When John O’Leary was writing his “Recollections of Fenianism” in the Dublin papers, in the year 1896, he said that when the Phœnix prisoners were in the Cork Jail, word was sent to them by James Stephens not to accept their release from jail on the terms of pleading “guilty.”
I know that the prisoners got no such word—for I was one of them. The men of the organization who were in Cork City were somewhat disaffected; they spoke to us as if the whole work was abandoned after the arrests. There was general disorganization and demoralization.
After our release from prison Mr. Thomas Clarke Luby visited the south of Ireland a few times. He was in communication with James Stephens in Paris, and with John O’Mahony. A letter he wrote to John O’Mahony in August, 1860, will give the reader an idea of the difficulties that beset the organization that time. This is it:
Dublin, 25th August, 1860.
My dear Mr. O’Mahony—I shall commence this letter by informing you that when your agent James Butler arrived in P——, our friend there decided on associating me with him in his Irish mission. Accordingly, copies of your correspondence with Chicago and St. Louis were placed in my hands; also, copies of all the passages of your letter to James, embodying charges, and, lastly, a long and able statement written by our friend. I was instructed to accompany your agent through the country; to make use of those papers; to place the charges contained in them before the principal shareholders of our firm; to explain the greater or less amount of truth existing in those charges; to lay before our friends fairly and squarely the question—whether our friend should withdraw from the management of the firm, or remain at his post; to try to produce a pressure from the members of the firm here on those across the sea, and to cause such steps to be taken as would give you satisfactory means of demonstrating, in the teeth of all reports to the contrary effect, that the transactions of the firm here were bona fide transactions. With this view, to cause letters to be written by friends of ours, in various localities through the country, to their friends in America, calling on them to repose unlimited confidence in you, and to sustain you in all your efforts; and, finally, I was to write and sign a document expressing the most unbounded confidence in you (as you will see, I have written one, expressing unlimited confidence in both you and our friend;) and to procure as many signatures to the document, of principal shareholders, as I could.
I have carried out those instructions to the best of my ability, and in fact, my success in the business has gone beyond my warmest anticipations. I would have written to you sooner, in order to relieve the anxiety which I know you must feel, were it not that I still was hoping to send my communication by Mr. C. Besides, as you will gather from the ensuing portion of this letter, the work to be done was not completed; and indeed, owing to unavoidable circumstances, it is even yet incomplete. However, I can no longer withhold from you the cheering intelligence I have to give you. Therefore, I have at last decided on sending you a letter by post.
But, let me here, in the first place, assert emphatically that never have more impudent and calumnious falsehoods been uttered than the statements regarding our business madly hazarded by that unfortunate rash man over there.
To dare deny that our firm was bona fide and solvent! Placing out of view for a moment the result of my movements, Mr. C.——, and Mr. B——, of St. Louis will, on their return, furnish you with a triumphant refutation of the monstrous and barefaced calumny. Nay, their letters must already, I should think, have satisfied you about our solvency. Why, even your friend Mr. K——, who saw comparatively little, learned enough, I fancy, to enable him to convince you that our transactions here are bona fide. I would almost venture to maintain that our County Cork branch alone, even now, comes up to the full height of what James originally engaged to do. What, then, shall we say when we take Kilkenny and the other districts into our calculation?
But, to give you a summary of the results of my mission: Since I received our friend’s instructions I have seen twenty principal shareholders, not to speak of numerous lesser ones who called on me in various places. Of these twenty, no less than nineteen signed the paper of confidence, and signed it in a manner which quadrupled my delight at getting their signatures. They listened to the tale of the calumnies of that unhappy man, but also with unspeakable scorn and indignation.
I cannot give you any adequate idea of the warmth with which I was received by some of the shareholders and their friends. My only complaint was, that their ardor occasionally outran discretion. Seeing those things with my bodily vision, and, at the same time calling to mind the outrageously impudent statements which had been made in certain quarters, I often fancied myself in a sort of dream. I do not deny that in two or three places I found apathy. But in spite of such drawbacks, I derived more pleasure from this last trip than from all my former ones put together. Almost everything satisfied me. In some spots, where, up to this, was comparative coldness; for the future expect enthusiasm. I got but one refusal, and even that did not by any means amount to a withdrawal of confidence. Indeed, the refusal was based on grounds simply childish. This occurred in Waterford City; but I have discovered another friend there who, without interfering with the former agent, will act with youthful energy. Lest I should forget it, let me add that shortly some new travelers will be added to the firm.