University of Virginia Library

THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD.

WHAT DOES ENGLAND MEAN TO DO ABOUT IT?

[From the Herald, May 5th, 1865.]

The British authorities have displayed much
anxiety of late in regard to the doings, aims, and
organization of the Fenian Brotherhood. They
asked our Secretary of State for “explanations
and such information as he could give;” and their
demand was complied with, to the very limited
extent of our Secretary's sources of knowledge.
From our more ample fountain of Fenian information,
however, we this day spread before Lord
Palmerston, and the rest of mankind, all such
particulars in regard to the Brotherhood as we
deem of immediate public interest—only suppressing
names, titles, and other important arcana of
the Order as the same this day exist in Ireland
and Canada, within grasp of the British authorities.

In return for these very full particulars given
gratuitously to her most sacred Majesty's government,
we have to request Lord Palmerston at once
to lay before us, through some one or other of his
journalistic organs in the London press, precise

data as to England's present policy of “neutrality;”
also what England proposes to do in regard
to the rebel conspirators and conspiracies in the
Canadas; and finally, whether it is the immediate
intention of her most sacred Majesty's advisers to
send over to us, without fuss, the amount of our
little bill for the damages inflicted on our shipping
interests by the Alabama, Florida, Georgia and
other Anglo-rebel privateers. We are not short
of money just now, but would be obliged to Lord
Palmerston for a settlement in gold without delay.
He knows the alternative; and, if not, our Fenian
developments may prove to him instructive reading.

TWO ORGANIZATIONS OF THE ORDER—ONE AMERICAN,
ANOTHER IN IRELAND AND THE CANADAS.

Of the organization called the “Fenian Brotherhood,”
generally recognised as mainly Irish in its
elements and aims, much has been heard, and but,

little is known by the citizens of this country. It
is by many thought to be a secret, oath-bound conspiracy,
created for revolutionary purposes in
regard to Ireland and the Canadas; and neither
loyal to the government of the United States,
under which it has been allowed to grow up, nor
unwilling to violate the laws of this country, if
by so doing its darling object—the liberation of
Ireland from the British yoke—could be either
accomplished or materially furthered. No errors
more malignantly false than are contained in this
view of the Brotherhood, could well be imagined;
and in attempting to account for the general
acceptance of such calumnies in the minds of large
classes of our citizens, we are irresistibly forced
to the conclusion that extraneous and well organized
agencies, of British origin, have been at
work in spreading these prejudicial and unfounded
aspersions. The Fenian Brotherhood is loyal to
the land of its adoption in every fibre; and none
the less so because refusing to forget the land to
which its members are bound by ties either of
blood or birth. Is the British government so
much the friend of the United States that to hope
for, organize for, and labor for, the overthrow of
its desolating power in Ireland must, of necessity,
involve disloyalty to the Union? Or shall an
organization which, within the past four years,
has sent over twenty-eight thousand of its active
members into the armies of the Union, be condemned
as unfaithful to the American cause, for
no other reason than that it hopes yet to grapple
with the tyrant of its native land, and to place
“the Irish Green above the English Red,” while
at the same time aiding to avenge America's quarrel
with the government which permitted a swarm
of pirates to be sent forth from its harbors to prey
upon American commerce in the hour of our
sorest need?

The time has been in which to hate and strike
against the red flag of England was no crime on
this side of the Atlantic. The time may come
again; and—should this happen—the Fenian
Brotherhood, we prophesy, will be found a ripe
and powerful auxiliary to the arms of the Union.

LOYALTY OF THE FENIANS TO THE UNION—
SOME NAMES OF THEIR MARTYRS IN THE LOYAL
CAUSE.

That the Fenians, as a society, have been zealously
and actively loyal to the cause of the Union
during the whole civil war just terminated, we
shall presently cite the names and numbers of the
officers and regiments they have directly furnished,

to prove; while, for the present, we may content
ourselves with pointing to the late Brigadier-General
Thomas A. Smyth, Second Division, Second
Gorps, who was Centre of the Fenian Order for
the Army of the Potomac; and the late Colonel
Matthew Murphy, Sixty-ninth New York, Corcoran
Legion, acting Brigadier-General in the same
army, who was General Smith's associate both in
the labors and perils of the field, and in the duties
and direction of the Fenian Brotherhood. These
are but two of the most prominent Fenians who
have recently laid down their lives for the land of
their adoption; nor did they fight any the worse
for popular institutions in America, because
actuated by the hope of one day assisting to give
the same to Ireland. That among the members
of this association, which, in its official capacity,
ignores all questions of American politics, there
may have been not a few holding the same tenets
as Mr. C. L. Vallandigham and the brothers Benjamin
and Fernando Wood, will be freely admitted.
The doctrines of the “peace democracy”
had, doubtless, a fair share of Irish believers; for
all doctrines of such a character are always most
popular wherever education has been most neglected.
But we affirm, without fear of contradiction,
that in the ranks of the Fenians the great
majority of members are and have been actively
devoted to the cause of the Union—many thousands
of them wearing swords or carrying muskets
in its armies; and for evidence that the
Brotherhood have been openly and steadfastly
loyal to the government under which they live,
we may cite the second resolution of the first
Fenian Congress, held at Chicago in November,
1863—since reaffirmed, we may add, by the second
Congress of the same Order, held at Cincinnati in
the first month of the present year. This resolution
first gratefully acknowledges that “the exiles
of all countries, and of Ireland most numerously,
have ever found a home, personal freedom, and
equal political rights” in the American Union;
after which the explicit declaration is made that
“we (the Brotherhood) deem the preservation and
success of the American republic of supreme importance,
not alone to ourselves and our fellow-citizens,
but to the extension of democratic institutions,
and to the well-being and social elevation
of the whole human race.” In yet another resolution
the society deplores in touching terms the
“large number of its members who, as officers and
men, have perished on the battle-field while defending
the integrity of their adopted country,”
winding up with an expression of “unqualified
admiration for their bravery and loyalty as soldiers
of the American republic.” In view of these
facts, how infamous must appear the slanders
which seek to impugn the fidelity of the Fenians
to the land of their adoption! And how absurd,
as well, when we remember that Colonel John
O'Mahony, the Head Centre and original founder
of the Brotherhood in both its branches—in this
country and in Ireland—has always been, though
taking no active part in American politics or party
warfare, perfectly unreserved in his avowal of
strong anti-slavery convictions. Colonel O'Mahony,
after the abortive rebellion of 1848, retired to
France, where he resided for several years in Paris
on terms of intimacy with the most eminent philologists
and men of science in that capital. He
then came over to the United States, where he
found the vast majority of his countrymen
strongly democratic and pro-slavery. But from
the hour of his landing to the present day, his
voice, when he was asked for an opinion, has
never ceased to condemn the former slave system
of the South as a crime against humanity, and a
fruitful source of injury to the progress of truly
democratic ideas in this and other lands.

