"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater: St. Louis, 1865

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater: St. Louis, 1865Author(s): Jack MorganSource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 24-37Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20646248 .

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Jack Morgan

'The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?

St. Louis, 1865

St. Louis's Calvary Cemetery, north of Interstate 70, near the airport, is best

approached from the east along 70, avoiding some of the more dangerous

neighborhoods. Like the old nineteenth-century Roman Catholic cemeteries of

many American cities, this one is now surrounded by derelict areas of poverty and crime. Calvary testifies to a time when American currency had gravitas and even German, Italian, and Irish immigrants were buried beneath what, com

pared to today's meager markers, were "polished white mansions of stone" as

the song "Maggie" puts it. In Calvary, opulent memorials abound, and a variety of Victorian grave motifs?heartbroken sculpted angels and forlorn stone

dogs?brood over the departed of a hundred years ago. One climbs marble stairs and enters the pillared building near Calvary's

main gate to enquire after the burial site of Henry O'Clarence McCarthy. The

office's computer brings up: McCarthy, Henry O'Clarence, Interment 3 Sep tember 1865, Section 9, Lot 269G?buried in a plot with his mother, Isabella

McCarthy. The staff provides a photocopied map, the relevant plot circled, and

the route in red traced along the Way of Nazareth, the Way of the Penitent, the

Way of the Good Shepherd, and so on, to Section 9. The plot is there, but there are no graves, only trimmed grass. Not even a

suggestion of the small monument indicated in the old cemetery records.

Back at the offices, the dominant speculation among those on duty is that

the markers were of sandstone and have worn away, but they offer the phone number of a priest who is an unofficial cemetery historian. Reached the next

day, he can offer only the same theory, that perhaps the gravestones have worn

away. Was McCarthy an ancestor of yours? No?an Irish nationalist, a Fenian

who died in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1865 and whose St. Louis funeral reportedly drew twenty thousand Irish and provoked a major controversy?Archbishop Kenrick at first refusing to grant him burial in Calvary Cemetery. Interesting, the priest remarks. Leave a number; he will check into it and, if he learns any

thing, will phone. No call ever comes, though.

NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW/lRIS EIREANNACH NUA, 2:4 (GEIMHREADH/ WINTER, 1998), 24-37



"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St. Louis, JS65

McCarthy's funeral triggered a dispute that was part of the larger falling-out be

tween the Irish nationalist cause and the Irish and American Roman Catholic

hierarchy during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Born in Morris County, New Jersey, in 1839, and a graduate of St. Marys College Delaware, McCarthy had worked as a journalist in New York, becoming renowned as an Irish na

tionalist newspaper voice. He later became a Fenian activist, speaker, and orga nizer of some repute and rose to a position second only to O'Mahoney's in

United States Fenian circles. His death in St. Paul, in late August of 1865 occa

sioned what was in many ways a replay of the earlier, more famous church-Fen

ian contretemps surrounding the Terrence Bellew McManus funeral in Dublin

in 1861, which itself was a reverberation of the events of 1848. Midwestern Fen

ian circles were no doubt emboldened, in fact, by the propaganda success of the

McManus funeral and had it very much in mind when they confronted the

powerful Irish-born archbishop of St. Louis four years after the Dublin funeral.

Archbishop Kenrick played a role in the McCarthy affair akin to the one played

by Dublin's Cardinal Cullen in the McManus affair.

When Terrence Bellew McManus died in San Francisco in January of 1861, the Fenian circle in that city decided that he should be returned to Ireland for

burial as an honored 1848 exile. The McManus funeral party journeyed across

the United States, serving as a rallying point for Irish nationalist groups in key cities along the route to New York. There the Fenian Brotherhood took charge of the funeral arrangements when McManus's body arrived on September 15, 1861. Thomas Francis Meagher had been delegated in advance to meet with

Archbishop Hughes regarding arrangements for a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathe

dral.1 A prelate of greater Irish nationalist sympathies than many, Hughes had, for example, justified the uprising of 1848.2 In addition, McManus hailed from

the same town in Ireland as the archbishop.3 Hughes was cooperative, and the

body was escorted to St. Patrick's by a police detachment, a band, and ten mem

bers from each company of the 69th Regiment. Once there, the funeral Mass was said, Hughes delivering a pro-Fenian sermon. This gesture endeared

Hughes to many American Fenians as an exception to the generally reactionary character of the American church, despite the archbishop's bitter editorial con

frontation in 1854 with John Mitchel. Through the pages of his Citizen, Mitchel

had then tried to read Hughes and the rest of the church out of the ranks of the nationalist cause?ranks, he argued, they had never been a part of anyway. "I mean to say, then, Bishop," he addressed Hughes in one Citizen editorial:

1. William D'Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States 1858-1886 (Washington: Catholic

University of America Press, 1947), p. 19. 2. D'Arcy, p. 4n.

