19th Century Irish History Articles - Renewed Nationalist Movements of the Mid-1800s

Articles: 19th Century Ireland
V. Renewed Nationalist Movements

by Dr. Sam Couch, Ph. D.
Owner, Rising Road Tours

Sectarian violence was endemic from 1850 on. The moment it became clear that because of the Famine and more normal demographic factors there was a sizeable population of Papists, Taigs or Fenians within the city boundary; after 1850 occupancy meant franchise.

The riots were seasonal in times of peace but when anti-Home Rule agitation was at its height the season was open. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were, on the whole, a non-partisan, if armed force, but the town police, the first line of peacekeepers, consisted almost entirely of Protestant Orangemen. The industrialists were against the idea of Home Rule not because of the Rome Rule equation but because they doubted a Dublin parliament's total commitment to the technically larger city and because they knew that agitation unsettled the workforce. Threats of a modification to the 1801 Act were met with exigency plans for the transfer of business to the Clyde or the Mersey.

The Union had failed. It was unthinkable that the smugly self-righteous Trevelyan and Wood would have been non-interventionist if the Famine had raged in Derbyshire or Dundee. All excuses damned the Union more deeply: lack of awareness of the extent of the problem; difficulties of bringing relief; lack of cooperation from the landowners; and the exacerbation of the problem by eviction - would these conditions have occurred with a Dublin parliament? With the passing of the 1850 franchise act, the group of nationalist MPs, once called "O'Connell's tail" had learned the techniques of tactical voting and procedural obstructionism. The tail was now ready to wag the dog. It was clear the Repeal would inevitably be obtained. The ultimate supremacy of two-thirds of the population that owed no allegiance to Britain was unquestioned. In the meantime the "attempted genocide" had to be avenged.

Vengeance and the question of the land had to be settled. Many of the leaders of the failed rising of 1848 escaped to France or America and continued with revolutionary zeal undiminished to plan for the physical force option which they believed was the only means of making Britain concede independence. In 1858 John O'Mahony suggested to James Stephens the foundation of a new republican organization at first known as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB) and later as the Irish Republic Brotherhood. Stephens was to organize at home while O'Manhony would be in charge of the American arm. Because of their stoicism in imprisonment, their dominance of the English media during the 1860s and their requisition by Pearse as revolutionary icons, the names of O'Donovan Rossa, John Deveoy, T.C. Luby, Charles Kickham, Micahel Doheny, John O'Leary and Micahel Davitt are still entities in an emotional hall of fame. They were soon called "Fenians" after the Fianna of Fionn Mac Cumhaill in the ancient sagas.

Its main membership was in working class Catholic met who were prepared to run the gauntlet of Church disapproval. Archbishop, later Cardinal, Cullen hated revolutionary movements. The IRB had its organ in The Irish People, a rather more energetic and specific paper than The Nation. The first opportunity for a show of public strength was the return of the body of the old 1848 warrior Terence Bellew MacManus who died in San Francisco in 1861. Cullen forbade lying in state in Dublin's Pro-cathedral, so the body was placed in state at the Mechanics Institute (later to be the first Abbey Theatre). The funeral was huge and made a considerable but significant detour by Thomas Street where Emmett had been executed 58 years before. The direct descendants of the Fenians were to stage exactly the same kind of emotional event when Pearse made his famous "Fenian dead" oration over the grave of O'Donovan Rossa in 1915.

Both events were intended as preliminaries to a rising, but Stephens, who loved the idea of a secret society, was a notable procrastinator and the 1865 insurrection had to be aborted. ON 15 September O'Leary, Luby and Rossa were arrested. The turn of Stephens and Kickham came on 11 November and John Devoy, who took over command from Stephens, was imprisoned the following February. Prison conditions were made deliberately harsh. Kickham's health was broken after he had served four of his fourteen years' penal servitude. O'Donovan Rossa, Devoy, O'Leary, and Luby all served at least five years before being released on condition of exile. Stephens escaped from Richmond Gaol a fortnight after his arrest with help form a warder who was a sworn Fenian brother. The fact that the movement had members in the army, police and prison service was balanced by the inevitable presence of informers.

The IRB gained grudging respect. Its activities consisted mainly of attempted rescues of members. On 11 September 1867 Thomas Kelly and Timothy Deasy were arrested in Manchester. A week later a successful rescue attempt from a prison van in Manchseter resulted in the shooting of a police sergeant. Three Fenians were tried for this murder and hanged. It was an age of instant ballads and "God Save Ireland," which told of the "gallant three" forever known as the "Manchester Martyrs" became a sort of national anthem. The other Fenian incident of 1867 another attempted rescue was bungled and horrific. The charge sent against Clerkenwell Detention Center was too heavy. Twelve people were killed instantly; of the 138 seriously injured, 18 later died. The prisoners did not escape; if they had been where they were supposed to be, they would have been killed too.

