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WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 DURING 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 1840-1920 
 
 A Review of 
 Some Great, Near Great and Little Events 
 
 By 
 WILLARD A. BURNAP 
 
 PRICE $2.50. 
 
 Published by the Burnap Estate 
 
 W. L. Burnap, M. D., Administrator 
 
 Fergus Falls, Minnesota 
 
 1923 
 
Copyright, 1923, by the Willard A. Burnap Estate 
 
 Fergus Falls, Minnesota 
 
 W. L. Burnap, Administrator 
 
?7J 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 This book would not have written had not Mr. 
 Burnap's friends persistently and unanimously urged him 
 to the task. 
 
 He told, for the most part, of things about which 
 he had first-hand knowledge. The facts for "The Pas- 
 sing of the Indian" were gathered in the wigwams and 
 hunting fields of the Red men before the Civil War while 
 they were still "blanket, Indians." For "The Settling of 
 the West" he pioneered in three or more states, beginning 
 in 1852 and ending only with his death in northern Minne- 
 sota in the spring of 1923. For "The Freeing of the 
 Negro" he campaigned in the South for four years, in- 
 cluding the dates of the Emancipation Proclamation and 
 the Thirteenth Amendment, and made many shorter so- 
 journs there in later years. His "Findings of Three Wars" 
 were based on the same four years of service in the Civil 
 War and a thoughtful observing of the events and con- 
 ditions of the two later ones. 
 
 This extraordinarily varied experience through a long 
 life was not all of the author's equipment for his task. 
 He engaged in a variety of occupations, in positions of 
 responsibility always, from the time he was fourteen years 
 old, and thereby acquired a keen insight into the essentials 
 of social organization as distinguished from the merely 
 superficial or personal. The appeals of friends to put 
 in interesting personal details he yielded to only when 
 those details illustrated conditions which constituted the 
 very warp and woof of life at that time. The result is a 
 historical and sociological exhibit, covering especially the 
 life of the Middle West during the third quarter of the 
 
nineteenth century, the value of which will be realized 
 only when that life shall have receded so far into the 
 past as to leave no living representatives who can tell of 
 it by word of mouth. 
 
 My expectation is that this account will constitute for 
 all time to come one of the indispensable sources of in- 
 formation about one of the great epochs of American 
 history. 
 
 To the writing of this book the author devoted the 
 closing years of his life. He was negotiating with print- 
 ers and publishers when his last illness came upon him. 
 It has devolved upon me to bring those negotiations to 
 a conclusion. 
 
 F. R. Clow 
 State Normal School 
 Oshkosh, Wis. 
 June, 1923 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART T. THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 9 
 
 Chapter I. A Noted and Historic Gathering n 
 
 Chapter II. The Blanket Indians as I Knew Them 29 
 
 Chapter III. A Treaty Made and Broken 38 
 
 Chapter IV. The "Great American Desert" 52 
 
 Chapter V. The Pueblo and Maya Indians 65 
 
 PART II. THE SETTLING OF THE WEST. . . / 83 
 
 Chapter VI. Some "Impossible" Achievements 85 
 
 Chapter VII. Railroad Building and Land-Grabbing 112 
 
 Chapter VIII. Pioneer Life 124 
 
 Chapter IX. "Westward Ho!" and the California Trail.. 143 
 
 Chapter X. Rocky Mountain Foothills and Mines 161 
 
 Chapter XI. Which is the Better Half of the United 
 
 States? 180 
 
 PART III. THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 207 
 
 Chapter XII. Like Topsy, Slavery "Just Growed" 209 
 
 Chapter XIII. Servitude "Befo' de Wah" 229 
 
 Chapter XIV. When the "Jubilee" Came 248 
 
 Chapter XV. Five Decades of Liberty 265 
 
 Chapter XVI. Providence and Improvidence of the 
 
 Freedmen 291 
 
 PART IV. SO-ME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 307 
 
 Chapter XVII. The Civil War. 
 
 Section I. Its Opening and Civil Conditions 309 
 
 Section II. The Campaign of 1861 331 
 
 Section III. The Campaign of 1862 339 
 
 Section IV. The Campaign of 1863 358 
 
 Section V. The Campaign of 1864 371 
 
 Section VI. The Campaign of 1865 and Closing Events. 390 
 
 Chapter XVIII. The Spanish-American War. 
 
 Section I. Its Commencement and Causes 400 
 
 Section II. Movements and Attained Results 407 
 
 Chapter XIX. The World War. 
 
 Section I. Our Work in America 418 
 
 Section IT. What Our Boys Did "Over There" 431 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Valley of the Arkansas 1 1 
 
 Big Timbers 12 
 
 The Tunnelled Rock 29 
 
 "Kiva" of Pueblo Indians 65 
 
 Indian Exhibit at Station in Albuquerque 68 
 
 Where I was Entertained for Dinner 70 
 
 Pueblo Woman 73 
 
 Hopi Building at Grand Canyon 74 
 
 Community House, Pueblo of San Domingo 75 
 
 Stone Cathedral at Pueblo of Laguna 76 
 
 Maya Woman, in Yucatan 79 
 
 Massacre Monument, Chicago 87 
 
 First Court House and Jail, 1836 93 
 
 Second Court House '96 
 
 Third Court House and City Hall 99 
 
 Fourth Court House and City Hall 103 
 
 Fifth Court House and City Hall 105 
 
 Sixth Court House and City Hall 106 
 
 Residences in Trinidad, Colorado 173 
 
 Bridge at Trinidad 175 
 
 Street in Trinidad 176 
 
 Grand Canyon, from Mohave Point 181 
 
 Grand Canyon, from Hopi Point 183 
 
 Grand 'Canyon,- from Observation Point 185 
 
 Adamana Reservation 187 
 
 Petrified Forest 188 
 
 Petrified Logs 189 
 
 Hokona, University of New Mexico 191 
 
 Fine Art Building, Santa Fe 192 
 
 Business Block, Albuquerqe 194 
 
 Land Office, Santa Fe 194 
 
 "Santa Fe Style" 196 
 
 Scandia Mountain 197 
 
 Adobe Houses 199 
 
 Rio Grande River, at Albuquerqe 203 
 
 MAPS 
 
 The United States before the Mexican War 147 
 
 Civil War Campaigns 332 
 
 German Offensives in 1918 433 
 
 Allied Offensives in 1918 434 
 
PART I 
 
 THE 
 PASSING OF THE INDIAN 
 
The Valley of the Arkansas 
 Looking North from the Ruins of Bent's Fort 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A NOTED PLACE AND A HISTORIC 
 GATHERING 
 
 In my "One Man's Lifetime" the most fool-hardy 
 adventure, one of the most pleasant episodes, and the 
 saddest memory are all connected with the North Amer- 
 ican Indian. The first two events occurred in the summer 
 of i860, before the Civil War, a half century plus a 
 decade ago; and the last took place some four years later. 
 All these happenings are clustered around one spot. 
 
 That place, situated on the old "Santa Fe Trail," 
 was the most important fort and Indian trading post be- 
 tween the outfitting location on the Missouri River in the 
 East, and Santa Fe in the Southwest. The fort was 
 
12 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 built on a rock- footed bluff on the north side of the 
 Arkansas River. There, as one looked northwest from 
 the summit of the hill, the broad, treeless valley of the 
 river stretched toward the mountains hundreds of miles, 
 level and smooth as an irrigated field. Northeast, the 
 plains rolled away like an ocean suddenly stabilized ; its 
 billows covered by short buffalo grass, on which, in the 
 old times and at certain seasons, countless herds of 
 buffalo ranged north or south; and at all seasons, 
 antelope in large or small bands might then have been 
 seen grazing. Southwest, across the river, a large belt 
 of cottonwood trees filled the valley with a scene of 
 phenomenal beauty for that desert-like land. 
 
 "Big Timbers" 
 Across the River from the Fort 
 
 This grove, well-known to the old Indians of the 
 plains, was called "Big Timbers." Here they gathered 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 13 
 
 for their feasts, their councils, their treaty making, and 
 their wars. It became noted in the early history of the 
 settlement of the West, especially in its relation to the 
 Indians. 
 
 To locate this station in the old times, one would have 
 said it was on the Arkansas River about a hundred and 
 thirty miles northeast of Raton Pass. Today, did one 
 care to find it, he must go to Lamar, on the Santa Fe 
 railroad in the southeastern part of Colorado, then 
 cross the Arkansas River to its north bank and take the 
 Santa Fe automobile trail for seven miles. As the new 
 trail follows closely the old historic one, a rocky bluff is 
 reached, still surmounted by the ruins of the old fort, 
 still overlooking the broad valley of the Arkansas as of 
 old, and still viewing the beauties of Big Timbers that 
 have, with little diminution, survived a half century of 
 the white man's devastation. 
 
 To this place, on the top of the bluff, came William 
 Bent in 1854, and, having destroyed the old fort that 
 he and his brother had built at the crossing of the 
 Arkansas, he here built a new one the ruins of which yet 
 remain as stated on the point of the elevation. This was 
 called Bent's Fort until it was transferred to the Govern- 
 ment in 1859. The Government then renamed it Fort 
 Wise — after the Virginia governor who hanged John 
 Brown. It did not long remain so named; the Civil 
 War came on, the battle of Wilson's Creek was fought in 
 1 861, and the fort was again renamed. This time it was 
 called Fort Lyon after the northern general who lost his 
 life in that battle. It remained Fort Lyon until 1866, 
 when the Government moved the fort to Las Animas, 
 and there built new Fort Lyon. 
 
14 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Here, in Bent's Fort, on the plains around it within 
 sight of its walls, and on the Santa Fe Trail that passed 
 its doors, was enacted, almost completely, an epitome of 
 our unjust and disastrous Indian policy. Here treaties were 
 made and dazzling promises given — treaties and promises 
 seldom made good and always broken at will by the white 
 man. Here, the Indians surrendered to the Government 
 rich* domains, and in return were promised an uncertain 
 tenure upon a comparatively few acres of the lands they 
 had given up, accompanied by a further pledge on our 
 part to irrigate the land and to furnish buildings, domes- 
 tic animals, tools and instruction in their use. These 
 promises were not complied with, either in spirit or letter, 
 although the parties to whom the promises were made 
 had kept full faith with the Government and were 
 starving on account of the failure of the good faith they 
 had a right to expect from it. 
 
 With that sad story and its dire results, I am perhaps 
 the only white man still living who was in any way, even 
 remotely, connected. It was the most tragic of all the 
 many, many happenings along this most noted American 
 trail of history and adventure, conflict and commerce, 
 war and peace. 
 
 The story I shall try to tell cannot be well visualized, 
 unless, as a foundation, I am 'permitted to relate some- 
 thing of the causes, the circumstances, and the environ- 
 ments that led up to and surrounded it. 
 
 First, of the Santa Fe Trail itself. It is worthy of 
 mention. It is the oldest, the most noted, and the best used 
 of all the paths that led from American savagery to 
 civilization. It was first traveled by white men nearly 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 15 
 
 four centuries ago, and, despite the railroad that now 
 parallels it, is still used. 
 
 It starts at the greatest river in the world, and goes to 
 the second oldest white man's city in the United States. 
 It was first known to history when, following the con- 
 quest of the Pueblo in Mexico in 1540, Vasquez de 
 Coronado with his band of fierce fighters, who had fol- 
 lowed Cortez from Spain, came along this path with 
 their guide in search of the still-existing hoax, Quivira, 
 the city of gold. They came almost to where Kansas City 
 now is; there they killed their false guide and, un- 
 fortunately for the fate of the poor Pueblo Indians, 
 found their way back to Mexico. 
 
 Later, it was traveled by long pack trains carrying 
 trading goods west, and furs and Indian blankets east; 
 and many times was marked by the hoofs of bare-foot 
 ponies and trailing travoix of moving Indian villages or 
 of painted and befeathered war parties. Then came the 
 long, crawling, wagon trains, the dashing stage coaches, 
 the flying pony-express, and at last, the rushing railroad 
 trains. 
 
 It is a country of diverse scenery through which this 
 trail finds its way. For the first few hundred miles the 
 eastern part of the road of old wound across the broad, 
 treeless, solemnly-silent, level plains. Then it opened 
 its course into many parallel tracks where the going was 
 soft or uncertain, and again gathered them where the 
 road was once more hard and smooth. It more or less 
 closely follows the shifting banks of the sluggish Arkan- 
 sas River, where that stream in soft sand may spread its 
 waters out a mile wide and perhaps a few feet or inches 
 
16 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 deep, or may nearly vanish from sight only to reappear 
 again, a bravely flowing stream where a more obstinate 
 sub-soil forces its waters to the surface. As the trail 
 reaches toward the mountains the snow-capped summits 
 of Pike's Peak and Long's Peak rise in view and keep it 
 company through the many crossings of streams, bright 
 flowing from the snows above, and watch it as it struggles 
 up the rises or through the openings of the foothills until, 
 with one supreme effort, it climbs to the summit of Raton 
 Pass and descends to the table lands to the south. 
 
 Upon this trail, not far from Santa Fe, I was riding 
 northward in i860, with the intention of visiting Bent's 
 Fort as circumstances permitted, and my adventure- 
 loving disposition found convenient. I was not twenty 
 years of age, but, like most boys of that non-maturity, 
 I considered myself older in knowledge than a grand- 
 father of this or any other generation. Like the prodigal 
 son of old, I had wearied of the husks of Mexican and 
 of savage life, and, like him, I had concluded to arise 
 and go, not to my father, for I had none, but to the land 
 we then called "God's Country" that lay east of the Mis- 
 sissippi River. I was alone with a traveling outfit of 
 two ponies, one of which I rode and the other upon 
 which I packed my camping necessities and the whole of 
 my worldly wealth, except the buckskin suit and prairie 
 dogskin cap I wore, and the rifle and revolver I carried. 
 
 I have described my outfit, because to it I believe I 
 later owed my life. I was so clothed, not from any 
 boyish desire for cowboy notority, because the North 
 American cowboy had not then appeared. He was a 
 post Civil-War product that arose after Western men 
 had discovered there was money to be made by running 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 17 
 
 great herds of cattle over the plains to feed upon the 
 grass which the vanished buffalo millions had heretofore 
 consumed. The cowboy who cared for these cattle 
 copied the trapper's dress I was wearing; in dress, I led, 
 not followed, the cattle herder of the plains. This ap- 
 parel was forced upon me because the one with which I 
 had left the States was long since worn out, and buck- 
 skin and fur were at that time, and in that part of the 
 country, the only available and efficient substitutes. 
 
 I was still south of the Raton Pass, near where the 
 trail commenced climbing to make that difficult passage, 
 and my course still lay across a level plain that reached 
 away, apparently for miles, when suddenly I drew rein 
 upon the edge of an almost perpendicular drop of some 
 hundreds of feet. Here lay concealed a chasm, con- 
 taining a valley some half mile in width, while the line 
 and elevation of the plain beyond the break conformed 
 perfectly to that upon which I stood. This valley and 
 chasm had been worn out by a stream that was one of 
 the head waters of the Cimarron, a branch of the 
 Canadian River. This formation is quite common in 
 this "Mesa," the table-land south of the Raton Moun- 
 tains reaching into Arizona and finding its highest exem- 
 plification in and around the Grand Canon of Colorado. 
 (See illustrations in Chapter XL) 
 
 To my surprise, I found camped along the stream in 
 the valley several trains of Mexicans, who apparently 
 were bound for the States but who seemed to have been 
 camping here for some days at least. Evidently there 
 was some trouble ahead, and it was absolutely necessary 
 that I should know what it was. I could find no one who 
 could talk English, and my Spanish was exceedingly 
 
18 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 weak. Spanish is a language of so many terminations 
 and inflections which an English tongue fails to master, 
 that I always feared getting into some scrape as the fel- 
 low who, leaning up to his Mexican best girl, whispered 
 softly, "Mi caro hermoso," intending to call her his 
 beautiful beloved, but he didn't get the "caro" just right, 
 and instead of the soft words of love he called her his 
 magnificent, two wheeled cart. The result may be 
 imagined. With his disaster in mind, I always talked 
 English when I could, and let the other fellow do the 
 guessing. 
 
 But necessity knows no law ; I approached a bunch of 
 drivers sitting around a fire, and braced myself for the 
 ordeal. 
 
 "Buenos dias, Senores," said I. 
 
 A merry-faced "bullwhacker," with a twinkle in his 
 eye, replied, "Buenos dias, tu." 
 
 That was a facer : I had given them the compliments 
 of the day as gentleman, and this rapscallion had re- 
 turned the same with a Tu, as though I had been a 
 servant or chum of his. 
 
 Well, I'let that go, but tried him again. "Por que 
 que dais vosotros agui por que no subis vosotros mas 
 alto?" (Why do you remain here, why not go higher?) 
 
 Then followed a babel of replies, with much violent 
 gesticulation : from which I gathered that the Comanche 
 Indians were on the war path, that the trail beyond was 
 running red with blood, that everybody in the mines and 
 mountains and in Denver had been murdered and scalped, 
 and the whole country was wiped clean of white men. 
 Further, that they were here waiting for an escort of 
 cavalry to take them through the Comanche country. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 19 
 
 After having made all due allowance for the impul- 
 sive Spanish-Indian temperament, I thought there must 
 be some foundation for all this furor and concluded to 
 "bide a wee" myself, and so I found a comfortable place 
 and made camp. I write "made camp," although I know 
 that the many men who leave the cities annually, pos- 
 sessing "light camping outfits" that require trucks to 
 move, would scorn the idea that my slight preparations 
 were entitled to any such name. Still I stand by my posi- 
 tion and as sustaining evidence bring the Indian, the old 
 trapper, and the many scouts and others who spend their 
 life in the open. Most of these city people never get out 
 of doors and back to nature at all. They simply change 
 their housekeeping from wooden or brick walls to canvas 
 ones and require, and must have, all the delicacies and 
 conveniences of their city homes, even to ice and their 
 daily milk and butter. Not so the old plainsmen : they 
 generally looked with disdain upon too many camp con- 
 veniences, and for pleasure, comfort and expedition, pre- 
 ferred to travel with loads containing only necessities 
 and very few conveniences. 
 
 I think my outfit was reduced to its lowest terms : 
 
 Provisions : Flour, salt, and baking powder. 
 
 Meat I expected to get by shooting. 
 
 Bedding: A light buffalo robe and two- blankets, laid 
 011 the ground with saddle for pillow. 
 
 Tent: None. In pleasant weather, which that dry 
 country had most of the time, I slept under the stars. 
 In stormy weather I made a "dog tent," such as soldiers 
 use, from my two saddle blankets, and got under them 
 when I was compelled to. 
 
20 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Cooking Utensils: A small, long-handled frying pan, 
 a quart cup, a tin plate, a spoon and my hunting knife. 
 
 Plenty of ammunition. 
 
 Flint, steel, and tinder. 
 
 A small camping axe. 
 
 These were all the essentials for comfortable travel 
 for me, in the West. This bill of particulars can be 
 added to as one wishes; nearly all would consider tea, 
 coffee, sugar, and pork essential, but I did not use the 
 first two, which required the third, and I did not care for 
 the last. Matches might be taken if convenient, but 
 should not be relied upon on account of exposure to the 
 rain. 
 
 The flour might be made into pancakes or baked as 
 bread before the fire in the frying pan or in the ashes. 
 Meat might be broiled on a forked stick, or when there 
 was plenty of time, and bread was being baked, it might 
 also be placed in the ashes. Should one be going into a 
 country where no game was expected, he might take 
 the time and "jerk" a supply of meat to last him through 
 such scarcity. 
 
 Please do not underestimate the old-time method of 
 "baking in the ashes" done by our ancestors from "the 
 time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the 
 contrary." It sounds plebeian and slovenly, but it is 
 highly satisfactory and absolutely sanitary. The baking 
 is not done in the ashes, but in the coals ; no germ could 
 possibly resist this trial by fire, and should the meat or 
 bread be wrapped in some wet covering, and care be given 
 that the coals cover everything, the eatables will come out 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 21 
 
 with even the covering unburned, and be as clean and 
 pure as from the finest oven, and of flavor superior to 
 any stove-cooked product. 
 
 Taught by the experience of one long summer and 
 over a thousand miles of such travel, I would not add 
 another item to my equipage. The many "light camp- 
 ing outfits" I have seen in use or advertised, usually 
 seem so elaborate and cumbersome to me that all pleasure 
 in traveling with them would be destroyed. I have ob- 
 served that the more one has moved about, whether it be 
 as sportsman, soldier, miner, or trapper, the less equip- 
 ment he carries. 
 
 For several days I "possessed my soul with patience," 
 but then became uneasy. I believed it useless to remain 
 in the valley waiting for the cavalry any longer. I felt 
 certain there were enough men and guns in the crowd to 
 make a safe organization, provided they would unite and 
 place themselves under some competent command. I 
 endeavored to make the Mexicans so organize and pro- 
 ceed, but failing to do so, lost my temper and announced 
 that, do what they would, I should start next Monday 
 morning. 
 
 Thus the "die was cast" and, so far as I was con- 
 cerned, I was compelled to start at the time so thought- 
 lessly mentioned. All Sunday, wherever I appeared, the 
 question was asked: "Va Vd a ir manana?" (Do you go 
 tomorrow?) 
 
 To which I always replied, "Si, manana por la mana- 
 na." (Yes, tomorrow morning.) 
 
 I was still uncertain but hopeful that some of the 
 Mexicans would go along with me. But when I drove 
 
22 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 through the camp on starting Monday morning the only 
 movements my way were discouraging remarks like 
 these, "Pcrderas el cranio tuyo manana," (You will lose 
 your scalp tomorrow), or more discouraging still, 
 "Cuando hallaremos el caerpo tuyo le enterraremos" 
 (When we find your body we will bury it.) 
 
 Thoroughly provoked, I called back, "Adios, Cobar- 
 dcs" (Good-bye, cowards), and put spurs to my horse to 
 avoid the shower of stones and clubs I might reasonably 
 expect. 
 
 Thus alone was I projected into a hostile Indian 
 country, bound for Bent's Fort, two hundred miles away, 
 the first place on the way to the States where I could 
 find safety. High up in the Raton Pass I met the escort 
 of cavalry for which the Mexicans were waiting. The 
 commander sent for me and inquired, "What crimes have 
 you been committing in New Mexico that you have to 
 risk your life to get out of that territory alone, at this 
 dangerous time?" 
 
 I told him "I had committed no crime, but that for 
 the last week or so I had been with a bunch of cowards, 
 and I thought a brave Indian, even if he was after my 
 scalp, would be an improvement in companionship." 
 
 "Perhaps so," he said, "but you will not go twenty- 
 four hours longer without losing that scalp if you go on. 
 Better come back with me and go through under my 
 escort" 
 
 This I should have done, and would have done, had I 
 been a reasonable being ; but I was a pig-headed boy who 
 preferred the risk of life and scalp, to returning to the 
 jeers and chaffing of my late Mexican companions. Be- 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 23 
 
 sides all this, the fact of the matter was that the risk had 
 given me an unwonted zest for the trip. I thought also 
 that I might be able to put up such a bluff that the 
 Indians would not think me worth killing; a hoped-for 
 fact that would only be a repetition of an event that oc- 
 curred the previous summer of 1859. 
 
 This event throws some light upon the method and 
 strategy of the Indian on the war path upon which I 
 relied for safety, and therefore I tell it. I was then 
 traveling with a party of eleven : three men, four women, 
 and three children, all born and brought up on the ex- 
 treme western border and all from birth, with the, excep- 
 tion of myself, acquainted with the Indian. I, the 
 eleventh, a Massachusetts Yankee, had been in the West 
 only some five years and as comparatively a tenderfoot. 
 
 Late in the fall we were in New Mexico going toward 
 Arizona. We had crossed a small stream and stopped on 
 its bank for dinner. Suddenly, and without warning, a 
 band of over a hundred Comanche Indians rode over the 
 near hills, following our tracks upon the trail. Upon 
 seeing us, they halted a moment, then came on ; part of 
 the band crossed the stream above and circled around us ; 
 others crossed below and circled to meet the upward 
 squad, and some remained across the stream. They were 
 a war party, stripped, painted, and feathered for the war- 
 path. We were completely at their mercy. 
 
 Charley Johnson, our oldest man and undisputed 
 leader, seeing the plan of the Indians, gave us wordless 
 and nearly motionless directions to stand by our arms and 
 appear as though nothing was expected to happen. 
 Therefore when the war party halted, facing inward, 
 
24 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 they saw a camp, the women of which were uncon- 
 cernedly getting dinner, the children playing, and four 
 men loafing carelessly around with guns in their hands. 
 The slightest show of panic among the women or chil- 
 dren, or of unpreparedness on the part of the men, would 
 probably have been fatal. 
 
 We said to the war party, as plainly as actions could 
 speak, "You are a mighty fine lot of warriors, but that 
 does not concern us greatly, because we are friends, and 
 do not expect to be interfered with by you or any of your 
 tribe." The warriors could see for themselves that 
 should they attack us they would lose at least four of 
 their number by the first discharge of our rifles, and how 
 many more afterwards depended upon whether or not 
 we had revolvers and how quickly they could silence us. 
 Evidently the warriors were anxious to begin to fight, but 
 the chief delayed giving the order. Finally an order was 
 given, not to charge us but to dismount and turn their 
 ponies loose; this was done, and a circle of dismounted 
 warriors now encompassed us. 
 
 After some consultation among them, six of the war- 
 riors led by their chief came into our camp, but failed to 
 give us the universal "How" of greeting. This looked 
 bad. Charley, however, knew what Indian etiquette was, 
 and set food before them. The chief divided the food 
 between his six companions, but retained nothing for 
 himself; this was worse — he had declined to eat with us. 
 The duty of the Indian guest to eat is as strong as that of 
 the host to provide the food : no matter how many smut- 
 nose papooses or straying dogs had previously eaten from 
 the common pot, the guest, if friendly, must eat. So 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 25 
 
 this chief was either holding us up for greater presents or 
 declaring his hostility. We afterwards learned it was the 
 latter. 
 
 The usual emigrant, hoping to rid himself of the 
 Indians, would at this point have given nearly every- 
 thing in the camp, but Charley knew better; he knew that 
 to submit to the first imposition was to lose all. As he 
 refused to be driven, the chief and his squad returned 
 to their warriors. 
 
 Again they approached us, this time as traders. The 
 line of their traffic, however, was exceedingly limited. 
 They wanted to buy guns. They needed them, for, I 
 believe, there was not one in their whole command ; but 
 with us that line of goods had suddenly risen in value : we 
 had none to sell, notwithstanding the fabulous prices of- 
 fered for them. 
 
 Thus, for over an hour, we pretended unconcern while 
 death, like Damocles' sword, seemed hanging by a slender 
 thread over our heads. At last a signal was given, ponies 
 were saddled and mounted, their ranks gathered, and at 
 another signal they charged with a whoop — away towards 
 the mountains, and we never saw them more. Months 
 afterwards the riddle was solved for us. The Indians 
 were hostile to us, as the chief had intimated, but this 
 band was not after our party, it was after a detachment 
 of the Apaches that had run off a drove of their ponies. 
 
 The business of the Indians was war, and, like the 
 white man in his business, he looked where the greatest 
 gains and the smallest losses would come. The chief 
 probably figured that it would spoil the afternoon to 
 wipe out our camp, distribute the plunder, and reorganize 
 his loosely held force; meanwhile, the Apaches would get 
 
26 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 into the mountains and be saved from pursuit. Good 
 business, simply good business, dictated that, if we were 
 going to fight, they had better let us alone at present, 
 press on, save their horses, and pick us up when they 
 had more time and it woul'd pay better. Fortunately for 
 us, they overtook and recaptured their horses, but the 
 Apaches put up such a battle that the Comanches had all 
 the fighting they wanted for that particular time. 
 
