Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865-1922 (The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series)

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Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865–1922 Jonathan Gantt

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-03

Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865–1922

10.1057/9780230250451 - Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865-1922, Jonathan Gantt

Series Editors: Akira Iriye, Professor of History at Harvard University, and Rana Mitter, University Lecturer in Modern History and Chinese Politics at the University of Oxford This distinguished series seeks to: develop scholarship on the transnational connections of societies and peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; provide a forum in which work on transnational history from different periods, subjects, and regions of the world can be brought together in fruitful connection; and explore the theoretical and methodological links between transnational and other related approaches such as comparative history and world history. Editorial Board: Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities, Professor of History, and Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University; Jane Carruthers, Professor of History, University of South Africa; Mariano Plotkin, Professor, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, and member of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research, Argentina; Pierre-Yves Saunier, Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and Visiting Professor at the University of Montreal; lan Tyrrell, Professor of History, University of New South Wales

Titles include: Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Wollacott (editors) TRANSNATIONAL LIVES Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700–present Gregor Benton and Edmund Terence Gomez THE CHINESE IN BRITAIN, 1800–PRESENT Economy, Transnationalism and Identity Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra (editors) COSMOPOLITAN THOUGHT ZONES South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas Joy Damousi, Mariano Ben Plotkin (editors) THE TRANSNATIONAL UNCONSCIOUS Essays in the History of Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism Jonathan Gantt IRISH TERRORISM IN THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY, 1865–1922 Glenda Sluga THE NATION, PSYCHOLOGY, AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, 1870–1919

Forthcoming: Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier (editors) COMPETING VISIONS OF WORLD ORDER Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s Matthias Middell, Michael Geyer, and Michel Espagne EUROPEAN HISTORY IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD

The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–50746–3 Hardback 978–0–230–50747–0 Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England



The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series

Jonathan Gantt University of South Carolina




© Jonathan Gantt 2010 Preface © Rana Mitter and Akira Iriye 2010

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–53812–2 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne



All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.


In loving memory of my mother, Janis Gantt



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Contents viii

Acknowledgments

x

Permission Page

xii

Introduction

1

1 Fenian Terrorism Confronts the Atlantic Community, 1865–1870

23

2 Agrarian Terrorism Confounds the Atlantic Community, 1870–1882

66

3 Clan-na-Gael Terrorism Challenges the Atlantic Community, 1881–1885

128

4 IRA Terrorism Conjoins the Atlantic Community, 1919–1922

187

Conclusion

251

Notes

266

Bibliography

320

Index

340

vii



Preface by Rana Mitter and Akira Iriye

In our age, terrorism seems a constant threat, and we are often told by our leaders that it is a threat more fierce and substantial now than at any time in the past. It is at moments like this that it is so worthwhile to turn to history, and realize that a phenomenon that seems so contemporary— terror tactics fuelled by transnational communities and new technological opportunities—has strong and important precedents. We therefore welcome Jonathan Gantt’s impressive monograph on the way in which “Irish” terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries extended its tactics and importance well beyond one small island on the west coast of Europe. The book makes a powerful case for a “trialogue” between the US, Britain, and the Irish transnational community in shaping and reshaping ideas of what terror was, and how it could be used. It points out that there was a mutual distrust between many sections of American society and the British state in the late 19th century, and argues that the transnational links between the Irish rebels against British rules and their kin and supporters in North America were an important though understudied factor in the changing nexus of British–American relations. This was of course a delicate period during which Washington and London became closer, and Gantt’s study provides an intriguing insight into one key ambiguity within the building of that relationship. The book also deals with a recurringly powerful idea which has occurred in more than one volume in this series: colonial ideas of “race,” which were used to redefine the Irish just as they had been for other colonized peoples. Nor does Gantt ignore the way in which the events of that earlier age have reemerged in the Cold War and the world of the early 21st century. The book is also a notable example of one of the most interesting trends in the emerging field of transnational history: the combination of national and transnational histories in one framework. There is often a view that transnational history is hostile to national narratives, but this is misleading. What transnational history offers is a chance to enrich national histories, by taking specificities which are surely there in the story of each nationstate, and showing how those features and discourses have been shaped by currents that came from sources well beyond that nation itself. Gantt’s use of sources from both coasts of the Atlantic makes his study of Irish history much more powerful as Irish history precisely because it has drawn so extensively on sources outside Ireland itself, as well as broadening its influence to viii



Preface

Preface

ix

readers who are interested in a variety of issues well beyond the subject matter itself—migration, identity, and of course, terrorism and its sources. This is a study of great richness and ambition.

Oxford, July 2009



Rana Mitter Akira Iriye

I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the following. Ken Clements shepherded this project from conception, reading multiple drafts, and always bringing with him a keen historical sense and insightful criticism. I’ve cherished the experience of working with him. Michael Strang at Palgrave found a home for this study, and along with Ruth Ireland, provided superb guidance in getting the manuscript ready for publication. The editors of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Transnational History, Akira Iriye and Rana Mitter, have been generous in their support and encouragement, and have offered helpful suggestions for situating what I thought was a parochial issue in the larger Atlantic community. An anonymous reader for Palgrave improved my understanding of the nuances of Irish and British history. A number of other readers have greatly enhanced the scope and quality of various drafts of this manuscript. Alan Lessoff at Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era published an earlier version of Chapter 3, allowing me an excellent opportunity to work through some of the finer points of historical argumentation. Murney Gerlach and an anonymous reader for the Journal introduced me to valuable theoretical discussions of American, Irish, and transatlantic history and offered helpful narrative suggestions. Alfred Eckes read a version of Chapter 2 at 2006 SHAFR Conference and reaffirmed my conviction that the topic was worthy of continued investigation. At a 2007 Young Scholars Forum hosted by the German Historical Institute on “U.S. History in Transnational Perspective” Abou Bamba, Derek Catsem, Ely Janis, Markus Lang, Joel Lewis, Uwe Lubken, Nicole Phelps, Katharina Rietzler, and Jeff Stone contributed to a productive discussion of Chapter 4, especially on the meaning of terrorism and its place in transnational history. Eric Cheezum read an earlier draft, providing the final product much needed clarity and his unique perspective on American history. Several academic institutions were vital for the completion of this study. Generous financial support from a Dissertation Grant by the Walker Institute at the University of South Carolina and a Klingenstein Fellowship from the New-York Historical Society funded research trips to New York City and Washington, DC. Librarians, archivists, and staff of the John Burns Library at Boston College, the Kenneth R. Spencer Library at the University of Kansas, the Library of Congress, National Archives II at College Park, MD, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the University of South Carolina Thomas Cooper Library’s Reference, Inter-Library Loan, and Government Documents Divisions were especially helpful. Colleagues, friends, and family made the research and writing for this work possible. Teachers and mentors, who in a variety of ways, some x



Acknowledgments

intentionally and others unwittingly, have shaped this project include Kathleen Berkeley, Larry Cable, Walter Conser, John Haley, Robert Herzstein, James McGowen, Lisa Pollard, Peter Sederberg, Mark Smith, Mark Spaulding, Alan Watson, and George Zervos. Dave and Melanie Collier, Scott Hileman, Chad and Jenny Ives, Ed Janik and Cheryl Wells, Neal and Jami Johnson, Sonny and Jenny Miller, Ray and Debi Newman, and Tom Stubbs have all endured the author without complaint. Charlotte and Tom Peddicord, and their daughters Lisa and Melissa, graciously opened their home to me during research trips, and showed me all the kindness and hospitality one could ask. Dorothy Minor, Kim and Tim Davis, Taylor and Jake, and Robert Seaton have welcomed me, with all my faults, to their family. My late sister Dee was a source of joy to all who knew her. Melinda and John Michael Rummage, and their boys Gantt, Max, and Michael, simply make life richer and more rewarding. My father and late mother, for whom this work is dedicated, sacrificed that I might pursue my goals and were never without love and encouragement. My son Jack has made me laugh and smile every day since arriving. And finally, Andrea, my companion and the love of my life, who has suffered the most from this intellectual adventure but always found new ways to inspire me.



Acknowledgments xi

Permission was granted from the New-York Historical Society to quote from the Records of the American Defense Society, by the New York Public Library to use material in the Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers and the Frank P. Walsh (Manuscripts and Archives Division, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations), and by the John Burns Library at Boston College for use of the George D. Cahill Papers and the Patrick A. Collins Papers.

xii



Permission Page

During a winter afternoon, a small group of men planted two bombs in the capital. The first exploded at a popular tourist attraction, while the other damaged a prominent government building, one of the most recognizable edifices of Western democratic tradition. No one was killed and only minor injuries were reported, but later the same day, a Senator from Vermont introduced a bill into the American Congress making it a federal crime to use explosives to destroy public or private property, or “for the purpose of assassination or murder or the destruction of life.”1 Given the audacity of the attack, and the public outcry that followed it, it may be surprising that the legislation never made it out of the Judiciary Committee, and that a similar bill died in the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the bills reflected a public discussion going on in the United States and Europe about the dilemma that acts of terrorism posed to open, democratic societies. While the proposed legislative language resembled 20th-century counter-terrorist legislation, in fact the bombing took place in 1885. Equally remarkable, the bombing that precipitated the debate took place in London, not Washington. The American reaction to these distant events signalled a new concern in Congress about Irish terrorism, and an awareness that Irish-American involvement had made an issue that, while legally a domestic concern for the United Kingdom, was also a real concern for the United States. Indeed, the bill introduced by Senator George Edmunds was one of the first efforts by the United States to criminalize transnational terrorism. Terrorism has captivated people in the Atlantic community for many years, but more recently for Americans and Britons it has assumed a greater urgency. Since the end of World War II, Great Britain has faced fierce terrorist insurgencies from across the globe, most notably the Stern Gang and Irgun in Palestine and the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Ulster Ireland.2 In the dawning moments of the post-Cold War geopolitical realignment, a scholar of modern political violence concluded that with the rise of the Arab–Israeli conflict and other global guerrilla insurgencies Americans had become quite “obsessed with terrorism,” despite the fact that in the dozen 1



Introduction


years following the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis fewer than 500 Americans had died as victims of transnational terrorism.3 Since this observation, American casualties from terrorism have dramatically increased. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995 resulted in 168 fatalities and over 800 casualties, and the 11 September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks in New York City, Washington, DC, and rural Pennsylvania caused nearly 3000 deaths and thousands more casualties, including hundreds of foreign nationals. Collectively, these attacks have profoundly altered contemporary American and Western attitudes about and reactions to terrorism, the 9/11 attacks inaugurating President George W. Bush’s vaguely defined “war on terror” during his address to a joint session of Congress on 20 September 2001. These events, along with numerous others, have elevated the language of terrorism within the political culture of modern America and the Atlantic community. In the aftermath of such defining events, however, it is important not to forget that terrorism, in a variety of forms, has long been a part of the American historical experience and a potent force for change in the Atlantic community. In the half century following the American Civil War (1861– 1865) Irish terrorism indelibly marked American domestic political culture and the nation’s important relations with the United Kingdom. Decades before terrorism became a viable national security threat to the United States, Irish nationalists and agrarians provided Americans a unique opportunity to observe and analyze the challenges that transnational terrorism posed to imperial powers. That interaction with Irish terrorists, and subsequent British counter-terrorism policies, contributed to shaping the contours of the Atlantic community. A close inspection of Irish terrorism in an Atlantic context will fill a historiographical void. The literature discussing American interaction with transnational terrorism conveys the false impression that the United States had little experience and virtually no contact with transnational terrorism until the end of World War II.4 Historians have noted that the British began conceiving and implementing counter-terrorism policies in the late-Victorian Era, but scholars have not sufficiently explored American reactions to either domestic or transnational terrorism.5 Studies have begun to reconstruct our understanding of the Cold War by demonstrating that Americans increasingly prioritized terrorism as the United States undertook greater global responsibilities and became a focus of resentment from under-developed peoples. A clear, definable counter-terrorism policy only began to take shape in the context of the ideological struggle against communism, as the Truman (1945–1953) and Eisenhower (1953–1961) Administrations crafted a comprehensive national security strategy in response to a perceived Soviet threat. In his address to Congress announcing the foreign policy doctrine that bore his name and prevailed throughout the Cold War, President Truman justified the massive foreign aid to Greece because Communist-led “terrorist activities”



2

threatened the vulnerable Mediterranean nation.6 The McCarran Internal Security Act (1950), a response to the fervent McCarthyism that followed the polarization of the international structure, was an attempt by Congress, over President Truman’s veto, to consider foreign and transnational terrorism as a potential threat against the United States or its global interests. With its elevation to international prominence in the post-World War II the United States entered a transformative era; breaking from a tradition of international disengagement and limited, decentralized government, Americans created a national security state that became heavily involved in global interactions. The United States engaged in numerous counter-terrorism programs unilaterally, as in Cyprus, as well as participating in multi-national arrangements, such as the United Nation’s condemnation of state sponsorship of terrorism against other nations.7 The primacy of the Cold War policy of containment and the scarcity of terrorist attacks against Americans eventually lessened the priority given to terrorism in policy considerations, leading to unfortunate inconsistencies or tacit toleration when it suited foreign policy objectives, such as supporting Zionists in Palestine or opposing Communists in Algeria. Beginning in the 1960s, as the volume and intensity of terrorist attacks increased in regions prioritized by American policy-makers and as terrorists increasingly targeted American citizens and assets, the US government began developing a more comprehensive counter-terrorist strategy that included military responses, economic sanctions, and prosecution of terrorists. It led efforts among industrialized and developing nations to codify and criminalize terrorism through an arrangement of alliances, treaties, and agreements by establishing criteria for distinguishing terrorism from legitimate acts of war, by providing mechanisms for uncovering terrorists operating under the guise of respectable political organizations, social-welfare agencies, and humanitarian charity groups, and, finally, by arranging global jurisprudence cooperation to remove and punish terrorist conspirators.8 Scholars have understandably found the violent challenges terrorism poses to modern society endlessly fascinating, but most research fails to account for the remarkable continuity in the methods and the organization that links transnational terrorism in the post-modern Cold War decades to the earlier era of industrial, commercial imperialism in the decades opening the 20th century. Decades before the Cold War, Americans encountered and interacted with transnational terrorists. The US government produced no official or comprehensive policy toward transnational terrorism before World War II, and did not construct a legal or diplomatic mechanism to confront organized international terrorism—the need and ability were several generations in the future. But in the years after their Civil War; Americans did confront the challenges of transnational terrorism, and in the case of Irish terrorism that interaction was long term and at times uncomfortably close.



Introduction 3


Although largely ignored by scholars for years, it is now evident that terrorism occupied an important place in American history even before the advent of the Cold War. Various manifestations of terrorism were an integral component of late-19th and early-20th-century American history, especially in the contentious arena of race and labor relations. In the years after the Civil War, terrorism became a more conspicuous component of American political culture than in previous years and was a topic of broad public discussion. A bloody contest of racial violence in the former Confederacy pitted a white establishment determined to maintain long-established social order against black demands for political inclusivity. Although commonly referred to as lynchings, these attacks were terrorism by nearly any acceptable definition. Outside the American South, labor organizations, frustrated by low incomes, poor working conditions, and the loss of control, reacted violently against America’s industrial capitalist society, seeking to alter existing political and economic structures.9 Heavy immigration, ethnic conflicts, and xenophobia, combined with existing labor tensions, contributed to the “emergence of terrorism as a cultural force” in American public discourse from the end of the Civil War through the Progressive Era. Scholars have begun to demonstrate that 19th-century Americans, as well as subsequent historical interpretations, often misinterpreted the relationship between violence with labor, immigrant, and ethnic cultures—a misunderstanding exemplified by the Molly Maguires in the 1860s–1870s. While contemporaries might not have had a sophisticated awareness of the motivations and methods of radical groups, many did recognize that terrorism was a potentially compelling and infectious agent for political change that ultimately jeopardized elites’ political and economic status. Besides the frequent episodes of racial and labor anti-establishment terrorism, usually perpetrated by individuals or small groups, corporate America employed local and state law enforcement, private police forces (the Pinkerton Detective Agency), state militias, or Federal troops against labor groups, who in many cases used variations of state-sponsored domestic terrorism.10 Southern racial and urban-industrial terrorism operated as fundamental challenges to the renewed efforts to impose nationalism based on republicanism and constitutional rule of law. During the post-Civil War era, America became entwined in transnational terrorism. Labor terrorism carried with it a uniquely transnational dynamic—heavy European immigration fueled popular perceptions that foreigners imported radical ideologies, such as socialism, anarchism, and nihilism, which bred terrorist violence in industrialized America. Many Americans linked domestic political violence to international terrorists bent on destroying the political and economic structures of Western civilization. During the early years of the 20th century, several incidences of American kidnappings, for example, the Stone and Perdicaris affairs,



4

confirmed for many Americans that terrorism was alien to Anglo-Saxon values and that it was a practice of lesser civilized peoples. The Roosevelt Administration (1901–1909) responded to these challenges to American prestige with its usual bellicosity but it did not directly intervene to secure the release of American captives or work to hold these kidnappers accountable, and essentially offered what amounted to concessions to the terrorists.11 Scholarly treatments have rarely alluded to the influence or implications of Irish terrorism and British counter-terrorism on US foreign relations. Traditional diplomatic studies of Anglo-American relations pay little or only casual attention to the subject of terrorism, and even less to Irish political violence, focusing instead on the conflicting and coinciding industrial, commercial, and imperialistic interests of the Atlantic powers. Great Britain and the United States have enjoyed a unique relationship in the modern world; from formal colonial attachment to separate, yet parallel trajectories that produced hostilities and mutual antagonisms, and then to an eventual rapprochement and ideological compatibility that crystallized into a formal alliance. The British Empire preoccupied American foreign policy considerations more than any other power. Throughout much of the 19th century a competitive Anglo-Saxon rivalry turned at times acrimonious, with war-clouds looming on several occasions. By the end of the 19th century, lingering American enmity toward the British gave way to mutual cooperation, and while strains of Anglophobia flashed on occasions, a mutually inclusive Anglo-Saxon ideological connection converged into shared national interests.12 Even studies that concentrate on Irish nationalist activities in America generally ignore the serious and sustained attention given to terrorism by policy-makers, nor have they satisfactorily explained how Irish terrorism shaped American relations with Great Britain. The extensive historical scholarship on the Irish experience in North America and Europe has demonstrated that Irish nationalism was complex and multidimensional, and formative in shaping both American and British domestic political culture and at times created serious diplomatic imbroglios to Anglo-American relations.13 Several historical treatments of Irish-American nationalist activities have offered some tantalizing clues to how Americans interpreted and reacted to transnational terrorism but allow little appreciation for the scale or sophistication of the public discussion on both sides of the Atlantic.14 What requires fuller explanation are the responses, reactions, and policies of Americans to the use of terrorism by the Irish against British imperial rule. Utilizing a transnational methodology that emphasizes the process of globalization within the triadic relationship between the Irish, the British, and the Americans, it becomes evident that Irish terrorists were powerful non-state actors who helped shape the Atlantic community.



Introduction 5


Theoretically and methodologically, this work is heavily informed by recent transnational studies which demonstrate that international conflicts were a crucial ingredient to defining and shaping American national identity and which highlight the contributions of non-state actors to transnational exchanges and international relations. Historians have recently shown that global interactions contributed to America’s own vision of itself, its crusading destiny, and a sense of exceptionalism. These studies contend that, for good and ill, prominent ideologies and core values shaped not simply a national identity but an activist, frequently militaristic United States.15 Historians have also been at pains to demonstrate that interactions with foreign cultures shaped not only Americans’ image of the other peoples but also conceptions of themselves and the construction of national identity. Using the paradigm of Irish transnational terrorism at the turn of the 20th century it is possible to link, as Akira Iriye suggested, internal national developments with international exchanges. Daniel Rodgers’s seminal study has demonstrated that Atlantic crossings were hardly limited to movements of people or institutional transactions, such as business interests or diplomatic communications, but that social-reform networks and progressive political ideologies formed a vast web of transnational exchanges.16 One of the crucial features of the Irish questions, especially the issue of terrorism, within the Atlantic community was the actively engaged public discourse. Terrorism is inherently a public act, and Irish terrorism, despite the absence of historical debate, was extensively discussed within the Atlantic community. While it is not likely that an accurate assessment of public opinion can be categorically or definitively determined, the historical records reveal that Irish political violence received enormous coverage within major newspapers, journals, and through other public venues. Irish terrorism contributed to what historian Akira Iriye called cultural internationalism, a “global network of communication both across and within national boundaries” that began in the late 19th century.17 After the calamitous Civil War and the subsequent difficulties of reunification, Americans engaged to numerous extra-continental enterprises in search for prosperity, security, and stability, but faced novel challenges and violent confrontations with the foreign peoples they encountered. Americans’ involvement in the larger process of globalization antedated the Civil War, but the conclusion of the conflict, the realignment of the political system, and the maturation of an industrial-capitalist economy propelled America’s participation and facilitated encounters with alien cultures. As Americans engaged in the international community, their priorities were most concerned with completing the process of North American continental expansion, enhancing the nation’s status as an Atlantic power and supreme power in the Western Hemisphere, and breaking barriers to access the Pacific and Oriental markets.18



6

Part of the difficulty confronting imperial powers at the end of the 19th century was that nations and peoples around the globe were struggling for the legitimacy of statehood. Yet, at the moment that much of the world was embracing the apparatus of sovereign representative nation-states, these modern governments incurred violent opposition from small dissatisfied groups that were employing terrorism to destroy the existing social structures. Historians have neglected to appreciate how terrorism contributed to what Amy Kaplan terms the “anarchy of empire”—that is, to consider fully how foreign anti-imperialist terrorists generated fears among Americans that ultimately helped to cultivate a national discourse on the dangers confronting modern empires. Matthew Frye Jacobson has disassembled the complex constructions of American modernization, especially the tensions of industrialization and republicanism in the years after Reconstruction, as the United States was interacting with distant lands and as foreign peoples were increasingly arriving on American shores. Borrowing the term “barbarian virtues” from Theodore Roosevelt, Jacobson identifies a tendency among Americans to imagine and identify foreign peoples in such a way to define their own version of Anglo-Saxon civilization.19 The use of terrorism by Irish nationalists and agrarians contributed to Americans’ defining themselves as a nation. Irish terrorism was closely tied to Ireland’s inclusion into the political state of Great Britain with the 1800–1801 Act of Union. Scholars have worked to situate Irish national experience in the United Kingdom. The eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm distilled the meaning of nationalism in the modern era, identifying a tendency within the Western world to image unique national identities by deliberately conflating conceptions of race and nation. For Catholic Irish, integration into the United Kingdom remained a political and social stumbling-block, and in the post-Famine era many Irish resented the indifference of the British and the sense of political, economic and cultural exclusion. While some historians have shown that a sense of Britishness was forged in England, Scotland, and Wales through Protestantism and a unitary state under the Crown and Parliament, other scholars have stressed that the formation of the modern British nation-state did not necessarily equate to a unified, singular nationalism. Instead lingering ethno-religious distinctions not only in the different countries making up the United Kingdom but within each of the separate countries continued to characterize the British realm well into the 20th century. Complicating the picture, Irish nationalism was fused with a diasporic experience, that included millions of immigrants fleeing to the United States.20 Irish political violence had an international context that presented challenges to Americans. Irish nationalists operating in the transatlantic arena, not simply in Ireland, offer scholars a new approach for scrutinizing American conceptions of terrorism at the turn of the century. American Anglo-Saxons, who made a majority of the population and constituted an



Introduction 7


influential political and economic elite, situated Irish terrorism as a violent reaction to British imperialism. While the British offered a variety of explanations for nationalist and agrarian violence, ranging from individual insanity to group pathology, Americans, even when slinging racial invectives against the Irish, contextualized their observations of Irish terrorism within a British imperial context, where extremists employed violence to erode and ultimately end British hegemony in Ireland. Irish anti-imperial violence against the United Kingdom reconfigured how Americans conceptualized non-conventional political violence in relation to nationalism and imperialism. The literature on Irish nationalist aspirations and their ideological, social, and economic connections to American society is vast and impressive, and while there is certainly disagreement on the particulars, it is clear that the United States served as an important entrepôt for repackaging and disseminating a violent nationalist ideology.21 Irish immigration to the United States during the antebellum era produced social conflicts that affected later American impressions of international terrorism. As a powerful social ideology, ethnicity and race colored American interactions with foreign peoples and helped establish the parameters within which Americans decided how to engage with the international community.22 Approximately a million Irish arrived on American shores during the later decades of the antebellum era, many of whom represented different social and religious groups. In the post-Famine years, however, when most Irish immigrants were desperately impoverished and even Protestant Scotch-Irish deliberately distinguished themselves from the Catholic Gaelic Irish, many Irish immigrants to America suffered from negative stereotypes that consigned them to a social status no better than free and slave blacks. Irish participation in urban and national politics focused on challenging the notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority prominent throughout American society.23 This historical narrative focuses on the extraterritorial movement of Irish terrorists, the proliferation of a radically violent ideology, and the sophisticated funding network operating in the United State and the United Kingdom. Historians have long documented that the transatlantic movement of Irish, a direct result of post-Famine economic deprivation, the absence of a substantive political voice within the British imperial system, and perceived opportunities available in the United States, contributed to the rich texture of American society, but have minimized or even neglected the place of Irish terrorism within the transatlantic community. Irish terrorists exploited the vast economic opportunities of globalization, especially mid-19th-century industrial capitalism, to fund their recruitment, arms procurements, and operational planning. The political openness of America added to the ability of nationalists and agrarians to promote their political agenda across the Atlantic. Ultra nationalists and violent agrarians engaged in a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign to promote and justify their



8

actions by developing multilevel political and cultural connections across the Atlantic Ocean. The intent of this study is to chronicle and analyze the evolution of Irish terrorism within the context of Anglo-American interactions in the Atlantic community. What is meant by the Atlantic community? Most studies of pre-World War II terrorism usually insulate the phenomenon within a strictly national context. It is eminently more profitable to analyze the problem of Irish terrorism in a transnational perspective. Certainly the Atlantic community is immense, including four major continents, and even in the 19th century it encompassed millions of people with vast cultural and socio-political differences. Beyond the collection of European, African, and Western Hemispheric peoples, the Atlantic community consists of distinctive ideological traditions. Historians have shown that the Irish diaspora contributed much to the Latin America, Canada, Africa, and the Orient.24 The Atlantic community under consideration is situated between the pre-19th-century Atlantic World, which is spatially expansive and temporally extensive, and the 20thcentury Atlantic alliance system formalized during the Cold War with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This study, however, focuses on one corner of the Atlantic community, namely, the Anglo-American neighborhood, a community closely tied to an Anglo-Saxon identity and ideology. Having evolved in England for centuries, by the 19th century, notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority, based on history, ethnic characteristics, cultural differences, and scientific racism, had become “triumphant.” Having first eclipsed Celtic identities throughout the British Isles by the last half of the 19th century, ascendant Anglo-Saxonism informed British imperial attitudes toward race globally and helped inspire a benevolent, civilizing, colonizing mission.25 Historians and literary critics have identified that the same discursive process engaging European imperialism in Africa and the Orient was at work in Ireland; the control of language, knowledge, and representations, which were several of the many European tools to establish hegemony over foreign peoples, allowed the British to dominate Ireland.26 The presence of Irish terrorism within the British Empire, just as the United States emerged as a global imperial power, provided Americans with the linguistic tools for explaining and justifying how the United States engaged with the larger global community. The British Empire offered Americans a convenient model for crafting their own imperial attitudes. American imperialists closely scrutinized British interactions and control of foreign peoples, being particularly sensitive to colonial challenges to the Empire. This Anglo-Saxon Atlantic community emerged from a British attitude toward race and civilization. Popular Victorian racial perceptions formed on a common ideological affinity based on intellectual constructs that conceived the national existence as a struggle among groups of peoples, categorized by race and ethnicity. Anglo-Saxon elites on both sides of the



Introduction 9


Atlantic viewed their civilization and institutions, founded on industriousness, intelligence, republicanism, capitalism, and the rule of law, as superior to those of other peoples and worked to fashion a new global realignment by enhanced cooperation.27 As a subject of inquiry, the Atlantic community is suggestive of both spatial and mental compatibility between peoples of different nationality, where there was hardly total agreement or identical interests, but a mutual acceptance of each other’s necessities and enough commonality to interact for each other’s survival and prosperity, at least for a foreseeable future. Besides the increasingly shared geopolitical strategic goals—though marked intermittently in the late 19th century with disagreeable episodes, as with most communities across the globe—ideology preceded and paved the path to formal alliance. Historian Frank Ninkovich’s study of Wilsonianism in American foreign relations notes that ideologies are “the only useful instruments of policy knowledge available to statesmen.” In particular, President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to restructure the international community were tied to notions of modernity and civilization. Anglo-American relations were particularly crucial to his vision. According to Ninkovich, there was “a growing conviction in both countries of the common duty to a global civilization.”28 For Americans observing, writing, and reacting officially to Irish terrorism, Anglo-Saxon values and institutions acted as important referent that helped them conceptualize Irish varieties of political violence. Because of the infusion of Anglo-Saxonism in the United States by the mid-19th century and fears that alien influences were eroding their most cherished values, such as capitalism, constitutionalism, and law and order, influential Americans frequently associated Fenian violence with the radicalism of Continental communist and anarchist organizations. Perceptions of race and ethnicity also colored American attitudes toward the Irish, which ultimately shaped American perceptions of Irish terrorism. Reflecting shared transatlantic Victorian values it was not unusual for Americans to characterize Fenian violence in racialized terms, often differentiating Celtic aggression from that used by Anglo-Saxon peoples. Transatlantic Fenian activities allowed observant Americans a unique opportunity to begin conceptualizing the problems of terrorism, and thus contributed to constructing the antecedents of contemporary American anti-terrorist ideology and helped lay the foundations for the comprehensive Anglo-American counter-terrorism policy that crystallized in the 20th century. A transnational perspective allows for a novel approach for viewing Anglo-American reactions to Irish terrorism. A vital element to American conceptualization of terrorism was the identity and ideologies of the perpetrators, as well as American perceptions of radical groups in Europe. The research for this study clearly demonstrates that race and class were crucial elements for differentiating terrorism from other types of political violence.



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An equally critical component was the prevailing Anglo-American attitudes toward communist, socialist, and other radical political philosophies operating within democratic-capitalist societies. The combination of Irish ethnic identity and communist-socialist political ideology contributed to an AngloAmerican repulsion and antipathy to the use of terrorism that eventually evolved into a comprehensive counter-terrorism approach. Besides establishing a common language to identify and conceptualize terrorist acts, Americans followed the British lead in establishing intelligence and law enforcement capabilities to monitor and analyze terrorist activities. The Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community constituted an influential public engaged in an official and unofficial discourse that sought to align the Englishspeaking peoples against the use of an increasingly lethal and potentially revolutionary form of political violence. Anyone who has surveyed the literature becomes quickly aware that defining terrorism is a daunting task. While precise categorization may remain elusive, some attempt to elucidate it is a necessary errand of any study scrutinizing a widely disputed and contentious subject. Thus it is imperative for scholars to discover precisely how the language of terrorism has been constructed, applied, and received in particular societies. Although the term “terrorism” only emerged in the modern era describing Robespierre’s violently revolutionary regime in France, it is clear that as a form of political action terrorism has been a part of the human condition from the origins of civilization. In a number of ancient societies various methods of terrorism maintained a conspicuous place, most especially among premodern Judaic, Christian, and Islamic militants resisting foreign domination or imposing their will on others. Common forms of terrorism in Medieval Europe included royal assassinations and pillaging armies that targeted noncombatant peasants and city dwellers. During the progression from feudal to modern Western traditions terrorism became less acceptable and ideologically repellent to many, and was gradually replaced with chivalric codes that institutionalized acceptable combat operations between armies and allowed only government to sanction violent force.29 While terrorism is an ancient human condition, the modern variety, attendant with technological innovations, communications advancements, national identities within powerful empires, and the emergence of nationstates that extended their dominion over large empires thrust the issue of terrorism upon public consciousness in way not seen in previous eras. Terrorism became conspicuous in the 19th century as nationalists in lessdeveloped regions began resisting European colonial imperialism or the lower classes rose in opposition to autocratic regimes. Peoples subjected to colonialism or autocratic regimes were unable to challenge the power of imperial states directly found terrorism a viable weapon of resistance. Modern advances in technology and communication, and powerful political ideologies that unified once disparate people, permitted terrorist groups



Introduction


to organize complex networks and unleash greater levels of violence against imperial powers. Aided by transnational economic interdependence and a concerted desire to alter the existing political realities, small groups of individuals throughout much of the Western world challenged hegemonic states, economic classes, and racial-ethnic groups. During the latter half of the 19th century terrorism manifested itself in a plethora of forms, each group motivated for different reasons, conditioned by their particular environment and unique set of ideas.30 During the 19th century, the term “terrorism” evolved. Generally, during the first part of the century terrorism was associated with state-regime agents who used terror campaigns to enforce their rule. Originating during the Jacobin rule of the French Revolution (1793–1794), terrorism typically involved the arbitrary arrest and execution of political opponents. While terrorism continued to be associated with certain methods of stateregime governance, by the end of the century the term was increasingly applied to revolutionary groups attempting to overthrow governments they deemed oppressive or illegitimate. In American usage, according to Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, between the 1850s and the 1890s, it was associated exclusively with French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror,” making reference to state repression against its own people. By the 1880s the Oxford English Dictionary expanded the terminology beyond state-terror to include “any policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted” or the “employment of methods of intimidation.” A terrorist was no longer simply a Jacobin or an agent of the state, but was now associated with substate radicals, such as Russian revolutionary anarchists and nihilists. As a broad “political term” a terrorist was “anyone who attempts to further his views by a system of coercive intimidation.” By the 1920s American lexicons began mirroring British usage of terrorism to include any revolutionary group’s efforts at “demoralization of government by force.”31 Scholars of Irish history are divided on the usage. For some, the term “terrorism” to describe Irish political violence is discomforting; a recent essay on Irish–American connections to the Irish nationalist insurgency in the 1880s dismissed the appellation terrorism as “stubbornly unwieldy and ultimately unprofitable.”32 This aversion probably stems from terrorism’s emotive force and its politicization in contemporary political culture. Yet, the term has been highly politicized from the beginning of the 19th century. Indeed, a goal of this study is to unravel the intellectual knot, indentifying how Anglo-Americans, and even the Irish themselves, grappled over its meaning and consequences. A number of studies have had less reluctance to categorize certain Irish violence as terrorism. Brian Jenkins’s recent study of the “Fenian problem” situates the rise and course of Fenian violence firmly within anti-imperial



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insurgency and terrorism.33 Lindsay Clutterbuck, a terrorist expert formerly with the London Metropolitan Police Service (New Scotland Yard) and presently an analyst for the RAND Corporation, in a comparative study argues that instead of Russian nihilists and anarchists, who are typically credited as inaugurating modern anti-establishment terrorism, Irish Republican extremists were more precisely the “progenitors of terrorism.” Unlike Russian terrorists who embraced a method of violence that seemed to compliment their deeply held ideological convictions, Irish militants’ doctrinal strategy of terrorism resulted exclusively from practical experiences and was not driven by an ideological predilection. While rarely the first strategic choice, terrorism became a calculated option. Irish nationalist terrorism was a more compelling model that global revolutionaries emulated, rather than more popular ideological explanations. In Clutterbuck’s assessment, Irish terrorism offered global revolutionaries a compelling model to emulate, and therefore, it was the Irish who were most responsible for creating “a new concept, that of ‘terrorism’.”34 While it is not the purpose of this study to purport or substantiate any Celtic originality to modern terrorism, it does contend that contextualizing Irish political violence within the paradigm of terrorism explains how two of the most powerful members of the Atlantic community conceptualized the problem and evolved a ideological opposition to certain forms of political violence. Terrorism is a notoriously slippery term. As a particular mode of political violence, it entails not only physical aggression but systematic intimidation, specifically targeting civilian non-combatants in order to coerce a people or government to alter its behavior or policies. Terrorism cannot be defined solely by the acts committed or in reference to the targets, but must also include purpose or motive of the terrorist themselves. Often instead of a precise, comprehensive definition, the international community has relied on agreements to criminalize specific acts, such as ransom kidnappings or aircraft hijackings, to deter and prevent terrorist attacks. Cultural and political differences, however, have raised serious barriers to a universal consensus— hence the bromide, usually attributed to either former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark or British fictional writer Gerald Seymour, “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”35 Inherently the term “terrorism” has been politicized and is used by practitioners, victims, and bystanders to convey political meaning or to tarnish the reputations of their opponents. Unlike other criminal activities that have acquired universal jurisdiction within the international community, such as the slave-trade or piracy, terrorism does not fit neatly into such similar categorization and must be analyzed specifically within the context of the events in which it transpires. Historically, terrorism has been a term with little legal significance and used as an umbrella term that encapsulates more specific crimes, such as kidnapping, bombings, highjacking, and assassination.36 Part of its enigmatic nature is that it involves multiple targets and most often the targets include not



Introduction


only immediate victims but also a larger political audience. For many casual observers, both historically and contemporaneously, terrorism entails the seemingly random use of extreme, disproportional violence against innocent victims. Most consider terrorists criminals because they use atypical, unacceptable forms of violence against civilians and as a conspiracy they operate outside the constraints of international laws governing warfare and widely accepted rules of military force engagement. While practitioners of terrorism usually consider their methods as legitimate acts of war, for bystanders, analysts, and the general public the tactics and means terrorists employ differentiate their aggression from legitimate acts of political violence or modes of war. Scholarship underscores the necessity of examining the motivations of terrorists and reactions from both the victims and the spectators. The reasons people employ terrorism are as numerous as the definitions of terrorism, but typically individuals employ terrorism when other forms of resistance prove unsuccessful. Current theories of political behavior suggest that the decision to utilize terrorist methods is the result of circumstances and opportunities, or lack thereof. Terrorists rationalize the use of violence against non-combatants through their conviction about particular political, social, economic interests, or their perceived exclusion or segregation from the constitutional or political process.37 In Western society the term “terrorism” has attained a negative label, laden with pejorative meanings and hostile moral judgments. Because terrorism violates Western ideological traditions, especially a commitment to the rule of law and constitutional democracy, it deliberately destroys public or private property that has little or no military value, and finally, because it deliberately targets non-combatants, many Americans have historically tended to conceptualize terrorism very simplistically, as merely something “bad guys do.”38 The notion that terrorism is solely the work of insane social malcontents is naïve and fails to recognize that the use of terrorism results from circumstances and opportunities, and terrorists carefully calculate their decisions.39 An important, if under-studied, component of terrorism is reactions from victims, witnesses, and the general public. Few practitioners of terrorism embrace the nomenclature “terrorist,” the most notable exception being the 19th-century Russian Terrorists. As a taxonomic indicator, the label terrorism is rarely self-referential but rather is usually imposed on people. But even attempts in the 20th century to codify an internationally agreed definition have woefully floundered. Relative to other forms of political violence, such as conventional warfare, terrorists have inflicted minimal harm to Americans and their property, and have not seriously attempted to overthrow constitutional government. However, the threat to the United States is nonetheless real, because terrorism strikes at the foundations of America’s commitment to constitutional government, the sanctity of life and property, and the primacy of law and order. Indirectly, terrorists, whether autonomously or



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through state-sponsors, have sought to undermine the openness of American society.40 As a result of the grave challenge that terrorism poses to Western values and institutions, Americans, like their British counterparts, have engaged in what psycho-sociologists and researchers refer to as a process of “positioning.” This heuristic approach allows victims and spectators of terrorism to easily differentiate themselves from the perpetrators, casting the terrorist as an uncivilized, non-progressive “other,” and thereby ethically wrong. Yet the Irish too participated in labeling. From the emergence of Fenian violence, Irish nationalists harkened back to the original meaning of the word “terrorism,” arguing that during its occupation of Ireland, the British Empire practiced state-sanctioned terrorism to oppress the Irish people.41 For the purpose of this study, terrorism is a type of psychological political violence that can exist in a state of war or otherwise. Terrorists deliberately strike non-combatant persons and public or private property to instill fear and dread in a political audience, altering the perceptions or actions of one or more targeted audiences for political purposes, in order to manipulate, affect, or change the existing status quo or certain governmental policies. Intrinsic to this definition is recognition that terrorism is not exclusively predicated on the intent of the perpetrator but that acts deemed terroristic are so defined by others, either the victims or the observers. Terrorism, as one of a variety of forms of low-intensity, asymmetrical warfare, is directed toward non-combatant targets and deploys violence through indiscriminate means. In addition to the actual physical violence, which is directed toward non-combatant targets, terrorists attempt to manipulate public opinion; according to one terrorist expert, “public intimidation is a key element that distinguishes terrorist violence from other forms of violence.” Besides the indiscriminate, often lethal, violence against non-combatants, terrorism also includes a second victim—spectators. Minor and spectacular acts of terrorism create real human casualties and costly property destruction, but also induce, literally defined, terror within a larger, usually symbolic, audience. Terrorists target individuals and property not only for their own value but because these targets represent vulnerabilities within a society. By attacking real and symbolic targets, terrorists not only seek tactical success but, as a strategic goal, attempt to influence and manipulate public opinion.42 By nearly any standard, and certainly those understood by contemporaries, Irish nationalistic and agrarian violence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries conducted by individuals and small groups using physical intimidation, assault, assassination, arson, incendiary bombing, kidnapping, cattle-maiming, or violent boycotting constituted terrorism. Individually or collectively, these violent expressions were acts of resistance against British occupation and its dominating social institutions in Ireland. The perpetrators intended these attacks to destroy the ability or will of the colonial power to exercise control over Ireland. Equally true, British coercive policies,



Introduction


namely, the suspending constitutional rights, garrisoning troops among the civilian population, indefinite detention, destruction of homes and businesses, and the assault and killing of suspects and their families, associates, and the general public, all were considered terroristic not simply by the Irish, but by Americans too. The Atlantic community’s observations and analysis of Irish terrorism contributed to a larger intellectual discussion, especially in the United States, about the meaning of empire and nationalism in the modern world. Just as the Anglo-Saxons formed a common language to explain and justify their aggressive expansionism and social imperialism, the official and public discourse on terrorism, especially in the context of Irish terrorism, played an important role for conceptualizing and understanding the perils of imperial rule amid popular nationalist aspirations. Anglo-Saxons identified the Irish as terrorists in order to differentiate them from acceptable Anglo-Saxon forms of resistance. As with other aspects of imperialism, terrorism became a linguistic tool between competing narratives. Anglo-Saxons employed the term with increasing frequency, if not haphazardly, as Irish militants engaged in non-normative violence. As popular diction formalized a demonization of terrorism, even those labeled as terrorists applied the term to their adversaries. As early as the 1860s and continuing through the 1920s, Irish nationalists employed the term to describe an oppressive, tyrannically violent rule over Ireland that violated long-established and repeatedly touted English constitutionalism and representative government. Terrorism and terrorist became a derisive terms; both sides bandied the epithets at each other as a moral weapon to justify their own retaliatory violence. From the beginning of the transatlantic phase of the Anglo-Irish conflict, Americans also used the term “terrorism” but less frequently. The intensity of the violence, the audacity of the attacks, and the victimization of the civilian population accounted for the increased usage by Americans. The diplomatic discourse and public press from the era of Reconstruction through the Progressive era are replete with American observations and assessments of terrorism generally and the Irish variation specifically. Before World War I the United States had limited intelligence capabilities, a nascent Secret Service and sporadic reliance on the Pinkerton Detective Agency for domestic intelligence. American diplomatic and consular officials stationed in foreign lands collected, analyzed, and disseminated mountains of information, providing a valuable conduit for transmitting events around the globe. Even beyond their clerical and bureaucratic duties, American diplomats provided the most thorough intelligence of international events for policy-makers before World War I.43 The diplomatic correspondence, complemented by journalistic accounts and contemporary scholarly analysis, formed the core of an Atlantic discourse about transnational terrorism and attests to the serious and sustained consideration given to the problems of revolutionary political violence. A careful textual analysis of these



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conventional and other less traditional records provides much needed perspective. Irish terrorism offers a unique perspective for analyzing the evolving Anglo-American relationship during the Victorian. Irish nationalist and agrarian violence provides scholars an opportunity to compare American and British responses to asymmetrical revolutionary political violence. Irish ethno-nationalist terrorism influenced British and American constructs of nationalism and imperialism. Irish terrorism impacted domestic political culture in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and it shaped how these imperial powers interacted with one another. As part of the Atlantic community, Irish political violence acted as a catalyst for an extended transatlantic dialogue on the nature of terrorism and provided these imperial powers an opportunity to explore appropriate responses by liberal-democratic societies. Their collective judgments not only reflected their own constructions of nationalism but also introduced challenges for those who were trying to imagine or actualize their imperial aspirations. The network of Irish terrorist cells operating in the Atlantic community provided the basis for an American hostility to transnational terrorism and contributed to a converging Anglo-American interest that sought to marginalize certain non-state actors during a crucial period of nation-state realignment. Understandably, the British were gravely concerned by Irish terrorism, not simply because it violated English constitutional and social sensibilities, but also because it represented a formidable challenge to its ability to govern Ireland. In response to Irish provocations, the British took a flexible approach that included a tactful mixture of coercion and concession. American reactions were generally less definitive, and tended to be more mutable as the North American republic transformed from a nation recovering from Civil War to a global imperio-military power. Between 1865 and 1922, American reactions to Irish terrorism shifted as the United States emerged as a viable, stable nation-state and global imperial power. Initially, sympathies with struggling Irish peasants and anger at British interference in the Civil War allowed Americans to minimize the implications of political violence in Ireland or even to tacitly excuse the behavior as a product of British misrule. The opening chapter traces the emergence of Fenian terrorism during the post-Famine decades and examines the conflicting perspectives that divided the British and the Americans. From 1865 to 1870, Irish nationalists in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, committed to an unconventional physical force strategy, laid the ideological foundations for modern Irish terrorism. Not all Fenian violence can be defined as terrorism, but numerous acts, especially several spectacular incidents in 1867, including the uprising in March, the September prison rescue of Fenian leaders that led to the Manchester Martyrs, and the stunning explosion at Clerkenwell Prison in December, were terrorist



Introduction


attacks. The failure of conventional tactics led some radical Fenians to adopt the use of terrorism. The failed Fenian invasions of Canada contributed to radical nationalists adopting terrorist methods. As the United States enhanced its stature in the Atlantic community in the post-Civil War era, the Anglo-Irish imperial dispute became a salient issue in American foreign relations and a potent force in American domestic political culture. Fenians expected their activities to exacerbate existing Anglo-American tensions, and their use of terrorism was designed in part to further excite American hostilities toward the British Empire and to play on the prevalent Anglophobia in the United States. Fenian terrorism provided a model of nationalism that was widely rejected by Americans, and this contrasting paradigm by which Americans in the post-Civil War period constructed their own national identity. After the ferocious sectional conflict, as Americans reoriented national loyalty to constitutional citizenship and republicanism, Fenian terrorism revealed stark differences within American society about the nature of political violence and the potency of ethnic nationalism within a multicultural society. The transition from uncertainty to the formulation of an Anglo-American ideological opposition to terrorism is the focus of Chapter 2. Agrarian terrorists had less direct connections to the United States than Fenians, but Americans in the United Kingdom as well as those particularly interested in land issues in the United States closely monitored developments in Ireland. From the emergence of rural violence in Ireland in the 1870s to the end of the Land War in 1882, Atlantic Anglo-Saxons identified a powerful current of communism and anarchism in Irish agrarianism, especially among extremists among the peasant class who used unconventional forms of violence to advance agrarian interests. Perceptions of race and ethnicity also colored American attitudes toward the Irish. Reflecting the dominant cultural values of the day, American reactions to agrarianism paralleled British opinions by frequently characterizing Irish violence in racial terms, differentiating Celtic aggression from the civility of Anglo-Saxon peoples and thereby distinguishing terrorism as something especially un-American. Irish agrarianism coincided with the labor and racial violence in the United States and further shaped American views toward terrorism. As agrarian terrorism escalated, culminating in the infamous Phoenix Park murders of 1882, many Americans followed the British in identifying terrorism as a credible threat to political order and economic development, and therefore completely unacceptable in civil society. The United States took no formal position on agrarianism, but the frequent public discussions of agrarian methods and brutality produced a consistent ideological opposition to its use. Equally potent was the American debate over the perceived misadministration of British colonial policy in Ireland that gave rise to agrarianism. Americans did not reserve their criticism solely for agrarians, but faulted British colonial officials and the Anglo-Irish landlord class for creating an environment that nurtured agrarian violence.



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The presence of Irish agrarian terrorism provided Americans further incentives for praising their own political and economic institutions. Agrarian activities and British reactions tended to reinforce among Americans their own unique ideals. Irish agrarian violence convinced many Americans that the Irish were not capable of self-government, while British reactions to agrarians confirmed to Americans that their political and economic institutions were superior to those in the United Kingdom. Chapter 3 returns to the dilemma Irish nationalist violence posed to Anglo-American relations, but places the discussion within the context of even greater globalization and intensified cultural exchange. Various IrishAmerican terrorists, operating within the Clan-na-Gael, in the early 1880s utilized technological advances to attack the British Empire from the United States. Irish nationalists seized the opportunities that American industrialization offered them, adopting a highly lethal strategy, using high explosives in a campaign of modern, systematic terrorism. The audacity and ruthlessness of these attacks alerted Atlantic Anglo-Saxons to the destructiveness of terrorism in modern urban societies. Not only did Americans and the British form an ideological repulsion to terrorism, but for the first time, some Americans began to seriously contemplate and discuss, in collaboration with the British, counter-terrorism policies that relied on law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Even though many Americans and Britons adopted similar attitudes toward Clan-na-Gael terrorism, difficulties between the Atlantic powers remained. The highly competitive political culture of Gilded Age America, in conjunction with political and economic energy of Irish immigrants, forced some prominent officials, much to the chagrin of British official and public, to ignore or even defend Irish activities. An active transatlantic Irish propaganda campaign worked to undermine American sympathies for the British and many Americans remained vocal critics of British colonial policy and held the British ultimately responsible for Irish terrorism. As the American public vacillated between aversion for terrorism and sympathy for the suffering Irish, the Federal government faced enormous pressure from the British and Anglophile Americans to directly confront Irish terrorists using the United States as a sanctuary and staging area for attacks. Besides financial and logistical operations, the globalization of terrorism forced Anglo-Americans to re-evaluate broader questions, such as the legal definitions of political prisoners, reconsideration of neutrality responsibilities under international law, and better regulation of transatlantic communications and financial transactions. Even as the United States was emerging as a global commercial power, some Americans contemplated alternative methods of formal colonial rule in order to avoid similar incidents of terrorism against the United States, while others used the example of Irish terrorism to strengthen traditional American anti-imperialist ideology. Irish-American violence compelled Americans to confront international terrorism directly and to begin envisioning a counter-terrorist strategy.



Introduction


By the end of World War I, as Americans became more engaged in global affairs and sought to maintain order and stability in the Atlantic community, they developed a consistent ideological opposition to terrorism that mirrored British opinions and led eventually to the formulation of AngloAmerican counter-terrorism cooperation. Although the United States did not emulate the British model of attempting to implement a coherent, comprehensive policy toward Irish terrorism, nationalist violence provided observant Americans a unique opportunity to begin conceptualizing a modern challenge to imperial states and constructing an ideological opposition to transnational terrorism. Although it is clear that the US government never articulated or adopted a clear, decisive policy toward Irish terrorism, it is evident that American citizens, territory, and institutions were entangled with this early modern form of transnational terrorism. World War I marked a turning point for America’s involvement in globalization, and proved equally decisive for the American people’s interaction with international terrorism. Chapter 4 demonstrates that during the epoch of zealous European nationalism and global imperialism, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) maximized a sophisticated network of financing, arms procurement, and operational planning and accelerated the use and lethality of terrorism in the Atlantic community. IRA operations in the Atlantic community from 1919 through early 1922, which included a ruthless guerrilla terrorist campaign that included hundreds of incidents annually, allowed Americans another opportunity to continue their protracted discussion about the origins, causes, and challenges terrorism created for imperial powers, just as the United States was embarking on its own imperial enterprises and acquiring extra-continental holdings. Several prejudices contributed to the harsh American reaction to Irish nationalist activities. Continuing a tradition begun in the mid-19th century, transatlantic Anglo-Saxons associated Irish nationalists with the radicalism of Continental communist and anarchist organizations. On both sides of the Atlantic, there was a determined effort to link Sinn Féin with other radical groups and to portray them in the worst possible light. During the first decades of the 20th century, transatlantic racial attitudes also continued to prejudice Anglo-Saxon perceptions of Irish violence, and discredited violence deemed perilous to liberal democratic, capitalist societies. Sinn Féin and IRA terrorism, for instance, the Bloody Sunday attacks in November 1920, flew in the face of Anglo-American sensibilities and, unfortunately for Irish nationalists, coincided with the crystallization of Anglo-American rapprochement. While many Americans continued their support for Irish nationalism, public opinion was increasingly critical of the British government’s excessively violent measure to repress Irish terrorism. Even British counterterrorist responses, such as the massacre at Croke Park and the general policy of reprisals, met a chorus of American condemnation. American



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commentators were increasingly less tolerant of terrorist activities, domestically and internationally, and became critical of state terrorism, but they began establishing the national security approach to terrorism designed to handle threats, specifically Congressional and state legislation against criminal syndicalism in 1918 and 1919. At times Irish terrorism exacerbated transatlantic tensions, but by the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, the United States and Great Britain achieved a remarkable level of consensus on the issue. The intense scrutiny of Irish terrorism eventually facilitated collaboration with the British. By the end of the Anglo-Irish War intelligence, law enforcement and military officials began aggressive surveillance operations of Irish nationalist groups and listed Irish nationalists among a number of other revolutionary groups considered a threat to American national security. As a result of the shared transatlantic Victorian values and intense scrutiny of nationalist activities, Americans not only publicly condemned IRA tactics, increasingly labeling their activities as terrorism, but by the end of the war began coordinating counter-terrorism arrangements with the British. Working closely with British officials, Americans supported and participated in an aggressive surveillance program that transcended national boundaries. Following the transatlantic Progressive movement, Americans relied upon professional law enforcement agencies to obstruct terrorist activities. What becomes clear is that by the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the US government crystallized its ideological opposition to terrorism and began laying the foundations for future Anglo-American counter-terrorism cooperation. Besides establishing a common language to identify terrorist acts, the United States also followed the British lead in establishing intelligence capabilities to monitor and analyze terrorist groups. The six decades from the American Civil War to the creation of the Irish Free State witnessed various forms of terrorism emerged within the Atlantic community, but few were as violent, longer sustained, or more affected American foreign relations as Irish terrorists. Irish nationalists and agrarians, attempting to end or alter British colonial domination of Ireland, posed a fundamental challenge to transatlantic Victorian values and democratic societies. While they usually targeted attacks against British interests, personnel, or their collaborators, and were not a direct threat to American national security, Irish terrorism transcended the British Empire and became a crucial component to development of Anglo-American relations. Of all the international terrorist groups in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Irish were the most active terrorists in the Atlantic community, utilizing transnational networks of political, economic, and cultural exchange. In the process they provided the impetus for an extended Anglo-American dialogue that scrutinized this particularly violent mode of political resistance. By necessity the British energetically engaged Irish terrorism, formulating a policy of firm response to violence, but Americans rarely articulated a clear,



Introduction


comprehensive, or definitive attitude toward Irish terrorism. The US government did not develop a formal counter-terrorism policy and only belatedly cooperated with the British in their counter-terrorism efforts. Irish terrorists operating on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, substantially supported by their compatriots throughout the industrialized centers of America, created and exploited real difficulties between the United States and Great Britain. By the 1920s, however, many Americans, especially those embracing Anglo-Saxon values, did develop an ideological opposition to terrorism as an instrument of political change, establishing the rudiments for cooperation with Great Britain that later transformed into a US doctrinal policy against international terrorism. After nearly six decades of experience with Irish extreme political violence, by the beginning of the 20th century, AngloAmericans embraced an ideological repulsion to terrorism as an expression of political resistance and began laying the foundations for a coherent counter-terrorism policy. American observations of Irish terrorism and British counter-terrorist responses provided the antecedents of United States’ policies and perceptions of international terrorism through the remainder of the 20th century. In essence the discussion of terrorism in the Atlantic community was a trialogue among the two Anglo-Saxon powers and Gaelic peoples. The subject of Irish terrorism is an important, if under-appreciated, component of transatlantic history that adds valuable insight into the intricacies of the interdependent Anglo-American relationship at the turn of the century and provides a unique perspective from which to conceptualize globalization and situate American society in the larger Atlantic community. The movement of a violent radical group and its ideology across national borders demonstrates the importance of transnational non-state actors to the construction of American foreign relations during a formative period of globalization. Encounters with Irish terrorism revealed intimate transatlantic cultural values that extended beyond traditional national interests and created an environment for demonizing certain types of activities considered a threat to civil society and nation-states. Thus Irish terrorism provided the antecedents of contemporary American anti-terrorist ideology and helped lay the foundations for the comprehensive Anglo-American counter-terrorism stratagem that was later codified during the Cold War.



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The end of the American Civil War coincided with the introduction of a modern form of political violence in the Atlantic community. The death of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, along with attempts on the lives of Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward, inaugurated an era of terrorism in America and Europe. Ironically, not three years earlier, amid repeated rumors of assassination conspiracies against Lincoln, Seward dismissed these intrigues as “unlikely” and “no ground for anxiety,” pontificating that assassination was “not an American practice or habit” and believed that as it was “so vicious and desperate,” it would never “be engrafted into our political system.”1 In the decades that followed the peoples of both continents witnessed, participated, or were unwitting victims of terrorist attacks, including the violent elimination of unwanted sovereigns, heads of state, state-political leaders, government officials, and political rivals. On occasion, for example the 1870 French Commune, campaigns of terror forced entire metro-state resources to restore order, usually with a vigorous, repressive counterterror. In the United States, Union forces had maintained a conspicuous presence along the Potomac throughout the war, but in the days immediately following the assassination terror gripped the populace, and the District of Columbia organized into a garrison city. Inside and out of the Capitol spontaneous lynchings and assaults occurred against suspected conspirators and Confederate sympathizers for allegedly lauding the killing.2 As shock and mourning settled upon the American landscape, news of the attacks elicited expressions of sympathy from across the Atlantic. According to an American consular official in London, the English public characterized the premeditated, conspiratorial attacks in Shakespearian language “the blackest crime yet recorded in history.”3 As news of the conspiracy widened over the next few weeks, revelations surfaced that former Confederates were planning to “wage secret war” using unconventional tactics, including an assassination campaign against American civil and military officials in Europe and “the burning of towns, cities [and] shipping” in an effort to 23



Fenian Terrorism Confronts the Atlantic Community, 1865–1870


continue the fight against the Union and to erode Northern desires to retain the states of the former Confederacy.4 No cross-Atlantic terrorist assault against the United States occurred, and eventually the excitement from Lincoln’s slaying quieted just as the racial violence of Reconstruction began to seethe in the American South and labor terrorism consumed urban industrialized centers. Yet a lethal form of transnational terrorism did confront Americans as they emerged from the Civil War in the form of Irish nationalist violence against the British Empire. While Irish nationalism had existed for decades, in the 1860s Fenians inaugurated a new offensive against the British Empire. A crucial aspect of the Fenian strategy was its transatlantic scope; taking advantage of labor opportunities, market investments, and political openness in the United States, Irish nationalists, known as Fenians, employed political pressure, economic opportunities and cultural activities in America to fund and publicize their anti-British activities. Irish political violence mirrored the domestic terrorism that gripped certain regions of the United States, but presented the American people significant challenges. Beginning in the 1860s Fenian aggression assumed a transnational character that forced the Atlantic AngloSaxon community to evaluate critically the meaning and consequences of terrorism within the context of imperial rule. While Irish nationalism experienced a resurgence in the years after the famine, by 1865 rumors of a Fenian uprising prompted the British to suppress nationalist groups, arrest Fenian leaders, and impose extra-constitutional measure of repression, including the suspension of habeas corpus. Although their ranks were diminished and moderate Fenians continued planning for a national rebellion in Ireland, some Atlantic Fenians began conceiving alternative strategies to erode British political rule in Ireland. The failure of nationalist uprisings in Ireland and the futility of conventional strategies, evidenced from the failed Fenian invasions of Canada, led the most radical Fenians to adopt the use of terrorism. Certainly not all Fenian violence was terroristic, but numerous incidents, notably several spectacular episodes in 1867, including the proposed raid on Chester Castle, the September prison rescue of Fenian leaders that led to the Manchester Martyrs, and the stunning explosion at Clerkenwell Prison in December, were terrorist attacks. On both sides of the Atlantic, there was a genuine concern that the Fenian’s newly adopted strategy of warfare might likely unleash destructive forces upon Anglo-Saxon civilization. The confrontation with Fenian terrorism beginning in 1865 coincided with the modernization of the American nation-state and its emergence as an imperial power. Historians have recognized the Civil War as a transformative epoch for the formation of the American nation-state and the commitment to democratic institutions, but it also shaped Americans’ views on violence and their interactions with foreign peoples. By 1864 and culminating with General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea and Carolinas



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Campaign, the war extended far beyond the battlefield to become a Union “war of terror directed primarily against the [civilian] population of the Confederacy.”5 The Civil War, which included brutal massacres of civilian populations, was instrumental in shaping American contemporary and latter attitudes toward violence. While the war was no doubt lethal, historian Mark Neely’s controversial polemic notes that much of the brutality has been unduly sensationalized, and that there was a deliberate disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of war. Less contentious, but equally important, however, by placing his study of the Civil War in a larger temporal and spatial trajectory Neely explores how mid-century American constructions of race and definitions of civilization differentiated modes of war between the acceptable civilized and the unwelcomed savage.6 Post-Civil War America excited the latent tensions between aspirants for national inclusion and racial militants committed to status quo antebellum social order. Racial political violence, often terroristic, erupted into a bloody confrontation between the recently freed slaves, their white Republican supporters, and the intransigent white social order in the former Confederacy. Southern white terrorism revealed the difficulties of constructing a liberal, orderly nation-state committed to republicanism, participatory government, and constitutional rule of law, amid a legacy of racial antagonisms.7 Reconstruction included the abandonment of regionalism that had dominated the pre-Civil War era and a new commitment to state-centered goals. Political reconciliation facilitated a greater activism with the international community and a commitment to extending commercial interests across and beyond the continent, while preserving and spreading cherished cultural values and social ideals.8 Even during the era when issues such as the Alabama Claims negotiations and arbitration of long-standing boundary and fishery disputes dominated policy discussions among Anglo-Americans, British and Americans were attentive to transatlantic Fenianism. Naturally, the British were especially observant of Fenian mischief and their activities within America and the influence they exercised on America politics. While it would be disingenuous to assert that Fenianism ever dominated American political discussions, it is equally obvious that Fenian terrorism occupied a conspicuous place in public discourse. Fenian violence was a persistent challenge for the British Empire, and due to the transatlantic arch of Irish nationalist violence, it factored upon American foreign policy decisions. This was particularly significant to Americans as the nation emerged as a proto-imperial power in the post-Civil War years. It is clear that throughout the era as the United States became more active in foreign affairs, the Anglo-American relationship functioned to reduce tensions and avoid conflicts that threatened their mutual prosperity and security, and the two powers worked to cement a cooperative environment.9 Fenian terrorism was a vital element in shaping the Anglo-American relationship, as the two Atlantic powers extended their empires far beyond the



Fenian Terrorism Confronts the Atlantic Community 25


Atlantic. Increasingly during the 19th century geopolitical and commercial considerations, especially the need for foreign markets and access to natural resources, motivated, if not monopolized American behavior and guided American involvement in the Caribbean and Pacific basins. Emulating their Anglo-Saxon cousins, in the post-Civil War period many Americans embraced an imperialistic attitude to enhance the nation’s position in global affairs and sought to displace domestic social tensions into foreign markets. The process of social imperialism that began occurring in Latin America and Hawaii by the 1870s provided not only the opportunity to export American products and expand its commercial interests, but allowed Americans to spread Anglo-Saxon cultural values and ideology to foreign peoples, as the British had been doing in Asia and Africa.10 In the struggle for recreating its national identity in the wake of the Civil War, reintegrating the former Confederate states and reevaluating the civic status of the former slaves, Americans took a particular interest in the plight of Irish nationalists because of their prominent place in American society and especially their influence in the Democratic Party and urban politics generally. Students of American nationalism, who increasingly concentrate their attention on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, treat ethnicity and race as crucial components to national development, and a number of studies have shown that political violence shaped how Americans differentiated groups of people and that violence was instrumental in formulating the contours of American nationalism. The calamity of the Civil War provided impetus for a national renewal, allowing Americans to recreate a national identity and ideology, largely forged from the Republican Party’s response to Southern slavery. Even before the war consumed American society, among Northern Republicans sectional distinctions operated as a powerful force in constructing a new inclusive nationalist identity. Republicans drew on Northern sectional fears that Southern society was fundamentally contrary to the ideals and legacy of the Founding Fathers and inherently destructive for the Union. The outbreak of war introduced a process of constructive nationalism, where Northerners no longer simply clung to sectional differences but embraced new civic ideals. Northern Republican nationalism embraced a commitment to the nation-state as protector, rather than adversary, of individual political rights and civil liberties. Furthermore, the travesty of war facilitated the shedding of localism and the weaning of a potent parochial tradition, that witnessed the redefinition of the nation-state not along regional or sectional lines, but within the relationship between the state and an individual.11 Yet the conclusion of the bitter sectional conflict did not settle the meaning of American nationalism, and ethno-racial conflicts domestically and abroad continued to recontour the parameters and substance of American national identity. Historians contend that from the era of Reconstruction through the end of the century, economic and ethnic conflicts among



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Americans, and between Americans and foreign peoples, provided important arenas for (re)defining American national identity. Irish diasporic nationalism in the United States, tied to their constructions of ethnic and religious identity and republican aspirations for Ireland, situated contemporaneously with Southern Ku Klux Klan terrorism and Black Reconstruction militancy, operated as a contrasting paradigm by which Americans in the post-Civil War period reconstructed their own national identity rooted in a brand of republicanism that increasingly eschewed political change through violence.12 By the mid-1860s the Anglo-Irish imperial dispute engaged American domestic political culture. Fenianism became a recurring controversy between the British Empire and the American Republic, rekindling old quarrels and creating new inconveniences. A number of Fenian activities severely strained Anglo-American relations, including armed raids into Canada to destabilize the British Empire, aggravating the already sore northern border and fisheries tensions; the funding of revolutionary organizations and arms trafficking from the United States called into question American neutrality laws; the arrest of American citizens in Canada and the United Kingdom reignited the naturalization controversy, the protracted AngloAmerican debate over the right of expatriation and perpetual allegiance; the appointment of Fenians to important diplomatic posts in the United Kingdom smacked of diplomatic impropriety; and the incarceration of Fenians by British authorities highlighted the disparities between the Atlantic powers’ conceptions of political crimes and who constituted a legitimate political prisoner. Many Northerners harbored resentment for British intrusions into the American Civil War and thus relished the idea of the Irish using the United States to menace the British Empire. In various ways these problems related to Fenian terrorism, but the appearance of terrorist violence also presented its own set of challenges for the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community. Americans and Britons perceived Irish terrorism differently and at times embraced opposing strategies to avert Fenian attacks. The British people viewed Fenian violence as an imperial challenge and dedicated substantial treasury and man-power to implementing an effective counterterrorist strategy. While some British commentators and statesmen recognized that centuries of inadequate imperial administration in Ireland was a contributing factor for Fenian adoption of terrorism, there was little sympathy expressed for Fenian terrorists and usually a demand for greater Crown repression. Americans, distracted by domestic Reconstruction and westward economic development, usually remained much more ambivalent toward the Fenians and at times exhibited a conspicuous indifference to their activities, even as Fenians transcended national boundaries to establish a complex transatlantic organizational network that stretched from Continental Europe to throughout the global British Empire and with branches across North America. Americans were far from unanimous in their





attitudes about Fenianism, and were equally divided by their use of terrorism. But there were considerable discussions that demonstrate Americans were attuned to unconventional violence used by Irish nationalists. Fenian terrorism contributed to an evolving narrative of American political culture; it gave not only encouragement to those promoting greater Anglo-American cooperation, but also armed Anglophobes who portrayed the British Empire as a despotic tyrant bent on crushing Irish nationalism. Fenian terrorism also shaped how Americans envisioned their own nation and the meaning of nationalism in the wake of the Civil War. Ultimately Fenian terrorism against the British Empire provided Englishspeaking peoples on sides of the Atlantic a unique opportunity to observe and analyze an increasingly prominent form of revolutionary violence. Few Americans would have feared Fenian terrorism. It posed little or no direct threat to most citizens’ personal safety or the United States’ national security. Thus at no time did the Johnson or Grant Administrations advance a clear, consistent reaction to Fenianism, much less develop or even seriously consider a comprehensive policy toward Fenian terrorism. But informed, observant Americans aware of events transpiring across the Atlantic discussed the causes and implications of Fenian terrorism. During the 1860s Americans began constructing a lexicon to discuss certain types of political violence. This new language ultimately laid the foundations for an ideological repulsion to terrorism. Fenian use of extreme, irregular violence provided greater context by which Americans, imbued with Anglo-Saxon values, differentiated American civic nationalism from racial or class identities and increasingly rejected European constructions of imperialism. Following a pattern provided by British politicians, statesmen, and social commentators, Americans identified certain types of Fenian violence as exceptional, beyond conventionally accepted modes of warfare and recognized it as a potentially decisive not only domestically, but also for relations between nations. While Americans could sympathize and support genuine nationalist aspirations, such as the Irish sought, numerous observers considered certain methods of anti-imperial violence objectionable because they posed a disproportional threat to social order and, as in the case of the British Empire, subverted fundamental constitutional procedures and undermined the rule of law. Fenian terrorism certainly strained relations among the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon powers. Despite disagreements between the two governments, by the end of the decade an ideological repulsion against transnational terrorism coalesced within the Anglo-Saxon community that prejudiced relations between the two Atlantic powers over the next half century.

Transatlantic Fenianism The reasons people employ terrorism are as numerous as the definitions of terrorism, but typically individuals and sub-state groups make a rational



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decision to employ unconventional forms of violence when other modes of resistance prove ineffective or futile. By the 1860s, Irish resistance to English colonial occupation was centuries in the making but had met with little success. Irish nationalists on occasion violently resisted British rule but had failed to achieve independence. The English rarely achieved the credibility necessary to govern Ireland through liberal principles—that is, through consent of the Irish people—so they established an imperial administration at Dublin Castle and garrisoned Crown troops to control the island. The presence of these imperial apparatus in Ireland remained strong enough to quash open rebellion. By the Victorian era, British officials in London and Dublin viewed Ireland through imperial lenses, constructing an Irish policy that corresponded with their global strategy and maintenance of the Empire. British imperial calculations for governing Ireland obviously conflicted with Irish nationalists’ aspirations.13 Although formally incorporated into unified state since 1800, there was persistent British tendency throughout the 19th century to regard the Irish as a distinctive, subjugated people, and not a co-equal community that was integrated fully within the Empire. While England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were bound together by proximity, economic interdependence, a common language, and political centralization, “disunity and divergence” persisted throughout the 19th century and contributed to popular sense of national distinctiveness. England’s dominant position within the Union, and combined with sectarian differences and the landlord system, fueled a belief among the Irish that they were inferior partners in the political association and that Ireland had not been completely integrated into the United Kingdom but remained a colonial holding. After the trauma of the 1840s famine, Fenians emerged as a revolutionary force throughout the British Isles, shaped not only by their own historical experiences in Ireland but also influenced by the larger Atlantic and Continental revolutionary tradition.14 By the 19th century, Irish nationalism coalesced around ethnic and religious identities. The fusion of primordial Irish nationalism, with modernist civic nationalism encountered in the United States, produced a volatile reaction to what many Irish believed was an ancient injustice—that is, British colonialism in Ireland. This violent form of Irish nationalism even revealed differences within American society about the nature of political violence and the potency of ethnic nationalism within a multicultural society.15 Referred to simply as The Organization by nationalists, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB), later known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, originated in Dublin in 1858 as a secret oath-bound society dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland through physical force. In opposition to moderate nationalists who advocated constitutional methods to dissolve the Act of Union, the IRB, committed to an Irish separatist ideology, worked to start a national uprising in Ireland by fielding a regular military against the British. Fenianism rejected English constitutional politics because they believed the English political system corrupt and led to a “degradation of





national virility, strength and manhood” of the Irish people.16 Their violent brand of nationalism was the product of social dislocation felt by much of the peasantry and because the majority of Catholics in Ireland “felt excluded” from the state apparatus and political establishment. The persistent sense of segregation and the failures of constitutional agitation prompted Fenians to adopt a violent disposition, which for the most extremists included terrorism.17 Unlike earlier Irish nationalist movements that aspired to complete separation or greater autonomy through constitutional agitation, culture expressions, or strict Catholic identity, the IRB advanced their own version of Irish republicanism through physical force. Even the IRB’s nom de guerre was suggestive of a new militancy based on ancient injustices. The name “Fenian,” most frequently used by observers on both sides of the Atlantic, was a modern derivation of the Feonin Erin, pre-Christian Irish militants. Before the end of the 19th century, the term “Fenianism” had become synonymous with all Irish nationalists, regardless of their method of agitation. British authorities and the English press used the term “Fenianism” in a ubiquitous fashion to lump all nationalists together despite very real differences and became a propaganda tool by the Tories and Irish Party to tarnish the image of Irish republicans and to marginalize the IRB as a criminal enterprise. Fenians were not an anomalous minority among an otherwise loyal Irish peasantry, and while not all Irish nationalists embraced Fenian militancy, aspects of Fenian ideology permeated Irish society. Fenian conceptions of separatism, embedded in a unique Celtic identity, repudiated the legitimacy of British authority in Ireland based on cultural nationalism and economic self-reliance, formed an important part of the political culture of Ireland and nationalists’ reactions to British imperial policies.18 Fenians were also part of a larger transnational movement of ideas. Not only did Fenians contribute to an Irish-American nationalist identity in the post-Civil War years, American Fenians assisted in constructing the image of a future Irish state.19 Transatlantic Fenianism, designed to achieve an independent Irish Republic, originated in earnest after the Irish famine and the failure of the 1848 Young Ireland insurrection, but its employment of organized terrorism only emerged after the American Civil War. Since the end of the 18th century, and the expansion of classical republicanism and civic humanism through Europe intellectual circles, the Irish people, building upon an earlier awareness of their own unique ethnic identity, exhibited modern nationalist tendencies based on popular sovereignty and rejection of foreign (English) interference in Irish affairs. Irish nationalism converged in the mid-19th century from many currents, including Catholic identity, Enlightenment rationalism, cultural romanticism, historical sentimentalism, and “celebration of uncompromising struggle,” which found release through mass-movements, grassroots political activism, and cultural and literary expressions. This movement was both inclusive of the



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whole Celt community and exclusive of the foreigner, specifically AngloSaxons. The devastation resulting from the Famine (1845–1848), further internationalized Irish nationalism. The emigration of an estimated two million Irish to North America produced a “large and angry transatlantic Irish nationalism and provided the basis for a lastingly rage-filled revanchism” that directed hostility toward the British government and the Anglo-Irish landowners.20 Whereas before the 1850s nationalists in Ireland committed to political revolution debated between violent and non-violent tactics, by the 1860s Fenians, influenced by their combat experiences in the United States and their immersion into American republican politics, were more concerned about conventional and non-conventional violence. In response to the British determination to preserve the Empire, some Irish extremists embraced forms of violence that manifested modern forms of political resistance, a complex expression of nationalist-separatist anticolonial terrorism. In their resistance to British imperial rule and military occupation, Fenians moved beyond the historical national borders of Ireland and crossed over the boundaries of the British Empire, and embraced the diasporic experience in American, which included a commitment to republicanism and a violent political culture.21 The IRB’s North American counterpart, the Fenian Brotherhood (FB), structured a network of clubs, known as “circles,” to provide their compatriots throughout the United Kingdom with the necessary sinews of war, access to arms, money, and combat trained soldiers. The militant milieu of the American Civil War helped popularize Fenianism in the United States. By the time of Reconstruction, IRB membership in the United Kingdom and the United States exceeded 10,000, many of whom acquired valuable military training and combat experience in both the Union and Confederate armies. The more radical American Fenians would modify their guerrilla training into a strategy of terrorism against the United Kingdom. Some historians have insisted that the only “real link” between the IRB and the FB was financial, but this misses the point of the larger contribution of American Fenians’ martial ideology, a byproduct of their military training during the Civil War, to the Irish nationalist movement and fails to appreciate the significance of Fenian terrorism in the Atlantic community. From the beginning of their structural organization in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood and its successors always sought to control Irish– American opinion and at times played a pivotal role in American national political discourse.22 American Fenians often thought they were better positioned than their compatriots in Ireland to command and manage the nationalist movement against the British Empire and at times there were contentious debates and conflicting goals between the IRB in the United Kingdom and the FB in the United States. The use of terrorism against this British Empire was a direct result of conditions in America and featured prominently in American conceptualizations of transnational terrorism a legacy.





Until recently students of the IRB and the FB have been largely silent about the subject of Fenian terrorism. Scholars have carefully plotted the social origins and ideological motives of Fenians, but have rarely broached the subject of terrorism. What discussion there has been has usually minimized the importance of methods of political violence used by Fenians or simply ignored the coverage given to it by the Atlantic community.23 Those who have focused on the exceptional nature of Irish nationalist violence still consider Fenians a “pre-terrorist organization” because of their commitment to an ancient idealized communal social order and their reluctance to specifically target non-combatant civilians. By situating Fenianism in a broader social moment dominated by the alignment of the Catholic leaders with the agrarian reform movement, one historian dismisses the Fenian assassin as “an adequate symbol” of the era. This approach does not adequately account for the deliberate transition that took place among Fenians, neither does it adequately or accurately reflect the changes in strategy that emerged by the mid-1860s. Offering a comparative study between Fenians and latter republican extremists, several Irish scholars have acquitted Fenians of terrorism.24 Yet this assessment is hardly universally shared. Over two and half decades ago, challenging the widespread assumption of an orderly Victorian society, historian Donald C. Richter offered some insight to the presence of extraordinary forms of Fenian violence, identifying a distinctive culture of domestic political violence. Titling an early chapter of his study “Fenian Terrorism in England,” Richter argued that the failure of traditional warfare prompted Fenians to adopt terrorist activities.25 More recently, Brian Jenkins’s twovolume study of Irish Fenianism provides a much needed corrective to the absence of serious study of Fenian political violence; in particular the second installment, a splendid narrative that attests to his productive career studying Fenians, not only situates their activities within the contours of insurgent terrorism but shows how the British prioritized Fenian terrorism as a central component of their imperial security and recognized Fenian terrorism as a profound challenge to liberal, democratic states. While he offers some account of its transatlantic character, Jenkins limits his perspective to the United Kingdom, paying little consideration to the broader Atlantic community.26 Studies that examine Irish nationalism in an American context have offered some tantalizing clues to how Americans conceptualized Irish terrorism but typically ignored the serious and sustained attention given to it or minimized its relevancy in the Atlantic community.27 Fenians on both sides of the Atlantic engaged in a lively debate on the acceptable and appropriate methods of war. It is clear from the evidence that these radical Fenians carefully calculated their decision to strategically alter from a popular national uprising to small-scale, asymmetrical operations. Fenians were acutely aware of the impressions their violent activities produced. While Irish nationalists themselves hardly described their activities as



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“terrorism” or referred to themselves as “terrorists,” and the Atlantic AngloSaxon community only used the expressions sporadically, even cautiously, because it was a word still widely used for state actions, contemporaries clearly identified certain types of Fenian violence as distinguishable from more traditional, acceptable modes of resistance. Those observing Fenian violence noted that certain exceptional incidents were specifically designed to produce panic among the civilian population and to terrorize the British into granting concessions for the Irish. Much attention has focused on British reactions to Fenians as well as the presence of Fenians in America, but what historians have neglected to consider carefully is how Fenian terrorism operated in the Atlantic context and how the Anglo-Saxon community reacted to this modern expression of political violence. Irish political violence exposed real vulnerabilities of the British Empire and provided Americans a sense of the potential threats to their own images of civilization. The Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community neither ignored nor casually dismissed Irish political violence as a momentary expression. Fenian terrorism was part of a larger Atlantic realignment that was contributing to the reconfiguration of Anglo-American relations in the 19th century.

The Fenian terrorist approach The use of extraordinary violence was contentious among the Fenians themselves and remained one of the most divisive issues among Irish nationalists through the end of the Anglo-Irish War of the 1920s. British propaganda notwithstanding, Fenianism was not synonymous with terrorism. While it is certainly true that not all Fenians were terrorists, indeed some Fenians were some of the most vocal critics of terrorism, it is equally undeniable that some were advocates and practitioners of terrorism. Given the choice, most nationalists, especially those hardened by combat experiences in the Union and Confederate armies, preferred heroic, honorable warfare to secure an independent republic. It was an article of faith among most Fenians that the only way to establish a credible nation-state was by fielding a regular military force and defeating the British in open battle. When James Stephens founded the IRB as an egalitarian, fraternal organization dedicated to Irish republicanism, he envisioned a military strategy based on an armed citizenry that would overthrow English rule through a well-coordinated, general national uprising.28 Early Fenian literature reinforced the goal of achieving Irish independence through legitimate, honorable methods of war, strategies designed to unify the Irish people. Some of the most ardent Fenians took great offence at being labeled by the English press perpetrators of “indiscriminate massacre and assassination” or having the “character of socialism.” George Francis Train, an Irish-American shipping magnate, social reformer, and supposedly





the inspiration for Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, emphasized the noble, chivalric qualities of the Irish. Often ridiculed in public for his zealotry and personal eccentricities, Train drew the cheers of thousands of Irish-Americans in attendance at a nationalist rally when he proudly proclaimed the “Irish are not assassins.” In the wake of the failed Fenian Rising in Ireland during March 1867, the influential weekly The Irish-American praised the rebels for their honorable conduct, especially the “absence of private outrages” and for comporting themselves in a manner contrary to British accusations of an innate Celtic “desire for riot and plunder.” In an impassioned address at his 21 June 1867 sentencing for treasonous activities, the Irish-American Stephen Joseph Meany, a senator in the O’Mahony wing of the FB and later active in the Clan-na-Gael and the American Land League, categorically repudiated efforts by Crown prosecutors to equate Fenianism with the terrorism of Robespierre. Fenians were simply nationalists, and even when their efforts failed, Meany testified they did not “degenerate into the attributes of the assassin” as so often depicted by the British government and press.29 In the face of overwhelming, seemingly insurmountable odds in their conflict against the British Empire, the attitude among some Irish nationalists changed. Historically, the Irish nationalists’ record of meeting the British in open battle had been abysmal. But the popular perception of oppression at the hands of the English precluded any possibility of a non-violent Irish revolution. Even some of the most prominent Fenians, disgruntled by the apparent futility of earlier attacks, tolerated the use of terrorism. Writing on the eve of the February 1867 Chester Castle raid, a Fenian attempt to initiate an insurgency in England, John Mitchel expressed the dismay of many at the failures of conventional warfare. Mitchel, long-time nationalist and a prominent voice among Irish-Americans, who earlier in his career had advocated passive resistance to British rule, concluded that while England was at peace with the United States and France, “all invasions and insurrections will be in vain.” He admitted that he “did not stand out for ‘civilized warfare’ ” and professed that the “Irish have the clear right to strike at England anywhere or anyhow, in Canada, in Ireland, in London, by steel or gunpowder or firewood.” Even though he advocated the right of the Irish to wage any type of war against the English, he lamented the futility of conventional warfare and rebellions, despaired at the failure of transatlantic funding and believed that those who undertook “any such warfare at present, whether civilized or uncivilized, must perish, and perish in vain.”30 The IRB’s circle cellular structure was originally established for rapid military response throughout Ireland in the event of a national uprising without jeopardizing the entire organization. Circles consisted of small groups of men led by an officer, which for operational secrecy had little knowledge of or tactical coordination with other IRB members. Over time as members of the IRB and Fenian Brotherhood became more radicalized, adopting



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extremist approaches, some circles evolved into small, semi-autonomous terrorist factions that mirrored modern terrorist cells.31 Even as Irish militants continued preparing for a national uprising and were trained in conventional warfare, by late 1865 reports from British officials stationed in North America increasingly surfaced that assassination teams had formed in the United States and were planning to launch a campaign against the queen and other law enforcement officials.32 This transition from traditional revolutionary activities to terrorist operations was immediately recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the New York Times, this new Fenian strategy suggested a desperation among nationalists that would ultimately doom the movement to failure. A Fenian meeting in New York in October 1866 convened to consider the conditions of imprisoned nationalists concluded with a unanimous resolution pledging to “revenge the outrage in the blood of the British oligarchy.” Other examples of Fenian violence touched American citizens directly. In an attempt to lessen the capital sentences of Fenians imprisoned in Canada for the Fenian raids in summer 1866, Irish-Americans vandalized an Episcopal Church in Brantford, Ontario, and kidnapped a witness in Buffalo, New York, caging him in a pigsty.33 The Philadelphia consulate, reporting the heightened nationalist activities in the United States, immediately believed that a recent explosion in English collieries was the work of Fenians, although British authorities concluded there was no connection and the explosions were accidental. According to historian Brian Jenkins, the panic produced from these and similar industrial accidents attested to the capability of Fenians to unnerve the British public.34 However unrealistic the New York Times considered the new Fenian strategy, British authorities and English commentators took these new Fenian threats quite seriously, beginning to construct a language to confront the new challenge. Even before IRB militants unleashed their first offensive against the British Empire some were already identifying terroristic temperament among Fenians. Goldwin Smith, the highly esteemed English historian and liberal social critic, and later a renowned professor at Cornell University in New York, identified traces of unconventionality in Fenianism years before the widespread fear of nationalist violence gripped English society. In a lecture given to the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society in June 1861, subsequently published in his book Irish History and Irish Character, Smith compared Fenianism to the “terrorism of the [French] Jacobins.”35 The reference to the French Revolution is important. It was not simply that the English recognized that Fenians had strategically embraced unconventionality, but the comparison evoked British conservative fears of revolutionary changes. Beginning with Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), the British establishment constructed a language that portrayed revolutionaries, in the words of one historian, “as enemies of humanity—inhuman brutes who abandoned reason and politics in favor of





destruction and terror.” Ironically, it was the Irishman Burke, who established the intellectual foundations among the British that terrorism was born of political extremism and British conservatives often worked to disarm their opponents by “allegations of terrorism” to silence “politically inconvenient dissent.”36 Thus, this allusion to the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, and the many more that occurred during the experience with nationalist and agrarian terrorism, was not complimentary, but calculated to discredit the Irish and stigmatize Fenian behavior. By the end of 1865, British officials in American cities were documenting tangible examples of Fenian terrorist activities. The consul in Philadelphia transmitted to the Foreign Office an informant’s report that a delegation from London had arrived in America to acquire permission from FB leaders in the United States to kidnap members of the British government and hold them hostage until exchanged for Fenians being held in prison. In the run-up to the 1866 Canadian raids, when American Fenians hoped to free Canada from British imperial rule and thereby diminish British power and spark a nationalist revolution in Ireland, the consul at New York City, emphasizing the gravely dangerous character of the conspiracy, presented more evidence that Fenians planned to seize hostages as political leverage to secure the release of Irish prisoners.37 Fenian agents in the United States threatened Crown officers stationed in America. Amid repeated threats to diplomatic personnel, the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Clarendon, cautioned the Crown Minister at Washington, DC, Frederick Bruce, against walking “home at night unarmed or alone.”38 By late 1866 rumors of an Irish rebellion gripped English society, prompting some to carefully evaluate the tactics adopted by Fenians. The London weekly The Spectator, a leading voice for Anglo-Saxon transatlantic cooperation, believed that Fenians now fully endorsed agrarian methods of resistance, including indiscriminate murder and assault of landlords, their agents or families, and private property destruction. English journals routinely pointed out that no conventional Fenian army could feasibly challenge the British, as Crown forces would quickly crush a national uprising. But the new and even greater fear was the spread of a robust, violent nationalism among the Irish peasantry, a product of the fusion of traditional agrarian grievances with the modern republicanism of Fenians committed to unconventional forms of warfare. This new, unrestrained violence posed a threat not just against British rule in Ireland but also to English institutions and Anglo-Saxon values. For the London Review, the desperation and utter hopelessness expressed by the New York Times was actually the most disturbing feature of Fenianism—it was the “very insanity of Fenianism that makes it truly dangerous,” and among landlords, agents, artisans, shopkeepers, and peasants in Ireland there was an air of “panic or undefined expectancy” that was oppressive. Even though Fenians had failed to foment a national uprising, their persistent threats and the climate of aggression had “all but



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paralyzed” normal social life in Ireland. Even these pro-imperial journals, The Spectator and London Review, acknowledged that it was British governance of Ireland that contributed to the presence of Fenians in Ireland and their terrorist behavior. While acknowledging that it was Fenians who ultimately made life unbearable for most of the peasantry, these journals held the British government responsible for the environment that allowed terrorism to flourish, not only for its failure to resolve the contentious land question, but also for not completely eradicating Celt nationalism in Ireland. Despite the peasantry panic in Ireland and the ubiquitous threat against the landlord class, the London Review cautioned against an excessive response by the government. It worried that the extra-constitutional measures to suppress violent nationalism that had been in place since 1865, when the British first clamped down on Fenian activities in Ireland, including disbanding assemblies, closing nationalist publications, and arresting Fenian leaders, might introduce a new brand of Fenian “terror.” It hoped the Gladstone Ministry would ignore the calls for a hard-line approach, and adhere to the constitutional and legal process to quell Fenianism.39 From the British perspective, one of the most contentious issues about Irish nationalism in the 1860s was its transatlantic character. It was the “Transatlantic Erin,” according to the English essayist and social critic J. Herbert Stack, especially those trained in the “rough warfare” of the American Civil War, who formulated the revolutionary violence and had assumed leadership of the organization.40 Particularly troublesome were reports from British diplomatic officials of a scheme hatched in New York to assault Dublin Castle, the residence and administrative offices of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, using “liquid fire” in order to kidnap the Irish Viceroy and other senior officials and to execute the junior officers. The British Consul in New York City reported that several Fenian rallies included discussions among members who had contemplated setting London afire, assaulting prisons confining Fenians, and plundering local banks in order to “strike at the heart of the enemy.” Since the founding of the FB in the United States, British authorities worried that Fenians might exploit AngloAmerican difficulties to instigate a war between the two Atlantic powers. With the likelihood of war between the United States and the United Kingdom removed at the end of the American Civil War, topping the list of British frustrations was a perception of American indifference, if not open tolerance of Fenian organizing, funding and training in the United States for hostilities against the British Empire. On more than one occasion the British complained to the Johnson Administration that Fenian operations violated American neutrality laws, because Fenians were organizing and waging war on a friendly power originating from US jurisdiction. The British press echoed the Ministry’s complaints, if with less diplomatic discretion.41 The unwillingness of American politicians and the inability of Federal law enforcement authorities to intercede in Fenian activities on behalf of the





British, and the apparent futility of further complaints, eventually compelled the Crown to shift tactics. Initially, the British hoped to rely on American cooperation to isolate Fenians and to diminish their financial and political support from America. Since they believed they could not reliably depend on American assistance, the British made an active intelligence operation a crucial element to their counterinsurgency, counterterrorist strategy. Because no coordinated secret service or intelligence apparatus monitored transatlantic Fenianism or tracked the movement of agents, British diplomats in Washington, DC, and New York City, led by Minister Sir Frederick Bruce, with the assistance of agents from the Royal Irish Constabulary, organized an active intelligence system to document and scrutinize Fenian activities in North America. Reluctant to share their intelligence with American officials for fear of Fenian infiltrations, British officials in America provided their superiors in London a wealth of information. Eventually the British provided the most damning evidence to the Americans unofficially, so as not to embarrass the Johnson Administration publically, but to ensure that the Ministry’s dissatisfaction with Americans’ indifference were clearly communicated.42 From English conservatives there were immediately calls for greater repression against Fenians. Regardless of the legitimacy of Fenian grievances, English social reformer and critic J. Herbert Stack maintained that the presence of assassins and the willingness of the Irish population to protect terrorists must be dealt with “sharply, sternly, and by the iron hand of military power.”43 In response to mounting evidence from America that Fenians were planning another uprising in 1867, the British government augmented its land and naval forces around Ireland, suppressed nationalist publications, suspended habeas corpus in disaffected counties, and initiated a new round of arrests of Fenian leaders, including a number of prominent Irish-American nationalists. Because many of those imprisoned for alleged complicity in Fenian activities in the United Kingdom and Canada claimed American citizenship they used their status and the alleged violation of their American rights to ignite a firestorm in Congress and the American press. Nationalists worked to pressure Congress, which was influenced by the Irish vote during Reconstruction, and attempted to inflame Anglophobic sentiments in the public.44 The incarceration of Fenians was tied directly to their adoption of terrorism. Beginning in 1865, imprisonment of Fenians became for the British a war by other means against the nationalist movement. This policy of separation and confinement epitomized for nationalists the oppressiveness of the British Empire. Even more, imprisonment of nationalists convinced some Fenian leaders that Britain’s ability to deprive the Irish of soldiers contributed to the necessity of an unconventional strategy. Finally, British treatment of Fenian detainees also accorded ample justification for their compatriots adopting unconventional warfare.45 Some of the more fanatical and daring Fenians, such as John Devoy, William Mackey



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Lomasney, and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, each active to varying degrees in the 1880s dynamite campaigns in England, embraced terrorism as a result of their prison experiences. Dublin Castle officials initially rejected the release of one notorious Fenian, Thomas Hynes, because they believed he was the “ringleader of a gang of miscreants organized for the purpose of assassination,” but under intense pressure from American officials eventually allowed his discharge.46 Detained American citizens frequently complained to American politicians, diplomats, and consular agents about their imprisonment and treatment. The US Congress, reacting to petitions by Americans supporting Irish independence, pressured the Johnson Administration to obtain their release and extend recognition of belligerency to the IRB in Ireland. In the Congressional debate about the condition of imprisoned Irish-Americans, Ohio Republican Robert C. Schenck called for their immediate release and praised the efforts of nationalists in their “holy struggles for freedom.”47 The State Department under William Seward, however, remained in the words of one historian “cautious and conciliatory,” refusing to endorse Fenian activities or defend Fenian violations of British domestic law.48 Yet, the severity of Britain’s repression did not go unnoticed by Americans and some worried that British policy resembled the Jacobin Reign of Terror. In the wake of the sweeping arrests, imprisonment, and suspension of habeas corpus, the American Consul in Dublin, William West, reported to the State Department that Crown officials were “inflicting the most severest [sic] punishment” on arrested Fenians so as to “strike terror in to the hearts of the entire body of conspirators” who, he believed, were supported by a large portion of Catholic Irish. Besides the erosion of liberal governance, several American officials in the United Kingdom, including the Minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, and the Belfast consular official, John Young, worried that excessive British repression, instead of diminishing or hopefully eliminating nationalist activities, would only fuel Fenian fury.49 This shift in Fenian strategy did not escape the notice of Americans. While official Washington was reluctant to discuss Fenian activities for fear of political backlash from the Irish vote, State Department officials residing in the United Kingdom were less constrained, producing a steady stream of correspondence on events in Ireland, being especially observant of Fenian tactics. Consular agents in Dublin and Cork, more immune to political pressure from Irish-American nationalists in the United States, were more willing to accept British rationalizations for severe repression and on occasion even praised the IRC’s treatment of Fenian insurgents.50 On both sides of the Atlantic reports surfaced that large caches of rifles were hidden in private residences, suggesting that Fenians were preparing for hostilities. More alarming was intelligence that Fenians had acquired stockpiles of “Greek fire” to destroy private and public property in England. Gaelic resolve, combined with the large British military presence on the island, which by the end of 1866 numbered over 40,000, suggested to





the American Consul in Belfast, G.H. Heap, the beginning of an “intestine war unsurpassed in savage cruelty.” American government officials and editorials in major American publications raised fears that an Irish insurgency coupled with Britain’s resultant retaliation might result in a massacre comparable to recent colonial insurgencies by the Sepoys in India or by the black indigenous residents at Morant Bay, Jamaica.51 From the first rumors of another nationalist rebellion in late 1866, American attitudes toward Fenian violence at times mirrored those of the British. The influential American journal The Nation, not so much a supporter of Irish nationalism as a critic of British imperialism, in 1866 reviled the tactics employed by Fenians. While The Nation acknowledged that the Irish “may have ‘the holiest cause that tongue or sword of mortal ever lost or gain’,” it rebuked nationalists making preparations from the United States. If the Irish were allowed to continue, other nationalists emulating the Irish example would in effect convert America into “a pirates’ den.” When Representative Nathaniel Banks, a former Union general officer and leading supporter of the Irish, attempted to amend American neutrality laws to support and assist all peoples seeking national liberation, The Nation argued that this measure would encourage Fenians and other radial European nationalists to “organize piratical expeditions” from American jurisdiction for the “devastation of friendly territory and the robbery and murder of people who have never injured them.”52 Using the descriptor of piracy to inform readers of Fenian activities in America is telling, because throughout the experience of Irish terrorism in the Atlantic community, American commentators likened them to pirates, beyond the scope of civility, law and order. After the failed Fenian invasions of Canada in 1866, the American government followed the British example of greater activism in intelligence gathering, employing the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to track and monitor Fenian activities.53 An American consular official at Cork, former Union Naval Officer, Captain Edwin G. Eastman, correctly opined that Fenians were utterly incapable of fielding a uniformed army and that an open rebellion would be disastrous to the nationalist organization. He reminded Secretary of State Seward that while a dedication to honorable war pervaded the Fenian creed, ideological convictions did not necessarily translate into military success and that any Fenian uprising could “only succeed in murdering a few of the country gentry” but would end in a “fearful retribution” by British troops. Once the March 1867 Rising commenced in Ireland, Eastman reported that after the initial confrontation “the insurgents had no regular engagement with the military” and within days of its collapse Eastman observed that Fenians were now “preparing for a guerrilla warfare.” Throughout rural Ireland, Fenians were stealing arms from landlords and assaulting undefended facilities, in particular private and commercial properties, in an effort to further wreck the island’s already precarious economy.54



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By the start of 1867, some in England naïvely believed that because the Fenian scares of 1866 had passed quietly, the new year promised a relaxation in Anglo-Irish tensions.55 Yet the failed invasions of Canada and the aborted 1867 March Rising in Ireland, which even the nationalist weekly The Irish-American called “a failure; and a disastrous one to all concerned,” prompted Fenian extremists to shift strategy to score a tactical success.56 Even as the March Rising was underway in Ireland, the British Consul in Mobile, Alabama, reported to the Foreign Office that Fenians were planning to emulate the C.S.S. Alabama affair of the Civil War by deliberately targeting British commerce in the Atlantic. British intelligence by late 1866 believed, based on informants in North America, that even an uprising in Ireland would include non-conventional acts of war. Pierrepont Edwards, the British vice-consul at New York, warned of Fenian plans to hold the Irish Lord Lieutenant and other British officials hostage, and to execute Irish civilians complicit with Dublin Castle rule.57 Aware that British security measures had centered on Ireland, the suspension of habeas corpus being renewed in fall 1866 (and continuing in effect until March 1869), some particularly aggressive Fenians sought to exploit the English public’s sense of security by attacking assailable targets inside of Great Britain. The February 1867 raid on Chester Castle, just outside Liverpool, offered a first glimpse of the new direction of Fenians. Although spoiled by an informer, the plan was not just a isolated coup against the castle armory but included mobilizing nearly 1000 insurgents across northern England who were part of scheme to acquire weapons and initiate, in the words of long-time Irish police detective H.B.C. Pollard “an outrage campaign in all the big cities of Britain, paying particular care to incite the mobs to looting and arson.”58 The size, complexity, and synchronization required for such an operation left it vulnerable to treachery and led ultimately to its failure, so in the months following the abortive Chester Castle raid Fenians selected British instillations they calculated susceptible to assault but that required less manpower and coordination, and were thus less liable to betrayal.59 One of the first incidents that entered public discussion as terroristic was the rescue of the imprisoned Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, the architect of the attack on Chester Castle, and Captain Timothy Deasy, while en route from court at Manchester in September 1867. Kelly had gained fame in Fenian and nationalist circle for the 1865 escape of IRB founder and President James Stephens from the Montjoy jail, who had been rounded up by the British during the first Fenian scare. Kelly orchestrated the rescue of Stephens, and in subsequent years prison rescues became both a tangible and a symbolic rejection of British dominance by nationalists, and in some cases assumed terroristic qualities. In the aftermath of the failed March Rising, 300 members of the IRB met at a secret convention in Manchester to sever ties with the feuding Fenian Brotherhood in America, which were irrevocably split





between the O’Mahony and Roberts/Senate wings over military operations in the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Kelly helped established a new organization, the Clan-na-Gael, becoming its first chief executive and succeeded Stephens as the Chief Organiser of the Irish Republic. While in England preparing operations, Kelly, who was a former Union army officer and recently appointed president of the IRB, and a strong proponent of terrorism, characterized the Anglo-Irish conflict as a “a war to the knife” but sent caustic pleas to nationalists in America to “only send us the knife.” British officials had been warned by informants that Kelly was a “more dangerous—because a less scrupulous—man” than Stephens, and learned he was preparing an assassination campaign if the planned uprising collapsed.60 Following the arrests of Kelly and Deasy on 11 September 1867 for loitering, their true identities were subsequently confirmed, the pair were charged with treason and remanded for trial. A week following the arrest approximately a dozen of Kelly’s compatriots brazenly assaulted the van conveying him to Manchester prison, securing his escape to New York City where, according the London Times, he was reconnoitering attacks against British transatlantic commercial shipping.61 The Manchester rescue contributed to an already hostile public discussion in England about the changing nature of Fenian violence, producing an array of responses. Despite ample warnings of a possible rescue attempt at Manchester, which went largely unheeded by British officials, the audacious operation resulted in the homicide of an unarmed police officer. The attack on the police transport and the killing, followed weeks later by the highly publicized assassination of an outspoken Irish anti-Fenian in the Holborn district of London, produced an “English panic” and swell of public outcry against Fenianism.62 Among the Anglo-Saxon press the Manchester rescue epitomized a violent Gaelic temper. Writers for the London Review and The Economist dismissed any political motivation or merit in the attack, but rather considered it simply as an isolated criminal incident. This attitude was quite common throughout the British establishment. There was a deliberate effort to distinguish between political and criminal offenses, thereby denying the Irish political legitimacy as they challenged some of the most cherished values of the British Empire, including constitutionalism, representative governance, the rule of law, and Christian restraint.63 Others in England drew an entirely different lesson from the Manchester operation, noting that such methods were quite exceptional and that these type of attacks offered Fenians new potential to strike a the British. The apparent penetration of English society and unconventionality of attack led several prominent London journals to conclude that the greater danger to the Empire was not a revolution in Ireland but according to the conservative Pall Mall Gazette the presence of “murderers and incendiaries dispersed” throughout England determined to “terroriz[e] society and the Government” in order “to extort . . . some degree of justice to Ireland.” Since the raid on Chester Castle, the Tory London Review had warned its readers



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that the present nationalist threat represented an innovative strategy. No longer did Fenians measure military success by battlefield victories. Instead of a conventional military strategy, Fenians had adopted a guerrilla strategy that defined victory through protracted attrition of English political support for garrisoning Ireland. Equally problematic was that the British army had no adequate response to the Fenian stratagem. Trained for conventional warfare, Crown forces were not readily experienced with or prepared for guerrilla insurgency. Instead of engaging uniformed enemy, British soldiers according to the Review “were fighting with shadows—apparitions which are here one moment and are gone the next.” The Pall Mall Gazette was more definitive, pointing out that Fenians had adopted a “system of assassination and terrorism” directed against the English people. More importantly, as the Gazette admonished, loyal Crown subjects should avoid the temptation of being “shaken out of our manhood” by allowing them to alter English society or the British commitment to constitutionalism.64 Writers for the popular conservative journal The Spectator suggested that the incident was neither purely a rescue operation nor a random, isolated attack, but rather part of a broader new Fenian stratagem. The audacity, coordination, and success of the rescue prompted The Spectator to speculate that there were more Fenians in England than in Ireland and that English domestic institutions were perilously vulnerable. Its audacity and lethality indicated a “retributive” quality based upon ancient historical grievances and contemporary “national spite.” While the incident had not succeeded in intimidating the British, it was conceivable that if more Fenians in England were dedicated to conducting murderous campaigns it “would become a most unpleasant form of guerrilla war upon [English] society.” Although The Spectator did not believe most Fenians were “as reckless and mad as that” it did identify unacceptable qualities in their new strategy; the “special feature of the torment they inflict,—its perfectly arbitrary and incalculable character.” The Spectator, while demanding justice and severity for those who committed terrorism, cautioned the public to consider the perpetrators as political offenders, not mere ordinary criminals, and to recognize that overreaction due to public outcry would only exacerbate Fenianism.65 These conservative condemnations of the new Fenian strategy encouraged a strong, but measured response by the government. While eliminating the presence of extremists, even conservatives feared inciting more Fenian violence. In response to this mounting public pressure for greater internal security British authorities immediately rounded up 28 Fenian leaders, including a number of Irish-Americans, throughout the United Kingdom for alleged complicity in the Manchester rescue. An all-English jury convicted five on charges of homicide, including the Irish-American Civil War veteran Captain Edward O’Meagher Condon, and eventually the Crown executed three Irishmen, who were immediately mythologized in Irish history as the Manchester Martyrs.66





Opinions on the incident across the Atlantic varied, reflecting the diversified American political culture. Even among Irish-Americans the Manchester rescue produced divergent reactions, indicative of its novelty and the uncertainty some had toward unconventional violence. John Mitchel’s New York weekly Irish Citizen, which regretted the trend of nationalist violence that defied Fenian ideals based on honorable, open warfare, tended to minimize the importance of the Manchester rescue. Furthermore, Mitchel attributed the panic in English society not to Fenian terrorism, but believed that it was manufactured by the reactionary, conservative press in England and the British law enforcement establishment as simply another way to justify greater repression against the Irish. According to its editorial column, true nationalists did “not want to frighten England—we want to hurt her.” While Mitchel did not show a particular enthusiasm for terrorism, throughout its coverage of the incident the Irish Citizen derided the alarm that swept over the English governing class and predicted that the English people’s reaction might embolden Fenians to conduct similar attacks.67 The moderate nationalist journal The Irish-American, the unofficial voice of respectable Irish-American interests, which showed no particular fondness for Kelly or other terrorists, regretted that so many Irish were being arrested on his behalf. But it also noted that the operation was certainly a success—not only because it reignited Fenian excitement in Ireland after the disastrous March Rising, but also because of the level of alarm and panic it produced among the English. In particular, according to the weekly’s Dublin correspondent, the operation suggested that a conspiracy amongst the English was a powerful weapon and that the heart of the British Empire was not “exempt from the terrors of the Fenians.” For weeks The Irish-American reported on the alarm convulsing English society as a result of the Manchester rescue and emphasized the value of warring against the British Empire not just in Ireland but “against English society where ever it is found.”68 Most frequently described as a “riot” or “outrage,” the Manchester rescue achieved considerable attention among the mainstream press because of the panic it produced among the English public. Those voices representing Anglo-Saxon culture often echoed British attitudes that recoiled at such unorthodox violence within a society dedicated to constitutional, representative government and which cherished and prioritized the rule of law.69 When Fenians and nationalist supporters in New York City organized a funeral procession for the Manchester martyrs, the New York Observer’s editors dismayed that city officials and prominent New Yorkers attended it. Their attendance, according to the New York Observer, suggested approbation, and so it took pains to ensure its readers that the city’s more respectable citizens, those who were “friends of law and order everywhere,” disapproved the murder of law enforcement officers.70 Yet American attitudes were hardly harmonious, reflecting the novelty of the challenge. Writing during the first months of the 1865–1866 Fenian



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scare the London correspondent to the New York Times detailed the troubles in Ireland and the reaction of the British, especially the deployment of a large contingent of Crown forces and the possibility of abuses reminiscent of the recent Jamaican racially motivated massacres at Morat Bay. While critical of the nationalists’ behavior, especially attacks on the police, the correspondent noted that the real threat in Ireland was the inability of the British policy to pacify the peasantry. He surmised it would take a strong, decisive leader in Parliament to rise above partisan politics to “introduce an entirely different policy from that of terrorism.” Believing that British terrorism and suppression against the peasantry had sparked Irish terrorism, he offered the American constitutional system as a better model for dealing with social conflict; instead of coercion and fear, he advocated “a policy of justice and generosity” toward the Irish as the most effective measure to terminate Fenian terrorism.71 Even unexpected voices empathized with the necessity for the Manchester assault. The American Congress in 1867 actively debated conditions in Ireland, and while considering the merits of extending belligerent status to the Irish and sympathy for Irish nationalists, some concentrated on the nature of Irish violence. Prior to the Manchester rescue, Democratic Representative Charles A. Eldredge from Wisconsin argued that Americans should not attempt to restrain or lecture Fenians for their methods or disparage any effort or discourage any enterprise which to them may betoken success. Any blow which the oppressed may aim at the oppressor to regain his rights and liberty has my heart’s best prayer for success.72 Writing from London, the US Minister to the United Kingdom, Charles Francis Adams, a critic of Fenianism who wholly condemned their recent operations, focused on the British reaction to the rescue, especially the treatment of those responsible for the murdered policeman. He conceded that British security measures had not substantially disrupted the militants, but were only inconveniencing the uninvolved masses. Furthermore, he specifically warned the British against executing those involved in the rescue as it might lead to a fresh round of Irish “violence and bloodshed” and further erosion of long-cherished English rights.73 Secretary of State William Seward, less favorably disposed toward the British during the tedious Alabama Claims negotiations, endorsed most of Adams’ conclusions but argued for clemency for those involved because of the “political character” of Fenian violence. He maintained that British repression would only exacerbate conditions and instructed Adams to remind the British that often “severity loses its restraining effect and terror lends strength to the revolutionists.” Even more problematic, according to the Secretary of State, writing in the immediate aftermath of a stunning Fenian terrorist incident, was his belief that British counterterrorist





measure were trampling the rights of American citizens travelling and residing in the United Kingdom. The abuses to American citizenship, combined with “some remembrance” that the British “favored the overthrow of the United States by illegitimate processes even at the cost of the perpetuation of human slavery,” had produced a stark reaction from across the country, it had “awaken a general feeling of resentment and deeply wounded our pride of sovereignty [sic]” and he predicted “that a restoration of cordial and friendly relations and sympathies between the two countries is impossible” until the British agreed to recognize the right of expatriation for Irish-American citizens.74 These warnings generally went unheeded and in November 1867 the British executed the Manchester Martyrs, setting the stage for the Fenians’ most spectacular attack to date.

