by Thomas Maier
Wrapped often in hyperbole, the story of Jack’s entry into the political arena sounds like some Irish legend, of one chieftain lost in battle being replaced by another. The theme of a brother picking up the mantle for his fallen sibling recurs throughout Irish history in heroes such as Brian Boru or in the battle legends of Vinegar Hill. According to most popular accounts, Joe brought the family together in Hyannis Port and informed Jack of his destiny. “I got Jack into politics—I was the one,” his father explained years later. “I told him Joe was dead and that it was therefore his responsibility to run for Congress. He didn’t want it. He felt he didn’t have the ability but I told him he had to.”To most chroniclers of this saga, the idea of Jack Kennedy picking up the gauntlet of his fallen brother seemed gallant, almost romantic, like the plot concocted for some B-movie adventure produced by Hollywood’s Joe Kennedy. Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, in their own paeans to their former commander in chief, suggest that Jack Kennedy entered politics of his own volition as an extension of his liberal views, though the record of JFK’s misgivings and the elder Kennedy’s repeated admissions certainly undermine this claim. A bit more plausibly, other biographers suggest that Jack’s entry was merely a manifestation of Joe Kennedy’s unrelenting megalomania. In American presidential history, there was no precedent for the Kennedy brothers (other previous dynasties, such as the Adamses, were handed down one generation to the next, though the current Bush family is more comparable).Yet in popular accounts of this brotherly succession—such a powerful dynamic in the Kennedy family’s future—there remains little examination of the past to find its root causes.
Joe Kennedy’s familial control over his adult sons was reflected in many examples of Irish Catholic family life. Like his older brother, killed near age thirty, Jack was still unmarried at age twenty-eight. The center of his emotional life remained focused on the large family created by his parents, a common Irish trait as observed by the Reverend Andrew Greeley and other social historians. In Boston, many Irish politicians and others in the Kennedys’ circle of friends didn’t start families of their own until later in life. Without a wife to counsel him, Jack was particularly susceptible to his father’s influence.“I was drafted,” Jack told a journalist.“My father wanted his eldest son in politics.‘Wanted’ isn’t the right word. He demanded it.”
An air of destiny hung over this brotherly succession. Jack’s future plans as an individual would give way to duty and the greater needs of the clan. Somehow, it seemed that all of the slights and resentments endured by the Irish in America would be redeemed if one of their own became president, and Joe Kennedy was determined to see that his son would be that one. It was more than just a father-son directive: the entire family seemed vested in this legacy.“When we lost our oldest son and Jack assumed his mantle, I thought it was great,” Rose confirmed.
Before his brother’s death, Jack had some interest in politics, but expected his career would be spent mainly as a writer. For newspapers owned by his father’s friend, William Randolph Hearst, Jack toured through Europe in the summer of 1945, ostensibly to cover the British elections. While in London, he met with several British politicians and attended a rally where Harold Laski, the socialist and his brother’s venerated former teacher, gave his views. After a private chat with Laski, Kennedy wrote in his diary that “these Leftists are filled with bitterness” and that Laski’s bitterness came “not so much from the economic inequality but from the social.” Kennedy seemed well aware of the class distinctions made by the British in dealing with Jews as well as the Irish. In this regard, one particular remark from Laski during their friendly chat seemed to resonate with young Kennedy.“In speaking of Boston, he [Laski] said,‘Boston is a state of mind—and as a Jew, he could understand what it is to be an Irishman in Boston,’” Kennedy wrote in his diary. “That last remark reveals the fundamental, activating force of Mr. Laski’s life—a powerful spirit doomed to an inferior position because of race—a position that all of his economic and intellectual superiority cannot raise him out of.” Could this be Jack’s fate, too? Rather than castigate Jews as his father did in private,Kennedy seemed to understand the frustrations and similar troubles faced by minority groups in dealing with a dominant culture different from their own.
