O'Callaghan: The Making and Unmaking of a Rebel 9780773573888

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I: Beginnings. 1800-1826
1. The O'Callaghans of Mallow
2. A Young Man in Paris
Part II: The Making of a Rebel. 1826-1837
3. At the Montreal General Hospital
4. The Evolution of a Newspaperman
5. The Editor
6. The Member for Yamaska
7. En Route to Rebellion
8. Rebellion!
Part III: The Unmaking of a Rebel. 1837-1880 .
9. Old Connections
10. New Beginnings
11. The Man of Letters
12. The Twilight Years
Appendices:
1. Summary of the Ninety-two Resolutions
2. Published Works Ascribed to Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan
Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Citation preview

O'Callaghan The Making and Unmaking of a R E B n Jack Verney

The Carleton Library Series A series of original works, new collections and reprints of source

material relating to Canada, issued under the supervision of the Editorial Board, Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press Inc., Ottawa, Canada. General Editor Michael Gnarowski Editorial Board Syd Wise (Chair and History) Bruce Cox (Anthropology and Sociology) Irwin Gillespie (Economics) Robert J. Jackson (Political Science) Peter Johansen (Journalism) lain Wallace (Geography)

The Malting and Unmaking of a REBEL Jack Verney

CAFUTON LIBRARY SERIES #I79 CARLEION UNIVERSITY PRESS OITAWA, CANADA 1994

O CARLETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC. 1994

Carleton Library Series # 179 Printed and Bound in Canada CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Verney, Jack, 1919O'CalIaghan : the making and unmaking of a rebel (The Carleton Library ; no. 179) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88629-230- 1 (bound). ISBN 0-88629-233-6 (pbk.) 1. O'Callaghan, E.B. (Edmund Bailey), 1797-1880. 2. Historians-New York (State)-Biography. 3. Canada-History-Rebellion, 1837-1838-Biography. 4. Archivists-New York (State)-Biography. 5. Journalists-Biography. 6. Physicians-Biography. I. Title. 11. Series.

Carleton University Press 160 Paterson Hall Carleton University 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6 (613) 788-3740 COVER DESIGN: Chris Jackson. COVER PHOTOGRAPHS: Portrait of

Distributed in Canada by: Oxford University Press Canada 70 W f o r d Drive Don Mills, Ontario M3C 1J9 (416) 441-2941 O'Callaghan - Albany Institute of History

& Art, McKinney Library Book Collection.

Unknown photographer/National Archives of Canada/C-11240. Phillip Bird, Bird Design & Services.

INTERIOR DESIGN AND TYPESETTING:

Acknowledgments: Carleton University Press acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Communications, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Preface

...................................

1

Part I: Beginnings. 1800- 1826.

................ 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1

The O'Callaghans of Mallow

2

A Young Man in Paris

Part II: The Making of a Rebel. 1826-1837. 3

4

5 6 7

. . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The Evolution of a Newspaperman . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Member for Yarnaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 En Route to Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 At the Montreal General Hospital

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Part In: The Unmaking of a Rebel. 1837.1880 . 9 Old Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 10 New Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 8

Rebellion!

11

TheManofLetters The Twilight Years

12

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Appendices: 1 2

Summary of the Ninety-two Resolutions . . . . . . . 219 Published Works Ascribed to Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Abbreviations Notes

Preface

lthough Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan is a significant figure in A b0th Canadian history and American historiography, he is neglected. The only previous attempt to describe his varied life in any detail is that of the Reverend Francis Shaw Guy, whose doctoral dissertation, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan: A Study in American Historiography, (1 797-1880), was published by the Catholic University of America in 1934.' That study, as C.P. Stacey remarked in his review of it, suffers from two major flaws. The one being that in his approach to the Canadian portion of his narrative, Guy "failed to acquire for himself an historical background adequate to the needs of that phase of his subject," and the other that the subsequent chapters "scarcely redeem the promise of its title."* In other words, the work does not do justice to its subject. That was the stimulus for this present study, which re-examines O'Callaghan's life and attempts to remedy the deficiencies of Guy's dissertation. This book consists of three parts, each one corresponding to a distinct period in O'Callaghan's life. Part I deals with the period from his birth in Ireland-probably 1800-until 1826, when h e first emerged from obscurity in Lower Canada. Part I1 covers the following eleven years, during which he became embroiled in the events there that culminated in the 1837 Rebellion. Part 111, concludes the work by examining the remaining forty-three years of his life, which he spent in the United States, occupied for the most part with documenting American colonial history. While Parts I1 and I11 are based mainly on primary source materials, that is not the case with Part I. Due to the dearth of documents

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

relevant to that period of O'Callaghan's life, it was necessary to approach it from some other direction. The one chosen was that of drawing upon published materials-contemporary ones whenever possible--to build up a portrait of the environment in which he lived during those years and then inserting in it, at appropriate points, the few available scraps of documented information about his early life. The help I received from the Reverend Robert Forde of the Mallow Field Club was invaluable; it permitted a far more accurate portrayal of the period than would otherwise have been possible. Although such a treatment gives only a very sketchy impression of the first twenty-six years of O'Callaghan's life, it was deemed, nevertheless, to be preferable to the alternative of ignoring them altogether and picking up his story in 1826, as if he were conjured up at that time, like a genie from a bottle, with a ready made personality. I rejected that option on the ground that a little knowledge would probably be better than none at all to a reader trying to detect some pattern in the subsequent course of a life punctuated by abrupt changes of direction. In addition to Father Forde's invaluable help, I must also acknowledge that provided by Albany Institute of History and Arts, Albany, N.Y;Cork City Library, Cork, Republic of Ireland; Douglas Library at Queen's University, Kingston; Jesuit Community, Dublin, Republic of Ireland; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; McGill University Archives, Montreal; Morisset Library at the University of Ottawa, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; National Library of Canada, Ottawa; Ontario Provincial Archives, Toronto; and the Archives nationales du Quebec, Sainte-Foy.

Part 1 Beginnings 1800~1826

Chapter 1 The O9Ca1laghansof Mallow

T

here had been Callaghans and O'Callaghans around Mallow for almost as long as history itself, and they all belonged to the Dunhallow sept of the clan, which had lived and prospered thereabouts until the Cromwellian dispersal of 1652. At that time the chief and all the leading families were transplanted to county Clare, leaving only the humbler ones where they were. It was from one of those that Edrnund Bailey O'Callaghan was descended.' He was born into the new Catholic bourgeoisie that began to emerge in Ireland during the latter years of the eighteenth century, and especially after 1793 when the Catholic Relief Act removed many of the restrictions of the penal years. His family lived in comfortable circumstances over the dry goods store on Main Street from which the pater families, Owen O'Callaghan, derived his income. The business was profitable enough for Owen to be able to provide each of his six children with a good education: his two daughters, Bess and Mary Anne; and his four sons, David, Owen, Theodore and, of course, Edmund, who appears to have been the youngest member of the family.2 In the absence of baptismal records it is impossible to say when they were all born but, in Edmund's case, his birth date can be inferred from secondary evidence. His gravestone recorded his birthday as 29 February 1800, an impossible date in the Gregorian calendar. Then, to muddy the waters somewhat, his obituarist, the eminent Catholic historian, John Gilmary Shea, stated that he was born on 29 February 1797,which is another impossible date. On the basis of those two conflicting pieces of evidence, he could have been born as early as 28 February 1797, or as late as 1 March 1800. Fortunately, Dr. A. Everett Peterson went a long way towards clarify-

ing those waters when he discovered that several New York newspapers reporting O'Callaghan's death in 1880 stated that he had "died in his 81st year." On the strength of that, Peterson contended, the weight of probability favoured the later date. He made a convincing case for that in a paper he presented to the New York State Historical Association in 1934. For the purpose of this biographical study it will be assumed that he was correct, and that 09Callaghanwas born on, or about, 1 March 180OO3 Mallow, at that time, was a bustling market town with about seven thousand residents. Its claim to fame, however, was that, thanks to a quirk of geology, it was blessed with warm mineral springs whose waters were reputed to be "a powerful restorative to debilitated constitutions, and peculiarly efficacious in scrofulous and consumptive cases." Whatever validity those claims had, the town was a popular spa which each year, from May to October, played host to innlids and hypochondriacs from across Ireland, and even beyond, who came to partake of the waters. Their hope was to rid their bodies of whatsoever ill humours and contagions might be afflicting them, and be able to return home at the end of the season fortified to face the rigours of the corning winterO4 It was not necessarily an enjoyable experience for every visitor, though. Mary,Daniel O'Connell's wife, writing to her husband in August 1814, grumbled, "You have no idea, love, what a stupid, dirty hole this is and the weather is wretchedly bad. The place is full but we know not a creature. How I envy you all in 'Ifalee . . .As to Mallow, never again will I be foned to visit it. It was foolish of me, enjoying perfect health, to be persuaded that Mallow would make it better."= Not all of the visitors were like her, however, looking only to improve their health. A good many of O'Callaghan's childhood memories would have been of the sights and sounds of the obviously healthy ones who made up the preponderance of the towns seasonal guests. What attmcted them to Mallow was not the curative properties of its mineral springs, but that it was a relatively inexpensive resort where a whirl of diversions and social occasions could relieve them from the tedium of their own company, and from the dmbness of life in damp country houses. They came for that, and to mingle with others of like qualily? It is not difficult to imagine the blare of the post horn heralding the arrival of the mail coaches bringing them to Mallow from Limerick and Cork, and a young child hurrying to a window above his father's shop to watch the liveried coachmen hauling back on the reins to bring vehicles to a halt outside Carmichael's Inn, just across

The 0'CaUaghan.sof Mallow

the street. Then, as the passengers alighted, to marvel at their grand manner and their finery. The visitors were not all that grand really, they would just have looked that way to a small boy. For the most part they hailed from the ranks of the Protestant ascendency, and consisted of the lesser gentry, the near fashionable, and the modestly well-to-do. Unlike Bath and Bristol, Mallow was not in the first rank of watering places.' Neither is it difficult to imagine the child being especially excited on summer afternoons when the Rakes of Mallow coach came pounding into town to disgorge its load of young bucks from Cork who dusted themselves off and then disappeared into Carmichael's in search of refreshmentasThey made no pretence of coming for anything more therapeutic than a roisterous spell of: Beauing, belling, dancing, drinking, Breaking windows, damning, sinking, Ever raking, never thinking,g Market days would also have been exciting times for a young boy watching the farmers throng into town on Resdays; their carts piled high with sacks of grain, or on Fridays when they were loaded with crates of chickens, baskets of eggs, cheeses, and vats of butter. Then, four times a year, there were those extra special days when Main Street was teeming with animals-pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses-all noisily making their way to the market place, urged along by herders armed with long switches and attended by surly dogs. Those were the fair days when dealers from all over Munster came looking for bargains which they seldom found: the farmers around Mallow were just as shrewd as they were when it came to dickering over the price of an animal.1° As time went by, and the young O'Callaghan grew older, rather than watch the passing show from an upstairs window, he would have been allowed to mingle with the market day crowds, pausing here and there to listen to the bantering, the bargaining, and all the latest news from miles around. He could not have missed noticing the soldiers on those days too, for they were everywhere, standing about with bayonetted muskets slung from their shoulders, and conspicuous in their scarlet uniforms. There were plenty of them in town for the garrison was a full regiment strong, and he could not have avoided hearing that their presence had something to do with hunting down the agrarian terrorist gangs, known as the Whiteboys, which were active in the area For that reason the soldiers were ever on the alert, and made little effort to fraternize with the

townsfolk and the farmers. Sometimes they actually went out of their way to offend the local populace by resorting to blatantly provocative acts such as the one of which Mary O'Connell wrote: "The town is full of the military. No sooner does one regiment march out than another marches in. There is a Scottish regiment quartered here. The last division marched in here this morning playing The htestant Boys." It was a particularly vexatious thing to do in a predominantly Catholic town like Mallow since this was a popular marching tune among the detested Omngemen.ll The farmers from the surrounding countryside were well aware why the military was there too, and some of them doubtlessly knew more about the Whiteboys than they would admit to. That was why, as they trudged towards some pot house, like O'Repan's, on market days, their business done, they would acknowledge the redcoats' presence with no more than a sour, sidelong glance.l2 It was by standing outside those pot houses that a lad who kept his ears open could hear a lot of talk, not just about the hay crop and the price of pigs, but also about the troops and how, one day, they would be sent packing out of Ireland. It was there too that the young O'Callaghan might have heard about the sort of things that went on over in the Assembly Rooms.13Tenant farmers did not go there in the ordinary course of events, and neither did young boys from the town, but there was always someone who could tell a tale or two about the guests there. These were tales about primped and powdered matrons who gossiped their afternoons away over tea, and spent their evenings sitting around the ballroom with their marriageable daughters, ostensibly listening to the music but actually behaving very much l i e the horse traders with fillies to sell on fair days; their eyes were constantly scanning the crowd to catch sight of a likely prospect, perhaps some young blood taking a breather from the card tables in an adjoining room. Most townsfolk had little contact with such people, but businessmen like O'Callaghan's father did. Such men were dependent upon the visitors for a major part of their incomes, and l i e them or not, they had to be pandered to. To that end, the town had provided amenities like ornamental canals and cascades flanked by treelined walks, along with bandstands here and there where military musicians could perform on fine summer afternoons. The race track was another attraction, however it was a little different from the others in that it was the one place where the visitors rubbed shoulders with the locals on something like equal terms. That took place at the annual September meet when any of the visiting gen-

The O'Callaghans of Mallow tlemen who fancied themselves astride a horse could take on all comers over the fences or, if they were not so energetically inclined, could join the crowd in one of the drinking tents, emerging whenever a race was imminent to wager a few guineas on the chances of some well-touted Pegasus with a rustic Bellerophon up.'" By the time that the meet was over, the social season too was at an end. Every day saw coaches carrying the seasonal visitors back whence they came. By the time the hunting season began, there were very few of them left to join with the local gentry in following the Dunhallow hounds half way across the county and back on the trail of elusive foxes, which as often as not, knew the terrain better than their pursuers and escaped with their brushes intact.15 What it all came down to was that by meeting the needs of the visitors, arrogant and overbearing as some of them were, Mallow was wildly prosperous compared to most Irish market towns. By providing for the material needs of those visitors, Mallow's thriving industries employed a considerable number of the townsfolk, and its merchants profited handsomely from the visitors' custom.16 To observers from most parts of Ireland, Mallow would have looked like the promised land itself. Its prosperity, however, might have been considered by some to have been bought at the price of noncommitment in the rebellion of 1798 when, like much of Munster, it had failed to rally to the rebel cause.17 It is unlikely, though, that O'Callaghan concerned himself about that sort of thing while he was still a carefree and active boy. As such he took his fair share of youthful risks, and at least one of them resulted in him nearly killing himself. Although the exact circumstances of it are unknown, the outcome was that Dan O'Sullivan, a boyhood friend who later entered the priesthood, had to rescue him from drowning in the Blackwater River.18 Beside being something of a daredevil and getting into occasional scrapes, he had both ear and voice for music, qualities which he never lost. Years after the event, another ex-Mallowite,John Baptist Purcell, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, recalled seeing and hearing the young O'Callaghan standing at the door of his father's shop one day singing "in a loud clear voice, one of Moore's melodies."lg The song could have been any one of those in the poet's Irish Melodies, many of which have a patriotic theme. It might even have been the evocative Oh! Breathe Not His Name, which was inspired by Robert Emmet's last words from the gallows. In Ireland during the early years of the nineteenth century, dead rebels like Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Robert

Emmet, the tragic heroes of the rebellions of 1798and 1803, caught youthful imaginations. That would be about the extent of O'Callaghan's political awareness at the t h e . h e , he would have experienced all the excitement of the 1812 General Election, but he was not likely to have learned much from that apart from how to earn a few farthings by shouting slogans outside the pot houses on behalf of one or other of the candidates. The political inequalities of the event, which made Irish Catholics second class citizens in their own land by barring them from sitting in the Parliament at Westminster, would have meant nothing to a twelve-year-old. It was for Daniel O'Connell, one of the giants of Irish politics, to concern himself with that problem. He was preaching up and down the country about the need to remove that barrier so that Ireland could have an effective voice in parliament. As a barrister on the assize circuit in south-western Ireland, he regularly pleaded cases in Mallow, and his wife Mary's presence there during the three seasons from 1812 to 1814, taking the cure for a bronchial complaint, ensured that he was a frequent visitor to the town. Whenever he was in Mallow he took advantage of every opportunity to speak in public, waxing unusually vituperative in his railing against the British on occasion.20 As good Catholics it can be assumed, therefore, that as many members of Owen O'Callaghan's family as could be mustered went along to hear the great man as often as possible and, in all probability, they actually met him Experiences of that sort would, sooner or later, have opened an impressionable adolescent's eyes to the fact of Ireland's subjection, and to the manifestations of it that were to be seen in Mallow the arrogance of some of the visiton to the spa, the British regiment stationed in town, the Union Jack flying from every available flagstaff, and the privileged status of the Church of I~land.21Thereafter, also, he would have begun to see his rebel heroes more clearly for what they were. No longer just icons, but men who had died in futile attempts to rid Ireland of its British infestation. At about the same time he possibly felt the fist stirring of the missionary zeal that burned in the breasts of three of his siblings and which impelled them out into the world to do God's work. Their vocations took David and Owen first to the seminary at Maynooth, and then into the priesthood. After ordination, David took pastoral charge of a London slum parish where he died in 1821. Owen was posted to a British West Indian mission on the island of St. Lucia where he too died some time before 1841."

The O'CaUaghmcs of Mallow It can hardly be said, however, that Theodore, the third brother, was motimted to go forth and do God's work. He was probably an officer in the British army where he acquired some notoriety as a duellist and was responsible for the death in 1818 of Lieutenant Bailey of the 58th Regiment. After the duel Theodore was arrested, convicted of manslaughter,and jailed for three months in Newgate. The circumstances of his subsequent death, which also occurred before 1841, are not known, but of them his sister Mary Anne wrote: "His life was one of peril, we must be resigned to what was probably the result of his career," which suggests that he met his end in some violent manner.23 Bess, the older of the two girls, also lacked the missionary spirit She became involved in an ill-advised amour with a local lothario by the name of John Lacy, got pregnant, and was forced into an unfortunate marriage. In due course she gave birth to a son, Richard, and for the brief remainder of her life her husband and his family, who resented her presence among them, missed no opportunity to humiliate her. Only her own death, two years after the birth of her son, freed her from her misery?4 Like their clerical brothers, both the remaining O'Callaghan children, during the course of their upbringing, acquired welldeveloped social consciences. Mary Anne's led her to become a worker on behalf of Father Theobald Mathew's controversial anti-poverty and temperance campaign, while Edmund's took him into the practice of medicine. After some years of doing that, however, other factors came into play and caused him to redirect his energies fust into journalism and political activism, and then into historiography? The two factors which played the biggest part in bringing about those changes also had their roots in Edmund's life before he left Ireland to continue his education in France. The first of these was that coming from a moderately well-to-do family, and having seen the ravages of poverty in a country where it was almost pandemic, had made him fearful of becoming poor himself and determined to avoid it at all costs. Edmund's personal success, and the fmancial security which it brought, were of the utmost importance to him throughout his life. The second factor was the effect that Daniel O'Co~ellhad on his political views. Like most Irishmen of his day, O'Callaghan retained a sentimental attachment to the memory of his country's martyr heroes who had sacrificed their lives m past insurrections. But, unlike many of his compatriots, he did not allow this to blind him to the fact that Irish rebellions had a tradition of failure, which was contrary to his own preoccupation with success.26 From that viewpoint it was not difficult for him to see that

Ireland's best hope for liberation lay not with insurgents like Tone, Fitzgerald, and Emmet, but with subtler men like O'Connell, who preached the politics of gradualism and whose weapons were words, not guns. As well as their tradition of failure, Irish rebels were also insular, a characteristic that O'Callaghan would not have noticed until he left the country and got away from its myopic view of the past The aims of Irish rebels seldom extended far beyond driving the British into the sea. While Wolfe Tone solicited, and to some extent got, F'rench aid, the 1798 and the 1803 rebellions remained essentially Irish in origin, Irish in participation, and Irish in scope. They were relatively uninfluenced by European liberalism and, consequently, were of little significance outside of the British isle^.^ O'Callaghan was similarly uninfluenced before 1820. Up until then his experience and education had been totally Irish and inward looking. His schooling was most likely obtained in one or more of the pay schools that replaced the illegal hedge schools of the penal years, certainly in Mallow, and perhaps in Dublin too. All that is known for certain about his studies is that one of his teachers, a man by the name of Jemmy Sheehan, insisted on his students repeatedly copying out saws such as "procrastination is the thief of time," in order to improve their penmanship. It was a drill that had a lasting effect on O'Callaghan's style of writing, judging by the generous sprinkliig of such maxims in much of his journalism Beyond that, it can be assumed that his education consisted of studying the so-called liberal arts which, notwithstanding the name, can be taken to have been totally innocent of anything as heretical as liberalism.28 Even so, no matter how his education might have stunted his political growth, it did give him the literate, and the strongly literary background that enabled him to express himself in wellturned sentences.2gIt also sharpened his enquiring mind and, above all, imbued him with a love of learning for its own sake. What it did not do, however, was broaden his political outlook, which, until the time he left for France, remained thoroughly Irish: Catholic, insular, and anti-British. What he lacked, if he was ever to become a true liberal, was a wider view of the world than it was possible to obtain in Ireland and, along with it, a draft of the heady philosophy that had sparked the F'rench Revolution, defined bourgeois liberalism for the rest of the world, and kept Bourbon Paris anxiously looking over its shoulder ever since the restoration of 1814.

The O'CaUaghans of Malbw

O'Callaghan left Mallow for Paris in 1820, or 1821, and his departure seems to have been the penultimate event in the disintegration of his familywhich had commenced some years earlierwith his sister Bess's unfortunate maniage. The end of that process came in 1823 when he left for Canada, never to return to his native Ireland.30

Chapter 2

A Young Man in Paris I

n the aftermath of the revolutionary and Napoleonic years Paris was a divided city. The more consenmtive of its citizens spent their time trying to make believe that those years had never existed, and the more liberal ones reminisced about the glory days of the Republic and the Empire. That division owed much to the constitution of 1814, a document which set out to satisfy all shades of political opinion, but failed to please any of them. The liberal factions found it too reactionary, and the conservative ones thought it too radical. The outcome was a political polarization that saw the Republicans and the Bonapartists bury their differences and occupy common ground well towards the left of the political spectrum, while the royalist and the clerical factions did likewise far towards the right of it, It was from those extreme positions that they conducted their political war. Initially, battles were fought on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, but later, after verbal sniping failed to accomplish anything, fighting spread to the streets of Paris in a series of confrontations that reached their climax at the barricades in 1830. In the Paris of the early 1820s that polarization was already well enough defined for an individual to know exactly where to go to hear the stripe of politicking of his choice. If it was ultra-conservatism that he wanted to hear, then he went to the nearest church, or to one of the salons frequented by the restored aristocracy and their hangers-on. If, however, radical liberalism was his choice, he headed for the Left Bank and the labyrinth of streets around the church of St. Germain des Pr&swhere the cafes and taverns patronized by students and bohemians were located. That quarter of the city was the acknowledged hotbed, not just of radical liberalism, but of Jacobinism too and, thus, highly suspect in the eyes of func-

tionaries intent upon presenhg the myth that 1' ancien dgime was aliie and well in Paris, and that revolutionary politics were a thing of the past. To those officials the professors at the university, who had lived through the Revolution and the Empire, were among the most suspicious denizens of that entire neighbourhood. They were the ones who could wistfully recall the days when France had been great and glorious, which they did, whenever possible, and to the detriment of the restoration monarchy and its political apparatus. What made that particularly galling to officialdom was that they shared their memories with their students. Seen from the political right, that looked very much like subversion, and, of all the students in the university, those attending the School of Medicine were considered to be far and away the most subverted.' Those were the turbulent political waters into which O'Callaghan ventured when he entered the school to learn the arts and skills of the physician.* One can only speculate as to what took him there, rather than to the equally prestigious, and closer to home, 'Ilinity College, Dublin. It could have been something as simple as his Parish priest, Father Thomas Barry, with fond memories of his own student days in a French seminary, counselling the young O'Callaghan to go to Paris. Whatever it was that took him there in the first place, by the time he left the city, in addition to such medical knowledge as it had imparted, the school had put its imprint on his political thinking? After Ireland had spawned and shaped it, Paris overlaid O'Callaghan's thought with a veneer of liberalism, thereby giving it a more cosmopolitan aspect. In the course of that process, however, he had to confront the problem of the relationship between church and state, which must have been a traumatic experience for him. Although O'Callaghan knew all about the favoured position enjoyed by the Church of Ireland visa-vis the British government, he had never before encountered the question with respect to the Catholic Church. From his perspective it was an issue between the radical liberals in the School of Medicine and the ultra-conservatives in government following the 1820 assassination of the Duc de Beni by a demented citizen intent upon bringing the Bourbon line to an abrupt end. What had, until then, been a relatively moderate regime suddenly became a reactionary one, primarily at the instigation of the clergy among the ultra-conservatives who managed to convince Louis XU11 that bloody revolution was imminent in his kingdom In the ensuing suppression of liberal institutions, the university became a prime target and, of its numerous schools, the School of Medicine

A Young Man in Paris

was singled out for particular attention. Needless to say the school reacted to the pressure by raising the shrillness of its anticlerical cries to such a pitch that, in 1822, the authorities closed it down for several months while the faculty was purged of its most militant members.4 On a purely political plane, O'Callaghan would have had little difficulty in equating such high-handedness with the sort of thing that could have originated in Dublin Castle. On a religious level, however, it could only have given him cause to ponder since it cast the Catholic Church in the role of oppressor. Coming, as he did, from semi-rural county Cork, where good Catholics held their priests in considerable awe, he would have found his professors' vituperations against the clergyWcularly disconcerting, especially since two of his brothers had entered the priesthood and one of them, David, had only recently died in the service of the church. That death, in 1821, had a profound effect on the family, judging by what O'Callaghan's sister, Mary Anne, had to say about it. "The brother we so loved," she wrote, "the brother whose death darkened our youth and bitterly overshadowed our lives, and our destinies." His grief, following that bereavement, gave O'Callaghan an added bulwark against the rising tide of atheism and anticlericalism which he had to withstand in Paris. Even so, by then he had abso&ed enough of Rench liberalism to consider a politicized clergy not entirely desirable. And, thereafter, while he remained as devout and unfaltering a Catholic as ever, he had the reservation that priests, being mortals, were just as susceptible to error and subversion as were laymen. It was not a position he would have shared with many of his fellow students in Paris but, since contradictory opinions were as commonplace among students then as they are now, it would not have deterred him from mingling with them, or with the many outsiders, both young and not so young, who enjoyed their company enough to join them in their haunts. The air in their meeting places was filled with debate over all those things which students argued about: lives, loves, injustices and, inevitably in restoration France, revolution. The arguments went on deep into the nights in a babel of idioms and argots, for there were young men there from all over France, and from beyond, including at least one from Ireland, and perhaps one from Lower Canada by the name of ~douard-Raymond Fab~.~ Although there is no documentary evidence to show that O'CaIlaghan and Fabre actually met in Paris, the coincidence of

E d d Bailey O'CaIlaghan

their presence there, along with the course of their future relationship, gives rise to the suspicion that they did. They lived very near to one another on the Left Bank for almost two years while the one was attending the School of Medicine, on the Rue de 1'~cole de Medecine, and the other learning to become a book-seller at the Libraine Bossange, at 11 Quai Voltaire, just a short distance away. It is not, therefore, entirely unreasonable to suspect that O'Callaghan not only patronized the bookstore and frequented the same haunts as the young Fabre, but that also, somewhere along the way, the two met and became friends, If that is not what happened, then the only alternative is to assume that they were both sufficiently exposed to very similar influences in Paris for them to have enough common elements in their backgrounds to draw them together as friends and colleagues in Montreal where they became active players on the same political stage.? Fabre was twenty-two years old when he went to Paris in 1821 to serve an apprenticeship at the Liiraine Bossange. Its owner was Martin Bossange, but it was run for him by his son, Hector, late of It was Montreal, and destined to become Fabre's brother-in-la~.~ also destined that the former Bossange emporium in Montreal would become the Librairie Fabre? on Notre Dame Street. This establishment became the nearest thing to a headquarters that the Patriote Party of Lower Canada ever had, and was located no more than a few steps away from the office where O'Callaghan would later work as a newspaper editor.1° That young man's medical studies, so far as is known, ended in 1822, and the indications are that he failed to complete them before the School of Medicine was forcibly closed down by the authorities. After that he returned to Mallow. Despite his sojourn in the French capital, such of his family and hiends as were still there would have found him only a little less of an Irishman than he had been when he left. His Catholicism, despite the anti-clerical buffeting it had suffered, was still intact, his native insularity was a little less obvious beneath its newly acquired overlay of French liberalism, but his Anglophobia was unscathed. Moreover, despite everything he had heard in Paris about man's universal yearning for freedom, justice, and brotherhood, his outlook remained sufficiently insular for him still to regard Ireland's problems as being among the most important ones facing the civilized world. It was a view that he was to retain long enough for it to have a pronounced effect on the course of his career over the next ten years. Why, then, did O'Callaghan emigrate rather than stay at home and join in Daniel O'Connell's fight to achieve Catholic emancipa-

A Young M m in

pa^

tion? There are a number of possible answers to this question, one of them being that he no longer felt bound by the strong ties that had held his family together before his brothers and sisters began leaving home, called away by marriages, vocations, and even death. Another could have been that he found life in Ireland too claustrophobic after Paris. The likeliest answer of all, however, was that sheer economic necessity forced him to emigrate, an imperative that would determine his actions on several fluture occasions as well. In the unlikely event that O'Callaghan had actually completed his medical training when he left Paris, one of his fust acts on returning to Mallow would have been to try and obtain a licence to practice medicine either there, or thereabouts. If he had done so he would very soon have discovered that there was some reluctance to accept his qualifications;not only was he a Catholic, but he had been trained in a school that was notorious for its radical politics. The very composition of the licensing authority would have ensured that. It consisted of the Bishop of Cloyne and four doctors who, it can be taken for granted, were good, sound members of the Church of Ireland. Whether that was the case, or the more probable one that he had not completed his medical training, the outcome was the same. O'callaghan's ability to earn a living in Ireland was severely limited and, in the end, that was what forced him to look elsewhere for a livelihood. It was a time when emigration, particularly fiom parts of Munster, was starting to surge. Large numbers of land-starved peasants scraped together the few pounds they needed to buy a passage across the Atlantic to Canada, or the United States, where, they had heard, there was money to be made working on large construction projects as canals and docks took shape to facilitate the flow of commerce. Ships left Irish ports regularly, all through the spring and summer months. Many of them engaged in the timber trade, and their owners found that carrying a farepaying human cargo on the westward trip was a profitable alternative to filling the holds with ballast." In 1823 a big obstacle was placed in the way of shipowners looking to benefit from that lucrative traffic. The new British Passenger Act required all vessels carrying fifty or more passengers to have a surgeon aboard. Needless to say, it was not a job that appealed to well-established medical practitioners, so the shipowners had great difficulties in meeting the requirements of the Act Under those circumstances, it is likely that O'Callaghan, despite any deficiencies in his haining, and his want of a licence, would have been quite acceptable to a shipowner anxious to give the appeamnce of complying with the law so that his ship could be on its way to pick

up another cargo of squared lumber in the St. Lawrence, with its holds full of emigrants.'* Whether those were the circumstances under which he arrived, or some others, O'Callaghan landed at Quebec some time in 1823, and was immediately confronted with the problem of sustaining himself. His first response to it would have been to try and obtain a licence to practice medicine, but he would quickly have discovered that his qualifications were no more acceptable in Lower Canada than they had been in Ireland. What he actually did, between when he arrived in 1823 and when he emerged from obscurity in 1826 can only be conjectured, for there is no mention of him in contemporary records, or newspapers, and none of his correspondence from that period has survived.13 He might have engaged in quackery, a clandestine form of medical practice that ministered inconspicuously, and often inexpertly, to the needs of the hordes of impoverished immigrants, mostly Irish, who were crammed into mean and ramshackle housing along the waterfronts of Montreal and Quebec. Alternatively, he might have found work with an organization like the Emigrants' Society, possibly as an assistant to the Port Medical Officer whose job it was to inspect the incoming ships to ensure that those who came ashore from them were in reasonably good health and, if they were not, to see to it that they received treatment. Another possibility is that he took a clerical position of some sort in one of the many offices connected with trade and shipping or, if he had in fact met E.-R. Fabre during his Parisian days, in the Librairie Fabre in Montreal. It can only be surmised what he did for those three years since it was not until March 1826 that his activities became a matter of public notice. That was when he responded to an advertisement placed in the newspapers by the board of governors of the Montreal General Hospital inviting applications for the position of apothecary and steward,I4 So it came about that in the spring of 1826 O'Callaghan, albeit unknowingly, approached the threshold of a public life. He brought to it a political outlook akin to that described by Wolfe Tone: "the name of England and her power is universally odious, save with those who have an interest in maintaining it, such as the Government and its connexions, the Church and its dependencies, the great landed property, etc."15

Part 11 The Making of a Rebel, 1826.1839

Chapter 3 the Montreal General Hospital ontreal in 1826 was a city of about twenty-seven thousand people which relied almost entirely on its role as an entrepbt M for its economic well-being.' Seen from the St. Lawrence, through the forest of masts of the ships berthed alongside its docks, it was a shabby looking place. The substantial buildings of the French colonial days were rapidly vanishing from sight behind the blank, gray walls of the warehouses strung along the waterfront, among and behind which huddled the slum tenements of those at the bottom of the social scale: the dock workers, the labourers, the unemployed, the unemployable, and all of their families? At the other end of the scale were the city's well-to-do: the shipowners, the lumber merchants, the bankers, and the shopkeepers. They had their business establishments a little farther inland, in the area bounded St. James Street to the north, St. Paul Street to the south, and bisected by Notre Dame Street. Not all of them actually lived there, though. The more affluent built homes yet farther afield, in one of the prosperous subuxbs springing up on the fringe of the city, where they could enjoy the illusion of being country squires without losing touch with the sources of their ~ e a l t hWhen . ~ times were good, those sources had an almost insatiable hunger for cheap labour in jobs where hazards to life and limb abounded. When they were bad, those same workers became unemployed and, along with their families, swelled the ranks of the destitute. Starvation, and the squalor in which they lived, made them vulnerable to every infection that was abroad at the time. It was that constant plight which provided the impetus for a group of concerned citizens to found the Montreal General Hospital?

On 1 March 1826, when its board of governors advertised for an apothecary and steward, the hospital was looking for a person with some knowledge of medicine, but not necessarily a licence to practice it.5 O'Callaghan was one of the two applicants for the position. On 9 May, after having carefully examined the credentials of both candidates, the governors decided that he was the man they wanted and offered him the position at a salary of seventy-five pounds per annurn, subject only to him giving them a written undertaking to remain in the board's employ for at least two years. O7Cal1aghanaccepted the terms and was able to commence his duties without any W e r f~rmalities.~ Those duties were both numerous and diverse. Not only did he have to take charge of the dispensary and the preparation of medications, but he had to supervise the day-to-dayoperation of the hospital and, at the request of any one of the four licenced medical offcers, assume responsibility for the actual treatment of some of the patients in the wards. In present day terminology, O'Callaghan7s duties required him to be the pharmacist, the hospital administrator, and the intern on call: a considerable burden to place on the shoulders of one man. So multifarious and demanding were his duties that he needed to be almost constantly present in the hospital. For that reason, he was required to reside in a small house in the grounds where, apart from providing his own fuel and food, he lived free of ~harge.~ Those grounds were situated in what were the outskirts of the city, in the St. Lawrence Suburb, a semi-rural area then, but today part of Montreal's inner core. Like most hospitals of the day, the Montreal General both depended on charity, and dispensed it. Its modest income came from donations, and its patients, who were mostly Irish and came from the most impoverished segment of the population. Patients turned to the hospital as a refuge when they were too hurt, too ill, or too infirm to look after them~elves.~ The experience of ministering to their needs was unlike anything that O'Callaghan could have encountered before, either in Ireland, or in F'rance. It brought him face to face with urban poverty in all its ugliness, and what made frying to cope with its consequences particularly diffcult was that the hospital's income was insufficient to provide much more than a minimal level of care. That was quite apparent from the size of the hospital's staff which, on the clinical side, consisted of himself, four medical officers, a matron who was little more than a housekeeper, and several nurses, or watchers as they were called, who had no medical training whatever. In addition, there were a handful of domestic servants and outside workers

At the Muntreal General Hospital

who carried out the more menial duties connected with the operation of the hospital. They did all the cleaning, prepared all the meals, and cared for the large grounds, including the farm that produced the eggs, the milk, and some of the meat for use in the kitchen. It fell to O'Callaghan, in his capacity of steward, to oversee all those activities, and to deal with any problems connected with them? In the role of apothecary, he had to deal with a different category of problems, ones that had to do with the treatment of patients, often those suffering from epidemic diseases like typhus, typhoid, and cholera. The trouble was that those complaints were very poorly understood, and so the practice was to treat the observable symptoms with such medications as were contained in a very limited pharmacopoeia. The result was that the treatment was often as life-threatening as the disease itself. The treatment of cholera patients, for example, could include huge doses of calomel, opium, or castor oil, and such procedures as turpentine enemas, blistering, leeching, and transfusions of rainwater. Barbarous as it all sounds today, at the time such regimens were among the most advanced ones known to medical science, even though many patients died as a result of them. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the number of patients who actually survived their administration.lo Happily, by the time that 09CaIlaghanstarted working at the hospital, the prospects of recuperating from some diseases were beginning to brighten. Smallpox, for instance, was already a declining problem in Montreal, thanks to the clinic in the hospital's out-patients department where the children of the poor were vaccinated free of charge.'] Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for surgery, which remained a perilous undertaking. The most serious problem was that there were no anaesthetics or antiseptics. That, however, did not deter some members of the medical staff from attempting opemtions which, although they said much for the surgeon's boldness, said precious little for his wisdom. They typically included amputations, often necessitated by frostbite, the removal of exterior tumours, cataracts, and haemorrhoids, mastectomies, and the removal of stones &omthe bladder, all canied out with the patients fully conscious, and under far from sterile conditions.12It must be said of the Montreal General Hospital, however, that its doctors only resorted to surgery when all else failed. Medication remained the preferred form of treatment.13 Neither were O'Callaghan's in-hospital difficulties all medical ones. The conduct of the patients in the wards was also a problem

It must have seemed to him sometimes that they went out of their way to make life dimcult for him and his staff by their flagrant disregard for hospital rules. There were some among them who aggmvated the ever present fear of fie by smoking in their straw-filled beds whenever they thought that no one was around to stop them14 There was also the problem of clandestine tippling on the wards. That practice fist came to light when one of the hospital governors found a group of patients clustered around one of the beds and obviously having a roaring good time. When questioned about the matter the matron let it be known that it was impossible to stop such things without suffering verbal abuse and possible bodily harm. Patients very often received large amounts of alcoholic beverages as part of their medication. When they had saved up sufficient quantities they gathered around one of the beds and proceeded to get uproariously and obstreperously drunk. Is Not all of O'Callaghan's in-hospital problems had to do with the patients though; the drains gave him trouble too. That there was something wrong with them was first brought to notice in 1823, before his time, when one of the hospital governors reported that he had found "over the whole house a very unpleasant smell." Three years later, by which time O'Callaghan was on staff and responsible for such things, there was still "a very disagreeable smell" about the place or, as a more outspoken governor described it, "an almost insufferable stench." The hospital records contain several theories as to what the cause of the malodour might have been but, after July 1826, there is no further mention of the subject. The only possible conclusion to be drawn is that someone, presumably 0'Callaghan, tracked down the source of the trouble, and had it rectified. l6 Throughout all the vicissitudes of his work, however, O'Callaghan's main concern was for the welfare of the patients. The fact that at least 60 percent of them were Irish immigrants made it all the more intense." Irish immigrants made up about 15 percent of Montreal's total population in the 1820s. Although a few of the Irish were modestly muent the =st majority were the poorest of the poor, downtrodden and despised. The city's prosperity, nevertheless, depended very much on their poorly paid labours, which often resulted in crippling . injuries and consignment to the ranks of the unemployable. Destitution awaited them there and made them easy prey to the next infection that rampaged through their slurns.18 The opportunity it afforded O'Callaghan to learn about that vicious cycle was what made his appointment to the hospital staff a

At the Montreal General Hospital

significant move towards his politicization. After observing the plight of his less foltunate compatriots in the wards, he could see that all they had accomplished by emigrating was to exchange rural poverty for the more demoraliuing urban Mliety. Once he realized that, it was but a simple matter for him to rationalize that the Montreal business establishment, with the tacit approval of the govemment, was prospering at the expense of his countrymen. From there, it only took one more step in the same direction to reach the conclusion that this was nothing more than an extension of the British oppression in Ireland. That belief led him to gravitate towards any group, political or charitable, which he perceived as being able to improve the lot of Irish immigrants. The Hibemian Benevolent Society was the first such group to which he was attracted, most likely because he was already aware of its work as a benefactor of the Montreal General Hospital.IgIts membership was drawn from the more prosperous segment of the Irish community,with the addition of a few French-Canadianswho were interested in its work. The society's single aim was to ameliorate the distress among immigrants resulting from their poverty. Its first concern was to raise sufficient money to permit it to fulfi its second, that of spending it in whatever ways its officers deemed to be the most beneficial for the Irish poor.20 Despite its commitment to those concerns, however, the society was never politically active; its actions were determined only by humanitarian considerations. That did not inhibit individual members from having opinions of their own on the issues of the day and, in that respect, they were by no means all of one mind. John Donellan, who at one time had been the society's president, ran as a Tory in the 1834general election; two years earlier, a former vice-president, Dr. Daniel llacey, had run successfully in the same Considriding, Montreal West, on behalf of the opposing Patriote~.~' ering the known members of the society, therefore, and the diversity of the roles that they played in subsequent events, there must have been some spirited exchanges between them. On those occasions one of the most opinionated voices would celtainly have been that of Daniel Tkacey, a physician from Roscrea, county Tipperary, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and something of a firebrand when it came to expressing his views on the British, and their exploitation of the Irish." O'Callaghan met 'Ikacey some time in 1826, or even 1827. Their encounter was most likely at the hospital, or at a meeting of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, but it could even have been after mass one Sunday at the old Recollet Church, which had been reconse-

Edmund Bailey O'Callughan

crated to provide for the spiritual needs of the Irish Catholics in Montreal." Wherever or whenever they met, they quickly struck up a firm and lasting friends hi^.^^ In the course of it they must have discussed the political position of the Irish in Lower Canada, and have agreed that, in Montreal at least, their compatriots could wield considerable power if only they could be persuaded to coardinate their voting practice^.^^ It was not an original conclusion by any means, but one which had been well aired by Jocelyn W l e r in The Canadian Spectator ever since he founded the paper in 1822. All along he had been trying to convince the Irish voters that their natural allies in the colony were the knch-Canadians rather than the British.26 At f ~ sitt had been a hard pill to swallow for those of his readers who often found themselves discriminated against by their francophone neighbours. In attempting to overcome resistance to his ideas, Waller appealed to their sense of history and pointed to the long-stmding tradition of Franco-Irish amity in Europe, a phenomenon that was epitomized by the "Wild GeeseN,=and by Wolfe Tone's seeking and receiving French help. Waller also went to considerable lengths to make the point that French-Canadiansoccupied a very similar position in relation to the British as did the Irish in Ireland. They were both oppressed, and in both cases the British were the oppressors. These proved to be persuasive arguments, for the Irish voters demonstrated that they had come round to his way of thinking at the polls in the 1827 election when they helped give the Patriotes a landslide vict0ry.2~ Waller probably knew of 'Ifacey before then, but the same could not be said for O'Callaghan. As late as 8 August, three days before the polls opened, The Canadian Spectator reported that among those present at a Tory sponsored meeting of Irish voters were a number of individuals who were not genuine sons of Erin, including "Mr. O'Callaghan who holds a little place at the hospital."2g One can only imagine what O'CallaghanYsreaction to that might have been, but, with his dander well and truly up, he probably stormed into Waller's office and demanded that the record be set straight Once his visitor's ruffled feathers had been smoothed a little, W l e r would certainly have taken the opportunity to inform him that it was unbecoming for a true Irishman to be seen at a Tory election rally, and that he ought to be associating with the more enlightened of his compatriots,who supported the other side. Waller, after all, forged the first link between the Irish voters and the Patriotes, and he was unlikely to have missed the chance to engage in a little proselytization with the election so close.

At rhe Montreal General Hospital

That election took place between 11 August and 17 August, and it was marked by the usual intimidation on both sides, each protesting vigorously over the other's sins while conveniently forgetting their own. The immediate culprits were the marauding gangs of bully boys, drawn from the estimated 95 percent of the Irish community who did not have the vote, and who were happy to crack a few heads in return for a shilling or so." The real blame, however, lay with the two party organizationswhich hired them, and with an electoral system that depended on public voting, which made intimidation possible and pr~fitable.~' On 17August, the returning officer called an end to the voting in Montreal West, and declared the Patriote candidates, Louis-Joseph Papineau and Dr. Robert Nelson, to be the victors over the Tory hopefuls, Peter McGill and John Delisle, by a handsome margin. It would undoubtedly have been a far closer contest had it not been for the Irish votes, which accounted for over a third of those cast for the Patriote candidates. The significance of that statistic becomes apparent when the fmal tally is examined. It shows that Papineau polled 593 votes, Nelson 592, McGill415, and Delisle 395." The figures also contained a lesson, for those who were prepared to learn it: so long as the Irish vote could be delivered in that fashion, the man who was able to do it was a power to be reckoned with in the riding. Recognition of that fact was evident in the victory celebrations when Irish and Canadians alike took to the streets, not just in Montreal West, but in the city's other two constituencies as well. Jocelyn Waller was acknowledged to be the architect of the Patriote victory in all three ridings, and was called upon to join the successful candidates in their triumphal procession. 'Tho hundred carriages carried them and their supporters through the city's streets, escorted by bands and banner bearers, and cheered on their way by the crowds lining the route. At last the cavalcade reached Waller's home where it stopped. As he alighted, "the music played, and as each carriage moved on, the gentlemen gave three cheers for him and shouted Mr. W l e r for ever! the friend of the Canadian and the Irish."33 Somewhere in the crowd were O'Callaghan and Tmcey, amazed by the spectacle, and it might just have occurred to them that if one Irishman could do it, then perhaps others could too. For the time being, however, only h c e y was free to do anything along those lines since, all through the election and for three months prior to it, 07Callaghan'sthoughts had been dominated by developments at the Montreal General Hospital that not only threat-

ened his immediate livelihood, but also the course of his future career.34 In its early years, the hospital was perennially teetering on the brink of insolvency. In the spring of 1827, however, its position became more than usually desperate. Lower Canada was in the grip of a depression, and the flow of donations had been reduced to a mere trickle. If the institution was to survive the crisis economies had to be made. As a first step, all but three of the wards were closed in order to reduce the size of the domestic staff. But that alone was not enough. There had to be further cuts if the hospital was to keep its doors open, which led the board of governors to consider dispensing with the services of the apothecary. The board authorized the committee of management to try to persuade O'Callaghan to relinquish his appointment, which under the terms of his contract had another full year to r ~ n . ~ ~ Whappened hat next has a certain Gilbertian quality to it that only becomes intelligible if the part played in it by the hospital's medical officers is fully appreciated. In Lower Canada, entrance into the medical profession was regulated by a 1788 enactment of the British parliament which required all candidates for licensing to satis@a board of medical examiners that they met one of two criteria: that they held a diploma from a university medical school, preferably a British one, or that they had served an eighteen month apprenticeship to a licenced physician in Lower Canada followed by a six-month internship at the Montreal General Hospital. Further, in 1823, an amendment to the act added the stipulation that the members of the Montreal Board of Medical Examiners could only be doctors with British medical degrees who were also medical officers at the Montreal General Hospital. The effect was to make the board indistinguishable from the hospital's staff of medical oficers.36 Soon afterwards, the incestuous arrangement was further compounded with the establishment,by those same doctors, of the Montreal Medical Institution which was promptly approved for the purpose of instructing would-be physicians in subjects considered essential to their professional de~elopment.~ It goes without saying who the instructors in the institution were, an arrangement that persisted until it became the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University in 1829? The outcome of it all was that the four medical officers at the hospital had de facto control over entry into the medical profession in Montreal. What it meant in practice for potential doctors was that, in addition to meeting all the requirements of the amended act,

At the Montreal General Hospital

andattending classes at the Montreal Medical Institution, they had to find favour in the eyes of the hospital's medical officers. Otherwise they were unlikely to receive certificates of proficiency from them in their guise of members of the Montreal Board of Medical examiner^.^^ Thus in the spring of 1827, when the question of OYCallaghan's licensing was fust raised, his fate was in the hands of the four men who, at one and the same time, were his superiors at work, his instructors in the medical institution, and his examiners for licensing. The four omnipotents were Doctors John Stephenson, Andrew Fernando Holmes, William Caddwell, and William Robertson, all graduates of Edinburgh University, and all very very much members of Montreal's Anglo-Scottish, Protestant elite? When O'Callaghan was fust approached to relinquish his position as apothecary and steward, he had already petitioned the Board of Medical Examiners for their certification and received an unfavourable response. Why the board denied hhn a certificate of proficiency is not entirely clear, but one reason might have been that he had not served the prescribed apprenticeship, seeing that his French training was not considered equivalent to a degree programrne.41 Early in June 1827, he wrote to the hospital's Committee of Management advising it that it would

. . .be of serious inconvenience to me at this moment to give up my situation, unprepared as I am to practice legally my profession. No person, Sir,is more desirous than I to disburthen the Hospital of that expense of which, it seems, I am the cause. My willingness so to do has been, inasmuch as I am concerned, fully demonstrated when I presented myself before the Board of Examiners for a licence. I did all in my power then, to obtain the object of my wishes. The result of that application is before you. I hope at some future period to be more successful, but in the existing state of my circumstances I must deem the relinquishment of my situation, a determination on my part at least, premature and unwise and, therefore, must beg leave to decline it? An interesting thing about the letter, apart from its content, is what it reveals about the writer. He was clearly not in awe of the hospital administration,and although he expressed a willingness to accede to its wishes, it was to be on his terms and nobody else's.

The letter also suggests that he was not on the most cordial of terms with the hospital's medical officers and that, as a result, he felt they were prejudiced against him. Whether he was right or wrong in that respect is impossible to say, but the letter did have the desired effect in the end. About three and a half months later, on 1 October 1827, the Board of Medical Examiners had second thoughts on O'Callaghan's case and issued a certificate of proficiency which tersely stated that it had examined him and had found him "qualified to practice Medicine, Surgery and Midwifery in this Pro~ince.'"~ No mention was made of what those qualifications were, or how they had been obtained, as was normally the case; it was nothing but an unadorned statement of certification. It was sufficient, though, and by the second week of November, the governor had granted the licence, and the Provincial Secretary had promulgated it in every newspaper in Lower Canada.44 O'Callaghan's only possible regret at the outcome was that h e would not be able to place the letters M.D. after his name, but only a university could bestow that distinction on him, and for that he would have to wait. It is only possible to speculate as to whether or not O'Callaghan would ever have been licensed at all if the Montreal General Hospital had not been in financial difficulty, but the licensing process being what it was, and the men involved in it being who they were, it is not unreasonable to think that he would probably have had to wait much longer for it to happen had a pressing need for economies not existed. Following his licensing, the whole question of his resignation was very quickly settled with O'Callaghan agreeing not to hold the hospital to the terms of its contract with him in return for a single payment of twenty pounds. With that his employment there came to an end and, from 1 January 1828, he was free to practice medicine wherever he pleased in the province. What did the hospital save by the settlement? A mere twenty-one pounds, the balance of what O'Callaghan's salary would have been had he stayed on to the end of his contracted term.4s

Chapter 4 The Evolution of

a

Newspaperman ne morning, early in January 1828, and long before the dawn could streak the eastern sky over Montreal with its wintery gray 0 light, Dr. O'Cdlaghan set out for Quebec. He was aboard the stagecoach which lurched its way along the north shore road, for the river ice denied him the relatively comfortable alternative of taking the steamboat. He would not have gone far before the combined effect of the bitter cold and the jolting progress of the vehicle engulfed him in wretchedness. It might just have crossed his mind that it was certainly no Rakes of Mallow coach, filled with summer revellers, in which he was riding, nothing of the sort. It was a workaday conveyance for the convenience of passengers who had compelling reasons for travelling in the depth of winter; passengers whose only comforts lay in the contents of hip flasks and in cursing their misfortunes as they cowered deeper into their furs in the hope of some respite from the numbingly cold wind sweeping down from the frigid Canadian Shield towards the river. The journey to Quebec lasted for two miserable days, broken only by an overnight stop in Wis Rivi&res,and on the second evening the doctor found himself in the city that was to be his home for the next five and a half years. Quebec had always been a two-tier city. Geology had ordained it that way by shaping a dominating bluff to loom over the narrow and relatively flat river front below it. In much the same way, the Upper Town, which had grown up within the fortifications built around the top of the bluff, dominated the Lower Town below it The wealthy and the powerful favoured the higher ground from where they could look down on the poor and the weak.

That was certainly the situation when O'Callaghan arrived and found a great number of his fellow countrymen living in the most abject poverty in the western part of the Lower Town. To him they looked as if they were even more impoverished, and living in greater squalor than the poorest of their compatriots in Montreal. The most destitute of all the immigrants were to be found in Quebec and, whether they wanted to or not, they were doomed to stay there until they could scrape together enough money to move on.' It could be argued that it was a burning desire to help alleviate the consequences of that grinding poverty which brought O'Callaghan to Quebec in the depths of winter but, realistically, it was more likely to have been sheer economic necessity which compelled him to make the punishing trip from Montreal. The trouble in that city was that it already had too many doctors, and the chances there for a newcomer to make a satisfactory living were not good, especially in view of the depressed state of the economy. At that time there were about fifty medical practitioners there, all trying to make a living from a population of about thirty thousand, while Quebec, although the number of inhabitants was fractionally smaller, was served by only around thirty doctors. The prospects for a newly licensed physician, therefore, were somewhat rosier in Quebec than they were in Montreal? Even so, O'Callaghan did not find it easy to get himself established in practice, particularly since he chose to locate his surgery in the Lower Town where, although about half of the population consisted of Irish immigrants, a great many of them lived in utter destitution. It was not a place where a new doctor could look forward to a remunerative career.3So precarious was the living to be made there that, soon after his arrival in Quebec, O'Callaghan again turned to hospital work and took the position of surgeon-incharge at the Emigrants' Hospital? That institution was unique in Lower Canada in that it was funded directly by the government in a stop-gap arrangement to deal with the escalating problem of impoverished immigrants from across the Atlantic. They came from seaports all around the British Isles, but especially from those in Ireland where a depressed economy, combined with agrarian discontent, periodic famine and chronic over-population caused an ever growing number of people to seek a better life in North America. They scraped together the two pounds or so for the one-way fare across the Atlantic and, with little else than the clothes they were wearing, set off to endure several weeks of the most appalling shipboard conditions before reaching their destinations. On arriving at ports such as Quebec, they disem-

The Evolution of a Newspaperman

barked virtually penniless and near starvation, their bodies possibly infested with lice, and some of them suffering from diseases contracted during a voyage on which they had been sustained by the most meagre of diets.5 The consequence was that the immigrants very often came ashore more dead than alive and, for the most diseased and debilitated among them, hospitalization offered their only hope of survival. At first, Quebec's one hospital, the HBtel-Dieu, managed to cope with the influx but, before long, the limited accommodation there proved to be totally inadequate for the ever increasing number of patients seeking admission. So many of them had to be turned away that it was obvious to the sisters there that, short of condernning many to die in the streets, additional bed space had to be provided.6To meet that need, an emergency charitable hospital was established in a disused military building, but that too was soon inadequate for the growing stream of patients. In the end, the govemment was forced to step in and assume responsibility for coping with the probleme7 In the summer of 1820, the governor, Lord Dalhousie, with the compliant approval of his appointed Executive and Legislative Councils, but without that of the elected Legislative Assembly, authorized the construction of an emigrants' hospital. The building, located on the western extremity of the Upper Town, was a jerrybuilt wooden structure that was soon completed and placed under the jurisdiction of the port medical officer whose duty it became to staff the institution, and to oversee its operation? By 1828 the hospital had shown that it could carry out the terms of its mandate with considerable success, treating as many as ninety patients a month with a mortality mte of only about 10 percent. For that considerable accomplishment the credit was due in large part to the care and attention given by the small staff: the surgeon-incharge, the apothecary, and a couple of nurses, augmented, on occasion, by physicians from the city who assisted as visiting doctors. It was, therefore, into the aura of a well established reputation that O'Callaghan stepped when he took over the position of surgeon-incharge to head an all Irish staff, and to provide medical care for almost exclusively Irish patientsg That a newly licensed doctor should have been given a position of such responsibility might seem surprising, but the fact was that he was not without experience in such a job. The time that he had spent as the apothecary and steward at the Montreal Geneml Hospital had given him that. Another consideration was that every penny spent on the Emigrants' Hospital was liable to provoke acri-

Edmund Baiky O'CalIughan

monious debate in the Legislative Assembly where the Patriote members were reluctant to agree to any expenditure of public funds over which they could not exercise jurisdictional control. The consequence was that whenever the hospital hired anyone, be it doctor, nurse, or menial, the least experienced applicant often had an advantage simply because he or she commanded the smallest salary. In addition to that, every effort was made to appoint Irish men and women because it was felt that they could communicate more readily with the patients. Given all of those circumstances, therefore, O'Callaghan was a very attractive candidate for the position.1° He started working at the hospital in January 1828,and remained ; there until May 1829. His experience dwing that period must have been very similar to what it had been at the Montreal General Hospital, except that there was a pronounced seasonal variation in the number of patients in the wards. In the shipping season, from April to November, there were far more admissions than at other times. As for the nature of the cases treated, they were generally associated with the ravages of the long Atlantic crossing, and consisted of infections rather than injwies. The source of the infection was usually to be found on the cargo decks of the lumber ships in which the immigrants usually travelled. Those decks were located directly over the ships' bilges which, unless the vessel had been recently launched, were nothing more than cesspools awash with a fetid soup of sea water befouled by human excrement, decaying waste, and the accumulated filth of years in which vermin and contagion flourished. mhoid and typhus were relatively common, as were bronchial and pulmonary complaints. However, a1though the Emigrants' Hospital treated a wide diversity of cases, the root cause of all of them lay back in Ireland where the penuriousness of rural life predisposed the emigrants to infection before they ever set sail.ll Witnessing the misery and misfortune of the hospital patients on a daily basis must have engendered thoughts of the circumstances in Ireland that had produced such poor creatures in the first place and, having done so, sent them across the sea in search of a better home. To a man like O'Callaghan such thoughts gave rise to a conviction that the British were to blame. That being so, the best approach to the problem was to bring about Catholic emancipation, as proposed by Daniel O'Connell, with all possible haste. Irish Catholic representatives in the parliament at Westminster, ideally holding the balance of power between the Whigs and the Tories, would be in a position to induce one of the parties to bring in legislation that would improve the lot of the landless tenants and thus reduce the rate of emigration, or so the argument went. In reality

The Evohtion of a Newspaperrnun no such thing happened: when the potato crops failed in the 1840s, the Irish Catholic M.Ps in the House of Commons were unable to prevent the ensuing mass emigration to North America. However, all that lay in the future. In the late summer of 1828, news of Daniel O'Connell's election to represent county Clare in the British parliament had just reached Lower Canada. As a move to help finance the campaign aimed at bringing about the abolition of the religious test, which would allow him to take his seat, the Society of the Friends of Ireland was born. In British North America that took place in Montreal on 7 September, when some prominent members of the Irish community, notably John Donellan and Daniel Tracey, convened the inaugural meeting of the society. Members immediately resolved to dedicate themselves to "raising a fund to aid that distinguished body, the Catholic Association of Ireland, in the noble cause of civil and religious liberty." From that beginning the society quickly spread to other centres in Lower Canada, to several locations in Upper Canada and Nova Scotia, as well as to a number of cities in the United States that had sizeable Irish populations.12 The Quebec chapter was the second to be formed in Lower Canada. It came into being on 27 September, three weeks after the Montreal one. What role, if any, O'Callaghan played in that first meeting was certainly not considered worthy of mention by the newspapers. Just as in Montreal following the 1827 election, he seems to have been reluctant to take on anything that might hinder him from carrying out his duties at the hospital. It would take someone whom he knew and trusted to convince him that he owed it as a duty to his compatriots to play an active part in the affairs of the Society of the Friends of Ireland. The man who succeeded in doing that was Tracey. Tracey provided whatever suasion was needed to induce O'Callaghan to join the society and, in doing so, set the doctor's feet on a road that would eventually lead him away from medicine and towards politics.I3 That all took place at the end of October when Tracey, in his joint capacity as president and corresponding secretary of the Montreal chapter, came to Quebec to promote a newspaper that he proposed publishing, which would speak for the society as a whole.I4 It was to be called The Irish Vindicator, and Tracey wanted the members of the Quebec chapter to give it their moral and financial support. However, that was not all he wanted to accomplish. He also wanted to get someone of his own choosing into the position of corresponding secretary in the chapter, someone who could ensure that it continued to act in unison with its Montreal counterpart, and who would be literate enough to serve as the Quebec corre-

spondent of his newspaper too. For that only one man would suit him: his very good friend from Mallow, county Cork.15 Everything went according to plan. O'Callaghan had obviously been brought around to Tracey's way of thinking for he arrived at the meeting with an acceptance speech all ready to deliver. In it he thanked the members for the confidence they had shown in him by appointing him to be their corresponding secretary, and went on to lambaste those newspapers which had been commenting adversely on the society's activities. That all led up to the main feature of his address, the five resolutions which he and Tracey had drawn up for the consideration of the meeting. Their subsequent adoption gave Tracey the endorsement for his newspaper that he was seeking.I6 O'Callaghan proved to be an excellent corresponding secretary, and in very short order he turned the Quebec chapter into the most numerous and prosperous in the province. So successful was he, in fact, that in a little over two months the treasurer was able to send fifty pounds off to Dublin-+ considerable feat since the basic membership fee was only one penny per month and the membership never amounted to more than 219.'' O'Callaghan was not hesitant over letting the chapter's success be known, nor of holding it up as an example of what all Irishmen in the Canadas should be doing in support of O'Connell. He even went so far as to suggest that those who did not contribute to the sacred cause were little better than traitors to their native land. "Shall it be said? forbid it heaven!" he wrote, "that Irishmen alone were luke-warm, that in quitting their native Land, they forgot their common mother--and in the grand struggle in which Ireland is engaged they alone were spectators.18Those remarks, contained in a letter to the Montreal chapter, seem to imply that in some parts of the country the response to the call for donations was less than overwhelming. It is quite possible that the total amount of money sent to Dublin by all the Canadian chapters was no more than C200. From a Canadian standpoint, however, the real significance of the Society of the Friends of Ireland lies not so much in the donations it sent off to Dublin, but in its legacy to Montreal. Following the news in May 1829 that the religious test in the British House of Commons had been abolished, there was no longer any need for the chapters of the society to continue to operate, so they wound up their affairs and passed into oblivion. The Irish Vindicator, though, survived: Jocelyn Waller's death in November 1828, and with it the disappearance of The Canadian Spectator, allowed The Irish Vindicator to broaden its scope so as to address the Irish community as a whole, rather than just a segment of it. For its editor, Tracey, that

The Evolution of a Newspapeman was the launching of a career that would carry him beyond journalism and into politics. Later, much the same thing would happen to O'Callaghan. For the time being, however, he had other concerns. As had been the case at the Montreal General Hospital in 1827, he found that his job at the Emigrants' Hospital was in jeopardy. As before, his reaction was to turn his back on public affairs for a while.19 O'Callaghan's employment difficulties must have occurred at about the same time that he was helping to wind up the affairs of the Quebec chapter of the Society of the F'riends of Ireland in May 1829,for on the twenty-sixth,under the heading "The Emigrant Hospital," the following reports appeared in The Quebec M e ~ w y : We learn that a thorough change has been recently made in the medical attendant, officers and servants of this institution, that the late apothecary and two nurses, all Irish, have been dismissed and their situations filled by Canadians. Of the merits and demerits of the persons discharged, it is not our intention to speak, their removal might, or it might not have been necessary, at all events it ought not to have been made before the complaints against them had been thoroughly investigated by the whole of the gentlemen forming the Superintending Committee, and, if necessary, further submitted by them to the magistrates, to which body the care of the Hospital has been confided. But so far from this course having been pursued, the change, we notice, has been made, as we are informed, by the 'Ikeasureron his own authority, in opposition to the representation of one of his colleagues, and without the knowledge of the other, who is indeed absent from Quebec. Our objection is not to the employment of Canadians, if pmperly qualified, in any or all of the offices of the Emigrant Hospital; but when it is considered that the patients who are the objects of relief in this Hospital, are Emigrants unacquainted with the French language,we must say that the appointment of a medical attendant who cannot thoroughly understand his patients, of a resident apothecary still less able to comprehend them, and of nurses who are utterly ignorant of the language in which alone the unfortunate sufferers can express their wants and their sufferings, is neither consonant with reason or humanity, and as the appointments we notice have a tendency to defeat the purpose of the hospital, in thus publicly expressing our

opinion we call upon the magistrates to take the case into their prompt and serious con~ideration.~~ For reasons best known to himself, the author of the article studiously avoided mentioning the names of the parties involved, perhaps out of fear of legal repercussions if the story proved to be incorrect, or partially so, as a letter to a rival paper, The Quebec Gozette, suggests.21However, the assertion regarding the medical attendant and the apothecary was not disputed, so that part of the story can be taken to be substantially correct. Furthermore, it can be demonstrated, albeit circumstantially, that O'Callaghan was the Irish medical attendant referred to in the article.22 All that can be deduced from the report with any certainty is that the dispute had to do with financial management and that it ranged the hospital's treasurer against its Irish staff. Anything beyond that can only be speculative. Having said that, it does seem likely that the trouble was connected with over-spending which, given the nature of the hospital's funding, would have been a matter of considerable concern for the treasurer whose duties would certainly have included keeping a restraining hand on the institution's purse strings. His main concern would have been that since the hospital was funded through the governor, its costs had to included in his civil list, which each year were submitted to the Legislative Assembly for approval, usually retroactively. Strictly speaking that was contrary to the provisions of the Constitutional Act which required the elected representatives of the people to approve public expenditures in advance. Nevertheless, in the case of the hospital, so long as its costs were not very different from those of the previous year, a convention had developed whereby the Legislative Assembly was prepared to approve them without much of an argument. However, should those costs have increased dramatically, a full scale political battle could have erupted, central to which would have been the whole thorny question of control of the public purse.23 To speculate even farther, what seems likely to have happened at the hospital is that O'Callaghan and the rest of the staff wanted to improve the quality of the care they were providing for their unfortunate compatriots. To do so they purchased additional food and medicine without getting the treasurer's prior approval. That would have put them at odds with him, and should he have been under the impression that the Irish were in collusion with the Patriotes, he could easily have regarded the whole affair as an attempt to embarrass the administration.

