Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:56:51.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CHARLES ROWCROFT, IRISH-AMERICANS, AND THE ‘RECRUITMENT AFFAIR’, 1855–1856*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2010

LAURENCE FENTON
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the prelude to, and machinations surrounding, the arrest, trial, and expulsion from America of Charles Rowcroft, the British consul in Cincinnati. Rowcroft's difficulties were a direct consequence of the conniving of Irish-American nationalists in the region during the Crimean War. The article places these events in Cincinnati against a backdrop of intense Anglo-American diplomatic distrust. It also highlights the exaggerated Hibernophobic response of some British officials in the United States. A study of Irish-American nationalism during the 1850s, bridging the historical and historiographical gap between the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion and the beginnings of Fenianism, has long been wanting. This article is a first, important step toward filling that void, elucidating the hitherto hidden extent of Irish-American agitation during the Crimean War.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 963 - 982
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives and the Board of Trinity College for permission to quote from papers in their possession. I would also like to thank the editors and referees of the Historical Journal for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: a history (Harlow, 2000); David T. Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001); Kevin Kenny, ed., New directions in Irish-American history (Madison, WI, 2003); J. J. Lee and Marion Casey, eds., Making the Irish American: history and heritage of the Irish in the United States (New York, NY, 2006); Kerby A. Miller, Ireland and Irish America: culture, class, and transatlantic migration (Dublin, 2008).

2 William D'Arcy, The Fenian movement in the United States, 1858–1886 (Washington, DC, 1947), pp. 4–10; R. V. Comerford, The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society, 1848–1882 (Dublin, 1985), pp. 33–4; John Newsinger, Fenianism in mid-Victorian Britain (London, 1994), pp. 22–3; Jack Morgan, Through American and Irish wars: the life and times of General Thomas W. Sweeny, 1820–1892 (Dublin, 2006), p. 49; Martha Ramón, A provisional dictator: James Stephens and the Fenian movement (Dublin, 2007), pp. 62–3; David A. Wilson, Thomas D'Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857 (Montreal, QC, and Kingston, ON, 2008), p. 317.

3 David Murphy, Ireland and the Crimean War (Dublin, 2002), p. 11.

4 Brebner, J. B., ‘Joseph Howe and the Crimean War enlistment controversy between Great Britain and the United States’, Canadian Historical Review, 11, (1930), pp. 300–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Van Alstyne, W., ‘John F. Crampton, conspirator or dupe?’, American Historical Review, 41, (1936), pp. 492–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alan Dowty, The limits of American isolation: the United States and the Crimean War (New York, NY, 1971); Conacher, J. B., ‘British policy in the Anglo-American enlistment crisis of 1855–1856’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 136, (1992), pp. 533–76Google Scholar.

5 Oliver Rafferty, P., ‘Fenianism in North America in the 1860s: the problems for church and state’, History, 84, (1999), pp. 257–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Nie, Michael, ‘“A medley mob of Irish-American plotters and Irish dupes”: the British press and transatlantic Fenianism’, Journal of British Studies, 40, (2001), pp. 213–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, David A., ‘The Fenians in Montreal, 1862–1868: invasion, intrigue, and assassination’, Eire-Ireland, 38, (2003), pp. 109–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Terry Golway, Irish rebel: John Devoy and America's fight for Ireland's freedom (New York, NY, 1998); Terence Dooley, The greatest of the Fenians: John Devoy and Ireland (Dublin, 2003); Janis, Ely M., ‘Petticoat revolutionaries: gender, ethnic nationalism, and the Irish Ladies’ Land League in the United States', Journal of American Ethnic History, 27, (2008), pp. 5–27Google Scholar.

6 Dye, Ryan D., ‘Irish-American ambivalence toward the Spanish-American War’, New Hibernia Review, 11, (2007), pp. 98–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Úna Ní Bhroiméil, ‘The South African War, empire and the Irish World, 1899–1902’, in Simon J. Potter, ed., Newspapers and empire in Ireland and Britain: reporting the British empire, c. 1857–1921 (Dublin, 2004), pp. 195–216.