3. D'Arcy, p. i9n.

25



"The Dust ofMaynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St. Louis, 1865

That your Grace, and the whole hierarchy of your Church, and the priesthood

of it, too, so far as the hierarchy can control it, is an enemy of Irishmen, to the

rights, the manhood, the very lives of Irishmen_I accuse them of having twice,

in '98 and '48 delivered over the Catholic people of Ireland.... Therefore no

terms are to be kept with such inveterate and treacherous enemies_Nay more,

that the Irish will be good and loyal citizens of this Republic in the exact pro

portion that they cut themselves off, not from religion, but from that political

corporation you call the church of God.4

While Hughes was willing to separate extreme radical views like these from

those of the later Fenian rank and file, Archbishop Cullen of Dublin was not.

R. F. Foster cautions against categorizing Cullen as an antinationalist pure and

simple, noting the cardinal's personal "anti-English and anti-Protestant pro clivities." But more evident than those proclivities was Cullen's opposition to

Fenianism and his "tirelessly monitoring nationalism for signs of secular im

propriety."5 He had lived thirty-five years outside of Ireland and was out of

touch and out of sympathy with grassroots Irish nationalism. Cullen was keenly aware that James Stephens had "fought in the Red resistance to Louis Napoleons

Coup d'etat in 1851" and claimed that Stephens was an enrolled member of the

Communist Party.6 And, as Meagher noted in his memoirs, Cullen had been

rector of the Irish college in Rome during the Italian revolutionary ferment of

1848 and would later associate the militant Irish Republican movement with

radical leftist groups like the Italian Carbonari.7 "He saw in the Irish Revolu

tionary Brotherhood an Irish adaptation of the secret societies on the continent.

The Fenians attributed his opposition to a malady they called 'Carbonari of the

brain'."8 Nor was such a viewpoint confined to the hierarchy in Ireland, as G. W.

Potter notes:

The 1848 revolutionary upheavals in Ireland started the Catholic Clergy and

press in the United States off on a Red hunt that ran contrary to the almost uni

versal American hope for the triumph of the Kossuths, Mazzinis, and Garibaldis.

"Your European democracy," wrote the Boston Pilot, "is a cut-throat affair, it is

bloodthirsty, it is Red, it is socialist, it only aims to destroy... it is atheistical, it

is devilish, it is criminal perse."9

4. Qtd. in D'Arcy, p. 4.

5. R. R Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 (New York: Penguin, 1988), p. 386. 6. John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel: A Personal Narrative (New York: Young, 1929),

p. 118.



9. George W. Potter, To the Golden Door (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974), p. 554.

26



"The Dust ofMaynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St. Louis, 1863

Foster argues that the United Irishmen, "the vital germ of Irish radicalism, cannot be separated from the general Irish reaction to the French Revolution.

Fashionable Irish people had tended to francophilia... ."10 The Young Irelanders

of the 1840s continued that tradition. While it was politic for nationalists to play down their French and Italian revolutionary sympathies the better to placate the Catholic hierarchy, the more outspoken among them, like Mitchel, were not

at all bashful about it. In his Jail Journal (1854), Mitchel wrote of the cause's

French inspiration during the depths of the Famine:

Every week was deepening the desolation and despair throughout the country;

until at last the French Revolution of February, '48, burst upon Europe. Ireland,

it is true, did not possess the physical resources or the high spirit which had

"threatened the integrity of the Empire" in '43; but even as she was, depopulated,

starved, cowed and corrupted, it seemed better that she should attempt resis

tance ... than lie prostrate and moaning_11

On the other hand, considerable suspicion existed among Fenians re

garding Irish clerical counterrevolutionaries conspiring with Britain. Ac

cording to William D'Arcy, "Clerical opposition they divided into two cate

gories; to the more charitably inclined, 'Father Tom' was dabbling in politics, while to the others he had succumbed to the lure of British gold.12 Moreover, as D'Arcy points out, the Fenians would have been even more convinced of

conspiracy had they been privy to communications like the following?con

taining an apparent reference to the recent Fenian-Kenrick confrontation in

St. Louis?sent from the British consul at Chicago on October 5,1865, to his

embassy in Washington concerning a conversation with Chicago's Bishop

Duggan:

