CHAPTER XXIII

TEMPORARY DISBANDMENT

Six days after the battle of Kirksville General Schofield reported to General Halleck that Porter's band of three thousand men had been driven a distance of not less than three hundred miles and whipped five times in ten days. ((His entire force is broken up and scattered. He probably has not twenty men with him." On the same day General Merrill, at Hudson, reported to General Schofield: "The country is full of wounded from the Kirksville fight. It has spread terror among secesh. Porter is used up in Northeast Missouri and it only remains to organize loyal men thereby and arm them and make secesh foot the bills, and the matter is forever settled."

The next morning, August 13, the Missouri Democrat said editorially: "General Schofield last night received highly satisfactory intelligence confirming that of the utter rout of Porter and his brigands. Porter's force is entirely and remedilessly scattered, hundreds of his men being killed, many more taken prisoners and the remainder separated and fugitive."

But the matter was not forever settled and the situation was not remediless. On the afternoon of August 9 Captain Purcell swooped down upon Columbia so suddenly that· the Federals walking the streets and sitting under the shade trees had barely time to escape to their camp before all the streets and roads were picketed.

The Statesman Colonel Switzler's paper-says: "After going through these preliminaries they proceeded to the jail, demanded the keys of the jailor, who surrendered them, and released three rebel prisoners therein confined, namely, William R. Jackson, of Audrain, William Rowland and Amos Marney, Jr., both of this county, the latter a cousin of the rebel captain, Purcell. The release of these men appeared to be the principal object of their visit to Columbia, for shortly after this was accomplished they evacuated the town, creating no further disturbance. This band was mounted on good horses and mostly armed with double-barreled shotguns. A few had United States muskets with some revolvers and sabres." Captain Purcell captured eighty-one Government horses grazing on the pasture of Major Cave, a mile north of town, which had been guarded by four soldiers, three of whom escaped.

A little later William M. Reading, enrolling officer for Lewis County, wrote to the Missouri Democrat: "The situation of Union men in this county, God knows, is bad enough, isolated as they are, with prying and prowling devils all around them, watching every motion."

About the middle of August Porter was reported, according to the Palmyra Courier, to have fifteen hundred men in the vicinity of Florida and in consequence there was lively marching hither and thither by the forces of Colonel McNeil and Majors Rogers and Dodson. A dispatch to the Hannibal Herald tells of forty rebels from Sharpsburg crossing the railroad going south and "swearing into the Confederacy all they could find," adding that the woods below Hunnewell are full of them and that they intend to rally around Porter again. A letter from Lewis County calla on the military authorities for more troops, as Porter is still at the head of a large guerrilla: force, carrying terror and dismay through the country. Notwithstanding all the reported defeats, demoralizations and scatterings of the rebels, there were camps here and there and there were squads riding about catching and· paroling the militia and with the

refinement of cruelty stopping them from foraging upon the disloyal. As the writer of the above mentioned bitterly says : "We are hardly able to protect ourselves from attack and collect provisions for our present necessities; for our only means of subsistence is by foraging off the disloyal people of the surrounding country, no provision whatever being made by the Government to supply us with anything but arms and ammunition."

The plan of conducting the war "with greater severity" seemed to multiply the number of rebels; the burning of their houses multiplied it, the killing of prisoners multiplied it,  confiscations multiplied it, and the reign of terror did not terrify. In fact, the Missouri rebel was the most perverse and least understandable being on earth. Chase him a hundred miles without food, water or sleep and if he gained a half hour he tied his horse and ambushed his pursuer. Scatter him today and he was one of a swarm to sting the scatterer on the morrow. Cast a net around his lair at night and daylight would show a water-haul. His horse, as perverse as its master, would gallop from the Iowa line to the Missouri River and in camp, day or night, be as immovable and silent as death.

Comrade J. T. Wallace, of Oakland, California, kept a record of his experience in the army. He writes: "We pushed on after the battle of Kirksville, hoping to cross the North Missouri Railroad before the militia could concentrate their forces to oppose us. But in this we were disappointed. On the 8th of August we encountered a force near Macon City. After a short contest here retreat was deemed advisable and we marched rapidly back toward the Chariton River, farther down. Before we reached it the long line of Federal cavalry could be seen on our track from Kirksville. They took a short cut-off and were soon in hot pursuit. When our rear guard had crossed the deep ford of the river they were nearly upon us. This 'General Merrill In his official report designates this as near Stockton. place afforded us an excellent opportunity to give them a check. The main command continued the line of march, while by order of Colonel Porter two companies, commanded by Captain Jim Porter and Captain John Hicks, remained to ambuscade the enemy at the ford. The ground was admirably adapted for this purpose. The river at this point was deep for fording and was about two hundred yards wide. The road. on the east side, where we were to take position, followed up the river on high ground and nearly parallel with it was a dry sag or low ground which curved in such a manner as to afford us ample concealment and protection at short range and with full  command of the ford. We had orders to remain as still as death until the enemy! began to come up the hill and were fully abreast of our line. When the river was full of men and swimming

horses a murderous fire from the two companies was poured upon them at from twenty to one hundred and twenty yards.

The effect was terrible. Not less, I think, than a hundred and twenty-five men must have fallen at the single volley from double-barreled shotguns and rifles. Nearly all who fell from any cause into the swift current were drowned amid the plunging horses. This stratagem gave us ample time to retire to our horses a quarter of a mile away and to escape our pursuers. They bombarded the woods for some hours after we left before they ventured to cross. This signal success was gained. on the 9th of August. However, being foiled in our efforts to cross the railroad. and finding our way of escape south in a body cut off, it was deemed best to disband the organization and allow each company to take care of itself. This was done on the 11th of August. For three weeks we were secluded in the woods foraging quietly upon our friends.

"While Captain John Hicks and his company of about ninety men were encamped on the South Fabius, about three miles north of Emerson, Marion County, we went out one night on a scout to learn what the prospects were for a general gathering. On our way back to camp the Captain thought he would like to pay a visit to his former friend and neighbor, Harvey Mann, who, he had heard, was a red hot Union man and quite officious as a reporter for McNeil. So we called at his house about nine o'clock in the evening and found him at home. Captain Hicks remained out of sight but in easy hearing while Lieutenant Bowles proceeded as the inquisitor. Bowles posed as an officer of McNeil's command and asked if he knew of any rebels camped in the neighborhood. Our Union friend at once became enthusiastic and very communicative. He told us that John Hicks and his band of bushwhackers were now camped two or three miles from there on the South Fabius and he expressed the belief and the hope that the whole crowd could be killed or captured, and that he was willing to guide us

to his camp in the woods. His remarks about Captain Hicks and his band of rebels were of the most uncomplimentary character. At this point he was told to put on his coat and come along with us, and he recognized the last speaker as his neighbor and brother in the Church. Without much delay, but with great fear and trembling he made ready to accompany us. Mounting one of his own horses he rode away with us, leaving his wife and children weeping hysterically. They doubtless expected that he would be treated as a Southern man, under similar circumstances, would be treated by McNeil or Rogers, and that they would never see him again alive. After a few hours in camp and a plain heart to heart talk with Captain Hicks,

who reminded him of the relation that had so long existed between them and asked him if he had ever known or even heard of himself or any of his men taking anything that did not belong to them, Mr. Mann confessed that he had not treated Captain Hicks as a brother should, not even as he should treat an enemy. He gave a solemn promise that if he were permitted to go home he would in the future attend to his own business and let the men in uniform attend to theirs. It may be added that, so far as the writer knows, he kept his promise. He was released and rode back on his own horse, a wiser man."

Comrade Phillips says: "When we left the battle-field at Kirksville we fell back to the Chariton River, which was barely fordable. I was detailed to guard the ford and another detail was placed at the bridge a little farther up. We had a big, fat major who had done a lot of blowing before the fight. As I was trying to find the command, I found him with thirty or forty men hid in a deep hollow. I asked him what he was doing there. He said he was waiting for Porter's command. I told him I was covering Porter's rear. He did not wait for any other command but

went like old nick after him.. "The morning of the 7th we continued moving in a southeasterly direction. I did not get up with the command until noon. The Federals camped in Kirksville until the 8th and then followed our trail. In the meantime, there was a force moving from the southwest to head us off. On the 8th we were going up a long open ridge with quite a stretch of timber off to our left. All at once the Federals opened fire on us; but they made a bad calculation on the distance and over-shot us. We fell back to Walnut Creek, crossed it, detailed every fifth man to hold horses and formed in! line under the bank of the creek, which made a nice rifle pit. They came charging down furiously. We held our fire until they got almost upon us, and then they went back a good deal faster than they came. Beyond our range their officers halted them, dismounted them, formed a line and ordered a charge, but the men never moved a foot.

The fellow with a bugle got out in front and sounded the charge, but no charge. The bugler kept coming a little nearer and tried to encourage the men but it was no go. Colonel Porter came along and asked me if I had any long range guns. I answered that we had three. He told me to pick that fellow off. The three boys got up on the bank, took rest on trees and fired at command. The fellow jumped two feet in the air and fell dead. That was enough for the rest; they took wings and fled. The boys mounted and went and got the bugle and the bugler's cap. "We moved on that evening and the next morning a Dutch regiment came in our right and we turned our course. A little after noon on the 9th we came to the Chariton and found

it very deep fording. There was a steep bluff running parallel with the river for some distance with just room for a good road, and when we crossed the river the road ran along the bank for a half mile and a deep ravine along the road. It was just the place to form our line. Colonel Porter ordered Major Majors to wait until the advance guard got across and up to the head of our column and then open fire. The Major got a little bit nervous and ordered us to :fire a little too soon. The river was full of them and the sight was fearful. I do not think a man got out

until he was dragged out the next day. I was told there were seventy or eighty taken out. We got one prisoner and several horses. The Federals went up that bluff on their hands and knees. We mounted our horses and were a mile or two away when they commenced to shell the woods, and for the next ten miles we could hear them shelling the woods. We lost one man, and he was shot by our own men. He jumped up and ran in front of the line while we were firing and was killed.

"We moved on in a southeasterly direction all the next day until about the middle of the afternoon, when Colonel Porter called a halt and disbanded us to meet at our several company headquarters. So we scattered and left no trail for the Federals to follow. Our company scattered to meet on Salt River, near Cincinnati, in Ralls County, where we had a jolly time for two or three weeks." Comrade Wine says: "We tried to cross the North Missouri Railroad at Stockton but were met by the Yanks. We took position behind the bank of a stream that was dry

and repulsed every charge they made. When their bugler sounded retreat I thought it the sweetest music I ever heard. When we were hotly pursued on our way to the Chariton River, our company-Hicks's--and another company in the timber to check the enemy. They would stop, bring their artillery and begin to shell the woods and we would move on. After crossing the Chariton our company and Captain Jim Porter's were left to halt them. A dry slough came into the river about twenty feet below the ford. We occupied it. When we fired it looked to me as if we killed a hundred, but I believe they reported it as sixty. One of their men was not hurt and we took him prisoner."

Comrade A. J. Austin says: "From Kirksville we went toward the southwest and then turned eastward, and on Friday, the 8th, we fought another battle at Painter's Creek. A force of several thousand men attacked us. Colonel Porter ordered us to go back a mile, hitch our horses and return to the creek. There was timber a hundred yards wide on the creek. We fought from one o'clock till about night and we drove them from the field. We had one man killed and one or two wounded. We turned back the same way we had come. The next day, after reinforcements had come to Macon City, they sent out a large force after us. They came up while we were" cooking breakfast. Colonel Porter ordered us to move. We were then on the west side of the Chariton River and it was up to the saddle skirts, so the wagons had to go around some ten or fifteen miles to a bridge. In order to give them time, Porter had us dismount and form a line to check the enemy. About the time the Feds would get ready to fight we would be up and gone. Then the Colonel would line us up again and give them another check until he knew the wagons had had plenty of time. Then we had orders to go and· we left the enemy.

When we crossed the Chariton, Colonel Porter had some large trees cut so the enemy could not get out with their cannon. He then stationed Captain Jim Porter with one hundred men to give the Federals a gentle surprise-and Jim Porter was the man to do it. When they came to cross, the river was waist and high. They rode right in and were letting their horses drink and were having a good time in the thought that the rebs were gone. Their good time lasted a very short time. They were stretched clear across, a hundred or more. Our men raised up and killed or drowned nearly everyone of them. We took one prisoner, a man about sixty years old. We went east for twenty or thirty miles and late that evening Colonel Porter stopped

out in the prairie and told us that it would be necessary for us to disband. Each company was directed to go back  to its own county and told that it would be called at an opportune time. We came to :Monroe and were not with Porter again until the Palmyra fight."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CAPTURE OF PALMYRA AND THE MURDER OF ALLSMAN

On his forty-third birthday, Friday, September 12, 1862, Colonel Porter captured Palmyra and demonstrated to the Federal commanders how powerless they were to defeat his plans. The inhuman McNeil, with superior numbers and equipments, might run death races over the counties; the unspeakable Benjamin might fume and rage and send murderous men over the trails; the alert and vigilant Guitar might make his best endeavor to execute his boast of "following Porter to the jumping-off place and of spoiling the jumping-off place;" one Federal commander might give him battle, another might ravage his camp, other! patrol the highways and by-ways of his territory, but so resolute and so resourceful was his purpose that enlistments went on, practically without interruption, until the harvest was gathered. The situation was mortifying to the district commanders, to General Schofield and to the rabid press

of the ·State.

The Missouri Democrat, in its issue of July 22 said editorially: "The many complaints relative to the Missouri State Militia and its efficiency in operating against guerrilla bands in Northern Missouri  naturally induce inquiry as to how these things can be, in a country occupied by an army triple in numbers that of the enemy. The fact stands out in unquestioned clearness that something is wrong, either in the army or in the system of warfare pursued."

The something was wrong in both the army and the system, but mainly in the system. Inhuman warfare, as practiced by McNeil and Benjamin, and as demanded by the rabid press is not always successful, and Porter more than matched in generalship the combined Federal commanders who opposed him in the field. Had he possessed half their opportunities he would have driven them from the State. Colonel Porter captured Palmyra to draw the Federal troops away from the Missouri River in order to facilitate the escape of companies, squads and individual recruits to the main army; to release the Confederate prisoners held there and take out of the State Andrew Allsman, a notorious informer, who was considered responsible for much of the misery inflicted upon the inmates of that horrible prison. The capture was accomplished without trouble and without loss. The companies, as directed, to the number of

about three hundred, left their various rendezvous and marched without detection to the designated point on the North Fabius River, fifteen or twenty miles north of Palmyra. This distance was easily made during the night.

The lights in the streets of Quincy were glimmering and the hoarse soughing of the Keokuk packet in its course down the Mississippi could be plainly heard, but not a word was said. At daybreak the horses were hitched in a convenient place west of town and the men marched on foot through the fields adjoining the town, evading the pickets who were stationed on every road. The surprise was complete. The place had been occupied fifteen minutes, some houses had been surrounded and prisoners taken, including Colonel Lipscomb, l before the militia knew there was an armed rebel within fifty miles. There was some firing, but it was desultory, with small loss on either side. Little attention was paid the militia occupying the town except those defending the jail, where were fifty or more Confederate prisoners. It was taken without loss and the prisoners liberated. The office of the provost-marshal, a two-room log house across the alley from the Spectator office, was filled with the personal bonds of Southern sympathizers collateral security for the observance of oaths of allegiance. This was raided and every paper carried off. A few of the men had the satisfaction of destroying their own bonds.

Comrade J. T. Wallace, of Oakland, California, says: "After about an hour of spirited :fighting we gained possession of the town, to the infinite satisfaction of its many warm-hearted Southern citizens. The cowardly and lecherous Provost-Marshal William R. Strachan, had fled by train to Hannibal. His office with most of his precious oaths and bonds was taken by us. Every paper of any consequence was carried away and destroyed. . I had the great pleasure of securing my own personal bond for one thousand dollars, as well as the iron-clad oath extorted from me when sick, and of using it for gun wadding.

"Andrew Allsman, a notorious old crone, who haunted the provost-marshal's office and made himself particularly obnoxious to Southern people by sending troops out after them or their stock, was captured. From the first he was dreadfully frightened, and not without cause. We moved away to the northeast, through Lewis County, and two or three days later we were suddenly attacked and had to scatter. When we assembled again and asked about Allsman, he was gone. From all I heard from those who were guarding him, I have no doubt he met his fate. There were scores of men in the command who would have counted it a duty and a privilege to end his miserable existence rather than that he should escape.

"I was a prisoner at Hannibal when the ten men were shot for Allsman and I knew several of them. John McPheeters belonged to Captain John Hicks's company. He was a modest, quiet young man with a young family. Thomas Humston and I were schoolmates. He was entirely inoffensive and not very bright. His father, Larkin M. Humston, lived only two or three miles from my boyhood home. Thomas Humphrey, l who was among those first sentenced to be shot, but afterwards his name was removed nom the list by Provost-Marshal Strachan, was my cousin. His case was very peculiar and especially disgraceful. I shall here quote from Captain Griffin Frost's journal.