7 Murphy, Angela, ‘Daniel O'Connell and the “American eagle” in 1845: slavery, diplomacy, nativism, and the collapse of America's first Irish nationalist movement’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 26, (2007), pp. 3–26Google Scholar.

8 Belchem, John, ‘Republican spirit and military science: the “Irish brigade” and Irish-American nationalism in 1848’, Irish Historical Studies, 29, (1994), pp. 44–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Belchem, John, ‘Nationalism, republicanism and exile: Irish emigrants and the revolutions of 1848’, Past and Present, 146, (1995), pp. 103–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The British army was actually slightly larger than the French. Its biggest element, however, was the Indian army whose indigenous contingent were unavailable for service elsewhere. The French were also much better prepared, equipped, and trained. Clive Ponting, The Crimean War: the truth behind the myth (London, 2005), p. 21.

10 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, cxxxvi, cols. 507–19, 19 Dec. 1854.

11 J. F. Crampton, ‘List of offers to join Her Majesty's army in the Crimea, or to procure men for the same, received at Her Majesty's legation, Washington, 1855’, 15 Apr. 1856, London, The National Archives (TNA), FO 881/572.

12 R. E. May, Manifest destiny's underworld: filibustering in antebellum America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), p. 238.

13 Walter LaFeber, The American age: United States foreign policy at home and abroad, 1750 to the present (2nd edn, New York, NY, and London, 1994), pp. 130–4.

14 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, pp. 533–4.

15 R. E. May, The Southern dream of a Caribbean empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1973), p. 88.

16 Crampton to Le Marchant, 12 Mar. 1855, London, British Library (BL), EG 2972/9–10. Emphasis in original.

17 Dowty, Limits of American isolation, p. 190.

18 Crampton to Le Marchant, 12 Mar. 1855, BL, EG 2972/9–10.

19 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 5 Jan. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/4. Rowcroft, born in London in 1798, emigrated to Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, for a period in the 1820s, and was the author of Tales of the colonies (1843), The bushranger of Van Diemen's Land (1846), and An emigrant in search of a colony (1851).

20 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 12 Jan. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/6.

21 Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Strong on music: the New York music scene in the days of George Templeton Strong: resonances, 1836–1849 (Chicago, IL, 1995), p. 261; New York Times, 13 Oct. 1851, 4 Mar. 1852.

22 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 12 Jan. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/6.

23 Howe to Rowcroft, 13 Mar. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14/encl. 1. Emphasis in original.

24 Rowcroft to Mathew, 17 Mar. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14/encl. 3. Emphasis in original.

25 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 7 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14.

26 J. Murray Beck, Joseph Howe: the Briton becomes Canadian, 1848–1873 (Montreal, QC, 1983), p. 89.

27 Turnbull to Korponay, 26 May 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14/encl. 9.

28 Crampton to Le Marchant, 4 June 1855, BL, EG 2972/32–7.

29 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 7 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14.

30 Korponay to Rowcroft, 7 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/13/encl. 1.

31 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 7 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14.

32 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 7 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/13.

33 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, p. 536.

34 Clarendon to Rowcroft, 13 July 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/4.

35 Crampton to Le Marchant, 16 July 1855, BL, EG 2972/76–82.

36 Trevor Royle, Crimea: the great Crimean War, 1854–1856 (London, 2000), p. 365.

37 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, p. 538.

38 Royle, Crimea, p. 367.

39 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, p. 538.

40 Crampton to Le Marchant, 4 June 1855, BL, EG 2972/32–7; Crampton to Le Marchant, 17 June 1855, BL, EG 2972/38–41.

41 Crampton to Turnbull, 21 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/19/encl. 1; Crampton to Le Marchant, 21 June 1855, BL, EG 2972/58–63.

42 Crampton to Turnbull, 23 June 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/19/encl. 2.

43 Dennis Clark, Hibernia America: the Irish and regional cultures (Westport, CT, 1986), p. 119.

44 Income Book of the Irish Confederation, 24 June 1848, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23/H/63.

45 New York Times, 19 Jan. 1854.

46 Irish American, 13 Nov. 1852.

47 Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American nationalism: 1870–1890 (Philadelphia, PA, and New York, NY, 1966), p. 22.

