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7 Fenianism on the Defensive The most significant Fenian activity occurred in England and Canada after the failed Erin’s Hope expedition. Increasingly operating on the defensive, IRB members primarily devoted their collective energy to liberating comrades from prison, while other militants enunciated their republican sentiments as defendants in British courtrooms. The open-air rescue of Thomas Kelly and an associate from custody in September 1867 was a tremendous nationalist victory that was overshadowed two months later when three questionably guilty perpetrators of the crime were hanged in Manchester. An attempt to liberate Richard O’Sullivan Burke from a London prison at the end of the year was an outright disaster that led to the death of a dozen civilians and the execution of another Fenian. Despite widespread English revulsion toward the Irish after these two events occurred, British prime minister William Gladstone emerged as a sincere advocate of Irish reform in the late 1860s. As part of a longstanding desire to rectify past injustices against the Irish people, the powerful Liberal party leader furloughed several republican prisoners who had been arrested in accordance with the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act and abolished state subsidies to the Church of Ireland. After a decade of Fenian efforts to lead Ireland into a new era, a British statesman— ironically—became a principal instigator of the slow process that eventually led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. John O’Neill, conversely, embarrassed Fenians throughout the world when he once again attempted to invade Canada in May 1870. A new era in the history of the Fenian movement began after a routine arrest in the fall of 1867. Having been reconfirmed as IRB leader at a clandestine Fenianism on the Defensive 182 convention in Manchester the previous summer, Thomas Kelly had conducted underground activities in England throughout the early fall. On the night of September 11, Kelly and expatriate assistant Timothy Deasy had just departed an intra-Brotherhood court-martial when they were arrested for loitering in a city park. Presumed to be vagrants, the two Fenians would have been booked under the aliases they had provided and released if a constable had not discovered a keepsake inscribed with the name “Kelly” in the possession of the Tenth Ohio Infantry veteran. When Coridon was summoned from London thereafter to identify the two mystery prisoners, British authorities confirmed that they had captured the most powerful Irish republican in the United Kingdom as well as a resourceful Fenian who had served in the Ninth Massachusetts Infantry. Irish nationalist republicans still at large recognized that the already tenuous future of the Fenian movement was in jeopardy if their two colleagues were not promptly extricated from custody. The number of IRB circles in Manchester had already dropped from nine to three since the previous March.1 Without a morale-boosting rescue, the organization might disintegrate not only in the Midlands, but also throughout the British Isles. The rescue of Kelly and Deasy was simple, quick, and inadvertently tragic. On the night of September 17,Edward O’Meagher Condon,Toronto Fenian circle founder and Irish Brigade veteran, devised a plan to rescue his two compatriots the following afternoon. After their arraignment in the Manchester Municipal Court, Kelly, Deasy, and a few petty criminals would be transferred to the nearby Bellevue Gaol in a horse-drawn carriage by way of Hyde Road.While waiting for a messenger to signal that the two expatriate IRB leaders were in transit, preselected Fenian volunteers would loiter in one of several saloons located near a railway arch between the two facilities. At the time of the briefing, all the designated assailants were instructed to avoid bloodshed and use their revolvers sparingly. The dozen constables assigned to escort the detainees, conversely, had taken limited precautions to protect themselves before the prisoner transfer began at about 3:00 p.m.Sergeant Charles Brett,the lone officer armed with a cutlass,rode inside the coach with the prisoners while his eleven associates carried truncheons. Why all the officers were not better armed is puzzling given that a knife-wielding Irishman unaffiliated with Condon had caused a brief disturbance as Kelly and Deasy were led down the front steps of the courthouse.2 Accordingly, many members of the guard detail fled when two Fenians darted out into the road and shot over the reinsmen and at one of their horses. While dodging rocks thrown by civilian onlookers, several assailants were able to wedge open a...

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