'Mrs. Humphrey on hearing of the doom which awaited her husband proceeded at once to Palmyra to see if she could do something for him. She went to Strachan accompanied by her little daughter, leaving her other four children at home, and implored him to spare her husband on account of her children, begging as only a mother and wife knew how to beg for the life of a husband and father. The fiend in human shape, seeing that he had the poor heartbroken woman in his power, told her if she would accede to his wishes and pay him five hundred dollars he would release her husband and shoot another in his place. She, in order to save her husband, consented and the cowardly villain committed the hellish deed of violating her person. While he was thus engaged the little girl was seen outside the door crying, which led to his detection. The Federal soldiers, suspecting the situation, found him committing the act.'

"I can vouch for the truth of this terrible statement. Tom Humphrey was a quiet citizen of Lewis County where he lived for many years after the war."

Comrade J. R. Wine, of Townsend, Montana, says: "We battered down the door of the jail and released the rebel prisoners. We also took Andrew Allsman, who was noted as a reporter and persecutor of Southern people. Just before

(Mr. R. M. Wallace, cashier of the bank or Dolgeville, California, writes: "There Is absolutely no foundation tor the statement that Hiram Smith volunteered to die In place or Tom Humphrey. George Humphrey, Tom's son, now prominent In Missouri politics. has In a way helped to let the false story be given greater credence. He erected a monument to Smith's grave In Shelby County a few years ago. giving as a reason for no doubt, that Hiram Smith suffered vicariously tor his father. So we see how difficult It Is to know how much of any history Is true.)

sunset, Sunday, we heard firing to the north, and the Federals came in right after our pickets. We were ordered to scatter and I obeyed the order promptly. We all crossed the South Fabius. Most of the command went straight on. My brother and I turned into the brush to the right, recrossed the Fabius and went northward. Allsman went with us of his own accord. We went ten or twelve miles and camped for the night on a small stream called Gussy. The next day Colonel Porter came over with thirty or forty men. Just before sunset he said to Allsman 'I had intended. to take you out of the State, but we cannot hold you any longer.' Allsman said he was afraid some one would kill him and wanted to be sent to a safe place. Porter asked what he called a safe place. He said out on the public highway or at some loyal man's house, and he asked for a guard. Porter told him to choose his guard. He selected three men. Porter added three to the number and they all left at sunset. The guard returned to camp next morning at sunrise. Allsman was about fifty-five years old; five feet, nine inches high; had blue eyes, and was rather good looking."

Comrade J. B. Threlkeld writes about his prison experience in Palmyra: "Provost-Marshal Strachan thought he had me pretty well worn out, and writing to my father asked him to influence me to take the oath, give bond and go home, or he would have to send me to Alton, Illinois, the following Monday morning. My father got Uncle Bob Threlkeld and Judge Foster to come to Palmyra and: see what they could do. They got me out that night on parole, to report next morning at eight o'clock. Andrew Allsman was in the office when I went in and remained there during my entire examination. Strachan put a great many questions to me which I answered. Allsman told Strachan that he very readily recognized me, and that I had done some terrible deeds, all of which I denied. It was hard to bear, but circumstances were such that I had to make the best of it. I told Strachan before I took the oath that I would never go into the militia. I had been at home two months when the order came for every man to go into the militia. I got on my horse and went to Porter, taking forty men with me, and we were sworn into the Confederate service for three years or during the war. When Porter went to Palmyra he burned all of Strachan's papers, my oath and bond with the rest, which was good for me. He took Allsman with him. At Whaley's Mill he released Allsman and furnished him with a horse to ride back to Palmyra. I think Allsman's bones lie in a cave between Whaley's Mill and Palmyra."

Comrade R. K. Phillips says: "When Porter captured Palmyra he got old man Allsman· who had been a source of trouble in that country. I think he was paroled with a safety parole>-one that he could not break, but it cost us dearly. Three of the men killed in retaliation belonged to our company: John M. Wade, my wife's first cousin, F. M. Lear and Herbert Hudson. The whole ten were men of good reputations, and some of them were the best in their respective communities, and they were sacrificed for a most worthless character; one who knew every man in and around Palmyra and was' said to be ready to accuse everyone. He had caused a great deal of trouble and his death was a relief to the country."

The detail which took Allsman from his bed that Friday morning was commanded by Captain J. W. Shattuck who had escaped from prison into which he had been cast on information furnished by Allsman. A short distance outside of Palmyra all the prisoners except Allsman and three others were paroled.

For a long time the fate of Allsman was a mystery. I never knew it until I began collecting material for this narrative. There are probably men living today who could give more information concerning his death than I have been able to get. All accounts agree that he had a guard of six men who were directed by Colonel Porter to take him to what he considered a place of safety; that these men left camp with Allsman Monday night and returned at daybreak next morning and reported that they had obeyed their orders. Did this guard kill Allsman and make a false report to Colonel Porter, or did others follow and wreak their vengeance on Allsman after the guard abandoned him. Only actual participants in the tragedy, if any survive, can

answer. It is said that Allsman selected his entire guard; it is also said that he selected only three and that Colonel Porter appointed three more, and the weight of the testimony favors the latter statement. If Colonel Porter selected half the guard, I believe it obeyed his orders implicitly and that it was innocent of any knowledge of Allsman's death. If Colonel Porter had been disposed. to connive at or knowingly to permit the killing of Allsman he would not have prevented the execution of Creek and Dunlap in retaliation for the killing of the boy prisoner, Fowler, at Florida; nor would he have treated as a prisoner of war, Captain Lair, taken to Newark, after the latter and Captain Collier had ordered the shooting to death after capture of Major Owen, of Colonel Porter's first regiment.

The killing of Allsman was undeserved, but the men who were threatened. with confiscation and death did not reason that way. They do not today, they did not yesterday, they will not tomorrow. It was unfortunate; its expiation placed an enduring stain upon the name of the State.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PALMYRA MASSACRE

The number of prisoners, citizen and Confederate, killed in Missouri during the war by the Federal militia reached many hundreds, but no case of single or wholesale slaughter created so great an inquiry or so general reprobation as the killing of Willis Baker, Thomas Humston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. McPheeters and Hiram Smith, of Lewis County, Herbert Hudson, John M. Wade and Marion Lair, of Ralls County, Thomas Sidemor, of Monroe County, and Eleazer Lake, of Scotland County, by order of General John McNeil, at Palmyra, Saturday, October 18, 1862. A notice was served on Colonel Porter by publication in the local papers and by a copy placed in the hands of Mrs. Porter which read. thus:

PALMYRA, Mo., October 8, 1862.

JOSEPH C. PORTER.

: Andrew Allsman, an aged citizen of Palmyra, and a non-combatant, having been carried from his home by a band of persons unlawfully arrayed against the peace and good order of the State of Missouri, and which band was under your control; this is to notify you that unless said Andrew Allsman is returned unharmed to his family within ten days from date ten men who have belonged to your band, and unlawfully sworn by you to carry arms against the Government of the United States, and who are now in custody, will be shot as a meet reward for their crimes, among which is the illegal restraining of said Allsman of his liberty, and if not returned, presumably aiding in his murder. Your

prompt attention to this will save much suffering.

Yours etc.,

W. R. 8TRACHAN,

Provost-Marshal General District N. E. Missouri.

Per order of Brigadier-General

Commanding McNeil's Column.

The dread day came without light on the fate of Allsman. Of the prisoners confined in Palmyra, a list of five was made by Strachan himself, who gratified his fiendish hate by personally announcing their doom to the selected. This announcement was made on the evening preceding the execution. The list had on it the name of William T. Humphrey, of Lewis County. Mrs. Mary Humphrey had come with her little daughter to visit her husband in prison, ignorant of the awful sentence. The next morning, on her knees before Strachan, she begged for her husband's life. Strachan, maddened by three demons, liquor, lust and human hate, named an infamous price, and she paid it. Her little daughter sat crying on the doorstep. Two Federal soldiers, attracted by the grief of the little one, peered through the window and saw the payment of the price. These two happened to be men, and in their indignation they took the

news to McNeil who used every means in his power to prevent all knowledge of this additional horror. Perhaps he had a prescience that the retaliation he had ordered would call down upon himself the execration of the whole civilized world. It was three months before Mrs. Humphrey revealed the secret to her husband. When Humphrey's name was taken from the list Strachan filled the blank with that of Hiram Smith. Two of Smith's brothers had married daughters of Willis Baker, one of the condemned. The boy was comforting the old man when Strachan informed him that he had two hours to live. With a smile he announced his readiness and busied himself with letters to his brothers and sisters, his parents being dead. The other five were selected by lot from the Hannibal prison.

Tom Humston, aged nineteen, laughed as he said: "Why not death now as well as any other time?" Morgan Bixler was a man of strong religious sentiment. Since the birth of his two sons his most earnest hope was that they might grow up and lead Christian lives and the theme of his affectionate letter to his wife was that she might rear them as carefully as he had done. He included a message to his relatives and friends not to avenge his death, as he had fully forgiven his executioners. Lake wrote a brave letter to his wife and children commending them to the protection of the Almighty in their trials, which he exhorted them to bear with patience and resignation.

The fortitude of the ten victims in the face of death robbed Strachan of half his pleasure in the deed. McNeil, strange to say, did not remain to witness the final scene. The ten men kneeling, the Rev. R. M. Rhodes offered the last prayer. Mr. Rhodes and Strachan gave their hands to the condemned men. Baker refused Strachan's hand saying: "Let every dog shake his own paw." When, the evening before, the Rev. J. ,s. Green in administering spiritual consolation had proposed the forgiveness of McNeil and Strachan, Willis Baker refused. They were murderers he said, and murderers deserved hell and he would not forgive anything pertaining to the devil. Let us hope that his unforgiveness was for the crime and not the criminals. Of all the men, Captain Tom Sidenor aroused the greatest interest. Young, handsome, cultivated, of high parentage, he had given his best to the cause of the South and the din

of battle was sweet music to his ear. "Aim here," he said, placing hi& hand over his heart, and his executioners, merciful to him, did his bidding, but many of the soldiers purposely aimed high; their repugnance and horror preventing them from realizing that obedience to orders was not only a duty but a mercy.

A friend claimed the body of McPheeters at the request of his brother. The reply of Strachan was: "You may have the whole damned lot for all I care. I have no further use for them." But there came a time when he did care, and it was not very long in coming.

The editor of the Palmyra Courier, whose hatred of everything Confederate or Southern was bounded only by the scope of his vigorous intellect, gave a minute description of the tragedy. Heretofore he had gloried in the killing of prisoners, the burning of houses and all the other "severities," but now, no word of approval for this tragedy, and scarcely a word of condemnation for its victims: "He (Captain Sidenor) was now elegantly attired in a suit of black broadcloth with white vest. A luxurious growth of beautiful hair rolled down upon his shoulders which, with his fine personal appearance, could not but bring to mind the handsome but vicious Absolom. There was nothing especially worthy of note in the appearance of the others. One of them, Willis Baker, of Lewis County, was proven to be the man who last year shot and killed Mr. Ezekiel Pratt, his Union neighbor, near Williamstown, in that county. All the others were rebels of lesser note, the particulars of whose crimes we are not familiar with."

This account was copied into the Southern papers and thus brought to the notice of President Davis and to that of the European press.

EXECUTIVE OFFICE,

RICHMOND, November 17, 1861.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL T. H. HOLMES,

Commanding Trans-Mississippi Department.

GENERAL: Inclosed you will find a slip from the Memphis Daily Appeal of the 3rd instant, containing an account, purporting to be derived from the Palmyra (Missouri) Courier, a Federal Journal, of the murder of ten Confederate citizens of Missouri, by order of General McNeil, of the U. S. Army. You will communicate by flag of truce with the Federal officer commanding that department and ascertain if the facts are as stated. 1£ they be so, you will demand the immediate surrender of General McNeil to the Confederate authorities, and if this demand is not complied with you will inform said commanding officer that you are ordered to execute the first ten United States officers who may be captured and fall into your hands.

. Very respectfully yours

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

General Curtis replied to General Holmes, St. Louis, December 24th, that "General McNeil is a State General; and his column was mainly State troops. The matter· has therefore never come to my official notice. His proceedings seemed to have been a kind of police resentment against citizens of Missouri who had violated paroles and engaged in robbery and murder, and has only been presented by such newspaper reports as you have sent me. I transmit to you a slip from the Palmyra Courier of the 12th instant, signed by William R Strachan, Provost-Marshal, which further describes the affair, but I am not so informed of the facts as to say whether the slips are true or false. Being thus explained by the provost-marshal, I am not disposed to meddle with it, and am not therefore authorized to admit or deny, justify or condemn." The inclosure referred to was the "Vindication of General McNeil," a remarkable

document, which, being inclosed with the letter of General Curtis, entitled it to be published in the War of the Rebellion. (Series I, Volume 22, Part I, page 861.)

The English press considered the massacre the infamy of all history. The London Star, which could see nothing good in the South and nothing bad in the North, asked: "What comment is needed upon a crime like this' Its stupidity is as astonishing as its ferocity is terrible." The New York Times, equally fierce and unjust to the South, echoed the denunciation of the London Star. In a long and terrible arraignment it said: "There can be no possible justification for such a butchery, and our Government owes it to itself, to the country and to the sentiment of the civilized world to mark by some prompt and distinct action its reprobation of it."

Colonel William F. Switder's History of Missouri, which is in many places colored by his intense hatred of rebels, speaking of "two of those atrocities which unhappily blacken the history of its civil war in Missouri," says, page 417 : "One of these atrocities was the execution at Macon., Mo., on Friday, the 25th of September, 1862, of ten rebel prisoners on the triple charge of treason, perjury and murder; and the other the execution at Palmyra, Mo., on Saturday, October 18th, 1862, of a similar number to explain the abduction and probable murder by some of Porters band of one Andrew Allsman, a Union citizen of Marion County. Whatever may be said to excuse, extenuate or justify this execution [referring to that at Macon, what can be pleaded to mitigate the horrible butchery at Palmyra a few weeks thereafter t" In one of McNeil's frequent visits to St. Louis, after the massacre, he was introduced at the Planters' House to a Federal general, and advanced, offering his hand; the officer turned his back on McNeil, saying: "I do not shake the hand of a murderer."

I have forgotten the name of this general. It was told me in 1867 by a relative, dead many years, who had personal knowledge of the incident.

(There were many more than two.)

To stem the torrent of indignation and its possible consequences, Strachan wrote his letter to the New York Times, McNeil procured many signatures to his memorial to President Lincoln, many claiming since that they signed through apprehension of the consequences of a refusal, and worked up all possible influence from every quarter. On the twenty-third of January, as the Missouri State Journal, published at Jefferson City, put it, "the man who had demonstrated that one loyal citizen was worth ten traitors unexpectedly made his appearance in the House" during the session of the legislature. His former provost-marshal was a member from Shelby County. McNeil was formally introduced. Speeches were made. McNeil said it was the proudest day of his life and he was deeply grateful for the spontaneous endorsement of the Representatives of the State.

The demand of President Davis was considered in Mr. Lincoln's cabinet. Political party interest in Missouri, and probably in other States, was imperative that McNeil should be upheld, and at that day party was above all other considerations. The rabid press of the country cried for more blood and statesmen echoed the cry. Senator Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, during the Christmas holidays, his heart softened by the memory of the Infant Prince of Peace, speaking of rebels, said in the Senate Chamber: "I would blast them with lightning; I would rain upon them showers of fire and brimstone, for which they are now as ready as Sodom and Gomorrah were in the olden time." This expressed the sentiment. General McNeil was promoted and

not surrendered, and Mr. Davis did not proceed with the threatened retaliation.

The letter of Strachan is a lurid denunciation of "the deep malice, the enormous crimes, the treacheries, the assassinations, the perjuries that invariably have characterized those, especially in Missouri, who have taken up arms avowedly to destroy their Government." The greater part of his charges .are general, and appeal to prejudice instead of reason. Nearly every direct charge is false in part or in whole. The ten men executed were not all taken with arms in their hands. Sidenor, Baker, Bixler, Humston and Smith were not taken with arms in their hands and it is doubtful if any of the ten were. They had not taken the oath, and it is doubtful if any of the ten had. The only man selected for death known positively to have taken the· oath was Humphrey, and he was allowed by Strachan to go. physically unharmed.

Strachan mentions eight Union men in Northeast Missouri, besides Allsman, who were murdered. Of these the murder of Aylward has been described. The killing of James Y. Preston was done some time before that of Aylward and by order of the same man.

The History of Shelby County, page 727, says: "Stacy tried Preston, after a fashion, found him guilty of playing the spy on him and his band, and shot him forthwith." The killing was probably as indefensible as that of Aylward, but this much can be truthfully said of Stacy: He never molested a man on account of his political sentiments. His trial "after a fashion" was at lea.st just as formal and honest as McNeil's alleged trials. Had the situation been reversed Preston would have gotten from the militia what he got from Stacy, only he would have gotten it more expeditiously. If Willis Baker killed Ezekiel Pratt, and it is believed that he did, and if Pratt's widow gave a true account of the killing (see History of Lewis County, page 97) he was justified. John W. Carnegy was a strong Union man, but such was his character that he had the respect and good will of every Southern man who knew him. His death by the hand of

Lieutenant Garnett, of Franklin's regiment, in the capture of Canton, was an accident of the kind that happens some-

(History of Lewis County. page 93.)

where every day in the year. When Garnett learned the situation he expressed sincere regret, released his prisoners and directed them to give the wounded man every care that his life might be saved. As to the killing of the other four, if they were killed, I have been unable to learn anything. It avails nothing in the argument to mention the number of men killed by the militia for no other reason than that they were sympathizers with the Southern cause, but one cannot help remembering that the latter list is very many times longer than the former and that it was the first begun.

