMicken, 9 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 1053124–5; McMicken to Campbell, 12 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105325–7. See also Mothersill to McMicken, 11 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105549–50; and McMicken to Campbell, 7 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105699–702. 3 McMicken to Campbell, 24 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105393–4. 4 Campbell to Macdonald, 19 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23737–9. 5 McMicken to Campbell, 7 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105479–81; McGee and McCabe, “Meany, Stephen Joseph.” 6 McMicken to Campbell, 15 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105514–6. 7 McMicken to Campbell, 14 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105506–9. 8 Amm to McMicken, 28 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105558–9; Allen to McMicken, 12 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105643–6. McMicken

notes to pages 2 11–15

455

wrote that he had fired three men, and Coulter does not appear in the subsequent reports. 9 Campbell to Macdonald, 19 January 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23737–9. See also E.J. Burton to McMicken, 28 January 1867, vol. 239, 105560–2. 10 McMicken to Campbell, 12 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105625–6. 11 McMicken to Campbell, 24 November 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105225–7. 12 McMicken to Campbell, 24 December 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 105393–4. 13 Clarke to McMicken, 4 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105458–9; Edwards to Stanley, 2 and 8 January 1867, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1341. 14 Clarke to McMicken, 4 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105458–9; B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 78–9. 15 Clarke to McMicken, 28 January 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105563–5; 15 February 1867, vol. 239, 105633; and 21 February 1867, vol. 239, 105662. 16 Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 218–27; B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 80–2; Ó Concubhair, ‘Fenians Were Dreadful Men,’ 86–124. 17 Takagami, “Fenian Rising in Dublin”; Ramón, Provisional Dictator, 229–33; Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 36–45. 18 Salyer, Under the Starry Flag. For a different view of Warren, see B. Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations, 237–44. 19 J. Wilson [McLaughlin] to McMicken, 18 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105649–51; McMicken to Campbell, 22 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105664–7. 20 McMicken to Campbell, 19 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105652–4; and 7 March 1867, vol. 239, 105669–702. 21 McMicken to Hemans, 26 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105672–3. 22 McMicken to Campbell, 13 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105728–31. 23 McMicken to Campbell, 7 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105699–702; 12 March 1867, vol. 239, 105724–6; and 13 March 1867, vol. 239, 105728–31. 24 Clarke to McMicken, 20 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105763–70; and 26 March 1867, vol. 239, 105787–9. 25 Mothersill to McMicken, 25 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105778; 1 April 1867, vol. 239, 105803–4; and 8 April 1867, vol. 239, 105824–5. 26 McMicken to Campbell, 3 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105808–10; and 6 April 1867, vol. 239, 105820–3. 27 McMicken to Campbell, 30 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105900–2, in which McMicken refers to Campbell’s order of 20 April 1867.

456

notes to pages 2 1 5–1 7

28 Mothersill to McMicken, 15 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105852–5. 29 McMicken to Campbell, 30 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105900–2; and 8 May 1867, vol. 239, 105915–18. 30 McMicken to Campbell, 30 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105900–2; “Disbursements Incurred on Account of Special Service in Month of June 1867,” Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106087; “Account of Disbursements on Special Service in the Month of July 1867,” Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106161; McMicken to Macdonald, 21 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106358–62. American operations cost $235.50 in August; see “Account of Disbursements on Special Service in the Month of August 1867,” Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106196–7. In October, the American amount was $181; see “Details of Disbursements on Account of Special Service in October 1867,” Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106275. For the figure of $150,000, see Carl Betke and Stan Horrall, Canada’s Security Service: An Historical Outline, 1864–1966 (Ottawa: rcmp Historical Section, 1978), 607, cited in Whitaker, Kealey, and Parnaby, Secret Service, 29. 31 McMicken to Macdonald, 28 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105962–6; and 30 May 1867, vol. 239, 105970–3. 32 McMicken to Macdonald, 4 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105989–92. Of the $650 spent on American operations in June, $156, including a $24 United States customs duty, was taken up with the purchase and transportation of the pony. 33 Fitzpatrick to George Lewis, 3 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23790–1; Lewis to Macdonald, 7 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23788–9. 34 Macdonald to McMicken, 29 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 513, 535. 35 Edwards to Dennis Godley, 1 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23821–5; Archibald to Godley, 20 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23850–5. Michael Slattery is not to be confused with the Slattery whom Edwards had mentioned in a letter to Godley some two months earlier; see Edwards to Godley, 27 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23776–9. The Slattery mentioned in the earlier letter was described as having a dark beard and a brother in Ottawa who was a dry goods merchant and unconnected with Fenianism. Michael Slattery had no beard, a sandy coloured moustache, and a very different kind of brother. 36 Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, McMicken Fonds, vol. 239, 106014–20. On Clarke’s contact with Fitzpatrick, see Clarke to McMicken, 26 March 1867, McMicken Fonds, vol. 239, 105787–9; and 15 April 1867, vol. 239, 105848–50.

notes to pages 2 17– 20

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37 Archibald, ed., Life and Letters, 166–70; McMicken to Macdonald, 18 January 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 242, 107718–20. 38 Clarke to McMicken, 26 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105787–9 (on the March meetings with O’Sullivan and Fitzpatrick); and 8 June 1867, vol. 239, 106014–20, 106021–4, 106025–8. 39 Edwards to Godley, 1 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23821–5; Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, McMicken Fonds, vol. 239, 106014–20; 10 June 1867, vol. 239, 106032–3; and 18 June 1867, vol. 239, 106049, 106053; McMicken to Macdonald, 17 June 1867, vol. 239, 106046–7. 40 D’Arcy, Fenian Movement in the United States, 259–60; “Report of D. O’Sullivan on His Mission to Ireland, to Gen. John O’Neill,” in Seventh National Congress, F.B., 5–39. 41 Mothersill to Macdonald, 28 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106079–80; Kavanagh [Mothersill] to McMicken, 1 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106156–7; McMicken to Macdonald, 3 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106158–60. 42 Montgomery to McMicken, 12 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106038–40; and 27 June 1867, vol. 239, 106076–7. 43 Montgomery to McMicken, 27 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106076–7; and 4 July 1867, vol. 239, 106106–7. 44 Montgomery to McMicken, 10 July 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106124–; and 24 July 1867, vol. 239, 106149–51. 45 Montgomery to McMicken, 10 July 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106124–7; and 6 August 1867, vol. 239, 106163–8. 46 Montgomery to McMicken, 6 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106163–8. 47 “Report of D. O’Sullivan on His Mission to Ireland, to Gen. John O’Neill,” in Seventh National Congress, F.B., 14–15; Comerford, Fenians in Context, 156–8. 48 Archibald to Godley, 20 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23850–5; Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 57–8, 99; William West to Seward, 23 September 1865, in Library of Congress, United States Congressional Serial Set, vol. 1339, 9–10; West to Thomas Larcom, 20 April 1866, in Library of Congress, United States Congressional Serial Set, vol. 1339, 219. 49 Montgomery to McMicken, 17 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106171–3; and 10 September 1867, vol. 239, 106198–9. 50 Clarke to McMicken, 10 April 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105826–8; and 16 May 1867, vol. 239, 105946–7.

458

notes to pages 220–4

51 Clarke to McMicken, 30 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106082–4; and 4 July 1867, 106102–4.

chapter twelve 1 Clarke to McMicken, 23 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106064–5. 2 Clarke to McMicken, 26 March 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105787–9. 3 Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106014–20. 4 Clarke to McMicken, 23 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106064–5. 5 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106201–4. 6 Ibid. 7 Clarke to McMicken, 9 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 108549–52. 8 Archibald to Dennis Godley, 3 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23862–8. 9 Montgomery to McMicken, 10 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106198–9. 10 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106201–4. 11 Montgomery to McMicken, 14 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106209–11; 26 September 1867, vol. 239, 106228–30; and 8 October 1867, vol. 239, 106246–7. 12 Montgomery to McMicken, 26 September 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106228–30; McMicken to Macdonald, 3 October 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106237. 13 Montgomery to McMicken, 8 October 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106246–7. 14 Mothersill to McMicken,10 October 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106250; “Details of Disbursements on Account of Special Service in October 1867,” Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106275. 15 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106288– 91; Clarke to McMicken, 8 June 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106025–8. 16 Report of 5 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106280–2; Charles Drinkwater to McMicken, 13 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514, 246; McMicken to Macdonald, 18 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106314–15. 17 I thank Bridget Hager for alerting me to the Burns-Gallagher correspondence.

notes to pages 22 4– 6

459

Burns to Gallagher, 18 and 24 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. For Mary Harnett, see C.E. Anderson & Co.’s Toronto City Directory for 1868–9, 126. On Daniel Harnett’s membership in the circle and its overlap with the Hibernian Benevolent Society, see Charles Fallis to McMicken, 21 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106927–31. On Bourke, see Quinn, “Bourke, Thomas Francis.” There is no evidence that Bourke stayed in Toronto long enough to have met Edward O’Meagher Condon, William Mackey Lomasney, or Murtagh Moriarty. But his trajectory – fighting in the Civil War (on the Confederate side in his case), becoming a local leader of the Fenian rising, and being sentenced to death, reprieved, and amnestied – was broadly similar to theirs. 18 Burns to Gallagher, 18 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 19 Burns to Gallagher, 30 January 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 20 Burns to Gallagher, 18 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 21 Burns to Gallagher, 19 January 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 22 Burns to Gallagher, 17 February 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 23 Burns to Gallagher, 19 January 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 24 Burns to Gallagher, 18 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 25 Burns to Gallagher, 17 February 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 26 Burns to Gallagher, 1 June 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection; Semple, “Fenian Infiltration.” 27 Burns to Gallagher, 4 July 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 28 Burns to Gallagher, 24 November 1867, 1 June 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 29 Burns to Gallagher, 16 August 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 30 Burns to Gallagher, 18 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection.

460

notes to pages 226–9

31 Burns to Gallagher, 30 January, 7 April, and 1 June 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 32 Burns to Gallagher, 18 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 33 Thomas Hynes to Gallagher, 28 September 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 34 Burns to Gallagher, 16 August 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 35 Fallis to McMicken, 21 May 1868, McMicken Fonds, vol. 240, 106927–31. 36 Ricard O’Sullivan Burke, quoted in Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 240–3; Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston), vol. 2, no. 6, 539–43; B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 104–8, 118–34. 37 [Unknown] to McMicken, 1 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106277–9. 38 Condon to Macdonald, 26 February 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22688–90. For Thomas Condon’s spy reports to Macdonald, see 15 March 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 57, 22688–90; 21 March 1866, vol. 57, 22816–17; 22 March 1866, vol. 57, 22824–6; and 2 April 1866, vol. 57, 22881–4. 39 James Donovan to Macdonald, 22 November 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 340, 155688. 40 B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 135–7. 41 “Edward Shore or E. O’M Condon,” tna, Home Office Papers, HO 45/9348, 25943; Condon to Thornton, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 237–9. Among those who signed a letter testifying to Thomas Condon’s good character was John Hillyard Cameron, the former grand master of the Orange Order. Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s signature was conspicuously absent. 42 Condon to Macdonald, 9 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341, 155788–91. 43 Condon to Macdonald, 28 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341, 155840–3. 44 On the shootings in Dublin, see Kennerk, Shadow of the Brotherhood. See also the reports of Superintendent Daniel Ryan of the Dublin Metropolitan Police that there was “a special circle for the assassination of the crown officials, jurors, witnesses and Police.” tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1537/1. 45 House of Commons Debates, 1st Parliament, 1st Session, 21 November 1867, 108, and 29 November 1867, 158–9, Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources. 46 Rose, Manchester Martyrs, 65–83, 112–22; Owens, “Constructing the Martyrs,” 24–8; O. McGee, “‘God Save Ireland,’” 39–42.

notes to pages 229–35

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47 Burns to Gallagher, 24 November 1867, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 48 Christian Norman file, January 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13A-2, vol. 18, 62. 49 Kelly to Macdonald, 10 December 1867, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,189/13. 50 Monck to Buckingham, 12 December 1867, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,189/13. 51 Archibald to Monck, 12 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23919–21. 52 Monck to Archibald, 11–14 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23916; Archibald to Monck, 12 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23919–21; Monck to Buckingham, 14 December 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 53 B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 148–60. 54 Buckingham to Abercorn, 18 December 1867, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,189/13. 55 [Unknown] to [unknown], 18 December 1867; [unknown] to Aberdeen, 18 December 1867; Birch to [unknown], 19 December 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 56 George Kelly, receipt for $100, 18 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 36, 14049. 57 Kelly to Monck, 20, 24, and 27 December 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 58 B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 148; Andrew Jameson to Buckingham, 23 October 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 59 Buckingham to Queen Victoria, 4 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 60 P. Kennedy, “Secret Service Department,” 102–12; Feilding to Mayo, 16 December 1867, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,151. 61 Monck to Macdonald, 27 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 75, 29169–70; Monck, McMicken, Clarke, and Mothersill to Buckingham, 31 December 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 62 Monck to Buckingham, 1 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 63 Monck to Buckingham, 7 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742; Monck to Macdonald, 29 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 75, 29218. 64 Hardy to Mayo, 9 January 1868, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,189/14. 65 Buckingham to Monck, 9 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 66 Hardy to Buckingham, 17 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742. 67 Monck, McMicken, Clarke, and Mothersill to Buckingham, 31 December 1867, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742.

462

notes to pages 235–4 1

68 Monck to Macdonald, 30 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 75, 29172–4. 69 Monck to Buckingham, 1 January 1868, bl, Hardy Collection, Add. Ms 43742; Monck to Macdonald, 31 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 75, 29175–6. 70 P. Kennedy, “Secret Service Department,” 118. 71 Feilding to Mayo, 16 December 1867, nli, Mayo Papers, MS 11,151. 72 Clarke to McMicken, 28 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106410–13. 73 Mothersill to McMicken, 11 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106533–4. 74 Clarke to McMicken, 17 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240,106560–5; and 1 April 1868, vol. 240,106668–74. 75 Clarke to McMicken, 17 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240,106560–5. 76 Mothersill to McMicken, 9 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106858–60. 77 Robert Anderson memorandum, 1 June 1868, in James Fergusson to Buckingham, 1 June 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 188–91. 78 Ibid.; Buckingham to Monck, 4 June 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 192. On O’Callaghan, see “New Reformation in Ireland.” Clarke also attracted the attention of the police in King’s County, where he was arrested on suspicion of Fenianism and subsequently discharged. 79 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107109. 80 Clarke to McMicken, 26 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107116–17. 81 Macdonald to McMicken, 22 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/4, 1142; Clarke to McMicken, 22 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107533–44. 82 Clarke to McMicken, 13 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105929–33; and 14 May 1867, vol. 239, 105936–9. 83 Ottawa Times, 19 September 1868. 84 Ottawa Times, 21 September 1868. 85 Macdonald to McMicken, 22 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/4, 1142. 86 Fallis to McMicken, 19 December 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107641–3.

chapter thirteen 1 Archibald to Lord Stanley, 1 October 1867, nai, Fenian A Files, A291. 2 McMicken to Macdonald, 20 December 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 106353– 6; and 3 February 1868, vol. 240, 106419–20. 3 McMicken to Macdonald, 27 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106402–4. 4 Coursol to Macdonald, 16 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106546–7; Macdonald to Coursol, 23 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/3, 611.

notes to pages 2 4 2– 4

463

5 Rooney to Lousada, 4 February 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 33–4; Lousada to Monck, 10 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23960–2; Diary of James Rooney, 5 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 194–5; Rooney to Lousada, 14 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 231–2. The “Papineau war” refers to Lower Canada’s Rebellion of 1837, which was defeated by the British Army and by anglophone Canadian volunteers. 6 Lousada to Monck, 3 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 165. 7 Macdonald to Coursol, 12 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23959; and 21 February 1868, vol. 514/2, 523; Macdonald to Ermatinger, 12 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/2, 579; and 13 March 1868, vol. 514/2, 586. 8 Coursol to Macdonald, 17 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106458–9. 9 McLoughlin to Coursol, 18 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106572. Another possible candidate for John Ward was a moulder who lived on Kempt Street in the heart of Griffintown. Hughes could have been Louis Hughes, a monument builder, member of the St Patrick’s Society, and signer of the petition against Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s Wexford speech. See Montreal Directory for 1868–69, 194, 345. 10 Ermatinger to Macdonald, 16 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106549–51. 11 Rooney to Lousada, 24 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 278–9. 12 Ermatinger to Macdonald, 26 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106619–20. 13 McMicken to Macdonald, 30 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106652–5. 14 Rooney to Lousada, 24 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 278–9. 15 Rooney to Lousada, 7 May 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 377; 1 June 1868, 436; 3 June 1868, 434–5; and 4 June 1868, 446; Lousada to Stanley, 5 June 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 440–4. 16 Macdonald to McMicken, 26 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/2, 536. 17 McMicken to Macdonald, 4 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106497. See also Smith to McMicken, 19 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106581–5; and 24 March 1868, vol. 240, 106613–16. 18 Macdonald to McMicken, 26 February 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/2, 536. 19 Allen and Caldwell to McMicken, 5 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106685–8.

464

notes to pages 2 4 4–8

20 Smith to McMicken, 24 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106613–16. See also George Grant [George McMicken] to McMicken, 24 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106609–12. 21 Lawson, “Case Study of Fenianism.” 22 Smith to McMicken, 19 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106581–5; and 24 March 1868, vol. 240, 106613–16; McMicken to Macdonald, 14 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106735–7. 23 McMicken to Macdonald, 14 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106735–7. 24 Allen and Caldwell to McMicken, 5 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106685–8. 25 Ibid. 26 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 20 August 1867. 27 Ermatinger to Macdonald, 13 January 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106391. 28 Jonathan Ormond to Macdonald, 7 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76924. Unfortunately, as regards Ormond’s ophthalmological advice, McGee had been shot in the back of the head. 29 J.S.H. to N.W.B., 7 April 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76935. 30 McMicken to Macdonald, 7 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76939; William Prince to Edward O’Neill, 7 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76945; Patrick Cummings to James O’Reilly, 7 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76931. 31 Michel Mathieu to Hector Langevin, 11 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 24026–32. 32 F.W.L. Penton to Macdonald, 7 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76943; Coursol to Hewitt Bernard, 8 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76950, 76954. 33 Edward Clarke to Cartier, 8 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76952. 34 Wright to Macdonald, 10 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341, 155929–30. On the election campaign, see Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, vol. 2, 308–22. 35 Mcneil Clarke to Macdonald, 8 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76978. For other examples of celebrations, see John White to Macdonald, 8 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106707–8; Statement of John Clare, 16 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76970; H.C. Moore to Cartier, 20 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 24039; W. Lambert to Gilbert McMicken, 7 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106830–31; Rev. E.P. Roche to Bishop Horan, 15 April 1868, Archives of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Horan Papers, DC18 C18/19; Daly, “Sketches of Our Ancestors,” 2–3.

notes to pages 2 48–54

465

36 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” [1865], vol. 17, folder 7, file 45, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 37 Canadian Freeman, 9 April 1868. 38 Globe, 10 April 1868; William Buell Richards, “Trial Notes,” cua, McGee Collection, P0030, HA260, folder 1; Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 29–30. 39 Macdonald to David Morrison, 11 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514, 644–5. 40 McGee, “Account of the Attempts,” Montreal Gazette, 17, 20, and 22 August 1867; Montreal Herald, 22 and 23 August 1867. 41 Archibald to Monck, 16 September 1865, lac, Correspondence with the Colonial Office, RG7-G-10, vol. 1. 42 Irish American, 25 April 1868. See also Cheyenne Leader, 17 April 1868. 43 McMicken to Macdonald, 14 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106735–7. 44 Globe, 17 and 25 April 1868; Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868; Canadian Freeman, 17 September 1868; Alexander Powell’s Memorandum, in Montreal Gazette, 12 September 1868; Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 31–2, 39, 63–4. 45 Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 21. 46 Globe, 22 April 1868; testimony of Edward Storr, in “Trial of Patrick Buckley,” Globe, 17 April 1869. 47 Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 28. 48 Globe, 10 April 1868. At least two witnesses were needed to secure a conviction; on the legal issues involved, see B. Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 55–6. 49 Marriage certificate, 13 February 1867, St Patrick’s Basilica, Marriage Records 1867. I thank Sheila Hennessy-Brandl for this reference. 50 [Fitzpatrick] to Archibald, 9 April 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 340–2. 51 Rooney to Lousada, 7 May 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 377. 52 Globe, 20 October 1865. 53 O’Neill to Macdonald, 13 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76961–3. 54 “Papers re. Parties Charged with Fenianism in Ottawa,” 17 April 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 510. 55 Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868. 56 Guelph Evening Mercury, 17 April 1868. 57 P. Maguire to Macdonald, 30 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 24051–2; and 22 April 1868, vol. 59, 24047–8. 58 Archibald to Dennis Godley, 20 August 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 59, 23850–5; Sutherland, ed., Ottawa City, 144.