I had occasion to call on the Roman Catholic Bishop, who in the course of con

versation referred to the question [Fenianism], and I found that the informa

tion in his possession was strikingly similar to that which I had gathered myself. He told me that the organization was spreading in Iowa but that it could be met

by as equally strong denunciation by the Roman Catholic clergy there as it had

been in his diocese and at St. Louis and that he believed the organization in

Chicago was effete for evil.13

To the extent they were in collusion though, the Irish and Irish-American

Catholic clergy and the British authorities made uncomfortable and suspicious bedfellows, as Terry Eagleton notes: "With comic inconsistency, the British vil

10. Foster, p. 264. 11. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, ed. Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day, 1991), p. 177. 12. D'Arcy, p. 49.

13. Qtd. in D'Arcy p. 5on.

27



"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St. Louis, 1865

ified Irish Catholics as groveling adherents of Rome, while denouncing them

for ignoring Rome's censure of their political views"14

Cardinal Cullen's refusal to cooperate with the Fenian plans for McManus's

Dublin interment four years earlier set the tone for general church policy in Ire

land and the United States during the decades of Fenian activity. Archbishop

Duggan, for example, threatened to withhold the sacraments from anyone sup

porting or attending the Fenian sponsored Grand Irish National Fair in Chicago in 1864, a fair of which Henry O'Clarence McCarthy was a primary organizer.15

The Chicago Fenian Michael Scanlan remembered the almost universal clerical

resistance the Fenians encountered, noting Bishop Moriarty of Kerry along with

Duggan as two of the most conspicuous anti-Fenians in the Catholic hierarchy:

Bishop Moriarty represented, more or less, every bishop in Ireland save ... the

great MacHale_I cannot call to mind a single Bishop in the United States who

did not re-echo Bishop Duggan's denunciations. In fact, with some rare excep

tions?and those exceptions were mum?the entire Irish hierarchy and priest

hood in the United States and in Ireland followed the example of Chicago and

Kerry.16

It was clear from the start, though, that Cardinal Cullen's resistance was at

odds with a significant body of Irish public opinion. It created a resentment in

the nationalist community that was reflected, for instance, fifty odd years later

in the dinner scene in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist when Mr. Casey refers angrily to the "bishops of Ireland": "Didn't they denounce the fenian movement from

the pulpit and in the confessionbox? And didn't they dishonour the ashes of Ter

rence Bellew MacManus?"17

From the arrival of McManus's funeral party at the port in Cork, the pop ular response to the occasion was ardent. Joseph Denieffe, a member of the fu

neral party, noted that "the enthusiasm was immense, swelling at every step, and

awfully profound." At Tipperary Junction "a solemn scene presented itself. A

great many were kneeling with their heads uncovered. They remained in silence

until the train was about to move, when they all arose . . . and waved a

farewell."18

In Dublin, though crowds welcomed the arrival of McManus's remains, the

body had to be taken to the Mechanic's Institute to lie in state under Fenian

14- Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso, 1995)?

p. 81.

15. Mable Gregory Walker, The Fenian Movement (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1969), p. 30.

16. Qtd. in Joseph Denieffe, A Personal Narrative of the Irish Revolutionary Movement (Shannon:

Irish University Press, 1969), p. 67.

17. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Boston: St. Martin's, 1993), p. 45.

18. Denieffe, pp. 65-66.

28



"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St Louis, 1863

guard, no church in the city being willing to accept it. "Cardinal Cullen's or

ders to that effect," Denieffe wrote, "were carried out to the letter. In vain we

looked for the Saggarth Aroon, but he was nowhere to be seen "19 The solemn

crowds that followed the cortege to Glasnevin cemetery on November 10,1861,

though, were a clear rebuff to the Irish church establishment, and the entire

passage from San Francisco to Dublin was a triumph for the Fenian cause and

popular belief in its strength and organizational ability. As D'Arcy noted, Cullen's denial of a Christian burial for McManus greatly strengthened the Irish