The honesty of the statements in the Vindication may be gauged by the fact that Strachan signed himself provost marshal twenty days after the office was abolished. The falsification of current history was considered necessary to strengthen Union sentiment in Missouri and to palliate crimes against humanity. It was so generally, and Strachan only followed the fashion. The line of this policy, most vigorously and persistently followed, was the classification of the men who fought under Porter, Poindexter, Franklin, and other authorized officers with those of Anderson, James and others who brought discredit upon the cause they claimed to fight for.

(In the territory of the murders denounced by Strachan I can recall: In Scotland County, Benjamin Dye, near Etna, 1861; Judge Richardson, Memphis, November 18, 1861; William Moore, Sand Hill township. 1862, and Thomas Bonner and his son, John, near Bible Grove, August 3, 1862; in Clark County, a young man (name forgotten) riding along with Captain Josiah McDaniel, five miles west of Fairmont—-McDaniel escaped; Samuel Dale and Aquilla Standiford, at Fairmont, May 26, 1863: Dr. B. R. Glasscock, five miles southeast of Fairmont. June 16, 1863: Samuel Dillard. Bear Creek, August 4, 1864; autumn of 1864, Mr. Moore, near Waterloo; Samuel Bryant, three miles south of Kahoka; Samuel Davis, between Fairmont and Colony; S. Kibbe, at Athens; in Marion County, W. G. Flannigan and Jesse Malloy. July 24, 1864. near Tucker Mill; in Lewis County, William Gallup, October 10. 1864, at Monticello. Bill Anderson was the most noted guerrilla in Missouri. His meeting with Major Johnson, at Centralia, has been called a massacre. It was a fair battle. What every Confederate denounces Anderson for are his robberies and his murder of prisoners. Captain Cox, the militia officer who killed Anderson, perhaps his own pistol being the instrument, was a good soldier and a man of the highest character, incapable of a cruel or mean act. The stamping out of the James gang would have been indefinitely postponed had it not been for the cooperation of the ex-Confederates of Jackson and the adjoining counties with Governor Crittenden.)

The claim that this massacre lessened Confederate activity in Northeast Missouri is false. Taking out of consideration the fact that about this time Colonel Porter succeeded in drawing out his last available man, there was no appreciable difference. The only effect of the deed, besides outraging the conscience of civilization, was to intensify political hate on both sides.

When the regis of the militia lost its virtue Strachan fled to Old Mexico. Tiring of that country and not daring to return to Missouri, he went to New Orleans, where, less than a year after the end of the war, he died of a horrible disease, friendless and alone.

When but few Democrats in Missouri were allowed to vote, McNeil was elected sheriff of St. Louis. Preceding the election held April 2, 1889, he was nominated for auditor. The only mention of his name in the canvass by the leading organ of his party was this, a few days before the election: "The Democratic organs are very much disgusted over the falsely reported introduction of 'war issues' by Colonel Butler, but just watch how they wave the bloody shirt at John McNeil because of a trifling event at Palmyra during the war." McNeil's ticket was generally successful by majorities ranging from 1,186 to 6,142, but he was defeated by 4,351 votes. About ten years before this date he was nominated for United States Marshal but the Senate refused to confirm him.

McNeil was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, February 4, 1813. He died on the afternoon of Monday, June 8, 1891, in Post Office Station E, 1113 South Jefferson Avenue, where he had been superintendent. He was sitting in a chair dead, before it was known that he was ill. The Globe Democrat mentioned the fact in its local columns and gave the principal eventsl of his life, but spoke not a word editorially. The notice said that President Garfield nominated him for Indian Inspector and that Senator Armstrong. of Missouri, was the only Democrat voting for conformation. This is a mistake. Shields succeeded Armstrong and Vest succeeded Shields before the Inauguration of Garfield.

The gifted but eccentric P. Donan, while conducting the Lexington Caucasian, published in October of each year in burning words the details of the tragedy, with the statement that he should publish it annually while John McNeil lived. In 1870 McNeil made an effort to gain some favor with the people by entering the campaign on behalf of the liberal and against the proscriptive wing of his party, but it was useless. The verdict stood.

CHAPTER XXVI

LAST DAYS IN NORTH MISSOURI

After the capture of Palmyra Colonel Porter marched northward into Lewis County not far from Nelsonville. The next morning, going toward Newark, he was joined by a good company under Captain Ralph Smith, of Lewis County, making his force about four hundred. He visited his home and went into camp at night near Whaley's Mill. Before pitching camp he prepared a trap for a detachment of the Eleventh Regiment Missouri Militia which, instead of falling into it, likewise arranged an ambuscade for the rebels. Both troops camped for the night half a mile apart, neither dreaming the proximity of the other. The next day the movements of McNeil were ascertained and Colonel Porter made arrangement for an immediate retreat, division of his force and subsequent concentration. He had hoped to stay in the vicinity twenty-four hours longer to receive much needed supplies, especially ammunition, already on their way from Edina and Canton. He had gotten a good supply of muskets, shotguns, rifles and revolvers at Palmyra, but no ammunition, "and his powder and lead were about exhausted. New arrangements had to be made and the time was short, but Porter was always ready for any emergency. The camp had scarcely been. half emptied before :McNeil came in closely following the pickets.

A few shots, with a trifling loss on either side, and the rapid retreat began and ended according to direction. That night near Judge Bragg's home, in the northeast corner of Shelby County, Henry Latimer and John Holmes were captured and by order of McNeil were shot at sunrise. McNeil also ordered Whaley's Mill to be burned, saying: "That mill has ground its last grist for the rebel commissary department."

The Palmyra Courier, referring to the burning of "that notorious rendezvous," said: Such measures look severe, but it is only by severe means that these wretches can be driven from the country." Colonel Porter had now given his last battle in North Missouri. For the next six weeks his whole time and energy were spent in getting twelve hundred men through to the

Confederate lines, the last installment of about five thousand sent through during his eventful campaign. There were some scouting and skirmishes but they were, like all his hard fighting and marching had been, only aids to his great purpose.

On the 16th of September, near Paris, Captain McDonald captured Colonel J. T. K. Hayward of the Enrolled Missouri Militia under circumstances deeply mortifying to the latter. On his way from Hannibal to Macon City he was riding with three men a mile and a half in advance of his regiment, and stopped at a farm house near the road for dinner. Seeing a small force of mounted men passing by and mistaking them for expected reinforcements from New London, he sent his orderly to tell them that he wished to see them. The Palmyra Courier, describing it, says: The sergeant obeyed and informed the passers-by that Colonel Hayward wishes to speak with them. 'Ah, the colonel wishes to see us, does he?' So the colonel came out and saw more than he bargained for-a band of bushwhackers- and himself a. prisoner I The rebs coolly possessed themselves of the colonel's horse and brace of pistols and, .after administering the usual oath, released him."

The St. Joseph Journal of the 21st made this comment: "For a colonel accompanied by three men to stop for dinner in the heart of the enemy's country, and then instruct his sergeant to hail them-apprise them of his whereabouts-is strategy extraordinary-a strategic maneuver that would put to shame any of those which Orpheus O. Kerr so graphically describes of the celebrated Mackerel Brigade."

Few men could have accomplished what Colonel Porter did in September and October, 1862. Heretofore wherever he went he evaded or fought a force .superior in equipment and nearly always superior in numbers. The foe was everywhere active and relentless. Only the touch of the master hand could solve the problems of the enrollment of every available man, of clearing the way for the escape of those who elected to go direct to the seat of war, of arming, equipping and subsisting the dare-devils who preferred to follow him, of maintaining and guarding them with great success against the usual fortunes of war and of finally placing them under the unfurled Confederate banner. But now the difficulties greatly increased. To still the sentiment created by· the execution of prisoners at Kirksville, Macon City, Palmyra and elsewhere, it must be shown that their effect made peace and quiet in that quarter of the State. Therefore: greater numbers, greater vigilance, greater fury, for the suppression of the pestiferous rebels.

To forward the main purpose, the proposition of surrendering some of the companies was considered. It was thought that if a few companies surrendered under the lead of officers

capable of managing the job skillfully, the way might be made easier for the crossing of the Missouri River. The difficulty was to get the men to agree to the scheme. Only enough of two companies consented to make the plan a partial success. Captain Gabriel S. Kendrick, a good soldier and competent officer volunteered. Negotiations with McNeil were begun the latter part of September or the first of October, and the Captain and all of his men that were willing to take the risk, surrendered. McNeil's report to Merrill states that this "captain of a guerrilla company under Porter" surrendered "nearly every man in his command"-twenty-seven men, sixteen horses and saddles and as many guns and pistols. McNeil's reported is dated

October 11; how many days elapsed between the surrender and the sending of the report cannot now be ascertained most probably eight or ten. Kendrick had one of the largest

companies under Porter at Kirksville, and his deceiving McNeil in accounting for the remainder was in pursuance of the plan agreed upon. Kendrick magnified many times the losses sustained by Porter and Franklin, and represented to McNeil that the numbers reported to be operating with Porter were greatly over-estimated; that there was a division of sentiment among the men-Porter and some of the officers wishing to continue the campaign of bushwhacking in North Missouri while the majority of the men much preferred to join the main army at once; that in consequence of the few boats left on the river being so well guarded there was little hope of crossing the Missouri; that discontent was growing, and that he and his men decided to risk a surrender for the sake of an exchange.

A few other detachments were surrendered and generally these movements were successful in getting through by exchange and by some improvement of conditions on the Missouri River. comrade R. K. Phillips was elected captain and Tod Powell first lieutenant of a new company which expected to cross the Missouri without much difficulty or delay. Finding the situation not so promising, most of the members voted to surrender in the event of a reasonable chance for a speedy exchange. Comrade Phillips communicated with the Federal authorities at Mexico and arranged the matter satisfactorily; but he had no confidence at that time in the word of a ::Missouri Federal so, turning the execution of the plan over to Lieutenant Powell, he, with Joe Inlow and Sam :Murray went south by way of Kentucky. Previous to this, Phillips had been collecting scattered detachments, awaiting notice to meet on the Missouri River, and had been in the unsuccessful effort to cross with twelve hundred. In scouting for this purpose, while waiting for breakfast at a farmhouse six militiamen came along the road. The rebels numbered only seven--evenly enough matched to have a rattling time-but the six were easily captured. They were paroled and only one of them violated

its terms. About the same time Dick Underwood, Al Purvis and a man named Kelso were captured by Colonel Smart's regiment of militia and shot.

The scouting party of seven separated with the understanding to meet the following Monday night at Joel Pierce's, on Spencer Creek, Spencer and Sutton going to Pike County, Dan Ely and Press Yeager going to Salt River, Thomas J. Pettitt, Jim Ely and R. K. Phillips to Lick Creek. When Spencer and Sutton reached the rendezvous they ran into a detachment of Federals. Sutton was a dead shot, but he had just traded his horse for a young and untried one and when he pulled his gun the horse reared and wheeled around. Before he could recover and fire he was shot to death. He lived only long enough to tell the Federals that our men would be on the scene in a few minutes and that they had better get away in a hurry.

They took his advice. When the others came up Sutton was dead. Sutton was a mere boy but he had a character that made him respected. and popular; handsome, well educated, carefully reared by pious parents, brave, untiring unselfish. He was the grandson of the Rev. Jesse Sutton, a patriarch of the Methodist Church in Northeast Missouri, whom I well knew, whose character was redolent of everything good and noble and who was a fit successor to another old Methodist patriarch, the Rev. Andrew Monroe-Father Monroe-as known far and near from fifty to eighty years ago.

An arrangement had been made to cross twelve hundred men over the Missouri River at Portland, Callaway County, on the 16th of October, and Moore's Mill was designated the rendezvous. Through some misunderstanding a thousand men were two or three hours late. A detachment of Colonel Krekel's regiment reached Portland in the interval between the passage of about two hundred men and the arrival of the main body. The small detachment of Confederates on the north side of the river were outnumbered five to one and could make but little resistance.. But for this mistake the whole body could have crossed with trifling loss. As it was the thousand men went through singly and in small squads, and by various routes, the greater part by crossing the Missouri River, but many by way of Kentucky and Virginia. Colonel Porter sometime afterwards crossed the river in a skiff at Providence, Boone County, and reached the army in Arkansas with thirty-five men, having many skirmishes on the way and losing some of his best men.

The men who crossed on the Emilie at Portland were commanded by Captains Ely and Craig. They were ambushed by the Federals two days later at California House, Pulaski County, and extricated themselves without much loss, inflicting very slight loss upon the hidden enemy. The report of Colonel Sigel estimates our loss at twenty killed and about the same number wounded. It further says that the rebels "were commanded by Captain Ely, Captain Brooks and two captains both with the name of Creggs." In Captain D. W. Craig's company the first lieutenant was G. R. Brooks and the second lieutenant, W. W. Craig. Its first muster roll  afrer being assigned to the Ninth Missouri Infantry, Confederate Army, dated November 9, 1862, makes no mention of casualties in the engagement with Sigel's men. The loss of Ely's company is unknown, but was doubtless slight. The Federals frequently counted Confederate losses through magnifying glasses.

The report of Major-General Hindman to Adjutant General Cooper, dated Richmond, June 29, 1863, says: "In the enrollment and organization of troops from Missouri, Brigadier-Generals Parsons and McBride; Colonels Clark, Payne, Jackman, Thompson, Porter, McDonald and Shelby; Lieutenant-Colonels Caldwell, Lewis and Johnson; Majors Murray, Musser and Pinchall, and Captains Standish, Buchanan, Cravens, Perry, Quantrell and Harrison were especially zealous and useful. In estimating the value of their labors and of the many other devoted men who assisted them, it is to be considered that in order to bring out recruits from their State it was necessary to go within the enemy lines, taking the risks of detection and punishment as spies, secretly collecting the men in squads and companies, arming, equipping and subsisting them by stealth and then moving them rapidly southward through a country swarming with Federal soldiers and an organized militia, and whose population could only give assistance at the hazard of confiscation of property and even death itself. That they succeeded at all under such circumstances is attributable to a courage and fidelity unsurpassed in the history of the war. That they did succeed beyond all expectation is shown by the twelve fine regiments and those batteries of Missouri troops now serving in the Trans-Mississippi Department."

The enumeration of General Hindman does not include all the Missouri recruits of the summer of 1862. Many joined Missouri regiments operating in Tennessee and many joined Virginia and Kentucky troops. Ben Loan, chairman of a delegation representing the counties of the Seventh Congressional District, in relation to the condition of affairs in Missouri, in a  communication to President Lincoln, October, 1863, says-War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume 53, page 581-"During General Halleck's absence at Corinth and elsewhere, General Schofield, as district commander and as major-general of the Missouri State Militia, had unlimited control and the direction of military affairs in Missouri. In the summer of 1862 he permitted the State to be overrun by guerrillas. Porter, in the northeast, was allowed to raise more than five thousand armed men, who ravaged that part of the State for a long time, killing great numbers of Union men and stealing large quantities of property."

CHAPTER XXVII

HIS LAST BATTLE

"At the command a thousand warriors sprang to their feet and with one wild Missouri yell burst upon the foe; officers mixed with men in the mad melee and fight side by side; some storm the fort at the headlong charge, others gain the houses from which the Federals had just been driven, and keep up the fight, while some push on after the flying foe. The storm increases and the combatants get closer and closer.

"I heard the cannon's shivering crash

As when the whirlwind rends the ash;

I heard the musket's deadly clang,

& if a thousand anvils rang!"

So read the report of that enthusiastic, dashing cavalryman, General Joe Shelby, of the capture of Hartville, Wright County, Sunday, January 11, 1863. General Marmaduke, commanding, said officially: "January 10 a junction was made with Porter, near Marshfield, who had captured the militia (some fifty) and destroyed the forts at Hartville and had also burned the fortification~ at Hazlewood. On the night of the 10th the column was put in motion toward Hartville. A little before daylight the advance encountered a Federal force coming from Houston,

via Hartville to Springfield, and hearing that a strong cavalry force was in my rear I deemed it best not to put myself in battle between the two forces, but to turn the force in my front and fight them after I had secured, in case of defeat, a safe line of retreat. This I did by making a detour seven miles, and fought the enemy (two thousand five hundred Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri troops) at Hartville. The Federal position was a very strong one and the battle was hotly contested for several hours till the enemy gave way and retreated rapidly and in disorder, leaving their dead and wounded, many arms, ammunition and clothing on the field and in my possession. I have established a hospital, leaving surgeons and attendants sufficient to take care of the dead and wounded, Confederate and Federal. Here fell the chivalrous McDonald, Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer and Major Kirtley, noble men and gallant officers, and other officers and men equally brave and true. Here, too, was seriously wounded Colonel J. C. Porter, a brave and skillful officer. He was shot from his horse at the head of his troops."