Clerkenwell as terrorism During the afternoon hours of Friday, 13 December, in a rescue operation to free the Irish-American Fenian Ricard O’Sullivan Burke from the Clerkenwell House of Detention, operatives detonated a massive explosion that blasted a 64-foot hole in the prison’s stone wall. An Irish-American and former Union officer who had been a Fenian recruiter in the United States during the Civil War, Burke was involved in the Manchester rescue of Colonel Thomas Kelly and had been active in arms trafficking while in England, so his arrest on 20 November 1867 for treason-felony was a severe blow to Fenians. While unsuccessful in its primary objective, Burke was not in the designated spot to be rescued, the explosion devastated the working-class London neighborhood, destroying or severely damaging adjacent residential tenements and shops, killing over a dozen and critically injuring hundreds of bystanders.75 Early studies suggested that the prison rescues at Manchester and Clerkenwell created only temporary public sensations, having minimal effect on the political climate in Britain or on reform initiatives. Historians have tended to dismiss the Clerkenwell explosion as an act of terrorism, because the level of destruction and lethality were not planned and it was not the stated goal of the conspirators to terrorize the populace. Even more scrupulous studies, which have demonstrated that a general panic did ensue from the attack, conclude that the alarm was more incidental than deliberate, and that the perpetrators were not motivated by a political desire to influence British public opinion but were simply perpetrating a prison rescue.76 This attitude seems speculative at best, given the dearth of evidence detailing the Fenian motivation, but more importantly it fails to consider fully the greater implications of Clerkenwell, not only among Fenians themselves but also within the larger Atlantic community. American commentators in the United States and abroad were especially concerned by the explosion and like their British contemporaries considered it terroristic not only in intent but in consequence. Historian Brian Jenkins’ recent study of the Fenian



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problem and British liberalism provides compelling evidence demonstrating that the explosion was an act of political violence and that a palpable terror reverberated throughout England.77 The English response to Clerkenwell clearly indicates its terroristic qualities in a number of ways. British reactions to public disorder and political violence in Ireland during the 19th century reflected a persistent legacy of vacillation among Liberals both in and out of government. There was also a tradition of conflict between officials in London and those in Ireland on how to minimize nationalist activities. The reaction in London to the Clerkenwell explosion suggested a hardening English attitude toward Irish nationalism. The Clerkenwell explosion provided further momentum to shift greater control of security and law enforcement in Ireland to Whitehall.78 The blast sent a shock of horror through London and beyond, and for weeks the Fenian “reign of terror” consumed British public discourse. Tactically, the attack was noted for its unprecedented audacity, and morally, for its total disregard for the defenseless civilian population that resided in the impoverished Clerkenwell district. English journals of all stripes lambasted the Fenians, called them cowards, and denied they were honorable soldiers fighting a legitimate war. A consensus across partisan lines viewed them as threats to civilization and “enemies of humanity.”79 A number of commentators agreed with London’s The Daily Telegraph that the Fenian strategy had produced among English subjects a “feeling of insecurity out of all proportion to their numbers.” Recognizing the explosions’ public impact, the Telegraph scrutinized the method of the assault. While Irish nationalist apologists explained the incident as a miscalculation, the rescuers had not anticipated the levels of destruction, most people sympathetic with the English cared little about intent. There was a “wide gulf” between insurgents who avoid civilian casualties and destruction of private property and Fenians who “now ‘make war’ on us [British] as we never make war on any foe.” While Fenians were “not even entitled to the appellation of rebels,” the Telegraph feared that in their “main strength” was the criminally conspiratorial organization and the capricious nature of the strikes; these qualities of Fenian terrorists made them “more difficult to uncover and stop than organized rebellions.”80 The use of high explosives indicated a reckless, callous indifference to defenseless civilians that convinced some Britons that the Irish had abnegated their right to self-government. Public discourse framed the explosion within Victorian morality and Anglo-Saxon ideals of civilization. The blatant abuse of such dangerous explosives by national extremists in the commission of a felony, resulting in such a heinous crime, constituted not simply murder, but assassination. The unauthorized use of explosives against the state by revolutionary groups violated Victorian sensibilities. Anglo-Saxons found this an unacceptable stratagem of war, “nothing but mere savagery” and a reaffirmation of Celtic barbarism.81 Author and social critic Cyrus





Redding was especially critical of Fenians’ use of violence against the defenseless populations. Attacks like those at Clerkenwell, according Redding smacked of “pseudo-patriotism,” undermined the legitimate and moderate efforts by nationalists, and discredited arguments for Irish independence.82 By characterizing the Clerkenewell explosions as a complete deviation from acceptable norms, the British sought to seize the initiative and control how the episode was discussed. Violence, especially such exceptional aggression, became a convenient referent for invoking a Celtic “otherness” that was distinctive from Anglo-Saxon culture, and bore more closely to Oriental cultures.83 The Economist compared Fenians to the Thuggee of India in the 1830s and 1840s, who organized their society not through constitutionalism and devotion to the rule of law, but through savage violence. It advocated a similar response in Ireland that the British had imposed in India, severe coercion. Even as they detailed the barbarous qualities of the Irish, British commentators took comfort that while terrorism had potential for great destruction, the more ignominious Irish violence got, the more the British people would rally in support of the government. Within days The Spectator announced that English unanimity and resolve were as strong as if the “nation is united as in a war,” and along with The London Review and The Economist argued that unlike previous minor Fenian outrages, Clerkenwell would embolden the “nerves of authority” to forcefully confront Fenian violence.84 With scores of Fenians still imprisoned, Prime Minister William Gladstone, whose Ministry ascended to office in late 1868, embraced the dual policy of coercion against Fenian extremism combined with a program of reform in Irish government and social integration. For Gladstone and other leading Liberals, as a political consideration, Irish home rule was not a quarrel at the periphery of the Empire, but struck at the very physical and ideological center of the England and was inexorably linked to the their “understanding of liberty and citizenship.” The Irish home rule question not only had practical implications for the Liberal party, which built its caucus base around an Irish policy, but for Gladstone it had even greater meaning. Irish home rule was a “crisis of public conscience,” transcending “sectional interests” and, ultimately, was fundamental to his conceptions of humanitarianism and liberal political rule.85 Long conscious of Irish distress, the famed Liberal politician became more studious and particularly sensitive to home rule, especially after the “bloodshed and ill-managed terrorist atrocities” following the 1867 Manchester and Clerkenwell attacks. Gladstone’s reform program included the disestablishment of the Irish Church, a new land bill, and, despite pressure from Parliament, his own government and the press, amnesty for imprisoned Fenians not complicit with either Manchester or Clerkenwell. Coupled with the Irish reform package, in response to public outcry Gladstone’s Ministry redeployed Royal Navy vessels off the Irish coast, deputized tens of thousands of special constables to protect



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public buildings and urban centers, and revamped their intelligence capabilities, leading to the creation within the Dublin Metropolitan Police of the Secret Service agency.86 During the Victorian era, the forces of domestic repression—the police, the military and the Home Office—were largely embryonic and inhibited by a tradition to constitutional liberties. The British relied more on public restraint than institutional controls to maintain public order.87 Months before Clerkenwell, the Derby Ministry had enlarged and tightened protection for Queen Victoria and her entourage but within days of the explosion the Cabinet agreed to increase her security detail. After the bombing, law enforcement reacted immediately and, as in Washington, DC, during the days following the Lincoln assassination, London became a garrison city with special precautions to identify possible Fenians. Within weeks scores of men were questioned and arrested, eventually leading to the trial of several and the execution of one of the defendants, under dubious testimony and evidence. Queen Victoria, frustrated that more had not met the full force of law and fearful that courts were not capable of confronting the threat of Fenian terrorism because of sympathetic juries, confided to Home Secretary Henry Bruce that “these Fenians should be lynch-lawed and on the spot.”88 While there was widespread support for the Ministry’s coercive measures, Gladstone’s reforms were interpreted by some within England, especially conservative Tories, as concessions to terrorism. In a lengthy criticism of the Prime Minister, historian J.A. Froude faulted the Gladstone Ministry for conceding too much to Fenians. An outspoken opponent to Irish nationalism, writing as the looming Irish-American dynamite war of the 1880s gripped London and English society, Froude argued that Gladstone’s public admissions that Parliamentary reforms for Ireland were a direct product of the Clerkenwell explosion and the other terrorist incidents simply encouraged more Fenian attacks and undermined imperial authority among the Irish. Not only had the Ministry’s reaction encouraged unrealistic expectations among Irish nationalists regarding future British policies toward Ireland, according to Froude, but government yielding to nationalist demands had “raised incendiaries and assassins to the rank of patriots” and bolstered those willing to resort to terrorist strikes.89 When a new brand of Irish nationalism emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, known as Sinn Fein, English writers returned to the Clerkenwell explosion, paying close attention to Gladstone’s reactive reform policies. One of the staunchest proponents of British liberalism, the scholar Goldwin Smith, who had been an early supporter of Church of Ireland disestablishment, criticized Gladstone for linking reform to terrorism. As a renewed separatist cultural nationalism permeated Irish society, Smith suggested that Gladstone’s coerced concessions had undermined British legitimacy in Ireland. Those on the front line fighting Fenianism, such as Dublin intelligence officer Robert Anderson, also sensed weakness from the





Gladstone response. Writing in 1906, Anderson condemned the Clerkenwell bombing as “egregiously foolish” for Irish nationalist, because it jeopardized desperately needed political and financial support, but he also criticized Gladstone’s 1869 election speeches at Midlothian and Southport because it conceded too much to the Irish and negated any political leverage the British might have expected. By admitting to an ancient British misrule in Ireland, acknowledging legitimate contemporary Irish grievances, and tying subsequent reforms to terrorist attacks like that at Clerkenwell, Anderson accused Gladstone of giving Fenians political credibility. Essentially, according to Anderson, Gladstone had admitted that terrorist attacks could positively affect British policy. Anderson surmised given the widespread panic within English society and Gladstone’s conciliatory attitude, although Fenians had tactically failed to secure the release of Ricard O’Sullivan Burke, strategically the operation was a success, and it encouraged later Irish nationalist terrorism.90 Across the intellectual divide, Marxist Karl Kautsky, who was supportive of land reform for Ireland, also admitted that Gladstone’s reforms were a direct consequence of the Clerkenwell bombing. Writing at the close of the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922), a period noted for intense terrorist activities throughout the Atlantic community, Kautsky noted that indeed the reform measures “were enough to force the terrorist into the background for a while” but that Gladstone and the British ultimately failed to provide enduring remedial solutions because they were motivated not by justice but rather goaded by terror.91 The fulmination over the explosion at the central London penitentiary went beyond the literal devastation to the prison wall and neighboring community; the legacy of Clerkenwell resonated over decades in English society and proved a seminal event in English constructions and reactions to Irish terrorism. From the beginning of the IRB English commentators identified various socialist-communist tendencies of Fenianism. Even Anglo-Irish nationalist sympathizers, such as landlord William J.O. Daunt, regretted the intimate connection between modern Irish nationalism and the ancient violent agrarian movement. Daunt believed that Fenians incorporated aspects of agrarian ideology and worked to find support among the peasantry. While radical peasants, many of whom supported socialist principles, might delight with attacks on the English, Daunt suggested that the convergence of nationalist and socialist ideals would ultimately undermine nationalists’ aspirations of greater independence and autonomy for Ireland.92 The English establishment in Ireland and Britain also increasingly identified extreme Fenians with the urban trade unionism that emerged in Great Britain in the 1850s, most especially their propensity to use terrorist violence. Fenianism seemed to share with both the rural and the urban forms of socialism, calling for redistribution of property and peasant or worker ownership, specifically it was the similarity in the methods of violence that drew comparison.93 Journalist



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J. Herbert Stack stated that “Fenianism is known to be Socialistic, to aim at immediate plunder.”94 As early as the 1867 March Rising, the Spectator speculated that Fenians did not yet enjoy the support of a majority of the Irish people, so increasingly nationalists were aligning with the socialist elements and identifying with the Irish agrarian tradition, which had aspired implementing revolutionary land redistribution through guerrilla warfare. To the Anglo-Saxon establishment, the Clerkenwell explosion demonstrated that Fenians were in league with “either Reds or Ultramontanes,” two very different groups but both of whom used unconventional forms of political violence. Fenianism was a rejection of Anglo-Saxon political culture, and it was apparent that Fenians had been submerged into a conspiratorial culture, that was very similar if not the identical that pervaded Continental Europe.95 Leading communists who sought revolution through the political process, including the movement’s intellectual founders Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, while sympathetic to the Irish cause they condemned the Clerkenwell bombing and sought to distance the theory of communism from the strategy of terrorism. Writing to Engels from London just hours after the bombing, Marx called it a “very stupid thing” and insisted that instead of strengthening the Irish cause it would only alienate a valuable ally to the Irish peasantry, the London working classes. Engels agreed with this assessment, asserting it was the work of a “few specialised fanatics” and not reflective of the legitimate grievances of the Irish peasantry. Karl Kautsky, a leading Marxist intellect and a vocal critic of terrorism and violent extremism, writing during the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922), believed that radicals had usurped legitimate Irish peasant grievances only after the failed nationalist uprising and the futility of conventional warfare.96 While commentators had for years identified socialist tendencies of Fenianism, increasingly they attributed the new mode of Fenian warfare to American influences. Engels and Kautsky deflected accusations that communist ideology inspired Fenian violence. They asserted that efforts to link Fenianism to communism were a design to discredit the International among the English working classes. Instead they indentified the violent strains of Fenianism with transatlantic republicanism, violent nationalism, and probably most important “American resources.”97 The usually sympathetic Cork landowner William Joseph O’Neill Daunt equated the new violent temper of the nationalists to the influences imbued from American republican ideology. Writing amidst the terrorist activities of 1867, Daunt considered American republicanism, the ideals of social and political equality and participatory government based on consent, ill-suited for Ireland. Exposure to American political institutions had radicalized Irish nationalists, who had now abandoned their traditional restraints and deference to the aristocratic class.98 Commentators from across the English political spectrum made causal links between the unacceptable levels of nationalist aggression and the





prevalence of violence in American culture. The unconstrained Fenian violence originated from those “transatlantic bandits” who had acquired a bloodlust during the American Civil War and had been schooled in the “street-rowdyism” of New York City politics. In particular, the London Daily Telegraph believed that Fenianism was “Irishism born again in America” and that nationalists had inherited “much new from its ‘new parentage’. ” The “Americanized Irishman,” unlike the Irish in Canada, Australia, and other parts of the United Kingdom, were imbued with the unique form of “American rowdyism”—invoking images of frontier Western disregard for law and order, where “revolvers and bowie-knives have always been used with a readiness unknown in the old country.” English commentators were rarely short on criticism of Fenians, identifying innate racial deficiencies among the Irish that made them especially susceptible to egregious foreign influences. Whereas Anglo-Saxons were industrious and law-abiding peoples in the United States and capable of responsible self-reliance and independence, the writer surmised that it was the “unlimited liberty in America” that has had such an “intoxicating effect on the lower orders of the Celts” leading to a violent disposition among the Irish. As a result of this unique transnational exchange, transatlantic Irish identity had mutated into a more aggressive, hostile agitation compared to the native revolutionary tradition in Ireland. Whereas Irish national identity had been motivated by resentment against English rule, Irish nationalism under the influence of American institutions included a “new hatred and contempt for princes, policemen, and priests.”99 Proponents of the transatlantic Anglo-Saxon community were particularly sensitive to these transnational exchanges. The English Episcopal clergyman M. Hobart Seymour, writing in the popular Contemporary Review, believed that Fenian violence resulted from the spread of American culture, which had “charms for a wild and reckless, a passionate and impulsive race” who were naturally inclined toward violence.100 Throughout the years of violent Fenianism, observers blamed the American influence for radicalizing Irish culture. One-time Irish nationalist journalist Richard Pigott, who later authored the forged documents designed to implicate Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Parnell in the 1882 Phoenix Park murders, had by the 1880s fallen out with Fenians and wrote a number of articles in an English conservative journal exposing the connection of the constitutional Irish Parliamentary Party to violent Fenianism. Pigott was especially attentive to the transatlantic nature of Fenian terrorism and especially its American connections, and writing in the Contemporary Review during the 1880s Dynamite War, he suggested that American Fenianism had not only politicized traditional home rule agrarian movement, but that since the failed 1867 March Rising it was solely because of the American influence that nationalists had adopted “dishonorable warfare” as its primary strategy.101 Clerkenwell further stoked disagreement among various Irish nationalist factions about the use of violence. Landowners such as William Joseph



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O’Neill Daunt, who supported disestablishment, genuine land reform, and greater political autonomy, greatly feared the social disorder and property destruction, but were also equally worried by the possibility of greater Crown repression. Within days of the blast, even committed separatists in the London Committee of the IRB disclaimed any knowledge or connection to the bombing. London Fenians further distanced themselves from extreme transatlantic nationalists, pledging to cooperate “for once” with British authorities to apprehend the culprits.102 Among American Fenians there was widespread criticism of such unconventional tactics. Long-time advocates of physical force, such as former IRB president James Stephens and the Fenian Senate sheltered in New York City, publicly disavowed any connection to the attacks and distanced themselves from extremists.103 General John O’Neill, the recently appointed president of the American Fenian Brotherhood, former commander of one of the Fenian armed forces that invaded Canada, and an outspoken proponent of honorable warfare against England, publicly repudiated the Clerkenwell bombing. But in the months after the bombing even O’Neill admitted the necessity of such tactics if circumstances warranted. With little argumentative consistency, according to the general “if England murders our innocent brothers, then as a nation virtually at war with England, we must seek reprisals.”104 Even those openly opposed to bombings, assassinations, and other unconventional tactics were not convinced that radical Fenians were responsible. As a way to further undermine British credibility, and to shift responsibility for Clerkenwell, nationalists accused the British of planting the bomb. Like a number of other traditional nationalists, O’Neill refused to believe that Fenians were involved. On assuming office he delivered an address “To the American People and Liberty Lovers Everywhere” asserting that the Clerkenwell explosion, along with other recent terrorist activities, was actually the work of English agent provocateurs and that true nationalists refused the “weapon of the assassin or the torch of the incendiary.”105 John Mitchel’s New York journal Irish Citizen, which did not support the Fenian Brotherhood or other militant Irish societies in America, denied any IRB connection to the explosion and reiterated O’Neill’s claim that it was the work of a British agent provocateur, or possibly an English thief attempting to rescue his cohorts.106 The influential weekly The Irish-American also initially refuted the Anglo-American press reports that it was a Fenian operation and like the Irish Citizen claimed that the British were simply sensationalizing the episode to divert attention from the recently executed Manchester Martyrs. The Irish-American also insisted that Fenians only fought in open battles with the “sword of the soldier, not the dagger of the skulking assassin.” Yet the Irish-American’s coverage, which was far from consistent, later found it impossible to deny the benefits of the “great London panic [which] seems to be the master stroke of those wicked Fenians.”107





There was little consistency among Fenian responses to Clerkenwell. Nationalists were typically loathed to publically endorse unconventional attacks that resulted in heavy civilian losses, but even among opponents to terrorism there was reluctant acknowledgment that it served some purpose. The Irish-American’s Dublin correspondent reported that Clerkenwell had exposed a vulnerability to the British Empire. While the correspondent was not yet convinced that Fenians detonated the explosion, and he was sure that Fenians were not deliberately initiating a bombing campaign against the English lower classes, Clerkenwell demonstrated that the English civilian urban population were vulnerable to being “utterly ‘demoralized’ by terror” and that selective bombings against the “wealth and power and pride of England” might equalize the conflict. Equally important, the unconventional strategy not only exposed vulnerabilities within British Empire, but the new power of Fenians suggested that the English would not be able to implement a “policy to strike terror” against the Irish. The Irish-American believed that terrorism equalized the playing field between small nationalities combating imperial powers. In response to a number of letters castigating Fenian violence, a 1869 editorial in the Irish-American offered a now standard rationale for using terrorism in the contest against the British Crown; acquiring concessions “wrung from her fears” that had long been refused from justice.108 Among some nationalists, the Clerkenwell bombing ushered in a novel approach to loosen the British grip on Ireland. Irish-Americans Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and John Devoy, who were both later complicit in the 1880s Dynamite War against British cities, were less restrained and immediately recognized the advantages of an irregular stratagem. Devoy, always an ambivalent terrorist, deplored the destructiveness and lethality of bombing civilian property and populations, but he could not deny that it resulted in valuable publicity for the Irish cause and spurred concessions from the British government that had been refused using traditional warfare. He considered Clerkenwell “the boldest stroke of the Fenian Movement,” not just because it threw “England into a panic of fear and rage,” but because it proved a stronger argument in favor of physical force—and even of Terrorism—on the part of Ireland to secure justice and freedom, than any Irishman ever made.109 Even Irish constitutional nationalists, such as Charles Stewart Parnell and William O’Brian, a leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and founder of the United Irish League, echoed extremists’ reasoning. Both acknowledged that the Manchester rescue and Clerkenwell bombing had more impact than the most eloquent nationalist oratory, and attributed British land reforms in the 1870s to Fenian terrorism.110 In the December edition of Tinsley’s Magazine, released at the same time as the Clerkenwell bombing, an unnamed “American Fenian” defended the use of violence



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to establish an Irish Republic. Fenians were not lunatics “who shed blood from wanton mischief” as portrayed by the British. Even the most violent nationalists were “reasonable persons, who proceeded by legitimate and well-considered means towards a definite and patriotic consummation.” While the anonymous writer admitted that certain incidents, such as the Manchester rescue, might be “ill-advised,” they just indicated the level of desperation and extremity the Irish suffered. Furthermore, the writer pointed to an Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, reminding readers that English commentators usually praised or simply ignored similar incidents perpetrated by Polish or Italian revolutionaries while condemning the entire Irish race as lunatics for the actions of small minority. The writer concluded by reminding the English audience that no matter how they interpreted such exceptional violence, whether it be riots in English cities, sacking of armories, or even “buildings be blown up,” Fenians considered these “simply legitimate acts of warfare” in the lop-sided contest for control of Ireland.111 In the aftermath of Clerkenwell such justifications met a chorus of criticism. One of the most scathing admonishments came from the Anglo-Irish feminist reformer Frances Power Cobbe. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, Cobbe refuted Fenian claims that they desired establishing an Irish Republic modeled after the United States. In a very condescending essay that was heavily infused with Anglo-Saxon notions of civilization and culture, she asserted that Celtic visions of an Irish Republic were nostalgic at best, based on an idyllic mythology of Ireland’s former independence and prosperity. Making an argument that would be repeated frequently in the subsequent decades, Cobbe asserted that nationalist efforts to establish an Irish Republic were “utterly vain” because the necessary foundations for republicanism were ultimately “wanting in the Irish nature.” The Irish did not possess the “cool Saxon brain,” but were driven by emotions and an inclination to monarchism. Furthermore, they lacked devotion to ideas and constitutions, were not independent or self-reliant, had little regards for others’ rights, and most importantly, they did not respect the rule of law—according to Cobb, the “true Irishman detests law.” Cobbe considered the Clerkenwell bombing and other such attacks inherently unmanly and contrary to masculine modes of warfare, because the primary victims were women and children. In response to Cobbe’s essay and the mounting criticism after the “horrible Clerkenwell explosion” the same unidentified “American Fenian” publicized another essay in Tinsley’s Magazine defending Fenians. Attempting to downplay the significance of the bombing, the writer contended that real reform in Ireland resulted from persistent pressure rather than from isolated, spectacular attacks. Thus the writer suggested that both the Manchester rescue and Clerkenwell bombing were probably unnecessary and senseless uses of violence. Yet even considering the carnage of the bombing, the writer concluded that “all things considered, [these attacks were] very cheap prices to pay for the benefits which will follow them.”112




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have a standard of right and wrong entirely peculiar to themselves. Their society becomes their nation. Its laws become the measure of right and wrong. Its commands are to be obeyed even when they prescribe the most revolting crimes, and those crimes, when committed, are regarded as virtuous actions.113 This quote reflected a distinction between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon varieties of nationalism. Unlike British and American Anglo-Saxon forms of nationalism, which were formulated through a commitment to civic ideals and constitutional parameters, Irish nationalism was more primordial, derived from an ethnic, religious identity.114 Editorials across the country, but especially from New York papers and journals, condemned Fenianism and accused Irish nationalists of committing the most heinous acts in recent memory. The term “outrage” most often appeared in press and public reports, but the journalist coverage leaves little doubt that the attacks were forms of terrorism. News reporting and editorial comments contained a common thread, making constant reference to the public panic the attacks produced. Some journalists pointed out that even though the Fenian attacks were an original stratagem of war, virtually all agreed on the savage effects that tore at the fabric of Anglo-Saxon culture; on a fundamental level many believed that Clerkenwell was a disgrace upon “Christianity and civilization.” Dailies and weeklies across the country vilified the “incendiary and assassin” because their indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations made any one a potential victim and therefore made the perpetrator “every man’s foe.” The extreme lethality and arbitrary nature of the attacks were so aggravating that “[n]o cause, however holy, can justify such a deed.”115 Several editorials appearing in the New York Times in the wake of Clerkenwell identified the explosion as a uniquely “Fenian mode of warfare,” and echoing a sentiment first voiced in 1865 considered their strategy “foolish, reckless and wicked.” The Fenians had become the “embodiment of unreasoning hate and indiscriminate violence” but reflecting mainstream American culture, the New York Times identified political motivations in their violence. In the weeks after Clerkenwell, the Times continued carefully scrutinizing Fenian violence. Reporting on similar attacks attempted on Milbank jail, the Dublin General Post Offices, and public works facilities in Glasgow, Newcastle, Warrington, as well as other localities throughout the United



Americans carefully studied the implications of the change in Fenian strategy but were far from unanimous in their evaluations. Clerkenwell intensified American public discussion about Irish violence, which for the most part mirrored that of the British. In a passage quoted from the Pall Mall Gazette, without crediting the London daily, a New York Times editorial compared Fenians to Continental secret societies who:

Kingdom, the Times concluded that these attacks were clearly not “isolated affairs” perpetrated by lone dissidents, but rather were part of an organized, systematic plan carried out with “extraordinary secrecy.” Even though most of the attacks were thwarted by authorities or botched by incompetence, they produced “something like a general panic” among English society. The New York Times feared that the terrorist campaign against the British was actually succeeding, as evidenced by the subsequent declaration of martial law and general diminution of English liberties and rights, especially in Ireland. If repression continued, it believed that the nationalist cause would gain greater popularity among the Irish peasantry and undermine the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland, even among the English.116 Yet even in the 1860s there was little consensus on the precise nature of these types of attacks and the confusion of categorization intruded into the public discussion about terrorism. The London correspondent for the nativist Chicago Tribune, who had carefully documented a precipitous rise of a transatlantic “system of terrorism,” estimated that the explosion at Clerkenwell went beyond a simple prison escape and was specifically designed to “strike panic and terror into the heart of the English.”117 The New York Times correspondent in London Monadnock, however, was less definitive about the terrorist character of Fenian violence. While depicting the Fenians’ violence in the worst possible light, it was evident from the placement of the explosives and negative reaction from nationalists that the operatives at Clerkenwell “had probably little idea of the force of the explosion.” The correspondent concluded, [I]f terror were the object, the same audacity which had been exercised in these two cases might have blown up a hundred mines and manufactories, and given half the cities of England to the flames. It is clear that the Fenians have not, so far, made any effort to destroy property or life for the sake of inspiring terror.118 Yet, a month later, after weeks of panic in London, the correspondent’s tone changed. Amid the deluge of threatening letters, repeated attempts to steal weapons, unsuccessful bombings of public facilities in Dublin, London, Glasgow, Newcastle, and Warington, assaults on Irish land-lords and witnesses in Fenian trials, the discovery of exploding letter-bombs, and a transatlantic assassination campaign targeting the royal family and collaborators panic gripped the English public.119 In response to these attacks, the New York Times correspondent concluded, The Present object of the Fenians appears to be to create alarm and horror throughout the community—to strike a panic. . . . People expect some such calamity every night. . . . It is the same as if a man knew that he was everywhere followed by an assassin, only waiting a favorable opportunity




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Over the next several weeks, the New York Times continued its criticism of Fenian terrorism, especially their proclivity to hatch assassination schemes and similar criminal methods under the “guise of patriotism” to attract public support from Americans and intimidate the Irish people. Reflecting an American tendency, the New York Times rejected British arguments that Fenian tactics were not political crimes, but it insisted that such terrorism was intolerable to civil society and demanded a heavy British response. Unfortunately, according to the Times, British reaction would unlikely bring the perpetrators to justice, but would be directed against the “majority of their compatriots [the Irish peasantry]” and result in the suppression of the Irish lower classes.121 Clerkenwell encouraged some Americans to delve into the question of causes. While there was virtually universal sympathy from Americans for all the victims in the hostilities on both sides of the Anglo-Irish dispute, prominent American journals believed the British shared in opprobrium. Careful not to excuse Fenian terrorism, the New York Times held British imperial policies in Ireland contemptible and responsible for conditions that nurtured terrorism. While supporting harsh justice for the terrorists, it worried that further repression against the Irish peasantry and the absence of real reform on land and political questions would only hasten the spread of terrorism. Echoing sentiments expressed in the moderate Irish-American press, a Chicago Tribune editorial alleged that the Clerkenwell bombing was “mild and pardonable compared with the steady tyranny with which Ireland is daily oppressed by the British”. The Brooklyn Eagle and the New York World, reflecting a growing current of opinion among American public discourse, concluded that the explosion was a direct result of British oppression, specifically the execution of the Manchester Martyrs, and that the only way to prevent future aggression was concessions to Irish nationalists. Even The Nation, a critic of the Fenians’ extra-constitutional methods, suggested that the attack actually revealed more about the failure of British rule than of any particular Irish characteristics. Indicative of the widespread American belief that Fenian terrorism was a result of failed British policy in Ireland, the New York Evening Post, which remained fiercely critical of Fenian tactics, lamented that the British had abandoned most of the sanctities of constitutional governance and that reforms followed “not argument but force; not justice, but the terrifying blows of a secret society.” In Ireland the English “needed to be bullied into doing right.” It was only through “threats, only by creating an actual or lively fear of revolution” that prompted English statesmen to consider meaningful reforms for the Irish peasantry.122



to strike the blow. A hundred men may easily scatter terror through a large community by the midnight use of gunpowder, nitro-glycerine and “Fenian fire.”120

Discussions of Fenian terrorism post-Clerkenwell were not restricted to the press but often intruded into official public discourse. Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon, who referred to the Fenian as “l’homme rouge . . . he is the enemy of social order and his occupation is brigandage [sic],” believed it a “misnomer to call men political offenders” who perpetrated the Manchester rescue or the Clerkenwell explosion, or attempted in June 1868 to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh while visiting Australia.123 Members of the American Congress had demonstrated a keen appreciation of the potential for exceptional violence in Ireland, and warned its citizens against participation. In February 1868, just weeks after the Clerkenwell bombing, while still considering the rights of American citizens arrested in the United Kingdom for alleged complicity in Fenian activities, Congressmen sympathetic to Irish independence introduced evidence attempting to mitigate the negative image left by Clerkenwell. Specifically an Irish declaration of war on 16 March 1867, issued by the IRB, and written in part as an appeal for American support and recognition of belligerent status, situated the Anglo-Irish dispute in moral imperatives enumerating innumerable “acts of inhumanity and barbarity” resulting from British occupation. While making no explicit reference to terrorism, the Fenians felt justified by “all Divine laws and human rights” to resist the occupation by attacking Britain’s vulnerabilities, including its economic credit markets and extensive property holdings. In this declaration presented to the American Congress, Fenians promised to destroy the British Empire by “every means that science, or even despair, shall place within our reach.”124 Even as Congress debated extending belligerent status to the Irish, those who supported Irish nationalist aspirations disapproved of the excessive violence committed by Fenians. While particularly anxious to protect American citizens’ rights in the Anglo-Irish conflict, several Congressmen explained their opposition to the Fenians’ terroristic behavior. An 1868 Congressional report, commissioned to investigate the legal and political implications of incarcerated citizens under British counterterrorist measures, reminded Americans of the responsibilities of citizenship in a civil society committed to the rule of law and participatory government. The report, submitted to the House of Representatives by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Nathaniel P. Banks, former governor of Massachusetts, a Union general officer, and supporter of Fenianism, was primarily concerned with defending the American doctrine of expatriation and supporting the Johnson Administration’s efforts to modernize international agreements for emigration. It also identified the imperative responsibilities of citizenship and addressed a major concern with terrorism: “No man is permitted anywhere among civilized men to look with unconcern upon any outrage inflicted upon persons or property.” Not only were citizens obliged to oppose threats to civil society, but reflecting the highest aspirations of Anglo-Saxonism, they must





be ever vigilant in the “protection of property, preservation of the public peace, as well as to the security of life.” Subsequent legislation introduced by Banks seeking protections for naturalized citizens abroad exempted those guilty of committing criminal offences or participating as a “belligerent in any foreign war.”125 State Department officials were equally attuned to the difficulties posed by Fenian terrorism. Secretary of State William Seward denounced the “ferocious and felonious character” of the Manchester rescue and Clerkenwell bombing, but tended to dismiss them as anomalies in an otherwise “meritorious political movement.” Having just learned from Adams of the eleventh hour reprieve of the Irish American O’Meagher Condon, alias Shore, an “occasion for large satisfaction” considering the State Department’s active intercession on Condon’s behalf, the Secretary reflected on the larger meaning of Manchester and the liabilities to a harsh British reaction: Similar conflicts of sentiment occur in every political disturbance. The judgment of mankind is that in revolutionary movements which are carried on by large masses, and which appear to popular sympathy, capital executions of individuals who fall within the power of the Government are unwise and often unjust. Such severity when practised [sic] upon a citizen of a foreign State excites a new sympathy by enlisting feelings of nationality and patriotism. The fellow citizens at home of the sufferer in a foreign country naturally incline to believe that the just and generous principle to which I have referred is violated in his case. The soundness of this principle is quite easily understood after the revolutionary movement is ended, although it is difficult to accept the truth in the midst of revolutionary terror or violence.126 Reflecting a culture still suspicious of imperialism and still highly sensitive to Anglophobia, and using American leniency toward Fenian invaders of Canada, Seward suggested that “similar clemency could be practiced in the Manchester case with benign results.” He indicated that some in America maintained that British treatment of the Irish engineered an environment for cultivating anti-imperial terrorism. Even after learning of the Clerkenwell explosion, which along with the Manchester rescue “had some influence in checking the course of [American] public sentiment in regard the to the great political question,” Seward stressed that any modifications of popular opinion did not negate the fact that it was “plainly to be observed that the sympathies of the people of the United States are every day more profoundly moved and more generally moved in behalf of Ireland.”127 Clerkenwell convinced one American stationed in Ireland that British policy in Ireland was not based on a commitment to constitutionalism. Writing decades before Irish-American nationalist John Devoy assessed the beneficial



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impacts of Clerkenwell for Fenians, the American Consul in Cork, E.G. Eastman, arrived at virtually the same conclusion. In a report to Seward in early 1868, Eastman surmised that sincere British reforms in Ireland resulted not from any innate English benevolence toward the Irish. Rather, any cultural, political, or economic allowances granted by the British had been spurred from a violent “fenianism—through fear and not from love of justice.”128 In London, Charles Francis Adams adopted a less tolerant, more conservative, pro-British attitude. His earlier concerns about extreme English repression against the Irish allayed, the American Minister agreed with British commentators that terrorist tactics were ultimately futile and selfdefeating, causing needless carnage and destruction, and therefore, required a most vigorous response from state authorities. In a communiqué that became part of the Congressional record Adams emphatically rejected his superior’s assessment. A skilled diplomat, Adams approached the dilemma of terrorism much more philosophically than Seward or his colleagues in State Department and in the process articulated an argument that framed the ideological opposition to terrorism within the contours of Victorian era notions of Anglo-Saxonism. Contextualizing the Clerkenwell bombing within the tenets of Christian morality, Adams advanced an argument that differentiated the “open war” of nation-states from the “clandestine attempts upon individual members of society.” Far from a warmonger, Adams believed that legitimate warfare might produce some good for civilization—though he neglected to elaborate on these benefits. In contradistinction to regular warfare between states, unconventional strikes against governments by sub-state groups had no constructive qualities, typically because they involved mostly civilian victims. Attacks like that occurring at Clerkenwell were designed “only to shake the foundations of confidence between man and man so far as to unsettle society without effecting [sic] any public good whatever.” Not since the “scheme of Guy Fawkes” was there so much “panic spread among families throughout this community.” In order to put Fenian tactics in a perspective easily comprehensible to Americans, and which might more readily resonate for the nearly assassinated Seward, he compared Fenian schemes to the recent assassination of President Lincoln.129 The Fenian movement fell short of achieving independence or any real measure of home rule but it did bequeath to nationalists a commitment to violence and a belief that terrorism offered opportunities for success that conventional warfare did not. In spite of the decline in Fenian activities in the late 1860s and their increasing hesitance to use unconventional violence, the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community still feared potential terrorist attacks from Fenian extremists. Always of special concern was the safety of the royal family, who were subject to sporadic threats of assassination and kidnapping. In spring 1868 the British Minister in Washington, DC, Edward Thornton, transmitted to the Foreign Office intelligence acquired from informants warning about assassination schemes against members of the royal





family. Thornton presented the evidence to Secretary of State Seward and the issue was referred to Federal Marshals for investigation. American law enforcement officials believed that such a campaign would require extensive planning and funding, and there was little evidence that such an operation actually existed.130 Besides the previous warnings against British officials in the United States, when the Prince of Wales visited North America in 1870, the British Consulate in New York City was inundated with threats of abduction and assassination. While the prince tended to minimize these threats, the Fenian menace produced anxiety among British officials in the United States and Minister Thornton believed they were “intended to frighten or to extort money.” He concluded that it was beyond doubt “that mischief was meant by the Fenians at New York.”131 Amid repeated Fenian pronunciations that they planned to target the royal family, the London Review maintained that the “greatest disgrace that could befall” the British Empire was the abduction of the Queen.132 By early 1868 the British government had effectively dismantled the “United Irish American Assassination Company,” better known by the Dublin Metropolitan Police as simply the “Shooting Circle.” The group had existed in the United Kingdom since 1865 under the direction of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and charged to eliminate obnoxious persons, such as informants and unsuspected police officers. In breaking up the shooting circle the police uncovered plans to assassinate the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister, and other senior officials in retaliation for the Manchester Martyrs, leading historian R.V. Comerford to conclude that “real fenianism” was better adapted to “gangland-style gunmanship than for field operations.”133 In 1874, Captain John McCafferty, who had been a member of the Confederate guerrilla units that plotted capturing President Lincoln and holding him hostage in exchange for release of imprisoned Confederate officers, proposed a kidnapping scheme in Great Britain. McCafferty hoped to kidnap leading British officials to exchange for imprisoned IRB soldiers.134 Although Fenians rarely targeted US citizens or property, Americans were certainly not completely immune to Fenian terrorism. While infrequent, reports of Fenian kidnappings in America surfaced, such as in New Jersey where a suspected British agent was kidnapped, detained, and given a mock Fenian trial before he barely escaped.135 At Fort Erie, New York, the US District Attorney prosecuting Fenian commander William R. Roberts before a Special Commission for his participation in the Fort Erie invasions of Canada was forced to abandon the proceedings because of the inability of the government to secure witness testimony against the defendant. During his address to the presiding commissioner, the prosecutor made frequent reference to a “system of terrorism” that had worked successfully to intimidate witnesses from testifying, coerce their testimony, and avoid subpoenas. The District Attorney proposed a change of venue so that the case could be brought before a federal grand jury where “witnesses will not be



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surrounded by a system of terrorism such as that which has induced them to hide away from the service of subpoenas.” The “terrorism” used by the Fenians, according to the New York Times, was “impolitic as well as unlawful and unseemly.” Neither the perpetrators nor Roberts denied its usage, nor attempted to account publicly for these Fenian operations, prompting the Times to predict that if they continued the Fenian Brotherhood would alienate the sympathies of the vast majority of Americans who treasured the rule of law.136 In the months immediately following the Clerkenwell explosion, similar Fenian threats against American structures surfaced. Republican House Speaker Schuyler Colfax reported to Congress that the New York Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police had received information of an attempt by suspected Fenians to acquire 165 pounds of nitro-glycerin, which according to experts was enough to “repeat the Clerkenwell Prison explosion.”137 Throughout the final years of the 1860s, American statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic periodically received death threats from Fenians.138 Not willing to jeopardize the sanctuary provided by America, however, Fenians did not act on these threats and they were usually given little credence by US officials. Yet, these incidents show that there was international concern about Fenian terrorism. Until recently studies of Irish nationalism have not concentrated on the terroristic features of Fenians. Despite a historical tendency to minimize Fenian terrorism, the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that terrorism was a key component of the nationalist program by the 1860s, and some writers have correctly identified a Fenian predilection to use terrorism. While the perpetrators did not anticipate the scale of the destruction and carnage, it certainly was meant to be a public show of force. Equally significant, Clerkenwell, along with numerous similar attacks, institutionalized terrorism in Irish society and encourage the IRB and nationalist radicals to embrace the use of terrorism over other acceptable modes of warfare to achieve goals.139 Even if Fenians did not identify themselves as terrorists the Atlantic AngloSaxon community certainly did. By the close of the decade Anglo-Saxon America was clearly conscious of this mode of warfare and increasingly worried that these new tactics against civilian, non-combatants might destabilize their ideals of liberal social order. Although there was never unanimity about terrorism, especially the Fenian variety, a consensus began to form that terrorism was an expression of anti-imperialism and that it posed a viable threat to imperial rule. Like the British, Americans clearly understood that terrorism used by Irish nationalists was a different breed of war. Except for vague assurances to enforce existing neutrality laws, the US government did not develop, or seriously contemplate a consistent, comprehensive policy toward Fenianism and Fenian terrorism in the 1860s. In lieu of a coherent, activist policy, Americans formulated an ideological repulsion to





transnational terrorism and tried to counsel the British to reform the Irish administration. Fenian transatlantic operations drew Americans into a transnational discussion about terrorism. Americans and Britons perceived Irish terrorism differently and at times embraced opposing strategies to avert Fenian violence. The British people and government viewed Fenian violence as an affront to the Empire, and the British dedicated substantial treasury and man-power to implementing an effective counterterrorist strategy. Unlike their British counterparts, American officials rarely referred to these acts specifically as “terrorism.” But the type of violence Fenians used, complement by their organizational network and funding operations in the United States, provided Americans an opportunity to begin devising an ideological opposition to international terrorism. By the late 1860s, the distractions of domestic Reconstruction, westward expansion, industrial economic development, combined with a lingering, at times resilient Anglophobia and resentment from British policies during the Civil War, produced American ambivalence toward Fenians. Fenian terrorism occupied a place in American political discourse, revealing serious fissures within domestic political culture and highlighting both similarities and differences between the United States and the British Empire. Fenian violence produced divergent responses from America. While there was general disapproval of the use of terrorism, based on a variety of perspectives, some were more willing to justify its use. Fenian terrorism at times strained already tense Anglo-American relations; specifically, the use of American institutions to support terrorist activities against the British Empire and the US government’s work on behalf of Fenian prisoners associated with terrorism. Despite occasional threats and random incidents, the decision not to directly target American citizens or their property explains why US military and diplomatic officials did not consider Fenian terrorism a primary concern. Fenians awoke American leaders to the potential dangers of terrorism. Their organizational and operational activities revealed to Americans that the United States was neither insulated from nor impervious to international terrorism. Despite lasting Anglo-American differences in perceptions of Fenian terrorism and opposing national interests, their mutual exposure to Fenian terrorism laid the foundation for a common ideological repulsion to terrorism, which provided the basis for future counterterrorism cooperation. Official discussions did not monopolize concern about Fenian terrorism, but there existed a larger transatlantic public discussion on the nature and implications of terrorism in the modern world. The evidence demonstrates convincingly, however, that Irish nationalist terrorism during the late 1860s, utilizing a sophisticated network of financing, arms procurement, and operational planning, were potent non-state actors who profoundly shaped the transatlantic community. Fenians’ attacks against the British



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Empire initiated an extended transatlantic dialogue concerning the causes and consequences of international terrorism. Yet this was not the last encounter with Irish terrorism by the Atlantic community. Agrarian terrorism, largely indigenous to Irish soil, embroiled the United States again in Irish terrorism, presenting new challenges and opportunities for the Atlantic community.


2

Irish terrorism was not exclusively a Fenian vocation nor was it limited to sensational, spectacular attacks like the Clerkenwell explosion. Throughout the prolonged struggle against British hegemony in Ireland, peasantry agitation has manifested various modes and even the decline of Fenianism after Clerkenwell did not mean an end to politically or socially inspired violence. The diminishment of Fenianism and nationalist violence did not restore peace—an equally aggressive and more lethal terrorism consumed much of Irish society for over a decade occupying considerable attention of British imperial officials. By the late 1860s and intermittently throughout the 1870s Ireland endured dire economic conditions resulting from poor harvests that were compounded by intractable political grievances from the absence of local self-government among the peasantry. These conditions fostered widespread social discontent and persuaded the most desperate to implement a form of rural terrorism, commonly referred to as agrarianism. Retributive violence from personal animosities among the lower classes was certainly a component of the land agitation, but agrarianism was a broad social movement embodied by much of the peasantry and supported by a substantial portion of the Irish intelligentsia and upper-class reacting to the loss of local autonomy. The land movement included a salient political dynamic, conveyed through legal and constitutional means, but by the 1870s, agrarianism was increasingly expressed through extralegal, violent conspiracies. Between 1879 and 1882 rural disturbances escalated into a country-wide Land War noted for exceptional brutality. Agrarian terrorists may have had less direct connections to the United States than Fenians, but Americans were hardly ignorant of their activities— Atlantic Anglo-Saxons and Irish-Americans closely monitored events in Ireland, as well as carefully scrutinized British reactions to this violent challenge to state authority. As with the Fenian movement, agrarian violence provided Anglo-Saxon culture in America another opportunity to carefully consider the potency of terrorism as a force for political change. The issue was particularly important to the Anglo-Saxon cultural establishment in 66



Agrarian Terrorism Confounds the Atlantic Community, 1870–1882

America whose industrial-capitalist institutions came under assault from organized labor and foreign radicals. Because of Americans’ commitment to a market economy and constantly pursuant of capital growth and expansion, agrarian nationalization and collectivization of property repelled mainstream American sentiments. Following their British Anglo-Saxon counterparts, Americans identified communist and anarchist ideologies in agrarianism and drew a clear and direct correlation between the land agitation in Ireland and the radical labor terrorism in Gilded Age America. The United States took no formal position on land disturbances in Ireland, but the frequent public discussions of its brutality strengthened among Anglo-Saxon Americans an ideological opposition to terrorism. The agrarian movement which contributed much to Irish history has not been adequately placed within a transatlantic context. While some historians have broached the subject, much work needs to be done explaining the transatlantic exchange of agrarian ideology. While it is correct that 19thcentury agrarian agitations were generally indigenous reactions to degrading local economic conditions, and in the case of the Irish agrarian movement there was certainly little direct connection with Fenians in the United States, Irish agrarianism as a mode of resistance against a perceived oppressive social system was no less instructive for Americans and was equally formative in shaping an American posture toward terrorism. Observant Americans initially sympathized with suffering Irish peasants, but as the land troubles escalated from sporadic engagements to the intense, coordinated Land War (1879–1882), American attitudes evolved from indifferent uncertainty to a recognizable Anglo-American ideological opposition to exceptional violence directed against the institutions and forces of law and order. From the first emergence of rural disturbances in the late 1860s to the end of the Land War, in which hundreds of assaults occurred annually, Anglo-Americans attributed the violence to a strong ideological attachment to communism among the Irish peasantry. Agrarians, maneuvering within a larger transatlantic network of radical movements, articulated a communal tradition, but one embedded in their uniquely Gaelic cultural nationalism. While peasant proprietorship of the land was a central component of agrarianism, British and American observers erroneously assumed, however, that the land disturbances, especially boycotting, cattle-maiming, and arson, were motivated by a strict anti-capitalist, anti-property Marxist philosophy. American commentators also assumed that Irish agrarians were active conspirators with labor radicals in the United States. These misconceptions influenced not only American appraisal of events in Ireland but also informed Americans attitudes toward their own domestic labor disorders. Perceptions of race and ethnicity also colored American attitudes— race became a convenient explanatory tool for ignoring legitimate social grievances and as rationalization for violence as a product of nature. In the scientifically sanctioned racism of the epoch, Anglo-Saxons measured



Agrarian Terrorism Confounds the Atlantic Community 67


their own ethno-racial superiority through stability and complexity of civilization. The writings and journalistic illustrations demonstrate that one of the most vital indices for civilization was the methods of violence people used. Reflecting the dominant cultural values of the day, American reactions paralleled British opinions by frequently characterizing Irish violence in racial terms, differentiating the civility of Anglo-Saxon peoples from a barbaric Celtic aggression and thereby characterizing terrorism as something especially un-American. As assaults escalated, culminating in the infamous Phoenix Park murders of 1882, many Americans, following similar British arguments, harnessed their economic and racial notions of Irish agrarians, to identify agrarian violence as a real threat to political order and economic development, and therefore completely unacceptable in civil society. Americans did not reserve their criticism solely for Irish agrarians, but constructed an intellectual topography that viewed terrorism not in simplistic terms but inclusive of the environment that gave rise to violence. While Americans held agrarians responsible for terrorism, there was a perception that the maladministration of British colonial policy in Ireland gave rise to the social disorder. As with Fenian terrorism, they faulted the British colonial system and its administration at Dublin Castle for creating conditions in Ireland that nurtured discontent and allowed terrorism to flourish. This attitude reflected the prevailing belief that American republicanism, despite its recent breakdown during the Civil War and contemporary absence in the Ku Klux Klan dominated American South, was uniquely suited to facilitate orderly resolution of injustice and inequality. Ignoring their own racial, agricultural, and industrial violence, the presence of Irish agrarian terrorism provided Americans an opportunity to extol their own political and economic institutions. In the post-Civil Era, the United States began engaging more actively in the international community, and by the late 1870s as the memories of British interference in the Civil War faded and Anglophobia lessened, some Americans became more sympathetic to British handling of Irish terrorism and expressing an ideological opposition to anti-imperialist terrorism. Agrarian violence provided American commentators and diplomats stationed in the United Kingdom a unique opportunity to observe and analyze a potent form of anti-imperialist terrorism. While it never monopolized American attention, and no official policy emanated from Washington, it is clear that American officials lamented the disorder it produced and feared that it destabilized the Atlantic community. Americans increasingly identified terrorism as inimical to American political values, viewing it as a consequence of not only racial disposition and radical ideologies, but also poor and improper British colonial administration. While careful not to condone terrorist violence, Americans ultimately explained conditions in Ireland as a product of violently predisposed people burdened by an oppressive, undemocratic social system.



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As the United States wrestled with new imperial ambitions after the Civil War, becoming exposed to unfamiliar cultures, Americans constantly reassessed their own national identity. In particular, Edward Blum demonstrates that the transition from Reconstruction to the Gilded Age witnessed the abandonment of civic equality between the races, often promoted and practiced by northern whites, that facilitated a new variation of American nationalism. This “reunification of whites” through racial superiority and Protestantism, combined by intensified militarism and imperialism, blurred sectional distinctions and provided impetus for extra-continental expansionism.1

Agrarianism The reemergence of agrarian violence in Ireland during the early 1870s immediately following the Fenian disturbances, after a short period of relative quiet, presented a legitimate security concern for the British. Attacks against English property owners and representatives of the ruling class had long existed in Ireland, and stories of assorted groups, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Ribbonmen, redeeming the unprotected, abused peasants pepper Irish lore. In contrast to the heroic protector of the Irish peasantry, the sinister image of the dark, deformed night-prowling Captain Moonlight attacking defenseless Anglo-Irish landowners and their agents haunted British Victorian culture. Whereas the establishment of an independent republic motivated Fenianism, land agitation was a response to specific socio-economic conditions in Ireland brought about by changes in rural occupations and the peasant’s loss of control of lands. Gaelic secret societies in the rural south and west Ireland used primitive forms of terrorism against English landlords and their property as expressions of economic frustrations, personal animosities, and political resistance to foreign domination. Typically, agrarian violence arose when the British colonial system seemed particularly heavy-handed or economic conditions exceptionally stagnant. Despite nationalist failures to secure an independent Ireland, the English rarely achieved the credibility necessary to govern the Irish population by consent. Scholars of pre-Famine Irish society have tended to deemphasize the anti-imperialist qualities of agrarian terrorism, contending that Irish peasants were not so much driven by nationalist aims as a response to local conditions, sectarian disputes, and especially the loss lands and widespread social dislocations.2 The political component of agrarian violence is still disputed by historians. Some contend that political calculations did not motivate agrarians, that they did not use violence against the peasantry to effect a specific political outcome, and that the use of terrorism on the peasantry was of little consequence on local elections. Rather, assaults against individuals and property typically reflected sectarian differences or personal or family





rivalries.3 Historian T.W. Moody’s seminal biographical study of the militant agrarian leader Michael Davitt disputes contemporaries’ contention that the Land War constituted an organized campaign of terrorism. While the violence and physical destruction were a “direct outcome of the [Land] league’s increasing militancy” and produced social tensions in Ireland, Moody relies on statistical data of “agrarian outrages” during the years of the Land War (1879–1882) to argue that agrarian crimes “scarcely bore out the theory of a Land League reign of terror.”4 Even if agrarian terrorism had minimum political effect and the Irish peasantry were politically immune from the violence, some historians recognize that beyond the peasantry, agrarianism affected other classes in Ireland, namely Anglo-Irish landowners, and their agents, and British colonial officials in Ireland. The Irish peasantry supported Charles Parnell’s home rule political program that sought to diminish the political and economic power of the Anglo-Irish land-owning class. Even if agrarian violence did not influence election results in Ireland, the same popular support given to Parnell’s Home Rule Movement would also sustain the violent component of the land agitation, namely agrarian terrorism. Agrarian violence was not limited to attacks against the peasantry, but also included assaults, murders, and destruction against land-owners and their property. Much to the frustration of British officials in Dublin and London, land owners and their agents often buckled in the face of the unremitting violence, granting concessions to tenant farmers and compromising on their political and economic rights. Some landowners fearful of the violence, abandoned their lands, becoming absentee landlords, which supported agrarian claims that the Irish people were governed by a distant, foreign power and not by their consent. The absence of purely nationalist ambitions, however, does not necessitate that agrarian violence was inherently apolitical.5 Properly understood, agrarianism was a broad social movement, incorporating political, economic, cultural, agricultural, and nationalist programs. Land agitation and home rule were popular social movements in reconstruction of nationalist identity, following the calamity of the Famine.6 In 1870, the Ulster Protestant Isaac Butt organized home rule politics, from the grassroots to the corridors of Westminster, as a constitutional, non-violent agitation. Butt lost control of the Home Rule Movement to Charles Parnell, whose obstructionist strategy worked to stall bills in Parliament procedurally. This change to aggressive nationalistic political opposition in Parliament coincided with a more violent climate in rural Ireland. Parnell’s public statements and association with radical agrarians convinced the British that he endorsed agrarian violence, and conservative leaders in London waged a campaign to discredit the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) leader.7 During the 1870s coordinated agrarian assaults against landlords, land agents, or Crown representatives and supporters of the British colonial system became an indispensible part of the strategy to achieve greater



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autonomy and control of the land on behalf of the peasantry. While personal animosity and vengeance were certainly a component, as with other forms of terrorism, agrarian atrocities carried with them a social and political element that was designed to challenge the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland. Intimidation, physical assault, and attempted murder of landowners prone to evicting tenants or considered especially ruthless to the peasantry began to rise. Agrarian violence also included attacks on the landlords’ private property, in the form of arson or cattle-maiming, as well as attacks directed against land agents and bailiffs charged with executing the landlords’ rights against peasant tenants. Long-time Anglo-Irish land agent for the Marquis of Lansdowne in Co. Laois, W. Steuart Trench, describing post-Famine violence from Ribbonism through the Land League identified a powerful separatist strain motivated by a “wild feeling of revenge” for ancient and contemporary “national wrongs.” By the end of the 1860s, Trench believed this Irish nationalism permeating rural Ireland contributed to a new and distinctively terroristic element than in previous eras, because it was more sophisticated and systematic; it was not random or isolated, but intended to alter fundamental social and economic institutions in Ireland.8 Founded in 1879 by Michael Davitt, an IRB arms trafficker who was part of the Fenian Chester Castle scheme in February 1867, the Irish National Land League became the primary vehicle for agrarian activism. The Land League was composed largely of rural peasants in the south and west of Ireland, and organized as a political and relief agency for those hit hardest by agricultural distress. Their tactics included divesting landlords of their land through murder, assault, threats, boycotts, and property destruction, as well as using many of the same techniques against peasants suspected of collaborating with landlords, relying on intimidation to compel the local peasantry into compliance with Land League and peasant codes. The Land League, while predominately agrarian, did maintain intimate ties with the IRB in the United Kingdom and Fenians in the United States. In particular, the IRB not only helped organize Land League chapters throughout Ireland, but also hoped to steer the League more toward a nationalists approach.9 As support for Irish home rule gained greater currency among Liberals as a way to grant the Irish more autonomy within the Empire, English observers and in particular officials in London viewed Ireland through imperial lenses, constructing their policy to correspond with their global strategy and maintenance of the Empire. The continuation of imperial ties obviously conflicted with Irish nationalists’ aspirations and enlarged radicalized peasants arsenal for greater autonomy.10 Even before the Fenian scare completely abated, reports from Ireland framed the conditions existing in Ireland in the language of terrorism, describing a society plagued by a tradition of “heartless systematic crime” directed against unarmed, defenseless landlords and their agents. What made the agrarian “reign of terror” most reprehensible for English observers was that it went undetected and unpunished because





assassins were “sheltered by the peasantry” and the police were “utterly unaided” by the local population.11 With the mounting number of incidents and the exceptional nature of the violence in late 1869, due to poor harvests, the English increasingly referred to these acts as terrorism. According to repeated coverage by the liberal Spectator, agrarians had established a “reign of terror” in Ireland designed to prevent landlords from evicting tenants and to dissuade the peasantry against cooperating with the landlord system. In a tone supportive of Gladstone’s conciliatory agenda, the Spectator advised against imposing harsh coercive measures, rejecting calls from some in England to annihilate entire towns or districts as had been done by despotic governments in India and the Ottoman Empire. Instead, it hoped that the English response would be guided by adherence to constitutional law and the protection of innocents.12 The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Earl Spencer noted that despite desperate endeavors to preserve law and order in Ireland, “the terrorism is so great and goes so far” that even those Irish farmers and tradesmen opposed to it and who had privately appealed for government repression “dare not speak out” publicly. Agrarian violence had not only cowed the general population but rendered the government “powerless to suppress it.”13 In the wake of the Fenian activities throughout the United Kingdom, English commentators and policy-makers were naturally sensitive to signs of organized protests in Ireland, but among 19th-century Liberal politicians there was sharp disagreement on the nature of Irish violence, and thus they were not able to settle on a coherent, consistent policy response. Liberals divided not simply on policy but also priority—some, such as Gladstone, believed concessions necessary to end disorder, while others, epitomized later by Irish Secretary William E. Forster, advocated pacification of agrarian violence before introducing reform.14 Colonial and military personal stationed in Ireland constructed their discussions and reports of conditions in rural Ireland in the context of terrorism. General Hugh Rose, later Lord Strathnairn, Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Forces in Ireland wrote that “a reign of terror has been established by the confederacies in Ireland” that required a robust, vigorous response from the government because concessions would encourage nationalist aspirations and ultimately result in Irish separation from the United Kingdom.15 Charles Savile Roundell, a fellow at Merton College, Oxford, former colonial official in Jamaica, private secretary to Irish Lord Lieutenant Earl Spencer (1869–1871), and later MP for Grantham (1880–1885), approached the problem differently, identifying an erroneous English tendency to conflate agrarian violence with ordinary criminal activities. In order to distinguish the two, he noted that agrarianism included specific types of crime to achieve discernible political purposes. He believed that Irish agrarians connected to a broader transatlantic network committed to republicanism. Placing his discussion in a context an American audience could readily understand, Roundell compared Irish agrarians



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to the Ku Klux Klan. Like the Klan in the American South, Irish agrarians attempted to construct and impose their own social order on British subjects in Ireland in defiance to the mandates from the central authority at Westminster. Agrarian leaders espoused a violent ideology to foster an “unnatural alienation” among the peasantry from the British Crown and worked to establish a “popular sympathy which makes of an assassin a hero, shields him from detection, and baffles justice.” While advocating land reform, Roundell asserted that England must make “no compact with assassination.” The government needed to destroy the agrarian conspiracy “by law if we can; if not, then by whatever means, be they constitutional, or be they extra-constitutional, will execute the settled purpose of the British people.”16 English policy toward Ireland had for centuries consisted of an “erratic alternation between” conciliation and coercion. The Disestablishment Act (1869), providing greater religious toleration for Irish Catholics, and Gladstone’s first land bill (1870), which extended some rights to tenants, accounted for a temporary reduction in rural agitation, but the watereddown Land Act (1870) continued to favor landlords and failed to provide tenants their desired security and economic benefits. Instead of a comprehensive land reform package that met the demands and needs of rural peasants the Gladstone Ministry relied upon a coercive measure to quell a potential uprising. The 1870 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, specifically designed as a counterterrorism measure, strengthened law enforcement capabilities by easing a number of legal constraints, most controversially suspending in Ireland one of England’s most cherished constitution protections, the right of habeas corpus.17 During the Parliamentary debates the Gladstone Ministry’s point man for Irish policy emphasized that escalating agrarian “intimidation and terrorism” required a firm response. According to the Irish Chief Secretary Chichester Fortescue, even non-violent agrarianism was being “propagated by the contagion of crime” and the entire agrarian movement was “stimulated” by violence. Finally, even though Fenianism had declined in recent years, Fortescue coupled the “state of terror and intimidation” generated by agrarians to the continued presence of violent nationalism, thus linking agrarians to nationalist, anti-imperialistic aims in a way not typical for British officials.18 According to a leading English legal scholar, the Peace Preservation Act provided the government a sufficient arsenal to target the overtly violent offenders, and was crucial for restoring order in Ireland. Furthermore, the law included allowances to suppress what one legal expert called “journalistic terrorism,” the Fenian and other nationalist publications that provided the political support sustaining agrarian activities and which called for use of violence in Ireland.19 Reports conveying the deteriorating agricultural situation in Ireland, and especially the proliferation of agrarian violence, generated a variety of opinions from America. Generally, agrarianism found substantial support from the Irish-American community with even some of the most





moderate voices excusing agrarian excesses. The Dublin correspondent of The Irish-American, the New York weekly that had long vociferously opposed unconventional, un-honorable warfare, admitted that Gladstone’s concessions after the Clerkenwell explosion had “raised the spirit of the lawless party” in Ireland and taught them that “by terrorism and outrage they could frighten the government into yielding still more to their demands.” After agrarianism seemed to yield political profit for the Irish cause, The IrishAmerican continued to perpetuate the Irish myth that historically England pursued a policy to exterminate to Celtic race. In view of the severity of current injustices, the American journal believed it astonishing that the Irish people had not already “slaughter[ed] all the foreign landlord garrison as so many vermin.”20 John Mitchel’s Irish Citizen, which repeatedly opposed Irish transnational networks and Irish-American secret societies, was a staunch proponent of terrorism employed by the Irish in Ireland. While Mitchel desired an independent Irish Republic achieved by the Irish themselves, very early in the renewed agrarian disturbances he praised the Irish peasantry for becoming increasingly “Europeanized and Americanized” in their commitment to republicanism and their willingness to embrace a less-than-honorable violent agitation against oppression. Specifically, he disparaged the tendency among Irish nationalists to embrace European and American revolutionary tactics, who “hire[d] assassins” to do their dirty-work. Instead of reliance on foreign revolutionaries, such as New York-based Fenians, Mitchel ascribed to Irish agrarians a high moral character because they fought their own battles. Unlike revolutionary mercenaries, Irish peasants carefully “balance[d] life against life” so that they only targeted offending persons. At one point in the Irish Citizen, discussing British laws that denied the peasantry property rights and tolerated landlord extirpations of Irish families, Mitchell admitted that he was “proud of the character of these occasional slaughters which take place in Ireland,” and on another occasion he positively asserted that “exterminating landlords and agents must be shot.”21 He had no difficulty in letting every ejecting landlord be slain like a mad dog . . . an occasional battue of six bad landlords in one night would be impressive, and would be far less hideous and cruel than many a winter clearance of a townland [by British forces].22 Mitchell readily admitted that his was a harsh attitude, but by persistently framing the sufferings of the Irish peasantry within moral imperatives, a violation of human dignity and Christian values, he concluded that agrarianism was the law of Ireland, and “a juster [sic] and more sacred law than any made in the London Parliament.” Excessive agrarian violence was justifiable because Ireland was in a state of war against an Anglo-Irish social



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system that subjugated the majority of the Irish peasantry, and during war any strategy that preserved the national survival of the Irish people was deemed legitimate.23 As the Fenian scares of 1867–1868 subsided, Americans almost seamlessly shifted their attention to the rise of agrarianism. The Anglo-Saxon community in America continued to scrutinize carefully events in Ireland and were particularly interested in the exceptional level of violence used to challenge the British rule and its social institutions that discriminated against the peasantry. Coverage by the New York Times began in late summer 1868, offering its readers detailed description of a recent assassination attempt against a land agent attempting to serve a quit-notice to tenants. While there was undoubtedly an element of personal vengeance in the attack, the Times believed that the large mob, which included a number of women, was politically motivated and indicative of a conspicuous erosion in Crown authority in certain rural districts. By spring 1869 a steady stream of reports crossed the Atlantic attesting to the deteriorating conditions in Ireland and the increasing numbers of murders and assaults against the landed class. The usually gaeliphilic American journal The Nation also commented on the influence of agrarianism on the peasantry; what made “these murders so appalling and so impressive” was the “dreadful secrecy and dreadful indifference on the part of the surrounding population.”24 Proponents of order and stability in America supported Parliamentary efforts to enlarge the Lord Lieutenant’s law enforcement powers, “enabling him to deal more promptly with local disturbances and chronic agrarian crime.” Even as the New York Times supported Gladstone and the Liberals’ efforts at land and church reform in spring 1869, it declared that: law and order must be maintained; and there was never a time when the British Government was so fully justified as it is now in suppressing disloyal demonstrations, or in punishing with severity political crimes of violence.25 By year’s end the Times was reporting widespread alarm among the peasantry and the landed class as rumors spread that local disturbances were a prelude to a national uprising.26 Throughout the early years of renewed agitation, American officials in the United Kingdom closely followed events in Ireland. From long-time professionals William West and Benjamin Moran to high-level political appointee, such as the renowned historian John Lothrop Motley, all noted that the majority of the peasantry were not active terrorists or direct participants in violence. Rather, while peasants supported the social, political, and economic goals of agrarianism, the violence was largely the work of a few extremists. This small, radicalized group were, according to American accounts, “bold, ambitious and aggressive,” and had not only co-opted the





social agrarian movement but through their violence and intimidation exercised a preponderance of control in rural Ireland. The common American refrain, based on a republican tradition and commitment to constitutionalism and the priority of rule of law, was that this forceful minority had usurped the will of the majority, and subsequently had eroded the internal social order and disrupted economic activities in Ireland. Representatives of the American government believed that agrarian terrorist activities undermined the peasants’ confidence in social order, market economy functions, and the sanctity of private property. This was not simply a crisis for the British Empire, but given the transnational nature of revolutionary groups, for the protectors of American values Irish terrorists posed a serious challenge to American ideals of constitutional order and reliance on market economy just as the United States emerged as multicultural industrial Atlantic power.27 One of the strongest concerns expressed by Anglo-Saxon voices in America was the possibility of the passage of Celtic terrorism across the Atlantic. These fears were not without some foundation. Historians have recognized that Irish agrarianism was part of the complex cultural exchanges occurring in the transatlantic community. Post-Famine Irish immigrants carried with them to the United States a distinctive social identity that contributed in unique ways to the convergence of class, ethnic, and ideological tensions in industrializing America. The sectarian and racial distinctions that led to violence during the New York City Orange riots excited Anglo-Saxon fears that Gaelic influences might subvert American republicanism and strengthened the nativist impulse to Americanize Celtic culture by reducing their propensity toward violence. Anglo-Saxon Americans, who supported the Orange Protestant Irish, crafted their own narratives of the 1870 Elm Park Riot and the 1871 Eight Avenue Massacre that depict their adversaries, the Green Catholic Irish, as uncivilized and repellant to mainstream American values.28 Part of the Nativists’ narratives highlighted the types of violence used by Catholic Irish. When discussing the disorders, the New York Times headlines “Terrorism Rampant” and “Roman Catholic Terrorism” highlighted the exceptionality of Irish violence, and were designed to provoke nativist fears that these Hibernian demonstrations against Orange Anglo-Saxons parades were simply Irish agrarianism being transplanted to American soil.29 An even more combustible ethnic movement that played on Anglo-Saxon fears of the migration of Irish terrorism to the United States was the Molly Maguires. Irish-American workers in the central Pennsylvania collieries during the 1870s provided Americans some of their first exposure to the brutalities of industrial labor terrorism. Responding to the economic depression following the Panic of 1873, the Molly Maguires used intimidation and assault against mining and railroad companies, and destruction of property. Historian Kevin Kenny’s research has shown that the Molly Maguires were not merely anarchists or nihilists, and that excepting the moniker and similarity of methodology, they had no direct connection to agrarians in Ireland. Molly



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Maguire agitation, similar to other labor terrorism during Gilded Age America, was not the result of widespread ideological commitment to violence, but rather was a specific, localized reaction to particular labor conditions and economic distress, more akin to militant British trade-unionism than to Fenian nationalism. The Molly Maguires targeted the agents and property of mine and railroad corporations because of a perceived loss of control and changes in local socio-economic status that silenced their political voice and excluded them from the political process. They sought to alter the status quo using the only perceived method they had, terroristic violence.30 In the wake of President Lincoln’s assassination and the emergence of Ku Klux Klan terrorism against freedpeoples and Union League activists in the South, Americans became conscious of domestic terrorism as a tool for political and economic change, but it was the Irish-American Molly Maguires who brought home the potential problems of transnational terrorism. Even though historians have dispelled any transatlantic connection, contemporaries actually focused heavily on the ethnicity and nationality of the Pennsylvania miners, attempting to associate their brand of terrorism with radical Europeans. Labor disturbances developed as a result of the social pangs of industrialization and contributed to growing public discourse on terrorism. Beginning in the 1870s, and continuing through the early 20th century, the political and economic elite viewed labor violence as the product of European revolutionary culture that was imported to the United States. To Anglo-Saxon contemporaries Irish-American terrorism was not a product of local conditions but the result of infusion of gaelic culture in American society.31 That Americans usually framed their discussions of the Molly Maguires in a transatlantic context provides a useful guide for understanding how Americans interpreted terrorism in the late 19th century. The Molly Maguires did not pose a national security challenge to the United States in the same way as Irish agrarians challenged British imperial security, but Americans conflated the two groups and exaggerated the danger of the Molly Maguires. An investigator for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency hired to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the Molly Maguires traced the organization through the Irish agrarian tradition of “shooting down landlords, agents, bailiffs or any other unoffending neighbor who might not coincide with their views.” The Pinkerton detective James McParlan contended that the Molly Maguires had deliberately transplanted these Irish secret societies to America, and emulating the “fashion of the Ku Klux Klan” in the American South, they were “terrorizing” mine and railroad officials. During one of the more famous Molly Maguire trials, the Schuylkill County prosecutor described a “reign of terror” patterned on the methods of agrarians in Ireland who had intimidated landowners and rent collectors and “terrorized” the Irish peasantry for generations.32 These images of the Molly Maguires as transnational terrorists were further sensationalized by the national media





coverage. Contemporary coverage and subsequent public memory of the Molly Maguires have reinforced popular perceptions that their terrorist activities were transferred from the agrarian disorders in Ireland.33 Despite the fact that agrarians were responsible for most of the physical clashes in Ireland, American observers did not confine their criticism solely to agrarian terrorists. A New York Times editorial raised a question that was repeatedly asked in American public discourse: “What Should be Done with Ireland?” It compared the indigence of the Irish peasantry with the Amerindian peoples and black freedpeoples in America. While comfortable in characterizing the Irish as a “race of rare, and in some respects troublesome qualities,” the editors concluded that the Irish peasants’ violent disaffection resulted from “English misgovernment.” It cautioned against overreaction, advocating instead an attitude of “justice and kindness.” If the British instituted credible land reforms and adhered to “forbearance and charity, and liberal-handed statesmanship” England would win the “love and obedience” of the Irish peasantry, resulting in a precipitous decline in agrarian violence. The New York Times cautioned the British against harsh coercion, a standard reaction to Irish political violence, reminding the Gladstone Ministry that the “sword will never pacify Ireland”: Terror is an old, old story and all that Terror has done for Ireland has been to add to its misery and give its people a new reason for hating the English name, and rebelling against English rule.34 In a criticism of Anglo-Irish landlords and the English political establishment that supported them, a special correspondent for the New York Times reported that in Ireland the “worst [land] system, perhaps, that ever existed still prevails.” The correspondent coupled the dire agricultural conditions to a long legacy of misrule by the Anglo-Irish landlord establishment and British officials in London. This combination of forces, largely beyond the control of the peasantry, resulted in the “poverty, the misery, the lawlessness, and the ever-recurring outbreaks of agrarian crime” in Ireland.35 By mid-1869, The Nation, which had been started by former abolitionists in 1865 and was then edited by Edwin L. Godkin, an outspoken liberal critic of nationalism, imperialism, and socialism, claimed it was obvious that the disestablishment of the Irish Church had not brought pacification in Ireland and that only meaningful land reforms would satisfy the disaffected tenantry.36 Even before agrarians ratcheted up assaults on the landed class, American officials in the United Kingdom believed that British colonial negligence and especially the inequitable land system were principal contributors to agrarian violence.37 The American Minister in London, John Lothrop Motley, a prominent essayist and accomplished historian, questioned whether it was actually surprising that British “tyranny should breed agrarianism and



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Agrarianism and assassination follow eviction and confiscation of tenants’ property with the regularity of an elemental law. The track of injustice can be traced as on a map by the corresponding footprint of revengeful crime.38 The maldistribution of land, combined with generations of “antipathy of race” and “religious hatred,” suggested to Motley that it was “not Ireland [that] England had to deal with now but—Nemesis.” Most of the resentment was the product of an archaic land tenure system that kept the Irish peasantry in a state that “more nearly resembled slavery than any other human condition.” Motley also identified a nationalist component in agrarian violence—it was “simply the spirit of vengeance for the ancient and present wrongs of Ireland.” However, a particularly obnoxious element was the landed class in Ireland who had for years obstructed Gladstone’s liberal reform measures. Their ruthless preservation of an antiquated tenure system perpetuated the economic distress of the Irish peasantry, heightened the sense of social injustice felt among the lower classes, and fueled nationalist animosity among the Irish people. In his critique of the land tenure system, Motley reserved his most scathing criticism for those landlords, whose “tyrannous spirit” he compared to the Spanish Conquistadors’ treatment of “the aboriginal savages of America” and to Southern plantation owners during the antebellum era. It was “inevitable” that the landlord system produced “dismay, despair, revenge, [and] murder” among the peasantry, and Motley predicted that “Captain Moonlight” would not “desist from his work of shooting landlords and bailiffs so long as there are hundreds, nay thousands, of such evictions every year.” He suggested that comprehensive land reform, while certainly a daunting political challenge for British statesmen, was imperative as the island was teetering on the verge of a Civil War that threatened the stability of the entire British Empire. Over the course of agrarian agitations, officials stationed throughout the United Kingdom shared Motley’s assessment and echoed his conclusions.39 Americans found that a number of landlord customs they believed belonged to the “age of flintlocks, and wooden frigates, and stage-coaches.” Especially appalling to the American journal The Nation, particularly within a supposedly modern state committed to the constitutional rule of law and legal protections of due process, was the practice of wholesale ejection of inhabitants from entire districts where murders went unsolved.40 Many accepted Motley’s contention that Gladstone’s reforms were guided by “sincere and honorable motives” but questioned if they went far enough to satisfy Irish demands. Motley maintained that “no remedial legislation can



organized assassination?” In an extensive report on Irish agrarianism written in February 1870, Motley cautioned his superiors at the State Department against any “hope for an approach to tranquility” in Ireland:


raze out” the injustices of the past that lived daily in the memory of many Irish. Compounding American fears of the tepid English reform measures was the severity of their coercive measures, which instead of preserving peace might only alienate the peasantry even further. Instead of a much needed comprehensive land reform, the New York Times noted that the system of assassination and network of intimidation spreading throughout Ireland captivated the attention of the British public, resulting in stronger desire for repression than reform.41 On being informed of the proposed coercive measures, the 1870 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish signaled a warning to his British counterparts. The legislation provided stern measures to repress agrarian crimes: requiring the licensure of firearms; judicial punishment to uncooperative witnesses; law enforcement searches of residences of suspected agrarian terrorists; closure of public houses and newspapers at the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant; and the detainment of strangers until they could account for the activities. The law was certainly not as repressive as more authoritarian states and attest to the liberality of the criminal system in Ireland.42 But as his predecessor William Seward had during the Fenian terrorism of 1867, Fish instructed the American Minister at London to caution the British that a “rigid policy of repression . . . strengthens the element of disturbance in Ireland.”43 A measure of calm did eventually returned in Ireland in late 1870. This was not so much a product of any combination of conciliation and coercion, but the result of better harvests and greater economic promise. But for some Americans these conditions were temporary at best because there was no guarantee of future agricultural abundance. Meanwhile British statesmen neglected to solve the land question, nor did they seek comprehensive solution to the grievances of agrarians.

Land war terrorism By the late 1870s the economic collapse in the rural districts, along with little relief assistance from the British, combined with a continued sense of alienation from the political process and growing numbers of tenant evictions, again pushed the Irish countryside into social turmoil. The Home Rule Movement, under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, later founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party, had offered a constitutional alternative that attempted to rearrange the status of Ireland in the British imperial system. Home rule was an appealing approach to Americans who sympathized with Irish struggles but feared the radicalism associated with agrarianism. While it temporarily pacified violent agrarianism, by the end of the decade another series of poor harvests and the rise in evictions resulted in the collapse of the constitutional, non-violent approach. The return to economic and political distress gave rise to a renewed, energized agrarian agitation that was exceptionally violent and became known as the Land War (1879–1882).



