by Winchester to Harper's Ferry. Four of the students whose
home lay beyond the mountains were to start with me. First,
however, I had to pass another day at the University, and spent
the evening at the house of one of the professors, where I met
old Andrew Stevenson, former Minister to London, who
once took it into his head to challenge O'Connell. O'Connell
was not at that time a fighting man, but one of his sons offered
himself as a substitute ; a proposal which was declined. Mr.
Stevenson is a very loquacious old gentleman ; talks well, but
too much [he has died since].
This visit to the Virginia University has been to me a very
great pleasure as well as a high honour. The weather has been
charming, the people all kind. It forms a bright picture which
I hang up in the chambers of my memory, framed with gold
and wreathed with flowers. After some friendly farewells we
are off, my four companions and myself, and it happened that
one of these students was named Grattan, Irish by descent ;
and he had actually the thin aquiline nose, the eye and the jaw
of the other Grattan whom you wot of. He said his father's
people were of that family, but how near of kin he knew not.*
We soon get among the hills, the radices of the Blue Ridge,
which we have to cross by Rockfish gap, a depression in the
* In 1869 when the Grattan statue in College Green, Dublin, was
projected, Mitchel contributed the proceeds of some of his lectures to
its erection.
394 JAIL JOURNAL
range where it is not more than 1,500 feet above the sea. I
snuff with delight the keen air of the forest-covered hills, laden
with the odours of tannin and terebinth.
IRISH ORGANISATIONS IN AMERICA
August, 1854. Again at work upon the Citizen in New
York. Of course this journal was not undertaken without
certain definite purposes. One purpose was to advocate and
maintain the full rights of Irish adopted citizens to all the
privileges and powers which purport to be conferred upon
them by the Act of Naturalisation ; and here we are met
by this new and violent outbreak of Native-Americanism,
whose aim is avowedly to deprive them of those powers and
privileges both as foreigners and as Catholics. Another of
our purposes was to make clear and plain to naturalised
Irishmen themselves what their rights are as American citizens,
and what they may lawfully and conscientiously do in the
direction of liberating their native country from British domin-
ion a dear and cherished aspiration with them in the past, as
it must be in the future ; and here also we were met by a very
general discouragement and apathy, resulting from the many
futile associations which have existed here since 184$ revolu-
tionary societies for Ireland, under various successive names
most of them appealing for subscriptions in money, as if some
immediate or early attack were in contemplation upon the
British power. The money subscriptions had all been lost,
squandered, sometimes stolen, by persons purporting to be
treasurers and secretaries, and it soon became evident that the
vast mass of our people here were shy of such organisations,
although as zealous as ever to give of their substance and of
their blood in the good cause of Ireland, if only they could see
their way. Many of these were tired and disgusted by the
mere delay continual payments of money to one society or
another, and nothing done or begun. For our people are
enthusiastic, fiery, impatient, eager for quick results, and willingly
lend an ear to sanguine promises. They saw there was on
this Continent a mighty Irish power ; they knew that one
hundred thousand Irishn-.en would joyfully spring to arms if
they could but get within reach of the tyrants who oppressed
JAIL JOURNAL 395
their kinsmen at home ; and now, instead of seeing any chance
of getting across the Atlantic with arms in their hands, what
they did see was an enormous migration, or rather flight, of their
friends and kindred across the same Atlantic but the wrong
way. On the quays of New York, in the year 1854, as many as
thirty thousand Irish were landed within one month, so sweeping
was the effect of the British policy of extirpation.
It has been mentioned that shortly after my arrival in this
country I had joined one of these revolutionary societies. The
men who formed it meant well. Many of them were devoted
and self-sacrificing, and would have certainly hailed and wel-
comed a chance of trying conclusions with the enemy, in arms,
upon Irish ground. But this organisation soon broke up. It
did not collect nor ask for subscriptions in money ; and, there-
fore, as nobody was enabled to " make a living " by it, and as
the same fatal impossibility of action was too obvious here again,
men became lukewarm. For my own part, when I saw that the
war with Russia was going to be confined to the East that
Russia herself, as the Russian Minister explained to me, could
not help us at all, and that France was in fast alliance with our
enemy, I knew that no opportunity for Ireland would arise
this year, and, therefore, quietly withdrew from the organisation.
