It is encouraging to note that several of the volumes published in conjunction with the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising have focused on the American contribution. After all, Thomas Clarke and James Connolly had lived in the United States, and Patrick Pearse, Sean Mac Diarmada, and Joseph Plunkett had travelled to America to raise money or on Irish Republican Brotherhood business, and the Proclamation itself singled out the Irish community in the U.S. as Ireland’s ‘exiled children in America’. Robert Schmuhl has taken that phrase for the title of his book and he explains the American part in the Rising through the work of four figures: John Devoy, Woodrow Wilson, Joyce Kilmer, and Eamon de Valera, his thesis being ‘the roots of the Rising grew in U.S. soil and … the American reaction proved critical to determining its consequences’ (p. 2).

John Devoy is an obvious choice—the ‘greatest’ of the Fenians, arrested and imprisoned in 1866, spent most of the rest of his life in the U.S., immersed in the intrigue of Irish revolutionary organisations, and eventually editing the strongest Irish nationalist newspaper. Schmuhl shows Devoy had the determination to hold to his revolutionary principles despite the apparent triumph of the home rule movement from 1910 to 1914. He was prepared to support the Irish Volunteers through the confusing months of 1914 when John Redmond appeared to take control of the organisation and steer it toward enlistment in the British Army. In those very months Devoy was the link to Clarke and the I.R.B. in Dublin, to German Ambassador von Bernstorff in New York, and to Sir Roger Casement in Berlin. Devoy and the Clan na Gael were the source of funds for both the I.R.B. and Casement leading up to the Rising, as well as the force behind the founding of the Friends of Irish Freedom in March of 1916, which became the leading Irish nationalist organisation in the U.S. One of Devoy’s many obstacles, however, was President Woodrow Wilson, a surprising choice for Schmuhl’s subject figures. Wilson, however, had good Irish lineage – his father’s parents came from Ulster – but Schmuhl sees him as indifferent to Irish nationalism. Wilson publicly supported home rule in 1910, and when the U.S. entered the war in 1917 he did push the British government to resolve the Irish question – the unsuccessful Irish Convention of 1917–18 being the response. Could Wilson have extracted concessions from the British at the Paris Peace Conference that would have satisfied Irish claims? This question seems more problematical. Schmuhl regards Wilson as denying his Irish heritage; Devoy saw President Wilson as much an enemy as any British prime minister.

Another surprising figure upon whom to base an analysis of the American role in the Rising is Joyce Kilmer, who adopted a romantic Irish identity, but who had no family link. Kilmer is remembered today for his poem, ‘Trees’, which is now parodied if mentioned at all. Schmuhl gives Kilmer much more credit as a poet and a journalist, and his focus on Kilmer provides an insightful analysis of U.S. newspaper coverage, which the author regards as decisive in shaping American opinion on the Rising and Irish self-government. The New York Times of 29 April ran eight articles about the Rising on the front page (out of a total of eighteen articles) and eight more on the second page, and the paper carried front-page Irish articles until 8 May. The editorial policy of the New York Times was critical of the Rising, but it printed sympathetic articles by Kilmer (and Padraic Colum), especially in the Sunday New York Times Magazine where the leaders of the Rising were praised. Indeed, Kilmer wrote a touching article about Cumann na mBan survivor Moira Regan, which when printed in Irish newspapers led to their suppression (reprinted in the appendix to Schmuhl’s book).

Eamon de Valera is almost unavoidable in any discussion of twentieth-century Ireland, but he too can hardly be thought of as Irish-American. Much of this chapter traces the extensive debate over whether de Valera’s survival after 1916 was determined by the fact that he enjoyed some form of protection because of his U.S. birth, or whether the hostile reaction to the earlier executions had led to pressure from the British government to end them, or whether he was too far down the queue of participants. The documentary evidence remains ambiguous, but Schmuhl concludes that de Valera’s own specific statement in 1969 ruled out any American influence in the decision not to execute him. Is this matter of any historical significance? Schmuhl asserts that de Valera’s American birth gave him a valuable mythic link to the U.S. and Irish America, which was of great use in his repeated visits seeking help and financing in building the Ireland de Valera envisioned. ‘One conclusion’, Schmuhl states, ‘is that de Valera himself wanted to maintain an aura of mystery and that his often-asserted life-saving association with America strengthened him in his political and governmental pursuits’ (p. 138). By the time of his 1969 statements denying any American influence in his survival, de Valera could let go. Intrigue, romance, denial, and myth are the terms Schmuhl uses to describe the American links to the Rising and the struggle for Irish self-government his four subjects characterised. This is a valuable innovative study.