John Mitchel
(1815 - 1875)
Young Irelander, A Felon
of our Land, Author, Publisher, Supporter of the Confederacy
John
Mitchel was born on November 3, 1815 at the manse, Camnish,
near Dungiven, Co. Derry to the Rev. John Mitchel, a
Presbyterian Minister, and Mary (Haslett). In 1823 the
family settled in Dromalane House in Newry, when his father
became minister of Newry Presbyterian Church.
Mitchel received his early education at Dr.
Henderson's Classical School
in Newry
where he met his lifelong friend John Martin.
After completing his schooling in Newry he attended
Trinity College,
Dublin from whence he graduated with a law degree in 1834.
In 1837, he married seventeen
year old
Jane
(Jenny) Verner of Newry, by whom he had three sons and
two daughters.
After
completing his apprenticeship in 1840
he
practiced as an attorney in Banbridge where he met
the charismatic and influential nationalist
Thomas Davis the chief organizer the Young Ireland
movement, who at the time was assistant editor of the
nationalist weekly newspaper, The Nation, owned and
edited by Charles Gavin Duffy.
Upon the death of Thomas
Davis in the Autumn of 1845, Mitchel gave up his
practice in Banbridge and moved to Dublin where he assumed
Davis's role as assistant editor of the Nation.
Meanwhile he had joined the Daniel O'Connell Repeal
Association whose aim was to peacefully dissolve the union
with England. Disillusioned with the lack of progress he
joined the emerging Young Ireland movement, whose militancy
and advocacy of physical force were leading to a collision
between the older and younger leaders.
In July 1846, Mitchel, together
with
Thomas Francis Meagher,
William Smith O’Brien, Charles Gavin Duffy and others,
formally separated from O'Connell's Repeal Association, and
established the Irish Confederation. Mitchel assumed a
prominent role in the Confederation, openly advocating the
complete separation from England, a belief he fervently
advocated for the rest of his life. He firmly believed
that England would never grant Ireland any degree of freedom
willingly and concluded that physical force was the only
option if freedom was to be achieved.
In December 1847 Mitchel
resigned from the Nation
which he considered to be too moderate and in
February of 1848 parted company with the Confederation
in a dispute over the issue of resistance to the collection
of rates. Also in February of 1848 he published the
first issue of a weekly newspaper the United Irishman
whose motto for the paper was the words of Wolf Tone,
"Our independence must be had at all
hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they
must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that
numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of
no property." In the first issue he called for a
"holy war to sweep this island clear of the English name and
nation," and referred to the Lord-Lieutenant as "Her
Majesty's Executioner General and General Butcher of
Ireland".
In May 1848 Mitchel was
arrested under the new Treason Felony Act, convicted and
sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. After sentencing he was sent from Dublin
on board HMS 'Scourge' to Spike Island in Cork harbor where
he was incarcerated for three days. From there he was
transported to Van Dieman's Land, (now Tasmania) which he reached after spells
in the hulks (skeleton ships) in Bermuda and the Cape of Good Hope. Upon his
arrival in Van Dieman's Land he was granted a ticket-of-leave on parole and
allowed to live amongst his fellow United Irishmen,
including his old friend John Martin, Thomas Francis Meagher, Thomas
Bellew MacManus, and Kevin Izod O'Doherty, all of whom had been
arrested and sentenced, as was he, to transportation. His
wife Jenny and children joined him in 1851.
In June of 1853, Mitchel's
friend, Patrick J. Smyth, traveled from New York,
posing as correspondent of the New York Tribune,
to facilitate his escape. After surrendered his parole
and ticket-of-leave at Bothwell police station, Mitchel
made his way to New York via Hobart, Sydney,
Batavia and San Francisco. Upon arrival in New
York in November of 1853 he received a hero's welcome
from his fellow-countrymen.