AFTER SPENDING A WEEK writing in England, John Kennedy crossed the Irish Sea. In Dublin, he also filed a dispatch about the Irish situation, but, though bearing a London dateline, the vantage was hardly that of an Anglophile. Instead, Kennedy wrote an eloquent description of the Irish plight. His feature, headlined “De Valera Aims to Unite Ireland,” described Eamon De Valera’s attempt to bring the six counties in Ulster under the same flag as the twenty-six counties in the south forming the Republic of Ireland. Perhaps most surprising about the essay was Kennedy’s point of view.
During World War II, Ireland steadfastly held on to its neutrality and denied the Allies access to military ports in the south—to the everlasting annoyance of English leaders. It turned out just as Winston Churchill had warned before the war, when Neville Chamberlain gave up control of the Irish ports as part of a deal brokered by Joe Kennedy. The position of Kennedy’s son was now even more surprising. A former U.S. Navy lieutenant planning to run for Congress, particularly one who had lost a brother a year earlier while fighting over the English Channel, might be expected to agree staunchly with the British position—but not John Kennedy. His essay made De Valera’s position seem reasonable to an American audience. He described De Valera, born in New York to a Spanish father and an Irish mother, not as a radical or a terrorist but as a freedom fighter. As leader of the “powerful” Fianna Fail Party, he said, De Valera was a “brilliant, austere figure” trying to bring all of Ireland together.
“De Valera is fighting politically the same relentless battle they fought in the field during the uprising of 1916, in the war of independence and later in the civil war,” wrote Kennedy. “He feels everything Ireland has gained has been given grudgingly and at the end of a long and bitter struggle. Always it has been too little and too late.” Kennedy detailed the Irish struggle for independence in the same glowing terms as the American Revolution and described the men around De Valera—such as Sean Lemass, the deputy prime minister—as sort of Founding Fathers of Irish freedom. “All fought in the war of independence against Black and Tans and later in the civil war of 1922,” he recounted. “All have been in both English and Irish prisons, and many have wounds which still ache when the cold rains come in from the west. They have not forgotten nor have they forgiven. The only settlement they will accept is a free and independent Ireland, free to go where it will be the master of its own destiny.”
In his article, Kennedy conscientiously informed readers that De Valera’s position for total unification was opposed not only by the British but by more cautious members of the Irish Dail, who felt it better to join the British Commonwealth and work together in mutual trust for the end of partition in Ireland. Yet Kennedy made clear that De Valera owned the Irish hearts and minds on this matter.“One is a strong stand and supported by the great majority of the people,” he observed. “The other is willing to compromise in view of present world circumstances.” Clearly, Kennedy’s perspective looked beyond the “present world circumstances” to the long history of Ireland in its quest for freedom.“De Valera is determined to end this partition, as it is called, and to that cause he has dedicated his life,” Kennedy wrote. “In this cause, all Irishmen of the south are united.” Undoubtedly, these words sounded more like an Irish Catholic politician preparing to run for office in Boston than the son of a former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, though his father likely agreed with every point.
In his private diary of the trip, Jack Kennedy wrote with fascination about De Valera and his appeal throughout the Irish countryside. In his diary, Kennedy recalled how young De Valera was ordered to jail and sentenced to death for his part in the uprising of 1916, a week-long revolution crushed by the British occupying force that s
et the stage of Irish independence. The older Irish leaders were shot “one or two a day” by British soldiers as a warning against further uprisings. “Public indignation had come to a fever pitch in America and Ireland due to the daily executions,” Kennedy wrote. The worldwide outrage prompted the English to reduce De Valera’s sentence and send him to a British jail for safekeeping. Kennedy recounted in detail the story of De Valera’s eventual escape. “Michael Collins, the great Irish hero, arranged for keys to be sent to De Valera in jail in a cake and went to England himself to aid the escape,” recalled Kennedy, who enjoyed such courageous tales. “One of the keys broke but at the last minute Mr. De Valera was successful in breaking out.”
