Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Thomas D'Arcy McGee (13 April 1825 – 7 April 1868) was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was an Irish Catholic who opposed British rule in Ireland, and was part of the Young Ireland attempts to overthrow British rule and create an independent Irish Republic. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism, Anti-Catholicism, and Classical Liberalism. McGee became intensely monarchistic in his political beliefs and in his religious support for the embattled Pope Pius IX.

For the Quebec riding, see D'Arcy-McGee.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Member of the Canadian Parliament
for Montreal West
In office
24 September 1867 – 7 April 1868
Preceded byRiding established
Succeeded byMichael Patrick Ryan
Personal details
Born(1825-04-13)13 April 1825
Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland
Died7 April 1868(1868-04-07) (aged 42)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Manner of deathAssassination (gunshot wound)
Political partyLiberal-Conservative
RelativesFrank Charles McGee (great-nephew)
Signature

He moved to the Province of Canada in 1857 and worked hard to convince fellow Irish Canadians to cooperate with Canadian Protestants in forming a self-governing Canada within the British Empire. His passion for Confederation garnered him the title: 'Canada's first nationalist'.[1] McGee also vocally denounced the activities of the Fenian Brotherhood, a paramilitary secret society of exiled Irish Republicans who resembled his younger self politically, in Ireland, Canada, and the United States. McGee succeeded in helping achieve Confederation in 1867, but was assassinated by the Fenian Brotherhood, which considered McGee guilty of Shoneenism, in 1868. Montreal Fenian Brotherhood member Patrick J. Whelan was convicted of McGee's murder and executed.

Early life

Widely known as D'Arcy McGee, he was born on 13 April 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland, and raised as a Roman Catholic. From his mother, the daughter of a Dublin bookseller he learned the history of Ireland, which later influenced his writing and political activity. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Wexford,[2] where his father, James McGee, was employed by the Irish coast guard (then under His Majesty's Coastguard and likely at the Wexford Town Station near Customs House Quay.[3]

In Wexford he attended a local hedge school, where the teacher, Michael Donnelly, fed his hunger for knowledge and where he learned of the long history of British rule and Irish opposition, including the more recent uprising of 1798. In 1842 at age 17, McGee left Ireland with his sister due to a poor relationship with their stepmother, Margaret Dea, who had married his father in 1840 after the death of his mother 22 August 1833. In 1842 he sailed from Wexford harbour aboard the brig Leo, bound for the United States. On the Leo he wrote many of his early poems, mostly about Ireland.[4]

He soon found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoe's Boston Pilot, a Catholic newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts. He specialized in articles expounding the movement for Irish self-determination led by Daniel O’Connell. He became the lead editor in 1844, While writing widely as well on Irish literature and politics. He advocated the union of Canada into the United States, saying, "Either by purchase, conquest, or stipulation, Canada must be yielded by Great Britain to this Republic."[5]

In 1845, he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited The Nation, the voice of the Young Ireland movement. In 1847, he married Mary Theresa Caffrey; they had six children but only two daughters survived their father. His involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped disguised as a priest and returned to the United States.[6]

United States

In the United States, he achieved prominence in Irish-American circles and founded and edited the New York-based Nation and the Boston-based American Celt. He also wrote a number of history books. In common with several other Young Ireland émigrés, McGee espoused proslavery thought and defended the continuation of slavery in the United States. In the August 4th, 1849 edition of the Nation, McGee attacked supporters of the abolitionist Daniel O'Connell in the United States, writing that "Their task is to liberate their slaves, not to travel across the Atlantic for foreign objects of sympathy."[7]

McGee eventually grew disillusioned with democracy, republicanism and the United States. Historian David Gerber traces a dramatic transformation from the Young Ireland revolutionary who sought a peasant insurrection to expel the British from Ireland. Gerber writes:

After 1851, however, he veered increasingly toward the opposite pole, espousing an ultramontane conservatism.... Catholic dogma and triumphalism, anti-Protestantism, cultural nationalism, and social conservatism were the framework of McGee's thought during the 1850s.[8]

He emigrated to Montreal in 1857, believing Canada was far more hospitable to the Catholic Irish than was the United States. He downplayed the importance of the Orange Order in Canada. He remained a persistent critic of American institutions, and of the American way of life. He accused the Americans of hostile and expansionist motives toward Canada and of desiring to spread its republican ideas over all of North America. McGee worked energetically for continued Canadian devotion to the British Empire seeing in imperialism the protection Canada needed from all American ills.[9]

Canada
A statue of McGee on Parliament Hill, Ottawa

In 1857, he set up the publication of the New Era in Montreal, Quebec. In his editorials and pamphlets he attacked the influence of the Orange Order and defended the Irish Catholic right to representation in the assembly. In terms of economics he promoted modernisation, calling for extensive economic development by means of railway construction, the fostering of immigration, and the application of a high protective tariff to encourage manufacturing. Politically active, he advocated a new nationality in Canada, to escape the sectarianism of Ireland. In 1858, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and worked for the creation of an independent Canada.[10] McGee earned a law degree at McGill University[11] and was called to the bar in 1861.[12]

