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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2010

LAURENCE FENTON
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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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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).