Colonel Porter's report of the movements culminating in the capture of Hartville, dated. February 3, is here given. The writer of the report is unknown. The style is not Colonel Porter's; his was direct, forceful and concise. He was physically unable to write a report, being so seriously wounded that he died fifteen days later.

"SIR: In obedience to your order I, on the 2d day of January, 1863, detached from my command (then encamped at Pocahontas, Randolph County, Arkansas) the effective men of my command, numbering in the aggregate eight hundred and twenty-five men, and proceeded westward with said detachment through the counties of Lawrence and Fulton, in the State of Arkansas. Arriving at or near the northwestern corner of Fulton County I learned of a considerable force of Federals stationed at Houston, in Texas County, Missouri. I therefore continued my march farther to the west, going farther west than I had anticipated. Arriving at a point nearly due south of the town of Hartville, in the county of Wright, State of Missouri, I changed my course northward and in the direction of said town (Hartville). However, before changing my course to the north on account of the roughness of the roads and the impossibility of having my horses shod, I was compelled to order about one hundred and twenty-five of my men back to camp, as being unable to proceed farther for want of shoes on their horses, leaving my detachment only seven hundred strong. No incident of importance occurred worthy of note up to this time, save that my men 50 well behaved that I enabled to surprise all citizens along the road and enabled me to capture some of the worst jayhawkers that infested the country.

"The men of my command seemed well satisfied and all things went well, notwithstanding the hardships all were compelled to undergo on account of shortness of provisions and clothing.

"On the morning of the 9th of January, 1863, we neared the town of Hartville, Wright County, Missouri, at which point I learned that a company of the enrolled militia of Missouri was stationed. Putting my command in order, I detached a company as advance guard, ordering them to reconnoitre, to ascertain the position and, as far as possible, the strength of the enemy. Following my advance I found upon approaching the town that the enemy, forty strong, had surrendered to my advance without firing a gun. Before approaching the town, however, I ordered the detachment of Colonel Burbridge's regiment, under command of Lieutenant Colonel John M. Wimer, to support Captain Brown's battery; the rest of my command, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and Colonel Jeffers, marching under my immediate command. Upon the surrender of the town, we took thirty-five prisoners (militia) and two United States soldiers and some citizens, and destroyed the fortifications with two hundred stand of arms, finding no commissary or quartermaster's stores or trains.

"Remaining in Hartville until 8 p. m. of the 9th of January, and receiving no orders from you as I had anticipated, I concluded to march upon Lebanon by way of Hazelwood, and immediately dispatched a messenger informing you of my plans.

".At 8 p. m. of the 9th of January, I moved my command upon the road to Marshfield some six miles and bivouacked till sunrise on the morning of the 10th of January, when I ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer to proceed with his command to the town of Hazelwood and, finding the place evacuated by the enemy, forthwith burned the blockhouse and rejoined my command some two hours after I had met the balance of my command; joined yours about four miles from the town of Marshfield.

".At 3 o'clock p. m. my command was ordered back three miles on the road to Hartville to encamp. .At 11 p. m. I received orders to proceed with my command to Hartville, at which hour I moved my command in the direction of said town, sending in advance the detachment of Colonel Burbridge's regiment under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer, to take possession of and operate the mill at Hartville, following with the rest of my command to wit, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, Colonel Jeffers and Captain Brown's two-gun battery.

"The advance, under Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer, when within five miles of the town of Hartville (at 3 a. m., 11th of January), were fired upon by Federal pickets, upon which Colonel Wimer fell back a short distance, dismounted his command and formed in line of battle, immediately after which a scout of Federal cavalry advanced upon Colonel Wimer's command. .Arriving very near they were fired upon by Colonel Wimer's command, killing two, and killing and wounding several horses.

''Upon receiving information of the enemy in front, I ordered Colonel Wimer to skirmish with the enemy and to fall back gradually upon my command, at the same time ordering Captain Brown's guns in position in the center, with Colonel Campbell on the right and Colonel Jeffers on the left; also dispatching a courier to you. I continued my advance as skirmishers until daylight and your arrival, the enemy during the time shelling to the right and left of my line, slightly wounding one of my men in the leg. Whilst the advance, under Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer, were falling back upon my line, the sharpshooters of Colonel Campbell, by mistake fired upon and wounded two of Lieutenant Colonel Wimer's command.

"At '[ a. m. (11th January), I was ordered to fall back and follow your command which I did, however, keeping my battery (Captain Brown) in position for a time, when I perceived Federal cavalry advance up the road and ordered Captain Brown to open on them; upon which Captain Brown fired two rounds dispersing them but doing no further damage. Captain Brown then limbered up his guns and fell back with the other command. After marching, per order, until about 1 p. m., we again neared the town of Hartville. I was then ordered to dismount my command and place Captain Brown's battery in position on the left. Before having completed or carried out the last order, I received information that the enemy were in full retreat from the town of Hartville, and at the same time an order to remount my command and pursue the enemy.

On arriving at the courthouse with the head of my column, I found the enemy formed in the brush just above the town, within fifty yards of my command. Immediately upon perceiving the enemy in position, I ordered my men to dismount; but the enemy poured upon us such a heavy volley of musketry that my command was compelled to fall back somewhat in disorder, I being at the same time wounded in the leg and hand. I ordered my adjutant to report the fact to you. Having, at the same time that I ordered my men to dismount, ordered Captain Brown's battery to take position near the head of my column; after Captain Brown took position as ordered, he was compelled for want of ammunition (his ammunition being carried off by his horses stampeding) and a galling fire of the enemy, to retire, leaving his pieces on the field, which were afterwards brought off by a part of Colonel Greene's and Burbridge's men. Lieutenant-Colonel Wimer was shot dead whilst leading the detachment of Colonel Burbridge's regiment. Colonel Jeffers, without fear, led his men through the fight. The detachment of Colonel Greene's regiment was gallantly led by Lieutenant-Colonel I,. C. Campbell, assisted by Major L. A. Campbell. I would do great injustice did I make distinction among my officers

present on that occasion, all having displayed great gallantry. My men, I must say, acquitted themselves with honor, almost without exception. Our loss foots up six killed and thirty-eight

wounded. I would here mention that Captain George R. McMahan and fifty of Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell's men destroyed the blockhouse and stockade at Dallas, the enemy fleeing before him.

"On our, return march from Missouri my men and officers displayed great energy in undergoing the fatigues and privations necessary. Arrived at Camp Salado, January 20, 1863.

Respectfully,

Jo. C. PORTER,

Colonel Commanding Porter's Brigade.

GENERAL MARMADUKE.

I have heard the order sending Colonel Porter into the death trap at Hartville criticized by Missouri Confederate officers, but wherever the responsibility may have been Colonel Porter rapidly placed his command in a better position to withstand greatly superior numbers before he was severely wounded, and his men after the first severe loss, stood bravely the unequal contest. In his report Colonel Porter modestly refers to this part of the engagement and places no blame anywhere. Here, as everywhere, when acting in a subordinate capacity he implicitly obeyed orders.

Evans's Confederate Military History, volume IX, page 114, thus describes the ending of the battle: "Shelby, in the rear, heard the uproar and with intuitive knowledge divined the cause. Without waiting for orders he rushed his command forward, crossed the stream at the nearest point and dismounting his men, charged through an open field to gain possession of the fence and strike the enemy in the flank. But the Federals held the fence with terrible tenacity and twice his brigade was beaten back. The third time he accomplished his purpose, drove the enemy before him and saved Porter's brigade and the day. But the loss was fearful. Colonel John M. Wimer and Colonel Emmett MacDonald were killed and many field and company officers. Colonel Joseph C. Porter was shot from his horse and seriously wounded at the head of his troops.

Shelby mentioned of his command Major George R. Kirtley and Captain C. M. Turpin, of the First, killed; Captain Dupuy, of the Second, lost a leg; and Captain Washington McDaniel, of Elliott's Scouts, fell with a bullet through his breast just as the enemy retreated. Lieutenant Royster was left on the field badly wounded; Captains Crocker, Burkholder, Jarrett and Webb, of the Second, were also severely wounded; Captain James M. Garrett fell in the front of the fight. Captains Thompson and Langhorn and Lieutenants Elliott, Haney, Graves, Huff, Williams, Bullard and Buckley were also severely wounded. Shelby was hard hit on the head and his life was saved by the bullet glancing on a gold badge he wore on his hat.

"That night, January 11th, the dead were buried by starlight and the next morning the command moved slowly and sorrowfully southward. Colonel John M. Wimer and Colonel Emmett MacDonald were citizens of St. Louis. Colonel Wimer had been mayor of the city and was universally respected. Colonel MacDonald was born and reared there and, though a much younger man than Colonel Wimer, was almost as well known and as highly respected. The bodies of both were taken to the city by their friends for burial But the provost-marshal there, Franklin A. Dick, refused to allow them decent and Christian burial, and had their bodies taken from the houses of their friends at night and buried in unknown and unmarked graves in the common potters' field.

"The retreat to Arkansas was a severe one. It was now in the middle of January and the weather suddenly became very cold. The change was ushered in, by a snow which lasted ten hours. The snow covered the earth to the depth of nearly two feet and, freezing on top, made marching difficult and dangerous to men and horses. Many of the men were poorly clad and suffered greatly, some of them having their hands and feet frozen." 

Captain Emmett MacDonald-the title by which we knew him when we joined Price's army-was an officer in the camp of instruction at Camp Jackson. Of all the men captured there he refused to be paroled, claiming that the organization of which he was a member was created by a law of the State, that when captured it was engaged in duties ordered by the State in conformity with the State law; that the capturing forces had no legal status, not being authorized by any State or Federal law. His contention ,vas upheld by the courts and he was released from custody. Lieutenants Guibor and Barlow, on the strength of this decision, considered their paroles illegal and immediately joined Price's army and the former was assigned to the command of the battery attached to Parsons' Division. In the cartel between Generals Fremont and Price, the latter however protesting that the capture of Camp Jackson was done by a force not recognized by law, State or Federal, First Lieutenant Henry Guibor, of the Missouri Light Battery, was exchanged for First Lieutenant J. Skillman, of the First Illinois Cavalry, and Second Lieutenant W. P.· Barlow, of the Missouri Light Battery, was exchanged for Second Lieutenant H. Fetter, of the Fourteenth Missouri. MacDonald was given the command of a company of cavalry.

At the battle of Carthage, in the temporary confusion due to the separation of the unarmed cavalrymen to be sent to the rear preparatory to the cavalry attack upon the enemy's flank,

Captain MacDonald took his company out on the high prairie in full view of every man in each contending army and in the midst of the flying shell and canister made it perform all the best maneuvers of the tactics. It was a beautiful sight and very inspiring to us who there got our first view of real war. He was an ideal soldier, brave, reliant, energetic, attentive to detail, exacting in duty yet courteous and gentle, brilliant in mental grasp, proficient in books, delicate in sense of honor, unassuming, modest. Colonel Porter's vigorous constitution was unequal to the effect of his severe wounds and the consequent exposure to the hardships of a long march in winter. He died in camp near Batesville, Arkansas, February 18, 1863.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LETTERS FROM COLONEL PORTER'S FAMILY

PALMYRA, Mo.} July 128, 1908.

My father, Joseph Chrisman Porter, was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky, September 12, 1819. His mother's name was Rebecca Chrisman. His parents moved to Marion County, Missouri, in 1828, and there he was married about 1844, to Miss Mary Ann E. Marshall. several years later he moved to Knox County where he lived until 1857 when he moved to Lewis County, five miles east of Newark. We have no picture of him; the only one we ever had was destroyed when our home was burned by the soldiers during the war. I do not know of any special circumstance that led to his joining the army. He was a man of strong convictions and, from the first, sympathized with the South. He had for neighbors a number of Northern men who made things very unpleasant for him in many ways. I think this perhaps hastened his decision to join the army, but cannot say how. I do not know the names of the officers under him in 1862. You can probably get them with any other information in regard to him from my uncle, Mr. William M. Glasscock,

Cherrydell, Missouri.

I knew Colonel McCullough. He has a sister living, Mrs. James Moore, La Belle, Lewis County. My uncle's name was James William Porter, he was a Captain and then a major. The Palmyra Courier was published by Mr. Joseph R. Winchell. About 1863 he moved it to Hannibal and continued the publication there. I do not know when it was established or when it was discontinued. Mr. Winchell is collector of customs at the port of New Haven, Connecticut.

Very sincerely,

MRS. O. M. WHITE.

In reply to further inquiries Mrs. White wrote again,

August 10:

My father and Uncle James went south with Colonel Martin E. Green's regiment in time to join General Price in the attack on Lexington, September, 1861, where Mulligan's brigade was captured. Colonel Green raised his regiment in Lewis and the neighboring counties and my father was lieutenant-colonel. Early in the Spring of 1862 my father came home to raise recruits for the Southern army. He was colonel of the regiment and Uncle James was captain of a company of boys from Marion and Lewis Counties. This company was called "the yearlings" on account of the youthfulness of its members.

The Union soldiers came to our home many times to arrest my father, usually in the day time, but several times at night. At one of these times they burst the door open before we could get out of bed to answer them. They never found anyone there except women and children, though Uncle James, at several different times, camped near the house for several days at a time and we carried provisions to him.

On the night of March 2, 1862, a company of Glover's men came to our home and were quartered there and at Uncle James's house until the 5th. They had full possession of Uncle James' house and left us only one room of our home. They took all our provisions; even burned meat in the stove and took everything in the house they wanted.

Among other things, they found a pair of white yarn socks which I had made with a Confederate flag knitted into each sock. I was then about sixteen years old. They had a number of citizen prisoners confined under guard in our kitchen.

I was acquainted with some of these men and one evening they asked me to sing some secession songs. I refused until the soldiers joined in the request when I sang several Southern songs. The officer in command ordered the guard not to let me out that night, but the guard was changed before I tried to leave the room and, for some reason, the new guard did not detain me. My uncle's house was robbed just as ours was and left in a terrible condition. My mother was taken prisoner in 1862 by Colonel Lipscomb and was kept one night at the home of Mr. Seeber, one of our Union neighbors, where Lipscomb was quartered for the night. She was arrested as she was passing the house. The children, not knowing what had become of her, remained alone all night. Uncle James's two children were there with my six brothers and sisters, the oldest was not yet fourteen and the youngest less than two years old. Colonel

Lipscomb abused my mother, calling her among other names, a "she wolf." She was kept in a room guarded by soldiers, and though she was well acquainted with the women at the

house, not one of them went near her. About the burning of our home, I cannot give you any very definite information. I was away at school. I am not certain what year it was but think it was in the Fall of 1863 or 1864. Nobody was at home except my mother and the younger children. My oldest brother was out hunting, and my mother had with her, her five children, two of Uncle James's and several of Uncle Dr. Marshall's small children. They were all in bed asleep except my mother, who frequently did not retire before midnight. I do not know anything

about how the house was fired, but the fire started on the outside and on the side nearest to Mr. Seeber's where the Union soldiers were quartered for the night. My mother was not able to save anything except the children. All of our near neighbors were Union men and not one of them came to offer aid. The soldiers at Mr. Seeber's watched the fire from its very start. The children were sleeping upstairs and as several of them were quite young-from two to six years old-it was very hard for my mother to get them all out and take care of them in the confusion. The two colored girls who were staying with her were too small to be of any help at such a time. My oldest sister carried out a few pieces of clothing, but nothing of any importance. Aside from these they did not save any clothing except the nightclothes they had on. Everyone has always thought that the soldiers set fire to our house.

In regard to Mr. Lipscomb, I have always understood that my father paroled him at the capture of Palmyra. I feel mre my father did not '~forget" it, and so far as I have heard, Lipscomb never violated his parole.

Very respectfully,

MRS. O. M. WHITE.

Colonel Porter's sister who signs herself Mary Love Porter Myers, "all that is living," writes from Newark, Missouri:

We came to Missouri in the Fall of 1829. My brother, Joseph Chrisman Porter, attended Marion College, at Philadelphia, Marion County. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was a prosperous farmer and cattle trader, but no slave holder. He married Mary Ann Marshall, of Marion County, who died at DeWitt, Arkansas, about two years after the war closed. We have no picture of him. He visited his home several times during the year 1862. You did not mention Captain Whaley was one of the officers under him.

My brother, Major James William Porter, was born in 1827. He attended his home schools and was a member of the

(Captain Marlon Whaley's company was enlisted after my connection with the regiment ceased.)

Presbyterian Church. He married in 1853, Columbia Marshall, who died in DeWitt, Arkansas, within a year after the death of her sister, Mary Ann. He and his brother, Joseph, farmed together. He also visited his home several times in 1862. We have no better picture of him than the one you have. Yes, we lived here during the war; still living on the same farm, one-fourth mile east of Newark. My father, James Porter, was living three miles east o£ Newark. It was a sad and gloomy time in this vicinity. Colonel Frisby H. McCullough left a wife and three

children, two daughters and a son, the latter now living at Edina. Dr. John L. Taylor was well known in Newark and was killed here a year or two after the war by Tom Everman.

We knew Willis Baker, one of the ten who were shot by McNeil at Palmyra. It was true that he shot and killed Ezekial Pratt.

