Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825-68)

Life

[var. M’Gee; ‘Father of the Canadian Confederation’]; b. 13 April, Carlingford Co. Louth, raised Wexford; lost his mother, purportedly descended from a rebel family in 19798; emig. USA, 1842 [vars. 16 DIB; 17 CAB and DIL], at first lodging with a sister in New Providence; gave an anti-English address to Boston Friends of the Irish on 4th July, and was invited to join The [Boston] Pilot as travelling agent [subscriptions] in New England; lectured on Irish affairs and contrib. 40 articles to the paper; appt. editor of the Pilot, 1844 first editorial appearing on 13 April 1844 [aetat. 19 CAB]; his speeches noted by O’Connell (‘the inspired utterances of a young exiled boy’); offered a post on Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) as parliamentary correspondent and returned to Dublin; joined Young Ireland when the advanced nationalist wing separated from O’Connell’s constitutional Repeal Movement; served as secretary of Irish Confederation and gave the founding address, June 1847; m. Mary Theresa Caffrey, 13 July 1847, with whom five dgs. and a son (only two daughters surviving him); briefly imprisoned for violent speech in Co. Wicklow; became London correspondent for Nation under Gavan Duffy, contrib. verse as ‘Amergin’, ‘Montanus’, ‘Sarsfield’, ‘Gilla-Patrick’, &c.; in Scotland raising support, 1848; escaped to America disguised as priest through offices of Dr. Maginn, Bishop of Derry [CAB err. Maguire];

fnd. The New York Nation on arrival; articles condemning Catholic priesthood in 1848 brought criticism and ruined his papers; moved to Boston and fnd. The American Celt, which became increasingly constitutional; accusations of treachery from Irish-Americans drove him to Buffalo, and thence to New York; came under attack from Thomas Devin Reilly and others; moved to Canada, 1858, settling in Montreal; fnd. New Era; President of the Council of the Legislative Assembly [aka Executive Council], 1862, 1864; Minister of Agriculture, 1867; he led Canada towards Home Rule Dominion status [resulting in N. America Act of 1867]; visited Ireland in 1865 as Canadian representative at Dublin Industrial Exhibition; travelled to Wexford and spoke against physical force nationalist [militancy], denouncing the Fenian raid on Canada; appt. Canadian Commissioner to Paris Exhibition, 1867; received the honour of a public banquet given by Irish Catholics in Canada on St Patrick’s Day, 1868; assassinated by Patrick James Whelan, a Fenian, in Ottawa, 7 April 1868, returning to his lodgings from a late session at the House of Commons; his assassin was tried and executed by hanging; massive procession at funeral service St Patrickְs Church; bur. in a vault in Côte des Neiges Cemetary, Ottawa; a full-size statue commissioned from by George William Hill after a competition was unveiled at northwest of the Library of Parliament, Ottawa, in 1913;

Magee’s chief works in prose were A Gallery of Irish Writers ... of the Seventeenth Century (1846); The Life ... of Art MacMurrough (1847); History of Irish Settlers in North America (1852); A Popular History of Ireland (3 vols. 1862-69) [var. 2 vols.]; and poetry collected as The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1869) - with an introduction and a biographical notice by Mary Sadleir; incls. the oft-echoed poem “The Celts” (‘Beyond the misty space of twice a thousand years / In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race’); the North American journals he founded and conducted incl. Nation (NY, 1848-50), American Celt (Boston, Buffalo, NY, 1850-57), and New Era (Montreal, 1857/8); there is a Thomas D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies at St. Mary’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia; sometimes called the Father of the Confederation [i.e., French and British Canada]. CAB ODNB PI JMC DBIV IF DIW DIB DIH RAF MKA FDA OCIL DIL

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Nine of his poems are given in the “Ireland” volume of Poems of Place, 31 vols. (1876-79), an anthology series edited by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of which Irish poetry occupies the fifth volume. This include “The Goban Saer”, a poem in octavo stanzas commemorating the legendary builder of the edifices of the “Round Towers”, with an introductory allusion to George Petrie’s essay of the same name - available at Bartleby [online].

