John Mitchel, the Derry-born son of a Presbyterian minister, was as fervent an enemy of English rule in Ireland as ever breathed. After escaping a British penal colony, he took the Southern side in America's Civil War, and spent time in an American cell, as well.
By Brigadier
John Mitchel, from a 19th century line drawing
He so outraged the great minds in Whitehall by his
logical demands for Irish independence in 1848 that
their lackeys in the Commons rushed through what became
known in British history as the first Ex Post Facto Act
of Parliament. What John Mitchel articulated wasn't illegal
at the time, but Parliament quickly concocted a new law
that made it so. Today we'd call it designer legislation,
much like designer drugs. [No, not Hong Kong opium.]
John, son of a Presbyterian minister and true to his Ulster
Presbyterian republican heritage, was born in Comnish, County Derry, on Nov. 3, 1815. He and Jenny Verner, who eloped in their youth,
were renowned for an intense loyalty to Ireland's cause
-- one that had few resources to return any but bountiful
quantities of disappointment, dispair, exile, all compounded
by the untimely death of two sons and daughters. Not to
speak of a husband nearly blinded to family needs by his
headlong pursuit of justice for his national family.
Mitchel is best known for his mind and his steely determination
to press the case for Irish independence, for his
in-your-face republicanism. He was banished to Tasmania (off
Australia) for his anti-royalist and Irish revolutionary ideals.
As his prison ship lurched the 17,000 miles from Ireland to the
prison colony (there to join other Irish friends), Mitchel wrote
the early pages of his famed "Jail Journal," containing a touching
reverie of his Jenny, his children and his country. The man of
steel poured his heart out in the most memorable and touching
prison prose in centuries. Even today, Mitchel's book -- including
long passages of unsurpassed literary criticism -- is a
standard among the activist Irish community worldwide.
Other equally important contributions of Mitchel to Irish historiography
and political exposition were his remarkable analyses of
the export trade in Irish foods (grain, beef, dairy products)
from Ireland to England even at the height of the famine years,
1847-1852. Perhaps even more than his sedition, Mitchel was hated by
the government in London for these trenchant famine reports. Short
of hanging, there was no way to contain the pen and the mind of John
Mitchel. Or so thought those men in London.
Shortly after settling into the life of the penal colony, Mitchel
engineered his escape (with his family, which had joined him there
in exile) to America, finally settling in the South.
To his children, Mitchel passed on a sense of duty and service that
marked his own life. A daughter found solace in a Paris convent
after conversion to Catholicism, only to die within months.
Jenny -- daughter of an English officer -- and John lived to see
their sons grow to manhood, but more tragedy, this time in the
service of another cause, would cruelly terminate the life of two
of them.
And you can read John Mitchel's own tale of his trial and imprisonment by the British in his now reprinted classic: Jail Journal 1876.
(A portion of your purchase price will help support "The Wild Geese Today.")
In the meantime, however, Mitchel's three sons would soon carve
out remarkable careers in the Confederate service. [To their great
regret, nearly all of their father's Irish revolutionary friends
in the United States found themselves in the Northern states, thus
became beloved enemies in the Union armies.]
The eldest of Mitchel's sons, Captain John C. Mitchel, served in the South Carolina Regular Artillery, which opened the barrage on Fort Sumter on April 12,
Charles Laverty photo John C. Mitchel's tombstone in Magnolia Cemetery.
1861. Later, as commander of Sumter, he lost his life, on July 20,
1864, uttering in paraphrase the last words of Patrick Sarsfield,
the Earl of Lucan (killed at Landen, Holland, 1693), "I willingly
give my life for South Carolina. Oh, that I could have died for
Ireland!" The words are inscribed on his headstone in nearby Magnolia
Cemetery, in a plot surrounded by a replica of Fort Sumter.
Captain Mitchel's younger brother, Private William, gave his life at Gettysburg in Pickett's Charge. Major James Mitchel survived the
war to enjoy the election of his only son, John Purroy Mitchel as
Mayor of New York! [More on their careers in a later report.]
Meanwhile, the old rebel himself, John Mitchel, was alternatively an editor
on two Richmond newspapers during the war. But it was his post-war,
pro-Confederate views, published in a New York newspaper that landed
him in jail. Mitchel thus enjoyed the hospitality of two
enemies, England's Queen Victoria and now of the United States
Army.
General John Dix dispatched his Irish rebel prisoner
off to a famous lock-up called Fortress Monroe, in Virginia.
Mitchel was shut up in Casemate #2. His next-door neighbor in
Casemate #1 was a well-known neighbor in Richmond and former president of the Confederate States, one Jefferson
Davis.
We know they met from time to time; when Mitchel was sprung
through the intercession of his best admirers, the Fenian Brotherhood
(almost to a man, veterans of the Union Army), he promptly
reported to Davis's wife, Varina Howell Davis, that her husband,
though badly treated by a vindictive fort commander, was otherwise
faring well.
Never for a minute, however, could John Mitchel allow himself
the luxury, even in Fortress Monroe, and with a long-suffering
and tolerant wife (now in New York), of forgetting his other love,
Ireland, and his life's hate, English rule in Ireland. Nobody in
all of Irish history can claim to hate the injustices suffered
by his fellow Irishmen more than "Ireland's First Felon." Freed
John Mitchel, from a Currier & Ives print
from Monroe, Mitchel was soon deeply involved once more in Irish
affairs, acting as a financial agent for the Fenians on the
European continent.
Soon, Mitchel was elected to represent Tipperary in London's
hated Parliament -- the very same body that made him a State
felon! The people of rebel Tipperary picked their man without
hearing him make a single speech. But Mitchel died on March 20, 1875, within days
of his great victory over crown and cruel exile.
In fact, Mitchel's impact on his adopted country reaches both before his arrival here and decades after his death. A near relative, Colonel John Haslet commanded the illustrious Delaware Regiment in Washington's army. Haslet died leading his troops at the Battle of Princeton, New Jersey, in 1777. Mitchel's grandson, the Mayor of New York, lost his life in an air training accident as a volunteer pilot in the Army Air Corps, 1917, the Corps' oldest trainee pilot.
