CHAPTER 8

The Affirmation of Naturalized Citizenship Abroad

In the spring of 1867, Fenians dispatched arms and men to Ireland aboard a ship they named Erin’s Hope. Britain arrested twenty-eight of thirty-one men within a day of their landing on Irish soil, including native-born American William J. Nagle and naturalized American John Warren. According to Nagle, the British arrested the two former Civil War officers on June 1 and kept them in the local prison at Youghal until June 4 before marching them in handcuffs through the streets of Cork to the jail in that city—“the penalty of being an American soldier with Irish blood in my veins, so far offending the majesty of British law as to be found upon Irish soil.” Secretary of State William H. Seward instructed the American minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, to intercede for the two officers, reminding Adams, “faithful service in the armies or navy of the United States during the rebellion constitutes an enhanced claim of persons so serving to the consideration of the Government which they have helped to perpetuate.” Britain nonetheless recognized Warren as a British subject and charged him accordingly.1

Another incident later that summer exacerbated tension between Britain and America. Early on the morning of September 11, 1867, British authorities arrested Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, two former Union officers and now, active Fenians, on a street in Manchester. On September 18, twelve unarmed police guarded the two handcuffed prisoners during their transfer to the county jail. As the police van passed under a railway arch, up to fifty armed Fenians stopped it, shot one of its horses, and called for the prisoners’ freedom. When this request went unheeded, the Fenians accidentally killed a policeman inside the van as they shot a lock off its door so as to release Kelly and Deasy. Adams accurately assessed that this bloodshed would enflame British public opinion and force the government to treat the Fenians with more severity, just at the moment he hoped for a release of confined Irish Americans. While Kelly and Deasy escaped to America, the British arrested twenty-six men for the policeman’s death, and by early November 1867, convicted five on capital charges. British authorities mitigated the sentence for two of the defendants but executed the other three on November 23, 1867, including one who claimed American citizenship. The next day, Irish Americans in New York City and across the United States held funerary processions for the “Manchester Martyrs.” Even the New York Times, generally hostile to Fenianism, condemned the executions.2

The Erin’s Hope expedition and the Manchester Martyrs episode did more than create an Anglo-American diplomatic crisis. Both incidents heightened popular response in America in a way congressional resolutions could not, and they illuminated the opposing positions Britain and the United States asserted about expatriation rights. Moreover, while Americans were working toward resolving the meaning of naturalized citizenship within the United States, through the process of ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, both incidents underscored for Americans that the question of what naturalized citizenship meant abroad still remained unsettled. In this context, Fenian John Savage challenged the American people and government to provide a strong national response when he concluded his book, Fenian Heroes and Martyrs (1868), “It is full time the people should know what is the meaning of the phrase American Citizen, or if it has any meaning at all, and having a meaning, does it embrace a distinction between and a difference of protection to, a native and an adopted ‘citizen.’” According to Savage, the imbroglio between America and Britain resulted from the blurry boundaries of expatriation rights, and the vagueness about what American citizenship meant: “If the Government had its mind made up as to what constitutes a citizen and his rights, its Minister and Consuls in Great Britain would no doubt have shown some prompt dignity and decision, when the national sentiment and character were outraged by the wanton arrest and contemptuous treatment of American citizens so-called, both native and adopted.” In the end, both naturalized and native-born Americans called for either war or diplomacy to vindicate naturalized citizenship abroad, and their efforts helped to change citizenship doctrine on both sides of the Atlantic.3

Martyrs and Trials

By the fall of 1866, some British officials held out hope for an Anglo-American truce over the expatriation issue, believing that the completion of congressional elections would lessen Irish American political influence at a time when dissension, low morale after the failed invasion of Canada, and a diminished treasury afflicted the Brotherhood. Optimistic that Fenianism had entered its death throes, the British government even intimated that it would not seek renewal of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act when a new session of Parliament opened on February 1867. On the other hand, Adams reported ongoing uneasiness in Ireland, as defiant rhetoric continued to emanate from America. Britain’s moment of hope proved short lived as Fenianism resurged within the United Kingdom, leading to continued suspension of habeas corpus and imprisonment of Irish Americans as subjects. With their Civil War veterans in the lead, Irish Americans agitated for a strong American response.4

In March 1867, renewed resolutions in Congress called for America to grant the Irish belligerent rights and expressed sympathy for their efforts to establish a republican government in Ireland. On a more popular level, ten thousand people attended a rally at Union Square in New York City in the pouring rain on the evening of March 13, 1867. Colored paper lanterns bearing the Stars and Stripes and the motto, “Union forever,” joined Irish Americans, American nationalism, and Irish nationalism without acknowledging any contradiction. Speakers vowed twelve British dead for every executed Irishman, and a unanimous resolution linked Ireland’s suffering with American resentment toward Britain for acts it committed during the Civil War: “The Crown and oligarchy of Great Britain have forfeited all claim to international courtesy from the government and citizens of the United States by the treacherous and hostile conduct pursued by them towards this republic during the recent civil war,” and “we deem it our right to retaliate upon her in a war for Irish independence” because the “attempts made by them to destroy our commerce, overthrow our institutions, and perpetuate discord and bloodshed on the American continent demands swift and speedy vengeance.” On March 14, 1867, hundreds of Fenians gathered at City Hall in Detroit and a large rally took place at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, keeping Irish Americans in the press and national consciousness.5

After meeting with Seward on May 20, 1867, Britain’s conciliatory minister to the United States, Sir Frederick Bruce, informed his superior that Irish Americans “so pressed” Johnson’s administration that it had no choice but to promote expatriation rights. Bruce further reported that the administration sought Irish American support, particularly with upcoming elections in mind. “American orators and newspaper writers invariably talk of the Irish as an oppressed people struggling for liberty and politicians of all parties find it to their interest to adopt this view in all questions affecting Ireland,” Bruce noted to Lord Stanley, the new British foreign secretary, and he saw “no remedy for this inconvenience as long as an insurrectionary spirit prevails in Ireland, unless the restoration of the Southern States to the Union and the increasing immigration from Germany diminishes the importance attached to the Irish vote.”6

The Manchester episode on September 18 hardened the British government’s position regarding Fenian prisoners, and when Adams went to the Foreign Office on September 23 to discuss a possible release of Warren and Nagle, the British responded that their trials would proceed. Further complicating matters, Bruce died suddenly on September 19. Meanwhile the London Times reflected British public outrage: “If the murder of a policeman is treated as a comparatively venial offence because he was assassinated in a public capacity, policemen cannot be expected to protect the public against the ‘American citizens,’ as they call themselves, who seem to be multiplying both in Ireland and in this country.” The Times emphasized that “a natural-born subject cannot transfer his allegiance from one sovereign to another at pleasure” and declared to readers,

For the restless adventurers whom the close of the American war has let loose upon the world, and who fancy they can here perpetrate with impunity deeds for which they would be hanged at home, with or without law, we can feel no compassion at all, on whichever side of the Atlantic they may have been born…. They have already had fair warning, and they may be assured that if they should fall into the hands of justice no American minister will intercede for them, and no English minister will venture to reprieve them.