Colonel Porter's son, Joseph I. Porter, Stuttgart, Arkansas, writes, October 21, 1908: I know but very little about the war and have been trying to forget what I do know. I hope never to read a history o£ it. Mr. J. M. Shipp, a nephew of Colonel Porter, of Bowling Green, Missouri, but residing temporarily at Newport, Arkansas, writes: A. B. Glasscock, .of Vandalia, Audrain

County, and William M. Glasscock, of Emden, Shelby County, are stepbrothers of Colonel Joseph C. Porter, and they both served with him from the beginning to the end o£

(Dr. Taylor was surgeon of Colonel Glover's regiment. While In camp at Ironton he wrote a letter which was published In the Missouri Democrat, denouncing the outrages of Colonel Porter In Northeast Missouri and suggesting the surest method of stopping them was the confiscation of the property of the colonel, his father, his brother and his relatives, Colonel

Bradshaw, Merritt Shlpp and William Kendrick, all being holders of considerable property. Dr. Taylor was a man of many good traits. He was a Union man from patriotic and disinterested motives and always had the courage of his convictions. But, unfortunately, he possessed an overhearing temper and a quarrelsome disposition. It Is said that he killed two men before the war, and that he was about to kill Everman, but the latter was too quick for him.)

the war. Both married my sisters. J. Russell Myers, brother-in-law of Colonel .Joe and Major Jim Porter, and his wife are living at Newark, Knox County. Mrs. Andrew B. Glasscock, of Vandalia, writes: My mother was seven years old when my grandfather, James Porter, came to Missouri, and she, I think, was next to Uncle Joe, who was the oldest of the family. Uncles Joe and Jim went to California in 1849 ; came back; married sisters; went in the stock business together and prospered until the war camp. Uncle Joe had eight children, but only the two oldest are now living-a daughter and a son. Uncle Jim had four children; only one--a successful physician of Memphis, Tennessee-- is now living. After the war Uncle Jim returned home penniless. He and Uncle Joe's oldest son went to Arkansas and in the stock business prospered greatly. I send you Uncle Jim's picture. It was taken in the brush and you can see it is a very poor one. My husband was a member of Captain Kendrick's company of Uncle Joe's regiment and his brother, William, was a member of Uncle Jim's company and was  Quartermaster of the regiment in Northeast Missouri.

Colonel Porter some time after the capture of Palmyra. started with twelve hundred men to the Missouri River, having made arrangements with a steamboat captain to cross. One hundred and fifty crossed. He went back to hurry up the remainder, but before he could get to the river the Federals rushed in and beat him off. So he remained on this side until he got all his men through in squads, which were assigned to the most convenient commands. When he got through he had only thirty-five men with him. It was his intention to go to Richmond and try to get his men assigned to him, but G€neral Hindman, who was commanding the Trans-Mississippi Department, wanted him to take command

(After the death of Captain Marks at Florida. July 22.)

of a brigade and go on the Hartville expedition, where he was mortally wounded. Uncle Jim went into Colonel Burbridge's regiment and was afterwards promoted to major. Mr. Glasscock remembers the names of only two survivors of Captain Jim Porter's company, his brother, William, and Samuel Smoot, Bethel, Shelby County. The Glasscocks are from Virginia. My grandfather Porter was married three times.

Mrs. James W. Porter, who conducts her husband's business at DeWitt, Arkansas, writes: "He came to Arkansas in 1866. He and I were married in 1871. He died .July 15, 1898. After the death of Colonel Joseph C. Porter he was assigned to Colonel Burbridge's regiment as major and was afterwards promoted to lieutenant-colonel. I should like to know more of his history in the army as my chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy wish me to give them what they are pleased to call a 'Porter Day."

CHAPTER XXIX

VIOLATION OF PAROLES

I have no comment to make for the course of those members of the Missouri Militia captured by Confederates, who voluntarily gave their parole not to take up arms until exchanged in order to secure release, and then violated the terms of such parole. Many, or all, may have conscientiously believed in the contentions of the rabid press that rebellion was a crime sufficient to void all contracts with its supporters; that the Confederates in Missouri were only guerrillas or bushwhackers, without military or moral right to give a parole, and that faith was not to be kept with men whom the press and the departmental commanders said were only "to be exterminated." Such' was the temper of the times that many good men believed their paramount d.uty was to subordinate everything to the pleasure of the Government, and the pleasure of the Government was too often interpreted to them by men whose highest conception of patriotism was personal or party plunder.

My knowledge of the conditions during the war period in ::Missouri was somewhat extensive and I have in the collection of material for this narrative secured as many additional details as time and opportunity permitted. It is my firm belief that no Missouri Confederate ever violated his parole. A great many Southern men in Missouri violated the oath of allegiance which they were forced to take or took to escape imprisonment, confiscation of property and death. Whatever of crime or dishonor there was in such proceeding let it be recorded against them and against the cause they stood for. Not one of them believed it to be a crime; a great many Union men believed it to be no crime. The principle has always obtained in this country that a citizen can change his allegiance at will.

At the December term, 1866, of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Ex-parte Garland, a member of the Confederate Congress, Mr. ,Justice Field delivered the opinion on the constitutionality of the act of .Congress prescribing an oath for attorneys before the Courts of the United States. A short extract of this opinion is given as pertinent to the status of oaths of allegiance. "The oath prescribed by the act is as follows,"-the first, second, third and fourth clauses are omitted-Hand fifth. That he will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. This last clause is promissory only, and requires no consideration," and only the· first four clauses are considered in the opinion. In this opinion and also in the opinion against the constitutionality of the Missouri Test Oath, in the case of Cummings vs. The State of Missouri, ,Justices Wayne, Nelson, Grier, Clifford and Field concurred. Chief ,Justice Chase, and ,Justices Swayne, :Miller and Davis dissented. Subsequently the Chief Justice expressed his concurrence in the opinion of the majority; and the decision was followed by the entire court, with the exception of Mr. ,Justice Bradley, in the case of Pierce vs. Carskadon, decided at the December term, 187216 Wallace, 234.

The "reign of terror," considered so necessary in September, 1862, by General Curtis, commanding the Department of Missouri, to check the rebels, had been on for a year or more, and its agencies were the killing of citizens, the crowding of men for little or no cause into filthy and already overcrowded prisons, where often a sentry's bullet was the reward of an attempt to get a breath of fresh air; the compelling of prisoners to do hard or ignominious tasks; the levying of grievous burdens by assessments of money; the confiscation and destruction of property; the burning of homes, barns, crops and farm improvements; the killing of prisoners on false pretexts, and all the while the rabid press of the State was calling for "greater severity." General Schofield was a good officer and not a cruel man, but the following dispatches show how far he was influenced by the bloodthirsty press of the State:

St. Louis Mo., September 9, 1862.

Brig. Gen. Lewis Merrill, Warrenton, Mo. :

I want to select a prominent case to test the question whether a bushwhacker can be shot in a proper manner. I want to know what I can rely on.

J. M. Schofield,

Brigadier General.

Warrenton Mo., September 9, 1862.

Brigadier General Schofield:

All right. I will run him up for you.

Lewis Merrill,

Brigadier General.

St. Louis, Mo. September 9, 1862.

Brig. Gen. Lewis Merrill:

I think Poindexter had better be tried by military commission. I believe I can secure the execution of a sentence.

J. M. Schofield,

Brigadier General.

Warrenton, Mo., September 9, 1862.

Brigadier General Schofield:

I had intended to have him shot on Friday, but if you think the sentence will be executed he had better be tried.

Lewis Merrill,

Brigadier General.

Referring to the demands of the bloodthirsty element in Missouri, General Schofield, in writing to President Lincoln, August 28, 1863, said: "I have permitted those who have been in rebellion, and who voluntarily surrender themselves and their arms, to take the oath of allegiance and give bonds for their future good conduct, and release them upon condition that they reside in such portion of the State as I shall direct. For this I am most bitterly assailed by the radicals, who demand that every man who has been in rebellion or in any way aided shall be exterminated or driven from the State. There are thousands of such criminals, and no man can fail to see that such a course would light the flames of a war such as Missouri has never seen. Their leaders know, but it is necessary for their ascendency, and they scruple at nothing to accomplish that end." War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 22, part 2, page 483.

A summary of General Fremont's Order No. 10-War of the Rebellion, Series II, Vol. 1, page 282, is given:

HEADQUARTERS, WESTERN DEPARTMENT,

SAINT LOUIS, Mo., September 2, 1861.

Before the military commission, which convened at the Saint Louis Arsenal on the 5th instant, pursuant to Special Order, No. 118, current series, from these headquarters, the following prisoners were arraigned, viz: Phineas P. Johnson, William Shiitell, Jerome Nall, John Williams, James R. Arnold, Charles Lewis, John Deane, Doctor Steinhoner, W. W. Lynch, T. J. Sappington, James Thompson, Thomas Grigsby, John Crow, David E. Perryman, John W. Graves, Alfred Jones, William Durnham, C. H. Hodges, James Marr, G. S. Yertes.

Many of the prisoners above named were found without any charge whatever lodged against them; others had but  trivial charges, and being unable to procure witnesses in their

respective cases the commission deemed it expedient to have the same released, which was carried into effect after a rigid cross-examination and having the oath of allegiance duly

administered in each individual case.

The commission would respectfully report to the commanding major-general that they have found imprisoned in the arsenal a great many persons charged with being spies and traitors. These charges were not sustained by any evidence whatever. The persons taking them prisoners did in moat cases send no names of witnesses along. In others the names of witnesses were sent without their addresses and residences. Some were sent here prisoners because one Union man considered them dangerous.

The commission would respectfully suggest that orders be issued preventing persons from being arrested unless there is some strong circumstantial proof of facts of which your

commission can avail itself. It seemed to your commission,' even, and it is with deep regret that they are compelled to report such things to you, that in a few cases men were arrested as spies and traitors and sent here because they raised objections when their property was taken while they were absent in prison without any cause whatever.

The reflections contained in the report of the proceedings have occurred to the commanding general. He is surprised to find that in many of the cases no evidence whatever has been presented to the commission. He concurs in the opinion expressed relative to groundless charges against citizens, unwarrantable seizures of their persons and unjust depredations

upon their property. The attention of the commanders is again called to the full observance of the orders that have been issued from these headquarters concerning arrests.

By order of Major-General Fremont:

J. O. KELTON,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

"As Mr. McAfee was a sympathizer with the Confederate cause and had been an active and prominent secessionist, he was especially obnoxious to the Federals, who treated him

severely-worse than any of their other prisoners. General Hurlbut forced him to labor hard in the hot sun, engaged in digging 'sinks' or privies for the soldiers. A few days afterwards

he was taken from Macon to Palmyra and the general ordered him to be tied on the top of the cab of the engine to prevent the bushwhackers from firing at the engineer. The latter said he would not run the engine if Mr. McMee was mounted upon it in that way; the soldiers delayed executing their orders until the train was ready to start, and then signalled to the engineer to pull out, which he did." -History of Shelby County, page '719.

John McAfee was then the speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives. He was an educated and cultured gentleman. Early in September, 1861, Major Joseph A. Eppstein, commandant of the poet of Boonville, arrested six prominent citizens, W. E. Burr, H. N. Ells, J. W. Draffin, R. D. Perry, J. W. Harper and the Rev. H. M. Painter, pastor of the Presbyterian Church, and informed them that they as Southern sympathizers would be put on the breastworks in the attack about to be made by the Confederates. He granted their request to be allowed to communicate his purpose to the commander of the attacking party and in consequence the Confederates retired when they had sufficient force to make the capture easy. Mr. Painter was banished to the State of ::Massachusetts during the war and there he published a pamphlet giving horrible details of the cruelties he suffered in prison. It was printed in the office of the Boston Daily Courier and is entitled a "Brief Narrative of Incidents in the War in Missouri, and of the Personal Experience of One Who Has Suffered." I give a short extract, knowing it to be a sample of how they did things:

"The writer once heard the following colloquy between an enrolling officer and a citizen whom the officer had never seen nor heard of before:

"Officer. 'How shall I enroll you, sir?'

"Citizen. 'As a Union man; I am for the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is.'

"Officer. 'Damn such an answer. Such men are the damnedest rebels! I enroll you disloyal!'

"Citizen. 'I cannot help it then. Such are my sentiments. I am a peaceable farmer, who loves my whole country.'

"Officer. 'I cannot help that; you are a rebel.'

"That enrollment exposed the person to arrest and banishment, and his property to confiscation."

General Merrill reported to General Schofield the old story of Porter "demoralized and broken up," after a skirmish in Macon County. Note mention of the execution of "twenty-six prisoners who had taken the oath and given bond." Had McNeil written the report he would have said, "violated their parole."

HANNIBAL, Mo., August 9, 1862.

GENERAL: McNeil's column overtook Porter again near Stockton yesterday afternoon and whipped him again. The fight ended at dark. During the storm Porter managed to slip away.

Nothing definite of the loss on either side. Report says McNeil's loss eight wounded, one mortally; Porter's loss fifty killed and wounded and some prisoners. Porter is demoralized and, I think, broken up. McNeil found among his prisoners twenty-six who had taken the oath and given bonds. They were executed yesterday. Inspected Palmyra yesterday; found everything going to the devil; relieved Stearns and Pledge and sent them to Hannibal. Stearns was going off with a large amount of money belonging to soldiers which he will not account for, and I

have just put him in close confinement. Yesterday caught a man who tried to throw passenger train off the track. If it can be proved clearly on him will execute him formally tomorrow.

Will leave at two o'clock for Macon City. Please send up my telegraph men.

LEWIS MERRILL,

Brigadier General

GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

The Quincy, Illinois, Herald, of August 11, 1862, tells, on the authority of an officer of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, of the shooting of twenty-six rebel prisoners at Macon City for "breaking their paroles." It learns that twelve paroled prisoners at the same place will probably suffer a similar fate. "After the battle at Kirksville, seventeen prisoners were condemned to death, and shot by order of Colonel McNeil, for violation of their parole; they having been caught in arms after taking the oath of allegiance. Among the number was Lieutenant Colonel McCullough, second in command under Poindexter, who met his fate courageously, giving the order himself for the executioners to fire." Switzler's History of Missouri, page 415. Note the claim that breaking the oath of allegiance is a violation of parole. McCullough had never before been arrested, had never taken the oath of allegiance and had never been connected with Poindexter, who, by the way, was a good soldier and a man of the highest character. "Thursday, the next day after the battle, quite a number of 'oath-breakers,' as they were called, were tried by a Federal drumhead court-martial, convened by McNeil, in Kirksville, and fifteen of them were convicted of violation of their paroles, and sentenced to be shot. McNeil approved the proceedings and the order, and the poor fellows were executed

('War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume 13, p. 224.)

the same day. Their names, as can best be learned now, were: William Bates, R. M. Galbreath, Lewis Rollins, William Wilson, Columbus Harris, Reuben Thomas or Thompson, Thomas Webb and Reuben Green, of :Monroe County; James Christian, David Wood, Jesse Wood and Bennett Hayden, of Shelby; William Sallee and Hamilton Brannon, of :Marion, and John Kent, of Adair. It is reported that Thomas Stone, of Shelby, was shot at the same time. Of the Shelby County victims all lived in the southwestern part of the county. James Christian, three miles east of Clarence, aged between thirty and forty; David and Jesse Wood were young men living west of Shelbina; Bennett Hayden lived near the present site of Lentner Station, aged thirty. All were married but David Wood, and all had been arrested and released on parole and bond."-History of Shelby County, page 151.

Concerning these executions the observing reader will notice one unvarying incident. The fight near Stockton took place "yesterday;" it ended at "dark." Twenty-six prisoners had taken the oath; they were executed "yesterday." "And the poor fellows"-at Kirksville-"were executed the same day." What was the testimony' What could be the testimony in the few minutes between the capture and execution' Did McNeil carry with him in his forced marches a list of the unfortunates whom his provost-marshals made swear allegiance, and could he or his men truly identify them on the moment' The question carries its own answer. To offset the objection as to identification it is claimed that "some of the prisoners even bore upon their persons copies of their paroles or certificates of loyalty." The hypocrisy of this claim is apparent. However bad the Missouri Confederates may have been, there was not one idiot among them. The History of Lewis County, says, page 135: "It seems almost incredible that any man would be so foolish as to carry about him such a paper, but it is explained that copies of paroles and certificates of loyalty were used as passes and exempted the bearer from arrest and molestation so long as their terms were complied with." A little reflection will show the absurdity of this explanation.

A man who had been compelled to take the oath would not have to produce a copy of the oath as a pass or as evidence of his right of exemption from further molestation, in the vicinity of his home where he was known, because the facts as to his compliance with the terms were patent. To present his copy, if he had one, where he was not known would be the height of folly. It would be conclusive proof that his disloyalty was pronounced and prominent enough to merit the punishment of the military authorities of his own county, and it would make him an object of suspicion and hate. The average standard of intelligence of the North Missourians in the Federal Militia was not very high, but Governor Gamble's order of enrollment did not

include the Fulton Lunatic Asylum. But suppose it did, and the Confederate oath-breaker took advantage of the fact, would he keep the copy of the oath on his person after capture ~ If so, his epitaph should have been written, "Died at the hand of the Fool-killer." No; no Missouri Confederate ever violated his parole and no Missouri oath-breaker was ever captured and killed with the copy of the oath on his person.

