Irish Americans and the Treaty: The View from the Irish Free State

Abstract

Irish Americans and the Treaty:The View from the Irish Free State Troy D. Davis Historians writing about the Irish-American response to the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 have emphasized the sense of confusion and dismay felt abroad after the outbreak of fighting between supporters of the Free State created by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and its opponents, who continued to insist on the establishment of an Irish republic. As Francis Carroll has said, the civil war was "a source of disillusionment to many Irish-Americans who had dreamed of a happy and prosperous Ireland freed from Britain’s grip."1 Elsewhere, Michael Hopkinson has noted that, "The Treaty and Civil War periods caused a vast fall in the membership and importance of exile nationalist organisations in the United States, and also in the relevance of the Irish question in American politics."2 Though many Irish Americans lost interest in Irish affairs following the Treaty split and the subsequent civil war, that does not mean that leaders in Ireland lost interest in the Irish Americans. Anti-Treaty republicans, for example—both "politicians," like Eamon de Valéra, and "militarists," like IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch—continued to place great importance on gaining the political and financial support of Irish-American activists. And those republicans succeeded in getting such support from a small but committed group of diehards in the United States, most notably those Irish Americans associated with Joseph McGarrity, whose reorganized Clan-na-Gael financed an ill-conceived and unsuccessful gunrunning scheme designed to provide the IRA with artillery from Germany for use against the Free State army.3 But what of the pro-Treaty side in the Treaty debate and Civil War? To what extent did the Provisional Government and, later, the Free State government attempt to garner Irish-American support for their cause? How much importance did the Free State place on maintaining such support? Did pro-Treaty officials [End Page 84] see Irish-American help as essential to success in their fight against the republicans? To answer those questions, it is helpful to review briefly the nasty divisions that had already developed among Irish-American activists before the Treaty split—i.e., during the Anglo-Irish War, when Irish separatists themselves were still more or less united and striving to end British rule in Ireland. Those divisions became public and very intense during de Valéra’s well-known publicity and fund-raising tour of the United States, which lasted from June 1919 to December 1920. De Valéra arrived in the States to find Irish-American supporters of Sinn Féin and the IRA feuding among themselves over how best to use Irish-American funds in support of the putative Irish republic. On one side, John Devoy and Judge Daniel Cohalan, leaders of the Clan-na-Gael and of the more public Friends of Irish Freedom organization (FOIF), wanted to use the funds primarily for American political purposes—specifically, to fight against President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to bring the United States into the League of Nations. They argued that the League was a pro-British entity that would require the United States government to support Britain in its efforts to defeat the republic. On the other side, Joseph McGarrity—who had the backing of such Irish republican representatives in America as Harry Boland—wanted the money to be used to help the republic more directly by financing the republican campaign in Ireland. De Valéra ended up siding with the McGarrity faction, as one might expect, given his obvious desire to get as much help as possible for republican activities in Ireland. But de Valéra went much further than that. He essentially took the position that, as president of the Irish republic, he was solely answerable to the Irish people and had the right to expect Irish-American organizations, whose raison d’être was to help establish the republic, to defer to his judgment. In essence, de Valéra seemed to see himself as not only the leader of Irish republican forces in Ireland but as leader of the "Irish race" everywhere, including the United States. Cohalan and...