“The River Boyne”	“To Kilbarron Castle”	“Cathal’s Farewell to the Rye”
“St. Patrick’s First Converts”	“King Malachy & the Poet M’Coisi”	“The Four Masters”
“The Gobhan Saer”	“A Legend of Antrim”	“Feagh M’Hugh”

[ Magee is the subject of an article in the Canadian Dictionary of National Biography - online. ]

Address to the Boston Friends of the Irish: ‘The sufferings which the people of that unhappy country have endured at the hands of a heartless, bigoted, despotic government, are well known to you. Her people are born slaves, and bred in slavery from the cradle; they know not what freedom is.’

He later wrote in the Pilot that ‘Repeal of the Union’ is the Irish for ‘Responsible Government.’ On the position of Canada, he wrote: ‘The United States of North America must necessarily in course of time absorb the Northern British Provinces ... One vast Federal Union will stretch from Labrador to Panama. A river like the St. Lawrence cannot safely be left in European hands ... Either by purchase, conquest, or stipulation, Canada must be yielded by Great Britain to this Republic.’

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Works

Poetry

The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (NY: D&J Sadlier 1869 [1870]), 614pp.
Poems Chiefly Written in America (Nation Office, 1854).

Fiction

Eva MacDonald: A Tale of the United Irishmen (Boston [Pilot] 1844).

Drama

Sebastian, or The Roman Martyr: A Drama Founded on Cardinal Wiseman’s Celebrated Tale of “Fabiola” (NY/Boston/Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier & Co 1861).

Historical & Political Writings

Historical Sketches of O’Connell and his friends ([Boston] q.pub. 1845).
A Popular History of Ireland From the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics [2 vols. in 1] (Glasgow: Cameron & Ferguson [1862]).
Gallery of Irish Writers: The Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: James Duffy 1846), and Do. (NY: Lemma Pub. Corp. 1974), 252pp.
A Memoir of the Life and Conquests of Art MacMurrogh, King of Leinster from A.D. 1377 to A.D. 1417; With some Notices of the Leinster Wars of the 14th Century (Dublin: James Duffy; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1847).
Memoir of Charles Gavan Duffy, Esq. as a Student, Journalist, and Organiser: With Selections from His Poems and Essays (Dublin: W. Hogan 1849), 32pp.
The Catholic History of North America (Boston: P. Donahoe 1855), 239pp.
A History of the Irish Settlers in North America: From the Earliest Period to the Census of 1850 (Boston: P. Donahoe [1851] 1855).
ed., A Life of the Rt. Rev. Edward Maginn: With Selections from his Correspondence (NY: P. O’Shea 1857).
The Present American Revolution: The Internal Condition of the American Democracy Considered, in a Letter from the Hon. Thomas D’Arcy M’Gee, M.P., President of the Executive Council of the Province of Canada, to the Hon. Charles Gavan Duffy, M.P., Minister of Public Lands of the Colony of Victoria (London: Hardwicke 1863).
Speeches and Addresses Chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union (London: Chapman & Hall 1865), 308pp.
Notes on Federal Governments, Past and Present (Montreal: Dawson 1865), 75pp.
The Irish Position in British and in Republican North America: A Letter to the Editors of the Irish Press Irrespective of Party [2nd edn.] (Montreal: M. Longmoore 1866), 45pp.
Charles Murphy, ed., 1825--D’Arcy McGee--1925: A Collection of Speeches and Addresses, Together with a Complete Report of the Centennial Celebration of the Birth of the Honourable Thomas D’Arcy McGee, at Ottawa, April 13th, 1925 (Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada 1937), 366pp.

See also Seán Virgo, ed., Selected Verse of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Exile Editions 2000), 104pp.

