Irish history Synopsis Six Days to Frongoch
On returning from the Fairyhouse Races the British commander General W.H.M Lowe declared Martial Law on
24, April 1916.
A cordon was thrown about the central city by commander General W. H. M Lowe and artillery fire begun day and night. 2000 trops already being in Dublin 6500 were brought in from other parts of Ireland and from England itself.
A position was taken up in the Shelburne hotel over looking St Stephens Green where the entrenched rebel troop under Mallon and Mareivicz were dug in. This required them to evacuate to the Royal College of Surgeons
The post office equally was put under continious heavy fire from posts on the roof of Trinity College.
By Wensday the gunboat Helga was called in and from the Liffy river shelling the entire central city area including Liberty Hall The entire area was set afire..
The rebels where shot while trying to evacuate the on fire post office.
Among those defenders at this General Post Office redoubt was a young Michael Collins who admired the leadership and effective resistance of Connolly.
By Thursday ,Dublin being aflame, an order to evacuate was given by Pearce.
The country in deference to the O Neill announcement reciding the rising plan had not risen .
On Friday on a second attempt, Connoly having been shot on the first attempt, managed to evacuate the untenable and burning post office.
On Saturday April 29 Pearce ordered a surrender.
The rebellion leaders were all taken into custody and courts martials begun immidiately.
Of the rebels 64 were found dead with 300 civilian casulaties
130 British soldiers wer killed.
Hundreds had been wounded and central Dublin had been distroyed.
3000 were immediately arested in Dublin.
At the end of Easter week Brigidier General Sir John Maxwell arrived in Ireland with full comander in chief powers. He considered the rebellion as having been planned and inspired by theGerman enemy.
With typical British military arrogance he ordered executions before firing squad of the most prominent leaders in his custody.
This policy was thought disasterous by MP Dillon who urged Asquith to recind it. Asquith sent a consilatory letter to
General Maxwell asking him to use restraint in creating Irish martyrs.
However the General proceeded with military precison to carry out the executions in a systematic way.
On May 3 soom three days after he took charge of the military forces in Ireland Padriag Pearce, Tom Clarke and Tom McDonagh were shot their bodies limed and put in a pit in the yard of Kilmainham jail in the middle of Dublin.
On May 4 Will iam Pearce the brother of Padraig was shot and disposed of in the same manner
along with the rebels Joseph Plunkett, Edward Daly and Michale O Hanrahan
On May 5 John MacBride, husband of Maude Gonne was shot limed and buried in the jailhouse yard
On May 6 18 exection were commuted ,one being Constance Markievicz
On May 8 Colbert, Ceanet, Mallon and Heuston were shot
Eamon de Valera was commuted this day
On May 12 John Connelly was transported to the jail from the Castle and shot sitting in a chair as he cound not stand from his wound. Sean Mac Dermott was also killed this day.
After these the killing stopped until August 3 when Roger Casement was hung at Pentonville Prison after a trial with an attorney going on in which he was prosecuted by F.E Smith and convicted of treason on June 29 1916 the only conpiritor given a civil trial or for that matter any trial at all. Casement was defended by Serjeant Sullivan who refused to enter a lunacy plea for him as the government wanted.
Of the 100 rebels sheduled to be shot only these 15 were dispached the rest having their sentances comuted to life in prison incuding among them Eamon de Valera and Eion ONeill who has been arested even though he had worked to avert the rebellion and had not participted in it.
Of the 100 detained without charge most were sent off to Frongoch camp in Wales. Some to the criminal prison system all under interment held withoutrial or charges as enemy combatants.
Of those sent to Frongoch Michael Collins was released with Arthur Griffith of Sinn Fein with 600 other in a Chrismas release from the 1867 intered persons. De Valera was held in various prisons.
On Collins release when he retuned to his home in Cork he ws unwelcome and no one would shake his hand.
He left for Dublin and was warmly welcomed by Kathleen Daly Clarke Toms wife who gave him a job as secretary to her Irish Volunteers ` Dependants Fund. Kathleen held the lists of members of the IRB and the republicans which she held from her brother and husband.
Before Roger Casement died he mused as to what Ireland would be like 100 years in the future which would be 2016.
Little could he visualize todays computer literate society, WW 2 ,or the Celtic Tiger ,the Troubles in the north ,electricity and running water , television and automobiles,indoor pluming and bungalos replacing the white thatched roof cottage.
The treasured language still clinging to life, just bearly, economic English worldwide and dominant in America obliterating not only Gaelic but most European languages ,African languages and in the 21 Century Asian.
A quietude fell over the country for the rest of 1916 as they recovered from these military abuses .
Judi Donnelly
copyright Aug 26 2007
sourses: The Green Flag ,Robert Kee, Penquin Books ,1972
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: 1900 to Easter rising part 2[ pages 5-6]
1900 to easter pge 5
When war began on August 4 1914 Ulster contributed several regiments to the British effort in addition to 2 regiments from Leinster Fusiliers, the Connaght Rangers,The Dublin Fusieliers, Munster Fusilielers and the Royal Irish Regiments.
These three regiments, the Royal Irish Rifles of Belfast
Royal Irish Fusiliers of Armagh
Innishkillen Fusiliers of Omagh.
were directly from Ulster.
There were also 8 regiments in the Regular British Army drawn from Irishmen.
Meanwhile in America the IRB had already determined that a rising would occur sometime during the period of the Word War. How they knew the war would continue from 1914 to 1916 reamins an unexplored mystery.
Again, with the split between the Irish Volunteer physical force men and Redmonds National Volunteers over Redmonds decision to consede 6 Ulster counties to the unionist secession demands the unity of cause among the Irish forces was weakened.
Germany sold arms to this small force bringing force in the Asgard with 900 rifles and 25,000 rounds of munitions being delivered at Howth.
800 o f the Irish Volunteers showing up to gather these weopons.
The Kings Own Scotish Borderes tried to stop this gun running in the county Wicklow but were unsucessful. As the troop marched back to Dublin they were jeered by a crowd at Bachelors Walk.
This provoked a shot followed by a volley in which 3 civilians were killed and two dozen wounded.
Two sets of rules, one for the Loyalist ,and one for the natives,'the Irish enemy of the King' prevailed in Irleand.
Pearce responded gleefully
'the whole movement, the whole country has been re-baptised by bloodshed.'
As September 14,1914 dawned the Home Rule Bill became law without the exclusion bill.
On September 21 John Redmond triumphantly pledged the Irish National Volunteers of 188,000 men to the British Army regulars for European battlefields. 200,000 volunteered.
The Irish Volunteers split 13,000 dissenters lead by Pearce and the IRB infiltrators formed them on nationalism and they named themsleves the Irish Volunteers.
The Parliament although passing the HR Bill passed a Suspention Bill for a year or the duration of the War.
In the US Roger Casement, an English Peer ,along with the Fenian John Devoy worked with the German Counsulate to bring about a rebellion in Ireland along with judge Cohalen of the NY Supreme Court and Joe McGarriety of Philidelphia they worked from within nutral America to provide money ,arms and contacts with Germany.
Casement was also a knight and served in the British Foreign Service gaining an applalling horror of human rights abuses by the colonial government while serving in the Belgian Congo, and the treatment of Peruvian and Columbian Indian slaves on the colonial rubber plantations.
He had been born in Antrim ,the heart of Ulster prodistantism of an Anglican Assendant family. He became enamourd with Irish nationalism in 1904 through his friendship with DouglasHyde, the Gaelic League founder.
He was also inspired to assist the nationalist cause by his exposure to his fellow Ulstermen resistance tactics.This converted him to militant nationalism.
He helped found the Irish Volunteers and was an organizer of the Howth gun running expidition.
In meeting with Devoy and McGarrity in Philidelphia he outlined his plan to Ireland..
They met with German diplomats at NY who agreed to the plan.
Casement enlisted as his aid a Norwegian sailor Alder Christensen who was suspect by Devoy who had Christensen watched
he found Cristiansen often in the Tenderloin district meeting suspicious charaters in disreputable hotels. This led Devoy, a prudish bachelor to believe both Casement and Christensen were homosexuals and therefore a security risk.
Contacts with Ireland were made by courier as the IRB in Ireland distrusted the mails.
These messages were forwarded by Devoy to the German Consulate in NY.
Devoy and McGarrity raised great sums of American money transmitting these to thier IRB contacts in Ireland in sums of $5000 and $10,000 dollars by courier.
When Jeremaiah O Donovan died on June 28, 1915 at Staten Island at 84, not able to recognise his daughter and shouting Irish commands to unseen comrades ,a telegram sent to Tom Clarke in Ireland asking for instructions.
The body was dutifully shipped to Ireland for burial with a great show made by the IRB.
The smallest detail to the arrangments being applied throught out the countryside.
A graveside speech to be made by Padraig Pearce to summon a new generation to the spirit of revolution.
On August 1 1915 under rainy skys thousands gathered to watch the dead body brought to resting place at Glasnevin Cemetary.
The National Volunteers in splendid uniforms with rifles along with Connollys Irish Citizens Army and the Irish Boy Scouts, Fianna Na h Eireann founded by Countess Markievicz marched.
Pearce dressed in the National Volunterrs uniform deliverd his speech saying:
'life springs from death and from the graves of partiot men and women spring living nations.'---'but the fools the fools they have left us our Fenian dead and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree will never be at peace.'
page 6 easter
Socialist throughout Europe were awaiting a world wide revolution of the proletariat against imperialists as the war dragged on.
Connolly founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1898 and leader of the Irish Transport Workers from Liberty Hall in Dublin and the Citizens Army the armed nationalist maintained a pragmatic approach to the romantic cultural revolutionary represented by Pearce.
In January 1916 the IRB military council brought
Connolly into their plans to begin a rebellion on Easter Sunday April 23, 1916.
An assault on Dublin by 5000 troops with a similtanious rising in the countryside with assistance from Germany being arranged in NYC.
After three days of discussions James Connoly was sworn into the IRB and became a member of its military council joining labor and nationalism.
A courier was dispached to NY announcing the planned date of revolution asking arms and munitions be in Limerick between Good Friday and Easter Saturday 1916.
Devoy raised and sent on $100,00 to the IRB to buy weopons.
He asked the Germans for 100,00 rifles ,artillery and German officers to lead the rebellion.
The Germans announced they would supply 20,000 rifles and 10 machine guns in time for the rebellion.
At that time Roger Casement was in a German Sanatorium being both in poor mental and physical health, his brigade plan of Irish prisoners having failed.
Devoy asked the Germans to keep Casement in the dark as to the looming plans.
The plan called for the seizing if several Dublin strong points such as the general post office Boland mills and the St Stephens green.
The military council in the meanwhile changed the date of the rising ,9 days before the set date,
to Easter Monday ,April 24 sending a message to Devoy to change the date of delivery for German arms no earlier than Easter Sunday night.
The Aud had already left Germany and was at sea with no radio contact.
On April 18 the US Secret Service raided the German Consulate picking up the scattered communiques and documents of Devoys communications with Berlin lying about on the desks
British Intelligence however had already cracked the German code and knew the rebels intentions.
Eoin O Neill chairmen of the Irish volunters confronted Pearce at St Ednas on Holy Thursday getting conformation of the rising plans.
O Neill was furious and said he would cancel the rising but recinded next day and agreed to do nothing to stop the impending rebellion.
When the Aud arrived on schedule and recieved no on shore response they waited patiently. It was subsequently spotted by the British navy and ordered to Queens[Colb] in copunty Cork.
While sailing into that port the German captain skuttled the Aud sending arms and amunition to the bottom of the Irish Sea.
Casment meanwhile was landed from a German submarine on Banna Strand
in company with two friends and arrested by police within hours.
When macNeill heard of thses dissaters on Easter Saturday he recinded his pledge of support and placed an announcement in the Sunday Independant newspaper cancelling the Sunday manuver.
the military counci; rebels gathered on Easter Sunday at Liberty Hall.
Pearce believing they shoudl flee to the west.
Connolly disagreed that the fight should be in the Dublin Streets.
Clarke argued the planed rebellion should go forward.
The council decided a postphonement of one day.
They knew the government had been alerted and that if they did not act they woiuld be arrested anyway.
The Castle was preparing a list of suspects as traitors that had contacts with the German enemy.
They fixed the rebellion for Easter Monday
In Liberty Hall printers produced a copy of Pearces Proclaimation propclaiming an Irish republic.
The rebels assembled at Liberty Hall on the morn of Easter Monday, a national holiday.
Padraig Pearce the Commander in Chief of the Army of the Republic and President of the Provisional goverment [Poblacht na Eireann] arrived on his bycycle in the green Irish Volunteer uniform with slouched hat.
1000 of the planed 5000 showed up.
Pearce Connoly Clarke and the rest of headquarters marched to the GPO.
Connoly ordered the charge and a column of 100 men burst into the building.
Telegraph cables were cut ,windows smashed and the building cleared of civilians.
Pearce stepped out to read his famous Proclaimation.
'In the name of God and the dead generations Ireland summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom-'
The petitiion was signed by the 7 council members
Tom Clarke
Sean mac Dairmada
Padraig Pearce
James Connolly
Tom mac Donagh
Eamon Ceannet
Joseph Plunkett
The rebels raised 2 flags over the post office. A tri color of green white and orange.
The other homemade banner with the gold Irish harp on a green background bearing the gold hand painted words Irish Republic.
Judi Donnelly
copyright August 24 2007
sourses:
History of Ulster , Ramsey Colles, Vol IV, Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd 1919
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Modern Ireland, R F Foster, Penguin Books 1989
When war began on August 4 1914 Ulster contributed several regiments to the British effort in addition to 2 regiments from Leinster Fusiliers, the Connaght Rangers,The Dublin Fusieliers, Munster Fusilielers and the Royal Irish Regiments.
These three regiments, the Royal Irish Rifles of Belfast
Royal Irish Fusiliers of Armagh
Innishkillen Fusiliers of Omagh.
were directly from Ulster.
There were also 8 regiments in the Regular British Army drawn from Irishmen.
Meanwhile in America the IRB had already determined that a rising would occur sometime during the period of the Word War. How they knew the war would continue from 1914 to 1916 reamins an unexplored mystery.
Again, with the split between the Irish Volunteer physical force men and Redmonds National Volunteers over Redmonds decision to consede 6 Ulster counties to the unionist secession demands the unity of cause among the Irish forces was weakened.
Germany sold arms to this small force bringing force in the Asgard with 900 rifles and 25,000 rounds of munitions being delivered at Howth.
800 o f the Irish Volunteers showing up to gather these weopons.
The Kings Own Scotish Borderes tried to stop this gun running in the county Wicklow but were unsucessful. As the troop marched back to Dublin they were jeered by a crowd at Bachelors Walk.
This provoked a shot followed by a volley in which 3 civilians were killed and two dozen wounded.
Two sets of rules, one for the Loyalist ,and one for the natives,'the Irish enemy of the King' prevailed in Irleand.
Pearce responded gleefully
'the whole movement, the whole country has been re-baptised by bloodshed.'
As September 14,1914 dawned the Home Rule Bill became law without the exclusion bill.
On September 21 John Redmond triumphantly pledged the Irish National Volunteers of 188,000 men to the British Army regulars for European battlefields. 200,000 volunteered.
The Irish Volunteers split 13,000 dissenters lead by Pearce and the IRB infiltrators formed them on nationalism and they named themsleves the Irish Volunteers.
The Parliament although passing the HR Bill passed a Suspention Bill for a year or the duration of the War.
In the US Roger Casement, an English Peer ,along with the Fenian John Devoy worked with the German Counsulate to bring about a rebellion in Ireland along with judge Cohalen of the NY Supreme Court and Joe McGarriety of Philidelphia they worked from within nutral America to provide money ,arms and contacts with Germany.
Casement was also a knight and served in the British Foreign Service gaining an applalling horror of human rights abuses by the colonial government while serving in the Belgian Congo, and the treatment of Peruvian and Columbian Indian slaves on the colonial rubber plantations.
He had been born in Antrim ,the heart of Ulster prodistantism of an Anglican Assendant family. He became enamourd with Irish nationalism in 1904 through his friendship with DouglasHyde, the Gaelic League founder.
He was also inspired to assist the nationalist cause by his exposure to his fellow Ulstermen resistance tactics.This converted him to militant nationalism.
He helped found the Irish Volunteers and was an organizer of the Howth gun running expidition.
In meeting with Devoy and McGarrity in Philidelphia he outlined his plan to Ireland..
They met with German diplomats at NY who agreed to the plan.
Casement enlisted as his aid a Norwegian sailor Alder Christensen who was suspect by Devoy who had Christensen watched
he found Cristiansen often in the Tenderloin district meeting suspicious charaters in disreputable hotels. This led Devoy, a prudish bachelor to believe both Casement and Christensen were homosexuals and therefore a security risk.
Contacts with Ireland were made by courier as the IRB in Ireland distrusted the mails.
These messages were forwarded by Devoy to the German Consulate in NY.
Devoy and McGarrity raised great sums of American money transmitting these to thier IRB contacts in Ireland in sums of $5000 and $10,000 dollars by courier.
When Jeremaiah O Donovan died on June 28, 1915 at Staten Island at 84, not able to recognise his daughter and shouting Irish commands to unseen comrades ,a telegram sent to Tom Clarke in Ireland asking for instructions.
The body was dutifully shipped to Ireland for burial with a great show made by the IRB.
The smallest detail to the arrangments being applied throught out the countryside.
A graveside speech to be made by Padraig Pearce to summon a new generation to the spirit of revolution.
On August 1 1915 under rainy skys thousands gathered to watch the dead body brought to resting place at Glasnevin Cemetary.
The National Volunteers in splendid uniforms with rifles along with Connollys Irish Citizens Army and the Irish Boy Scouts, Fianna Na h Eireann founded by Countess Markievicz marched.
Pearce dressed in the National Volunterrs uniform deliverd his speech saying:
'life springs from death and from the graves of partiot men and women spring living nations.'---'but the fools the fools they have left us our Fenian dead and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree will never be at peace.'
page 6 easter
Socialist throughout Europe were awaiting a world wide revolution of the proletariat against imperialists as the war dragged on.
