Moses Watt Little wept as he watched the steamer sail for America with his daughter, Mary. For a staunch Protestant Unionist in 1912 who had signed the Ulster Covenant, the impending partition of Ireland would have been enough to send his children to America, especially if he lived in one of the counties of Ulster not included in North Ireland. The nature of the divisive issue of Nationalism versus Unionism, overlaid with the resentments between the majority, yet relatively powerless, Catholics and the minority, yet powerful, Protestants was a strong blend of social and political elements capable of frightening a middle-aged farmer. The keystone of the Irish conflict that would continue for most of the rest of the twentieth century was laid at the turn of the century. It did not require a highly educated man to be able to foresee the troubles that were near to boiling over.
A farmer in County Monaghan, Moses was born in 1837. County Monaghan was one of the nine ancestral counties of the Kingdom of Ulster. In the comprises,Monaghan was excluded from Northern Ireland. The partition of Ireland was based on population density of Catholics and Protestants. Protestant counties were generally included in Northern Ireland, but those counties with a higher population of Catholics were excluded and were thus included in the Irish Free State. When he died in 1919, Moses had lived to witness the Potato Famine, the Easter Uprising of 1916, World War I, and the third Home Rule crisis. He would not witness the final partition of his country.
The Home Rule crisis that climaxed in years from 1912 to 1914 was different from the Home Rule crises of 1886 and 1893. Specifically, it was very clear to the Irish who supported union with Great Britain and opposed a proposed “Government of Ireland” bill the center of opposition was primarily Ulster where a majority of Ireland’s Protestant population lived. Nicola Morris points out the central cause of disagreement.
The Government of Ireland bill of 1912 proposed that a Home Rule parliament should be established at Dublin for the whole of Ireland dealing with such domestic matters as education, policing, and taxation. Unionists objected in principle to the creation of a Dublin legislature, but—given that some form of Home Rule was at that point inevitable—argued during the third Home Rule crisis for some form of exclusion for certain of the counties of Ulster.
To refute such an Irish government, Protestant men and women signed a petition to the British government. The so-called “Ulster Covenant” was a public protest against Home rule in any form. Morris declares, “[s]igning the Ulster Covenant became the touchstone of loyalty, with considerable scorn rapidly displayed to those who had failed to exhibit their allegiance, whom contemporaries designated as ‘traitors to their faith’”. Moses was either not a “traitor” to his faith or a man who stood by his community’s identity. Likely, it was the former, as his émigré daughter, Mary, would pass on to her children and grandchildren that “we were Orangemen.”
More than just a common religion or political bent informed a regional identification with old Ulster. Those who lived in the nine counties, especially near the city of Belfast, would have been pulled into a commercial orbit. “…it was not just that the north-east evidenced a prosperous aspect, but that the nature of that prosperity invested the region with an integrated identity. In fact, the same Parnell who ridiculed the region as a ‘little yellow patch up in the north-east’ in 1886 visited Belfast in May 1891…and, like many travelers, having proceeded from the south, declared himself impressed by the region’s prosperity and the functional, complementary relationship between Belfast…and outlying towns that underpinned it.”
From the British public’s point of view, large portions of Ireland’s residents were savages. Since relatively recent military conflicts on the island were focused in the southern portion, even those residents of northern Ireland could accept a basic difference between the two areas. This difference was reinforced by the development of photography, which assisted in the formation of a greater regional identity. James Loughlin argues, “…photography in Ulster should be seen in the late nineteenth century, for the enormous popularity of urban/rural, local/national photography—fueled by a symbiotic relationship with the growth of tourism—helped enormously, it can be argued, to enhance a regional self-consciousness and identity.” For an older man, like Moses Little, the visual depiction of a romantic Ulster would have a great impact.
For a man like Moses Little, who was both Protestant and Unionist, living in the midst of a largely Catholic country had its potential problems. Under a political system that was sure to represent the majority, the Protestants, previously the beneficiaries of political power when the British Parliament controlled the country, would become powerless. “There was finally a thing to be feared by all Unionists who were Protestants, and that was the existence of an overwhelming majority of Catholic voters, who under Home Rule would gradually but surely yield the government in large part into the hands of the church… In 1912, according to the Irish News of Belfast, the Reverend Gerald O’Nolan said: ‘We shall have a free hand in the future. Let us use it well. This is a Catholic country, and if we do not govern it on Catholic lines, according to Catholic ideals, and the safeguard Catholic interests, it will be all the worse for the country and all the worse for us. Here it is that religion and nationality meet, and may, and should, go hand-in-hand.’” There was no question for Protestants that Catholics would control an Ireland with its own parliament, for Catholics.
Indeed the split from the dominant Protestant power had already occurred for Catholics. The 1908 decree of Ne Temere, released by Pope Pius X, invalidated Catholic marriages performed by Protestant or civil authority. Catholic marriages were similarly declared outside the jurisdiction of civil authority and exclusively under the authority of the church. A secondary decree by Rome set Catholic priests out of touch of non-Catholic trials. With the majority of the population now essentially beyond secular control, it would not be much of a logical reach for Moses Little, and others like him, to understand that should Catholics gain control, politically, the system would be geared toward papal decree, making Protestants outcasts in their own nation.
