UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN ILLINOIS HISTORICAL 8VBV1SY THf : RECOLLECTIONS OF Pioneer and Army Life BY MATTHEW H. JAMISON, Lieutenant E Company, Tenth Regiment, Illinois Veteran Volunteer Infantry; Assigned Commander of F Company on the Hood Chase and on the March to the Sea ; Assigned Commander of G Company on the Campaign through the Carolines under General Wm. Tecumseu ShermaL. Peace.- is the dream of the wise; war is the history of man. %Youth listens without attention to those who seek to lead it by the paths of reason to happiness, and rushes with irresistible violence into the arms <>f the phantom which lures it by the light of glory to destruction. Srgur. TO HARRY F. McALLISTER: THIS IS MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE "DERISIVE SILENCE OF THE CENTURIES/' AND MY TESTIMONIAL, TO YOUR EVER FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP THESE FORTY-FIVE YEARS. PREFATORY. Gone are they all! The tints of youth; the tumult of battle; the old and worn and tattered banners; the neighing horses; the broken caissons; the prisoners of war; the Mis- sissippi flotilla ; the defiant rebel yell on the midnight departure from Corinth ; Bragg's broken columns on the shifting field of Mission Ridge ; the bloody repulse of Kenesaw and Marietta ; the discomfiture of Hood before Atlanta; the exultant March to the Sea ; the advance in storm and flood through the Caro- linas; the bloody hour before Bentonville; the Surrender of Johnson at Raleigh ; and the pageant on Pennsylvania Avenue following the funeral car of President Lincoln. Gone are they all; and I too am soon gone! In the fleeting moment the aging veteran, hat in hand, waves a salute to the oncoming youth, bearing full high advanced the colors of his country to undreamed-of triumphs: for this is our warfare; no battle; no crown of Victory! M. H. J. October i, 1911. Battle Mountain Sanitarium, Hot Springs, South Dakota. 818 10 CONTENTS Pae. CHAPTER I. Our Family in the Early History of the Government .... 7 CHAPTER II. My Earliest Days Continued 13 CHAPTER III. My Mother 18 CHAPTER IV. Rachel T. Nicol 23 CHAPTER V. The South Henderson Church 30 CHAPTER VI. Off for Oregon. Frontier Life in the Early Forties 36 CHAPTER VII. The Illusions of Childhood 40 CHAPTER VIII. The Family Removes to the Yellow Banks 44 CHAPTER IX. My Boyhood at the Yellow Banks 50 CHAPTER X. Temptations of the Great River 56 CHAPTER XI. The Yellow Banks 61 CHAPTER XII. "Gold ! Gold ! from Sacramento River" !. 66 CHAPTER XIII. The Village Bakery 70 CHAPTER XIV. The Presbyterian Chapel and Its Memories 75 CHAPTER XV. The Ghost and the Fink & Walker Stage Coach 80 CHAPTER XVI. The School-teacher Descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, 87 CHAPTER XVII. The Menace of the Great River 92 ii Contents. Page CHAPTER XVIII. A Ride with One of the Cloth 96 CHAPTER XIX. The Bloomer Costume, the Crinoline Disturbance, and Other Matters 100 CHAPTER XX The Mysterious Stranger 104 CHAPTER XXI. The Ghost 112 CHAPTER XXII. Overland to Fountain Green 115 CHAPTER XXIII. A Glimpse of Horace Greeley 119 CHAPTER XXIV. Lincoln and Douglas 124 CHAPTER XXV. My School -days at Monmouth and the Crozier-Fleming Tragedy 1 30 CHAPTER XXVI. "To Pike's Peak or Bust" 135 CHAPTER XXVII. Homeward Bound 1 45 CHAPTER XXVIII. A Volunteer at the Fall of Ft. Sumter 149 CHAPTER XXIX. To Washington and Through New England 156 CHAPTER XXX. Re-enlisted for Three Years 1 63 CHAPTER XXXI. Our First Encounter with a Contraband 171 CHAPTER XXXII. The Capture of Island No. 10 and New Madrid 175 CHAPTER XXXIII. From Shiloh to Corinth under Halleck 183 CHAPTER XXXIV. The March to Tuscumbia and Nashville 188 CHAPTER XXXV. Isolated at Nashville 1 92 CHAPTER XXXVI. Bridgeport to Chattanooga ; 197 Contents. iii Page. CHAPTER XXXVIII. Good-bye, Braxton Bragg 201 CHAPTER XXXIX. Relief of Knoxville 205 CHAPTER XL. On Veteran Furlough 211 CHAPTER XLI. The Knights of the Golden Circle 215 CHAPTER XIJI. The Confederate Campaign in Henderson County 219 The Atlanta Campaign, or the Hundred Days Battle. ... 220 Battle at Rocky Face 233-4 Battle of Resaca 235 Adjutant Rice Wounded 236 Capture of Rome 237 The Fight at Dallas 239 Preliminary Fighting at Kenesaw Mountain 245 The Charge of Our Division at Marietta 247 Fighting at the Rifle-Pits and on the Picket- Ivine 250-1 Peach-Tree Creek. Major Wilson and Captain Munson Wounded 254-5 Battle of July 22 nd. Death of Gen. McPherson 255 Our Division, the Victim of a Shameful Miscarriage on July 28th 257 Our Regiment Exchanges the "Acorn" for the "Arrow," 264 Resignation of Commissioned Officers 267 Assigned to the Command of Company F 268 The Hood Chase 268-9 Death of Gen. Ransom 2 74 The March to the Sea 278 Tear Up, Burn and Twist 284 Prisoners from Fort McCallister 288 On the Gulf Railroad 289 The City of Savannah 290 On Ocean Transports to Beaufort, S. C 293 Campaign Through the Carolinas 296 Fighting at the Crossing of the Salkahatchie 300 Assigned to the Command of Company G. Capt. Wilson of "G" Wounded 302 Midnight Crossing of the Edisto 304 Passing Through Orangeburg 306 On the Saluda, Opposite Columbia 308 The Burning of the Capitol of South Carolina 309 iv Contents. Page. At Winsboro 311 Capture of Cheraw 314 Arrival of the Army at Fayetteville, N. C 318 Our Division at Bentonville 321 Our Arrival at Goldsboro 323 Grant Has Taken Richmond 325 Dispatch that Lee Has Surrendered 326 Arrival of Sherman's Army at Raleigh 326-7 Assassination of President Lincoln 327 1 7th A. C. Reviewed by Gen. Grant, Sherman and Other Distinguished Officers 328 Interview with Mrs. Stewart 329 Homeward Bound via Richmond and Washington 330 In Old Virginia, Petersburg 332 "On to Richmond," Libby Prison and Belle Isle 333 Richmond to Washington. Scene of Sheridan's Cavalry Engagements 334 Ride Over Spottsylvania Battle-Ground ... 335 Ride with Surgeon Ritchey and Acting Q. M. Hughes to Mt. Vernon 337 President Johnson at the Entrance to the White House . . . 338 Letter from Mary F. Hamilton of the Treasury De- partment 339 By Rail to Parkersburg Down the Ohio River to Louis- ville 340 On Fu lough. Ride v\ith Gen Morgan on Front Platform of Cars from 4 p. M. until Midnight 342 Home ! 343 APPENDIX. I7th A. C. Badge 344 Congratulatory Dispatch from Governor Low, of Cali- fornia 345 The Pot -Trammels of 1690 346 Patriotism of Illinois Joe Hooker and John Pope 347 Heroes Given to Strong Drink 348 The Rebel Paper's Libel 349 Capt. David R. Water's Explanation of the Movement of Our Division on July 28th, 1864 352 The National Tribune's Tabular Statement of the Union Soldiers' Services 354 Henry Watterson's Tribute to Lincoln 356 Copyright 1911, By MATTHEW H. JAklSON, Kansas City, Mo. CHAPTER I. OUR FAMILY IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GOVERNMENT. To bear willing testimony to the virtues of my honored parents, whose memory I hold in unfeigned love and rever- ence, is my first duty as well as my chiefest pleasure in the preparation of these pages. My father, William Rollin Jami- son, was born in Grayson County, Kentucky, in 1808, the year in which the Congressional Act was passed prohibiting the slave trade, and in which Aaron Burr, after his trial at Richmond, left his country for Europe, an outcast, to wander a discredited man. My father's long and useful life compassed three-quarters of a century. My immediate forebears and myself were born on our American frontier. Some branches of our family were represented in the army under Washing- ton, one of them a quartermaster, and others were usefully employed in different branches of the military service. One of these, a young man of eighteen years, left his widowed mother in the north of Ireland and escaped to this country as a stowaway, and under an old law or custom of the time, dis- charged his obligation to the master of the vessel by enlisting in the patriot army. A grand-uncle was a merchant high in repute and of considerable wealth in the city of Baltimore dur- ing the first third of the nineteenth century, and his descend- ants are now citizens of Maryland. My great-grandfather. John Jamison, from across the water in the north of Ireland, settled in Lancaster County. Pennsylvania, the richest agricult- ural part of the State, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. He it was who named the township "Little Britain" ; 8 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. and my grandfather, Samuel Jamison, moved from thence to Kentucky at the beginning of the century, where my father was born as aforesaid. The axe, the plow and the rifle were the im- plements used by the three generations of my ancestors to sub- due the wilderness. They chose the route into the Mississippi Valley taken by the Lincolns namely, from Pennsylvania and Virginia into Kentucky, thence across the Ohio River into Southern Indiana, and from thence directly to the Father of Waters. These migrations consumed the first quarter of the century. Clearings were made and homes established in the wilds of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. In Perry County, Indiana, my grandfather built a comfortable frame dwelling, the frame of oak, direct from the trees, the siding, sash and doors of walnut. Here my father was advancing in his teens and was the main dependence of the family in the care of such machinery as the> had, such as horse-power for grinding corn, the fanning-mill for cleaning wheat, and possibly the crude cylinder threshing machine, although the ox and the horse were still in use in my childhood for treading out, the grain. My father was twice married. His first wife, Marth.i Finley, who died of cholera in 1832, was the daughter of i soldier of the Revolution, who fought under Washington at Monmouth and on the Brandywine. He had just attained his majority on the arrival of the family in Henderson (then Warren) County, in 1829. He was a man of strong will, per- sistent energy of purpose, and in his old age, leaning on his staff, might well have said, "These hands have ministered to my necessities." His hands were large and well-shaped, with the broad curved thumb, the sure sign of a man well endowed. He taught school on his arrival in Henderson County; could survey his own lands ; was skillful in the budding and grafting of fruit trees, and practiced the art more or less all his life extending this work to his wild orange groves in Florida. All his farm work was done with the crude implements and tools used in the period following the Colonial era. At the time of Recollections of Pioneer and .Inny Life. 9 my birth, some (a few) of the better helps were coming into use, such as the cast-iron plow, the then (not always) reliable steel plow. 1 recall my father in my earliest years, dragging in his small grain with a well-distributed tree-top, and he did a good job. The small grain was cut with a cradle, and his sickle, with its serrated edge (an implement of a former gen- eration, with which "the mower no longer filleth his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom"), was an object of in- terest to me, and coveted, but denied to me as a plaything. The trace-chain, the flat wooden hames tied with a leather thong, the harness made of broad, flat strips of leather cut directly from the hide, the wide-track linch-pin wagon with its small fore wheels and extra large hind ones, the tar-bucket swinging under the hind axle, was the fashion on the public highways. A wagon of this description, usually drawn by oxen and scantily daubed with tar on the thimbles, warned the coun- try round of its approach long before coming into view by its agonizing shriek ' The late John Bruen, one of the wealthy live-stock men of the county, began life with such a wagon. I remember him well, swinging his ox-goad over his shoulder, a nut-brown, good-natured fellow, hesitating in his speech. The late David Rankin, another man of the same class, a reputed millionaire, started on a successful career with such an outfit. My father had the mechanic's eye, and knew at a glance whether a line was straight or not. He had the charge, when under age, of the machinery or tools requiring special care, for my grandfather had little aptitude for such work. When doing work which required some skill, his usual comment upon his awkward sons or others assisting in the labor was, "He hasn't half an eye!" He "found" himself, and "came to" him- self, in his own way. He had considerable education: but gathered it as every pioneer did, by hook and by crook, no one can tell just how, for he was a man of few words and only briefly and casually reminiscent. For a rail-splitter, inured to the toil of building homes in lo Recollections of Pioneer a)td Army Life. the wilderness, he wrote a good hand, and spelled correctly, an accomplishment marked by the breach rather than the ob- servance by alleged educated people. He never talked about it; but I think he must at one time have had an ambition be- yond the commonplace, for he always had useful books in his possession, and one in particular (an Ains worth's Latin diction- ary) which he seems to have put to considerable use. During the winter evenings, when he was not otherwise engaged, he busied himself making split-bottom chairs for his children and larger ones for the family. He was skillful at any kind of re- pair work and owned a kit of shoemaker's tools, with which he kept the footwear of the family in good shape. These home- ly labors are best appreciated when those of us who are old enough can recall families where the stupidity was so dense, or indolence so extreme, that even in severe weather little ef- fort was made in pioneer homes to provide these comforts. He was diligent in his business, intent on his purpose, concentrated, and cheerful, whistling in a peculiar minor key as he went about his farm work. I recall him, as he appeared to me in my earliest years, wearing a broad-brimmed home- made straw hat and linsey-woolsey waistcoat. Usually the farmer of those days wore a red waumus of home-woven ma- terial, the same as the mother and daughters wore, except that the linsey-woolsey for the latter came from the loom in stiipes. The elder Hanna presided at an old-fashioned Independence Day celebration at Centre Grove as late as 1853 in every-day attire namely, in an old waumus, with the corners drawn to the front and tied in a knot. In pioneer days my father was a sort of referee in local legal matters; that is to say, his neighbors made him "Squire" by regular commission, and by this official title he was always addressed by his friends. And too, he was available when his neighbors were ailing, for, while he made no pretensions to the healing art, his judgment was relied upon with great con- fidence by his neighbors. Blood-letting was still in vogue for Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. n many diseases, and as a child 1 used to look upon his keen lance, with its tortoise-shell handle, with a kind of horror, and 1 never failed to lapse into a condition akin to nervous pros- tration whenever he bled my mother for sick headache. In this connection poor Josh Darnell comes into view. He was an epileptic, seven or eight years of age possibly. His parents, not knowing what better to do, brought him to father to be bled, which was done. One day at school I came very near being the victim of one of Josh's spells. Mary Ann Bigelow, an estimable young woman, was the teacher at the old Davenport school-house, and I and my younger brother, Ewell, were sent to her to ex- plore the mysteries of the alphabet. We were among the small- est urchins and sat with our bare legs hanging over the first low bench at the front. Behind us rose a higher bench and a writing desk or board running along the wall. Here the larger scholars sat. Josh was seated right behind me, and without warning the poor lad was suddenly taken with a "fit." His face flushed purple and he was caught by the teacher in the act of striking me a terrific blow from behind The teacher was as much afraid of him as the scholars were and the school was in a fright; but, after a struggle, the boy lapsed into a stupor, and in an hour or so was about as well as usual. The only event that arose to disturb the even tenor of Miss Bigelow's school was her method of getting even with the refractory boys. A feature of her academy was an im- provised gallows, from which was suspended a piece of woolen yarn. The criminal was brought out upon the, floor and placed on the trap. The rope was adjusted so that the transgressor stood on his toes, and if he acted as his own executioner, and sprung the trap that is to say, settled down on his heels and broke the rope, he either got a "licken" or had to be hung over again. In the pursuit of learning the two children were sent to Aunt Tabitha Stice, who opened a competing university in a log cabin which stood on the site of my brother Francis 12 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Marion's home. At this time, throughout all the region round about, there was a great scare over the mad dog that bit Brad- bury. The good mothers were particularly concerned at the risk taken in sending the children a mile or two to school while this dog was still at large. As a precaution Aunt Tabitha took the door of the cabin, which was off its hinges, if it ever had any, and laid it down on its edge across the doorway, which would let in the light and keep out the dog, as she supposed. The dog never came our way, however, and for a break in the monotony we had to fall back on our own resources. As for myself, I found a good subject in Will Graham,, who had not as yet learned the art of blowing his nose. Being his next neighbor, I introduced some bits of vaudeville which proved a side-splitting success. At every joke sent as a surprise from behind my spelling-book there was a cataclysm Will snick- ered and the sheep-legs hung suspended at great length. Up to this time handkerchiefs had not been discovered, and the helpless boy could do nothing less than wind up his suspen- sories, until he must have had a coil in his head as big as -\ pound pippin. CHAPTER II. MY EARLIEST DAYS CONTINUED. During my father's laudable effort to help poor Josh Dar- nell, I find that I have escaped into this world unbeknownst, as it were, and got as far as Aunt Tabitha's school before be- ing discovered, and if my patient reader please, we will trace the fugitive back to his entrance. I was born on the loth day of September, 1840, on the ancient hunting-ground of the Sacs and Foxes two of the many collateral tribes of the great Algonquin race; within a few yards of an old stockade, pierced for musketry, erected at the opening of the Black Hawk War on my father's homestead, situated in the angle formed by the branches of the Henderson River, close to its junction with the Mississippi, and within five miles of the Yel- low Banks, where I grew to manhood. My half-brothers, John C. (October 15, 1830) and Francis Marion (October i, 1832), were born in that stockade, while the children of the second marriage, myself included, were born in a log cabin on the same ground. There was no booming of cannon on my ad- vent into this world; but the Whigs throughout the country were on their sailor's legs through the inoidinate consumption of hard cider. Does my reader remember the campaign song of 1840? "Farewell, old Van; You 're a used-up man. To guard our ship We '11 try old Tip. With Tip and Tyler We '11 burst Van's biler I" 13 14 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. In the "Military Tract' the supporters of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" were short on the prescribed refreshment of the campaign. They were strong on coonskins and log cabins, but were in a strait for hard cider, and I suspect that my elders were compelled to work up enthusiasm for the ticket on the standard stimulant. My father explored Fulton and Henderson Counties in 1829, and in 1830 my grandfather, Samuel Jamison, and my uncles James, John Calvin, Harvey and Nathan, my aunt Elizabeth, a grand-uncle, John Jamison, and a grand aunt, Sally Jamison, all settled in the immediate neighborhood known for three-quarters of a century as the "Jamison Settlement" ; ^11 of them within four and five miles of the Yellow Banks. I recall all the original cabins built by the heads of the differ- ent branches of the family the cabin in the woods where my grandfather died ; for some reason he was not at home, in his own good frame dwelling close by. I was a small child at play around the cabin when he breathed his last He died before his time, at the age of sixty-eight, having torn his thumb on a splinter as he climbed over the rail fence. The wound re- sulted in time in blood-poisoning. He used to ride over to my father's on his old saddle-horse, "Jawl," and show my mother his wounded thumb, and when he held it out, by rising on my toes I could get a glimpse of it. Uncle James' rude cabin stood for some years close to the frame dwelling, which was not completed at his death. I stood in recent years at the door of the log cabin and looked in at the same four-square room where my Uncle Calvin and Aunt Sarah began housekeeping. Everything comes back to me now : the giant oak and hickory trees that cast their shadow over the cabin, the long winter evenings, the shell-bark hickory nuts and the hearthstone where they were cracked in the light of the blaze while the apples sputtered in a row and the corn pone slowly ripened in the lit- tle oven. The current literature was Horace Greeley's Tribune. The Jamisons all set out a fruit tree first and built their cabins Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 15 afterwards. Uncle Calvin was a clean, wholesome man ; a good neighbor, without pretensions of any kind; blessed with com- mon sense in a large measure, a sound judgment, and a proper pride in his own personality. He suffered much sickness in his family in the early days of his married life, which kept him back; but in later years he came grandly forward, and died with a good estate, rejoicing in having seen his great- grandchild ! The first built of the frame homes (those of my grand- father and Uncle James, the first about seventy years old and the latter sixty or more) are in a good state of preservation, promising to last to shelter still other generations. My grand- father's homestead, as cared for by Uncle Harvey in the old days, was especially beautiful, with its large mulberry tree on the lawn, the picketed garden-plot on the north, the wide- spreading pasture land, in which stood the spacious barn, and the orchard and noble grove of primeval forest for a back- ground. Now, however, with the passing years the savage greed of the alien has made havoc in the forest, run the plow- share almost into the doorway, and threatens to make a manure- heap of the private burial-ground. I have always been af- fected in a peculiar way by this venerated spot. Across the vista of my earliest recollection passes a group of mourners bearing the remains of my grandmother from the ancestral home (a short way) to the private burial-plot. My mother led me by the hand, and I was awed and did not understand ; but the cloth-covered casket borne solemnly along made an impression that time alone can not efface. My Uncle Nathan at his death was an octogenarian, and the last survivor of the ancient race whose members settled in Henderson County early in the first third of the nineteenth century. His relict, Aunt Sophronia, is living at an advanced age, richly blessed in her children. It is the happy lot of the child born on the frontier to be oblivious to the sturdy blows of the axe at the root of the tree 1 6 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. the patient accumulation of years by which the young mar- ried couple surround themselves with the comforts of home; the comfortable cabin itself ; the necessary outbuildings ; the conveniences of interior lanes and gates and bars ; the well safely curbed against the feet of tottering childhood, the old oaken bucket ; the lowing herds and flocks ; my. mother's old- style poppies and pinks in the garden; father's amber grapes and damson plums, and his stalwart orchard, the first and the best in the State (so the State Historical Society says), with its stout apple trees heavy laden ; the cherry trees, in whose tops the birds were wont to compete with the boys for the ripe clusters ; the pears, the peaches in perfection all, untenanted by worm and unstung by fly ! All this seems commonplace : but when I recall the aged couple whose ashes rest in Florida "in their sepulchre there by the sea" who supplied my earli- est youth with such lavish abundance, the tears come welling up. Nor is this picture shown in its best light save by contrast. When I was a lad, I could look across our great prairies and not see in those wide open spaces a single farm-house, and fruit in the thinly settled country was almost unknown. My father brought his fruit scions (poor dried -up little roots, which could not possibly live, he thought) in a wagon from Kentucky ! I believe that my father wa -5 the best farmer and the best all-around man in his neighborhood. He had a roomy two-story log barn and comfortable cattle sheds when the most of his neighbors had little or no sheltei for their stock, or turned it out in the arctic cold. He always had a small drove of young cattle coming on, and as children we took great de- light in attending upon the sheep-shearing at the sheep-house down in the pasture. The threshing scenes at the barn were a great wonder, where the oxen or the horses went round and round treading out the grain, and where the fanning-mill stood for cleaning it. The wheat bins were sections of great hollow sycamore or cottonwood trees which had been further perfect- ed for use by burning out. He raised more timothy and clover Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 17 hay than anyone that 1 can remember, which seems odd enough in a new country where the great prairies were still unoccupied and wild hay could be had for the cutting. He raised flax also in small quantities to supply my mother's little spinning-wheel, on which she made hei thread. The old hackle for cleaning the flax lay around the house for years after it had fallen into "innocuous desuetude." CHAPTER III. MY MOTHER. My mother, Margaret Mcllvain Giles, was born in Abbey- ville Parish, South Carolina, the birthplace and home of John C. Calhonn. One of her earliest recollections, at three years of age, was of being carried on the shoulder of her uncle. Andy Giles, in subsequent years a wealthy slaveholder, in full dress, including his cavalry boots, from the tops of which hung pendent a tassel after the style of the Revolutionary period. Her people were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who emigrated during the first quarter of the nineteenth century with a con- siderable body of these sectaries into Preble County, Ohio, where they had an established church under the ministry of Doctor Porter, the father of the well-known first pastor of the Ce.dar Creek church in Warren County, Illinois. One of the brighest pictures of my childhood is the Sabbath scene at this country church on the occasion of one of our semi-annual visits to our numerous relatives in the vicinity : the warm sunlight of ai perfect summer day ; the noble forest ; the interest of innum- erable strange faces ; the neighing of horses as of an army with banners ; the groups of worshipers in the light and shade of the trees, held together by the living meshes of demure yet happy children ; and the coming and going through the throng, with nimble tread, of a pet deer or two, with a tinkling bell under its throat. The pastor, a typical preacher of pioneer days, was marked by the romanticism of the mighty hunter. Woodcraft and the hunting of large game was second nature to him. He had, too, the wit, tact, and flavor peculiar to his class. Of no mean education, he lived a rude life, spend- 18 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 19 ing more time in the woods with his rifle than in the prepara- tion of his sermons, which lacked nothing essential, however, to the homilies of the John Knox cult. My mother was the idol of her household of boys indulg- ent, gentle, affectionate. One of my earliest recollections is of standing at her knee Sunday afternoons repeating after her the Child's Catechism : "Who made you ? God. Who re- deemed you ? Christ. Who sanctified you ? The Holy Ghost. Of what were you made? Of the dust of the earth," etc. These great mysteries were doubly mysterious to me, and I could get no hold on them until my mother declared, with the Catechism to back her, that I was made of the dust of the earth ! I recall perfectly how I pricked up my ears at the thought of being made out of the dust of the earth. I looked up into her face more questioningly than before ; but it was serenely grave as usual ; and withal I know all about the dust, for my younger brother, Ewell, and I did nothing else the long summer day than run up and down the lane, stopping at inter- vals to make of the dust foothouses, of which we had whole villages ! My mind rested on the announcement that I was made of dust, and whatever else in the Catechism I may have forgotten, this great revelation remains as fresh in my memory as ever. When my father was absent from home, she took the book. and led in worship. If Aunt Polly McKinney came over from Uncle James', close by, she sat in the kitchen and visited while mother walked back and forth whirling her spin- ning-wheel. I think she must have experimented with almost everything that was good for the table, for among my earliest recollections is seeing her trimming home-made cheeses, and pressing out the juice of blackberries for wine, and I am sure her delicately browned puddings served with a sauce two- thirds of a century ago were as nice as any we have in the wonderful Now ! She was among the first to make fruit jel- lies when they were first introduced, and she made them beau- tifully. Her success was the despair of Mrs. Robert Ross, 20 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. her pastor's wife, of a later time, whom she was fond of hav- ing at her table for tea or an elaborate dinner. They were a newly married couple, and the wife, being ambitious to learn, got her first points, after some failures in jellies, from my mother. The cabin where I was born, afterward weather- boarded over, had a fireplace, where the cooking was done in the beginning of her married life ; but she was among the first, if not the very first, in our neighborhood to have a cooking- stove, which was like the two steps of a stairway, the firebox the first step and the rising step the oven back of it. It was a simple affair, but effective as far as it went, for it was only an adjunct to the fireplace. The big corn pone, seasoned with small bits of fat pork scattered through it, continued to be baked on the hearth, in the Dutch oven, with coals and hot ashes on top and underneath. Thar old birthplace is still in use by the alien. The ancient hearth is still there, in the room where I slept in my trundle-bed, where the fire blazed over the back-log, and scorched my face, while I tried to whittle with the first dog-knife on the Christmas day it was presented to me. The walnut doors, plain as a pikestaff, and the little old-style latches, which look like they had been beaten out on the smithy's anvil, are there, and it is a long time now since I had to stand tip-toe and make a struggle to raise the latch to compel the "open door" which John Hay, poor fel- low ! clamored for in the Orient so loudly. She had small, beautifully shaped hands the thumbs cunning little half-circles, full of character; and when they rested in persuasive admonition on my head, I felt the strength of that maternal love which is the most potent guiding force known to our race. When she was left alone, without com- pany except her small children, and any unusual noise occurred at night outside, she would get up from her bed and go out around the house to find the cause. This is a pioneer home, where help was not at hand, during the years when the Mor- mons occupied Nauvoo. My father's horses were stolen by Recollections of Pioneer and Army 'Life. 21 Mormon thieves at this time. He recovered two in place of them, but did not get his own. One day an insane man passed through the country. He came down the lane past the house, hurling stones and clubs as he went. My father was away from home and my mother stood on the porch with her small brood around her, full of apprehension, relieved somewhat as she saw our neighbor, Sam Lynn, and others, riding hastily from the north, watchful of the man until he had passed our place and no harm could come to us. This kindness on the part of Lynn was always referred to gratefully by her, although he was a man w*ho, his life long, kept a liquor-joint on his place and with whom our family could not fraternize. I was a reckless rover about four years of age when my mother ventured one Sunday morning to leave me at home while she and my father went to church. Some older children (my cousins probably, or my half-brothers) had charge of me. Without announcing the fact, I concluded to look the premises over, and wandered off down into the barn lot, where I found a span of horses lying at their ease only a few feet apart ; one of these a young gelding which my father had received from the Mormons in lieu of one their people had stolen from him. This animal was wild and unbroken. I went up to it, and in the most social way attempted to draw it into conversation. I laid my hand on it, or tried to. It did not wait to get up. It flashed, and gave me a kick that laid me out good and quiet in another part of the barnyard. I can barely remember that they came and carried me into the house, for my thigh felt like it had been crushed, and I could not walk. When my mother came home and opened my clothing and found the print of the horse's hoof on the soft flesh, my elders were brought to account, and there were a number of points in the cross-exmination which have not been cleared up to this day. Some time afterward I saw a young fellow trying to break that horse ; and the last view I had of him he was going head first over the horse's ears in ;i way well devised to break his neck. 22 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. i tried to trudge over to Uncle Calvin's one day and had got out on Sam Lynn's unbroken "quarter" a piece of first- class land still untouched by the plow when 1 was discovered by a drove of cattle grazing some distance ahead of me. I was advancing towards them with the utmost confidence in their good intentions when suddenly the leader bowed low his wide-spreading horns and began waving his tail aloft and throwing dirt in the same direction with his alternating fore feet. I stopped a moment to survey the enemy. Then the fellow with the big horns and another fellow with short horns and wrinkled countenance (as though the troubles of this world were proving too much for him) lifted their heads way up very much higher than there was any warrant for, I thought; then they would trot around a little and paw the dirt some more, and by this time the whole drove was honoring the small object with two short legs standing in the grass gun-shot away with the deepest interest. Then the leader sent me another challenge, and the whole herd moved in my direction. I lost all interest in my visit to Uncle Calvin's. I thought he could wait a week or so, and those legs of mine, such as I had, went through the grass like buggy spokes in the wake of a two- minute nag. I didn't wait to climb Uncle James' fence I just touched it lightly and passed over the top rail like a partridge on poised wings, and landed I landed in the rotten cornstalks and dirt with a thump that disabled everything inside of me, while the cattle, having lost sight of me, rounded the corner and went down the lane toward the old church, looking for the fugitive, bellowing, and raising so much dust that I thought as I crouched out of sight in the weeds that I should never want to go visiting again. CHAPTER IV. RACHEL T. NICOL. Some of my mother's forebears and many of her relatives rest in the churchyard adjoining the Cedar Creek church; and if my reader should ever visit the lonely spot (not so bright and fair as in the days long gone, for the meeting-house has been removed to conform to the public highway on the section line), on the center pathway he will find the grave of Rachel Nicol, a blood relative, the daughter of my aunt Susan Giles Nicol, and that of her brother David, a mere youth, shot from ambush by guerrillas while scouting with his company under the command of Captain John Gamble, on the public highway, near Fort Donelson, Tennessee, during the Civil War. This ambitious young woman was not favored by Nature in all which young women born into this world are fairly entitled to comeliness of form and feature. She was plain, but she had redeeming gifts ; she plodded, but the tortoise reached the goal. Her classmates were comparatively handsome some of them distinctly so. Rachel's was a reserved, kindly, well- poised personality, manifesting a certain mental solidity and strength of character, rather than brilliance, and a uniformly neat person. She was fearless, and when others shrank from the scourge, she nursed the cholera victims. She was grad- uated by Monmouth College with high averages. When her class dissolved on Commencement day, some to idleness, some to fashion, others to work and still others to marriage, she went on with her studies completed the course and received the degree of M.D. from a medical school in Philadelphia ; then entered the New England Hospital, in Boston, where she 24 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. had the advantages of hospital practice, and nothing daunted, crossed the Atlantic and entered the University of Zurich. Switzerland, to further advance her studies in medicine and surgery. Here she was. taken ill, it is believed, with pneumonia. In that hour which must come to all, the nurse bent over her and asked her if she knew that she could not get well; then for the first time the face of the brave girl showed emotion ; the chin trembled, and the tears came ! In due course her re- mains went by rail to the seaboard, then across the solemn main homeward bound, and by rail once more, a long journey, to trie lonely churchyard on the hill, on Cedar Creek. From a voluminous correspondence I select a few of the letters of Miss Nicol to her life-long friend, Mrs. Emma Kil- gore, the accomplished wife of the late Doctor Kilgore, of Monmouth, which will aid those who treasure her memory with miser care to trace her preparations for a professional career. To Mrs. Kilgore. "New England Hospital, Boston, Mass. "May 1 6, 1879. EMMA. As you see, 1 am 'swinging around the circle,' arid now find myself at the 'Hub,' where 1 expect to tarry for a year. The New England Hospital is delightfully located in Boston Highlands, on an eminence, from which the city and its numerous suburbs can be viewed. I have seen very little of the city yet, have been out but twice since I came, which I do not consider a great cross, as I did not come on a visit. The hospital is net connected with any medical school, nor is it a charity hospital except a few endowed beds which may be occupied by free patients; hence the class of people with which we work is quite different from that ordinarily met in hospital work. I am to spend my first four months in the surgical wards and have already become deeply interested in my patients. Each doctor is expected to visit the patients under Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 25 her care before breakfast, dinner and supper, also again in the forenoon with the chief of the hospital. After supper each one reports to the chief physician the condition of her patients. Each puts up her own remedies also. Tuesdays and Fridays are set apart for surgical operations, so you have a synopsis of our work, except that I did not say that we are expected to write the histories of all our cases." A Premonition of Her Fate. "33 Warrenton St., Boston, Mass. "Dec. 30, 1879. "DEAR EMMA. I think you might have made a further sacrifice in order to make me a visit and see Boston, whose wonders I would only be too glad to visit with you ; then you know such a thing might happen as that I could not visit you for a long, long time, maybe never, and then no, no, I will not try to work upon your feelings in such a way as to unfit you for responding to the demands of the present ; but then, after a while not now, but far away in the future, the burden of years or some such inconvenience may possibly interfere with the realization of anticipated enjoyments ; only a bare pos- sibility you understand, of course. You ask how I like my profession. My reply is, the more I know of the principles upon which its practice is founded the deeper becomes my in- terest in and the greater my admiration for it. My great lamentation is that I did not begin the study ten years sooner than I did. I am, and have been, in the dispensary connected with the N. E. Hospital. We have clinics every forenoon and while away our afternoons, and alas ! too many of our nights, visiting patients at their homes. It is especially interesting to be called up at I or 2 in the night when the horse-cars are not running and find a walk of from i to 3 miles before you with the inspiration of a pouring rain or a terrific snow-storm to spur you on." 20 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. From Germany to Mrs. Kilgore. "Hotel de la Rose, Wiesbaden. "June 9, 1880. "DEAR EMMA. I postponed answering your letter until I could decide what disposition I would make of myself. I left N. Y. on the nth day of May, then undecided whether I should remain tnere tor any lengtn of time, or come here. 1 spent the ten days in X. Y., and in company with two friends from Philadelphia, who met me there, did the city quite thor- oughly. During this time I also made up my mind to come here, and in accordance with that conclusion sailed at 3:15 p. M. in the 'Maas,' one of' the Xetherland-American S. S. Co.'s vessels, sailing between X. Y. and Rotterdam. The time in which this steamer usually makes the trip is thirteen days, but owing to head winds, which prevailed all the time except the first three days, and the roughness of the German Ocean, the voyage was prolonged to fifteen days, lacking three hours. As regarded roughness of sea, we were told our trip was an unusually favorable one, .even for this season, with the exception of twenty-four hours on the German Ocean, which was somewhat boisterous, but not alarmingly so. Notwith- standing the smooth sea, which was like a mirror most of the time. I was sea-sick eleven days of the fifteen ; not very sick any of the time, but so dizzy I could not stand on my feet, and rather than substitute my head for these ordinarily useful mem- bers, assumed the recumbent position on deck sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, the remaining eight in my berth and in go- ing to and from it. I am convinced that I might have escaped the sea-sickness entirely had I gone on shipboard in good con- dition, which I did not ; the ten days' dissipation in X T . Y. hav- ing had the opposite effect. But I will be wiser next titrie! The remaining five days T enjoyed very. much. I will take this opportunity of commending our ship's officers for their thought- ful attention and gentlemanly bearing, which in no small de- gree aided in the mitigation of the wretchedness attendant upon sea-sickness. When you are ready to take a sea voyage, you can not do better than to patronize some of the steamers of this line. We arrived at Rotterdam at n A. M. June i6th, where I remained until 10:30 A. M. next day; then took an express train, which brought me here at 10:30 P. M. of the same day. I did not make the famous trip along the Rhine in Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 27 a boat, as it was raining that morning when 1 started and con- tinued to do so all day. The trip requires two days by boat, while I came by rail in twelve hours and saw beautiful scenery for one day. It is truly magnificent yes, glorious ! The rail- road track winds along the river just far enough from the edge of the water for a drive and walk, and upon the opposite side of the track, upon its very edge almost, rise abruptly the hills covered with grape vines which seems> to be growing from a stone pavement as seen from the car window not a speck of soil could be seen. "The journey through Holland I enjoyed as much. It is like a fairy land. I could scarcely realize that I was not dreaming. It is a land of beautiful gardens. They grow some grain and grass, but always in small plots, edged by grass of a different tint, closely cut, serving as an ornamental border. Then surrounding this a wide ditch or small canal, these aver- aging about ten feet in width and serving the purpose of drains as well as means of connection between different localities. Of public highways as we understand that term there are very few in Holland, travel being effected in small boats on the canals, which I should judge use up fully one-sixth of the sur- face of the country. What few roads there are have on either side a row of immense trees carefully trimmed and whose branches meet overhead, adding greatly to the beauty of the landscapes, and no doubt contributing to the com.fort of the travelers. "I had quite an amusing experience at one of the railway stations in Holland. No one could speak or understand Eng- lish and I could not understand Dutch. One fellow seemed to have a sort of vague idea of the signification of the words 'ticket' and 'luggage.' which he continued to repeat in very much the same tone and manner of the faithful on their Ave Marias, as if by so doing he hoped to receive inspiration sufficient to make victors of him and myself both. It was ex- ceedingly amusing, but, as the inspiration was not forthcoming and everything around seemed to point to the early departure of the waiting train for somewhere. I determined to exercise my faith in a more energetic manner, and with an incredible amount of gesticulation performed during the few minutes left before leaving of the train, succeeded in getting aboard, bag and baggage. T leaned back and drew a long breath, feeling quite sure of being on the verge of departure for somewhere. just where was sufficiently mysterious to keep my interest in 26 Recollections of Pioneer and .Irmy Life. the journey from flagging until about i p. M. of the same day (the hour of starting was 10:30 A. M.), when the train stopped and everybody got out and I could see they were unloading the baggage, and yet there seemed to be no station, only a single large uuilding. Suddenly it began to dawn upon me that we had reached the boundary between Holland and Germany and here we were to have our baggage examined by Custom House officers. I sat in the car, knowing that if my surmise proved correct, the day's mystery would soon be solved. In a few minutes one of the uniformed guards appeared at the door of the car and addressed yours truly as follows, 'Haben Sie bag- gage?' to which I replied in the affirmative and immediately clambered out, went into the Custom House, opened one of my trunks, into which the officers cast an indifferent glance, and at once marked them both free from duty. Being now among Germans, whose language I could speak and understand to some extent, I learned that 1 was on the right track. I then took my seat in the car and in a few minutes we had resumed our journey, reaching Wiesbaden at the hour previously stated. I shall probably remain here two months, then go to Zurich or Berne, which I can not yet say. "With kind regards to all my friends and love to yourself, I am as ever, "Your sincere friend, R. J. NICOL." From Switzerland to Mrs. Kilgorc. "Zurich, Dec. n, 1880. "DEAR EMMA. You evidently think crossing the ocean an extraordinary affair, yet you think nothing of making a long journey by rail every few months which is attended with many more inconveniences than traveling by water. I admit sea-sickness is not the most agreeable sensation imaginable, yet believe it can be to a great extent avoided by going on ship- board in good condition and exercising a little common sense the first few days of the voyage. "As to your question, 'Am I attending