In correspondence with his friend, the Roman Catholic priest John Kenyon, Mitchel revealed his wish to make the people of the U.S. “proud and fond of as a national institution, and [to advocate its extension by re-opening the trade in Negroes.” Slavery he promoted for "its own sake". It was "good in itself" for "to enslave is impossible or to set them free either. They are born and bred slaves". The Catholic Church might condemn the "enslavement of men", but this censure could not apply to "negro slaves". The value and virtue of slavery, "both for negroes and white men", he maintained from 1857 in the pages of the "Southern Citizen", a paper he moved in 1859 from Knoxville, Tennessee to Washington D.C..