After settling in New York
he edited James Clarence Mangan and Thomas Osborne
Davis collections of poetry. Together with
Thomas Francis Meagher he established the Irish
nationalist newspaper
The Citizen in which he serialized his Jail Journal,
a detailed account of his time in English prisons. The
Jail Journal was published in 1854 as 'Five Years in
British Prisons'. He also used The Citizen to
expose and condemn British oppression in Ireland and,
surprisingly, to defend the institution of slavery; arguing
that slaves in the southern states were better cared for and
fed than Irish cottiers (peasant farmers) or industrial
workers in English cities. In 1861 Mitchel wrote The Last
Conquest of Ireland in which he accused England
of "deliberate murder" for their actions during the 1845
Irish famine. An excerpt from the book reads as follows;
A
million and a half of men, women and children, were
carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English
government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance,
which their own hands created; and it is quite immaterial to
distinguish those who perish in the agonies of famine itself
from those who died of typhus fever, which in Ireland is
always caused by famine.
Further,
I have called it an artificial famine: that is to say, it
was a famine which desolated a rich and fertile island, that
produced every year abundance and superabundance to sustain
all her people and many more. The English, indeed, call that
famine a ‘dispensation of Providence;’ and ascribe it
entirely to the blight of the potatoes. But potatoes failed
in like manner all over Europe; yet there was no famine save
in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is
first, a fraud - second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed,
sent the potato blight, but the English created the
famine....
The
subjection of Ireland is now probably assured until some
external shock shall break up that monstrous commercial
firm, the British Empire; which, indeed, is a bankrupt firm,
and trading on false credit, and embezzling the goods of
others, or robbing on the highway, from Pole to Pole, but
its doors are not yet shut; its cup of abomination is not
yet running over. If any American has read this narrative,
however, he will never wonder hereafter when he hears an
Irishman in America fervently curse the British Empire. So
long as this hatred and horror shall last - so long as our
island refuses to become, like Scotland, a contented
province of her enemy, Ireland is not finally subdued. The
passionate aspiration for Irish nationhood will outlive the
British empire.
As was typical of Mitchel he
could not reconcile his views with those of Meagher and as a
consequence the Citizen went out of business. After
that Mitchel spent some time in Washington DC working as a
reporter before relocating to Tennessee where he edited
The Southern Citizen.. When the American Civil War broke
out he moved to Richmond to edit The Enquirer,
the semi-official organ of Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederacy. The war cost him dearly as two of his sons were
killed fighting in the Confederate army, John at Fort Sumter
and Willie at Gettysburg. His third son James lost an arm
in one of the Seven Days battles
around Richmond.
After the war ended Mitchel
moved back to New York to edit the New York Daily News.
His continued advocacy of the southern cause earned him
five months of confinement in Fortress Monroe in Virginia.
He was released after the Fenian organization interceded on
his behalf. After a year in Paris as financial
agent for the Fenians he returned to New York where in 1867
he founded the Irish Citizen.
By 1874 Mitchel had allied
himself with Clan na Gael. Flanked by the Clan leadership he
gave a speech at the Cooper Institute in New York describing
his recent trip to Ireland and denouncing constitutional
nationalism. He contributed his speaking fee to the
fund set up to rescue Fenian prisoners in Australia.
During his trip to Ireland in
1874 he ran for parliament from Tipperary and won a
lopsided victory against a conservative candidate. Although
he won he had no intention of taking his seat in as he
considered the Parliament an illegitimate body. In February
of 1875 the British Parliament declared him ineligible
to hold the seat as an undischarged felon. He was
subsequently re-elected unopposed in 1875.
John Mitchel died in Dromalane
House in Newry on 20 March 1875 nine days after his
re-election.
Mitchel's most important works
were: Life of Aodh O'Neill, Jail Journal,
Last Conquest of Ireland an edition of
Mangan's Poems, History of Ireland from the Treaty of
Limerick, and Reply to the Falsification of History
by J. A. Froude.
Click
here
for photos
relating to John Mitchel's incarceration on Spike
Island
Contributed by;
Tomás Ó Coısdealbha
cemetery
Name:
Little Unitarian Graveyard
ADDRESS: High
Street, Newry, Co. Down, Ireland
HEADSTONE