the University?' Yes, I am attending two lectures daily and the remainder of the time devoting to the clinics and the hospitals ; am also having Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. .29 practice work in the pathological laboratory three hours every Friday. * * * * Would be glad to take you the satin and silk dresses were I going in your direction, and what you want will be sent as soon as possible. If there is any other article which the second cousin of the President-elect of the U. S. wishes, I would be most happy to lend my aid in procuring the same. One can buy the best quality of kid gloves four buttons for four and a half francs. They can be sent by mail for 12 cents per pair. "Sincerely yours, etc., R. J. N." Miss Nicol was my mother's favorite niece, and although widely sundered, the two loving friends made the journey to other worlds than ours nearly together. CHAPTER V. THE SOUTH HENDERSON CHURCH. The South Henderson Associate Reformed Congregation was organized by the Rev. Alexander Blakie on July 4, 1835, with a membership of fifty-nine. My father and John Giles were elected elders. Four sermons were preached in my fath- er's barn prior to the organization, two by Rev. Jeremiah Mor- row in 1834, and two by Rev. Thomas Turner in 1835. The first meeting-house, a frame structure, was built in 1837; the second, of stone, in 1855. The frame meeting-house was the one familiar to me in my childhood. Here the honest yeomanry of the new country met in reverential worship. Here the local workmen put to- gether their share of the moral framework of the political structure which forms the commonwealth of Illinois. The in- teresting spot, hallowed by association with so many good and useful lives, became a notable landmark in the county and a modest force and center in our Western civilization. Our fath- ers did a crude and imperfect work possibly, but it was done in sincerity and there is none to gainsay it to this day. The open, original forest (the heavy undergrowth has since ob- scured the view) permitted us to see the meeting-house one- third of a mile away from my father's doorstep, and we had a private pathway through the woods by which we attended the services. Here the old-style preachers of the ancient Scotch faith made the spot lurid with the fires that are never quenched and made the prayers hold out better than the legs of those who stood to hear them. At unanticipated intervals we had a supply direct from Scotland. They were of the 30 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 31 straight John Knox brand very raw. The}' employed the method direct. They handed out the prescription. If the flock would not take the dose, because it was "too strong," then the devil would be to pay. and his terms were hard to meet. I am glad I did not hear everything the preacher said. While he breathed threatenings. and warned the good people of an impending smash-up, I leaned my weary head the long, hot summer day on my dear mother's arm, oblivious of it all, and I think she was as glad as I was to get out of the stifling close room into the fresh air, where we could eat cookies, pie and chicken, and talk with the neighbors during "intermission." I am happy to say, there was a constant aspiration toward bet- ter things, both as to forms and doctrine a permanent revolt among the less hide-bound members against the absurdities of Rouse's version and allied straight- jacket methods of script- ural construction. The old church cracked the whip over its poor slaves who would not many of them so much as look up and claim an inheritance here, much less a rest with the people of God hereafter. Derision in the seat of the scornful, and ridicule in the church itself, drove Rouse back to his native highlands, and opened the hearts and minds of men and wo- men nursed in the ironclad forms of an ignorant and brutish age to the light and warmth of the truth as it is in Jesus and America ! The indulgence in strong drink, a convivial weakness not uncommon among the members and not wholly unknown among the clergy, was esteemed a trivial offense compared to a little sanity in the ritual. I can speak by the card, for my mother declared that the old preacher who baptised me had a preternatural affection for his toddy and was crazy withal ! Almost without exception, all the old-time clergy were grovel- ing tobacco-chewers. There were some odd specimens among the early pastors of the South Henderson church. Father Friedley wis one of these. He had a very priestly air when harnessed for service, and he was an honest little man. but he T,2 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. couldn't preach worth shucks. His best point was an unfail- ing good nature, and his worst an incorrigible laziness thai must have reached back lineally through seventeen generations, it was so thoroughly bred up. His morning service was sched- uled for 1 1 o'clock A. M. ; he did nobly, for him, if he hove in sight of his flock at i o'clock p. M., and the apprehension the poor man felt, that under the circumstances the "session" would have a rather chilly reception planned for him, did not add to his peace of mind ! Later on he taught the Brokelbank "Academy," and still later the public school in the court-room at the Yellow Banks, where I took advantage of his kindness, and along with two other boys got leave to study in the shade of the black-jacks outside ! Why our elders put us to study- ing Latin when as yet we knew nothing about our own tongue is one of the mysteries not pertinent to this narrative. There was blue-grass in the bushy groves in those days, big bull snakes, strawberries and flocks of quail. My companions, John Brook and Jim Pollock, were very good in the Latin grammar and in reading "Historian Sacrae," but a large portion of our time was spent in gathering violets and fighting 'em as Johnny Jump-ups. I remember well, at a point not over fifty yards from the court-house, catching over a dozen quail in my trap and losing half as many more in my efforts to hold them all in one hand while I reached under and pulled them out by twos and threes with the other. The sandy level extending back from the river to main Henderson was heavily wooded and the soil fertile, the result of decades of rotted leaves. In places the ground was heavily carpeted with blue-grass, and the whole of it so covered, but in places thinly. When the original forest of large oak trees was cut away and the fierce heat of mid-summer fell unbroken upon the sandy loam, the strength thereof disappeared like snow in May. The forests in the great economy of Nature are ranked by the Psalmist with the seas and the mountain ranges, and the mental feather- weight who will invade their ranks for indiscriminate slaughter Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 33 should be indicted for the murder of earth's chiefest conserv- ing glory. To gather up the threads of my discourse : Dominie Fried- ley I believe really preferred teaching to roasting such an immense majority of the human race in the flames of the pit. He did not take kindly to the business of a stoker. The dear, kind, patient old man ! He will get his share of the good things coming I verily believe, whatever becomes of the rest of us! As a class the old-style preachers knew no other way than to strike terror into our guilty souls to scare us into the king- dom. The Sunday aspect at South Henderson was rather grim. The sermons were wrathful. Robert Ross, who was a comparatively modern preacher there, had but one burden the wrath to come ! His favorite phrase, which he never omit- ted, regardless of the text, was "the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth" as the seething masses of humanity, like maggots in a dunghill, crawled over each other in their efforts to get out of the flames. One impression only was indelibly stamped upon my youthful mind by these sermons that of terror, and the nightmare follows me like a shadow to this day! And yet to my immature understanding there was the suggestion that my elders took these anathemas with some grains of salt ; that, after all, it may not be as rough sledding in the great hereafter as the picture drawn would seem to imply. My father, contemplative and discerning, did much thinking on religious subjects on his own account. He was an inquirer, and welcomed the light which shone from his varied reading. He was a great admirer of Dr. N. L. Rice and he never failed, when opportunity offered, to hear that eminent man in his own pulpit in St. Louis. On these occasions he was fed on manna not so severely roasted as that to which he was accustomed at home. An interesting old couple in regular attendance upon the services were the aged Mr. and Mrs. Davis coming and going in their well-remembered "one-horse shay." Mr. Davis was 34 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. a figure sure to attract attention from any boy. His age (he must have been a veteran of 1812), his erect carriage; and his queer, drab-felt great-coat coming down to his heels, and its series of ever-enlarging capes, beginning with a small one at the throat and increasing in size down to the point of the shoulders, and the fastening at the collar (a twisted brass chain and hook) the whole giving one a good idea of the appearance of historical figures of the past. The fathers of South Henderson were of that grain that if a prejudice once found lodgment therein, it was like a four- pronged, hard-and-fast molar tooth one must break the jaw to get it out; but with all their shortcomings, of whatever nature, which they shared in common with their fellow-men, they were, as a rule, clean as a new silver dollar, as welcome, and would pass the solid globe around. The congregation was about equally divided between* immigrants from the North and South members from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana had their equivalents from Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, and some of these latter who had withdrawn from the South were so poisoned by the virus of slavery that they continued to vote for the oppressor as before; but while the elder gen- erations have passed away, I remain steadfast in the hope and belief that some time or other, in the future ages, their de- scendants will cease to vote the Democratic ticket. And now as to King David : he was a musician the chief musician and composer of his time, the leader of a choir; the companion, friend, and patron of choristers. His psalms, or songs, were all addressed to some one of the chief musicians, by name, his contemporaries. It was his business and chief delight to "sing a new song" unto the Lord, with "the harp, with trumpets, and the sound of cornet, with the timbrel, and with stringed instruments" and "organs," with the "loud," the "high-sounding cymbals." He was the inspired composer of Israel as Mozart and Mendelssohn and their compeers were the inspired children of song of a later time. Our dear old Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 35 fathers affected to admire David's songs above all other men, and in the same breath to despise his orchestra. How could that be? But his orchestra, as we have seen in the passing years, is a monster which the old Church, with all its qualms, "endured, then pitied, then embraced." I salute them most heartily in their emergence from the thralldom of Rouse and all the bigotry of centuries. May their choirs, their organs, and their "gospel songs" prevail and spread till they fill the whole earth ! And I lament and mourn with them that one of their immature preachers, in a public assembly, in the year 1905, should make such an ass of himself as to attempt to cover with opprobrium the inspired song "Lead, Kindly Light." The Church will purge herself of all such indigestible matter in due time. CHAPTER VI. OFF FOR OREGON. FRONTIER LIFE IN THE EARLY FORTIES. In the year 1845 some of our kin and acquaintances a part of that restless, migratory advance guard of the race anticipating a lack of elbow-room on the fertile soil of Illinois, gathered up their small effects and struck out with their ox- teams and prairie schooners for Oregon ! Think of all that has happened on the "plains" since that year! Around Forts Bridger, Snelling and Kearney ; Zack Taylor and his little army on the Rio Grande ; the expeditions along the Santa F6 trail ; John C. Fremont and Kit Carson and their alleged explora- tions ; Albert Sidney Johnston and his army menacing the Mor- mons in Utah ; the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece ; the dramatic scenes in the Lava Beds and the bloody vengeance taken on the pale-face; the score of Indian campaigns marked by the bloody reprisals and heroic deaths since these emigrants made their peaceful journey to the Willamette valley ! They pulled up at my father's gate to say farewell, and they might well do so, for it was the final separation of old friends. They had gotten a mile distant on their journey to the Pacific when we discovered that they had forgotten a rifle (an important part of their equipment, as regarding game and defense), and my young cousin Mary, always quick to act, picked up the gun and ran across lots, through an eighty- acre field, and intercepted them ; I, doing my best to keep up w r ith her, got lost in the weeds. During these years my young cousins, older than I, Sarah Ann, Mary and Ellen, daughters of my uncle James Jamison, took care of me and Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 37 younger brother when our parents were absent from home. Mary was a fearless, enterprising girl, and was wont to take me down to the sheep pasture, along the little spring-fed "branch," among the crawfish-holes, in search of adventure. Here she found a garter snake or two one day, and stunning them by a stroke with a stick, would lay them on a stump and cut them in two with an axe she held in her hand. I stood by in consternation, looking at the pieces wriggle ! My uncle James and aunt Polly McKinney died at thirty- five years of age, or thereabouts, leaving behind them these young cousins and their brothers, Samuel R. and George Mc- Kinney, all of whom lived to old age and have been blessed in their day and generation. The three daughters made their home under my father's roof at intervals while they were growing up, and all of them were married under it. Sarah Ann was my mother's right hand for some years, and much endeared to us by her faithful services in the household. My uncle James was the eldest son in my grandfather's family, an honor to his race, as indeed were all my uncles, his broth- ers. He was a member of the Presbyterian congregation at the Yellow Banks, and after the pioneer method, he went to the woods and cut out and delivered the timbers for the frame of the church, which is still in use in an almost perfect state of preservation. The brothers, James, William R. (my fath- er), John Calvin, Harvey and Nathan H., were home-builders, as were their forebears. They founded Christian homes and surrounded them with peace and plenty. They were all lovers of choice fruits, and literally rested under the trees which bore twelve manner of fruits in this world, as they had a well- founded hope should be their lot in the world to come. And now, when I recall them in their old age, their bent forms and their blameless lives, I feel that just pride in an honorable ancestry which should be the inheritance of all. It was during the, winter of the deep snow (1845-46) that my father would bundle us all into the two-horse sled and drive by moonlight to the Davenport school-house, where the 38 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. singing-school, under the training of Mr. Joseph Chickering, was held. The patrons were David and Aleck Finley and their sisters, Sarah and Eliza, and the young people of their generation. The school was very small in numbers and the income slight for the young Yankee singing-master. What- ever it may have been, it was subsidiary to the old gray mare and the big undulatory driving-wheel of the turning-lathe at the furniture factory, which would be under full swing the next morning at the Yellow Banks. There must be some of Mr. Chickering's kitchen and rocking-chairs, bedsteads, etc., in use in Henderson and Warren counties to this day. If none can be found in use, but a piece of one of them can be recovered from the weeds back of the stable, I hope it will be placed in a glass case for preservation, for I know of no man's handiwork better worth recovery from the "tooth of time and razure of oblivion." One of the figures that interested me in my childhood was old Mr. Lusk, the deer-hunter. He was a dilapidated-looking old sheik, with a glittering eye. He rode a horse whose sur- name might have been "The Ancient of Days," and it had a movement like the planets ; that is to say, if you had the neces- sary instruments and were versed in astronomical calculations, you might determine the progress of that horse. It was be- yond the scope of plain mathematics. It was a special Provi- dence in behalf of the old hunter, having been designed from the foundation of the world for stalking big game. Mounted, you could not tell where the man left off and the horse began, the two were so essentially one. Moving like Fate through the open forest in the early, frosty morning, the old hunter of sixty years ago rode imperceptibly along with his long rifle on his shoulder, a tinkling bell hanging under the horse's throat and a bit of bright red flannel conspicuously in view. He never pursued his quarry; the agile, sinewy pride of the forest heard the soft, scarcely audible notes of the bell long before it came into view. Its well-known curiosity was in- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 39 stantly aroused and it strode inquiringly, in its clean-cut beau- ty, directly toward the hunter, whose searching eye took in the slightest movement in the wide forest around. The instant the stag came into view, and stood like a statue with uplifted muz- zle, the report of the rifle was heard, and the game was there to take home ! CHAPTER VII. THE ILLUSIONS OF CHILDHOOD. Every child has its share of illusions, acquired in part from the conversation of his elders, which he misconstrues. On a journey into Rock Island County with my parents to visit my aunt Susan Nicol, I was queerly impressed by an old bachelor who lived alone in a cabin on the roadside. He believed in witches, and would not sleep on the first floor of his cabin, but in the loft, to which he ascended by a ladder, which he drew up after him ! The lower floor was covered with a jumble of trumpery, including buffalo robes, and so forth. I tried to catch the meaning of the conversation be- tween my father and mother concerning this man and the witches which were his unwelcome visitors. I was curious to know the dimensions and appearance of a witch. At the edge of the grove near his cabin were some singular bits of handi- work made of split hoop-poles the size and length of wagon- bows. These were bent and the sharpened ends stuck in the ground ; they were in pairs, the one bent over the other at right angles. I wondered what these were for. Did the witches live in those wicker houses? My father was not com- municative on the question of hobgoblins, and I did not feel at liberty to push my inquiries. When a small lad, I was playing near my father's store when a wraith came out of the invisible and disappeared be- fore my affrighted gaze in the same direction. Out of the viewless air came he and went in the same way like a flash. It was the figure of a man in a devil of a hurry, carrying something. It might have been the devil himself, who had captured a small boy and was making off with him ! He made Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 41 the dust fly as he sped away into the unknown. He made an impression on me at the moment which slowly faded away as the years passed on. He never came back and I am glad of it. I was standing under a certain tree with another boy in the deep woods of the Henderson River bottoms when a cer- tain warning sound seemed to come from the tree and we thought it trembled. We left the spot without so much as saying "Good day" to the man up-a-tree, or whatever it may have been. Possibly it was one of those lofty elms the poet refers to, which "murmur sometimes overhead and sometimes underground." I was taken to Burlington when the town was known as the "Flint Hills," and as we sat in the wagon waiting for the ferry-boat I was fascinated with the scene across the river, which I was looking at for the first time. The hills across the broad stretch of water looked like mountains, and at their base along the river shore a number of men were busy wash- ing lumber in the cribs and piling it on the bank. They looked like Lilliputians a finger-length in height, and the boards they handled like toothpicks ! I seemed to be looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope, and my eyes were riveted upon them in mute astonishment. There was nothing illusory about the ferry-boat, which was a flat-bottomed scow propelled by horse-power connected to paddle-wheels, and would carry two teams at a crossing. It was steered with a big oar like a raft of lumber. I made the acquaintance of Elijah the Tishbite early in life. In one of my father's old books there was a picture of Elijah seated in an automobile borne up on a billow of fire. He had lost his hat and his bald head stood forth, the long, thin, gray hair on the back of his scalp streaming in the wind. His foot was on the brake, and he was holding on for dear life. His Mobler seemed easily dirigible, notwithstanding the horses on the front. They were there for effect! They had no pull, for they had no harness on! But they were beauti- fully rampant and I could see that Lije was stuck on his team. They had no use for harness in the country he was going to. 4? Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. and he gave his set to Elisha along with his old clothes. He was two miles up when I first noticed him, going lickety- brindle, no open bridges to engulf him, no traction cars cross- ing just a hair ahead of him, no woman frozen stiff with fright on his beat. I never saw a man enjoy a ride so much. No wonder Elisha tore his coat from tail to collar when he found he could not go along ! I got nervous for fear one or more of those horses would plunge off the billow of fire and break his neck. I watched that Mobler spin away, up, up, and away, till night came on; then Lije sheered up to the door and asked the man in the moon for the loan of an overcoat. He ex- plained that he didn't think it was so far ; wanted to kick him- self for throwing his own coat out at Lish's head as his chariot responded to the throttle and_lit out. As he sped away for the Big Bear in the polar zenith overhead he confessed to him- self that the climate was different from what he expected; then he began to wonder if the contents of the storage-tank would last the trip out, and if he could buy a bearskin cap with eartips anywhere on the route. The next station was Mars, and he made as if to stop a few minutes and aid the constable by an inquiry as to whether Rockefeller had been seen anywhere around; and too, Lije had another motive up his sleeve: if, in aiding the officer to serve his subpoena, he might in the same motion persuade Rock to refill his storage- tank; but Mars was not to be caught napping. He mistook the Mobler for an English fishing-smack and let go a broad- side with his quick-firing guns. That settled it for Lije. He bore away limping, but not completely disabled. I watched him as he mounted into the inaccessible verge of planetary life. I felt bad for Lije, to think he would go on such a fool trip. The billow of fire was dying out ; it was dull red, almost cold ; the storage-tank had collapsed, the punctured wheels shriveled up. and the skeleton of the venerable chauffeur sprawled over the disjointed chariot, the grinning skull and its streaming hair crowning the wreck drifting, drifting, to shores where all is dumb ! Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 43 Most dreams are of the earth earthy in line with the cur- rent of our lives; but some of our visions are separate and apart; flashed upon the penumbra of our slumber world for a definite purpose ; prophetic they are, and savor of admonition, instruction, inspiration, or all together. Most men affect to laugh at them, but all men believe reticently and reluctantly perhaps, but they believe. No intelligent man questions the visions that crossed the disk of Abraham Lincoln's slumbers that wonderful, startling portent of tremendous events. Ten years before the Civil War a marching column of troops inter- cepted my progress in the slumber world, led by cavalry, fol- lowed by infantry, artillery and trains a formidable array that threatened to trample me like a leaf under the horses' hoofs; unlike anything I had ever seen in reality or on can- vas, but familiar to me during the Civil War. I have for- gotten a thousand of my idle dreams as completely as though they had* never been. Not so this one the token of a com- ing day ! CHAPTER VIII. THE; FAMILY REMOVES TO THE YELLOW BANKS. In the year 1847 my father rented his homestead, which had cost him so much labor, and removed to the Yellow Banks, to become a merchant, for which he was well fitted ; that is to say, for general merchandising, which was the vogue in his day. He was a skillful and experienced trader, and his enter- prises included investments in the Northern pineries, the sale of lumber from the mills on Black River in Wisconsin, and the buying and shipping of grain, which involved long credits to the farmers and the maximum of bookkeeping. The transfer to the county seat was easily made, for he owned a good resi- dence and half a block of ground in the residence district, a combined storeroom and warehouse on Market Square, and a separate grain warehouse ready to hand. For many years he was highly prosperous down to the time foreseen by sagacious business men, when the channels of trade and com- merce underwent a radical change from the river south to New York and Boston via the steel rail. In the palmy days there was an immense river tonnage and the number of steamers in commission in surprising contrast to the slight carrying trade on the river in 1911. This pioneer county seat, known to the Indians as the Yellow Banks, has a site favor- able to the eye, if broken to the hope. The traveler on the deck of the steamer approaching the town from the south, looking up-stream over two miles of the channel, is apt to in- quire with an awakened interest the name of the metropolis where the landing is about to be made. The town is now un- dergoing a renaissance : the residences of yesterday are beau- 44 Recollections of Pioneer avid Army Life. 45 tiful, and as the years file away it will become more and more a desirable place of residence. The public schools are good, the locality extremely healthful, and markedly picturesque, in the combination of bluffs and flowing water. There are strong- flowing mineral springs (the Rezner and MeKemson) in the hills, within an hour's drive of the landing, which would be an attraction to visitors if properly exploited. I hope to see these springs, and others in my native county, surrounded by cottages, and the Mississippi bridged at the Yellow Banks for a traction system, supplying direct communication with Mt. Pleasant and other prosperous towns west of the river. My earliest familiarity with the river, at seven years of age, afforded glimpses of the old slavery days, at the Yellow Banks, outside of the slaveholders' jurisdiction. With his usual arrogance, he did not scruple to violate a constitution of whose provisions he considered himself the heaven-ordained custodian. Some of these gentlemen, residents of St. Louis, were not cotton- nor tobacco-growers, nor tillers of the soil by slave labor in any sense. They were gentlemen of leisure, who sold the labor of their slaves to the officers or owners of steamboats, where it was employed on the deck. All grain was sacked for shipment, and I have a vivid recollection of the loading of large steamers, winged with great barges, one on each side of her. On a hot summer day, or in the early fall, the warehouse was set wide open, revealing the sacked grain in tiers piled to the roof ; wheat in cotton sacks ; corn in bur- laps or "gunnies." Double stages reached from the ground to, the deck of the steamer and also to the warehouse's double- entrance, affording room for a long file of deck-hands (black as the ace of spades most of them) to file down on one side, each with a bag of grain on his shoulder, and a similar file to return empty on the other side, an endless chain. These deck- hands (some of them, at times the majority of them, slaves) went at a trot, hatless, with an empty bag drawn like a priest's caul over the head. The ideal mate (there were two of them, first and second) wa.s a survival of the fittest, and was chosen 46 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. for that reason because he was a brute, big and burly, with a voice like a fog horn, and who would not hesitate to take a stick of cord-wood and brain the wretch that crossed him. There was often great rivalry between these freighters. As fully as possible the steamer going up engaged the cargo for the trip down, but there were odd lots of freight to be picked up in considerable quantity and the passenger traffic to look after, and the boat that could lead her rival by a few hours or a day was in luck. Under the circumstances, the brutality of the mate was apt to come into full play. I have seen him with the "big stick" driving his herd of slaves at top speed, the perspiration dripping from their faces. Before we had steel-rail connections with New York a large foreign immigra- tion landed at New Orleans, and came north along the Mis- sissippi the Germans dropping out all along the way, in large numbers at St. Louis and in constantly lessening numbers as they advanced northward ; the Scandinavians doling them- selves out scantily until they reached the upper river, discharg- ing en masse upon the soil of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The arrival at our landing of one of the Northern-line packets of the largest size with double barges loaded to the guards with immigrants and merchandise was a scene to rivet the atten- tion of the small boy no less than that of his elders. From the water-line to the pilot-house she swarmed with life. Sharp eyes caught her large size two miles down stream and when her whistle called the citizens of the landing to attention, an imposing body of merchants, idlers and small boys, under the leadership of Jo Hand, the steamboat agent, went down onto the wharf to receive the new arrival. She overwhelms us with interest as she advances, floating in majesty, and with a sense of power. A railroad train strikes to the heart of the town, or through it like a' dirk ; but the steamer comes before you with grace, full of color, like milady within the charmed cir- cle of foot-lights. The bell sounds and the captain from his coign of vantage on the hurricane deck gives a quick signal over the shoulder to the pilot in his handsome conservatory so Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 47 high and lifted up, and which the small boy on the landing imagines must be a very heaven indeed. The engine bells jingle and talk back to the pilot, and the great paddle-wheels reverse, and Leviathan lays his nose gently upon the rocks to doze and sleep while the cargo is carried ashore, preceded by the clerk of the steamer. He is a distinguished personage. He is in his shirt-sleeves. His linen is three X fine. From time immemorial it has been correct form for a Mississippi River steamboat clerk to flash upon the landing in his shirt- sleeves, never otherwise ; but those sleeves ! And the fullness of the garment of which they were a part ! Only the angels would feel unabashed in its presence. On this spotless front glittered Kohinoor, the possession only of kings and emperors and steamboat clerks. He has under his arm the book of records whose contents correspond to the bills of lading. The small boy notes the fine long pencil behind his ear, which is there for ornament only, as he has another for use in his jeweled hand. He exhales the aroma of Ind as he settles with metaphorical outspread wings on earth before the steam- boat agent, to whom he offers the latest St. Louis papers (a week old) and the vouchers according to which the freight is checked off Close at hi3 heels, on the run; comes a caravan of deck-hands bearing boxes and bags and rolling barrels and hogsheads of brown sugar two men, sometimes four, to each of them. He has a large cargo to discharge, for in addition to the quotas for our own merchants, there are tons of grocer- ies, hardware, wooden and willow ware, crates of crockery, dry goods, what not. for the country stores in Monmouth, Greenbush, Berwick. Ellison and Stringtown. He plats the space along the wharf for each of these consignments and long before he has exhausted his tally he is crowded for room. The small boy is awed at the excellence of things around him. His senses are keenly alive to the odors of sweet and precious things that rise like incense from the heavy-laden steamer. The round globe has contributed to the happiness of the Yel- low "Ranks. The subtle pungent barks and seeds from the 48 Recollections of Pioneer and Anny Life. spicy isles, the oranges and limes from the languorous South, nuts from Brazil, sugars from "Belcher's sugar-house" and "New Orleans" molasses from Louisiana and the "Tiger" State, with its slaves and sugar plantations, seemed more re- mote to the small boy than Spain or Italy, both of which were well represented in the cargo. Think of the anguish he endured when the figs from Smyrna and the fine layer raisins from Catalonia were laid down on the wharf so near, and yet so far ! He has his revenge. He got all the boys he could and all the shingles he could, broke the latter into long narrow scalpels and ran them into the knot-holes in the ends of the hogsheads of sugar and brought forth nectar for the gods ! lie ate sugar till he should have died if he didn't. Afar off, piled from the "Texas" to the limit of the hurricane deck, the light, bulky freight, such as furniture, rose in pyramids, and at the fore, suspended by block and tackle, hung the new family carriage, or a farmer's wagon bright from the shop. The interesting part of the cargo now unloading at the Yellow Banks is the immigrants and the cabin passengers. The steamer is crowded with both classes. The old country people, in wooden shoes and queer headgear, swarming over the steerage and barges with their hard- wood, iron-bound trunks built during the reigns of the Great Frederick or Gustavus Adolphus, and which can now be found in use all through Wisconsin and Minnesota as shed kitchens and silos. There was an interchange of curiosity and comment between the loungers on the wharf and the cabin passengers, noticeably between the young bloods of the town and the fair travelers clustered along the railing of the ladies' cabin. As the delay promised to be considerable, many of these came ashore and studied the architecture of our temple of Justice, with its Cor- inthian columns, which aspired to rank with the fallen glory of Baalbec. Some of them were tempted to see Moir Brothers manufacturing high wines, and found their way with diffi- culty among the saw-mills, and the lumber piled high around, Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 49 and celebrated their return to the steamer by regaling them- selves with confections from Chickering's "Yankee Notions." I have spoken of Belshazzar's feast elsewhere, but the real thing was served a la carte at 12 o'clock noon of each day on board these great steamers in the good old days. None of your pale Pecksniffian coffee, but the stout black Turk, and plenty of it; meats and roasted birds and puddings but I do not care to be set down as lax in strict veracity. Solomon had wives enough to turn out a fair quality of hash and enough to go around, but he 'd pale his ineffectual kitchen fires, once he got a glimpse of the saloon of a Mississippi steamer in white and gold, the glittering chandeliers, and the colored waiters and the swell people on the right and left of the captain at the dinner hour! CHAPTER IX. MY BOYHOOD AT THE YELLOW BANKS. Idle "skiffs" were plentiful along the river shore, some of them fastened with lock and key, others drawn half length ashore and not tied. One day Will Henderson ( a lad of my own age, long dead, poor fellow!) and I got hold of one of these free-for-all row-boats, and by dint of a long struggle got it launched. There were no oars and we could not have used them if there had been. After a search, I found some pieces of rotten string on the wharf, with which I tied the boat~tol a stake. Will sat in the stern and occupied himself as first cabin passenger. The string would allow the boat to float out a few feet into the current, and with a stick I propelled our craft from the shore to the limit of the string a number of times. Each successful trip made the navigator more bold and stirred him to greater enterprises, and the last passage out I gave her a shove that broke the string and sent her out into the stream, and in mv fright I jumped, landing knee-deep in the water, and that sent the boat far out on the current! Will, in his excitement, got to the bow and clambered over, clinging to the gunwale, his body suspended in the water. I was in momentary expectation that he would let go and drown. Ev- ery moment the current was carrying him farther out and down stream. He had drifted a hundred yards from the start- ing-point before some workmen along the shore discovered him. and soon there was a half-dozen men calling to the boy to hold on. and it took a very few minutes only to get another boat and bring him ashore. T thought I would be punished for this affair, but I heard no more about it. Poor Will. T fear, did not fare so well. The boys learned to swim at a 50 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 51 tender age by playing hookey to get into the water, and I learned the manly art by getting into a hole one day, and I was so frightened because I could not touch bottom that I struck out and landed without difficulty. Ever afterward for me to swim was no trick at all. I grieve to add that I went to war almost at daybreak. There are few boys that escape it. There w r ere the King boys the blacksmith's sons. They dug a hole in the ground for a play-house, a fireplace therein, and a cupboard dishes and so forth disposed around. I made a friendly call ; but they had just set up housekeeping that morning, and were not "at home" to their friends, nor to their enemies either, and proceeded to prove it by both of them jumping onto me. I was surprised at their lack of hospitality, and I rose up something like Samp- son when he grasped the pillars of the temple and brought it down, roof and all, upon the heads of his persecutors, and the dishes flew like the sparks from a Fourth of July whirligig, the cupboard turned a handspring, and the house caved ir. I don't know whether anybody got licked or not. To the best of my recollection, I got out whole ; but Mrs. Carmichael, who was passing at the moment, had a good' laugh at us. Coming home from school one day at noon. I met my foe in the alley. We were of the same age and size. I do not remember what it was about ; anyway, at the first cross-fire we grappled. He had long hair, which was a decided advan- tage to me. In the struggle I got two full hands in the wool and I was slowly pulling his head down into chancery when his father came yelling at the top of his voice, as I supposed to jump onto me, and I cleared that battle-field at a bound ! I met the gladiator often afterward, but he seemed not to want any more of it and I was content to let him alone. At the old Fryrear house we had a circus. Charley Cowan, Jr., was the general manager and clown. He appoint- ed me ring-master and gave me a small cowhide riding-whip with which to encourage the "horses" and performers. The grand entry had been made and the three-ringed show was in 52 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. full swing, with the clown winning bursts of applause by his acrobatic feats and Shakespearean jests. Now this star pro- tege of Dan Rice was clothed in delicate gingham knicker- bockers, and at a moment when the beauty and fashion on the upper tiers were in a cataclysm of delight over his jokes, he stooped, with his head down and his hands on the floor, and the ring-master, quick to see his opportunity, came down on the clown's ''full moon" with a thwack of that raw-hide that made the veteran of the sawdust ring jump about ten feet and flush painfully in the presence of the ladies. I fear but for the presence of our sweethearts on that occasion the ring-master would have suffered affliction, for the noble jester was much the older and stronger of the two. These were the days when Uncle Sam was waging war with Mexico and the boys' sports all took the military form. Through the sandburrs and stinkweeds of the suburbs our campaigns were conducted. The forces were divided as nearly equal as possible into two armies. One of these had its headquarters at the Fryrear house aforesaid and the other in the unfinished brick school- house not far away. The armies met in battle's stern array on the sandy plain between. We secured a modern equip- ment of arms at the lumber-yards, where the bunches of lath and shingles suffered marked depletion on account of our re- quisitions. From this raw material we constructed muskets, swords, and some of the most savage-looking dagers known to warfare. At a given signal the armies emerged from their fortifications the captains, the horses and the banners ! Con- trary to ordinary usage, the captains did not loaf in the rear, under a tree, smoking a cheroot, while the trash mixed for victory or death. They went to the front, and with a drawn dagger, four feet long, dared Alexander the Great to come on ! The result was that in a cloud of dust or sand that obscured the battle-field there was a sort of military dissolving view in which the non-combatant could get a glimpse at times of a mass of bare heels in the air and noses in the sand, with guns and swords and bayonets writhing and squirming to secure a Recollections of Pioneer and .Inny Life. 53 decisive stroke. At times it would appear that twenty-seven veterans were heaped upon one poor fellow, who still had life in him and was yelling defiance and striking fiercely at his foes with a deadly weapon in each hand. As a rule, both arm- ies were slaughtered to a man ; the field being strewn with the slain, who rose up at dinner-time, when they proved that the next best thing to fighting was to devour the rations. At the close of the Mexican War I found that I was a radical, if not an offensive, partisan. General Zack Taylor was my father's candidate for President. Forthwith I dis- covered that I was a Free-soiler whatever that was, and had never been anything else, and when election day came, I ran barefooted around and around the old temple of Justice where the ballots were being deposited, yelling myself hoarse for old Zack, and singing the campaign couplet : "And he had an old 'Whitey' and he rode him very fast, Because he was a ten-mile nag ; And he answered back to Van Buren and Cass, 'A little more grape, Captain Bragg !' " When President Taylor died, all of "us Free-soilers" nearly died too, for we loved that old man ! I was pleased to accompany my father in his drives, on mingled business and pleasure: out to the farm, over to Uncle Calvin's, and on to Uncle John's a grand-uncle, who differed from all of the Jamisons whom I have ever seen. He was trimmer built and finer boned; a handsome man, I am sure, when he went "sparking" among the belles of Kentucky; full of the milk of human kindness and in his old age childlike in his fondness for his kin. Like the folks at Grigsby's Station, he was "so happy and so poor," for he was no money-maker ; and when we drove up to his doorway, enclosed by a two- or three-rail fence, like himself decrepit with age, he would lead us around and point out along the distant groves the spots where all the kin lived, with the simplicity and eagerness of one showing something new. Poor old man ! with his shaggy 54 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. eyebrows white as wool; he has gone where the mists of the morning have gone swallowed up by the universal light in which we shall all be merged at last. He lived the typical simple life of the pioneer, in marked contrast to my father, who at that time was in his prime, restless and ambitious. In a sense they were far apart, yet full of that love for each other which had run in commingled blood for generations. And then again we were driving along Cedar Creek, where herds of deer would cross the road ahead of us, single file, and hop leisurely over a low rail fence into a corn-field. The dense woods along this stream was a favorite haunt of wild turkeys and "varmints" of different kinds. At a turn in the road an opossum exploited his tail and his person along a limb overhanging the water. This gave my father his opportunity. He asked me to spell 'possum. I spelled it correctly as he pronounced it; but he declined the civility. I noticed at an early stage in this mortal life that if one confidently (a good deal depends upon the amount of "bluff" you put into it) raises a doubt, it will almost certainly breed another ; so I fol- lowed up my stunt by omitting one J "posum" ; but I felt right away that this was a reflection on the gentleman with the elongated tail out on the limb on our left. All I knew about him I had picked up in conversation and I spelled by sound, for I had not as yet met with an account of him in my speller and reader at school. Albeit I found I was sinking in the syllabic mire, but before I stuck in the muddy bottom I returned to the double s. "No, sir!" came more emphatically than before. I was not aware that his Prehensile Excellency had his origin in Ireland and I expired without an O ! Frontier life in Henderson County was marked by all the characteristics common to newly organized communities. The Methodist camp-meeting was one of the diversions peculiar to the time. "The groves were God's first temples." Under every green tree and on every mountain-top the pagan worshiped his idols before the Christian era. The worship of the true God followed under like conditions and the camp-meeting was Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 55 the final development of outdoor devotion. The saints took these meetings seriously ; pitched the tabernacle in the wilder- ness; erected booths; provided rations; and made a direct as- sault on the world, the flesh and the devil. His majesty never shirked the challenge, but met Gideon and his band boldly, and it took more than a ram's horn and a perforated tin lantern to scare him off ! At the first blare of the preacher's horn, the foe tapped a whiskey-barrel under the guise of cider and sup- plied the scoffers who mingled with the crowd; the livery- stables established quick round trips and did a land office bus- iness, and there were other traffickers with an eye to the main chance. Once in a while a brand was snatched from the burn- ing, and he was wept and exulted over alternately ; and Fash- ion came as in later times and hung on the outskirts of the crowd to display her millinery. The camp-meeting at Ryer- son's, in the old Sugar Camp, at the foot of the bluff two miles from the Yellow Banks, is the one I remember best. A copious spring flowed out from the rock to quench the thirst of the multitude. Interest centered in the mourners' bench. Here the pentitent in deep abasement grovelled in sack-cloth and ashes until the preacher, in Stentorian tones, declared him ab- solved from any further allegiance to Satan, or the attendant saint whispered in his ear the supreme deliverance from the thralldom of sin. There was jubilation. The bold, bad sin- ner, having regained his freedom, vented his joy in war-whoops or wept on his marrow-bones, and the ransomed sisters went off in a trance or figured in the green-corn dance. Old-timers recall one of the WycKoffs (a hulking country