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The driving force in the renewed agrarian campaign was the Irish National Land League, a modern, larger version of the secret land associations that had existed in Ireland for centuries. The Land League, as an expression of Irish nationalism, was a social force that rejected the British landlord system in Ireland.44 Although the Land League formally and publicly discouraged violence and denounced indiscriminate attacks on landlords and their estates, its dedication to keeping peasants on the land while eroding the political will of English landlords and their supporters encouraged radical members to use violence against offenders. Some agrarian attacks were certainly retributive for past or immediate sufferings, but according to historian Charles Townshend many Land Leaguers used or condoned a form of “enforcement terrorism” designed to violently coerce support from the peasantry with the goal of undermining the legitimacy of the British imperial system. Besides its coercive component upon the peasantry, agrarian violence operated to erode the political will of the Anglo-Irish ruling class and their English supporters. While an agrarian ideology permeated the peasantry, agrarian terrorism was not wholesale collective violence, but rather what researcher and terrorist expert Martha Crenshaw meant by an “extremist offshoot of a larger social movement.”45 During the Land War, agrarian extremists conducted a spirited campaign that included assaults, intimidations, and murders in the western and southern counties.46 Many of the agrarian acts of terrorism were associated with boycotting, a politico-economic scheme that ostracized the landed class and tenants who cooperated with landlords. Agrarians relentlessly enforced boycotting through brutal violence and persistent intimidation. Boycotting aided agrarian efforts to diminish the ability of Anglo-Irish landed class from governing in Ireland, and further legitimized agrarian land courts that were supplanting the Crowns judicial process in Ireland. Peasants who occupied lands boycotted were also subject to violent reprisals by agrarians that included social banishment. Irish Secretary William Forster claimed that boycotting, the agrarian practice of forcefully preventing rent collections and socially ostracizing peasants who occupied vacated farms, “was the strongest weapon” of the Land League. Boycotting not only proved uncomfortable and troublesome for the landed class and the Irish Executive, but also strained the loyalty of those tenants that collaborated with or defended the British presence in Ireland.47 Gladstone linked the practice of boycotting, and its attendant economic stifling, to intimidation and murder. The inability of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) to maintain order in rural regions convinced the Gladstone Ministry to augment the military’s presence and charging Crown forces with a greater share of ordinary police powers in Ireland.48 Between 1880 and 1882, Forster’s coercive approach marked a point of divergence between himself and Gladstone, and contributed to the Liberals’ disillusionment regarding Ireland and ultimately its failure to pacify Ireland beyond the short-term.49





To properly place agrarian terrorism in an Atlantic context, it is necessary to offer some explanation of how the British viewed the dilemma confronting them in Ireland. For Victorian imperial strategists, land outrages were by their very nature not isolated incidents but an assault on the foundations of the British Empire. Agrarian outrages recorded by police listed three classifications of offences: homicides, assaults, and other injury to persons; damage to property and animals; and threatening letters and notices and other offences against public order. British officials believed that this was collectivist violence, designed to undermine the legitimacy of Crown authority in Ireland. Philip H. Bagenal provided one of the earliest studies of the Land War. Bagenal, who studied law at the Inner Temple, was an editor for London’s St. James Gazette, later served as private secretary to conservative Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin, the first President of the Board of Agriculture, and from 1896 to 1918 was General Inspector of the Local Government Board (later the Ministry of Health), in 1880 published a study of agrarianism that characterized Davitt’s National Land League as a vigilance committee with a “programme of agitation and terrorism.” Bagenal viewed the violent distress in Ireland not as individualistic attacks motivated by personal vengeance, but as a widespread social crisis. The violence had become endemic and threatened a complete breakdown of civil society. While undeniably some of the more heinous attacks were motivated by personal vengeance, those carefully considering the question emphasized its conspiratorial character, a tool for social change, calculated to achieve definite political and economic objectives.50 Typical Anglo-Saxon journals, such as The Spectator, The Nineteenth Century, The Economist, and the Fortnightly Review, echoed Bagenal’s assessment. Popular British commentators portrayed agrarians as illegitimate political reformers because they depended on violence to achieve political results. Because of their reliance on terroristic violence, the British press characterized agrarians as criminal extortionists, comparable to the Mediterranean Mafiosi. The ubiquitous presence of violent agrarianism among peasant communities confirmed to British conservatives the incapacity of the Irish for self-government. Their rejection of a constitutional process was not simply indicative of a primitive disposition to rule through brute physical force but suggestive that the Irish people had discarded liberalism and modernism.51 The pages of the Spectator and The Economist are filled with coverage of events transpiring in rural Ireland, offering a range of options to pacify agrarian violence—depending on the intensity of violence, suggestions spanned from genuine reform and flexible concessions for the peasantry to steadfast enforcement and intransigent coercion to protect landlord interests.52 Daily News correspondent Bernard Henry Becker noted that the Land League, though not directly responsible for the violence, was a dedicated agrarian organization that was reliant upon the terrorism of agrarian extremists for its own achievements. It was nearly impossible for those not familiar with conditions to “understand the almost insane terror of nearly all persons



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endowed with property” in Ireland. “So skillfully has this organization [the Land League]” carried out its program that few were willing to perform their duties or speak out against agrarianism.53 While it may not be possible to ultimately determine the Land League’s involvement in the hundreds of incidents that occurred annually from 1879 through 1882, he was probably correct to recognize that the League benefited from agrarian terrorism. Even after the Land War ended, Anglo-Irish landlord, a county magistrate, and local historian William O’Connor Morris offered insight on the agrarian violence. Morris, who opposed home rule and detested the violent trajectory of the agrarian movement, feared that if government repression against the peasantry continued, desperate agrarians would be well-positioned to inaugurate a coordinated, nation-wide “system of terrorism and outrage” that he believed would exceed the excesses of French Jacobins. After a period of reflection, writing two years after the end of the Land War, Morris accused the Anglo-Saxon community of fundamentally misunderstanding the true nature of agrarian aspirations and the vitality of the Land League to peasant identity. He concluded that pacification was only attainable through comprehensive economic and land reforms and a genuine willingness to engage in political reconciliation.54 Morris’s model for ending agrarian terrorism was not shared by the larger Anglo-Saxon community in Great Britain. Besides press attention, officials at Whitehall debated the violent conditions and offered varied responses. Former Colonial Secretary Earl Grey, following Gladstone’s preference, urged a delicate balance between coercion and conciliation. While the Liberal Grey protested the punitive nature of 1881 Coercion measures, he publicly warned against conceding to Land League demands “won by intimidation and by outrages.”55 Despite a tendency to foster liberality toward the Irish, some worried that the Irish would interpret any concession or toleration as weakness. An array of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals favored a sharp, decisive response predicated on repression because reform could not occur until security and order returned. To accomplish this stability, disciples of Anglo-Saxonism at times preached a harsh brand of repression. The eminent imperialist historian James A. Froude, an influential social commentator and advocate of dynamic Anglo-Saxon expansionism, denounced any concessions or leniency toward violent agrarians. Characteristic of Anglo-Saxon encounters with foreign peoples around the globe, Froude believed that only through determination and resolve could the English achieve and maintain a “superiority to [Irish] terrorism.” Beyond speaking to the British people, he was especially critical of prominent political figures debating a proper response. Perceptions of ministerial weakness had allowed agrarianism to flourish. Prominent academics and pundits agreed that agrarian violence posed grave strategic, even existential dangers to the Empire that required immediate and vigorous counterterrorism measures, including expanding and extension of the suspension of habeas corpus to disaffected areas,





modification of the jurisprudence system to protect witness and mitigate agrarian influence on the judiciary, amplification of firearms restrictions, and deployment of military forces to garrison the island.56 The government in London and the Irish Executive at Dublin Castle shaped their response to agrarianism in full awareness that it was not conventional warfare but that agrarians had now chosen an asymmetrical strategy that was primarily reliant on guerrilla terrorism. In parliamentary debates on the 1880 Peace Preservation (Ireland) bill, Lord Oranmore and Browne, an Irishman, demanded greater repression and tougher language from the Gladstone Ministry to indicate its commitment to ending agrarian terrorism. While he praised some of the liberal measures, Lord Oranmore and Browne lamented the ubiquitous “crime and demoralization” in Ireland and believed that the government’s policy had utterly failed to defeat “the arts of agitators.” Gladstone remained committed to pursuing a delicate balance between coercion and conciliation to pacify and rehabilitate Ireland, while facing fierce and scurrilous criticism within Parliament, especially from members who believed that his concessions after the 1867 Clerkenwell explosion were equivalent to “paying blackmail to crime; and terror, supported by crimes as barbarous as ever disgraced a country.” Terror now “ruled supreme over the law of the land.”57 The British clearly recognized that besides attacks on the landlord class much of the agrarian violence was designed to impede the criminal-judicial process or to deprive landowners of their constitutionally protected property rights, and that such impediments fundamentally discredited British rule in Ireland.58 Even if the violence endured by the peasantry was not to influence political elections as suggested by some historians, British leaders believed that agrarian outrages were not ordinary criminal activities. Agrarian violence included an unmistakable political element that sought to obstruct normal legal, constitutional proceedings. In spring 1881, during the run-up to some of the worst violence during the Land War, Parliamentary debate on agrarian violence began to focus on agrarian leaders encouraging outrages against landlords and their cooperative tenantry. A sensational letter signed by Patrick Egan on Land League letterhead and published in the Freeman’s Journal, entered into the parliamentary record, defamed those Irish MPs who endorsed the ministry’s policies. In reaction to an apparent alliance between Irish members and agrarian leaders, Gladstone called into question the loyalty of those MPs supportive of the Land League. Specifically the Prime Minister inquired of Parnell and other Irish MPs whether it was “by means like these—by terrorism like this, as it has been justly called . . . to establish peace, order, and liberty in Ireland?”59 Back at Dublin Castle, where officials suspected terrorism was a product of radicalized few and not the masses, Irish Secretary William E. Forster initially hoped to confront the disorders with measured coercion and conciliatory incentives to the peasantry, the goal being to separate and isolate militants



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from general public. By December 1880, Forster received numerous reports from landlord allies describing a ubiquitous agrarian reign of terror in southern and western Ireland. Local government had broken down and the British were losing control over the island, according to these land owners. They sought from Forster the assignment of greater security forces and repressive measures. With the approval of Lord Lieutenant Earl Cowper, Dublin Castle advised the Gladstone Ministry to extend the suspension of habeas corpus and to conduct sweeping surprised arrests of known agrarian leaders to “strike general terror” among the Irish population. Yet Forster advised it was best to leave these operations to law enforcement and he rejected an increase in military troops, believing that Crown soldiers were “singularly unfitted” for the guerrilla-style warfare in Ireland.60 After a series of spectacular agrarian outrages, culminating in the 1882 Phoenix Park murders of Lord Cavendish and Undersecretary Thomas Burke, Forster indicated that the government was indeed committed to suppressing agrarian crimes. Responding to a question from Lord Forester about the suspension of land auctions in County Tipperary because of the “prevailing terrorism” orchestrated by agrarians, the Irish Secretary confirmed that the “state of terrorism” indeed had forced the cancellation, but he reassured Forester and others who questioned the Ministry’s resolve “that the Government would use all means in their power to put down terrorism.”61 Once Gladstone’s efforts to broker a workable compromise with Charles Parnell on rent reductions collapsed, under the unrelenting accumulation of agrarian agitation the Ministry’s counterterrorism hinged on dismantling the Land League structure. In 1881, the Liberal government imprisoned high-profile Irish leaders, including Parnell and Michael Davitt, one of the great personalities of the agrarian movement, arousing noticeable American interest, including resolutions of sympathy by several state legislatures.62 Instead of breaking the League, the arrests only further decentralized the Land League into small gangs of militia patrolling the rural districts, controlling the population through physical intimidation. The fear that the Land League authority might encroach on British sovereignty through violence convinced Parliament to enhance the Executive’s authority in Ireland, with enactment of the Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act and the 1882 Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, both of which were designed to restore to Dublin Castle as the legitimate power of state in Ireland.63 Although he made no specific reference to terrorism in his parliamentary defense of the legislation, Forster admitted that the principal object was to stop the menacing violence and pervasive fear that allowed agrarianism to thrive.64 The Irish nationalist historian, novelist, journalist, and MP for Co. Longford, who joined the Land League and later served as chair of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Justin McCarthy, hardly an advocate of violence, writing in the American journal International Review, noted that the Land League was not directly responsible for agrarian violence. In the final months of the Land War, he argued





that the terrorism that pervaded Ireland was the work of individuals and small conspiracies of peasants who were disenfranchised, excluded from the political process, and economically impoverished.65 Although scholarly treatments of the Land War focus on conditions in Ireland or reactions from the British, little attention has been given to agrarian activities in the United States or American reactions to agrarian violence. Agrarian terrorism had grown indigenously in Ireland for generations, but by the 1870s its roots extended across the Atlantic becoming embedded in American soil. As the Land War intensified, agrarian terrorism facilitated greater commonality among the Anglo-Saxon community but it certainly presented new challenges to solidarity. A number of the leading Irish-American nationalists, including the long-time Fenian John Devoy, diligently worked to formalize transatlantic ties between Irish agrarians and the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. Not only did Devoy’s New Departure seek to bind physical force republicanism with the agrarian agitation, but he also provided financial assistance to agrarians. While speaking at a January 1881 meeting of the New York branch of the American Land League, which was associated with the Irish National Land League, Devoy approved proposals for an assassination campaign against British ministers and attacks on English cities in reprisal for agrarians shot by the British military and the RIC under the recently enacted Coercive Bill.66 The evidence suggests that Irish agrarian terrorists had intimate ties to America and that substantial funds were collected in the United States. By 1882, over 1500 Land League branches sprouted in the United States collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from American contributors. Exploring the ideological implications of Irish agrarianism upon American domestic society, historian Eric Foner wrote that the Land League was an important social organization for the Irish-American community, that it contributed to the construction of a unique Irish-American identity, and that ultimately, it contributed to “the complex interplay of class, ethnicity and radicalism in industrialized America.” Land League activism in America, which included contributions from labor leaders Terence V. Powderly and Samuel Gompers, proved critical for forging community solidarity amid an ethnically fluid shifting America. Both Powderly and Gompers referred to Irish struggles when condemning the labor injustices existing in America, and on occasion extolled the agrarian nationalist cause in Ireland, even advocating violence. According to the English spy Thomas Miller Beach, alias Henri Le Caron, who served as an officer in the Union army and later infiltrated the Irish-American nationalist extremists organization the Clanna-Gael, Irish-Americans were deeply involved in Irish agrarian terrorism. At the 1881 Clan-na-Gael Convention in Chicago, Powderly, who was then president of the Knights of Labor and a member of the Clan-na-Gael’s executive board, according to Beach, advocated assassinating “English robbers and tyrants in Ireland” and destroying their means of “capital and resources.”



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Specifically he thought it necessary to “torch” English cities and assassinate the English leaders “till they agree to let Ireland severely alone. London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol in ashes may bring them to view it [the Irish Question] in another light.”67 The level of Irish-American involvement in agrarian terrorism remains historically contested, but it is clear that there were some direct connections. Historian Alan O’Day recently challenged conventional wisdom that American money donated to the Land League was spent supporting agrarian violence, asserting that the bulk of American contributions sent to Ireland were remittances for struggling family members, assistance to rural distresses, or religious contributions.68 Due to the inherently surreptitious nature of underground organizations, as certainly the Land League was once it declared illegal, it is difficult to discern exact expenditures, but there is certainly evidence to suggest that agrarian terrorists had intimate ties with America and that portions of the funds collected to finance agrarian violence came from America. Land League treasure Patrick Egan, an Irish-American who was intimate with many prominent American politicians and later was Minster to Chile during the Harrison Administration, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of League funds in US government bonds and railroad securities.69 At the British Consulate General in New York City, Pierrepont Edwards noted that the Land League had “considerable sums” from American contributors and certainly believed that Egan’s stewardship of Land League funds went both to agrarian purposes and to Fenian revolutionary activities. The British Consul in New York Edward Archibald believed that the vast proportion of American contributions to the Land League were for “revolutionary purposes.”70 Patrick Egan’s 1883 solicitation tour of America produced a marked reaction from Americans who had grown intolerant of Irish radicals collecting funds from within the United States for revolutionary purposes. Several years after the Land War, while as President of the Irish National League of America, Egan continued to encourage Irish-Americans to support and assist those in Ireland who are “doing their part despite every kind of coercion and terrorism” inflicted by the English.71 Henry Ward Beecher’s The Christian Union praised English restraint and good will to Americans despite continued contributions. To halt the practice, it advocated amending the Anglo-American extradition treaty to permit the arrest and delivery of suspects “having a share in schemes of assassination and incendiarism.”72 Puck illustrator J.A. Wales’ “An Irish Jig” depicted an Irish agrarian fattened from American resources, who then turn to violence against the British. Its editors, who only a year earlier implored the Irish who had been “forced to lay down the hoe [due to agricultural famines], not to take up the shot-gun” and to find cheap land in American, now cautioned against their rowdiness in American cities and warned the radicals not to use the United States as cover and sanctuary for terrorist activities against the United Kingdom.73





American Gilded Age illustrated journals, such as Harper’s Journal, Judge, and Puck, largely dominated by German Americans, filled pages with humorous stereotypes of ethnic and immigrant groups. Besides satirizing Eastern Europeans, Jews, Orientals, African Americans, and Amerindians, the Irish were particularly favorite targets because of their Catholicism and unique ethnic identity, and popular perceptions of their innate laziness and propensity for alcoholism. American cartoons owed much to the expropriation of British caricatures, especially those in Punch, especially the image of Fenian terrorists endangering descent, respectable, and defenseless society. Dating back to the 1860s, the London weekly had long highlighted that the Fenians’ militant attitude resembled Sheffield strikers and that the Irish had joined with radical labor in common cause, using unconventional weapons (the “powder” kegs) and murder, to trample the law and civil society. In the aftermath of the 1867 Clerkenwell explosion, the Victorian caricature of the brutish, simianized Fenian had little regard for the innocent, defenseless English women and children. Caricatures crafted by Americans of AngloSaxon ancestry were part of a larger social process that defined certain groups as aliens, in order to “define the outer limits of tolerable conduct.”74 By the 1880s, on both sides of the Atlantic the Anglo-Saxon community made Irish nationalists and agrarians not simply a source of ridicule but one of the paradigms of modern terrorism and enemies of constitutional government. Irish political societies, such as the Land League, were portrayed as terrible monsters gripping British society with a strategy of anarchy, sedition, and “terrorism.” In the “Dynamite Skunk,” Punch depicted Irish-American terrorists, such as the dynamiter Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, very unfavorably. But it also portrayed the frustrations many British felt by the unwillingness of Americans to put their “foot down on that beast [O’Donovan Rossa].”75 American illustrators expressed similar frustrations by Irish terrorist activities in the United States. In March 1883, during the height of the dynamite war, Puck showed Patrick Egan, a prominent Irish-American nationalist and treasurer of the Land League, being held to answer for funds committed by the Irish-American Land League for relief of the Irish peasantry, which were going to support agrarian terrorism.76 In an illustration titled “Ireland’s Evil Genius,” Puck gave visuality to several long complaints made by Americans; an Irish terrorist flanked by an Irish servant girl and Britannia, accentuating his ability to woe the former of her savings and the latter of political concessions through violence. This image, along with others, highlighted the belief among Anglo-Saxon Americans that Irish-American dynamiters were actually swindlers, who profited by preaching terrorism but were not willing to wage actual war on Great Britain.77 The transatlantic nature of agrarian terrorism prodded British officials to confront Irish-American activities. Despite different priorities and causal explanations, the emerging Atlantic community largely adhered to



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popular Anglo-Saxon political ideals and values, and more often than not conceptualized agrarian violence as terroristic. The Peace Preservation Act’s provisions, such as the suspension of habeas corpus and adjust judicial procedures, could do nothing to thwart agrarian activities in US jurisdiction. To assess Irish-American involvement, Dublin Castle amplified its intelligence on Irish-Americans, whom Forster in particular considered “very mischievous and dangerous in intention.” British authorities ruled out that Irish-Americans were responsible for actual assaults in Ireland but rather organized and financed arms trafficking to agrarians. The abundance of un-policed contributions to League coffers was a source of concern, especially among coercionist like Forster, and resulted in enhanced transatlantic intelligence operations to track and monitor those financial remittances.78 From the beginning of the Land War, British officials in America predicted that an imminent Irish Civil War would be fought with unconventional tactics and that support from compatriots in the United States would be crucial. They were well aware that American branches of the Land League were offering substantial contributions to agrarians, specifically in support of violence. By spring 1880 reports from Vice Consul George Crump in Philadelphia, PA, claimed that agrarian terrorists indeed had intimate connections in the United States and that American citizens were actively engaged in conspiracies to assassinate landowners and prominent British functionaries.79 By autumn 1880 the chargé d’affaires in Washington, DC, Victor Drummond, opined that a conflict in Ireland between the tenantry and Crown forces would be conducted like the “old Colonial War in this Country [the United States], by shooting Troops from behind walls and hedges, and avoiding all encounters in the open.” Even beyond a guerrilla strategy, Drummond feared that nationalists in America, who hoped to exploit the agrarian agitation, might actively interject themselves in the Land War, using unconventional tactics and innovative devices: Dynamite and Petroleum will be used for blowing up and burning Public Buildings, Barracks, etc. In fact, everything will be devised by the Rebels to destroy secretly, and to harass the Authorities and Military without exposing themselves.80 In December 1880, Vice Consul Crump indicated that members of the Pittsburgh Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal Irish Catholic society that emerged in the United States to assistant emigrants from Ireland and protect the Catholic Church from nativists’ attacks, had selected by ballot operatives to travel to Ireland to engage in agrarian assassinations. Days later Crump identified proposed marks; Irish-America nationalists were volunteering to kill the British Minister in Washington or the Consul in Philadelphia if the British arrested Irish Parliamentary Party chief Charles Parnell or other Land League leaders.81





By the beginning of 1881, the repeated warnings from British officials stationed in the United States further identified transatlantic connections among Irish agrarians. The new Minister in Washington, Edward Thornton, informed the Foreign Office that a group of 500 assassins from America was planning, in the event of rebellion in Ireland, to descend upon Britain to target members of the Royal family, principal army and navy commanders, and other prominent civilians responsible for government policies in Ireland. Although Thornton dismissed the viability of the scheme, he did note that such threats, even if improbable, carried a corollary advantage for the agrarians, a benefit the Irish agrarians generally hoped to exploit. The assassination plans, according to Thornton, were less about actual tactical success but more strategically designed “with a view to creating a general alarm, of embarrassing Her Majesty’s Government and putting it to needless expense.” In February 1881, Thornton received a letter from the Irish Revolutionary Army threatening to abduct him until the British released Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League and leading voice in the agrarian movement, from prison. Again, Thornton gave the reports little credibility, but as with previous warnings, acknowledged that their true intent was to induce alarm among British officials.82 By spring 1881, the Consul General in New York City Edward Archibald transmitted copies of the New York Sunday Mercury that contained detailed reports of assassination campaigns against government officials, including Prime Minister William Gladstone. Though not a Fenian publication, Archibald considered it an “especially sensational paper” and therefore attached little credence to it, believing there was “something ludicrous” in publicizing so “solemn and secret” schemes. Despite its apparent absurdity, like Drummond he recognized that such publications served concrete purposes: first, to provide greater contributions to the dwindling treasury of the nationalist funds in America; and secondly, “to inspire terror of assassination and outrage” among the governing class in the United Kingdom. Public disclosures tainted such threats with the “air of rhodamontade [sic]” calculated to increase circulation, but an additional object was “to excite terror and alarm.”83 For the Anglo-Saxon transatlantic community Irish agrarianism contested their vision of civil society, the primacy of the rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. Americans in the Ireland carefully appraised the agrarian situation, usually with equal amounts of commendation and consternation for all involved in the Land War. A lengthy 1879 report from the American Consul in Dublin, B.H. Barrows, praised the Land League’s efforts to provide the impoverished peasants much needed assistance, but leveled contemptuous criticism at the League for its violent disposition and especially its practice, even among moderate leaders such as Charles Parnell, for dispersing money to “a factious tenantry to encourage them to shoot their landlords” and for using political rhetoric that “simply fosters agrarian outrage.”84



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Several detailed reports from the American Consul in Cork Edward Brooks between late summer 1880 and spring 1881 voiced similar condemnations against agrarianism but delved deeper into the cause of terrorism. Brooks, who for years had despaired at the economic conditions in Ireland, acknowledged that deprivation nurtured violence. But Brooks disagreed with those who argued that violent agitation exclusively corresponded to economic deprivation, providing data illustrating that even as economic conditions improved discontent did not abate but instead remained “constantly and dangerously increasing.” The rise in disorder was not quantifiable by inverse proportionality to declining economics but reflected the politicized character of the Land League and its growing embrace of Fenian radicalism. Brooks believed that if the Land League were better armed and professionally led, Ireland would be in open rebellion. Ideologically League leaders, according to Brooks, like the Fenians before them, preferred honorable war but were willing to engage terrorist attacks out of expediency. As the League possessed neither enough weapons nor qualified leaders, Land League warfare was limited to turbulent political demonstrations, violent resistance to legal tenant evictions, and “sporadic ‘agrarian outrages.’ ” Despite faulting the British for economic and social conditions, Brooks held the League, due to its “all-pervading influence for good and evil,” most responsible for the “deplorable situation” in Ireland, because they either directly employed or tacitly sanctioned unconventional force to supplant the legitimate British authority. Furthermore, the American Consul made a leap in analysis; though it had never had a chance to govern Ireland, Brooks questioned the Land League’s ability to govern without coercion and function through normal, constitutional political institutions. As agrarians worked violently to ascend from a sub-state agent to a credible governing body, Brooks faulted agrarian leaders for their unwillingness to speak out against terrorist attacks. While he praised their efforts to alleviate economic distress and to rectify social injustices, Brooks believed agrarian reliance on terrorism to advance political, social and economic causes was ultimately counterproductive because the agrarian leadership had essentially abdicated any credibility among the Irish peasantry and respect among civilized peoples.85 Americans public discourse on agrarian violence often borrowed extensively from the English. In London the American Minister James R. Lowell, aware of the acute sensitivity of the Irish question, acknowledged the advisability of home rule in Ireland. Lowell was generally sympathetic to the British position and cautioned against creating more martyrs in the Irish cause.86 He reiterated the sentiments of his subordinates stationed in Ireland, noting that public opinion in England and Scotland was “unmistakeably [sic] in favour” of enforcing law and order in Ireland. In his own extensive reports back to Washington, the famed essayist and poet turned diplomat believed that the Land League initially promised the needed reform, but had





been hijacked by the more extreme elements, who in Lowell’s estimation were no better than the landlords who they targeted daily. While critical of Anglo-Irish landlords, it was agrarian extremists, who in Lowell’s estimation were controlling the Land League, that were “much more hateful” than those against whom they complained, but unlike the landlords, Land Leaguers were “more cowardly, more indiscriminating and wielded by men more irresponsible and not less self-interested.” Finally, acknowledging agrarians’ terrorist qualities Lowell believed that the League’s claims of support from the Irish population were disingenuous, because any unanimity among the peasantry or support for violence was “more apparent than real, and due altogether to terror than conviction.”87 American officials in the United Kingdom took a particularly critical view of agrarian terrorism. The use of terrorism weakened agrarian claims of being the rightful, legitimate voice of the Irish, it negated their ability to govern the peasantry, and ultimately the use of terrorism failed to unify the Irish people. Americans viewed agrarian violence as terroristic, and espousing an unmistakable Anglo-Saxon attitude they considered these forms of political violence unacceptable in a constitutional, civil society. Agrarian decrees and their violent enforcement had left the landed class in Ireland in a “state of abject terror.” According to American journal The Nation, landowners and their agents were subjugated by an “invisible power” that was supported by the “whole peasantry and lower middle class” in Ireland.” The New York Tribune echoed the dismay of American diplomats Lowell and Brooks, holding agrarians responsible for the crisis because much of retributive violence was directed against the defenseless peasantry. Reinforcing the enforcement component of agrarian terrorism, the Tribune claimed that agrarian violence was designed to “enforce obedience” to Land League decrees by “inspiring terror” among the general population. The goal was evident; to ostracize the governing Anglo-Irish elite and their Irish collaborators from peasant majority, thereby diminishing the British colonial system in Ireland.88 Some of the most extensive journalistic coverage of the Land War came from the New York Times, which often provided readers detailed descriptions of the attacks and their effects on Irish society. Within the first year of hostilities, the Times detailed a litany of brutal agrarian exploits under the headline “Land League Terrorism” and continued throughout the duration of the Land War to identify the League violence as exceptional, unconventional, often simply terrorism. It claimed that the “terrors of the League” far exceeded the outrages of the Fenians during the 1860s. From the first emergence of terrorism, the paper labeled agrarian violence “cowardly and abominable crimes” and worthy of only “unsparing condemnation.”89 Americans framed their discussion of agrarians’ terrorism in the context of an imperial struggle between the metropole authority and periphery discontentment—according to the New York Times the “reign of terror” was if anything an indication of incompatibility between the English and Irish,



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and proof that the two peoples fundamentally could not “understand each other and live peacefully together.”90 In the final stretch of the Land War, the New York weekly Puck was especially hostile to Irish agrarians and nationalists. It predicted pandemonium in Ireland if the British pulled out, because the Irish were simply incapable of effective governance; in typical Anglo-Saxon imagery Puck asserted that “Self-government for Ireland is as impossible as decency in a monkey-house.”91 Others in New York City, especially members of the Anglo-Saxon community, were especially hostile to the unconventional, unorthodox character of agrarian violence. In its coverage, the Christian Union, edited by the former abolitionist and popular liberal Congregationalist minister and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher, contemptuously characterized the Land League’s program as a “system of terrorism.” Agrarian violence was not isolated nor exclusively personal but rather resulted from a well-organized and rigidly focused conspiracy bent on violently ejecting the British Empire from Ireland. As a prominent, popular political voice of anti-Catholicism and gaeliphobia the Christian Union inculcated moral condemnation that added credibility to Anglo-Saxon fears of Irish terrorism.92 Writing for the American journal The Century, the British jurist and historian James Bryce discredited Irish arguments that agrarianism was a political contest, and dismissed their insistence that agrarian violence was a “a sort of guerilla warfare,” an “irregular foray” against an enemy occupation. Byrce, later Chief Secretary for Ireland, ambassador to the United States on the eve of World War I, and a close acquaintance of a number of prominent Americans including President Theodore Roosevelt and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, pointed out to his American audience that for political and judicial purposes British authorities categorized agrarian violence as a criminal activity, requiring vigorous law enforcement. In a bit of confused logic he inadvertently politicized agrarianism, arguing that agrarians’ criminal activity had morphed into an organized, coordinated “private war” between the peasantry and landed class, and feared that without greater judicial repression the Land League would evolve into a “social revolution.”93 Few prominent American journals, however, reiterated the British position that agrarian violence was fundamentally apolitical. Harper’s Weekly acknowledged that agrarianism amounted to “organized crime” but the popular journal could not deny its political component or its effort to diminish the social prominence of the Anglo-Irish landed class in Ireland. Like numerous journals, it compared the Land League to the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party in the American South, one of the most pervasive terrorist organizations in the United States, arguing that agrarians had effectively “established in some districts a complete terror.” Like the Klan’s racial terrorism, agrarian terrorism served to enforce a political, economic, and social agenda. Comparisons between agrarian terrorism with Ku Klux Klan violence in the American South reflected an abiding transatlantic concern that some





unprogressive elements in society had rejected the liberal commitment to constitutionalism and the rule of law. While the journal believed that respectable Americans did not endorse the Land League or the agrarian violence, it asserted that progressive, responsible Americans were not enthusiastic about a severe repression by the British government. Instead, Harper’s Weekly supported meaningful land reforms for Ireland and political equality for the Irish. Terrorism would cease only possible through social reconciliation and political compromise.94 Cultural constructs contributed to transatlantic Anglo-Saxon discussions of Irish terrorism. The 1870s was an era of intense interest in scientific racial categorization and measurable assessments of civilization, and a number of social commentators framed their discussions of Irish agrarian violence in racial terms. A crucial ingredient to Anglo-American assessments of agrarian terrorism was the perception of race. As a mode of social representation, an ideological construct relying more on historical experiences than physical characteristics, race became a convenient method for differentiating cultures and a way for Anglo-Saxon culture to explain Irish terrorism.95 A number of innovative studies have disentangled how English culture constructed the complex image of the Irish to complement their Social Darwinist ideals. Studies of Atlantic Anglo-Saxon racial perceptions toward the Irish confirm that powerful prejudices and stereotypes were at work, and that Atlantic Victorians constructed racial distinctions between Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures. In the Atlantic community, Celtic peoples suffered from negative racial stereotyping, and for Anglo-Saxons unconventional political violence became a comfortable mode for racial differentiation and a convenient way to demonize Irish terrorists. By the latter half of the 19th century the English transformed the image of the Irish from drunken, relatively harmless peasants to dangerous “simianized agitators.” In the intellectual topography of Victorianism, Celtic peoples resisted civilization, were incapable of self-rule, and because of their racial inferiority, they were biologically predisposed toward uncivilized forms of violence. Researcher Carolyne A. Conley has shown that even though British crime statistics bear a different conclusion, the English succeeded in portraying the Irish as not only “alien and inferior” but prone toward unacceptable, excessively violent behavior.96 The racialization of Irish violence was complex and not always consistent, and has stirred a lively scholarly debate on Anglo-Saxon representations of Celtic peoples. Historian R.F. Foster contends that English representations of the Irish were not exclusively bestial. Examining prominent Anglo-Saxon journals, and their illustrations of the Irish, he argues that not all depictions were demeaning caricatures. Many of these journals, which were not favorably disposed to Irish nationalism, indeed portrayed the Irish as handsome and civilized. Even when the Irish were simianized in English publications, according to Foster, these caricaturizations were less about race ideologies, and more about class struggles. In essence, the unflattering depictions



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sought to identify class enemies to Anglo-Saxon capitalist institutions. Historian Eugenio Biagini asserts that class disparity was often a more decisive factor than race in constructing Irish identity and its motivation for violent agitation. Biagini offers considerable evidence indicating that British Liberals recognized that agrarianism was a product of economic distress and class conflict, a struggle comparable to that experienced by British trade unions.97 The dearth of economic opportunities and political oppression certainly better explains the willingness of individuals and groups to engage in political violence than any racial predilection to terrorism. But in the 19th-century notions of scientific Social Darwinism, ethno-racial distinctions were frequently utilized to explain Irish terrorism. Yet, Foster and Biagini’s research, along with those scholars who have shown that a perceptibly violent disposition informed Anglo-Saxon images of the Irish, have not adequately demonstrated that certain types of violence, such as terrorism, were judged differently and used by Anglo-Saxons to delegitimize Irish political aspirations. Even before the Land War, racial stereotyping was a salient part of English discussions of agrarian terrorism, reinforcing their beliefs that the animalistic tendencies of the Irish were ethnically instinctual. Even those willing to acknowledge a legacy of English oppression in Ireland believed that the Celtic tribal character and lack of individualism were primarily responsible for the “tyrannous combinations” among the agrarians. It was their “fidelity to community,” in contradistinction to Anglo-Saxons’ individualism and self-reliance that above all else allowed for the effectiveness of agrarian terrorism. According to the Spectator “no doubt the lawless law of fidelity is sanctioned by terror.” The Anglo-Irish pedagogist Peter Quin Keegan, writing at the apex of the Land War, suggested that Celtic peoples were not fully developed humans, and in comparison to Anglo-Saxons the Irish were savages like the “wild beast denizens of an Indian jungle,” totally devoid of civilization.98 During the 19th century British colonial officials and imperial agents made frequent comparisons between the Irish and Orientals, especially the modes of resistance and violence used by each, as a way to cast them as “others” and inferior to Anglo-Saxons and their prominent political, economic, and cultural institutions.99 The Daily News correspondent, Bernard Henry Becker, who nonchalantly referred to the peasantry as brutes, savages, and the like, after travelling Ireland during the Land War, documented the brutality of agrarian violence and boycotting (“cowardly kind of general strike against an individual”). As a means to differentiate from the English commitment to parliamentary resolution of social injustices, he reported that for the Irish “terrorism is upheld as a legitimate weapon of reform.”100 Writing at the beginning of the 20th century the Australian AngloSaxonist George E. Boxall, reflecting on the legacy of Irish agrarianism, offered one of the most complete studies tracing the alleged terroristic





inclinations of the Irish. Boxall subscribed to conventional Anglo-Saxon stereotypes of Latin and Gaelic peoples as “thoughtless, childish, and excitable” and therefore less capable of self-government. He believed that Latins had “never shown much consideration for human life” and that the “Latin spirit” which permeated the Irish led to “excesses, the barbarities, the ‘Terror’,” as epitomized during the French Revolution. Instead of relying on the democratic process, they sought political change through brute force against those unable to defend themselves. For the Australian Social Darwinist, terrorism was completely antithetical to progressive modernization and to the Anglo-Saxon commitments to the rule of law and democratic institutions; “there will be no more beheading of monarchs or murdering of nobles in the Anglo-Saxon communities.” According to Boxall political murders among the Irish was natural and expected.101 The Irish were fully aware of this negative characterization, even if they accepted an erroneous definition of race. Irish-American nationalist Patrick Egan, an officer in the Land League, identified a racial component to the agrarian conflict. In spring 1881, as agrarian outrages in Ireland escalated, Egan characterized the contest a “war to the knife between the entire Irish race and our brutal Saxon foes.”102 During the 19th century Irish antiquarians worked to glorify the Irish race in order to justify an independent Ireland. Irish nationalists spoke out against the English practice of depicting them with the “face of an idiot or a gorilla.” The National Review, an American journal sympathetic to the Irish, specifically rejected Anglo-Saxon representations of the Irish as a barbarian, cannibalistic race who spoke with a savage tongue and delighted only in “deeds of violence and bloodshed.” Irish nationalists struggled to rebut the English image of Ireland as a “nation of savages, grouped in a landscape of picturesque barbarity.” Contrasting the myth of an idyllic, ancient Erin to contemporary sufferings, in the late 1860s the National Review argued that the “war and desolation” that characterized modern Ireland was the product of English occupation. The English not only deprived the peasantry of its indigenous nationality and cultural unity but deliberately cultivated a violent, divisive society in Ireland.103 Popular New York Irish-American weeklies also contested the image of the Celts being propagated by the Anglo-Saxon Atlantic community. Irish World proprietor and editor Patrick Ford, a social reformer who flirted with radicalism, was deeply involved with labor and land questions, and was a colleague of the famed American labor activist Henry George, paid particular attention to Anglo-Saxon stigmas of Irish identity. Dedicating many articles and editorials to the subject of the Irish race, Ford diligently sought to dispel Anglo-Saxon myths of Celtic inferiority and to advance the socio-economic conditions of Irish immigrants to America so they could then elevate their kinsmen’s status within the British Empire.104 The pages of The Irish-American and Irish Citizen indicate that there was a clearly identifiable conspiracy among Atlantic “Anglo-Saxon cousins” to



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disparage and ultimately subjugate the Irish. These journals accused British and American Anglo-Saxons of colluding with their respective governments and the mainstream press to portray the Irish in a negative image. The Irish-American scorned the frequent comparisons made between the Irish and Mediterranean brigands or the American “red-skin” as an effort by English elites to alienate the sympathies of English working class from the Irish cause. Furthermore, the journal dismissed Anglo-Saxon arguments that methods of violence defined civility. If modes of violence were measures of civilization, according to the journal, the English, the self-proclaimed guardians of civilization, were more savage than the Celts because there were countless historic and contemporaneous examples of English brutality against Irish unarmed men, women, and children. Instead of measuring civilization and stigmatizing people by modes of violence, the editors of The Irish-American submitted that a more accurate indicator for distinguishing civilization from barbarism was collective memory and national history. Using historical memory as a barometer for civilization, the editors argued that in fact the British were far more uncivilized than the Irish because they were willing to dismiss or ignore the injustices of British rule of Ireland. The historic reliance on violent repression, coercive legislation, sectarian conflict, and social dislocation, rather than progressive land reform and equitable constitutional procedures, was indicative of Britain’s uncivilized treatment of the Irish. The absence of an English collective recollection resulted in their contemporary misrule in Ireland and the failure of coercive measures to quash Irish culture.105 The editor of the American journal The Nation, Edwin L. Godkin, an Irish-American Protestant who promoted transatlantic Anglo-Saxonism, attempted to rebut the tendency to stereotype the Irish, dismissing the negative portrayals of the Irish peasants as violent savages in English journals.106 Godkin intended The Nation to be the preeminent forum for elite discourse on public affairs. He attempted to influence public men and intellectuals and The Nation became widely read among the American elite; contributors were the cream of American intelligentsia, including Secretary of State James Russell Lowell. The anglophilic Godkin, who often scoffed at American democracy and especially its egalitarian political culture, praised English governance and society and encouraged greater commercial expansion. While he supported Anglo-Saxon economic dominance, he cautioned the British against overly zealous imperialist impulses and especially their policy of global territorial acquisitions. Although he could be equally critical of Irish primitivism in contrast to English progress, Godkin lamented the prevalent tendencies among the English to degrade foreign peoples and deny them their capacity for self-government. Consequently, he became a staunch advocate of constitutional home rule for Ireland.107 Part of the controversy between Godkin and Goldwin Smith centered on the issue of agrarian terrorism. Smith, never short of praise for Anglo-Saxon institutions, culture,





language and its commitment to democratic values, agreed with Godkin in condemning the British imperial impulse, especially the brutality dispensed upon subjugated indigenous peoples.108 Goldwin Smith’s treatment of the Irish Question veered far from Godkin’s approach. Whereas Godkin was sympathetic to Irish nationalist aspirations, and claimed that the Irish had been driven to extremes by British imperial abuses, Smith viewed the unacceptable political violence in Ireland as a source of national humiliation and the product of ethnicity. Agrarians’ “system of murderous terrorism” was dependent transatlantic Fenianism. Instead of greater autonomy, Smith, the English historian and social critic, who taught at Cornell University before finally settling in Toronto, advocated coercion and supported Irish emigration to North America. According to Smith, neither Canada nor the United States tolerated terrorists or dealt with them leniently. He admonished the British to adopt a similar hardline approach, a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorists. In his numerous published essays on the Irish Question, Smith made constant reference to agrarians as terrorists, and drew links between agrarianism in Ireland and Fenian terrorism originating from Irish nationalists in the United States. Imbued by Social Darwinism, Smith often framed his discussions of Irish terrorism in racial terms. Their reliance on violence and incapacity for parliamentary government spoke to their innate inferiority in comparison to Anglo-Saxons and their incapacity at self-government. Thus he concluded that the Prevention of Crimes (Ireland) Act was absolutely necessary to restore order in Ireland and to “repress anarchy and root out terrorism. To all but the terrorists such a measure would have been really one of freedom.”109 The Godkin–Smith debate on the Irish question highlights the fact that racial stereotyping was not only transnational but that conceptions of terrorism were closely bound to the Atlantic community’s Anglo-Saxon values. Ethno-racial attitudes toward the Irish remained entrenched in American for decades, and prominent jurist and political theorists situated agrarian terrorism within a larger framework of Social Darwinist’s explanation of human behaviors and social interactions. Longtime Columbia University professor John William Burgess, considered by many one of the forefathers of American political science, in his magnum opus Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, took a particularly critical view of the Celt psychology. Drawing upon racial stereotyping typical of the era, Burgess reinforced the prevalent Anglo-Saxon ideology that identified within the Celtic peoples innate deficiencies resulting in an inability to engage in civil politics and an ethnic predilection towards “violence and corruption.”110 Ethnicity and race became a convenient, if logically inconsistent given the racial terrorism conducted by white Southerners, way to explain Irish agrarian terrorism. During the racially convulsive era of Reconstruction, Americans crafted their own images of the foreign to strengthen national unity. There was no



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homogenous American attitude toward Irish agrarian violence, but AngloSaxon racial thinking, especially the violence the Irish practiced against their Anglo-Saxon rulers, influenced concerned American observers and commentators. There were some efforts to differentiate between terrorists and those Irish who refused terrorism, but on both sides of the Atlantic the process of creating and propagating a simian stereotype of the Irish was part of an effort by Victorians to devise racial constructions in order to undermine the credibility of Irish agitators and to reinforce the superiority of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Even in the United States, according to popular ethno-racial categorization, the Irish were situated well below Anglo-Saxon and other Western European groups, and were often more comparable to African and Oriental groups. While perceptions of the Irish shifted over the course of the late 19th century, eventually permitting the Irish to become “white,” there was a persistent belief that the Irish were inferior, less civilized people who were not only capable but prone to unacceptable forms of violence.111 Racial attitudes toward the Irish were informed by the perception of Irish political violence. Writing to Congressional House Speaker Schuyler Colfax in the months after the Clerkenwell explosion just on the eve of renewed agrarian violence, John Hay, personal secretary and military adviser to President Lincoln and future Secretary of State, noted that the Irish mode of violence confirmed that the “Irish race [are] today the bitterest foe of human freedom everywhere but in Ireland.”112 Others’ comments on the Irish, such as American Ministers Charles Francis Adams and James L. Motley, were more sympathetic, but still patronizing and offered chauvinistic comparisons of the suffering Irish to the indigenous American peoples and African slaves. In their discourse on the Anglo-Irish conflict, American diplomats not only tended to reinforce Anglo-Saxon prejudices, but they also acknowledged that British social prejudices and colonial policy reinforced racial distinctions and prevented Irish assimilation into the British Empire. According to Motley, the Irish were a “warmhearted, quick-witted, genial and affectionate race” pushed to extremes by circumstances. It was the daily “misery” of life under the British system that pressed many Irish into the “hopeless madness of rebellion and agrarian crime” and which demonstrated that they were “still possessed by the demon of race hatred,” which according to Motley more than any other conflict between peoples was “always [the] most difficult to exorcise.”113 During the Land War, some Americans stationed in Ireland considered racial distinctions crucial to understanding the agrarian difficulties. The American Consul in Cork, Edward Brooks, described the violence in Ireland as a “conflict of races” that was based on long legacy of “jealousy, hate and real or imaginary oppression.” The language used in diplomatic correspondence reflected their racial conceptions of Irish susceptibility to violence.





While not a defense of agrarian terrorism, American officials in the United Kingdom did attempt to explain the Irish predilection for the use of extraordinary violence by referencing ethnic stigmatizations. According to lengthy report prepared by Brooks, the Irish were quite simply a “different people from their English rulers and incapable of assimilation.” The majority of the Irish peasantry viewed all English measures as oppressive, whether true or not. Brooks believed that the “average Irishman” suffered from an “unreasoning excitability” that clouded their judgment and contributed to the violent disposition. Land League and agrarian leaders had succeeded in rousing peasant hostilities because the Irish race was easily provoked “to extremes.”114 Compounding these negative racial attitudes, the emergence of widespread property damage done during the Land War and agrarian demands for property redistribution spurred many in America to follow the thinking of Goldwin Smith and other English observers who associated agrarianism with the violent socialist, radical, anarchist doctrines pervading Continental Europe. Historians have pointed out that by the late 1870s the Land League had adopted the English trade unions strategy of using strikes and violence to correct industrial injustices and to erode popular support for capitalists. The Land League abandoned the secret-society structure in favor of open organization and agitation, but increasingly they were reinventing Irish nationalism, incorporating a socialist ideology to attract urban workers to the traditionally agrarian movement.115 A crucial linkage of Land League agrarianism and communist ideology for contemporaries of the Atlantic community was the correlation of certain types of violence each relied upon. Anglo-Saxons routinely conflated agrarian terrorism in Ireland with radical ideologies, such as of socialism, communism, nihilism, and anarchism. Members of the Anglo-Saxon establishment in the United Kingdom were particularly frightened by the possible contagion of terrorism. Agrarian terrorism was not meant to protect peasants, its purpose included the “expropriation of landlords’ property” and the “repudiation of lawful contract.”116 Popular periodicals linked Irish agrarians to European radicalism and came to accept the necessity of defeating terrorism everywhere, believing that if any major power capitulated to terrorism then all nation-states of Europe were endangered.117 To the English establishment the agrarians were highly susceptible to the socialist tendencies not only simply from material wants of the peasantry but also because their “ethnical characteristics” and tribal tradition predisposed the Irish toward communism. English writers pointed out that the adoption of communist ideology included a commitment to terroristic violence. There were numerous warnings from within English society that unless the Gladstone Ministry fundamentally reformed Irish land laws, Ireland would experience a wave of nihilistic violence not unlike that occurring in the Russian Empire. Land League boycotting, according to The Economist, borrowed extensively



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from English trade unions’ methods and was only effective if used with “naked terrorism.”118 To capitalist Anglo-Saxons communism was enforceable only through violence, and frequently the mode of violence ascribed to communists was terrorism. Critics of a conciliatory approach to the Irish problem argued that Gladstone’s earlier concessions immediately after Fenian and agrarian violence equated to a “triumph to Communism.” In his recommendations to Parliament for enhanced coercion Irish Secretary William E. Forster conveyed the growing fear among local judicial officials of the working relationship between agrarian assassins and communist elements.119 In the wake of the organization of the communist First International (a.k.a., the International Workingman’s Association founded in 1864), and its advocacy of anarcho-syndicalism, along with the violence associated with the 1871 Paris Commune, there was little sympathy among representatives of the English establishment for allowing similar violence to transpire in Ireland.120 Fears of an international communist conspiracy dedicated to violently overturning established social order became embedded in the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community for decades to come. From the reemergence of agrarian violence British officials and other English voices warned Americans about Irish cooperation with communists.121 Americans heeded these warnings and those Americans stationed in Ireland drew direct links between agrarian terrorism and communist ideologies. In London, James Lowell accused even the more moderate elements of the Land League, such as Charles Parnell, of “coquetting” with communist leaders.122 Lowell portrayed to superiors in Washington a highly politicized Land League that was no longer “agrarian in the better sense of the word” but an organization infused with a communist program. The League’s use of violence was alienating the “more respectable classes” who were growing weary of a campaign that seemed “disastrous only to the peaceable, the orderly, and the industrious” elements in Irish society.123 According to Cork Consul Edward Brooks the racial hostilities between the Irish and the English were further aggravated by class antagonisms. Since England “predominates over Ireland as the great capitalist” owning or controlling virtually the totality of the island’s soil, manufacturing, transportation, and consumer profits, many Irish peasants equated British governance to an unrepresentative oligarchy, working for the “benefit of the few instead of the many.” Hinting at a fundamental paradox of the Irish question for many observant Americans was a general sympathy for their nationalist aspirations that was tempered by the impression that reform included redistribution of property and violation of Anglo-Saxon notions of property rights. While he admitted that the “average American mind becomes confused” by the convoluted circumstances in Ireland, Brooks insisted that these “arbitrary disturbance of the rights of property” conducted by revolutionary peasant agents were the “only practical means for agrarians to relieve



Agrarian Terrorism Confounds the Atlantic Community


Irish distress.” Besides brazen attacks on defensive landlords, land agents, or English sympathizers, a “favorite method” of agrarian terrorism was boycotting, which not only deprived landlords’ ability to collect rent on farms but also included the violent social ostracization of anyone who collaborated with the existing land tenure system. Not only was violence a real threat to the landowners and their agents, agrarians also prevented the landed class from making any purchases, including the “necessaries of life for themselves and their families.” Agrarians would also harvest crops on behalf of evicted tenants and in plain view of local law enforcement, according to Brooks, they were carried away and “appropriated for the benefit of the distress or distrained [sic] party.” Agrarians barred peasants from commercial enterprises or social engagements with tenants who took residence in vacant lands where the previous residence had been evicted. “More cruel and not infrequent,” according to Brooks, was the practice of waylaying the offending tenant, assaulting him, “and sometimes cutting his ear off.” The purpose of the Land League, according to Brooks, was to deny landowners property rights and ultimately to redistribute land holdings to the peasantry. Brooks reported that despite the Land League’s insistence that it was “law-abiding,” in reality they had “inaugurated covert rebellion under the guise of radical reform and peaceful revolution.” Throughout the Land War, Americans in Ireland continued to associate violent boycotting with communism because it was composed of “vast conspiracy against vested rights.”124 For Americans, charges of socialism and communism were a particularly sensitive issue during the era of labor violence. Mainstream American fear of communism involved perceived threats, usually identified by prominent politicians and government officials, that America’s most sacred political and economic institutions were susceptible to violent domestic insurrection. The spread of communist radicalism in Western Europe combined with increasing immigration to the United States resulted in intensified efforts to label communism as fundamentally un-American. During the Gilded Age the rapid escalation of agrarian and labor violence, epitomized by the Molly Maguires and the 1877 Great Railroad Strikes, convinced many politicians that immigrants were indeed transplanting violent radicalism into America. Yet studies exploring American reactions to communism in the 19th century pay scant attention to Irish agrarians and even less consideration on the convergence of the two with the use of terrorism.125 Agrarians formally ostracized and terrorized those who broke peasant codes or were complicit in peasant evictions conducted by landlords and agents. Because agrarian peasants deprived one class of its property rights, advocated widespread property redistribution through violent agitation, and thus called into question many of the basic tenets of the entire capitalist system, especially the sanctity of private property, Americans viewed their political aspirations with grave suspicion.126 A number of prominent public voices directly linked the agrarian violence to communist ideology.



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A writer in The Century viewed the practice of boycotting as “un-Christian and immoral.”127 In language that harkened back to Marx’s description of the French Reign of Terror and Napoleonic Wars, and its similarity to Fenian terrorism, The Christian Union characterized agrarianism as a “perpetual agitation” against the British until it abandoned rule in Ireland. During Charles Parnell’s 1880 American tour, The Christian Union, the political voice of social reformers Henry Ward Beecher and Lyman Abbott, while critical of the British land system in Ireland, advised Irish-Americans against giving “any aid to Irish ‘reds’ or any contributions to swell the ranks of the violent and the passionate abettors of communism.” Using the “model of a great national trades union,” Beecher and Abbott demurred that agrarians had established de facto governance in some sections of southern and western Ireland, established judicial tribunals (the land courts), and were collecting revenues. The only thing absent to finalizing a legitimate government was a conventional “standing army.” Yet in European constructs of the nationstate this was a serious, if ultimately delegitimizing, omission. According to the Christian Union the Irish peasantry relied on “agrarian crimes” to police the population and thus they were incapable of credibly governing the people according to Anglo-Saxon standards.128 Even beyond the Land War, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, agrarians held to the conviction that the “terrorism of boycotting” would eventually compel the British to allow a greater measure of home rule for the Irish.129 This was not the last occasion Americans simplistically equated terrorism to communist or anarchistic ideology, and the linkage between ideology and method remained a crucial ingredient by which Americans conceptualized terrorism into and beyond the 20th century. Despite an inclination, based on both racial and ideological values, to sympathize with their transatlantic Anglo-Saxon counterparts, Americans did not solely fault the Irish for the violent affairs convulsing Ireland. Notwithstanding Michael Davitt’s assessment of American opinion, formed from his 1879–1880 North American tour, that the British press agency had effectively conflated agrarian outrages to the Land League, both philosophically and tactically, Americans also held the British responsible for the violence in Ireland.130 A number of voices suggested that agrarian terrorism resulted directly from British rule and its contravention of Anglo-Saxon ideals. Irish nationalists were also framing their versions of events in Ireland. The Parnellite MP Thomas Sexton, formerly a writer for The Nation and later Lord Mayor of Dublin and editor of the Freeman’s Journal, complained that local magistrates were guilty of abuses that exceeded agrarian outrages. During Parliamentary deliberations on Irish magistrate salaries, just weeks after the May 1882 Phoenix Park murders, Sexton singled-out Clifford Lloyd in County Clare, who had the ear of the much despised Irish Secretary William E. Forster, for unilaterally engaging in “a system of terrorism and unprecedented inhumanity” that had deprived the impoverished peasantry





of housing and sustenance during some of the most distressing periods in Ireland.131 Among those Britons troubled by the possibility of social revolution in Ireland, there was an awareness that part of heritage of English colonization and occupation was actual socio-economic inequality and political repression that contributed to agrarian violence. In the same year he published the now classic The American Commonwealth (1888), James Bryce introduced a collection of historical essays on Irish history that addressed the recent experience of agrarianism. Bryce argued that the agrarian conspiracy was a derivative of “miseries unparalleled in modern Europe, miseries which legislation did not even attempt to remove.” Writing in recent memory of the Land War, Bryce believed that the Irish “sense of wild justice”—that is, agrarian terrorism—followed centuries of poor administration and continued condescension, and not unexpectedly resulted in an Irish element disregarding not only law but expressing an “aversion to so-called ‘English Government’ and to England herself.”132 Some late-19th-century observers concluded that terrorism was not a product exclusively of ideology or ethnicity but a result of circumstances brought about by geographical limitations of the island and by a socio-economic and political system deemed unrepresentative and incapable. The American humorist, novelist, literary critic, and New York Herald writer John Habberton provided a supplementary chapter titled “Moral Force” to Reverend Augustine J. Thebaud’s Ireland: Past and Present that framed agrarian violence as a social revolution. He crafted a defense of agrarianism based on their unique nationality and abusive British policies. His was an unforgiving perspective that condemned the audacity of agrarian violence but he cautioned against subscribing blindly to English versions. Quoting his contemporary, the historian, novelist, and later Irish Parliamentary Party member Justin H. McCarthy, Habberton reminded Americans that agrarian crimes were acts of “ignorant peasants” whose families had for generations become “maddened by hunger, want, and eviction” and were “convinced in the utter hopelessness of redress.”133 As the Land War intensified through the final months of 1880, some in the United States believed that violent agrarians was not only legitimate but proving successful. During the two years of agrarian violence, thousands of incidents of agrarian outrages had occurred in Ireland, with nearly 20 homicides.134 Scrutinizing the legacy of British policy in Ireland, by December 1880 the persistent, brutal violence prompted the Democratic Brooklyn Daily Eagle to conclude that the Dublin Castle Irish Executive was utterly “panic stricken” and powerless to maintain law and order in rural districts. Edited by Thomas Kinsella, a County Wexford emigrant and former Democratic Congressman for New York, the afternoon daily praised the novel framework of the Irish social revolution. Specifically, the Daily Eagle applauded the self-sacrificing peasantry for their suffering during the



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boycotting campaign. Not only did boycotted landlords and peasants suffer, but according to Kinsella, millions of peasants were willing to starve unemployed rather than propagate an inequitable system by working for paltry compensation. While estimating that the reports of “terrorism and violence” had been greatly exaggerated, Kinsella’s popular Brooklyn newspaper admitted that boycotting only work if complimented by active resistance and physical force—in essence, coercive violence allowed boycotting to function and therefore undermine the ability of landlords to administer or profit from their land holdings. The terrorist component of agrarianism was succeeding in undermining British rule in Ireland and discrediting the Anglo-Irish landowning class.135 In the final year of the Land War, radical Irish-Americans echoed the sentiments of Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Land League treasure Patrick Egan, a prosperous Dublin business owner and later a prominent American Midwestern politician, was a principal architect of transatlantic agrarian activities. While on League business in France, a nexus for Irish nationalist activities in Continental Europe, Egan closely monitored events in Ireland and the effectiveness of agrarianism. He corresponded frequently with a compatriot in the United States Patrick A. Collins, formerly a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate, delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and later US Congressman (1882–1889), general consul in London (1893–1897) and Boston mayor (1902–1905). Egan ascribed the violence in Ireland to ancient and contemporary British policies and attitudes toward the Irish. Despite widespread arrests of agrarian leaders and the British government’s unwavering support for the Anglo-Irish landlord class, in spring 1881 Egan remained optimistic, even as he predicted that the worst violence was yet to come. All efforts to “crush League [were] futile,” according to Egan, and the peasantry were united in their opposition to the British presence in Ireland and Gladstone’s measure at land reform.136 In his numerous missives to Irish-Americans, Egan crafted an image of British statesponsored terrorism to counteract the widespread belief that the Irish were solely responsible for violence. In a telegram to Collins, Egan remarked that even though “[English] terrorism continues, spirit of the country was never better.”137 Even if agrarian terrorism was not overtly politicized to influence elections, as historians now assert, boycotting (and the terroristic violence that made the boycott effective) included a nuanced political consequence that was ultimately designed to undermine Anglo-Irish, and thus English, rule in Ireland. In January 1881, the consistently celtiphobic American illustrated journal Puck, published by the Anglo-Saxon Joseph Keppler, printed a biting cartoon of an “old woman” Gladstone ineptly attempting to douse (using the British Field Marshal General Hugh Rose as water) the raging fire of “anarchy, rebellion, insurrection” consuming Ireland. Wondering how the British could allow the “country to remain in a state of terrorism,” the





editorial page faulted the British Liberal’s inclination to accommodate the Irish rather than dealing with them properly through effectively coercion. In comparing British policy in Ireland to the stern reaction of city and state officials during the recent Orange Riots in New York City (1870–1871), Puck advocated using overwhelming force to suppress agrarians to restore order and then initiate reforms that held absentee landowners and cruel landlords more accountable.138 American observers viewed the struggle in Ireland not simply as a political struggle, but fundamentally an imperial contest. Referring to Irish Secretary William Forster’s determination of “striking terror into them [Land Leaguers]” by suspending habeas corpus and instituting indefinite detention pending viceroy or privy council release approval, the Atlanta Constitution characterized British policy as “simply brute force.” British rule in Ireland was not based on consent, and thus the Irish suffered from an alien, oppressive occupier. While this prominent voice of the American South dismissed reports on the level of violence occurring in Ireland, “except for limited localities,” it compared British policy to the despotism of the Russian czar. It believed that at best latent agitation existed in Ireland that would only escalate to Civil War if the British refused meaningful reform. According to the Atlanta Constitution, there would be “no peace, no settlement” until Parliament passed “radical change in the ownership of the soil.” The coercive bill before Parliament would simply “thrust a few of the suffering people into prison” but would not “materially change the situation” in Ireland. A week later, the Constitution, referring to Forster’s “reign of terror,” again decried government coercion and believed that “peasant proprietorship” was an inevitability that the British must eventually accept.139 Despite a general condemnation of agrarian terrorists, American officials stationed in the United Kingdom were ever mindful of British policy responses to agrarianism. They faulted their counterparts in Dublin Castle and Whitehall for creating an environment that germinated and nurtured social violence. As cultured, educated leaders, Anglo-Irish landowners and British administrators and officials were responsible for instituting policies to alleviate the economic and political distresses that contributed to rise in outrages against persons and property in Ireland. According to Cork Consul Edward Brooks, the Land League should be held accountable for the violence, either for its direct complicity or for tacitly condoning it. But as the sovereign power it fell to the British, as the only legally recognized authority, to maintain the rule of law, security of life, and protection of private property. In his extensive assessment of the Land War, Brooks asserted that the form of government in Ireland was “an anomaly.” Brooks asserted that the “general belief in America” that the same laws and administrative procedures governed that England or Scotland also existed in Ireland was a “sad mistake” that led to popular misrepresentations in the United States. The Consul at Cork gave considerable attention to the Crown’s coercive strategy



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against what Brooks ironically called the “Greater Power” in Ireland—that is, the Land League. While acknowledging that the 13000 member RIC was an imposing law enforcement agency and an excellent criminal bureau, Brooks informed the State Department that it had simply become incapable of “repressing land outrages” and was unable to expose or control the agrarian conspiracy pervading rural Ireland. If not for the assistance of military troops the RIC “would be further defied and their authority utterly set aside.”140 Brooks believed the coercive measures recently enacted by Parliament, the 1881 Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Act and the 1881 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act bore remarkable resemblance to the American Force Bill (1875) designed to repress Klan violence in the American South. The enforcement bill (HR 4745) was designed to reinforce the 1870–1871 Klan Acts that made racial terrorism in the American South a federal crime by extending the powers of election supervisors and strengthening presidential power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in violent areas.141 Generally, according to Brooks, the bills “show the similarity of English and American impulses in administrative affairs.” Yet the ultimate defeat of the most repressive parts of the American version and the enactment of British coercive measure in Ireland demonstrated that there were distinct differences between the two Atlantic powers.. Brooks held that outcome could be cited as proof that the American Congress is, perhaps, more truly conservative in dealing with the “personal rights of its citizens” than the British Parliament was in treating its “Irish subjects.”142 American diplomats gave considerable attention to British coercive measures in Ireland. American Minister Lowell sent copies of both laws to the State Department for complete review. The 1881 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, in particular, was designed according to Lowell, to eliminate “violence and intimidation, tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order,” and enacted principally to restore the Crown’s diminished authority in Ireland. Lowell seemed to agree with Fenian-agrarian Patrick Egan, forecasting a continuation of agitation and raising concerns that enhanced British repression would simply make martyrs of terrorists and ultimately “involve a loss of prestige” for the Empire. Furthermore, Lowell pointed out that the laws bore burdens on American citizens; the suspension of habeas corpus and restrictions on possession of firearms affected American travelers, many whom applied to him and other consular agents for “advise and protection.”143 In Lowell’s June 1881 assessment of the crisis in Ireland all involved, Irish and British alike, were culpable for the conditions, but he judged that British imperial officials and the Anglo-Irish landlords had terribly mishandled the situation. He favored the land reform measures under consideration by Parliament, considering the inequitable land arrangement a primary cause of Irish complaint and at the root of agrarian violence. Lowell thought that some reasonable scheme for peasant proprietorship and home





rule could cure the economic distress and provide much needed local autonomy. Yet it was “thoughtless or vindictive landlords” continuing to evict an impoverished peasantry that worked “as a prophylactic against the expected passage of the Land Bill.”144 Nor were imperial officials in London beyond reproach. Lowell conveyed to the State Department his confidence that the Gladstone Ministry was “perfectly honest in [its] desire to be generously just” but believed that it had seriously erred by enacting overly aggressive coercive measures. Lowell found the coercive laws remarkably “exceptional and arbitrary measures . . . contrary to the spirit and foundation principles of both English and American jurisprudence.” The following year, once the suspension of habeas corpus resulted in the detainment of American citizens, he suggested to the State Department that these coercive measures were “arbitrary and severe and contrary to the spirit and fundamental principles of the British Constitution.” Not only were the acts constitutionally suspect, but they were largely ineffective, if not entirely counterproductive. Besides not providing tangible results in the reduction of agrarian outrages, Lowell believed the laws “altogether for evil” because they “enabled unprincipled” agrarians opportunities to convince the Irish peasantry that the government had no positive, accommodating remedial measures. Agrarian propagandists would hone in on the continuation of repression and accentuate antigovernment sentiment prevalent among the peasantry, many of whom were already convinced that London solely honored and supported landlord interests.145 Other American diplomats shared Lowell’s opinion. Even after the Land War ended, the American General Consul in London, Edwin Atkins Merritt, a quartermaster officer with a New York regiment during the Civil War, noted that even with the decline of assaults and property attacks, the country’s economic conditions remained dire but the British government had provided little in the way of direct assistance to the peasantry. Instead of an aggressive program of internal improvement to ameliorate social conditions in Ireland, the government had simply encouraged a policy of voluntary emigration out of the Empire.146 Officials in Washington commended Lowell’s thorough and “lucid treatment” of the agrarian difficulties, and in particular shared his concern that by concentrating on repressive rather than remedial measures the British were only inflaming a situation that involved a sizeable portion of the American electorate. Equally troublesome to Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen’s Anglo-Saxon sensibilities, Britain’s coercive measures were “repugnant to the principles of civil liberty and personal rights which [were] the common glory of British and American jurisprudence.”147 By the beginning of 1882 scores were arrested following the decision by the British to clamp down on agrarian activities, including several claiming US citizenship. Gladstone’s government was not inclined to show any leniency toward Irish-Americans imprisoned for involvement in agrarian activities. In an interview with Lowell, the Prime Minister himself refuted



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American arguments that agrarian terrorism was politically motivated. According to Gladstone, agrarianism was a social conflict, based on sectarian and economic differences. In support of this position, Gladstone pointed to the fact that most of the violence was not directed against Anglo-Irish landlords but rather against the Irish peasantry. The government’s position was hardly consistent on this point. On numerous occasions, members of the government had explicitly identified agrarian violence as a form of terrorism, speaking directly to its political character. Even Gladstone’s justification for the Protection Act admitted that agrarian violence impacted governmental functions; extraordinary judicial proceedings were necessary because “no evidence and no conviction could be obtained” under regular jury courts. By eroding the capacity of the Crown legal system and establishing their own land courts to adjudicate disputes, Irish land leaguers attempted to supplant imperial administration for local autonomy.148 Yet the Foreign Secretary Lord Granville made clear to the British Minister in Washington, DC, Lionel S. Sackville-West, the arrest of American citizens was based on imperial security considerations; those detained under the Prevention of Crime Act was “not a measure of punishment, but of prevention.”149 In other words, applying the legal doctrine of prior restraint to transnational terrorism, Irish-Americans were not arrested for anything they had actually done but because what they might do in the future. This approach offended Americans’ sensibilities and justified the strongest possible protests. To appease a growing outcry among the American public and Congress, in spring 1882 the Irish administration in Dublin agreed to release some prisoners, including several American citizens, who were not a “risk to the public safety” and were willing to consider the release of others if “no danger to the public peace [was] apprehended.” To qualify for release the British required they leave the United Kingdom and agree not to return. Despite misgivings about the emigration qualification, Lowell accepted its necessity and the Cabinet’s argument that counterterrorist efforts were not designed as punitive measures but merely for prevention of future attacks. In the face of mounting public pressure from Irish-Americans and pro-Irish members of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, who had for weeks in spring 1882 clamored for the immediate release or jury trial of detained Irish-American citizens, and demands from the American public for a repudiation of any emigration requirement, Lowell relayed to the State Department the British belief that it was indeed Irish-Americans who were the “most mischievous in fomenting disorder” in Ireland. He maintained that British policy was strictly a “matter of internal administration” and it would be not only “indecorous but absolutely unavailing” for the United States to interfere. He advised accepting the British emigration proviso, at least “during the continuance of exceptional legislation in the United Kingdom.”150 Further highlighting the political character of agrarian terrorism was the fact that agrarian leaders hoped to leverage American public opinion in





order to pressure the British in changing its behavior and policies toward Ireland. After his interview with Gladstone, Lowell later met the Irish Secretary William Forster, who the Minister called a true friend of America. Forster indicated that the British could not concede an “unconditional discharge” of naturalized American prisoners, because they “gave the Irish Government more trouble than any other” and they used their American citizenship as a means of manipulation. If the British tried them, they could never secure conviction and if the accused were acquitted, more Irish-American terrorists would undoubtedly come to the United Kingdom, making it virtually impossible for the British to govern the island, much less maintain public order. After a number of diplomatic exchanges, Lowell expressed his confidence to the State Department that the Irish Secretary intended to release the American prisoners “quietly, whenever he could find a plausible pretext for it,” but that Forster did not want to give the appearance of either caving in to the pressure of a foreign power or being misrepresented by agrarian terrorists as appearing weak. Eventually the Ministry granted the release of a number of the incarcerated Americans on the condition that they leave the United Kingdom and not return to Ireland. Once convinced that the British would discharge agrarian suspects not charged in violent crimes, Lowell believed that their release would render agrarian accusations, especially among vociferous Irish-American supporters, of British repression and injustice as moot and inconsequential. Furthermore, he acknowledged that it would prove an important, if vapid victory for Irish-American political leaders, allowing them to retain public respectability among their constituency.151 Coming after the sensation and turbulence during the Molly Maguire trials and 1877 Great Railroad Strike, in the United States there was a palpable public suspicion of radicalism and violent challenges to social order. Americans not only increasingly directed their attention to potential terrorists operating inside America, but also projected their animosity against similar groups who challenged established social orders elsewhere. Among Anglo-Saxon commentaries of agrarian terrorism, several transatlantic links were established. The British government had for years complained about funds raised in America to support agrarian violence and Irish-American publications encouraging agrarian assassination campaigns. While consistently critical of British imperialism, and especially of its coercive administration of Ireland, Goldwin Smith did not believe agrarianism could have survived without support from America. Politically, agrarians benefitted from the nationalist ideology infused by American Fenians, and financially, agrarians were funded by their compatriots in New York City.152 After the imprisonment of Land League founder Michael Davitt in 1881, the Foreign Office learned that American Land League meetings had issued “threats of retaliation” against British consular officials in the United States.153 On both sides of the Atlantic, in public discourse considerable parallels were made between agrarian terrorists and the Molly Maguires in



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Pennsylvania earlier in the decade. Irish-Americans, and non-violent IrishAmerican nationalists, such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, had been discredited by their connections to Molly Maguire labor terrorism.154 At the beginning of the Land War, a New York Times editorial warned the American people that Irish agrarian terrorists were arriving in America, as suggested by the recent Molly Maguire terrorism in Pennsylvania. Irish Secretary Forster’s son-in-law made similar arguments in a popular British journal. The North American Review, which perceived a “strong family likeness” between the Molly Maguires and agrarians in Ireland, offered similar admonishments against transatlantic cooperation among Irish-American terrorists. The proliferation of such methods “would overturn civilization and bring back chaos and black night again.”155 Ethnicity of the perpetrators and the methods of violence provided the critical linkage. Those comparing the agrarians and Molly Maguires bestowed near universal condemnation on both because they represented fundamental challenges to Anglo-Saxon civilization. Of primary concern for Americans and the British was that, because of a number of challenges in Latin American and Asia, Irish agrarianism might disrupt the growing rapprochement between the Atlantic powers. Because of their demographic and political power, the Irish enjoyed a unique position to undermine efforts to harmonize their global capitalist, imperialist ambitions. State Department officials in Washington and the United Kingdom discussed the implications of agrarianism to Anglo-American relations, fearing that an escalation of violence in Ireland might strain the recently improved relations between the Atlantic powers.156 As with Fenian terrorism, agrarian violence disconcerted American officials because of the familial ties and close ethnic relations agrarians had in America. By the early 1880s, millions of Irish emigrants had traveled to America, having established a vast transatlantic network to support and exchange. Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen acknowledged Americans’ historical ties to Ireland, which was why the American government took such great interest in AngloIrish dispute, a struggle “which has baffled so many generations of English statesmen.”157 American Consul Edward Brooks asserted that due to the substantial Irish contingent in America, the “current political agitations” in Ireland had essentially “transferred the discussion of the ‘Irish Question’ to American soil.”158 Even more problematic for the American Minister was the work of Irish-American nationalists inciting violence among Irish agrarians. As Parliament debated remedial legislations, which according to Lowell seemed to be gaining traction, these efforts were constantly obstructed by the Land League’s “violence of language and the incitement to violence of action.” “[A]mong the most violent” were naturalized American citizens in Ireland, who were inciting the peasantry to rebellion and violence against the Crown and landlords. Lowell warned the State Department about such persons, and especially “the doctrines they preached.” He stressed that “under ordinary





circumstances they would be harmless” but in the current environment, they were “made mischievous only by the excited state of the country.” He reported they continued to use their American citizenship as a cover to engage in revolutionary, seditious speech, hopefully to precipitate the Fenian aspiration, an armed conflict between the United States and the British Empire. Lowell feared that these Fenian activities would spill over into the agrarian dispute in Ireland.159 Crown authorities complained to US officials about the growing number of Irish-American publications that advocated the assassination of members of the English royal family, specifically the Prince of Wales. Not only did they find such publications diplomatically indecorous, but because the material was so blatantly incendiary, British officials in London and Dublin feared it might actually incite more agrarian violence in Ireland. The Christian Union, while admitting that such “scandalous publications” were “certainly worthy of the severest reprobation, and deserve punishment,” pointed out that constitutionally there was nothing the Federal government could do to silence these journals or prosecute their proprietors. By calling attention to their widespread circulation the British were not initiating a legal confrontation, but according to the Christian Union, they hoped to curry public favor and cultivate an “indignant [American] sentiment against the authors.”160 Like many of his Atlantic Anglo-Saxon contemporaries, Goldwin Smith found particularly disturbing allegations of agrarian connections with American Fenian Brotherhood. Although he believed that most Americans opposed “sheltering a war of assassination” on their shores, he suggested that linking this transnational network of Irish terrorism might indeed “threaten to jeopardize Anglo-American relations.”161 Philip H. Bagenal’s study of Irish-American influences on Irish politics provided one of the most thorough Anglo-Saxon assessments of agrarian troubles within an Atlantic context. A critic of liberal concessions to Irish peasantry, who produced commentaries through the end of the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922), Bagenal travelled extensively through North America just before the Land War and claimed that the political violence in Ireland was a consequence of the unique Irish culture in the United States and that IrishAmericans were complicit in agrarian terrorism. Ultimately, he believed that American interests in Ireland resulted not from a genuine desire to spread American republicanism or from any attachment to Irish nationalism, but rather from the undue influence that Irish-Americans had on American elections. He concluded that Irish-Americans would continue to exercise a powerful and dangerous influence on American domestic political affairs and foreign relations, and would not become properly Americanized until a satisfactory conclusion of the Anglo-Irish struggle was reached. Writing from a conservative perspective, the American Catholic Quarterly Review identified Bagenal as an “Oxford man,” with some claim to “judicial quality” but who tended to arrive at “alarming or despondent conclusions.”162 His



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a people numerous, comfortable and influential, animated by a spirit of nationality beyond all belief, and impelled to action by a deep-seated hostility to the English Government.163 In several chapters that dealt with the Land War, titled “The Revolution” and “The Reign of Terror,” Bagenal identified that a “system of terror and chicane [that] has superseded the law of the land” originated from the political support, material assistance, and financial contributions of both prominent and laboring Irish-Americans.164 Complaining about the “anarchy and terrorism” that convulsed Irish society, where “outrage upon man and beast, [which] have been for eighteen months universal,” the aristocracy were “hounded down personally and persistently,” and even Irish women had “forgotten all decency and modesty,” Bagenal ascribed the revolution in Ireland to the designs of nationalists “who for years had harboured in the United States.” While one impartial reviewer believed that Bagenal’s study presented compelling evidence and “strong testimony to confirm his theory,” the Atlantic Monthly questioned Bagenal’s “historical knowledge” and his analysis of the transatlantic connection, The Dial called the book’s tone “sinister” and its purpose “obscure,” and the American Catholic World believed the work propagandist, “merely a political pamphlet against the Land League.”165 Within the United States there was certainly a great degree of sympathy for the struggling Irish peasantry, and while the American Anglo-Saxon community recoiled at the terrorist violence used by agrarians, they believed it resulted from dire economic conditions, social dislocation, the lack of local political autonomy, and poor imperial policies coming from London. Much of the blame for conditions was squarely placed on British shoulders. But throughout the conflict, although there were powerful sympathies for the plight of Irish peasants, policy-makers and prominent voices in public affairs repeatedly identified American interests with those of Great Britain and worked to strengthen those attachments.166

Phoenix Park murders In spring 1882 a pair of gruesome murders in Dublin’s main park sparked an international incident and further emboldened the Anglo-Saxon Atlantic bond. Even though sporadic agrarian violence continued through the end of the decade, the Land War came to an abrupt end in spring 1882 with



work, The American Irish and Their Influence on Irish Politics (1882), published in London and reprinted in Boston the same year, argued that the “roots of the agitations and disturbances which have convulsed Ireland and shaken England were to be found in America.” What made these Irish-Americans so dangerous was that they were


the Phoenix Park murders. On Saturday, 6 May, two days after arriving at his post as Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Frederick Cavendish, along with the long-serving undersecretary for Ireland, Thomas Burke, were brutally knifed by Irish extremists known as Irish Nationalist Invincibles while walking unarmed and unguarded through Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Organized in Dublin by national-separatists with ties to the Land League in Ireland and the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, the Invincibles were an elite assassination squad with members scattered throughout the United Kingdom who aspired to eliminate upwards of 100 Crown officials.167 In an account by Patrick Tynan, head of the Invincibles, and known at the time under the alias Number One, the cabal was an “inner circle” made up of disgruntled Land Leaguers and Fenians, dissatisfied by the failure to achieve independence and by the lukewarm dedication of nationalists. While in the tradition of the moonlighting Whiteboys and Ribbonmen, those earlier 19th-century Irish secret societies that used various forms of agrarian terrorism, the Invincibles were completely distinct from the Land League. Tynan and the Invincibles believed violence morally acceptable against corrupt laws and where the people were denied a political voice. They were not organized for sporadic guerrilla engagements determined by specific economic conditions or immediate social dislocation, but rather the Invisibles combined elements of agrarianism and nationalism, an expression of “militant Ireland, the nation prepared to smite the foe” through precision strikes against high-valued targets. They sought to eliminate the principal government officers responsible for British rule in Ireland. According to Tynan, these assassins had assumed from the Irish people a “higher mandate” to annihilate England’s domination of Ireland. Tynan and his co-conspirators calculated that by using terrorism they could incite a large-scale national uprising. Following the Fenian model, they believed that targeting selected non-combatants would precipitate a forceful British response upon the Irish people, who in retaliation would then mobilize a conventional army to defeat the British in battle. Tynan prophesied that this “species of guerilla war” against a foreign occupier “was the Future making its appearance on the scene” and that the Invincibles were the model for all anticolonialists to follow. Prime Minister Gladstone had intended the Cavendish appointment to inaugurate a new era of cooperation, because of Cavendish’s expressed sympathy for the Irish cause, but extremists like Tynan viewed it simply as a continuation of English oppression.168 The Phoenix Park murders produced an enormous rift among the Irish themselves. Moderate voices complained that Irish agrarians had become too infused with the belligerent ideologies emanating from Russian or American nihilists. Land League leader Michael Davitt recoiled at the violence unleashed by the Land War and from the founding of the League had publicly denied that his organization was complicit in agrarian violence. He pointed out that violence resulted from the inequitable landlord system,



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and that the League acted as a restraint against even greater violence. Davitt feared that continued agrarian violence, especially increasing murders, would be a publicity victory for Anglo-Irish landowners, especially in the United States. But in an interview with the director of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Metropolitan Police, Colonel Sir Howard Vincent denounced the Phoenix Park murders, Davitt promised to assist the authorities and had renounced his IRB membership. Davitt issued a strongly worded antiterrorism manifesto, also signed by Irish nationalist leaders A.M Sullivan, Charles Parnell, and John Dillon.169 In the wake of Phoenix Park murders, those who had advocated independence, such as Charles Parnell and the IPP, recommitted to the constitutional agitation of the Home Rule Movement as a way to distance themselves from violent extremists. The IRB organized the Gaelic Athletic Association to discourage lower-class rural peasants from becoming involved in agrarian secret societies or embracing violent republicanism.170 The grisly political assassinations resonated throughout the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community, much as President Lincoln’s death years earlier, and while agrarian violence did not completely end after the infamous attack, the murders, much to the dismay of Land Leaguers, undermined sympathy for the agrarian cause among moderate Irish and otherwise supportive Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic and helped galvanize Anglo-American repulsion to terrorism directed against recognized authority by sub-state actors. Historians have carefully considered how the Phoenix Park murders precipitated a “radical shift in government policy” from conciliation to coercion, but it is not always clear from their discussions how the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community constructed their image of the Phoenix Park murders as a grave terrorist act.171 In the 19th struggle between English democratic ideals and a growing Irish nationalism, British Liberals faced a quandary as they advanced the goal of greater autonomy for Ireland but solidly integrated within the United Kingdom. Agrarian violence factored significantly in their discussion, and ultimately Liberals never settled on either coercion or conciliation, but rather an unsatisfying, indefinite combination of the two.172 The Phoenix Park murders produced a spate of commentary, often singling out terrorism as the central dilemma confronting the very uneasy relationship between the British and the Irish. Even before the attacks the conservative Quarterly Review vehemently criticized the Gladstone Ministry, accusing it of being “panic-stricken” and crafting an Irish policy based on confusion that allowed for the growth of agrarianism. In its article, “The Paralysis of Government” published after the Phoenix Park murders, it asserted that “the murders had so enervated the Ministry’s capacity to govern that only the anarchists ruled Ireland.”173 This attitude was evident among Americans immediately upon learning of the Phoenix Park tragedy. Within hours of the killings, the New York World attributed the murders to years of Gladstone’s vacillating posture between coercion and conciliation, and





called for the British to be more decisive; the Ministry must either remove its garrison from Ireland and allow for total home rule, or the “ ‘green terror of assassination’ must be once more met by the ‘red terror of war’.”174 Continuing a pattern begun decades earlier, members of the Anglo-Saxon community immediately likened the Invincibles to socialists and communists conspiracies. While Atlantic capitalists rejected many economic and property rights arguments of agrarians, they also based their judgments on the conspiratorial nature of agrarianism on the agrarian’s methods of agitation—namely, terrorism. Evidence presented at trial of the alleged Phoenix Park assassins convinced those within the English establishment that the Irish Invincibles were modeled after Continental nihilist organizations. Evaluating the propaganda used by both Nihilists in Russia and Fenians and agrarians in the United Kingdom verified in the minds of some the linkage in ideology and acceptance of terrorist violence. The popular and influential journals, The Economist and Macmillan’s Magazine, not only compared the Phoenix Park assassinations to extremist elements in Russia and Eastern Europe, but believed that the Invincibles’ tactics more closely resembled the labor violence that had cropped up in America in recent years.175 Yet English observers were far from agreed on the proper course. Members of the English establishment continued to place the Phoenix Park murders exclusively in the landscape of Irish violence. In his memoir, long-time intelligence official at Dublin Castle, Robert Anderson admitted that there was little remarkable about the murders. While the English were understandably outraged by the high-profile killings, these homicides were simply the most sensational in a long line of brutal crimes orchestrated by Irish agrarians in an environment where murders and assaults were quite common. In the Irish countryside, according to Anderson, “terror reigned.”176 H.O. ArnoldForster, the adopted son of former Irish Chief Secretary William Forster, who Irish extremists had long targeted because of Forster’s repressive governance of Ireland, regretted the reactionary attitude of the English. Writing years after the Phoenix Park murders, Arnold-Forster did not excuse the “lawless and barborous [sic] terrorisms” of the Land League or other radicals but he did believe it incongruent for the English public to apotheosize Cavendish and Burke simply because of their status while ignoring the countless Irish victims who suffered from both British and Land League conduct.177 By the early 1880s it was becoming more common for the English to place the Phoenix Park murders, and terrorism in Ireland generally, in an imperial context. Applying historical perspective, the prominent Cork landowner William Joseph O’Neill Daunt asserted that these attacks were not merely emotional responses generated by any Gaelic ethnic proclivities, but rather calculated strikes against the Crown resulting from a long train of abuses, disassociation from the political process, and no prospects for amelioration. Daunt suggested that when compared to the legacy of British oppression of



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Ireland since the Act of Union (1800–1801), the Phoenix Park murders were “absolutely dwarfed in comparison to Pitt’s” decision to formally absorb Ireland into the British Empire.178 Yet by the end of the year, even though he had not exonerated the British, Daunt claimed agrarian attacks were not only futile, but destructive to Irish society and would precipitate greater factionalization rather than social unity. In the closing entry for his journal for 1882, Daunt harkened back to the 1782 “glorious” rebellion and expressed dismay that the centenary celebration had been “blackened by [the] most abominable murders and crimes.” According to Daunt, Parnell and the Land League had admirably succeeded in exposing the corruption of Anglo-Irish landlords, but in “attacking all landlords, bad and good indiscriminately” agrarians had alienated the sympathies of respectable classes and “fatally widened that severance of classes which has always been the curse of Ireland.”179 Even the leading London journals, such as Spectator and The Economist, which repeatedly labeled the attacks “terrorism,” and which had long called for strong force to preserve the rule of law and social order, cautioned against undue repression. They immediately recognized that the Invincibles’ strategy was to use terrorism to incite a heavy-handed British response that would unite the Irish peasantry for a bloody revolution. Reminding their audiences that terrorism was made futile by strengthening support for executive authority, they called for a judicious response that would alienate the Irish extremists from moderate nationalists.180 After the murders, however, officials at Dublin Castle and Whitehall were not content to accommodate agrarians. Instead, focus was on bringing the assassins to justice and eliminating any remaining threats against public officials. By this point, British officials categorized the attacks as acts of terrorism, and therefore they were not justifiable homicides. Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt, an English Liberal who although a staunch advocate of law and order, did not indict the entire peasantry. Believing the majority of the Irish population did not support the murders, he pushed for an even more coercive policy to root out extremists from the protection of the peasantry. This was absolutely necessary in his estimation because “everybody knows that there exists a terrorism, a state of terror in Ireland.” Defending the 1882 Prevention of Crime (Ireland) bill during Parliament deliberation, Harcourt made repeated reference to the terrorism in rural Ireland to justify coercive legislation. Even the Prime Minister chimed in on this debate. According to Gladstone, the crime bill was vital because the “wider sphere of terrorism” among the peasantry prevented prosecution of crime and ultimately undermined the legitimacy of Crown authority in Ireland.181 Invincible terrorism had not only intimidated the Irish populace, who were increasingly unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement, but prevented Dublin Castle from governing Ireland. The 1882 Prevention of Crimes (Ireland) Act, which the American journal The Nation later labeled





“terror inspired” legislation, introduced to Parliament just days after the Phoenix Park murders, sanctioned expansive surveillance of suspects, again suspended habeas corpus in Ireland and allowed law enforcement broad authority to indiscriminately interrogate and depose suspects without probable cause.182 The assassinations prompted unprecedented levels of British intelligence activities in Ireland. Dublin Castle established the Crime Special Branch, the first permanent secret service department in the British Empire and reorganized its intelligence operations, with expenditures on intelligence work soaring, reaching levels comparable to figures spent during the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922). The Irish Executive placed Dublin under a special duskto-dawn curfew and the Dublin Metropolitan Police raided public houses and private residents, resulting in street violence, riotous mobs and creating a community plagued by fear of arrest, boycotting, and violence. Despite misgivings, it is clear that the Gladstone Ministry’s more aggressive posture diminished the abilities of both the Land League and the IRB. A carefully orchestrated propaganda front by the Tory Party created a negative public image of both the IRB and the agrarian cause, portraying them as terrorists, and the enhanced intelligence operations undermined the organizational functions of both nationalists and agrarians. As a result, in the years after the Phoenix Park murders agrarian attacks declined significantly.183 In view of the terrorism that gripped Irish society Harper’s Weekly, A Journal of Civilization favored the Ministry’s judicious mixture of coercion and conciliation. Although it might seem arbitrary power to American sensibilities, Harper’s Weekly believed that Gladstone’s measures were founded on liberal, progressive principles that would eventually do justice to Irish complaints while maintaining law and order, and securing property in Ireland.184 American reactions mirrored those of the British. Popular and official discussions immediately denounced the assassination using the most scurrilous language, but the episode produced conflicting views. Reporting the incident to his superiors at the State Department, Minister Lowell praised Frederick Cavendish for his liberal disposition and public acclaim, and characterized the murders as a “horrible crime.”185 In the United States, British officials noted that popular sentiment condemned the attacks. They supplied the Foreign Office with a plethora of press reports and editorial reactions. As evidence of the American reaction, British Minister Sackville-West reported that the Secretary of State personally called on the British legation to “make inquiries, and to express his deep concern” at the crime.186 Because of the Irish presence in the United States, and especially the transatlantic network of revolutionary organizations, the British government immediately sought American assistance in apprehending suspects. Within hours of the murders, Sackville-West reported that the Arthur Administration would provide “every assistance” to bring the perpetrators to justice. At the State Department’s request the War Department provided a



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naval steam vessel for “special duty” under the command of US Marshals to examine passengers arriving in New York City from Great Britain. Descriptions of the assassins were provided to American law enforcement agents in the hopes that if they fled to the United States, as many British officials suspected, they could be quickly apprehended and extradited.187 The American press extensively covered Phoenix Park murders. Reminding its American readers of times when the United States was “overrun with guerrillas, who were far less unscrupulous and cowardly that the Irish assassins,” The Christian Union suggested that there were “times when the terror excited by secret leagues” could only be smashed by a “government strong enough and wise enough to make itself a greater terror to evil-doers.” Because Ireland was now a “carnival of crime,” it favored a much more robust repression that would undermine the assistance they received from the Irish people.188 American sentiments not infrequently mirrored Sackville-West’s conclusion that the Land League and Charles Parnell’s “hands were stained with blood.”189 The Phoenix Park political murders were unparalleled not only in Irish history, but “in the history of modern Europe” because the targets were not personally responsible for the political conditions in Ireland but were merely targeted as symbolic representatives of the Imperial government.190 The audacity of the attacks generated fears among some Americans that the murders might be used as the British rational to further subjugate the Irish people. The Atlanta Constitution admitted that the assassinations were reprehensible and required swift justice, but reminded its readers that it was the work of a few and that the Irish peasantry should not be punished for the crimes of individuals. It went on to praise Gladstone’s restraint and commitment to conciliation, supporting government relief efforts for the peasantry and the Ministry’s efforts to deal with terrorists in the “harshest terms of the law.”191 Others were less lenient. Some Americans did not simply single out one group for responsibility, but held the entire Irish peasantry responsible for the Phoenix Park murders. New York Tribune editorials in the days after the attack captured the general sentiment in the American press, describing the murders as a “diabolical outrage on modern civilization.” Employing AngloSaxon racial taxonomy, the paper asserted that the murders were “wrought by pygmies” and that the Irish were the “most unruly and lawless race on earth.” While the perpetrators must be held strictly accountable, the Tribune faulted the Irish people too; “Anglo-Saxon law [had become] inadequate for maintenance of order and the defense of civilized society” because the Irish public had abandoned a commitment to law. Even though the Land League had no involvement in the Phoenix Park murders, many Americans believed that Parnell and Land League leaders were accessories to the crime because they had thus far failed to educate the peasantry on the futility and harm “lawless violence” inflicted on the Irish themselves.192 Joseph Keppler’s Puck situated blame for the murders squarely on the entire Irish population.