The Manchester incident left the British government little choice but to proceed with the trials of Nagle and Warren. By Christmas Eve of 1867, Adams informed Seward that, in London, “It may be doubted whether at any time since the discovery of the scheme of Guy Fawkes, there has been so much of panic spread among families throughout this community as at this time.”7

Warren’s and Nagle’s citizenship status arose as soon as their trials commenced in Dublin in autumn 1867. The American government hired counsel to defend both men against charges of treason and, as a native-born American citizen, Nagle applied for jury de mediatate linguae. Literally meaning “of the half tongue,” this type of jury, composed of six English subjects and six from the alien’s country, determined civil and criminal cases where one party was an alien. Unable to supply such a jury, the British had to release Nagle in May 1868, and he arrived to a hero’s welcome in the United States, including a reception at Cooper Institute attended by women’s suffrage activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.8

Warren’s different experience galvanized Irish Americans, and the larger American public, to the cause of sanctifying expatriation rights. Born in Ireland and claiming naturalization as an American citizen, Warren squarely fit within the British definition of a subject. From Kilmainham Prison in Dublin, Warren issued a call that “it is the duty of America to immediately protect any citizen whose liberty is assailed for giving expression to opinions in American favorable to the spread of republicanism and self-government.” Powerfully describing how naturalization papers and passports held no meaning in Britain, Warren called out to all Americans that “the very idea of the myrmidons of England being permitted, for one moment, to touch an American citizen and imprison him for presumed acts done in America, should rouse the indignation of every American citizen, and demand that England should be made immediately and significantly to understand that no American citizen is amenable to her laws for acts committed within the jurisdiction of the United States.” Warren reminded Irish Americans that “you have entered into a sacred compact with the American government. You have renounced all former allegiance and have sworn to obey and protect her laws. By your industry, by your manual labor, by your intellect, by your capital, by your devotion, by your blood on the battle field, you have, in proportion to your number, done more than any other class of citizens to raise your adopted country to the proud position which she holds to-day.” In a separate letter, Warren called on President Johnson to intervene against British insult to American citizenship.9

Like Nagle, Warren petitioned the British for trial by jury de mediatate linguae, but the court denied his request by relying on Britain’s long-held doctrine that “he who once is under the allegiance of the English sovereign remains so forever.” The British Court cited American jurists such as Supreme Court justice Joseph Story and Chancellor Kent to support its ruling, declaring, “We in our courts have been in the habit of treating, not merely with respect, but with reverence, these two great lights of the laws of America” and ominously warned “they who in America…have ever been under the allegiance of the Crown of England” to take note “how, according to the laws of England, they may be dealt with when they are found here.” With this ruling, Warren dismissed his counsel and stood trial as a British subject from October 30 to November 1, 1867.10

Just before the court sentenced him to fifteen years imprisonment on November 16, 1867, Warren (conveniently forgetting his Fenian activities) declared, “I am an American citizen, and as such I owe allegiance to that government and to none other. I am a soldier in the United States army…I have fought for America; I belong at present to her national militia, and in case of war to-morrow between these two countries, England and America, my position is in the army.” Warren further announced, “If America does not resent England’s conduct towards me; if the only allegiance I ever acknowledged is not to be vindicated, then thirteen millions of the sons of Ireland who have lived in happiness in the United States up to this will have become the slaves of England.” A week later, Britain executed the three Manchester Martyrs.11

Adams “regretted” the “conflict between established policy of the Executive Department and the ruling of the Federal Judiciary” regarding expatriation rights, which allowed the British Court to embarrass the United States by citing American jurists in favor of a doctrine the United States opposed. President Johnson also noted the conflict in his annual message to Congress, and asked the legislature to “declare the national will unmistakably upon this important question.” At Seward’s request, Attorney General Henry Stanbery performed a cursory review of Warren’s case and admitted that the British Court correctly denied Warren a jury de mediate linguae under “perfectly well established” British law. For his part, Seward protested to Britain the conviction by asserting Warren’s status as a naturalized citizen and cited the agitation his imprisonment caused in the United States.12

Meanwhile, Warren publicly petitioned Congress in terms that would have caught the attention of any proponent of a stronger American nation-state. Warren described his situation as that of a “first-class convict in a British bastile,” and he reminded the congressmen that “British law claims me to be a British subject, ignores my United States citizenship, and consequently your right to confer it.” Warren challenged Congress to answer whether under the Constitution and naturalization laws, “Am I…a citizen of the United States and entitled to her full protection, or am I under the English statutes a British subject and amenable to English laws in America,” and he concluded his missive with hyperbole: “In the name of our common country, in the name of freedom, in the name of God, I ask of you to take hold of this matter vigorously, and compel England to expunge from her law books every presumption bearing on the rights of the American citizen. If she does not do it, wipe her from the face of the earth, and God will bless you.”13

The Public Response in America

Even before the Manchester executions and Warren trial, the Fenian situation energized an increasingly powerful response in America during the summer and fall of 1867. Petitions came in from more than just select Fenians acting out of self-interest, or the family members of prisoners. President Johnson received a letter from New Jersey’s governor Marcus L. Ward informing that citizens of that state demanded the release of those claiming to be U.S. citizens, while another similar petition contained more than a thousand signatures, including from the mayor of Brooklyn and other governmental officials and judges. While Seward received an appeal from Detroit’s Fenian circle, New York’s state constitutional convention mistook Nagle and Warren as both native-born Americans and asked for their release in a petition signed by Irish American Union Democrat judge Charles P. Daly, Republican ex-mayor of New York City George Opdyke, Republican Horace Greeley, and fifty others. Five thousand citizens of Hamilton County, Ohio, also called on Johnson to pressure Britain to release its Irish American prisoners.14

Now, as the crisis intensified, William H. Grace identified the situation as “the most popular political issue of the country at present.” Fenian John Savage wrote Republican congressman Banks in November that the “non action of the United States representatives in Great Britain has led to deep humiliation here and to every form of insult and outrage—including martyrdom on the scaffold—on the other side. The doctrine of once a subject always a subject is as insolent as preposterous.” Savage further reminded Secretary of State Seward that “thousands of those citizens have served the republic on the field. Thousands have won these citizenships helping to save the republic. Thousands are maimed for life in the service, and bear honorable scars in testimony of their allegiance to the United States government.” A few weeks later, after Warren’s sentencing, Savage grumbled that the doctrine of perpetual allegiance violated “the compact entered into between the United States and its adopted citizens,” and he vowed that the American people could not “tamely submit to such a humiliating position.” Reflecting on ceremonies commemorating the British evacuation of New York City during the Revolution, held the day before he wrote, Savage declared that if America “admitted” the British doctrine, then the Revolution meant nothing because “we are not a country, but a colony of Great Britain.” This “insult to the republic” aroused a question “vital to every man,” Savage pronounced, for it involved “the spirit, character, and dignity of the republic.”15