Connolly founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1898 and leader of the Irish Transport Workers from Liberty Hall in Dublin and the Citizens Army the armed nationalist maintained a pragmatic approach to the romantic cultural revolutionary represented by Pearce.
In January 1916 the IRB military council brought
Connolly into their plans to begin a rebellion on Easter Sunday April 23, 1916.
An assault on Dublin by 5000 troops with a similtanious rising in the countryside with assistance from Germany being arranged in NYC.
After three days of discussions James Connoly was sworn into the IRB and became a member of its military council joining labor and nationalism.
A courier was dispached to NY announcing the planned date of revolution asking arms and munitions be in Limerick between Good Friday and Easter Saturday 1916.
Devoy raised and sent on $100,00 to the IRB to buy weopons.
He asked the Germans for 100,00 rifles ,artillery and German officers to lead the rebellion.
The Germans announced they would supply 20,000 rifles and 10 machine guns in time for the rebellion.
At that time Roger Casement was in a German Sanatorium being both in poor mental and physical health, his brigade plan of Irish prisoners having failed.
Devoy asked the Germans to keep Casement in the dark as to the looming plans.
The plan called for the seizing if several Dublin strong points such as the general post office Boland mills and the St Stephens green.
The military council in the meanwhile changed the date of the rising ,9 days before the set date,
to Easter Monday ,April 24 sending a message to Devoy to change the date of delivery for German arms no earlier than Easter Sunday night.
The Aud had already left Germany and was at sea with no radio contact.
On April 18 the US Secret Service raided the German Consulate picking up the scattered communiques and documents of Devoys communications with Berlin lying about on the desks
British Intelligence however had already cracked the German code and knew the rebels intentions.
Eoin O Neill chairmen of the Irish volunters confronted Pearce at St Ednas on Holy Thursday getting conformation of the rising plans.
O Neill was furious and said he would cancel the rising but recinded next day and agreed to do nothing to stop the impending rebellion.
When the Aud arrived on schedule and recieved no on shore response they waited patiently. It was subsequently spotted by the British navy and ordered to Queens[Colb] in copunty Cork.
While sailing into that port the German captain skuttled the Aud sending arms and amunition to the bottom of the Irish Sea.
Casment meanwhile was landed from a German submarine on Banna Strand
in company with two friends and arrested by police within hours.
When macNeill heard of thses dissaters on Easter Saturday he recinded his pledge of support and placed an announcement in the Sunday Independant newspaper cancelling the Sunday manuver.
the military counci; rebels gathered on Easter Sunday at Liberty Hall.
Pearce believing they shoudl flee to the west.
Connolly disagreed that the fight should be in the Dublin Streets.
Clarke argued the planed rebellion should go forward.
The council decided a postphonement of one day.
They knew the government had been alerted and that if they did not act they woiuld be arrested anyway.
The Castle was preparing a list of suspects as traitors that had contacts with the German enemy.
They fixed the rebellion for Easter Monday
In Liberty Hall printers produced a copy of Pearces Proclaimation propclaiming an Irish republic.
The rebels assembled at Liberty Hall on the morn of Easter Monday, a national holiday.
Padraig Pearce the Commander in Chief of the Army of the Republic and President of the Provisional goverment [Poblacht na Eireann] arrived on his bycycle in the green Irish Volunteer uniform with slouched hat.
1000 of the planed 5000 showed up.
Pearce Connoly Clarke and the rest of headquarters marched to the GPO.
Connoly ordered the charge and a column of 100 men burst into the building.
Telegraph cables were cut ,windows smashed and the building cleared of civilians.
Pearce stepped out to read his famous Proclaimation.
'In the name of God and the dead generations Ireland summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom-'
The petitiion was signed by the 7 council members
Tom Clarke
Sean mac Dairmada
Padraig Pearce
James Connolly
Tom mac Donagh
Eamon Ceannet
Joseph Plunkett
The rebels raised 2 flags over the post office. A tri color of green white and orange.
The other homemade banner with the gold Irish harp on a green background bearing the gold hand painted words Irish Republic.
Judi Donnelly
copyright August 24 2007
sourses:
History of Ulster , Ramsey Colles, Vol IV, Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd 1919
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Modern Ireland, R F Foster, Penguin Books 1989
Irish istory snopsis: 1900 to Easter Rising Part 1[page 1-4]
Irish History Synopsis 1900 to Easter Rising
On January 22 1901 Queen Victoria died at 6:30 PM. She was given a military State Funeral at her own wish with bands and marches fully armed and the streets lined with her much reduced ignorant and poor subjects. Her coffin in which her small frame was placed was lined with her fvorite bobbles and posesssions. The gun carriage bearing the body was followed by her son King Edward VII, Kaizer Wilhelm II, King Georges I of the Hellenes, King Carlos of Portugal. In the procession the Crown Princes of Rumania, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweeden and Siam.
The Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovith, The Tzar of Russia, ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand Emperor of Austria all in uniform and feathered hats presiding over countries even more repressive and poverty sticken than Victorian England ; these lived under totalitarian, autocratic regimes who were also cruel coloniaal masters in Africa and Asia.
In her last days the Queen ate from gold plate including a gold plated egg cup. The Boar War between The British Army and the Dutch Boer settlers went on with no advance by the great Imperial British force over the teanatious Dutch settlers.
Edward VII the eldest child of Victoria took office as King of England.
By 1902 the Boer war was brought to a close under Edward who was known as the Peacemaker with dimunition of British power in South Africa.
By 1901 56 % of the Irish tenant farmers were living in adequate housing with 5 or more rooms.
In 1903 the Wyndham Bill provided for land purchase by tenants, a realization of peasant ownership.
Poverty in Ireland shifted from the mud cabin in the countryside to urban ghettos.
Dublin than was one of the most appalling slums in Europe Lacking water ,heat or plumbing. Where workers were poorly paid and cruely treated.
100,000 of the city's 300,000 lived in one room apartments.Desease was rampant.
Each acre of the city contained 38.5 persons. Malnutrition a constant companion.
The city's governement in the hands of industrial barons and land lords believed, in true Calvanistic tradition, that these downtrodden people were sent their condition by the Almighty as punishment of their sin.
While in the countryside impowered as tenant farmers my grandfather among them, were able to acquire purchase of their holdings on easy terms.
At the same time culture and literary works were being discovered and revived, ironically by the Anglo Irish prodistant elite.
This rediscovery of Irish folklore ,history and language which had been scorned as backward and barbaric since the 12 century and Henry II became a rage and vogue not only in Ireland but as well in the cultural ethos of England and the US.
Material was gathered from Workhouses and rural farms and presented by the Asendancy on the stages of NY and London.
The ancient legends of heros such as Cuculainn were translated and Lady Greagory with William Yeates wrote Cathleen ni Houlihan in 1902 ,a play in which Maude Gonne stared to rave reviews.
When she recited the closing lines;
They shallbe rememberd forever
They shall be alive forever
They shall be speaking forever
The people shall hear them forever
the audince rose to its feet cheering and broke into the Thomas David's young ireland ballad
Let Ireland long a provence
Be a nation once again.
Arthur Griffith in that audience was inspired and being a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell he formed a political consept and party called Sinn Fein[ourselves] that professed self governement for Ireland and self sufficiency without help from the outside world. But an Ireland within the sphere of the Monarchy and a Commonwealth.
In 1904 he wrote a pamphlet published in his United Irishmen newpaper on the history of Hungary discribing the passive resistance of Francis Deak leading to the rescue of Hungary from the Austo HUngarian Empire.
This pamphlet became a best seller and was a favorite amongst Young Irish who had been schooled in the Irish cultural revival. However the main Irish party was the Irish Parlimentary Party was under John Redmond.
Well financed with Irish American Money from the United Irish League and slogginga long with 82 members of the London Parliament to achieve Home Rule.
1900 to easter pg 2
Augustine Burrell was President of the Board of Education in 1906, Chief Secreatry of Irleand in 1907 when he introduced the Irish Council Bill to establish local elections and councils in Ireland.
In 1908 he established the National University of Ireland and Queens University in Belfast.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians flourished all over Ireland after the clerical ban against it was lifted and it became a powerful catholic political force.
By 1905 clubs were forming to consider and encourage Irish nationality and republicanism called the Dungannon Clubs.
One of the founders Bulmar Hobson of Antrim and a close friend of Roger Casement started a new paper called The Republic.
These people in close conjuntion with John McBride's IRB and John Devoys Clan N GAel in America worked tirelessly on behalf of national republicanism.
In America the emigrant Irish continued to struggle in tenament conditions shunned and dispised by older more established America as stupid, deceatful, drunk, filty, and barbarous.
Desease was rampant among them with an infant mortality of over 27%.
It was an era of streets filled with horse manure. uncollected garbage, communal outhouses overflowing with excretment and hordes of filthy unkempt children runing amuck.
When a case of typhoid appeared in upper class Oster Bay Long Island it was traced to a cook in the household named Mary Mallon an emigree of deprivation and hunger from Tyrone County Ireland.
This fiesty lady refused cooperation with public health authorities but was eventually captured by them , tested and found to be a carrier of the deadly bacillius.
She was confined to an East River island at Riverside hopital against her will bcoming know in the press as 'Typhoid Mary'.
By 1909 Mary was again associate with an outbreak of Typhoid at Sloan Medical Center in NYC where she had again been employed as a cook. This lead to her reincarceration at Riverside where she remained the rest of her life dying on November 11, 1938 at age 69.
She had been involuntarily incarcerated for 32 years of her life by the NYC Department of Public Health having only one
petition brought for her by an attorny Goerge O Neill.
Judge Erlandger found for the Public Health even though typhoid was known not to be contagious except by the carrier handling food.
NY city subsequently passed legislation requiring typhoid testing as a pre requisite for all food handlers but allowed thousands of carriers freedom to live and work in other professions.
Mary was chosen as an example and a scapegoat.Whether because of her Irish fiestiness or of her beginning in Hells Kitchen will never be known.
The city of NY as did all Amercian cities remained a sespool of filth, desease, extreme poverty and outrageous slums with the rich and sucessful entrenched in outer suburbia in mansion style homes acquired by exploitation of Americas immigrants and its natural resourses.
Social Injustice in this society was the norm.
In 1908 Lord Asquith becme Prime Mininster with Winston Churchhill Secretary of the Board of Trade.
They were free traders.
An Old Age Pension Bill was passed by the house of Lords and became law allowing a British subject of 70 years and a resident for 12 years to recieve a pension of 31 pounds.
On May 7 1910 Edward VII died after being King only 9 years.
He was suceeded by George V ,the second son of the dead king Edward and grandson of Victoria. Goerge was elected King because his older Brother Albert had did in 1892.
1900 TO EASTER PG 3
In 1912 a 3rd Home Rule Bill was introduced in the House of Commons.The veto of the house of Lords had been voted out of power under the rulership of Edward VII, who had implimented the Parliamentary Reform Bill the year before.
The Liberal Party being dependant on the Redmond Irish support of all their measures inspired the new HR Bill for the Irish support in the critical elections and the Budget Bills of 1910.
In Ireland a new threat to diehard Unionists expressed by the Orange Lodges had come into being amongst Unionists in the idea of devolution inspired by the Irish Reform Association was spurned by the Earl of DunRaven. This Movement so frightened the Ulster Unionists as to revive the Defence Associations and Ulster Unionist Council with an amrament fund.
The Unionist Council selected their leader a Dublin University Solicitor Conservative Sir Edward Carson. At 55 Carson a desendant of Ulster prodistant settlers from 1690 was a devoted Irishman as equally dedicated to the country and union with Great Britain.
He was an orderly and disaplined man who believed in firm government.
Educated at Trinity College Dublin he was elected as a Parliamentary representative for Trinity as a Liberal Unionist. He blieved in woman sufferage and catholic education. He was anti Home Rule believing it was not in the best interests of Ireland to separate from Great Britain.
He desired sacrafice and force to resist Home Rule writing to a fellow Parliamentary member James Craig a wiskey millionaires son and founder of the Belfast Stock Exchange.
Craig had served and been wounded in the Boer war and was an Empire Loyalist. He organized Ulsters determination against Home Rule at Craigavon, 2 miles from Belfast in 1911; two months before the bill was even entered before the Commons.
50 thousand Orangemen and Unionists assembled.
Carson spoke to hold their districts and create a government of Ulster. The Orange had marched to Craigavon in formation four abrest, disaplined and drilled.
These authorizations to drill had been obtained from local Justivce of Peaces to help maintain rights and liberties of the UK constitution.
By April 1912 before the home Rule Bill had been introduced a definate miltary flavor had been added to its opposers.
100,000 men marched below a large Union Jack on a 90 foot pole at Balmoral, a Belfast suburb.
Bonar Law the conservative seat of Ulster announced
'there will not be wanting of help from across the Channel when the hour of Battle comes.'
The cause of Ulster he invisioned was the cause of the Empire.
The spirit of war and rebellion was in the air.
The conservatives od England and the Liberal Unionists of Ulster stood united against Home Rule and the already implimented Local Government Act.
On September 28 1912 Ulster Unionist gathered to sign a Solomn League and Covenant,some 250,000 people. Some signed there name in blood.
The Ulster Unionist Council completed its development of the Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF] for January 1913 and with support from high Army officers in Britain a provisional government for Ulster was organized and a coup plan secretely organized among them.
Carson was opting for the exclusion of the 9 Ulster counties under devolved separate government. The idea of excusion of 4 of the Ulster counties had been proposed on February 12 when Churchhill and Lloyd Goerge formerly submitted to the Britsh Cabinite the proposal of Partition of 6 of the 9 counties which were not exclusively catholic.
The Nationalists under Redmond felt the Unionist of Ulster were bluffing however in the end Redmond aquised to a 6 year opt out of Home Rule by the north on an individual county basis.
On January 16 1913 the HR Bill passed Commons by a vote of 367-257.
On January 30 it was regected by Lords 326-69.
Carson claimed a moral right to do anyting necessary even using force to remain a citizen of the Imperial Parliament and indicated that the North east of Ireland would accept a foreign government over a nationalist Parliament in Dublin.
1900 to easter page 4
Eoin MacNeill fearing pograms against the NE catholic minority by the UVF force organized a south National Vounteer Force to resist the building paramilitary force in Ulster so addamantly opposed to HR.
The National force was promptly taken up by Redmond.The volunteers were upheld and taken over by the Irish Parliametary Party.
This usurpation was opposed vorciferously by Sinn Fein in the Irish Freedom newspaer.
An additional Union/Labor malita force was created by Jamesn Connoly called the Citizens Army.
In May 1914 the HR Bill was finally passed with out the amendment allowing a county opt out for 6 years only.
The planed Ulster Rebellion did not materialise because on August 4 1914 World War I began putting HR on ice.
Redmond pleged the National Volunteers to the cause of Great Britain in September 1914.
The Volunteer ranks split in two those following Redmonds commitment around 150,000 and those opposed to fighting for Englands wars around 10,000 now forming the Irish Vpolunteers and represnting the IRB element with a central executive of O Neill, Hobson Rahilly, McDonagh and Joe Plunkett.
These anti war Irish Volunteers flourished while the National force declined through enlistment in the English Army.
It became alligned with Sinn Fein and was pro German.
They stood against conscription and war taxes and were almost exclusively sons of farmers.
At the same time, Dublin was aroused by a strike called by its much oppressed workers putting in a 70 hour week for 22 shillings or sometimes 10 shillings leaving them in dire poverty.
James Larkin from Liverpool had founded th Irish Tansport and General Workers Union in 1913 asking for better working conditions and better wages.
Employers being unsucessful in breaking the union imposed a general 'lockout' of the workforce throwing some 25,000 people out of work.
Confrontations with police who were sided with the employers caused the founding of a union malitia called the Citizens Army.
This general 'lockout' brought the plight of the working poor to the attention of the cultural nationalist movement, bringing in such luminaries as Maude Gonne, and Countess Gore-Booth Markievicz who became a lieutenant in the Citizens army and served at her post during the Easter Rising.
She was spared hanging because she was a woman.
A New light in British Army policy as none of famine/eviction females had been spared the collection by the grim reaper.
Padraig Pearce a follower of Gaelic League's Douglas Hyde's revival of the gaelic speech declared a time had come for physical force tactics and the use of arms to create a new Ireland.He viewed bloodshed as a clensing santifying process.
This mystic conspept became an idea of a group of republicans assocated with Tom Clarkes toabacco shop in downtown Dublin and the IRB in Ireland , consiting of about 2000 which was infiltrated in the Natiolnal Volinteers toward its dream of revolution.
Unionist Churchhill in 1914, First Lord of the Admiralty charged Carson and his Ulstermen with a treasonable conspiracy provoking the government to create a garrison in Ulster to act against the UVF force and enforce Home Rule.
When an order to do so was sent to the Curragh commander Brigadier General Gough ,he and 60 of his officers resigned rather than move agains their fellow adherents in Ulster.
The government backed down to the Currah Mutiny.
A month later in April the UVF brought 25,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of amunition purchased in secret from Germany and delivered to Larne harbor where they unloaded and secured this hoard within 24 hours as it continued its trek towards civil war.
On January 22 1901 Queen Victoria died at 6:30 PM. She was given a military State Funeral at her own wish with bands and marches fully armed and the streets lined with her much reduced ignorant and poor subjects. Her coffin in which her small frame was placed was lined with her fvorite bobbles and posesssions. The gun carriage bearing the body was followed by her son King Edward VII, Kaizer Wilhelm II, King Georges I of the Hellenes, King Carlos of Portugal. In the procession the Crown Princes of Rumania, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweeden and Siam.
The Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovith, The Tzar of Russia, ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand Emperor of Austria all in uniform and feathered hats presiding over countries even more repressive and poverty sticken than Victorian England ; these lived under totalitarian, autocratic regimes who were also cruel coloniaal masters in Africa and Asia.
In her last days the Queen ate from gold plate including a gold plated egg cup. The Boar War between The British Army and the Dutch Boer settlers went on with no advance by the great Imperial British force over the teanatious Dutch settlers.
Edward VII the eldest child of Victoria took office as King of England.