 Now to apply that experience to my present condition, 
 I reasoned that if I could only make the Comanches 
 again think it would be bad business to kill me, I might 
 get through safely. 
 
 The captain's warning did me a good turn; it made 
 me cautious. The Comanche country through which I 
 expected to travel as soon as I should leave the Raton 
 Mountains, was a level or gently rolling plain, here and 
 there crossed by streams of running water fresh from 
 the snows of the mountains. There was no timber on 
 the plains, except a little along the banks of the water 
 courses, consequently there was scant cover to hide an 
 ambushed Indian. 
 
 My general outfit — two ponies, buckskin suit, rifle and 
 revolver — would disguise me as that most expert and 
 deadly Indian fighter known, the American trapper, a 
 man whom the Indians knew it was foolish to attack, 
 in the open and during the day, with their bows, arrows, 
 and tomahawks. They might kill such a man as I was 
 supposed to be, but it would be at the expense of some of 
 their warriors, and the plunder I had would not pay the 
 cost. Obviously, when I was reported to some chief as 
 being on the trail, the best policy would be to let me alone 
 during the day, and pick me up some night when caught 
 napping. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 27 
 
 Feeling certain that the Comanches would never sus- 
 pect how innocent I was, but would class me as a veteran 
 trapper, I felt perfectly safe during the day. It only re- 
 mained to provide for the night. Having ridden leisurely 
 and carelessly during the day, as though a hostile Indian 
 was not in the United States, I camped near sun down at 
 some usual camping place; there I turned my ponies 
 loose, built my fire, got my supper, and went to bed as 
 though for the night. I slept, with one eye open, until 
 about one o'clock, when I got up and got out of that 
 camp as fast as whip and spur could drive my horses, 
 nor stopped nor stayed for anything until I had traveled 
 at least twenty miles. Then I made a dry camp away 
 from both water and trail. Thus, at the time the Indian 
 usually makes his nightly attack — from two to four 
 o'clock in the morning, when, if ever, man and beast are 
 asleep and off guard — I made it a point to be at least 
 five or ten miles from the camp I first made and travel- 
 ing as though his Satanic majesty was after me. 
 
 In this manner, loafing along by day, camping and 
 running by night, I finally reached my longed-for haven, 
 Bent's Fort. To my great surprise and pleasure, I found 
 a gathering of the friendly Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes 
 of Indians surrounding the fort, their number so numer- 
 ous that they covered the river valley and ranged through 
 the trees of Big Timber for miles. 
 
 Whether my deserted camp was ever visited by the 
 Comanches, I know not. This ride through a hostile 
 Indian country was a foolhardy undertaking, later dis- 
 coveries proving it more dangerous than I had supposed. 
 It was a trip I never would have taken had I cultivated 
 the habit — no, I will not say habit ; it is something higher ; 
 
28 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 let me say religion — of the primitive old-time Sioux 
 Indian warrior. He, in such a crisis as I met at Raton 
 Pass, retired alone, shut out all disturbing thought, and 
 in absolute silence communed with his "Great Mystery'' 
 until his mind was settled and his course seemed clear. 
 This almost daily habit of the old Sioux Indian is, to me, 
 a matter of great interest; it seems to be in continua- 
 tion or memory of his first great silence, when, follow- 
 ing the age of adolescence and before he is made a war- 
 rior, having purified his body with the Indian steambath, 
 naked, save for moccasins and breech cloth, without food 
 or drink, he stations himself upon the height of some 
 summit, and, facing the rising sun, shutting out all 
 worldly thought, he there stands motionless, perhaps for 
 several days and nights, while his soul seeks the Great 
 Mystery. What visions he may there see, what thoughts 
 may come to him, what resolutions he may there make, 
 no one may ask and he seldom tells, unless some public 
 act may be connected therewith. 
 
 The Indian, thus in his primitive simplicity, seems 
 here to have found a great religious or mind-moving 
 principle. Christ retired alone to the desert, and com- 
 manded his followers to pray in secret ; and today I can 
 find no difference between the great silence of the old 
 Sioux and the deep silence of the Church of the New 
 Thought that is now rapidly spreading. The old Sioux 
 devotee went to the mountain top or deep forest to be 
 alone; the new devotee, to obtain a similar environment, 
 must go to his private room. The first sought commu- 
 nion with his Great Mystery ; the last with the Infinite — 
 a difference of condition and nomenclature only, but an 
 identity of act, of purpose, and desired accomplishment. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 
 
 29 
 
 The Tunnelled Rock 
 Head of the Irrigation Project, Arkansas River 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BLANKET INDIANS AS I KNEW THEM 
 
 As I stood upon the ruins of the old fort in the spring 
 of 19 18, and looked northwest at the broad valley of the 
 Arkansas River that reached miles and miles away to- 
 ward the Rocky Mountains, the contrast between the 
 present view and the one that was first presented to me 
 fifty-eight years before, was almost unbelievable. Then, 
 in the long ago, as far as the eye could reach, the valley 
 was covered with the tepees of the Indians, their droves 
 of ponies and their people; now, in 1918, by the farms, 
 homes, and herds of domestic cattle of the white man. 
 In the foreground, a modern, iron bridge carries an 
 automobile trail across the river. At the left, an immense 
 dam stops the river where the rock of the bluff has been 
 
30 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tunneled, and an irrigation ditch flows away, reaching 
 eighty-six miles and watering over eighty thousand acres 
 with the farms, towns, and villages covering them. 
 
 The Indians I met here, in i860, were still "blanket 
 Indians" in the fullest sense of the word. They wore no 
 discarded civilized costume, but were dressed in their 
 own buckskin, beads, and feathers. They carried very 
 few guns and were armed almost entirely with their own 
 primitive weapons. I doubt if half a dozen In the whole 
 two nations there encamped could speak English, more 
 than to utter the universal "How" of greeting. Yet 
 trading, and visiting, and correspondence between the 
 whites of the fort and the reds of the plains was constant 
 and active, if not always pleasing and understandable, 
 owing to the fact that sign-language was necessarily used 
 between them, and all were not equally expert in its 
 gesticulation and interpretation. 
 
 To a "tenderfoot" like myself it was intensely interest- 
 ing to see a knot of Indians from different tribes, mixed 
 perhaps with a few whites, seated in a circle on the 
 ground and conversing gravely and earnestly on some 
 important subject, or laughing and joking on some 
 trivial matter, while not a word was spoken, sign lan- 
 guage alone conveying the ideas circling around. 
 
 As good luck would have it, I possessed some knowl- 
 edge that the commandant at the fort needed, and he 
 did not have to use much eloquence or present strong 
 inducements to get me to stay during the pending negotia- 
 tions that had called this gathering. 
 
 It is just as good a time now as any to say that, dur- 
 ing my stay with these people, I never was more kindly 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 31 
 
 and courteously treated; never have I seen apparently 
 better conducted homes, nor happier children; never a 
 larger per cent of athletic, well-put-up, young men, nor 
 sturdy, well-built, modest maidens, than among these 
 Indians. I fully believe, what better men than I, with 
 better means of knowing, have said, that the "North 
 American Indian was the best primitive people that ever 
 inhabitated any portion of this world." I became an 
 admirer of, formed a sincere friendship for these tribes, 
 and parted from them with regret. I saw many of their 
 ceremonial and other dances, and I think the most 
 beautiful sight of my life was presented when, one 
 evening, their maidens, dresesd in perfectly white, bead- 
 ornamented, antelope-skin dresses, performed a squaw 
 dance of significance unknown to me. 
 
 These Indians were very nearly in their primitive 
 state, and I found them so different from the Indians as 
 they are supposed to be by a large majority of our white 
 people, that, in justice to them, I feel compelled to state 
 my opinion of some of their habits and characteristics — 
 an opinion found at this and other meetings and con- 
 firmed by what others, who know them better than I, 
 have testified. 
 
 It has been said that the Indian is shy, silent, unde- 
 monstrative, even morose, and incapable of seeing a joke. 
 This is true when he is among strangers or those he does 
 not trust, but when among friends and those he trusts 
 nothing could be farther from the truth. I found him 
 to be exceedingly happy, humorous and friendly. Doctor 
 Eastman, a Sioux Indian himself, brought up in Sitting 
 Bull's camp until early manhood, must certainly know 
 whereof he testified, when he wrote: "I don't believe I 
 
32 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 ever heard a real hearty laugh away from an Indian 
 fireside, and whole evenings were spent in laughing with 
 them until I could laugh no more." 
 
 It was thought that the Indian had no education. 
 Wrong again : it was of the very best, not for our purp- 
 ose, but for his needs. If it be true, as I have seen as- 
 serted, that Napoleon's military ideas were first con- 
 ceived in his mother's womb, then it is true that the 
 Indian's education begins months before he is born. The 
 expectant mother is taught to retire, and in her mind to 
 dwell upon the heroic and patriotic deeds of her ances- 
 tors. After birth, the baby's lullabies are all of brave 
 deeds and generous giving. At five the mother and grand- 
 mother take charge of the girl, the father and grand- 
 father of the boy, and both are taught in accomplish- 
 ments that will best advance the children and conserve 
 the highest good of their tribe. The boy is taught to be a 
 hunter and -a warrior, not for himself, but for his tribe; 
 the girl is taught to be a homekeeper and a mother, the 
 last so efficiently that when her great time comes she 
 retires alone, to some secluded spot, and there remains 
 until she can return bearing the fruition of love, her 
 babe, in her arms. Doctor Eastman, although he gradu- 
 ated with honors at one of our best colleges and 
 medical schools, considers that the most valuable part 
 of his education was received before he was sixteen years 
 old in an Indian camp. 
 
 The primitive Indian was hospitable and generous. 
 His hospitality extended to all who entered his camp, 
 be they friend, stranger, or even foe; and he would 
 turn out his warriors to protect such guests, if need 
 there be. His generosity often found an end only when 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 33 
 
 he had impoverished himself by liberal giving. That his 
 hospitality and protection may be tribal, as well as per- 
 sonal, was proved by a comrade of mine. He was a con- 
 tractor, who had engaged to grade a portion of a rail- 
 road through a certain part of South Dakota containing 
 the Sisseton Sioux reservation. Soon after commencing 
 his work, several big Sioux came to him and one of them, 
 touching him with his finger, said, "Yon — sojer — Daven- 
 port!' Then John realized his condition, and he told me 
 that he "never was so badly scared in his life." 
 
 When the contractor was in the army, his duty at 
 Davenport was guarding the two hundred and fifty war- 
 riors who had been condemned to death for the murders 
 and atrocities committed at the great outbreak of Indians 
 at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1862. Our kind-hearted 
 Lincoln would permit only forty of these to be executed, 
 and now my comrade found himself alone with his whole 
 grading crew in the reservation and at the mercy of 
 the two hundred and ten "fiendish devils" who had been 
 turned loose. 
 
 He tried to get released from the contract, but could 
 not; he endeavored to get someone to take it off his 
 hands — nobody wanted it. Finally, as every cent he had 
 was tied up in the job, he concluded to put it through 
 even though it should be the last thing he would ever do. 
 In describing the completion of this work to me after- 
 wards, he said, "Never in all my railroad contracting 
 did I experience so little trouble or lose so few things as 
 across the reservation. I did not lose so much as a linch- 
 pin on the whole job." 
 
34 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The facts were he had been halfway decent to those 
 Indians as a guard, and they had not forgotten it. Their 
 "You-sojer-Davenport" had been intended as the wel- 
 come of a host, not the defiance of an enemy. His ig- 
 norance of the Indian language, and the Indian's lack of 
 English, had cost my comrade needless apprehension. 
 
 Regarding the social position of the Indian woman, 
 many white people believe she was almost a slave. What- 
 ever she may have become since the white man's laws 
 have robbed her of her property, her genealogical pres- 
 tige, and made a wreck of her social position, I will not 
 discuss, but in old times and under tribal customs noth- 
 ing could be farther from the fact. 
 
 She owned the home and domestic property — the men 
 only furnished subsistence and protection to it — and 
 young Indian bucks and lordly warriors had to step 
 around her wigwam as she bade. This property des- 
 cended by clan law to her heirs and not to his; thus at 
 her death the bereaved widower lost not only his wife 
 but perhaps his home. The Indian was careful to main- 
 tain the purity of his blood and was as proud of his 
 ancestry as an Englishman, but with the red man the 
 line of ancestry descended through the female, not the 
 male. The honor of the tribe was in the woman's hands 
 and careful and proud was she to maintain it. The un- 
 married women held their virgin feasts wherein they 
 challenged the world to cloud their honor. Woe to the 
 girl whose virginity was challenged and the charge made 
 good, and twice woe to the brave who made a challenge 
 which he failed to prove. But the white man changed all 
 this. He took hunting-ground away from the warrior, 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 35 
 
 made him a lazy loafer, gave to him the woman's prop- 
 erty, and placed the honor of the tribe in his hands, not 
 in the woman's. Then she fell. "When she fell, the 
 tribe fell with her." 
 
 Another practice contrary to the education of the 
 primitive Indian was that of being paid for services done 
 or hospitality rendered. It was foreign to all his training 
 and habits. He was brought up with the thought of 
 service and self-sacrifice to his tribe, to his family, and 
 to his guests. He served with no thought of property 
 reward. So long as this idea remained true, the Medicine 
 Man retained a high character ; he gave the best advice 
 and used for his patients the best known remedies with- 
 out remuneration. But when the idea of healing for pay 
 became prevalent, that office became a fraud of the worst 
 type. 
 
 The first natural conclusion of the Indian, when he 
 learned that the white man bought and sold his services, 
 was that anything he had was for sale. This idea caused 
 much amusement for us men and annoyance for the two 
 girls who were in the 1859 party heretofore described. 
 During that summer we were traveling up the north 
 branch of the Platte river, and through the Sioux country 
 from Fort Kearney to Fort Laramie. Soon after we left 
 Fort Kearney, Indian swains began to appear in camp and 
 along the trail, proving their worth and dexterity by ex- 
 hibiting their horsemanship and athletic ability, and offer- 
 ing ponies, many ponies, in trade for the girls as in- 
 tended wives. This continued, and the girls were rapidly 
 increasing in value ; and I do not know how many ponies 
 they would have brought had not an occurrence taken 
 place which stopped the whole proceeding. 
 
36 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 This happened near Scott's Bluff, which reared its 
 precipitous sides hundreds of feet from the level plain 
 upon the south side of the river. It was the Fourth of 
 July, and we decided to celebrate it by a day's rest. The 
 two older men took their rifles and went after antelope ; 
 George and I, the two younger, concluded to wade across 
 the river and investigate the bluffs. Thus the camp was 
 left with only the women and children. Just at this time 
 a band of Sioux came and entered into possession. 
 
 Finding all the men gone, they expected the women 
 would in their terror give them everything they de- 
 manded. But they were disappointed; they had found a 
 camp of border women, who would give them nothing on 
 demand. When they began to get ugly about it, the 
 grandmother in the group concluded she would drive 
 them out of camp. She retired into one of the wagons 
 with a pitcher of water and a bottle of ink; then after 
 having made moans of suffering enough to attract the 
 attention of the Indians, she opened the front of the 
 wagon top, motioned one of the girls to bring her a 
 wash-basin, and then emptied her mouth of the inky 
 water wherewith she had filled it. This "black vomit" 
 was enough; visions of small-pox and every other disease, 
 known and unknown, terrified the mighty warriors. They 
 knew now why there were no men around — we were all 
 dead and buried. Immediately they deserted camp. They 
 stopped not on the order of their going. Neither money, 
 persuasion, nor force, would have induced any one of 
 them to take the smallest thing from our camp with 
 them; nor did they ever return while we were in their 
 country. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 37 
 
 In his creed the Indian recognized spirit in all things, 
 but between him and his Great Mystery he allowed no 
 priest, person or entity to come. Before this Great 
 Mystery he stood silent and submissive, but to no other 
 person, being, or thing, dead or alive, did he bow the 
 knee of homage. 
 
 This Great Mystery or spirit is with him at all times; 
 daily he faces the rising sun, and alone communes with 
 it ; not a deer does he kill, not a stream does he cross, not 
 a striking landscape does he meet but he is conscious of 
 its presence ; and even the housewife, when she places 
 the steaming meal before her waiting family, softly 
 whispers, "Spirit partake." In some tribes a piece of 
 meat is placed on the blazing coals and the meal is not 
 eaten until the "offering" is consumed. 
 
38 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A TREATY MADE AND BROKEN 
 
 The Indian nations I found at Bent's Fort had gath- 
 ered for no holiday purpose ; it was a question of life and 
 death that had brought them together; not personal life 
 and death — the Indian cares little for that, but the life 
 and death of his tribe, for which he cares everything. 
 During the preceding year over sixty thousand emigrants 
 had crossed the Indian lands and gone into the mines. 
 These emigrants had ruthlessly slaughtered the buffalo ; 
 cut down and destroyed the scant and valuable timber 
 along the streams ; and worse than all, had burned the 
 fall grass, thereby leaving the Indian's ponies and the 
 buffalo to starve during the winter. 
 
 If this state of things should continue, the Indians 
 saw nothing ahead of them but starvation and death. 
 They wanted their "Great Father at Washington" to help 
 them arrange matters so that they could settle down, 
 raise crops and live more or less like the white man. This 
 was necessary, because their game was vanishing and 
 their country rapidly being ruined for the life they had 
 hitherto led. The "Great Father" had heard their re- 
 quest, and it was to meet commissioners appointed by 
 him to consider the subject that they were now gathered. 
 
 Never was there a more harmonious meeting than 
 between the commissioners thus appointed and these 
 Indians. The Indians freely gave up all their lands north 
 of the Arkansas River, including the rich mines in the 
 Rocky mountains, and were to receive therefor a small 
 portion of the land they had ceded, together with tools, 
 improvements, and instruction which would enable them 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 39 
 
 to cultivate the land for their subsistence. The com- 
 missioner's report, made and on file in Washington, 
 reads, "It has not fallen to my lot to visit any Indians 
 who seemed more disposed to comply with the wishes 
 of the government than the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. 
 Notwithstanding that they were fully aware of the rich 
 mines discovered in their country, they were disposed to 
 yield up their claims without reluctance. They certainly 
 deserve the fostering care of the government, and should 
 be liberally encouraged in their new sphere of life." 
 
 After the conference ended the Indians broke camp 
 and dispersed, thinking that their troubles were over and 
 that the way to peace, prosperity, and plenty for their 
 tribes was assured. This happy consummation I cer- 
 tainly believe would have ensued, had not the govern- 
 ment engaged in a great Civil War and failed to make 
 good on its part. One year passed, and nothing was 
 done ; two years passed, and only a surveyor appeared ; 
 three years passed, and still no farms, not even an irriga- 
 tion ditch ; no promised farmer, or blacksmith, or houses, 
 or school, or grist-mill — nothing but a survey, and no 
 two tribes of Indians, however well-meaning, treaty- 
 keeping, and economical, can live long on surveyor's 
 stakes and governmental lines. Four years passed, and 
 nothing was done. The great buffalo herds were gone; 
 the tribes were broken up into small bands, hunting game 
 wherever they could, some of them actually starving for 
 necessities, and many feeling that, if die they must, it 
 was better to die with a full stomach on the war path 
 than of starvation and submission to injustice. Some did 
 commence depredations, but many were still peaceable 
 and friendly. 
 
4 o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Governor of Colorado called for military aid in 
 June 1864, but at the same time sent a proclamation to all 
 Indians who were friendly to come to places he would 
 designate, where they would be assured of rations, safety, 
 and protection. Complying with this proclamation the 
 two chiefs, Black Kettle and White Antelope, proved and 
 tried friends of the whites, with their tribes and some 
 others, all being the same Indians who made the treaty 
 in i860 at Bent's Fort, came to that place, then called 
 Fort Lyon, surrendered their arms, made their camp in 
 the place directed by the commander of the fort, and in 
 every way complied with all orders and suggestions 
 which he made. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the good faith and helplessness 
 of these Indians ; notwithstanding the honor of the 
 United States government, plighted by its commissioned 
 officers ; notwithstanding the pledged word of the state 
 of Colorado, as given by its governor in his proclama- 
 tion; in spite of all principles of justice and mercy, of 
 equity and . prudence, these friends of ours were at- 
 tacked on the morning of November 27, 1864, by the 
 First Colorado Cavalry under the command of Colonel 
 J. M. Chivington, and men, women, and children were 
 murdered and mutilated without mercy. When the attack 
 commenced White Antelope thought it a mistake, and 
 came running toward the soldiers, holding up his hand and 
 calling in English, "Stop! Stop!" When he saw that 
 there was no mistake and that it was a deliberate attack, 
 he folded his arms and waited until he was shot down. 
 Then the outrage proceeded to its brutal termination. 
 
 Some may think this is an exaggeration of some East- 
 ern sentimentalist gone daft on the Indian question. I 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 41 
 
 wish they were right. Congress appointed a commission 
 to investigate this horror, and the details there testified 
 to I care not to write — they are too horrible. Suffice it 
 to say, that this commission reported, "It is difficult to 
 believe that beings in the form of men, disgracing the 
 uniform of United States service and officers, should 
 commit such acts of cruelty and barbarity." And of 
 Colonel Chivington, they reported, "He deliberately 
 planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre, 
 which would disgrace the veriest savage among those 
 who are the victims of his cruelty." 
 
 I care not to blister these pages with further detail of 
 the brutalities testified to before this committee for they 
 seem so unbelievable. Anyone who cares to verify the 
 report or follow the tragedy further can find it fully set 
 out in two hundred pages of Volume II, Senate Docu- 
 ments for 1866-67, or he can find the essential facts in 
 condensed form in Helen Hunt Jackson's Century of 
 Dishonor. In 1868, a commission, of which General W. 
 T. Sherman was a prominent member, also alluding to 
 this ''Sand Creek Massacre," says "It scarcely has its 
 parallel in the records of Indian barbarity ; fleeing women 
 holding up their hands and praying for mercy were shot 
 down, infants were killed and scalped in derision, men 
 tortured and mutilated in a manner that would put to 
 shame the savages of Central Africa. No one will be 
 astonished that a war ensued that cost the government 
 thirty millions of dollars and carried conflagration and 
 death into the border settlement." 
 
 When the few survivors who escaped from the "Sand 
 Creek Massacre" reached their friends and relatives, 
 or course they all, as reported by the last commission, 
 
42 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 went upon the war path. What else could they do? They 
 considered the action of Colonel Chivington and his 
 men as the act and sentiment of the whole white nation. 
 They naturally resolved that if death was their doom, 
 whether they were at war or at peace, it was better — 
 far better — to die fighting like warriors, for the life and 
 liberty of their women and children, than to be butchered 
 in a so-called peaceful encampment, with those dear ones 
 defendlessly clinging to them for aid. Who can blame 
 them ? Not I ; not you. 
 
 The Indians were wrong, certainly wrong. The "Sand 
 Creek Massacre" did not represent the feelings of the 
 white people. The curse of our race war with the Indian 
 from the time the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock 
 and the Cavaliers at Jamestown, down to and including 
 the very moment that I am writing these words, has 
 been the unjust, unsportsmanlike idea — harbored equally 
 by the white men and the red — of holding a whole race 
 of well-meaning and peaceful people responsible for the 
 acts, or accidents, of a foolish or malignant few. It is 
 this wicked idea that has marked in blood the white man's 
 progress and the Indian's retreat across our land from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Great Lakes to the 
 Gulf. It is this that has made three-fourths of our 
 wars, battles, and massacres on both sides throughout our 
 history. Strange it is that an educated, intelligent nation 
 like ourselves cannot rise above this crudity ; but it is 
 not strange that the uneducated Indian, knowing really 
 nothing of the world, should be actuated by it. 
 
 In this case the people of Colorado had suffered de- 
 predations from some Indian bands of wrong doers, and 
 this massacre was their reprisal and revenge, a revenge 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 43 
 
 inflicted, not on the guilty, but on the innocent. The 
 militia of Colorado was not, in this case, sustained by 
 the general government ; but, strange to say, our Govern- 
 ment itself, at Washington, deliberately made an equally 
 bad mistake that cost the lives of hundreds of whites, 
 and forty millions of dollars in money. 
 
 In 1857, Inkpaduta, with a band of about a dozen, 
 committed fiendish outrages at Spirit Lake, Iowa, not 
 far from where I then lived. He and his band were a 
 bad lot, outcasts from the Sioux tribe and not recognized 
 by them, and yet the Government held the whole Sioux 
 nation responsible for the outrage. It weighed nothing 
 with the Government in extenuation that these men had 
 been separated from the nation so long that they had been 
 lost sight of, both by the Sioux tribe and the Government 
 itself, and that they had been refused payment in 1856, 
 at Redwood, because they were not Sioux. It counted for 
 nothing that it was currently reported among the whites 
 where I lived — and I believe the report was true — that 
 the outbreak was almost forced upon the Indians by the 
 whites taking away their guns and leaving them in winter 
 without means to secure game to keep them from starva- 
 tion. It counted nothing that the Sioux did send out an 
 expedition that killed four of these Indians and captured 
 three, and that they tried their best to bring in all of the 
 band, but found it impossible. In spite of all this, the 
 Government held the nation responsible and stopped 
 their annuities and rations. This injustice on our part 
 had much to do with, if it was not a prime cause of, the 
 Sioux outbreak at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1862, in 
 which nearly a thousand white men, women and children 
 were killed ; millions of dollars in property destroyed ; 
 
44 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 nameless outrages committed; and which, as I said be- 
 fore, cost us forty millions of dollars to subdue. 
 
 Was our Government's treatment of these wards of 
 ours exceptional or typical? In its most brutal aspect I 
 am glad to say it was exceptional, but in its general treat- 
 ment I blush to say it was typical. As time has pro- 
 gressed and reached nearer to our present epoch, our 
 Government has grown more and more liberal and just 
 in its Indian policy ; but even within my memory Colonel 
 Henry Inman, Assistant Quartermaster U. S. A., by no 
 means an Indian-lover, was compelled to admit, "That 
 for more than a third of a century, passed on the plains 
 and in the mountains, he had never known a war with 
 hostile tribes that was not caused by broken faith on 
 the part of the United States or its agents." 
 
 I know of but two treaties made between the white 
 men and the Indians which have been kept in good faith 
 by the first party. 
 
 These were not treaties by the Government, but by 
 communities: the Quakers in Pennsylvania, and the 
 Mormons in Utah. In both of these cases, the Indians 
 proved true to the contract. 
 
 The result of these broken treaties is, that the Indian 
 has been rapidly passing even during my life time; and 
 his going is, any way it may be viewed, a tragedy. In 
 1840, at the commencement of my "One Man's Life 
 Time," the red man had not felt the devastating touch of 
 the white man west of the Mississippi River except in the 
 present state of Louisiana. Through all the valleys of 
 the Red, the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Missouri 
 Rivers, together with all the country west of the Rocky 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 45 
 
 Mountains, their tribal life had not been disturbed, and 
 their hunting grounds had not been molested. They were 
 still living a free, happy, and prosperous life as they 
 understood it ; and this method of living was largely true 
 even as late as i860, when I traveled among them on the 
 western plains. East of the Mississippi River, all north 
 of Chicago and west of Lake Michigan, and also in some 
 other places the Indians were practically in the same 
 condition. 
 
