in Pennsylvania were
unearthed. Among the anthracite coal miners a society was formed,
probably about 1854, called the Molly Maguires, a name long known in
Ireland. The members were all Irish, professed the Roman Catholic
faith, and were active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The Church,
the better class of Irishmen, and the Hibernians, however, were
shocked by the doings of the Molly Maguires and utterly disowned them.
They began their career of blackmail and bullying by sending threats
and death notices embellished with crude drawings of coffins and
pistols to those against whom they fancied they had a grievance,
usually the mine boss or an unpopular foreman. If the recipient did
not heed the threat, he was waylaid and beaten and his family was
abused. By the time of the Civil War these bullies had terrorized the
entire anthracite region. Through their political influence they
elected sheriffs and constables, chiefs of police and county
commissioners. As they became bolder, they substituted arson and
murder for threats and bullying, and they made life intolerable by
their reckless brutality. It was impossible to convict them, for the
hatred against an informer, inbred in every Irishman through
generations of experience in Ireland, united with fear in keeping
competent witnesses from the courts. Finally the president of one of
the large coal companies employed James McParlan, a remarkably clever
Irish detective. He joined the Mollies, somehow eluded their
suspicions, and slowly worked his way into their confidence. An
unusually brutal and cowardly murder in 1875 proved his opportunity.
When the courts finished with the Mollies, nineteen of their members
had been hanged, a large number imprisoned, and the organization was
completely wiped out.

Meantime the Fenian movement served to keep the Irish in the public
eye. This was no less than an attempt to free Ireland and disrupt the
British Empire, using the United States as a fulcrum, the Irish in
America as the power, and Canada as the lever. James Stephens, who
organized the Irish Republican Brotherhood, came to America in 1858 to
start a similar movement. After the Civil War, which supplied a
training school for whole regiments of Irish soldiers, a convention of
Fenians was held at Philadelphia in 1865 at which an "Irish Republic"
was organized, with a full complement of officers, a Congress, a
President, a Secretary of the Treasury, a Secretary of War, in fact,