By 1902 the Boer war was brought to a close under Edward who was known as the Peacemaker with dimunition of British power in South Africa.
By 1901 56 % of the Irish tenant farmers were living in adequate housing with 5 or more rooms.
In 1903 the Wyndham Bill provided for land purchase by tenants, a realization of peasant ownership.
Poverty in Ireland shifted from the mud cabin in the countryside to urban ghettos.
Dublin than was one of the most appalling slums in Europe Lacking water ,heat or plumbing. Where workers were poorly paid and cruely treated.
100,000 of the city's 300,000 lived in one room apartments.Desease was rampant.
Each acre of the city contained 38.5 persons. Malnutrition a constant companion.
The city's governement in the hands of industrial barons and land lords believed, in true Calvanistic tradition, that these downtrodden people were sent their condition by the Almighty as punishment of their sin.
While in the countryside impowered as tenant farmers my grandfather among them, were able to acquire purchase of their holdings on easy terms.
At the same time culture and literary works were being discovered and revived, ironically by the Anglo Irish prodistant elite.
This rediscovery of Irish folklore ,history and language which had been scorned as backward and barbaric since the 12 century and Henry II became a rage and vogue not only in Ireland but as well in the cultural ethos of England and the US.
Material was gathered from Workhouses and rural farms and presented by the Asendancy on the stages of NY and London.
The ancient legends of heros such as Cuculainn were translated and Lady Greagory with William Yeates wrote Cathleen ni Houlihan in 1902 ,a play in which Maude Gonne stared to rave reviews.
When she recited the closing lines;
They shallbe rememberd forever
They shall be alive forever
They shall be speaking forever
The people shall hear them forever
the audince rose to its feet cheering and broke into the Thomas David's young ireland ballad
Let Ireland long a provence
Be a nation once again.
Arthur Griffith in that audience was inspired and being a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell he formed a political consept and party called Sinn Fein[ourselves] that professed self governement for Ireland and self sufficiency without help from the outside world. But an Ireland within the sphere of the Monarchy and a Commonwealth.
In 1904 he wrote a pamphlet published in his United Irishmen newpaper on the history of Hungary discribing the passive resistance of Francis Deak leading to the rescue of Hungary from the Austo HUngarian Empire.
This pamphlet became a best seller and was a favorite amongst Young Irish who had been schooled in the Irish cultural revival. However the main Irish party was the Irish Parlimentary Party was under John Redmond.
Well financed with Irish American Money from the United Irish League and slogginga long with 82 members of the London Parliament to achieve Home Rule.
1900 to easter pg 2
Augustine Burrell was President of the Board of Education in 1906, Chief Secreatry of Irleand in 1907 when he introduced the Irish Council Bill to establish local elections and councils in Ireland.
In 1908 he established the National University of Ireland and Queens University in Belfast.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians flourished all over Ireland after the clerical ban against it was lifted and it became a powerful catholic political force.
By 1905 clubs were forming to consider and encourage Irish nationality and republicanism called the Dungannon Clubs.
One of the founders Bulmar Hobson of Antrim and a close friend of Roger Casement started a new paper called The Republic.
These people in close conjuntion with John McBride's IRB and John Devoys Clan N GAel in America worked tirelessly on behalf of national republicanism.
In America the emigrant Irish continued to struggle in tenament conditions shunned and dispised by older more established America as stupid, deceatful, drunk, filty, and barbarous.
Desease was rampant among them with an infant mortality of over 27%.
It was an era of streets filled with horse manure. uncollected garbage, communal outhouses overflowing with excretment and hordes of filthy unkempt children runing amuck.
When a case of typhoid appeared in upper class Oster Bay Long Island it was traced to a cook in the household named Mary Mallon an emigree of deprivation and hunger from Tyrone County Ireland.
This fiesty lady refused cooperation with public health authorities but was eventually captured by them , tested and found to be a carrier of the deadly bacillius.
She was confined to an East River island at Riverside hopital against her will bcoming know in the press as 'Typhoid Mary'.
By 1909 Mary was again associate with an outbreak of Typhoid at Sloan Medical Center in NYC where she had again been employed as a cook. This lead to her reincarceration at Riverside where she remained the rest of her life dying on November 11, 1938 at age 69.
She had been involuntarily incarcerated for 32 years of her life by the NYC Department of Public Health having only one
petition brought for her by an attorny Goerge O Neill.
Judge Erlandger found for the Public Health even though typhoid was known not to be contagious except by the carrier handling food.
NY city subsequently passed legislation requiring typhoid testing as a pre requisite for all food handlers but allowed thousands of carriers freedom to live and work in other professions.
Mary was chosen as an example and a scapegoat.Whether because of her Irish fiestiness or of her beginning in Hells Kitchen will never be known.
The city of NY as did all Amercian cities remained a sespool of filth, desease, extreme poverty and outrageous slums with the rich and sucessful entrenched in outer suburbia in mansion style homes acquired by exploitation of Americas immigrants and its natural resourses.
Social Injustice in this society was the norm.
In 1908 Lord Asquith becme Prime Mininster with Winston Churchhill Secretary of the Board of Trade.
They were free traders.
An Old Age Pension Bill was passed by the house of Lords and became law allowing a British subject of 70 years and a resident for 12 years to recieve a pension of 31 pounds.
On May 7 1910 Edward VII died after being King only 9 years.
He was suceeded by George V ,the second son of the dead king Edward and grandson of Victoria. Goerge was elected King because his older Brother Albert had did in 1892.
1900 TO EASTER PG 3
In 1912 a 3rd Home Rule Bill was introduced in the House of Commons.The veto of the house of Lords had been voted out of power under the rulership of Edward VII, who had implimented the Parliamentary Reform Bill the year before.
The Liberal Party being dependant on the Redmond Irish support of all their measures inspired the new HR Bill for the Irish support in the critical elections and the Budget Bills of 1910.
In Ireland a new threat to diehard Unionists expressed by the Orange Lodges had come into being amongst Unionists in the idea of devolution inspired by the Irish Reform Association was spurned by the Earl of DunRaven. This Movement so frightened the Ulster Unionists as to revive the Defence Associations and Ulster Unionist Council with an amrament fund.
The Unionist Council selected their leader a Dublin University Solicitor Conservative Sir Edward Carson. At 55 Carson a desendant of Ulster prodistant settlers from 1690 was a devoted Irishman as equally dedicated to the country and union with Great Britain.
He was an orderly and disaplined man who believed in firm government.
Educated at Trinity College Dublin he was elected as a Parliamentary representative for Trinity as a Liberal Unionist. He blieved in woman sufferage and catholic education. He was anti Home Rule believing it was not in the best interests of Ireland to separate from Great Britain.
He desired sacrafice and force to resist Home Rule writing to a fellow Parliamentary member James Craig a wiskey millionaires son and founder of the Belfast Stock Exchange.
Craig had served and been wounded in the Boer war and was an Empire Loyalist. He organized Ulsters determination against Home Rule at Craigavon, 2 miles from Belfast in 1911; two months before the bill was even entered before the Commons.
50 thousand Orangemen and Unionists assembled.
Carson spoke to hold their districts and create a government of Ulster. The Orange had marched to Craigavon in formation four abrest, disaplined and drilled.
These authorizations to drill had been obtained from local Justivce of Peaces to help maintain rights and liberties of the UK constitution.
By April 1912 before the home Rule Bill had been introduced a definate miltary flavor had been added to its opposers.
100,000 men marched below a large Union Jack on a 90 foot pole at Balmoral, a Belfast suburb.
Bonar Law the conservative seat of Ulster announced
'there will not be wanting of help from across the Channel when the hour of Battle comes.'
The cause of Ulster he invisioned was the cause of the Empire.
The spirit of war and rebellion was in the air.
The conservatives od England and the Liberal Unionists of Ulster stood united against Home Rule and the already implimented Local Government Act.
On September 28 1912 Ulster Unionist gathered to sign a Solomn League and Covenant,some 250,000 people. Some signed there name in blood.
The Ulster Unionist Council completed its development of the Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF] for January 1913 and with support from high Army officers in Britain a provisional government for Ulster was organized and a coup plan secretely organized among them.
Carson was opting for the exclusion of the 9 Ulster counties under devolved separate government. The idea of excusion of 4 of the Ulster counties had been proposed on February 12 when Churchhill and Lloyd Goerge formerly submitted to the Britsh Cabinite the proposal of Partition of 6 of the 9 counties which were not exclusively catholic.
The Nationalists under Redmond felt the Unionist of Ulster were bluffing however in the end Redmond aquised to a 6 year opt out of Home Rule by the north on an individual county basis.
On January 16 1913 the HR Bill passed Commons by a vote of 367-257.
On January 30 it was regected by Lords 326-69.
Carson claimed a moral right to do anyting necessary even using force to remain a citizen of the Imperial Parliament and indicated that the North east of Ireland would accept a foreign government over a nationalist Parliament in Dublin.
1900 to easter page 4
Eoin MacNeill fearing pograms against the NE catholic minority by the UVF force organized a south National Vounteer Force to resist the building paramilitary force in Ulster so addamantly opposed to HR.
The National force was promptly taken up by Redmond.The volunteers were upheld and taken over by the Irish Parliametary Party.
This usurpation was opposed vorciferously by Sinn Fein in the Irish Freedom newspaer.
An additional Union/Labor malita force was created by Jamesn Connoly called the Citizens Army.
In May 1914 the HR Bill was finally passed with out the amendment allowing a county opt out for 6 years only.
The planed Ulster Rebellion did not materialise because on August 4 1914 World War I began putting HR on ice.
Redmond pleged the National Volunteers to the cause of Great Britain in September 1914.
The Volunteer ranks split in two those following Redmonds commitment around 150,000 and those opposed to fighting for Englands wars around 10,000 now forming the Irish Vpolunteers and represnting the IRB element with a central executive of O Neill, Hobson Rahilly, McDonagh and Joe Plunkett.
These anti war Irish Volunteers flourished while the National force declined through enlistment in the English Army.
It became alligned with Sinn Fein and was pro German.
They stood against conscription and war taxes and were almost exclusively sons of farmers.
At the same time, Dublin was aroused by a strike called by its much oppressed workers putting in a 70 hour week for 22 shillings or sometimes 10 shillings leaving them in dire poverty.
James Larkin from Liverpool had founded th Irish Tansport and General Workers Union in 1913 asking for better working conditions and better wages.
Employers being unsucessful in breaking the union imposed a general 'lockout' of the workforce throwing some 25,000 people out of work.
Confrontations with police who were sided with the employers caused the founding of a union malitia called the Citizens Army.
This general 'lockout' brought the plight of the working poor to the attention of the cultural nationalist movement, bringing in such luminaries as Maude Gonne, and Countess Gore-Booth Markievicz who became a lieutenant in the Citizens army and served at her post during the Easter Rising.
She was spared hanging because she was a woman.
A New light in British Army policy as none of famine/eviction females had been spared the collection by the grim reaper.
Padraig Pearce a follower of Gaelic League's Douglas Hyde's revival of the gaelic speech declared a time had come for physical force tactics and the use of arms to create a new Ireland.He viewed bloodshed as a clensing santifying process.
This mystic conspept became an idea of a group of republicans assocated with Tom Clarkes toabacco shop in downtown Dublin and the IRB in Ireland , consiting of about 2000 which was infiltrated in the Natiolnal Volinteers toward its dream of revolution.
Unionist Churchhill in 1914, First Lord of the Admiralty charged Carson and his Ulstermen with a treasonable conspiracy provoking the government to create a garrison in Ulster to act against the UVF force and enforce Home Rule.
When an order to do so was sent to the Curragh commander Brigadier General Gough ,he and 60 of his officers resigned rather than move agains their fellow adherents in Ulster.
The government backed down to the Currah Mutiny.
A month later in April the UVF brought 25,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of amunition purchased in secret from Germany and delivered to Larne harbor where they unloaded and secured this hoard within 24 hours as it continued its trek towards civil war.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Irish Hijstory synopsis sourses for 1850-
sourses: History of Ulster, Ramsey Colles Vol IV ,Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd, 1919
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckstein and O Malley, 2003 Ballantine Books
Sourses for 1850 to death of Queen victorai will not post with article The computer only likes Ramsey for some reason???
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckstein and O Malley, 2003 Ballantine Books
Sourses for 1850 to death of Queen victorai will not post with article The computer only likes Ramsey for some reason???
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: 1850 to death of Queen Victoria
Irish History Synopsis: 1850 to death of Queen Victoria pg 1
Although the government had smothered the Gaelic culture beneith its dark hand of death, dispair and dispondancy, by 1851 a subdued spirit of renewal arose among the survivors both on the island itself and in its lands of diaspora.
During 1849 the Navigation Act which had so impeeded the importation of food to the island was repealed by the English Parliament.
A Tenants Rights Association was formed in Ireland to fight the continuing evictions by landlords creating a temporaty unity between south and north. The Irish Tenant Rights League was established.
By 1850 Parliament passed a Rate In Aid Act imposing on Ireland not the rest of England the disbursement of the costs of the Famine. This required the costs of the Famine and its relief being charged to the Irish not the English.
Many of the class of strong farmers, those having leases of 20 acres or more, had prosecuted there fellow Irish for stealing food such as turnips from the fields. Most of these cases were refused by the assize justices which created a great howl of injustice from the farmers bringing the charges.
This adament desire for justice, however, may have contained a seed of sympathy in that if the starving person were either sent to jail or transported they would escape the death sentance that had been imposed upon them.
In 1850 Parliament passed the Franchise Act changing the qualification for voters to enable an occupational class with a valuation of 12 pounds for the county vote and 8 pounds for the burough vote.This assured voting rights for property owners and excluded the poor whe were formerly qualified to vote.
Shopkeepers began to prosper as did the farmers having 20-30 acres.
Prices rose and prospertiy was restored to these middle Irish people by 1855 who were no longer outnumbered by a laborer/cottier class.
APost-Famine class of retailers ,urbanization ,church, social and politicly active class of influence arose.
The street ballad became prominent being what cultural artist there was available to the common people.
A National School was founded in Ireland in 1850.
Young Ireland and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were formed within Ireland to advocate for national independance though both were met with apathy amonst the population.
The landlord class remained in control of the country both economically and politically prefering as before profit over investment. This system was much added by the Encumbered Estates Act which was provisional of banqrupsy protection for indebeted holders which allowed them to sell the estate and not have to pay their creditors. Many of the famine landlords did sell there improved holdings to absentee investors who had no intention of living on or improving the estates other than taking out yearly profits from the labor of the remaining tenants.
Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston and Gladstone formed a new English govermentt in 1852 professing the Whig policy of Free Trade which had never really given way during or after the Irish Famine years.
The Crimes and Outrages Bill passed in 1848 was renewed from year to year as was the Peace Preservation Act.
2/3ds of the Parliamentary MP's were owener landed gentry.
The Electorate was dominated by strong farmers and landlords who maintained a form of social triablalism with the tenants providing a guarantee of the estate tenants to vote the way his lordship wanted them to vote tThrough maintaining hunting rights awarding tenants marriage feis and maintaining for themselves Dublin Clubs the landlords maintained their supremacy on their estates.
There were 400,000 acres of wheat, flax, root crops and greens in production and 2 million acres of hay and medow. Dairy production was prosperous.
There were 90,000 farms above 50 acres and feed lot farmers exclusively to fatten cattle.
Evictions continued if the teant could not pay his required excaction of rent to the landlord. If a tenant had subleted acreages to other familiies these too suffered removal for the leaseholders negligence and were cleared from the land. Whole families being thrown out to the road with out any sustanance such as the 1861 Derry Veigh eviction which put over 200 persons adrift including old and women and children.
The Average landlord desmensne wasout 2000 acres with rents usualy 25/40% of the tenant income.
Some 800 landlords owned 1/2 of Irleand.
13% of them absentee investors seeking only profit and return.
However as prices rose some 78 % from 1850-1870 and the need to let land in conacre to the landless cottier/laborer class having disapeared the larger tenant farmers benefited economically from the improvement.
In America the Diaspora resolved to become revolutionaries forming an organization called the Fenians after the ancient pre-christian Fianna soldiers of Ireland.
A sence of anger and rebellion against the abuses they had sufferend prevailed and a spirit of desire to apply phsycial force to restore Erin to the control of the native Irish.
Where in Ireland James Stephens tromped the lanes and byways to gain support for the IRB resistance movement he recieved little support and hardly any entusiasm.
These two groups one advocating miltary attacks in America and the other constitutional adjugation united in the mid 50's after a revolt at Ballingarry had failed and all were arrested ,hung or forced to flee.
Stephens IRB organization was united with Mohoney's Fenians Brotherhood on March 17 1858.
The organization maintained secrecy forming cirles with a
Center known as A
Captains known as B
Seargants known as C
Privates known as D.
Each circle being separate and hence unknow to other circles all under the control of the Circle or Center.
The IRB began recruting within the British Army for the 1/2 of British garrisons of Irish blood.
8000 British soldiers of Irish blood took the oath of allegience to the IRB.
By 1865 the Irish and British members in the IRB were estimated at 85,000 men.
The Irish People newspaper was started in 1863 by O Leary of Tipperary whose father owned the town.This paper exibited openly the Fenian doctrine of physical revolution through the writings of both John O Leary and Charles Kickham his Tipperary companion.
These catholic middle class men both espousing Mahoneys Fenian case enjoyed in Irleand not only the spirit of revolution but defiance of Church dogma.The Catholic Church had gained unchallanged power over the local rural population by acting as power brokers for them over evictions and hunger during and after the Famine giving them unpresidented influence over Irish political thought.
In America the Church also had sway ove the flock demonising the Fenian Brotherhood.
Kickham took on the Church by knowledge of its rethoric and theology. This defiance roused the ire of Archbishop Cullen who called for the banishment of the defiant paper.
1850 pg 2
In England in the early 60's the great writer Charles Dickens was composing Great Expectations following his sucesses with A Tale of Two Cities and the Pickwick Papers written at the accention of Queen Victoria.
