~Just a bit of history to whet our appetite~

I am reading a book this weekend called "Tide and Tempest" , now almost to the middle of the book I am finding that Tillie and the Captain of the ship along with his brother are having difficulties stemming from the "Fenian movement"...I am always learning from authors that research and put in their stories history that we can too look into and learn more.  Thank you for your clever writings that make me want to delve further and I have...........this is what I have found out about the movement.

 The Fenian Brotherhood was an organization started in the United States by John O?Mahony in 1858. O?Mahony and James Stephens, both members of the Young Ireland Rising of 1848, worked together to gain support for an uprising in both Ireland and the US. Stephens was instrumental in establishing the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (later known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood) in Ireland. The object of Stephens, O'Mahony, and other leaders of the movement was to form a league of Irishmen in all parts of the world against British rule in Ireland. The organization was modelled on that of the Jacobins of the French Revolution; they even formed a "Committee of Public Safety" in Paris, with a number of subsidiary committees and affiliated clubs. The Fenians were soon found in Australia, South America, Canada, and above all in the United States, as well as in the large cities of Great Britain such as London, Manchester, and Glasgow. 

One of the main goals of the Fenian Brotherhood was to invade Canada in order to ransom it back to Britain in return for Irish freedom. Despite several raids conducted between 1866 and 1871, the Fenians were never successful. There was also a Fenian rising in Ireland in 1867 that was unsuccessful. Despite their lack of success on the battlefield, the Fenians true achievement was to pass on the ideal of Irish independence to the next generation.