Clan na Gael
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For the Celtic Rock band formerly known as Clan na Gael, see Seven Nations.
The Clan na Gael (sic; the correct modern Irish spelling would be Clann na nGael "family of the Gaels") was an Irish republican organization in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Successor to the Fenian Brotherhood and a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
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[edit] Background
As Irish immigration to the United States of America began to increase in the 18th century many Irish organizations were formed. One of the earliest was formed under the name of the Irish Charitable Society and was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1737. These new organisations went by varying names, most notably the Ancient and Most Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of Saint Patrick, founded in New York in 1767, the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick for the Relief of Emigrants in Philadelphia in 1771, and the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick also formed in New York in 1784.
In the later part of the 1780s, a strong nationalist rather than Catholic character began to grow in these organisations and amongst recently arrived Irish immigrants. The usage of Celtic symbolism helped solidify this sense of nationalism and was most noticeably found in the use of the name "Hibernian." (Hibernia is the Latin name for Ireland.)
In 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood had been founded in Dublin by James Stephens. The initial decision to create this organisation came about after Stephens consulted, through special emissary Joseph Denieffe, with John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny, members of a precursor group called the Emmet Monument Association.
In response to the establishment of the IRB in Dublin, a sister organization was founded in New York, the Fenian Brotherhood, led by O'Mahony. This arm of Fenian activity in America produced a surge in radicalism among groups of Irish immigrants, many of whom had recently been forced from Ireland by the Great Hunger. In October, 1865, the Fenian Philadelphia Congress met and appointed the Irish Republican Government in the U.S. But in 1865, in Ireland, the IRB newspaper The Irish People had been raided by the British and the IRB leadership imprisoned. Another abortive uprising would occur in 1867, but the British remained in control.
After the 1865 crackdown in Ireland, the American organization began to fracture over what to do next. Made up of veterans of the American Civil War, a Fenian army had been formed. While O'Mahony and his supporters wanted to remain focused on supporting rebellions in Ireland a competing faction, called the Roberts, or senate wing, wanted this Fenian Army to attack British bases in Canada. The resulting Fenian Raids strained U.S.-British relations. The level of American support for the Fenian cause began to diminish as the Fenians were seen as a threat to stability in the region.
The Irish were still seen as a foreign people within the borders of the American state by anti-Catholic Americans such as members of the Know-Nothing Party; their existence within America was seen primarily as temporary camps of immigrants who planned to stay in America only as long as the British stayed in Ireland. Upon the British withdrawal from Irish soil, it was believed, the Irish immigrants would return to their native land. The Fenian Raids were seen as an astonishing example of immigrant activity in U.S. history and Irish nationalism has itself become something of an exception among the American melting pot. Very few U.S. immigrants concerned themselves with their mother country as did the Irish; in March of 1868, 100,000 Fenian supporters held an anti-English demonstration in New York.
[edit] Creation of Clan na Gael
After 1867, the Irish Republican Brotherhood headquarters in Manchester chose to support neither of the existing feuding factions, but instead promoted a renewed Irish republican organization in America, to be named Clan na Gael.
According to John Devoy in 1924, Jerome James Collins founded what was then called the Napper Tandy Club in New York on June 20, 1867, Wolfe Tone's birthday, this club expanded into others and at one point at a picnic in 1870 was named the Clan na Gael by Sam Cavanagh. This was the same Cavanagh who killed the informer George Clark (Gaelic American January 7, 1905) who had exposed a Fenian pike making operation in Dublin to the police.
Collins, who died in 1881 on the disastrous Jeannette Expedition to the North Pole, was a science editor on the New York Herald, who had left England in 1866 when a plot he was involved in to free the Fenian prisoners at Pentonville prison was uncovered by the police. Collins believed at the time of the founding in 1867 that the two feuding Fenians branches should patch things up. (Much of the preceding is found in the Gaelic American, 29 Dec 1906, in an article entitled "The Inside Story of the Jeanette Horror". Both John O'Mahony and William R Roberts, opposing leaders of fighting branches of the Fenians, belonged to the Napper Tandy Club, according to Devoy in the aforementioned article.)
After arriving in America in 1871 John Devoy indicated he joined the Clan na Gael early on and attempted several times at Clan conventions to get the Clan to adopt a plan to free the military prisoners held by the British in Fremantle Australia. In 1874 John Devoy, with some oratorical help from Thomas Francis Bourke, was elected Chairman of the Executive Board of the Clan and was also chosen to execute the rescue of the prisoners. Bourke warned Devoy that there would be "kickers" and he would have to have a heavy hand to control the Clan na Gael and succeed in the project(Proceedings of the United Brotherhood Convention, Cleveland Ohio September 1874 held at the Fenian archives at the Catholic University of America). John Devoy devoted all his time to this project and oversaw the purchase of the bark Catalpa and the outfitting of this ship as a whaler. The Clan engaged an American Captain George S Anthony as its Captain with New Bedford whaling crew. John received considerable help in running the Clan from Dr. William Carroll who was elected Executive Board Chairman in 1875 and between them they controlled Clan activity until 1882. Carroll was of Ulster Protestant stock and brought in others to the Clan from the upper middle class such as Simon Barclay Conover, Senator from Florida. Devoy's nemesis during the fund raising for the enterprise was John Goff, an aspiring Clan member who later became a New York Supreme Court Judge and who, perhaps, resented the influence of Bourke and Devoy in the Clan. Devoy did in fact take a strong hand and began tossing out Clan members for malfeasance in office and violation of Clan rules as is shown in "General Circular No. 2" dated January 15, 1875 [NLI MS. 18,015(1): John Devoy Papers. For more on the Catalpa rescue see Sean O'Lung "Fremantle Mission", Philip Fennell and Marie King (Eds.) "John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition", a transcription of John Devoy's Catalpa Story in the Gaelic American, and ZW Pease's "The Catalpa Expedition" the latter published by George Anthony the Captain aboard the ship. The success of the rescue in 1876 resulted in the Clan na Gael replacing for all practical purposes the Fenian Brotherhood as the spokesman of Irish-American nationalism.