The Evolution of n Newspaperman

Whether or not that was the reason for the summary dismissals, their aims were to bring the hospital's costs under tighter rein, and to inhibit fraternization between its staff and its patients." The dismissal must have come as a hard blow to O'Callaghan's pride, but it did not stop him from concerning himself with the medical needs of Irish immigrants. To that end he opened a surgery in the Lower Town and there, for the next fifteen months, he devoted himself to following his profession in that poverty-stricken neighbourhood, and leading a lie out of the limelight.%Such outside interests as he did pursue were small enough to be of no interest to the press, and were mostly connected with the church. The main problem faced by all Irish Catholics in Quebec was not having a church they could call their own, one wherein the working language of the clergy was English, and the ritual was what they were accustomed to in Ireland. Any attempt by O'Callaghan to remedy that, however, had to wait until after he was married, and had a persuasive and supportive wife to coax him back into public lie. Little is known for certain of Charlotte Augustina Crampe's background except that she and her family might have been acquainted with the O'Callaghans back in Ireland, and that she had obviously emigrated to Lower Canada some time previous to 20 August 1830P That was the date when she and O'Callaghan were married by special licence at Shebrooke, where she had apparently been living? She was a well educated lady who had an amiable disposition and readily made friends. She is reputed to have been keenly interested in social causes, an aspect of her character which, along with her strong determination, probably accounts for her husband's resumption of active participation in public affairs shortly after his marriage? That occurred when the project of the Quebec Irish community to build a church of its own became entangled in the toils of the diocesan b~reaucracy.~ The brand of Catholicism that the Irish found in Quebec's churches was not only marked by more sophisticated forms of ritual than they were accustomed to, but its working language was French. The language of the confessional was French, as was the language of the pulpit and, judging by the preponderance of graves in the cemeteries, it appeared as if the language of death too was French. For English-speaking Irish immigrants, having their children baptized in French, seeing them married in French, receiving absolution for their sins in French and, Tially, being buried next to someone who, in life, had spoken French, was too much to bear. In Quebec's Lower Town, where the Irish made up half of the population, it was the source of considerable disquiet, especially since they

had their own pastor, the Rev. Patrick McMahon, who, while he had no official status,was looked up to by them as their spiritual leader." Some time in 1829 they prevailed upon Fr. McMahon to organize a campaign aimed at building an lrish church in Lower Town. His fust step towards that end was to set up a committee to conduct what might be called a feasibility study. At the same time, another group began soliciting donations in order to raise the money needed to cover the costs of a suitable piece of land, and of the structure itself. While the fund raising project was successful from the outset, bringing in seventeen hundred pounds by the beginning of 1830, the feasibility study was less so. It was soon bogged down in a morass of bureaucratic pettifoggery, mostly written in bench, and much of it emanating from the diocesan office, which was resistant to any change from the status quo. That was the juncture at which O'Callaghan entered the picture?' Fluently bilingual, not overawed by authority, and newly inspired to take on the most redoubtable of adversaries, he was the very man to break through the mire of obstruction and procrastination that had thwarted the best efforts to produce a feasibility study. As secretary to a committee charged with looking into what was causing the delay, he very quickly had it dispose of all diocesan obstruction by the simple expedient of noting it, regretting it, and then ignoring it. He followed that by calling a meeting of all Msh Catholics and having it approve six resolutions which, in essence, presumed that sooner or later permission to proceed would be forthcoming and, that being so, directed a management committee to purchase a suitable piece of land as soon as it was practicable to do so. Then, so that nobody was left in any doubt as to what the Irish intentions were, he undertook to see to it that copies of the resolutions were sent to the bishop, as well as to the editors of several newspapers in the province." When the resolutions appeared in the Montreal papers, they stirred up quite a hornets' nest in certain quarters where they were regarded as a direct challenge to the bishop's authority, and also as evidence that, as suspected, the Irish were a clannish, chauvinistic and undisciplined lot. So incensed was one Montrealer over it all that he felt compelled to air his displeasure in a letter to the editor of La Mineme, taking care, however, to hide his identity behind the pseudonym of I'Impmtial.The letter has a pronounced clerical flavour to it, suggesting that its author was probably someone like Mgr. Jean-Jacques Lartigue, the Bishop of Quebec's Montreal lieutenant. Whoever the writer was, he made no bones about what his views were on the Irish and their plans:

The EwoIution of a Newspaperman

Have we not seen by some Resolutions passed in Quebec the 30th January last, a parcel of Irish, styling themselves Catholics, trying to build a Church in that City without the intervention of the Bishop, and for that pupose choosing themselves a lot of Ground, which he alone has the right of pointing out to them? As if strangers, because they are from beyond the seas, should on their arrival here, overthrow our usages and Customs instead of conforming to them.33 The letter so outraged Quebec's Irish that they hurriedly called meetings to vent their anger over it in irate resolutions and pronouncements." It was left for O'Callaghan, however, to make a public response, and he did so in gmnd style. He exploded into a two thousand-word diatribe in The Quebec Gazette in which he let fly with volleys of vitupemtion that provided a foretaste of what lay in store for the Tories once he got his hands on an editorial pen. Neither did he ignore the politics of the day for, having damned the letter writer as being pharisaical, slanderous, and idiotic, he treated him to a few home truths on the subject of Irish voters. "I question much if the proceedings of the Irish Catholics of Quebec would ever have distwbed your bilious zeal, had not their countrymen in Montreal preferred the Recollet Church as their House of Worship," he began. Then he went on to add: Base C a l d a t o r , do you dare impugn our right to the title of Catholics? Have you ever read the History of that people on whom you thus presume to reflect? Have your stunted enquiries ever extended to that tale of woe, heartscalding, and desolation embodied in Irish History and interwoven in the History of the Catholic Church? ...Who wielded the mighty engine of the press in support of your liberties, and blush when you learn that you have been defaming the countrymen of a WALLER and of a TRACY [sic],and if still their unwearied energies do not protect us from your obloquy, go to the poll books, when the voice of your country spoke from the hustings, and enquire in whose ranks these "Strangers" were marshalledwhether in support of the rights of the people of Canada or in aray [sic] against their liberties, and then answer whether we have "come from beyond the seas, to over throw your customs and usages, instead of conforming to them?3!j

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

It was a devastating denunciation, and it had the desired effect. Thereafter the negotiations and the fund raising went ahead without further hindrance. On 11 June 1832, it was possible to lay the corner-stone of St. Patrick's Perhaps an even more significant outcome, though, was that O'Callaghan had shown himself to be the latest strong Irish voice in Lower Canada, a man cast in the same mould as Jocelyn Waller and Daniel Tracey. However, for the time being, improving the lot of the poor, rather than beating a political drum, remained his prime concern. Right up until the spring of 1833, when he left the city, his name frequently appeared in the Quebec newspapers as being present at meetings of organizations devoted to social improvement of one sort or another, not just as an observer, but as an active participant who was ever ready to serve on committees, be they of the executive, management, or working variety. His involvement in the work of the Quebec Emigrants' Society was just one example of that. The society had been established in 1819 for the purpose of trying to alleviate the problems created by the flood of impoverished emigrants entering the colony through the Port of Quebec. Although it was a governmentally funded agency, it enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy. Unlike the Emigrants' Hospital, the hands of bureaucracy did not hold it in such tight rein so it was able to respond more readily to the needs of those who arrived penniless or sick. Such immigrants were a particular problem because they often reacted to their plights in unacceptable ways, such as by begging in the streets, squatting in dock-side buildings, and by crime.37 A large number of such people accumulated in Quebec, not because they liked the place, but because they lacked the means to move on. They were literally stranded. The magnitude of the problem emerges starkly from the immigration statistics for the Port of Quebec in 1831. That year a total of 50,254 immigrants disembarked there of whom almost 70 percent were Irish. Although the majority of them moved on to other destinations, a staggering 8,500 of them remained to tax the city's resources to their limits.38 It was an ever worsening problem. Every year, from the moment the navigation season opened in the spring right up until the following November when it ended, the ranks of the chronically indigent continued to swell. The Emigrants' Society's entire efforts and resources were directed towards trying to cope with the problem by such means as attempting to restrict the movements and activities of beggars, returning whence they came those who, for reasons of health or physical incapacity, had little hope of surviving in the harsh

The Evolution of a Newspapemn

North American environment, providing transportation to the next stop along the way to their fmal destinations for those fit to travel, and by providing emergency shelter for those living in the streets. So effective did the society become that it was praised in the Irish press as an inducement to would-be emigrants, recognition that it would probably have preferred to do without.39 Although the society was a government agency, rather than a charitable one, it did not inhibit O'Callaghan from remaining associated with its work all the while that he was in Quebec, even to the extent of serving on its committee of management. Neither did he stop at that: when an emergency dispensary was established to provide medication to needy immigrants, he donated the use of part of his surgery for the purpose and, along with a Dr. Lyons, served in it as a volunteer apothecary.4o Close associationwith the work of the Emigrants' Society did not hinder O'Callaghan from trying to ease the lot of needy immigrants through charitable agencies as well. A good example of that was when he, along with other members of the Irish Catholic congregation in Quebec, organized and conducted a city-wide canvass to raise funds "for the purpose of enabling the sick and indigent patients at present in town, to proceed as soon as possible to their respective places of destination."41 The drive raised a little over a hundred and eleven pounds, which was entrusted to the Rev. Fr. McMahon for disbursement with the proviso that "the money shall not be given to applicants;but that all deserving objects shall be furnished, without any religious distinction, with a passage to Montreal," which seems to imply a strong suspicion that if the cash were handed out to those seeking aid, it could well end up in the pocket of a Quebec taverner." Drunkenness was an ever-present problem among the irnrnigrants, and a cause for continuing concern to those trying to help them. That, no doubt, was what took O'Callaghan to the inaugural meeting of the Quebec Temperance Society, in March 1832, where he found himself unexpectedly elected to the Committee of Management-his reputation as a good committee man had obviously preceded him there." Throughout his years in Quebec, whether he was working to stamp out drunkenness, disease, or indigence, O'Callaghan often gives the impression that he served the poor because it was the Christian thing to do. At first that was almost certainly true, however, it was a period in which he was starting to be influenced by what he read in the liberal press of Andrew Jackson, America's Tist populist president. He was thus exposed to the radical idea that in a de-

mocracy government is not the preserve of an elite ruling class, but that, given a modicum of education, the highest offices in the land were within the reach of the humblest of its citizens. In O'Callaghan's mind that opened up the prospect of another way in which the lot of the Irish poor might be improved, and also convinced him that education was an essential element in the lives of those living in a democracyP4 It was a considerable change in his philosophical outlook for, until then, he had always considered humanitarian and charitable acts to be the best means of contending with social ills; as a nascent Jacksonian, he began to look increasingly towards political means as holding out the best hope for eradicating them. O'CallaghanYsnew view of things probably led him to take the chair on 8 December 1830 at a small meeting that had been called to investigate the possibility of opening a public library in Quebec for "the more general diffusion of useful knowledge," and which unanimously agreed to present the idea to a larger gathering the following week.45 There, enthusiasm for the plan proved to be overwhelming, and the original intention to open a library was supplanted by a far more ambitious one to establish a MechanicsyInstitute in the city. Donations of books would be solicited to provide material for all who wanted to come and read, and discussion groups would be organized to encourage an exchange of ideas, so long as the participants avoided the proscribed subjects of religion and politics, the two most divisive in Lower Canada." Appeals to the public for books brought donations of a wide variety of works, some of which were possibly too esoteric for the down-to-earth tastes of those who visited the reading room, but there were enough volumes of the right sort to meet most of their needs. Far and away the most important result of the project was not the extent to which the institute managed to disseminate practical knowledge, but the fact that it raised the level of literacy among the poor. In addition to that contribution to public education, the institute also provided improving lectures from time to time with a view to stimulating interest in areas considered worthy of further study. One such series, conducted by a reverend gentleman, under the rather intimidating title of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, sounds far removed from what might appeal to the intellectual palate of the day labourer; nevertheless, by all accounts the lectures were both well attended and well received, which suggests that the speaker must have leavened their stodginess with a measure of clerical wit while continuing to deny his audience a taste of the forbidden f i t s of religion and politics?

The Evo~utionof a Newspapemurn The Mechanics' Institute was a minor triumph for O'Callaghan, and he remained active in it until he left the city. It was work that earned a great deal of public approval, so much that Lord Aylmer, the governor at the time, agreed to become the patron of the institute, a gesture which added the accolade of respectability to its already wide p ~ p u l a r i t yThe . ~ ~ only problem it seems to have encountered appears to have been that of finding a permanent home. During the relatively short period of O'Callaghan's involvement from December 1830 to May 1833, the institute had to move on at least one occasion, and probably more often than that, so that it ended up by occupying part of O'Callaghan's own house.49 It was there that the idea of erecting a statue to honour the memory of the recently deceased Sir Walter Scott would first have been discussed. The subject likely arose in the course of a session that must have ventured perilousIy close to the forbidden subject of politics when the conversation got round to the debt that liberal thought owed to the darling of romanticism. The outcome was that the inevitable committee was formed to work towards the erection of an appropriate structure in Quebec, and the inevitable committee member, Dr. E.B. O'Callaghan, already a vice-president of the institute, was on it. On that occasion his efforts, and those of his fellow committee members, were to no avail for the project foundered on some unforeseen rocks, most likely those of public apathy.50 That was not O'Callaghan's first encounter with monument projects. In August of 1831 he had been active in a campaign to raise subscriptions for a monument of political, rather than literary significance after "some gentlemen from Montreal" came to Quebec seeking support for a project to build a memorial to the late Jocelyn Waller.51The idea had originated with Ludger Duvernay, the publisher of L a Mineme, but from the outset Daniel Tracey had also actively supported it and, before long, so did every Patriote of any consequence in the entire Montreal area. The degree of that support is at once apparent from the list of twenty-nine notables who made up the organizing committee. It reads like a Who's Who of the party with Louis-Joseph Papineau, its leader, heading it. Who the "gentlemen from Montreal" were is not known, but the project was certainly considered important enough by the Patriote leadership for it to have sent prominent party members to plead its case. The leadership saw the projected monument as having more than just a sentimental value. Over and above its obvious purpose, it would serve as a permanent monument to what the Irish did to bring about the party's electoral success in 1827 and, furthermore, it would also stand as a constant reminder to francophone voters, particularly

those in Montreal, of the importance of preserving that connection if they wanted continued Pahiote victories at the polls.52

In Montreal, ever since the dissolution of the Society of the Friends of Ireland in 1829, Daniel Tracey had been leading The Irish Vindicator away from its position of being primarily concerned with supporting Daniel O'Connell in his campaign for Catholic emancipation and towards one where it would become an acknowledged English voice of dissent in Lower Canada His editolial aggressiveness was having an effect elsewhere in the province too, and already the paper was starting to challenge the genteel radicalism preached by John Neilson in The Quebec Gazette. It was not an easy transition for the paper, however, and neither was it one that was to be bought cheaply: it cost both a name change, and a loss of independence. The financial health of the Lower Canadian press in the 1830s, was seldom better than ailing, and more often than not it hovered close to death's door, an unfortunate condition brought on by the two major determinants affecting the newspaper business. The first was the prevalence of illiteracy, which restricted the potential readership of a newspaper to a relatively small number of individuals. The second was the saleability of advertising space, a commodity for which the main customers were the government and the business community, both of which were typically opposed to the Patriotes and were inclined, therefore, to place their notices only in those papers that were editorially supportive of the Tory cause. The result was that most of the advertising money went to The Montreal Gazette and The Quebec Mercury. The Quebec Gazette and The Irish Vindicator both suffered for their political hue in dirninished incomes.s3 In the case of The Irish Vindicator, its circulation had declined dramatically when the winding up of the Society of the Friends of Ireland deprived it of its primary market and the source of its initial capitalization, which was no more than 5180 and insufficient to tide it over any protracted period of financial duress." To s u ~ v the e hard times the paper needed to increase its number of subscribers and advertisers or, failing that, to fmd a sponsor who was willing to undenmite it's losses. Such a benefactor had to have a good reason for wanting to keep the paper alive, since it was not likely to become profitable in the immediate future. In Montreal, only the Patriote party was in such a position. Following the death of Jocelyn Wler, and the disappearance of The Canadian Spectator, it was in desperate need of an English-language paper to speak for it.

The Evolution of a Newspapennun It appears that in May 1829 some of the shares in The Irish Vindicator held by ifacey, along with all of those held by his partner and printer, John Hagan, were sold to a consortium that included such eminent Patriotes as Ludger Duvernay, the publisher of the French language La Mineme; DenisBenjamin Vger, the attorney and elder statesman in the party; members of the Pemault family with its connections to a number of members of the party's establishment; ~douard-Raymond Fabre, the bookseller and emhence grise behind the Patriote leadership; Jacob de Witt, the prosperous iron merchant and financier; and several others.55Thereafter, John Hagan ceased to be associated with the paper, and in July 1829 the word Irish was dropped from its name, a change over which ifacey editorialized over a trifle wistfully:

In compliance with sentiments by which we would always feel anxious to be guided, and sensible that the same opinions, supporting the interests and rights of the people can be as well, if not better, maintained under an appellation which will apply to all indiscriminately in the Province, we have thought it more advisable not to persist in our nationality, however pleased with it ourselve~.~~ It is unlikely that the change did much to increase the circulation figures, but it did give the paper the appearance of having a broader based appeal than it previously had, an impression which might commend it to those anglophones who were not particularly interested in the ebb and flow of political fortunes in Ireland. It was the price that Racey had to pay for the survival of his newspaper. With the change, The Vindicatoreffectively entered the Patriote fold where it worked in tandem with La Mherve to spread the party word, a practice which brought both editors into conflict with the Legislative Council for allegedly libelling it.57 For their misdeeds, both 'Racey and Dwemay were hauled before the full panoply of the Council in January 1832. All their considerable rhetolic on the subject of freedom of the press was to no avail for, apart from the formality of being sentenced, their fate was never in much doubt Their gadfly tactics had goaded the Legislative Council into taking some retaliatory action, and it was not going to be denied that pleasure. The pair were jailed for the remainder of the sitting of the provincial Parliament, a period of thirty-five days, and plenty long enough to bring O'Callaghan out from the calm of his practice and his charitable and humanitarian pursuits to hasten to the aid of his imprisoned friend."

Edmund Bailey O'Callugghan

O'Callaghan's first act was to help organize a protest meeting at the Ottawa Hotel where, along with Eldar Bedard and ~tienneParent, he harangued the large crowd of between four and five hundred strong until it was worked up into such a frenzied state of indignation that it was prepared to follow anyone who chose to lead the way.%4nd someone did. No sooner were the speeches over and the brave resolutions carried by resounding voice votes than the crowd took to the streets, singing and shouting slogans. The best account of what followed is contained in an article in Ihe Undicator, no doubt written by O'Callaghan himself, who was still the paper's Quebec correspondent. So detailed is the account that, despite a disclaimer by the author, he must have been a witness: As soon as the meeting broke up, a party from the Hotel of

about 200 to 300 persons went towards the jail, crying out to take that direction, arrived there in front of the building they repeatedly cheered Messrs. aacey and Duvernay, and called for them to appear. Cries of "Vive la liberte de la presse, A bas du Conseil &c.,"were also heard. It appears that a couple of sentries had been placed on the steps of the jail, that the guard was turned out and drawn up in the passage, and that some precautionary steps were taken. From the jail they proceeded to Mr. Chief Justice Sewell's house where they repeated the same cries, and sang part of a song apparently written for the occasion & adapted to the Marseillaise, the Parisienne was also spoken of. From thence they proceeded down St. Lewis Street, stopping at Mr. Smith's, Clerk of the Council, who had signed the warrant, hissing and shouting; at the Chateau gate, cries of V i v e Lord Aylmer", "Vie la Chambre", [and] "Down with the Council", were repeated. The party then came to the House of Assembly where they cried, "Vive I'Orateur", &c.,some cries to Mr. Lemoine being heard. The party separated about eight o'clock. The only damage done was the breaking of a pane of glass at the Chief Justice's, by an individual who is known. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that the persons who caUed the meeting took no part in the proceeding, and it appears to have originated in a spirit of fun more than anything else? In subsequent days he participated in what, latterly, might be referred to as a media blitz. All the Patriote newspapers bombarded

The Evolution of a Newspaperman

their readers with letters and articles upholding the concept of the freedom of the press, extolling the heroism of those who were imprisoned for defending it, and denouncing the Legislative Council for jailing men whose only crime lay in exercising their God-given right to express themselves freely and openly. Some of the items were certainly O'Callaghan's work, although he kept his identity well-hidden beneath a blanket of editorial anonymity and an assortment of pen-names. The net result was that by the time the sitting of Parliament was over, and 'kacey and Duvernay were released from jail, they had been built up into folk heroes and were the subjects of public acclaim wherever they went. Their departure from Quebec, on the frigid afternoon of Saturday, 25 February, was evidence of that. When their coach left for Montreal it became the focus of a popular demonstration as a caravan of canioles, carrying ardent supporters, including O'Callaghan, escorted it as far as St. Augustin, twenty kilometres along the way?' In Montreal, according to the reports in the Patriote papers, their return to the city was nothing short of a triumph, although accounts of it in the opposition press were nowhere near as extravagant in their descriptions, labelling it as a trivial affair and of no consequence. Wherever the truth of the matter lay, there is no doubt that in the days following their return 'Ilacey and Duvernay were honoured at testimonial occasions, with specially minted medals, and by political lionization as champions of freedom of the press. It was the last of the three, rather than the depth of his commitment to the Patriote credo, which led to the Irish doctor's selection as the party's candidate in the approaching by-election in the riding of Montreal West62 The balance of electoral power in Montreal West lay in the hands of the two hundred or so Irish voters. A candidatewho could appeal both to them and to the F'rench-speaking electors who made up the party's main support, was the one who would most likely win the day in a closely contested election, which was something of an inevitabilitysince the electoratewas fairly evenly divided between the Patriotes and the Tories. That being so, it was 'Ilacey, rather than Duvemay, who looked to be the man to win, for everything indicated that Mcey was better able to deliver the Irish vote. Also, thanks to his close association in the public mind with Duvemay, he was unlikely to disaffect too many of the doctrinaire, francophone Patriotes, who might have preferred to have had one of their own as the candidate. Tkacey it was, therefore, who was sent to the hustings to contest the election with Stanley Bagg, the representative of the Tory business establishment.

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

At issue, above all else, was the question of the authoritywielded by the Legislative Council, and the abuse of it As a recent victim of that abuse, together with his fiery oratory from the hustings, and the returning officer's anxiety to preserve law and order, 'Racey proved to be the victor in the contest by the narrowest of margins--the final tally of votes gave him 691 to his opponent's 687.W It was a hard-won victory, not just because of its narrowness, but because of what it had cost in human lives as well. On 21 May, following violent conhontations between rival gangs of bully boys in the streets, the magistrates called out the military to restore order. At the time, it probably appeared to be the best thing to do. Unfortunately an order was given for the soldiers to fire into a crowd of rowdy mcey supporters which was escorting him back home after the close of the poll for the day. Three men were killed on the spot, and a number of others were wounded. Apart from a public outcry, the immediate consequence of the incident was that the following day, fearing that more serious disorders might be imminent, the returning officer closed the poll and declared mcey elected by a majority of four votes.= Despite the tmgedy, the victory was celebrated,especially by the Irish voters who, once again, had carried the day for the Patriotes. For the party it was also an occasion to be relished. Beside giving it a renewed lease on the seat for Montreal West, the election had provided it with martyrs to personify Lower Canada's suffering at the hands of the Legislative Council, the institution it liked to portray as the embodiment of all that it held to be evil in the British rule. It was, however, a short-lived triumph. It came to an abrupt end while the flush of victory was still hot on the cheeks of the victors. On Thursday, 7 June, a scant sixteen days after 'Ikacey's victory at the poll, the steamboat Voyageur tied up at a wharf in Quebec, and disembarked a number of immigrants, some of whom were infected with Asiatic cholera. The disease was about to run rampant through the province, picking off victims with impartiality be they . ~ vessel had only come from rich or poor, Tory or P a t r i ~ t eThe Grosse Ile, the newly established quarantine station located about fifty kilometres downstream from Quebec. Immigrants were supposed to be held there under military supervision until any shipboard infections had run their course. On this occasion the system failed miserably and permitted the disease to enter the country." The anival of Asiatic cholera was not entirely unheralded. All through the previous winter and spring the newspapers had been regularly carrying articles dealing with aspects of the disease, all the way from theories as to its cause to its progress across Europe,

The Evolution of a Newspaperman where it spread unchecked until it reached the Atlantic seaboard. As early as the preceding February the government had announced a number of far-reaching measures aimed at checking its spread into Canada These included the establishment of a board of health, made up of magistrates and other prominent citizens, with wide powers to enter and inspect buildings, to restrict movement by closing off thoroughfares as needed, and to limit public access to meeting places such as taverns and hotels. The measures also provided for the appointment of a health officer to board and inspect incoming ships which would be required to remain anchored and under military supervision in a designated quarantine area off Grosse he, until such time as they were given clearance to move up river to Quebec? Stringent as they might appear, in practice the precautions proved to be as ineffective as were the steps taken to enforce them which, to say the least, were inadequate. The captain of the Voyageur had no difficulty in taking a number of newly arrived irnrnigrants on board, and in obtaining the necessary clearance to proceed up river. His first port of call was Quebec, where he disembarked some of his passengers, before going on to Montreal with the rest of them. The consequences were the same in both cities. Very soon they were in the throes of a full scale epidemic which skipped erratically from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, spreading like a grass fue driven by the vagaries of a capricious wind. The captain had done his work welIP9 In Quebec, faced with a fait accompli, the board of health could only try to contain the outbreak by every means at its disposal under the regulations, one of which was to open an emergency hospital to augment the limited bed space awilable in the H6tel-Dieu, and in the Emigrants' Hospital. The new institution, referred to simply as the Cholera Hospital, was situated close to the docks in the Lower Town, and O'Callaghan was named to be one of its two medical directors. It was a position that he had actively sought by petitioning the Governor, Lord Aylmer, which suggests that he was motivated as much by economic necessity as he was by compassion. After all, such a job was not without its risks. He more or less confumed that interpretation of his actions some years later when he admitted that the ten to fifteen shillings per day that he received at the Cholera Hospital was a welcome addition to his income, which would seem to indicate that he was not prospering as a doctor in private practice. Regardless of motives, he and his fellow medical director, Dr. Anthony von Iffland, set about trying to cope with an impossible task70

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

All through that summer a familiar sight in the streets of Quebec and Montreal were the covered wagons and carts, vehicles pressed into senice as makeshift ambulances and hearses, trundling those stricken with the disease in one direction and, on the return trip, the bodies of the dead to the cemeteries. They were busy days for the drivers, and for the priests and the gravediggers, just as they were frustrating ones for doctors unable to slow the traf"ic.71 Their problem was that apart from its observable symptoms of diarrhoea, stomach cramps, vomiting, and terminal coma, they knew very little about cholera and had no way of cuing it For those contracting the disease, death within hours was the fate of two out of every three, while the third only survived by virtue of constitui l l to live. Even so, doctors did not allow their tional strength and a w ignorance to deter them from treating patients, usually by means that were as lethal as they were bizane. Medical men, in their quest for a remedy, resorted to procedures of every imaginable, and often baharous kind, their precise nature dictated by the particular theory as to the cause of the disease to which they subscribed. There were those who held cholera to be the result of some deadly vapour present in the Canadian air that struck down newcomers as soon as they started to inhale it. Others were equally certain that it was the result of a salt deficiency in the blood. Still more were of the opinion that it was a manifestation of poisons produced by the fermentation of tainted food m the alimentary tract There were many other equally outlandish ideas, but there was only one treatment of known efficaciousness, that was the strict isolation of patients and their contacts, which was the whole idea behind setting up the quarantine station at Grosse he. Once the disease came ashore on the mainland, isolation was a lost option, and a great many of the victims of it never came to official notice until they died. They suffered in the privacy of homes and lodgings, and there was no means of knowing how many others they had infected before they succumbed to their illness." The incidence of that practice can be readily calculated from the mortality figures for the city of Quebec during the four months from early June to the beginning of October 1832. During that period, of the 3,292 known deaths from cholera, only 722 occurred in hospitals.* The disease held Lower Canada in its grip all that summer, and into the early fall, but as the number of incoming ships declined, so did the number of new cases, and by the fust week in October it seemed to have run its course. It was only then that the full toll of the epidemic could be calculated.

The Evolution of a Newspaperman

Considering the prevailing state of medical knowledge, and the inadequate hygienic standards of the day, which did not extend far beyond scattering a little chloride of lime around, the remarkable thing was that any of those whose work took them into close contact with victims of the disease managed to survive, but many of them did, including O'Callaghan. A number of his friends and colleagues were not so fortunate, though, particularly those in Montreal where, as well as some of his former associates at the General Hospital, Daniel 'Itacey died. It was a tragic personal loss because, in addition to his friendship, Racey had given him an insight into the role of the press in the world of p0litics.7~ It is also unlikely that O'Callaghan was left intellectually unscarred by an epidemic which had brought him into daily contact with death. It was an experience that must have opened his eyes to the hard truth that despite all his medical training he was powerless to alter the progress of the pestilence. Subsequent events show thal thereafter, he became increasingly concerned with improving people's quality of life by means of his pen and his politics, and decreasingly so with treating their bodily ills with his pills and his potions. There were also other consequences of the epidemic that affected him. Among them was an upsurge in communal tensions as a result of some of the more reactionary Patriotes publicly attributing the cause of the disease to immigrants which, while it was perhaps technically correct, did nothing to promote harmonious ethnic relations. As one put it: When I see my country in mourning and my native land nothing but a vast cemetery, I ask what has been the cause of these disasters? and the voice of my father, my brother and my beloved mother, the voices of thousands of my fellow citizens respond from their tombs. It is emigration. It was not enough to send among us avaricious egotics without any spirit of liberty than that which can be bestowed by a simple education of the counter, to enrich themselves at the expense of the Canadians, then endeavour to enslave them, they must rid themselves of their beggars and cast them by thousands on our shores; they must send miserable beings, who after having partaken of the bread of our children,will subject them to the horrors following upon hunger and misery, they must do still more, they must send us in their train pestilence and death?

-

Another individual went even farther than that. He laid the blame at the devil's door, and the imagined immunity of the Scots to the epidemic was a sure sign of their being in league with him to eradicate French-Canadian culture from the face of the e ~ t h . 7 ~ Unfortunately, those sorts of outbursts only served to erode the improved relations that Tracey, and Waller before him, had been able to foster between the Irish and the French-Canadian cornrnunities. There were other significant losses too: Montreal West had lost a member in the Legislative Assembly, The Vhdicator had lost an editor, the Pahiotes had lost their English language paper in the city, and the Irish had lost an acknowledged leader. It was all a matter for considerable concern to the Patriote leadership, for Tkacey had garnered the support of 150 of the 2 10 Irish who had cast votes. It should have been abundantly clear to anyone looking to the political welfare of the party that a successor of similar calibre and nationality had to be found without delay. Alas, that was not the way it was to be.77 At frst sight it looked as if O'Callaghan might step straight into the editorship of The Vindicator because on 21 July, a mere four days after 'Itacey's death, Ludger Duvemay requested his agent in Quebec to meet with the doctor, and to fmd out what his feelings might be on the subject. Apparently O'Callaghan was eager enough to take on the job, provided some agreement could be reached on the issue of compensation for his loss of income from the small medical practice he had built up in the city." Dwemay must have been acting on his own initiative, for nothing farther came of it. In fact the paper remained in limbo for almost four months while its future was debated, and it did not appear again until the beginning of November when it came out under the editorship of an American by the name of John Thomas.7g It is impossible to say exactly what happened between July, when O'Callaghan was first approached regarding the editorship, and November, when the paper reappeared under Thomas' direction. There is good reason to believe that the time was taken up with protracted wrangling between the shareholders over its future. By the end of September it looked as if the parties might have found a compromise solution to the impasse when an announcement appeared in L a M h e m stating that the paper would shortly resume publication under the editorial direction of a committee, rather than of an individual. But that idea foundered on some hidden rock and nothing more was heard of itso The crux of the whole problem was that the shareholders were divided. On the one hand there were the O'Callaghan supporters,

The Evolution of a Newspaperman among whom were Duvemay and E - R Fabre, along with a number of others who favoured the paper continuing in the Racey tradition. On the other hand there was the faction led by Jacob de Witt, which wanted to keep the editor's pen out of Irish hands and to broaden the publication's appeal so as to woo voters in other parts of Lower Canada, such as in the Patriote wilderness of the Eastern Townships. The attraction there was that electoral boundary changes had created eight new ridings, five of which returned two members each to the Legislative Assembly, giving the area thirteen seats in all. To the de Witt faction that was an enticing lure. If, by changing The Vhdicator's editorial posture, the paper could establish a Patriote bridgehead there, it could be expanded into a power base from which to combat the Tones, who had already made inroads into the townships by posing as the champions of the predominantly Englishspeaking p~pulation.~~ The fallacy in the de Witt argument was that, in order to maintain its image as a broadly based, bilingual, province-wide party, rather than a hodgepodge of sectarian factions, the Patriotes could not afford to lose their u&an support, especially that of the Irish. To a great extent The Vindcator had been responsible for mustering that support since it had always been a city newspaper that appealed very much to the tastes of its mainly Irish and urban readers. Any change in that could have unfortunate repercussions in future elections. Very few of the anglophones in the Eastern Townships, were of Irish origin. There was little interest among them for what had transpired at the last Limerick Assizes, or for what Daniel O'Connell had said in his latest letter to the Irish people. Those who could read and were of English or Scottishbirth considered Irish news to be unworthy of their attention, while those who came from the United States still considered themselves to be Americans who had only left their native sod to acquire some cheap land and had little interest in Lower Canadian politics. Political thought in the townships, in so far as it existed at all, was an improbable mixture of Tory and Jeffersonian ideas that was untainted by any Patriote heresy." Moreover, if the people there read newspapers at all, they favoured those from Tory presses, or that had been published somewhere in Maine, Vermont, or upper New York State." Even so, the advocates of giving The Vindicatorsome townships appeal must have prevailed because John Thomas did become its new editor. It was a development which must have disturbed the O'Callaghan supporters who sensed that, as a result, the Irish vote in Montreal, and perhaps in Quebec too, could be lost for the Patriotes and, with it, as many as eight seats in the Legislative Assembly.

In their estimation, if they hoped to retain Irish support, they had to have an English- language paper, edited by an Irishman who could interpret the party's policies so that they were both intelligible and acceptable to his compatriots without, at the same time, antagonizing any other of its supporters. That view seemed to be substantiated when, even before the new editor had put out his first issue, threats of a boycott put the papers future in some jeopardy, a disturbing development which, in no small part, was the result of events in Quebec." There, in what had all the appearances of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, O'Callaghan had assumed a leading role in furthering the candidacy of George Vanfelson, the Patriote standard bearer in a by-election in Lower Town; at the same time that he was preparing to bring out a newspaper to rival The Vindicator." Despite appearances, the two actions were actually quite consistent with each other. The consistency lay as much in the structure of the Patriote party as it did in O'Callaghan's own personality. The Patriote party, inasmuch as it was a party at all, was not a monolithic organization in which all the members subscribed to a common political outlook. It was more of an umbrella organization covering a number of factions each of which differed in particulars from all the rest. It consisted of rural, francophone conservatives, anxious to preserve and expand what remained of the seigneurial system. Since it was committed to opposing the British rkgime, it also attracted a variety of urban liberals, republicans, revolutionaries, and disgruntled farmers. The whole made up a mishmash of anglophones, francophones, Catholics, Protestants, Canadians, Englishmen, Irishmen, Americans, and even a Swiss. What they all had in common was dissent, and that was the uncertain mortar that held together the edifice known as the Patriote party. If such an organization was to remain intact, it needed someone at its head who could negotiate that razor's edge of consensus between the various factions. It required a man whose personal prestige was sufficient to obscure the diversity in the party and to give it a semblance of unity. He had to be a leader behind whom all could muster, and in whose words each could hear just what he wanted to hear. Such a man was Louis-Joseph Papineau, one who at heart was a rural conservative, but who was able to project the image of being a liberal reformer. Papineau was a man with a penchant for having newspapermen among his closest associates which perhaps suggests that he saw himself to be destined for greatness and needing a Boswell on hand to chronicle his career. Despite all his flaws and failings, he managed to perform the delicate task of holding the

The Evolution of a Newspapemran

party together, a task which he accomplished from the supposed neutrality of the Speaker's chair in the Legislative Assembly, rather than from a partisan seat on its benches. From his position he was able to create the illusion of party solidarity until internal rifts became too wide to be bridged by mere oratory. That was when the illusion began to fade, and he was gradually revealed to be less than the great unifier he had always been taken to be. Outside the Legislative Assembly, Papineau had very little to do with the day-today functioning of the party. Consequently there was a constant undercurrent of bickering between the various factions it contained, a characteristic that is well illustrated by the controversy over the editorship of The Vindicator in the summer of 1832. All through the tragic weeks following the death of Daniel 'Racey, while the cholera epidemic continued to rage and his time was fully taken up with ministering to the needs of the dying and the desperately ill, O'Callaghan smouldered over the machinations that were denying him the editorship of the paper. To a man of his temperament it was a personal slight. Further, it was an affront to the entire Irish community and a negation of everything that Daniel lkacey had meant when he wrote that The Vhdicator was for "a portion of this people, so calumniated, for the Irish Inhabitants of Canada."% Considered from that viewpoint, O'Callaghan was in no doubt that the whole affair was blatantly discriminatory against him and his compatriots and, once the cholera epidemic showed signs of abating, it was all that was needed to propel him into action, brandishing the banner of a promised rival newspaper to be published in Quebec. It was to be called The Pilot, and the prospect of its publication gave rise to considerable alarm among those Patriotes who viewed the news of its impending appearance as an unnecessary misfortune, albeit one of the party's own making. As one put it, "It is unforkrnate that the two papers will harm each other. It was an unpardonable blunder not to have taken the Dr. as Editor."" Some days later, obviously having kept his ear close to the ground m the interim, the same writer had even more distwbing tidings to report. "The Irish in Quebec," he wrote, "are indignant that their compatriot should be turned down for a Yankee unknown. The committee has blundered."mAnd,worst of all, the following day he passed on the news that "the Irish of Montreal have written to the Dr. in great numbers that they don't want The Vindicator if he is not the Editor, and they will take the paper that he will publish."."" Those who had brought on all the bother, however, remained obdurate. 7he Vhdicalor came out under its new editor on 2 November. It was an event which 07Callaghandid not €id displeasing

Edrnund Bailey O'CaIlaghan

after he had read the long and boring editorial, which meandered through the length and breadth of the history of repression from classical times on. ''Why the devil speak to us of Greeks and Romans whilst there is plenty to say about Canadians?" he happily grumbled as he despatched an emissary to Montreal to solicit subscriptions to The Pilot. That editorial, and its repetition in the next four issues of The Vindicator, was good for a fair number of subscriptions to his paper, in O'Callaghan's book.g0 Meanwhile, his efforts to secure the election of George Vanfelson had been successful, and it had established him as something of a kingmaker in Quebec, a reputation that gained him access to influential Patriotes, particularly those from the Montreal area who were in town through the winter months for the sitting of the Legislative Assembly. He even found himself welcomed to the party's deliberations, including a major one in April that was convened to "take into consideration the state of the Country," a Patriote metaphor for demanding reforms. O'Callaghan was a member of the committee charged with drawing up an address to the governor urging him to support the party's demands. Needless to say, nothing came of it, but O'Callaghan's part in the affair indicates that he was already considered a person of some consequence in Patriote circles.g1 That was more or less coincident with the ownership of The Vindicator changing hands once again. Although The Pilot never materialized, it remained a Damoclean sword poised over The Vindicator. O'Callaghan's canvassers, particularly those in Montreal, kept the Irish constantly aware of the shortcomings of the paper, and of its editor, with a view to selling them subscriptions. The paper was chronically short of money but, under the pressure of such negative publicity, its circulation plunged and reduced its financial plight to more desperate straits than ever. There were other adverse forces at work too, all adding to the need for change. One of them was the ever widening split between the moderate Patriotes, who followed John Neilson in Quebec, and the more radical ones in Montreal who considered Papineau to be their man. What made the split particularly significant was that Neilson had long been considered to be Papineau's second in command, a position from which he had been preaching, in the pages of his newspaper, The Quebec Gazette, his interpretation of the party gospel. The trouble was that his version differed from Papineau's over the question of how reform should be achieved in the province. Neilson, and many of the Quebec Patriotes contended that it should be accomplished within the framework of the Constitutional Act of 1791, while Papineau, and the more militant Montrealers, held that

The Evolution of a Newspaperman it was a flawed piece of legislation that should be replaced. The effect of the rift was that The Quebec Gazette was reluctant to publicize the mdical views of the Papinemites and, with The Vindicator collapsing economically, a quick and drastic remedy as needed if they were to be left with any English-language newspaper in which to air their opinions." For The Vindicator to survive three things had to happen. Fist, it had to be rescued from fmancial ruin by an immediate injection of new capital. Second,its editorial policy had to be restored to what it had been under 'lfacey's direction. Third, it had to bolster its income by regaining lost subscribers, particularly those in the Irish community." The fust step towards the rescue of The Vindicator was its purFabre, one of O'Callaghan's leading chase by ~douard-~aymond protagonists in the controversy over the editorship. All that can be said with any certainty about the manner of the acquisition is that the shareholders were quite willing to sell Fabre their interests in the paper and thereby get their hands on money which they thought they would never see again. By the end of April 1833, The Vindicator was his.94 He wasted no time in doing what had to be done. The following week the paper tersely announced that "Mr. John Thomas, late editor of this paper, ceased to be connected with The Vindicator as such on 30th ult"95 Soon afterwards, someone went to Quebec to offer O'Callaghan the editorship-it had to have been Fabre himself because no other person could have concluded the negotiations in such a short space of time, and without having to refer to anyone else. The outcome was that the doctor accepted the position and gave a written undertaking to use the pages of the paper to support the "Majority of the Assembly," which was another way of saying the Patriotes." By the middle of May he had closed his surgery in Quebec, divested himself of all his various offices, travelled to Montreal, and put out his fust issue of The Vind~ator.~

Chapter % The Editor he events of the preceding seven and a half months at once raise T the question of why O'Callaghan should have been so anxious to get into journalism. Although one cannot say exactly what motivated him to do so, enough is known about him for a number of possibilities to suggest themselves. He might have been attracted by the prospect of emulating Jocelyn Waller and Daniel Tkacey and of basking in prominence and public acclaim. Or, as a budding Jacksonian, he may have seen the job as giving him the opportunity to educate his compatriots politically so that they could take an active part in shaping their own future. Above all, though, he was not doing well in the practice of medicine, which is evident from his taking the position at the Cholera Hospital. Since writing was the only other thing that he was expert at, journalism offered him the best alternative way of earning a living. The eight months immediately following his assumption of editorship were notable. In that period he witnessed the transition of the Montreal Patriotes from being just one component of a loosely knit, province-wide union of reformers to a political entity in its own right. It had an ideology that reflected the diversity of its leading members, containing elements of agrarian conservatism,bourgeois liberalism, Jacksonian Democracy, and a hint of Jacobin extremism. It advocated preserving an outdated form of society based on subsistence agriculture at the same time that it looked to the institution of popular democracy as its ultimate goal. The group was unified by its opposition to the Anglo-Scottish business establishment, and to any moves towards reaching an accommodation with the British within the provisions of the Constitutional Act.

E d d Bailey O'CdZdghan

The same period also saw O'Callaghan's ingrained Anglophobia fmally burst out from the confines of its Irishness. His recognition of the injustices apparent in his adopted homeland continued a trend that fiat became apparent in the days of the Society of the F'riends of Ireland when he had set a tentative foot on the path pointed out to him by Daniel 'ILacey. His latest step along that way was certainly not retarded by his daily attendance at the delibemtions of those Patriotes who gathered every afternoon in the room behind E-R. Fabre's bookshop. By the time the general election was called in 1834, he had taken on the colours of a Lower Canadian nationalist. It may have been an illusion, though, nothing more than a sign that he was carrying out the terms of his employment, which required him to give public support to the Patriotes.' It can be argued that the Montreal Patriotes did not constitute a nationalist organization in the generally accepted sense because a number of the more prominent members, including O'Callaghan, were neither native to the province nor francophones and would, therefore, have been unreceptive to the idea of an independent French-Canadian state? That was probably why O'Callaghan, in his editorial writing, tried to emphasize the commonalties that unified the group, rather than the divergences that divided it, hoping thereby to strengthen the bond which not only had to hold Irishmen and French-Canadians together in common cause, but expatriate Americans and radical Englishmen too. That, without doubt, was why his very frst editorial in The Vindicator made it plain that he intended following in the footsteps of Waller and Tracey. He held up these men as martyr figures in his opening declaration that having been "chosen to succeed men of such intellectual superiorityas these, it shall be our earnest endeavour, as far as our limited abilities will permit, to support the cause which they consecrated by the loss of liberty and life."3 He was telling his readers, particularly the Irish among them, that the best hope they had of achieving political goals lay in their supporting the Patriotes. W l e r and 'kacey had advocated that, and he was doing so too. To that end he concentrated on whatever political objectives he felt that all would-be Patriotes could support, and avoided those which he knew they could not. Also, to make certain that there were no lingering doubts in any of his readers' minds as to just what those objectives might be, he enlarged on his opening declaration by outlining the three basic principles which would guide the paper's editorial policy. The frst was that the public purse should rightfully come under the exclusive control of the people's elected representatives. The

The Editor

second was that under the ConstitutionalAct the British had surrendered all lights to interfere in the internal affairs of the two Canadas. The third was that the elective principle should apply in all branches of government4 The entire body of that first editorial was devoted to restating the most widely acceptable of Patriote canons, but only after they had been thoroughly purged of even a hint of anything that might have had an alienating effect on any of the party faithful. To start with, O'Callaghan avoided any reference to the dominant French-Canadian character of the party for fear of alarming his English-speaking readers, particularly the Irish and those settlers in the Eastern Townships who had little sympathy or time for their francophone neighbours in the seigneuries. He also carefully avoided any mention of the question of seigneurial tenure, and the related issue of the sale of crown lands, important as they were to rural French-Canadian traditionalists in the party, including Papineau. These issues alarmed those of his readers of British or American origin who already Finally, he owned, or rented, freehold property in the to~nships.~ left the whole matter of the role of his compatriots in any political arrangements deliberately vague, implicit rather than explicit, for the very good reason that to many French-Canadians Irish irnrnigrants had no more appeal than the recent cholera epidemic. Ignoring such potentially divisive subjects left O'Callaghan free to concentrate on those things that all Patriote sympathizers could support, regardless of what their origins and backgrounds might be, namely his three basic principles which, taken together, read very much as if they might constitute the bare bones of a nationalist manifesto which was both liberal in its character and popular in its appeal. What is more, those same three principles provided the grist for O'CaIlaghan's journalistic mill for some time to come. Of the sixty-eight editorials that he wrote from 14 May to 31 December 1833, for example, only four of them dealt with uniquely Irish subjects, and two more had to do with IrisWCanadian relations. The rest, an overwhelming sixty-two,were all devoted to exclusivelyCanadian topics.6 Any members of Montreal's Irish community who had campaigned for O'Callaghan to become the editor of The Vindicator out of the belief that he would bring out a paper that would devote itself to chronicling, and commenting upon events in Ireland, had to have been disappointed. Their only possible consolation could have come from the fact that very often the paper's entire front page was given over to political articles scalped from Irish newspapers, but even that was not an assured feature of it. If the provincial Parliament happened to be in session, pride of place was

given to Hansard-like accounts of the sittings and, sometimes, if British or American journals contained any items of particular interest to those of the liberal persuasion, 09Callaghanhad no qualms over copying them, word for word. There is no way of telling for certain the extent to which the editorial contents of The Vindicator consisted of pure, unadulterated O'Callaghan, and that to which they reflected the consensus in E-R. Fabre's back room. It is, however, safe to say that whatever went into the paper, as well as into L a Mineme, had been thoroughly discussed and dissected there before ever the editors set pen to paper? It is worthwhile, therefore, to examine the structure of the group that wielded so much influence over the contents of two newspapers. Although it later became a more formal body, in 1833 the group was still little more than a gathering of men of similar opinion whose membership varied from day to day. Even so, it did have a recognizable nucleus consisting of those who came by on a more or less regular basis to discuss the events of the day in and around Montreal, and to try and evaluate them in terms of provincial politics. They were all youngish men, and a number of them were either lawyers, or were connected with the legal profession, including ~eorge-~tienne Cartier (aged nineteen), Charles-Ovide Perrault (aged twenty-four), Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine (aged twentysix), Auguste-Norbert Morin (aged thirty), and ~douard-~tienne Rodier (aged thirty-three). The remainder of the group consisted mainly of men who depended on the printed word for their livelihood, and it consisted of k-R.Fabre himself (aged thirty-four), Ludger Duvemay (aged thirty-four), and O'Callaghan (aged thirtythree).a Despite any appearances to the contrary, it was really quite a homogeneous group. To start with, its members were mostly of an age that was still able to see the world in terms of black and white. They were still in that clear-sighted period in their lives before the disillusionments of middle age had started to fog the clarity of their perception with a gray mist of cynicism. All of its members belonged to that segment of the middle class which was inclined to view Lower Canadian society as a three-tiered structure dominated from the top by a powerful and privileged governing class which exploited an impotent working class at the bottom. They saw themselves in between, reformers with a mission to help the bottom usurp the authority of the top, a reversal that would be to their mutual advantage. By virtue of his not being a French-Canadian, 0'Callaghan might have found himself the odd man out in such a group, but that was not the case. He was readily able to equate the situ-

The Editor

ation in Lower Canada with that in Ireland. For him the enemy was the same in both places: Britain. This group constituted a kind of informal board of directors of the Patriote newspapers in Montreal. However, the influence it exerted over O'Callaghan and the contents of The Vhdicator was not so much that of a watchdog, as one might expect given his undertaking to endorse Patriote policies, as that of a news agency-cumadvisory service. It served two main purposes for O'Callaghan. Fist, as a team of reporters to keep him informed of what was going on in the city, and, second, as a sounding board for any new ideas that he planned to promote editorially. It would, for example, have been in that back room where he fist heard of the controversy surrounding the elections to the directorate of that sanclum sanctom of Anglo-Scottish entrepreneurialism,the City Bank of Montreal, which he went on to dissect in three searing editorials. It was also where he would have initially suggested the idea of establishing a network of corresponding committees across the province as a means of disseminating such news and views as the Montreal Patriotes wished to put out in the advancement of their cause.9 In all of those daily discussions, O'Callaghan had a strong ally in Fabre, whose interest in The Vindicatorwas more than just a vested one. Fabre more than anyone else helped the Irishman to reduce the fiery idealism of the young lawyers' rhetoric to something that the paper could print as Patriote orthodoxy, or at least the Montreal brand of it To that process he brought a sensible, bourgeois rrjnd, very much in the Parisian tradition, which O'CalIaghan both knew, and could understand. The result was that he came to trust the bookseller's judgment, and the two became not only close collaborators, but close fiends too. Although all the habitugs of the back room meetings there acknowledged Papineau as the leader of the Patriotes, he rarely, if ever, attended any of their gatherings, even though what emanated from them often appeared in print implicitly in his name. For clues as to why that was so one has to look at the man's background. Apart from the difference between himself and John Neilson over the direction that the party should be taking, Papineads leadership of the Pabiotes was unquestioned. It was not so much due to his being a charismatic figure as it was to expediency, a recognition of the fact that he was the only politician in Lower Canada who could hold together a party so diverse in its composition. Everybody connected with the Patriotes knew that, so any debate over whether he was the creature of the party, or whether the converse was the case, is irrelevant Each was vital for the other's political survival. In

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan Papineau's person resided any semblance of party unity, and so long as that was so he was secure in his position.I0 If Femand Ouellet is correct in his assessment of Papineau, what made his acceptability as a leader so general was the nebulosity of his political stance. It combined aspects of rural conservatism, based on seigneurial tenure, French common law and Catholicism, with contrary ideas of democracy and anti-clericalism plucked from urban liberalism. Paradoxically, the strength of that position lay in its apparent weakness. So manifold were its contradictions that it permitted men of the most divergent opinions to find in it something that reflected their own points of view. The outcome was that otherwise incompatible groups were able to gather behind the facade of unity that it provided.I1 What also contributed to that end was that, even though he was a major political figure, he secretly thought public life to be a shabby business and so, whenever possible, he turned his back on the dayto-day posturing and squabbling that it entailed. His position as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly made that a relatively simple thing to do. While it still allowed him to indulge in long, and sometimes tedious, partisan speeches, it insulated him from the verbal parry and thrust across the floor of the Assembly which might have forced him into taking a firm position that could have marred his image of being the great unifier.12 Papineau's political ambiguity, therefore, along with his disinclination to make decisions, left all of the various factions in the Patriote party more or less free to reach their own concIusions without any fear of interference from him; a practice which he never seemed to discourage, even though some might have regarded it as being an undermining of his authority as a leader. All of these reasons, and his abhorrence of any kind of contentiousness, would have deterred him from frequenting the room behind the Fabre bookstore throughout 1833, as would have the knowledge that the place was usually at least half filled with lawyers, a class of people that he preferred to avoid if at all possible. He always looked down upon them as being nothing more than quibblers and squabblers, and the places where they foregathered as "dens of chicanery."13 If Papineau had needed any additional inducement to keep him away from the bookstore that summer, it was provided by the weather. It was hot and humid, as only Montreal can be hot and humid, and that encouraged him to turn his back on the city and to retreat to La Petite Nation, his seigneury in the Ottawa Valley. Away from all annoyances and discomforts he could immerse himself in

The Editor his beloved Greek and Latin classics, and leave the business of the Patriotes to whoever wanted to take care of i t l4 Back in Montreal, swarms of marauding insects descended on the city to add another dimension to the discomforts that pestered its citizens. Seeking any relief that they could fmd, they flocked to whatever outdoor diversions were available to them. A few of the more uninhibited fellows among them had no compunctions over stripping off their clothes and cavorting in the fzst inviting stretch of water they could find, much to the disgust of some passers-by. The more conventional members of the public chose the less outrageous pursuit of simply stroIling by the water's edge, hoping for the breath of an onshore breeze to cool them. Along the way some paused to listen to the military band playing, while others stopped to gaze at the somnolent animals in a visiting menagerie. For the truly adventurous souls with the necessary half-crown fare, there was always the relief of overnight steamboat trips down the river.to St. Sulpice and back.I5 None of that was for O'Callaghan, though. By the summer of 1833he had become a very busy man with no time for such frivolities. What with getting his newspaper out twice a week, participating in the daily discussions in Fabre's back room, and trying to cope with the demands of the medical practice that he had recently opened at his home in the Recollet suburb he had little time left for anything else. Not even the main outdoor event of the season, the September meet of the Montreal Tbrf Club held on the St. Pierre racecourse, could entice him away from his demanding routine. That, if any, was an occasion that ought to have appealed to a man who had been born and raised in the heart of Ireland's hunting and horse-racing country. But it did not, and he missed the chance to write a fisthand account of what he built up to be Montreal's bigest news story of the year.16 The so-called Race nack Riots undoubtedly had their immediate cause in the potables dispensed in the various beverage tents set up around the course, but their underlying cause lay in the longstanding animosity that existed between a segment of the working class population and the enlisted men of the 24th Regiment That animosity had developed in the seedy dock-side taverns which were haunts for both the soldiery and the civilian dock workers who regarded them as interlopers, resented their swagger and braggadocio, and hated their making advances to the womenfolk of the neighbowhood. It was a situation that has plagued garrison towns since time irnrnem~rial.~~