THE AMERICAN FENIANS NOT A “SECRET NOR
OATH-BOUND” SOCIETY WITHIN THE CATHOLIC
PROHIBITION.

Another attempt to injure the Brotherhood has
been made by certain of its enemies, who have
denounced it as “a secret society bound together
by an oath,” and as such distinctly condemned by
certain Catholic fulminations, originally levelled
against the Carbonari, Freemasons, and other
similar societies; while the facts, on the contrary,
are: that no pledge of secresy, express or implied,
is demanded from any candidate for membership
of the Fenians in America; nor is any oath whatever
required, at least on this side of the Atlantic
and within the United States, to entitle an acolyte
to all the privileges of becoming an accepted
brother. Equally untrue is the vague allegation
advanced by pro-British agencies against the
order, that it is, in any American sense, an “illegal
society,” or has in view “illegal objects”
likely to involve this country in a war with Great
Britain. The members of the Brotherhood neither
contemplate, nor have ever sanctioned, any breach
of the laws of the United States, in their efforts
looking to the liberation of Ireland from English
thrall; and while they would most gladly take
advantage of any conflict between the Red Flag
and Banner of Stars, at once to prove their fidelity

and devotion both to the land of their adoption
and that of their birth, the general plan of
their organization (as will be more fully developed
hereafter) does not depend for its hope of success
on a war between Great Britain and this country;
nor on the levying of a war against Great Britain
by any foreign land whatever. For the Fenians
it would be a happy chance if either France or
the United States should go to war with England—thus
at once offering a supply of arms and
the necessary munitions of war to the one hundred
and twenty thousand able-bodied brothers
of the order who are now enrolled and being
rudely but efficiently drilled high up in the mountain
solitudes and far down in the moonlit raths
of Innisfail. Should no such chance occur, the
peaceful and semi-public efforts of the Brotherhood
on this side of the Atlantic, acting in concert
with the secret, spy-proof, and powerful organization
of insurrectionary elements—already
widely spread and daily spreading more widely—
throughout Ireland, will not be without a very
fair and flattering prospect of yet accomplishing
its object. From this side of the Atlantic, the
Fenians will only have to supply munitions, arms,
and officers—matters perfectly open to legal private
enterprise under the precedents established
by the British government in favor of the Southern
rebellion; while the more active Fenians, in
their native land, who are under an entirely different
and admittedly revolutionary organization, are
numerous and well disciplined enough, with such
help as this, to drive every red coat and red flag
beyond the limits of the “Isle of Saints” within a
month from the kindling of the beltane fires upon
her holy hill-tops.

THE FENIANS, AS A BODY, IGNORE RELIGIOUS
DIFFERENCES AND LOCAL AMERICAN POLITICS.

Our fellow-citizens of Irish birth have too often
been made the prey of designing politicians and
demagogues who have only sought their favor for
the purpose of securing their votes—these traders
in Milesianism, of whom we have far too many
in the Democratic politics of New York, belonging
to that well known class who are “only Irish on
election-day;” but who—on that particular day,
and to suit their own selfish purposes of place
and plunder—are “as Irish as —:” but no
matter what! No such use of the Irish vote,

however, is contemplated by the chiefs of the
Fenian Brotherhood, who in their corporate or
organized capacity take no interest whatever in
American politics—each member, of course, being
left free, as an individual, to cast his vote on
whichever side of any American political question
may to him seem best or most expedient.
As Fenians, their only thoughts are of Ireland;
and their action as Fenians can have only one
object—the independence and consequent happiness
of the Old Land to which they are bound
by ties either of blood, birth, or affection; and in
order to exclude effectually any designs that
might be entertained by political demagogues to
turn their pure national organization to base party
uses, connected with our local wranglings for
office and “the spoils”—it has been wisely
resolved and solemnly set forth in the Fenian
constitution, “that every question relating to the
internal politics of America and the quarrels of
American partisans, together with all subjects
relating to differences in religion, shall be absolutely
and for ever excluded from the councils and
deliberations of the Fenian Brotherhood, and be
declared totally foreign to the objects and designs
of the Order”—than which it would be difficult
to find an instance wherein our impulsive Milesian
fellow-citizens have arrived at a more wise
conclusion. Every man of Irish birth or descent
who lives on the American continent, and all
others who are friendly to the liberation of Ireland,
are invited to join them, “without distinction
of class or creed;” provided only that “their
characters be unblemished,” and their devotion to
the main aim of the Brotherhood admitting no
reasonable question.

