Thomas Carlyle and the Politics of Race in John Mitchel’s Jail Journal

This article deals with John Mitchel’s engagement with questions around race as articulated in his 1854 Jail Journal. Mitchel has been oft noted and condemned for his support of the Confederacy during the US Civil War, in which he lost two of his sons. His racism as it was articulated in the Southern Citizen during that period and his defence of slavery as an institution has led to numerous and open disavowals of his legacy. This article seeks to trace the development of Mitchel’s attitude towards race through a close reading of his Jail Journal in conjunction with a contemporaneous racist tract by Thomas Carlyle. This double reading will expose some of the ambiguities and ambivalences in Mitchel’s thinking in contrast to the strident pro-slavery position that he later embraced, whilst also allowing for an uncovering of his modus cogitandi that may help to explain apparent contradictions within his thought.