John Mitchel

John Mitchel 1815-75, Irish revolutionist and journalist. A practicing lawyer, Mitchel contributed articles to the Nation (Dublin) and the United Irishman, which he founded in 1848, calling for rebellion against Britain. He was transported to Australia for sedition before the abortive Young Ireland revolt of 1848, which he had helped prepare, was carried out. He escaped to the United States in 1853, where he led a turbulent and contentious career as a journalist, editing the proslavery journal Citizen (1854-55) in New York City, and during the Civil War, the Richmond Enquirer. After a short imprisonment (1865) for his Confederate activities, he became acknowledged leader of the Irish-American nationalists, and as such edited the Irish Citizen. He returned to Ireland and was elected (1875) to Parliament shortly before his death. His Jail Journal (1854; new ed., with intro. by Arthur Griffith, 1945) is an Irish revolutionary classic.

Mitchel, John (1815–75). Irish nationalist. Mitchel's father had taken part in the '98 rising. Mitchel, a protestant, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, became a solicitor. A militant supporter of Young Ireland, he joined the staff of the Nation. An inflammatory article, pointing out how easy it was to cut the railway network around Dublin, led to a breach with O'Connell, anxious that his Repeal Association should not be smeared by violence. Mitchel founded a weekly paper, the United Irishman, in February 1848 and began publishing articles on drilling and the use of the pike. In March 1848 he was charged with ‘treason-felony’, sentenced to fourteen years transportation, and was on board boat when the abortive 1848 rising occurred. He was sent to Bermuda for a year and then to Tasmania, where he broke parole and escaped to America. There he founded a newspaper in New York, the Citizen, preaching hatred of Britain. In the Civil War he supported the South. Mitchel returned to Ireland in 1875, was elected MP for Tipperary, disqualified, and died. His Jail Journal (1854) has been called ‘the bible of republicanism’.

J. A. Cannon

Mitchel, John (1815–75), Young Irelander. The son of a Unitarian minister, Mitchel was educated in Newry and at Trinity College, Dublin. He practised as a solicitor at Banbridge, was attracted by the writings of the Young Irelanders, and joined the Repeal Association in 1843. In 1845 he succeeded Thomas Davis as political leader writer for the Nation. Deeply influenced by Thomas Carlyle and James Fintan Lalor, and traumatized by his experience of the Great Famine, Mitchel became an outspoken advocate of a peasant‐led revolution to establish an independent Irish republic. Increasingly at odds with more socially conservative Young Irelanders, he resigned from the Nation in December 1847 and later, when his call for a rent and rates strike was rejected, from the Irish Confederation. He began publishing the United Irishman specifically as an organ of revolution in February 1848. In May he was convicted of treasonfelony by a packed jury and transported. Escaping from Tasmania to America in 1853, Mitchel was involved in Irish‐American politics and was a leading supporter of slavery and the southern cause during the American Civil War. In 1865–6 he was the financial agent of the Fenian Brotherhood in Paris, but he disapproved of that movement's leadership and subsequently criticized it. In 1875 he returned to Ireland and, although disqualified as an undischarged felon, was elected MP for Co. Tipperary shortly before his death. His Jail Journal (1854) and other writings had an immense impact on subsequent nationalist thinking.

Peter Gray