Charles Dickens also wrote the Chrismas Carol in 1843 and during the Famine years some short stories such as the Haunted Man and the Battle of Life and the Cricket and the Hearth.
This period also produced such famous English Works as the Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and the works of Hans Chiristian Anderson all dealing with the social interactions of mankind.
The American IRB absorbed Fenian ideals. While most exibited much enthusiams for revolution in Ireland they did not heed the call for finances leaving Irish coffers empty of funds sufficient for such an escapade.
Because of the great Irish participation in the Union Army cause of emancipation and preservation of the US as one nation, Washington indulged the nationalist movement giving James Stephens a grand tour of the union forces in 1864 as he recruted for the Irish rising.
In 1865 Stephens succeeded in his mission raising 50,000 US dollars and recruiting 100,000 Irish Americans ready for battle in Ireland.
The Fenien movment in the US was quite open throughout, hold Chicago Convention in 1863 The members being given leave by the Union Army to attend. A second Convention was held in Cincinatti in 1865 as the Civil War drew to a close.
Queen Victoria wrote in her diary on February 12, 1865 [Lincolns birthday } of the danger of Briitain going to war with America as soon as peace was delcared and the impossiblity of the imperial government in holding Canada.
However, on September 14, 1865 the government on inforamtion from spys from both sides of the Atlantic raided the Irish People taking its incriminating documents and arresting everyone there.
John O Leary was waited for by 4 Constables at his home.
He asked for a few moments and settled himself in an armchair with a wiskey and water and his pipe. He offered no resistance.
Stephens went into hiding with Kickham He was arrested on November 9 1865 with Kickham.
He had given the signal to rise if he were arrested but in America Mahoney could not round up more than a skirmishing force.
Much of the information the government had acquired had been obtained by Jim McDermott a Fenein figure who passed it to the NY British Consulate. He was also a good creator of dissent in the organization through passing gossip and outright lies, creating dessent.
These dessenters where known with the Fenian Movement as the Senate consiting of men like William Roberts and Brigadier General Tom Sweeney.
This 'split' in the Fenian Movement creatred 2 NY headquarters, the old Moffett Mantion on Union Square occupied by Mahoney's forces and the dissentors headquarters on Broadway in lower Manhattan.
James Stephens was put in Richmond Prison making no defence against the charges. He had refused to recognise British law.
The IRB however had penetrated the prison security having members of oath on the prison staff.
The IRB on November 24 1865 [American Thansgiving] 'sprung' James Stephens.
Stephens announced a call off of the planed revolt and was sent to France.
Meanwhile in NY 100,000 people gathered in a park on the East River in March of 66. Mahoney addressed them to provide arms to fight the Battle of Irish Freedom.
Roberts and Tom Sweeeney were preparing a 10,000 man force to attach Canada.The plan was not secret. it was discussed by the Andrew Johnson Admininstration in Washington with the decision not to interfere.
In Ireland the government had suspended Habeus Corpus and was rounding up hundreds of suspected rebels including American citizens claiming Irish born Americans were subjects of the Crown which drove Secretary of State William Seward into a rage. Tensions both in London and Washington were rife.
The Fenians had achieved dissention betwen the 2 countries Britain and The US.
The Mahoney faction, pressing for action converged on EastPort Maine targeting CampoBello Island part of New Brunswick. A steamship of weopons arrived in April. On April 15 the Fenians invaded Indian Island.
Washington sent troops and warships to Eastport.The Fenians withdrew from Canadien territory.
Sweeney and the dissadents meanwhile planned a winter assalt over frozen lakes and rivers.
The dissident civilians commander in chief Williams Roberts ordered an immediate spring attack
The asault was armed with weopons and ammunition purchased from federal arsenals and planned to attack along a 1000 mile front.
The dissadent force was named the 'Irish Republicna Army.'
The attack was planned for 31 May 1866.
The three winged invasion force collapsed through accident, apathy and confusion.
The US government did not interfere.
800 men under the command of John O Neil la Civil War veteran crossed into Canada from Buffalo NY and won and engagement with Canadien malitias. After several days of fighting the Johnson Admininstration sent General Ulysses S Grant and General Meade to put an end to the affair.
O Neill withdrew and was arrested by federal authorities.Sweeney also arrested at Buffalo.
The movement was
now in tatters and reviled by a previously encouraging press.
Mahoney was relegeted to obscurity and was found much later in a NYC tenament room to proud to ask for help and to poor to buy coal or food half starved and dying of old age ,poverty and dispair. He died in 1877 rewarded respect in death he had not recieved in life.
Stephens watched his adherants and coherts arrested and tried in Ireland.
Jeramigha [Dairmaid] O Donavan Rossa who had watched his father die of starvation during the Great Hunger and been got to relatives in Skibereen to observe more death fillabustereds the trail he was given. representing himself before a catholic judge William Keogh. Lambasting the judge and giving long winded disertations for days.
This got him ,at age 34 ,a life sentance from Judge Keogh for treason felony.
Kickham, O Leary, Tom Clarke, Luby all followed Rossa to prison dispite Issac Butts ,the prominent prodistant Young Islander defender of William Smith OBrien and Gavin Duffy.
3000 young Fenians were arrested by police in early 1866.
Entire British Army units were transfered and soldiers who had taken the Fenian oath were released from service and sent to prison colonies in western Australia.
Former US Civil War soldiers Tom Kelly and John McCafferty took over the IRB with a coup , stripping Stephens of his power over military affairs and planning.
Stephens was left only control over the broader movemnt. He lost credibility and departed for France discredited in January 1867,where despirately poor he moved constanty from lodging to lodging before the landlord could evict him dying in 1901, discredited and unremembered for his work for Irish independance and nationhood.
He had taken the broken dead country of 1856 to a formidable organization spanning an ocean in the IRB.
1850 pg 3
Fenians were sought in all corners by the British Authorities. Spys were everywhere .The military was on constant alert.
A rebelion was planed by Colonel Kelly for March 5 1867.A French officer ,Gustav Clusert in Command ,as Kelly was in hiding from the police in London. This officer resigned on the eve of battle convincd of the failure of the planned operation.
The fight was sporadic and quickly put down thus ending the greatest threat to Bitish rule in Ireland since the United Irishmen in 1798.
On Septemeber 11 1867 Col Kelly was arrested in Manchester England. He was resqued by his comrads while being transported in a prison van. A van guard was shot but the prisoner freed.
Dozens of Irish living in Manchester were arrested on suspision. Five were eventually selected from these arrested ,tried ,convicted and hung. Two of them American citizens.
One Edward Condon saying the farewell speech fromt he dock called "God Save Ireland' which becme a cry and later a ballad and anthem.
Allen, Larkin and Obrien ,the Americans wer hung in Manchester on November 24, 1867 becoming the Manchester Martyrs.
O Donnovan Rossa remained defiant in prison remanded on a bread and water punishment diet.
Starvation did not subdue him nor did humiliating him by tying his hands behind his back forcing him to eat like a dog.
Amnesty for the Fenians prisoners was sought by Issac Butts.
O Donnovan Rossa name was entered in a Parliamentary election in Tipperary in 1869 which he won.
Gladstone the Prime Mininster ordered a general amnesty and these Fenian prisoners were released in 1871. Most sailed for America.
In England a Conservative government under
Disreali took power;.
In 1869 the Irish established Church was disestablished. Regium Dorum compensation payment to non conformist Presbyterians was continued.
By 1870 Gladstone Whigs were returned to power by a general election.
An Irish Land Act was passed giving compensation to evicted tenants for improvements.
In 1872 Parliament passed a Ballot Act abolishing public nomination of candidates.
An Irish University Bill was introduced but was thrown out. Gladstone resigned.
The Bill had excluded the teaching of moral phylosophy, theology and modern history.
In 1878 Rain distroyed the potato crop once more and thE peat was to wet to dig.
A Land League to adjutate for rent reduction was formed by Michael Davett who had himself been evicted with the family during the Famine and had lost his right arm to mill machinery in England at age 9 years..
The League proposed to bring down 'rack rents' and to obtain ownership of the land.
The practice of Boycott was addopted.
The League was helped by Parnell and Bigger O Donnell among other members of Parliament.
By 1880 Victoria having displayed previous neglect of her Irish subjects in a speech from theThrone expressed sympathy with Irish hardship and asked the Church of Ireland to alleviate Distress.
A Parliamentary Relief of Distress Act passed at once. Forty years to late.
In 1881 the Protection of Life and Property Act and the Peace Preservation Act were reinstated.
The Land Act provided the three F's
Fair rent
Fixed Tenure
Free sale of holding[sublease]
The land League was proclaimed.
In 1882 Frederick Cavendish was to replace Lord Lieutenant Forster. He and Burke were set upon in Phoenix park and murdered by a group of men calling themselves the Invinsibles.
The Prevention of Cime and Arrears Act followed.
In 1886 a Government In Irleland Bill was brought providing for a Dublin legislature, exclusion of the Irish from the Imperial Parliament, Taxes to the Irish assembly with the exlusion of exise and customs taxes, and security of protection of minorities.
The bill was regected.
In 1886 A Land Purchase Bill was introduced by Gladstone providing 50 million pounds for tenants buying estates of landlords wishing to sell.
The bill was opposed by Conservitives and some Liberals who broke with Gladstone and formed the Liberal Unionist Party.
These bills caused serious exitement and rioting in Ireland.
When these bills failed Gladstone disolved the Parliament.
At election Gladstone was defeated by Lord Salisbury who upheld the Liberal Unionist party..
Lord Wolsely was preparing resistance in Ulster to the Home Rule Bill under consideration.
Lord Salisbury was in support of the Liberal Unionist Party in Ulster.
In 1887 The Parliamentary Session was devoted to the Irish Question.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act was made permanent to stop meetings and suppress dangerous associations.
Its enforcer was Lord Balfour, Chief Secretary of Ireland
The nationalist adopted the 'Plan of Campaign' against tenant evictions.
They deposited rents with 'trustees' until land lords agreed to rent reductions.
Joseph Chamberlain speaking in Ulster Hall in Belfast agaisnt Home Rule asking his audience what would they do if Home Rule came they responded Fight!
In 1889 ,10 million pounds was voted for Irish land purchase and for drainiage and light rail,.
A County Government Bill was introduced in 1892 and was withdrawn because of fearce opposition by ulster Unionists.
In 1892 Belfast was granted a city charter and was the commercial capital of all Ireland.
The Duke of Abercorn presided over a mass convention of 11,000 delagates against Home Rule.
The Convention led by Sinclair and Ewart were adamant in refusing any form of Home Rule as degraded status undera Dublin parliament.
When Lord Bill was solomnly burned in public and stompted upon while the crowd cheered.
This Home Rule bill finally, after much amendment and arguement passed the House of Comons but was than thown out by the Lords.
In Ulster the Unionists gave attention to defence organizations.
Rifle Clubs weer formed. A Central Assembly of Ulster Defence Union held a meeting of its 60 members.
In 1895 gladstoneat 85 retired giving over the PM ship to Lord Rosebury. This governemnt was defeated in June 1895. Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister forming a Conservative Liberal Unionist coalltion government
Home Rule was shelved for years.
In the year 1896 the new bycycle became fashionable among middle class people.Tthe motor car was being acquired by the upper classes and new benefits of industrial and science were becoming the prominet changes of the day.
In 1897 Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubalee having ruled these islands for 60 years.
By 1899 the South Afrcian Boer War had begun between England and Dutch settlers.
Theater and entertainment in Ireland had been provided by British touring companys for the past half century but in 1898 Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, J Synge and Sean O Casey
formed a theater company know as the Abby Theater with acting talant produced in Ireland such as Frank and Will Fay who established the Dublin Dramatic School in 1898.
The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 to revive the Gaelic tongue and de -anglisize Ireland.
The creation of the Gaelic Athletic Association ,founded in 1884 to preserve ancient Irish games like hurling and Irish football were created at the end of the 19th century.
A base of national culture and prosperity fromteh ruins of 1850.
The Catholic Church during the 50 years revived under Archbishop Cullen of Dublin ,built schools and churches, fostered a devosionaly mission ,reformed the Irish clergy conduct, and administered the Sacraments.
Ireland passed into the 20th Century hopeful of its survival as a people ,stuggling on on both sides of the
Atlantic and in England to rise from its own demise.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright Aug 17 2007
sourses: History of Ulster, Ramsey Colles Vol IV ,Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd, 1919
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckstein and O Malley, 2003 Ballantine Books
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckenstein and O Malley ,Balantine Books , 2003
Although the government had smothered the Gaelic culture beneith its dark hand of death, dispair and dispondancy, by 1851 a subdued spirit of renewal arose among the survivors both on the island itself and in its lands of diaspora.
During 1849 the Navigation Act which had so impeeded the importation of food to the island was repealed by the English Parliament.
A Tenants Rights Association was formed in Ireland to fight the continuing evictions by landlords creating a temporaty unity between south and north. The Irish Tenant Rights League was established.
By 1850 Parliament passed a Rate In Aid Act imposing on Ireland not the rest of England the disbursement of the costs of the Famine. This required the costs of the Famine and its relief being charged to the Irish not the English.
Many of the class of strong farmers, those having leases of 20 acres or more, had prosecuted there fellow Irish for stealing food such as turnips from the fields. Most of these cases were refused by the assize justices which created a great howl of injustice from the farmers bringing the charges.
This adament desire for justice, however, may have contained a seed of sympathy in that if the starving person were either sent to jail or transported they would escape the death sentance that had been imposed upon them.
In 1850 Parliament passed the Franchise Act changing the qualification for voters to enable an occupational class with a valuation of 12 pounds for the county vote and 8 pounds for the burough vote.This assured voting rights for property owners and excluded the poor whe were formerly qualified to vote.
Shopkeepers began to prosper as did the farmers having 20-30 acres.
Prices rose and prospertiy was restored to these middle Irish people by 1855 who were no longer outnumbered by a laborer/cottier class.
APost-Famine class of retailers ,urbanization ,church, social and politicly active class of influence arose.
The street ballad became prominent being what cultural artist there was available to the common people.
A National School was founded in Ireland in 1850.
Young Ireland and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were formed within Ireland to advocate for national independance though both were met with apathy amonst the population.
The landlord class remained in control of the country both economically and politically prefering as before profit over investment. This system was much added by the Encumbered Estates Act which was provisional of banqrupsy protection for indebeted holders which allowed them to sell the estate and not have to pay their creditors. Many of the famine landlords did sell there improved holdings to absentee investors who had no intention of living on or improving the estates other than taking out yearly profits from the labor of the remaining tenants.
Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston and Gladstone formed a new English govermentt in 1852 professing the Whig policy of Free Trade which had never really given way during or after the Irish Famine years.
The Crimes and Outrages Bill passed in 1848 was renewed from year to year as was the Peace Preservation Act.
2/3ds of the Parliamentary MP's were owener landed gentry.
The Electorate was dominated by strong farmers and landlords who maintained a form of social triablalism with the tenants providing a guarantee of the estate tenants to vote the way his lordship wanted them to vote tThrough maintaining hunting rights awarding tenants marriage feis and maintaining for themselves Dublin Clubs the landlords maintained their supremacy on their estates.
There were 400,000 acres of wheat, flax, root crops and greens in production and 2 million acres of hay and medow. Dairy production was prosperous.
There were 90,000 farms above 50 acres and feed lot farmers exclusively to fatten cattle.
Evictions continued if the teant could not pay his required excaction of rent to the landlord. If a tenant had subleted acreages to other familiies these too suffered removal for the leaseholders negligence and were cleared from the land. Whole families being thrown out to the road with out any sustanance such as the 1861 Derry Veigh eviction which put over 200 persons adrift including old and women and children.
The Average landlord desmensne wasout 2000 acres with rents usualy 25/40% of the tenant income.
Some 800 landlords owned 1/2 of Irleand.
13% of them absentee investors seeking only profit and return.
However as prices rose some 78 % from 1850-1870 and the need to let land in conacre to the landless cottier/laborer class having disapeared the larger tenant farmers benefited economically from the improvement.
In America the Diaspora resolved to become revolutionaries forming an organization called the Fenians after the ancient pre-christian Fianna soldiers of Ireland.
A sence of anger and rebellion against the abuses they had sufferend prevailed and a spirit of desire to apply phsycial force to restore Erin to the control of the native Irish.
Where in Ireland James Stephens tromped the lanes and byways to gain support for the IRB resistance movement he recieved little support and hardly any entusiasm.
These two groups one advocating miltary attacks in America and the other constitutional adjugation united in the mid 50's after a revolt at Ballingarry had failed and all were arrested ,hung or forced to flee.
Stephens IRB organization was united with Mohoney's Fenians Brotherhood on March 17 1858.
The organization maintained secrecy forming cirles with a
Center known as A
Captains known as B
Seargants known as C
Privates known as D.
Each circle being separate and hence unknow to other circles all under the control of the Circle or Center.
The IRB began recruting within the British Army for the 1/2 of British garrisons of Irish blood.
8000 British soldiers of Irish blood took the oath of allegience to the IRB.
By 1865 the Irish and British members in the IRB were estimated at 85,000 men.
The Irish People newspaper was started in 1863 by O Leary of Tipperary whose father owned the town.This paper exibited openly the Fenian doctrine of physical revolution through the writings of both John O Leary and Charles Kickham his Tipperary companion.
These catholic middle class men both espousing Mahoneys Fenian case enjoyed in Irleand not only the spirit of revolution but defiance of Church dogma.The Catholic Church had gained unchallanged power over the local rural population by acting as power brokers for them over evictions and hunger during and after the Famine giving them unpresidented influence over Irish political thought.
In America the Church also had sway ove the flock demonising the Fenian Brotherhood.
Kickham took on the Church by knowledge of its rethoric and theology. This defiance roused the ire of Archbishop Cullen who called for the banishment of the defiant paper.
1850 pg 2
In England in the early 60's the great writer Charles Dickens was composing Great Expectations following his sucesses with A Tale of Two Cities and the Pickwick Papers written at the accention of Queen Victoria.
Charles Dickens also wrote the Chrismas Carol in 1843 and during the Famine years some short stories such as the Haunted Man and the Battle of Life and the Cricket and the Hearth.