While the country debated the Fourteenth Amendment in late 1867 and early 1868, tens of thousands of Americans, both Irish-born and native-born, attended public meetings held from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Bridgeport, Connecticut, from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Nashua, New Hampshire, to urge that the federal government provide equal protection to native-born and naturalized American citizens abroad. The widespread debate generated by the naturalization issue signified more than affirmation of Irish Americans in the polity in the aftermath of the Civil War, or political opportunism by those who sought their votes. Through meetings, petitions, resolutions from state legislatures, and congressional debates, Americans discussed allegiance and expatriation within the context of considering what comprised a republican government, who had rights to participate in and be protected by it, and what it meant to be an American citizen. This discussion comprises a neglected facet of the broader debates that took place in the aftermath of the Civil War. The expatriation question took prominence after Congress sent the Fourteenth Amendment to the states on June 13, 1866, but it served as a backdrop during ratification debates about a measure that affirmed U.S. citizenship for naturalized persons, prohibited states from abridging “the privileges or immunities” of such citizens, and forbade states from depriving “any person,” alien or native-born, “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws.”16

Many Republicans embraced the impulse running through the discussions about expatriation rights that recognized a stronger American nation and an expansive view of rights to be enjoyed by all persons, including the right to self-determination. Some Irish Americans, meanwhile, declared that naturalization, by comprising a choice, showed a deeper appreciation of American republicanism than felt by the native born. At the head of this debate lay the meanings and practices of Irish American citizenship status, both in the United States and abroad. Contrasting native-born Americans, “born on the soil of freedom, and inheriting, without trouble or difficulty”—and therefore, not fully appreciating—the “priceless boon” offered by America, the Irish-American described Irish naturalized citizens as having made a choice for freedom in relocating to the United States. Moreover, the newspaper’s editors asserted, Irish Americans “honestly earned” the rights of citizenship when the “expatriated sons of Ireland” battled alongside the native-born in support of Union, “dying that the republic which gave them shelter might live.” Naturalized Americans now stood with clear title, “as citizens (with a trifling limitation as to the highest executive offices) in the same sense as though we and our fathers had possessed the land for generations.” Reminding readers that the United States fought Britain in 1812 over the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, the Irish-American declared that disrespect for American citizenship now could not go unchallenged, or the vague “definition of the rights of American citizens” remain unrevised.17

Irish-born Colonel Patrick Guiney wrote Massachusetts congressman Benjamin Butler an indignant summation of the Irish American position. Guiney demanded immediate resolution on behalf of “millions of American citizens” and supported the concept of a strong American nation-state capable of defining and protecting its citizens:

I am one of those millions, and I have fought side by side with thousands of men born, as I was, in Ireland, for the flag, the integrity, and the perpetuity of this Republic. Are we British subjects or are we American citizens? We must be answered now, and we are ready to fight the matter out in the political field—or in any other. This country was built, has been made great and prosperous, and hopes to go on in the increase of its greatness and prosperity, upon the right of expatriation. England denies this right, and does an overt act, if not a series of them, in pursuance of that denial, and in absolute defiance of our law. Will this nation—will Congress—will you—allow us to be seized, tried, condemned, and punished as British subjects with only a cataplasm of cold-blooded insolence from some Charles Francis Adams, to allay our sense of outrage? I ask this question, and I want to see it answered in decisive action. Nothing else will do. Remonstrance, trifling, effete diplomacy, can never settle a matter which the War of 1812 failed to adjust. The elegant and bold words of Mr. Seward, followed as they always are with flat inaction, will not avail—are not worth a Scotch bauble to us. The first duty of a government is to protect its citizens. Mr. Seward lets the citizen take care of himself [crossed out: and goes into real estate….] the best way he can. How differently all other governments act in the interest of each of their citizens whose rights as such citizens are denied, trifled with, or trampled upon abroad! Our country must not be an exception any longer; we must assert the force of our laws, and that our Constitution is not a false light to the immigrant nor a sham to those who swear allegiance to it.

I am no Fenian, properly so called; but I think well of those who are, and better of their cause. This, though, has nothing to do with the subject. American citizens and American soldiers are startled by finding themselves pronounced to be that which most they hate to be—British subjects. We want this position answered by the establishment of our status under the Constitution and laws of our country. Do we ask too much?18

Butler replied within days to blame Johnson for the lack of vigorous protection of naturalized citizens and scorn any Irish American support for the president. “I sympathize most heartily with every word you say,” Butler assured Guiney, “The naturalised citizen is as much an American as is the native born. Especially is this true of those who have fought side by side with us in the country’s battles. Theirs is a baptism by fire and blood in to the church of American freedom American rights and protection of American laws.”19

Meanwhile, mass meetings protesting the expatriation issue grew in size and frequency, uniting Irish- and native-born on this topic and publicly punctuating the message that Guiney sent privately. On November 23, 1867, tens of thousands of people convened in Cincinnati to resolve that the Ohio congressional delegation should use their best efforts to urge the government to “take immediate action” regarding all American citizens, whether native-born or naturalized, imprisoned by the British. That same evening, thousands of veterans of the Irish Brigade and Corcoran Legion gathered at Cooper Institute in New York City. After appointing a committee to lobby Congress, the meeting resolved that naturalized and native-born citizens stood subject to the same rights, responsibilities, and protections, and called on the government to defend the liberties of all citizens. The veterans then reminded everyone that they and other “Irish-born citizen soldiers of this Republic” had “recently emerged from the horrors and slaughter of a great war in defense of the flag of their adopted country, which flag they did fully believe would give them its protecting shelter against the claims to their allegiance of any Power on the face of the earth.” To emphasize their point that the United States owed Irish Americans protection in exchange for their allegiance, some orators wore their federal army uniforms, and they spoke under a banner that read, “The rights of the naturalized citizens must be protected. Our claim in the Republic is earned by our devotion.”20

A few days later, on November 26, 1867, another meeting gathered at Cooper Institute, this one open to the public and chaired by Irish American judge Charles P. Daly. Echoing the words of the Irish American veterans, this meeting emphatically affirmed that, where “the Constitution and laws impose on naturalized citizens the same burdens and responsibilities as on those of native birth, they should also receive the same protection from the government to which they have sworn allegiance, and to which alone they owe obedience.” Inviting war should Britain not abandon the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, the meeting called on

our fellow-citizens throughout the Union, by the mutual interests which bind us as children, by birth or adoption, of a common country, to assemble in mass meetings in their various localities, and, in the name of the people of the United States, to demand that our representatives at Washington shall not rest until the amplest protection is insured to all our people abroad, and the name of an American citizen is respected throughout the world, as was that of the Roman of old.21