 How many Indians there were in the United States 
 originally nobody knows with any degree of certainty; 
 how many there were here at the commencement of my 
 life-time is a riddle that cannot be definitely solved. The 
 Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company in a "Red 
 Book," containing statistics touching the country it cov- 
 ers and controls, says, "At some time near the upper Mis- 
 sissippi valley, comprising one-ninth of the United States, 
 there were five hundred thousand Indians, now not forty- 
 eight thousand." This being correct, there must have 
 been "at some time" no less than three million in the 
 United States. "How are the mighty fallen !" These 
 supposed three million souls, by the more or less direct 
 result of contact with the white man, his civilization, his 
 broken treaties, his diseases, his whiskey and gun powder, 
 are now reduced to less than three hundred thousand as 
 shown by the census of 19 10. 
 
 Even this number is ethnologically too large, for the 
 Government calls one an Indian who has any Indian 
 blood in his veins. At the White Earth Agency of the 
 Chippewa Indians in the summer of 1918, I found their 
 official list of names of the tribe separated into full bloods 
 and mixed bloods. There were twice as many pages of 
 
46 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the latter as there were of the former ; and the same year, 
 at the Sisseton Agency of the Sioux, they told me there 
 were probably not forty full-blood Sioux in the four 
 thousand registered as belonging to the tribe. All this 
 being true, it is probable that the pure-blood Indians in 
 the United States today are the smaller part of the num- 
 ber stated. The Indians, not only as a tribe, but as in- 
 dividuals, physically and ethnologically, are not only dy- 
 ing out, but also fading out. Thus it becomes very 
 apparent that when the government or anyone else talks 
 about the Indian increasing in number, the increase so 
 mentioned may be, and doubtless is, largely of those 
 who are nearly, if not quite, as white in color as we are. 
 
 This estimate mentioned may be too large, or too 
 small ; it may be based upon facts exaggerated, or mini- 
 mized. But the great truth stands, unchallenged and 
 undebatable, that the Indian, throughout more than half 
 of our country, as an Indian in his free, self-reliant and 
 self-sustaining tribal character, has, during my life time, 
 perished forever from the United States. 
 
 Some of the three hundred thousand of his descend- 
 ants and quasi-descendants today are the richest people 
 per capita in the world; many of them individually start 
 out on a new life and make good in their chosen profes- 
 sion. But the greater part of these broken tribes, with 
 their hunting grounds gone and their former life rendered 
 impossible, find it hard to take up the white man's 
 burdens, and are living an indolent, dependent, object- 
 less life, without purpose, without hope, without future 
 outlook. These pitiful remnants of a once mighty people 
 have hardly preserved enough of their ancient personal- 
 ity, habits, customs, clothing, and surroundings, to exhibit 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 47 
 
 or even suggest the brave, defiant warrior, the tireless 
 hunter, the generous host, the patriot who felt it a joy 
 to sacrifice himself for his tribe, and the self-reliant, self- 
 sufficient people and such as all early explorers and 
 unbiased travelers unanimously testify the American In- 
 dian once was. 
 
 I can imagine some one laying down this book and 
 saying, "This writer • is an Eastern sentimentalist, who 
 has been carried away by the feathers, beads and paint of 
 the Indian, and is stating things he knows nothing of." 
 Whatever else I may be, I am not an Eastern sentimen- 
 talist: I have spent all my active life upon our Western 
 border; I am a Western observationist, and what I have 
 personally known and experienced concerning the red 
 man and the manner in which he has been treated by our 
 Government fully agrees with that of Bishop Whipple of 
 Minnesota. Of all men, no one had better opportunity to 
 know the inside facts of which he wrote or possessed a 
 more honest heart and fearless courage to tell what he 
 knew. Hear what he wrote: "The Indian Bureau" (at 
 Washington) "represents a system that is a blunder and 
 a crime." "It is to be doubted whether one single treaty" 
 (with the Indians) "was ever fulfilled as it would have 
 been if made with a foreign power, which is equivalent 
 to saying they were not fulfilled at all. Pledges solemnly 
 made have been ruthlessly broken." "The North Ameri- 
 can Indian is the noblest heathen man on earth ; he is brave 
 and fearless, quick of intellect, a clear thinker and, until 
 betrayed, true to his plighted faith ; he is passionately 
 fond of children, and counts it a joy to die for his 
 people." I also have found that what Captain Carver, 
 who traveled among the Indians as early as 1766, says 
 
48 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 of them at that time, was practically true of the blanket 
 Indians of the West, when I visited them in i860. . He 
 says they were "temperate in their mode of living, pa- 
 tient of hunger and fatigue, social and humane to all 
 •whom they looked upon as friends, and ready to share 
 with them the last morsel of food they possessed and to 
 expose their lives in their defense. They possessed an 
 attachment for their tribe unknown to inhabitants of any 
 other country, combining as if actuated by one soul 
 against the common enemy. Never swayed in their 
 councils by selfish or party views, but sacrificing every- 
 thing to the honor and advantage of their tribe, in sup- 
 port of which they fear no danger and are affected by no 
 suffering." 
 
 I might fill the remainder of my book with quotations 
 from travelers among the Indians in primitive time; also 
 from what early traders, government subsistence agents, 
 and inspectors who have rationed and overlooked them 
 say, and even from what officers who have fought them 
 testify — all sustaining and maintaining what I have 
 written. Further proof seems needless repetition. 
 
 I am fully aware of the current saying and opinion, 
 credited to General Sheridan, that "the only good Indian 
 is a dead Indian" ; I also know the usual opinion that 
 he is a lying, treaty-breaking, murdering, scalping savage. 
 He tells lies? Yes, I suppose we all do, and in his deal- 
 ings with us he has received some wonderfully effective 
 lessons in that noble art, but the word and honor of a 
 primitive Indian was as high as that of Damon and 
 Pythias. Then one who told an untruth found it nearly 
 impossible to reinstate himself in his tribe; and it was no 
 anomaly in the old Indian history for him to report him- 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 49 
 
 self for death voluntarily, as the three Cayuse Indian 
 chiefs did to General Lane in Oregon in 1848; as the 
 three Sacs did to General Scott at Rock Island in 1832 ; 
 and as the two indicted for the murder of the Beresford 
 family did to Sheriff Walker at Ottawa, Illinois, after 
 the Blackhawk war. Even as late as twenty years ago, 
 it was reported, and truly, as I believe (because I have 
 had verification of the story from Indian sources), that 
 a baseball player in the Indian territory was condemned 
 to death, but was permitted on his word of honor to 
 complete the series of games of his league. This done 
 he reported to the sheriff. All these men, reported for 
 supposed death, simply on their word of honor; and not 
 one of them had a Damon pawned in dungeon to compel 
 such surrender. 
 
 Treaty-breaking? No! I have yet to hear of a treaty 
 he has broken before the whites had shattered it beyond 
 repair. 
 
 Murderer? I deeply regret to admit that he is, but I 
 more deeply regret that the Sand Creek is not our only 
 slaughter of the red men, and that for every atrocity of 
 the red men committed upon us, there are — to our shame 
 — on record in the white man's history, as many or more 
 of ours committed on him. 
 
 Brutal scalper? Yes, but in old times, I understand, 
 only one scalp was taken by the victorious war party as 
 a symbolic trophy, and that one was treated with respect 
 and buried with honor. It was not until the colonial 
 governors offered cash bounties for Indian scalps 
 that scalp-hunting vigorously began, the whites taking a 
 prominent part therein. 
 
50 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Indian, at times and as an individual, has broken 
 every command of the decalogue, and has committed 
 every crime imaginable in' his dealings with us, and so 
 have we sinned in our dealings with him. That ought 
 to be a standoff. Let us now, sportsmanlike, give our 
 enemy credit for the good there is in him. We have 
 taken from him the most beautiful country on earth, a 
 country that, by our treaties, we have over and over again 
 admitted was his. We have ruined his hunting ground; 
 we have slaughtered his game; we have destroyed his 
 tribal relations ; we have imprisoned him upon reserva- 
 tions that were far from the home he loved, and away 
 from the graves of his ancestors, and in surroundings 
 that he, many times, hated; we have given him our 
 whiskey, our diseases, our immoralities, and now let us 
 not, needlessly rob him oif the good name and memory 
 of the virtues he once possessed. 
 
 Why has the Indian so vanished before the white 
 man ? It was inevitable ; it could not be helped. The re- 
 sistless law of progress needed his hunting ground for 
 cities, and towns, and civilized life. No supplication, no 
 pleading, no argument, no force would stop its onward 
 flow. When you reach the great underlying fact, you 
 will find that it was a war of races ; and that knowingly 
 or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, it also became 
 a war of extinction, Our forefathers seemed to so 
 understand it, for where are the tribes of Powhatan in 
 Virginia and of King Philip in Massachusetts? If it 
 were not so, why should the old colonial governors offer 
 bounties for scalps? Why should the peaceable, Chris- 
 tian, Moravian Indians have been butchered while at 
 prayer, with no one daring to say a word of protest ex- 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 51 
 
 cept the Quakers? And why should the old time 
 Episcopalian and Presbyterian preachers both believe 
 and preach, like the Israelites of old, that it was their 
 bounden duty to kill, root and branch, the heathen and 
 Canaanite, as they called the Indian? 
 
 Yes, it was a war of races, the strong against the 
 weak, and in such war, the weak must go to the wall. 
 If in the desperation of defeat and disaster the defeated 
 one, like Shylock, shall say to the white man, "The vil- 
 lainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard 
 but I will better the instruction," who shall blame him? 
 Then when death and the extinction of his tribe faced 
 the Indian, he did as you would, as I should, and as we 
 all ought to have done, if matters were reversed, and the 
 Indians were the aggressors and the white men the de- 
 fenders : they went upon the warpath and there fought 
 bravely — how bravely, space in this book will not permit 
 me to tell. 
 
 I blame not my country, nor my ancestors. I try to 
 be a one hundred per cent American. My forefathers 
 fought in the Colonial wars and in the Revolution, as 
 I did in the Civil War, and as I am now voluntarily 
 under call to do what I can in the World War. My 
 people have treated the Indians badly, but the greater 
 part of that treatment was a necessity. You or I could 
 probably have done no better — might have done worse. 
 The Indian has done what his Great Mystery bade him ; 
 he has, to his last and his best, fought for his land, his 
 fathers' graves, his wife and his children, and we, all 
 of us, would despise him had he not done so. There 
 let the issue rest until the great Hereafter shall try the 
 cause, and just judgment render. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 
52 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE "GREAT AMERICAN DESERT" 
 
 When the Indians had dispersed, after their council, I 
 resumed my way down the Arkansas River. Oh, the 
 glory of that ride! Think of it : I had youth, my ponies 
 at my command to carry me where I would and when 
 I would, thousands of miles of uninhabited land for my 
 kingdom, over whose plains I could gallop at will or by 
 whose streams I could linger at pleasure; with herds of 
 buffalo in each valley, with bands of antelope on each 
 hill, and the "yap-yap" of the countless prairie dogs cal- 
 ling, "Hail brother." Even the howl of the large gray 
 wolf at night was a greeting, and the "yip~yip y-e-ah" of 
 the coyote was a welcome. What more could a boy ask? 
 My old blood of more than four score years leaps again 
 at memory of it. 
 
 I was in love with life on the plains. I should have 
 been more than welcome in either of the Indian nations 
 at Bent's Fort, for I possessed some of the white man's 
 knowledge which they greatly wanted ; I had no ties that 
 called me back to the States, and I have since wondered 
 how I escaped remaining in that wild country. 
 
 I think likely I would have remained, but for one 
 man. He was one of the scouts who took Fremont 
 through the Rocky Mountains, and was a genuine speci- 
 men of that class of men of which I told you once I was 
 an imitation — a Western scout and trapper. He was then 
 an old, feeble, decrepit man. His left arm had been 
 broken by a bullet. It had healed without proper setting 
 and was stiff and distorted, but he could raise it enough 
 to steady his rifle ; he was still a dead shot. I met him in 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 53 
 
 the hostile Comanche country about three days before I 
 reached Bent's Fort. He was, like myself, traveling with 
 two ponies, and we rode and camped together until we 
 reached the point mentioned. 
 
 The old man seemed to take a fatherly interest in 
 me, and, as soon as he found that I had education and 
 experience enough to take care of myself in civilized life, 
 insisted that I return immediately to the States. He 
 urged this, with many reasons, until I promised to com- 
 ply. To get this promise from me, he broke through 
 the stoic reserve of the plainsman and confidentially 
 told me his story. He belonged to one of the best known 
 and respected families of St. Louis. He went on the 
 plains about my age and stayed too long; so long, that 
 when he did return, it was too late : he could not adapt 
 himself to civilized life, and, what was worse, did not 
 want to. 
 
 He again went West to live and die in the land he 
 loved. He had a grown family in a tribe of Indians, 
 but any one of his grown boys, he said, would shoot 
 him on sight. He could not go to his Indian home, he 
 would not go to his white one. He was too proud to 
 impose upon a stranger, and told me he would range 
 the plains and mountains, trapping as he could, scouting 
 when he might, until he died in some lone camp and the 
 wolves picked his bones — unless someone found them 
 sooner and buried them. 
 
 He would not tell me why his sons were so hostile, 
 but years after, in reading an account of the Fremont 
 expedition, I came across a bit of his life that solved the 
 riddle. His act was that of a man crazed with whiskey, 
 and I could not blame his tribe for the deadly hatred in 
 
54 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 which they held him. Yet sinner that he was, I still 
 thank him for his unselfish act in baring his lone life for 
 my benefit. Although I know well that his condition 
 was the result of his own folly, still the thought of my 
 promise to that old, broken man, waiting to die alone, 
 always remained between me and my thought of follow- 
 ing his footsteps. 
 
 But there was one draw-back to my complete pleasure 
 in this glorious ride across the primitive plains. That 
 was the red man. I was now among friendly and neutral 
 tribes ; there was no danger to my life ; no Indian could 
 gain an eagle's feather by taking my scalp or counting a 
 coup on my body. Should he kill me and claim such 
 reward of his council, they would not grant it to him, but 
 would probably punish him for needlessly embroiling his 
 tribe in war. Therefore, my person was safe, but one 
 might just as well be killed and scalped as left on the 
 plains without ponies and provisions. 
 
 An Indian was not supposed to marry until he had 
 changed his child name to one gained by himself from 
 some noted deed he had done. The principal way to 
 such honor was the hunting trail and the war path. To 
 kill me would bring no honor, but to raid my camp, in 
 their view, was a different matter, and if worthily and 
 skillfully done, might bring distinction to some young 
 man, giving him a name among his tribe, and permitting 
 him to marry the maid he, perhaps, had long loved. In 
 every tribe through which I might pass were many young 
 men eager for such advancement, and even though I was 
 a friend of the Indian, I did not care to graduate him 
 in the only university his tribe possessed by the loss of 
 my ponies. Given my way about it, I should prefer he 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 55 
 
 would remain unknown and unmarried forever rather 
 than to assist him in that way. In this case, as in many 
 before, for aid and support I relied upon Beauty, brave, 
 faithful Beauty — my first love. 
 
 That reminds me, you have not been introduced to my 
 two traveling companions. This must be done. Permit 
 me to introduce Bob and Beauty. Bob was an ordinary 
 Indian pony; he did not know much — scarcely as much 
 as I did when it came to an ultimate show down ; but he 
 had two virtues that made him invaluable to me as a 
 pack pony: he was afraid to be alone, and he, like myself, 
 loved Beauty. Turned loose with his pack in the morn- 
 ing, where Beauty and I should go, he would follow. 
 No forest was so dark and tangled, no path on the preci- 
 pice so steep or dangerous, no trail so long, no desert so 
 drear, but he was near us, and the greater the danger the 
 closer he came. 
 
 But Beauty — how shall I describe her? She had the 
 far-reaching eye of the eagle, the alertness and spright- 
 liness of the deer, the speed of the antelope, the affection 
 and fidelity of the dog, and the beauty of a glorious 
 woman. She must have had much gentle blood in her 
 veins. I more than half suspect she had been stolen ; the 
 low price asked for her, the fact that such low price was 
 further cheapened when it was made known that I was 
 leaving immediately for the States, and her apparent 
 aversion to the man who claimed to be her owner, were 
 all suspicious facts. But it was a case of "love at first 
 sight" with me, and the fear of being accessory after the 
 fact in a case of grand larcency had no terrors for me if 
 I could only call her mine. 
 
 Unlike Bob, Beauty had brains and knew how to use 
 
56 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 them. Without joking, of the three of us, she was in 
 many ways the best plains-man ; of some things she knew 
 more than Bob and I both, and experience had taught us 
 to let her have her way therein. But one day our wills 
 crossed, and I shall never forget the conflict, my defeat, 
 her victory, and the final result eminently satisfactory to 
 us both. Before this when in need of provisions, I had 
 killed buffalo by still-hunting, but had never attempted 
 to run them on horseback ; that was a new thing to me, 
 but before the day was out, I found it was an old game 
 for Beauty. I knew something of the danger and to pro- 
 vide against it had cinched Beauty's saddle tight and 
 drawn up the curb strap of her bridle so that I had full 
 command of her motions. To my surprise, when we 
 reached the herd of buffalo, she would not go near them. 
 I coaxed, there was no compliance ; I commanded, there 
 was no obedience ; I chastised to her, and there was such 
 spirited resistance that I should have been stretched 
 upon the ground had I not been a fairly decent horseman. 
 I dismounted to investigate — there was no mistaking her 
 eye, it was not wicked or obstinate; it was pleading and 
 anxious. I remembered the time when crossing a river 
 she absolutely refused to go where I wanted her, but 
 when given her head she safely picked her way over. 
 She knew the look of quicksand ; I had not noticed it. 
 Something of that kind was the matter now, and the 
 poor beastie could not talk and tell me what it was. 
 
 Finally I had sense enough to guess the trouble. She 
 was afraid to go in among the dangerous horns of a 
 furious buffalo herd unless she was given her head, free 
 to dodge wherever and whenever need appeared. With 
 much misgiving I risked my guess. I stripped her clean, 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 57 
 
 save for lariat looped around her lower jaw, Indian 
 fashion. I left saddle and blanket and bridle on the 
 ground, and mounted her. I had no more than touched 
 her bare neck when she was off like a falcon after its 
 quarry; she taught me that day how to run buffalo. 
 
 The trick for the horse to perform in this case is to 
 place its rider along side of the buffalo, just behind his 
 left shoulder, and never to pass that point; should it be 
 done, a mad bull would be likely to wheel and thrust his 
 horns into the flanks of his passing antagonist, and the 
 horse and not the buffalo would be killed. I saw an inex- 
 perienced traveler lose the best horse in his team, trying 
 to run buffalo and not observing this precaution. 
 
 The trained pony, the moment the shot is fired, halts 
 in his course or whirls to the left before the bull has time 
 to make his counter attack ; the alert horse can tell when 
 and how this should be done better than his rider. Have 
 you ever seen a little king bird drive a great hawk away 
 from too close proximity to his nest? There is a dash 
 and a stroke in the rear, a dash and a stroke at the side, 
 but never in front where the beak and the talons of the 
 great bird work. Such is the movement of the buffalo 
 pony after his game. Such attack demands quick move- 
 ment for the horse and sure seat for the rider, or they 
 will terminate the hunt by measuring their lengths upon 
 the ground, perhaps beneath the hoofs of a frightened 
 herd. 
 
 This accounts for the fact that Beauty would risk 
 herself, and me, with only a lariat in her mouth, Indian 
 fashion, but would not go while under my control with 
 a bridle. With the first I could communicate only my 
 wishes to her, but could not prevent her from doubling 
 
58 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and dodging whenever she wished. Buffalo Bill had a 
 favorite horse from which he always took the bridle, then 
 gave freedom when running the game that gave him his 
 name. 
 
 Such a horse was Beauty, and upon such a four- 
 footed chum I must rely to protect ourselves from 
 marauding Indians during night time. All traveling 
 trains were compelled to guard their camps by sleepless 
 sentinels. I must do the same or attach myself to some 
 train for protection, or camp and run as I did in the 
 hostile country. I had exhausted all the fun there was 
 in the latter method ; I did not care to adopt the former, 
 because my ponies secured better feed and I maintained 
 my glorious independence while alone ; therefore, I con- 
 cluded to mobilize my own forces. 
 
 As Bob was a "dumb-head" he was of no use in this 
 emergency, and so it left only Beauty and me to guard 
 camp. I believed we could do it. She slept little nights 
 (that was her feeding time), and she wakened easily. 
 She hated an Indian, and naturally a wolf, and would 
 stamp and snort her indignation at the near approach of 
 either. My tactics at night were as follows : I would 
 lay my buffalo robe, fur up, on some grassy spot — this 
 for the fourfold purpose of warmth, of protection from 
 possible dampness, to guard against the ever-present 
 needles of the cacti, and lastly, as a shield against the 
 rattlesnake that never crawls over animal hair. My saddle 
 was my pillow, and I placed it at the head of the robe, 
 and there drove my picket pin; to this was attached a 
 fifty foot lariat, and at the other end of the same, by a 
 protected loop around her neck, Beauty was secured. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 59 
 
 There, with only my blankets and the sky above for cov- 
 ering, I slept, while Beauty grazed around and over me. 
 
 I was sure that neither Indian nor wolf could ap- 
 proach our camp without the stamping and snorting of 
 Beauty awakening me ; therefore we were safe, unless 
 some one should crawl into camp when she and I both 
 were asleep at the same time — a very rare moment. This 
 was a danger so remote that to consider all such hazards 
 would make life unbearable. . 
 
 My order of campaign worked well for several weeks, 
 and then one night I was suddenly awakened. Some- 
 thing had happened ; I could not hear Beauty. I reached 
 for the lariat and pulled in about twenty feet of it. I 
 found it broken ; my pony was gone. The end of the 
 lariat was not ragged or lacerated ; therefore neither 
 wolf nor accident had parted it. It was cut smooth with a 
 knife — the "almost impossible" had happened ; Beauty 
 and I had both been asleep, and an Indian had raided us. 
 
 My first thought upon springing to my feet was one of 
 panic. I was here in the center of the then-called "Great 
 American Desert," without ponies, and I might as well be 
 scalped and buried. My second thought was to use the 
 Indian silence method. I sat down to think the matter 
 out. An Indian had certainly cut my pony loose, but 
 had he caught her? I knew her well enough to under- 
 stand that with only a stopped lariat loose around her 
 neck, no Indian could handle her or mount her without a 
 fight, and even if he had succeeded in mounting her, he 
 would have to be an A No. I crack rider, or she would 
 string his length across the prairie sod. There had been 
 no such struggle or I should have wakened in time to 
 take part in it. The chances were that the cutting of the 
 
60 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 lariat had awakened the mare and that her first spring 
 had jerked the rope from the Indian's hand. This start 
 of Beauty was what awakened me. If this was the case, 
 she would not run farther than her first scare took her, 
 and then would commence working back to camp. But 
 I must find her before daylight, for if the raider had 
 another horse and a lasso he might still catch her. 
 
 I had no fear of the Indian should I run across him. 
 He would probably meet with a "How," I should likely 
 get my ponies back if he still had them, and we should 
 most likely part friends. I commenced circling farther 
 and farther around the camp, occasionally placing my ear 
 to the ground. Hunters and plainsmen know that the 
 ground is a pretty good telephone ; one can hear an animal 
 grazing a long distance away. After several hours of 
 such circling and listening, my ear often close to the 
 ground, I heard, away off, the crop, crop, crop of some 
 animal feeding, I carefully worked up nearer, then I 
 softly whistled and called, "Beauty!" A whinny ans- 
 wered me. The next moment I was hugging her neck 
 with Bob standing by to witness the mutually joyful 
 reunion. 
 
 Now that my scheme of camp protection had been 
 shattered, what should I do? I remembered a story 
 extant in the west, corroborated by what I had learned at 
 Bent's Fort, which is, as lawyers say, so on "all fours" 
 with this situation that I must here repeat it although the 
 yarn is hoary with age. As the story goes, a commis- 
 sioner was sent by the government to some western tribe 
 of Indians. He had a very fine beaver overcoat, and the 
 day being warm, he asked a chief where he could leave 
 it so that it would be safe. This was a strange question to 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 61 
 
 ask in an Indian village, although the commissioner did 
 not know it. The chief haughtily replied, "Leave it any- 
 where; other than yourself there is not a white man with- 
 in five hundred miles." Now, I know not, and I care 
 not, whether this story was true or fictitious; but I do 
 know and I do care that the great fact, so far as the 
 safety of the overcoat was concerned, would have been 
 true in old time in any camp of our western tribes, even 
 though the guest had been an obscure stranger, and not a 
 representative of the government. 
 
 This being a fact, why not throw myself upon the 
 red man's hospitality? I did this and found no further 
 trouble. You may care to know how I managed it. When 
 I was within reasonable distance of an Indian town that 
 was fairly accessible, I made the ride, went openly into 
 the camp, unsaddled my ponies, and left my property 
 wherever I cared to. While there were things among my 
 kit which an Indian of that time cared more for than 
 bags of gold, I felt that, although among so-called "thiev- 
 ing, treacherous, murdering, scalping savages," I and my 
 property were as safe as though I were in some city hotel 
 and my property locked in a safety deposit vault. 
 
 I can imagine circumstances where, by thus riding 
 into an Indian camp, one might lose his life and scalp in 
 ten minutes. But entry having been made; and the rela- 
 tion of host and guest being established, the guest and his 
 property were safe, even to the extent of the warriors of 
 the tribe having to fight for his protection. I never lost a 
 thing. I never missed a thing but once. I had a small, 
 sharp, camping ax, something that an Indian of that 
 time would prize more than a white man would a farm. 
 One morning when I saddled up, it was gone. I went' to 
 
62 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the chief and made him understand what was missing. 
 Just imagine what would happen in a white man's town 
 should a stranger passing through make such a complaint 
 to the mayor. His Honor would refer him to the chief 
 of police, and he to some lieutenant or sergeant who 
 would make some due record of the same, and you would 
 be lucky if he did not require you, as a transient traveler, 
 to put up bail to appear at the prosecution if the thief 
 should be caught. There was no such circumlocution in 
 my case in the Indian town. In less than ten minutes 
 the commotion was such that you would have thought a 
 cyclone had struck the camp, and in less than half an 
 hour my ax was returned. A little eight-year-old papoose 
 had carried it off. 
 
 One thing on this trip saddened me : it was the ruth- 
 less destruction that my people were committing in this 
 land. I will let Santanta, a Kiowa chief, pleading before 
 a United States commission, just before the Sand Creek 
 massacre, tell the tale : "I have no desire to kill the white 
 settlers or immigrants crossing the plains, but those who 
 come and live upon the land of my tribe ruthlessly 
 slaughter the buffalo, allowing the carcasses to rot upon 
 the prairie, killing merely for the amusement it affords 
 them, while the Indian only kills when necessity de- 
 mands. White hunters set fire, destroying the grass and 
 causing the tribe's horses to die of starvation as well as 
 the buffalo. They cut and otherwise destroy timber on 
 the margins of the streams, making large fires of it, while 
 the Indian is satisfied to cook his food with a few dry 
 and dead limbs. Only the other day, I picked up on the 
 trail a little switch, and it made my heart sick to think 
 that the green branch torn out of the ground, and thought- 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 63 
 
 lessly destroyed by some white man would in time have 
 grown into a stately tree for the use and benefit of my 
 children and children's children." 
 
 Santanta was right : the destruction was appalling. I 
 feel thankful that before I went upon the plains I had 
 already learned that it is wicked to take any life without 
 need or cause, and that, having spent the winter prece- 
 ding my trip at work in the timber, I had so tired of an 
 ax handle that I would not touch one unless absolutely 
 compelled to. Some conception of the slaughter of the 
 buffalo may be had from the number of skeletons left 
 upon the plains. Inman, in his "Santa Fe Trail," tells 
 us that according to carefully compiled statistics there 
 was paid for the bones of these skeletons during the 
 years 1868-1881, in Kansas alone, the sum of two million 
 five hundred thousand dollars. At the prices and weights 
 which he gives it must have taken millions of skeletons 
 to produce the tonnage. Nine-tenths of these animals were 
 killed for fun, or for their tongues, or for their robes, or 
 for sheer deviltry. 
 
