ARTICLE OCR TRANSCRIBED

ARTICLE OCR TRANSCRIBED

FROM THE

BROOKLYN EAGLE

JUNE 28, 1885

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IV

THE FENIAN MOVEMENT

An Account of its Origin, Progress

and Temporary Collapse.

By Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

 

Ireland a Vast Prison—The Blessing of Living in America—No Security from Arrest in Ireland. An Englishman's House His Castle—Perpetual Coercion in Ireland—A Lull in Fenian Organization—England Did Not Put the Fear of God Into the Fenians—Croppy Pike—Surrendering Arms—Threatened to be Called up for Sentence -- A Tribute to McCarthy Downing—The Mitchels and the Moores — The Torch that Lights Slavery's Way—Stephens and Luby in Skibbereen—Prince of Wales Never King—John O'Mahony Visits Ireland — Patrick O'Regan and Edward J. Kelly Visit Ireland—Religion of the Fenians—Orangemen and Ribbonmem The McManus Funeral — Praying in Tipperary—Michael Doheny and the Priest—Captain Welply—His Widow a Nun—War Between England and America—The Irishman Fights Double Handed

 

Released from prison, we were free men again, so far as men living in Ireland can be considered free. But Ireland is one vast prison And England is the big jailer. Living in Ireland, no men can call his liberty his own, for with law or without law England's magistrate can enter an Irishmen's house, and with warrant or without warrant take him off to prison, That is one of the blessings a living in America; an Irishman can feel the blessing of going to bed at night feeling that until morning no English spy or peeler will break into his house, drag him out of bed and run him into jail because of a suspicion that he is hostile to the government. I experience that happy feeling lying down at night in America with such thoughts, and I enjoy and appreciate the blessings of freedom in a free land, but I have lived for years in Ireland, never going to bed at night without carrying with me the thought that I may be in jail before morning. Coercion or no coercion, England always leaves the power of arrest in the bands of her magistrates and police In Ireland; if they go beyond the law, England passes a law of indemnity to save them, so long as they are able to show the illegal arrests are made in sustainment of British power.

In England an Englishman's house may be his castle and in it no man can molest him. In Ireland the Irishman's house is not his castle, ‘Tis the Englishman's castle, and the Englishman can enter any hour of night and carry off to prison everyone in it.

This very evening I am writing I buy the Evening Telegram of New York and I read in it this editorial paragraph:

Coercion in Ireland—Lord Randolph Churchill is the funny man in the political circus in England, He insists upon it that they cannot get on without him and so they do not try. Consequently the making of a new ministry must turn upon his caprice. He said he would not go in unless they abandoned coercion in Ireland. Then they were all in despair and had to appeal to the Liberals for mercy. But behold, Churchill is merciful. He says the ministry may have a coercion law for Ireland if they will agree not to enforce it.” I The man who was in favor of the Maine Liquor law, but opposed to enforcement, was evidently the the inventer of Lord Randolph's polities.

“The ministry may have a coercion law for Ireland if they will agree not to enforce it." That's just it, the coercion law most not die. It must ever be alive, and the Irishman must live, feeling that his liberty is not his own, that if he looks black at a policemen or a landlord or a magistrate—every landlord is a magistrate—it is in the power of the policemen or magistrate to arrest him, put him to prison and keep him there till his spirit is broken. What is the law in Ireland today, was the law twenty years ago when I was there, was the law twenty years before that, when John Mitchel was there, was the law twenty years before that, when Dan O'Connell was there, was the law twenty years before that, when Robert Emmet was there—in a word, as John Mitchel in his Jail Journal says, Ireland, since the invasion of England, was never without a coercion law.

While we were in prison in '58 and '59 the progress of the work of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood seemed to have slackened somewhat, and after our release from prison there seemed to be a lull in the work of organization. James Stephens had gone into privacy, as the law was looking out for the dangerous character who bad been so active in organizing mischief to England, During 1860 we heard little or nothing of him, but in 1861 he made his appearance again and we resumed work with renewed energy. We were not altogether scared by England's efforts to put the fear of God or of England into our hearts. If England could so manage as to impress on the minds of the Irish people that any kind of resistance to her rule or her law was the most dangerous thing on earth, was certain imprisonment and perhaps death, and that all resistance was useless to upset her power in Ireland, then England's work was done and she would be happy at seeing Irishmen live satisfied slaves. She would be happy to be able to suspend her Coercion laws and to appear before the world as a nation that gave to Ireland all the privileges of freedom. In '58 I bought an Enfield rifle and sword bayonet, and I had an old '98 Croppy pike, with hook and hatchet on it, that looked formidable. That part of the Coercion law which forbids an Irishman to drill or learn the use of arms in Ireland is always in force in Ireland. It is never repealed, but the portion of the law which forbids an Irishman having possession of arms is sometimes repealed. It was not in force from ‘58 to '63, and I gave considerable annoyance and alarm to the landlords and magistrates in my neighborhood by the way I acted with my gun and pike.