bumpkin) who on a time got religion at Ryerson's, and in a paroxysm of pious frenzy and self-importance exclaimed : "Nobody knows how much I knows !" CHAPTER X. TEMPTATIONS OF THE GREAT RIVER. The river steamers had a bar, which shone with the efful- gence characteristic of Satan's favorite decoy, the cut-glass service of high rank, as becomes the plate in use by "gentle- men.'' The iced cocktails were a temptation to over-smart clerks at the landings, who were disposed to "take something" and pay for it with coin filched from the employer's till, for I am pained to say that graft was noticeable at times "before the war," where the salary was incommensurate with the vault- ing appetite! and there were other temptations. The great river gave the Yellow Banks connection with the world-wide commercial ganglia, and stirred the imaginations of youth on its shores to a strong desire to penetrate the Utopia that lay beyond their own immediate region. Ed Knowles was the first of our enterprising lads to make the venture. He would throw the "old man" off the trail by placing a suit of clothes hat and all on the raft anchored to the shore. "When the Judge discovers these," Ed argued to himself, "and cannot lo- cate the owner thereof, he will infer that his unfortunate off- spring had made his accustomed plunge from the spring-board to rise no more !" But the father was a discerning man, and upon examination he found that the young man had left home in his best clothes, and the noble father ceased to mourn. In a few brief disastrous moons afterward, Ed was discovered in an unwashed, famished condition, sneaking in at his moth- er's back door. John McKinncy, Jr., a youth of the town, verging on manhood, felt that he could improve on Ed Knowles' romance. He had given the matter profound thought and assurer! him- 56 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 57 self that he could not only surprise the old 'Squire, but give the town the worst jolt in its history. Captain James Findley, an old-time steamboat pilot. \vho had a long and distinguished career in the wheel-house on the lower Mississippi, was the hero who stirred the youth of the town to emulation. They observed the marked respect with which he was welcomed when he returned to his estate near the Yellow Banks for a brief respite from his labors. They were speechless at the scintillations of the gem on his fourth finger; the gold wheel on his shirt-front, the emblem of his guild; his air of a man of the world. In this renowned Presence all the glittering baubles of this present evil world were as nothing. John cut his bridges behind him. He went by night to the 'Squire's strong box and fortified his purse with a roll of the "shin- plasters" of the period, charged himself with the amount, and took French leave on the night boat going down. He would a pilot be. He had not explored the great world further than Burlington, but felt in his heart that St. Louis and New Or- leans were cities of mosques and minarets whose foundations were jasper and whose walls were sapphire. On the landing at the Yellow Banks he had often studied the pilot at the wheel, pulling the signal-cords and whirling the helm around and back, and resting his foot upon it when the noble craft stood to sea to suit him. He marked the smiling, vivacious daugh- ters of the South at his side, up from the ladies' cabin, to look the Northland over from the pilot's coign of vantage. Ah ! what would the youth not give to be the cynosure of such a group as that? He could and he would be! Right now; at once ! He would enter the lower river trade ; experience and training and a close study of the treacherous currents would be superfluous labor for a youth from the Yellow Banks who had spent his whole mortal existence rowing over the Father of Waters. He knew all about it. Owners of steamboats would trample on each other in their scramble to obtain his services. He would secure a five-years contract to begin with, provided the salary met his expectations. He would be wary 5 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. as to salary and stern-wheel steamboats. "Nothing but the best," he said. "There is room at the top," he quoted. St. Louis was something of a disappointment to him. There was a mile of steamboats at the wharf, mostly stern-wheelers, with here and there a three-decker, cotton craft, the most of them rather uninviting. As he stood on the levee a friendless youth a mere speck of aimless humanity in the midst of drays, pounding over the rocks with their immense loads, the odor of perspiring negro deck-hands, the grime of world-wide traffic in the ponderous, pungent things of commerce, like barreled salt, old-time heavy sugars in hogsheads, tierces of rice, slabs of greasy pork in ton lots, molasses, oakum, tar, pitch and what not, his elusive dream slipped from him like a soap- bubble in the hand of a child, and without warning he stood face to face with a giant mate of a Northern-line packet, di- recting a file of deck-hands bearing the heavy cable to make fast. Taking John by the shoulder, the brute growled, "Git out o' yer !" and the young man slunk hurriedly away, when another file of deck-hands from the opposite way corralled him with another cable, which tripped him in his headlong flight and sent him sprawling into the smear and smell of the slop- ing, smooth- worn wharf. He went down to the water and washed his hands and face and sought the sidewalk, obstructed with freight along the front of the seamy, stained, age-worn warehouses. Disenchanted and not "knowing what better to do, he went down and boarded a swift New Orleans packet. Having ascended to the clerk's office and registered for his des- tination, he began to slip bank-notes from the diminishing roll of shinplasters. "Bank of Nemaha," said the clerk ; "we don't take that it ain't worth a d ." "Farmers' and Traders' Bank of St. Joseph," and the clerk turned to his broad-leaved, thumb-worn "detector," and ran his finger down the column of suspicious fiat money, not unlike a row of condemned crim- inals, the forehead of each branded with the number of years discounted from a checkered career. The logarithm "20" was in the margin. "Yes," said the clerk, "it is twenty off 1 , but Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 59 that ten-dollar note is a good ways from home, and I '11 allow you fifty cents on the dollar for it." John weakened at every bluff. He despised figures anyway, and the clerk settled the account on his own terms Then he entered the number of the berth, perched right over the wheelhouse, and known in the parlance of old river men as the sanitarium of diseased livers. The boy, having no baggage, was now relieved of every care and took a seat with the other passengers, on the focs'l along the railing, and looked out over the crowded, boisterous wharf and the steady stream of deck-hands going and coming. He was ill at ease. There was an undefined brooding at the heart ; a sense of helpless drifting to sea, without compass, hope or haven. He thought of home, and the picture of the old 'Squire and his rod, and the short shrift he used to get, gave him tranquil pause now that he was beyond the sweep of the paternal arm. At this thought a joy unknown before elbowed the mulligrubs off his perturbed spirit and he came to him- self. He took heart ; he was bound for the land of eternal summer ! He rejoiced at the prospect of seeing Natchez-under- the-hill, that ancient cavern of gamblers. He would revel in the glances of the French Creoles in the Crescent City. Under a spell of returning lunacy in due time he was landed in the great sugar and cotton mart of Louisiana, and a brief season of shinning along the back-doors of the tuppenny restaurants in the French quarter, where silver coin was the recognized medium of exchange, chilled the ardor of the youth with his few remaining discredited shinplasters. He was treading no\* a precarious path. Silver and gold he had none. He could not feed the swine, for the slave did every menial service. He could not earn a wage in the counting-room, for he scorned the schoolmaster at the Yellow Banks, and all his works. Ignorance is not bliss. Hunger was on his right hand ; the police station on his left. With a feeling of deep contrition, he said : "I will arise and go to my father." He went to the captain of a steamer, who by good fortune had served in the up-river trade, and knew all the shippers at the Yellow Banks. 60 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Questioning the Prodigal, he said to him: ''What is your weight?" "One hundred and twenty pounds," said John. "Charles," said the captain, addressing the clerk, busy cast- ing his accounts, "make out a bill of lading for this young man at live-stock rates, consignee John McKinney, Sr., Yellow Banks." "You will be transferred," continued the captain, "to a Northern-line packet at St. Louis, and may the Lord have mercy on you !" John McKinney, Jr., was a creditable soldier during the Civil War ; the captain of a company in the 94th Ills. Infantry. As a private citizen he had many friends. He was rated as a skillful politician, and no blemish attaches to his memory. CHAPTER XL THE YELLOW BANKS. The years 18401856, inclusive, the Yellow Banks was one of the important markets and chief distributing points on the upper Mississippi. As a lumber market it was second to none of the up-river landings. My father exchanged merchandise for grain, pork and other farm produce from points as remote as fifty miles, and the widely separated settlers in the area came here for lumber and repairs at the wagon shops. The country stores in the interior received their stocks of goods at this landing. Rankin, of Monmouth, delivered his barreled pork here for shipment, and the travel from the East came to this point on the river by stage-coach via Peoria, Galesburg and Monmouth. A very considerable part of the population of the town came from New England. The old Middle West contributed its share Ohio chiefly; and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee contributed heavily of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians to the country surrounding. The intelligence at the county seat was above the average for a frontier town, and the public schools were well supported. It was the center of amusements, such as large singing-school classes, the cotillion, the circus, the concert troupes and the vaudeville. Dan Rice was here in the early forties ; the Hutchinson family of con- cert singers, the Peck family of Swiss bell-ringers, and the Lombards, who came down to and included the Civil War. The old Pioneer House was the scene of many elaborate and liberally patronized social events, and the fashions of the pe- riod were promptly displayed on the streets. One of the characters about town in the days of the 62 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. steamboats "Clermont," "Iron City" and "Uncle Toby" was Al Eames, who had the genius to make something out of nothing. His first venture was to saw a canoe in twain, lengthwise, and utilize the halves for the sides of the flat-bottomed hull of his first steamboat, a small affair, not much more than a toy, with a steam escape-pipe not much larger than a broomstick. Back from the shore two or three rods the boat was hardly visible to the pedestrian, but one could hear its feeble, asthmatic cough as it shunned the strong current and hugged the shore. He completed the engine for it from scraps picked out 01 the junk-pile. It was a stern-wheeler of approved pattern. After- ward he built a larger boat with a double hull, equipped with an engine of the same sort as the first, but the paddle-wheel worked on a shaft between the hulls, and not at the stern as usual. His third effort was the construction of what was known as the "Tow-String" saw-mill. It was a creditable work a practical mill of its kind, that turned out thousands of feet of lumber, and turned in good revenue to its owners, and the digestive apparatus, as heretofore was pieced up from the scrap-pile castaway pieces of machinery and engines which men of less skill counted as worthless. It was said that when he lacked necessary connecting links of metal, he used a tow- string to supply the want. Strong drink was poor old Al's besetting sin, but he came in time into the possession of a good steamboat and made considerable money towing rafts through Lake Pepin. which was a profitable business in the old days. Some of the illustrious and not a few of the infamous men of the nineteenth century have walked the streets of the Yellow Banks. April 27, 1832, four companies of miltia, en- listed for the Black Hawk War. began the overland march from Beardstown for the Yellow Banks. A part of them were organized at Quincy and formed a junction with the main body near Rushville. O H. Browning, later United States senator, and later Secretary of the Interior under Andrew Johnson, was a private in the Quincy company, and squealed like a pig under a gate at being exposed in camp for one night Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 63 away from the timber and water. Abraham Lincoln com- manded one of the companies, and in referring to this fact many years afterward said: "I cannot tell you how much it pleased me to be elected captain of that company." The troops followed a trail which led them past the site of Stronghurst, Olena and Gladstone. The spot where they crossed the Hen- derson River, is not known, but it was probably below the con- fluence of the two branches, near the railroad bridge, where they improvised a bridge by felling trees into the stream. Here they lost one or two horses in the swollen river. Not lacking in the picturesque, this body of frontiersmen trailing north along the sand-ridge to the landing, under the leadership of the great Emancipator! They were detained in camp at the Yellow Banks for four days, awaiting supplies by boat from Rock Island, and it is certain that Abraham Lincoln was a compulsory citizen of the town for that length of time. Their camp was located by a bayonet found years afterward sticking in the ground with a piece of candle in the shank ! This "candlestick" I used as a plaything, and it lay around my father's house for many years. The battalion of mounted men marched from this point to Dixon. The presence of Abraham Lincoln at the head of his company in camp at the Yellow Banks on this occasion confers a distinction upon the town which should be acknowledged by the citizens with a suitable memorial erected on the spot where the troopers camped. A "lost rock" (a granite boulder of the glacial period) with a suitable inscription, secured from desecration and or- namented by shade trees, should be provided. Now, even now, when such a memorial can be placed at small expense, is the time to act ; for in the coming days of a new and ever- enlarging growth avarice will pay little heed to "the better angels of our nature." During the Indian campaign the following historical char- acters, then young men, officers of the line in the regular Army, appeared at this landing, ami doubtless were ashore more or less during the discharge of cargo: Jefferson Davis, General 64 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Harney, David K. Twiggs, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert Anderson (of Fort Sumter fame), General Joe Johnston, and many others. Some of the celebrities of the campaigns of the Mexican War enjoyed the hospitality of our citizens. Among them, I have special reasons for recalling General James Shields, who was billed to fight a duel with Abraham Lincoln. My playmates had their views of all the incidents of the Mexican War. We got these from the veterans of the service or by reading them in Colonel Patterson's Spectator. In talking them over we drew wrong inferences from some statements and unconsciously embellished others. As a matter of fact, we knew that General Shields had been shot through the breast, and in some way we got the impression that as the combat deepened the doughty warrior disdained to have his wound dressed, but stopped long enough in the saddle to draw a silk handkerchief through his body along the channel of the wound and kept right on carving "Greasers" right and left with his reeking sabre ! When we discovered that General Shields in his own proper and distinguished person had ar- rived at the Yellow Banks, our imaginations glowed like a prairie fire. We resolved to feast our eyes upon him as upon the supernatural ! We believed with gospel sincerity that the silk handkerchief (the big red bandanna was the vogue in those days) still illuminated his mortal remains, that the flow of blood was still unquenched, and we were determined to see a real soldier in that condition. The great man, fresh from the field of his fame, was announced to address the citizens in the court-room on a given evening, and this was the opportunity for the bare-footed boy. The general had already entered upon his address to a full house when I ran up the stairway and stuck my head in at the door to see the wonderful, soul- harrowing sight! I suppose the English language never was more impotently inadequate to the portrayal of a boy's amaze- ment and disappointment than at this precise moment. I craned my neck around the door-jamb, and there stood a plain Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 65 little man in perfect health and a swallow-tail coat, talking to the crowd ! 1 pulled my head back out of sight a moment and took a gulp or two at my Adam's apple, feeling awful cheap. However, as no one seemed to be aware of the contretemps, I made bold and took a back seat to hear something about the Constitution, the enlargement of our national boundary, our glorious free institutions, and other stereotyped matters of the kind. CHAPTER XII. "GOLD! GOLD! I/ROM SACRAMENTO RIVER!" The Argonauts of 1849 followed hard upon the election of Taylor to the Presidency. The gold fever affected multi- plied thousands and sent its lessening warmth to the uttermost corners of the earth. The Yellow Banks was the center of preparation for a wide region. Impecunious men foresaw an opportunity to get rich quick. The conservative element in the community smiled at the ebullition around them and kept on plodding, content with small but steady gains. Attractive nuggets had already found their way from "the diggin's" to the Yellow Banks. I have a distinct recollection of some of these, displayed in my father's store. They showed plainly that they had once been in the molten state; of the valiK of $20.00, some of them enough indeed to fire the imaginations of men ! Interested parties who could not go sent proxies ; that is to say, provided a young man of brawn with a grub- stake and sent him forth to try his luck. Men gambled on the discovery in all sorts of ways, and took all the desperate chances, as men have done and will ever do all for gold ! That magic word has thrown a glamour over the State of California that has lured scores of men to a tragic fate, and many thousands to disapnointment. Mr. Hart's blacksmith-shop was the headquarters for shoeing the animals for the overland trip. It was equipped with gearing for shoeing the ox-teams and the work went merrily on. George Muck's wagon shop, George Sloan's and Blackhart's were all busy in the repair or construction of wagons and in shoeing the animals. At the warehouses the wagons were loaded with provisions. At Blackhart's shop I 66 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 67 was a curious observer of Aleck Henderson's vehicle, with which he was to make the long journey across the mountain ranges to the Pacific Coast. It was not larger than an ordi- nary grocer's delivery-wagon and seemed to my boyish eyes a very frail craft, by comparison, for such a trip, which in- deed it was. I can see them now, more than sixty years after the event, bringing the lines taut over the horse teams and swinging the gad over the oxen as they pulled out upon the street to take the trail, marked all the way along by sickness, hunger and death. Some got away furtively, feeling that they had undertaken a big job! I recall perfectly a modest train passing along the street bound for the new Eldorado: Mr. Roberts, the principal, following along behind, his poor wife in tears, trailing after her husband, unwilling to part with him! The children in the street the neighbors all were in deep sympathy with her But after all. there was a strong hope and a just in the hearts of these men. There was no doubt no longer as to the precious metal being there in quanti- ties. The tide westward had already set in and was irresist- ible. There was Sammy Snook, the hunchback liquor-dealer on Water Street. His neighbors lifted their brows in amaze- ment when it was told around town that Sam was going to "the diggin's." If he was stopped in the street, taken to one side, and cross-questioned on the momentous theme by one of his confidential friends. Sam would smile blandly in the face of his interlocutor and reply with the couplet on the lips of all the boys on the street in those days: "It rained all night the day I left, The weather it was dry ; The sun so hot I froze to death. Susanna, don't you cry!" On the journey out Sam was in hard luck, but he got safely through, and the next year, on the Isthmus, on his way home, he was much "jollied" by Wils. Graham on his success in making the round trip. Glancing out of the corner of his 68 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. eye, Sam would answer with the gag which had been a by- word with him all his life: "Catch a weasel asleep, will ye?" All the phases of human nature shone forth in sharp con- trast on the journey. Personal and property disputes arose with aggravating frequency, and when the parties were in the neighborhood of a military post the matters in controversy were submitted to the officers in command, whose award \\as accepted with more or less grace. Footsore animals crippled the trains and added to the emergency problems to be solved. A crisis arose w r hen life-long neighbors quarreled, and a solu- tion in equity was arrived at by sawing the vehicle in twain and dividing the provisions and draft animals, one party driv- ing off with the fore-wheels of the wagon, the other with the hind-wheels. In desert lands the ox and other teams gave out, the provisions were piled upon the desolate trail and the men with grub on their backs pushed on for succor, and if Fortune favored, returned and gathered up what they had left behind. Some of our Henderson County men, reduced to the last ex- tremity, made up the remaining moiety of Hour into biscuits, gave each man his share (a beggarly portion) and climbed the icy altitudes of the Sierra Nevada Range in hunger and privation. Rumors of these hardships drifted back home, and the boys of my own ago had a tale which passed current in our school circle of Sammy Snook, who in a strait betwixt two, out on the Snake River, took refuge in the carcass of a disemboweled mule, where he lived comfortably and regaled himself as he had need with steaks of imitatior> mutton at his hand ! Captain John McGaw, Alex. P. Nelson, and Sam Plum- mer were among the adventurous spirits who participated in this forlorn hope. They were typical men of our American frontier, descendants of the hardy pioneers of our earlier his- tory. Nelson's father was one of Ihe American volunteers sur- rendered by Hull to the British on Lake Erie in 1812. The trio named stood together on some of the immemorial height* of the Civil War. Sam Plummer fa jovial, sincere, honest Recollections of Pioneer ati4 Army Life. 69 man) fell in the bloody encounter on Stone River. The other two were with the beaten right wing of Rosecrans' army at Chickamauga. Captain McGaw survived many notable engage- ments in defense of the Union, and in the great festivals and solemn assemblies of the people of my native county these American volunteers will be held in gratful remembrance. All of our Henderson County men made money enough to get home on, which ir- about all that can be said for their trip to the California gold-field. Porter Nelson boasted of having a "quarter" left ! On a sailing vessel bound for New York from the Isthmus. Captain McGaw, later of the 84th Ills. Vols., suffered shipwreck. In the fierce gale that was blowing, a friendly vessel stood in the offing to help them, and was in the act of sending the life-boat to take the passengers off. High seas were breaking over the wreck, which was hard fast on the rocks, and no time was to be lost. The officers of the endangered vessel had prepared numbered slips of paper and distributed them among the passengers, who were to form in line and enter the life-boat, at each successive trip, accord- ing to their number. Captain McGaw for a minute or two did not look at his slip, for fear it was a large number; but he found on examination (lucky man) that he held preferred stock in Fortune's bank. He was one in the only boat-load that was saved ! By and by a day came, as still such days will come, to call "doggery "-keepers, as well as sober people, "home." Sammy Snook died, and his friends on Water Street said he must have a funeral, and they invited Dr. Campbell, of the Cumberland church, to make a few remarks at the private obsequies. The kind old doctor responded favorably, and dis- charged the obligations implied in the emergency act to the satisfaction of all concerned ; but, to the amazement of some of the hide-bound burghers, the solid globe on which we live did not collapse on account of the observance of this Christian duty. CHAPTER XIII. THE VILLAGE BAKERY Deacon Banner's bake-shop was the fond attraction of the small boy. It had a flavor of its own which affected me mncn as the smell of grog undermines the equilibrium of the toper. The odor of the gingerbread was demoralizing. Under its spell I was drawn irresistibly to the door to gaze in helpless rapture on the squares of sweet bread when I had not a cent in my pocket and no expectation of ever having one. Right there in full view the good deacon had a heaven, whose bliss, for the lack of a penny, was as remote and inaccessible to me as the real thing may prove, alas! for many of .is in the great day later on. I was in despair. At this time Jamison & Moir were at the southwest corner of Market Square in line with a row of grain warehouses. In the same row, north, stood the deacon's bakery and lunch counter aforesaid, and on further north, along Water Street, on both sides, were the "doggeries," the principal one and the most celebrated Sam Snook's, the hunchback. At the extreme north end, fac- ing east, stood the principal business house of the town in the earliest time, that of the Phelps Brothers. McKinney & Adams had a general merchandise store on the then business outskirts on Schuyler Street as it existed, mostly on the town plat. Trian & Day had a similar store on the corner of Schuy- ler Street and Market Square. There were other minor places of business, clustered around Colonel Patterson's printing of- fice, the brick addition to which stands a disfigured relic of the past. Deacon Benner's little bake-shop was of the humblest origin, but there was a man behind it ! In the northwest cor- 70 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 71 ner of the small business room, behind a bit of counter, rested a keg of spruce beer and the display of gingerbread. On the main counter and shelves were luncheon goods with such un- usual neighbors as two or three styles of plain ribbon, one or more patterns of calico, and a suspicion possibly of millinery; but of this latter I cannot make oath whatever there was, it was the promise of things not seen. The family occupied the back rooms. The daughters, of whom there were three, were the main attractions, and no inconsiderable ones either! The family was of German descent, dexterous in the use of English, but with a noticeable lisp. They were "Pennsylvania Dutch" probably, or Hessian. They were Baptists, and the good dea- con, stood by his colors nobly. It may seem a bit odd even for that day that the bake-shop should include haberdashery among the articles for sale; but thereby hangs a tale. The deacon was a born gentleman. The rogues like Ed Ray and Brent Jones made a butt of him ; the Yellow Banks "Four Hundred" winked at their jokes, and the bad boys were none too decent in their deportment toward the girls, who were regularly at school up to their majority, or nearly so. The current fun of a frontier town is of the broad stripe; the kind that takes sc many risks that it sometimes drops its molasses jug, to use a phrase stolen from Uncle Remus. Deacort Benner had just enough of the German lisp in his speech to make him an in- teresting character when allied to other peculiarities which lent themselves to the picturesque. The two practical jokers aforesaid fastened on him at once. Always treating him courteously, or seemingly so; but ever with a card up the sleeve. Brent Jones was a printer, and it was no surprise when the town woke up one morning and found itself in the possession of this bit of verse : 72 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. "Old Deacon Benner of our town Is now a man of great renown; He left the East in an angry mood He left it for his country s good ! He landed here with a picayune, But soon he sang the temperance tune; He made a barrel of ginger beer, If you 'd mention rum, he 'd shed a tear! He put on a religious face, And they made him deacon of the place ; But every Sabbath he is found Selling beer on the old camp-ground ! The 'Suckers' suck his ginger pop, But they find it all molasses slop. His ginger beer and ginger cake Give the 'Suckers' the bellyache !" I have no doubt the rhymester reported the Deacon's financial condition correctly on the day he landed, but Brent maintained a familiar intercourse with Water Street where water was the only refreshment unobtainable and it is pos- sible that he was overseas when he made the claim that the Deacon sold pop on the Sabbath ; that the brand was not the best known to the trade, conducive to abdominal calm and a better grade of morals than pertained to hilarious printers. If the Deacon landed with a picayune, he quit the town with a barrel of 'em, and that is where he had the advantage of the jokers, for if the assets of the nondescripts of the town had been pooled, the Deacon might easily have bought them in with his small change. Business at the bake-shop prospered; the pop and ginger cake were in time let out, the luncheon trade was abandoned, and the Deacon and family (for each member contributed to the success of the business in a direct way) became the leading venders of millinery, not to men- tion dry goods, of which he came eventually to carry a large stock. The town did not continue to thrive like the trade- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 73 centers in the interior on the railroads, and Deacon Benner removed his business to Galesburg, where he prospered and died in the possession of a very considerable estate, having realty holdings in some of the growing cities in the West. It was not so disreputable to sell and drink whiskey in those days as it is now, although it was felt by many to be an unqualified curse. Legal enactments were not as yet leveled at it, but self-respect compelled many to shrink from its asso- ciations. The town was well equipped for the display of the business in its most degrading aspects, and could turn out a grist on short notice. I recall passing in the early morning the window of a grog-shop kept, I am sorry to say, by so good a man as Obadiah Eames, and discovering the floor covered with men who had fallen in a drunken stupor and gone to sleep at the close of an all-night carousal. For some years after my father left the farm the family continued to attend the services on the Sabbath at South Hen- derson, and it was a common thing, as we drove along, to see drunken men lying at the roadside, sound asleep, their bloated faces upturned to the burning sun, their clothing saturated with the premature disgorgement of an overcharged stomach their saddle-horses grazing close by. Among the vicious class it was supposed to be a mark of genius for a lawyer or doctor to be drunk when off duty, and if he succeeded in making a good plea or prescription when drunk, it was a miracle to be noised to the ends of the earth. Old Doc Hulbert, of Rozetta, was one of these miraculously endowed physicians. In the opinion of many people, the drunker he was the greater his skill in the practice of his pro- fession. He was a good doctor and would, of course, have been a better one of it had been possible for him to have lived a sober life. It came to be a street scene to occasion little notice when this unfortunate man, obliviously drunk, seated in his old buggy, his trusty horse carefully picking its way along the road, from which it would not depart until the old 74 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. master had been safely landed at his own gate some miles away. Firewater is not a good protection from cold, but on a day the late Charles M. Harris (distinguished lawyer and one- term member of Congress) ran this gauntlet without injury. He was a three-hundred-pounder, and on a trip to Keithsburg in an open vehicle with some boon companions, in the dead of winter and against a fierce north wind, he was seen with his shirt-front wide open, in the full enjoyment of the supremt luxury of a drunken stupor. CHAFER XI V. THK PRESBYTERIAN CHAPEL AND ITS MEMORIES. My uncle James Jamison went to the woods and cut down, hewed out and delivered the oak logs for the frame- work of the Presbyterian church in the village, and it is as neat a pioneer chapel as can be found in the State. I can hear the tolling of the bell in the cupola this moment as in the far-away years, when each stroke counted one for every year of him who was being borne over to his last rest in the village cemetery. I was at the burial, when a lad, of a brother of Judge William C. Rice. As the scene closed the Judge said to a friend, "This is the last of earth !" How a few words like these will stick in the memory ! It so happened that, after an absence of many years from the State. I was within call when T heard that the remains of two old friends, those of Joseph Chickering and Mrs. John M. Fuller, the mother of those gallant soldiers. Lieutenant Wm. H.. of the Signal Corps, and Sergeant Andrew M. Fuller, would be buried in this con- secrated ground the next day. I obeyed the promptings of my heart and went to see the remains of so much that was gord, and so closely associated with the early history of the county, left to silence and the worm. When T wish to recall the fair young faces and the grave and reverend seigniors of the days of my youth, I am wont to sumnn n a gathering at the crowded Presbyterian chapel on a bright Sunday morning in June in the forties. Whoevrr designed the little house of worship had a lot of good sense. It possesses the beauty of true proportions, and escaped the beggarly attempt at ornament so common in the structures of its class in the new West. The interior was finished in 75 76 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. solid walnut, and the builder was not stingy in the use of the raw material. Walnut lumber is so much prized now that the quantity of it used in the construction of those pews would start a man in business, The backs of the pews (since cut down) were so high that T had to stand up and lengthen out onto the ends of my toes to see what was going on at the front. But we had a fine view of the preacher of his head merely. He was boxed in, far and away! The pulpit was an architectural triumph. There were two routes by which, if you were careful and observed all the finger-boards of direction, you could find the good man when seated and lost to the view of his flock. One could start on either side where there was a broad and sure footing and be gin the ascent of the ecclesiastical Matterhorn. A guide bear- ing a banner with a device, as "Where he leads we will fol- low," would have been a great convenience. By keeping one's eye fixed on him and not permitting him to get too far ahead, up the winding stairway, one might come at last upon the object of his search. I have heard of preachers unused to this sky-scraper pulpit getting lost, trying to find the "way" ; but once in the box, they could look down and count the warts on all the bald heads in attendance. The stranger was given a seat right under the droppings of the sanctuary, where, hearing a voice somewhere overhead, he uniformly suffered dislocation of the neck trying to locate it. We faced about to see the choir in the gallery, over the entrance. I suppose the time never was when the choir (the organ-loft) was not the favorite spot for the display of millinery. Not always, I suppose (bless their honest hearts), was the vocalization of the "old school" church in inverse proportion to the display of head-gear. The young women in their flounces and fur- belows and the young gentlemen in their soap-locks gave prestige to the choir by their numbers, for there was a wide- spread desire among the young folks to be of the elect coterie; but as for their deliverance, they rested secure in the belief that in Father Chickering and his violin, his fine baritone and Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 77 his accomplished leadership and the accompanying melodeon they had a safe refuge from detection. There was a sensa- tion among the young gentlemen when the soprano and her convoying sisters filed in, enveloped in a distinct odor of the perfumer's art the seven angels with the seven vials filled with seven kinds of bear's oil, from which I think the young gentlemen helped themselves surreptitiously to more than their share, since they smelt so loud. In the depths of those high-backed pews I made one in the row of the Sunday-school class, which sat under the minis- trations of good old "Squire" Patterson, with his spectacles hanging helplessly on his venerable nose. I maintained allegi- ance to the "Squire" to secure the right to draw a book each Sunday from that wonderful library consecrated to the spirit- ual welfare of the on-coming citizens of our glorious country. I acknowledge with some dismay the greed with which I turned over the leaves of the different books to find the one that had the "purtiest" pictures. Having come off victorious in that reconnaissance, I carried it home in triumph to read about Albert Toogood, who was so pious he always looked down like Grief on a tombstone, who committed to memory a chapter of the Bible every day of his precious life, who was so patient and sweet when one of those old flinty sand-burrs ran one of its spirited needles a stout half-inch into his heel. Xo ; he never dropped one not one of those pearly tears nor bad words over so trifling a thing as that. I was satisfied with one of those nice books. I got through with it in a hurry. I felt so discouraged over Albert's superior goodness that I wanted to drown myself. The quality had a rock-ribbed pre-emption right to certain of the pews. These they furn- ished with foot-stools and cushions, and there was no denying the distinguished manners of gentlemen like the late William Moir and the ladies of his family and the allied families, of whom there were a number, who worshiped here. One of these (the late Asa Smith's) had artistic talents of a high order. One of my earliest recollections is of Mr. Smith's 78 Recollections of Pioneer and .Inny Life. studio in a building which stood on the corner west of the old Conger boarding-house, where portraits from life, in oil, hung on the walls. There was slight patronage in the pioneer town for one so regally endowed, but the wonderful discovery of Daguerre made it possible for the humblest the world over to possess the likenesses of those dear to them, and Mr. Smith established a gallery and supplied the people far and near with the pictures they so much prized. Many families still have specimens of that art of surprising beauty and fidelity. Then came in succession the ambrotype and finally the photo- graph all of which Mr. Smith successfully cultivated. I recall an incident which illustrates his skill in drawing. His neighbor, Mr. Blackheart (which indeed was not a name one would choose for a good neighbor, but was the best the fore- bears of the old, well-known blacksmith could do for him), had lost his cow, and after some days he chanced to call at Mr. Smith's book-store, where he found a pencil sketch of a cow the artist had drawn from life as she stood under a tree two miles north of the town. A peculiarity in the faithful portraiture convinced the owner that here was a true picture of the estray, and on going to the spot the animal was recovered. Chickering & Fanning's furniture factory came in time to be an important enterprise in the industrial development of the town. Both of these gentlemen were skilled mechanics, and most of the burial caskets were made to order in their shops, and Mr. Chickering was the familiar official at the ob- sequies of his friends and neighbors. I shall never forget my astonishment at being told one day that Johnny Roberts was dead! He was of my own size and age. We were classmates. He? Johnny? So blithe and gay dead? I was dumb. The next day Mr. Chickering's son Henry, also my classmate, told me his father was making Johnny's coffin. I made no reply, but we went down together to the factory to see it. I stole softly into the room where the good man was deftly putting in place the w r hite lining of Johnny's narrow Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 79 house. I was sober beyond words in going close to it. I did not care to touch it, but I looked down into it, and my first thought was, "It is so long! Johnny could not be so tall as that !" Then Mr. Checkering explained to me why the foot of it was made at an angle that the pair of little feet themselves came, as it were, to "attention," till the dissolving years made them relent. It was all very wonderful, a part of the great mystery, but I could not utter a word. The pastor at the chapel at one time was Dr. King, a fiery, impetuous spirit, who might have led a forlorn hope on Marye's Hill at Fredericksburg. At a morning service he made a characteristic parenthesis. He read the old familiar hymn in which Dr. Watts sacrificed his orthodoxy to accomplish the rhythm in the couplet which declares that "While the lamp holds out to burn The vilest sinner may return!" In short, sharp staccato the doctor said : "The choir will please omit the stanza [giving the number], for I believe it to be wholly and essentially false!" Many a time and oft had I heard the hymn used in the service, but this was the first time I had ever heard it challenged. CHAPTER XV. THE GHOST AND THE FINK & WALKER STAGE-COACH. My mother's relatives, the Giles, were the most friendly people in the world, and when they came down from "Cedar" to pay us a visit, there was a demonstration of "that fellow- feeling which makes us wondrous kind" ; but I recall an in- cident which occurred on an occasion of this kind which lefc a different impression. My forebears were Scotch-Irish on both sides, with a distinct vein (if only a vein) of the super- stitions of the race, as this instance will show. My uncle Eli Giles was paying my mother a visit, and the family had separ- ated after supper and left my uncle and my mother in conver- sation at the table, with myself as the third party. The con- versation turned upon the subject of ghosts, in which Andy Allen (another uncle) was a firm believer, according to the representations of my uncle who led the conversation. Mv elders had forgotten me, or were careless certainly uncon- scious of the effect of their narrations upon the nervous, diffi- dent boy who was their only auditor. I was unused to ghost- stories, and was startled from the first, and I followed the tales with increasing alarm. My easily awakened imagination magnified the incidents in the story of the dark woods, the road running past the haunted house, where the man had been murdered and from whence the belated traveler was inter cepted by the ghost, etc., etc. These phases with their varia- tions were related as facts, attested, they said, by my uncle Andy, and I believed every word of the story. As I listened my senses sank under the load of fright and I started up from the table distraught! I looked at my mother. Her face had changed. I knew her not. I remember distinctly these changes 80 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 81 in my senses, but I was powerless to recall them or to rid myself of the spell. I was for the moment daft. I made no outcry, and my mother, unconscious of my condition, continued in an amused way to listen to the stupid outrage from which 1 suffered. 