The "bold Fenian" men had for the time being been defeated. Factionalism followed and several localized eruptions were organized by small splinter groups. The Irish Republican Army, led by John O'Neill a former Union general, invaded Canada at the end of May 1866. This effort was a total failure. After O'Neill's imprisonment, he abandoned further republican activity.

One of the Fenian oaths started with the words: "I do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established... This arrogation of sovereignty was to establish the moral right to carry on a war as if a country called the Republic of Ireland actually existed. It was a right later assumed by the IRA and so stated in 1920, 1938 and 1971. The "Invincibles" who carried out the Phoenix Park murders of the chief and undersecretaries Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke on 6 May 1882 were another such "independent" group. The undefined Fenian tradition lived on, regularly to reawakend the Phoenix Flame, as O'Donovan Rossa called the cause.

The Fenians' most obvious successes were won more or less constitutionally in alliance with Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Plan of Campaign was the first significant step in the process that was finally to settle the question of the ownership of the land of Ireland. From 1850 to 1880 there was a sense of stability in rural Ireland. This stability depended on emigration and on subsidies of the American letter, an important part of the homeside family's budget. Economic recession in America meant an excess population at home who often vented by increased protest and unconstitutional activity. For most Irish farmers at this time rends were endurable (just), eviction unlikely and tenure tolerably secure. A majority had achieved the "Three Fs" - fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale - that Charles Gavan Duffy's Tenant Right League had sought in 1850.

Landlords still were tolerable, though there were exceptions. Most were not at all like Michael Davitt's emotional description of them as "vampires." Gladstone's 1870 Land Act was one of the first moves to pacify Ireland. Davitt's hope of land nationalization was not to be realized, but he is to be credited along with Parnell with the settling of the land question. His 1876 analysis showed that 70 percent of the land was owned by fewer than 2,000 people. Three million small tenants and laborers owned no property at all.

The years 1879-1881 saw a serious crisis in agriculture that seemed comparable with the Hungry Forties. Davitt organized farmers in Mayo. He persuaded Parnell to speak at his demonstrations and was able to provide the relief that was sorely lacking during the Great Famine with money provided by American Fenians, who had started calling themselves Clan na Gael in 1870. There was support from the Catholic clergy and the policy of ostracism was used most noisily in Lough Mask House, the home of Captain Boycott, when Lord Erne's crops were harvested by Cavan Orangemen at an astronomic cost. There were threats, special courts, independent collection of rents, agrarian outrages and when Parnell was arrested in 1881, a rent strike.

Gladstone's Land Act of 1881 granted the Three Fs and the Healy Clause, ensuring that tenants' improvements would not be penalized by rent increases. Independence was now the prize and the more austere of the Irish leaders were disinclined to spend further time on bread and butter issues like land ownership. It was under Conservative governments that the acts that enabled the Irish peasantry finally to purchase their farms were passed. In 1885 the Purchase of Land Act enabled a total of 942,600 acres to be purchased. Wyndham's Act in 1902 and Birrell's Act gave the Congested District Boards powers of compulsory purchase in December 1909. This allowed the poorest tenants to acquire the land they worked. The landlords were interested in unloading the largely unprofitable lands. Land purchase become compulsory in 1920 and many landlords left for political as much as economic reasons. The significant history of modern Ireland could be said without much exaggeration to have begun in the bad winters of 1879-1881.

This series of articles is based on lectures given by Dr. Samuel Couch to Irish Studies courses at Georgia Southern University and Young Harris College between 1997 and 2004. Documented sources come from Couch's research and studies in American universities and with scholars in Ireland. The articles are in no way intended to be comprehensive.

Background materials come from, but are not limited to, readings in the following books:

Duffy, Sean, ed., Atlas of Irish History. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1997.
Joyce, P.W., Outlines of the History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 1905. M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin. 1909.
Killeen, Richard, A Short History of Ireland. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1994.
Smyth, Daragh, A Guide to Irish Mythology. 2nd ed. Irish Academic Press: Dublin. 1996.

Any lack of attribution to primary sources is unintentional and the sole responsibility of Dr. Couch.

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Articles: 19th Century Ireland V. Renewed Nationalist Movements

Articles: 19th Century Ireland
V. Renewed Nationalist Movements