CHAPTER XXX

WAS THE CAUSE BAD?

If it is proper to estimate the cause in the light of the character of the men who upheld it, the good name of the South will be secure when, a century from now and long after the bitter words, inspired by hate or want of a knowledge of the truth,' are forgotten, the historian shall tell of the events of the Great Conflict. Without any intention of suggesting a comparison between the men who met in the struggle and the people who sent them, a few comments are given from which, while far from being comprehensive, may be inferred the governing idea of our people. "Today the centennial of the inauguration of George Washington, the first President of the United States, will be celebrated at the National Capital. The commemoration exercises will be held in the Hall of the House of Representatives, and will be attended by the President and his Cabinet, the delegate of the Pan-American Congress and other  representatives of foreign Governments, and the Senators and Representatives of the United States. Today, the funeral of Jefferson Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate

States of America, will take place in New Orleans. At Washington the character and achievements of the great Virginian will be the inspiration of the eulogist and orator. At New Orleans the recollections of the virtues of the great Mississippian, his devotion to principle, his valor in battle, his genius in statesmanship, his glory in martyrdom, will comfort his people in the hour of their sorrow.

"To the reflecting mind these two contemporaneous events the centennial of Washington's inauguration and the funeral of Jefferson Davis-are full of significant interest. When impartial history shall have made up its judgment, Washington and Davis will stand together, the most illustrious Americans, the highest type of American manhood. It is right that they should occupy an equal station in the affections of the American people. They represented the same great principles, they staked their lives and fortunes, and their sacred honor on the issue of the struggles in which they were engaged. They were the unyielding champions of the right of the people to govern themselves."  Charleston News and Courier, December 11, 1889.

("Both men were unselfish in their devotion to their country. Both men were pure patriots. Davis believed his first allegiance was due to his State. Lincoln gave his first allegiance to the United States. He was so fortunately situated when the war came on that his allegiance to his State and the United States did not conflict. In the case of Yr. Davis he had to choose between Mississippi and the United States. There was no middle course for him. He had to go with his own people against the North or with the North against his own people. He went with his people. Robert E. Lee had to choose between the United States and Virginia. He went with Virginia. There was no middle way for an honorable or patriotic man to go.

"Jefferson Davis was a strong and masterful man, a brilliant orator, a statesman, a scholar, a man of the highest and purest standards of honor and integrity, to whom principle, patriotism and duty were the loftiest words in the lexicon of life. He sustained the indignities and cruelty to which he was subjected with patience and fortitude, and after his release spent the remainder of his days in dignified retirement, :receiving many visitors from the North and South, impressing all with his nobility of character, his dignity and kindly courtesy."-Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1908.)

"Jefferson Davis began life well. He had a clean boyhood, with no tendency to vice or immorality. That was the universal testimony of neighbors, teachers, and fellow students. He grew up a stranger to deceit and a lover of the truth. He formed no evil habits that he had to correct, and forged upon himself no chains that he had to break. His nature was as transparent as the light that shone about him; his heart was as open as the soft skies that beat in benediction over his country home; and his temper as sweet and cheery as the limpid stream that made music in its flow through the neighboring fields and forests.

"He was an ideal Senator, dignified, self-mastered, serious, dispassionate, always bent on the great things that concerned the welfare of the nation. He was never flippant-never toyed with trifles, and never trifled with the destiny of his people. His was the skill and strength to bend the mighty bow of Ulysses. "When Jefferson Davis entered the United States Senate,

the glory of that upper chamber was at its height. Possibly I never at one time had so many illustrious men sat in the highest council of the nation. There were giants in those days. There sat John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina; Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts; Henry Clay, of Kentucky; Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri; Lewis Cass, of Michigan; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and other men· of lesser fame. In that company of giants Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, at once took rank among the greatest, 'eloquent among the most eloquent in debate' and worthy to be the premier at any council table of American statesmen. The historian, Prescott, pronounced him 'the most accomplished member of the body. Bishop C. B. Galloway, in the Methodist Review.

Mr. James Ridpath, a life-long political opponent, after having been for months domesticated with him, said: "Before I had been with Mr. Davis three days, every preconceived idea of him utterly and forever disappeared. Nobody doubted Mr. Davis's intellectual capacity, but it was not his mental power that most impressed me. It was his goodness, first of all, and then his intellectual integrity. I never saw an old man whose face bore more emphatic evidences of a gentle, refined, and benignant character. He seemed to me the ideal embodiment of  sweetness and light: His conversation showed that he had 'charity for all and malice toward none.' I never heard him utter an unkind word of any man, and he spoke of nearly all of his more famous opponents. His manner could be described as gracious, so exquisitely refined, so courtly, yet heart-warm. The dignity of most of our public men often reminds one of

the hod carrier's 'store-suit'-it is so evidently put on and ill-fitting. Mr. Davis's dignity was as natural and as charming as the perfume of a rose-the fitting expression of a serene, benign, and comely moral nature. However handsome he may have been when excited in battle or debate-and at such times, I was told, he seemed an incarnation of the most poetic conception of a valiant knight-it surely was in his own home, with his family and friends around him, that he was seen at his best; and that best was the highest point of grace and refinement that the Southern character has reached.

"lest any foreigner should read this article, let me say for his benefit that there are two Jefferson Davises in American history-one is a conspirator, a rebel, a traitor, and the 'Fiend of Andersonville'-he is a myth evolved from the hellsmoke of cruel war-as purely imaginary a personage as Mephistopheles or the Hebrew Devil; the other was a statesman with clean hands and pure heart, who served his people faithfully, from budding manhood to hoary age, without thought of self, with unbending integrity, and to the best of his great ability-he was a man of whom all his countrymen who knew him personally, without distinction of creed political, are proud, and proud that he was their countryman." From in this environment, matured in these traditions, to ask J. Davis to raise his hand against Virginia was like asking Montrose or the McCallum More to head a force designed for the subjection of the Highlands and the destruction of the clans.

"Where such a stern election is forced upon a man as then confronted Lee, the single thing the fair-minded investigator has to take into account is the loyalty, the single-mindedness

of the election. Was it devoid of selfishness-was it free from any baser and more sordid worldly motive-ambition, pride, jealousy, revenge or self-interest ~ To this question there can, in the case of Lee, be but one answer. When, after long and trying mental wrestling, he threw his fate with Virginia he knowingly sacrificed everything which man prizes most-his dearly beloved home, his means of support, his professional standing, his associates, a brilliant future assured to him. *

Next to his high sense of allegiance to Virginia was Lee's pride in his profession. He was a soldier; as such, rank and the possibility of high command and great achievement were very dear to him. His choice put rank and command behind him. He quietly and silently made the greatest sacrifice a soldier can be asked to make. With war plainly impending, the foremost place in the army of which he was an officer was now tendered him; his answer was to lay down the commission he already held. Virginia had been drawn into the struggle; and, though he recognized no necessity for the state of affairs tin my own person,' he wrote, 'I had to  meet the question whether I should take part against my native State; I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.'

"It may have been treason to take this position; the man who took it, uttering these words and sacrificing as he sacrificed, may have been technically a renegade to his flag if you please, false to his allegiance-but he stands awaiting sentence at the bar of history in very respectable company. Associated with him are for instance, William of Orange, known as the Silent; John Hampden, the original Pater Patriae; Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of the English Commonwealth; Sir Harry Vane, once a Governor of Massachusetts, and George Washington, a Virginian of note. In the throng of other offenders I am also gratified to observe certain of those from whom I not unproudly claim descent. They were, one and all, in the sense referred to, false to their oaths--forsworn. As to Robert E. Lee, individually, I can only repeat what I have already said-if in all respects similarly circumstanced, I -hope I should have been filial and

unselfish enough to have done as Lee did. Such utterance on my part may be 'traitorous,' but I here render that homage.

"Into Lee's subsequent military career there is no call here to enter. Suffice it for me, as one of those then opposed in arms to Lee, however subordinate the capacity, to admit at once that, as a leader, he conducted operations on the highest plane. Whether acting on the defensive upon the soil of his native State or leading his army into the enemy's country, he was humane, self-restrained and strictly observant of the most advanced rules of civilized warfare. He respected the non-combatant, nor did he ever permit the wanton destruction of private property. His famous Chambersburg order was a model which any invading general would do well to make his own, and I repeat now what I have heretofore had occasion to say: 'I doubt if a hostile force of any equal size ever advanced into an enemy's country or fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind less cause of hate and bitterness than did the army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign which culminated at Gettysburg.'

* * *

"Lee had at that time supreme confidence in his men, and he had grounds for it. As he himself then wrote: 'There never were such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and do anything, if properly led.' And, for myself, I do not think the estimate that he expressed was exaggerated; speaking deliberately, having faced some portions of the army of Northern Virginia at the time and having since reflected much on the occurrences of that momentous period, I do not believe that any more formidable or better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that which Lee led across the Potomac in the early summer of 1863. It was essentially an .army of fighters-men who individually or in the mass could be depended on for any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accomplish. They would blanch at no danger. This Lee from experience knew. He had tested them.

"Narrowly escaping destruction at Gettysburg, my next contention is that Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally, it is true, succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight. How was the wholly unexpected outcome brought about ~ The simple answer is, the Confederacy collapsed from inanition. Suffering such occasional reverses and defeats as are incidental to all warfare, it was never crushed in battle or on the field until its strength was sapped away by want of food. It died of exhaustion--starving and gasping.

"Lee was at the head of Washington College from October, 1865 to October, 1870-a very insufficient time in which to accomplish any considerable work. A man of fast advancing years, he also then had sufficient cause to feel a sense of lassitude. He showed no signs of it. On the contrary, closely studied, those years, and Lee's bearing in them, were in certain respects the most remarkable as well as the most creditable of his life; they impressed unmistakably upon it the stamp of true greatness. His own means of subsistence having been swept away by war-the property of his wife as well as his own having been sequestered and confiscated in utter disregard not only of law but, I add it regretfully, of decency-a mere pittance, designated in courtesy 'salary,' under his prudent management was made to suffice for the I needs of an establishment, the quiet dignity of which even exceeded its severe simplicity. Within five months after the I downfall of the Confederacy, he addressed himself to his new vocation. Coming to it from crushing defeat, about him there was nothing suggestive of disappointment; and thereafter through public trials and private misfortunes--For it pleased Heaven to try him with afflictions-he bore himself with serene patience and a mingled firmness and sweetness of temper to which mere words fail to do justice."-Charles Francis Adams, at the Lee Centennial Celebration, Washington and Lee University.

"There is no need to dwell on General Lee's record as a soldier. The son of Light Horse Harry Lee, of the Revolution, he came naturally by his aptitude for arms and command. His campaigns put him in the foremost rank of the great captains of all time. But his signal valor and I address in war are no more remarkable than the spirit in which he turned to the work of peace once the war was over. The circumstances were such that most men, even of high character, felt .bitter and vindictive or depressed and spiritless, but General Lee's heroic temper was not warped nor his great I soul cast down."-President Roosevelt's letter to the Lee Centennial Celebration, New Willard Hotel, Washington. "The fierce light which beats upon the throne is as a rush light in comparison with the electric glare which our newspapers now focus upon the public man in Lee's position. His character has been subjected to that ordeal, and who can point to a spot upon it 1 His clear, sound judgment, personal courage, untiring activity, genius for war, absolute devotion to his State, mark him out as a public man, as a patriot to be forever remembered by all Americans. His amiability of disposition, deep sympathy with those in pain or sorrow, his love for children, nice sense of personal honor, and general courtesy, endeared him to all his friends. I shall never forget his sweet smile, nor his clear, honest eyes that seemed to look into your heart while they searched your brain. I

have met with many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mold and made of different and finer metal than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as being apart and superior to all others in every way, a man with whom none I ever knew and few of whom I have read are worthy to be classed. When all the angry feelings aroused by secession are buried with those that existed when the Declaration of Independence was written; when. Americans can review the history of their last great war with calm impartiality, I believe all will admit that General Lee towered far above all men on either side in that war. I believe he will be regarded not only as the most prominent figure of the Confederacy but as the greatest American of the nineteenth century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal pedestal with that of Washington, and whose memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of all his countrymen."-Lord Garnet Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.

"My own impression of the man, of course, has been obtained largely from what I've heard my father say of him. At Appomattox General Grant met him, not as an enemy but as a noble-hearted, high-minded man, who has simply taken a different view on a very vital subject. That winning personality, which had charmed the whole South, appealed strongly to my father.

"General Lee was a beautiful, loving character; he was the best type of Christian gentleman. In his military character he lived up to his motto: 'In planning, all dangers should be seen; in action, none, unless very formidable.' He came of good stock. He was the son of 'Light Horse Harry,' and of a family that was richly endowed with the power to attract a following. Few men have been so human and at the same time held the confidence of military men."-General Frederick Dent Grant, Lee Centennial.

"Some may be surprised that I am here to eulogize Robert E. Lee. It is well known that I did not agree with him in his political views. Robert· E. Lee is worthy of all praise. As a man he was peerless; as a soldier he had no equal and no superior; as a humane and Christian soldier he towers high in the political horizon.

"The name of Lee appeals at once strongly to every true heart in this land, and throughout the world. Let political partizans, influenced by fanaticism and the hope of political plunder, and fault with and condemn us. They will be forgotten when the name of Lee will be resplendent with immortal glory."Reverdy Johnson, October, 1870. Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, was as fair a man as an intense partizan could be. In the latter years of his life he had opportunities for learning that his judgment of the Southern people has been unjust and on many occasions gave expression to his changed sentiment concerning them. For instance the following quotation: "They have some qualities which I cannot claim in an equal degree for the people among whom I, myself, dwell. They have an aptness for command which makes the Southern gentleman, wherever he goes, not a peer only but a prince. They have a love for home; they have, the best of them, and the most of them, inherited from the great race from which they came the sense of duty and the instinct of honor, as no other people on the face of the earth. They have above all, and giving value to all, that supreme and superb constancy which, without regard to personal ambition, and without yielding to the temptation of wealth, without getting tired, and without getting diverted, can pursue a great object, in and out, year after year, and generation after generation."

Hoar on Walthall: "If I were to select the man of all others with whom I have served in the Senate who seemed to me the most perfect example of the quality and character of the American Senator, I think it would be Edward C. Walthall, of Mississippi."

"Throughout the long period of their domination the Southern leaders guarded the Treasury with rigid and increasing vigilance against every attempt at extravagance and every form. of corruption." Twenty Years in Congress, by James G. Blaine. The Macon Telegraph recalls an incident related by the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a member of the Confederate Congress, and before the war a member of the United States Congress. Dr. Curry, while in Washington, in the fall of 1865, called upon Elihu B. Washburne, then and for twelve

years a member of Congress from Illinois, and afterwards Minister to France, and was cordially received. Said Dr. Curry: "Holding my hand, he said with warmth, 'I wish you fellows were back: here again.' I responded, 'After the last four years' experience?' 'Yes,' he said, 'you gave us a great deal of trouble; but the fact is you wouldn't steal.' "

"The statue of Robert E. Lee, for which the State of Virginia will ask a place in the Memorial Hall of the Capitol at Washington, has been completed. In the near future Congress will be asked to accept the gift, and the strong hope and belief is that no individual or organization in the whole length or breadth of the North will so much as murmur against the intention to honor the memory of the great Confederate soldier.

"If it had been said in the days immediately following the Civil War that in time a memorial to Lee would have a place of honor in the nation's Capitol, there would have been few to admit that such a thing was possible. Time has brought its changes. Robert E. Lee is honored in the North only to a degree less than he has been honored in the South. He was an American who fought as he thought, and he was one of the greatest soldiers who ever went into battle."

From the Chicago Post.

"The day is not far distant when the statue of Lee, the most beloved of all Southern men, who stands in history today abreast with the few great soldiers of the nineteenth century, will grace the streets of our national capital along with that of Grant as a tribute of the nation to the greatness of -American commanders, and I hope at an early date to see Virginia and Pennsylvania unite in placing on Seminary Hill at Gettysburg an equestrian statue of Lee, with the right conceded to the South to embellish that memorable field with statues of her heroic leaders."

From Colonel A. K. McClure's address at the Unveiling of the Monument to General Humphreys and the Pennsylvania troops, Fredericksburg National Cemetery, November 11, 1908.

"Carlyle said that long after Napoleon had been forgotten As a great general he would he remembered as a great lawgiver; and long after Lee is forgotten as the leader of a valiant army, he will be remembered as one to whom posterity may point and say, 'This was a man.' "

Washington Post, January 19, 1909.

"Our miserable little handful was as good. as captured at any time after the Confederate advance had reached the brow of the hill, and here is a marked refutation of the oft-repeated

'needless Rebel cruelty.' We were engaged in an open fight, and they could have wiped us off the face of the earth at any time after getting over the hill, for they were upon us. I was repeatedly ordered to halt after getting three or four hundred feet start, and could easily have been shot down before I reached the river; but I didn't have time to halt or obey orders. According to all the rules of war, they were perfectly justified in killing me when I failed to stop. "This magnanimous trait is particularly conspicuous in the Southern soldier. He will fight day and night against superior odds, but, on the other hand, when the advantage is greatly in his favor he views the situation in altogether a different light. The spirit of magnanimity overcomes him.