466

n ote s to pag e s 2 5 4 –6

59 Clarke to McMicken, 22 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107533–44. 60 Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868. 61 Ottawa Citizen, 29 May 1868; Francis Ritchie to McMicken, 6 August 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107309–11; Globe, 19 May 1868. 62 Wilson, “D’Arcy McGee Affair.” 63 [Fitzpatrick] to Archibald, 9 April 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 340–2. 64 Globe, 18 April 1868. 65 F.W. Campbell, medical certificate, 4 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341, 156021. 66 See above, 90, 138. 67 Coursol to Hewitt Bernard, 8 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106842. 68 Globe, 18 April 1868. 69 Globe, 6 May 1868; warrants of commitment, 4 May 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 584. 70 Clarke to McMicken, 10 May 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105922–6. 71 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 July 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 238, 104371–4; see above, 197. 72 Charles Fallis to McMicken, 23 March 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106602–4. 73 Clarke, “Religious Riot as Pastime,” 115–16, 118–19. 74 Warrants of commitment, 4 May 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13A-2, vol. 20, file 584. 75 Quoted in McMicken to Macdonald, 7 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106824–7. 76 Mahon to Murphy, 9 April 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106752–4. 77 Guelph Evening Mercury, 6 and 7 May 1868; reports on John Murphy, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585; James O’Reilly to Macdonald, 27 July 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 78 Macdonald to Hayes, Ottawa, 31 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514/3, 784. 79 Joseph Workman to Charles Clarke [not the detective], 14 April 1868, Archives of Ontario, Charles Clarke Fonds, F26. Joseph Workman was the superintendent of the Toronto-based asylum for “Insane and Lunatic persons”; Charles Clarke was a businessman, journalist, and supporter of the Liberal Party in Ontario. 80 Hamilton Times, 22 May 1868; Amos, Fenians in Australia, 45–77. Keith Amos argues that the assassin, Henry O’Farrell, was not a Fenian; however, O’Farrell clearly believed that he was one. 81 J.L.P. O’Hanly, “To the Hon. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, M.P.,” November 1867, vol. 17, folder 7, file 46, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11.

n ote s to pag e s 2 5 8 –62

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82 O’Hanly to John Hearn, 4 May 1868, vol. 1, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 83 Globe, 29 May 1868. 84 Globe, 17 April 1869. See also Globe, 29 May 1868; Guelph Evening Mercury, 14 September 1868; and Globe, 17 April 1869. 85 Eliza Doody to the Honorable members of the Government of the Dominion of Canada, 4 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 341, 156022–4. 86 Irish Canadian, 20 January 1869. 87 The words had faded over time, to the point of illegibility. Recently, Alfhard Brandl, the husband of a descendant of Patrick and Denis Doody, had the inscription recut so that it is clear to all who pass by. Alfhard Brandl, communication with author, 2 August 2021. 88 Globe, 29 May 1868. 89 James Gill to John Rose, 1 September 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 510. 90 Globe, 25 April 1868. 91 Globe, 17 September 1868. 92 O’Hanly to John Hearn, 4 May 1868, vol. 1, lac, O’Hanly Fonds, MG29-B-11. 93 Globe, 17 July 1868. 94 Mahon to Monck, 9 June 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 95 Mahon to editors of the Guelph Evening Mercury, John McLagan and James Innes, 25 May 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 96 Ibid. 97 Macdonald to George Grange, [May 1868], lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 98 Globe, 8 May 1868. 99 Globe, 29 May, 12 and 15 June 1868. 100 Globe, 18 May 1868. 101 Globe, 9, 13, and 25 May 1868. 102 Globe, 19 May 1868. 103 Globe, 22 July 1868; Canadian Freeman, 23 July 1868. 104 O’Reilly to Macdonald, 27 July 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 105 Globe, 28 July 1868. 106 Irish Canadian, 5 August 1868. 107 Irish Canadian, 19 August 1868.

468

notes to pages 262–5

108 McMicken to Macdonald, 2 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106808–10; and 19 May 1868, vol. 240, 106897–9. 109 Globe, 29 May 1868. 110 Montreal Herald, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 9 September 1868; Guelph Evening Mercury, 3 September 1868. 111 Allen to McMicken, 2 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107438–40. 112 Corry to McMicken, 2 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107442–4. 113 Ritchie to McMicken, 12 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol 241, 107506–8. 114 Allen to McMicken, 15 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107511–12. 115 Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 86–8. 116 Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868. 117 Globe, 8 September 1868. 118 Irish American, 25 April 1868. The article was attributed to the paper’s Irish correspondent from Montreal, who was identified in secret police reports as Callahan. 119 Coursol to Macdonald, 17 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107516–17. 120 Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868; Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 320; Whelan to Macdonald, 14 September 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 76993–6; Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 87–8; Macdonald to O’Reilly, 12 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 515, 551–2. 121 Globe, 11 February 1869. 122 Statement of P.J. Whelan, 9 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 77013; Macdonald to O’Reilly, 12 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 515, 551–2. 123 Mail and Empire, 7 April 1934. 124 Testimony of Alex Turner, John Joseph McGee, Joseph Faulkner, and James Inglis, drawn from Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868; Canadian Freeman, 23 April 1868; and Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 26, 31–6. 125 Kinsella’s identity as the man with Whelan who made the threatening gestures was revealed in the testimony of parliamentary messenger Edward Storr during the trial of Patrick Buckley in April 1869. See above, note 46; and Globe, 17 April 1869. 126 Perhaps not coincidentally, boot prints in the snow at the back of the house matched the soles of Whelan’s boots, right down to the nail marks in the heel. See Globe, 18 April 1868. 127 “I have it here,” Whelan reportedly told Detective O’Neill after his arrest in April; “they can’t take it from me; I will never be a Corydon, a Massey, or a Nagle, let them do as they will.” John Joseph Corydon and Godfrey Massey were informers

notes to pages 265–7 0

469

who had revealed the Fenian Brotherhood’s plans for the Rising of 1867 in Ireland, and Pierce Nagle had supplied the Dublin Metropolitan Police with the evidence that led to James Stephens’s arrest in 1865. All were hated by the Fenians. See Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868. 128 Macdonald to O’Reilly, 12 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 515, 551–2; William Powell to Macdonald, 15 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 77033–6. 129 O’Reilly to Macdonald, 17 September 1868, in “Papers re. Parties Charged with Fenianism in Ottawa,” lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 510. 130 Globe, 17 April 1869. 131 O’Reilly to Macdonald, 18 November 1868, in “Papers re. Parties Charged with Fenianism in Ottawa,” lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 510.

chapter fourteen 1 John Beach to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [Clarendon], 28 March 1866, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1336, 377–8. 2 In his autobiography, Thomas Billis Beach wrote that the home secretary, Spencer Walpole, “in the most earnest way requested my father to correspond with me on the subject, and to arrange for my transmitting through him to the Government every detail with which I could become acquainted.” There is no evidence, however, of any such letters. See Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 30. Beach’s autobiography cannot be taken at face value; he embroidered and lied about parts of his past and got some of the dates wrong. 3 Rebow to Adderley, 17 December 1867, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5; McMicken to Macdonald, 8 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107057–9. 4 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 8. 5 Trainor, “Le Caron, Henri”; Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 10. 6 Edwards, Delusion, 38. 7 On O’Neill’s connection with the 17th US Colored Infantry, see Fox, John C. O’Neill, 49; on Beach’s connection with O’Neill during the Civil War, see Le Caron [Beach] to Macdonald, 24 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106953–4. 8 Crawford, “Henri Le Caron”; Archibald to Michael Hicks-Beach, 12 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5; Finerty, “Thirty Years of Ireland’s Battle,” 541.

470

notes to pages 272– 7

9 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 56–7. 10 Beach to [Anderson], 19 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 11 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, v. 12 [Beach], “Report,” [February 1868], tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 142–3. 13 Archibald to Lord Stanley, 31 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 314–17. 14 Thornton to Stanley, 28 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 280–2. 15 Archibald to Stanley, 31 March 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 314–17. See also Thornton to Stanley, 2 May 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 370–2; and Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 58–9. 16 Beach, “Memo of Information Received Relative to the Proceedings at a Fenian State Convention Recently Held in Springfield,” 19 May 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 212–14. 17 [Beach], “Extract from Further Letter,” 13 April 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 155. 18 Beach to Feilding, 21 April 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 19 [Unknown] to Thornton, 28 February 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 146; Memorandum, 19 May [1868], tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 172–3. 20 Memorandum, 23 May 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 179. 21 [Beach], “Extract from a Letter Relative to Fenian Designs on Canada,” 31 May 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 220–2. 22 Anonymous [Beach] to Macdonald, 24 May 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 240, 106953–4. 23 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107057–9. 24 Macdonald to McMicken, 15 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 514, 883–4. 25 McMicken to Macdonald, 15 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107074–5. 26 McMicken to Macdonald, 26 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108373–5. 27 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 25 November 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107625–6. 28 Caroline Ermatinger to Macdonald, 25 November 1879, Macdonald Fonds, vol.

notes to pages 27 7– 82

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229, 98739–45. See also Macdonald to Ermatinger, 9 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 515/4, 954; and Stewart, Ermatingers, 137–40. 29 Thornton to Stanley, 2 May 1868, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1343, 370–2. 30 John O’Neill, “To the Officers and Members of the Fenian Brotherhood,” 13 June 1868, in McMicken to Macdonald, 29 June 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107140–74. 31 Ibid. 32 Beach to Feilding, 11 July 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5; [Beach], “Extract,” 21 July 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 259–61. 33 [Beach], “Extract,” 5–6 August 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 267–9. 34 [Beach], 8 August 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 270–6A; McMicken to Macdonald, 21 August 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107383–6. 35 [Beach], “Copy Extract,” 11 October 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 294; [Beach], “Copy Extract,” 22 October 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 299–300; McMicken to Macdonald, 13 October 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107586–9. 36 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 October 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107582–4. 37 Archibald to Hicks-Beach, 12 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5 38 Beach to [Anderson], 19 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 39 Archibald to Hicks-Beach, 12 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 40 McMicken to Macdonald, 26 November 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107614– 17; and 15 December 1868, vol. 241, 107639–70. 41 Le Caron [Beach] to McMicken, 25 November 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107628–9. 42 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 December 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107622–3. 43 McMicken to Macdonald, 18 January 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107718–20. 44 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 67–70; Beach to [Anderson], 19 November 1868, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 45 Beach to [Anderson], 8 January 1869, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 46 John Whitehead Byron to Le Caron, 6 May 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 242, 108157.

472

notes to pages 2 82–4

47 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 242, 108292–3. 48 Archibald to Lord Lisgar [John Young], 12 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24453–9; McMicken to Macdonald, 17 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108327–30. 49 McMicken to Macdonald, 26 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108373–5. 50 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108618–19; T.B. [Beach] to James Bell, 4 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108609–11. 51 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 16 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108680–2. 52 T.B. [Beach] to Bell, 19 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108707–8. 53 Macdonald to White, 19 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 267. 54 Macdonald to Sir John Young, 26 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 297. 55 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108618–19. 56 Macdonald to James Cockburn, 13 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 231–2. 57 McMichael [Montgomery] to Macdonald, 31 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108709. 58 Boyle to O’Brennan, 11 November 1868, Newberry Library, O’Brennan Papers, box 1, folder 6. 59 Report from Beach, 11 October 1868, in McMicken to Macdonald, 13 October 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107586–9. 60 [Beach], “Copy Extract,” 22 October 1868, tna, Colonial Office Papers, CO 537, 299–300; McMicken to Macdonald, 19 October 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107600. On Conroy, see above, 94, 138, 262. Le Caron also named Pat Doyle in Toronto, which McMicken assumed was a mistake for Patrick Boyle. There was, however, a P. Doyle in Toronto who ran a bookstore at the St Lawrence Arcade; see W.C. Chewett & Co.’s Toronto City Directory 1868–9, 191. The list also included one John Cotter in London, Ontario; the other names are illegible. 61 McMicken to Macdonald, 30 November 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107662– 3. See also McMicken to Macdonald, 26 October 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107604–6. 62 McMicken to Macdonald, 15 December 1868, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 241, 107639–70. 63 Archibald to Lord Lisgar [John Young], 12 July 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24453–9.

notes to pages 2 82–9 0

473

64 Irish American, 30 January 1869. 65 Irish Canadian, 3 February 1869. 66 O’Farrell is the most likely candidate for the “Quebec gentleman” whom Macdonald and James O’Reilly believed was behind the murder; see O’Reilly to Macdonald, 10 February 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 184, 77023–4. For other views that O’Farrell was behind the assassination, see Charles Murphy to Mrs O.D. Skelton, 2 May 1934, lac, Murphy Fonds, 11591–2; and Reuben Wade to Macdonald, 1 March 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 342, 156344–7. On O’Farrell’s connections with Ribbonism, see Barlow, “Fear and Loathing,” 67, 85. 67 Irish Canadian, 31 March 1869; Wilson, “Fenian World of Jeremiah Gallagher.” 68 Irish Canadian, 14 July 1869. 69 Irish Canadian, 24 March 1869. 70 Irish Canadian, 31 March 1869. 71 Irish Canadian, 17 March 1869. 72 Irish Canadian, 8 September 1869. 73 Irish Canadian, 28 April, 23 June, 7 and 21 July 1869; Irish American, 4 September 1869, 1 January 1870. 74 Irish Canadian, 28 July 1869. 75 Macdonald to Moylan, 15 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 743–6. 76 Irish Canadian, 17 November 1869. 77 McGee to Moylan, 30 October 1866, lac, Moylan Fonds, MG29-D-15. 78 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 25 October 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108696–8. 79 Irish Canadian, 24 November 1869. 80 Irish Canadian, 21 July 1869; see also 7 July 1869. 81 Irish American, 1 January 1870. 82 Irish Canadian, 13 October 1869. 83 Irish American, 11 December 1869. 84 Macdonald to Moylan, 15 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 743–6. 85 See above, 138–40. 86 Irish American, 1 January 1870. 87 Macdonald to Moylan, 15 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 743–6. 88 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108751–4. 89 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108803–18; and 4 December 1869, vol. 243A, 108885.

474

notes to pages 29 0–3

90 “Letter Rec’d from ‘Informant B’ [Beach] Dated New York 14 Nov. 69,” in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24574–5; McMicken to Macdonald, 30 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108857–60. 91 Archibald to Thornton, 13 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24535–52. 92 “Extract from Letter Rec’d from ‘Informant B’ [Beach] Dated New York Nov. 7,” in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24566–9. 93 Robert Anderson, “Memo for Mr. Liddell with Reference to Informant B’s [Beach’s] Letter of the 7th Nov.,” 25 November 1869, in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24570–2. The weapons had been returned on the condition that they would not be used against Canada. 94 Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24563–4, in Granville to Young, 27 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24560–75. 95 “Extract from Letter Rec’d from ‘Informant B’ [Beach] Dated New York Nov. 7,” in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24566–9. 96 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243, 108751–3. 97 Macdonald to Coursol, 5 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 383; Coursol to Macdonald, 9 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108799–800; McMicken to Macdonald, 11 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108803–18. 98 Frank Renehan, “Story of Canada,” Irish American, 1 January 1870. He was referring to the conquest of the French, not that of Indigenous peoples. 99 Macdonald to William Griffin [deputy postmaster general], 5 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 516, 387; 15 November 1869, vol. 516, 424; and 17 December 1869, vol. 516, 748. 100 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108803–18. 101 “Extract from Letter Rec’d from ‘Informant B’ [Beach] Dated New York Nov. 7,” in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24566–9. 102 Archibald to Thornton, 13 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24535–52; McMicken to Macdonald, 24 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108950–3.

chapter fifteen 1 Sager [Beach] to James Bell, 21 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244, 109317– 24. Bell was McMicken’s secretary.

notes to pages 29 4– 6

475

2 Sager [Beach] to Bell, 21 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109317–24; Thornton to Clarendon, 17 January 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 18–25. 3 Sager [Beach] to Bell, 21 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109317–24; Clarendon to Thornton, 10 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 61. See also Clarendon to Thornton, 8 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 55; Clarendon to Thornton, 10 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 61; and Thornton to Clarendon, 14 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 89–91. 4 Sager [Beach] to Bell, 21 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109317–24. 5 Sager [Beach] to Bell, 26 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109325–9. 6 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109398– 400; Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 75–6. The identity of John C. Rose remains a mystery, although it is likely that he was one of McMicken’s detectives based in Ottawa. 7 Sager [Beach] to Bell, 26 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109325–9; McMicken to Macdonald, 12 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244, 109377–9. 8 McMicken to Macdonald, 5 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109314– 15; Young to Granville, 10 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 133–6. 9 Thornton to Clarendon, 14 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 89–91. See also Thornton to Young, [February or March 1870], Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24610–12; and Young to Macdonald, 28 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24707–12 10 Young to Macdonald, 28 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24707–12. 11 Macdonald to Young, 28 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 517, 91; Young to Granville, 31 March 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 254–5. 12 Archibald to Clarendon, 15 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 97–8. 13 See, for example, McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 22 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24646–8; and 2 March 1870, vol. 60, 14672–4. 14 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 2 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 14672–4. 15 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 4 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24682–4.

476

notes to pages 29 6–9

16 Archibald to Young, 3 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24676–80. 17 Ibid.; Archibald to Young, 31 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24713–17. 18 Archibald to Clarendon, 15 February 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 97–8. 19 R.G. Sager [Beach] to Bell, 21 January 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109317–24. 20 Reported in McMicken to Macdonald, 24 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109398–400. 21 Coursol to Macdonald, 5 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109602–5. 22 Coursol to Macdonald, 11 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109666. On Calvert’s meeting with Foster, see Coursol to Macdonald, 9 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109650–7. 23 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 17 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109495–8. 24 Coursol to Macdonald, 22 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109487–8. 25 Archibald to Young, 31 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24713–17. 26 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 1 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109630–3; and 4 April 1870, vol. 60, 24719–23. 27 On Perkins, see Fish to Thornton, 13 April 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 241; on the head centre in Burlington, see Coursol to Macdonald, 7 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109622–5. 28 Coursol to Macdonald, 1 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109751–8. 29 Ibid; McMicken to Macdonald, 8 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109639. 30 Young to Thornton, 8 April 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1348, 226. 31 Coursol to Macdonald, 9 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109650–7. 32 Macdonald to Coursol, 11 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 517, 124; Macdonald to Carnarvon, 14 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 517, 129; Globe, 12 and 13 April 1870. 33 Globe, 15 April 1870; Young to Granville, 21 April 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1349, 56–7. 34 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 15 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109730–2. 35 Ibid.; “Extract from Letter Rec’d from ‘Informant B’ [Beach] Dated New York Nov. 7,” in Liddell to Granville, 25 November 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24566–9.

notes to pages 29 9–306

477

36 McMicken to Hewitt Bernard, 23 May 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 109883–6. 37 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken,15 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109727–9. 38 Clingen to Gallagher, 18 April 1870, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 39 R.G.S. [Beach] to Bell, 22 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24740. 40 New York Times, 20 April 1870; Young to Granville, 28 April 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1349, 61–4. 41 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 27 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109812–17. 42 [Beach] to [unknown], 5 May 1870, tna, Foreign Office, General Correspondence, FO 5/1349, 35–6. 43 Ibid. 44 McMicken to Hewitt Bernard, 23 May 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 109883–6. 45 O’Neill, Official Report, 15. 46 Ibid., 14–18. 47 Ibid., 18–19. 48 McMicken to Hewitt Bernard, 23 May 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 109883–6. 49 Brief Account of the Fenian Raids, 10–15. 50 Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 154–5. 51 Ibid., 155–9. 52 For the full text, see “May 24, 1870: Proclamation Regarding Fenian Brotherhood,” Miller Center, University of Virginia, Presidential Speeches, Ulysses S. Grant Presidency. 53 Fenian Raid of 1870 by Reporters Present, 16. 54 O’Neill, Official Report, 20. 55 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110141–5. 56 O’Neill, Official Report, 19–24. 57 Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 163–4. 58 Irish American, 18 June 1870; Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 89; Klein, When the Irish Invaded Canada, 211–13. 59 Harvey Prentice Dwight to Hewitt Bernard, 26 May 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 109960. 60 Boston Pilot, 4 June 1870; Shannon, “O’Reilly, John Boyle.” 61 Finerty, “Thirty Years of Ireland’s Battle,” 543. 62 For general accounts of the 1870 raid, see Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 147–72;

478

notes to pages 306–1 2 and Klein, When the Irish Invaded Canada, 215–27. On the Fenian barricade, see Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 170; on the wounding of Fitzpatrick, see Finerty, “Thirty Years of Ireland’s Battle,” 542.