Republican Brotherhood: "In the eyes of the Irish people they became patriots,

persecuted by the Church for their efforts to liberate Ireland."20

The funeral thus made manifest the subtle and often ambiguous dynamic

underlying church-nationalist relations in Ireland: the church attempting to ne

gotiate between its conservative self-interest and popular nationalism, a dy namic that carried over in many ways to the relationship between the church

and the Fenians in the United States. Eagleton compares the position of the Irish

church at the time to that of the modern trade-union movement:

Like the trade union, the Church was forced to collude with an authority it took

a dim view of, for the purpose of advancing its own interests; but by the same

token it could be led to defy it, not least when it was pressed from below by a

militancy it needed to placate.21

If Irish nationalists were influenced and encouraged by French radicalism, a more deeply seated influence upon Irish culture?and arguably upon Irish

American culture in the longer run?came, ironically enough, from the French

political right through the vehicle of St. Patrick's College, the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, County Kildare. Founded in 1795 and funded by London, this

institution twelve miles out of Dublin had long been the focus of nationalist

misgivings about the church's political independence. The suspicion was that

Westminster had in mind the cultivation of a docile, provincial clergy home

grown under the British thumb. Even The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 so char

acterized it: "... The British Government was glad of an opportunity to with

draw young Irish ecclesiastics as far as possible from the revolutionary influences to which they were exposed on the Continent."22 In his study The

Irish, Sean O'Faolain argues that Maynooth provides the key to understanding the development of a politically conservative and arguably crypto-loyalist Catholic clergy in Ireland.

19- Denieffe, p. 66.

20. D'Arcy, p. 19.

21. Eagleton, p. 79.

22. The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1911), X:Sj,

29




In 1795, the year of Maynooth's foundation, there were a great many French

refugee professors and teachers to whom any haven, the most frugal pension,

would have been welcome. This suited Maynooth perfectly, for it was a rich

foundation, and, as one may imagine, Ireland (just emerging from the Penal

Code) was in no position to supply it with sufficient native scholars. It gave posts to several of these distinguished men, such as Delahogue and Anglade for moral and dogmatic theology, thereby importing a French school of thought_For nearly half a century.... through their hatred of the Revolutionary spirit... they

filled the mind of most Irish priests... with the traditional Gallican belief that all things, even many of the privileges of the Church, must lie in servile subjec tion to the throne_23

This ideology, O'Faolain notes, remained dominant until at least the 1850s, by which time it "had been carried through the length and breadth of Ireland by

priests educated under the old regime."24 When Sheridan LeFanu late in life brought together a collection of his sto

ries, he presented them as the Purcell Papers, documents collected by an Irish

rural priest and antiquarian, Father Francis Purcell. LeFanu felt obligated to jus

tify the fictional priest's intellectualism, however, by explaining in a note that

this clergyman's continental education antedated the rise of Maynooth:

To such as may think the composing of such productions as these inconsistent

with the character and habits of a country priest, it is necessary to observe, that

there did exist a race of priests?those of the old school, a race now nearly ex

tinct?whose education abroad tended to produce in them tastes more literary than have yet been evidenced by the alumni of Maynooth.25

In this period, when the provincialism implied in this note held sway at

Maynooth, were trained the cadre of men who later founded and ruled the

Roman Catholic church in the major American cities and, in many ways, set the tone for the nascent Irish-American culture in the United States.

The major Fenian nemeses in Ireland and the United States, men willing to

defy rank and file Irish political sentiment?Kenrick in St. Louis and Moriarty in Kerry, for example?were Maynooth products. As mentors of a later gener ation?the anti-Fenian Duggan of Chicago served first under Kenrick in

St. Louis?they espoused the kind of social conservatism that led to the entre

preneurial hierarchy and clerical rotarianism that came to characterize the Irish

dominated American Catholic church.26 Thanks to Maynoothism, for a long

23. Sean O'Faolain, The Irish: A Character Study (New York: Devin Adair, 1949), p. 117.

24. O'Faolain, p. 118.

25. Qtd. in Victor Sage, Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (New York: St. Martini, 1988),

pp. 40-41.

26. There were of course exceptions to the general anti-Fenian stance adopted by the American

Catholic hierarchy. Individual priests were often less censorious. Father Edward O'Flaherty of

30



"The Dust of Maynooth**: Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St. Louis, 1865

time a prudential, accommodationist social policy prevailed in the American

hierarchy and led to spectacular organizational and financial successes, as well

as to such real accomplishments as the construction of an independent educa

tional system from grade school through university. The cost to the church's es

sential intellectual and moral fiber, however, was another matter.