I found that when I talked to the farmers and farmers' sons I had sworn in about the necessity of their providing themselves' with arms of some kind, many of them were under the impression that the law would not allow them to have them; it had come down traditionally to them that they would be transported if Croppy pikes wore found in their possession. I found it necessary to rid the people of that delusion, and what did I do to that end? I kept a general hardware store in Skibbereen, and I took my rifle and pike and sword and hung them up in the most conspicuous part of the shop. Doing that was teaching the people the lesson that they could carry arms in spite of the law, and it was dispelling the fear or the ignorance which it was England's policy to foster. If the Irish people, through fear of a law that did not exist, kept themselves unarmed, there was no necessity for England appearing in an ugly light before the world by having publicly in perpetual force a coercion law that forbade the Irish people the possession of arms.

The news ran like wildfire through the country that it was not any crime now to have a pike or gun, that Jerry O'Donovan Rossa had them publicly hanging up in his shop, I was often amused on fair days and market days at seeing big, grown up country boys coming into the shop and looking, with light in their eyes, at the arms, exclaiming "Feuch, feuch!" "Look, look!" The landlords of the country were getting alarmed again, and they made representation to Dublin Castle of the mischief I was making in the community. Fitsmaurice, the Stipendiary Magistrate, who had. handled he in former Goula, had gone away from Skibbereen, and in his place another had been sent, His name was O'Connell, one of the family of the great Daniel O'Connell, a big, tall, six footer—maybe as tall as six feet four or six feet six, and a Catholic to boot. This magistrate sent for me and told me I would, under my plait of "guilty" a few years before, be brought up for sentence unless I ceased disturbing the community. I told him there could be no calling up for sentence on that plea of "guilty" unless he could prove a repetition of the offense with which I was then charged, and I asked him was he prepared to produce another Sullivan Goula to swear he saw drilling going on that be never saw and that never took place, and that I was the drill master? I would not promise him to give up my pike and gun; he did not want me to give them up, he said, but to take them off exhibition, I would not promise him to do that either; I said the law allowed me to keep these things and while the law allowed it I would keep them anywhere I liked in my house. He represented the great alarm they were causing to respectable people in the district; and I told him respectable people were honest people and were no way afraid of my having a rifle or pike in my shop; that it was robbers and thieves and plunderers who were afraid of such things and I would not give up my rights for their fears. Ho threatened I would hear more about the matter and to my own disadvantage and our interview ended. Tim Duggan was one of my clerks and Tim was full of mischief. He was one of the men in prison with me In Cork jail; and now when he saw our little stock of arms had created such an alarm, he increased that alarm by taking them outside the door on sunny days and "shining them up." At last McCarthy Downing, the attorney who was conducting our defense when we were in prison, sent for me and he asked me as a personal favor to him to give him the arms, pledging me his word of honor that whenever I asked them back from him he would give them to me. Of course the government influence was brought to bear upon him to make that request of me; I did not like to yield, but it was hard for me to refuse what he asked, because in preparing for our defense a few years before he had done things more than an ordinary lawyer could do. Wherever he heard the enemy was tampering with men of the organization whole fidelity might be weakened, he saw those men and strengthened them, and he got some men out of the country around whom the enemy had woven toils for imprisonment. I told him I would deliver up the arms to him. I went back to my shop told Tim Duggan I had to surrender, and Tim almost cried. "Then dar Fia," said he, "but we'll make it I glorious surrender," saying which he screwed the sword bayonet on the rifle and put it on one shoulder, took the croppy pike and put it on the other shoulder, and marched out toward McCarthy Downing's home. I took the sword with me. It was a fair day in town, and when we got to McCarthy Downing's house half the fair were around us.