63 Dwight to Hewitt Bernard, 29 May 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110022. 64 James Gibbons, “To the Officers and Members of the F.B.,” 28 May 1870, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 65 Gibbons to Gallagher, 5 July 1870, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. 66 Finerty, “Thirty Years of Ireland’s Battle,” 544. 67 Quoted in Fox, John C. O’Neill, 164.

chapter sixteen 1 Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 18–38. 2 “From the Red River Settlement”; Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 39–114. 3 Wilkeson to Gallagher, 19 April 1868, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. Wilkeson’s correspondence with Gallagher was brought to my attention by Barnett, “O’Neill’s Last Invasion of Canada.” 4 Wilkeson to Gallagher, 18 November 1869, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection; Stanley, “O’Donoghue, William Bernard.” 5 McMicken to Macdonald, 24 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108950–3; Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 76–8. 6 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108900–3; and 24 December 1869, vol. 243A, 108950–3; O’Neill to Frank B. Gallagher, 16 and 24 December 1869, Villanova Digital Library, Fenian Brotherhood Collection. See above, 223–4. 7 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 243A, 108900–3; 18 December 1869, vol. 243A, 108926–9; and 24 December 1869, vol. 243A, 108950–3; Archibald to Young, 24 December 1869, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24581–2, 8 Irish American, 25 December 1869. 9 Quoted in Rea, “Scott, Thomas.” 10 Quoted in Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 158, 164. 11 Macdonald to John Rose, 23 February 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 517, 24–8. 12 McMicken to Macdonald, 26 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109771–4. 13 On the rumours, see Arthur Wanser to Macdonald, 14 April 1870, Macdonald

notes to pages 312–16

479

Fonds, vol. 60, 24729–30; Alexander McMicken to Gilbert McMicken, 18 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109734–5; Gilbert McMicken to Macdonald, 21 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109723–5; W.H. Henery to Macdonald, 25 April 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 24748–51. 14 Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 175. 15 McMicken to Macdonald, 6 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110167–70. 16 Adams Archibald, “Memorandum Connected with Fenian Invasion of Manitoba in October, 1871,” in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 140. 17 Pritchett, “Origin of the So-Called Fenian Raid,” s135–8, s136–7 (quote). See also Senior, Last Invasion of Canada, 173–5; Stanley, “O’Donoghue, William Bernard”; and Thomas, “Riel, Louis.” 18 Pritchett, “Origin of the So-Called Fenian Raid,” s141. 19 Interview with a Fenian Council member, New York Herald, 13 October 1871, reprinted in Globe, 16 October 1871. 20 O’Neill, Official Report, 59–60. 21 Address of the Council of the Fenian Brotherhood given by John Savage, Chief Executive, 29 September 1870, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 22 Young to Lord Lisgar [John Young], 11 October 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 517, 300–7. 23 O’Neill, Official Report, 59–60. 24 Interview with a Fenian Council member, New York Herald, 13 October 1871, reprinted in Globe, 16 October 1871. 25 George-Étienne Cartier to Macdonald, 8 May 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245A, 109838–41. 26 Macdonald to Charles Coursol, 14 June 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 518, 907. 27 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 98. 28 Sager [Beach] to James Bell, 16 June 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245A, 110537–9. 29 McMicken to Macdonald, 23 June 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245A, 110535–6. 30 McMichael [Montgomery] to McMicken, 17 March 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 244A, 109495–8. 31 Archibald to Macdonald, 31 August 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24796–9. 32 Archibald to McMicken, 31 August 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24796–9. 33 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24816–19. 34 McMicken to Macdonald, 9 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24816–19; and 29 September 1871, vol. 61, 24850–7.

480

notes to pages 316–23

35 Bumsted, Red River Rebellion, 262. 36 McMicken to Macdonald, 27 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24847–8. 37 Taché, Fenian Raid, 5. 38 McMicken to Macdonald, 29 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24850–7; McMicken, Abortive Raid, 2. 39 McMicken to Macdonald, 29 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24850–7; McMicken, Abortive Raid, 2–3. 40 McMicken, Abortive Raid, 3. 41 Taché, Fenian Raid, 9–10. 42 McMicken to Macdonald, 5 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24934–41; McMicken, Abortive Raid, 4–7. 43 Archibald to Macdonald, 15 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24837–43. 44 Archibald to Macdonald, 2 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24872–8. 45 Thomas Howard, “Proclamation,” in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 142–3. 46 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25011–18. 47 McMicken to Macdonald, 5 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24934–41. 48 Ibid. 49 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24982. 50 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25011–18. 51 McMicken, Abortive Raid, 7–8. 52 McMicken to Macdonald, 13 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25011–18. 53 Swan and Jerome, “Unequal Justice,” 28–9, 31–2. 54 Taché, in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 53. 55 De Trémaudan, “Louis Riel,” 136–9. 56 Ritchot, in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 89–91. 57 De Trémaudan, “Louis Riel,” 138–9. 58 Archibald, “Memorandum,” in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 140. 59 Louis Riel, A.D. Lepine [sic], and Pierre Parenteau to Archibald, 7 October 1871, in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 147. 60 Swan and Jerome, “Unequal Justice,” 28, 31–2. 61 The best account of the raid comes from one of the prisoners, George Webster; see Webster to Macdonald, 12 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24992– 25001. 62 James Wickes Taylor, cited in McMicken, Abortive Raid, 10.

notes to pages 323– 3 4

481

63 Macdonald to Archibald, 24 September 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 519, 236–8. 64 Klein, When the Irish Invaded Canada, 259–60. 65 Archibald to Macdonald, 9 October 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24960–6. 66 Globe, 21 October and 6 November 1871. 67 Archibald, “Memorandum,” in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 142. 68 Archibald to Macdonald, 31 December 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 187, 78107–9. 69 Macdonald to McMicken, 29 November 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 529, 522–3. 70 McMicken to Macdonald, 22 December 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 246, 110681–7. 71 McMicken, Abortive Raid, 10. 72 Irish American, 21 October 1871. 73 Fox, John C. O’Neill, 121–9. 74 Stanley, “O’Donoghue, William Bernard.” O’Neill was born in 1838, not 1834 as he pretended; see Fox, John C. O’Neill, 17. 75 Swan and Jerome, “Unequal Justice,” 28–34. 76 Archibald to Macdonald, 31 December 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 187, 78111–16; Taché to Macdonald, 2 January 1872, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 103, 41547; Swan and Jerome, “Unequal Justice,” 32. 77 Archibald, “Memorandum,” in Parliament of Canada, Report of the Select Committee, 142.

chapter seventeen 1 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110131–7. 2 Ibid. 3 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 90–4. 4 Ibid., 95; McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110131–7; and 6 July 1870, vol. 245, 110167–70. 5 Irish American, 18 June 1870. 6 McMicken to Macdonald, 6 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110167–70. 7 Snell, “Cost of Living in Canada.” 8 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110131–7. 9 Ibid., 110141–5; Hemans to McMicken, 5 August 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110224–7. 10 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110131–7.

482

notes to pages 33 4– 4 2

11 McMicken to Macdonald, 1 July 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110131–7; McMicken to Hewitt Bernard, 1 August 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110217– 19. See also “Compensation to Foreign Police Agents &c. in Respect to Services Connected with Fenian Information,” n.d., Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110138–40. 12 See, for example, “Irish Political Societies 1896–1914,” tna, HO 317/39. I thank Shane Lynn for this reference. 13 McMicken to Macdonald, 7 September 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110267–9; Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America, 107. 14 Hemans to McMicken, 5 August 1870, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 245, 110224–7. 15 Irish Canadian, 1 June 1870. 16 Irish Canadian, 15 March 1871. 17 Irish Canadian, 24 December 1873; Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 266–7. 18 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 274; P. O’Leary, Travels and Experiences, 59. Only a few copies of the Montreal Sun have survived; see lac, NJ FM 393, Montreal Sun, 21–26 January 1876. 19 Irish Sentinel, 21 and 28 March 1872. 20 Irish Sentinel, 7 February 1872. 21 Irish Sentinel, 6 June 1872. 22 Irish Sentinel, 29 February and 14 March 1872. 23 Hugh Curran, Irish World, 18 July 1874, quoted in Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 272. 24 Irish World, 11 March 1876. On Father Dowd’s continuing role in countering Irish nationalist societies in Montreal, see Trigger, “Clerical Containment.” 25 Lynch to William Walsh, 27 May 1887, Dublin Diocesan Archives, Walsh Papers. 26 Irish Canadian, 3 and 24 December 1873. 27 Irish World, 18 March and 8 April 1876. 28 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 276–80, 295–6; Irish World, 1 April, 13 May, 29 July, 9 and 26 September 1876, 13 October, 10 November, 1 December 1877. 29 Irish World, 13 October 1877. 30 Irish World, 1 December 1877. 31 Globe, 19 March 1877, quotation changed from third to first person for immediacy. 32 Globe, 5 March 1878. 33 Devoy to Lawrence Ennis, 11 March 1878, Catholic University of America, Fenian Brotherhood Records. 34 Irish Canadian, 20 March 1878; Globe, 19 March 1878.

notes to pages 3 4 2– 6

483

35 Irish World, 2 February 1878, referring to events “two or three years ago”; Irish World, 24 October 1876. 36 Irish World, 11 March 1876. 37 Globe, 5 March 1878. 38 Macdonald to Frank Smith, 17 July 1871, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 519, 40–1. 39 McGowan, “Boyle, Patrick.” 40 The Pacific Scandal arose from a secret agreement between the Conservatives and railway magnate Sir Hugh Allan; Allan donated $350,000 to the 1872 Conservative election campaign in return for a contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. 41 Crockett, “Uses and Abuses,” 103–32. 42 The literature on the New Departure and the Land War is vast, but good entry points are Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, 160–77; Bew, Ireland, 302–45; and Bartlett, Ireland, 314–30. 43 “The Special Commission,” Times, 6 February 1889. 44 On the bomb campaign, see Campbell, Fenian Fire; Kenna, War in the Shadows; and Whelehan, Dynamiters, 70–103. 45 Irish Canadian, 10 March 1880; Trigger, “Clerical Containment,” 89, 212n37. For McNamee’s advice to Macdonald about how to maintain Irish Catholic support, see McNamee to Macdonald, 7 January 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 128, 52989. 46 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 321–2. 47 Mothersill to Macdonald, 20 October 1880, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25147. 48 Thornton to Lorne, 29 January 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 81, 31789–94; and 11 February 1881, vol. 61, 25191; Lord Kimberley, memo, 2 February 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25178. 49 Robert Hall to Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Admiralty, 19 March 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25249. 50 Francis De Winton to Macdonald, 22 February 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25201–4. 51 Coursol to Macdonald, 30 October 1880, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 370, 172340; Carpenter to Macdonald, 5 December 1880, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25163–4. 52 Ellen Forrest is the only person in the 1881 Canadian census who fits the bill: a widow, single, Irish, and Catholic, she lived in the township of Huntley, in Carleton County, near Ottawa. See lac, Census of Canada, 1881. 53 Forrest to O’Connor, 8 February 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25181–90. 54 O’Connor to Macdonald, 26 March 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25238–40. 55 Forrest to O’Connor, 5 April 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 24241–5.

484

notes to pages 3 4 6–9

56 Forrest to O’Connor, 14 April 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25256–68. 57 Archibald to Thornton, 2 March 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25228–34. 58 “The Special Commission,” Times, 6 February 1889; Thomas Billis Beach to Robert Anderson, 27 May 1875, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538/5. 59 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 117–18. 60 McMicken to Macdonald, 11 February 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25191; [illegible] to McMicken, 12 February 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 61, 25192. 61 Compare McMicken to Macdonald, 26 September 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 246, 110910–13, with the Clan’s circular, in “The Special Commission,” Times, 7 February 1889. 62 See, for example, Shanahan, “Costigan, John.” As a result of Macdonald’s modifications, the resolution no longer called for unconditional Home Rule but now expressed “a hope that if consistent with the integrity and well being of the Empire, and if the rights and status of the minority are fully protected and secured, some means may be found of meeting the expressed desire of so many of Your Irish subjects in that regard.” As a result, Macdonald wrote, it was “perfectly harmless.” Macdonald to Lorne, 2 May 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 524/3, 713–14, 717–18, typescript in Macdonald Fonds, vol. 324, 146279–83; Costigan, Local Self-Government for Ireland, 8. 63 Macdonald to Lorne, 2 May 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 524/3, 713–14, 717–18, typescript in Macdonald Fonds, vol. 324, 146279–83. 64 Lorne to Macdonald, 2 May 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 82, 32036–8. 65 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 349–50. On Cunningham’s role in Montreal’s Skirmishing Club, see the Irish World, 10 November 1877. He was also a member of Montreal’s St Patrick’s Society. St Patrick’s Society Roll Book, 22, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 66 Lorne to Macdonald, 22 June 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25299; De Winton to Macdonald, 5 July 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25301–8; Stuart to Macdonald, 12 July 1882, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25313–14. 67 Montreal Gazette, 18 October 1883; Globe, 18 and 23 October 1883. 68 Lorne to Macdonald, 18 October 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 83, 32605–7. 69 Globe, 9 April 1884. 70 For some examples of death threats on Lansdowne, see Lansdowne to Macdonald, 1 November 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25336–8; 2 November 1883, vol. 62, 25339–40; 6 November 1883, vol. 62, 25341–2; 24 November 1883, vol. 62, 25343–

notes to pages 3 4 9–52

485

5; 7 December 1883, vol. 62, 25346–8; and 20 December 1883, vol. 62, 25349–52. On the precautions taken to protect Lord Coleridge, see Lorne to Macdonald, 24 August 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 192, 79973–5; and J. Bagot to Macdonald, 25 August 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 192, 79975. 71 John Rose to Macdonald, 27 February 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25379–81; Macdonald to Rose, 27 February 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25383. 72 Macdonald to Joseph Trutch, 27 February 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25377; Macdonald to Adams Archibald and Macdonald to Robert Wilmot, 27 February 1884, vol. 525/2, 357; Macdonald to Théodore Robitaille and Macdonald to John Beverley Robinson, 27 February 1884, vol. 5245/2, 356. 73 Lansdowne to Macdonald, 6 March 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 60, 25400. 74 Lionel Sackville-West to Lansdowne, 26 September 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25433; Lansdowne to Macdonald, 26 September 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25429–30; 30 September 1884, vol. 62, 25434; and 9 February 1885, vol. 85, 32984. 75 J. Clinton Collins to Mackenzie Bowell, 9 February 1886, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 213, 90582–4. 76 McMicken to Macdonald, 8 April 1885, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 246, 110951–3. 77 Monro to Robert Meade, 8 March 1888, enclosed in Lord Knutsford to Lansdowne, 8 March 1888, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25453–4; Monro to Colonial Office, 21 April 1888, enclosed in Lord Knutsford to Lansdowne, 24 April 1888, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25457. See also Lansdowne to Macdonald, 11 May 1888, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 62, 25456; and Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 377–9. 78 Trigger, “Clerical Containment,” 93. 79 Globe, 18 and 19 May 1887; Coffey, Planters of Luggacurran. 80 Clarke, “Religious Riot as Pastime,” 118–27. 81 On the Cronin murder, see G. O’Brien, Blood Runs Green. 82 Lynch to The O’Donoghue [Daniel O’Donoghue], 28 February 1866, arcat, Lynch Papers, LAE 06.12. 83 On the weakening of Irish nationalism in Toronto during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see McGowan, Waning of the Green. 84 Jolivet, Le vert et le bleu, 33–76. 85 Lynn, “Global Irish Nationalism,” 299–301. 86 McGowan, Imperial Irish, 56–70. 87 Lynn, “Global Irish Nationalism,” 94–136. 88 Patrick Rankin, Document No. W.S. 163, Bureau of Military History, Ireland. On the Playboy protest, see Globe, 21 April 1914.

486

notes to pages 354–8

89 Wilson, “Fenian World of Jeremiah Gallagher,” 29–30. 90 On problems associated with calling it the Irish War of Independence, see L. Kennedy, Unhappy the Land, 187–217. 91 Ó Siadhail, Katherine Hughes; Boyle, “Fenian Protestant in Canada.” 92 As well as Ó Siadhail, Katherine Hughes, see Jolivet, Le vert et le bleu; McEvoy, “Canadian Catholic Press”; R. McLaughlin, Irish Canadian Conflict; Mannion, “Contested Nationalism”; and Mannion, Land of Dreams. 93 Lorne to Macdonald, 12 July 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 83, 32533–4. See also Macdonald to Joseph Kerby, 2 January 1884, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 525/2, 330. On Carpenter’s activities, which consisted of looking for Fenian arms in Montreal in 1880 and guarding Lord Coleridge in 1883, see Coursol to Macdonald, 30 October 1880, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 370, 172340; Carpenter to John Stoughton Dennis [son of Lieutenant Colonel John Stoughton Dennis], 17 May 1881, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 209, 88967–71; Bagot to Macdonald, 25 August 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 192, 79975; and George Burbidge to Macdonald, 28 August 1883, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 192, 79971–2. 94 Quoted in Whitaker, Kealey, and Parnaby, Secret Service, 35–6. 95 Ibid., 62–3. 96 Gwatkin to Officers Commanding Districts, 10 May 1916; General Officer Commanding Military District No. 2 (Toronto) to Gwatkin, 11 May 1916; and Captain Gaunt, n.d., all in lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-Hqc-965, vol. 17. I thank Shane Lynn for alerting me to these records. 97 Sinn Féin Executive, “Sinn Fein Movement,” report of secret meeting, 18 September 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 98 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 21 October 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. See also Burns, 14 and 15 October 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 99 Jolivet, Le vert et le bleu, 242–4. 100 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 3 and 9 October 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. See also St Patrick’s Society Roll Book, 7, cua, St Patrick’s Society of Montreal Fonds, P0026. 101 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 24 October 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. On plans to ship arms from Halifax, see Burns, 24 January and 10 February 1921, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 102 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 9 October and 4 November 1920, 3 February 1921, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471.

notes to pages 358– 6 6

487

103 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 30 November 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 104 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 3 and 11 December 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 105 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 3 and 15 October, 30 November 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 106 On links between revolutionary Irish nationalism and revolutionary socialism in Montreal, see G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 30 September, 9, 14, and 20 October, 19 November 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 107 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 13 December 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 108 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 14 October 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 109 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 21 December 1920, lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24-C-8, vol. 4471. 110 G.E. Burns, “Sinn Fein Movement,” 10 March 1921; Charles J. Armstrong, Brig. General, GOC, M.D.4., to Chief of the General Staff, Militia Headquarters, Ottawa, 4 May 1921, both in lac, Department of National Defence Fonds, RG24C-8, vol. 4471. 111 Whitaker, Kealey, and Parnaby, Secret Service. 112 Quoted in Currie, Canada and Ireland, 115, 142. 113 Ibid., 142–3. Thomas Kiernan is mistakenly identified as J.G. Kiernan. 114 To say that the literature on the Troubles is vast would be an understatement, but for a key book that asks the hard questions, see L. Kennedy, Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? 115 Toronto Star, 28 December 1992, A13. 116 New York Times, 15 May 1994, sec. 1, 37. 117 Former csis intelligence officer, interview with author, 2 October 2020. 118 A.T.Q. Stewart, Shape of Irish History, 186.

chapter eighteen 1 Irish Canadian, 15 April 1868. 2 Montreal Gazette, 19 June 1906. 3 Ibid.