Despite the dinginess of its origins, the story is worth examining in some detail, at least O'Callaghan's version of it, because he inflated it into something of a cause c&I+?breand, by so doing, provided an excellent example of his journalistic methods and style. The fust hint of impending trouble Ntered up into the more polite circles of the city some time towards the end of August when O'Callaghan got wind of it,' either from one of the gentlemen in Fabre's back room, or from one of the workers in the printery. As an enthusiastic advocate of temperance, he promptly seized upon the news as providing a golden opportunity for him to exhort the local magistrates to foxbid the sale of liquor at the forthcoming race meeting. "We earnestly call on the Magistracy," he wrote, "not to permit tents or booths to be erected on the ground. It is the intention, we understand, of some persons to create disturbances, for which liquor will be the excuse. We therefore hope that none may be permitted to be sold."18Not surprisingly, the magistrates chose to ignore the warning, fearing that any hint of W i g heed of it could be interpreted as giving in to Patriote pressure, a reaction that was fairly predictable considering that the magistrates were largely drawn from the AngloScottish business community.~g However politically motivated he might have been in giving it in the first place, O'Callaghan's warning proved to be a well-founded one when, on the evening of Tbesday, 3 September, following the end of the fust day's racing, distuxbances broke out at the racetrack with a drunken brawl between a number of civilians and soldiers in which the latter were purported to have drawn their bayonets. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the rowdyism continued well into the night as the soldiers roistered their way back to barracks on Water Street2* The next day, Wednesday, was quiet, simply because it rained and the races had to be postponed. On Thursday the weather cleared and the programme was resumed. In the evening events again got out of hand when another free-for-all broke out which O'Callaghan portrayed as having distinctly ethnic overtones: One of these military ruffians[,]having got up a row[,]retreated to the open part of the field where he was joined by a body of his comrades, to the number of twenty, who immediately drew their bayonets and ran yelling, and swearing through the course, crying out for a d - d Canadian. . . . One gentleman would have been inevitably murdered by a ruffian who held an uplifted naked bayo-

The Editor

net over him, had he not fortunately begged for mercy in the King's English.2' Bad as that was, worse was yet to come. Up until then, apart from a few bloodied noses and sore heads, there had been no injuries reported, but the following day, Riday, the last day of the meet, all that changed. "A Canadian, by name Barbeau, was separated from his friends, surrounded by the soldiery, and received a stab of a bayonet in the back!"" So much for the events at the racetrack, as 0'Callagha.n described them. What is important is not so much the accuracy of the story, but how he managed to give it a political slant which it actually never had. He did that, presumably, because the magistrates had chosen to ignore his warning and so he felt under no obligation to be entirely objective in his accounts of the ensuing events. The factual content of his story must have come out of Fabre's back room, for it is quite apparent that O'Callaghan did not witness anything he described. That however, did not prevent him from giving the story extensive coverage, and using it as an opportunity to castigate both the magistrates and the military with acrimonious enthusiasm." He had never had much reason to love the British army since the days of his youth, when the garrison troops in Mallow went out of their way to humiliate and aggravate the townsfolk by every means at their disposal.24AS for the magistrates, he had no cause to love them either; he had devoted several editorials in the weeks leading up to the Race Course Riots to denouncing them as being nothing more than lackeys of the Anglo-Scottish business establishment. In his treatment of the events at the racetrack, therefore, he showed no reticence over blackening their names with still more derogatory remarks like "bodies of armed soldiers were publicly seen by some of the magistrates, going towards the course, determined on fighting-Yet no interference! Shame! Shame!! Shame !!!25 Despite its virulence, O'Callaghan's story, augmented by Ludger Dwemay's version of it in L a Mineme, did have the effect of stinging the magistrates to action. Within a week, they had set up a comrnittee of enquiry to look into what had actually happened. When the time came for him to testify before it, O'Callaghan, of course, had no first hand evidence to give, so he had nothing to report and had to settle for denouncing the whole hearing for its secrecy, and raising the cry for a public in~estigation.~~ Nothing came of that until the end of November, and only then because the unfortunate Barbeau had died of his wound. A coro-

ner's inquest was called to determine the cause of his death, an action demanded in an open letter O'Callaghan directed to Lord Aylmer. In it he assumed the mantle of both judge and jury by prejudging the case: My Lord - BARBEAU IS DEAD! aye, dead! and what is worse, it is notorious that he came to his death from a bayonet wound inflicted by a soldier of the garrison, and no steps have been taken to investigate the case, or to arrest the murderer. This culpable negligence of the local authorities is dangerous, My Lord, to the reputation of your administration, and ought to be inquired into. ...The murderer has been permitted to roam at large, and Barbeau has been interred without even a Coroner's Inquest.*' The inquest was convened on 27 November. After hearing evidence for four days, the jury brought in the verdict that Barbeau had died as the result of a bayonet wound inflicted by some person unknown.28 That brought O'Callaghan back to the attack, accusing the coroner of trying to protect the military by not permitting the verdict to state that the fatal blow had been struck by a soldier. Then, to heap more coals onto the fire, elsewhere in the same issue of The Vhdicator, he published a short item that was literally dripping with innuendo, and which hinted very clearly that he, for one, did not consider the matter closed: We mentioned in our last that the belt and clothes of a soldier supposed to have deserted, were found on Thursday morning in the rear of a store in Point B Calli&res.We have since been informed by a gentleman that a soldier was brought back into town on Saturday in custody as a deserter. The public would wish to be informed, if such is the case, whether this man has been submitted for inspection to the witnesses who swore at the Inquest that they could identify the person who wounded Barbeau." That was where The Wndicator's coverage of the story of the Race Rack Riots ended. O'Callaghan had extracted every drop of political advantage there was to be wrung out of it, and in doing so had shown himself to be a propagandist of considerable ability. He had successfully inflated a straight-forward story of drunken brawling into a political incident by adorning an underlying fabric of huth

The Editor with an overlay of half-truths and innuendoes, all of which he presented to his readers in a most persuasive manner by his skillful use of the English language. No small amount of political profit accrued to the Patriotes thanks to his having discredited the military the magistracy, insinuated that the governor and his administration were not only incompetent, but were obstructive to the course of justice, and suggested that the soldiers' actions were deliberately directed at French-Canadians. A revealing aspect of O'Callaghan's handling of the story is that he never attempted to give it an Irish flavour, even though it would have been relatively easy for him to have done so since a good many of the civilians involved in the disorders were undoubtedly compatriots of his. This was a reflection of the fact that under his editorship, The Vindicator was oriented towards promoting ethnic unity in order to focus attention on political issues. He deemed that to be necessary because the backlash against the Irish following the cholera epidemic was still there, and he was anxious to do all that he could to negate it. If, by sympathizing with FrenchCanadians in an Irish newspaper, he could bring the two communities to realize that they were both on the same side of the political fence, and that their common enemies were the British, he would have accomplished what he set out to do. That too was one of the ideas behind the broader based variety of nationalism which was the subject of much of the talk in Fabre's back room, where O'Callaghan's treatment of the racetrack story had certainly enhanced his stature. Elsewhere, it had attracted the attention of Papineau, who, aware that a final break with the moderate wing of the party in Quebec was imminent, was on the lookout for likely successors to John Neilson and The Quebec Gazette. Not all of O'Callaghan's journalism was politically inspired, however. Occasionally he wrote in a much lighter vein, revealing another side of his character than that of a rather distant and austere man who was forever giving his readers advice on how to achieve political nirvana. That is not to say that he actually became frivolous in print. But once in a while he allowed a glimpse of a warmer, more genial person to be seen through chinks in the o t h e d s e unremitting earnestness of his journalism. Such was the case when he turned his hand to theatrical criticism. Montreal had six theatres in 1833, but the grandest of them all was undoubtedly the Theatre Royal, also called the Molson Theatre.30Touring companies, and other itinerant actors from Boston, New York, or even London, graced its stage with a variety of offerings ranging from plays by Shakespeare and Sheridan to inconsequential pieces whose lives were mercifully short.31 One such

travelling performer was a young thespian, reputedly only fifteen years of age, who was billed as "Master Burke, The Irish Roscius." O'Callaghan referred to him as "our talented young countryman," and attended two of the performances he gave at the Theatre Royal during October 1833. On both occasions the usually austere editor came away delighted by what he had seen. So much so that he sat down and wrote what can only be called rave reviews." On the fust &it, Master Burke played the title role in a dramatic piece entitled Denis Bulgruddery, then, during the intermission, gave a performance on the violin. He went on in the second half of the programme to play six different parts, including that of a "little French Actress," in a farce called Whirligig Hall. The whole evening's entertainment was a good example of the fare offered to the patrons of the Theatre Royl in those days, a place where audiences were known more for their enthusiasm than for their discrimination." O'Callaghan was so captivated by what he saw on his fust visit that he went to another performance the following week On that occasion Master Burke surpassed his previous versatility when, after regaling those present with another display of his acting prowess, he went on to enrapture them with what proved to be the pi&e de r6sistance of the evening, "a concerto on the violin, after which he cut three strings and treated the audience to a Fantazia, cornmencing with the beautiful air of, The Exile of Erin."94 Those two theatrical evenings were among the few occasions in his life over which O'Callaghan is known to have gone on record as having enjoyed himself; but even then, at the height of his delight, he could not refrain from scoring a few political points at the expense of the rival Momal Gazette. Following his second visit, he observed in his review: We cannot conclude this notice without refening to an attack which appeared in the Gazette of Saturday, on some gentleman who, a few evenings ago, preferred standing by the warm stove in the passage whilst the National Anthem was playing, to remaining uncovered in a cold theatre. If this be disloyalty, God help the Editor of the Gazette who, we are credibly informed, retired from the boxes at the same time with the fne gentlemen "wearing his beaver upn. Those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones.35

The Editor

Needless to say, there was no love lost between O'Callaghan and the editors of Montreal's other English language newspapers, all of whom supported the government and the business establishment36 They all went for him and The Vindicator whenever a chance arose because, to them, he spoke for the unspeakable: the Irish and the Patriotes. O'callaghan retaliated in kind, usually in far more biting terms than theirs, and heaped derision and damnation upon them and their He dealt with John Neilson in much the same way. He accused him of defecting to the Tories-the ultimate treason in Patriote term-d blasted him and The Quebec Gazette for having abandoned their former friends, thus foreshadowing the parting of the ways between the Montreal and the Quebec branches of the party.% Journalistic feuds, together with O'Callaghan's customary editorial pungency, must have been just what his readers enjoyed because, as early as November 1833, he was able to report that The Vbzdicator's circulation had risen dramatically, as had its advertising revenue, accomplishments which were cause for considerable satisfaction, even though they did not mean that the paper had suddenly become profitable. That happy state of affairs was never attained at The Vihdicator in all of its nine years of existence.% The decisive battle between the radical and the moderate Patriotes was fought out on the floor of the Legislative Assembly on 21 February 1834. That was when a document which became known as the Ninety-two Resolutions was introduced by Elzear Bedard." He, August-Norbert Morin, and Papineau, had drawn up the final form of the document. O'Callaghan played no direct part in that process, but what went into it would certainly have been discussed in some detail by the habitues of the Fabre bookstore (see Appendix The Legislative Assembly approved the resolutions, perhaps not quite so overwhelmingly as Papineau might have wished but, nevertheless, by a handsome enough margin. Of the eighty members who voted on the measure, fifty-six were in favour of it, and twentyfour were against. The significant thing about the vote was that twenty of those opposing the resolution were Neilsonites, mainly from the Quebec area The division, therefore, was the parting of the ways between them and their more radical colleagues who regarded Papineau as their leader. From that time on, the appellation "Patriote" referred only to those who accepted the Ninety-two Resolutions.& O'Callaghan, of course, was one of them, and he had taken an avid interest in their passage through the Legislative Assembly. Dur-

ing the weeks leading up to their introduction to the Assembly by Elzear Bedard, and all through the four days of debate on them, he reported the story of their progress in minute detail for The Vindicator under the byline "From Our Quebec Correspondent," a minor piece of deception resulting from the paper's tight financial circumstances which necessitated its editor being a man of many parts.43 All his enthusiastic articles on the resolutions, however, did not hide the fact that, in reality, they only catalogued means for remedying the grievances of a would-be ruling caste that was seeking access to the fruits of power. Should that goal ever have been achieved, the beneficiaries would inevitably have been all the lawyers, notaries, physicians, surveyors, and the like, professional men who covetously watched Tory counterparts benefitting from the rewards of government patronage. There was nothing in the resolutions for working people, the habitants, loggers, and dock workers of the province. They would barely have noticed any difference if the proposed reforms had ever come about. All it would have meant for them was that one clique of oligarchs, and their appointees, was replaced by another. Nevertheless, mass support for the resolutions was essential. That became evident in 1837, when arguing about them began to give way to sabre-rattling, and the Patriote leaders suddenly found that they would need foot soldiers if the battle for Lower Canada was to be won. Whatever the long-range consequences of the resolutions were to be, in the months immediately following their adoption they served as a most opportune election platform for the Patriotes, a use for them which would certainly not have escaped Papineau and his advisers when they were timing their presentation to the Assembly. They knew perfectly well that the governor was constitutionally obligated to dissolve parliament shortly, and that before another sitting could take place the province would have to go to the polls.44That sent both Patriotes and Tories scurrying off on the campaign trail right after the prorogation. Having ousted the Neilsonites from their ranks, the Patriotes' immediate response to the impending election was to try and consolidate all their remaining support behind the Ninety-two Resolutions by means of province-wide constituency meetings, called during the spring of 1834 expressly for the purpose.4sTo counter that the Tories set up constitutional associations as agencies for disseminating propaganda calculated to be harmful to their opponents' campaign. Their central claim was that "the British and Irish population of Lower Canada are now united for self-preservation,animated by

The Editor

a determination to resist measures [the Ninety-two Resolutions] which, if successfU1 must end in their destr~ction."~~ The very thought of such an alliance was cause for grave concern among the Patriotes for it would be at the cost of their Irish support, which had already declined from its peak in 1832, when Daniel 'Ihcey owed his by-election victory to it, to a dmstically reduced level in 1834. It was a decline which reflected, for the most part, the uneasiness of the Irish over what they perceived to be the growing FrenchCanadianization of the party. The task of attempting to reverse that trend fell to O'Callaghan, the only man in the htriote camp who could possibly do i t His ethnic ties with the defectors, the esteem in which he was held by his compatriots, and his ready access to their attention through the pages of The Vindicator,made him the best qualified Patriote for the job. Failure would mean electoral defeat in a number of closely contested urban constituencies, the most conspicuous of them being Montreal West, one of whose members in the Assembly had been Papineau, and where the Tones, thinking of the Irish voters there, were already claiming support of "a majority of independent British electors, disenfranchised for two years.''47 It was in Montreal that O'Callaghan chose to concentrate his initial endeavoun to regain the Patriotes' lost Irish support, an undertaking that, whatever the Tories might think, was not impossible. The number of Irish eligible to vote was not great, no more than 250 in Montreal West, perhaps as many again in the rest of the city, and O'Callaghan knew a good number of them personally* His first move, appropriately enough, was on St. Patrick's Day when he chaired a banquet to celebrate the occasion, and took care to have a number of prominent Patriotes on hand as guests. They included Duvernay, Morin and Rodier, three of the brighter lights from the bookstore's back room,and all very influential in the pay. Their presence at the banquet was a move calculated to help allay Irish fears of the consequences of the Ninety-two Resolutions and, at the same time, to present a more favourable image of the Patriotes than the Tory one of illiterate, self-seekingchauvinists who had neither time nor concern for anything beyond preserving an outdated form of society. W~ththat in mind, O'Callaghan saw to it that all three individuals played a prominent part in the proceedings by responding to toasts and making impromptu speeches, but most of all by the proven political tactics of shaking every hand within reach, and by engaging in conversation, in English, with anyone in the room they could buttonhole for long enough to do more than just pass the time of day49

In that same week, O'callaghan again took up editorial cudgels with one of his sworn enemies, The Monlreal Hmld, for allegedly maligning Irish voters. His resounding denunciation of his foe, written in his customary scathing, yet highly literate style, lacked for nothing by way of bravado, making the defiant boast that "we will treasure these with other insults, fast in the inmost recesses of our hearts, and prove to the faction of which the H d d is the organ, by our votes in the corning election that Irishmen newr forget an insult."a Despite the bombast, for bombast it was at that early date, he had no idea of how the Irish would vote when the time came. Not all of his electioneering was conducted in such a public manner. Much of what he did, to assure his countrymen that the Pattiotes had their best interests at heart was far less conspicuous. He did not report in The Vindicator all his casual conversations with people in the street, or on the church steps after Sunday mass. To calm anxiety expressed over how, if ever the Ninety-two Resolutions were implemented, they would have the effect of imposing a French-Canadian tyranny he would have been quick to draw attention to certain similarities between them and the policies of the United Irishmen, as propounded by Wolfe Tone in the years leading up to the '98.51Probably his most effective campaigning was on a personal level where wit, charm, and persuasiveness could play a far more telling part than with a mass audience. Whenever he met an Irish voter he saw to it that the conversation got round to the subject of the forthcoming election, even if it was only to make the point that a vote for the Patriotes was a vote against the British. Meanwhile, back on a more formal plane, there were meetings organized across the city, some exclusively for Irish voters, and others for a wider audience all had the same purpose: to muster support for the yet un-named Patriote candidateswho would campaign on the strength of the Ninety-two Resolutions. It was at one of the latter, a mass gathering of supporters from the entire region held at the beginning of April, that a committee was set up which would ultimately have a pronounced effect on the march of the Patriotes towards rebellion.52 The Permanent Central Committee was initially intended to act as a coordinating body for all the constituencies in the Montreal and Richelieu Valley area It functioned very much as a present day party headquarters might do, distributing electioneering material to ensure that the Patriote candidates preached a uniform message. Gradually it extended its field of operation to take in the rest of the province.53

The Editor It almost goes without saying that O'Callaghan was active in the organization, as were most of the other members of the bookstore fraternity. It all added to the demands on his time and attention in those pre-election days. However busy as he was, he never neglected The Vindicator, which he regarded as a vital element in his campaign to rally the Irish voters to the Patriote flag. On its front page he published every scrap of Irish news that was to be found, no matter how trivial; such an enticing front page was intended to lure an uncommitted compatriot into picking up a copy of the paper. If that could be achieved there was a good chance that the reader would go on to the inside and read the political message in his editorial. Irish voters found themselves courted as they had never been courted before, whether they were aware of the reason for it or not. O'Callaghan certainly knew that the outcome of the election in the city of Montreal would be very much theirs to determine, and he intended seeing to it that they knew exactly what he expected of them. His campaign could be intelpreted as the expression of his continuing concern for the welfare of the Irish as a distinct ethnic group in the province, but, at best, that would only be marginally correct. More than anything else his activities were directed towards advancing the cause of the Patnotes. Moreover, there is good reason to suspect that by 1834 he subscribed to the nationalist ideas that permeated so many of the discussions behind Fabre's bookstore. This was thanks in no small part to his fellow newspaperman, Ludger Duvemay. Duvemay's dedication to the idea of a French-Canadian renaissance was both deep and sincere. He felt that every true patriot owed it both to himself and to his compatriots to do all in his power to bring about national rebirth, which was an epiphanic experience that could not be brought about by means of parliamentary enactments or force of arms alone. Without it independence would want for a soul. If F'rench Canada's political futw lay in the hands of the M o t e s , then the shaping of its ethos lay in Duvemay's." His approach to the task, therefore, did not entail resolutions and manifestoes. He relied on his newspaper, L a Minerve, to exhort his readers to seek unity of purpose by turning to their ethnic roots, their culture, and their rich past. Thus inspired, they could start thinking as a nation, even if they were still living under a colonial yoke. By 1834, with the election looming, he felt that the time was propitious for some form of public expression of what he had been preaching. He organized a celebratory dinner to mark the feast day of St Jean-Baptiste, the patron saint of Fkench Canadas5

Edmund Baiky O'Callaghan

It took place on the evening of 24 June and, although it was the inauguration of what was to become a tmdition, the first occasion was by no means a mass celebration. Nevertheless, all the sixty guests who took their places around tables decked with maple leaves set against splashes of the red, white and green of the Canadien tricolour, were enthusiastic in their support of Duvemay's cause. Following the meal, the order of business consisted of toasts and speeches interspersed with patriotic songs and recitations performed ex-tempore by many of the notable guests. O'Callaghan's contribution was a rousing speech which was well received.56 Papineau was a notable absentee from the celebration. Since he was considered to be the personification of French-Canadian political aspirations, this might seem odd at fust. It has to be borne in mind, though, that he was withdrawing by nature. The Speaker's dais in the House of Assembly, or the podium at a political rally were the only public stages on which he was truly comfortable, and his wife, a formidable lady and something of a snob, was loath to mingle with those she considered to be her social inferiors." The same could not be said of O'Callaghan and his wife. They were far more gregarious in nature and attended meetings, rallies, conventions and banquets of all kinds, particularly if there was any hint of political or social sigMicance to them. That all came to an abrupt end a few weeks later, though, when cholera struck again and, once more, a pall of fear descended on the province." The 1834 cholera epidemic was not nearly so severe as its predecessor had been two years earlier. The death toll in Montreal was only about a tenth of that in 1832. Writing on 29 July, OYCallaghan estimated that, up to that time, about 400 people had died from the disease. Seeing an opportunity to discredit his counterpart at The Vindicator, Robert Weir, the editor of the Tory Monheal Hemld, immediately disputed the figure. He went even faflher and stated categorically that there was no epidemic in the city. The implication was that if O'Callaghan would lie over a matter of life and death, he would certainly not hesitate to do so when it came to politics. Shortly afterwards, the official fqure for the number of cholera victims buried over the period in question was announced as being 351. Upon-learning that, OYCallaghanfelt fully vindicated and proceeded to savage Weir, firstly for having the effrontery to question The Vhdicator's accuracy, and secondly for revealing himself to be not just a scoundrel, but a Tory one to boot." It was a shabby little exchange, but it serves to illustrate the bitterness that existed between rival newspapers in Montreal, and the lengths to which their editors would go in order to get the better of

The Editor

each other, even if it meant trying to extract political advantage from a most melancholy statistic. Fortunately, the epidemic was of comparatively short duration and by the end of August was virtually over. That was the signal for the less lethal election fever to resume spreading its infection, and for O'Callaghan and Weir to resume sniping at each other over less . ~ frst shot was fred gruesome subjects than a count of c o r p ~ e sThe when Weir published an article supporting the sale of public lands in the Eastern TownshipsP1It certainly reflected The Herald's Tory bias, as well as the views of a good many of the settlers in those parts, but, in all likelihood, that was not the main purpose of the article. It is quite possible that Weir had got wind of O7Cal1aghanbeing philosophically opposed to the whole notion of seigneurial tenure, and wanted to lure him into the embarrassing position of having to publicly defend it since it was a feature of Patriote orthodoxy as enshrined in the Ninety-two Resolutions. O'Callaghan, however, did not rise to the bait. He neatly sidestepped the whole issue and instead of rallying to the defence of seigneurialism, struck back with a diatribe attacking Weir's basic premise, that the Imperial Government could dispose of crown lands in Lower Canada His contention was that Westminster had no right to do so without the prior assent of the Legislative Assembly since "the interference of Great Britain, by Act of Parliament, in the internal affairs of any province, having an independent Legislature of its own, is unconstitutional."@The position was based on his interpretation of Article 11 of the Constitutional Act which, he maintained, bestowed sovereignty over provincial affairs on provincial governments and, by so enacting, the Imperial Government had relinquished any right to legislate on their behalf so far as intra-provincial affairs were concernedF That ended the exchange and O'Callaghan returned to the business of trying to secure the Irish vote for the Patriotes in Montreal, and particularly in Montreal West where, he must already have heard that the Tories were planning to run William Walker, a city lawyer, in tandem with John Donellan as their candidates in the constituency. Donellan was a prominent member of the Irish community, and a former president of the Hibernian Benevolent Society. His candidacy, therefore, could well split the Irish vote and thereby tip the electoral balance in favour of the ToriesY The move was the Tory response to the ethnic dishibution of voters in Montreal West where the largest group were the French-Canadians, who accounted for 43 percent of the electorate.They were not, however, numerous enough to carry the day against the com-

bined voting strength of the three English-speaking groups, of which the Anglo-Scots represented 33 percent of the total electorate, the Irish 16 percent, and the Americans 8 percent.65The Irish, then, were the key group; without them neither the French-Canadiansnor the AngloScots could muster enough votes to win an election. Oddly enough, central as O'Callaghan's part in the campaign was to a Patriote victory, it did not mean that he himself could have been a successful candidate in Montreal West. It might be argued that since Daniel 'Ifacey, had won the seat in 1832, it was his for the taking in 1834,but that was not so. In 1832Tmcey had recently been released from jail where he and Ludger Dwemay had been incarcerated for libelling the Legislative Council. 'lhcey was able to win more on the strength of his association in votersyminds with the eminent nationalist than on his personal appeal. Even then, he had only managed to win by the slimmest of margins. Without the emotional increment of being seen to be associated with a FrenchCanadian idol, like Duvemay, the likelihood of Montreal's francophone voters supporting an Irish candidate was not great: throughout the 1830s the tide of Hibemo-phobia continued to flow in Lower Canada. Patriote tacticians were fully aware of this. They knew that O'Callaghan could not win in Montreal West. That was why the party chose Dr. Robert Nelson as Papineau's running mate. Nelson was also a physician but an English one, and more acceptable to FrenchCanadian voters than an Irishman. Politically Nelson was on the radical fringe of the Patriotes, almost a Jacobin, but he had been very active in Montreal on behalf of the party for a good many years, and was well-liked there? As soon as Nelson's candidacy became known, the Tory press began attacking him in the hope of tarnishing his image sufficiently for the Irish to repudiate him and to defect to the Walker/Donellan camp. The depths of journalistic blackguarding to which editors were prepared to descend in order to bring that about knew no bounds. This is well illustrated by one especially vicious article that set out to destroy his acceptability to the Irish by reporting that Dr. Nelson was reputed to have said, "Are we to be told by a paltry handful of presumptuous and conceited Irishmen that they have a right to send an Irishman to the House of Assembly, as well might our German fellow-citizens insist upon our nominating one of them, or I will go further and say that if we are to yield to the pretensions of the Irish, the Niggers, who are numerous likewise,would have an equal right to send one of their body to the House."67 The quotation comes from a report in The Montreal Gazette on the Patriotes' nomination meeting, at which there had been consid-

The Editor

erable argument over who the nominee to run with Papineau should be. O'Callaghan's name obviously came up, but only to be rejected on the perfectly sound political grounds already mentioned. The report, therefore, was intended to pour salt into any wounds which his rejection might have inflicted on Irish susceptibilities by making out that their man had been passed over in favour of a bigot who was opposed to their having any parliamentary representation what~oever.~~ Neither was it the only attempt to subvert whatever loyalty the Irish voters had to the Patriotes; another had occurred at an earlier meeting when John Donellan appeared with a number of his supporters and began to rant about Daniel mcey not having been "a genuine Irishman," but "no more than a hireling and could not be depended on," Those were literally fighting words in that particular setting. Reading between the lines of O'Callaghan's very carefully worded account of what transpired it would appear that following a vigorous defence of his dead brother's good name by John Tracey, the two factions squared off against each other and the meeting degenerated into a general free-for-all. It went on until the combatants paused to catch their wind, whereupon O'Callaghan, who was in the chair, hastily declared the meeting adjourned and leftm Writs for the election were issued two weeks later, and campaigning entered its last, frantic phase. O'Callaghan's tirades against the Tones escalated to such a crescendo of invective that they actually provoked calls in Quebec for the suppression of The Wndicator and the dismissal of its editor. Fortunately O'Callaghan still had a good following there, particularly among the Irish in the Lower Town where he remained very much of a favourite son as a result of all his good works there in the past, not least among which was his help in getting St. Patrick's Church built. Despite this, the move to muzzle him came from that very institution. However, so many of his friends showed up at the meeting convened for that purpose that what had been intended as a kangaroo court wound up by being a gigantic demonstmtion of support for his stand against the Tories. It was a turn of events that must have been particularly galling to those who had wanted to silence him.70 It is not clear from the newspaper account exactly who the conspirators were. The only clue it contains is a remark to the effect that the placards calling for the meeting originated from the vicinity of St. Patrick's. However, evidence that it was actually the pnest-incharge, the Rev. McMahon, who was behind the move to suppress him is provided by O'Callaghan himself in a letter he wrote some years later to Papineau. In it he said "I was once the Editor of a paper

Edmund Bailey O'CalZaghan

to which he [the Rev. McMahon] subscribed and he should have remembered that he & his co-labourer, Dom'k Daly collected a meeting in the Church to excommunicate me, 'bell, book and candle'."71 That was by no means an unlikely reaction on the part of the priest; what O'Callaghan was preaching on behalf of the Patriotes amounted to a call for responsible government in the province. If that ever came about the Catholic church might have found itself in danger of losing its favoured status, not to mention its considerable income from real estate holdings. The reaction was also very much in keeping with the church's well-established practice of rallying to the defence of the status quo whenever change threatened. A Patriote victory would certainly have a marked effect on the nature of the government of Lower Canada. By the beginning of November, O'Callaghan's electioneering was just about at an end. He had done everything within his power to secure the Irish vote for the Patriotes. He had conducted nothing less than a one-man campaign among his countrymen on behalf of Papineau and Nelson with the result that he had come to be looked upon by English-speaking Montrealers as the voice of the Patriotes, even though opinion among them was divided over whether he was a fiend or a friend. No one could be neutral about E.B. O'Callaghan. He was known to all, and whether they loved him or loathed him, most agreed that he had emerged from the weeks of campaigning as a major political figure in his own light. So obvious had that become that Papineau considered it essential for his talents to continue to serve the party from a seat in the Legislative Assembly. His outspokenness and his command of invective could only enhance the already sulphurous quality of the deliberations there. There were a number of so-called safe ridings in the province, as the forty-one Patriote members who were elected to the Legislative Assembly by acclamation in the 1834 election attested to. One of them was the county of Yamaska, a constituency on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, between the Yarnaska and the Nicolet Rivers. To its predominantly Fknch speaking electorate politics had neither the urgency, nor the stridency of those in Montreal, and the two members it returned were, as a rule, Patriotes with agrarian, consenmtive in~linations.7~ In 1834, however, the constituency was having difficulty in finding people of any stripe to stand for election, a state of affairs attributable to the depressed conditions in agriculture. Potential candidates could spare neither the time nor the money needed to campaign; moreover, in the event of their getting elected, sitting as a member of the Legislative Assembly would be an additional drain

The Editor on their resources since there was no pay for the job. Political inertia prevailed in the county at the end of October, a few days before the election was due to commence there. At that time, apart from one of the former incumbents, Leonard Godefroy de Tonnancour, and Josias Wurtele, a Neilsonite from Sorel ,no one else had shown any interest in running.73 Exactly what transpired to change things is far from clear but the outcome of it was that O'Callaghan suddenly appeared on the scene as a candidate, as one reporter put it, "to formally give the lie to our opponents' statements regarding the rules of exclusion that they allege we have for men of Irish origin."74How much actual truth there was in that remark is open to debate, but it did make for good propaganda in Montreal West where the election was still in full swing, and where every possible Irish vote was needed to ensure a Patriote victory. What most likely did happen, although it is purely speculative, was that since Papineau wanted O'Callaghan in the House of Assembly he intervened to engineer the move. There is also an air of mystery about another aspect of the Yamaska election: the candidature of Wurtele. While sitting in the Assembly as the member for the town of Sorel, he had broken with the Patriotes by voting against the Ninety-two Resolutions and on the day of the election, the returning officer received a letter from him in which he announced his withdrawal from the contest without further explanation. That left just Tonnancour and O'CalIaghan in the race and they were duly proclaimed elected by ac~lamation.7~ The election in the county of Yamaska was otherwise uneventful, which is more than can be said for what was happening in the neighbouring riding of Sorel, where inter-party hooliganism was rife. The most serious incident there occurred on the evening of 5 November when Louis Marcoux, a Patriote supporter, was accosted on the street by a mob of roving Tory rowdies made up of three brothers, by the names of Isaac, James, and William Jones, plus eleven others. During the course of the ensuing fracas a shot was fired, and Marcoux fell to the ground mortally wounded.76 At the inquest that followed the coroner ordered four medical gentlemen, who happened to be in the vicinity, to examine the body and determine the cause of death. They were Robert Nelson's brother, Wolfred, and Messrs. Dorion, Hallen, and O'Callaghan, who very quickly found that Marcoux's death resulted from a gunshot wound in his lower abdomen. Other evidence identified the Jones brothers and their gang as the culprits, whereupon they were all arrested and charged with murder. However, with the exception of the two ringleaders-Isaac Jones who had allegedly fired the fatal shot,

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

and his brother James--all were released on bail to await trial. The matter ought to have ended there, at least so far as O'Callaghan was concerned, but events were to prove otheNvise.77 Meanwhile, back in Montreal West, where the election had commenced with very little evident violence, as Papineau and Nelson began to draw ahead, outbreaks of disorder involving rival gangs of Irish bully-boys, became increasingly frequent. The newspapers responded to them with accusations, counter-accusations, and outright denials of who had done what, and when, as editors, becoming shriller by the day, blamed their political opponents for the distuhances. One outbreak that caused some minor damage to the Recollet Church, where the Irish worshipped, was denounced by The Vindicator as a major act of sacrilege on the part of the Tories? A report carried by another paper concerning an incident outside the Longford Tavern where members of the town watch allegedly attacked a number of Donellan's and Walker's supporters who were refreshing themselves there after a day of head-cracking, led The Monb-eal Gazette to protest, "It is not true that the disturbance 'proceeded from a band of ruffians infuriated by drink,' as stated by The Daily Advwtr'ser, nor would one have taken place, but for the uncalled for interference of the watchmen."79 Then there was the following story canied by The Vhdicato~ We are sorry to perceive a number of persons who have pretensions to some respectability, among the rioters apparently directing their motions, Mr. Andrew Doyle, Hardware dealer in St, Paul Street, was the most prominent on the ground holding a roll of paper in his hand, and seemed to have a complete command and control over the rioters. Mr. Doyle is one of Messrs. Walker and Donellan's Committee, and ever since the election has been first spoke [sic]of has taken an active part against Mr. Papineau and the liberal party. Towards 11 o'clock, the Poll was adjourned to Monday. Everything like opposition having disappeared, and seeing that they were in complete possession of the field, the Captain General, Mr. Andrew Doyle, came forward and ordered the rioters away. His orders were immediately obeyed and the armed ruffians returned towards Messrs. Walker and Donellan's Cornmittee Room, where we understand, they deposited their axe handes.80

The Editor

The story was probably true enough but, not surprisingly,Doyle took exception to seeing his name appearing in print in that context. He knew whom to blame. He was a vindictive man, but he was a patient one too. He was prepared to wait for his revenge until an opportune moment presented itself, as it did the following June. Those were just three of the incidents that occurred in Montreal West There were others too, of varying degrees of severity, of which the most disastrous, from a Tory point of view, was the one which occurred on the morning of 17 November. A mob of club-wielding rowdies confronted the returning officer in an attempt to prevent him from opening the poll and allowing a number of electors to cast their votes. The result was immediate and decisive. Without any further ado, he formally ended the election by proclamation: It being impossible to continue the Election of the West Ward of the City of Montreal with security for myself and for the Citizens Electors, I think of my duty to terrnine the Election, and I do proclaim duly elected to represent in the Provincial Parliament, the West Ward of the City of Montreal the citizens Louis Joseph Papineau and Robert Nelson, as having the majority of the votes, as it appears in the Poll Book of the West W d of the City of Montreal.

Montreal, 17th November, 1834 Chs. Andr, Lusignan. Ret. Off.81 So far as can be ascertained,at the time of the proclamation Papineau had amassed 587 votes, Nelson 586, Walker 554, and Donellan 547.82 A namw victory for the Patriotes, but a victory nevertheless, and it was of O'Callaghan's making. He had campaigned hard and had secured enough of the Irish vote to elect the Patriote candidates. Not only that, but small as the margin of victory was, it was slightly better than Daniel 'Ikacey's had been in 1832; evidence enough of the doctor's ability to sway his countrymen.@ As in Montreal West, the Tories went down to defeat almost everywhere in the province. When the last poll was finally tallied, all that was left of them to sit in the Legislative Assembly and glower at the awesome might of 71 victorious Patriotes was a rump of 9 members.84 In Montreal, the Tories' immediate reaction to their humiliation at the polls was to withdraw into their retreats along St James Street to regroup and re-emerge as The Loyal and Constitutional Associa-

tion.a5That done, they set out their policies in a document that they called An Address to the Constitutionalists of Montreal. In it they shifted all the blame for their electoral defeat from their own shoulders, and placed it squarely on those of the "seigniors, lawyers and notaries, of French extraction" who had deliberately hoodwinked an illiterate French-speaking majority into supporting Patriote candidates. Having thus revealed the culprits, the address next descended to a darker plane with the veiled warning that the constitutionalists were "prepared to resist to the uttermost the efforts of a party, which, under the specious guise of popular institutions, would sever wisdom from power, and respect from intelligence, and consign us to unendurable bondage."86 By contrast, The Quebec Constitutional Association, which came into being at about the same time, adopted a position very similar to that of the Neilsonites. In its statement of aims and objectives it advocated seeking such reforms as were necessary to ensure fair representation and treatment in the province for those of British or Irish origin by constitutional means. It also omitted to lay any blame for election losses, or to issue any threats, veiled or otherwise. Not only were the Neilsonites more moderate than the Montreal Patriotes, but the same was true of the Quebec Tories and their Montreal ~ounterparts.~~ The election, and the resultant regrouping of the Tories into constitutional associations, spurred the Patriotes into establishing committees of correspondence, as prescribed by the Ninety-two Resolutions. The first official act of the Montreal committee was to send a letter to the newly elected members of the Legislative Assembly in the Quebec area, advising them of the contents of the local constitutional association's address, and paying particular attention to the implied threat it contained of resorting to the use of force. For the first time the Patriotes faced the problem of what to do in that eventuality since they were "so little organized to repel by force of arms a domination which has become so burdensome to US,"and posed the question, "Are we ready?"88 The letter went out over the signatures of Papineau, Lafontaine, Morin, Perrault, and O'Callaghan, all newly elected members of the Legislative Assembly, and probably the five most important Patriotes in the Montreal area. The inclusion of 09Callaghanin the five clearly puts him very close to Papineau in the party hierarchy, and that is further reflected in his being named as one of three delegates-Lafontaine and Joseph Girouard were the other two-who were sent to Quebec and Trois Rivieres t o co-ordinate the activities of the

The Editor three existing committees of correspondence,and also to confer on other matters of common interestsg The three made their way to the docks on 29 November to board the steamboat Canada. There, also about to embark, was William Jones, one of the three Jones brothers charged with murdering Marcoux duing the recent election at Sorel. He had been freed on bail, and was on his way home. What happened next is best left to O'Callaghan himself to describe: This Jones, previous to leaving Montreal, expressed his intention of insulting, if not assaulting the Doctor on his anival at Sorel, and manifested some disposition to be insolent on the passage down, but he was treated with that contempt which he deserved. Arrived at Sorel, Jones immediately jumped ashore, collected seven or eight of his partisansamong whom was Peter McNie-also one of the party who is under accusation as accessory to Marcow's death--and a man named, we are told, Gardner, Blacksmith to Mr. Molson's establishment at Sorel. This posse of ruffians having been assembled, descended to the cabin where Dr. O'C. and the other passengers were sitting around the stove in conversation--but as it seemed they could not put their blackguard purposes into execution in their sober senses, they proceeded irnrnediately on coming downstairs to the Bar of the Steamer . . . where they were served to ardent liquor by the Steward of the Boat. Having drunk a sufficient quantity to give them courage, they sallied into the cabin where the passengers continued sitting, and there Jones, who was at the head of the party, assailed the Doctor in the most ruffianly language that could be made use of. Having discharged every epithet that a blackguard of his description was acquainted with, the party retired, but only to procure a few more partisans, with whom they shortly after came down again, one by one, and reassembled in the Bar of the Steamer for the purpose of getting more liquor, after which they came again into the cabin, and repeated their insults. One of the party-the Blacksmitk-cried out with an oath that he was a Scotchnm+and significantly said that he had a rifleimd that the Doctor would never see Three Rivers if he would only go ashore. In vain during the continuance of these outrages did the other gentlemen in the cabin appeal to the waiters and

steward for protection from the insults of which they, as cabin passengers, were alike exposed Neither the waiters nor the steward would interfere. In vain did some of the gentlemen present call for the Captain or the Pwser of the boat 'Ihe Captain and the Rnser were conveniently out of the wayand the disgraceful scene did not terminate until Jones and his party condescended to retire from the steamer's cabin of their own accordgo O'Callaghan's description immediately raises the question of whether or not it was a premeditated act of harassment instigated by Tolies anxious to repay him for his part in the recent election. In suppofi of that contention it can be argued that the steamboat was owned by John Molson, a prominent Montreal Tory, and it would not have been difficult for him or any one of a number of his employees to have found out about 09Callaghan'sitinerary, assuming that advance bookings were required. Furthermore, the ship's senior officers were conveniently out of the way when the harassment took place, and other members of the crew turned a blind eye to what was taking place. They also contributed to aggravating an already tense situation by serving the troublemakers with liquor. In addition to that, before the ship ever left Montreal, Jones warned O'Callaghan that something would happen at Sorel, and his "posse" was there, waiting for him, when it docked there. To accept the converse argument, that it was the spontaneousact of a man who felt himself to have been grievously wronged, calls for great credulity, considering all the evidence to the contrary, even though it is largely circumstantial in nature. It seems reasonable, therefore, to believe that O'Callaghan was the victim of a deliberate attempt to harass him. Whatever the truth was, neither he nor his two colleagues risked a recurrence of the harassment on the return trip. Although they travelled by steamer from Quebec to nois Rivi&res,after completing their business with the Patriotes there, they boarded a coach to complete the journey back to Montreal by road.g1 Soon afterwards the official announcement appeared advising all concerned that the next sitting of the provincial Parliament would commence on 27 January 1835. It signalled the end of another phase in O'Callaghan's already varied career, and the start of another, that of a duly elected representative of the people, a sitting member for the county of Yamaska in the Legislative Assembly of the province of Lower CanadaB

Chapter 6 The Member for Yamaska

I

n 1835, the Parliament of Lower Canada was still the front line in the constitutional battle which saw the Patriote majority in the Legislative Assembly ranged before those bastions of British dominance, the governor and the Legislative Council. At issue were the wielding of power and the disposition of patronage in the province, and the weapons were procedural ones. The Patriotes contended that the only way to secure political harmony was for the Imperial Government to amend the existing constitution and bring it into line with the Ninety-two Resolutions. The main weapon they had in their arsenal to induce the governor to recommend that course of action to Westminster was their majority in the Assembly, which they could use to deny him the funds to cover the cost of his civil list. However, by the time Lord Aylmer prorogued the first sitting of the new Parliament it was beginning to become apparent that the tactic was not going to work. It was totally unrealistic for the Patriotes to have thought that the Tories in the Legislative Council would ever support a step which, for them, would be an act of political suicide, and that the governor would ever recommend it to the Imperial Parliament. They had, in fact, misread the signs. From the growth of radicalism in Britain, the spate of reforms that it spawned, the success of Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic emancipation in Ireland, and the pronouncements of men like Richard Cobden advocating colonial self-government, the Patriotes had got the mistaken impression that the Imperial Government would be receptive to their proposals. The truth, however, was that no matter how enlightened their domestic reforms might appear, the British were in no mood to change anything in so far as Lower Canada was concerned. For one thing, an elective upper house would have been contrary to the British par-

Edmund adley O'Callaghan

liamentary tradition, as manifest in the House of Lords, and for another, as a legacy from the French Revolution, they continued to look upon francophones, regardless of their origin, as being revolutionaries, regicides, and republicans at heart, a fear that was still at the back of Lord Durham's mind in 1839 when he wrote: I entertain no doubt of the national character which must be given to Lower Canada; it must be that of the British Empire; that of the majority of British America; that of the great race which must, in the lapse of no long period of time, be predominant over the whole North American continent. . . . It must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English laws and language, in this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English Legislature.'

There was, therefore, no likelihood of Britain acceding to the demands of the Patriotes, a stand which enjoyed the whole-hearted support of the Tories in Lower Canada. Indefensible as that position might now seem, to members of the Anglo- Scottish business establishment it held the promise of enabling them to hold on to the reins of power and privilege that were so eagerly sought after by the predominantly French-Canadian Patriotes. Given the ill-will that such a situation engendered, it is easy to see how what started out as an essentially constitutional wrangle very quickly degenerated into an ethnic one. That was no novelty for O'Callaghan, who had been stirring the fires of Anglo-Irish discord ever since he took over as editor of The Vindicator. What was new for him was conducting the battle in a parliamentary setting and finding that his acerbic pen was of little help to him, All the skirmishing in the House of Assembly was conducted within the bounds of parliamentary procedure and, in that milieu, he soon found that his oratory had to take second place to that of Papineau who used his privileged position in the Speaker's chair, not only to control the proceedings in the House, but to actively participate in them too. As it turned out, the first session of the new parliament was prorogued on 18 March and was a short-lived affair. It was unwilling to vote supplies for the civil list, so the governor cut its deliberations short. Even so, it did sit long enough for O'Callaghan to get a feeling for its routines, although not long enough for him to shine as a parliamentarian.*

The Member for Y m k u The very first item of business tackled by the House in that opening session was that of electing a Speaker. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Papineau was elected by a margin of seventy votes to six, but not without the formality of a debate. That provided the occasion for O'Callaghan to make his maiden speech in the House when he spoke in favour of Papineau's ~andidacy.~ Soon after that he became involved in a war of words with the member for Sherbrooke, Conrad Augustin Gugy, over a motion to erase the governor's prorogation speech to the previous parliament from the records on the grounds that it was "insulting and insolent."4 If the newspaper report of it is accurate, it was an acrimonious exchange, but unremarkable in other respects. Unfortunately there is no official record of what was actually said for there was no Hansard at the time, and the journals of the House were no more than minutes of the proceedings there, giving no indication of the verbal cut and thrust that occurred in the course of debate. Little was accomplished in that sitting of the provincial Parliament and, elsewhere in the province, that gave rise to signs of growing disaffection among the Irish. As the Patriotes became increasingly concerned with French-Canadianism, the Irish showed their apprehension by beginning to defect to the Tory camp, a trend that was particularly evident in Quebec, but that was starting to show in Montreal as well. That, and the split between the Patriotes and the Neilsonites were reflected in O'Callaghan's journalism. He used the pages of The Vindicator to vilify and lampoon John Neilson whenever an opportunity presented itself, and to rebuke the Rev. McMahon, who he saw as being the instigator of the defection of numbers of Quebec's In an attempt to halt a similar tendency in MontIrish to the Torie~.~ real, he wrote an emotional editorial urging them to hold fast, and to remain loyal to the French-Canadians who had stood beside them when the Tories would not. The article, headed What Have Canadians Done for Irishmen? opened with these words: A fine watchword they made of this at the last Election. If

anybody wishes to know what the Tories have done for Irishmen, we can show it on every page of Irish history for the last two hundred years; and the Bumbureaucracy of Ireland is precisely the same as the Bumbureaucracy of Canada; likely [sic]presented to the Legislative Council at Quebec, reminds us of something the Canadians have done. When the butchery of that excellent man, the Governor, at Grosse Isle, had commenced to send the first

EdMmd Bailey O'Callaghan

fruits of pestilence through the Country, and when that same excellent personage had refused to grant one farthing to alleviate the suffering of the poor strangers who were daily aniving at Montreal, who was it came forward to their relief? UFas it the Election champions of the Irish? no, no. W s it the renegade Irishmen, who endeavoured to debauch their countrymen and make them as black as themselves? no, no, not a bit of it - none of these cared a fig for Irishmen then, for there was no election going on. It was Canadians who came forward to the relief of Irishmen6 It is doubtful if the editorial accomplished much, but it does serve to show that O'Callaghan still saw himself as fighting for the Irish cause by supporting the Patriotes, and wanted to persuade as many of his compatriots as possible to see like wise. However, if the Irish were not all of one mind, neither were the Patriotes. Behind their facade of singleness of pulpose there were several shades of opinion as to what the party's ultimate goal should be. At one extremity there were out-and-out Jacobins, like the Swiss Amury Girod, and to a lesser degree, Dr. Robert Nelson; at the other were the neo-seigneurialists such as Papineau and D.-B. Vier; and between there were all those who occupied mrious pieces of middle ground. However, for the nonce, little of that was manifest; all were primarily concerned with the means of achieving their particular ends, rather than with the ends themselves, thereby creating the illusion of unity. In all of this O'Callaghan's position was, perforce, an ambiguous one, While at heart he was inclined towards the democratization of Lower Canada along American lines, as the editor of The Vindicator he was obligated to support the eclecticism of the Ninety-two Resolutions, as was quite evident in his coverage of the 1834 election. There was also an item of unfinished business left over from that covelage. It had to do with Andrew Doyle, the Irish hardware merchant who he had revealed as the man in charge of the gangs of bully-boys that the Tories had employed to intimidate voters.' Doyle was anxious for revenge, but he had to wait until June 1835 before he had an opportunity to get it: Doctor O'Callaghan called upon a friend in St. Paul Street, about three o'clock, which was probably noticed by Doyle, who keeps a shop on the opposite side of the Street; and, as he went out; a truck standing in the way caused him to cross over to Doyle's side. As he passed the

The Member for Yamask door, Doyle rushed after him, and with the butt end of a short loaded hunting whip struck him a heavy blow across the temple, and before Doctor O'Callaghan could recover himself, or anyone interfered, he received several more dangerous wounds across the head and temple, that place him in a situation of imminent danger? Under the grim headline, "Blood! Blood!! Blood!!!" The Vindicator shrilled that its editor "lies at this moment in a most dangerous state," neglecting to mention that it was he who had written the article. The triple repetition used in the headline gives him away for it is unmistakably O'Callaghan's style. If the truth of the matter were known, it is probable that his wife Charlotte suffered far more than he did as a result of the attack.g At the time she was in the latter stage of a pregnancy complicated by what was described as a pulmonary complaint. So bad was her condition that it was deemed prudent to have her young niece, Susan Colelough, staying with her.I0 However, by the third week in June, her health had deteriorated so much that her husband considered it advisable to cancel many of his outside engagements to allow him to be at her side more or less constantly. Apologizing to Ludger Duvernay for having to miss the St. Jean-Baptiste Dinner that year he explained that "serious illness in my family prevents me enjoying that p l e a ~ u r e . " ~ ~ In mid-July, Charlotte O'Callaghan went into premature labour and gave birth to a baby boy. The child was so frail that he died almost immediately, and his mother, already on the verge of death, passed away shortly afterwards. Her passing was greatly mourned, not only by her husband, but by many others in Montreal, for she had been a well-liked person. That, however, did not prevent the author of her obituary from giving his report a political twist when he wrote that she had been "strong in her attachment to the country of her adoption," and that her last words had been to enquire whether her son had "been baptised by the name of Jean-Baptiste."I2 Rather a misplaced piece of propaganda, perhaps, but certainly symptomatic of the concern among the Patriotes over the continued defection of the Irish to the Tory fold. The funeral took place in the Catholic Cemetery on 19 July and was attended by many prominent members of both the Hibernian Benevolent Society, of which O'Callaghan was still the president, and the Patriote party.I3 It is difficult to say exactly what effect the deaths of his wife and son had on O'Callaghan, although appearances suggest that he

sought solace in frantic political activity. Throughout the remainder of the summer, and into the early fall, he became deeply involved in a number of undertakings. One was continuing to attack the British American Land Company for offering to sell land on a credit basis. It was not the idea of selling land at freehold that he found objectionable, as one might have expected of one who supported the Ninety-two Resolutions, but that of encouraging people to go into debt. He wrote: Of all the systems of land granting in existence, perhaps none could be discovered more pernicious to the interest and independence of the settler, and more dangerous to his liberties than the CREDIT SYSTEM-or allowing settlers to pay for their purchases by instalments at certain definite periods, it renders them serfs of the Company.14 Also, during those first weeks following his bereavement, O'Callaghan busied himself with berating those of his countrymen who advocated anything but blind loyalty to the Patriotes. Over one such renegade, whose kind he dubbed as being Orangemen, he raged: We have often commented on the Orangeism which graces the columns of the misnamed Irish Advocate. The number of this morning is more than usually ferocious. An anonymous writer, who signs himself 'An Irishman', concludes one of his semi-weekly attacks on Dr. O'Callaghan in these words:'Editor of the Vindicator, Thank God I have enough sin left in me to hate you!!!' What an abandoned wretch he must be who can thus blaspheme the name of his Creator, by thanking Him for being in sin! l5 When it came to sanctimoniousness, O'Callaghan took second place to none if the occasion demanded it. Perhaps the most unusual thing that he undertook during this period of mourning was promoting a bank, the Banque du Peuple. Generally speaking, on the subject of banks, O'Callaghan took a Jacksonian position, maintaining that they should serve their clients rather than their directors.16 For that reason he was ever ready to take the City Bank of Montreal to task since he considered it to be in the pocket of the Anglo-Scottish business establishment and, therefore, the Tories. However, he considered the Banque du Peu-

The Member for Yanuzska ple to be different, despite its close association with the Patriotes. It has been alleged that it was established primarily to finance an armed uprising in Lower Canada, but that has never been conclusively demonstrated. Certainly the fact that E.-R. Fabre was one of the prime movers in getting it started, and that a number of its directors were prominent members of the Patriotes might lead to that conclusion, but it only makes sense if the party was committed to rebellion as early as February 1835, and that was just not so. Furthermore, the course of events shows that the ability for long-range planning possessed by the Patriotes was considerably less than their idealism and that, if rebellion was their intention all along, they showed themselves to be more noteworthy for their ineptitude than they were for their foresight. A far more acceptable theory is that the founders of the bank had no sinister agenda whatsoever, and that it was, as set out in its prospectus, established purely to provide for the banking needs of the French-Canadian population. In that respect it was first cousin to the Maison Canadienne, an organization which Fabre also helped establish to provide French-Canadian storekeepers with an alternative source of supply to the big AngloScottish wholesale outlets in the city.17 This, then, was the bank to which O'Callaghan gave his wholehearted support in the pages of The Vindicatorduring 1835, not only by extolling its virtues, but also by disparaging the policies and practices of the detested City Bank." While the editor of The Vindicatorwas thus engaged during the summer of 1835, the province was getting a new governor. In an attempt to break the political deadlock which had developed during Lord Aylmer's incumbency at the Chgteau St. Louis, the Imperial Government recalled him in the June and replaced him with Lord Gosford. The new governor was of the Irish peerage, a Protestant from county Armagh who, in addition to his gubernatorial duties, had the added responsibility of heading a three-man Royal Commission with a broad mandate to find a modus vivendi with the majority party in the Legislative Assemblies of both Canadas. The only proviso of the mandate was that the government remain within the confines of the terms of the Constitutional Act, although that was not common knowledge at the time.Ig In the hope of reaching a working arrangement quickly, Gosford summoned the Lower Canadian Parliament in October 1835, and, for the second time that year, O'Callaghan made his way to Quebec to carry out his duties as a duly elected member of the Legislative A~sernbly.~~

His first impressions of the new governor were all favourable and, writing to Fabre, he depicted him as being something of a social lion. Describing a grand ball at the Chateau he wrote: The crowd, I am told, was excessive. They had scarcely room to budge, let alone dance. They kept it up until 5 o'clock. The Gov'r was most affable and attentive. Kept walking about the rooms all the time paying attention to the guests. He was draped in a plain blue coat, white vest, and black breeches. After supper he was prevailed on to dance when, I am told, he danced two reels with the Mayoress (MdIe Caron). Before breaking up he promised the ladies another ball before long.21 As well as being struck by the governor's social graces, O'Callaghan saw reason for optimism over constitutional reform. Gosford and Sir George Gipps, one of his fellow commissioners, had let it be known that they were not averse to reforms, although their colleague, Sir Charles Grey, still had some reservations over the matter. Nevertheless, O'Callaghan felt:

certain that his Excellency, Lord Gosford, and Sir Geo. Gipps, are in favour of an Elective Council. Sir Charles Grey is rather opposed to giving French Canadians so much power, but would have but little objection to give it to the Upper Canadians if they asked for it; if the latter once has it he thinks the Lower Canadians would have a better chance of getting it afterwards. This information may I believe be relied on, at the same time it would be prudent not to state it in the newspaper because it would serve no good purpose. It would rather embarrass perhaps the Governor who I believe is favorably inclined towards Canada. God grant that he may not cheat us as Lord Aylmer did.22 It turned out to be a session of parliament in which Papineau's support noticeably declined. What had been an over whelming majority in the House in January 1835 had dwindled by February 1836 to a point where the Patriotes' almost traditional motion to postpone consideration of the civil list was carried by a mere three votes. Absenteeism was certainly a contributing factor, but it was by no means the only one. A far more pernicious reason was the conciliatory tone of Gosford's first throne speech along with his sociability,

The Member for Yamaska his accessibility, and his declaration that the British Rifle Corps-a quasi-military organization formed by the Tories in Montreal after the 1834 election-was unconstitutional and illegal. These were all seen a s gestures of goodwill towards the French-Canadian majority. That undermined the resolve of those less than staunch Patriotes who Charles-Ovide Perrault described as being "cowardly weaklings and mollycoddles." One of the most noticeable outcomes was that Papineau's claim to speak for the entire province lost much of its credibility. Despite his personal conservatism, his remaining support was concentrated in the radical heartland in and around M ~ n t r e a l . ~ ~ As a result, O'Callaghan's status with the Patriotes was greatly enhanced-so much so that he came to be regarded as Papineau's second-in-command. The Speaker had little fancy for back room politics, yet, if he was to remain an effective leader and at the same time retain his privacy he had to have some means of keeping in touch with what went on in the room behind Fabre's bookstore. That was where O'Callaghan came in; he was the link between the two, the go-between. Even so, there was no great warmth in the relationship between the two men. It was purely a working arrangement that was born out of expediency. O'Callaghan was Papineau's eyes and ears, and kept him informed about what was going on within the party without his having to sacrifice all of his privacy. Politically convenient as the arrangement was for Papineau, it was not displeasing for O'Callaghan either. It allowed him to bask in the reflected glory of a man whom he considered to be a Canadian version of Daniel O'Connell. This in turn permitted him to be deluded into thinking that he was engaged in the same struggle for freedom as were his compatriots back in Ireland. Only one piece of correspondence between the two has survived from the pre-rebellion period, a letter written by the doctor in March 1837. If it is at all typical of what passed between them, and one can only assume that it is, it gives a very good indication of what their relationship must have been like-formally polite, and solely concerned with political matters.24 Even as a relatively new member of the provincial Parliament, O'Callaghan had no need to scintillate in debate in order to establish his position in the party. It was secure, everyone knew it to be so, and he did not have to go out and about to convince people of it. Whether or not that was one of the things that contributed to his reluctance to participate in the social whirl in Quebec, which revolved around the new governor and his entourage, is a matter for conjecture. He was certainly keenly interested in what went on at

Edmund Baiky O'Cdlaghan

the Chateau-who was there, what they did, what they wore--but when writing about one reception there, he pointedly made it clear that "I did not go." His reluctance to participate in diversions of that sort did not pass un-noticed by at least one of his colleagues. Charles-Ovide Perrault's comments on the subject leaves the distinct irnpression that he considered the doctor to be something of a dull dog, one whose chief pleasure came from workF5However, when evaluating such observations, it is well to bear in mind that his wife and son had been in their graves for only a matter of weeks, so he was probably still in mourning and just did not feel up to joining in the spirited social life in Quebec. Even so, he did not lead the life of a recluse, and W~lliimLyon Mackenzie, recalling in a letter to O'Callaghan many years later a visit he made to the city in November 1835, told of "hearing you singing the song en&. abt. 'a nail in the door,' as I heard you sing it in Miss Desmoulins."" Whatever else it might have been, O'Callaghan's sojourn in Quebec during his second sitting as a member of the Legislative Assembly was not uneventful. Always the newspaperman, he became displeased over the manner in which The Vindicator was compelled to obtain its reportage on the debates in the House. W o Quebec and the Gazete, provided the only English newspapers, the Melanguage accounts available to The Vindicator, which could not afford the luxury of having a reporter of its own in the House. What he took particular exception to was that their reports had a pronounced Tory, or Neilsonite slant to them, which led him to warn his readers that: We publish an outline of the debate in the House from the English papers of Quebec, the Mercury and the Gazette. These proceedings are often badly, and even dishonestly reported. Our readers must ahyays remember that the speeches are first published by the Tory newspapers, which give great importance to anything that comes from His Majesty's opposition, and destroy most able speeches that are delivered by the best speakers in the HouseF7 The caveat had unexpected repercussions. A young reporter from the Mercury, by the name of Philippe Aubert de Gasp& resented the implication of O'Callaghan's article and, a day or so later, summoned him from the House and, brandishing a horsewhip, threatened him with violence should he meet him in the street. Messengers intervened to separate the two before the altercation dete-