 From Bent's Fort to the outskirts of white settlements 
 in the then territory of Kansas, over five hundred miles, 
 I found not a single dwelling or sign of civilized improve- 
 ments between the two places save only the many and 
 deeply marked tracks of the Santa Fe Trail. How many 
 more miles the windings of the trail compelled me to go, 
 I know not, or how much I lengthened the distance by 
 side trips for game, pleasure, or sight-seeing, I cared not 
 then nor care I now. Between the mesa lands of New 
 Mexico and the waters of the Missouri River the whole 
 summer passed away, never to be forgotten, but always 
 
64 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 to be remembered in the years of strenuous work that 
 followed, as a prolonged, life-giving, glorious holiday. 
 
 I have since, again and again, made trips over the 
 same country, not on horse-back and alone, but on luxur- 
 ious trains in a Pullman car. The journey that then took 
 me all summer to make is now rushed through in twenty- 
 four hours. In place of sleeping beneath the stars in 
 God's free outdoors, I am crammed into a berth four by 
 four by seven feet, so small and so close as to make me 
 dream of the chamber I soon expect to have assigned for 
 my final rest. 
 
 Then, for nearly a thousand miles of the distance, 
 there was a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and 
 wandering tribes ; the only signs of civilization being a 
 fort or trading station once in several hundred miles or 
 so, and occasionally, on the trail, a long train outward or 
 inward bound ; sometimes a lone hunter or trapper ap- 
 peared, and at times a straggling line of gold-seekers — 
 simply these and nothing more. Now we pass in endless 
 and constant succession, cities, towns, villages, farms, 
 and factories. The wilderness that was, has given way 
 to civilization and busy life, and the West as I knew it in 
 my young manhood has gone forever. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 
 
 65 
 
 "Kiva" of Pueblo Indians 
 
 Place for Heathen Worship. Only the Entrance is shown, 
 
 The Temple is below the ground and reached by ladder 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PUEBLO AND MAYA INDIANS 
 
 In our far Southwest resides an Indian who is an 
 anomaly of the race. He lives in a pueblo, tills the 
 ground, and is not dying out like his wandering, hunting 
 brothers of the North and East. His deviation from the 
 tribes that we have been describing is so great in history, 
 in habits, in condition, and I found his surroundings so 
 interesting when I visited his home, that I care not to 
 drop this subject without mentioning something of him 
 and his life. 
 
 Many writers claim that the Pueblo Indian is living 
 the same life that his ancestors did, perhaps two thousand 
 years ago, and that during all these years he has not 
 
66 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 changed. One such enthusiastic writer said that these 
 people were so self-sufficient and self-secluded that, 
 "were the whole earth swept bare of everything except a 
 few leagues around their tribal home, their life would 
 show little disturbance ; probably some time would elapse 
 before they even heard of the event." This statement is 
 wrong: I know something of this people; I have visited 
 their pueblos ; I have entered their great community 
 buildings, enjoyed the hospitality of their owners, and 
 stood on the walls that rear themselves story over story 
 and built without outer openings of any kind. The win- 
 dows and doors of these curious structures were formerly 
 in the roof, and access thereto was had by rickety pole 
 ladders which, in old war times, were let down in the 
 morning and withdrawn to the roof at night. I have 
 often thought what a lively contest it would be should the 
 persistent enemy the Pueblo feared, attempt to mount 
 those ladders in face of a stubborn defense ; it would be a 
 conflict worth seeing — from the distance. In these great 
 houses, in old times, the whole community once lived, 
 traveling daily from them perhaps a score of miles to 
 cultivate its crops. 
 
 The Pueblo Indian is the great conservative of his 
 race, yet what these enthusiastic writers say of him as 
 not changing is true only in a limited degree. Notwith- 
 standing asertions to the contrary, I found him progres- 
 sing. During my lifetime, he has knocked openings for 
 doors and windows in the walls of his ancient houses, so 
 that he uses his ladders for other purposes than means of 
 entrance. He is now building one-story homes, more com- 
 fortable and convenient than the old ones, and placing 
 them in scattered locations near his farm work. He is 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 67 
 
 now using our new farm machinery and means of trans- 
 portation including' even the automobile. He and his 
 wife patronize the trader's store, and the question most 
 frequently asked of me in the Pueblo was, "How is the 
 war in Europe getting along?" That the Pueblo Indian 
 has been surprisingly conservative, and has changed as 
 little as possible, is a fact, but there are only nine thou- 
 sand of him, and what he has done or has not done 
 touches not nor affects the great mass of the Indians of 
 the United States of whom I have been talking. 
 
 The Pueblo Indian character is, however, so unique, 
 and his history, what we know of it, so interesting, that 
 it well deserves mention. His contact with the white man 
 began in 1540, when Antianco de Mendoza was governing 
 Mexico City and territory. Among his military forces 
 were some of the fierce Spaniards of Cortez' old com- 
 mand, with others, who, having no more enemies there 
 to fight, were quarreling among themselves. To rid him- 
 self of these turbulent men he ordered Francisco Vasquez 
 de Coronado to take the whole organization on an expedi- 
 tion to the northeast, and never to bring them back. These 
 men, with some priests, subdued the Pueblos and natives 
 of Arizona and New Mexico by artifice, diplomacy, and 
 battle, and penetrated in search of Quivira (a reported 
 city of much gold) to near where Kansas City now is. 
 There the hoax exploded, so far as the expedition was 
 concerned, and the deceitful guide was killed. 
 
 How the Pueblos liked the rule of these men is proved 
 by the revolution of 1680, when they did what I suspect 
 they would like to do today. Unexpectedly and simul- 
 taneously they arose, wiped the land clean of the white 
 men, butchered the priests at their altars, and made it a 
 
68 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 crime for an Indian to confess or profess the Christian 
 religion. Had they remained true to one another, the 
 Spaniard would never have reconquered them, but they 
 quarreled among themselves, and fourteen years later 
 Deigo de Varges, the Reconquestador, again reduced 
 them to submission. Ever since this time they have been 
 under Spanish or American rule. 
 
 As I understand it, and as I found it to be, the Pueblo 
 Indians were not so self-sustaining, self-sufficient, ex- 
 clusive, or separate a people as some writers would make 
 them. The fact seems to be, from all we know of this 
 Indian, that he now is, and always has been a born trader, 
 and a trader, must of necessity be more or less of a 
 mixer. In old times he made traffic even with his ancient 
 enemies, the Apaches and Navajos, and as most any 
 
 Indian Exhibit at Station in Albuqueque 
 Trading Squaws Meet Every Train 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 69 
 
 tourist through their land today can testify, they have 
 not yet forgotten their cunning either as salesmen or 
 manufacturers. At every station in their land will be 
 found Indian traders with their wares soliciting patron- 
 age, and in neighboring towns their manufactures are the 
 most prominent on sale. 
 
 So keen were the old Pueblos for trade that many 
 were destroyed when, in their cupility for traffic, they 
 opened their doors to the savages who came pretending 
 a desire for trade, but after entering remained to 
 slaughter. 
 
 Of course, such a born trader as this would know 
 immediately what to do when the white merchant set up 
 his store in the vicinity of his community, and I always 
 found near every Pueblo I visited ? large flourishing store, 
 so well-filled that even a white family would not suffer 
 if limited to its contents. The path between the Indian 
 community houses and the trader's store is kept well 
 trodden by men, women, and children, and, as with us, 
 the women are the most persistent patrons. While they 
 cling most tenaciously to their tribal dress, I fear the ma- 
 terials of which it is made come largely from the trader's 
 shelves. Do not think for a moment that the trading 
 squaw can be deceived in the difference between silk and 
 near-silk, or between cotton and wool fabrics. She loves 
 the better goods quite as well as her white sister, and 
 will be quite as patient, persistent, and resourceful in 
 procuring them. 
 
 Since the traders came to the Pueblo Indian's door, 
 he, like his white brother, has commenced specializing his 
 industries. The men specialize in silver trinkets and 
 
70 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 farming; the women in basketry, pottery, and blanket- 
 weaving, but they have woefully changed their manufac- 
 ture of the last. When one asks for a Navajo blanket 
 today, there will be shown a thick, heavy rug, fit only to 
 place on the floor, or, at most, on top of a bed, a blanket 
 which they detest and which they call us fools for buy- 
 ing. Seldom, now, can one find that old, comfortable, 
 light garment that would protect one's person in a storm 
 and comfort one's body in sleep. When I traveled the 
 plains in the Fifties, a Navajo blanket was a beautiful 
 and light article of clothing, that one could wrap delight- 
 fully about his body, and it was so closely woven that no 
 wind could penetrate it nor water pass through it. One 
 of its chief purposes was to use, when properly folded, as 
 
 Where I was Entertained for Dinner 
 DILL OF FARE: 
 
 Came con papa Pan con mantiquella 
 
 Frijoles pasada por agua Huevos fritos 
 
 Cafe con leche e azucar 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 71 
 
 a bucket to water one's ponies when a man found water 
 the ponies could not reach. I asked a trader what had 
 become of these magnificient blankets. He said the In- 
 dians had stopped making them because "the trade" de- 
 manded the rug variety. He then took me into a separate 
 room where I saw some of my old friends displayed at 
 three hundred and fifty dollars each. They had ceased 
 to be an article of trade : they had become curios. 
 
 The Pueblo Indian, to maintain his trading propensity, 
 possesses three different currencies and three different 
 languages : Spanish, American, and Indian. If anyone 
 thinks the Indian does not understand the value of the 
 first two currencies, let him try short-changing him to be 
 convinced of his error ; and if a tourist tries trading with 
 him in the third currency of shells, turquoise, and Indian 
 trinkets, his good spirit must certainly protect him, or he 
 will be cheated out of his eye-teeth. 
 
 Not only does the Pueblo Indian have currency and 
 language in triplicate, but he also has more things in dupli- 
 cate than we would imagine. He has two religions : his 
 own pagan multiplicity of gods, and a thin veneer of 
 Catholicism that the priests have added thereto. I was 
 told at the Indian Pueblo of Laguna that the Catholic 
 priest there said that the Indians were "good Catholics in 
 the cathedrals on Sunday, but heathen all the rest of the 
 week." They have two marriages : one solemnized in the 
 cathedral and blessed by the priest, and the other made in 
 pagan form. 
 
 He also has two names : his Catholic baptismal name 
 and the one his Indian god-father gave him at some In- 
 dian feast, the latter being known only to his tribe and 
 friends. The womanly woman who posed for the pic- 
 
72 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tures on the opposite page, when I said to her, 
 "What is your Indian name?'' looked at me as though she 
 would know whether or not I would misuse her con- 
 fidence, but finally gave it to me. I cannot violate that 
 confidence and pass it along to you ; suffice it to say that it 
 was as musical and soft as the ripple of the stream that 
 flowed past the Pueblo where she lived. He has two codes 
 of law : one that has governed the Pueblo, perhaps since 
 the decalogue was given to Moses, and the other which he 
 acquired in 1848, when Mexico ceded his home to the 
 United States. 
 
 In person, the Pueblo Indian is rather below the me- 
 dium in stature ; athletic, plump, and pleasing in build ; 
 frank and friendly in countenance ; and quite ready to be 
 a "good fellow" and to meet you half way if he could 
 only find time from his work and the many religious 
 dances and ceremonies that seem to demand all his 
 energy and attention. 
 
 The Pueblos have now all the domestic animals of 
 their white brother, but at the time the Spaniards found 
 them they had none and, save for the very limited small 
 game the desert afforded, they were agricultural and 
 vegetarian in their habits and diet. Their crops con- 
 sisted of beans, melons, squashes, corn, chili, cotton, etc. 
 The first article mentioned is of such excellent quality 
 that, in common with most white men, I prefer it to the 
 best navy variety. 
 
 The fact that they had no domestic animals, and that 
 their fields were often at great distances from their 
 pueblos, permitted the location of their towns where, in 
 our view, there was insufficiency of water. It does not take 
 much water per capita for drinking purposes, and bath- 
 ing is a secondary consideration to some Indians. Con- 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 
 
 73 
 
 Pueblo Woman Photographed in the Quere Pueblo of 
 Lacuna, Arizona 
 
 Showing the Back of the same Costume 
 
 The cloaklike garment is blue, the dress red, and the aprons and 
 
 sleeves white. A half dozen squaws together look 
 
 like one end of a rainbozv 
 
74 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 sequently, wherever they found a reasonable water-shed 
 with a rock reservoir, and a stream within twenty miles 
 for field crops and emergency, there they could build their 
 pueblo. For example, the noted typical Pueblo of Acoma 
 was built upon a flat rock about seventy acres in extent, 
 its top standing over three hundred feet above the adjoin- 
 ing mesa from which it rises. Its sides are so precipitous 
 that only by ladders and steps cut in the sides of the cliff 
 can a person climb to the summit. Yet wonderful to tell, 
 upon its top, from time immemorial, there has existed a 
 pueblo of some five hundred Indians. More wonderful 
 still, these Indians have carried up that precipice materials 
 for a cathedral whose walls are sixty feet high, ten feet 
 thick, and occupy proportionate ground space. In this 
 cathedral are timbers fourteen inches square and forty 
 feet long. How so few people managed to perform such 
 Herculean work is a mystery. 
 
 Replica of Hopi Building at Grand Canyon 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 75 
 
 Being a Massachusetts Yankee, I pride myself that the 
 old town meeting system of the Puritans was the origin 
 and basis of our republic. Imagine what a set-back to 
 my conceit it was when I found here, in the deserts of our 
 southwest, democracies that were in existence perhaps 
 ten centuries before my forefathers landed from the May- 
 flower. In some respects, their democracy is superior to 
 ours. With them, the office truly seeks the man, not the 
 man the office. The principal civil officer of the Pueblo 
 is the governor. When one is to be selected there is no 
 campaigning for votes. Such a thing would be positively 
 fatal to any person desiring the office. They get together 
 and select the man most desirable for the place, and that 
 man must serve whether he wishes to or not ; they will 
 not hesitate to punish him by confinement or otherwise, 
 should he prove contumacious on that point. 
 
 'Community House" Pueblo of San Domingo 
 Built of Adobe 
 
76 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The family of the Pueblo Indian is monogamous, and 
 property rights and genealogy of the children descend by 
 clan law through the mother. The woman owns the house 
 and domestic utensils ; the man the field crops, domestic 
 animals, and farm machinery. In other words, the wife 
 is lord of the house and all inside, and the husband of 
 the property outside. This freezes the man out of a home 
 in case of the wife's death, desertion, or divorce, because 
 property must descend by Quere law inside the clan, but 
 husband and wife cannot belong to the same clan. 
 
 In the middle of the sixteenth century there were 
 sixty-five pueblos, now they are reduced to twenty-four. 
 They were built on the communal plan, either of stone or 
 of adobe, on the cliffs, in the cliffs, on the high mesa, or 
 in the river valleys, as circumstances seemed to demand 
 or desire to dictate. 
 
 The Pueblo was not a wandering Indian, yet change 
 
 Stone Cathedral at Pueblo of Laguna 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 77 
 
 of environment seemed sometimes to compel a change of 
 residence. Near the Rio Grande River, not far southeast 
 of Santa Fe, is located the Pueblo of Cochiti, substantially 
 the same as it was in 1540 when Coronado found it, but 
 this place was not their original home. At one time they 
 are said to have lived in the Rio de Los Frijoles, and 
 from there they moved, at different times and for various 
 causes, six times to reach their present home. There is 
 evidence to show that the residence in each pueblo may 
 have been as long as that in the one they now occupy. 
 If this be true, it would mean that they were living in 
 the Canyon de Los Frijoles perhaps two thousand years 
 before Columbus discovered America. 
 
 The principal points of interest in each Pueblo are the 
 cathedral for Catholic worship and its kiva for heathen 
 ceremonies. Upon the first has been expended all the 
 architectural ability of the old mission ; on the kiva is 
 worked an expression of the Indian's secret and super- 
 stitious reverence. The kivas are built largely below 
 ground and are entered from the top by ladder. (See 
 illustration at head of this chapter.) 
 
 Who and what is the Pueblo Indian racially and 
 ethnologically ? I have seen him classified in several 
 ways, but have been unable to reconcile one with the 
 other. So, as a free and untrammeled citizen of this 
 great republic, I am entitled to my own guess on the 
 subject. At one time in my life I was thrown in contact 
 with the Maya Indian of Yucatan, Old Mexico, in his 
 home and in his native environment. I was forcibly im- 
 pressed with the wonderful similarity of the Mayas of 
 Old Mexico and the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and 
 Arizona. 
 
;S ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 They are of the same general stature and appearance ; 
 they express or non-express themselves in the same way ; 
 neither of them are warriors ; both are agriculturists ; 
 both raise the same crops. I can swear that the frijoles 
 that the Mayas fed me in Yucatan were of the identical 
 varieties that I ate in an Arizona Pueblo. Both types of 
 Indians, at times, built the same adobe or stone houses, 
 and on the Potero de las Vacas near Santa Fe the Arizona 
 Quere tribe left sculptures of two crouching cougars, 
 amply proving their ability to make carvings like those 
 upon the temples of Old Mexico if circumstances per- 
 mitted and occasion required. They both have also the 
 same lax ideas of marriage and strict ideas of fidelity and 
 companionship. 
 
 If one were to mix a number of the two peoples to- 
 gether it would not be possible to pick out the one from 
 the other by any physical characteristic. 
 
 They dress differently, of course, and otherwise dif- 
 ferentiate, but necessity demands it. One lives near the 
 sea level in the latitude of twenty degrees north, while 
 the other has his habitation in an altitude of five thousand 
 feet and a latitude of about thirty-five degrees north. 
 The Pueblo Indian is conservative, but, when necessary, 
 adapts himself to his environment and conforms his habits 
 to his necessity, comfort, and pleasure. 
 
 Bear in mind that these Maya Indians of Mexico, 
 whereof I am speaking, lived in Yucatan, not modernized 
 Vera Cruz or half- Americanized Mexico City, but in rural 
 Yucatan, when the "Conoa" and "Barco" were the only 
 means of transportation on water, and the "Volanta" and 
 "Silla" upon land; where the "Gringo" was still a cur- 
 iosity and the rancher still reigned truly lord of his 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 
 
 79 
 
 thousands of acres. Then the laboring Indians were 
 working for from five to ten dollars a month, Mexican 
 money, and were made peons for life should they get 
 into their lordly senor's debt as much as one hundred dol- 
 lars — a dire disaster that was the almost certain fate of 
 all. A peon was an ignoble, helpless, hopeless slave — 
 the most unfortunate slave on earth ; though legally a 
 free man, he was bought and sold by the transfer of his 
 contract to his employer, followed by bloodhounds and 
 law officers and returned in irons if he evaded its terms 
 or attempted to change residence without permission. 
 All this bondage and slavery persisted because he could 
 not support his rapidly growing family without over- 
 drawing his account a few dollars. This law of contracts 
 applies to all wage-workers, white, black, or red. 
 
 Maya Woman Photographed in Yucatan, Old Mexico 
 Compare with Pueblo woman, page 73 
 
8o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Under these conditions I found nine-tenths of its rural 
 people where I visited in Yucatan. Notwithstanding there 
 is absolute political equality in Mexico, and the most 
 humble peon, be he Indian, mixed blood, or Spaniard, 
 may become president of the republic, still I have never 
 seen before and hope never to see again such great dis- 
 tance in social standing and condition between the poor 
 and the rich, the laborer and the employer, as existed in 
 this land which prided itself upon being a free nation. 
 
 I found the Mayas to be industrious, cleanly, con- 
 tented, pleasant, agricultural, and non-warlike in habits. 
 But for two faults I believe they would make a magnifi- 
 cent population upon which to build a solid republic. 
 These faults are strong drink and gambling. In the Maya's 
 present aimless, hopeless condition he cannot resist the 
 temptation of either. I think that were he given an out- 
 look, with education and a chance to make something of 
 himself and his children, he could and would conquer 
 these habits. 
 
 As a typical illustration of the man we are talking 
 about, I must relate an experience. I had ridden some 
 fifteen miles to a nearby ranch upon a strange horse. 
 While eating my dinner and visiting the ranchero, my 
 mount performed his usual trick — slipped his bridle and 
 got away. This was a serious matter to me ; the walk 
 back to my starting point, beneath the blazing tropic sun 
 was bad, but the jeering and fun that I should be com- 
 pelled to submit to when I got there would be worse, far 
 worse. Soon I saw a mounted Maya Indian with a lasso 
 after my four-footed deserter, and before long the latter 
 was returned to me safe and sound. As peons in Yucatan 
 are almost universally paid in goods, store checks, and 
 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN 81 
 
 orders, I doubt if the one who caught and brought me my 
 horse had owned as much as a dollar in real money for 
 years — perhaps never. I tried to give him one, but he 
 refused to be paid for what he thought was a simple 
 courtesy. "Muchos gracias" (many thanks) was all he 
 would receive from me and he seemed to consider that 
 ample. 
 
 This act was so characteristic of the Maya Indian of 
 that time that, trusting to his good faith in the rural dis- 
 tricts, and to an Iowa Governor's commission which I 
 carried to prevent extortion by the petty officials in the 
 small towns, I contemplated a ride, alone, across the coun- 
 try from the Gulf of Mexico to Guatemala or some other 
 point. But fate in the shape of a tropic disease prevented. 
 The time I had assigned for such an interesting ride was 
 spent on a sick bed, in a Spanish hotel where no soul 
 could speak a word of English save myself. 
 
 Now regarding the relationship between the Mayas of 
 old Mexico and the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New 
 Mexico, I have a theory that I think has a better basis of 
 known facts than any other I have seen. The Maya 
 Indian, according to the best authorities, is a descendant 
 of the builders of those wonderful cities of Yucatan 
 and Central America, like Mitla, Palanque, Copan, and 
 Uxmal. The edifices in the rural districts of that region 
 have now crumbled to mounds upon which gigantic ma- 
 hogany, zapate, colalox, pupe, and other near-tropic trees 
 flourish as though it were a forest primeval and not the 
 grave of mighty people. The ruins of the cities have been 
 examined and described many times, but the ruins of 
 the rural mounds have never been systematically explored. 
 
82 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 I have done this partially, and my greatest regret for the 
 last two decades I have lived is that the years have made 
 me too old to finish that task. 
 
 Writers who have investigated the history of the 
 people who built these cities, and who I believe are cor- 
 rect, say they originated from the Mound Builders of the 
 Mississippi valley, who migrated into Central America 
 and Yucatan through Mexico, centuries upon centuries 
 before even the Aztecs settled in the latter region. All this 
 being true, may not the Pueblos of the Southwest be 
 detachments of, or colonies left by, this Maya march as it 
 passed through this land in the long, long, prehistoric and 
 pre-Aztec age? 
 
PART II 
 
 THE 
 SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 85 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 SOME "IMPOSSIBLE" ACHIEVEMENTS 
 
 Buster and 1 both were boys and playmates. He, in 
 his first youth, was nearly ten years of age and had devel- 
 oped an abnormal love for history. I, in my second youth, 
 had seen more than eighty seasons pass, and, mattering 
 little that we were grandfather and grandson, I valiantly 
 contested with him for first place in interested study of 
 anything and everything connected with the growth of 
 our country. 
 
 It was a beautiful fall afternoon, one of those days 
 when nature seemed to have clad herself in brightest 
 array especially to call boys, of any age, out of doors to 
 play with her. The temptation irresistibly allured me. 
 Turning to the smaller boy I said, "Buster, do you remem- 
 ber anything about the Massacre of Chicago?" 
 
 "Yes, Grandpa, what of it?" said he. 
 
 "Do you know the place where the Indians committed 
 the murder?" I asked. 
 
 "No," he replied, "but I would give a whole lot to see 
 it. Do you think we can find it?" 
 
 "Of course we can," I answered. "Wherever the spot 
 may be, it is marked by a beautiful monument. I know 
 it, because I have seen a replica beneath the dome of 
 Iowa's State House." 
 
 "Then let us go and hunt for it," was our enthusiastic 
 mutual decision, and we started out on our trip of dis- 
 covery. 
 
 Of course, we could have consulted a directory or 
 guidebook and found exactly where the object stands, but 
 
86 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 that would never do, it would change a tour of discovery 
 into a "simple sight-seeing trip, and spoil half the fun. The 
 monument must be on the lake shore and north of our 
 street — Hyde Park Boulevard — because the evacuating 
 column followed the lake shore, and between the evacua- 
 tion of the fort and the massacre of its late occupants 
 time would not have permitted it to have traveled farther 
 south then this. 
 
 The park policemen were the first victims of our 
 question, "Do you know where the Chicago Massacre 
 Monument is?" 
 
 Those we asked said "No, we know nothing of either 
 the massacre or the monument." We kept on north along 
 the lake shore, persecuting all we met with the same 
 question with like results. Finally I cornered a yard-man 
 of the Illinois Central Railroad and said, "Now, you work 
 up and down this line several times a day, every time you 
 go up you must pass the monument we want to see. Can't 
 you remember where it is?" 
 
 He thought awhile and replied, "There is some sort of 
 monument about Eighteenth Street, but what it is for, 
 I haven't the slightest idea." 
 
 There we found the object of our search, a beautiful 
 monument built to commemorate one of the chief events 
 of early Chicago ; yet the city guardians and many of its 
 citizens knew nothing of either the event or its memorial ; 
 others who may see it daily, know not and care not what 
 it represents. 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 87 
 
 Massacre Monument, Chicago 
 
88 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 But we, the two boys, who that day looked upon it for 
 the first time, saw it with no such indifferent eyes. There 
 before us were represented some of the circumstances of 
 that strife. Upon the ground lies the post surgeon, Dr. 
 Van Voores, who sadly misrepresents the army, for he 
 was the only one who did not fight bravely but spent his 
 time until killed bemoaning his fate. Beside him is a 
 baby typifying innocence slain. And there, dragged from 
 her horse, is Mrs. Helm, struggling for her life as an 
 Indian tries to tomahawk her, while she endeavors to 
 draw the red man's scalping knife from its sheath upon 
 his breast. Above them both towers Black Partridge, 
 holding back the warriors and protecting the women. 
 
 How this sight affected the younger boy I know not, 
 but the mind of the older one visualized a far different 
 scene from the one before him. The beautiful residences, 
 the long, paved streets, the many-tracked railroads, the 
 plying boats upon the lake, and even the monument itself 
 faded away ; and there came into his mind the vision of a 
 clean lake shore and a virgin prairie, separated only by a 
 line of sand hills, all untouched by any mark of civiliza- 
 tion save the indistinct ruts of a little-used wagon road. 
 From the top of the sand hill could be seen towards the 
 north, a small fort not much larger than a good-sized 
 trading post, and gathered around it were several frontier 
 buildings. In his vision the fort is being evacuated by 
 orders from the commanding general. The garrison leaves 
 — its band prophetically playing the "Dead March" from 
 Saul — and marches toward where we stand. The Indians 
 enter the stockade. Soon, they angrily emerge; they have 
 been deceived. They had been promised by the commander 
 of the fortification that they would be given the contents 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 89 
 
 of the fort not taken away by its occupants, if they would 
 escort the garrison to a place of safety. They found when 
 they entered that the things they most cared for — arms, 
 ammunition, and whiskey — had all heen destroyed. Prom- 
 ised friends had thus heen turned into certain enemies. 
 Black Partridge, a chief of the Pottawatomies, the sur- 
 rounding tribe of Indians, square, red gentleman that 
 he was, when he understood hefore the evacuation, what 
 was going on, came to Captain Heald, the commander of 
 the fort, and returned the medal that had been given him 
 by our Government. He would not wear a favor from a 
 people whom he would soon be compelled to fight. 
 
