Amongst the men who had rallied round James Stephens in America there
were many whose honesty was untainted, and who had responded to his call
with the full intention of committing themselves, without regard to
consequences, to the struggle which he promised to initiate. They
believed his representations respecting the prospects of an insurrection
in Ireland, and they pledged themselves to fight by his side and perish,
if necessary, in the good old cause, in defence of which their fathers
had bled. They scorned to violate their engagements; they spurned the
idea of shrinking from the difficulty they had pledged themselves to
face, and resolved that come what may the reproach of cowardice and bad
faith should never be uttered against them. Accordingly, in January,
'67, they began to fend in scattered parties at Queenstown, and spread
themselves through the country, taking every precaution to escape the
suspicion of the police. They set to work diligently and energetically
to organize an insurrectionary outbreak; they found innumerable
difficulties in their path; they found the people almost wholly unarmed;
they found the wisest of the Fenian leaders opposed to an immediate
outbreak, but still they persevered. How ably they performed their work
there is plenty of evidence to show, and if the Irish outbreak of '67
was short-lived and easily suppressed, it was far from contemptible in
the pre-concert and organization which it evidenced.
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