While the Land League and Fenians were responsible for fomenting a revolutionary environment, it was the Irish peasantry that permitted these social movements to continue and flourish. Even as the English “policy of iron was abandoned for the policy of pap,” Puck’s reference to the appointment of Cavendish and Gladstone’s conciliatory approach, the journal concluded that the English were not dealing simply with a bad, spoiled child but rather a “wild brute.”193 Even though the preponderance of public opinion suggested a “general expression of horror and detestation” among the American public, and even among some nationalists and agrarians in the United States, the British Consul General at New York Edward Archibald worried that the nationalist and agrarian orators and propagandists would achieve some success among the American people. The repetitive speeches and writings advocating assassinations “can not but have had its natural consequences in strengthening the diabolical resolves of the wretches who have perpetrated this cruel murder.”194 There was widespread speculation among British officials that the Phoenix Park murders originated from Irish-Americans in New York City. Initially, the Dublin Metropolitan Police thought Fenians were responsible for the assassinations and the British government even protested to the United States against harboring Irish terrorists associated with the murders. Yet even after investigators learned that the American Clan-na-Gael organization, the nationalist successor to the Fenian Brotherhood, was not complicit, Dublin authorities still believed that other Invincibles, the “cream of the [Fenian] Society,” were planning more assassinations against all government officials, and arrested dozens of suspects.195 From New York City Edwards Archibald “entertain[ed] a very strong opinion that the plot was concocted” here and that “some if not all of the murderers were sent over from this country [the United States].” So sure was the British consul that a transatlantic conspiracy existed that he believed a sizeable reward in the United States would provide valuable information about the “perpetrators of this atrocious crime.”196 Americans also tied the Phoenix Park murders to the Land League, especially monies sent from America to support agrarian causes. While on his 1883 American tour treasurer Patrick Egan refuted accusations of Land League complicity, claiming that no League funds were used in the planning or execution of the Phoenix Park murders. The New York World praised the Land League for cooperating with authorities and for offering its own reward leading to the capture of the assassins. Notwithstanding its efforts to assist law enforcement, the World continued to hold the League responsible for the murders, if indirectly, for instilling among the Irish peasantry a conviction that terrorism was a “legitimate method of agitation.” Despite Egan’s pleas, according to the New York Times, much of the American public increasingly associated the murders with the League.197 When the American Land League reorganized at its 1882 Philadelphia convention in order to



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distance itself from the Phoenix Park murders, Harper’s Weekly criticized the American organization for not explicitly condemning assassinations. Representing American commitment to the rule of law and republicanism, it encouraged the Irish to agitate constitutionally through the political process, and even accepted the right to fight through open warfare for their political rights, but terrorism was unacceptable and required vigorous reaction by the British government. Harper’s Weekly even condemned the recent Irish Convention in Philadelphia, because of its tacit endorsement of the agrarian movement, which it viewed as indicative of the movement’s lack of courage. Furthermore, the Convention’s “cowardice” in not disowning the Invincibles would certainly alienate American public sympathy from their cause and legitimate grievances.198 The Invincibles attack did present a minor diplomatic dispute between the United States and Great Britain. When rumors surfaced that British consular agents in New York City were detaining Irish passengers arriving on British vessels, Secretary of State Frelinghuysen sternly reminded the British Minister in Washington that such actions were “unwarranted by law or treaty” and violated American sovereignty. Frelinghuysen assured Sackville-West that law enforcement agencies in New York were completely “competent and prepared to guard the interests of Great Britain and to aid in the apprehension of criminals.”199 The British justified their actions by asserting that consular officials did not violate international or American domestic law because they only questioned suspects while still embarked. Furthermore, they explained that the Americans had pledged assistance to uncover alleged suspects. Even as late as the 1920s, British law enforcement continued to suspect that the assassins had direct ties to Land League funding and agents in the United States.200 There was also considerable discussion in America about the causes of the attacks and concern about English repression in Ireland. Even those who denounced Land League terrorism, such as the New York Tribune and New York World, both of which were very critical of the agrarian violence, also held the British responsible for conditions in Ireland that allowed terrorism to thrive and for only offering meaningful reforms in response to terrorism while long ignoring legitimate Irish grievances.201 Those predisposed to sympathize with the Irish struggle found ways to rationalize the use of terrorism. A meeting of Irish-Americans in New York City held fast to the cause of independence while simultaneously condemning the Phoenix Park murders and other similar attacks. The Irish National League of American (INLA), a pro-Parnell group that provided financial support to the Land League, condemned the assassinations. Months before the Phoenix Park murders the INLA, in an analogy meant to pique the sensibilities of Anglo-Saxons, contended that British policies in Ireland were “worse than Asian methods of repression.” The Buffalo INLA branch believed the killings offered no practical benefits and feared the murders would introduce a “new code of





misrule” upon the entire Irish population greater than any previous era. The Quincy, Massachusetts branch of the INLA passed a resolution condemning the Phoenix Park murders but reaffirmed its commitment to the “principles of the Land League” and admonished the British from holding the entire Irish population responsible through passage of repressive coercive measures. In Chicago, the INLA also publicized their opposition to the murders but recoiled from the “terror of coercion” implemented by the British.202 Writing just weeks after the murders, the American economist Henry George, who in 1881 had published The Irish Land Question, a scathing critique of the Irish land system and the landlord class, in which he offered numerous comparisons between the United States and Ireland, framed his discussion of the Irish question in language remarkably similar to that used by Patrick Egan. George asserted that despite minor variations, the land system in Ireland was similar to most in the civilized world, and the issues driving agrarian violence were the same that drove others, namely the desire for natural rights. While he did not advocate complete separation from the British Empire, George advised Irish peasants to form an alliance with English working-classes against the aristocracy. George, the renowned political economist whose Progress and Poverty (1879) sold millions of copies, in an article “England and Ireland: An American View” published in the English journal The Fortnightly Review, carefully examined the land question in Ireland and reached similar conclusions of those in his famed treatise on the land system and labor question in America. While the essay was laden with statistical data supporting reform and redistribution, George paid considerable attention to “the white terror and the red terror” afflicting Ireland. But unlike the inequitable land and wealth conditions in the United States, George identified an additional burden facing the Irish that helped explain its “red terror.” The RIC was not simply a law enforcement agency, it was a “standing army of occupation” and Dublin Castle was not a positive administration working to improve the Irish, but rather a “vast system of repression, and espionage, and corruption” dedicated solely to collecting rents for landlords. When peasants refused to pay exorbitant rents “police terrorism is invoked and draconic [sic] sentences imposed” on the tenants. According to George’s assessment, the only truly remedial measures to end agrarian terrorism required a deliberate reform of the land system that favored the Irish peasantry, gave them ownership of the land, and which enhanced the peasantry’s ability to govern their own local affairs.203 Among seasoned American officials in the United Kingdom there were similar fears of British retaliation against the entire Irish peasantry. Minister Lowell expected that the ubiquitous “horror and indignation” might “hurry the English people into a policy that might savour more of revenge than justice.” Despite his concerns about excessive repression, the American Minister initially praised the moderation of the British people and the “quiet determination” of the government to continue its remedial policies for Ireland. Lowell advised Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen that more than



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any other people the British had “shown themselves worthy of freedom by self-possession under strong excitement.” Yet the 1882 Prevention of Crimes (Ireland) Act, which Lowell transmitted to the State Department in its entirety, reminded the American Minister of previously futile efforts to eliminate political violence in Ireland and concluded the measure absolutely necessary to placate English public opinion. Lowell remained critical of coercive legislation because it did not directly address the causes of Irish terrorism, namely the absence of political participation and the inequitable land tenure system. Lowell also reminded Frelinghuysen that while the present government appeared to have adopted a moderate approach, the crimes act granted exceptional powers that could be used harshly against the Irish peasantry by future governments. Lowell concluded his assessment of the Irish situation with the observation that the “Irish question” was no longer “a party question, but one that concerns the very existence of England.” Although he believed “a separate nationality” for the Irish was still not yet viable, Lowell reported to the State Department that some in Britain were “becoming more accustomed” to the idea of home rule. Given the fact that by 1882 Irish-American nationalists were bombing London and other British cities, Lowell considered the Crimes Act quite mild considering the circumstances. Yet, as months passed he did not think it “rash to forebode its [the Crimes Act] most efficient result would likely be to increase the bitterness of resentment” among the Irish.204 Even after shock of the Phoenix Park murders quieted, talk of agrarian violence did not cease being part of Anglo-American discourse. Robert J. Creighton’s article in International Review on contemporary American foreign relations highlighted the shifting American attitude toward revolutionary activities. A native of Londonberry, who emigrated first to American and later to New Zealand, where he served in the Parliament before returning to reside in San Francisco as a consular agent for New Zealand, Creighton advocated expanding and strengthening Anglo-American commercial ties as a force for global peace and prosperity. Echoing complaints made by others that the Land League movement embraced communism, he paid particular attention to the methods of violence pervading Ireland and feared it threaten the social order of Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community. Creighton emphasized that ideology of Irish agrarian violence had been transplanted to America; branches had formed in America to “raise money to carry on the social war against England” which included meetings where “the most atrocious and bloodthirsty sentiments have been uttered.” Creighton argued that the American people would not tolerate the Irish secret societies that engaged in the “brutal terrorism” against landlords and the peasantry. Yet Creighton noticed a strange paradox. While Americans would not tolerate such activities in the United States, it would be “ruthlessly stamped out; yet this terrorism is fostered and fed by funds raised in America.” Creighton’s article did not consider questions of legitimacy of the Irish cause, but simply





that they should “not abuse the hospitality of America by attacking a friendly power under the protection of the American flag.”205 After months of investigation, in January 1883 British authorities eventually arrested the Fenian James Carey, along with 16 others alleged as part of the Phoenix Park conspiracy. Carey betrayed his conspirators and became a government informer, and after turning Queen’s evidence, five of his accomplices were executed. Because of betrayal, and subsequent threat to his life, Carey and his family were transported to South Africa. While on a voyage bound for Natal, an Irish bricklayer, Patrick O’Donnell assassinated Carey.206 Among Irish-American nationalists, O’Donnell’s case became a cause célèbre. The State Department carefully monitored his trial and IrishAmericans provided him with additional legal counsel. Several Congressmen representing Irish constituencies demanded O’Donnell’s release from British custody, even threatening political retaliation against President Arthur if he did not secure his liberation. The anglophilic American illustrated journal Puck ridiculed this effort by Irish-Americans to save a convicted murderer and faulted American officials for attempting to intervene on behalf of O’Donnell.207 Despite Irish-American public outcry, a British court convicted O’Donnell in June and executed him on 17 December 1883. Even with strong current of condemnation for the Phoenix Park murders, Irish extremists continued to plot against the English from within the United States. Pierrepont Edwards, the Acting Consul General in New York who had long tracked Fenian and agrarian activities in North America, forwarded the constitution of a new secret society, known as the Irish National Revolutionary Association. Its preamble explicitly rejected conventional warfare because of limited industrial resources, and declared that in a war against England revolutionaries “must resort to the most deadly and destructive methods in the most secret manner.” These “Advance Guard” nationalists were “to scruple at nothing in destroying English interests either on land or water.”208 In the years after the assassinations, the invariable term “terrorism” was used when referring to agrarian violence. When agrarian violence surged again temporarily in the mid-1880s, the British press again issued calls for renewed coercion measures against “the houghers of cattle, the butchers of bailiffs, [and] the black-visaged visitors of isolated cottages whose inhabitants they murder and maim.”209 On both sides of the Atlantic, the debate on responses to terrorism continued also. In a piece that drew parallels between tactics of the Klan and the National League, a writer for The Spectator suggested that just as Americans had recently repressed threats to law and order, alluding to the Force Acts (1870–1871), so the British had a right to quell Irish terrorism.210 Edwin Godkin, editor of The Nation, outspoken supporter of Irish nationalism, but a critic of terrorism, identified a common Anglo-Saxon political ideology of repression at work in both Ireland and the American South. He suggested that the Irish were no different than other peoples who were expressing their



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“discontent with a government directed or controlled by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community which it is impossible to resist in open warfare.” Godkin drew comparisons with British oppression in Ireland and the Ku Klux Klan’s “reign of terror” in the South against former slaves. The Anglo-Saxon willingness to resort to methods of “lawlessness and cruelty” against perceived alien peoples did not “necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an orderly and efficient government [by the British], although I admit freely that they do argue a low state of civilisation.”211 Others, however, continued to acknowledge the effectiveness of terrorism. After having just completed his third Ministry, Gladstone publicly admitted that Irish demands from England were most often met as a result of fear.212 Even across the Atlantic, the Phoenix Park murders sparked a minor political debate, five years after the attacks occurred. Republican Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts, speaking at an Irish society meeting in 1887, according to Secretary of State Thomas Bayard, not only minimized the attack, but asserted that the “tragedy of Phoenix Park [was] of small consequence in comparison with the sufferings of the Irish people for a century.” Bayard questioned the logic that excused or immunized such a “wanton murder” and accused Senator Hoar and other Republicans of politicizing Irish agrarian terrorism to pander to their Irish constituency in the 1888 election. Such compromises of morality, according to Bayard, and the willingness to rationalize terrorism was indicative of political “weakness and despair” within the Republican Party and raised doubts about their fitness to govern effectively.213 The Catholic Irish-American author and editor of the New York World from 1876 to 1883, Henry William Hurlbert, wrote a lengthy two-volume work on the conditions in Ireland based on his travels to the island in 1888. While he supported Irish independence, he criticized the methods of agrarian terrorism that plagued the island. Despite the incendiary language used by nationalists from America, Hurlbert found in Ireland that the peasantry enjoyed freedoms that a truly coerced people would not. Suggesting the power of terrorism, Hurlbert indicated that a substantial portion of the peasantry opposed violent agitation, but that agrarians, who acted as a “local Mafia,” used violence and boycotting to intimidate local residents. Yet, he did not hold the Irish tenantry solely responsible for the deplorable conditions, but insisted that external factors had created the environment for agrarianism. British imperial policy, combined with political and social ideas from America, drove the agrarian movement in Ireland. Ultimately, according to Hurlbert, the presence of ferocious agrarianism represented a failure for all concerned and marked a breakdown in civilization.214 The Land War and widespread agrarian terrorism ended with little resolution of the agrarian dispute. Incidents of agrarian violence continued throughout the remainder of the decade, but the stark decline in their





frequency and intensity resulted from efforts at land reform and greater discussion of home rule. Despite his Anglo-Saxon bias that viewed the Irish as instinctually violent, George E. Boxall reminded his countrymen why the Irish were fighting. Reacting to the failure of home rule and the reliance on coercion by the Conservative party, Boxall argued that British policy toward Ireland was “arrogant, unjust, cruel, and oppressive.” He contended that Irish home rule was an expression of Anglo-Saxon values for “local self-government.” He noted that financial contributions supporting Irish autonomy arrived from Anglo-Saxons throughout the world. Boxall faulted the Irish for being “Latin enough to squabble among themselves, to elevate their individual opinions about the common good,” but admonished his Anglo-Saxon readers against the “futility of opposing the evolution of the spirit of their race” and advised assisting the Irish in “obtaining justice.”215 Anglo-Saxonists held that the Phoenix Park murders, and similar agrarian attacks, had “shown all future governments once and for all that it is impossible to parley with terrorism, and that it is folly to pat a mad dog.”216 Although having failed immediately to achieve its goals of peasant ownership and an end to the Anglo-Irish landlord system, agrarian violence did provide the Atlantic community another opportunity to observe and analyze Irish terrorism against the backdrop of British imperialism and provided Americans valuable insight into the trials of imperial rule. According to historian M.J. Sewell, American support for an independent Ireland and the plight of Irish agrarians cooled as the American people perceived that the Irish were “moving away from romantic nationalist rebellion, towards the combination of social revolution and terrorism to achieve self-government.”217 Agrarian terrorism never monopolized American attention and no official policy emanated from Washington. But it is clear that American officials lamented the level of agrarian terrorism in Ireland and its consequence to American domestic political culture and Anglo-American relations. US diplomats, like their British colleagues, drew direct correlations between agrarian terrorism and the rise of communist ideology throughout Western Europe and America. American officials increasingly identified terrorism as inimical to American political values, viewing it as the product of not only radical, nihilistic ideologies, but also poor and improper British colonial administration. By the beginning of the 1880s those engaged in unconventional, unorthodox violence that endangered civilian populations and private property were viewed contemptuously. The term “terrorism” itself became a negative descriptor, evoking the worst possible fears; the complete breakdown of civil polity, a rejection of constitutional processes, and the repudiation of the ideals and values that adhered the Atlantic AngloSaxon community together. As Americans wrestled with their own racial and labor violence—when even the bastion of American Anglo-Saxonism was guilty of terrorism against the African-American populations and immigrant



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laborers—Irish agrarians stood out as example of the collapse of democratic, constitutional ideals. The shared disdain by Americans and the British for terrorism neither prevented American officials from criticizing British policy nor propelled them to adopt a malevolent attitude toward Irish agrarian demands for reforms in land ownership and political realignment. While Americans opposed the tactics employed by agrarian extremists, identifying their actions as terrorism, they were also equally critical of British colonial policies in Ireland that fomented agrarian violence. Even as establishment terrorism against minorities and labor groups shaped American domestic culture in the 1870s and 1880s, foreign terrorists, whether sub-state actors or state-agents, were viewed differently, as inherently un-American. Unlike many English policymakers and commentators who considered agrarianism simplistically as an organized criminal enterprise based on social conflicts, Americans viewed it as a political response to oppression, and thus more frequently equated agrarian terrorism to a style of revolutionary warfare. Only after the United States began to acquire colonial territories did it become more sympathetic to British handling of Irish terrorism, which tended to reinforce and strengthen the prevailing transatlantic Victorian belief that Irishness was inherently defective and that as a racial group the Irish were synonymous with a ferocious, sadistic disposition. Using the agrarians as an example, Americans began to construct a world-view that defined terrorism as intrinsically contrary to modernity and civilization, a significant threat to the peace and prosperity to the Atlantic community, and antagonistic to America’s global interests.




3

In February 1881, just days after the first the Irish nationalists’ bombings inaugurated a half-decade dynamite war in Great Britain, in his essay on the Irish land question Henry George wrote, the civilized world is on the verge of the most tremendous struggle, which, according to the frankness and sagacity with which it is met, will be a struggle of ideas or a struggle of actual physical force, calling upon all the potent agencies of destruction which modern invention has discovered, every sign of the times portends. The voices that proclaim the eve of revolution are in the air. Steam and electricity are not merely transporting goods and carrying messages. They are everywhere changing social and industrial organization; they are everywhere stimulating thought, and arousing new hopes and fears and desires and passions; they are everywhere breaking down the barriers that have separated men, and integrating nations into one vast organism, through which the same pulses throb and the same nerves tingle.1 George’s words, composed during the sanguineous agrarian Land War in Ireland, presaged a novel breed of terrorism confronting the Western world. Various strains of Irish-American nationalist groups utilizing technological innovations to attack the British Empire introduced significant challenges for the Atlantic community. The adoption of dynamite and other high explosives, and the sophisticated transatlantic arms trafficking network, reveals that the process of greater globalization not only offered new opportunities for positive, productive cultural exchanges, but also demonstrates that these transnational interactions opened the door for nefarious activities and introduced a new potential risk for modern imperial powers. By the 1880s, a number of Irish nationalists moved beyond simple assaults, assassinations, and minor property damage to exploit vulnerable targets, such as urban areas and oceanic commercial traffic, seizing the opportunities that greater American industrialization and affluence offered 128



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them, adopting a highly destructive, potentially very lethal strategy of modern, systematic terrorism. The globalization of Irish terrorism compelled the British to harden their repression against Irish nationalists and to take a more aggressive posture toward its Atlantic partner’s perceived leniency. The audacity and ruthlessness of the Irish-American attacks had by mid-decade alerted Anglo-Americans to the destructiveness that terrorism posed to modern urban societies and at moments threatened to reverse efforts to improve Anglo-American relations. But by the end of the dynamite campaign in 1885 the two Atlantic powers had cemented a common ideological repulsion to terrorism. By the 1880s, an awareness of the potential lethality and injury to non-combatants and the physical destruction to private property and public facilities produced a growing consensus within the Atlantic community that terrorism was an intolerable method of achieving political goals. The threat of unconventional warfare from revolutionary sub-state agents had become so palpable that the New York Times reported in early 1881 a movement among European elites for the “suppression of terrorism.” According to the Times, Europe’s leading monarchs were contemplating a conference to coordinate a strategic “war on terrorism.”2 Americans also began to seriously contemplate and discuss, especially in collaboration with the British, counterterrorism policies that relied on law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Politically conversant Americans, however, remained far from united about Irish terrorism as certain elements continued to support Irish national independence and tended to minimize the terroristic qualities of Irish attacks. The highly competitive political culture of Gilded Age America, in conjunction with the political and economic energy of Irish immigrants, forced some prominent officials, much to the chagrin of British officials and the public, to ignore or even defend some of the most heinous nationalist activities. An active transatlantic Irish propaganda campaign worked to undermine American sympathies for the British. In fact, throughout the 1880s and beyond, as with earlier experiences with Irish terrorism, many Americans found fault with the British colonial system for creating an environment that nurtured political violence. Not only did Americans hold the British responsible for the conditions in Ireland that fostered nationalist terrorism, some Americans were vociferous critics of Britain’s counterterrorist measures, which they believed were harshly repressive and largely ineffective. As the American public vacillated between an aversion for terrorism and sympathy for suffering Irish peasants, the Federal government faced enormous pressure from the British and Anglophile Americans to confront directly nationalists using the United States as a sanctuary and staging area for offensive actions against the United Kingdom. Beyond the transnational financial and logistical operations conducted by Irish-American nationalists, the globalization of terrorism forced AngloAmericans to reevaluate broader questions, such as the legal definitions of political prisoners, reconsideration of neutrality responsibilities under



Clan-na-Gael Terrorism Challenges the Atlantic Community


international law, and better regulation of transatlantic communications and financial transactions. Besides contributing to the emerging public discussion in America on terrorism, Irish political violence, conducted by the Irish-American nationalists association, the Clan-na-Gael, presented real problems to Anglo-American relations. The British government periodically complained to the US government about nationalists’ operations originating from America and sought unsuccessfully to formulate a formal common counterterrorist agenda with the United States. The dynamite war of the 1880s has drawn considerable scholarly attention from students of Irish nationalism and political revolutionaries, as well as from students of 19th-century British imperialism, providing a rich narrative of the forces of social discontent operating against the power of economic and political institutions. Studies of Anglo-American relations in the 1880s generally pay only little or casual attention to the presence of dynamiters and how they contributed to an Atlantic Anglo-Saxon discussion of normative, acceptable behaviors. Traditional diplomatic treatments charting Anglo-American rapprochement usually accentuate the converging industrial, commercial, strategic interests of the two Atlantic powers at the end of the 19th century and the confluence of a powerful Anglo-Saxon social imperialism.3 Historians examining the American context of the Irish question generally focus on the social and political impact of Irish-American nationalism as a force in American domestic political culture and an impediment in the coalescence of an Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community at the end of the 19th century. Most studies do little more than label certain Irish nationalists as terrorists, ignoring the serious and sustained attention given to terrorism by those crafting the new global arrangement.4 Bernard Porter’s study of British intelligence and state-structure repeatedly identified Irish terrorism as a crucial component in centralizing government control and law-enforcement agencies, while maintaining traditional liberal values. Yet Porter makes little mention of the issue’s transatlantic scope.5 Historians David Pletcher and Joseph O’Grady, writing over three decades ago, offered clues to how Americans conceptualized Irish-American terrorism. Both correctly identified a strong ideological repulsion to terrorism, but each in his own way tended to minimize the impact of terrorism on Anglo-American relations and neglected to account fully for the sophisticated level of transatlantic dialogue that occurred. Only Murney Gerlach, in his valuable study tracking the convergence of transatlantic liberalism, has satisfactorily identified an Anglo-Saxon ideological aversion to terrorism. But even Gerlach’s compendious treatment does not satisfactorily survey the rich discourse on terrorism that was decisive to constructing the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community.6 Irish-American dynamite terrorists operated in a dynamic transatlantic system. Americans at home and abroad, conscious of the converging Anglo-Saxon Atlantic community, monitored and assessed the activities



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and ideologies of many radical groups throughout Europe, but few were more burdensome and frustrating than Irish-American dynamiters. Recurrent threats to life and property in the United Kingdom and allegations of American citizens’ involvement eventually prompted the Americans to begin articulating an aversion to terrorism based on practical and moral considerations. During the 1880s the United States and the United Kingdom still suffered from mutual antagonism, including lingering animosity from the American Civil War and economic competition in Latin America and the Orient. As bombs exploded in British cities and transit systems, the British government and public understandably placed the highest importance on ending the dynamite campaign and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Since the Clan-na-Gael did not conduct the bombing campaign against the United States, Americans did not share the same sense of urgency. While Irish nationalists continued to create diplomatic complications between the United States and Great Britain, long-sustained antagonisms about the Irish nationalist question eventually gave way to a mutual Anglo-American ideological repulsion to terrorism. Just as Molly Maguire violence in the 1870s had reintroduced the complexities of terrorism to American domestic political culture, Irish-American dynamiters in the 1880s did demonstrate that terrorism had a transnational component that required careful consideration. By mid-decade many Americans came to accept the British view that terrorism, particularly the use of explosives, was a highly destructive force in society and a unique challenge to modern imperialist powers. Even as the United States was emerging as a global commercial power, some Americans contemplated the implications of Irish terrorism for colonial rule and it contributed to the long-standing anti-imperialist tradition in America. Irish-American violence compelled Americans to confront transnational terrorism directly and to begin envisioning their own counterterrorist strategy.

Clan-na-Gael terrorism and Anglo-American discord By both contemporary and present-day standards, elements within extreme Irish-American nationalism exhibited textbook characteristics of a modern terrorist organization. One expert recently christened Irish republican extremists the “progenitors of terrorism.”7 Known officially as the United Brotherhood, the Clan-na-Gael (“family of Irish”) was conceived initially by Fenians in England dissatisfied by conventional strategies, but was organized in New York City under the leadership of Jerome Collins, the meteorological and science editor of the New York Herald, and other Irish Republican Brotherhood members who had fled Ireland after the failed Fenian March 1867 Rising. Like its precursor the Fenian Brotherhood, the Clan-na-Gael, after a slow start, expanded rapidly in American urban centers, so that by





the mid-1870s membership exceeded 11,000. The Fenian Brotherhood continued to exist nominally until the 1880s, but most of its organizational structures, known as “circles,” had by that point been subsumed into the United Brotherhood and maintained a working relation with the IRB in Ireland. Learning from previous Fenian failures, Clan leaders placed a greater premium on operational secrecy and adopted the use of small-unit, lowintensity attacks. They embraced a strategy utilizing terrorism to attack vulnerable targets within the British metropole, to further discredit its governance of Ireland and as a means to incite British repressive measures upon the Irish people, thereby exciting greater Anglophobic sentiments in Ireland and America. Clan circles in the United States recruited members, procured and distributed arms, raised funds, and planned attacks against the United Kingdom.8 In 1877, nationalist leaders, led by Fenian John Devoy and Clan Executive Board Chairman Dr. William Carroll, established a Revolutionary Council to coordinate a transatlantic network between the Clan-na-Gael in America and the IRB in the United Kingdom for the importation of arms, funneling of funds, and recruitment. Besides gun-running, the Clan deployed modern indiscriminate weapons on a broader, more reckless scale than previous nationalists, and intentionally targeted highly populated civilian areas to generate the greatest possible publicity. Historian Charles Townshend has argued that the United Brotherhood was the continuation of an Irish tradition of violent “agitational terrorism.” Clan bombings were more aggressive and coordinated than Fenian activities in the 1860s, and therefore, according to Townshend, introduced a “novel framework” of resistance to British imperialism. The bombings on the British mainland prompted the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community to essentially equate Fenianism with terrorism.9 One of the leading advocates and practitioners of the bombing campaign was Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. A founding member of the IRB jailed in 1865 for involvement in nationalist intrigues, he was released from prison during the 1870s amnesty movement. O’Donovan Rossa, along with John Devoy and three others known collectively as the Cuba Five, relocated to New York City in 1871, becoming a momentary sensation. Indicative of the social prominence given to Irish nationalists, the Cuba Five were ceremoniously received by prominent political and social leaders and even had an audience with President Ulysses S. Grant at the Executive Mansion. Once in New York, Devoy organized the New Departure, which attempted to merge the three main current of Irish protests: Fenian revolutionary republicanism, Charles Parnell and his Irish Parliamentary Party’s home rule movement, and agrarian land reform. Having rejected the revolutionary republicanism of Devoy, the constitutionalism of Charles Parnell and other moderates, and the narrow scope of agrarian violence in favor of uncompromising nationalism, O’Donovan Rossa, after a fruitless effort to



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reunite Irish-American nationalists under a new organization, launched an unconventional bombing offensive against the British Empire.10 O’Donovan Rossa conceived this irregular strategy while imprisoned, and candidly associated his own radicalization with the degradation and abuse he received from his jailors. There was certainly an element of personal animosity fueling his belligerency, but for Rossa personal experiences and the abusive treatment he received reflected the greater Anglo-Irish conflict and especially the national repression felt by the Irish people in the British Empire. Once in New York City, O’Donovan Rossa openly advertised for contributions for his new offensive against the British and with the assistance of Patrick Ford, an Irish immigrant who had begun his journalism career with William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist journal The Liberator and later became editor-publisher of the popular nationalist weekly the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, created the Skirmishing Fund to finance a terrorist bombing campaign.11 Joseph Keppler’s Puck, an American weekly journal highly critical of Irish nationalism, lampooned O’Donovan Rossa’s “private Revolution,” believing that the Skirmishing Fund was simply for his own personal wealth and that any “sensible revolutionist would have got twice as much carnage for the money expended.”12 Dedicated Fenian activists did not view the bombing campaign as some fantastic scheme for personal aggrandizement but believed it provide the means to achieve tangible political results. According to Fenian Mark Ryan, O’Donovan Rossa learned a valuable lesson from the “widespread panic” produced by Fenian activities in 1867 and set as his goal “terrorising [sic] the English people” to achieve Irish independence. In his own memoirs, Rossa acknowledged that the Manchester and Clerkenwell affairs in 1867, more than any other Fenian operations, had struck “terror into English statesmen.” He calculated that similar and even more spectacular attacks might persuade Britain “to loosen her grasp of the old land.” By 1879, the importance of Manchester and Clerkenwell as stratagem of war was well understood by the extremists; the European correspondent “Trans-Atlantic” to the Irish World reminded readers that it was these “bold acts” that resulted in meaningful changes in British policy toward Ireland, notably the Irish Church Disestablishment Act (1869).13 By the late 1870s, O’Donovan Rossa and Ford publicly articulated a rationale for using terrorism against the British Empire. A British spy who infiltrated the Clan, Thomas Beech, reported that O’Donovan Rossa boasted the capability of bombing British targets three or four times annually, which he believed would not only “harass and annoy” but eventually “hush” the English.14 Rossa laid out his strategy in his propaganda organ, the weekly United Irishmen: I believe in all things for the liberation of Ireland. If dynamite is necessary to the redemption of Ireland, then dynamite is a blessed agent and should




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Before O’Donovan Rossa began publishing the United Irishmen, Patrick Ford’s Irish World, one of the highest circulating Irish-American newspapers, became the primary venue for articulating O’Donovan Rossa’s terrorist philosophy. The mercurial Ford, who after the 1886 Haymarket bombing and the 1889 intra-Irish factional murder of Dr. Patrick H. Cronin in Chicago feared that Irish nationalists might be associated with radical, un-Americanism, had during the late 1870s and early 1880s supported dynamite as the most effective tool to attaining Ireland’s independence, which would subsequently benefit Irish immigrants to America.16 The Irish World advised nationalists to strike at what “England regards as more sacred than life—‘property’.” In the run-up to the Dynamite War, Ford frequently insisted that Britain ought to be “scourged by day and terrorized by night” and that “this species of warfare [dynamite bombings]” ought to be utilized until the British public was “hurt as well as scared” and begging for disunion.17 While Rossa or Ford did not use the term terrorism to describe their methods, the frequently reprinted “Maxims for Skirmishers” in the Irish World leave little doubt of their proclivity for terrorism, if not ideologically at least strategically. The apothegms comprised a number of justifications for dynamite warfare. Comparing it with regular warfare, dynamite was relatively inexpensive financially, and unlike conventional battles, dynamite was actually more humane because it involved less loss of life, physical destruction, and its violence was of shorter duration. In the new age of science and technological innovations, the Irish World argued that “regular warfare [was] nearly obsolete,” especially in contests pitting belligerents who were on a vastly uneven footing, as was the case between oppressed peoples and imperial powers. In these circumstances, according the Irish World, traditional notions of honorable warfare were antiquated. Dynamite was not only a great equalizer, but ironically served as a positive force in civilization by holding imperialists accountable for their treatment of subjugated peoples. During the early years of the Skirmishing campaign, when asked about the propriety of using unconventional methods, O’Donovan Rossa dismissed all talk of civilized warfare as “trash” because dynamite had been used by regular armies. He summed up, “I have no scruples about the means. The only question is as to expediency and opportunity.” Rossa never denied an element of personal vengeance contributed to his enthusiasm for terrorism, but he consistently emphasized the political component. Admitting dynamite attacks against civilian populations were “vicious and diabolical,” he believed that “if you go to fight the devil you may as well put your hoofs and horns on at once.” Considering the formidable British garrison in Ireland, he calculated that England’s greatest vulnerability was on its own soil



be availed of by the Irish people in their holy war . . . , and speaking in all soberness, I do not know how dynamite could be put to better use than in blowing up the British Empire.15

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and within its cities. Finally, Rossa and Ford justified their dynamite campaign by the treatment of the British Empire toward the Irish people. The British had conducted a “reign of terror” in Ireland for generations and were waging a “war of utter subjugation and wholesale extermination” against the Irish people. Furthermore, England had used similar methods against peoples in North America and India. Writing in his 1899 memoirs, Rossa referred to recent British conduct against the Boers in South Africa. Irish nationalists frequently compared conditions in Ireland to British colonial repression of Oriental, African, and indigenous American peoples. Employing the “resources of civilization,” an obvious twist of Gladstone’s famed 1881 phrase about protecting the British Empire from Land League agrarian terrorism, Rossa claimed that colonized peoples had the right to use technology against imperial powers.18 The Skirmishing Fund was a source of dispute among many Irish nationalists, especially those who questioned the wisdom of terrorism. Some nationalists enthusiastically supported the Skirmishing Fund, and wrote letters to Rossa volunteering as operatives. Others, like the Irish-American John Devoy, who was imprisoned with Rossa, supported the Skirmishing campaign at the beginning but questioned Rossa’s management of the fund and its operations, and the wisdom of openly publicizing the skirmishing strategy and taking credit for each attack. Devoy feared a public backlash from civilian losses and therefore hoped to maximize political gains from each attack.19 For old-guard Fenians, dynamite terrorism represented a fundamental break with the past. Many nationalists, including former IRB President James Stephens and John O’Leary, an Irish poet and IRB executive officer, opposed Rossa’s dynamite campaign because it fundamentally departed from the Fenian ideal of an Irish people’s army fighting an honorable war. The Clan’s “urban terrorism” was also a source of anxiety for rural agrarians, such as Land League leader Michael Davitt, not simply because it was contrary to Fenian ideals but because it would likely lead to greater repression against the Irish peasantry. Furthermore, the use of dynamite against civilian populations was controversial and therefore threatened to undermine the nationalists’ credibility and erode the financial support arriving from America. The IRB took great pains to distance itself from Rossa’s methods, sending flyers and posting placards warning Irish nationalists against participating in unsanctioned attacks. Some nationalists, so eager to end the dynamite campaign, betrayed the IRB and became informers or agent provocateurs for the Home Office. The IRB’s efforts to discredit the Clan nearly succeeded. Ironically, it was suppression of the Land League in winter 1880–1881 and the enactment of the Peace Preservation Act (1881) that galvanized Irish-American extremists’ determination to strike at the British. Despite the open conflict with moderate nationalists, Rossa and the dynamiters succeeded in the words of one scholar in shifting nationalist strategy from a political contest predicated on “national honor to a war of attrition fought with terrorist tactics.”20





The Skirmishing Fund initially languished, but the successful liberation of six Fenian prisoners from West Australia in 1876, a rescue expedition organized by John Devoy, renewed interest among Irish nationalists in unconventional operations and energized contributions to the Fund. At the start of 1877, the Fund only amounted to approximately $5000, but by 1880 it exceeded $90,000. The Anglo-Saxon community ridiculed the Skirmishing Fund as a war-chest financed by the savings of Irish-American servant girls and impoverished laborers, but O’Donovan Rossa simply dismissed these jibes, believing that urban bombings would rally latent Irish nationalism in the United States and the United Kingdom, which in turn would spur greater contributions. O’Donovan Rossa’s calculations were substantiated by the British infiltrator Thomas M. Beach, who admitted that while Americans might label the Fund’s collectors “cowardly, lying braggarts” or “common swindlers,” it was “altogether beyond dispute” that bombings did stimulate greater contributions to the Skirmishing Fund. By 1881, O’Donovan Rossa had become more bombastic and audacious in his violent rhetoric. At the Clan annual convention held in New York City in August 1881, the American journal The Nation called it a “Dynamite Council,” O’Donovan Rossa announced that in order to persuade the Gladstone Ministry to change its Irish policy the Skirmishing Fund would begin targeting British merchant vessels carrying passengers after 1 September. Rossa issued a public warning against travelling on ships that “sail under the protection of the English flag.” While much of the American press dismissed the threats as fictitious scares, The Nation chided Americans who did not take these threat seriously, warning that technological advances and the sizable treasury collected for the Fund made these threats against British shipping and commerce very real.21 Moderate American Fenians, led by John Devoy, advocated physical force republicanism but preferred a more conventional strategy of armed uprising. Not only did Devoy personally disliked O’Donovan Rossa but he feared the negative publicity generated by skirmishings, and the subsequent damage to the Irish cause within the international community. Devoy and the moderates eventually succeeded in removing the Skirmishing Fund from O’Donovan Rossa’s authority and renounced his plans for terrorism.22 Reacting to this rebuff, in June 1880 O’Donovan Rossa formed a splinter group, the United Irishmen of America, that was financially supported by the New York weekly United Irishmen and loosely attached to extremist elements in the Clan through a network of auxiliary social clubs.23 The Minister in Washington, DC, Edward Thornton, immediately warned the Foreign Office about O’Donovan Rossa’s new organization and weekly. What made Rossa so dangerous, according to Thornton, was that he had completely abandoned constitutional agitations and “preaches the doctrine that violence alone” would free Ireland. Unlike earlier nationalists and agrarians who focused on uprisings in Ireland, Rossa advocated an



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invasion of England by non-uniformed agents who would set fires to English cities.24 From the beginning of the Skirmishing campaign, the British were attentive to the rhetoric and actions of extremists within the Irish-American community. The New York Philo-Celtic Society, a linguistic association that became a model for the Gaelic League in Ireland, published an article in its journal on 4 March 1880 that questioned the very nature and viability of honorable warfare. Titled “England’s Honorable Warfare,” the article asserted that because England had suppressed the Irish peasantry for centuries, the Irish were justified in using whatever means necessary, including explosives, against English cities and civilians, because the best means of achieving Irish independence was to “Strike terror in the hearts of the English people.”25 The British Consul General in New York City, Edward Archibald, admitted that the article was no worse than many others published in the Irish World, and suggested to Minister Thornton that, like other nationalist publications, it needed to be banned in Ireland.26 The controversial pamphlet The Irish Avenger; or Dynamite Evangelist added religious justification for terrorism, encouraging nationalists to “pour down fire in the way of dynamite on the modern Sodom, the British metropolis.” Based on a history of oppression and contemporaneous abuses the author admonished the Irish to show the English, in Gladstone’s words, the “intensity of terrorism.” In an effort to disassociate Irish nationalism from European radical groups, the author disclaimed any association with socialism or nihilism. He suggested that “Dynamite will be their [the Irish] salvation” against English tyranny, and offered songs and rhymes, imbued with religious justification, that glorified dynamite for the oppressed: Blessed be the hand that causes the first outbreak of the forked red flame that wraps London in a blaze!—Blessed be they who fan that flame into a towering conflagration, which no human power can arrest ‘till the den of the British tyrants shall become a heap of ruins!27 The Foreign Office actively vetted Irish publications in America, specifically directing the British Consul General in New York City to transmit nationalist publications that included material “inciting to treason, violence, or intimidation.”28 By August 1882 the Irish Administration at Dublin Castle banned the pamphlet, along with other Irish-American publications, such as the Devoy’s Irish Nation and O’Donovan Rossa’s United Irishman, from distribution or possession in Ireland.29 While incendiary publications were disturbing, the greater dilemma, however, remained with actual terrorist attacks. In August 1881, Acting British Consul General in New York, Pierrepont Edwards, transmitted to the Foreign Office copies of a New York Times article on a suspected O’Donovan Rossa bomber who proposed, according to the Times’ reporter, initiating a “system





of terrorism” and sanctioning any mode of warfare against the British.30 In fact, O’Donovan Rossa’s team fired the opening salvo of the bombing campaign on 14 January 1881, two months before the dynamite attack by The People’s Will in Russia assassinated Czar Alexander II, an event often regarded by many in the West as the beginning of modern dynamite terrorism. The Clan-na-Gael, unlike Russian domestic terrorists, innovated a transnational, transatlantic network. Since the Fenians of the 1860s, Irish nationalists had embraced Continental revolutionary ideology and cellular structure, but unlike Russian anarcho-nihilists, settled on terrorism not as an ideology but as a practical strategy for dismantling British imperial rule in Ireland. Another difference with Russian terrorists who were often committed to regicide or assassinating state ministers, Irish terrorists were not so myopic. The Clan did not confine their attacks to the British monarchy or the ruling class but were comfortable targeting all aspects of the British Empire, including non-military, public buildings and the civilian population. The bombing of Salford Barracks in Manchester was an attack on a military instillation, thus it is not customarily considered a terrorist attack. The attack, however, did include civilian victims, resulting in the death of a young boy, injuries to three civilians, and destruction to a number of privately owned local shops. Further highlighting its terroristic qualities, the Salford police concluded that the attack was neither a traditional military operation nor designed to achieve standard military objectives, but was “perpetrated for the purpose of public intimidation.”31 Two months later, authorities discovered 15 pounds of undetonated explosives at the Mansion House, the residence of London’s Lord Mayor, located directly across from the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. O’Donovan Rossa targeted Lord Mayor Sir William McArthur, an Irishman, because he had zealously supported the 1881 coercion acts against agrarians. A year later a second bombing attempt on the Mansion House was again detected before detonation. In spring 1881, O’Dovovan Rossa’s men on several occasions used gun-powder pipe bombs against the Liverpool police headquarter and town hall, causing only minimal structural damage and no human casualties. O’Dovovan Rossa’s enthusiasm for terrorism even led him to falsely claim credit for bombings; at a meeting of Irish nationalists at Fall River, Massachusetts, reported by the New York Times, Rossa took responsibility for an accidental explosion on board a British vessel in the Straits of Magellan. The New York Times minimized the blustering of O’Donovan Rossa and Ford, who might foam at the mouth like a “rabid dog” but were actually a “toothless animal” and “harmless as kittens.” These bombings resulted in relatively few casualties but abruptly awoke the British to the potentials of modern terrorism.32 The English establishment immediately understood the novelty of the dynamite war and drew some comparison between the Clan’s activities and the notorious terrorist attacks conducted by Russian anarchists. A series



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of articles printed in the influential English weekly The Spectator labeled the dynamiters “Fenian Nihilists,” but differentiated them from their Russian counterparts in several substantial ways. First, it recognized that Irish dynamiters were less idealistically motivated or inclined toward martyrdom as evidenced by careful planning for escape after each attack. Second, the absence of a single, despotic ruler in England compelled Irish dynamiters, more than Russian Nihilists, “to diffuse their violence” over the British public to produce a “general panic,” “terrorising a general public innocent of all political responsibility.” The bombings, according to the Spectator, had introduced a “novel terror” upon society that augured a new era of revolutionary violence because it posed a great risk to society at minimal expense and planning. By summer 1881, as it became clear that the bombings were not isolated events but part of a pattern, the Spectator recommended that the British government “strike terror into these social assassins.” To the chagrin of many, it was now evident that “science, which had armed civilisation, has now armed savagery.” The application of dynamite in such unconventional tactics not only spoke ill of the practitioners, but the absence of any public condemnation and the silence of the Irish people were indicative of the weakness of their national character.33 Even from America, George W. Crump, the long-serving vice-consul at Philadelphia who was born to English parents in the United States, reported to the Foreign Office that the Irish-American dynamiters were similar to Russian nihilists because they largely came from the lower classes.34 Even before the first bombs exploded, British diplomats and commercial agents in America had carefully observed the growth of Irish-American nationalism, especially the Skirmishing Fund. Initially they concluded that the Fund was not a serious threat to British security, but their attitudes adjusted immediately after first strikes. The Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Metropolitan Police, charged with gathering and analyzing intelligence data, and using undercover agents and paid informers to frustrate Irish terrorist operations, became the primary agency against the dynamite campaign.35 In the years before the dynamite campaign, the British had few institutional mechanisms for uncovering political conspiracies or implementing preventative measures against terrorist attacks. Although the Criminal Investigation Division of the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) had existed since 1878, it proved incapable of handling the threat posed by Irish terrorists on English soil. The organization of the Special Irish Branch in 1883 was a direct response to the law enforcement and intelligence deficiencies.36 In fall 1880, news that O’Donovan Rossa’s agents were preparing to assault docks and public buildings throughout Great Britain alarmed British officials in the United States. In reporting facts to the Foreign Office about Clan activities in America, Consul General Edward Archibald in New York City noted that such schemes would only elicit indignation from American





public opinion and even among most Irish nationalists. Archibald believed that the purpose of the attacks was to stimulate “zeal and liberality of contributions” for the Skirmishing Fund (hereafter known as the National Fund) among sympathetic nationalists in America and to strengthen the resolve of less committed nationalists. Though in late 1880 British officials believed that there was little support or financial means to carry out attacks in England.37 Despite serious questions about the viability of such attacks, some British officials in the United States were not convinced that the Skirmishing Fund was a legitimate threat, the British Consul General in New York City admitted that even without actual attacks, “a principal object with him [O’Donovan Rossa] has been the exciting of terror and alarm.” Archibald believed that while Rossa’s resources were limited, he and his supporters hoped to “inspire terror” and even to “extract a sort of revengeful gratification.” Without strict vigilance on both sides of the Atlantic, Archibald concluded that Rossa’s team would succeed in bombing buildings in the United Kingdom.38 Amid repeated rumors and intelligence about possible schemes, Archibald reiterated the theme of public alarm and panic on several occasions, but he did not doubt that Rossa’s followers were “men wicked enough” to execute his plans.39 Throughout 1881 reports from British officials revealed that an active conspiracy was afoot to supply radical extremists with more of what the British chargé d’affaires Victor Drummond called “devilish inventions.” In February 1881 British officials in America uncovered a plan to coordinate attacks on the docks and customs house at Liverpool. The British Legation in Washington attempted to obtain information on the network through a number of sources. It employed the Pinkerton Detective Agency to gather intelligence on the Clan, but because of the agency’s recent infiltration of the Molly Maguires and the tight secrecy of the Clan, Allan Pinkerton doubted the success of infiltrating the organization. Pinkerton even cautioned Prime Minister Gladstone against using informers the prospects for personal profits might actually instigate attacks. They also considered paying-off the manufacturer of explosive devices to obtain information on purchasers. One of the greatest difficulties the British faced was the strong influence the Irish had upon American political culture and the belief among many Americans that the British government was mostly responsible for the bombing attacks because it had tolerated the continued presence of Irish terrorists and had not used adequate “force for the maintenance of order.”40 In light of these developments, the British government, led by the famed Liberal politician William E. Gladstone, took a hard line toward perceived American toleration of Irish-American terrorist activities. Specifically, it protested the presence of advertisements in Irish-American publications, such as Ford’s Irish World and O’Donovan Rossa’s United Irishmen, soliciting funds for terrorist operations against the British Crown.41 In a June 1881 meeting with American Minister James Russell Lowell, Foreign Secretary



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no civilized Government would tolerate the keeping of an office to collect and distribute money publicly for the purpose of murder and incendiarisim against individuals within their own borders. The same rule applies with equal force to an open trade in assassination and arson aimed at the public and at private persons in a friendly nation.42 In his affable way, Granville reaffirmed the “excellent relations” between the British Empire and the American Republic, based not simply on common interests but by “mutual sympathy and respect.” But it was apparent that the British were now advancing a harder line than previously. Reflecting Anglo-Saxon attitudes, the British constructed a model of civilization that no longer tolerated passive acceptance of unconventional violence by sub-state actors against nations. Granville confided to Lowell, that if circumstances were reversed, that the US government would have protested to the British and that Her Majesty’s Government would have greeted the request “with a due response.”43 Despite assurances of Anglo-American cordiality and evidence of commonality among the English-speaking peoples, Lowell remained reticent about American responsibilities in stopping Clan activities in the United States. There were constitutional “obstacles” that prevented President James Garfield (who himself was assassinated a few weeks later) from proceeding “until some overt act had been committed or until some definite proof should connect the violent language on one side of the Atlantic with specific actions on the other.” Lowell also drew from recent history, reminding Granville that during the Anglo-American dispute pertaining to the CSA Alabama raids against the Union navy and merchant marine during the Civil War. Whereas American officials believed they had “conclusive evidence” of British subjects’ culpability, the British rejected American interpretations of the evidence. Finally, Lowell assured the British of Americans’ antipathy to the Clan-na-Gael, as judged “by the Press, public opinion in America attached no importance to the vaporings [sic] of O’Donovan Rossa.”44 In nearly simultaneous conversations in Washington, DC, Secretary of State James Blaine took a more aggressive posture toward revolutionaries. While he essentially agreed with Lowell, Blaine used language that, in comparison to Lowell, was more precise and legalistic. He assured the British Minister Edward Thornton of Americans’ abhorrence of the violent Irish press and pledged the United States would take the “most energetic



Lord Granville presented evidence of a transatlantic dynamite conspiracy and asserted that the United States had at a minimum a moral, if not legal, obligation to suppress nationalist journals collecting contributions to fund the attacks and to prevent attacks from originating within American jurisdiction. Providing the State Department a synopsis of the interview with Granville, the Foreign Secretary reminded his American colleague:


measures” to prevent “armed expeditions” and schemes for the “destruction of life or property in Great Britain by means of explosives manufactured here.” Based on these diplomatic exchanges in London and Washington, the Thornton and Granville believed that both governments were in “complete harmony” and that the United States had agreed to the “criminality” of the material published in O’Donovan Rossa’s United Irishmen.45 Despite these reassurances from Americans, the British government protested the toleration of these publications inciting terrorism and the collection of subscriptions. Over the course of the next three years the British continued to complain to the Americans about the existence of these publications in the United States and the apparent indifference of the American government. After having the questionable publications reviewed by legal counsel, Secretary of State Frelinghuysen claimed that he was “aware of no event having occurred which can properly be charged to have sprung from the newspaper publications.” Furthermore, he made a distinction, originally made to the British Minister at Washington in April 1883, between news reporting and editorial opinions expressed in Irish nationalist publications. Except for material published in Rossa’s United Irishman, the material prompting British complaints were news articles. Notwithstanding the American government and people’s “detestation for such publications” and willingness of Americans “to prevent anything being done in this country which endangered the lives” of British subjects, Frelinghuysen asserted that he knew statute that authorized the government to suppress these publications. In his December 1883 instructions to Lowell that were to be presented to the Foreign Office, Frelinghuysen believed it unnecessary to continue revisiting the subject or to speculate whether “Congress could properly legislate on the subject.” He assured the Foreign Office that the Arthur Administration knew “the effect of the publications in question and how to treat them.” Reminding the British of the sizable, and largely law-abiding, Irish population in the United States, whose sympathies were obviously with their kinsmen in Ireland but who had not committed “over acts” against the United Kingdom, Lowell argued that it would not be wise for any Governmental action to excite in them hostility towards a nation with which we are at peace and thus disturb the cordiality which is both the pleasure and the interest of this Republic to maintain with Her Majesty’s government. These considerations have weight and influence, but what is conclusive on the subject is that this Government cannot consent by its official notice to emphasize, dignify and give prominence to articles of the character complained of, which while unnoticed, are important. Her Majesty’s Government should if satisfied of the friendly purpose of this government, accord to it the right when it thinks its own interests are involved, of shaping its policy according to its own discretion. This right the Government of the United States must exercise.46



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While the Administration found the Irish-American dynamite press distasteful and increasingly inconvenient, it was not willing to intervene and cautioned the British against infringing on American sovereignty. The British were not satisfied with this explanation. Throughout the bombing campaign the Foreign Office kept pressing the issue of the IrishAmerican dynamite press operating in the United States. The British recognized that US national laws were inadequate for dealing with transnational terrorism, but as early as April 1883 the Minster in Washington provided his superiors at Whitehall some indication that municipal laws in New York and other states might consider the Irish-American violent press a criminal conspiracy to commit murder in foreign nations.47 They dismissed Frelinghuysen’s distinction between news reporting and editorial opinions. According to Granville, citing the United Irishman and Patrick Ford’s Irish World, both of which continued to advocate dynamite terrorism, both news articles and editorials were of an “equally mischievous character.” The British established, at least to their own satisfaction, that incitement to commitment crimes in the United Kingdom and the collection of funds from the United States to commit these crimes were “evidence, and conclusive evidence” against the people complicit in the dynamite attacks in Great Britain. Granville did not single out any specific American law that required or allowed law enforcement to suppress the nationalist press or the subscription lists that funded the dynamite war. Even without a legal justification, Granville argued that if similar publications created funds to commit crimes, outrages and systematic assassination against “American citizens at home [they] would be by some means or other prohibited.” Granville remained convinced that these publications and the subscription funds were “over acts of solicitation and abetting crime is a matter which admits of no dispute.” But sensing he would not convince the Americans of the British position, Granville let the matter stand and relied on Frelinghuysen’s assurances that the United States would prosecute publications involved in overt acts of violence against the United Kingdom.48 Certainly even more alarming to the British was the mounting evidence of transatlantic explosives trafficking. In America, the Salford bombing immediately raised the spectre of the 1867 Clerkenwell explosion.49 As the first dynamite campaign quieted in late spring 1881, Americans learned that British authorities had confiscated several shipments containing explosive devices bound from Boston to Liverpool, one of which contained bills bearing Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s name. Though he denied responsibility for the shipment, British intelligence agencies determined that the bombs had been constructed in the United States for Rossa’s operatives “to destroy life and property” in England. Home Secretary William Vernon Harcourt issued orders to the British Consul in Boston to trace their origins, and after requesting American assistance in the investigation, received guarantees from Lowell that the US government “would make every possible exertion




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National, State and Municipal Authorities are all engaged in the work of discovering the wicked authors of the dynamite plot. It was a stealthy, secret crime and it is not believed that any considerable number of accomplices were engaged in it. No pains or expenses will be spared in the detention and prosecution of the guilty parties.51 He personally assured British Minister Thornton that if any Americans died on ships carrying bombs the “Irish would be exterminated.” The House of Commons “cordially received” Blaine’s assurance of cooperation, and it seemed as if the long-desired collaboration might materialize. But only days later Blaine publicly criticized the Liverpool police for allowing the conspirators to escape, which left the impression among Americans that the whole affair was a plot orchestrated by British intelligence agencies to “cast odium on the Irish agitators.” Despite repeated assurances of assistance from American officials, it is difficult to discern an activist policy on the part of the US government—no Americans did die because of explosives trafficking and even after the American manufacturers were discovered, the matter was eventually dropped without prosecution.52 The American journal The Nation warned that the agrarian agitation that had for generations kept Ireland in a “state of abject terror” from the “invisible power which surrounds them” had now infiltrated English urban areas. The government must institute vigilant security measures to protect public buildings, bridges, and water and gas pipelines from bombings. The Liverpool shipments demonstrated, according to The Nation, that American laws were antiquated and “ridiculously inadequate” in regulating the exportation of dynamite and other explosives. Modern technology and transportation had “brought within the reach of criminals stupendous agencies for the destruction of life.” New York Times editorials during the summer tended to minimize the violations of American laws and on the whole rejected arguments that dynamite attacks were of a military character. It suggested that instead of involving the American people, the British could end dynamite terrorism by simply ending misrule in Ireland.53 Victor Drummond reminded his superiors at the Foreign Office that municipal laws or statutes did not criminalize the making of bombs, but expressed hope that a growing public sentiment might pressure Congress to pass national laws to augment existing regulation of explosives, specifically prohibiting the construction of bombs designed to destroy public property and innocent lives.54 The opening round of the bombing campaign also revived tensions over Americans incarcerated in Great Britain for alleged participation in Irish nationalist violence, an issue that had strained Anglo-American relations



to discover and bring to justice” the perpetrators and prevent further attacks against the British.50 Even before receiving Lowell’s detailed report of British complaints, Secretary of State Blaine pledged even more emphatically that:

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during the Fenian uprisings in the years immediately after the United States Civil War. In the early 1880s, responding to the agrarian violence in Ireland, the British Ministry enacted stronger security measures, arrested suspected terrorists, and detained numerous American citizens for indefinite terms without judicial due process and under physical duress. After passage of the Protection of Person and Property in Ireland Act (1881), which suspended the right of habeas corpus in Ireland, the American Consul in Cork, Edward Brooks, reported that many American citizens “fearing arrest” had applied to him “for advice and protection.” American Minister Lowell worried about the “exceptional and arbitrary” character of the law, which was at variance with the “spirit and foundation principles of both English and American jurisprudence,” though he acknowledged that it was inappropriate for the United States to obstruct or meddle with British domestic law. State Department officials did not express an official opinion on the domestic laws of Great Britain, especially coercive measures dealing with Irish terrorism, but they refused to ignore laws that infringed the rights and liberties of American citizens traveling in the United Kingdom on mere suspicion of involvement with Irish terrorism.55 Minister Sackville-West reported the substance of Lowell’s criticism to the Foreign Office, highlighting that Congress, under the sway of the Irish vote, was working against the Administration by attempting to condemn formally British security measures.56 Between February 1881 and February 1882, American officials in the United Kingdom intervened in a dozen cases involving imprisoned IrishAmericans. Historians David Pletcher and Joseph O’Grady have demonstrated that the State Department worked to ensure the rights of US citizens in the United Kingdom while not defending terrorists.57 Minister Lowell, ever sensitive about American honor, worked closely with Foreign Secretary Granville to reach a solution. It was obvious to American officials in the United Kingdom that “among the most violent” offenders were naturalized Irish-Americans, who openly exploited their American citizenship in order to precipitate conflict between the transatlantic powers. Lowell warned the State Department that such people, who “under ordinary circumstances” were “harmless,” were “made mischievous only by the excited state of the country.” He opined that the British government was “perfectly honest in their desire to be generously just” and the “Ministry [had] gone to the extreme limit of public opinion in their concessions.”58 The issue of Irish-American prisoners also entered American domestic politics. Members of the House of Representatives representing districts heavily populated by Irish-Americans dominated debates about the imprisoned American citizens and often played upon Irish nationalist sentiments to criticize British imperial policy. Congressional deliberations focused on the injustice of British imperial policy in Ireland, especially violations of Irish civil liberties, such as the suspension of habeas corpus, which Representative S.S. Cox of New York described as beyond the “pale of humanity.”





Even during the first bombing campaign, supporters of the Irish applauded the heroic course pursued by nationalists against “British tyranny,” which was attempting to “denationalize” the Irish people. “The cabal in Downing street” victimized courageous Americans by denying them the sanctity of their citizenship. British policy was an example of “wanton brutality such as barbarians alone inflict on prisoners” and showed that the “spirit of torture, which for so many ages stained and blackened English history, is yet alive and active.” The ideas of justice in Great Britain had given way to “the law of suspicion” and there was “no more atrocious system of jurisprudence.” Some congressmen warned that interning American citizens could provoke a war with the United States, which was actually more dangerous to British security than the dynamite terrorists.59 In early 1882 public pressure spurred the State Department to amplify intercessions on behalf of incarcerated Irish-American nationalists who claimed US citizens, despite a reluctance to get involved in British internal affairs and the annoyance of coming to the assistance of revolutionaries.60 Americans remained insistent on protecting their citizens abroad, but this did not diminish President Chester A. Arthur’s appreciation for British security concerns. British officials maintained that the bombing campaign in Great Britain was a clear threat to their internal security and necessitated coercive measures. Secretary of State Frelinghuysen conveyed President Arthur’s views to London, that the American “government [had] no sympathy with the motives or the methods of the class of indiscreet individual” but worried that excessive security measures might strain relations between the two nations.61 Crown authorities arrested over 25 suspects, including several American citizens for complicity in the conspiracy. Consular officials worked diligently for their release and by the end of the year President Chester Arthur assured Congress that he had reached an agreement with Great Britain to release the remaining prisoners.62 For Americans a crucial issue of Irish political prisoners was the protection of American citizens’ rights. Except for the most ardent supporters of Irish nationalism, public discussions about Irish-American terrorists was not about forgiveness, but guaranteeing rights of habeas corpus, reasonable detention, an open, fair, impartial trial, and due process. Americans did not demand the release of suspected terrorists or clemency, only that those suspected of dynamite crimes receive regular, speedy trials. From the beginning of the dynamite campaign the New York Times criticized Irish-American terrorists for using the “sacred mantle of American citizenship” to commit violence in friendly nations. The editorial page proffered that such methods of violence were not an “American institution” and that respectable Americans regretted that such perpetrators could claim to be their “fellow-citizens.” In the 1883 trials of Irish-American bomber, the Christian Union praised the guilty verdicts and especially applauded the fair trial.63 Acknowledging “exceptional conditions,” notably the absence of law and order in Ireland,



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President Arthur praised Britain’s patience during such extraordinary attacks and approved the British stipulation that suspected Irish-American terrorist prisoners emigrate from the United Kingdom upon release. The State Department continued to “urge” the American legation in London to secure the release of remaining American prisoners held in British prisons while the “time [was] opportune.”64 The window of British clemency, however, quickly closed in the wake of the Phoenix Park murders in May 1882. Although this terrorist attack in Dublin, orchestrated by the Irish Invincibles, a group of Irish nationalist and agrarian extremists, had little direct connection with Irish-American nationalist groups, it did contribute to Britain’s unwillingness to free suspected Irish-American terrorists.65 Heightened British attention to internal security needs and the consistent presence of transatlantic terrorism pushed the issue of incarcerated American citizens off the immediate agenda. Intelligence and government officials concluded that there it was “war in Ireland.”66 In the view of British officials in America, based upon a recent address issued by an advanced nationalist published in the New York Star, it was a “war of extermination against England.”67

The triangle and Anglo-American strains The year 1883 opened with another round of bombings, with Irish-American skirmishers targeting government officials, critical public facilities and other visible, symbolic places. In early 1882, the United Brotherhood, now completely controlled by John Devoy, the Protestant middle-class Dr. William Carroll of Philadelphia, who had close ties to Michael Davitt and the agrarian movement in Ireland, and John J. Breslin of New York, an old Fenian who helped in the 1865 escape of James Stephens from Bidwell Prison and the 1876 Catalpa rescue in Australia, concocted schemes to burn London and other English cities, to “avenge Irish wrongs, and accomplish the ‘freedom’ of Ireland.” Although the plans were publicized in American papers, British agents believed this an intentional ploy; authorities would not take them seriously if so openly discussed.68 Nothing came of this plot, but on the evening of 20–21 January 1883, near simultaneous explosions occurred in Glasgow at a large gasworks, the Buchanan Street railroad station, and at the bridge over the Posil aqueduct. The bombings injured a dozen bystanders and caused significant property damage, but it was the potential for far greater destruction and carnage than previous attacks that alarmed British officials. On the evening of 15 March 1883, police officers discovered a bomb at the back of The Times offices in London. An hour later, a terrifying blast occurred at Westminster, targeting the recently completed government office buildings for the Home Office, Foreign Office, India Office, Colonial Office, and Local Government Board Office, causing some structural damage. By spring, rumors also surfaced of potential strikes against the Manchester town





hall, the Portsmouth offices of the Bank of England, and Dublin Castle, the real and symbolic center of British rule in Ireland. In spring 1883, the New York Times reported that in response to the bombings and public concerns that utility services were particularly vulnerable, the London Metropolitan Board of Works had recommended strict supervision and regulation of all workmen entering the sewage system.69 Fissures within the Clan-na-Gael, resulting from personal animosities, ideological differences, and alienation of Irish-American nationalists from the IRB in Ireland, produced several splinter groups in 1883, the most violent being The Triangle. Formed by Alexander Sullivan, a powerful Midwestern politician in the Republican Party headquartered in Chicago and president of the American branch of Charles Parnell’s National Irish League, along with Michael Boland and Denis Feeley, The Triangle were extremist Fenians formed during a restructuring of the Clan-na-Gael in late 1882 to provide for greater operational secrecy. According to nationalists William O’Brien and Desmond Ryan, The Triangle sought to use dynamite “terrorism to force concessions from the British Government” rather than fight a traditional war for independence. Closely assisting Sullivan was Land League treasurer Patrick Egan, who diverted funds totaling $100,000 intended to assist farmers and rural peasants in Ireland in their opposition against English landlords to The Triangle for a bombing campaign in Great Britain. Sullivan’s bombings equaled or exceeded O’Donovan Rossa’s audacious attacks, producing panic among the British public. During late summer 1883, British authorities detected a large unexploded bomb at a linen factory in Scotland. In the early evening hours of 30 October, two bombs exploded in the London Underground system, the first at Paddington Station and the second between the Charing Cross and Westminster stations, seriously injuring passengers in third-class coaches and damaging the trains, tunnels, and stations. According to historian K.R.M Short, who wrote a definitive account of the dynamite war, British authorities feared The Triangle even more than O’Donovan Rossa’s bombing teams because it maintained a larger war chest and Sullivan’s men were more proficient bombers.70 British officials closely tracked agrarian activities in the United States, but by 1883 became particularly sensitive to agrarian involvement with the dynamite campaign. During the May 1883 Irish National League Convention in Philadelphia, the successor of Charles Parnell’s Irish National Land League, American agrarians specifically rejected O’Donovan Rossa’s dynamite campaign but did not end extremists’ commitment to terrorism. Joseph Keppler’s Puck delighted in ridiculing O’Donovan Rossa personally for the affront from his compatriots in America, and was optimistic that if other nationalists stood up to O’Donovan Rossa they “may in time acquire as much gumption as the average Saxon.”71 The British Consul in Philadelphia, Robert Clipperton, reported that a secret meeting convened immediately



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after the Convention composed primarily of dynamiters, who were working out the methods for executing attacks against English targets. The meeting was attended by over 100 adherents to dynamite terrorism, including O’Donovan Rossa, Patrick Egan, who according to informants drew up the rules of the “New Dynamite Departure,” and Captain Edward O’Meagher Condon, a U.S. Department of Treasury employee, who was the master-mind of the 1867 Manchester rescue but escaped execution and was pardoned by the British in 1879 largely because of his American citizenship. At this gathering, a pamphlet by Professor Gaspodin Mezzeroff titled “Dynamite Against Gladstone’s Resources of Civilization, or The Best Way to Make Ireland Free and Independent” was distributed among those in attendance. For months the mysterious Professor Mezzeroff, a travelling liquor salesman of Russian origins, had lectured across America on the necessity of using explosives for revolutionary purposes, the most sensational speech held at New York City’s Cooper Union in September 1882. Mezzeroff even established schools to train revolutionaries to build and detonate explosives. Borrowing from Gladstone’s famous phrase, Mezzeroff’s pamphlet and lectures defended terrorism as a legitimate method of warfare against an oppressive imperial power and specifically encouraged the use of high explosives for their destructive and publicity effects.72 Throughout the following months, British officials frequently referred to Mezzeroff’s influence upon Irish extremists in America, and feared that he had established a dynamite training program financed by the Clan-na-Gael to elevate the bombing campaign. British officials in America were confident that both Alexander Sullivan and Patrick Egan, foremost agrarian leaders in the United States, were also directly involved in transatlantic dynamite trafficking and the bombings occurring in Britain. During the height of the bombing campaign, Egan, later the United States Minister to Chile, publicly acknowledged that only dynamite was “necessary for the redemption of Ireland.” A year after the bombing campaign ended, he was still advocating for the burning of London by disguised Irish operatives.73 The cross-pollination between agrarians and nationalists roused concerns among British officials in America who feared that the two groups were increasingly indistinguishable and that relying on each other’s organizational structure they might coordinate their operations in simultaneous attacks in Great Britain and Ireland. Under Sullivan’s leadership of the NIL in America, the British Consul in Philadelphia Robert Clipperton reported that “exterminating societies” had formed to engage in murder and property destruction against “those obnoxious to the Irish cause.” Using a cellular structure that received funding from the umbrella organization but acting independently, these terrorist teams were training to use hand-grenades to destroy the Liverpool customs house and to “remove” alleged Irish informers and prominent British officials, such as Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and Lord Lansdowne. In spring 1884 Clipperton reported that these individuals and others





were under constant threat and that police protection for the government principles should not be relaxed.74 By summer, fears of agrarian-nationalist joint operations calmed. The British Minister in Washington believed that cooperation between agrarians and nationalists in the United States had not only lessened but that the two groups were competitive with one another. According to Sackville-West, the Irish-American dynamiters hyped bombing scares not only to increase financial contributions for their “nefarious purposes,” but also to siphon money away from Parnell’s constitutional agrarian agitation.75 Yet some still viewed the two intricately tied if not operationally, at least ideologically. The Atlanta Constitution contended that “Irish patriots” had “picked up the socialistic and communistic ideas that a red flag and a little dynamite will redress their political wrongs and bring about a political millennium.” Irish dynamiters, lamented the Constitution, were indicative of a larger problem, the diminishment of individualism in modern society. The use of terrorism reflected a broad tendency, increasingly manifest in industrialized, state-centered societies to assign social difficulties to social systems and relations, rather than individuals taking personal responsibility for their own actions.76 As in previous periods of Irish terrorism, the nationalist community remained divided over the use of unconventional, controversial methods of warfare. The bombing campaign prompted divisions within the Clanna-Gael, not so much over the use of violence itself as over the tactics of O’Donovan Rossa. Long-time Fenian leader and Paris émigré James Stephens in an interview with the London Times continued to “condemn the use of dynamite or the knife in the struggle against English misrule.”77 James J. O’Kelly, one time associate editor at the New York Herald and an Irish Party MP who was imprisoned with Charles Parnell at Kilmainham, after learning of plans to bomb Dublin Castle, advised John Devoy against further attacks because of a potential backlash from the Irish peasantry, which was “not in favor of militaristic operations.” Particularly, he feared a British retaliation that would result in the death of “hundreds of innocent lives and produce a reign of terror similar to that which preceded ’98,” a reference to the failed 1798 uprising quashed by British troops.78 The IRB in Ireland approached the dynamite campaign as tactical calamity. Dynamiting English cities threatened not simply to siphon support away from its activities, deviating from the IRB’s program of slow, gradual accumulation of arms by importation, but because it would bring far greater repression on the Irish and impede their local operations.79 A.M. Sullivan, a leading nationalist in Ireland and publisher of Dublin-based The Nation, in an effort to exonerate and distance Irish nationalists from the dynamite campaign, pointed out that the dynamite prisoners were principally non-Irish born, and that a principal reason that most dynamiters came from America was that anglophobia was actually stronger among the second and third generation Irish-Americans than among those originally driven from Ireland.80



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only kill individuals or knock down buildings but do no injury to oppressive institutions . . . The dynamite theory is the very abnegation of mind, the surrender of reason to rage, of judgment to blind, unthinking recklessness.81 Davitt deplored the dynamite conspiracy, comparing them to Russian anarchists. But the land leader cautioned against a violent reaction by the British government. According to Davitt, coercion was “one of the Anarchists’ trump cards” because it created martyrs for extremists to idolize. Furthermore, while coercion might reduce terrorist attacks, it ultimately failed to address the underlining causes that created terrorism.82 According to Anglo-Irish immigrant Edwin L. Godkin’s New York weekly, The Nation, which had been a long-time sympathizer with Irish nationalist aspirations but had increasingly adopted an attitude in conformity with the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community, the Underground bombings completely alienated English public sympathy from the Irish cause. Dynamite had reintroduced a “kind of social terror to the Irish question” which precluded the possibility of a constitutional, political settlement.83 Godkin, who according to one biographer was often schizophrenic intellectually, initially rejected calls for an Anglo-American treaty banning dynamite conspiracies. He argued that any such treaty would have required the United States to police British domestic troubles. By early 1885, after a round of spectacular bombings, Godkin did call for the American government to suppress the violent Irish-American press and to prohibit the collections of funds used, according to his biographer, for “Irish terrorist activity abroad.” Although of Protestant origins, Godkin supported Irish nationalist aspirations, but like many sympathetic Americans, was not willing to defend terrorist methods to achieve the goal of an independent Irish nation-state.84 Even among proponents of violent republicanism within the Clan-na-Gael there were voices of dissent. Many recognized that carefully orchestrated bombings offered the benefits of publicity without sacrificing public support, but by 1883 prominent members of the Clan-na-Gael’s Revolutionary Directory became outspokenly hostile to O’Donovan Rossa’s wanton recklessness and unprofessionalism. The Clan, having abandoned its stated commitment to conventional warfare and constitutional agitation, began planning its own dynamite campaign under the leadership of William Francis Lomasney, a former Union soldier in the American Civil War, leader in the 1867 Fenian uprising, and long involved in arms and dynamite trafficking.85 Along with John Devoy, Lomasney favored, in the words of William O’Brien (an Irish Party MP and later founder of the United



Land League leader Michael Davitt denounced the dynamiters in the Glasgow Herald, believing their campaign detrimental to the Irish cause because they:


Irish League) and Desmond Ryan (an Irish nationalist historian), a form of “bloodless terrorism” that targeted only public monuments and symbols of the British Empire, and sought to minimize civilian casualties.86 Lomasney believed that O’Donovan Rossa bombings were “insane designs,” marked by unprofessionalism and incompetency, and ultimately were selfserving. Even though he was heavily involved in explosives trafficking and was accidentally killed while planting a dynamite bomb under the London Bridge, Lomasney remained ambivalent about lethal terrorism from a moral perspective.87 Legal scholar Seán McConville suggests that because of their reluctance to maximize non-combatant casualties, Lomasney and Devoy were not legitimate terrorists.88 This rather narrow conception of terrorism fails to recognize that terrorists not only target non-combatants, but also property, industrial and economic infrastructures, and social institutions—that is, “a way of life.” On the one hand, according the British intelligence, John Devoy and other prominent nationalists who rejected O’Donovan Rossa’s schemes not only were proposing the use of torpedoes and dynamite to destroy life and property in England and Ireland, but they organized an assassination team to kill Gladstone, William E. Forster, Vernon Harcourt, Strafford Northcote, and Lords Beaconfield and Annaly.89 A proper view of terrorism, however, should not be limited to actual violence against people but is any method of aggression against civilian society designed to intimidate and spread fear within a specific audience for political purposes. According to terrorist specialist Lindsey Clutterbuck, McConville too narrowly views Clan-na-Gael terrorism. While indeed the Irish bombings were less lethal, the planting of explosives in public spaces, such as railway tracks, stations, tourist spots, indicates an acceptance of the potential loss of life. Clutterbuck, along with historian Owen McGee, makes a compelling case that it is a mistake to infer that because no fatalities occurred that none were sought or that there was a deliberate effort to minimize the lethal force of explosions. During the period of 1879 and 1885, Skirmishing and Clan-na-Gael bombing attacks actually exceeded those conducted by Russian revolutionaries. Russians tended to wield more crude, unstable, nitroglycerine bombs that were of much higher risk to the bombers. Unlike Russian anarchists, Irish-American bombers utilized more technologically advanced explosives; using dynamite and time-delayed charges that foreshadowed modern-day improvised explosive devices.90 Increasingly by the mid-1880s, terrorism became an acceptable mode of resistance for some within the Irish-American community. After abandoning the nationalist cause, Richard Pigott, who was later implicated as the alleged forger of letters connecting Charles Parnell to the Phoenix Park murders, traced the dynamite campaign to a Fenian strategic shift to terrorism in 1867. Irish nationalist strikes against non-combatant and undefended property simply complemented the larger stratagem of “perennial tumults,



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perpetual disorder, and prolonged terrorism” to convince the British public “that it was too costly and troublesome an enterprise” to govern Ireland.91 To Irishmen such as T.M. Healy, later the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State, the use of dynamite was suggestive of poor English administration and indicative of a monumental policy failure. The willingness of dynamiters to suffer execution or imprisonment not only validated charges of British misrule but also attested to the moral and political character of the Irish. William Dillon, a committed revolutionary who would later write a biography on the Irish-American nationalist John Mitchel, advised his British audience that notwithstanding propaganda efforts to the contrary, most Irish nationalists did support the dynamite campaign. Even in America, where there was in some forums “[v]ehement disapproval,” this was more the “exception rather than the rule,” and that even among the American people there was a sense of indifference.92 The volume and tenor of Irish nationalists’ outcries at times simply drowned out moderate voices. One example included a speech given by the famed Irish poet John O’Leary, one-time editor of The Irish People who had been imprisoned with O’Donovan Rossa in 1865. On his return to the United Kingdom in 1885, after a decade of exile in Paris, while giving a lecture condemning the use of dynamite by nationalists, he singled out Irish-American dynamiters as “ignorant and unscrupulous fanatics.” During his address, O’Leary met a chorus of opposition, being repeatedly interrupted by those praising O’Donovan Rossa’s work. The speeches following O’Leary’s advocated a continuation of the dynamite campaign.93 Some prominent Irish-Americans not actively involved in the dynamite campaign, nonetheless, sensed its necessity and publicly supported Clan activities. When asked about the March 1883 bombing of government buildings, Representative-elect John F. Finerty of Chicago, an emigrant from Galway and former Union army officer, simply regretted it was “not more successful.” Any sympathy he shared for innocent bystanders were “entirely overridden by the feeling of commiseration” he felt toward the Irish.94 The Pennsylvania Democrat P.J. Sheridan, speaking to nationalists at the Horticultural Hall in Philadelphia on 27 September 1883, argued that dynamite warfare was actually more legitimate than conventional uprisings. Hardly a consistent argument, because he did not address civilian casualties, Sheridan claimed that English soldiers were actually innocent victims, the unwitting tools of nefarious policy-makers at Dublin Castle and Westminster. Imperial official were most responsible for conditions in Ireland, therefore, according to Sheridan, the Irish should target the legislators and officials that determined policies for Ireland.95 A synopsis of Sheridan’s address, provided to the Foreign Office by Consul Robert Clipperton, noted that those in attendance enthusiastically supported his argument for unconventional warfare. To the great approval of the crowd, Sheridan admitted that a regular army could not achieve Irish independence. It was only through taking the fight directly to





British cities that the English would conclude that it was too costly for the Empire to hold Ireland.96 Extremists by 1883 had become increasingly candid about the necessity of terrorism to achieve the dream of an independent Irish Republic. Days after the Westminster bombing, a reporter for the New York World attributed to Patrick Ford a desire to “terrorize England into granting independence to Ireland by destroying public property.” In an interview with Captain John McCafferty, the former Confederate guerrilla who commanded the abortive raid on Chester Castle in 1867, a correspondent for The Irishman attributed to him the argument that “terrorism is the lawful weapon of the weak against the strong.”97 As late as January 1885, The Christian Union reported statements from Representative P.A. Collins of Pennsylvania that the Irish were completely justified in using any means, including dynamite, against the English because they were at war with the United Kingdom. The Union’s article “The Dynamite Guerrilla” dismissed the premise of Collins’s argument; “This is not war; it is assassination” because war occurred openly between organized bodies with armed forces and sought to avoid civilian loses. According the Union, “War is horrible; but it is open, brave, honest.” Events in Great Britain, however, demonstrated that it was not a war of “Ireland against England,” but instead it was a battle of “barbarism against civilization.”98 Such support from prominent Irish-Americans produced a reaction from the American press. Amid repeated dynamite scares in London, which the New York Tribune compared for American readers to the 1867 Clerkenwell explosion, the Tribune expressed surprise that such prominent, respectable Irish were increasingly tolerant, if not condoned the use of dynamite terrorism to achieve political goals, namely to “exasperate the English people” so much that they concede national independence. By the end of the year the Tribune noticed a similar attitude among Americans generally. It denounced members of Congress for allowing, if not openly supporting, violent nationalists use of the American “Republic as a convenience” for their attacks against a friendly nation.99 A New York Evening Post editorial noted that Irish nationalists had adopted a new, yet irrational doctrine of war. While regicide was conceivably justified for removing an oppressor, the Post dismissed as fundamentally unsound the arguments made by many Irish-American that justified nationalists killing “anybody who does not share his views, or whose existence, he thinks, is in some way a hindrance to him.”100 The new dynamite threats in the United Kingdom elicited a strong response from the British government that conformed to Anglo-Saxon constructs of civilization. According to the historian Bernard Porter, the dynamite campaign produced among the English more fury than fear, who were determined to create an agency to suppress political violence while maintaining the foundations of cherished English liberties. The use of secret intelligence operations within England produced philosophical tensions,



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political conflicts, and divergent ideas on how best to police terrorists. The bombing provided the English establishment, led by Home Secretary William Vernon Harcourt, a powerful propaganda message against the IRB in Ireland and the Clan in America, enabling them to demonize the nationalist movement and to portray all nationalists, despite real differences, as complicit in terroristic violence. This proved valuable to British authorities, who feared an alliance between Irish and English working classes. British propaganda effectively alienated British working-class sympathy from the Irish cause to an even greater degree than with Fenians in the 1860s.101 From the beginning of the dynamite campaign, British diplomatic officials provided the Foreign Office with a steady supply of Irish nationalist newspapers and journals published in the United States, often specifically highlighting entries that related to unconventional violence. British officials in the United States sought to uncover formal ties between Irish terrorists and other anarcho-nihilist groups in America. Although they concluded that Rossa and American anarchists were not formerly allied, they certainly sympathized with one another.102 In April 1883, British authorities uncovered a dynamite factory in Birmingham operated by Dr. Thomas Gallagher for “preparing and mixing” explosive using “scientific principles.” The British arrested Gallagher, a Scottish-born physician, who resided in Brooklyn, New York, along with his six man bombing team, 400 pounds of nitroglycerine, and a large sum of money. While British authorities aggressively pursued the Gallagher Team’s links to the United States, American authorities did not actively assist in the investigation. Indicative of the seriousness that the British viewed the case, the Lord Chief Justice, with the assistance of other senior judicial officials, presided over the trial. Gallagher and four of his team members were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.103 The Triangle bombing campaign prompted an aggressive reaction from the British. For stalwarts of Anglo-Saxonism, who doubted that moderate nationalists would be able to prevail over the more extremist elements, it was necessary for the government to end dynamite terrorism. A firm application of government power was the most certain way of defeating the Irish-American terrorists. The Spectator, a staple of Anglo-Saxonism by the 1880s, cautioned the English people not to make any “concession to terror,” and not to allow justice to be “extorted from the British people.” Since July 1882, The Economist had argued that if the Gladstone government maintained an aggressive posture toward the dynamiters, their efforts to terrorize the English people would ultimately fail.104 As a result of public clamor for action against the dynamiters, British authorities captured operatives from both the O’Donovan Rossa and Sullivan wings and seized substantial amounts of explosives. By late 1883 many Irish-American dynamiters were standing trial in the United Kingdom. Within in a matter of hours of its introduction in April 1883, Parliament passed the Explosive Substances Act. The act established regulations and greater restrictions on the manufacture





and usage of dynamite and other dangerous explosives, and meted out harsher punishment to convicted offenders. According to Robert Anderson, a long-time British intelligence official in Ireland, because it allocated to the government greater powers and increased punishments, the law proved decisive for British infiltration of the dynamite teams.105 Although the Explosive Substances Act was no doubt repressive, according to the American weekly, The Christian Union, “no measure could be too severe in dealing with a crime so cowardly, so base, and so dangerous to society.” Furthermore, the Union called for Americans to reevaluate their own tolerance to dynamite terrorists, allowing such men to operate, fund, and plan their operations from American soil. While it might be beyond ability of Congress, the Union advocated that the state legislature of New York emulate British law, making use of dynamite in commissions of crime a felony.106 The British also increased the security of officials traveling in the United States. Because of his participation in the Gallagher trial, British authorities feared that Clan-na-Gael might target Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Duke Coleridge, during his 1883 visit to North America. In response to a request by the Foreign Office, the American government provided Coleridge a security detail, made up of a military escort and Secret Service bodyguards. American officials thought these security measures somewhat unnecessary, believing that Irish extremists were not prepared to threaten the sanctuary provided in America by assassinating a British official within US jurisdiction, but Secretary of State Frelinghuysen provided assistance.107 When rumors surfaced that Irish-American dynamiters might also target British colonial holdings in the Caribbean, British authorities requested protection assistance from the United States for the governor-designate of the Bahamas, who was in early 1884 travelling through North America.108 But augmenting security details for visiting officials did not translate into broad cooperation between the two Atlantic powers, and often IrishAmerican activities strained efforts to cement rapprochement. Specifically, the British found American indifference to what they believed was a common threat to both their peoples most troubling. Although British officials pressured the Arthur Administration to take an activist approach, especially for the suppression of the violent Irish press operating in the United States, conservative English critics faulted the Gladstone Ministry for not putting sufficient pressure on Americans. They also complained that in some cases, as in the release of Irish-American prisoners, the Ministry had capitulated to American demands at the peril of imperial security. A writer for the Quarterly Review unleashed harsh criticism to Americans as well. While singling out Irish-American dynamiters or their benefactors in Congress for contempt, the writer also held the American people responsible for Irish terrorism, which they believed was one of the greatest risks to modern civilization. The anonymous author noted that if circumstances were reversed no one would expect Americans to “look with silence” as conspirators in the United



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Kingdom “excite terror and undermine the Government” of a friendly power. Yet this was exactly what much of the American people demanded from the British in their time of peril.109 Writers for The Economists believed that because most Irish-Americans were under the influence of national extremists, the Ministry should take a harder line with US citizens engaged in these conspiracies. Furthermore, it accused the American government, because of its unwillingness to intercede, of abetting dynamite terrorism.110 The British Minister in Washington, Lionel Sackville-West, provided officials in London with some explanation of why it was so difficult to get American cooperation, either in the form of reliable intelligence to prevent attacks or evidence to prosecute dynamiters. Constitutional limitations and uncertain responsibility under the federal system made assistance difficult to obtain. Another explanation was simply proximity. Whereas Americans generally supported suppression of domestic terrorism, as evidenced by harsh reactions to Irish-American Molly Maguires, because the murder and destruction of the dynamite campaign was so far removed, Americans were naturally more indifferent to it. Furthermore, public interest in American was profoundly influenced by Irish nationalists. While the British Minister admitted that the majority of Americans opposed the dynamite campaign, there was no active, coordinated movement demanding that the Federal government intercede on England’s behalf. Instead, those most vociferous during the Dynamite War were proponents of Irish independence at any cost. Because of this conspicuous imbalance of influence, the Arthur Administration and Congress were not disposed to actively assist the British in exposing Clan-na-Gael plots and schemes.111 Despite a reluctance toward greater involvement, the language from the Anglo-Saxon community demonstrated that the new modes of revolutionary warfare distressed many in the United States. The absence of any attacks in the United States and no American casualties certainly lessened the urgency and produced varying responses. Generally, Americans viewed the use of terrorism as contrary to constitutional government, democratic governance, and the rule of law. On learning of the attacks against Westminster, even before receiving instructions from the State Department, Minister Lowell at the London legation expressed the “horror and detestation” of the American people of this “dastardly crime.” In a note conveyed to the Queen, Gladstone, and Harcourt, Lowell emphasized that President Cleveland and the American people were gratified that “no loss of valuable lives resulted from an attempt as wanton as it was inhuman.”112 While it was beyond dispute that dynamite terrorism recklessly endangered civilian populations and thus worthy of universal condemnation, Americans cautioned against overreaction and were not willing to impede Irish-American nationalist activities. The government took no effort to choke the flow of contributions. Nor was the Arthur Administration willing to trample the constitutional civil liberties of Irish-American citizens, by





suppressing the nationalists press. Blaine’s successor at the Department of State, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, chided British insistence that the United States adopt a coercive attitude. Writing just weeks after the March 1883 bombings at The Times building and Westminster, he went so far as to suggest it would be better for the English to allow Irish nationals open venues and greater freedoms to discuss their nationalists’ aspirations, because it was better to have such extremists using open forums rather than “suppress[ing] them,” thus “forcing them into secret and venomous channels.”113 These assurances provided little comfort to the English amidst the dynamite attacks in London. British officials concluded that the Irish-American community wielded disproportionate influence on America politics. Minister Sackville-West argued it was futile to complain to the State Department, because even if it was willing to act, “no Judge nor Jury could be found” in the United States to convict Irish-American dynamiters.114 Several editorials printed in the New York World during the worst of the spring 1883 bombings reinforced British impressions of the ambivalence that pervaded American attitudes about the Irish-American dynamite campaign. Careful not to condone the attacks, the World believed that bombings were not “wanton crimes” but a physical expression of the nationalists’ loathing of the political connection to the British Empire and were intellectually understandable given the long history of English abuse and misrule in Ireland. The World even approached the bombings cynically, suggesting that “no public in the world was more susceptible of idle panics” than Londoners, and probably the English were exaggerating the threat posed by the dynamiters in order to coax cooperation from Americans. The Christian Union pointed out that the “terrible feature” of dynamite terrorism was that it did not require extensive organization as with previous revolutionary activities, but made it possible for a “single conspirator to work irreparable damage.”115 Among some prominent American institutions there was an identifiable Anglo-Saxon current that indicates a common antiterrorist attitude was bridging the Atlantic. In general, the American press paid considerable attention to events in Ireland and during the dynamite campaign reflected the growing concern among Anglo-Saxons that terrorism posed unique and unacceptable risks to society and challenged the foundations of Western civilization. Even those, such as The Century, which criticized the occupational quality of British imperial policies, rejected Irish arguments that they were an oppressed nation in the traditional sense. It argued that the Irish peasantry enjoyed political rights denied to truly oppressed people. Furthermore, it praised the self-control of the English people for not conceding to the demands of “dynamite and dagger conspirators.” Reiterating a theme commonly expressed among English journals, that respectable Irishmen should publicly denounce the dynamiters’ “inhuman vandalism,” a New York Times editorial specifically addressed the transatlantic nature of Irish dynamite terrorism, praising the English for approaching Americans



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with this sensitive but critical dilemma, while criticizing the Arthur Administration for “observing a degree of reticence” that was “liable to lead to embarrassment and confusion” between the two Atlantic powers. It advocated opening an Anglo-American dialogue, because transnational dynamite terrorism was “a novel question,” to which “neither international law nor actual treaties nor the municipal law of the United States can furnish any distinct and undisputed decision.” No law or treaty obligations bound the United States to act against dynamite terrorism, but the New York daily believed it was imperative for Americans to acknowledge “these crimes to be against humanity and utterly intolerable, and they recognize their duty to prevent and punish” the perpetrators. The New York Times also speculated about the possibility of suicide-bombers, Irishmen converting “themselves into peripatetic bombs” willing to “sacrifice themselves for the good of their native land.” While it failed to mention the possibility of civilian casualties, the editorial claimed that public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic would be “happy to see a dynamite patriot blow himself up at any time.”116 Americans continued a tradition of holding all sides in the Anglo-Irish conflict responsible for the deteriorating relationship, but blame was not shared equally. Many held that if the British had enacted meaningful reforms in Ireland, there would be less nationalist cries of injustice, demands for independence, or need by extremists to resort to terrorism. Some argued that it was the US government’s responsibility to obstruct Irish nationalist terrorist operations in America, thereby denying Irish-American terrorist valuable sanctuary where they could plan, coordinate, fund, and execute their attacks against the British Empire with impunity. But certainly the lion’s share of blame was laid on the “dynamite scoundrels,” as the otherwise sympathetic Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune labeled them. For journals like the Tribune and Harper’s Weekly, dynamite violence against civilian populations was not simply a menace to the British Empire, but branded this method of war “against humanity and civilization.” Both advocated passing laws and establishing treaties that outlawed the use of dynamite by revolutionaries. The Tribune believed it was time for the “governments of Christendom” for their mutual protection to begin distinguishing between acceptable political offenders and intolerable dynamite criminals.117 American commentators were not above deriding the sincerity and commitment of the Irish-American dynamiters, such as O’Donovan Rossa and Alexander Sullivan. The organizers of the dynamite campaign, who received most of the publicity within the American press, were according to Harper’s Weekly, not true, committed revolutionaries of the vein of Russian Nihilists, Italian Carbonari, or even the Irish Whiteboys and Molly Maguires. Instead they were more like the notorious Captain Bobadils, the antihero in Ben Johnson’s Every Man in His Humor (1599), who were not real warriors but rather waged war from a distance. Rossa and Sullivan were essentially all talk, leaving the dirty-work of dynamiting to their underlings, while they





garnered all the credit and reaped financial benefits. Their object was not heroic warfare nor personal sacrifice, but merely “comfortable living” though subscriptions collections and bilking hardworking Irish-American laborers.118 The Irish-American Richard K. Fox, famed editor of New York’s The National Police Gazette, railed against the leaders of the dynamite campaign. While he sympathized with the “poor, ignorant but earnest men who are doing the work and mounting the scaffold or filling the prisons” the same was not true for those “insincere demagogues” who simply collected funds and incited others to conduct the dynamite campaign.119 Comparing Irish-American’s work to Russian Nihilists, The Christian Union ridiculed Irish nationalist bombers for not being willing to sacrifice their own lives in a bombing operation. That they were willing to enjoy explosions “only at a [safe] distance” from America, the British had less to fear than the Russian Czar, who was surrounded by dedicated assassins.120 A series of articles in the North American Review, a bastion of AngloSaxonism in the United States, reflected the growing concern among American that Irish terrorism posed a significant challenge to American values. In an article titled “The Abuse of Citizenship” Edward Self feared that public toleration of the atrocities committed by “adopted citizens,” who used their citizenship to attack non-combatants and private property, was indicative of a decline in traditional American standards. Cognizant that transnational terrorism appealed to revolutionary groups, especially anarcho-communists in the Atlantic community, he warned that those who called for violence abroad were actually sowing the “seeds of violence at home.” The indifference, callous disregard exhibited by Irish-American nationalists for traditional American ideals led Self to question whether the Irish were even deserving of American citizenship.121 Written amid the attacks in 1883, Julius H. Seelye’s article “Dynamite as a Factor in Civilization” held dynamiters and other terrorists beyond the pale of civilization. An ordained Dutch Reform clergyman and president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, Seelye crafted an argument that attempted to explain why terrorism was so destructive to modern nations. Replete with Christian references, his essay argued that the agent of destruction, whether dynamite, nitroglycerine, or some other explosive, was less important than the immorality of the terrorist themselves. Their methods of warfare, with a complete disregard for civilian non-combatants, and rejection of constitutionalism, indicated an unfitness to govern. Dynamite terrorism was so destructive to modern civilization, Seelye argued that it needed to be resisted “as much by a popular instinct as by governmental resistance.”122 By the end of the year, John Newton, Colonel of Engineers and Brevet Major-General in the US Army, suggested that public anxieties about dynamiter terrorism were largely sensationalized and that dynamite as a weapon represented no real threat to society. Pointing out the practical benefits of



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high explosives, he argued that for “unlawful uses, to serve the purposes of assassination and destruction” it could only be applied on “a limited scale and with nearly fruitless results.” Coming at the predicament from a conventional understanding of warfare, and with questionable understanding of events in the United Kingdom or Continental, he believed that transatlantic dynamite terrorism, on a “large scale to force social changes and overturn governments,” required substantial funding and careful coordination to be effective, and was therefore easily detectable. Such attacks could be suppressed “unless favored by organized masses of people sufficient in numbers and power to initiate revolution and war.”123 The dynamite war provided ample fodder for American illustrators who shared little sympathy for the Irish. Since the emergence of the agrarian Land War, Joseph Keppler’s Puck fashioned his coverage of the Irish-American dynamiters through the lens of Anglo-Saxonism. Beginning with organization of the Skirmishing Fund, he and other illustrators for Puck, especially Frederick Burr Opper, literally drew very disparaging portraits of O’Donovan Rossa and his dynamite conspiracy, casting them beyond the pale of civilization. To an even greater degree than the English Punch, Keppler’s weekly depicted a rowdy, violent Irish whose physical features were crude and primitive next to the more refined Anglo-Saxon stock. Puck was neither enthusiast nor apologist for Irish culture heritage or national aspirations, and repeatedly caricatured Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, crafting an unflattering portrait of a fatuous revolutionary. Initially it asserted that O’Donovan Rossa and the other Irish-Americans terrorists were merely swindlers and not a credible threat to either Great Britain or the United States. It dismissed O’Donovan Rossa’s rants as mere publicity. But after the first bombings in England, the usually Democrat-leaning Puck demanded that the Federal government intercede in these enterprises to prevent further bombings.124 Reaffirming the simian characterization of the Irish by Atlantic AngloSaxons, a recent study analyzed depictions of Irish servant girls in American illustrated journals. Puck illustrators did not depict female domestics as terrorist themselves, but part of the larger dilemma confronting the Atlantic community. As controllers of their household economies, and important members of their ethnic communities, Irish women essentially financed the bombing campaign. Keppler’s Puck portrayed these women as the prey or unwitting dupes to more malicious men, such as O’Donovan Rossa. Although women were rarely directly involved in carrying out terrorist attacks, there financial contributions were essential to the Skirmishing Fund.125 Others immediately viewed the dynamite threats seriously and viewed ethnic immigrants suspiciously. An illustration titled “A Kind of Freedom We Will not Tolerate” in the patriotic Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper shows the personified Columbia confronting Irish, Eastern European, and communist terrorists attempting to enter the United States. Terrorists, donned with





firearms, bombs, explosives, and even a torpedo boat, approach entry into the United States with warnings that there was “No sympathy for political assassins” in America. In a caption representing a popular Anglo-Saxon hostility to those transporting transnational terrorism to American shores, Columbia welcomes immigrants to the United States but admonished newcomers that “I’ll have no trifling with the peace and security of any members of my household.”126 Even amid this torrent of Anglo-Saxon criticism, Irish-American dynamite terrorism resumed in early 1884 and continued intermittently until January 1885. In January 1884 British authorities discovered a bomb at the Primrose Hill railroad tunnel in London and on February 26 a bomb exploded in the Victoria railroad station, damaging a baggage room and causing minor injuries to commuters. Later the same day, authorities discovered undetonated bombs at Charing Cross, Paddington and Ludgate Hill stations. On 30 May 1884, the Clan-na-Gael bombed the Junior Carlton Club and the residence of a British official, and later the same day law enforcement authorities found an unexploded bomb at Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. The most sensational, and troubling for the British government, bombing occurred at Scotland Yard, near the offices of the Irish Special Branch Division. It caused few casualties, but severely damaged the building and destroyed many records relating to Irish terrorism. In summer 1884, British intelligence agents advised the Foreign Office that more dynamite attacks were probable against port cities and the British White Star Liner, and that assassination teams had been deployed to kill Prime Minster Gladstone, Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt, and Irish Secretary William Forster. One scheme included planting chemical compounds in glass bottles in urban areas, which when broken released a poisonous gas on the civilian population.127 At a Clan-na-Gael convention held in Chicago, Captain John McCafferty, who had already publicly defended the practice of terrorism from a strategic sense, headed a team to study the feasibility of deploying hot-air balloons over English cities to release incendiaries on unsuspecting civilian populations below. In December 1884, William M. Lomasney putting his “bloodless terrorism” into practice, in a bit of historical irony inadvertently killed himself and two assistants while planting dynamite on the London Bridge. Within 24 hours after New Year’s Day 1885, a bomb exploded in the London Underground at the Gowen Street station, damaging a train but causing only a few minor injuries. In early 1885 bombing threats were made against the British Museum, the London Terminal of the Great Eastern Railway, the Holyhead Railway terminus, as well as the Britannia Tubular Bridge and the Menal Suspension Bridge.128 The final IrishAmerican bombings in Great Britain occurred three weeks later. They were conducted by Luke Dillon, who was still waffling between supporting the Boland or Devoy wings of the Clan-na-Gael. The first bomb exploded at the Tower of London on a busy Saturday afternoon, while tourists viewed



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the dungeon and crown jewels. Within minutes, two more bombs exploded at Westminster, near the House of Commons, also during visitation hours. Unlike previous dynamite attacks, these attacks occurred during daylight in order to seize the element of surprise. During the final year of the bombing campaign, the casualty count remained low but property damage exceeded £60,000. Panic spread quickly among Londoners as the city seemed under siege.129 The bombing campaign, according to double-agent Frederick F. Millen, was proving surprisingly satisfactory in some “unexpected quarters.” Millan informed O’Donovan Rossa that the attacks met with the approval of the former liberal president of Honduras, Aurelio Marco Soto, and believed that similar successful attacks might aid in gaining foreign recognition for an independent Irish Republic.130 The last rounds of bombings produced a severe reaction from the British. The Scots writer Malcolm Laing Meason, who reportedly “mixed with the Irish dynamiters” from March 1884 through the end of the campaign the following year, described them as a highly professionalized terrorist group and one of the greatest threats to modern society. Irish-American extremists were not “mere vulgar loafers” or ideological maniacs as sometimes portrayed by the English press, but were educated, driven by purpose and necessity, and confident that they were acting patriotically. The transatlantic reach and sophisticated network boded ill for the British. It was all the more ominous, Meason believed, because the dynamiters had excellent intelligence about British security measures, while Scotland Yard and Dublin Castle were not capable of infiltrating the dynamite teams. In short, according to Meason, this transatlantic conspiracy, which could attack multiple British targets with little financing and minimal risk, was a “dedicated and implacable enemy” that was “openly and defiantly at war with all that society respects and esteems throughout the civilized world.”131 The Spectator also highlighted the ruthlessness of the dynamite campaign and dismissed as “folly” the argument that some of the bombings were innocuous because they were directed against “public buildings, and not on human beings.” It correctly pointed out that Irish dynamiters were not mere ideological anarchists, but had definite political objectives that required maximum effect, and that lethality was only one part of that strategy. While they had not succeeded, there was no doubt, according to the Spectator, that in dynamiting public buildings, Irish terrorists intended them “to come crashing down,” killing unfortunate bystanders.132 Unbeknownst to Meason, the Gladstone Ministry had resolved on a firm reaction to what many considered the most audacious attacks to date inside the metropole of the British Empire. In April 1883, immediately after the March bombings, it reorganized the intelligence agency, now known as the Crime Branch Special Department, under new leadership (Major Gosselin) based in Manchester. Even with the reorganization and the flood of reports arriving from Ireland about IRB activities, British officials, knowing the





Irish-American extremists were primarily responsible for the dynamite campaign, continued to focus on infiltrating the Clan-na-Gael, using spies and informers, to disrupt the financial sources for dynamiters. The British developed a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, relying on information provided by paid informers and increased security details for prominent government officials. Tory propaganda was also quite successful at controlling the public image of the IRB and exploiting divisions between Clan and the IRB, in order to undermine the efforts of Parnell and the Irish Party. The dispute between the Devoy and Sullivan wings of the Clan contributed to British infiltration and undermining of IRB effectiveness as a revolutionary group in Ireland. The numerous IRB arrests, Special Branch infiltrations, seizure of sensitive documents, decline in arms importation, and failure in the propaganda war resulted in a serious diminution in IRB strength by 1885.133 English women organized the Primrose League for propagating traditional Anglo-Saxon values and perpetuating the British Empire to combat the “novelty and suddenness of the Radical and Fenian onslaught.” “For the first time in our history women have taken an active part in controversies hitherto reserved to men” and had organized the League to oppose the new theories and doctrines that threatened revolution and a “reign of terror” upon English society.134 The enhanced British presence in Ireland, and its more robust, aggressive pursuit of dynamiters, led Irish nationalists to compare British rule, especially the aggressive policing which was less a civil law enforcement and a garrisoned imperial military force, to Russian despotism in Poland.135 The Brooklyn Eagle, which catered to a sizable Irish population, remained especially critical of the British practice of paying informers for information because at best it provided dubious intelligence. More importantly, it faulted the British for inadvertently financing the dynamite campaign; as a way of escaping Crown prosecution, suspects were allowed to continue their activities under British pay, while informing on their compatriots. What made this particularly distasteful, however, was that these informers were essentially being paid by the British government to “strike terror” among the British public. As long as the government continued to pay Irish informers, “Great Britain is pretty certain to be in a constant state of agitation and terrorism.”136 The resumption of the bombing campaign in 1884 excited interest among American diplomatic and public officials, who continued to speculate on the causes and effects of Irish-American terrorism. Immediately upon taking up his residence as second secretary at the London legation in March 1884, Henry White noted that “[p]ublic opinion here [was] considerably excited.” White believed the dynamiters, “undoubtedly of American origins,” would arouse anger among the English lower-class, resulting in British reprisals upon the Irish lower class. After several years of observing the bombing campaign, White reached conclusions similar to many British officials who long



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feared that Irish-American bombings were not solely directed against the British, but designed to create what British Minister Sackville-West called Anglo-American “ill-feeling.” White concluded that, besides the Canadian fisheries dispute, Irish dynamiters posed the last serious obstacle to AngloAmerican rapprochement. If both these issues were solved, there “would be no more trouble between England and the United States.”137 American Minister Lowell continued to condemn the barbarous and criminal nature of the bombing campaign. He reported to his superiors that British authorities had informed him that the bombs recently found were of American origin, similar to the devices discovered in the cement barrels at Liverpool in July 1881. Although Lowell was not convinced about their origins, he was certain about the “great exasperation, especially among the labouring classes, against the supposed authors of these villainies.” A “more immediate consequence” was that British frustrations were translating into greater difficulties and harassments for American citizens in the United Kingdom. Even as late as 1888, three years after the last bombs detonated in London, American travelers entering the United Kingdom still complained of harassment and the special scrutiny they were subjected to by British customs agents.138 The bombing of Parliament, unlike the previous railroad bombings, suggested that it was now evident that the dynamiters were sincere. Convinced that nationalists were not capable of waging conventional warfare, the Atlanta Constitution nonetheless believed that Irish-American dynamiters had “declared war on England.” To achieve Irish independence, the dynamiters had put London in a “practical state of siege.”139 The British repeatedly dogged the Arthur Administration for not taking a stronger stance against Irish terrorism originating from the United States. After the explosions in the London Underground in spring 1884, the British intensified their efforts to gain American cooperation. They published evidence demonstrating the complicity of American citizens in the bombings and intelligence linking Irish terrorists to dynamite manufacturers in the United States. British officials also provided the State Department with examples of Irish-American newspapers advertising bounties for the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family. Despite compelling evidence, it took eight months for Secretary of State Frelinghuysen to reply to British accusations of negligence on the part of the United States stemming from Irish terrorism.140 British persistence only yielded a limited American reaction. The accumulating evidence of American citizens’ complicity in the “recent dynamite explosion in London” prompted President Arthur, under advice from Secretary Frelinghuysen, to direct Attorney General Benjamin H. Brewster to issue a circular to US district attorneys and marshals in March 1884, instructing them to prevent unauthorized exportation of explosive materials. Lowell immediately communicated the attorney general’s circular to the British Foreign Office.141 The Administration comforted itself with the assumption that





the circular would satisfy British desires and reaffirm America’s opposition to Irish terrorism. The Brewster circular met with different reactions; the New York Tribune praised it for addressing this “insidious species of terrorism,” but others such as The Nation pointed out that it was a tepid response at best, because while it did commit the United States to upholding the law, American law only made it illegal to transport undeclared explosives on passenger vessels and in no way anticipated the transport and use of dynamite or other explosives for terrorists’ purposes.142 In the wake of the February 1884 Underground bombings, Sackville-West reported to Whitehall that prominent voices were no longer simply critical of Irish terrorism, but increasingly admonished their own government for not cooperating to prevent these attacks. A chorus of criticism admitted that not only was America’s honor and international prestige at stake, but that it was not far from conceivable that just as dynamiters were attacking symbols of British democracy, so too were American institutions, such as the United States Capitol, vulnerable.143 The recognition that terrorism represented a common threat did not mitigate American domestic political considerations. Since the end of the Civil War, the Irish vote had become increasingly important in American politics. The influx of Irish immigrants to America, which rapidly increased in the post-famine years, proved a source of political strength for the Democratic Party. By the 1880s, the Republican Party also began wooing Irish voters, and several prominent Irish-Americans supported James Blaine’s candidacy for the 1884 Republican nomination. During the 1884 presidential contest, the Arthur Administration worried that its comments criticizing Irish terrorism might jeopardize the Irish vote and refused to press for stronger laws against explosive trafficking.144 Alexander Sullivan, leader of the Clan-na-Gael since 1881 and a leading advocate of terrorism against the British, temporarily suspended dynamite operations to campaign personally on behalf of Blaine. The competitiveness of the election and the importance of Irish support prompted Sullivan to advise Blaine to simply ignore IrishAmerican terrorism and to publicly support nationalist aspirations. Only after the Democratic victory, lame-duck President Arthur took the opportunity, in his final State of the Union Address, to express public indignation at Irish-American terrorism directed against Great Britain. He recommended extending American neutrality laws to include terrorist attacks that originated from the United States and occurred in countries “with which we are at peace.” According to Arthur, America’s “national honor” demanded “prompt and thorough” action against terrorism. The New York Times praised President Arthur’s proposal as “one of the most important” in his message to Congress.145 By this point the British had lost patience. Despite assurances to the contrary, they realized that the Arthur Administration was unwilling or incapable of actively interceding and decided to wait for the



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Democratic Cleveland Administration, which they anticipated might be more accommodating than previous Republican administrations.146 In late November 1884, after the election season and the Republican defeat, Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen finally responded to British accusations of American negligence and indifference to Irish terrorism and in the process most clearly articulated the American position. Frelinghuysen’s response demonstrates the ambivalence of the United States toward transnational terrorism, carefully weighing international considerations against domestic political realities. He reminded the British that the United States had repeatedly condemned the violent methods used by Irish terrorists, specifically “lawless combinations” that “secretly plot assassination and destruction of life and property.” He asserted that the United States was “as anxious as Her Majesty’s Government can be, to check and eradicate an evil alike dangerous to both nations.” In principle, the US and British governments agreed that terrorism jeopardized democratic political institutions and the structures of capitalist economies.147 Admitting a common revulsion against terrorism, Frelinghuysen offered a detailed explanation of the American position. The administration understood that recently enacted Parliamentary legislation criminalized incitements to murder in foreign nations, but he maintained that American law only addressed “overt acts of hostility against a friendly nation” that occurred within its own jurisdiction and that constitutional guarantees of the freedom of press prevented active repression of Irish-American publications. Federal law did not recognize acts of terrorism against foreign nations as crimes, and even if it did, Frelinghuysen believed that the evidence offered by the British was at best circumstantial. He denied that the government had any definite evidence or intelligence connecting Irish terrorists to groups in America seeking “to promote murder and arson in the United Kingdom.” Absent conclusive evidence linking specific advertisements in American publications to actual crimes committed in the United Kingdom, Frelinghuysen maintained there was nothing the United States could do under existing law or treaty.148 Finally, Frelinghuysen addressed the central dilemma presented by IrishAmerican dynamiters. The problem with transnational terrorism was its novelty and the unpreparedness of the international community to deal with this type of political violence: The truth is that this species of crime, namely, the making of preparations in one country for the preparation [sic] of systematic murders and arsons in another country in time of peace, if not new in history, has lately been pressed upon the attention of modern governments.149 After a thorough examination of current domestic and international laws, Frelinghuysen concluded that no statutes existed in the United States, the





United Kingdom, or “in any country” dealing with these unique methods of political violence. Until Congress enacted legislation or the United States concluded a treaty with the United Kingdom specifically criminalizing such activities, there was little the State Department could officially do to actively assist the British. In the absence of specific laws or treaty obligations, Frelinghuysen detailed the government’s efforts designed to limit the terrorist connections in America. He reassured Foreign Minister Granville that the United States would not request immunity for its citizens who committed terrorist acts in the United Kingdom. He reiterated that American laws already restricted undeclared transportation of dynamite, noting President Arthur’s recent instructions to federal officials to discover and prevent illegal transport of explosives. According to Frelinghuysen, terrorism must be countered and prevented “in accordance with law,” and in such cases the United States had “gone at least as far as other nations toward protecting friendly nations from the diabolical acts.” He also offered a cryptic reassurance that the Arthur Administration had “employed special means for the prevention and discovery of any such acts.” It remains unclear what the Secretary of State meant by “special means.”150 In response to the final round of bombings, the US Congress did begin to discuss the problems of Irish-American terrorism. News of the explosions at Westminster and the Tower, headlined by the New York Times as “London’s Great Terror,” dominated congressional deliberations during late January 1885. The feeling in Congress was that the explosions did great harm to the cause of Irish independence.151 On the same day as the final bombing attacks on London, Republican George F. Edmunds of Vermont, the Senate President pro tempore and chair of the Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill to prevent and punish crimes committed using explosives. Although Edmunds admitted the bill imperfect, it having been drafted by “a friend” only a week or two previously, the urgency of events compelled him to introduce it despite its defects. Specifically, the bill criminalized the use of explosives in America or by Americans abroad against public or private property, or for the purpose of “assassination or murder or destruction of human life” in the United States or in foreign countries. The bill also made it a felony to aid or abet dynamiters and made it a misdemeanor for those who knowingly shipped explosive materials involved in criminal enterprises. The bill received bipartisan backing and even some support from the Irish bloc but eventually died in committee for fear of offending the powerful Irish vote in Congress. Similar legislation introduced in the House of Representatives was also defeated in the Judiciary Committee.152 Because of the proposed legislation Edmunds received “threatening letters,” which promised to target the Judiciary Committee’s Senate room.153 Proponents of Anglo-Saxonism suggested that the Edmund bill did not go enough in criminalizing terrorism. Then United States District Attorney Elihu Root, later Secretary of War and State during the McKinley and



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Roosevelt Administrations respectively, a US Senator, and long-serving president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in speech at the Lotos Club in January 1885 supported federal law modeled after a bill introduced in New York legislature. It went further than the Edmund’s bill by prohibiting the solicitation of funds and empowered federal law enforcement to disrupted organizations planning attacks and restricted freedom of speech and press from groups that promote terrorism.154 While the legislation was in the right direction, to some it was quite toothless and did not address the problem of Irish publications collecting funds for the dynamite campaign. The New York Tribune noted that while dynamite might “not cross the ocean,” recognizing that France and Holland had become centers for Irish-American explosive manufacturing, the money funding the attacks was raised in American. Again, the Tribune called for updating extradition treaties for the “suppression of these crimes against civilization.”155 The Tribune also praised the proposed New York legislature, believing the state bill far superior to the Edmunds bill because it included a section that criminalized the collection of funds for dynamite attacks. Yet the Tribune noted that state authority was limited domestically, and probably would not extend to crimes that extended beyond national borders. Irish-American terrorism posed a problem for America’s federal power structure, which differentiated between legitimate political offences and dynamite attacks.156 The same afternoon that Senator Edmunds introduced his bill to criminalize dynamite terrorism, just before the Senate’s adjournment for the day, Democratic Senator Thomas Bayard from Delaware, former President pro tempore and soon to be Secretary of State, introduced a resolution directed against Irish-American terrorism, expressing “indignation and profound sorrow” for the bombings at Parliament and other London buildings and declaring America’s “horror and detestation of such monstrous crimes against civilization.” During the debates the following Monday, Bayard made it clear that he had introduced the resolution as a reaffirmation of the American commitment to the rule of law and to demonstrate the Senate’s opposition to violent methods of political protest that destroyed the liberties “that can only exist under law.” He characterized the bombings as “uncivilized, cruel, and barbarous.”157 Several weeks later, Bayard declined an invitation to speak at the Philadelphia Hibernian Society in March 1885 because of the group’s refusal to condemn the “senseless and wicked crimes” of the dynamiters.158 There was near unanimous support for the Bayard resolution and senatorial deliberations focused particularly on the nature of terrorism. Senator Harrison H. Riddleberger of Virginia, a former Confederate officer, offered the lone opposition. While careful not “to justify the method” of the dynamiters, for Riddleberger it was “not a question of socialism; it is not a questions of nihilism” but rather the “great and growing question” of American support for the English tyranny and cruelty in Ireland. He believed the





resolution hasty and without precedent, and more importantly it might give the impression that the American people were showing preference to British policy in Ireland and ignoring the suffering of the Irish people, thus violating the spirit of American neutrality laws. Yet Riddleberger also spoke to the nature of terrorism. While he opposed methods that rendered life and property insecure, he reminded his colleagues that Ireland and England were at war, “so far as Irishmen without a government can make it.” Under certain circumstances, those without the power of the state may adopt terrorism: [I]t scarcely becomes us to say that a people who do not constitute a government and cannot make a proclamation of war shall not use the same instruments of war [dynamite] that we would use under the same circumstances. Put any of us in a country where we could not own land, where we could not exercise the God-given right of owning a foot of land, even though we earned it by the sweat of our faces, and then see what kind of methods we would employ.159 Riddleberger’s colleagues were hardly persuaded and most excoriated the dynamiters. Senator George F. Hoar from Massachusetts who at one point even excused the 1882 Phoenix Park murders did not believe attacks on “unoffending women and children” a legitimate mode of warfare. He argued that the vast majority of Irish, in both Ireland and America, had rejected dynamite terrorism. Hoar, a progressive, anti-imperialist Republican who campaigned on behalf of African–Americans, Amerindians, and womens’ political rights, and later was a vocal critic of American involvement in the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) and intervention in Panama (1903), suggested immediate legislation prohibiting attacks originating from American jurisdiction and carried out against foreign nations. Randall L. Gibbons, Democratic Senator from Louisiana and former Confederate officer, condemned the attacks as “diabolical.” For Gibbons, those who used terrorism were neither patriots nor soldiers but were more akin to pirates, “assassins, the most accursed and degraded of all criminals.” Echoing Gladstone’s 1881 Commons speech, Gibbons claimed that Ireland could only achieve justice and freedom through the “resources of civilization.” Republican Senator Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut, a former Union officer during the Civil War, reminded his colleagues of the public terror that followed the assassinations of Lincoln and Garfield, but estimated that the London bombings were “far worse, far viler, and more devilish. They have not the logic of assassination.” They were not directed against a tyrant, as in Russia, but were instead “simply an insensate dash against humanity.”160 The term “hostes humani generis” (“the common enemies of humanity”) was frequently used to characterize the dynamiters.161 Similar attitudes extended to several state legislatures, including New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, which debated motions similar to those considered by Congress.



