Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/377

Rh ington, Ark., in 1835, he there practised his pro- fession for more than twenty years. In 1848 he was elected to the legislature, and in 18o2 appointed receiver of public inoney in Washington, which office he held for four years. He was elected to the U. S. senate from Arkansas for six years, begin- ning on 4 March, 1861, and held his seat until May, when he went south, and was expelled on 11 July, 1861. Dr. Mitchel then represented his state in the Confederate senate from its first organization until the time of his death.

MITCHEL, John, Irish patriot, b. in Dungiven, County Derry, Ireland, 3 Nov., 1815; d. in Cork, 20 March, 1875." He was graduated at Trinity college, Dublin, in 1834, studied law, and practised for sev- eral years at Banbridge. In 1846 his " Life of Aodli O'Neill, Prince of Ulster," was published in Dublin, and gave him great reputation as a writer and nationalist. Pie became a contributor to the " Irish Nation," and after the death of Thomas Davis was its chief writer. In 1846 he opposed the peace resolutions of the O'Connells, and strongly advocated the absolute independence of Ireland. He was a Protestant, and warned the Irish Catho- lics from driving the Irish Protestants from the patriot cause by needless tests. Early in 1848 he withdrew from the " Nation " and founded the Young Ireland party. His fervid appeals in this paper aroused the insurrectionary spirit of the Irish people, and, to put him down, the treason-felony bill was passed by the British parliament. On 18 May, 1848, he was arrested under the provisions of the new act, and on 26 May he was convicted and sentenced to fourteen years' banishment. He was first taken to Bermuda, where he passed a year of " suspense, agony, and meditation." Thence he was transported to Van Diemen's Land. Assisted by friends in America, he escaped in the summer of 1853, and on 12 Oct. landed in San Fx-ancisco, re- ceiving there an enthusiastic welcome. In a short time he went to New York, where he published his "Jail Journal, or Five Years in British Pris- ons" (1854). In 1855 he established -'The Citi- zen," in which he published his celebrated letter to Henry Ward Beecher in defence of slavery. He also had a controversy with Archbishop Hughes on the subject of the independence of Roman Catholics in political matters. These discussions lost Mitch- el many friends in the northern states, and he was obliged' to stop " The Citizen." He then went to Knoxville, Tenn., and in 1857 established the "Southern Citizen," which failed. During the civil war he edited the Richmond " Enquirer," in which he advocated the cause of the south with en- thusiasm. After the war he returned to New York and began to publish the " Irish Citizen," which, like all his newspaper enterprises in this country, failed on account of his sturdy independence. In 1875 he returned to Ireland, but was not molested. The same year he was elected to jiarliament from Tipperary, but was declared ineligible, and not al- lowed to take his seat. He was again elected, but died before any action was taken in his case. Be- sides the books mentioned above, he published '" The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) " (New York, 1860) ; " History of Ireland from the Treaty of Lim- erick " (New York. 1868) : and '• Life and Times of Aodh O'Neill, Prince of Ulster" (1846) ; and he ed- ited the poems of Thomas Davis (New York, 1856) and James C. Mangan (1859), with biographies.
 * ' United Irishman," as the organ of the advanced

MITCHEL, Ormsby MacKnight, astronomer, b. in Morganfield, Ky.. 28 Julv, 1809; d. in Beau- fort, S. C, 30 Oct., 1862. He received his early education in Lebanon, Ohio, and when thirteen years old became a clerk in a country store. In 1825 he received an appointment to the U. S.^mil- itarv academy, where he was graduated four years later, standing fifteenth in the class that includ- ed Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. He was made 2d lieutenant in the artillery, and as- signed to duty as assistant professor of mathematics at the Military acad- emy until 1832, after which he was stationed at Fort Marion, St. Au- gustine, Fla., but resigned in Sep- tember of that year. Subsequent- ly he studied law in Cincinnati and was admitted to the bar, meanwhile also holding theap- pointment of chief engineer of the Little Miami railroad. He was professor of mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy in Cincinnati college from 1836 until 1844. when he proposed the establishment of an observatory at Cincinnati, and, after raising nearly all of the'funds through his own exertions, was made its director. The corner-stone of the pier which was to sustain the great refracting tele- scope was laid by John Quincy Adams, with an oration, on 9 Nov., 1843, and the apparatus for the proper equipment of the observatory was obtained by Prof. Mitchel during a visit to Europe in 1842 for that purpose. This was the first of the larger observatories to be built in the United States. He invented in 1848 a chronograph for automati- cally measuring and recording right ascensions by an "electro-magnetic mechanism, similar to that constructed by John Locke (q. v.). In 1849 he de- vised an apparatus for the accurate measurement of large differences of declination, which, after suc- cessful improvement, was in 1854 attached to the equatorial. During 1854-'9 he made nearly 50,000 observations of faint stars. His other work includ- ed the discovery of the duplicity of certain stars, notably Antares, observations of nebulje, solar spots, double stars, and comets, the determination of the longitude of Cincinnati with reference to Wash- ington and St. Louis, and the invention of an ap- paratus for finding the personal equation. He was also adjutant-general of Ohio in 1847-'8. and chief engineer of the Ohio and Mississippi railroad in 1848-9 and 1852-3. In 1859 he was called to the charge of the Dudley oVjservatory in Albany, where he remained until 1861, retaining during the inter- val his connection with the observatory in Cincin- nati. At the beginning of the civil war he was made brigadier-general of volunteers from Ohio, and at first reported to Gen. George B. JMcClellan, who assigned him to the command of Gen. William B. Franklin's brigade in the Army of the Potomac, but at the request of the citizens of Cincinnati he was transferred to that city, where his duties large- ly consisted in fortifying the city and in prepara- tion of recruits for the field. He served with the Army of the Ohio during the campaigns of Tennes- see and northern Alabama in the winter of 1861-'3, and occupied Bowling Green, Ky.. and Nashville, Tenn., in February. 1862, after which he partici- pated in the action near Bridgeport, Ala., taking possession of the railroad from Decatur to Stephen-