488

notes to pages 366–7 6

4 Macdonald to Lorne, 29 May 1883, lac, Marquess of Lorne Collection, MG27I-B4. 5 Wilson, “Fenian World of Jeremiah Gallagher,” 28–9. The original online reference cited in the article is no longer operative. 6 Toner, “Rise of Irish Nationalism,” 332. 7 Wilson, “Fenian World of Jeremiah Gallagher,” 31–2. Jeremiah either did not know or had a capricious attitude towards his birth year, which varied from census to census. 8 This was certainly the case with the family of Michael Starrs. His grandson shared stories about him with historian T.P. Slattery in the 1960s; his great-granddaughter, Shirley McKenna, shared stories about him with me in 2008; and his greatgreat-grandson, Darren Coughtrey, shared stories about him with me in 2021. 9 O’Hanly, Resumé and Suggestion, 5. 10 Mahon to to editors of the Guelph Evening Mercury, John McLagan and James Innes, 25 May 1868, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, vol. 20, file 585. 11 Lawson, “Case Study of Fenianism,” 5; Puslinch Township Historical Committee, Annals of Puslinch 1850–1950. 12 Allen to McMicken, 12 February 1867, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 239, 105643–6. 13 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 40. 14 See above, 256. 15 Kealey, “Empire Strikes Back.” 16 John Rose, “Confidential Memorandum,” May 1882, tna, Papers of Sir Robert Anderson, HO 144/1538, 4. 17 Ibid. See also Kenna, War in the Shadows, 74–5. Unfortunately, Shane Kenna gets everything wrong about Rose, even in his subordinate clauses. Rose did not “oversee” Britain’s American intelligence-gathering operation in 1882, was not an “expert in the field,” had not been “crucial” to British anti-Fenian policy during the 1860s, and did not have “tremendous experience” in anti-Fenian intelligence work. As one of John A. Macdonald’s Cabinet ministers and close friends, however, Rose did have a good general sense of counter-intelligence operations during the 1860s. 18 See, for example, Klein, When the Irish Invaded Canada, 50. 19 As it turned out, the Treaty of Washington (1871), which settled the claims issue, did not provide Canada with any American compensation for the Fenian raids. 20 A.T.Q. Stewart, Shape of Irish History, 33. 21 Garret FitzGerald, conversation with author, November 2002.

notes to pages 3 80–9 4

489

22 Whitaker, Kealey, and Parnaby, Secret Service, 36. 23 Macdonald, responding to E. Browkowski to Macdonald, 10 September 1866, lac, Department of Justice Fonds, RG13-A-2, 999.

dramatis personae 1 Quoted in Madden, Life and Times, 3. On the “official” and “patriotic” versions of Emmet’s speech, see Vance, “Text and Tradition.” 2 Quoted in Jenkins, Fenian Problem, 133. 3 Feely to James Cockburn, 19 September 1866, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 58, 23534–7. 4 Jordan, Grosse-Isle Tragedy, 12–13. 5 O’Brien and Ryan, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 9–10. 6 Guelph Evening Mercury, 6 May 1868. 7 McCarroll, Ridgeway, 135. 8 Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years, 40. 9 Pearse, Collected Works, 137. 10 Stephens to the Members of the Fenian Brotherhood, 23 December 1865, in Denieffe, Personal Narrative, 207–8. 11 Finerty, “Thirty Years of Ireland’s Battle,” 542. 12 Caroline Ermatinger to John A. Macdonald, 25 November 1879, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 229, 98739–45. 13 Macdonald to Thomas Swinyard, 19 December 1864, Macdonald Fonds, vol. 510, 70–1.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Abercorn, Lord. See Hamilton, James, 1st Duke of Abercorn abolitionists, 9 Act of Union (1801) (Great Britain and Ireland), 89, 260, 404n34 Adams, Gerry, 360 Adderley, Charles, 270 Adjala, on, 46, 96 African Americans, 9, 280 agents provocateurs, 140–1, 149, 349–50, 380, 390 Akenson, Donald Harman, 34–5, 406n53 Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 256, 466n80 Alien Bill (1865), 111 Allen, James, 116, 202, 210, 262–3, 275, 368–9, 428n13; in Port Colborne, on, 111–12; reinstatement, 116; in Sarnia, on, 121, 176 Allen, R.M., 76 Allen, William (Manchester martyr), 227–9, 230, 234, 285 Allen, William Cox (Cornwall mayor), 331 American Celt (New York), 159 American Express, 223 Amherstburg, on, 109 Amm, Samuel, 201, 210 Ancient Order of Hibernians, 351–3 Anderson, Robert (Canadian detective), 112 Anderson, Robert (spymaster, British Secret Service Department), 234, 270, 272, 277, 281–2, 290–1, 373 Anderson, Thomas, 155 Anglin, Timothy Warren, 229 Anglo-American relations. See British government: diplomacy; United States government: diplomacy

annexation: Canada to the United States, 20–1, 25, 28–30, 40, 74, 91–3, 190; of Manitoba, 313, 321; support among Irish Canadians, 202–3 anti-Catholicism, 7, 97, 104, 232; in Britain, 232, 270; in Canada, 95–6, 256–7, 262; in Canada West, 66, 84, 87–8, 98, 153–4, 203, 365, 380–1; and Fenianism, 92; following Fenian invasion, 194–5; in Ireland, 83; in New Brunswick, 153–4; in song, 86–7; in Toronto, 58–9, 82–5, 90–1, 93; in the United States, 7, 190. See also Orange Order; sectarian violence Archibald, Adams, 325, 394; condemnations of, 324; and Fenian threat to Manitoba, 315–16, 318–27; on sectarian tensions in Manitoba, 313 Archibald, Edward, xxxii, 19, 116, 119, 127, 129, 145, 200, 224, 227, 231, 234–5, 241, 269, 273, 368, 375, 392; assessment of Fenian Brotherhood activities, 118, 122–3, 128, 158, 172, 176, 241, 281–2, 296, 298, 373, 400n79, 401n89; and Thomas Billis Beach, 270, 281, 290–1; and Campobello Island, 146, 154–5, 157–63, 400n79; on Clan na Gael, 346; and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, xxxii, 217, 219, 222, 251, 272, 275, 277, 296, 301, 334, 373, 390; and Jim McDermott, 147–50, 152, 376–7, 390; and Frank Millen, 150–3, 377, 390–1, 440n24; threats against, 146; and “Colonel” Wheeler, 144, 167 Armstrong, Charles J., 359 Armstrong, John, 113, 120, 143, 199, 201 Arthur, on, 87 Australia, 256; Fenian exiles in, 3, 8–9, 305 Bagot, George, 306 Banks, Nathaniel P., 190 Barclay, Anthony, 26, 28, 404n23, 431n78 Battle of Castlebar, 183

514 Battle of Eccles Hill, 302–5, 314, 335 Battle of Limestone Ridge. See Battle of Ridgeway Battle of Ridgeway, xxix, 33, 181–5, 195–6, 203, 227, 242, 256, 291–2, 298, 304–5, 323, 333, 376, 430n53; and William Burns, 226; and Charles Clarke, 193, 198, 370, 389; and Denis C. Feely, 200, 383; and Rudolph Fitzpatrick, 216, 334, 389; and James McCarroll, 385; and Father John McMahon, 286–7; and William Montgomery, 275–6, 391; and John O’Neill, xxix, 179–83, 189–91, 192, 195, 250, 270, 279, 304, 307, 386; re-enactment, 201 Battle of Trout River, 305–7 Beach, Thomas Billis (pseud. Dr Howard, Henri Le Caron, R.G. Sager, J.R. Smith), xxxii–xxxiii, 269–75, 271, 279–84, 293–5, 297– 302, 304–5, 310, 331–3, 371–3, 376, 388–9, 391; assessment of John O’Neill, 386; autobiography, 396n14, 469n2; Battles of Eccles Hill and Trout River, 301–2, 304, 331; and Canadian Fenians, 284, 291, 297, 472n60; in Chicago, 277; in Clan na Gael, 346–7; Fenian suspicions of, 281; indiscretions, 332; on the Irish people, 272; and John O’Neill’s Red River plan, 312, 315–16; opinion of Fenians, 272, 332; and planned invasion at Quebec, 282–3, 290– 1, 302; promotion within Fenian Brotherhood, 290; racism, 272; reporting on Fenian arms locations, 290–1, 293–5, 298; and Patrick James Whelan, 273 Beauregard, P.G.T., 280 Beckwith, Charles, 155 Belfast, 67, 83 Bell, James, 132 Bernard, Hewitt, 238 Black, Patrick, 78 Black, William, 109, 111–12 Blake, Edward, 36 black propaganda, 48 Blanqui, Louis-Auguste, 4 Boer War. See South African War (1899–1902) Booker, Alfred, 182, 191 Booth, John Wilkes, 231 Boston, MA, 147, 200, 242, 387; British consul in, 42, 242, Fenians in, 88, 145, 160, 377, 443n63 Bourget, Ignace (bishop), 53–4 Bourke, Richard, 6th Earl of Mayo, 234, 236, 405n46, 432n82 Bourke, Thomas Francis, 224, 340, 361, 459n17;

index in Canada, 338, 342–3; eponymous Fenian circle, 224–6, 374 Boyd, Alfred, 316 Boyle, Bridget, 251 Boyle, Patrick, 38–9, 45, 77, 80, 283, 285, 289–90, 343, 352, 364, 383, 472n60; alliance with Conservative Party (Canada), 345, 366; arrest and imprisonment, 255, 261–2, 378; on arrests of Toronto Fenians in Cornwall, 169; criticism of, 226; editorials by, 55–6, 81, 83, 98–100, 169, 262; as editor of the Irish Canadian, 80, 255, 284, 337, 405n45; on Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 99; meeting with Charles Clarke, 132–33, 397n17; on John O’Neill, 335; on sectarianism in Toronto, 81, 86, 98; speeches, 96; support for James McCarroll, 97; visit to Kingston Penitentiary, 288–9 Bracken, William, 348–9 Brantford, on, 87, 108, 112, 114, 142, 226 Brennan, Francis, 94 Brennan, James, 224, 310 Brett, Charles, 68, 227, 235 Bristol, uk, 231–3 British Army: and Campobello Island, 161–3; infiltration of, 20, 28, 136; and invasion of Canada East, 185; and invasion of Canada West, 177, 181; Irish deserters from, 172; reinforcements coming to Canada, 174; proposed withdrawal from Canada, 299 British Columbia, 345, 348 British government: and American Civil War, 14, 19; Colonial Office, 232, 273, 294; diplomacy, cooperation with the United States, 20, 135–6; diplomacy, Fenian threats to, 163, 195–6; diplomacy, tensions with the United States, 5–6, 14, 19–20, 78, 103; Foreign Office, 273, 294; Home Office, 273, 277; Home Rule bills (Government of Ireland bills) 351; policies in Ireland, 8; suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, 127–28, 212; Treaty of Washington (1871), 488n19. See also British Army; Royal Navy; Secret Service Department (Britain) Brockville, on, 28, 80 Brooklyn, ny, 346; Fenians in, xxix, 12, 206, 275, 277, 305, 369, 371 Brown, George, 66, 77, 92, 365; anti-Catholicism of, 66; attacks on, 77, 81; Irish Catholic animus for, 66–7, 261; and policing; 64; and politics, 66, 77, 80; and suspension of habeas corpus, 261–2

index Brown, R. Blake, 196 Bruce, Frederick, xxxii, 20, 135, 147, 152–3, 176, 202, 273; assessment after Ridgeway, 190, 195– 6; and Campobello Island, 146, 153, 161; and Charles Carroll Tevis, xxxii, 208 Bruce, James, 8th Earl of Elgin, 27–9 Brydges, Charles, 119, 142, 165–6, 366, 443n63 Buckingham, Duke of. See Temple-Grenville, Richard, 3rd Duke of Buckingham Buckley, Patrick, 258–9, 262, 265, 468n125 Buffalo, ny: Canadian secret police in, 124; Fenians in, 127, 134, 173–4, 201, 224, 275, 346; Grand Picnic, 201, 275; as staging ground for raid, 108, 134, 172, 223 Burke, Ricard O’Sullivan, 227, 232 Burlington, vt, 131, 298–9, 306, 440n12 Burns, Charles, 75 Burns, Frank J., 358 Burns, G.E., 357–9 Burns, Michael, 106, 127, 277 Burns, William, 224–7, 229, 340 Burton, F.H., 198, 210–11 Burton, Patrick C. See Nolan, Patrick Butler, Patrick, 147, 435n25, 439n12 Butt, Isaac, 335 Byron, John Whitehead, 219, 231, 282 Cahersiveen, County Kerry, 70–1 Calais, me, 154, 163, 444n65 Caldwell, William, 109–10, 275; accusing fellow agents, 112; reinstatement, 116; in Sarnia, on, 121 Callahan, Felix (pseud. Felix de Chapelle), 89–90, 94, 138, 255, 262–3, 265, 284, 291–2, 423n80, 424n81, 437n73, 468n118; criticism of Francis Bernard McNamee, 290; editor of the Montreal Sun, 336–7; later nationalism, 335–6 Calvert, William, 297 Cameron, John Hillyard, 460n41 Campbell, Alexander, 209–11, 215 Campbell, John (pseud. R.W. Grant), 112, 114–15, 125 Campbell, John, 9th Duke of Argyll, 346, 348–9, 356 Campobello Island, nb: defence of, 153, 155; raid planning 40, 145–6, 149–50, 153–4, 157–8, 444nn63–5; rumours about raid in New Brunswick, 153; Toronto Fenians and raid, 166 Canada East, 27, 410n49; Fenians in, 46–7, 137; social divisions in, 52. See also Quebec

515 Canada West, 23; Fenians in, 45–6, 74, 82, 142–3, 202, 407n1; politics in, 63, 76–7. See also Ontario Canadian Confederation (1867), 21; context, 103; and Fenianism, 32–3, 406n51; in New Brunswick, 159–60, 163; in Nova Scotia, 163, 262; opposition to, 160, 163, 216 Canadian Freeman (Toronto), 93 Canadian government: Home Rule resolution in House of Commons, 347–8, 484n62; Lawless Aggressions Act (1866), 191, 196; Manitoba Act (1870), 312; Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1866), 190, 194; Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1867), 229, 245, 254–6, 258–66; Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1870), 29; War Measures Act (1970), 379. See also secret police in Canada Canadian militia, 6, 98, 434n21; 17th Regiment (Toronto), 225; arrest of Toronto Fenians, 166; call-up in March 1866, 128; and Campobello Island, 153, 161–2; deployment to the border, 99, 104, 119; Fenian infiltration of, 137–8, 225; and invasion of Canada East, 185; and invasion of Canada West, 178, 181–3, 193; Irish Volunteer Company of Quebec City, 137–8; Missisquoi Volunteers, 303; Orange support for, 86–7; Prince of Wales Regiment of Montreal, 78, 138; Saint John Volunteer Battalion, 153; second Fenian invasion, 283, 299, 303; usefulness against Fenian threat, 164; Volunteer Thirteenth Infantry Battalion, 178, 181 Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 361 Canty, John, 142–3; reconnaissance in Niagara, 180–1, 198 “Captain Rock,” 11 Cardwell, Edward, 118, 153, 196 Carey, James, 48, 50 Carey, Patrick, 107, 109, 111–12 Carnarvon, Lord. See Herbert, Henry, 4th Earl of Carnarvon Carpenter, George, 346, 356 Carr, Edward, 111, 427n12 Cartier, George-Étienne, 106, 140, 166, 246 Cashen, Patrick, 242 Catholic Church: clergy and Fenianism, 22, 53–4, 132, 153, 192, 286, 346; condemnation of William O’Brien, 350; hostility among Fenians toward, 9, 14; opposition to Fenianism, 22, 53–4, 153; in Quebec, 353–4; in the United States, 6

516 Catholic Register (Toronto), 352 Cavendish, Frederick, 348 Cavendish, Lord. See Cavendish, Frederick Celts: Celticism (Celtic Revival), 11; stereotypes of, 190, 348 Chamberlin, Brown, 303 Charlottetown, pei, 49, 338 Chateaugay, ny, 172 Chester Castle, 212, 214 Chicago, IL, xxx; as base for attack on Canada, xxxii, 172, 179; Fenians in, 115–17, 174, 176, 198, 209–10, 215; secret police in, 114–17 Chicago Fenian congress (1870), 298 Chicago Fenian convention (1863), 17, 81 Chippawa, on, 181–2, 201 Cincinnati, oh, 114–15, 430n53 Cincinnati Enquirer, 115 Cincinnati Fenian convention (1865), 17, 114 Citizen, The (New York), 9 Civil War (United States), 13; Confederate Army, generals, 280–1, Confederate Army, veterans, 144, 449n9, 459n17; Confederate operations in Canada, 103; Irish veterans of, xxix, 17, 30, 68–71, 73, 173, 179, 212, 219, 304, 318; as training ground for Fenian soldiers, 14, 20–1, 23, 182, 191; Union Army, 13–15, 270, 384, 449n9; Union Army, crimping, 104 Clan na Gael, 340; arms purchases, 346; bomb campaign, 200; in Canada, 336–7, 350; convention in Chicago (1881), 347; Cronin murder, 351; divisions within, 345, 351; founding as United Brotherhood, 334–5; fundraising, 350; leadership, 352; in New York, 259; threat to Canada, 345–7; Triangle of, 72, 200. See also dynamite campaign Clapp, Miss, 221–2, 370 Clarendon, Lord. See Villiers, George, 4th Earl of Clarendon Clarke, Brian, 35 Clarke, Charles (pseud. Cornelius O’Sullivan, Captain John C. Murphy), 121, 125, 220–1, 370–1, 389, 396n15, 433n97, 433n7; arrest of Thomas Sheady, 166; assessments of, 199, 238–40; Battle of Ridgeway, 193; blown cover, 133, 175, 222; and Patrick Boyle, 255; with British Secret Service Department, 233–7; denunciation of Reverend John O’Callaghan, 237–8, 462n78; Fenian suspicions of, 132, 197; indiscretions, 199, 221; in Ireland, 237–8; and Gilbert McMicken, 193, 199, 220, 238, 240; as Captain Murphy, 175; and Michael Murphy, 167–8; in Niagara Peninsula, 177, 201, 206,

index 212; in Ottawa, 254; at Pittsburgh Fenian convention (1866), 126–7, 197; posing as a prisoner, 192; promotion to superintendent, 198; on second Fenian invasion, 201; suspension and firing, 238–40; tensions with Elon Tupper, 199; in Toronto, 132–33, 175, 193–4, 199, 212, 218–19, 221, 240, 419n2; at Troy Fenian convention (1866), 204–6; undercover in Detroit, 121–22; undercover in New York City, xxix–xxxiii, 206–7, 211, 214–17 Clarke, Edward, 246 class, 14, 16, 30, 52, 67, 285 Clerk, George, 92–3 Clerkenwell jail explosion, 232, 235–6, 270 Cleveland, oh, 172 Cleveland Fenian convention (1867), 55, 219– 20, 241, 244–5, 251, 220, 223 Clifton, on, 106, 110, 112, 116 Clingen, William, 300 Clinton, mo, xxix, xxxi, 205, 218, 391 Clonbur, County Galway, 237 Club Saint-Jean-Baptiste, 21 Cluseret, Gustave-Paul, 212–3 Coachman’s Arms tavern (Toronto), 44, 255 Cobourg, on, 45–6, 72, 82 Cockburn, James, 88, 200–1 Colchester, uk, 269–70 Coleridge, John, 1st Baron Coleridge, 349 Coleridge, Lord. See Coleridge, John, 1st Baron Coleridge Collier, W.E., 357–8 Collingwood, on, 174 Collins, Jerome J., 334 Company of Canadian Volunteers (American republican organization), 24 Conception Bay, nl, 50–1, 412n70 Condon, Edward O’Meagher, 68–73, 69, 340, 354, 383; and Clan na Gael, 345, 350; and Fenians in Cornwall jail, 204; and Manchester rescue, 227–9; and Patrick James Whelan, 251 Condon, Thomas, 227–8, 377, 460n41 Confederation. See Canadian Confederation Connolly, Thomas (bishop), 50, 53, 441n34 Conroy, William, 94, 138, 262, 284, 297 Conservative Party (Canada), 67, 343, 381, 483n4 Considine, Owen, 3 Cooper, George H., 162 Cooper Institute, 286 Corcoran, Michael, 15, 68 Cork, Ireland (city), 357 Cork, Ireland (county), 10, 12, 68, 71, 213

index Cornamara, County Galway, 237 Cornwall, on, 166; jail, 70, 167–8; jail escape, 204, 453n75 Corry, George, 262, 275 Corydon, John Joseph, 213–3, 265, 468n127 Cosgrove, Owen, 44, 255, 261, 285, 342 Costello, Augustine, 213–14 Costigan, John, 347–8 Cotter, George, 60–2, 65 Coulter, Andrew, 210, 454n8 Coursol, Charles, 246, 277, 278, 331, 346, 356–7, 392–3; chief of Montreal Water Police, 141, 241; as head of secret police in Quebec, 277, 334, 368, 393; investigating Montreal Fenians, 242, 244, 255, 291, 297; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 246, 255, 263; St Albans raid, 103; and second invasion threat, 297–8 Coyle, Peter J., 89 Crampton, John, 28 Crawford, John, 76 Crawford, Lindsay, 354, 356 Creighton, Donald, 32, 406n56 Crimean War, 9–10, 49 crimping, 104, 112, 140, 290 Cronin, Patrick, 351 Cuba, 282 Cullen, Andrew, 250 Cullen, Philip, 165–6, 168 Cummings, Patrick, 85, 113, 133, 141 Cunningham, Peter, 129–30 Cunningham, Thomas, 348 Curley, Thomas, 315–18, 323 Curran, John, 255 Dakota Territory, 313 Dallas, Donald, 112 Dallison, Robert, 33 D’Arcy, William, 149–50 Darroch, Gordon, 34 Davitt, Michael, 149, 344–5 Deasy, Timothy, 68, 227 de Courcey, Maurice, 198 Defenders, 4 Denieffe, Joseph, 3, 10, 213 Dennis, John Stoughton, 182–3, 191, 193, 308 Dent, Edwin, 112 Department of Militia and Defence (Canada), 356–7, 359 Detroit, mi, 71; Fenians in, 121–2, 262; secret police and, 106, 108, 120, 124, 427n10 Devany, Lawrence, 99

517 Devlin, Bernard, 26, 36, 77–8, 90; election campaign against Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 31, 246, 249; and Prince of Wales Regiment of Montreal, 78, 138 Devlin, Charles Ramsay, 36 Devlin, Owen, 78–9, 90, 246 Devoy, John, 136, 149, 335, 342, 352 De Winton, Francis, 348 Dickson, George, 83 Disraeli, Benjamin, 234 Doheny, Michael, 4, 6–7 Dominion Police Force. See secret police in Canada: Dominion Police Force, formation; secret police in Canada: Dominion Police Force, later responsibilities Donnelly, John J., 297, 301, 315, 323 Doody, Denis, 259, 262 Doody, Patrick, 259; criticism of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 94; death, 258; imprisonment, 255, 258, 262, 265; as martyr, 258, 265, 284 Dorion, Antoine-Aimé, 229 Dorion, Jean-Baptiste-Éric, 21 Dowd, Patrick (priest), 53, 79, 337 Downing, Patrick, 149 Doyle, Charles Hastings, 161–3 Doyle, John, 262, 265 Doyle, Thomas, xxxii, 11–2, 19, 43, 154 Drummondville, on, 109–10 Dublin, Ireland, 3, 13, 14, 58, 117, 121–2, 136, 150–1, 212–13, 229, 231, 235, 338, 357, 365 Dublin Metropolitan Police, 18, 107, 469n127 Dufferin, Lord. See Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Frederick, 1st Marquess of Dufferin Dugas, Georges (priest), 320 Dundas, on, 81, 226 Dunnville, on, 178 Dunphy, E.J. (priest), 153 Durant, James, 142, 180 D’Urban, Benjamin, 28 dynamite campaign, 23, 337–9, 345–6; attempts to subvert, 149; Irish nationalist opposition to, 340; London Bridge bombing, 71–2 Eastern Townships, qc, 185 Easter Rising (1916), 36, 354 Eastport, me, 154–5, 160–3 Eccles Hill, qc, 302–5 Edwards, Pierrepont, xxxii, 200, 212, 217, 349 Egleson, Patrick, 45 Egleson, Peter, 45, 239, 248, 259, 262, 265 E.H. Pray (Fenian schooner), 160–2, 443n64

