Shades of white: were the Irish historical victims of racism?

An Irishman Looks at a Poster Advertising Voyages to New York and Resolves to Emigrate. Coloured Lithograph after E. Nicol, ca. 1840/1860

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (i)

During the Nineteenth Century and specifically following the Great Famine, 'dark', 'hairy', 'odious', 'simian', 'ugly' and worse, became common terms used to describe the Irish in America (1). Certainly, during the same period and well into the Twentieth Century, the Irish were often portrayed in English political cartoons as not only ugly subhumans but also hopeless and stupid. In his review of Liz Curtis' Nothing But the Same Old Story: The Roots of anti-Irish racsim, John Darby referred to a notorious cartoon by JAK published in the Evening Standard in 1981, which presented a mock movie poster entitled 'Showing Now: the Ultimate in Psychopathic Horror The Irish XXX'. Although purporting to be a commentary on the latest troubles of that time, it was interpreted as a continuation of a tradition of representing the Irish as inherently violent (2). This raises the intriguing question then: have the Irish historically been the victims of racism? 

Irish Emigrants in America: A Woman with Two Children, and a Man Sitting Outside an Inn Smoking a Pipe. Coloured Etching after William Heath, date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (ii)

Bryan Fanning has argued that racism as a concept has 'always drawn on the dominant paradigms of knowledge and truth'. He proposed that while in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century racism largely relied on assumptions of racial superiority, increasingly there has been a shift in rationale towards arguments based around the necessity of exclusion to preserve cultural purity (3). If nothing else then, this suggests that racism is a malleable concept. In contrast, Amy Martin has perhaps provided a more nuanced view of traditional racism and its philosophical foundations suggesting that there were in fact two strains: one was indeed 'epidermal' in nature and the other was reliant on a 'more fluid understanding of racial hierarchy'. Indeed, this might explain Charles Kingsley's reference in a letter to his wife about witnessing 'human chimpanzees' on a visit to Ireland! This is perhaps an indication that British racism in the Victorian period was based less around a bias for 'whiteness' and relied more heavily on a complex, hierarchy of perceived physical and cultural traits (4). But does that mean that the idea that the Irish have been victims of active racial discrimination has merit?

Children Play a Game with Potatoes and a Rag Hanging from the Beam. Process Print after Erskine Nicol, date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (iii)

To some extent negative perceptions of the Irish were driven by the displacement triggered by the famine. The Great Famine of the 1840s triggered a Malthusian response from the British that sought to avoid the effort and cost involved in any relief by blaming the victims with accusations of 'indolence and backwardness' (5). Dale T. Knobel, who wrote Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America in 1985, later noted that of the forty immigrant ships arriving in New York Harbour daily by 1851, most were carrying Irish immigrants; therefore established Americans were very conscious of both their numbers and their 'haggard' presentation on arrival (6). At the time, American nativists were prone to attributing their condition on arrival to their nature rather than their experiences. Such nativists were defined by Knobel as settled Americans with anxieties concerning a national identity during a period of great economic and demographic change who tended to a convenient scapegoat for their varied problems in migrant populations. Among the subjects for derision were their religion, their impact on the labour market, even their politics. Many Irish were accused of undermining the labour market for working for low wages. They were also collectively known to support the then current pro-slavery platform of the Democratic Party. At the same time, the American nativists were concerned to some extent with all migrant groups including the Chinese. As a result, fraternal organisations tended to limit their membership to American born - although it would be interesting to know what percentage of their current membership were themselves descendants of earlier Irish migrants! (7)

A Well-Dressed Black Couple in New York City Are Being Offered a Coat by a Poor Irish Immigrant Outside a Laundry. Coloured Lithograph, artist and date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (iv)

Regardless, the Irish were probably historically treated worst of all in their own land under Norman, English and later British rule. The Norman invasion of Ireland was initiated because of an indigenous civil war in the 12th Century and only eventually sanctioned by Henry II on account of political rather than truly colonial motives. The Statutes of Kilkenny that were enacted in 1366, were the foundation of a more 'defensive colonial policy' adopted by the government of Edward III. While they provided practical measures to ensure peace and trade, they were also a vehicle of segregation. The settler population were forbidden to form alliances with the natives through marriage or fostering, speak the Irish language or adopt Irish customs. The native Irish were themselves forbidden to speak Gaelic around the settlers and excluded from ecclesiastical positions. Regardless of whether they were intentioned as defensive or derogatory, they were J. C. Beckett's admission 'aimed at setting a permanent barrier between the two races in Ireland.' Ultimately though - despite their cruelty - the statutes were based on cultural differences and political interests rather than any obvious notions of racism. After all, this form of hierarchical, feudal society was the 'norm' in Europe; the native populations of England were themselves ruled by the Normans. Even so, widespread assimilation occurred in both England and Ireland and the Lordship of Ireland was increasingly left to its own devices until the middle Tudor period (8).

Resistance against colonialism also ironically provided a basis for the development of a view that the Irish were inherently troublesome (9). The worst excesses of the plantation system were to some extent an opportunistic response by the English to the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The corrupt system of confiscation that developed was likely fueled again by a defensive colonial policy which feared a coalition of the 'old English' (ie. the descendants of Norman invaders) and the natives. The confiscations inevitably led to the uprising in 1641. The English response was itself brutal and was largely justified by exaggerated claims of massacres of Protestants. Once English authority has been fully reasserted, the Irish Parliament of 1697 instituted laws that were designed to be specifically degrading to Catholics, which incorporated virtually the entirety of the native population. Catholics were excluded from Parliament, military service, civil service, municipal corporations and the legal profession. Alterations to laws relating to land ownership and inheritance were designed to make it virtually impossible for Catholics to accumulate land. Many of the 'old English' were also Catholic though, and were also impacted, probably more by the restrictions on educating their children abroad and change to rules of inheritance which encouraged conversions. These discriminatory laws were not repealed until 1829. These new laws were clearly an official strategy to deprive the native Irish population of any political power (10). The conflicts in Ireland from 1641 have traditionally been framed within the wider contests between Protestants and Catholics or Loyalists and Parliamentarians rather than one that on the ground may have been for the participants, more essentially between colonisers and natives. 

From 1641 then, the Irish character was characterised as inherently treacherous and violent. The thousands of Irish that were sold into Carribean slavery under Cromwell after the defeat of the rebellion in 1649 were by his own admission meant to serve as examples to the rest of the native population and not treated so because of their 'race'. (11). Later conflicts appeared to consolidate the treacherous and violent characterisation of the Irish which helped justify their heavy handed responses. Two attempted revolutions in 1798 and 1803 led to the institution of martial law. (12) The British reaction to the Easter uprising in 1916 for instance involved imposing martial law across Ireland although most resistance was centred around Dublin. The arbitrary British reprisals against the Irish during the War for Independence included such atrocities as the sacking of Balbriggan and the burning of Cork. (13) This pattern of brutality demonstrated a dogged colonial mindset rather than a racist agenda. General Nevil Macready who accepted Irish Command in 1920 and was apparently more sensitive towards the Irish situation than most of his counterparts, reportedly hated the Irish 'with a depth deeper than the sea and more violent than that which I feel against the Boche.' (14)  However, the Victorian and Edwardians tended to emphasise their Anglo-Saxon heritage at the expense of their Celtic, Roman and Scandanavian roots. (15) The 'Boche' of the day were likely despised because they represented a rival empire with which the Commonwealth had recently been at war, not from sense of racial superiority. It had been widely recognised by the British, that among the wider population of Ireland in 1916 there had been sympathy with the allied cause and most were content to wait to the end of hostilities before terminating the legislative union. The impatience and poor judgment of a small number of separatists (republicans, socialists and Sinn Fein) was not claimed to be proof of some kind of inherent racial propensity for treachery. (16) 

Author Unknown, advertisement for the position of a Nanny, Boston Transcript, 1868.