"That day a sergeant of the guard visited me. He conveyed the glad but weather-beaten tidings of exchange, not in the old stereotyped form, but with variations. This time' it was 'tomorrow.' Blessing on him if alive; and if dead, may the earth lay lightly upon him! "Just a word more about the cheerful and encouraging exchange Rebel falsifier. I cannot think of him other than a pure philanthropist and humanitarian. We had no medicine, and he had none to give us. We were his enemies, invading his country. There was war, 'grim-visaged war,' between us, and he could have done a thousand times worse than. to say : 'You will be exchanged tomorrow.'

"Touching my treatment on the whole, I cannot recall a solitary instance during the fourteen months while I was a prisoner of being insulted, brow-beaten, robbed, or maltreated in any manner by a Confederate officer or soldier. "We were guarded by the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, veteran troops, who knew how to treat prisoners. And I said then and have ever since said in speaking of our guards the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry-that I never met the same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call gentlemen. They were respectful, humane, and soldierly."-A True Story of Andersonville Prison, by James M. Page, Lieutenant Co. A., Sixth Michigan Infantry.

And those old aristocrats had their virtues. One loves to hear the names still applied at Richmond, Montgomery, :Macon and Charleston to the men of the old type, by other men of the old type. How often have I heard the terms a 'high man,' an 'incorruptible man.' Beautiful names! For there was a personal honor, a personal devotion to public duties among many of these ante-bellum slave-owners that made them indeed 'high men.' "

Ray Stannard Baker in American Magazine.

In viewing the magnificent spectacle of the Davis Monument (Richmond, June 3, 1907) the thought came into my mind: "Can it be possible that these splendid specimens of manhood who endured for four years unparalleled hardships and peril, who for ten years fought the harder battle of the Reconstruction, who for forty years, while paying vast tribute to a victorious people, have been patiently effacing the desolation of war, building up homes and sanctifying them to love, to liberty and to duty, and who now, in the matured and charitable judgment of the evening of their lives, return to the central point of the great conflict to ratify the act of their enthusiastic youth, made their dedication to an unworthy cause and vicious purpose?"

I recalled that Judge Brewer, of the Supreme Court of the United States, whose favorite brother was killed fighting for the North, declared at the Lee Centennial Celebration of my Camp. that, while Lee was the greatest general the English-speaking people had produced, Lee, the man, was greater than Lee, the general Was the crowning life work of Lee and the other great leaders, whose purity of character and loyalty to purpose are being recognized everywhere, given to what was bad ~ And there was that great army of men whose individual

services made no note in history; but whose lives were stainless, whose ideals were high, and with whom patriotism was the supreme passion. The record of one of these heroes

seemed to me of peculiar import.

The Rev. Matthew O'Keefe, a Catholic priest, who died last year at a very advanced age, came to this country after the illusions of youth had passed away. He had no inherited love for the Southland. He had no bias of feeling to direct his judgment. H he had any sentiment of slavery, it was probably one of opposition. He was a large man physically and mentally. He was possessed of a very considerable fortune, which was spent in church extension and the alleviation of human suffering, reserving to himself less than what comes to the humblest street beggar. He took a charge in Norfolk. In 1855, when that city was scourged by yellow fever and everything was demoralization and chaos, he was sleepless, tireless, priest, undertaker. Denied by his bishop, the saintly McGill, the privilege of taking up arms in defense of the land of his adoption, he became brigade chaplain under the fighting Mahone. On a hundred battlefields he fired the enthusiasm of the living, and gave the consolation of religion to the dying, soldier. He was a daily visitor to the dungeon of Mr. Davis, whose trusted adviser he had been during the four eventful years. In 1869 he received from Emperor No. 171, Washington, D. C.

Napoleon the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor for his attentions to a yellow fever stricken French man-of-war in Hampton Roads. Many years ago he was given his last charge, a country parish near Baltimore, which he maintained with the same devotion and self-abnegation that characterized his whole life. He died penniless, and his last illness was contracted in administering the sacred rites to the dying. In the most solemn manner ever vouchsafed to man, his mind undimmed by age, unclouded by disease, with full knowledge that in a few minutes his spirit would stand in judgment before its God, he sealed his faith in our cause by directing that his coffin should be draped in three Confederate flags. Judged by his every known act, it must be said of him, that to God, to country, to fellow-men, he gave all; to self, nothing.

Contributed by me to the Confederate Veteran, Nashville, September, 1907.

Was hate the mainspring of his thought? Was his life purpose bad?

Shortly after the introduction of a bill in Congress to pension Confederate soldiers, I wrote on Christmas Day, 1907, the following, which, published in the Baltimore Sun, brought many expressions of approval: The George M. Emack Camp, Confederate Veterans, is opposed to the idea of Federal pensions for Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers enlisted. not for bounties or pay but for a cause. Of the more than a thousand battles they fought, nearly always against superior numbers, they gained many more than they lost. They captured more prisoners than did their adversaries; they fed, clothed and cared for their prisoners better than they fed, clothed and cared for themselves; they obeyed the laws of civilized warfare with

more fidelity and more humanity than did any previous armies recorded by history. When the end came they were penniless. With the same indomitable courage and fortitude they began the struggle against poverty and desolation and the unparalleled horrors of the Reconstruction. With the same loyalty to duty which prompted the supremest sacrifice they have been for forty years paying vast tribute to their victors, making green the waste places and helping to make the common flag respected the world over. These statements are very generally admitted, and we are willing to let it go at that.

I conclude this chapter with a few words from a speech made in the House of Representatives of the American Congress, by Mr. Lincoln, when he was a member of that body.

It is given in the Congressional Globe, Thirtieth Congress, First Session, page 155:

Revolution: One of the most sacred of rights-the right which he believed was yet to emancipate the world; the right of a people, if they have a government they do not like, to

rise up and shake it off.

CHAPTER XXXI

WOULD IT HAVE BEEN BETTER?

The purpose to set up a new Government in the South and to establish the Confederate States of America, failed by the fortunes of war. The appeal to reason had failed. The appeal to liberty-loving mankind had failed. The resistance to the armies of the United States, impossible for a month without the full measure of courage and sacrifice, had, after four years of carnage and devastation, ceased because the limit of human endurance had been reached. Would it have been better had the issue of battle been different and the Confederate States of America acquired independence ~ At first thought this question will be answered almost unanimously in the negative. The abstract idea of Union is pleasing to the multitude. Applied to States it appeals to the noblest impulses of patriotism. A grand nation-two dangerous ideas are embraced in these words appeals strongly to the unreflecting mind, and is not  incompatible with some element of patriotism. The first thought too frequently final-is not unerring in its judgments.

Viewed without enmity or bias, there must come a doubt as to the right answer. Had the end of the war left two republics instead of one, two things would have been certain and I in each the two republics would have been benefited-not equally, it is true, but still both. First, the South would have escaped the long dismal period of the Reconstruction, and the North would have been spared the memory of inflicting it. Second, the Southern people would have preserved in the old-time flavor and strength, unaffected by the modern commercialism, the beautiful personal traits of a high sense of private and public honor, of hospitality, of adherence to traditions, of intense love of home, acknowledged even by enemies to be distinctive. Further, the two peoples would perhaps have been more friendly than now, or--to put it more correctly-the present condition of amity would have been reached at an earlier day, because neither side would have been the conqueror. The world-power idea, if it ever came, would have been delayed for generations. The perpetuation of peace might have been better guaranteed.

Public and private extravagance would not have been stimulated and the inequalities in the results of individual effort would not have been so marked. An issue-a great one would have been a thousand times better settled. It is not necessary to say which section is the more responsible for the existence of slavery in this country. The unbiased student of history can easily find the truth. The pious and learned Bishop Galloway says, in the Methodist Review of October, 1908: "It is a matter of pride with us that no Southern colony or State ever had a vessel engaged in the slave trade. And several of the Southern States were the first to pass stringent laws against the importation of African slaves." The slave-holders were jealous of their rights and of their moral standing. They defended, at all times, on all occasions, to the extent of their power under the law, their institution and their purpose, but always on higher ground than the consideration of property. They resented outside interference, and denied its sincerity and honesty. The great majority of them were opposed to slavery. Had the issue

of the war been different slavery would have gradually disappeared through the uninfluenced action of the slave-holder.

(General Lee manumitted his slaves before the emancipation proclamation; the slaves in General Grant's family were held until freed by the Constitutional Convention of Missouri, January 11, 1865.)

This disposition would have been infinitely better for the slave. The relations, business and social, between the two races would have been incomparably better. Again, would it have been better ~ Who knows ~ This question may be of some interest, but it has no practical value. No Confederate ever asks it seriously. The fact is, the country is one, the Government is one. It is the first duty of every citizen to render his completest service to the one, and to give his best influence to keep the other in the path of justice. .If the faults of the Government ware, through the incompetency or dishonesty of its administrators, multiplied many times it would still be the best on earth.

Conceding that going behind the result for any purpose but harmless speculation is wrong and unpatriotic, another question naturally comes into mind: Was it better that the war between the States was fought ~ The preponderance of sentiment would undoubtedly give a negative answer. General Sherman gave war a horrible name; it was not a true name, but he tried to make it true. See his official reports; his "Memoirs," pp. 124-5; 185, Vol. 2, pp. 223, 227-8, 287, 888; "First Days of the Reconstruction," by Carl Schurz; see particularly "The Story of the Great" March, From the Diary of a Staff Officer," by George Ward Nichols, brevet major aid-de-camp to General Sherman, Harper Bros., 1865, pp. 40, 81, 112, 113, 114, 115, 151, 166, 170, 207, 222, 277, 289. General Sheridan tried to make it true. See "Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac," by the Northern historian, William Swinton., New York, 1866, p. 560.

Unlike the preceding chronicler Swinton condemns the acts mentioned and cites the denunciation of eminent European authority on the law of nations. General David Hunter, the most brutal character that ever held a commission in any army, tried to make it true. See his official reports, histories of his war record, especially Munsey's Magazine, May, 1908, p. 179. General Thomas Ewing, brother-in-law to General Sherman, tried to make it true when it issued order No. 11.1 General John G. Foster tried to make it true. 2 Many of less note tried to make it true. Yet war-prolonged war-is horrible enough. History does not tell of a country that paid a greater price in war than did the South. Mourning in every home, desolation and ruin all over the land, the penalty for the failure of four years of armed resistance and then thrice four years of oppression and degradation in the effort to make true the words of the poets, "For its people's hopes are dead." But the hopes of the people were not dead, the spirit of self-sacrifice was not discouraged, the devotion to duty was not diminished; indomitable courage was equal in victory, in defeat, in humiliation.

If war were the only cause of great suffering, or great loss in life and property, it might be regarded in no other light than as an ultimate resort, but it is only one of the instruments of a wise and merciful Providence. Without considering the contingency of same results obtained by peaceful legislation, or any of the lesser questions involved, I believe it better that the war was fought. Among the many reasons for that belief may be mentioned these, anyone of which to this and future generations is well worth all the blood and treasure sacrificed in that event of history: The record of the last eight years of the life of Robert E. Lee; the military record of the majority of the Confederate generals; the courage of the Confederate soldiers, the

(Abram J. Ryan, the Poet Priest of the South; he was one of my professors at folleire. *A good friend who command pd a brigade under Grant, and who, by the way, was born on a farm in Connecticut adjoining that of the father of General Lyon, whom our regiment killed at Wilson Creek, told me recently that the Confederate flag was daunted in his face eighty-two times

and that every time it caused a tremor and a quickening of the pulse, because he knew the men who stood beside it—American soldiers, he called thorn—were willing to die for it.

Henry Ward Beecher, who did so much to bring on the conflict, says:

"Where shall we find such heroic self-denial, such upbearing under every physical discomfort, such patience in poverty, in distress, in absolute want, as we find in the Southern army? They fight well and bear up under trouble nobly, they suffer and never complain, they go in rags and never rebel, they are in earnest for their liberty, they believe in it, and if they can, they mean to get it."—Acts of the Republican Party as seen by History, by C. Gardner, page 45.)

sacrifices of the Southern people, and especially of the women of the South; the patriotism of the Southern people after defeat; the courage of an element in the Northern States, small in

number, but great in intellect and character, which braved obloquy, imprisonment and death in defence of their sentiment, as evidenced by a declaration made in Cincinnati by a man who had carried the flag of his country on foreign battlefields and who, later, had adorned the American Senate, "Abraham Lincoln can take my life but he cannot take my liberty;" the military record of the majority of the Federal generals; the courage of the Federal soldier; the classic oration of President Lincoln at Gettysburg; and finally it was the greatest war in the history of the world and, with a few regrettable exceptions, it was fought by both sides with more humanity than ever before shown in warfare, but more than all it made the people of the contending sections know each other, which they had never done before.

CHAPTER XXXII

"WE DONE OUR BEST"

In company with a delegation from George M. Emack Camp, No. 1471, United Confederate Veterans, I visited Richmond during the Reunion of June, 1907. On account of the business affairs of the greater part of the delegation, it was decided to forego all the functions except the unveiling of the Davis Monument, and then to spend a few hours in seeing the points of interest in that historic city. We arrived at noon Sunday, June 2nd, when we found that the arrangements had been made by the committee for us to be quartered at the boarding house of Miss C. S. Leftwich, South Third street, every hotel being filled. I felt compensated for the deprivation of hotel conveniences by the assurance that my children and their cousin from St. Louis, who had never before been South, would have an opportunity of seeing something of the home life of the people of Richmond, the most hospitable city in the world; and I was not

mistaken. After a home dinner, such as could be had only in this latitude, we went out to see what was best, to see in the time at our command. Richmond was decorated such as no

other city on the American continent, or perhaps any other continent, had ever been decorated. Among other places we visited the Executive Mansion and from the brow of Shockhoe

Hill I pointed out the site of Howard's Grove Hospital, where I had been stationed and where a footpath then ran down the hill, which I had used hundreds of times. A glance at the John Marshall House and we came to the Capitol.

Around the statues there were a number of squads of veterans in old faded gray uniforms with the Southern Cross of Honor and Camp badges, and a few squads of other veterans in old faded blue uniforms graced with the army button . and the different corps badges, having as much fun" as any body and showing by their behavior that they thought they had as much right to be there as anybody-and so they had. What added to the beauty of the picture were two or three squads of ''half and half" and these were swapping experiences with as much real good nature as perhaps some 01 them did on the picket line during the respites from gun practice. I enjoyed these little bits of comedy and saw that my children were fully impressed with their meaning. We went into the Capitol and I told where President Davis stood when I first saw him and of the impression made by his gentle, dignified manner. In going out of the grounds by the west entrance, I said: "Stop a minute."

:My daughter asked: "What is to be seen here, Papa?"

"Nothing; but forty-three years ago, next October, I saw a very memorable sight here and my recollection of it is just as vivid as if it occurred yesterday. The Texas brigade, my children were born in Texas; the other three not now living were born in :Missouri- "the Texas brigade, three Texas and one Arkansas regiments-nearly five thousand men at first-saw a great deal of hard service and had more commanders killed at its head than any other brigade on either side during the war. 1\t the Wilderness, on the 6th of :May, their number had been reduced to fifteen hundred. At a very critical point in this battle the brigade refused to go in unless General Lee, who had ridden forward as if to lead it, would go back out of danger. As one man, they cried out: 'If you go back, general, we will go in,' and one impulsive soldier broke ranks, seized General Lee's bridle rein and i turned his horse around.

They did go in. They stayed in  ten minutes; but in that ten minutes they broke the force of the Federal advance, saved the day and left eight hundred of their comrades on the field. In an engagement on the New Market road, just below the city on the north side of the James, on the 9th of October-every gun of which I heard-its commander, General John Gregg, was killed. As an especial privilege, granted to no other command, General I.ee allowed the brigade to come out of the trenches and escort the remains to Hollywood. I am sure that in witnessing the

funeral march I stood within two feet of where I now stand. It was very pathetic to see four distinct regiments led by full quotas of officers, with each a band of music, and numbering in the aggregate scarcely more than six hundred. men.  They were ragged and dirty and long-haired, but every man was a soldier.

"Six feet from me stood John B. Clark, then a member of the Confederate Congress, but who was my brigadier in the Missouri State Guard at the first of the war, and whose son John B. Clark, Jr., was my major. He viewed the procession with much interest, commented on it in fitting terms to a companion whom I did not know and said: 'I received a letter last week from Captain Gaines, in Price's army. He tells me that of the six thousand Missourians who went from the State Guard into the Confederate army, January, 1862 the very cream of the State, every man a Bayard--only about six hundred are left and not one missing. All dead!' The old man's voice choked and tears rolled down his cheeks. Perhaps he was drawing the long bow a little. He could do that sometimes. He was a lawyer, a very eloquent speaker and could influence a jury as few men could. I am sure, however, he did not overestimate the character of the men who joined Price. When he was a brigadier under Price, he had a habit of saying, when anything especially hazardous was to be done: 'General, let my men do that; they are the boys for that work.' At Wilson's Creek the first intimation we had of the Federals being nearer than Springfield was a cannon ball that came crashing into our camp. The long roll was beat and in a few minutes Generals Price, Parsons and Clark were mounted and giving orders.