In Boston, six thousand people assembled at Faneuil Hall on December 7, 1867, and adopted resolutions sent to President Johnson that rejected Britain’s continued application of the doctrine of perpetual allegiance and its de facto nullification of American naturalization. Resolving that “the time has come when it is no longer just, politic, wise, or expedient to suffer any foreign power to exact service or allegiance of any kind from those who have been naturalized as citizens of the United States,” the Faneuil Hall assembly petitioned Congress to declare that “the fullest legal protection while traveling in foreign countries” applied to “all citizens, native and adopted,” and called for the immediate release of all American citizens presently held as British subjects. Boston’s ex-mayor Joseph M. Wightman served as president of the meeting, and eleven other prominent citizens served as vice presidents, including Irish-born Union veteran Patrick R. Guiney and Irish-born editor of the Pilot, Patrick Donahoe, in a nativist stronghold in the 1850s.22

Not content to confine his thoughts to private letters, Guiney ascended the podium at the Faneuil Hall meeting, an especially moving figure in that he bore the grievous head wound received in service of the Union without an eye patch. Echoing his earlier letter to Butler, Guiney declared to this broader audience that both native and naturalized citizens stood “on precisely the same footing as to their rights and duties” pursuant to the Constitution, and he attacked Britain’s imprisonment and sentencing of Irish-born American citizens without the same due process applicable to native-born American citizens in British territory. Britain alone did not earn Guiney’s anger, however, as he questioned the Johnson administration’s courage in protecting America’s citizens and defending so fundamental a right as expatriation. Guiney cast himself as the proponent of America’s strong national power by arguing that, in allowing Britain to determine the Constitution’s effect according to where an American citizen was born, America ceded to Parliament the power to “alter, amend, impair or destroy” this country’s fundamental charter and the rights vested in it. For Guiney, the issue could not be simpler: the naturalized citizen and his chosen government contracted for protection on one side and allegiance on the other, and on adjuring foreign allegiance and swearing loyalty to the United States, “the Constitution flings its sunshine and its promise around the new-born citizen.” Guiney acknowledged that the Irish “love their native hills and valleys,” and did not leave their homeland willingly but as a result of expulsion at the hands of British actions, but in referring to “our nationality,” he included himself as an American.23

From major urban centers to rural areas, similar mass meetings swept the entire country, calling for an affirmation of expatriation rights and demanding that the nation assert its power to protect those it defined as citizens. Republican congressman George S. Boutwell forwarded to the Johnson administration the proceedings of a public meeting held in Marlborough, Massachusetts, which declared that the United States had to stop allowing “any foreign power to exact allegiance from any citizen of this republic, whether native or adopted,” and called for the federal government to demand release of all those American citizens tried and convicted as British subjects. On December 22, 1867, Milwaukeeans gathered at City Hall to identify the violation of any rights of citizens abroad as a cause of war in a petition sent to Johnson, Seward, and Congress. The attendees affirmed that “expatriation is one of the inalienable rights of man,” so that one naturalized in the United States “should be regarded during the continuance of such domicile as invested with our national character, and entitled to the protection of our government,” and “no distinction should be tolerated between native-born and naturalized citizens of the United States in regard to immunities and privileges in foreign countries.” On January 8, 1868, the Knights of St. Patrick met in New York to adopt similar resolutions, sent to Seward, and called on the United States to settle by treaty with Britain the debate over expatriation rights once and for all.24

On January 17, 1868, citizens of Bridgeport, Connecticut, unanimously declared, “When the government of the United States has accepted the allegiance of any person of foreign birth it is its right and its duty to give him protection as such citizen everywhere, and it is not bound to conform to the policy or traditions of any other nation.” Citizens in the Adirondack Mountains of Franklin County, in northern upstate New York, convened at the courthouse in Malone to echo the resolutions passed by the Cooper Institute assembly on November 26, 1867, and the residents of Auburn, New York, a central New York town where Seward had his home since 1823 and Harriet Tubman lived after the war, likewise met in a courthouse to proclaim that through the Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican War, and Civil War “our flag has had no more faithful, tried, or noble defenders than our adopted citizens.” The Auburn meeting demanded European nations to respect, and the United States to defend, the equal citizenship of naturalized Americans.25

A number of state legislatures also sent resolutions to Congress. On January 22, 1868, the Wisconsin state legislature rejected the doctrine of “once a subject always a subject” as “repugnant to the dictates of enlightened civilization” and identified expatriation as “one of the inalienable rights of man.” Wisconsin’s legislature further vowed that “no distinction should be tolerated between native-born and duly naturalized citizens of the United States in regard to their immunities and privileges in foreign countries.” A month later, Wisconsin’s legislature reiterated its position by announcing that “if there is a principle which is popularly precious to the heart of the country, it is that those millions of foreigners who came to our shores had the right to come, the right to stay, the right to make themselves citizens by complying with the law, and a right, as citizens, to be defended by the government.” Pennsylvania’s legislature instructed its senators, and requested its congressmen, to urge Seward to demand the release of all American citizens, native or naturalized, and resolve with Britain the expatriation issue. The legislatures of Minnesota, Ohio, and California passed similar resolutions.26

In contrast to antebellum nativism, some state legislatures explicitly affirmed equality for native and naturalized citizens in America and abroad. On January 29, 1868, Maine’s governor Joshua Chamberlain (of Gettysburg fame) endorsed a resolution of his state’s legislature that contrasted with antebellum nativism there. Maine’s resolution declared that “the naturalized citizens of the United States are entitled to the same rights and protection, in the lawful pursuits of life, as native citizens, whether at home or abroad,” and any denial of this American doctrine comprised “an offence against the United States.” Maryland’s legislature, where the Know Nothing party achieved success before the Civil War, similarly asked its congressional representatives to secure “to all naturalized citizens the same rights of person and property, both at home and abroad, which are now possessed by the native-born.” Kansas’s legislature, moreover, declared it “a cardinal doctrine of republicanism that every man has the indisputable right to transfer his allegiance from one government to another” and recognized that pursuant to the Constitution, “naturalized citizens are entitled to all the rights privileges, and immunities of the native born,” save “the offices of President and Vice President.”27

Petitions continued pouring into Congress from across the country through the summer of 1868, though with particular intensity from late 1867 through the end of March 1868. A broad and popular movement urged equal rights and protection for native and naturalized citizens, action to compel Britain to recognize expatriation rights, and affirmation of the power of the United States to define and protect its citizens. By January 1868, Seward wrote Adams that, while the American public deplored the bloodshed of the Manchester rescue, nonetheless their sympathies “are every day profoundly more moved and more general” on Ireland’s behalf. British application of perpetual allegiance to naturalized American citizens, “awakened a general feeling of resentment and deeply wounded our pride of sovereignty,” Seward noted, as well as that “the people are appealing to this government throughout the whole country from Portland to San Francisco and from St. Paul to Pensacola.” With tensions already exacerbated by Britain’s actions in the late war, Seward feared the outcome unless the expatriation issue was resolved.28