Public domain via wikimedia commons (v)

The Australian colonial experience for the Irish raises the same caveats to the proposition. Just as in the United States, there were a plethora of Nineteenth Century job advertisements evident in Australian colonial newspapers specifying that the Irish need not apply! (17) And while there is some evidence that the Celtic ritual practice of Halloween was suppressed in the Australian colonies, it has been noted that both the St. Patrick's and St. Valentine's feast day celebrations were better accepted on account of their Christian rather than pagan origins. (18) Certainly, there was discrimination, but it often appears to have emanated from a sectarian rather than a racial basis. Until the middle of the Twentieth Century at least, Australia was regarded as homogenous Anglo-Saxon society. The adoption of the term 'Anglo-Celtic' has only become evident in response to recent lobbying by descendants of Irish and Scottish migrants who desired recognition for their ancestors' contribution to the nation's cultural development.  But there is little or no evidence that this Celtic amnesia was motivated by anything other than an official desire to cultivate a more homogenous society. It may be significant to note however that the shift from Australia identifying as an 'Anglo' to an 'Anglo-Celtic' society though followed the upsurge of non-British emigration after 1945. (19)

A Potato Shaking Hands with Edward Jenner, Claiming Him as a Fellow Vaccinator. Watercolour by John Leech, date unknown. Note the name of the potato: 'Paddy Fluke'.

Public Domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (vi)

Ironically in recent decades, Ireland itself has demonstrated increasing opposition to migrants, particularly asylum seekers. Bryan Fanning has argued that while this populism has great 'political currency' it is nevertheless 'grounded in racism and xenophobia'. Like the objections the American nativists expressed to Irish immigration in the Nineteenth Century, this resistance Fanning explains 'provides exceedingly simple explanations for complex societal problems' (20). 

Therefore, while the Irish were arguably vilified and discriminated against during the Nineteenth and into the Twentieth Centuries it should not be considered to have been a form of racism. In a colonial context, their 'whiteness' likely allowed for a swifter assimilation into European colonial societies than non-white immigrants. There were also major structural differences, both legislative and cultural, that would have mitigated their experiences; for instance, however equal their treatment with their black counterparts in the Caribbean, they were not assigned to become a kind of hereditary property in perpetuity. Furthermore, their typically pro-slavery stance during the Nineteenth Century was actually evidence of the privilege of suffrage, a liberty not universally enjoyed at the time by the Afro-American population. The subjugation of Ireland by the Normans, English and later British, occurred over several centuries. The conflicts that ensued have probably been correctly framed by historians as sectarian or native resistance movements rather than having been explained by racism. Subsequent to the Great Famine at least, it's clear that the Irish experienced prolonged periods of active discrimination in the New World by nativists but perhaps never as extreme as that inflicted by foreign invaders in their own occupied country. Ironically, there are some 'nativist' Irish voices today that could be accused of expressing anti-migrant sentiments that might be more accurately explained by racism.

-  Colin Mallett, 17 March 2026. 

Endnotes

(1) Dale T. Knobel, 'Celtic Exodus: The Famine Irish, Ethnic Stereotypes, and the Cultivation of         American Racial Nationalism', Radharc, 2001, 2:3-25, p. 5, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122316, accessed 17 March 2025.

(2) John Darby, 'The Problem of English Racism', Fortnight, 1984, 211:19-19, p. 19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547631, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(3) Bryan Fanning, 'The Political Currency of Irish Racism: 1997-2002', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2002, 364(91):319-27, p. 320, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30095578, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(4) Amy E. Martin, 'Victorian Ireland: Race and the Category of the Human', Victorian Review, 2014, 1(40): 52-7, p. 52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24497037, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(5) Martin, "Victorian Ireland', p. 53. 

(6) Knobel, 'Celtic Exodus', pp. 3-4.

(7) Kevin Kenny, 'Race, Labor, and Nativism: A Response to Dale T. Knobel', Radharc, 2001, 2:27-33, pp. 27-30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122317 accessed on 17 March 2025. 

(8) J. C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland, Cressant Library, Sydney, 1986, pp. 16, 27, 31-6.

(9) Martin, "Victorian Ireland', p. 53.     

(10) Beckett, Short History, pp. 62, 64-5, 71-5, 92-3, 127.

(11) It must be acknowledged as John Donoghue argues that Atlantic slavery based on race was in fact an historical abberation. See: John Donaghue, 'The Curse of Cromwell: revisting the Irish slavery debate', History Ireland, 2017, 4(25):24-8, pp. 24-5, http://www.jstor.org/stable/90014565, accessed on 19 March 2025. This view is reinforced by the trade in a million European slaves among the Ottoman Barbary states from the Seventeenth Century the early Nineteenth Century. Refer to: Giles Milton, White Gold, Hodder and Stoughton, 2005, passim.

(12) Charles Townshend, ' Martial Law: legal and administrative problems of civil emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800-1940', The Historical Journal, 1982, 1(25):167-95, p. 167, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811, accessed 21 March 2025. 

(13) M. A. Doherty, 'Kevin Barry and the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War', Irish Historical Studies, 2000 126(32):217-31, p. 228, http://www.jstor.org/stable/300006997, accessed 21 March 2025; Martin Frederick Seedorf, 'The Lloyd George Government and the Strickland Report on the burning of Cork, 1920', Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies', 1972, 2(4):59-66, pp. 59-60, https:doi.org./10.2307/4048122, accessed 21 March 2025. 

(14) Ian Roxborough, '6. The Military: The mutual determination of strategy of Ireland, 1912-1921', in Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged, Jan Willem Duyvendak & James M. Jasper (eds), Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015, pp. 142-4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt.196315k.9., accessed 21 March 2025.

(15) Joanne Parker, '6. The Victorians, the Dark Ages and the English National Identity', in The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Low Countries, pp. 132-3, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004241862_088, accessed 11 August 2025. 

(16) Beckett, Short History, pp. 151-2. Ultimatley, sixteen of the insurgents were tried and shot. 

(17) A phrase search for 'No Irish Need Apply' on the digitisation resource TROVE in the category of Newspapers and Gazettes produces 1, 181 results: https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/advanced/category/newspapers?keyword.phrase=No%20Irish%20Need%20Apply&startPos=0&sortBy=dateAsc The source newspapers cover the period from early settlement to the 1950s: the earliest example is from 1832 and the most recent from 1953. See: "English Wants', Launceston Advertiser (Tasmania), 18 January 1832, p 23, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article84775136, accessed 19 March 2025 & 'Irish insulted', Tribune (Sydney), 25 February 1953, p 9, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212468776, accessed 19 March 2025.

