Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction (review)

BOOK REVIEWS283 bution to Civil War historiography if only his book had lived up to its title. Considerably more candid about the conduct of Irish volunteers is Mather Cleveland, an orthopedic surgeon from New York who retired to New Hampshire in 1958 and devoted himself to the Civil War traditions of the Granite State. In his New Hampshire Fights The Civil War, Dr. Cleveland notes that valorous Irishmen made up that state's largest pool of foreign-bom man power—and spawned at least their share of bounty-jumpers. New Hampshire contributed about 28,000 men to the Union forces, and nearly a fifth of them failed to survive the war. About three in five of the fatalities resulted from diseases or non-battle causes. As an army medic of two World Wars, Dr. Cleveland handles the surgical and medical facets of the Civil War with ease and perspective. He includes a highly useful index, an enthralling collection of contemporary photographs , and a noteworthy bibliography of original materials. Because his book is a series of sketches of regimental histories, Cleveland has largely eliminated reader appeal from this story of New Hampshire 's fighting men. What he has produced is a highly worthwhile reference work, although it passes this reviewer's understanding why the narrative had to appear in a book more than twelve inches tall. Leslie Anders Central Missouri State College Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction. By Brian Jenkins. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969. Pp. 346. $10.50.) An unpleasant byproduct of America's "melting pot" tradition has been the persistently divided loyalties of certain immigrant groups. These "hyphenates" have used their new American citizenship for the benefit of their original homeland with little concern for the interests of the United States. The most notorious example in the nineteenth century was the Irish-American, and the most notorious Irish-American organization was the Fenian Brotherhood. These nationalist expatriates set out to free Ireland from British oppression by the roundabout route of invading Canada and more directly by launching campaigns of disorder and terrorism in Britain. Brian Jenkins has told in considerable detail the story of Fenian activities during a five-year period of great sensitivity in Anglo-American relations , from the end of the Civil War through the first year of Grant's administration. Resentful of the British neutrality policy during the war, which had seemed unduly favorable to the Confederacy, the Johnson administration and Congress were trying to extract some sort of indemnity —even the cession of Canada—from the Conservative government in Britain. The Foreign Office did its best to parry the American 284CIVIL WAR HISTORY thrusts, while the Colonial Office helped the Canadian government to formulate a new relationship with the British Empire—the Confederation of 1867. It is not surprising that both governments at times subordinated the Fenian problem to other issues of high policy. At one point, for example, Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain, refrained from active defense of Irish-Americans arrested in England lest he weaken the American case regarding wartime neutrality, while his opposite number in Washington, Sir Frederick Bruce, stretched his instructions and avoided open protest at Fenian preparations to attack Canada in the hope that his moderation would oblige Seward and Johnson to reciprocate in the larger issue. But neither minister could operate with complete freedom, for Seward had to obey the immutable laws of American politics—the Irish-Americans formed the "swing vote" of New York —and the British foreign minister, Lord Clarendon, could never overcome lus personal distaste for the Irish revolutionaries and for the agile American rationalizing, which he thought hypocrisy. Under the circumstances it may seem surprising that the Fenians accomplished a little as they did, but they had an unerring genius for chaos, as they demonstrated in their abortive attempts on Canada. Even their efforts at political pressure in the United States suffered from hyperbole and lack of direction. Ironically the most important result of their activities in these five years was to encourage both nations to remove an age-old impediment to Anglo-American friendship through the Naturalization Treaty of 1870. In this the British recognized that the...