 I seem to see the column from the fort advancing 
 toward the place of the monument in long line. First, on 
 ponies, comes a squad of Miami Indians as advance 
 guard. Then, upon a fine, blooded horse rides gallant 
 Captain Wells, who risked his life, and lost it, to bring 
 aid and advice to the fort. Then follow the garrison, 
 regular soldiers and militiamen; after them the train of 
 wagons, containing the women, children, supplies, and 
 equipage. Mrs. Heald and Mrs. Helm are riding horse- 
 back where they will. Finally a guard of the Miamis 
 brings up the rear. 
 
 It is about ten o'clock in the morning. The advance 
 guard reaches the place of the monument. Now one can 
 see that Captain Wells has his face blackened, the red 
 man's token of war and death. Border man and Indian 
 fighter that he was, he knew what would be the result of 
 destroying the stores in the fort; and knowing it well, 
 soldier and patriot that he also was, he urged their de- 
 struction rather than place the arms and ammunition in 
 the hands of a tribe which under the influence of Great 
 
90 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Britain was likely to become hostile to the United States. 
 No soldier ever gave his life for his country more surely 
 than he, and the heroic figure in the memorial should 
 have been his. 
 
 The advance guard passes and part of the marching 
 regulars arrive, when Captain Wells, wheeling quickly 
 with his horse, comes galloping back, swinging his hat to 
 indicate that the whole party is surrounded, and shout- 
 ing to Captain Heald, "They are about to attack us ! 
 Form instantly and charge them !" Immediately the war- 
 painted heads of hundreds of savages appear above the 
 sand hills ; battle cries and war whoops, musket shot and 
 stifling gun powder smoke fill the air. The soldiers charge, 
 but the red enemy yields before them only to press them 
 more closely behind ; yelling demons climb into the wagons 
 and butcher the women and children ; Captain Wells falls, 
 but six red warriors slain by his own hand, escort him 
 hence. The soldiers fight bravely, but what can a few 
 men, encumbered by a train of women and children, do 
 against a multitude? Almost within the time you have 
 been reading this, over fifty soldiers, women, and chil- 
 dren, dead and dying, lie upon the ground ; all the rest 
 are prisoners. 
 
 The bleak, houseless prairie, the unfretted lake shore, 
 and the awful battlefield fade away; the present returns. 
 The ground that was wet with the blood of the slaughtered 
 pioneers now lies, marked by its memorial group, almost 
 in the geographical center of a city twenty-six miles long, 
 reaching fourteen miles west, covering nearly two hun- 
 dred square miles of territory, and containing nearly 
 three million people. Over the ground where the battle 
 was fought, thunders scores of railroad trains which carry 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 91 
 
 untold wealth to and from the whole world and which 
 daily transport approximately fifty thousand passengers, 
 yet here are only three of the thirty-three roads that end 
 in Chicago. Should some soldier who died that day re- 
 turn like Rip Van Winkle, he would find four thousand 
 seven hundred miles of streets upon which to travel ; had 
 he children, he could send them to any of two hundred 
 and ninety-nine schools ; he and his family could ride 
 upon one thousand three hundred and fifty miles of sur- 
 face and elevated street car lines ; they might worship in 
 any one of one thousand two hundred and forty churches, 
 and have a choice of twenty different languages in which 
 to hear the Word preached. 
 
 And this great change from a primitive wilderness 
 to a mighty city has not taken the ages that London and 
 Paris and Vienna, all newer cities of the Old World, 
 have required ; nor the centuries that Boston and New 
 York and New Orleans and others of our land have used 
 in their making. For Chicago, the giant of the West, my 
 life time is almost enough to cover its growth. Move my 
 birthday back but ten years and the time is sufficient; 
 for the mas.sacre we have attempted to describe occurred 
 as late as 1812, and Chicago, as a town, was not incorp- 
 orated until more than a score of years after that time. 
 Then it became a town under provision of statute that 
 allowed one hundred and fifty persons to organize upon 
 not more than one square mile of territory. 
 
 This unprecedented growth is one of the things that 
 the famous liar, Baron Munchausen, would not have 
 dared to foretell. Had he been willing to brave the risk, 
 his imagination could not have reached the actual facts. 
 He would have been like the early promoters of the city 
 
92 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 who seemed to have been close rivals of the Baron both in 
 wealth of imagination and boldness of statement. About 
 the year 1870 I attended a banquet where one of these 
 boomers of the old city was called upon for a toast. In 
 response he said that when the real estate men of early 
 Chicago printed and circulated their prospectus and ad- 
 vertisment in which they predicted what the city would 
 be in the future, they lied as much, as largely, and as 
 strongly as they possibly could ; but the city in its devel- 
 opment had so beaten their prophesies that they were 
 ashamed of the weakness of their supposed gigantic 
 imaginations. 
 
 I passed through Chicago in 185 1, a year before any 
 railroad ever reached it from the East. I have been there 
 often since, sometimes for years as a resident, sometimes 
 as a visitor, and sometimes as a spectator. Although I 
 consider that my adopted home and first love is west of 
 the Mississippi River, this city is my second love, and I 
 have kept constant watch of her phenomenal advance- 
 ment. 
 
 The First Court House 
 
 The square in this city bounded by Washington, Clark, 
 Randolph, and La Salle Streets, has from the first been 
 devoted to civic purposes. There the county and the city 
 have united in erecting buildings for their joint govern- 
 mental affairs. Nothing in Chicago is more typical of the 
 fortune, misfortune, and growth of the city than the 
 changes that have taken place on and about this square. 
 Six combined city halls and court houses have been built 
 upon this ground. I have seen them all, been in them all, 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 93 
 
 some of the many times, and I know of no better text 
 around which to gather some facts of the city's growth 
 than these buildings. 
 
 The first court house was built in 1836, principally 
 if not entirely for court house purposes. It was of brick, 
 classic in style, with four Doric columns and a flight of 
 steps in front, and was really a very neat house for a 
 rough western place. When this was erected, the "Chi- 
 ca-gou," our Indian onion, from which the settlement was 
 named, still grew along the margin of the river. Not 
 long before that time, lots eighty by one hundred and 
 fifty feet had sold in the surrounding squares at auction 
 for from twenty-four to seventy-four dollars each. The 
 extent of the town limits was then two and two-fifths 
 square miles, but it was just beginning its permanent 
 growth. Its commerce had increased from four vessels 
 of a total tonnage of seven hundred in 1833, to four 
 hundred and fifty vessels with a total tonnage of sixty 
 thousand in 1836. 
 
 Thk First Court House and Jail, 1836 
 Loaned by the Chicago Historical Society 
 
94 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The next year, 1837, a special charter was procured 
 and Chicago was incorporated as a city, with a limit of 
 ten square miles and a determination to beat all creation. 
 Strange to say, the fact upon which she predicted her fu- 
 ture greatness was the Illinois and Michigan canal. It 
 was upon becoming a great station on a mighty water- 
 way, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of 
 Mexico, that the city relied for success. No one then 
 thought of the railroad as a factor; had any one dared 
 then and there to tell them that the canal would be almost 
 unheard of and unfelt among more forceful causes, they 
 would have wanted to hang him to a lamp post, if at that 
 time they possessed such a thing. 
 
 But this court house stood to see the beginnings of the 
 real cause of Chicago's power — the railroads. It saw the 
 Galena and Chicago Railroad start out in 1848 and build 
 clear to the Des Plaines River, ten miles, and heard the 
 jollification that accompanied the first in-shipment of one 
 wagonload of wheat from the West. It also witnessed 
 the celebration that accompanied the arrival of the first 
 train upon the first railroad to reach Chicago from the 
 East, the Michigan Southern, in February, 1852. It was 
 still standing when the Galena and Chicago Railroad was 
 running its tri-daily trains — tri-daily in this, that they 
 went out in the morning and tried to get back at night — 
 and when the officials of the same used to climb into the 
 observatory of their old depot at Kinzie and Canal Streets 
 with telescopes to watch for the coming of the old locomo- 
 tive, "Pioneer," with its mixed load of freight and pas- 
 sengers. Sometimes they would deliberate, after a long 
 wait, whether or not to send a man on horse to find if 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 95 
 
 the cars were coming, or if they had slid off from the 
 rails of strap iron and wood, of which the railroad was 
 built, and were lying somewhere in the ditch. 
 
 In 1842 an anomaly in legal proceedings occurred on 
 the front steps of this court house — the sale of a negro 
 in a state having a free constitution. Notwithstanding its 
 apparent impossibility, the transaction was perfectly legal 
 under the then existing laws. The man had been arrested 
 as a runaway slave, he had been kept some time with- 
 out anyone claiming him, and now he was to be sold for 
 the expenses of arrest and incarceration. The anti-slavery 
 people billed the city to witness this most illogical event. 
 There was a large gathering and the sheriff feared 
 personal violence. At first there were no bidders, but 
 many offensive remarks. Finally a man jokingly offered 
 twenty-five cents ; the sheriff snapped at the bid as a trout 
 would at a fly. The money was paid ; the new master 
 gave the man his liberty ; and the incident was closed. 
 
 It was while this building stood that the principal 
 streets were often so soft and deep with mud that teams 
 were mired and wagons abandoned, and cautioning signs 
 were erected along the way, sometimes in earnest and 
 sometimes in fun, ''No bottom," "Nearest way to China," 
 "Danger." Then and there the old hoary story was said 
 to have started, of the man going along the street so deep 
 in the mud that only his hat showed. Some friend called 
 to him, "Bill, do you need any help?" 
 
 "No," came the reply. "I don't need any help, I've 
 got a good horse under me." 
 
9 6 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Stone pavements were useless — the stones soon sank 
 beyond useful depth. In 1848 and 1850, three miles of 
 streets were planked forty-eight feet wide, at a cost of 
 thirty-one thousand dollars. 
 
 Finally this first public building, erected in 1836, hav- 
 ing for seventeen years served the city and county, and 
 having seen the settlement grow from an incorporated 
 town of less than four thousand to a city of more than 
 thirty thousand, passed away and made room for the 
 second building. 
 
 The Second Court House 
 
 In 1853 the county and city united in building, under 
 one roof and one harmonious plan, a joint city hall and 
 
 The Second Court House 
 Loaned by the Chicago Historical Society 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 97 
 
 county court house. It was completed and occupied about 
 a year before I came to the city a second time to hunt 
 my fortune. 
 
 I was a boy fourteen years of age, a stranger, with a 
 total wealth of $1.50 and not a friend in all the city. I 
 cannot recall the exact place where I finally found a loca- 
 tion, but it was in State Street near where the Palmer 
 House now stands. That street was then largely built up 
 of one- and two-story, false front, wood structures, and 
 in one of them I found a room suitable to my lack of 
 means. 
 
 It was in the winter. The job I had captured could 
 not afford me a warm room, so I had the choice of spend- 
 in my evenings in my cold room, the city street, or the 
 saloon. A few nights in the last was sufficient to disgust 
 me, and I was limited to the first two alternatives. I 
 compromised by dividing my time between them : I would 
 walk the streets until I was cold and tired, then go to my 
 room and to bed. 
 
 Thanks, many grateful thanks, to the men and. women 
 of Chicago with generous heart and lavish hand, who, 
 by their Y. M. C. A., their free reading rooms, their night 
 schools, their settlement work, and other liberal provi- 
 sions, have said to the world that "Never again," as I did, 
 "shall a friendless boy walk the streets in the dead of 
 winter, or any other time, seeking warmth and welcome 
 and finding none." 
 
 In 1855 the Galena and Chicago Railroad installed 
 along its lines from Chicago to Freeport an invention 
 highly recommended by some, but held to be of doubtful 
 utility by many. This new and untried invention was a 
 
98 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 telegraph. It worked satisfactorily, and thenceforth there 
 was no more watching with a telescope from the observa- 
 tory of the depot for late trains, or sending a man on 
 horseback to hunt missing ones. 
 
 During the standing of this court house, the streets 
 of the business part of the city were unsanitary, unsightly, 
 and in wet weather almost impassable. To remedy all 
 three of these conditions, the unprecedented and gigantic 
 project was designed and carried to a successful conclu- 
 sion of raising the whole business district — its buildings, 
 its streets, and its sidewalks — from seven to fifteen feet. 
 
 This tremendous undertaking called for the assistance 
 of the best engineers in the country, and they came from 
 all quarters to help. Among others, I think from Cin- 
 cinnati, was the later noted George M. Pullman, who 
 really began his career when he raised the Tremont 
 House, at that time the largest building in Chicago. He 
 accomplished the feat without breaking a window, crack- 
 ing a wall, or jamming a door. No employee or guest of 
 the hotel was discommoded during the process, either in 
 his room or at table. If necessary litter upon the street 
 front and workmen beneath the building had not been 
 noticed, no one would have known what was going on. 
 Afterward, whole blocks were raised without interruption 
 of, or confusion in, the various forms of business therein 
 conducted. 
 
 Of necessity, all the owners of property in a block 
 could not be ready to raise their buildings at the same 
 time. The result was that sometimes part of the stores 
 would be raised and part not. Each merchant insisted 
 that the sidewalk must conform to the grade of his store 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 99 
 
 floor. Therefore it soon appeared that walking along a 
 street in those days was a constant succession of going 
 upstairs to the higher level and downstairs to the lower. 
 
 Third Court House and City Hall 
 And now, in the late fifties, as the second court house 
 and city hall again proved itself too small for necessary 
 business, the county and city officials decided to construct 
 
 Chicago Court House, Viewed from the Northwest, i! 
 Loaned by the Chicago Historical Society 
 
ioo ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 practically a new building, by taking off the roof of the 
 old one and adding another story. This was done, and 
 the old building which had served a city of a little over 
 thirty thousand inhabitants and which determined the 
 grade of the whole business section, now passed on and 
 left to its successor over a hundred thousand people, a 
 lake traffic greatly increased, and a railroad system fairly 
 inaugurated. 
 
 When the story was added to court house number two 
 a large cupola -was erected, and in it an enormous bell 
 was installed the alarm note of which could be heard to 
 the utmost corporate limits. To this bell the fire alarm 
 system of the city was attached. When necessity demanded 
 the bell clanged forth the general alarm and added the 
 ward where danger menaced. I well remember that bell. 
 Its sonorous call to action when fire threatened was 
 strangely exciting. First its loud, rapid alarm filled the 
 air with deafening clang for thirty to sixty seconds. Then 
 every man in the business section stopped to listen ; the 
 lawyer ceased his plea, the shop-keeper and his customer 
 stopped their trading, the working man paused with his 
 hammer in the air, all waiting for the ward number; it 
 comes, one, two, three, four — ward four. Men of that 
 ward were permitted and expected to rush out to make 
 sure that their individual property was in no danger ; all 
 others resumed their pleasures or occupations. 
 
 But the duty of fire alarm was not the only office held 
 by this bell. It was the herald of the town. It rang the 
 note of war when Sumter was fired upon ; it sounded 
 peals of rejoicing when the news of the victories of 
 Gettysburg and Vicksburg reached us ; it almost broke 
 itself with joy when Lee surrendered; and, dolefully tol- 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 101 
 
 ling, it sobbed its sorrow when Lincoln, son of its state 
 and martyr for its nation, lay in state beneath its dome, 
 while thousands upon thousands of citizens mournfully 
 passed for a farewell gaze upon the beloved remains. 
 
 In my memory the most significant and exciting note 
 ever heard from the bell was on the tenth day of May, 
 1869, when the two ends of the Union Pacific Railroad 
 came together at Promontory Point in Utah, and the two 
 halves of our country were physically united for the first 
 time. Great preparations had been made. Prominent 
 men from the East and the West met at that junction. 
 Telegraphic connections were made so that every stroke 
 of the sledge in driving the last spike — a gold one — could 
 be flashed across the country to the Chicago court house 
 and tallied by the bell. 
 
 Everything was ready in the city and harbor, and at 
 the appointed time business was called off and everyone 
 was waiting. At length came the "dong, dong, dong," 
 from the driven spike. Then pandemonium broke loose. 
 Every tug and steamer on the lake or the harbor blew its 
 whistle; the churches, the schoolhouses, and the public 
 buildings clanged their bells ; work shops and factories 
 blared their semaphores; and if there was anything mov- 
 able or immovable capable of making a noise that was 
 not utilized that day, I do not know what it was. Chicago 
 was out for a jollification, and she had it in the Chicago 
 way — thoroughly, enthusiastically, good-naturedly, and 
 with a bang. 
 
 Of the six court houses of the city, this might be 
 called the heroic one. It was built when the country was 
 supposed by many to be a temporary gathering of states, 
 one-half slave and one-half free; at a time when it was 
 
102 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 possible for a man, apparently as white as any of us, to 
 be shackled under its dome and returned to slavery for 
 life, just because some particular woman had been his 
 mother. It finally stood in a united country, "one and 
 indivisible," where every man was actually "born free and 
 equal." To accomplish this the people had voluntarily 
 sent forth their sons by thousands and their money by 
 millions ; they had cheered regiment after regiment of 
 northwestern boys as they marched through their streets, 
 going south, and welcomed them on their return home. 
 
 During those days, I owed the city my personal grati- 
 tude for several days' needed shelter in their "Soldier's 
 Rest." That rest, as I remember it, stood on Michigan 
 Avenue about where the Art Institute is now located, of 
 perhaps farther north. Its front was on the avenue, and 
 its rear, for about two-thirds of its length, was supported 
 by piles driven in the lake. This was not because the 
 building was over a mile long, as would be necessary to 
 make that condition today, but because, from Randolph 
 Street to Park Row, Michigan Avenue was then the west 
 shore of Lake Michigan. The city at one time canopied 
 the streets around the court house and turned them into 
 a magnificent voluntary gift-offering, when the Sanitary 
 Commission held their great fair for the benefit of our 
 then "boys in blue." 
 
 By 1864, the growth of the city had polluted the water 
 supply to an unbearable degree. When the wind was in 
 certain directions, the foul river and noxious sewer out- 
 flow, in place of going to the depths of the lake, would 
 seek the intake of the water system and carry disease and 
 death with it. For the safety of the city these water 
 intakes must be at least two miles out in the lake. How 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 
 
 103 
 
 could this be done ? Engineers solved the problem. Near 
 the water works, a well was dug ninety feet deep. Out in 
 the lake two miles, by the aid of an octagonal coffer-dam, 
 another well, eighty-five feet below the surface of the 
 water, was also dug. Then by digging from the bottom of 
 each well a tunnel two miles long was constructed, so 
 carefully, and so scientifically, that no lives were lost; 
 and when the two ends joined there was scarcely an inch 
 of difference in position or size of the two excavations. 
 This satisfactorily provided for Chicago's water supply. 
 The Fourth Court House and City Hall 
 In 1870 a substantially new building was again made. 
 The county erected a large wing on the west of the old 
 court house and the city a like one on the east, thus prac- 
 
 The Fourth Court House 
 Loaned by Chicago Historical Society 
 
io4 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tically making the fourth court house and city hall. This 
 might be called the tragic building of the series. It had 
 hardly been completed and occupied when the giant bell, 
 still retained in its cupola, rang out the fire alarm that 
 proved its own death knell. 
 
 About an hour before midnight of October 8th and 
 9th, 1871, was sounded the first alarm note that awoke 
 the city for the Great Chicago Fire. The alarm was 
 repeated again, and again until the bell's mighty voice was 
 stilled by suffocation in the ruins of its own home. 
 
 Among great conflagrations this fire is an anomaly, 
 because it seemed bound by no rules save those of its own 
 making. It broke out in some wooden houses and stables 
 near Jefferson and DeKoven Streets, in the southwest 
 part of the city. Before daylight, pushed by a wind from 
 the southwest, it swept clean a strip toward the northeast, 
 a block or two wide. and about four miles long, clear to 
 the water works and the old cemetery, upon the north side, 
 having jumped the river easily on its way. Then all 
 Sunday, Sunday night, and Monday morning, on both 
 sides of this strip, it burned outward until it was con- 
 trolled or found nothing else to consume. 
 
 The statistics of that tragedy are appalling. Two 
 hundred and fifty people lost their lives;, one hundred 
 thousand were homeless. All that was left of the city was 
 not, in commercial value, worth one-half of that which 
 was destroyed. 
 
 The heat passed all common estimate and observation. 
 It was comparable only to that of oxygen and hydrogen 
 under a blow pipe. Exposed safes were absolutely con- 
 sumed, but those in brick vaults, or that dropped in places 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 
 
 105 
 
 covered by the debris of the fallen buildings were saved 
 with their contents. Iron pillars two feet square were 
 in parts absolutely burned up*, no residue remaining. 
 
 Thieves and cut-throats flocked from everywhere, like 
 vultures to their prey, and added to the distress of the 
 people. Crime seemed threatening what remained from 
 the ravages of the fire, until the military boys from the 
 State University and Gen. Sheridan's regular troops came 
 and restored order. 
 
 Thanks to the sympathy of the entire world, to the 
 courage and ability of its inhabitants, and to the confi- 
 dence of financial men everywhere, wealth unlimited 
 
 *Lieut. Governor Wm. Bross, in "History of Chicago," page 
 91: "In places it would strike great iron columns nearly two 
 feet square and for four or five feet, perhaps more, the iron 
 would be burned up. No residuum being left." 
 
 The Eifth Court House 
 Loaned by Chicago Historical Society 
 
io6 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 was offered for reconstruction. The city soon arose 
 better, newer, and more substantial. Her symbol and seal 
 should be the Phoenix. 
 
 The Fifth Court House 
 Of this, I have little to say. During its reign I spent 
 much of my time west of the Mississippi. It was occu- 
 pied by 1885, and I think was the beauty of the series. I 
 saw it in its pride, when the dream-city of the Columbian 
 World's Fair transformed Jackson Park into a realm of 
 beauty, wealth, and education. But like many other 
 beautiful things it was frail; its foundation gave way, it 
 was condemned, and in 1905 the wrecking of its walls 
 commenced. 
 
 The Sixth Court House 
 
 The sixth and present court house and city hall was 
 occupied in 191 1. The combined cost was ten million 
 
 The Sixth Court House 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 107 
 
 dollars. It is the largest, the best arranged, and the most 
 substantial structure from which the city was ever gov- 
 erned. 
 
 And what a city ! It is stated that some single firms 
 have thirteen thousand employees. Such a firm, with 
 its laborers, their families, and attendants, if segregated, 
 would alone make a city of more than fifty thousand 
 people. There are single office buildings whose tenantry, 
 with their dependents, would, thus segregated, make 
 towns of more than five thousand inhabitants. 
 
 Chicago is extremely cosmopolitan. I always knew 
 that, but never fully realized it until the Fourth Liberty 
 Loan parade. Then, for hours, I saw its foreign sec- 
 tions pass. Each nationality marched by itself headed 
 by more or less of its marchers, who displayed their 
 national costumes and expressed their peculiar character- 
 istics. There passed me that day costumes I never be- 
 for had seen in common life, on the stage, or in pictures. 
 I heard languages utterly strange, and saw banners show- 
 ing nationalities which I have never yet been able to find 
 on a map. There are said to be forty-three nationalities 
 inhabiting the city in large numbers, and they all seemed 
 to be out in full force to attest their devotion to this 
 land of their adoption and to pledge their support in the 
 war it was carrying on. 
 
 Let me recapitulate the manner in which the census 
 kept up with our city buildings, all during my lifetime, 
 four years alone excepted. In round numbers : No. 1 
 took possession of a town of four thousand people in 
 1836; No. 2 thirty thousand in 1853; No. 3, one hundred 
 thousand in 1859; No. 4, three hundred thousand in 
 1870; No. 5, eight hundred thousand in 1885; No. 6, two 
 
108 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 million one hundred thousand in 191 1, and the end is not 
 yet. The last building has already seen over half a million 
 added to the population of the city, and how many more 
 it will turn over to its successor no one can tell. 
 
 Optimistic boomers have already formed a "Chicago 
 Plan" which, if carried out, will make the present look 
 like a pigmy beside a future giant. This plan contem- 
 plates a great civic center, supposedly at the junction of 
 La Salle and Congress Streets. Here all public buildings 
 are to be assembled, constructed artistically in design, 
 magnificent in detail and gigantic in size. From this 
 center, broad avenues are to diverge diagonally, as in our 
 capital at Washington, making communications every- 
 where rapid and pleasant. On the lake a beautiful, broad 
 boulevard, built outside the railroad tracks, would connect 
 Grant and Jackson Parks, and a magnificent yacht and 
 boating lagoon would be constructed between the same 
 two points by making a series of islands out in the lake. 
 Above the river, another yachting course would be ex- 
 tended north by the same means, perhaps to connect at 
 Wilmette. 
 
 Can this be done? Stupendous as it may seem, it is 
 only one more of the supposedly impossible things that 
 the city has met and conquered. Has it not already been 
 commenced? Is not the widening of Twelfth Street and 
 Michigan Boulevard one step of the plan? And is it not 
 already understood that whatever is done in the future 
 in the way of changes shall be further steps in the same 
 direction ? 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 109 
 
 Can it be done ? I believe it will be done, and I would 
 give some years of the end of my life to be permitted, a 
 half century from now, to return for twenty-four hours 
 to see what shall have been accomplished. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long in my description of Chicago, 
 not because it is the only city of the West of phenomenal 
 growth, but for the reason that its story is typical of what 
 other cities have done, and because I have been more 
 closely identified with it than with any other. St. Louis, 
 since I was born, has grown from a place of sixteen 
 thousand to a city of nearly seven hundred thousand. 
 Milwaukee, when I was first there, contained about twen- 
 ty thousand people ; now it has nearly four hundred 
 thousand. Had I gone to what is now Minneapolis when 
 I crossed the Mississippi in 1857, I could still have found 
 odd pieces of government land which are now inside that 
 city of over three hundred thousand inhabitants. The site 
 of the great dam itself, the center of its power and wealth, 
 was not pre-empted until 1848, and the significant sum 
 of one hundred and seventy-two dollars and twelve cents, 
 silver, was paid for the millions of dollars of value there 
 today. St. Paul, owing to its proximity to Fort Snelling, 
 was inhabited earlier. It was first settled by outcasts 
 and undesirables from the fort, and was called "Pigs 
 Eye" from the characteristic of one of its chief sinners. 
 Denver, Colorado, I found in 1859, was a little village of 
 board shacks containing a few hundred residents ; now 
 it has more than two hundred thousand people. Omaha, 
 Nebraska, when I first passed through it, could hardly be 
 called a town ; now it has more than one hundred and 
 thirty-four thousand inhabitants. 
 
no ONE MAN'S -LIFETIME 
 
 There is a circle of towns and small cities, commenc- 
 ing west of Omaha and following the line of the Union 
 Pacific to Denver, continuing along the foothills of the 
 Rocky Mountains from Cheyenne south to Trinidad, and 
 thence north-east and east away back into Kansas — a 
 circle of live, growing, wide-awake, western communities, 
 ranging from villages up to good sized cities. In any of 
 these places, Denver and Boulder alone excepted, had I 
 been a year or two older I could have taken the present 
 site for a homestead or pre-emption, when I passed 
 through or camped upon it in 1859 or i860. 
 
 I mention these towns and cities not because they are 
 exceptional, but because they represent nearly all of such 
 communities now flourishing west of the Missouri River 
 that were, when I was a man nearly grown, far distant 
 from a white settlement of any kind, and inhabited by 
 no one, not even a wandering red man. 
 
