Sense and Sensibility

De Valera’s American Swing

In the summer of 1919, the man who called himself president of Ireland stole his way out of a British prison, fled to the docks of Liverpool and burrowed into the lamplighter’s cabin of the mammoth SS Lapland.

The stowaway, Eamon De Valera, hero of the failed 1916 Easter Rising and insurrectionist to the British Crown, shrank into the lower decks of the 17,540-ton passenger ship, where rats gnawed through his spare clothes.

De Valera, arguably the most powerful and divisive figures in the Irish fight for independence, might have stayed in Ireland, where his cohort Michael Collins was then waging guerilla war on English troops. But the American-born de Valera, already twice imprisoned with a death sentence hanging over his head, had his sights set on juicier prey: The estimated 5 million Irish-Americans then living in the United States. Those Irish-Americans, one million of whom had been born in Ireland, were wealthier, politically better connected and more essential to Ireland’s drive for independence than any other group in the world.

They were, says Dave Hannigan, author of “De Valera in America: The Rebel President and the Making of Irish Independence,” critical to his success.

By 1919, he said, Irish rebels had tried and failed at insurrection and were trying to “broaden out the struggle,” said Hannigan, who led a book reading and discussion of his work recently at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. “Their idea is that to take it to the British again [they] need money. They look around and say, ‘What country has money, influence and an awful lot of Irish people?’ Obviously, that’s America. Their thinking was ‘Once we get to America, surely (President Woodrow) Wilson and Washington will see the merits of our cause and row in behind us,’” he said.

Not quite. De Valera might not have received the political backing he needed, but he raised money and awareness and became a better politician in the bargain [--] a quality that would serve him well in the internecine political battles of the young Irish Republic.

Regardless of the negative coverage, Hannigan writes, 303,578 people bought Irish bond certificates, most in denominations of $5, $10 and $25.

In that financial respect [--] opening a spigot of Irish-American money for the IRA that would last for decades [--] de Valera’s trip was a success. But plenty of Americans objected to de Valera’s claim to the presidency of an Irish Republic [--] a republic that had yet to be formally recognized by the U.S. Others resented the Irish Republican’s open courting of Germany, from which it tried to obtain arms to fight the British.

“The U.S. government was not very happy about the Irish cause,” said David Valone, chairman of the history department at Quinnipiac University. “During World War I, (the U.S. government) persecuted some strong Irish nationalists in New York.” Indeed, said Valone, one of the key reasons for the failure of the Easter Uprising was that a shipment of German arms failed to arrive in Ireland in time for the revolt.

But the 18-month trip, Hannigan said, “knocked the edges off” de Valera’s naiveté and better prepared him for an Ireland in desperate need of a statesman.“His political muscles had been honed over here by going to Washington and discovering, no, you’re not going to get what you want out of them.” De Valera became prime minister in 1932, and wrote the Irish Constitution in consultation with Archbishop John McQuaid, the most influential cleric in the country. De Valera died in 1975.

chastises de Valera for not appreciating the depth of American alliance with Britain. “De Valera doesn’t realize that Wilson is in bed with Britain,” Hannigan said. “I mean, they had just fought a war together. It’s kind of naïve for de Valera to think he could get anywhere with Wilson. Wilson is no great friend of Ireland anyway, and at this point in history, he can’t fit Ireland into his agenda because he has too many other fish to fry and he doesn’t want to annoy the British.”

chastises de Valera for not appreciating the depth of American alliance with Britain. “De Valera doesn’t realize that Wilson is in bed with Britain,” Hannigan said. “I mean, they had just fought a war together. It’s kind of naïve for de Valera to think he could get anywhere with Wilson. Wilson is no great friend of Ireland anyway, and at this point in history, he can’t fit Ireland into his agenda because he has too many other fish to fry and he doesn’t want to annoy the British.”

The book tells the story of de Valera’s 18-month, cross-country visit of the U.S. to publicize Ireland’s plight, a barnstorming that eventually raised $5 million for the newly formed Irish Republican Army. De Valera packed Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Madison Square Garden.

“He got this rock star reception,” Hannigan said. In New York alone, de Valera raised $1 million from 100,000 people, a success that led the Wall Street Journal to fret that the donations had been “swindled” from “Irish domestic servants, and others of a like or lower standard of intelligence.”