THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 223 



apparently due to the anti-British feeling en 

 gendered by the incidents of the war. Congress 

 directed by act of January 18, 1865, that the 

 requisite one year s notice of abrogation be 

 given, and accordingly the provisions went out 

 of effect in 1866. By this action the unsatis 

 factory conditions as to the inshore fisheries re 

 vived, and a period of friction over this trouble 

 some matter was prepared. 



Still more directly and obviously the outcome 

 of the changed feeling toward Great Britain 

 was the support given to the earnest but rather 

 absurd undertakings of the Fenians. Among 

 the millions of Irishmen in the United States 

 hatred of all things British was practically 

 universal. Any project, however chimerical, 

 for breaking the power of the &quot;Saxon&quot; was sure 

 of wide sympathy and support from Irish- 

 Americans. In the armies that fought the war 

 of secession the Irish were conspicuous in both 

 numbers and achievement. When the armies 

 were disbanded many of these veterans were 

 easily induced to join the Fenian movement 

 an enterprise directed with rather ostentatious 

 secrecy to the establishment of an independent 

 republic in Ireland. It would not seem likely, 

 a priori, that the first overt step toward this 



