John Lendrum Mitchell: a George Bailey-esque character.

Guest Post by Henry Stull

The character I chose to portray in the Twitter reenactment is John Lendrum Mitchell, son of banking and rail mogul Alexander Mitchell and father of famous pilot Billy Mitchell, an early pioneer of the U.S. Air Force. Despite being the only child to survive past infancy, John Mitchell spent much of his youth far away from home. After graduating military school in Connecticut, his parents sent him to Europe to further his studies. He returned from Europe at the twilight of the Civil War, enlisting as a second lieutenant. After being discharged due to bad eyesight John finally returned to Milwaukee, operating a farm in the area. It was there on the farm where the middle Mitchell began his foray into local politics, his tendency to generously donate large sums of his family's fortune no doubt aided these efforts. Eventually John Mitchell set his sights to Washington, being first elected to the House of Representatives and then to the Senate, where he was an outspoken advocate against the American imperialism of the 1890s. Even among his peers in the Senate, John Mitchell was considered to be highly educated and remarkably intelligent; his diverse array of knowledge allowed him to heavily weigh in on a number of different laws, such as the filled cheese bill.

John Lendrum Mitchell reminds me of a George Bailey-esque character. A key event in John’s life where the quality of his character shines through is when, during a run on the bank he inherited, he protected the savings of his depositors by reimbursing them with money from his own pocket. Obviously, there is a scene like this in It’s a Wonderful Life, but like in the movie it really shows off a conflict in the character between wanting to live the good, adventurous life and following the honed point of his moral compass. The generosity of John contrasts with the stiff-lipped nature of his father and is probably a result of the two vastly different experiences each man had in life.

Find John Lendrum Mitchell on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JMeechMKE.