John Devoy
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John Devoy (1842-1928) was an Irish rebel leader and exile.
Devoy was born near Kill, County Kildare. In 1861 he travelled to France with an introduction from T. D. Sullivan to John Mitchel. Devoy joined the French Foreign Legion and served in Algeria for a year before returning to Ireland to become a Fenian organiser in Naas, County Kildare.
In 1865, when many Fenian leaders were arrested, James Stephens, founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), appointed Devoy Chief Organiser of Fenians in the British Army in Ireland. His duty was to enlist Irishmen in the British Army into the IRB. In November 1865, Devoy orchestrated Stephens' escape from Richmond Prison, Dublin. In February 1866, an IRB Council of War called for an immediate uprising, but Stephens refused, much to Devoy's annoyance as he calculated the Fenian force in the British Army to number 80,000. The British got wind of the plan through informers and moved the regiments abroad, replacing them with loyal regiments from Britain. Devoy was arrested in February 1866 and interned in Mountjoy Gaol before being tried for treason and sentenced to fifteen years penal servitude. In Portland Prison, Devoy organised prison strikes and was moved to Millbank Prison.
In January 1871, he was released and exiled to America, where he received an address of welcome from the House of Representatives. Devoy became a journalist for the New York Herald and was active in Clan na Gael. In 1875, Devoy and John Boyle O'Reilly organised the escape of six Fenians from Fremantle Prison in Western Australia aboard the ship Catalpa. In 1879, Devoy returned to Ireland to inspect Fenian centres and met Charles Kickham, John O'Leary and Michael Davitt on route in Paris. It was on this trip that he convinced Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell to cooperate in the "New departure" during the growing Land War.
Devoy played a minor indirect role in Ireland's Easter Rising in 1916. In 1914, Padraig Pearse visited the elderly Devoy in America, and later the same year Roger Casement worked with Devoy in raising money for guns to arm the Irish Volunteers. Though he was skeptical of the endeavor, he financed and supported Casement's expedition to Germany to enlist German aid in the struggle to free Ireland from English rule, including Casement's "Irish Brigade".
Devoy returned to Ireland and in 1919 addressed Dáil Éireann. He later supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Devoy was editor of the Gaelic American from 1903 until his death in New York in 1928. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
[edit] References
Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Ireland's Freedom, by Terry Golway, St. Martin's Griffin, 1999 (ISBN 0-312-19903-1).