1 think it was her low. kind voice, reassuring, al- though unconsciously so, which restored me. I seem never to have gotten quite over the shock, but I said not a word to my mother nor to others about it; and in this I was wiser than I knew, for if I had confessed to my suffering, I would have been quenched in the brutality of our human nature, for the savage is so strong, in the young at least, that I would have been laughed at. The youngsters at the Yellow Banks were an enterpris- ing lot. We had ambitions assorted sizes and kinds. Our thoughts rested heavily, like the weight of the globe on the shoulders of Atlas, on two choice professions namely, that of the pirate and the stage-driver. We stood on the edge of the water and saw through the fog, or thought we saw, a low rakish craft steal from the shadows of the main shore over to one of the islands. During the passage we spoke in whisp- ers, and our eyes were as big as the ivory rings on the martin- gales of Bill Van Pelt's livery nags. We exchanged comments on the size of the scowl on the pirate captain's face and the pike, as big as a fence-rail, with which he scuttled ships and split the liver of his enemies. But the stage-driver was our beau ideal. Him we worshiped. If he condescended to walk on earth after the grand entry, we trailed after him (all the small boys in town) like a brood of sucking pigs ! If he indulged himself in a bit of humor to the effect that old Mathews, the baker, filled his pies with stewed potato vines in lieu of ap- ples, we snickered in the most truckling way. I can see him now, seated on the box, over "the boot," high and lifted up, armed with the long braided whip, with \vhich to touch the leaders under the belly with that hawk-like circle and down- ward swoop known only to stage-drivers of a generation now extinct. As he descended upon the admiring town with break- 82 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. neck speed, he blew his horn. Ah ! was it not grand ! the tally- ho, as it poised for a moment on the brow of old Schuyler Street in the days before the hill was graded down ! And the bare-legged, shirt-tailed boys swooped around the corner like pigeons to take it all in ! How the old Fink & Walker stage- coach rocked and plunged, and stood on her beam ends, as she rounded the corner in a cloud of dust and landed before Col- onel Patterson's post office, where the mail-bags were thrown out and the passengers braced themselves for the role of dis- tinguished arrivals to meet the expectations of the staring crowd ! Colonel J. B. Patterson was hardly less distinguished in the eyes of the small boy than the stage-driver himself. In our minds he was intimately associated with that great rival. He received the mail-bags from him, and the mail in our youth- ful thought was an important matter. I supposed the Great Father, who lived in some great temple of fame like unto that which used to serve as a frontispiece for McGuffey's second reader, wrote all the letters and sent them to everybody and everybody sent him letters in return and paid Colonel Patter- son for the privilege. And I used to look with an absorbing interest on the little tray at the table open to all, where the good Colonel kept the old-fashioned pennies, big as our "quar- ters," the picayunes, the 12^2 cent "bits," the "smooth" quar- ters with a cross on them which marked them as degenerate and worth only 20 cents, all of which were used as legal tender in the payment of postage, all the way from 6 to 25 cents per letter, according to the distance. One of the "lame ducks" in the early history of Hender- son County was Watty Burnside. Watty was a patriot after his kind. He was zealous in the matter of specie payments, and in his role was a sort of financial prophet in the wilderness. His contribution to the country's circulating medium was home-made. His equipment consisted of a pair of molds, or dies, and a melting-pot. In the latter he was wont to reduce old pewter spoons ; lacking these, he challenged Fate and the Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 83 scrutiny of the public with plain, bare-faced bar lead. With this material he "struck" half-dollars bearing the similitude of the coin of the same denomination issued by Uncle Sam. Watty was a dense old simpleton and thought he could ex change the output of his mint for the common moonshine whiskey of his time. But the boss of the Water Street grog- shop was built on the same lines as his lineal descendant of to- day calculating and sober in handing out the drinks, and knew the kind of money that would "pass" better than anybody. \ never heard of Sam Snook being drunk -never! and when Watty came along and threw down one of his galena half- dollars to liquidate his bill for corn- juice, Sam (who had a hammer and nails close at hand for such emergencies) took the alleged coin and. with a deep and horrible oath, nailed it to the counter. In this manner Watty left souvenirs of him- self all over the country. And by and by the sheriff came along and took him by the ear and locked him up, and at the following session of the circuit court he was sent down to Alton (the State's prison was at Alton in his day) to serve time. Mr. Joseph Chickering. the founder of the pioneer fur- niture factory, was of Massachusetts origin, and the family name adorns the history of the old Bay State. His forebears were persons of culture, distinguished as clergymen, musicians, and manufacturers of musical instruments of national celeb- rity. He possessed in full measure the varied talents peculiar to his ancient and honorable family, and it was a kind Provi- dence that sent this good man, so useful in his day and genera- tion, to the pioneer village so close on the heels of the depart- ing red man. One needs to take a second thought to appre- ciate this fact : to recall how barren the pioneer life was of all that refines, softens and elevates the social scale at this period. T remember well when T could not have been more than three years of age awaking in the morning in my trundle-bed from the child's all-night deep slumber and meeting (so unexpected- ly) Mr. Chickering's cheerful greeting. T had already learned 84 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. that here was the kind, paternal face of the wonderful magi- cian who carried in a curious oblong box a something I did not know the name of, which he lovingly took up in such a funny way and across it drew a polished little stick with a pearl in the end of it, and forthwith came softly the sweetest notes the child had ever heard, and which made him glide sideways around and take refuge under his mother's arm. "The stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times." Mystery. Silence. The usual activities of the household sud- denly ceased. The members were invisible. Myself and young brother, Ewell (whom I dubbed the "Deacon/' after Deacon Brown, the capitalist of Monmouth), were spirited away. I cannot tell how nor where we were held in duress. We must have been chloroformed, or captured by brigands and held for ransom. I cannot say. Strategy. Women display unexpected and wonderful skill in maneuvers. There are few of them that do not excel Napoleon in the art of concealing the move- ments in the campaign which they are directing. They were supernatu rally smooth on this occasion, or there would have been a big kick. The "Deacon" and I "got fooled oncet," as the Dutchman says and with all our wits so miraculously sharpened ! Some hours passed. I do not know how it came about, but my brother and I as by a flash regained our liberty and our consciousness. We realized at once that our home was in eclipse. Darkness reigned, and trouble. Cousin Sarah, T think it was. came with an anxious face and took us by the hand and led us up into mother's chamber. We were amazed at the large group of sad faces, the physician in the midst, sur- rounding mother's bed. The ominous fever had taken hold of her, and they were in despair. Father hung over her pillow the picture of suspense and apprehension. There lay the lov- ing face the one face in all the world ! She said some ten- der words to her two small lads, which I cannot repeat here, and we were taken away. The night came on the night which has steeped in forgetfulness so much of the sorrow of the world. Out of childhood's long, dreamless slumber I Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 85 awoke the first of all. It was scarce day. I started from my bed with all my senses in an agony of inquiry to know the truth. In the death-like silence I stole out from my own room and went half creeping, I knew not why, to my mother's room and looked in. The watchers were asleep and the doctor and the friends were gone. My mother's bed seemed so still and large and white; it startled me to look at it, and she was lost to sight in its folds. During the night hours the fever had not at least increased and the sick one had fallen into deep sleep, and the doctor and attendants had all agreed that she would be well again and separated. But think of the happiness of that mother ! She had lived all her married life in a household of noisy, willful boys young savages, that gave her little peace with the demands made upon her time and patience. There, on her arm, she had a pulsating life more fragile than a Sevres vase, more precious than fine gold a little daughter, to be the companion of her old age, and in whose arms she was to die ! My moth- er's face was very sad at times, and her thoughts seemed far away. As she mused the fire burned and her lips moved as if in prayer. I often wanted to go and put my arms around her, but it seemed like a kind of sacrilege to disturb her at such moments, and I refrained. What soul born into this world hath not had such moments, when the pulse beats low and the spirit seems aweary of time and sense? I was often a truant boy, and this dear Christian mother would take me into a room aside and close the door, and we would kneel down, and she would offer that prayer for me which I hope will avail when all other pleas are in abatement. Two notable publications that appeared during my boy- hood not only made a distinct impression on my own mind, but stirred the anti-slavery sentiment of the country to its profoundest depths Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "My Bondage and My Freedom," by Frederick Douglass. The first was read in the humblest homes in almost every hamlet in the Northern States. My mother had a strong 86 Recollections of Pioneer and .Inny Life. prejudice against fiction, but she read "Uncle Tom," and she and my cousin Sarah Ann were amusingly agitated over the incidents in the story. The reading of these books made a dangerous fanatic of me. I was not noisy, but if "Osawat- omie" Brown had marched by at the moment in the prosecu- tion of any of the turbulent schemes of his career, I certainly should have enlisted under his banner and got hung in my zeal. CHAPTER XVI. THE SCHOOL-TEACHER DESCENDED FROM THE PILGRIM FATHERS. Brokelbank; do you remember him? Alexis Phelps was living when I went to school to Brokelbank. James K. Polk was President. Yes, that is quite a ways back ; sixty yean* now and more. I would like to be a child again a small boy ; but not on the old terms ! Those were the good old days, that is true; but "ye that say the former times are better than these, ye inquire not wisely concerning these things." I would like to be a small boy now and hold in my strong embrace "the faces loved long since and lost awhile," and all the other pre- cious things that I have garnered and that are the furniture of the soul. Brokelbank must have been a Dutchman. Look at his name ! A Hollander by blood descent, although I would not needlessly hurt the feelings of the good young queen of that country by saying so; nor would I cast a slur on the Pil- grim Fathers, but I find the name among those folks who came over in 16 . He was not of the true Dutch type, to be sure. He had not the rubicund face nor the jovial capacity for lager beer commonly attributed to that ancient and honorable race. In the last analysis Brokelbank was an attenuated Dutch Yan- kee. He appeared on the streets of the Yellow Banks quite unlocked for by the honest burghers. He said he was a school- teacher. His accomplishments as such seemed to lie in the direction of a strong aversion to earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. He dropped in at Henderson & Graham's store in the old Trian & Day building on a Saturday in the year 1848. and after discussing the weather and the probable 87 38 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. success of General Zach Taylor in his race for the Presidency, he was on the point of taking his leave; when, admonished by the approach of winter that a pair of gloves would come handy, he turned to the counter, on which lay a quantity of the buckskin variety, which, along with buffalo-robes, were the vogue of the period, and pulled on a pair, but declined to purchase at the solicitation of Colonel Henderson, but he -would see the Colonel later, he said, or words to that effect. In relating this incident in his reminiscent hours the Colonel used to say that it gave him a pang to recall that Brokelbank did not keep his word, but that a hurried inventory taken on the heels of his departure disclosed a shortage in the stock of gloves by one pair ! I was a freshman at the seat of learning known as the Brokelbank school-house, which stood across the street from the grounds of Alexis Phelps. My time was occupied in learning to spell "horse-back" and similar words in Webster's old blue-back spelling-book, and in solving the conundrums in McGuffey's second reader. The picture of Albert driving his clog hitched to the victoria was the piece de resistance around which my affections revolved. I quarreled with the order of things every time I looked at that picture. I wanted a dog like that, that would work anywhere you put him, single or double, and a wagon like that one, in which I could rest at my ease, whip in hand, and drive the dog and keep on driving him forever. When my attention was withdrawn for the moment from Albert and his dog, I was industriously engaged with a Barlow knife, cutting my initials in the desk, which was a plain slab already overloaded with the hieroglyphics of preceding generations; and when this labor palled, my energies were absorbed in writing love-letters for Bill Kelly. Bill couldn't write, but he was moving heaven and earth trying to learn the art, which seemed an up-hill business for him. I can see him now, sprawled over the desk, his tongue squirming around in his mouth like an imprisoned boa constrictor on the point of breaking through, his cramped fingers bending desperately to Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 89 the task of making parallel lines, which was the first lesson after the ancient method. I don't remember whether I acted as Bill's stenographer and took the matter down at his dicta- tion, or whether it was a scheme of my own to test the young lady's affections by proxy. I don't know what came of it all ; nothing in particular, I think, except the evidences, which were plain enough, that Cupid's wings were short in his first flight. The young lady was well worthy the amorous forays of the most gallant knights. She was a pretty little body, the daugh- ter of Dr. Clendenin. I wonder if any who read these pages remember Dr. Clendenin? Whether they do or not, some of the big boys, like Billy Wood and Homer Conger, locked oid Brokelbank out of the school-house and nailed the windows down ! Y'see it was this way : Christmas had come and Brokey had failed to treat. The big boys determined to force the issue, and they got a padlock and fastened the door solid, and set two big forked posts in the ground in front of the door and laid a rail from fork to fork, and this they called a "horse," on which they said they would ride Brokey if he should con- clude not to "set 'em up." Then they got a stick and furled a handkerchief upon it and set it a flying from the head of the "horse," as a sort of challenge from which Brokey might take warning at a distance that the boys were "onto him." Then they took to the brush and watched to see what Brokey would do. Well, he came along at 9 o'clock (the school hour), and the horse was there to receive him, but never said a word, nor Brokey a word to the horse. Then Brokey looked around, raspy and hot, and found an old hammer lying on the ground, with which the boys had nailed the windows down and had forgotten. Brokey did it with that hammer he smashed that pad- lock till it looked worse than one of those Russian battleships in the Straits of Tsushima after Togo had gotten satisfaction cut of it ; then he opened the academy on time, as usual. But I want to say confidentially that Brokey rallied handsomely and went down to Deacon I'enner's at noon and bought a f o Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. bushel basket full of sweet-cakes, gingerbread and things, and fed us like chickens at the coop. Other shadows fell on the old school-house. The chil- dren whispered to each other how bad some of their playmates felt when a new report came from the sick-room across the way. It was one of the palatial homes of a branch of an in- fluential family engaged in the Indian and domestic trade of the frontier. The loss of such a man would be severely felt by the community. The children at school had some compre- hension of this, and we were in deep sympathy when a young girl came to the door and beckoned to her sisters in the school- room. They went out in tears and we all knew that Alexis Phelps was dying. The old school-house was affected by the California gold fever with the rest of the town. Brokelbank showed strong symptoms from the first. He was absent minded in the conduct of the school. He was a diligent in- quirer after the latest news. He would start up in his dreams with a bag of gold as big as a beer-keg in each hand. He early made up his mind to go. He went. But, like most of his neighbors, he had difficulties to overcome. He was breasting a financial shortage. He had not thought of California having a gold eruption. He had been teaching geography for a num- ber of years and California was "laid down" in the old Olney school atlas sicklied o'er with the pale cast the few "Greasers" and old Spanish missions could confer upon it, never once suspected of the largess she held in store for the seekers after the golden fleece. He must now make the best of it, and take his chances. He elaborated plans which involved a wagon, oxen, and provisions in quantity. He placed an order for a wagon at one of the local shops, linchpins and all, and started the men at work on it forthwith. The woodwork finished in due time, it was up to Brokey to provide the iron for it. At this point Brokey struck a sawyer. He was "busted" to use the vernacular of a frontier town in '49. On his pillow lie thought it all over, and took heart in a wlay. I will explain if my reader will forbear. He rose from his couch and shook Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 91 himself, to clear his wits and disappeared in the darknes:-, fired with an invincible resolution. If he weakened at any moment, he recovered his courage at once as the gold mirage flooded the dark offing of his mind with its glory. There was something extraordinary in the buoyancy with which he slipped through the inky night in the pursuit of his evil purpose. His feet were shod with wool, and his long thin legs strode nimbly and noiselessly down to Jamison & Moir's iron-house, which, under the provision of honest merchants who believed in the "open door," stood open all night. Here Brokey found bar iron in quantity for all purposes. It nearly broke his back, but he carried off iron enough and more to complete his wagon in every detail. Years afterward the blacksmiths acknowl edged that the scars were plain where Brokey did his best to file away the shipping-mark "J & M" on the bar iron used on that wagon, but they did not "give him away," because they had money and labor tied up in it which they did not wish lo compromise. Brokey's weary wanderings out over the plains to Cali- fornia are not of sufficient interest to justify rehearsal here, but I will indicate in a word what became of him. Teaching, and Nature's bias had unfitted him for delving in the bowels of the earth. It made him tired to think of supporting the frail tabernacle in that way, and in the hour when the owl is abroad, the tempter came too, and said something to Brokey, and he went and thrust his hand under the sleeping miner's pallet and drew forth his buckskin bag, and the Vigilance Committee took him they took Brokey and hung him on the limb of a tree ! CHAPTER XVII. THE; MENACE OE THE GREAT REVER. As the river was a fruitful source of apprehension to my mother in the summer, it was none the less so in the winter time. During Saturday holidays the boys were out on the frozen river in crowds. Frequently dangerous air-holes were. in close proximity to our skating-places. In addition to these, the noise of the contracting ice, sounding like the sullen roar of distant artillery as the mercury descended rapidly toward the bulb, often filled her startled senses with foreboding. On a Saturday night of a biting cold winter all her flock were safe in the fold except her oldest boy, Porter. The short winter day haa closed and no word of him. None of us had seen him since the early morning. All that was known of him was that he and George McKinney were seen skating on the river. At the close of an hour after dark my mother sat down in tears and would not be comforted. She had sent word to my father at the store and he had consulted with uncle John McKinney and the two had left town walking south along the river shore, but my mother knew nothing of that. Another hour of sus- pense and anguish wore on, at the end of which, dazed by mental suffering, not knowing what she did, she drew a thin shawl over her shoulders and went out on the porch, holding byself and younger brother, Ewell, by the hand, and stojd trembling and tearful, on the point of plunging into the dark- ness and cold, she knew not whither my cousin Sarah plead- ing with and trying to comfort her. She was gotten back into the house, where she sank down unconscious. The neighbors surrounded her, and the doctor came in, and at length my fath- 92 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 93 er returned with the missing boy. The parents had gone on down the river shore till they met the boys returning over the ice on their skates from Burlington, twelve miles below. This brother years ago followed his mother into the great unknown. In a note bearing the date of April 29, 1881. received by mail from his home in Minnesota, he says : "We were sadly pained to receive the news of our own poor mother. If there is any reward in the next world for a true and trust- ing woman, she, I know, will receive it. I saw her a little over a year ago and knew she could not last long." Lying before me are two old letters and a lock of gray hair. It startles me to look at the dates. Can it be that thirty years have sped away since my mother's death? For sixty cent- uries, more or less, man has been admonished that time is a swift courser ; but, heedless and forgetful, we have to be cease- lessly pricked by the arrows of the arch tnemy to keep us in remembrance of the fact. Here is a letter written by an only sister, who was my mother's companion foi so long a time and almost her only solace in her last hours. Without doubt the re- moval of my parents to Florida prolonged their lives, but it was a great hardship for my mother to be removed so far from her kindred and life-long associations. The obvious re suit of this isolation was to bring mother and daughter closer together, if possible, than ever before. Wheu the daughter came, therefore, to have a home of her own, the mother was left alone indeed! This my sister dutifully tried to remedy by going back and forth from the city as often as possible. She explains in the letter from which I quote: "I had been staying with mother a few days and left on Tuesday after- noon, and Wednesday night she was taken with a bad pain in her side and could not lie down; had to sit up all night Thursday morning father sent for me. I went to her as soon as I could, and found her very sick. She could only lie down a minute or two at a time, and father had arranged a sup- port so she could rest as easily as possible in a sitting posture. 94 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. After dinner I went in to sit with lier, and father said he would go out and see what the men were doing in the garden. Mother said she would like to sit in the rocking-chair while I arranged the bed for her. Having done this service for her, she said she could not sit up any longer ; for me to lay her down. I did so, and she closed her eyes and seemed to go to sleep. I rested a little while and then walked quietly out on the balcony so I should not waken her. Having put Roy to sleep, I returned to mother and spoke to her; laid my hand gently on her wasted form and felt her pulse, and found that she had passed away. You can hardly understand my anguish when I discovered the truth concerning her." My mother's was the initial mound in the new city (Jacksonville, Fla.) cemetery, around which a great company has since gathered. Two years afterward, in his seventy-fifth year, my father died, walking in the yard with his cane in his hand. During the summer vacation when I was about twelve years of age, I was hunting down at Grizzly Island, where my father owned timber lands and had a woodyard and flatboat and men employed, cutting cordwood. When an up-stream steamer called, the flatboat (which was kept loaded) was loosed from its mooring and taken in tow by the steamer, which trans- ferred the wood to her own deck as she proceeded on her way. When the transfer had been completed, the woodboat was cast off and floated back to the landing to be reloaded for the next steamer. By boarding the steamer I was saved a walk of several miles home. On the day aforesaid I was standing on the gunwale of the woodboat nearest the steamer as she came plowing her way under a full head of steam. The force of the deep, strong current brought the woodboat square across the bow of the steamer, which struck it a stunning blow and knocked me. like a shot from a rifle, into the deep, dark water below, between the boats, which were rapidly swinging in to- gether over the spot where I had sunk out of sight. The first I knew T was struggling in the water and could see the light Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 95 as I swam to the surface The mate on the deck of the steamer was watching for me, and when I came up. he had two men hanging over the gunwale of the steamer with hands extended toward me, and when I got near enough, they grappled me and pulled me to the deck with my hat still on my head and none the worse, except being well chilled through before I got home. CHAPTER XVIII. A RIDE WITH ONE OF THE CLOTH. Our home was the headquarters for the visiting preachers of the old Scotch church. As a matter of fact, my parents ran a sort of "Preachers' Inn," and I can hardly recall a time when some of the cloth were not enjoying themselves at my mother's table. I looked at them askance, for the prayers were long. They seemed to feel bound, under the claims of hospi- tality, to repay my mother for her good cuisine by ranging over seas and across continents in search of material to lengthen out the petitions to the point she would accept as liberal compensation for the free lunch. While the debt was being paid I usually fell over dead asleep. One day Tom Cunningham came along. You remember Tom? He was the "flash" preacher of the old church when I was merging into my "teens." He had one of the best jobs under the paternal care of the Western Synod the pastorate of a big congregation in St. Louis. It was a sunny morning in June when Tom got off the Northern-line packet at out landing and met father at the gate, just starting down town. I was standing in the yard, stunned by the appearace of the dapper young preacher in his white silk hat, nobby garmenture, and winning ways. For a minute or two my father, the family, I even I everybody was thoiotighly saturated by a spray of Tom's choicest salutions. When the sign was about right, Tom sprang his request. I never knew one of those preachers that did not have a deep-felt want of some kind. Tom had a good old father and mother out on a farm, northwest of Monmouth, and could my father land him on the spot? Father could do that, or anything else, one of the 96 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 97 preachers of "our church" asked him to do. Yes; he had a horse and buggy and a boy, and the boy was listening, and heard his father acquiesce in the plan. It was the boy that was always called on to handle the preachers, and he 's han- dled his share of 'em. I got out the nice buggy with old Coelum. Coelum in Latin means "heaven." What better than Coelum to haul the man who was directing the world to the port after which he was named. Good enough we started, not for Paradise, but for the preferred lamling at Father Cun- ningham's in Warren County. Tom was voluble, and the landscape bright with the tender spring verdure, and every- thing took on new beauty as seen through the eyes of the young preacher from the city, who was in a state bordering on ecstasy as we jogged along. Betimes we pulled up at the gate of a farm-house where the roses clambered over the entrance and the moss-covered bucket invited man and beast to refreshment. There was a pause of some minutes if Tom came in contact with some of the fair young faces of the house- hold, which gave opportunity for an exchange on the trans- cendent loveliness of everything when you "feel that way," and when you don't "feel that way" everything is a theory and not a condition. My distinguished companion's exuberance was the counterpart of the affluence of nature in the most hopeful month in the year. He could not repress himself. He became more communicative, even confidential, with every mile accomplished. He had a load on his mind and he must ease himself by making me a partner in his joys. He told me all about it. He was in love! In a few choice phrases he told me all about it, how divinely fair she was. And then she had a further charm not universal among expectant brides. She had a rich "Pop," think of that ! Tom thought about it every day, and every hour in the day, and every minute in the hour poor young preacher ! She was sixteen he said To head off all rivals, Tom had "cast his fly" early. Having secured his catch, he had nothing to do but to play with it until she had reached her majority, then land his prize. The 98 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. children of light are as wise as the children of this world in some things! It is seven and fifty years since I took that ride with Tom and it is little less than that since I saw him the last time. It was on the day in 1859 when William H. Seward made his bid in Chicago for the vote of the young West for the Presidency. Quite unexpectedly I caught a mere glimpse of him on the street. The young St. Louis wife was with the angels, and Tom had a second one, leaning joyfully on his arm as they tripped away through the crowd. On what seas sails his barque now, or is poor Tom a-cold? The limits assigned to these pages preclude the interest .that attaches to the lads identified by birth with the early his- tory of the town. Suffice it that John M. Fuller, Esq., a staunch supporter of the great cause, took an honest pride in his sons, but the one that gave the least promise led all the rest. The rather delicate, freckle-faced lad learned a trade, and the knowledge of tools gave facility in the handling of agricult- ural implements .for one of our great Illinois manufactories which led to position and a competence. George Fuller sits now among the commercial princes of the earth, and, what is better, his exemplary Christian character puts to shame the unbeliever and the scoffer. I cannot refrain from a passing allusion to two others of the contemporaries of my youth : Tom Scott "our Tom." as he is affectionately called, and Horace Bigelow, who led me in age by a year or two. Both have won a fair share of worldly fame and fortune in the face of adverse conditions, and none of my early friends are more worthy. The "Q" railroad, or Peoria and Oquawka, as the charter read, was completed from the east shore of the Mississippi, opposite Burlington, up through the Henderson County bluffs, in the summer of 1854, and the company on the 4th day of July ran an excursion train from the river to the groves along the hills, the terminus being at Ward's mill, where an old-time barbecue was held the pit dug and the ox roasted, with such Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 99 side dishes as the people chose to bring. The train was made up of platform (dirt) cars, with plank seats. A large crowd took advantage of this opportunity to take their first ride on a railroad train. Junketing parties were let off any whei e they chose among the natural groves along South Henderson Creek , those in charge of the train accommodating themselves to the whims of the people in that respect. Some of these small parties, with their lunch-baskets and hampers of champagne, showed greater nimbleness in getting off the train in the morn- ing than they were able to exhibit in getting on again in the evening. CHAPTER XIX. THE BLOOMER COSTUME, THI; CRINOLINE DISTURBANCE. AND OTHER MATTERS. One of the great sensations in the town was the advent of the "Bloomer" costume. When it first crossed the disk ot fashion, the young misses throughout the country craned their necks till they nearly pulled them out of joint staring at it, and the staid matrons had to put on their glasses to make it out. But the weakness of human nature to grab at every new style met with a perceptible balk as the Bloomer tide rolled westward. The Yellow Banks were agitated as never before over the question of trousers becoming the wearing apparel for both sexes, with only such modifications as modesty might suggest. At the last it assumed the form of give and take. To maintain the judicial balance, the men thought it would be correct to adorn their breeches with some of the trimmings heretofore in exclusive use by the ladies; while the sewing societies of the town almost broke up in a row over the adop- tion of hip pockets. Ed Ray. as the strenuous advance agent of the new style, ordered fringes around the bottoms of his new trousers ; while Luke Strong, as a Miss Nancy, occupy- ing a position between the rival parties in interest, had a row of steel cut buttons sewed on the seams of his'n. The new fad was making progress after all ! The ladies took courage, but who should take the first plunge? By and by it leaked out. The garments were being made. An expert seamstress had 'em on the way, seven-ninths completed, and she would have them ready to launch the next Sunday for church. There would be new millinery attachments and everything in rapid- 100 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 101 fire order. There was an excess of joy throughout the pur- lieus of the Yellow Banks. Everybody hoped it would be a pleasant day. For once in the history of the town, the people had a pious spell, and all with one accord brushed up their religion, and said they were going to attend the services. The eventful day dawned at last a sunny summer day. vServices were held in the court-house, and as the tribes went thither the windows were packed with noses flattened against the panes to see the pants go by! Crum Mathews was in com- mand; but as to the particular frills and the fit of the calico pantaloons, ask any of the old-timers. They can tell you all about it. The Crinoline atmospheric disturbance which followed in due succession equalled that of Free Silver under "Coin" Har- vey in '96, and they were alike in the dependence upon wind for their exploitation ; the more you talked against them the more wind you raised the greater the increase in circulation It was dangerous for mere man (the old man of the house) to suggest to his son that the hoops on the rain-barrel needed mending. The daughters of the household took the slur and drove the male beasts away with a stick of stove-wood. Hoops got to be such a necessity that an order for groceries was seldom issued that did not include a skirt of the approved pattern. The grocer had the latest in stock, and the hardware man did not consider his purcases complete without assorted sizes of the common and the patented articles. They hunf I'ionccr and .Inny IJfc. powerful strabismus stare, and \vith an artistic flick of the \vhip he gave his two old plugs to understand what was re- quired of them, and down they came, making the grand cur\e at Phelps' corner in approved style. 1 am sure the old-timer falls short of what is due to Thad whenever he omits to shed a few tears at the remembrance of that performance. In due course there was an enlargement of the household at the Eagle House by the addition of two sons-in-law. As the increase in numbers w r as purely ornamental, there was no in- cumbrance in the way of additional revenue. This made hard sledding for the Mysterious Stranger. There is hardly any- thing in this present evil world that will make a man's face blanch whiter than to look into his cash-box and find it empty. It was noticed that the old gentleman was less spruce than formerly. The broadcloth was getting a little seedy ; the step less springy, and Hope sat on his brow less securely. The in- exorable years will bind the best of us hard and fast. In the early morning of a day long gone the early riser went down to the river shore as usual. The fresh morning air cleared his brain and his heart, and there was something like the finger of Fate in the mighty river that rolled ever in that one direc- tion in which we all are going, and a voice seemed to say. "That stream cannot turn back upon its course, nor can you return and make good the \vasted years." The town breakfasted as usual, and in the interval of going and returning from the morning meal the "jimmy" had been at work and forced an entrance to Phelps' Bank. The safe had been wrecked and the contents taken all in a moment's time, and silence reigned. As the rising sun burst upon the streets he who kept the keys returned to the scene of his life-long labors to find the evidence of the burglary the forced entrance, the confusion within, the prints of feet without. The first thing we do in a case of this kind is to stare in unbelief. Then one or two neighbors come along, and we point to the havoc, and we explain that when we went to breakfast all was as usual. In a few minutes the town Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. in awoke to what had been done, and the singular thing about it all was that while. few glimpses, or none, were had of fig- ures going or coming, the mass of the people had but one opinion as to the idenity of the robbers, but all was serene at the Eagle House. The old Mysterious Stranger was there, supervising the first meal of the day. The household seemed intact. If there were any discrepancies, they were not noticed at the moment. As the people canvassed the situation the ex- citement increased. After some consideration, the crowd of citizens as if by common impulse went to the Eagle House. T was in the crowd, along with all the boys in town, and I stood at the head of the cellar-way when Frank A. Dallam, of the Plaindealer, led the searching party, thrust his hand into a hole in the cellar wall and brought forth a double handful of paper money. There was a shout of exultation, not so much over the recovery of the money, but at everybody's "I told you so." The additions to the family by marriage went over the road. The Mysterious Stranger, who formulated the scheme of rob- bery, and enticed the willing tools to do his bidding well, the gold-headed cane thumped the walk as in the past, followed by the long step and the short step. CHAPTER XXL THE GHOST. On a dark and stormy night in recent years a physician, returning from a midnight professional call in the country, caught a glimpse of a moving taper through the windows ot the Eagle House, when it was unoccupied, in its uncanny, dis- credited old age. Having left his conveyance at the livery, on his way up town his curiosity awoke on passing in front of the deserted hotel, and he determined to go in and quietly survey the premises. Taking a station at the window through which he had seen the light, he silently awaited developments. He had no better company at first than a mouse gnawing in the wainsconting or an occasional rat scurrying along the dark passages. At a moment when he was not looking directly through the window into the interior of the building, he caught a glimpse of a dim tongue-like flame (a mere wisp of light) as it quickly passed out of view, going from one passage-way into another, and along with it a slight noise which he could not make out. Putting his ear to a small opening in the cor- ner of the windowpane where a bit of glass an inch square had fallen out, he listened with an awakened interest. He was rewarded in a few moments by a slight noise, scarcely audible, like the thump of a cane on the floor,' tapping at reg- ular intervals, accompanied by the mere whisper of a foot- fall, a hesitating, regular, but soft footfall, as of a long step and a short step. In a moment :t seemed to be descending a. stairway. The doctor stood with his back to the outside cel- lar-way, which stood wide open, dismal and damp. The foot- steps seemed to be coming nearer in that direction and he crouched and peered down into the cellar, a part of the in- terior of which at intervals, by the glow of intermittent light- 112 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 113 ning, he could see the whole, in fact, of one side of the wall. He could hear the gentle tap of the cane and the footfalls as they reached the bottom of the stairs. The doctor, being a man of iron nerve, was not in the least disconcerted, and re- lated this incident afterward in the assured, easy way char- acteristic of him. The invisible Presence then strode across the cellar floor, diagonally, to a small, irregular hole in the wall in full view of the silent visitor on the outside. The taper cast a pale, peculiar light and moved unsteadily about as if held in an invisible hand, while a real hand (pale and finely formed) reached into the hole in the wall, withdrew, and here a large loose stone under the doctor's foot rolled and fell with a crash into the cellar. Instantly the Presence disappeared, and the doctor withdrew, determined to investi- gate later on. Ghosts are supposed to stand their ground, but this one cut sticks for the happy hunting-grounds, breaking all rule-; for good behavior, al! records for speed, and I fear will seri- ously impair the confidence of my reader in this and all other ghosts. The details of this well -accredited experience were never related to mere than one person. The doctor, ordinarily uncommunicative, was particularly so on a matter which hLi senses could not readily credit. To one close friend, however, the doctor, before his death, gave the minute phases in full OT this extraordinary occurrence, and discussed in a way peculiar- ly his own his beliefs respecting the gulf which marks the boundary of another world than ours, and the probabilities of an interchange therewith. On two occasions subsequently, months intervening, the doctor verified the main features of his first noctuinal visit to the deserted caravansary. During the first of the last two visits, on a night of arctic cold and darkness, he saw the taper in the old office of the hotel in a state of strange agitation. The light, as before, seemed to be carried f>bout by an unseen hand and the movements of the pantomime seemed to answer plainly . to an ungoverned pas- ii4 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. sion. It. would swoop down at limes as if in a great rage- then trembJe as if in a paroxysm of anger; the drawers of the desk would open and shut with a slam-like movement, and yet thov made no uoise. The lid of the old-fashioned desk lifted like the jaws of Leviathan and closed with an apparent snap, bnt there v;as only silence, and no other visible move- ment except that of the little taprr. In a moment the noise of the cane passed through the doorway into the passage, tap- ping quickly along in company with the long step and the short step. On a Christmas night, for the last time, the taper was seen at the head of the long dining-room table. In the darkness, relieved by the dim rays of the quarter-moon, it was seen apparently in the hands of one doing the honors. It seemed to be bestowing the compliments of the season upon the invisible guests seated to grace the holiday occasion. The taper raised high and bowed low. as if mine host interlarded 'his speech with the good cheer and pungent raillery with which the year's chief est festival is usually adorned. At times one might suppose the company to have broken out in con- tinuous quavers and semi-quavers of laughter, the taper cut such curious antics, as it passed with measured pauses down one side of the festal board and up along the other side. Ar- riving at the head of the table once more, the little flame made three grand flourishes, from which one might suppose the Mysterious Stranger delivered his valedictory; reviewed his three-score years and ten upon this earth, his meteoric suc- cesses, his humiliations, and the vanity of it all ! CHAPTER XXII. OVERLAND TO FOUNTAIN GREKN. During my school-days at Monmoutb I made an overland trip with Robert Wilson McClaughry, a well-known fellow- student, now a distinguished authority on penology and war- den of the Government Prison at Fort Leavenworth, whose fame is founded on exhaustive study, and a career of many years of supervisory control of some of the great prisons and reformatory institutions of our country. The journey was made in a single-rig livery conveyance of the subdued pattern of those days. Mack called the horse "Bones," which was illumkiatingly descriptive, if not elegant. The steed was tall and his ribs shone resplendent: peace to his ashes, for he must have died a long time ago. Our destination was* Fountain Greea, in Hancock County. I am sure it was a poet that named that hamlet; anyway we were going there if "Bones" and good fortune could help us out in a bad job. In the old days that are not forgotten the flat prairies of our dear old "Sucker" State were in a condition of chronic moisture, and when a lane was forced on a community and the traveler could not muster courage to throw his neighbor's fence down and drive over the corn crop, that portion of the interurban subway be- came anywhere from one foot deep to a bottomless bog. Well, the brace of travelers were not responsible for the state of the Union, nor for the condition of the roads of the common- wealth, so we made bold and drove gleefully south over the level prairie until we came upon the kind of obstruction noted in the few cautious words just set down. At this point we made a pause; then the travelers glanced naively at each other : then at the landscape ; then at "Bones." I suppose the n6 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. instant before a Jap commits hari-kiri upon his honorable per- son for he professes great contempt for this mortal existence he is just as happy as he ever was in his life. I suppose also, when one jumps from a spring-board for the bottom of the Colorado Canyon two miles below, that he is as serenely com- fortable at the precise second in advance of his pre-determined leap as one ever could be here below. It certainly is after, and not before, a Frenchman "sneezes in the basket" that he feels "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." So here, looking ahead upon the long stretch of liquid mud ahead of them, the travelers were not in the least dismayed ; on the oth- er hand, your humble serv- ant, who bore aloft the rib- bons, proudly said "cluck" to "Bones" and advanced confidently. We sank a foot the first length, the second length out we were up to the axles, at half of "BoNEs"AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOG the third length "Bones" had difficulty getting his feet up out of the stuff muck at the bot- tom ; then he laid down flat and rested, out of sight, except the half of his neck and head. "Bones" did this respectfully, quietly, without disturbing anybody. But he was not ailing, and there was a chance for an argument. Mack gave an audible gasp and succumbed. By and by a little resolution, the size of a pea. began to flutter under his waistcoat, and he crawled out onto the rail-fence and cooned along to land not so moist and went up to the farmer teaming near by, and I could see the pantomime between the two. Mack first stood on his toes, bowed his back, pushed his telescopic neck out three meters and lifted his hat. The tiller of the soil stood Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 117 as rigid and unbending as a statue of Patrick Henry. Mack, seeing he had failed to make an impression, turned, and with desperate eagerness hurled his long arm, barbed with a keen index finger, toward "Bones" and his driver. The agricultur- ist continued sphinx-like, as though he had stood there for four thousand years and meant to stay there for a season longer ; whereupon Mack, who was full of resources, thrust his windward arm deep down into his spring pajamas. I took that for a feint, but before he could turn and give me a grave \vink that farmer had unhitched from his wagon, backed his team up to the disabled vehicle far out from shore and "yanked" it from the jaws of Erebus, while the driver sat on the box triumphant as it emerged. The travelers contemplated "Bones" in silence for some minutes. Then one said to the other, "Tie is richly embossed and I think we had better have him baked and hand-painted, and return him to the livery- man as a 'shef-duver.' " We took dinner with Mr. Eldridge, of Roseville, not with- out some apprehension as to the appearance of our entourage as we drove within the porte-cochere. We greeted our host meekly as he glanced at "Bones" and observed the evidences of the desperate efforts we had made to clean him off with cobs and sundry other aids we found along the road, and after the noon hour, as we drove away, our courteous host seemed to smile in an unwonted manner as we trotted off down the lane. Our stepper had been refreshed with a good dinner and was winsomely blithe and graceful, barring the mud on his sides, on the harness and on the vehicle, which did not seem to impede his movements as we drove south- ward toward the next frog-pond, which we reached in due time, and on the verge of which Mack deserted his compan- ion, and took to the fence again to observe the behavior of "Bones" and his driver across the worst place we had yet struck. A farmer plowing in the field adjacent was also in- terested in the passage, and craned his neck over the plow, bent on not missing any part of the show as he saw "Bones" MS Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. cautiously descend into the abyss and the driver lay on the whip at the supreme moment. At the bottom of the bog "Hones" declared himself, and walked out of the harness and away from the jaunting-car onto dry land, leaving the driver with a piece of the lines in his hands. Mack from his perch on the fence and the plowman in his furrow exchanged wire- less messages, while "Moses" sat speechless down where the bulrushes grow. Mack dubbed me "Moses" on the journey, on account of my superior wisdom and meekness, char- acte ristics which. I am pleased to acknowledge, adhere to me to this day. Henceforth the skies re- lented, the roads improved, and we passed through a series of landscapes not surpassed in the Garden State, nor matched outside of it. On our return trip we bore away northwest and reached the Mississippi River at the Yellow Banks. MOSES IN THE BULLRUSHES. Here we should have turned due east on the old stage road to Monmouth, but the bridges were gone, and we drove north to Rollings worth's; but the storm god shook his head, and we continued north to Coghill's, where the bridge was also gone, and under grim necessity poor "Bones" dragged his weary way far north into Mercer Coun- ty, where we found lodging at the hospitable farm-house of Mr. Duncan. From this point we drove nearly due south, finding a crossing near Little York. On our last day out we came upon Monmouth in the happy possession of her over- grown cottonwood tree and fathomless mud-hole in the north- west corner of the public square, which were her chief orna- ments in ante-bellum davs. CHAPTER XXIII. \ GLIMPSE OF HORACE GREELEY. The Civil War of 1861-65 was one of the stepping-stones of the ages ; like the expulsion from the Garden ; the Exodus ; the fall of Babylon ; the civilization of Greece ; the fall of Rome; the crucifixion of Christ; the Crusades; the discovery of America; the overthrow of British tyranny by the thirteen Colonies. It was a fight to hold what the race had already won of civil liberty a free conscience and a free right arm. With the crisis came the man our great political prophet; born in due time, among the lowly, in deepest poverty. There was no beauty that we should desire him. We were faithless and unbelieving. "Can any good come out of Nazareth ?" "Is not this the carpenter's son?" "Whence getteth he this wisdom?" Derided, scorned, hated, threatened, murdered! Anointed of God, bearing His unmistakable image in his soul, and confessed of just men, willing to stand for the truth at the cost of blood and treasure. And so it came to pass that he was made President of the United States, and wrought a work which has transfigured the man for all time. A root out of dry ground, he is still an enigma and an astonishment to many; incomprehensible now in this age of graft and colossal selfishness as he was to the great men of his own generation, who assumed superiority over him. A matchless pilot he, to the consternation of the shallow pre- tenders in high places. He had none of the pride of life. The obscurity of his birth weighed upon him down to his entering the White House. It was only then that he was emancipated. "I am not fit for the Presidency/' he wrote to his friends. 