Young Kennedy listened one day to the sharp criticisms of De Valera by David Gray, the U.S. minister appalled by Ireland’s neutrality during the war. Yet Kennedy seemed to distance himself from Gray’s caustic comments. He recognized the deep, almost spiritual desire among the Irish to end the partition of their country and gain their own fully realized independence. His diary notes underline the linkage between De Valera’s commitment to a united Ireland and the Catholic hierarchy’s view of their nation. “The Cardinal believes that Ireland was created by God—a single island and people, and partition is therefore an offense to God,” observed Kennedy, well aware of the intermingling of church and state in Irish politics. “Because of De Valera’s appeal to nationalism and his mystic hold on the hearts of the people and his practical politics, he did not lose control.” Though sympathetic to the Irish historical quest for freedom,Kennedy also noted in his journal a quote intended for “Irishmen abroad” from Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a Canadian of Irish descent, which seems to apply to himself: “While always ready therefore to say the right word and do the right act for the land of my forefathers, I am bound above all to the land where I reside.”
FOUR MONTHS LATER, when he returned to Massachusetts, Kennedy reworked his article and diary notes into what would become his first public speech. On November 11, 1945, Kennedy appeared at the Crosscup- Pishon American Legion Post, one of the largest in New England, and added even more comments about his Irish allegiance and admiration for De Valera. His talk abounded with ironies.
It was a night for showing Jack Kennedy in a greener tint than usual. Among Boston’s Irish, the speech was meant to shore up lingering questions about Kick Kennedy’s marriage to a Cavendish and to demonstrate Kennedy’s affinity for Ireland. The tall, thin war hero regaled the crowd with stories of meeting General Richard Mulcahy, who served as chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the 1919 war for independence from Britain and was then leader of the Fine Gael (United Irish Party). In glowing terms, Kennedy described Mulcahy as “that able warrior who proved his toughness in the wars against the Black and Tans.” Jack spoke of the Black and Tans with the same contempt as his father. Of Mulcahy,Kennedy commented that “he looked like the soldier he was—he was a man of strong opinions. When an Irish politician gives you his views on his country’s position, you know that they are not lightly held and that he has probably shed some blood in their defense.”
Indeed, Kennedy’s description of Mulcahy, particularly his familiarity with violence, seemed deliberately downplayed. Through sheer will, Mulcahy had whipped ragtag Irish soldiers into a credible army that would not fail in 1919, not as Irish resistance had done so many times before to British tyranny. Mulcahy survived imprisonment as an Irish freedom fighter and waged a tightly organized guerrilla war for the IRA. As a biographer later concluded, Mulcahy “epitomized the political and cultural nationalist whose vision of a free and independent Ireland was a synthesis of traditions: Gaelic and English, constitutional and revolutionary, modern and traditional.” In the civil war that erupted, Mulcahy, who served as minister for national defense for the new provisional government, employed brutal counterterrorism methods, including the execution of prisoners. None of these messy details were in Kennedy’s speech.
Instead, Jack Kennedy, the budding Boston pol, skated carefully between the two Irish factions, careful to praise both sides without alienating the other. His audience knew enough of modern Irish history to recognize the general’s name. In his speech, Kennedy recalled sitting with Mulcahy in his small office full of books, a large portrait—“the most impressive object in General Mulcahy’s room”—of the fallen Michael Collins adorning the wall.“If Michael Collins had lived,” the old man told Kennedy,“the history of Ireland would be different.” Kennedy said he talked for “several hours” with Mulcahy about the legacy of Michael Collins.
In the pantheon of modern Irish heroes, Michael Collins’s tale is perhaps the most charismatic and tragic. During the war for independence, Collins rejected the idea of a large-scale rebellion against vastly superior armed forces. Instead, with the help of Mulcahy, he brilliantly forged a campaign of hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. He arranged for secret loans to finance the struggle and set up a complex web of spies to learn of the British military’s strategy. Once victory over the British was attained—in the form of a negotiated settlement that drew a partition line through Ireland—Collins tried to convince his fellow freedom fighters of the treaty’s merits, but to no avail. The Irish civil war became a cross for Collins to bear. “Think, what have I got for Ireland? Something she had wanted these past seven hundred years,” Collins wrote a friend about the treaty, which he called “my death warrant” because he knew it would be untenable for those who wanted their freedom from England complete. Soon after the treaty signing in 1922, Collins was assassinated; his memory became a treasured part of Irish history.
