Description
This wonderfully clear image has an E. & H.T. Anthony backmark. After the start of the Civil War, Mitchell served as the Adjutant General of Kansas from May 2, 1861, to June 20, 1861. He later led the 2nd Kansas Infantry. He was badly wounded at the Battle of Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861. He was shot from his horse while leading his regiment. After recovery, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him as a brigadier general to rank from April 8, 1862, and he was given command of a mixed brigade at Fort Riley. He commanded the 9th Division in Charles C. Gilbert's III Corps at the Battle of Perryville. He was then sent to Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained for several months.
During the Chickamauga campaign, Mitchell served as George H. Thomas's Chief of Cavalry for the Army of the Cumberland. Just before the Third Battle of Chattanooga, he was ordered to Washington, D.C., for court-martial duty. According to some sources, this was due to severe wounds which incapacitated him from field duty but this is contradicted in the Official Records by Mitchell's own correspondence. Whether incapacitated or not, he would not see active campaigning again, and for the remainder of the Civil War, he commanded the District of Nebraska, then the District of North Kansas, and finally the District of Kansas. He saw service in Colorado Territory in January 1865, following the Indian raid on Julesburg, Colorado, on the Overland Trail, but he did not succeed in locating the Indian camp on the Republican River until after they had departed.
