Finding Aid
Correspondence:
23 autograph letters, signed, from Thomas D'Arcy McGee to John O'Donohoe, 1858 to 1863.
Note: "Slatter" refers to: T.P. Slattery, The Assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Toronto and N.Y.: Doubleday), 1968.
Description of letters:
Montreal, November 8, 1858
4 pages, 4 1/2" x 7"
Slight worming and discoloration, not affecting text.
Written four days after George Brown's triumphant banquet in Montreal. Regrets O'Donohoe's absence from the banquet, and expresses anxiety about support for Brown in the coming elections: "It will be as you say, either the consumption or the divorce of the alliance." Enquires about friends, and expresses opinions on The True Witness and The Freeman: "You and I, O'Donohoe, are especially bound to stand by Moylan [and] Mallon, since it was certainly our doing, that they ever undertook it."
Montreal, January l0, 1859
1/2 pages, 4 1/2" x 7"
Slight staining not affecting text.
Congratulates him on his recent political success, and reviews the activities of friends: "but in London, Norris, I fear, asked too much, in the Mayoralty. He is a very worthy little fellow, and I wished him success, while I hardly expected it, just yet."
House of Assembly, March 9, 1859
1 page, 5" x 8"
Slight staining, not affecting text.
Regarding the decision of the St. Patrick's Association of Toronto to discontinue its customary St. Patricks Day procession.
Montreal, September 15, 1859
4 pages, 5" x 7 3/4"
Staining, with slight tears at outer edges, not affecting text; together with "categorical statement", enclosed with the above, in the form of a letter to O'Donohoe, in reply to "The Declaration of His Lordship, the Bishop of Montreal", published in the True Witness on August 19, 1859. (Slattery, p. 123-124)
2 pages, 7 3/4't x 10"
Slight tearing at folds, not affecting text,
[with revisions in pencil by the author].
McGee asks O'Donohoe to make a "clean copy" of the Statement, and send it at once to the Vicar General for His Lordship, Bishop de Charbonnel of Toronto. He further asks that should O'Donohoe have opportunity, he should bring to the attention of His Lordship a slighting reference made in a recent edition of the Minerva. The substance of the "categorical statement" would form the basis of McGee's speech at the banquet in his honour at the end of the month.
[no place]) September 21, 1859
2 1/2 pages, 4 1/2" x 7 1/2"
Slight staining at folds, not affecting text.
Discusses suggested changes to the "categorical statement".
Quebec, March 14,1860
3 pages, 5" x 8"
Reviews political topics, including his views on the Constitutional question.
Montreal, November 9, 1860
4 pages: 4 1/2" x 7"
Slight tearing and foxing at upper edges; slight tearing at folds; text fully legible.
Reflects on the "short and peremptory tone" used by Moylan at the "St. Catharines affair." "I have felt it my duty to communicate at once to Moylan, my views of this last bulletin; it has pained me deeply to sever a political intimacy..."
Quebec, March 23, 1861
4 pages, 4 1/2" x 7 1/2"
Slight stains at upper edges, not affecting text.
A conversational letter, written when McGee was confined to bed "from having ducked under two or three times in crossing the river."
Montreal, June 5, 1861
4 pages, 8" x 10"
Tears at folds; text fully legible.
A long letter regarding the establishment of a Central Committee in Toronto, and the organization of a convention of Catholic electors. Suggests specific means of arranging such a convention:
"The circulars might be printed, but so worded, that if one of them got into wrong hands, it could do no harm ... Clifton House, Niagara, clearly empty this season, would have some advantages on account of privacy..." A lengthy and pointed postscript, giving specific advice on such a convention: "No one ought to be admitted as a delegate without some credentials ... no spectators ought to be admitted at all."
Montreal, August 1,1861
3 1/2 pages, 4 1/2" x 7"
Staining and slight tearing in upper half of all pages; text fully legible.
Regarding an evening to be spent in Toronto prior to his attendance at a Banquet in Stratford.
Cacouna, July 31,1862
3 1/2 pages, 5" x 8"
McGee spent the month of July, 1862 at Cacouna, near Rivière du Loup, trying to rid himself of bilious attacks. The letter is marked "Private", and he asserts that he has "abstained from writing anything for any paper since I became a Member of the Administration. " He goes on to obliquely encourage him (O'Donohoe) and others to make public statements on his behalf.
