Fenian Brotherhood

We've got the Manhattan CSE, Manhattan number one CSE, New York Fenian Boys, because the area where we were founded, and it's Rocky Sullivan's, and it's in the same area that Ernie Malley's, and it's just round the corner from it.

That's where the Fenian Brotherhood was formed, I think it was 1858, you know, to fund arms, to, you know,

you

know, take on a massive rebellion back home.

There's a kind of miniature famine in Ireland during the war years, 1862 to '63, and Irish Americans send, again, large sums of money across the Atlantic to, to aid their, their potentially starving countrymen and countrywomen.

And also the growth of militant physical force nationalism in the form of the Fenian Brotherhood in the US and the, the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland during the war all seems to kind of confirm this notion that once the union is preserved, once the war is ended, Irish Americans can redirect now their military training and discipline and take part in the future liberation of Ireland, right? But none of that can happen, right? The US can't continue to serve as a refuge for immigrants, America can't come to the aid of, of the Irish national struggle until the union's been preserved, and the union cannot be preserved if slavery continues to tear it apart, and that's the sentiment that kind of undergirds this.

You know, it's, it's impossible to tell what percentage, and I don't try to in the book say, you know, it's, this percentage was pro-emancipation and pro-war, this percentage wasn't, right? But what I think is, is notable is that contemporaries, right, the New York Herald, for instance, writes this article in 1864 saying, "The war has been a great teacher, and we're finding our fellow, uh, Irish people, our Irish immigrants accepting of emancipation in ways that we thought unimaginable prior to the war," right? You find someone like Thomas Francis Meagher, who before the war was a prominent Democrat and voted for the party of slavery, stumped for the party of slavery, stumping for Lincoln in 1864, right? And encouraging Irish Americans to vote for the Republican Party, right? And those changes just kind of indicate, I think, a, a, a sentiment beneath the surface that is saying, "Well, we might not like it, but the war has taught us the necessity of emancipation as a means of tearing out the root of this source of division in our adopted country, and thereby allowing our adopted country to, to continue to, to kind of, you know, serve the interests of Irish people both in America and in Ireland."

I, I, it's, it's very convincing the way, uh, I mean, I suppose the experiences the soldiers decide that you should a degree to which particularly for that kind of leadership group, if you like, for, for people who are very invested in Ireland, the, the degree to which really their position shifts relative to almost what's best for Irish people and the Irish.

There's also the IRB in Britain.

And then very importantly, there's the IRB or Fenian Brotherhood in the States.

Clan de

Gael.

There's also a letter to the editor saying, where a farmer bemoans the lack of willing and able-bodied young men to till the soil.

They're either going to America or abroad or i- or joining up with the Fenian Brotherhood or otherwise gamboling over the landscape.

It is a right for a woman to till the f- soil, but it is with shame that he has to put his wife and two daughters to work.

So that's just kind of a snapshot of what's happening in Ireland at the time.

Straight ahead is Earn Street.

To the right, Hogan Place, and to the left is Fenian Street, named for the Fenian Brotherhood, who were once based here.

Close to the corner of Hollow Street, now stand the flats of St. Andrew's Court.

But up until 1963, there was a terrace of Georgian houses, each with a shop on the ground floor and living quarters above.