McGee became a member of the executive committee of five and went to his task of creating a revolution with flushed enthusiasm. A venture promising a quick fame and success to the public cause presented itself. A delegate arrived from the Irish Confederates at Glasgow stating that they had a considerable supply of arms and ammunition, and if a known and daring leader were sent them, four or five hundred men would volunteer for an expedition to Ireland. They might seize a steamer on the Clyde, and sail for Sligo or Killala. Thus, by a diversion in the west, they could strike British power a blow from the rear. There was too much of a dramatic appeal in this adventure for McGee to refuse when it was suggested that he be the leader. Visions of emulating Paul Jones danced before his mind, and away he sped the same evening for Scotland, while his associates matured their plans in Ireland. With rapid dispatch McGee consulted the Irish revolutionists in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Greenock, and enrolled four hundred volunteers. The crew of a steamer sailing from Greenock was won over, and it was arranged that the arms should be placed on board as merchandise. While he was developing his plans, McGee was recognized by the police; and, his arrest being under consideration, the revolutionary committee insisted that he leave immediately and proceed to Sligo, where he could extemporize arrangements for the landing of the expedition. He reached Sligo early in August, and there awaited developments, scanning the rocky and picturesque shores of Lough Gill in the character of a Dublin student on holiday. The news that finally reached him shattered his hopes. He learned how Smith O'Brien had led his insurgents to the so-called battle of Ballingarry, which ended, pantomime-like, in Widow McCormack's cabbage patch. O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and other leaders, he heard, were in the hands of the government, and the revolutionary organization had collapsed like a punctured balloon. The peasantry, on whom the success of the movement finally depended, were more eager to escape in emigrant ships from an impoverished country than to fight for a revolutionary government. To America McGee's eyes were immediately turned. He made his way to Derry, where the bishop and his clergy sheltered him. Thence in the dress of a priest, with his breviary in his hand and with a sad heart, he boarded a brig at the mouth of the Foyle, and sailed for the United States. He became one of the many disillusioned who in this year of unfulfilled revolutions streamed across the Atlantic. His departure from Ireland was not, however, as he might have thought, the close, but the more vital opening, of his career. In America he began at the age of twenty-three a new life in which he was destined to plead for causes that were to prove more successful than that of Irish independence in 1848. CHAPTER II THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE