Devoy, John (1842–1928)

Irish-born US journalist and republican activist. In 1861, he joined the secret society of the Fenians to struggle for an independent Ireland. After serving five years in prison (1866–71), he was forcibly exiled to the USA, where he took citizenship and campaigned vigorously among his fellow Irish-Americans for the nationalist cause. He was a leading figure in the formation of both ‘Clan-Na-Gael’, an expatriate revolutionary organization, in 1867 and the Land League in 1879.

Devoy was born in Kill, County Kildare and worked as a clerk in Dublin. He helped rescue the Fenian leader James Stephens from prison in 1865, but the following year was himself jailed for revolutionary activity. In the USA, he joined the New York Herald before founding his own newspaper, the Gaelic American. Through this journal, Devoy adopted an increasingly anti-British position, opposing constitutional settlements and advocating armed rebellion. He helped raise funds to buy German arms for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, and strongly backed the Easter Rising of 1916.

Devoy loathed US president Woodrow Wilson for supporting the British during World War I, and sought to identify Irish-American nationalism with Wilson's opponents. Éamon de Valera, leader of Sinn Fein during this period, recognized the damage this factionalism would do to the republican cause, and so broke with Devoy. Devoy's memoirs were published as Recollections of an Irish Rebel in 1928.