518 Elgin, Lord. See Bruce, James, 8th Earl of Elgin Elmira, on, 46 Emmet, Robert, 158, 364, 382 Emmet Monument Association, 10 Emmett Rifle Club of Quebec, 26 Enright, Michael, 252, 255, 258, 262, 264–5, 425n103 Erie, Lake, 172, 174, 179 Erin’s Hope (Fenian ship), 213 Ermatinger, Frederick William, 104, 105, 108–9, 155, 166, 175, 202, 216, 220, 242–5, 357, 368, 392–3; assessment of Fenian threat, 243; death, 277; directions from John A. Macdonald, 166; as head of secret police in Canada East, 41–2, 103, 127, 241, 275, 334; lost correspondence, 106; threats to Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 141, 245. See also secret police in Canada Esquimalt, bc, 345 evictions, 8, 21–2 Expatriation Act (1868) (United States), 214 extradition, 104, 195 Fallis, Charles, 226, 240, 419n2 Fallon, John, 171–2 Famine, the: catalyst for radical nationalism, 22–3, 26–7, 179; collective memory of, 22, 39, 73, 351; as the Great Hunger, 362–3; memorial on Grosse Île, 353–5, 367; myths about, 7, 336; refugees from, 6–7, 26, 58 Farrell, John (bishop), 53–4 Farrell, John (shooting victim), 63 Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society, 81 Feast of Corpus Christi procession (Toronto), 82 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 361 Feely, Denis C., 45, 72, 82, 95–6, 200–1, 377, 383 Feilding, William, 233–4, 236, 270, 272 Fenian Brotherhood, O’Mahony wing, xxix, 12; after Battle of Eccles Hill, 314; Canadian supporters, 40–1, 143; central council of, 145–6; competition with Senate wing, 40, 128; connection to Irish Fenians, 150; designs on Campobello Island, 145–64; goal of striking Ireland, 128; informants within, 147–53; invasion plans for Canada, 40; problems within, 149–50; protests organized, 128; under John Savage, 223, 314; split with Fenian Senate, 17, 57. See also Fenianism in the United States; O’Mahony, John Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing: alliance

index with Radical Republicans, 190; and the Canada strategy, 128, 169–72; financial troubles, 200, 208; fundraising, 171, 215; informants within, 228; overtures to Fenians in Ireland, 218; planning of Canadian invasion, 172; possible attack on New Brunswick, 154–5; recruiting by, 175–6; secrecy within, 172, 218; support among Canadian Fenians, 41, 202. See also Fenianism in the United States; Roberts, William Fenianism: ballads, 49; definition of, 38–40, 51; Catholic hostility toward, 92, 424n93; and class, 14, 16; and gender, 55–7; oaths, 3–4 Fenianism in Canada, 33–5, 38–57, 431n79; alleged infiltration of British Army, 28, 136–7, 378; arms to the United States, 357–8; arrests in Cornwall, 70, 167, 224; assessments of, 39, 93, 118, 128; and Catholic Church, 54, 132; ciphers, 147, 166, 379; demographics of, 43–7, 51–2, 55, 408n24–5; divisions within, 99, 224, 226; dues, 45, 408n33; evolution of, 337; flags, 131; founders of Fenian Brotherhood in Canada, 73, 416n53; fundraising, 217, 360; hostility toward French Canadians, 56–7; informants within, 99, 140–1, 290, 226; Irish Canadian support for, 51, 81; and Irish nationalist tradition, 37; later manifestations, 336–7, 354; leaders of, 20, 31; links with American Fenians, 47, 55, 143, 171, 217, 224, 242, 248, 254, 292, 297; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 246–65; manifesto in response to arrests, 169; martyrs, 258–9, 265; morale, 214, 226; oaths, 137; organizers, 68– 70; perceptions of, 41–2; popular support for, 26, 34–8, 40, 42–3, 51, 128, 173, 337; prisoners after Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 254–66; prisoners after Ridgeway, 191; Protestant fears of, 83–4, 87; public opposition to invasion of Canada, 169; recruitment, 46–7, 127, 225, 410n42; secrecy within, 78, 118, 167, 379; songs, 168, 446n20; statistics about, 43–7; support for second invasion, 202–3, 225, 291, 297; support for Senate wing, 169; threat from, 195; Toronto arrests in 1866, 169; as vanguard for invasion, 100, 144, 169, 171, 225, 241, 283, 293, 297; weapons, 165–6, 175; among Welland Canal workers, 202; witness intimidation, 254 Fenianism in Ireland, 16; Americans in, 213; ciphers, 243; crackdown on, 117; false promises, 212; and Fenians in the United States, 219;

index fundraising in the United States, 3, 10, 16–17, 213; informants within, 117; leadership of, 3–5, 12, 16, 57, 146, 150; leadership change, 212; martyrs, 228–9, 285, 351; military council of, 150; membership numbers, 18; morale, 219; oaths, 136; origins of, 3–4; prisoners, 56, 68, 214, 227–9, 340; recruitment, 12–13, 136–7, 225, 305; Rising of 1867, xxx, 68, 70–1, 212–14, 340; “shooting circle,” 231, 235, 249; songs, 136, 417n68 Fenianism in the United States: and American political power, 19–20, 189–90, 195–6, 273, 294, 401n85, 401n89; arms, acquisition of, 115, 118, 171, 278, 282; arms, distribution of, 127,176, 242, 291, 293–5; arms, movement to border, 127–8, 130, 160, 167, 172, 176, 223–4, 227, 282, 290; arms, movement into Canada, 224, 242–3; arms, movement to Ireland, 50–1, 56, 130, 213; arms, recovery when confiscated, 162, 306, 315, 474n93; bonds, xxix–xxx, 39, 133, 167–8, 181, 254–5, 358, 408n33; and the Canada strategy, 18–21, 23–4, 31; ciphers, 147, 165, 378–9; committee of war and finance, 127; counter-espionage, 116, 121, 143; descriptions of Fenians, 160; factionalism within, 20, 40, 122, 128, 223, 279, 296, 300; factionalism within, attempts to redress, 293, 314; and false promises, 10, 30, 44–5, 178, 226, 282–3, 301; Fenian Council, 315; and Fenians in Canada, 218, 254, 284, 292, 400n79; and Fenians in Ireland, 16, 217–19, 227; financial dealings, 100, 296; first invasion of Canada East, 183–5; first invasion of Canada West, 181–3; flag of, 181; founding, 11; fundraising, xxix– xxx, 18, 39, 56, 115, 189, 210, 223, 279, 282, 298; fundraising, in Canada 45; fundraising, problems with, 280–1; headquarters in New York, xxix, 45, 118, 146, 217–18, 223, 230, 281; influence in Canada, 78–9, 100; intelligence operations of; leadership, 11, 16–20, 40, 116, 150, 158, 163, 172, 180, 201, 218–19, 250, 270, 279–81, 282–4, 290, 292, 296–9, 302; leadership, divisions, 17, 212, 282–3, 299, 306–7; links with German Americans, 356–7; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 250, 263; membership numbers, 18; military preparedness, 165, 189, 200, 299, 302–3; morale, 163, 206, 214, 226, 279, 281, 306–7; mythologies, 189; “naval force,” 146; oaths, 4, 38, 68, 122, 137; organizational structure, 4, 17, 397n6; plan to attack New Brunswick, 21;

519 prisoners in Canada, 56, 191, 203, 226, 285–9, 449n9; prisoners in Britain, 56, 214, 335; prisoners in the United States, 314; privateers, 145–6; “protection committee,” 121; reconnaissance in Canada, 142, 171, 182, 205, 219, 241, 280; recruitment, 47, 100, 132, 144, 175–6; and Red River, mb, 300, 312, 315; Safety Committee of, 126, 132, 218; second invasion, planning, 189, 250, 263, 273, 277, 280, 282, 292–3, 301–2; secrecy within, 119, 197, 397n6; secretary of civil affairs, xxxiii, 217, 231, 291, 296; secretary of war, 23, 152, 171, 190, 205, 269, 296–7, 387, 388, 390; secret service of, 100, 121, 142, 171, 180, 182, 219, 284, 433n95; support among Irish Americans, 118; telegraph operators, 284; threat to British officials, 231–5; threats to informants, 116–17, 171, 222, 431n71; treasurer, 145, 296; uniforms, xxix, 235, 255; and the West Indies, 126. See also Fenian Brotherhood, O’Mahony wing; Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing Fenian Sisterhood, 55–6, 171, 215, 224 Ferres, James Moir, 289 Fiann na h-Eirenn, 11 Finerty, John F., 270, 305–7, 349–50 Fionn Mac Chumhaill, 17 First World War, 356 Fish, Hamilton, 293–4, 375 Fitzgerald, Edward, 17, 231 FitzGerald, Garret, 376 Fitzhenry, Thomas (priest), 60 Fitzpatrick, Rudolph, xxx, xxxii–xxxiii, 216–17, 219, 222, 231, 272, 275, 281, 296, 298–302, 305, 310, 334, 373, 376–7, 389–92; on Canadian Fenians, 254, 284, 291, 334; on Charles Clarke, 239; on Michael/Ralph Slattery, 252–3; on Patrick James Whelan, 251; wounded at the Battle of Trout River, 306 Flanagan, Bernard, 288–9 Flood, Patrick, 54 Forrest, Ellen, 346, 483n52 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 280 Fort Abercrombie, nd, 316 Fort Erie, on, 116, 181–3 Fort Garry, mb, 310, 312, 319, 324, 326 Fort Pembina. See Pembina, nd Foster, George Perkins, 297–8, 303–4 France, 4–5, 13, 28, 147, 212, 217–19, 227, 236, 386 Franklin, vt, 302 Fraser, Andrew, 110 Frelinghuysen, Frederick T., 375

520 French Canadians: attempted alliance with Irish Canadian nationalists in 1848, 25, 27–8; Fenian denunciations of, 56–7; Fenian overtures to, 21, 52; and politics, 53, 64; relations with Irish Canadians, 52 Frenchman’s Creek, 181–2 Friends of Ireland (1848), 31 Friends of Irish Freedom, 354 Front de libération du Québec, 359, 379 Frost, John, 420n8 Gaelic football, 54, 352, 365 Gahan, James, 336–7 Gallagher, Francis, 45–7, 336–8, 350 Gallagher, Frank B., 134, 224–6, 229, 300, 309, 374 Gallagher, Jeremiah, 45, 284–5, 336–8, 350, 352–4, 353, 366–7, 383–4, 488n7 Galt, Alexander, 166 Galveston, tx, 152–3 Galway, Ireland (county), 132, 237, 345, 370 Garland, Richard D., 361 Gaspé region, qc, 48 Gavazzi, Alessandro, 104 Gerrish, F.W., 357–8 Gibbons, James, 219, 306 Given, Patrick, 246 Gladstone, William, 233, 344, 351 Globe, The (Toronto), 44, 64, 66, 77, 81, 88, 94, 131, 166, 365; on Thomas Francis Bourke’s speech, 338; on Campobello Island and Fenians, 165–6; condemnations of Fenianism, 81, 88; on Guy Fawkes Night demonstration (1864), 83–4; on Jim McDermott’s speech, 92; on Ottawa jail, 258; on Louis Riel, 324; and sectarian violence, 85–6; on suspension of habeas corpus, 261–2. See also Brown, George Gorman, John, 435n25 Graham, William, 254 Grant, R.W. See Campbell, John Grant, Ulysses S., 136, 281, 303, 313–14 Granville, Lord. See Leveson-Gower, Granville, 2nd Earl Granville Great Hunger, the, 362–3. See also Famine, the Grey, Henry, 3rd Earl Grey, 29 Grey, Lord. See Grey, Henry, 3rd Earl Grey Griffintown. See Montreal, qc: Griffintown neighbourhood Grosse Île, qc, 353–4, 355, 367 Goderich, on, 116, 172, 174, 280, 369 “God Save the King,” 357 Goodwin, James, 264

index Gordon, Arthur. See Hamilton-Gordon, Arthur Goulet, Elzéar, 313, 321 Government Constabulary for Frontier Service. See secret police in Canada: Government Constabulary for Frontier Service, formation Government of Ireland bills. See British government: Home Rule bills (Government of Ireland bills) Gowan, Ogle, 28, 31, 53, 60–1, 66, 97 Guelph, on: Fenians in Guelph, 46, 109, 244; jail, 256, 260; secret police in, 244–5; as target of Fenian invasion, 172 Guelph Evening Mercury, 260–1 Gurnett, George, 62–3 Guy Fawkes Night demonstration (1864), 83–5, 108 Gwatkin, Willoughby, 356–7 Halifax, ns, 16, 49–50, 53, 161–2, 345, 348–9, 358, 408n24, 411n64 Halpin, William, 212 Hamilton, James, 1st Duke of Abercorn, 231–2 Hamilton, on, 87, 112, 167, 172–3, 178, 181, 202, 350; corruption in police force, 113, 120; Fenians in, 45, 80, 110, 202, 224, 226, 350; and Hibernian Benevolent Society, 53–4, 80–1,87 Hamilton-Gordon, Arthur, 153, 155, 157–8, 161, 163, 441n29 Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Frederick, 1st Marquess of Dufferin, 311 Hampton, Wade, 280 Hardy, Gathorne, 228, 235 Harnett, Daniel, 224 Harnett, Mary, 224 Harrison, Robert, 106, 192, 203, 239 Hart, Charles, 27 Hart, Mathew, 44, 202 Hart, Nicholas, 242 Haviland, Thomas, 49 Hearn, John, 26, 31, 257, 404n27, 405n45 Hemans, Henry, 173–5, 201, 335, 390; assessment of Fenians, 176–7; assessment of Ridgeway, 190; on John McLaughlin, 333; Rising of 1867, 214 Herbert, Henry, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, 196 Hibernian Benevolent Societies: expansion in Canada West, 80–1, 96; government assessment of, 87; of Hamilton, 53–4, 80–1, 187; sporting events, 74; views of Orangemen, 84 Hibernian Benevolent Society (Toronto):

index extending its influence, 73–7, 80–1, 87, 96, 419n2, 421n38; and Fenianism, 67–8, 73, 114, 133–4, 142, 165–8, 193, 224, 248, 255, 335, 338, 365, 392, 409n34, 416n53, 417n61, 418n70; formation, 67, 416n53; and Guy Fawkes Night demonstration (1864), 82–5; and Jim McDermott, 91–2; and John Nolan, 114, 197, 255; and Patrick Nolan, 45, 114; and St Patrick’s Day celebrations, 77, 130–1, 137, 148. See also Boyle, Patrick; Murphy, Michael Hibernian Benevolent Society (Quebec City), 46, 52, 284–5, 336 Hibernian Knights (Montreal), 352 Hibernian Rowing Club (Toronto), 74–5, 193, 365, 419n2 Hibernian Society (Montreal), 79, 90, 94, 420n26 Hines (Hynes), Edward, 255, 261 historiography, 32–4, 38, 41–3, 106, 152, 240, 283, 356, 362–3, 376, 406n59 hms Duncan, 162 hms Pylades, 157, 161, 174 hms Rosario, 161, 174 Hoffman, John T., 294 Holland, John, 58, 63 Holmes, James, 348–9 Home Government Association. See Home Rule League Home Guards (Red Sashes), 303–5 Home Rule, 336, 344–5, 351; crisis of 1912–14, 36, 354. See also British government: Home Rule bills (Government of Ireland bills); Canadian government: Home Rule resolution in House of Commons Home Rule League, 335; in Canada 336–7 Hope, James, 162 House of Providence (Toronto), 82, 93 Howlett, John, 61 Hoy, John, 256 Hozier, Henry M., 270 Hudson’s Bay Company, 308–9, 323, 326 Hughes, John (bishop), 9 Hughes, Katherine, 354, 356 Hunter, Alex, 165 Huntingdon, qc, 305–6 hurling, 75, 352, 365 Huron, Lake, xxx, 172, 174, 179 Hutson, Robert, 59, 62, 65 Indian Island. See Campobello Island, nb Indian Rebellion (1857), 39 Invincibles (Fenian splinter group), 345, 348

521 Irish (language), 237, 354, 397n15; use among Fenians, 4, 125; use among police, xxxiii, 121, 125, 166 Irish American (New York), xxxi, 42; Canadian correspondents, 52, 137, 203, 263, 468n118; Canadian subscribers, 48, 24; on Patrick Doody, 284; on Fenian prisoners in Kingston, 286; Fenians on staff, 224, 296; on Henri Le Caron (Thomas Billis Beach) after Battle of Eccles Hill, 332; Francis Bernard McNamee’s letter, 289; on John O’Neill’s Manitoba raid, 326; on the Red River Resistance, 310; on Patrick James Whelan, 284 Irish Americans: in Civil War, 13, 21; discrimination against, 6–7, 190; machine politics of, 294; resentments among, 22; in slums, 6–7; as a voting bloc, 6, 19, 135, 161–2, 190, 273, 280, 314 Irish battalion proposal (Canada), 78, 138, 420n23 Irish Canadian (Toronto), 80; on arrests after Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 262; on arrests of Toronto Fenians in Cornwall, 166; contributors, 94; crackdown on, 255, 262; defence of Fenianism, 92, 55, 203; denunciation of Thomas McCready, 138; denunciation of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 89, 99; denunciation of John O’Neill, 335; description of Francis Medcalf, 168; on Patrick Doody’s death, 258; on Fenian Brotherhood (United States), 38–9, 81; and Fenian invasion threat, 84; on Fenianism in Canada, 39–40, 42, 80–1; on Fenian prisoners in Kingston, 286; later moderation, 337, 343; on Jim McDermott’s speech, 91; and John A. Macdonald, 343; on Michael Murphy’s speech, 131; money from American Fenians, 284; on the O’Donovan Rossa riot in Toronto, 342; outing Charles Clarke, 132; on the police, 85; “Quebec Girl” column in, 55–7; subscribers, 89, 423n78; on trial of Patrick James Whelan, 263. See also Boyle, Patrick Irish Church Missions Society, 237 Irish Free State, 360 Irishmen’s Civil and Military Republican Union, 9 Irish National Fair (1864), 17 Irish National Land League. See Land League Irish Parliamentary Party, 36, 344, 351 Irish People (Dublin), 16, 42, 49; Canadian readers, 42, 46, 49, 94; suppression, 18, 117, 126

522 Irish Protestant Benevolent Society (Montreal), 90 Irish Repeal Party, 29 Irish Republic, 360 Irish Republican Army (Ireland, 1800s), 212–3 Irish Republican Army (Provisional), 360–1 Irish Republican Army (United States, 1800s), xxix–xxx, 144, 169, 175, 244, 293; invasion of Canada East 172, 183–4, 242, 303; invasion of Canada West, 169, 172, 183, 192–3, 286, 288, 392; leadership of, 266, 271, 280, 290, 372–3, 383, 389; organizing of, 144; prisoners in Canada, 191; weapons, xxx. See also Fenianism in the United States Irish Republican Brotherhood. See Fenianism in Ireland Irish Republican Union, 26, 28–30 Irish Sentinel (Quebec City), 336–7 Irish Vindicator (Montreal), 421n27 Irish Volunteers movement, 74, 81 Irish War of Independence (1919–21), 354, 486n90 Irish World (New York), 50, 337, 348, 410n51 Islander, The (Charlottetown), 49 Jackson, Daniel, 242 Jackson, William Henry, 349–50 Jacmel (Fenian ship), 213 Jefferson, Thomas, 73 Jenkins, Brian, 232 Johnson, Andrew (president), 183, 195–6, 375, 401n85; assistance to Fenian cause, 273; Fenian anger at, 189–90; meeting with Fenians, 19; and neutrality laws, 159; Neutrality Proclamation (1866), 183–4 Johnstone, John, 277 Juárez, Benito. See Mexican-American War (1846–48) Kealey, Gregory, 374, 380, 416n53 Keane, Richard, 200 Kearney, Anthony, 435n25 Kearney, Frank, 297 Keenan, James, 296 Keenansville, on, 96 Kelly, Edward, 48 Kelly, George (Fenian letter writer), 230–5 Kelly, Michael, 47 Kelly, Tom, xxix, 236, 243, 316–18, 384; leadership of Fenians in Ireland, 212, 219, 227; in New York, 243; rescue in Manchester, 68–9, 227, 232, 251; Rising of 1867, 213, 227; “shoot-

index ing circle,” 231, 249. See also Fenianism in Ireland Kemptville, on, 46 Ker, Robert, 157, 160 Kerry, Ireland (county), 12, 69–70, 73, 204, 212–13 Kerwin, Michael, 296–7 Keyes, Edward, 166 Kickham, Charles, 16 Kiernan, Thomas, 360, 487n113 Kilkenny, Ireland (county), 10 Killian, Bernard Doran, 19–21, 384, 401n89; as an alleged informant, 159; and Campobello Island, 145–6, 155, 158, 160–3, 165; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 158–9; on suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, 128 Kingston, on, 224, 393; Penitentiary, treatment of Fenian prisoners in, 285–6, 288–9; St Patrick’s Society of, 288 Kinsella, James, 251–2, 262, 264–5, 367, 468n125 Know-Nothings, 6, 190 Laffin (Fenian from Toronto), 224 Land Act (1881) (Ireland), 344 Land League, 344–6, 348, 410n50 landlords: killing of, 345; opposition to, 4, 8–9, 11, 23, 338, 344, 410n49; threats to, 350–1 land reform, 16, 344 Langan, Peter, 3 Lansdowne, Lord. See Petty-Fitzmaurice, Henry, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne Larkin, Michael, 228–9, 230, 234, 285 Latchford, Robert, 264 Law, James, 74, 193, 419n2 Lawless Aggressions Act (1866). See Canadian government: Lawless Aggressions Act (1866) Lawrence, Reuben, 264 Leader, The (Toronto), 81, 83, 99 Le Caron, Henri. See Beach, Thomas Billis Lees, Robert, 264 Lennon, John (pseud. Reynolds), 205 Lennox, Bill, 59–63, 415n25 Lépine, Ambroise, 322 Lépine, Baptiste, 321–2 Letendre, Louison, 327 Leveson-Gower, Granville, 2nd Earl Granville, 291 Lewis, E.C., 299–300, 332 Lewiston, ny, 176 Leyne, Denis, 361 Liberal-Conservative Party (Canada), 228 liberalism, 36

index Liberal Party (Canada), 343 Limestone Ridge. See Battle of Ridgeway Lindsay, James Alexander, 333 Lindsay, on, 202 Linehan, Edward, 95 Linehan, William, 79, 89, 94 Lisgar, Lord. See Young, John, 1st Baron Lisgar Listowel, on, 87 Liverpool, uk, 235–6, 243 Lockport, ny, 173, 290 Logue, Charles, 410n50 Lomasney, William Mackey, 71–3, 72, 81, 384, 418nn70–2; on Canadian invasion, 335; and Clan na Gael, 345; death, 72, 345, 383; Rising of 1867, 213 London, on, 202; Fenians in, 46, 226, 256, 472n60; and Fenian invasion threat, xxx, 119, 172, 179; secret police in, 108–9, 111–13 London, uk, 212, 232, 236, 239, 270, 273, 345, 374; London Bridge, 72, 345 London Metropolitan Police, 234, 236 Lorne, Lord. See Campbell, John, 9th Duke of Argyll Louise, Duchess of Argyll, 348 Louisville, ky, 241 Lousada, Francis, 242–3, 251 Lower Canada. See Canada East loyalty oaths, 54, 79, 141–2 Luby, Thomas Clarke, 3, 16, 339, 335; arrest in 1866, 126; in Canada, 338, 342, 361; founding of Fenian Brotherhood, 3; on James Stephens, 4, 13 Lynch, John Joseph (bishop), 22, 128, 402n101; assessment of Fenianism, 22, 39, 93; and Hibernian Benevolent Society (Toronto), 54, 77, 90; and Jim McDermott, 91–2; mission in the United States, 22; and St Patrick’s Day parades, 77, 90, 131, 420n16; sectarian tensions in Toronto, 82, 84, 90–3, 131, 337, 450n17; and spirit of Irish nationality, 351 Lynch, William, 172, 179 Lyons, Daniel, 79, 89, 94, 138, 262, 423n80 McAndrew, Patrick, 142–3, 171 McAndrew, William, 142 McCafferty, John, 212 McCarroll, James (pseud. Terry Fenian, Terry Finnegan), 96–7, 134, 135, 226, 385, 435n25; in Buffalo, 134, 173; “The Fenian’s Vow,” 96; outing of Alexander McLeod, 173 McCauleyville, MN, 316–17 McCoy, Michael, 421n27

523 McCready, Thomas, 138, 140 McCrystal, Edward, 354 McCullough, Hugh, 162 MacDonald, John A. (author), 32 Macdonald, John A. (politician), 32, 149, 209, 216, 257, 343–4, 349, 380–1, 393; arrest of Michael Murphy, 131, 204; and Battle of Ridgeway, 178–9; and Thomas Billis Beach, 274, 291, 298, 304, 332, 346; and Campobello Island, 146, 159, 164; and Canadian Confederation, 159, 209; and Clan na Gael, 335, 348–9, 356; and Charles Clarke, 204–5, 238–40, 254, 371; and Charles Coursol, 103, 346; on crackdown on Fenians in Ireland, 117; dealings with informants, 120, 149, 200–1, 216–17, 228; and deployment of troops, 119, 128, 299; and Frederick William Ermatinger, 106, 109, 166, 277; and Fenian infiltration of the army, 137; and Fenianism in Ontario, 114, 131, 134, 167–8, 202, 204, 244, 374; and Fenianism in Quebec, 202, 241, 246, 289–90, 292, 346, 374; and Fenian threat to Canada, 32, 123, 127–8, 164, 166, 173, 243, 266, 315, 346, 348–9; and Fenian threat to Manitoba and the North-West, 315– 16, 318–21, 323–6, 350; and Fenian threats to British officials, 230–3, 346; financial misdealings, 343–4, 483n40; and Home Rule resolution in Canadian House of Commons, 347–8, 484n62; and the Irish Canadian, 290, 343, 345, 383; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 245–50, 252, 285; and Gilbert McMicken, 106, 109, 116, 176–7, 179, 193, 222, 274, 325, 369, 394; on Francis Bernard McNamee, 289–90, 345, 366, 483n45; and Manchester Fenians, 228–9; on the Métis, 312; pardon of Father John McMahon, 286; and patronage, 193, 343, 366; personal papers of, 32, 141, 356; politics in the United Canadas, 66, 97; and William Prince, 137, 192; and St Albans raid, 103; and second Fenian invasion of Canada, 283, 295–6, 299, 304; and secret police, directives to, 107–8, 113, 116, 178, 210–11, 238, 241–2, 244, 255, 292; and secret police, finances of, 110, 200; and secret police, jurisdiction of, 122, 298, 356; and secret police, operations of, 118, 124–5, 130, 147, 218, 220, 236, 298, 356, 380; and sectarian politics, 66; suspension of habeas corpus, Fenian arrests, 192, 196–7, 261, 380; suspension of habeas corpus, limits to, 194– 7, 203, 256–8, 379–80; suspension of habeas corpus, renewal of, 229, 299, 378; and railways, 119, 141–2, 343, 483n40; on the Red

524 River Resistance, 312; relationship with James McCarroll, 134, 173, 226; and Patrick James Whelan, 264–5. See also Canadian government; secret police in Canada Macdonald, John Sandfield, 97, 168–9 McDonald, J.W. (pseud.), 275, 277, 282, 284, 310, 333 MacDonald, Rolland, 194, 197 MacDonell, Angus, 130 MacDonnell, Donald, 289 McDougall, William, 308–9 McDermott, James (Jim), 148, 390, 444n65; as informant, 147–52, 158, 376–7; in Toronto, 91–2, 97, 424n90 McDermott, John, 444n65 MacFarlane, Robert, 112 McGee, John Joseph, 252 McGee, Mary, 264 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, 5, 134, 247, 338, 393; assassination of, 137, 245–66, 273, 285, 388, 464n28, 468nn125–7, 473n66; assassination of, aftermath, 367, 378, 380; attempts to marginalize Fenianism in Canada, 54, 94; and Campobello Island, 158–9; and Bernard Devlin, 31; on Owen Devlin, 78; early nationalism of, 27, 93, 364, 402n2, 414n13; on the Famine, 27; Fenian animus toward, 54, 60–1, 89, 94–6, 98–9, 249–50, 289, 291; on Fenian invasion plan, 143, 176; on Fenians in Canada, 44–6, 79, 88, 94, 98, 408n33; on French Canadians, 52; funeral of, 246; on individual Fenians, 44; on inflated Fenian threats, 88, 98, 176; on Irish in America, 93–4; Irish Canadian views of, 80, 89, 94–6, 98–9, 216, 246–8, 285; and Bernard Doran Killian, 159, 384; on loyalty to Canada among Irish Canadians, 93, 98; and loyalty tests, 79, 141; and Thomas McCready, 138, 140; on Father John McMahon, 288; on Montreal Fenians, 79, 88, 420n25; on Michael Murphy, 67, 76; on Orangeism, 52; organizing an Irish Canadian militia unit, 78, 138, 420n23; and place in history, 34; St Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto (1866), 130–1; St Patrick’s Day riots (1858), 60–1, 63; threats against, 60–1, 98–9, 126–7, 141, 200, 245, 249–52, 425n103; transformation into a loyalist, 31; Wexford speech, 93–4, 463n9; and Young Ireland, 4–5, 27 McGowan, Mark, 35 McGrath, John, 39, 79, 89, 94, 138, 420n22 McGuire, John, 76, 85, 165, 450n20 McGwyn, John, 128–9

index McKenna, Mary, 250 McKenna, Thomas, 89, 423n73 Mackenzie, Alexander, 343–4 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 25, 120, 403n13, 420n8 Mackenzie’s British, Irish, and Canadian Gazette, 25, 403n9 McKinnon, David, 119–20 McKinnon, Hugh, 119–20 McLaughlin, John (secret police, pseud. “The Veterinary”), 192, 197, 390; in Buffalo, 173, 175–9, 201, 210, 214–15; on Charles Clarke, 199; compensation, 333; warning of invasion, 177, 333 McLeod, Alexander, 127, 134, 173 McLoughlin, John (Montreal Water Police), 242 McMahon, John (priest), 192, 286–8, 287, 292, 306 MacManus, Terence Bellew, 13 McMicken, Alexander, 333 McMicken, George, 316 McMicken, Gilbert, 42, 104–6, 107, 155, 181, 243, 350, 369, 380, 393–4; and Thomas Billis Beach, 274–5, 277, 279, 284, 290–1, 293–5, 304, 315–16, 331–2, 347, 372; and British Secret Service Department, 235, 237; and Clan na Gael, 335, 347; and Charles Clarke, 121, 126, 132–3, 193–4, 199, 204–6, 217, 220, 222–3, 237–40, 370–1, 389; on the dynamite campaign, 350, 356–7; and Fenian informants, 120, 200, 269, 334; on Fenian risings in Ireland, 211; and Fenian threat to Red River, mb, 312, 315; Goderich mystery, 240, 369; intelligence gathering in Baltimore, 118; intelligence gathering in Buffalo, 124, 127, 134, 173, 175–8, 201, 390; intelligence gathering in Canada West, 137, 143, 167, 202, 219, 224, 244–5; intelligence gathering in Chicago, 117, 174, 210; intelligence gathering in Detroit, 124, 136, 216, 427n10; intelligence gathering in Missouri, 218; intelligence gathering in New York, 117– 18, 210, 250, 297, 391; intelligence gathering in Philadelphia, 117; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 246, 248, 254, 262–3; in Manitoba, 316–27; and Michael Murphy, 113, 131–4, 167; on Patrick Nolan, 130, 197–8; on William O’Donoghue, 310, 312; reports to John A. Macdonald, 106, 109, 116, 176–7, 179, 193, 209, 220, 222, 274, 291, 304, 325, 369, 394; on Louis Riel, 326; and secret police, jurisdiction, 122, 298, 356; and secret police, man-

index agement of agents, 110–14, 124–6, 173, 199, 205, 211, 215, 217, 241, 255, 275, 333–4, 368–9; and secret police, recruiting agents, 107–8, 120–1, 125, 130, 197–8, 200, 208, 262; and threat of Fenian invasion, 41, 115–16, 119, 127– 8, 142–3, 161, 173–8, 214; and threat of second Fenian invasion, 279–82, 292–3, 296, 299, 301, 303–4. See also secret police in Canada McMullen, James, 143 McNab, John, 130 MacNabb, Alexander, 167, 230 McNally, Michael, 154 McNamee, Francis Bernard, 31, 45, 139, 140, 365–6, 385; accusations of being an informant, 99, 140–1, 290, 374, 438n76; alleged threats to Charles Brydges, 142; alliance with Conservative Party (Canada), 345, 366, 483n45; and the art of deceit, 138–9; assault of Lawrence Devany, 99; description of, 289; and Fenian Brotherhood (United States), 138–9, 205, 289–90, 374, 437n73; Fenian criticism of, 290; on Fenian factions, 41; and Fenian invasion plans, 139–40, 202, 205, 255, 374; founding of first Fenian circle in Montreal, 31, 78–9, 437n73; and John A. Macdonald, 289–90, 345, 366, 483n45; Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 246; plan to help Fenian prisoners escape, 289–90; St Patrick’s Society (Montreal), 285; and second Fenian invasion, 202; support for the Montreal Sun, 336; testimony at trial of Michael Murphy et al., 168; visit to Kingston Penitentiary, 288–9; welcomes Charles Stewart Parnell to Montreal, 345 McNaney, Barney, 181 MacNeven, William James, 25 MacSwiney, Terence, 357 Maguire, John (Toronto Fenian), 193, 450n20 Maguire, John Francis (Irish politician), 21–2, 119 Maguire, Thomas, 193, 229 Mahon, Peter (pseud. Peter McNamara), 45–6, 244–5, 261, 368–9, 384–5; arrest of, 255–6; letters from prison, 260–1 Maidstone, on, 46, 109, 428n22 Main, David, 154–5, 160, 443nn63–4 Maine, 70, 136, 145, 154–5, 163, 167, 224 Mallon, James, 75 Malone, ny: as base for Fenian invasion, 175, 242, 290, 292, 301–2, 305–6, 331, 333; Fenians in, 175, 263, 294; secret police in, 263 Manchester, uk, 68, 227

525 Manchester martyrs: executions, 228–9; rescue of Fenian prisoners in 1867, 68, 227; legacy of, 285, 351 Manitoba, 180, 308, 311–19, 323–7, 376 Manitoba Act (1870), 312 Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society, 318–19, 326 Manitoulin Island, on, 85 Maniwaki, qc, 48, 410n50 Mannix, Edward, 246, 294 Mansfield, William, 79, 89, 94, 138, 140, 289, 423n80 marshals (United States). See United States Marshals Service Massachusetts, 297, 301 Massey, Godfrey, 265, 468n127 Mayne, Richard, 234, 236 Mayo, Lord. See Bourke, Richard, 6th Earl of Mayo Mazzini, Giuseppe, 4 Meade, George, 136, 162–3, 184 Meagher, Thomas Francis, 9, 13, 398n27 Meany, Stephen J., 51, 210, 336, 411n70 Medcalf, Francis: anti-Catholicism of, 82–3, 85–6, 93, 108, 113, 421n41; and Canadian secret police, 106, 121; and Charles Clarke, 121; and Orange Order, 86; and St Patrick’s Day parade (1866), 131; threats against, 168, 422n54 Meehan, Patrick, xxxi, xxxiii, 296 Meehan, Terry, 114 Memphis, TN, 241 Mercur (Danish cargo ship), 231–3, 235 Merritton, on, 46, 352 Métis, 308; contacts with Fenians, 321; grievances with Canadian government, 308– 10, 316; mobilization against Fenians, 322–4; threat of alliance with Fenians, 316, 319–20; treatment by Canadian settlers, 320–1 Mewburn, John, 195 Mexico, 152 Mexican-American War (1846–48): veterans of, 26, 28–30, 150 Michel, John, 118–19, 124, 137, 202, 210, 431n79 Michigan, 121, 167, 280. See also Detroit, mi Millen, Francis (Frank), 150–2, 151, 373, 390–1, 392; as “Special Informant” to Edward Archibald, 150–3, 377, 392, 440n24, 441n25, 443n63 Miller, A.F., 200 Miller, William, 63 Milne, David, 275 Milwaukee, wi, xxx, xxxii, 172, 174, 179, 209

526 Minnesota, 316–17, 327 Mirror, The (Toronto), 66, 76 Missouri, xxix–xxxiii, 121, 126, 205–6, 218, 220–3, 369, 380, 391 Mitchel, Jane, 9 Mitchel, John, 7–10, 8, 12, 19, 21, 285, 354, 364, 385–6; arrest in 1848, 50; on the Famine, 7–8, 363; legacy, 285; in Paris, 147; and slavery, 9– 10, 385; support for the Confederacy, 9, 13–14 Mitchel, William, 27 Monck, Charles Stanley, 4th Viscount Monck, 32, 119, 122, 126, 164, 196, 204, 217, 231–6, 238, 273–4, 284–5 Monck, Lord. See Monck, Charles Stanley, 4th Viscount Monck Mono township, on, 87 Monro, James, 350 Montgomery, Richard, 24, 402n2 Montgomery, William (pseud. William McMichael), 216, 219, 315, 334, 369, 373, 376, 391; in Clan na Gael, 334; compensation, 333; on Fenian infighting, 279, 296; on Fenians and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 250; with Fenians in New York, 218–20, 241, 275, 277, 304–5, 310; on links between Canadian and American Fenians, 219, 297; on Father John McMahon, 288; on plans for second Fenian invasion, 223, 280–3, 298–302; potential exposure, 222–3, 370 Montreal, qc, 53, 99, 127, 166, 286, 358–60; Battle of Eccles Hill, 302–3, 331; Clan na Gael in, 336–7; Fenian circles in, 31, 40–1, 44, 74, 78, 88–90, 94, 117, 138–40, 143, 147, 168, 205, 216, 244, 255, 259, 265, 283–4, 290, 365–6, 385, 393, 420n26, 439n12; Fenianism, 39, 44–6, 51, 98, 202, 224, 241–3, 252, 254–5, 262, 283, 285, 297, 338, 352, 374; Fenian plan to attack, 115, 143–4, 172, 183–4, 241, 291, 374; Griffintown neighbourhood, 46, 51, 60–1, 89, 242, 246, 463n9; Irish Catholics in, 26, 67, 77–9, 93, 95, 258, 289, 337, 409n39; Irish nationalism in, 27–30, 95, 258, 336–7, 345, 351, 357, 364, 421n27; Irish nationalist speakers in, 28–9, 56, 80, 92, 339, 342, 345, 351–2; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 245–6, 248–52, 254, 258, 264; politics in, 25, 104, 141; St Albans raid, 103; secret police in, 167, 291–2, 331, 333, 346, 357. See also St Patrick’s Society (Montreal) Montreal Herald, 140 Montreal police, 99, 104, 245–6, 254–5, 262; Fenians in, 141; and loyalty oath, 141; Water Police, 104, 106, 141, 346, 392–3

index Montreal Post, 140 Montreal Sun, 51, 336–7, 482n18 Moodie, Robert, 76 Morant Bay Rebellion (1865), 39 Moriarty, David (bishop), 70 Moriarty, Murtagh, 69–73, 165–7, 206, 380, 417n61, 418n69, 459n17; arrest in Ireland, 213; on Canadian invasion, 335; escape from Cornwall jail, 204; Rising of 1867, 212–13 Morrisburg, on, 290 Morrow, John, 297 Mothersill, George (pseud. Philip Kavanagh), 224, 241, 345, 370, 391; with British Secret Service Department, 233–7, 241, 270, 371, 374; in Chicago, 208–9, 215; Cleveland Fenian convention (1867), 220, 223; compromised by outing of Charles Clarke, 222–3; forming Fenian circle in Clinton, mo, 218, 369 Moylan, James, 76, 93, 99, 194, 261, 286, 290 Mullarky, M.C., 88–9 Mulligan, Michael, 206 Mulvey, John, 75, 80, 167–8 Murphy, Henry, 89–90, 94, 254–5, 258, 262, 265 Murphy, Jeremiah, 335 Murphy, John (Hibernian rower), 74, 419n2 Murphy, John (Fenian baggage man), 256, 260–1 Murphy, John (Fenian store clerk), 256, 261 Murphy, Kate, 221 Murphy, Michael, 34, 45, 165, 335, 338, 351, 370, 386, 416n52, 422n58, 435n26; allegiance to John O’Mahony, 40–1, 143, 364; arrest in Cornwall, 165–9, 175, 192, 197, 211, 224, 331; in Buffalo, 204; and Campobello Island, 40, 165–6; character, 67; criticism of, 81, 226; and Patrick Cummings, 113, 133; escape from Cornwall jail, 204; and Bishop John Farrell, 54; and Fenian Brotherhood (United States), 99, 143, 175; Fenian circle in Toronto, 130–1, 418n70; and Fenian infiltration of British Army, 136; and Hibernian Benevolent Society (Toronto), 54, 67, 74–7, 81, 131, 365, 419n2; and Hibernian Rowing Club (Toronto), 74– 5, 193, 419n2; and the Irish Canadian, 80; and James McCarroll, 97; and Gilbert McMicken, 113, 131–4; at Philadelphia Fenian convention (1865), 20, 99–100, 136; public endorsement of Fenianism, 81; rejection of Fenian invasion of Canada, 40, 81–2, 143; St Patrick’s Day speeches, 84, 91, 167–8, 338, 364; selling Fenian bonds, 133; support for Fenian invasion of Canada, 20–1, 40; taverns belonging to,

index 67–9, 71–2, 76, 166, 204, 416n53; at Troy Fenian convention (1866), 206. See also Hibernian Benevolent Society (Toronto) Murphy, Neil, 126 Murphy, Seán, 360 Murphy, Shamrock, 202 Murphy, Thomas, 252, 255, 262, 264–5 Murray, Henry, 159–61, 377 Musgrave, Anthony, 51 Muskoka, on, 338 Nagle, Pierce, 117, 265, 468n127 Napier, George, 174, 177–8, 448n65 Nashville, tn, 179, 269–70, 384, 388 Nation, The (Dublin), 68, 385 nativism, 6–7, 52 Nault, André, 321–2 Navy Island, on, 120 Nebraska, 327 Neidhardt, W.S., 32–3 neutrality laws. See United States government: neutrality laws Neville, James, 291 New Brunswick, 88, 92, 153–4, 157, 338, 397n15; and Confederation, 49, 159–60, 163; Fenian invasion attempt, 40, 70, 145–6, 149–50, 153– 5, 157–8, 161–3, 391, 444n65; Fenians in, 48, 157, 442n48; Fenian threat to, 21, 33, 48, 153–5, 166–7, 364, 373, 376–7, 384, 386, 390; secret police in, 155, 157; sectarianism in, 48, 153–4, 397n15. See also Campobello Island, nb Newcastle, Duke of. See Pelham-Clinton, Henry, 5th Duke of Newcastle Newcomb, Abner, 206, 223, 454n87 New Departure, 344–5, 483n42 Newfoundland, 50–1, 68, 70, 354, 357, 392, 411n68 New Hampshire, 136 New Jersey, 88, 179, 386 New Orleans, LA, 255, 402n2 New York (state), 115, 127, 136, 141, 167, 172, 176, 183–4, 204, 241–2, 262–3, 275, 277, 290, 293–4, 297, 300–1, 305, 309, 312, 315, 333, 371–2, 376, 389 New York, ny, xxix, 12, 73, 91–2, 174–5, 210, 231, 290, 313, 321; British consul in, 18–19, 26–8, 42, 116, 119, 122, 127, 129, 151, 157, 172, 176, 200, 224, 231, 235, 241, 251, 272, 275, 281, 290, 296, 346, 349, 367, 375–6, 390, 392; Clan na Gael in, 259, 334–5, 348, 342n26; Fenian Brotherhood, headquarters, xxix, 45, 78, 118, 145–6, 150, 217–18, 223, 225–6, 230, 248–9, 277, 281–2,