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Republican Senator John J. Ingalls from Kansas offered some of the most insightful analysis of terrorism. He acknowledged that terrorists not only represented the worst of their own revolutionary movement, but they were the worst enemy to the “cause of civilization and good government everywhere.” Their violent attacks “shook the foundations of every capital in Christendom.” Yet according to Ingalls, there was something even worse than dynamite. The greater danger to society were the motives, tyranny and oppression, that compelled individuals to employ dynamite. For Ingalls, the “worst dynamite is in the soul of man” who was deprived of freedom and justice. Listing the social conditions that fostered terrorism, Ingalls summarized, Poverty, helpless and hopeless, oppression, ignorance, vice, the wrongs of centuries, are the ingredients of that minister of destruction. Every affect [sic] has its cause. Tyranny makes the nihilist.162 He issued a warning, not simply to the British but the entire Western world, that even those supportive of the Edmunds bill and Bayard resolution could not ignore. Great powers had an obligation to treat their subjects and citizens justly and to make allowances for political liberties, the very Anglo-Saxon ideals that the British had denied the Irish. The American press generally supported the efforts in Congress to address Irish-American terrorism. The New York Times criticized those in the Senate who opposed Bayard’s resolution of sympathy for Britain. It rejected arguments that claimed that Irish-American terrorism reflected or was justified by the state of war existing between the British and the Irish. The issue was not about deciding which side to support, but was “a question of civilization and barbarism.” “Regardless of the merits of the political controversy,” no civilized government or social group could countenance the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians and non-military properties. Americans should not even concern themselves about the opposing sides in the Anglo-Irish conflict, but rather should first endeavor to “clear our skirts of the suspicion of harboring and protecting” terrorists who “cannot be countenanced as belonging either to political agitation or civilized warfare.” The Times recommended passage in the House of Representatives of a bill similar to Senator Edmunds, though it admitted such legislation would be of little effect against men so determined to commit terrorist acts. The Nation concluded that any such legislation would be simply “a waste of paper” as it was unreasonable to expect the United States to curb a conspiracy against the United Kingdom that British officials themselves could not prevent. Simply put, the United States did not have the bureaucratic infrastructure or customs agency to search all items exported from the United States. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which admonished “every manly Irishman” to denounce making war against women and children, encouraged Congress





to enact Edmunds’ bill, so as to preclude terrorists from using American hospitality for villainous ends. The Eagle believed the Edmunds bill was vital not only for protecting the advancement of civilization, but imperative for America’s own self-preservation. While it admitted that the “doctrines of the Commune and kindred social monsters” had not become popularized in American, it was foolish to contend that the “germs of Socialism, Anarchism, Nihilism, or whatever else the disorder is called, have not crossed the oceans.” Ironically, given its fear of state control, it called for the national government to establish a manufacturing monopoly of dynamite and other explosives to regulate their production, distribution, and use.163 The House of Representatives investigated the connections between the London attacks and Irish-American involvement. The Committee on Foreign Affairs sought information from the State Department regarding the complicity of American citizens in the attacks. The House report concluded that there was “no evidence to justify the assumption” that American citizens or immigrants living in the United States were “directly or indirectly implicated” in the bombings. Until guilt was firmly established, “no action should be taken by this House.”164 Reporting the public debate on the recent attacks, Sackville-West took comfort that there was broad condemnation of the dynamiters and that Americans of all classes had become less apathetic to the collection of moneys for terrorist activities in the United States. In Philadelphia, Consul Clipperton confirmed the Minister’s assessment, informing the Foreign Office that the press and public condemnation of the attacks and the Fenian organization was “universal” throughout America.165 To the disappointment of the British, and adding frustrations to American diplomats in the United Kingdom, no legislation immediately emerged from Congress. According to William Hoppin, secretary of the American legation in London, the legislative efforts of “Edmund and Bayard had a very good Effect here,” but he criticized Congress for “shilly-shallying in regard to the dynamite business.” Over the next several decades, Congress periodically debated strengthening laws against trafficking of explosives for terrorist purposes, but it did not finally enact stronger legislation until 1909.166 Some tried to minimize the importance of the dynamite campaign, convinced that it had little bearing for Americans. The Century, ignoring deteriorating labor relations and the rise in violent strikes, echoing former Secretary of State William Seward, opined that assassination and dynamite terrorism would never become popular in the United States because it was “not the American way.” While acknowledging problems of lynching in America, it drew clear distinction between racial terrorism in America that targeted specific individuals and Irish-American terrorists’ “dastardly and reckless use of explosives, where invaluable works of art, and innocent men, women, and children, together with the supposed ‘oppressor,’ are confounded in a common destruction.”167



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For a number of years, British officials placed Clan-na-Gael terrorism in a transnational context. The Irish-American dynamite campaign coincided with British imperial military operations in Egypt and Afghanistan, but because it was occurring in the midst of the London metropole rather than on the distant periphery of the empire the Irish agitation brought a greater sense of urgency to the British. While the British were enduring real attacks at the very center of their society, dynamite bombers posed a broader challenge to notions of liberal democracy and to the rule of law that extended beyond British national interests. Repeatedly Minister Sackville-West noted that Irish terrorism did not represent just a security threat to the British Empire, but warned that tacit toleration of secret revolutionary societies in America might make them “as dangerous to itself [the United States] and its institutions, as it is supposed to be, to other Governments.”168 The message was simple; although not yet victims of dynamite terrorism, like other open societies, the United States was not immune from these types of irregular attacks. In the wake of the 1883 bombings, the British Minister in Washington, DC, believed that President Arthur’s cabinet had discussed Irish nationalists’ transatlantic terrorist activities, and that although it was not yet prepared to react because of domestic political pressure, particularly from pro-Irish Congressmen, there was a growing awareness within the Administration and a “general feeling” among the American people that dynamite bombers might turn “against the [American] Government which has tacitly fostered their growth,” especially if government actions were interpreted as unfavorable to nationalist aspirations. Sackville-West did not believe that Irish terrorism would seriously impede long-term Anglo-American relations, and that nationalist activities might even assist rapprochement between the two Atlantic powers in the future. But for the moment, difficulties would remain within the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community.169 Even after the dynamite campaign ended, conservative Anglo-Saxon voices on both sides of the Atlantic protested that the Irish-American press were allowed to collect funds for bombing and assassination campaigns. British officials kept up their pressure on the Arthur Administration to suppress publications that promoted the assassination of British leaders. The British again officially complained that O’Donovan Rossa’s United Irishman was still printing incendiary articles, citing eight cases where the weekly recommended the use of arson and dynamite against the British.170 Major journalistic voices, such as the conservative New York Times, railed against Irish-American weeklies for printing incendiary editorials. Before the dynamite campaign ended, writing days after the January 1885 bombings at Westminster and the Tower, the Times echoed British complaints,



From American ambivalence to Anglo-American ideological repulsion


dismissing the contention made by Irish-American nationalists that American freedom of the press protected their rights to collect funds to wage an unconventional war against a friendly power and accused them of corrupting a treasured American right.171 British expectations of greater cooperation were rarely met. Before leaving office in March 1885, Secretary of State Frelinghuysen reiterated the constitutional impediments imposed on the administration that prevented an activist policy, but agreed to forward the British complaint to the governor of New York to review and ascertain whether the publications violated state laws. He also tried to reassure the British of American hostility to Irish terrorism by transmitting information on the Edmunds bill in the Senate.172 Assistant Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee even went so far as to publicly deny that the US government was in any way responsible for the dynamite campaigns and refuted British contentions that there was verifiable evidence linking O’Donovan Rossa and others to terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom.173 The Cleveland Administration, like its predecessors, did not take threats in Irish-American publications seriously and cited constitutional constraints as defense of their refusal to prosecute the publishers. Still, Thomas Bayard, Frelinghuysen’s successor the State Department and an outspoken anglophile and admirer of British political and social institutions, hoped to cement an agreement between the Atlantic powers and to diminish the influence of the Irish vote upon foreign policy considerations. He felt deep “distress and anxiety” for the British, but believed that inflexibility on the part of both the British and the Irish had created the perilous situation. Likening governments to humans he suggested that at times “nations become insane” and feared that if Irish nationalist violence continued against the British Empire it might eventually redirect its attacks across the Atlantic, undermining the stability of American political culture and institutions. While reaffirming the United States’ historical disengagement from European affairs, he was not willing to consider any formal agreement with the British. Instead, guided by an “American policy” that adhered to the nation’s “traditional principles,” Bayard concluded that the nation’s prestige and credibility in the international community required protecting the values of civilization and the rights of its citizens.174 The obvious difficulty, that Bayard failed to address, but that the British frequently complained of, was that on this occasion it was American citizens who were essentially challenging Anglo-Saxon conceptions of civilization. Even as the dynamite campaign in London quieted in early 1885, largely the result of effective British intelligence and law enforcement operations and the backlash from within moderate Irish-American communities who were concerned that the nationalist agenda was being demonized because of their political and financial support for bombings, the incarceration of Irish-American dynamiters remained a point of contention between the



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United States and Great Britain. The final two years of the bombing campaign resulted in British imprisonment of nearly 30 suspects, some of whom claimed American citizenship.175 Irish-American constituents throughout the country pressured State Department officials and members of Congress to secure their release. In 1884, Minister Lowell noted that the “constant repetition” of dynamite explosions made it “extremely improbable” that the British government would act leniently toward those convicted of similar crimes. Having closely watched the legal proceedings against Dr. Gallagher and his dynamite team and carefully examined the trial reports, Lowell concluded that the proceedings were fair and the defendants “justly convicted.”176 Before assuming his responsibilities as the new minister in London in 1885, E.J. Phelps also attended the trials of several Irish-American terrorists. Phelps thought the proceedings against two Americans charged in the 1885 bombings at Westminster and the London Tower “eminently just and fair” and the life sentences “fully justified.” Contrary to the conclusions reached by a House of Representatives investigation of American citizens’ involvement in the London bombings, Phelps reported to the State Department that the evidence presented at the trial clearly established that the bombing campaign was in fact transatlantic in scope, involving many operatives in America, many of whom were “the dupes and tools . . . of more adroit and designing men.” Reviewing the transcripts of previous judicial proceedings, Phelps acknowledged that other trials of Irish-American dynamite terrorists were also “fair and humane” and the charges against them “fully sustained by the evidence.” The overwhelming evidence made any application for pardon “absolutely hopeless.”177 Although the United States continued to protect the rights of its citizens in foreign nations, especially those believed to have been wrongfully detained, by 1885 there was little sympathy and virtually no attempt to assist convicted terrorists. The hysteria produced by the attacks on the Tower of London and Westminster in 1885 proved a turning point for the British, who immediately called for closer Anglo-American cooperation and a new extradition treaty. The January 1885 Senate resolutions condemning dynamite terrorism, as well as similar resolutions from the legislatures in New York and Pennsylvania, were welcomed by the English journal The Spectator, but a treaty between the two Atlantic powers “would be a readier instrument” to prevent terrorism. Despite their initial reluctance to bestow on the dynamiters a political character by charging them with treason, prominent voices in Great Britain were now willing to concede that dynamiters were not ordinary criminals but rather political offenders, who still deserved punishment. Admitting to its transnational character, dynamite terrorism was “encouraged by the impunity accorded” by the absence of a comprehensive international agreement. While the English were prepared to acknowledge the “political character” of dynamite terrorism, they were not willing to tolerate the sanctuary and security provided to them in America. They advocated a strong





treaty that recognized dynamite plots in America as an extraditable crime.178 The Economist claimed that under existing laws and treaty obligations, there was little the Arthur Administration could do to prevent Clan terrorists, because “O’Donovan Rossa and his friends are not sending troops against England, or ships of war.” They were simply intent to “organise murderous societies, or to commit assassinations, or to buy nitro-glycerine at English chemical works, and with it blow up public buildings.” There were no laws against this. What was need was a “treaty binding both parties to make conspiracy to murder, or to destroy property beyond their own confines,” a ordinary criminal offence to be tried in its own judicial system to avoid charges of unfair trial.179 Extradition between the two Atlantic powers in the 1880s was still based on the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which limited extradition to a few serious felonies. The practice of the United States has been to authorize extradition only when a treaty proscribed certain crimes. Traditionally, the US government did not authorize extradition for political offenses and American courts required the offense in question be a violation of US law, as well as the requesting nation. The advent of international terrorism, particularly transatlantic dynamiters, spurred discussions for a more comprehensive agreement. During the 1870s and 1880s, the United States had signed bilateral treaties with several European and Asian nations that included extradition clauses for those using explosives against persons or property. In these treaties the United States began to narrow its definition of political crimes for which it would not extradite fugitives. Specifically, alleged perpetrators who used dynamite for malicious purposes were no longer protected.180 A comprehensive Anglo-American extradition treaty was more difficult to conclude. Always a major problem for any Anglo-American agreement was the Irish vote in America. Secretary of State Bayard frequently railed against the influence of the “Dynamite Irish vote” and Irish activists’ success in obstructing the conclusion of a new extradition treaty.181 Another problem, which had existed since the emergence of Fenianism in the 1860s, was differing opinions on the political nature of Irish terrorism. Historically, the British had categorically denied that Irish terrorism in any manifestation was a political issue, but instead considered it a “social” problem, criminal in nature.182 The British did this not to minimize the importance of their counterterrorist measures but to deny terrorists any political legitimacy and international recognition. Since the Fenian uprisings in the 1860s, however, Americans increasingly found it difficult to separate the political motivations of Irish terrorists from their violent acts and frequently equated Irish terrorism to British misrule in Ireland. While not meant to excuse their behavior, Americans viewed Irish terrorism as inherently political. Even after the March 1883 London bombings, Minister Sackville-West noted that one of the principal objections by American to interfering with Irish terrorism was the widespread belief by the American people, and especially members of the US government, that nationalists had legitimate



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political grievances and that their activities were political offenses rather than criminal acts.183 Despite efforts by Irish-Americans to have dynamite crimes included in a revised extradition treaty, prominent anti-Irish voices rallied in support of tougher laws and greater cooperation with the British. Beecher and Abbotts’ The Christian Union advocated extradition for anyone “having a share in schemes of assassination and incendiarism.” The journal claimed that the “use of dynamite for political ends is a crime not against special governments, but against civilization” and that Irish dynamiters were “as much an enemy of the American government as the English.” The Union suggested that the 1885 London explosions demonstrated the need for preventative laws in the United States against the transport of dynamite and other high explosives for such purposes. Opponents would no doubt invoke constitutional limitations to deny Congress the power to make it a federal crime, so the Union referred to laws being considered by the states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York. If Congress was unwilling to legislate, it recommended that the states act conjointly to criminalize dynamite terrorism.184 Even the New York World, which two years earlier had tried to justify the dynamite campaign, had by spring 1884 begun to change its attitude toward the dynamiters. In editorials titled “The Enemies of Civilization” and “The Dynamite Folly,” the World, which covered the London bombings extensively, suggested that not only was this method of warfare impractical and counterproductive to the Irish cause, it would also unite the divided English public because “no community can long remain in a state of insecurity and terror without doing something rash and making bloody reprisals.”185 Edwin Godkin’s The Nation covered the extradition controversy extensively. Essentially, The Nation argued that recognition of a political offense rested with the nation in which the crime was connected. Referring to the 1882 Phoenix Park murders, which it admitted might not have been politically motivated, The Nation reiterated the “joy which all civilized men” will feel when all those connected with the assassination were “strung up.” Yet, unlike premeditated homicide, dynamite terrorisms was not clear cut. The destruction of government and public buildings was clearly political in nature, and there was no clause under existing treaties to warrant American extradition of dynamite terrorists to the United Kingdom. The journal even questioned whether conspirators who killed someone under such circumstances had actually committed a crime that constituted murder, because it would be difficult to prove their intent. The Nation prophesied that no effective law against the dynamite terrorists could come from the Democratic controlled Congress. And even if legislation did pass, any arrests in America would turn into a sensational political trial that would end in acquittal or release. Ultimately, the solution for preventing dynamite terrorism could only come from a reconciliation of the Anglo-Irish relations, not from the American government. To bolster its case, The Nation pointed





out that even existing American Neutrality Laws did not include clauses pertaining to dynamite terrorism among the list of prohibited activities. Finally, it argued that any remedial legislation would require national regulations for production and transportation of dynamite and explosives and an agency for inspection. Such legislation would certainly be challenged in the courts and would probably not survive contemporary constitutional interpretations of federal powers.186 Even prior to the Westminster and Tower bombings, the New York Tribune called for “concerted action on the part of civilized nations for mutual protection.” While the Tribune’s editors made a point of indicating that there was no universal term to identify this mode of war, Irish bombers certainly embodied the “gravest menace to modern civilization and progress” and that required not just “international friendliness” but an “international specialized action.”187 During the Congressional debates on the January 1885 Edmunds bill and Bayard resolution, the Democratic Atlanta Constitution, which was usually sympathetic to Irish grievances and critical of British coercion, suggested that Irish dynamite terrorists had been inspired by communist doctrines. The Constitution argued that Irish terrorism was a manifestation of an “old struggle” in Europe and North America “between order and anarchy, between the rich and the poor, between civilization and barbarism.” It believed Irish terrorism, personified by dynamiters, was transnational and therefore required a multinational response. That the United States had not legislated repressive measures against dynamiters demonstrated the “confidence in the glory and strength of our free institutions to ignore these miscreants and their plans.” However, this overconfidence contained caution; their transatlantic character required “proper steps in time to guard the public peace.” It advised that the instinct of self-preservation warns us to stamp out communism and dynamiteism [sic], and ever other ism that menaces civilization, law and order. This is a duty which we owe to our neighbors across the water and to ourselves.188 Because it believed that the dynamiters were part of a larger international conspiracy, and therefore not constrained by national borders, any response required multinational cooperation. University of Michigan law professor Henry Wade Rogers, later a justice on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, echoed Anglo-Saxon sentiments that placed acts of terrorism completely outside the realm of warfare and deemed them crimes against humanity. Using the post-Civil War Alabama claims as precedent, Professor Rogers argued, in an essay considered so important by British diplomats in American that is was transmitted to the Foreign Office by several sources, that nations could not ignore acts of aggression originating from within its jurisdiction against a friendly power,



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even if they did not violate the letter of the law. He maintained that the assassination of heads of state “could not be properly regarded as a political offense” and that assassins and terrorists should not be granted political asylum in the United States. Not only did the United States need to amend its present statutory laws to prohibit such activities, he advised drafting an Anglo-American extradition treaty modeled on the June 1882 US—Belgium agreement that included criminalizing the assassination of heads of state. Rogers held that American extradition treaties should include “conspiracy to murder,” because these offenses were not considered “strictly political in their character.” Besides bilateral agreements, he recommended that Congress could bring some immediate relief from the dynamite campaign by amending American neutrality laws to include conspiracies against the “lives and property of the citizens of a foreign state with which we are at peace.” Following a rising tide of opinion, Rogers held that terrorism was not a problem for a single nation but involved the “peace of the world” and that the responsibility for confronting these dangers rested with liberal nations acting in concert “with unhesitating fidelity”; the “dangers of the future to the nations of the earth lie in the conspiracies of dynamiters, of communists, and nihilists.”189 As in previous eras, Americans most often discussed Irish terrorism from a decidedly Anglo-Saxon perspective. Since the commencement of the bombing campaign, the New York Times concluded that the Irish were “a vexatious and foreign body, unassimilable [sic] by our American civilization.” The Times compared the Irish question confronting the British Empire to difficulties the British faced in their Oriental holdings, but the confrontation with Ireland was far worse and because of proximity the security concerns for the British immediate. Yet the Times, like many public commentators, were not always consistent in their assessments. Like the Egyptian, South African, and East Indian questions, but “far more terrible,” it held that responsibility for the “whole Irish question” rested with British imperialist policy dating back to the Elizabethan era. In an undisguised dig at the British, it was clear that while the Irish “fight as a savage” they had been made “savages by ruthless” conquerors, so why not expect them to react with such brutality. After the 1884 Underground bombings the Times became increasingly sympathetic to the British predicament, shifting primary responsibility on the Irish. It refuted Irish contentions that they were waging war against an oppressor; “humanity recognizes no such warfare.” As an “act of pure and wanton deviltry,” it concluded that the Irish “countenancing an appeal to English terror” through assassination and dynamite were during “their best to disgust all mankind to their cause.” If Irish nationalists were committed to achieving Irish independence through such means they were “not fit for civil self-government, nor even personal liberty.”190 Americans viewed Irish terrorism not strictly from a realist, pragmatic slant. Popular ideological and racial constructs worked to delegitimize their behavior and to marginalize their influence. The Irish became identified as





potential destroyers of Anglo-Saxon civilization, and their terrorist activities were so heinous and against humanity, as not to be considered political in nature.191 Using language loaded with racial and religious meaning, The Christian Union referred to the Irish dynamiter as a “human gorilla” and “dynamite Ishmaelites.” Although it provided little explanation, the Union reiterated on several occasion that Irish terrorists were not satisfied with attacking the United Kingdom, but were intent on spreading dynamite terrorism to America.192 Several illustrated American publications reinforced popular Anglo-Saxon notions of Celtic inferiority through visual representations of simianized Irish. Coverage of the dynamite war by journals such as Harper’s Weekly and Puck, illustrated by Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler, respectively, which reached hundreds of thousands of middle-class subscribers, excited anti-Catholic, gaeliphobic fears by portraying the Irish generally, and the dynamiters particularly as crude, beastly, uncivilized figures.193 Historians have documented Puck’s notorious hostility toward Catholic Irish immigrants in America, but it is worth noting that several Puck artists deliberately highlighted the terroristic qualities of the Irish. An illustration by owner-editor Joseph Keppler titled “The U.S. Hotel Badly Needs a ‘Bouncer’ ” depicted Uncle Sam savoring his “Presidential Bouncer” (Chester A. Arthur) running roughshod over European terrorists, but gave prominence to the Irish-American dynamiters Patrick Egan and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and their supporters, such as Congressman P.J. Sheridan. The cartoon addressed the influx of European immigrants to the United States, advising that “Guests are required to Preserve Order” and that the American people would tolerate “No Bomb-Throwing, No Incendiary Talk, No Communism, No Fenianism.”194 By the beginning of 1884, criticism of Irish-Americans focused on the exploitation of their American citizenship to conduct terrorist attacks. In a panel strip by cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper titled “Our Naturalized Innocents Abroad,” simianized Irish-Americans are portrayed committing horribly violent crimes against the English while cloaking themselves in the protection of naturalization. Opper, born in Ohio of Austrian immigrant parents and one of America’s pioneers of newspaper comic strips, accused Irish-Americans of abusing their citizenship status and trying to hide behind to US Constitution for committing acts of terrorism and other uncivilized behavior.195 In one of its most venomous caricatures, using an undisguised pun, “Gorilla Warfare under the Protection of the American Flag,” again protested Irish-Americans’ reliance on American resources to wage their terrorist war against the British. Opper employed ape-like features, including a prehensile tail, to depict the ethnic inferiority of Catholic Irish. Swinging from an American flag-pole from within the United States, O’Donovan Rossa is hurling with simian paws dynamite bombs—reminiscent of feces—across the Atlantic at England.196 Puck advocated a get tough policy against Irish in America. While prominent, Protestant, middle-class Irish in America were



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usually exempted from these types of negative depictions, the American Anglo-Saxon community utilized such representations as a moral assessment of lower-class Irish who did not fit comfortably into their image of modern America. Beyond specifically stereotyping the Irish, Puck’s caricatures were designed to discredit revolutionaries and terrorists.197 The continuation of the dynamite attacks was affecting Americans in unexpected ways. American goods exported to Britain were subject to extensive customs searches and on several occasions the State Department became entangled in efforts to have these seized goods returned. The State Department periodically petitioned the British for release of imported goods, even explosives, destined for ports around the globe, seized by Crown customs agents.198 Bayard had become so hostile to Irish-Americans that he accused the “Dynamite and Fenian elements in the United States” of seizing upon strained American and Canadian relations over Newfoundland fishery rights to divide the American public and exacerbate tensions between the United States and the United Kingdom.199 By 1885 politicians in the United States and Great Britain wanted a new extradition treaty, if for different reasons. The British wanted to close off the safe-haven provided to Irish terrorists in the United States, while Americans wanted to secure the return of embezzlers fleeing to Canada for sanctuary. These mutual desires initiated a public discussion in America on the nature of terrorism and the extradition of political offenders. Mainstream public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic supported the proposed 1886 Phelps-Rosebery extradition treaty, but the Irish vote proved critical in its initial defeat. When the treaty was reintroduced for Senate ratification in 1889, the Irish lobby succeeded in removing the dynamite clause while it was in committee. Then they had the whole treaty defeated in the Senate by a two-to-one margin, even absent a dynamite clause. The Blaine-Pauncefote Extradition Treaty, finally ratified in March 1890, also did not include a dynamite clause. Clauses pertaining to the destruction of property and “malicious injury” to persons were not added to until 1931.200 During the 1886 congressional elections, Secretary of State Thomas Bayard noted the political ramification of Irish terrorism, especially with regard to the impending extradition treaty. Specifically addressing the extradition dispute, Bayard instructed the American Minister at London, E.J. Phelps, to remind Lord Rosebery “that in all the arrangements between the United States and Great Britain, the element of Irish hostility in the latter is never to be omitted from consideration.” Bayard pointed out that Irish nationalism was effecting the 1888 election campaigning. Eighteen months before the election, he accused Republicans of “vigorously and unscrupulously” attempting to exploit the extradition treaty dispute for purely partisan gain and warned that Republican candidate James Blaine had successfully captured the “Dynamite Irish vote.”201 Not only were the British determined to conclude an extradition treaty with United States that included a dynamite





clause, but they continued to complain about the Irish-American newspapers that praised and recommended assassinations of British leaders. Bayard simply dismissed the complaints, lamenting that most newspapers in the United States were “wholly under Irish inspiration and influence.” Furthermore, he claimed that the language of numerous “state legislatures, Governors, and other officials, of Senators and Representatives in Congress” were filled with “extravagance and violence.” Bayard admitted having to maintain “steady resistance” during the previous four years to the Irish radical interests in America demanding support for “hostile action against Great Britain.” Despite the undue influence that Irish nationalists, even terrorists, exercised upon American political culture, Bayard remained determined to “follow an American policy, dictated by the true interests of our own country and led by the light of our honor and traditional principles.” He praised those attributes that made “Britain truly ‘Great’ ” and disavowed any sympathy for those who attempted to exploit Britain’s “distress or seek to increase that anxiety” caused by the Irish troubles. Yet, even the noted Anglophile Bayard could not help but express frustration at the lack of reason by all sides in the Irish question.202 As in earlier periods, Irish nationalist terrorism crossed the Atlantic to threaten American sovereignty directly. Even before the bombing campaign ended, warnings arrived to American officials that Irish-American Clan members were departing from American shores, reminiscent of filibustering campaigns of the 1840s and 1850s, to destroy floating docks in Bermuda and attack non-military facilities in other parts of British North America. American officials monitored not only arms shipments to Canada, but assassination threats against the Canadian Governor-General (and future British Foreign Minister), the Marques of Lansdowne.203 British intelligence not only confirmed many of the same plots, but also identified assassination schemes, threats against British public property, and even claimed that dynamite used for construction of the Panama canal had been obtained by Irish nationalists to bomb English cities.204 In the wake of the Phoenix Park murders, British officials were particularly sensitive to threats against members of the royal family. Over the next year, members of the Royal family faced numerous assassination threats. While accompanying her husband the Marquis of Lorne, the Governor-General of Canada, on travels to North America in 1883, British authorities took special precautions to monitor and guarantee the safety of Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. As a result of several threats from Irish nationalists in North America, the Foreign Office requested and received from the States Department information of possible Fenian attacks.205 The fear of Irish terrorism lingered long after the Clan’s capacity to engage in dynamite warfare. When Joseph Chamberlain, former president of the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board, and a committed imperialist, planned to tour the United States in 1887, the American minister in London advised “providing police protection”



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as the Irish considered him “very obnoxious” because of his opposition to the first Irish Home Rule Bill (1886). The Cleveland Administration heeded the warning and while in America Chamberlain remained “under careful guardianship.”206 As during the 1860s Fenian terrorism, Minister Lowell learned of nationalist death threats against him and other American diplomats residing in the United Kingdom. Lowell was publicly unaffected by the threats. Deaththreats against American officials were rare and usually given little credence, although Irish terrorists were not above trying to intimidate United States officials in the hope of discouraging American cooperation with Great Britain. Clearly, however, Irish terrorists were unwilling to endanger the tolerance and sympathy they enjoyed in America by directly attacking Americans officials and institutions.207 One of the more extraordinary Irish-American terrorist weapons involved nautical innovations that reconfigured naval history. In the 1880s British officials suspected that Irish-Americans in New York City had deployed a new, secret man-of-war. Initially it was thought that the Clan-na-Gael hoped to use marine torpedoes against Royal Navy vessels.208 John Holland, an Irish-American Fenian who pioneered submarine warfare, received financial support from the Clan-na-Gael’s Skirmishing Fund to build a submersible vessel. The submarine was not intended for conventional naval engagements against the British Royal Navy, which was much too powerful, but for unconventional attacks against British merchant vessels in the unprotected Atlantic commercial shipping lanes. After learning of the Fenian submarine, the British unofficially sought cooperation from the Arthur Administration. Secretary of State Blaine replied, again unofficially, that the United States would cooperate fully with the British government and that the American people were opposed to such violent nationalist schemes. According to the charges d’affaires Victor Drummond, Blaine indicated that there was little danger that the submarine would actually attack British vessels. Instead, Blaine believed the “designs of these wretches were only to frighten people from crossing in English vessels.”209 After finally accepting the existence of the submarine in 1885, officials at the State Department insisted that the Justice Department prevent any violations of United States neutrality laws. The following year the submarine, dubbed the Fenian Ram, surfaced in New Orleans, and the Treasury Department and the New Orleans collector of customs kept a “strict watch” on the vessel to ensure that it did not depart without “complete compliance with law.” As a ship of war, an attack on British vessels would clearly violate American neutrality laws. The State Department reemphasized the need for accurate information from its consular agents as the best preventative to terrorism and encouraged intelligence sharing between American and British officials.210 Although American officials and the public were aware of the submarine’s existence, the government did little to prevent its construction





or launching, and proved unwilling to confiscate the novel weapon or prosecute its crew.211 The Fenian Ram plot, which never resulted any attacks, was significant because it demonstrated that the Clan was willing to support policies, similar to O’Donovan Rossa’s dynamite campaign, to destroy English property to weaken the Empire commercially, rather than support the IRB policy of “slow, but steady, arms importations until the day that a nationalist movement might emerge in Ireland.”212 The use of dynamite terrorism proved disastrous for the Irish nationalist movement in America. Public tolerance of Irish-American violence, already weakened by the nationalist schism, was further depleted by the proliferation of labor strikes and pitched battles that consumed industrial America, which included substantial Irish-American participation. Clan-na-Gael terrorism became equated with labor terrorism and by mid-decade, especially after the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago, “removed whatever romance remained in the popular view of dynamiters.” James Green’s valuable social history of the Haymarket affair asserts that the 1886 bombing “marked America’s first experience with what would be today called terrorism.”213 This is a bit of an overstatement, failing to recognize that America has had a long experience with both domestic and transnational terrorism, but his study does demonstrate the potency of terrorism in 19th century American society. The decline of dynamite attacks resulted from changes within Irish nationalism and British counterterrorism. Periodic dynamite scares continued after 1885, but they lost the sense of urgency and alarm of the earlier years. Plagued by British infiltration, the IRB in Ireland and the Clan-na-Gael in the United States suffered major setbacks in operational planning and the loss of credibility among moderate nationalists in the United States and Ireland.214 In the wake of the bombing campaign, British sources in the United States noted that Irish nationalist organizations in America became increasingly fractured and that internal dissension was being publicized, resulting in diminished abilities launch attacks against English targets.215 Irish-American dynamiters became conscious of the negative public reaction to the bombings on both sides of the Atlantic. Historians have long recognized that some Irish nationalists operating from the United States used terrorism, but there has been little attention given to the American response to Irish terrorism. Although many non-Irish Americans sympathized with the Irish fight for national independence and supported the struggle for home rule, this did not usually extend to terrorism or the use of America as a sanctuary for terrorists.216 The meaning and implications of dynamite terrorism lingered for years. Several English writers, who viewed the rise of the United States as the fulfillment of the globalization of Anglo-Saxonism, recognized that the end of the 19th century not only occasioned monumental, technological and industrial innovations but also introduced into the Atlantic community terrorism as a



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powerful social force for change. According to James Howard Bridge, a British immigrant in 1884, who later worked as a literary assistant for Andrew Carnegie, Irish-American dynamiters epitomized a new wave of crime confronting society, where America had become the “base of operations against European systems.”217 In his 1902 volume, The Americanization of the world, or, the trend of the twentieth century, William T. Stead held that one of the vital components of the spread of American culture was the exportation of unrestrained egalitarianism, violent political ideologies, and social disorder. According to Stead, an innovator of investigative journalist, former editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, founder of the Review of Reviews, executor of the Rhodes Scholarship, and outspoken pacifist, the Irish-American dynamiters’ “campaign of terrorism” was one of the more powerful indicators of the influence of American culture on the modern world: for the revolutionary party in Ireland America is their base, their banker, their recruiting ground, and their safe retreat. Every year Ireland becomes more and more Americanized, more and more assimilated to the ideas of the democracy of the West.218 Although a proponent of closer Atlantic Anglo-Saxon ties, Stead believed there was a direct linkage between American-style democracy and unconventional political violence. Domestic political considerations and the absence of a clear threat to the United States prevented American officials from completely cooperating with British counterterrorism. While they remained critical of British colonial policies in Ireland, some officials did recognize the effectiveness of British counterterrorism practices. Years after the dynamite campaign subsided, E.J. Phelps, the American minister to London, not only reiterated many of the themes and observations of his predecessors but also recommended to the State Department that terrorists were ineffective when law enforcement and intelligence agencies used vigilant and dexterous surveillance methods to monitor and intercede before they could execute their plans.219 By the mid-1880s, changes in American attitudes toward terrorism were evident by comments from several presidents, irrespective of party affiliation. President Chester A. Arthur’s message to Congress, which the New York Times called “one of the most important,” admonished those who supported nationalist terrorism, reminding Americans that for the nation’s honor and prestige in the international community the United States must clearly differentiate between providing asylum to the oppressed and poor and harboring and tolerating terrorist conspirators.220 Democratic President Grover Cleveland’s first State of the Union Address in December 1885 advised revoking the citizenship of those naturalized citizens who used the United States to engage in such “evils” against their home countries.





Cleveland’s statements reflected the convergence of the transatlantic liberalism identified by historian Murney Gerlach, supporting his contention that liberals on both sides of the Atlantic “fervently desired an end to IrishAmerican terrorism.” Such sentiments were not limited to one political party, however, as indicated by Republican President Benjamin Harrison’s State of the Union Address in December 1889. Delivered several years after the last Irish-American dynamite blasts, Harrison labeled violent revolutionaries “avowed enemies of social order” and, echoing the moralistic language used by Cleveland, advocated that those who used these “evil practices” should not only be “denied citizenship, but a domicile” for sanctuary.221 It would certainly be disingenuous to overemphasize the importance of Irish terrorism to the US government during the 1880s. At no time did it dominate American foreign policy nor did it seriously jeopardize severance of relations with the United Kingdom. Yet, neither was it wholly ignored nor dismissed. Irish-American dynamiters who planned, funded, and organized attacks on the United Kingdom from the United States demonstrated to American officials the difficulties of controlling terrorism through international cooperation. Americans never spoke with a unified voice on the issue of terrorism, and political considerations certainly colored their reactions to Irish terrorism, but the presence and activities of Irish-American terrorists were a catalyst for an extended American dialogue on the nature of international terrorism and were the antecedent of US policy against international terrorism. Despite widespread American sympathy for Irish national independence, Irish-American terrorism provided American officials an opportunity to begin articulating an ideological opposition to international terrorism. Anglo-American cooperation survived Irish-American terrorism and in subsequent years, especially during and immediately after World War I, the two Atlantic powers worked closely together to strengthen their counterterrorism policies.



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The end of World War I dawned a new epoch for European society and ushered in a dynamic transatlantic community. Traditional economic barriers remained, and in some cases protectionism intensified, and despotic political tendencies continued, evidence by the rise in totalitarians, presenting difficult challenges for the new liberal-progressive order that emerged from the 1919 Versailles settlement. The collapse of ancient autocratic political institutions and the acceleration of global economic interdependence, fundamentally rearranging centuries old empires, reflected the highest aspirations of Atlantic Anglo-Saxon ideals and facilitated greater transnational cultural exchanges. The war in Europe not only propelled the United States among the global powers and enhanced American involvement in the process of globalization, but proved equally decisive for American interactions with transnational terrorism. The United States’ new global status, and its closer relationship with the British Empire, offered Americans new perspective on Irish terrorism and prompted policy-makers the opportunity to craft more coordinated responses to the greater challenges posed by Irish extremists. By World War I, Irish independence and the use of terrorism had been a contentious issue in the Atlantic community for over a half century. But in final days of the calamitous European war, and continuing for over two years afterward, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) adopted a ruthless guerrilla campaign against the British Empire that included hundreds of incidents of terrorism annually. Reflecting President Woodrow Wilson’s calls for selfdetermination, Irish nationalists, supported by most Irish Catholics, rejected British rule in Ireland. When their separatist aspirations were not met, the most committed nationalists inaugurated a guerrilla campaign that relied heavily on terrorism for ultimate success. In order to support their aggressive strategy, IRA operatives modernized the transatlantic economic and cultural networks established by 19th-century Fenians. IRA attacks against the British by 1920 took on a decidedly terroristic quality, allowing Americans to continue their decades-long discussion about the origins and causes of terrorism, and the challenges terrorism created for imperial powers. 187



IRA Terrorism Conjoins the Atlantic Community, 1919–1922


By the beginning of the 20th century, American public and official discussions about Irish terrorism took on a new urgency, as the United States had already begun to embark on its own imperial enterprises. Having acquired extra-continental holdings and engaged in controlling foreign peoples since the 1870s, Irish anti-imperialist terrorism took on even greater meaning for Americans. American occupation of the Philippine Islands following the Spanish–American War (1898) resulted in the United States’ direct encounter with anti-imperialist terrorism. During testimony before the Senate, thenGovernor General William H. Taft identified within the Filipino nationalist revolutionary guerrilla war against the United States a “system of terrorism.” Filipino insurgent leaders, after the failure of conventional tactics against American armed forces, adopted a guerrilla strategy that used terrorism against the indigenous population to augment support for the nationalist movement and diminish cooperation with the US military forces. According to Taft, terrorism was essential to the guerrilla campaign and involved widespread depravation to the Filipino people and greater difficulty for Americans trying to establish Western style civic government. Taft also imposed moral judgments on the insurrection strategy, arguing that “warfare which depends upon terrorism and murder is a crime.” General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., Commander of the Department of Northern Luzon and Military Governor of the Philippines, tended to minimize the effect of terrorism in uniting Filipino people behind the insurgency. Taft rejected General MacArthur’s assessment, believing that the vast majority of Filipinos favored peace and acceptance of American sovereignty. He argued that continuation of guerrilla warfare was not possible “without the system of terrorism and assassination and murder which prevails.”1 Combating Filipino insurgent terrorism, manifested by coordinated and systematic assassinations, burning villages, and crop destruction, directed primarily against americanistas that is, supporters of American rule and collaborators with the US army—became a vital component of Americans’ conduct during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902).2 From the first observations about Fenian terrorism during the 1860s, and continuing through the bombing campaign of the 1880s, many Americans directly linked Irish terrorism to British imperial rule in Ireland. After World War I, many American Progressives viewed the terrorism in Ireland as the product of British colonialism, so much so, that a number of prominent Americans believed that the violence would end only when the British reformed its political relationship with the Irish. Ultimately, liberal and progressive voices called for some version of home rule or complete separation for Ireland to bring an end to Irish terrorism. IRA violence, even more than previous Irish terrorism, polarized American political culture. Continuing a tradition begun decades earlier, some Americans, the most vocal and patronizing being Irish-Americans, sympathized



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with Irish nationalist aspirations and supported some measure of home rule for Ireland. Even during the worst periods of violence, there was an active base of support at work propagating for Irish independence and appealed directly to American citizens. Americans not only carefully scrutinized nationalists’ violence, but strengthened collaboration with the British in conceptualizing the threat terrorism posed to liberal-democratic, capitalist societies and worked with the British to prevent future attacks, to disrupt IRA activities in the Atlantic community, and to discredit those who advocated the use of terrorism. IRA terrorism flew in the face of Anglo-American sensibilities, and unfortunately for Irish nationalists, coincided with the coalescence of Anglo-American rapprochement. Even Britain’s repressive responses, which at times elicited profound concerns from Americans, were not enough to stymie the growing Anglo-American commitment to resist revolutionary violence. Deeply entrenched prejudices continued to contribute to the harsh American reaction to Irish nationalist activities. As a means of discrediting Sinn Féin nationalism, transatlantic Anglo-Saxon culture associated Irish violence with radical ideologies and anarchist organizations. Another powerful legacy from the 19th century was the infusion of racial attitudes that prejudiced Anglo-Saxon perceptions of Irish violence. As result of the shared transatlantic Victorian values, Americans not only publicly condemned the IRA’s tactics, labeling certain incidents and activities as “terrorism” but by the end of the war began coordinating counterterrorism arrangements with the British. In the United States the Anglo-Irish War was portrayed as unrelenting civil strife, yet prominent within American discussion was the frequent occurrence of terroristic violence. Although the United States still had not codified an official, coherent counterterrorist policy, its new postwar status and abiding interest in the conditions of Ireland led to a continuation of a transatlantic dialogue concerning the incidents, causes, and implications of Irish transnational terrorism. Working closely with their British counterparts, officials in the Wilson and Harding Administrations participated in an aggressive surveillance program that transcended national boundaries. Embracing a transatlantic Progressive movement that viewed the state as a principal instrument for social stability, Americans utilized intelligence and law enforcement agencies to assist the British in obstructing IRA terrorist activities. Only after the IRA accepted a conventional military strategy in the waning months of the Anglo-Irish War did Americans consider the national independence movement legitimate. Antipathy to terrorism remained entrenched within American political culture and tended to negate otherwise legitimate nationalist aspirations. At times Irish terrorism exacerbated transatlantic tensions, but by the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 the United States and Great Britain achieved a remarkable level of consensus on the issue.



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Irish violence in the postwar era is a topic of considerable scholarly discussion, producing two schools of thought. Historian Peter Hart has challenged conventional wisdom regarding the violence used by the IRA emphasizing its apolitical, non-nationalistic character. According to Hart, Irish violence was not solely inspired by republican ideology, but rather was multidimensional, encompassing several overlapping struggles. The intensity of the violence reflected the fluidity of Irish society and the numerous forces rearranging traditional social relations in Ireland. Irish violence tended to be localized, even to the point of being intimately personalized, reflecting longstanding ethnic tensions and sectarian conflicts that had balkanized Irish society for decades. Irish terrorism certainly included an anti-English character, but in Hart’s assessment most of the violence occurred as effort to establish community solidarity or as an expression of intra-nationalistic differences among the Irish people. The anti-English violence that consumed Irish society was indicative of a more fundamental transformation in Ireland, where intense competition among local identities and regional commitments to variations of republican ideology resulted in a violently defensive response to perceived external threats. Effective political mobilization by Sinn Féin and the IRA, who were able to elevate once marginalized elements to the mainstream, combined with greater British state repression, radicalized communal barriers, leaving those outside identifiable groups vulnerable to victimization. Hostilities devolved into a sort of anonymous collective violence where individuals and small groups acted on feelings of personal vengeance or expressions of communally shared “tit-for-tat” retaliation.3 Peter Hart’s revisionism challenges the conventional scholarship led by historians Joost Augusteijn and Charles Townshend, who situate the fighting in a nationalist, anti-imperialist context, where militants sought primarily to remove the British regime from Ireland and used terrorism as a central component to their strategy for ending occupation. Looking at the contest from the British angle, Townshend notes that extremists waged a modern, prototypical guerrilla war against the Empire that included a “methodical campaign of terrorism” designed to make Ireland ungovernable by exploiting the psychological effects of low-intensity tactics against the institutions, symbols, and sympathizers of British rule in Ireland.4 According to Augusteijn, the political violence was predicated not so much on an ideology of militancy but motivated by a form of “negative nationalism,” in which Irish extremists defined Irish nationality based on geographical separation and a social identify distinct from Anglo-Saxons.5 The use of terrorist methods proved remarkably effective in achieving in two years what decades of sporadic violence by the IRB and Fenians had failed, and according to Michael Laffan, this strategy epitomized modern decolonization warfare.6



Theories of IRA violence

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Historians have begun to take Peter Hart’s “tit-for-tat” thesis to task. His contention that IRA “political serial killers” engaged mostly in retaliatory violence that was often indiscriminate and emotionally reactionary does not appreciate the careful coordination and execution of IRA strikes. Nationalist violence, for instance against the Cork Anti-Sinn Féin Society, a group of loyal Irish who attempted to uncover IRA operations, did not rely on a “general terror campaign.” Instead, the IRA carefully coordinated its operation, scrutinizing suspected informers and executing only those civilians who collaborated with the British. Ultimately, IRA violence against Cork loyalists was to eliminate high-value British assets and disrupt a potentially damaging spy network in Ireland.7 In a recent article drawing on modern theories of terrorist behavior, Augusteijn refutes the argument that local circumstances, regional identities, sectarian tensions, personal animosities, or straightforward tit-for-tat reactions dictated the use of terrorism. Rather violence in Ireland was motivated by an ideological commitment to republicanism, which was a crucial factor for escalation and radicalization. Reflecting current psycho-sociological explanations, Augusteijn traces the process of violent militants’ isolation from mainstream society and the severance of ties with families and friends. This process was crucial in the development of Irish terrorists who were insulated by “collective or in-group identity” among like-minded individuals where actions became the only thing that mattered and moral constraints were eroded, making extreme, exceptional actions acceptable. Although isolated from the broader society, militants were nonetheless widely supported by the community, which was necessary for an underground violent organization to function.8 According to terrorist experts, Irish national extremists were “the first to understand the complex mechanisms defining the disproportion between extremely weak strategic potential and potentially enormous political gain.” Irish terrorists thus provided a viable model for other anti-imperial radicals.9 While the precise nature of Irish violence will undoubtedly remain a point of debate and scholars will continue to debate the propriety of labeling Irish violence “terrorism,” of immediate concern here is how the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community interpreted and reacted to that violence. There is a preponderance of evidence that observers on both sides of the Atlantic viewed Irish violence during the Anglo-Irish War as anti-imperialist terrorism. While the violence in Ireland might have been, as Peter Hart suggests, a product of the disruption in long-established communal ties in Ireland, for the Anglo-Saxon communities in Great Britain and the United States, Irish terrorism was not a localized feature, but ultimately a crisis of empire. Furthermore, for many observant Americans, even those supportive of Irish nationalism, the collapse in social order and disintegration of British rule in Ireland through terrorism methods were indicative of the existential dangers confronting Western civilization at the beginning of the 20th century.





American observers also considered many of the British counterterrorism programs as terroristic. It is now safe to conclude that belligerents on each side of the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922) used systemic terrorism to diminish their rivals’ military capabilities. Each side hoped to extinguish the political will of their opponents while simultaneously enhancing public support and cooperation from among their own supporters for continued operations against the enemy. As will become evident, the British practice of reprisals, which at first specifically targeted the IRA and then later evolved into campaign against the Irish population, resulted from an official recognition that the British public were not prepared to engage in a protracted and expensive military campaign in Ireland. Simply put, after the European conflict the British people were not enthusiastic about war, and terroristic reprisals offered a way to undermine the IRA’s strength without committing a large conventional force to Ireland. For Americans, British reprisals were as problematic as IRA terrorism. Not only did reprisals fundamentally undercut many of the most cherished Anglo-Saxon values, such as the sanctity of property rights, the inviolability of non-combative civilians, and the highest ideals of participatory government and self-determination, it also conveyed a conspicuous weakness from America’s most important ally. In essence, it was apparent IRA terrorists were succeeding against one of the world’s most formidable military powers. Within the transatlantic context, the terrorism that ravaged the Irish landscape and destroyed the lives and property of thousands became in the United States a vehicle for discussing the new conceptions of national security, the merits of imperialism, and the ideals of self-determination. Thus, IRA terrorism had ramifications for American foreign relations, most especially in the evolving movement of the Anglo-American “special relationship.” It was less important for Americans that Irish and British terrorism was nuanced and as complex as modern scholarship suggests. Instead, for Americans the principle concern was that both belligerents had adopted terrorism to achieve their political goals and were pursuing methods destructive to Americans’ ideals for international order, security, and prosperity. By the turn of the century, the issue of terrorism factored significantly within the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community, which equated civilization with order, progress, and modernization. Labor terrorism against capitalist institutions had been disruptive on both sides of the Atlantic since the transformation to industrial societies. The 1914 assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg crown prince, and the calamitous general European war that followed, had already made undoubtedly clear the possible implications of terrorism. The November 1917 Bolshevik revolution further exacerbated Western fears that terrorism might not only disrupt society, but could ultimately result in the utter collapse in democratic-capitalist societies. Sub-state, transnational terrorism, by groups intractable to the politico-economic structures of Western capitalist societies, challenged the fundamental Anglo-Saxons’ notions of civil society.



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Some have argued that the cultural and political transition from Victorian to Edwardian Britain, and the geopolitical realignment following the United States’ entry into the Caribbean and Pacific basins, marked the apogee of global Anglo-Saxonism, and that Anglo-American ideological attachments began to unravel in the first decade of the 20th century.10 While certainly the new century offered novel challenges and produced serious strains to Anglo-American relations, not the least including renewed American frustrations at Britain’s repression of the Irish, the two most formidable Atlantic powers continued to share seminal values that informed their behavior for decades to come. The guerrilla insurgency that rose in Ireland by late 1919, which throughout its duration comprised certain incidents perpetrated by both Irish Volunteers (and later the IRA) and agents for the British Empire, struck at the very core of those long-championed Anglo-Saxon values. In the post-World War I period the Anglo-Saxon Atlantic community constructed a world-view where terrorist acts were labeled uncivilized, antithetical to Western norms of warfare. The necessities of national survival and imperial security often mitigated questionable practices, if not excused, even the most heinous attacks perpetrated by the Irish and the British alike. Therefore Anglo-Saxon values did not dictate British policies, much less American reactions to events in Ireland, but acted more as a moral guide. “Cultural internationalism,” identified by historian Akira Iriye as the sharing of basic ideals through transnational intellectual exchanges, was a constructive aspect of Anglo-American relations and helped shaped the Atlantic community by the beginning of the 20th century. These transnational exchanges did operate within a global climate of zealous nationalism, aggressive imperialism, and violent racism, but despite the presence of these powerfully divisive forces, and the generally competitive nature of international relations, historian Frank Costigliola has shown that American political and economic leaders after World War I were opposed to the revolutionary changes advocated by radical movements. Instead, American political and business leaders worked with like-minded individuals and groups in Great Britain and Western Europe, who were dedicated to preserving world order and stability against aggressors and sought social reform through constitutional mechanisms and capitalist institutions.11 The Anglo-Irish conflict presented an opportunity for Americans to develop even more fully their notions of order, stability, and civilization, while correcting their Atlantic partner on the proper form of imperialism, in the hopes of minimizing abuses against colonized peoples. Reform-minded Americans for decades found much to criticize about British rule in Africa, Latin America, and the Orient.12 The emergence of the United States as a global imperial power coincided with a greater affinity among Americans for Victorian values and a conspicuous contempt for foreign, non-AngloSaxon cultures. For many Americans, the assassination of President William McKinley underscored the threat posed by anarchist ideologies. In response





to the growing public concern, President Theodore Roosevelt articulated a new social order for the international community.13 Roosevelt enthusiastically endorsed legislation to expel anarchist aliens from the United States and supported federal laws criminalizing political assassinations. In his 1901 Annual Message to Congress he proposed that the United States should take the lead in banning global revolutionary activities and that “anarchy should be declared an offense against the law of nations through treaties among the civilized power.”14 Writing on the eve of American entry into the European war, George Louis Beer, a dean of the Imperialist School of history and later a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, argued that more than anything else greater AngloAmerican cooperation was vital for global peace and prosperity. Although he did not specify exactly how, the committed anglophile believed that AngloAmerican peoples needed to prioritize cooperation against transnational revolutionaries. According to Beer, the Atlantic English-speaking peoples had created the most superior societies and to preserve them they needed to dedicate their energies to removing the “international anarchy” that threatened world civilization.15 It was during World War I that President Woodrow Wilson first reconceptualized Roosevelt’s brand of internationalism, specifically applying it to Anglo-Irish contest. The scholar-president advocated for a “community of nations” based on self-determination, universal democracy, the rule of law, and collective security as a means to counter the growing anarchist threats felt by civilized nations. Unfortunately for the Irish, Wilson’s worldvision, like that of his predecessors, contained contradictions. While Wilson endorsed people’s right of self-determination and he opposed oppressive imperialism, the president believed that English imperialism was a civilizing agent for native societies. Wilson had no particular affinity for the Irish or any personal stake in Irish nationalism. Furthermore, Wilson was enough of a realist to recognize the paramount mutual national security interests that existed between the United States and Great Britain. With his commitment to strengthening strategic bonds with the British, added by a pro-British cabinet, diplomatic corps, and influential anglophilic acquaintances, Wilson settled on a strict non-interventionist policy during the bloody contest for an independent Irish nation. By prioritizing Anglo-American cooperation and encouraging cultural exchanges, the Wilson Administration tended to marginalize groups who did not fully embrace Anglo-Saxonism. This was especially true for those who attempted to revolutionize society by using unacceptable forms of violence.16 For decades the Irish question had intruded onto American domestic political culture in a variety of ways and helped contoured Anglo-American relations. But at the end of World War I, Irish nationalists adopted a guerrilla strategy that included acts of terrorism, forcing the Wilson Administration to address directly Irish methods of war and their capacity to govern a



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Volunteer and IRA terrorism While cultural nationalism had spread in Ireland in the years leading up to World War I, the failed 1916 Easter Rebellion, and subsequent execution of many of the nationalist leaders, revitalized a violent brand of nationalism among the Irish. One of the most important achievements of the 1916 rebellion was to eradicate from Irish politics a “constitutional, parliamentary, conciliatory version of nationalism.”17 The failure of the rebellion prompted some extremists to reject a conventional strategy against the British Empire, calculating that terrorism was their best option for achieving greater independence and autonomy. Even though Sinn Féin had little role in the failed Easter Rising, the party was the main beneficiary of the Rising and began a rapid ascent after the Crown executed the rebellion’s leaders. Originally founded by journalist and propagandist Arthur Griffith as a constitutional movement that sought to end the collaboration between the Irish Parliamentary Party and British Liberal Party, Sinn Féin embraced “IrishIreland” nationalism, a commitment to promoting linguistic revival, cultural exclusivity, economic independence, and political self-determination. As it became increasing politicized during the European war, Sinn Féin sought to dismantle the Westminster system by eliminating the influence of Irish Party MPs and achieving political autonomy by linking republicanism to secular citizenship at the expense of the Catholic elite. Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers (a military organization composed of members of the Gaelic League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the IRB), the IRA, and other nationalist groups, despite ideological and tactical differences, defined Irish nationalism in contradistinction to English values, identity, traditions, and institutions. The culture of Irish separatism developed in response to nationalists’ convictions that in the wake of postwar global imperial realignments the English were attempting to reestablish a cultural hegemony in Ireland and eradicate all vestiges of a unique Irish identity.18 During and immediately after the war years, Irish nationalists became increasingly committed to a militant ideology, as indicated by the growing numbers of volunteers, the rise in drilling and military training, and the number of arrests for offenses committed with firearms. In spring 1917, Sinn Féin’s strength was still very limited, with only 166 clubs with 11,000 active members, but within six months it had over 1200 clubs and a membership that approached a quarter-million. The militant wing of Sinn Féin was the Irish Volunteers, organized in 1913 by IRB extremists as a reaction to



modern state. The resumption of a terror campaign, closely followed by a British reprisal policy, ushered a renewal of contentious debate within America about the meaning of civilization and the responsibility of the United States for maintaining order within the international community amid revolutionary violence.


the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force who had organized and armed against home rule. By 1921 the IRA numbered approximately 3000 fulltime militants, 50,000 part-time militants, and over 100,000 members of an “invisible army” dedicated to expelling the 50,000 British forces from Ireland. Although attached by a nationalists ideology and shared membership, the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin were often at odds over strategy and divided over the use of terrorism. While terrorism brought some military successes, it was a political hazard for Sinn Féin, especially in the increasingly important propaganda war between the Irish and the British. As its popularity and support grew, extremists from the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, which later evolved into the IRA, assumed control of Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin was not initially connected with the IRB or the American Clan-na-Gael, which since the 1880s dynamite campaigns were largely militarily dormant. Despite the decline in militant activities in the two decades before World War I, the IRB and the Clan-na-Gael remained powerful cultural agents of Irish nationalism. Both groups eventually supported Sinn Féin’s separatist program and as a result much of the operations of Irish militants became associated with Sinn Féin.19 Initially the party reflected Griffith’s pacifism, but during the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922), also known as the Irish War for Independence, Sinn Féin tacitly became identified with IRA violence, either through direct support from prominent members or because the organization turned a blind-eye to the brutality of the militants’ terroristic tactics. The war was a political contest, based on Irish nationalists’ struggle to achieve self-determination, sovereignty, and state power.20 The presence of violence was vital to the nationalist struggle, not simply for individuals who achieved social identity and prominence, but for nationalist ideology it cemented communal bonds, demonstrated the vitality and strength of the Irish nation, and represented ultimate defiance, no longer deference, to the British. IRA violence tied local, communal relations to the larger vision of the Irish nation.21 The Irish Volunteer influence on the political party was apparent by 1917, as evidenced by Sinn Féin’s constitution which includes a clause that promised to “make use of any and all means” to end British rule in Ireland. Volunteer militants, reacting to the 1918 British conscription scare, were taking over the political direction of Irish nationalism.22 British and American observers particularly attributed the disorders in Ireland to “Sinn Féin terrorism,” but actually it was the work of Irish Volunteers, the IRA, or of individuals. By the last years of World War I, Irish extremists reorganized into an ultraviolent revolutionary association, embracing a ruthless terrorism that was reminiscent of the 1880s dynamiters, but according to legal scholar Seán McConville, on an “incomparably larger scale.” In his study of Irish political prisoners within the British legal institutions, McConville notes Irish nationalist violence constituted terrorism because it was designed to influence “a community well beyond the immediate victim.” Even historian Peter Hart,



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whose studies tend to minimize the anti-imperialistic qualities of Irish violence, recognized that the IRA guerrilla organization, a fusion between the conventional IRB and modern Volunteers, was manned by ultra-nationalists who brought a new level of violence to Irish politics. By adopting “a style of outright terrorism” the Volunteers and the IRA targeted non-combatant civilians through assassination, assault, and coercive intimidation of Crown officials and their collaborators and supporters. Besides attacks against individuals, the destruction to property, arson, community boycotting or exile became common tactics used by the IRA, which generally was less concerned about how Ireland was governed, or by whom, just as long as England did not rule Ireland. The guerrilla campaign was anything but a conventional military engagement; most military, police, and even IRA casualties did not happen in open combat, but like the countless civilian deaths, usually occurred while the victim was unaware or defenseless. During the AngloIrish conflict there were no recognizable campaigns or battles, no decisive large-scale encounters between opposing forces, no traditional advances or retreats, and little measurable progress in territorial or even attritional terms.23 Although few terrorist activities had occurred between 1890 and 1914, some Irish militants in the pre-World War I years began to construct a defense for unconventional warfare. Ultra-nationalist Bulmer Hobson provided the intellectual framework for the guerrilla strategy in what historian M.J. Kelly called an “iconic 1909 pamphlet,” Defensive Warfare. A long-time socialist IRB member and leading figure in the Irish Volunteers before it morphed into the IRA, Hobson rejected an open, conventional revolutionary uprising in Ireland. Instead he favored a highly flexible military strategy that condoned boycotting, skirmishing, terrorism, a general repudiation of Crown courts, officials and administration to force the British into a reactive posture where they could only regain authority at Sinn Féin’s expense. By selectively choosing targets, Hobson advised a strategy of victory based on neutralizing Britain’s conventional military forces, disrupting its ability to govern Ireland, diminishing its credibility and legitimacy among the Irish people, and ultimately collapsing the will of the British public to wage war against the Irish.24 While few militant nationalists offered such a strategically sophisticated defense for guerrilla warfare, others expressed their support for equally ruthless tactics against the British. During the 1918 conscription crisis in Ireland, Protestant nationalist Ernest Blythe penned an anonymous article titled “Ruthless Warfare” in An tOglach, the official organ of the Irish Volunteers and later the journal for the IRA. In what became a very popular essay among nationalists, Blythe encouraged assassinations against all enemies of the republic: We must recognize that anyone, civilian or soldier, who assists directly or by connivance in this crime against us, merits no more consideration




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In a similar vein, Cathal Brugha, head of the Volunteer executive, suggested assassinating all members of the Cabinet if the British attempted to enforce conscription in Ireland.26 While militants were not yet fully committed to such extremes in autumn 1918, by the start of the Anglo-Irish war the following year these ideas were becoming more acceptable among those committed to Irish separatism. Éamon de Valera, by 1917 president of Sinn Féin and later the first president of the Dáil Éireann (Assembly of Ireland), in a 1920 comparative study of British imperial rule in India and Ireland wrote that because conditions in the two colonies were quite different tactical resistance would therefore naturally take different forms. On a strategic level, however, he noted that “Ireland’s struggle teaches very plainly . . . [i]t is only through the influence of fear and the presence of force” that the British government had considered colonial grievances.27 This insurgent strategy was not necessarily militarily significant, in view of the potential power of the British armed forces. But the strategy was pivotal for Irish nationalists because it changed the tenor of their struggle. Attacking these institutions not only eroded the credibility of British governance but signified the power and resilience of the IRA, providing a much needed sustainability in the movement until the vast majority of the Irish people supported or joined.28 By 1919 the ingredients for an underground guerrilla war existed: the breakdown of civil law, a demoralized Irish police force that lacked legitimacy and authority, and an underground army of young men who were reared in violence and had little prospects for political inclusion or economic prosperity within the British Empire. In 1919 independent Volunteer gunman began shooting unarmed policemen. The Soloheadbeg ambush in Co. Tipperary in January, resulting in the theft of explosives and murder of two policemen, is often credited as commencing the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1921). Following the Soloheadbeg ambush, murders and thefts in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, and Tipperary went unprosecuted because the local population was unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement. By autumn, the violence escalated with attacks on unarmed, undefended Crown representatives and facilities, specifically targeting the largely demoralized and unprepared Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). British sources, notably RIC reports of violence, most often referred to this new offensive as terrorism, concluding that it was specifically designed to instill fear among the population, to intimidate and disarm loyalists, and to prevent witness testimony or the supplying of information to law enforcement.29 American observers from the beginning of the Anglo-Irish War quickly labeled the violence as terroristic and associated it with the heritage of Irish agitation. As a result of the infusion of large numbers of non-Western European immigrants in the decades before World War I and heightened



than a wild beast, and should be killed without mercy or hesitation as opportunity offers.25

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xenophobic attitudes toward other foreign, non-white peoples, American attitudes toward the Irish softened. There was little effort to simianize the Irish, as had been the case in the 1870s and 1880s.30 The 19 December 1919 assassination attempt on Lord Lieutenant John French, former commander of British troops during the war who oversaw the suppression of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, was to Americans reminiscent of the 1882 Phoenix Park murders, which according to The Outlook, had been one of the “severest blows ever given to the cause of Irish independence.” Formerly the Christian Union, and long-time the unofficial political voice of the recently deceased former President Theodore Roosevelt, The Outlook had been particularly attentive to threats of domestic American and transnational terrorism for years, which it viewed as one of the greatest threats to civilization and Western values. From the start of the guerrilla campaign, the American journal not only condemned terrorism as morally repulsive, but echoing a theme heard during the Fenian crisis of the 1860s, viewed it as counterproductive. The use of assassinations indicated that the Irish “little understand English character or the lesson of history.”31 The failed attempt on Lord Lieutenant French did not abate the terroristic violence, and over the following months thousands of brutal killings occurred across the country usually as deliberate assassinations, mass executions, bloody massacres, disappearances, and midnight executions, where bodies were publicly dumped in ditches and fields. Reliable estimates claim that more than a third of the dead were civilian non-combatants, and that beneath the surface of murders was the “vast everyday traffic in terror and destruction” in the form of assaults, raids, kidnappings, torture, arson, robbery, and vandalism that left few untouched and “shattered normalcy” in Irish society.32 English commentators immediately discerned that Irish violence was assuming an aggressive, unconventional character, and what was in the 1860s only sporadically identified as terrorism was by the beginning of the AngloIrish conflict almost universally branded as terroristic, even if every incident was not technically terrorism. Members of the Anglo-Saxon establishment on both sides of the Atlantic used the term “terrorism” broadly to categorize Irish violence and to frame their aggression in Victorian moral values of what constituted civilization and acceptable behavior. English critics provided historical comparison to contextualize the type of violence consuming Ireland, most frequently using the French Reign of Terror and Pennsylvania Molly Maguires to underscore the deplorable nature of terrorism and to cast the Irish in a negative image that would resonate across the Atlantic. A British correspondent for the Spectator believed that past experiences with the Irish, whether it was the Civil War draft riots in New York City or the “system of bloody assassination” of Molly Maguires, tied the Atlantic AngloSaxon community together and strengthened their bonds.33 Author and lecturer Philip Whitwell Wilson, special correspondent on America affairs





for the London Daily News and staff writer at the New York Times, wrote a study of the Irish question specifically for an American audience in which he defended the British presence and policy in Ireland. Noting the “family resemblance” between the “famous terrorism of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania” and Sinn Féin’s intimidation tactics in its 1918 electoral success in western and southern Ireland, Wilson hoped to gain sympathy from Americans who feared social disorder and revolted by those who attempted to undermine republican values by tainting elections with coercive violence.34 What concerned British journals like The Times and the Spectator, besides the total abandonment of Victorian notions of civilized warfare, was the apparent effectiveness of the Irish strategy. Michael Collins and the IRA used assassinations carefully, as in the March 1920 killing of the Dublin Castle official investigating Sinn Féin laundered money.35 Initially, The Spectator believed that the Irish violence was personalized, inspired by hatred, malice and revenge, and “camouflaged with the title of patriotism.”36 By spring 1920, the popular British journal changed its assessment, recognizing a distinctive political component to the violence. It reported that British estimates believed there were “not in Ireland more than 2000 real terrorists.” While these numbers seemed manageable, by summer the journal made clear that Sinn Féin, through a calculated, coordinated campaign of intimidation and violence against civilians, had succeeded in frightening even moderate nationalists and had become a powerful, well-organized conspiracy dedicated to establishing “a Republic by means of terrorism.” As the bloodshed and material destruction persisted from weeks to months, they were no longer forgiven as political crimes of passions, but were Machieavellian, part of a “black-hearted, diabolic policy.”37 A correspondent’s reports for the London Times, which were reprinted in American newspapers, made repeated reference to Sinn Féin “terrorism” when describing Irish violence. It was not only “grim, cold-blooded, and cruel,” it was systemic.38 By late 1920, the English took a particularly unapologetic attitude about the need to restore law and order in Ireland. One of the more noteworthy incidents, the 21 November 1920 assassination of nearly 20 British intelligence agents, known as the Cairo gang, was planned and orchestrated by the Dail’s Minister of Finance and intelligence chief Michael Collins. The Cairo gang assassinations not only raised the specter of violence, but the methods proved enormously controversial. Although the operation had a clear military goal, the crippling of British intelligence capabilities, because these officers were assassinated while unarmed, many still in their residences or in the company of their families, they had all the effects of terrorism. The killings appalled the British public, and shocked officials at Dublin Castle and Whitehall, who previously had never seriously contemplated attacks against police or spies in their personal residences, and therefore took no precautions. Even among the Irish, the killings were controversial. De Valera feared the British might pound the image of Irish “murder gangs” into the American public,



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eroding support for the Irish cause and diminishing the legitimacy of the IRA. After the Cairo Gang killings, de Valera, recognizing the political and financial ramifications of terrorism, attempted to fold the IRA into the Dial government, in order to better control their operations.39 The use of terror tactics was certainly controversial and a major point of contention even among the most dedicated nationalists. Among some guerrilla leaders, such as Eoin O’Duffy, an IRA commander in Ulster, there was reluctance if not outright refusal to condone an assassination campaign against British officials. While initially O’Duffy was willing to use intimidation raids on private residences to secure weapons or to evict offending, pro-British supporters, he generally acted as a restraining force on his more extremist subordinates. By the beginning of 1921, realizing that the war was likely to escalate, O’Duffy’s earlier reticence gave way to a greater ruthlessness that not only authorized attacks against unarmed Crown forces but also a willingness to kill civilian enemies. O’Duffy straddled a precarious, fluid line; while commanding IRA forces in Ulster he not only encouraged, and allegedly participated in acts of terrorism, believing that violence was necessary to impose Republican ideals on the local community, but he also acted as a restraining force on his men, who were disposed to greater levels of violence.40 Michael Collins, who was less interested in American opinions or dependent on Irish-American support than de Valera, approached violence from a business-like pragmatism. An early patron of O’Duffy, Collins supported and orchestrated attacks that promised tangible military and political results. Recognizing the limitations and utility of terrorism, Collins eschewed attacks based on simple bloodlust or personal vengeance, which was popular among many Irish gunmen, but he did approve strikes, regardless of conventionality or lack thereof, that promised tactical success and contributed to strategic objectives. For instance, he approved the 1882 Phoenix Park murders on the “ground of expediency.” The rationale of expediency, which O’Donovan Rossa had used to justify the 1880s dynamite campaign, is a crucial ingredient to terrorism. Although most Fenians and IRB members aspired to honorable, conventional warfare, many were disposed to resort to unconventional, asymmetrical violence to achieve political objectives. According to a recent biographer, Collins repeatedly “stressed the utility of force”; DMP killings were to meet specific tactical needs, protecting Sinn Féin and IRA leaders, diminishing new recruitment to the RIC and the DMP, and discouraging the law enforcement, intelligence and military officers from pursuing nationalists’ criminal activities. Yet, the terror campaign was never centrally organized or under the sole control of a single leader. From the beginning of the guerrilla insurgency through the beginning of the Irish Civil War, many of the most important IRA brigades operated independently, and even when civilian violence at times rose sharply, it did so with little direction from General Head-Quarters (GHQ) commanders in Dublin.41





The IRA did not confine its operations to Ireland, but also struck on English soil. IRB and Volunteer operatives in Liverpool, London, Manchester, and other English cities reorganized after 1916 Easter Rebellion and by summer 1921 had over 1000 agents operating throughout Great Britain. With the blessings of Michael Collins and the GHQ, these agents planned hostage schemes and assassination campaigns against selected high-profile government officials and sabotage of vital infrastructure, including harbors and docks, utility pumps, power stations, bridges, telecommunication networks, commercial warehouses, and vital private enterprises (such as hotels, office buildings, and the timber industry), and even poisoning horses at Buckingham palace. Among the British IRB there was a strong element of personal revenge that inspired this campaign, but ultimately these committed terrorists took the fight directly to the English public, where they lived, worked, and played, to further weaken support for the Ministry’s Irish policies.42 But it is clear that British IRB operations and violence was not limited to private vengeance but included political motivations. Both the conservative Irish Chief Secretary Hamar Greenwood and former liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, in a contentious Commons debate on Irish violence just days after attacks on the docks and harbors at Liverpool, referred to the operations as terrorism dedicated to the nationalist cause.43 The stated purpose of the British IRB, by one of the operatives deeply involved in their schemes, was to terrorize civilians, producing public panic by exposing and exploiting English vulnerabilities. In effect, it was to neutralize the supposedly vaunted English intelligence and military force. In his memoir, Edward Brady, an IRA agent in Liverpool, categorically admits the primary “object was terrorism”—that is, to take the fight to the British in England and to undermine the sense of security among the English population. In moment of reflective humanity in an admittedly dehumanizing process, Brady empathized with England’s difficulty, especially with those suffering because of the government’s policies. But when it came to Irish independence, Brady remained unflappable in justifying the necessity of exceptionality in a war with Great Britain and was solaced by the thought that his contributions expedited a favorable conclusion for the Irish nation.44 During this particular struggle between imperialism and nationalism, a repetitive process during the 20th century, especially the threats to global powers by oppressed peoples, terrorism was viewed as totally unacceptable by some (usually by the victims) while regrettably inevitable by others (the perpetrators). From the beginning of the Anglo-Irish War, American public discussion attached even greater significance to the presence of terrorism. The conflict, especially the exceptional violence, continued to warrant historical context, not simply for its audacity but because it was now effectively organized. Writing in 1920, Rodolphe C. Escouflaire argued that Irish nationalists, and their Irish-American compatriots, dating back to “Fenian terrorism”



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had succeeded in stirring panic and alarm in the “Anglo-Saxon world.”45 Once national extremists emerged as a genuine security concern for the British Empire, concerned observers in America constructed a lineal perspective on Irish terrorism based on historical continuity—contemporary terrorism was part of the Gaelic heritage. The acceleration of transatlantic communications, and the correspondingly accumulation of volume, persuaded establishment voices and beneficiaries of the status quo to emphasize Sinn Féin’s violent ancestry through two prior strains of violent agitation in Ireland; namely, agrarianism and fenianism.46 By the beginning of the Anglo-Irish War in 1919, Anglo-Saxon versions of Fenian terrorism were standardized. A revised volume of the Essentials in English History: (from the Earliest Records to the Present Day), a widely read, highly acclaimed American secondary school history text that documented Britain’s present dilemmas in Ireland, made especial mention of the burnings of public offices and assaults on police barracks by the Irish. The authors believed that Irish nationalism, born from French revolutionary ideology, posed an “acute danger” to the British Empire. Conscience of the zealous, idealistic Irish-American diasporic nationalism that praised and practiced violent republicanism, Americans carefully grappled with the conspicuous terrorist traditions in Irish history. Written by Albert Perry Walker, Master of the Boston English High School, in consultation with Albert Bushnell Hart, one of the first professionally trained American historians, a Harvard University professor, long-time editor of the American Historical Review, and activist in both the National Security League and the American Defense Society, the Essentials in English History is indicative of a scholarly consensus that was quite comfortable labeling Irish violence as terroristic. Failed attempts at a national uprising had encouraged a radicalized Irish-Americans in 1867, who “in desperation [for an independent Irish republic] began a course of terrorism.” Yet reflecting Anglo-Saxon values, the text warned American pupils against concessions to terrorists and criticized social reforms emanating from terrorism. While Walker and Hart supported disestablishment and sincere land reforms in Ireland, they held that justice and prudence, not fear, should inspire and guide reforms.47 Worried that Irish terrorism might alienate an otherwise sympathetic American public, Irish nationalist leaders worked to contextualize events in Ireland to America’s own anti-colonial historical experiences. In an April 1920 interview with Frederick Dumont, at the American consulate in Dublin, Sinn Féin President Arthur Griffith compared events unfolding in Ireland to the unconventional violence that occurred during the Hungarian and American revolutions. He provided no evidence to substantiate, but argued that both in Hungary and in the United States independence succeeded “partly by force of arms and partly by outrages of the Irish type.” While Griffith regretted the carnage, he was resigned to its necessity, if not inevitability, to hold the “attention of the world and make people realize how bitter the fight is and how determined





Ireland is to get her freedom.” Dumont admitted to his superiors at the State Department that Griffith’s logic contained a “certain amount of truth” because “publicity and revenge are secured at one and the same time” with every terrorist attack. But after the Cairo Gang executions, and in response to the coordinated Sinn Féin propaganda campaign in spring 1921, Dumont dispelled comparisons between the American Revolution and events in Ireland. Dumont identified Thomas J. Ford and the Irish World, as well as Sinn Féin’s “Irish Bulletin,” as leading a propaganda offensive against the British that specifically targeted American audiences. Irish propagandists learned, like other “wise propagandists” during World War I, that the spectacular reports and sensational depictions made were rarely investigated. Regarding parallels made by Irish nationalists between the American Revolution and events in Ireland, Dumont believed it doubtful if any “American of Revolutionary ancestry would relish the comparison made of the military operations of the Continental Army and the exploits of the [IRA].” Dumont found it “hard to believe that [George] Washington did or would have issued such orders that Michael Collins” or other Irish commanders had. Ultimately he dismissed Griffith’s comparison and nationalist justifications of terrorism, believing the slayings were “barbarous in the extreme.” Furthermore, he thought it doubtful that in no other country except Ireland was murder exalted and glorified, where “men who order or commit murders in the name of patriotism could be elevated by the populace into the position of heroes.”48 Dumont ridiculed “vile [IRA] assassins who masqueraded as Irish patriots.”49 He also faulted the Irish Catholic clergy for giving moral sanction to IRA terrorists. In the pulpit and press, nationalist bishops and priests praised fallen IRA assassins “as patriots” who died as “martyrs” for the Irish people and Irish independence.50 By 1920, American consular officials in all regions of Ireland, as well as the diplomatic corps in London, identified and characterized IRA attacks as terrorism. American observers recognized there were fractures within the nationalist movement, primarily over the modes of violence consuming Irish society. While moderates deplored the guerrilla strategy, and still sought home rule through the parliamentary process, according to the American Ambassador at London, John W. Davis, the Irish Volunteers were planning a rising in southern and western Ireland. The Volunteers devoted themselves “to major operations as attacks on the British Military and the capture of police barracks,” but it was the IRB constituting the “inner ring in the organization of the Irish Volunteers” that was “responsible for the policy of terrorization which is carried out by raids and ‘executions’.” While he found it “particularly interesting” that Parliament was pushing ahead with a new home rule bill, given the “system of terrorization” he informed the State Department that “no responsible political group in England is willing to accord independence to Ireland” and that the restoration of law and order was a prerequisite to home rule.51 No region of Ireland was immune



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from terrorism. In Belfast, American Consul William Kent reported similar events.52 Americans were little better than the British at differentiating types of attacks and embracing Anglo-Saxonism simply imposed descriptors used by English commentators to describe events in Ireland, regardless of their appropriateness. Even ambushes against legitimate military targets, not technically considered terrorism, were lumped together with less conventional, asymmetrical engagements. Americans stationed in Ireland found the violence appalling, and worthy of moral condemnation. In language that resonated over generations of Anglo-Saxon involvement in Ireland, Americans described those Irish engaged in violence as “cowardly,” “savage,” “criminal,” and “uncivilized.” American diplomats usually agreed with British characterizations of conditions in Ireland. They considered terrorism an illegitimate form of revolutionary violence, a blight on society, and contrary to liberal democratic principles that sought reform through constitutional political change.53 Particularly disturbing was the shear brutality of Irish violence, which included the assassination and assault of noncombatants, destruction of public and private property, cropping the hair of female sympathizers, and the complete disruption of the British judicial system in Ireland as a “general plan to keep the country terrorized.”54 The American Consul at Dublin, Frederick Dumont, provided the State Department with some of the most insightful analysis of IRA terrorism. Reflecting a powerful Atlantic Anglo-Saxon current, Dumont, along with most American diplomats in the United Kingdom, was generally sympathetic to the British predicament. Dumont built up a network of contacts with prominent Britons, and according to one historian, was heavily influenced by of General Sir Nevil Macready, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Crown forces in Ireland.55 No doubt, his observations were crafted amid a very tense environment. In September 1920, the American Ambassador in London, John W. Davis, warned the State Department that “it was not impossible that something might happen to him [Dumont] as Sinn Féin is desperate.” Dumont himself barely escaped the 21 November “Bloody Sunday” murders—he had been playing cards with several of the slain British intelligence agents just moments before Collins’ gunmen struck.56 By summer 1920, Dumont calculated that Sinn Féin was absolutely reliant on terrorism. They recognized that it was a highly controversial strategy. In spring 1920, Dumont pointed out that IRA violence had already significantly tarnished Sinn Féin’s reputation within the international community. Even some of its leaders admitted that Sinn Féin could not govern Ireland exclusively through coercive violence and knew that eventually the “policy of murder must stop if it is to command the respect of the world.” But for the immediate period, Sinn Féin was determined to keep the Irish public interested in self-determination. Dumont accused Sinn Féin leaders of using





these “theatrical coups”—that is, acts of IRA terrorism—for publicity sake. Terrorist attacks certainly “make good newspaper reading,” but according to Dumont, ultimately Sinn Féin “gain little” by these attacks in practical control over Ireland or in diminishing British rule.57 At the end of summer 1920, the unconventional strategy had come to identify Irish nationalism and had become essential to the nationalist movement. Dumont reported to the State Department that the “withdrawal of the support of this ‘terrorist’ element from the Sinn Féin movement would cause its collapse.”58 Dumont wrote extensively about IRA terrorism, recounting the most brutal incidents. Even though no IRA soldier wore “anything but civilian clothes,” their raids and ambushes were not ordinary crimes but were “military operations.” Their object was to make Ireland ungovernable by the British and to make the lives of loyalists intolerable. By autumn 1920, IRA violence translated into some strategic success; Dumont estimated that at least three-quarters of resignations by police, justices of peace, county commissioners resulted from “they or their families [being] terrorized and intimidated by Sinn Féin ers.” As the violence escalated, at one point Dumont admitted to the State Department that he “could fill one hundred pages of a despatch” on the terrorism occurring in Ireland.59 He compared the atrocities committed by Irishmen on behalf of Irish nationalism to “barbarities worthy only of the Middle Ages.” He described the condition in Ireland as a “type of guerilla warfare to which civilized people have been unaccustomed” for over three centuries. Particularly galling, and disgraceful from the American perspective, was Sinn Féin’s unwillingness to take responsibility for the attacks and the generally distressed environment in Ireland. While it was nearly impossible to pin responsibility for specific acts on individuals, American officials noted that Sinn Féin’s splendid intelligence provided it accurate and reliable knowledge of those committing the atrocious violence. Sinn Féin’s leadership neither took credit for terrorism nor did it disavow or repudiate attacks, but they definitely profited from “the terror inspired by them.” Terrorism was the antithesis of modernization and civilization, and the anarchy that it produced, where “[n]o man’s life [is] safe,” led Dumont to conclude that the Irish were incapable of assuming the responsibilities and obligations of civic governance.60 Efforts to profile terrorists rendered different conclusions. Recruits enlisted for a variety of reasons. Ambassador Davis and Consul Dumont highlighted the youthful character of the IRB. The most active terrorists were ardent republicans, “young, able and determined men, willing to risk all for independence.” Some joined simply from dire economic conditions. Still, others were “forced to join the Irish Republican Army” from peer pressure or nationalist demands. According to William Kent, the American Consul at Belfast, it was widely known that many terrorist operatives were actually the unwitting dupes of more designing men and were obliged to carry out assassinations or assaults for fear of being suspected traitors to the cause of



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Irish independence. Ultimate responsibility for conditions in Ireland, however, according to Consul Dumont, rested on the entire Irish people who knowingly harbored terrorists, tacitly condoned their activities, or lacked the “moral courage” to unite against extremism.61 American anglophiles unleashed constant vituperations upon the unrelenting, unrepentant, dedicated revolutionaries. As in previous eras of political violence, American journals covered events and conditions in Ireland extensively and often their criticism mirrored British attitudes. By the 1920s it was common the British practice to designate all Irish insurgent violence as “terrorism,” regardless of the act, because the term’s pejorative connotations offered a simple label rather than allowing for clear, comprehensive policy formation.62 According to the New York World the IRA was engaged in murder, not Civil War. Legitimate warfare, in a carryover of 19th century understandings, required “armed forces responsible to a definite authority and fighting in the open.”63 A May 1920 New York Evening Post headlined, “Irish Terrorists Shoot and Destroy,” ascribed to Sinn Féin, not British soldiers or London policy-makers, sole responsibility for the violence. The Evening Post believed conditions were so dangerous in Ireland because Sinn Féin, which exerted enormous influence on the population, encouraged or tacitly condoned the violence of the IRA.64 By the summer 1920 Americans had begun to reassess carefully the situation but usually reached very different conclusions about IRA violence. Writers for The Independent assigned the use of terrorism by the IRA to necessity; the incapacity to field a conventional army reduced them to “guerilla or skirmishing warfare” which throughout history “has been the cruelest form of warfare.” Others, such as Congregationalist minister and social critic Rollin Lynde Hartt, who had long warned that racial violence in the American South was indeed a national problem the United States because it violated Americans’ most cherished values, criticized the Irish-Americans in New York City who supported the attacks against representatives of the Crown. The method of violence and victims selected indicated to Hartt a complete rejection of the constitutional rule of law, a breakdown in internal domestic security, and sacrilege to the rights of private property.65 John R. Rathom, the Australian-born editor and general manager of the Providence (RI) Journal and director of the Associated Press, who was personally acquainted with luminaries such as Secretaries of State Robert Lansing and Charles E. Hughes, and a member of the hyper-patriotic American Defense Society (ADS), which had gained national notoriety during the war exposing a German spy network in the United States, compared IRA assassins of the unarmed RIC to the “barbarous outlaws of semi-civilized counties like Mexico.” Again and again, in the story of Irish violence, Americans equated levels of civilization with methods of violence.66 Not only was terrorism considered fundamentally uncivil, in an era marked by transatlantic progressivism terrorism was viewed as counterproductive to creating a stable, peaceful international community. Henry Seidel





Canby, long-time Yale professor and literary critic, who established and edited the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post, framed his criticism of Irish terrorism within the context of modernity, contending that the use of unconventional violence was “clogging the wheels of international progress.”67 During the Wilsonian Era, progressive spokespersons of the Atlantic community assumed that meaningful and enduring socio-economic and political reforms occurred through an orderly process, not by revolutionary violence, as epitomized by the Russian Revolution. For Atlantic progressives, the Irish had deliberately rejected a moderate course and as recent events showed they were committed to revolutionary violence. In his highly critical study of Irish nationalism, Ireland: An Enemy of the Allies? author Rodolphe Escouflaire asked what use was it “promise political toleration and fiscal equity” to a “people who has no other ideal than terrorism?”68 While condemning the terrorism in Ireland, American observers were candid about explaining the success of the IRA’s strategy. William MacDonald, a popular Brown University history professor and later foreign correspondent and associate editor at The Nation, after touring Ireland in spring 1920 commented on the “moral strength” Sinn Féin exercised over the peasantry. MacDonald, who served as secretary of Oswald Garrison Villard’s American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, was not yet convinced that Sinn Féin had settled on a “reign of terror” because there was not ubiquitous indiscriminate violence often associated with movements in the complete breakdown of social order, but he did worry that if conditions continued to deteriorate, the temper of the Irish might become “badly strained” and a “general terrorism” would become “extremely probable.” Within a few weeks, MacDonald’s initial hesitation gave way to full recognition that violence was consuming Irish society, and admitted that in Ireland “[m]urder is King.” Most disturbing, the violence was not random or spontaneous, but was carefully calculated and systematically coordinated.69 Charles H. Grasty, war correspondent for the New York Times, publisher of the Baltimore Sun, and a proponent of the Wilsonian progressive mission, also confided to his audience that the violence was remarkably business-like. It had become “domesticated—an institution” for protecting and enhancing the political power of nationalists. Murder conspiracy had assumed a professional façade that allowed Sinn Féin to begin assuming basic government functions. Equally problematic and ironic to Americans, given the long lineage of Irish republican aspirations, was the quintessentially undemocratic, tyrannical character of the terrorists. As the IRA was an “invisible,” “shadowy and illegal” combination of extreme nationalists, who controlled most of the Irish population through fear rather than genuine inclusion, it was not representative of the people’s will and thus it was not truly legitimate. According to the New York Times economic, political, and sectarian factions divided Irish society. Amid these divisions, outside of Ulster, terrorism



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was the “compelling force” unifying the Irish people against the British Empire. In a violation of the Anglo-Saxon vision of democracy, Sinn Féin and the IRA had succeeded because collectively they relied on coercion, not persuasion.70 The assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, a security advisor to the Northern Ireland Government, while in London in June 1922, by IRA gunmen attempting to reunited nationalists during the early days of the Civil War, harkened back for Americans to the Phoenix Park murders 40 years earlier.71 Reporting the assassination to the State Department, William Kent not only faulted Sinn Féin for failing to condemn the act but reasoned that the IRA miscalculated in believing that the killing would unite Ulster with nationalist Ireland. Instead, he believed Sinn Féin’s cause was “immeasurably the loser, and in no respect strengthened” because it would produce among the Ulster Irish a “burning sentiment of revenge and an utter loathing” and therefore “will not advance the interest of the Republic.” According to Kent, in the “face of the world wide storm of reprobation” Sinn Féin leaders sought to “free themselves from responsibility” from the criminal violence they had inspired. The killing was the culminating act in a political, racial and religious war, and is one more instance of the malign fate which has historically persued [sic] the cause of Irish freedom, which has suffered through the irreparable blunders of its leaders.72 A week later, as the Civil War between Free Staters and Republicans in Ulster escalated along the northern border, the Vice-Consul at Belfast bristled at the “apology for the orgy of terrorism” offered by Republican “desperadoes.” While he dismissed reports of large numbers of attacks, he believed it regrettable that Republicans in County Donegal had not dissociated themselves from those who had been responsible for the wholesale plundering, looting and terrorism carried on, under the guise of Republicanism, and which was a disgrace, not alone to that cause, but to Christianity.73 By early 1920, “terrorism” became the explanatory term used by American Consul Frederick T.F. Dumont to describe the ubiquitous violence occurring in Ireland. His “Precis of Outrages,” an American record of IRA violence, is replete with examples that conform to Anglo-Saxons perceptions of violence. Dumont reported to the State Department with little doubt that attacks against British forces, IRA bounties on perspective RIC recruits, and widespread physical outrages were part of a “general plan to keep the country terrorized,” enhancing the Sinn Féin’s status in inverse proportion to the diminishing capacity of the British to exercise civil functions in Ireland.74 To meet the loss of real and perceived power, the British government settled on




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a policy of counterterrorism and reprisals that unleashed more violence in Ireland and remains very controversial.