(18) Colin Mallett, 'Halloween in Australia', The Write Side of History blog, 29 October 2022, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/halloween-in-australia.html, accessed 19 March 2025.

(19) Miriam Dixson, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the present, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 9.

(20) Fanning, 'Irish Racism', p. 319. 

Figures and Illustrations

(i) Nicol, Erskine, 1825-1904. An Irishman Looks at a Poster Advertising Voyages to New York and Resolves to Emigrate. Coloured Lithograph after E. Nicol, ca. 1840/1860. 1 print : lithograph, with watercolour, [not after 1867]. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24750461, accessed 19 March 2025.

(ii) Heath, William, 1795-1840. Irish Emigrants in America: A Woman with Two Children, and a Man Sitting Outside an Inn Smoking a Pipe. Coloured Etching after William Heath. 1 print : etching. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24885469, accessed 19 March 2025.

(iii) Nicol, Erskine, 1825-1904. Children Play a Game with Potatoes and a Rag Hanging from the Beam. Process Print after Erskine Nicol. 1 print : process print, 4 July 1891. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24884706, accessed 19 March 2025.

(iv) A Well-Dressed Black Couple in New York City Are Being Offered a Coat by a Poor Irish Immigrant Outside a Laundry. Coloured Lithograph. 1 print : lithograph, with watercolour, 1800-1899. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24885523, accessed 19 March 2025.

(v) Unknown, Author. Advertisement for a nanny that appeared in the Boston Transcript in 1868, stating "Positively no Irish need apply." Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No_Irish_Need_Apply.jpg#Licensing. Reprinted in "A Journey Through Boston Irish History" by Dennis P. Ryan, Arcadia Publishing, 1999, accessed 19 March 2025. 

(vi) Leech, John, 1817-1864. A Potato Shaking Hands with Edward Jenner, Claiming Him as a Fellow Vaccinator. Watercolour by John Leech. 1 drawing : watercolour, with pen and brown ink, [between 1800 and 1899]. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24742788, accessed 19 March 2025.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Launceston Advertiser (Tasmania)

Tribune (Sydney)

Secondary Sources:

Beckett, J. C. A Short History of Ireland, Cressant Library, Sydney, 1986.

Darby, John, 'The Problem of English Racism', Fortnight, 1984, 211:19-19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547631.

Dixson, Miriam, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the present, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999.

Doherty, M. A., 'Kevin Barry and the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War', Irish Historical Studies, 2000 126(32):217-31, http://www.jstor.org/stable/300006997.

Donaghue, John, 'The Curse of Cromwell: revisting the Irish slavery debate', History Ireland, 2017, 4(25):24-8, http://www.jstor.org/stable/90014565.

Fanning, Bryan, 'The Political Currency of Irish Racism: 1997-2002', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2002, 364(91):319-27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30095578.

Kenny, Kenny, 'Race, Labor, and Nativism: A Response to Dale T. Knobel', Radharc, 2001, 2:27-33,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122317. 

Knobel, Dale T., 'Celtic Exodus: The Famine Irish, Ethnic Stereotypes, and the Cultivation of American Racial Nationalism', Radharc, 2001, 2:3-25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122316.

Mallett, Colin, 'Halloween in Australia', The Write Side of History blog, 29 October 2022, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/halloween-in-australia.html.

Milton, Giles, White Gold, Hodder and Stoughton, 2005.

Parker, Joanne, '6. The Victorians, the Dark Ages and English National Identity', in The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Low Countries, Hugh Dunthorne & Michael Wintle (eds), Brill, Netherlands, 2013, pp. 133-50, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004241862_008.

Roxborough, Ian, '6. The Military: The mutual determination of strategy of Ireland, 1912-1921', in Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged, Jan Willem Duyvendak & James M. Jasper (eds), Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015, pp. 133-56, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811. 

Seedorf, Martin Frederick, 'The Lloyd George Government and the Strickland Report on the burning of Cork, 1920', Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 1972, 2(4):59-66, https:doi.org./10.2307/4048122. 

Townshend, Charles, ' Martial Law: legal and administrative problems of civil emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800-1940', The Historical Journal, 1982, 1(25):167-95, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811. 

Online Sources:

Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, accessed 2 April 2025.

*

Many thanx to Kylie for always proofreading my scribbles!

Away to Zion! Early Mormon proselytisation in Australia

During the Nineteenth Century thousands of converts to the Church of Latter-day saints travelled from Europe to America. This represented an enormous transfer of human capital to the new world, facilitated by the lure of an emerging faith and perhaps the tempting promise of a new start. Less is known about those that travelled the pacific route, some even coming from the Australian colonies. While the Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter-day saints first began to establish a presence in the colony of Van Diemen's Land, later Tasmania, during the 1850s, the religion did not establish a strong footing there for another century. So, how and why was Mormon proselytisation so successful during the Nineteenth Century? And what challenges did the Mormon movement face in the Australian colonies, specifically Tasmania?

The Mormon story began with a 'divine restoration ' that occurred at the village Palmyra, Manchester, New York in 1820. A young prophet named Joseph Smith Jnr (1805-1844) had a vision of Jesus who forgave him his sins and instructed him not to join any established church. In 1822, he claimed to experience three visits by an angel named Moroni, who tasked him with finding and translating a trove of ancient records in the form of golden plates. This archive detailed the history of a group of Israelites (the Nephites and Lamanites) who had left Jerusalem around 600 BCE only to become extinct around 400 CE. This history had been written by the last Nephite prophet, Mormon. Smith's translation was published in 1830 as The Book of Mormon. Naturally the ideas of Smith and his followers attracted criticism and persecution, one incident even leading to their prophet's premature demise. Originally based in Illinois, Mormons began to seek their independence, crossing the Great Plains and settling in the Salt Lake Valley.  Under the leadership of their second President, Brigham Young, they attempted to form their own state 'Deseret' (partly across the territory that had already been designated by the US government to be Utah). The 'democratic theocracy' of the Mormons clashed multiple times with US administrations, particularly on the practice of polygamy. Regardless, this new faith endured and the commitment by the Mormon church to proselytise has continued through the Twentieth and into the Twenty First centuries, to the extent that today there are 14 million members of the church, two thirds of which live outside the United States. (1)

C. C. A. Christensen, The Hill Cumorah, Before 1912.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (i)

Between 1840 and 1890, approximately 90, 000 Mormon converts were transported from Europe to the American territories. (2) In the 1840s the former President of the British Mission, Thomas Ward, proposed the formation of a joint stock company; it's purpose was to provide a commercial service to trade goods between Britain and the United States and at the same time provide free - or at least subsidised - passage for European Mormons to migrate. This proposal survived many iterations but eventually failed, causing many British Mormons to lose their savings but their desperation and disappointment reflected the difficulty many converts experienced in arranging passage in pursuit not only of salvation but also of a better life. (3)  But many converts did find a way to migrate. A hostile editorial commentary on Mormonism copied from the Globe and published in the Louisville Commercial in 1880 argued that 'the vast majority of converts come from the ranks of dissent', adding that 1500 of the 'poor ignorant creatures'.... departed from Liverpool that year alone and as many from Glasgow'. The accusation was made that '...before embarkation, converts have fancy pictures sketched for them of a happy land where...all is fraternity...', although it's noted that '...Poverty of a very stern order exists in Utah as elsewhere...'. The point is also made that a migrant would have as a good of a chance as making a success as a farmer in Australia, New Zealand or Canada. (4) The allure experienced by these converts must have been strong enough to resolve the cost but also the very real risks of continental migration. Even so, the only known voyage carrying Mormon pioneers to be shipwrecked was the Julia Ann that departed from Sydney under the command of Captain Benjamin F. Pond in September 1855. (5)