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Criticism

D. C. Harvey, Thomas D’Arcy McGee: The Prophet of Canadian Nationality (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba 1923), 30pp.
Isabel M. Skelton, The Life of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Gardenvale, Canada: Garden City 1925).
Alexander Brady, Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada 1925), 182pp.
J. Phelan, The Ardent Exile, The Life and Times of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Toronto: Macmillan 1951) x, 317pp.
A. Brady, Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Toronto: Macmillan 1925).
James Coleman, Bibliography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Dublin: [Bibliographical Society of Ireland] 1925).
J. S. Crone [on McGee], in Irish Book Lover, 15 (1925) [q.p.].
Robin B. Burns, ‘D’Arcy McGee and the Fenians’, in Fenians and Fenianism, ed. Maurice Harmon (Univ. Review 1968), pp.68-81 [see extract].
Norman Vance, ‘Victorian Ireland, Carleton and D’Arcy McGee’, in Irish Literature, A Social History (London: Basil Blackwell 1990), pp.120-64 [Chap. 4].
Michael E. Vance, ‘The Assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Father of the Confederation, April 1868’, in An Nasc, 8 (Summer 1995), pp.11-13 [see extract].
Brian Lambkin, ‘Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Charles Gavan Duffy’s “The Irish Chiefs”: Diasporic Trajectories of a Young Ireland’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 31, 1 [Irish-Canadian Connections / Les liens irlando-canadiens] (Spring 2005), pp.98-107.
David Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy Magee: Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825-1857 (Canada: McGill UP 2008), 448pp. [being Vol. 1; Vol. II: The Extreme Moderate].

The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada, ed, Robert O’Driscoll, 2 vols. (Canada: Celtic Arts 1988)

Chapter: Thomas D’Arcy McGee and the Making of the Canadian Nation

Thomas D’Arcy McGee: Irish Founder of the Canadian Nation [William G. Davis]
From Freedom to Tolerance: D’Arcy McGee, the First Martyr [Robin B. Burns]
Turning the Spit: Timothy Anglin and the Roasting of D’Arcy McGee [William M. Baker]
D’Arcy McGee, Fenianism and the Separate School System in Ontario [Ann Dooley]
Thomas D’Arcy McGee: Turning Points in the Life of a Nationalist [William Kirwin]
Ridgeway, the Fenian Raids and the Making of Canada [Peter Berresford Ellis]
When It Mattered:]
The Linking of the Orange and the Green]
A Linking of the Orange and the Green [Clare Wescott]
The Irish in the War of 1812 [A.E.C. Bredin]
The Orange and the Green with Snow in Between [Hereward Senior]
Who Shall Separate Us? The Montreal Irish and the Great War [Robin B. Burns]
Back in the Old Country: Diary of a Canadian Soldier in Ireland, 1918 [Christopher Cochlan]
The Second World War and the Saga of the Irish Regiment of Canada [Brian Horgan]

Index available at Lycos - online; accessed 24.11.2023; see also under O"Driscoll - infra.

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Commentary
William J. Maguire, Irish Literary Figures, Vol. 1 (1945), Thomas D’Arcy Magee [sic], whose History of Ireland is based largely on Ware’s manuscripts, wrote that he was ‘a great, persevering book-worm, and sincere receiver and transmitter of truth.’

Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama (1936), p. 95, One of the ablest of The Nation’s poets, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who escaped in 1848 with a price on his head, became editor of The Boston Pilot.

Robin B. Burns, ‘D’Arcy McGee and the Fenians’, Maurice Harmon, ed., Fenians and Fenianism (Univ. Review 1968), pp.68-81, By his determined opposition to Fenianism, D’Arcy McGee won a special position as a Canadian hero. ... When he began to attack republicanism and defend the British constitution in Canada, the NY Tribune echoed his theme, ‘The democratic tarantella which Mr McGee used to dance so beautifully has been entirely cured by the jingling of Treasury silver ... we leave him with the galling consolation ... that ... he can always make a speech, upon either side of the question. (Trib., quoted Christian Guardian, 2 Sept. 1863).