The Member for Yamaska riomted any farther, whereupon the doctor returned to the House and immediately brought the incident to the attention of the Speaker. The outcome was that Gasp6 was arrested, arraigned before the House, found guilty, and sentenced to a month in jaW8 That did not end the matter. Naturally enough Gasp4 bore a grudge against the entire House for its having imprisoned him, and he nursed it until the following February, when he set out to get his revenge. According to Le Canadien,Gasp6 and an accomplice gained access to the House of Assembly by means of a ladder, and once inside, set about pouring liquid asafoetida on several of the hot stoves in the building. Before long the resulting evil smelling fumes had permeated to every comer of the building. Members had to evacuate it until it could be fumigated with the vapours of a fmgmnt resin. The following day, when the premises were again fit to be occupied, the perpetrators were soon identified, for their rnisdeed had been witnessed, and warrants were issued for their arrest. It was too late, though. By then Gasp6 and his accomplice, with the help of sympatheticjournalist friends, had fled the city to find refuge beyond the reach of the Sergeant-at-Arms,where they remained for the rest of the session.29 That was not O'Callaghanlsonly encounter with strife during the period. Duelling too commanded his attention, although not as a combatant. His impulsive young colleague, Charles-Ovide Perrault, the member for the county of Vaudreuil and one of the group that frequented Fabre's back room, became embroiled in an altercation on the floor of the House with the member for the county of Richelieu, Charles Clement Sabrevois de Bleury, who was also something of a hothead. The point at issue between them was who should, and who should not, be called before a committee that was looking into the sale of potash. The exchange came to an end with Bleury returning to his seat and grumbling aloud about having to conduct business with filth. Perrault was angered by the insult and went to see Papineau about it. Papineau suggested, in pontifical manner, that it would be best to meet with Bleury somewhere outside the House, and let him know that the insult had been noticed. Perrault took that to mean that he should teach the man a lesson. When next they met, in the dark of night on an icy patch of road near the Battery, he threw the first punch. What ensued was a farcical fist fight in which the combatants were unable to keep their footing on the ice as they flailed away at each other. It only ended when Perrault landed a blow which knocked Bleury down, and then, unable to retain his balance, fell on top of him. The following morning, Bleury, feeling that his honour as well as his body had

been bruised in the fight, sent a peremptory note to Perrault demanding satisfaction. O'Callaghan entered the picture when the challenged asked him to act as his second, and the doctor demurred on the ground that he was not a warlike man. He did, however, agree to attend the duel in case there was any call for his surgical skills." Shortly before the appointed time for the confrontation, Penault went to see Papineau to acquaint him with the latest development Upon hearing the news, the M o t e leader broke down and wept, sobbing that they were both such young men. His reaction was that of a man distraught to the point of inc~herence.~~ As it turned out there was no need for any tears. Good sense prevailed; the seconds negotiated a peaceful and honourable resolution of the dispute, both Perrault and Bleury apologized to each other, shook hands, and discharged their pistols into the air to end the matterY Although the whole incident had a touch of the ridiculous to it, it did serve to reveal Papineau to be a man given to ambiguitywhen clatity was called for, and to allowing his emotions to get the better of him when fofiitude was needed. As for OYCallaghan,he showed himself to be a peace-loving man who abhorred violence, contrary to what his style of journalism might suggest. In both men they were reactions which presaged future ones under more dire circumstances but, for the time being, nothing more was thought of them Papineau and O'Callaghan continued with their business in the House which, in the case of the latter, was mainly to do with shepherding a bill through the House of Assembly that was aimed at setting up a general post ofice in Lower Canada The postal s e ~ c ine all of British North America came under the jluisdiction of the Imperial Government, which it exercised through a postmaster general. In the Canadas he was represented by a deputy postmaster general who was responsible for overseeing the mail senice. To say that the system he supervised was disorganized would be a gross understatement, for the quality of service varied from place to place, as did its reliability, and the postage rates were both high and far from standardized. O'Callaghan7sbill, which he drafted with the assistance of William Lyon Mackenzie, who introduced a similar piece of legislation into the Upper Canadian House of Assembly in April 1836, proposed the creation of an indigenous post office. It would be responsible to the provincial parliament for operating the postal service, regulating postal rates, and fixing the wages paid to its employee^.^ It all looked very reasonable the way he outlined it to his readers in The Vhdicator, but the Legislative

The Member for Y m k a

Council did not quite see it that way. What it saw was a bill that would take the postal service out from under the authority of the Imperial Government and place it under that of the provincial Parliament whose lower house was controlled by the Patriotes, who were determined to gain control over all expenditures of public money, especially that part which went to pay the salaries of government officials. The bill was defeated by the upper house for, had it ever been passed into law, it would have been tantamount to giving the elected representatives of the people jurisdiction over the salary of at least one such official, and would have thus set a precedent that could have been used to attack the larger question of the entire civil list34 O'callaghan's proposed bill was certainly not unique in that respect; it was typical of forty-eight others, all of which had similar implications, and all of which suffered the same fate. They were all part of the Patriotes' campaign to establish a legislative bridgehead from which to attack the problem of making public officials accountable to the elected representatives of the people. Even though all those bills were rejected by the Legislative Council, the second session of that parliament was not an unproductive one. A total of fiftyeight bills were passed into law and received the Royal Assent. In terms of legislation, therefore, it was a sitting which accomplished much, nevertheless, it left the nagging problem of the civil list unresolved and so, faced with that impasse, Lord Gosford prorogued the last session of the Parliament of Lower Canada which can be said to have been modestly producti~e.~ For the ensuing six weeks many of The Vindicator's columns were dedicated to what were essentially obituaries for the forty-nine bills which had been killed by the Legislative Council. It was not really newsworthy stuff, but it made good propaganda for the Patriotes. Not only did O'Callaghan continue with the practice until all forty-ninebills had been dealt with, but he then consolidated all the articles into a pamphlet which he published under the title of, 7he Late Session of the Prooincial Parlament of Lower Canada. However, on the third of May, he had something a little more sensational for his readers? That was when he broke the story that the instructions given to Lord Gosford's Royal Commission by the Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, had included one which made it quite clear that the Imperial Government had no intention of considering the question of elective Legislative Councils in the two Canadas. The Vindicator gave the story extensive and dramatic coverage, and adorned it with a strident headline and heavy black lines between the columns as

a sign of mourning. Much of the space O'Callaghan devoted to the story was taken up with the complete text of Papineau's letter on the subject to Marshall Spring Bidwell, the Speaker of the Upper Canadian House of Assembly, where the information had first been made public." That had taken place when Sir Francis Bond Head, the new Lieutenant-Governor of the province, despite the Colonial Secretary's admonition that he should make public no more than the gist of his instructions, had sent an actual copy of them to Bidwell. They revealed that Lord Gosford's Royal Commission had been instructed that it could make no concessions to the principle of an elective Legislative Council in either of the Canadas.% That piece of news was what prompted Papineau to write to Bidwell and vent his feelings on the subject at some length: The Colonial Minister, four thousand miles distant from the scene of our sufferings, and naturally unable from the multiplicity of his avocations, to become acquainted with the extent of our wrongs, arrogantly tells the Assemblies, that have declared that all remedial measures short of rendering the seats of the Legislative Councils dependent on popular Election, will be futile and unsatisfactoryThat "The King is most unwilling to admit as open to debate the question, whether one of the vital principles of the Ravincial government shall undergo alteration!' These deceitful Agents, the Royal Commissioners, to whom these instructions were addressed, told this Assembly, on the other hand, that they are not precluded from entering on an enquiry on this grave subject. Instead of freely cornmunicating those instructions to the Legislature of this Rovince, on its being convened, on whose determinations they could not but have had great influence, the Royal Commissioners carefully withheld those instructions, and it was not until nearly four months' Session, that the Representativesof his Province by chance learned the suppressed truths from the newspapers of the day." Perhaps the most interesting thing about that letter is neither its length nor its thrust, but its date: 15 March 1836. This was six days prior to the proroguing of the Lower Canadian Parliament, where the matter was never raised, and seven weeks before it appeared in The Vindicator,where it had never been mentioned before. From that it would appear that the Royal Commissioners were not the

The Member for Yarnaska only ones who were guilty of suppressing the truth, or at least of delaying its r e ~ e l a t i o n . ~ ~ If, a s Papineau wrote, he had learned the news "by chance" from "the newspapers of the day," then O'Callaghan must have known about it too since, as the editor of The Vindicator, he had regular access to the Toronto papers, and often scalped items from them, especially those to do with the deliberations of the Upper Canadian Parliament, and with the activities of William Lyon Mackenzie. If that were so, and if 0'Callagha.n was in the know, then it is reasonable to assume that so too were all the others who met in Fabre's back room to discuss the contents of both La Minerve and The Vindicator. It bears all the hall marks of having been a conspiracy of silence for some unknown purpose but, alas, there is nothing to indicate what that purpose might have been. What is known, however, is that when O'Callaghan did break the story in The Vindicator, it signalled the end of any goodwill that remained between the Patriotes and Gosford. It also meant an end to any lingering hopes which party members might still have been cherishing that an elective Legislative Council could be achieved by constitutional means. From that time on the trend towards more radical courses of action became pronounced. Immediately after the publication of Papineau's letter to Bidwell, but without knowing the full text of the Royal Commissioners' instructions from the Colonial Office, O'Callaghan had to content himself with attacking Gosford on the firmer ground of what he had said in his speech proroguing the last sitting of pailiament, most notably about how he proposed getting around the failure of the Legislative Assembly to approve payment of his civil list by "applying the revenues at the disposal of the Crown, as far as they will extend, to the payment of the Public Servants, and towards the current expenses of the Civil G~vernment."~' All through the summer of 1836 O'Callaghan spared neither venom nor hyperbole in penning the diatribes which appeared in the pages of The Vindicator on that topic. It was a campaign fuelled by all the wrath that a Catholic Anglophobe from county Cork could muster for an Ulster Orangeman who, he felt, had deceived him and for whom, therefore, no fate was too severe. 'Whoever violates the fundamental constitutional rights of the subject," he railed, "is equally held by us to be an enemy of the Country. Guilty of a crime, which were h e a responsible minister of the Crown in England would bring his head to the block, or consign him to disgraceY2

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

And when the moderately liberal Le Canadien rallied to the governor's support, it too felt the full force of that wrath when O'Callaghan fulminated: The Canadien, perhaps, is in the secret, and has authority for stating that Lord Gosford has done all that he can do. However, this may be, we are inclined to think that His Lordship has done more than he ought to have done, had he respected the interests of the country and the rights of the subject. In asserting that it supports Lord Gosford's administration because his Lordship has done All he can do, the Canadien, no doubt includes in the category of all what Lord Gosford has done-the paying of public moneys without authority of the Assembly." Needless to say, Le Canadien did not just ignore O'Callaghan's censure. It gave back as good as it got, and a war of words raged to and fro for several weeks. At the height of the fury, events, however, conspired to bring about a truce between the two papers and to cause them, for a while, to speak with one voice in condemning what their editors saw as an attack on the freedom of the press. That happened when Ludger Duvernay, for the second time in his career as a newspaperman, found himself in trouble with the law.44 Without delving too deeply into the substance of the case against him, suffice it to say that the Patriote newspapers in Montreal, both L a Mineroe and The Vindicator, courted libel and contempt charges with the venomous tone of their political articles every time they went to press. It was almost as if they set out to goad the authorities into taking some retaliatory action against them so as to provide the party with an incident to exploit as an example of British oppression, and to give it a martyr. As O'Callaghan put it, when writing about the Duvernay case: Irresponsible power and official oppression have clutched another victim. Mr. Duvernay, proprietor of the Minerve newspaper, is in jail. On Saturday last, having been previously obliged to bear witness against himself, judgment was delivered, and he was sentenced to thirty days imprisonment in the common jail of this District, & to pay a fine of twenty pounds to the King. . . . In the midst of the present struggle for freedom of opinion, responsible Government, and British Institutions, the people have one consolation; that the liberal press is surrounded and sup-

The Member for Y m k a

ported by men who are determined not to be driven from the performance of their duties by the terrors of prisons, or the threats of dungeons. Victim after victim may be sentenced and incarcerated, mulcted and shut out from society, but pens will still be found to expose the injustices which are daily committed against the subject [sic] of this colony, and hearts proud to bear, and to brave the vengeance of the persecutors. The liberty of the press must have, perhaps, its martyrs!'45 Strangely enough, although he was a more scumlous journalist than either Tracey or Duvernay both of whom were imprisoned for writing libellous articles, O'Callaghan was never jailed, nor even charged with any wrong-doing. It was almost as if the authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, were reluctant to put him in the dock. The irony is that Duvernay may not have been the actual author of the offending articles which landed him in jail. That distinction quite possibly belonged to one of the gentlemen who frequented Fabre's back room, perhaps even O'Callaghan, for the editor of La Minerve did not have the ready facility with words that his colleague at The Vindicator had, and much of what he published was ghosted by one or other of them,46Nevertheless, it was he who was jailed for the offence, and it was he whose flower bedecked carriage headed a grand procession to the jail gates on the afternoon of 10 September 1836. A triumphal progress made up of over thirty vehicles filled with the cream of the Patriotes escorted Duvernay to prison. In the places of honour, with him in the leading carriage, were the Mayor of Montreal, Jacques Viger; Papineau's cousin, CBme Seraphin Cherrier; Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine; and O'Callagha~~.~~ Within days of the prison gates closing behind Duvernay, O'Callaghan and his colleagues in the House of Assembly were en route to Quebec for what was to be the penultimate session of the Parliament of Lower Canada, one doomed to failure before it ever started. All the terms of reference of Lord Gosford's Royal Commission were published in late July in a belated attempt to lessen the darnage caused by Sir Francis Bond Head's untimely revelation of some of them. The Legislative Assembly, however, was in no mood to cooperate with the governor unless he made a significant concession to its demands. If he had any doubts about that he only needed to read what O'Callaghan had written on the subject in The Vindicator to have them all dispelled:

Without a large and liberal accession of new members to the Legislative Council, to bring it to harmonize with the Representative Branch, w e believe w e are warranted in saying, that the prospects of a Session are but very few. Indeed, the country would only consider the Assembly degrading itself were it to proceed to public business with men who inflicted such a quantity of mischief last winter on the public, and destroyed the greater part of a five months session.48 The remarks are interesting, not so much because they show that O'Callaghan was still smarting over the forty-nine bills which the Legislative Council had rejected, but because they hinted at a way out of the impasse over the question of an elected upper house. It was that of appointing additional members to the Legislative Council until its composition resembled that of the Legislative Assembly. It was certainly an approach that was not entirely unacceptable to Gosford, for he showed himself to be quite willing to appoint prominent Patriotes to positions under the Crown when he named ElzCar BCdard, one of the authors of the Ninety-two Resolutions, to the bench, and Pierre-Dominique Debartzch to a seat on the Legislative Council, and subsequently to one on the Executive Council. Unfortunately, though, the problem called for more than just tokenism, for those who accepted such appointments were shunned and vilified a s traitors by their former colleagues. It is quite possible, however, that had the governor followed up on 09Callaghan'ssuggestion, and had taken the bold step of appointing enough Patriotes to the Legislative Council for it to mirror the make up of the lower house, history might have taken an entirely different turn.49 In the immediate aftermath of the abortive autumn sitting of parliament, a temporary lull descended on Lower Canadian politics. It was almost a s if the politicians were pausing to consider what next. For those of the Patriote inclination, all was not yet lost. The Gosford Royal Commission still had to report its findings and recommendations, and they hoped against hope that when these were made known, they would advocate reforms that were in keeping with at least some of the Ninety-two Resolutions. During the hiatus O'Callaghan contented himself with writing editorial banalities in The Vindicator, that is until ~ t i e n n eParent, the editor of Le Canadien, suddenly resurrected the feud between the two, which had subsided when the Duvernay affair erupted. O'Callaghan must have underestimated the lengths to which Parent

The Member for Yarnash would go in order to attack him: during the truce, Parent had obtained access to records in the Provincial Secretary's office, and had discovered two letters that the doctor had written to Lord Aylmer, petitioning him for an appointment as a government physician. What made it worse was that he had actually been given such a position when he became one of the two doctors in charge of the emergency Cholera Hospital that was established at the time of the 1832 epidemic in Quebeceso Parent's intention was to reveal O'Callaghan as a hypocrite for having sought to benefit from a practice which he so often denounced-that of seeking and accepting a paid position under the Crown. That, it was hoped, would not only cast doubt on the doctor's integrity, but also on that of the Montreal Patriotes, or the Papineau party as they were sometimes referred to, which could serve to the advantage of Parent's moderate liberal friends in Quebec? O'Callaghan was having none of that. He responded to the revelation in his own inimitable way by portraying the author of it as being nothing but a sordid little muckraker, and a toady of the Provincial Secretary. His hope was to blinker his readers to the stigma of his alleged hypocrisy.52Even so, after the first vicious exchanges, much of the venom went out of the squabble, and the two editors relapsed into their customary sporadic sniping at each other. Such unspent malice as O'CaIlaghan had left in his soul was redirected at two of his long-standing targets, The Quebec Gazette and its former editor, John Neilson. Thus winter dawdled into spring, and relative calm prevailed until the beginning of April when the Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Grievances Complained of in Lower Canada was made public. Many Patriotes had been waiting for it with some optimism, but their mood soon changed when they discovered that the commissioners had recommended that the government deny all the reforms they had called fores3 While they were still reeling from that bad news, they learned of the British parliament's response to the Ninety-two resolution^.^^ It was a document referred to as Lord John Russell's Ten Resolutions, and its essence was captured by O'Callaghan's editorial: The sum and substance of these resolutions are that the Legislative Council is not to be rendered elective; that the Land Company is not to be inviolable-and lest it should not be sufficiently insulting to the people, thus summarily to reject their oft-repeated prayers, our oppressors go one

step further, and have resolved to dispose of the money of the people of this province, by a British act of Parliament55 His subsequent handling of the story shows him trying to shaddle the gap between the divergent opinions in the Patriote leadership over what to do next On the one hand there were those who favoured bringing further pressure to bear on the British to implement reforms by means of acts of civil disobedience. While, on the other hand, there were those who held more radical views and looked to overthrowing the existing regime by force and replacing it with an independent, libeml and republican government as the only solution to the province's problems. As spokesman for the party as a whole, O'callaghan was faced with the task of persuading his mainly Irish readers that the two differing views were just facets of a total policy. His fust attempt to do so was an article which he published on 14 April 1837 under the headline, Coercion Bill for Canada." The title clearly established the Irish analogy, a point which he was at pains to reiterate at the beginning of his exposition of the party's policy: The die is cast; the British ministry have resolved to set the seal of degmdation and slavery on this Province, and to render it actually, what it was already only in reputethe Ylreland"of North America .. . Thus deprived of all justice from the other side of the water, and rejected, by those in whom they foolishly put their trust, one duty alone now remains for the people of Lower Canada. Let them study the HISTORY of the AMERICAN REVOLUIIUN. Thereintheywill find wisdom, consolation and encouragement Their British rulers, strong in their brute force, and insolent on account of their numbers, have rejected the lessons that History teaches. It is for the people to profit by the wisdom which their rulers reject. England in 1765,deterrnined to oppress the Old Colonies which she possessed on this Continent. She passed a StampAct, on which occasion there were only Mty votes in favor of American liberty in the House of Cornmons. How did the Americans meet that act of oppression? Did they lie down and patiently brook the insult? No. They were made of sterner stuff. They determined to attack British commerce; not to consume those products which were imported hom -land or her possessions. They resolved to attack her in her most vulnerable quarter, and force her

The Member for Yamka merchants to become the allies of the Colonists, and advocates in defence of American freedom. Combinations and societies were everywhere formed, to abstain from the consumption of foreign luxuries. The consequence was, that the obnoxious Act was repealed early the folowing year. The people of Lawer Canada must "go and do likewise," if they wish to preserve their liberties, and to hand them down unimpaired to their posterity. The monies which fill the coffers at Quebec, and which are about to be illegally disposed of by the British Parliament, are collected by duties on Brandy, Rum, Wines, Tobacco, Tea and such like articles. Instead of drinking Brandy or Rum, let them drink home-made Whiskey, if they require such like stimulus, and encourage the smuggling of Tea, Tobacco and other articles, from the United States. In this lies their only sahmtion. By this means, they will destroy that Revenue of which Fmgland now illegally and unconstitutionally disposes, and paralyze the arm of the oppre~sor.~ It was an artful piece of writing. By referring his readers to the history of the American Revolution for guidance, O'Callaghan helped them make the connection, between the situation in Lower Canada with that in pre-revolutionary America. Implicit in that was the manner in which the thirteen colonies had ultimately resolved the problem. However, he never actually advocated resorting to force of arms in so many words. He knew better than that Instead he left his readers to draw their own conclusions and went on to call for a typically Irish response: a boycott of all imported goods as a means of depriving the administration of any revenue from customs duties with a view to forcing it to consider constitutional reform in order to restore its income. Much the same can be said of the far more notorious article that he published the following week, which has been condemned as being "representative of the violence of the leaders of the movement of 1837."58 Under the headline H m h for Agitation-one of Daniel O'Connell's rallying cries-he set out to beat the drum for a series of public meetings called to organize opposition to the Ten Resolutions. It ended up with the clarion exhortation: "Henceforth there must be no peace in the province, no quarter for the plunderers. Agitate! Agitate!! Agitate!!! Destroy the Revenue; denounce the oppressors. Everything is lawful when the fundamental liberties are in danger. 'The guards die--they never surrender.'""

Stirring words indeed, and in the best tradition of Irish demagoguery but, even so, O'Callaghan was unable to completely hide the gap that existed between the reformers and the revolutionaries among the Patriotes. While the article reflects the views of the reformers in calling for people to "destroy the Revenue," and to "denounce the oppressors," it similarly supports the revolutionaries when it trumpets that "henceforth there must be no peace in the province, no quarter for the plunderers," and that "everything is lawful when the fundamental liberties are in danger." Putting aside what part of O'Callaghan's personal views the two articles reflected, they do show that his concern was to promote the idea that for any campaign'against the Ten Resolutions to be effective it had to have the active support of the entire party. He was preaching unity, and to bring that about he was calling upon all factions that claimed any allegiance to the Patriotes, whether they were based in Montreal, Quebec, or anywhere else in the province, to forget their differences and to close ranks if they wanted to bring the British to heel and force them into making concessions. As it turned out, the extent to which his call was heeded was perhaps more of a measure of agricultural discontent than it was of singleness of political mind. That was particularly true in the Richelieu Valley, and in.the environs of Montreal. Seigneurial agriculture all over Lower Canada was experiencing hard times throughout the 1830s, a period in which crop failures were common and rural poverty was on the increase. The popular belief was that an infestation of the Hessian, or wheat fly was to blame for all of it but, in reality, the plague was just one element of a complex process, much of which was rooted in seigneurialism itself, a regime which contained the seeds of its own destruction. Seigneurialism was part of a paternalistic social order and very much under the sway of the Catholic church. It was being sapped of its vitality, not just by a succession of crop failures, but also by a high birth rate coupled with a legal system in which the laws of inheritance led to the fragmentation of family farms into ever smaller holdings The result of these was a rapidly increasing population confined within the bounds of seigneuries which had no room to expand. To compound matters, inefficient farming practices further impoverished the soil with each successive harvest. It all contributed to the emergence of a disgruntled peasantry some members of which were no longer able to scratch a living off the land. Most of these moved to nearby villages, but some emigrated to the United States-the former looking for work in the growing number of industrial enterprises springing up in the villages, and the latter for

The Member for Yarnash land or employment in one of the border states. The migration had two effects in Lower Canada. The firstwas that it hastened the process of urbanization, particularly in the vicinity of Montreal, and the second was that it turned many of the villages thereabouts into hotbeds of dis~ontent.~~ Even though the level of rural poverty which produced those effects was perhaps not as high in the Montreal/RichelieuValley area as it was elsewhere in the province, the region became the location for the highest level of political activism as a result of it. That was largely due to the presence in a number of villages of community leaders like Wolfred Nelson, Cyrille Cote, Arnury Girod, and others, mostly professional men and all ardent Patriotes, who found the newcomers fertile tilth in which to sow the seeds of the party's gospel. They cultivated it to its full, laying the blame for all the habitants' woes at the door of the British who steadfastly refused to countenance land reforms which were likely to disturb the status quo in the seigneuries. In their campaign for the hearts and minds of those displaced persons, as well as those of their relatives still on the seigneuries, it was not unknown for them to draw their inspiration from the pages of La Minerue where they often found material well suited to arousing or to exacerbating anti-British sentiments. The following is a typical example: A large number of Canadians are leaving the banks of the

Richelieu and surrounding areas in order to settle in Michigan and other parts of the United States. . . . Most of them are young people who will search elsewhere for more liberal institutions. It seems that they are not the only ones who wish to try their fortunes outside. Every day steamboats leave with a certain number who take this step. Nothing, it seems to me, is more calculated to show us the corruption of our institution^.^' Regardless of the accuracy of such reports, village demagogues made good use of them in the arguments they advanced in the course of their political proselytizing. The success of their approach was to be seen in the growing militancy in and around the villages. The disgruntled and the displaced turned to their priests for spiritual guidance. For their economic salvation, they began looking to lay community-leaders-the doctors, the lawyers, and the notaries who, generally speaking, were the guiding lights in the local Patriote cells, men who tended to concur with and to propagate whatever they read in La Minerue.

Although O'Callaghan would normadly have publicized the Patriote policies at least as forcibly as Duvemay did, he gave no sign of matching the Canadian's missionary zeal on the subject of opening up Crown land for seigneurial expansion. h e , he reported the gloomy agricultural statistics from time to time, but he never commented on how they mirrored the economic plight in the seigneuries. That was possibly due to his personal aversion for a system which was alien to his own cultural tradition, and to the fact that few, if any, of his countrymen held seigneurial land. Almost without exception, the few of them who were farmers had land in the Eastern Townships where agricultural practices were more efficient than those in the seigneuries,and where, if they wanted to expand their holdings, there was nothing to stop them so long as they had the money, or the credit, to do so. His view, therefore, was different from that of Duvemay and Papineau who, while working to establish a liberal regime in Lower Canada, paradoxically did so with one foot firmly planted in the past, insisting that reforms would not, and could not alter the fact that seigneurialism was central to F'renchCanadian culture. The habitants were not the only ones suffering from the effects of hard times by the mid-1830s. Many businessmen in the larger towns were suffering as well. Their problems for the most part, however, were not of their own making, but were the result of an economic slump which had started in Europe and then spread to North America. Its onset was marked by a general slow-downin commercial activity followed by a run on the banks when clients lost confidence in paper money and demanded coin in exchange for their banknotes. That pattern first emerged in the United States where a number of banks actually failed when they were unable to meet the sudden demand for specie; as a stopgap measure, the surviving banks all suspended such transactions to conserve their remaining reserves of coin. When they began to find themselves facing a sirnilar threat, Canadian banks very quickly considered doing likewise? That recourse became imminent in May 1837 when a meeting of the Montreal bankers gathered to discuss the matter. Already sensing what the outcome of those deliberations would be, O'Callaghan, who held very strong views on how money should be managed, assumed a Jacksodan stance and proceeded to expound his opinions in a series of bitter denunciations of banks and bankers who resorted to contrary practices.63His objections, however, fell on deaf ears for, without exception, the Montreal bankers agreed to suspend specie payments without any further delay. What made that decision particularly distasteful to him was that the Banque du

The M&r

for Y m k a

Peuple was a party to the agreement, for it was an institution that had very close ties to the Patriotes and which had left no doubt over where its political sympathies lay when it issued a coin embossed with a star and a Phrygian bonnet-two emblems with a decidedly revolutionary connotation to thema By denouncing the agreement to suspend specie payments, and by describing banknotes as "no better than waste paper," O'Callaghan did nothing to endear himself to the board of directors of the Banque du Peuple, which included a number of ~ r prominent y Pahiotes, men like the bank's president, Louis-Michel Vger, Jacob de Witt, and the party's eminencegrke, 8-R. Fabre. What made things still worse was that, in so far as the Patriotes had any banking policy at all, it was embodied in the business practices of that bank. By criticizing those policies he managed to upset a number of very influential men in the party." Several years later O'Callaghan commented on this issue: I am given to understand that the Banque du Peuple has never forgiven me for the stand I took in 1836 [sic]against the suspension of Specie Payments by the banks that year. I was right-the event has proved it. . . . My offense has never been forgiven, and like those sins against the Holy Ghost, I suppose they never will-But never mind-Right is, notwithstanding, right--and though I suffer, I'd much rather suffer for a good cause than sanction what I consider an improper acP6

It is not at all clear how his open criticism of the bank escaped the notice of the watch-dogs in Fabre's back room who normally kept a close eye on the editorial content of the two Patriote papers, but it did. The likeliest explanation is that they were otherwise occupied. There were, after all, political meetings taking place all across the province on a better than daily basis. The constant demand for speakers from the ranks of the Patriote lions depleted their numbers in Montreal to the point where, on occasion, what went into The Vindicator was left very much to O'Callaghan's own judgment. Another thing that hurt his reputation among some of the party faithful was the ongoing war of words, conducted in the columns of their respective newspapers, between himself and Ludger Duvernay on the one hand, and ~tienneParent on the other. The Abbe Chartier referred to it as "this pernicious quarrel between Le Canadien for the one part, and L a Mineroe and The Vhdcator for the ,

other; a quarrel and a rift, which prevented any co-operation from the District of Quebec at a time when that of Montreal needed it most."67 O'Callaghan also made enemies within the party when he refused to have anything to do with what appears to have been an attempted palace revolt aimed at usurping Papineau's leadership. Unfortunately, all that is known of it comes from the doctor's own pen, and he reveals little about it beyond the fact that two major figures in the party were involved. Writing to Papineau in 1848 he remarked: Had I consented in 1837, to attach myself to Intrigue, as I was invited to do, by some who hold a high head in your Country, I would not be here today [in the United States]. But none of my family has ever been a traitor to friendship and confidences. . . I am sorry that Mr. Morin and Mr. Cherrier should feel so unjust towards me. . ..The quarrel in which I was struck down was not a private one-it was neither yours, nor Mr. Cherrier's, nor mine. It was a struggle for a People's rights and a People's liberties, and I fell, merely because I was one of the advance guardeG8

.

Thus, as the spring of 1837 gave way to summer, O'Callaghan found himself increasingly out of favour with certain elements of the Patriote party; he began to feel that, even though he did not agree with all he stood for, Papineau was one of the few persons left in Montreal whom he could trust. Thereafter, the two became closer political associates than ever, although still not close friends. Coincidentally, Papineau's star was also passing its apogee and his position as undisputed leader was starting to be undermined by developments at the many political rallies in the province. Those gatherings, called to promote opposition to Lord John Russell's Ten Resolutions, all had three well-defined parts to them, although the parts did not always come in the same sequence. One part was a speech from a visiting Patriote notable, often one from Montreal, who spoke about some aspect of British iniquity and was rewarded with polite applause from the crowd. Another part consisted of the formal resolutions, which received rubber stamp approval, and which were much the same wherever the meeting was being held-they always contained condemnation of the Ten Resolutions, support for the Ninety-two, a call for a boycott of all imported goods, and one for recognition that the true friends of the Patriotes were to be found in the United States. The third part of the meetings, how-

The Member for Y m k a ever, was far more emotional than the other two. It consisted of speeches by local leaders, some of them charismatic figures whose demagoguery, usually devoted to matters of immediate concern to the crowd on hand, soon had it worked up into a lather of enthusiasm which erupted into a tumultuous ovation when they had done. The outcome was that the party stated to fragment into an agglomeration of local cells, each with its own leader, and each with its own agenda. O'Callaghan attended relatively few of those rallies, although it is conceivable that he had a hand in drafting the resolutions adopted by some of them. That possibility is suggested by the inclusion in some of them, but not others, of a pro-Irish statement, as was the case at St. Ours where it was resolved that "in order to effect more efficaciously the regeneration of this country, all should rally round a single man, following the example of Ireland God has marked this man, like O'Connell, to be the political chief and the regenerator of a people. . . . This man, already singled out by the country, is L.J. Papinea~."~~ Beyond this involvement, however, O'Callaghan had very little to do with most of the meetings that took place across Lower Canada during the spring and summer of 1837, and he is known to have actually spoken at just three of them: one was in his own riding of Yamaska, the second in the county of Montreal, and the third in the county of W o Mountains. In the last case, someone took the precaution of having a number of Irishmen from Montreal on hand at St. Scholastique, where the rally was held, so that when O'Callaghan spoke, he was assured of having a few claqueurs in the predominantly francophone crowd, and also a ready to hand bodyguard should his person be threatened. The rarity of his appearance at those meetings might have been partly due to his fear of such a possibility for, in essentially Fkench-Canadian areas, like 'Ihro Mountains, Irishmen tended to be viewed with intense suspicion as possible British ~pies.7~ Above all else, however, his absence from so many of the meetings came about as a result of his close attendance on Papineau who was generally reluctant to go to any of them. As his son, Amedee observed, "During the course of the summer, he [Papineau]was present at several others [rallies]but always after much persuasion. They sent him letter after letter to which he replied and excused himself. Then came a deputation, 10, 15, 20 of the most worthy citizens of a county. It was impossible to refuse themn7' Thus as Papineau, and with him O'Callaghan, avoided rnanylof the popular manifestations of Patriote fervour in the parishes ahd

the counties of Lower Canada, the determination of the direction in which the party would go fell increasingly to local leaders. For the most part, these men advocated more extreme courses of action than either Papineau or O'Callaghan had ever contemplated. That was quite evident in the county of W o Mountains where Papineau's ambiguities were intelpreted in the most extreme manner and used to incite habitants to perpetrate barn burnings, charivaris, and threats of violence as means of intimidating any who were considered to have pro-British sympathies. The result was that, before the summer was over, the whole county was on the verge of insurgency, and much the same was taking place in the Richelieu Valley counties too? It was the beginning of a new phase of unrest, one in which clarnours for an independent Lower Canadian republic began to drown out calls for just constitutional reform, and in which words from men like Papineau and O'Callaghan were warped by rural firebrands to warrant actions that their authors had never even contemplated. It came about very largely as a result of impatience and a dawning realization that brave words alone were not going bring about change. The trouble was that Papineau was just not the man for revolution, and shrewd observers, like the Abbe Chartier, did not fail to notice it "Alas!" he wrote, albeit some time later: had nature only endowed you with as much courage as it did eloquence! Today you might perhaps be sitting glonously in the presidential seat of the Republic of Canada, and we, the proud admirers of our fust magistrate! We are forced to recognize, with bitter regret, that you did not show yourself, in the day of peril, to be what one might have expected, and such as read of in the published account of your speech at S t Laurent.* Papineau was unpredictable, and he gave mixed signals to his supporters. When the excitement of an occasion ran high, perhaps after a local leader had whipped the crowd up into a fury of rebelliousness, he would follow with a speech that incensed it still farther; under less highly charged circumstances, he might speak of nothing more revolutionary than a boycott of imported goods. The combined effect of the two left the impression of a man floundering indecisively in the no-man's land between reform and rebellion. Moreover, his position was further weakened by his widely publicized boycott failing to have the impact on the British that he had said it would.

The Member for Yamka The problem was that only the more affluent members of the party were in a position to respond to the boycott call: the habitants in the seigneuries, and the working class people in the towns and cities, to whom the Patriotes looked for grass roots support, were rarely if ever able to afford to buy imported goods. Another factor that inhibited the success of the boycott was that it led to a sudden and dramatic increase in the price of domestic goods, which quickly eliminated any advantage they might have had over similar imported articles Even Arntidke Papineau, an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign, could not completely hide those hard facts when he confided to his journal that, "At Montreal, Madame Lafontaine and Madame Peltier had the honour of being the first two ladies who appeared in public clad in Canadian fabric-This measure doubled and tripled the value of domestic goods and, consequently, enriched the producers and did good for the country, at the same time that it was bad for our oppressor^."^^ Perhaps the most effective moment of the whole campaign occurred on 18 August 1837, the day on which the provincial Parliament was called into session for the last time. A number of the Patriote members from Montreal, including O'Callaghan, caused quite a stir at what would otherwise have been a very formal occasion:

M. Rodier wore a granite coloured frock coat made of domestic fabric, knee-breeches and a waistcoat of the same stuff, except that it was blue and white striped, a straw hat and rawhide shoes, with home made stockings to complete his outfit It was noticeable that M. Rodier did not wear a shirt, doubtlessly having been unable to make one, or to get hold of a smuggled one. Dr. O'Callaghan's dress was similar to M. Rodier's, save for the hat, the gloves, the shirt (he had one), and the glasses.7s Apart from that the final sitting of the Parliament of Lower Canada was without incident The Legislative Assembly accomplished nothing beyond refusing to consider any legislation whatsoever and, immediately after Gosford's speech from the throne, its members returned to their own chamber and proceeded to ignore his request to approve his civil list. Instead, they sat as a committee of the whole and discussed the state of the province. They continued doing that until 27 August when, once again, they were summoned to the upper house in order to hear the governor prorogue the sitting." Throughout all that procedural posturing, and for some weeks prior to it, O'Callaghan had faithfully reported every public utterance

that Papineau made. While it was indicative of his diligence in carrying out his obligation to present the party line a s expressed by its leader, it should not b e taken a s showing what his personal views might have been. Indicators a s to what they were are to b e found in two places: implicitly in the pages of The Vindicator, and explicitly in his later correspondence. He was a lifelong Anglophobe, and a latter-day Jacksonian, who made n o secret of his affection and admiration for America, and for its seventh president. For O'Callaghan, the United States w a s the model for any people looking to cast off the British yoke, and Jackson's concept of popular democracy was the form of government most worth striving for. Each year h e tacitly admitted where his sympathies lay when, in the issue of The Vindicator which came out nearest to the fourth of July, he made a point of publishing the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. In addition to that, he always gave extensive coverage to American political events and, furthermore, during the summer of 1837, when h e was probably freer than at any previous time to express his own opinions in print, he published articles on the American Revolution, thereby implying that such things were possible in Lower Canada too. Whatever else they did, those articles would certainly have left his readers with the clear impression that h e favoured closer ties with the United States a s a solution to the province's woes. That is confirmed by what h e wrote after the rebellion to Papineau. In those letters he expounded an unashamedly annexationist solution to the problems facing the United Canadas following the Act of Union.77 Papineau, of course, was central to everything that O'Callaghan had in mind for Canada. That is clear from the reportage h e got in the pages of The Vindicator, where h e was lionized to a far greater extent than h e was by Ludger Duvernay in L a Minerve. He was depicted as being a man with the sagacity of Daniel O'Connell, and the common touch of Andrew Jackson, neither of which h e really had, but such was O'Callaghan's loyalty to Papineau that he continued to portray him in the most favourable light throughout The Vindicator's final weeks, and even after opposing voices began making themselves heard in Patriote circles. Strong a s t h e bond b e t w e e n the two w a s , though, e v e n a t that late d a t e , it remained that b e t w e e n a leader a n d his lieutenant. It w a s b a s e d o n mutual d e p e n d e n c y rather than identity of opinion, on expediency rather than friendship.

The Member for Yamaska As things stood at the end of the summer in 1837, O'Callaghan and Papineau both faced a future filled with uncertainties. The only certainties were that government, as defined by the Constitutional Act, had broken down in Lower Canada, and that the Tories and the Patriotes were headed towards an inevitable confrontation of some sort.

Chapter 7 En Route to Rebellion n Montreal, the pulse of the city was quickening. There was a feeling abroad that the increasing frequency of political demonIstrations presaged momentous events. None of the demonstrations, however, could be called impromptu expressions of partisanship. Those in support of the Tories were ordained and directed from well-appointed chambers .in the vicinity of St. James Street, while Patriote demonstrators had to look a little farther to the east for their marching orders, to the more modest accommodations of the Nelson Hotel, in the New Market, where the Central and Permanent Committee of the county of Montreal met and deliberated. That body, it will be recalled, came into being in 1834, as an agency for coordinating and disseminating party propaganda in the period leading up to the general election in that year. After that it became moribund, and remained so until 15 May 1837 when it was resuscitated at the big Patriote rally in the county of Montreal, and forty-seven delegates were named to sit on it and direct the party's activities in the area. It resumed holding regular weekly meetings immediately. A feature of the meetings was that they often ended with more members being elected to the committee, usually delegates from adjacent counties. The result was that, very soon, the committee became a kind of representative assembly for the counties in the Montreal/Richelieu Valley area and, consequently, too large and unwieldy to be an effective policy-making body. Femand Ouellet's assertion that "it did the planning, and framed resolutions, directions, and slogans" is not, therefore entirely accurate.' Patriote policies continued to be shaped and formulated in the room behind Fabre's bookstore. However, in keeping with the mandate of the Central and Permanent Committee, once that had been

done, members of that de facto inner council presented the policies to the next meeting at the Nelson Hotel in the form of resolutions. There, after receiving the committee's approval, they were elevated to the status of policy statements for the guidance of Patriotes elsewhere. Unfortunately, it did not always work out that way in practice. Party cells in the adjacent counties were often unwilling to have their activities determined by a committee h Montreal which they suspected of being out of touch with the realities of rural political life. It was one more manifestation of the factionalism which plagued the Patriotes, this one in the countryside, where local prejudices and privations played a far greater part in determining political actions than did any dicta coming out of the city. What made that situation still worse was that even if there had been some means whereby Montreal could have imposed its will on the party as a whole, it could not have done so without endangering the party's fragile unity. As a publicist for the party, O'CaUaghan found himself faced with the impossible task of trying to reconcile sometimes violent outbreaks with the official policy of bringing economic pressure to bear on the Gosford administration by means of the boycott. In the end he chose to sidestep the problem, and to treat the chaotic political scene in the Montreal/Richelieu Valley area as a simple struggle between the forces of good and evil. He lumped all the activities of Patriotes together, regardless of what they were or where they took place, and published reports of them under all embracing headlines like Progress of !he Movement, or The Voice of the People, while the doings of the Tories were similarly consolidated and printed under the ominous title Progress of ihe Reign of T m r O 2 It was a gross over-simplification of a most complex situation, at least so far as the Patriotes were concerned, but it accomplished what it was intended to d&t maintained the illusion of party unity. Seen from the perspective of Fabre's bookstore, it was a justifiable thing to do. In the circumstances there was no room for any appearance of differences within the party. It was in the Montreal leadership's interest to keep the public's eyes closed to the fact that the party had degenerated into little more than an arnophous collection of factions within factions, each having its own leader, and each having its own agenda Anything which revealed that state of affairs, beside giving aid and comfort to the British, would have exposed the hollowness of any claim to be a united, provincial party, and that nobody wanted.

En Route to Rebellion

Meanwhile, developments in the city all pointed to an imminent confrontation on the streets. Both Tories and Patriotes were going out of their way to taunt each other as rival gangs of young men, recruited by them into quasi-military organizations, roamed the streets giving every sign of a readiness to lock horns. The Tory Doric Club, which had risen, phoenix-like, from the remains of the former British Rifle Corps, had been more or less dormant until the Patriotes began holding large political rallies. It then emerged as an organization dedicated to using bully-boy tactics to intimidate anybody going to or from the Patriote meetings. It had become such a nuisance by the end of the summer that it was deemed necessary to devise some means of countering it. The Patriotes were not long in finding one. If the Tories wanted to take their politicking to the streets, so could they, and O'Callaghan indicated what they planned to do when he reported that, "According to a notice published in the Minerve of August 2 1st calling a meeting of the young reformers of this city at the Nelson Hotel, a large number of our young men, zealous and courageous radicals, met together and declared their determination of forming a political so~iety."~ He was, in point of fact, announcing the birth of a body to become known as the Fils de la Libertt?, and he left little room for any doubt in his readers' minds over what its purpose was when, soon afterwards, he wrote, "Canada must triumph over her enemies. The young blood of the country is aroused. The bone and sinew of the land have taken the determination to rescue the Colony from the fangs of the vampyre now preying on its vitals. May the GOD of the oppressed nerve their young hearts, and bless their patriotic p~rpose."~ It was vintage O'Callaghan prose, and for any who might still have been wondering what the new organization's precise role was to be, he provided further elucidation in a subsequent issue of The Vindicator when he reported how its members had "assembled at first in the New Market, but finding no place sufficiently spacious, adjourned to a store in Great St. James Street. They marched in regular order from the New Market to the place of adjournment, with music and banners. The procession through Notre Dame Street must have counted more than five hundred men fit to 'go forth to war."'5 And well they needed to be, for their march took them right through the heart of Tory Montreal, and bore the stamp of being a calculated act of provocation. Whatever else it did, the creation of the Fils de la Libertg brought two other Patriotes into prominence, both of whom left firsthand ac-

counts of their exploits and experiences. One was Papineau's elder son, Arnedee, and the other was Thomas Storrow Brown, a hardware merchant whose reputation, until then, had come from his fiery speeches at political rallies, and from letters he had written under the pseudonym L.M.N. to a New York newspaper in the hope of gaining support for the Patriotes in the United States. He was irnmediately attracted to the military aspect of the movement and, even though he had served in neither the regular army nor the militia, for want of anyone better qualified, he became its general. Thereafter, to use his own words, the organization "speedily became the most offending of the offenders, holding frequent meetings, and marching in strong number^."^ It was an indication that the civil authority was losing control in the Montreal area Where once it could have turned to the militia to restore order, that was no longer possible since a good number of its members had shown themselves to be unreliable. That had become very evident in the previous June when, on the occasion of the annual review of the force, many of the militiamen had joined with gangs of Patriote agitators in deriding their officers, and had compounded their mutinous conduct by walking off parade and vanishing into the crowd. In addition to that, militiamen elsewhere in the vicinity had shown where their political sympathies lay when they took part in Patriote rallies at which they not only paraded, but fued off f e u dejoie when called for as part of the proceedings.' Also symptomatic of the deterioration of civil authority were the events in the county of ?fnroMountains, north of Montreal, where, as one observer described it, the citizens had:

...elected in each parish Justices of the Peace, or adjudicators, to settle differences which could arise between reformists. These officers would be elected annually and would receive neither pay nor allowances. No-one was obliged to take his complaints before them, but when two individuals agreed to rely on their decision, they had to abide by it. If one of the parties disliked it, he could appeal to the Central Committee of the County, whose judgment was final. If someone then refused to submit to it, he had to be declared an enemy of the county, and unworthy of being respected by the people on account of any office he might hold, such as that of being a Representative, etc.. The Reformists also had to terminate all business or personal relationships with him. There was nothing unconstitutional about that; and it was an excellent

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means of having law and order at a reasonable price, and of giving the people a taste for republican institutions, and of the responsibility of judges. The Tories saw where the step was leading, and cried "treason" at the tops of their voices? The outcome was that the British, no longer able to rely on the militia, were compelled to move regular troops into potential trouble spots in order to ensure some semblance of authority. They reinforced the garrisons at Montreal and 'Itois Rivi&res,sent detachments to the Richelieu Valley and to the county of W o Mountains, and established defensive presences near where the Ottawa and the Richelieu Rivers joined the St. Lawrence, all of which O'Callaghan duly reported in The Vindi~ator.~ Even so, the initiative remained with the more radical Patriote cells, especially those in the Richelieu Valley. These cells were determined to use the reforms which had been instituted in the county of W o Mountains as a blueprint to be copied in their own jurisdictions. That was made abundantly clear at what became known as the Meeting of the Confederation of the Six Counties of the Richelieu Valley, which was held at St. Charles on 23 and 24 of October. It was a grand occasion, by all accounts, but 09Callaghan'slimited part in it reflected the disfavour he had recently incurred in some segments of the party. ' h e , he was accorded all the respect due to the editor of one of its newspapers who was also a member of the Legislative Assembly and Papineau's aide, but he was excluded from the list of speechmakers, and from moving or seconding any of the resolutions, even though he was nominated to help draft them. The public sessions of the meeting all took place in a field adjacent to the property of Pierre-Dorninique Debartzch, the former Patriote who had defected to the Tories. Throughout the morning of the twenty-third, a Monday, delegations from the parishes of the Richelieu Valley, and from beyond, streamed past the decorated houses along the way, and into the field, singing and shouting and carrying home made-bannersaloft bearing such anti-British slogans as "Independence," "Liberty! We'll Conquer or Die," and "The Curses of the Unborn Will Overtake Russell." Festive as the crowd was, its partisanship was on display for all to see.1° It gravitated towards the centre of the field where a white and gold liberty pole, capped with a Phrygian bonnet and a fasces to symbolize revolution and unity, rose from a pedestal decorated with

maple leaves and bearing the inscription "To Papineau from the Grateful Citizens." Nearby stood a platform also decorated with foliage, the autumn gold of maple and the dark grren of spruce and pine. Suspended above it was a length of locally made cloth ernblazoned with the legend Manutactws &nadiennes.l As midday approached a group of more than sixty militiamen began to form up behind the platform and an air of expectancy settled over the field. On the stroke of noon, a cannon boomed out the signal for the proceedings to commence. As the platform party mounted the steps to take up its position of honour, it was greeted by thunderous cheers and the crackle of musketry as the militiamen fued off a feu dejoie.l2 No sooner had the smoke created by the discharge of so much black powder dispersed than the meeting came to order and tackled the fiat item of business on its agenda, that of electing a president for the occasion. To no one's surprise the honour went to Dr. Wolfred Nelson, the man who, above all others, was responsible for organizing the meeting, and whose idea it was to form a confederation of the Richelieu Valley counties in the f ~ sp1ace.l3 t At that early stage of the day's proceedings, it was no more than a loose union of five of them-those of Richelieu, St. Hyacinthe, Rouville, Verch&res,and Chambly-whose purpose was to bring some order and co-ordination to the activities of the various Patriote cells in the region. It was, however, an organization which comand before any mended itself to another county too, that of IYAcadie, actual business was considered, its spokesman, Dr. Cyrille Cot4, requested that I'Acadie be allowed to join. In his impassioned speech in support of that request, he left his audience fully convinced that he was actually calling for rebellion, without saying so in so many words. In doing so, Cot4 gave the crowd a sense of solidarity which it had not had before. Cote's address was greeted with a tumultuous roar of approval and the county of 1'Acadie was admitted without any debate into the organization, which was formally renamed the Confederation of the Six Counties of the Richelieu Valley.14 Since the organization was primarily concerned with the political and economic problems in those counties, it had objectives markedly different from those of the group which met in the room at the back of E.-R. Fabre's Montreal bookstore. Rom the viewpoint of the Richelieu Valley, that group was seen as an urban, intellectual elite primarily interested in replacing the existing Tory oligarchy in Quebec with one of its own making.The habitants' concerns were far more fundamental than that; they had to do with matters Lie land reform, restrictions on immigration, and the abolition of tithes

En Route to Rebellion

payable to the Catholic church. Nevertheless, despite his ties with the Montreal cabal, Papineau was an essential figure at St. Charles, for he more than anyone personified the Patriote party. He was all that held its diverse elements together in any semblance of unity, and his presence gave the meeting a legitimacy that it would not otherwise have had. It was he, therefore, who made what today would be called the keynote address, the inspirational prelude before the main business of the meeting was commenced. Unfortunately, none of the newspapers reported what he actually said. All O'Callaghan had to say about it was that he regretted having been unable to follow it, and that "its delivery occupied about two hours and a half. The people seemed to feel what he was saying, They frequently cheered, and now and again interrupted him by viva uoce commentaries on his discourse as he went along."'5 Such fragmentary reports of the speech as there are all suggest that Papineau failed to gauge the mood of his audience, hence the heckling, or, as O'Callaghan put it, the "oiua voce commentaries." While he spoke of achieving goals by peaceful means, his audience, fresh from listening to Dr. Cot6's fire and brimstone, wanted to hear about gaining them by force of arms. Before he was too far into his address, therefore, Papineau must have realized that the crowd was not with him because he offered to resign from active politics. The throng of Richelieu Valley militants, however, would hear none of that. Although they might have disagreed with what he was saying, for them he was just as much a symbol of what they stood for as was their green, white, and red tricolour. Consequently, his offer was greeted with horrified cries of "No! No!" After that, judging by what little is known of it, his speech became nothing more than a regurgitation of old Patriote platitudes and, by the time he had finished, he could not fail to have known that although he was still nominally the leader of the party, in the Richelieu Valley at least, he had become little more than a figurehead. Actual control over future actions had passed into more radical hands than his, those of Dr. Wolfred Nelson, Amury Girod, Thomas Storrow Brown, and Dr. Cyrille Cote. The tirades of these men later that same afternoon had the crowd in a fever of rebellious fervour and convinced that, in the future, only bullets could speak to the British for the Patriotes.16 None of that appears in O'Callaghan's report either. It could be argued that his omissions, as well as Papineau's indifferently received speech, were the result of fatigue: they had both been up late the night before helping draw up resolutions for the approval of the meeting. That argument, however, does not stand up to close scrutiny for, in OICallaghan's own words, Papineau

spoke "in his usual fervid swle" for two and a half hours the following afternoon, which would have been most unlikely had he been tired. If tiredness prevented O'Callaghan from reporting what he said, he only needed to have consulted his leader who would have been able refresh his memory immediately. Ruthermore, being as close as he was to Papineau, he must have known ahead of time what was in the speech.17 What is most likely to have happened is that since it had always been a matter of policy for Patnote newspapers, which spoke with Montreal voices, not to publish anything detrimental to the party, neither m e Vhdicator nor La Minerve, on the advice of their editorial advisers in Fabre's bookstore would have attempted to publish detailed accounts of the speeches at St. Charles which revealed the rift within its ranks. O'Callaghan was well aware of that division the night before any of those speeches were delivered when he and Papineau helped to draft the resolutions for the meeting to approve. The resolutions had to meet three criteria. The main one was that they had to bridge the ideological gulf which was dividing the party. They also had to be acceptable to the five thousand Patriotes attending the meeting, who for the most part represented the concerns of the Richelieu Valley farmers. F i l y they had to be acceptable to Patriotes elsewhere in the province, many of whom held more conservative views. If that fine balance could be achieved, the resulting resolutions might constitute a broadly acceptable and unifying statement of party policy. To achieve that the authors had to skirt around controversial subjects. One thing that went by the board was any mention of making the entrenchment of seigneunalism a feature of Patriote policy, even though it was a subject which was very dear to Papineau. It was sacrificed because any resolution advocating it would find little support among the farmers of the Richelieu Wley, who were more likely to favour a drastic modification, or even the abolition of seigneuralism than they were its preselvation. Similarly, any direct reference to the question of reform rather than rebellion, or vice versa, was avoided, although the combined effect of all the resolutions did imply that some unspecified confrontation with the British was a likely outcome of the actions they prescribed. They included one calling for all parishes within the confederation to elect justices of the peace and militia officers, after the pattern established in the county of WOMountains; another advocating the recruitment of companies of the Fils de la L&ert&s;and a third proposing the encouragement of members of British regiments to desert, and then

En Route to Rebellion . assisting them to make their way to the United States. All of these

were based on the presumption of eventual confrontation.18 There were thirteen resolutions in all, and in the evening of the twenty-third, after all the speeches were over, they were put to the meeting, one by one. Each one was given a roar of approval, which was followed by a volley of musketry from the militiamen. The longest and loudest reception was reserved for the resolution stating that during the month of December the parishes within the six counties would meet again to elect justices of the peace and militia officers. The crowd saw that as a first overt act of rebellion, a unilateral declaration of independence, in fact, and greeted its approval accordingly.19 With all the resolutions adopted, the first day's business came to an end. All that was left to do the next morning was for Wolfred Nelson to read a communique summarizing the resolutions in less formal terms for popular consumption. After that, the meeting was adjourned, and the delegates returned home to await the next turn of events.20 It was not long in corning. Even as the crowd was dispersing, Papineau's cousin, Bishop Jean-Jacques Lartigue, was preparing a pastoral letter denouncing the Patriote cause as a heresy, and urging Catholics not to allow themselves to be seduced into rebelling against the established government.*' Needless to say, that elicited a vigorous response from the Patriote press. Both The Vindicator and La Mineme condemned Lartigue's action as an intrusion by the church into an area that was none of its concern. O'Callaghan described it as "one of those tricks before high Heaven, which make angels weep," and then went on to recommend that his readers turn to the page containing a long diatribe on the subject from the pen of Thomas Storrow Brown, writing over his pseudonym of L.M.N.= As for the secular authorities, the attorney general of the day, Charles Richard Ogden, assessed the meeting as having been "the fust public and open declaration of an intention to revolt."23He was probably correct, although it is unlikely that many of the participants saw it that way at the time. The symptoms were not that obvious. There were a few hints of it in the fiery rhetoric of some of the speakers, and one or two more in the contents of the resolutions, but the surest sign of it was not so evident. That was the behind the scenes power shift which saw effective control over future events pass into the hands of men like Amury Girod, T.S. Brown, and Drs. Wolfred Nelson and Cyrille Cote. Papineau's proper arena always had been the House of Assembly, and words were the best weapons

that he knew. For that reason he became progressively more inadequate as the leader of what was fast turning into a movement committed to deeds rather than debate.24Although he remained the party's titular head, after the St. Charles meeting his role was inspirational rather than directorial. That change is noticeable in the tone of Wolfred Nelson's introduction of him to the crowd there. "Stand forward illustrious Canadian!" he began, "and gladden the hearts of your ill-treated and suffering fellow citizens by your presence, and allow them with u p lifted voices to bless the defender of their rights, and the benefactor It sounded almost as if he was inviting a revered of their ~ountry."~ patriarch to stand up so that his people could see him and be inspired by the experience. The trouble was that Papineau at the age of fifty-one was no patriarch, and he had given no thought to becoming one so early in his life. O'Callaghan too was affected by this shift. Tied as he was by a bond of loyalty to his chief, being like him to the extent that he too was a man of words rather than of action, and seen by some Patriotes as a leper in their midst, he found himself occupying the same backwater as Papineau while the mainstream of events cascaded towards rebellion. Chateau St. Louis viewed the prospect of those events with some alarm. As soon as Gosford was in full possession of the news from St. Charles, he came to the conclusion that insurrection was in the air. Accordingly, he summoned his executive councillors to discuss with him what action to take. They convinced him that Montreal was the source of all the unrest, and that was where the problem should fist be attacked. On the basis of that advice he sent his attorney-general there armed with the authority to take whatever steps he considered necessary to maintain law and order.26 Once in the city, Ogden quickly decided that the most irnrnediate threat was a meeting of the Fils de la Liberte scheduled to be held on Monday, 6 November. He therefore had the magistrates issue an order prohibiting any political society from meeting, or marching through the streets on that day. Although the Fils de la Libertb were not actually named in the order, no-one was in any doubt against whom the prohibition applied. Just to be doubly sure, the magistrates made a point of speaking to as many prominent members of the organization as they could, and warning them that if the meeting took place, the Doric Club would almost certainly attack it, and that they would then have no choice but to call out the troops to restore order?