McGee became the minister of agriculture, immigration, and statistics in the Conservative government which was formed in 1863. He retained that office in the "Great Coalition", and was a Canadian delegate to the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864. At Quebec, McGee introduced the resolution which called for a guarantee of the educational rights of religious minorities in the two Canadas.[13]

Fenians

Moderating his radical Irish nationalist views, McGee denounced the Fenian Brotherhood in America that advocated a forcible takeover of Canada from Britain by the United States. Following the Confederation of Canada, McGee was elected to the 1st Canadian Parliament in 1867 as a Liberal-Conservative representing the riding of Montreal West. However, he had lost much of his Irish Catholic support.

On 5 November 1867 McGee delivered an oration titled "The Mental Outfit of the New Dominion." The address surveyed the literary status of Canada on the eve of the first Dominion Parliament. McGee's views were a combination of Tory principle, revelation, and empirical method. He suggested a national literature inspired by the creativity and ingenuity of the Canadian people.[14]

Assassination

On 7 April 1868, McGee participated in a parliamentary debate that went on past midnight. After finishing, he walked back to the boarding house where he was staying. McGee was opening the door to Mrs. Trotter's Boarding House in Ottawa when he was shot in the head by someone waiting for him on the inside. Several people came running to the scene; however, there was no sign of the assassin.[15] It was later determined that McGee was assassinated with a shot from a handgun by Patrick J. Whelan.[6]

McGee was given a state funeral in Ottawa known to be one of the largest funerals in Canadian history. He was interred in a crypt at the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal. His funeral procession in Montreal drew an estimated crowd of 80,000, out of a total city population of 105,000.[16]

Patrick J. Whelan, a Fenian sympathiser and a Catholic, was accused, tried, convicted, and hanged for the crime on 11 February 1869 in Ottawa. The jury was decisively swayed by the forensic evidence that Whelan's gun had been fired shortly before the killing, together with the circumstantial evidence that he had threatened and stalked McGee. Historian David Wilson points out that forensic tests conducted in 1972 show that the fatal bullet was compatible with both the gun and the bullets that Whelan owned. Wilson concludes:

The balance of probabilities suggests that Whelan either shot McGee, or was part of a hit-squad, but there is still room for reasonable doubt as to whether he was the man who actually pulled the trigger.[17]

Conspiracy theorists questioned his guilt, suggesting that he was a scapegoat for a Protestant plot.[18]

The government of Canada's Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building stands near the site of the assassination.

The case is dramatised in the Canadian play Blood on the Moon by Ottawa actor/playwright Pierre Brault. Patrick J. Whelan was hanged in front of an audience of 5,000 people. The assassination of McGee is also a major component of Away, a novel about Irish immigration to Canada by Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart.

McGee funeral procession in 1868

Impact of the assassination

P. M. Toner argues that the assassination was an important historical marker in Irish-Canadian history. He argues that the Fenian element among the Canadian Catholic Irish was powerful in the 1860s. The reasons for Fenian influence included McGee's failure to rally moderate Irish support before his death, and the fact that no convincing moderate leader replaced McGee after his death.[19]

In addition the Catholic bishops proved unable to control the Fenians in either the US or Canada. A final factor explaining the influence of the Fenians was the courting of the Irish Catholic vote by Canadian non-Catholic politicians. Behind all these reasons was Canadian fear of the 'Green Ghost': American Fenianism. After 1870, the failure of American Fenian raids into Canada, followed by the collapse of American Fenianism, led to the decline of Canadian Fenian power.[20]

Honours
McGee's mausoleum in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, Montreal, 1927

A monument to McGee stands at Tremone Bay, in north County Donegal, Ireland near the bay from which he escaped to North America in 1848.[21] There is a monument to him in his native Carlingford, County Louth, unveiled during a visit in 1991 by former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey. His parents' grave in the grounds of Wexford's historic Selskar Abbey is marked by a plaque presented by the government of Canada.

On 20–22 August 2012, the inaugural Thomas D'Arcy McGee Summer School was held in Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland to commemorate and celebrate his legacy.[22]

On Sparks Street, in downtown Ottawa, the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building is a prominent government-owned office building. D'Arcy McGee's Pub stands on the corner of Sparks and Elgin streets.[23]

McGee also has several schools named in his honour including:

The Quebec provincial electoral district (riding) of D'Arcy-McGee is named in his honour, as well as two villages in central Saskatchewan: D'Arcy and McGee, located approximately 20 kilometres apart.