 Great as was the growth of the cities of the West, 
 the country was not far behind. In 1818 congress per- 
 mitted Illinois to become a state, provided it had forty 
 thousand people. The census takers found them, but in 
 getting them they were said to have counted every 
 emigrant who passed through their respective districts. 
 Therefore, if some settler bound for Iowa or Minnesota 
 was caught by six census men, he counted just six times 
 as heavily as one actual resident of the state. Now, 
 Illinois does not have to pad or multiply its enumeration 
 to show six million inhabitants. During my lifetime 
 Wisconsin has grown from thirty thousand to nearly two 
 million five hundred thousand. Iowa has increased from 
 forty-three thousand to over two million two hundred 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST in 
 
 thousand; Indiana from six hundred eighty thousand to 
 two million seven hundred thousand ; Colorado from no 
 census to one million one hundred thousand ; Kansas 
 from no census to one million seven hundred thousand. 
 California from no census to two million four hundred 
 thousand. In this ratio the wonderful story goes on all 
 over the West. 
 
ii2 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 RAILROAD BUILDING AND LAND-GRABBING 
 
 In 1854, at the age of fourteen, I became a "railroad 
 man." I commenced running upon the Chicago and Mil- 
 waukee railroad as "water boy," and performed that duty 
 on the first trains that made the through trips between the 
 two cities. Then there were three villages between the 
 two places : Waukegan, Kenosha, and Racine. Farm 
 residences were few and far between. Now for nearly 
 one-half of the distance there is one continuous city, 
 though under some twenty-five different names and cor- 
 porations. m 
 
 There were orginally only two trains a day upon the 
 road, one starting from each terminal and returning at 
 night. They were drawn by locomotives of the same type 
 as the "Pioneer," the first engine on the Galena & Chicago 
 Railroad. These engines seemed to run largely to smoke 
 stacks and whistles, but they were so weak in steam 
 making power that it was said when the whistle was 
 blown the train had to be stopped. This may be an exag- 
 geration, but I do know that sometimes we were halted 
 between stations for the fireman to get up sufficient steam 
 to go on. Whether this stoppage was due to an excessive 
 use of the whistle or to some other cause, I refuse to say. 
 
 A baggage car and two — or at most three — small 
 passenger cars made up our train, and were ample for the 
 traffic. Postal cars and express cars or sleeping cars were 
 not then known or wanted. The coaches were coupled 
 freely and widely, the drawbars protruded well from the 
 platform and were connected to the next car either by 
 three short links or one long one. When the train was 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 113 
 
 stretched out the open space between the platforms was 
 so wide and so shifting that passing from one car to 
 another was an acrobatic feat not always safe. To this 
 I can testify, for one day I dropped down between two 
 of the platforms and only a fortunate catch at a brake 
 rod and the railing prevented my falling upon the rails 
 beneath and ending my story there. 
 
 The Galena & Chicago and the Milwaukee & Chicago 
 Railways were the only ones then in operation that now 
 constitute part of the Chicago & Northwestern system. 
 There were no suburban trains, and I do not believe that 
 the combined outgoing and incoming passengers on the 
 two roads would amount to two hundred people daily. 
 Today seventy-five thousand passengers, carried by three 
 hundred and ten trains, arrive and leave at their station 
 on Madison Street each twenty-four hours. 
 
 Milwaukee having secured a railroad to the south, 
 now determined to make an outlet to the northwest. It 
 commenced building the Milwaukee and La Crosse Road 
 in 1855, and I secured the train rights on it for myself. 
 
 No change in anything I can think of can be found 
 greater than in the method, or lack of method, of our 
 railroading then, and the machine-like precision with 
 which it is conducted now. At that time our "railroad 
 men" necessarily had to come from all trades and profes- 
 sions except railroading, which occupation was then in its 
 infancy. Nearly every man belonging to the train car- 
 ried his drinking flask, which he freely patronized and 
 passed to those who had none, not omitting any officials 
 of the road who might be present. Of course, in order to 
 be a man among men I also carried mine. At New 
 Year's all hands on the train swore off drinking forever. 
 
ii4 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 That "forever" lasted about thirty days, when their flasks 
 all reappeared, and I did some thinking. That drinking 
 was a bad habit, all had admitted by trying to stop ; that 
 it was their master, was proved by their commencing 
 again. That was demonstration enough for me; I threw 
 my flask away. 
 
 The La Crosse Road on which I was running made 
 its way through a beautiful land of mingled groves and 
 prairies west of Milwaukee. It was sparsely settled by 
 backwoodsmen who came here because their last home 
 had been so thickly settled that neighbors were not more 
 than four or five miles apart, and such proximity made 
 it entirely too crowded for them. A very large propor- 
 tion of these people had never seen a train of cars be- 
 fore we appeared, a startling apparition to them. 
 
 Lack of funds compelled the company to purchase and 
 use a very light rail, the ends of which were laid loosely 
 in old fashioned "chairs," and as the ties were laid in 
 loose, sandy loam, without ballast, it was not strange that 
 some cars occasionally "jumped the track," and bumped 
 along over the ties until stopped. As our time was slow 
 and the cars were light, little damage was usually done. 
 We had no connections to make, and the schedule was 
 liberal. So, getting necessary tools — always carried for 
 such emergency — out of the baggage car and off the en- 
 gine, we would get to work with the aid of willing pas- 
 sengers, and jack the cars up and pry them into place. 
 Little harm would generally happen on these occasions, 
 save, perhaps, being late for supper at the home end of 
 the run. Railroad travel in this new West, sometimes 
 approximated old stage service, where, it was said, in 
 rainy weather the stage coach passengers paid "ten cents 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 115 
 
 a mile for the privilege of walking and carrying a rail to 
 pry the stage out of the mud." 
 
 The train boy of those times, whose place I tried to 
 fill, was called the water boy. He supplied the passengers 
 with ice water when they wanted it, and in return was 
 permitted to sell what he could and would. Usually the 
 right was individual, and he was a little business man, not 
 an employee. He sold his own goods, pocketed the dif- 
 ferences between selling proceeds and cost price, and 
 accounted to no man therefor. Trade was good with the 
 people who were taking their first ride on the cars, and 
 many a time I have sold some young fellow the first 
 peaches and bananas he and his girl ever ate. Often the 
 water boy's job was, financially, the best one on the train. 
 I know mine was, and as I had few expenses I was rap- 
 idly becoming the moneyed man of our gang. But 
 unfortunately in the fall of 1856 sickness compelled me to 
 tell the boys "Good-bye" and leave the road. 
 
 I next found myself in the land-rush for north central 
 Iowa in the spring of 1857, before there was any bridge 
 across the Mississippi at any point. The "opening," or 
 sale of public land, was at Osage, and, I think, was the 
 last one held under the old pre-emption laws. Land grab- 
 bers with their gold — the only money Uncle Sam would 
 recognize at the land office — had filled the hotels and 
 houses of the town to overflowing, and settlers with their 
 teams and wagons were camped everywhere through the 
 town. Under the law, settlers upon land had the first 
 right to buy it at the government price of $1.25 per acre; 
 this chance had been given them before the opening day, 
 but money was scarce and could be obtained only at 
 exorbitant rates. Some few settlers had borrowed at forty 
 
n6 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 per cent per annum, but the larger part of their land was 
 still not paid for, and the speculators there gathered ex- 
 pected to buy the improved holdings at government rates. 
 The pioneers, however, did not propose to be sold out of 
 the homes they had worked so hard to make, if they could 
 help it. 
 
 The hour of opening arrived. Jubilantly the specu- 
 lators with their gold went to the land office to make their 
 entries, but they found the settlers in possession of the 
 doors and they could not get in. And what a shabby- 
 looking lot of men these settlers were at first sight : the 
 most of them were barefooted — they called themselves 
 "the barefoot brigade" ; many were without hats or caps, 
 nearly all in clothes showing long service, and some of 
 these garments bearing many signs of near-dissolution. 
 But despite their apparel, which the lack of money had 
 compelled them to wear, they were not bums or hoboes ; 
 they were a brave, hardy, dependable lot of men, the bone 
 and sinew of the Western border. 
 
 The "Land Grabbers" appealed to the officials of the 
 land office to get access to the doors, but were told in reply 
 that "the books of the office are all open to receive land 
 entries whenever you see fit to come for them." 
 
 "But we can't get in," was the reply. 
 
 "We cannot help that," said the officials. "How or 
 when you get here is no part of our jurisdiction." 
 
 The land-buyers then appealed to the civil officers of 
 the town, but were told, "We cannot see any disturbance 
 on the street for us to interfere." 
 
 "But we want those men moved out of our way so we 
 can get into the land office." 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 117 
 
 "If that is what you want," said the mayor, ''let me 
 tell you something. I know some of those men, and there 
 are not enough inhabitants in the county to do your job. 
 If you want them moved, you will have to do it your- 
 selves." 
 
 Thus the issue was joined. It was a fight or a com- 
 promise : the moneyed men chose the latter and sent a 
 delegation to open negotiations. "What do you settlers 
 want, any way?" 
 
 "We want," was answered, "to locate our own homes 
 and one quarter section besides." 
 
 "You have those rights already," said the buyers. 
 "You have possession of the doors, why don't you go 
 ahead and locate your selections ?" 
 
 "We have no money," replied the settlers. "You are 
 business men enough to understand that a good quarter 
 section that we could select near settlements, is a much 
 better buy at $2.50 per acre than anything you, not know- 
 ing the country, can catch at $1.25. So we want to sell 
 you our extra quarter sections at the first named figure." 
 
 "We agree to that," assented the buyers. "We will 
 buy your extra selections at the price you name, $2.50 per 
 acre." j 
 
 "But," continued the pioneers, "we have no money to 
 enter either piece. We want you to advance each of us 
 four hundred dollars to buy both and after we get them, 
 we will deed you one." 
 
 "Nonsense!" objected the speculators. "That is neither 
 law nor business ; legally you cannot sell what you do not 
 own, and it is not business to pay for land until a deed is 
 either delivered or placed in escrow." 
 
n8 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The eye of the leader of the settlers' delegation 
 snapped and his jaw tightened as he replied, "We know 
 that the proceeding is neither law nor business ; it is 
 more than either, it is a necessity if you buy any land at 
 this sale." Then he added in a less belligerent tone, "I 
 realize we are an almighty tough-looking lot, but if you 
 are afraid we will not do the square thing in the deal, I 
 think you will find that every bank in town and also the 
 land office itself will vouch for us. As the banks and 
 land office gladly made sufficient guaranty, agreements 
 were made and carried on the terms proposed. This de- 
 sirable arrangement having been effected, the settlers went 
 home happy with paid-for deeds to their homes in their 
 pockets, and left the speculators to buy and tie up from 
 settlement the lands of about twelve counties. 
 
 Such was a "Land Opening" under the old pre-emp- 
 tion law, when the Government sold its land to any specu- 
 lator who would buy it at one dollar and a quarter an 
 acre. A very few years later the "Homestead Law" was 
 passed, and no land could be bought at any price, but 
 farms were given free to any citizen who would live on 
 them. Under that law, a land opening of some Indian 
 reservation, compared with the other just described, was 
 like a circus to a prayer meeting. I attended one such 
 in 1892, a full generation later than that of Osage. 
 
 The Sisseton Sioux reservation in South Dakota was 
 to be opened for settlement, not purchases, at twelve 
 o'clock noon, the second Saturday in April, 1892, and no 
 person was permitted to be on the land before that hour. 
 There were two methods prescribed for acquiring title at 
 this opening: one was by taking possession of the land 
 and making improvements thereon ; the other, by handing 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 119 
 
 the description of the land you wanted, with your name 
 and two dollars fee, to a clerk in the land office at Water- 
 town. The man who first settled, either by taking posses- 
 sion or filing in the land office, secured the homestead. 
 
 There were about a thousand farms and about ten 
 thousand persons who wanted them. The country was 
 settled all around the reservation and the lands were 
 valuable. A Louisiana lottery was small and insignificant 
 compared to the chances here presented for the success of 
 a life time, and excitement ran correspondingly high. 
 
 During the week preceding the sale, the city filled up 
 with the most heterogeneous collection of persons pos- 
 sible. Lawyers without clients, doctors without patients, 
 merchants without stores, schoolteachers without schools ; 
 and the landless of all former nationalities and degrees, 
 from all parts of the Union, came here to establish new, 
 or re-establish old, homes. 
 
 Old soldiers were given the advantage over the others 
 of filing by attorney, and that was what brought me into 
 the scrimmage. I was the attorney for nearly sixty of my 
 comrades who wanted homesteads. I could not take pos- 
 session of the land for these comrades — I was limited in 
 my choice of method : I must file for them in the land 
 office. The doors were to be opened on Saturday at noon, 
 and feeling that I must be near the head of the line, Tues- 
 day at two o'clock in the morning, I roused myself and 
 went to the land office. I found eight men ahead of me, 
 but that was not bad ; I was number nine in the line, 
 and maintained it through night and day, rain, cold, and 
 snow, until the stated hour Saturday at twelve o'clock, 
 when there were more than a thousand men behind me. 
 
120 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 At that hour, those who wanted to get their homes by 
 occupation were stationed all around the reservation, the 
 lines of which had been marked and guarded by sentinels 
 to prevent any from entering before the appointed time. 
 To comply with the law, these seekers must be first on the 
 land that they wanted and must be first to commence im- 
 provements. 
 
 The "improvements" usually favored consisted of dig- 
 ging a well or a cellar. If one first placed his feet on the 
 ground of his choice and threw one spade of earth from 
 his proposed well or cellar, he had commenced improve- 
 ments and secured the land, unless someone in the land 
 office had filed on the same piece before he had made 
 such "settlement." 
 
 As the hour approached the most intense excitement 
 reigned along the long line of those who meant to make 
 filings at the land office. Among those who hoped to 
 gain their homes by occupation every nerve was strained 
 throughout the ranks of the men and women, on horse- 
 back, on foot, in carriages and wagons ; any and every 
 means of locomotion that could be used for speed were 
 lined up for over one hundred and fifty miles around the 
 reservation. The hour came : the land office threw open 
 its doors, the sentinels on the waiting line around the 
 reservation fired their guns as a signal, and the mad rush 
 then began. To repeat all the tales of the struggle, comic 
 and pathetic, would require volumes ; one of them may 
 only partially picture a little of the scene. 
 
 A young man and his sister were mounted, waiting for 
 the signal. Both were excited and anxious, for they knew 
 where they wanted to locate. "Now, Betty," cautioned 
 the man, "be sure to follow me, and keep up with me if 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 121 
 
 you can, for 1 have the spade to commence our improve- 
 ments and I am going to ride on a dead run." The gun was 
 fired ; the rush was on. They both were away at their 
 utmost speed, but were separated in the mixup. When 
 the man reached the chosen place he found that his sister 
 had out-run him and, having no spade, was digging her 
 cellar like a woodchuck or gopher — with her hands and 
 feet. If the girl did not secure her home she certainly 
 deserved it. Luck favored me in my filings. Out of the 
 sixty which I made I caught about twenty-five quarter 
 sections on which my comrades made homes, and some of 
 whom became wealthy. 
 
 It is the common impression that land early purchased 
 of the Government at the low price of a dollar and a 
 quarter an acre made their buyers wealthy. Whatever it 
 may have done at other times and other openings, I am not 
 discussing, but the lands at the Osage sale in 1857 proved 
 a regular "Old Man of the Sea" upon the backs of their 
 unlucky purchasers. It was more than thirty years— a 
 full generation — before they were saleable. The reason 
 was apparent : western Iowa and Minnesota were still 
 open for settlers ; the Homestead Act soon passed, and 
 while "Uncle Sam was rich enough to give us all a farm" 
 what was the use of going to north central Iowa and buy- 
 ing one? 
 
 There were enough residents in the counties, subject to 
 this sale, to organize civil governments and hold the 
 offices, and the first duty of county officers was to see that 
 non-resident landholders paid taxes — a duty that was 
 properly attended to. I know whereof I am writing. My 
 partner and I had on our books, twenty years after this 
 opening, thousands of acres of these lands offered, without 
 
122 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 takers, for sale at five dollars per acre. The cost of that 
 land, counting investment, taxes and interest throughout 
 all these years, must have been more than twice that sum. 
 Many of these lands were subsequently sold for taxes and 
 their owners never realized anything for their invest- 
 ment. 
 
 About 1870 a peculiar condition prevailed in the west- 
 ern part of one county. Many entries had been made 
 there by Southern people ; then the war came on, fol- 
 lowed by the reconstruction period in the South, when our 
 Southern brothers had all they could do to maintain and 
 keep up their plantations without bothering with any 
 wild-cat lands in Iowa. There were accumulated on these 
 lands, ten years of unpaid taxes. As no one would buy 
 them for the amount due, it was decided that they should 
 be sold for whatever they would bring. This was done. 
 The sale dragged ; nobody wanted to bid, and many pieces 
 sold below fifty dollars for the whole quarter section. To 
 be sure it was only a tax title, but under the circumstances, 
 it was a title which has held for nearly half a century — 
 will hold for ten centuries longer — and one which it would 
 cost from one hundred to two hundred dollars per acre 
 to dispossess today. From fifty dollars a quarter section 
 to two hundred dollars an acre is a respectable profit. 
 These purchasers made money. 
 
 Many of the quarter sections sold at Osage were so 
 wet or broken that good lands could be bought at much 
 less than the expense of draining or otherwise reclaiming 
 them. I remember one case of a non-resident who had 
 paid taxes for more than ten years on a piece of land, and 
 finally came out to see it. He employed the country sur- 
 veyor, and with his help found the first corner of the 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 123 
 
 quarter section. The surveyor folded his compass and 
 started west to find the next corner, when the Easterner 
 stopped him and said, "You say this is a corner of my 
 land." "Yes," replied the surveyor. 
 
 "Now, which is my land? Point it out, please." 
 
 The surveyor, pointing west said, "Your north line 
 runs one-half mile in this direction;" then pointing south, 
 "a half-mile there. It is a half-mile square of land located 
 in here," waving his hand between the two points and 
 indicating a shaky, wild-grass slough, at that time worth- 
 less for any purpose whatever. 
 
 "Well say, what is that hole in the ground there?" 
 asked the land owner. 
 
 "That is a craw-fish hole," replied the surveyor. 
 "Do you think the gentleman lives there?" 
 
 "Yes," said the surveyor. "Don't you see the fresh dirt 
 he threw out last night?" 
 
 The land owner thoughtfully unbuttoned his coat, took 
 from his pocket a warranty deed for the land, carefully 
 wrapped it around the end of his cane, and pushed it well 
 home into the craw-fish's residence, then said, "There, Mr. 
 Craw-fish, you have possession of this land. Blame you, 
 take the title !" 
 
 It was not until about 1890 that holding lands in that 
 part of Iowa was a good speculation : at that time came a 
 steady rise lasting for twenty years ; lands purchased at 
 from six to twenty dollars an acre in 1890, often sold for 
 from sixty dollars to two hundred dollars an acre in 19 10. 
 
124 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 PIONEER LIFE 
 
 The interval between the years 1857 and 1890 — a 
 third of a century, a full generation — were certainly 
 "back woods," or, if you prefer, "back prairie," times 
 of primitive pioneer life in northern Iowa. It is hard for 
 one who has not experienced it to realize the conditions 
 which then and there surrounded the settlers. Take our 
 party for instance. We located some forty miles west of 
 the land office in Osage, and after we had left Mitchell 
 on the Cedar River, about three miles on our way, we 
 passed but two houses on all the long journey— one of 
 them vacant. At the end of our drive, we found the 
 little settlement that was our objective with about half 
 a dozen houses and possessed of the ambitious design to 
 capture the county seat. This design they accomplished 
 and maintained until another part of the county located a 
 few more citizens, when the honor was lost never to 
 return. 
 
 We found the people here regaining heart and hope 
 from the effects of perhaps the hardest winter that sec- 
 tion ever knew. The snow came early and in great abund- 
 ance. To listen to the tales told us of the depths of the 
 drifts, one would suppose that some lively liar had been 
 teaching school in that vicinity, but investigation proved 
 that it was harder to invent lies than to relate facts that 
 were so much stranger than fiction. They told of going 
 out to the meadow to get hay for their teams, and having 
 to dig down to reach the top of their stacks. This was 
 doubtless true in cases. Of their having to dig tunnels 
 into their houses. This also certainly was sometimes a 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 125 
 
 fact. Harder yet for a stranger to believe, but most indis- 
 putable of all ; at times they were compelled to stretch a 
 line from the back door of the house to the stable for 
 fear of getting lost during a storm while going from one 
 to the other. This was true, not only of the winter in 
 question, but true for many winters thereafter. So long 
 as the snow-filled blizzards could sweep for miles without 
 finding a house, a stable, or grove, or cornfield, around 
 which and in which the snow could find rest, it rushed 
 on, a blinding, swirling mass until it pounced upon some 
 advanced settler's home and buried it. If the pioneer 
 himself was caught outside in the blinding, suffocating 
 swirl, he soon lost all sense of direction, and might be- 
 come bewildered and suffocated, helpless in his own door 
 yard. 
 
 But the deep snow was not the climax of the tragedy 
 of the winter 1856- 1857. About the middle of the winter 
 came a warm spell and some rain, and then it turned 
 fearfully cold. A crust formed on top of the deep snow 
 strong enough to carry a man, but not enough to support 
 any domestic animal heavier than a dog. This condition 
 continued during the remainder of the winter. Elk and 
 deer were imprisoned in the places where the rains found 
 them, and as the sharp, icy crust prevented their getting 
 away, they either starved, or were killed by the wolves, 
 the settlers' dog, or the settlers themselves. That winter 
 practically exterminated the hoof and horn game from 
 northern Iowa. 
 
 Soon there was danger that not only the wild game 
 but also the settlers and their families would starve, for 
 no crops had yet been raised in this location. On the 
 Cedar River, nearly forty miles away, was the nearest 
 
126 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 point where farming had been done and a mill erected to 
 grind grain. Not a team could possibly make this trip 
 through the crusted snow ; there was only one thing left 
 to do; the crust would hold up the men, and they must 
 hitch themselves to sleds and haul the flour or meal in, 
 or starve. They chose the first alternative, and taking 
 the place of horses, hauled in the provisions. They also 
 did all the other work that their teams usually performed. 
 This was a prairie country, wood was scarce and many 
 times a long way off. Though most families had not 
 provided a winter's supply, the home fires must be kept 
 burning. Again they tied themselves to their sleds and 
 went to the timber, usually miles away, cut their sled 
 loads of wood and returned to toast their shins before a 
 blaze whose worth they fully realized. One man who 
 lived six miles from the timber told me, "After I had 
 gone to the timber, cut my load and returned home — a 
 twelve-mile trip — I could sit and enjoy that fire as never 
 before in my life. Before spring I could do anything a 
 horse could except whinny and eat hay." 
 
 The next summer, fields were broken up ; wheat, corn, 
 oats, and barley planted, and bountiful crops harvested. 
 That fall a mill was built, and the question of provisions 
 for another winter was settled so far as cereals were con- 
 cerned. For sugar, sorghum cane was planted. In each 
 settlement some enterprising man would put up a sorghum 
 mill, and press the cane and boil down the sap on "shares." 
 Of course, one could not frost cake with sorghum, but 
 candy could be made, and no better fun existed than 
 plenty of girls and a sorghum candy pull. For coffee, 
 carrots roasted hard and ground in the coffee mill strove 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 127 
 
 hard to fill the demand, and old ladies tried to think that 
 red-root leaves gathered on the prairie at the right time, 
 and properly cured, made fine tea. 
 
 The prairie sod, turned over the first year, was an 
 unequaled place to raise garden vegetables. The groves 
 and thickets furnished plums and crab apples for all who 
 would come and get them. Thus was the inner man sup- 
 plied, if not bountifully and daintily, at least sufficiently, 
 and better still, what one had was free for all ; no person 
 went hungry if there were provisions anywhere in the 
 neighborhood. 
 
 But money, and things money alone could buy, were 
 scarce, almost absent. There were but two sources of 
 money supply : first, taxes realized from non-resident 
 land owners ; second, what sums the settlers brought into 
 the country with them. We could raise unlimited crops, 
 but of what use were they after home wants were sup- 
 plied ? It was two hundred miles to McGregor, the nearest 
 market — eight days going and eight days returning. 
 
 Our best cash crop was wheat. Twenty bushels would 
 make as much as the average team could haul over sloughs 
 that were not graded, and through rivers not bridged. 
 This grain would sell for forty cents a bushel ; eight dol- 
 lars compensation for the load of wheat, sixteen day's 
 work with team, sixteen day's expense on the road for a 
 man and team, besides necessary breakages and inciden- 
 tals. The only figuring necessary for such a market-man 
 to make after he got home would be to find out how much 
 he would have saved had he thrown his wheat away be- 
 fore he started. 
 
128 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The resourceful pioneer, however, would manage to 
 beat even, as bad a proposition as this. He would start 
 while grass was green, with an ox team that was expected 
 to forage for its own rations and stable itself out of doors 
 nights ; he would, besides his wheat, put in his wagon a 
 small sack of flour, some blankets, a little salt, and his 
 shot gun. By this means, if, through the trip, the cattle 
 succeeded in feeding and stabling themselves, and if the 
 man lived the entire time on his own cooking of pancakes 
 and dudah gravy, mingled with what game he might shoot, 
 and if there were no mishaps that ruined the grain or 
 called for cash outlay, the man might return home with a 
 dress for his wife, shoes for the girl, tobacco for the 
 father, tea for the mother, ever necessary powder and 
 shot for the gun, and probably new experiences to relate. 
 
 I mentioned an article found on the menu of this 
 market-man which was standard with all during the first 
 few years of new settlement, but which became obsolete 
 in good families after cows came to be milked and pigs 
 fed. "Dudah gravy" is the luxury I refer to, and that 
 the knowledge of its making may not die out of the land, 
 I here preserve the recipe. Put sufficient water in a 
 frying pan, salt to the taste ; then take a piece of butter 
 or other fat and hold over the frying pan carefully, so 
 that the shadow of the fat may rest upon the water. Put 
 the butter away for further use, thicken the water with 
 flour as desired. Serve hot. 
 
 You doubtless notice in the financial statement I have 
 given that there was scant provision made for any com- 
 forts or necessities that demanded money to procure. 
 Principal among these was clothing. As new clothing was 
 near the boundary of the impossible, the old was utilized 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 129 
 
 to the limit of its endurance. It is surprising how long 
 a suit will last if so used. Judicious, or even unjudicious, 
 patching will extend its life so that it may even rival the 
 nine assigned the cat. At first it was thought that patches 
 should correspond with the material and color of the 
 garment, but from lack of material this idea was soon 
 abandoned as unnecessary and as being too much of a 
 concession to eastern style and to the backwoods four 
 hundred. A white patch upon black goods, while not sought 
 for, was permissible ; and when time came to patch the 
 patch, if a brilliant red was handy, one's garment might 
 soon rival that ancient and unlucky suit of many colors 
 that Joseph wore. Occasionally in this community might 
 unexpectedly appear a person dressed in fine broadcloth, 
 or rustling silk, according to the sex of its wearer. Im- 
 mediately he or she would be surrounded by sympathizing 
 neighbors, who knew only too well the direful fact, that 
 these persons had not achieved wealth, but that everything 
 they possessed was worn out except this suit. As the say- 
 ing went, "Poverty had driven them to their best." The 
 efYorts made to preserve this best suit would be pathetic 
 had they not been so amusing. 
 
 When we commenced raising wheat, canvas sacks 
 were necessary. As these were hard to keep track of when 
 unlimited borrowing and lending was the rule, each owner 
 branded his own sacks indelibly with his name. Now two 
 grain sacks make a serviceable pair of pants, and two 
 more a coat, and should a settler appear some morning 
 with a brand new canvas suit bearing one neighbor's name 
 branded on the coat and another friend's initials stamped 
 on the pants, no one was shocked ; for it would be a 
 mighty mean man who would begrudge a neighbor a sack 
 
130 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 or two when he needed a suit of clothes, even though his 
 permission for such reconstruction had not been asked. 
 
 One writer on the settlement of the West says, 
 "Wherever Spaniards located they first built a church; 
 the French, a fort ; Germans, a beer hall ; Dutchmen, a 
 warehouse; Englishmen, a tavern; and Americans, a 
 school and a printing office." Our settlement was made 
 up of people from all corners of the world, but if the 
 above classification be true, it was very strongly Amer- 
 ican ; for wherever on our prairies or in our groves there 
 were half a dozen children that could be gathered — natur- 
 ally come by, or borrowed of far away neighbors for this 
 purpose — a school was there organized ; and wherever 
 there was even an apology for a village, there either 
 flourished or languished a newspaper. 
 
 Our people may have been of all lands and of all 
 tongues, but they soon became one in broad, generous 
 comradeship and hospitality. Should a man at the close 
 of spring work, or at any other time, care to hitch up 
 his team and drive with his family fifteen or twenty 
 miles to a near neighbor for a few days' visit, he was 
 always gladly welcomed. Every one had plenty to eat, 
 such as it was, and one who could not wrap himself in a 
 blanket and lie on the floor, or in the hay in the stables, 
 either as host or guest, was not worthy of the western 
 friendship there bestowed. 
 
 Property was so nearly in common that what one man 
 owned could be used by all ; borrowing and lending were 
 endless. Should one man be the luckless owner of some 
 useful and popular piece of farm machinery, and needed 
 it for his own use, he might have to trace its path over 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 131 
 
 many farms before he found it, and then in courtesy, 
 might be compelled to wait until the neighbor was through 
 using it. 
 
 The country was well watered by beautiful streams, 
 clear and sparkling, running over bright and pebbly beds. 
 But one did not always stop to admire their beauty when 
 he considered there were no bridges, and that he often 
 needed to cross them at whatever stage of water they 
 might be. It was remarkable what facility some of our 
 people acquired in fording streams that were seemingly 
 impassable. The secret was in knowing how, and in 
 learning the peculiar characteristics of each ford. One 
 person, desiring to know the secrets of such a crossing, 
 called over the stream to a native, "Say, how do you drive 
 this ford?" "Well," answered the Hoosier — for such he 
 was — "You drive down that ar bank and into the stream 
 sort a slaunchwise until you get f ernint that big boulder ; 
 then you turn and come kinder catawampus-like to this 
 cotton wood tree, and I think you will get through all 
 on a squegee." This direction platted that ford, but 
 often when carelessness or error of judgment obtained, we 
 did not always get across "on a squegee." 
 
 Once, with a rig containing my sister, another man's 
 sister, and myself, I attempted to cross a stream whose 
 depth I had under-estimated. When part way 
 across, the team commenced swimming and carried 
 the front wheels of the wagon with them to the further 
 shore ; the hind wheels dropped into the deep water, while 
 my sister, the other fellow's sister and I, went floating 
 down the stream in the wagon-box. Before I had finished 
 reassembling the disunited parts of my outfit I learned 
 
132 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 that before driving into water of unknown depth, it was 
 wise to chain the box down to the running gear of the 
 wagon. 
 
 Near the north line of Iowa, where we were located, 
 is the broadest sweep of prairie in the state, because there 
 were fewer large streams here than elsewhere to stop the 
 destructive fall-fires. From the upper Cedar River to the 
 upper Des Moines River, about seventy-five miles, the 
 distance is practically one broad prairie. Here and there 
 some lake or stream may have protected a grove or belt 
 of trees, but these spots were like oases in a great desert, 
 and to them rushed the first comers. Such a settlement 
 was ours, whose inhabitants, being hundreds of miles 
 from steam or river transportation, were compelled to 
 have wood to keep them alive through the hard winter. 
 Therefore, if a piece of land had a few acres of timber on 
 it, they seemed not to care if the rest was brush or stone 
 that would take years to conquer, or swamps that would 
 never be worth anything. 
 
 The pioneers who waited until the railroad brought 
 market for their wheat, and coal for their stoves, and 
 who went out in the middle of the prairie, where they 
 could sit whistling on their plows while they broke the 
 raw sod in furrows half a mile long without stop or 
 impediment, rapidly passed the old, first residents in 
 everything that marked financial success. 
 
 In the fall after repeated frosts had thoroughly 
 killed the grass, and bright, sunshiny days had dried it, 
 came the warm, hazy, lazy time of our Indian summer. 
 We soon learned what that hazy, smoky air meant — 
 prairie fires were running somewhere. Then everyone 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 133 
 
 looked to his protection from that danger. All were out 
 everywhere, plowing fire-breaks where necessary, and 
 establishing foundations for back-fires where deemed 
 desirable. Woe to the farmer who neglected these pre- 
 cautions. The loss of his crops of the summer, his hay 
 for the winter, and even his house and buildings — every- 
 thing he had — might be the penalty inflicted for his 
 neglect. 
 
 An effective fire break was easily made. A strip four 
 or five feet wide was plowed around the property to be 
 protected, then four or five rods outside of that plowing 
 another in like manner was made thus forming two 
 parallel rings a few rods apart aroiuid the exposed build- 
 ings or stacks. After that, some still evening, the grass 
 and everything between the two strips that would take 
 fire was burned. This with proper back-firing, should 
 emergency demand, was amply sufficient. Few fires could 
 jump such a break. 
 
 To one who had no property at stake, or who had 
 adequately prepared for it, a fire at night, seen from its 
 front upon that great prairie, was a most beautiful and 
 inspiring sight to behold. From right to left as far as 
 could be seen, the broad line of fire might be rapidly ap- 
 proaching. The sky was illuminated to its zenith with 
 the glow of the advancing flames, as they sprang high or 
 dropped low, governed by the wind, or as vegetation 
 furnished food for consumption. No wonder that men 
 and women were nervous for fear the mighty onslaught 
 would jump their breaks and come in upon them. No 
 wonder they prepared for a "fight to the finish," should 
 disaster demand it. 
 
134 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 When fire swept down unexpectedly on an unpro- 
 tected settlement, all hands — men, women, and children — 
 turned out to fight. Often the battle was long and ex- 
 hausting; the tense exertion, hot flame and dense smoke, 
 frequently overcoming the contestants. Some rushed their 
 teams with plows to make fire breaks, all others either 
 back-firing or with wet blankets, grain sacks, or any other 
 available weapon, charging the flames and whipping them 
 out, until the strife was won and property safe, or the 
 battle was lost and everything burned. 
 
 In that back-woods epoch "Live and let live, console 
 and help your neighbor" was the motto in the hard times 
 of our pioneer days. They were really hard times; times 
 when whole communities, perhaps, were hungry from 
 failure of crops ; times when they were cold, owing to 
 hard winters, poor houses and insufficient clothing ; times 
 when roads were impassable, rivers uncrossable, and 
 they were completely cut ofT from the outside world. 
 
 And yet! And yet! Very few who passed through 
 those years would permit to take them out of their lives : 
 other years you might have, but not these. There was a 
 democracy, a comradeship, cemented in the furnace of 
 their hardships, that was truer, firmer, and more lasting 
 than any glitter that a finer civilization could produce. 
 Could a man leave this and go back to the flesh pots of an 
 older country ? Never ! Few persons who once got the 
 breath of western life ever returned east to live. They 
 might be nomads moving here and there, as many were, 
 but they always moved farther west. 
 
 We had a fertile, beautiful country, "fair as the 
 Garden of the Lord." Its oases of trees dotted the land- 
 scape here and there ; flowers thickly scattered over the 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 135 
 
 rolling prairies everywhere, from the time the wild 
 anemone (Pasque flower) painted blue the sunny sides 
 of the hills in the spring — even before the snow was all 
 gone — until fall, when the goldenrod flaunted its bril- 
 liant yellow in the face of coming Jack Frost, himself. 
 
 We saw this country not with a stranger's eyes ; he 
 saw only a barren land devoid of everything that, to him, 
 made life bearable. We saw it not as Longfellow des- 
 cribed it — "Sea-like, pathless, limitless, waste of desert." 
 We visualized the same landscape covered by future 
 homes, and bounty-giving fields, and fruit-laden orchards ; 
 by town and cities, with schoolhouses on all the hills, 
 and churches in all the communities ; and these all pos- 
 sessed by and for the benefit of our children and our 
 children's children. 
 
 We loved this land : we worked for it, and when our 
 country called in 1861, we voluntarily more than filled our 
 quotas and fought for it. 
 
 But some of the deprivations^ compared with present 
 modes of life, were not caused entirely by our extreme 
 Western location, they were partly due to the non-develop- 
 ment of the country at large. Before the Civil War, 
 whether one lived in the North, South, East, or West, 
 he had no artificial light in his house save that furnished 
 by oil lamps or home-made tallow candles ; he had no 
 heat except what was furnished by fireplaces and wood 
 stoves ; a very large percentage of sleeping rooms were 
 without heat of any kind, and, when necessary, the 
 "warming pan'' was filled with coals from the fire-place 
 and pushed by its long handle around between the sheets 
 of the bed until one dare go to bed without fear of 
 freezing. 
 
136 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 There was no rural mail delivery, therefore no daily 
 paper, and probably no paper at any time other than the 
 local one from the county seat, and that consisted, per- 
 haps, of only four small pages. Postage was high ; letters 
 were few and had no envelopes, the sheets of paper being 
 fastened together by sealing wax or wafer, and must be 
 delivered at the town post office. 
 
 Books were so few and costly that not many families 
 possessed private libraries of any size, and access to a 
 public library, the farmer had not. 
 
 The family was largely, if not wholly, clothed in home- 
 made garments. The wool was sheared, carded, and spun 
 on the farm, woven into cloth by some loom in the com- 
 munity, and cut out and made by the women of the house 
 or some person who went from family to family to do that 
 special work. Not until the fifties did the young men on 
 the farm commence priding themselves on being the pos- 
 sessors of "store clothes." 
 
 The farmer of today would give up in despair if com- 
 pelled to raise a crop with the implements then used. 
 The agriculturist of those days had no silo, no gang plow, 
 no hinged drag, no disk, no seeder or drill for either field 
 or garden ; no reaper or binder, no mower or hay-loader 
 or horse-rake, fork, or corn-cutter, and he never heard of 
 a motor machine for farm use. This old-time farmer 
 had not one of the many implements that an up-to-date 
 farmer of today deems absolutely necessary to make a 
 crop, and yet he had all he wanted, and all he knew how 
 to use. He was far from destitute and was rich compared 
 with the farmer of Old Mexico who does all his work 
 with only three hand tools : ax, hoe, and macheta. He 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 137 
 
 still had his team and wagon, or cart ; a plow — of narrow 
 cut and with only a cast iron mould board — and a drag, a 
 grain cradle, a scythe, a hand rake, a pitchfork, a hoe, an 
 ax, and a flail. 
 
 With this small outfit, coupled with a willingness to 
 work, the men and women of those days raised a few 
 field crops and the best generation of boys and girls the 
 world ever saw — a generation that worked the wonders 
 of the succeeding fifty years. 
 
 The towns and cities were lacking in modern conve- 
 nience quite as much as the country. They had no 
 electric lights, no telephones, no movies, no street cars 
 except horse cars in the larger cities. Cable cars were not 
 introduced until 1873, nor electric cars until 1888. There 
 was no hot or cold water in rooms, even of hotels, unless 
 carried up in pitchers. There were no automobiles, no 
 bicycles, no railroad trains except connecting large cities — 
 even Buffalo was not reached until 1842, or Chicago until 
 1852 — and no elevated railroads anywhere. 
 
 Of the many magazines now waiting periodically to 
 be bought, only two could then be found — Godey's Lady's 
 Book and Harper's Magazine, and these did not appear 
 in general circulation until the early fifties. 
 
 The multitude of breakfast and prepared foods now 
 on sale did not then exist. The housewife at that time 
 was compelled to do all the cooking for the family. 
 
 Of the greater sports, baseball was then "one old cat" ; 
 tennis was "battledore and shuttlecock"; golf had not yet 
 crossed the ocean, and polo had not arisen above shinny. 
 
 Only the larger cities had pavements, and those were 
 likely to be laid with cobble stones. 
 
138 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Drinking intoxicating liquors was a common habit. 
 Even when the minister made his customary pastoral 
 visit the "toddy" was provided and duly used. Men prided 
 themselves on being able to carry their liquor without 
 showing it, and drinking bouts were frequent among the 
 best citizens, to test who could drink the most and get 
 away from the table without assistance. Pocket drink- 
 ing-flasks were carried as commonly as watches, and 
 "Will you have a drink?" was as frequent a greeting as 
 "Good morning." 
 
 Prices for labor were low in those days. Salaries 
 amounting to eight hundred or a thousand dollars a year 
 were liberal ; unskilled labor received from seventy-five 
 cents to a dollar and a half a day, and skilled labor from 
 a dollar and a half to three dollars. But every one seemed 
 happier then than now, when even common labor gets 
 from five to eight dollars a day, and skilled workers 
 and professional men have only the sky for the higher 
 limit of their charges — happier, because in those "good 
 old times" there were thousands of costly things now 
 deemed necessary that then were not cared for, or known 
 of ; happier, because the principal requirements of living 
 bore prices corresponding to the worker's wages. 
 
 The price of wheat was from forty cents to a dollar 
 a bushel; butter, ten cents a pound; eggs, fifteen cents a 
 dozen ; chickens, twenty-five cents each ; dressed pork, 
 two dollars and fifty cents a hundred. At a Farmer's 
 Institute I held in Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, in 1890, 
 I placed the following then debatable question on the 
 program. "Is it cheaper to burn corn for fuel on the 
 farm than to burn coal at three dollars and fifty cents a 
 ton?" The question was earnestly debated, and decision 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 139 
 
 was made that "if the farm was more than ten miles from 
 the depot where coal could be bought, it was cheaper to 
 burn corn." The Clear Lake, Iowa, market for April 
 15, 1897, was: Oats 10-12; wheat 56-60; corn 10; rye 20; 
 barley 15-18; potatoes 30; hogs 3.30 to 3.50; cattle 3.25 
 to 3.75 ; butter 10 to 12; eggs 6 and chickens 5. 
 
 But the greatest change for the better between the 
 before- and after-Civil War times was one of currency. 
 Before i860 the only money that one could take from one 
 state to another and be sure it would retain its value was 
 gold or silver. Banks of exchange were conspicuous for 
 their absence, and therefore a cumbersome belt around 
 the body, filled with gold, was a traveling necessity where 
 even a limited amount of money was transported. Bank 
 bills were plentiful but mostly of the "wild cat" variety 
 that might be good today and worthless tomorrow. 
 
 Different states had diverse laws covering banks of 
 issue, and the flood of paper currency sent out by them 
 was correspondingly valuable or worthless. Ohio had a 
 better banking system than other states and thus her 
 currency was more desirable. Some states were- lax in 
 requirements, and their issues were to be avoided. 
 
 Thompson's Bank-note Reporter hung near the cash 
 drawer of every store, and when paper money was pre- 
 sented, that book was consulted to ascertain the value of 
 the bills offered. This Reporter listed every bank of 
 issue in the United States and stated the value of its 
 bills. The value might range from worthless to par ac- 
 cording to circumstances. This list was published 
 monthly, and there were many and wild fluctuations in 
 the value of the paper currency it reported from time 
 
140 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 to time. So great were these changes in value that one 
 might go to bed with a comfortable roll of good money 
 on hand and get up in the morning still possessed of the 
 same bank bills and find himself "dead broke." 
 
 The necessities of the Civil War compelled the adop- 
 tion of a national and stable currency, and the advantages 
 accruing from the banks of issue Secretary Chase estab- 
 lished may have equaled the cost of that war. 
 
 Banks of deposit in most of the states still were under 
 few or no requirements as to the opening of their busi- 
 ness, or of examination during the continuation of the 
 same; the liabilities of the proprietors of such concerns 
 being no greater, and their affairs being subject to no 
 closer supervision, than that of partners or proprietors 
 of any other line of trade. 
 
 It would seem at first sight that depositors, not hav- 
 ing the protection that recent laws provide, would have 
 lost their deposits more heavily than now. I do not think 
 this was true, at least in Iowa and adjacent states. The 
 temptation to every banker is to use his depositor's 
 money 'when he sees a proposition that promises large 
 and fairly safe returns. In these modern times financing 
 new corporations and speculation in stocks and produce 
 are the pit-falls that alluringly present themselves and 
 secure advance of cash from optimistic bank officials. In 
 old times it was choice pieces of real estate being sold 
 at less than their value that lured the depositors' money 
 from the bank safe. 
 
 Of course, if everything went as expected, the depos- 
 itors' money was safe in both cases; but if conditions 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 141 
 
 went wrong, some one suffered. When the hanker of 
 recent years is caught there are only the resources and 
 stock of a broken corporation and the margin and colla- 
 teral of a trade deal upon which to rely ; all perhaps com- 
 paratively worthless, and the depositors are the victims. 
 In the case of the old-time banker, if he was an honest 
 man (and he usually was), his choice pieces of real estate 
 were still on hand, and their proceeds, together with the 
 other resources of the bank, would usually pay the de- 
 positors and correspondents in full. In this case the value 
 of the real estate so sold would be slaughtered without 
 mercy, and the banker, not the depositor, suffered. 
 
 I speak knowingly and feelingly on this subject be- 
 cause I went through the mill in the last eighties from 
 both a depositor's and the banker's standpoint. I was 
 conducting a private bank and, as usual with Iowa bank- 
 ers at that time, I carried the bulk of the bank funds on 
 deposit, subject to draft, in a bank in Chicago. My Chica- 
 go correspondent failed, and I received payment of only 
 ten cents on the dollar. This misfortune, coupled with an 
 illegal act of my cashier, compelled me to close my doors. 
 My bank resources, my choice pieces of real estate, and 
 homestead paid my depositors one hundred cents on the 
 dollar inside of ninety days. My private obligations were, 
 of course, unprovided for, but pioneer sympathy was 
 with me, and to that kindly consideration I owe the fact 
 that, though it was years before those debts were all paid, 
 not a man enforced proceedings against me, but every 
 one gave me all the time I needed and all the courtesy and 
 encouragement I wanted. 
 
142 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 My experience of eighty years has taught me that if the 
 Golden Rule is hard to maintain in business, this para- 
 phrase of it is almost sure to be true : 
 "As ye do unto others even so others will do unto you." 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 143 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "WESTWARD HO!" AND THE CALIFORNIA 
 
 TRAIL 
 
 In the summer of 1858 the exciting news came from 
 the Rocky Mountains that gold had been discovered at 
 Pike's Peak. This was so soon after the rush of the 
 "Forty-Niners" to California that every one remembered 
 the fortunes there made in the placer mines of that terri- 
 tory. It was proclaimed that a new Eldorado had been 
 discovered, containing fabulous wealth for those who 
 would only go and pick it up, and the message was enthu- 
 siastically received and heartily believed. All the winter 
 of 1858-1859, parties were organizing to start immediately 
 when spring opened. 
 
 It follows without telling, that a foot-loose boy like 
 myself would be swept away with the crowd; and the 
 spring of 1859 found me driving a team of three yoke of 
 cattle to which was attached a covered wagon bearing in 
 large letters the motto "Pike's Peak or Bust." 
 
 Early in the season with ten western pioneers from 
 Northern Iowa we left our homes and drove over forty 
 miles toward the west across an absolutely uninhabited 
 and treeless prairie until we reached an upper branch of 
 the Des Moines River. Then we followed a track down 
 that stream, finding at intervals gatherings of settlers here 
 and there, and, occasionally, block houses built the pre- 
 ceding summer as protection from the Indians under 
 Inkpaduta, who had been committing depredations at 
 Spirit Lake and elsewhere. 
 
144 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Reaching the town of Des Moines, now the capitol and 
 metropolis of our state, we found hardly more than a 
 village. From there we again went west across another 
 prairie, nearly one hundred and fifty miles in extent, with 
 houses few and far between, until we reached the settle- 
 ment of Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. Should 
 you examine our route, you would see that from the upper 
 branch of the Des Moines River to Council Bluffs via 
 Des Moines is a very long roundabout way. Deviation 
 was deemed desirable in order that we might take advan- 
 tage of the roads that joined the scattering improve- 
 ments made in the timber along the river ; use the best 
 fords found through the unbridged streams, and follow 
 the safest and hardest places across the ungraded sloughs. 
 
 The roads we sought would not be recognized as such 
 today. They were simply trails, unworked wagon tracks, 
 two parallel strips about twelve inches wide and two feet 
 apart, where the wheels of wagons and feet of teams had 
 trampled down the grass, leaving the middle growing as 
 luxuriantly as elsewhere. This track, or road, wound 
 and twisted across the prairie, following from ridge to 
 ridge, to find the smoothest land, and going often miles 
 out of the way to seek a place where an ungraded slough 
 or unbridged stream might be crossed. 
 
 Had we, at that time, attempted to drive the short way 
 between the two places mentioned, there would have been 
 no track, and we would not have known where to find 
 crossings of streams and when to avoid the low, wet and 
 miry land. We would have been compelled to navigate 
 the prairie much as the sailor does the sea. The sailor 
 has to avoid rocks and shoals, the prairie schooner must 
 miss uncrossable rivers and quagmires : they both may 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 145 
 
 make their way by landmarks if they recognize them, or 
 by the sun by day, the stars by night, or the compass when 
 neither can be seen. Without landmarks, or sun, or stars, 
 or compass, the driver of the prairie schooner would be 
 as helpless as a sailor, except for one thing. And that is 
 the dependable compass plant (Silphium Laciniatum.) 
 Longfellow, in his Evangeline, gives a beautiful descrip- 
 tion of it: 
 
 "Look at the delicate plant that lifts 
 
 its head from the meadow, 
 See how its leaves all point 
 
 to the north as true as a magnet ; 
 It is the compass flower, that the 
 
 finger of God, has suspended 
 Here on its fragile stalk, to direct 
 
 the traveler's journey 
 Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless 
 
 waste of the desert." 
 
 Evidently, Longfellow never saw the plant; but his 
 description is true in the main — that the leaves point north 
 and south. As to the rest, it resembles what an author 
 of a work said when he described a crab as "a small, 
 red fish that walks backwards." Submitting this to a 
 naturalist the opinion was returned, "Absolutely correct, 
 except the crab is not a fish, is not red, and does not 
 walk backwards." So with Longfellow's description of 
 this flower. It is not a "delicate plant" — it is the largest 
 and sturdiest one growing in its habitat. It is never found 
 in the "meadow" — it always seeks dry land. Neither 
 leaves nor flower are "suspended on a fragile stalk," but 
 the leaves grow in a bunch vertically from the ground, 
 
146 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the points of their pennatifid leaves pointing north and 
 south, the central stalk rising nearly leafless. It is never 
 found in a "waste of the desert," but always upon the best 
 of land. So true is this last, that if a seller wants to con- 
 vince a buyer of the fertility of a piece of land and its 
 adaptability for immediate cultivation, he says, "There 
 are plenty of rosin weeds (common name for compass 
 plant) growing upon the place." Notwithstanding the mis- 
 information Longfellow had received, he does well in 
 calling to the atention of all the great fact "that the 
 finger of God has placed it here. . . .to direct the traveler's 
 journey." Many times I have consulted it and have never 
 been misled by it. 
 
 Council Bluffs was really, at this time, the limit of 
 settlement. Across the river, there was an Indian trading 
 station and the nucleus of what is now the city of Omaha. 
 I do not remember to have seen a single farm west of the 
 Missouri River until we reached the irrigated lands of 
 New Mexico. When we left Omaha and its buildings, 
 we were past the bounds of civilization. 
 
 According to old opinion and the reports of old ex- 
 plorers, we were now upon the "Great American Desert." 
 Explorer Long, after whom Long's Peak was named, 
 officially reported : "That land west of the meridian of 
 Council Bluffs was a desert, and could never be cultivat- 
 ed." Dr. D. D. Mitchell, superintendent of Indian affairs 
 in 1842, says in his official reports: "If we draw a line 
 through Missouri near the mouth of the Vermilion River, 
 we shall designate the limits beyond which civilized man 
 is never likely to settle. At this point, the Creator seems 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 u; 
 
 to have said to the tides of emigration that are annually 
 flowing toward the west, 'Thus far shalt thou go and 
 no farther." 
 
 Following these reports of explorers and officials, the 
 geography makers drew their maps. The atlas I studied 
 when a hoy, showed the "Great American Desert" west 
 of the Missouri River marked as plainly and almost as 
 extensively as the Desert of Sahara in North Africa or 
 the Desert of Gobi in China. 
 
 It was almost eight hundred miles from the Missouri 
 River to our first objective, Fort Laramie, near the foot 
 of the Rocky Mountains. In this long distance, there 
 was no mark of white man's work save Fort Kearney, 
 about half way there, which slightly broke the monotony. 
 There was no fear of our losing our way — the road was 
 plainly marked and deeply worn. We were now on the 
 old California Trail, three thousand miles long, com- 
 
148 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 posed of many parallel wagon tracks, which here fol- 
 lowed the north bank of the Platte River past Fort 
 Laramie, and thence into South Pass, and onward through 
 Utah to California. 
 
 The trail was largely used, first by the Mormons in 
 1847, when their advance caravan of one hundred and 
 forty-seven people, with seventy-three wagons, drove 
 over it, and on the twenty-fourth day of July, wound 
 their way down the Wasatch Mountains, and first saw 
 the valley of their then found "Deseret." 
 
 The next year saw their great migration on this 
 route : the whole Mormon people with their possessions — 
 horses, mules, oxen, and donkeys for teams ; cows, sheep, 
 goats, and even swine driven loose ; wagons — heavy and 
 light, covered and uncovered — carriages, buggies, carts, 
 and even wheelbarrows, conveying the persons, food or 
 property of the multitude. Some rode, many walked, 
 not a few pushed their property before them in carts or 
 wheelbarrows. 
 
 For their religion and misdemeanors, these people had 
 been driven out of Ohio in 1833, and out of Missouri in 
 1838. Then they settled and built a town and temple at 
 Nauvoo in Illinois, but their leader was killed, and they 
 were driven out of that State in 1846. This year, 1848, 
 with Deseret, the land of promise, ever before their 
 vision, they now toiled over these plains, welcoming the 
 babes that were born and burying the dead that failed 
 along the way, all of them as enthusiastic and devoted a 
 set of converts to a new faith as the world ever saw. 
 
 You may think what you will of the morals and reli- 
 gion of these people, but no one can help admiring the 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE \\ EST [49 
 
 courage and devotion of these converts who left every- 
 thing that they had in the world, save what they could 
 take witli them, even though they had nothing hut a 
 hand-cart, and then pushed that cart more than a thou- 
 sand miles to make a new home at the bidding of their 
 president and elders. 
 
 One year later, the grand rush to the California gold 
 field came, and the long train of "Forty-Niners," seeking 
 wealth in that land, wore the ruts still deeper and made 
 more numerous its parallel tracks. It is now half a cen- 
 tury since the Union Pacific Railroad took the place of 
 the caravans on this trail, but I will guarantee that if I 
 could find a piece of land where the road then crossed, 
 that had not been torn up by the plow, I could see the 
 trail yet, still so visibly present that it would be followed 
 with ease. I so found the Santa Fe trail on the Arkansas 
 River, and this route was the more deeply worn and the 
 broader of the two. 
 
