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{{Short description|Irish republican organization}}
{{Other uses|Clan na Gael (disambiguation)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=
{{Infobox political party
The '''Clan na Gael''' (in modern [[Irish orthography]]: ''{{lang|ga|Clann na nGael}}'', {{IPA-ga|ˈklˠan̪ˠ n̪ˠə ˈŋeːlʲ|IPA}}, ''family of the [[Gaels]]'') was an [[Irish republicanism|Irish republican]] organization in the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, successor to the [[Fenian Brotherhood]] and a sister organization to the [[Irish Republican Brotherhood]].<ref>Buescher, John. "[http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/19821 What Happened to the Fenians After 1866?]" [http://www.teachinghistory.org Teachinghistory.org], accessed 8 October 2011</ref> It has shrunk to a small fraction of its former size in the 21st century.▼
| name = Clan na Gael
| colorcode = #006633
| founded = {{start date and age|1867|06|20|df=y}}
| predecessor = [[Fenian Brotherhood]]
| newspaper = {{plainlist|
* ''[[The Gaelic American]]''
* ''[[The Irish Press]]''}}
| headquarters =
| ideology = {{plainlist|
* [[Irish nationalism]]
* [[Irish republicanism]]}}
| affiliation1_title = Irish affiliate
| affiliation1 = {{plainlist|
* [[Irish Republican Brotherhood]]
* [[Irish Volunteers]]
* [[Irish Republican Army (1919–1922)|Irish Republican Army]]
* [[Anti-Treaty IRA]]
* [[Provisional IRA]]}}
| slogan =
}}
▲
==Background==
[[File:Green Sunburst Flag.svg|thumb|The flag of Irish Republican Brotherhood, the organisation Clan na Gael was directly tied to for many decades]]
{{Irish republicanism|Defunct Organisations}}
As [[Irish immigration]] to the United States of America began to increase in the 18th century many Irish organizations were formed. One of the earliest was formed under the name of the [[Irish Charitable Society]] and was founded in [[Boston]], Massachusetts
In the later part of the 1780s, a strong [[Irish Patriot Party|Irish patriot]] (rather than [[Catholic]]) character began to grow in these organizations and amongst recently arrived Irish immigrants. The usage of [[Celt]]ic symbolism helped solidify this sense of nationalism and was most noticeably found in the use of the name "Hibernian." (Hibernia is the [[Latin]] name for Ireland.)
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After the 1865 crackdown in Ireland, the American organization began to fracture over what to do next. Made up of veterans of the American [[US Civil War|Civil War]], a Fenian army had been formed. While O'Mahony and his supporters wanted to remain focused on supporting rebellions in [[Ireland]] a competing faction, called the Roberts, or senate wing, wanted this Fenian Army to attack British bases in [[Canada]]. The resulting [[Fenian Raids]] strained US–British relations. The level of American support for the Fenian cause began to diminish as the Fenians were seen as a threat to stability in the region.
The Irish were still seen as a foreign people within the borders of the American state by anti-Catholic Americans such as members of the [[Know-Nothing Party]]; their existence within America was seen primarily as temporary camps of immigrants who planned to stay in America only as long as the British stayed in Ireland. Upon the British withdrawal from Irish soil, it was believed, the Irish immigrants would return to their native land. The Fenian Raids were seen as an astonishing example of [[immigrant]] activity in US history and Irish nationalism has itself become something of an exception among the American melting pot. Very few US immigrants concerned themselves with their mother country as did the Irish; in March 1868, 100,000 Fenian supporters held an anti-British demonstration in New York.{{citation needed|date=June 2020}}
== Creation
After 1867, the Irish Republican Brotherhood headquarters in [[Manchester]] chose to support neither of the existing feuding factions, but instead promoted a renewed Irish republican organization in America, to be named Clan na Gael. According to [[John Devoy]] in 1924, [[Jerome J. Collins]] founded what was then called the Napper Tandy Club in New York on 20 June 1867 – [[Wolfe Tone]]'s birthday.<ref>{{cite book |last=Golway |first=Terry |author-link= |date=1998 |title=Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Ireland's Freedpm |url= |location= |publisher=St. Martins Press |page=72 |isbn=0312181183}}</ref> This club expanded into others and at one point at a picnic in 1870 was named the Clan na Gael by Sam Cavanagh. This was the same Cavanagh who killed the informer George Clark, who had exposed a Fenian pike-making operation in Dublin to the police.<ref>''Gaelic American,'' 7 January 1905</ref>
