Enter the Molly Maguires

Abstract The first wave of Molly Maguire activities occurred during the American Civil War. Making sense of this violence requires an understanding of the political crisis of the 1850s and r86os, along with the economic, social, and cultural context in which the violence took place.The Molly Maguires existed on two related but distinct levels: as a shadowy pattern of actual violence and as an ambiguous concept in a system of ideological representation.The disparity between fact and representation was often quite considerable, but it was mediated by the ideology of the contemporary observers on whom historians have relied for their evidence-journalists, politicians, clergymen, mine operators, and military officials. These people had good reasons for saying what they said about the alleged secret society, and their ideology offers one key to interpreting the Molly Maguires.As for the violence itself, the men who were involved in the pattern of activities labeled “Molly Maguireism” left little direct evidence for historians to examine. But their actions begin to make sense when viewed in terms of the emergence and transformation, in industrializing Pennsylvania, of an ethic of retributive justice with its roots in the Irish countryside.