Recruitment to the church was also drawn from the recent European diaspora of the time. The life story of Samuel Rose Parkinson preserved by his journal reflects the often-complex migratory journey of many converts to Mormonism. Born in 1831, a native of Lancashire, Samuel first migrated to the Australian colony of New South Wales in 1839 but returned in 1846. He and his parents migrated to St. Louis, Missouri in 1848 (soon after assisting his sister and her own family in a classic pattern of chain migration). It was there he joined the church after marrying a convert in 1852 and finally travelling with his own family and sister to Utah in 1854. (6) Recruitment was often a source of controversy, particularly when converts were young and even married women. Martha Maria Humphreys (nee Bucknell) a married woman living in the Hunter Valley, was converted in 1852 by young minister of church named John McCarthy. A letter she wrote to her parents in December 1853 is still extant in archives of the Mitchell Library; Marjorie Newton explains that the letter reveals the 'millennialism' evident among converts, a sense of urgency to remove to 'Zion' before the day of final judgment. The letter also betrays and awareness and support for the doctrine of polygamy. It is also clear that at least at the time of composing the letter, her husband was engaged elsewhere and was unaware of her plans - although it is not known if he and the older sons planned to join the rest of the family at a later date. Martha departed aboard the ill-fated Julia Ann with two daughters and younger son on 7 September 1855. She and her daughter Mary were drowned although the other two children survived. There was a subsequent scandal involving Martha's brother William Wentworth Bucknell another convert who along with his wife and family were intending to emigrate on the Jenny Ford in September 1856. However, an attachment to a servant he intended to bring with them led to a dispute, the ultimate result of which was Bucknell's excommunication. Bucknell's wife and two sons subsequently emigrated as converts and he duly complained to the Governor that they had been seduced away! (7)

Joseph Keppler. In Memorium Brigham Young, 1877.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (ii)

There were other serious challenges to the establishment of the Mormon church in the Australian colonies. The primary one was of course, remained the issue of polygamy.  In 1873 on the occasion of a Mormon minister coming to conduct sermons in Sydney, the Melbourne's Advocate reported that: '...we scarcely think that many fair Australians will be found willing to exchange even the chance of a whole husband, all to herself here, for a mere fraction of a husband at Salt Lake.' (8) The practice of polygamy combined with the habit of recruiting converts was to long remain a fixation for the local media: the following year the Tasmanian Tribune noted that regarding a tour by Elder Geddes he defended plural marriage on 'material and Scriptural grounds' although it is noted, perhaps with some relief, that '...no rumour has yet floated abroad as to his having made converts...' (9) As a reult of pressure and persecution from the US government, the church effectively ceased the practice of polygamy following a general conference in 1890. (10) Despite segments of the media afterwards continuing to focus on the persistence of the practice outside of the mainstream church, interest and respect for the faith among the general Australian population seemed to improve from that time. (11) Anti-Mormon activists succeeded in having entry banned for all Mormon missionaries across the British Empire following the end of World War One, but it was lifted by 1920. A decade later, the onset of the Great Depression made it more difficult for missiony work to be supported. Despite these challenges, the church continued to find acceptence and expand. The first Australian state to recognise the Mormon church as an official religious denomination was Victoria in 1923. (12) 

As previously noted, it took a century for the Mormon movement to become frimly established in Tasmania. While, the Church of Latter-day Saints began to establish a presence in Tasmania from 1854, progress was slow and there was active resistance to their mission. Regardless, congregations were first established in the 1890s. (13) Resistance to early missionaries were apparently strongest in Launceston and Elders Burr Frost and Robert Owens experienced 'considerable opposition' on their arrival there in 1854. Permission was eventually obtained from the local Mayor for Mormons to hold street meetings in 1897. The Tasmanian region first became known as the 'Tasmanian Conference' led by a 'presiding elder' based in Hobart. Local members worked as Sunday School teachers, secretaries and organists. The first local member to be ordained an Elder was Tracy William Watkins in 1894. The church was finally recognised by the state in 1931 allowing its priesthood to perform such functions as marriages and funerals. The same year the term conference was changed to district. Between 1926 and 1951, the membership grew from 1169 to 2187. In 1937 the standing of the district was raised when the formation of a 'stake of Zion' in Tasmania was approved by church authroities. Membership more than doubled in the decades between 1955 and 1976 from 3506 to 7071. Two of the more progressive initiatives institued by the church were a local branch of the Mormon Women's organisation, the State Relief Society during the depression and a welfare farm in the early post-war period. (14)

Sydney Australia Temple (Carlingford), 2010.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (iii)

The mass migration of Mormon converts to the United States likely reflects several push/pull factors among them: poverty, fraternity and perhaps most importantly of all, a compelling, 'new' christian faith. Certainly for many British converts if the motivations were purely material, it probably would have been a more practical  to simply migrate to one of the promising colonies such as Australia, New Zealand or Canada. It hard to reconcile the contemporary argument that the new faith was only a convenience for the dispossesed as the process of conversion was clearly most often a heartfelt and genuine one; for instance, many early missionaries faced many hardships including open hostility and poverty away from their families in order to proselytise their faith. Among the converts there was in fact, an underlying sense of urgency among converts to escape 'Babylon' and find 'Zion' before the impending day of judgement. In truth, the church itself was established during a age of great migration and drew on various European diaspora, including the British and Irish colonials. The missionary experience in Tasmania reflects many of the broader challenges the church faced in its first century or more of development. It was most of all, a threat to the established christian denominations and the hostile reception in Launceston was particularly notable. The practice of polygamy, which had in truth been effectively dropped by 1890, was used as a tool of derision and to some extent negative propaganda. Other challenges - such as the ban against missionaries entering in the British Empire following the First World War and then the Great Depression from 1929 - stunted the development of the church in the newly federated country. However the strong contribution and model behaviour of the church's menbership eventually saw it win mainstream acceptance, offical recognition and growth. 

- Colin Mallett, 19 December 2025.

Endnotes

(1)  D. Michael Quinn, 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)' in The Columbia Guide to Mormonism in American History, Paul Harvey, Edward J. Blum & Randall Stephens (eds), Columbia University Press, 2012, pp. 352-64, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/harv14020.23, accessed 30 September 2025.

(2) Keith L. Brown, 'As they sailed to Zion: The Voyage of the Julia Ann', History of Mormonism website, https://historyofmormonism.com/2014/10/12/sailed-zion-voyage-julia-ann/, accessed 30 September 2025. There were in fact 593 known voyages that carried converts from Europe to America.
(3) Ronald D. Watt, 'Mission to Britain' in The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: first Britsh convert, scribe for Zion, University Press of Colorado, 2009, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgrhc.8, accessed 30 September 2025, pp. 60, 64. 

(4) Author Unknown, 'The Mormons in England', Louisville Commercial, 31 October 1880, p. 7, https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31322241, accessed 30 September 2025.

(5) Fred. E. Woods, 'The unbelievable true story of Saints shipwrecked on their way to Zion', Latter-day Saint Life website, https://www.ldsliving.com/the-unbelievable-true-story-of-saints-shipwrecked-on-their-way-to-zion/s/78234, accessed 30 September 2025. Although five lives were lost, the surviving passengers and crew were rescued and continued their voyage.

(6) William C. Parkinson, 'Biography of Samuel Rose Parkinson', Hagan Family History Website, https://www.hagan.me/fhist/parkinson/SamuelRoseParkinson.html, accessed 30 September 2025.

(7) Marjorie Newton. ' "Seduced Away": Early Mormon Documents in Australia', Brigham Young University Studies, 35 (3), 1995-6, pp. 152, 154, 163, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43042071?seq=1, accessed 30 September 2025. Ironically, while it appears Bucknell went on and married the servant girl, his first wife later returned with her sons to the colony making him effectively, a bigamist.

(8)  'A Mormon Minister in Sydney', Advocate, 26 April 1873, p. 13,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article170298808, accessed 26 September 2025.

(9) 'A Mormon in Tasmania', Tasmanian Tribune, 29 December 1874, p. 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article201483955, accessed 26 September 2025.

(10) 'About the Mormons', Tasmanian News, 12 January 1895, p. 4., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173870258, accessed 26 September 2025, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173870258, accessed 26 September 2026.  According to Elder Pond in the interview, no more than 2% of their people ever engaged in the practice. Men remained married to their first wives and provision was made for the disenfranchised wives. 

(11) An example of a typical salacious headline being: 'Harems in Mexico', Tasmanian News, 23 January 1896, p. 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article177536945, accessed 26 September 20206. Indeed, the publication of a clipping from New York's Independant in 1898 claiming that polygamy was still flourishing in Utah, prompted a visiting missionary to Tasmania, William Harvey, to write a letter to the editor explaining that the practice was indeed formally abandoned with the publication of a manifesto by their president Wilfred Woodruff dated 24 September 1890 after a legal challenge had been lost and to ensure that the Mormon population conformed with the 'law of the land'. He added that any Mormons still engaging in the practice were doing so in defiance of the teachings of the church. See: 'The Mormons and Polygamy', Mercury, 4 June 1898, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9423641, accessed 26 September 2026. The film, 'The Mormon Maid, 1917,  was released in Australia in 1918 and presented a negative view of the church, emphasising the banned practice of polygamy. Refer to: Preben Villy Scott & Donald Arthur Woolley, The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: Tasmania 1854-2001 (2nd Edition), self--published, Ulverstone, 2001, p.5.

(12) Scott & Woolley, The History of the Church, pp. 4-5.Subsequent to the lifting of the ban, in 1921, Elder David O. McKay of the Council of Twelve toured Australia, visiting all conferences except Perth. This perhaps marked a turning point in the long process of the Mormon faith becoming mainstream in Australia.

(13) Neil Chick, 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints', Companion to Tasmanian History website, https://www.utas.edu.au/tasmanian-companion/biogs/E000207b.htm, accessed 30 September 2025. In fact the first Mormon missionaires believed to have arrived in the colony were John Murdoch and Charles Wandel in 1851. The first Elder to visit was Robert Owen in 1854 on his return home from a mission to India. See: Scott & Woolley, The History of the Church, p. 4.

(14) Scott & Woolley, The History of the Church, pp. 4-6, 8, 11, 86, 92, 123, 127.

Figures and Illustrations

(i) C. C. A. Christensen, The Hill Cumorah, before 1912, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Hill_Cumorah_by_C.C.A._Christensen.jpeg, accessed 8 October 2025.

(ii) Joseph Keppler, In Memoriam Brigham Young, 1877, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:In_memoriam_brigham_young_3.jpg, accessed 8 October 2025. 

(iii) Scott Contini, Sydney Australia Temple (Carlingford), 2010, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sydney_Australia_Temple_(Carlingford).jpg, accessed 8 October 2025. 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Advocate (Melbourne)

Mercury (Hobart)

Tasmanian News (Hobart)

Tasmanian Tribune (Hobart)

Secondary Sources

Newton, Marjorie. ' "Seduced Away": Early Mormon Documents in Australia', Brigham Young University Studies, 35 (3), 1995-6, pp. 149-65.

Quinn, D. Michael. 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)' in The Columbia Guide to Mormonism in American History, Paul Harvey, Edward J. Blum & Randall Stephens (eds), Columbia University Press, 2012, pp. 352-64, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/harv14020.23, accessed 30 September 2025.

Scott, P. V. & Woolley, D. A. The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: Tasmania 1854-2001 (2nd Edition), self--published, Ulverstone, 2001.

Watt, Ronald D. 'Mission to Britain' in The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: first British convert, scribe for Zion, University Press of Colorado, 2009, pp. 58-81, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgrhc.8, accessed 30 September 2025. 

Online Sources

Author Unknown, 'The Mormons in England', Louisville Commercial, 31 October 1880, p. 7, https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31322241, accessed 30 September 2025.

Brown, Keith L. 'As they sailed to Zion: The Voyage of the Julia Ann', History of Mormonism website, https://historyofmormonism.com/2014/10/12/sailed-zion-voyage-julia-ann/, accessed 30 September 2025.

Chick, Neil. 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints', Companion to Tasmanian History website, https://www.utas.edu.au/tasmanian-companion/biogs/E000207b.htm, accessed 30 September 2025.

Parkinson, William C. 'Biography of Samuel Rose Parkinson', Hagan Family History Website, https://www.hagan.me/fhist/parkinson/SamuelRoseParkinson.html, accessed 30 September 2025. 

Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.

Woods, Fred, E. 'The unbelievable true story of Saints shipwrecked on their way to Zion', Latter-day Saint Life website, https://www.ldsliving.com/the-unbelievable-true-story-of-saints-shipwrecked-on-their-way-to-zion/s/78234, accessed 30 September 2025. 

Not taking sides: Australia and the American Civil War

While Australia was geographically quite removed from the theatre of the American Civil War, its ripples did carry across the Pacific Ocean to the continent. The Civil war - which lasted from 1861 to 1865 - was a brutal one, arguably the first industrial war, permanently scarring both the political landscape of the US and its people. (1) It’s effects were legion and long lasting; in fact the very last Civil War widow was to pass away as recently as 2020. (2) Australia in 1861 was not even a nation but instead a conglomerate of independent British colonies—all in their separate forms of development on the road to self-government and a sense of individual political identity. In that sense there was no ‘Australia’ yet, the nation had yet to be born. However, the British subjects that populated our handful of colonies looked on with a degree of interest and shared horror as their ‘cousins’ waged war on themselves essentially over the issue of slavery. (3) It’s not the purpose of this essay to present a potted history of the American Civil War and thereby provide a description and analysis of the causal factors involved or the political and/or social outcomes of the conflict. (4) Rather it is my intention to establish how and to what extent the American Civil War affected the Australian colonies on different levels and particularly how it was received and responded to by them.

So, what was the ‘Australian’ attitude to the issue of slavery? Did the Australian colonies support the Union or the Confederacy? How specifically, if at all, were the Australian colonies affected by the American Civil War?