527 284, 290, 298, 310, 390; Fenians in, xxix, 3, 12, 14, 26–7, 29, 51, 68, 70, 79, 128, 130, 138, 143, 146, 154, 158, 160–1, 185, 203–4, 206, 223, 228, 239, 254, 282, 286, 302, 304, 313, 334, 377; informants in, 129, 150–1, 200, 224, 227, 251, 272, 298, 390; Irish immigrants in, 7, 26, 43, 145; Irish nationalist exiles in, 6, 8–12, 69, 163, 243, 384–7; nationalist speeches in, 29, 31, 364; newspapers in, 11, 25, 42, 50, 75, 159, 290, 343; secret police in, xxix–xxxiii, 117–18, 132, 204, 206–8, 210–11, 214–17, 218–23, 235, 241, 250, 270, 275, 277, 281–2, 288, 296–7, 298–9, 304–5, 310, 333–4, 350, 369–70, 373, 391; Sinn Féin in, 358–9 New York Fenian congress (1870), 295–6, 298, 300, 312 New York Herald, 103 Niagara Falls, on, 54, 75, 192, 240, 357, 365 Niagara Peninsula, 105, 394; and Fenian invasion, xxix–xxxi, 32, 56, 100, 116, 120, 128, 181– 3, 192, 198, 201–4, 252, 370; Fenians in, 44, 46, 128, 201–2; policing of, 108–10, 122, 128–9, 177, 192, 198, 201, 203–4, 240, 357, 370, 392. See also Battle of Ridgeway Nightingale, Leonard, 174, 176–7, 197 Nolan, John, 114, 197, 255, 261 Nolan, Patrick (pseud. Patrick C. Burton), 113– 14, 126, 130, 177, 197, 255, 391–2; investigations in Toronto, 45, 130, 133, 409n34, 445n4; operations in Chicago, 114–17, 120, 122, 125; resignation, 197–8 Norman, Christian, 229–30 North-West Resistance (1885), 326, 349 Nova Scotia, xxxii, 49, 53, 161–2, 358, 392; Canadian Confederation in, 163, 216, 262; dynamite threat in 1883, 348–9; Fenians in, 16, 49–50, 345, 408n24, 411n64 “O Canada”, 357 O’Brennan, Martin, 283–4 O’Brien, J.C., 309 O’Brien, Michael, 228–9, 230, 234, 285 O’Brien, William (Irish nationalist), 350–1 O’Brien, William Smith (Young Ireland), 50, 75–6, 78, 350–1, 420n8 O’Brine, Jeremiah, 206 O’Callaghan, Edmund Bailey, 25 O’Callaghan, John, 237–8, 370–1 O’Connell, Daniel, 25, 231, 382, 393; burning effigies of, 83; as icon, 17; invocations of, 153, 285; nationalist tradition of, 29, 36, 49–50, 52, 80, 96, 153, 364

528 O’Connor, John, 346 O’Connor, Michael Thomas, 28–9, 92, 364 O’Day, Patrick. See O’Dea, Patrick O’Dea, Patrick, 134, 178, 203, 223–4, 284, 309; auction house of, 127, 136, 173, 177–9 O’Donnell, Patrick, 48, 50 O’Donnell Defence Fund, 48, 50, 425n103 O’Donoghue, Daniel, 14 O’Donoghue, William Bernard, 311; communication with Fenian Brotherhood, 309–10; Fenian invasion of Manitoba, 312–16, 318, 320–7; imprisonment, 326; visit to Washington, dc, 313 O’Donohoe, Barney, 134, 166, 431n76 O’Donohoe, John, 134, 285 O’Donohoe, Mary, 61 O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah, 56, 22–3, 335, 341, 346, 363, 387; arrest in 1866, 126; dynamite campaign, 149, 285, 337, 339, 345, 347, 349; in Montreal, 342; Skirmishing Club, 348, 484n65; Skirmishing Fund, 49, 337–9, 343, 425n103; split from Clan na Gael, 345; as symbol, 285; in Toronto, 338–9, 341–2, 361, 418n69. See also dynamite campaign; United Irishmen (1880s) O’Donovan Rossa, Mary Jane, 56, 413n102 O’Farrell, Henry, 466n80 O’Farrell, John, 285, 336, 473n66 O’Gallagher, Dermot, 367 O’Gallagher, Marianna, 367 O’Gara, Martin, 46, 141, 144, 264 Ogdensburg, ny, 28, 30, 109, 143, 166, 175, 223, 290–1, 293, 297 O’Gorman, J., 207 O’Gorman, Richard, 7 O’Grady, Miss (New York Fenian), xxix O’Grady, William John, 25 O’Halloran, Daniel, 74 O’Hanly, John Lawrence Power, 52, 95, 141, 143–4, 256–60, 367–8, 381 O’Leary, Grattan, 410n51 O’Leary, John, 16 O’Leary, Patrick, 136 Oliver, Thomas, 120–2, 125, 432n93 O’Mahony, Ellen, 56, 413n98 O’Mahony, John, 4, 6, 12, 68, 74, 95, 159, 386, 425n103; acquiescence in the Canadian strategy, 100; and Campobello Island, 145–6, 155, 157, 163, 172, 401n84; formation of the Emmet Monument Association, 10; and informants, 147–53, 377, 390; and Irish Canadians, 41, 78, 130, 143, 364, 383, 386; as leader of Fenian

index Brotherhood, 11, 16–20, 40, 118, 150, 158, 163, 223, 273, 384; resignation, 163. See also Fenian Brotherhood, O’Mahony wing O’Mahony wing. See Fenian Brotherhood, O’Mahony wing O’Meara, Patrick, 40–1, 79, 89–90, 94, 98, 420n25 O’Neill, Edward, 248, 252, 468n127 O’Neill, John, 180, 200, 270, 291, 295, 335, 356, 386–7, 394, 481n74; Battles of Eccles Hill and Trout River, 34, 301–6, 331, 333, 356, 372; Battle of Ridgeway, xxix, 179–83, 192; Battle of Ridgeway, aftermath, 189–91, 195, 202; calls for extradition of, 195; condemnation of Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 250; Cuba expedition, 282; denounced by Fenians, 306–7; early career, 179; final years, 326–7; fundraising, 270, 279, 298, 315, 391; informants on, 334, 391; imprisonments, 306, 314, 326; and Henri Le Caron (Thomas Billis Beach), 266, 269–72, 274, 277, 279–80, 290, 293, 315, 372, 388–9; and Henry Murphy, 254; and William O’Donoghue, 309–11, 316, 320, 327; opposition within Fenian Brotherhood, 292, 296, 299–300, 306–7, 332, 335; and perceived American political support, 273, 294; plan to invade Manitoba, 312, 315–16, 319, 323–6, 394; plans for second Fenian invasion of Canada, 189, 250, 263, 273, 277–84, 290, 292–3, 295–302; president of Fenian Brotherhood, 250; reputation as “hero of Ridgeway,” 180, 270, 386; and Red River, mb, 312, 314, 316, 319–20, 323–4, 326; resignation from Fenian Brotherhood, 315; speech in Buffalo, 201. See also Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing; Fenianism in the United States O’Neill, nb, 327 O’Neill, Patrick, 66–7, 76 O’Neill, Terrence, 288 Ontario, 216, 280, 283, 286, 308–9, 360; Fenians in, 244, 284, 333; secret police in, 222, 275; settlers in Manitoba from, 312, 321, 327. See also Canada West Orange and Green violence. See sectarian violence Orangeism. See Orange Order Orangemen. See Orange Order Orange Order, 51, 91, 130, 225, 336, 354, 365, 460n41; and American nativism, 6; arming of members, 97–8; burning down Parliament Buildings (Montreal) in 1849, 104; and Charles Clarke, xxxiii, 370; and Corpus

index Christi riot (1864), 82; and Owen Cosgrove, 256; and Bernard Devlin, 77–8, 90; disrupting speeches in Toronto, 341–2, 350–1, 361; and Fenianism, 97–8, 169, 203; and Ogle Gowan, 28, 60–1, 66, 97; Grand Orange Lodge of British North America, 28, 60; and Guy Fawkes Night (1864), 83–5, 422n43; and John Holland, 58, 63; hostility toward Irish Catholics, 53, 58–9, 80, 82, 87–8, 95, 202–3, 289, 337, 364, 379–80; and Incorporation Bill (1858), 64; Irish Catholic hostility toward, 23, 52, 67, 73, 77, 84–5, 169, 262; Irish speakers, xxxiii, 397n15; and Bill Lennox, 59–63; and James McCarroll, 96; and John A. Macdonald, 195, 380; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 52, 60–1, 95, 379–80; and Father John McMahon, 288; and the Métis, 312–3, 316, 318, 320, 322, 325; as mirror image of Fenianism, 52–3, 75, 92; and Jane Mitchel, 9; and Murtagh Moriarty, 71, 418n69; in New Brunswick, 48, 153–4, 397n15; and William O’Brien, 350–1; and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, 342, 361; and Ribbonism, 410n49; and Edmond Ronayne, 42; St Patrick’s Day intimidation in Peterborough, on (1863), 80–1; St Patrick’s Day riot in Saint John, nb (1849), 48; St Patrick’s Day riots in Toronto (1858), 59–67; sectarianism in New Brunswick, 153–4; and Thomas Scott, 310, 312; and shocking moral standards, 55–6; in song, 87–8; in Toronto, 58, 61–7, 71, 73, 75– 6, 80, 82–6, 91, 130, 225, 255, 337, 342, 350; Toronto Orange hall break-in, 85–7; and Toronto police force, 61–2, 64–5, 76; Twelfth of July celebrations, 59, 62. See also antiCatholicism; sectarian violence Ord, Edward, 136 O’Reilly, James, 144, 238–9, 263, 265–6, 281, 283, 473n66 O’Reilly, John Boyle, 305 O’Reilly, Michael, 142 O’Reilly, Miles, 121 Ornstein, Michael, 34 O’Shaughnessy, Edward, 259, 420–1n26 O’Shaughnessy, Garrett, 3 Oshawa, on, 46, 223 O’Shea, Johanna, 56 O’Sullivan, Cornelius. See Clarke, Charles O’Sullivan, Daniel, xxxiii, 217–19 Ottawa, on, 44, 178, 233, 238, 252, 258, 273, 275, 285, 292, 311–12, 331–2, 345, 346; assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee in, 245–8, 250–5, 261–4; Fenians in, 44–6, 51, 80, 141, 143, 217,

529 219, 239, 248, 252–4, 275, 294, 366–7, 456n35; Fenian threats to, 202, 241, 291; Irish Catholics in, 52, 67, 87, 256; jail, 258, 262; municipal government, 95 Ottawa police, 248, 250, 316 Ottawa Times, 239 Palmerston, Lord. See Temple, Henry John, 3rd Viscount Palmerston Papineau, Louis-Joseph, 25, 27, 242, 463n5 Parenteau, Pierre, 322 Paris, France, 28; Fenians in, xxx, 4, 6, 219, 236, 386; Thomas Billis Beach in, 270, 388; Tom Kelly in, 212; John Mitchel in, 147; William Roberts in, xxx, 217–18, 227; secret police in, 236, 391; James Stephens in, 13, 387 Paris, on, 46, 172 Parliament Buildings (Montreal), 104 Parliament Buildings (Ottawa), 177, 205, 250–1, 259, 262, 264–5, 275 Parnaby, Andrew, 380 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 344–6, 351, 373, 389, 391 passport system, 109 Patriot Hunters, 25, 28, 30, 191, 403n13 patronage, 6, 193, 343, 366 Peacocke, George, 181–3, 192, 201 Pelham-Clinton, Henry, 5th Duke of Newcastle, 83, 422n43 Pembina, nd, 316, 319, 321, 323–4, 327 Perrault, Joseph-Xavier, 21 Peterborough, on, 96, 117, 202, 385, 421n33, 431n76; St Patrick’s Day intimidation (1863), 80–1 Petty-Fitzmaurice, Henry, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, 348–50 Philadelphia, pa, 43, 117, 120, 171, 215, 275–6, 346, 352 Philadelphia Fenian convention (1865), 18–20, 117, 153, 251, 281; Canadians at, 20, 80, 99, 364 Philadelphia Fenian convention (1868), 281; Canadians at, 284, 297 Phoenix, The (New York), 11, 75, 78 Phoenix Park assassinations, 48, 345, 348, 374 Pigeon Hill, qc, 185, 376 Pittsburgh, pa, 126, 132, 215, 221 Pittsburgh Fenian convention (1866), 126–7, 154, 197, 204–6, 370, 389, 392 Plattsburg, ny, 172 police reforms, 64–5 Pope Pius IX, 83 Portage, mb, 310, 316

530 Port Colborne, on, 46, 100, 111–12, 142–3, 171–2, 177–8, 181–2, 193, 275, 370, 391 Port de Grave, nl, 50 Port Huron, mi, 137, 210 Portland, me. See Campobello Island, nb Port Stanley, on, 172 postal system, 378, 380; intercepting Fenian mail, 143, 210, 244–5, 248, 256, 369, 378; monitoring mail, 292; postmasters, 216, 221–2, 292 Potsdam, ny, 223, 333 Potsdam Junction, ny, 241–2 Power, Patrick J., 43 Prescott, on, 46, 80, 128, 166, 248, 275, 290 press, 41–2, 50, 168; in Canada, 27, 67, 80, 99, 195, 210–11, 261, 342, 351; in Canada, Catholic, 67, 92–3; in Canada, crackdown, 94, 255; in Canada, freedom of, 261; in the United States, 18, 104, 158; in the United States, Irish nationalist, 41, 50, 78, 255 Prince, William, 45, 65, 113–14, 121, 392, 394; cooperation with secret police, 106–7, 427n11; crackdown on Fenians, 192; and Fenian threat, 137; investigating Fenians, 165, 409n35; investigating Michael Murphy, 167; St Patrick’s Day parade (1866), 131 Prince Alfred. See Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Prince Edward Island, 49, 68, 338 Princess Louise. See Louise, Duchess of Argyll Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom, 354 Protestantism, 6, 53, 66. See also Orange Order; Protestants Protestants, 92, 412n73, 424n93; Battle of the Boyne, 322; in Canada, 24–5, 35, 53–4, 86, 90, 98–9, 354, 360, 410n49; in Canada, politics of, 64, 82, 95–6, 202, 286; fears of massacre, 50, 83–4, 87–8; in Fenian organizations, 203, 385, 449n9; and Fenian threat, 58, 82–4, 87–8, 109, 202, 257; Fenian views of, 56, 64–5, 81, 96; in Ireland, 237–9, 360, 382; in Manitoba, 308, 321, 327; millenarianism among, 87; in New Brunswick, 157, 396n15; in Newfoundland, 50–1; on police forces, 62–4, 114, 125, 198, 202, 216, 370, 389, 391, 396n15; in Toronto, 58, 60, 62–7, 76, 85, 91, 93, 225; in the United States, 6, 190. See also Orangeism; sectarian violence Purcell, John Baptist (bishop), 288 Puslinch, on, 45–6, 51, 244, 255, 368, 384 Quebec, 32, 128, 316, 321, 353, 379; Fenians in, 283, 338; secret police in, 104–5, 241, 275, 278, 334, 368, 393; as target of Fenian invasion,

index xxx, 23, 127, 172, 184–5, 277, 287, 298, 301–5, 308–9, 314, 335, 387. See also Canada East Quebec City, qc, 24, 31, 412n75; Confederation conference in, 33, 103; explosion at the legislature, 349; Fenian circle in, 16, 43–5, 171, 202, 137, 251, 336; Fenians in, 30, 44, 46–7, 51–2, 171, 202, 284–5, 337–8, 345, 350–3, 366, 383; Irish Catholics in, 26–7 46–7, 67, 404n26; Irish nationalism in, 26–7, 42, 44, 80, 357; policing, 292, 349; as target of Fenian invasion, 172 Quebec Mercury, 43 Quebec Morning Chronicle, 27 Quebec Spectator, 404n21, 421n27 Queen’s Own Rifles, 178, 181–3, 193, 201, 370 Queen’s Park, Toronto, 83 Queenston-Lewiston Suspension Bridge, 106, 201, 357 Queen Victoria. See Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Quimby, Isaac, 294 Quinn, James, 76 Quinn, Richard, 264 Radical Republicans, 190, 280, 401n85 railways, 110, 204, 316, 343–4, 345, 483n40; Buffalo and Lake Huron, 142; detectives, 141–2, 165–6; Erie and Niagara, 128; Fenianism among workers, 128, 141–3, 256; Fenian threats to, 119, 141–2, 172, 180, 232; Grand Trunk, 44, 119, 141, 172, 256, 366; Great Western, 119, 141–2; Irish immigrants working on, 6, 58; Minnesota, 324; Northern Pacific, 319; Ottawa and Prescott, 205; use by Fenians, 279, 378 Rankin, Patrick, 352 Rebellion Losses Bill riots (1849), 104 Rebellions of 1837–38 (Canada), 24–5, 52, 127, 173, 412n75, 463n5 Rebow, John Gurdon, 270 Redfern, James, 112, 427n11 Redmond, James (Quebec Fenian), 46, 284 Redmond, John (Irish politician), 351 Red River, mb, xvi, 300, 308–27, 349, 394 Reform League (Ireland), 234 Reform Party (Canada), 64, 66–7, 80 Renehan, Frank, 292 “Repeal Bands,” 28, 404n34 republicanism, 40, 94, 214, 351, 356, 360; American, 93–4, 189, 214; Canadian, 20, 24–5, 40, 74, 163; Irish, in British North America, 27, 37,

531

index 40, 48, 51, 68, 73–4, 81, 169, 173, 203, 354, 356, 364; Irish, in Ireland, 3, 16, 57, 89, 357, 360, 382, 393; Irish, in the United States, 7, 9, 19, 27, 30, 91, 93, 158, 160, 309, 358, 363–4; European, 4 Republican Party (United States), 19, 190, 280–1, 314, 401n85 Republic of Emmetta, 145, 158–9, 162, 373 Revolutionary war in Ireland (1919–21), 30, 354 Rhode Island, 78, 297, 301 Richmond Hill, on, 81, 83, 87, 421n38 Ribbonism, 76, 410n49 Ribbonmen, 48, 67, 76, 416n51, 416n53 Ridgeway. See Battle of Ridgeway Riel, Louis, 308–13, 311, 316, 321–6, 349–50 Ritchey, David, 59, 414n7 Ritchie, Frank, 275, 316 Ritchot, Joseph-Noël (priest), 319–20, 322 Rivière aux Îlets-de-Bois, mb, 322 Robert, Mrs, xxx, 217 Roberts, William, xxix, 17, 170, 286, 387; attempt to repair rift with Irish Fenians, xxx, 217–19, 227; and Charles Clarke, xxix–xxxiii, 133, 205, 207–8, 215–16, 221, 239, 371, 389; compromised post office box of, 210, 248, 369, 378; family of, xxxi–xxxiii, 216–17; and Fenian invasion of Canada, 20, 23, 169–70, 215; and Fenian invasion of New Brunswick, 154– 5, 157; and Fenians in Canada, 40–1, 122, 133, 169, 175, 202; fundraising, 122; as leader of Senate wing, 20, 145, 159, 164, 172, 179, 202, 218, 230–1; replaced by John O’Neill, 250, 270, 386; and revolution in Ireland, xxix–xxx, 396n5; and secret police, xxix–xxxiii, 200, 205, 207–8, 212, 215–17, 219–21, 223, 239, 369, 371, 389. See also Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing; Fenianism in the United States: leadership Rochester, ny, 200–2, 214, 309, 383, 403n9 Ronayne, Edmond, 42–3 Rooney, James (pseud.), 242–4, 251, 272 Rose, Hugh, 1st Baron Strathnairn, 432n82 Rose, John (politician), 127, 374–5, 488n17 Rose, John C. (secret agent), 294–5, 475n6 Rossin House, Toronto, 76 Rouses Point, ny, 30, 127, 144, 243, 291, 358 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 359, 361 Royal Irish Constabulary, xxxii, 106–7, 234 Royal Navy, 20, 161–3, 232, 374 Russell, John (British prime minister), 4 Russia: government and Fenians, 9–10 Ryan, James, 246