48 Citizen, 1 Apr. 1854, 21 July 1855; Irish American, 27 Oct. 1855.

49 Rowcroft to Crampton, 16 July 1855, TNA, FO 5/622/149/encl. 3.

50 Citizen, 21 July 1855.

51 Ibid.

52 Welkins to Korponay, 26 Apr. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/14/encl. 8.

53 Citizen, 21 July 1855.

54 See Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and slavery: the northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1992).

55 Baughin, W. A., ‘The development of nativism in Cincinnati’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, 22, (1964), pp. 240–55Google Scholar.

56 New York Times, 19 Jan. 1855.

57 Royle, Crimea, p. 367.

58 Newspaper reports in Crampton to Clarendon, 16 July 1855, TNA, FO 5/622/140.

59 Rowcroft to Crampton, 16 July 1855, TNA, FO 5/622/149/encl. 3.

60 Clarendon to Rowcroft, 2 Aug. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/5.

61 Clarendon to Crampton, 22 June 1855, Papers relative to recruiting in the United States (London, 1856), p. 16; Crampton to Le Marchant, 16 July 1855, BL, EG 2972/76–82.

62 Crampton to Clarendon, 10 Sept. 1855, TNA, FO 5/623/185.

63 Marcy to Crampton, 5 Sept. 1855, TNA, FO 5/623/185/encl. 1.

64 Crampton to Clarendon, 15 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/623/211.

65 Clarendon to Palmerston, 26 Sept. 1855, University of Southampton, Broadlands (Palmerston) Papers (BP), GC/CL/698; Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, pp. 553–4.

66 Golder, F. A., ‘Russian-American relations during the Crimean War’, American Historical Review, 31, (1926), pp. 462–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dvoichenko-Markov, Eufrosina, ‘Americans in the Crimean War’, Russian Review, 13, (1954), pp. 137–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bolkhovitinov, Nikolay, ‘The Crimean War and the emergence of proposals for the sale of Russian America, 1853–1861’, Pacific Historical Review, 59, (1990), pp. 15–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Rowcroft to Crampton, 19 Nov. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/33/encl. 1.

68 See W. L. Joyce, Editors and ethnicity: a history of the Irish-American press, 1848–1883 (New York, NY, 1976).

69 Irish American, 4 Nov. 1854; Citizen, 1 Apr. 1854.

70 Dowty, Limits of American isolation, pp. 87–90; Jones, Horace Perry, ‘Louisiana opinion on the Crimean War as expressed in the newspapers’, Louisiana History, 18, (1977), pp. 323–34Google Scholar.

71 Dowty, Limits of American isolation, p. 101.

72 Rowcroft to Crampton, 3 Aug. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/20/encl. 2.

73 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 3 Sept. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/22.

74 Ibid.

75 Richard Shaw, Dagger John: the unquiet life and times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York (New York, NY, 1977), pp. 302–3; James Quinn, John Mitchel (Dublin, 2008), pp. 59–60.

76 Kenny, American Irish, pp. 124–5.

77 For more on Purcell see McCann, M. A., ‘The most reverend John Baptist Purcell, D.D., Archbishop of Cincinnati (1800–1883)’, Catholic Historical Review, 6, (1920), pp. 172–99Google Scholar; Hussy, M. E., ‘The 1878 financial failure of Archbishop Purcell’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, 36, (1978), pp. 6–41Google Scholar.

78 R. V. Comerford, ‘Churchmen, tenants, and independent opposition, 1850–1856’, in W. E. Vaughan, ed., A new history of Ireland: Ireland under the Union, 1800–1870 (9 vols., Oxford, 1989), v, pp. 413–14.

79 Belchem, ‘Republican spirit and military science’, p. 48.

80 D'Arcy, The Fenian movement, p. 225; Takagami, Shin-ichi, ‘The Fenian rising in Dublin, March 1867’, Irish Historical Studies, 29, (1995), pp. 340–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Rowcroft to Crampton, 9 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/26/encl. 1.

82 Christine Kinealy, Repeal and revolution: 1848 in Ireland (Manchester, 2009), p. 246.

83 Crampton to Rowcroft, 14 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/28/encl. 1.

84 Rowcroft to Crampton, 17 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/28/encl. 2; Rowcroft to Crampton, 18 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/28/encl. 3.

