Courtney McGrailIrish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s fight for Ireland’s freedom
by Terry Golway
(Merrion Press, €19.99).
J. Anthony Gaughan
A life-sized statue of John Devoy was recently unveiled at Naas by Kildare County Council as part of their celebrations marking the centenary of the Easter Rising. It was an appropriate acknowledgement of a life-time of patriotic endeavour.
This new biography is based on research in American sources by a distinguished American political journalist (associated with the New York Times) who holds a PhD from Rutgers University. This gives the book an added dimension of importance, as much of Devoy’s life was passed among the Irish-American community.
Devoy was born in Kill, near Naas, on September 3, 1842. Following the transfer of the family to Dublin he was educated at the O’Connell Schools. He was sworn into the IRB in 1861. This led to disputes with his father and caused him to leave home and join the French Foreign Legion.
After serving for a year in North Africa he returned to Naas, where he secured employment as a clerk in Watkin’s Brewery. He became the local IRB organiser and was also appointed by James Stephens, its Head Centre, to oversee the swearing of Irish members of the crown forces into the secret, oath-bound revolutionary society.
He participated in the rescue of Stephens from prison in 1865. In the following year he was arrested, and while he was on remand the Fenian Rising of March 1867 collapsed in ignominious failure. At his trial later that year he was condemned to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour.
Devoy and other leading Fenian prisoners were granted early release in 1871. Devoy emigrated to New York, where he joined Clan na Gael, a secret, oath-bound organisation with aims no different from those of the IRB and he exercised a powerful influence over it for the next 50 years.
As secretary of its Revolutionary Directory, he had a leading role in organising the spectacular rescue of Fenian prisoners from Western Australia by the schooner Catalpa in April 1876. As a journalist on a number of newspapers Devoy was able to exercise much of his influence, especially after he became editor of the weekly Gaelic American in 1903.
Through Clan na Gael Devoy played a major part in financing the resurgent separatist movement and the IRB in the years leading up to the First World War. He became the main link between the German government and the Military Council of the IRB which planned the 1916 Rising.
A key figure in the negotiations to supply the insurgents with a shipload of arms and ammunition and some personnel from Germany, he was also involved in the scheme to have Sir Roger Casement visit prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and attempt to persuade captured Irish members of the British forces to join the Rising in Dublin. When he learned the exact date of the Rising he made an abortive attempt to join the insurgents in Dublin.
During the War of Independence Devoy ensured a continuous supply of finance and weaponry to the IRA and Sinn Féin. He also organised a press campaign on behalf of Sinn Féin across the US. When Éamon de Valera arrived in the US in July 1919 on a fundraising and propaganda campaign, he claimed as President of Sinn Féin to be the leader of the independence movement on both sides of the Atlantic.
This was contested by Devoy and his close associate Judge Daniel Cohalan and caused unprecedented bitterness and dissension in the Irish American community at a crucial time. Devoy supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and on a visit to Ireland in 1924 was feted by the Irish Free State government, which, after he died on September 29, 1928, granted him a state funeral.
The most valuable section of this book is the author’s account of the interaction between the mainstream US political parties and Clan na Gael and the other Irish American organisations. It is a welcome addition to the already extensive literature on John Devoy and the IRB.