This period also produced such famous English Works as the Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and the works of Hans Chiristian Anderson all dealing with the social interactions of mankind.
The American IRB absorbed Fenian ideals. While most exibited much enthusiams for revolution in Ireland they did not heed the call for finances leaving Irish coffers empty of funds sufficient for such an escapade.
Because of the great Irish participation in the Union Army cause of emancipation and preservation of the US as one nation, Washington indulged the nationalist movement giving James Stephens a grand tour of the union forces in 1864 as he recruted for the Irish rising.
In 1865 Stephens succeeded in his mission raising 50,000 US dollars and recruiting 100,000 Irish Americans ready for battle in Ireland.
The Fenien movment in the US was quite open throughout, hold Chicago Convention in 1863 The members being given leave by the Union Army to attend. A second Convention was held in Cincinatti in 1865 as the Civil War drew to a close.
Queen Victoria wrote in her diary on February 12, 1865 [Lincolns birthday } of the danger of Briitain going to war with America as soon as peace was delcared and the impossiblity of the imperial government in holding Canada.
However, on September 14, 1865 the government on inforamtion from spys from both sides of the Atlantic raided the Irish People taking its incriminating documents and arresting everyone there.
John O Leary was waited for by 4 Constables at his home.
He asked for a few moments and settled himself in an armchair with a wiskey and water and his pipe. He offered no resistance.
Stephens went into hiding with Kickham He was arrested on November 9 1865 with Kickham.
He had given the signal to rise if he were arrested but in America Mahoney could not round up more than a skirmishing force.
Much of the information the government had acquired had been obtained by Jim McDermott a Fenein figure who passed it to the NY British Consulate. He was also a good creator of dissent in the organization through passing gossip and outright lies, creating dessent.
These dessenters where known with the Fenian Movement as the Senate consiting of men like William Roberts and Brigadier General Tom Sweeney.
This 'split' in the Fenian Movement creatred 2 NY headquarters, the old Moffett Mantion on Union Square occupied by Mahoney's forces and the dissentors headquarters on Broadway in lower Manhattan.
James Stephens was put in Richmond Prison making no defence against the charges. He had refused to recognise British law.
The IRB however had penetrated the prison security having members of oath on the prison staff.
The IRB on November 24 1865 [American Thansgiving] 'sprung' James Stephens.
Stephens announced a call off of the planed revolt and was sent to France.
Meanwhile in NY 100,000 people gathered in a park on the East River in March of 66. Mahoney addressed them to provide arms to fight the Battle of Irish Freedom.
Roberts and Tom Sweeeney were preparing a 10,000 man force to attach Canada.The plan was not secret. it was discussed by the Andrew Johnson Admininstration in Washington with the decision not to interfere.
In Ireland the government had suspended Habeus Corpus and was rounding up hundreds of suspected rebels including American citizens claiming Irish born Americans were subjects of the Crown which drove Secretary of State William Seward into a rage. Tensions both in London and Washington were rife.
The Fenians had achieved dissention betwen the 2 countries Britain and The US.
The Mahoney faction, pressing for action converged on EastPort Maine targeting CampoBello Island part of New Brunswick. A steamship of weopons arrived in April. On April 15 the Fenians invaded Indian Island.
Washington sent troops and warships to Eastport.The Fenians withdrew from Canadien territory.
Sweeney and the dissadents meanwhile planned a winter assalt over frozen lakes and rivers.
The dissident civilians commander in chief Williams Roberts ordered an immediate spring attack
The asault was armed with weopons and ammunition purchased from federal arsenals and planned to attack along a 1000 mile front.
The dissadent force was named the 'Irish Republicna Army.'
The attack was planned for 31 May 1866.
The three winged invasion force collapsed through accident, apathy and confusion.
The US government did not interfere.
800 men under the command of John O Neil la Civil War veteran crossed into Canada from Buffalo NY and won and engagement with Canadien malitias. After several days of fighting the Johnson Admininstration sent General Ulysses S Grant and General Meade to put an end to the affair.
O Neill withdrew and was arrested by federal authorities.Sweeney also arrested at Buffalo.
The movement was
now in tatters and reviled by a previously encouraging press.
Mahoney was relegeted to obscurity and was found much later in a NYC tenament room to proud to ask for help and to poor to buy coal or food half starved and dying of old age ,poverty and dispair. He died in 1877 rewarded respect in death he had not recieved in life.
Stephens watched his adherants and coherts arrested and tried in Ireland.
Jeramigha [Dairmaid] O Donavan Rossa who had watched his father die of starvation during the Great Hunger and been got to relatives in Skibereen to observe more death fillabustereds the trail he was given. representing himself before a catholic judge William Keogh. Lambasting the judge and giving long winded disertations for days.
This got him ,at age 34 ,a life sentance from Judge Keogh for treason felony.
Kickham, O Leary, Tom Clarke, Luby all followed Rossa to prison dispite Issac Butts ,the prominent prodistant Young Islander defender of William Smith OBrien and Gavin Duffy.
3000 young Fenians were arrested by police in early 1866.
Entire British Army units were transfered and soldiers who had taken the Fenian oath were released from service and sent to prison colonies in western Australia.
Former US Civil War soldiers Tom Kelly and John McCafferty took over the IRB with a coup , stripping Stephens of his power over military affairs and planning.
Stephens was left only control over the broader movemnt. He lost credibility and departed for France discredited in January 1867,where despirately poor he moved constanty from lodging to lodging before the landlord could evict him dying in 1901, discredited and unremembered for his work for Irish independance and nationhood.
He had taken the broken dead country of 1856 to a formidable organization spanning an ocean in the IRB.
1850 pg 3
Fenians were sought in all corners by the British Authorities. Spys were everywhere .The military was on constant alert.
A rebelion was planed by Colonel Kelly for March 5 1867.A French officer ,Gustav Clusert in Command ,as Kelly was in hiding from the police in London. This officer resigned on the eve of battle convincd of the failure of the planned operation.
The fight was sporadic and quickly put down thus ending the greatest threat to Bitish rule in Ireland since the United Irishmen in 1798.
On Septemeber 11 1867 Col Kelly was arrested in Manchester England. He was resqued by his comrads while being transported in a prison van. A van guard was shot but the prisoner freed.
Dozens of Irish living in Manchester were arrested on suspision. Five were eventually selected from these arrested ,tried ,convicted and hung. Two of them American citizens.
One Edward Condon saying the farewell speech fromt he dock called "God Save Ireland' which becme a cry and later a ballad and anthem.
Allen, Larkin and Obrien ,the Americans wer hung in Manchester on November 24, 1867 becoming the Manchester Martyrs.
O Donnovan Rossa remained defiant in prison remanded on a bread and water punishment diet.
Starvation did not subdue him nor did humiliating him by tying his hands behind his back forcing him to eat like a dog.
Amnesty for the Fenians prisoners was sought by Issac Butts.
O Donnovan Rossa name was entered in a Parliamentary election in Tipperary in 1869 which he won.
Gladstone the Prime Mininster ordered a general amnesty and these Fenian prisoners were released in 1871. Most sailed for America.
In England a Conservative government under
Disreali took power;.
In 1869 the Irish established Church was disestablished. Regium Dorum compensation payment to non conformist Presbyterians was continued.
By 1870 Gladstone Whigs were returned to power by a general election.
An Irish Land Act was passed giving compensation to evicted tenants for improvements.
In 1872 Parliament passed a Ballot Act abolishing public nomination of candidates.
An Irish University Bill was introduced but was thrown out. Gladstone resigned.
The Bill had excluded the teaching of moral phylosophy, theology and modern history.
In 1878 Rain distroyed the potato crop once more and thE peat was to wet to dig.
A Land League to adjutate for rent reduction was formed by Michael Davett who had himself been evicted with the family during the Famine and had lost his right arm to mill machinery in England at age 9 years..
The League proposed to bring down 'rack rents' and to obtain ownership of the land.
The practice of Boycott was addopted.
The League was helped by Parnell and Bigger O Donnell among other members of Parliament.
By 1880 Victoria having displayed previous neglect of her Irish subjects in a speech from theThrone expressed sympathy with Irish hardship and asked the Church of Ireland to alleviate Distress.
A Parliamentary Relief of Distress Act passed at once. Forty years to late.
In 1881 the Protection of Life and Property Act and the Peace Preservation Act were reinstated.
The Land Act provided the three F's
Fair rent
Fixed Tenure
Free sale of holding[sublease]
The land League was proclaimed.
In 1882 Frederick Cavendish was to replace Lord Lieutenant Forster. He and Burke were set upon in Phoenix park and murdered by a group of men calling themselves the Invinsibles.
The Prevention of Cime and Arrears Act followed.
In 1886 a Government In Irleland Bill was brought providing for a Dublin legislature, exclusion of the Irish from the Imperial Parliament, Taxes to the Irish assembly with the exlusion of exise and customs taxes, and security of protection of minorities.
The bill was regected.
In 1886 A Land Purchase Bill was introduced by Gladstone providing 50 million pounds for tenants buying estates of landlords wishing to sell.
The bill was opposed by Conservitives and some Liberals who broke with Gladstone and formed the Liberal Unionist Party.
These bills caused serious exitement and rioting in Ireland.
When these bills failed Gladstone disolved the Parliament.
At election Gladstone was defeated by Lord Salisbury who upheld the Liberal Unionist party..
Lord Wolsely was preparing resistance in Ulster to the Home Rule Bill under consideration.
Lord Salisbury was in support of the Liberal Unionist Party in Ulster.
In 1887 The Parliamentary Session was devoted to the Irish Question.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act was made permanent to stop meetings and suppress dangerous associations.
Its enforcer was Lord Balfour, Chief Secretary of Ireland
The nationalist adopted the 'Plan of Campaign' against tenant evictions.
They deposited rents with 'trustees' until land lords agreed to rent reductions.
Joseph Chamberlain speaking in Ulster Hall in Belfast agaisnt Home Rule asking his audience what would they do if Home Rule came they responded Fight!
In 1889 ,10 million pounds was voted for Irish land purchase and for drainiage and light rail,.
A County Government Bill was introduced in 1892 and was withdrawn because of fearce opposition by ulster Unionists.
In 1892 Belfast was granted a city charter and was the commercial capital of all Ireland.
The Duke of Abercorn presided over a mass convention of 11,000 delagates against Home Rule.
The Convention led by Sinclair and Ewart were adamant in refusing any form of Home Rule as degraded status undera Dublin parliament.
When Lord Bill was solomnly burned in public and stompted upon while the crowd cheered.
This Home Rule bill finally, after much amendment and arguement passed the House of Comons but was than thown out by the Lords.
In Ulster the Unionists gave attention to defence organizations.
Rifle Clubs weer formed. A Central Assembly of Ulster Defence Union held a meeting of its 60 members.
In 1895 gladstoneat 85 retired giving over the PM ship to Lord Rosebury. This governemnt was defeated in June 1895. Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister forming a Conservative Liberal Unionist coalltion government
Home Rule was shelved for years.
In the year 1896 the new bycycle became fashionable among middle class people.Tthe motor car was being acquired by the upper classes and new benefits of industrial and science were becoming the prominet changes of the day.
In 1897 Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubalee having ruled these islands for 60 years.
By 1899 the South Afrcian Boer War had begun between England and Dutch settlers.
Theater and entertainment in Ireland had been provided by British touring companys for the past half century but in 1898 Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, J Synge and Sean O Casey
formed a theater company know as the Abby Theater with acting talant produced in Ireland such as Frank and Will Fay who established the Dublin Dramatic School in 1898.
The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 to revive the Gaelic tongue and de -anglisize Ireland.
The creation of the Gaelic Athletic Association ,founded in 1884 to preserve ancient Irish games like hurling and Irish football were created at the end of the 19th century.
A base of national culture and prosperity fromteh ruins of 1850.
The Catholic Church during the 50 years revived under Archbishop Cullen of Dublin ,built schools and churches, fostered a devosionaly mission ,reformed the Irish clergy conduct, and administered the Sacraments.
Ireland passed into the 20th Century hopeful of its survival as a people ,stuggling on on both sides of the
Atlantic and in England to rise from its own demise.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright Aug 17 2007
sourses: History of Ulster, Ramsey Colles Vol IV ,Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd, 1919
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckstein and O Malley, 2003 Ballantine Books
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway, Simon and Schuster ,2000
Everthing Irish ,edited by Ruckenstein and O Malley ,Balantine Books , 2003
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: The Famine Years
Irish History Synopsis; The Famine Years pg 1
In 1837 Victoria became Queen of England at age 18 years.
Within 2 years she had married her firt cousin Albert of Saxe Colburg.The marriage produced 4 children for 1840. 1841, 1843 and 1844. Much of the day to day running of the Monarchy was given over to Albert by the much in love young mother.
Her Minister was Lord Melbourne a Whig party member who proved a helpful and good advisor for the young Queen.
The English Parliament however remained callous passing such coersive acts as the Criminal Lunacy Act in June 1830 which allowed 2 judges or a lord lieutentant to remand or discharge a person in asylum or any person'intent to commit crimes' or suspicion of degeneracy.
Melburne had been elected in general election in 1834 However King George IV did not likehis politics of Whigness and replaced him with the Conservative Peel. Melbourne again won the geneneral election in 1835 adn was returned where he remained in power until the Peel government was re elected in 1841. Peal remained Prime minister during Victorias regn until 1845 and during that time passed the repeal of the corn laws which forbade grain being imported into Ireland and purchased some 20,000 pounds of corn meal for the Irish relief. He was ousted on trying to defeat the Cohersion Bill Parliament proposed to controlthe unrest in Ireland and was replaced by the Whig Lord Russel in 1846. Lord russell was a free trade and lazssez faire candidate and remainined in charge of the prime mininsters office till 1852 when he was oustd by the Earl of Derby ,Stanley.
thus the Queen had three Mininster during the troublesome Famine years.
In Ireland 100 workhouses were founded in July 1838.The Unions were subdivided to electoral districts and each district charged with its own poor, every parish to bear its own burden.This Act introduced by Wellington would properly relieve the deplorable social conditions in Ireland when the Coersion bill had been proposed and passed.
By 1838 there were crowds of beggars on the roads.
Of Irelands 20,319,924 total acres including water and bogs, 5,238,575 acres were under cultivation.
306,915 of these acres being farms of 1-5 acres tilled by cottiers and laborers under a con acre system of rental.
The 1841 Census showed an Irish population of 8.3 million souls, over half of these dependant on the land for sustainance.
The English government pursued a policy of free trade and lassez faire. A policy hotley and adamantly perusued by the Whig Liberals.
The idea of a state being responsible for the welfare of citizens was unaceptable to lassez faire economists who believed and made it government policy that all enterprise should be left alone no matter how bad a human or environmental condition it produced.
A common prejudice was in vogue amongst the assendant religious views that the Irish were an inferior people and a sinful one.
In writings of the English Home Secretary to the Prime Mininster Peel, James Graham expressed the common belief among Calvinists:
"Its Awful to observe how the Almighty humbles the pride of nations.
The Sword, the Pestilence and Famine are the instruments of his displeasure:
the canker- worm and the locusts are his armies,
He gives the word: a single copy is blighted;
and we see a nation prostrate,
streaching out its Hands for Bread.
These are solemn warnings, and they fill me with reverence;
they proclaim with a voice not to be mistaken,
that doubtless there is a God who judgeth the Earth."
At the time and occurance of the Great Hunger almost all Irish land and wealth were in the hands of the English Aristocracy, all of whom were pre-destination Prodistants. The native population holding small plots as tenants at will.
1/4th of these were Peers and Lords. Most of these Lords had never set foot in Ireland leaving the 'rent collecting' to agents.These rents were not collected in money as the Irish had no money to speak of but by rendering of labor to the Lords without pay and by the crops or livestock which were simply given to the estate manager for export to enrich English markets.
The Irish themselves existed almost totaly on the imported south american tuber potato and an occational milk diet without any other food but perhaps an occational festive occcation fish such as cod, haddock or herring. The teaming salmon runs were forbidden them as his Lordship considered these his personal estate. Fishing had been forbidden to he Irish under the penal laws.
The law considered this usually as criminal types keeping them in line with Parliamentary Acts forbidding about all human endevor and viewing them as uncivilized and inferior people.
The same philosophy expressed in nazi Germany a century later.
the state assendancy system operated daily on a human need to survive from it. Irish serf populations provided great leisure and profit to its perpetrators.
At the height of the famine under Lord Calendon, George William Federick Villiers than Viceroy paid out
1,297 pounds for table wine
1,868 pounds for butchers
619 pounds for chickens and poultry
352 pounds to the fish monger
562 pounds for butter
for the Castle court.
His personal salary was 20,000 pounds per annum.
Laborors earned 10 d a day not enought to purcahse a meal.
The Liberal Whig Lord Russell government which replaced the Conservitaive Peel in 1846
continued its free trade policy through the famine years with profiteering unchecked.
During 1846 and Black 47 speculators sold omported corn meal that the Pell government had purchased from America to relieve famine in Ireland.
The meal contained no nutrient value but sufficed to remove hunger pains Therefore, many eating it simmply perished from malnutrition and deseae inspired by malnutrition.
Riot police and troops were ever present to put down any mob anger.
These troops were provided beef pork and biskets for putting down food riots amonst the natives.
These were under the control of Trevelyan the permanent exchecker secretary.
Trevelyan being among the prevailing belief in the doctrine of pre-destination and the government imbibement in lassez faire Malthus doctrine preaching to Parliament that Ireland would be left to' the operation of natural forces'.[ the Reverend Thomas Malthus Essay on the Principles of Population 1798].
These lordly people truly beliving from indoctrination that God Himself was the planned instigator of the misfortunes besetting their fellow man.
Late in 1860 John Mitchel writing in the Last Conquest of Ireland stated:
'The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the Famine'.
famine pg 2
The Irish under the potato system having no money had no new cloths and were usually ragged , shoeless and unkempt. Living in mud cabins with sod roof and mud floors and sleeping on skanty piles of old straw or rushes they were also unbathed.
If they had no money to pay the larger tenants farmers conacre without prepayment was refused. this was sometimes alliviated by providing free labor for the necessary 1/2 acre to grow and produce 6 pounds of potatos.