Expatriation Rights and the Act of July 27, 1868

Under this pressure, Seward’s State Department as well as Congress took up the cause of settling the expatriation issue once and for all. The issue took on heightened prominence as pressure peaked in a presidential and congressional election year, especially in light of Republican Party’s poor showing in several 1867 state elections in the North. As Seward noted in March of that year, Fenianism not only gained the sympathy of Irish America but “of the whole American people.”29

On November 21, 1867, an Irish-born Democratic congressman from New York, William E. Robinson, moved for Charles Francis Adams’s impeachment for “neglect of duty” for “failing to secure” the “rights” of American citizens in Britain. Speaking in support of this demand a few days later (which became submerged by calls for Johnson’s impeachment), Robinson attacked British imprisonment of American citizens and Americans who discounted this “insult” because “the victims are Irishmen or Fenians,” and felt them “unworthy of a flag for his country, or a grave beneath its soil.” Assuring that he did not claim that naturalized Americans could “invade England and there commit crimes with impunity,” Robinson demanded that no American traveling abroad should ever be imprisoned without proper charges and a fair, speedy trial, or be subject to distinction based on naturalized status.30

Robinson challenged the country, “‘Are we a nation?’ If so, let us show it, not by broils at home, but with backbone abroad.” Robinson also conflated Irish nationalism as a natural component of Irish Americanism and announced that Britain must realize “we sympathize with Ireland, and that we have a right to do so.” Robinson went so far as to proclaim, “We have just as much right to Ireland as she [Britain] has,” because Britain based its claim on “fraud” and the seven-century-long attempt of an “inferior race,” the English, to conquer “a superior race like the Irish.” Professing that the United States itself “is Irish,” reflected in a large segment of the population as well as the number of congressmen who had at least partial Irish heritage, Robinson reminded his fellow representatives of the power Irish Americans held as a voting bloc. Robinson concluded with a resolution, which the House approved, calling for the Committee on Foreign Affairs to report a bill articulating the extent to which the United States would protect the rights of her naturalized citizens, and he quoted a poem published in the New York Herald the day before under the name of “that gallant soldier, genuine Irishman, and true American,” Charles Halpine’s fictional Miles O’Reilly:

Oh, as citizens—Americans—

  We gloried in the name,

And on many a field our blood we shed

  To guard your flag of fame;

But to-day we lie in bonds, as if

  Mere felons we had been—

The only charge that England brings,

  “Those boys were for the Green!”

We are citizens twice over,

  By the law and by the sword,

By adoption and by service,

  But our claims are now ignored;

Say, Uncle Sam, is this your wish,

  And do you really mean,

That you’ve outlawed all your faithful sons

  Whose birth was of the Green?31

Within days, Robinson delivered another speech in which he exposed to his colleagues Britain’s two-faced position on perpetual allegiance by quoting an 1857 letter from the British Foreign Office, in which it refused to help the mother of a dead naturalized American citizen make a claim for compensation to the United States. The Foreign Office wrote to the woman, living in Dublin, that her son’s naturalization precluded its involvement because he “deliberately renounced his connection with this country, and died a citizen of the United States.” Robinson also invoked Irish American participation in the Civil War, quoting the words of Patrick J. Condon, formerly an officer in the Sixty-third New York: “I believe you are aware I shared the gloom and the glory of the Irish brigade,” but now “American citizens and soldiers who had shed their blood and periled their lives in defense of the Union were marched like felons from a British dungeon escorted by constabulary.” Robinson named other arrested federal veterans, such as Denis F. Burke, who “three times won the rights of citizenship, once by the regular form of naturalization, and twice afterward by honorable discharges from the American Army.”32

Robinson concluded by naming several Irish American generals, living and dead, and he noted that the British applied the rule of perpetual allegiance even to individuals born in America of parents born in the United Kingdom. “This is a question of importance to thousands of soldiers who have risked their lives in defense of the American banner,” Robinson reminded his fellow congressmen, and “they deserve the protection of the flag they fought for.” While denying that anyone had a right to violate British laws while visiting its territory, Robinson upheld the right of naturalized citizens to enjoy protection while traveling abroad on business or pleasure, and he predicted, “We are going to make a change in the law of nations.”33

Other congressmen expanded Robinson’s call to include equal treatment at home. On December 20, 1867, Republican congressman Hiram Price of Iowa proposed a resolution declaring the government’s “obligation…to protect and defend the subject, whether native or adopted, whether at home or abroad,” and that the country would “submit to no such oppression of our citizens by any Power” and “adopt such measures as will make it safe for an American citizen, free from crime, to travel in any part of the civilized world.”34

A few weeks later, on January 9, 1868, the House unanimously approved resolutions asking the president to intercede with Britain to secure the release of prisoners in Canada, Britain, and Ireland. On January 20, 1868, Republican congressman Robert T. Van Horn of Missouri introduced a joint resolution that demanded redress for the execution of Michael O’Brien, one of the Manchester Martyrs who claimed American citizenship, and affirmation by the United States that naturalized citizens are “entitled to all rights and protection accorded natural-born citizens” and infringement of those rights by foreign powers constituted a cause for war. The following day, California’s senator John Conness, an Irish-born Democrat who switched to the Republican Party, offered a similar joint resolution authorizing the president to use armed force if necessary to obtain the immediate liberation of Americans imprisoned by Britain.35

Finally, on January 27, 1868, Massachusetts’s Republican congressman Banks reported a bill from the foreign affairs committee that declared naturalized citizens abroad entitled to the same protection of person and property accorded to the native-born and empowered the president to use all resources at the country’s disposal to enforce it. The law carved out several exceptions: where the naturalized citizen stood guilty of a crime committed within the foreign state’s jurisdiction, deserted from the armed services or conscription ordered by such state, obtained naturalization through fraud, committed treason against the United States, lived abroad continually for five years, failed to make proper report of property for taxation, returned to the native country with the intent of resuming domicile there or elsewhere in a foreign state, or engaged in any foreign war as a belligerent. For the first time, Congress stood ready to put teeth behind American support for expatriation rights.36

