with Ernest Blythe, was deported from Ireland under the Defence of the Realm Act at the beginning of April 1916 and forced to lodge in the town of Leek in Staffordshire, only to be smuggled back into Ireland, via Belfast, disguised as a priest by his brother Barney and Nora Connolly in the days before the Rising. In Galway, he was to lead a force of over five hundred rebels, without sufficient arms or ammunition, for one week in the Galway countryside attacking the police at Clainbridge, Oranmore and Carnmore. Following the rebellion, Mellows spent several months hiding out in the remote countryside on the Galway–Clare border before making his way to Cork and on to Liverpool from where, under Volunteer orders, he crossed the Atlantic for New York City. Upon arrival in America, he made an immediate impact on John Devoy, the leader of the American Fenian network, Clan na Gael, who regarded him as ‘the most capable man who had so far arrived in America’.21 His four years in New York were to be the unhappiest of his life, however, and he became a victim of perpetual intrigue between rival factions within Clan na Gael. Exasperated to the point of despair, the experience was to test his commitment and emotional limits. In his role as representative of the Volunteers, Mellows initially worked closely with Devoy and his close circle centred around the Gaelic American newspaper where he was initially employed. Following a succession of clashes with the American-born leadership of the Clan, however, Mellows was politically marginalised and personally shunned, and he subsequently defected to the Irish Progressive League.22 The personal abuse directed towards him was such, however, that he dropped out of revolutionary politics altogether for a time and sought work as a labourer; however, as a comrade explained, ‘the Clan hounded Liam systematically, procuring his dismissal from one job after another, even from labourers’ work on the docks’.23
Mellows’ time in the United States started badly and went rapidly downhill. As the leading ‘Commandant of the Rising’, as he styled himself, he was in high public demand, making his first of many public appearances in January 1917 at a meeting organised by Cumann na mBan, where he spoke alongside Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.24 Mellows was one of a coterie of high profile ‘1916 Exiles’ in the city, including James Connolly’s daughter, Nora, and Margaret Skinnider, Irish Volunteer officers Robert Monteith and Paddy and Hugh Holohan, and Frank Robbins of the Irish Citizen Army, who drew enthusiastic crowds to prestigious venues, including Madison Square Garden and the Central Opera House. Both Cumann na mBan and the Volunteers were organised in the city, renting premises on the Upper East Side.25 The Irish-American community supported republican events in significant numbers and eight thousand people attended a Gaelic football tournament under the auspices of the Volunteers at Celtic Park in August 1917.26 Mellows regularly inspected the New York Volunteers, who were commanded by Major Thomas J. Nolan; however, he ended his association in April 1917, when, with America’s entry into the war, the New York Volunteers pledged ‘to make a tender of the services of the regiment to President Wilson’.27 The New York Volunteers’ decision to support the burgeoning American war effort was the first manifestation of the cleavage in revolutionary circles that was to emerge between Irish-Americans, whose primary allegiance was to their country of birth, and the Irish in America, who saw America’s wartime alliance with Great Britain as a betrayal of Ireland’s claim for independence. America’s ‘duty to Ireland’ and her apparent betrayal of that debt through her alliance with Britain was to be one of the abiding themes of Mellows’ public speeches, making him a problematic figure for Clan na Gael, who wholeheartedly supported America’s war effort during a time of heightened national patriotism.