Michael E. Vance, ‘The Assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Father of the Confederation, April 1868’, in An Nasc, 8 (Summer 1995), pp.11-13: prints a letter from Alexander McArthur, of Hudson Bay Co. at Manitoba to a sister in Nairn, Scotland: “We have been very much agitated herefor the last ten days about the Assassination at Ottawa of one of our foremost public men the Hon. D’Arcy McGee by a Fenian. … There has been nothing like the excitement here since the Kent Affair or the Fenian Raid or Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. McGee was a warm-hearted genial Irishman with the most be-witching eloquence I ever listened to. There was music in his every word. I never heard any one with a sweeter pronunciation. The words flowed in a continuous stream from his lips. He was well known in Great Britain as he was a prominent rebel (although only 22) in Ireland in 1847-8. He has since been home as a Canadian Cabinet Minister and was held in high esteem by the leading English Statesmen with whom he came in contact. He has changed about a good deal in politics but his has been the result of an ardent poetic temperament rather than anything else. Although a Catholic he was exceedingly popular among the English and Scotch. / What adds to the interest in his life is that up to the late election in Montreal, when that riot took place, he was very intemperate. He had taken the pledge three times and broken it and used to be seen the worse of drink even in Parliament. But he made a vow at the last election that if he was returned he would again take the pledge. At that election Presbyterian ministers were canvassing for him which shows what power he had over men. Well people did not think much of his new pledge at first but by and by they saw he was in earnest. Three Doctors during a long illness he had last winter recommended Wine to him and said they would not answer for the consequences unless he took it. He said he could not help it. He would not run the risk. I suppose he thought better to die than go back on his old habits. He was just recovering from this illness when he was taken off. / In a country like this where we have so many Creeds and nationalities he was a most invaluable man in creating good feeling between them. There has never been a funeral like his in Canada. In the Catholic Church where the funeral services were conducted there were besides the Priests, Church of England clergymen, Presbyterian, Methodist, [12] Baptist, Congretational, German and other ministers. All the soldiers and Volunteers lined the streets which the procession passed. I was in it among St. Andrews Society. The Government is going to give a pension to his wido and children. / I never felt as sorry for the death of any persona who was not connected to me as [I] did for McGee. I did not even know him. This was the general feeling. A monument will be put up to his memory. (pp.12-13.)

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Quotations
“The Celts”: ‘In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race, / Taller than Roman spears ... These Western shepherd seers.’); ‘Salutation to the Celts’ (‘Hail our Celtic brethren, wherever they may be ...’); ‘The man from the North Countrie’ (‘I wish in Munster they only knew / The kind, kind neighbours I came unto; / Small hate or scorn would ever be / Between the South and the North Countrie’.

Mememboreme!: ‘Am I remembered in Erin? / I charge you to tell me true. / Has my name a sound or memory / In the scenes my childhood knew?’ (Quoted in Frank Keane, Thank You Ireland: Some Phenomenal Success Stories of the Irish in North America, White Rock BC: Garryowen 1999; cited in Books Ireland, Oct. 1999, p.283 [review].)

Blame not ...: ‘O! blame me not if love to dwell / On Erin’s early glory; / Oh! blame me not if too oft I tell / The same inspiring story. / For sure ‘tis much to know and feel / that the race now rated lowly / Once ruled as lords, with sceptre of steel; / While our Island was yet the Holy.’ (The Poems, 1869, p.128; quoted in Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), cp.155.

Grave verses: ‘His grave is in St Mullin’s / But to pilgrim eyes unknown / Unmarked by mournful yew / Unchronicled in stone / His bones are with his peoples’ / His clay with common clay / His memory in the night that lies / Behind the hills of day’ (Thomas D’Arcy M’Gee [sic], quoted in Anon., Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, King of Leinster (CTS n.d.), 20pp.-pamph. held in Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast), ending with an ill. of ‘Meeting of Art MacMurrogh Kavanagh and Earl of Gloucester on mountainside nr. coast of Wicklow’.

Next time: ‘The people are not to blame that there has not been a revolution. Next time they must trust in local leaders like the Raparees and the Catalonian chiefs - fierce men and blunt, without too many ties binding them to the peace. They must choose, too, the favourable concurrence of a foreign war, an event which is likely to precede the settlement of the newly awakened races of the continent.’ (See Roy Foster, review of Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, in London Review of Books, 13 Dec. 2007, pp.21-23; available online or in RICORSO, Library, “Criticism Reviews” - via index or attached.)

