By Ruairí Nolan
On a crisp, cool evening in early July 1867 the steamboat G.A. Thompson chugged its way down the Missouri River, Montana, towards Camp Cooke. As a lone sentry patrolled the upper decks, he spotted from the corner of his eye a man hastily making for the rear of the boat, dressed in nothing but his underclothes. Thinking it an officer going to relieve himself over the edge, the sentry turned and moved on to provide some privacy. Suddenly there was a yelp, followed by a loud splash.
The weak light provided by the sentry’s lanterns barely illuminated the water beyond a distance of five feet. No calls for help could be heard—only low and agonising cries. At dawn there remained no sign of the person who went overboard. To this day there remains an aura of mystery hanging over the missing body of Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish revolutionary and Union brigadier general from the American Civil War. Speculation on the nature of his death still divides scholars. Did he simply trip and fall or were there more sinister games being played in Montana politics? Was he pushed to his death?
Meagher had emerged from the Civil War with a mixed reputation. He had distinguished himself bravely on the battlefield but had embarrassed himself with a lack of tactical and strategic skill, ultimately being cashiered before peace was made. His only hope for redemption was appointment to a political office, which would provide him with the platform necessary to reconstruct his image in the American and Irish mind-set. Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln early in his second term, his vice-president, Andrew Johnson of the Democratic Party, assumed the role and Meagher, a long-time supporter of the Democrats, harried the administration for an appointment.
MONTANA TERRITORY
Eventually a role came up: secretary of Montana Territory, a subordinate role to that of governorship. A ‘territory’ was land claimed by the United States but administered directly by the federal government from Washington DC. Territories, unlike states, had no sovereignty independent of the central government, meaning that affairs could be managed by political appointees alone rather than by elected representatives. It was a governorship that Meagher had coveted, but in 1865 President Johnson feared that the appointment of a Democrat to such a position so soon after the Civil War would invite unwarranted hostility from the Republican-led Congress.
When he arrived in the territory in September 1865, Meagher stepped into a volatile political maelstrom. In Montana most elected representatives were Democrats but they were controlled by federally appointed Republicans. Prior to Meagher’s arrival, the Republican governor had taken away the territory’s right to hold a legislative assembly, with his son calling them ‘rebels and traitors’ who were ‘unfit to exercise the right of self-government’ in the light of recent events. In the eyes of the Republican minority, it was better to have no government at all rather than one they could not easily control.
REPUBLICANS VS DEMOCRATS
As soon as Meagher arrived in the territorial capital, Bannack, Governor Sidney Edgerton—who was deeply unhappy about Meagher’s appointment—returned to Ohio, making Meagher acting governor. It is important to note that Edgerton did not leave because of Meagher’s arrival but rather because the appointment of a secretary allowed him to delegate what was an incredibly onerous job, one that had reduced him both mentally and financially. Meagher was introduced to the leading Republican members of the territorial government, who pressed their case about the political situation in Montana. As a Union Democrat, he sympathised with many of the Republican concerns about their Democratic counterparts; he believed that they were ‘turbulent men … and abettors of treason’, men ‘not fitted to govern’. Meagher was determined to forge his own path, as his own man, without connection to either party, and would struggle in the coming years to placate the interests of both factions.
As time went by, however, Meagher’s sympathies shifted significantly towards the elected Democratic majority, as he came to realise that the appointed Republicans had misled him about the political reality of the rivalry between the two groups. He felt that the Republicans exercised more control of the territory than their positions warranted, impeding his own ability to perform his role as acting governor. It may have helped that many of the Democratic majority were themselves of Irish or Irish-American descent, creating a common bond, and he came to be seen as a spokesman for the Democrats in Montana.
FINAL BREAK
The final break with the Republicans came when he decided to recall the legislative assembly and reform the territorial government. The Republicans claimed that he had no right as acting governor to make that choice and that he was overstepping his bounds. Further to this, Meagher called for a constitutional convention to begin the process of acquiring statehood. It was claimed by one of his strongest rivals, Wilbur Fisk Sanders, that the only reason Meagher sought a constitutional convention and statehood was because he surrounded himself with flatterers and soothsayers who promised him a seat in the senate for their newly formed state.
By July 1866, any authority that Meagher had held as acting governor was shattered when Andrew Johnson replaced Sidney Edgerton as governor with Green Clay Smith, a Mexican War veteran, Union major-general from the Civil War and former congressman. Meagher, in response, attempted to resign from his post as territorial secretary, but Smith convinced him to remain. The two, it appears, had a genuine respect for one another.
Like Edgerton, however, Smith wasn’t in Montana for long, seeking a temporary leave of absence in January 1867, and for two months Meagher again found himself filling in as acting governor. Since Smith’s arrival the political atmosphere had stabilised and become less charged, but matters immediately deteriorated upon his departure. It was during this time that some of Meagher’s fiercest opponents went to Washington DC and lobbied the Republican Congress to make null and void any legislation enacted by Meagher and his recalled legislative assembly the previous year.
Johnson made the decision to replace Meagher as territorial secretary, taking away any powers he held. The Congress agreed to the requests of his rivals in March 1867 and thus any progress he had made in the territory was reversed. It was as if he had never been in charge at all, apart from the polarisation of politics that his time had generated.
