James William Fitzgerald
One of the first members of John O'Mahony's Fenian Brotherhood
Later a Prominent Senate Wing leader from Cincinnati, Ohio
Founder of the Irish Republic newspaper of Chicago
Below is a scan of an Irish American article about Fitzgerald.
On June 1st, one week after this article, Fitzgerald arrived with the Cincinnati Fenians to Buffalo where the Cincinnati soldiers apparently integrated into the 18th Fenian Ohio Regiment and then joined Fenian Colonel John O'Neill in the Senate Wing Fenian invasion of Canada. Fitzgerald arrived according to Scian Dubh [James O'Carroll] in his account of Ridgeway but nothing verifying his actual participation in the battle.
Before the second Fenian Senate Wing invasion of Canada in 1870 by the now Fenian General John O'Neill, Fitzgerald issued a proclamation withholding Cincinnati Fenians from participation in what was later called O'Neill's Folly.
Fitzgerald probably in on founding of Clan na Gael
In addition to O’Neill’s conflict with the Senate Council, the Senate Wing had another problem to face. In 1868 the fledgling nationalist organization known as the Clan-na-Gael began actively recruiting members of the Senate Wing, a fact that provoked O’Neill to issue an eighteen-page circular warning members against joining “secret sworn organizations.” The circular also charged the Irish Republic with fomenting Senate Wing disunion. As mentioned above, Michael Scanlon, P.W. Dunne, J.W. Fitzgerald, Dr. David Bell, and other senators founded The Irish Republic in Chicago in 1867. From the tone of The Irish Republic editorials and the circumstances of its founding one is led to speculate that these Fenian senators, at the time of the newspaper’s founding, were in collusion with, or already members of, a group advocating oath-bound secrecy that by 1868 had affiliated themselves with the emerging Clan-na-Gael Association.
The Change of a Fenian's Heart
James W. Fitzgerald, the
powerful Fenian Senator from Cincinnati, seems to have had an epiphany in May
1870. The Cincinnati Enquirer on April
22 stated that Fenian Major General Fitzgerald was about to lead the Cincinnati
Fenians into battle. On May 6 the Cincinnati Enquirer
published an announcement that “Parties who desire to make a pleasant summer
excursion in Canada are requested to call upon General Fitzgerald.”[1]
The Cincinnati Gazette reported that
men were assembling for battle at the armory but at the end of the article was a
paragraph that cast some doubt about Fitzgerald’s commitment to the coming
battle:
James W. Fitzgerald, who
has returned from a visit to Louisville, reports that the number of Fenians who
have gone from the city to the fight on the border is ridiculously small.[2]
On May 23, Senator
Fitzgerald publicly pronounced the invasion to be “hair-brained and
premature” and the invasion to be the work of “hot-brained madcaps” not of
the Fenian Brotherhood.[1]
[1] Cincinnati Daily
Gazette, May 23, 1870.
[3]
Cincinnati Enquirer, May 23, 1870.