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References

D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), lists Canadian Ballads, and Occasional Verses, Montreal, 1858, 8vo; The Poems of T. D. McGee, with notes and biography by Mrs. Sadlier, London, 1869, 8vo; New York, 1870, 8vo. - and writes extensively of McGee:

‘One of the most remarkable of the Young Irelanders, and author of various admirable works, such as Irish Writers of the I7th Century (1847), History of Ireland, History of the Irish Settlers in America (1851), Memoir of C. G. Duffy (1845), Life of Bishop Maginn (1856), Historical Sketches of O’Connell and his Friends (1845), Eva McDonald, a tale of the United Irishmen and their times (1844), Life of Art McMurrough (1847), &c. Born in Carlingford, Co. Louth, on April 13, 1825, and educated at Wexford, where his father was in the Custom House. In 1842 he went to America, where he became editor of the Boston Pilot. He returned to Ireland soon, however, and was parliamentary correspondent of The Freeman’s Journal, and joined the Young Ireland party, writing constantly for the Nation, not only then, for he kept up the connection all through his life, writing numberless poems over various signatures, such as “Montanus,” “Amergin,” “Amhergin,” “Sarsfield,” “Feargail,” “Gilla-Patrick,” “Gilla-Erin,” “M.,” “T. D. M.,” “An Irish Exile,” etc. Towards the end of 1848 he went to New York, and established there The American Celt, for which he wrote many poems, and The Nation. After a few years he removed to Canada, and started The New Era. finally settling in Montreal. He was elected M. P. for that city in 1857, and gradually became [279] one of the most prominent public men in Canada, noted everywhere as astatesman and orator. But his hostility to the Fenians caused him to be considered a traitor, and he was assassinated in the streets of Ottawa on April 7, 1868. He was President of the Executive Council at the time of his death. Owing to his very dark complexion, he was jocularly called “Darky McGee “by his Young Ireland comrades. There are three of his poems in Rev. E. H. Dewart’s Canadian Anthology. A memoir of him by Mrs. Sadleir appeared in Nation, March 29, 1890, et seq. The present writer has prepared a selection of his poems for publication.’ (Poets of Ireland, pp.278-79.)

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2, gives bio-data: b. Carlingford, Co. Louth, ed. Wexford. emig. America, 1842; ran Boston Pilot and correspondent for The Freeman’s Journal. Contrib. to The Nation; sec. of Irish Confederation, 1847; fnd. New York Nation [with Mitchel] and American Celt.; cites lives by D. C. Harvey (Manitoba 1923); I. M. Skelton (Canada 1925); A. Brady (Toronto 1925); also J. Phelan, The Ardent Exile, The Life and Times of Thomas D’Arcy Mc Gee (Toronto 1951) x, 317pp.

Canadian Dictionary of National Biography - Thomas D’Arcy Magee

[...]

The Irish Confederation was frustrated in the general elections of 1847, and a radical faction developed which called for armed action. When the radicals were purged from the Confederation at the beginning of 1848 McGee supported the conservative leadership. But the French revolution of February persuaded the conservatives to adopt a revolutionary course of action, and McGee now participated in the plans for an Irish rebellion. He was actually arrested for sedition on the eve of his first wedding anniversary, but the charges were dismissed the next day. The government suspended habeas corpus in Ireland towards the end of July, and the Irish Confederation appealed to the country for armed support. McGee was dispatched to Scotland where he was to collect an expedition of armed sympathizers, but the main resistance did not last two weeks and McGee’s expedition did not embark. He returned to Ireland; when he could not obtain a following in the northeast he left again for the United States.
McGee arrived in Philadelphia in October 1848, and issued a public letter describing recent events in Ireland. He blamed the Irish clergy for the rebellion’s failure and signed the letter defiantly, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee, A Traitor to the British Government.” He then moved to New York City and started his own newspaper, the Nation, [...]

[...] When the pope appointed an English episcopacy in 1851, anti-Catholic opinion was aroused in Britain and America, and McGee, unable to endure the charge made by Catholics that he was contributing to the nativist campaign by attacking the clergy, made his peace with the Catholic Church.

[...] Gradually McGee became more critical of the United States, arguing that American society required the tempering influence of Catholicism to balance the disorderly tendencies of the New World. By 1855 he was urging the American Irish Catholics to leave the eastern cities and to found a colony in the newly opening west where they could recover their Celtic and Catholic character. He was the principal organizer of the Buffalo Emigrant Aid Convention of 1856, but the project failed when it aroused the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy in the east who insisted that the Irish had neither the skills nor the capital necessary for colonization.

