Michael Scanlan (10 November 1833 – 6 March 1917) was an Irish nationalist, editor, poet and writer. Known as the "Fenian poet" or the "poet laureate of American Fenianism", he was the author of a number of Irish ballads such as the " Bold Fenian Men" and " The Jackets Green".

Life

Scanlan was born in Castlemahon,

County Limerick County Limerick () is a western Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Reg ...

in November 1833. He emigrated to the United States at fifteen years of age and with his brothers, John and Mortimer, settled in Chicago. They started a sweets (candy) business which became successful. Scanlan joined the

Irish Republican Brotherhood The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB; ) was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924.McGee, p. 15. Its counterpart in the United States ...

(IRB) and wrote articles and poems for a number of newspapers.Obituary in Gaelic American, March 1917 He supported the Fenian invasion of Canada (31 May 1866), following the leadership of William R. Roberts, and was a member of a body known as the Senate. After the failure of that enterprise, he became editor of a new newspaper, the ''Irish Republic''. He edited the ''Irish Republic'', described in its masthead as a "journal of liberty, literature, and social progress", together with Patrick William Dunne and fellow IRB exile David Bell. In the ''Irish Republic'', Scanlon and Bell promoted physical-force Fenianism, while disparaging the general

clericalism Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of the church or in broader political and sociocultural contexts. The journalist has stated that clericalism was not part of the Gospe ...

and pro-Democratic-Party leanings of rival Irish-American papers. The ''Irish Republic'' supported the

Radical Republican The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They ca ...

agenda for

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...

, black suffrage and equal rights. After the ''Irish Republic'' ceased publication in 1873, Scanlon continued writing for Irish and American newspapers. He later became a senior official in the American administration in Washington. In 1887 he was appointed chief of the Bureau of Statistics in the State Department. He retired in 1912. He had a son and three daughters. He died, aged eighty-four years, in the hospital of St. Mary of Nazareth in Chicago.

References

1833 births 1917 deaths 19th-century Irish poets Writers from County Limerick Irish emigrants to the United States Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood {{Ireland-writer-stub