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- After Abe Lincoln became president in 1861 it was soon proved that Robert B. Mitchell was a patriot above party jealousy, for at the first call for troops there was a meeting held on the public square at Mansfield May 14 and a company of the brave men of the county organized who made him their captain. The regiment not yet being organized, the company march away to Lawrence with the name Mansfield Blues. Mitchell was a born commander, and had considerable acquaintance among military men of the state, having twice been commissioned inspector general of the territorial militia by Governor Medary and reappointed by Governor Robinson when the state was admitted. The Mansfield Blues became Company F of the Second Kansas infantry volunteers organized at Lawrence June 11, 1861.
- The company succeeded in having Captain Mitchell elected colonel of the Second regiment, and he received his commission as such from Governor Charles Robinson June 3, 1861. Byron P. Ayres became captain of the company.
- Col. Mitchell then took the Second regiment to the defense of Kansas City, and some few weeks later joined the army of Gen. Lyon at Springfield, where they took part in the second great battle of the rebellion at Wilson Creek. They gave battle to an enemy almost three times as strong numerically, and won a practical victory till the two great leaders fell. Mitchell was riding at the head of his regiment into the thickest of the fight when he was shot and fell. Gen. Lyon , a beloved patriot, saw the colonel fall and shouted to the regiment that he would command them and with a major general for their leader the regiment kept on, but brave General Lyon had gone but a few paces when he received his death wound and fell expiring into the arms of a soldier. Gen. Sturgis succeeded him in command of the army, but the controlling spirit was missing and the great victory about to be achieved was abandoned and the army retreated to Springfield. The Second Kansas regiment were for the first time under fire, and only a few days after the great Bull Run disaster to the Union army in the east, and their heroism at Wilson Creek is a bright page in the history of the Federal army.
- Mitchell's wound was such that he was for a long time confined to the hospital. Then he served on court martial duty at Washington till next spring, when he returned to Kansas and gathered his old command together, they having been disbanded by expiration of their term of enlistment. He reorganized them as the Second Kansas Cavalry and was stationed at Fort Riley, when on April 8, 1862, he received a commission as brigadier general from President Lincoln and was ordered at once to Pittsburg Landing, where they arrived after the battle, and then did service throughout the south and made a notable record.
- General Mitchell's qualities as a military leader were of a high order and but for having incurred the bitter political enmity of General James H. Lane would have attained the rank of major general, to which he was brevetted.
- At the close of the war he was commissioned governor of New Mexico Territory by President Johnson and served four years, his wife and child, Henry St. John Mitchell, now division superintendent of the Memphis road, with residence at Fort Scott, and who was born at Mansfield, Linn County, accompanying him. Subsequent to 1870 he lived for many years in Washington, where he died January 23, 1882, and was buried in the famous Congressional cemetery.
- Mrs. Mitchell has always retained her citizenship in Kansas and has taken an active interest in its welfare. June 30, 1882, Congress voted her a pension of $50 a month, but she has not been content to live idly as a pensioner. In 1889 she learned that by taking a homestead the four years' military service of her husband would be deducted from the five years required upon it, so she went with some acquaintances to Kearney county and took a homestead 14 miles from Larkin, the county seat, a station on the Santa Fe railroad, where she again spent a year in pioneer life, receiving a patent for the land in her own name.
- The name of the General has been perpetuated in Linn county by giving it to Robert B. Mitchell Post No. 170, G.A.R., and his widow, who did so much for the community in the early days, was initiated into full membership and given all the secret work of the patriotic order - a compliment never before paid to a woman. The post recently removed the remains of their first born from the grave out on the prairies to Oak Lawn cemetery, La Cygne.
- From clippings of the Linn County - May 3, 1895
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