In the United States, Fenian circles took note of the McManus funeral's success as political theatre in their 1865 funeral-centered confrontation with

Kenrick, the archbishop of St. Louis, who shared Cullen's adamant anti-Fenian

sentiments and general conservatism. The seriousness of the St. Louis con

frontation at the time is evident in the biographical profile of Kenrick set forth in J. Thomas Scharf's History of St Louis City and County (1883), which identi

fies the three great crises of Archbishop Kenrick's administration as "the cholera

epidemic of 1849, the Civil War, and the Fenian agitation of 1849."27 Born in Dublin in 1806, Kenrick worked in his father's scrivener's office for

years during several of which James Clarence Mangan was one of his cowork ers. He was ordained in Dublin after five years study at Maynooth and, in 1833,

following the death of his mother, went to the United States where his older

brother, Francis Patrick, was already a bishop in Philadelphia. In 1840, now president of the seminary and rector of the cathedral in

Philadelphia, Kenrick met St. Louis's Bishop Rosati in Rome. The latter, im

pressed with Kenrick's qualities, which by then included a significant body of

theological scholarship, urged the Holy See to appoint Kenrick his coadjutor in St. Louis, which was done. Kenrick was consecrated a bishop and succeeded

Rosati shortly thereafter when the latter died while on a trip to Haiti in 1843.

Through his business savvy, Kenrick soon had the diocese's financial affairs, for

merly in serious disarray, in order, and St. Louis became an archdiocese under

Kenrick in 1847. As an archbishop, Kenrick gained a reputation as "one of the

foremost <Americanizers' of the Church" as well as one who "discouraged inor

dinate ties with the 'old country' and set an example of sterling [American] pa triotism."28 One of Kenrick's many ecclesiastical accomplishments was the

founding of Calvary Cemetery, a site that figured prominently in his later battle

with the Fenians. It was there that the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)

planned to bury Henry O'Clarence McCarthy, and with as much pomp and cir

cumstance as possible.

Crawfordsville, Indiana, for example, was an active and unapologetic Fenian and an aide and

envoy of John O'Mahoney's. Indiana was in fact a particularly active Fenian state, indeed at one

time the "banner state" of Fenianism. D'Arcy, p. 23.

27. J. Thomas Scharf, History of St. Louts City and County, from the Earliest Period to the Present

Day, with Biographical Sketches of Famous Men (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1883), p. 1644. 28. Ernest Kirschten, Catfish and Crystal (Garden City: Doubleday, i960), p. 121. Kenrick was also

a leading member of the minority opposed to the doctrine of papal infallibility at the Vatican

31




The matter began quietly enough with an announcement in the Missouri

Republican of August 30,1865 of a Fenian leader's death near Minneapolis five

days earlier. The piece noted that McCarthy was "Deputy Head Centre" of the

Fenian Brotherhood and president of the Central Council at the time of his

death.

He had repaired to Minnesota with the hope that the climate would relieve him of a pulmonary disease contracted during a lecture tour for the order of which

he was so prominent a member. The remains were taken in charge by his brother,

to be conveyed to St. Louis for interment near the grave of his mother.29

McCarthy had been appointed deputy head center of the American Fenian

Brotherhood in 1863, at the insistence of James Stephens and to satisfy a Fen

ian faction interested in checking somewhat John O'Mahoney's powers as head

center. McCarthy appears to have been consistently a Stephens supporter and a

representative of that wing's interests in the United States?even to the extent

of reputedly being a party to a conspiracy, along with Illinois activists Michael

Scanlan and Peter Dunne, to overthrow O'Mahoney.30

McCarthy was highly regarded in Fenian circles. John Devoy recounts being told by American Fenian leaders that if McCarthy had lived, there would have

been no split in the IRB in the United States and that he would have eventually moved into O'Mahoney's position. "I met him in Dublin," Devoy wrote, "and

he impressed me as a very clear-headed man...." 31 Another Fenian described

McCarthy as one "of those enthusiastic Irish youths who seem to live, move and

have their being in the memories of Sarsfield, Emmet, Fitzgerald, [and] Tone."32

McCarthy traveled to Ireland to raise money for the 1844 Chicago Fenian Fair

and persuaded Stephens to attend it, promising that the fair's proceeds would

go to the Stephens faction of the IRB* in Ireland. The pair returned to the United

States and traveled together from New York to Chicago.33 A zealous Fenian

Council of 1870, voting "non placet" on all ballots. In James Joyce's story "Grace" in Dubliners,

Kenrick may be one of those churchmen whom Fogarty has conflated in recalling the last hold

outs against the doctrine: "I thought it was some Italian or American." Fogarty wrongly ascribes

the dramatic accession "Holy Father, I believe" to John MacHale of Tuam, as many apocryphal

things were ascribed to the beloved MacHale in the Irish folk tradition. It was in fact Fitzgerald of

Little Rock, Arkansas, who spoke this credo at the assembly. But Kenrick was the more famous

opponent of the new doctrine, issuing a pamphlet in opposition while in Rome and acceding pub

lically and unconditionally only on his return to St. Louis.