ORIGIN OF THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD—HOW IT
STARTED AS THE “E. M. A.”

And now, having stated what the Fenians are
not, and having briefly but sufficiently, we hope,
refuted the pro-British slanders levelled against
their organization, it is high time, perhaps, that
we commence telling what they are; and what
progress they have made in numbers, influence,
and discipline since the year 1859—the year in
which, after two previous years of drifting experiment
by Colonel John O'Mahony and the late
Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Doheny, their organization
began to settle down into its present shape
and with its present title. Previously, in 1857,

its inchoate germ had been planted by the gentlemen
we have named, in an organization called the
“Emmett Monument Association,” or the “E. M.
A.”—the point of this name being that Robert
Emmett, when about being hung by the brutal
sentence of Lord Clare, asked of his countrymen
that no monument might be erected to his memory
until his country should have become free of
British thrall—an independent republic.

An association, therefore, which proposed to
build a monument to Robert Emmett on Irish soil,
implied an effort for the overthrow of British
power in Ireland; and this was directly the object
of the “E. M. A.,” as much as it now is of the
Fenian Brotherhood. The term “Fenian” is, we
suppose, an Irish translation or derivative from
the word Phœnician—the Phœnicians having been
the earliest colonists of Ireland, although other
authorities trace the origin back to King Fion, one
of the earliest kings of Ireland. Be this as it
may, Colonel O'Mahony, the Head Centre of the
Order, is a thorough master of the old Erse or
Irish tongue, as witness his translation of Keating's
History of Ireland; and in the term
“Fenian” he has embodied the name recognised
by Irishmen as that relating to the period in

which their ancestors were most cultivated, prosperous,
happy, and independent.

ORGANIZATION OF THE FENIANS IN THE UNITED
STATES.—THEIR HEAD CENTRE, HIS POWERS
AND DUTIES.

The chief officer of the order in the United
States and other countries is called the Head
Centre of North America—an office filled, as
before mentioned, by Colonel John O'Mahony, a
gentleman of old and honorable Irish lineage,
whose ancestors for a thousand years back have
clung to the picturesque sides and fruitful valleys
of the Comeragh mountains, in the southwest of
Ireland. This Head Centre of the Order in the
United States is elected annually by a general
congress, composed of the various State Centres
ex officio, and one delegate from each Circle in
good standing, containing not less than one hundred
members—with one additional delegate
from each Circle containing two hundred members
and over. This Head Centre has very

extensive powers, and is the only medium of communication
between the Fenians on this side of the
Atlantic, where their existence is legal and recognised,
and the Fenians in Ireland and other provinces
under the British government, where they
are regarded as conspirators of the blackest dye,
and would be transported if caught. All Circles,
to be entitled to representation in this Congress,
must be “in good standing”—i.e. must have made
regular and satisfactory monthly reports for at
least the two months preceding, through the immediate
District Centre to the State Centre—the
State Centre forwarding these to the headquarters
of the Head Centre in this city. It is, in fact, a
system precisely similar to the tri-monthly reports
in our armies—the Adjutant of each regiment forwarding
his report to the brigade Adjutant, who
forwards it to the Assistant Adjutant-General of
Division, who then transmits it, through corps and
department headquarters, to the Adjutant-General
of the Army.

CENTRAL COUNCIL OF FENIANS—THEIR NAMES,
DUTIES, AND HOW ELECTED.

The Head Centre is assisted by a kind of
cabinet called the Central Council of Ten, who
are nominated by himself, but must be confirmed
by the next Congress of the Order; and the same
mode of appointment holds good with regard to
the Central Treasurer, and Assistant Treasurer,
and the Central Secretaries—the financial officers
of the Brotherhood having to furnish securities
approved by the Central Council. This Council
at present consists of the following eminent gentlemen,
most of whom are Irish by birth as well
as by blood:—James Gibbons, Esq., an extensive
printer of Philadelphia; Henry O'Clarence McCarthy,
of New York; P. W. Dunne, Esq., of Peoria,
Ill.; William Griffin, a respected merchant of
Madison, Ind.; William Sullivan, Esq., of Tifflin,
Ohio; William R. Roberts, Esq., of New York;
Michael Scanlan, of Chicago; Patrick J. Meehan,
editor of the Irish American; and P. Bannon,
Esq., of Louisville, Ky. Brigadier-General Thomas
A. Smyth, recently killed before Richmond,
under General Sheridan, was the tenth member
of the Council—his brother in arms and Fenianism,
the gallant General Matthew Murphy, dying
in hospital at City Point of wounds previously

received in the movement on Hatcher's Run, a
few days after hearing of General Smyth's untimely
taking off. This Central Council elects
its own President and other officers—its President
assuming the duties of the Head Centre in case
of the death, removal, resignation, or impeachment
of that officer. This Central Council also
may call conventions of all State Centres, or a
general congress, in case of any emergency; and
such bodies when called together have power to
impeach or remove any officer. The Council, too,
must audit and approve all financial transactions
of the Brotherhood, and is further charged with
the duty of reporting progress once a year to each
session of the Fenian Congress. The Central
Treasurer of the Order is Patrick O'Rourke,
Esq., and the Assistant Treasurer is Patrick
Keenan, Esq., both of New York city.