During the Anglo-Irish War, Irish militants neither monopolized the use of unconventional violence nor were the sole practitioners of terrorism. Captain Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollards, who worked on the staff of the Chief of Police for Ireland, in a 1922 apologetic volume justifying British policy, made a feeble effort to refute contentions that IRA terrorist operations had no negative effect on the RIC and were not able to “break the morale” of British forces in Ireland.75 In the final years of World War I, as a result of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, proof of German collaboration, and the conscription controversy, British forces engaged in numerous raids and arrests, but between 1919 and 1921 repression assumed a new scale and intensity as Sinn Féin and the IRA went underground and escalated the violence. The operational success and audacity of IRA attacks, the collapse of British rule of law and the Empire’s ability to maintain order in Ireland, combined with the corresponding rise in Sinn Féin’s political credibility, compelled Crown forces to adopt a system of retaliatory strikes against the IRA and the Irish population. The main dilemma confronting the British as IRA operations rapidly accelerated in early 1920 was that they had limited forces in Ireland and those charged with managing law enforcement were not prepared for the new IRA assault. By the final weeks of 1919, and for the first time since the 1880s, the RIC began devoting more of its resources to the social violence rather than ordinary criminal activities, and their internal reports attest to a conspicuous sense of anxiety and unrest among law enforcement officers. Several insurmountable challenges impeded the RIC’s efforts to regain the initiative. The RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police were not just isolated, but being deliberately and systematically ostracized and boycotted, substantially diminishing their interaction, and thus confidence, with the general population, and undermining much needed cooperation from the local population in pursuance of IRA goals. The assassinations and threats to family members proved effective as RIC officers resigned in unprecedented numbers. In order to met the challenge posed by the IRA, in 1920 the Crown augmented its military presence in Ireland, increasing its regular troop personnel to around 40,000 and introducing two paramilitary groups who have since become infamous in Irish history, the Black and Tans and about Auxiliaries. Approximately 7000 Black and Tans, supported by another 1500 Auxiliaries, were the counterterrorist forces sent to destroy the IRA and end the terrorist campaign in Ireland. Composed mostly of World War I veteran non-commissioned officers, these well-trained, seasoned warriors, who were desensitized to brutal violence, ultimately proved incapable of restraining



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IRA violence. While proficient warriors, instead of defeating the IRA, British forces introduced a new element to the conflict, namely reprisals, that further emboldened the nationalists and provided Americans another model of terrorism.76 Although the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries engaged in few civilian atrocities before autumn 1920, after the Cairo Gang assassinations these “militarized police” as Peter Hart characterized them, formed death squads that targeted not only the IRA but its civilian supporters too. According to legal historian Sean McConville, these auxiliary forces had little in common with civilian law enforcement agencies that were traditional in the United Kingdom, but were more akin to French gendarmerie (soldiers who serve as armed police force for the maintenance of public order) or even worse, a “band of mercenaries.” Like the RIC and Crown regular military forces, the Black and Tans, most of whom were trained for and experienced in conventional warfare, were insufficiently prepared, ill-trained, lacked needed intelligence operations, or were simply unsuited for a counterinsurgent guerrilla-terrorist campaign. Reflecting policy from London, they had no clear, definable mission or strategy for victory against the IRA; instead, like British policy itself after 1919, they were not constructive but simply reactive to events. Initially, these forces used unpremeditated, unauthorized attacks as retaliation but in order to deal with the escalating violence, Black and Tans and Auxiliary forces were granted wide, extra-constitutional latitude for responding to IRA terrorists.77 The effectiveness of Sinn Féin operations required a vigorous British response and over a period of months reprisals took a number of forms. By January 1920 the Lloyd George Ministry had imposed martial law in south-west Ireland, and over the next months imposed dusk-to-dawn curfews in Dublin and Cork. Increased patrolling, roadblocks, indiscriminate searches, arbitrary arrests, indefinite detention, prisoner torture, accosting and assaulting non-combatant civilians, and ruination of personal residences, public facilities and private businesses not only failed to dismantle the IRA structure but antagonized the Irish population. The assassination of Tomás Mac Curtain, commandant of the IRA Cork Brigade and Lord Mayor of Cork, in March 1920 by RIC officers inaugurated a program of high-profile violent reprisals that continued through the conclusion of the Truce. By June 1920, with the sacking of Fermoy by British forces, retaliation for the IRA kidnapping of a British officer, governmentsanctioned terrorism became systematized and institutionalized in what political scientist and political violence expert Peter Sederberg referred to as “establishment terrorism.” British reprisals against Sinn Féin and the IRA, using the civilian population as targets, was a form of what Walter Laqueur called “reactive terrorism,” where a government uses the functions of the state to preserve the status quo through unconventional violence against non-combative civilians. Ultimately, this stratagem





for dealing with the IRA not only further alienated an already disaffected Irish population, but eventually proved a public relations disaster for the British, as domestic and American public opinion increasingly believed that if the government could not govern Ireland according to “British standards,” then they should grant it independence. For nearly two years, with neither side willing to concede national honor and guided by a collective, human intuition whereby the number of dead dictates the policies of belligerents, each side settled on particularly brutal methods to achieve victory.78 British counterterrorism operations certainly exhibited terroristic qualities and created a real quandary among the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community. London officials often criticized Dublin Castle for mishandling conditions in Ireland and worked hard to minimize the negative publicity in England. Among the English there was plenty of discussion of British policy in Ireland, much of it focusing on the nature and implications of violence used by Crown forces. Some were quite comfortable justifying repressive stateterrorism against the Irish.79 By late summer 1920 it was apparent that the RIC was no longer effective against the IRA and that basic law enforcement functions had ceased. According to Lord Monteagle, uncle of the former British Ambassador to the United States Cecil Spring Rice, because of Sinn Féin and the loss of British governance in Ireland, the RIC could only operate by using “general terrorism exercised on the whole population.”80 Throughout the British reprisal campaign, even the most vocal proponents of Anglo-Saxon notions of law, order, and social stability, such as the liberal The Spectator, believing that IRA violence against the unarmed and innocent were “inspired by the sophistries of Hell,” advocated greater repression by Crown forces even if they violated Anglo-Saxon sensibilities. Violent reprisals were understandable because they were not malicious and indiscriminate but reactions by men provoked and stressed. Once it became clear that reprisals were systematic and state-sanctioned, designed to eliminate sanctuaries for IRA soldiers, The Spectator distinguished these operations from Irish “terrorism.” Because they were attempting to suppress disorder and end widespread social violence, and had approval from government policy-makers, Crown forces were conducting legitimate operations. IRA violence, on the other hand, was not legitimate warfare because it was not state-sanctioned, but rather the “meanest forms of savagery” and a war of “pure plunder.” Because Black and Tans were dedicated to the restoration of law and order, which for the British had to precede any meaningful political and economic reforms in Ireland, The Spectator concluded that the violence committed by British forces was morally justified. In fact, the journal continued to denounce both the Lloyd George Ministry and the opposition Liberal Party for allowing “Terror in Ireland” to persist and escalate, and it called for greater use of reprisals. Its principal concerns about the continuation of excessive violence against the Irish were that it might tarnish the Crown’s political credibility among otherwise loyal Irish subjects. Finally, an overreliance on reprisals



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threatened British foreign relations with the United States by alienating American sympathy from British imperial rule globally.81 Others among British commentators criticized the government for its excessive violence and violations of traditional English commitments to the rule of law and civilized warfare. The September 1920 British campaign of arson and murder in Irish towns created concern among British officials and intense criticism from the press, even from establishment journals such as the Times and Manchester Guardian. The policy of executing Irish political prisoners between November 1920 and June 1921, treating them as ordinary criminals rather than protected prisoners of war, did little to solve the military dilemma but only served to galvanize Irish political unity; the attendant emotional response from the Irish people not only provided valuable propaganda fodder, but it consolidated the anti-British, national republican sentiment.82 Even among admittedly pro-English Irish, the escalation of terrorism required an acknowledgment by the British of their own policy failure, a “reckless negligence of British statesmen” that required a complete reform of the Dublin Castle administration.83 English liberal social critic John Lawrence Hammond, who praised William Gladstone’s conciliation and coercion approach of the 1880s for alleviating the causes for violence, while simultaneously upholding the Anglo-Saxon commitment to social stability, condemned what he believed was Lloyd George’s singularly repressive approach. In his The Terror in Action, Hammond concentrated his criticism on the government’s suppression of Sinn Féin, the murder of nationalists and abolition of justice in favor of “primitive passions,” which had placed England “among the terrorist tyrannies of the world.” Comparing British policies against the Boers, Hammond situated his analysis of terrorism within a larger imperial context. Terrorism used against smaller nations was meant to erode a people’s national “self-respect” and substitute the attachments of civil society with the “bond of fear” and the “dread of power.” In his analysis, Hammond included a long list of British atrocities to conclude that the British seek “one thing in Ireland, submission; it has one method, terror.”84 If voices of concern among the English provided substance, Irish critics contributed volume. By World War I, Irish nationalists had become increasingly adept at propagating their message. As the Anglo-Irish War progressed, they used their new skill adroitly, primarily speaking to American audiences, to cast reprisals as forms of state terrorism. For years nationalists had tapped the vast moral, financial, and material resources available in the United States, but as the drive for independence accelerated Sinn Féin sought to justify their own reliance on violence by portraying the British as the true aggressors.85 From the beginning of the European war, nationalists were fully aware of Britain’s own propaganda efforts in the United States. According to Roger Casement, one of the prominent leaders of the ill-fated 1916 Easter Rebellion, the British were “spending money like water,” had





“spies everywhere,” and had “gangs of boosters” throughout America in a campaign to promote “Anglo-Saxon solidarity.” Casement became so frustrated at times because British propaganda appeared to be bearing fruit that he confided to Irish nationalist historian Alice Stopford Green, a Volunteer gun-runner, that if the US government agreed to an alliance with the United Kingdom, President Wilson “would get shot right away!”86 After the war, a delegation of Irish-Americans sent to the Versailles Peace Conference to secure recognition of an independent Irish Republic met opposition from the Wilson Administration, whose determination to form the League of Nations required appeasing British imperial considerations. Undeterred by Administration snubs, once the guerrilla campaign was underway, Irish-Americans revamped their propaganda efforts, focusing closely on English terrorism against the Irish. The Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF), led by New York State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Cohalan, a member of the Clan-na-Gael and an intimate associate of John Devoy, was originally a charitable relief organization supporting Irish political prisoners. By the end of the war, the FOIF had evolved into the premier Irish nationalist propagandist agency in the United States. The FOIF was a uniquely Irish-American institution, fully supportive of Irish independence but dedicated principally to counteracting British propaganda and undermining the prevalence of Anglo-Saxonism and an anti-Catholic gaeliphobic climate in American society. A relatively small organization during World War I, after a year of the Irish insurgency the FOIF counted over a quarter-million members and was publicizing material that not only justified Irish violence but demonized the English as the true purveyors of terrorism. Until Eamon de Valera’s Irish-based American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR) siphoned off the FOIF’s membership base and financial support, the FOIF engineered a powerful propaganda campaign in the United States.87 To the English establishment the FOIF, and similar transatlantic aid organizations, “prostitute the name of Charity” because their real purpose was to “foster sedition and finance murder” among nationalists.88 The act of naming “terrorism” was important part of the Anglo-Irish War. In press releases, public speeches, and publications about conditions in Ireland, the FOIF frequently drew parallels between events in Ireland and conditions in the American South during the 1860s and 1870s, where Ku Klux Klan terrorism suppressed the freedpeople’s constitutional rights and to appropriate their property rights. The Irish were quick, usually faster than the British themselves, to publicize their version of skirmishes, and ultimately succeeded in framing the discussion of British reprisals as a form of state terrorism. Historians now correctly recognize that the Anglo-Irish War was very much a battle of words and ideals—each belligerent sought to brand the other as terrorist to gain the moral high-ground. By the beginning of the 20th century, within the Atlantic community terrorism had become an insulting epithet and belligerents on both sides worked to portray their



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acts labeled terrorism inevitably gain discursive momentum and spiral into larger and larger phenomena, ultimately making the aggrandizing rhetoric of both terrorists and their commentators into part of the machinery of terror.90 Irish nationalists were keenly aware of the propaganda value that Black and Tan reprisals offered, and they diligently worked to convince American audiences that the British were the true aggressors. The Dáil Éireann’s official information vehicle, the Irish Bulletin, documented a British operation against the Irish that included deliberate strikes against civilian non-combatants and private property, making not infrequent references to an official policy of “military terrorism” in Ireland.91 The Irish Bulletin, published several times weekly for over two years, was designed to influence transatlantic public opinion and was a strong voice for Irish nationalism. The Bullentin offered a very different version of events than that coming from the British establishment in Dublin Castle. It argued that British accounts were heavily distorted, having failed to elaborate adequately on British atrocities against the Irish. Before the end of hostilities the Dail publication was even offering crude psychological profiles of the directors and agents of British terror.92 While the Dail’s Irish Bulletin was no more accurate than official versions of events, and like the British versions was anything but impartial, unlike British propaganda it did succeed in shifting the focus in world opinion, exposing the violence used by Crown forces against the Irish civilian population.93 In a rare moment of concord with the Irish Dail, the Irish-American FOIF published a spate of books, pamphlets, and newsletters that detailed hundreds of atrocious acts committed by British forces. Defending IRA activities, the FOIF also characterized a pattern of British misrule in Ireland based on an ancient and ruthless “military terrorism.” The FOIF’s National Bureau of Information argued, using language laden with political meaning, and designed to draw comparison between British rule over the Irish to Czarist Russia treatment of Jews, that British governance of Ireland equated to official persecution against Irish Catholics.94 Throughout the conflict Irish-Americans included the theme of terrorism in a sizable portion of its literature advancing national independence. A variety of spokespeople for Celtic nationalism catering to an American audience when addressing the issue of terrorism exclusively applied the term to British behavior. At no point did they characterize IRA activities as “terrorism.” The investigating committee for the American Commission of



attacks as honorable and to label their opponents as terrorists.89 According to the literary criticism of Jeffery Clymer, who has studied domestic terrorism in the United States, the act of naming, assigning the label “terrorism” to opponents was crucial:


Conditions in Ireland, established in Washington, DC, in August 1920 and which operated until January 1921, formally presented its findings to the US Congress in April 1921. The Commission’s investigation, which included testimony from pro-Irish British subjects, but none from British officials or Unionists, portrayed the island as an anomaly within Western civilization. Unlike other liberal progressive societies in the Atlantic community, Ireland was a garrison state, where violent reprisals and rule through intimidation had displaced the English commitment to representative government.95 Both old and new nationalists argued the merits of Irish independence based on British misrule, specifically the conduct of its occupying army that engaged in a concerted, condoned campaign of counterterrorism.96 According to contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic it was apparent that proponents of Irish nationality had succeeded in winning public sympathy by sensational portrayals of British terrorism against Irish women and children, while typically ignoring the calamites caused to the “women and children of Crown policemen.”97 Lengthy lists of British atrocities in Ireland compiled separately by Irish historian Alice Stopford Green and Canadian author Katherine Hughes portrayed English operations against the Irish people as terroristic. Green identified hundreds of killings, thousands of assault incidents, thousands more destructive raids on private homes and local businesses, and suppression of the press that constituted acts of state terrorism against the Irish. The IRA and Volunteers were by 1919, according to Green, merely responding to British aggression that occurred after the 1916 Easter Rebellion.98 Hughes, a Canadian journalist and Alberta provincial archivist, after relocating to the United States, contributed to the conversion of the FOIF from an amateurish organization to a professional propaganda vehicle. Her volume Ireland, published as the European war was ending, argued that cultural identity and economic self-reliance justified an independent Ireland. A year into the Anglo-Irish War she shifted her focus, however, arguing that thousands of incidents of British “military terrorism” intended to bring physical harm and intimidation to the unarmed, undefended people of Ireland justified nationalist demands for a complete dissolution of the Union. Aware of American’s postwar animosity toward Germany, Hughes believed that the British had instituted an organized “system of ‘official anarchy’ and outrage more severe than Germany’s military rule in Belgium”99 Like Hughes, a writer in The New Republic compared British military occupation and brutality to German atrocities in Belgium and equated its rule in Ireland to a repudiation of liberal democracy and the resurgence of “Prussian ideas of internationalism.” A social reformer, journalist, and later associate editor at The New Republic, Irish-American reformer Francis Hackett detailed a persistent English “bullying” intended to “brutalize Sinn Féin into submission.” In true Progressive pragmatism, Hackett believed all sides in the Anglo-Irish conflict shared responsibility for the breakdown of civil society



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in Ireland, but for Hackett and other supporters of Irish nationalism it was undeniable that the Black and Tans were by autumn 1920 decided on a “policy of terrorism.” In a series of articles in The New Republic dedicated to British governance of Ireland, Hackett, who grappled with the moral implications, explained the collapse of British prestige and declining allegiance to the intensified state repression, the proverbial vicious circle of violence begetting violence. The inability of the British to control the violence in Ireland provided nationalists ample cause for arguing for some measure of acceptable home rule.100 Hackett’s volume Ireland: A Study in Nationalism, which went through numerous editions by 1919, placed British rule in Ireland within the context of British conquest and occupation of India and Egypt. He admonished white Americans not to ignore the reality that the British, through the method of the treatment and violence used in Ireland, had lumped the Irish with the colored ethnicities of the Orient.101 The revival of violence in Ireland protracted tensions within the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community. From the beginning of the Anglo-Irish war in 1919, there were some Americans who called Britain’s Irish policies, not simply reprisals but occupation generally, into question. Writers for The New Republic, which tended to sympathize with nationalist aspirations, viewed Sinn Féin’s “manifestation of radicalism” through the prism of Wilsonian rhetoric. The Irish resort to violence was merely an expression of the “Allied doctrine of self-determination” that had been denied to them by the major powers after the war. It was hardly surprising then that the Irish relied on vicious violence.102 Following the 21 November 1920 Croke Park massacre, when security forces opened fire on spectators attending a Gaelic Athletic Association rugby match at Croke Park, as reprisal for the Cairo Gang assassinations, and which subsequently became known in Irish history as “Bloody Sunday,” a long debate ensued in Parliament over government policy in Ireland. Even before Bloody Sunday, the Lloyd George Ministry, as announced by a New York Times headline, had decided to be “Firm on Irish Terrorism.” At London’s Lord Mayor annual Guildhall banquet just days before Bloody Sunday, the Prime Minister made his famous declaration that the British had “murder by the throat” and congratulated his government’s counterterrorism repression: “We struck the terrorists and now the terrorists are complaining of terror.”103 Amid the escalating violence and negotiations for a truce, that ultimately were months away, Collins reported from Dublin that operations against Crown forces had not only “reharden[ed] the spirit in many well-intentioned people” but had shown that “England as ever remains the aggressor, and to demonstrate anew the righteousness of our struggle.” Despite the rhetoric coming from the Lloyd George Ministry, and a growing fear among hard-core nationalist that the Dail might cave to peace negotiations and sacrifice national independence, Collins assured Arthur Griffin, “Let Ll. George make no mistake, the I.R.A. is not broken” and that “[n]either is the spirit of the people subdued.”104





The opposition in Parliament became increasingly confrontational with the Government over its tacit policy of reprisals, especially after news that Crown forces had deliberately destroyed creameries and sacked Balbriggan. Liberal leader Asquith introduced a resolution condemning Lloyd George’s Coalition government, which was already shaky from several high-profile scandals, for attempting to repress crime in Ireland by “methods of terrorism” that targeted the “lives and property of the innocent and are contrary to civilized usage.” Asquith accepted the government’s explanation that reprisals may have initially been spontaneous reactions by men faced with unremitting hostilities. But following several spectacular reprisals, such as arson attacks in Dublin and Bloody Sunday, Asquith was convinced that reprisals had become systematic and indiscriminate, directed not against IRA gunmen but against the civilian population. British reprisals against Irish property, usually through arson, began in summer 1920, became officially sanctioned by January 1921, and resulted in the destruction of over 200 private businesses and residences.105 While agreeing with the Government that the Irish Executive had a solemn responsibility to “stamp out murder and terrorism,” he reminded his colleagues that the “means are almost, if not quite, as important as the ends.” Part of the evidence Asquith produced to substantiate his accusations of terrorism by Crown forces he drew directly from American sources, specifically the extensive press coverage. Asquith claimed that the Government’s “terroristic methods” not only tarnished Britain’s reputation in the eyes of the civilized world, they were making any hopes of political reconciliation with the Irish virtually impossible because even moderate nationalists “who hate crime and who have no sympathy even with extreme aspirations—still less with anarchic and terrorists methods” would adopt an attitude of “supine indifference” toward Crown peace overtures. He believed government terrorism would alienate its few remaining friends in Ireland.106 Asquith’s resolution was soundly defeated, and the Government, represented by the Chief Secretary for Ireland Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood, attempted to shift the burden of responsibility for terroristic violence back to Irish nationalists. He defended RIC and Black and Tan operations as necessary to restore order, and lauded their successes in “breaking the terror” that was consuming Ireland. Coming just days after the Cairo Gang assassinations, Greenwood denied the “monstrous allegations” made by Irish MPs accusing Crown forces of complicity in organized, systemic terrorism. Furthermore, he denied charges that the Government was supporting the Anti-Sinn Féin Society in its assassination attacks against disloyal Irish civilians. Greenwood claimed that the Government’s policy was showing success, and called for greater repression against Irish terrorists and complete restoration of public order before entering negotiations with nationalists.107 Continuing a pattern of observation begun decades earlier with Fenian terrorist attacks, Americans did not reserve criticism exclusively for the Irish but found Britain’s conduct cause for censure. Great Britain’s reluctance to



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allow for meaningful autonomy and the perpetuation of an unjust land system remained stock criticisms, but as the Anglo-Irish war unfolded, Americans sharpened their attitudes, increasingly categorizing British military tactics as terrorism. On numerous occasions since the 1916 Easter Rebellion, representatives for the Wilson Administration were confounded by British “mismanagement” in Ireland. Some in the Administration called its policies “stupid” and a complete “fiasco”; no transgression being more fundamentally problematic and unprogressive than predicating its governance of Ireland on “fear” rather than “trusting the Irish people.”108 In his defense of Irish nationalism, George Creel made no direct mention of an terrorist tradition within the Irish nationalist movement, but he did note an English proclivity to stereotype images of Irish “savages” to justify their repressive treatment of the nationalist movements, which over the previous century resulted in “wars of extermination” in Ireland.109 Even to Wilsonians, such as journalists Canby and Grasty, who viewed Irish terrorism an antithesis to Anglo-Saxon progressivism, the institutionalization of brutal reprisals by British forces was completely contrary to English character, and totally “abnormal by comparison with their procedures elsewhere” in the British Empire. Murder, assault, and the “destruction of private property” were bad enough, but harkening to the arguments long made against Irish terrorism, the severity of British counterterrorism, designed to extinguish nationalism, was actually counterproductive because the violence simply fueled hatred and provided nationalists a measure of moral justification for continuing their own terrorism.110 A number of American intellectuals, standard-bearers for the transatlantic Progressive tradition, faulted the Irish for maintaining a violent legacy that conflicted with ideals of constitutional rule of law and participatory republicanism, but increasingly they shifted their focus to the terroristic nature of British reprisals. During the early period of Irish terrorism American publications adopted an attitude similar to much of the nationalists’ propaganda, presenting a sympathetic treatment of the Irish and condemnation for British policies. Hamilton Holt, a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and later president of Rollins College, faulted the British for temporizing in Ireland and giving the peasantry the impression that their goal was extermination. Given the violence perpetrated by Crown forces against the peasantry, as publisher and editor, Holt’s The Independent found it little surprising that the Irish resorted to exceptional violence.111 Leading progressive journals, such as The Nation, a long-time supporter of the Irish cause, minimized the terroristic qualities of IRA violence while accentuating the excessive, exceptional nature of British coercion. Even before hostilities erupted, the American journal adopted the language of Irish nationalists when referring to Britain’s “military terrorism” in Ireland. Unlike the British who used terrorism to suppress the Irish nation, IRA violence like the assassination attempt on Lord French, while deplorable, was an expression of nationalist will. British misgovernment was





responsible for a cycle of violence where “Terrorism is being met with terrorism” and would continue until the government removed its garrisons and political police.112 By June 1920, Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann’s The New Republic, a leading proponent of American progressive internationalism, characterized Westminster as a “panic-stricken government” that was behaving in an un-Anglo-Saxon character, not simply because of their incapacity to militarily suppress violence in Ireland but, more importantly, because they were unwilling to recognize legitimate Irish demands for reform in local governance. Editorials for The New Republic explained IRA violence as a natural reaction to a “Tsaristic policy of political exasperation and bullying.” Crown forces’ behavior executing a program of “criminal imperialism” was increasingly compared to Russian occupation of Poland and German treatment of Belgians. By the end of the war for separation, the deteriorating conditions offered convenient comparisons with the economically stagnant and politically segregated American South where racial violence terrorized a sizable portion of the populations to maintain traditional social and racial order, disenfranchise political opponents, and stifle the economic progress of African Americans.113 Whereas in earlier periods Americans contextualized Fenian and agrarian violence in terms of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, during the Anglo-Irish War, American observers associated British governance in Ireland to the German occupation of Belgium during World War I. By the 1920, German atrocities against Belgian civilians were well documented in the United States, and the comparison was designed to discredit British imperialism in Ireland. In his essay “The Reign of Terror in Ireland and Egypt,” Thomas St. John Gaffney, an American consular official in Germany, found little to distinguish German atrocities in Belgium from British actions against the “unarmed and defenseless inhabitants” in Ireland. The powerful American workers’ union, the American Federation of Labor, adopted a resolution requesting President Warren G. Harding to intervene on behalf of the suffering civilian population. It denounced the British government’s “brutal and uncivilized war” against the Irish people that bore frightening similarity to German atrocities. According to the AFL’s resolution, the use of reprisals were not simply shameful for the British and a travesty for the Irish people, but its policies “threaten[ed] the peace of the world” by inciting further radical violence and further dividing the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community.114 By 1920 Americans had traditionally excused British repressive measures against Irish revolutionaries and were staunch advocates of greater transatlantic Anglo-Saxonism took a less favorable attitude toward British reprisals. Even those once favorably disposed toward British policy in Ireland began to question the propriety of unrestricted reprisals that targeted civilians and private property. According to the San Francisco Argonaut, the use of reprisals was “unworthy of any civilized government.” The Argonaut argued it was better that criminals escape than that “a great government should seem



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to imitate the methods of the criminality that it is trying to suppress.”115 The New York Evening Post, under the editorship of Edwin F. Gay, dean of the Harvard Business School and an avid enthusiast for closer AngloAmerican cooperation, in an editorial “Terrorism in Ireland” dismissed the widespread British accusations that Sinn Féin’s political support was reliant “upon intimidation for its power.” The recent election victories in Ireland demonstrated that Sinn Féin enjoyed mass support and a close examination of circumstances revealed that the “general public is unmolested” by Sinn Féin operatives or the IRA. The September 1920 attacks on creameries and hosieries industries in Balbriggan, Co. Dublin were clearly “a form of terrorism in Ireland which menaces the innocent and the guilty, politicians and private citizen alike.” The excess of force not only undermined British credibility, according to Gay, undermined the ability of the two Atlantic powers to establish a world policy of spreading “progress and civilization.” The steady flow of reports detailing British atrocities was creating a marked impression on Americans, and according to the Evening Post, the massacre threatened “the future harmony of the English-speaking peoples.”116 The Croke Park Massacre was one of those defining moments for American reactions to British reprisals. Even those ardent voices for Anglo-Saxonism, who were prone to rationalize British behavior, could not deny that Crown forces had established “a sort of lynch law” in Ireland.117 A New York World editorial surmised that it was “warfare of savagery, worse than that of the jungle” and held the British solely responsible—“never was an imperial breakdown more complete.”118 The widespread appeal of Anglo-Saxonism did not preclude Americans stationed in the United Kingdom from providing the State Department a steady stream of reports that not only carefully documented the incidents of both IRA terrorism and British reprisals, but increasingly characterized British violence as terroristic. American officials witnessing events in Ireland felt compelled to question the earnestness of the British government’s stated intention to reform Irish society and to conclude that its conciliatory efforts appeared as empty gestures.119 After his services as head of the American Committee on Public Information, George Creel took to writing on current events, dedicating an entire volume to the Irish question. Although a loyal Wilsonian, the President’s indifference to the plight of the Irish was a source of frustration for Creel. Just as the conflict escalated to a full throttle guerrilla insurgency, Creel linked the present difficulties to a pattern of historical “systemization of cruelty” perpetrated by the British in Ireland.120 When rumors surfaced in Ireland during spring 1920 that the British were shifting their strategy to greater repression, an unidentified American in the United Kingdom curtly cabled the State Department: “England prepares massacre of Irish, prevent.”121 Several weeks later Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby warned the British Embassy that the Hearst newspapers in the United States were printing stories that the British had recruited a “secret service army”





[the Black and Tans] of more than 4000 ex-army officers to “take [IRA] terrorist chiefs dead or alive.” Colby was not overly concerned for the fate of the Irish terrorists, but worried that the operations would arouse public condemnation in America and might undermine the Anglo-American harmony that both powers valued. Thus he cautioned the British against any unnecessary overreaction.122 Repeated evidence of British atrocities eventually bore heavily on the American public and found expression by prominent Americans. Some 70 Democratic members of Congress petitioned on behalf of the Irish, specifically protesting British policies in May 1920. The British Ambassador A.C. Geddes, when reporting Congressional deliberations about Irish agitation, believed that typically bills to recognize Irish independence or criticize British rule were introduced to satisfy members’ Irish constituency and usually lack “sincerity and conviction.”123 This Congressional entanglement with British internal affairs, while based on a “good moral case,” according to the Evening Post was imprudent and inappropriate. The Post suggested that American interference would justify protests in the Commons against the recent Mitchell Palmer raids and arrests of communists, or the “classical case of the negro in the South or of the Philippines.”124 One of the most prolific observers of events, the Cork Consul Frederick Dumont carefully documented the behavior of Crown forces in Ireland. By June 1920, Dumont lamented the intolerable conditions confronting the RIC. After recounting recent assassinations, ambushes, and a general boycotting by the IRA and “their neighbors,” he concluded that the RIC was in “constant terror.” Resignations were high and few recruits were replacing their diminishing numbers. The military forces in Ireland were not trained to police civilian populations and were ineffective law enforcement agents. Furthermore, the Irish peasantry openly dislike their presence and “made Crown forces objects of ridicule.” Morale among Crown forces was very low, and because of the delicate political situation, they were constrained by officials in London. Dumont concluded, “if there is not to be active warfare in Ireland, the soldiers would be glad to leave.” In spring 1921, Dumont reported to the State Department that IRA terrorism was effectively reducing the political and economic power of the two groups who supported British rule in Ireland, the landed class and business community. Ironically, these groups most benefitted from British rule of Ireland. But they had been “so terrified by Sinn Féin that they lack moral courage” and had abandoned Ireland to live in England. As a result, the half-million British loyalists in Ireland had “no compact, formidable and fighting opposition” to Sinn Féin. There was “no organized, active party of Irishmen to oppose Sinn Fein” therefore, the “odium of repressing the organization falls upon the servants of the Government.”125 From the beginning of the Anglo-Irish War, Dumont supported “stern police methods” to reestablish law and order, and often criticized the British



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for taking a tentative reaction. He called for the extension of martial law throughout all of Ireland, excluding Ulster, but the British were “afraid to turn machine guns on the people of South and West of Ireland,” and therefore only “fights with the powers conferred upon it” by the Defense of the Realm Act. Dumont believed that for many Americans, the constant repetition of Irish terrorism and British reprisals “may seem an ‘opera bouffe’ ” if it were not so tragic and serious. By May 1920, Dumont reported to the State Department that the only prospect for peace between Ireland and England was either “full Dominion Home Rule with absolute Irish control of its own revenues” or a “rigid military rule” with no less than 300,000 Crown forces in Ireland. Anything less would “mean a continuation of guerilla warfare on the part of Sinn Fein, terrorism, and a condition of affairs that will put an end to Irish prosperity.”126 In late summer 1920, Dumont claimed that Sinn Féin’s situation was “desperate,” and reasserted that “there has never been a moment when the British Government could not take over the governing of the country if it chose to exert force.” But by August, even the usually pro-British Dumont acknowledged that the police and soldiers “following particularly atrocious attacks, have run amok, shooting up towns and villages and terrorizing the inhabitants.” Ill feeling between the two sides was growing daily, and “neither is just to the other.”127 Despite denials by the Irish Administration and the Cabinet, Dumont reported “there is no question” that Crown forces engaged in reprisal terrorism. Dumont recorded that reprisals were not intended as provocation, but simply reactionary; “one cannot find a case where they have not been the result of particularly atrocious ambushes or murders.” He argued that it could “truthfully be said” that the British were confronting in Ireland conditions “very similar to those which prevailed in the Philippines after they were taken over by the United States.” American military commanders in the Philippines Islands adopted different strategies to deal with insurgent terrorism, relying on “regional pacification policies” and “rapid response to guerilla operations.” Some military authorities driven by humanitarian concerns showed restraint and flexibility, hoping to lessen the sufferings inflicted on Filipino civilians while aggressive in pursuing insurgent leaders. Others such as the notorious General Jacob H. Smith and General J. Franklin Bell, who a fellow officer called “the real terror of the Philippines,” adopted counterinsurgency strategies against Filipino people that exceeded conventional, acceptable standards.128 But unlike the United States, which responded with overwhelming force against Filipino nationalists, British officials could not ignore the delicate political reality created by Irish-American nationalist activities in the United States and took a more restrained approach in Ireland. While the “salutary effect” of reprisals allowed Crown forces to recapture control of some districts in Ireland, Dumont questioned the overall effectiveness of reprisals. Beyond the questionable morality of widespread reprisals that included violence against





civilian populations, Dumont believed that reprisals were merely a reactionary rather than a positive response. Instead of undermining the political will of the insurgents, violent reprisals pushed moderate nationalists in Sinn Féin into the more extremist camps. Ultimately he believed that the practice of reprisals, in lieu of home rule, was “useless as a means of settling this [Irish] Question.”129 Dumont indicated that British counterterrorism measures had diminished the capabilities of the IRA, but ultimately reprisals would not extinguish the nationalist agitation or completely pacify disaffected districts. The RIC and the DMP were no longer capable of addressing the violence in Ireland, and Dumont felt that the British were completely justified in using military forces to restore order. Black and Tan and Auxiliary forces were indeed limiting IRA attacks. A number of local organizations were disbanded, prominent leaders had been arrested, and “extremists are killed at sight.” The British did not arrest all Sinn Féin ers or even those known to oppose British rule in Ireland, only those military active against Crown forces. Dumont estimated that 95 out of every 100 cases of raiding or arrests by Crown forces resulted from “excellent reasons.” Black and Tan raids proved valuable for collecting intelligence of IRA attacks, and according to Dumont, were critical in the Crown’s disruption of attacks on the Manchester power station and the Liverpool dock. Dumont speculated that had similar evidence been uncovered in the United States of similar conspiracies and plots, the organization would not “have been permitted to carry on activities with the law called seditious as long as the British Government” had allowed them to exist in Ireland. While certainly Black and Tan forces had “retaliated in as savage a manner as they have been attack,” Dumont excused the actions of these men because while they are usually “orderly and disciplined” the Ministry “used wrong measures to meet a desperate situation.” Had the British imposed martial law, they might have better controlled the “seditious newspapers, persons, organizations and councils” that escalated the violence in Ireland. He warned, “Nations having like problems to solve can profit by British experience [sic].”130 While Dumont remained convinced that the IRA and IRB were principally responsible for events in Ireland, the tenor and content of his reports changed, focusing at times almost exclusively on British security forces’ “reign of terror” against the Irish. Dumont indicated astonishment and dismay at the frequently reported atrocities committed by crown forces, especially assaults on the civilian populations, targeting the wives and daughters of known Sinn Féin and IRA operatives and “terrorizing the inhabitants” of towns and villages by indiscriminate shootings and arson. Echoing public discussions in American journals, Dumont framed the conflict in a psycho-sociological context that might help explain the crisis; neither side “seem[ed] quite sane” and both had abandoned the basic truism that “outrage begets outrage, murder begets murder.” While both sides had “terrorized and intimidated” not only each other but the entire Irish population,



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Dumont concluded that because they claimed the sanction of law and were the only recognized government in Ireland, the British were responsible for peace and security. The Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920), which virtually relieved the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries of nearly all legal restraints, was according to Dumont an admission of “complete failure” by civil authorities.131 Consul Kent labelled it “panic legislation,” calling attention to its abrogation of many of the fundamental English constitutional protections found in the Magna Charta and the English Bill of Rights.132 While both the IRA and the British committed atrocities “in the name of patriotism,” according to Dumont, “the British have at least to their credit” that reprisals were “in the main committed while endeavoring to maintain not only their authority but public order.” IRA gunmen were able to disperse quickly among civilian populations, and because they were protected by the Irish people, they escaped capture and prosecution. Under these circumstances, the Black and Tan “frequently take the law into their own hands and shoot anyone who runs from them.” During the first six months of 1920, it was IRA gunmen who “had the doubtful honor of terrorizing the countryside. During the last six months of the year, ‘Black and Tans’ have had it.” While certainly innocents had been killed by British forces, Dumont believed that civilian casualties caused by Crown forces were relatively low considering the level of IRA terrorism. Providing the State Department with statistical evidence and casualties lists to demonstrate the challenges confronting British forces, Dumont sought to excuse some of their behavior. During raids, except for “dangerous Sinn Feiners,” the Irish people were treated “with all possible courtesy and put to as little inconvenience as is necessary.” The Black and Tans “terrorize Sinn Féiners but loyal, peaceable people have little to fear from [the Black and Tan].”133 Despite Dumont’s assurances, the weight of evidence that came into the State Department revealed beyond doubt that the RIC and military were incapable of coping with the IRA’s guerrilla warfare stratagem. By December 1920, after months of reprisals, most recently with the burning of Cork, Ambassador John W. Davis questioned the utility of reprisals. He was no longer confident that they could “suppress the present movement,” but even more “dreaded the legacy of hate they would leave behind.”134 British reprisals, such as the Croke Park massacre and the burning of Cork, resulting in an estimated $15 million in damages and the unemployment of over 100,000 workers, convinced American diplomats stationed in the United Kingdom that British counterterrorism was not only systematic but economically “ruinous” for Ireland.135 British policy was “bungling and unsatisfactory” and incapable of putting “an end to their [the IRA’s] campaign of murder and terrorism.” Not only did the IRA campaign demonstrate that the British were politically bankrupt in many parts of Ireland, British reprisals also contributed to the destruction of the island’s precarious economic infrastructure. American officials predicted that economic recovery from British counterterrorism would require





even more financial assistance from American citizens than the nationalists had acquired to fund terrorism.136 Writing from London, the American Ambassador Davis advised Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the Cairo Gang assassinations had undermined the confidence of many Britons that the Irish were ready for independence. Equally revealing to Davis, the Croke Park massacre that followed demonstrated that British reprisals were indeed “systematic and not altogether mere passionate outbursts.”137 The State Department’s Division of Western European Affairs confirmed much of the analysis from consular agents, specifically Dumont’s detailed explanations, and suggested that British terrorism had virtually eliminated all support for the Crown among the Irish population.138 By 1921, when both the IRA and Crown forces were shooting civilians more often than they were shooting each other, events in Ireland were widely discussed in America. Historian Peter Hart has concluded that Britain’s reprisal campaign “hadn’t terrorized the terrorists” but simply encouraged nationalists to ratchet up the body count.139 American journals reprinted a “toll of outrage and terrorism in Ireland” conducted by both Sinn Féin and the Government that detailed the death and destruction experienced by the civilian population.140 Throughout the summer, American officials in Ireland noted that the escalation of reprisals indicated a British exhaustion, a “weakness and helplessness” of the government that “bode[d] disaster to the Empire” and that argued for an immediate transition to home rule.141 The American Consul in Belfast, William Kent, summed up the situation: the veneer of civilization has broken down under the weight of these calous [sic] and hideous crimes in Ireland. The people have become accustomed to them, and but a languid interest is aroused when the roll of casualties is of lesser dimensions than those of a battle. It is not war. It is not even guerrilla warfare. It is a hideous and merciless crime, which even the Germans would blush to commit.142 The contrast between the values and ideals of Anglo-Saxonism with the reality of British behavior in Ireland justified to some observant Americans a fundamental rearrangement of British imperial rule toward Irish home rule. In the early months of 1921 the American Congress was no longer simply discussing the prudence or viability of an autonomous Irish nation, but increasingly focused on the presence of Irish terrorism and British counterterrorism. The Congressional debate about terrorism in Ireland suggests that Americans were reevaluating their understanding of British imperialism. Leading Senate Progressives, such as Republican Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, Republican George W. Norris of Nebraska, and the Democratic Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, used the catalogue of violence in Ireland to caution against the abuses of empires. Britain’s determination to hold Ireland, despite the wishes of the Irish people, and the use of



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such extraordinary violence to maintain their control, flew in the face of President Wilson’s progressive ideal of universal self-determination and undermined the Anglo-Saxon commitment to constitutionalism and social stability. Progressive Republican Senator from Idaho William E. Borah, one of the leading Irreconcilables during the Senate debate on the 1919 Versailles Treaty and prominent anti-imperialist, introduced an appeal on behalf of the recently proclaimed Irish Republic. The Irish nationalist petition specifically requested American intercession and assistance because of Great Britain’s unremitting “reign of military terrorism” in Ireland.143 La Follette led the Congressional invective against the British reprisal campaigns in Ireland. Focusing almost exclusively on the “plan of terrorism” orchestrated to “reestablish Imperial British civil government in Ireland,” the Senator from Wisconsin submitted a much maligned report from the American Commission of Conditions in Ireland, known as the Villard Committee, to demonstrate the coordinated operations against the civilian population, revealing “conditions of barbaric cruelty and oppression which are almost beyond belief.”144 Formed by the editor of the American journal The Nation, Oswald Garrison Villard, who had founded the American Anti-Imperialist League during the Spanish–American War and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Villard Commission was one of several propaganda campaigns that endorsed Irish nationalist aspiration. Unlike other pro-Irish campaigns in the United States, the Villard Committee was not a nationalist organization, but composed of prominent Americans progressives.145 Yet it still came under intense scrutiny for its manifest impartiality, because no Irish Unionists or British officials testified, and perceived intrusion into the domestic affairs of a friendly power. When pressed on the issue by Sir Horace Plunkett, Ambassador Davis in London advised respectable Irishmen from appearing before the Committee because it was “not calculated either in composition or method to accomplish any good.”146 British Ambassador Geddes, who accused Villard of sympathizing with Germany during the recent war, believed that his Commission was not inspired by genuine concern for the Irish but rather “enmity to Great Britain.” In a deliberate attempt to cast the Irish as the only authentic terrorists in Ireland, Geddes assured the United States that “no steps” would be taken against British subjects offering testimony, but His Majesty’s Government “could not guarantee that no reprisal would be enforced by Sinn Féin extremists in Ireland against persons who had given evidence against certain elements in the movement.”147 As evidence of British atrocities accumulated, however, it became harder to deny the damage accruing to the entire Anglo-Saxon weltanschauung. Information provided by Brigadier General Frank Pearce Crozier, commander of the Black and Tans in 1920 and early 1921, who ultimately rejected the British reprisal policy in Ireland and became an outspoken critic of the





Ministry, solidified for some in America the conviction that Crown forces were engaged in deliberate “forms of terrorism” in violation of international laws protecting prisoners of war and non-combatants. News of General Crozier’s assessments, especially his critiques of British terrorism against the Irish people, roused American opposition to British reprisals.148 The American Congress considered several resolutions against British actions, based on the mountain of evidence from both English and Irish witnesses, reports, and testimony detailing British violations of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, the international agreements that enumerated rules of war and certain war-crimes. Specifically, in June 1921 the Senate considered condemning British rule in Ireland because Crown forces were not providing protection for prisoners of war, and were attacking non-combatants, taking hostages, engaging in torture, and blatantly destroying businesses and private property. Senator Norris characterized British policy in Ireland as a “violation of the dictates of humanity,” and called on Congress to protest against “acts of uncivilized warfare” and to support an independent Irish state.149 Even such outspoken proponents of Americanism, such as The Argonaut, could not help but comment on the irony of Americans lecturing the British on political violence, especially amidst the brutality of Jim Crow racial terrorism in the South, anti-radical red-scare counterterrorism, and persistent labor discord.150

Green-red scare As in earlier periods of Irish violence, many of the most forceful advocates of Anglo-Saxon political and economic institutions attributed the manner and conduct of Irish agitation to socialist, communist ideological infiltration. To an even greater extent than previously, after the 1917 Russian Revolution the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community found it convenient to attribute IRA violence to the influence of Bolshevism. Since the 19th century, the British had linked Irish terrorism to radical, socialist ideologies. Despite little direct political or social connections between Irish nationalists and radical socialist groups, historians have noted that the British and American public associated the IRA to Bolshevism through comparable methods of violence. As the guerrilla campaign escalated in Ireland, British authorities branded certain violent methods as Bolshevik and in an effort to discredit Irish nationalists worked to highlight commonalities.151 Cecil Battine, a Crown army officer who authored one of the first military studies of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Wilderness campaign of the American Civil War, and was a highly respected British military authority, compared the nationalist violence in Ireland to the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Though he did not attribute to the Irish any innate “tendency of Socialist or international doctrines,” for Battine, Irish tactics, the use of assassinations and the terror campaign, bore remarkable similarities to the proceedings of Russian Bolsheviks.152



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Others were less constrained, being quite comfortable situating the IRA and Sinn Féin firmly within a transnational “trend towards Syndicalism and Communism.” Tracing European communism through the Gallicized revolutionary tradition, dating back ideologically and methodologically to Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, according to K.L. Montgomery (pseudonym for the Irish-born, English-bred novelist sisters Kathleen and Letitia Montgomery, most noted for their historical, romantic fiction), it was modern Irish separatists who advanced a national vision that was not only reliant but deliberately encouraged its adherents to use violence to subvert democratic principles and erode the sanctity of property rights. According to the Montgomery sisters, English occupation and images of the Irish contributed to the savage climate in Ireland, where the Irish was a two-headed monster, “the one labeled ‘Irish-Papist-and-Murderer,’ the other ‘Wild Irishman’ ”— the Irish character, as constructed by the English, was a “thirst for blood and whiskey; love-making and extravagance,” idleness and social ridicule. Yet, notwithstanding centuries of English transgressions, contemporaries could not help but critique the political climate of Irish nationalism. For the Montgomery sisters: The Irish atmosphere, mental and physical possesses a glamour often enough transfiguring at a distance unlovely realities. Sinn Féin patriotism is the glamour cast over Bolshevism.153 The way to remove the specter of Bolshevism in Ireland, and to build up a “new spirit in Ireland of nationalism,” was for the English to recognize the value of Irish contributions—politically, economically, and culturally— to the British Empire.154 One of the more popular propaganda books on the subject, Richard Dawson’s Red Terror and Green (1920), which received favorable reviews from Americans, provided one of the more comprehensive polemics identifying IRA methods to a Bolshevik ideology. Not only did Dawson believe this detrimental to Ireland, but his greater concern was that it was prelude to communist expansionism. In a scathing critique of IRA violence, Dawson asserted that Irish radicals were determined to subvert AngloSaxon institutions not just in Ireland but throughout the Atlantic community. What started as a purely Irish nationalist association, after the failed 1916 rebellion Sinn Féin and the IRA had become corrupted by socialism into a revolutionary movement that “openly prescribes sporadic assassination and selects for its allies the vilest elements of society.” Instead of securing reform through a constitutional process, by infusing the nationalist movement with Bolshevik traits, the IRA by 1920 was practicing “guerrilla warfare of a particularly barbarous character.” While personal animosity and vengeance motivated past Irish violence, according to Dawson, IRA tactics were “cold and calculated” and dedicated to





spreading socialist ideology in Ireland and beyond. Writing in The Edinburgh Review, Philip H. Bagenal, long-time commentator on Irish affairs and a critic of Irish-American influence on revolutionary activities in Ireland, continued to make links between Irish terrorism to Irish-American republican nationalism, praised Dawson’s book as a “valuable contribution” to the subject of Irish disorders.155 Once the guerrilla war was well underway and British forces were suffering setbacks, the British government released documents dating back to 1917 Sinn Féin’s connections to Russian socialist revolutionaries. To discredit further the nationalist program, the government concluded that the collusion between the Irish and Russian Bolsheviks was established principally with a design for inaugurating a “reign of terror” against England.156 Irish police official Captain Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard devoted considerable attention in his study of Irish secret societies to linking Sinn Féin with radical sovietism and offered revelations of intimate collaboration between radicals in the United States and Sinn Féin leaders. A paragon of the English establishment and Anglo-Saxon fears, Pollard’s work refuted efforts by Irish sympathizers to morally justify methods used by the IRA. Not only were nationalists’ tactics completely contrary to the laws of war, and thus criminal by very nature, the use of terrorism indicated an absence of civilization among the Irish race. In his concluding chapter, “The Psychology of Irish Crime,” Pollard identifies a Celtic racial predilection toward violence resulting from a mental incapacity to process advances in modernity. The Irish “collective psychology” remained arrested in permanent adolescence, guided by emotion and sentimentalism rather than rationality and an innate Anglo-Saxon reverence for law. According to Pollard, their appropriation of Bolshevism corresponded to a weakness in Gaelic culture, which was for generations rooted in communal agrarianism and brutal violence.157 This process of racial stereotyping the enemy was not simple vindictiveness, but part of a larger strategy utilized by belligerents on both sides of the Anglo-Irish conflict for generations. By 1920 constructions of an inferior “other” allowed combatants to dehumanize their adversaries in order to carry out brutalities otherwise too difficult to perform by trained, disciplined soldiers.158 Historians have long identified the immediate postwar era as a time of intense anti-Bolshevism in the Atlantic community, but this was particularly strong in the United States. As the European war was ending, news of the Bolshevik Revolution gripped Western Europe and the United States, often producing shock and revulsion at the violence and excesses. Strikes in Great Britain (among cotton workers, Yorkshire coalminers, and Liverpool dockworkers), as well as violent demonstrations in the United States (race riots in Washington, DC, and Chicago, and strikes among New York City theater actors, the Boston police force, and Pittsburgh steel workers) in summer 1919 were blamed on the “taint of bolshevism” that had been



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transplanted to America.159 Even before the war concluded, in the United States the fear of anarchistic terrorism was palpable and pervaded public discourse. An array of public discussions focused on the potential spread of Bolshevism into the United States. Of primary concern to American anticommunists was the supposed use of violence by Bolsheviks to achieve their political goals. Prominent public officials and leading intellections offered direct correlation between radical socialist ideology and terroristic violence.160 While the rhetoric from mainstream America became increasingly intolerant of terrorism, institutional reactions resulted in a coordinated effort by legislative and executive branches to construct a more centralized approach to handle threats posed by sub-state terrorists. One of the primary legacies of the 1880s, and especially the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago, was a prevalent attitude among mainstream Americans linking anarchism to terrorism.161 Going back to the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, the Roosevelt Administration, in full cooperation with Congress, took a more decided stand against anarchistic activities, believing that socialism and terrorism were intrinsically bound together. President Theodore Roosevelt pushed through Congress the 1903 Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens, also known as the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which established precedents used later in the postwar era for enacting laws against the assassination of government officials. By 1908, Congress permitted the Federal agents to suppress anarchist literature that advocated toppling government by terrorism.162 Immediately following the Russian Revolution, the American Congress augmented the nation’s classification of terrorism by including violence not only against government officials, but any act of intimidation designed to overthrow duly established government through violence or to undermine capitalism by destroying public and private property. Legislation introduced in the House of Representatives in 1918 to supplement the 1917 Sedition Act, which had exclusively dealt with pro-German radicals in the United States, broadened the government’s reach against radical groups critical of the United States or its policies. Specifically, the proposed addition enumerated punishments for “disloyalty, sabotage, and acts of terrorism,” that included murder, property destruction, or other forms of violence, designed to create political disaffection or interference with government functions. Although HR 11187 never made it out of the Judiciary Committee, Congress was moving in the direction of equating terrorism with acts of disloyalty.163 In the final days of World War I, given the success of the Bolshevik takeover in Russia and the possibility that Western European nations were vulnerable to similar upheavals, American public sentiment was wary of radical ideologies, resulting in stronger Congressional action. During the debates on HR12402, a 1918 bill to “exclude and expel aliens who are members of anarchistic and similar class,” Representative Edward E. Robbins of




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Pennsylvania proclaimed the legislation vital to US national security because the American people:

While HR 12402, known as the Johnson bill, did eventually become law, it did not specifically define or enumerate acts of terrorism. It did allow the Secretary of Labor to detain and deport aliens conspiring or advocating violent attacks against the government or public officials. Once the war in Europe ended, American anxieties of German Prussianism gave way to fears of Russian Bolshevism. The Senate’s Overman Committee, originally called to investigate German espionage activities in the United States, by February 1919 had shifted its attention almost exclusively to Bolshevism. During its hearings to investigate Bolshevik activities in the United States, Senators and witnesses frequently discussed the effectiveness of organized terrorism and intimidatory violence used by the Bolsheviks in Russia to overthrow the Czarist government and effecting political leverage over both the bourgeois and proletariat.165 As a result of the ubiquitous concern that Bolshevism was spreading into Western Europe and across the Atlantic community, members of the Anglo-Saxon establishment placed the highest premium on perceptions of loyalty and patriotism, reckoning those who engaged in violent conspiracies designed to alter the political system outside of an established constitutional process as un-American. Proposed amendments to the Anarchist Exclusion Act drew on a number of state laws already in place that criminalized anarchists and criminal syndicalists to provide legal clarity and meaning to the term “terrorism.” Acts of physical violence or damage to public or private property to effect a political change were increasingly defined as terrorism. In a address to the Federal Club at New York City, Representative Albert Johnson of Washington, the charismatic chair of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization who introduced the amendments, noted that this legislation was not an assault on the “right kind of foreigners,” but “just bomb-throwers.”166 Links between Bolshevism and terrorism helped conservative Americans understand and define certain groups and individuals as un-America. The militantly patriotic American Defense Society (ADS), formed in 1915 as an offshoot of the National Security League (NSL), originally a non-partisan group, with Theodore Roosevelt as honorary president, was a policy advocacy association that called for preparedness and American intervention in the European war, and engaged in an extensive anti-German propaganda. After the war the ADS, not unlike mainstream America, shifted its focus, redirecting its attention from the menace of German Prussianism to the threat



were at war with the most savage foe and most completely organized, barbarous, cruel, and resourceful enemy that confronted the civilized nations in a time of war.164

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of Bolshevism. Much to the chagrin of some of its long-time supporters, the ADS became increasingly politicized, an outspoken supporter of the Republican Party and the Harding Administration and critical of the Woodrow Wilson’s vision of progressive internationalism. Amid the Red Scare, the ADS sent a letter to the chair of the Senate Committee on Immigration favoring an immediate passage of the Johnson Bill. The ADS not only feared their activities against American political institutions, but they also framed their discussion in a larger Atlantic context. European states were particularly vulnerable, and so the ADS worried about the threats posed from “the radicals, terrorists, and a number of the criminal classes” using the United States as a sanctuary.167 Fears of radical terrorism resounded among the Anglo-Saxon community in America. At an October 1919 speech at the Middlesex Club during the Boston police strike, Massachusetts governor and soon-to-be Republican president, Calvin Coolidge made constant reference to the threat of terrorism in American society. Coolidge’s speech conveyed the popular belief that Bolshevik terrorists had infiltrated the police force and that the strikers were encouraging public disorder. The Boston Herald headlined its coverage of the speech: “Gov. Coolidge Declares War on Terrorism.”168 Because the Irish guerrilla insurgency so closely followed the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, some in America correlated the two. Fears of radicalism had become so entrenched among American Anglo-Saxons that it is hardly surprising, given the historical tendency and the current environment, which helps to explain the posture adopted by Americans toward the IRA and Sinn Féin in Ireland. A number of voices struggled futilely to disassociate from public perceptions any connection between IRA violence and Bolshevism. Progressive American journals such as The Nation and The New Republic tended to dismiss any direct or formal association between Irish violence and radical ideologies, claiming that IRA terrorists were not inspired by any allegiance to Bolshevik ideology. Rather their resort to terrorism was rather an expression of pent up frustrations from long-denied nationalistic aspirations and the failures of conventional warfare. Even though in the first months of the guerrilla campaign The Nation did report some evidence of Bolshevism in Ireland that might be tied to the nationalists’ methods, it believed this was due to convenience and expedience, rather than ideology. Indeed, these journals were often more critical of perceived government repression. During the infamous Palmer Raids (1919–1921) in cities across American, The Nation accused the US government of essentially practicing establishment terrorism against its own people. Instead of relying on the oppressive power state force, it reminded its readers that the only way to adequately remove the “dangerous discontent” of radicals was to “remove [the] causes” for their disaffection.169 The New Republic accused many groups, including the American government, of practicing terrorism against socialists, communists, and radicals. In an article titled “Terrorism,” published weeks after 30 Galleanist package bombs were shipped through the US Postal Service and immediately after





eight Galleanist bombs detonated in several American cities, the progressive journal did not excuse or condone such methods of violence but cautioned against the understandable public desire to crackdown on anarchists. It claimed that such methods of violence were a double crime, not only targeting the immediate victim but the society at large; upon “murder it piles the mortal sin of creating panic.” There was “no greater enemy to society than a panic-monger.” “Liberty is not achieved by terror, and the victories of liberty when attended by terror are always retarded and poisoned by it.” According to its author, “Red Terror always breeds White Terror.” Placing its discussion of terrorism in the context of class warfare, The New Republic claimed that truly progressive movements did not subscribe to violent means and those who practiced terrorism were not political reformers but criminals.170 Even renowned socialist theorists worked to distance Marxist ideology from Irish terrorism. Karl Kautsky, one of the leading Marxist thinkers during the early 20th century, wrote that despite the effectiveness of Western, Anglo-Saxon propaganda, terrorism was not synonymous with communism. A prominent German-Austrian socialist who lived in London between 1885 and 1890 and close acquaintance of Friedrich Engels, Kautsky opposed violent revolution, arguing that communism was best achieved through political, constitutional processes. Indeed, Kautsky argued that the adoption of terrorism by the most extreme radicals, from the earliest expression of communism during the French Revolution through present-day Russian Bolshevism, had been detrimental to communist movements. In his short volume on Ireland, Kautsky claimed that IRA violence was actually much more a product of American capitalist–republican culture and believed that it was Irish-American extremists who were orchestrating the violence against British forces. If anyone, however, was guilty of “terroristic methods” for Kautsky it was state agents, British Crown forces in Ireland.171 Following a pattern that stretched back to the 1870s, reflecting the larger Atlantic Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward Irish terrorism, Americans framed their discussion of IRA violence in the context of modern anarchist ideology. A number of historians have demonstrated that Americans were deeply concerned about the connections between Irish nationalism and communism, and part of the resistance to an independent Irish state was that it might mirror the Soviet Union. Yet these studies have little to say on how Americans equated terrorism with communist ideology.172 In the wake of the anarchistic bombings in spring 1919 and the subsequent Palmer Raids, Americans appeared comfortable associating Irish terrorism with radical and communist ideologies and the linkage between Irish terrorism and Bolshevism resonated within American society. Days after the October 1919 anarchist bombings in Gary, IN, Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, a staunch proponent of President Woodrow Wilson’s progressive internationalism in Congress, directing his remarks in the



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Senate chamber to Irish-American nationalists in the galleries, drew parallels between Sinn Féin activities and the Bolsheviks’ use of assassination and other forms of violence that threatened all societies whose civilizations were predicated on “Anglo-Saxon law, Anglo-Saxon order, and Anglo-Saxon liberty.” According to Williams, the challenge was so imperative because nothing was “more precious to humanity than Anglo-Saxonism.”173 State Department officials in Ireland also discerned Bolshevik tendencies in the nationalist campaign that went beyond economic nationalization or land redistribution. They identified “a definite Bolshevist programme of action” in the IRA’s guerrilla strategy because their “methods resembled those of the terrorists in Russia.” While substantial portions of the American public sympathized with Irish nationalist aspirations, this did not extend to the “[n]ihilistic method of promoting liberty” practiced by the militant extremists.174 In Dublin, Consul Dumont also paired IRA violence with radical labor groups. Pointing out to Secretary Colby that the IRB, “a secret organization with Sinn Fein,” was responsible for the lethal violence that has “disgraced Ireland in the last few months,” he noted that it “terrorizes in connection with the agrarian element of the Labor party the entire country.”175 Dumont believed that Sinn Féin “Intelligensia” [sic] were committed republicans, “the pureness of the ideals and motives of these [Sinn Fein] leaders cannot be gainsaid.” But not being able to achieve their goals independently, Irish nationalists had joined with the Irish Labor Union, “bolshevik though it is.” What made this particularly obnoxious to the British was the possibility of Irish violence becoming associated with labor agitation in Britain, which generally supported Irish self-determination, but not separation from the Empire. The possibility of a general strike throughout the United Kingdom was something the “British Government is afraid of.”176 In a comparison that harkened back to the labor terrorism perpetuated by the Industrial Workers of the World, Dumont believed that Sinn Féin’s ideology and methods evidenced that Irish nationalists had embraced labor’s Bolshevik goal of “One Big Union” as essential to its own goal of uniting the Irish people behind independence.177 This attitude was not limited to Americans stationed in Ireland, but resonated among the American public. Adherents of Anglo-Saxonism viewed terrorism as fundamentally antithetical to their values and destructive to its most prized institutions. Known for its outspoken political Americanism, the San Francisco Argonaut, which had endorsed Lloyd George Ministry’s policies in Ireland and generally praised British imperial rule in South Africa and Asia, blamed the failures to reach a negotiated peace to end the AngloIrish conflict on “that variety of Bolshevism that called itself the Sinn Féin.” Instead of a sincere desire to achieve an Anglo-Irish political reconciliation, Sinn Féin and Irish nationalist generally repudiated constitutionalism in favor of violent revolution and were committed to a “campaign of crime”





to simply gain power in Ireland. A spirit of justice for the Irish people did not guide Sinn Féin and the IRA, according to the Argonaut, but rather a selfish desire to exercise political power. Merely by employing terrorism, the Irish demonstrated that they were not entitled to enjoy Anglo-Saxon institutions.178 Some in the academic community supported this contention. While Brown University historian William MacDonald remained adamant that British policies contributed to conditions in Ireland, and he worked for Irish-American nationalist organizations to secure Ireland independence, he admitted considerable concern about the influence of socialism within Sinn Féin. MacDonald, later one of the most outspoken critics of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, identified a strain of pacifism in early Sinn Féin ideology, but he came to accept that the nationalist movement had become co-opted by violent factions. While the rural peasantry embraced Sinn Féin “Ireland–Irish” separatist ideology, nationalists were also dependent on the support of urban organized labor, especially the powerful Irish Transport Workers Union, which according to MacDonald was “predominantly socialistic” and “inclines strongly toward Bolshevism or Communism.”179 Some, such as the pacifist historian Roland Hugins at Cornell University, who was writing about IRA terrorism early during the guerrilla struggle, recoiled at the violence of Bolshevism and the fundamental threat it posed to Western liberal-democratic institutions. Referring specifically to the Irish in an essay appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, Hugins traced the violent tendencies rife in the Atlantic community to the struggles of “working-class minorities” and the socialist forces unleashed by World War I. Using the failure of the British to grant Irish home rule in the 1880s as an example, Hugins argued that the primary cause for the spread of communist ideology was the failure of democratic institutions, whether through disenfranchisement or minority repression, to properly represent the people’s will. It was this weakening of democracy, “not hunger or poverty that makes the doctrines of Lenin so dangerous.” Advocating sweeping democratic-liberal reforms, such as proportional minority representation, cessation of government censorship and gag laws that obstructed free expression, and government by consent, Hugins reminded conservative elements in America: The reactionaries who preach coercion are as much its [a democratic nation] enemies as the insurgents who preach organized revolt. A policy of intimidation will be met with terrorism.180 Only inclusiveness and compromise allowed for meaningful social reform based on justice and the rule of law. The difficulty, from Hugins’ perspective, was that if liberal-democratic states were not stable enough for inclusivity, then they were not sustainable over time. Again using the example of Sinn



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Féin and the IRA, the collapse in democratic institutions would give rise to “militant minorities” adopting Bolshevik totalitarian methods to oppress the majority. In his well-received volume on Anglo-Irish relations, the Michigan University, later Yale University, historian Edward Raymond Turner went further in his analysis. Turner traced the origins of Irish terrorism to economic deprivation. Nationalists, aided by American money, “crossed the Atlantic to stir up disaffection in Ireland and spread secret terror in England.” IRA methods of political violence, including systematic murder, assaults, incendiarism, and intimidation, “resembled those of the terrorists in Russia.” Comparing the IRA to Russian terrorists or the reinvigorated Ku Klux Klan in the United States, Turner concluded that it was essentially economic strife that produced “secret organizations, with violence, intimidation and disorder.” For an impoverished nation, terrorism was the “last recourse of a people.” Turner recognized, unlike many of his contemporaries, that a disposition to certain, unacceptable modes of violence was not based on ideology but expedience. While British officials argued that economic conditions in Ireland were much improved in recent years, for Turner and other American observers, in the context of the British Empire the Irish people felt economically subservient to the English.181 Turner’s ideas seemed to gain some currency, even among those usually the most unsympathetic toward terrorist behavior. The Outlook, long a bastion of unadulterated Anglo-Saxonism, agreed with those who believed that IRA violence was clearly Bolshevik, but acknowledged that contemporaneous English injustices were exacerbating a historic sense of abuse. The article, “The Remedy for Radicalism,” stressed that economic inequalities facilitated extremism. While the author admitted that emigration from Ireland might provide some economic relief for the Irish people, and thus temporarily diminish terrorist attacks, the only permanent cure for Irish ills was sincere “justice, education, and the fraternal spirit.”182 More often, however, self-anointed guardians of Anglo-Saxonism did not take such a sophisticated approach to the problem of revolutionary political violence, and were content to ridicule the Irish for using methods that could conveniently link them to Bolshevism. Using racially incendiary language, William T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Garden and an active member of the ADS, compared Bolsheviks to “gorillas” because of their predilection for violence and uncivil methods. As a rationale for his argument on the simian nature of Bolshevism, Hornaday pointed to the popularity of communism among “Southern negroes.” Hornaday and the ADS, while primarily focused on the spread of Bolshevism in the United States, were certainly attentive to those Irish nationalist activities they deemed communistic.183 Others within the ADS feared that Bolshevism and IRA activities in the United States suggested a formal cooperation, which required closer scrutiny.





The ADS’s weekly newsletter, American Defense, identified and outlined a Bolshevik program for subverting American democratic government and capitalist institutions by terrorist violence.184 By 1919 Francis Ralston Welsh, a wealthy Philadelphia investment broker and rabid anti-communist, was conducting his own private investigations of Bolsheviks in America, often noting their connections with Sinn Féin. In letters to prominent national politicians and to the Executive Committee of the ADS, Welsh especially focused on the contacts between Sinn Féin to Russian-American anarchist Alexander Berkman and Thomas Mooney, an Irish-American radical labor leader and alleged author of the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco. In his unpublished essay “Some Notes on Certain Red and Pink Organizations,” Welsh also claimed that prominent Irish-Americans such as Joseph McGarrity and Dr. Patrick McCartan, as well as the Irish-American societies FOIF and the AARIR, were closely associated with “anarchists and bolsheviki.”185 Among Americans, there was no simple, consensual explanation for Irish terrorism. Some suggested that ethnic and ideological predilections made Celts innately violent while others argued that economic conditions best explained the resort to terrorist acts. Still others believed there was an unmistakable connection with the violent radicalism associated with spread of Continental Bolshevism. Linking the IRA to the perceived menace of Bolshevism provided the Atlantic community political ammunition against elusive conspirators. During a period of already heightened fears of Bolshevism in Europe and North America, this facilitated a heightened sense of shared identity and greater cooperation among the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community.

Anglo-American cooperation Despite intense public condemnation of British reprisals and widespread appeals for greater justice and autonomy for the Irish, the US government continued to cooperate with the British ministry, most often through shared intelligence. The transatlantic discourse about transnational terrorism had practical applications for American foreign relations and domestic policy. Neither the Wilson nor the Harding Administrations were willing to intervene on behalf of Irish independence because they considered Irish nationalism a purely British domestic affair.186 But beginning with Irish–American complicity in the 1916 Easter Rebellion and reports of German–Irish cooperation, the Wilson Administration aggressively monitored Irish-Americans suspected of violating US neutrality laws, conspiring to sabotage American and Allied merchant shipping, or fomenting labor agitation.187 From the earliest months of the guerrilla conflict, a number of British writers were taking up the Irish question and placing it an imperial context. Responding to the growing American public condemnation of British imperialism generally, and specifically in Ireland, and the general America



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support for home rule in Ireland, Philip Whitwell Wilson, a popular English journalist and author, who wrote periodically wrote for American audiences, offered comparative perspective. By placing his discussion of the British occupation of Ireland within the context of American economic and political dominance in Cuba and Panama, he argued that, just as the United States in the Caribbean and other vital regions, the British government had legal rights and obligations in Ireland and a responsibility to guard “its sovereignty jealously.” Like the United States, the British would not tolerate foreign interference where its sovereignty was recognized. Writing in The Outlook, Wilson reminded his American audience that the British people were confronting an implacable foe who had adopted a coordinated program of terrorism to dismantle their empire. The inference was obvious; the United States had not and would not sacrifice its colonial holdings to terrorists’ demands, and the British should not either.188 But for some, IRA terrorism was not simply a domestic issue for the British but one that endangered the larger Atlantic community. They stressed the necessity of maintaining amicable Anglo-American relations amid deteriorating conditions and growing American sympathy with Irish nationalist aspirations. In particular the exchange of terrorist assaults by the warring factions, the “diabolical interchange of crime and brutality,” according to Harold Spender, father of American poet laureate Stephan Spender, was one of the great threats to Anglo-American relations. When an Irish-American procession on behalf of the recently martyred Lord Mayor of Cork Terrance MacSwiney in New York City erupted into a riot at the Union Club in December 1920, for displaying a British Union Jack flag alongside French and American national colors, some Americans feared that the Anglo-Irish conflict had indeed migrated to American soil. Press reports condemned what they considered a violent disposition of the Irish and cautioned against Americans tolerating this type of political behavior within their own jurisdiction.189 Author Alfred George Gardiner, formerly editor of the London Daily News and one of the most distinguished British journalists, wrote for several American journals and spent considerable column space detailing the importance of Anglo-American relations, reminding the English that Irish nationalism continued to be one of the greatest sources of anglophobia in the United States. During the worst guerrilla fighting in Ireland, and at the heightened anti-Bolshevism in the United States, Gardiner noted that “the Irish question was an American question as much as the Negro question.” In one of his most recognized books, The Anglo-American Future, published during some of the most intense IRA attacks and Black and Tan reprisals, Gardiner advised the very survival of world civilization depended on Atlantic harmony. The greatest impediment to that harmony was the crisis in Ireland. In Gardiner’s estimation, observant Americans recognized that Ireland’s strategic location along the Atlantic “highway” made it critical to both powers, economic interests and thus vital for American national





security. Gardiner rejected a parochial approach to Irish nationalism, believing that “Irish discontent [was] a world force,” and that it, combined with similar movements throughout Europe and the United States, threatened to undermine the Anglo-American-led “international crusade against” extremism. This attitude resonated throughout the Anglo-Saxon community, and during the course of the Anglo-Irish War, Anglo-American counterterrorism cooperation became increasingly institutionalized.190 Despite a preponderance of reports corroborating accusations of brutal, terroristic British suppression of the Irish people, some Americans maintained unwavering support for the Empire’s occupation of Ireland. Civic-religious leaders insistent in strengthening Anglo-American bonds usually highlighted the advantages and advances of Anglo-Saxon civilization. When discussing other non-Anglo-Saxon cultures, such as the Irish, they often emphasized the need to rule through coercion because of the innately violent disposition of the natives. Anglo-American culture accepted the necessity of violence to maintain social order and to civilize those beyond the pale. But those who violently rejected Anglo-Saxon culture, especially adopting unsanctioned forms of protest that deliberately targeted non-combatants, discredited their own claims to national sovereignty. The attitude of the Philadelphia Protestant Federation reflected this Atlantic Anglo-Saxon current. In passing resolutions of sympathy for Ulster and opposing American support for an independent Irish Republic, the Federation distributed literature refuting all claims of Irish nationality. While they did not deny the use of violence by Crown forces, they claimed that it was proportional and necessary. They dismissed allegations of British oppression against the Irish civilian population as exaggerations of nationalist propaganda. In particular, the Federation believed the collapse within Irish society, particularly the absence of the rule of law and erosion of social order through the “terror of [Sinn Féin] reprisals,” demonstrated that the Irish were unfit for greater autonomy, much less independent self-government. A report by the New York Methodist Episcopal Conference’s Committee on the State of the Country, drafted by the chancellor of Syracuse University, also opposed any recognition of Irish independence. In part, the committee argued that Ireland’s attachment to the British Empire was as necessary as “the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands are of ours.” Even beyond the imperial connection, the bishopric opposed concessions to Irish nationalists on a more fundamental principle. It rejected Irish nationalist aspirations in any form, whether separation or some level of home rule, as long as they sought to achieve them through “murder and arson.”191 Even detractors of American imperialism were reluctant to endanger Atlantic Anglo-Saxon bonds. A letter in the Boston Herald by Moorfield Storey, a social reformer, first president of the NAACP, and out-spoken critic of American imperialism, warned against Irish efforts to damage the “unbroken harmony between the great English speaking peoples of the world.” While he endorsed their nationalist aspirations, Storey chided the Irish for



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creating so much violence, while ignoring the plight of oppressed peoples in other parts of the globe. Finally, he erroneously suggested American supporters of Irish nationalism that there were colonized peoples, such as in the Philippines or Caribbean, who engaged in nationalist activities but did not use terrorism to resist colonialism.192 Not a few commentators of the situation in Ireland ignored the imperial context of Irish terrorism. Historian Raymond Edward Turner’s anglophilic history cautioned against the tendency among Americans to look too favorably at the nationalist cause and not to fall prey to Irish nationalist propaganda that was sensationalizing English violence while completely ignoring IRA terrorism. Given the precarious state of the postwar world, not to mention the existential threat the British faced during the war, Turner reminded Americans that the British had real strategic concerns. Complete national liberation, therefore, was unlikely, if not an impossibility for the British.193 The eminent American historian, Alfred L.P. Dennis, who was active in national defense councils during World War I, worked for the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff and as a military attaché for the American consulate in Ireland during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, in a detailed discussion of events in Ireland suggested that “the day of national wars may have passed,” and that the United States would need to use its military might in an “international crusade against some common enemy of world-wide peace.” While the Irish question remained a British internal matter, it was obviously of great interest to America, because “Irish discontent is a world force.”194 It was evident that Irish terrorism was not simply a British domestic problem but a global challenge. More than any another revolutionary group, it was Sinn Féin’s operations in America that facilitated an enhanced cooperation between the United States and the British Empire. Since the emergence of Fenianism in the 1860s a crucial component of transatlantic Irish terrorism had been the acquisition of funds. After the 1880s dynamite campaign, Irish-American funding had largely evaporated, especially for terrorist operations. Beginning with the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1914, a militant wing of Irish nationalism complimenting the IRB that eventually evolved into the IRA, thousands of dollars were arriving from the United States. By the end of World War I, Irish-Americans accelerated their funding drives and within months the Friends of Irish Freedom’s Victory Fund had raised over $1 million ostensibly for relief efforts, but sizable amounts financed insurgent operations. The transnational appeal of Irish nationalism was particularly strong in American urban centers, especially New York City. Not only was New York an important political and inspirational center for the Irish nationalist movement, but historian Mary Kelly notes that it proved critical in the guerrilla terrorist campaign because of the city’s seemingly inexhaustible resource pool, which was ideally suited for recruitment and funding.195





Even the Irish relief campaign in the United States became intertwined in the discussion on terrorism. The American Committee for the Relief of Ireland, organized by Dr. William Maloney of New York City days after the December 1920 burning of Cork by British forces, sought to raise $10 million for suffering Irish peasants. For Irish nationalism, American relief was crucial to ending British counterterrorism reprisals. While on his American tour in summer 1921, Harry Boland reported to Dail President Eamon de Valera that contributions to the American Committee for the Relief of Ireland totaled approximately $4.5 million. Having consulted with leading Irish-American nationalists, Boland was convinced that if these funds were used effectively to “rebuilding and reconstruction” projects in Ireland, such as roads, bridges, and factories, it would be “impossible for England to re-open her campaign of terror” against Ireland. Boland was so enthused by the progress of IrishAmerican activities, he argued that if similar “work were going on Ireland, England would find it impossible to resume her campaign of terrorism,” especially as the United States was hosting the Washington Disarmament Conference (1921–1922).196 From the British perspective, Irish relief agencies operating in the United States were simply another means for the continuation of terrorism. After his inauguration, President Harding, based on a genuine humanitarianism, and with the reluctant support of his Secretary of State Charles Hughes, abandoned Wilson’s strict non-interference policy and endorsed relief efforts for suffering Irish peasants. The British government viewed relief activities as another form of propaganda and became sufficiently alarmed by the campaign once it gained momentum in the United States.197 The British Ambassador at Washington maintained that there was some dissension within the Administration over American relief to Ireland. Having discussed the issue with several Administration officials, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who also endorsed the relief, also put the question of relief in the contest of terrorism. Hoover held that by endorsing the project, the Administration hoped keep the relief effort respectable and under the control of “really reputable people,” so that the monies go to those genuinely needy. Geddes reported that the Administration’s efforts failed and that relief monies went to continue the guerrilla war.198 When members of the relief committee arrived in Ireland to disperse funds, the American Consul at Dublin, Frederick Dumont, who was also highly suspicious of Irish relief agencies and expressed surprise by Harding’s endorsement, worked to ensure that relief money was actually used to assist those in need. Under the influence of British officials in Ireland, Dumont, along with Mason Mitchell in Cork and William Kent in Belfast, argued that conditions were not as severe as portrayed in the press and by nationalists propaganda, there was no imminent famine in Ireland, and there was no immediate need for relief from non-British sources. They claimed relief monies, if dispersed directly to the Irish peasantry, would be acquired by



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Sinn Féin to prolong the war and the IRA’s terrorist campaign. American diplomats in Ireland feared that the collection and distribution of these funds, through the endorsement of the Harding Administration, would seriously jeopardize Anglo-American relations.199 As local governments throughout Ireland renounced their affiliation with the Crown, new sources of revenue were desperately needed for them to function properly and to provide the critical relief necessary to already beleaguered Irish population. Michael Collins, Minister of Finance for the underground Provisional Irish Republic and mastermind behind the guerrilla campaign, despite enormous obstacles, organized bond drives in Ireland and the United States that allowed the Irish Provisional government to continue operations and to subsidize guerrilla strikes against British forces. More than any other Sinn Féin activities, it was these IRA operations that permitted nationalists Irish to supplant the government at Dublin Castle.200 Throughout the Anglo-Irish War the sale of “Sinn Féin Bonds” in America was quite successful, generating an estimated $6 million, which not only helped legitimize Irish nationalism and provide for a functional government. According to historian Francis Carroll, it was these funds collected in the United States by Sinn Féin that made the guerrilla terrorist campaign possible.201 Despite the public squabbles between competing nationalists in Ireland and their financial backers in the United States, resulting in several valuable accounts being tied up in the courts for several years, State Department officials in Ireland recognized and reported to their superiors in Washington that the moral and financial support from America were a principle determinant for the nationalist strategy in Ireland. British complaints to American officials attest to their own conviction of the transatlantic character of IRA terrorism. In his study of Irish secret societies, Major H.B.C Pollard, on the staff of the Chief of Dublin Castle Police, provided evidence of direct American financial contributions for murder against Crown forces in Ireland.202 According to an American diplomat in Ireland, Sinn Féin “was absolutely dependent upon America.” Frederick Dumont an astute observer of events in Ireland, went so far as to conclude that the terrorists received their orders directly from Irish-American leaders in the United States.203 While IRA terrorism was largely organized by only a handful of leaders in Ireland, Dumont believed that IRA leadership took their orders from “certain individuals” in the United States, “who look upon Sinn Feiners in Ireland as pawns in a game” and who were not so much concerned about an independent Irish Republic but rather “the compassing of the downfall of the British Empire.” In a report evaluated by the State Department’s Division of Western European Affairs, Dumont believed that the “situation is one full of danger to the peace and well-being of the United States” and he believed it is “well worth investigating” the activities of Irish-American citizens, who were “more loyal to Ireland than to America.”204 By summer 1921, Dumont





estimated that the IRA would have to “quit operations” in three months if it “were not supported by American money.”205 According to Dumont, the majority of the Catholic Irish population did not provide the financial backing of IRA terrorism. They preferred depositing their savings in English banks, rather than in Irish Republican bonds. According to Dumont, money from Irish-Americans was essential; “Without American money, the movement for self-determination would utterly collapse. . . . America is therefore the chief field for Irish propaganda.”206 During the first phase of the Anglo-Irish War, some American officials actually downplayed protests from British officials in London and Dublin and bristled at accusations made by the British that Americans were responsible for IRA terrorist attacks because of funding. In Dublin, Consul Frederick Dumont suggested that Sinn Féin and IRA activities, most especially terrorism, were the result of poor British policies in Ireland. Dumont went further in his defense of the American position, concluding that British policies in Ireland caused distress among the sizable Irish population in the United States, thereby giving Americans greater cause for complaint about Irish terrorism than the British.207 The American Defense Society recoiled at the perceived indifference of Americans to IRA terrorism and was especially alarmed by the resources and sanctuary America provided to these terrorists. John R. Rathom, who had been sending the ADS information of Bolshevik activities in America for months, was especially critical of Famon de Valera, the “agitator-in-chief,” and other Sinn Féin leaders for soliciting funds from America for an assassination and bombing campaign against the British. By coupling IRA violence to a decidedly Bolshevik ideology, Rathom became convinced that Irish radicals would subvert Anglo-Saxon institutions not only in England but in the United States. Writing to the chairman of the ADS, he concluded that nationalists’ activities, funding drives and propaganda campaign, in the United States were supportive of terrorist operations, and that this unconventional strategy of warfare indicated that the Irish were willing to crush all civilization simply to defeat the British.208 Transatlantic Irish terrorism was not limited solely to propaganda and funding, but included arms procurement and trafficking and in some cases direct threats against American officials. Guns, ammunition, and explosives had been essential wares for the Irish since the end of the American Civil War, but by World War I, arms trafficking had become much more audacious and organized. Sir Roger Casement, a Dublin-born Protestant who served as a British Consul at Boma before converting to the Irish nationalist after witnessing British atrocities in the Congo (1903–1904), on the eve of World War I complained that the Irish were the “only white race that was denied the use of arms.” He complained that British policies had consigned the Irish to the status of Indians, that “race the English called ‘niggers’ who like the Irish were unarmed.”209 Beginning with the Irish Volunteers’ arms landing at Howth, Ulster, in July 1914, which Casement helped organize, a steady



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stream of weapons arrived for nationalists. During the height of the terrorist campaign, intelligence reports from British sources indicated that Sinn Féin operatives were purchasing thousands of weapons in America. One cache included approximately 500 Thompson sub-machine guns being “smuggled from America to Ireland.” The Thompson machine guns, provided by the Irish White Cross relief organization, a front for militant activities, were loaded for passage on the S.S. Eastside in Hoboken, NJ, until longshoremen discovered them and reported the finding to port authorities.210 A federal grand jury eventually indicted the gun-runners in June 1921, but months of legal wrangling between the city of Hoboken, with the backing of well-connected, influential Irishmen, and Justice Department officials under intense pressure from the British eventually ended when the weapons were returned to their owners. Contemporaries and historians agree that while the transfers were a violation of American neutrality laws and mythologized by a sensationalistic American press, the Thompsons were of little value to Irish terrorists. Compared with much more lethal shotguns and industrial explosives, the Thompsons were not a guerrilla weapon but were design for trench warfare and ultimately performed poorly, often jamming during the Anglo-Irish War.211 Irish terrorists challenged American national prestige in other ways. Several American officials in the United Kingdom suspected that “imported American gunmen” were some of the “most efficient of assassins” in Ireland. Press reports indicated that these Americans were responsible for a number of British deaths, though no verifiable evidence was presented to the United States.212 British subjects in America frequently received assassination threats. The Bureau of Investigation took part, along with local law enforcement, in ascertaining whether American citizens were part of these assassination conspiracies. A Bureau agent, on instructions from his superior, infiltrated the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, to learn the identity of terrorist conspirators who were sending death-threats to British officials in the United States. Little information on the conspirators in America was gathered, but Special Assistant J. Edgar Hoover, formerly head of the Enemy Aliens Registration Section and by 1919 chief of the General Intelligence Division, assured State Department officials that Federal agents around the country had been informed of the threats and were “notified to take necessary precautions.” Bureau agents, under orders from Hoover, who had been given broad powers by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer to root out radical groups in America, even infiltrated the Irish-American societies to profile suspected terrorists and kept detailed files on Irish extremists.213 In London, the American Ambassador Colonel George B. Harvey publicly reaffirmed that the close connection between the English-speaking peoples should not be limited to immediate national security interests, but was rooted in a historical commitment to constitutionalism and the rule of law that distinguished Anglo-Saxons from other peoples. In several speeches





during his first year at the London post, which met with praise and general approval from the British, Harvey reiterated that a primary responsibility of the two Atlantic powers was to preserve Anglo-Saxon civilization by working closely together. That cooperation should specifically work to arrest anarchists and eliminate the dangers posed by revolutionary violence.214 Irish nationalists continued to adhere to a tradition of not jeopardizing American sanctuary by attacking Americans, but American citizens were not entirely exempt from Sinn Féin threats. While attending the Paris Peace Conference, American diplomats learned that a nationalist meeting held in Philadelphia had vowed to use “every means in their power” to repel the British military occupation of Ireland. In summer 1921, during one of bloodiest periods of the Anglo-Irish war, Irish terrorists threatened American institutions directly, promising to violently “storm Congress” if the United States forgave the British war-debt.215 Probably the most credible Sinn Féin threat leveled at an American was against Admiral William Sims, former commander of American naval forces in Europe during the war and subsequently an outspoken anglophile. Sims, president of the U.S. Naval War College and 1921 Pulitzer Prize winner in history, disliked Sinn Féin and beginning in January 1921 made a number of speeches throughout England to bolster the Anglo-Saxon Atlantic connections. At a speech before the English Speaking Union in London on 7 June 1921, Admiral Sims compared Sinn Féiners in the United States to jackasses, who were “making war on America today” and have the blood of “English and American boys on their hands.” Sims’ remarks were widely supported by the mainstream American press and the admiral was not censured by the Harding Administration.216 Irish nationalists were not so forgiving, and according to FBI reports, some extremists promised him a “hot reception” when he returned to America. Patriotic organizations, such as the ADS and the National Security League, both of which supported Sims, informed local law enforcement of threats against Sims, requested a police presence to protect the admiral once he returned to America, and encouraged their own members to attend the Admiral’s arrival at New York to “offset the action of Irish agitators.” Federal officials apparently took the threat seriously and Secret Service agents met Sims when he arrived in New York harbor.217 Sinn Féin’s transnational exchanges produced tangible state cooperation between the British Empire and the American Republic. Despite political wrangling and public discussions, the transatlantic terrorist network, compounded by an alarmist climate of anti-Bolshevism, provided America’s nascent national security structure ample justification for cooperating with the British intelligence agencies in the gathering and sharing of intelligence. After the 1916 Easter Rebellion, and revelations of Irish-American collaboration with German agents during World War I, Secret Service and military intelligence agents kept routine surveillance on Irish-Americans, infiltrating



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nationalist groups, scrutinizing Irish activities thought to be un-American, and labeling extremists as “disloyal Americans.”218 In one of the first shows of coordinated counterterrorism operations, officials from the State and Justice Departments, Military Intelligence, the Secret Service, and even state authorities worked to identify Irish-American extremists in the United States, monitor and track their movements, and to frustrate their activities. Besides close scrutiny of nationalist organizations, such as the FOIF and Sinn Féin, officials carefully monitored other IrishAmerican cultural groups and carefully reviewed nationalist publications in the United States to trace possible terrorist operations. Irish meetings were suppressed in San Francisco, New York, and other major American cities, popular Irish journals were included on the Department of Justice’s proscriptive list, and prominent Clan-na-Gael members were arrested and threatened with possible deportation proceedings.219 Even as Irish and British gunmen waged the guerrilla campaign in Ireland, American military intelligence officials closely monitored nationalist organizations operating in the United States, such as the Irish-American Labor League. Military spies reported that this labor organization, which the New York Times reported two months previously had established close ties to Russian Bolsheviks, had passed resolutions “to compel the [British] government to withdraw the Black and Tans out of Ireland,” by economic pressure if possible but with unconventional physical force if necessary.220 American diplomats received intelligence from British authorities that elements of the IRB constituted the “inner ring” of the Irish Volunteers and were responsible for “the policy of terrorization which is carried out by raids and ‘executions.’ ”221 Domestic American law enforcement agencies were also particularly sensitive to Irish terrorism. Following the practice used against other radical groups, the Federal government sought to subdue Irish extremists in America. After the end of the European war, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation had institutionalized an anti-communist program that centralized its surveillance operations not only against radical groups, but also on anyone politically suspicious.222 Bureau of Investigation agents closely watched Irish nationalist organizations in American, including Sinn Féin and the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, being particularly sensitive to any perceived political and financial support for IRA violence.223 US Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty’s speech at the American Bar Association meeting at Cincinnati on 31 August 1921, amid renewed fears of communist, anarchistic conspiracies, denied that American laws provided special legal protection to perpetrators of supposedly political crimes. In now characteristic Anglo-Saxon language referring to the French Reign of Terror as a “drunken orgy of lawlessness and anarchy,” Daugherty linked the preservation of traditional Anglo-Saxon values, such as political liberty





and private property, to the rule of law predicated on a constitutional system. Daugherty, the architect of President Warren G. Harding’s return to “normalcy” campaign, argued that anarcho-terrorist conspiracies were so dangerous to society because they outright rejected the basic premise for solving political conflicts in democratic societies. As they sought reform through violence rather than by constitutional means, Daugherty advanced the position that the Justice Department had an obligation to investigate and prevent their attacks from being carried out. Succeeding the crusading anti-Bolshevistic Mitchell Palmer, Daugherty continued the Justice Department’s aggressive pursuit against organizations deemed un-American and a threat to Anglo-Saxon culture.224 The Department of Justice was particularly vigilant in monitoring Irish nationalist activities and Sinn Féin operations in America to determine collusion with terrorism and to alert the British about potential threats. Department records indicate a productive cooperation between state and national agencies with the British to ascertain the activities of suspected militants and interdict weapons trafficking originating from the United States.225 Agents for the Bureau kept detailed files on Irish nationalists operating in America, specifically tracking the transatlantic travels of Sinn Féin members. While they observed scores of silent marches and nationalist parades held by Irish-Americans, Bureau agents also identified and monitored the movements, actions, and associates of nationalists alleged to be actively engaged in IRA terrorist operations. They observed over 50 silent marches and nationalist parades held by Irish-Americans in Washington, DC. By the 1920s, the Bureau was keeping extensive files on a number of foreign and domestic groups that used or advocated violence outside the sanctions of law or whose ideology represented a perceived threat to social order and stability in America. In their intelligence files, American officials grouped Sinn Féin and extreme Irish nationalists with other supposedly un-American groups, such as “Negro dissidents” in the NAACP and the National Urban League, labor radicals in the Industrial Workers of the World, anarchists, and the Ku Klux Klan.226 By 1921, Federal agents were receiving weekly intelligence reports from Great Britain, entitled “Revolutionary Organizations in the United Kingdom,” that provided details about the Irish terrorist organizations, their members, and planned attacks.227 American officials sought intelligence and evidence on Irish terrorists from British officials. In prosecuting socialists and anarchists in New York during the height of the First Red Scare, the New York District Attorney requested detailed information from British authorities about labor terrorism in Ireland during the early years of World War I.228 Michael Collins, the IRA’s chief intelligence officer, who was convinced that information-intelligence would be key to an Irish victory, informed the Dáil Éireann that American diplomats in the United Kingdom relied almost exclusively upon British sources when reporting on conditions in Ireland to the State Department. When



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assessing Irish terrorism, the records of the State Department bear Collin’s statement out. By 1921, American officials were receiving weekly intelligence reports from British sources detailing the identities, movements, and plans of Irish terrorists, a fact that greatly frustrated Collins and other Sinn Féin leaders.229 During the waning months of the conflict, Americans still could find disagreement on Irish terrorism. By summer 1921, American Consul Dumont reported that Irish nationalists were on the verge of collapsing, but for the substantial financial contributions arriving from Americans. The State Department continued to take reports of American contributions seriously and instructed American officials in Ireland to investigate and convey any information of how terrorist acquired and spent funds originating from the United States.230 The American Consul in Belfast, William Kent, however, suggested that Irish terrorism was still at its zenith and despite the best Anglo-American cooperation, no measure of the moment would successfully “put an end to their campaign of murder and terrorism.” Even as the truce negotiations between the Irish and the English were occurring in London, and the British military had ceased operations, Irish nationalists continued to engage in terrorist attacks against the British supporters, especially against Ulster Unionists.231 Constant exposure to terrorism, whether directly or indirectly, can be grueling on a society. By late 1921, after several years of an intense terrorist campaign, American diplomats clearly recognized that the British public was exhausted from both Irish terrorism and British counterterrorism reprisals. Criminologist Karen McElrath characterized American policies regarding Irish political criminals by successive administrations as non-interventionist; that is, most presidents leading up to the Anglo-Irish War were not willing to intrude into what was perceived as a British domestic problem.232 Despite the reluctance to intervene directly, Irish terrorists utilizing a sophisticated network of financing, arms procurement, and operational planning did influence how Americans conceptualized revolutionary violence, nationalist aspirations, and imperial dangers. The complex network of cells operating in the Atlantic community provided a basis for American hostility to terrorism and contributed to a converging Anglo-American interest that sought to marginalize sub-state actors during a crucial period of nation-state realignment. While Americans opposed terrorism as a method of political change, they were equally critical of British reprisals, which they deemed a form of state terrorism. Encounters with Irish terrorism revealed intimate transatlantic cultural values that extended beyond traditional national interests and provided an environment for demonizing certain types of violence considered a threat to civil society. While no formal arrangement bridged the Atlantic, by the time the Truce in December 1921, the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community had solidified an ideological repulsion to terrorism and began a process




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of limited mutual assistance that eventually evolved into a comprehensive global commitment to in counterterrorist operations. Irish terrorism thus provided the antecedents of contemporary American anti-terrorist ideology and helped lay the foundations for the comprehensive Anglo-American counterterrorism strategy that took shape during the Cold War.