29. The Missouri Republican, 30 August 1865, p. 2. c.3.

30. Walker, pp. 35-36.

31. Devoy, p. 58.

32. Qtd. in Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New

York: Oxford University Presses), p. 551.

33. Walker, p. 29.

32




fundraiser, McCarthy brought back for the 1844 fair "a large assortment of

prizes, harps, old battle flags, old books and letters, weapons belonging to Wolfe

Tone, Emmet, Fitzgerald and other Irish heroes "34

McCarthy's central role in the American Fenian movement and his close

ness to Stephens is evidenced by the fact that he alone was in possession of a se

cret Paris address to which large sums for the IRB were to be sent. During the

"final call" crisis in August and September, 1865, there was significant funding confusion because McCarthy had just died with secret money routing infor

mation. The American brotherhood

was making strenuous efforts to make the "final call* a huge financial success.

According to O'Mahoney, within two weeks after its issuance ?6000 were for

warded to Ireland. The money was sent but was immediately seized by the

British authorities. O'Mahoney sent the money to addresses in Dublin furnished

him by Stephens. He was unaware of the addresses in Paris to which sums ex

ceeding ?1000 sterling were to be sent. These addresses were known only to

Henry O'C. McCarthy, who died during the summer of i865.35

When plans for McCarthy's interment in St. Louis appeared in the Republican of August 30 announcing that the deceased would be interred at Cavalry Ceme

tery after a funeral mass at St. Patrick's Church, the archbishop's reaction was

immediate; he issued the following edict the next day:

to the roman catholics of st. louis: The undersigned has read in the Re

publican of this morning an announcement of a funeral to take place next Sun

day from St. Patrick's church, in this city, of a deceased member of the Fenian

Brotherhood, who died at St. Paul, Minn., on the 24th instant_The connec

tion of St. Patrick's church, where the religious service is announced as to take

place... imposes on me the obligation of forbidding, as I have done, the pastor

of that church to permit any funeral service or other religious ceremony to take

place on that occasion. I have furthermore directed the superintendent of the

Calvary Cemetery not to admit any procession of men and women bearing in

signia of Fenianism within the gate of the cemetery. I use this occasion to state

publicly... that the members of the Fenian Brotherhood, men or women, are

not admissible to the sacraments of the church as long as they are united with that association_36

What particulary raised the ire of the Fenian community, however, were

concluding remarks in Kenrick's communication, which they viewed as having a tenor clearly sympathetic to Britain. He referred to the Fenians as an organi zation that he had always regarded as "immoral in its object, the exciting of re

34- D'Arcy, p. 39

35. D'Arcy, p. 72.

36. The Missouri Republican, 31 August 1865, p. 2, c.5.

33




bellion in Ireland, and unlawful and unlegal in its means, a quasi military or

ganization in this country while at peace with England... ." Kenrick's remarks were unqualified, showing no deference to Irish nationalism of any stripe. They stand in contrast to the archbishop of Cincinnati's anti-Fenian declaration later

the same year affirming that "Finally. I love Ireland, I desire its independence, I

deplore its sad fate for the last three hundred years, especially under the galling

yoke of England's injustice... and tyranny."37 Kenrick's edict, on the other hand, declared Fenianism immoral in its "ob

ject" and placed him among the most reactionary Catholic clerical leadership. Indeed, the edict confirmed the adamant rhetoric and diction of Chicago's Bishop Duggan in an earlier meeting with American Fenian leaders interested

in reaching an understanding with the church. When the committee asked what

it might do to overcome the bishop's objections to the organization, Duggan an

swered, "Give up your object." The committee replied: "But our object is the In

dependence of Ireland," and his answer was: "I have said you must give it up."38 John Rutherford notes that there had been four papal documents relating to "se cret societies" from 1738 to 1825. Addressed primarily to the Italian Carbonari

and to Freemasonry, they were brought to bear against Fenianism in the 1850s.

