Fenian brotherhood

The content on this page originated on Wikipedia and is yet to be significantly improved. Contributors are invited to replace and add material to make this an original article.

The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish nationalist organization based in the United States of America in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". The revolutionary secret society was founded by John O'Mahony in 1858. O'Mahony, who was a Celtic scholar, named his organization after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.

Founding of The Fenian Brotherhood

After the collapse of William Smith O'Brien's attempted rising in Ireland in 1848, O'Mahony, who had been involved in it, had escaped abroad, arriving in New York City in 1852. Around 1858, O'Mahony was a member of the committee that sent a delegate to James Stephens in Dublin with proposals for the founding of the secret society later known as the Fenian Brotherhood, whose members bound themselves by an oath of allegiance to the Irish Republic and swore to take up arms when called upon and to obey their superior officers. After a convention held at Chicago under O'Mahony's presidency in November 1863, the American wing of the movement began to become effective.

The Irish People, a revolutionary journal started in Dublin by IRB leader James Stephens, was appealing for aid from Irishmen who had received military training and experience in the American Civil War. At the close of that war in 1865, numbers of Irish veterans flocked back to Ireland, but a government crackdown arrested many and forced Stephens to flee.

Fenian Raids into Canada

See main article Fenian Raids

In the United States, O'Mahony's presidency over the Fenian Brotherhood was being increasingly challenged by William R. Roberts. Both Fenian factions raised money by the issue of bonds in the name of the "Irish Republic," which were bought by the faithful in the expectation of their being honored when Ireland should be "a nation once again." These bonds were to be redeemed "six months after the recognition of the independence of Ireland." Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants subscribed.

Large quantities of arms were purchased, and preparations were openly made by the Roberts faction for a co-ordinated series of raids into Canada, which the United States government took no major steps to prevent. Many in the U.S. administration were not indisposed to the movement because of Britain's failure to support the Union during the civil war. Roberts' "Secretary for War" was General T.W. Sweeny, who was struck off the American army list from January 1866 to November 1866 to allow him to organize the raids. The purpose of these raids was to seize the transportation network of Canada, with the idea that this would force the British to exchange Ireland's freedom for possession of their Province of Canada. Before the invasion, the Fenians had received some intelligence from like minded supporters within Canada but did not receive support from all Irish Catholics there who saw the invasions as threatening the emerging Canadian sovereignty.

The command of the expedition in Buffalo, New York, was entrusted by Roberts to Colonel John O'Neill, who crossed the Niagara River (the Niagara is the international border) at the head of at least 800 (O'Neill's figure; usually reported as up to 1,500 in Canadian sources) men on the night and morning of May 31/June 1, 1866, and briefly captured Fort Erie, defeating a Canadian force at Ridgeway. Many of these men, including O'Neill, were battle-hardened veterans of the American Civil War. In the end the invasion had been broken by the US authorities’ subsequent interruption of Fenian supply lines across the Niagara River and the arrests of Fenian reinforcements attempting to cross the river into Canada. It is unlikely that with such a small force that they would have ever achieved their goal.

Other Fenian attempts to invade occurred throughout the next week in the St. Lawrence Valley. As many of the weapons had in the meantime been confiscated by the US army, relatively few of these men actually became involved in the fighting. There even was a small Fenian raid on a storage building that successfully got back some weapons that had been seized by the US Army. Many were eventually returned anyway by sympathetic officers.

To get the Fenians out of the area, both in the St. Lawrence and Buffalo, the US government purchased rail tickets for the Fenians to return to their homes if the individuals involved would promise not to invade any more countries from the United States. Many of the arms were returned later if the person claiming them could post bond that they were not going to be used to invade Canada again, although some were possibly used in the raids that followed.

In December 1867, O'Neill became president of the Roberts faction of the Fenian Brotherhood, which in the following year held a great convention in Philadelphia attended by over 400 properly accredited delegates, while 6,000 Fenian soldiers, armed and in uniform, paraded the streets. At this convention a second invasion of Canada was determined upon; while the news of the Clerkenwell explosion was a strong incentive to a vigorous policy. Henri Le Caron, who, while acting as a secret agent of the British government, held the position of "Inspector-General of the Irish Republican Army," asserts that he distributed fifteen thousand stands of arms and almost three million rounds of ammunition in the care of the many trusted men stationed between Ogdensburg, New York and St. Albans, Vermont, in preparation for the intended raid. It took place in April 1870, and proved a failure just as rapid and complete as the attempt of 1866. The Fenians under O'Neill's command crossed the Canadian frontier near Franklin, Vermont, but were dispersed by a single volley from Canadian volunteers; while O'Neill himself was promptly arrested by the United States authorities acting under the orders of President Ulysses S. Grant. Yet another attempt and failure would take place in 1871 near the Red River in Manitoba.

The Fenian threat prompted calls for Canadian confederation. Confederation had been in the works for years but was only implemented in 1867, the year following the first raids. In 1868, a Fenian sympathizer assassinated Irish-Canadian politician Thomas D'Arcy McGee in Ottawa for his condemnation of the raids.

Fear of Fenian attack plagued the Lower Mainland of British Columbia during the 1880s, as the Fenian Brotherhood was actively organizing in Washington (U.S. state) and Oregon, but raids never actually materialized . At the inauguration of the mainline of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, photos taken of the occasion show three large British warships sat in the harbor just off the railhead and its docks. Their presence was explicitly because of the threat of Fenian attack or terrorism, as were the large numbers of troops on the first train.

1867, and after

During the latter part of 1866 Stephens endeavored to raise funds in America for a fresh rising planned for the following year. He issued a bombastic proclamation in America announcing an imminent general rising in Ireland; but he was himself soon afterwards deposed by his confederates, among whom dissension had broken out.

The Fenian Rising (1867) proved to be a "doomed rebellion"¹, poorly organized and with minimal public support. Most of the Irish-American officers who landed at Cork, in the expectation of commanding an army against England, were imprisoned; sporadic disturbances around the country were easily suppressed by the police, army and local militias.

After the 1867 rising, IRB headquarters in Manchester opted to support neither of the dueling American factions, promoting instead a renewed organization in America, Clan na Gael.

In 1881, the submarine Fenian Ram, designed by John Philip Holland for use against the British, was launched by the Delamater Iron Company in New York.

Footnote

1. Quote from 'fenianism' by R. V. Comerford in W. J. McCormack, The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture p.221.

Additional Reading

• R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848–82 (Wolfhound Press, 1985)
• William D'Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 1858–86 (Catholic University of America Press, 1947)
• Brian Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Renstruction (Cornell University Press, 1969)
• William L. Keogan, Irish Nationalism and Anglo-American Naturalization: The Settlement of the Expatriation Question 1865-1872 http://www.charleslivermore.com/keogan/keogan.htm (1982)
• T. W. Moody (ed.) The Fenian Movement (Mercier Press, 1968)
• William O'Brien and Desmond Ryan (eds.) Devoy's Post Bag 2 Vols. (Fallon, 1948, 1953)
• Leon O'Broin, Revolutionary Underground: The Story of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1858–1924 (Gill and Macmillan, 1976)
• David Owen. The Year of the Fenians. Buffalo: Western New York Heritage Institute, 1990.
• Hereward Senior. Canadian Battle Series No. 10: The Battles of Ridgeway and Fort Erie, 1866. Toronto: Balmuir Book Publishing, 1993.
• Hereward Senior. The Fenians and Canada. Toronto: MacMillan, 1978.
• Hereward Senior. The Last Invasion of Canada. Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1991.