Stephens, James

Stephens, James (1824–1901), from Kilkenny, an apprentice railway engineer before joining in the rebellion of 1848. In exile in Paris Stephens was one of the small group among whom the formula of secret preparation for a foreign‐aided insurrection was nurtured. Assured of Irish‐American support he launched the society later known as the Fenians or Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin on 17 March 1858. On the strength of its early success Stephens seized nominal headship of its sister movement in the USA in early 1859. From 1861 to 1866 Stephens's influence was at its zenith. His organization flourished in Ireland, Britain, and the USA; he established a successful propagandist newspaper, the Irish People; he stymied the efforts of others to launch rival nationalist mobilizations; and his followers were able to spring him from a Dublin prison within weeks of his arrest in November 1865. When in December 1866 he abandoned the rising he had rashly promised by year's end, Stephens's reputation and influence suffered irreparable damage. The leaders of the rising of March 1867 and of the post‐1867 IRB repudiated him. Stephens remained in exile until 1891 when he came to retire quietly in Dublin.

Richard Vincent Comerford