[...] McGee’s concept of the “new nationality” was based on the desirability of developing an alternate experience in North America to that of the United States. An essential characteristic of Canada’s experience was its relationship with Great Britain, and McGee’s solution to the problem of retaining the connection between them yet providing for Canadian sovereignty was a proposal that one of Queen Victoria’s younger sons establish a Canadian dynasty in a “kingdom of the St. Lawrence.” Equally important in McGee’s mind was the development of a distinctive Canadian literature. After asking, “Who reads a Canadian book?” he went on to suggest ways in which Canadian literature might be encouraged, including tariff protection for Canadian publishers. Much of McGee’s Canadian programme was derived from the nationalist theories of Young Ireland, and he applied them to the particular circumstances of Montreal and British North America during the economic depression of 1857. Later he described his programme as his “national policy,” and its tenets influenced the course of his public life in Canada.

[...] Americans had developed their freedom into a republican system of government, and, although it was a magnificent experiment, it had many shortcomings. British Americans, on the other hand, had not separated from Britain and had developed their institutions along different lines. By retaining a system of constitutional monarchy, they had achieved a better balance between their natural freedom and the need for authority. Their society was more orderly and more free. “To the American citizen who boasts of greater liberty in the States, I say that a man can state his private, social, political and religious opinions with more freedom here than in New York or New England. There is, besides, far more liberty and toleration enjoyed by minorities in Canada than in the United States.” McGee was fond of citing the example of minority rights and he brought this to the attention of the Irish press, contrasting the position of the Irish in “British and Republican North America.”

[...] The years which inaugurated confederation [of Canada] coincided with a crisis in Ireland, and the crisis touched McGee. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, popularly known as the Fenians, had obtained wide support among the Irish in Great Britain and the United States, and appealed to the Irish in Canada. McGee openly opposed the movement, and based his opposition on two grounds: first, he objected to the republican programme for Ireland and urged the Irish to adopt the Canadian model of self-government within the British Empire; second, McGee attacked the Fenian plan to invade British America and called on the Irish in Canada to “give the highest practical proof possible that an Irishman well governed becomes one of the best subjects of the law and the Sovereign.” When he visited Ireland in 1865 as the Canadian delegate to the Dublin International Exposition McGee addressed an audience in Wexford, the town where he had spent his boyhood, and spoke on the Irish immigrant in Canada and the United States. He also described his career as an Irish rebel as “the follies of one and twenty.” This “Wexford Speech” attracted great attention in Ireland, Britain, the United States, and Canada, and McGee was accused of being a turncoat and a traitor to Ireland.

By 1866, McGee was in political trouble with his Irish constituents in Montreal. [...] He now expressed a desire to leave politics. John A. Macdonald promised him a civil service post for the summer of 1868, and McGee intended to turn his full attention to literature and Canadian history. He was dead before the appointment was made.
McGee was assassinated in Ottawa during the early morning hours of 7 April 1868. He was buried a week later on his 43rd birthday. It was generally believed at the time that his murder was part of a Fenian conspiracy. Patrick James Whelan, an Irish immigrant, was charged with the crime, found guilty, and hanged publicly in Ottawa on 11 Feb. 1869. The crown, however, never accused Whelan of being a Fenian, and the charges against other alleged members of the conspiracy were dismissed. [...]

Bibl.: T. D’A. McGee, The Catholic history of North America; five discourses, to which are added two discourses on the relations of Ireland and America (Boston, 1855); Eva MacDonald, a tale of the United Irishmen (Boston, 1844); Gallery of Irish writers; the Irish writers of the seventeenth century (Dublin, 1846); Historical sketches of O’Connell and his friends ... (2nd ed., Boston, 1845; 4th ed., 1854); A history of the attempts to establish the Protestant reformation in Ireland, and the successful resistance of that people [1540-1830] (Boston, 1853); A history of the Irish settlers in North America, from the earliest period to the census of 1850 (Boston, 1851; 5th ed., 1852); A life of the Rt. Rev. Edward Maginn, coadjutor bishop of Derry, with selections from his correspondence (NY, 1857; 2nd ed., 1860); A memoir of the life and conquests of Art MacMurrogh, king of Leinster, from A.D. 1377 to A.D. 1417, with some notices of the Leinster wars of the 14th century (Dublin, 1847; 2nd ed., [1886]); “A plea for British American nationality” and “A further plea for British American nationality,” British American Magazine; Devoted to Literature, Science, and Art (Toronto), I (1863), 337-45, and 561-67; The poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee; with copious notes; also an introduction and biographical sketch, ed. Mrs. James Sadlier [M. A. Madden] (NY, 1869); ed. Brady (2nd ed., Boston, 1869), A popular history of Ireland ... (2 vols., NY, 1863).

