Union Civil War officer John O’Neill is being honored with a statue that is being installed in O’Neill, Nebraska, the town the Irish immigrant founded. O’Neill served with the 17th United States Colored Troops during the war. After the Civil War he became a leader in the ill-fated Fenian Raids by Irish revolutionaries against the British in Canada. O’Neill’s statue will be placed on the Holt County Courthouse lawn.
The 17th USCT included both formerly enslaved men from Tennessee and free Black men from Ohio in its ranks.
The Holt Independent news offers a brief summary of the life of John O’Neill:
John C. O’Neill was born in Clontibrit, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1834 and emigrated to America in 1848. The Ireland he left was in the grips of a genocidal famine, which added to the animosity he and many Irish felt toward the British who had occupied the country for over 700 years.
O’Neill enlisted in the U.S. military, serving in the 5th Indiana Cavalry during the Civil War, earning citations for gallantry and bravery: “John O’Neill had earned his reputation leading a famous cavalry charge on July 19, 1863 that broke Confederate General John Morgan’s Raiders on Buffington Bar in the Ohio River as Morgan was attempting to cross back into West Virginia.”
…O’Neill later volunteered to lead the 17th U.S. Colored Infantry and was promoted to Captain. With the close of the Civil War, he became involved with the Fenian Brotherhood, a secret society organized in both Ireland and America, whose goal was the liberation of Ireland. The group split into 2 factions. O’Neill aligned himself with the one which favored military action as a means of attaining Irish independence. “The governing passion of my life apart from my duty to my God is to be at the head of an Irish Army battling against England for Ireland’s rights,” O’Neill declared. “For this I live, and for this if necessary I am willing to die.”
…The Battle of Ridgeway made “General” John O’Neill a hero. It has the distinction of being the only armed victory for the cause of Irish independence in the entire 19th century. It is hard to overstate the profound effect this had, to Irish people on both sides of the Atlantic. Later attempts to invade Canada, in 1870 & 1871, did not meet with success, and the Fenians disbanded. However, the Fenian Raids, demonstrated to the residents of “British North America” that they could not count on the British military to defend them, and so began a confederation, developing into the country of Canada. O’Neill meanwhile, pivoted to find other means of helping the Irish.
Aware of the crowded and unhealthy conditions many of his countrymen were living in the eastern U.S., O’Neill was convinced that moving west afforded them the best opportunity for improving their lot in life. Traveling through the Midwest to seek the ideal location, he concluded that Nebraska possessed all the best qualities for settlers….
Beginning in 1874, he led groups of colonists to Holt and Greeley counties. This work continued until 1877, when he suffered a stroke, then pneumonia, passing away at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Omaha on January 8th, 1878, at the age of 43. In 1896, to show their admiration for “The Hero of Ridgeway”, Irish Nationalists raised a 15-foot-tall monument at his gravesite in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
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The formal Dedication ceremony for the sculpture is slated for June 4, 2022.
He deserves to be remembered always