 

The Battle of Gettysburg, Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the precursors to the conflict had been the attempt by farmer, tanner, surveyor, and later abolitionist John Brown to instigate a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry, Jefferson County in West Virginia and his subsequent trial and execution in 1858. Brown’s actions were born directly of his Puritan faith combined with an insistence on the righteousness of the American constitution that noted the equality of all men. (5) There was a large degree of sympathy for John Brown and his cause in the colonies. A South Australian editorial declared in 1860:

We have already deprecated the wild attempt of Old John Brown with his score of followers to liberate the slaves of Southern America, and we repeat our conviction that the Harper’s Ferry scheme was the offspring of literal insanity. But the fate of that brave old man, whose worst acts sprang from the holiest of motives, and the impetuous inhuman mode in which that fate was inflicted by Virginian slaveholders, redeem his memory from disgrace and elevate him to the dignity of a martyr. (6)

The shared sense of Christian values between the states and the Australian colonies made Brown a common sympathetic figure.

It was possible to be an inherently racist society yet still be largely opposed to the economic policy of slavery. The passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and the subsequent Emancipation Act of 1834 had sought to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire by 1840. Despite this ‘enlightened’ development which was already ‘history’ by 1861, newfound freedom did not translate into equality. (7) The battle for the abolishing of slavery in the British Empire had been a long and bitter one. Many had ruminated during the transition on the economic impacts of the reform including scarcity of labour in the West Indies and lower productivity in sugar plantations. (8) But these were largely economic arguments and they eventually floundered when pitched against ethical ones. Abolition in the British Empire marked the end of an economic practice and not, by any scale of measurement, the end of racism. Henry Melville, in his observations on Mauritus in 1828, argued that freedom could even be seen as ‘valueless’ as slaves were often happier there at least, before they were freed. Their disadvantages in an overtly racist colonial society made their subsequent lives challenging and a law was passed mandating that slaves had to be awarded land or at least 500 piastres before being granted their liberty. Tellingly, Melville also concluded that life as a slave anywhere in the British Empire – as appalling brutal and exploitative as it may have been - was eminently more desirable than life as an indigenous Aboriginal of Van Diemen’s Land! (9)

 

Slaves working on a cotton plantation, James Richard Barfoot, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Racism was, of course, transplanted to the Australian continent as a byproduct of British colonialisation. Aside from the violence and discrimination perpetuated against the indigenous population, one of the most obvious early examples of it being inflicted on another immigrant population, was that perpetuated against Chinese miners during the gold rush period. Certainly, the reaction to the employ of ‘Kanakas’ in Northern Queensland was arguably another plank in the emergence of a white Australian policy. (10) After Australia became a nation, one of the first pieces of legislation passed by its new Commonwealth Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. Increasingly Australia was seen as rightfully a place for Europeans only and Asian or anyone of colour was to be discouraged. Yet even though racist prejudice was clearly evident, and exclusion of the ‘other’ was increasingly seen as justified, abolitionism by contrast represented the ‘holiest of motives’. (11)

Perhaps the best measure of colonial neutrality or otherwise to the American Civil War was the visit of the USS Shenandoah in 1865. The ship, a clipper-built screw steamer of 709 tons, arrived in Australian waters in January r to arrange repairs. The crew included a nephew of General Robert E. Lee. (12) While it was built for mercantile service, it had been outfitted with ‘four smooth-bore sixty-eight pounders, and two thirty-two-pounder rifled Whitworths, together with two smooth-bore eighteen pounders, used principally as signal guns’. On Wednesday, 25 January 1865, the Shenandoah arrived at Hobson’s Bay, Victoria. The ship had previously suffered damage to its shaft in the South Atlantic. (13) After a two-hour emergency meeting between the Governor Charles Darling and the Executive Council, they were somewhat cautiously allowed to dock. Specifically, the confederate ship was granted permission by the government to ‘…coal, provision, and effect the necessary repairs to her machinery’. But clearly the subsequent interaction was more complex and lively than anticipated. The crew and the ship proved a popular social curiosity during their stay with thousands visiting to take tours of the ship. In fact, the Sydney Mail reported that visitors ‘showed their Southern sympathies by cheering the Shenandoah heartily as they took their departure from her’. (14)

C.S.S. Shenandoah destroying whale ships, B. Russell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The reason for the initial delay in processing the arrival was without doubt concerns over the official British government policy of neutrality particularly following the instigation of the ‘Alabama claims’ by the United States against the United Kingdom from 1862. (15) Soon after its arrival in Hobson’s Bay, the Adelaide Observer related an edict from Lord Russell which had been gazetted a few days earlier, openly insisting that no vessel of war or privateer should be allowed when at port in British territory to take on any more than subsistence rations or coal that was what was necessary for them to their own country or some near destination. (16) There may have been a more negative attitude towards the presence of the ship due in part to the fact that the Shenandoah boarded another ship named the Nimrod off the coast of South Australia on arrival in British waters before allowing it to go on its way unmolested only after it was satisfied that it was English and not associated in any way with the Union. (17) A second reason may have been that Adelaide was missing out on all the fun! (18) Any negative reaction to their presence in Melbourne was attributed by John Thomson Mason to the American Consul and a small group of American shipping merchants who ‘…tried in every way to involve us in a dispute of some kind with the authorities, with a hope of some kind that the ship might thus be detained or seized…’. (19) Regardless, it is likely that international tensions were the reason for a collective sigh of relief amongst the colonial media on the Shenandoah’s prompt departure rather than any personal objections to the crew. (20)

Indeed, there proved to be an unequal exchange of men during the Shenandoah’s time in Melbourne. By some accounts, the ship had a crew of only 23 men although it was augmented by several prisoners. At least eighteen of its own crew were rumoured to have deserted! (21) However, when the Shenandoah departed from Williamstown on 16 February 1865 it had in turn gained an unspecified number of crewmen. Indeed, four men who were believed to have been concealed on the ship were caught escaping soon before its departure. However, Captain James Waddell refused permission for Victorian authorities to search his ship on departure from Williamstown noting that to allow such a search was ‘contrary to the dignity of the Confederate flag’. (22) Its new recruits were officially enlisted just outside of British territorial waters. The ship was the last of the Confederate fleet to surrender in November at Liverpool, England and there it was found to contain forty-two colonials aboard! (23) At least 100 Australian and New Zealand colonists were known to have served on both sides in the American Civil War. (24) There appears to be no discernable bias to either the Confederate or Union sides of the conflict among these colonial recruits—it’s likely that that other factors such as poverty and perhaps even the call to adventure were responsible for their engagement in the war, rather than any kind of coherent abolitionist political philosophy.

When President Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, there was certainly an outpouring of genuine official and public regret throughout the Australian colonies. The emphasis appears to have been on his personal tragedy and perhaps some fascination with the nature of the conspiracy rather than his leadership of the Union or his advocation of a policy of emancipation. ‘Honest Abe’ was variously described in editorials as a ‘revered’ President, America’s ‘Cromwell’ whose death had thrown a ‘gloom’ across the world. His record of suspending habeus corpus and suppressing the press were now virtually forgotten – perhaps with some admission that his motivations in maintaining the union had been as much economic as it had been abolitionist or emancipist. (25) The platitudes were more reflective of the loss of a man in his political prime and a leader during testing times rather than a deeper collective preoccupation with his ‘cause’. 