A Catholic-controlled parliament was a well-founded fear for Protestants. Protestants dominated the political infrastructure of Ireland, even if they were in a numerical minority. Until 1840, there was essentially no representative form of government in Ireland. The minority Protestant landowners controlled what electoral government existed in Ireland. These men in power did not hesitate to use their power for their own benefit and to the detriment of Catholics. Subsequent to 1840, urban and rural district councils, county councils, and boards of guardians were chosen by popular election. While this meant a modicum of enfranchisement for Catholics, Irish elementary and technical education, fisheries, agriculture, congested districts, and old age pensions were still run by appointees.
One example of Protestant appointed political control was the Grand Jury. John Clancey describes the Grand Jury by writing,
It consisted, usually, of a couple of dozen persons chosen from a larger number selected by the High Sheriff for the county or the city…the High Sheriff himself being the nominee of the Lord Lieutenant, who acted on the recommendations of the Superior Court Judges, who, in their turn, always recommended some leading landlord and magistrate… [T]he Grand Jury in every Irish county, down even to the present year, has always consisted almost entirely of members of the landlord class, and mainly Protestants also.The Grand Jury was responsible for maintenance of public infrastructure, including roads and other large works, buildings, prisons, hospitals, appointments. The Grand Jury could also levy a specific county tax, which was an engine for raising considerable revenue.
For Moses Watt Little, the certain future partition of Ireland and the inclusion of his native County Monaghan in the Catholic Ireland may well have been the signal that what stability he and his family had known was at an end. Already, one of Moses’ daughters, Hannah, was in America and preparing to get married in San Francisco. When Hannah’s sister, Mary, told their father that Hannah had sent Mary a ticket to America so Mary could attend Hannah’s wedding, Moses likely encouraged Mary to stay in America. Mary, in her mid-20s, was no longer living in her father’s household, but was rather working as a domestic worker in a Catholic household. From Moses’ perspective, emigration to the United States protected Mary’s future prospects, as well as her physical well-being.
To be sure, Moses Little’s County Monaghan was historically associated with the Protestant Orangemen. The conflicts between Protestant and Catholic became the core of local legend. These legends and oral family histories would find their form in a 1915 American novel, The Orangeman. The novel, written by John H. Finlay, was based on the oral histories of his grandfather’s life in County Monaghan, though fictionalized. In a review of The Orangeman, The Irish Book Lover wrote, “We would hazard the guesses, first, that this book was written, after a visit to the scenes described, by a descendant of the hero… Secondly, that it is founded on tales told by him in his declining years of the bitter feuds between the contending factions on the Ulster border, and the squalid party feuds are magnified in the course of time into Homeric combats…” Without doubt, Finlay’s family would not be the only Monaghan family to pass down tales of violent sectarian clashes.
This was a clue to what Irish society could become under Home Rule. Edward Turner described the process of Ireland becoming dominated by Catholics when he wrote, “If the people were mostly incapable, then Irish administration, no longer supervised from England, would inevitably come into the keeping of the politicians who were now at the head of powerful organizations, like the Ancient Order of Hibernians and others allied with it…” A significant portion of the debate over Home Rule for Ireland was that it would be the heads of Catholic organizations, like the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who take control of a free Ireland’s politics. The Ancient Order of Hibernians were also known as “Molly Maguires”, a Catholic counterpart to the Orangemen, and were loathed by Protestants and Unionists. There were even Catholics who feared and hated the Molly Maguires.
The resistance methods utilized by the Molly Maguires, and other Catholic nationalist groups, were often coercive in nature. Such methods included boycotting, intimidation, destruction of property, threats of violence, ravaging farms, and attacking crops or cattle. “The methods employed to extend and perpetuate the greatness of these bodies, it was said, would be using unseen power, coercion by boycotting, intimidation, and destruction of property. Additionally, “[t]here were stories of brutal murder and cruel revenge, of moonlighting, hayburning, arson. And it was said that such conditions prevailed and such was the character of the Irish magistracy that either criminals were not prosecuted or the trials resulted in gross miscarriage of justice, with secret societies intervening and malefactors allowed to escape.” The situation was unlikely to improve with the establishment of an Irish parliament. Law enforcement and the judiciary would be taken over by a Catholic political power. As Edward Turner wrote in 1917, “…the situation would then be to the advantage of ambitious and reckless political leaders for the control of their supporters and the crushing of those who opposed them.” Moses Little had definitely opposed such Catholic power in 1912 when he signed the Ulster Covenant. His farm and his family would be at risk of reprisal should Ireland gain Home Rule.
Such was the situation when Moses Little, a man who had lived through many troubles and who supported the status quo, waved good-bye to another daughter he would never see again. The combination of political and historical grievances that the Catholics bore against Protestants was sure, under Home Rule, to be redressed in a manner like what the Protestants had delivered to the majority of Irish. Moses stood with those who would have had Monaghan excluded from a free Ireland, but only six of the nine counties of Ulster were ultimately included in Northern Ireland. Moses foresaw the coming troubles for Ireland and, when opportunity came for him to try to protect at least one daughter, he ensured that Mary would not return to Ireland.
Bibliography
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