Subject: fenian rebel
Culture: Catholic Irish
Setting: Irish Republican Brotherhood / Fenian Brotherhood, Ireland / Irish diaspora mid-late 19thc
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Kenny 1994 p6-8
"The blight that destroyed the potato harvest between 1845 and 1849 caused a human tragedy of unprecedented proportions. An entire social class of smallholders and labourers, totally dependent on the crop and lacking the cash with which to purchase alternative food, was virtually wiped out by hunger, disease and emigration. The laissez-faire economic thinking of the day also ensured that government help was slow, reluctant and insufficient. Between 1845 and 1851 the population fell by almost two million. The enduring folk memory of a people starving while livestock and grain continued to be exported, often under military guard, left a legacy of bitterness and resentment among the survivors. The great exodus of the famine and post-famine years also ensured that such feelings were not confined to Ireland, but spread to England, the United States, Australia and other countries where Irish emigrants gathered.
"Shocked by the horrors of starvation and influenced by the revolutions then sweeping Europe, the Young Irelanders moved from agitation to armed rebellion in 1848. The attempt failed utterly, after a minor skirmish at Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary, and a few lesser incidents. The reasons were three-fold -- inadequacy of military preparations, lack of unity of purpose among the leaders, and the total despondence of the people after three years of famine. The leaders fled, their followers dispersed. A last flicker of revolt in 1849 was equally unsuccessful.
"[....] It was these younger refugees and escapees who were to provide the leadership for the two republican organisations set up at the end of the 1850s, one in Ireland, the other in America.
"The republican movement in Ireland was known as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB), and its American equivalent was named the Fenian Brotherhood. Both bodies were to find their greatest support among the displaced survivors of the famine. Members of both groups and indeed sympathisers who were not in either organisation were commonly termed 'Fenians' by the contemporary media and commentators."
* Small 1998 p28-30
"After the relative stagnation of the 1850s, in the next decade the nationalist sentiments aroused by Young Ireland were given a new outlet. In 1858 James Stephens and John O'Mahony, who had both been 'out' with William Smith O'Brien in 1848, had set up the Fenian movement in Ireland and America. Having avoided arrest in Ballingary in 1848, Stephens and O'Mahony had fled to Paris, a hotbed of underground revolutionary activity following the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848. Their experiences in Paris convinced them that greater secrecy and more thorough organization would be needed if a future nationalist revolution was to have any chance of success. So in 1854 O'Mahony went to New York where, with the help of men like Michael Doheny, he began to organize financial and moral support from the ever-increasing Irish population in America.
[....] The Fenians wanted a democratic, independent republic, with votes for all adult males and the separation of church and state. They also sought reform of landownership and were scathing of aristocratic landlords, whether English or Irish. From 1859 they were rapidly swearing in new members with the following secret oath:
'I, A.B., in the presence of Almighty God, do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and that I will do my utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity, and finally, that I will yield implicit obedience in all things, not contrary to the laws of God, to the commands of my superior officers. So help me God! Amen.'
"In keeping with its deliberately shadowy nature, there has always been some uncertainty over the origins of the name of the branch of the Fenians in Ireland. It was officially known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) but was usually referred to simply as 'the organization' or 'the brotherhood' by its members. To the public at large, Fenian, the name of the more open American branch, did service for the whole phenomenon. The IRB's rank and file members were usually Irish Catholics from the lower middle and working classes. In the towns, shopkeepers, artisans, schoolteachers and building workers were prominent, in the country small farmers and laborers were the norm.
"IRB members were ordinary Irishmen, but they tended to be a step above those in genuine poverty; it was not generally a movement of the very poor. Largely due to the work of John Devoy, a significant number of members were Irishmen serving in the army -- an ominous development for the government. These members were organized into cells. Nine privates reported to a sergeant. Nine sergeants reported to a captain. Nine captains reported to a 'center.' In an attempt to preserve secrecy, privates were not supposed to know the identities of any other members apart from those of their own cell."
* de Breffny ed. 1977 p192 (Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, "The distressed society: The struggle for emancipation and independence, 1801-1918" p171-198)
"In political life the mid-Victorian period witnessed a major struggle between Fenian republicanism and moderate Catholic nationalism within the nationalist camp, punctuated at regular intervals by explosions of Orange triumphalism in the northeast with resulting riot and disorder. The 1857 Belfast riots were particularly vicious evidence of racial prejudice. The Fenians, or Irish Republican Brotherhood, was a secret oath-bound society dedicated to the overthrow of the English government of Ireland by force. It was founded in 1858 by veterans of the Young Ireland rising of 1848 who were determined to erase the memory of that fiasco. The leaders were all, to some extent, disciples of the Nation of the 1840s. They were of mixed social origin -- John O'Mahoney sprang from an established landed family in Co. Cork; James Stephens was a civil engineer; John Devoy, a cottier's son; O'Donovan Rosa, a grocer; John O'Leary and Charles Kickham, both shopkeepers' sons. But the general character of the movement was decidedly working-class and lower-middle-class. Farm labourers, small farmers, artisans in the towns and cities, shop-boys in Dublin, Cork and other large towns -- these were the backbone of the Fenian rank and file in Ireland. A significant number of Ribbonmen and other small groups were absorbed into the movement, and the Fenians had considerable success in penetrating and establishing Fenian 'cells' within the British army. The Fenians could count on massive support from Irish immigrants in English towns and, especially in the USA, immigrants anxious to retain group identity and to avenge the shame of the famine. Indeed, in financial and organizational terms the American support was crucial. Numerically the Fenian movement was the best-supported clandestine separatist movement in Irish history. By 1865 it was estimated that some 80,000 Fenians had been enrolled in Ireland and Britain. In 1861, the massive funeral of Terence Bellew McManus (an 1848 veteran) showed a wide latent sympathy for the Fenians. A short-term agricultural crisis between 1860 and 1863 helped to swell the ranks still further."
* Kenny 1994 p34
"The launching of the IRB in 1858 was followed a few months later by the formal setting up of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. Its principal leaders, such as John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny, were committed revolutionaries who were determined that the fiasco of 1848 would not be repeated. The name, from the legendary warrior of Irish mythology, the Fianna, came eventually to be applied in a general way to republicans on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The existence of two separate organisations was to cause considerable friction and misunderstanding. The Irish tended to regard their American colleagues as auxiliaries, whose function was to provide finance and arms. The Americans, however, were unwilling to accept a subordinate role. This conflict, never properly resolved, was to surface at intervals right into the 1920s."
* Prassel 1993 p254
"The Fenians kept alive the dream of Irish independence for more than half a century, from the times of Daniel O'Connell to those of Charles Stewart Parnell. They existed because of support from the United States, which was receiving as many as one hundred thousand emigrants a year from Ireland. Wherever they settled, including the most raucous of western mining towns, Irish freedom remained an issue of great concern. American contributions of money and men were essential for [the] survival of the Fenian Brotherhood."
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