THE STATE CENTRES—HOW APPOINTED—THEIR
NAMES AND OTHER PARTICULARS.

The State Centres of the order are appointed
and commissioned by the Head Centre on the
recommendation of a majority of delegates from
the various Circles entitled to vote in their respective
States. The Head Centre, however, has
power to reject such nominations, being responsible

to the next annual congress for his action;
and with the assent of the Central Council may
even remove such State Centres as may be agreed
upon, and appoint other and more trustworthy
men in their places. The State Centres are
charged with establishing District Centres, and
organizing circles in their respective States or
Territories, settling all minor disputes and reporting
twice a month to the Head Centre the progress,
numbers, and financial condition of their
charges. The names, occupations, and residences
of the various District and State Centres, so far as
we have been able to collect them, run as follows:
—New York, D. O'Sullivan, of Auburn, lawyer;
Illinois, Michael Scanlan, of Chicago, merchant;
Indiana, Bernard Dailey, of Delphi, lawyer; Ohio,
J. W. Fitzgerald, of Columbus, merchant; District
of Columbia, P. H. Donegan, of Washington,
lawyer; Missouri, James McGrath, of St.
Louis, lawyer; Kentucky, P. Bannon, of Louisville,
merchant; Pennsylvania, James Gibbons,
of Philadelphia, printer; Massachusetts, Daniel
Donovan, of Lawrence, engineer; Wisconsin,
John A. Byrne, of Madison, farmer and merchant;
Michigan, Judge Miles J. O'Reilly, of
Detroit (own cousin to Private Miles, of
the Tenth Army Corps); California, Jeremiah
Kavanagh, of San Francisco, engineer; New
Hampshire, Cornelius Healy, Captain United
States Volunteers; Iowa, Patrick Gibbons, of
Keokuk, merchant; Oregon, S. J. McCormick,
merchant; Nevada, Andrew O'Connell, Esq.
(related to the Irish “Liberator”); and District
of Manhattan, James J. Rogers, lawyer. For
the Army of the Potomac, the late lamented
General Smyth was Centre, having succeeded the
late Brigadier-General Corcoran in that capacity;
and in all our other great armies the commissioned
and enlisted Fenians and men have elected similar
officers.

NUMBER OF CIRCLES IN EACH STATE BY LAST
REPORTS—CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR ARMY AND
NAVY.

The Circles of the Brotherhood range in number
of members from sixty, the minimum, to
about five hundred—probably averaging throughout
the States about two hundred and thirty members
each. Of these circles, Connecticut, three
months ago, had eight; California, thirteen; Delaware,
three; Indiana, twenty-nine; Illinois, twenty
six; Iowa, fifteen; Kentucky, eight; Kansas,
three; Louisiana, one; Missouri, nine; Montana
Territory, two; Maine, three; Michigan, nine

Minnesota, three; Massachusetts, sixty-five; Nevada,
three; New Hampshire, nine; New York
State, forty-one, and in District of Manhattan
(New York city), twenty-six; New Jersey, five;
Ohio, twenty-two; Oregon, three; Pennsylvania,
twenty-seven; Rhode Island, ten; Tennessee,
four; Vermont, six; Wisconsin, eleven; Army
and Navy, fifteen—the Fenians of this latter
naval and military class, of whom there were
14,620 by last reports, voting by proxy on certificates
of delegation supplied to them from the
office of the Head Centre. In the United States
to-day it is estimated that there are about eighty
thousand Fenian Brothers[1] in good standing, it not
being required of members on this side of the
Atlantic that they shall be able-bodied or take the
oath of military service and obedience—two points
which are the first pre-requisites in the Fenian
Army of Independence which is being organized
in Ireland, and already numbers over sixty-five
thousand men. Of these, however, and their elaborate
military and spy-proof organization, we
shall speak hereafter. Of the contributions of
men and officers made by the Fenians to our army
we can only call attention to a few of the more
prominent examples in regiments sent from New
York, the Central Secretaries of the Brotherhood in
the various States being now engaged in compiling
full statistics on this interesting point. Nearly all
the officers of General T. F. Meagher's original
and famous Irish Brigade, as also of the Corcoran
Legion (including Corcoran and Meagher), were
Fenians. Colonel McIvor, of the Sixty-ninth
New York, belongs to the Order, as does also
Colonel Gleason, of the Sixty-third, formerly of
the Pope's Foreign Legion serving in Italy. In
the Corcoran Legion alone, last year, twenty-four
Fenian officers were killed or crippled, including
Colonel Murphy. The One Hundred and Sixty-fourth
New York was originally raised and officered
by Fenians who had graduated in the Ninety-ninth
New York State Militia, otherwise called
the Phœnix or Fenian regiment—a regiment
which has educated and sent into the army three
full sets of officers within the past four years,
together with over twelve hundred men of the
rank and file. In Milford, Mass, out of a Circle
of one hundred and fifteen Fenians previous to
the war, eighty at once enlisted in a body under
their Centre, Major Peard, and of these but
twenty-three are now alive. In Connecticut one
whole Circle, of about two hundred, volunteered
unanimously; but, as their State quota was full,
finally went off in the Tenth Ohio infantry, as the
records of that State will show. Two-thirds of
the Ninth Massachusetts infantry were Fenians,
who went off under a Fenian Colonel, who was
shot through the head at the head of his regiment.
The “Douglas Brigade” of Illinois, chiefly raised
in Chicago, was also in greater part Fenian; as
was also the brigade raised by the lamented Colonel
Mulligan, who was high up in the Order. In
the Excelsior Brigade, a large proportion of the
officers were Fenians; and the Forty-second New
York, raised by the late Colonel William D. Kennedy,
was chiefly organized by Lieutenant-Colonel
Michael Doheny, one of the original founders of
the Fenian Order, whose two sons, both of the
same faith, have since done gallant service and received
glorious wounds in the Army of the Potomac.
In the Committee on Military Affairs of
the Fenian Congress, described further on, the
names of some of the more prominent Fenian
officers of our Western armies will be found; and
when the reports of the various State Secretaries,
now ordered, giving the numbers of men and the
names of all Fenian officers who have served in
the armies and war vessels of the United States
shall have been received and compiled, the slander
that the Brotherhood has been wanting in true
allegiance to the land of their adoption will receive
a withering refutation.

STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE ORDER APPOINTED
BY LAST ANNUAL CONGRESS.

The Committee on Military Affairs of the
Brotherhood consists exclusively of officers who
are now serving or have served a full term in the
army of the United States, and their names run
as follows:—Colonel S. J. McGroarty, of Ohio;
Colonel B. F. Mullen, of Indiana; Colonel John
H. Gleason, Army of the Potomac; Lieutenant
Colonel P. J. Downing, of New Jersey; Lieutenant
Colonel Patrick Leonard, of New York; Major
Matthew Donavan, of Massachusetts; and Captains
Michael Bailey, of New York; Joseph Pollard,
of Rhode Island; Michael Scanlan, of Massachusetts;
Cornelius O'Brien, of Connecticut;
Hugh Rodgers and Thomas Finley, of Pennsylvania;
and Patrick K. Walsh, of Ohio.

The Committee of Foreign Affairs is composed
of Lawrence Verdon, Michigan; P. A. Sinnott,
Massachusetts; Captain Thomas K. Barrett, Illinois;
W. J. Hynes, Massachusetts; J. C. O'Brien,
New York; Thomas Heanie, Illinois; J. W. Fitzgerald,
Ohio; and John A. Geary, of Kentucky.
The Committee on Resolutions has but two members—Colonel
W. G. Halpin, of the Army of the
Cumberland, and James McDermott, Esq., of
Kentucky.

The Committee on Ways and Means has six

members:—P. W. Dunne, of Illinois; Patrick
Gibbons, of Iowa; P. Bannon, of Kentucky;
Mortimer Scanlon, of Illinois; Patrick Keenan,
of New York; and William Moran, of Missouri.

The Committee on Government and By-Laws
consists of nine:—Miles J. O'Reilly, of Michigan;
B. Higgins, of New York; P. A. Collins, of
Massachusetts; Thomas McCarthy, of Tennessee;
Thomas Hanley, of New York; J. McDermott,
and P. F. Walsh. Central Organizers at large—
A. Wynne of Pennsylvania, and J. J. Rogers of
New York.

The Committee on the Fenians in Ireland has
only three members—A. L. Morrison, of Illinois;
J. P. Hodnett, of New Jersey; and James F.
Finerty, of Indiana. The name of the American
Chief Fenian Envoy to the Irish Revolutionary
Brotherhood of the Green Isle, is of course, for
obvious reasons, not publicly stated—there being
no inclination here to have the British government
know any more than it already knows about
his movements. All the reports of this officer
and his subordinates, we may say, however, as to
the cost of arms in Ireland, their quantity, and
the kind and quality of ordance and ordance
stores now in the possession of the “I. R. B.,” or
Irish Republican Brotherhood, together with his
reports and accompanying documents on all matters
pertaining to the military organization of the

said “I. R. B.” in Ireland—all these matters are
duly referred at each annual Congress to the Committee
on Military Affairs, for their action and
report to the Head Centre of the Brotherhood in
North America.

CENTRES OF CIRCLES.—HOW ELECTED, AND THEIR
DUTIES.—PLEDGE, INITIATION FEE, MONTHLY
DUES, AND QUALIFICATIONS.

Circles are first formed by State agents, who
visit different localities, beat up recruits, and initiate
enough members to make a provisional
organization. This organization then elects a
provisional Centre, who must fill up the Circle to
at least sixty before applying to the State Centre
for his commission, which will authorize his
Circle to send a delegate to the next Fenian Congress.
The Circle numbering sixty, its members