That those who read my words may understand, and understand what Irish life is, I will say something on the head of this same McCarthy Downing. I feel kindly to him and to his memory; he is dead now, and I do not mean to wrong him. I hope I won't wrong him. He commenced life an Irish nationalist, a hater of English rule in Ireland: he died a magistrate, swore to uphold English rule in Ireland. His energy and ability took him beyond the sphere of Irish nationality and beyond the society of those who sat around to "wake" "the corpse on the dissecting table," When an Irishman aspires beyond the condition of the enslaved, and has mind and energy to soar beyond that condition in Ireland, he has either to take his chances for the convict hulk or the scaffold, with the Barretts, Allens, Larkins, O'Briens, Mitchels, Meaghers, Dohenys, Orrs, Jones, Emmets and Fitzgeralds, or throw in his lot with those Thomas Moore had in his mind's eye when he sang :

The torch that would light them through dignity's way

Must be caught from the pile where their country expires.

McCarthy Downing was one of the men who had to lay hold of that torch, just as Gavan Duffy and John O'Hagan and Thomas O'Hagan and many others laid hold of it. They wanted light and elevation; they could not get either in the darkness of their people's slavery, and they seized the torch the enslaver held out to light them into the ranks of the enemies of their people—the torch that lights slavery's way. I often heard McCarthy Downing boast of having been a '48 man, of having helped the '48 men who were "on the run" to escape from the clutches of the English law; he would proudly show a green cap that Smith O'Brien wore and gave him as a momento when parting from him, and then he'd say, as he said to me when delivering up my arms to him, "I'd fight for Ireland as soon as you would. I'd be, the first man to handle a pike if I thought it would be of any use." And then he'd go on to show it was no use in the world to be trying to get rid of English rule, that England was too strong and that Ireland was too weak. I hope in God I'll never die in such slavery of thought as that, and if great riches would make such a slave of me I hope in God I'll never get greatly rich. I want to die as I have lived, a freeman; yes a freeman even in a land enslaved, aye, even chained band and foot in the hands of the enslaver—a freeman still.

"Eternal spirit of the chainless, mind,

Brightest in dungeons—Liberty thou art—

For there thy habitation is the heart,

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are confined,

To fetters and the damp vault's Bayless gloom,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind."

In furtherance of the organization James Stephens paid a few visits to Skibbereen between the years 1861 and 1869. Thomas Clarke Luby came on one occasion. We met Mr. Stephens one Sunday at Corly Batts, near Drimoleage, where we bad a long talk with the old war horse, Cody. Another time we met in Bantry. Denis O'Sullivan had a yacht and in it some eight or ten of us sailed up Bantry Bay to Glengariffe and dined at Eccles' hotel, James Stephens paying for the dinner. I well remember when in that yacht his talking of Ireland and of her prospects of freedom; his taking his pipe out of his mouth, holding it in his band and saying he would not give that dudeen for the value of the Prince of Wales' title to Ireland as King. I think Stephens was sincere in saying this; I think be believed what be said. He impressed me that he had faith in what he said, and faith works wonders. His faith strengthened ours, anyway, and made us work with more heart and spirit.

About the beginning of 1861 word came to us that John O'Mahony, of New York, was coming to Skibbereen to see us. We were told the day he would leave Bandon for Skibbereen on Bianconi's car. Morty Moynahan and another center and myself took a coach in Skibbereen and set out to meet Bianconi's car. We met it in Ross Carbery, my native town, and there we took John O'Mahony from the car and made a delay of some time at Mahony's hotel. Then we started for Skibbereen, a distance of twelve miles, arrived about 10 o'clock at night and found my house full of friends before us. They hugged O'Mahony for the dear life and he seemed to be as big as a giant. He was a giant of a man that time, too. He remained in Skibbereen a few days and appeared to be highly pleased with what he saw of the organization.

After John O'Mahony's visit other men from America visited us in connection with the organization. Patrick O'Regan, of Ardagh, Ross Carbery, came from New York and spent some time among us. His brother Michael, at present living in Willamsburgh, came over after him, was arrested on a charge of swearing in men and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, I worked with him in the quarries in Portland convict prison before his seven years were up. Edward J. Kelly came from America, spent some time In Skibbereen drilling the men, remained in Ireland till the rising, was with Captain John McClure (now in New York) at the fight in Kilclooney wood, where Peter O'Neil Crowley was shot, was sentenced to be hanged and beheaded for being in that fight, which sentence was commuted to transportation for life. He was transported to Australia and released from there when the amnesty was granted. He then came to Boston and was working as a printer on the Boston Pilot when he died, two years ago.