119 120 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. At the opening of the senatorial joint discussion, he said: Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I became ac- quainted. We were both young then he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious I perhaps quite as much so as he. With me the race of ambition has been a fail- ure a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid suc- cess. His name fills the nation, and it is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. I would rather stand upon that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow." The one glorious and glorifying fact concerning Mary Todd, a fact that should hallow her memory to all future gen- erations despite her weaknesses and follies, is that she be- lieved from the first, implicitly, with a faith rock-ribbed and unshakable, in the inherent greatness of her husband. "Doug- las is nothing but a scrubby little Vermont Yankee, not to be compared with Lincoln," said Mary. The woman's intuition surpassed the wisdom of the great. During my school-days at Monmouth there were no hard- and-fast contracts with literary bureaus to secure popular lect- ures on diverse current themes. Some of the distinguished men of the period were at our service, among them Horace Mann, George D. Prentice, Dr. Haven, and Horace Greeley. The literary societies of the college were the intermediary for providing this mental pabulum, and we negotiated with the principals direct at an average cost of $50.00 each. It fell to my lot to secure the services of some of these men to see that they were properly domiciled during their brief stay among us and that the leading professional men of the town had an opportunity to meet them. Horace Greeley was the most interesting figure that appeared on our platform. He was the man behind the anti-slavery guns during the years leading up to the Civil War. He had the conscience and the ear of the nation as no other had. The people were eager to see and hear him. His eccentricities no less than his great ability contributed to this curiosity. Since the foundation of Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 121 our Government we have had only two (not more) great journalists in this country Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley. This was my thought when a young man and at the close of half a century I am still of that opinion. These two men in intellectual force surpassed a thousand, and they will he remembered when ten thousand bright editorial pens are forgotten. It is true that the founder of the Tribune was brought low during the Civil War and had to dip his colors to the Great Commoner in the White House, but he might have done that and still easily be the one great editorial light to lead a nation to rid itself of a damning stain. Benjamin Franklin was not a pattern in morals for his generation and Horace Greeley had his limitations ; but when that honored memory is menaced, a mighty throng of the chivalrous and impartial stands ever ready for its defense. Mr. Greeley arrived in Monmouth, according to agreement, on the early morning train. I was late in getting down to meet him. The depot was a dirty little dry-goods box, the reserved space fully occupied by a "cannon" soft-coal stove, by the side of which stood the solitary figure of the great editor, wrapped in an enormous buffalo great-coat, his well-remembered face and full dome of thought o'ertopped by a broad-brimmed Quaker hat of the precise pattern of William Penn's own. I con- cealed my amazement as well as I was able, and found him most cordial and companionable. I saw him comfortably quartered at the old Baldwin House. On assisting him to divest himself of his wooly buffalo investment, we uncovered the famous old "drab overcoat" which had become, on account of its age and constant daily service, a piece of garmenture subject to national comment. At the last, or first, however, I found the old gentleman in conventional evening attire as good as the best, barring his neck-tie a wandering accessory to his toilet, which Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on one occasion, had to bring into control on short notice as a distinguished company was on the point of passing in to dine. At the solic- 122 Recollections of I'ionecr and Army Life. itation of the local photographer, I had agreed to entice Mr. Greeley over to the sky-light for his picture. This he good- naturedly assented to, and after breakfast and other prelimi- naries were out of the way, I sallied forth with my peculiar charge in the ancient drab envelop and Quaker hat. ,Mr. Greeley had a certain inequality of carriage as a birthright, a lameness, or shuffling gait, which made him appear to dis- advantage as he made his way through the town, and it fol- lowed that we had all the idlers and street Arabs at our heels. They lay in ambush while we were occupied in the photo- graph gallery, but at our reappearance upon the street they fell in again like Falstaffs army, receiving recruits moment- arily, so that by the time we had got around to the Atlas office we had a large convoy. The local newspaper office oc- cupied another dry-goods box under the old cottonwood tree at the northwest corner of the public square. At this point the motley crowd, narrowly watching our distinguished vis- itor's every change of direction, and probably anticipating our objective, overflowed the local editor's sanctum in advance, so that I had difficulty in getting the two men together. It was Horace Greeley's influence and active personal labors, as is well known, that led the convention of 1860 to nominate Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency. Little thought we, as this singular figure slouched around the public square in Monmouth in 1859, of the strange detenni-iing influence which was so mightily to effect the history of our Govern- ment, and how this personal triumph over William H. Seward in the old Wigwam was to be requited by his own complete discomfiture at the hands of the man whose elevation to the Presidency he had so signally aided. Greeley's helplessness in his encounter with Abraham Lincoln may be accounted for in precisely the same way that other distinguished men whose ability equalled that of Greeley discovered their master in the man in the White House the failure to comprehend and rely upon the consummate pilot in charge of the helm of State during the Civil War. Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 123 We are not to kick, therefore, if in being helped in the advancement of a great cause, we ourselves should suffer humiliation and contumely. Alas, that it should ^be so! His great and sensitive heart was broken at the last, and it was a hard and stony heart that felt no qualms when that great editorial light went out in eclipse. George D. Prentice, the biographer and friend of Henry Clay, the poet, editorial wit, and paragrapher of considerable fame was greeted by a full house. His best verse, written in his earlier and better days, will survive the flood of similar literature, but the Lyceum platform suffered no loss when he retired from it. He was billed for two lectures at Monmouth, but he was let off with one appearance at his own request. We transferred him to Oquawka for the unemployed even- ing, where the receipts, owing to the short notice, barely cov- ered the expenses. Prentice, at this time was supplying Rob- ert Bonner's New York Weekly Ledger with a quarter col- umn, more or less, of paragraphs, wise saws, and otherwise. On our way over to Oquawka by rail and hack I had the op- portunity of observing how this Ledger work was done. He carried a volume of "Quotations" in his hand, from which he would make a selection, transfer it to his mental hopper, turn the crank, and lo here and lo there something bright and new; nothing more or less than old straw threshed over! Who was it said, "There is nothing new under the sun"? CHAPTER XXIV. LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS. Stephen A. Douglas was well known at the Yellow Banks when Henderson was a part of Warren County. My father sat on the jury when Douglas was the circuit judge, and his charges to the jury, as my father was wont to say, were models of force and clearness. At the age of thirteen or thereabouts I first heard Douglas in a public address. It was during the "Know-nothing" eruption and the gathering took place at the north door of the court-house. General Dodge, of Burlington, Iowa, introduced the speaker, who presented a striking figure as he came forward on the platform. On a compact little body, clothed in a black broadcloth, claw- hammer suit, sat a remarkable head, surmounted by a shock of dark brown hair. It was an Irish mug and he looked like an unabridged edition of Admiral Dot. But he was mighty in the pulling down of his enemies' strongholds. For con- centrated vituperation his denunciation of the political fore- runner of A. P. A.-ism has had few equals. His invective did not appear in its most significant aspect in the printed page. I recall it now as though one of our battle-ships had placed one of her twelve-inch shells ten times in succession in the same spot on the enemies' water-line. In the course of his address he undertook a defense of the repeal of the "Kansas- Nebraska Act." It was then that the crowd became restless under the interpellations of Gideon Russell, a thoroughly sin- cere, courteous, fearless and well-informed citizen on the cur- rent political questions of the day. The local anti-slavery cham- pion was persistent and sent a shot in at every favorable oppor- tunity. The Democrats in the crowd finally got nervous over 124 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 125 it, and boldly accused Frank Dallam and Colonel Henderson of molding the bullets for Mr. Russell to fire at the speaker. At this moment there was a chance for a row. As a boy, earnestly partisan, and watching the corners, I could see that there was an undercurrent of deep feeling in the crowd. This was made plain in various ways ; as for Colonel Henderson, he was shaking like an aspen with anger and excitement. Douglas could on occasion make the amende honorable in a very neat way, and so, here and now. oil was poured on the troubled waters; the crowd quieted down, and the meeting dispersed in an amiable mood. Afterward, I heard Douglas on the public square in Monmouth. He had grown stouter; his voice, always strong, now seemed at times Stentorian as he rolled off his periods. His deliberation was such that his words seemed hyphenated, and too the syllables, and he be- came so absorbed in his theme that he was oblivious of his handkerchief and other trifles till the foam gathered in the corners of his mouth, not an object specially attractive. I was at school at the time, and having a good voice myself, I used often to amuse my confreres by imitating Douglas' peculiar bull-dog notes and manner. I usually began with the Senator's opening sentence in his Monmouth speech : "Fellow-citizens- of - old - Warren ! We - have - come-together - to-dis-cuss-the- 'grea:t-questions-which-are-now-ag-i-ta-ting - the-country-f rom - cen-ter-to-cir-cum-f er-ence !" His stump speeches were composed largely of pure soph- istry and bluff, but he will be remembered for his sturdy, all-around, large patriotism. If Great Britain put up a bluff against us, Douglas was sure to call it on the floor of the Senate. He was a thoroughbred American, and that meant his country an indissoluble Union first, last and forever. I salute his memory. The answering notes of preparation for the Lincoln- Douglas senatorial campaign were beginning to be heard throughout the State; discussion was rife, and voters were stirred as never before. As the summer of 1858 wore along 126 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. these giants in the political arena came together on the same platform at carefully selected points in congressional districts supposed to be coigns of vantage, but the whole country stood in the attitude of attention and made careful notes on the progress of the debate. The passing years have rendered judgment from which there is no appeal on these two historic characters and the results of this campaign, and when the un- believer questions the veteran who "lags superfluous on the stage," the book is pointed out, with the injunction: "There is the history of your country; read it." On the date fixed for the joint discussion I made one of an immense delegation from Henderson and Warren counties and boarded a train for Galesburg to witness the meeting of the gladiators at that place. The day was fair and hot and the multiplied thousands who came by train and private con- veyance stirred the dust in the streets until it was suffocating. Douglas was detained at a hotel near the depot during the forenoon by a political side-show. An ambitious student from Lombard University, encouraged by his party allies, addressed the Senator in a speech of absurd buncombe and presented him with a small flag. After the noon hour, the immense crowd assembled on the Knox College campus, the platform for the speakers, the reporters and others having been erected against the wall of the old auditorium on the south side. Here with their backs against the wall of the old college as near as either of them ever got to a college the tribunes of the peo- ple were at bay, and had. as it were, to fight for their lives. As a young auditor and a strong partisan, it is easy for me to exaggerate the scene presented to my highly wrought nerves on that day ; and still, now. looking back upon it after the lapse of three and fifty years, through the color reflected by the blood-red shield of Mars, am I not justified in record- ing that the occasion was a memorable one, so full of sup- pressed feeling, as the tall figure of our great political prophet advanced to protest against the brazen impertinences of the Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 127 chief Northern apologist for the extension of slavery? Aleck Findley, an intelligent farmer of our county, stood in the dense crowd in front of me, and when Lincoln in a few clear- cut sentences laid bare the moral stain of slavery -upon the race and its depressing effect upon the heritage won by our fathers, which we wished to preserve in its entirety, he could not restrain his emotion "Isn't that grand!" Douglas opened the discussion in a speech of one hour; Lincoln replied, oc- cupying an hour and a half ; and Douglas closed with a resume of thirty minutes, during which he presented a figure which could not be forgotten. Taking exception to Lincoln's pointed arraignment, Douglas presented a spectacle for men and an- gels as his shock of hair flared like that of an enraged lion, and, as usual, his explosions of wrath and power of denuncia- tion were the sensations of the day. During this forensic dis- play Lincoln sat with his back half turned to the audience, leaning on his hand, braced by his arm akimbo; at times run- ning his fingers through his hair until it stood straight up, the gnarled face upturned, the kindly, beaming, penetrating eyes looking straight into the face of his roaring antagonist ! Apart from the joint discussions, both speakers continued the canvass of the State, and including all other points, Lin- coln spoke in the old Military Tract at Dallas, Oquawka and Monmouth. His speech at the latter place, where I was at school, was delivered under conditions in striking contrast to the bright, sunny day on which Douglas appeared there. From first to last the two men appear in striking contrast: The one was tall ; the other short. The one deferential ; the other sufficient unto himself, and deferred to none. The one studied carefully his ground, then moved with the force of an aval- anche ; the other with supreme audacity forced the fight from start to finish. The one seemingly never quite ready ; the other alert and never surprised. The one inscrutable in his patience ami \\-ariness, waiting his opportunity; the other, with savage directness, did not scruple to tear down the most sacred 128 Recollections of Pioneer and Anny Life. barriers. The one composite, revelling in the warmth of his companionships, passing easily to the consideration of the gravest questions that concern our race ; the other destitute of humor, selfish in his aims, basking in the plaudits of the groundlings. The one loved his home and the child at his knee ; the other almost unconscious of the domestic hearth. The one lived, as it were, under the constant surveillance of the Eye that slumbers not nor sleeps; the other oblivious to the unseen world so close at hand. The one took counsel of the prophets of old ; the other was never known to open the Book, nor to care concerning its contents. The one abstemi- ous, clean, not an habitue' of the bar-room, and shrank instinct- ively from its odorous powers as a soul- and body-wrecker. The other drank whiskey, and leaned heavily on men given to their potations. Both have disappeared from the horizon of mortal ken the souls hungering for liberty in every clime, of whom the world is not worthy, with upturned, wistful faces, looking yearningly after the great Emancipator depart- ed; the other forgotten, except as his memory is preserved by association with his great rival ! Yes ; even the weather divided upon these two men. The skies were dissolving when Lincoln arrived in Monmouth ; the crepe was on Nature's door, and the mourners were going about the streets under umbrellas. But this was a slight affliction compared to the prolonged address of welcome inflicted upon the patient crowd standing in the rain through it all ! The local orator was a distinguished gentleman from somewhere in the south end of the county. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he enjoyed it to the full. The meeting was held in the vicinity of a lumber-yard, where a water-proof shed had been erected for the great Commoner's accommodation. It took our neigh- bor half an hour to introduce Mr. Lincoln. The work was done after the manner of some of the old-time preachers of the period, who took the Lord to one side, as was their wont, and told Him all about Himself; where He was born, and Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 129 when, and the circumstances incident thereto, and what He had been doing these six thousand years : where he had failed in his calling, the remedy he had applied for his mistakes, how things were going now since he had introduced his reforms, what rebates he had abolished, the amount in dollars and cents of the graft he had exposed, the number of the big thieves he had locked up, and on and on, extending particulars, until he had thoroughly coached him in the whole of his biography. And now to turn the switch after the gentleman had equip- ped the speaker with a good running knowledge of himself and fully posted the crowd as to the importance and extent of his own superior knowledge and information, he told Mr. Lincoln that it was his turn. In the meantime how poor old Mother Nature did flood the earth with her tears ! And by the time the entire crowd had found a seat on the lumber-pile, and under the protection of their umbrellas had pulled off their boots and emptied a quart of water out of each one, the speaker had finished, and we all went home. CHAPTER XXV. MY SCHOOL-DAYS AT MONMOUTH AND THE CROZIER- FLEMING TRAGEDY. Monmouth College was opened for the reception of stu- dents in September, 1856, in an old frame school-house of one room, which stood on ground near the Y. M. C. A. build- ing. Provision had been made for a college building, of which the school took possession the next year. The president-elect, David A. Wallace, did not take charge of the school at once. He was an attractive, interesting man at the time of his ad- vent on the streets of Monmouth, within a twelvemonth of the opening, at the age of thirty-five or thereabouts. His intellect- ual qualifications were considerable. He possessed good exec- utive talents and marked energy. I have heard him deliver some very able discourses, but as a rule his sermons, while ac- companied by more or less forensic display, were not above the average. He had his limitations, but he must be credited with a laborious life-work, self-denying, great and enduring. He had affable, pleasing manners, and I am sure he will be held in grateful remembrance by the early friends (alumni and their descendants) of what has come to be a highly creditable and flourishing school. It is to be hoped that some glad day the college will come into the possession of an endowment that will place it beyond apprehension as to its financial support ; then it will follow as a matter of course that a fund will be raised and expended in the erection on the campus of a bronze statue of its first president. My elder brother, Porter, and I were among the first students in attendance at the opening of the school. My father was a staunch friend of the under- 130 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 131 taking, a member of the first board of trustees, and a liberal supporter. In the year 1857 we occupied a room at the hospitable home of James G. Aladden, Esq., on East Broadway, and on a sunny day in the autumn, between the hours of one and two o'clock P. M V as was my custom, I Was sauntering along the street toward the college with my books under my arm to attend the afternoon recitations. On approaching the old Baldwin House, Mrs. William Grant, who lived across the street, came running in an excited manner toward the hotel. As I came up to the first or ladies' entrance old Mr. Fleming stood at the foot of the stairway leading to the second story, shouting in a crazed way that they (not saying who) had kill- ed his sons, and demanding help. His face was bleeding, and the white hairs of age aroused my sympathy. The crowu had not yet gathered, and there were only a very few people about, and these few were standing dazed at the sudden shedding of blood, uncertain what to do. A step or two and I stood in the f r6nt doorway of the office, and in the' center of the room, stretched at full length on the floor, lay the body of Henry Fleming, the glassy eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. In a room up stairs his brother lay dead. A stalwart young carpenter, thirty years of age, William Crozier by name, was the author of this double homicide. The Flemings (father and two sons) had brought pressure to bear upon Crozier and compelled him to meet them for a private interview at the hotel. The Flemings were armed and brought with them a written statement compromising Crozier and Miss Alice Flem- ing, an attractive young lady of hitherto unblemished reputa- tion, the eldest of three daughters of the Fleming family. The Flemings demanded Crozier 's signature to the paper, which they had placed before him. On his refusal the two young Flemings (both married men) sprang upon Crozier as he sat in his chair, and in the struggle which ensued he man- aged to get a large dirk knife from his pocket, with which he 172 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. cut both men to the heart. They died almost instantly. Henry Fleming, after being cut, ran down the stairway into the hotel office and fell a corpse in the center of the room as aforesaid. His brother sank down a corpse in the room where he was struck. A young brother of Crozier's met the elder Fleming in the hallway upstairs and struck him in the face, and thus -ended this bloody tragedy, the whole of which was consum- mated in less time than it has taken to write these words. The few people at hand at the moment were stunned. The Flem- ing family suffered great loss, and Warren County stands conspicuous with the name of Crozier written in blood upon her annals ; a name not to be pronounced in the home which shelters the sacred honor of a Christian household. He be- trayed the innocent one, and in defense of that crime commit- ted a double murder for which there was no extenuation, and lie should have forfeited his life on a limb of the first tree at hand ! I do not believe there is another instance in the his tory of our country where a family and the majesty of the law suffered such an enormity at the hands of one man, and the crime-laden scoundrel anointed with an acquittal and given "his liberty ! The old church of which he was a member began forthwith to manufacture public sentiment in his favor, and some young men of the town secured a cheap notoriety by supplying the prisoner with something better than a convict's ration and sharing his bed in the old county jail. It is a fair question whether, in the event of their own household having suffered a like invasion, these young men would have hesitated to advertise their shame by lying-in with the ravisher. One of these addle-pated gentry I believe served a term subsequent- ly as a member of the State Leg'slatur^ and rounded out his career as a statesman by selling second-hand sewing machines. The truth in this instance may be discerned at the bottom of the well. The community where this crime was accomplished "had not been so fortunate up to that time as to come into possession of a hero. In Crozier they discovered this "great Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 133 awakening l.gnt," and they made the most of it. I do not know at whose instigation or permission, but the finishing touches were placed on this uncanny business by the photog- rapher who secured a negative of the remains of the brothers resting together on the bier ready for burial, and the picture gallery became the subject of curious inquiry on the part of the groundlings who repaired thither in numbers to gratify a morbid curiosity. It is a pity that Crozier could not have sup- plied the "high light" to this post-mortem finale by standing on the public square and selling his own negatives, rather than undertake a retreat to Texas. It was on a dark, misty day that the long funeral train passed like a phantom across the high tableland to the cem- etery, as the road ran in those days. As I stood at my window and caught a glimpse of the procession the words of Ossian seemed to fit in well : "The mist is on the hills ; the blast of the north is on the plains ; and the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey!" During my attendance at the school "bleeding Kansas" was the principal theme of public controversy. Politicians wrangled over it; street toughs fought over it; "advanced" preachers bloviated about it ; and the Eccrittean Society, of which I was president during a port of this period, went into convulsions trying to reconcile the antagonisms growing out of it. If, in the regular weekly debates, we sounded the depths of theology, astrology, psychology or any other subject which we knew nothing about, the astute disputants uniformly wound up with a peroration on "bleeding Kansas," in which she was made to bleed afresh, at every pore, copiously. Out in Kansas. John Brown, of Osawatomie, was the heavy villian. The Eccrittean Society, not be outdone in mixed vaudeville, ex- ploited a John Brown also. At a memorable meeting of the society during the winter of 1858-59 we suddenly found our- selves in the throes of revolution, with John Brown in the leading role as a Jacobin. The "house" came to a division, in 134 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. which Brown "got it in the neck." In a paroxysm of wrath he seceded went across the hall to the Philos and they shut him out with a .blackball. Thereupon "bleeding Kansas," out of sympathy, discharged gore more profusely than before. Bob Diehl led the Brown forces. Bob appeared on the floor at the next regular meeting with a manuscript speech seven yards long. His roach, nicely slicked, stood vertically in the most menacing way. The benches weie full. Bob was a veteran orator (the equal of Dad Harris), and the boldest held his' breath to catch the opening sentences. Bob was grave even to sadness. He took a hitch in his suspender and addressed the chair in his best lord marquis manner. The chair responded with a distant random rap of the gavel that made the eyeballs of the members "about face." The house came to order and Bob opened artfully. He said or read that he purposed to "touch lightly upon the great questions which now made the earth tremble exultingly." At this point the members look- ed suspiciously at Bob's manuscript, which hung down and extended in manifold waves along the floor like a queen's train. I would be pleased to give a stenographic report of Bob's speech right here, but the necessary space would exceed that required for "Atmosphere Bill's" speech on Free Silver, and prudence admonishes a recoil. To explain, however. Bob's speech was in defense of the Brown family generally, and among other things he declared with extreme emphasis that nothing had occurred in "bleeding Kansas" to compare with the revolting abasement which our own illustrious scion of the tribe of red-heads had suffered at the hands of his enemies. The upshot of it all was that, in the absence of the lord chan- cellor and his lieutenants, on a subsequent night, "our Brown" sneaked back into the fold, and when we heard of it we ex- changed a casual glance, pulled a Virginia stoga and took a smoke. CHAPTER XXVI. "To PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST." During the year 1859 ^ e political parties throughout the country were organizing the contest for the nominations for the Presidency to be made in the national conventions the fol- lowing year, the dramatic features whereof stirred the dark- est passions of partisans for years, and were destined to affect the organic structure of the Government itself for all time. The hopes of the conservative anti-slavery party were cen- tered in William H. Seward, although strong side-lights re- vealed figures of other notable men. In due time Seward made a direct bid for the vote of the Western States and I joined the multitude which packed the trains going to Chi- cago to hear him. The city had less than 200,000 population ; it laid low on the flat prairie, the wooden sidewalks conspicu- ous for their inequalities. It was essentially a wooden town, the same that went up in flames twelve years later. The term- inals of the "Q" railroad were of the crudest description, and our train stood on the open prairie with a dozen other long passenger trains of that and converging roads for two hours, waiting turns to get into the city and unload. Seward's Northwestern welcome was an open-air meeting, for the crowd was beyond the capacity of any dozen auditoriums of that day. "Long John" Wentworth was the mayor of the city, and introduced the senator, who was welcomed by the pro- longed cheers of the people, who were massed in the streets for blocks in the vicinity of the speaker's platform. The lit- tle "great man" was visible only to the few, and could be heard only by the select few in his immediate vicinity. He made one of the great orations of his life, as the people discov- 135 136 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. ered after they had returned home and read it; but Seward, to be appreciated as an orator, required certain conditions ; an enclosure of limited area ; a place to lie down, broadly speak- ing; to be exact, something to sit on, or, in default of that, something he could cling to with both arms, for he was born tired. The Civil War, you remember, would not last longer than ninety days, according to the New York senator's reckon- ing, because, in the physical sense, that was the limit of his comprehension. In May of the year the nominating conventions were held, 1860, I was on my way to the Western mountains. As we wound along westward, across the broad, lonely tablelands of western Iowa, where the bleaching bones of the recently ex- terminated buffalo were still lying plentifully broadcast, the approaching Republican Convention at the "Wigwam" in Chi- cago became the subject of conversation between myself and my companion, James Shoemaker, who declared stoutly and conclusively (in his own estimation) that Abraham Lincoln would be the nominee. I shared in the general belief that William H. Seward was the coming man, and I also shared In the general surprise, although not in the disappointment, at his defeat. The western half of Iowa was very thinly settled; the only object of interest which we visited before reaching the Missouri River being a Mennonite settlement, where mar- riage was barred and property held in common. I recall the log dining-room and kitchen with its immense cauldrons where the food was cooked. We crossed the "Big Muddy" at Platts- mouth. Nebraska, where we met E. H. N. Patterson and D. C. Hanna with quartz mills, on their way to Pike's Peak. We joined their train, which materially increased the pleasure of the journey, for Mr. Patterson had made the trip the year previous, and, too, was an Argonaut of '49, and* had printed notes of these trips at hand, which gave our bearings from day to day. At this point I respectfully submit that a memoir of Mr. Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 137 Patterson is due the people of Henderson County from the pen of his talented son, now the publisher, in the third gen- eration, of the Spectator, one of the oldest county papers in the State. Such a memorial volume, with portrait and the notes of the California and Pike's Peak journies and the his- torical matter available from data left by the grandfather, Mr. J. P>. Patterson, would meet with a cordial reception at the hands of the people of the county and without doubt would be financially profitable. The Historical Association of the county would find such a volume an invaluable accession to its archives. Neglected local history soon fades into tradition, then to doubt, which is another word for denial. Catch the record while you can. Bayard Taylor at this time was in the flush of his fame as a litterateur and traveler, and his published works were familiar to me. Before leaving for the West I had the pleas- ure of hearing him at Galesburg deliver a descriptive lecture on a journey along the Nile valley, which so affected my imagi- nation that when we first came in view of the Platte River I looked with delight on the distant virgin landscape, the wind- ing river, the isolated trees, not unlike the tufted palms of the Nile valley, and almost in spite of myself, I found I was look- ing through Taylor's glasses upon old Rameses' sand-dunes and fertile fields. With a pyramid or two the picture would have been complete. I was mounted, riding alone far in advance of the train, and, at a moment, Mr. Patterson overtook me afoot. T was riding leisurely, and, as he was a genial com- panion, we were en rapport at once. He was a cultured gentle- man, and 1 cannot recall a happier hour on this journey than this present one; the soft, rose-colored atmosphere was en- chanting, and our hearts burned within us as we drank to our fill the elixir of a perfect spring morning in the last of May. There are lost years in our lives ; so long gone and so com- pletely forgotten that we cannot identify them; then there are other days hours one hour in which we feel that we have been supremely blest, and yet nothing has been added to oui 138 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. stature nor to our bank account ! This was one of my happy mornings! That was largely an equestrian journey so far as I was personally concerned, and I had a picturesque steed of an ashen hue, and its sense of hearing was fully proportioned to the equipment which Nature had provided for that neces- sary office. Had General Washington, in Crawford's bronze group in Capitol Square, Richmond, Virginia, been mounted on a thoroughbred such as mine, his dignity would be im- paired ; but I believe Julius Caesar had nothing better to ride at the head of his victorious legions. My steed had a voice with its other accomplishments. One June morning our train took the upland trail while I rode out of sight of it on a parallel route, at the foot of the marl bluffs, along the river, and had ad- vanced some miles when I suddenly found that the ears of my steed had assumed a particularly rigid and questioning at- titude. I gazed off toward the Pacific Coast and saw in the distance two highly illuminated mounted figures advancing in my direction gentlemen without hats, with quills in the seams of their pantaloons, fringe on their coat-tails, and a turkey cockade in their hair, and when the sense of being un- armed fully dawned upon me, they seemed about nine feet tall, and at the end of each rod in our mutual approach they took on at least a foot more in height, until by comparison I felt of no consequence whatever. But I made bold with the thought that maybe I was increasing in size in their imagina- tions also, and I rode on to my doom ! As we met in Nature's audience-chamber the old chiefs said "How ! How !" and the one nearest to me reached out his brawny hand in welcome. My Rosamond circled gracefully out of his reach. Then it was my turn to do the grand handsome, and I plunged the spurs to the hilt and bore down upon I'empereurs Americaine with the glad hand : but Rosamond was coy ; a princess of the blood could not courtesy and retreat more faultlessly. Noth- ing daunted, I summoned the shades of all my patriotic an- cestors, and plunged down into the dust of the arena once more with my hospitable right hand extended far out. The Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 139 old chiefs embraced the opportunity in succession, and with a hearty "How! How!" from both sides the brilliant court dissolved, assented to with great readiness by Rosamond, who lifted up her noble voice, with the echoes of which the vasty solitudes rang in a way they never rang before and will never ring again. Fremont's orchard, and Fort Kearney, O'Fallon's Bluffs, and old Fort St. Vrains, of the Hudson's Bay Company, were some of the interesting points on this journey, but the trail of the Argonauts of '49, still plainly visible in many places, affected me in a peculiar manner. I noted with interest where they crossed the Platte at the confluence of the North and South Forks where some of them lost their lives by drown- ing. 1 should wish to approach the palaces of the Eternal City by the Via Appia, along the ruts worn by the chariots in the solid rock-paved road where Paul went with "this chain" to appeal to Caesar. Here, rather than in the shadows of the mouldering plinths and blackened shafts, I should feel like taking the shoes from off my feet. The footsteps of those who have gone before hallow the ground for me ! We made our noon halt one blistering hot day in a desert region where the prickly pear and other forms of cacti were the only visible vegetation. For an hour or more, off in the distance south of us, an Indian was in full view stalking an antelope. He finally killed it, as I remember, with the bow and arrow, dressed it, and came in haste, spitting cotton, and of- fered to trade half of the carcass. We gave him a pint of sugar in exchange, with which he was delighted. In the vicinity of a suspicious cabin, where the pasture was rich and plentiful, we made our camp. The small log- cabin of one room was occupied by two slouching rascals, who had no visible means of support, and Jim, who had an uneasy feeling concerning them, had them under surveillance. He paid them a visit and came back to camp confirmed as to the character of the squatters; but, notwithstanding, none of us were considerate enough to stand watch during the night. We 140 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. paid the usual penalty. The next morning our best horse (picketed out) was missing. Jim had plenty of nerve, and during breakfast fixed upon a plan for the recovery of the stolen horse. He took a lunch and disappeared over the hills with the doubtful prospect of ever returning, for he was un- armed and horse-thieves in that region held human life in slight estimation. The good fortune which attended my com- panion on many of the battle-fields of the Civil War in later years crowned his search in this instance. We had almost reached the end of our journey when lo ! Jim rode into view on his blue roan. He found his horse picketed far out from the trail, screened by the intervening hills. Returning to the Cache le Poudre trail, he cast his lot with friendly trains along the way and returned in safety. My riding-nag, with all her vocal accomplishments strong within her. was at our service ; but when I put "Nailer's" har- ness upon her and condemned her to service at the wagon- tongue, she seemed more under-sized than ever alongside of the bay mare; but "Nailer's" mate pulled the wagon, while Rosamond was thrown in for good measure. In the absence of the veteran driver, T was promoted to the box, and having seated myself and got hold of the reins, I had ample time to scrutinize my team, which looked like an old mare and her colt, the latter walking at her side with its father's harness on. I was not unreasonably elated at the presentment. I medi- tated on Thad Warner and the stage-drivers of the elder time, and felt humbled by comparison, not only at my accomplish- ments as a Jehu, but at the aspect of my roadsters. I had some misgivings as to how Rosamond would discharge her obliga- tions, and I treated her with great deference. As an encour- agement. Captain Hanna took the advance, and the ox team with the machinery was our rear guard. I had the center. The advance moved off. Rosamond was silent and in a dis- consolate state of mind, and T was uncertain as to the out- come. The Scripture came to my rescue. Do you know, you miserable sinner, that the Lord is always at hand to give you Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 141 a lift if you will only ask Him ? Faith gave me a jog in the ribs and said, "If them sayest to this mountain, 'Be thou removed! and cast into the sea,' it shall be removed." So I raised my whip and in a burst of confidence said, "Get up." and Rosa- mond, to my infinite relief, took up the line of march. At the distance of thirty miles we had our first view of the mountains, lying like a bank of blue clouds on the west- ern horizon. After a few hours' travel, we could distin- guish the pine forests thereon, looking like weeds or small shrubs, and in due time we rested in camp at the foot of the rocky escarpments which formed the background of the site of the hamlet of Boulder, on the banks of the stream of that name where it debouches upon the plain. Boulder is now a beautiful city ; then it consisted of two or three cabins, and the immense spiral horns of mountain rams, weighing fifty pounds with the skull, lying around where the carcasses had been- dressed. In the vicinity panther, wild cats, and mountain sheep- were plentiful. We celebrated Independence Day in Gold Hill mining camp in a light fall of snow, and made the return trip- to Boulder (nine miles) almost on the double quick, as it is an easy descent all the way. This was the camp where Hanna and Patterson proposed to install their mining machinery. Here, on the summit of the valley range, their associates had excavated a hole about fifteen feet deep; on this and nothing more their hopes were founded. If there was any color in the camp, the possessor did not boast of it nor offer to show it. There was still some grub in the camp and an unusual number of men for the size of the hole in the ground, with which all of them claimed to be identified, and on this rested their justification for assembling with great promptitude for pork and beans at the hour of twelve. Experienced men had explored Colorado thoroughly and determined that the gulches of the territory held no reward for the placer miner. The reduction of the quartz was the only alternative, and this did not seem to be gold-bearing. I recall seeing but one "stamp-mill" there in 1860, and that had proven 142 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. a (barren investment. In the face of these discouragements Hanna and Patterson, neither of whom had any practical knowledge of the reduction of quartz, invested in two quartz- mills of the Swartz pattern. They were nothing more than large coffee-mills of the type in use by pur grandmothers. They were lame and ineffective, and came to naught. They were built for horse-power, but the motor was ridiculously inad- equate, as well as the grinding power. The mills went to the junk-pile in short order Patterson to his printer's case and Hanna to his plow. Along the summit of the valley range some happy mid- summer hours were rounded out breathing in the delicious odors of the spruce groves and gathering the flecked gum so much prized by the children of the home prairies, who had lit- tle knowledge of the glorious regions where it is gathered. On some far granite boulder I used to loiter and look back over the plains whence we had come, and trace like threads the course of the streams. At intervals we came upon scenes of devastation too black for words, caused by forest fires the beautiful coniferous groves burned to a crisp, the mountains to their very summits studded with the skeleton stems of the masses of young trees. Having secured our animals and other property for an absence of some days, we strapped Rosamond with a grub-stake and made a trip over the range to the Greg- ory diggings in search of the camp of Billy Martin and Will Porter. The trail crossed the first range north of the Boux- der; it was very narrow, and in places the narrow path stop- ped at the base of a vertical ledge of rock ; then Jim would get under Rosamond with one of her forelegs over each shoulder, whilst your humble servant would secure a good stout tail holt, and in this elaborate and skillful fashion lift her majesty onto the shelf above and so continue the ascent. From the spot where the trail crossed the Boulder, that mountain