CIVIL WAR

INTRODUCTION.  Thomas Flanagan in The End of the Hunt. 

I.  THE TREATY.  Anglo-Irish Treaty (6 December 1921). 

A.  TREATY AND PARTITION.  Partition:  Down, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone, Antrim, and Fermanagh + 2 parliamentary boroughs, Belfast and Londonderry.

B.  THE TREATY'S CONTENTS.  The Irish Free State:  dominion status; governor-general; oath to the king; liability for public debt; open harbors; partition; king, senate, House of Commons.

C.  THE GOVERNMENT LINE.   "The freedom of Ireland increases the strength of the empire by ending the conflict which has been carried on for centuries" (Prime Minister David Lloyd George.  "the damnable question" (H. H. Asquith).

II.  THE IRISH DEBATE.  "Early this morning I signed my death warrant" (Michael Collins).

A.  THE ARGUMENT AGAINST.  "We were elected by the Irish people, and did the Irish people think we were liars when we said that we meant to uphold the republic" (Erskine Childers).  "I am against this treaty, not because I am a man of war, but a man of peace" (Eamon de Valera).  "It would be a surrender which was never heard of in Ireland since the days of Henry II" (Eamon de Valera).

B.  THE ARGUMENT FOR.  "We went there to London, not as republican doctrinaires, but looking for the substance of freedom and independence" (Arthur Griffith).

C.  THE DIFFERENCE.

II.  RECEPTION OF THE TREATY.  The Dáil (7 Jan. 1922):  64 for, 57 against.

A.  THE TREATY SUSTAINED.  General election (June 1922):  Pro-treaty Sinn Pro-treaty Sinn Féin, 38.6%; Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin, 21.6%; Labour, 21.4%; Farmers, 8.2%; Unionists, ?

B.  THE SPLIT: INDIVIDUALS.  PRO:  Richard Mulcahy (1886-1971), Provisional Government's military commander during the Civil War; Arthur Griffith (1871-1922).  CON:  Erskine Childers (1870-1922; Cathal Brugha (Charles William St. John Burgess, 1874-1922); Austin Stack (1880-1929); Eamon de Valera; Constance Countess Markievicz; Maude (Gonne) MacBride; Kathleen Clarke; Mary McSwiney (1872-1942).  "The Republican widows."  "[The Treaty is] "the grossest act of betrayal that Ireland ever endured" (Mary McSwiney).

C.  THE SPLIT:  THE I.R.A.  General HQ officers, 9-to-4 pro-Treaty; divisional commanders, evenly split; brigades, 3-to-1 anti-Treaty.

D.  THE CHURCH. 

III.  FOUNDATIONS OF THE SPLIT:  TWO NATIONAL IRELANDS.  Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn, Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Liverpool, 1977).

A.  THE GREAT DIVIDE. 

B.  FORCES OF COMMUNITY.  Language, religion, political culture.

CONCLUSION.  MICHAEL COLLINS & EAMON DE VALERA.