XX.
While my Fenian friends struggled on in this way, I looked after my own affairs. Completing my studies and business in Detroit, I moved myself and my family to Wilmington, where I settled down to make a home and secure an income. I was now a fully fledged M.D., and so I immediately commenced practising at Braidwood, a suburb of Wilmington. Success attended my start, my Irish connection and record bringing me an amount of patronage almost beyond my powers of attention. I had given up all idea of anything definite happening in the way of Fenian affairs, and turned my attention to local politics. Here, of course, my Irish friends were again of use. Failing to obtain a seat on the School Board, for which I had been nominated, I succeeded in getting an appointment on the Board of Health. The office was really a sinecure, with one hundred dollars a year attached. Not content with it, I gained the much more lucrative appointment of Supervisor of Braidwood, attached to which was a daily fee of 2½ dollars, and travelling allowances when engaged on town business. Anybody acquainted with the American political system, even to a moderate extent, will know how paying such offices can be made.
Meantime I had joined the Medical Society of my State, and assisted in founding the State Pharmaceutical Society. My activity did not even stop here, and, in addition, I took a very active part in bringing about much-needed legislation on the question of the practice of medicine. In these days there was no such thing as a State law regulating the practice of medicine or pharmacy, and I—let me frankly confess it—as much for the sake of popularity as anything else, spared no pains, even going to the extent of “lobbying” in Springfield, the State capital, in the interest of legislation on these matters, in which I was very successful.
Little as I imagined it then, events were at this time shaping themselves to an end which, frequently attempted, had never yet been wholly accomplished by the aspiring leaders of the Irish in America. This was the bringing together of all Irishmen at home and abroad into one vast and perfect organisation. The hour was coming, and with it the men. Born in comparative poverty and insignificance, but under an impressive name, the association now being formed, the great Clan-na-Gael of the future, was destined to be a powerful, rich, and far-reaching organisation, healthy of limb and strong of hand, fated to leave its heavy mark upon the pages of this half-century’s history. From small beginnings have come great results.
Away back towards the end of the sixties, there came into existence one of those temporal societies, an off-shoot of the permanent conspiracy known under the name “Knights of the Inner Circle,” which was joined by many Irish conspirators, myself amongst the number. With its members there became associated, in the latter end of 1869, some three hundred members of the “Brian Boru” Circle of the Fenian Brotherhood in New York City, who, in consequence of a political quarrel over electioneering matters, seceded from their original body; and by these men, acting in concert with others under the name of the “United Irishmen,” what were really the first camps of the Clan-na-Gael were established.
The V.C. (the cypher was arranged on the plan of using the alphabetical letters immediately following those intended to be indicated) had for its object the same intention which governed the inception and development of all Irish conspiracy in America—the freedom of Ireland from English control by armed force. It was, however, to differ from its predecessors insomuch as, unlike them, it was to be of an essentially secret character. P. R. Walsh of Cleveland, Ohio, known as “the Father of the Clan,” was the apostle of this new condition of things, and he, with others of shrewd and far-seeing minds, argued with great success, that if one lesson more important than another was to be learnt from the past history and miserable fiascos of the movement, it was that no possible success could be achieved with a revolutionary organisation working in the open day. The Irish people, reasoned these priests of the new faith, had not judgment enough to manage their schemes for freedom. They revealed their secrets to the heads of their Church; they were dictated to by these heads; they feared to obey their non-clerical leaders; and so were thwarted the best schemes of the most active workers. A revolutionary movement must be secret and unscrupulous, and, to be successful, they could not enter on the contest for freedom with the yoke of the Church around their neck.
Language like this reads strangely indeed in the light of latter-day revelations, and the knowledge the world now has of Clan-na-Gael priests and their work. But at the time it was not without its appropriateness and significance. The priests at the period of which I write were, neither in Ireland nor America, the priests of these subsequent years. Then, as in those days of old, when religion was paramount and priestly control salutary and effective, the ban of the Church was not merely a phrase dangerous in sound, it was a living dread reality, fearful in its consequences in the eyes of those who in their lives worked out that grand old characteristic of the Irish people, faith in their Church and reverence toward its rulers. It was reserved for the coming years to bring to the view of a startled public a people reckless and defiant of priestly control, because of the teachings of their atheistic and communistic leaders, and the self-surrender of all their higher and priestly functions by those who were content to be led by, rather than to lead those whose consciences were their charge and their responsibility.