The Catalpa Expedition/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII

OTHER ESCAPES AND RESCUES

The rescue of the young Irish revolutionist, John Mitchell, was the first of the series of escapes participated in by Irish patriots. Mitchell was a talented and brave young man, whose life and history have been an inspiration to the devotees of Irish freedom. He was originally a writer upon the "Nation," but its policy was too conservative for his tastes, and in 1847 he founded a new journal called "The United Irishman." Mitchell belonged to that section of "young Ireland" which advocated immediate war with England. He believed the time was now ripe, and he set about making his paper as obnoxious to the English government as possible. He was a brilliant writer and an enthusiast for the revolution. His plan was to force the hand, first of the English government, then of the Irish people. He deliberately challenged the government to arrest the leaders of his party. Then he calculated that the Irish people would rise to defend or rescue their heroes, and rebellion would be effected.

For three years he continued his taunting tactics. He wrote in a strain of fiery sedition, urging the people to prepare for warlike effort, while he described how to make pikes and use them; how to cast bullets; and how to make the streets as dangerous for cavalry horses as Bruce made the field of Bannockburn. Some of the agencies which were suggested for the use of the people, when they should take up arms, were almost devilish in their ferocity, such as the employment of vitriol. At length the government was forced to recognize the violence of young Mitchell's newspaper attacks, and a measure was framed by the government to meet the case, enabling it to suppress newspapers like "United Irishman" and imprison the publishers. Mitchell was defiant still, and he was arrested. Greatly to his chagrin, no attempt was made to rescue him. "Had there been another Mitchell out of doors, as fearless and reckless as the Mitchell in the prison," writes a historian, "a sanguinary outbreak would probably have taken place. He was sentenced to expatriation for fourteen years, and was deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and other of the confederate leaders were likewise sent there.

In 1853 P. J. Smyth, who was known as "Nicaragua," a correspondent of the "New York Tribune," was commissioned by the Irish Directory of New York to proceed to Australia and procure the escape of Mitchell and his political associates. Mitchell was under parole, and his sense of honor would not permit him to leave without surrendering it. On June 8, 1853, in company with Smyth, he presented himself to the police magistrate in Bothwell and surrendered his parole.

"You see the purport of that note, sir," said he.

"It is short and plain. It resigns the thing called 'ticket of leave' and revokes my promise, which bound me so long as I held the thing."

Then they left the magistrate, who was either stupid or afraid to make an attempt to detain them, and, mounting horses, rode through the Australian woods until Hohart Town was reached, when they sailed on the passenger brig Emma to Sydney, and in due time reached the United States. Meagher soon followed. O'Brien declined to have anything to do with any plot for escape while he was on parole, and his honorable conduct was rewarded by a pardon.

After reaching this country, Mitchell founded a paper advocating slavery, and championing the Southern cause in the Rebellion. One of his last acts here was a lecture, the proceeds of which went to swell the fund which was being raised for the Catalpa expedition. Later he returned to Ireland, where, owing to some defect in the criminal law, he could not be arrested, his time of penal servitude having expired, although he had not served it. He was elected to Parliament for Tipperary, was disqualified for a seat, and then reelected. Some turmoil was expected, when Mitchell was withdrawn from the controversy by death.

"Weep for him, Ireland, mother lonely;
⁠Weep for the son who died for thee.

Wayward he was, but he loved thee only,
⁠Loyal and fearless as son could be.
Weep for him, Ireland, sorrowing nation,
⁠Faithful to all who are true to thee;
Never a son in thy desolation
⁠Had holier love for thy cause than he."

The rescue of Kelly and Deasy at Manchester was daring and successful, but it was only accomplished by the killing of one man, and three were subsequently hanged for complicity in the affair. Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy, Fenian agents in England, were captured by the Manchester police on September 11, 1867, and a week afterward were arraigned at the Manchester police office. Being identified as Fenian leaders, they were again remanded and placed in the prison van to be conveyed to the borough jail. They were in charge of Police Sergeant Charles Brett. When half way to the prison, and just as the van passed under the railway arch over Hyde Road at Bellevue, a man jumped into the middle of the road, pointed a pistol at the head of the van-driver and ordered him to stop. Immediately thirty armed men swarmed over the wall which lined the road. A shot was fired, and the driver was so frightened that he fell from his seat. One horse was shot, and the gallant police escorts scattered and ran for their lives.

