Michael Collins: Almost a ‘Beat Cop’ in the Chicago Police Department?
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Brian McGowan
In the Irish gallery of patriots, there are few as large as Michael Collins.
His life, and untimely death, have been the subject of countless books and films. Cut down in his prime, there is little question that had he lived, Ireland would have evolved quite differently in the rocky decades that followed creation of the Irish Free State in 1921.
The treaty with Great Britain creating that state – which Collins, among other Irish patriots, signed in December 1921 – was, as he remarked while the ink still dried, his death warrant.
But first, a word about a choice he faced sometime prior to the Apr. 24, 1916, Easter Rising. This was the day a group of rebels, including Collins, hoisted the Irish Tricolor atop the roof of Dublin’s General Post Office. They set in motion a train of events that rolls on into the current day.
Collins was born in County Cork on Oct. 16, 1890. A bright youth, he sought more than the family farm. He made his way in banking, working both in London and New York in the decade leading up to 1916. While in London, he became involved in the subterfuge of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
By 1915, he was in New York, where he worked for the Guaranty Trust Company. A relative living in Chicago contacted him, and, as rumor has it, offered Collins a position with the Chicago Police Department. All he had to do was say yes, and he would become a member of Chicago’s finest, then a veritable fiefdom of Irish and Irish-Americans.
But Ireland beckoned. A letter arrived from one of his co-revolutionists, bidding him to return to Ireland, and help plan for an upcoming rebellion. Michael chose his homeland over a comfortable life in America. He threw himself into the rebel movement, and became an integral part of it.
In the five years following 1916, he rose to head up rebel intelligence operations, espionage and finance, and in 1921 entered negotiations with the British to bring an end to the struggle.
The credo of Irish revolutionaries had always been a united, 32-county republic. Collins saw that the prospect of that goal being achieved in the near term was unlikely. He was forced to either accept partition, with six of the northern counties remaining part of the British Empire, or have Ireland suffer British repression more brutal than any it had ever seen. He signed the treaty and made his famous comment about it being his death warrant.
Almost immediately, Ireland was convulsed in bitter civil war. The forces of the Irish Free State, in which Collins held the rank of general, battled the “anti-treaty” members of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA continued to hold out for a united Ireland.
Collins, never one to be cowed, traveled the country freely, directing operations. He was engaged at the time to Kitty Kiernan. At 31, he looked forward to victory, and peace, as his “free staters” progressively wore down the IRA stalwarts.
But on Aug. 22, 1922, Collins’s luck ran out. The convoy he was traveling in was ambushed by the IRA not far from Béal na Bláth, County Cork. In the ensuing gunfight, Collins was struck in the head by an IRA bullet. He died instantly. His funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Ireland. Before long, most of the IRA gave up their arms, and Ireland settled into a fragile peace.
It is said by some that Collins should have resisted British demands that the treaty be signed “or else.” As far as partition went, the clauses were far different in execution than what had been agreed to. Large swaths of what is today Northern Ireland would have been included in the Irish Republic, making partition a temporary settlement at worst. Instead, it became the source of decades more death and destruction on both sides of an artificial line drawn across the map of Ireland.
Longtime Pleasantville resident Brian McGowan was born and raised in the Bronx, and is a second-, third- and fifth-generation Irish-American/Canadian, as his immigrant ancestors followed several paths to the New World. Reach him at brian.m.mcgowan1952@gmail.com. He is the author of three books: “Thunder at Noon,” about the Battle of Waterloo; “Love, Son John,” about World War II; and “Island Prize,” about the Revolutionary War in 1776 New York. All are available at Amazon.com.
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