Except for a provision authorizing reprisals on British subjects, many congressmen from both parties enthusiastically embraced the proposed bill. Minnesota Republican congressman Ignatius Donnelly championed the measure not only because it confirmed the legal status of millions but because he felt it furthered America’s role in shining as a beacon for republicanism. Claiming that Europe’s refusal to recognize American naturalization showed the “contempt” with which monarchical governments treated democracies, Donnelly offered that the Civil War decided the “destiny of all mankind” and linked “the agitation which now pervades western Europe” as “the reflex of the mighty results of our own great struggle,” an “‘irrepressible conflict,’ not alone between slavery and liberty, but between republicanism and monarchy.” After winning the “crusade against slavery in this land,” the United States now embraced another mission, to “be on the side of liberty and against oppression in all the lands of this earth,” even if it meant war. Democratic congressman George W. Woodward from Pennsylvania called the Declaration of Independence “the first grand naturalization act adopted by this country,” affirmed by blood spilled in the War of 1812, and he proposed the bill be amended to confirm American support for expatriation rights for its own citizens.37

For some, Banks’s bill did not provide enough protection. Iowa Republican congressman James F. Wilson feared that the bill’s section authorizing the president to use all resources at his disposal to secure the principles of expatriation did not have enough specificity, and the lack of explicit enforcement provisions could render the act hollow. Wilson felt that naturalized citizens should find “the shield of this Republic as firmly held for their defense as it is for those who are born upon our soil” and declared that “it is high time that feudalism…[is] driven from our shores and eliminated from our law.” Wilson demanded a clearer, more forceful bill, so that the whole world would know that “the act of naturalization is equivalent to an American birth; and that where he may thereafter go the flag of the Republic envelops him as completely as it does the person of him who first saw the light of heaven in an American home.” Illinois Republican congressman Norman B. Judd objected to the list of terms by which the federal government declared it would not provide protection, claiming it inappropriate to “hunt up disabilities, imaginary or supposed difficulties” and “notify foreign Governments what points might be made against such naturalized citizens.”38

For different reasons, Democratic congressman John Chanler, one of New York’s staunchest racists and a bitter opponent of the Fourteenth Amendment, also stood as an energetic proponent of affirming expatriation rights. Chanler did so as part of his attack on efforts to uplift blacks to equality, a notion he found to be repugnant and insulting to whites. Chanler called for an international diplomatic congress to convene, and for the United States to take the lead in changing the international law of expatriation as part of its global mission. Chanler made these proposals out of gratitude to foreign-born individuals who fought for the Union, but also so as to further define American citizenship as based on whiteness. Chanler equated expatriation and emigration as principles as fundamental as the rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and he deemed naturalized and native citizens “identical before the law” and enjoying an “inalienable” right to protection so long as they obeyed it. Chanler opposed the use of the phrase “naturalized citizens” in Banks’s bill as implying a distinction where none existed, going so far as to say that while Congress had done so much work to declare no distinction among American citizens based on color, there should be none based on birth. While calling for action, “boldly, decisively” and “at once” to vindicate the rights of American citizens abroad regardless of birth, Chanler simultaneously rejected reprisals against British subjects as a reenactment of “the brutalities of the Middle Ages.”39

On February 20, 1868, Banks reported a new bill from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, H.R. 768, which stated that “this government has freely received emigrants from all nations and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that all such American citizens, with the descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof…this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed.” The bill mandated three points: first, that any declaration or order of a government officer that questioned or restricted the right of expatriation was null and void; second, that all naturalized citizens traveling abroad would receive from the government the same protections accorded to native-born citizens in like situation and circumstances; and third, that whenever the president learned “that any citizen of the United States has been arrested…upon the allegation that naturalization in the United States does not operate to dissolve his allegiance to his native sovereign; or if any citizen shall have been arrested and detained, whose release upon demand shall have been unreasonably delayed or refused, the President shall be, and hereby is, empowered to order the arrest and to detain in custody any subject or citizen of such foreign government who may be found within the jurisdiction of the United States.”40

Even in Britain, the growing furor across the Atlantic caused some popular support for abandoning perpetual allegiance. On December 11, 1867, British barrister William Vernon Harcourt wrote under a pseudonym in the London Times to argue that perpetual allegiance made sense during the feudal period, when few people left the realm except to escape some duty or service but proved inappropriate to deal with the waves of immigrants leaving British territory in the nineteenth century. Besides, Harcourt argued, recognizing Irish Americans as U.S. citizens would place greater responsibility on the American government for their behavior abroad. Harcourt proposed the establishment of a joint American-British commission to resolve the issue that Charles Francis Adams, that same day, identified as “one of the most threatening problems to the peace of the two countries.” The following month, the Law Amendment Society after debate concluded that the time had come to resolve the Anglo-American divergence on the issue. Even the London Times, which two months earlier upheld the doctrine of perpetual allegiance in the context of the Manchester rescue and Warren trial, in January 1868 admitted that it understood the interest shown on the issue in the United States, considering that much of its population hailed from abroad, and called for a resolution with America.41

As discussion and rhetoric heightened to a crescendo, the State Department urgently sought to settle the expatriation issue, hoping to preclude the passage of additional inflammatory resolutions. Seward wrote Adams that the naturalization issue generated so much controversy that it had to be resolved before any other Anglo-American difference, such as the Alabama claims, could even be addressed. Stanley agreed in principle but took a cautious stance, instructing Edward Thornton, Britain’s new minister to the United States, to assure Seward that Britain stood ready to abandon perpetual allegiance but that a number of legal questions had to be considered first—the status of children, for example, as well as what to do if someone renounced his naturalization and wished to return to his original allegiance. Seward pressed the issue and suggested to Thornton that the two countries should at least lay down the general principles for a resolution and leave the final details for a future convention, but the British government dragged its feet.42

Lasting from March 5, 1868, until final acquittal on May 26, 1868, President Johnson’s impeachment trial in the Senate cooled Seward’s ability to press the naturalization issue. Meanwhile, the House passed a modified version of Banks’s bill, including a retaliation clause, on April 20 by the vote of 104 to 4, with 81 abstentions. Additionally, Adams resigned his diplomatic post and returned to the United States. Once relieved of the threat of removal from office, Seward immediately went back to work on the expatriation issue. On May 27, Seward instructed Benjamin Moran, serving as charge d’affaires in London until a successor could be named to fill Adams’s place, to continue pressing the British. On May 28, Seward replied to British minister Thornton’s request for assistance in the event of another Fenian attack against Canada by using the Fenian threat to help coerce a negotiated end to perpetual allegiance: “Whatever danger there may be of a disturbance of the peace at the frontier at the present time,” Seward declared, “that danger is altogether due to the omission by the British Government to reasonably remove, either by legislation or negotiation, the indefeasible features of British policy on the subject of the rights of naturalized citizens of the United States.” The following month, Seward instructed Moran to remind the British of the terms of Banks’s bill pending in the Senate, including its reprisal provision.43

Both political parties addressed the issue during what turned out to be a close 1868 presidential election, in which Republican Ulysses S. Grant won with less than 53 percent of the vote, and possibly a minority of white voters. On May 20, the Republican convention declared in its platform “sympathy with all the oppressed people which are struggling for their rights,” and contrasted former nativist impulses by holding that “foreign immigration, which in the past, has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of power to this nation—the asylum of the oppressed of all nations—should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.” The convention adopted another plank:

The doctrine of Great Britain and other European powers, that because a man is once a subject, he is always so, must be resisted, at every hazard, by the United States, as a relic of the feudal times, not authorized by the law of nations, and at war with our national honor and independence. Naturalized citizens are entitled to be protected in all their rights of citizenship, as though they were native-born; and no citizen of the United States, native or naturalized, must be liable to arrest and imprisonment by any foreign power, for acts done or words spoken in this country; and, if so arrested and imprisoned, it is the duty of the Government to interfere in his behalf.