tor- rent, clear as crystal, can be seen for miles in its sharp descent from its covert of eternal snows, escaping confinement in the narrow passages in the rocks at one point, breaking in spray Recollections of Pioneer and Artny Life, 143 over resisting boulders at another, coming down upon one like a long line of glittering, .sabre-wielding cuirassiers ! In our passage over we slept one night on the dome of the mountains with the cougars. At dawn Nature was in deep mourning. We no longer looked up at the clouds. We groped our way cautiously in the midst of them. They enveloped us like cotton-wool. As we made our way in the moist mass it would open and close upon us, then move in prodigious vol- ume round about us, to open for a moment, then close again. The mountain world was reeking wet, but there were no rain- drops. Along those high altitudes, through these impenetrable fogs, we came now and then upon miniature glens carpeted with the most luxuriant emerald pasturage. We were now in the ancient haven of the wild flocks and herds. Even Rosa- mond the imperturbable took heart at this scene. After some hours' travel, we descended into the lateral gulches leading into Gregory Canyon, which we found strewn in places with the abandoned appliances for placer mining. Pay dirt had not been found, or not in quantity to warrant further effort. Be- fore nightfall we had reached Martin and Porter's cabin, where the two Henderson County boys labored assiduously in the role of masters of ceremony, and welcomed the travelers from "the States" with the pomp and circumstance worthy of old Gregory in her best days. Jim responded promptly to their friendly advances ; placed another quid where it would do the most good, and broke out in one of those full-moon smiles which have been the envy of his friends these three-score years and ten. Porter acquiesced with a broad grin, his eyes rest- ing heavily on our grub-stake ; then he lifted up his voice with his favorite song: "The ash and the oak and the bonny willow tree Are all growing green in the old country." We were as hungry as coyotes. Billy Martin was the chef. Seigneur Porter turned to him and said : "Let the grand salon be made ready, and covers laid for four." "The salon 5s al- 144 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. ways ready," replied the chef. I was curious to see a Gregory dining-hall that was "always ready," so I looked in. It had no windows. It had a piece of the mountain for a floor, and there was a pig-sty in one corner which I was about to take liold of when Seigneur Porter staid the hand of the intruder with the expostulation, "Don't disturb the bed!" As he said this he gazed in a vague way at the stringy clouds as they coiled like vaporous snakes around the summit of Pike's Peak. Then Bozzaris (I mean the Grand Seigneur) cheered the band by saying to the chef : "Is the piece de resistance about ripe?" ""I ran the knife through it and she 's gittin' there," said Billy. "I say, chef," resumed Seigneur Porter, "ain't it about time the puree was purred?" "Sound the gong," said the chef; "call Jim, but softly, for he is hungry enough to eat a raw boar; and tell Mat to go out and point Rosamond to the pine trees and tell her to help herself.'' Then the Grand Seigneur sat himself down in the seat of MacGregor. The guests were placed according to storage capacity, which gave Jim first place, and he helped himself to the dried apples first dash. The introductory over, the cloth was removed, and the corn- dodger came on hard and cold. The heft of the feast centered on this course, and there were some lightning strokes, and the act throughout was abreast with the claims of the press agent. Our pack-animal, being well supplied with granite gravel and ^ine needles, seemed to enjoy the function to the limit. Our return journey to the old "Sucker" State had irresist- ible charms for our two mining friends, and on the payment vof a large sum they secured the right to walk alongside of our wagon home. * CHAPTER XXVII. HOMEWARD BOUND. Denver \vas the place of rendezvous for our departure homeward. Here we met Mr. Fred Ray, Sr., his son Fred, and other associates, who had just got in from extensive ex- plorations of the mining region contiguous to South Park. Alaska is the only territory now under the Stars and Stripes, with the exception possibly of the Philippine Islands, which can produce such a scene as Denver presented in 1859-60. Dance-halls and gambling-dens had full swing, and these re- sorts were crowded with blacklegs of every description. Three- card monte and every other gambling device, the most of them beyond my knowledge and the whole of them I was looking at for the first time, were being patronized by the crowds com- posed of Mexicans, half-breeds, and strange characters from distant corners of the earth. A leader, an assistant, and the "cappers" exploited each his own peculiar game of chance in his own way. Abandoned women stole into view and disap- peared through doorways opening from the rear into the main hall, and the passage to hell was softened and gilded to the ear by strains of music from an orchestra. I looked in at the morgue, where the dead were to to be found almost every morn- ing. Few questions were asked about the crimes committed the night before ; whatever happened was accepted as a matter of course. The town pointed with pride to its graveyard contain- ing a select assortment of gentry who had died with their boots on. In one of my rambles about the town I came upon a more cheerful aspect some distance back from the turbulent streets: a well-conducted school under the supervision of a lady teach- 148 146 Recollections of Pioneer and Artny Life. er, a bright, intelligent woman of middle age, in the pursuit of her vocation with as much pride and success as we are accus- tomed to see in well-ordered communities. Under the circum- stances the discovery was a surprise to me. She was the only woman of good repute that I can recall seeing in Denver at that time, although the good mothers of the children in that school were in the town somewhere ; certainly they were chary of going on the streets. To get a letter from home I stood in line while two hundred men preceded me to the delivery. On opening my letter, I found that Robert Moir (on whom I had an order for money) and Mr. Blake, of Burlington, had passed through Denver ahead of us on their way home. The men quarreled on the return journey, and after my own return home I was the only witness to a terrific pugilistic encounter between them. In the late summer we bade adieu to Denver, which I have not seen since, and on our way home we came upon the whole of the Sioux tribe of Indians returning from their annual hunting-trip with the "jerked buffalo" heat hang- ing in strips across their ponies. They went swarming over the plains northward, the squaws having the care of things generally, the young copper-colored lads, cunning as mice, shooting birds in the grass with the bow and arrow as they continued on their way. The young braves, tall, athletic scamps six feet in height, some of them, annoyed us a good deal, sneaking around our wagon for an opening for theft. When well settled in camp one evening we found that we were close neighbors to a small village of the Ogallalah Sioux. The bucks were away on some thieving foray, a favorite amusement, the main purpose of which was to make a sneak at night on the ponies of a neighboring tribe and get off with some of the best of them. Nothing shows some of the char- acteristic traits of the Indian so thoroughly as this bent to theft. His skill at secreting himself at the moment, permitting you to pass within a few feet of him unobserved, is provoking. On this journey and in subsequent years he caught me un- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 147 awares many times. I have been the victim of an old lump of a squaw with a papoose on her back, standing in the woods like a statue I rode past within a few feet of her, unconscious of her presence. They seem to have the art of the wild animal of taking on the color and shape of surrounding objects. It is true that I was not hunting "Injuns," but I was in their country, and I always felt a little "off" when told by others of my company, who were following the trail after me, that we had just passed some red folks. On the evening in question we were not aware that there was a small group of tepees in our immediate vicinity, in a valley on the further side of the knoll; great was my surprise, therefore, when a group of ladies of our great interior quietly filed around me as a cen- ter-piece and seated themselves in a circle around our camp- fire. I felt like a tenderfoot, much abashed. Doubtless I smiled with a mixed motif, but I bowed correctly. Inasmuch as the ladies had already secured a solid foundation on the ground, it was not necessary for me to suggest that they take seats. My "buffalo chips'' were burning brightly, and I was frying "twisters" of the barbwire type in a hoary spider of an earlier time. The ladies had found me by tracing the odor of the evening meal up the wind. I was glad they called, for I exchanged without difficulty some of those libelous dough- nuts for chamois (antelope) skins, soft as the cheek of in- fancy. They departed in triumph, these club women of the Ogallalah Sioux heavy laden with the trophies of an equit- able commerce. A few days afterward we were in camp at the noon hour. I had in the wagon a "target" rifle of the old pattern; a su- perior gun, highly ornamented, but very heavy ; too much so for hunting game. I had brought it along in the hope of trad- ing it off. While we were eating our lunch some Indians rode up to the wagon where I was seated, and I entered into an earnest pantomime with one of them, exhibiting my rifle, and offering to trade it for his pony. It attracted his attention at 148 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. once, and he reached out for it. The weight of the gun so surprised and disappointed him that he showed his estimation of it by instantly pulling a feather out of his hair and offering it in exchange for the rifle. CHAPTER XXVIII. A VOLUNTEER AT THE FALL OF FORT SUMTER. The winter of 1860-61, following the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, was marked by a disturbed condi- tion of the public mind. Conservative men began to question themselves and each other as to the threats of the Southern leaders who had declared the right of revolution, as our fath- ers had done against Great Britain. The people looked for- ward to the message of President Buchanan to the Congress in December with deep interest, not to say apprehension, as containing a statement of the conservative Democratic view of the situation. I recall as freshly as if it were yesterday how eagerly my brother Porter took up the Chicago morning daily and began reading the message to my father and others gath- ered at the store, and their comments pro and con as the read- ing proceeded. As the winter months wore away the slave-holding States, through their prolonged political rottenness, sloughed off and dropped into the abyss of rebellion. In this connection I re- call one figure in South Carolina that of Judge Pettigru, the only public man probably in all of my mother's native State who remained true to the Union. A stranger met him on a street in Charleston one day in 1861 and inquired the way to the insane asylum. "Look anywhere," the old Judge an- swered ; "you will find it anywhere around here." While Floyd completed hi> theft of the Government stores and arms, and as the oak buds began to swell, the country was startled by the reverberations of Beauregard's guns firing on Fort Sumter. On the 23d day of April, 1861. eleven days after the fall 149 150 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. of Fort Sumter, there was a movement at the Yellow Banks for volunteers to join the Union forces at Cairo under Colonel Ben M. Prentiss, of Quincy. Frank A. Dallam, founder of The Plaindealer, was the leader of this movement. Along with the principal young men of the village, I signed my name on this roll of the first volunteers of the Civil War from Hen- derson County. My services as such ceased on the 4th day of July, 1865. On the day we left home for the South there was a throng of people on the streets and around the court-house to see us off. There was a current of strong patriotic feeling in the hearts of those who had assembled to bid us God-speed, and, as was natural under the circumstances, our thoughts took a practical direction, and a Democrat distinguished himself by coming forward and offering to drill us in the facings and evo- lutions of the military company. I was much surprised to see Judge Richey engage in this most useful and necessary work. He was a Democratic official and an honorable man, but some- how in the mind of the youthful brave the word "Democrat," as known in that day, had a sinister association with "seces- sion," and although I joined the "awkward squad" for awhile, the more I thought of it the more suspicious I became that through some military sleight-of-hand this Democratic son of Mars might land us in the ranks of the Confederacy ; so I fol- lowed Jeff Davis' example and seceded. It seemed absurd to me that I should take lessons in methods of fighting from peo- ple I was going to fight. We were so ignorant as to what constitutes a good soldier that we had not the slightest suspicion of our ignorance. Along with all the youngsters of my day, -my imagination was stocked with the feats of Napoleon, with the school reader pictures of the surrender of Cornwallis, and, not the least of these, the patent medicine placard of Santa Anna, his wooden leg having dropped on the road while fleeing for his life with his mounted escort before his American pursuers ; and all we would have to do in going to war, we surmised, would be to draw the wooden scimiters of our boyhood and the enemy Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 151 would disappear with the vapors of the morning. Alas for him who boasteth before putting on the armor, rather than after putting it off! But however dense our ignorance, we were not boasters. As for myself and a moiety of our com- pany, we had a decided advantage. We had belonged to a company of "Wide-A wakes," drilled campaigners during the political rivalry and stimulus of the Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign of 1858, an organization which continued down to and through the Presidential campaign of 1860. Charles S. Cowan, county clerk, was our captain and drill-master, and a thoroughly competent leader. There was no company in our Congressional District that could compete with us in company evolutions, and without doubt many thousands of young men throughout the North were in this way unconsciously prepar- ing themselves for efficiency in the Civil War. Massachusetts, always the stout defender of free institu- tions, was well represented in the crowd in the person of Joseph Chickering, whose patriotic fervor found expression in song. He mounted a wagon in the crowded street and led some of the young vocalists in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." As the hour of departure drew near a great throng from the village and surrounding country gathered in vehicles to escort the volunteers to the depot in Sagetown, five miles south. At the moment of leaving I bounded in long strides up the stairway to my mother's chamber, where she was lying temporarily ill, and kneeling at her bedside, received her bless- ing. On our arrival in Quincy we were hospitably entertained by, Mrs. O. H. Browning, wife of one of the leading attorneys of the old I4th Congressional District, later a member of the Senate, and later Secretary of the Interior under Andrew Johnson. The Browning home was of palatial proportions, distinguished for its architecture, and, taken with its parklike enclosure, was the pride of the city. After an exchange of tel- egrams between Capt: Dallam and Col. Ben Prentiss, we took the train for Cairo, where we were incorporated into the loth Illinois Infantry as Company D. Cairo was the rendezvous for 152 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. troops, the base of supplies, and the chief strategical point in the Southwest in the days of hurried organization under the first call for 75,000 men. The population of the town com- prised many traitors in disguise; rebel spies crowded elbows on the streets with the Union troops and a good deal of con- fusion and uncertainty marked the administration of the post. The regiments of the State began with the number 7, where our regiments in the Mexican War left off, and they were composed of the best blood of the commonwealth. The Qth and loth Regiments occupied barracks along the levee on the west side of the town. Here we had a local drill- and parade- ground, and our time was occupied by squad, company and battalion drills, including the zouave skirmish drill, and in private apartments the sword and Turner athletic exercises, the latter excelled in by the Germans from St. Louis. Our German-American friends occupied a separate barrack and were supplied with free beer by the car-load from their home breweries, and as a result these staunch friends of the Union were most of the time in a condition of incertitude the cap- tain of the company particularly, a big, fierce- visaged six- footer, uniformly appearing at the head of his men on dress parade his face blazing like a head-light. They stood firm by their war-cry throughout the service. "Zwei Lager nnd cine Union!" Floyd and his conspirators were still busy shipping arms and munitions of war South in disguised packages in the holds of the steamboats up to the last moment, and it was the busi- ness of these craft carrying the contraband goods to get past Cairo without being searched, although none of them succeed- ed in doing so after our arrival. A shot across the bow from one of our field guns compelled a landing. There was such a mass of humanity citizens . and soldiers on the streets of Cairo during these months, and indeed down to the close of the war, that business of all kinds was very profitable : so much so that it was a common remark, that one could, and many did, make small fortunes, or lay the foundations of large for- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 153 tunes, selling pea-nuts and the "pegged and sewed" pies so notable in that town in those days. Close to our barracks, on the extreme point of the peninsula, Fort Defiance (a formid- able earthwork) was being constructed. In its unfinished state General George B. McClellan, who was making a study of all the advanced posts held by the Union forces, paid it a visit, and the field guns placed near were fired to show him the range over the water. In the evening the troops were reviewed by him a really formidable host as they appeared to us, unused as we were then to the large armies with which we were identified in the years afterward. I recall his short, stout person ; his large black charger, and his new buckskin gaunt- lets. We looked upon him as he dashed down our line as noth- ing less than a god : if anything less than a god, certainly noth- ing less than a god with a small g, who, at the very least, possessed some of the attributes of the supernatural. Such was the impression made upon the youthful warriors by the successor to General Winfield Scott, the aged and the hero of two wars. Innocently enough, while in the armed possession of this post we had a peculiar (if long-range) connection with the Brit- ish Government. Palmerston and "melud" John Russell were no friends of ours. English official opinion gave vent to its joy at our fancied dissolution in the columns of "The Thunderer." The London Times had already wiped the United States from the map of the world, declaring that "the great Republic is no more" ! In this vein of cherished belief the publishers of that paper sent W. H. Russell, who had served as their war correspondent in the Crimea, to spy upon our movements and troubles. From the first he showed a marked fondness for the South and her leaders. He domiciled and counseled with them, made the most of their preparations for defense, and declared them invincible. Starting in at Richmond, he made a tour of the Southern States, concluding with a trip up the Mississippi River from Xew Orleans to Cairo, where he looked the raw levies of the Government over. I can see 154 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. him now; his insolent figure confronting us as we stood on dress parade on that summer evening in 1861. But "where be their gibes now"? Across "the gray and melancholy waste of years" I see the pirate ships, equipped with English guns and manned by English sailors, being built and fitted out in English ship-yards: the destruction of our merchant marine on the high seas ; the British corvette, the "Deerhound," stand- ing in the offing to rescue Semmes and his drowning ship- mates, fleeing like rats from the sinking "Alabama." Is there anything in history more detestable than the con- duct of the British Government toward us during our strug- gle to save our national inheritance ? On the completion of Fort Defiance, a small group of soldiers, including some ladies from the North, led by Colo- nel (later Major-General ). Dick Oglesby wounded nigh unto death at Corinth, resisting Van Dorn and "Pap" Price gath- ered at the foot of the flagstaff to do honor to the raising of "Old Glory" over the fortress. The flag was run to the top, when the tackling parted and the colors fell to the ground. We had the heartache for an instant when Oglesby burst forth in an impassioned speech of a few sentences, declaring that the flag of our country would be trailed in the dust by some of the States of the Union, but that it would float again over an undivided country and in greater splendor than before! In July the reports of the first battle on Bull Run reached our camp. Our chagrin and humiliation was complete. The term of our enlistment (ninety days) would soon expire, and our leaders gathered the soldiers en masse on the parade- ground, pleading and insisting that in the shadow of defeat it would be dishonorable to accept a discharge. I am sure that if the Government had insisted upon it officially suggested such a sacrifice, the large majority would have promptly com- plied and remained in the service. The South recoiled from that shock more distinctly than the North were amazed, in fact, that by a lucky chance they held possession of the battle- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 155 field. If they had felt convinced of a fairly earned success, they would have promptly followed it up. The excitement died down, leaving the Western troops where they properly belonged. CHAPTER XXIX. To WASHINGTON AND THROUGH NEW ENGLAND. When our term of enlistment had expired, under which the first call for 75,000 men were sworn in, the: regiments reorgan- ized, and re-enlisted for three years unless sooner discharged. We were paid in gold and silver, and with the thought in my mind that I would like to serve throughout the war in the Army of the Potomac, I took the train for Philadelphia, de- termined withal to refresh my patriotism at the shrines of the past. A young blood is tempted to do some foolish things in going to war, and without doubt I did my share of them. My older brother, Porter, although he was not in the military serv- ice, must have had some war-like notions in his youth, for he was the possessor of an elegant pearl-handled poniard which had never been brought into requisition ; but, as the opportu- nity to use it seemed to have arrived when I volunteered, I took the Castilian weapon with me. When I boarded the train for the East I concealed the stiletto in my boot-leg in regular cut-throat fashion, and thought no more about it until I had been two nights out, when, feeling the loss of rest, I took an upper berth in the sleeper. The car was packed to suffocation ; the aisles overflowing with passengers ; so that I had difficulty in reaching my berth in the old-fashioned sleeper, and in doing so my dagger was exposed, and instantly I became an object of suspicion. At that time one was liable to be placed under surveillance on slight evidence. I became aware forthwith that I was assuming unwonted and sanguinary proportions in the imaginations of my fellow-passengers, and, as the result of pantomimic notification, the conductor came and peered with Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 157 a searching eagerness into my boot-leg. I affected indiffer- ence, and turned over as though I had taken refuge in "the land of Nod." On arriving in Philadelphia the next morning a stranger came and indulged in a little common-place, but I shook him off. After I had established myself in comfortable quarters at the hotel and scrutinized the old Liberty bell, and the apartments at Independence Hall, and the portraits of the sages on the walls, and plucked a blade of grass or two from the grave of Benjamin and Deborah 1 Franklin, I was con- scious, as I made these various and sundry turns throughout the city, of the momentary presence of the face I had met on getting off the train. Had I taken a carriage to admire the venerable edifice known as Girard College, the face seemed to flit by; at Betsy Ross' house, where the flag was made, I was not quite sure, but I had the impression that the face was hovering in the vicinity ; but if so, was that anything to won- der at ? Were not patriots of all ages, from all over this broad land, dropping in at all hours to see Mrs. Ross or the rooms where she had experimented with the national colors? Hav- ing no quarrel on this head, I bowled out upon the suburban drives, over miles of beautiful boulevards, along the little gem of a stream called the Wissahickon, yet the face was there ! "Well," I said to myself, "I hope the gentleman is enjoying his outing," and I turned to the driver : "We '11 take zwei glass lager beer on it anyway," and we drove up to the road-house, and quaffed the stranger's health. On the morrow I rode out to Laurel Hill cemetery, gave "Old Mortality" with his chisel and hammer a nod as I passed in, and was soon lost in the peaceful vales of this ancient city of the dead. For some years I had been fascinated by the experiences of Doctor Kane in the Arctic regions. That fine scholar with the noble spirit of adventure had just died, at middle age, and his tomb was a shrine where I could worship. As the cab carried me out from the avenues and away to the city I thought I caught a glimpse of a familiar face. Tt seemed grave and business-like, but I smiled and lifted my hat to it. On the day following I 158 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. was in Washington. I lodged at the old Willard Hotel, where all the great men of eld, my peers, were wont to put up. I lodged in realistic fashion, for they put me in a crypt directly under the roof. Washington was a scrub town in those day a military camp and the commissioned officers blocked the passage-way at Willard's, and the entrance to the saloons along Pennsyl- vania Avenue. The soldiers were coming and going. One poor lad in uniform, quite exhausted, had sunk down under the load of his knapsack and accoutrements. He was a mere youth. Drawn by his pale face, General Mansfield approached and began conversing with him, advising and admonishing. In line with our American love of sensation, I looked upon the spot where Dan Sickles killed Philip Barton Key. I was ashamed of myself when I looked down on the slight stump yet remaining of the shade-tree in the brick sidewalk (all that was left by relic-hunters) to mark the place of the tragedy. Think of the human vultures making off with the splinters of the shade-tree which marks a lecherous chapter in the history of the capital ! Under the second call for troops a large army had already assembled on the heights around Arlington. The Army of the Potomac, however, lacked the enchantment that distance gave it, and I reconsidered my purpose to join it, preferring to return and trust my fortunes with the comrades with whom I had already passed through a preparatory serv- ice. Having resolved, while I was on the ground, to finish my visit to the East, I spent some days in the Capitol building itself, and in the Department buildings (mainly in the Patent Office building), where at that time were kept the objects of interest most attractive to an under-age youth to whom Gen- eral Washington's sword and Ben Franklin's old. wooden printing press were as sacred as the bodies of Gengis Khan's ancestors were to him. And more than this : to keep my spir- its at the right point above low-water mark, the face of my Philadelphia double had a ghostly preference for me. How- ever, when I took the "Bound Brook" route for New York Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 159 the familiar face came and sat down in the seat with me and \ve got real chummy, he having made up his mind, without any assistance from me, that I was not an emissary of Jeff Davis, nor an assassin from Baltimore with designs on the President. We walked up Broadway together from the Jersey ferry at midnight, and he showed me into a nice hotel. No. 144 Broadway, for which act of courtesy I was sincerely grate- ful, as I was a stranger in the town. Manhattan Island em- braces its share of the visible traces of the brave days of old, and I spent some happy hours there, for the transfigured scenes of youth and young manhood surpass in interest all others. On an excursion steamer to West Point in subsequent years I fell in with my old comrade in arms, Major Charles S. Cowan, who was born in the city. In our stroll from the Gold Room (the scene of the "Black Friday") 'over to Broadway we passed into Trinity church-yard, where he showed me his mother's grave. When the Major was a babe occurred the great fire in the history of old New York, when the fire de- partment was wholly inadequate to cope with such a disaster, and in the widespread confusion and destruction of property his mother died from fright and grief, in the full belief that her child, which had been taken by its nurse to a distant block on a visit, had been lost. Trinity and the interior of old Saint Paul's, where Washington worshiped, are haunts not to be overlooked by the young visitor nor by their elders, for that matter. I found a seat in a coach on the old New York and New Haven line through New England for Boston in the month of August, a favorable time for a visit along the Atlantic coast. I had been dreaming of the land of shoe-peg oats and bass- wood hams since childhood, and I now was to see the people of the old Wooden Nutmeg State in the very act of emptying their coal-scuttles out at the back window onto Rhode Island, and in this mean and underhand way had about buried "Little Rhody" out of sight. My most radiant recollections of my mid-summer trip up to Boston are illuminated by the bright 160 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Yankee girls with whom I exchanged bits of silver for pieces of huckleberry pie, which happened every now and then, for, as I remember, we jogged along in no great hurry and I had a good opportunity to see the hills, salt-water estuaries, villages and country life on the hunting-grounds of the Pilgrim fathers. As I rode along toward the intellectual and commercial center of Massachusetts I could not bring myself to believe that the shadow of a great civil war (the most terrorizing of all wars) was at that moment lowering over these peaceful landscapes. I saw no evidence of it anywhere. And yet I had already com- pleted one term of military service and would soon return to resume these duties. On arriving at the, hotel, and having reg- istered and gotten rid of my grip, I stepped to the entrance and saw across the street an old brick meeting-house, plain as a barn, and helf-embedded in the walls, near the cornice, a British cannon-ball, fired in 1776 from one of King George's blockading vessels. Now, I had come to Boston to see that cannon-ball and other coincident things, and I saluted it with unction ; and right there and then I took the shades of all the embattled farmers, each in his turn, and gave him, or it, a big hug. I was so impressionable that when I recalled all the scraps the patriots used to have with the "red-coats" in those crooked streets (they have been straightened since), I went about in my unsophisticated "Sucker" way earnestly desiring to worship everybody and everything I met. Down at King's Chapel, where the British stabled their cavalry, I would not have been in the least surprised to have seen the stout) troopers dash out like an arrow from the bow and charge Washington's lines down on the Common there. Ben Franklin stood in bronze close by and I saluted him in abject admiration, and I would not have considered it a hardship to have saluted him five hundred times a day while my visit lasted. In truth I soon reached such a condition of chronic salutation that I went about with my hat poised three inches above my head, where it rested in rigid veneration for all Boston had, could, would, or should have. In this patriotic trance I came at last Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 161 to the foot of Bunker Hill. On the spot where Warren fell, marked by a tablet, I sorrowed as sincerely as mortals can. I did not see the monument. I was too busy looking for Pres- cott and "Old Put," and the farmers young and old, with their flint-lock muskets, long-barreled rifles, and shot-guns carry- ing buckshot. I remarked the line where they had stood, and I looked off upon the bay where the British debarked, and I saw them form in line, one company after another and one battalion after another, until they seemed strong enough to swallow the hill and all the patriots upon it. They were in full uniform and silent, but they were not cowards. The Briton had been a soldier for a thousand years, and he was not going to balk now. The battle of Bunker Hill belongs to your day and mine. There was no loud-resounding circumstance of war along that British line of battle that is now ready to charge the hill. The order to advance was given quietly. I am stand- ing here on the hill, looking down at them. The shadowy forms of other days are around me. There is a deep silence here also, for modern civilization is about to strike another blow for a larger liberty. Crowns and titles will not see this thing done willingly. England's might is at the foot of this hill to see that it shall not be done. Her line of battle is already half way up the hill, coming on with the masterful resolution she had ever shown. They are nearer now and coming close. The farmers at the word crouch and lean forward, looking keenly along their rifle barrels with the fine nerve of the New World hunter. There is a crash as the farmers send their shots to the mark. Through the powder smoke you can see the British line stagger and fall in its own blood, and they sullen- ly fall back and re-form again at the foot of the hill. You know all the story that fills so bright a page in the history of this dear land of ours. Down at the "Cradle of Liberty,'' I laid my hand on its walls to assure myself that it was still there, and the mor- row being Sunday. I attended the service at Tremont Temple, where Jenny Lind had sung a few years previously, her con- 1 62 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. cert being marked by an enthusiastic advertiser, who bid $625 for first choice of seats. On Monday morning I laid a twenty- dollar gold-piece down and the agent gave me a ticket for Chicago, and I was whisked away through the Catskills to Al- bany, thence to Buffalo, where the conductor gave me a stop- over for Niagara. On a moonless night I stood alone on the narrow bridge leading to Goat Island and looked down for the first time on the darkling waters as they flashed their myriad Satanic faces upon me while they passed like a shot from a rifle under my feet. In the visitors' register on the Canadian side I noticed the autograph of Henry Clay and other notables of the past, placed some years before. Here we put on our water-proof suits, and descended under the main fall, and on the verge of rock in the depths below we felt as one might who is about to stop into eternity! Here I met some Hen- derson County Argonauts returning home with a good stake after twelve years' absence. On the Niagara River below the falls I squandered some delightful hours and brought to a close my inter-military itineracy. CHAPTER XXX. RE-ENLISTED FOR THREE YEARS. Our company reorganized for the three-year service un- der Charles S. Cowan, and assembled along, with the other companies of the regiment at Cairo. The commanding officer of our regiment, Colonel James D. Morgan, had served as captain in an infantry regiment in the Mexican War, rendered valuable service at the battle of Buena Vista under General Taylor, and was a thorough soldier through natural aptitude and experience. He was the captain of the Quincy Rifles dur- ing the Mormon troubles, and no man in the State excelled him in the mastery of the evolutions of the battalion. He was cool and clear-headed in an emergency, as we often had oc- casion to remark during the war, and in the preparatory months, when we were drilling for active service, the dress parades and battalion drills of the "Old Tenth" were interest- ing and beautiful. For the accuracy and precision of his work at all times, his bearing in battle, and for his fine, well-remem- bered voice, to which the battalion became so well accustomed for all these things, which play their part in rounding out a perfect esprit de corps, the gallant old man, who died at the age of eighty years, will not soon be forgotten by the survivors of his "command," who claim him as the leader par excellence. The Government had established a ship-yard at Mound City, seven miles up the Ohio River from Cairo. Here two "iron-clads" were in course of construction, and the Tenth was ordered there late in the summer of 1861, as a guard over this important work. Later on, while the weather was still warm, we were ordered to join our brigade at Cairo for a re- 163 164 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. view of all the troops at the post. Forty thousand men of the different arms of the service were in line, and the earth was tramped till the dust was deep and stifling. The intense heat and the suffering of the men for water gave us a foretaste of the many privations in store for us. As our Government ad- vances in age the lustrums are apt to be marked by the lineal descendants of distinguished soldiers in its history who come to the front in the activities of the hour. My attention was called to this fact by the appearance among the general officers in charge of the review of General Van Rensselaer, a name familiar to readers of "Knickerbocker" history on Manhattan Island. We had with us also, in our carr>aign in the Car- olinas, under Sherman, a general of division, a lineal descend- ant of Israel Putnam. When I found that we had a Van Rensselaer with us at Cairo, I would hardly have been sur- prised to learn that "Hard-koppig Piet" and "The Headless Horseman" were members of his staff. The people of southern Illinois were not all loyal, and this was shown by a wealthy resident of Mound City when our regiment took possession of the town. His large, comfortable house was directly on our route as we entered the village: the day was hot and the men thirsty. It was a great surprise to Mr. Rollins when our men rushed in upon his well to replenish their canteens. The old gentleman came out in a furious pas- sion and ordered them out of his yard. His voice was drowned in the volley of chaff the boys fired at him, and in spite of his valiant exertions he was carried off his feet like a feather on the current of the Ohio. The large majority of our company was composed of the native born; the remainder were Ger- mans and Swedes. The foreign-born were almost to a man good soldiers, and here and there among them a man of su- perior fibre. This, is shown now, after an interval of half a century, during which they have achieved successful careers ; one of them being the president of a bank, others successful merchants, live-stock commission agents and farmers. One of the most attractive of the young Swedes (Albert Peterson) Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 165 died in the hospital at Mound City, and his grave, along with that of others of our regiment, formed the nucleus of the National Cemetery at that point. It came in time to be a trite and indifferent thing the passing to the grave of the bodies of these young lovers of liberty from a foreign land ; the bier covered by the Stars and Stripes ; the escort and firing-squad marching to the funeral note; albeit, it was a scene full of pathos, for those who were dear to them were still in far Scandinavia, patiently waiting for good tidings and a remit- tance from the son who had gone to the land of great oppor- tunity to seek his fortune. Our parade-ground was as level as a floor, an advantage in our primary military schooling, and in the pursuit of daily routine I was out one day with our company when we had occasion, along with other points in the manual, to "ground arms," but one of the most popular soldiers in the ranks had difficulty in obeying the order. With this exception the com- pany executed the simple feat with ease, but a gracious provi- dence had equipped "Put" with an unusually thrifty and ample growth, both in stature and bulk, with the balance in favor of the latter, and when the gallent lad reached the critical point in the posture his trousers parted at the tactical cross-roads, making an exposure of which the enemy for target purposes might take advantage. On our return to quarters he got a needle and thread and strengthened his base against assailants of all sorts whatsoever, and with admirable foresight followed up this bit of grand strategy by securing a detail to the com- missary department, where he had freedom of growth and could indulge his personal preference of posture without in- terference and where he proved one of the most efficient and useful men in the "command." Our regiment occupied a large brick factory building, each company having a room 60x20 feet. Here in the evenings, under the training of Dr. W. H. Craig, we became expert in the Ellsworth Zouave manual. 1 66 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. We first came under the observation of General U. S, Grant on this parade-ground. Orders had been issued that the General would review our regiment on a certain day. We knew nothing about him; had hardly heard of him. Before leaving Cairo field orders from him as commander of the De- partment had been read to us; but the only incident that had occurred up to this time to draw my attention to him was an order read to us one evening by Adjutant Joe Rowland, signed "U. S. Grant, commanding, etc.," and when the adjutant came to the General's initials in a Stentorian, perfunctory voice he announced "United States," when on noticing that "U. S." did not stand for the Government in that connection he recovered himself and read the name as signed. There was a rumor that a man had succeeded to the command of the Department who went about the streets of Cairo in citizen's clothing, wear- ing an old plug hat. We knew so little about the matter that we did not identify this man with General Grant Our battalion formed for review as appointed, and the mounted officer who was to officiate had arrived from Cairo for the purpose. He sat on his horse, an indifferent figure, undemonstrative, quiet- ly looking us over. The usual formality of presenting arms gone through with, the battalion had massed in columns by companies, and was marching past the reviewing officer when, on account of our indifferent martial music (we no longer had Tip Prentice with us), accidental change of step, or other mis- fortune, the nature of which I have forgotten, we passed un- der the eye of the greatest general of modern times, not with the faultless front and rhythm of step which was our pride, but like a flock of exasperated goats. Beginning with Scott's tactics, I learned three different manuals during the first six months of my military service. Following closely onto Scott's, or in combination with it, we took up Hardie's; then at Mound City I diligently practiced the Zouave drill and manual of attack and defense. After the lapse of fifty years I have seen nothing superior to the Zouave skirmish drill in use in 1861. It was controlled by the voice Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 167 or the bugle, preferably by the latter, and always so in battle. During our first ninety days' service at Cairo this drill was beautifully given on that level parade-ground. During our stay at Mound City one of the gun-boats was launched. A large assembly of soldiers and citizens witnessed the event which was marked by the usual ceremonies. When the full number of these fighting-craft was completed and in commis- sion, the Mississippi flotilla under Commodore Foote, and later under Commodore Davis, formed a formidable arm of the service, which played an important part in opening up the river to an unvexed flow to the sea. The hulls of the boats were built in water-tight compart- ments, eight feet square, of 12x12 solid white or live oak tim- bers. Our guards held the approaches, with a reserve on the vessel under construction, and if any of our men dropped to the bottom of any of the compartments, they had difficulty clambering out, for the walls were neatly joined and smooth and seven or eight feet in depth. On the 7th of November, 1861, the battle of Belmont was fought. We could hear the field guns distinctly. On the next day one of the transports brought the remains of some of our officers slain on that field to our levee to be expressed home. As we looked upon their pale faces, their hands crossed in eternal protest against the deep damnation of their taking off, treason and rebellion assumed their true significance. Men will volunteer for war whose physical qualifications are noth- ing short of a travesty on what a soldier should be. In our company we had a man built on the plan of the Platte River, which Artemus \Vard said would make a good river on its edge. This man had length and width, but no thickness. As he approached one could see distinctly through his transparent rigging without the aid of the .r-ray. The skull was always grinning, for he was a very good-natured fellow, and he was always sick and always eating. At the sutler's and elsewhere he kept his pockets replenished between meals. "M. Kom," namesake of the original at the Yellow Banks, called him "Old 1 68 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Death." This man, after gliding spiritually throughout camp for a few months, was reabsorbed into private life. And I think at this precise moment he must be somewhere in this glorious Union in high feather with a big pension, for such people never die. At my readers' sufferance I will devote a few lines to the method of such creatures. Finding the Government more than willing to get rid of them, they returned home to play the game of the "coffee-cooler," to place himself in the swim, under the patronage of some gentleman recruiting to secure a commis- sion, through whose collusion he was sworn in again, securing the usual perquisites of city, township, county and occasion- ally private bounties, amounting in all to a considerable sum. The second enlistment would not last long. He would be dis- charged the second time probably, on the recommendation of the surgeon at the hospital. By this time he would have learned his lesson well, and presenting himself before some man who wanted to hire a substitute, he would be paid $1,000, perhaps more, to make once more the vicarious sacrifice. It is only fair to say that the men with whom I entered the serv- ice at the fall o!' Fort Sumter did so without a thought, hope or promise of reward of any kind. Bounties were then un- known, pensions unthought of. As noted elsewhere, we were paid in specie at the close of our service under the first call. Our first payment under the second enlistment was made in greenbacks (the first we had seen), crisp and clean, fresh from the press. Since the foundation of the Government our people had struggled with an uncertain, discounted, if not fraudulent shinplaster currency. And here it may be said in a word, but with the force of exact truth, that among the many blessings brought about by the Civil War was a stable, secure financial system, which came to its full and rounded perfection when the nation anchored at last on the resumption of specie pay- ments with the gold dollar as the unit of value. The green- backs (promises to pay) "five-twenties" they were called were indeed an epochal departure. Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 169 Uncle Sam was solvent (entirely so), but he had no money, and assassins were thirsting for his blood on all the horizon around. Honest man that he is, he took a simple, open, straightforward way. He issued promises to pay, founded on the wealth of the country. He fixed a time and manner of redemption. He signed the bond. At a later day the people called it "fiat" money, but the greenbacks were a "go" they went like Sampson's foxes and firebrands through the "stand- ing corn." The pockets of the people bulged out with them; prosperity prospered over again, and the North grew rich be- yond the dreams of avarice, as a direct result of the war. Calico sold at 25 cents a yard: but hogs brought n cents a pound on the hoof. Everybody took greenbacks, nothing doubting. I could fill my wallet with them in Chicago and the cashier at the bank in San Francisco or Boston would receive them without question. Not so under the old regime. Then the cashier would get out his "Bank-Note Detector," adjust his glasses and scrutinize columns of names and titles dignified as "Banks," where they kept in store a few old-style coppers, a poverty-stricken assortment of silver, and a coin or two of gold, all conspicuously displayed, and a ton of shinplasters, shown with less effrontery. In those days a cashier was em- ployed for his accomplishments as a persuader. His business was to stand at his window and convince people by some hocus- pocus that the shinplasters he was shoving at them would not expire before they could unload them on some other fellow. Here in the greenbacks we had a universal currency; a finan- cial heaven we had never aspired to and did not feel worthy of. We had discovered another Beatitude : "Blessed is he that hath a barrel of them." But our ancient enemy, John Bull, would have none of them. Andrew D. White in his memoirs gives testimony to the light in which the financial circles of London looked upon our issue of currency to carry on the war: "Drawing money one morning in one of the large banks of London, I happened to exhibit a few of the new national greenback notes which had ijo Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. been recently issued by our Government. The moment the clerk saw them he called out loudly, 'Don't offer us any of those things ; we don't take them ; they will never be good for anything.' I was greatly vexed, of course," says Mr. White, "but there was no help for it." John Bull sings a different song nowadays ! I took the clean bright bills from the paymaster and ex- pressed them home. Good money ! I had no doubt of it. Good as gold. Taken on faith ; faith in a good cause. Faith in God ! And I communed to myself : Uncle Sam's promise to pay had gone forth to the world. He must make good. And he has placed a rifle in my hands that carries nine hun- dred yards and sent me South on a righteous errand with this injunction, "See thou to that." There never was an hour dur- ing the four years that I did not feel the force of that obliga- tion. It bore me up through good and evil report; in light and darkness ; in weakness and strength ; down to that moment when, standing under the dripping trees in North Carolina in the driving rain, chilled to the marrow, we were told that Lee had surrendered ; that we must finish Joe Johnston ; and then we could go home ! CHAPTER XXXI. OUR FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH A CONTRABAND. During the winter of 1861-62 general orders were issued for the concentration of troops at Bird's Point, opposite Cairo, in Missouri, and on the Kentucky and Illinois shores in that vicinity, for a projected movement down the Mississippi un- der General John Pope, and a similar movement up the Ten- nessee against Fort Donelson, and on to Pittsburg Landing, under General U. S. Grant. Preparatory to these movements and for the purpose of confusing the enemy, our regiment be- came part of the 4th Brigade of 10,000 men, under the com- mand of Gen. John A. McClernand, to threaten the fortified rebel post at Columbus. It was a mid-winter march, the weath- er was severe, with a considerable fall of snow and rain, and the reconnaissance, while it fulfilled its purpose, was far from a round of pleasure ; the rough clay roads, worked into an almost impassable condition by the artillery and trains, made the progress of the infantry slow and difficult. While in camp at Fort Holt, after our return from this detour, an incident occurred which will throw light on the status of the slave at the opening of the war. We were still splitting hairs over the question, whether we were fighting to save the Union as it is, or as it ought to be. We had men on both sides of this question, and while the majority, if put to the test, undoubted- ly were anti-slavery, the North through observation had be- come so accustomed to the "peculiar institution" that many doubted whether we might or could get rid of it. Ben Butler bad not as yet defined the slave as contraband who had taken refuge within our lines. And so it came about that a young fugitive slave within our lines but a few hours gave rise to 171 172 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. a new experience. McClernand, the commander of this expe- dition, was a radical pro-slavery politician. The slave's master had a clew or suspicion that his chattel was in hiding among the troops, and applied at the general's headquarters for as- sistance to recover him. There was an impression current that our regiment had possession of the colored boy ; the charge was in fact whispered around that the nigger was in E's wood-pile. The general's partisan zeal was aroused, and he applied at Colonel's Morgan's headquarters for informa- tion, but without result. When, as in blind man's buff, the search got warm, our men were non-committal; if questioned, they answered that they had not come South to hunt niggers. No discovery was made. The troops were under orders to move. The transports were at the landing to take the division across the river. McClernand had his spies out, and when the train came down to drive aboard, our wagon was searched and the young slave dragged out from under the load of tents and equipage and handed over to his master. This incident had a marked effect on our personal fortunes. McClernand's prej- udices were aroused against us, and our regiment was omitted from the troops selected to fight the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh. But for that colored boy doubtless the bones of many of us would now be resolving to earth on those famous fields. On a bright day in February, after a season of prolonged, dismal, severe weather, I was standing on the levee at Cairo when a fleet of transports, coming down the Ohio, landed the Confederate prisoners from Fort Donelson and were taken on to Rock Island. It was an impressive scene and rejoiced the hearts of the loyal North. In compliance with a general order for the concentration of 'troops, the Tenth Illinois made its final exit from the preparatory school at Mound City and winter quarters in cabins at Bird's Point, on the Mississippi shore, opposite Cairo, whence we entered upon those great campaigns under Gen- erals Pope. Halleck, Rosecrans, Thomas, Grant, and finally Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 173 Sherman, which terminated, so far as I was personally con- cerned, on the 4th day of July, 1865, after the exhausted Con- federate armies had surrendered and our Government rested once more in the peace and security of restored sovereignty. While at this camp I was forced to go to the hospital for the first and the only time during the war, b) a severe cold, akin to pneumonia, and I believe was diagnosed as such by one of the surgeons. I was convalescing when the troops broke camp and marched South at the opening of the spring cam- paign, and I stood in the doorway to greet my regiment as it passed by, feeling blue as it disappeared from view in the woods. In a few days, feeling stronger, I insisted on rejoining my regiment, against the remonstrances of those in charge at the hospital. Although not at all strong, I felt well, excepting a tender throat, and shouldering my traps, I boarded a "bob-tail" train, which took us as far as Sykeston, where I took the high- way in company with others for the front, which we reached in the evening. The weather being mild, I regained strength and resumed my duties. Our brigade occupied a camp within a few miles of the rebel fortifications at New Madrid, an old town founded by the Spanish when under their jurisdiction. My first glimpse of Gen. John Pope was had at this camp during a review of the troops, when he rode down our front at break-neck speed on his dapple-gray charger. This per- formance was intended to be very impressive, but something in the appearance of the horse and the rider made it both ridiculous and comical. General George B McClellan's per- formance in the same role, while more grandiose, had essen- tially the same effect. I never could rid myself of the comical figure our dear old President, Abraham Lincoln, used to make on review as I read of it in the dispatches, for I certainly never had the opportunity nor the desire to see him in the act his tall, angular figure, his small horse, the long legs, the tall silk hat, his coat-tails in horizontal display while in pursuit of a possible jack-rabbit for anything the troops could de- termine by the performance. 174 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. I cannot say certainly, but I do not believe Ulysses S. Grant ever thus displayed himself for the delectation of be- holders. It is possible that Julius Caesar wert down his lines with such speed as he could thump into an ass. and military gentlemen in all the ages have been loth to surrender the priv- ilege; on the other hand, there is the sense of majesty and power in an immense army, such as the Army of the Cumber- land before the battle of Stone River, passing in review before General Rosecrans at Nashville; or the army that made the March to the Sea passing in review before General Sherman :in Exchange Square, Savannah ; or the same army, at Raleigh, .North Carolina, after it had completed the historic campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas, passing in review before the group of historic mounted figures, in repose, composed of Grant, Sherman, Howard, Slocum, Schofield, Terrill, Schurz, Logan, and many other distinguished soldiers. Such pictures as that, or the Grand Review at Washington, are epochal tab- leaus that remain fixed in the memory and are beyond criticism. CHAPTER XXXII. THE CAPTURE OF ISLAND No. 10 AND NEW MADRID. On the 1 2th of March, 1862, in the evening twilight, our brigade formed and silently moved out from camp, the artil- lery muffled, and the men cautioned against making unusual noise. Conversation, when indulged, was in undertones. In the darkness of the moonless night the column moved like an immense serpent winding in and out through the openings of the forest. I was in the file at the head of our company with Lieutenant Sam Wilson and Captain Carr, whose company (H) preceded us in the column. That officer was a veteran of the Mexican War, of middle age, who had seen much of the world; was devoted to the service, and kept his men well in hand. We chatted in low tones as we marched along, Cap- tain Carr admonishing his men at intervals against the clat- ter of their canteens, or the querulous voice of some man who had difficulty in getting along amicably with his neighbor. We passed rapidly along in the darkness, and soon debouched upon an open field. Our engineers and staff officers were at hand and under their guidance we were drawn up in line facing the rebel works ; stacked arms ; and in the inky darkness found a line of rail-fence, which we lifted bodily, noiselessly, and extended along our front as a base for a breastwork ; then with our trenching tools, working like beavers, we soon had an effective defense against the enemy's siege guns, for at daylight we would be an easy mark for his trained gunners at the rebel fort. We were now up against the first notable" obstruction of the Mississippi south of Cairo, which consisted of a formidable earthwork and siege guns and a line of de- fense works for infantry, a fleet of gunboats on the river, and 175 176 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. the fortifications on Island No. 10 above. On the left of our line four siege guns were placed in position protected by a still heavier earthwork. While we were engaged in this work not a shot had been exchanged. If the rebel pickets heard us, they relied upon their ears rather than upon their rifles for entertainment. The silence remained unbroken, till Captain Carr left his company at their work in the trenches and went out on our front to reconnoitre on his own account. There was a lane running at right angles to our line of works, and along the "worm" fence the captain stole quietly. He loved his pipe, and in an unfortunate moment stopped and struck a match ! That was the rebel sharp-shooters' opportunity, and in the glare of that little blaze the veteran received a mortal wound. He was carried to the farm-house near by, where he died shortly afterward. In the early dawn, our earthworks having been completed, there was a lively exchange of Minie balls, and the gunners in the rebel fort, discovering a big black hunch in the corn-field which they had never seen before, trained some of the best rifled pieces on it and made the morn ing exercises interesting for Captain Joe Mower and his men. The captain (later a major-general) in command of our divis- ion, and later of our corps, was a fighter, but he was out- classed with his little hunchback of earthwork and four guns against a deliberately built fort of approved pattern. During our second night under the rebel batteries our company was on the outposts, where in the silence we could hear much that was going on behind the enemies' lines. There was a "racket" throughout most of the night, their lights were gleaming, their band played continuously, and there was the rumble and tumult as of reinforcements coming in. The truth proved to be, they were going on board their transports in a panic, evacuating all their works, leaving valuable prop- erty behind them. At daylight we found their tents standing, lights burning in them and breakfast on the tables, and mili- tary stores in quantity and the heavy guns in the fort fell into our hands. The result was that during the unequal duel which Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 177 extended throughout the previous day, a center shot from the rebel fort nearly buried Colonel Smith of the i6th Illinois and another broke the muzzle off one of our big guns, putting it out of the game. The captain smiled grimly (a man in a fight always smiles "grimly," I believe, if he is able to work his facial muscles at all) and landed another shot a little closer than be- fore ; at all events, the captain took a look at the enemy's coign of vantage after we got possession of it, and found one of his guns dismounted and his household furniture piled up in a heap. Along with our work on this day there was something do- ing down at Point Pleasant pointed but unpleasant for the rebel Commodore Hollis, which shut him out of the mixup. The Mississippi is a nice stream to travel on if you have the stuff which entitles you to a first-cabin passage and a "Northern line" table to lunch at with a seat on the right of the captain, and provided there are no hunting parties out looking for big game. Up to this hour in the Commodore's life he had smooth sailing, but on a night a Yankee battery was neatly fitted into a depression made for it at the "Point" and a lot of our best wing shots stood in the rifle-pits, looking bland and smiling out over the water, and, as usual, the unsuspicious Commodore came along with his flock of "Turtles," and our boys scared him so he has not been heard of to this day. As a further diversion, during the afternoon the rebels formed a small in- fantry force out of our sight and played the old trick of march- ing it around and around through the fort as a continuous line- of reinforcements, but really dropping out of sight be- hind the fort and coming in again, an endless chain. We were unbelievers and smiled as we looked at the performance. General Pope made the following official report of these operations : "The loth and i6th Illinois, commanded respectively by Colonels J. D. Morgan and J. R. Smith, were detailed as guards to the prosposed trenches and to aid in constructing them. They marched from camp at sunset on the i2th in- 178 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. stant, and drove in the pickets and grand guards of the enemy as they were ordered, at shouldered arms, without firing a shot ; covered the front of the intrenching parties and occupied the trenches and rifle-pits during the whole day and night of the 1 3th, under furious and incessant cannonading from sixty pieces of heavy artillery. At the earnest request of their Colo- nels, their regimental flags were kept flying over our trenches, though they offered a conspicuous mark to the enemy. "The coolness, courage and cheerfulness of these troops, exposed for two nights and a day to the furious fire of the enemy at close range, and to the severe storm which raged during the whole night of the I3th, are beyond all praise, and delighted and astonished every officer who witnessed it.'" General Pope says in another connection, referring to this movement : "One brigade, consisting of the roth and i6th Illinois, under Colonel Morgan, of the loth, was detailed to cover the construction of the battery and to work in the trenches. They were supported by General Stanley's division, consisting of the 27th, 43d and 63d Ohio. Captain Mower, of the ist U. S. Infantry, with Companies A and H of his regiment, was placed in charge of the siege guns. "The enemy's pickets and grand guards were driven in by Colonel Morgan from the ground selected for the battery, with- out firing a shot, although the enemy fired several volleys of musketry. The work was prosecuted in silence and with the utmost rapidity until at 3 o'clock A. M. two small redoubts, con- nected by a curtain and mounting the four heavy guns which had been sent me, were completed, together with rifle-pits in front and on the flanks, for two regiments of infantry. Our batteries opened as soon as the day dawned and were replied to in front and on the flanks by the whole of the enemy's heavy artillery on land and water." We had in our company an educated Virginian, Absalom Martin, for whom I felt a warm admiration on account of his literary quality. By the aid of a good memory he would plunge Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 179 into the English classics and help me to divert the tedious hours in camp. He had a premonition of his fate. We were seated on our breastworks one evening after the enemy had ceased firing at us, when he said to me: "If I should fall dur- ing this revolution [I use the exact words], I want you to write to my wife and tell her all about me." I replied that I would be glad if I should never have occasion to comply with his request. His ordinary mood was that of a cheerful good humor, and although physically too weighty a man for active service, he got along very well until after the close of our opei ations around New Madrid, when it was noticed, while on the transports going South, that he was not well. On our return up river, on the way to Pittsburg Landing, during a stop at Cairo, he was sent to the hospital. From thence he was for- warded on a hospital steamer, along with hundreds of others, to one of the large general hospitals in St. Louis, from whence we were notified of his death. The letter from his wife in response to one from me concerning him was painful reading. Concurrently our friends were busy up at the Island. Colonel Roberts (that gallant, deeply lamented hero of the 42d Illinois, who fell at Stone River), with a picked squad of his boys, dropped in upon General McKown at vespers and spiked his guns, and on a stormy night the "Pittsburg" ran the rebel batteries and got safely down to the New Madrid landing, where we were waiting for it. Withal, the opening along the bayous for the transports had been completed, and while our brigade stood in arms on the shore, lo ! a steamer came walking, as it were, out of the woods, landed, and took us aboard. There was a rebel earthwork on the opposite shore and the "Pittsburg" dropped out into the stream and sent a few plunging shots at it. There was no response, and the transports carried us promptly to the Tennessee shore, and a foot-race began to interpose our force across the rebel line of retreat from the Island above. Our brigade had the advance ; quick time was made, and before night came on we had taken up our positions with strong picket forces out. Our own com- i8o Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life, pany occupied an outpost, where we took prisoners in number equal to our own strength regular Arkansas travelers ; armed with frontier "toothpicks," home-made, on the anvil, and rifles, muskets and revolvers and every description of shot-gun that had been made up to that time ; one of these a giant shot-gun that only a giant could carry or wish to fire. During the night the commander of the rebel army at the Island, whose forces we had barred in their efforts to escape, sent in a communica- tion asking for terms of surrender. These having been agreed upon, the rebel army (infantry and batteries) filed onto open ground, nearer the river, in the vicinity of a hamlet named Tiptonville, close at hand, and stacked their arms. I cannot say that the stars in their courses contributed to our success in these operations, or that our foe lacked courage and skill. I am sure that those rebel soldiers of the Southwest lacked nothing essential to the real soldier. The use of fire-arms, and fighting of one kind or another, was an everyday affair with them almost a pastime ; and I feel that I am stating the exact truth in saying that those backwoodsmen whom our company corraled as prisoners at our outpost could, man for man, have "wiped the ground" with us on a fair field and no favor. The reasons for our success include some curious facts. Precisely fifty years in advance of our appearance before New Madrid a great convulsion of Nature had changed the features of the landscape from the mouth of the Ohio River to the St. Francis. Where once had been level farming lands and high plateaus covered by the ancient forest, appeared lakes of great depth or depressions difficult to pass. The seismic disturb- ances of 1811-16 (for they covered the interval between these years) involved this whole region and were the severest in the immediate vicinity of our operations. No disturbance of the kind recorded since the landing of Columbus could compare with it. The best authorities state the movements were of two kinds a perpendicular and the horizontal ; that the latter was the most destructive; that it moved in immense waves, increasing in size as they progressed until they were the height Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 181 of the trees, which tossed and tumbled together, the earth opening and discharging great volumes of water, sand, coal and rock. Whole districts of fertile country were covered to a depth with white sand, and in other places the earth and forest sank, forming lakes some of them twenty miles in length. Adjutant Theodore Wiseman, of our brigade, assured me that previous to the war he had passed in a hunting-boat with his fowling-piece over submerged forests in this region, the trees standing upright where they had sunk. The grave-yard of New Madrid and large tracts of land with it were swallowed up by the great river, and chasms and crevices appeared across which the few inhabitants of the country crawled upon trees where they happened to span these gulfs. As a result of this earthquake the region around Island No. 10 which since the close of the war has wholly disappeared in the current of the Mississippi extending on clown the river and embracing all the country on both shores below New Madrid, was so broken up by lakes and the scars of this convulsion that the passage out from the Island by an army under the restrictions of an investment was not a job to be relished by the most competent of military commanders. The difficulties of the situation were greatly increased by high water. The Father of Waters was rolling one of his immense spring tides to the sea and was a majestic spectacle. The tributary streams were overflowing, and I hive said enough to show that the Confederacy was in hard luck in her struggle with Nature, to say nothing of John Pope and his army. A field battery of the Washington artillery (the pride of the South), manned by young bloods from New Orleans, was a part of the trophies of this campaign. These gallant young French Creoles and their beautiful brass guns won our sym- pathies, and I had an interesting talk with a lieutenant of the company as we stood on the shore looking out over the great river. He was courteous, intelligent, undismayed by their ill fortune, and had a rock-rooted faith that the South would never be overcome. Our prisoners followed those of Fort 1 82 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Donelson to Rock Island, while a fleet of transports assembled at New Madrid, and, convoyed by the flotilla of gunboats, the Army of the Mississippi descended the river to a point on the Arkansas shore in the vicinity of Chickasaw Bluffs, the next fortified stronghold placed to dispute our passage. It was a notable scene our descent of the river; so many of the steamers, often in full view, crowded with troops: hesitating at intervals on the broad bosom of the water, at a signal of caution from the iron-clads which were the advance guard, on the discovery of one of the enemy's "Turtles," half hid around the point of an island, when the boom of one of our rifled chasers woke the deep echoes of the desolate region. CHAPTER XXXIII. FROM SHILOH TO CORINTH UNDER HALLECK. The surprises, involving sudden change of direction and thwarting well-laid schemes, during the Civil War, are well illustrated in the change in our fortunes while waiting in this Arkansas camp for the order to advance. We were startled by the news from Shiloh, and, under an order from Washing- ton, re-embarked and made the long journey back to Cairo and up the Tennessee River to Hamburg, where I met Will H. Scroggs, an old classmate, who make a diagram with his finger on the ground to show me the position of his regiment and the general line occupied by our troops at the battle of Pitts- burg Landing. We had a close personal interest in this fight, for our old colonel (later general), Ben M. Prentiss, and most of his division, after a prolonged struggle, were surrounded and captured and taken to Richmond. The Army of the Mississippi (now no longer such), under Gen. John Pope, be- came the left wing of Gen. Halleck's grand army, and advanced on Corinth, along the Farmington road. Halleck's entire force comprised more than 100,000 men, and it was an army worthy of any commander. The enemy kept us busy. After the ex- perience at Shiloh, we were wary and made our reconnaissance in force. General E. H. Paine, of Monmouth, a West Point graduate, was our brigade commander. He was a man of "nerve," and in many respects an accomplished soldier. Our first reconnaissance was in a heavily wooded country, so diffi- cult to operate in, for almost every step in advance was a sur- prise of some kind. The "Yates Sharp-shooters," armed with globe-sighted rifles, were our close comrades and the appoint- ed skirmishers of our brigade. At a crossing, close to the edge 183 184 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. of the dark, heavy timber, a number of the enemy were killed trying to get over an open space to a refuge. On the low ground we halted for a few moments, when a neatly dressed young rebel officer came out of the woods on our company's front to give himself up, crying out to us not to fire upon him "Don't fire, gentlemen," he said ; he was submissive now, but afterward, when he found he was being treated according to the rules of civilized warfare, he became very abusive. Be- yond this timber there was high open ground, which the enemy stubbornly held. There was some delay, when General Paine, becoming restless, passed through our lines, and having made his observations, we forced our way under fire out upon ris- ing, open ground. Our line was now the target for an enemy we could not see in the woods west of us. At this moment Houghteling's Battery passed us like a flash, unlimbered on a knoll on our right and shelled the woods, which we followed up with a charge that cleared our front of the enemy for that day. It was a warm morning in May when the long roll called us to arms. Our camp was on a high wooded ridge with open- ings to the south upon the Farmington plains, a park-like plateau, with copses of wood here and there, and covered with l)luegrass. Looking south upon this partially open country, we saw an army with banners like a stereoscopic picture suddenly cast upon canvas a reconnoitering force, twenty thousand strong, led by John C. Breckenridge. The facts were as we now know them to be: Beauregard's army in Corinth was getting ready to abscond and did not wish to be crowded in the act, fearing it might not be a success ; hence this bluff (the battle of Farmington) on our front this day. Our army was drawn up in line to receive them, and at one or two points of contact there was severe fighting, but the Confed- erate force withdrew without bringing on a general engage- ment. Following up this diversion, we advanced to the village and threw up a formidable line of breastworks. Tarrying here briefly, we advanced within striking distance of Corinth. Here Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 185 was a beautiful pasture-like country studded with parks of "Napoleons," or "rifled parrots," and all the paraphernalia of a great army. As our lines of circumvallation shortened a portion of this splendid equipment was necessarily held in re- serve. On the last day of our operations on the front of Beauregard's army we came into line in the early morning. We occupied the south line of an open field, across which, posted along the edge of a wood, were the rebel outposts. As we stood in line waiting, the "Yates Sharp-shooters" deployed rapidly upon our front and passed gallantly across the field in face of the enemy. We held our breath for a time, fearing some of our lads would fall ; but they employed the Zouave trick of always keeping in motion, and the line, including the major in command on his black charger, coolly riding up and down with his men, had a wonderful escape. As I remember, only one or two were wounded. Our line of battle was many miles in length through swamp and thicket, over hills, across gullies, at the door of farm-houses, closing in on all sides of the fortified town except a door of escape by the B. & O. Rail- road, which it was the Confederate commander's especial care to keep open. At intervals along the line sharp fighting took place. The day was occupied on our own front in forcing our way close up under the rebel works, the yellow clay of which we had glimpses of through the woods. An infantry force came out under cover of the thick underbrush on our front to dispute our further advance, and our sharp-shooters had to withdraw. At the moment one of our batteries opened on them with grape. Between the volleys a remnant of our skirmish-line ran crouching back into our lines. We looked for the enemy to advance upon us, but he refused our chal- lenge. At nightfall we supped on what we had in our haver- sacks and lay down in our blankets, guessing on the morrow. At midnight we were suddenly aroused by a succession of ex- plosions which could be heard for miles, accompanied by the prolonged cheering of the rebel troops. Now, Beauregard might have sneaked away more easily than to have kept his 1 86 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. men out of their blankets yelling themselves hoarse trying to make the impression that they were receiving reinforcements. We stood in groups in our blankets in the chill night air (in the South the temperature is low from midnight to dawn and our ponchos reeked with dew when we woke up), assuring one another that the rebel army was destroying what they could not carry away. The rumbling of trains was incessant, loaded with our departing friends in their hurried flight. In the wake of our cavalry our brigade had the advance in the pursuit, for a portion of the retreating army occupied the roads leading south from the town. As we entered the village but one man greeted us a typical hook-nosed Jew with a peddler's pack on his back. He crawled out of a wet brush- heap and solicited comradeship. The wandering Jew is the real thing when we want to label a man doing business under difficulties. We came up with the rebel rear guard at the Hatchie River. They had burned the bridge, and their cavalry videttes occupied the south bank. At this point our pursuing cavalry suffered a severe check and retired in our favor. They came upon this ground in the early morning hours, before it was yet dawn, cautiously feeling their way. At a sharp turn in the road, close to the bridge, the advance was literally blown from the muzzles of a rebel battery ambushed to cover the approach. The spot, marked by the dead horses, was the subject of remarks as we passed. Our company (E) was here detailed to advance and discover the strength of the rebel videttes holding this crossing. We filed down into the woods to the left of the burned bridge and advanced at will toward the river bank, each man selecting his own cover from whence he could fire upon the ambushed enemy waiting for us on the opposite bank. We were well to the front, having gained a hundred yards advance, when Sergeant George W. Cowden had his arm broken by a shot from the hidden foe. As we could not charge him across the stream, we poured a volley into the brush where he was hidden, with good effect, for he decamped without ceremony. The pursuit of Beauregard's Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 187 army was given over to our cavalry, and we went into camp at Big Springs near Corinth. We were here during the black- berry season and recovered from the fatigues of the campaign indulging in pie sicklied o'er with the pale cast of crust con- structed without those helps down in milady's cook-book a& the shortening and baking powder. They were just cobbled those pies. Possibly Martha Washington regaled Uncle George with something better, as she had saleratus and sour milk. I don't know. The boys dug a hole in the side of the hill and built what they called an oven, where they baked those pies. I did not think it good manners to inquire too closely about that oven. I contemplated it respectfully at a distance. Some- how our pies had no color. They must have had tuberculosis, for they perished prematurely. Dave Sage was our tonsorial artist at this point, famed for the superior style of his "cut," and for the way he in- spired the boys to spruce up. When David got through with the army, the men looked like a lot of dudes. When he had trimmed and slicked up the last man, he had hair enough on hand to start a hair-mattress factory. He was our pride, and distinguished for his versatile talents. When he took a patron in hand, he finished him for a swell function of any kind. He shaved him and "shingled" him, stuck mint in his nose, sham- pooed and manicured him, laid him on a board and pinched and punched and slapped and rolled him under massage, rub- bed in some skin food, shook him, and made him stand up like a man and look like somebody. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE MARCH TO TUSCUMBIA AND NASHVIU.E. At the close of a day's march toward Tuscumbia, Ala- bama, at nightfall, supper over, we gathered our mounts on short notice (a group of the line officers and subalterns) and struck off at right angles into the enemy's country for a moon- shiner's headquarters of which we had been advised by one of our scouts. An hour's rapid riding from our outposts brought us into a desolate, uninhabited, hilly region within striking distance of the rebel cavalery. We slowed down and advanced cautiously with a small, alert, advance guard. There was no moon and the darkness and silence made our ears re- ceptive of every sign or noise outside of our own group. About 9 o'clock we came suddenly upon the cluster of cabins well within a small canyon, withdrawn from the prying world without, which composed the "still" characteristic of the South in ante-bellum days, where, judging from the quantities of ancient pumice lying in heaps around, the quality of "chain lightning" known as peach brandy had been manufactured for a hundred years. Having posted pickets, we took an inventory of the "still" in the darkness. The premises stank of alcohol. Strong as the odors were, they were so conflicting that we could not locate the best in stock in the darkness by smell alone, and we strode noiselessly to the door of the moon- shiner's cabin and tapped it softly, one, two, three, and an object came to the door and we said to it, "Stranger, we are around looking at the country for an uncle of ours : have you anything at hand with which to cheer belated travelers?" With great apparent alacrity, but with a subdued, apprehen- sive voice, the figure out of the darkness answered : "It 's likker 188 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 189 you'ns 'd like?" "Stranger," replied the captain, "you 're warm; hand her out." Without ado, the old mountaineer rolled a keg out at the door, saying, "Thar ain't much in yer, but it 's all 1 hev." The contents were drawn into canteens, the cabin- door closed softly, and we were promptly on the road for camp. We had hardly got away from the "still" when at a low signal we stood motionless in the road. There was a movement at the front which cast a doubt in the minds of our advance, and the riders parted equally to each side of the road, sheltered in the heavy forest, and stood on their guard, listen- ing and waiting. After a brief interval and a sign of restored confidence, we covered the miles into camp at a rattling pace. The round trip had been made in comparative silence, and was wholly free of bibulous traits. It was undertaken at the in- stance of John Tillson and other headquarters gentlemen of like tastes, simply to equip their circle with the cup which cheers. I joined the expedition with no better motive than that of adventure. Of the many beautiful springs in the South at luka, Huntsville, Nashville, and Rome from \vhich we filled our canteens, I am sure the spring at Tuscumbia is the most won- derful of all, worthy of a journey of a thousand miles to see. It rushes from the rock a river in volume and, like the jester in cap and bells, goes plunging and dancing away over the rocks, glittering in the sunlight and shaking with merriment. If I were an artist, I would return to Tuscumbia and lay upon my canvas the old colored "auntie" coming up from the spring, with the turban of color around her head, a pail of water balanced upon it, her pickaninnies happy all the day, in her train. On one of the lonely hillsides near that town we buried one of our Swede boys. Alabama "Here we rest." It used to be said of one of Henry Clay's partisans that he would go twenty miles to hear Kentucky's great Whig orator pro- nounce the name "Alabama." Our family used to have in Henderson County a friend (Allen Briskey by name peace 190 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. to his ashes!) who had two distinguishing characteristics: he was from Alabama and, as the boys in the Army used to say, he "stood lots of rest." The seizure of cotton by Government agents and by pri- vate parties began first to attract my attention at Tuscumbia. The leader in this business near our camp was a Jew, and this fact did not tend to confirm my conviction that it was a "square deal." The great staple of commerce was moic to be desired than fine gold. A few bales surreptitiously tuins- ported within our lines and cashed would place the possessor on the road to independence. A book might be written on "The Adventures of a Cotton Broker during the Civil War." A cer- tain well-known officer in our command may have been baited, or he may have made a study of "How to Get Rich Quick" in the cotton business prior to the summer of 1862, but I think the beginning of his criminal connivance should be dated at Tuscumbia. Here was an opportunity for graft, and the career of the officer in question furnishes a striking example of how easily one may barter away an honorable position in the serv- ice and the respect of his neighbors at home for money vir- tually stolen, and which betrayed, him at last into abject pover- ty and the forfeiture of home and friends. Little thought we as we marched away from Corinth, Mississippi, that in a very few brief months it would be the scene of one of the most fiercely contested battles of the Civil War. "Old Rosey," however, drove Price and Van Dorn away in disastrous rout, and after much sparring for an open- ing between Generals Buell and Bragg, the next move on the military chessboard resulted in a foot-race for Louisville. When the course of events left no doubt of this fact, the Gov- ernment resolved not to give up the capital of Tennessee, feel- ing a proprietary interest in a State which contained so many Union men like Andy Johnson and Parson Brownlow, and which had made so many sacrifices in life and property in a great cause. As these two armies left the South for the Ohio River, our division, in command of General John M. Palmer, Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 191 marched to Nashville, crossing the Tennessee River at Athens, and advanced north through Pulaski, Columbia and Franklin. We were molested more or less all the way by guerrillas, who killed or captured our men as occasion offered. As we left our camp on Duck River, opposite Columbia, the bushwhackers gathered in considerable force and some of our men were driven away from the spring where they were filling their canteens ; but, as our column was stretched far out on the road, no halt was made to exchange shots. This running fight with guerrillas did not cease till we had passed Franklin. CHAPTER XXXV. ISOLATED AT NASHVILLE. At Nashville we were isolated in the enemy's country, having neither rations nor communication with our military leaders save by courier, which was a dangerous business at that time. The city was full of spies and other enemies, and we were liable to attack at any time by independent forces, such as Forrest's cavalry, or other marauders of the guerrilla type. We prepared for this by enclosing the city in a rude breastwork and by a series of fortifications, of which Fort Negley was the chief; albeit this fortification was in a crude state for some months, but afterward, when completed, a formidable defense, armed with heavy artillery in bomb-proof casements. Our regiment occupied this fort for some months. Rations had to be supplied by our wits : and a systematic search of the cellars of the city resulted in finding a quantity of cured pork in a condition bordering on putrefaction, and in a limited supply of flour and corn meal. With this pork and accessories we invited the bubonic plague, dysentery and the malignant fevers that find a hospitable home in the South in the sultry season. As for forage, the brigade marched into the country in force with a train of empty Army wagons, and having marked the plantations where the cribs were well sup- plied, outposts were stationed on all the approaches and the wagons, loaded, returning to the city heavy laden. Some of our men were captured in small squads when they ventured out along the turnpikes in search of something to fill their haversacks. Reports of guerrillas in force came in almost daily, and there were collisions of more or less importance, 192 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 193 and finally we prepared for an attack, threatened by Forrest. The situation was considered serious enough to justify Gen- eral Granger in coming to the fort and carefully studying through his glass the movements of Forrest and his men on our front. The enemy, not finding what he was looking for (an opportunity to surprise us), reconsidered his purpose and decamped. The State's prison is in the suburb east of the city. Here the military prisoners were confined, including those under sentence by the general courts-martial. One day our brigade was called out and marched to the level ground on the east- ern outskirts of the city. In the column was an Army wagon containing a coffin and a prisoner in irons seated thereon. On reaching our destination, we "formed square," the wagon and the prisoner at the center, where was an open grave. The coffin was placed on the ground and a guard conducted the condemned man to his seat on the coffin as before. He sat facing the west. An official of the military court read the charges and specifications and the sentence of the court. An officer of the line then stepped forward and blindfolded the prisoner, and at a silent signal another officer with a file of sharp-shooters faced the prisoner at a distance of ten paces and cocked their guns out of his hearing. Some of the rifles were loaded with ball and others were not. In silence, at a signal, the men aimed at his heart; at a signal they fired. For an instant the body sat upright, then fell over backward, and the column moved quietly away at the word. Not all the deserters from the service had the good fortune to receive clemency at the hands of that most merciful of all men Abraham Lincoln. On another occasion our regiment had a painful duty to perform. A troop of Pennsylvania cavalry had refused to obey orders. They were picked men blue- bloods from the old "Keystone" State, who claimed to have been "inveigled" into the service (poor credulous dupes) as the body-guard of General George B. McClellan, whereas it was sought to put them to baser uses to feel for the enemy 1*94 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. if happily they might find him, and put him to rout. Here was another rebellion and it was up to Uncle. Sam to put it down. The general sent for Colonel Morgan; explained the situation to him, and told him to take his regiment out to the cavalry camp west of the city, and bring those boys; to head- quarters, boots and saddles. The next morning the old Tenth halted in front of the Pennsylvania troopers' camp ; faced ; came to "rest," and were ordered to load. Under all circum- stances the colonel was a man of few words and full of busi- ness, : and addressing the descendants of William Penn, said to them : "You will be given twenty minutes to mount and fall into line with this battalion." One of the leaders came out of his tent bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves (a company officer probably), armed with some manuscript flapdoodle, and began to pluck the tail-feathers of the national bird savagely ; but it was noticed that at the expiration of about five min- utes the majority of the men were out at the tethering-rope, drawing cinches with the saddle-girths. Our conception of liberty is so broad within the boundaries of these States that we don't want to mind anybody anywhere at any time. Andrew Johnson was the Military Governor of the State and during our occupation of the city he had convened a pro- visional legislature, representing the loyal counties or all the counties by loyal representatives, and the leaders who were faithful to the Constitution and laws of the Government