“This young man who was killed in his early thirties looms as large today in Ireland as when he died,” John F.Kennedy declared about Michael Collins in this November 1945, speech. Decades later, others would compare Michael Collins to a fallen leader in America. In his history of Ireland, Robert Kee said that Collins “has assumed, in Irish consciousness, a place not unlike the place that John F. Kennedy has in American consciousness. A young, attractive and dashing individual shot down at a young age, shortly after his greatest triumph. Like Kennedy, the perception in Ireland is, that if Collins had lived, Ireland’s future could only have been different and better.”
IN HIS SPEECH that day, Kennedy offered a debatable interpretation of the past. But his take on recent Irish events was even more noteworthy. He suggested that De Valera—who had asked Collins to negotiate with the British and then vehemently rejected the treaty—would be the one to “finally settle the problem of Partition.” He pointed to De Valera’s success in getting the British to relinquish their naval ports at Berehaven, Queenstown and Lough Swilly to the Irish without mentioning his father’s part in the arrangement. He also avoided Churchill’s criticisms of the deal and its impact on the war effort. Instead, he focused on praise for the Irish leader. “De Valera has a unique hold on the hearts of the Irish people,” Kennedy told the crowd.“There is no compromise in De Valera’s firm, ascetic face. He has a passionate intensity and a single-mindedness in the course he is taking that brooks no opposition.”
Before these Irish-American war veterans sitting in Massachusetts, Kennedy forgave Ireland for not fighting with the Allies in World War II, citing its ancient antipathy for the imperialist Brits. He explained away De Valera’s stance as “identifying neutrality with freedom from England, which will always win support” with the Irish people. As Jack certainly realized, the wish to avoid war was one that De Valera’s friend, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, tried in vain to affect for his own country. With his intense, oracular manner, De Valera managed to cast a spell on the Kennedys, as he did much of the Irish people.
Understanding DeValera was much like deciphering a mystic. He showed great strength and cunning to gain Ireland’s long-sought independence from its great oppressor, England. Rather than look forward as the new nation’s leader, however, De Valera insisted that Ireland return to its roots. He promoted an agrarian economy, rather than develop the cities, clung to an isolationist
policy and instructed that native Gaelic be taught as Ireland’s first language. Keenly aware of the simmering prejudices of the British toward his country, De Valera never trusted Churchill, who thought briefly of taking back the Irish ports by force during the war but was prevented from doing so because of the Irish lobby in America. “De Valera is quite content to sit happy and see us strangle,” Churchill complained bitterly to Roosevelt. After the war, the British prime minister lambasted the Irish leader for not allowing Ireland’s ports to be used by the Allies, a stand that he said resulted in needlessly lost lives. In reply, De Valera pointed to his country’s own history. “Could he not find in his heart generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone, not for one year or two, but for several hundred years, against aggression?” De Valera said of the British prime minister. “Mr. Churchill is justly proud of his nation’s perseverance against heavy odds. But we in this island are still prouder of our perseverance for freedom through all the centuries.”
That the Kennedys, both father and son, should find such affinity with this champion of Irish freedom seemed unlikely, and yet his words struck a chord in both of them. Indeed, Jack Kennedy’s deference to De Valera was so complete that he could even excuse the Irish leader’s decision to express his condolences at the German embassy in Dublin when Adolf Hitler died. “He is extremely conscious that his visit to the German Legation on Hitler’s death caused unfavorable comment in America,” explained young Kennedy. “He discussed it with me at some length. He was determined to carry out Eire’s policy of strict neutrality to the end, and carry it out he did. To all critics he answers, ‘I kept Ireland out of the war.’”