In 1986, a Chair of Irish Studies was set up in his honour at Saint Mary's University, Halifax. In 2005, the gun that was used to assassinate McGee was purchased at auction for $105,000 by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.[28]

Electoral history
1867 Canadian federal election: Montreal West
Party Candidate Votes
Liberal–ConservativeThomas D'Arcy McGee2,676
LiberalBernard Devlin2,477

References
  1. Gwyn, Richard (2008). John A.: The Man Who Made Us: The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald. Vol. One: 1815–1867. Vintage Canada. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-679-31476-9.
  2. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/12273/1/fulltext.pdf
  3. Demeter, Richard (1997). Irish America: The Historical Travel Guide. Vol. I: United States, Northern Atlantic States, District of Columbia, Great Lakes Region and Canada. Cranford Press. p. 535. ISBN 978-0-9648253-3-8.
  4. Demeter, Richard (1997). Irish America: The Historical Travel Guide. Vol. I: United States, Northern Atlantic States, District of Columbia, Great Lakes Region and Canada. Cranford Press. p. 535. ISBN 978-0-9648253-3-8.
  5. Demeter, Richard (1997). Irish America: The Historical Travel Guide. Vol. I: United States, Northern Atlantic States, District of Columbia, Great Lakes Region and Canada. Cranford Press. p. 535. ISBN 978-0-9648253-3-8.
  6. Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography (3rd ed.). Gill and MacMillan. p. 246. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
  7. Fanning, Bryan (1 November 2017). "Slaves to a Myth". Irish Review of Books (article). 102. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  8. Gerber, David A. (1989). The making of an American pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825–60. University of Illinois Press. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-252-01595-3.
  9. Snell, J. G. (1972). "Thomas D'Arcy McGee and the American Republic". Canadian Review of American Studies. 3 (1): 33–44. doi:10.3138/CRAS-003-01-03. S2CID 154710276.
  10. Skelton (Murphy), Isabel (1925). The Life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Garden City Press. p. 281. OCLC 1015365672.
  11. "The first decades". McGill University. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
  12. Dent, John Charles (1881). The Canadian Portrait Gallery. JB Magurn. p. 146.
  13. Wilson 2011, p. 304
  14. Warkentin, Germaine (1982). "D'Arcy McGee and the Critical Act: A Nineteenth-Century Oration". Journal of Canadian Studies. 17 (2): 119–127. doi:10.3138/jcs.17.2.119. S2CID 152113212.
  15. Slattery, T. P. (1968). The Assassination of D'Arcy McGee. Doubleday Canada. p. 465. OCLC 422290671.
  16. Wilson 2011, pp. 384–385
  17. Wilson, David A. (2015). "The assassination of Thomas Darcy McGee". The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  18. MacNab, Charles (2013). Understanding the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Assassination: a legal and historical analysis. The Stonecrusher Press. pp. 335, 352. ISBN 978-0-9812667-1-8.
  19. Toner, P. M. (1981). "The 'Green Ghost': Canada's Fenians and the Raids". Éire-Ireland. 16 (4): 27–47. When he was hanged, it was in front of 5,000 people and this was also the last time this was done in public in Canada
  20. Toner, P. M. (1981). "The 'Green Ghost': Canada's Fenians and the Raids". Éire-Ireland. 16 (4): 27–47. When he was hanged, it was in front of 5,000 people and this was also the last time this was done in public in Canada
  21. D'Arcy McGee, Thomas (1998). Beattie, Seán (ed.). Thomas D'Arcy McGee: a commemoration 1998: Recalling the escape of D'Arcy McGee to America, September 1848. Lighthouse Publications. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-9520481-4-5.
  22. "8th Annual Thomas D'Arcy McGee Summer School". Dundalk Institute of Technology. 29 July 2019.
  23. "D'Arcy McGee's Irish Pub". Ottawa Tourism and Convention Authority.
  24. "School History and Tradition". Toronto Catholic District School Board.
  25. "Thomas D'Arcy McGee Catholic School". Ottawa Catholic School Board.
  26. "Symmes Junior & D'Arcy McGee High Schools". Western Québec School Board.
  27. "Thomas D'Arcy McGee High School". Faith in Action. Congrégation de Notre-Dame Archives and Marguerite-Bourgeoys Historic Site.
  28. "Museum buys McGee assassination gun". CBC News. 23 May 2005.

Sources
  • Wilson, David A. (2011). Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Volume 2: The Extreme Moderate, 1857–1868. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-3903-7.

Further reading
  • Burns, Robin B. "McGee, Thomas D'Arcy" in Dictionary of Canadian Biography online
  • Burns, Robin B. "D'Arcy McGee and the Fenians: A Study of the Interaction between Irish Nationalism and the American Environment." University Review (1967) 4#3: 260–273. online
  • Kirwin, Bill. "The Radical Youth of a Conservative: D'Arcy McGee in Young Ireland." The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies (1984): 51–62. online
  • Phelan, Josephine. The ardent exile: The life and times of Thos. Darcy McGee (Macmillan Company of Can., 1951).
  • Wilson, David A. Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825–1857, (2007), major scholarly biography, vol 1. online free to borrow
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