En Route to R e b e h

What is not entirely clear about the whole affair is whether the prohibition order was intended to apply to the activities of the Doric Club as well as to those of the Fils de la Lhertt?.The turn of events suggests that not to have been the case: some time early in the morning of 6 November, the Tories plastered Montreal with posters calling upon loyal citizens to meet at 12:30 p.m. at the Place d'Armes in order "to nip treason in the bud."28 Thus was the stage set for a confrontation of the two opposing paramilitary groups in the city and, among the victims of it would be The Vindicator. Some violence was ensured the moment that the Fils de la Libertt?decided to defy the order and to proceed with their meeting as a gesture of their rights as British citizens. Many of them took the precaution of arming themselves with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on, be they sticks, stones, daggers, butchers' implements, sword sticks or pistols. Despite that, though, the leaders still deemed it prudent not to advertise their movements, so the various sections were instructed to carry neither flags nor banners, to play no marching music, and to make their separate ways to the meeting place as inconspicuously as possible." Their destination was an inn yard, near the Haymarket, and by about 2:00 p.m., the several sections, about fifteen hundred men in all, had reached it without incident. The afternoon's business commenced with the adoption of a number of strong and stining resolutions calculated to arouse the crowd to a high state of enthusiasm. Then came the turn of the orators, and a number of them made speeches from the vantage offered by an upstairs window. They included some of the most vehement Patriote demagogues, noted fiebrands like Amury Girod, T.S. Brown, and OVCallaghan, who was perhaps hoping to recoup some of his lost esteem in party circles with a rousing speech." Unfortunately, there are no records of what they all had to say, but it can be assumed that it was something fiery and uncompromising, calculated to bring already simmering tempers to the boil. Before that point was ever reached, though, the proceedings were distu&ed by a hail of rocks hurled over the gate that opened on to Notre Dame Street by members of the Doric Club who had discovered where the meeting was being held. For a while the assembled Fils de la Lhertt? hied to ignore the barrage, but after enduring a good hour of it, they had had enough and prepared to leave the yard.31 Thinking that a counter-attack was about to take place, the rock throwers withdrew towards the horse market, known locally as Tat-

tersall's, where they hastily threw up a barricade, as if they intended to stand and fqht. If that was their plan, it came to naught. The Fils de la Libmt?by-passed the banicade, and made their way homewards via alternative routes.= Such fqhting as did ensue amounted to no more than a few running scuffles through the streets from which neither side emerged totally victorious. In the magistrates' eyes it was sufficient to warrant calling out the troops. However when the troops did arrive on the scene of any fighting, they did very little to stop it, and seemed content to stand aside and let the rival parties battle it outA Ultimately, after the Fils de la Libertt? had reached their homes, and the fighting had petered out, the streets were left to the Doric Club members who, decided to vent their fury on attacking the homes of prominent M o t e s . They targeted several, including the Papineau residence where, for a while, its fate, and that of its temfed occupants hung in the balance but, after ten noisy minutes, and a few broken windows, troops appeared on the scene and the mob moved off.34 Its next target was The Vhdcator office. Seeing the mob's approach, the paper's publisher, Louis Penault, who lived over it, managed to hustle his family out of the building by a rear door, and left the field open for the attackers to wreak whatever havoc they wished. First they ransacked the office, forcing desks and cupboards open and throwing their contents out into the street. Then, when there was no more damage they could do there, they moved into the printing shop where they did likewise with the racks of type, the entire stock of paper, and with any parts of the presses that they could remove or break off. By the time the military patrol arrived on the scene, the whole place was a shambles and, for all practical intents and purposes, The Vhdicator was no more. O'Callaghan had published his last issue of the ~aper.3~ Where he was, and what he was doing while all this was going on is not known. He must have taken refuge in some safe haven for, had he ever been seen on the streets, he would certainly have been in grave danger. T.S.Brown made the mistake of doing that. Thinking the disorders to be over after the street scuffles had died down, he set out from the Haymarket to make his way home. Along the way he met up with a roving party of Tones which he attempted to mollify by a show of geniality, greeting those of its members whom he knew by name. He was wasting his time; the moment he turned his back on the gang he was felled by a blow from a bludgeon accompanied by cries of, "Brown! Kill him! Kill him!" He escaped with his life but

En Route to Rebellion

suffered a number of cuts and bruises and the permanent loss of the sight in his right eye." The general turmoil in Lower Canada had not passed unnoticed in Upper Canada, where William Lyon Mackenzie's Reform party was also moving towards rebellion. Although there was no formal arrangement between it and the Patriotes to act in concert, there was a tacit understanding that they would keep each other informed as to what their plans were, so that whatever pressure the one was able to bring to bear on the British administration might be augmented by that of the other. That understanding was the result of a number of informal meetings, spread over the previous two or three years, which had brought Mackenzie, Papineau, O'Callaghan, and others together from time to time to discuss matters of mutual interest. One obvious outcome of those meetings was to be seen in a regular exchange of editorial articles between Mackenzie's Constitution and The Vindicator, an arrangement which, along the way, had given rise to a degree of mutual regard between O'Callaghan and his Upper Canadian counterpart which would survive the rebellions, and develop into a fitful friendship lasting until Mackenzie died in 1861. As the frequency of disorders and demonstrations escalated in and around Montreal during the fall of 1837, Mackenzie became increasingly apprehensive and in the dark over what was going on there. Accordingly, he decided to send a personal emissary to confer with the Patriote leadership in Montreal in the hope of finding out what its plans might be.37 He chose one of his close associates, Jesse Lloyd, to undertake the mission, and early in November, Lloyd left Toronto, armed with letters of introduction to Papineau, T.S. Brown, and O'Callaghan, and made his way secretly to Montreal. He arrived there soon after the events of the sixth, and went directly to Papineau's residence where he met with the Patriote leader, alone at first, and later with Dr. Robert Nelson and O'Callaghan in attendance. After that he was taken to meet Brown, most likely by O'Callaghan.38There are no records of what was discussed at either of the meetings, other than what Brown himself wrote on the subject, and what Lloyd had to say on his return to Toronto when he reported that "the Lower Canadians were all ready and prepared. . . . So soon as the ice began to float in the river opposite Montreal, they intended to cross over and entrench themselves in some part of the country adjacent, but wished us, the Reformers of Upper Canada, to make the first move, giving them notice of the time when we should do so, so they would second us."39

Edmund Bailey O'CaUaghn If Lloyd's report was accumte, and there is no reason to think otherwise, his mission had left him with the impression that the Patriotes were well organized, and had the notion in mind of co-ordinated uprisings in the two Canadas. Sad to say, it was a false impression. The Patriotes had no plan of action whatsoever, as Brown reveals in his own account of the events leading up to the rebellion:

So general was the idea abroad that we were organized and ripe for revolt, that Mackenzie, who had planned a rising in the rear of Toronto, and an attack on the Capital, sent an agent to communicate his designs, and learn ours. We had none, and not even a committee with whom the agent could consult. One of the few with whom he was able to communicate, much alarmed at this notice of Mackenzie's unexpected intentions, brought this agent to my room for consultation. My friend taking me aside, said: "You know we are doing nothing, and have no designs for the future; Mackenzie should be undeceived, and dissuaded from his intentions." I replied that Mackenzie knew his own business, and should be allowed to take his course, which, result as it might, could only help us." What from Toronto might have looked like an organized campaign of disorder and civil disobedience was in reality nothing more than the unco-ordinated outcome of the chaotic state of affairs that prevailed among the Patriotes. It was a state which led to disorders occurring at the whim of local leaders, rather than at the behest of a centralized command structure. In the days following Jesse Lloyd's return to Toronto, rumours raced through the streets of Montreal. The most persistent of these was that the arrest of Papineau, and a number of other prominent Patriotes, was imminent. Denis-Benjamin Wger, Papineau's cousin, had heard, on good authority he claimed, that it was true. He warned his relative that he would be well-advised to lie low, and if he did venture out of doors, to do so in disguise. Papineau's immediate familywent even farther; they counselled him to leave the city without delay, advice which he decided to followY On the evening of the thirteenth, he slipped out of the house, heavily disguised, met with OSCal1aghanat a pre-arranged rendezvous and, together, they left the city under the cover of darkness. They made their way to Pointe a w 'krnbles, at the eastern extremity of Montreal Island, where they persuaded two boatmen to ferry

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them across the St. Lawrence to Varennes. They were the vanguard of what became a general exodus of leading Patriotes from the city, which would leave the Fils de la LzBettg, and any others, F'renchCanadian or Irish, who might have been prepared to take up arms on behalf of the Patriotes, disorganized and without direction.@

Chapter 8 Rebellion! apineau and O'Callaghan's destination when they left Montreal is not known. Wherever it was, it certainly entailed crossing the P St. L a m n c e and was most likely S t Hyacinthe, where a number of Papineau's relatives lived, and where he probably thought they could find refuge. Whether that was so or not, it seems clear enough that it was not their intention to go and raise the flag of rebellion in the Richelieu Valley. The cold light of the morning of 14 November found them at Varennes where, quite by chance, Amury Girod happened to be, shipping some grain off to market. By good fortune he recorded what took place there in his journal, thereby providing a first hand account of the meeting. It took place outside Girard's Hotel, on the waterfront, and Girod was observant enough to notice the physical and mental state of the two fugitives from Montreal, both of whom were suffering from the ravages of a sleepless night, and a crossing of the river in an open boat under the cover of darkness: I found there 1st O'Callaghan, trembling with cold, I think with uneasiness also, he wore a very elegant surtout, his head was concealed by an immense red shawl, which formed a singular contrast with the paleness of his face2nd Papineau in a Capote, but presenting a marked difference in his appearance from the former; because he was tranquil, composed, and, although allowing nothing to escape his attention, he manifested not the slightest symptom of apprehension.'

Edmund Baiky O'Callaghn

There followed a conversation in which O'Callaghan who, despite his being "oppressed with fatigue,' acquainted Girod with the developments in Montreal. Papineau "did not articulate a single syllable, indicative of physical and moral debility." Talk then turned to what should be done next, and Girod's advice to them was clear enough. "Go you to St Dennis," he said, "see [Dr. Wolfred] Nelson, be ready to procure Arms." They decided to do as he had suggested, at least to the extent of seeking out Wolfred Nelson, and shortly afterwards they set off by carriage to try and do so? In describing what happened during the following three and a half weeks, it is rarely possible to distinguish between what Papineau did, what O'Callaghan did, and what they did together. They were more or less inseparable throughout the period and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it has to be assumed that whatever they did, they did it together. It is a situation that is further complicated by much of the source material not being contemporaneous with the events it puports to document The result is that, at times, there is a want of precision to it, especially with regard to times and places. Another thing to bear in mind is that a great deal of that material comes from the pens of such men as T.S. Brown, Dr. Wolfred Nelson, Papineau himself, and his son Amedee, all of whom were often more concerned with justifying their own actions at the time than with leaving objective accounts of the events for posterity. All their writings bear the mark of their personal biases and one of them, the Abbe ~tienneChartier, was so ill-disposed towards O'Callaghan that he felt compelled to use the most derogatory of terms when refemng to hirne3Being forced to rely on such documents results very largely from the Patriote leaders' decision to bum all the records of their activities up till that time before the actual fihting started at St Denis, on 23 November. While that might have been a prudent move in the light of the time, it only obscures the view of anyone trying to discern what took place from a viewpoint that is more than a century and a half removed from the actual events. The following account, therefore, suffers from the consequences of that, and is the result of an attempt to pick an objective course through a morass of subjective data! It would appear that Papineau and O'Callaghan reached St. Denis some time during the afternoon, or early evening of the fourteenth, and there met up with Dr. Wolfred Nelson who persuaded them to accompany him to St Charles, about twelve kilometres farther on, to pass on their tidings to leading Patriotes in that cornmunity. Thus, around eleven o'clock that night, the three presented themselves at Dr. Fkancois Chicot-Duvert's door. After hearing what

Rebellion!

they had to tell, he took them across the Richelieu River to St. Marc, to the home of Joseph-Toussaint Drolet, a haunt of prominent Patriotes in the area? At the informal gathering which followed, the news brought by the hrvo fugitives from Montreal was sufficient to convince even the most skeptical of those present that the time for talking was fast running out, and that the future held promise of bullets rather than of rhetoric. For that reason much of the talk centred on how to obtain arms, a topic that Amury Girod had first broached that morning at brines, and one that had grown out of his belief that the political situation had deteriorated to a point where it was only a matter of time before the Gosford administtation resorted to military action in order to maintain control amidst the growing disorder. Although nothing concrete was settled that night at St Marc, the considered opinion of most of those there was that such an eventuality would most likely occur after a big Patriote rally scheduled to be held at St. Charles on 4 December. It was widely thought at this time that Papineau would take advantage of the occasion to proclaim a declaration of independence; yet, in Drolet's house, on the night of 14 November, he had little to say on that, or on any other subject, and was described by Chicot-Duvert as being gloomy and thoughtful. That could have been nothing more than fatigue but, whether it was or not, it left the impression that he was reluctant to contemplate any steps that might further exacerbate relations with the British. That view was reinforced when he tried to dissociate himself from the decisions made at the meeting of the Confederation of the Six Counties. When Drolet remruked that all of the problems currently facing the Patriotes could be traced back to that gathering, Papineau snapped back that what had happened there had been none of his doing since he had only attended it in passing. It was a foolish remark for him to have made for it was demonstrably false, everyone in the room knew that, and it must have left some of them wondering whether or not his commitment to the idea of revolution was as strong as he had made it out to be in one or two of his public orationse6 On that note the impromptu midnight meeting broke up, with two important questions left unanswered. The one was how to give an air of legitimacy to any acts of insurgency that might occur in the days ahead; the other was how to obtain the arrns and ammunition that would be needed if those acts were to succeed. If any consensus were to be reached on those questions a further meeting would have to take place.

So far as can be determined, that occurred on either the fifteenth, or the sixteenth of the month.' It was most likely the latter since both Papineau and O'Callaghan would have needed rest after at least forty sleepless hours, and also since it would allow more time to assemble a representative group of Richelieu Valley Patriotes8 That second meeting, held in Wolfred Nelson's house at St. Denis, was attended by a larger group than had been present at the earlier one in Drolet's living room, and it certainly approved a document of some sort. However, it is not possible to say with certainty that it was a declaration of independence since the only copy of it was burned, along with all the other documents, on 23 November. Writing of it in 1848, Papineau referred to it as having been no more than a circular summoning supporters to the mass meeting on 4 December, protesting that it contained nothing stronger than the manifesto approved by the six counties at St. Charles. Others, nevertheless, saw it differently, and men like Wolfred Nelson had no reservations over refemng to the document as a declaration of independence. He could well have been correct in that assessment for, whatever it was, the document was considered important enough to warrant the signatures of Papineau, Nelson, Dr. Kimber from Chambly, David Bourdages from St Denis, and four others, presumably including O'Callaghan, who would certainly have been at the meeting, and have had a hand in drafting itm9 With military action against the Patriotes becoming more likely by the day, it is possible that some form of command structure was discussed at that second meeting. It has been claimed that a committee, called the Council of Patriotes, was formed with a civil and a military wing. The former consisted of Papineau and O'callaghan, and the latter was headed by Wolfred Nelson. Such an arrangement could certainly have been established by the meeting, but there is no evidence that it actually was, other than what is contained in Amedee Papineau's memoirs which, it has to be realized, is neither a first hand, nor a second hand account of events. His information on the subject, for what it is worth, was written in 1880, during a visit to Valetta, on the island of Malta, after reading the memoirs of a retired British Major-General who had served in Lower Canada in his youth.l0 In theory, Papineau was best qualified to assume military command, as he held the rank of major in the militia Wolfred Nelson's credentials consisted merely of his having served as a military surgeon in the War of 1812. His assumption of military command at S t Denis bears every indication of having been a fait accompli before

ever Papineau arrived on the scene. Nelson was the acknowledged Patriote leader thereabouts, as we1 as the leading industrialist in St Denis where he operated a distillery. Under those circumstances it would have been natural enough for him to assume charge on his own turf when it appeared to be threatened. Additionally, such an arrangement was consistent with what happened elsewhere in the area, which saw pockets of armed Patriotes, each with its own local leader, operating as independent units in places as widely separated as St. Eustache in the north, and St. Mathias in the south. It was not planned that way, but then nothing much was planned in the rebellion anyway. It was a situation that grew out of the fragmented nature of the Patriote movement, a chronic condition that was further mirrored in its failure to establish anything resembling a central command structure.'1 As for the question of finding money with which to purchase arms, that was left for Papineau and Nelson to deal with. The day after the meeting at St. Denis, they sent David Bourdages to try and persuade all the church wardens in the Richelieu Valley to hand over whatever parish funds they had in their possession. It was argued that the money rightfully belonged to the parishioners since they had contributed it in the first place, but the churchwardens did not see it that way. Without exception they turned the Patriotes' request down flat.12 The next recourse was to try and tap sources in Montreal. Once again David Bourdages was the emissary, and he went there carrying written requests for help, probably in the form of promissory notes. Among them, without any doubt, there would have been one addressed to the directors of the Banque du Peuple, the institution which, it was widely assumed, had been established to meet just such a need, but more of that later.13 It is interesting to turn for a moment, to the question of what Papineau's grand strategy might have been, if indeed he actually had one at all. It could only have been as Jesse Lloyd had reported to Mackenzie, namely to wait until "the ice began to flow in the river opposite Montreal" before doing anything that was likely to bring the Patriotes into open conflict with the British. Such a plan would have had some merit to it for, had it ever been possible to put it into pmctice, the ice would have impeded the moving of troops across the St. Lawrence, and thus have given the Patriotes in the Richelieu Valley an advantage. Unfortunately, any hope of such a thing happening was destroyed at about 10:00 a,m on 17 November.14 The event which culminated in that stroke of misfortune had taken place in Montreal on the previous day when the anticipated

warrants for the arrest of the leading Pahiotes were issued. Tho of them took Constable Malo to the St Jean homes of Dr. Davignon and Paul Desrnamis in the small hours of Fkiday, the seventeenth. He had orders to apprehend the two, and to take them back to Montreal in irons. That he did, and with his prisoners in custody the constable set out for the city, choosing to go via a mute that would take him through Charnbly and Longueuil, so as to let the countryside see what measures the British were prepared to take in order to stamp out Patriote activity, and also to overawe it with the display of military power that his retinue, consisting of a troop of volunteer cavalry and a number of regulars, represented. As the column approached Longueuil, it was sighted by a party of armed Patriotes which was not large enough to challenge it so, without revealing itself, it withdrew to gather reinforcements. A short time later, and a little farther along the road, Constable Malo and his escort were ambushed by three dozen well-armed men. There was a brief exchange of words, and then the shots began to fly. At that the volunteer cavalrymen turned and bolted, and were soon followed by the regulars. That left Constable Malo alone, at the reins of the waggon carrying his prisoners, and he too decided to make a run for it However, before he had completed the manoeuvre of turning his waggon around, a stray bullet hit one of his horses and it fell, causing the vehicle to roll into the ditch. Malo, showing great presence of mind and no little agility, leapt from the waggon and took off down the mad as fast as his legs would cany him, leaving his prisoners to be released by their rescuers.15 So started the Rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada, an event that certainly had a touch of the ludicrous to it but, nevertheless, one that was not without its repercussions. In the fust place it meant that the Patriotes had fially thrown down the gauntlet, and that the British would undoubtedly accept the challenge by retaliating at a time and place of their choosing. It also meant that the Pahiotes had deprived themselves of whatever control they might have had over when, where, and under what circumstances they would confront their enemy, Thereafter they were forced into making extempore responses to whatever military moves the British chose to make. The arrest warrants which had precipitated the Longueuil encounter also forced T.S. Brown out of Montreal, and drove him to the Richelieu Valley. The story of that journey is a catalogue of misfortunes and mishaps well worthy of exploration in its own right but, so far as the present narrative is concerned, suffice it to say that he reached St. Charles on Saturday, 18 November, leading an assortment of variously armed Patriotes. If his own account is to be be-

lieved, he had gathered them together along the way from Montreal, mostly "at a collection of houses and two taverns" where he "found a crowd of excited people." And, as they crossed the river from St Marc to St. Charles, watching them from two carts were Wolfred Nelson, Papineau, and O'callaghan. l6 It had to be Brown who brought them the fist news of the encounter at Longueuil, which made his arrival doubly valuable for, beside bringing much needed armed men with him, he also alerted Papineau and his entourage to the possibility of a British attack at any moment. However, whatever ideas they might have had in mind for the deployment of Brown's little army, he had some of his own which his men immediately set about putting into practice. They commandeered the Debartzch house and set about fortifying it, thereby establishing, by right of possession, their intention of staying put and becoming the defenders of St Charles.'7 Wolfred Nelson must have approved of the arrangement for he soon left for St Denis to oversee the construction of defence works there and to muster a force large enough to man them. Having of what had happened at Longueuil, he knew heard Brown's r e p o ~ that it was only a matter of time before the British retaliated and that, when they did, they would certainly attack the Patriotes in the Richelieu Wley. When that occurred, he believed St. Denis and St Charles would be obvious targets and should, therefore, be fortified with all possible haste.I8 Papineau and O'Callaghan remained at St Charles overnight in order to attend a meeting the next day, called to elect militia officers. Papineau named Brown to be the "General" in charge there, and called upon all those under his command to obey his orders. To that O'Callaghan added his own amen and spoke in glowing terms of the appointment for, so far as he was concerned, Brown was a hero who had acquitted himself bravely in the disorders at Montreal on the sixth, and whose honourable wounds, received in them, were visible evidence of his val0ur.1~That done, "General" Brown was left to his command while Papineau and O'Callaghan returned to St. Denis, and their quarters in Wolfred Nelson's house.20 Apart from the meeting at St Charles, Sunday the twentieth was an uneventful day both at St Denis and St Charles. Although Bishop Lartigue's notorious mandement of 24 October had made it very clear that the Patriotes' opposition to the established government was offensive to the church, most of them remained devout enough Catholics to observe the obligations of their faith, even though many of the clergy had little sympathy for them and their cause?'

E d d Bailey O'CaUaghan

The next day, though, Monday, it was back to felling trees building barricades, repairing fire-arms, which were often potentially more dangerous to their users than they were to anyone at whom they were fued, and amassing powder and shot to suit their multiplicity of calibres. As for artillery, two antiquated six pounders were recovered at St Charles from a barn where they had been quietly rusting away since the War of 1812. They were cleaned and mounted on runners by the local blacksmith, while a supply of grapeshot for them in the form of bits of scmp metal, was gathered up from around the village. At St. Denis they had no such heavy weaponry. All they had to repel a British attack was an assortment of small arms, mainly fowling pieces but augmented with a few pistols.22 How Papineau and O'Callaghan occupied themselves while all that was going on can only be surmised. However, since the former was, nominally at least, the supreme commander of the Patriote forces which, by devolution, made the latter his adjutant, it is likely that they spent their time inspecting the construction of defence works at St. Denis, and offering advice and encouragement to those building them. They might even have ventured as far afield as St. Charles, about twelve kilometres to the south, to inspect what was going on there and to confer with "General" Brown. It is also likely that they spent a good deal of their time closeted upstairs in Wolfred Nelson's house, pondering how best to defend the village when the inevitable attack on it occurred. With respect to that, both Papineau and O'Callaghan are known to have been opposed to the Patriotes trying to achieve their goals by force of arms, at least until the St. Lawrence began to freeze. However, after the skirmish at Longueuil, they were faced with the likelihood of an immediate military response, and had no choice but to come to terms with the prospect of i t Even so, they well knew that given the Patriotes' state of unpreparedness, and the unrestricted freedom of movement that the British troops enjoyed so long as the river remained bee of ice, defeat was a very real possibility. In that dire predicament all they could do was try and remedy the most glaring deficiencies as quickly as they could and to pray for cold weather.23 Their efforts did not go unnoticed for, unbeknown to them, news of whatever they did by way of preparing to repel attackers was quickly passed on to the British. Even in the Richelieu Valley, where Patriotes abounded, there were spies and Tory sympathizers who, not satisfied with acquainting Lord Gosford with what was actually taking place there, allowed their imaginations to inflate the desper-

ate efforts to fortify a couple of villages into preparations for an allout attack on Montreal with an army of twelve thousand men.24 Whether or not their exaggerations did in fact sway the governor is impossible to say, but something certainly did for, on 22 November, the British Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant-General Sir John Colborne, issued orders for a two-pronged assault on the Patriote positions at St. Denis and St. Charles. His plan called for the deployment of two columns. The one, under the command of Sir Charles Gore, was to move on the villages from the north, via Sorel; and the other, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Wetherall, was to do so from the south, by way of C h a m b l ~ . ~ ~ On the evening of the twenty-second, Gore crossed from Montreal to Sorel by steamboat with a force made up of elements from the 24th and 32nd Regiments, along with a detachment of artillerymen in charge of a twelve pound howitzer. At Sorel he was reinforced by the addition of two companies from the 66th Regiment. At 10:OO p.m., he and his four hundred men marched out into the darkness towards St. Denis, about thirty kilometres to the south. It was a wretched night for such an enterprise. Even as the column moved out, torrential rain began to fall which not only drenched the men to the skin, but also turned the dirt roads into quagmires.26 News of Gore's approach reached St. Denis well ahead of him, and the Patriote defenders, who at that juncture could count on putting no more than seventy men with serviceable weapons into a firing line, prepared to face a numerically superior and infinitely better armed opponent. The battle was joined at about 9:30 a.m. when Patriotes first fired upon the advancing soldiers from the windows of the widow St. Germain's three storeyed stone house.27 At about the same time that those first shots were exchanged, fi.-R. Fabre arrived at Wolfred Nelson's house from Montreal, and demanded to see Papineau. He was taken to the upstairs room where Papineau and O'Callaghan were, and the three conferred briefly. After that Fabre left.28 No sooner had he gone than the other two prepared to do likewise, even though, by then, the battle was at its full fury. According to statements made eleven years later by witnesses of their departure, Papineau first exchanged his hat for a gray habitant tuque, then he and O'Callaghan mounted their horses and rode off towards the south, allegedly pausing at the outskirts of the village just long enough to assure a man who enquired where they were going that they were on their way to St. Charles in order to get reinforcements, and that they would be back shortly. St. Charles, however, was not thing to do with reinforcements. They were heading for St. Hyac-

inthe, which was a logical direction in which to travel if their ultimate destination was the United States. Had they taken a more direct route to the border, it would have involved running the gauntlet of British patrols, which were known to be active in the vicinity of St. Hilaire, where Wetherall's column was bivouacked waiting for the weather to improve so that it could continue its march to St. charies.29 They reached St. Hyacinthe at about 10:00 p.m., and took shelter in the home of Papineau's brother, Augustin, where they collapsed from sheer exhaustion. It had been a long, hard day spent in travelling roads that the rains and snow had made almost impassable. Their progress had been further delayed by bands of armed Patriotes, mostly on their way to St Denis, demanding to know where they were going, and their business.30 Soon after they arrived at Augustin Papineau's house, they were persuaded to move to his sister's n e a y home. There they ate while others debated over where in the village they would be safest for, without a doubt, residences belonging to members of the Papineau family would be the first places that the British would look for them. In the end it was arranged that they would go to the home of a trusted neighbour, a farmer by the name of Poulin, under whose roof they remained undetected for several days, until they felt it time to continue on their way.31 By the time they had dined, and moved on to Poulin's fa&, the fghting at St. Denis had been over for hours, and the htriote defenders there were celebrating what they considered to have been a famous victory. They had forced the British trwps from their positions, and had driven them back up the road towards Sore1 in some disorder. It was an unexpected but, nevertheless, an exhilarating outcome, for Wolfred Nelson's men had been outnumbered, and outgunned. However, their success was not entirely attributable to their intrepidity; the trail weariness of Gore's troops was a contributing factor too. They had anived at St Denis exhausted from an overnight march; they were cold, wet, unfed, and had little stomach for a battle-miseries that were exace&ated when, with dawn, the temperature plunged and the overnight rain and sleet gave way to snow? Su~prisingas the victory at St. Denis was, though, the real enigma of the occasion was not how a small, untrained body of poorlyarmed farmers, stiffened with a few militiamen, managed to overcome a superior force of regular soldiers but why it was that Papineau and O'Callaghan left the scene of the battle almost as soon as it began, It was the question which gave rise to an acrimo-

Rebellion!

nious public debate in 1848,and throughout it, Papineau maintained that he and the doctor left St. Denis at Wolfred Nelson's request so that, in the event of negotiations with the British becoming necessary at some future date, there would be Patriote leaders available who did not bear the stigma of having taken up arms against the government.= That could have been so but, like Wolfred Nelsons version of the same events, it is not very convincing. According to him, Papineau and O'Callaghan left St. Denis entirely on their own initiative, and he even went so far as to publish a number of affidavits, which implied that they litemlly bolted when the shooting began."That same point was made quite explicitly in a letter which Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine wrote, a mere seven months after the baffle: "It seems that at the beginning of the St Denis affair, O'Callaghan and Papineau ran away from Nelson's house, where they were. It is also said that several habitants wanted to fue on them, but that Nelson's young son prevented them from doing it Is this really hue?"s5The reference to the alleged circumstances surrounding the departure like the rest of the quotation, has to be regarded with some skepticism because it is obviously based on nothing more reliable than rumour and hearsay. Unfortunately, any documentation that might clear up the mystery of what actually did happen at St Denis was destroyed, on Papineau's orders, before the fighting there began, so it is impossible to verify any of the accounts of what took place. However, viewing the matter from a purely subjective standpoint, everything that is known about Papineau and O'Callaghan suggests that, although they might not have agreed with Wolfred Nelson on certain matters, they were loyal and committed Patriotes, and it is unlikely that they would have deserted their comrades at such a moment without good reason. Furthermore, it has to be remembered that Papineau still saw himself as the leader of the pMy, and as such he was under no obligation to acquaint Wolfred Nelson, or anyone else, with what his intentions were. Perhaps the most significant thing about the whole controversy is that, although it might have simmered for years, it only erupted in the summer of 1848, right after the riding of St. Maurice had returned Papineau by acclamation to the Legislative Assembly of the then United Canadas. That was taken by some as signalling his return from the political wilderness, where he had languished ever since the rebellion. However, standing between him and his playing a dominant role in the House stood one of his former disciples, Lafontaine, who had successfully skirted round the insurrection of

1837-1838,and had gone on to become the leader of the liberals in Canada East The bone of contention over which they bared their fangs was the old question of the province separating from British North America, which Papineau chose to reopen. It was in the course of that argument that Lafontaine's supporters, notably Wolfred Nelson, rallied to his defence by launching a campaign designed to discredit the former Patriote leader in the eyes of the public. At about the same time, Nelson persuaded the Abbe ~tienne Chartier to publish the text of the letter he wrote, but never sent, to Papineau in 1839, still another document which condemned both him and O'Callaghan for the pa& they played in the rebellion yet which, l i e the others, failed to explain why they left St Denis at the time, and in the manner in which they did.36 That being the case, it is worth considering an alternative explanation, one which has a modicum of credibility to it since it is supported by a body of circumstantial evidence. It is based on the hypothesis that the hunied departure from St. Denis was connected with E.-R. Fabre's brief visit on the morning of 23 November 1837. It goes back to the days immediately preceding the battle, when David Bourdages was sent to Montreal to try and raise money for arms and ammunition. As has already been stated, one institution to which he would undoubtedly have carried such a request was the Banque du Peuple. By his own admission, he returned to St. Denis empty handed, so he certainly failed to persuade the directors to open up their coffers, not so much because they were out of sympathy for the Patriotes, but because, at that particular time, they were in no position to accede to such a request The bank's president, Louis-Michel Wger, had been arrested, and was locked in the city jail as one of the Patriote activists who had played a major part i x Counties. That set off in the Meeting of the Confederation of the S rumours around Montreal to the effect that he had been imprisoned because the bank had advanced money to the rebels, which, in turn, led to a run on its funds. To stop that, and to restore confidence in the institution, the directors had taken the step of issuing a formal , denial of having done any such thing." That being the situation, it is not unreasonable to suspect that Fabre, who was perhaps the most respected member of the bank's board of directors and who, at one time, had been its treasurer, went to the Richelieu Valley to acquaint Papineau with the state of affairs in Montreal, and to advise him that he would have to seek money elsewhere. Elsewhere, of course, meant the United States, where it was widely assumed in Patriote circles that there was considerable support for the cause.

Rebellion!

Although there is no hard evidence of that having been the purpose of Fabre's flying visit to St Denis, it can, nevertheless, be inferred to have been so from the wealth of material showing that, immediately upon arriving in the United States, Papineau applied himself to the business of attempting to raise money and to negotiating deals with arms merchants there? Being an intelligent man, he could not have failed to see that whatever the outcome at St. Denis might be, the fate of the premature Richelieu Valley uprising was sealed. It was only a matter of time before the superior fire power of the British troops prevailed and, until the Patriotes could arm and deploy a comparable body of men, such as the Fils de la Liberte might become, that would continue to be the case. It also goes a long way towards accounting for why O'Callaghan accompanied him when he left St. Denis, with the battle there barely started. Papineau needed his help in the fund-raising campaign that he would have to launch in the United States if he hoped to buy munitions there. O'Callaghan would be able to appeal to the generosity of the thousands of his immigrant countrymen living in the industrial cities in the northeastern part of the country who, almost without exception, shared his view that fighting British oppression was a noble and just cause. Papineau also wanted to use O'Callaghan's persuasiveness to help break down the resistance of hard-headed Yankee arms dealers, and other industrialists, to aiding the Patriotes in some practical manner. In addition to those eminently sensible reasons for accompanying his chief, there was also the personal one that, apart from Papineau, O'Callaghan was no longer sure of who among the Patriotes he could trust. That being so, rather than face an uncertain future in Lower Canada, even though he did not share his leader's entire political philosophy, he went with him out of both expediency and loylty. In the period immediately after the victory at St. Denis, attention shifted to St. Charles, where Brown was preparing to face the second British column, which was expected to advance from the south as soon as the weather improved. Unfortunately for the defenders there, he was no Wolfred Nelson. Perhaps he was just incapable of handling the stress of command, or maybe his previous wounds had unnerved him but, whatever the problem was, when it was coupled with his intemperance, it resulted in his being in a more or less permanent state of inebriation. It was a condition that was noticed by at least three people. One of them, Joseph-Toussaint Drolet, found Brown so drunk at St. Charles that he was unable to carry on a rational conversation with hirn."The other two were O'Callaghan and Papineau and, in 1844, the former wrote to the latter that, "I am in-

Edrnund Bailey OJCalIaghan

formed by those friends who have seen him [Brown],that he has very much fallen in character in consequence of his strong habits of intemperance. He is often drunk,and that not secretly. That much is regretted. It will not however astonish you, after what we saw of He was probably referring to what they saw on him at St. Charle~."~ the eve of the battle when he and Papineau visited St. Charles, apparently to encourage the Patriote defenders there to stand firm and not to retreat?' That was the last known appearance of either of them in any official capacity connected with the rebellion in the Richelieu Valley. The next day, 25 November, Wetherall's troops moved on St. Charles. This time it was a well rested body of men that faced the Patriotes, and the outcome was never in doubt. The defenders were routed but, well before that, "Generaln Brown had left the scene. The last that was seen of him was early in the engagement, long before its result was settled, when, according to Amed6e Papineau, he mounted a horse and rode away, shouting back over his shoulder as he spurred his mount on, "have courage, my Mends, I am going to look for reinforcements." With that he galloped off towards St Denis. Seeing their commanding officer abandon them in that manner had a demoralizing effect on the.defenders of St. Charles. Immediately thereafter they began to disperse, leaving the way open for the British to inflict a crushing defeat on all that was left of Patriote resistance in the Richelieu Valle~.~ That was not the end of the rebellion in Lower Canada. There were other battles in other places in all of which the Patriotes were defeated, but neither Papineau nor O'Callaghan played any part in them. What happened in those conflicts was determined entirely by others. Oddly enough, and contrary to expectations, none of those subsequent battles took place in Montreal. There, although the Fils de la Libertt5 and other supporters were numerically strong, they played no active part in the rebellion. When the Patriote chiefs fled the city, they were left leaderless, and thus remained quiescent Neither did Dr. Cyrille Cote's well-armed force at St. Mathias play any part in the events at St. Denis and St. Charles. It withdrew across the border into Vermont, probably as early as 25 November, and returned on 6 December only to be thoroughly trounced by the British at Moore's C0rners.4~ As for Papineau and O'Callaghan, they remained in hiding at Poulin's farm for a few days more, long enough, perhaps, for them to see the glow in the night sky on 2 December when British troops returned to St. Denis, this time unopposed, and reduced it to ashes. Finally they set out for the south, travelling on back roads and trails

until, some time between the fifth and the eighth of the month, they reached the international boundary and crossed over to Alberg on the American side. After only a brief halt there, they continued on their way, over the neck of Missisquoi Bay to Swanton and thence to Albany, a city with one of the largest concentrations of Irish immigrants in the United States.*

Part

HI1

The Unmaking of a Rebel, 18372 1880

Chapter 9 Old Connections 'Callaghan and Papineau made their way directly to Albany, arriving there during the second week in December. The latter 0 became a house guest in the home of James Porter, a court registrar there, where, after he had recuperated from his travels, he established a base from which to direct efforts, mainly O'Callaghan's, aimed at getting financial support for the Patriote cause.' There was, therefore, no such respite for his lieutenant. He was soon on the move again, arriving in New York shortly after the middle of the month, and W i g up lodgings at the Clinton Hotel.* O'Callaghan's mission there was simple enough, it was to raise money by whatever means he could, and to keep Papineau informed by mail on how he was progressing, but taking care not to reveal where his chief was by refraining from addressing any of his letters to him by name. It was all part of an elaborate scheme to keep Papineau's whereabouts secret during the first weeks of his exile. Beside having his mail addressed to a trusted third party, the scheme included such devices as keeping himself secluded from public view and, only venturing forth from his refuge incognito. It was all done to protect him from anyone who might be tempted by the S1,000 price on his head to abduct him, and to return him to Lower Canada for the reward. Oddly enough, no such precautions were taken to protect O'Callaghan, who also had a price on his head. He travelled frequently, and far, and never attempted to hide his identity or his whereabouts from anyone. Admittedly, the reward for his apprehension was only half as big as that offered for his chief, but it was still sizeable enough to have made it worth somebody's while to seize him. Perhaps Papineau was being a little overcautious, or even a trifle paranoid?

O'Callaghan's first letter back to Albany, written on 22 December, was full of optimism over how, in New York, things were "assuming some shape which promises final success." He was referring to plans to hold a giant rally to mobilize support for the Patriotes, and provide a fitting send-off for a fund-raising campaign aimed at tapping the generosity of New Yorkers.4 Six days later, he again wrote to Albany recounting in some detail what had happened at the rally, held the previous night. It had turned out to be a personal triumph for him:"It was a splendid sight, I never attended a meeting so enthusiastic in the course of my life. To tell you it was numerously attended would be to give you no idea of the meeting. It was literally packed and crowded to suffocation."5 What made the meeting most memorable to O'Callaghan, was that once the formalities were over he became the focus of an outpouring of public acclaim from the largely working class and predominantly Irish crowd, the equal of which he had never before experienced, nor ever would again. His own account of what took place captures all the atmosphere and the excitement of the occasion, and makes no secret of the exhilarating effect that it had on him: The Resolutions and preamble were then read amid the cheers of the meeting. They were most enthusiastically received and then another thundering roar of, "Aye," shook the house and recorded the fixed determination of the meeting, "To go the whole figure" for Canada At this stage of the proceedings one of the gentlemen came forward and told the meeting that he would introduce to them one of the Canadian "Rebels" for whom $2,000 are offered by the British government I went to the meeting under the impression that I should not be called on to speak. Indeed, I went solely to witness with my own eyes and learn for myself what sort of feeling existed in this city towards Canada In the course of the proceedings, one of the gentlemen asked me if I had any objections to speak [sic], I told him to advise with Mr. Staples and if that gentleman thought it would be advantageous to the cause, I had no objection. Mr. S. approved of it, and I consented on condition that I should be introduced by my own name, for I could not appear in public under any other. It was in this manner that I was hauled into the matter. I accordingly came forward, introduced as Dr. O'C., Member of the L.C.Assembly and Editor of The Vmdicator for whom

Old Connections 22500 are offered. I can give you an idea of the reception I

experienced. There I stood looking on the crowd of joyful and excited faces whilst the room rang with cheers, hurras and all sorts of congratulatorynoise. I never believed I could cut so important a figure' It was in vain for me to attempt to speak. "Stand up on the table," roared a hundred voices, as if they wished to examine if I had horns or a cloven hoof. So, accordingly, your humble servant was obliged to stand upon a chair, and the crowd began to cheer and fling about their hats wilder and louder than ever, after which they began to groan for the British government which had set a price on me. At last the storm, after roaring for some ten or fifteen minutes, did subside and I made my speech. In our corner of the room was hung a portrait of the Hon'ble Mr. Papineau, painted by James who resides in this city, and in the course of my observations I directed the attention of the people to this portrait of our leader. All eyes were in a moment stretched to devour it and three cheers for Papineau folthwith burst forth from the multitude. I thought to myself, were the original present, instead of the portrait, what a sensation he would have created, and I almost regretted he was not standing in my place. A Mr. Hoar, President of the Wo&men's Association of London followed me. Shortly after I retired into the other and private end of the building. I had not been there long, however, when a number of persons came forward to be introduced to me, some "to have the honor," as they said, "of shaking hands with me," all to congratulate me on my safe arrival among them, and to pledge themselves to defend and protect me from the B. Gov't. whilst in the city. I thanked them all in suitable terms. I mention these little circumstances to my friends in Albany not through any motive of self vanity. I hope they know I'm too wise for that. The cordial reception I experienced, the kind expressions of regard which were addressed to me, I took not as any compliment to myself personally, but as paid to Canada and as sympathy for her sufferings of which the people seemed to consider me the humble representative. All the kind expressions of sympathy were for Canada, and her alone, and so I received them, and returned thanks in her name and not my om.6

Unfortunately, the tidings that O'Callaghan had to report were not all glad ones. H e had a couple of pieces of bad news too. The one was that "a loan in this city is out of the question. After advising with several gentlemen I have given up all idea of it. The only way money can now be raised is by subscription." The other was equally ominous. It warned of a circumstance that boded ill for that method of fund raising too because "we have the bone and sinew-the working classes and the bourgeoisie; but the millionaires and the speculators are not with us."7 O'Callaghan remained in New York long enough to see the subscription launched and then on 2 January 1838 set off back to Albany, travelling via New Haven, rather than by the direct route up the Hudson by steamboat. The detour permitted him to meet with some of the gunsmiths in that city in the hope of reaching an accommodation with them over the supply of arms. That delayed his arrival back in Albany until the seventh, or the eighth of J a n ~ a r y . ~ Papineau himself had only been back there since the sixth. He had been to Middlebury, in Vermont, attending what proved to be perhaps the most critical meeting in the history of the Patriote movement. It defined the line along which the schism between its two remaining factions would occur. It was that separating those who wanted to see seigneurialism abolished in an independent Lower Canada from those who wanted to see it retained.g Ostensibly the meeting had been called to discuss a proposed invasion of the Canadas with the help of what, for want of a better term, were American mercenaries, including three inactive generals. However, it very soon degenerated into an argument over the inclusion, in a declaration of independence, of an article which would abolish all seigneurial rights. Any thought of that was completely unacceptable to Papineau, and that put him at odds with the more radical delegates, those who saw no place for seigneurialism in the democratic republic they had in mind. Those contrary views, which had been simmering beneath the surface for a long time, finally burst into the open and left the Patriote party deeply and irreparably split, never again to present a united front to the world. Thereafter, although there was still some contact between the two factions, they became, in effect, separate entities-one which looked for its direction to out-and-out revolutionaries like Dr. Cyrille Cote, ~ d o u a r d - ~ t i e n nRodier, e and Dr. Robert Nelson, became known as the physical force party; the other, sometimes called the peace party, followed the more conservative and less belligerent leadership of Papineau.Io

Old Connections One contemporary report of that fateful meeting claimed that "there were heated exchanges between Rodier and Papineau. Dr. O'Callaghan thought like Papineau. Cote and Nelson told me these facts, which I guarantee to be correct."I1 Guarantee or not, the author was quite wrong in his implication that O'Callaghan took part in the argument. It was physically impossible for him to have done so for, on the day in question, he was somewhere between New York and New Haven, over 400 kilometres to the south of Middlebury.l2 When he and Papineau really did meet, in Albany on the eighth of the month, they could only commiserate with each other. O'Callaghan had nothing good to report from either New York or New Haven, and Papineau had nothing encouraging to say about what had transpired at Middlebury. All the setbacks and discouragements must have depressed them somewhat; however, they managed to hide it the next day when Dr. Robert Nelson arrived from Plattsburgh, accompanied by a representative of the Philadelphia based Deringer company. They had come to discuss matters connected with the purchase of arms to equip an army that Nelson and Cote proposed leading into Lower Canada to take Montreal.I3 It might seem odd that they should come on such an errand after the bitterness at Middlebury but, whether Nelson liked it or not, in the eyes of the United States administration and of American business men, Papineau still spoke for the Patriotes. Moreover, and what was probably more to the point, he held the purse strings to their meagre financial resources, so American gunsmiths were unlikely to give any favourable consideration to business propositions involving Lower Canadians which did not have his approval. As a mark of that, even though Nelson wanted the guns to enable him to establish a regime that would be unacceptable to Papineau, the latter agreed to send O'Callaghan with him and the Deringer man to Philadelphia, and to lead the negotiations there. That done, he would go on to New York to see how the fund raising there was progressing.14 The talks with Henry Deringer came to nothing. He could certainly provide all the arms that Nelson was likely to need but, being a hard-headed Yankee businessman, he wanted to have some money in his hands before he parted with any of them. That, alas, was a commodity of which O'Callaghan had little to bargain with. This hard fact is reflected in his report on the talks that he sent back to Albany for Papineau's information: He [Deringer] has 2,000 which he can deliver immediately, but he will not do anything unless we can advance

him part of the cash. The price is $5 each and he demands three dollars, cash down, on each piece. For the payment of the remainder he will give time. Thus, you see, it requires $6,000 at least to satisfy him. There are 500 rifles which can also be procured for which the owner demands $12 a piece - $3 cash, the remainder on approved security. Much time was lost in talk which it is unnecessary to detail here. Thus thwarted for want of money, O'Callaghan tried to raise some in Philadelphia, only to find out that the prospects there were just as bleak as they were in New York, and that 'those who had money were opposed to us, and those who were our friends were not the moneyed class."15 Empty-handed, both O'Callaghan and Nelson left for New York and anived there on 15 January only to learn that the fund-mising campaign had failed dismally. In relaying that piece of bad news back to Papineau, OYCal1aghanwas unable to hide his disgust over the inactivity of the canvassers. "In reply to my complaints," he grumbled, "I am told that this man and the other excused themselves from acting on the frivolous pretence that they have not time. I am heartily sick of them. There is to be a "Canadian Ball" tomorrow evening, but I do not expect anything from it. The only zeal I notice is in reading bulletins, and in telling us what ought to be done, just as if we did not know that better than themselves." Low spirits and anger ooze from every word in that letter, and resignation too when he confesses that "I am now tired of meetings which end in nothing but lip All O'callaghan's enthusiasm of a month earlier had evaporated to be replaced by a pall of disillusionment. Thus, seeing the likelihood of a triumphal return to Lower Canada vanish into the mists of impossibility, he was compelled to ponder its consequences for himself. If the invasion failed to take place, he would have to fmd some gainN employment in the United States. That was what led him, before he returned to Albany, to write to a friend in New York enquiring of him what the prospects might be for a doctor setting up his practice in the city. Also, at about the same time, he began looking into the possibility of setting up an English-language newspaper for Canadian refugees, of whom there had been a sizeable influx as an aftermath of the failed rebellions north of the border.17 When O'Callaghan and Nelson got back to Albany, on the eighteenth, they had nothing to report to Papineau that was likely to raise his spirits. He was already discouraged by the lack of support, both

of a political and of a fmancial nature, for an invasion of Lower Canada under his leadership; and what they had to tell him was more than sufficient to dispel any remaining hope he had of that ever happening. If he did not actually give way to despair, he came very close to it, and he was not alone in that either.18O'Callaghan's demeanour too showed signs of hopelessness which, if anything, were more pronounced than those of his chief. So obvious, though, were the symptoms of anxiety displayed by both of them that Nelson felt obliged to remark on them to his associates when he returned to Plattsburgh. The gist of his observations is contained in a letter which one of them wrote to Ludger Duvernay reporting that, "Dr. Nelson has been there [Albany] and has not brought back very pleasant news. On the one hand master O'Callaghan is crying that all is lost and is looking for work in a print shop; on the other, the great chief is pacing up and down in his room, barely willing to receive Dr. Nelson."lg Fkom the moment that they arrived in Albany, boot hpineau and O'Callaghan had devoted the major part of their time to trying to muster support for their cause, support which they had assumed to be there just for the asking. Now, with their eyes opened to the reality of the situation, they saw nothing more substantial than an illusion and that, despite their paying lip-service to the contrary, Americans, by and large, were quite indifferent towards Canadian affairs. It was an attitude which O'Callaghan was able to encapsulate in a few words, and to quantify in a few figures: In regard to the friends in N. York and Albany aboutwhich you enquire, I regret to say that the proverb of "great cry and little wool"has been verified in both these cities. In N. York no pains were taken to collect subscriptions. They had a benefit at a miserable minor theatre there, which resulted in sinking the Committee $90 in debt They had a Canadian Ball which I heard netted them some $50 profit In Albany there was a great deal of speechifying, but no money collected, except about $150 from a benefit at the theatre which was sent, or proposed to be sent, to our friends at the north last week? It was the end of Papineau's vision of returning to his native land as a conquering hero. After that he literally turned his back on political activity and left Albany for Philadelphia There, under the assumed name of Mr. Lewis, he moved in with an old family friend and for almost four months led a life that was more akin to that of

a tourist than it was to that of a political personage. He did not return to Albany until the beginning of June 1838, and then for the non-political reason that his wife and daughter had recently arrived there from Canadaz1 However, for the time being, there was no such loss of hope tormenting the leaders of the physical force party. Nelson and Cot6, from their Plattsburgh base, were still actively preparing for a return under arms to Lower Canada, something for which O'Callaghan, no longer restrained by Papineau's hand, wished to demonstrate his support. Entirely on his own initiative, he approached Erastus Coming, the prominent Albany industrialist, and persuaded him to donate a supply of lead with which the invading army would be able to make shotn Robert Nelson and Cot4 knew nothing of that at the time and, even if they had done, they would have been extremely suspicious of O'Callaghan's motive for doing such a thing, for they considered him, along with Papineau and T.S. Brown to be untrustworthy. That is quite evident from the letter, attributed to Nelson, addressed to William Lyon Mackenzie which warned him, "For the love of Liberty, do not write one word to that madman T.S. Brown-he [will go] trumpeting all & more than all he knows-This dam'd publicity will yet I fear be the ruin of our cause-that mode will do for that Jack Ass the "Big beggar of Ireland" [O'Callaghan], but is unsuited for us--and pray do not write to "our friend in Albany" [Papinea~]."~ As it happened, Nelson and Cot6 had a plan of their own for obtaining arms. It consisted of the simple, but illegal, expedient of raiding the American arsenal at Elizabethtown, N.Y., an establishment whose custodian was a known friend of their cause and who, therefore, was not inclined to see anything that he was not supposed to see. Even with collusion like that, though, the invasion failed rniserably. It was defeated from within by mass desertions, and what was left of it thereafter was chased ignominiously back into the United States by Canadian militia units.24 Despite Nelson and Cote's animosity towards him, O9CaIlaghan was profoundly affected by the failure of their incursion into Lower Canada, and he allowed his disappointment to show in his letter to Emstus Coming, thanking him for his generosity, and advising him that his gift was no longer required. In it he left very little room for doubt as to what he thought about those who had behaved so cmvenly by deserting before ever a shot was fired: Although I had not flattered myself with the idea that those people could have entered, with any force they

Old Connections could muster on the fmntier, the city of Montreal, or even have reached the banks of the St. Lawrence, yet, I must acknowledge, I never expected they would have returned to the States so very soon as they have done. The news which arrived on Sunday night surprized Isic] & disappointed me not a little. The reason of this unexpected movement I have since I came here [Saratoga Springs] learned from a letter addressed to Mr. Sidney Cowan, by a citizen of St. Albans Vt. It seems the force which crossed into Canada fmm AIburg Vt. was 700 strong. It encamped about a mile north of the line for the first night. Whether this service was too severe for those who embarked in it, or whether a panic seized the Volunteers, does not appear. But certain it is that the next morning the Patriot leaders on beating up their followers, could not muster more than 160 men! The remainder of the Volunteers were found absent without leave! In consequence of this sudden diminution of the Patriot force, some of the principal citizens of Swanton and St. AIbans represented the folly of proceeding further and at their intercession the leaders of the party consented to return to the States with their arms, ammunition, provisions &cwhich they surrendered to General Neither Nelson nor Cot6 ever learned that O'Callaghan had been actively working behind the scenes on their behalf, and thus continued in the belief that he was the one man who could have swayed Papineau to swallow his intransigence over seigneuialism, and to support the invasion, but did not. That is reflected in the fact that when next Nelson met the doctor he refused to shake hands with him.26 Whatever personal animosities the abortive invasion spawned, its main consequence was as a watershed in the affairs of the dissidents. On the one side it was the death mttle of the so called physical force party, and on the other it was the birth cry of its successor4 sickly babe as it proved to be. Thereafter, all the plotting and planning for the liberation of Lower Canada was left to extremists who banded together to form the Chasseurs which was not so much a political organization as it was a backwoods secret society. Its direction was in the hands of revolutionaries whose motivation was manifest in a mumbo-jumbo of oaths and rituals, rather than in bourgeois aspirations and agrarian discontent, as had been the case with its predecessors. As a discernible political body, there-

fore, the Patriotes were no more, their passing having been hastened by internecine squabbling, and by the unforeseen circumstance that Americans, especially the more affluent ones, were unconcerned over who wielded power on the other side of their northern bordere2' Following the fiascoes along the frontier, O'Callaghan too left Albany for an extended period. Except for occasional brief return visits there, generally occasioned by travel arrangements, he divided the next fourteen months of his life between Saratoga Springs and New York City-mostly the latter. What he did in those two places is not known, but at least some of it provided him with an income of sorts.28 So long as he had been engaged in political activity, O'Callaghan appears to have received some remuneration from Papineau, either out of the meagre resources of the Patriote war chest, or even out of his own pocket. Some such arrangement is clearly implied by the use of the phrase "big Irish beggar" to describe O'Callaghan. With his chief gone, it must have become a matter of some urgency for him to find gainful empl~yment.~~ When he left for New York in April 1838, he made no mention of anything like that. He let it be known that he was going there to observe the civic election. However, since it was not to take place for almost another month, it is unlikely that the election was either the sole, or the main reason for his going to the city in the first place, or for his protracted stay there. His reasons had to have included something to do with earning a living.3o Considering O'Callaghan's areas of expertise outside of political activism, only two possible occupations suggest themselves. One was the practice of medicine, and the other was writing. With regard to the former, it could be argued that it would be a logical choice since he had made preliminary enquiries about the feasibility of returning to the profession when he first visited the city in January. Furthermore, the Abbe Chartier, writing in November 1839, stated that O'Callaghan "took formal leave of the Canadians by publicly announcing himself as a practicing physician in New York.'"' Unfortunately, the Abbe's use of the term "New York" does not make it clear whether he was referring to the city or the state. That ambiguity is cleared up by the doctor himself in a letter which he wrote to Papineau in May 1839: "Since 1 had the pleasure of writing to you last from New York, 1 came to the resolution of removing to this place [Albany] for the purpose of following my profession as I found there was no prospect of procuring anything to do at New Y ~ r k . The " ~ ~obvious conclusion to be drawn is that he did not prac-

OId connections

tice medicine in the United States until then and, if that were so, the Abbe Chartier must have been referring to the State of New York, and to the announcement in an Albany newspaper that, "Dr. O'Callaghan, one of the exiled patriots of Canada, having the reputation of a man of sound learning and science, had taken up his residence in Albany, with a view to retiring from politics and devoting himself entirely to his profession, that of a phy~ician."~ So much, therefore, for the case that he tried to establish a medical practice in New York City, a flimsy case at best The evidence of his attempt to return to newspaper work and resume a career that was left in ruins when The Vindicator was vandalized is stronger. The evidence emerges from the weeks preceding Nelson and Cote's abortive invasion of Lower Canada, even to before Papineau left for Philadelphia As early as that O'Callaghan had already done a considerable amount of research into the feasibility of starting a newspaper, and had actually put out feelers to detect what support such a publication could hope to get. Unfortunately, his efforts to raise the necessary capital for such an undertaking were found to be inhibiting the success of fund-raising campaigns in aid of the refugees along the border with Canada, so he stopped them. He did not allow that setback to dampen his enthusiasm for the project, however; he was still able to write, "My head is full of projects for this press, and my herut clings to the wish of establishing it, notwithstanding all the difficulties by which we are s~rrounded."~ He next considered taking over an existing newspaper, and showed a definite interest in acquiring either the Albany Daily Advertiser, or the Samtoga Sentmel. Had he succeeded, his intention was to turn the paper into a publication devoted to keeping the Canadian refugees informed of developments that might affect them, defending the chamcters and reputations of their leaders when they were maligned, and improving Americans' understanding of the problems faced by the expatriates in the United States? Nothing, however, came of that project either, once again because of O'Callaghan's inability to get the necessary financial backing to cover the cost of type and presses, and at least one year's operations. By the end of February 1838, therefore, he was still without a newspaper, and was casting around for some alternative means of fulfilling his ambitions. That was about the time when Wdliarn Lyon Mackenzie visited Albany. He too was excited over the idea of starting a newspaper in the United States, similar to the one that O'Callaghan had in mind. The two of them met during that visit and although there is no record of their conversation it can be assumed that they spent some of the time discussing the setting up of a newspaper. The out-

come was that a few days afterwards, while O'Callaghan and Arnkd6e Papineau went off to Saratoga Springs, Mackenzie returned to New York and the following week, issued the prospectus for his soon to be published Mackenzie's Weekly Gazette. Unlike O'Callaghan, the former Upper Canadian rebel leader was willing to take financial risks, and to go ahead with the project without the benefit of assured long-range backing, an aspect of his character that revealed him to be far less cautious than the doctor was ever likely to be.= Faced with the chance to become a newspaperman again, it is unlikely that O'Callaghan could have resisted the lure of Mackenzie's Weekly Gazette for long, and it would have wanted little by way of inducements to draw him to New York. His arrival there, early in April, gave him ample time to have had a hand in getting out the fnst issue of the paper on 12 May 1838." If that was indeed what happened, he would presumably have been paid for his services, which appear to have been such that he was able, if need be, to perform at least part of them by mail. That was what he did between 23 July and 15 October 1838 when he was in Saratoga Springs. His letters to Mackenzie during that period, along with some of the copy that he enclosed with them, reveal that he was primarily engaged in editorial work, some of which was creative rather than objective. He scalped material from other newspapers, or from letters, carefully edited it, and then combined it all into something which conformed with the paper's editorial position. The resulting copy was more akin to propaganda than it was to objective journalism, but that did not worry O'Callaghan. His aim was to stoke the fires of anti-British sentiment in his readers, and that was precisely what his contributions to Mackenzie'sWeekly Gazette did. He clearly enjoyed the work, and his only known complaint was that he found it to be very demanding." So much so that on one occasion he felt it necessary to apologize to Mackenzie for not writing a longer covering letter, explaining that, "I have so drained myself in the 'correspondence' which I send herewith, that I have nothing to add, except, Compliments to your lady.s739 Neither was he averse to indulging in a little oral propaganda if an opportunity presented itself. That was what happened when he was interviewed by Stewart Dehishire, a member of Lord Durham's entoumge who wanted to get his views on the late rebellion. O'Callaghan regaled him with a fuIl recitation of all the threadbare arguments which the Patriotes used to justify their actions, adding that he thought Durham "ought with the least possible delay, to grant an unconditional Amnesty for all political offence^."^ Needless to say,

Old Connections

he had a vested interest in that happening because it would allow him to return to Lower Canada should he fmd it impossible to earn an adequate living in the United States. His opinions, sincere as they might have been, obviously carried very little weight for, when Durham proclaimed the punishments to be meted out to the leading Patriotes, eight of them, including Wolfred Nelson, were ordered to be transported to Bermuda, and fifteen others, O'Callaghan among them, were banished from Canada and forbidden to return, on pain of death, for the duration of her Majesty Queen Victoria's pleasure.41 While 09Ca11aghanwas in New York during the spring and early summer of 1838, the reunited Papineau family passed through the city on two occasions. The frst time they were en route to Philadelphia and, during their brief stop-over in New York, the doctor spent as much time as he could in the company of one or more of them?* The most notewoflhy of those occasions was the one which took place on 5 July, in Mackenzie's office. On that occasion Mackenzie tried to bring about a reconciliation between Robert Nelson, Papineau and O'Callaghan. It was a wasted effort; relations between the three were no better after the meeting than they had been before and, according to Am6d6e Papineau, who was there, "Dr. Nelson after a fairly cool conversation with papa, and having refused Dr. O'Callaghan9shand, went out."@ On the Papineaus' return trip from Philadelphia there were no such confrontations. They, along with O'Callaghan, did a little sightseeing in New York and then, on 2 1July, left for Saratoga Springs by steamboat, the doctor following them two days later.4 He remained at the resort for about three months, the period during which he carried out his editorial duties for Mackenzie by mail. Apart from that, though, he was content to lead the life of a visitor: sightseeing, taking things easily, and generally socializing. There were callers too, all of them to see Papineau, and most of them politicallymotivated. One of them, however, was not; that was when Hector Bossange, Fabre's brother-in-law and the Parisian bookseller from whom he had learned his trade, came visiting. He had first called on the Papineaus in Philadelphia, soon after disembarking in New Yo&, but he had to huny off on business and arranged to meet with the family later. That came about in Saratoga Springs, early in September, and the meeting was marked by the amount of time that Bossange spent rhapsodizing to Papineau about the virtues and beauties of his beloved F'rance. Those conversations were to have a significant effect on O'Callaghan's life, After Bossange's visit Papineau began considering an extended visit to

France. When it became a reality, it was to deprive the doctor of one of the major influences on his life? It took Papineau until the new year to decide to make the trip, pluportedly to try and arouse some support in Paris for the idea of an independent Canada, but what was more likely was that he was feeling increasingly out of place in the United States where the enforcement of the Neutrality Act was a sure sign that the Van Buren adrninistration was unwilling to tolerate active preparations on American soil for an armed reentry into Canada Not only that, but he was out of favour with a good many of the Canadian refugees who felt that he had deseaed them in their hour of greatest need. One study even goes so far as to suggest that it was some of them who were responsible for inducing him to go to France so that they could pursue their own ideological goals unhindered by his presence. In any case, his going there seemed to him to be a desirable thing to do for it would allow him to move into the friendly Gallic surroundings, where he would be more likely to be accorded the respect that he felt was his due than he was likely to get in Americaa So it transpired that, on 8 February 1839, Papineau set sail from New York en route to Le Havre, leaving O'Callaghan at the dockside to contemplate what it might mean for his own future." Another factor that helped determine the course that O'Callaghan would take was the declining fortune of Mockentie's Weekly Gazette. As early as July 1838 the paper was feeling the combined pressures of inadequate financing and alarmingly declining circulation. The effect of those and other pressures was that on 26 January 1839 it ceased publication in New York and transferred its operations to Rochester. O'Callaghan's connection with the paper was severed some time during this period of economic duress. Mackenzie was probably no longer able to pay him, and O'Callaghan was probably unwilling to move to Rochester. The result was that he found himself left in New York without employment, and with no prospects of finding any?