[ Available online; accessed 19 April 2007.]

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Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice (1989), b. Carlingford, Co. Louth, 13 April 1825, died Ontario 7 April 1868; emig. Boston 1842; returned to Dublin 1845; co.-ed. The Nation, contrib. as ‘Amergin’; emig. Canada, 1849; key role in Confederation of Canada in 1867; assassinated by disgruntled Fenian; ‘The Famine in the land’ in The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (London: D&J Sadlier 1869) [err. for NY]; appeared in The Nation vol. 5, No. 236 (17 April 1847), as ‘Life and Land’. Also ‘A Harvest Hymn’, The Nation, Vol. 6 No. 298 (17 June 1848), ‘The Living and the Dead, The Nation, vol. 5, No 243 (5 June 1847); ‘The Three Dreams’, Poems (1869), p.104; ‘The Woeful Sinner’, Poems (1869), p.343; ‘St Patrick’s Day, 1847’, in The Nation, vol. 5, No. 234 (3 April 1847; Pro and Con’, in The Irishman, vol. 1 No. 32 (3 April 1849).

John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909), gives bio-dates 1825-1868; ‘The Celts’ [as infra.]; also ‘Home Thoughts’ [‘ ... where my own love dwells’].

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists Eva McDonald, a tale of the United Irishmen (1844), given as a separate work in PI, but appeared only in Boston Pilot [Brown].

Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), selects ‘The Celts’; ‘Memories’; ‘Am I Remembered’; ‘My Irish Wife’; ‘Death of the Homeward Bound’; ‘Home thoughts; ‘The Death of O’Carolan’; ALSO, Justin McCarthy, Irish Literature (1904) selects eight pieces, incl. ‘To Duffy in Prison’, ‘The Celts’, and ‘Am I Remembered?’

Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites Poems, with intro. and biog. sketch by Mrs. J. Sadlier (Sadlier NY, 1869); Poems Chiefly Written in America (Nation Office, 1854); also Eva Macdonald [ ... &c.] (Boston 1844), fiction; Sebastian, or the Roman Martyr (NY, Sadlier, 1861), drama; Isabel Skelton, The Life of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Canada, Garden City Press 1925).

Seamus Deane, gen. ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, selects from The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee ‘The Woeful Winter, Suggested by Account of Ireland in Dec. 1848’ [66-67]; assassinated at forty-three, 3; had not known Davis, 117; John O’Leary recalls ‘explosive oratory’ of McGee and others (Recollections 1896), 254; bio-note, denunciation of physical force led to assassination in Canada, 999; 113-14, BIOG, editor of The Pilot, Boston; [etc.] BIOG & COMM as supra.

Booksellers
Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, with copious notes (1st ed. NY 1869).

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Notes
Sir James Ware: McGee’s History is largely based on Ware’s manuscripts [sic], according to William J. Maguire, Irish Literary Figures, Vol. 1 (1945). The same is attested in Norman Vance, Irish Literature, A Social History (London: Basil Blackwell 1990), adding that an account of the manuscript MS Harley 913 (BML), which includes “The Land of Cockayne”, is given in McGee, A Memoir of the Life ... of Art MacMurrough (1847), pp.145-47.

J. F. Kennedy, Prelude to Leadership: The European Diary of John F. Kennedy (Washington 1995), copies ‘A thought for Irishmen abroad - written by Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a Canadian of Irish birth: “Our first duty is to the land where we live and have fixed our homes; and where, while we live, we must find the true sphere of our duties. While always ready therefore to say the right word and do the right act for the land of my forefathers, I am bound above all to the land where I reside.”’ (Irish Times, 20 July 2002, p.8.)

Chair of Irish Studies: The Thomas D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies at St. Mary’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, is held by Pádraig Ó Siadhail, PhD., TCD), in 2010.

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