a
replica of the American Federal Government. It assumed the highly
absurd and dangerous position that it actually possessed sovereignty.
The luxurious mansion of a pill manufacturer in Union Square, New
York, was transformed into its government house, and bonds,
embellished with shamrocks and harps and a fine portrait of Wolfe
Tone, were issued, payable "ninety days after the establishment of the
Irish Republic." Differences soon arose, and Stephens, who had made
his escape from Richmond, near Dublin, where he had been in prison,
hastened to America to compose the quarrel which had now assumed true
Hibernian proportions. An attempt to land an armed gang on the Island
of Campo Bello on the coast of New Brunswick was frustrated; invaders
from Vermont spent a night over the Canadian border before they were
driven back; and for several days Fort Erie on Niagara River was held
by about 1500 Fenians.[23] General Meade was thereupon sent by the
Federal authorities to put an end to these ridiculous breaches of
neutrality.

Neither Meade nor any other authority, however, could stop the flow of
Fenian adjectives that now issued from a hundred indignation meetings
all over the land when Canada, after due trial, proceeded to sentence
the guilty culprits captured in the "Battle of Limestone Ridge," as
the tussle with Canadian regulars near Fort Erie was called.
Newspapers abounded with tales of the most startling designs upon
Canada and Britain. There then occurred a strong reaction to the
Fenian movement, and the American people were led to wonder how much
of truth there was in a statement made by Thomas D'Arcy McGee.[24]
"This very Fenian organization in the United States," he said, "what
does it really prove but that the Irish are still an alien
population, camped but not settled in America, with foreign hopes and
aspirations, unshared by the people among whom they live?"

The Irishman today is an integral part of every large American
community. Although the restrictive legislation of two centuries ago
has long been repealed and a new land system has brought great
prosperity to his island home, the Irishman has not abated one whit in
his temperamental attitude towards England and as a consequence some
40,000 or 50,000 of his fellow countrymen come to the United States
every year. Here he has been dispossessed of his monopoly of shovel
and pick by the French Canadian in New England and by the Italian,
Syrian, and Armenian in o