There proved to be two direct effects on the Australian colonies resulting from the American Civil War. Once war was declared in the United States, Australia became the subject of heightened international strategic machinations. Geo-political alliances were evident even in 1861 and as a result Russia threatened to attack the Australian colonies if Britain politically recognised the Confederacy. The Russian Empire was after all an ally of the Union and despite the Tsar abolishing serfdom in 1861, the support was pragmatic rather than ideological. (26) In December 1864 the news broke that Russian Admiral Andrey Popov who had visited Melbourne aboard the Bogatyr in 1863, had received orders in the middle of that year to institute an attack on British ships stationed in the territorial waters around the Australian colonies. This secret was revealed by a former officer of the Bogatyr, Lieutenant Zbyszewski. Although there was clearly some skepticism over his motivations and the delay in his release of the information, the revelation clearly concerned both the colonies and the British authorities. (27)

There had been consistent concerns over the threat the Russian Empire posed to British interests in the region since the Russian sloop Neva wandered into Port Jackson in June 1807. The alliance between the United States and Russia presented the distinct possibility of Australia being drawn into an international conflict if the British government had chosen to support the Confederacy on an official level. These concerns were heightened by the neglect of the colonies’ military defences. In 1862 the Russian ship Svenlana arrived in Port Philip Bay and fired a ceremonial salute which could not be returned as there was a shortage of gunpowder! Even in May 1870, the arrival of the Russian Imperial corvette Boyarin in the Derwent River caused panic in Hobart when it was feared it was the head of an invasion armada. (28)

Newspaper illustration of people waiting in line for welfare at a Provident Society office in Manchester, Uncredited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Lancashire Cotton Famine occurred as a direct consequence of the American Civil War. A blockade of southern ports by the Union navy led to a shortage of cotton supplies to Europe. Production ceased from October 1861 and mill closures and widespread unemployment became endemic in the Lancashire economy. The war proved, despite initial hopes, to be a sustained one and there were subsequent riots in Stalybride, Dukinfield and Ashton. The British Government were characteristically slow and incompetent in their response to alleviate poverty and distress. (29) As a direct result of the shortage, cotton became the young colony of Queensland’s biggest crop between 1861-3. However, in addition to cool resistance from British ‘cotton lords’ at the time who doubted the feasibility of the industry on the Australian continent, the climate proved very unsuitable, and the project was a failure. (30)

Another inadvertent effect of the war was an upsurge in Irish migration to the antipodes in preference to the United States or North America more generally. There was an increase in the percentage of the total share of Irish global emigration to Australia from 3.8% of total between 1846 and 1855 to a sustained 11.5% between the 1856 and 1880. This fell away abruptly to 5.7% between 1881 and 1900. While some could be attributed to family reunions as a result of sustained transportation from Ireland to the Australian colonies until 1853, as well as the US recession of 1858, the increase was also very likely a reflection of a widespread aversion to the conflict on the North American continent. (31)

Despite obvious xenophobic and racist sentiments evident throughout the British colonies established on the Australian continent during the period of the American Civil War, there was strong mainstream sympathy for the abolitionist cause. After all, slavery had been officially abolished throughout the British Empire by 1840 and perhaps to the British Subjects resident in the Australian colonies, the practice seemed antiquated and cruel. John Brown was perhaps a sympathetic character because his actions were strongly rooted in Christian beliefs although a Puritan brand and the Australian colonies naturally enjoyed a shared Judeo-Christian heritage with a large cultural section of the United States. While apartheid by any name was acceptable to the Christian conscience in the colonies, slavery was not.

While most Australian colonists would have likely argued for the cause of the Union for reasons previously discussed, the reception for the crew of the Shenandoah in 1865 indicates that Australian colonists felt no widespread animosity towards the Confederate side. The civility with which the crew were treated, at least by the public, would have convinced them at least of their hosts neutrality. Similarly, the grief exhibited over the death of President Lincoln was as much a result of his loss as a leader and the unfair nature of his death as the cause he championed. The war was seen by these proto-Australians as a tragic but remote internal conflict of another Empire in relation to which, they were if nothing else, pragmatically neutral.

There were two main effects of the conflict on the Australian colonies. The onset of the American Civil War raised alarm in Australia over the increased probability of a Russian invasion. Whether there was any danger or not, it was obvious that the general public and perhaps the governments of the age believed there was a real pre-existing threat that was exacerbated by the conflict. However, the war also inadvertently created economic opportunities by triggering the Lancashire Cotton Famine which in turn provided an interim boon to the nascent Queensland economy and increasing Irish immigration to the antipodes generally in preference to North America.

-  Colin Mallett, 20 November 2022.

Endnotes

(1) The mortality rate was approximately 2% of the population of the nation in 1860. It is perhaps more correctly considered a transitional war in the sense that it was the last traditional war, but it encompassed various technological innovations which were to fully culminate with intensity on the battlefields of the First World War. Warren W. Lassler & Jennifer L. Webber, ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(2) Elizabeth Elizdale, ‘Helen Viola Jackson, America’s Last Civil War Widow dead at 101’ in New York Post on 06 January 2021. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(3) President Lincoln was elected on an abolitionist platform in 1861 and on his assumption of power, no less than 11 states succeeded from the union. The Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘Causes and Effects of the American Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(4) On this point I am not a ‘revisionist’: two of the main causes appear to have been the size of the slave population and the fear of rebellion this engendered in addition to the profitability of the system. Whatever the reasons, it is clear then that the Southern States during the 1850s were threatened by abolitionist policies in the North and felt that the Federal government did not have the right to decide where or how it was practiced on the state level. There have been more books written about the American Civil War than any other: approximately 60, 000! Warren W. Lassler & Jennifer L. Webber, ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(5) It could and has been argued that there was something of the charismatic zealot about Brown. His approach to resisting slavery contrasts with the non-violent one shared by the Quakers. Although antiquated one of the best biographies of him is: Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and his Men, Funk and Wagnells, New York, Revised Edition, 1894, pp. 14, 22-38. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(6) ‘The Latest Martyr’, Adelaide Observer, 11 April 1860, p.6. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(7) Odeen Ishmael, ‘Emancipation – The End of Slavery in British Colonies, August 1 1834’ in Guyanese Online, 08 January 2020. Accessed on 27 September 2022. 

(8) ‘Slavery – Story of Abolition’, Morning Bulletin, 3 January 1933, p. 1. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(9) Henry Melville, Observations Respecting the Islands of Mauritis Written During a Short Sojourn There in 1828, James Dally, Adelaide, 2004, Facsimile Edition, pp. 67-9.

(10) Fact Sheet 8 – Abolition of the ‘White Australia Policy’. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(11) ‘The Latest Martyr’, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(12) ‘The Confederate War Steam Shenandoah’, The Australian News for Home Readers 23 February 1865, p. 3. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(13) John Thomas Mason, ‘The Last of the Confederate Cruisers’, Century Magazine, August 1898, p. 606. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(14) ‘The Confederate War Steamer Shenandoah’, Sydney Mail, 04 February 1865, p. 8. Accessed on 27 September 2022. In fact, two of the officers were inducted into honorary membership of the prestigious or at least elite ‘Melbourne Club’ and two visited the Legislative Assembly in person. Refer again: ‘The Confederate War Steam Shenandoah’, The Australian News for Home Readers 23 February 1865, p. 3

(15) Several confederate ships were slyly ordered and constructed in British ports disguised as merchant vessels, the most successful in combat being the Alabama. This initially led to the United States claiming damages but ultimately to improved diplomatic relations after the case was settled in 1872. Unattributed, ‘The Alabama Claims, 1862-72’ in Office of the Historian. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

(16) ‘The Shenandoah’, Adelaide Observer, 04 February 1865, p. 6. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(17) Brian Thomsen, Blue and Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War, (St. Martin’s Press, New York) 2004, pp. 282-283.