An endeavor was then made to break in the door of the van. It was locked on the inside, and the key was in the possession of a police officer named Brett, who sat within. A shot was fired at the keyhole to blow off the lock, and the unfortunate police officer received a wound from which he died soon after. The doors were then opened, a woman prisoner in the van handing out the keys, which she found in the pocket of the officer. "Kelly, I'll die for you," said one of the Fenian rescuers.

He kept his word.

The prisoners were freed, and were seen to enter a cottage near the Hyde Road. They left it unfettered, and were never seen after by English officials. Several men were put on trial for the murder of Brett, and five were found guilty,—Allen, Larkin, O'Brien, Condon or Shore, and Maguire. The defense was that the prisoners only meditated a rescue, and that the death of the policeman was an accident. The five were sentenced to death, but the newspaper reporters were so certain that Maguire was not concerned in the affair that they joined in a memorial to the government, expressing their conviction that the verdict was a mistake. The government made an investigation, and found that he was not near the spot on the day of the rescue,—that he was a loyal private in the Marines, and not a Fenian. He was pardoned, but not unnaturally the circumstances caused a grave doubt with relation to the soundness of the verdict in the other cases.

Strenuous attempts were made to secure a commutation of the sentence. Mr. Bright was foremost with his exertions, and Mr. Swinburne, the poet, wrote an appeal for mercy, from which a few verses are quoted:—

"Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
England, art thou of them, too.
That drink of the poisonous flood,
That hide under poisonous trees?

"Nay, thy name from of old.
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed;
Purer we held thee than this,
Purer fain would we hold;
So goodly a glory it seemed,
A fame so bounteous of bliss,
So more precious than gold.

"Strangers came gladly to thee.
Exiles, chosen of men.
Safe for thy sake in thy shade.
Sat down at thy feet and were free.
So men spake of thee then;
Now shall their speaking be stayed?
Ah, so let it not be!
 
"Not for revenge or affright.
Pride or a tyrannous lust,
Cast from thee the crown of thy praise.
Mercy was thine in thy might.
Strong when thou wert, thou wert just;
Now, in the wrong-doing days.
Cleave thou, thou at least, to the right.

"Freeman he is not, but slave,
Whoso in fear for the State
Cries for surety of blood.
Help of gibbet and grave;
Neither is any land great
Whom, in her fear-stricken mood,
These things only can save.

"Lo, how fair from afar,
Taintless of tyranny, stands
Thy mighty daughter, for years
Who trod the winepress of war;

Shines with immaculate hands;
Slays not a foe, neither fears;
Stains not peace with a scar!

"Be not as tyrant or slave,
England; be not as these,
Thou that wert other than they.
Stretch out thine hand, but to save;
Put forth thy strength, and release;
Lest there arise, if thou slay,
Thy shame as a ghost from the grave.

The government refused to listen to the appeals, and Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were hanged at Manchester on November 23, 1867, meeting death with courage and composure, we are told. Shore escaped, since he was proven to be an American citizen, and the English spared him lest the protection of the American government might have been invoked in his behalf.

One more incident may be added to the chapter of Fenian rescues. This was the attempt to blow up the House of Detention at Clerkenwell in December, 1867, where two Fenian prisoners were confined. This affair was farcical in conception, but its results were cruelly tragic.

"At the very time that this horrible crime and blunder was perpetrated," writes a historian, "one of the London theatres was nightly crowded by spectators eager to see an Irish melodrama, among the incidents of which was the discussion of a plan for the rescue of a prisoner from a castle cell. The audience was immensely amused by the proposal of one confederate to blow up the castle altogether, and the manner in which it occurred to the simple plotters, just in time, that if they carried out this plan they must send the prisoner himself flying into the air. The Clerkenwell conspirators had either not seen the popular drama or had missed the point of its broadest joke."

A barrel of gunpowder was exploded close to the wall. Sixty yards of the prison wall were blown in, and many small dwellings in the vicinity were shattered. A dozen persons were killed, one hundred and twenty were wounded, and there were other serious consequences. Had the prisoners been near the wall, they would have been killed. Five men and a woman were put on trial for the crime, but only one man was convicted. He was found guilty on the evidence of an informer and executed. It was agreed that the persons who were concerned in this plot were "of that irresponsible crew who hang on to the skirts of all secret political associations, and whose adhesion is only one other reason for regarding such associations as deplorable and baneful. Such men are of the class who bring a curse, who bring many curses, on even the best cause that strives to work in secret. They prowl after the heels of organized conspiracy, and what it will not do they are ready in some fatal moment to attempt."

And this brings us back to the last and most important of Irish national rescue projects.