“Mitchell himself was threatened with hanging at the hands of a Charlotte County mob angered by his reporting of the lynching, there, of Richard Walker in May of 1886. Mitchell was sent a rope with a note attached, warning him that he would be lynched himself if he ever set foot in the county. In reply, and borrowing a line from Shakespeare, Mitchell had this to say: “There are no terrors, Cassius, in your threats, for I am so strong in honesty that they pass by me like the idle wind, which I respect not.” Then, armed with two Smith & Wesson pistols, he boarded a train for Smithville and undeterred, walked the five miles from the station to the site of the hanging. He went unmolested.“