The woods were blue with Federals. General Clark, pointing to what was, after the battle, christened 'Bloody Hill,' said: 'General, here will be the brunt of the battle. My men can take and hold that hill. Let me occupy it.' 'Very well, General,' said General Price, 'take that position.' "

"Papa, did you hear General Clark say that?" asked Frank.

"Yes, I was within ten feet of the two generals."

"What did you think of them just then?"

"Well, in the high tension common to such an occasion a thousand thoughts rush through your mind in a moment and you seem to see the situation presented by each one clearly and to be able to reason out, in minute detail, every point involved. The question of personal safety always comes up, and its mental and physical effect varies greatly, according to circumstances, from nothing to an uncontrollable force.

With me the most effective agents to neutralize fear were hunger and fatigue, and I had just finished a twenty-four hours' round of guard duty. When I heard General Clark's request and saw the heavy force coming down with step so steady I realized that we were going into a death trap. I remember very well how anxiously I scanned the faces and the bearing of our little regiment of undrilled men and how much I was assured. I said to myself, these men can be depended upon. What strengthened this feeling was the appearance of a number of deserters from the line of unarmed men ,who had been ordered to march two miles to the rear. These were eager to get into the fight and said they could soon get guns. I noticed one man with a stout hickory stick six feet long on which was fastened a bayonet. He boasted that if we came to close quarters he could teach the Yankees a trick or two. A man with his haversack filled

with stones said thirty yards was his distance, and he would guarantee to break more than one Yankee's nose. I had great confidence in our generals. General Parsons had been a captain, and General Price a colonel in the Mexican War, and both had distinguished themselves. When Governor Boggs called out the Militia, in 1838, to drive the Mormons out of Missouri, he gave the command to General Clark.

Under General Parsons was Colonel Kelly's Irish regiment from St. Louis, a splendid body of men. Every battlefield in the Old World made famous by Irish valor flashed before me. These and many other things, analyzed and digested in one-tenth the time it takes me to tell it, made my state of mind almost as unconcerned as when I went into my first battle at the end of a furious march of ten days with next to nothing to eat. I felt that come what might we should not fail to give a good account of ourselves. There is one thing I wish you to understand and remember. The men who win the applause of the country for their behavior in battle, who lead the forlorn hope, who rush to the cannon's mouth or who stand for hours under the withering fire of musketry, are not the men of exceptional bravery or courage. They are everyday men; men and boys you see around you-yourself included, I hope. And more, the man

who never heard the roar of the cannon, the music of flying bullets, the trumpet call or the long roll, or saw the things that make a battle the most magnificent spectacle on earth, but who in his daily round of labor does his duty because it is his duty and does not show the white feather when that duty leads to danger or to certain death, without thinking or caring whether the world mayor may not recognize his sacrifice--this man is the real hero, and he and his deeds are about us today and every day. Don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget to do your duty in everything, great or trifling-especially trifling, because nothing else may ever come to you-and do this duty regardless of consequences.

I hope your life may be peaceful, but if otherwise, don't shirk anything. If the honor of this country ever requires a call to arms, remember your father periled his life for his country and that he wishes you to do likewise. We made good General Clark's promise. We did take the hill and hold it, but at a fearful cost. The loss in Our regiment was the heaviest in the army. This was the bloodiest battle of the war. Tom Hudson, who stood at my left, had his right leg shot off; Billy Wingfield, who stood at my right had his elbow shattered by a minie ball; a man named Shults, who stood behind me, I being in the front and he in the rear rank, got a bullet in his right groin and died. When Colonel Burbridge, severely wounded, fell from his horse, he

was caught and carried off the field by Hack Stewart and Alton Mudd, my cousin. Ten minutes after they returned Hack Stewart got his death. wound and Alton carried him off. Two minutes after Alton took his place in line he got an ugly wound and I carried hjm off. The ill luck stopped there, however, and out of my mess of eight men I was the only one to answer roll call next morning. When Bob Tanner, who tied with me for the honor of being the youngest boy in our company, got well from a wound received while standing three feet of me, his right leg was four inches shorter than his left. General Clark was shot in the leg, but he didn't mind that.

"He stayed with us until the loss of blood made him faint. More than half of our officers were killed and wounded. General Price, while about ten feet behind our company, had cut out by a minie ball a scar from a wound he received at the battle of Canada, Mexico, now New Mexico, fourteen

(Well might the historian say: "Never before—considering the number engaged—had so bloody a battle been fought on American soil; seldom has a bloodier one been fought on any modern field.' "—Evans's Confederate Military History, Volume IX, page 62.

"It had lasted about six hours, and considering the number engaged, and the fact that a large proportion of them were armed with nothing but shotguns and hunting rifles, it was one of tiie bloodiest, as it was one of the most memorable, conflicts of modern times."—Missouri, a Bone of Contention, by Lucian Carr, page 332.)

years before. The afternoon of the next day, which was Sunday, the camp showing horribly the effects of the Federal cannonading-wrecked. wagons and tents and dead horses

everywhere-General Clark was sitting in front of his tent, talking to Colonel Casper W. Bell, his aide-de-camp, and both of them, I think, had been taking a little mint, the general broke off abruptly from the subject of the conversation and slapping with great force the knee of his unhurt leg, said: "'But didn't my men fight, though? Didn't they fight like devils?"

"I don't mean to say that General Clark ever drank to excess. He did not. He was a Kentucky aristocrat, resident nearly his whole life in Missouri and he had the traditional ideas of hospitality. Withal, for that day he was a very temperate man. Today he would have been practically an abstainer."

We then went to St. James Episcopal Church and I pointed out where I sat May 14, 1864, and heard the rector, Dr. Peterkin, read the solemn office of the dead over the remains of Major General J. E. B. Stuart, where General Matt. W. Ransom and five other generals were pall-bearers. We saw many other objects of interest and finished our round by going to the river where I pointed to where the Belle Isle military prison camp had been, and the Tredegar Foundry, where so many munitions of war had been fashioned. That evening many of Miss Leftwich's guests whom I had not yet seen came in from the sightseeing, among them a patriarchal old gentleman from North Carolina. He was a man of intelligence and culture and his conversation and manner had that charm. only to be found in the best types of the South. I had a delightful half hour with him. The next day after the parade and the ceremonies of the unveiling of the monument to Jeff. Davis, the children visited the new Cathedral and the tomb of Davis in Hollywood, while I returned to Miss Leftwich's to rest and have everything in

readiness by train time. Presently a young looking veteran came out of the parlor and passed out of sight down the hall. His modest, almost bashful, face and his easy carriage engaged

my curiosity and I asked my patriarchal acquaintance of yesterday if he knew him.

"Yes, he was in my company nearly three years. He is a North Carolina sandhiller and lives within two miles of me."

''What is a sandhiller?"

"A sandhiller is a man who digs a living, or half a living, out of the poorest kind of a small farm."

"How do they who dig only half a living out of the farm get the other half?"

"Don't get it; they do without. John, there, digs out a good living."

"From his look I should say he was a good soldier."

"He was. His father was a very poor man and knew little except industry, honesty and truth. At the first call, he said, 'Boys, the country needs our services. Jim, you and me and Bill and Henry will go to town tomorrow and jine. John will do what he can on the farm and tend to mother and Sis.' John worked as he had never worked before. The second spring of the war, when he had just turned into his fifteenth year, he said: "Mother, I am ashamed to stay at home when all the boys have gone off to the war. I think I can do as well as any of them. The corn is clean and won't need much more hoeing and you and Sis can make out.' So he came to Richmond and joined my company, where were his father, his father's two brothers and his own three brothers. His experience was peculiarly sad. In his first battle, the bloody Seven Pines, the day after he enlisted, he saw his father killed.

At Ellison's Mill he saw his oldest brother killed. At, Frazier's Farm his brother, Bill, got a bullet in the neck. It was thought for a long time that he would die, but he finally got well; that is, as well as he ever will be on earth. Since that time he has 'been an almost helpless paralytic. At Malvern Hill, Henry was shot through the heart and died with his head on .John's knee. But John kept on. He was wounded two or three times during the war, but never severely enough to make him leave his place in line. He never missed a roll-call; he never missed a guard

mount; he never missed a battle; he never missed a duty of any kind. When, for the first time after his enlistment, there was a call for volunteers for a desperate undertaking John stepped forward and in his quiet, timid way, said: 'I'll go if you let me.' Everybody was surprised when the captain chose him over the other volunteers, but when the work was done and done well, without any strutting or playing to the grandstand, and John had returned to his place as quietly as he had left it, we knew the captain had made no mistake.

John never failed to volunteer on such occasions, and he got the detail oftener than anyone else; when he missed it he would generally say: 'Captain, I'd like to go, but I don't want to be hoggish.' At Gettysburg he was in the line that went farther than any Confederate except Pickett's men in their great charge, and right there his two uncles laid down their lives. He stood in the bloody angle at the Wilderness. He was with the men who, with the old time enthusiasm, made the Last Charge at Appomattox. Oh, I could tell you many things about him, but you'd never get them out of him. He never boasts of his army career, or anything else, in fact. He is a man of good sense, but of little education. He doesn't know grammar, but he knows the value of his word, he knows what belongs to him and what belongs to the other fellow, and he had never crossed the line a hair's breadth. When the surrender came every man in the company cried but John. I tell you, Comrade, I couldn't help it.

Of course it was silly for grown men to boo-hoo like a lot of women or children. The kids, as we called the boys in their teens, threw themselves on the ground and cried as if their hearts would break. The old men appeared to be momentarily deprived of the power of speech, but their tears fell freely. As for me--I was thirty then-the sun seemed too quit shining. What I wanted then was an order for our company to charge the whole Yankee Army. My pulses quicken now at the thought of how that order would have been obeyed. Cardigan's ride at Balaklava would have been ridiculous in comparison. The revelation was so sudden and so astounding. Why, before that moment a doubt of the success of the Confederacy never entered our minds. Our faith in the righteousness of our cause and in Lee was sublime. Defeat -never weakened it and victory never strengthened it because it always stood at the limit of human capacity. It seems strange now that this confidence should have taken hold of our people as it did, but I think this was what made our men the best soldiers in the world.

Comrade, you've :read history, I know, but you never read of an army that endured so much in the way of hunger and nakedness and then held out for four years against greatly superior numbers. You never read of women making such sacrifices to keep their husbands and sons and fathers and brothers in the field as ours did. You know after the second year the supply of food and clothing tightened up mightily. I've seen colonels and captains and majors who never went out of camp except to go in battle or on the march, and if a lady would come in they'd hide unless they could grab up an army blanket to wrap around themselves. As far rations, if one of our soldiers had gotten a chance at a full meal, I don't think he would have eaten it for fear of had luck. A full meal was contrary to precedent and our people were great sticklers for precedent. Well, as I was saying, John was the only man in the company who didn't cry. When the word came he was standing just in front of me, listening to a yarn a soldier was telling. He had always been so unresponsive to outside influences that I was curious to know how he would take the news.

The battle, the bivouac, the march, the guard beat, the burning sun, the rain, the snow, were all the same to him. When he realized the situation there was a scared look in his eyes: the dirty sallowness of his face gave way to a marble whiteness and for a moment he staggered. Then he was at himself and in his quiet, uncomplaining way he said: 'I never thought I'd have as sad a birthday as this; I am seventeen years old today.' As soon as he got his parole he made a bee-line for home. He took his hoe and it seemed as if he swung it day and night. It

looked to me like a hopeless fight against fate, but John came out on top. He said afterwards that the one hope of his life was to go to school after the war. In the army he had associated with educated men and had realized the advantage that books could give him. But there were no schools, no money for tuition, and a mother broken in health, a sister and a helpless brother to support.

When he got far enough ahead he married. He has reared a large family and given everyone of them a good education. It has been no easy task for him, but nothing ever daunted John. He swings that hoe just as nervily today as he did forty-six years ago. In the long, horrid nightmare of the Reconstruction, John did his duty to his people with the same unconcern for his own comfort or personal safety as he had done in Virginia, in Maryland and in Pennsylvania. He would dig in his patch all day and if need be he would consult and ride with the boys all night. I don't think he ever shirked a duty private or public-in his life, and he has trained his boys to walk in the same path. John's not very talkative-at least not about himself-but  everybody knows where he stands on 'every subject, and everybody knows that he can be depended on to do what is right. He never sought social distinction, but it looks as if his children might, and his grandchildren, if he ever has any, will surely attain the highest in the county. He is, however, a living refutation of the old slander that the poor whites of the South never had any real interest in the institutions, the principles and the traditions of the land that gave them birth. Of course, the white feather is liable to crop out anywhere, but my observation, and it has been somewhat extensive, is that the sandhiller is just as patriotic as the aristocrat.

The trouble is that when a sandhiller proves recreant to what our people have always conceived to be the highest duty, he is judged as a representative of his class, and yards of rot and nonsense are spun out by the man who thinks he is writing history and who considers misrepresentation of the people of the South the acme of ethics. I have a great admiration for sandhillers. They are a wonderful people in their way. I knew but little about them before the war; but during that period and afterwards by association with them I found out what was in them. At first, I wondered how it was that so many of these people with 80 little education, with so few opportunities, so circumscribed, had some of the finest characteristics, such as gentleness, courage and a high sense of honor. It must be that these traits came to them from a high-class ancestry generations back, and they are kept alive by an intense love of home.

After all, Comrade, the love of home and the maintenance of its purity are the greatest safeguards of this or any other country."

A little later I had an opportunity for a few minutes' conversation with the sandhiller.

"How long have you been here, Comrade?"

"Ten days."

"I came at noon yesterday and I haven't seen you until now."

"I've been pretty busy. This is the first time I've been to Richmond since the war. I often thought I'd come next year, and then next year, but somehow I never got quite ready. I attended all the sessions of the Reunion. It got to be a little tiresome to me at times, but for the sake of my children I eat it out. I wanted them to see all and to hear all that was to be seen and heard. I didn't march in the procession today. I'd have liked to be with the North Carolina boys and help to make a good showing for my State, but I wanted to show it to my children. I told them to remember it always to tell it to their children if they should live to have any, and to have their children to tell it to their children."

"1 said the same to my children. The Maryland contingent, with which I marched, formed in front of Murphy's Hotel, went past the Jefferson and took position near the curb, where it could see almost the entire parade pass before the place assigned to us was reached. Immediately behind us were my son and daughter, my youngest two--all that survive out of five--and a cousin from St. Louis. I pointed out to them the remarkable features of the parade, which I think has never been equaled, and I doubt if it will ever be equaled. I am sure it cannot be if the occasion and the sentiment are considered."

"Yes, it was a grand affair. How could it have been greater? I wanted my children to get the full benefit of it. I sometimes feel real sad when I think that maybe the memory of what we did will pass out of the minds of those who come after us. The only thing I regret about the war is that I didn't go into it at the very first. I wanted to, but father said I was too young."

"Don't you regret the way it ended?"

"No; I couldn't help that. I always thought that if I had begged a little harder my father, who was the kindest and best man in the world, would have let me go. I'd have been so much better satisfied if I had served the whole war through. I went in the second year, May 30, the day before the battle of Seven Pines. Father was killed there. I showed my children the very spot where he fell. I took them to Ellison's Mill, where my oldest brother was killed; to Malvern Hill, where my youngest brother was killed. He wasn't quite seventeen; he and I were great favorites with one another. He was a mighty good-tempered boy and everybody liked him. The captain told me that Henry was fully as good a soldier as Father and Jim and Bill. I am

glad to know that he never shirked anything. It seems to me that I couldn't have stood it if I heard that either of them ever let down even a little bit. I also went down to Frazier's Farm, where Bill was wounded so bad I thought he would die before they got him off the field. He didn't die, but he's been paralyzed ever since. He's just able to shuffle a few feet at a time."

"Have you any other brothers?"

"I never had but three brothers and one sister. The war nearly exterminated our family. My father had only two brothers and both of them were killed at Gettysburg."

"North Carolina lost a great many soldiers."

"More than twice as many as any other State, they say."

"Missouri lost a great many good men, in comparison to the number she had in the field. It was hard, except at the very :first, for Missourians to get into the Confederate army; but a great many did get through, and counting the nearly five hundred battles and skirmishes fought in the State by the Missouri State Guard and men enlisted by authorized Confederate officers, but who did not get their names on the regular roll, the loss was heavy."

"Well, nearly all the Southern States suffered a heavy loss of their best men; men whose places couldn't be filled."

"I know by my own observation and by what I have read that the North Carolina soldiers were among the very best."

"Yes, they were said to be good soldiers. But the Confederate soldiers were generally good men. In the first place, there were no hirelings in the Confederate army. Then, every man knew what he was fighting for. Then again, every man had the greatest confidence in the generals. I tell you there were some great men among the Confederate generals. In the army there were some bad men and some cowards, but the percentage of either was small."

"Did you ever notice that there were men of all ages in the army?"

"Yes, the old white-haired man and by his side the boy whose face hadn't yet thought of sprouting beard. The South gave all she had: Men, money and everything, and lost. Anyway,

"WE DONE OUR BEST."