Ireland’s Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising by Robert Schmuhl (review)

The years leading up to 2016, and 2016 itself, saw the publication of dozens and dozens of critical, academic books focused on the events and history of the Easter Rising, its planners and fund-raisers, its sites, its martyrs, its legacies, and so forth, one hundred years later during this decade of centenaries. Notre Dame Professor Robert Schmuhl’s contribution, Ireland’s Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising, examines the American response to the Easter Rising as news of it made its way slowly across the Atlantic, referencing in his book’s title the line from the Proclamation that the Ireland the signatories were proclaiming was a vision of Ireland “supported by her exiled children in America” (15). He writes in his prologue, “To a large extent, the roots of the Rising grew in U.S. soil and … the American reaction proved critical to determining its consequences” (2) by shaping public opinion, especially after fury swept through America when fourteen rebel leaders were executed by a firing squad that May.

Schmuhl focuses his book on four Americans who were crucial in shaping America’s, and especially Irish-America’s, response: John Devoy, Eamon de Valera, Joyce Kilmer, and Woodrow Wilson. He explains:

For Devoy, a naturalized American living in New York, the Rising, which he helped to plan and to fund, was the culmination of a half-century struggle to free the place of his birth from British rule. The Rising established de Valera, who was born in New York, as an Irish leader, one who somehow escaped execution to launch a political and governmental career that spanned nearly six decades. … A journalist and poet, Kilmer was quick to put into words for American readers what the rebels had done. By contrast, Wilson did his best to avoid committing to a stand on an international and domestic situation loaded with what he viewed as political dynamite.

(13)

Schmuhl serves these four key figures well, except that Kilmer seems like the odd man out with no Irish or Irish-American background. The chapter on Kilmer’s importance to the Rising, and to the American response to it, is not entirely convincing, whereas the other three chapters are expertly argued, especially the opening chapter on Devoy and “his unbending commitment to ‘bloody sacrifice’” (19).

The chapters on Wilson and de Valera are excellent and provide a wealth of fresh research. As Schmuhl explains early in his book, each chapter “uses an individual to tell the larger story of what happened in each phase: the preparation, the fighting, and the aftermath. Thus, each chapter is principally a biographical essay, combining personal details and fitting them within the context of the Rising and the greater Irish-American connection” (12). This smartly structured book, then, explains the main figures and all of their connections: the author brings together a wealth of information on people readers would expect to find in a book on this topic—Roger Casement, Michael Collins, Thomas J. Clark, James Connolly, Joseph Mary Plunkett, John Quinn, Joseph McGarrity, and a host of Woodrow Wilson’s aides and chiefs of staff such as Joseph Patrick Tumulty, though Schmuhl notes that Wilson often preferred to keep his own counsel and “could never seem to disentangle himself from the Irish Question” (93):

The American Irish were led to believe the president understood their viewpoint in seeking remedies to their problems and the larger resolution of Ireland’s future. In private, however, Wilson operated differently. What he said or did showed a deliberate resolve to keep at arm’s length almost every matter explicitly related to Irish-American interests.

(89)

In fact, Schmuhl argues that Wilson kept dodging the topic publicly and fulminated about the Irish Question privately. Though it was “an issue that demanded a definite policy stand, the president decided to do nothing” (117).

Chapter 4 on de Valera is interesting but is full of repetition. On almost every third or...