elect a permanent Centre, who, if approved by
the State Centre and Head Centre, will then be
approved and confirmed by the latter. These
centres, on the 25th of each month, make out in
duplicate full reports of all their proceedings,
receipts and disbursements, increase or decrease
of members, etc.—one copy being sent to the State
Centre and the other forwarded for file and comparison
to the Head Centre's headquarters. Any
Circle failing to report for three months will be
set down as “in bad standing,” and will be cut
off from connection unless full and satisfactory
explanations are forwarded. The initiation fees
of each Circle shall not be less than one dollar—
many rich and patriotic members having volunteered
as high as five hundred dollars; and the
monthly dues of each member shall not be less
than ten cents—about fifty cents per month being
the average actually paid in by each member.
Candidates for membership must be proposed by
one Fenian Brother and seconded by another.
Their names, and evidence as to their good moral
character, are then submitted to the Committee of
Safety of each Circle—this committee consisting
of not less than three nor more than seven of the
most discreet and trustworthy members of each
circle. This committee is nominated by the Centre
of each Circle—but must be approved by a
majority vote of all the members; and its report
on each candidate for admission has to be submitted
for acceptance or rejection to a regular meeting
of the Circle. If the candidate for admission
be accepted, he then (in the United States) is only
asked to make the following very simple declaration,
which is as little of an oath as can safely
be asked: “I solemnly pledge my sacred word of
honor as a truthful and honest man, that I will
labor with earnest zeal for the liberation of Ireland
from the yoke of England, and for the establishment
of a free and independent government on the
Irish soil; that I will implicitly obey the commands
of my superior officers in the Fenian Brotherhood
in all things appertaining to my duties as a member
thereof; that I will faithfully discharge my duties
of membership as laid down in the constitution
and by-laws thereof; that I will do my utmost to
promote feelings of love, harmony, and kindly
forbearance among all Irishmen; and that I will
foster, defend, and propagate the aforesaid Fenian
Brotherhood to the utmost of my power.” All
political discussions as to any but Irish national
affairs are peremptorily excluded from the deliberations
of Circles; while religious discussions of
any kind are excluded altogether. Centres of
Circles correspond with State Centres; State Centres
with the Head Centre. All correspondence
with the Brothers in Ireland, the Canadas, or
elsewhere in foreign parts, has to pass through the
Head Centre—a law the more easily enforced, as
only the Head Centre and Central Council know
the true names and addresses of the officers of the
“I. R. B.” and other brotherhoods in England,
the Canadas, and elsewhere. Members of the
“I. R. B.” coming from Ireland, must first be
certified by the Head Centre, to whom they shall
show their credentials as brothers in good standing
when they left their native land. The names
of all Fenian Brothers—or members of the
“I. R. B.” expelled for perfidy—are sent by the
Head Centre to all State Centres, these latter communicating
them to all their subordinate Centres
of Circles. When brothers are about changing
their places of residence, they must procure,
for a trifling fee, letters of introduction from the
Centre of their late Circle to the Circle they are
about joining. If these are in different States,
the introduction must be avouched as correct by
the State Centres as well. The decision of the
Head Centre, approved by a majority of the Central
Council, is absolute upon all points within the
association; and now we shall conclude this—the
American—branch of our subject by giving the
new charter-song of the cis-Atlantic Fenians, as
the same is chorussed in their regular monthly
meetings and other festive or business celebrations.
It was written some years ago by a Fenian
private soldier of the old Tenth Army Corps, and
goes glibly to the air of that one of Moore's Irish
melodies commencing, “To ladies' eyes around,
boys, we can't refuse, we can't refuse:” and its
author called it:—

THE FENIANS, OR “I. R. B.,” IN IRELAND—THEY
ARE BOTH SECRET AND OATH-BOUND—THEY
DRILL AND ARE RECEIVING ARMS—THE NEW
IRISH REPUBLIC TO BE A STATE OF THE UNION.

In all the foregoing developments we have
been speaking exclusively of the Fenian Brotherhood
in the United States, where its aims, operations,
and existence are strictly legal, and where
its proceedings are, in consequence, comparatively
open. We now approach that branch of it existing
in Ireland, and known as the “I. R. B.,”
which is, in very deadly earnest, “a secret and
oath-bound conspiracy,” its mechanism being as
nearly spy-proof as human ingenuity can conceive
or make it; and its organization having thus far
defied the whole efforts, money, labor, tyranny,
and seductions of the British government to break
it up, or even unravel to one-tenth of its extent
any single one of the many thousand cords which
are gradually being woven around that now corpulent
and fast-failing monster—the British lion, in
Ireland. If it be a sin to be “oath-bound” and
“secret,” where to be open is to court a felon's
cell and transportation to Botany Bay, through
means of a “perjured sheriff, packed jury, and
partisan judge,” then are there over sixty-five
thousand very heinous and able-bodied sinners in
Ireland this day. In the United States the
Fenians are not required to be able-bodied, nor
are they sworn into military service, nor are they
compelled to drill as soldiers, because the object
of the Order here is only to prepare Ireland by
internal organization, and by furnishing arms, ordnance