In writing this sketch of the Fenian movement I will somewhere in it have to say a few words about the religion of the Fenian!, and as I am talking of Edward Kelly I may as well say the few words hero as anywhere else. My readers, perhaps, think from what I have written up to this that all the Fenians were Catholics and that there were no Protestants among them. To think that or to believe that would be a mistake. We were all anxious to get Protestant and Presbyterian recruits, and the center of a circle who had the greatest number of them in his circle was the proudest of the centers. Ned Kelly was a Protestant. I had been intimate with him for years; he had worked as a printer on the Irish People to Dublin when I was its business manager, and I never knew he was a Protestant till a short time before he died. I met him In Boston. We went into a restaurant to have dinner; it was Friday; he ate meet. "Why, Ned," said "is it possible that you're a black Protestant?" He laughed heartily, saying "Here, you know me now since 1861, and you did not know up to this that I was a Protestant. Well, Rossa, it shows one thing—it shows there was no ugly sectarianism in our movement." And there was not. The happiest recollections of my life, out side of home, are recollections of hours I spent in the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood Society of Protestants and Presbyterians. The darkest of ray prison cells were brightened by the remembrance of a day I spent in Newtownards, some seven miles out side of Belfast. I met about thirty men there; they were all sworn members. Some of them were Protestants, some were Catholics and some were Presbyterians. A few years before some of them belonged to the Ribbonmen's Society and some to the Orangemen's Society, and there they were in my presence admitting to each other that until they were enrolled and met in the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood Society they'd think very little of cutting each other's throats. Fenianism was killing the bad feeling that existed In the North of Ireland between Protestants and Catholics; it was killing the faction fighting that existed in the South of Ireland, and that added to the alarm of the English Government in Ireland, because "Divide and govern" is the English policy. I was another day in the South of Ireland and I went to Drimoleague Fair to meat some of the men of the organization and have a talk with them. While walking around the fair field I saw a crowd gathering and sticks flourishing. I rushed Into the crowd, laid hold of the two leaders and said sternly : "You must stop this kind of work." The whole crowd of people knew me, the sticks were taken down and there was no faction fight that day, or any day after, I think.

The McMauus funeral from America to Ireland, and from the Cove of Cork to Glasnevin, in 1861, was the first public manifestation the men of the I. R. B. had of their organization. James Stephens availed of that funeral to get together as many of the men as possible and let them see their strength and union. I was summoned up to Cork City the Sunday of the funeral, and my faith and hope were 'strengthened by meeting there, from the counties of Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford, men of the organization whom I had never met before. I was selected as one of the Southern escort who should accompany the remains from Cork to Dublin. The funeral in Cork was a most imposing demonstration. Passing the river side a little boy ran up the ratlines of a ship and hauled down the

English flag that was flying from the masthead; even though it was a funeral, the funeral cheered and cheered again.

There were some apprehensions that there would be disturbance of some kind on the line of march from Cork to Dublin, and we all got orders to go armed with our pistols loaded and capped. The fears of the disturbance arose with a rumor that some of the delegates from America were in favor of making the McManus funeral the occasion of a rising of the people against the English Government. The remains were to be taken out of the train at the Tipperary or Limerick Junction, the people would gather in thousands, and were to be called upon to drive their oppressors from the land. James Stephens was opposed to work of that kind, as, in his opinions, the people were not prepared for a successful revolution. Beside, he was in command of the organization, and it was against all discipline that others should come in and dictate what was proper to be done. When the train arrived at the Tipperary Junction, there were crowds of people all around; there was a delay of fifteen or twenty minutes at the station. I came out on the platform to reconnoiter. I joined in with the crowd. Tom Brougham, of Tipperary, and other men recognized Mr. Stephens as be looked out one of the windows. There was a rising cheer which he suppressed with a motion of his hand ; he then asked the men to kneel down and offer up to God a prayer for the repose of the dead, and the deliverance of the living, and those crowds of people all fell on their knees and prayed during a few minutes. It was about the mid hour of night; so solemn a ceremony I do not think I ever witnessed. I took my seat on the train, the bell rang, the engine moved and the next moment we were beyond the Tipperary Junction with the cheers of the people ringing in our ears,

