Dublin 1886: JF Armstrong’s Meeting with Charles Stewart Parnell

June 2, 2015

Charles Stewart Parnell, 1881, Irish Protestant landowner and MP, Image courtesy of Library of Congress

In an interview published in The New York Times on March 6, 1886, John F. Armstrong expressed optimism that the British Parliament would pass an Irish home rule bill at its next session.

The interview with Armstrong was conducted in Augusta, Georgia following his return from a meeting in Dublin with Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish home rule movement in the British House of Commons.

Armstrong traveled to Dublin as a representative of the Executive Committee of the Irish National League of America (INLA) to hand-deliver INLA papers and funds to Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party. During the second week in February, he and Parnell met privately for two hours at the Morrison Hotel in Dublin to discuss business matters between the Irish and American branches of the Irish National League.

Back in the US, he told The New York Times: “Mr. Parnell is confident and has a right to be. The very construction of the Gladstone Government is almost a guarantee of home rule under the current administration.”

According to Armstrong, the situation in Ireland was improving because its leaders were willing to make the necessary concessions to achieve home rule, and because, with the land reform movement and improved economic conditions, the people “…decline nowadays to starve in order to pay rents.”

The Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886, the Parnell Commission, and Katherine O’Shea

Despite the high hopes of supporters in Ireland and abroad, the Irish home rule bill of 1886 failed to pass in the House of Commons.

Other setbacks to the movement soon followed. In 1887 The Times of London published a letter allegedly signed by Parnell that approved of the 1882 murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary of Ireland, and his undersecretary in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Parnell was also accused of having connections to the Irish dynamite campaigns of the early 1880s. The reasoning for this was that the Irish National League of America, which donated money to the Irish Parliamentary Party, also gave money to the Clan na Gael, an Irish-American organization dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland. A powerful faction of the Clan, known as the Triangle, had supported and funded the dynamiting of sites throughout Britain in the early 1880s.

Although a special parliamentary commission cleared Parnell of all charges in November of 1889, its probe documented direct links between the leadership of the Clan na Gael and the Irish National League of America.

In the Parnell Commission report, John F. Armstrong of Georgia was listed as a member of the Executive Committee and Council of Seven of the Irish National League of America and as a member of the Clan na Gael. Armstrong’s 1886 meeting with Parnell in Dublin was cited as an example of the Irish leader’s association with Clan members.

Surprisingly, Parnell emerged from the crisis more popular than ever. However, when he was named as Katherine O’Shea’s lover in her divorce case in 1890, his supporters in Ireland and the US split over whether he was fit to maintain his leadership position, and the home rule movement lost its momentum.

Parnell married Katherine when her divorce became final but refused to retire from politics. Suffering from cancer of the stomach, he died at the age of forty-five in October of 1891.

In the US, the Irish National League of America (INLA) lost widespread support due to its continued backing of Parnell during the O’Shea divorce scandal. The Clan na Gael also suffered a loss of members due to accusations of money mismanagement and murder in the late 1880s.

John F. Armstrong continued his role as a member of the Executive Committee of the INLA until he became ill in the spring of 1890. In February of 1891, he left his family in Georgia to recuperate with his parents in County Sligo for a year.

Unfortunately, his condition continued to deteriorate and when he attempted to return to the US he was detained by British authorities. When he finally reached Augusta in September of 1893, he was declared mentally insane. He died in the Georgia Lunatic Asylum in Milledgeville on November 9th, 1893 and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Augusta the following day.

References

“After Beach All ‘Round: Mr. John F. Armstrong Contradicts the Spy’s Testimony.” The Augusta Chronicle, 10 February 1889. Accessed at Genealogybank.com on 13 March 2014.

“Ireland’s Rosy Prospects.” The New York Times, 6 March 1886. Newspaper interview with John F. Armstrong about his meeting with Charles Stewart Parnell. Accessed at Query.nytimes.com on 30 July 2014.

O’Connor, Thomas Power and Robert McWade. Gladstone, Parnell, and the Great Irish Struggle, pp. 650-655. Hubbard Brothers: Philadelphia, 1890. Accessed in 2014 & 2015 at Archive.org.