During the worste Famine years 46-48 English Exchecher remined closed to Irish needs. Only a small smattering of private charity such as the Baron de Rothchilds 1846 British Association to relieve extreme distress in remote parishes.
Qeen Victoria donated 2000 pounds, Rothcild provided 1000 the Duke of Devonshire who owned in addition to his several English palaces, a castle in Lismore in Waterford County gave 1000 pounds. He also owned Bolton, 1/2 of Yorkshire,Chatsworth,Derbyshire East Borune entirely and a hugh palace in London.
The Association appointed Count Strelecki an anglisized Pole to admininster the fund along with the Evangelical Church and the Quakers.
Charles Trevelyan advised the Association would be of no help. He believed in free trade and was religious stating:
"The great evil with which we have to contend is not physical of the famine but the moral evil of the selfish ,perverse and turbulant character of the people".
This attitude prevailed among most religious and government persons with influence and power.
The belief that the State owed no responsiblity to the people and that their misfortunes were a punishment from God for their sin or fecklessness was the norm.
The Manchester Guardian printed much against the Irish race blaming all their ills on their own atitudes of lazyness and refusal to work and the use of gavelkind division of the assigned land rather than the English promogeniture distributing all the land to the eldest son..
Malthusian and Darwinism ideas prevalied in England.
In 1847 the Parliament passed the Passenger Act making the coffin ships posible.
Lord Palmerston having Sligo lands he never went near, sent no relief but exported as many as he could to Canada on the Aeolus which was sent to St John Newfoundland with 428 on Board.
Destututea and in rags some stark naked when the ship arrived 8 people were found dead on board as the ship came into port.
The people of St Johns had no place for them and demanded free passsage back to Ireland.
Palmerston was required to defend himself in Commons. He required all the passengers to write letters to the St Johns newspapers absoving him and expressing their gratitude for his help in getting them to the New World. He blamed his Agents for the deplorable conditions on the Aeolus.
These 'passengers' were left on the docks to survive as best they could begging all winter with no shoes or socks and no warm cloths in the snow.
Some went to New York or risked the anti-Irish hostility of England for navvie work.
Parliament insisted the Assendant gentry of Ireland not itself should pay for relief.
The English Governmnent consciously conspired to de-populate Ireland of the native Gael and its culture.
This policy of extermination of North America Indians had alredy begun in the east of the United States. An article comparing the two was published in the Times.
After England had tried military conquest, plantation and legislative union all of which the Irish had resisted, extermination provided by 'providence' and man induced dysfuntion seemed the solution to 'progress'.
In legislative demands putting the burden of relieving starvation on the landlords, Parliament assisted with malice aforthought, the financial distruction of the Assendany Class Landed Gentry.
In depriving Ireland of the plantation stock a hope remained to anglisize Ireland completely.
Dublin ate the countryside starved.
Spereanza wrote such lines in the Young Irelanders Nation newspaper:
"Weary men what reap ye--Golden corn for stranger.
What sow ye?--Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offings?
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffings."
Daniel O Connell now 71 years old was spent.
He traveled to Parliament to tell in a weakened voice inthe Commons:
'Ireland is in your hands. If you do not save her she cannot save herself'.
He than went on towards Rome dying on the road.
The government both Irish Confederates and the Commons seemed unaware of the starving Irish masses. They argued on unconserned.
William Smith O Brien argued that the government should provide assistance to the starving Irish. He was arrested and given 30 days in cell under the Parliament where he had a bed ,a table, some chairs,a toilet which was more than most Irish cabins starvees had.
By 1847 the Irish lay dead in the fields, in the workhouses, in the road side ditch . A steady treck of skeletons to Irish ports where the scandal of ships loaded them for transportation to America.
Dozens of these unfit craft sank at sea. Those that sailed on thousand died of dysentry, typhoid and cholera and were uncerimoniously dumped into the sea. At ports such as Grosse Island in CAnada and other ports these ships were denied entry and sent back out to sea.
The Famine continued unablated for 3 more years.
No other crops were planted such as beans or peas to relieve the death spiral.
the British believed the social structure would collape if it distributed free food. Spectators made fortunes selling meger corn meal to those starving masses.
At last in 1851 the potato appeared eatable and the Famine was relieved- not by mankind but by the benevolance of Mother Nature.
In 1848 the cripple hunchback James Fintan Lalor formed Young Irleand with Gavan Duffy Frank Meager and Davis dictating, 'the owners of the soil must be Irish'.
James preached revolution but was unable to complete his plan. He died of bronchitis 3 months after the Battle fo Widow McCarthys Cabbage Patch at Ballengary in 1848.
The Irish suffered on. They ate raw turnips, nettles and seaweed finally consuming the grass itself dying green mouthed from the stain.
The Irish themselves of nature a hospitable people turned away beggars out of fear of deseases to themeselves and their families,.
Oats and Barley Wheat and livestock continued unabated to leave Ireland, 3 ships going out full of food for one coming in.
Whole cabins containing the deseased families were demolished and burned withthe bodies within out of fear of typhoid cholera and the ever present famine fever.
The treck to the ports continued amongst the 100,000 dead. Passage either provided by the landlords for all his tenantry or being individuly paid.
The potato blight continued to appear in Ireland until 1914 when it was treated by copper sulfate.
The landlords continued to demand rents of all crops and livestock and continued to evict with police and troop enforcers , braking down the mud hovels adn turnign the former holdigns into pasture.
The population of 8.3 million in 1841 became 4 million by 1900.
The Island had the lowest population in Europe having regressed instead of increasing.
The English government considered the Holicast was in the end a benefit and good for Ireland.
100,000 had been evicted and no one knew what happened to them.
Gavelkind was ended. Gaelic culture was defunct. The Gaelic language with its song and dance was heard no more.
Exports of oats wheat barley and livestock continued unenterupted.
In 1849 the little mother ofEngland Queen Victoria visited Dublin where she was warmly recieved and cheered by her subjects for her goodness.
At this time she was the mother of 5 healty offspring,3 left to be born in 1850, 1853 and 1857. She was 30 years old and had been Queen for 12 years.
By 1850 my two great grandfathers born in 1830 and surviving the Famine married and betwen them produced 9 children after 1850 whose births were unrecorded and no one knows waht happened to them.
In 1854 England spend 70 million pounds on the Crimean War where Irish soldiers served.
7 million had been spent on the Great Hunge relief effort.
In 1855 Castle Garden was opened at Battery Park Manhattn, NY to provide assistance to the Immigrants with food purchases, train tickets and lodging at the station.Children were assisted in finding the American relatives. It was the first Travelers Aide.
In 1856 Old St Patricks was built in downtown Chicago and I have been there in 1990 it still has the warm and caring spirit within.
St Patricks in NY City was built in the same way by donations of the faithful in 1858.
St Patricks in Armagh had to be postphoned in its building program as the money was needed to feed the starving.
It was finally dedicated and finished in 1873 with its 34 foot mark of pre-famineline blocks at window heights.
Most of the emigrees sent home money to relive the suffering of death to assist in sending passage money to family members.
By 1860 the Irish had gained success as police, maids ,nanies, dock workers , mill works and
other respectable work.
famine pg 3
By 1848 Irelands 8.3 million had dropped to 6 million. One million dead of 'natural causes' and exposure to the elements;
1.1 million dead of starvation.
Over 100,000 had fled to Canada and the US. 200,000 by 1851.
5000 ships were used to transport them.
The usual voyage took 4 weeks or 10 weeks if no wind.
Yellow fever was added to the list of deadly deaseases available on board.They landed at
Deer Island in Boston
Battery Park Manhattan Ny
Grosse Iles Montreal.
Many had died on the dock newly buried in mass graves in the new soil. Most wore rags Most were shoeless as the old kings of Ireland were inagurated with their bare foot on a rock impression of that investure. All were hungry and overwhelmed by the large cities they encountered having been born raised and lived an entire life in small rural villages.
Many were children sent on alone to find relatives.
All were easy marks for con artists who sold them false railway tickets, led them to unsrupulous lodges and to alleged employers.
Any shelter would do and most ended up in tenement houses filty, unsanitary, cime ridden, garbage piled onthe street, no toilet or water.
in 1849 a cholera epidemic swept the east coast of the US. 500 ofthe 700 killed were Irish.
In New Orleans yellow fever wiped out 20% of the Irish immigrants.
the Gold Rush reports drew many to take railroad jobs laying track to get to California for 1.00 a day.
Of 370,000 Immigrants in 1850 1/2 were Irish [185,000]
After that year 50,000 a year left Ireland for future in America.
They recieved anti-Irish backlash from Anglo Americans who provided them with abuse and ridiclule, refused them jobs, attacked catholic churrches.
A No nothing party formed called the American Party in 1852 against immigration and Catholics.
The party gained seats in govenrment to obtrain these ends..It held secret meetings.
The irish immigrants formed such socities as the Friends of St Patrick,St Patricsk Mutual Allaince, Legion of Mary,Hibernian Society,Emigrant Society.
150,000 Irish fought for the Union in the American Civil War.
40,000 for the Confederacy.
The IRB was formed with the Fenians from these regiments.
An irony to the Famine was that by 1830 the Irish made up over 40% of the British Imperials Legions. Before the Famine over half of the white soldiers in India were Irish.
The Irish nursery seemed inexaustable.
Irishmen fought at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 inhancing the vitory over France and aiding the empire ,condusive for its future growth.
The Irish continued to die for both Britain America and Canada through both Worlds Wars I and II throughout the 20th Century and as Sarsfield said at his death in France'
"Oh but for Ireland.
sourses: The Victorians, A N Wilson, W W Norton and Company, NY , 2003;
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Galway, Simons and Schuster, 2000;
The History of Ulster, Ramsey Colles, Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd ,1919;
Our Cutural Heritage-Irish Americans, Sarah deCapua, 2003, Childs World;
Irish in America, Margaret Goldstein,2005 Learner Publications;
The Irish American Family Album, Dorothy Hobbler, 1995 , Oxford University
Press
Judi Donnelly
Copyright August 1 2007
In 1837 Victoria became Queen of England at age 18 years.
Within 2 years she had married her firt cousin Albert of Saxe Colburg.The marriage produced 4 children for 1840. 1841, 1843 and 1844. Much of the day to day running of the Monarchy was given over to Albert by the much in love young mother.
Her Minister was Lord Melbourne a Whig party member who proved a helpful and good advisor for the young Queen.
The English Parliament however remained callous passing such coersive acts as the Criminal Lunacy Act in June 1830 which allowed 2 judges or a lord lieutentant to remand or discharge a person in asylum or any person'intent to commit crimes' or suspicion of degeneracy.
Melburne had been elected in general election in 1834 However King George IV did not likehis politics of Whigness and replaced him with the Conservative Peel. Melbourne again won the geneneral election in 1835 adn was returned where he remained in power until the Peel government was re elected in 1841. Peal remained Prime minister during Victorias regn until 1845 and during that time passed the repeal of the corn laws which forbade grain being imported into Ireland and purchased some 20,000 pounds of corn meal for the Irish relief. He was ousted on trying to defeat the Cohersion Bill Parliament proposed to controlthe unrest in Ireland and was replaced by the Whig Lord Russel in 1846. Lord russell was a free trade and lazssez faire candidate and remainined in charge of the prime mininsters office till 1852 when he was oustd by the Earl of Derby ,Stanley.
thus the Queen had three Mininster during the troublesome Famine years.
In Ireland 100 workhouses were founded in July 1838.The Unions were subdivided to electoral districts and each district charged with its own poor, every parish to bear its own burden.This Act introduced by Wellington would properly relieve the deplorable social conditions in Ireland when the Coersion bill had been proposed and passed.
By 1838 there were crowds of beggars on the roads.
Of Irelands 20,319,924 total acres including water and bogs, 5,238,575 acres were under cultivation.
306,915 of these acres being farms of 1-5 acres tilled by cottiers and laborers under a con acre system of rental.
The 1841 Census showed an Irish population of 8.3 million souls, over half of these dependant on the land for sustainance.
The English government pursued a policy of free trade and lassez faire. A policy hotley and adamantly perusued by the Whig Liberals.
The idea of a state being responsible for the welfare of citizens was unaceptable to lassez faire economists who believed and made it government policy that all enterprise should be left alone no matter how bad a human or environmental condition it produced.
A common prejudice was in vogue amongst the assendant religious views that the Irish were an inferior people and a sinful one.
In writings of the English Home Secretary to the Prime Mininster Peel, James Graham expressed the common belief among Calvinists:
"Its Awful to observe how the Almighty humbles the pride of nations.
The Sword, the Pestilence and Famine are the instruments of his displeasure:
the canker- worm and the locusts are his armies,
He gives the word: a single copy is blighted;
and we see a nation prostrate,
streaching out its Hands for Bread.
These are solemn warnings, and they fill me with reverence;
they proclaim with a voice not to be mistaken,
that doubtless there is a God who judgeth the Earth."
At the time and occurance of the Great Hunger almost all Irish land and wealth were in the hands of the English Aristocracy, all of whom were pre-destination Prodistants. The native population holding small plots as tenants at will.
1/4th of these were Peers and Lords. Most of these Lords had never set foot in Ireland leaving the 'rent collecting' to agents.These rents were not collected in money as the Irish had no money to speak of but by rendering of labor to the Lords without pay and by the crops or livestock which were simply given to the estate manager for export to enrich English markets.
The Irish themselves existed almost totaly on the imported south american tuber potato and an occational milk diet without any other food but perhaps an occational festive occcation fish such as cod, haddock or herring. The teaming salmon runs were forbidden them as his Lordship considered these his personal estate. Fishing had been forbidden to he Irish under the penal laws.
The law considered this usually as criminal types keeping them in line with Parliamentary Acts forbidding about all human endevor and viewing them as uncivilized and inferior people.
The same philosophy expressed in nazi Germany a century later.
the state assendancy system operated daily on a human need to survive from it. Irish serf populations provided great leisure and profit to its perpetrators.
At the height of the famine under Lord Calendon, George William Federick Villiers than Viceroy paid out
1,297 pounds for table wine
1,868 pounds for butchers
619 pounds for chickens and poultry
352 pounds to the fish monger
562 pounds for butter
for the Castle court.
His personal salary was 20,000 pounds per annum.
Laborors earned 10 d a day not enought to purcahse a meal.
The Liberal Whig Lord Russell government which replaced the Conservitaive Peel in 1846
continued its free trade policy through the famine years with profiteering unchecked.
During 1846 and Black 47 speculators sold omported corn meal that the Pell government had purchased from America to relieve famine in Ireland.
The meal contained no nutrient value but sufficed to remove hunger pains Therefore, many eating it simmply perished from malnutrition and deseae inspired by malnutrition.
Riot police and troops were ever present to put down any mob anger.
These troops were provided beef pork and biskets for putting down food riots amonst the natives.
These were under the control of Trevelyan the permanent exchecker secretary.
Trevelyan being among the prevailing belief in the doctrine of pre-destination and the government imbibement in lassez faire Malthus doctrine preaching to Parliament that Ireland would be left to' the operation of natural forces'.[ the Reverend Thomas Malthus Essay on the Principles of Population 1798].
These lordly people truly beliving from indoctrination that God Himself was the planned instigator of the misfortunes besetting their fellow man.
Late in 1860 John Mitchel writing in the Last Conquest of Ireland stated:
'The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the Famine'.
famine pg 2
The Irish under the potato system having no money had no new cloths and were usually ragged , shoeless and unkempt. Living in mud cabins with sod roof and mud floors and sleeping on skanty piles of old straw or rushes they were also unbathed.
If they had no money to pay the larger tenants farmers conacre without prepayment was refused. this was sometimes alliviated by providing free labor for the necessary 1/2 acre to grow and produce 6 pounds of potatos.
During the worste Famine years 46-48 English Exchecher remined closed to Irish needs. Only a small smattering of private charity such as the Baron de Rothchilds 1846 British Association to relieve extreme distress in remote parishes.
Qeen Victoria donated 2000 pounds, Rothcild provided 1000 the Duke of Devonshire who owned in addition to his several English palaces, a castle in Lismore in Waterford County gave 1000 pounds. He also owned Bolton, 1/2 of Yorkshire,Chatsworth,Derbyshire East Borune entirely and a hugh palace in London.
The Association appointed Count Strelecki an anglisized Pole to admininster the fund along with the Evangelical Church and the Quakers.
Charles Trevelyan advised the Association would be of no help. He believed in free trade and was religious stating:
"The great evil with which we have to contend is not physical of the famine but the moral evil of the selfish ,perverse and turbulant character of the people".
This attitude prevailed among most religious and government persons with influence and power.
The belief that the State owed no responsiblity to the people and that their misfortunes were a punishment from God for their sin or fecklessness was the norm.
The Manchester Guardian printed much against the Irish race blaming all their ills on their own atitudes of lazyness and refusal to work and the use of gavelkind division of the assigned land rather than the English promogeniture distributing all the land to the eldest son..
Malthusian and Darwinism ideas prevalied in England.
In 1847 the Parliament passed the Passenger Act making the coffin ships posible.
Lord Palmerston having Sligo lands he never went near, sent no relief but exported as many as he could to Canada on the Aeolus which was sent to St John Newfoundland with 428 on Board.
Destututea and in rags some stark naked when the ship arrived 8 people were found dead on board as the ship came into port.
The people of St Johns had no place for them and demanded free passsage back to Ireland.
Palmerston was required to defend himself in Commons. He required all the passengers to write letters to the St Johns newspapers absoving him and expressing their gratitude for his help in getting them to the New World. He blamed his Agents for the deplorable conditions on the Aeolus.
These 'passengers' were left on the docks to survive as best they could begging all winter with no shoes or socks and no warm cloths in the snow.
Some went to New York or risked the anti-Irish hostility of England for navvie work.
Parliament insisted the Assendant gentry of Ireland not itself should pay for relief.
The English Governmnent consciously conspired to de-populate Ireland of the native Gael and its culture.
This policy of extermination of North America Indians had alredy begun in the east of the United States. An article comparing the two was published in the Times.