Too plain that a better opportunity must be waited for.
Another and more general purpose of the Citizen was to lay
before our Irish-Americans, from week to week, the true nature
of British policy in Europe, in America, and in Ireland, and to
refute and expose the treacherous representations of all these
things which were constantly put forward by the English Press,
and too often adopted upon trust by that of the United States.
If nothing decisive could just yet be done, still a clear under-
standing of that atrocious British policy, in its minutest details,
would prepare the minds and hearts of our people to act the
more zealously when the day of action came.
THE CONTROVERSY WITH ARCHBISHOP HUGHES
A great controversy existed that year concerning the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope, who had lately been reinstated in his
dominions by French arms. Now, the conductors of the Citizen
were Democrats, chiefly with a view to the destinies of Ireland,
396 JAIL JOURNAL
because it was plain that the British dominion once overthrown,
there was nothing possible for Ireland, except a Republic, which
might, as in France, take the form of a military monarchy, and
perhaps with much advantage. At anyrate, the Citizen had
loudly affirmed the right of the people to abolish its existing
government and to substitute another ; and agreed that if the
people of the Roman States were dissatisfied with their form of
government, they had the same right which other people had to
change it peaceably if they could, violently if they must.
I have since had reason to think that we had been considerably
misled by English " Liberal," French, and American repre-
sentatives as to the feelings of the Roman people ; and it was
not they who were eager for revolution, but the Mazzinis, Gari-
baldis, and Gavazzis, and the grasping power of Sardinia, that
were moving hell and earth to abolish the Papacy, both spiritual
and civil. It gives me pleasure now that during all that year
of editing upon the Citizen I never spoke of those Italian agi-
tators save with abhorrence and contempt ; and if once, in the
former part of my Journal (Jail Journal), I alluded to them
with something like respect, it was in ignorance of their actual
doings during the five years of my imprisonment at the world's
end.
However, the doctrine of the Citizen, that the Romans had a
right to change the government of Rome, scandalised a great
many of the Catholic clergy of the United States, and Arch-
bishop Hughes came out and scathed us in the newspapers.
I am not patient of ecclesiastical censure ; and replied, perhaps
too bitterly ; and more than once. It was an unfortunate
controversy for me, and for the purposes and objects of the
Citizen, inasmuch as most of the readers of that paper, those
indeed to whom it was mainly addressed, were just the flocks
of this very prelate and of the rest of the Catholic clergy. Inde-
pendently, however, of the effect of the dispute upon the fortunes
of the Citizen, I do admit, now, after fifteen years that I would
if I could erase from the page and from all men's memory, about
three-fourths of what I then wrote and published to the address
of Archbishop Hughes. This I say not by way of atonement
to his memory for he deserved harsh usage and could stand it
and repay it but by way of justice to myself only.
JAIL JOURNAL 397
Ax STONINGTON
It is flagrant summer weather ; more intense heat here in
New York than I have ever experienced in any other country,
even in the Tropics. In Tahiti, in Cuba, I have never seen the
thermometer stand higher than 87 in the shade. Here 97 is
common enough and 92 Fahrenheit a very usual summer heat.
We cast about for some place at the seaside, and there is no great
city in the world having so many and so beautiful sea-bathing
retreats within easy reach. Generally, however, these places
are occupied by vast hotels or public boarding-houses, where
people live in crowds, as New Yorkers delight to live, and where
the main occupation of the women is dressing, that of the men
lounging, smoking with their heels on a balcony rail, with
occasionally a boating or fishing party. There are nowhere
hereabouts quiet cottages by the seaside which you can rent
for the season, where you can live as at home and wear what
you please such as I remember at Warren point and Newcastle
and Bundoran. At last we selected a place in Connecticut
called Stonington ; whereto Mr. Dillon's family and our own
betook ourselves, taking passage in an enormous steam-vessel,
quite as huge as any line-of-battle ship, two or three of which
rush every evening through the " East River " and Long Island
Sound, bound to various points in Connecticut and Rhode
Island, making connection with lines of railway to Boston.
