An Irish General in America's War: The Life and Times of Thomas W Sweeny Book

"This well-illustrated biographical study is the first ever of Thomas W. Sweeny who, with his widowed mother, brother and sister, emigrated to Brooklyn, New York, in 1832 when Tom was twelve years old. Until the outbreak of the US war with Mexico, he was occupied with schooling and then work in the printing trade. Setting off for Mexico in 1847 as a Lieutenant in a New York volunteer regiment, however, would serve to define his life from then on. He lost an arm in the battle of Churubusco, but was permitted to serve as an officer in the regular army after the war. After service in California and the southwest desert, he was an outstanding officer in the Civil War during which he rose to the rank of General." All along, however, he had remained devoted to the cause of Irish nationalism, and at the close of the Civil War politicked among Irish nationalist circles (the Fenian Brotherhood) in the US for an American Irish invasion of Canada as the most direct and viable action to free Ireland. Sweeny's plan was adopted by the Fenians and, under his leadership, strikes into Canada were undertaken in 1866. The book considers at length the Fenian movement of the 1860s, its relationship to Irish nationalism in Ireland and the historical context in which Sweeny's Canadian invasion plan was formed and carried out. Also examined is the shaping of the historical record of the event.