Collins, who died in 1881 on the disastrous [[
▲Collins, who died in 1881 on the disastrous [[USS Jeannette (1878)#Arctic voyage|Jeannette Expedition]] to the North Pole, was a science editor on the New York Herald, who had left England in 1866 when a plot he was involved in to free the Fenian prisoners at [[Pentonville (HM Prison)|Pentonville Prison]] was uncovered by the police. Collins believed at the time of the founding in 1867 that the two feuding Fenians branches should patch things up.<ref>Much of the preceding is found in the ''Gaelic American'', 29 Dec 1906, in an article entitled "The Inside Story of the Jeanette Horror". Both John O'Mahony and William R Roberts, opposing leaders of fighting branches of the Fenians, belonged to the Napper Tandy Club, according to Devoy in the aforementioned article.</ref>
== Catalpa rescue ==
{{main|Catalpa rescue}}
After arriving in America in 1871 John Devoy indicated he joined the Clan na Gael early on and attempted several times at Clan conventions to get the Clan to adopt a plan to free the military prisoners held by the British in [[Fremantle]] Australia. In 1874 John Devoy, with some oratorical help from Thomas Francis Bourke, was elected
Under the leadership of [[John Devoy]], Clan na Gael would eventually be successful in educating Americans about the movement.
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In 1879, Devoy promoted a "[[New Departure (Ireland)|New Departure]]" in Irish republican thinking, by which the "physical force party" allied itself with the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]] under the political leadership of [[Charles Stewart Parnell]], MP; the political plans of the Fenians were thus combined with the agrarian revolution inaugurated by the [[Irish National Land League]]. The arrangement was cemented at the first [[Irish Race Conventions|Irish Race Convention]] held in [[Chicago]] in 1881.
By 1880, more aggressive men within the Clan na Gael were chafing at the slow pace of Devoy and Carroll and these men were able to take control of the organization in 1882 when two "action men", Alexander Sullivan and Michael Boland took over the reins and ran the clan as a dictatorship along with an inactive Mr. Feeley. The new leadership ignored the Revolutionary Council set up by Carroll to coordinate between the IRB and the Clan and began to operate in total secrecy from even the membership of the Clan. These three men called themselves the "Triangle" and began making bombing runs into England in what was called the "[[Fenian dynamite campaign|Dynamite War]]". This infuriated the IRB in Ireland which cut ties with the Irish-Americans. Michael Boland was later pointed out as a British spy which might have explained why the majority of the bombers were caught and jailed before they could strike.<ref>McGee, Owen. ''The IRB''. Four Courts Press, Dublin. 2006 pp 105-8</ref><ref>Devoy, "Story of the Clan na Gael," ''Gaelic American'' 29 November 1924</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Whelehan|first=Niall|title=The Dynamiters: Irish Nationalism and Political Violence in the Wider World|year=2012|location=Cambridge}}</ref>
The 1880s saw the solidification, at least within America, of Irish ideological orientations, with most nationalist sentiment finding its home within Clan na Gael, rather than organizations such as the [[Ancient Order of Hibernians]]. The more agrarian-minded found their ideological brethren within the [[Irish Federation of America]]. The third ideological strand was connected to the union and [[socialist]] movement and found support with the [[Knights of Labor]]. In the late 1880s a financial scandal in the Chicago branch of the Clan led to a successful conspiracy to murder whistle-blower Dr. [[Patrick Henry Cronin]]. John Devoy, who worked with Cronin, also began carrying a gun and expected to be assassinated by Alexander Sullivan's henchmen. The Cronin case, prosecuted by State's Attorney [[Joel Minnick Longenecker]] achieved international attention. Neither the prosecution nor the defense were concerned with the Clan's ties to the Fenians, trying the case simply as a conspiracy to commit murder.<ref>McEnnis, John T. ''The Clan na Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin''. (The original book had no publisher information, however a preliminary subscriber list indicates it was to be published in 1889 by John W Liff & Co. of Chicago, Illinois)</ref> The Clan na Gael had split into pro and anti Sullivan/Boland branches, but was re-united by John Devoy around 1900.