This Stonington is situated on a narrow strip of land running
out southwards into the sea ; there are several quiet streets of
private houses all built of wood and painted white ; the streets
shaded as usual by trees. It is a place of intensely puritanical
aspect, and anything more dreary than a Sunday in Stonington
(Sabbath they call it) cannot well be conceived. People go with
a grim and mortified aspect to their various conventicles ;
march back again to their houses, where every window-blind is
strictly closed. No creature is on the streets ; nobody looks out
of any window. They never issue out for a ramble or for a drive
on Sunday evening ; and I believe that if a piano were heard
in one of those wooden houses rattling out " The Wind that Shakes
the Barley," or if there were a sound of dancing feet, the in-
habitants would be in as great commotion as they were when
398 JAIL JOVRNAL
a British fleet opened its broadsides. For Stonington has its
place in history ; and its boast is that a British squadron did
actually bombard it in August, 1814, and that although several
houses were knocked to pieces nobody was hurt. They had
also traditions here that some stout-hearted Stonington people
did respond to the English broadsides by certain shots from two
or three old cannon they had, and, even, that one shot did strike
an English ship in the hull. At all events, the English having
done all the mischief they could, made no landing but hauled
off. It was only one of many similar brutalities perpetrated
upon unprotected coast towns and villages by the British in that
last war ; and the families along Chesapeake Bay will long re-
member, and hand down in tradition, the black story of men-
of-war's boats, crowded with armed ruffians who came up and
robbed their storehouses and winecellars, carried off chickens,
stole their negroes, insulted the women, burned the houses,
and sailed away. No people on earth is so perfect in that
species of warfare as our Anglo-Saxon brethren ; a fact which
the desolated Finland villages, harried in the late Russian war,
can attest. Stonington, however, on the occasion in question,
made so stout a show of resistance that the British hearts of
oak thought it would not pay to come ashore.
" ANGLO-SAXONISM " IN NEW YORK
New York, 1854. The English and French armies having,
after long delay, at last ventured on an invasion of the
Crimea, and beaten an opposing force on the Alma River
what is this we read in vast capital letters on all street
corners ? " Fall of Sebastopol ! " Irresistible English and
French armies have marched straight upon the city and
its fortifications ; the city is taken ; all the great line of
fortifications, together with the Russian fleet, destroyed ;
Russian army annihilated, Prince Menschikoff a prisoner,
and the war ended in a rapture of triumph ! For all
this, to be sure, there was not even the slightest shadow of
foundation. It was, on the very face of it, a wild canard, in-
tended to operate upon the money market ; yet the startling
story rung over the whole earth. The American newspapers,
finding that the English ones pretended to believe in that grand
JAIL JOURNAL 399
event, did themselves most implicitly believe it, commented on
it with much Anglo-Saxon complacency, and caused stocks to
rise and fall in Wall Street. Nothing has ever caused in London
such a paroxysm of idiotic joy. Great meeting at once, with
Lord Mayor to preside. " First of all," cried his lordship, " I
call for three cheers for the Queen ! " " The Czar Nicholas,"
said the London Times, " has fallen from his high estate, his
armies are scattered to the wind, his ships seized or sunk, his
forts and arsenals blown about his ears ! " Here is the rapture
of the London Daily News reproduced here in every
newspaper :
" Let the reader fancy to himself the roaring and reverberation
of all this artillery in a space of three miles long. Let him fancy
in addition, the thundering broadsides from the allied fleets off
the mouth of the harbour. Let him add to this the noise and
clamour of the assault and defence of the North Fort on the
heights immediately behind the Double Battery ; and, after its
fall, of the artillery, Minie rifles, and platoon firing of the allied
troops. To all this let him again add the noise of explosions,
now of a fort, now of a man-of-war. Let him conceive the
hollow of the harbour thus filled with smoke and flame, re-
sounding with the deep roar of artillery and the pattering of
firearms, the solid earth shaking with the reverberation of the
aent and tormented atmosphere. And, last of all, let him
imagine, in the midst of this artificial volcanic eruption, masses
of human beings interchanging sabre blows and bayonet thrusts,
closing in death-grapples, panting with exhaustion, fevered
with quenchless thirst, writhing in mortal agony. Of the
Russians, eighteen thousand are said to have been killed in
this man-made hell. How many of the allies have fallen is
still unknown."