Chapter 10 New Beginnings

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en Papineau left for France, and Mackenzie for Rochester, 09Callaghanhad no further reason for continuing to pretend that he was still actively involved in advancing the cause of 1837. Until then that pretence had given his life in exile some direction, even though he had long been disavowed as a legitimate partisan by the rump of the Patriote party, whose members devoted much of their time to raking over their recollections of the late rebellion in search of someone other than themselves to blame for its failure. Some of those who engaged in that activity soon decided that Papineau and O'Callaghan were the culprits, and pointed to their abrupt departure from St. Denis as incontrovertible evidence of their lack of commitment to the rebellion.' There were others, though, who singled out O'Callaghan as having been mainly responsible for what one of them called "the unfortunate events which are the ruination of our unhappy h~meland."~ Charges like that, no matter how far-fetched they might have been, could only have exacerbated the isolation that he felt following Papineau's and Mackenzie's departures. His feeling of abandonment by those he had once looked upon as fellow toilers in the vineyard of Canadian liberalism, certainly soured O'Callaghan's opinion of that cause.3 However, at .heart, he remained an ardent disciple of Andrew Jackson whom he described as being "a man of great mind-of strong will and of the purest honesty, loving the Masses and hating all Banks and Monopolies.'" It was a description that could well have been applied to himself. Oddly enough, despite his disillusionment with Lower Canadian liberalism, and contrary to his obituarist John Gilmary Shea's assertion that during the later part of his life he "avoided all allusion

to his Canadian career," almost as if it was "a subject of painful memory," he did not use his disenchantment as a pretext for severing all ties with his former liieOs For many years he maintained a correspondence with both Mackenzie and Papineau, and it reveals a continued lively interest in political and constitutional developments in Canada, Even given his general disenchantment with things Canadian, and his preoccupation with carving out a niche for himself in the United States, it was still apparently necessary for O'Callaghan to maintain that link with his former life. Perhaps it was because he considered that failure to do so would have been tantamount to turning his back on a past which had seen him rise from the obscuity of a newly arrived hish immigrant to the full blaze of public recognition in a matter of just fourteen years. W e , to Americans those Canadian glory days meant little, but until he managed to achieve similar public recognition in the United States, it was all he had to bolster his selfesteem which, to a man of his temperament, was a matter of some importance. Without it he was a nonentity; with it he was Edrnund Bailey O'callaghan, the liberal journalist, the former Canadian parliamentarian, the rebel with a price on his head, a man with a reputation and with roots. The only possible explanation of Shea's impression that he had nothing further to do with Canada after settliig in the United States is that his correspondence with the former rebel leaders was something that he kept strictly to himself. O'callaghan's letters are also interesting for what they reveal of his attitude towards Papineau and Mackenzie. They show him to have been somewhat paternalistic, and ever generous in giving them what he obviously considered to be good advice. However, there the similarity ends; beyond that, there was a W e d difference in the tone of his letters to the two men. A feature of his correspondence with Papineau was that each wrote in his native tongue, even though both were fluently bilingual and equally at home in using English and F'rench. Perhaps it was a sign of one of the main differences between them for, whatever else it was, it certainly did draw attention to the fact that they came from distinctly different linguistic and cultural environments. Almost as if to underlie that, the style of O'Callaghan's letters to Papineau was invariably more stilted than was that of those which he wrote to Mackenzie. It was most likely due to Papineau's patrician aloofness which inhibited close relationships with anyone except members of his own family. Mackenzie, on the other hand, was a far more sociable person, and he had a great deal in common with O'Callaghan, Both came fiom an English-speaking cultural background,

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both had been raised in a bourgeois setting and, in addition, both had a goodly dose of printers ink mixed in with their blood. The fiery Scot's lie was also punctuated by crises of one sort or another, so that he was often in dire need of a friend to whom he could bare his soul and who would, in turn, bolster his spirits when they sank to depths of dejection. It was a role that O'Callaghan seemed quite happy to fulfil.6 Most of his letters to Papineau had an impersonal air to them, none more than those he wrote in the months immediately after the former Patriote leader's departure for France. They were almost entirely given over to cataloguing the political news corning out of Canada and from the concentmtions of Canadian refugees in northern Vermont and upstate New York. They were long, tedious epistles devoid of anything by way of personal news. By June 1839, though, he had tired of writing this sort of letter, most likely because he could no longer spare the time. The result was that he did not write to his former chief again until October 1842, and then on a perceptibly more personal level. After that, the correspondence continued intermittently for the next twentysix years, right up until shortly before Papineau's death in 1871. Over that period the letters became decreasingly concerned with the political minutiae of the day and, until about 1850, their main emphasis was on trying to stimulate Papineau into shaking off the lethargy that possessed him and into resuming an active political life. However, except for the very last ones, the letters continued to show very little real warmth of feeling. O'Callaghan's letters to Mackenzie, on the other hand, at least until 1847, had a far more genial tone to them even though, as a rule, they were much shorter than were those to Papineau. In the former case the emphasis was not on stimulating the man to action, i m in the face of the many problems, but on being supportive of h both real and imagined, that tormented his life in exile. That was especially true during the period from June 1839 to May 1840, when Mackenzie was in prison for having violated the American Neutrality Act. The doctor wrote encouraging letters to him, and even interceded with the authoritiesin an effort to secure his release from jail. Unlike his correspondencewith Papineau, it is quite obvious that he did not allow the exigencies of setting up a new practice, or anything else, to interfere with his writing to Mackenzie. His letters throughout that period, and afterwards too, were generally those of a well-intentioned friend, perhaps overly so at times when he tended to sermonize. Whenever he went too far in that direction, though, he paid dearly for it when the coals of a fiery Scottish temper were heaped upon his head. Despite those occasional outbursts

the correspondence continued until shortly before Mackenzie's death in 1861, although, after something of a falling out in 1847 and his return to Canada in 1850, it became far more sporadic than bef0re.l Mackenzie and Papineau were the only former Canadian rebels with whom O'Callaghan corresponded on anything like a regular basis. For a while he exchanged a few letters with Fabre, mainly over matters to do with the sale of his books and pamphlets, but that came to an abrupt end in 1854 when the bookseller, and by then mayor of Montreal, suddenly died. In February 1839, though, O'Callaghan's main concern was not that of keeping up a correspondence with former rebel leaders, but that of finding some gainful employment. Once again economic necessity was to determine the future course of his career. For the next several weeks he scoured New York in search of a position, but it was to no avail. Discouraged, he gave up the search and returned to Albany where he at least knew a few people, and it was there in May 1839 that he resumed the practice of medicine. He did not find it easy. Although there were as many as five thousand Irish immigrants in Albany, for the most part they were an impoverished lot and could not afford the luxury of medical treatment, even if it was administered by a fellow countryman. The only place they were likely to see a physician was in the Alms House, where those in the direst straits ended up. Not only did that militate against O'Callaghan having many patients, but the local medical fraternity, which was predominantly Yankee-Dutch and Protestant, resented a newcomer to their ranks, especially if he happened to be Irish and C a t h ~ l i cHe . ~ tried to put a bold face on his difficulties, and to maintain the pretence that all was well, but behind the facade he was gradually sinking into a state of utter dejection. "For anything I can see," he complained to Mackenzie, "I know not what use I am in the world, and it sometimes puzzles me to find out lo. why Providence ever sent me here & 24 why it continues to keep me here. I a m only filling the place, and eating the bread of a better and more useful member of Society. 'Would it were bed-time, Hal!' I, for one, sometimes long for the last sleep."g At the nadir of that despondency, his sister, Mrs. Mary Anne Walsh of Cork, who had kept up a correspondence with him until the tumultuous events of 1837 had forced him to leave Montreal, finally tracked him down and began writing to him again. That probably cheered him up a little, but the fact that it took her so long to locate him-something like three and a quarter years-suggests that he made no attempt to contact her during the interim, even

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though he must have known her address. For the next ten years they corresponded on a regular basis, and although O'Callaghan's letters to his sister have disappeared, those that he received from her after he anived in the United States have survived.1° It was at about this time that romance reentered his life in the person of a young lady by the name of Ellen Hawe. She seems to have been his life lime out of the mi^ of self-pity in which he had been wallowing. She was an Irish girl from Charleville (Rath Luirc) county Cork, the sister of a prominent Albany cooper. They manied there on 9 May 1841, and the following March, a daughter was born to them who they named Mary Anne, after O'Callaghan's sister in Cork. The marriage was a turning point in O'Callaghan's fortunes. He was admitted, as a licentiate, into the Medical Society of the county of Albany in 1841, and the following year he was able to write that he was doing as well as he could expect. The hostility of the other doctors in the area towards him began to evaporate after his marriage and life became much easier. Even so, he was still not prosperous, and at one point he considered moving to Florida, where T.S. Brown was living in exile. In a letter to him in October 1843, O'Callaghan asked what the prospects might be for a doctor there. The reply he received was far from encouraging. "Florida is the worst of all places for a physician," wrote Brown. "There are not enough people in the Country." The doctor took his word for it and resigned himself to staying in Albany where, in 1843, he became the treasurer of the county medical society, a sign of his acceptance by the other physicians, and a position which he retained until 1847 when he abandoned the profession to pursue a career as a historiogmpher.l2 Another sign of his regenemted spirits was to be seen in the revival of his interest in journalism He began submitting articles for publication in a semi-monthly Albany literary journal called The Northern Light. His submissions covered a wide range of subjects, all the way from biographical sketches of notable men to satirical pieces, such as his The Misfortunes of Getting an Office, and descriptive articles on places like the Oregon Tenitory. He was even prepared to tackle current political problems, and that was what led him to begin looking into the anti-rent agitation in the state in the hope of finding material for an article on it. Those investigations soon revealed to him that the anti-renters' complaints had their roots in Dutch colonial days when large land grants had been made to leading colonists, who were referred to as patroons. Although the gmnts had initially been made under the provisions of Dutch civil

law, they had been perpetuated first by the English, after their seizure of the colony in 1664, and, following the Revolutionary War, by the State of New York. The result was that the intervening years had seen families like the Van Rensselaers in Albany enjoying an uninterrupted income from the land, and growing wealthy at the expense of tenants who were locked into the archaic system of leaseholds and rentals. Apart from his recognition of the anachronistic nature of the system, O'Callaghan was undoubtedly intrigued by its similarity to seigneurialism, the issue which had contributed so much to the final disintegration of the Patriote party, and over which the evidence suggests that he had not shared Papineau's views.I3 When he first became interested in the Dutch patroons, he was making a move towards a career change, although he probably did not realize it at the time. Up until then his life in North America had been largely given over to serving what he considered to be liberal causes, liberal politics, and liberal politicians; service which had brought him to the verge of destitution, and to being a political exile reviled by former colleagues who blamed him for their own misfortunes. His subsequent life was mainly devoted to scholarly pursuits, and it was characterized by a preparedness on his part to make use of politics and politicians for the furtherance of his career. The result was that it brought him financial security, public esteem, and the recognition of other scholars. Initially it was his newspaperman's nose for a story which set him on the trail of the patroons and their privileges but, before long, his researches had so captivated him that they led him far beyond his original goal into an examination of the entirety of Dutch colonial history in North America. That was a formidable task, one which not only made considerable demands on his time, but also required him to get a working knowledge of Low Dutch to enable him to translate the abundance of documentary material left over from the days of New Netherland that he found gathering dust in the State Secretary's office in Albany.I4 Fortunately O'Callaghan had a facility for learning languages. Although he had a tutor at first, he very soon outstripped him and it became a case of the teacher bringing material for translation to the student, rather than the other way around. So ardently did O'Callaghan apply himself to both his linguistic and historical studies that one wonders what could have given him the necessary drive and singleness of mind at a time when his medical practice was beginning to prosper and thus demand more of his attention. There are a number of possible explanations of that, but one commends itself

New Beginnings

above all the others, even though it is largely speculative. It has to do with the hagedy which struck the O'Callaghans in March 1843; their infant daughter, Mary Anne, conhacted whooping cough and died from complications of the disease. It was a grievous blow to the parents, and it must have brought home to the bereaved father, even more forcibly than had the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834, that despite his medical expertise, his ability to heal the sick was very limited indeed. It seems reasonable to suppose, therefore, that a desolated and disillusioned O'Callaghan immersed himself in his studies, hoping thereby to deaden the pain of his grief with the narcotic of work. Such a remedy could well have been addictive: by the time his grief began to give way to a stoical acceptance of the tragedy, as became a good Christian, an owwhelming urge to pursue the project to.its conclusion had taken hold of hi.If that were indeed so, it could have been what he was referring to when he wrote, "Any spare moment that I have is now devoted to further research."15 It seems likely, therefore, that it was during a frenzy of work in the period immediately following his daughter's death that O'Callaghan's recollections of his experiences of colonialism in action metamorphosed into an academic interest in the subject. He had been raised in a Britishdominated Ireland, where many of the features of true colonialism had prevailed; he had lived and worked in Lower Canada where power was in the hands of a British colonial administration, and where many of the traditions and customs of the h c o p h o n e majority were those established during the former F'rench one; in the United States, he found himself living in an area where traces of the old Dutch colonial regime were still to be found. It all made him something of an authority on colonialism. Once he came to realize it, presumably some time during 1843, it became the dominant interest in his subsequent life, much of which he devoted to documenting the subject both in original works and in numerous volumes of transcriptions and translations of documents which have contributed significantly to North American historical scholarship (see Appendix 2). However plausible an explanation of O'Callaghan's intellectual epiphany the foregoing might be, it must be borne in mind that it is speculative and should therefore be treated with caution. Whatever its true cause, O'Callaghan's intellectual rebirth was largely responsible for deterring him from returning to Canada in 1844, when he became entitled to. By then he had lost any desire to do so, partly because he had become an American citizen, and partly because he felt he would be out of place there under a regime

whose leaders were "chuck full of loyalty on their lips and something else in their hearts," and where he would feel "like a cat in a strange garret."I6He had no illusions about what his reception back in Canada would be like, especially by those former colleagues who, in his opinion, had sacrificed their principles on the altar of opportunism, and accepted positions of authority in the new government Moreover, they were the ones who had let it be known that they considered him to be too violent a person to be anything but a political liability to them17The main reason for his decision to remain in the United States, however, was without question that he had already invested a great amount of time and energy in his researches and was unwilling to turn his back on them, which a return to Canada would have necessitated. He had more constructive things in mind than that. "I hope, with time, & means and leisure," he wrote to Papineau, "to anange my notes so as to render them of general interest This is my present project, and although it is a laborious one, it affords me pleasure to carry it out "I8 In that manner was the die cast and, as a result, O'Callaghan was destined to be domiciled in the United States for the rest of his lie. By late 1843, his contributions to The Northern Light, along with the expertise which he had acquired during his years with The Vindicator, had got him involved in the editorial side of producing the paper. That, in turn, brought him to the attention of The Freeman's Journal, a New York based newspaper published by the Catholic church to which O'Callaghan occasionally submitted articles.19 It must have been some time in the spring of 1844 when he was first approached by its publishers to see if he would consider editing it He would not, but suggested instead Mackenzie, who was in dire need of a regular income to support his large, and ever increasing family. When he was approached to see whether he would take the job, he too refused, his excuse being that a peppery, Presbyterian Scot was not the ideal person to have sitting in the editorial chair of an Irish Catholic newspaper. In reality, what probably had more to do with his decision than anything else was that, at the time, he was actively engaged in trying to obtain a patronage appointment in the New York Custom House by the expedient of ingratiating himself with henchmen of John 'I)rler, the American president who could not decide whether he was a Whig or a Democrat.20 At about the same t h e O'Callaghan was also offered the editorship of a proposed Catholic newspaper in Quebec, but he declined that too, not just for the reasons that deterred him from returning to Canada, but also because his former archenemy, the Rev. Fk. McMahon of St Patrick's Church was known to be connected with the pa-

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per, and of whom he fumed, "He is so simple as to imagine that I will consent to put my neck under his foot! and be his Editor! He may forgive, but I do not forget."21 As his studies progressed, it became increasingly apparent to him that, if they were to be truly exhaustive, he would have to consult documents preserved in New York City, and in adjacent parts of New Jersey, which had been part of the colony of New Netherland. To be able to do that he would have to move there, at least for a while, and that necessitated finding gainful but not demanding employment there. Of course, there was always the editorship of The Freeman's Journal to be had for the asking, but that would be a fulltime job, and would have left him without time for his studies. What he wanted was a sinecure of some sort, and the only way to get one of those was to follow Mackenzie's example and to put himself in a position where he could reap the rewards of political patronage. Up until that juncture OICallaghan's participation in American public lie had amounted to nothing more than attending meetings of the Albany chapter of the Irish Repeal Society, a group not unlike the old Society of the F'riends of Ireland with which he had been so closely associated in Quebec. Its activities consisted of giving moral and fmancial support to those working for home rule in Ireland, and attempting by whatever means it could to counter the anti-Irish outbreaks that erupted from time to time in cities like Philadelphia. His actual role in the society involved him in presiding at some of its meetings, and in writing some of its publicity submissions to newspapers, but his position was not one which enabled him to direct what form its activities should takeF2 Beyond that, he had not ventured any farther onto the political stage than to have made himself an informed observer of what was taking place upon it, a practice which had led him to the point of being very cynical over the ethics of the players he saw there. He made no bones about what he thought of them when he wrote to Mackenzie that "all this & much more that I see around me makes me sick of politics and politicians-Whitened Sepulchres! and I trouble my head but little about themnP He wrote that in June 1844. Yet, by the fall of the year, he was prepared to ignore what he had said, and to set about ingratiating himself with some of those in whose power it was to dispense political patronage. O'Callaghanssfomy into American politics, like a sudden squall, was unexpected, fierce, and short-lived.As late as the end of August 1844he was boasting that he did not bother himself much with politics, yet, by the third week in October, he was vowing that in the

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghn

forthcoming election he would "work day and night to defeat Whiggery and Nativism" Then, in the second week of November, with the election over, he announced that "having done my duty, to the utmost of my power, in this past Campaign, I now return within myself, leaving to others to reap the more substantial benefits of the election."24 In that contest, which was the cause of all his political tumabouts, O'Callaghan campaigned on behalf of the Democrats, as one would expect of an avowed Jacksonian. The issue, he claimed, that set his feet on the campaign trail was that of Nativism, one of the major planks in the Whig platform and which would have given native born Americans preference over their naturalized counterparts when it came to making patronage appointments. That, of course, was a matter of great personal interest to O'Callaghan who had hopes of receiving just such an appointment, so his participation in the campaign was not as altruistically inspired as he implied when he pontificated to Mackenzie that "the only protection and sympathy Adopted Citizens can obtain or expect is from the great Democratic party, the legitimate successors of the Jeffersons, the Monroes, the Madisons and the Jacksons of former days."25 Neither did he have to be cajoled or coopted into joining in the campaign. He joined it of his own accord by simply putting a notice in The Albany Atlas announcing that he "would address the people that evening at the Democratic Headquarters," There he propounded his views with such eloquence and persuasiveness that immediately after he had fmished speaking he was invited to address the voters in Albany's 3rd Ward, which he did two days later and at considerable length." His reputation as a speechmaker spread quickly. Right after that meeting he was approached by delegates from Clinton county, in the north of the state where there was a considerable French-speaking population. They wanted him to speak to voters there in French, in an effort to discredit a fmncophone campaigner who was beating the drum for the Whigs in those parts. What ensued was a whirlwind speech-makingtour in which O'Callaghan was able to indulge in a bout of mudslinging in his old Montreal West style. He verbally tarred the Whig campaigner as being "one of the most profligate fellows in the community," and then proceeded to feather him with such choice bits of intelligence as that he was sepamted from his wife, and, despite his claim to be manied to a Canadian girl in Clinton county, was in all likelihood l i i g off the avails of prostitution. That sort of material was the stuff of classic O'Callaghan electioneering, and provided the grist for tub-thumping speeches he made

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in the north-two in Plattsburgh and one in Champlain--all of them in French, and all of them very long-he was good for three hours once he got started? Back in Albany he continued to be in demand as a speaker for the Democrats, and there too he had some equally damaging material to work with. The Whig candidate for Congress, a lawyer by the name of Wheaton,was favoured to win the seat, but scavenging Democrats had dug up enough of a derogatory nature about him to destroy his electability, if it was properly exploited. Some of it showed that he had acted unprofessionally when as district attorney, he had prosecuted anti-rent agitators who had been his clients before he was elected to that office. The most damning evidence against him was the revelation that he owned a number of properties in Albany which were "tenanted by Bad Women, and kept as Bawdy Houses." That sort of stuff in the hands of a demagogue of O'callaghan's calibre had the desired effect. As he himself put it, "the 'Rigidly Righteous' of the Whig party 'scratched' him [Wheaton] off their tickets in scores and voted for his opponent who is a stiff blue Pre~byterian."~~ After O'Callaghan's final electioneering speech in Albany, it was up to the voters. He spent the election day as a scrutineer at the polls, and two days later had the satisfaction of learning that his efforts had all been worthwhile. The Democrats took not only Clinton county, but Whig Albany too. They also won the gubernatorial contest and, to crown the victory, Polk, their presidential candidate, was elected to the White House. But what was most important about it all to O'Callaghan was that he considered the party was indebted to him, and owed him a favour.2g He returned to his studious pursuits, therefore, and considered how best to go about reaping the rewards of his brief re-entry into politics. His fust step in that direction was to write to Mackenzie, who by then had succeeded in obtaining a position in the New York Custom House, and ask him to look around and see what wcancies might exist for physicians in the port quarantine service's hospital on Staten Island. Mackenzie, however, could give him no grounds for optimism. "There are so many who have claims," he told him, and then went on to advise looking closer to home, in Albany, and to "get a comfortable berth among your new friends."30 That came as no real slllprise to O'Callaghan, who had already got an inkling of what his chances were of getting a patronage medical appointment in New York. He had learned from his so called new friends that they were very much the preserve of New Yorkers,

Edrnud Bailey O'Callaghan and beyond the aspirations of outsiders-especially if they happened to be Irish and Catholic as well. His best hope of finding a niche in New York, he had been told, lay in going after a non-medical position at either the Custom House or the Brooklyn Navy Yard.31 He felt that he had been let down by his Democrat friends in Albany who, so far as he could see, had not even tried to find him an acceptable post in New York. That was more than enough to bring him to the boil. He raged, as only he could do, that "there is more open bribery & foul Corruption at the polls than I should like to have anything to do with, or that I ever thought could exist. It is as public, I regret to say, as is Whoredom in a brothel.' Out of such sinks and cesspools, what purity and self-denial can be infused into the representation-& what guards can be placed against Corruption which will not be sapped and undermined?"" Strong words indeed, and strangely reminiscent of what he had said about the Whigs before the election campaign. What it all boiled down to was that O'Callaghan had lost his faith in political hacks, whatever their stripe, who reneged on debts of honour, and relapsed into their customary self-serving ways the moment they had got themselves elected. H e was realist enough, though, to know that expressing his disgust in a few well-chosen words to a friend could do nothing more than relieve his feelings, and since his real concern was not the corruptness of politicians, but getting a sinecure in New York, it called for a change in tactics. Although what he did next had the appearance of him crossing the political fence into the Whig camp, where Thurlow Weed was the man in charge, it was probably nothing more than the action of a man turning for help to someone he knew when all else had failed. Weed, so far as O'Callaghan was concerned, was not just the Whig party boss, but a personal friend too. It is not clear exactly when, where, or under what circumstances the two originally met, but they did so at some time between July 1840 and January 1843. Thereafter, a lifelong friendship grew up between the two, one that transcended their political differences. It was both a very close and a very strong relationship, one that saw Weed sending gifts to O'Callaghan's sister in Ireland, and one that was able to withstand the stresses of the 1844 election, which had them in opposing camps. While Weed was using the pages of The Albany Evening Journal to blacken the Democrats, O'Callaghan was reviling the Whigs from the hustings, yet neither allowed it to interfere with their personal friend~hip.~~

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By the time of O'Callaghan's apparent defection, the manuscript of the first volume of his History of New Nethedand was ready for the publisher, His need for a position in New York was becoming more pressing by the day if he was to be able to proceed to working on the second volume without any delay. It would be principally concerned with the administration of Peter Stuyvesant, and much of the surviving documentation from the period was to be found in and around the city that was formerly called New Am~terdam.~~ The Freeman's Jownal remained eager to employ him, and its publishers, perhaps aware of his predicament, became more persistent than ever in their endeavours to tempt O'Callaghan to take on the editorship of their paper. The spring and early summer of 1845 saw their inducements become increasingly enticing. The salary they offered climbed from $600 per annum to $780, and finally to $1,000. Although he was sorely tempted to accept the last offer, in the end he decided against it. He wrote to Bishop Hughes, through whom the church exercised its control over the paper, laying the conditions under which he would accept the position, conditions which he thought would be totally unacceptable. He did not want a job that he knew would tie him down to the extent that he would be unable get on with the second volume of his history. His book was of paramount importance to him, and only a sinecure would give him the time he needed to compete it, and at the same time provide him with a livelihood. The essence of the terms which he set out in his letter to Bishop Hughes was that he was not interested in editing a newspaper unless he had effective control over its production and its content It was a position that he defied more succinctly some years later when he informed Papineau that he had made up his mind to never again be a salaried editor, nor the editor of a paper over which he did not have managerial control. "Unless the press is my own," he concluded, "I am not to be its Edit~r."~ He did not bum his bridges entirely with h e Fmeman's Journal. He agreed to become one of a panel of useveral distinguished Catholic writers" who would from time to time submit articles for publication in the paper. It was one of those articles which played a part in his receiving the degree of doctor of medicineF Even though he was on the verge of leaving the practice of medicine, it was important for O'Callaghan to be able to write the letters M.D. after his name. Any attempt to explain why that might have been so would stretch the conjectural skill of a behavioural psychologist to its utmost. Suffice it to say that the circumstances of his medical training and licensing had precluded him from receiving a degree and that in the spring of 1845 an opportunity arose for him

Edrnund Bailey O'Callaghan

to remedy that through the intercession of his nephew, Richard Lacy. Lacy was the son of O'Callaghan's older sister, Bess, and the issue of an unhappy maniage. His mother had died when he was just two years old, and he had been raised by a father who resented his presence. He did, however, see to it that the boy received a good education, and when Lacy emigrated to the United States, he was able to establish himself as a physician in the state of Missouri. There he proceeded to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of St. Louis in a relatively simple manner.37 The young man, aware of his uncle's desire to obtain a similar degree, wrote to the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the university and asked him how O'Callaghan might accomplish it without having to attend a course of instruction. Lacy enclosed one of his relative's articles from The Freeman'sJournal in support of his enquiry. It has to be presumed that it was one on a medical topic of some sort for, after all, O'Callaghan was quite knowledgeable about such things as epidemic cholera and typhoid after his experience in Canada The dean replied that the University would be willing to award an honourary diploma, provided that he met three conditions. They were simple enough. All that O'Callaghan had to do was to make a formal application for the diploma in his own handwriting, to provide evidence to show that he was suitably qualified, and to submit proof that he was a person of good character.38 He had no difficulty in meeting those requirements and in 1846 he was granted the right to use the coveted letters after his name. An examination of his surviving correspondence shows that immediately afterwards he began to sign his name "E.B. O'Callaghan, M.D." whenever he wrote to other than old acquaintances and relatives? The first volume of History of New Nethedand, or New Yo& under the Dutch appeared in December 1845, despite the publisher's imprint being dated 1846-*ere is documentary evidence to show that it was not available on 27 November 1845, though it was on 4 January 1846. A thousand copies of the work were printed and published by D. Appleton and Company, and the entire edition was soon gone, although not all to paying customers. A good number of copies were sent out to reviewers and newspapers by way of publicity so that, in the end, O'Callaghan wound up owing the publisher money for the losses incurred on his book which, despite that, was at once the object of wide critical acclaim That misfortune made it all the more necessary for him to find a position in New York which would ensure him of an income adequate to allow him to clear off

New Beginnings

that debt, in addition to sustaining him and his wife while he completed the second volume." He had to wait until October 1846 before any prospects of that happening opened up. At that time through Thurlow Weed's representations on his behalf, he was offered a position as a clerk in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on a new dry dock construction project at a salary of $600 per annum4'At first he turned the offer down because, as he put it, "It comported neither with my wishes nor position, and I preferred to struggle on than to accept what in my opinion ought not to have been offered me." However, since nothing better came up, he thought better of it and took the position, no doubt on the advice of Weed who immediately began pressing the Navy DepaItment, which was notoriously tight-fisted, to increase his salary." It was fie months before those efforts had any effect, but, on 15 May 1847, a terse note informed the Whig boss that "Dr. O'Callaghan's salary has been increased to the amount you requested last winter, by the Navy Department." No mention was made of what the new figure was, but it is unlikely to have been any more than $800.44 As the second volume of History ofNew Netherland approached the point of being ready for the publisher, O'Callaghan found himself facing something of a dilemma While the first volume of the work had brought him critical acclaim, and had projected him into the front rank of American historiographers, its financial failure had left him owing the publisher money. The question he faced was whether or not to follow the same procedure, and risk repeating the loss, or to make alternative arrangements for bringing out the second volume. In the end he opted for the latter course of action and decided to undertake the book's promotion himself. It proved to be a shrewd decision. Volume one had established his reputation and created a demand for volume two before it appeared. As a result, although only five hundred copies of the second volume were printed, he realized a modest profit fiom their sale. It was a paradoxical outcome which, afterwards, O'Callaghan liked to put as a poser to people he was entertaining by asking them to explain to him how it was possible to sell a thousand copies of a book and lose money while, by selling only five hundred, it was possible to make a modest profit So far as is known, noone ever answered the question to his entire satisfaction." The celebrity status that History of New Netherland brought O'Callaghan, overshadowed a more modest scholarly accomplishment he achieved during his period at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That was the publication, in pamphlet form, of a paper which he had presented to the New York Histofical Society on the subject of the Jesuit

Edmund Bailey O'callaghan

Relations. It was based on research that he had conducted into such volumes of the documents as remained in North America. In the long term, this relatively humble work has possibly had as far reaching an effect on American historiography as any of his more celebrated works, including his History of New Netherland.46 It was instrumental in awakening an interest in the old Jesuit records which had lain gathering dust for up to two centuries, and it led the Librarian at Harvard University to observe that "if a competent person would make and publish an English translation of these Relations, he would render an acceptable service to the community." 47 The ultimate outcome of the r e h l of interest was the translation and publication, between 1896and 1902,of the entire seventy-three volumes of The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents; the work of Reuben Gold Thwaites still remains the fust port of call for any anglophone carrying out research into the history of New Rance. By the time that the second volume of his Hisory ofNew Netherland came out, it was clear that OYCallaghan'sfuture lay in historiography, a change for the better according to 12,-R. F'abre, who told him that by abandoning the practice of medicine his health would improve and he would fmd himself on a more elevated plane of human endeavour--an interesting remark, and indicative of the low esteem in which doctors were generally held in those days. As a result of his new status O'Callaghan had to give his attention to what he should do next.48 At that juncture of his career, tragedy again struck the O'Callaghans; not perhaps so hard as it had done when their daughter Mary Anne died but, nevertheless, it did have an impact on their future lives. In the latter part of 1847 Richard Lacy died and left two young, orphaned children. At first the OYCallaghansthought that they might have to care for both of them but, in the end, it was only the little girl, also called Mary Anne, who came to them and she, no doubt helped fill the void left by the death of their own child. It proved to be a happy arrangement, despite its melancholy beginning, and eighteen years later the girl was still with them, obviously very attached to her sumgate parents, and they to her, although it is unclear whether she was ever legally adopted by them.49 And what of the tempestuous Mackenzie while O'Callaghan was ascending to the rank of celebrity? At some point during O'Callaghan's stint at the Brooklyn Navy Y d , there was a falling out between himself and the Scot It most likely took place after Mackenzie left his position at the Custom House at the end of June 1845. The precise causes of the break are not entirely clear, but among them were their divergent opinions on

New Beginnings

Papineau's role in the rebellions of 1837and 1838.50During the early months of his exile, Mackenzie's opinion of the Lower Canadian leader had been shaped very much by the views expressed in a letter from T.S.Brown in September 1838. In it he had denounced Papineau as having been responsible for the disastrous turn of events following the disturbances in Montreal on the 6 November 1837. "Had Mr. Papineau on the 7th of November," he had written, "commenced and continued active preparations we should on the first of May have been in possession of all the Canadas with the excep" ~ ~ accusation struck home with tion of the City of Q u e b e ~ . That Mackenzie, especially since Brown implied that even the defeat of the rebellion in Upper Canada had been Papineau's fault. Over the years that followed, Mackenzie often tried to bring O'Callaghan round to his way of thinking. On 16 September 1844, he went so far as to put it all in a letter that literally oozed with his antipathy for the entire Papineau clan, which, he felt, despite all their setbacks ,had fared better than he had. "What do I now see?" he complained: Papineau's family well off-his eldest son Citizen Papineau slipping over to Montreal to enjoy $6000 a year of a sinecure-his brother Dennis Benjamin Papineau enjoying $6000 more, and enough of patronage, conferred thro' Dennis Benjamin Viger-Papineau himself forgivenhis property undisturbed, while mine, and it was extensive, was scattered, stolen, sold, plundered-he ready to appear here or in Canada-to act a patriotic part, like O'Connell, taking no office except thro' his connexions-Lactance Papineau, educated in Paris in the best style for a physician, and gazetted as such in s . . .but I need not go fartherMontreal by V ~ e r organ myself treated as if I was an old dog." The crux of Mackenzie's whole argument was that, not only had Papineau brought about all of his misfortunes in the first place, but that since then he and his family had received every consideration from the British. O'Callaghan did not choose to respond to the diatribe right away. When he did next write to Mackenzie, two months later, he accused him of trying to shake his "high respect and confidence in Mr. Papineau." That did nothing to resolve the differences between them, which continued to simmer. More heat was applied to them in April 1845when O'Callaghan refused to have anything to do with helping Mackenzie put out a new edition of E.A. Theller's

book, (3anada in 1837-38, an opinionated work which denounced Papineau for the part he had played in the rebellion. Matters seethed at that level until just after O'Callaghan moved to Brooklyn, and then the whole thing came to a boil. It ended up with an acrimonious exchange in which the doctor declared that he would not do anything to embarrass the movements of those with whom he had been associated in Canada "I will place no stumbling block in their way," he told the Scot, "leaving to Providence to decide whether I shall be ever again considered worthy to do my duty in my old ranks and with my old c~rnpatriots."~ Even so, by the end of December 1847, whatever heat the argument had generated, had cooled to a point where Mackenzie felt able to tip O'Callaghan off to the fact that there was $1,500 waiting to be earned by translating thirty volumes of early Dutch records into English for the Common Council of the City of New York-informa; tion upon which the doctor acted and got the job. Apart from that, though, there is no sign of any further correspondence between the two for over five years and, when it did resume, it lacked much of its former warmth? With the publication, in the summer of 1848 of the second volume of his History ofNew Netherland, the time had come for O'Callaghan to look beyond the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The post had served him well, but there was an election in the offig and it would put his position there at risk. He was not without prospects, however. A job was already in the making for him, a job that, to some extent, was one of his own making. The success enjoyed by his History of New Netherland was unquestionably due to the public interest it aroused by revealing a period of American history which, until then, had been hidden behind a curtain of language. That was what established his reputation in the first place. However, the more durable aspect of his fame rests on the effect that his work had on the manner in which historiographers treated the early colonial period of American history, Where in the past they had been prone to depend rather heavily on lore and legend, thenceforth their work would have to be based on documentary evidence if it aspired to be considered authoritative, Far-sighted men, like the State Librarian, Dr. Theodoric Romeyn Beck, who had come to h o w O'Callaghan and his methods during the time when he was researching the material for the fist volume of his history, saw that and lobbied the New York State Legislature to renew its interest in the vast collection of transcripts which it had ordered to be made some years before. They had been made by John Romeyn Brodhead between 1841 and 1844. Working out of the

New Beginnings

American Embassy in The Hague, Brodhead had searched out and copied whatever documents he could find in that city which he considered to be relevant to the colonial history of what became the state of New York. He had gone on to do likewise in both Paris and London? The transcripts, which he had turned over to the State Secretary in Albany, lay gathering dust until the spring of 1848,when the State Legislature authorized money for their sorting, translation, and publication. Overseeing that job was tailor-made for O'Callaghan. He wasted no time in applying for it and, on 17 May 1848, he was advised that the position was his, and that the salary would be $800 per annum. On receiving that news, he hurried to complete the translation work that he had undertaken for the city of New York, and tendered his resignation from the Navy Yard. That done, all that remained for the O'Callaghans to do in Brooklyn was to pack up their belongings, and to prepare for their return to Albany?

Chapter 1.1 The Man of Letters

H

ad he been a superstitious man, O'Callaghan might have viewed the signs marking his return to Albany as being less than auspicious, Within days of his arrival, a disastrous fire destroyed six hundred or so homes in the city, and in the following year, 1849, a cholera epidemic chimed three hundred lives before it abated, mostly in the Irish neighbourhoods! He allowed none of that to deter him from going about the formidable task of sorting out the collection of documents in the state secretary's office, selecting from it those he deemed to be the most important, translating them where necessary, and arranging them in an orderly sequence. Within six months of starting the work, fire and pestilence notwithstanding, he had the first volume of what would be entitled Documentary History of the State of New York ready for publication, and four months later the second. He then ran into trouble. The problem was that while O'Callaghan's name appeared on the title page, no mention was made anywhere of the part that John Romeyn Brodhead had played in the project It is a controversy worthy of examination for the glimpse it gives of the political machinations that lay behind the publication of a major piece of s~holarship.~ It all started back in April 1838when the New York Historical Society initiated a move to lobby the state legislature to appropriate funds to cover the cost of collecting "reference materials in Europe illustrative of the history of New York." The legislature approved the appropriation in 1839, at the urging of the then governor, Williim Henry Seward, and in 1841 Brodhead was appointed to undertake the work. By all indications it was a job for which he was well qualified. Beside being a prominent member of the New York Historical Society, he was already in Europe, serving as an attach6 at the

American Embassy in The Hague. Moreover, he had some facility with the Dutch and French languages.3 Over the next four years he made tianscripts of a great number of documents which he found in various repositories in Paris and London as well as The Hague and which he turned over to Christopher Morgan, the state secretary in Albany. For his efforts Brodhead received payment in the sum of $13,405.2 1.4 In 1846, Brodhead returned to his diplomatic duties and was posted to the embassy in London as a secretary. The transcripts he had made were bound into more than two hundred volumes and in 1848 the state legislature appropriated the money for a start to be made on translating them where necessary and preparing the most important of them for publication. O'Callaghan was hired to carry out that work, and it was only after he had completed the fust two volumes of the task that trouble began5Although Brodhead was still away in London, he had powerful friends at home, notably those in the New York Historical Society, and they complained that the documents he had transcribed had been prepared for publication by O'callaghan who stood, therefore, to reap all the kudos for the work. The squabble ended up in the state legislature, and there a compromise of sorts was hammered out6 An act was passed stipulating that all of the documents transcribed would be published, not just a selection of them as was the case in the work which O'Callaghan had entitled Documentary Hktory of the State of New York, and that a suitable person would be employed to translate into English those that were written in Dutch or Fkench.7 At that juncture, Bmdhead let it be known that he would be willing to undertake that work and of superintending publication, at no cost to the state. He misjudged the strength of O'Callaghan's political friends, though. The Whigs we= once more in control of the legislature and Thurlow Weed ruled the roost. Thus, when it came to choosing between O'Callaghan and Brodhead it was no contest The doctor was hired to cany out the work at an annual salary of $1,500, plus 25@for every page which he had to translate.' After that, the remaining two volumes of Documentary History of the State of New Yo& were published without further incident: volume three in 1850,and volume four in 1851. That done, O'Callaghan got down to the business of translating and preparing for publication, the entire collection of documents which Bmdhead had collected in E ~ r o p e . ~ One can only hazard a guess as to what part pmfessional rivalry played in the matter, but it should be noted that both O'callaghan and Brodhead were interested in the same field of study. On the

The Man of Letters

other hand, it has also been suggested that their relations were really quite amicable, Brodhead having nominated O'Callaghan for membership of the New York Historical Society soon after the publication of HLFory ofNew Nethedand. Moreover, the fact that Brodhead wrote the introduction to Documents Relatiue to the Colonial History of the State ofNew York,as the work containing the whole of his transcripts was called, and that he presented the doctor with an autographed copy of his own History of the State of New York, have been cited as indications that he and O'Callaghan were on good terms with each other. It is a deceptive argument though. In the matter of the introduction, that was written by Brodhead at the insistence of the regents of the state university, who took over the general supervision of the publication from the state secretary in 1856, by which time six volumes of the work were already in print. As for the autographed copy of History ofthe State ofNew Yo&, that was likely to have been nothing more than an attempt at a piece of scholarly one-upmanship.lo The decision to publish the entire collection of Brodhead tmnscripts in order to mollify his supporters, and the actual comrnencement of work on the project, did not ensure calm for long. Argument erupted again in 1855 when O'Callaghan was accused of manipulating both the sequence in which the volumes were published and their contents, in order to give the work a pronounced Catholic bias. This occurred when he had volumes five and nine published simultaneously. The trouble was that volume nine happened to be the first one to contain material which Brodhead had collected in Paris. Since it covered the early years of h n c h colonial activity in North America it necessarily contained a large number of items that came from priestly sources, notably Jesuit ones. In some eyes, that amounted to spreading papist propaganda O'Callaghan tried to calm the uproar by explaining that in order to get the Brodhead documents into print with the least possible delay it made good sense to publish fiat those which were already in English, namely the London ones, while work went ahead on translating the French transcripts, which would make up the contents of volume nine. Since they were contemporary with the volume five London documents, O'Callaghan and the regents of the university decided that it would make good sense to publish the two volumes simultaneously, even though that would entail volume nine being out of sequence. He was not, he felt, breaking any new ground in proposing that, He had already established a precedent for it by bringing volumes three and four out before volumes one and two, which would contain the Dutch documents, and would not be ready for some time. As for the

Edmund Bailey O'Calhaghn

charge of religious bias, it is true that much of what went into volume nine came from Catholic sources, but since it was preceded by two tomes of material kom good Protestant pens, and was accompanied by a third, the argument that it showed Catholic bias lost much of its force." The outcome was that the legislature removed the whole project from the political arena by enacting that the general supervision of it was to be transferred from the state secretary to the regents of the university, who were empowered to decide which of the remaining documents should be published. Although that seems to violate the Fist Amendment of the Constitution by allowing the regents to require the removal of any offending documents and to have them replaced by "others in relation to the early history of the State, to an equivalent extent," it was an attempt to placate those who had accused O'Callaghan of disseminating Catholic propaganda. In practical terms, the change had no effect whatsoever. The regents were already aware that the translation work was more or less complete, and let it be known that it would be inexpedient for them to attempt "any exercise of the discretion vested in them." Thus O'Callaghan was allowed to continue as he had intended to in the first place by bringing out volumes six, one, seven, eight, two, and ten, in that sequence, over the next two yean.12 Every indicator points to it having been another stratagem on the part of the proBrodhead group to try and discredit O'Callaghan, for one of the outcomes of it was that the regents of the university requested Brodhead to "prepare a General Introduction to that work, to be prefixed to the first volume." Brodhead's introduction gave explicit recognition, and implicit approval of the part that O'Callaghan had played, and would continue to play, in bringing about the publication of the entire collection of transcripts.13 Although Brodhead's introduction set one ogre to rest, it did nothing to prevent the emergence of another and far more serious threat to O'Callaghan's position. That was State Secretary Joel T. Headley's 1857 report to the legislature. While general supervision of the publication of the Brodhead documents had been vested in the regents of the university by the act of 1856, the project was still dependent upon the state for funding. It was that which permitted Headley to report that the cost of it was getting out of hand, and that the mlue of the finished work did not warrant the kind of expenditure which had already seen O'Callaghan paid the sum of $16,329 for a work which was nowhere near fiished. Dangerous as the charges could have been to his position had the legislature reacted to them as Headley hoped it would, in

The Man of Letten the end they had no effect at all. O'Callaghan's powerful friends saw to it that the report was ignored, and s o the work on Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York was able to continue to its conclusion without any further attempts either to hinder or to stop it.I4 In passing, however, it should be noted that Joel T. Headley was not an entirely impartial critic. He too was a historiographer, although generally considered to have been a second-rate one. Professional jealousy, therefore, could have been as much of a factor in determining the contents of his report as concern over the conservation of state funds.Is As much as anything else, the affair attests to the strength of O'Callaghan's political support; demonstrating that Thurlow Weed's influence was not only great, but far reaching too, extending all the way from the floor of the state legislature to the ivory towers of the university. Despite such occasional disquieting events though, the O'Callaghans' life in Albany between 1848 and 1870 was pleasant enough. They lived in the best part of town, on State Street, where their neighbours included the city's rich and powerful-men like Erastus Corning, Joel Munsell, and Weed himself. As for his work at the state capitol, that was as near as the top of the street, and although he occasionally complained mildly about having to spend his time shut up with musty old documents, or of being very busy, he found it much to his liking.I6 It was rewarding a s well; in addition to financial well-being, it brought him recognition from scholars and from scholarly institutions across the United States and beyond. H e became known as the undoubted authority on American colonial history, and was consulted by such notables a s Francis Parkman, Francis-Xavier Garneau, and John Gilmary Shea. Some years later his work even elicited the grudging approval of the Anglophile historian William Kingsford who, after writing about how O'Callaghan had "closed his turbulent career in Canada by his shameful flight," went on to add in the form of a footnote that "it is only a matter of justice to Dr. O'Callaghan to bear witness to his useful and honourable career in the United States," and that his work contained "not the slightest trace of the style of the Vindicator."17 St. John's College, Fordham, bestowed the degree of doctor of laws upon him for his work.18 There was a growing demand for his books abroad, and the Maatschappu der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, in Holland, named him to its ranks in recognition of the contribution he had made to the study of Dutch colonial hi~tory.'~In short, he became famous, and justifi-

ably so, for History of New Netherland had pointed the way that American historiography should go. In his subsequent works, even though he had played no part in actually collecting the documents which made up their contents, he had made them more accessible by translating them into English where necessary, and more intelligible by annotating them. They were contained in the more than thirty works which he published from 1848to 187Mhose under the aegis of the state of New Yo&, as well as those on his own behalf (see Appendix 2). Diverse as their subject matter might seem, there is a unity to them that their titles tend to obscure. They all have to do with aspects of colonialism in North America, the subject which dominated much of his adult life in one way or another: fiat by carnpaigning against it in Lower Canada, and afterwards by documenting it in the United States. From that it follows that someone looking at the list of O'Callaghan's published works for the first time might expect to find something in it to do with the 1837 rebellion in Lower Canada But, apart from a pamphlet, published in 1836, entitled The Late Session ofthe Provincial Parliament ofLower Canada,the list contains nothing even remotely connected with those events. There is a simple enough reason for that. It is not, as his obituarist suggested, that they were "a subject of painhl memory to him."" The nature of O'Callaghan's work was such that it always depended or consisted of documentary materials; the fact was that he did not have ready access to any for the period in his life before he found refuge in the United States. They were either in London, if they were of British origin, or burned if they were from Patriote pens. It is unlikely that he had any regrets over that since he had plenty to occupy both his mind and his time at the state capitol. Moreover, he found Albany to be a congenial place in which to live, largely on account of its Irishness. Up to 40 percent of its population consisted of immigrants from the old country. They began to anive around the turn of the century, and kept on coming in ever increasing numbers until the flow peaked at the time of the potato famine in Ireland. The earliest to anive found work building the Erie Canal, and then laying track for Erastus Coming's New York Central Railroad. When construction of those facilities was complete, the ones who did not move on to similar projects elsewhere joined with later comers in seeking work in the new industries that were springing up in Albany By the 1850s, the combination of natural increase and continued immigration gave Albany an Irish population in excess of 20,000 which, it would appear, was predominantly Roman Catholic.2'

The Man of Letters

Unlike some cities, it did not suffer the outbreaks of sectarian and ethnic violence which occurred in places like Philadelphia, where, in 1844, Catholic churches were burned to the ground despite the presence of large numbers of troopsP The reason for the difference in Albany was that Mayor Erastus Coming, and his Democratic city administration depended very much on the Irish vote to maintain their grip on power, while the Whig opposition, overlorded by Thudow Weed, constantly courted it in the hope of breaking that h01d.23 It was a political climate in which the Irish population, and with it the Catholic church, could grow and prosper. Starting in 1800from a minuscule congregation which fitted easily into one small church-the original St. Mary's-it had grown by 1855 to a point where it required fwe large churches and a cathedral to accommodate the 13,000 regular communi~ants?~ The poorest of the poor in Albany were mainly Irish and Catholic, as were the richest of the rich. Among the former, sickness, drunkenness, and crime were rampant. As for the wealthy, they exemplified the American dream; they had escaped by their own efforts from the trap of poverty and become successful businessmen. O'callaghan's brother-in-law, Matthew Hawe, was one of them, and the former Patriote, John Tracey-the late Dr. Daniel Tracey's brother who had fled from Lower Canada in 1837and had since become one of Albany's largest distillers-was another. The brewing industry too was largely Irish owned, as were a number of other prosperous enterprises; by the middle of the century, the register of Albany's leading businessmen contained not only Hawes and 'Raceys, but Cassidys, Nolans, Caggers, McKnights and others, men whose names left no doubt as to what their origins were. It was among those people that the O'Callaghans found many of their friends. They had others from among the city's non-Irish residents too, political and business moguls like Thurlow Weed and Erastus Coming but, almost without exception, whether their friends were Irish, Knickerbocker, or Yankee, Catholic or Protestant, they all had one thing in common. They were all powerful and influential.% The O'Callaghans were always devout Catholics, and attended St. Mary's Church, just around the comer from their home on State Street. It had been enlarged on several occasions and, when the O'Callaghans returned to Albany in 1848, it was sening as a procathedral for the newly created diocese, and the seat of its frst Biiop, John McCloskey. They very soon gravitated towards the coterie that gathered in his home some evenings to enjoy literary and musical entertainment. Later, when Clarence Walworth-a young man of

Protestant origins who had converted to Catholicism, and who O'Callaghan had known ever since he first arrived in Albany in 1837-became the parish priest at St. Mary's, he continued the practice? At other times, they visited the homes of lay friends, or entertained in their own residence, for by then the doctor was something of a celebrity in Albany, which, coupled with his reputation as a mconteur, was more than enough to attmct guests. On those evenings the talk was usually on some serious topic; but now and then, if he felt in good voice, the host could be induced to sing, probably one of Moore's songs which he had first learned as a young boy back in Mallow. Alternatively, he might even be persuaded to treat his guests to an anecdote or two, sometimes against himselfm27 Outside the social life in Irish Albany, and occasions connected with his work, O'Callaghan engaged to a limited extent in what might be called community affairs. He was no longer politically active in the accepted sense, but he was particularly interested in education. It was his firm conviction that every child should receive the benefits of at least an elementary education. In that, he remained true to Jacksonian principles, even though it put him at odds with the city fathers in Albany, who were notoriously stingy when it came to financing schools. To counter that Bishop McCloskey spearheaded a strong movement to provide parochial schools in the However, the perceived need for schools was not the most pressing social problem facing the Catholic church in Albany; that was drunkennesswithin its predominantly Irish congregation. In the squalid, teeming neighbourhoods of Martinville and Gander Bay, where the poorest of them lied, and where, with the city's tacit approval, pigs roamed at large, fomging off the refuse that was thrown into the streets for want of a garbage collection service, alcoholism vied with pestilence to become the more effective killer. The extent of that problem is hinted at by the fact that in a city of 50,000 people of whom over 40 percent were Irish, there were in the decade between 1845 and 1855 as many as eight hundred grog shops. Given that statistic, it is not surprising that Father Theobald Mathew, the renowned Irish temperance missionary, was invited to visit Albany during the course of his American crusade from 1849 to 1851.29 Father Mathew was not unknown to O'Callaghan. His sister in Cork, Mary Anne Walsh, never tired of extolling the priest's virtues in her letters to him, and both she and her husband Frank were dedicated workers in his campaign to eradicate drunkenness from the face of the earth. So committed was she to the cause that she

The Man of Letters

appealed to her brother to solicit donations from his wealthy friends in Albany to help pay off the huge debt which the priest had incurred in carrying out his campaign in Ireland. However, as her letters show, he did not respond to her pleas immediately." It was not that he was opposed to sobriety, for he had been encouraging it among the poor ever since 1832,when he became active in the work of the Quebec Temperance S~ciety.~' But as an erstwhile physician, as well as an astute observer of social conditions, O'Callaghan saw the problem of drunkenness from a quite different perspective than people like Father Mathew. The doctor regarded it as a "cursed disease," rather than as a surrender to temptationillness rather than a sin, That being so, it was not something to be cured by inducing a victim to sign a pledge which, in his opinion, was tantamount to trying "to stifle the Passion for Rum by exciting one for Cold Water!"" O'Callaghan was not totally averse to the use of alcohol, and would have probably advocated moderation rather than abstinence. He is known to have visited taverns on occasion, and he would have prescribed liquor for his patients hom time to time since it was regarded as having great curative properties. Like many a bourgeois of his day, he would have looked upon intemperance as an affliction of the poor, one to which his wealthy friends, many of whom had vested interests in the sale of alcoholic beverages,were not susceptible. What he failed to recognize was that those friends were actually a major part of the problem, being purveyors of its root cause, cheap liquor. In the end, though, O'Callaghan did rally to the aid of Father Mathew. It is arguable, however, whether he did so out of respect for his sister's wishes, or as an expression of his personal feelings &er meeting the rather down-at-heel priest, and hearing his impassioned appeal to the drunks of Albany to amend their ways.He published an open letter urging the public to come to the assistance of the man who, regardless of his own health, was "anxious only to reclaim the unfortunate, and to win our Youth to the ways of Sobriety.''s3 As a footnote to Father Mathew's Albany crusades, although many of the Irish there did sign the pledge, there is no evidence to suggest that it had any lasting effect The consumption of alcohol continued to increase distilleries and breweries continued to prosper and, of the 801 prisoners incarcerated in the city penitentiary in 1855, 771 were there for dr~nkenness.~ Sad to say, it was a sign that Albany was a growing industrial city and beset with all the social problems which that brought Nevertheless, O'Callaghan found working there to be pleasant enough

Edmund Bailey O'CaIlaghan

and, what is more, he and his wife could get away from it more or less whenever they pleased. When he found what he referred to as his rheumatism bothersome-it was probably arthritis--#hey sometimes took a short trip to Saratoga Springs, hoping that a few draughts from the mineral springs there would alleviate the pain.% At other times, when they felt the need for a longer break, they usually went to Rockaway, a resort on the south-west coast of Long Island, to enjoy the bracing effect of the sea air, Unfortunately, they were not always made to feel welcome there by those of the Knickerbocker elite from New York and environs, who considered the place to be their own private preserve. They were the sort of people who would have treated an Irish couple like the O'Callaghans, as if they were social lepers. Even though this did not disturb the doctor, his wife made no secret of how it distressed her, and of how she would have preferred to spend her vacations.elsewhere.% On at least three occasions they did do that,and travelled north to Canada, which she enjoyed very much. They were primarily business trips, but they did manage to fmd time to visit some of 0'Callaghan's old haunts in Montreal and some of his old Patriote colleagues before returning to Alban~.~ The first of those visits to Canada took place in the summer of 1852, when they visited Montreal. It was presumably a business trip connected with the m e t i n g of one or other of O'Callaghan's published works. While there, however, they took advantage of the occasion to visit Papineau at La Petite Nation. It was a brief visit, but it had a far-reaching effect on O'Callaghan. Up until then he had always given the impression that, politically, he stood solidly behind his former chief, but afterwards his views veered sharply round to correspond with those expxessed by Mackenzie in several of his letters written in 1844.38At that time O'Callaghan had soundly scolded him for attempting to shake his "high respect and confidence in Mr. Papineau."s He set out his new stance in a letter to Henry S. Chapman, written in September 1853, in which he complained about how well Papineau and his family had fared at the hands of the British, and of how Papineau had withdrawn from public life because he could no longer be a dictator. Rather a startling turn-about for a loyal supporter of many years' standing. It was not, however, an entirely unforeseeable conclusion to a process which had been underway ever since 1839. Seeing a prosperous Papineau enjoying the life of one to the manor born was just the nudge O'callaghan needed to take the ultimate step in that direction.4 After Papineau left for Rance, O'Callaghan's ties with the Patriotes, especially those with their former leader, began to loosen, and

The M m of Letters

continued to do so as the years went by and he climbed to a position of eminence in his own right. As his own star ascended, so the need to bask in the reflected light of a setting sun diminished. The acclaim that was his as a result of his published works only served to accelerate the process that was gradually distancing him from his former life wherein his renown had come not so much from his own accomplishments as from his association with Papineau and the Patxiotes, It was the first and last time that O'Callaghan went to La Petite Nation, despite a standing invitation to do so whenever he felt the need for a vacation. One can only speculate as to just why that was so, but it is reasonable to suspect that it had something to do with the place being a wo&g seigneury. To an advocate of popular democracy and of a landowning yeomanry, such as the doctor was, seeing seigneurialism at fistahand would have come as something of a shock. He had left no room for doubt as to what his sentiments were when he wrote to F.-X Gameau that with the annexation of Canada to the United States, "the curse of feudalism will be lifted from your soil."' Annexation was what he had been preaching to Papineau ever since his return from fiance. Papineau in turn, had given every indication of commitment to the concept;yet there he was, living and loving a way of lie which was a complete denial of the underlying philosophy of annexationism. To O'Callaghan that must have appeared as the height of hypocrisy and have brought home to him the realiiation that despite all his claims to being an annexationist, Papineau, at heart, remained an unregenerate seigneurialist. It was a political gulf that had existed between them all along but, until then, O'Callaghan had chosen to close his eyes to its existence. The sight of his former chief enjoying the avails of being a seigneur made him finally face up to the truth. Once he did that, a political parting of the ways was inevitable and fmal, even though seignewialism was abolished two years later with the passage of the Seigneurial Tenure Bill in 1854. Oddly enough, on a personal level, they remained on good terms-they had shared too many advenities for it to have been otherwise. Thereafter, though, politics ceased to dominate their correspondence, and when they did meet, it was always somewhere other than at La Petite Nation? Shortly after his visit to the Ottawa Valley, 09Ca.Uaghanwrote to Mackenzie for the fist time in fwe years. Mackenzie had returned to Canada by this time, and was politically rehabilitated to the point where he was a sitting member of the House of Assembly." It was a brief and very formal letter, dealing with a relatively minor political

matter bearing all the marks of being a conhived excuse for writing. A month later he wrote again, this time somewhat less formally. Although the contents were again mostly trivial, at the end of it O'Callaghan wrote, "I'm a fossil, stowed away here among musty old recordrelic of a bygone age. Take therefore in good part what I write. If 'twill answer no other purpose, 'twill show that I still live."44 That reads very much as if, writing as one old rebel to another, he was appealing to Mackenzie to restore their correspondence to what it had been up until 1847 in order to fdl the gap left in his psyche by his final acceptance of the fact that Papineau was not a true liberal after all, and never had been. Since moving back to Albany in 1848, the doctor had assumed an uncommitted posture so far as American politics were concerned; he had friends upon whom he could count among both the Whigs and the Democmts. The same, however, was not true of his attitude towards Canadian affairs. He felt that he had too much of an emotional stake in political developments there to be able to ignore them and, in addition, in the United States he had no British colonial regime upon which to vent what was left of his Anglophobia, For those reasons he had tried to participate vicariously in Canadian affairs through Papineau. But with Papineau's political virtue compromised, Mackenzie was to be his alternative point of access to them With the ice thus broken, the two corresponded intermittently for the next eight years, although the later letters never recaptured the warmth of their earlier ones. So far as can be ascertained, the last letter to pass between them was written by Mackenzie on 29 November 1860, and towards the end of it he wrote, "I am 66 next March-hale, active and industrious. My mother lived till 90-4'11 l i e as long as I can." It was not to be for very long, though; he lived to see his sixty-sixth birthday but soon afterwards, his health began to decline, and continued to do so until 28 August 1861, when he died.45 By that time the American Civil War was more than four months old, and the North was smarting from early Confederate victories. O'Callaghan did not become directly involved in that rebellion, but continued working on the documents preserved in the state secretary's office. He was, of course, strongly pro-Union, although his views on the conflict were perhaps a little different from those held by most Albanians. Like them he was opposed to secession, and he abhorred slavery. But for him, the mere fact that the Confederate government enjoyed British sympathy was sufficient on its own to ensure his support for the Union. During the war he paid one visit to Canada, in May 1864. On that occasion he was appalled to fmd

The M m ofLetters

that in Montreal, where "the very air stunk with secession," even a confirmed Union supporter like T.S. Brown "was fearful of opening his mouth on the subject." No such fear inhibited O'Callaghan, though. "I told them pretty plainly that the North would triumph and crush out the damnable Heresy," he wrote to Am6d6e Papineau. He also got considerable personal satisfaction out of the United States' abrogation of the Reciprocity Watywith Canada, in retaliation for Britain building warships for the Confederates. It was cause enough for him to gloat that "Canada is now taught a lesson. She had better take care lest she be called on to learn a severe one."d6 Before 1 January 1863, when the Proclamation of Emancipation took effect, one consequence of the war, and of the events leading up to it, was the influx of black refugees into Albany. They were mostly runaway slaves on their way to Canada via the Underground Railway, on which it was a major staging point. Most of them continued on their way as soon as possible for, although the city already had an appreciable black population, the refugees were not always made to feel welcome:" The Albany Atlas and &us set the tone for that when it editorialiied that they belonged to "a separate race, which can never amalgamate with the white mce and must continue a distinct and peculiar people." O'Callaghan, however, was not one who subscribed to that view. In his opinion their differences were the result of their slavery, which he pointedly referred to in a letter to Papineau as "that last relic of Feudal Barbarism," and its ~ ~ so, deabolition as "a great triumph of the Rights of M E I ~ . "Even spite the cool attitude of some Albanians towards the black refugees, the city was not troubled with racial strife, as was the case in some places, and so, for the most part, the war years there were uneventful. The exploits of the hometown hero, General Philip Sheridan, a son of Albany Irish parents who achieved everlasting fame for pioneering scorched earth tactics in warfare, were a source of civic pride. Wartime tocsins and alanuns occasionally disrupted the day-today rhythm of life, but the city's industries prospered, and people went about their business very much as usual. The war, however, marked a watershed in O'Callaghan's writing career. From 1848until its outbreak,with the exception of preparing three lesser works of his own for publication40missary Wilson's Werly Book, in 1857, Orderly Book of Lieut-Gen. John Bwgoyne, in 1860,and A 'Ituo Years Journal in Necu Yo& and k r t of its Tem'tories in America by Charles Wmley, A.M., also in 186O-he was fully occupied with his work on the Brodhead documents. After the publication in 1861 of the eleventh volume and general index of Documents Relatiw to the Colonial History of the State of New York,

he had more time to pursue interests of his own. The result was that from 1861 to 1865, although he put out two titles on behalf of the state, he also managed to publish three on his own (see Appendix 2).50 The most notable of these was List ofEiiitions ofltre Holy So@t m s and Phrts Thereof in Amenka A-evious to 1860, which came out in 1861, and was the result of two years of painstaking research carried out almost entirely by mail. In the years following the war, up to 1870, his researches took him into areas that bordered on the esoteric. Between 1866 and 1867 he published a series of four woks under the collective title New York Colonial Documents. They consisted of annotated transcripts of four documents of English and Dutch origin dating from the middle of the seventeenth century to the early years of the eighteenth. His favourite field of study, however, was among the Jesuit Relations, and he broke historiographical ground by publishing reprints of eight extracts from them under the general title of O'Callaghan's Reprints. The original documents they contained dated from 1611 to 1632, and the reprints, replete with O'Callaghan's own notes, came out between 1870 and 1871. They were a logical outgrowth from Jesuit Relations ofDiscowries and Other Occmnces in anada and the Northern and WestemStates ofthe Union, 16321672, which he had published in 1847 (see Appendix 2). None of those later works had large press runs. Often as few as twenty-five copies were printed, and seldom more than one hundred.sl However, the smallness of their numbers is no indication of their importance. That was immense and lies in the interest they helped rekindle in the French side of colonial history in North America. O'Callaghan finally began to lose interest in Canadian political and constitutional affairs in the post Civil War period. Mackenzie's death deprived him of a direct point of contact, and his disinterest was hastened by the move towards Confederation, which he was perceptive enough to predict as early as 1858 when he observed that it would "be the next move, but whether it is to be on the same plan as these States, or a Consolidation under one Federal Head and Parliament B la Louis Napoleon, the wire pullers best know."52 When it came about in 1867 it altered the whole nature of Canada's relationship with Britain, causing O'Callaghan to confess, "The politics of Canada I do no longer pretend to understand."% The letter in which he made that admission was the first one which he had written to Papineau in two and a half years, and only the second since his fateful visit to La Petite Nation in 1852. It was also, so far as can be determined, the last he ever wrote to his for-

The Man of Letten

mer chief. When he says in the letter, "I am no longer young. A few years, and that is all I anticipate. Yet during these years that are left, I consider it a duty to renew a friendship, and to exchange sentiments on men and events once in a while with one to whom I have so long looked up," it reads almost as if he felt that life was slipping away from both of them, and that he wanted to restore severed ties before it was too late." Papineau was, after all, the last survivor of the trio of Canadian political fqures with whom he had maintained a correspondence, albeit a sporadic one in latter years. The other two had already died; Fabre fnst, in 1854 from cholera and, as previously mentioned, Mackenzie seven years later, in 1861, from a debilitating disease. It presaged the approaching end of an era in O'callaghan's lie.% Albany had been O'Callaghan's home since 1848. In 1870, he and his household moved to New York. It was a recourse whose seed had been sown twenty-three years earlier when the doctor, who was then still at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, undertook to translate some of the city of New York's early records from their original Dutch into English. For that he was paid the sum of $1,500, and it was money which probably lured him back there in 1870.s6 On 12 May 1869, the Common Council of the city of New York approved the expenditure of $100,000 to renovate the Hall of Records so that it would be a secure and accessible repository for the municipal archives. A year later, on 13 May 1870, it was resolved "That the Clerk of the Common Council be and he is hereby authorized and directed to employ a suitable person to prepare for the press, with appropriate introductions and notes, the ancient records of the City of New Amsterdam, and those of the City of New York, prior to eighteen hundred and fifty, and to cause fwe thousand c o p ies of the same to be printed and publi~hed."~~ The then mayor was Abraham Oakey Hall, "the Elegant Oakey" to some, who was a noted dandy, a notorious profligate, and a Democrat in the pocket of the Grand Sachem and political boss at Tammany Hall, William Marcy Rweed. However, notwithstanding all of that, Hall, surprisingly, was a respected member of the New York Historical Society and, in that capacity, he and O'Callaghan were known to each other. The mayor, therefore, took it upon himself to try and induce the doctor to come to New York and do the job, since he was probably the only man in the country who could do it satisfactorily. The inducements Hall had to offer, perhaps adorned with a little flattery, proved to be irresistible, and by the beginning of July 1870, O'callaghan had agreed to accept the position."

