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The following is excerpted from The Irish Times review of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Volume 2: The Extreme Moderate, 1857-1868.
McGee was born in Carlingford, Co Louth, in 1825. He emigrated at 17, was offered a job with the Boston Pilot and became editor within two years. He was invited to join the staff of the Dublin Freeman’s Journal and served as its parliamentary correspondent in London. He transferred to the Nation and, as the Young Irelanders moved towards insurrection in 1848, was sent to Scotland and, later, Co Sligo to rouse sympathisers. When the rebellion collapsed he was sheltered by the Catholic bishop of Derry, before fleeing to the US disguised as a priest.
He started a New York edition of the Nation. The fastidious Dillon – then an emigre, too – considered him an opportunist who lacked “good feeling” and traded on the misfortunes of his country. At first McGee criticised the church for its opposition to revolution, but, not wishing to contribute to anti-Catholic nativism in the US, he soon moderated his views. As a result he was reproached for abandoning Irish republicanism.
The second and final volume of David A Wilson’s biography, The Extreme Moderate, discusses McGee’s emergence as the leading Irish-Canadian politician and chief publicist of confederation. It is a political rather than a personal biography, with only oblique references to McGee’s heavy drinking. The chapters on Fenianism will be of particular interest to Irish readers. McGee became a force for moderation while developing a Burkean aversion to revolution. His constitutional conservative model for Canada brought him into conflict with militant Irish nationalism.
His bilious attitude towards Fenianism cost him his life. He mocked the leader of the American Fenian Brotherhood, John O’Mahony, as “incurably insane”. McGee became a hate figure to many Fenian sympathisers, one of whom assassinated him on the doorstep of his Ottawa boarding house in April 1868. His funeral, the largest that Canada had seen, took place on what would have been his 43rd birthday.
Or browse pictures from Wilson's Irish leg of the Thomas D'Arcy McGee book tour.
To learn more about Thomas D'Arcy McGee, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
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