Roman Catholic Hierarchy, the Fenians had arranged for people to come and pay their respects to MacManus while he lay in rest in the Mechanics Institute, and despite religious opposition, thousands of people visited the coffin.8 Inside the Mechanics Institute, the room had been decked in black and the coffin had been placed on a table in the centre of the room, surrounded by a guard of honour, a standing crucifix at the top of the casket and two candles, providing a ‘sombre and peculiar effect’.9 At one o’clock on the 11 November, MacManus was brought from the Mechanics Institute on Abbey Street in a slow procession to Glasnevin Cemetery. Taking a meandering route, the procession passed by several sites associated with Irish republicans, including St Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, opposite where Robert Emmet had been executed in 1803. Taking over four hours, the funeral procession, followed by thousands of people, eventually arrived at Glasnevin Cemetery. Defying Archbishop Cullen’s dictate that no Catholic priest was to preside over the funeral of Bellew MacManus, Fr Patrick Lavelle, a radical nationalist and respected priest from County Mayo, known as the Patriot Priest of Partry, delivered the funeral service. Fr Lavelle eulogised all who had attended the procession and had been involved with its organisation. He commented how the procession and the show of support for Bellew MacManus had ‘told more forcibly on our hereditary foes and oppressors than any language which that any Irish Priest or patriot could pronounce’. Lavelle went further, and in a remarkable outburst from a Catholic priest, exclaimed: ‘Yesterday, that sarcophagus was the symbol of Erin’s grave. Tomorrow it will be her resurrection.’10 Attending the funeral in Glasnevin, and listening attentively to Lavelle, O’Donovan Rossa could only agree, and left knowing that the funeral was laying the ground for the emergence of a serious challenge to British rule in Ireland: ‘The MacManus funeral tended very much to increase the strength of the Fenian movement. Men from Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught met in Dublin who never met each other before. They talked of the old cause, and of the national spirit in their respective provinces, and each went back to his home, strengthened for more vigorous work.’11
In January 1863 there had been a rebellion in Poland against the Russian monarchy, and by March of that year, O’Donovan Rossa, with Morty Moynahan and Jerry Crowley, had set his mind to organising a sympathy rally with Polish insurgents in Skibbereen. Once again, O’Donovan Rossa was at odds with the local police, and alongside comrades within the IRB, he actively prepared republican banners and torchlights.12 Becoming a key organiser of this rally through Skibbereen town centre that would involve marching bands and public speaking, O’Donovan Rossa believed that if a large number of people came out it could be perceived as ‘a meeting of organised hostility against England’, bringing the community together in a display of strength.13 In preparation for the rally it had been decided that the marchers were to be properly stewarded, and handbills were produced calling on the people to show no grievance to any police officer observing the parade on the basis that they were Irishmen in uniform who were forced by circumstance to serve the Crown. While O’Donovan Rossa did not agree with this sentiment, the local IRB had produced the flyers for police dissemination so as to avoid potential problems. Learning of the plan to have a rally through the town, police numbers were consolidated and the marchers were confronted by a large body of police led by Charles O’Connell.
O’Connell immediately instructed the marchers to disperse and met with O’Donovan Rossa and the organising committee, demanding that they call upon their followers to disperse as they were disturbing the peace. Explaining to O’Connell that they were peaceful citizens in support of the Polish struggle against tyranny and had a right to peaceful protest, O’Connell read the Riot Act and declared their gathering to be illegal. O’Connell forced the marchers to remove their flags and torchlights but the gathering refused to leave, pointing out that they were now simply walking through the town centre. Allowing a boys band to play ‘Garryowen’ and march on, the police moved aside and allowed the marchers to hear an address by O’Donovan Rossa. Alongside Morty Moynahan, O’Donovan Rossa was later approached by O’Connell, who warned both men that they needed to readdress their conduct in Skibbereen and that on account of their earlier guilty plea, if they continued to act as they were doing they would be returned to jail. O’Donovan Rossa, as ever, remained unmoved, and noted to O’Connell that if he were arrested again on this occasion: ‘They should first prove me guilty of the practices of drilling and of other things sworn against me at my trial; and that while in their eyes I was acting unlawfully, I did not care about their threats.’14 Returning to his home, with the assistance of his friends, O’Donovan Rossa unfurled several republican flags from his chimney and windows.