The Democratic convention followed suit and adopted planks of “equal rights and protection for naturalized and native-born citizens at home and abroad,” absolute opposition to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and called for “the assertion of American nationality, which shall command the respect of foreign powers, and furnish an example and encouragement to people struggling for national integrity, constitutional liberty, and individual rights.”44

Britain remained slow to respond while the Senate debated H.R. 768. Ultimately, the powerful chair of the Senate’s foreign relations committee, Charles Sumner, blocked the retaliation clause because he deemed making retaliatory arrests of British subjects a “proposal of unutterable barbarism.” The Senate passed a revised version of H.R. 768 on July 25, 1868, 39 to 5 with 20 abstentions. The House quickly concurred with the revised version that same day.45

The act signed by President Johnson on July 27, 1868—the day before the secretary of state declared that the nation had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment—affirmed that “expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The act disavowed foreign claims of allegiance on those which America had invested with citizenship and codified the right of American citizens to expatriate and naturalize abroad as well. Declaring any order or decision of any government officer that restricted or questioned the right of expatriation to be contrary to the fundamental principles of the government, the act held that all naturalized citizens abroad “shall be entitled to, and shall receive from this government, the same protection of persons and property that is accorded to native-born citizens in like situations and circumstances.” Finally, under the act, whenever the president learned that an American citizen had been “unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government,” he had a duty to “demand” of that government the reasons for such imprisonment. If the rationale given appeared “wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship,” the president then had a duty to “demand the release of such citizen” and “use such means, not amounting to acts of war,” to effect that release.46

With the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution for the first time definitively set forth the doctrine of equality between native-born and naturalized citizens, and with the Act of July 27, 1868, Congress declared the policy of the United States regarding expatriation rights. The Act of July 27, 1868, still in force today, explicitly linked expatriation rights to those listed in the Declaration of Independence, and in conjunction with the Fourteenth Amendment, it affirmed that naturalization placed foreign-born citizens on the same footing as those born on U.S. soil. Moreover the Act of July 27, 1868, made citizenship consensual and voluntary, by affirming one’s right to opt out of birthright citizenship and choose a new allegiance. As nation-building measures, moreover, both the amendment and the act affirmed the power of the government of the United States to define its citizenry as well as protect it.47

On the other hand, implicit in this understanding of expatriation rights and national citizenship was the idea that the destination country had to accept the expatriating individual for naturalization. America affirmed the right for people to change their allegiance but expatriates had to find a nation willing to naturalize them. American support for expatriation rights did not require or expect that nations had to agree to naturalize every incoming foreign-born person, or any at all. Individual nations, including the United States, retained the power to determine whether to naturalize individuals, as well as the procedure involved to do so. Accordingly, while the United States strongly supported expatriation rights and the voluntary nature of citizenship, it could also exclude Native Americans, who were considered to have allegiance to their tribe, from naturalization and American citizenship without paradox. In 1882, Congress passed an act prohibiting the naturalization of Chinese individuals as well. At the same time that a proponent of expatriation rights could support the right of a Chinese-born person to change allegiance and naturalize abroad, that same proponent could also support American exclusion of the Chinese from naturalization and citizenship without perceiving any contradiction. Individuals had a right to expatriate under the Act of July 27, 1868, but nations did not have a duty to naturalize those who they did not wish to naturalize.

Negotiation with the British

On the diplomatic front, Seward pressed the new American minister to Britain, former senator Reverdy Johnson, to settle the naturalization issue. Minister Johnson reported no success after a month, but he maintained pressure on Britain, especially after passage of the Act of July 27, 1868, and Seward’s reminder that America hesitated to apply itself vigorously against any further Fenian attacks on Canada where Britain showed insufficient interest in resolving the perpetual allegiance issue. By September 19, 1868, Minister Johnson reminded Stanley that the naturalization dispute precluded even discussion of the Alabama claims, and Stanley finally assented. Although unwilling to conclude a formal treaty until a royal commission studying the matter issued its report, Stanley agreed that the two countries should at least approve a protocol agreeing on certain expatriation principles.48

On October 9, 1868, Minister Johnson and Stanley signed a protocol establishing that Britain would now consider and treat subjects naturalized in America as “in all respects and for all purposes American citizens,” and vice versa. While the protocol could not take effect until Parliament revised the law codes pursuant to the report of the royal commission, the British government officially announced that it would, at long last, abandon the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. Also by 1868, the Senate ratified or had placed before it treaties which clarified naturalization rights with the North German Union, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse, Belgium, and Mexico as well.49

On February 20, 1869, a commission appointed by the crown the previous May recommended, as expected, that Britain abandon the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. Finding perpetual allegiance “neither reasonable nor convenient,” the commission declared that the doctrine conflicted with “that freedom of action which is now recognized as most conducive to the general good as well as to individual happiness and prosperity,” and was inconsistent with the practices of a state that otherwise allowed its subjects freedom to emigrate. Besides, the panel urged, a change in policy would alleviate Britain of any claim for protection by people who had “severed their connection” with the empire. Around the same time, Britain announced plans to release several dozen Fenian prisoners, among them John Warren, in the near future. In exchange, and as the Brotherhood’s treasury and overall potency dwindled by spring of 1869, Grant’s administration (which included Fenian sympathizer Schulyer Colfax as vice president) grudgingly signaled a greater willingness to prevent any further designs on Canada.50

On May 12, 1870, Parliament passed an act that allowed British subjects to naturalize abroad, except if some disability to doing so existed. The next day, a treaty between Britain and the United States recognized that American citizens could naturalize as British subjects and British subjects could naturalize as American citizens and thenceforth be held “in all respects and for all purposes” as citizens or subjects of their new country. The short treaty went on to mandate that British subjects who naturalized in the United States could resume their British subjectship by publicly renouncing their naturalization by May 12, 1872. Americans could do the same, although because of the requirement of Senate approval for the treaty, the two-year period within which to renunciate began to run on exchange of the ratification of the treaty. Finally, the treaty provided that Britain or America could readmit someone to citizenship, on that person’s application, who had naturalized in the other country, and allegiance based on that naturalization would fall null. The Senate consented to the treaty on July 8, the United Kingdom ratified it on July 16, and President Grant approved it on July 19. With the ratifications exchanged on August 10, 1870, an issue left unsettled since the close of the American Revolution was resolved.51