stores, and officers for the final struggle.
But in Ireland each Fenian, or member of the
“I. R. B.,” has to be fit for the duties and trials of
the camp; he must take the most solemn oath of
military obedience and readiness to turn out
against the “red-coats” whenever called upon by
his next superior officer; and he must meanwhile
attend regularly to the drill and other exercises
which are now being vigorously enforced in
every township and parish throughout the Emerald
Isle by the officers, drill sergeants, and military
sub-envoys sent over by the Order from America,
and such other teachers in this line as may be
otherwise provided for their instruction. Even
with the present force of the “I. R. B.” well
armed, and with from three to five thousand veteran
officers and non-commissioned officers of our
late civil war to command them, it would not take
a campaign of three months to leave no single
red-coat or red flag from Kinsale to the Giants'
Causeway. At present the great difficulty consists
in smuggling arms and ammunition into the
country, and distributing the same after they have
reached the various secret depôts along the Irish
coast. Any trouble between either France or the
United States and England would at once obviate
this at present great cause of delay and embarrassment—more
than two-thirds of the Fenians, or
“Irish Republican Brothers,” in their native land,
now having to accept such drill as they can get
with rude pikes, in the absence of the necessary
muskets and bayonets. Uncle Sam, however,
will soon have half a million muskets not needing
employment at home, together with any conceivable
amount of superfluous ordnance and ordnance
stores. With one-fourth of these landed on
the shores of Ireland—of course, in case of England's
refusing to pay for the damages inflicted by
her privateers on American commerce—not a year
would pass before the delegates of an Irish Republic
would be knocking at the doors of our
National Congress for the admission of their State
as the van-ward European outpost of American
liberty and popular democratic institutions! Let
there be war between England and France, and
precisely the same thing will happen—Ireland
first achieving her independence, and then flying
(where her heart has ever been) to the shelter and
sure, strong refuge of the mighty American Commonwealth.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THE “I. R. B.” IN
IRELAND—IT IS FLEXIBLE, POWERFUL, AND
SPY-PROOF. HOW ITS COLONELS AND OFFICERS
ARE APPOINTED.

The Fenians in their native land are organized
on the French plan of secret political societies—a
matter to which Colonel O'Mahony gave special
and very useful attention during his years of residence
in Paris; and which he some years ago
transplanted to Ireland in one of his secret visits
to that country, wherein he was long ago proscribed
and outlawed, with a reward placed upon
his head. This system we shall now briefly describe,
taking care, however, while we seek to
interest many additional thousands of born Americans
and others in the great question of Irish
Independence, that we give no information to our

British enemies which is not already in their
possession through the spies they employ, and the
developments already made to them in the innumerable
trials they have had of persons charged
with Fenianism. To everything additional, or
that can benefit the British authorities and mouchards
in our disclosures, we make them heartily
welcome—the Irish organization being so perfect
as almost to defy detection or punishment, with
any semblance of legality; and these developments,
as we hope, having a tendency to cheer all
friends of the cause in Ireland, and to arouse to
greater activity and more fervent zeal all sympathizers
with the movement on this side of the
Atlantic, when we shall have shown them how
much has been already done.

The national power of the Fenians in Ireland
is lodged in a Provisional Government, as we shall
call it (though that is not the true Fenian name),
consisting of four persons, who represent respectively
the four Irish provinces, or principalities, of
Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. It is
with these, and through these alone, that the Head
Centre of North America holds correspondence in
Ireland. These four members of the Provisional
Government we shall describe for convenience as
the Numerals One, Two, Three, and Four—the
mode in which these officers have been selected
and commissioned being secret and only known

on this side of the Atlantic to the Head Centre
and Central Council. It is the duty of these
Numerals, each in his own province—as of Ulster,
Munster, and so forth—to search out and discover
such prominent and reliable men, possessing local
influence and the necessary education, as they may
be willing to approach with a view to the formation
of the cadare, or skeleton, of a regiment.
The Numeral, for his own sake, must be very
cautious. He then inquires the general views of
the gentleman he may think of selecting to be his
“A,” as we shall call it—a rank equivalent to
colonel. He sounds him gently as to his willingness
to try one other chance and risk his life and
property for Ireland's liberation; and if he finds
him all right in these particulars, and a man deserving
confidence so high, the Numeral then
broaches his business more directly, shows the intended
“A” so much of his credentials as may be
necessary, and then swears in and commissions
this “A,” if he be willing and properly qualified,
as a Colonel of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Of these colonels, or “A's,” there are
from twenty to thirty in each province, but not
one of them is officially known to the other, nor
could give evidence against the other. Each
“A” has been sworn in separately, and only
knows the Numeral who swore him in. He does
not know any one of the other three Numerals in
control of the three other provinces; and as the
oath is administered in secret by the Numeral to
each “A,” with no witnesses present, and as the
commission is couched in language of no legal
significance, and is only signed with a seal, there
can be produced neither oral nor written evidence
against any member of the Provisional Government,
even supposing (as has never yet happened)
that some “A” should wish to prove a traitor, or,
as they say in Ireland, “to sell the pass.”

HOW THE CAPTAINS AND SERGEANTS ARE APPOINTED—ORGANIZATION
OF THE MEN AND
THEIR DRILL—THE SYSTEM SPY-PROOF.

Each “A,” or colonel, thus appointed, next
proceeds with equal caution and at equal personal
risk to select nine subordinates, whom we will
style “B's,” holding the rank of captain. These
are selected from men of his most intimate acquaintance,
whom he can trust with his life.
They are sounded, examined, and thoroughly
tested before the direct project is opened to them.
They are then sworn in separately as “Soldiers
of the Irish Republic”—there being no one present
at the time of such swearing in but the “A”
(colonel) and the “B” or captain; nor are any of
the nine “B's” ever brought together in official
contact, so that they could swear against each
other if traitorously inclined. Each “B” only
corresponds with, or officially knows, his colonel;
so that two “B's” might be next-door neighbors
for ten years without either one suspecting the
other's sentiments or affiliations. Each “B” or
captain thus indoctrinated, has to select, sound,
and swear in nine “C's,” or sergeants, in like manner
and at equal risk of his own liberty and property—these
“C's,” or sergeants, being the lowest
officers of the Order; and each “C” has again to

