Fenian Movement

FENIAN MOVEMENT

FENIAN MOVEMENT was an Irish-American organization created by John O'Mahony in 1858. The movement raised money, supplied equipment, and trained leaders to help the Irish Republican, or Revolutionary, Brotherhood uprising against Great Britain. Fenian membership rose to 250,000, and in 1865 the movement established an "Irish Republic" in New York and issued bonds to finance its activities. The group focused much of its attention on the Irish cause in Canada. In 1866, for example, a dissatisfied Fenian faction broke from the organization, crossed the border at Fort Erie, defeated Canadian troops, and returned to Buffalo, New York. U.S. officials halted reinforcements and arrested the raiders, but eventually released the captives. American troops checked similar invasions from Saint Albans, Vermont, and Malone, New York.

After failing in an earlier attempt against New Brunswick, Canada, the Fenians participated in the republican revolutionary movement in Ireland and sent a vessel loaded with arms and men across the Atlantic in 1867. Fenian involvement in British affairs complicated American foreign policy during the 1860s and 1870s. The Canadian government, for example, treated imprisoned American Fenians as British subjects, which strained relations between the United States and Great Britain. Fenians captured by the British also tried to use their American citizenship to draw their adopted country into a naturalization controversy. Unsuccessful in their objectives, and under growing pressure from the federal government and the Roman Catholic church, many Fenians left the movement and joined the Land League and Home Rule movements. The Fenians held their last congress in 1876 and the movement collapsed following O'Mahony's death in 1877.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Comerford, R. V. The Fenians in Context. Dublin, Ireland: Wolf-hound Press, 1985.

Neidhardt, Wilfried. Fenianism in North America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975.

Senior, Hereward. The Last Invasion of Canada: The Fenian Raids, 1866–1870. Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1991.

Ezra H. Pieper / e. m.

See also Canada, Relations with ; Great Britain, Relations with ; Immigration ; Ireland, Relations with ; Irish Americans .