NOW ASPIRED TO BE A MILITARY LEADER
Meagher was able to put a positive spin on this change. He determined that he was not destined to be a politician but rather an accomplished military leader and earn his reputation on the field of battle. He sought advancement in the ongoing war with local Native Americans in the Montana region, specifically against the Lakota and Cheyenne. Since 1866 the two groups had come into conflict with the US Army, besieging three forts in south-central Montana continuously for nearly a year.
Meagher had for some time been petitioning General William Sherman, commander of the military division of the Mississippi, for military assistance in the territory in order to safeguard settlements against Native American incursions and had received nothing in return. Eventually he received permission to form a territorial militia composed of local residents willing and able to take up arms to defend themselves. According to Jon Axline, they were ‘a motley collection of businessmen, former vigilantes, lawmen, miners, bullwhackers and frontier ne’er-do-wells’ who spent ‘most of their time fighting themselves over rank, deserting or drinking’. The militia never even took the field against the Native Americans and Meagher never achieved the glory he so desperately sought. Realistically, the militia was more like ‘a summer camp for the recalcitrant’, and ‘Meagher seemed more interested in the adventure and glory than in the drudgery of commanding troops’.
In June 1867, Meagher and eleven officers from the militia set out from Virginia City in southern Montana to collect a shipment of weapons from Fort Benton, sent upriver by Sherman. While making the journey, Meagher fell ill with dysentery owing to the scorching heat and long days of riding. The trip was delayed by six full days while he recovered. They eventually made it to Fort Benton on 1 July, exhausted both physically and mentally, and Meagher sought refuge in the back room of a log store next to the river.
DERANGED?
While there, Meagher learned that the shipment hadn’t made it to Fort Benton but instead was 130 miles downriver to the east at Camp Cooke. The river water was too low for the boat to make the full journey, news that he was less than happy to hear. Instead of making the journey over land again, the decision was made to travel by river on the steamboat G.A. Thompson. One of Meagher’s strongest rivals from his time as acting governor, Wilbur Fisk Sanders, was also in town and travelling downriver on the same steamboat. Sanders recalled:
‘My attention was arrested by abnormally loud conversation, and as the party came nearer, I saw that it came from General Meagher. As the party came to the place where I was, it was apparent that he was deranged. He was loudly demanding a revolver to defend himself against the citizens of Fort Benton, who, in his disturbed mental condition, he declared were hostile to him.’
This is but one account that speaks of the distress in which Meagher found himself shortly before leaving Fort Benton. According to Doran, the pilot of the boat, Meagher overheard someone earlier in the day say ‘There he goes’, taking the comment as a threat and also claiming that his life had been threatened during his stay in the settlement. Both Doran and Sanders agree that the general was not in his right mind that evening. It was later that evening, after Meagher had finally calmed down and retired to his room, that the sentry noticed him heading for the rear of the boat. When he fell, some men dropped into the water while others ran downstream along the shore, but despite their efforts Meagher was never seen again.
ACCIDENT OR FOUL PLAY?
Was it an accident? Or was it an act of malice by a political opponent? There is some evidence to suggest that it was a targeted assault/assassination, though all of it is circumstantial in nature. The amount of controversy and hatred that Meagher managed to arouse in his enemies in such a short time makes the possibility of assassination somewhat reasonable. Many local Irishmen claimed that Meagher was a victim of tribal politics—North and South, Democrat and Republican, nativist and immigrant—and many held the belief that he was pushed overboard that night. Meagher was ‘of the wrong party, the wrong church and was far too vocal in his opposition to the status quo of Montana’.
This is further reinforced by Frank Diamond’s claim, some half-century later, that he killed Meagher in exchange for $8,000 offered by a Montana vigilante group, though he later retracted this confession. Could this explain some of the delusions from which Meagher was suffering? Or perhaps they weren’t delusions—perhaps threats were indeed made against his life that day and, just maybe, those threats were acted upon.
The more likely and more plausible scenario, though, is that he went on deck to relieve himself because he was still suffering from dysentery, an illness of which the main symptom is diarrhoea and dehydration. Being unwell and unsteady on his feet, and quite clearly suffering delusions of some sort (perhaps from a fever, though there is no documentary evidence of this), he could have lost his footing and hit his head on the way down, particularly in view of the likelihood of ropes lying around the deck. Moreover, on this particular boat, the G.A. Thompson, the railings usually encircling the upper decks for safety had been removed following a collision only a few days before, leaving Meagher with nothing to hold on to in order to balance himself.
His death remains one of Montana’s most enduring mysteries. In his two years in Montana he had managed to hold the role of acting governor for much of the time, and had attempted to reinforce the democratic process for the majority and to put the territory on the path to statehood. Failing this, he attempted to re-establish his military reputation against the Native Americans, but failed in this too. Meagher died in 1867 at the young age of 43, leaving behind an incredibly mixed and somewhat deflated legacy. Today, however, people prefer to remember him as a courageous Irish patriot, idealist, renowned orator, commander of the Irish Brigade in the American Civil War and begetter of the Irish tricolour in 1848.
Ruairí Nolan is an independent historian and author of the online newsletter Ireland and the Age of Revolution.
Further reading
J. Axline, ‘With courage and undaunted obstinacy: Meagher in Montana 1865–67’, in J.M. Hearne & R.T.
Cornish (eds), Thomas Francis Meagher: the making of an Irish American (Dublin, 2005).
T. Egan, The immortal Irishman: the Irish revolutionary who became an American hero (Boston, 2016).
P.R. Wylie, The Irish general: Thomas Francis Meagher (Oklahoma, 2007).