Soon afterwards, O’Donovan Rossa made his way to Union Hall, a small fishing village in Cork. At Union Hall, O’Donovan Rossa continued to be a vocal republican, and engaging in republican songs and speeches, he came to the attention of the Local Resident Magistrate, John Limerick, who had let it be known that if he or anyone associated with radical politics returned to Union Hall they would be arrested. Never one to back down from danger, O’Donovan Rossa responded to Limerick’s threat by gathering some twenty colleagues and inviting them to Union Hall the following Sunday:
The rumour spread through the country that we would go to Union Hall next Sunday again, and that rumour was met by another one from the English side of the house that if we went we would never come back alive; that we would be shot down like dogs. It would never do for us to be intimidated; our cause would lose prestige. Sunday morning came, and after mass and breakfast some twenty or thirty of us from Skibbereen were on the road toward Union Hall. Limerick, the magistrate, had sent out requisitions to all the surrounding police barracks, calling the police to Union Hall that day, and on Sunday morning the police were marching in from Ross, Drinagh, Leap, Drimoleage, Ceharagh, Skibbereen, Glendore and Castletownsend. War and rumours of war were in the air, and the people the country around, seeing the armed police marching on the several roads toward Union Hall, followed them into the little city. The Men from Ross brought a band of music with them. They crossed the bay from Glendore in boats, and as the boats approached the quay at Union Hall Limerick, the magistrate, stood there and forbade them to land. I stood alongside of Limerick and told the men not to be driven back by such petty tyranny as this. That this was Irish soil and they had as good a right to tread it as Limerick had. Patrick and James Donovan, who are now in New York, steered their boat into shallow water and leaped ashore; the other men in the boat leaped after them. The bandsmen went to the house of Father Kingston and remained there for a short time.15
Limerick ordered that all the pubs in Union Hall were to be immediately shut by police. This was undertaken with a marked perception that Fenians in the locality would have made for local pubs. One local pub they went to was owned by O’Donovan Rossa’s aunt, Mrs Collins. Learning that the Fenian gathering was in her pub, Limerick directed police to meet with Mrs Collins. She refused to remove her nephew, however, but fearing Limerick would withhold her licence to sell alcohol, and thus ruin her business, O’Donovan Rossa and his gathering left the pub. Limerick read the Riot Act and the police, with fixed bayonets, engaged in a scuffle with the Fenians. While there were no arrests, some of O’Donovan Rossa’s friends were fined or lost their jobs when news of the Union Hall scuffle became known.
Life was getting increasingly hot for O’Donovan Rossa in Skibbereen and even if he were arrested the government did not need to prove any accusations against him because of his earlier guilty plea. With his business destroyed because of his politics as the more affluent customers stopped shopping with him, while landlords put pressure on their tenants not to do any business with him, O’Donovan Rossa decided to make for America, and in 1863, left with friends Dan Hallahan, William McCarthy, Simon Donovan, John O’Gorman and Jerrie O’Meara aboard the trans-Atlantic steamer The City of Edinburgh. Leaving on Fenian business, he left Eileen in Ireland to take care of their son, Stephens; he had intended for his family to join him later.
Arriving in America on 13 May, O’Donovan Rossa appreciated America. He had arrived at New York Harbour and taking in a view of the bustling metropolis, he contrasted its urbanity with its rural hinterland. Looking at the Staten Island Hills, which at this point could still be seen, he commented how they reminded him of his beloved Cork.16 Despite the beauty of America, however, he had entered a society in the midst of a brutal civil war.
