McGee became a member of the executive committee of five and went to his task of creating a revolution with flushed enthusiasm. A venture promising a quick fame and success to the public cause presented itself. A delegate arrived from the Irish Confederates at Glasgow stating that they had a considerable supply of arms and ammunition, and if a known and daring leader were sent them, four or five hundred men would volunteer for an expedition to Ireland. They might seize a steamer on the Clyde, and sail for Sligo or Killala. Thus, by a diversion in the west, they could strike British power a blow from the rear. There was too much of a dramatic appeal in this adventure for McGee to refuse when it was suggested that he be the leader. Visions of emulating Paul Jones danced before his mind, and away he sped the same evening for Scotland, while his associates matured their plans in Ireland.

With rapid dispatch McGee consulted the Irish revolutionists in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Greenock, and enrolled four hundred volunteers. The crew of a steamer sailing from Greenock was won over, and it was arranged that the arms should be placed on board as merchandise. While he was developing his plans, McGee was recognized by the police; and, his arrest being under consideration, the revolutionary committee insisted that he leave immediately and proceed to Sligo, where he could extemporize arrangements for the landing of the expedition. He reached Sligo early in August, and there awaited developments, scanning the rocky and picturesque shores of Lough Gill in the character of a Dublin student on holiday.

The news that finally reached him shattered his hopes. He learned how Smith O'Brien had led his insurgents to the so-called battle of Ballingarry, which ended, pantomime-like, in Widow McCormack's cabbage patch. O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and other leaders, he heard, were in the hands of the government, and the revolutionary organization had collapsed like a punctured balloon. The peasantry, on whom the success of the movement finally depended, were more eager to escape in emigrant ships from an impoverished country than to fight for a revolutionary government.

To America McGee's eyes were immediately turned. He made his way to Derry, where the bishop and his clergy sheltered him. Thence in the dress of a priest, with his breviary in his hand and with a sad heart, he boarded a brig at the mouth of the Foyle, and sailed for the United States. He became one of the many disillusioned who in this year of unfulfilled revolutions streamed across the Atlantic. His departure from Ireland was not, however, as he might have thought, the close, but the more vital opening, of his career. In America he began at the age of twenty-three a new life in which he was destined to plead for causes that were to prove more successful than that of Irish independence in 1848.

CHAPTER II
THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE

In early October, 1848, McGee arrived in Philadelphia, and before the close of the month he was in the exciting swirl of American journalism. He established the New York Nation, patterned much after the Dublin Nation. It was frankly an Irish-American organ which gave special attention to the politics of Ireland, and to the means whereby Irishmen in the new world might advance the interests of their native country. It was written with that intense bitterness towards Britain characteristic of the journals of most exiled Irishmen. It is interesting to find the man who in 1868 was described by Lord Mayo as "the most eloquent advocate of British rule on the face of the world" vowing in 1848 to dedicate all his days to the ruin of British power. But McGee's opinions were to travel a changeful journey between these two dates.

His prospects in New York were promising. Although young, he had already a wide reputation as an Irish leader, and a large population in New York and the neighbouring states was prepared to support his paper. But youthful rashness damaged his prospective success. Soon after his arrival in America, he wrote some public letters attributing the failure of the Irish revolutionary movement to the influence of the clergy. He argued that they were primarily responsible for the fact that the peasantry had not risen at the critical moment. Such a reflection upon the patriotism of the Irish clergy brought into the field against McGee an experienced and formidable controversialist in Bishop Hughes of New York. The bishop had proved his steel in many a public duel, and his ardent Irish patriotism had given him a vast prestige over his flock. Having closely followed affairs in Ireland, he was well prepared to meet McGee's challenge. He argued that blame for the failure of the insurrection must not be placed upon the clergy, but upon the leaders of Young Ireland, prominent among whom was McGee himself. They had precipitated a rebellion for which they had made no serviceable preparation, and thus exposed the peasantry to destruction by British soldiery. The priests, by restraining their flocks from rebellion, had alone saved them from disaster. Bishop Hughes was not content with such argument. He denounced McGee as being faithless to his church and creed, which elicited from the latter the reply that "My crime is not that I do not believe in the creed of my fathers and my affections, but that I have failed to pay my court to some great unknown who sits chafing on his chair, impatient of his daily dose of honied praises."

The futile controversy that ensued proved fatal to the fortunes of McGee's paper. His joust with the most powerful Catholic ecclesiastic in America alienated the sympathies of those who might otherwise have given him support. He had jockeyed himself into the false position of being anti-clerical, a position which in the nineteenth century seldom won the support of Irish Catholics. The situation was all the more unfortunate in that he held many views in common with Bishop Hughes, and was later to become his warm friend. In the midst of the controversy, he received from Gavan Duffy an invitation to assist once more in the editing of the Dublin Nation. Duffy wrote with the enticing remark that "as a writer and a speaker there is not any Irishman living whose help I would as soon have as yours." All the weight of pleasant associations tugged at him to return. In his youthful verse a dominant note was a longing for his native land:

Where'er I turned, some emblem still
Roused consciousness upon my track;
Some hill was like an Irish hill,
Some wild-bird's whistle call'd me back.