In fact, for a few days New York was very much inclined to
vote itself an Anglo-Saxon city, for our worthy people here do
shift and veer somewhat in their ethnological affiliations, and
although as a general rule, Anglo-Saxon enough, yet they become
more intensely British in sympathy feel, as it were, the Saxon
fibres throbbing more strongly whenever our transatlantic
brethren have some mighty success. Of all the newspapers in
the United States, the Citizen was the only one which instantly
4 oo JAIL JOURNAL
pointed out the necessary and obvious falsehood of this mon-
strous canard. In truth, I do always take a saturnine pleasure
in ripping up any bag of gas and letting its contents escape into
the atmosphere. But nobody minded me for three or four
days ; everyone was dancing an insane war-dance. However,
four days after the grand news came another steamer the
sublime drama of the " Fall of Sebastopol " had vanished. Not
only had Sebastopol not fallen, but it was manifest that Prince
Menschikoff did not apprehend anything of the sort. The city
holds a Russian army, another Russian army is outside, and it
is clear th'at the English and French allies must prepare to
winter in the mud. Still there is not the least sign of this
gracious war spreading over Europe, and I lose all interest in
a petty little siege in Crim Tartary.
NEW YORK AND THE IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS
October 2$th. At last we have certain news of the release of
Mr. Smith O'Brien and his comrades from their imprisonment.
I have received a letter from John Martin, dated Paris, October
3rd. Here is one extract :
" I left Melbourne, in company with O'Brien, in the steamer
Norma, on the 26th July. Contrary to the anticipations of both
O'Brien and myself, the ' pardon ' was not attended by any
conditions whatever. We had nothing to do, except on the
appearance of the notice in the Gazette, go away at our pleasure.
No forms to sign, no applications to make nothing whatever
to do hi the matter. You are probably aware that the
' pardons ' themselves did not reach the Tasmanian Government
until five or six weeks after the news of the announcement by
the British Minister in the British Parliament."
So after Lord Palmerston's announcement (" It is the
intention of her Majesty's Government to advise the Crown to
extend to Mr. Smith O'Brien an act of clemency, and to allow
him to apply for the means of placing himself at liberty ") after
that announcement, some six weeks after, her Majesty's Govern-
ment changed its mind, and let Mr. O'Brien and his friends go
free without applying for the means, etc.
It seems, also, that this was contrary to the anticipations
of the exiles themselves, who were acquainted with the
c!.
!
JOHN MITCHEL
(The last portrait, 1875)
I AIL JOURNAL 401
usual routine, and were, of course, resolved never to comply
with it. .
The whole truth of this matter is that Lord Palmerston, an
excessively cunning old intriguer, had intended to make our
friends an illusory offer of pardon, and, on their refusing it (with
the conditions) had intended to turn his candid countenance to
all mankind and say " Behold ! these headstrong convicts will
not accept their gracious Sovereign's pardon ! " But his lord-
ship became convinced that his predetermined trick was watched,
had been already exposed, and would be mercilessly exhibited
to the world. Besides, he knew that P. J. Smyth was then in
Van Diemen's Land, and would be sure to rescue O'Brien at
last, if any further paltering took place about his release. So,
at length, after six weeks' delay, ministers made up their mind
to put on the false pretence of doing a generous action for which
our friends take care to say they do not thank Her Majesty or
her advisers.
December i^th. New York, feeling less Anglo-Saxon than it
was a few weeks ago, is bestirring itself to do honour to Smith
O'Brien and his associates, Messrs. Martin and O'Doherty, on the
occasion of their release. A requisition has been extensively
signed by prominent citizens, headed by the names of Jacob A.