Why he should have wanted to do so remains something of a mystery, for it meant uprooting his family and leaving the congenial surroundings of Albany at a time of his life when he ought to have been contemplating retirement. On the face of it he had everything he needed right where he was-friends, status, a comfortable home, books, and all the other resources that he might need to facilitate his researches. Unquestionably the reputed $5,000 which he was offered was a tempting c m t . Perhaps, as on former occasions, economic necessity, or a perception of it, determined his c o m e of action.59 On the other hand, there is nothing to suggest that he was under any kind of financial duress in 1870. Perhaps, since he was already seventy years old, he was looking ahead to when there would be no more work left for him to do with the state archives, and he would be left without a regular income. There are signs of that being imminent for he had published nothing on behalf of the state since 1868. If indeed that were the case, he could well have been tempted by what appeared to be easy money: he had already done a large part of the translation work back in 1847. Alternatively, monetary considerations may have played little or no part in shaping his decision to accept the job. He could have been motivated purely by his desire to continue basking in the glow of public acclaim, which the publication of the New York records, under his supervision, would certainly ensure. He never was one to avoid such attention, especially when it came from those who considered themselves to be his peers in the field of American historiography. Whatever it was that led to his decision to take the position, by mid-July the O'Callaghan household was packing up and making ready to leave for New York What that household consisted of at the time, apart from the doctor and his wife, is unceltain. Richard Lacy's orphaned daughter was probably still living with them, for she is known to have been doing so as late as April 1868." It is also possible that O'Callaghan's sister, Mrs. Mary Anne Walsh, was living with them too for, after the death in 1851 of her husband Frank,he invited her to America. There is nothing to indicate whether or not she accepted the invitation beyond the fact that there is no trace of her having written any further letters to her brother after she had promised to visit him in the spring of 1852.61 As the O'Callaghan menage, prepared to leave Albany, it is worth considering what impact the city might have had on the doctor. That it provided him with the opportunity to develop into one of America's foremost historiographers is self-evident, but it has also been said that the conservative climate of opinion there was responsible for diverting his energies horn revolutionary politics to the study of

The Man of Letters

history?* Arguably that, was not so. It was his social conscience combined with his journalist's penchant for ferreting out a story which fust directed him into that avenue, and afterwards he was propelled along it by the momentum of success. What can be said with some degree of certainty, however, is that his close association with the Catholic church in Albany, and his personal friendship with the clergy there, especially with Bishop McCloskey and the Rev. Clarence Wworth, had a moderating effect of some on his views. That is quite apparent if one compares those which he expressed with regard to the relationship between church and state in The Vindicator, immediately before the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837, with those he expounded to Papineau in 1850. In the first instance he protested most vehemently that Bishop Lartigue of Montreal, by requiring that his pastoral letter following the meeting of the six counties at St. Charles be read from every pulpit in the diocese, was abusing his position by interfering in politics: whereas, in the second he made it quite clear that although he remained committed to the idea of the separation of church and state, he saw nothing wrong with priests preaching politics since, by so doing, "they only help keep the people alive and thinking, and when they begin to think, Libew must be gained? It was a dramatic turn-about which took him from a position where, in 1837, the charge of anti-clericalism could have been levelled at him, perhaps unfairly, to one where, in 1850, that was no longer possible. It can only be said, therefore, that, except for a lingering academic interest in Canadian affairs, O'Callaghan's years in Albany saw politics replaced as a dominating factor in his life by the documentation of American colonial history, and by his faith. To some extent he seems to have recognized that for himself because his last gesture of gratitude to the city took place in a religious rather than a political setting. He chose to make it in the newly rebuilt St. Mary's Church, only completed in 1869 to replace the one in which he had worshipped throughout his years in Albany. It was the gift of a solid marble altar to grace the Lady Chapel, and was consecrated on 2 July 1870 by Bishop W d h a r n ~ . ~ W~thindays of the ceremony, OYCallaghanand his family were on their way to New York to face whatever the future had in store for them there.

Chapter 12 The Twilight Years ad the O'callaghans but known what lay ahead for them in New York, they would probably never have left Albany. However, they proceeded to move into 651 Lexington Avenue, which seems to dispel any notion that they might have had financial problems, for it was not a neighbourhood favoured by those trying to make ends meet There they began to adjust to their new surroundings. One effect of the move on the doctor was that his correspondence underwent a pronounced change. For one thing its volume was greatly diminished, and for another it contained a larger proportion of brief notes than it had formerly done.' Much of that was due to the fact that many of those with whom he had previously corresponded lived in New York and were, therefore, within easy visiting distance. In the absence of telephones, meetings were usually arranged via notes scribbled on odd sized scraps of paper. It was a practice which, although he disliked it, O'Callaghan tolerated, and even indulged in it himself occasionally, yet he did not allow that to stop him from complaining about it at every opportunity. That is apparent from one such missive he received in which the author, anticipating his reaction, commenced with the words "In spite of your objurgation against hasty notes."* A noticeable feature of the notes which O'Callaghan wrote himself during this period of his life is the deterioration of his handwriting which, by as early as 1874, had degenerated into little more than a scrawl? When, however, he wrote an actual letter, he took such meticulous care to keep his writing legible that it had the appearance of a copy-book exercise to it, suggesting that he might have had some difficulty in manipulating a pen, the possible consequence of an arthritic condition in his

H

Edmund Bailey O'CdZaghan

If that were so, it did not impair his ability to prepare the New York records for printing. That went ahead at a tremendous pace, facilitated to some extent by his having done much of the translation work years earlier. Within twelve months of having taken on the task, he had fifteen volumes of the city's earliest records ready to be set in type, as well as Nty-six of the wills on file in the Surrogate's oficealmost forty thousand pages in all, including forty-three of maps, all of which had to be redrawn because the originals were too fragile, or faded, to be reproducible. That prodigious output was further facilitated by O'Callaghan having an adequate staff under his direction, and by the assistance of Dr. Samuel S. Ruple; a practising physician with an interest in archival work, who had a fascination for old wills and vital statistics. It was a collaboration which, beside speeding up the work, also led to a strong and enduring friendship developing between the two, and to Purple becoming O'Callaghanls personal physician. Both relationships continued throughout the latter's last years.= Unfortunately, all their efforts were nullified by the misdeeds of a group of corrupt city politicians known as the Ring. The Ring was the brainchild of Boss Meed, and beside himself, it consisted of the mayor, A. Oakey Hall, the city comptroller, Richard B. Comolly, and the commissioner of public parks, Reter B. Sweeny-all leading fgures in the Tarnmany Hall machine. The way it worked was simplicity itself. They saw to it that the city only purchased goods and services from suppliers who agreed to make clandestine payments to them for the privilege. To recompense them for the expense which that entailed, the suppliers were permitted to inflate the cost to the city of whatever they supplied. The net result was that the suppliers had a guaranteed source of business, the members of the Ring became wealthy, and the city of New York paid for it all.6 One such supplier was the New York Printing Company, which had been designated as the city's official printer. After O'Callaghan had prepared the records and the wills for publication, he was required to send his material to that f m 7 He sent the first batch off and some time later he received proof copies to peruse and correct That all took place in the summer and fall of 1871, coincidentally the period in which Papineau died, which meant that the last link with his Canadian political past was broken at about the same time that his career as a historiographer was coming to an end.8 He never published another thing after the breakup of the Ring. There had been murmurs about its activities for some time, particularly in the pages of Harper's Weekly, where the caricaturist,

The Twilight Years

Thomas Nast, seldom allowed a week to pass without pillorying one or other of its members. Then The New Yo& Times joined in the campaign and used its editorial columns to air public concern over the perception of corruption at Tarnmany Hall which many suspected, but none could prove without gaining access to the city's books. Weed, therefore, was able to ride out the storm of disapprobation until July 1871 when one of his minions, Sheriff James O'Brien, became disgruntled after being denied a place at the trough. Hungry for revenge, O'Brien organized and led a palace revolt at Tammany Hall. The pro-Weed faction there was too strong, however, and it went down to defeat. If nothing else, O'Brien was a persistent and resourceful man; having tried overt action and failed, he resorted to a covert approach. Shortly after the failed revolt, he delivered to the office of The New York Times transcripts of Comptroller Connolly's books.g As soon as the paper began printing them, the days of the Ring were numbered. A Grand Jury began investigating its activities, and before long Tweed, Hall, Connolly, and Sweeny had all departed the political stage. Boss Weed ended up in jail, Connolly and Sweeny departed hastily for Europe, and "the Elegant Oakey" was acquitted to resume leading a colourful life as a journalist and an impresario in New York They were not the only victims of the scandal. In its wake a reform minded city administration abrogated all existing contracts, and that included not only the one with the New York Printing Company, but the one with O'Callaghan too. All work on the publication of the records stopped, and the doctor was left unpaid for the balance of the work that was still to be done. All he had to show for his labours was the only known printed copy of what he had completed up until that time.1° Should O'Callaghan, with all his experience of politics and politicians have foreseen the possibility of such an outcome? Or, failing that, could any of his powerful political hiends have forewarned him of it? ThoSe are just two of the imponderableswhich come to mind, and one can only speculate as to what the answers to them might be. The problem is that remarkably little is known of the circumstances which took him to New York in the first place, and not a great deal more about what kept him there for the rest of his life after the abandonment of the project to publish the city's records. The indications are that the event did not damage his reputation as the highly respected doyen of American historiographers, although John Gilmary Shea did remark that it was "a severe blow" to him,and that it "preyed upon him greatly."ll That, however, is not

to say that it harmed him unduly, or that he shut himself off from the world and gave himself up to self pity. He continued to live on Lexington Avenue, so he was obviously not in any financial need, but how he spent his time remains open to some speculation. There is some evidence to show that he helped others to carry out researches in the areas of his expertise, and that he furnished them with full and well-documentedanswers to the questions which they put to him, but not much more is known beyond that.12 He was certainly engaged in some research of his own as well, for his correspondence shows that now and then, he consulted Shea over certain aspects of it. But it is impossible to determine from the few surviving notes which they exchanged just what its nature was.13 O'Callaghan seems to have gone out a fair amount, sometimes to visit old friends, such as Thurlow Weed who, like himself, had moved to New York.14 It can also be assumed that he was a regular visitor to the Lenox Library, which at that time housed what was probably the greatest collection of early Americana in the world.15 He would have been a more than welcome guest there for he had got to know James Lenox in 1860, when he was gathering data for A List ofEditions of the Holy Scr@turesand Ants ThereofM t e d m America Previous to 1860, and a great many letters passed between them at that time. The library would have been a powerful attraction for 09Ca11aghansince it was at his suggestion that Lenox had proceeded to assemble in it the only complete set of original copies of the Jesuit Relations in the United States.I6They were works in which his secular and religious interests found common ground. In the first instance, they were important sources for anyone engaged in the study of American colonial history, and in the second they were inspirational texts for devout Catholics since they chronicled the setbacks, the sacrifices,and the triumphs in the lives of the Pope's loyal soldiers campaigning for God in the New World. Catholicism had always been a constant in O'Callaghan's life, and this was no different in New York. He worshipped at St. Patrick's Cathedral, his parish church, which was also the seat of the Cardinal Archbishop, John McCloskey. He, it will be recalled, had been the first bishop of Albany, and was one of the doctor's old friends, so it can be taken as a matter of fact that he was a regular visitor to the Cardinal's residence, just as he had been in former times. O'Callaghan was also active in a number of church related organizations, such as the Council of the Catholic Union of New York, and the Xavier Alumni Sodality, which all made certain demands on his time."

The Twilight Years In short, he had many activities, both sacred and laic, which occupied his time, and the only thing which could keep him away from them was illness. H e seems to have suffered from some chronic condition which incapacitated him on occasion, one of which caused "a constant soreness between the Scapula and behind the Sternum," and which led him to complain "I should like to get rid of it if I knew how."18 Whatever that malady was, he continued to get out and about most of the time, helped in that by being able to take one of the horse-drawn streetcars, which operated along the main thoroughfares of New York. They were not, however, the most comfortable mode of transportation. Mark Twain found that out and remarked on it. "A car's proper cargo should be twenty-two inside and three upon each platform-twenty-eight-and no crowding," he grumbled. "I have seen fifty-six persons on a car, here, but a large part of them were hanging on by the teeth."Ig That sort of thing could well have been something to do with the accident in 1877 in which O'Callaghan is said to have been "hurt by a streetcar." Whatever the nature and the cause of it might have been, he was seriously injured-perhaps a fractured pelvis or a leg--and that set off the sequence of events which culminated in his death.20 What little evidence there is, and that amounts to the contents of Shea's "Obituary" in the Magazine of American History, suggests that after his accident, the remainder of O'Callaghan's life was divided into two parts. The first part he spent recovering from the effects of his injuries, and in the second part he became bed-ridden, suffering from what the obituarist referred to as a disease.21 During the first phase, which lasted a relatively short time, perhaps no more than a few weeks, his reduced mobility kept him confined to the house where he occupied himself among his books. Though his injuries healed, his general health began to deteriorate; his disease, whatever it was, advanced and forced him to take to his bed. There he languished in considerable pain for two years, attended by Dr. Purple, and nursed by his wife. Friends dropped in now and then to chat with him, and members of the clergy visited him regularly to hear his confession and to administer communion to him. All the while his condition continued to worsen until, "on Saturday, May 29,1880, there were signs of great weakness; the sacrament of extreme unction was administered, and in the evening he expired without a struggle, retaining his faculties to the close, making on his breast the sign of the faith which he had professed and pract i ~ e d . " ~ ~

Thus died Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, and four days later, on 2 June 1880 they buried him The funeral mass was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral, on 5th Avenue, and in addition to his widow, and those who had been near to s the ecclesiastical, pohim, the mourners included d i g n i ~ efrom litical, and scholarly communities. Cardinal McCloskey officiated, and the Rev. Clarence Walwofih, who had been 09Callaghan'sparish priest and friend for many years in Albany, eulogized him as having been "a great and good man, a man of faith and truth," which was demonstrably so. Then, touching on the doctor's importance as a historiographer, he spoke of how his "love of truth made him accurate in detail, and gave a value to his works which rendered them an authority, and established the reputation which he had so long enjoyed among scholars," which was also demonstrably true. He spoke too of how O'Callaghan "was not without fault," referring, in all probability, to aspects of his career which the church would not, or could not have condoned. Aspects such as his association with the infamous Weed Ring, and his part in inciting Lower Canadians to rebel. After that, Cardinal McCloskey, coped and mitred, pronounced the absolution, and 09Callaghanwas carried off to his grave in the Calvary Cemetery, flanked by eight pall-bearers. There was Thurlow Weed, his champion and guardian angel; John Gilmary Shea, his longstanding friend who would write his definitive obituary; John Kelly, 'heed's successor at Tammany Hall who helped purge it of corruption; George Henry Moore and E.F. De Lancey, the librarian and corresponding secretary of the New York Historical Society respectively; and three others, Henry Amy, F.H. Churchill, and William S. Preston, who were probably friends of his later years.23 What of O'Callaghan's legacy? It is not known what his personal fortune was, but he did leave a considerable library containing many rare and valuable books-2,474 titles in all. They were sold by auction in December 1882 when buyers paid good prices for them. Original copies of the Jesuit Relations, for instance, were sold for from $15.00 to $62.50 each, mainly to the Canadian Library of Parliament.24The Library of Congress bought a number of the books too, as did the New York Historical Society and the Lenox Library, whose purchases subsequentlybecame part of the collection of the New York Public Library.= Conservatively, the sale probably realized more than $10,000, but not all of 09Callaghan'sbooks were on offer in it. The only extant copy of his hceedings of the Common Council of New Amsterdam and New York was donated to the New York Historical Society by his widow, and that of his New York Wdls, 1664

The Twilight Years 16123he had given to Dr. Ruple; that too ultimately ended up in the

Society's pos~ession.~ So much for 07Callaghan'smaterial estate. He also left an intangible one and, of the two, it was by far the more valuable. He was the founding father of modem historiography so far as American colonial history was concerned. He lifted it out of the morass of lore and legend and set it on a firm foundation of fact. His work stimulated interest in the history of New F'rance, New England, and New Netherland and, in the case of the last of the three, he personally shipped it of its Rip Van W~nkleimage and revealed it for what it was: a mean-spirited place dominated by commercial exploitation and by feudal overlords. All of that might seem a little incongruous from a man who had previously shown himself to be an ardent campaigner against what he denounced as imperial oppression in Lower Canada. There he had espoused the Patriote cause and, through the pages of The Vindicator, had urged Irish immigrants to do likewise. He chose to fight his battles, however, with a pen rather than with a pistol and thus, when the time for writing passed and that for shooting began he found his weapon to be useless: in the eyes of many, he failed to measure up as a rebel. After he had taken refuge in the United States, he again rose to prominence as a writer, albeit in a different guise, that of historiographer rather than a polemicist. That apparent incongruity notwithstanding, O'Callaghan7slife was not without pattern. There was a definite connection between the fluctuations of his personal fmances and whether he turned to medicine or to writing for a livelihood. The former was his original choice for his life's work but, after his first discouraging experiences in the practice of it, he only returned to it when nothing else was available. A writing career, therefore, was obviously his preference subsequent to that, and he clearly got great satisfaction out of following it, whether it was as a journalist or as a historiographer. It brought him a reasonable living, the recognition which he seemed to crave and, moreover, it spared him the anguish of having to face his own inadequacies every time one of his patients died. Unfortunately, writing was not an option that was open to him in 1839,when he was left jobless after Mackenzie moved his newspaper to Rochester. He resumed his medical career. But even then, he continued writing on a part-time basis until he again saw an opportunity to make it his full-time occupation. Although writing was undeniably his first choice of career, it was not without its political consequences. That is to be seen in his editorship of The Vindicator. Granted that it was 07Callaghan'sconcern for the awful plight of

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghn

some of his compatriots, coupled with his introduction to the ideas of Jacksonian democracy and the inspiration of Daniel 'kacey that led him to start looking for political solutions to their problems. But it was the editorship which actually thrust him onto Lower Canada's political stage and compelled him to play a leading role in the colony's affairs for the next four and a half years. Similarly, when he took the position of editor and translator of the Brodhead papers it embroiled him in political controversy at the State House. In yet another instance, the completion of his History of New Netherland required him to seek political favours from whoever would provide them, be they Whig or Democrat. His compulsion to write, therefore, must have been very strong for him to have been willing to pay the political price that it often entailed. Within that overall framework OICallaghan's reactions to the day-to-dayincidents which he encounteredwere very largely reflections of his chamcter and personality, both of which had been forged and tempered in four Irish fires. The first was his Anglophobia, which was the result of his having been born at a time when the signs and symbols of British oppression were to be seen everywhere in Ireland. It remained a driving force in his daily life right up until he fled Lower Canada for the United States and then, in the socalled land of the free, where there was no British colonial presence, it suddenly became irrelevant. However, out of its remains sprang his interest in past colonial regimes in North America Their study and documentation occupied the rest of his life and brought him a measure of personal fame and fortune that the practice of medicine was unlikely to have provided. e helped shape his responses to life's daily The second f ~ which challenges was that he shared seveml of his siblings' zeal for serving others, particularly those who were less fortunate. That zeal gave him the compassion and the dedication necessary to endanger his own life in the cause of others, as was most evident when he was practising medicine in Lower Canada and had to contend with the cholera epidemics of the 1830s. The third motive force in his daily lie was his literacy. That derived, not just from his formal education, but also from being raised in a family that set great stom on learning. It gave him the means of expressing himself in both the written and the spoken word, and put fury into The Vhdicator, fire into his political speeches, and fluency into the numerous books that he wrote, edited, or annotated. The fnal fire in which his character was forged and tempered was that of Catholicism Throughout the eighty years of his life his faith never faltered. Although, from time to h e , he lost his respect

The Twilight Years

for certain members of the clergy, such as the Rev. Patrick McMahon in Quebec and Bishop Lartigue in Montreal, he was never anticlerical in the usual sense. He was a devout believer in the separation of church and state, especially during his Canadian years, when the hierarchy made no bones over its distaste for the Patriotes, but he never allowed that to diminish his adherence to the faith into which he was born. Nothing in the foregoing character sketch should be taken to suggest that O'Callaghan was a man without blemishes. All the adversities and set-backs which he suffered were bound to leave some scars on his personality. He learned to harbour grudges against those who crossed him: the Rev. McMahon, for instance, and those of the Patriotes who tried to subvert his loyalty to Papineau. He also acquired a toughness which, on occasion, bordered on unscrupulousness when he was pursuing some personal goal. That is well illustrated by his tactics in securing the editorship of The Vhdicator, and by the lengths to which he went when he was seeking a United States government sinecure in New York to allow him to complete his History of New Netherland. At some point in his life he came by a measure of vanity: he saw himself as a fount of wisdom that he did not hesitate to dispense, particularly in some of his letters. It was a trait which possibly had its origin in Montreal when he was trying to persuade the Irish voters that supporting the Patriotes was in their best interests by holding himself up as an example. In any case, by the time he fled to the United States it had taken on the appearance of a well-developed intellectual arrogance and was manifest in some of his letters to Mackenzie and Papineau in which his pontificating had an air of sanctimoniousness to it. Another manifestation of that vanity was in the matter of his obtaining the degree of doctor of medicine. Putting aside the fact that he got it by less than conventional means at a time when he was about to quit the practice of medicine. Once he received the degree the only use he ever made of it, so far as can be determined, was to sign his letters to those correspondents whom he wished to impress in the style of "E.B. OYCallaghan,M.D." Despite those, and any other prejudices, peccadilloes, and peculiarities he might have had, O'Callaghan's reputation as a man who helped shape the history of one nation, and the historiogmphy of another, remains undiminished. As Shakespeare put it, "one man in his time plays many parts."n Such words can truly be said of Edmund Bailey 09Callaghan.

Appendix 1 Summary of the Ninety-two Resohtions Resolution Contents. 1 to 5.

Express the loyalty of the people of Lower Canada to the Crown, and the willingness of their elected representatives to co-operate with the government, despite its attempts to ignore their rights. Complain that nothing was ever done over a previous list of grievances. Itemize misdeeds and shortcomings of the Legislative Council, and demand that it be made elective forthwith. Outline the advantages of the American system of govemment over that of Lower Canada. Demand that the rights of French-Canadians as British subjects be observed and respected. Set out the case for the repeal of the Tenure Act, and demand that it be done immediately. Defends the right of the LegislativeAssembly to expel members for cause. Demand that control of the public purse be in the hands of the elected Legislative Assembly.

E d d Bailey O'Callaghan 75.

Condemns the government's giving preference to anglophones rather than hcophones when making appointments in a province that is predominantly French speaking.

76 to 78.

Complain of bias in the courts where it is claimed that anglophone judges are consistently prejudiced against French-Canadians, showing it by trying to have all proceedings take place in English.

79 and 83.

Reiterate the rights of the Legislative Assembly, including those that permit it to incur certain expenses in carrying out its duties.

84.

Itemizes sixteen specific complaints against the governor and his councils, over and above those already mentioned.

85 and 86.

Demand the impeachment of Lord Aylmer, the governor, for his unjust and unconstitutional rule in the province.

87 and 88.

Express the gratitude of the Legislative Assembly for the work of Daniel O'Connell and Joseph Hume in the Imperial Parliament on behalf of Lower Canada.

89.

Calls for the establishment of Committees of Correspondence in Montreal and Quebec to provide for the dissemination of political news. Calls for D.-B. Viger to remain in London through the current sitting of the lmperial Parliament to watch over the interests of Lower Canada. States that the expenses of the Committees of Correspondence should met from the public purse. Demands that recent communications from the governor to the Legislative Assembly, which were of a derogatory nature, be expunged from the official record.

Appendix 2 Published Works Ascribed to Edmund Bailey 09Callaghan 1. As Author. The Late Session ofthe Provincial Parliament ofLower Canada. Montreal: js.n.1 1836. Published under the pen name of "An Old Countryman".

History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch, 2 vols., New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1846-1848. Jesuit Relations ofDiscoveries and Other Occurrencesin Canada and the NoHhern and WesternStates of the Union, 1632-1672. New York: Press of the Historical Society, 1847. Published in French in Montreal by Bureau melanges religieux, 1850. A List ofEditions of the Holy Scriptures and Parts ThereofRinted in America Previous to 1860.Albany: Munsell and Rowland, 1861. 2. As Editor. Commissary Wilson'sOrderly Book. Expeditions ofthe British and Provincial Army, under Maj. Gen. Jefhey Amherst, against Ticonderoga and Cmwn hint, 1759. Albany: J. Munsell1857. OrderlyBook ofLieut. Gen. John Burgoyne, h r n his Entry into the State of New York until his Surrender at Saratoga, 16th October, 1777. Albany: J. Munsell, 1860. A Two YearsJournal in New York,and Parts of its Territories in America, by Charles Wooley,A.M.. New York: W. Gowans, 1860. Journals of the Legislative Council of the Colony of New York. Begun the 9th day of April 1691; and ended the 3rd of April, 1775. 2 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1861.

Edmund Baiky O'Callaghdn

On@nof the Legislative Assemblies of the State of New York, Including Titles ofLaws Passed Previous to 1691. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1861.

New York Colonial Tracts.4 vols. Albany: J. Munsell, 1866-1867. The titles of the individual volumes are: 1. "Journal of the Voyage of the Sloop Mary from Quebeck together with an Account of her Wreck off Montauk Point, L.I., anno 1701." "Voyage of George Clarke Esq., to America, 1703." 2. "Voyage of the Slavers St. John and Arms ofAmsterdam, 1659, 3. 1663; together with Additional Papers IIIustrative of the Slave Tkade under the Dutch." "Letters of Isaac Bobin Esq.." 4.

O'Callaghan's Series ofReprints. 8 vols. Albany: J. Munsell1870-1871. The titles of the individual volumes are: 1. "Missio Canadensis. Epistola ex Portu Regali en Acadia transmissa ad Praepositum Generalem Societas Iem a R. Petro Biardo ejusdem Societatis." 2. "Copie de Trois Lettres escrittes +s annees 1625et 1626par le R.P. Charles Lallemant, SupCrieur des Missions de la Compagnie de Iesvs en la Nouvelle France." "Lettre du Reverend P&reL'Allemand, Supkrieur de la Mission 3. des P&es Jesuites en la Nouvelle France, Datee du 22 Novembre, 1629." 4. "Canadicae Missionis Relatio ab anno 1611, usque ad anno 1613, cum statu ejusdem Missionis annis 1703 & 1710." (By Joseph de Jouvency). "De Regione et Moribus Canadensium seu Barbarorum Novae 5. Franciae Auctore Josepho Jwencio Societatis Iesv, Sacerdote." "Relatio Rerum Gestarum en Nova Francia Missione. Annis 1613 6. & 1614." 7. "Relation de ce qui s'est pass6 en Nouvelle France en l'annee MDCXXVI. Par R.P. Charles L'Allemant, Sup6rieur de la Mission de la Compagnie de Iesvs en Canada." "Lettre de P&reCharles L'Allemant, Sup6rieur de la Mission de la 8. Compagnie de Iesvs en Canada" (1627.) 3. As Editor and Translator.

Documentary History ofthe State ofNew York. 4 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1850-1851.

Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York. 1 1 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1853-1861. Four additional volumes were subsequentIy published under the editorship of Berthold Femow. Remonstrance ofNew Netherland and the Occuwences there;Addressed to the H&h and M&hty States General of the United Netherlands, on 28th July, 1649 by A. van der Donck. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1856.

A Brief and True Narrative ofthe Hostile Conduct ofthe Barbarous Natives towards the Dutch Nation. Albany: J. Munsell, 1863. Register ofNew Netherland, 1626 to 1674. Albany: J. Munsell, 1865. Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1823.Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1868. hceedings of the Common Council of New Amsterdam and New York. 15 vols. New York: The New York Printing Company, 1871. This work was never published. New York Wills, 1643-1823. 56 vols. New York: The New York Printing Company, 1871. This work was never published.

4. As Compiler. Catalogue of Historical Papers and Parchments Received hom the Office of the Secretary ofState and Deposited in the New York State Library. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1849. Names of &mom for Whom Mamage Licences WereIssued in New York Previous to 1784.Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1860. Calendar of State Papers, Dutch MSS. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1864. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Officeof the Secretary of State, Albany, N.Y (Dutch and English). Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1865-1866.

Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Officeof the Secretary of State Relating to the War of the Revolution. 2 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1868.

Abbreviations ANQ

National Archives of Quebec.

AOM

Archives of the Province of Ontario, The Mackenzie-Lindsey Papers.

APJ

Arnedee Papineau. Journal d'un Fils de la Libertb. 2 vols. Montreal: R46dition-Qu4bec, 1972-1978.

LC0

Library of Congress, The E.B. O'Callaghan Papers.

MGAZ

The Montreal Gazette.

MGH

H.E.MacDerrnot.A History ofthe Montreal General Hospital. Montreal: Montreal General Hospital, 1950.

MIN NAC NACP

National Archives of Canada. National Archives of Canada, The Papineau Family Papers, MG. 24,B.2.

QGAZ

The Quebec Gazette.

QMER

The Quebec Mercury.

TSB

Thomas Storrow Brown. 1837, My Connection with it. Quebec: R. Renault, 1898.

VIN

The Vindicator/IrishVindicator.

Notes Unless otherwise stated in these notes, direct quotations in the text from French sources have been translated into English by the author.

Preface. 1. Rancis Shaw Guy, the Rev,, EclinundBailey O'Callaghm A Study in American 2.

Histonogmphy, (I 797-1880) (Wshington: The Catholic University of America, 1934). Charles F? Stacey, "Reviewof EdmtmdBailey O'Callqhm A Srudy h Amen'can Hktoriogmphy, (1 ZI7-1880)' The Canadian Historical Reuiew 14, no2 (1935): 207-8.

PART I. Chapter 1. 1. Edward MacLysaght,Irish Families, me&Names and O&hs (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis& Co. Ltd. 1957), pp. 71-72. 2. m,Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan,27 M y 1847,2January 1848,4October 1848,24March 1849,6F e b w 1850,'Ihe Most Rev. J.B. h e l l to EB. O'Callaghan 27 July 1855;S e a m bwley, "AnOld Ground Sketch of Mallow," Mallow Field Club Journal5 (1987): 6-17. 3. A.Everett kterson, 'Edmund Bailey OtCall;lghan,Editor of New York Historical Records,"h e e d e s of the New Yo& StateHistoricalAsshation (1935), 64-74; John Gilmary Shea,"Obituary,"M q m e ofhen'can History 5, no.l(l880): 77-80. 4. Samuel Lewis,A TopographicalDiclronary of I ~ l m d2, vols. (London: S. Lewis & Co., 1840), 298-41. 5. Maurice R O'Connell, ed., 77ze Comspondence of Daniel O'ConneU, 2 vols. (Shannon: Irish UniversitiesPress,1972), 1:308,309,374. d the Geotges, rev. ed. 6. Constantia Maxwell, Counby and Town in I ~ l a n under @undalk: W. Tempest, h d a l g a n PE I S, 1949), p. 260. 7. Ibid. p. 260; Crowley, "AnOld Ground Sketch of Mallow," pp. 6-17. 8. Crowley, ""An Old Ground Sketch of Mallow,"pp. 6-17; Maxwell, Countryand Town in Idand under the Geotges, p. 260. 9. The Rakes of Mallow. The words of this traditional song are to be found in a number of anthologies. 10. Lewis,A TopogmphicalDictionaryof k l m d 2:338-41. 11. Ibid., 2:338-41; OtConneII,The Comspondence of Daniel O'Connell, 1:373.

Edmund Bailey O%alIQghun Crowley, "AnOld Ground Plan of Mallow,", pp. 6-17. Maxwell, Counby and Town in Ireland undmthe Geotrges, pp. 259-60. Ibid., 260; Lewis,A TopographicalDictionaryof lieland, 2~338-41. Lewis,A TopogmphicalDictioncayof Ireland, 2:338-41. Ibid., 2:33841. Edmund Curtis,A History of Ireland, (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1936), p. 339. KO, The Rev. D. O'Sullivan to Mary Anne W h , 8 October 1843(transcript in NAC, MG.24, B.50). KO, The Most Rev. J.B. Purcell to EB. O'Callaghan, 27 July 1855. O'ConneU, 7he Correspondence of h i e l O'ConneU, 1:309,339,340,376. Ibid., 1:373; Lewis,A TopogmphicalDichonaty of Ireland, 2338-41. KO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'r;llknh;tn, 4 May 1841,27July 1847,24March 1849;Curtis,A History of Ireland, p. 336; Frands Shaw Guy, the Rev., Edmund BaPey O'CaUaghan: A Study in American Histonogmphy, (I 797- 1880) (Mshington, D.C:The Catholic University of America, 1934), pp. 1-2; Sean O'Faolain, The Irish (Harmondsworth: knguln Books,1980), pp. 94-95. KO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 4 May 1841,lOJuly 1847;John G. Millingen, 7he History of Duelllhg, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1841), 2:224-34. LCO, Mary Anne Wakh to EB. O'Callaghan, 4 May 1841,15October 1842,9 May 1847,2January 1848,6February 1850,27September 1850. Ibid., 27 July 1847,4October 1848. O'Faolain, 7he Irish, pp. 97-98. Ibid., pp. 99-100. LCO, MaryAnne Wakh to EB.O'Callaghan, 25 April 1848;Robert Forde, the Rev., "Aspects of Education in Mallow in the Nineteenth Century,"Mallow Field Club Journal, 1 (1983): 131-52;Jacques Monet, 'Edrnund Bailey O'Callaghm," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 12 Vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1!X6-1990), 10:554-5; Padraig 0 Maidin, "A Mallow Historian of New York," Cork Examiner 23 November 1973;Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. LCO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 14August 1848. hid., 15October 1842,30September 1846,27September 1850;Shea,"Obituary," pp. 77-80.

Chapter 2. 1. Fkederick B.Artz, lhmce under the Bo-n Restomtion, 1814-1830 (New Yo* Russell & Russell Inc., 1963), pp. 13435. 2. While there is no documentaryevidence of O'CaUaghan attending the School of Medicine, it is known that he studied medicine in Paris,and that it was the only medical school there. It follows, therefore, that he must have attended. 3. Jim Copps, "St. Mary's Church,"MaUow Field Uub Journal5 (1987): 116-21. 4. AIIz, Fmnce under the Bo&n Restomtion, 18141830,p. 134. 5. LCO, Mary Anne Walsh to EB. O'Callaghan, 27 July 1847.

Notes 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

Jean-LouisRoy,Edoumd~aymondF a b ~Libraire , et Fhbiote, (Montreal: Humbise HMH, 1974), p. 58. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 58; NACP, E.B. OtCallaghanto L.J. Papiieau 14 December 1842. The building is still standing at 160 Notre Dame Street, East, Montreal. Hector F'abre, "Dans la Bonne Societe en 1840,"Anecdotes Canadiemes ed. houard-zotique Massicotte, (Montreal:Librairie Beauchemin Ltee., 1925),p. 192; houard Fabre-Sweyer, "klouard-~aymondF'abre,"Mgmoires de la Socidtg Royale du Canada 3rd Series,vol. 38 (1944), Section 1,pp. 94-95; Urard Fdteau,Histoke des hbiotes, 3 Vols. (Montreal: htions de l'A.C.-F. and hitions Modaes, 1938-1942),2:8M 1;Roy, E d o u d - ~ a p o n Fabre, d Libraire et hbiote p. 58, p. 135. W W b h Adams, Imland and Irish Emigration to the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932),pp. 1404,149-50. Ibid., p. 144. LCO, Mary Anne U h to EB. O'Callaghan, 15 October 1842,30September 1846; John GiimaryShea, "Obituary," Magazine ofAmericanHistory 5, no.l(l880): 77-80. MGAZ, 1 March 1826. Roy F. Fbster, Modem bland, 1660.1972 (New York: Viking-PenguinInc., 1988), p. 269.

Part 11. Chapter 3. Donald G. Creighton, The E q k e of the St. Lawrence mronto: Ryerson Press, 1956), pp. 14-15; Claude krrault, MoMal en 1825(Montreai: Groupe d'etudes Gen.-histo, 1977), p. 419. 2. "The Diary of Nicholas Gany,Deputy Govemor of the Hudson's Bay Company from 1822-1835,"h e e d i n g s and 7kmsactionsof the Royal Society of Canada, Second Series,6 (1900), Section II,91; Creighton, The E m p h of the St. Lawrence, pp. 21 1-14. 3. Creighton, The E h p k of the St. Lawrence, pp. 25-27,29. 4. MGH, PP. 2-5. 5. Ibid.,21;MGAZ,IMarch1826. 6. McGill UniversityArchives, RG.96, The Montreal General Hospital Administrative Records, 1820-1952,c. 15, Minutes of a meeting held 28 April 1826; c.1, Minutes of a meeting held 9 May 1826; The Canadian Cowant, 15November 1826;MGAZ, 1 March 1826. 7. McGi University Archives, RG.96, c. 1, Minutes of meetings held 11 May 1824and 9 May 1826;MGH,p. 21. 8. MGH, pp. 7,34,38,54, and plan facing p. 45. 9. Ibid., pp. 14,23,29. 1.

10. Geoffrey Bion, "Canadian Doctors and the Cholera," in Medicine in Canadian Society,ed., Samuel Edward Dole Shortt (Montreal: McGii-Queen's University Press, 1981), pp. 128-9;MGH, p. 43. 11. MGAZ, 10January 1824. 12. Ibid., 23 August 1823;MGH, pp. 52-53. 13. MGH, p. 43. 14. Ibid., p. 39. 15. Ibid., pp. 41,51-52. 16. Ibid., pp. 41-42. 17. Ibid., pp. 47,51; 7he Canadian Spectator, 18 February 1826. 18. kmdt,MoMalen 1825,p. 419. 19. McGiIl University Archives, RG.96, c.15, Minutes of a meeting held 28 March 1828; WN, 24 March 1829,27March 1829,20February 1835,21July 1835. 20. m e Canadian Coumnt, 13November 1823;MGAZ, 20 March 1824. 21. Throughout this work the t m "Patriotenis used to refer to the political party that was sometimes also called "Liberal" or "Canadian". In like manner, the term "Tory"is used to refer to the party that was also known by the names " B u r e a u ~ cand " "English". 22. NAC, The Audet Papers,MG. 30, D. 1, vol. 29,272-7;WN, 24 February 1829,26 Febn~ary1833; Emmet J. MuMly, ""Dr.Daniel 'Ifacey,APioneer Worker for Responsible Government in Canada,"Report of the Catholic Histodcal Associahbn (1935): 33-45; Femand Ouellet, Lower Canada, 1791-1840 Qoronto: McCleIland and Stewart,1980),pp. 226,233,234. 23. Until it was demolished in 1867,the Recollet Church stood at the comer of Notre Dame and Ste. H&ne Streets in Montreal. 24. MGAZ, 18April 1831. 25. Ouellet, Lower Canada, 1791-1840,p. 376. 26. Jocelyn W e r was an aristocrat by birth who, prior to coming to Lower Canada, lived in Newport, county llpperary,site of the familyseat, Castle W e r . The head of the familywas his older bmther, S i r Robert W e r , whose heir presumptive he was. Joseph J. Howard and Frederick A, Crisp, VisPation of Ireland 6 vols. (London, 1897-1918). Reprint (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc., 1973), 2:79; Samuel Lewis,A TopographicalDictionary of Idland 2 vols. (London: S. Lewis & Co., 1840),2:430. 27. Fernand Oudet, Economic andSocialHistory of Quebec, 17601850 Qomnto: Macmillan of Canada, 1980), p. 294. The "Wild Geese"were those young Irishmenwho left their native land during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, usually in secret, to enlist in the armies of England's enemies, particularly those of France. 28. NACP, A mugh draft of a history of the press in Lower Canada, dated 1838; 7he Canadian Spectator,numemu issues, 1822-1828;Ouellet,L o w Canada, 1791-1M0,pp. 207-8. 29. 7he Canadian spectator, 8 August 1827;QGAZ, 27 April 1832.

Notes 30. Extrapolating from the official return for the 1832 election in Montreal West, and from the figures contained in a census taken in 1825, it is estimated that about 5 percent of the Irish in Montreal were qualified to vote. Ouellet, Lower Canada, 1791-1840,p. 376; Perrault,M o d a l e n 1825,p. 419. 31. MGAZ, 13August 1827,16August 1827,20August 1827. 32. Ibid., 20 August 1827;QGAZ, 20 August 1827. 33. QGAZ, 23 August 1827. 34. Ibid., 19January 1828. 35. McGiIl UniversityArchives,RG.96, c. 1, Minutes of a meeting held 8 May 1827;MGH, p. 33; Ouellet, Economic and SocialHisory of Quebec, 176(F1850,pp. 41 1-2. 36. Barbara R. 'Ilmis,"Medical Licensing in Lower Canada: The Dispute over Canadas Fust Medical Degree," in Mediche h Canadian Sociely, ed. Samuel Edward Dole Shortt (Montreal: McCi-Queen's University Press, 1981), pp. 138-40. 37. The subjects taught at the Montreal Medical Institutionwere: Anatomy, Botany, Chemistry, Diseases of Women and Children, Materia Medica, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiology, and Surgery. 38. Stanley Brice &st, McGill Unioe~ityfor the Adwncement of Leam'qg, 2 vols. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980-1984), 1:129; MGH, p. 19. 39. Tunis, "Medical Licensing in Lower Canada: The Dispute over Canadas Fmt Medical Degree," p. 140. 40. MGH, pp. 14-18. 41. McGil UniversityArchives, RG.96,c. 15, Minutes of a meeting held 15June 1827; NAC,RG.4, B.28, Medical Licences,vol. 51, EB. O'Callaghanto the governor, 10 May 1827. 42. McGill UniversityArchives, RG.96, c. 15, Minutes of a meeting held 15June 1827. 43. NAC, RG.4, B.28, Medical Licences, vol. 51, Certificate of the Montreal Board of Medical Examiners, 1 October 1827. 44. QMER, 13November 1827. 45. McGi University Archives, RG96, c.1, Minutes of a meeting held 5 February 1828; c. 15, Minutes of a meeting held 7 December 1827.

Chapter 4. 1. QMER, 16 November 1821;R. Cole Harris and John Wkentin, Canada before Confedemtion, a Study in HistoricalGeogmphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 102; Femand Ouellet,Lower Canada, 1791-1840 (Toronto: McCleland and Stewart, 1980)p. 141. 2. NAC, RG.4, B.28, Records of Civil and Provincial Secretaries,vol. 53, Election of Members of the Medical Board, 11July 1831;QGAZ, 15April 1830,ll February 1833. ~ p. 102. 3. Harris and W e n t i n , Canada B e f o Confederation, 4. QGAZ, 13November 1828;QMER,6 January 1829. 5. WUam b&es Adams, Idand and Irish Emigration to the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932),pp. 129-44.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Pierre-Georges Roy, "l'H8pital des Ern@& du Faubourg Saint-Jean,B Quhbec," Bulletin des RecherdlesHkton'gues, 44, n0.7 (1938): 200-2. Ibid.; QMER, 16 November 1821. Roy,"l'H6pital des Em@% du Eiubourg Saint-Jean, ii Quebec," pp. 200-2. QGAZ, 13November 1828; QMER, numerouseditions between January 1828and May 1829. Roy,"19H8pitaldes h i g & du Eiubourg Saint-Jean,B Qu6becInpp. 200-2. QGAZ, 13November 1828;QMER, numerouseditions between January 1828and May 1829;Adams, kland and liish Eh&&on to the New M d d , pp. 149-50; Geoffrey Bin,"CanadianDoctors and the Cholera," in Medche h Canadian Society, ed. Samuel Ectward Dole Shortt, (Montreal: McGiIl-Queen's University Press, 198I), p. 124;Donald G. Creighton,The h p i r e of tfie Sf. Lawrence Qmnto: MacmiIlan Companyof Canada, Ltd., 1956), pp. 259-61; OuelIet,Lower Canada, 11791-1840, pp. 127-8. The Canadian Spectator, 20 September 1828;QGAZ, 22 September 1828,29 September 1828. The Canadian Spectator, 4 October 1828;QGAZ, 29 September 1828,3November 1828. QGAZ, 3 November 1828;WV, 17 March 1829. QGAZ, 23 October 1828,3November 1828. Ibid.,3 November 1828. WN,23 December 1828,30December 1828,12May 1829. 30 December 1828. Ibid., 14Ap1il1829,29May 1829;QGAZ, 21May 1829. QhdiX, 26 May 1829. Q W ,28 May 1829, French Section. h m the regular monthly reports on the operation of the Emigrants' Hospital between January 1828and May 1829,which are to be found in The Quebec Mercloy, it is possible to compile a list of the physkhm who served in it. Among the names on it, only three could possibly be those of Irish doctors, Drs. Lyons, Leslie, and O'Cahghan According to The Quebec Gazette of 23 May 1831,Dr. Lyons was most likely either an Englishman or a Scot He was a former military surgeon, a member of the Royal College of Surgeonsin London, and he had a medical degree from JMinburgh University. It is unlikely, theretore that he was the Irish medical attendant referred to. Fewdetails are knownof Dr. Leslie's backgmund, and there is nothing to i n d i e whether he was Eriglish, Scottish,or Irish, but a report in 7he Quebec Gazette of 12August 1831shows that he was still associated with the hospital as avisiting physician. It is unlikely that would have been so had he been the doctor involved in the dispute in 1829.That leaves Dr. O'CalIaghan, and he seems to meet all the requirements. He was Irish, he was on the hospital staff at the time in question and, after the newspaper report of the personnel changes, there is nothing to suggest that he had anything farther to do with the institution.

Notes Although all the evidence is circumstantial in nature, it is sufficientlyconvincing to permit the presumption that he was the one involved in the dispute. Ihe Constitutional Act, 1791,31George 111, c.31, XLW;QGAZ,26 May 1829,French Section;Roy, "I'H6pital des Em@% du Faubourg Saint-Jean,Zi Quebec,"pp. 200-2. QMER,26 May 1829. Ibid., 8 December 1832,ll May 1833. LCO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 4 October 1848,6February 1850. W, 27 August 1830. Ibid., 21 July 1835. QGAZ, 13January 1831. Ibid., 14April 1831;Adams, IreIand and lrish Em&mtion to the New World,pp. 139-40; Harris and Wdcentin, Canada beforeConfedemtiion, p. 102; Helen 'Thft Manning, 7he Reuolt ofh n c h Canada, 1800-1835 (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1962), p. 205. QGM, 13January 1831;QMER, 2 February 1830,8February 1831. QGAZ, 13January 1831,7April1831;QMER,8 February 1831. MN,31 March 1831;'Ikanslation by EB. O'Callaghan in QGAZ, 18April 1831. QGAZ, 7April1831,14April1831. Ibid., 18April 1831. Wid., 8 June 1832.The oiighal St. Patrick's remained in use until 1956when it was replaced by a much larger edifice in the Upper Town After that the old building fell into disrepair and was demokhed around 1967 to make way for a parking lot. QMEEZ, 16November 1821. QGAZ, 7 November 1832. bid., 25 April 1832; QMER, 16 November 1821,30 June 1831,12July 1831,7June 1832;Adams, Ireland and Irish Em@tion to the New World, p. 146. QGAZ, 23 August 1831. Much of the work done on behalf of needy immigrants, whether it was at an official or a charitable level,was aimed at getting the poorest of them out of Quebec and on their way to some other place, usuaIly Montreal,which would then face the problem of having to deal with them. In that respect, Quebec was in a geographicallyfavoured position, at the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence for ocean going ships, and was thus immune from similar practices. QMER, 11June 1831. QGAZ, 26 March 1832,2April 1832. XO,EB. O'Callaghanto The Friends of Fkee Schools, 6 July 1850. QMER, 11 December 1830. Ibid., 18December 1830. bid., 8 March 1831,12 March 1831. bid., 5 March 1831. Wid., 15January 1831,19March 1831,8December 1832. Ibid., 14 February 1832,22 December 1832.

51. QGAZ,23August1831,26August 1831. 52. VIN, 2 August 1831,30August 1831,23September 1831,27September 1831. 53. kdouard WbreSuweyer, u~ouard-Raymond Wbre," Mkmoiresde la Sociktk Royale du Canada, 3rd Series, vol. 38 (1944): Section 1,89-112. 54. QGAZ, 23 October 1828. 55. m, 15May 1829.The Patriote leadership in Montreal was a tightly knit group of which the krrault family formed a major part. Julien and his wife, Euphrosine, were both ardent party workers, and of their five children, the three oldest were an closely connected with the Motes. Louis became the publisher of 7he Vhdicator, Luce married k.-R. Me,and Charles-Ovide, following his articled apprenticeship to D.-B.Viger, a cousin of the Patriote leader, LJ. Papiieau, tumed to politics and was elected to the LegislativeAssembly to represent the county of hdreuil on behalf of the party. 56. VIN, 28 July 1829. 57. One offending article appeared in The Vindicator on 3 January and stated that "it [theCouncil]is seldom exerted but to obstruct the public welfare, one cannot but believe the Province would be a considerablegainer by its total annihbtionn Another came out six days later, on 9 January,when La Mineme published a letter to the editor containing the suggestion that "the present Legislative Council, being perhaps the b i e s t nuisance that we have, we must take steps to rid omelves of it" MIN, 9 January 1832;WV,3 January 1832. 58. Jownals of the Lqisldik Councilof the h v h c e of Lower Canada, Second Session of the Fourteenth hmhcial Wiament, 1831-1832, pp. 109-13,119-22; QMER,28 February 1832. 59. The Ottawa Hotel was the former meeting place of the Societyof the Fkiends of Ireland in Quebec. It was located on Rue Sainte-Anne,across from the Presbyterianchurch. FiMar Mard was the first mayor of Quebec and a noted Pahiote, while ~tienneParentwas the editor of Le Canadien,the French language M o t e newspaper in that city. 60. WV,24 January 1832. 61. QMER, 28 Febmary 1832. 62. MGAZ, 1 March 1832;VIN, 2 March 1832,6March 1832,20April 1832. 63. vnv, 20 April 1832. 64. bid., 22 May 1832;OueIlet,L o w Canada, 1791-1840,p. 376. 65. MGAZ, 24 May 1832;VIN, 22 May 1832. 66. QMER,9 June 1832. 67. VIN, 24 F e b m 1832; Maude E Abbott, History of Medicine in the h u h c e of Quebec (Toronto: MacmiIlanof Canada, 1931)p. 63. 68. VIN 24 February 1832. 69. QMER,9 June 1832;Abbott, History of Medicine in the h v h c e of Quebec, p. 63; MGH, p. 48. 70. Le Canadien, 14 December 1836;QMER,9 June 1832,16June 1832;VIN, 23 December 1836,27December 1836,30December 1836. 71. Mnu, 18June 1832;QMER, 16June 1832.

Notes 72. B i n , "Canadian Doctors and the Cholera," pp. 123-9. 73. QMER,9 June 1832,16June 1832,23June 1832,30June 1832,sJuly 1832,26July 1832,4September 1832,6October 1832. 74. MIN, 19July 1832;MGH, p. 46. 75. MGAZ, 21August 1832. 76. ANQ, Documents Dwemay, L. Winter to Ludger Dwemay, 20 July 1832. 77. Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,p. 376. 78. ANQ, Documents Dwemay, L. Winter to Ludger Dwemay, 25 July 1832. 79. Ibid., L b n Gosselin to Ludger Dwemay, 3 October 1832; MIN, 5 November 1832; VIN, 2 November 1832. 80. Mav, 27 September 1832. 81. ANQ, Documents Dwemay, Leon Cosselin to Ludger Dwemay, 27 September 1832;AOM, EB.O'Cdaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 21 March 1841;VIN,27 September 1832;Creighton, h e Empike of the St. Lamnee, p. 286; Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,pp. 207-12. 82. 'Ihe demand, by some Patriotes, for the repeal of the Tenure Act, which provided for the holding of land in free and common soccage, and a return to the seigneurialsystem, would have been completely unacceptable to the settlers in the Eastern Townships. 83. Hanis and W e n t i n , Canada before Confedemtion, pp. 93-97; Ouellet. Lower Canada 1791-1840,p. 212. 84. ANQ, Documents Dwemay, LCon Gosselin to Ludger Dwemay, 27 September, 1832,4October 1832. 85. Ibid., Leon Gosselin to Ludger Dwernay, 27 September 1832;QGAZ, 18September 1832. 86. QGAZ, 30 October 1828. 87. ANQ, Documents Dwemay, Leon Gosselin to Ludger Dwemay, 27 September 1832. 88. Ibid., LCon Gosselin to Ludger Duvemay, 3 October 1832. 89. Ibid., Leon Gosselin to Ludger Dwemay, 4 October 1832. 90. Ibid., I?. Parent to Ludger Dwemay, 7 November 1832;VIN, 2 November 1832. 91. QGAZ, 26 April 1833;QMER, 23 April 1833. 92. Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,229-30;Mason Wide, h e French Canadians, 1760-1967,2 vols. (loronto: MacmiIlan of Canada, 1968), 1:138-9. 93. NACP, EB.O'Callaghan to L-J. Papiieau, 16April 1848. 94. Mav, 29 July 1833;VIN, 3 May 1833,7 May 1833. 95. WN,7 May 1833. 96. MCP, EB.O'Callaghan to LJ. Papiieau, 16April 1848. 97. QGAZ, 10 May 1833;QMER, 11May 1833;VIN, 14 May 1833.

Chapter 5. 1. NACP, EB.O'Callaghan to L.J. Papiieau, 16April 1848; Hector Fhbre, "Dansla Born SociCtC en 1840,"Anecdotes Canadiemes ed. houard-Zotique Massicotte, (Montreal:Librairie Beauchemin Ltee., 1925), p. 192; Srard Rlteau,

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. lo. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

Hisoh des hbiotes 3vols., (Montreal: htions de 1 'A.C.-F. and Jklitions M~d&les 1938-1942),2: 80-81. Mason Wade, "Comrnentaire,"Report of the Canadian HistoricalAssociation (19581, p. 33. VIN, 14 May 1833. Ibid. FernandOuelet, Lower Canada 1791-1840(%oronto:Mcclelland and Stewart, 1980),pp. 150-53. MN, 14May 1833to 31 December 1833. F'abre,"Dansla Bonne SociCtCen 1840," p. 192;Roger-D. Parent,Duvemay, le Magnifique (Montreal: Institut de la Nowelle-hnce, 1943), p. 12. Fabre, "Dansla Bonne SociCtCen 1840," p. 192. MN, 28 June 1833,9July 1833,23July 1833,30July 1833.The City Bank of Montreal is now known as the Bank of Montreal. Fernand Ouellet, Louis-Joseph Fbpineau - A Dioided Soul (Ottawa. The Canadian HistoricalAssociation, 1961), p. 13. Ibid.,pp. 11-13. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,p. 191. Ibid., pp. W, Ouellet,Louis-Joseph h p h e a u - A Divided Soul, pp. 3,5,8; Ouellet,L o w Canada 1791-1840, p. 191. Ouellet, Louis-JosephW h e a u - A Dior'ded Soul, pp. 3,s. W, 25 June 1833,30July 1833,6August 1833;FraMnGraham, Hisbionic Monbval (Montreal: J. Lovell, 1902). Reprint (NewYork: B. Blom, 1969),p. 65. VIN, 7 June 1833,25June 1833.Today the Recolet Suburb would correspond r o w with the western part of downtown Montreal which, in 1833had a semi-rural character. The mcetrack was located in open meadows to the south of this area. MN, 4 October 1833. Ibid., 30 August 1833. Ibid., 26 July 1833. Of the 279 magistrates in the Montreal area, 195were of British, origins, and oniy 84 were kench-Canadians. or other EnglishVIN, 6 September 1833.The site of the ban&, in terms of today's city, would be at the comer of Rue Beni and Rue de la Commune. MN, 6 September 1833. Ibid., 10September 1833. Ibid., 6 September l833,lO September 1833. Maurice R O'ConneU, ed., ?he Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, 2 vols. (Shannon: Irish UniversitiesPress, 1972), 1:373. WN,10 September 1833.A triple escalating repetition, such as "Shame! Shame!! Shame!!!' is a stylistic device frequently used by O'Callaghanwhen he wanted to express outrage, or some other strong emotion. It is a trade mark of his editorialstyle. MI13September 1833. Ibid., 22 November 1833.

Notes 28. Ibid., 10September 1833,29November 1833. 29. Ibid., 3 December 1833. 30. John Molson, a prominent Montreal entrepreneur, was the main shareholderin the theatre. It was located at the comer of St. Paul and Bonsecours Streets. 31. Murray D. Edwards,A Stage h Ourht: The English Language l3eab.e h Eastern Canada h m the 1790sto 1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968),p, 1I; Graham,Histrionic Monb0eal,pp. 40-65. 32. VIN, 11 October 1833,18October 1833,22October 1833. 33. MN, 18October 1833;Ed-, A Stage h o u r h t , p. 12. 34. MN, 22 October 1833. 35. Ibid. 36. In addition to the Guzette,the main pro-governmentpapers in Montreal were the Herald and the Courant. 37. MN. In 1833alone there were the issues of 13August 1833,6September 1833,20 September 1833,15November 1833. 38. 6 August 1833. 39. Ibid., 1 November 1833;Edouard WbreSmyer, u k d ~ ~ a r d - ~ a y Wbre," m~nd M6moli.e~ de la Soci6t6 Royale du Canada 3rd Series,vol. 38 (1944): Section I, pp. 89112. When O'Callaghan took over The in May 1833,it had 700 subscribers. This figure rose throughout his editorship and when the paper ceased to publish, in November 1837,it was close to 2,000. NACP,EB. ' 0 to L-J. Papiieau, 24 June 1848. 40. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,p. 231. 41. MIN, numerous issues; VIN, numerous issues between 14May 1833and February 1834;William Paul McCIure Kennedy, Statutes, maties and Documents ofthe Canadian Constifufzon(London: Word University Press, 1930),pp. 270-90. 42. vIN, 21 February 1834,25February 1834;Ouellet,Louter Canada 1791-1840,pp. 207,231 43. VIN, every issue from 3 Januaty 1834to 4 March 1834. 44. Article XXVII of the Constitutional Act stipulated that the life of an Assemblywould not exceed four years. Since the previous election had taken place in 1830,Lord Aylmer's action was both predictable and inevitable. 45. WN, most issues between 28 March 1834and 6 June 1834. 46. Kennedy, Stawes, maties and Documents ofthe Canadian Constitution,p. 294. 47. p. 293. Montreal West was one of a number of two seat ridings in the province. 48. Ouellet,Lower Canada 1791-1840,p. 376. 49. WN,18 March 1834;Kennedy,Statutes, Deaties and huments ofthe Canadian Consttution,pp. 291-94. 50. VfN, 18 March 1834. 51. Edrnund Curtis and R.B. McDowel, eds. Irish Historical Documents 1172-1922 (New Yo& Barnes and Noble, 1968),pp. 237-42. 52. W, 28 March 1834,4April 1834,ll April 1834. 53. Ibid., 4April1834,23May 1834,4July 1834,5September 1834,7October 1834.