Under the leadership of John Devoy, Clan na Gael would eventually be successful in educating Americans about the movement.
[edit] New Departure 1879
In 1879, Devoy promoted a "New Departure" in Irish republican thinking, by which the "physical force party" allied itself with the "constitutional movement" under the political leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, MP; the political plans of the Fenians were thus combined with the agrarian revolution inaugurated by the Irish National Land League.
By 1880 more aggressive men within the Clan na Gael were chaffing at the slow pace of Devoy and Carroll and these men were able to take control of the organization in 1882 when two "action men", Alexander Sullivan and Michael Boland took over the reins and ran the clan as a dictatorship along with a inactive fellow name Feeley. The new leadership ignored the Revolutionary Council set up by Carroll to coordinate between the IRB and the Clan and began to operate in total secrecy from even the membership of the Clan. These three men called themselves the "Triangle" and began making bombing runs into England in what was called the "Dynamite War". This infuriated the IRB in Ireland which cut ties with the Irish-Americans. Michael Boland was later pointed out as a British spy which might have explained why the majority of the bombers were caught and jailed before they could strike.[1][2]
The 1880s saw the solidification, at least within America, of Irish ideological orientations with most nationalist sentiment finding its home within Clan na Gael, rather than sectarian anti-Protestant organisations. The more agrarian-minded found their ideological brethren within the Irish Federation of America. The third ideological strand was connected to the union and socialist movement and found support with the Knights of Labor. In the late 1880's a financial scandal in the Chicago branch of the Clan led to a successful conspiracy to murder whistle-blower Philip Patrick Henry Cronin. John Devoy, who worked with Cronin, also began carrying a gun and expected to be assassinated by Alexander Sullivan's henchmen. The Cronin case, prosecuted by State's Attorney Joel Minnick Longenecker achieved international attention. Neither the prosecution or the defense were concerned with the Clan's ties to the Fenians, trying the case simply as a conspiracy to commit murder.[3] The Clan na Gael had split into pro and anti Sullivan/Boland branches, but was re-united by John Devoy around 1900.
In 1891, a moderate offshoot of the Clan na Gael broke away and formed an organization under the name of Irish National Federation of America with T. Emmet as president. The federation supported the National Party in Ireland, a splinter group of Parnell's Home Rule Party.
The objective of Clan na Gael was to secure an independent Ireland and to assist the Irish Republican Brotherhood in achieving this aim. To this end, the Clan was prepared to enter into alliances with any nation allied against the British; with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Clan found its greatest ally in Imperial Germany and it was with their help the Easter Rising would succeed. Devoy, along with Roger Casement and Joseph McGarrity, was able to bring together both the American and German support in the years prior to the Easter Rising. However the German munitions never reached Ireland as the ship carrying them was scuttled. Clan na Gael became the largest single financier of both the Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence. Imperial Germany aided Clan na Gael by selling those guns and munitions to be used in the uprising of 1916. Germany had hoped that by distracting Britain with an Irish uprising they would be able to garner the upper hand in the war and affect a German victory on the Western Front. However, they failed to follow through with more support. Clan na Gael was also involved via McGarrity and Casement in the abortive attempt to raise an "Irish Brigade" to fight against the British. The Clan Na Gael is also accepted to have been a major supporter of the Ghadarite Indian Nationalism, and is thought to have played a key role in the Hindu German Conspiracy in the United States during World War I.[4]
The Clan-na-Gael still exists today, much changed from the days of the Catalpa rescue and as recently as 1997 another internal split occurred as a result of the IRA shift away from using physical force as a result of the Good Friday peace accords.[5]
[edit] Presidents of the Clan na Gael
From its founding in 1869, although heavily influenced by founder John Devoy over the years, the organiaztion was nominally under the control of an executive committee. At a conference held in Chicago during 1881, the committee was reduced to five members. However, within a short time, the committee would come under the domination of Michael Boland, D.S. Freely and national chairman Alexander Sullivan who together were known as "the Triangle".
[edit] References
- ^ McGee, Owen. The IRB. Four Courts Press, Dublin. 2006 pp 105-8
- ^ Devoy, "Story of the Clan na Gael," Gaelic American 29 November 1924
- ^ McEnnis, John T. The Clan na Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin. (bibliographic information needed for this book)
- ^ Plowman, Matthew Erin. "Irish Republicans and the Indo-German Conspiracy of World War I," New Hibernia Review 7.3 (2003) 81-105
- ^ Ed Moloney, Clan na Gael split a worry for Sinn Féin Published 9 May 2006. Accessed 17 March 2008.
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