After England had tried military conquest, plantation and legislative union all of which the Irish had resisted, extermination provided by 'providence' and man induced dysfuntion seemed the solution to 'progress'.
In legislative demands putting the burden of relieving starvation on the landlords, Parliament assisted with malice aforthought, the financial distruction of the Assendany Class Landed Gentry.
In depriving Ireland of the plantation stock a hope remained to anglisize Ireland completely.
Dublin ate the countryside starved.
Spereanza wrote such lines in the Young Irelanders Nation newspaper:
"Weary men what reap ye--Golden corn for stranger.
What sow ye?--Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offings?
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffings."
Daniel O Connell now 71 years old was spent.
He traveled to Parliament to tell in a weakened voice inthe Commons:
'Ireland is in your hands. If you do not save her she cannot save herself'.
He than went on towards Rome dying on the road.
The government both Irish Confederates and the Commons seemed unaware of the starving Irish masses. They argued on unconserned.
William Smith O Brien argued that the government should provide assistance to the starving Irish. He was arrested and given 30 days in cell under the Parliament where he had a bed ,a table, some chairs,a toilet which was more than most Irish cabins starvees had.
By 1847 the Irish lay dead in the fields, in the workhouses, in the road side ditch . A steady treck of skeletons to Irish ports where the scandal of ships loaded them for transportation to America.
Dozens of these unfit craft sank at sea. Those that sailed on thousand died of dysentry, typhoid and cholera and were uncerimoniously dumped into the sea. At ports such as Grosse Island in CAnada and other ports these ships were denied entry and sent back out to sea.
The Famine continued unablated for 3 more years.
No other crops were planted such as beans or peas to relieve the death spiral.
the British believed the social structure would collape if it distributed free food. Spectators made fortunes selling meger corn meal to those starving masses.
At last in 1851 the potato appeared eatable and the Famine was relieved- not by mankind but by the benevolance of Mother Nature.
In 1848 the cripple hunchback James Fintan Lalor formed Young Irleand with Gavan Duffy Frank Meager and Davis dictating, 'the owners of the soil must be Irish'.
James preached revolution but was unable to complete his plan. He died of bronchitis 3 months after the Battle fo Widow McCarthys Cabbage Patch at Ballengary in 1848.
The Irish suffered on. They ate raw turnips, nettles and seaweed finally consuming the grass itself dying green mouthed from the stain.
The Irish themselves of nature a hospitable people turned away beggars out of fear of deseases to themeselves and their families,.
Oats and Barley Wheat and livestock continued unabated to leave Ireland, 3 ships going out full of food for one coming in.
Whole cabins containing the deseased families were demolished and burned withthe bodies within out of fear of typhoid cholera and the ever present famine fever.
The treck to the ports continued amongst the 100,000 dead. Passage either provided by the landlords for all his tenantry or being individuly paid.
The potato blight continued to appear in Ireland until 1914 when it was treated by copper sulfate.
The landlords continued to demand rents of all crops and livestock and continued to evict with police and troop enforcers , braking down the mud hovels adn turnign the former holdigns into pasture.
The population of 8.3 million in 1841 became 4 million by 1900.
The Island had the lowest population in Europe having regressed instead of increasing.
The English government considered the Holicast was in the end a benefit and good for Ireland.
100,000 had been evicted and no one knew what happened to them.
Gavelkind was ended. Gaelic culture was defunct. The Gaelic language with its song and dance was heard no more.
Exports of oats wheat barley and livestock continued unenterupted.
In 1849 the little mother ofEngland Queen Victoria visited Dublin where she was warmly recieved and cheered by her subjects for her goodness.
At this time she was the mother of 5 healty offspring,3 left to be born in 1850, 1853 and 1857. She was 30 years old and had been Queen for 12 years.
By 1850 my two great grandfathers born in 1830 and surviving the Famine married and betwen them produced 9 children after 1850 whose births were unrecorded and no one knows waht happened to them.
In 1854 England spend 70 million pounds on the Crimean War where Irish soldiers served.
7 million had been spent on the Great Hunge relief effort.
In 1855 Castle Garden was opened at Battery Park Manhattn, NY to provide assistance to the Immigrants with food purchases, train tickets and lodging at the station.Children were assisted in finding the American relatives. It was the first Travelers Aide.
In 1856 Old St Patricks was built in downtown Chicago and I have been there in 1990 it still has the warm and caring spirit within.
St Patricks in NY City was built in the same way by donations of the faithful in 1858.
St Patricks in Armagh had to be postphoned in its building program as the money was needed to feed the starving.
It was finally dedicated and finished in 1873 with its 34 foot mark of pre-famineline blocks at window heights.
Most of the emigrees sent home money to relive the suffering of death to assist in sending passage money to family members.
By 1860 the Irish had gained success as police, maids ,nanies, dock workers , mill works and
other respectable work.
famine pg 3
By 1848 Irelands 8.3 million had dropped to 6 million. One million dead of 'natural causes' and exposure to the elements;
1.1 million dead of starvation.
Over 100,000 had fled to Canada and the US. 200,000 by 1851.
5000 ships were used to transport them.
The usual voyage took 4 weeks or 10 weeks if no wind.
Yellow fever was added to the list of deadly deaseases available on board.They landed at
Deer Island in Boston
Battery Park Manhattan Ny
Grosse Iles Montreal.
Many had died on the dock newly buried in mass graves in the new soil. Most wore rags Most were shoeless as the old kings of Ireland were inagurated with their bare foot on a rock impression of that investure. All were hungry and overwhelmed by the large cities they encountered having been born raised and lived an entire life in small rural villages.
Many were children sent on alone to find relatives.
All were easy marks for con artists who sold them false railway tickets, led them to unsrupulous lodges and to alleged employers.
Any shelter would do and most ended up in tenement houses filty, unsanitary, cime ridden, garbage piled onthe street, no toilet or water.
in 1849 a cholera epidemic swept the east coast of the US. 500 ofthe 700 killed were Irish.
In New Orleans yellow fever wiped out 20% of the Irish immigrants.
the Gold Rush reports drew many to take railroad jobs laying track to get to California for 1.00 a day.
Of 370,000 Immigrants in 1850 1/2 were Irish [185,000]
After that year 50,000 a year left Ireland for future in America.
They recieved anti-Irish backlash from Anglo Americans who provided them with abuse and ridiclule, refused them jobs, attacked catholic churrches.
A No nothing party formed called the American Party in 1852 against immigration and Catholics.
The party gained seats in govenrment to obtrain these ends..It held secret meetings.
The irish immigrants formed such socities as the Friends of St Patrick,St Patricsk Mutual Allaince, Legion of Mary,Hibernian Society,Emigrant Society.
150,000 Irish fought for the Union in the American Civil War.
40,000 for the Confederacy.
The IRB was formed with the Fenians from these regiments.
An irony to the Famine was that by 1830 the Irish made up over 40% of the British Imperials Legions. Before the Famine over half of the white soldiers in India were Irish.
The Irish nursery seemed inexaustable.
Irishmen fought at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 inhancing the vitory over France and aiding the empire ,condusive for its future growth.
The Irish continued to die for both Britain America and Canada through both Worlds Wars I and II throughout the 20th Century and as Sarsfield said at his death in France'
"Oh but for Ireland.
sourses: The Victorians, A N Wilson, W W Norton and Company, NY , 2003;
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Galway, Simons and Schuster, 2000;
The History of Ulster, Ramsey Colles, Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd ,1919;
Our Cutural Heritage-Irish Americans, Sarah deCapua, 2003, Childs World;
Irish in America, Margaret Goldstein,2005 Learner Publications;
The Irish American Family Album, Dorothy Hobbler, 1995 , Oxford University
Press
Judi Donnelly
Copyright August 1 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: The Beginning of the Union to Victoria
.
Subject:
Irish History Synopsis: the Beginning of the Union 1801-Victoria
The Act of Union began with a failure of the crops in the south of Ireland in the years immediately following the Union.
The beginning years of the Century resulted in a tedious sparing between the nationalist Irish and the English Parliament.
In 1802 Catholic emancitpation sought after by the catholics and the same relief being desired by the dissenting Presbyterians were exasperated by religious anamosity felt in the country.
Lord Castlereagh [Stewarts of Down] was approved to be President of the Board of Control.
Riots occurred in Derry between Orangmen and Catholics where some were killed.
The prodistants were very agressive against the catholics killing them as catholics assembled for midsummer penances.
Castlereagh devised a plan to increase the Regium Donum grant whereby the state[English] rather than the church synod should distribute payment to mininsters.
Before a mininster could be granted this payment he must prouduce a guarantee of good character and that he was loyal .
This plan was approved by Parliament thereby incorporating the presbyterians mininster and flock to their thinking and creating a zelous loyalty to the State by a subordinate eccleastical asristocracy.
This distribution and inclusion did not include the Catholics.
By 1803 young Robert Emmett issued a manifesto and insurection broke out in the southern provinces.
But in Ulster, Tom Russell met with apthy to any revolutionary spirit.
He was avoided and the Catholic Church urged the flock not to listen to him.
He began to fear for his saftey but still, hidden in a cave declared himself to be General of the Northern District.
Both he and Emmett were arrested tried and excecuted in September.
The movement was infiltrated with spys and informers for the government.
The Irish catholics continued to petition the Pitt government for religious and civel emancipation.
In March 1805 these petitions were presented to both houses of Parliament by Grenville and Fox after Pitt refused to present them.
Discussion was postphones till May. A member from Armagh, Dr Duigenanan was vehemently anti catholic against emancipation.
Grattan rose to defend the petition and to castigate Duigenanan for his bigoted presentations, claiming the member had delivered invectives against the catholic religion, invectives against the past, invectives against the future, and invectives against the present generation.
However after two days debate the Fox motion was set aside until i a committeee approved in Febuary 1807 was composed to draw a new petition.This committee containing the name of Daniel O Connell.
Discord continued in Ireland between the prodistant orange and the catholic green party.
In June 1808 a group of men women and children convorting around a mid summer bonfire when yoemen appeared under the control of a sergeant who ordered fair like procedings halted and than ordered his men to present arms and fire.
Although the Lord Lieutenant the Duke of Richmond considered direct intervention that was not activated and the perpetrators were never caught or charged but one, who escaped with the connivance of Lord Gosford.
The attitude of the orange yoemen was that they had a right to kill any catholic Irish found offensive to them and that any of their members charged should be rescued by physical force.
A second motion for emancipation was presented in Parliament by Grattan and was again regected 213 agaisnt to 89 for.
In 1811 a third petition was presented and again regected 146-83.
The first adutation for repeal of the Union was begun in Dublin by Daniel O Connell.
He called for a coaltion of prodistant ,presbyterian and catholic with a spirit of unity in reacall of the United Irishmen.
In 1813 Grattan placed a forth Emancipation Bill in the English Parliament calling for admission of the excluded believers to Parliament, corporations, civil and militray offices.
This bill was dropped.
By 1815 turbulance in some baronies of Ireland was so prevelant that these districts were proclaimed- put under martial police law.
Waterloo fell to Wellington and gloom desended in western Europe including Britain and irleand.
Ireland remained tranquil and the Seditious Meetings Act was not applied to Ireland.
In Jan 1820 George III, old , mad , blind and despised died.
Also in that year Henry Grattan gave up the spirit having served 20 years in the Irish Parliament and 15 years in the new Union English Parliament.
Lord Wellesly was Viceroy of Ireland.
Plunkett brougt in a series of 6 resolutions on the catholic question asking the oath of disbelief and transubstantiation[ the doctrine that holds the belief of the change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ] be repealed, and to modify the Kings supremancy in spiritual as well as temporal matters.
These resolutions although opposed by Peel were carried.
pg 2 victoria
A Second Bill in March 1821 required that no person could be a Bishop or Dean of the Roamn Cathloic Church whose loyalty and peaceable conduct had not been previously established.
Every priest should swear that he would not recognise any Bishop whose loyalty was not satified; that he would not correspond with the Pope or the Pope's agents; that he would not correspond with Rome on any matter touching his civl allegiances.
O Connell denounced the Bill, as did all Ireland, and the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and clergy.
This Commons originated Bill along with the previous Plunkett rsolutions added were passed on the third reading. However Lords opposed the Bill from Lords Eldon, Liverpool and the Duke of York. The Bill was regected in Lords and set aside.
In Ireland Orangemen vs Ribbonmen aggravated the spirit of anamosity between Church and State.
A royal visit was planned for George IV in July 1821.
George being the first English king to go to Ireland since William III.
He remained in Ireland for a month under his plan of consiliation. He assured the Irish his 'heart had always been Irish' and shook hands with the lowest of subjects.
The loyal subjects among the nationalists welcomed the King's advances including Dan O Connell.
But in Oct, Nov and Dec outrages dislodged the euphoria County Cavan being one of the most notorious areas of disturbance.
'Hatred of each other for the love of God' became the signature expression of the day.
Antrim and Armagh hurled insults and provocative remarks about followed by riots amongst the people.
Courts could not obtain adequate unpurged testimony and threw out cases brought before them.
ON July 12 1823 at the Meghara Fair Orangemen and Ribbonmen quarelled. The Orangmen were driven to the Barracks where the provided themselves with arms and amunition. They fired into the Ribbonmen killing and wounding 20 or 30 of them. This was followed by an attack on Catholic dwellings in the area.
The Catholic Association of Ireland was founded by O Connell and Sheil and friends
to adopt legal and constitutional means to achieve Catholic Emancipation.
The organization was open to all who subscribed for membership. Meetings were held on Saturday.Reporters were allowed to attend.
Subsciptions were solicited in every town ,village and parish.
Everyone applied for membership at the rates they could afford and a Forth Estate arose in Ireland, that of the common people.
The King however, opposed the Association.
A Bill was brought in Febraray of 1825 to prevent unlawful societies and to prevent collection of money subsciptions for the purposes of releiving greviences. and to prohibit communications between affillliated societies.
This Bill supported by Plunkett was passed and given the Royal Assent in March 1825,
thus ending the Catholic Association without a struggle
A Committee was formed to study ways of dealing with this legislative dismissal of the Association.
21 noblemen were assembled to work out a compromise solution and submit a report.
This recommended a new Association with Dublin as its Headquarters, with sub offices in every Irish county acting independantly of each other.
12 shillings was made the new membership fee regardless of creed or or political affiliation.
This precedure suficed to engage Catholic Emancipation activity until the Act directed agains the Association expired in July 1828.
During this period a vacancy occured in County Clare when Vesey Fitzgerald was appointed to the Board of Trade.
O Connell was offered as a candidate by the Association to which he was elected.
When he went to Commons he was presented the Oath of Supremecy and Abduration which he refused to take.
This caused exitement in the countys as O Connell was refused his seat.
In the north the Association sent Lawless to represtnt them. The entire population o f County Monahan followed him in numbers of 20 to 30 thousand.
These being annimated with a desire for lawless behavior presented a serious menace.
The magistrates called out the miltary to check them.
In 1829 the King again in his speech from the Throne regretted Irelands Association as dangerous to the public peace and advised Parliament to remove the Civil disabilites of the catholics in conformity with the Church and State.
Peel brought in a bill to supress the Catholic Association and to remove the civil disabilities of catholics.
This bill heard 10 March 1829 and on Marhc 18 passed and on the thrid reading March 30th passed 320-140
In Lords the Bill was passed on April 10 and recieved the Royal Assent on the 13th.
On April 15 1829 O Connell again appeared at the House to take the newly enacted Oath.
This the House refused to allow him to do claiming he was elected before the new act he was still required to take the old Oath of
Supremacy and Abduration .
He refused again and was returned to Ireland to seek re election.Passing the cry of Repeal he was again returned for Clare with no contest.
Goerge IV died on Saturday 26 June 1830, the English Crown being taken by his brother Willaim of Clarence third son of George III of Hanover as William IV.
As William IV arose to the Throne England cried out for Parliamentary reform.
The Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame, retorted that no reform was needed and would not be considered arousing more popular ire.
Wellington resigned and a Whig ministry was formed under Grey and Lord John Russlell.
On March 1 ,1831 a Reform Bill was introduced inthe Commons by L Russell.
The bill failed as it had no majority and Parliament disolved.
Rioting occured at the elections.
When a new Parliamentof reformers was formed the Bill again passed Commons but was regected by Lords on the second reading.
Lord Anglesay was again appointed Viceroy for Ireland but the ministers were so absorbed in reform they had no time to questions of order in Ireland or the knawing question of Church of Irleand tithes.
In May 1832 a Reform Bill for Ireland was introduced by Stanley the Chief Secretary.
The Bill was designed to relieve unequal representation of the 7,700,000 population in which 700,000,000 were represented by only 64 representatives, and to raise the voting franchise to tenant holders of 50 pounds a year and leaseholders of 99 years to10 pound s to give these groups the vote.
Dublin constituancy would be raised from 15,000 to 16,000 and Belfast would have a constituancy of 1500 to 2300 instead of 13; and would raise the ordinary franchise from 5 pounds to 10 pounds.
O Connell and Sheill opposed the Bill .
This oppostition was indicated by indicating that in some counties of Ireland not more than 300 persons could pay the franchise fee. and the favoritism of electors thereby to prodistant counties able to pay the 10 pounds.
Stanley however, replied that Parnell, an accountant and impartial man had contended that 50 pounds increase would add to the catholic constituancy.
This reform Bill was passed by both houses and given the Royal Assent on August 7 ,1832.
The social condtions in Ireland was deplorable.
A Coersion Bill was introducd in Lords to rectify this condition. Lord Grey was the Prime Minister at this time.
There were at this time some 9000 crimes of violence in the countryside within the preceeding 2 months peroid.
Murders were committed.
Juries refused to convict and intimidation entered almost every household.
The law had no authority.
The state of Ireland was abysmal.
This Coersion Bill was passed 29 March 1832, 345-86 and recieved the Royal Assent.
Political gatherings were banned by the Lord Lieutenant Anglesay and the Volunters' were not needed'.
OConnell had reestablished this force. These were disbanded by the LL who proceeded to put action to his words.
The offences throughout Ireland dimminshed.