Westervelt, Mayor ; A. C. Kingsland, Ex-Mayor ; Fernando
Wood, Mayor elect ; and exhibiting such other names as Robert
Emmet, Thomas Addis Emmet, Charles O'Connor, Horace
Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, and others well known, calling
a great meeting at the Tabernacle to adopt and transmit an
address to Mr. O'Brien, " expressive of admiration for his lofty
integrity," and all the rest of it. On this occasion I am in high
good-humour forbear even to intimate that all the parade is
only to make capital for certain politicians with the multitude
of Irish voters. What if it be so ? Is it not gratifying that the
said politicians know they can make their capital with our
people only by sympathising with rebels and affronting the
English Government ? Accordingly I accept in gracious-wise
this New York demonstration, and treat of it in the Citizen
thus :
"It is no mere Irish movement, this spontaneous impulse of
the people *Q do honour to a brave and good man. The
402 JAIL JOURNAL
requisition proceeded from the Chief Magistrate, and from some
of the most notable citizens of Mew York, and arose from the same
honest impulse that made even the colonists of Van Diemen : s
Land and the citizens of Melbourne (all British subjects them-
selves, and more or less ' loyal ') rise as one man to congratulate
him and his worthy associates on their release, and to give
expression to that spontaneous instinctive admiration for
heroic constancy in adversity and a stainless character, which
is bounded by no latitude nor longitude, religion or nationality.
" Neither is it a movement of American politicians to buy
' Irish votes.' The elections are over. O'Brien is not to come
to America ; is no way likely to be of the slightest service to
any one of the struggling parties. Even the very Know-Nothings
are in good humour ; for this is a question of paying honour to
a foreigner who has the good taste to know his own place
namely, the other side of the Atlantic.
" Over this meeting and address there rests no shadow of a
cloud. No selfish or partisan design can be supposed to pollute
it. The men of a great American city, who have eyes to see and
hearts to appreciate what is good and noble, stretch forth their
hands in hearty greeting across the sea, to welcome to freedom
and home the illustrious though unfortunate champion of an
oppressed land. Six years he has been counted among the
felonious off-scourings of British gaols ; but the citizens of New
York (who do not happen to be a packed jury of the Qtieen of
England) assure him of their esteem and admiration, and with
the same breath virtually fling back the foul name of felon and
traitor in the teeth of his enemies.
" There is an additional significance in the proceeding, inas-
much as the liberation of O'Brien was really decreed and accom-
plished in New York, not in London. It was because they knew
the indefatigable agent of the New York Irish Directory had
just returned to his mission in Australia, bound to rescue O'Brien
out of the hands of his gaolers by force that it occurred to the
prudent British Government to make a virtue of necessity and
release him. The very next mail steamer after Mr. Smyth
sailed carried out to Australia the preliminary announcement of
their insolent ' pardon.'
" O'Brien and his associates, however, not only did not pur-
JAIL JOURNAL 403
chase their freedom by the smallest semblance of submission, or
hint of contrition, but took the very earliest public occasion,
even while still in the power of British officials, to repel the
treacherous compliment offered him by the Government at the
expense of his friends and late associates and further to inform
them distinctly that he did not thank them for ' pardon.'
" Whatever may become of the cause of Ireland, here at
least is one other reversal of a fictitious jury's fraudulent verdict
one other emphatic contradiction by the voice of freemen to
the loud British falsehood that has dared to call an Irish Rebel
Felon."
The old " Tabernacle " crowded to its utmost capacity, with
a vast and enthusiastic assemblage, consisting mainly of Irish-
men, but with a large admixture of native citizens. A platform
thronged with well-known faces, on whose successive appearance
deafening cheers arise. The proceedings were already half over
when the fine face and grey hair of Robert Emmet were first
recognised in this group. He was unwell, and had dragged
himself from his bed to participate in the tribute of respect to
his noble countryman. When this fine old man, who had shared
as a boy, the captivity of his father, Thomas Addis Emmet, at
Fort George, was recognised by the multitude, one tempestuous
peal of applause seemed to rend the walls of the building.
When the applause had subsided, Mr. Robert Emmet moved
the adoption of the Address. He said :
" I regret that I am not in a condition to respond to the en-
thusiasm with which you have received me this evening. I
feared very much, until within the last half hour, that it would
not have been in my power to have presented myself before
you ; and let me assure you that it required some effort to do
it an effort, however, which the strong desire that I had to
be present on an occasion when the object was to express the
feelings entertained by the Irish population of the city to their
renowned compatriot, William Smith O'Brien, rendered impera-
tive. I should never have forgiven myself, fellow-citizens, if
I had not made that effort, because I feel that my past life, and
my past history, and the traditions of my family (tremendous
cheering, prolonged for several minutes) are intimately connected