... As the Fenians had been denounced from certain altars in America, as well

as from most altars in Ireland, by order of certain American bishops, a good

many recruits were deterred from joining_The stronger-minded, however,

could find enough in the documents leveled at secret societies to satisfy them

selves that Fenianism had been wrongly denounced_For instance, the earlier

documents had made various mistakes concerning the Freemasons; and Feni

anism had been denounced as akin to Freemasonry, which it was not.39

From the start, the St. Louis dispute took on the character of the McManus

confrontation?an intransigent churchman at odds with a significant body of

popular Irish sentiment. The publicity-conscious Fenians recognized right away that, after the fashion of the McManus funeral, the situation presented excel

lent propaganda possibilities. McManus's funeral had been a striking success

for Stephens and, especially, for the Fenians' American wing, whose project it

initially was. An American representative had, in fact, been given the honor of

delivering the funeral oration, and popular support for the Irish Republican Brotherhood soared in Ireland afterward:

37. John Rutherford, The Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy, Vol. 1 (London: Keegan-Paul,

1877), p. 222. Rutherford's book is an anti-Fenian work, but offers some valuable details on the

church-Brotherhood antagonism and on other aspects of the Fenian movement,

38. Devoy, p. 119.

39. Rutherford, p. 218.

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"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater?St Louis, 1865

From the time of the McManus funeral Stephens's organization in Ireland began

to flourish. Though referred to mysteriously rather in the same sort of way as

people spoke of the fairies, it came eventually to be known popularly, from as

sociation with the open Brotherhood in the States, as "the Fenians."40

One of American Fenianism's primary coups in connection with the McCarthy funeral was its adroit drawing in of Archbishop Hughes as the Brotherhood's

white knight among the American clergy. The Brotherhood took full propa

ganda advantage of Hughes's cooperation during the McManus funeral party*s New York stop. Archbishop Hughes was not the unequivocal Fenian supporter, as the Brotherhood implied, but he did cherish greater nationalist sympathies than was typical in the American church hierarchy. He later visited Ireland dur

ing the American Civil War, and according to Rutherford's account, he

... did not conceal his object; it was to recruit [for] the armies of the Northern

States of America-The I.R.B. gave the words of the Archbishop such an in

terpretation as suited themselves. According to them, the Archbishop intended

Irishmen trained in the American armies to fight ultimately for the indepen dence of Ireland. There was much in the antecedents of the Archbishop?no

tably his conduct during the [McManus] funeral?to harmonize with this in

terpretation.41

The length of time between McCarthy's death and his interment?August 24 to September 3?suggests that the Brotherhood had another cause celebre like

the McManus one in view from the start and may have viewed Kenrick's re

sponse, an echo of Cullen's in Dublin, as playing into their hands. They would

march victoriously to St. Louis's Calvary Cemetery in defiance of a powerful church leader just as they had marched to Glasnevin four years earlier. The

Brotherhood knew well the potential of the strong wave of Irish nationalism in

the United States at the close of the Civil War. An editorial in The Missouri Dem ocrat of September 1,1865 titled "The Fenians in Ferment," was laced with notes

of personal contempt for Kenrick. Nevertheless, the editorial deferred to Ken

rick's ecclesiastical powers and noted that Kenrick's withholding of the sacra

ments from the Fenians had put devout local Roman Catholics in a quandary:

The publication yesterday of a document signed "[cross] Peter Richard" threw the Fenian Fraternity into a big excitement. This Peter Richard seems to be a man

of mark, as he always puts a mark [cross] before his name, and talks as one hav

ing authority. He has authority in fact, being The Most Reverend Archbishop of the Catholic Church. His authority, of course, will be respected by all good

40. Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicol

son, 1972) P- 315.

41. Rutherford, p. 286.

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Catholics_Protestant Fenians will, of course, feel no alarm at this fulmina

tion of [cross] Peter Richard, but as the vast majority of the Brotherhood or Sis terhood are Irish Catholics, the injunctions of the Archbishop cannot be disre

garded. The publication of the document alluded to threw a gloom over the entire Fenian community of the city.42

The next day, St. Louis newspapers carried details of the proposed funeral

from the parade route to the interment, but no mention was made of a fu

neral mass at St. Patrick's or elsewhere.43 An agreement had evidently been

worked out, however, between the Fenian leadership and representatives of

the archbishop whereby burial would indeed be in Calvary Cemetery on Sep tember 3, but no Fenian banners, armbands, and so forth would be worn

within the cemetery gates. The day following the funeral, The Missouri De mocrat reported the previous day's "immense funeral procession" under the

heading "The Dust of Maynooth."