Mellows’ attitude to American life was coloured by the US government’s approach to Ireland’s claim for independence, which was dictated by their wartime alliance with Britain. Unlike most speakers at Irish-American political meetings, Mellows made no effort to conceal his contempt for the stance of the US government. His comrade Alfred White recalled, ‘at his first public meeting in America, he refused to use the “safe” speech written for him and spoke as he thought’.28 White even claimed the Clan tried to send Mellows and fellow Sinn Féin TD Patrick McCartan to Germany, ostensibly in search of arms; however, ‘it was an easy way of getting rid of both of them in the awkward situation brought about by the war’.29 Mellows’ closest personal friend in New York, Fr Peter Magennis, provided a succinct summation of his comrades in the Clan, ‘again and again the question comes into my mind can men who stoop so low to hit so meanly be really sincere in their major works and yet I think they are sincere, in so far as they can see’.30
In January 1918, William J. Flynn, Chief of the United States Secret Service, tendered his resignation from the force he had led for six years to loud approval from the Irish community in New York. The Gaelic American newspaper claimed credit for helping ‘run Flynn the brute out of town’ for his attempts to ‘hurt the Irish people’ by labelling them ‘disloyal’ and ‘traitors to America’.31 Flynn earned the ire of the city’s Irish-American revolutionaries for his aggressive campaign against them, and in particular, the manufacture of a ‘German Plot’ in 1917 that saw several senior figures imprisoned, central among them, the recently arrived Liam Mellows.32 The ‘plot’ was a component of a wider campaign, led, John Devoy claimed, by ‘Anglomaniac politicians and newspapers’ who ‘assailed the Irish cause’.33 As ever, the affair generated lingering suspicions and accusations of betrayal among the revolutionaries themselves that were to have lasting consequences.34
The Committee on Public Information led by George Creel was a powerful wartime governmental agency created to generate public support for America’s entry into the First World War.35 In late September 1917, the agency leaked information to the New York papers alleging that the Secret Service had uncovered a ‘German plot’ to attack England from Irish naval bases, facilitated by Clan na Gael in New York. The Gaelic American hit back at the allegations accusing the Mayor of New York, John P. Mitchel, and William J. Flynn of being the authors of the ‘plot’, claiming their ‘evident object is to help England in her hopeless endeavour to hold Ireland down, and to bolster up Mitchel’s tottering political fortunes’.36 The ‘revelations’ centred around the ‘discovery’ of cipher documents discussing a proposed German landing in Ireland, along with papers pertaining to Roger Casement’s attempt to organise German support for the 1916 Rising, found in the possession of German agent Von Igel. Implicated in the documents were Clan leaders, Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy, along with the German ambassador, Von Bernstorff. The ‘plot’ was an obvious attempt to blacken the patriotic wartime credentials of the Clan and drive a wedge between Irish-Americans and the Fenian network by establishing a link between the German High Command and the Clan in New York. Devoy responded to the plot by pointing out ‘the purpose of the attack is plain. It is to injure the cause of Irish nationalism in the minds of the American people.’37 Likewise, Judge Cohalan countered by claiming ‘the loyalty of those of Irish blood is being attacked’ and, reaffirming Irish-Americans’ loyalty to their country of birth, ‘the record of the Irish throughout the entire history of the country has been one of unconditional and uncompromising loyalty, and whatever their sympathies in the great World War had been before our entrance into the struggle, they are now, as they always have been, for America, first, last and all the time’.38 While Cohalan’s denial represented a defence of Irish-America’s loyalty to the United States, implicit in his statement was a disavowal of Mellows, who repeatedly criticised America’s support for Britain in front of packed public meetings. For Irish-American leaders in New York, Mellows had become a potential threat to the patriotic credentials of the entire Irish-American community and, in particular, the Clan.
Events came to a head in October 1917 with Mellows’ arrest by the Secret Service: he was charged with being in possession of a forged seaman’s passport and purporting to represent himself as an American citizen.39 Imprisoned in the Tombs Jail, while his close associate Patrick McCartan languished in jail in Halifax, Canada, things went from bad to worse when none other than the Mayor of New York, John P. Mitchel, claimed at a public meeting in Brooklyn that Mellows had made a full confession concerning the activities of John Devoy and his associates. Incensed by the claim, Mellows wrote an indignant letter to the press repudiating the notion that he would ever become an informer and challenging the mayor to a fist fight, which alas, Mitchel ignored.40
Labelled a quisling and languishing in jail, Mellows’ situation was compounded