At no point did Irish terrorism ever dominate Anglo-American relations or the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community between 1865 and 1922. While transnational terrorism introduced novel challenges, it did not completely capture the attention or ultimately guide policy between the two Atlantic powers. Denied autonomy and independence, Irish nationalist and agrarians initiated violent campaigns designed to creating an entirely new political and social realignment. The work of Irish terrorists owed much to American resources, financial assistance, and political support. By the 1860s terrorism was hardly novel to either British or American societies, each having experienced various forms of unconventional political violence in their national heritages. Indeed, both nations have celebrated violence as crucial to rejecting tyrannical tendencies. Guy Fawkes in the early 17th century and trade-unionism in the mid-19th century were modernist expressions brought about by frustrations some English subjects felt about their society, particularly fears that the British state was trampling on the rights and liberties of its own subjects.1 Terrorism has been a salient feature of the North American Republic from the colonial era. As European settlements multiplied and encroached on Amerindian lands, combat among the numerous parties involved shifted from irregular to traditional siege warfare, but non-combatant settlers and indigenous peoples often targeted non-combatants as means of achieving political leverage. In the revolutionary era, backcountry Regulators and partisans initiated terrorist campaigns against adversaries and their non-combatant supporters.2 During the sectional crisis and the Civil War, politically inspired civilian massacres occurred between Free and Slave state forces.3 During the post-Civil War era, when constitutional efforts failed to satisfy legitimate grievances, labor terrorism in urban centers and racial terrorism in rural Southern States became an expedient mode of confronting social divisions.4 As a political contest, terrorism is a stratagem of warfare. Modern warfare is not exclusively the purview of nation-states, solely battles between organized, uniformed armies and navies, but also includes asymmetrical 251



Conclusion


confrontations between states and sub-state actors. This approach contends that warfare is also a clash of ideologies and cultures, often with devastating consequences for non-combatants. Except for rare occasions, such as attempted rebellions and national uprisings in 1848 and 1865, the 1860s and 1870s Fenian invasions of Canada, and the 1916 Easter Rebellion, Irish nationalists and agrarians did not field a uniformed army against the British. Instead they relied on a guerrilla campaign that used terrorism. While the violence in Ireland is attributed to numerous causes, political violence at its core was a reaction to the socio-political and economic domination of English imperialism in Ireland. Historians of American experience with warfare have identified a pronounced tendency among Americans to racialize violence. Americans had done this throughout the 19th century, and continued the greater scope and ferocity after the United States began to undertake imperialists enterprises. Due to their training in Eurocentric warfare, Filipino revolutionary leaders were uncomfortable with guerrilla tactics but adopted them out of necessity. American military commanders in the Philippines, however, were slow to appreciate this. Because “race was at the core” of American imperial thinking, the American military generally believed that the use of guerrilla and unconventional tactics were by definition savage. Because they were beyond the pale of civilized warfare, American commanders felt no need to apply consistently or comprehensively the laws of the warfare to the Filipino people, resulting in a violent counterterrorist campaign that deliberately targeted civilian non-combatants and non-military property. This powerful racial thinking of political violence and terrorism extended into American political culture and shaped how Americans viewed foreign peoples and heightened fears as immigrants from around the world flooded into the United States.5 Each power prioritized the various manifestations of Irish terrorism differently. The most committed separatists and agrarians deliberately set aside conventional standards of warfare, and struck at the very nexus of the British Empire—the British Isles, London, and other major cities, commercial centers, and national symbols of English history and imperialism. Attacks on the metropole itself produced various reactions from British subjects. On one level, some considered it an existential threat to the Empire itself. Beginning with the Fenian incursions on the homeland, Irish terrorism entered into the public and official discussion throughout the United Kingdom. While at moments and over extended time, Irish terrorism captivated the British public, over the half century ending with the Anglo-Irish Treaty it was usually handled as a problem to be solved. Usually this entailed unequal doses of concessions and coercions that rarely satisfied Irish expectations. This was not simply a novel dilemma for British political culture and domestic society, but because of much of Irish political violence operated in a transatlantic context, it posed problems and opportunities for the United



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States. If situated within America’s own unconventional political violence (racial, labor or otherwise), Irish terrorism takes on additional meaning. Immediately following the Civil War, Americans demonstrated at times an almost cavalier indifference to the most violent forms of domestic terrorism. Southern white terrorism against the former slaves and their white collaborators, designed to deprive them of political enfranchisement and economic autonomy, met little resistance from state government and only half-measure from the Federal government. Only after five years of unrelenting racial violence in the former Confederacy did Congress finally pass the Force Acts (1870–1871) making it a federal crime “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone exercising their constitutionally protected civil rights. At best, this was a lukewarm response to guard the recently freed, yet still vulnerable African-American population because it did not provide needed enforcement mechanisms and the Supreme Court eventually overturned the most important protections offered by the Force Acts. Thus racial terrorism continued, becoming a salient feature of American society. American relations to terrorism were not uniform. Unlike Southern racial terrorism, labor terrorism usually elicited strong reactions from local, state, and national authorities. Sympathy for the plight of industrial workers did not translate into support for labor terrorism, and there was widespread support for the government’s measures, which ironically included terrorist acts, to restore law and order. From Reconstruction through the Progressive Era, local law-enforcement, state militias, and federal troops did indeed severely crack down on suspected labor, anarchistic, and communist terrorism against vital American economic infrastructure. Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, Americans were quick to associate domestic labor terrorism with foreign ideologies that were at variance with traditional American ideals of the corporate-capitalist ethos. The threat was perceived as so great that agents of the American state encouraged and were even complicit in the reactionary violence against groups deemed un-American by the Anglo-Saxon community. While Americans generally viewed terrorism negatively, at least by those who were not terrorists, its use of terrorism as a reactionary, restraining force was more palpable than the terrorism employed for revolutionary purposes. Irish nationalist and agrarian violence rarely intruded American legal domain; no nationalist bombs detonated in American cities and few actual politically inspired assassinations occurred. American citizens, institutions, or property typically escaped attacks, but Irish political violence certainly occurred in the United States—the 1889 Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin murder in Chicago from the internal fighting between the competing wings of the Clan-na-Gael, being a prime example. But besides funding, recruitment, and planning, and the occasionally announced threats, most Irish nationalist and agrarian violence was directed outward from American soil. Even the Fenian Canadian Raids in 1866 and 1870 involved virtually no hostilities



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within the United States or against American citizens. While the absence of direct American involvement might lead some to minimize the importance of Irish terrorism, given the volume of public discussion and attention, even the absence of bloodshed on American soil or against US citizens does not diminish its relevancy to the larger Atlantic community. Irish terrorism presented challenges and opportunities for the two Atlantic powers and paved the way to a more interactive Atlantic community. Irish terrorism transcended national boundaries and functioned as a vital component of the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community. By the early decades of the 20th century, Irish transnational terrorism had introduced new challenges for the two Atlantic powers. Irish nationalism, from its first emergence during the era of the French Revolution, was a complex process that did not exist exclusively within the United Kingdom and was not solely a British problem. For the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community, Irish terrorism contested fundamental principles to their vision of society. Nationalist and agrarian terrorism were a fundamental challenge to the credibility of British authority in Ireland, which the British had long argued was absolutely necessary for the welfare of the Irish people. Furthermore, Irish terrorism represented an imminent threat to the British Empire, which many English believed was the most civilizing agent in the world. The breakdown in law and order undermined British contentions that they were capable of credibly governing Ireland. While Crown ministries remained reluctant to concede that Ireland suffered from despotic rule, increasingly objective, dispassionate English observers found it difficult to deny that Irish political violence was a response to an ancient occupation. By the end of the conflict, even proponents of British hegemony feared that the protracted brutal violence committed by Crown forces undermined British credibility and eroded British sovereignty among the local peasantry. Irish terrorism, not being exclusively a nationalist program, was indeed a reaction against British imperialism. Historians still debate whether the British presence in Ireland constituted a legitimate colony or some hybrid form of imperialism. One student of this controversy described Ireland as existing in a “quasi-colonial condition” because it held a unique position in the Empire. Ireland was clearly beyond the metropole, yet it was not consigned to the extreme periphery, literally in proximity the British Isles or figuratively in cultural separateness, as were other colonies. The Irish, like the Welsh and the Scots, had seats in the Imperial Parliament in London and several Irishmen ascended to the premiership, while other imperial domains in Africa, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere were denied actual representation in the imperial legislature. Moreover, a number of Irish worked to integrate the Celtic island within the larger political, economic, and cultural domain of the United Kingdom, with some active agents for the British Empire. Yet in treatment and ethnic judgments, the British tended to denigrate the Irish peasantry, lumping them into the lot of lesser subjects, such



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as Indians, Afghans, and Egyptians. Religious and racial distinctions provided the English a convenient point of demarcation to explain the uncivil, non-progressive nature of their subjects. Due to the deficiencies of their non-British subjects, many Britons embraced the noblesse oblige to introduce Western modernization, such as constitutionalism, rule of law, sanctity of private property, and market economies. The Irish, and many Americans, dismissed this interpretation and tended to view British imperial rule as oppressive, attributing the social problems that excited terrorist activities to the presence of British occupiers. Placing Irish nationalism within the context of British imperialism helped both Irish and American commentators to explain the existence of terrorism in Ireland.6 If terrorism is essentially a political act, for its Irish practitioners, terrorism functioned as a violent rejection to the connection with Great Britain through the United Kingdom or the dominance of English political, economic, and cultural presence in Ireland. While Irish political violence stretched back for centuries, the 1800 Act of Union for many Irish nationalists represented the ultimate collapse of their autonomy and the subjugation of Gaelic culture to Anglo-Saxon occupation. Students of nationalism claim that national identity has been one of the most powerful political ideologies of the modern era.7 Using the Celtic experience to demonstrate the power of nationalist ideology, historian Victor Kiernan argues that: nationality, pride in ideas, feelings, memories, not shared by others, can live on unsupported by the state, and even in spite of efforts by state power to banish it.8 While Irish terrorists never monopolized, or completely co-opted the nationalist or home rule movements that emerged in Ireland during the 19th century, some members of the Catholic community in Ireland embraced terrorism as the only means to sustain Celtic nationalism, to advance their own political agenda among competing nationalist ideologies, and to achieve their nationalistic goals against the most powerful global imperial state. Certainly, not all of the violence in Ireland was inspired by nationalism, but even sectarian and agrarian manifestations were unmistakably political. Agrarian groups such as the Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, or Ribbonmen, although not advancing a purely nationalistic agenda, used violence, typically terroristic violence, to discredit the pro-English land system in Ireland and as rejection of the economic, legal, and political systems imposed by the English. Undoubtedly, historians will continue to debate the centrality of violence to Irish society and its national experience, but it is evident that terrorism to some degree contributed to eventual statehood. Irish substate actors and institutions, using unconventional yet expedient tactics, participated in the movement for home rule. It is arguable that terrorism significantly contributed to the transition of Irish nationalism from a sub-state



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political and social movement to attaining political status and assuming the functions of state governance. Irish terrorists certainly demonstrated the potential vitality of non-state actors even as hegemonic powers and institutional structures were centralizing their control over foreign peoples and eradicating cultural distinctions. Even as the debate on the relevance of violence to Irish nationalism and home rule movement, what is less doubtful is the interest and concern for Irish terrorism within the Atlantic community. Historian Brian Jenkins’ study of Fenian political violence within the context of British liberalism has admirably shown the importance of Irish terrorism within Victorian England. This study compliments Jenkins’ valuable work by situating Irish terrorism within a larger spatial and temporal context. It is evident that Irish terrorism was not simply limited to Irish or British societies but was indeed transatlantic, crossing national boundaries and oceans. A transnational historical approach is valuable for studying modern terrorism. Irish terrorists were potent non-state actors who profoundly interacted with and shaped the Atlantic community, and their impact had lasting implications for Anglo-American relations. Rarely did terrorists operate exclusively in a single nation-state. Americans were not only conscious of transnational terrorism, but were generally critical of its application. Although many Americans sympathized with and supported Irish independence, very few beyond the most fervent Irish-American nationalists countenanced terrorist tactics, even if for laudable goals. Encounters with Irish terrorism revealed fundamental transatlantic cultural values that extended beyond traditional national interests and created an environment for demonizing certain types of violence considered a threat to civil society. In the 19th century, the exchange of political and economic ideas across borders and continents resulted in shared attitudes and common difficulties. The fluidity of ideas and the movement of peoples included those willing to use non-conventional forms of political violence. Terrorists seized upon opportunities to exchange and interact with likeminded radicals in foreign lands. This study seeks to contribute to transnational studies by accentuating the textured nature of political violence and the capacity of non-state actors to impact domestic political culture in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and the interactions between the two Atlantic powers. This study also attempts to surface just some of the rich, fascinating, and voluminous discursive artifacts that speak to the widespread public concern about terrorism and to recognize that the public discussion transcended national borders, class, ethnicity, political persuasion, or religious devotion. Research for this study highlighted the importance of non-state actors in shaping British and American attitudes and demonstrated that perceptions of race, ethnicity, and class often informed and prejudiced American judgments. Irish terrorism provides a unique case study for evaluating American conceptions of nationalism and imperialism. In a society riddled by ethnic,



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racial, and cultural diversity, a strange flux of ideas and ideologies influenced conceptions about what it meant to be American. While the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture sought to impose its values and customs on the entirety of American society, predicated on civic values and a commitment to constitutional government, it was hardly successful in establishing a homogenous American identity. Irish terrorism offered Americans a convenient contrast and additional perspective for conceptualizing the nation-state, the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and the place of political violence in a civil society. American sympathies for Irish nationalism did not translate to widespread support for terrorism, and ultimately many Americans believed those who used terrorism were unfit for the responsibilities of governing. While it is unlikely that any satisfactory measure can gauge the relevancy of social ideals, norms, and customs to individual or group actions, the volume and sophistication of public discussion and official discourse suggests that ideology was meaningful for the Atlantic community and that certainly one of the most powerful ideologies within the Atlantic community was Anglo-Saxonism. While rarely the ultimate determinant of American foreign policy, Anglo-Saxonism operated as a powerful moral, intellectual, and ideological guide for how Americans perceived themselves as a people and a nation. The range of Anglo-Saxonism was sweeping, and despite some minor disparities, usually proponents of Anglo-Saxon culture apotheosized racial hierarchy, constitution government, capital-market economy, and Protestantism. These values shaped many Americans’ thoughts, behaviors, and ultimately policies toward others. Given the tremendous social diversity of the United States, Irish terrorism was not of great concern to many Americans and the historical record suggests that some ethnic, religious, and social groups in the United States rarely discussed the issue. Furthermore, it was hardly the case that American Anglo-Saxons, those who conscientiously subscribed to or unwittingly personified Anglo-Saxon ideals, were a homogenous, unanimous group. But the evidence does suggests that the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon community, while representing many different viewpoints and competing interests, as the primary agents of the dominant political and economic institutions and representative of cultural norms, left a voluminous historical record about Irish terrorism. This record offers valuable insight to how Irish terrorism impacted American society and American’s interactions with foreign peoples and states. The activities of Irish terrorists exposed the inadequacies of British political discourse, as well as ineffective jurisprudence and law enforcement practices, to address the struggles confronting the Catholic peasantry in Ireland. Despite rhetorical devotion to law and order and the use of harsh measures against some terrorists in the United States, Americans cautioned against the use of extra-constitutional devices, such as the suspension of habeas corpus, indefinite detention, and special courts. When these measures failed



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to restore calm, the British deployed Crown military forces. Finally, these terrorists, because they were operating in a transnational context, created numerous foreign relations challenges for the British, especially with the ascendant United States. Even after resolving the naturalization controversy in 1871, the British continued to confront active funding and recruitment campaigns from Irish-American compatriots committed to terrorism. The general ambivalence about these nationalist and agrarian activities in the United States remained a constant source of frustration for the British. Even after Americans demonstrated genuine concern about Irish terrorism and actively cooperated with British counterterrorism, Irish terrorists continued to operate in the United States and it remained a valuable source of arms and money. Even if it did not present a direct national security challenge, Irish terrorism called into question for some the viability of republicanism in the face of European-style imperial aggression. From their first observations and involvement in the long-simmering Anglo-Irish dispute, Americans generally considered events in Ireland as a crisis of empire. Although some attributed the violence to an ethno-racial predilection inherent in Gaelic Irish character, even among the most ardent American Anglo-Saxons, there was an awareness that British occupation of Ireland was riddled with inconsistencies and a dark legacy of injustice. When Americans discussed Irish political violence and the counterterrorist measures implemented by the Crown, an overriding concern was the perceived inability of the British to establish a credible government among the peasantry, the social discrimination experienced by the Catholic population, and the inequitable land distribution that favored minority Anglo landowners over the majority peasantry. The British Empire inflicted and was afflicted by political violence, both domestic social upheaval and colonial conflicts. Between the 1860s and 1920s the British Empire faced daunting challenges globally, specifically confronting colonial resistance in North Africa, Afghanistan, and India, and cultural cross-currents that pitted the metropole against the peripheries of the Empire. Anti-imperial nationalist agitation in Asia and Africa introduced new forms and actors of terrorism against the British, but these were distant, often accessible to the British only through public reports and journalistic coverage. Irish terrorism, however, hit the British close to home.9 Geopolitical strategic challenges from old rivals and new friendly competitors required a more vigorous British administration of Ireland. The issue was not simply an anti-imperialist attitude that completely rejected the right of the British Empire to govern Ireland, but one of accountability, the ignoring of legitimate Irish grievances and the absence of representative government. Irish terrorism, because of its proximity and presence at times in their midst, was more palpable for British subjects. But even among those Americans who continued to advise greater home rule for Ireland, an early predicate for formal decolonization, there was persistent empathy for the precarious



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situation confronting the British Empire. American Anglo-Saxons encouraged and supported British efforts to introduce Western institutions into underdeveloped regions. Notwithstanding the moral misgivings about intimidatory violence against civilian populations, many viewed Irish terrorism pragmatically, as a negative consequence of British imperialism. After having fought a guerrilla insurgence against Filipino nationalists for three years, which included insurgent violence directed against the civilian population and terrorist strikes against American forces, followed by counterterrorist operations by the US forces against Filipino guerrillas and civilians, Americans were sensitive to terrorism in a way not previously experienced. Irish nationalists in the United States drew parallels between the English occupation of Ireland and American subjugation of the Filipino people as a lessen in avoiding transnational, anti-imperial terrorism.10 After years of sanguinary fighting in Ireland, respected and persuasive Progressives in America warned against the perils of empire, linking the horrors of terrorism to the tyranny and injustice of imperialism. In spring 1921 the arch-Progressive Robert La Follette declared in a speech calling for recognition of an independent Irish Republic that “Ireland is to-day a test of real Americanism.” Inquiring about the “fundamental cause of this ‘reign of terror’ that prevails in Ireland,” the senior Senator from Wisconsin, summing up the progressive temperament so popular at the beginning of the 20th century, insisted that: It is the old struggle . . . the irrepressible, irreconcilable conflict between imperialism and representative democracy. Born of greed and tyranny, imperialism is the deadliest enemy of self-government.11 Irish nationalist activities had been a topic of numerous contested narratives, but La Follette’s explanation of conditions in Ireland rhetorically encapsulated one of the primary arguments made by American anti-imperialists. The presence of political violence resulted from an absence of representative government and a rejection of liberal governance. Yet La Follette’s brevity resulted from generations of Americans observing and interacting with various forms of Irish terrorism. While there was never unanimity within the United States or among Anglo-Saxons on either side of the Atlantic regarding Irish terrorism or British counterterrorism, a consensus eventually emerged, forged from a shared British and American repulsion to terrorism as a means of altering the international system. On a very basic level, beyond parochial political consequences in the United States, Irish terrorism never seriously jeopardized severance of Anglo-American relations and it is hardly remarkable that Irish terrorists failed to drag the two Atlantic powers into conflict, as nationalist had hoped for generations. Strains notwithstanding, the commonalities of the Atlantic powers (liberalism, constitutionalism, capitalist



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entrepreneurship, imperial ambitions) outweighed competing national interests roused by the Irish Question. During the 19th century, the massive influx of Irish immigrants to America provided fuel to Anglo-Saxon nativists’ derision and discrimination against the Gaelic newcomers. A crucial ingredient to American perceptions of terrorism, based upon the dominant Victorian values of the age, was the widespread assumption that the Irish were less civilized and predisposed to utilize methods of violence that were antithetical to American ideals and tradition. Irish nationalists naturally rejected this interpretation of Celtic culture. The Irish generally supported national liberation movements across the globe, usually as justification for their own national independence. But being conscious of racial comparisons made by Anglo-Saxons, the Irish took exception to accusations that they were on par with less civilized peoples because they used terrorism. Irish nationalists explained their use of terrorism resulted not from any biological predisposition or cultural inferiority, but because of generations of subjugation and the recognition that no other means provided the potential for national autonomy. But as Irish-American voters emerged in post-Civil War America as a vocal and influential voting bloc in many urban areas, politicians and public officials less frequently identified innate terrorist predilections among the Irish. The multi-interested, diverse, and highly competitive nature of American political culture required politicians in certain parts of the country to carefully consider and calculate possible reactions from their Irish constituents. In some cases, especially the problems of Irish-American political prisoners in the United Kingdom, the influence of the Irish on Congressmen and politicians, the State Department and Executive branch was apparent. While foreign policy officials were never completely insulated from these pressures, as the State Department evolved into a modern, professional bureaucracy, it became less susceptible to these influences and impulses. They increasingly recognized that Irish terrorism was unequivocally a result of the poor economic conditions of the island and oppressive English colonial administration. They not only carefully scrutinized the methods of Irish terrorism, but associated Irish violence with radical and anarchistic ideologies. Reflecting shared transatlantic Victorian values of acceptable forms of resistance, by the beginning of the 20th century, Americans collaborated with the British in conceptualizing terrorism as a threat to all liberal, democratic societies. Although Americans did not reserve criticism solely for the Irish, finding fault with British counterinsurgency efforts in Ireland, American national interests required coordinating counterterrorist arrangements with the British. Working closely with British officials, Americans worked to stigmatize Irish terrorist behavior and participated in an aggressive surveillance program that transcended national boundaries. Irish terrorists in the Atlantic community provided Americans a unique opportunity to discuss the challenges of anti-imperial terrorism just as Americans were embarking on their own imperial enterprises.



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Although certainly there was much disagreement on the causes, responsibilities, and potential remedies for the terror in Ireland, Anglo-Saxons articulated an opposition to groups or states that deviated from conventionally accepted modes of warfare, endangering civilian life and non-military property. Instead of allowing Irish nationalists to provoke war between the United States and the British Empire, Atlantic Anglo-Saxons launched a new level of cooperation; intelligence sharing and military consultation, law enforcement cooperation and laws criminalizing specific behavior, and improved extradition agreements. By the close of World War I the Americans had become increasingly attentive and concerned about the disruptive nature of terrorism upon society. American involvement in this transnational discussion concerning the causes and implications of Irish terrorism fashioned the intellectual antecedents for future American counterterrorism policies. For Americans, the challenges of Irish terrorism were different, but no less significant. The presence of Irish terrorism in the Atlantic community presented complex, often incongruent reaction from Americans. Unlike the British who attempted a coordinated response, the United States did not adopt a comprehensive policy. At best, Americans offered a collection of opinions from diversified voices, some of whose mattered more than others. Americans were far less harmonious than their British counterparts on either the nature or consequences of terrorism. As Irish terrorism was a topic of discussion within the public domain, not reserved exclusively to the corridors of the nation-state apparatus, it provided the arena for crafting American impressions of transnational terrorism. The Irish vote and financial contributions from Irish-Americans across the continent prompted prominent political figures to support nationalist aspirations and on select occasions public officials found cause to rationalize terrorist behavior. While most never overtly favored the use of terrorism, representatives advanced their constituents’ nationalistic ideology and explained Irish terrorists’ behavior by emphasizing a despotic image of the British Empire that required the most advanced guerrilla strategy available to eliminate its colonial rule in Ireland. Finally, the Anglo-Saxon community and others not emotionally invested in Irish national independence labeled nationalists and agrarians as terrorists as a means to discredit their cause. While certainly cognizant of the dire economic conditions and the illiberal politico-social order in Ireland, a powerful segment of American political culture eventually established the parameters for viewing revolutionary violence. They crafted an image of the Celtic terrorist based on an ideological predilection, infused by commitment to republican constitutionalism, an expansive capital market economy, and ethno-racial prejudice. American encounters with Irish terrorism shared much with the experience of their Atlantic neighbors, but as with Ireland and Great Britain’s own unique experience, Americans experienced unique encounters with Irish



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terrorism. Even with decades of interaction and observations, State Department officials and the American political elite failed to learn the lessons of colonial agitation that Irish terrorism provided. Despite a keen interest in the subject, for various reasons influential groups in Britain and Americans rejected real social reforms for Ireland but instead diligently labored to stigmatize and ultimately eliminate those groups who sought political change through revolutionary violence. Besides the careful observations and public commentary from prominent Americans, Irish terrorism entered into the naturalization controversy of the 1860s and 1870s, becoming entwined in Anglo-American dispute of the right to transfer allegiance. Americans typically welcomed citizenship for those willing to embrace their institutions and values, but found reprehensible nationalists’ exploitation of citizenship simply to wage a terrorist campaign on Britain, only to then demand protection from the US government. Nationalist and agrarian funding, recruitment, planning, and arms and explosives trafficking were sources of frustration for American officials, and an unwelcomed reality for many America citizens who were sympathetic and supported an independent Irish Republic. Finally, Irish terrorism posed a fundamental paradox for American sensibilities that were steeped in liberal traditions of republicanism and capitalism. While supportive of nationalist aspirations, they recognized the exigencies of British imperial security and in the post-Civil War rejected political movements that eschewed constitutional process for revolutionary violence. Irish terrorism not only created real Anglo-American tensions, but also provided the antecedents for future cooperation. Sympathies for Irish nationalism coincided with an American willingness to encourage greater Anglo-Saxon identity, as well as commonality in economic and strategic interests, in the Atlantic community and beyond. Even if American observers rationalized Irish terrorism, admitting a legacy of English injustice and oppression against the Irish, few excused it, because most people believed terrorism represented a fundamental collapse in the virtues of Anglo-Saxon culture and therefore a threat to Western civilization. While expressing sympathy for Irish nationalist aspirations, by the Progressive Era many Americans associated Irish terrorism with the various forms of domestic agitation and labor violence who were guilty of violating bedrock Anglo-Saxon values, including the stable social order under the rule of law, republicanism, constitutional participatory government, the sanctity of private property, and the protection of civilian non-combatant members of the society. By the time the Irish and the English agreed to a truce in late 1921, Americans had certainly awakened to the realities of terrorism as an instrument for effecting political change, especially among national-separatist dedicated to resisting colonial powers. Americans not only carefully scrutinized Irish terrorism but began actively collaborating with the British in conceptualizing the threat terrorism posed to liberal democratic, capitalist societies.



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The network of cells operating across the Atlantic contributed to a converging Anglo-American interest that sought to marginalize non-state actors during a crucial period of global nation-state realignment. The interactions and cooperation established between the American Republic and the British Empire established to confront Irish terrorism continued after the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1922). Although not formally party to the 1937 League of Nations Convention that proposed the first internationally agreed definition of terrorism, the United States worked with the Atlantic community to criminalize terrorism. Immediately after World War II, decolonization terrorism in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East increasingly became a security concern not simply for the United States but for the entire Atlantic community. As the American Republic emerged as a global hegemon in a bipolar international system (the Cold War), although Irish terrorism had receded in importance, the two Atlantic Anglo-Saxon powers formalized their counterterrorist policies. Through complimentary legal structures criminalizing terrorist behavior, more exacting extradition agreements, stronger economic sanctions against state-sponsors of terrorism, joint military responses, and pro-active preventative and disruptive programs, the United States and its Cold War allies formed more comprehensive counterterrorism strategies. Their mutual cooperation proved valuable in the engagement with communism during the Cold War.12 Among Anglo-Saxons there was a tendency to marginalize terrorists’ behavior by attributing it to socio-pathologies or biological underdevelopment. Typically, they failed to recognize that terrorism was a product of perceived grievances and extremists employed it when they concluded no other approach to achieving meaningful reform. This would not be the last time the American government or its people misjudged global terrorist conspiracies. During the Cold War, as the United States ratcheted up its aggressiveness toward the Soviet Union, policy-makers arrived at a consensus that transnational terrorism was exclusively a global communist conspiracy inspired and orchestrated by the Kremlin.13 These conclusions were largely misplaced, with the unfortunate consequence of not grasping that the real looming tower in the 1980s was not a communist conspiracy but a violently radicalized Islam.14 But even in the 1980s, this was hardly a novel reaction, as Americans from at least the 1860s had associated terrorism with communist and anarchist conspiracies in order to explain the behavior and to differentiate violent modes of political change from constitutional, participatory values of Anglo-Saxon tradition. In both time periods, Americans defined the true terrorists as the “other”, an un-American, those who abandoned the traditions and ideals of Anglo-Saxonism. This inclination continued through the remainder of the 20th century, even as terrorism generally receded among domestic political culture in subsequent decades. In the 1920s and 1930s the concern about the spread of communism included fears that subversives would use terroristic



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violence to orchestrate a political revolution from within the United States. While the potential of rogue, guerrilla dissident terrorism never completely vanished, the rise of totalitarianism in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and Spain introduced a novel challenge to the Atlantic community, where governments overtly imposed state-sanctioned terrorism on their populations to achieve power, to maintain governance, and to eliminate internal threats and undesirables. Throughout the entire era discussed here there were innumerable examples of Americans being less than diligent in disrupting Irish terrorist activities occurring within the jurisdiction of the United States. At times, the British interpreted American passivity as outright tolerance, much to the chagrin policy-makers at Westminster and Dublin Castle. Throughout the period the United States simply ignored or tacitly tolerated or ignored Irish terrorist activities on its soil and jurisdiction to a degree that perplexed and frustrated the British government. Based on one current criterion used by the Federal government and terrorist specialists to assess and catalogue state-sponsorship of transnational terrorism, American indifference if not open tolerance to Irish terrorism from 1865 to 1922 would likely require inclusion on its own list.15 While no known such list of state-sponsored terrorism existed in the 1920s, Americans’ casual ambivalence disturbed those in Britain who believed Irish terrorism represented an existential threat to established civil society. But given its political culture, industrial priorities and racial heritage, the reluctance of the United States to take a strong posture against Irish terrorism is hardly surprising. From the first reports of Fenian violence in the waning months of the Civil War, it is evident that Americans recognized the exceptional and extraordinary character of Irish violence and discussed it in language couched in unconventionality. Ultimately lingering animosities toward Great Britain, the urgency of other affairs, the political realities of large Irish populations in certain areas of the country, and the absence of a direct threat against American citizens and property delayed a coherent, comprehensive counterterrorism policy. Suspected alien radicals were subject to arrest and deportation and ordinary state and municipal law punished extralegal violence—this was deemed sufficient. The confidence in the existing arrangement, and the absence of overwhelming public response demanding stronger federal action, dissuaded American Anglo-Saxons from finalizing a comprehensive treaty and retarded efforts by some to codify a universally accepted legal definition. Between 1865 and 1922 American public discussion of transnational terrorism went through a variety of transitions, reflecting various currents. From the moment Fenian terrorism entered American domestic political culture, a considerable amount of public discussion asserted that strikes against civilian non-combatants using indiscriminate weapons violated the accepted international rules of warfare and were ultimately contrary to the purpose of civil society. Americans immediately acknowledged that this violence



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included a political component, designed to alter the imperial relationship and influence policy decisions. Coinciding with the United States’ pursuit of its own imperial aspirations at the beginning of the 20th century, the presence of Irish terrorism and British counterterrorism provided American statesmen invaluable examples of the complex, difficult relationship between an imperial power and its colonial subjects. American imperialists also learned from the British experience in Ireland. During the Populist and Progressive eras, officials in the State Department increasingly equated Irish terrorism to the radical communist ideology that emerged in Europe and the United States. Efforts to link terrorism to communist, anarchist, or nihilist ideologies were an essential ingredient to American identification and labeling of Irish terrorism as un-American. US government officials shared the conventional public belief that terrorism was contradictory and destructive to the traditional American ideological values of democracy, liberty, law and order, and the sanctity of private property within a capitalist economic system. As the American Republic embarked on a global pursuit to secure markets and to spread Anglo-Saxon civilization, Irish political violence against the British Empire provided Americans excellent opportunities to evaluate the challenges of hegemonic governance and imperial administration. American criticism of British imperialism in Ireland was not so much over its existence or necessity, but faulted the misapplication of policy. Political disenfranchisement, sectarianism, land proprietor absenteeism fostered a violent disposition among the Irish. Even as establishment terrorism against African Americans and radical labor activists was a defining feature of American society, American officials criticized the British government’s harsh counterterrorist tactics. Despite repeated British pleas of American duplicity, considering the labor and racial terrorism in the United States, many Americans concluded that excessive reprisals only served to perpetuate Irish terrorism rather than alleviating the conditions that fostered terrorism. Six decades after the Civil War American foreign officials remained reluctant to publicly or formally endorse the Crown Government’s reactionary militancy or to finalize a binding counterterrorism agreement. Interagency intelligence and criminal evidence sharing under Executive authority satisfied the security needs for the United States, so no legislative sanction was asked, accepted, or offered. A discernable consensus among post-Civil War American Anglo-Saxons galvanized into a generally agreed antipathy to unconventional, unacceptable modes of violence—despite previous misgivings and misunderstandings terrorism was not a legitimate form of political protest. Although the United States at no point defined or articulated a comprehensive counterterrorist policy before World War II, in the opening years of the Victorian age and continuing beyond the Progressive Era, Americans were active participants in an extended exchange about the presence of terrorism in the Atlantic community.



Conclusion

Notes

1. Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 48 Cong., 2nd sess. 24 January 1885, 981; United States Congress, Senate, S. 2578, 24 January 1885. 2. Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 (Ilford and Essex: F. Cass; Portland, OR: International Specialized Book Services, 1994); J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929–1949 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977); J. Bowyer Bell, The IRA, 1968–2000: Analysis of a Secret Army (London and Portland, OR: F. Cass, 2000); Martin Dillon, The Dirty War: Covert Strategies and Tactics Used in Political Conflicts (New York: Routledge, 1999). 3. Lawrence Howard, “Introduction,” in Terrorism: Roots, Impact, Responses, ed. Lawrence Howard (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1992), 1. 4. David Tucker, Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire: The United States and International Terrorism (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1997); Robert Kumamoto, International Terrorism and American Foreign Relations, 1945–1976 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999); Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2001); Brent Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1994); Christopher Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism, 1955–1998: An Historical Perspective on Terrorism and Related Fatalities,” Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 12, Spring 2000, 1–14; John Dugard, “International Terrorism: Problems of Definition,” International Affairs, vol. 50, January 1974, 67–81. 5. Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1983). 6. President Harry S. Truman’s address before a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, January to December 1947 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), 176–180. 7. James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 240; Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chapter 2; Dugard, “International Terrorism: Problems of Definition,” 70. 8. Charles A. Russell, Leon J. Banker, Jr., and Bowman H. Miller, “Out-Inventing Terrorists,” in Terrorism: Theory and Practice, ed. Yonah Alexander, David Carlton, and Paul Wilkinson (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 5–7; Kumamoto, International Terrorism and American Foreign Relations, 11–30, 69–95; Matthew Levitt, Targeting Terror: US Policy toward Middle Eastern State Sponsors and Terrorist Organizations, Post-September 11 (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002), 38, 76–83. 9. Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (orig., 1971; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). 266



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10. Richard Green, Death in the Market: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006); Jeffery A. Clymer, America’s Culture of Terrorism: Violence, Capitalism and the Written Word (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 3–6, 32–59; Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18–19. 11. Bernard K. Johnpoll, “Perspectives on Political Terrorism in the United States,” in International Terrorism: National, Regional, and Global Perspectives, ed. Yonah Alexander (New York, Washington, DC, and London: Praeger, 1976), 30–36; Randall B. Woods, “Terrorism in the Age of Roosevelt: The Miss Stone Affair, 1901–1902,” Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 31, 1979, 478–495; Russell D. Buhite, Lives at Risk: Hostages and Victims in American Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1995), 1–56. 12. Ernest May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 52–58; Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895–1914 (New York: Atheneum, 1968), 4–10; Edward P. Crapol, America for Americans: Economic Nationalism and Anglophobia in the Late Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 19–39; Charles S. Campbell, From Revolution to Rapprochement: The United States and Great Britain, 1783–1900 (New York and London: Wiley, 1974), 137–163; Charles S. Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865–1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 49. 13. Carl Frederick Wittke, The Irish in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956); William D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States: 1858–1886 (orig., 1947; New York: Russell & Russell, 1971), 367–407; Charles Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 1866–1922: An Old Story based upon New Data (New York: Devin-Adair Col., 1957), 105; Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890 (orig., 1966; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 19, 69–73; T. Desmond Williams, “The Irish Republican Brotherhood,” in Secret Societies in Ireland, ed. T. Desmond Williams (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973), 143–144; Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (Harlow and New York: Longman, 2000), 171–179, 192–195. 14. David M. Pletcher, The Awkward Years: American Foreign Relations under Garfield and Arthur (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1962), 235; Joseph P. O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 1880–1888 (orig., 1965; New York: Arno Press, 1976), 203–204, 269–283; Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the Late Victorian Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), xiv–xviii, 84–94. 15. Walter L. Hixson, The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); H.W. Brands, What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 16. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 182; Daniel Rodger, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998). 17. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order, 3–8, 27.



Notes

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18. Thomas Schoonover, Uncle Sam’s War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003); Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. and Thomas W. Zeiler, Globalization and the American Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 19. Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 12–16; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). 20. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 108; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Christine Kinealy, A Disunited Kingdom?: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1800–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 21. D.G. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (orig., 1982; London: Routledge, 1995); S. Cronin, Irish Nationalism: A History of Its Roots and Ideology (Dublin: Academy Press, 1980); Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972); Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (Basingstoke and Oxford: Macmillan, 2006). 22. Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), chapter 3; Michael L. Krenn, The Color of Empire: Race and American Foreign Relations (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006). 23. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 143; Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 38–40. 24. Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 1845–1851, ed. Margaret M. Mulrooney (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2003); Tim Pat Coogan, Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), especially chapters 4 and 7–9; Peadar Kirby, Ireland and Latin America: Links and Lessons (Dublin: Gill Macmillan, 1992); see also the open-access journal Irish Migration Studies in Latin America. 25. Hugh MacDongall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and AngloSaxons (Montreal: Harvest House; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982), chapter 5; Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), chapter 1. 26. Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 35–38; Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), chapter 4. 27. Stuart Anderson, Race and Rapprochement: Anglo-Saxonism and Anglo-American Relations, 1895–1904 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1981), see especially chapters 1–4; Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Paul A. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and the United States Empires, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History, vol. 88, no. 4, March 2002, 1315–1353. 28. Frank Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 5–11, 30. 29. David Rapoport, Assassination and Terrorism (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1971), 9–12; David Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” American Political Science Review, vol. 78, 1984,



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658–677; Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, “Zealots and Assassins,” in The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda, ed. Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007), 55–78; Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, “Manifestations of Terror Through the Ages,” in The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda, ed. Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007), 79–92. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977), 40, 49–54; Walter Laqueur, Terrorism (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1977), 219–226; Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 145–150; Martin A. Miller, “The Intellectual Origins of Modern Terrorism in Europe,” in Terrorism in Context, ed. Martha Crenshaw (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 28–29, 53–55, 62. Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (Springfield, MA: 1856, 1866, 1875, and 1892), 1139–1141; A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, ed. Sir James A.H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W.A. Craigie, and C.T. Onions (orig., 1888; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), vol. 9, pt. 2, 216; The New Century Dictionary of the English Language, based on matter selected from the original Century dictionary and entirely rewritten, with the addition of a great amount of new material, and containing the great mass of words and phrases in ordinary use, ed. H.G. Emery and K.G. Brewster (New York and London: Century, [c.1927]), vol. 3. Niall Whelehan, “Skirmishing, The Irish World, and Empire, 1876–86,” Éire-Ireland, vol. 42, Spring/Summer 2007, 180–200. Brian Jenkins, The Fenian Problem: Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858– 1874 (Montreal, Kingston, London and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008). Lindsay Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?”, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 16, Spring 2004, 154–181. Maurice Flory, “International Law: An Instrument to Combat Terrorism,” in Terrorism and International Law, ed. Rosalyn Higgins and Maurice Flory (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 30–38. Rosalyn Higgins, “The General International Law of Terrorism,” in Terrorism and International Law, ed. Rosalyn Higgins and Maurice Flory (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 15–16, 24–28. Adrien Guelke, The Age of Terrorism and the International Political System (London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1995), 16; Martha Crenshaw, “Thoughts on Relating Terrorism to Historical Contexts,” in Terrorism in Context, ed. Martha Crenshaw (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 3–24; Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice,” in Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, ed. Walter Reich (orig., 1990; Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 7–24; Peter Merkl, Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 362. Crenshaw, “Thoughts on Relating Terrorism to Historical Contexts,” 8–9; Brian M. Jenkins, “The Study of Terrorism: Definitional Problems,” RAND Corporation Report P-6563, December 1980, 1–3.



Notes

Notes

39. Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice,” 7–24; Crenshaw, “Thoughts on Relating Terrorism to Historical Contexts,” 8–9; Jenkins, “The Study of Terrorism: Definitional Problems,” 1–3; Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 14–15. 40. Tucker, Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire, 189. 41. Rom Harre, “The Social Construction of Terrorism,” in Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, ed. Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004), 91–102. 42. Peter C. Sederberg, Terrorist Myths: Illusion, Rhetoric and Reality (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 30–42; Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 43–44; Brian M. Jenkins, “The Study of Terrorism: Definitional Problems,” 6–7; Alex P. Schmid, Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1984), 119–152; Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Origins of Terrorism, 162–163. 43. Charles D. Ameringer, U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990), 63.

1 Fenian Terrorism Confronts the Atlantic Community, 1865–1870 1. Glyndon G. van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 412–415; John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 240–244; William Seward to John Bigelow, 15 July 1862, in John Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life, 5 vols. (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1909–1913), 2, 547–548. 2. Michael Kaufmann, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), 24, 36–37, 235–237, and Thomas Goodrich, The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), chapter 14. 3. J.W. Morse to William Seward, 5 May 1865, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consuls, London, England, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 35 (microfilm reel 35) [henceforth, Consular Despatches, London]. 4. J.W. Morse to William Hunter, 12 and 13 May 1865 and 2, 9, and 16 June 1865, Consular Despatches, London, vol. 35 (microfilm reel 35) [emphasis in original]; J.W. Morse to William Seward, 20 May 1865, Consular Despatches, London, vol. 35 (microfilm reel 35). 5. Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1987), chapter 10; Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Sean Michael O’Brien, Mountain Partisans: Guerrilla Warfare in the Southern Appalachians, 1861–1865 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999); Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999). 6. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), 5, and especially chapter 2 and Conclusion.



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Notes

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17. R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848–1882 (Dublin: Wolfhound Press; Atlantic Highland, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985), 211. 18. Owen McGee, The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), 13–37, 268, 328–329; M.J. Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882–1916 (Dublin: The Boydell Press, 2006), 6–11, 239. 19. Michael Hanagan, “Irish Transnational Social Movements, Migrants, and the State System,” in Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements, ed. Jackie G. Smith and Hank Johnston (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 53–73. 20. English, Irish Freedom, 81–97, 111, 121–140, 169–170. 21. Laqueur, Terrorism, 219–226; Sederberg, Terrorist Myths, 55. 22. McGee, The IRB, 33; Michael Doorley, Irish-American Diaspora Nationalism: The Friends of Irish Freedom, 1916–1935 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), 14–16. 23. F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971); Kee, The Green Flag; Williams, “The Irish Republican Brotherhood,” 143–144; Ò Broin, Revolutionary Underground: The Story of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1858–1924 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1976). 24. Seán McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 1848–1922: Theaters of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 118, note 20; Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 160; Maureen Hartigan, Alan O’Day and Roland Quinault, “Irish Terrorism in Britain: A Comparison Between the Activities of the Fenians in the 1860s and Those of Republican Groups since 1972,” in Ireland’s Terrorist Dilemma, ed. Yonah Alexander and Alan O’Day (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), 49–60. 25. Donald C. Richter, Riotous Victorians (Athens, OH and London: Ohio University Press, 1981), chapter 2. 26. Brian Jenkins, Irish Nationalism and the British State: From Repeal to Revolutionary Nationalism (Montreal, Kingston, London and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006) and The Fenian Problem: Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858–1874 (Montreal, Kingston, London and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008). 27. D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States; Charles Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 1866–1922: An Old Story based upon New Data (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1957); Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870– 1890 (orig., 1966; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980); Brian Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969); Leon Ó Broin, Fenian Fever: An Anglo-American Dilemma (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971), 1; E.R.R. Green, “The Fenians Abroad,” in Secret Societies in Ireland, ed. T. Desmond Williams, 79–89; W.S. Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975); Terry Golway, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998); Kenny, The American Irish: A History; Alan O’Day, “Irish Nationalism and American Relations in the Later Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Anglo-American Attitudes: From Revolution to Partnership, ed. Fred M. Leventhal and Roland Quinault (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 174–185. 28. McGee, The IRB, 17–19, 30–31. 29. The Fenian’s Progress: A Vision (New York: John Bradburn, 1865), x, 48–51; D.G. Bodkin, The Fenian Catechism (New York, 1867), 11; George Francis Train,



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Notes

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44. D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 129–132, 176, and chapter 6; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 38–40; Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 22–33, 70–99; Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction, 23–73, 113, 128, 151, 170–184, 210–212; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 30–33; 55–61, 71–72; Comerford, Fenians in Context, 172–173; Rafferty, The Church, the State, and the Fenian Threat, 39–47, 75–76, 85–88. 45. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, chapter 4. 46. R.N. Matheson to William B. West, 3 July 1866, FO 5/1339, 84–86 (microfilm reel 4); Sir Thomas Larcom to William B. West, 27 July 1866, FO 5/1339, 171 (microfilm reel 4). 47. United States Congress, Congressional Globe (Washington, DC: Blair & Rivers, 1866), 39 Cong., 1 sess. (4 and 11 June 1866 and 23 July 1866), 2946, 3085–3086, 4047; United States Congress, House of Representatives, 39 Cong., 1 sess., House Executive Doc. 139, 39–40; United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., House Miscellaneous Doc. 46, 40–41. 48. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 149. 49. William B. West to William Seward, 20 January 1866, United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 2, 32; William Seward to William B. West, 10 March 1866, United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 2, 43; Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 22 September 1865, no. 1054, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Ministers to Great Britain, 1791–1906 [microform] vol. 90 (microfilm reel 86) [henceforth, Diplomatic Despatches]; Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 22 February 1866, no. 1158, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 91 (microfilm reel 87); John Young to William Seward, 21 February 1866, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consuls, Belfast, Ireland, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 4 (microfilm reel 4) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, Belfast]. 50. William B. West to William Hunter, 27 May 1865, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consuls, Dublin, Ireland [microform], vol. 4 (microfilm reel 4) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, Dublin]; William B. West to William Seward, 16 September 1865, United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 2, 1; E.G. Eastman to William Seward, 30 September 1865, Consul Despatches, Dublin; William B. West to William Seward, 14 October 1865, United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 2, 14. E.G. Eastman to William Seward, 25 February 1866, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consuls, Cork, Ireland, 1790– 1906 [microform], vol. 6 (microfilm reel 6) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, Cork]; E.G. Eastman to William Seward, 7 March 1867, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 6 (microfilm reel 6). 51. Pierrepont Edwards to Stanley, 22 November 1866, no. 107, FO 5/1340, 159–162 (microfilm reel 5); G.H. Heap to William Seward, 5 December 1866, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Consular Despatches, Belfast, vol. 4 (microfilm reel 4); New York Times, 30 December 1866; New York Tribune, 18 December 1867; Chicago Tribune, 13 January 1867.



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52. “The United States and the Fenians,” The Nation, vol. 2, no. 57, 15 June 1866, 760; “The Fenian Sop,” The Nation, vol. 3, no. 66, 4 October 1866, 270–271 53. D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 318; Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America, 70–72; Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction, 128, 151. 54. E.G. Eastman to William Seward, 24 November 1866; 9 March 1867; 14 March 1867, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 6 (microfilm reel 6); House of Representatives, Executive Documents, no. 157, part 2, 65–68. 55. “Fenianism and the Irish Government,” London Review, vol. 14, no. 340, 5 January 1867, 6–7. 56. The Irish-American, vol. 19, no. 13, 30 March 1867, 2. 57. F.J. Cridland to Stanley, 14 March 1867, no. 12, FO 5/1341, 176–177 (microfilm reel 5); Pierrepont Edwards to Lord Stanley, 6 November 1866, no. 104, FO 5/1340, 93–104 (microfilm reel 5). 58. John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (orig., 1929; Shannon: Irish University Press, 1969), 114; H.B.C. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland: Their Rise and Progress (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1922), 62. 59. Kee, The Green Flag, 330–332; Patrick Quinlivan and Paul Rose, The Fenians in England, 1865–1872: A Sense of Insecurity (London: J. Calder; New York: Riverrun Press, 1982), 16–18. 60. Pierrepont Edwards to Stanley, 30 November 1866, no. 110, FO 5/1340, 237–239 (microfilm reel 5); Thomas Kelly to Gen. [F.F. Millan], 12 July 1867, Papers of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Malony Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 4, folder 60, New York Public Library [emphasis in original]. 61. The Times, 14 November 1867. 62. Anderson, Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement, 73, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; Manchester Guardian, 20 and 21 September 1867; The Times, 20 September 1867; “The English Panic,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2049, 5 October 1867, 1107–1108. 63. “Fenianism in American,” The London Review, vol. 15, no. 379, 5 October 1867, 372–373; The Economist, vol. 25, 12 October 1867, 1156–1157; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 3–7. 64. “The Fenians at Chester,” The London Review, vol. 14 no. 346, 16 February 1867, 191–192; Pall Mall Gazette, 1, 3 and 5 October and 2 November 1867. 65. “The Fenian Mosquito,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2047, 21 September 1867, 1048; “The English Panic,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2049, 5 October 1867, 1107–1108; “The Manchester Fenians,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2054, 9 November 1867, 1248–1249; “The Fenian Dreamers,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2056, 23 November 1867, 1316–1317. 66. Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 217–219; Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 148–150; Quinlivan and Rose, The Fenians in England, 43–61; Rafferty, The Church, the State, and the Fenian Threat, 100–103. 67. “British Press on Fenianism,” Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 2, 26 October 1867, 3; “The Secret of the Panic—English Fenians,” Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 3, 2 November 1867, 3; Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 4, 9 November 1867, 2–3; “The Fenian Craze in England,” Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 5, 16 November 1867, 3.



Notes

Notes

68. The Irish-American, vol. 19, no. 41, 12 October 1867, 2; The Irish-American, vol. 19, no. 42, 19 October 1867, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 19, no. 43, 26 October 1867, 2. 69. Chicago Tribune, 5, 14, and 20 October 1867; New York Times, 25 and 26 December 1867; New York World, 20, 21, and 24 September 1867. 70. New York Observer, vol. 45, no. 49, 5 December 1867, 390. 71. New York Times, 11 February 1866. 72. Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 1 sess. (27 March 1867), 392–394; 73. Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 21 September 1867, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1867–1868 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1868), part 1, 145 [hereafter FRUS]. 74. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 21 November 1867, no. 2096, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, Great Britain [microform], vol. 21 (microfilm reel 80) [henceforth, Diplomatic Instructions]; William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 13 January 1868, no. 2119, FRUS (1868), part 1, 142. 75. Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 265–267. 76. Norman McCord, “The Fenians and Public Opinion in Great Britain.” in Fenians and Fenianism, ed. Maurice Harmon (orig., 1968; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 40–55; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 36–37; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 136–138. 77. Jenkins, The Fenian Problem, 148–149. 78. Virginia Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 3–5, and chapter 3. 79. The Times, 14, 16, 18 and 21 December 1867 and 8 January 1868; Pall Mall Gazette, 14 December 1867; The Daily Telegraph, 16 and 24 December 1867; Manchester Guardian, 14 and 18 December 1867; The Economist, vol. 25, 28 December 1867, 1470; “What shall we do for Ireland?” The Quarterly Review, vol. 124, no. 247, January 1868, 254–286. 80. The Daily Telegraph, 17 December 1867. 81. “The Fenian Outrage,” The London Review, vol. 15, 390, 21 December 1867, 650–651; “Crime in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 41, no. 2094, 15 August 1868, 956–957; “The Fenian Outrage,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2060, 21 December 1867, 1440–1441. 82. Cyrus Redding, “Death Punishment—Fenian Assassinations,” The New Monthly Magazine, vol. 142, no. 565 January 1868, 107–116; Cyrus Redding, “Fenian Conspiracies,” The New Monthly Magazine, vol. 142, no. 566, February 1868, 208–218. 83. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 84. “The Fenian Outrage,” The London Review, vol. 15, 390, 21 December 1867, 650–651; “The Fenian Outrage,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2060, 21 December 1867, 1440–1441; The Economist, vol. 25, 28 December 1867, 1470. 85. Eugenio F. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter 1; Gladstone quote on page 40. 86. Tom Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders: Conflict, Compromise and Tragedy in Ireland, 1879–1882 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968), 75; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 224–273; Quinlivan and Rose, The Fenians in England, 95–103, 142, 161–167; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 212–216, 242.



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87. Richter, Riotous Victorians, chapter 1 and 167–169. 88. Lord Derby report to Queen, 19 December 1867, Cabinet Reports by Prime Ministers to the Crown, 1837–1867, D22/92, microfilm reel 5; Queen Victoria quote in Richter, Riotous Victorians, 32. 89. J.A. Froude, “Ireland,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 8, no. 43, September 1880, 341–369. 90. Goldwin Smith, Irish History and the Irish Question (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905), 196; Anderson, Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement, 75–80, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 91. Karl Kautsky, Ireland (orig., 1922; Belfast: British and Irish Communist Organization, 1974), 8–9. 92. William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, “Why is Ireland Discontented? A Letter to John Bright, Esq., MP” (Dublin: John Mullany, 1866), 2–13, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, Ireland Since the Union, A Letter (Dublin: John Mullay, 1866) in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 93. Quinlivan and Rose, The Fenians in England, 169–170; John Newsinger, Fenianism in Mid-Victorian Britain (London and Boulder, CO: Pluto Press, 1994), 64–68. 94. J. Herbert Stack, “The New Irish Difficulty,” Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 13, April 1866, 506–519; Punch, 12 October 1867; The Times, 15 November 1867. 95. “The Insurrection in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2019, 9 March 1867, 260–261; “The Fenian Outrage,” The Spectator, vol. 40, no. 2060, 21 December 1867, 1440–1441; The Daily Telegraph, 31 December 1867; “What shall we do for Ireland?” The Quarterly Review, vol. 124, no. 247, January 1868, 254–286. 96. Karl Marx to Frederick Engels, 14 December 1867 and Engels to Marx, 19 December 1867, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, ed. R. Dixon (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), 159; Kautsky, Ireland, 8–9. 97. Engels to Marx, 19 December 1867, in Ireland and the Irish Question, 159; Kautsky, Ireland, 8–9. 98. William J. O’Neill Daunt, Ireland and Her Agitators, 2nd edition (Dublin: John Mullany; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867), 242–247, O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 99. The Times, 21 September 1867; Pall Mall Gazette, 10 and 14 December 1867; The Daily Telegraph, 16 December 1867; J. Herbert Stack, “The New Irish Difficulty,” Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 13, April 1866, 506–519; Cyrus Redding, “Death Punishment—Fenian Assassinations,” The New Monthly Magazine, vol. 142, no. 565, January 1868, 107–116; “Modern Notions of Government: The Irish Question,” Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 89, 1868, 344–380; “The Irish Abroad,” The Edinburgh Review, vol. 127, no. 260, April 1868, 502–537. 100. M. Hobart Seymour, “The Difficulty of Ireland,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 5, March–August 1867, 502–512. 101. Richard Pigott, “Irish Murder-Societies,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 43, April 1883, 583–591. 102. Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 13, 11 January 1868, 3. 103. An American to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Capt. McClure, Col. Bourke and Other Irish Exiles, 8 February 1871, Devoy’s Post Bag, 1871–1928, ed. W. O’Brien and D. Ryan, 2 vols (Dublin: Fallow, 1948–1953), vol. 1, 29–30; New York Herald, 1 and 2 January 1868; Chicago Tribune, 4 January 1868.



Notes

Notes

104. New York Times, 1 January 1868, 5; John O’Neill, Address of General John O’Neill, President of Fenian Brotherhood, to the Officials and Members of the Fenian Brotherhood on the State of the Organization and its Attempted Disruption (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1868), 9–10. 105. O’Neill, Address of General John O’Neill, President of Fenian Brotherhood, to the Officials and Members of the Fenian Brotherhood on the State of the Organization and its Attempted Disruption, 9–10. 106. “Hungry for Blood,” Irish Citizen, vol. 1, no. 12, 4 January 1868, 4. 107. The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 1, 4 January 1868, 1–2; The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 2, 11 January 1868, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 3, 18 January 1868, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 21, no. 38, 18 September 1869, 3. 108. The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 1, 4 January 1868, 1–2; The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 2, 11 January 1868, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 20, no. 3, 18 January 1868, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 21, no. 38, 18 September 1869, 3. 109. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa to John Devoy, 30 March 1874, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 68; Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 244–250. 110. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 107; Rafferty, The Church, the State, and the Fenian Threat, 111, 149–155. 111. An American Fenian, “Ireland for the Irish,” Tinsley’s Magazine, vol. 1, no. 5, December 1867, 607–616. 112. Frances Power Cobbe, “Ireland for the Irish.” Tinsley’s Magazine, vol. 2, no. 1, February 1868, 39–49; Frances Power Cobb, “The Fenian ‘Idea’,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 17, no. 5, May 1866, 572–576; An American Fenian, “The Irish Conspiracy,” Tinsley’s Magazine, vol. 2, no. 2, March 1868, 142–148. 113. New York Times, 16 February 1868; Pall Mall Gazette, 16 December 1867. 114. Jonathan Hearn, Rethinking Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), chapters 2–5. 115. Chicago Tribune, 15 December 1867; New York Herald, 29 December 1867; New York Tribune, 18 December 1867; New York Times, 4 and 7 January 1868, 16 and 29 February 1868, 13 May 1868, 16 and 18 August, and 8 October 1868; New York World, 14 December 1867; The Nation, 19 and 26 December 1867 and 2 January 1868. 116. New York Times, 29 December 1867 and 30 December 1867. 117. Chicago Tribune, 13 July and 25 October 1867 and 9 January 1868. 118. New York Times, 28 and 29 December 1867. 119. London Times, 24 December 1867; New York Times, 28, 29 and 30 December 1867 and 18 January 1868; Chicago Tribune, 19 December 1867; Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 8 January 1868, FRUS, 1868, part 1, 134; William B. West to Hamilton Fish, 28 April 1869, Consular Despatches, Dublin, vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7). 120. New York Times, 17 January 1868. 121. New York Times, 13 May and 8 October 1868. 122. Harper’s Weekly, 4 January 1868; New York Tribune, 16, 17 and 18 December 1867; New York Herald, 27 December 1867; New York Times, 30 December 1867, 7 January, 16 and 29 February 1868; Chicago Tribune, 15 and 17 December 1867; Brooklyn Eagle, 14 December 1867; New York World, 17 and 28 December 1867, and 21 January 1868; The Nation, 19 and 26 December 1867, and 2 January 1868; New York Evening Post, 5 January 1868, and 6 January 1868. 123. Lord Clarendon to Thornton, 9 October 1869, American Material in the Clarendon Papers, Part III: 1868–1870, Out-letters MS C476 [1865–1866] (microfilm reel 14).



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124. United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 1, 301–302. 125. United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Report no. 13, “Rights of American Citizens,” 5; Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 2 sess., pt. 1, 27 January 1868, 783. 126. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 9 December 1867, no. 2106, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 21 (microfilm reel 80). 127. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 30 August 1867, no. 2049, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 21 (microfilm reel 80); William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 3 October 1867, no. 2069, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 21 (microfilm reel 80); William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 13 January 1868, no. 2119, FRUS (1868), part 1, 142. 128. E.G. Eastman to William Seward, 28 April 1868, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 6 (microfilm reel 6). 129. Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 14 December 1867, no. 1495, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 95 (reel 91); Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 24 December 1867, no. 1502, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 95 (reel 91); United States Congress, House of Representatives, 40 Cong., 2 sess., House Executive Doc. 157, pt. 1, 294–295. 130. Edward Thornton to Stanley, 16 March 1868, no. 56, FO 5/1343, 243–248 (microfilm reel 7); Edward Thornton to Stanley, 23 March 1868, no. 71, FO 5/1343, 264–270 (microfilm 7). 131. Edward Thornton to Lord Clarendon, 7 February 1870, no. 56 (private), American Material in the Clarendon Papers, Part III: 1868–1870, In-letters MS C481 [1868–1870] (microfilm reel 14). 132. “Fenian Movements,” The London Review, vol. 16, no. 392, 4 January 1868, 2–3. 133. Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 38; Ó Broin, Fenian Fever, 222–223; Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 159. 134. Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 67–69; McGee, The IRB, 95. 135. New York Times, 24 December 1865. 136. New York Times, 16 June 1866. 137. Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 2 sess., pt. 2, 27 February 1868, 1484; Chicago Tribune, 4 March 1868. 138. Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 29 November 1867, no. 1485, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 90 (microfilm reel 94); James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 2 June 1870, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 103 (microfilm reel 99); D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 360. 139. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 257; Peter Alter, “Traditions of Violence in the Irish Nationalist Movement,” in Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, in association with Berg Publishers Ltd. for the German Historical Institute, 1982), 137–154.

2 Agrarian Terrorism Confounds the Atlantic Community, 1870–1882 1. Blum, Reforging the White Republic, 3–19, 90–91, 108, 118–126, and chapters 5 and 7; Snay, Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites. 2. Maureen Wall, “The Whiteboys,” in Secret Societies in Ireland, ed. T. Desmond Williams (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973),



Notes

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

Notes 13–25; Joseph Lee, “The Ribbonmen,” in Secret Societies in Ireland, 26–35; The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923, ed. D.G. Boyce (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988), 4; S.J. Connolly, “Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Colony or ancien régime?” in The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy, ed. D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Routledge, 1996), 20–23. Michael Beames, Peasants and Power: The Whiteboy Movements and Their Control in Pre-Famine Ireland (Sussex: Harvester Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 42–153. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 31–32, quote on pages 420–421. Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 132–133. English, Irish Freedom, 202–209. David Thornely, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (orig., 1964; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976); F.S.L. Lyons, The Fall of Parnell: 1890–1891 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964); F.S.L. Lyons, Charles Steward Parnell (New YorK: Oxford University Press, 1977). W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish Life (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868), 185–188, 361–362, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846–82, 565; McGee, The IRB, 66–67. Kenny, “Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction,” 1–25; Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 14–24, 47–48. J. Herbert Stack, “The New Irish Difficulty,” Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 13, April 1866, 506–519. “The Secret of the Irish Crisis,” The Spectator, vol. 42, no. 2162, 4 December 1869, 1418–1419; “Agrarian Outrage in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 43, no. 2175, 5 March 1870, 294–295; “The Repression of Crime in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 43, no. 2177, 19 March 1870, 364–365. Spencer quote in Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 123. Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, see especially chapter 4. Strathnairn quote in Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 119. Charles S. Roundell, “Agrarianism,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 9, no. 53, 1 May 1871, 580–594. L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880–1892 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), viii; Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, 136, 156; McConville, Irish Political Offenders, 1848–1922, 238–240; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 62. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (London: T.C. Hansard, 1870), 20 H.C. Deb. 3rd Series, vol. 200, 17 March 1870, 86–94; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 21 H.C. Deb. 3rd series, 2 March 1871, 2 March 1871, vol. 204, 1173, 1176, 1187, 1194. I.S. Leadam, Coercive Measures in Ireland, 1830–1880 (London: The National Press Agency, 1880), 29, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. The Irish-American, vol. 21, no. 20, 15 May 1869, 1; The Irish-American, vol. 22, no. 9, 26 February 1870, 4; The Irish-American, vol. 22, no. 23, 4 June 1870, 6.



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21. “Murders in Ireland,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 84, 22 May 1869, 251; “Irish Agrarianism,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 87, 12 June 1869, 276; “The Cable Canards,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 89, 26 June 1869, 292. 22. “Land Question in Ireland,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 103, 2 October 1869, 372. 23. “The Cable Canards,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 89, 26 June 1869, 292. 24. New York Times, 16 and 18 August 1868; The Nation, 20 May 1869, 390. 25. New York Times, 12 May 1869. 26. New York Times, 3 December 1869. 27. William B. West to Hamilton Fish, 8 May 1869, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consul, Dublin, Ireland, 1790–1906 [microform] vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7) [hereafter Consular Despatches, Dublin]; Benjamin Moran to Hamilton Fish, 15 May 1869, no. 170, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Ministers, London, England, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 98 (microfilm reel 94) [hereafter Diplomatic Despatches]; James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, no. 240, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 101 (microfilm reel 97); D.B.E. to John C. Bancroft Davis, 13 January 1871, Papers of John C. Bancroft Davis, Library of Congress. 28. Eric Foner, “Class, Ethnicity and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish-America,” in Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War, ed. Eric Foner (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 150–200; Michael A. Gordon, The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 9–15, 24–25, 188–220. 29. New York Times, 11 July 1871, 1, 4. 30. Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18–19. 31. Green, Death in the Market. 32. James McParlan to Allan Pinkerton, 10 October 1873, Papers of the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agencies, Library of Congress; Argument of Franklin B Gowen, Esq., Consul for the Commonwealth, in the case of the Commonwealth vs. Thomas Munley; indicted in the court of oyer and terminer of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, for the murder of Thomas Sanger, a mining boss, at Raven Run, on September 1, 1875 (Pottsville, PA: Chronicle Book and Job Rooms, 1876), Papers of the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agencies, Library of Congress. 33. Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, 11 December 1875; Springfield Daily Union, 17 March 1877; New York Herald, 27 November 1888; New York World, 16 December 1889; St. Paul Dispatch, 23 May 1905; Reading [PA] Eagle, 26 April 1936; Philadelphia Record, 11 June 1936; New York Journal, 22 June 1936; Detroit Times, 22 June 1936; Allan Pinkerton, The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1877); Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., The Molly Maguires (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 323. 34. New York Times, 27 December 1869. 35. New York Times, 19 April 1870. 36. The Nation, 20 May 1869, 387; The Nation, 4 November 1869, 379. 37. William B. West to Hamilton Fish, 8 May 1869, Consular Despatches, Dublin, vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7); Benjamin Moran to Hamilton Fish, 15 May 1869, no. 170, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 98 (microfilm reel 94). 38. James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, no. 240, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 101 (microfilm reel 97).



Notes

Notes

39. James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, no. 240, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 101 (microfilm reel 97); see also, Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 12 March 1880, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consul, Cork, Ireland, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, Cork]; Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 16 February 1881, ibid., vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8); James R. Lowell to William M. Evarts, 13 November 1880, no. 87, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 141 (microfilm reel 137); James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138). 40. The Nation, 3 June 1869, 427. 41. James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 101 (reel 97); New York Times, 19 April 1870. 42. William Edward Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 141. 43. Hamilton Fish to John Lothrop Motley, 10 August 1869, no. 41, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, Great Britain [microform], vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85) [hereafter, Diplomatic Instructions]. 44. English, Irish Freedom, 222. 45. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 36, 108–118, 158–166; Crenshaw, “Thoughts on Relating Terrorism to Historical Contexts,” 4. 46. Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 48–56. 47. William E. Forster Memorandum, 27 December 1880, CAB 37/4, no. 94; William E. Forster Memorandum, 9 October 1881, CAB 37/5, no. 22. 48. David N. Haire, “In Aid of the Civil Power, 1868–1890,” in Ireland under the Union: Varieties of Tension: Essays in Honour of T.W. Moody, ed. F.S.L. Lyons and R.A.J. Hawkins (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1980), 127–135. 49. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906, 166–167; Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 131–132. 50. Philip H. Bagenal, The Irish Agitator in Parliament and on the Platform: A Complete History of Irish Politics for the Year 1879 (Dublin: Hodges, Foster, and Figgis, 1880), 73, 87. 51. “The New Agrarian Movement in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 52, 14 June 1879, 746–747; “The New Temper of the Irishmen,” The Spectator, vol. 55, 4 March 1882, 287–288; Edward D.J. Wilson, “The Present Anarchy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 9, no. 47, January 1881, 37–52; “The Immediate Need in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1943, 20 November 1880, 1351–1352; Edward D.J. Wilson, “The Present Anarchy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 9, no. 47, January 1881, 37–52; I.S. Leadam, “Substitute for Trial by Jury in Ireland,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 31, no. 185, 1 May 1882, 547–563. 52. “Coercion for Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 53, 9 October 1880, 1273–1274; “Law in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 53, 11 December 1880, 1580; “The Irish Crisis,” The Spectator, vol. 53, 18 December 1880, 1612–1613; “The Resources of the Law in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1939, 23 October 1880, 1230–1231; “Law and Coercion in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1940, 30 October 1880, 1262–1263; “The Jury System in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 39, no. 1987, 24 September 1881, 1183–1184; “The Immediate Need in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1943, 20 November 1880, 1351–1352;



282

53. 54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

68.

283

“Ireland and the Government,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1944, 27 November 1880, 1382–1383; “Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 39, no. 1998, 10 December 1881, 1518–1519; “Ireland and the Law,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1946, 11 December 1880, 1446–1447; “The State of Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 38, no. 1947, 18 December 1880, 1478–1479; “The General Situation in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2019, 6 May 1881, 530–531. Bernard Henry Becker, Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written during the winter of 1880–1881 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), 274. William O’Connor Morris, “Irish Land Act and Land System,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 45, February 1884, 175–189; William O’Connor Morris, Ireland, 1798–1898 (London: A.D. Innes, 1898), 255. Lord Grey, “Ireland,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 11, no. 64, June 1882, 977–1012. J.A. Froude, “Ireland,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 8, no. 43, September 1880, 341–369; Edward D.J. Wilson, “The Present Anarchy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 9, no. 47, January 1881, 37–52; I.S. Leadam, “Substitute for Trial by Jury in Ireland,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 31, no. 185, 1 May 1882, 547–563; Goldwin Smith, “Parliament and the Rebellion in Ireland,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 41, May 1882, 890–896. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 15 March 1880, House of Lords, vol. 251, 965–972; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Lords, 12 July 1880, vol. 255, 148–150. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 27 February 1880, House of Lords, vol. 250, 1557–1558; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 15 March 1880, House of Lords, vol. 251, 965–966; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 23 May 1881, House of Lords, vol. 261, 1040–1045. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 30 May 1881, House of Commons, vol. 261, 1678. William E. Forster Memorandum, 10 May 1880, Great Britain, Parliament, Cabinet Papers, Public Records Office, 37/2, no. 23 [hereafter, CAB]; Viscount Emly to William E. Forster, 3 November 1880, CAB 37/3, no. 68; William E. Forster Memorandum, 15 November 1880, CAB 37/4, no. 71; Lord Cowper Memorandum, 8 November 1880, CAB 37/3, no. 67. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 20 May 1882, House of Commons, vol. 267, 1273. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 112. Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 75, 108–109, 132, 150–155, 175; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 133–136, 156–157. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Commons, 19 May 1882, vol. 269, 1551. Justin McCarthy, “The Irish Land Question,” International Review, vol. 10, 1881, 261–274. Devoy’s Post Bag, 1871–1928, ed. W. O’Brien and D. Ryan, 2 vols (Dublin: Fallow, 1948–1953), vol. 2, 41–43; Comerford, Fenianism in Context, 241; Golway, Irish Rebel, 6–12, 104, 130. Foner, “Class, Ethnicity and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish-America,” 150–200; [Thomas Miller Beach], Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service; the Recollections of a Spy, by Major Henri Le Caron (London: W. Heinemann, 1892), 201–202. O’Day, “Irish Nationalism and Anglo-American Relations in the Later Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” 180–181.



Notes

Notes

69. Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 42; Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 25 February 1881, Papers of Patrick A. Collins, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 21; Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, February 1882, Papers of Patrick A. Collins, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 2, folder 30. 70. Pierrepont Edwards to Earl Granville, 9 February 1881, no. 5, FO 5/1776, 156–161 (microfilm reel 17); Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 17 June 1881, no. 24, FO 5/1778, 49–52 (microfilm reel 18). 71. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 October 1885, 9. 72. The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 12, 22 March 1883, 225. 73. Puck, “Irish Jigs,” vol. 8, no. 191, 3 November 1880, 140–150; see also, “The Land Question in Ireland,” Puck, vol. 6, no. 136, 15 October 1879, 503. 74. “The Order of the Day; or Unions and Fenians,” Punch, 19 October 1867; “The Fenian Guy Fawkes,” Punch, 28 December 1867; Roger A. Fischer, Them Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Political Cartoon Art (North Haven, CT: Archon Book, 1996), chapter 4, and especially 74–76, 80–81, 100. 75. “The Irish Devilfish,” Punch, 18 June 1881; “Dynamite Skunk,” Punch, vol. 86, 14 June 1884, 283. 76. “Is it a Change for the Better?” Puck, vol. 13, no. 316, 28 March 1883, 54. 77. “Ireland’s Evil Genius,” Puck, vol. 15, no. 379, 11 June 1884; “O’Donovan Rossa’s Shooting-Gallery for Irish Dynamiters,” Puck, vol. 16, no. 411, 21 January 1885, 336. 78. William E. Forster Memorandum, 10 May 1880, CAB 37/2, no. 23; William E. Forster Memorandum, 27 December 1880, CAB 37/4, no. 94; McGee, The IRB, 67–68, 80–81. 79. George Crump to Edward Thornton, 28 April 1880, no. 15, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Series 5, United States of America, The Fenian Brotherhood, 1864–1887 [microform], file 1745, 222 (microfilm reel 16) [hereafter, FO]. 80. Victor Drummond to Earl Granville, 31 October 1880, no. 296, FO 5/1746, 90–94 (microfilm reel 16). 81. George Crump to Edward Thornton, 7 December 1880, no. 39, FO 5/1746, 172–181 (microfilm reel 16); George Crump to Edward Thornton, 20 December 1880, no. 43, FO 5/1746, 190–194 (microfilm reel 16). 82. Edward Thornton to Earl Granville, 27 January 1881, no. 35, FO 5/1776, 98–105 (microfilm reel 17); Edward Thornton to Earl Granville, 7 February 1881, no. 39, FO 5/1776, 144–147 (microfilm reel 17). 83. Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 20 April 1881, no. 16, FO 5/1777, 204–209 (microfilm reel 17); Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 17 May 1881, no. 19, FO 5/1777, 290–297 (microfilm reel 17). 84. B.H. Barrows to Assistant Secretary of State, 27 October 1879, Consular Despatches, Dublin, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 85. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 10 August 1880, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7); Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 16 February 1881, Consular Dispatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8); Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, Consular Dispatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 86. Martin Duberman, James Russell Lowell (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1966), 321–328. 87. James R. Lowell to William M. Evarts, 13 November 1880, no. 87, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 141 (microfilm reel 137); James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 142 (reel 138); James R. Lowell



284

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93. 94. 95.

96.

97.

98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

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to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 17 February 1882, no. 317, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 143 (microfilm reel 139). The Nation, vol. 32, no. 817, 24 February 1881, 126–127; New York Tribune, 14 January 1881. New York Times, 6, 7 and 23 December 1880, 6 December 1881 and 11 January 1882. New York Times, 26 December 1882. Puck, vol. 9, no. 232, 17 August 1881, 398. The Christian Union, vol. 24, no. 22, 30 November 1881, 518; The Christian Union, vol. 24, no. 23, 7 December 1881, 546; The Christian Union, vol. 22, no. 23, 8 December 1880, 490; The Christian Union, vol. 22, no. 24, 15 December 1880, 518. The Century, vol. 26, June 1883, 249–264. “Buncombe,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 25, no. 1262, 5 March 1881, 146. Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed., J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 143–177; “Race,” Culture and Difference, ed. James Donald and Ali Rattansi (London: Sage Publications, in association with the Open University, 1992), 1–4. L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (Bridgeport, CT: University of Bridgeport; New York: New York University Press, 1968), 2–8, 90–97; L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (orig., 1971; Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), xxxi, 21–29, 37–57, 58–67, 87, 104, 134–135; Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland: The Influence of Stereotypes on Colonial Policy (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976), 71–87, 105–106; Steve Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience (London, Dublin, and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2004), chapter 5; Carolyne A. Conley, “War Among Savages: Homicide and Ethnicity in the Victorian United Kingdom,” Journal of British Studies, vol. 44, October 2005, 775–795. R.F. Foster, Paddy and Mr. Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (London: A. Lane, 1993), 193; Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 24–28, 81–88. William O’Connor Morris, “The Irish Character,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 20, June 1872, 104–124; “Caste Fidelity in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 53, 20 November 1880, 1474–1475; P. Quin Keegan, “Irish Education: How Are We to Educate the Irish,” The New Monthly Magazine, vol. 121, no. 724, April–May 1882, 345–360. Scott B. Cook, Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth Century Analogies and Exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993), 131–136. Becker, Disturbed Ireland, 244. George E. Boxall, The Anglo-Saxon: A Study in Evolution (London: Grant Richards, 1902), 69–74, 242–243. Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 21 May 1881 (telegram), Papers of Patrick A. Collins, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 41. “Fudge for Ireland,” The National Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1 June 1868, 15–16; “The Irish in London,” The National Review, vol. 1, no. 5, 12 September 1868, 90–91; “Modern Irishmen,” The National Review, vol. 1, no. 7, 26 September 1868, 123–124, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas.



Notes

Notes

104. James Paul Rodechko, Patrick Ford and His Search for America: A Case Study of Irish-American Journalism, 1870–1913 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), chapters 3 and 9. 105. “Cheering from England,” Irish Citizen, vol. 2, no. 90, 3 July 1869, 300; Irish World, 5 December 1874, 1, 5; The Irish-American, vol. 19, no. 40, 5 October 1867, 2; The Irish-American, vol. 22, no. 8, 22 February 1868, 2; The Irish-American, vol. 22, no. 16, 16 April 1870, 4. 106. E.L. Godkin, “An American View of Ireland,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 12, no. 66, August 1882, 175–192. 107. William M. Armstrong, E. L. Godkin and American Foreign Policy, 1865–1900 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957), 12–15, 19–21, 107–112. 108. Elisabeth Wallace, “Goldwin Smith on England and America,” American Historical Review, vol. 59, no. 4, July 1954, 884–894; Goldwin Smith, “England and America,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 14, December 1864, 749–769. 109. Goldwin Smith, “The Home Rule Fallacy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 12, no. 65, July 1882, 1–7; Goldwin Smith, “Why Send More Irish to America?” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 13, no. 76, June 1883, 913–919; Goldwin Smith, “Great Britain, American, and Ireland,” The Princeton Review, vol. 58, November 1882, 283–305. 110. John William Burgess, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, vol. 1, Sovereignty and Liberty, 2 vols (orig., 1890–1891; Boston and London: Ginn and Co., 1902), 33–35. 111. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness; Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 105–172; Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience, chapter 4; Kevin Kenny, “Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century,” in Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, ed. J.J. Lee and Marion R. Casey (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006), 364–378. 112. John Hay to S.S. Colfax, 24 June 1868, Papers of John Hay, Library of Congress (microfilm reel 1). 113. Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, 22 September 1865, no. 1054, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 90 (microfilm reel 86); James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, no. 240, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 101 (microfilm reel 97). 114. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 115. Alter, “Traditions of Violence in the Irish Nationalist Movement,” 137–154; McGee, The IRB, 69. 116. Bagenal, The Irish Agitator in Parliament and on the Platform, 73, 87. 117. “The Irish Land Question,” The Westminster and Foreign Review, vol. 115, no. 227, January 1881, 104–131; Goldwin Smith, “Why Send More Irish to America?” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 13, no. 76, June 1883, 913–919; Emile de Laveleye, “The European Terror,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 33, no. 196, 1 April 1883, 548–561. 118. “The Russian Land Laws and Peasant Proprietors,” Quarterly Review, vol. 151, no. 302, April 1881, 428–462; The Economist, vol. 37, no. 1891, Saturday 22 November 1879, 1334; “The Debate on the Coercion Bill,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2022, 27 May 1882, 639–640. 119. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Lords, vol. 255, 12 July 1880, 148–150; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Commons, vol. 255, 19 July 1880, 777–779.



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120. H.B.C. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland: Their Rise and Progress (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1922), 26, 64–68. 121. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, 91; McConville, Irish Political Offenders, 259. 122. James Lothrop Motley to Hamilton Fish, 9 February 1870, no. 240, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 101 (microfilm reel 97); James R. Lowell to William Evarts, 26 February 1881, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1881 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1882), 504 [hereafter FRUS]. 123. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 17 February 1882, no. 317, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 143 (microfilm reel 139). 124. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 125. M.J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1990), 3–41; Foner, “Class, Ethnicity and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish-America.” 126. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 59, 102–104; Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 90–91; Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 237–239. 127. New York Times, 18 July 1879, 21 November 1880 and 3 January 1881; The Nation, vol. 34, 22 June 1882, 512; The Century, vol. 32, June 1886, 320 128. The Christian Union, vol. 21, no. 1, 7 January 1880, 2; The Christian Union, vol. 22, no. 24, 15 December 1880, 518; The Christian Union, vol. 22, no. 25, 22 December 1880, 549. 129. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 October 1885, 2. 130. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 430. 131. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Commons, vol. 267, 22 May 1882, 1385. 132. James Bryce, “Introduction,” in Two Centuries of Irish History, 1691–1870, ed. R. Barry O’Brien (London: K. Paul, Trench & Co., 1888), xxix–xxx. 133. Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, with a supplementary chapter of recent events by Habberton, Ireland: Past and Present, 539 and chapter 16. 134. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 565. 135. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 December 1880, 2. 136. Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 25 February 1881 (telegram), Papers of Patrick A. Collins, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 21; Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 12 March 1881 (telegram), ibid., box 1, folder 26; Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 25 May 1881 (telegram), ibid., box 1, folder 42. 137. Patrick Egan to Patrick A. Collins, 13 May 1881, Papers of Patrick A. Collins, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 37. 138. Puck, vol. 8, no. 200, 5 January 1881, 293–294. 139. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 29 January and 6 February 1881. 140. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 141. Wang, The Trial of Democracy, 115–119. 142. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, Consular Despatches, Cork, vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8). 143. James R. Lowell to William Evarts, 7 January 1881, FRUS, 1881, 492–495; James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 11 June 1881, no. 200, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138).



Notes

Notes

144. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138). 145. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138); James R. Lowell to Edward P. Brooks, 3 August 1881, FRUS, 1881, 546; James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 14 March 1882, no. 331, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140). 146. E. A. Merritt to Assistant Secretary of State, 21 March 1883, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consuls, London, England, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 50 (microfilm reel 50) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, London]. 147. William M. Evarts to James R. Lowell, 20 January 1881, no. 102, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); James G. Blaine to James R. Lowell, 26 May 1881, no. 165, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 19 June 1882, no. 396, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85). 148. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 7 April 1882, no. 338, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 144 (reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 3 May 1882, no. 349, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 144 (reel 140). 149. Earl Granville to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 6 April 1882, FRUS, 1882, 318–319. 150. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 14 March 1882, no. 331, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 31 March 1882, telegram, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 3 April 1882, telegram, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140). 151. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 7 April 1882, no. 338, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 144 (reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 3 May 1882, no. 349, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 144 (reel 140). 152. Goldwin Smith, “The Home Rule Fallacy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 12, no. 65, July 1882, 1–7; Smith, Irish History and the Irish Question, 193–226. 153. Pierrepont Edwards to Earl Granville, 9 February 1881, no. 5, FO 5/1776, 156–161 (microfilm reel 17). 154. Thomas N. Brown, “The Origins and Character of Irish-American Nationalism,” The Review of Politics, vol. 18, no. 3, July 1956, 327–358. 155. New York Times, 9 September 1878; H.O. Arnold-Forster, “Shall We Desert the Loyalists?” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 19, no. 108, 215–225; Edward D.J. Wilson, “The Present Anarchy,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 9, no. 47, January 1881, 37–52; North American Review, vol. 136, June 1883, 551–553. 156. Hamilton Fish to John Lothrop Motley, 10 August 1869, no. 41, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); William M. Evarts to James R. Lowell, 20 January 1881, no. 102, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85). 157. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 19 June 1882, no. 396, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85). 158. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 12 March 1880, Consular Dispatches, Cork, vol. 7 (microfilm reel 7). 159. James R Lowell to James G Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 142 (reel 138). 160. The Christian Union, vol. 23, no. 26, 29 June 1881, 609. 161. Goldwin Smith, “Parliament and the Rebellion in Ireland,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 41, May 1882, 890–896.



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162. H.J. Desmond, “A Century of Irish Immigration,” The American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. 25, January–October 1900, 518–530. 163. Philip H. Bagenal, The American Irish and Their Influence on Irish Politics (London: K. Paul, Trench & Co.; Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1882), 107. 164. Bagenal, The American Irish and Their Influence on Irish Politics, chapters 8 and 10; quote on page 241. 165. Bagenal, The American Irish and Their Influence on Irish Politics, 240–243; The Eclectic Magazine, vol. 36, no. 1, July 1882, 138; The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 49, no. 296, June 1882, 858; The Dial, vol. 3, no. 27, July 1882, 60; The Catholic World, vol. 35, no. 208, July 1882, 572. 166. Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding, 3. 167. Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 140; Senan Moloney, The Phoenix Murders: Conspiracy, Betrayal and Retribution (Dublin: Mercier Press 2006). 168. Patrick J.P. Tynan, The Irish National Invincibles and Their Times (London: Chatham & Co., 1894), 415–486 169. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 322–326, 333, 430–432, 536–537; Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 136. 170. Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 248–249; Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 16, 54–64; McGee, The IRB, 151–156, 165–173, 334–338. 171. Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 179, 190–194; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 166–180. 172. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 232–250. 173. “What shall be done with Ireland?” Quarterly Review, vol. 153, no. 306, April 1882, 583–560; “The Paralysis of Government,” Quarterly Review, vol. 154, no. 307, July 1883, 258–2914. 174. New York World, 7 May 1882. 175. “The Weakness of Assassination,” The Spectator, vol. 55, 27 May 1882, 685–687; “The Effect of Assassination in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 41, no. 2061, 24 February 1883, 218; “The Assassinations in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2020, 13 May 1882, 566–567; Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 49, February 1884, 318–319. 176. Anderson, Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement, 109, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 177. H.O. Arnold-Forster, “Shall We Desert the Loyalists?” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 19, no. 108, February 1886, 215–225. 178. William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, “Ireland under the Legislative Union,” Contemporary Review, vol. 41, June 1882, 909–922; William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, “The ‘Irish Difficulty’ ,” The Westminster and Foreign Review, vol. 124, no. 248, October 1885, 505–521. 179. William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, A Life Spent for Ireland: Selections from the Journals of W.J. O’Neill Daunt (orig., 1896; Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972), 380. 180. “The Remedial Policy of the Government,” The Spectator, vol. 55, 13 May 1882, 617–618; “The Progress of the Coercion Bill,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2023, 5 June 1882, 666; “Police and Peasantry in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2036, 2 September 1882, 1086; “The Effect of Assassination in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 41, no. 2061, 24 February 1883, 218. 181. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Commons, vol. 269, 11 May 1882, 462–472; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, House of Commons, vol. 269, 19 May 1882, 1119. 182. The Nation, 21 February 1884, 162–163.



Notes

Notes

183. Richard Hawkins, “Government versus Secret Societies in the Parnell Era,” in Secret Societies in Ireland, ed. T. Desmond Williams (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973), 113–125; Eunan O’Halpin, “The British Secret Service vote and Ireland, 1868–1922,” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 23, 1983, 353; McGee, The IRB, 101–115, 151–156. 184. “England and Ireland,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 26, 27 May 1882, 322; “O’Donnell’s Position,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 27, 1 December 1883, 763. 185. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 13 May 1882, no. 365, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140). 186. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 8 May 1882, no. 4, FO 5/1817, 251– 259 (microfilm reel 20); Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 8 May 1882, no. 204, FO 5/1817, 260–269 (microfilm reel 20). 187. Foreign Office to Sackville-West, telegram no. 23, 9 May 1882, FO 5/1817, 270– 272 (microfilm reel 20); Sackville-West to Earl Granville, telegram no. 14, 10 May 1882, FO 5/1817, 291–301 (microfilm reel 20); Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 14 May 1882, no. 213, FO 5/1817, 325–328 (microfilm reel 20). 188. The Christian Union, vol. 25, no. 24, 15 June 1882, 541; The Christian Union, vol. 26, no. 22, 30 November 1882, 455. 189. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 29 April 1883, no. 144, FO 5/1861, 172– 174 (microfilm reel 23). 190. The Century, vol. 26, June 1883, 254. 191. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 9 and 13 May 1882. 192. New York Tribune, 7 May 1882; New York Tribune, 8 May 1882. 193. Puck, vol. 11, no. 271, 17 May 1882, 164. 194. Edward Archibald to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 9 May 1882, no. 37, FO 5/1817, 285–287 (microfilm reel 20). 195. John Adye Curan, The Reminiscences of John Adye Curran, K.C.: Late County Court Judge and Chairman of Quarter Sessions: With Portrait (London: E. Arnold, 1915), 159–160, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Granville, 13 March 1882, “Private Letters from the British Embassy, 1880–1885,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1941, ed. Paul Knaplund and Carolyn M. Clewes, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), vol. 1, 174; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Granville, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 174; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Granville, 17 April 1882, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 176; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Granville, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 177–178; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Granville, 16 May 1882, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 179. 196. Edward Archibald to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 9 May 1882, no. 37, FO 5/1817, 285–287 (microfilm reel 20). 197. New York World, 9 May 1882 and 14 March 1883; New York Times, 20 February 1883. 198. “The Irish Convention,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 27, no. 1377, 12 May 1883, 290. 199. Frederick Frelinghuysen to Sackville-West, 3 March 1883, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Department of State, 1834–1906, Great Britain [microform], vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48) [henceforth, Notes to Foreign Legations]; Frelinghuysen to Sackville-West, 14 March 1883, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48).



290

291

200. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 82. 201. New York Tribune, 8 May 1882; New York World, 9 May 1882. 202. New York Times, 13 May 1882 and 21 May 1882; Irish National League of America Pamphlet, 10 November 1881, George D. Cahill Papers, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 3; Irish National League of American Pamphlet, 27 May 1882 (Buffalo, NY), George D. Cahill Papers, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 4; Irish National League of American, 1882 (Quincy, MA), George D. Cahill Papers, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 2, folder 13; Irish National League of American Pamphlet, 1883 (Chicago), George D. Cahill Papers, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, box 1, folder 5. 203. Henry George, The Irish Land Question (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1881), 2, 13–14, 44–47; Henry George, “England and Ireland: An American View,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 31, no. 186, 1 June 1882, 780–794. 204. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 20 May 1882, no. 369, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 14 July 1882, no. 398, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 145 (microfilm reel 141); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 18 December 1882, no. 465, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 146 (microfilm reel 142); Lord Granville to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 6 April 1883, FRUS, 1883, 318. 205. Robert J. Creighton, “Influence of Foreign Issues on American Politics,” International Review, vol. 13, 1882, 182–190. 206. Moloney, The Phoenix Murders, 250–266. 207. Puck, vol. 14, no. 354, 19 December 1883, 242; Puck, vol. 14, no. 355, 26 December 1883, 258. 208. Pierrepont Edwards to Earl Granville, 14 September 1882, no. 49, FO 5/1820, 104–124 (microfilm reel 22). 209. “The Present and Near Future of Ireland,” Quarterly Review, vol. 159, no. 318, April 1885, 480–497; “The State of Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 43, no. 2196, 26 September 1885, 1163–1164; “The Crisis in Ireland,” The Economist, vol. 44, no. 2248, 25 September 1886, 1186. William Joseph O’Neill Daunt, “The ‘Irish Difficulty’ ,” The Westminster and Foreign Review, vol. 124, no. 248, October 1885, 505–521. 210. “The Unionists and Irish ‘Depravity’ ,” The Spectator, vol. 59, 5 June 1886, 743–744. 211. E.L. Godkin, “American Home Rule,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 19, no. 112, June 1886, 793–806. 212. William E. Gladstone, “The Irish Demand,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 21, no. 120, February 1887, 165–190. 213. Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 20 October 1887, Letterbook 199, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 245. 214. Henry William Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, 2 vols (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1888), vol. 1, xiii–xxxi, and vol. 2, 48, 104–169, 335–340. 215. Boxall, The Anglo-Saxon, 200–207. 216. Rodolphe C. Escouflaire, Ireland: An Enemy of the Allies? (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1920), 99. 217. M.J. Sewell, “Rebels or Revolutionaries? Irish-American Nationalism and American Diplomacy, 1865–1885,” The Historical Journal, vol. 29, no. 3, 1986, 723–733.