E d d Bailey O'Cdlaghan 54. Parent, Dtimay, le Magnlfigue,p. 15. 55. The banquet was held in the garden of John de Belestre-McDomel's house. He was a lawyerwho Iivedon Rue St. Antoh. The site is presently occupied by part of the Wmdsor mibad stationwhere it is W e d by a commemorative plaque* 56. MEN,26 June 1834;.VIN, 27 June 1834;hrent, Lhmzay, le Magnifigue,pp. 15-16. 57. MEN, 26 June 1834;Ouellet, Lou&-JosephFbpheau, A DwidedSoul, pp. 3,18-19. 58. VIN, 29 July 1834. 59. 'Ihe M o m d Hemld, 31 July 1834;VIN, 29 July 1834,5August 1834,8August 1834. 60. W , 22 August 1834. 61. The H d d article in question appeared on 11August 1834.So far as can be determined, no copy of that patidar h u e has survived with the result that all that is known of it is contained in O'Callaghan's response to it which, fo-ely, does give a good idea of its contents. 62. VIN, 26 August 1834. 63. The ConstitutionalAcf31 George HI,C31. 64. VEN, 3 October 1834. 65. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,p. 376. 66. bid., pp. 337-38. 67. MGAZ, 23 October 1834. 68. Ibid.; Wu, 24 October 1834. 69. VIN, 3 October 1834, 70. Ibid., 14October 18348November 1834, 71. Ibid., 8 November 1834;NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L.-J. Papheau. 17July 1844. 72. Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,pp. 232,237. 73. Ibid., p. 239; MW,27 October 1834;Fernand Ouellet, Economic and SocialHhtory of Quebec, 1760.1850 flomnto: Macmillan of Canada, 1980),p. 341. 74. MINI 10 November 1834. 8 November 1834. 75. W, 76. Ibid., 13November 1834. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., 1 November 1834,lI November 1834;MGAZ, 15 November 1834. 79. MGAZ, 13November 1834. 80. MN, 1November 1834. 81. MGAZ, 18November 1834. 82. Ibid., 15November 1834. 83. Ibid.; Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,p. 376 84. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,~. 240. 85. MGAZ, 22 November 1834. 86. Kennedy, Statutes, 7kahes and Documents of the Canadian Comtihction,pp. 2914. 87. Ibid.,pp.290-1.

Notes 88. MC,The Recorcls of the Montreal Committee of Correspondence, MG24,B.129, Letter dated 20 November 1834addressed to the newly elected members of the Legislative Assembly in Quebec. 89. m , 5 December 1834. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. bid., 22 December 1834.

Chapter 6. 1. John George Lambton, Earl of Durham,Report on the M a h ofMfkhNorth Amen'ca.There are numerous editions of this repolt. 2. vIN,20March 1835. 3. Ibid., 24 February 1835. 4. Ibid., 27 February 1835. 5. Ibid., 27 March 1835,3April 1835,7April 1835,lOApril 1835,l May 1835.These issuesare just some of the many in which O'Cahghanattacked John Neilson andlor the Reverend McMahon. 6. W,loMarch 1835. 7. Ibid., 1 November 1834. 8. bid., 9 June 1835. 9. hid. 10. IXIO,Susan Mary Colelough to E.B.O ' C a i l m , 12 October 1860. 11. VIN,30June 1835,21July 1835. 12. Ibid., 21 July 1835. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 2 June 1835. 15. Ibid., 7 August 1835. 16. President Andrew Jackson's message to the Senate of the United Statesvetoing the Bank Renewal Bill, July 1832.The text of the message is available in a number of somes. 17. VIN, 20 Febmary 1835,and a number of issues throughout the spring and summer of that year; Fernand Ouellet, "Le Nationalisme canaden-frangais: De ses oxigir~esB l'insmction de 1837," 7he Canadian Historical Review 45 ( 1 964): 292; Jean-LoS ROY, Edoumd~aynond~abre, Libmire et pabiote Canadieme, 17991854 (Montreal: Hurtubise HMH, 1974), pp. 125-27. 18. VIN,20 February 1835,and a number of issues throughout the spling and summer of that year. 19. VIN, 23 June 1835;Joseph J. Howard and Fkederick A. Crisp, VMationof&land, 6 vols. (London: 1887-1918). Reprint (BaItimore:Genealogical hblishing Co. Inc., 1973), 470; WilIiam Paul McCIure Kennedy, Statutes, ?kahtr'esand Documents of the CanadianComrihction, 1713-1929 (London: Oxford University Press,19301, pp. 307-18; Femand Ouellet, Lower Canada 1 791-1 840, (Vmnto: McQeNand and Stewart, 19801,pp. 269-70. 20. Wu, 30 October 1835.

Edmund Bailey O'C&ghan 21. NAC, 'Ihe 6-R. M r e Papers, MG.24,B.127, EB. OtCabghanto k-R.Fabre, 26 November 1835. 22. bid. 23. ANQ,Fbnds houard-~aymondWbre, C.-Ov. krrault to &-R Wbre, 16 December 1835,23February 1836;Journals of the House of Assembly of L o w Canada, vol. 45, various entries for January and February 1836;VIN, 2 February 1836, Robert Christie,A History of the Late huince of Lower Canada, 6 vols. (Quebec: R Christie, 1848-1855),4: 14250. 24. NACP, EB. OtCallaghanto LJ. Papmeau, 21March 1837. 25. ANQ, bnds houafd-Raymond Fabre, C.-Ov. knault to k-RFabre, 2 November 1835,9December 1835,ll January 1836;.NAC, Ihe B-R. Ribre Papers, MG24, B.127, EB. O'Callaghan to B a Wbre, 26 November 1835. 26. LCO, William Lyon Mackende to E.B. OtCallaghan,15December 1858. Presumably Mlle. Dumoulin,the landlady of the boarding house in Quebec where O'Callaghan, and several other members of the Legislative Assembly stayed, and Miss Desmoulins are one and the same person. 27. VIN, 6 November 1835. 28. Ibid., 13November 1835;Journals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada vol. 45, entries for 9 and 10 November 1835. 29. Jownals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada,vol. 45, entry for 13February 1836;Le Canadien, 17February 1836;&iouard-Zotique Massicotte, ed., Anecdotes Canadiemes (Montreal. Librabie BeaucheminLtk., 1925), pp. 97-98. 30. ANQ, lbnds Ibouard-Raymond Wbre, C.-Ov. knault to k-RFabre, 8 January 1836,9January 1836,lOJanuary 1836. 31. Wid. 32. Ibid., 10January 1836. 33. WN,19January 1836,8April 1836,12April 1836,19April 1836. 34. Ibid., 8 April 1836. 35. Ibid., 26 March 1836;Journcrls of the House ofAssemblyof Lower Canada, vol. 45, entry dated 21March 1836. 36. wu, 1April1836,5April1836,8April1836,15April1836,22April1836,29April 1836,6May 1836: Edrnund Bailey OtCallaghan,The Late Session of the ~ o i n c i ahliament l of Lower Canada (Montreal: 1836). OtCallaghanused the pen name ''An Old Countrymannfor this work. 37. WV, 3 May 1836. 38. Jownalof the House of Assembty of Upper Canada, 1836,enhy dated 30 January 1836;Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada 17&1&41 moronto: McClelIand and Stewart, 1963),p. 233. 39. VIN, 3 May 1836. 40. Wid. 41. J m a l s of the House ofAssernblyof Lower Canada, vol. 45, entry dated 21 March 1836. 42. VIN, 20 May 1836. 43. Ibid., 3 June 1836.

Notes 44. Le Canadien, 16May 1836,27May 1836,l June 1836,26August 1836,7September 1836. 45. W, 13September 1836. 46. houard FWre-Suveyer, "Charles-Ovide krrault, 1809 1837," Mkmoks de la Socidtd Royale du Canada, 3rd Series,vol. 31 (1937): Section 1,160; Gerard Fdteau, Histoire des hbioles, 3 vols. (Montreal:hition de llA.C.-F. and hitions Mod&les,1938-1942),255-67. 47. Le Canadien, 12 September 1836; MIN, 12 September 1836; Roger-D. Parent, DuLlemay, le Magnifigue (Montreal: Institut de la Nouvelle-France, 1943), pp. 19-20. 48. VIN, 22 July 1836,26July 1836,9August 1836. 49. Ibid., 30 September 1836;Dictionmy of Canadian Biogmphy, 7:61-62,23537, 50. Le Canadien, 14 December 1836;VIN, 23 December 1836. 51. "Lettre de 19AbMBtienne Chartier hI'Honomble Louis-Joseph Papineau," Le Bulleth des Rechmhes Histongues 43 (1937): 112. 52. VIN, 23 December 1836,27December 1836,30December 1836. 53. Ibid., 4 April 1837;APJ, 133. 54. Kennedy,Statutes, matres and Documents of the Canadian Constilution, 1713-1929,pp. 342-3. 55. Wl, 15April 1837. 56. 'The socalled CoercionActs in Ireland were a series of suppl.lessive measures intended to prevent rebelliousnessin the period leading up to and following the 1798 uprising. 57. WU, 14April1837. 58. William Kingsford, 7Re History of Canada, 10vols. ('hronto: Rowsell & Hutchison, 1887-1898), 10:41. 59. wv, 21 April 1837. 60. MIN, 26 May 1836;Allan Greer, ksant,Lord, and Merchant: R m l Society in Three QuebecM h e s 1740-1840(3oronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985),pp. 194-231;Allan Greer and Leon Robichaud, "La rebellion de 1837-1838 au Bas-Canada: Une approche g6ographique," Cahiers de Gdographie du Qukbec, voL 33, no. 90 (1989): 345-77; Femand OueUet, Economic and SocialHistory of Quebec, 1760-1850floronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1980),pp. 357-59,477. 61. MIN, 26 May 1836. 62 OueIlet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,pp. 279-80. 63. Wl, 16 May 1837,19May 1837,23May 1837. 64. RW. MMcLachlan, 'The Copper aurenCy of the CanadianBanks," P)ocee&gs and Tmnsacn'onsd t h e ~ o ~~ouety a l of Canada 2nd Series,vol. 9 (1903): 22 1. 65. Wu, 23 May 1837. 66. NACP,EB. O'Callaghan to L.-J. Papineau, 8 December 1842. 67. "Lettre de 19Abb4Btienne Chartier h 1'Honomble Louis-Joseph Papiieau," p. 115. 68. W,EB. 0'C;hlarrhan to LJ. wneau, 16April 1848. 69. WU, 12 May 1837. 70. APJ, 1:41.

Edmund Bailey O'Callagh 71. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,pp. 286-87. The fact that O'Callaghan only spoke at three rallies can be established from an examination of the issues of m e Vdicicator between 12 May 1837and 22 August 1837. 72. Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840,pp. 387-90. 73. "Letire de lPAbb6~tienneChartier h I'Honomble Louis-Joseph Papineau," p. 121. 74. APJ, 1:44. 75. J.-D.Borthwick, ('Ihe Rev.), "Le Costume des Patriotes," Anecdotes Canadiemes, ed. Massicotte,p. 107. 76. Joumak of the House ofAssernblyof Lower Canada,vol. 47, various entries for August 1837;VIN, 22 August 1837. 77. NACP,E.B. O'Callaghan to L.-J. Papimeau, 8 December 1842,21February 1848,lO May 1848'24 June 1848,12February 1850;WN, 4 July 1837.Agreat many issues of the paper during this period carried articles on the American Revolution.

Chapter 7. 1. WN, 19 May 1837,and subsequent issues; Femand Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1840 floronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), p. 284. 2. There are numerousinstances of the use of these headlines in The Vindicator throughout the summer and early fall of 1837. 3. W, 29 August 1837. 4. Ibid., 8 September 1837. 5. bid,3 October 1837. 6. TSB,pp. 16-17. 7. APJ,1:39. 8. W1d,1:51. 9. VIN, 6 October 1837,13October 1837,20October 1837. 10. Ibid., 27 October 1837;APJ, 1:52-53. 11. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 45, The testimony of Dr. Fransois Chicot-Dwert; APJ, 1:53; VIN, 24 October 1837. 12. APJ, 1:53;VIN, 27 October 1837. 13. WN, 27 October 1837. 14. Ib'~d 15. Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840,295-6. 16. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 40, Affidavit of Jean-Louis Beauchamp, no. 41, Affidavit of Antoine Brodeur, no. 43, Deposition of the Hon. Fkansois-XavierMalhiot, no. 44, Deposition of Joseph Retit; G M Fdteau,Histoie des mbiotes, 3 vols. (Montreal: hitions de 1'A.C-F., and htions Modeles, 193&1942),2:180-2. 17. ANQ, E,1837-1838,no. 49, The examination of Tnothee Franchh;VIN, 27 October 1837. 18. WN, 27 October 1837. 19. bid, 24 October 1837,27October 1837. 20. 31 October 1837. 21. Mandements, LeLeltrres pastomles, C k u l a k et autres Documents publiks dans le diuc&e de M o d a l (Montreal: Diocese of Montreal, 1867)' 1:14-21.

Notes 22. MIN, 2 November 1837;VIN, 31 October 1837; TSB, p. 17. C.R.Ogden to TWC. Murdoch, 16 November 1839. 23. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 3224. Femand OuelIet, Economic and SocialHistory of Quebec, 1760-1850 (Ibmnto: M a d a n of Canada, 1980),p. 435. 25. WN, 27 October 1837. 26. APJ, 1:55-56. 27. Ibid.; EB, p. 21. 28. APJ, 1:57; 'ISB, p. 21. 29. APJ, 1:5&57; TSB, p. 21. 30. APJ, 1:57-58. 31. Ibid., 1:58;'ISB, p. 21. 32. APJ, 1:58. 33. Ibid., l:58-61. 34. Ibid., 1:6042. 35. hid., 1:6243. 36. ISB, 21-22. 37. '"The Statementof Dr. Thomas David Monison," John Charles Dent, The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion, 2 vols. (%oronto:C. Blackett R o b i n , 1885), 2:20-2 1. 38. NACP, The Memoirs of Amc?dc?ePcrpneau, pp. 309-10; ISB, pp. 22-23. 39. "The Statement of Dr. Thomas David Monison." 40. 'ISB,pp. 22-23. The only people, outside of Papineau's immediate family and T.S. Brown, who met Jesse Lloyd in Montreal were Dr. Robert Nelson and OtCdaghan. It was one of them who must have voiced the misgivings mentioned by Brown. 41. WQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 843, Deposition of AngClique Labadie;APJ, 1:67. 42. NAC, The Durham Papers, MG.24, A.27, vol. 34,Journal Kept by the Late Amwy G i ;APJ, 1:68,72.

Chapter 8. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

NAC, The Durham Papers, MG.24, k 2 7 , vol. 34, Journal Kept by the Late Amury Girod.

Ibid. "Lettrede l8AbM~tienneChartier I'Honomble Louis-Joseph Papineau," Le Bulleth des Reche~hesHktonques 43 (1937): 124. ANQ, P-B, no. 459, L.-J. Papineau to E.B. OtCallaghan,28 October 1848; MIN, 24 July 1848,27July 1848. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 45, The testimony of Dr. Fran~oisChicot-Dwert, No.46, The testimony of Joseph-Toussaint Drolet, no. 844, Deposition of S i 6 o n Marchessault. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 45, The testimony of Dr. Fkan~ois Chicot-Dwert, no. 46, The testimony of Joseph-Toussaint Drolet; ANQ, P-B, no. 459, L-J. Papiieau to EB. OPCallaghan,28 October 1848;"Lettre de lPAbM~tienneChartier a 1'Honorable Louis-Joseph Papiieau," p. 119.

7.

The dates for the meeting can be deduced from the informationcontainedin David Bourdages' testimony in La M h m of 21 August 1848, and h m the fact that it must have taken place before 18November, the day that TS.Brown arrived at St.Charles: he would certahly have been present had he been anywhere in the

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

vicinity. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 844, Deposition of S i 6 o n Marthessault; ANQ,P-B, no. 459, L.J. Papieau to E.B. O'Callaghan, 28 October 1848; MW, 24 July 1848,21August 1848;TSB, p. 27. ANQ, P-B, no. 459, L.J. Papineau to E.B. O'Callaghan, 28 October 1848; MINI 24 July 1848,21August 1848. WCP, The Memoh of Am4d4e lbpineau, p. 666. The book was called Rough Notes by an OldSoldier, dwihg 50 Years Sentice h m Ensign G.B. to Majo-Genml, G.B..It was written by Majoranera1George Hall, and was published in London in 1867. APJ,1:42; Femand Ouellet, "hpiieaudans la R4volution de 1837-1838,"Canadian Histon*calAssociahonReport (1958): 22; Dichonary of Canadian Biogmphy, 9593. MINI21Augustl848. Ibid.; "LeMe de I'AbM h e m e Chartier I'Honomble Louis-Joseph Papieau," p. 119. "lhe Statement of Dr. Thomas David Morrison,"John Chaies Dent, 'Ihe Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion, 2 vols. floronto: C. Blackett Robiin, 1885), 220-21. APJ, 1:74-78. 'ISB,26-27. Ibid., pp. 25,27. Ibid., p. 27; ANQ,E, 1837-1838,no. 4025, Anonymous letter to Lord Gosford, 20 November 1837;Ouellet, "Pap'ieau dans la Revolution de 1837-1838,"p. 22. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 346q The testimony of Luc Ethier, No.844, Deposition of S i 6 o n Marchessault. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 4025, Anonymous letter to Lord Gosford, 20 November 1837; NAC, The Wblfred Nelson Papers, MG24,B.34, The testimony of Charles Dansereau, 1 October 1840. EB, p. 27; Femand OueIlet, "Le Mandement de Mgr. Lartigue de 1837et la &action liMrale," Le Bulleth des Rechetrhes Histon*ques58 (1952): 97-104. TsB, pp. 27-30. OueIlet, "Pap'ieau dans la R4volution de 1837-1838,"p. 22; Mason Wde, "Commentaryon Femand Ouellet's 'Papmu dans la R4volution de 1837-1838,"' Canadian HistoricalAssociation Repott (1958): 32-34. ANQ, E,1837-1838, Anonymous letter to Lord Gosford, 20 November 1837. 'ISB, p. 29; Mary Beacock Fkyer, Battlefields of Canada Voronto: Dundurn Press, 1986),pp. 183-84;George EG. Stanley, Canada's Soldiers,rev. ed. Voronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1960),pp. 192-94. Ibid.; APJ, 1:83-84. APJ, 1:82,84-85.

Notes 28. NAC, The UQ&d Nelson Papers, MG24, B.34, The testimony of Charles Dansereau, 1 October 1840. 29. ANQ, E,1837-1838,no. 346a, The testimonyof Luc Ethier; 7SB, p. 3 1;APJ, 1:87; MIN, 21August 1848; W r , Battlefieldsof Canada, pp. 184-85. 30. APJ, 1:87-88. 31. bid. 32. XB,pp. 2930; Stanley, Cmada's Soldiers, pp. 193-4. 33. ANQ, P-B, no. 459, LJ. Papiieau to EB. O'Cdaghan, 28 October 1848;APJ, 1:88. 34. M, 10July, 1848,24July 1848,27July 1848,21August 1848. 35. NAC, The Chapman Papers, MG.24, B.31, L.-H. Lafontaine to H.S. Chapman, 14June 1838. 36. "Lettre de 1'AbS lhkme Chartier hl'Honorab1e Louis-Joseph Papiieau," 112-142; J.M.S. Careless, 7he Union of the Canadas, 1841-1857(%oronto:McClelland and Stewart, 1967),pp. 121-22. 37. MIN, 2 1August 1848;I'Ami du kuple, 22 November 1837;Louis Richard, "Jacob de Witt," Reuue d'Histobe de I'Am&weh g a i s e 3, no. 4 (1950):545. 38. NACP, E.B. O'callaghan to LJ. hpimeau, 22 December 1837,28December 1837, 30 December 1837,15January 1838. 39. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 46, The testimony of Joseph-Toussaint Drolet. 40. NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papinem, 17July 1844. 41. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 353, The testimony of Olivier Lussier. 42. bid., no. 1433,The testimony of Fkan~oisDarche; APJ, 1:91. 43. APJ, 1:105; Femand OueIlet, "Les Insurrectionsde 1837-38: Un Phenomhe Social,"Hisloire Sociale no. 2 (1968): 60; Fernand Ouellet, L o w Canada 1791-1840uomnto: McClehd and Stewart, 1980),p. 306; Stanley, Canada's Soldiers, p. 195. 44. ANQ, E, 1837-1838,no. 848,The testimony of Robert Shore Milnes Bouchette;APJ, 1:98.

Part 11. Chapter 9. 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

NACP, E.B. O'Callaghan to an unnamed correspondent,22 December 1837, EB. O'Callaghan to James Fbrter, 28 December 1837. NACP,EB. O1r;rllanhanto an unnamed correspondent,22 December 1837.

NACP, EB. 0'Wagl-mto an unnamed correspondent,22 December 1837,EB. 0'C;rlkrrh;mto James Pbrter, 28 December 1837,30December 1837,15January 1838; NAC,The l h r b n Papers, MG.24, A.27,vol. 37, Stewart Dehiihires report to Lord JMwn, 24 May 1838; "Lettrede 1'hM h i m e Chartier h ltHonorable Louis-Joseph Papiieau," Le Bullefh des Recherches Histon'ques 43 (1937): 122 NACP,EB. 0'C;IIbnhan to an unnamed correspondent,22 December 1837. NACP, EB. O'CaIlaghan to James Fbrter, 28 December 1837. bid. bid.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

bid.; APJ, 2:70. APJ, 2:68-70; "Letbe de 1'Abbd h e m e olartier A lsHonorableLouis-Joseph Papheau," pp. 122-23. WJ, 2:68,7 1;"Lettre de -1' heme Chartier h1'Honorable LouisJoseph Papieau,"pp. 122-3; "Statement by Dr. Jean-Baphte Henry O'Brien," Reporlof the State mak before a Geneml Court Martralheld at Monb-eal, 183&9: Exhibiting a Complee History of the Late Rebelion in Lower Canada, 2 vols. (MonW: h o u r and Ramsey, 1839),2:54&61; Femand Ouellet, Lower Canada 1791-1841noronto: McCebd and Stewart, 1980), p. 310; Norah Story, "kpheauin W e , " Canadrbn HistoricalReoiew 10,no. 1(1929): 44-45. Dr. Robert Nelson had been rnistakenty arrested in Montreal in place of his brother, Wlblfred, and had made his way directly to the United Statesimmediatelyafter his release, He believed that the British would be looking for him again once they realized who he was. "Statementby Dr. Jean-Baptiste Henry O'Brien," 2:54&61. NACP, E.B. O'Callaghan to James hrter, 28 December 1837. APJ, 2:70-71; Ouellet,Lower Canada 1791-1841,p. 312; George EG,Stanley, CanadasSoldiers, rev. ed. noronto: The M a d a n Companyof Canada, 1960), pp. 196-97. NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to James Pbrter, 15January 1838;APJ, 2:71; Fernand Ouellet, "Papiieau dans la Revolution de 1837-1838,"Canadian Historical Association Report (1958): 27. W P , E.B. O'cakqhan to James Rorter, 15January 1838. bid. AOM, EB. O'Cahghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 17 February 1838, NACP, James Shea to EB. 0-' 1 Eebruary 1838,Draft for a circular soliciting support for a newspaper to be estabbhed and edited by EB. O'Cailashan, undated but probably some time in January 1838,and filed in 2:2490-1. WJ, 2:73. NAC, The Dwernay Collection, MG.24, C.3, vol. 2, I?-H. Cote to Ludger Duvernay, 26 January 1838. AOM, EB. O'Callaghanto WUam Lyon Mackenzie, 17Eebruary 1838. APJ, 2:81,85,127,129,130. Albany Institute of History and Art, The Erasbus Coming Papers,Box 15, Folder 7, EB. O'Callaghan to ErastusCorning,6 March 1838. AOM, Chapman to WIlliarn Lyon Mackenzie, 19February 1838. APJ, 2:86,89,177; "Statementby Dr. Jean-Baptiste Henry O'Brien," 2:548-61; Stanley, Canada's Soldim, pp. 196-67. Albany Institute of History and Art, The Erastus Coming Papers, Box 15, Fblder 7, E.B. O'Callaghan to Erastus Corning,6 March 1838. APJ, 2: 103-4,151. "Statementby Dr. Jean-Baptiste Henry O'Brien," 2:54861.

Notes 28. O'Callaghan's movements during this period can be determined from several sources, including the headings of letters which he wrote, and entries in Volume 2 of AmCd& Papieau's J o d d'un I;"& de la Libe?t&. 29. AOM, Chapman to William Lyon Mackenzie, 19February 1838. 30. APJ, 2:106. 31. NAB, James Shea to EB. OVCallaghan,1Febnmy 1838;"Lettre de I ' M ~tienne Chartier B 1'Honorable Louis-Joseph Pap'ieau," pp. 124-5. 32. NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J.Pap'meau, 16 May 1839. 33. Joel Munsell,Annals of Albany, 10vols. (Albany:J. Munsell, 1850-1859), 10:296. 34. AOM, EB. OC 'to William Lyon Mackenzie, 17February 1838; NACP, Draft for a circularsoliciting support for a newspaper to be established and edited by EB. O'Cdhghan, 1838,2:2490-1. 35. AOM, EB. 0'r;lllwrrhan to William Lyon Mackenzte, 17February 1838. 36. bid.; APJ, 2:88; Lillian E Gates,Mer the Rebellion, m e Later Years of Wdliam Lyon Mackenzie ('Foronto: Dundurn Ress, 1988),p. 36. 37. APJ, 2:106. 38. AOM, EB. 0'r;rlhrrh;ur to Wiam Lyon Mackenzie, and enclosures, 19July 1838, 24 July 1838,28July 1838,31July 1838,8August 1838,2 September 1838,s September 1838,7September 1838,26September 1838. 39. bid., EB. O'r;tlk9han to W m Lyon Mackenzie, 2 September 1838. 40. NAC, The Durham Papers, MG.24,A.27, vol. 37, Stewart M i h i r e ' s report to Lord Durhamon Lower Canada, 24 May 1838. 41. APJ,2:1513. 42. Wid., 2: 148-72. 43. Ibid., 2951. 44. lbid., 2: 170-3. 45. lbid., 2:159,185. 46. Femand Ouellet, Louis-Jixeph lbpineau, A Divided Soul, (Ottawa: The Canadian HistoricalAssociation, 1972),p. 16; Story, "Pap'ieau in M e , " pp. 47-48. 47. Ouellet, "Papineau dans la Revolution de 1837-1838,"p. 30. 48. NACP, E.B. O'Callaghan to L.-J. Pap'ieau, 16May 1839;Gates,After the Rebellion, The Later Yem of William Lyon Mackenzie, pp. 44,57.

Chapter 10. "Lettre de 1 ' M ktienne Chartier h 1'HonombleLouis-Joseph Papieau," k Bullelin des Rechexhes Historigues,43(1937): 124;MIN, 10July 1848. 2. NAC, The Dummy Collection, MG.24,C3, vol. 3, J A Berthelot to Ludger Duvemay, 28 March 1838. 3. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to Wfim Lyon Mackenzie, 21 March 1841;NAC, The Chapman Papers, MG.24, B.31, vol. 1, EB. O'CaIlaghan to H.S. Chapman, 19 September 1853. 4. NACP,E.B. 0'r;hlanrhan to Am&& Pap'ieau, 26 June 1845. 5. John Gilmary Shea, "Obituary,"Mqazhe ofAmenkan History 5, no. 1 (1880): 77-80. 6. M o u s letters contained in AOM, LCO, and NACP. 1.

Edmund Bniky O'Callaghan AOM, EB. O'CalIaghan to W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie, 28 November 1839,s March 1840;Lillian F. Gates,Mter the Rebellion, 7ReLater Yem ofWdliamLyon Mackenzie (Toronto: Dundum Press, 1988),pp. 64,71. AOM, EB.O'Maghan to W h Lyon m e , 28 November 1839,4July 1840,15 March 1842,29June 1844,John 'lkacey to W W Lyon Mackenzie, 3 July 1839; LCO, W i l l i a m Lyon M a c k e ~ to e EB. O'Callaghan,22 May 1844,25June 1844; NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papieau, 16 May 1839;Joel Munsell, Annals of Albany, 10vols. (Albany Joel Munsell, 1850-1859), 10:296; Wmam E Rowley, "lhe Irish Aristocracy of Albany," New York History 52, no. 3 (1971): 27881 AOM, EB. O'CalIaghan to Waam Lyon Mackenzie, 21 March 1841. LCO,Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 4 May 1841. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie, 15March 1842; LCO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 15 October 1842;NACP EB. O'Callaghan to LJ. Pap'ieau, 4 October 1842;George R,Howell and Jonathan Tenney, eds., History ofthe County ofAlbany h m 16@ to 1886(New York: Munsell and Co., 1886), pp. 595-97; Fkancis Shaw Guy, The Rev., Edinund Bailey O'Callaghan,A Study in American Historiogmphy, 117-1880(Washington: The Catholic University of America, 1934, pp. 9-10. LCO, TS. Brown to EB. O'Callaghan, 27 March 1844;NACP, E,B. O'Callaghan to L J . Papineau, 4 October 1842;Guy, Edrnurtd Bailey O'Callaghan,A Study in American Historiography, 117-1880,p. 9; Howell and Temey, eds., History ofthe County ofAlbany h m 1609to 1886,pp. 210,213;A Everett Peterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," hceedhgs ofthe New York State Historical Association 33 (1935): 67. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie, 29 June 1844,12November 1844; LCO, Wmam Lyon Mackenzie to EB. O'Callaghan, 16January 1844;NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to LJ. Papiieau, 21 Febnrary 1848; "Mr. Butlers Discourse," Collectionsofthe New York Historical Smety Second Series,2, pt. 1(1848): 15-16; Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. NAB,EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papieau, 17July 1844,21F e b w 1848. NAC, The Chapman Papers, MG.24,B.31, vol. 1, EB. O'Callaghan to H.S.Chapman, 19September 1853;NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papiieau, 30 March 1843,17 July 1844,24June 1848. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to W r l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie, 12 November 1844; NACP, 17 July 1844. NAB,E.B. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papiieau,8 December 1842. Ibid., 17 July 1844. Shea,"Obituary," pp. 77-80. LCO, W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie to E.B. O'Callaghan, 22 May 1844,l June 1844,25 June 1844;Lillian E Gates,Afterthe Rebellion, 7he Later YearsofWiliamLyon Madzenzie (%oronto: Dundum Press, 1988), pp. 107-9. LCO, M. ComoUy to EB. O'Callaghan, 9 Febnwy 1844, EB. O'Callaghan to John Teed, 1 March 1844,EB. O'Calla#m to John Daly, 30 March 1844; WCP, E.B. O'Callaghan to LJ. Papineau, 17 July 1844.

w,

Notes 22. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 22 October 1843; KO, Patrick Cassidy to EB. O'Callaghan, 23 May 1844. 23. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 29 June 1844. 24. Ibid., 27 August 1844,12 November 1844. 25. Ibid., 12 November 1844. 26. Ibid. 27, Ibid. 28. bid. 29. bid. 30. bid., 22 December 1844;K O , WiIliam Lyon Mackenzie to E.B. O'CaIlaghan, 2 January 1845. 31. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 9 January 1845. 32. Ibid., 25 April 1845. 33. Ibid., 4 July 1840,29January 1843; tCO,Mary Anne W h to E.B. O'Callaghan, 2 January 1848. 34. KO, T.Romeyn Beck to EB. O'Callaghan, 12 May 1845;NACP,E.B. O'Callaghan to Amed& Papiieau, 26 June 1845. 35. LCO, Messrs. End6 and W h to EB. O'Cdaghan, 24 May 1845,7July 1845,28July 1845, EB. O'callaghan to Bishop Hughes, 8 August 1845,Draft of a letter by EB. O'CaUaghan to Bishop Hughes, undated, mounting no. 39201; NACP, EB. O'CalIaghan to L-J. Pap'ieau, 24 June 1848. 36. KO, Messrs. End6 and W h to EB. O'CaIlaghan, 7 July 1845. 37. Ibid., Richard Lacy to EB. O'Callaghan, 19July 1845, Mary Anne W h to E.B. O'Callaghan, 9 May 1847,2January 1848. 38. Ibid., J.V. Prather to Richard Lacy, 17June 1845,Richard Lacy to EB. O'Callaghan, 19July 1845;Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. 39. Sundry letters to and from O'Callaghan contained in the LC0 collection show him signing his name, and b e i i addressed in this style. 40. tCO,T.Ewbank to EB. O'Callaghan, 27 November 1845,John D. Shea to E.B. O'Callaghan, 4 January 1846. The letters in LC0 from John D. Shea, John G. Shea, and John M. Shea are all from the same person. He was baptized John Dawson Shea but assumed the middle name of G i a r y when he became a Jesuit novice. Even after he left the Society of Jesus before ordination, he retained the adopted name, and often signed himself by it. He became an eminent Catholic historian, and O'Callaghan's obituaist. 41. KO, EB. O'Callaghan to SenatorJA. D i i 28 January 1847, EB. O'Callaghan to ThurlowWeed, 1June 1848, Peterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," p. 68. 42. NACP, EB. 0'C;rlknhan to L-J. Papiieau, 28 October 1846. 43. KO, Draft of a letter by EB. O'Callaghan to the Secretaryof the Navy, undated, mounting no. 39202. 44. LCO, ThurlowWeed to EB. O'Callaghan, 2 January 1847,L.W. Cass to EB. O'callaghan, 15January 1847, EB. O'Callaghan to Senator JA. Du,28 January

Edmund Bailey O'Callughan

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

1847,W.B. Maclay to Thurlow Weed, 15May 1847,RH. Ruyn to EB. O'maghan, 2April1848. Shea, "Obituary,"pp. 77-80. Wid;LCO, M. Carter Brown to EB. ' 0 8 June 1847,T Romeyn Beck to EB. O'Callaghan, 6 December 1847. LCO, T.W. Hanb to EB. O'Callaghan, 16 December 1847. EO, k-RFabre to EB. OWlaghan, 19January 1847. KO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan, 2 January 1848,6Ebmary 1850,27 September 1850; NACP, EB. 0'CaIl;mh;mto LJ.Pap'meau, 19April1868. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to Wrlliam Lyon M a c k e ~ e1, October 1838. AOM, T.S. Brown to William Lyon Mackenzie, 12 September 1838. LCO, W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie to EB. O'Callaghan, 16September 1844. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to Wrlliarn Lyon Mackenzie, 12 November 1844,25April 1845,8March 1847, EO, WlllIam Lyon Mackenzie to E.B. O'Callaqhan, undated but probably 20 December 1847,mounting no. 39204; NACP, EB. O'Callaqhan to LJ. Pap'meau, 24 June 1848;Reterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," p. 68. LCO, EB. 09Callaghanto Thurlow Weed, 1June 1848;John Romeyn Brodhead, Documents Relatiw to the ColonialHistory ofthe State ofNew York Edmund Bailey O'Callaghm, ed., 11vols. (Atbany: Weed, Parsons E Co., 1853-1861),Id. KO, RH. Pniyn to EB. O'Callaghan, 2 April 1848,EB. O'Callaqhan to Christopher Morgan (State Secretary), 2 1April 1848,ChristopherMorgan to E.B. O'Callaghan, 17 May 1848,EB. OSCallaghanto Thurlow Weed, 1June 1848; Brodhead, Documents Relati* to the ColonialHistory ofthe State ofNew York,I S .

Chapter 1 1. 1. W i l l i a m Kennedy, 0 Albany! I . b I e Cityofhlirical W m ,Feadess Ethnics, Spectacul~Aristouuts,Spiendid NMies, a d UndenutedScoun&Is mew Yok Viking knguin Inc., 1983), pp. 67-68;WilIiam E Rowley, "Ihe b h Aristocmcy of AIbany, 1798-1878,'' New York History 52, no. 3 (1971): 285. 2. John~meynBrodhead,henlsRel&bdheCddfl~db)leSIateof New Yo& Edmund Bafley O'Callaghan, ed., 11vols. (Abany: Weed Parsons and Company,1853-1861), 1JtIi-xlii. 3. "HistoricalSketch of the Society," Coflectzonsofthe New York HistoricdSociety Second Series, 1 (1841): 468. 4. Bmdhead,fbamenls Relatiue to the CddalHiihny ofthe Sate ofN a v Y d ,IxL 5. Ibid., I d , xliv. The date of Brodhead's return to Europe can be interred from the records of the New York Historical Society. 6. A. Everett kterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," heedings ofthe New YorRState HistoricalAssociation23 (1935): 70. 7. Brodhead,Da:umentsRelatiw to the Colonial History ofthe State ofNew York, IJtliv.

Notes 8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 15 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

&id.; LCO, EB. O'Callaghan to the Comptroller of the State of New York, 1 February 1853,Draft of a letter by EB. O'CaIlaqhan, undated, mounting nos. 391736. KO, Drafts of two letters by EB. O'Callaghan, undated, mounting nos. 39180-1, 39182-3. Brodhead, Documents Relcltr*~ to the Colonid Hisory ofthe State ofNew York, "Correspondence" in front matter to voL 1;Peterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," p. 70. LCO, EB. 0 ' to the Chairman of the Committee of Regents of the State University of New York, undated, mounting nos. 37447-8; Francis Shaw Guy, The Rev., Edinund Bailey O'Callaghan,A Study h Amm'can Histon'ogmphy, 1797-1880(Mshington: The Catholic Unkrdty of America, 1934), pp. 6244. Brodhead,Documents ReIatiue to the Colonial History ofthe State ofNew Yo&, Iflv-Xhr. Ibid., 1: front matter, "Correspondence," and xMi-xtv. kterson, "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," pp. 70-71. Ibid., p. 71. ANQ, Documents Gameau, EB. O'Callaghan to E-XGameau. July 1850;AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie, 23 September 1852; NACP,E.B. O'Callaghan to L.-J. Papieau, 12 February 1850;Kennedy, 0 Albany! 6142. W i l l i a m Kingsford, me Hhtory ofCanada 10vols. (Toronto: Rowsell and Hutchison, 1887-1898), 10:6647. John Giary Shea, "Obituary,"Magazine ofherr'canHistory 5, no. 1 (1880): 77-80. LCO, W,B, Hayden to EB. O'C;m;mh;m,20 January 1849; N e w York State Library, Albany, Manusaipt CoIlection, EB. 0'C;ln;rrrhan to the Rev. Fr. Fmotti, 31 October 1870. Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. William E Rowiey, "The IrishAristocracy of Albany, 1798-1878,"New York History 52, no. 3 (1971): 278-84. E o ,W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie to EB. O'Cal@haq 22 May 1844. Rowley, "The Irish Aristocracy of Albany, 1798-1878," p. 289. Ibid., pp. 279,290-91. Ibid., 275304; Geoqe R Howell and Jonathan Tmey, eds., History ofh e County ofAlbany h m 1tXB to 1886(NewYo& W.Munsell and Co., 1886), pp. 595-97. Howell and Tenney, eds., History ofthe County ofAlbanyh m 16iBto 1886,pp. 752-4; Rowley, 'The Irish Aristocracy of Albany, 1798-1878"pp. 290,293,300-1. Shea, "Obituary,"pp. 77-80. KO, EB. O'Callaghan to the Friends of Fkee Schools,6 July 1850: Rowley, "The Irish Aristocracy of Albany, 1798-1878,"pp. 292-93. LCO, Draft of a letter from EB. O'Callaghan to the American Public, undated but written in 1851,mounting nos. 39184-6; Howell and Tenney, eds., History ofthe County ofAlbanyh m 16iBto 1886,p. 343; Kennedy, 0Albany!, pp. 47,57,73;

Edmund Bailey O'Cdlaghan RowIey, T h e Irish AristocracyofAlbany, 1798-1878,"pp. 284-86. The Martinville neighbourhoodwas razed in 1894to make way for a public park. It was fmt called Beaver Park but was later renamed Lincoln Park. Canal Street, in the Gander Bay area, was renamed SheridanAvenue in honour of General Philip Sheridan,of CM W fame and a native son. KO, Mary Anne W h to EB. O'Callaghan,25 April 1848,4October 1848,7 January 1849,24March 1849. MGAZ, 26 March 1832,2 April 1832. NACP. E.B. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papiieau, 15 February 1852. KO, Draft of a letter from EB. O'Callaghanto the American Public, undated but written in 1851,mounting nos. 39184-6. Kennedy, 0Albany!, p. 77. MCP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papiieau, 18Aptil1868. KO, L-J. hpiieau to EB. O'Callaghan, 21 January 1856. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to Wiam Lyon Mackenzie, 31 December 1858; NAC, The Chapman Papers, MG248.31, EB. O'(2&ghan to H.S. Chapman,19September 1853;NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to b e d & kpineau, 5 June 1865. LCO, William Lyon Mackenzie to EB. O'Callaghan, 25 August 1844,16September 184428October 1844. AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to Wrlliam Lyon Mackenzie, 12 November 1844. NAC, The Chapman Papers, EB. O'Callaghan to H.S.Chapman, 19September 1853. ANQ, Documents F.-X Gameau, EB. O'Callaghan to E-X Garneau, 15June 1849; NACP,EB. O'CAI@UI to L.-J. Papineau, 21 Eeb1848. D,L-J. hpiieau to EB. O'CaI@hn, 21 January 1856; NACP,EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papieau, 12 February 1850, EBB. O'CaIlaghan to Am&iCe Papieau, 5 June 1865;Femand OueIlet, LoubJoseph mheau, A Added Soul (OMawa: The Canadian HistoricalAssociation, 1972), p. 18. Lillian E Gates,Mer the Rebellion, lhe Luter Yearsof Wliam Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto: Dundum FVess, 1988), p. 178. AOM, EB. O'Cabghan to WIlliarn Lyon Mackenzie,24 August 1852,23September 1852. KO, William Lyon Mackenzle to EB. O'CaIlaghan, 28 November 1860. NACP,EB. O'Callaghan to Am&& Papineau,5 June 1865. Kennedy, OfWmy!pp. 51,254. 77zeAbmyAtfasand-, 7 November 1860. NACP, EB. O'Callaghan to L-J. Papieau, 7 December 1865. It is easy to determine which of O'Callaghan's works were pubiished by and for the state of New York They were aIl put out by Weed, Parsons and Co., the officialprinters. Most of his own works were published by Joel MunseIl. EW. Nash, Catalogueof the Library of the Late EB. O'Callaghan,M.D., U D . , Historian of New York (New York: Douglas Taylor, 1882). AOM, EB. O'Callaghan to William Lyon Mackenzie,31 December 1858. NACP, EB. O'Cabghan to L-J. Pap'ieau, 19April 1868.

Notes 54. Ibid. 55. KO, CL, Austin to E.B. OtCaIlaghan, 17July 1854. 56. Ibid., W i l l i a m Lyon Mackenzie to EB. O'Callaghan, undated but probably 20 December 1847,mounting no. 39204. 57. AJ. W,'"llte Printing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of William M. Tweed by the 'Ring'," New York Historical Society QuartedyBulletin 7, no. 3 (1923): 93. 58. bid., p. 94; Lloyd Monis, "BossTweed: What Are You W h g to Do About It?" The E m p k City,A Aaswy ofNew York,ed. Alexander Klein, Reprint (Freeport: Books for Libraries Ress, 197I), pp. 207-10; kterson, "Edmund Bailey OtCallaghan,Editor of New York Historical Records," p. 72. 59. Fkancis Shaw Guy,The Rev., WnundBailey O'CaUaghan:A Study in American Histonogmphy, 1797-1880whington: The Catholic University of America, 1934),p. 76. 60. NACP,E.B. OtCallaghanto L-J.Papineau, 19April1868. 61. Ibid., 15 February 1852. 62. Rowley, "The Irish Aristocracyof Albany, 1798-1878,"p. 30 1. 63. NACP, E.B. O'CaIlaghan to L.J. Papineau, 12 February 1850;WN,31October 1837. 64. Howell and Tenney, eds., History ofthe County ofAlbanyhm 1609to 1886,p. 753; Kennedy, 0 Albany! p. 65.

Chapter 12. 1.

LCO, vol. 18,pieces of correspondence from the period after July 1870,including certain undated items which can be attributed to that same period. J.G. Shea to EB. OtCallaghan,undated, mounIing no. 39140. 2. W , 3. bid., EB. OtCallaghanto Dr. S.S. Ruple, 28August 1874. 4. Ibid., EB. O'CaIlaghan to ER Purple, 7 February 1876. 5. Ibid.,EB.O'~toDr.S.StArrp1e,1lAugustl871,9July1874;kJ.W,'~ Printing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of W i l l i a m M. Tweed by the 'Ring'," New York Historical Society QuarterlyBulletih 7, no. 3 (1923), 88-97. 6. Lloyd Morris, "Boss Tweed: What Are You Going to Do about It?" The Empue City,A Aaswy ofNew York,ed. Alexander Klein, Reprint (Freeport: Books for LibrariesPress, 1971), pp. 209-13. i l l i a m M. 7. W,"The Printing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of W Tweed by the 'Ring'," pp. 93-94. 8. Papieau died on 24 September 1871at the age of 85 years. 9. Moms, "Boss Tweed: What Ate You W h g to Do about It?" pp. 208-9,213. 10. A. Everett Peterson, "Edmund Bailey O'CalIaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records,"Weedings ofthe New York.State Historical Association 33 (1935): 72; John GiImary Shea, "Obituary,"Magazine ofhencanHistory 5, no. 1 (1880): 77-80;W 1, "The Printing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of W r l l i a r n A.Tweed by the 'Ring'," p. 88. 11. Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. 12. LCO, EB. O'Callaghan to E.R. Purple, 7 February 1876.

Edmund Baiky O'Callaghan 13. Ibid., J.G. Shea to EB. O'Callaghan, undated notes, mounting nos. 39140,39141, 39143,39144. 14. Ibid., Thurlow Weed to EB. OtCallaghan,undated, mounting no. 39203. 15. The Lenox Library was a private institutionwhich was absorbed into the newly formed New York Public Library in 1895. 16. LCO, vol. 18,J. Lenox to E.B. O'Callaghan, numerous letters written in the year 1860;James J. W h , "Edmund Bailey O'CalIaghan, Physician, Historian, Antiquarian,"Shcdies (Dublin: The Educational Company of Ireland Ltd., 1933), 22:474-75. W h ' s article is a revised version of his earlier one, "Edrnund Bailey O'CalIaghan of New Yo* Physician, Historian and Antiquarian,A.D. 1797-1880," which appeared in American CatholicHkton'cal Society ofPhgadeNhia Records 16,no. 1 (1905): 5-33. 17. Shea, "Obituary)))pp. 77-80; W h , "Edrnund Bailey O'Callaghan, Physician, Historian, Antiquarian,"p. 479. 18. LCO, EB. O'Callaghan to Dr. S.S. Ruple, 9 July 1874. 19. Mark Twain, '"Ihe Sex in New York," 7he Einpire City,A Amury ofNew Yo&,ed. Alexander Klein, Reprint (Fleeport: Books for Libraries Press,1971), pp. 206-7. 20. Shea, "Obituary," 77-80; W h , "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Physician, Historian, Antiquarian," p. 478. 21. Shea, "Obituary," pp. 77-80. 22. bid. 23. Ibid. 24. EW. Nash, Catalogueofthe Library ofthe Late EB. O'Callaghan,M.D., LD., (New York:Douglas Taylor, 1882). Specifically,the copy in Hison'an ofNew the possession of the National Library of Canada which is annotated with the prices which some of the items fetched. 25. W h , "Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Physician, Historian, Antiquarian," p. 477. 26. kterson, "Edmund Bailey'O'Callaghan, Editor of New York Historical Records," p. 72; W, "The Pkirtfing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of William M.Tweed by the 'Ring'," pp. 88-89, 27. As You L&e It, act 2, sc.7, line 142.

Index Acheson, Archibald, Earl of Gosford, 97, 103, 107, 108, 146 Agriculture in Lower Canada, 112-13 Albany: Catholicism in, 196-98; Irish immigrants in, 174, 196; newspapers in, 180, 182; O'Callaghan and Papineau in, 157-70 American Civil War, 202 Aylmer, Lord Mathew. See Whitworth-Aylmer, Baron Mathew Bagg, Stanley, 5 1 Banque du Peuple, 96-97, 114-15, 143, 150-51 Barry, Rev. Thomas, 16 Beck, Dr. Theodoric Romeyn, 188 Bedard, Elzear, 50, 75-76, 108 Bidwell, Marshall Spring, 104 Bleury, Charles Clement Sabrevois de, 101-102 Bossange, Hector, 18, 169 Bossange, Martin, 18 Bourdages, David, 142, 143 British American Land Company, 96 Brodhead, John Romeyn, 188-89, 191-94 Brooklyn Navy Yard, 182, 185, 189, 205 Brown, Thomas Storrow, 126, 131, 133, 134-35, 144-45, 151-52, 164, 175, 187, 203 Caldwell, Dr. William, 3 1 Canadian Spectator, 28, 38, 48 Cartier, ~eorge-Etienne,66 Catholic church, political position of, 84 Central and Permanent Committee. See Permanent Central Committee

Chartier, Abbe gtienne, 140 Chasseurs, 165 Chicot-Duvert, Dr. Franlois, 140-41 Cholera, 52-56, 80-81, 177, 205 Cholera Hospital, 53 City Bank of Montreal, 67, 96 Clinton county, 180-81 Cobden, Richard, 91 Colborne, Lieut-General Sir John, 149 Committee of Correspondence, 88 Connolly, Richard B. 2 10-11 Corning, Erastus, 164-65, 195-96 Cote, Dr. Cyrille, 113, 128, 131, 152, 161, 164-64 Council of Patriotes, 142 Crampe, Charlotte Augustina. See O'Callaghan, Mrs. Charlotte Augustina, (nee Crampe)

Daily Advertiser, 86 Dalhousie, Earl of. See Ramsay Davignon, Dr. Jean-Fran~ois,144 Debartzch, Pierre-Dominique, 108, 127 Delisle, John, 29 Derbishire, Stewart, 168-69 Deringer, Henry, 161-62 Dessaulles, Rosalie, 148 Desmarais, Paul, 144 De Witt, Jacob, 49, 57 Donellan, John, 27, 8 1-83, 87 Doric Club, 128, 132 Doyle, Andrew, 86-87, 94-95 Drolet, Joseph-Toussaint, 141-42, 151 Durham, John George, Earl of. See Lambton Duvernay, Ludger, 49, 5 1, 56-57, 66, 77, 79, 80, 82, 95, 106-107, 114-15, 120, 163 Electioneering, 29, 52

Emigrant's Hospital, 34-36, 39-41 Emmet, Robert, 9-10, 12 Fabre, kdouard-~aymond:death of, 205; financier, 97, 115, 147; O'Callaghan and, 17-18, 20, 186; political insider, 64, 66, 68, 70, 73, 75, 79, 128, 147; Vindicator and, 49, 56-57, 61 Fils de la Liberte, 125, 130, 132-34, 137, 151, 152 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 9, 12 Freeman's Journal, 178, 179, 183, 184 Garneau, Fransois-Xavier, 195, 20 1 GaspC, Phillipe-Aubert de, 100-101 Girod, Amury, 94, 1 13, 129, 131, 139-41 Girouard, Joseph, 88 Gore, Col. Sir Charles, 147 Gosford, Lord. See Acheson Grosse fle, 52-54 Gugy, Conrad-Augustin, 93 Hagan, John, 49 Hall, Abraham Oakey, 205, 210-1 1 Hawe, Ellen. See OtCallaghan, Mrs. Ellen, (nCe Hawe) Hawe, Mathew, 197 Head, Sir Francis Bond, 104, 107 Headley, Joel T. 194-95 Hibernian Benevolent Society, 27, 81, 95 Holmes, Dr. Andrew Fernando, 3 1 Hughes, Bishop John, 183 Iffland, Dr. Anthony von, 53 Ireland: emigration from, 19, 34-35; martyr heroes of, 9-10 Irish Repeal Society, 179 Irish Vindicator. See Vindicator Jesuit Relations, 185-86 Jones, Isaac, 85, 89 Jones, James, 85-86, 89 Jones, William, 85, 89, 90 Kimber, Dr. 142 Kingsford, William, 19

Lacy, Mrs. Bess, (nCe OtCallaghan), 5, 1 1, 184 Lacy, John, 11 Lacy, Mary Anne, 186, 206 Lacy, Richard, 1 1, 184, 186 Lafontaine Louis-Hyppolite, 66, 88-89 Lambton, John George, Earl of Durham, 92, 168-69 L a Minerve, 42, 47, 49-51, 56, 66, 77, 79, 106-107, 113, 120, 130, 131 La Petite Nation, 200 Lartigue, Bishop Jean-Jacques, 131, 145, 207, 217 La Canadien, 106, 108-109 Lenox, James, 2 12 Lenox Library, 2 12, 2 14 Lloyd, Jesse, 135-36, 143 Lonqueuil, skirmish at, 144-46 Lord John Russell's Ten Resolutions, 109-12, 116-19 Lower Canada, transportation, 33 Loyal and Constitutional Association, 87-88 McCloskey, Bishop John. See McCloskey, Cardinal Archbishop John McCloskey, Cardinal Archbishop John, 197, 198, 207, 2 12, 2 14 McGill, Peter, 29 McGill University, 30 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 100, 102, 135-36, 143, 167-68, 170, 178, 181, 201-202, 204-405, 215 McMahon, Rev. Patrick, 4 1-42, 83-84, 93, 178-79, 2 17 Maison Canadienne, 97 Mallow, town of, 5-9 Malo, Constable, 144 Marcoux, Louis, 85, 89 Mathew, Rev. Theobald, 11, 198-99 Mechanics' Institute, 46-47 Medical Licensing, 19, 20, 30-31 Medical treatments, 25 Militiamen, 126-28, 131 Montreal, 23, 73-74 Montreal Board of Medical Examiners, 30-32 Montreal Gazette, 48, 74, 82, 86

Montreal General hospital, 20, 23-27, 30-32, 39, 55 Montreal Herald, 78, 80 Montreal Medical Institution, 30-3 1 Montreal West Ward, 27, 29, 51-52, 56, 77-79, 81-87 Morin, Auguste-Norbert, 66, 75, 77 Munsell, Joel, 195 Nagle, Mary Anne. See Walsh, Mrs. Mary Anne, (nee O'Callaghan) Nast, Thomas, 2 10-11 Neilson, John, 48, 73, 75, 93 Nelson, Dr. Robert, 29, 82, 87, 94, 135, 160-65, 169 Nelson, Dr. Wolfred, 85, 113, 129, 131, 140, 142-43, 145, 169 Newspaper, economics of, 48, 75 New York Historical Society, 185-86, 193, 205, 2 14 New York Printing Company, 2 10 Ninety-two Resolutions, 75-78, 8 1, 85, 88, 9 1, 94, 2 19-20 Northern Light, 175, 178 O'Brien, Sheriff James, 2 11 O'Callaghan, Bess. See Lacy, Mrs. Bess, (n6e O'Callaghan) O'Callaghan, Charlotte Augustina, (nee Crampe), 41, 80, 95 O'Callaghan, Rev. David, 5, 10, 17 O'Callaghan, Edmund Bailey: Anglophobia of, 18, 64, 66-67, 105, 110-12, 202, 216; Catholicism of, 10, 18-19, 41-44, 177, 193-94, 197-98, 207, 212, 2 16-17; youth of, 5-6, 9-10, 12, 19-20; formative elements in the life of, 2 14-17; historiographical career of, 175-88, 191-96, 203-207, 209-12, 2 17; Jacksonianism and, 45-46, 63, 114, 120, 171, 198, 216; journalistic career of, 37-39, 43-44, 50-51, 56, 59-61, 63-90, 92, 94, 115, 167-68, 175, 178-79, 183; marriages of, 41, 95-96, 175; medical career of, 18-20, 24-25, 3 1-32, 34-36, 39-41, 53-56, 63, 69, 85-86, 166-67, 174-75, 183-84; political career of, 37, 42-44, 58,

60, 66, 78-80, 83-85, 88-90, 92-93, 97-100, '102-103, 114, 116, 133, 136, 140, 142, 157-64, 169, 171-74, 1 79-8 1, 200-204; politicization of, 10-13, 16-18, 27-29, 50-51; temperance work of, 45, 198-99 O'Callaghan, Mrs. Ellen, (nee Hawe), 175, 2 13 OICallaghan, Jean-Baptiste, 95 O'Callaghan, Mary Anne. See Walsh, Mrs. Mary Anne, (nee O'Callaghan) 08Callaghan, Mary Anne, jr. 175-77, 186 O'Callaghan, Owen, sr. 5, 10 O'Callaghan, Rev. Owen, 5, 10 OICallaghan, Theodore, 5, 11 O'Connell, Daniel, 10, 12, 18-19, 37, 38, 48, 57, 91, 99, 111, 117 O'Connell, Mary, 6, 8, 10 O'Sullivan, Rev. Daniel, 9 Papineau, AmCdCe, 117, 119, 126, 142, 152, 169 Papineau, Augustin, 148 Papineau, Louis-Joseph: political career of, 29, 47, 58-59, 93, 99, 101-102, 114, 116-18, 129-30, 132, 135-36, 139-40, 142, 157, 169-70, 186-88, 204-205, 2 17; private life of, 163-64, 169, 200, 2 10 Parent, gtienne, 50, 108-109, 115 Paris, post-Napoleonic, 15-1 7 Parkman, Francis, 195 Patriotes: American support for, 158-64; election success of, 27-29, 5 1-52, 87-88; factionalism among, 57-60, 63, 75-77, 93-94, 98-99, 117-19, 124, 128-30, 171; Irish support for, 83-84; military leadership of, 142-43, 145; policies of, 9 1, 123-24; Vindicator and, 48-49, 56-57 Permanent Central Committee, 78-79, 123-24 Perrault, Charles-Ovide, 66, 88-89, 100-103 Pilot, 59-60 Porter, James, 157 Poulin's farm, 148, 152

Edrnuruf Bailey O'Callaghun Purcell, the Most Rev. John Baptist, 9 Purple, Dr. Samuel S. 2 10, 2 13, 2 15 Quebec, 33-34, 44 Quebec Constitutional Association, 88 Quebec Emigrants' Society, 44-45 Quebec Gazette, 40, 43-44, 48, 60-6 1, 73, 75, 100 Quebec Mercury, 39-40, 58, 100-101 Race Track Riots, 67-72 Rakes of Mallow, 7,33

Ramsay, George, Earl of Dalhousie, 35 Reciprocity Treaty, 203 Richelieu Valley, O'Callaghan and Papineau in, 139-53 Ring, the, 2 10-11 Robertson, De. William, 3 1 Rockaway, N.Y. 200 Rodier, edouard-fitienne, 66, 77, 161 St. Charles, 147, 151, 152 St. Denis, O'Callaghan and Papineau at, 142, 145-51 St. Hyacinthe, 148, 152 St. Jean-Baptiste Society, 79-80 St. Patrick's Church, Quebec, 41-44, 83 Saratoga Springs, O'Callaghan at, 166, 169, 200 Shea, John Gilmary, 171-72, 195, 2 11-14 Sheehan, Jemmy, 12 Sheridan, General Philip, 203 Six Counties, Confederation of the, 127-31 Slavery, 203 Society of the Friends of Ireland, 37-39, 48, 64, 179 Stephenson, Dr. John, 3 1 Sweeny, Peter B. 2 10-11 Tammany Hall, 205, 2 10 Theller, E.A. 187 Thomas, John, 56-58, 61 Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 9, 12, 20, 28, 78

Tonnancour, Lkonard Godefroy de, 85 Tracey, Dr. Daniel, 27-29, 37-38, 43, 48-52, 55-57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 77, 82, 83, 87, 197, 2 16 Tracey, John, 83, 197 Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 213 Tweed, William Marcy (Boss), 205, 210-1 1 University of St. Louis, 184 Viger, Denis-Benjamin, 49, 136 Viger, Louis-Michel, 150 Vindicator, 178, 195, 2 15-17; demise of, 133, 134; editorial posture of, 48, 49, 64, 66, 72-73, 78-81, 93-94, 103, 105-107, 120, 130, 131; editorial policy formation in, 64, 66, 67, 69, 73, 79; editorship of, 38-39, 56-6 1, 63, 73, 75, 83-84; ownership of, 37, 48-49, 6 1; reportage in, 50-5 1, 70-75, 79-81, 83, 86-87, 94-95, 100, 103-105, 125 Voyageur, the steamboat, 52, 53 Walker, William, 81, 82, 87 Waller, Jocelyn, 28, 29, 38, 43, 47, 48, 56, 63, 64 Walsh, Mrs. Mary Anne (nee O'Callaghan), 5, 11, 17, 174-75, 198, 206 Walworth, Rev. Clarence, 197-198, 207, 2 14 Weed, Thurlow, 182, 185, 192, 195, 212, 214 Weir, Robert, 80, 81 Wetherall, Lieut.-Col. George, 147 Whitworth-Aylmer, Baron Mathew, 50, 53, 91, 97 Wurtele, Josias, 85 Yamaska, county of, 84-85