Author: Wilfried Neidhardt Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
Chronicles the growth and Civil War activities of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in America and examines effects of Fenian efforts to invade Cana and provoke Britain on Canadian Confederation.
Author: Peter Vronsky Publisher: Penguin Canada ISBN: 0143182846 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
In this groundbreaking narrative, historian, investigative journalist and filmmaker Peter Vronsky uncovers the hidden history of the Battle of Ridgeway and explores its significance to Canada’s nation-building myths and traditions. On June 1, 1866, more than 1,000 Fenian insurgents invaded Canada across the Niagara River from Buffalo, N.Y. The Fenians were mostly battle-hardened Civil War veterans; the Canadian troops sent to fight them came from a generation that had not seen combat at home for more than 30 years. Led by inexperienced upper-class officers, the volunteer soldiers were mostly young, some as young as 15 years old. They were farm boys, shopkeepers, apprentices, schoolteachers, store clerks and two rifle companies of University of Toronto students hastily called out from their final exams. Many had not fired live rounds from their rifles even once. When they fought the Fenians near the village of Ridgeway the next day, a single rifle company of 28 students took the brunt of a counter-attack by 800 insurgents and suffered the most killed and wounded. The events of June 2, 1866, were covered up by the Macdonald government. The story was falsified so thoroughly that most Canadians today have not heard of the first modern battle in which Canadians died.
Author: Patrick Steward Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press ISBN: 1572339799 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 335
Book Description
Aspirations of social mobility and anti-Catholic discrimination were the lifeblood of subversive opposition to British rule in Ireland during the mid-nineteenth century. Refugees of the Great Famine who congregated in ethnic enclaves in North America and the United Kingdom supported the militant Fenian Brotherhood and its Dublin-based counterpart, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), in hopes of one day returning to an independent homeland. Despite lackluster leadership, the movement was briefly a credible security threat which impacted the history of nations on both sides of the Atlantic. Inspired by the failed Young Ireland insurrection of 1848 and other nationalist movements on the European continent, the Fenian Brotherhood and the IRB (collectively known as the Fenians) surmised that insurrection was the only path to Irish freedom. By 1865, the Fenians had filled their ranks with battle-tested Irish expatriate veterans of the Union and Confederate armies who were anxious to liberate Ireland. Lofty Fenian ambitions were ultimately compromised by several factors including United States government opposition and the resolution of volunteer Canadian militias who repelled multiple Fenian incursions into New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. The Fenian legacy is thus multi-faceted. It was a mildly-threatening source of nationalist pride for discouraged Irish expatriates until the organization fulfilled its pledge to violently attack British soldiers and subjects. It also encouraged the confederation of Canadian provinces under the 1867 Dominion Act. In this book, Patrick Steward and Bryan McGovern present the first holistic, multi-national study of the Fenian movement. While utilizing a vast array of previously untapped primary sources, the authors uncover the socio-economic roots of Irish nationalist behavior at the height of the Victorian Period. Concurrently, they trace the progression of Fenian ideals in the grassroots of Young Ireland to its de facto collapse in 1870s. In doing so, the authors change the perception of the Fenians from fanatics who aimlessly attempted to free their homeland to idealists who believed in their cause and fought with a physical and rhetorical force that was not nonsensical and hopeless as some previous accounts have suggested. PATRICK STEWARD works in the Mayo Clinic Development Office in Rochester, Minnesota. He obtained a Ph.D. in Irish History at University of Missouri under the direction of Kerby Miller. Patrick additionally holds two degrees from Tufts University and he was a strategic intelligence analyst at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, D.C. early in his professional career. BRYAN MCGOVERN is an associate professor of history at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. He is author of the widely praised 2009 book John Mitchel, Irish Nationalist, Southern Secessionist and has written various articles, chapters, and book reviews on Irish and Irish-American nationalism.
