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John O'Mahony was born in 1816 near Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, not far from Kilbeheny in Limerick, where his father, Daniel O'Mahony, held some lands. The family was popular on account of its nationalist feeling and its opposition in the past to the Earls of Kingston, whose estates were near by. Both O'Mahony's father and an uncle are said to have been concerned in the rebellion of 1798.
John attended Hamblin's School at Middleton in Cork and went thence to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was admitted as a "pensioner" on July 1, 1833, but never took a degree.
The death of John's father and brother left him in possession of their property, and he settled down to the life of a gentleman farmer. When the enthusiasts of the "Young Ireland" party broke away from O'Connell in disgust with his caution, O'Mahony adhered to them. He was then living on "a small paternal property" near Carrick-on-Suir, and he organized in the district one of the clubs which the "confederates" hoped to utilize in a revolt. In 1848, he shared the fortunes of Smith O'Brien and others in their brief and abortive insurrection, but escaped arrest, and remained in hiding until September, when he and John Savage for some days carried on a guerrilla campaign in the valley of the Suir, and had several conflicts with the police. On September 26 Dublin Castle offered a reward of £100 for O'Mahony's apprehension; nevertheless, after a whole series of hairbreadth escapes, he got safely away to France. There he lived in poverty until, apparently, late in 1853, when he went to New York.
The next year he helped organize a military body called the Emmet Monument Association, designed to turn Britain's difficulties in the Crimean War to Irish advantage. This organization disbanded when the war ended, but was the foundation of the later Fenian movement. About this time O'Mahony had a fit of insanity and was temporarily confined in an asylum; but his friend John O'Leary affirms his belief that he was quite sane during the rest of his life.
In 1857 O'Mahony published a translation of Geoffrey Keating's seventeenth-century Gaelic History of Ireland which, though hastily executed and taken from bad texts, seems to have commanded respect from scholars. This work gave much attention to the Fenians, the legendary defenders of Ireland in the time of Finn, and here probably O'Mahony got the idea of a name for a new militant organization. Towards the end of 1857 he and other Irishmen in New York suggested to James Stephens that he should organize a revolutionary society there. On being promised financial support, Stephens inaugurated his secret movement in Dublin on March 17, 1858. In Ireland the society, known later as the Irish Republican or Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, was headed by Stephens; the American branch, called the Fenian Brotherhood, was directed by O'Mahony as "Head Centre. " The movement spread in America and modest sums were transmitted to Stephens. In 1860-61 O'Mahony visited Ireland and had a violent interview with Stephens, who accused him of affording him too little support; complete confidence was never restored between the two men afterwards.
During the Civil War, O'Mahony worked to obtain Irish recruits for the Union army. Early in 1864 he raised the 99th Regiment, New York National Guard; became its colonel; and did duty with it at the Elmira prison camp. At the end of the war the Brotherhood was prosperous, and O'Mahony sent drillmasters and large financial aid to Stephens. Disputes now arose between O'Mahony and hostile elements in his organization, growing worse after the British government nipped Stephens's conspiracy in the bud in September 1865. In October a Fenian congress in Philadelphia adopted a new constitution styling O'Mahony president and providing a senate to check his powers. In December an open quarrel occurred over the sale of Fenian bonds, O'Mahony desiring to proceed with it at once to aid those still conspiring in Ireland, while the senate enjoined delay.
The organization split in two, each faction claiming to be the Fenian Brotherhood. The senate party elected W. R. Roberts as president and made plans to invade Canada. In January 1866, a congress of O'Mahony's adherents voted confidence in him and restored the old constitution. In April, however, he gave a reluctant consent to a hostile demonstration against Campobello Island (part of the province of New Brunswick), which proved a fiasco and was fatal to his popular reputation. Soon afterwards, Stephens, who had escaped from prison, arrived in New York, and on May 11 accepted O'Mahony's resignation. In 1872 O'Mahony was called out of retirement to resume the leadership of the Brotherhood, then only a shadow of the formidable organization of 1865; he now bore the title of executive secretary, but in 1875 again took that of "Head Centre, " and held it until immediately before his death.
His body was sent from New York to Ireland, and on both sides of the Atlantic there were impressive memorial demonstrations. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, on March 4, 1877.
John O'Mahony was a founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood.
O'Leary spoke of him as physically "perhaps the manliest and handsomest man" he ever saw, and believed him to be "the soul of truth and honour. " Whatever may be said of his methods, the sincerity of his Irish patriotism is undoubted. He was indifferent to money, and although he handled large sums of Fenian funds he died in poverty.
O'Mahony never married.
