Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Reilly, Thomas Devin
REILLY, THOMAS DEVIN (1824–1854), Irish revolutionary writer, was the son of Thomas Reilly, a solicitor, who obtained the office of taxing-master for his services to the liberal party. The younger Reilly was born in the town of Monaghan on 30 March 1824. He was educated there and at Trinity College, Dublin, but did not take a degree. In Dublin he renewed an early acquaintanceship with his fellow-townsman, Charles Gavan Duffy, and through him became known to the leading Young Irelanders. He sent contributions to the ‘Nation,’ and in 1845 joined its staff, writing in it fiery and eloquent articles. He became devotedly attached to John Mitchel [q. v.], but did not work well with the other members of the advanced nationalist party, and especially disliked Thomas D'Arcy McGee [q. v.] When Mitchel broke off his connection with the ‘Nation’ in December 1847, Reilly followed his example, and became early in 1848 a contributor to Mitchel's newly established paper, the ‘United Irishman.’ A violent article by Reilly, entitled ‘The French Fashion,’ which appeared in the paper on 4 March 1848, formed one count in the indictment on which Mitchel was subsequently tried. Mitchel declared Reilly's article, for which ‘he was forced to undergo all the responsibility—legal, personal, and moral’—to be ‘one of the most telling revolutionary documents ever penned.’ Reilly escaped from Ireland to New York in 1848, and contributed to the Irish-American papers. For two years he edited the New York ‘Democratic Review,’ and afterwards the presidential organ, the ‘Washington Union.’ He died suddenly in Washington on 6 March 1854, and was buried in Mount Olivet cemetery. In May 1881 a fine monument was placed over his grave by the Irishmen of that city. On 30 March 1850 he married Jennie Miller in Providence, Rhode Island. She died in Washington on 29 July, 1892.
Reilly, who could write forcibly, was one of the boldest and most impetuous of the Young Irelanders. Gavan Duffy severely condemns his hostility to D'Arcy McGee. Mitchel wrote of him as ‘the largest heart, the most during spirit, the loftiest genius of all Irish rebels in these latter days,’ who ‘in all the wild activity of his life, never aimed low and never spoke falsely.’
[Life of John Martin, by P. A. S., pp. 76–104; Savage's '98 and '48; Duffy's Young Ireland; Mitchel's Jail Journal; Irishman, 16 Dec. 1876; O'Donoghue's Poets of Ireland, p. 213. ]