Preparations had been made for one of the greatest pageants ever witnessed in

the United States, and not withstanding the recent fulminations of Archbishop

Kenrick, declaring the objects of the Brotherhood to be "immoral" and denying to its members the sacraments of the Church, the demonstration was immense

in numbers and unchecked in enthusiasm.44

The "Dust of Maynooth" headline reflected the recurrent theme of James J. McBride's funeral oration delivered at St. Louis's Mozart Hall?perforce a sec

ular venue, just as in Dublin McManus's remains had had to lie in state at

Mechanics Hall in lieu of Dublin's St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. The McBride ora

tion was printed in its entirety by the two major St. Louis papers. The speech

sought to isolate the Maynooth element in the church?Cullen, Kenrick,

Duggan, et al.?to circumscribe it as a distinct reactionary grouping distin

guishable from the democratic mainstream represented by churchmen com

paratively sympathetic to the Fenians like Archbishops Hughes and McHale and

Fathers Edward O'Flaherty and Patrick Lavelle 45

Without naming Kenrick, McBride's oration took the Archbishop to task for

his virtual excommunication of the Fenian membership. "What, shall the Poles, the Germans, the French and the people of every clime be exempt from the

anathema of the church... and the Irish alone be damned for their patriotism?" McBride demanded. Addressing the sometimes vague papal pronouncements

42. The Missouri Democrat, 1 September 1865, p. 2.

43. See, for example, "Funeral Programme of H. O'Clarence McCarthy, D.H.C. Fenian

Brotherhood in America," The Missouri Republican, 2 September 1865, p. 4.,c.3. No funeral Mass is

mentioned.

44. The Missouri Democrat, 4 September 1865, p. 2.

45. Kee,p.i8.

36




censuring political agitation against "legitimate" governments, McBride recalled

as well the Confederacy in the American Civil War just concluded:

Where were the ecclesiastical thunderbolts when thousands upon thousands of

the Catholic citizens of this country flocked to the standard of revolt, and

valiantly upheld it during the four years war just passed? What prelate's decree interdicted these rebels against a just, wise and humane government? Why was

not the penalty of exclusion from "communion with the faithful" denounced

against the Polish societies lately so numerous in this country, and whose ob

jects and means were exactly similar to our own?... Why this tender, this most

strange and suspicious regard for England? ... Why this brotherly fear for the

safety of England's crown?

McBride's echoing of Kenrick's recent diction characterizing the brotherhood as "immoral in its object" and "unlawful and unlegal in its means" would have been starkly clear to the funeral throng. The archbishop's words were invoked

in further bitter irony later in McBride's speech when he referred to a New York mass meeting during the Famine to collect money for arms that were

avowedly to be used in "stirring up insurrection" in Ireland_The object of the

meeting was terribly "immoral." The means used were "illegal and unlawful" be

cause in violation of the neutrality laws with England with whom we were then

at peace.

In a final obvious reference to Kenrick's Maynooth education, McBride noted that

"a large number of America's best and greatest men attended that meeting. Foremost amongst them all, was Archbishop Hughes, the sole of whose feet had never been stained by the dust of Maynooth."

The September 5 edition of the Sr. Louis Daily Press, the city's most identi

fiably Irish newspaper, reflected the depth and emotion of anti-Kenrick senti ment surrounding the funeral in the following statement: "Many a man went

to that cemetery a better Catholic than Fenian and returned a better Fenian than

Catholic if the two are incompatible, which we do not believe."46

Thus, the confrontation at the McManus funeral in Dublin in November of 1861 was oddly repeated in the McCarthy funeral in Saint Louis in September of 1865, and the old nationalist-Maynooth enmity reignited before thousands in a mid

western American city. Once the deputy head center of the American Fenian

Brotherhood, Henry O'Clarence McCarthy receives little mention today, even in

Fenian histories, and we are left with a century of wind, rain, and snow as the

only explanation for there being no trace of his grave in Calvary cemetery.

0^ UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, ROLLA

46. St. Louis Daily Press, 5 September 1865, p. 4, c.3-4.

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"The Dust of Maynooth": Fenian Funeral as Political Theater: St. Louis, 1865

Documents

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