In Ireland the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) achieved electoral success in the 1880s, and was supported by the British Prime Minister [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] who introduced the unsuccessful [[Government of Ireland Bill 1886]]. Gladstone's party then divided over home rule, and the IPP also divided for a decade over Parnell's marriage to [[Katharine O'Shea|Mrs. O'Shea]].
In 1891,
==In the 20th century==
[[File:Joseph McGarrity.jpg|thumb|[[Joseph McGarrity]] became the leader of Clan na Gael following splits mirroring those in Ireland caused by the Irish Civil War]]
The objective of Clan na Gael was to secure an independent Ireland and to assist the Irish Republican Brotherhood in achieving this aim. To this end, the Clan was prepared to enter into alliances with any nation allied against the British; with the outbreak of the [[First World War]] in 1914, the Clan found its greatest ally in [[Imperial Germany]]. A delegation led by Devoy met with the German Ambassador in the US Count [[Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff]] and his aide [[Franz von Papen]] in 1914. This was followed by an emissary [[John Kenny (Clan-na-Gael)|John Kenny]], sent on a [
Clan na Gael became the largest single financier of both the Easter Rising and the [[Irish War of Independence]]. Imperial Germany aided Clan na Gael by selling those guns and munitions to be used in the uprising of 1916. Germany had hoped that by distracting Britain with an Irish uprising they would be able to garner the upper hand in the war and
Some [[Sikh]]s held talks with Clan Na Gael, which led to authorities in Great Britain and [[British Raj|India]] fearing [[Irish-American]]s and [[Sikh]]s uniting against the [[British Empire]].<ref name="Mount1993">{{cite book|last=Mount|first=Graeme Stewart|title=Canada's enemies: spies and spying in the peaceable kingdom|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6vZi0OD6B-sC&pg=PA27|
Clan Na Gael largely controlled the [[Irish Race Conventions]] from 1916, and its affiliated group the [[Friends of Irish Freedom]]. The [[Irish War of Independence]] led to a split in Clan na Gael which was precipitated in June 1920 by [[Éamon de Valera]], who as President of the Irish Republic became involved in a dispute with Devoy and [[Daniel F. Cohalan|Judge Cohalan]] over lobbying US
McGarrity continued to provide support and aid to the [[Irish Republican Army|IRA]] after it was outlawed in Ireland by de Valera in 1936 but became less active in the 1940s and 1950s following McGarrity's death in 1940.
The Clan na Gael still exists today, much changed from the days of the ''Catalpa'' rescue and as recently as 1997 another internal split occurred as a result of the IRA shift away from using physical force as a result of the 1998 [[Belfast Agreement|Good Friday peace accords]]
==Presidents of the Clan na Gael==
[[File:Alexander Sullivan, Chicago lawyer and Chairman of Clan na Gael (cropped).jpg|left|thumb|Alexander Sullivan, one of the Clan na Gael "triangle"]]
From its founding in 1869, although heavily influenced by founder John Devoy over the years, the organization was nominally under the control of an executive committee headed by a national
The first Chairman perhaps should be Jerome Collins as the man who founded the first Club (D1) of what would later be called the Clan na Gael (these clubs later were called "Camps"). The club was named Napper Tandy after an Irish patriot. From the beginning, according to John Devoy in the Gaelic American, the secretary of Napper Tandy and later of the Clan na Gael was William James Nicholson. He was secretary from 1867 to 1874 when he was dismissed for loaning Camp Funds which were not repaid. According to a descendant of the John Haltigan the foreman printer of the Irish People, James Haltigan son of John Haltigan was Executive Board Chairman in 1871.
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In 1873 James Ryan was Executive Board Chairman.<ref>Devoys PostbagBP Vol. I p. 87–88. was he from Lawrence, Mass? (Devoy in the ''Gaelic American'' said the man who preceded him was from there and was a nonentity.)</ref>
In 1874 John Devoy was chosen Executive Board Chairman at the Baltimore Convention.
From 1875 until he resigned in 1879, John Devoy's trusted friend and ardent nationalist Dr. William Carroll of Philadelphia was Executive Board Chairman. James Reynolds of Connecticut temporarily held the post from Carroll's resignation until 1881 (there was no convention in 1880) when the Triangle of Sullivan, Feeley and Boland assumed command. Although Devoy supporters Reynolds and Treacy remained on the
==References==
{{
== Further reading ==
* {{cite book
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