85 Ramón, A provisional dictator, pp. 63–4.

86 Rowcroft to Crampton, 30 Oct. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/31/encl. 1.

87 Rowcroft to Crampton, 19 Nov. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/33/encl. 1.

88 Times, 25 Oct. 1855; Royle, Crimea, p. 388.

89 Rowcroft to Crampton, 19 Nov. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/33/encl. 1.

90 Rowcroft to Crampton, 26 Nov. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/34/encl. 1.

91 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 15 Dec. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/35.

92 Clarendon to Palmerston, 1 Nov. 1855, BP, GC/CL/719/1–2.

93 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 9 Jan. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/5.

94 Rowcroft to Crampton, 3 Aug. 1855, TNA, FO 5/629/20/encl. 2.

95 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 9 Jan. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/5.

96 Limerick Chronicle, 13 Feb. 1856.

97 Times, 1 Feb. 1856; Nation, 2 Feb. 1856.

98 Brian Griffin, ‘Irish Identity and the Crimean War’, in Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton, eds., War: identities in conflict, 1300–2000 (Stroud, 1998), p. 113; Richard Davis, Revolutionary imperialist: William Smith O'Brien, 1803–1864 (Dublin, 1998), p. 324.

99 Official Correspondence, 14 Aug. 1855, Dublin, National Library of Ireland (NLI), Larcom papers, MS 7515.

100 United States vs. W. G. Halpin, D. Reidy, E. Kenifeck, S. Lumsden et al. (Cincinnati, OH, 1856).

101 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 30 Jan. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/10.

102 Rowcroft to Crampton, 6 Feb. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/13/encl. 2.

103 Marcy to Buchanan, 28 Dec. 1855, Papers relative to recruiting, p. 151.

104 Clarendon to Palmerston, 25 Sept. 1855, BP, GC/CL/697.

105 Clarendon to Palmerston, 30 Jan. 1856, BP, GC/CL/792.

106 Clarendon to Rowcroft, 14 Feb. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/4.

107 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 10 Mar. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/21.

108 LaFeber, American Age, p. 133.

109 T. M. Roberts and D. W. Howe, ‘The United States and the revolutions of 1848’, in R. J. W. Evans and H. P. von Strandmann, eds., The revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849: from reform to reaction (Oxford, 2000), pp. 157–79.

110 Sewell, M. J., ‘Rebels or revolutionaries? Irish-American nationalism and American diplomacy, 1865–1885’, Historical Journal, 29, (1986), pp. 723–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 724.

111 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 29 Mar. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/24.

112 Royle, Crimea, p. 486.

113 Crampton to Crampton, 10 Mar. 1856, Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Crampton papers, 4176–80/645.

114 Rowcroft to Crampton, 21 Mar. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/23/encl. 2.

115 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 29 Mar. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/24.

116 Jewett to Messrs Taft, Key & Perry, 5 Apr. 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/27/encl. 1.

117 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, pp. 566–7.

118 Clarendon to Palmerston, 4 June 1856, BP, GC/CL/879.

119 Rowcroft to Clarendon, 9 July 1856, TNA, FO 5/653/45.

120 Times, 11 Oct. 1856, 29 July 1858.

121 Conacher, ‘The enlistment crisis’, p. 551.

122 Dowty, Limits of American isolation, p. 245.

123 Clarendon to Palmerston, 25 May 1856, BP, GC/CL/877/1–2.

124 James Chambers, Palmerston: ‘the people's darling’ (London, 2005), p. 417.

125 Thomas Keneally, The great shame: a story of the Irish in the old world and the new (London, 1999), p. 280.

126 Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and exiles: Ireland and the Irish exodus to North America (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1985), p. 334; Belchem, ‘Republican spirit and military science’, p. 63.

127 Doyle Reports (Phoenix in America), p. 5, NLI, Larcom papers, MS 7697.

128 Miller, Emigrants and exiles, p. 338.

129 Report of the trial of William G. Halpin for treason-felony, November 1867 (Dublin, 1868).