Notes

292

Notes

1. George, The Irish Land Question, 75. 2. New York Times, 30 March 1881, 1; New York Times, 2 April 1881, 1. 3. May, Imperial Democracy, 52–58; Crapol, America for Americans, 19–39; Campbell, From Revolution to Rapprochement, 137–163; Charles S. Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865–1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 49. 4. D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 367–407; Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 1866–1922, 105; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890, 19; Kenny, The American Irish, 171–179, 192–195; Williams, “The Irish Republican Brotherhood,” 143–144. 5. Bernard Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch before the First World War (orig., 1987; Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1991), chapters 2–5. 6. Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 235; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 1880–1888, 203–204, 269–283; Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States, xiv–xviii, 84–94. 7. Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?” 154–181. 8. Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 1866–1922, 41–54; Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 41–45, 61; Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction, 320–321; K.R.M. Short, The Dynamite War: Irish-American Bombers in Victorian Britain (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1979), 2–3, 38; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890, 65–69; Comerford, The Fenians in Context, 207; Golway, Irish Rebel, 72; McGee, The IRB, 52. 9. Devoy’s Post Bag, 1871–1928, ed. W. O’Brien and D. Ryan, 2 vols. (Dublin: Fallow, 1948–1953), vol. 1, 404–407; McGee, The IRB, 55–63, 90; Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1983), 36, 119, 158–166; Thomas P. Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation,” in Internal Wars: Problems and Approaches, ed. Harry Eckstein ([New York]: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 72–77. 10. David Brundage, “ ‘In Time of Peace, Prepare for War’: Key Themes in the Social Thought of New York’s Irish Nationalists, 1890–1916,” in The New York Irish, ed. Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meager (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 321–334. 11. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Irish Rebels in English Prisons: A Record of Prison Life (New York: P.J. Kennedy, Excelsior Catholic Publishing House, 1899), iii–xiii, 39, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; 25 February 1871 Manifesto “The Unity of the Irish Race in America,” Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 26; D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 372–379. 12. “O’Donovan Rossa, The Rival of St. Patrick,” Puck, vol. 3, no. 55, 27 March 1878, 1–2. 13. Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 15 March 1879, 15; O’Donovan Rossa, Irish Rebels in English Prisons, 114, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; Mark Francis Ryan, Fenian Memories (New York: M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1945), 107, 125. 14. Beach, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, 130–134 15. Quoted in Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 60.



3 Clan-na-Gael Terrorism Challenges the Atlantic Community, 1881–1885

293

16. Rodechko, Patrick Ford and His Search for America, 48–49, 261, and especially chapter 7. 17. Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 21 April 1877; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 29 December 1877; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 30 March 1878, 4, 5; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 8 July 1882, 4. 18. Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 21 April 1877; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 29 December 1877; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 30 March 1878, 4, 5; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 8 July 1882, 4; O’Donovan Rossa, Irish Rebels in English Prisons, iii–xiii, 39, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; Lennon, Irish Orientalism, 194. 19. B.K. Kennedy to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, 7 June 1877, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 255–256; John Devoy to?, 1 March 1876, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 142–144. 20. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846–82, 362, 554; Seán McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 1848–1922: Theaters of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 332–339, 359–360, 379; McGee, The IRB, 82. 21. Beach, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, 28; New York Times, 22 August 1879; New York Times, 22 June 1881; New York Times, 11 July 1881; New York Times, 31 July 1881; New York Times, 17 March 1883; The Nation, vol. 33, no. 843, 24 August 1881, 143. 22. Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 130; John Devoy to [unknown], 1 March 1876, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 141–143; Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa to Thomas Francis Bourke, undated, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 322–323; Michael Davitt to John Devoy, 5 October 1880, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 1, 555; John O’Leary to Devoy, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 110–113; New York Times, 13 August 1881; Beach, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, 156–157. 23. D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 392; Short, The Dynamite War, 29, 45–46, 103; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 119; Ó Broin, Revolutionary Underground, 18–19; Golway, Irish Rebel, 72–73; McGee, The IRB, 81. 24. Edward Thornton to Earl Granville, 28 June 1880, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Series 5, United States of America, The Fenian Brotherhood, 1864–1887 [microform], file 1745, 278–281 (microfilm reel 16) [hereafter, FO]. 25. “England’s Honorable Warfare,” The Philo-Celtic Journal, vol. 1 (4 March 1880). 26. Edward Archibald to Edward Thornton, 5 March 1880, FO 5/1745, 99–112 (microfilm reel 16). 27. P.M. McGill, The Irish Avenger; or Dynamite Evangelist (Washington, DC: Globe Printing Office, 1881), 7, 10–11, 13, 15. 28. Foreign Office to Edward Pierrepont Edwards, telegram no. 26, 18 August 1882, FO 5/1819, 295–298 (microfilm reel 22). 29. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (London: T.C. Hansard, 1882), HC Debate, 24 Nov 1882, vol. 275, 9. 30. Pierrepont Edwards to Earl Granville, 4 August 1881, no. 48, FO 5/1779, 82–85 (microfilm reel 19); New York Times, 3 August 1881. 31. Quote in Lindsay Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?” 165. 32. New York Times, 22 June 1881; New York Times, 31 July 1881; Short, The Dynamite War, 50–56, 64–65, 91–93; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 162. 33. “The Dynamite Campaign,” The Spectator, vol. 54, 6 August 1881, 1016–1017; “The Fear of Dynamite,” The Spectator, vol. 56, 14 March 1883, 477–478; “The



Notes

34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

Notes Dynamite Danger,” The Spectator, vol. 56, 24 March 1881, 382–383; “The Gospel of ‘Dynamite’,” The Spectator, vol. 54, 30 July 1881, 986–987; “The Weak Side of Irishmen,” The Spectator, vol. 54, 6 August 1881, 1017–1018. George W. Crump to Earl Granville, 1 August 1882, no. 13, FO 5/1819, 184–193 (microfilm reel 22). Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 79; Golway, Irish Rebel, 134; Short, The Dynamite War, 47, 67, 81–86, 166. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, 4, 19–34. Edward Archibald to Edward Thornton, 13 October 1880, no. 15, FO 5/1746, 74–77 (microfilm reel 16); Edward Archibald to Edward Thornton, 27 October 1880, no. 16, FO 5/1746, 78–83 (microfilm reel 16). Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 2 March 1881, no. 9, FO 5/1777, 12–16 (microfilm reel 17); Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 6 April 1881, no. 14, FO 5/1777, 161–168 (microfilm reel 17). Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 17 January 1882, no. 2, FO 5/1816, 12–24 (microfilm reel 20). Edward Thornton to Lord Granville, 25 January 1881, “Private Letters from the British Embassy, 1880–1885,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1941, ed. Paul Knaplund and Carolyn M. Clewes, 2 vols (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), vol. 1, 114–116; Lord Granville to Edward Thornton, 8 February 1881, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 116; Victor Drummond to Lord Granville, 18 October 1881, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 148; Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 19 February 1881, no. 6, FO 5/1776, 221– 227 (microfilm reel 17); Allan Pinkerton to William Gladstone, 8 July 1882, in Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, 70. Victor Drummond to James G. Blaine, 28 July 1881, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 144; United Irishman, 23 and 30 April, 14, 21 and 28 May, and 4 and 11 June 1881; Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 16 April 1881. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 25 June 1881, no. 209, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Ministers, London, England, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138) [hereafter, Diplomatic Despatches]. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 25 June 1881, no. 209, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 142 (reel 138). James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 25 June 1881, no. 210, Diplomatic Dispatches, vol. 142 (reel 138). Edward Thornton to Lord Granville, 27 June 1881, British and Foreign State Papers, ed. Sir Edward Hertslet and Edward Cecil Hertslet (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1889), vol. 78, 1181–1182; Lord Granville to Victor Drummond, 28 July 1881, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 78, 1182–1183. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James Russell Lowell, 4 December 1883, no. 720, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, Great Britain [microform], vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85) [hereafter, Diplomatic Instructions]. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 22 April 1883, no. 132, FO 5/1861, 92–94 (microfilm reel 23); New York Herald, 21 April 1883.



294

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48. Lord Granville to Lionel Sackville-West, 12 May 1883, no. 102, FO 5/1863, 204– 206 (microfilm reel 24); Lord Granville to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 13 March 1884, FO 5/1928, 171–176 (microfilm reel 25). 49. New York World, 17 January 1881. 50. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 30 July 1881, no. 230, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138). 51. James G. Blaine to James R. Lowell, 31 July 1881 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85). 52. James G. Blaine to James R. Lowell, 1 August 1881 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 6 August 1881, no. 232, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138); Victor Drummond to Lord Granville, 24 October 1881, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 150; Blaine quote in O’Grady, Irish-American and Anglo-American Relations, 177–178. 53. The Nation, 24 February 1881, 126–127; The Nation, 28 July 1881, 63; New York World, 21 June 1881, 4; New York Times, 29 July 1881 54. Victor Drummond to Earl Granville, 8 August 1881, no. 230, FO 5/1779, 101– 102 (microfilm reel 19). 55. Edward P. Brooks to John Hay, 3 March 1881, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Despatches from United States Consul, Cork, Ireland, 1790–1906 [microform], vol. 8 (microfilm reel 8) [hereafter, Consular Despatches, Cork]; James G. Blaine to James R. Lowell, 2 June 1881, no. 172, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1881 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1881), 532 [hereafter, FRUS]; James R. Lowell to Edward P. Brooks, 3 August 1881, FRUS, 1881, 546. 56. Lionel S. Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 15 February 1882, no. 65, FO 5/1816, 109–115 (microfilm reel 20). 57. Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 238–240; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and AngloAmerican Relations, 144. 58. James R. Lowell to James G. Blaine, 4 June 1881, no. 194, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 142 (microfilm reel 138). 59. Congressional Record (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1882), 47 Cong., 1 sess. pt. 1, 26 January 1882, 657–659; Congressional Record, 47 Cong, 1 sess., pt. 2, 14 February 1882, 1135; Congressional Record, 47 Cong., 1 sess., pt. 3, 14 April 1882, 2887–2891; Congressional Record, 47 Cong, 1 sess., pt. 4, 24 April 1882, 3283; Congressional Record, 47 Cong, 1 sess., pt. 7, 23 and 26 January 1882, 6–17. 60. Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 216–256. 61. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 4 March 1882 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); George F. Hoar to James R. Lowell, 28 March 1882, no. 335, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 29 March 1882, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 30 March 1882, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James Russell Lowell, 22 September 1882, no. 462, FRUS, 1882, 295–296. 62. The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790–1966, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger and Fred L. Israel (New York: Chelsea House, 1966), vol. 2, 1452. 63. New York Times, 9 April 1881; The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 25, 21 June 1883, 485.



Notes

Notes

64. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 1 April 1882 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 3 April 1882 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 10 April 1882 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 18 April 1882 [telegram], Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 26 (microfilm reel 85); Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 25 April 1882, no. 366, FRUS, 1882, 233–234; James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 14 March 1882, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140); John Rose to Davis, 3 April 1882, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140). 65. Beach, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, 208; Corfe, The Phoenix Park Murders, 135–140; Comerford, Fenianism in Context, 243. 66. Sir Henry Brackenbury, Some Memories of My Spare Time (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1909), 312. 67. Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, no. 59, 24 October 1882, FO 5/1820, 202– 204 (microfilm reel 22); The Star, 22 October 1882. 68. Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 24 March 1882, no. 8, FO 5/1816, 196–207 (microfilm reel 20). 69. New York Times, 14 April 1883, 1. 70. Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 233; Short, The Dynamite War, 160–161; Golway, Irish Rebel, 144–157, 164; McGee, The IRB, 105, Cambell, Fenian Fire, 65–74. 71. Puck, vol. 13, no. 321, 2 May 1883, 130. 72. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Ganville, 5 May 1883, no. 12, FO 5/1861, 229–246 (microfilm reel 23). For coverage of the meeting, see New York Times, 27 September 1882; Ann Larabee, “A Brief History of Terrorism in the United States,” in Technology and Terrorism, ed. David Clarke (Transaction Publishers, 2004), 19–40. 73. Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 26 January 1884 and 28 August 1886. 74. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Ganville, 3 July 1883, no. 14, FO 5/1862, 49– 60 (microfilm reel 24); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Ganville, 12 October 1883, no. 18, FO 5/1862, 203–213 (microfilm reel 24); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Ganville, 3 March 1884, no. 5, FO 5/1928, 185–189 (microfilm reel 25). 75. Lionel S. Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 18 August 1884, FO 5/1930, 33–34 (microfilm reel 26). 76. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 8 January 1885. 77. The Times, 7 April 1883; New York Times, 8 April 1883, 1. 78. James J. O’Kelly to John Devoy, 21 September 1882, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 140–143. 79. McGee, The IRB, 107–108. 80. A.M. Sullivan, “Why Send More Irish Out of Ireland?” The Nineteenth Century, vol. 14, no. 77, July 1883, 131–144. 81. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846–82, 536–538, 554–555; Davitt quote in Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 555. 82. Davitt quote in Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906, 136– 137. 83. The Nation, 8 November 1883, 885. 84. Armstrong, E. L. Godkin and American Foreign Policy, 1865–1900, 155–158; “The United States and the Dynamiters,” The Nation, 29 January 1885, 88. 85. Short, The Dynamite War, 45–61; Comerford, Fenianism in Context, 241.



296

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86. Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 4–10; Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel, 211–212. 87. William Mackey Lomasney to John Devoy, March 1881, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 51–52; William Mackey Lomasney to John Devoy, 31 March 1881, Devoy’s Post Bag, vol. 2, 56–59. 88. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 327–328, 350. 89. Edward Archibald to Earl Granville, 8 March 1881, no. 11, FO 5/1777, 37–43 (microfilm reel 17); British Consul in Philadelphia Captain Robert C. Clipperton, however, believed that the United Brotherhood, led by Devoy, Carroll, and Breslin, “will not energetically take part in any heinous measures,” in Robert C. Clipperton to Earl Granville, 24 March 1881, no. 7, FO 5/1777, 96–103 (microfilm reel 17). 90. Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?,” 168–171; McGee, The IRB, 120. 91. Richard Pigott, “Irish Murder-Societies,” The Contemporary Review, vol. 43, April 1883, 583–591. 92. T.M. Healy, “Ireland and the Tory Policy,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 34, no. 203, 1 November 1883, 728–731; William Dillon, “Assassination and Dynamite,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 35, no 208, 1 April 1884, 510–521. 93. New York Times, 2 February 1885, 1. 94. New York Tribune, 17 March 1883. 95. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 341. 96. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 12 October 1883, no. 18, FO 5/1862, 203–213 (microfilm reel 24). 97. New York World, 18 March 1883; The Irishman (Dublin), 8 March 1884. 98. “The Dynamite Guerrilla,” The Christian Union, vol. 31, no. 5, 29 January 1885, 4. 99. New York Tribune, 17 March 1883; New York Tribune, 18 December 1883. 100. New York Evening Post, 19 December 1883. 101. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, 31–34, 57–64; McGee, The IRB, 107–108; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 379. 102. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, no. 8, 6 January 1883, FO 5/1860, 13–15 (microfilm reel 23). 103. New York Times, 6 April 1883, 1; The Nation, vol. 36, no. 928, 12 April 1883, 310–311; Short, The Dynamite War, 102–108; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 349. 104. “The Use of the New Fenian Outrage,” The Spectator, vol. 56, 17 March 1883, 344; “The Government Argument for the Protection Bill,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2027, 1 July 1882, 802–803. 105. Anderson, Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement, 125–127, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 106. The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 16, 19 April 1883, 305; The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 17, 26 April 1883, 325. 107. FO 5/1862, 98–107 (microfilm reel 24); New York Times, 15 June 1883; Short, The Dynamite War, 136–141, 148–159, 164–172, 193–195; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 350. 108. Edward Winsfield to Under-Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 14 January 1884, FO 5/1928, 20–23 (microfilm reel 25). 109. “What shall be done with Ireland?,” Quarterly Review, vol. 153, no. 306, April 1882, 583–604; “The Paralysis of Government,” Quarterly Review, vol. 154, no. 307, July 1883, 258–291; “The Present and Near Future of Ireland,” Quarterly Review, vol. 159, no. 318, April 1885, 480–497.



Notes

Notes

110. “The Irish American Suspects,” The Economist, vol. 40, no. 2007, 22 April 1882, 465–466; “The American Irish and the American Government,” The Economist, vol. 41, no. 2070, 28 April 1883, 486–487. 111. Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 9 February 1884, no. 33, FO 5/1928, 87–96 (microfilm reel 25). 112. James R. Lowell to Earl Granville, 16 March 1883, FO 5/1860, 253 (microfilm reel 23). 113. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 29 March 1883, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 146 (reel 142); Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. SackvilleWest, 14 April 1883, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Department of State, 1834–1906, Great Britain [microform], vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48) [hereafter, Notes to Foreign Legations]. 114. Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 3 April 1883, “Private Letters from the British Embassy, 1880–1885,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1941, ed. Paul Knaplund and Carolyn M. Clewes, 2 vols (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), vol. 1, 175 [hereafter Annual Report of the American Historical Association]; Memorandum of Conversation with Mr. Blaine, 1 April 1883, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 175; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 17 April 1883, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 176. 115. New York World, 17 March 1883; New York World, 6 April 1883; The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 15, 12 April 1883, 285. 116. The Century, vol. 26, June 1883, 254, 305; New York Times, 18 April 1883; New York Times, 24 April 1883, 4; New York Times, 30 June 1884. 117. “Dynamite Crimes,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 28, 14 March 1884, 167; New York Tribune, 18 March 1883, and 7, 9, and 20 April 1883. 118. “Dynamite,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 29, 24 January 1885, 56–57. 119. The National Police Gazette: New York, vol. 42, no. 294, 12 May 1883, 2. 120. The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 15, 12 April 1883, 285. 121. Edward Self, “The Abuse of Citizenship,” North American Review, vol. 136, June 1883, 545–554. 122. Julius H. Seelye, “Dynamite as a Factor in Civilization,” North American Review, vol. 137, July 1883, 1–7. 123. John Newton, “Modern Explosives,” North American Review, vol. 137, November 1883, 457–468. 124. “An Irish ‘Crank’ – of Unsound Mind; But Harmless,” Puck, vol. 9, no. 231, 10 August 1881, 381–382; Puck, vol. 13, no. 315, 21 March 1883, 34. 125. Maureen Murphy, “Bridget and Biddy: Images of the Irish Servant Girl in Puck Cartoons, 1880–1890,” in New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora, ed. Charles Fanning (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 152–175. 126. “A Kind of Freedom We will not Tolerate,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 20 August 1881, vol. 52, no. 1351, 405. 127. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 3 June 1884, no. 13, FO 5/1929, 259–265 (microfilm reel 25); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 23 September 1884, no. 20, FO 5/1930, 50–57 (microfilm reel 26). 128. New York Times, 21 January 1885. 129. New York Times, 21 June 1884; New York Times, January 28, 1885; Short, The Dynamite War, 176, 184–186, 205–208; Clymer, America’s Culture of Terrorism, 69.



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130. F.F. Millen to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, 23 February 1885, Fenian Brotherhood Collection, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, box 1, folder 15, http://dspace.wrlc.org/view/ImgViewer?url=http://dspace.wrlc. org/doc/manifest/2041/5052, accessed on 18 September 2005. 131. Malcolm Laing Meason, “The Irish Dynamitards in Paris,” The Gentlemen’s Magazine, vol. 261, October 1886, 362–374. 132. “The Explosions in London,” The Spectator, vol. 57, 7 June 1884, 733–734; “The Explosions,” The Spectator, vol. 58, no. 2953, 21 January 1885, 141–142. 133. McGee, The IRB, 120–134, 145, 178, 213–218; Christy Campbell, Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria (London: Harper Collins, 2002), 154. 134. New York Times, 15 August 1886. 135. John J. Clancy, The Irish Question: #5, The “Castle” System (London: The Irish Press Agency, 1886), 18–19, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 136. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 November 1883, 2. 137. Henry White to? Austin, 4 March 1884, Papers of Henry White, Library of Congress, box 2 (microfilm reel 1); Henry White to J.C. Brownsand, 4 February 1887, Papers of Henry White, Library of Congress, box 2 (microfilm reel 2); Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 5 June 1883, Annual Report of the American Historical Association, vol. 1, 177. 138. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 1 March 1884, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 149 (reel 145); Henry White to? Tree, 19 September 1888, Papers of Henry White, Library of Congress, box 3 (microfilm reel 3). 139. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 25 January 1885. 140. Short, The Dynamite War, 198–203; Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 251. 141. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 14 March 1884, no. 804, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 27 (reel 86); A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897), vol. 10, 4815. 142. New York Tribune, 14 March 1884; The Nation, vol. 38, 20 March 1884, 249; An Act to Regulate the Transportation of Nitro-Glycerine, or Glynoin Oil, and other Substances therein named, United States Statutes-at-Large, vol. 14, chapter 162, sections 1–5 (1866). 143. Washington Republic, 1 March 1884; Washington Post, 1 March 1884; New York Times, 1 March 1884; New York Evening Post, 1 March 1884; New York Tribune, 2 March 1884; all included in Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 3 March 1884, no. 57, FO 5/1928, 178–182 (microfilm reel 25). 144. Wittke, The Irish in America, 172–175; Edward M. Levine, The Irish and Irish Politicians: A Study of Cultural and Social Alienation (South Bend, IN and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 112–114; Short, The Dynamite War, 195– 197; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 38–39, 69; Kenny, The American Irish, 160–162. 145. Beach, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, 235; New York Times, 3 December 1884; The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790–1966, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger and Fred L. Israel, vol. 2 (New York: Chelsea House, 1966), 1498– 1499. 146. Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 79; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 199; Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 253.



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147. Frederick Frelinghuysen to James R. Lowell, 24 November 1884, no. 1029, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 27 (microfilm reel 86). 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid. 150. Ibid. 151. New York Times, 25 January 1885; New York Times, 27 January 1885; Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 253; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 162. 152. United States Congress, Senate, S. 2578 (24 January 1885), 48 Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2 (24 January 1885), 981; United States Congress, House of Representatives, H.R. 8085 (26 January 1885), 48 Cong., 2 sess. 153. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 4 February 1885. 154. “Dynamite Crimes,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 29, 7 February 1885, 82. 155. New York Tribune, 27 January 1885. 156. New York Tribune, 28 January 1885. 157. Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 24 and 26 January 1885, 983, 996–1000, 26 January 1885; New York Times, January 27, 1885. 158. Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion, vol. 1, 251. 159. Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 26 January 1885, 997. 160. Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 26 January 1885, 996–1000. 161. New York Times, 8 May 1884; New York Times, 1 June 1884; New York Times, 2 June 1884; New York Times, 2 August 1884; New York Times, 28 December 1884; New York Times, 4 May 1887; North American Review, vol. 141, July 1885, 47–50. 162. Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 26 January 1885, 999. 163. New York Times, 27 and 29 January 1885; The Nation, 6 March 1884, 206, and 20 March 1884, 248–249; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 January 1885, 6 and 26 January 1885, 2. 164. Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 16, pt. 2, 26 January and 3 March 1885, 1007, 2572; United States Congress, House of Representatives, 48 Cong., 2 sess., House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Report 2690 “Dynamite Explosions in London, England” 3 March 1885. 165. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 26 January 1885, no. 39, FO 5/1930, 178– 185 (microfilm reel 26); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, no. 5, 26 January 1885, FO 5/1930, 190–192 (microfilm reel 26). 166. William J. Hoppin to Henry White, 13 February 1885, folder 12, Papers of Henry White, Library of Congress; Offenses against Foreign and Interstate Commerce, United States Statutes-at-Large, vol. 35, chapter 9, sections 232–236 (1909). 167. The Century, vol. 29, April 1885. 168. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 22 July 1882, no. 293, FO 5/1819, 110– 113 (microfilm reel 21). 169. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 29 April 1883, FO 5/1861, 159–171 (microfilm reel 23). 170. United Irishmen, 11 February 1885; D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 406; Short, The Dynamite War, 217–219. 171. New York Times, 26 January 1885. 172. Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 24 February 1885, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48). 173. New York Times, 4 and 27 January 1885, and 23 February 1885.



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174. Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 27 June 1885, Letterbook 194, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 6 May 1887, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 198, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 24 September 1886, Letterbook 196, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 6 May 1887, Letterbook 198, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 23 May 1887, Letterbook 198, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 4 December 1888, Letterbook 202, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress. 175. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 162. 176. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 6 June 1884, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 149 (microfilm reel 145). 177. E.J. Phelps to Thomas F. Bayard, 21 May 1885, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 151 (microfilm reel 147); E.J. Phelps to Thomas F. Bayard, 4 February 1888, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 157 (microfilm reel 152). 178. “The Explosions,” The Spectator, vol. 58, no. 2953, 21 January 1885, 141–142; “The New Extradition Treaty,” The Spectator, vol. 59, 24 July 1886, 981–982. 179. “The American Irish and the American Government,” The Economist, vol. 41, no. 2070, 28 April 1883, 486–487. 180. O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 203–205; Short, The Dynamite War, 214–215. 181. Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 1 July 1885, Letterbook 194, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 7 March 1886, Letterbook 195, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress [emphasis in original]; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 21 November 1887, Letter-book 199, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress. 182. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 7 April 1882, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 144 (microfilm reel 140). 183. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 29 April 1883, FO 5/1861, 159–171 (microfilm reel 23). 184. The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 12, 22 March 1883, 225; The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 15, 12 April 1883, 285; The Christian Union, vol. 31, no. 6, 5 February 1885, 1–2. 185. New York World, 1 June 1884; New York World, 25 January 1885 and 26 January 1885. 186. The Nation, 1883, 180, 356, and 6 March 1884, 202–203. 187. New York Tribune, 26 January 1884. 188. The (Atlanta) Constitution, 26 January 1885. 189. Henry Wade Rogers, “Harboring Conspiracy,” North American Review, vol. 138, no. 331, June 1884, 521–534; Lionel S. Sackville-West to Lord Granville, 19 May 1884, FO 5/1929, 143–155 (microfilm reel 25); Pierrepont Edwards to UnderSecretary of State, Foreign Office, 29 May 1884, FO 5/1929, 184 (microfilm reel 25). 190. New York Times, 22 June, 11 July, and 31 July 1881; New York Times, 17 March 1883; New York Times, 1 and 2 June 1884. 191. O’Grady, Irish-Americans and Anglo-American Relations, 203–204. 192. The Christian Union, vol. 27, no. 17, 26 April 1883, 325; The Christian Union, vol. 31, no. 3, 15 January 1885, 2; “The Dynamite Guerrilla,” The Christian Union, vol. 31, no. 5, 29 January 1885.



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193. Leroy V. Eid, “Puck and the Irish: ‘The One American Idea’ ,” Éire-Ireland, vol. 11, 1976, 18–35. 194. “The U.S. Hotel Badly Needs a ‘Bouncer’ ,” Puck, vol. 13, no. 316, 28 March 1883, 55–58. 195. “Our Naturalized Innocents Abroad,” Puck, vol. 14, no. 357, 9 January 1884, 292. 196. “Gorilla Warfare und the Protection of the American Flag,” Puck, vol. 15, no. 367, 19 March 1884, 33. 197. Rebecca Edwards, “Politics as Social History: Political Cartoons in the Gilded Age,” Magazine of History, Organization of American Historians, The Gilded Age, vol. 13, no. 4, Summer 1999, 11–15, http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/gilded/ edwards.html, 15 June 2009. 198. William Hunter to James R. Lowell, 31 October 1884, telegram, Diplomatic Instructions, vol. 27 (microfilm reel 86). 199. Thomas F. Bayard to E J Phelps, 1 July 1885, Papers of Thomas F Bayard, Letterbook 194, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 7 March 1886, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 195, Library of Congress [emphasis in original]. 200. Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 252–254; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and AngloAmerican Relations, 156–167, 211–268. 201. Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 6 May 1887, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 198, Library of Congress. 202. Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 7 March 1886, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 196, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 23 May 1887, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 198, Library of Congress; Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 4 December 1888, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Letterbook 202, Library of Congress. 203. Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 27 March 1884, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48); Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 24 April 1884, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48); Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 19 May 1884, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48); Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 21 May 1884, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48); Frederick Frelinghuysen to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 5 June 1884, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48); Francis Bayard to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 8 May 1885, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 19 (microfilm reel 48). 204. Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 15 February 1882, no. 2, FO 5/1816, 102–108 (microfilm reel 20); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 5 January 1885, no. 1, FO 5/1930, 134 (microfilm reel 26); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 13 January 1885, no. 3, FO 5/1930, 159–163 (microfilm reel 26); Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 12 February 1885, no. 69, FO 5/1931, 41 (microfilm reel 26); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, 16 February 1885, no. 7, FO 5/1931, 50–59 (microfilm reel 26). 205. Lionel Sackville-West to Earl Granville, 14 August 1882, no. 323, FO 5/1819, 257–260 (microfilm reel 22); Robert Charles Clipperton to Earl Granville, no. 4, 12 February 1883, FO 5/1860, 144–152 (microfilm reel 23). 206. E.J. Phelps to Thomas F. Bayard, 24 October 1887, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 156 (reel 151); Thomas F. Bayard to E.J. Phelps, 21 November 1887, Letter-book 199, Papers of Thomas F. Bayard, Library of Congress.



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207. James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 1 March 1884, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 149 (reel 145); James R. Lowell to Frederick Frelinghuysen, 15 November 1884, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 150 (reel 146). 208. George Crump to Earl Granville, 29 October 1880, no. 8, FO 5/1746, 84–89 (microfilm reel 16). 209. Victor Drummond to Earl Granville, 3 September 1881, no. 265, FO 5/1780, 12–17 (microfilm reel 19). 210. J.D. Porter to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 5 June 1885, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 20 (microfilm reel 49); J.D. Porter to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 1 October 1886, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 20 (microfilm reel 49); Thomas F. Bayard to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 6 October 1886, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 20 (microfilm reel 49); J.D. Porter to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 18 October 1886, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 20 (microfilm reel 49); Thomas F. Bayard to Lionel S. Sackville-West, 23 October 1886, Notes to Foreign Legations, vol. 20 (microfilm reel 49). 211. Short, The Dynamite War, 37, 169–170; Golway, Irish Rebel, 95, 148; O’Grady, Irish-American and Anglo-American Relations, 176–177. 212. McGee, The IRB, 90. 213. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 147–162; Green, Death in the Haymarket, 360– 361 and especially note 52. 214. Campbell, Fenian Fire, 358–363; McGee, The IRB, 182–189; Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882–1916, 16–17, 99–107; Golway, Irish Rebel, 155–180, O Brion, Revolutionary Underground, 60–83. 215. W. R. Hoare to Marquis of Salisbury, 20 May 1887, no. 12, FO 5/2044, 53–58 (microfilm reel 28). 216. Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 83–86; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 147–154, 162, 171–172; O’Grady, Irish-Americans and AngloAmerican Relations, 198, 273–283; Short, The Dynamite War, 225–240; Pletcher, The Awkward Years, 248–249; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 356–383; Laqueur, Terrorism, 69. 217. James Howard Bridge, Uncle Sam at Home (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1888), 181. 218. William T. Snead, The Americanization of the World, or, the Trend of the Twentieth Century (New York [etc.]: H. Markley, 1902), 41. 219. E.J. Phelps to Thomas F. Bayard, 4 February 1888, Diplomatic Despatches, vol. 157 (reel 152). 220. New York Times, 3 December 1884. 221. The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, vol. 2, 1525, 1639; Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States, 94.

4

IRA Terrorism Conjoins the Atlantic Community, 1919–1922 1. United States Congress, Senate, Committee on the Philippines, Affairs in the Philippine Islands: Hearings Before the Committee on the Philippines of the United States Senate, 31 January–28 June 1902, 57 Cong., 1 sess., Doc. 331, pt. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), 69–70, 72, 79, 136–137. 2. Brian McAllister Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986), 18–26;



Notes

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

Notes Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 260; John Coats, “Half Devil and Half Child: America’s War with Terror in the Philippines, 1899–1902,” in Enemies of Humanity: The Nineteenth-Century War on Terrorism, ed. Isaac Land (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 181–202. Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–1923 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–18, 71–83, 96–121, 278–315; Peter Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9, 20–22, 47–58, 79–81. Joost Augusteijn, From Public Defiance to Guerrilla Warfare: The Experience of Ordinary Volunteers in the Irish War of Independence, 1916–1921 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996); Charles Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919–1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 39; Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986), 52–53. Joost Augusteijn, “Motivation: Why did the Fight for Ireland?: The Motivation of Volunteers in the Revolution,” in The Irish Revolution, 1913–1923, ed. Joost Augusteijn (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 103–120. Alter, “Traditions of Violence in the Irish Nationalist Movement,” 137– 154; Michael Laffan, “Violence and Terror in Twentieth-Century Ireland,” in Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, in association with Berg Publishers Ltd. for the German Historical Institute, 1982), 155–165. Hart, The I.R.A. and its Enemies, 100; John Borgonovo, Spies, Informers and the “Anti-Sinn Fein Society”: The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1920–1921 (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 90, 167–180. Joost Augusteijn, “Accounting for the Emergence of Violent Activism Among Irish Revolutionaries, 1916–1921,” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 35, no. 139 (May 2007), 327–344; Merkl, Political Violence, 352–353, 364; Fathali M. Moghaddam, “Cultural Preconditions for Potential Terrorist Groups: Terrorism and Societal Change,” in Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, ed. Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004), 107–108; Donald M. Taylor and Winnifred Louis, “Terrorism and the Quest for Identity,” in Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, ed. Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004), 180; Hart, The I.R.A. and its Enemies, 242–256. Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, “The Invention of Modern Terror,” in The History of Terrorism: From Antquity to Al Qaeda, ed. Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007), 97. Anderson, Race and Rapprochement, 174–177. Frank Ninkovich, Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1994), 8–10; Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order, 27–43; Frank Costigliola, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), 17–22.



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12. E. Berkeley Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970); Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). 13. William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903– 1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 29–35; Frederick Marks, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (Omaha, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 2–14; William Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 54–55; Eric Rauchway, Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), xii–xiv, passim. 14. Department of State Memorandum, 14 December 1901, Papers of John Hay, Library of Congress (microfilm reel 3). 15. George Louis Beer, The English-Speaking Peoples: Their Future Relations and Joint International Obligations (Macmillan Company: New York, 1917). 16. Joseph Cuddy, Irish-America and National Isolation, 1914–1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 2–25; Kendrick Clements, Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 153; Thomas Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), viii–ix, 105; Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913–1929 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), 28–58, 178–203, 276–278. 17. English, Irish Freedom, 252–277. 18. McGee, The IRB, 272–326; Jason K. Knirck, Imagining Ireland’s Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 16–25, 43–48; Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882–1916, 73–99, 199, 217–232. 19. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, 390; Gary MacEoin, “The Irish Republican Army,” Éire-Ireland, vol. 19, 1974, 3–19; Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 268– 280. 20. English, Irish Freedom, 288–291. 21. Ibid., 291–300. 22. Sinn Fein Constitution quote in Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins (New York: Viking, 2006), 156. 23. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 1848–1922, 662; Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 18, 58–75, 97–98. 24. Bulmer Hobson, Defensive Warfare: A Handbook for Irish Nationalists (Belfast: The West Belfast Branch of Sinn Fein, 1909), 16–22, 38–51, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas; Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882–1916, 136. 25. Quote in Hugh Hunt, The Abbey: Ireland’s National Theatre, 1904–1978 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1979), 166. 26. Hart, Mick, 201. 27. Éamon de Valera, India and Ireland (New York: Friends of Freedom for India, 1920), Papers of Patrick McCartan, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 6, folder 152, New York Public Library. 28. Knirck, Imagining Ireland’s Independence, 38, 58.



Notes

Notes

29. Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 226–270; Hart, Mick, 209–223. 30. Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 192–193. 31. “Liberty and Assassination,” The Outlook, vol. 123, no. 13, 31 December 1919, 568; New York World, 20 December 1919, 1–2; see also, Walter V. Woehlke, “Terrorism in America,” The Outlook, vol. 100, 1912, 359–367; “Dynamiting as a Profession,” The Outlook, vol. 102, 1912, 600–601; “Government by Dynamite,” The Outlook, vol. 103, 1913, 62–65. 32. Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 50–51, 65–67, 70–74, 102–104; Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 30–31. 33. “An ‘Apologia’ for Murder,” The Spectator, vol. 123, 13 December 1919, 801–802; “What Should We Do?” The Spectator, vol. 125, 3 July 1920, 5; “Britain, America, and Mischief-Makers,” The Spectator, vol. 126, 26 March 1921, 385–386. 34. Philip Whitwell Wilson, The Irish Case before the Court of Public Opinion (New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1920), 35–36. 35. Hart, Mick, 194–196. 36. “The Irish Imbroglio,” The Spectator, vol. 123, 18 October 1919, 492. 37. “The New Policy in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 124, 22 May 1920, 681–682; “The Condition of Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 14 August 1920, 198–199; “Politics and Murder,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 6 November 1920, 588–589. 38. London Times, 30 November 1920; “If England Only Knew!,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 88, no. 2288, 29 January 1921, 67. 39. Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 61–62; Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 50–64, 205; Hart, Mick, 241–242; Knirck, Imagining Ireland’s Independence, 61–62; William Kautt The Anglo-Irish War, 1916–1921: A People’s War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), vii, 104. 40. Fearghal McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-Made Hero (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 42, 48–55, 58–73. 41. Hart, Mick, 272; Collins quote on page 59, but see also pages 200 and 220, and chapter 14. 42. Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 142–177, 194–220. 43. The Parliamentary Debates, 135 H.C. Deb. 5th series, 24 November 1920, 487–511. 44. Edward M. Brady, Ireland’s Secret Service in England (Dublin and Cork: The Talbot Press, 1928), 22–96, in O’Hegarty Collection, Spencer Library, University of Kansas. 45. Escouflaire, Ireland, 86, 91. 46. Boston Herald, 30 November 1919. 47. Albert Perry Walker, in consultation with Albert Bushnell Hart, Essentials in English History: From the Earliest Records to the Present Day (orig., 1906; New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: American Book Company, 1919), 473, 512–513. 48. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 April 1920, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910–1929 [microform], 841D.00/180 (microfilm reel 215) [hereafter, Records of the Department of State]; Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 January 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/314 (microfilm reel 218); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 July 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/402 (reel 218). 49. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/243 (microfilm reel 216).



306

307

50. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 November 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/259 (microfilm reel 217). 51. Charles Hathaway to Secretary of State, 1 February 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/22 (microfilm reel 213); John McAndrews to Secretary of State, 19 August 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/82 (microfilm reel 214); John McAndrews to Secretary of State, 17 September 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/90 (microfilm reel 214); John Davis to Secretary of State, 3 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/178 (microfilm reel 215); John W. Davis to Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/198 (microfilm reel 216). 52. William Kent to Secretary of State, 2 March 1921, ibid., 841D.00/325 (microfilm reel 218); William Kent to Department of State, 23 February 1921, ibid., 841D.00/326 (microfilm reel 218); William Kent to Department of State, 23 March 1921, ibid., 841D.00/336 (microfilm reel 218). 53. Charles Hathaway to Secretary of State, 11 July 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/71 (microfilm reel 214); Charles Hathaway to Secretary of State, 8 December 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/109 (microfilm reel 214); Shay to Secretary of State, 5 January 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/122 (microfilm reel 214); John W. Davis to the Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/198 (microfilm reel 216); Robert Krammer to the Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/199 (microfilm reel 216); William Kent to Department of State, 18 May 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/362 (microfilm reel 218). 54. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/137 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 March 1920, ibid., 841D.00/163 (microfilm reel 215); John Davis to Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, ibid., 841D.00/198 (microfilm reel 216). 55. Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 247–252, 272–276, 295, 307, 325. 56. John W. Davis to Secretary of State, 29 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/238 (microfilm reel 215); Paul Bew, “Collins and Adams, LG and Blair: The Continuity between Washington’s 1921 Irish Policy and Now,” The Spectator, vol. 278, 31 May 1997. 57. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/180 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 16 July 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/214 (microfilm reel 216). 58. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 15 October 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/248 (reel 217). 59. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 July 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/402 (reel 218); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/243 (microfilm reel 217); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 November 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/259 (microfilm reel 217). 60. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 2 January 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/119 (microfilm reel 214); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 14 January 1920, ibid., 841D.00/126 (microfilm reel 214); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 20 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/147 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 March 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/163 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 21 April 1920, Records of the Department



Notes

61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76.

77. 78.

79. 80.

Notes of State, 841D.00/191 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 15 June 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/209 (microfilm reel 216); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 15 October 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/248 (microfilm reel 217); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 January 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/314 (microfilm reel 218). Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 24 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/190 (reel 215); John W. Davis to Secretary of State, 31 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/204 (reel 216); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 March 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/339 (reel 218); William Kent to Secretary of State, 20 April 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/348 (reel 218); William Kent to Secretary of State, 4 May 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/359 (reel 218). Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 95–101, 113; Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 63–69. New York World, 24 November 1920, 10. “Irish Terrorists Shoot and Destroy,” New York Evening Post, 13 May 1920, 1. “Civil War in Ireland,” The Independent, vol. 104, no. 3751, 25 December 1920, 431; Rollin Lynde Hartt, “More Irish than Ireland,” The Independent, vol. 20 August 1921, vol. 106, no. 3781, 68; Rollin Lynde Hartt, “The New Negro. When He’s Hit, He Hits Back!,” The Independent, vol. 105, 15 January 1921, 59–76. John R. Rathom to Charles S. Davison, 20 July 1920, Records of the American Defense Society, box 5, folder 5, New York Historical Society. Henry Seidel Canby, “The Irish Mind,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1919, 34–43. Escouflaire, Ireland, 231–232. William MacDonald, “Underground Ireland,” The Nation, vol. 110, no. 2867, 12 June 1920, 800–801; William MacDonald, “ ‘Direct Action’ in Ireland,” The Nation, vol. 110, no. 2868, 19 June 1920, 822–823. Charles H. Grasty, “Irish Realities,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1920, 383–394; New York Times, 9 August and 30 September 1921. Hart, The IRA at War 1916–1923, 194–220; New York Times, 23 June 1922. William Kent to Department of State, 28 June 1922, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/524 (microfilm reel 219). American Vice-Consul in Charge to Department of State, 12 July 1922, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/527 (microfilm reel 219). Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/137 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 March 1920, ibid., 841D.00/163 (microfilm reel 215). Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 182–184, 234. Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 95–101, 113; Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 63–69; Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 54–61, 110; Knirck, Imagining Ireland’s Independence, 58; Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, 270, 284–291. Hart, Mick, 214, 267–268; McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 660–690. Lee, J.J., Ireland, 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 43; Sederberg, Terrorist Myths, 59–60; Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and Arms of Mass Destruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 125. Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, 292–297. Lord Monteagle Sir Thomas Spring Rice, “The Irish Problem,” Contemporary Review, vol. 118, September 1920, 305–314.



308

309

81. “The New Policy in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 124, 22 May 1920, 681–682; “The Condition of Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 14 August 1920, 198–199; “Mr. Lloyd George and His Speech,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 16 October 1920, 488–489; “Politics and Murder,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 6 November 1920, 588– 589; “Home Rule and the Doctrine of Murder,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 20 November 1920, 660–661; “The Nemesis of Murder,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 27 November 1920, 692–693; “The Nemesis of Pretence,” The Spectator, vol. 125, 18 December 1920, 804–805; “The Policy and Impolicy in Ireland,” The Spectator, vol. 126, 19 February 1921, 224–225; “Britain, America, and Mischief-Makers,” The Spectator, vol. 126, 26 March 1921, 385–386. 82. McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 691–697. 83. An Administrator, “Irish Administration,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 114, no. 647, 1 November 1920, 749–752. 84. John Lawrence Hammond, The Terror in Action: A Graphic Sketch of Irish Policy from 1914–1921 (London: The Nation and Athenaeum, 1921), 12–15, 31–32. 85. Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom, 157–166; Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relation, 1899–1921 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 231–246; Francis M. Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 1910–1923 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978), 36–89, 157–163; Ernest May, The World War and American Isolation, 1914–1917 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 4–5, 19; Thomas Hachey, Britain and Irish Separatism: From the Fenians to the Free State, 1867–1922 (orig., 1977; Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1984), 242–255; Kautt, The Anglo-Irish War, 1916–1921, 83. 86. Roger Casement to Alice Stopford Green, 14 September 1914, Papers of Roger Casement, Maloney Collection of the Irish Historical Papers, box 1, folder 10, New York Public Library. 87. Doorley, Irish-American Diaspora Nationalism, 26–80, 92, 123–138. 88. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 157–158. 89. Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 28, 36–38, 83, 141–142. 90. Clymer, America’s Culture of Terrorism, 182. 91. Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 24, 5 October 1920; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 34, 16 October 1920; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 36, 20 October 1920; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 43, 1 November 1920, all available in the Papers of Patrick McCartan, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 6, folder 156, New York Public Library; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 53, 9 November 1920; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 54, 16 November 1920; Irish Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 68, 8 December 1920; all available in the Papers of Patrick McCartan, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 10, folder 157, New York Public Library. 92. “The Type of Mind Which Directed the British Terror in Ireland,” Irish Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 73, 12 September 1921, Papers of Patrick McCartan, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 10, folder 156, New York Public Library. 93. Keiko Inoue, “Propaganda II: Propaganda of Dail Eireann, 1919–1921,” in The Irish Revolution, 1913–1923, ed. Joost Augusteijn (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, Macmillan 2002), 87–102. 94. Newsletter of the FOIF, vol. 1, no. 40, 2 April 1920 (National Bureau of Information, Washington, DC); Newsletter of the FOIF, vol. 2, no. 20, 13 November 1920 (National Bureau of Information, Washington, DC); Newsletter of the FOIF, vol. 2, no. 26, 25 December 1920 (National Bureau of Information, Washington, DC), Newsletter of the FOIF, vol. 3, no. 5, 20 July 1921 (National Bureau of Information, Washington, DC), all available in the Papers of Patrick McCartan,



Notes

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

100.

101. 102. 103.

104.

105. 106. 107.

Notes Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 10, folder 153, New York Public Library. Edward F. Dunne, What Dunne Saw in Ireland: The Truth about British Militarism in all Its Brutality (New York: Friends of Irish Freedom, 1919), 26; American Commission on Irish Independence Circular, 24 April 1920, Papers of William J. Maloney, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 7, folder 24, New York Public Library; Wright McCormick, Ireland Under English Intrigue: British Responsibilities for Ulster Disturbances (Friends of Irish Freedom, Pamphlet 25, September 1920), 3–7; Senator La Follette of Wisconsin on Proposed Recognition of Ireland, S.J. Res. 1, United States Congress, Congressional Record (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1921), 67 Cong., special sess., vol. 61, pt. 1 (26 April 1921), 648. Stephen O’Neill, “Ireland Under the English Terror: A Record of Personal Observations” (FOIF Pamphlet 31, December 1921), 3–8; Resolution of Citizens of New York City, Papers of William J. Maloney, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 9, folder 144, New York Public Library. Raymond Edward Turner, Ireland and England in the Past and at Present (New York: Century Co., 1919), vii, 439–444; Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 21 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/191 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 23 April 1921, ibid., 841D.00/351 (microfilm reel 218); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 24 August 1921, ibid., 841D.00/428 (microfilm reel 219). Alice Stopford Green, “The Irish Republican Army,” American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, Pamphlet, no. 36, 1919, Papers of Patrick McCartan, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 10, folder 154, New York Public Library. Katherine Hughes, Ireland (New York: The Donnelly Press, 1918); Katherine Hughes, English Atrocities in Ireland; a Compilation of Facts from Court and Press Records (New York: Friends of Irish Freedom, Inc., 1920), 10–11, 47–60. Teague O’Regan, “The Prussianization of Ireland,” The Nation, vol. 109, no. 2839, 29 November 1919, 678; Francis Hackett, “Hands Off Ireland?” The New Republic, vol. 22, 28 April 1920, 283–284; Francis Hackett, “The Impasse in Ireland,” The New Republic, vol. 24, 13 October 1920, 161–163; Francis Hackett, “The Condition of an Irish Settlement,” The New Republic, vol. 24, 27 October 1920, 205–206. Francis Hackett, Ireland: A Study in Nationalism, 3rd edition (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1919), vii. The New Republic, vol. 17, 4 January 1919, 263; “A Free Ireland,” The New Republic, vol. 18, 1 March 1919, 132–134. New York Times, 10 November 1920; Lloyd George quote in Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland (orig., 1990; Dublin: Macmillan, 2002), 156. Michael Collins to Arthur Griffith, 14 December 1920, UCDA P150/1900, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, vol. 1, 1920, no. 125, http://www.difp.ie/viewdoc. asp?DocID=125, 8 October 2008. Hart, The I.R.A. and its Enemies, 100–101. The Parliamentary Debates, 135 H.C. Deb. 5th series, 24 November 1920, 487–494. The Parliamentary Debates, 135 H.C. Deb. 5th series, 24 November 1920, 416–417, 495–511.



310

311

108. Edward House to Wilson, 7 June 1916, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966–), vol. 37, 168; Walter Hines Page to Wilson, 3 September 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 44, 133–134; Extract form diary of Josephus Daniels, 28 May 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 48, 192; Joseph Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 393–394; Slocum to Milstaff, 15 June 1918, National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Department of War, General and Special Staffs [WDGS/WDSS], RG 165, Military Intelligence Division Correspondence, 1917–1941, box 1067, 2266-A-60 [hereafter, Military Intelligence Division Correspondence]; John McEdwards to Secretary of State, 10 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/142 (microfilm reel 215). 109. George Creel, Ireland’s Fight for Irish Freedom: Setting forth the High Lights of Irish History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1919), 110, 178. 110. Henry Seidel Canby, “The Irish Mind,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1919, 34–43; Charles Grasty, “Irish Realities,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1920, 383–394. 111. Hamilton Holt, “England and Ireland,” The Independent, vol. 104, no. 3751, 25 December 1920, 428; “Sinn Feiners Kidnap British General,” The Independent, vol. 103, no. 3728, 10 July 1920, 50–51; The Independent, vol. 105, no. 3759, 19 February 1921, 189. 112. “ ‘Cant About Ireland’ ,” The Nation, vol. 108, no. 2811, 17 May 1919, 262–263; Richard Roberts, “Irish Nights,” The Nation, vol. 110, no. 2848, 31 January 1920, 138–140. 113. The New Republic, vol. 23, 2 June 1920, 3; Francis Hackett, “The Impasse in Ireland,” The New Republic, vol. 24, 13 October 1920, 161–163; Francis Hackett, “The Condition of an Irish Settlement,” The New Republic, vol. 24, 27 October 1920, 205–206; The New Republic, vol. 25, 1 December 1920, 3–4; “The Good Name of Britain,” The New Republic, vol. 25, 29 December 1920, 124–125; “Liberty by Bayonetting,” The New Republic, vol. 25, 19 January 1921, 216–217; “The Bullying of Ireland,” The New Republic, vol. 27, 20 July 1921, 63; “Does Ireland Matter?” The New Republic, vol. 26, 2 March 1921, 6–8; The New Republic, vol. 26, 13 April 1921, 168. 114. St. John Gaffney to O’Donnell, 1 December 1919, Papers of Joseph McGarrity, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 5, folder 78, New York Public Library; American Federation of Labor Resolution, 22 June 1921, Frank P. Walsh Papers, box 26, New York Public Library. 115. “Cardinal Bourne on Ireland,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 88, no. 2300, 23 April 1920, 257. 116. “Terrorism in Ireland,” New York Evening Post, 24 September 1920, 8; New York Evening Post, 10 November 1920, 8 117. “Lawlessness and Lynch Law in Ireland,” The Outlook, vol. 126, no. 6, 6 October 1920, 216. 118. New York World, 23 November 1920, 12. 119. Charles Hathaway to Secretary of State, 1 February 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/22 (microfilm reel 213); Frederick Dumont Memorandum 23 December 1919, ibid., 841D.00/115 (microfilm reel 214). 120. Creel, Ireland’s Fight for Irish Freedom, 108. 121. Edward Woods to Secretary of States, May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/195 (microfilm reel 215).



Notes

Notes

122. Colby to Winslow, 18 August 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/215a (microfilm reel 216). 123. A.C. Geddes to Marquess, 15 September 1921, no. 1001, Annual Report of the United States for 1920, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, ed. Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, Part II: From the First to the Second World War, Series C, North America, 1919–1939, ed. D.K. Adams, vol. 1, The Republican Ascendency, January 1919– June 1928 (University of Publications of America, Inc., 1986), 54–57. 124. The New Republic, vol. 22, 19 May 1920, 364; New York Evening Post, 5 May 1920, 8. 125. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 16 July 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/214 (microfilm reel 216); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 March 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/339 (microfilm reel 218). 126. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/180 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 14 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/197 (microfilm reel 215). 127. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/243 (microfilm reel 217); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 20 August 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/232 (microfilm reel 217). 128. Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 63–85, 133–160. 129. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 12 November 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/259 (microfilm reel 217). 130. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 17 December 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/279 (microfilm reel 217). 131. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/243 (microfilm reel 217). 132. William Kent to Department of State, 16 March 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/333 (microfilm reel 218). 133. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 28 January 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/314 (microfilm reel 218). 134. John W. Davis diary entries for 11 and 17 December 1920, in The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis: The Court of St. James, 1918–1921, ed. Julia Davis and Dolores A. Fleming (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 1993), 373–375. 135. Mason Mitchell to Secretary of State, 15 December 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/264 (microfilm reel 217); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 March 1921, ibid., 841D.00/339 (microfilm reel 218). 136. William Kent to Secretary of State, 15 June 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/384 (reel 218). 137. John W. Davis to Robert Lansing, 23 November 1920, Papers of Robert Lansing, Library of Congress, box 54. 138. Wright to Secretary of State, 30 October 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/251 (microfilm reel 217); Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/340 (microfilm reel 218). 139. Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 19; Hart, Mick, 274–275. 140. New York Times, 9 August and 30 September 1921; “Two Weeks of Terror in Ireland,” The Nation, vol. 113, 6 July 1921, 23–27.



312

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141. William Kent to Department of State, 16 March 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/333 (microfilm reel 218); William Kent to Department of State, 23 March 1921, ibid., 841D.00/336 (microfilm reel 218); William Kent to Department of State, 29 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/390 (microfilm reel 218); William Kent to Department of State, 14 September 1921, ibid., 841D.00/435 (microfilm reel 219); Norman Davis to Major Kinkaid, et al., 26 January?, Papers of Norman Davis, Library of Congress, box 9. 142. William Kent to Department of State, 15 June 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/384 (reel 218). 143. “Struggle of the Irish people, address to Congress of United States from Irish national assembly,” 2 May 1921, United States Congress, Senate, 67 Cong., 1 sess., Doc. 8, 4, in LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection. 144. Thomas Walsh to John McBarron, 10 January 1921, Papers of Thomas Walsh, Library of Congress, folder 190; Thomas Walsh to Judge W.E. Carroll, 31 January 1921, Papers of Thomas Walsh, Library of Congress, folder 190; Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin on Proposed Recognition of Ireland, S.J. Res. 1, Congressional Record, 67 Cong., Special sess., vol. 61, pt. 1 (26 April 1921), 648–651. 145. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relation, 231–233, 245–246; Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 157–159, 162–163. 146. “The President and Sinn Fein,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 87, no. 2282, 18 December 1920, 390; The Independent, vol. 105, no. 3768, 23 April 1921, 430– 431; John W. Davis diary entry for 7 December 1920, in The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis: The Court of St. James, 1918–1921, ed. Julia Davis and Dolores A. Fleming (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 1993), 370. 147. A.C. Geddes to Marquess, 15 September 1921, no. 1001, Annual Report of the United States for 1920, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, ed. Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, Part II: From the First to the Second World War, Series C, North America, 1919–1939, ed. D.K. Adams, vol. 1, The Republican Ascendency, January 1919– June 1928 (University of Publications of America, Inc., 1986), 54–57. 148. New York World, 25 May 1921. 149. Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin on Conditions in Ireland, Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 sess., vol. 61, pt. 3 (8 June 1921), 2257–2258; Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska on Conditions in Ireland Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 sess., vol. 61, pt. 3 (20 and 21 June 1921), 2259, 2803–2837. 150. “America and Ireland,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 88, no. 2306, 4 June 1921, 355–356. 151. Anthony Read, The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 289–292, 325; Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 134–148. 152. Cecil Battine, “The Safety of Ireland,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 109, no. 615, 1 March 1918, 462–469. 153. K. L. Montgomery, “Ireland’s Psychology: A Study of Facts,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 112, no. 634, 1 October 1919, 572–584 [emphasis in original]. 154. K. L. Montgomery, “Ireland’s Psychology: A Study of Facts,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 112, no. 634, 1 October 1919, 572–584. 155. Richard Dawson, Red Terror and Green (orig., 1920; London: New English Library, 1972), 30–33, 118–143; Philip H. Bagenal, “Irish Unrest Review,” The Edinburgh Review, vol. 233, no. 475, January 1921, 178–195.



Notes

Notes

156. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents Relative to the Sinn Fein Movement (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1921), 38–39. 157. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 120, 182–237, 238–256. 158. Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 80. 159. Read, The World on Fire, 1–24, 247–272. 160. J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 41; Melvyn Leffler, The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1953 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 19; Regin Schmidt, Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919–1943 (Copenhagan: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2000), 20, 148–151. 161. Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), chapter 26. 162. United States Congress, “Act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States” (1903), 32 Statute-at-Large, chapter 1012, §1222; Transmission through the mails of Anarchistic Publications. Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a communication from the Attorney-General relative to the transmission through the mails of certain Anarchistic Publications, 5265 S. Doc. 426, 9 April 1908. 163. United States Congress, House of Representatives, H.R. 11187 “An Act to Exclude and Expel from the United States Aliens who are Members of the Anarchistic and Similar Classes,” 65 Cong., 2 sess., 2 April 1918; United States Statues-at-Large, 40 Stat. 1012, Chap., 186 (1918). 164. Congressional Record (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1918), 65 Cong. 2 sess., vol. 56, pt. 8, 21 June 1918, 8113. 165. United States Congress, Senate, “Bolshevik Propaganda: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary,” 65 Cong., 3 sess., Pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469, 11 February 1919, to 10 March 1919 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1919). 166. United States Congress, House of Representatives, H.R. 11224, Congressional Record (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1919), 66 Cong., 2 sess., vol. 59, pt. 1, 20 December 1919, 998–1000; New York World, 23 December 1919, 2. 167. Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the ADS, Inc., 4 April 1921, Records of the American Defense Society, box 10, folder 12, New-York Historical Society. 168. “Gov. Coolidge Declares War on Terrorism,” Boston Herald, 28 October 1919. 169. “Russian-Tweedledee and Erin-Tweedledum,” The Nation, vol. 109, no. 2819, 12 July 1919, 31; “The Case for Irish Freedom,” The Nation, vol. 108, no. 2805, 5 April 1919, 489–490; “Sowing the Wind to Reap the Whirlwind,” The Nation, vol. 110, no. 2846, 17 January 1920, 64. 170. Francis Hackett, “The Impasse in Ireland,” The New Republic, vol. 24, 13 October 1920, 161–163; “Terrorism,” The New Republic, vol. 19, 14 June 1919, 201–202. 171. Karl Kautsky, Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution, trans. W. H. Kerridg (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920); Kautsky, Ireland, 14–17. 172. Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 114–148; Francis Carroll, The American Presence in Ulster: A Diplomatic History, 1796–1996 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 121; Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann, 1919–1922 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1995), 176–179; Edward Cuddy, “ ‘Are the Bolsheviks Any Worse than the Irish?’:



314

173. 174.

175.

176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183.

184. 185.

186. 187. 188.

189.

190.

315

Ethno-Religious Conflict in America during the 1920s,” Éire-Ireland, vol. 11, 1976, 13–32; Peter Emmett J. O’Connor, “James Larkin in the United States, 1914–1923,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, 2002, 183–196. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 sess., vol. 58, pt. 7 (16 October 1919), 7006. Charles Hathaway to Secretary of State, 11 July 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/71 (microfilm reel 214); ibid., 8 December 1919, 841D.00/109 (microfilm reel 214); William Cox Redfield to Wilson, 22 November 1918, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 53, 179. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 21 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/191 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 14 May 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/197 (microfilm reel 215). Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 16 July 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/214 (microfilm reel 216). Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 15 September 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/214 (microfilm reel 217). “The Death of MacSwiney,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 87, no. 2275, 30 October 1920, 273–274. William MacDonald, “Will Sinn Fein Succeed?” The Nation, vol. 110, no. 2869, 26 June 1920, 846a–847a. Roland Hugins, “Militant Minorities,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 123, no. 5, May 1919, 701–705. Turner, Ireland and England, 120, 152, 247. “The Remedy for Radicalism,” The Outlook, vol. 124, no. 3, 21 January 1920, 99–100. William T. Hornaday, “The Lying Lure of Bolshevism” (Pamphlet Series no. 35, New York City, American Defense Society, November 1919), 8–20, Records of the American Defense Society, box 12, New-York Historical Society. “American Defense,” no. 15, 16 June 1919, Records of the American Defense Society, box 12, New-York Historical Society. Francis Ralston Welsh memo to ADS Chairman Charles S. Davison, October 1919, Records of the American Defense Society, box 10, folder 3, New-York Historical Society; Francis Ralston Welsh to Sen. George H. Moses, 31 December 1919, Records of the American Defense Society, box 4, folder 8, New-York Historical Society; Francis Ralston Welsh to Charles S. Davison, 22 September 1921, Records of the American Defense Society, box 6, folder 8, New-York Historical Society. Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 295, 315–316. Woodrow Wilson to William Gibbs McAdoo, 16 January 1918, Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 46:5. Wilson, The Irish Case before the Court of Public Opinion, 82–105: Philip Whitwell Wilson, “The Irish Question From an English Liberal’s Point of View,” The Outlook, vol. 124, no. 17, 28 April 1920, 752–753. New York Evening Post, 26 November 1920, 6; “Sinn Fein versus America,” The Argonaut (San Francisco), vol. 87, no. 2280, 4 December 1920, 353; Los Angeles Times, 12 December 1920. Harold Spender, “Ireland: A Plea for Conciliation,” Contemporary Review, vol. 119, March 1921, 299–309; A.G. Gardiner, “Anglo-American Issues,” Contemporary Review, vol. 118, November 1920, 609–618; A.G. Gardiner, The Anglo-American Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), 47–48.



Notes

Notes

191. Facts about Ireland: For Consideration of American Citizens by Delegates of the Protestant Churches of Ireland (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Protestant Federation, 1920); New York World, 11 April 1920, 18. 192. Boston Herald, 13 October 1919. 193. Turner, Ireland and England, 386–448. 194. Alfred L.P. Dennis, “Ireland and the Outside World,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1920, 234–244. 195. Marie Veronica Tarpey, The Role of Joseph McGarrity in the Struggle for Irish Independence (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 106–107; Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relation, 231–234, 245–246; Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 157– 159, 162–163; Mary Kelly, The Shamrock and the Lily: The New York Irish and the Creation of a Transatlantic Identity, 1845–1921 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005), 169–170, note 79. 196. Harry Boland to Eamon de Valera, 5 August 1921, DFA ES Box 27 File 158, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, vol. 1, 1921, no. 103, http:// www.difp.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=103, 8 October 2008. 197. Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 310–320. 198. Annual Report of the United States for the Year ending 1921, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, ed. Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, Part II: From the First to the Second World War, Series C, North America, 1919–1939, ed. D.K. Adams, vol. 1, The Republican Ascendency, January 1919–June 1928 (University of Publications of America, Inc., 1986), 141–145. 199. Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 321–329. 200. Knirck, Imagining Ireland’s Independence, 52. 201. Francis Carroll, Money for Ireland: Finance, Diplomacy, Politic, and the First Dáil Éireann Loan, 1919–1936 (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2002), 15–26, 89. 202. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 213. 203. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/180 (microfilm reel 215); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 15 June 1920, ibid., 841D.00/209 (microfilm reel 216); Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 March 1921, ibid., 841D.00/339 (reel 218). 204. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 March 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/339 (microfilm reel 218); Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/340 (microfilm reel 218). 205. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 9 June 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/381 (microfilm reel 218); Charles Hughes to Frederick Dumont, 1 July 1921, ibid., 841D.00/381 (microfilm reel 218). 206. Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 22 July 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/402 (reel 218). 207. Memo of conversation between Norman Davis and British Ambassador, 14 December 1920, Papers of Norman Davis, Library of Congress, box 9; Frederick Dumont to Secretary of State, 5 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/180 (microfilm reel 215). 208. John R. Rathom to Charles S. Davison, 20 July 1920, Records of the American Defense Society, box 5, folder 5, New-York Historical Society. 209. Roger Casement to Alice Stopford Green, 26 January 1914, Papers of Roger Casement, Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers, box 1, folder 8, New York Public Library [emphasis in original]. 210. John Davis to Secretary of State, 27 January 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/123 (microfilm reel 214); John Davis to Secretary of State, 4



316

211.

212.

213.

214. 215.

216. 217.

218.

219.

220.

221.

317

February 1921, ibid., 841D.00/299 (microfilm reel 218); Harvey to Secretary of State, 3 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/360 (microfilm reel 218); Harvey to Secretary of State, 20 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/370 (microfilm reel 218); J. Moyle to Secretary of State, 20 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/372 (microfilm reel 218); Report of F.G. Caskey, 18 June 1921, Washington, DC, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of Justice, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau, 1908–1922, RG 65, M1085, file 202-600-9 (microfilm reel 921) [hereafter, FBI Investigative Case Files]; Memo to J.E. Hoover, 18 July 1921, ibid., file 52–505 (microfilm reel 910). Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, 205–208; J. Bowyer Bell, “The Thompson Submachine Gun in Ireland, 1921,” Irish Sword, vol. 8, 1967, 102–108; Tarpey, The Role of Josephy McGarrity in the Struggle for Irish Independence, 140–141; Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 181–193 John Davis to Winslow, 21 June 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/205a (microfilm reel 216); John Davis to Secretary of State, 22 June 1920, ibid., 841D.00/206 (microfilm reel 216); Wright to Secretary of State, 24 August 1920, ibid., 841D.00/221 (microfilm reel 216); Charles Grasty, “Irish Realities,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1920, 383–394. Report of William Sausels, 20 November 1920, Jacksonville, FL, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-10 (microfilm reel 922); Report of James Wynn, 2 April 1921, Washington, DC, ibid., file 202-600-216 (microfilm reel 926); J.E. Hoover to W.L. Hurley, 19 November 1920, ibid., file 202-600-288 (microfilm reel 927); Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004), 249. “Britain and America,” The Spectator, vol. 126, 28 May 1921, 672–673; “America and Britain: A Clean Slate,” The Spectator, vol. 127, 20 May 1922, 612–613. March 1919, Memo for Herter, Current Intelligence Division, American Section, Papers of Henry White, Library of Congress; Report of F.G. Caskey, 3 September 1921, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-9 (reel 921) Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 304–305, 336–307. Casper Whitney to?, 17 June 1921, Records of the American Defense Society, box 6, folder 7, New-York Historical Society; Report of F.G. Caskey, 11 July 1921, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-9 (reel 921). Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relation, 144–156, 190–207; Cuddy, IrishAmerica and National Isolationism, 155–169, 181, 209–215; Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 102–122, 139–140; Golway, Irish Rebel, 243–249. Slocum to Milstaff, 15 June 1918, Military Intelligence Division Correspondence, box 1067, 2266-A-60; Assistant Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence to Director of Military Intelligence Division, 17 June 1921, Military Intelligence Division Correspondence, box 2865, 10110-PP-51-1; Attorney General to Robert Lansing, 4 December 1919, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/103 (microfilm reel 214); John Davis to Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, ibid., 841D.00/198 (microfilm reel 216); Robert Krammer to Secretary of State, 17 May 1920, ibid., 841D.00/199 (microfilm reel 216); Report of G.P. Putnam, 21 June 1918, New York City, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-504 (microfilm reel 929). Assistant Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence to Director of Military Intelligence Division, 17 June 1921, Military Intelligence Division Correspondence, box 2865, 10110-PP-51-1; New York Times, 27 April 1921. John W. Davis to Secretary of State, 3 April 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/178 (microfilm reel 215).



Notes

Notes

222. Schmidt, Red Scare, 20, 40; David Williams, “The Bureau of Investigation and Its Critics, 1919–1921: The Origins of Federal Political Surveillance,” Journal of American History, vol. 68, 1981, 560–579. 223. Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland, 263–265. 224. Harry M. Daugherty, “Respect for Law: Certain Theories of Political Philosophy, Tending to Undermine this Essential Fact of Our Civilization, which have been Actively Asserted since the World War Ended,” American Bar Association Journal, vol. 7, October 1921, 505–509. 225. Edward Swann to Department of State, 17 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/132 (microfilm reel 214); Alvey Adee to Edward Swann, 27 February 1920, ibid., 841D.00/132 (microfilm reel 214); John Davis to Secretary of State, 4 February 1921, ibid., 841D.00/299 (microfilm reel 218); Harvey to Secretary of State, 20 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/370 (microfilm reel 218); J. Moyle to Secretary of State, 20 June 1921, ibid., 841D.00/372 (microfilm reel 218); Report of F.G. Caskey, 18 June 1921, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-9 (microfilm reel 921). 226. Report of F.G. Caskey, 14 December 1920, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-9 (microfilm reel 921); Report of G. Leslie Darden, 31 December 1921, Pensacola, FL, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-10 (microfilm reel 922); Report of William Sausels, 20 November 1920, Jacksonville, FL, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-10 (microfilm reel 922); FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-216 (microfilm reel 926); FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-1617 (microfilm reel 938); Report of H.J. Lenon, Pittsburgh, PA, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-1768 (microfilm reel 939); Report of James Wynn, 2 April 1921, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-216 (microfilm reel 926); Report of F.G. Caskey, 14 April 1921, Washington, DC, FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-9 (microfilm reel 921). 227. FBI Investigative Case Files, file 202-600-882 (microfilm reel 935). 228. Edward Swann to Department of State, 17 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/132 (microfilm reel 214); Alvey A. Adee to Edward Swann, 27 February 1920, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/132 (microfilm reel 214). 229. Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, 269; Hart, Mick, 203–206. 230. Frederick Dumont to the Secretary of State, 9 June 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/381 (microfilm reel 218); Charles E. Hughes to Frederick Dumont, 1 July 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/381 (microfilm reel 218). 231. William P. Kent to Department of State, 14 September 1921, Records of the Department of State, 841D.00/435 (microfilm reel 219); William P. Kent to Department of State, 5 October 1921, ibid., 841D.00/439 (microfilm reel 219); William P. Kent to Department of State, 30 November 1921, ibid., 841D.00/458 (microfilm reel 219). 232. Karen McElrath, Unsafe Haven: The United States, the IRA, and Political Prisoners (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2000), 7–20.

Conclusion 1. Mark Nicholls, Investigating the Gunpowder Plot (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914: An Aspect of Anglo-Irish History (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1988).



318

319

2. Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North American (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 92–93, 102, 116–118, 140, 197–206, 221–222, 241; John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflection on the Military Struggle for American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), chapter 9; Jeffery J. Crow, “Liberty Men and Loyalists: Disorder and Disaffection in the North Carolina Backcountry,” in An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, ed. Ronald Hoffman, Thad W. Tate and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: Published for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society by the University of Virginia Press, 1985), 125–178; Walter Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (orig., 2001; New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 62, 101, 131–142; John W. Gordon, South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History (orig., 2003; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), chapter 5. 3. Fellman, Inside War, chapter 2; Neely, Jr., The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction, chapter 2. 4. Trelease, White Terror; Green, Death in the Market. 5. Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States & the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 130–145, 416. 6. English, Irish Freedom, 131–132; Christine Kinealy, “At Home with Empire: The Example of Ireland,” in At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, ed. Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 77–100. For the larger historiographical debate see, Was Ireland a Colony? Economics, Politics and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, ed. Terence McDonough (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2005). 7. Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998), 1; R. Taras, Liberal and Illiberal Nationalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), xii. 8. Victor Kiernan, “The British Isles: Celt and Saxon,” in The National Question in Europe in Historical Context, ed. Mikuláš Teich and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1–34. 9. Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), see especially chapters 4–10. 10. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 254; David N. Doyle, Irish Americans: Native Rights and National Empires: The Structure, Divisions, and Attitudes of the Catholic Minority in the Decade of Expansion, 1890–1901 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 273–285. 11. Senator La Follette of Wisconsin on Proposed Recognition of Ireland, S.J. Res. 1, Congressional Record, 67 Cong., special sess., vol. 61, pt. 1 (26 April 1921), 651. 12. Tucker, Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire, 89–95; McElrath, Unsafe Haven, 51–53, 114–119. 13. Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981); George Schultz, “Terrorism: The Problem and the Challenges, June 13, 1984,” United States Department of State, Office of Public Communication (Washington: Department of State, 1984); George Schultz, “Terrorism and the Modern World,” U.S. Department of State Bulletin, vol. 84, 12– 17, December 1984; Ronald Reagan, “The New Network of Terrorists States,” U.S. Department of State Bulletin, vol. 85, no. 7, August 1985. 14. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006). 15. Levitt, Targeting Terror, 45.



Notes

Unpublished Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (online version) Fenian and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa Papers John J. Burns Library, Boston College, Boston, MA Papers of Patrick Andrew Collins Papers of George D. Cahill New York Public Library, New York City, NY Papers of Frank P. Walsh William J. Maloney and Margaret McKim Maloney Collection of Irish Historical Papers Papers of Patrick McCartan Papers of Roger Casement Papers of William Bourke Cockran Papers of Daniel Cohalan Papers of William J. Maloney Papers of Joseph McGarrity Papers of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa Library of Congress, Washington, DC Papers of Thomas F. Bayard Papers of John C. Bancroft Davis Papers of John Hay Papers of Robert Lansing Papers of the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agencies Papers of Henry White National Archives (formerly, Public Records Office), Kew. Great Britain. Parliament. Series 37. Cabinet Papers, 1880–1914, [microform]. Great Britain. Foreign Office. Series 5. United States of America, The Fenian Brotherhood, 1864–1887 [microform]. National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, MD Department of State Records, Diplomatic Correspondence, Record Group 59 Despatches from United States Ministers to Great Britain, 1791–1906 [microform]. Despatches from United States Consul, London, England, 1791–1906 [microform]. Despatches from United States, Belfast, Ireland, 1791–1906 [microform]. Despatches from United States, Cork, Ireland, 1791–1906 [microform]. Despatches from United States, Dublin, Ireland, 1791–1906 [microform]. Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, Great Britain [microform]. Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Department of State, 1834– 1906, Great Britain [microform]. 320



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Bibliography

9/11 attacks, 2 Abbott, Lyman, 103, 177 Act of Union (1800–1801), 7, 29, 117, 255 Adams, Charles Francis, 39, 45, 60–1, 99 Adee, Alvey A., 174 agrarianism, 18, 66–7, 69–76, 78–80, 82–6, 90–1, 93, 95, 98–100, 103–6, 109–11, 114–16, 125, 127, 203, 230 Alabama Claims, 25, 45, 178 Alabama, C.S.S., 41, 141 American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, 214, 238, 245 American Catholic Quarterly Review, 112 American Commission on Conditions in Ireland (Villard Commission), 208, 227, 247 American Defense Society (ADS), 203, 207, 224, 232–3, 237–8, 244, 246 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 220 Anarchist Exclusion Act (1903), 231–2 Ancient Order of Hibernians, 89, 111, 195 Anderson, Robert, 49–50, 116, 156 Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), 21, 189, 252, 263 Anglo-Irish War (1919–1922), 21, 33, 50–1, 112, 118, 189, 191, 196, 198, 202–3, 210, 213–14, 216, 220, 222, 240, 243–4, 249 Anglo-Saxonism, 4–5, 7–11, 16, 18–19, 22, 24, 26–8, 31, 33, 36, 42, 44, 47–8, 51–2, 55–6, 59, 61, 63, 66–8, 75–7, 82–3, 86, 88–90, 92–3–103, 105, 108, 110, 111–13, 115–16, 119, 121, 123–6, 130, 132, 136, 141, 148, 151, 154–5, 157–8, 160–2, 164, 168, 171, 173–4, 178–81, 184–5, 187, 189–94, 199, 203, 205, 209, 212–14, 217, 219–21, 226–30, 232–8, 240, 244–9, 251, 253–5, 257–65 An tOglach, 197

Archibald, Edward, 87, 90, 120, 137, 139–40 Argonaut, 220, 228, 235–6 Arnold-Forster, H. O., 116 Arthur Administration, 118, 142, 156–7, 159, 165–6, 168, 173, 176, 183 Arthur, Chester A., 124, 146, 180, 185 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 202, 218 Atlanta Constitution, The, 106, 119, 150, 165, 178 Atlantic Community, 9 Atlantic Monthly, 55, 113, 236 Bagenal, Philip H., 82, 112–13, 230 Banks, Nathaniel P., 40, 59–60 Barrows, B.H., 90 Battine, Cecil, 228 Bayard, Thomas, 125, 169, 171–2, 174, 176, 178, 181–2 Beach, Thomas Miller, 86–7, 133, 136 Becker, Bernard Henry, 82, 95 Beecher, Henry Ward, 87–8, 93, 103, 177 Beer, George Louis, 194 Bell, J. Franklin, 223 Berkman, Alexander, 238 Black and Tans, 210–12, 217, 222, 225, 227, 247 Blaine, James, 141–2, 144, 158, 166, 181, 183 Blaine-Pauncefote Extradition Treaty (1890), 181 Bloody Sunday (1920), 20, 205, 217–18 Blythe, Ernest, 197–8 Boers, 135, 213 Boland, Harry, 242 Boland, Michael, 148, 162 Borah, William E., 227 Boston Herald, 233, 240 Boxall, George E., 95–6, 126 boycotting, 15, 67, 81, 95, 100, 102–5, 118, 125, 197, 222 Brady, Edward, 202 Breslin, John J., 147 340



Index

Brewster, Benjamin H., 165–6 Bridge, James Howard, 185 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 58, 103–5, 164, 171–2 Brooks, Edward, 91–2, 99–102, 106–7, 111, 145 Bruce, Frederick, 36, 38 Bruce, Henry, 49 Bryce, James, 93, 104 Bureau of Investigation, 245–7 Burgess, John William, 98 Burke, Edmund, 35–6 Burke, Ricard O’Sullivan, 36, 46, 50 Burke, Thomas, 85, 114, 116 Bush, George W., 2 Cairo Gang, 200–1, 204, 211, 217–18, 226 Canadian Raids (1866, 1870), 36, 253 Canby, Henry Seidel, 207–8, 219 Captain Moonlight, 69, 79 Carbonari, 159 Carey, James, 124 Caribbean, 26, 156, 193, 239, 241 Carnegie, Andrew, 93, 185 Carroll, William, 147 Casement, Roger, 213–14, 244–5 Cavendish, Frederick, 85, 114, 116, 118, 120 Century, The, 93, 103, 158, 172 Chamberlain, Joseph, 182–3 Chester Castle Raid (1867), 24, 34, 41–2, 71, 154 Chicago Tribune, 57–8 Christian Union, The, 87, 93, 103, 112, 119, 146, 154, 156, 158, 160, 177, 180, 199 Clan-na-Gael, 19, 34, 42, 86, 120, 130, 131–2, 138, 141, 148–9, 151–2, 156–7, 162, 164, 166, 173, 183–4, 196, 214, 247, 253 Clarendon, Earl of, 36, 59 Clerkenwell Prison Bombing (1867), 17, 24, 46–61, 63, 66, 74, 84, 88, 99, 133, 143, 154 Cleveland Administration, 167, 174, 183 Cleveland, Grover, 157, 185–6 Clipperton, Robert, 148–50, 153–4, 172 Cobbe, Frances Power, 55 Cohalan, Daniel, 214

341

Colby, Bainbridge, 221–2, 235 Cold War, 1–3, 9, 22, 250 Coleridge, John Drake, 156 Colfax, Schuyler S., 63, 99 Collins, Jerome, 131 Collins, Michael, 200–2, 204–5, 217, 243, 248–9 Collins, Patrick A., 105, 154 Condon, Edward O’Meagher, 43, 60, 149 Contemporary Review, 52 Coolidge, Calvin, 233 Cowper, Earl of, 85 Cox, S.S., 145–6 Creel, George, 219, 221 Creighton, Robert J., 123–4 Crime Special Branch, 118 Croke Park Massacre (1920), 20, 217, 221, 225–6 Croly, Herbert, 220 Cronin, Patrick H., 134, 253 Crozier, Frank Pearce, 227–8 Crump, George W., 89, 139 Cuba Five, 132 Daily News, 82, 95, 200, 239 Daily Telegraph, The, 47, 52 Daugherty, Harry M., 247–8 Daunt, William J. O’Neill, 50–1, 53, 116–17 Davis, John W., 204–6, 255–7 Davitt, Michael, 70–1, 82, 85, 90, 103, 110, 114–15, 135, 147, 151 Dawson, Richard, 229–30 Deasy, Timothy, 41–2 Derby Ministry, 49 de Valera, Éamon, 198, 200–1, 214, 242, 244 Devoy, John, 38, 54, 60, 86, 132, 135–7, 147, 150–2, 162, 164, 214 Dillon, John, 115 Dillon, Luke, 162 Dillon, William, 153 Disestablishment Act (1869), 48–9, 53, 73, 78, 133, 203 Drummond, Victor, 89–90, 140, 144, 183 Dublin Castle, 29, 37, 39, 41, 68, 84–5, 89, 104, 106, 116–18, 122, 137, 148, 150, 153, 163, 200, 212–13, 215, 243, 264



Index

Index

Dublin Metropolitan Police, 49, 62, 115, 118, 120, 198, 201, 210, 224 Dumont, Frederick, 203–7, 209, 222–6, 235, 242–4, 249 Dynamite War (1881–1885), 49, 52, 54, 88, 128–61, 180–3 Easter Rebellion (1916), 195, 199, 202, 210, 213, 216, 219, 238, 246, 252 Eastman, Edwin G., 40, 61 Economist, The, 42, 48, 82, 100, 116–17, 155, 157, 176 Edmunds, George, 1, 168–9, 171–2, 174, 178 Edwards, Pierrepont, 41, 87, 124, 137 Egan, Patrick, 84, 87–8, 96, 105, 107, 120, 122, 148–9, 180 Eisenhower Administration, 2 Eldredge, Charles A., 45 Engels, Frederick, 51, 234 Escouflaire, Rodolphe C., 202, 208 Explosive Substances Act (1883), 155–6 Feeley, Denis, 148 Fenian Brotherhood, 31–2, 34, 36–7, 41, 53, 63, 86, 112, 114, 120, 131–2 Fenianism, 25, 27–38, 42–3, 45, 49–52, 56, 59, 61–3, 66, 69, 73, 98, 132, 176, 180, 203, 241 Fenian Ram, 183–4 Filipino Nationalists, 188, 223, 241, 252, 259 Finerty, John F., 153 First International (1864), 101 Force Acts (1870–1), 124, 253 Force Acts (1875), 107 Ford, Patrick, 96, 133–5, 138, 140, 143, 154, 204 Forster, William E., 72, 81, 84–5, 89, 101, 103, 106, 110–11, 116, 152, 162 Fortescue, Chichester, 73 Fortnightly Review, 82, 122 Fox, Richard K., 160 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 161–2 Frelinghuysen, Frederick T., 108, 111, 122–3, 142–3, 146, 156, 158, 165, 167–8, 174 French Assassination Attempt (1919), 199, 219 French Commune (1870–1), 23, 101

Friends of Irish Freedom, 214–16, 238, 241, 247 Froude, James A., 49, 83 Gaelic Athletic Association, 115, 217 Gaffney, Thomas St. John, 220 Gallagher, Thomas, 155–6, 175 Gardiner, Alfred George, 239–40 Garfield, James, 141, 170 Garrison, William Lloyd, 133 Geddes, A.C., 222, 227, 242 George, Henry, 96, 122, 128 German-Irish Collaboration, 210, 238 Gibbons, Randall L., 170 Gladstone Ministry, 73, 78, 81, 84–5, 100, 108, 115, 118, 136, 155–6, 163 Gladstone, William, 37, 48–50, 72, 74–5, 79, 81, 83–4, 101, 105, 109–10, 114–15, 117–20, 125, 135, 137, 140, 149, 152, 155, 157, 162, 170, 213 Glasgow Herald, 151 Godkin, Edwin, 78, 97–8, 124–5, 151, 177 Gompers, Samuel, 86 Grant Administration, 28 Grant, Ulysses S., 132 Granville, Lord, 109 Grasty, Charles H., 208 Great Railroad Strikes (1877), 102, 110 Greeley, Horace, 159 Green, Alice Stopford, 216 Greenwood, Hamar, 202 Grey, Earl of, 83 Griffith, Arthur, 195–6, 203–4 Guy Fawkes Plot (1605), 61, 251 Habberton, John, 104 habeas corpus, 24, 38–9, 41, 73, 83, 85, 89, 106–8, 118, 145–6, 257 Hackett, Francis, 216–17 Hague Conventions (1899, 1907), 228 Hammond, John Lawrence, 213 Harcourt, William Vernon, 117, 143, 149, 152, 155, 157, 162 Harding Administration, 189, 233, 238, 243, 246 Harding, Warren G., 220, 242, 248 Harper’s Weekly, 88, 93–4, 118, 121, 159–60, 180 Hart, Albert Bushnell, 203 Hartt, Rollin Lynde, 207



342

Index

International Review, 85, 123 Iran Hostage Crisis (1979–1980), 2 Irgun, 1 Irish-American, The, 34, 41, 44, 53–4, 74, 96–7, 160 Irish-American Labor League, 247 Irish Bulletin, 204, 215 Irish Citizen, 44, 53, 77, 96 Irish Free State, 21, 153 Irish Invincibles, 114–17, 120–1, 147 Irish Nation, 137 Irish National League of American, 86–7, 121, 148–9 Irish Parliamentary Party, 52, 54, 70, 80, 85, 89, 104, 132, 195 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 20–1, 187–250 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), 29–35, 39, 41–2, 50, 53, 59, 62–3, 71, 115, 118, 132, 135, 148, 150, 155, 163–4, 184, 190, 195–7, 201–2, 204, 206, 224, 235, 241, 247 Irish Volunteers, 193, 195–7, 204, 216, 241, 244, 247 Irish World, 96, 133–4, 137, 140, 143, 204

Jacobin Terror (1793–4), 12, 23, 35–6, 39, 83, 96, 103, 199, 203, 220, 234, 247, 254 Johnson Administration, 28, 37–9, 59 Johnson, Albert, 232–3 Johnson, Andrew, 23 Johnson, Ben, 159 Kautsky, Karl, 50–1, 234 Kelly, Thomas J., 41–2, 44, 46, 62 Kent, William, 205–7, 209, 225–6, 242, 249 Keppler, Joseph, 105–6, 119, 133, 148, 161, 180–1 Kinsella, Thomas, 104–5 Knights of Labor, 86 Ku Klux Klan, 27, 68, 73, 77, 93–4, 107, 124–5, 214, 237, 248 La Follette, Robert, 226–7, 259 Land Act (1870), 48, 73, 108 Land League, 34, 70–1, 81–94, 96, 100–7, 110–11, 113–23, 135, 148, 151 Land War (1879–1882), 18, 67, 70, 80–114, 125, 128, 161 Lansing, Robert, 207, 226 League of Nations, 214 League of Nations Convention (1937), 263 Lincoln Assassination (1865), 23–4, 49, 61–2, 77, 99, 115, 170 Lippmann, Walter, 220 Lloyd George, David, 213 Lloyd George Ministry, 211–12, 217–18, 235 Lomasney, William M., 38–9, 151–2, 162 London Review, The, 36–7, 42–3, 48, 62 Lowell, James R., 91–2, 97, 101, 107–12, 118, 122–3, 140–5, 157, 165, 175, 183 MacArthur, Arthur, 188 Mac Curtain, Tomás, 211 MacDonald, William, 208, 236 Macmillan’s Magazine, 116 Macready, Nevil, 205 MacSwiney, Terrance, 239 Maloney, William, 242 Manchester Guardian, 213



Harvey, George B., 245–6 Hawley, Joseph R., 170 Hay, John, 99 Haymarket Bombing (1886), 134, 184, 231 Healy, T. M., 153 Heap, G. H., 40 Hoar, George, 125, 170 Hobson, Bulmer, 197 Holland, John, 183 Holt, Hamilton, 219 Home Office, 49, 135 home rule, 48, 52, 61, 70–1, 80, 83, 91, 97, 103, 115–16, 123, 126, 132, 183–4, 188–9, 196, 204, 217, 223–4, 226, 236, 239–40, 255–6, 258 Hoover, Herbert, 242 Hoover, J. Edgar, 245 Hoppin, William J., 172 Hughes, Charles E., 207, 242 Hughes, Katherine, 216 Hugins, Roland, 236–7 Hurlbert, Henry William, 125 Hynes, Thomas, 39

343

Index

Manchester Martyrs, 17, 24, 43–4, 46, 53, 58, 62 Manchester Rescue (1867), 17, 24, 41–6, 48, 53–5, 59–60, 133, 149 March Rising (1867), 41, 44, 51–2 Marxism, 67, 234 Marx, Karl, 51, 103 McArthur, William, 138 McCafferty, John, 62, 154, 162 McCarran Internal Security Act, 3 McCartan, Patrick, 238 McCarthy, Justin H., 85, 104 McGarrity, Joseph, 238 McKinley Assassination (1901), 168, 193, 231 McParlan, James, 77 Meany, Stephen Joseph, 34 Meason, Malcolm Laing, 163 Merritt, Edwin Atkins, 108 Mezzeroff, Gaspodin, 149 Millen, Frederick F., 163 Mitchel, John, 34, 44, 53, 74, 153 Mitchell, Mason, 242 Molly Maguires, 4, 76–8, 102, 110–11, 140, 157, 159, 199–200 Montgomery, K. L., 229 Mooney, Thomas, 238 Moran, Benjamin, 75 Morat Bay Massacre (1865), 40, 45 Morris, William O’Connor, 83 Motley, James L., 75, 78–80, 99 Nast, Thomas, 180 Nation, The, 40, 58, 75, 78–9, 92, 96–7, 103, 117, 124, 136, 144, 150–1, 160, 166, 171, 177, 208, 219, 227, 233 National Police Gazette, The, 160 National Review, 96 National Security League, 203, 232, 246 naturalization controversy, 27, 60, 110–11, 145, 180, 185, 258, 262 New Republic, The, 216–17, 220, 233–4 Newton, John, 160–1 New York Evening Post, 58, 154, 207–8, 221 New York Herald, 104, 131, 150 New York Methodist Episcopal Conference, 240 New York Observer, 44 New York Star, 147

New York Times, 35–6, 45, 56–8, 63, 75–6, 78, 80, 92, 111, 120, 129, 137–8, 144, 146, 148, 158–9, 166, 168, 171, 173, 179, 185, 200, 208, 217, 247 New York Tribune, 92, 119, 121, 154, 159, 166, 169, 178 New York World, 58, 115, 120–1, 125, 154, 158, 177, 207, 221 Nineteenth Century, The, 82 Norris, George W., 226, 228 North American Review, 111, 160–1 O’Brien, William, 54, 148, 151 O’Donnell, Patrick, 124 O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah, 39, 54, 88, 132–43, 148–53, 155, 159, 161, 163, 173–4, 176, 180, 184, 201 O’Duffy, Eoin, 201 O’Kelly, James J., 150 Oklahoma City Bombing (1995), 2 O’Leary, John, 135, 153 O’Mahony Wing, 34, 42 O’Neill, John, 53 Opper, Frederick Burr, 161, 180–1 Orange Riots (1870–1), 76, 106 Outlook, The, 199, 237, 239 Pall Mall Gazette, 42–3, 56, 185 Palmer, Mitchell, 222, 245, 248 Palmer Raids (1919–1921), 222, 233–4 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 194, 241, 246 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 54, 70, 80, 84–5, 89–90, 101, 103, 115, 117, 119, 121, 132, 148, 150, 152, 164 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act (1870), 73 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act (1881), 85 Perdicaris Affair (1904), 4 Phelps, E. J., 175, 181, 185 Phelps-Roseberry Extradition Treaty (1886), 181 Philadelphia Protestant Federation, 240 Philippine-American War (1899–1902), 170, 188 Phoenix Park Murders (1882), 18, 52, 68, 85, 103, 113–27, 147, 152, 170, 177, 182, 199, 201, 209 Pigott, Richard, 52, 152



344

Pinkerton Detective Agency, 4, 16, 77, 140 Plunkett, Horace, 227 Pollard, Hugh Bertie Campbell, 41, 210, 230, 243 Powderly, Terence V., 86 Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act (1882), 85 Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Act (1881), 107, 145 Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1 Puck, 87–8, 93, 105–6, 119–20, 124, 133, 148, 161, 180–1 Punch, 88, 161 Quarterly Review, 115, 156 Rathom, John R., 207, 244 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920), 225 Ribbonmen, 69, 71, 114, 255 Riddleberger, Harrison H., 169–70 Rightboys, 69, 255 Robbins, Edward E., 231 Roberts/Senate Wing, 42 Roberts, William R., 62–3 Rogers, Henry Wade, 178–9 Roosevelt Administration, 4–5, 7, 169, 231 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 236 Roosevelt, Theodore, 7, 93, 194, 199, 231–2 Root, Elihu, 168–9 Rose, Hugh, 72, 105–6 Roundell, Charles Savile, 72–3 Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), 38–9, 81, 86, 107, 122, 198, 201, 207, 209–12, 218, 222, 224–5 Russian Revolution (1917), 208, 228, 230–2, 234, 247 Russian Terrorists, 12–14, 100, 114, 138–9, 151–2, 159–60, 230, 237 Ryan, Desmond, 148, 152 Sackville-West, Lionel S., 109, 118–19, 121, 145, 150, 157–8, 165–6, 172–3, 176 Salford Barracks Explosion (1881), 138, 143 Schenck, Robert, 39

345

Seelye, Julius H., 160 Self, Edward, 160 Sepoy Rebellion (1857), 40 Seward, William, 23, 39–40, 45, 60–2, 80, 172 Sexton, Thomas, 103–4 Seymour, M. Hobart, 52 Sheridan, P.J., 153–4, 180 Sherman, William T., 24–5 Sims, William, 246 Sinn Féin, 20, 49, 189–91, 195–249 Sinn Féin Bonds, 243 Skirmishing Fund, 133–40, 152, 161, 183 Smith, Goldwin, 35, 49, 97–8, 100, 110, 112 Smith, Jacob H., 223 Social Darwinism, 94–6, 98 Soloheadbeg Ambush (1919), 198 Spectator, The, 36–7, 43, 48, 51, 72, 82, 95, 117, 124, 139, 155, 163, 175, 199–200, 212 Stack, J. Herbert, 37–8, 51 Stead, William T., 185 Stephens, James, 33, 41, 53, 135, 147, 150 Stern Gang, 1 Stone Affair (1901–2), 4 Storey, Moorfield, 240–1 Sullivan, Alexander, 148–9, 155, 159–60, 164, 166 Sullivan, A.M., 115, 150 Sunday Mercury, 90 Taft, William H., 188 terrorism, definitions of, 11–15 Thebaud, Augustine J., 104 Thornton, Edward, 61–2, 90, 136–7, 141–2, 144 Threshers, 69, 255 Times, The (London), 42, 150, 200 Tinsley’s Magazine, 54–5 Train, George Francis, 33–4 Trench, W. Steuart, 71 Triangle, The, 147–8, 155 Truman Administration, 2–3 Truman Doctrine, 2–3 Turner, Edward Raymond, 237, 241 Tynan, Patrick, 114



Index

Index

United Irishmen, 133–4, 136–7, 140, 142–3, 173 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 208, 227 Vincent, Howard, 115 Walker, Albert Perry, 203 Walsh, Thomas J., 226 Washington Disarmament Conference (1921–1922), 242 Washington, George, 204 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 176

Welsh, Francis Ralston, 238 West, William, 39, 75 Whiteboys, 69, 114, 159, 255 Williams, John Sharp, 234–5 Wilson Administration, 10, 189, 194–5, 208, 214, 219, 238 Wilson, Henry, 209 Wilson, Philip Whitwell, 199–200, 239 Wilson, Woodrow, 10, 187, 194, 214, 221, 227, 233–4, 242 Zionists, 3



346

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