select and swear in from among the neighbors he
most intimately knows and trusts, nine “D's” or
private soldiers, who are to form his squad.
These “D's” are sworn in separately as in the
previous cases, and therefore can bring forward
no proof, if traitorously inclined, of the sergeant's
having administered to them an illegal oath—
which is said to be a high crime, amounting to
felony under the “White Boy,” “Croppy,” “Captain
Rock,” and other Irish coercion-bills passed
by the British Parliament. It is true the “D's”
have to be brought together four times a month at
least for drill, and can therefore swear to each
other as having been drilled together by a certain
man. This, however, compared with the administration
of an illegal oath, is a venial offence; nor
does England like to acknowledge that ten poor
peasants coming together and drilling with long
poles, or pike-staves, can fright her chalky isle
from its propriety. Innumerable are the efforts
her agents and spies have made during the past
four years to pierce into the arcana of this secret
and dangerous Order, but as yet wholly without
success. Some few traitorous “D's” have been
found, and a few “C's” or sergeants transported;
but the treachery has never spread further. Two
“C's” in two different provinces turned traitors
and attempted to convict their “D's” or captains;
but the prosecution broke down in both cases so
badly that nolle prosequis were entered by the
Crown before either case went to the jury. No
instance of a traitorous “B” or “A” has yet been
discovered; nor if any traitor should lurk among
them, could he produce any evidence against his
next higher in authority, by whom, in secret, he
was sworn in with no witnesses present, and with
whom alone he holds official communication.
This is the “hard nut” which English lawyers and
the English Parliament have now to crack—every
Irish paper bringing us new accounts of abortive
trials in Ireland on the charge of Fenianism; and
no debate in Parliament being complete without a
demand from ex-Crown Solicitor Whiting to be
informed by the “Honorable Minister for Foreign
Affairs, what steps have been taken by her Majesty's
government to bring the American government to
a sense of its just responsibility for harboring the
dangerous organizers in America of the vile and
blood-thirsty Fenian conspiracy, which is now
rampant in Ireland, for the overthrow of our
beloved Constitution, and all the rights and safeguards
of property and religion.”[2]

ORGANIZATION AND OBJECTS OF THE FENIANS
IN CANADA—LET THE KANUCKS LOOK OUT, OR
“THEY WILL ALL WAKE UP SOME FINE MORNING
AND FIND THEMSELVES DEAD MEN.”

Upon the organization and objects of the
Fenians in the Canadas and other British possessions
it is not our present purpose to enter. That,
wherever they may be, they are no lovers or
admirers of the Red Cross of St. George is
very certain. If the United States, for example,
should desire to seize the Canadas as a material
guarantee for England's making satisfaction in
money for the injuries inflicted on our commerce
by Anglo-rebel pirates, it is not immediately probable
that the Fenians in the Blue Nose Land
would offer any very violent or decided resistance
to annexation. Every blow against England is a
balm to the true Irish nature. Every humbling
of the “red flag,” everywhere and anywhere, is an

act of long-delayed retribution to “our own immortal
green.” Let there be a war between the
United States and England, and not a dollar in
bounty would be required to enlist from seventy-five
to one hundred thousand able-bodied and
pugnacious Irishmen throughout the States in that
holy strife. With all veritable Milesian natures,
hatred of the British government is a part of their
religion. Against the foreign usurpation which
crushes, depopulates, and plunders their country,
having long since disfranchised it, their hatred is
as immortal as the mountains of their rock-bound
island—as deep and wild as are the waves which
lash the volcanic crags of Donegal and Antrim.
Show a true Irishman the red flag or a red-coat,
and you show him his native enemy and the symbol
of that bloody rule which has either driven
his race into unpitied exile or kept them slaves at
home. There are massacres of six hundred years
to be avenged; confiscations of James, Elizabeth,
and Cromwell to be reversed; a tyrant church,
hostile and foreign to the people, though fattening
on their substance, to be blotted out; rights of
the honest laboring tenant against the libidinous
and cruel foreign landholder to be established;
massacres by starvation in recent years to be
avenged; penal codes and treason-felony bills,
and hundreds—yes, literally hundreds—of fierce
coercion-acts to be erased from the books of Ireland's
renovated courts. There are tombs to be
built to the martyred dead, and many graves to be
filled on both sides before this can be done. Of a
truth our fellow-citizens of Milesian birth or
blood are not loyal in any sense that could give
delight to the soul of ex-Crown Solicitor Whiting,
or any of his breed. They did not turn out in
honor of that serenest youth, the Baron Renfrew,
alias Prince of Wales; nor are we at all clear
that they sing or recite with any cordial spirit of
unanimity “Croppies, lie Down,” “The Boyne
Water,” the “Maiden City,” or “The Health of
our great and good King William,” on the appropriate
anniversaries of these “orange and purple”
pæans. They are indeed a stiff-necked generation,
and the sooner President Andrew Johnson goes
to work and crushes them out, and kills them off,
and utterly exterminates them, the better and
happier will it be for our dear trans-Atlantic
cousins, who equipped rebel corsairs against our
commerce, and armed rebel armies against our
lives; and also for those sweet, pleasant neighbors
of ours—the Canadians—who have refused to
surrender the St. Alban's cut-throats and burglars,
and who have made their whole frontier for the
past four years a Northern base of operations for
our Southern foes. By all means let President
Johnson take steps to crush out the Fenians at
once; and let all loyal, British-loving Ameri
cans take part with him in so doing in a hurry.
Thus endeth the Herald's first epistle on the
Fenian Brotherhood![3]