(18) Four of the officers (minus their Captain) even attended at ball held at Craig’s Royal Hotel in Ballarat on and were described as ‘all quite young men’ with a ‘quiet gentlemanly demeanor’. Ballarat Star, 11 February 1865, p. 2. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

(19) John Thomas Mason, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(20) ‘The Shenandoah’, Launceston Examiner 28 February 1865, p. 2. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(21) Philip Van Doren Stern, The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History (Da Capo Press, New York) 1992. If this is true then the ship may have contained more prisoners than crew and Waddell may have deemed it necessary to accept these new recruits, however ‘illegal’ his actions. This was despite there being some concern that some Union sympathisers might try to infiltrate the crew and ultimately seek to take the ship! Indeed, Mason mentions in his account that due to the desertions they were ‘deplorably short-handed’.  

(22) ‘The Shenandoah Affair’, Bendigo Advertiser 18 February 1865, p. 1. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(23) John Thomson Mason, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(24) Barry Crompton, ‘Civil War Participants Born in Australia and New Zealand’, Archer Memorial and Civil War Library & ACWRTA inc., September 2008. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(25) Refer to: The Age 26 June 1865, p. 5; Kepunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer 28 July 1865, p. 4; South Australian Register 28 June 1865, p. 2; Freeman’s Journal 1 July 1865, p. 409; Empire 25 July 1865, p.2. All accessed on 27 September 2022. In fact, Lincoln once stated in August 1862 that: ‘If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.’ ‘Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Greely’ in Digital History. Accessed 27 September 2022.

(26) Oleg Yegorov, ‘What Role did Russia play in the American Civil War?’ in Russia Beyond, 16 August 2017. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(27) ‘The Russians are Coming! By Fairplay’, The Argus 27 December 1864, p. 7. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(28) Georgy Manaev, ‘How Australia prepared for war with Russia’ in Russia Beyond, 29 April 2019. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

(29) Ben Johnson, ‘The Lancashire Cotton Famine’ in Historic UK. Accessed on 27 September 2022. There is evidence of a proposal to relocated perhaps 100 families or more affected by the famine in the region to the Australian colonies, a policy that would have mutually beneficial although it appears to have been rejected on the basis of cost. Hugh McCall & Alexander Turney Stewart, The Cotton Famine of 1862-3: with some sketch of the proceedings that took place in connection with the Lisburn Relief Committee, William McMillan and Son, London and Belfast, 1881, Revised Edition, pp. 96-103. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

(30) Jean Farnfield, ‘Cotton and the Search for an Agricultural Staple in Early Queensland’, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1971, pp. 20-5. Accessed on 30 September 2022.  In fact, aside from the distance from markets, the unreliable climate as well as lack of local expertise, the experiment highlighted the demand for cheap ‘coolie’ labour in the agriculture industry and may have helped pave the way for further examples of exploitation in the colony. This is ironic as overall the enterprise was seen by reformer Rev. Dunmore Lang as a way to build a better (Protestant) society free of both popery and slavery!

(31) David Noel Doyle, ‘The Irish in Australia and the United States: Some Comparisons, 1800-1939’, Irish Economic and Social History Vol. 16 (1989), pp. 79–80. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Adelaide Observer

Age

Argus

Australian News for Home Readers

Ballarat Star

Bendigo Advertiser

Empire

Freeman’s Journal

Kepunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer

Launceston Examiner

Morning Bulletin

South Australian Register

Sydney Mail

Secondary Sources:


Doyle, David Noel. ‘The Irish in Australia and the United States: Some Comparisons, 1800-1939’ in Economic and Social History, Vol. 16, 1989, pp. 73–94.

Farnfield, J. ‘Cotton and the Search for an Agricultural Staple in Early Queensland’, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1971, pp. 20-5.

Hinton, R. J. John Brown and his Men, Funk and Wagnells, New York, Revised Edition, 1894.

McCall H. & Stewart, A. T. The Cotton Famine of 1862-3: with some sketch of the proceedings that took place in connection with the Lisburn Relief Committee, William McMillan and Son, London and Belfast, 1881, Revised Edition.

Mason, J. T. ‘The Last of the Confederate Cruisers’, Century Magazine, August 1898, p. 600-10.

Melville, H. Observations Respecting the Islands of Mauritis Written During a Short Sojourn There in 1828, James Dally, Adelaide, 2004, Facsimile Edition.

Thomsen, B. Blue and Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2004.

Van Doren Stern, P. The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History, Da Capo Press, New York, 1992.



Online Resources:


Crompton, C. ‘Civil War Participants Born in Australia and New Zealand’, Archer Memorial and Civil War Library & ACWRTA inc., September 2008. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20090217060350/http:/users.bigpond.com/bcrompton/Ausborn.htm accessed on 27 September 2022.

Editors (The) of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘Causes and Effects of the American Civil War’ in Britannica Online. See: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Causes-and-Effects-of-the-American-Civil-War accessed on 27 September 2022.

Elizdale, E. ‘Helen Viola Jackson, America’s Last Civil War Widow dead at 101’ in New York Post on 06 January 2021. See: https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/helen-viola-jackson-last-known-civil-war-widow-dead-at-101/ accessed on 27 September 2022.

Ishmael, O. ‘Emancipation – The End of Slavery in British Colonies, August 1 1834’ in Guyanese Online, 08 January 2020. See: https://guyaneseonline.net/2020/08/01/emancipation-the-end-of-slavery-in-british-colonies-august-1-1834/ accessed on 27 September 2022.

Johnson, B. ‘The Lancashire Cotton Famine’ in Historic UK. See: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Lancashire-Cotton-Famine/ accessed on 27 September 2022.

Lassler, W. W. & Webber, J. L. ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. See: https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Civil-War/The-cost-and-significance-of-the-Civil-War accessed 27 September 2022.

Georgy Manaev, ‘How Australia prepared for war with Russia’ in Russia Beyond, 29 April 2019. See: https://www.rbth.com/history/330300-how-australia-prepared-for-war-with-russia accessed on 27 September 2022.

Unattributed, ‘Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Greely’ in Digital History. See: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=393 accessed 27 September 2022.

Unattributed, ‘The Alabama Claims, 1862-72’ in Office of the Historian. See: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/alabama accessed on 30 September 2022.

Unattributed, ‘Fact Sheet 8 – Abolition of the ‘White Australia Policy’ in European Parliament. See: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/danz/dv/0220_13_1/0220_13_1en.pdf accessed 27 September 2022

Yegorov, O. ‘What Role did Russia play in the American Civil War?’ in Russia Beyond, 16 August 2017. See: https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2017/08/16/what-role-did-russia-play-in-the-us-civil-war_823252 accessed on 27 September 2022.

Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, accessed 27 September 2022.