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CHAPTER VI.

NEW YORK-FORTRESS MONROE-PARIS.

1865, 1866.

How Mitchel fared in New York, when he came there from Richmond, what subjects mainly occupied his thoughts at this tiine, and what work he went to, can best be told by giving extracts from a letter written by him to his sister Margaret a few days after his arrival at New York. The letter is dated June 3, 1865

The war being over, and the Confederacy, which has cost me dear, being at an end, I have emerged from the prison of the blockade and from the ruins of Richmond, and am once more in New York, where I have just accepted the editorship of the Daily News, a staunch southern newspaper, which has opposed the war from the beginning. Jenny and the girls, together with James, are at Richmond still, where, luckily, our house was not burnt down, though it was somewhat torn by shells. They are pretty comfortably situated, though, and may remain where they are for some weeks, until I can make arrangements here. We are all accepting the new position of affairs, and making ourselves at home in it as well

as we can.

And now, dear Margaret, I am almost afraid to ask after my friends, and especially my dear mother. It is so long since I heard anything, and at last accounts she was in very poor health. I hope you are well, and that no dreadful gaps have been made any of your households. Pray write to me at once.

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We have had a terrible time of it; not from any personal privations of comfort, which the Confederates did not undergo to

any such extent as the outside world supposes, but from the agitation and excitement, and latterly the misery of seeing our cause go down irretrievably, and the best people of the South reduced under the sway of Yankees. The whole southern country is ruined and almost beggared. There is a bitter and mean and cowardly spirit of revenge possessing these northern people. Mr. Davis is a prisoner awaiting trial for treason. They will not be satisfied without having Lee in the same predicament, and God knows how many others. I fear, if they once erect a gallows, it will have many victims. As for myself, I am not sure that I am safe, and when I came on here, several of the more violent newspapers called for my arrest, etc. If I had had the means of living and supporting my family in a foreign country, I would have certainly returned to France. As it is, I must stand my ground

and take the risks. I don't know yet what poor James will do with himself. He is deeply distressed and humiliated at the cause in which he has himself suffered so much and lost his two brothers having failed after all, and he talks of trying to quit the country. However, I rather think be will find New York his best place. It is the freest, and, at present, the most southern city on the continent. . .

Now, will you write to me at once? Tell me where all the family are, and all about my mother and sisters, and what is William about, and how is he? And how fares it with Matilda's family and with your own? I will be eagerly waiting an answer.

The fears expressed in this letter as to his mother were but too well founded. Mrs. Mitchel had died shortly before the close of the war, while her son was still shut up in Richmond. The news reached John Mitchel subsequently, during his imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. I have already, at the commencement of this life, said something of Mrs. Mitchel's character. Few mothers have the good fortune to be loved and looked up to by all their children to the extent that Mrs. Mitchel was. By those of her children who were still living with her, her death was most severely felt. But even to those who, like John Mitchel,

1866.]

EDITING NEW YORK “DAILY NEWS.”

215 had families of their own and were living away from her, the news of her death was a great affliction. Indeed, love for his mother was in John Mitchel's case so strong as to form a leading feature in his character. During all the time she lived in New York, one of his greatest pleasures was to come once or twice a year from Tennessee, or wherever he chanced to be living, and spend a few days at her house. His private letters show with what eagerness he looked forward to these visits. Mrs. Mitchel, like her son, had a character and a will of her own. They sometimes differed in their views of things, and on either side the view was sure to be pretty strongly expressed. But they never quarrelled; and whenever John Mitchel was in his mother's presence, his manner was always peculiarly affectionate and respectful.

Mitchel was now once more a newspaper editor. His writing for the Daily News very soon led to his arrest and imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. It would therefore be very desirable to tell the reader as precisely as possible what it was that he did write. I have not before me the copies of the Daily News during the brief period of his editorship. I can, therefore, only give the reader his own summary of the doctrine he began to teach in the Daily News. Here it is :

Of course I set myself at once to tell the truth concerning the southern cause, to explode and expose the villainy of affecting to consider Jefferson Davis as a criminal and our Confederacy as a penitentiary offence; and generally to denounce Mr. Johnson's "My Policy." I did endeavour, in very good faith, and without language needlessly provocative, to show that, as the South acknowledged and accepted her defeat in a great war, as she was absolutely powerless to renew it, and indeed no way inclined to renew it, the time was come for the victorious party to heal the breach.

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I continued to write the chief leading articles for this Daily News for just two weeks-the proprietor, Mr. B. Wood, liberally and boldly allowing me to write and print just what I liked; and the other New York papers, especially the Daily Times and the Evening Post, continually raging and roaring against me-citing, as written by me, all the most violent and abusive articles they could find in Richmond newspapers during the war, but generally citing what I had never written, and earnestly calling upon their government to stop the intolerable nuisance.

General Dix was at that time military commandant of the district in which New York was situated. Some two or three days after Mitchel assumed charge of the Daily News, a message came to him from General Dix, in an indirect way; that is to say, the message was conveyed by an officer on the staff of the general to a person known to be an intimate friend of Mitchel's. It was to this effect: General Dix did not wish to interfere with him; had rather not; but Mitchel had better take care. To this communication Mitchel replied, more straightforwardly than prudently, that Dix might go to the devil, or words to that effect, and went on writing as before. Again, on the 12th A gentleman called

of June, another warning reached him. at the office of the Daily News and told Mitchel that a military order for his arrest had actually been made out. This fact, the gentleman said, he had on the very highest authority. Mitchel thanked his visitor, but was still incredulous; for, as he said, he could not believe that military commanders, in time of peace, could feel themselves authorized to arrest a civilian attending to his lawful business and against whom there was no charge of any kind.

It turned out, however, that this friendly visitor was well informed. There was then, and had been for several days previously, an order for John Mitchel's arrest, made out and signed by General Grant; and in pursuance of

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1866.]

KIDNAPPED.

217 this order of the commander-in-chief, there was another order by General Dix directing the arrest, and designating the place of imprisonment as Fortress Monroe. Mitchel went on writing, as was his habit, with more vehemence the more he was threatened. Just two days after the second warning the order was executed. I take his own account of the arrest :

At last, on the morning of the 14th of June, I went down as usual from my boarding-house, in West Twelfth Street, to the Daily News office. Everything was going on smoothly, and I was just about to write to my own folks to come on to New York, where I was myself established. I was seated in the editor's room at the desk, and busy over a manuscript, when the door opened and an artillery officer appeared, backed by a number of others, two in uniform and three in plain clothes. I rose. "You are my prisoner," said the officer. 'By whose order?" "No matter; come along." Three or four men gathered round me, and I was hustled out, through the long outer office. A carriage stood, not at the door, but three doors off. I was conducted to this carriage; the officer and another man (a detective, I believe) entered along with me; a sergeant took his seat on the box with the driver. Blinds were drawn down, and we started at a very rapid pace.

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From the office Mitchel was conveyed direct to the wharf, where a steamer lay with steam up. Two guards, with fixed bayonets, stood at the gangway. The officer who had arrested Mitchel escorted him on board, and in half a minute more the vessel was moving away from the wharf. As they steamed down the bay, the officers sat in the cabin with Mitchel. He tried to find out from them where they were going. This question they declined to answer. Then he asked what was the charge against him. As to that, they assured him they were entirely ignorant. The voyage was delayed by stress of weather; and it was not until the morning of the 17th that they reached their

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