Ryan, John, 175 Rykert, Charles, 111 St Albans, vt: Confederate raid (October 1864), 103–4, 108–9, 116, 392; as staging ground for invasion, 242, 291, 293, 297, 301–2, 304–5, 326, 333 St Andrews, nb, 154–5, 161–2 St Boniface, mb, 324 St Catharines, on, 109, 194; Fenians in, 44, 46, 142–3, 171, 203; secret police in, 111, 197 Saint Croix Courier (St Stephen, nb), 154, 160, 443n63 St George, nb, 48, 88 St Helen’s Island, qc, 28, 30, 242–3 St Jean, qc, 298, 301–3333 St Jean Baptiste Society of Quebec City, 52, 412n75 Saint John, nb, 48, 153–4, 157, 161, 338, 345 St John’s, nl, 50–1, St Joseph, nd, 324 St Marys, on, 46 St Matte, André Jerome, 327 St Michael’s Cathedral (Toronto), 59, 82, 130, 365 St Patrick’s Church (Montreal), 53 St Patrick’s Day parades, 31, 55, 58, 77; in Canada West, 65; intimidation in Peterborough, on (1863), 80–1; in Montreal, 78, 90; in New York City, 145; suspension in Toronto, 58, 65, 75, 77, 91, 130–1, 137, 352; violence in Toronto (1858), 58–65, 73, 414n17 St Patrick’s Literary Society (Ottawa), 248 St Patrick’s Society (Cobourg), 82 St Patrick’s Society (Kingston), 288 St Patrick’s Society (Montreal), 46, 53–4, 77–9, 88–90, 98, 248, 255, 285, 289, 357, 385, 423n80, 424n81, 426n119, 463n9, 484n65 St Patrick’s Society (Peterborough), 80, 421n32 St Patrick’s Society (Quebec City), 285 St Paul, mn, 316, 319 St Paul’s Cathedral (Toronto), 58 St Stephen, nb, 153–4, 161–3, 444n65 Sarnia, on, 46, 87, 106, 108, 116, 121–2, 128, 176, 202 Saskatchewan, 326, 349 Savage, John, 223, 273, 314, 398n27 scalping. See substitute brokerage Scanlan, Kate, 44, 252 Scanlan, Michael, 205, 216 Schryer, Joseph, 198–9 Scotland Yard, 345

532 Scott, Michael, 414n7 Scott, Thomas, 310–13, 324, 327 secret police in Canada, xxxi, 31–2; agent assignments, 107–10, 112, 120–2, 197–9; agents posing as prisoners, 192; assaults of agents, 111, 113, 295; assessments of Fenianism, 118– 19, 127–8, 197, 205, 214, 243, 282, 303, 409n34; arming of agents, 166, 211, 215; attempts to con, 41, 119–20, 125, 200, 208, 269; and Battle of Ridgeway, 192–3; under Alexander Campbell, 209–11, 215; compromised agents, 110–11, 197; cross-border cooperation, 124, 136, 173, 206; cultivating informants, 200; deployments in Canada East, 127; deployments in Canada West, 107–10, 121–2, 130, 133, 143, 177, 192, 201, 203–4, 206, 212, 226, 254; deployments in Toronto, 132–33, 175, 193–4, 199, 212, 218–19, 221, 240; directives from John A. Macdonald, 107–8, 113, 116, 178, 238, 241–2, 244, 255, 292; disbandment in 1870, 331–4; Dominion Police Force, formation, 275; Dominion Police Force, later responsibilities, 356; early operations of, 107–10; Fenian circle in Missouri, xxix, xxxi, 205, 218, 369, 391; at Fenian conventions, 126–7, 197, 204–6, 220, 223; finances, 110, 215, 219, 233, 343–4, 456n32; Government Constabulary for Frontier Service, formation, 103, 106–8; infiltration of Senate wing, 205; intelligence failures, 177–9; lack of accountability, 343–4; layoffs of agents, 113, 454n8; Gilbert McMicken’s management of, 113–14, 199, 211, 215, 241, 275, 369; misconduct within, 198–9; morale within, 111–12, 124–5; in New Brunswick, 155, 157; payroll problems, 110, 114, 343; recruitment of agents 106–7, 114, 125, 197–9, 427nn11–12, 428nn13–14; reorganization, 113, 198, 220, 275; reputation, 369; responsibilities of, 108, 275; rewards to agents, 332–3; secondments to British Secret Service Department, 233–7; Special Order No. 1, 108; squabbles among agents, 199; tactics of, 108, 133, 143, 237; threats against agents, 111–12, 197; undercover in Buffalo, 127–9, 173, 175–9, 201, 203–4, 210, 214–15; undercover in Chicago, 208–9, 114–17, 120, 122, 125, 215; undercover in Detroit, 120– 2; undercover in New York City, xxix–xxxiii, 206–7, 211, 214–20, 241, 275, 277, 304–5, 310; undercover in Philadelphia, 117, 120, 281, 284; undercover in Pittsburgh, 126, 132; use of badges, 211, 223, 369; withdrawal of agents

index from the United States, 210–11. See also secret policing secret policing: opposition to, 111, 234, 429n34 Secret Service Department (Britain), 233–7, 241, 270, 272–3, 371–2, 374, 389, 391 sectarian violence: in Canada West and Ontario, 59–64, 82–3, 255, 339, 341–2, 350–1, 423n68; in Manitoba, 313; in Montreal, 99; in New Brunswick, 48, 153–4; in Newfoundland, 50; Wellington County election riot, 63–4 Self-Determination for Ireland League of Canada (and subsequently Newfoundland), 354, 356–7, 360 Senate wing. See Fenian Brotherhood, Senate wing Senior, Hereward, 34, 44 separate schools issue, 66, 77, 80, 261 Seward, William, 162, 190, 294, 375; and AngloAmerican intelligence sharing, 135, 161, 195–6, 273, 277; Fenian anger at, 162, 189; meeting with Bernard Doran Killian, 19–20, 401n89; pact with Britain to contain Fenians, 20, 135–6 Sewell, Anthony, 242–3, 275, 277 Shakespeare, William: possible member of the “Celtic race,” 11, 399n46 Shakespeare Club of Toronto, 74, 419n2 Shamrock Saloon (Suspension Bridge, on), 201 Sheady, Matthew, 58–60, 62–3, 65–6, 73 Sheady, Thomas, 166–8 Sherbrooke, qc, 246, 357 Sheridan, Dennis, 59, 61–3, 95 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 294 Sherwood, Percy, 356 Sherwood, Samuel, 62, 65, 415n25 Shiel, D.R., 231 Shields, Lawrence, xxxi, xxxiii, 218, 224 Siege of Quebec (1775), 24 Sillery Cove, qc, 338 Sinn Féin: branch in Montreal, 357–9; electoral victory in 1918, 36, 354; rejection of Canadian invasion, 359 Sinnott, Patrick, 88, 145–7, 155, 161–2, 443n64 Sisters of St Joseph, 59, 82, 93 Skirmishing Club. See O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah: Skirmishing Club Skirmishing Fund. See O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah: Skirmishing Fund Slabtown, on, 46, 202

index Slattery, Michael/Ralph, 217, 219, 239, 252–4, 253, 258, 262, 265, 367, 456n35 Slattery, Patrick, 217, 252, 254 Slattery, Ralph. See Slattery, Michael/Ralph Slattery, Richard, 47, 171 slavery, 8–10, 385–6 Sligo, Ireland (county), 5, 213, 309 Smith, Albert, 92 Smith, William (detective), 216, 244–5, 275, 333 Smith, William Osborne, 303 Smiths Falls, on, 46 Smith-Stanley, Edward, 14th Earl of Derby, 231–2 Smithville, on, 202 smuggling: alcohol, 109; weapons to Canada, 175, 224, 242–3, 358; weapons to Ireland, 30, 50–1, 56, 130, 213, 359–61; weapons to the United States, 358 socialism, 358 Societé des Familles, 4 Sorel, qc, 246 South African War (1899–1902), 352, 410n51 Southampton, uk, 236 Southern Citizen (Knoxville), 10 Spear, Samuel, xxx–xxxi, xxxiii, 184, 310, 387; Battle of Eccles Hill, 304; and Charles Clarke, xxx-xxxiii, 207, 224; as commander of the Irish Republican Army, 172, 184–5; invasion of Canada East, 185, 191, 304; mission inside Canada, 47; and William Montgomery, 218 Speeches from the Dock (Sullivan et al., 1868), 68, 417n60, 418n72 Spence, Charles, 109, 111–13, 116, 217 Stacey, C.P., 34, 406n51 Stafford, Henry Joseph, 357–8 Stanley, Edward, 16th Earl of Derby, xxxii Stanley, Lord. See Stanley, Edward, 16th Earl of Derby Stanton, Edwin, 162 Starnes, Henry, 141 Starr, Owen, 181, 305–6 Starrs, Michael, 44, 254, 261, 264, 488n8; hotel of, 44, 141, 248, 254, 262–3, 367 Stephens, James, 5, 387–8, 469n127; descriptions of, 4, 13, 16, 131; escape from custody, 18, 151; and Fenian Brotherhood (United States), 3, 10–11, 16, 20, 57, 147, 149–50, 163; founding of Fenian Brotherhood, 3, 57–8; fundraising, 10, 12, 16–18; in Ireland, 4, 13; and the Irish People, 16, 18, 42; leadership of Irish Fenians, 3–5, 13–14, 16–18, 57, 146, 163, 200; leadership of

533 Irish Fenians, hold on power, 150; leadership of Irish Fenians, ousting, 211–12; and Frank Millen, 150–3, 390; Michael Murphy, 131; myth of impending action, 12–13, 17–18, 211, 279; and John O’Mahony, 11, 16–18, 20, 146, 149–50, 163, 386; opposition to invasion of Canada, 20; in the United States, 11–12, 17, 163; walk across Ireland, 10. See also Fenianism in Ireland; Irish People (Dublin) Stevensville, on, 181–2 Stewart, A.T.Q., 361, 376 Stratford, on, 46, 109, 112, 119, 226, 256 Strathnairn, Lord. See Rose, Hugh, 1st Baron Strathnairn substitute brokerage, 108–12, 114; definition, 428n15 suffrage, 234 Sullivan, Alexander (Clan na Gael leader), 72 Sullivan, Alexander Martin (constitutional nationalist), 189; Speeches from the Dock (1868), 68, 417n60, 418n72 Sullivan, Cornelius (suspected Fenian), 201 Sullivan, J.J., 98, 425n103 Sullivan, Patrick, 338 Sullivan, Robert Baldwin, 28 Sullivan, Timothy Daniel, 14, 68; Speeches from the Dock (1868), 68, 417n60, 418n72 Suspension Bridge, on, 192, 201 Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1866) (Canada), 191, 194 Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1867) (Canada), 229, 245; arrests following, 254–6, 258–66, 281, 285 Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (1870) (Canada), 299 Sweeny, Thomas (Tom), 133, 138, 140, 145, 158– 9, 164, 179, 205–6, 269, 388; arrest, 184; and Fenian secret service, 100, 121, 142, 171; and informants, 144, 147, 175, 205; invasion plan, 23, 56, 126, 169–72, 176, 183–4; personal papers, 42; proclamation read at Ridgeway, 181; reputation after Ridgeway, 190; resignation, 190; supposed designs on New Brunswick, 154, 157; and “Colonel” Wheeler, 144. See also Fenianism in the United States Swinyard, Thomas, 119 Synnott, John (priest), 58 Taché, Alexandre-Antonin (bishop), 316, 318, 321, 327 Tallaght Hill (Dublin), 213

534 Taylor, James Wickes, 323 temperance, 337 Temple, Henry John, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, 14 Temple-Grenville, Richard, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, 231–3, 235–6, 238 Tenant League. See Prince Edward Island Tennessee, 10, 241, 270; Fenians in, 152, 175–6, 179, 269–70 Tevis, Charles Carroll, 48, 209; and Charles Clarke, xxx, 207; as informant, xxxii, 208–10, 214, 377; and invasion plan, 144, 172 Theller, Edward, 25 Thornton, Edward, 273, 294–5, 298, 345 Thorold, on, 46, 110 Tilley, Leonard, 159 Tipperary, Ireland (county), 4, 10, 224 Titusville, pa, 252 Tone, Wolfe, 25, 36, 285, 364, 382 Toner, Peter, 34, 43, 350, 374, 396n15 Toronto, on, 25, 55–6, 58–73, 93, 96, 106, 168, 246, 255, 292, 345, 354, 360–1; and Battle of Ridgeway, 178, 191–3, 195; Fenian circles in, 68–73, 100, 114, 117, 121, 129–30, 133–4, 137, 143, 165–7, 169, 204, 224–6, 342, 364–5, 374, 376–7, 380, 407n1, 418nn69–70, 445n4; Fenianism in, 40, 43–6, 51, 58, 74–7, 79–80, 84, 91, 97, 193–4, 202–3, 205, 216, 230–1, 241, 283, 285, 337–8, 340–2, 352, 368, 406n64, 408n33, 409n34; Fenian threats to, 241, 349; Irish Catholics in, 35, 38, 54, 57–8, 64, 66, 99, 261, 409n36, 420n16; Jim McDermott’s speech in, 92, 148–9, 390; St Patrick’s Day riot (1858), 58–73; secret police in, 106–7, 113–14, 131–3, 141, 175, 192–3, 197, 211, 216–17, 347, 391; sectarian tensions in, 58–73, 82–3, 86–7, 90, 95, 108, 350–1. See also Boyle, Patrick; Burns, William; Clarke, Charles: in Toronto; Hibernian Benevolent Society (Toronto); Murphy, Michael Toronto police, 77, 83, 121, 166–7, 339, 342, 407n1, 409n35; fears of infiltration by Hibernians and Fenians, 76, 85, 113, 133, 141, 370; Guy Fawkes Night demonstration (1864), 83–5; Orangemen in, 59, 61–5, 415n25; reform, 64–5; and St Patrick’s Day riots (1858), 61–5; and secret police, 107, 113, 121, 131, 216– 17, 221, 369, 389, 391–2, 427n12. See also Prince, William Tracey, Daniel, 421n27 Trent crisis, 14, 78, 138

index Troubles, the, 360 Trout River, qc, 305–6 Troy, ny, 197, 204–5, 223, 299 Troy Fenian convention (1866), 49, 51, 204–6, 371 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 379 True Witness (Montreal), 92–3 Tupper, Elon, 117, 120, 202, 216, 392; and Battle of Ridgeway, 192; in Buffalo, 127–9, 177–8, 201, 203–4; denounces Charles Clarke, 199; in Fort Erie, 122, 143, 192, 201 Turner, Alec, 250, 252, 254 Twelfth of July. See Orange Order: Twelfth of July celebrations Tyrell, John (pseud. John Turner), 244–5 Tyrone, Ireland (county), 150, 390 Ulster loyalism, 360 Union Army. See Civil War (United States): Union Army Union Jack, 60, 160, 169, 185, 276, 312, 357 United Brotherhood. See Clan na Gael United Canada, Province of, 32–3; Legislative Assembly of, 53, 64, 66, 76, 106; legislative response to Fenian invasion, 191, 194 United Irish League (Quebec), 352 United Irishmen (1880s), 345–7 United Irishmen, Society of, 4, 24, 50, 74, 382; legacy of, 22, 24–5. See also United Irish Rising of 1798 United Irish Rising of 1798, 4, 24, 73–4, 183, 189, 351, 403n6, 432n82 United States Army, 108, 112–13, 140, 319, 323; deployment to border, 136, 163, 184–5; matérial sold to Fenians, xxix, 189; veterans of, 173, 179, 269, 315, 386. See also Civil War (United States); crimping United States government: diplomacy, cooperation with Britain, 20, 135–6; diplomacy, Fenian threats to, 163, 195–6; diplomacy, relations with Canadian government, 103–4, diplomacy, tensions with Britain, 5–6, 14, 19– 20, 78, 103; Expatriation Act (1868), 214; neutrality laws, 135, 159–60, 162, 189, 190, 304, 323; relations with Fenians, 19–20, 184–5; Treaty of Washington (1871), 488n19. See also Johnson, Andrew (president); Seward, William United States Marshals Service, 157, 294, 297–8, 303, 306, 371 United States Navy, 162, 183; Fenians in, 180 University of Toronto, 75, 178, 360–1

index Upper Canada. See Canada West; Ontario uss Michigan, 180, 183 uss Winooski, 162 Utah War, 179 Van Diemen’s Land, 8, 13, 75, 385 Vermont, 136, 241, 277, 293, 297, 312, 372, 440n12; Fenians in, 138, 242, 298–9; as staging point for invasion, xxx, 103, 115, 131, 172, 183– 5, 290, 301–4, 306, 389 Victoria, bc, 349 Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 85, 142, 256, 348, 371, 387; assassination plot, 231–5, 374 Victoria Station (London), 236, 371 Villeneuve, Isadore, 327 Villiers, George, 4th Earl of Clarendon, 146, 149, 151–2, 157–9, 190, 269, 294 Virginia, 179 Volunteer movement (Ireland), 74, 81 Vronsky, Peter, 33, 374, 401n85 Wales, 212 Wall, Henry, 88–9 Walsh (treasurer, Hibernian Benevolent Society of Oakville), 167–8, 193 Walsh, Andrew, 198 Walsh, Patrick, 193 War of 1812, 21, 23, 24, 33 Warren, John, 213–14 Washington, DC, 9, 135, 157, 161–2, 298, 313; British consul in, xxxii, 28, 147, 190, 195, 208, 273, 294, 298, 346 Washington, George, 73 Waterford, Ireland (county), 4, 213 Watertown, ny, 223, 346 Webster, Richard, 4 Welland, on, 142, 177, 193, 198–9, 206, 212, 221 Welland Canal: Fenian reconnaissance of, 142; protection of, 198, 357; threatened in 1866– 67, 100, 177, 204; threatened in 1900, 352; workers, 44, 46, 202 Welles, Gideon, 161–2, 443n64 Wellington County, on, 63 Welsh, Peter, 13 Western Frontier Constabulary. See secret police in Canada: Government Constabulary for Frontier Service, formation

535 Westover, Asa, 303 Wetmore, Douglas, 157 Wheaton, Lloyd, 323 Wheeler, “Colonel” (Fenian informant), 144, 172, 193, 376; “arrest” in 1866, 167–8; in Toronto, 175 Whelan, John Patrick, 140 Whelan, Joseph, 136–7 Whelan, Patrick James, 137, 249, 273, 283–4, 388, 465n48; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination, 248–65, 468n125–7; as martyr, 265 Whitaker, Reg, 380 Whitby, on, 46 White, Thomas, 283 White, William J. (priest), 113, 429n48 Whitney, Edward, 198, 208, 451n40 Wilkeson, John, 309 Wilkins, John Edward, 174, 177 Willcocks, Joseph, 24, 403n6 Wilson, Adam, 65 Windsor, on, 46, 128, 132, 174; as headquarters for secret police, 108, 177, 275, 277; police operations around, 109 Winnipeg, mb, 309, 310, 347, 394 Wisconsin, 280, 312 Wolseley, Garnet, 1st Viscount Wolseley, 177 Wood, William P., 206, 454n87 World, The (New York), 158–9, 165, 373 Wright, John, 112 Wright, Richard, 246 Yeoward, Richard, 176, 428n13 Young, John, 1st Baron Lisgar, 285, 295, 298, 314 Young Ireland, 3, 14, 24, 26–7, 29; exiles, 7–9, 10, 13, 16, 27, 386, 402n2; image as romantic revolutionaries, 93; leaders of, 50, 75, 247, 385; organization, 75; prisoners, 4; Risings of 1848–49, 3–4, 26, 75, 189, 398n38; as rivals to Fenians, 14 Young Irishmen’s Catholic Benevolent Association (Toronto), 339 Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benevolent Association (Montreal), 350 Young Italy, 4 Young Men’s St Patrick Association (Toronto), 58–60, 64–6, 68, 75–7