Author: Wilfried Neidhardt Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
Chronicles the growth and Civil War activities of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in America and examines effects of Fenian efforts to invade Cana and provoke Britain on Canadian Confederation.
Author: Christopher Klein Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0525434011 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
"Christopher Klein's fresh telling of this story is an important landmark in both Irish and American history." —James M. McPherson Just over a year after Robert E. Lee relinquished his sword, a band of Union and Confederate veterans dusted off their guns. But these former foes had no intention of reigniting the Civil War. Instead, they fought side by side to undertake one of the most fantastical missions in military history: to seize the British province of Canada and to hold it hostage until the independence of Ireland was secured. By the time that these invasions--known collectively as the Fenian raids--began in 1866, Ireland had been Britain's unwilling colony for seven hundred years. Thousands of Civil War veterans who had fled to the United States rather than perish in the wake of the Great Hunger still considered themselves Irishmen first, Americans second. With the tacit support of the U.S. government and inspired by a previous generation of successful American revolutionaries, the group that carried out a series of five attacks on Canada--the Fenian Brotherhood--established a state in exile, planned prison breaks, weathered infighting, stockpiled weapons, and assassinated enemies. Defiantly, this motley group, including a one-armed war hero, an English spy infiltrating rebel forces, and a radical who staged his own funeral, managed to seize a piece of Canada--if only for three days. When the Irish Invaded Canada is the untold tale of a band of fiercely patriotic Irish Americans and their chapter in Ireland's centuries-long fight for independence. Inspiring, lively, and often undeniably comic, this is a story of fighting for what's right in the face of impossible odds.
Author: Lucy E. Salyer Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674989228 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
In 1867 forty Irish-Americans sailed for Ireland to fight against British rule. Claiming that emigrants to America remained British citizens, authorities arrested the men for treason, sparking a crisis and trial that dragged the U.S. and Britain to the brink of war. Lucy Salyer recounts this gripping tale, a prelude to today’s immigration battles.
Author: Robert L. Dallison Publisher: Fredericton, N.B. : Goose Lane Editions ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
In the early 1860s, Irish immigrants in the United States were eager to help the Fenian brotherhood overthrow the British in Ireland. The American Fenians' mission: to invade British North America and hold it hostage. New Brunswick, with its large Irish population and undefended frontier, was a perfect target. The book tells how, in the spring of 1866, a thousand Fenians massed along the St. Croix River and spread terror among New Brunswickers. When the lieutenant-governor called in British soldiers and a squadron of warships, the Fenians saw that New Brunswick was no longer an easy target, and they turned their efforts against central Canada. The Fenian "attacks" and the demand for home defence fanned the already red-hot political debate, and a year later, in July 1867, New Brunswick joined Confederation. Turning Back the Fenians is volume 8 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.
Author: Oliver Rafferty Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan ISBN: 9780312220631 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 229
Book Description
"The revolutionary activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century posed an enormous challenge to both the Catholic Church and the state in Ireland. The Fenians not only undermined ecclesiastical authority but also sought to create a society in which church and state would be completely separate. By contrast, the British state, although ostensibly hostile to Catholicism, nonetheless tried to use ecclesiastical authority as an instrument for the preservation of the political status quo and as a means to curb the subversive propensities of the Church's adherents. Although Church and state worked towards the same end the eradication of Fenianism - there was, ironically, little direct cooperation: proof positive of their mutual suspicion. That said, both Church and state laboured for the papal condemnation of Fenianism in 1870. However, by then, Fenianism had effectively changed the terms of the political debate in Ireland and, ultimately, neither ecclesiastics nor governments were able to contain the ideological forces released by the Fenian organization."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: Wilfried Neidhardt
Author: Fenian Brotherhood of America
Author: Peter Vronsky
Author: Patrick Steward
Author: Hereward Senior
Author: Wilfried Neidhardt
Author: Christopher Klein
Author: Lucy E. Salyer
Author: Robert L. Dallison
Author: Oliver Rafferty