Quebec, February 12, 1863
3 1/4 pages, 5" x 8"
Offers whatever assistance he can to O'Donohoe "in the line of your profession only." He tells O'Donohoe that "Wilson has been writing several letters to Richards, with a view to get him to make room for you, a a remuneration..."
Montreal, May 16, 1863
7 pages, 4 1/2 x 7"
Slight staining and tears at folds; not affecting text.
Following the defeat of the MacDonald-Sciotte ministry on May 8, 1863, a new cabinet was secretly constituted. McGee was discarded, and he heard the news on May 15, the day the House was dissolved. This long letter, written the following day, was marked "Private and Confidential." The letter is quoted at length by Slattery (pp. 188-189).
Montreal, [no month] 5, 1860
4 pages, 8" x 10"
Both leaves have been separated completely at centre horizontal fold. Usual staining on other fold lines; nicks and. tears at edges of leaves. No significant loss of text.
A lengthy private letter to O'Donohoe (and Moylan) on provincial politics: "It is quite evident... that our new and only Irish bishop [Bishop Lynch] has been very badly ‘taken in'. He has met Cartier, without any previous personal knowledge of Cartier's character. He has heard his professions, and believed them...What we should do is, to give him an early opportunity of being undeceived...by some of us calling on him...and submitting to him frankly, a proposition of [the following] kind..."
Quebec, [no date] Monday
3 pages, 4 1/2" x 7 1/4"
Slight staining, nicks and tears, not affecting legibility of text.
On the prospects of a standing army of Orange militia: "Now, with no solitary Reformer left in the Coalition, but Sidney Smith, had more certain than that you will have a new orange militia regime fastened on Upper Canada ."
Montreal, [no date] Monday night
4 pages, 4 1/2" x 7"
Slight staining to fourth page, not affecting legibility of text.
Reflects on "the firmness of a few" in "resisting the total change of Catholic policy which has been attempted, simply to oblige Mrs. Crawford's husband...Oh! shame, shame, shame, on the men, who so weakly or wickedly betrayed their followers ."
Montreal, [no date] Wednesday
3 pages, 4 1/2" x 7 1/2"
Slight tears at folds, not affecting text.
A private letter, in which McGee gives advice to O'Donohoe in point form on the conduct of a convention in the light of differing circumstances.
Montreal, [no date] Wednesday evening.
4 pages, 5" x 8"
Slight staining at folds, not affecting legibility of text.
An urgent letter to O'Donohoe, impressing upon him the necessity of pressing Crawford to publicly declare his intention: "will you, on a want of confidence motion coming up vote against the Ministry of the day, yea or nay?" He goes on to say that vacillation on this question will mean that they ( i.e. the voters) will elect "a prop to be put under the Cartier-MacDonald administration. No after explanation ever can clear of inconsistency or something worse those who vote, without an answer to such a question, for George Crawford's son, and John Ross' private partner, in law, and in Grand Trunk speculations."
Montreal, [no date] Saturday, 6 o'clock p.m.
2 pages, 5 1/4" x 8"
Some discoloration and staining, not affecting legibility of text.
Marked "Private", this letter gives O'Donohoe various instructions for the prosecution of various political arrangements. He encloses (not present) a "strange letter" from Henderson, and urges O'Donohoe to keep it "strictly to yourself". He adds that "Moylan told McCready here, that he had got an advance of $3,700 and was going home able to pay off all incumbrances... "
[no place], [no date] Saturday morning
1 page, 5" x 8"
A short note, in which O'Donohoe's attention is directed to "Hayes's infamous treachery" in the Brockville Recorder.
London, [September 21st, 1861] Saturday evening
3 pages, 8" x 10"
Contained within this letter is the draft of a letter to the Editor of The Globe, dated from Woodstock, September 24th, 1861, regarding a sum of money which McGee alleges was given to the Editor of The Freeman for "electioneering services. " The covering letter reports on McGee's general satisfaction with the outcome of the Haldimand Banquet, but is largely taken up with McGee's efforts to secure "explicit written answers" from his informants (McCready and Donnelly) to substantiate McGee's assertion about the $3,700. A postscript instructs O'Donohoe (referring to the draft letter to The Globe) : "If only one of the answers is emphatic, please change the plural for the singular and Ingersoll for Woodstock in my note, and give only the emphatic answer."
[no place], [no date]
Pages 3 and 4 only of an ALs. , 4 1/2" X 7"
This fragment refers to a break in a personal relationship. McGee says: "I was hurt -- deeply hurt by not being consulted before the ultimatum was issued..." The letter concludes with McGee's plans for his itinerary in the near future.