The debate over expatriation rights had an unintended consequence: it brought into focus corruption within naturalization procedures, helping spur on a reform movement regarding that topic. The American consul in Zurich criticized the “worthlessness” of American naturalization certificates as evidence of citizenship and urged that only federal courts issue them not just to combat election fraud at home, but also so that governments abroad would respect their meaning. Allegations of fraud, such as charges that naturalization papers could be purchased for two dollars at one New York City bar, led to a congressional committee chaired by Ohio Republican William Lawrence to investigate 1868 election fraud in New York City. Congress incorporated the Lawrence Committee’s recommendations into the July 14, 1870, second Enforcement Act, which focused on naturalization reform. While this act did not tighten or restrict access to legal naturalization, it did make it a crime to commit perjury in any naturalization oath or affidavit, make or sell false naturalization certificates, knowingly use any fraudulent naturalization certificate, or falsely represent that one was an American citizen. Further reflecting greater control by the federal government over naturalization affairs, the act gave U.S. courts jurisdiction over offenses against the act. The act also authorized federal supervision of elections in cities with populations greater than twenty thousand people and appointment of federal deputy marshals to guard polling places on national election days. Accordingly, for New York’s 1870 election day, the federal government appointed almost eight hundred supervisors and twelve hundred deputy marshals in a multiracial force (at least two hundred of the deputy marshals were black).52

Fenians in North America tried another Canadian assault around the same time resolution came on the expatriation issue. On May 25, 1870, John O’Neill led Fenians who struck at Eccles Hill on the Vermont border. A presidential proclamation published in newspapers that same day declared that anyone who attacked Canada forfeited their “right to the protection of the Government, or its interference on their behalf to rescue them from the consequences of their own acts.” The Fenian attack collapsed, and the American government tried O’Neill and several of his comrades (a far cry from the Johnson administration’s response of paying the return fare for many of the Fenians stranded during the 1866 raid), and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from six months to two years. President Grant pardoned them within months, just before Election Day in New York State. Britain followed suit and, on January 15, 1871, began discharging Fenian prisoners so long as they accepted return to the United States. By February 1872, all Fenian prisoners in Canada had likewise been returned across the border save one. Fenianism would no longer pose a threat to Anglo-American relations, and it gave way in coming years to other Irish nationalist organizations such as Clan na Gael.53

Conclusion

In the end, Fenianism failed in its objective of liberating Ireland from British rule, but its activities did accomplish a number of unanticipated goals in the Unites States. Fenianism generated a postwar opportunity for Irish Americans to solidify their right to act as citizens and coalesce as a voting bloc recognized by local and national political leaders. Fenianism helped publicize the contribution Irish Americans made to the Union war effort, and it facilitated Irish American inclusion in the broader community on the basis of this loyalty. The Fenians and their supporters increasingly acted as an Irish American political advocacy group, lobbying both lawmakers and society at large to promote changes in American citizenship doctrine.

In stunning contrast to the nativism of the 1850s, much of American society went beyond tolerating Fenianism to embrace it in the second half of the 1860s. Now both the Fenian movement and Irish American agitation regarding expatriation rights garnered widespread approval across the land. Irish Americans successfully asserted an American identity, along with expectations for legal change, at a moment when Irish American military service, egalitarian impulses, America’s emergence from the Civil War as a global power without fear of tampering from abroad, and American concern for transnational republicanism contributed to a more accepting climate. Native-born whites proved more receptive to the moral arguments Irish Americans offered based on their military service, desire to spread American-style republicanism to Ireland, and calls for the United States to act as a more vigorous nation-state in defending those it defined as citizens. Moreover, the power of Irish American votes lured politicians from both parties.54

Akin to black protests against caste in citizenship based on color, Irish Americans opposed distinction based on whether one held birthright or naturalized American citizenship. Popular support across America forced the clarification of citizenship doctrine pertaining to naturalized citizens at home as well as abroad. Legislation emphasized the power of the United States to define and protect its citizens, including when they traveled abroad, in the context of America’s consciousness and exercise of its power as a stronger nation-state and status as the global defender of republicanism. Some Americans even expressed their willingness to go to war over the issue. At the same time, this legislation affirmed the voluntary and consensual nature of citizenship by affording expatriation rights as a way out of birthright citizenship, including for Americans. In the end, diplomatic pressure forced Britain to accept the American view on expatriation rights and abandon its adherence to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance.55

In 1869, a report from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs recognized the petitions “from nearly every State, and signed by representatives of all parties” on the naturalization issue. The report offered that “no subject has ever shown greater unanimity of opinion than this demand for the protection of American citizens resident or travelling in foreign states” and ascribed congressional action in passing the Act of July 27, 1868, to “obedience to the prayer of these petitions.” On May 23, 1870, New York City mayor Abraham Oakey Hall and Irish-born congressman William E. Robinson used loftier words in their speeches on American citizenship delivered to a packed house at Cooper Institute, where Irish American veterans had gathered several years earlier to discuss the issue. In introducing Robinson, Hall, an alleged henchman in the Tweed Ring, lauded American citizenship as “an insignia more honorable than those of Kings” and inclusively noted that “when the subject of American citizenship is inscribed upon any banner, I want to march under it as you do.” Hall acknowledged the impact of Irish American activism in helping force the Anglo-American naturalization treaty: “Irishmen set in motion the ball which rolled in the early part of this month to the feet of England’s Sovereign and compelled her to sign a bill which accords to you and to me, and to every American, the rights throughout all Great Britain of American citizenship.” Irish Americans, Hall explained, raised the issue; congressmen like Robinson advocated their concerns; and, through these efforts, Britain now accepted as American citizens those they formerly considered as subjects.56

Robinson opened his speech by declaring it a mortification on the national character any time the government shirked its duty to guard the rights of its citizens at home or abroad. A nation was more than the power of its military and the wealth of her coffers, Robinson continued, for if it would not protect its citizens at home and abroad, its might and money were meaningless. Robinson echoed Hall’s words in ascribing to Irish American agitation, and his own efforts in Congress, the fact that foreign countries now respected the United States and citizenship in it. Naming Irish American Civil War heroes such as Corcoran, Mulligan, Shields, Meagher, Logan, and Sheridan, Robinson bristled that before, Irish Americans who had sworn allegiance to the United States and fought for her preservation were held, tried, and even convicted while visiting Britain for words spoken and acts done in America. Should war have erupted between the two countries, Robinson reminded his audience, they would have been liable to suffer death as traitors to the British crown. The agitation of naturalized citizens, however, resulted in their acknowledgement as equal to the native-born before all the nations of Europe, pursuant to a bill Robinson deemed one of the most important in the history of the United States.57