By 1834 with the Coersion Bill in full force crime and outrage were becoming rare but discontent was rife.
The tithe question remainded unaddressed.
The King recommended Parliament consider it in his speech from theThrone ,however opposed any repeal for the legislative union.
The King considered the Union a bond of national strength and safety and was for prevention of reform.
He declared to maintain the Union by all means in his power under the blessing of Divine Providence.
page 3 victoria and end
The entire session of this Parliament was devoted to Irish affairs.
The Parliament reduced the number of Prodestant Bishops in Ireland to reflect their adherents number per parish and reduced the stifend from 12,600 pounds per year to 8,000 pounds a year. ATithe Bill was introduced abolishing parishes where public worship had not been held in 3 years.. 66 such parishes were found.
136,600 pounds of tithes money were gathered from these counties for these parishes.
Reduction of the cess [taxes] filled the Assendany with dismay.they strongly objected to the Tithe Bill which was passed 30 July ,135-81.
This ended the great struggle between the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland.
The Irish Church question had attracted universal attention.
The Prodistants alarmed at the proposed loss of their priviledge and favored status petitioned the King with a 1400 clergyman document outlining the proposed loss of the priviledge. The King upheld the petition.
A vote of no confidence was taken and a new government was formed under Melbourne. A Tory reaction was approved and favored by King William who grew wary of the reform spirit.
He dismissed the Melbourne cabinate and placed Sir Robert Peel at head of government.
After four months Peel fell and Melbourne was returned to power in April 1835.
A town council reform act [ Municipal Reform Act] was passed giving freemen and rate payers the right to appoint town counselors who than elected the magistrats from among themselves.
Hrenry Phipps,Earl of Mulgrave became Lord Lieutenant in 1835. Perrin was Attorney General and set aside the Crown Prosecutors rule requiring Catholics to be set aside when called to jury duty ending Irish jury padding.
Under Melbourne the tithe settlement , reform of municipal corporations and Irish poor laws were enacted.
The tithe settlement surplus revenues of the Church of Ireland at around 58,000 per annum were applied to religious and moral education in Ireland.
This bill was twice regected but O Connell organised a National Association for promotion of Reform.
The Association was resisted in Ulster under Dr Henry Cooke who is now represented by a statue of Bronze in Belfast popularly known as the Black Man due to its tarnish.
These Radicals and Catholics made an ounslaught against the Orange Order which by 1835 had great power in Ireland having lodges in the Army.
The Duke of Cumberland, son of George III was Grand Master.
The Orange Order was investigated by the House of Commons Committee which uncovered a conspiracy to change the sucession in favor of Cumberland the Kings brother.
Frederick Agustus Duke of York and Albany, when informed of the Orders illegalities resigned from the Order as Grand Master and had forbidden the lodges in the Army as he was Commander in Chief.
However his brother ,the Duke of Cumberland ,Ernest William Agustus on succeeding York issued warrents allowing the formation of lodges within the British Army.
Hume introduced a motion to remove all the judges, privy counselors, Lord Lieutenants , magistrates, malitia officers, inspectors and constables who attended a meeting of the Orange Lodges or any Ribbon Lodges or any political club.
Lord Russell resisted this motion which was defeated.
Russell invited the House to leave the matter to the King to discourage the Orange Lodges and politcal societies. This was complied with by the lodges and Ernest William Agustus of Cumberland withdrew from the association.
On 20 June King William IV died.
Because Salic law forbade the Hanover House in Germany being given to a woman, the 8th child of Goerge III Ernest Agustus Duke of Cumberland was appointed King in Germany and the young daughter of the Duke of Kent, Edward Agustus, who had married Strathhein Victoria of Saxe Colburg Saalfeld their daughter
Alexandrina Victoria became Queen of England in June 1837 ushering in the Victorian Age.
submitted by judi ann aug 6 07
source: History of Ulster , Ramsey Colles ,Volume 4, published 1919 by Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd
Judi Donnelly
Copyright August 1 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject:
Irish History Synopsis: the Beginning of the Union 1801-Victoria
The Act of Union began with a failure of the crops in the south of Ireland in the years immediately following the Union.
The beginning years of the Century resulted in a tedious sparing between the nationalist Irish and the English Parliament.
In 1802 Catholic emancitpation sought after by the catholics and the same relief being desired by the dissenting Presbyterians were exasperated by religious anamosity felt in the country.
Lord Castlereagh [Stewarts of Down] was approved to be President of the Board of Control.
Riots occurred in Derry between Orangmen and Catholics where some were killed.
The prodistants were very agressive against the catholics killing them as catholics assembled for midsummer penances.
Castlereagh devised a plan to increase the Regium Donum grant whereby the state[English] rather than the church synod should distribute payment to mininsters.
Before a mininster could be granted this payment he must prouduce a guarantee of good character and that he was loyal .
This plan was approved by Parliament thereby incorporating the presbyterians mininster and flock to their thinking and creating a zelous loyalty to the State by a subordinate eccleastical asristocracy.
This distribution and inclusion did not include the Catholics.
By 1803 young Robert Emmett issued a manifesto and insurection broke out in the southern provinces.
But in Ulster, Tom Russell met with apthy to any revolutionary spirit.
He was avoided and the Catholic Church urged the flock not to listen to him.
He began to fear for his saftey but still, hidden in a cave declared himself to be General of the Northern District.
Both he and Emmett were arrested tried and excecuted in September.
The movement was infiltrated with spys and informers for the government.
The Irish catholics continued to petition the Pitt government for religious and civel emancipation.
In March 1805 these petitions were presented to both houses of Parliament by Grenville and Fox after Pitt refused to present them.
Discussion was postphones till May. A member from Armagh, Dr Duigenanan was vehemently anti catholic against emancipation.
Grattan rose to defend the petition and to castigate Duigenanan for his bigoted presentations, claiming the member had delivered invectives against the catholic religion, invectives against the past, invectives against the future, and invectives against the present generation.
However after two days debate the Fox motion was set aside until i a committeee approved in Febuary 1807 was composed to draw a new petition.This committee containing the name of Daniel O Connell.
Discord continued in Ireland between the prodistant orange and the catholic green party.
In June 1808 a group of men women and children convorting around a mid summer bonfire when yoemen appeared under the control of a sergeant who ordered fair like procedings halted and than ordered his men to present arms and fire.
Although the Lord Lieutenant the Duke of Richmond considered direct intervention that was not activated and the perpetrators were never caught or charged but one, who escaped with the connivance of Lord Gosford.
The attitude of the orange yoemen was that they had a right to kill any catholic Irish found offensive to them and that any of their members charged should be rescued by physical force.
A second motion for emancipation was presented in Parliament by Grattan and was again regected 213 agaisnt to 89 for.
In 1811 a third petition was presented and again regected 146-83.
The first adutation for repeal of the Union was begun in Dublin by Daniel O Connell.
He called for a coaltion of prodistant ,presbyterian and catholic with a spirit of unity in reacall of the United Irishmen.
In 1813 Grattan placed a forth Emancipation Bill in the English Parliament calling for admission of the excluded believers to Parliament, corporations, civil and militray offices.
This bill was dropped.
By 1815 turbulance in some baronies of Ireland was so prevelant that these districts were proclaimed- put under martial police law.
Waterloo fell to Wellington and gloom desended in western Europe including Britain and irleand.
Ireland remained tranquil and the Seditious Meetings Act was not applied to Ireland.
In Jan 1820 George III, old , mad , blind and despised died.
Also in that year Henry Grattan gave up the spirit having served 20 years in the Irish Parliament and 15 years in the new Union English Parliament.
Lord Wellesly was Viceroy of Ireland.
Plunkett brougt in a series of 6 resolutions on the catholic question asking the oath of disbelief and transubstantiation[ the doctrine that holds the belief of the change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ] be repealed, and to modify the Kings supremancy in spiritual as well as temporal matters.
These resolutions although opposed by Peel were carried.
pg 2 victoria
A Second Bill in March 1821 required that no person could be a Bishop or Dean of the Roamn Cathloic Church whose loyalty and peaceable conduct had not been previously established.
Every priest should swear that he would not recognise any Bishop whose loyalty was not satified; that he would not correspond with the Pope or the Pope's agents; that he would not correspond with Rome on any matter touching his civl allegiances.
O Connell denounced the Bill, as did all Ireland, and the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and clergy.
This Commons originated Bill along with the previous Plunkett rsolutions added were passed on the third reading. However Lords opposed the Bill from Lords Eldon, Liverpool and the Duke of York. The Bill was regected in Lords and set aside.
In Ireland Orangemen vs Ribbonmen aggravated the spirit of anamosity between Church and State.
A royal visit was planned for George IV in July 1821.
George being the first English king to go to Ireland since William III.
He remained in Ireland for a month under his plan of consiliation. He assured the Irish his 'heart had always been Irish' and shook hands with the lowest of subjects.
The loyal subjects among the nationalists welcomed the King's advances including Dan O Connell.
But in Oct, Nov and Dec outrages dislodged the euphoria County Cavan being one of the most notorious areas of disturbance.
'Hatred of each other for the love of God' became the signature expression of the day.
Antrim and Armagh hurled insults and provocative remarks about followed by riots amongst the people.
Courts could not obtain adequate unpurged testimony and threw out cases brought before them.
ON July 12 1823 at the Meghara Fair Orangemen and Ribbonmen quarelled. The Orangmen were driven to the Barracks where the provided themselves with arms and amunition. They fired into the Ribbonmen killing and wounding 20 or 30 of them. This was followed by an attack on Catholic dwellings in the area.
The Catholic Association of Ireland was founded by O Connell and Sheil and friends
to adopt legal and constitutional means to achieve Catholic Emancipation.
The organization was open to all who subscribed for membership. Meetings were held on Saturday.Reporters were allowed to attend.
Subsciptions were solicited in every town ,village and parish.
Everyone applied for membership at the rates they could afford and a Forth Estate arose in Ireland, that of the common people.
The King however, opposed the Association.
A Bill was brought in Febraray of 1825 to prevent unlawful societies and to prevent collection of money subsciptions for the purposes of releiving greviences. and to prohibit communications between affillliated societies.
This Bill supported by Plunkett was passed and given the Royal Assent in March 1825,
thus ending the Catholic Association without a struggle
A Committee was formed to study ways of dealing with this legislative dismissal of the Association.
21 noblemen were assembled to work out a compromise solution and submit a report.
This recommended a new Association with Dublin as its Headquarters, with sub offices in every Irish county acting independantly of each other.
12 shillings was made the new membership fee regardless of creed or or political affiliation.
This precedure suficed to engage Catholic Emancipation activity until the Act directed agains the Association expired in July 1828.
During this period a vacancy occured in County Clare when Vesey Fitzgerald was appointed to the Board of Trade.
O Connell was offered as a candidate by the Association to which he was elected.
When he went to Commons he was presented the Oath of Supremecy and Abduration which he refused to take.
This caused exitement in the countys as O Connell was refused his seat.
In the north the Association sent Lawless to represtnt them. The entire population o f County Monahan followed him in numbers of 20 to 30 thousand.
These being annimated with a desire for lawless behavior presented a serious menace.
The magistrates called out the miltary to check them.
In 1829 the King again in his speech from the Throne regretted Irelands Association as dangerous to the public peace and advised Parliament to remove the Civil disabilites of the catholics in conformity with the Church and State.
Peel brought in a bill to supress the Catholic Association and to remove the civil disabilities of catholics.
This bill heard 10 March 1829 and on Marhc 18 passed and on the thrid reading March 30th passed 320-140
In Lords the Bill was passed on April 10 and recieved the Royal Assent on the 13th.
On April 15 1829 O Connell again appeared at the House to take the newly enacted Oath.
This the House refused to allow him to do claiming he was elected before the new act he was still required to take the old Oath of
Supremacy and Abduration .
He refused again and was returned to Ireland to seek re election.Passing the cry of Repeal he was again returned for Clare with no contest.
Goerge IV died on Saturday 26 June 1830, the English Crown being taken by his brother Willaim of Clarence third son of George III of Hanover as William IV.
As William IV arose to the Throne England cried out for Parliamentary reform.
The Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame, retorted that no reform was needed and would not be considered arousing more popular ire.
Wellington resigned and a Whig ministry was formed under Grey and Lord John Russlell.
On March 1 ,1831 a Reform Bill was introduced inthe Commons by L Russell.
The bill failed as it had no majority and Parliament disolved.
Rioting occured at the elections.
When a new Parliamentof reformers was formed the Bill again passed Commons but was regected by Lords on the second reading.
Lord Anglesay was again appointed Viceroy for Ireland but the ministers were so absorbed in reform they had no time to questions of order in Ireland or the knawing question of Church of Irleand tithes.
In May 1832 a Reform Bill for Ireland was introduced by Stanley the Chief Secretary.
The Bill was designed to relieve unequal representation of the 7,700,000 population in which 700,000,000 were represented by only 64 representatives, and to raise the voting franchise to tenant holders of 50 pounds a year and leaseholders of 99 years to10 pound s to give these groups the vote.
Dublin constituancy would be raised from 15,000 to 16,000 and Belfast would have a constituancy of 1500 to 2300 instead of 13; and would raise the ordinary franchise from 5 pounds to 10 pounds.
O Connell and Sheill opposed the Bill .
This oppostition was indicated by indicating that in some counties of Ireland not more than 300 persons could pay the franchise fee. and the favoritism of electors thereby to prodistant counties able to pay the 10 pounds.
Stanley however, replied that Parnell, an accountant and impartial man had contended that 50 pounds increase would add to the catholic constituancy.
This reform Bill was passed by both houses and given the Royal Assent on August 7 ,1832.
The social condtions in Ireland was deplorable.
A Coersion Bill was introducd in Lords to rectify this condition. Lord Grey was the Prime Minister at this time.
There were at this time some 9000 crimes of violence in the countryside within the preceeding 2 months peroid.
Murders were committed.
Juries refused to convict and intimidation entered almost every household.
The law had no authority.
The state of Ireland was abysmal.
This Coersion Bill was passed 29 March 1832, 345-86 and recieved the Royal Assent.
Political gatherings were banned by the Lord Lieutenant Anglesay and the Volunters' were not needed'.
OConnell had reestablished this force. These were disbanded by the LL who proceeded to put action to his words.
The offences throughout Ireland dimminshed.
By 1834 with the Coersion Bill in full force crime and outrage were becoming rare but discontent was rife.
The tithe question remainded unaddressed.
The King recommended Parliament consider it in his speech from theThrone ,however opposed any repeal for the legislative union.
The King considered the Union a bond of national strength and safety and was for prevention of reform.
He declared to maintain the Union by all means in his power under the blessing of Divine Providence.
page 3 victoria and end
The entire session of this Parliament was devoted to Irish affairs.
The Parliament reduced the number of Prodestant Bishops in Ireland to reflect their adherents number per parish and reduced the stifend from 12,600 pounds per year to 8,000 pounds a year. ATithe Bill was introduced abolishing parishes where public worship had not been held in 3 years.. 66 such parishes were found.
136,600 pounds of tithes money were gathered from these counties for these parishes.
Reduction of the cess [taxes] filled the Assendany with dismay.they strongly objected to the Tithe Bill which was passed 30 July ,135-81.
This ended the great struggle between the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland.
The Irish Church question had attracted universal attention.
The Prodistants alarmed at the proposed loss of their priviledge and favored status petitioned the King with a 1400 clergyman document outlining the proposed loss of the priviledge. The King upheld the petition.
A vote of no confidence was taken and a new government was formed under Melbourne. A Tory reaction was approved and favored by King William who grew wary of the reform spirit.
He dismissed the Melbourne cabinate and placed Sir Robert Peel at head of government.
After four months Peel fell and Melbourne was returned to power in April 1835.
A town council reform act [ Municipal Reform Act] was passed giving freemen and rate payers the right to appoint town counselors who than elected the magistrats from among themselves.
Hrenry Phipps,Earl of Mulgrave became Lord Lieutenant in 1835. Perrin was Attorney General and set aside the Crown Prosecutors rule requiring Catholics to be set aside when called to jury duty ending Irish jury padding.
Under Melbourne the tithe settlement , reform of municipal corporations and Irish poor laws were enacted.
The tithe settlement surplus revenues of the Church of Ireland at around 58,000 per annum were applied to religious and moral education in Ireland.
This bill was twice regected but O Connell organised a National Association for promotion of Reform.
The Association was resisted in Ulster under Dr Henry Cooke who is now represented by a statue of Bronze in Belfast popularly known as the Black Man due to its tarnish.
These Radicals and Catholics made an ounslaught against the Orange Order which by 1835 had great power in Ireland having lodges in the Army.
The Duke of Cumberland, son of George III was Grand Master.
The Orange Order was investigated by the House of Commons Committee which uncovered a conspiracy to change the sucession in favor of Cumberland the Kings brother.
Frederick Agustus Duke of York and Albany, when informed of the Orders illegalities resigned from the Order as Grand Master and had forbidden the lodges in the Army as he was Commander in Chief.
However his brother ,the Duke of Cumberland ,Ernest William Agustus on succeeding York issued warrents allowing the formation of lodges within the British Army.
Hume introduced a motion to remove all the judges, privy counselors, Lord Lieutenants , magistrates, malitia officers, inspectors and constables who attended a meeting of the Orange Lodges or any Ribbon Lodges or any political club.
Lord Russell resisted this motion which was defeated.
Russell invited the House to leave the matter to the King to discourage the Orange Lodges and politcal societies. This was complied with by the lodges and Ernest William Agustus of Cumberland withdrew from the association.
On 20 June King William IV died.
Because Salic law forbade the Hanover House in Germany being given to a woman, the 8th child of Goerge III Ernest Agustus Duke of Cumberland was appointed King in Germany and the young daughter of the Duke of Kent, Edward Agustus, who had married Strathhein Victoria of Saxe Colburg Saalfeld their daughter
Alexandrina Victoria became Queen of England in June 1837 ushering in the Victorian Age.
submitted by judi ann aug 6 07
source: History of Ulster , Ramsey Colles ,Volume 4, published 1919 by Gresham Publishing Coy Ltd
Judi Donnelly
Copyright August 1 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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