he keen observer it became apparent that the
Fenian Society in Ireland had attained to the zenith of its power on the
day that the _Irish People_ office was sacked by the police. Never again
did the prospects of Fenianism, whatever they might then have been, look
equally bright; and when the brotherhood at length sprang to action,
they fought with a sword already broken to the hilt, and under
circumstances the most ominous and inauspicious.

The recent history of the Fenian movement is so thoroughly understood
that anything like a detailed account of its changes and progress is, in
these pages, unnecessary. We shall only say that when James Stephens
arrived in America in May, 1866, after escaping from Richmond Prison, he
found the society in the States split up into two opposing parties
between whom a violent quarrel was raging. John O'Mahony had been
deposed from his position of "Head Centre" by an all but unanimous vote
of the Senate, or governing body of the association, who charged him and
his officials with a reckless and corrupt expenditure of the society's
funds, and these in turn charged the Senate party with the crime of
breaking up the organization for mere personal and party purposes. A
large section of the society still adhered to O'Mahony, in consideration
of his past services in their cause; but the greater portion of it, and
nearly all its oldest, best-known and most trusted leaders gave their
allegiance to the Senate and to its elected President, William R.
Roberts, an Irish merchant of large means, of talent and energy, of high
character and unquestionable devotion to the cause of his country. Many
friends of the brotherhood hoped that James Stephens would seek to heal
the breach between these parties, but the course he took was not
calculated to effect that purpose. He denounced the "senators" in the
most extravagant terms, and invited both branches of the organization to
unite under himself as supreme and irresponsible leader and governor of
the entire movement. The O'Mahony section did not answer very heartily
to this invitation; the Senate party indignantly rejected it, and
commenced to occupy themselves with preparations for an immediate
grapple with British power in Canada. Those men were thoroughly in
earnest, and the fact became plain to every intelligence, when in the
latter part of May, 1866, the Fenian contingents from the various States
of the Union began to concentrate on the Canadian border