were familiar figures in the halls of the Capitol and on the streets- such men as Parson Brownlow, Plorace Maynard and Judge IJawkins. But there was a gathering of another sort from the remote corners and mountain fastnesses of the State which was an object of pathetic interest, the refugees from Confed- erate oppression the patriots of this and other rebel States, separated from their homes and families by the Davis con- scription. Scores of these hunted men assembled at times, apparently without shelter, on the outskirts of the city. Many of them lost their lives in east Tennessee, and a considerable number in other parts of the South, especially in Missouri and Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 195 Texas. In the latter State from two to three thousand lives were taken by local vendetta on the plea that they were not in sympathy with the rebellion. Those who were fit for military duty were organized in one or another branch of the Union service (cavalry mostly) and. in a sense, provided for in that way. The women of the capital city of Tennessee (chiefly the wealthy class surcharged with the spirit of treason) had one amusing method, among many, of showing on which side their sympathies lay, by coming out on the veranda as the Union soldier passed by, and calling their dog : "Come, Beauregard ! now, Beauregard! will you come?" The large buildings in the city, such as the medical school, the seminaries, the factory buildings, were taken by the Gov- ernment for hospitals and they were constantly full to reple- tion. At the convalescent hospital, on a Sunday afternoon, in the large hallway, there was usually an improvised semi- religious service or "talk." The leader, often a distinguished visitor of the Sanitary Commission, like Lydia Alaria Child, of Philadelphia, her hair snowy white, the sweet motherly face of fine intelligence, set off by the Quaker cap of lace. The halt, lame and blind, or nearly so, from the great battle-fields, gathered eagerly around her while she gave out in simple words those truths which we need to have repeated to us every day, and which are as old as the race. After the battle of Perryville, General William S. Rose- crans succeeded to the command of the newly organized Army of the Cumberland. My first glimpse of him was over in Mis- sissippi near Corinth. We were in column on the march when he dashed by us alone, a stout-built soldier in fatigue dress and cavalry boots. The army was reviewed by him on the outskirts of Nashville near the close of the year 1862. lie appeared to advantage, and scanned the troops closely for de- ficiencies of every kind more thoroughly, I believe, than I had ever seen it done. He had many of the traits of a popular commander, and some of his noblest c|ualifications. He nar- 196 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. rowly missed being the idol of the North during the Civil War. "Old Rosey" was once a name to conjure with, and his men saw him go away after Chickamauga with a pang. I saw him in Nashville on his way North from Chattanooga. Laura Keene was in town, playing leading roles at the principal theater the same actress who appeared in "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was assassinated. Rosecrans and his staff occupied a private box one evening and the actress, during a pause in the play, in response to applause from the general and his companions, turned full upon him and court- esied in acknowledgment. As he passed out at the close of the . performance the soldiers present gave him an ovation, and we all shook hands with him. It was the passing of "Old Rosey." While in camp on Stone River, we strengthened our love for the Union by marching over to "The Hermitage" and wor- shiping at the shrine of "Old HicKory." We stacked arms in the avenue of cedars and were received by General Jack- son's foster-son, Andrew Jackson Donelson, then a man well advanced in life. The room in which the old defender of the Union died, and his tomb, were the principal objects of inter- est. As we walked along the paths familiar to the hero of the battle of New Orleans, we could hear the distant guns of an army assembled with the sworn purpose to destroy all that "Old Hickory" held most dear, and we came away convinced that his bones were resting uneasily in the grave where his countrvmen had laid him. CHAPTER XXXVI. BRIDGEPORT TO CHATTANOOGA. On our march to Bridgeport, on the Tennessee River, we were held for a day or two in our camp at Columbia. Dur- ing the delay, along with Sergeant Simpson, I called at the "Athenaeum" a seminary for young ladies, equipped with a fine library and a number of musical instruments. It was the summer vacation, but the principal was in charge, and a num- ber of students were in attendance taking lessons in music possibly. Our reception, while not lacking in the amenities, was a little on the bias, as a call from the "blue-coats" evident- ly had not been anticipated. However, she was a lady of mature years, intelligent, and we soon became interested in a line of conversation that presented some difficulties. The principal having cleared the ground and stretched the rope, as it were, we were given an opportunity to explain our mis- sion to the South. While Charlie was making the pass pre- liminary, I was looking over my mental wares to see if I could find a reason for having been discovered by this lady south of Mason and Dixon's line with a gun in my hand. My comrade was a "Union Democrat," and scorned the thought of fight- ing to free the "nigger." Whether I was an Abolitionist or not, I thought I was, and I said to her in effect that slavery was a subsidiary thing, to be gotten rid of, as Washington and Jefferson had shown us by personal example; but I ran the knife to the bone by adding that the black man had a right to the bread which his toil had won; that I was in the South to help him to win out; that if we succeeded, the South having never gotten out of the Union, would be in it, and we could and would continue to do business at the old stand, having no 197 198 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. bone of contention to wrangle over as before. Charlie fared no better in the old lady's graces than I did ; in truth, she smiled on us as though we were a brace of young lunatics. While on this march the troops were called into line one morning, and to our surprise there came on a quick-step down our front the snare-drums and the shrill notes of the fife, playing "The Rogue's March," the rogue himself following, and a file of bayonets in close touch bringing up the rear. The culprit was exhibited before a long line of troops, his buttons cut off, and at the end he was drummed out of camp. What his offense was we were not informed. From Bridgeport our regiment escorted an immense train of ammunition along the Sequatchie valley and over a spur of the Cumberland Mountains to the army at Chattanooga. Two miles out from the foot of Wal- dron's Ridge we came upon the remains of a similar train that had preceded us, which contained withal some sutlers' wagons loaded with miscellaneous confectionery, tobacco, whiskey no doubt, canned goods, etc., which had been destroyed by Wheel- er's cavalry. The road for the whole of that distance was filled with the large, fine mules, shot in thei. tracks, and the ashes of the burned wagons, and along the road-side, under the bushes, cans of cove oysters and other edibles were found where they had been left by the rebel cavalry, too heavily laden with the spoils to carry everything off. One dead rebel lying in the mud was the only visible regret Wheeler had left be- hind him. Looking east from the crest of Waldron's Ridge, over the valley in which Chattanooga is situated, the eye rests on a natural amphitheater of majestic proportions. The Ten- nessee River flows through the foreground, the city at the north end of the valley, the immemorial summits of Lookout and Mission Ridge, covered with forests framing in the scene, with the woods that hide Rossville and Chickamauga for a background. The National Cemetery is a feature new to this valley. Historic ground ! From the top of this ridge (a moun- tain range in itself) the road descends like a cork-screw. Here at the edge of the precipitous mountain wall, in the shade of Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 199 the trees, we stand absorbed, thinking of all the tragedies that have taken place here within the sweep of one's vision. Can one name a spot on the round globe so fit for the circumstance and pomp of war? A painful scene this; as our train wound slowly along this valley, which had been so often crossed and recrossed by armed men and by the starving animals of the beaten Union host. The earth was trodden bare for miles, so that not a blade of grass was left, and the bushes withal had been eaten up, and the limbs of the trees. Somewhere on the high tablelands we met the slightly wounded from Chicka- mauga, footing it back to Bridgeport to take the train for the general hospitals at Nashville, or for home on a short furlough. I remember seeing Sam P. McGaw, of Henderson County, in the crowd. We had a rude awakening at Bridgeport which will be easily borne in the memory of the last survivor of our brigade. The reserve ammunition of the Army of the Cumberland was kept at this place. Through the lack of proper storage it was placed on high ground, adjoining our camp, in pyramidal form, covered with a tarpaulin. In this pile of explosives were mil- lions of cartridges in cases, "spherical case," and grape, and shrapnel, in unlimited quantity. A guard, in reliefs, stood over it night and day. Nero, possibly, in taking up his fiddle, threw the stump of a cigar into a pile of shavings, which set Rome afire? A wisp of fire the size of your little finger started the conflagration that wrapped the city of London in all-embracing flame. Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked the lamp over which started one or two little straws burning, and they started other straws, till Deacon Bross, fleeing along the streets of the lurid city, looked back and saw the public buildings aflame "with a sublimity of effect that astounded me" ! No one knows. Dead guards tell no tales. They were careless, and smoked their pipes in unconcern on this mountain of gun- powder. It does not seem possible that a grain of powder could have been exposed among those sealed packages and 2OO Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. water-proof percussion shells. I know not, nor does any other man know. Did a blundering guard let fall one of those weighty shells on the dangerous cap of another? All the an- swer we ha^e is the thunderbolt that tore the bodies of some of those guards to atoms ; bits of whose flesh were picked up in the weeds a hundred yards away. Then those shells opened on our camp like a battery, and men hunted shelter in every direction. The body of John Owens, of Henderson County, was burned to a crisp; every shred of clothing burned from the body, the hair from his head ; the eyes sealed with fire. He still breathed when brought to the surgeon's tent, and soon died. CHAPTER XXXVIII. GOOD-DYE, BRAXTON BRAGG. During the crucial days when General Grant assumed command of the beleaguered army in Chattanooga and General Sherman and the Army of the Tennessee were being trans- ferred from Vicksburg to our front, our division, under the command of General Jeff C. Davis (the same who shot Gen- eral Nelson in the Gait House at Louisville), was distributed along the fords of the Tennessee above the city; our own company (E) being stationed at Penny's Ford. We were di- rectly opposite the extreme right of Bragg's army on Mis- sion Ridge. Across the river, on our immediate front, were the rebel cavalry videttes with infantry supports en echelon behind barricades. This was our situation at the opening of the battle of Mission Ridge. Our division was a part of the Army of the Cumberland, under General Thomas, which oc- cupied the center some miles away from us in the Chatta- nooga valley. Our orders were, therefore, to co-operate with General Sherman's Army of the Tennessee, which came onto the ground we occupied, but remained screened from obser- vation in the woods back from the river. General Jeff Davis (our Jeff) was a West Pointer and a lieutenant under General Robert Anderson when Fort Sumter fell; after that event he was advanced in grade along with most or all of the West Point men, and transferred to the West, and was in command of a brigade in Buell's army at Louis- ville when the personal encounter took place which resulted in the death of General Nelson. He was a stocky little man, was Davis, and would recoil, one would suppose, from a passage at arms with a powerful man like Nelson, whose 201 202 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. courage nothing could daunt. Not so ! Nelson's brutality ventured once too often ! Alas, that it was so ! for he was a soldier whom Napoleon would have chosen for his most des- perate enterprises. Poor old Braxton Bragg! Who could stand against such a combination as this : Hooker at Lookout Mountain; Grant, Thomas, and Sheridan at the center, and Sherman on the left. No soldier nor combination of soldiers since the world began! In the great crises of the future may the honor of our country find defenders in sons like these! Any one of them (barring only one) the equal of any soldier our race has ever known. Hooker, in line with his best days, had taken Lookout, and his camp-fires from base to summit flickered in the darkness like signal lights, beckoning the avenging forces of the Union on. The armed hosts for miles around (friend and foe) took note; and as we looked at the moon, rising above the hood of the mountain, the fugitive figures of Bragg's defeated left wing passed across the lunar disk. In the night hours the small boats, packed with armed men, crept along in the shadows of the willows on the shore of the Tennessee River on Sherman's front. Captain Ewing, of the 36th Illinois, had command of one of these boats. They landed silently on the enemy's side of the river unseen, and stole noiselessly upon the chain of rebel barricades, and pointed their guns down into the faces of the enemy's outposts taken unawares ! The Federals were busy. A strong force quickly deployed and covered the ground, protecting the men laying the pontoons. The cavalry, infantry, artillery, and the ambu- lance and ammunition trains passed over in rapid succession. Tom Ewing was ordered to advance his division upon Bragg's right and "not to call for help unless he needed it." Jeff C. Davis' division was massed in reserve. A Federal battery of siege guns (rifled Parrotts), planted on a promontory on the west side of the river, kept np a continuous fire over our heads at the rebel trenches. During the progress of the battle on our front we could see the steady stream of rebel reinforcements toward us from Bragg's center, following the crest of the Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 203 ridge, their polished arms glistening in the sunlight. The en- emy had the advantage of us in his superior view of all parts of the field. Sheridan's charge on the center of his defenses was noticeable to us by the musketry fire only, as we could not see the movement. * General John M. Corse, later the hero of Altoona Pass and son of the old-time bookseller at Burlington, Iowa, was on the fighting-line in our front, and was borne back wounded to the field hospital, on a stretcher. He was boisterous and blasphemous, declaring his ability to lick the Confederacy, with other manifestations of lunacy. The surgeons gathered around him, and among them our division surgeon, Henry R. Payne, whom I quote : "We removed the general's clothing tenderly, expecting to find (as there was no blood) a severe contusion. On opening the underclothing at the knee with a knife, the disabled limb was exposed, and looking it over minutely, we found a little blue spot where a spent ball had struck him !" On learning that some prisoners from South Carolina had been taken on our front, I went over to where they were held, and found among them some men from my mother's native parish, who told me of a Giles relative who had received a mortal wound during the day. After Bragg's center had been broken and his army had taken the roads south in retreat, our division crossed Chicka- mauga Creek in pursuit. We came up with their rear guard at Chickamauga Station, where they had a field hospital. Here we were confronted by a strong earthwork on a salient of the bluff. The Confederate officers stood on the parapet ob- serving us form our line below. To charge these hills we had to make our way over fallen timber, much of it of the largest size, felled to make almost a perfect defense against the attacking force. The trunks of some of the trees were so large that while we could not force our way under them for the mass of tangled limbs, they were so thick through that it was all we could do to climb over them. As we advanced we finally got away from this obstruction, and \vent to the top of 204 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. the ridge on the double quick in the face of a sharp cross- fire of musketry. We got possession of the range of hills without difficulty, and advancing through the open woods across the high tableland, discovered the enemy's rear guard (a division of troops) in full retreat across a field in the next valley. They disappeared from view in the dense woods on the further side of this opening. Here they were screened from our sight, and I thought we would be severely punished as we came within range with a close line of battle. I could distinctly hear their teamsters cursing their animals in their efforts to get their trains out of our range. We were halted here. When we did advance, after some delay, the enemy had taken a strong position, where severe fighting was going on when night fell and we withdrew to our camp-fires. This was the last we saw of Braxton Bragg. When we grappled again with this reorganized rebel army, it was under the able leadership of General Joe Johnston. CHAPTER XXXIX. RELIEF OF KNOXVILLE. Longstreet had withdrawn* from Mission Ridge before the battle and united his strength to the rebel investment of our fortifications at Knoxville, defended by Burnside. Under the impression that the Union army there might suffer defeat, our division and Gordon Granger's were sent by forced marches to raise the siege at that point. Our route lay along some of those fertile valleys in east Tennessee, celebrated when I was a boy for their crops of red winter wheat, highly prized on the Atlantic sea-board when converted into superior flour for domestic use and for export. I was kindly re- ceived at a cabin on the roadside, one evening after we had got into camp, by an octogenarian, who had served under Jackson and who was greatly surprised and pleased to find the Stars and Stripes so unexpectedly near his house. The women of that household baked for me some biscuits incomparable biscuit, no doubt, for never before nor afterwards during the service was I blessed with the good fortune of wheaten biscuit, for "co'n-bread" was the staple article of diet in Dixie at that time. Perfect little gems (those biscuit), baked by the fire-place of our forebears, in the same little oven, with the hot coals underneath and on the lid. One day later on I went into a farm-house, at the close of a long march, and found a group of soldiers who had pre- ceded me being entertained by an intelligent young lady of the household. She Deemed in good humor with her self- invited callers, but as I took a seat (with due deference I am sure) she turned to me and said, "Do you think you can conquer the South?" I was taken aback by this unlooked- 205 206 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. for sally, but I could not take water; so I gathered my wits and replied: "We are here and it is General Bragg's busi- ness to put us out." I must say here, once for all, that not- withstanding all that had happened, and was happening, and in the nature of things would happen, I took no pleasure in the ghastly wounds the South was inflicting upon herself, through that pride which goes before a fall. The young lady, contrary to my expectations, ceased to press her inquiries. Full sorrowful was she, I fancied. Had her lover been slain in battle, in the forlorn hope of trying to make good a lost cause ? One morning, as the column left camp, weary of the interminable marches, I chose my comrade, John Clover, for a companion, and followed the crest of a chain of hills par- allel to the road. This move of mine was not good military form in the enemies' country, but I seldom left the column, and to relieve the wearisome monotony, I chose to come in contact with the people of the country at their homes, and exchange a little of our small store of coffee, which the fam- ilies on the plantations had long been deprived of and would be glad to barter for. In this way we could get a change of ration. I am aware that I am drawing upon the credulity of my readers in the suggestion I have made; for it seems to run counter to the observation and experience of all who have ever come in contact with a hungry soldier, campaigning in another quarter of the globe than his own a sort of shock to most people to intimate that even in remote instances the soldier will depart from his own peculiar method of securing something good to eat, and deliberately engage in equitable traffic to secure it. Well, there were some poor white trash in east Tennessee, and we came upon a lonely cabin occupied by a cheerful old lady, who, so far as we could see on a cursory view, was full as short on subsistence as in everything elsje. When all other visible means of support failed, those people had one never-failing resource they could chew snuff; and Recollections of Pioneer and .Inny Life. 207 this poor thing had the snuff-stick in her mouth, emphatically indifferent to Bob Toomb's success in calling the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill. I challenged Fate by donating some of my coffee on the spot, and the joy with which it was re- ceived well repaid me for the slight sacrifice. The ever-changing landscape, as seen from the high coun- try along which we were making our way, was at intervals very interesting, and we kept our bearings by catching a glimpse now and again, off in the valley, of the column wind- ing its anaconda way toward Knoxville. As we strode warily along I amused myself at times revolving on the ease with which we might bring a marked change in our fortunes by taking a course a mile or so further southward and being run off to Libby or Andersonville by the enemy's scouts. In going from one plantation to another, along a zig-zag course, we traveled twice the distance the column made in the day, and were thoroughly tired and hungry at the noon hour when we entered a well-to-do planter's door and suggested in circum- locutory fashion that refreshments would be acceptable. This being in line with the daily procedure, we were not disap- pointed. The planter was a substantial, well-fed person, and he had "backing" in a young man of brawn whom I took to be a son-in-law, but that was only a guess. It was two and two anyway, and we looked well to our "Enfields." However, after looking the situation over, I made up my mind that these men were disposed to be hospitable, but did not confess as much for fear that in some way the fact would leak out, and there would be trouble, either with their neighbors or with Jeff Cavis' conscription officers. The fact that here were two able-bodied men at home satisfied me that they were friends at heart. We were invited to seats at the dinner-table a wide board, but there was little on it. The plantation had responded so often to the raids of the Confederate commis- sariat that private hospitality was scudding under bare poles. The place had been stripped of animals and fowls. There were only two plow-horses left ; and when we applied for transpor- 208 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. tation with which to overtake the column, the planter responded with better grace than I anticipated. I assured him that if he would send his man along, that when we came in sight of the rear guard we would dismount and his horses would be re- stored intact. This agreement was faithfully carried out, and John returned to camp triumphant, with a nice ham hang- ing on the point of his bayonet. At a day's march out from Knoxville we were advised by courier that Longstreet had delivered his charge on the Federal defenses and met with a bloody repulse, and was re- treating toward Richmond, and thus ended our expedition for the relief of Burnside. Here we fully realized that the people of east Tennessee were steadfast and true to the Government founded by our fathers. The able-bodied men were in the Federal Army, and the women (young misses, sixteen to twenty) came to the column on the road, waving the Stars and Stripes, and bade us God-speed. We were now near the close of 1863, and about to take up the drudgery of the return march to Rossville. We had not met with the quartermaster for some months and the men's shoes were worn out. I don't know why his case should stick in my memory, for many were getting back to winter quarters with their feet wrapped in rags; but Captain Sam Wilson was making great personal sacrifices for his country that was plain. In an unfortunate moment he had chosen to penetrate the Confederacy in a pair of boots, rather than in a pair of Uncle Sam's uncompromising, broad-soled, easy marching shoes. His martyrdom was painful to behold. Be- fore we had fairly shook Braxton Bragg for a neighbor the captain's boots had begun to weaken under the stress of the stony mountain roads, and on our approach to Knoxville the heels of his foot-gear had reversed arms. With a rusty cape on his shoulders, a slouch hat, his trousers stuffed into those boot-legs, the afflicted veteran limped along like a disconsolate "Arkansau traveler" on the home stretch. Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 209 I am in deep sympathy this moment with my patient reader. He was wholly justified in his expectation that these pages would be filled with a blood-curdling narrative of war. I am mortified beyond words that I cannot disembowel a hun- dred of the enemy on every page, or hold up my dripping sword on filling a number of chapters with the slain of my own valiant arm. A word about this : Our destined end and way depends upon the star under which we were born. The old 3d Brig., 4th Div., i4th A. C., under Gen. James D. Morgan, possessed a peculiar hypnotic power the power of dispersion. When we suddenly confronted the rebel fortifications at New Madrid and my company took position on the outposts, that was a bluff. And the foe did not stop long enough to blow out his lights, nor to eat a hasty, early breakfast. When he found the old loth and i6th Illinois across his path of escape from "Island No. 10," he acknowledged the corn, came in, and stacked his guns. Beauregard kept his nerve from Shiloh to Corinth, till Morgan closed up against his works. That fixed him. He promptly exploded his magazines and left for a sunnier South. When we got to Bridgeport the Fates went against us (but for a few minutes only) and turned our own shells against us a striking instance indeed where, gallant men not being able to bring the enemy to bay, adverse fortune evened up the score by involving them in a fight with themselves. At Mis- sion Ridge and Chicakamauga Station the old prenatal influ- ence returned and Bragg virtually refused to make our ac- quaintance. And here we are, within striking distance of Knoxville; and we waved our magic wand and Longstreet at once bestirred himself to get back into Virginia. Fortunate man ! Morgan's brigade was instructed at the outset to "make war gaily" and we continued to do so "all summer," and every summer, till Jeff Davis, tired of his job, disappeared in a petticoat. 210 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. And so now we have nothing to do this moment but to take up the long march in the hot sun and stifling dust and stride on, unmoved, when men oppressed by the heat, the burden of arms, and the choking thirst, throw away their blankets with an oath and awake in the chill and heavy dew of the Southern night suffering for the want of those blankets. Whosoever thou art, O youth of this dear native land of ours, who shall bear this flag in other days on other fields know thou that not to every man is it given to bear wounds or suf- fer death on the field of honor. At the supreme moment, when duty calls, we in vain protest ; for shall the thing made say to Him who made it, "What doest thou?" CHAPTER XL. ON VETERAN FURLOUGH. At Rossville we received the proposition to re-enlist as veterans of the service; to receive our regular pay, a bounty of four hundred dollars to be paid in advance, thirty days' furlough and free transportation to and from the place of enlistment Quincy, Illinois. We completed our muster-rolls and were sworn in and paid on these terms. Each of our men had a comfortable roll of greenbacks, but some of them, being incorrigible gamblers, had lost all their money at "cbuck- a-luck" before leaving camp and boarded the train at Chatta- nooga bankrupt. We made the round trip in freight cars, and other notable rides we had in like fashion, during and at the close of the war. The self-denying work of the loyal women of the North through the Sanitary Commission and other agencies were a part of the amazing energies of the Civil War. We came within the scope of this influence on our arrival at Quincy. We had hardly stacked arms before we were ushered into the banqueting-hall. The soldier could hardly get around without breaking his neck, stumbling over things provided for the inner man, and the attention and service of these ladies did not stop here, but they were at the beck and nod of every volunteer, sick or worn out. I am sure our reception, how- ever, would have had fewer qualms could we have dodged from the cattle-cars into the bath-room before being discovered by the fair daughters of the Gem City. Passing through the old "Sucker" State from the sliding doors of the box-cars we cheered everybody and were cheered by everybody in return. As our train passed through a small, coal-mining hamlet on 211 212 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. the Quincy branch of the "Q" a buxom young Irish mother came to her door with her babe in her arms in response to our cheers and the swinging of our hats from the car windows (we exchanged freight for passenger cars at Quincy), and began saluting us by lustily swinging her disengaged arm, and when that tired, she would bounce the baby over onto the other arm dexterously and swing the free arm as before, the baby smiling and enjoying the fun as much as the mother. As we passed out of sight that baby was making lightning changes from right to left and back again with the goodi humor and abandon the Irish race throw into every cause which they have at heart. On our way North to Galesburg, Major Charles S. Cowan wired ahead to a way station an order for dinner, for the company, as a free-will offering. In the evening of a January day in 1864 we were received by our friends in the ancient village of the Yellow Banks. It is difficult to ade- quately set forth here the deep sympathy and loving-kindness shown us by our old friends and neighbors during our leave of absence of thirty days. We shall not see its like again, for somehow the great days of old never repeat themselves. As the war spirit grew in fervor from year to year the political estrangements and antagonism in the North multi- plied so that almost every neighborhood showed the limit to which people can be drawn in the fierce enmities of a civil war. The people were divided as formerly between the two great political parties, but within the Democratic party arose another, a secret organization known as "The Knights of the Golden Circle," sufficiently ornate in its title and threatening in its teachings to create the suspicion that it originated in central Illinois and the southern half of the State, southern Iowa, Indiana and Ohio and along the border counties of other States adjoining the Confederacy. Henderson County was afflicted by ambitious gentlemen of this description. They took their cue from the Right Reverend Henry Clay Dean ("Dirty Dean"), formerly of Iowa, later of Rebels' Cove, Mis- Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 213 souri, Dan Yorhees, of Indiana, and Yallancligham, of Ohio. The official title of the organization was found in practice to be too elaborate for the Western mind, and the people cut it short by calling the members the "Copperheads'" and "But- ternuts." The young people of the "Circle" households were the more demonstrative in their efforts to show the world where they stood on the great question at issue. They evaded explanations and came to the point at once by wearing a "But- ternut" pin an article of home-made adornment, worn as a lady's brooch. On the occasion of a social event held at the south end of the county (in Bedford precinct, I believe) be- fore our return on veteran furlough, a young lady had the temerity to traverse the sentiments of the Union majority present and a patriotic woman in the company tore the offend- ing ornament from the wearer's person. The men of our company, to show their appreciation of this act and to com- memorate the event as a part of the local history of the times, purchased a valuable set of jewelry, and at a public meeting where a banquet was served, honored the heroine by presenting her with this evidence of their approval. My comrades were kind enough to ask me to make the formal presentation. It was an interesting occasion, and the notoriety 'given the incident served a good purpose, as it had a deterrent effect upon insolent enemies of the Union cause at home. The meeting was held in the Methodist church, and the first citizens of the town and vicinity were present and gave their hearty assent to the pro- ceedings. With a few complimentary phrases I endeavored to discharge my comrades' commission. The ceremony closed with one of those characteristic Civil War banquets where the abundance and variety of the viands were beyond belief. At whose initiative I do not remember, but in a burst of generosity a liberal appropriation was made by our men, and a sword purchased and presented to Captain Sam J. Wilson. The enthusiasm of E Company was without bounds so long as our "greenbacks" held out. For the first ten days of our furlough we felt equal to any proposition in high finance. 214 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. Hence the sword affair. General Grant and other heroes had received a sword at the hands of admirers, and our lads would hold their place on earth with the best. The majority "chipped in" ; that is to say, those who had a reserve fund with no pre- ferred investments. A considerable contingent refused to "go broke" over the sword. I was solicited to make the presenta- tion, which I did. There was a big crowd present to witness the ceremony. McKinney's Hall was packed to the entrance and our sweethearts were there, and the lamplight gloated o'er. In presenting the sword I assumed that the captain was as much of a hero as anybody and a good deal better one than some we had heard of, although I did not press the point. Rev. Hanson backed all I had to say on the subject and went me one better, and as the affirmative "had it," we adjourned to another hall and had a "shake-down." CHAPTER XLI. THE; KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE. During the winter of 1863-64 the "Copperheads" con- spired with Jeff Davis and the select coterie of traitors at Rich- mond known as "The Forty Thieves" to control the next Pres- idential election, on the platform that "The war is a failure." The details of the scheme were perfected in the councils of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or the Sons of Liberty, as they, on occasion, preferred to call themselves. A part of their general plan, as it is now well known (see the memoirs of Geo. H. Bontwell, Secretary of the Treasurer in President Grant's cabinet, 2d Vol., pp. 57-61), was to kidnap President Lincoln, hold him as a hostage until the independence of the Confederacy was recognized ; failing in that, and in the event that the election was lost to the Democrats, to murder him. I do not mean to say that the masses who voted for the Mc- Clellan electors nursed the thought of assassination, but I do mean to say that the leaders of the "Copperhead" branch of the Democratic party of 1864, which was an annex of the Confederate Government at Richmond, were traitors with all these intents and purposes. Vallandigham discussed his plans with Jeff Davis and the Southern leaders during his expatria- tion, and "the man without a country" and his associates gave aid and comfort to the enemy, in cash, in an all-pervading spy system, and in other forms without stint. The battle of Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, fol- lowed by the flight of Bragg from Mission Ridge and of Long- street from Knoxville, sent a wail of lamentation throughout the South, and the waning fortunes of the Confederacy made 215 2i 6 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. it imperative that Bill Hanna, as an auxiliary of the "Copper- head" leaders of the old Military Tract, should make a demon- stration to prevent the Union armies from overwhelming Lee and Johnston in Virginia and Georgia. The unorganized rebel forces in Henderson County were therefore promptly brought under military discipline : a charter for a council of the Knights of the Golden Circle was secured: the ritual also, the rules and the regulations for the installation of members. The gentlemen concerned felt the solemnity of the occasion. They conferred fully with each other, with Vallandigham at Wind- sor, Canada, and with the Confederate authorities at Rich- mond, who urged sepulchral secrecy and the utmost energy in organization. Hanna and his men responded promptly. On a certain night, notable in the history of Henderson Coun- ty, these patriots of the bush came together by stealth and posted their pickets. The council being called to order, Bill Hanna, in suppressed tones, made known the object of the meeting, and read from the printed matter in his hands a synopsis that gave his compatriots a vague conception of the scope and purposes of the order, which statement carefully veiled the whole truth except by inference. One of the ob- jects was to create as large an armed force throughout the North as possible; to do this their unsuspecting dupes must be inveigled to commit themselves by oath and the restraints of association and comradeship to the fortunes of a desperate cause. The leaders therefore dealt gently with the unwary, but were open and bold among those who had their confidence. This meeting of the charter members was confined largely to the great unwashed, unsanctified Democracy such as Bill Hanna, Sam Hutchinson, Tom Record, Lynn Carson, Jon- athan and Sam Mickey, Elihu Robertson, and other well- known choice spirits of the Yellow Banks, Stringtown, Bald Bluff. Sagetown. and Biggsville. While the oath taken was about all they could stand up to, they swallowed it at a gulp and made a pretense of calling for more. Bill Hanna, having been previously sworn in and qualified by the State Council. Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 217 now called before him the charter members, to whom he re- peated the following oath, line upon line, which was assented to in like manner : The Opening Declaration. "Do you believe, the present war now being waged against us to be unconstitutional ?" Answer : "We do." "Then receive the obligation." The Oath, or Bill Hanna's Holy Alliance. (A true copy.) "I do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the State in which I reside, and keep it holy! "I further promise and swear that I will go to the aid of all true and loyal Democrats, and oppose the confiscation of their property, either North or South! "And I further promise and swear that I will suffer my body severed in four parts, one part east, out of the East gate'; one part west, out of the West gate; one part north, out of the North gate; and one part south, out of the South gate, before I will suffer the privileges bequeathed to us by our forefathers blotted out or trampled under foot forever! "I futher promise and swear that I will go to the aid, from the first to the fourth signal, of all loyal Democrats, either North or South. "I further promise and swear that I zt'ill do all in my power against the present Yankee, abolition, disunion Admin- istration. "And I further promise and swear that I will not reveal any of the secret signs, passwords, or grips to any not legally authorized by this order, binding myself under no less a pen- alty than having my bowels torn out and cast to the four winds of heaven ; so help me God." 2i8 Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. The tenderfeet in this assembly felt some distinct qualms at the prospect, under certain contingencies, of being hung, drawn, and quartered for no worse offense than a mild ad- hesion to the administration of Abraham Lincoln, who was accepted by many of their neighbors as one of the prophets of the ages, a seer in the councils of the wise and prudent, the herald indeed of a better day; but they were reassured by a motion to adjourn to the school-house for an hour of social intercourse, where elaborate preparations had been made to jolly the boys. The men from Sagetown vied with the veterans from Bald Bluffs in the glow and warmth of their enthusiasm ; Stringtown led the Yellow Banks a merry dance ; and the Smith Creek boys emptied the flowing bowl in a way to disgust the Biggsville patriots. The leaders mingled with the common herd like birds of a feather. Bill Hanna fratern- ized with the boys with that stereotyped sneer for which he was famous somewhat modified. Colonel Sam Hutchinson did not unbend that was spinally impossible; but he cast some of his most benignant smiles upon the assembly from the Hutchinson Heights. Lynn Carson and a pard from Sagetown were convivially inseparable (the bibulous twins of the even- ing), and they finally went to sleep in each other's arms. The Tipperary round of pleasure was at high tide when the gray of the morning compelled the warriors to strike hands with pledges of eternal fidelity and disperse. CHAPTER XLII. THE CONFEDERATE; CAMPAIGN IN HENDERSON COUNTY. Our thirty days at home at the crisis of the war intensi- fied the bitter feeling between the loyal citizens and the "Cop- perheads." But the influential Union men at the county seat were not of one mind respecting their neighbors in secret op- position to the Government. Men like Fred Ray, Sr , and Sumner S. Phelps and others of the same relative standing did not agree on all points involved in the peace of the commu- nity. I conversed with them freely on these subjects. Mr. Ray was peculiarly sensitive, apprehensive of incendiarism; and, to state the bald fact as it was, he distrusted a brawling soldier as much as a "Copperhead." Ben Harrington offered to show me where the Confederate forces of the town had arms secreted. Out of regard to the conservative sentiment among the Union men, the majority of our men neither said nor did anything to provoke a collision. As for those arms, we were not under martial law at home ; and as for Bill Hanna and Sam Hutchinson and their retainers, we considered them impotent. Bill Hanna was a nice man. He was much deferred to. When he sneezed, some of his neighbors never failed to explode in concert with him. His only fault was, he pulled off from the men who staked life and treasure on the Union, and became an ordinary skulking "Copperhead." But notwithstanding the friendly deportment of our boys during their freedom from military restraint, we did not es- cape attention from Bill Hanna's "bushwhackers." I have briefly stated the condition of affairs at home when on a Saturday a few of our men of the pugilistic tem- perament who had imbibed freely of the usual stimulants con- 219 22O Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. sidered themselves still in the pursuit of the enemy, and hav- ing one of the most notorious of the local type pointed out to them on the street, gave chase, and cornered him in a dry goods store with the object of compelling him to take the oath of allegiance to the Government. It hurt the pride of the "Butternut" to take the oath under compulsion, and if his friends could have been summoned at the moment, there would have been an encounter of more or less impoitance. There was some delay in getting the rebel courier off through- out the county with dispatches, but at the summons to arms there was a prompt uprising among the local step-sons of Jeff Davis. Bill Hanna left his plow in the furrow ; Sam Hutchin- son spit on his flintlock, wiped off the dust, jumped bareback on his old mare and rode at breakneck speed for the rendez- vous. Bald Bluff arrived with strong reinforcements. It be- ing Saturday night, Sagetown was in a condition of indeter- minate consciousness, with a gallon jug of "Coonrod's best" in reserve, and on the way over lost the road, and did not reach headquarters till after midnight. Jake Spangler and the learned blacksmith from String- town struck the highway with loaded powder-horns. The army assembled in the mountains on the head-waters of Smith's Creek, and detachments continued to arrive on the grounds on all the public roads up to a late hour. It was a formidable mounted force, well equipped. All movements were carefully muffled; all the approaches carefully picketed. General Bill Hanna arrived on the ground by a circuitous route, and cau- tiously reconnoitered his own command from behind a hay- stack before he ventured to make himself known. His ad- vance guard having completed a final patrol of the ground ahead of him and notified him that the way was clear, he assembled his escort and rode to Colonel Sam Hutchinson's headquarters in great state. The troops were massed and the affairs of the hour carried on in suppressed tones, no fires or lights being allowed. A large number of recruits had been sworn in at the sub-stations during the weeks preceding, and Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life. 221 the officers and most of the rank and file being unacquainted, it was determined to improve the esprit de corps by introduc- ing the general commanding the Department to the army. Colonel Hutchinson therefore stepped forward and saluting, said: "Gentlemen, I have the honor to introduce to you the brigadier-general commanding the gallant Knights of this Congressional Department. Soldiers ! I propose three sup- pressed cheers for General Bill Hanna." The noble general advanced, lifted his shako, smiled, bowed in an uncertain way, both right and left, and said : "I am delighted to see you look- ing so well to-night. I am looking extremely well myself. There are none like me. I am the only one the real thrng, in Henderson County. It is true, gentlemen, that I have only a single star on each shoulder to designate my rank during this night attack, but when this cruel campaign is over 1 shall have gold-wash epaulets equal to those General Scott wore when he led the victorious American army into the capital of Mex- ico. Wait and see. It would be useless to wear gold epaulets in a night attack. You could not see them, but I '11 be with you. Understand me, pray: I am your brigadier only. Colonel Huthchinson will command in the field ; he will lead } cu : I will follow ; follow all the way, even to the gates of the city." Lynn Carson, his face all allaze with with well, Lynn broke out in a wild "Hooray" but was choked off in the midst of his "hoo." A voice broke in here that of Brother Jonathan, who only the day before had his patriotism refreshed by tak- ing the oath at the Yellow Banks: "Gentlemen, this is the winter of i;iir discontent; the breeze is chi'ly for Democrats of our peculiar stripe, and as the school-hov.st has been warm- ed for our accommodation, I move, sir, that we repair thither to complete our preparations for our advance." The change of base was made without the loss of a man. The hi