THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE
CHAPTER I
YOUTH
Thomas D'Arcy McGee had a unique place among the Canadian statesmen of his time. His life was replete with dramatic interest. Most of those who stood by the cradle of Confederation, wherever they had been born, were fashioned in their development by commonplace Canadian conditions and environment. Such was not the case with McGee. When he came to Canada, a young man of thirty-two, he had already gone through the crucible of varied experiences. In another land and under different conditions he had battled for a lost cause. He had risen quickly from impoverished boyhood to distinction. He had been a leader in an attempted revolution, a conspirator, a fugitive rebel, an exile. He had felt the thrill that comes to a poet, and the less intense satisfaction that comes to the public leader. In the work that brought him fame, journalism, he had a career equalled by few in its meteoric character. He had been the editor or assistant editor of five newspapers, and on both sides of the Atlantic had borne a large share in intense controversies. He came to Montreal, in 1857, almost in the guise of an adventurer; and the portion of his life woven into the story of Canada was no less dramatic than that which preceded it. Within a few months of his arrival, he was elected to the colonial legislature; within a few years, he was honoured as one of the outstanding statesmen of the British colonies. In that venture of political faith which resulted in the establishment of the Dominion, he took a dominant share, and was generally acclaimed its most eloquent champion. His public life in Canada was crushed into ten years, but within that period his achievements had won him a permanent place in Canadian history. Yet in his career tragedy kept pace with brilliant success. He had no more than seen his cherished cause triumph when his life was cut short by the bullet of a Fenian assassin, who mistook him for an enemy of Ireland.
Like Abraham Lincoln, also the victim of an assassin, McGee was born in a cottage. But the country and circumstances surrounding the birth of the two men were strikingly different. The hero of the American Civil War was reared amid the uncouth surroundings of the frontier. He never became freed from the social rawness of a community arising from a wilderness. McGee was born in the year 1825, at Carlingford, in the beautiful coast country of County Louth, Ireland. Carlingford is a shrine of natural beauty. It is washed by the blue waters of Carlingford Lough, and in the background are the Mourne Mountains with their ever alternating shadows and sunshine. In such congenial surroundings, rich in their associations with Ireland's heroic past, McGee's childhood was spent.
His father was a coast-guard, whose remote ancestors had been the famous Magees of Ulster. But it was chiefly from his mother, not his father, that McGee received his mental inheritance. She was the daughter of a Dublin bookseller, by name Morgan, who had been implicated in the rebellion of 1798, and whose business as a consequence had been ruined. She was a woman of imagination, who cherished the memory of her father's espousal of the national cause and preserved all his national enthusiasms, which she sedulously fed to her son, Thomas D'Arcy. Her nationalism was not limited to the mere aspiration that Ireland possess political independence. She was interested in all the old Irish myths, traditions, and poetry, and these she related to her little "Tommie". Thus, from infancy, he grew up saturated in Irish literary lore, and an ardent idealist for the nationality of his country.
The simple facts respecting McGee's childhood scarcely need narrating. They are facts that might be recounted with respect to thousands of Irish boys of the same period. His father brought his family to Wexford when Thomas D'Arcy was eight years old, and McGee later in life always associated Wexford with his youth. In this city he obtained the slender advantages of a day school education, and came under the influence of a stimulating personality, the famous Father Mathew. This marvellously effective apostle of temperance, who swayed the conduct of Irishmen as with a magic wand, was at the time carrying on his triumphant campaign in southern Ireland. His appeal touched McGee. Under Father Mathew's influence a juvenile temperance society was established in Wexford. One evening a slight boy with flat face, dark skin and hair, and wonderfully expressive eyes, delivered before the society a spell-binding oration, on which he received the hearty congratulations of the great priest. The boy was young McGee, and this was his first public speech. During the next two years, 1840-1842, "little Tommy McGee's" speeches drew large numbers to the society's meetings. But Wexford was not long to claim the boy orator. His mother had died, his father had remarried, and the family were not in affluent circumstances. Ireland in the forties held out few prospects to the children of the indigent. The economic structure of Irish society was diseased. Approximately seven million were vainly endeavouring to wring a lean subsistence from the land, and hundreds of thousands were on the verge of famine. Gloom and misery were written broad over the southern counties, lit up but not relieved by the sputterings of political agitation. The one hope of the impoverished was the continent in the west, and a mighty stream of emigration to that land of promise set in. McGee joined the emigrant throng.
Accompanied by a sister, he arrived in the United States with few material possessions beyond the clothes on his back and a prize book won at school. The latter he disposed of during his first day in Boston in order that he might be able to sleep under a roof. His destination had been the home of an aunt in Rhode Island, but Boston, with its commercial activities and its hum of life, attracted him. In June, 1842, he repaired there to seek his fortune. Boston, like every large American city, had many immigrant boys seeking fortunes, and the hopes of the Irish lad must have shrunk away as the days of unemployment passed and the empty future opened out. Then, suddenly, one of the many incidents which give a dramatic interest to McGee's life occurred. It was the practice of Bostonians, a patriotic people mindful of their history, to commemorate the Fourth of July with a civic celebration. At the close of a much applauded public address, a strange and very uncouth youth feverishly jumped on an old cart, and for half an hour delivered in a voice of thrilling melody an oration on the virtues of liberty. Unknown by a soul in the large throng, McGee was cheered for his audacity and success. Next morning, with still little hope of getting employment, he prepared to return to his aunt in Rhode Island. The story is related that he called at the office of the Boston Pilot with the purpose of procuring something to read on his journey. He was there recognized by the observant proprietor as the silver-tongued youth of the previous day. A conversation was opened which resulted in the offer of a position with the paper. This offer he accepted, and thus he became launched on the career of journalism which dragged him, as it has dragged many obscure but talented youths, into the glaring light of publicity.
He had the powers certain to extract success: a quick and assimilative mind, an imagination that could clothe the dullest facts in the most appealing colours, and a marvellous facility in expressing himself. Within a few months he revealed that he was worth more than a mere clerkship, and became a travelling agent and special correspondent. To retain the support of those subscribers who were immigrant Irish, the prominent questions of Irish politics were threshed out in the columns of the Pilot. McGee proved invaluable in the presentation of Irish issues and in the vigorous championship of the chief plank in O'Connell's platform, repeal of the union of Great Britain and Ireland. The powers of his journalistic pen extended his fame throughout New England, and within two years he became, with Walter J. Walsh, joint editor of the Pilot. An editor of the age of twenty is not a common phenomenon. Still more uncommon is it when the youth in question is at the same time winning a widely-extended reputation as a public speaker. In the forties, on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a passion for public lectures. Such great names as those of Carlyle, Emerson, and Dickens were associated with the movement. McGee's zeal to find expression led him to deliver public lectures throughout New England, and the magnetic charm of the born orator insured his success. Few public speakers could equal him in holding an audience enthralled.