Some ideas are so crazy they just might work. Many more ideas are so crazy that there’s almost no chance they’d work. For example, let’s say it’s 1866 and you’re the leader of the Fenian Brotherhood, a group of about 50,000 Irish Americans who want to win the independence of their homeland. What are the chances you’d decide that the best way to free Ireland was to invade Canada? Pretty good, believe it or not.
Founded in 1858 by John O’Mahony as the American arm of the Irish Republican Brotherhood—a military group aimed at ending British rule in Ireland—the Fenians recruited most of their members in Boston and other cities along the northeast U.S. coast. At first, the Fenians were more of a diplomatic organization. Problem was, many in the group weren’t interested in negotiating or organizing—they were looking for direct confrontation, by force if necessary. So at a contentious convention in Philadelphia in 1865, O’Mahony lost control of the group when the members elected a man named William Randall Roberts as their chief executive.
Roberts was more confrontational than O’Mahony, but he was skeptical that his group would be able to mount a successful revolution in Ireland. So he hatched a bold plan: invade part of Canada, proclaim the occupied territory the new Irish Republic, and use it as leverage to bargain for Ireland’s independence from the British.