We reached Dublin before daybreak, and were me-there by a torchlight procession that escorted the remains from the Ring's Bridge terminus to the hall of the Mechanics' Institute. Here the body was laid in state, as Archbishop Cullen forbade any of the Catholic chapels to receive it. The parliamentary agitators of that day thought to get hold of the management of the funeral, and thought to turn it to the account of their parliamentary policy, but the stalwart men of the organization prevented this. Jerry Kavanagh, now living in Louisville, Kentucky, was one of the delegates from America. He wee a good public speaker, and, supported by the men of the organization, he led the debate at some public meetings that were held during the week McManus' body lay at the Mechanics' Institute. The Dublin funeral did not take place till the Sunday succeeding the Sunday of the Cork funeral.

On the evening of Thursday a reception was given to the American delegation at Carey's Hotel, on Bridge street, and something occurred at supper that is worth putting on record. Michael Doheny is buried in Calvery Cemetery without a stone to mark his grave; he died here a few months after returning from Ireland that time; he was at that supper. A priest was there from the West of Ireland named Father Conway, and during the drinking of the toasts and making of speeches Father Conway came to say something. He said his mission to Dublin was for the purpose of collecting subscriptions for the relief of his parishioners, who were under notice or under sentence of eviction by the landlords, and with his general appeal for assistance appealed to the company present to help him in the work of charity that engaged him. "I will give you £10," said Michael Doheny, and"—here the priest took his note book and pencil and commenced writing—"Hold awhile." said Mr. Doheny, "I give it on conditions that you buy a rifle and pistol and powder and ball, and put them into the hands of the first man whose family is to be evicted, that he may shout down whoever comes to deprive him of his house and home." The whole house cheered at what Colonel Doheny said, the priest closed his book, and made no further appeal that night for aid for his suffering people.

The Dublin demonstration the day of the funeral was a most imposing one; it passed off quietly, the populace marched in procession in military order, and the alarm of the government increased. The government newspaper organs called for a Peace Preservation act. It is when the people of Ireland are most at peace that Ireland's governors become most alarmed; if the people were fighting among themselves, the advocates of English law and order would be in their glory.

Frank Welply, of New York, was one of the delegates of the McManus funeral to Ireland; he belonged  to the military company of the Fenian Brotherhood in New York; when he returned to America the war was raging; he went to the front, and as captain, in command of his company, was killed on one of the battle, fields. His wife, Annie O'Donovan, born in the same town with me, entered a convent and became a nun. She is now in the House of the Good Shepherd, Now York—Sister Jane de Chantal.

Frank Welply and I grew up boys together. He came to Skibbereen after the McManus funeral, as there lived his mother, as true a Fenian as Frank himself was. He was sitting in my house one morning when the postman brought the Cork Examiner, in which was an account of the Mason and Slidell affair. He jumped for joy, said he should start for New York next morning, and that is the last I saw of brave Frank Welply. Soldiers who saw him die tell me he faced danger too daringly. His company were under a heavy fire, they were under orders to lie on the ground or take the shelter of trees convenient, a tree was in front of him, be came out from its shelter and as be did a cannon shot struck him and ended his life on earth. His hurry back from Ireland to take a part in the war sprang from the idea that England meant to attack America again, and England being the aggressor made him doubly anxious to fight for America. In whatever army an Irish Fenian is enlisted he fights with double strength if ho finds himself fighting against England, and I do not know that America has better defenders in the citizens of any other nationality than she has in the Irish, because the men of every other nationality have a country and flag of their own. Irishmen have no country, no flag.

"A home or a country remains not to me,"

That is the song of the Irishman in his native lend and all other lands.

Let America have a war with Germany, the German-American citizen will not like it, he cannot fight with heart and hand against the flag of his fatherland, one of his arms will be paralyzed. Let America have a war with France, and the Frenchman will feel the same way; the same way with the Spaniard, the Italian and the Englishman, in a war with Spain, Italy or England ; but the Irish born American citizen has no allegiance on earth to weaken his strength in defense of America. Give him a war with England, he is with it heart and soul, and both his hands are lifted to tear down the flag that makes him a wanderer over the earth, and symbolizes ruin and misfortune in the fair land of his birth.