 Driving west from Omaha, and seeing not a resident 
 or soul save Indians, we found the broad, muddy, shallow, 
 unnavigable Platte River. This stream is typical of all 
 the rivers flowing into the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers 
 out of the mountains from the west. They are all bright 
 and clear where they leave the mountains, but soon pick 
 up and carry along the light soil of the plains which they 
 cross, until they come to resemble your morning coffee 
 after it has been well colored, according to conditions: 
 creamy like the Platte and Arkansas, or reddish, as is the 
 Red of Louisiana and the Colorado in Arizona. Many 
 are simply muddy as is the Missouri, often called the 
 "Big Muddy." For a long distance below where it and 
 the Mississippi meet, the clear water of the latter does 
 
150 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 not mix with the muddy water of the former. That 
 greatest fool known to history, "Thompson's Colt," when 
 he "swam across the river in order to slake his thirst," 
 would have been justified if he lived in Missouri at this 
 point and wanted a clean drink. If the water from any 
 of these streams is dipped in the evening, it will settle 
 over night, and the mud and sand will carry down with 
 it all other contamination, leaving it clear, pleasant and 
 healthful ; this is the usual method of handling it. 
 
 The vagaries of all these streams are freakish and 
 wild, and for that reason many that carry plenty of 
 water are unnavigable. Bill Nye said, "Western rivers 
 are a mile wide and an inch thick ; they have a wide circu- 
 lation, but little influence." They seem to change their 
 banks at will, sometimes, even at low water. They 
 spread out a mile wide, but one may easily wade across 
 them if he is careful to avoid quicksand. 
 
 The valley of the Platte, up which we were traveling, 
 was wide, almost perfectly level, and bordered on both 
 sides by gently rolling hills. For about the first hundred 
 miles or more of travel in our "Great American Desert," 
 we considered that we met every sign of fertility and 
 promise that we left in the favored lands of Iowa. Our 
 judgment has since proved correct, for the land is now 
 covered by prosperous farms and rich towns. 
 
 Farther west, the soil was still fertile, but the scant 
 rainfall necessitated a change of vegetation ; the long, 
 luxuriant grasses of the western prairies gave way to 
 short buffalo grass and, in dryest places, to sage brush 
 and grease wood. 
 
THE SETTLING OF Tl I E WEST 151 
 
 Tlic success and riches of the now rapidly passing 
 ranches of our one-time "cow country" was built upon 
 buffalo grass. This grass though short and small, was 
 highly nutritious. It ripened before the frost, and unless 
 late and heavy fall rains came, which were almost un- 
 known there, it retained its feeding value all winter. This 
 condition developed a very desirable financial situation ; 
 the ranchman's cattle boarded themselves all the four 
 seasons of the year, and left to him the less tedious 
 detail of picking out bunches of his horned property as 
 they reached marketable age and pocketing the money 
 their sale produced. 
 
 There was no danger of our becoming lonesome on 
 our journey toward the mountains for the California 
 trail was this summer in the very height of its employ- 
 ment and usefulness. Along some one of its numerous 
 trails the overland stage drove a three thousand mile 
 trip from Council Bluffs to Sacramento, and the pony 
 express dashed over the same route three days to Denver 
 and eight to the last terminal. 
 
 Three distinct classes of people were lining the borders 
 of this thoroughfare with their camps and filling its 
 trails with their long lines of wagons. First, were the 
 through trains to California. These were large, thoroughly 
 organized, well-armed and efficiently commanded. Such 
 organization was usually made at its outfitting point on 
 tin- Missouri River. Unless the train was controlled by 
 <»ne interest, its captain or master was selected in some 
 form or manner mutually agreed upon. One such elec- 
 ii<>n was humorously described in the New Orleans 
 Picayune. November 1. [843. "The candidates stood up 
 
152 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 in a row before their electors and at a signal they turned 
 about and marched off, while the whole mass broke after 
 them lickety split, each man forming beTiind his favorite 
 so that each candidate flourished a kind of tail of his 
 own and a man with the longest tail was elected — a literal 
 running for office." 
 
 These trains were required to be thoroughly orgam 
 ized, armed, and equipped, because in 1857 the Mountain 
 Meadow Massacre had taken place in what is now Utah. 
 In that tragedy a hundred and twenty emigrants bound 
 for California were slaughtered. The Mormons insisted 
 that the Indians did the deed, but this statement did not 
 coincide with the fact that much of the rich property of 
 the plundered train was found in the possession of the 
 Mormons. The doubt of the innocence of the people of 
 Deseret heightened, until twenty years later it was con- 
 clusively proved that they were guilty, and John D. Lee, 
 one of their leaders, was hanged for participation in the 
 crime. 
 
 That summer we knew not who were guilty. There- 
 fore, in order that there should be no repetition of the 
 tragedy, through trains went armed and prepared against 
 any aggressors whoever they might be. They traveled 
 with all the method and precision of a military unit ; 
 every wagon had its number and must keep its place. 
 When they stopped for the night they formed their wa- 
 gons into a circle, the tongue of each chained to the 
 rear of the one in front, thus forming a very respectable 
 fort for defense against enemies, or making a corral for 
 their teams. 
 
 Teams were usually composed of oxen or mules, sel- 
 
TIM SE [TLING OF THE WEST 153 
 
 dom of horses. Three or more span of mules or yoke of 
 oxen were used to each wagon, and when only three, 
 the first was the lead team, the second the swing team, 
 and the one nearest the wagon the wheel team. The 
 driver of oxen usually walked most of the time unless 
 things were going unusually well, and he might climb 
 up into his wagon for a rest. The driver of mules rode 
 the nigh wheel mule and directed the whole six by a 
 single line attached to the bit of the nigh leader. Stage 
 and circus men only, use a line for each horse driven. 
 Both drivers of mules and oxen use as a propelling force 
 a short-handled long-lashed whip, and a vocabulary long, 
 loud, and lurid enough to meet all expected contin- 
 gencies. 
 
 The second class was the Mormons. Their trains 
 were all well appointed, but as they had no enemies to 
 contend with they were neither so large, so thoroughly 
 armed or disciplined as the Californians. They seemed to 
 have been organized as much for proselyting as for 
 freighting purposes. There was always an air of festivity 
 about them. Dances were held by their camp fires each 
 night, to which all who would might come in welcome. 
 Apparently ever} thing was done to convince the Gentiles 
 they met of the desirability of joining them, the "Chosen 
 people of God." 
 
 The third, and altogether the largest class, was the 
 Pike's Peakers. A more heterogeneous lot of people, it 
 would be impossible to find. In some respects they were 
 worse than that Mormon migration of 1848 that I tried 
 to describe. A few of these gold seekers were organized 
 into well-appointed, well-conducted caravans, but the 
 main body traveled as they saw fit, without discipline, 
 
154 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 method or order, and many times without discretion. 
 Many went in small trains of a few wagons. These 
 usually were acquaintances or relatives from some com- 
 munity that might voluntarily keep together for company 
 and mutual assistance. 
 
 Such a train as this was ours : we had three families 
 of relatives, three men, four women, three children, and 
 myself, an outsider — eleven persons in all. We drove 
 four wagons, drawn by twelve yoke of oxen and cows. 
 The last were brought along for their milk, and were 
 put into the teams on the light loads because it was the 
 easiest way of handling them. There was just one horse 
 for riding and emergency purposes. We were frontier 
 people who knew what camping meant, and came fully 
 prepared for it, and, better than all, we had a "boss" 
 whose supremacy not one of us dared to dispute. 
 
 This boss was "Charley," our oldest man. He was a 
 "Forty-Niner" who had crossed the plains twice, and 
 who was an experienced miner. Under his guidance 
 everything moved as smoothly as a military unit. When 
 we camped at night or broke camp in the morning, each 
 person knew just what he was to do, and went quietly 
 and instantly about it. When Charley, who had been 
 prospecting ahead on horseback, led us to his selected 
 camp ground and held up his hand, each driver dropped 
 his chains, unyoked the oxen, drove them to the river and 
 let them loose. Charley and Hoit then put up the tent, 
 while George and I alternated in finding water and fuel. 
 One of us would take two buckets and a spade and wade 
 out into the muddy river, and if a place could not be 
 found, on some sand bar, where the water had filtered 
 through and become clear, a small well was dug and filter- 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 155 
 
 ing waited for. The other boy would take a basket and 
 saek, and scour the plains for dry buffalo chips, the only 
 burning material obtainable. Meanwhile, the women had 
 commenced getting the meal, not forgetting to open up 
 the churn, which set over a back wagon axle and held 
 the morning's milk, to ascertain whether the all day's 
 jolting had made the butter for supper. As work was thus 
 regulated at night, so was it assigned for the morning. In 
 this manner was celerity achieved, and order and comfort 
 were the result. 
 
 Few others were so fortunate as we ; for they were 
 persons mostly from cities or communities in the East to 
 whom a tent was a mystery, and its setting up an unsolved 
 problem. The building of a fire, where there was no 
 wood, was to them unheard of ; and the cooking of a 
 meal under those circumstances was an impossibility. It 
 was a rare train of this kind that did not have at least 
 three or four bosses, not one of whom knew what should 
 be done, but all insistent on his methods being adopted. 
 Quarrels resulted, life-long friendships were broken, and 
 partnerships were destroyed. It is a true saying in the 
 West, "You never know a man until you have camped 
 with him." 
 
 But the Pike's Peakers were not all going the same 
 way; almost as many were driving east away from the 
 mountains as were driving west towards them. The 
 reason for this was that returning miners, who had been 
 through the mines, were bringing back discouraging re- 
 ports. This frightened the more timid, and they turned 
 around and started back home. Almost universally the 
 migrants had painted "Pike's Peak" upon their wagons 
 when they started for the mountains, but after they had 
 
156 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 turned back the address was altogether wrong. To avoid 
 the jeering suggestions that they would meet, they added 
 something to indicate a change in their objective. There- 
 fore wagon tops reading "Pike's Peak" were changed to 
 read 'Tike's Peak, Not for Me"; "Pike's Peak, Over the 
 Left"; "Pike's Peak Not for Joseph, No! No!" and other 
 phrases of negation that ingenuity invented, or skill por- 
 trayed. 
 
 But there were others, ourselves among the number, 
 who proposed to go through no matter what reports 
 might come back; and these men, to show their determi- 
 nation and to hearten others, amended their address to 
 read "Pike's Peak or Bust." Sadly be it told that some 
 of these brave souls also gave up and turned East deject- 
 edly before the snows of the mountains came into view. 
 These men were again compelled to amend their amend- 
 ment so that their signs now read "Pike's Beak or Bust" 
 —"Busted." 
 
 The condition of some of these returning migrants 
 was pitiful. Many had gone to the mines with provisions 
 and only money enough to take them there, thinking 
 gold could be dug as soon as a claim was found, and if 
 worse came to worse, they could work for another until 
 good luck came. They found no gold, they failed to 
 obtain work. Many lost even their outfits, and were now 
 compelled to walk home, foot-sore, weary, hungry, and 
 begging their subsistence from outgoing teams. People 
 from the cities and the East, realizing their inability to 
 replace provisions, and who were accustomed to refuse 
 solicitations for aid, could drive past these men;' but we 
 of the western border, who were used to dividing every- 
 thing we had with those in need, could not ; had we men 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 157 
 
 been so disposed, the women would not have permitted 
 any one to leave our camp hungry so long as there was 
 anything left in our wagons. 
 
 In consequence of such liberality, no great time 
 elapsed before everything eatable was gone out of our 
 wagons except flour, and the boss-put an embargo on that. 
 Something must be done, or we would be reduced to pan- 
 cakes and dudah gravy, and very short rations of those. 
 One morning Charley started in advance very early ; 
 about mid-afternoon we saw him waving a signal from 
 a mound at the right of the trail. We turned our teams 
 and drove toward him. He led us five or six miles to a 
 valley covered with luxuriant grass that he had found by 
 a small, willow-bordered stream in the hills. When we 
 had made camp, he said, "Now we will give the cattle a 
 chance to rest and fill up on this grass for a few days, 
 while we see what we can do to fill the wagons with 
 something to eat." 
 
 The next morning we started out afoot with our guns. 
 We were in the edge of the buffalo country. The great 
 mass of these animals we had not seen, but among the 
 hollows and swales of the rolling plains could be found 
 bunches of males which had been driven out of the herd 
 by their stronger and more ambitious antagonists. They 
 were living forced lives of celibacy, and were probably 
 cursing among themselves the unfairness of buffalo 
 aristocratic government. 
 
 We found such a bunch, and among them a fine, large, 
 fat fellow. We stalked them until we got into good rifle 
 range, when we fired our rifles and he fell. We could 
 have killed more, but we were sportsmen, not butchers — 
 one was all we needed. Returning to the camp, two of us 
 
158 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 took a team and went for our game, while the remaining 
 two went to work with the aid of the women and built 
 a jerking stand. This was done by cutting willows from 
 the bank of the stream and building a platform about 
 three feet high and six feet by six feet in extent, covering 
 the top with willow switches several inches apart. 
 
 When our buffalo came he was skinned and cut into 
 long strips. The top of the stand was covered with these 
 strips, a fire was built underneath, and the sun and fire 
 commenced the Indian method of jerking meat. Its con- 
 tinuance and completion consisted merely in turning and 
 re-arranging to promote even drying, then storing away 
 the finished strips when done, and adding raw strips in 
 their places, until the whole carcass was properly 
 "jerked" and packed away in the wagons. 
 
 To those who care to know, I want to say that where 
 time is no object, jerking meat is, in my opinion, the best 
 method of cooking and preserving it. If one wants it hot, 
 a piece steaming from off the stand is as much superior 
 to broiled steak, as broiled steak is superior to fried. The 
 finished jerked product is not only more agreeable to eat, 
 but has much better keeping qualities than dried beef. 
 
 When we again yoked up our teams, and once more 
 took the trail, our women had sufficient food of finest 
 quality for all hungry men, and they were not required to 
 withhold their giving, for should the wagons again be 
 depleted, all that was necessary for us to do would be to 
 give our teams another resting spell and repeat our hunt- 
 ing experience. 
 
 A word about the surprise some of the best outfitted 
 trains received. Some such, wishing to get to the mines 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 159 
 
 at the earliest date, seleeted horses or mules to draw 
 their wagons, thinking - they could outstrip in travel the 
 slower oxen. They were disappointed in the final test: 
 horses and mules had been used to grain; oxen had not, 
 so that when both were compelled to live upon the grass, 
 the grain-fed teams lost all their superiority, and the 
 mileage of both oxen and mules became about the same. 
 
 Twenty to twenty-five miles a day was what the 
 average train wanted to make daily when the roads were 
 good and food plentiful. This might be reduced to as 
 little as a mile or two under adverse circumstances. Some 
 tried to increase this rate by traveling nights during the 
 hot weather and resting days, but stock did not thrive on 
 the schedule, for they wanted their nights to graze and 
 rest. This method was generally given up. 
 
 Fort Laramie, on the upper waters of the north fork 
 of the Platte River and lying close to the foot hills on 
 the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains, was our second 
 objective. A little more than a month from Omaha 
 brought us to this place, and here we were compelled to 
 make a long-delayed decision. Our party had not been 
 entirely immune to discouraging reports from Pike's Peak 
 that we had been constantly meeting, but we differed from 
 the returning gold seekers. We had agreed that, come 
 what would, we were determined not to return to the 
 East. We would go to Fort Laramie, and there decide 
 whether to go along the east foot-hills of the mountains 
 to Pike's Peak, or continue west through the South Pass 
 and thence onward to California. 
 
 The party was strongly divided as to which alternative 
 should be adopted and I am uncertain what the result 
 would have been had we not found at the fort, when we 
 
160 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 arrived there, a late copy of the New York Tribune. This 
 paper contained a report of an examination of the mines 
 at the Peak made personally by its editor, Horace Greely. 
 He not only practically endorsed the fabulous stories of 
 riches as heretofore told, but added a few like ones of 
 his own making. This settled the matter unanimously 
 for our whole party, and with visions before us of much 
 wealth, easily made, we forded the river and set our faces 
 towards the south, along the foothills, for the "Land of 
 Gold." 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 161 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 ROCKY MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS AND MINES 
 
 Jubilant with prospects of success, and comparatively 
 near our ultimate destination, with high hopes and happy 
 hearts, we passed where Laramie, Cheyenne, Fort Collins, 
 Greeley, J Brighton, and many other towns and cities now 
 stand. We found not a soul in any of these places. Their 
 locations were there, for any one to take and plat for the 
 future populous communities they now are. From Fort 
 Laramie until we reached Boulder, nearly one hundred 
 and fifty miles, there was not a sign of occupancy, save 
 the remains of Fort Russell, where Cheyenne now is. At 
 this place our troops wintered in 1857-1858 under com- 
 mand of General Albert Sidney Johnston, later of Con- 
 federate fame, while on their way to straighten out the 
 Mormons after the "Mountain Meadow Massacre." 
 There we found the empty barracks, where our soldiers 
 had lived, and the tin cans the contents of which they 
 had devoured — and nothing more. 
 
 For the first few weeks after a camping party starts 
 on the road, it is necessary that they watch the stock 
 carefully and constantly, whether they be cattle, horses, 
 or mules, for fear they will leave and go back to their old 
 home. After that length of time, they consider the camp a 
 new moving home, and they stay by it as contentedly and 
 closely as they did by the barns and stables wherein they 
 were born and raised. After such length of time there is 
 little or no danger of their straying away, unless some- 
 thing happens to create a stampede. 
 
 This danger is always present, and its cause may be 
 anything or nothing; a straying mountain lion, a prowling 
 
162 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 wolf, a screeching owl, a sharp crash of thunder, or a 
 bunch of Indians swinging their blankets, may create a 
 panic, and away the animals go, all together at their ut- 
 most speed, in their mad terror as dangerous as so many 
 wild bulls, should one dare to confront them. For over 
 a thousand miles traveled, our cattle had been so con- 
 tented with us, and so at home with the wagons, that 
 thoughts of the well-known risk of the stampede, at this 
 late day, had practically ceased. 
 
 But we were not to escape ; at last one suddenly came. 
 It happened near midnight. It was upon us in a mad 
 rush. I was cow boy that night and as it had been ex- 
 tremely warm all day, I had lain down to sleep, divested 
 of all clothing. I heard the first, bawling out-cry of the 
 herd when it started, and grabbing the bridle at my side, 
 took no time to dress, but was instantly chasing the horse 
 which, frightened as badly as the worst beast in the bunch, 
 was madly plunging as desperately as his spancels would 
 permit in the direction that the cattle had gone. I man- 
 aged to calm him enough to get his bridle on and his 
 spancels off, then jumped upon his back. 
 
 By that time the herd was out of hearing and I had 
 lost the direction in which they had gone ; but the horse 
 knew, and the moment I had mounted and given him the 
 bit, he was away after them with the speed of an antelope. 
 Charley, who stood anxiously in the door of his tent, 
 listening to every sound, heard me go, and turning to 
 his wife said; "That boy is riding for a fall." The boss 
 was right: I had nearly overtaken the frightened teams 
 when my horse's feet struck a prairie-dog house and he 
 fell so flatly and heavily that he rolled completely over. 
 Had I retained my seat on his back, I should have 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST * 163 
 
 been crushed ; but I was riding so rapidly that when he 
 fell 1 went on, how far I dare not guess. My fall was 
 harder than his, for I had farther to go ; it was so severe 
 that under ordinary circumstances I should have lain as, 
 still as I could and called for help, but there was no time 
 for any such softness now. I was up, and as the pony 
 scrambled to his feet I mounted his back and rose with 
 him. Away we went again with no lack of speed, or in- 
 crease of caution. There was need of the speed ; we 
 could not afford the caution. 
 
 Finally we reached the herd ; they were still running, 
 still wild, still frightened, still ungovernable. To get in 
 front of them was useless, dangerous, and perhaps fatal. 
 The only course was to ride among them and talk with 
 them, trusting to a familiar voice to calm their terrors. 
 What a scene! A bunch of crazy cattle, a naked boy on 
 a wild horse, conversing with the dumb brutes on various 
 subjects. Soon my own team recognized my voice and 
 stopped running; others followed their example, and the 
 >tampede was broken. 
 
 Nothing now remained but to work them back to 
 cam]). Their terror controlled, no one knew where that 
 home was better than the cattle themselves, and so all 
 I had to do was to follow along behind and urge the lag- 
 gards. About the middle of the forenoon we reached the 
 tents to the joy of the occupants. 
 
 Another danger to man and beast in this country was 
 alkali. This, present nearly everywhere, was abundant in 
 places; many times large areas of low ground were so 
 impregnated with it that they looked as though they were 
 covered with a light coat of snow. Water too strongly 
 alkalied is fatal. I never knew a running stream that 
 
164 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 carried a sufficient amount to be dangerous, but pools that 
 are remnants of ponds collected during the rainy seasons 
 may be deadly. Cattle will not drink from these unless 
 exceedingly thirsty, and so we always made it a point to 
 see that they were driven to some river or creek before 
 letting them run at will. 
 
 But despite our care, we were victims at last. It 
 seldom rains where we were at that time, but when it does 
 the clouds roll low, thunder breaks with a tremendous 
 crash, the "windows of heaven are opened" and a genuine 
 cloudburst may result. We encountered one such storm. 
 It came up suddenly, and we made camp with all possible 
 speed. The rain poured in torrents, the wind blew like a 
 hurricane ; the thunder was so loud and the lightning so 
 blinding that it was impossible to drive the teams away 
 from the wagon, and they did not get immediately to the 
 stream to quench their thirst. 
 
 The result was, when the storm had passed, the land 
 was flooded and the cattle drank the new fallen rain that 
 had dissolved alkali from the ground. The next morning 
 we found all had been poisoned. We stayed several days 
 doing the best we could for the sick ones, but in spite of 
 our best efforts six of our twenty-four head of cattle died, 
 and when we resumed our journey, I had only two yoke 
 of oxen in place of the three I was accustomed to drive. 
 
 It may be the glamour of youth that has filled my 
 mind for over half a century, but looking back through 
 all these years, it still seems to me that the scenery along 
 the foothills and the first range of the Rockies of Colo- 
 rado challenges comparison with anything, anywhere, for 
 picturesque contrast and beauty. In this country I have 
 seen more freakish sights, like the Grand Canyon of Ari- 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 165 
 
 zona, higher and more abrupt cliffs, like El Captain in the 
 Yosemite Valley ; and more gigantic and higher reaching 
 peaks, like Mount Shasta in California ; but for scenic 
 qualities I still cling to my first love. 
 
 And why should it not be so? Is not contrast the 
 most enduring element of beauty? Where on this earth 
 can one find a more diverse manifestation of the unique, 
 the grand, the beautiful? As one stands upon some up- 
 lifted crag of the first range and looks east, the broad 
 plains roll away as far as the eye can follow them, not 
 bare and desolete, but made green and beautiful by the 
 most nutritious grass the world ever saw. Hundreds of 
 streams, flowing bright and clear from the snowy peaks, 
 wind their way eastward by devious courses and mark 
 their progress by long lines of trees and groves that their 
 life-giving waters sustain. It is a beautiful land, lacking 
 only a few inches of rainfall to make it a paradise. As 
 one turns around and looks west he can almost hear Wil- 
 liam Tell's welcome to his old home : "Ye crags and peaks, 
 I'm with you once again." Precipices and canyons, bold 
 peaks and narrow valleys, bald mountain tops and tim- 
 ber-clad slopes, meet one's view, until, far in the distance, 
 overtopping all, the snow range that crowns the continent 
 and divides its waters east and west dominates the whole 
 scene. So I saw it in boyhood, so it has stayed with me 
 during my life, so it will ever remain, a glorious memory 
 of our picturesque America. 
 
 At last we reached our final objective — the mines of 
 the Rocky Mountains. But we did not find them at Pike's 
 Peak. The rich ledges of Cripple Creek and other gold- 
 producing rocks near the foot of that mountain were not 
 discovered until years afterwards. The "Diggins," when 
 
1 66 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 we arrived, were confined to a strip of country among the 
 crags and canyons, about forty miles north and south, 
 lying in the mountains and foot-hills west of Boulder and 
 Denver, two villages that then boasted several saloons and 
 a few houses each. 
 
 We entered the mines, hopefully, near the first place. 
 Our boss was a cool-headed miner, with several years' 
 experience in California. We looked over the placer 
 mines that had been opened up; we prospected new val- 
 leys for indications of new finds, and discovered one that 
 gave a strong color. We opened it up from wall to wall 
 down to the bed rock. We found gold, but as there was 
 not enough to pay for working it we left. 
 
 Illustrative of the craze which seems to affect all gold 
 hunters alike, was the effect that our little find produced. 
 The fact that we struck gold was enough ; thousands 
 flocked to the valley; it mattered not that we told them 
 the pay dirt was poor — they thought we were lying. The 
 fact that we had left our claim as worthless failed to im- 
 press them for they believed we had quit because we had 
 made our pile ; they insisted on tearing up the valley with- 
 out reward or returns. 
 
 We spent most of the fall prospecting the rocks and 
 gulches of the Rocky Mountains until Charley at last 
 gave his opinion, which, to his credit (though given then 
 as a prophecy), could not be more nearly correct were I to 
 write it now as history proved by half a century of exper- 
 ience. His decision was that gold was here in consider- 
 able quantity; but unlike California, there had been very 
 little volcanic action to melt it out of the quartz that 
 usually contains it. Therefore, water and gravity could 
 not work it down into the streams and low valleys as it 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 167 
 
 did where the California placer miners found it. His 
 further opinion was, that the labor and machinery neces- 
 sary to extract the gold from the rocks would be so ex- 
 pensive that large capital would be required to work the 
 mineral leads, and that so far as we were concerned, even 
 if we had the money, there were better chances in Iowa 
 to invest it. 
 
 Still thinking we might find something different, we 
 continued prospecting, hunting, and taking life easy, mov- 
 ing all the time south, among cliffs and valleys of the foot- 
 hills and plains, as need or fancy called. From the time 
 we left Denver until we reached Fort Union and the 
 Spanish town of Mora, New Mexico, there was no sign 
 of habitation except the Spanish grant of Maxwell's 
 Ranch located forty or fifty miles south of the Raton 
 Range. 
 
 It was a land almost untouched even by hunters. 
 Buffalo there were none- — they seemed to be ranging 
 farther east this year. But deer — both black and long- 
 tailed — , antelope, mountain sheep, and turkeys were 
 plentiful. We had seen many signs of bear but no bears, 
 until one day I thought I saw one and called to my com- 
 rade. 
 
 "George, do you see that bear over there on the side 
 hill?" 
 
 "Bear! Your Granny, that's a stump." 
 "I tell you, George, it is a bear; I saw it move." 
 "Ah!" replied George. "Rub the alkali dust out of 
 your eyes so that you can see straight; that's a black, 
 pine stump." 
 
1 68 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Just here the discussion stopped, for the "black pine 
 stump," having finished the investigation of our outfit, 
 dropped from its sitting position to one upon its four feet, 
 and ambled away towards the mountain by that rolling 
 gait known to beardom everywhere. Instantly every team 
 was given a most willing rest, and all four of us, men and 
 boys, seized our guns and plunged into the brush after 
 his black impertinence. But the search for the gentleman 
 was unavailing — he had not only sat by the trail side and 
 seemingly laughed at us, but he had also made good his 
 dare and got away with it. There was one thing that the 
 brute did not take away with him when he vanished, and 
 that was our longing for a bear hunt. 
 
 During the summer, we had met and vanquished all 
 kinds of big game of the plains and mountains, bear and 
 elk excepted, and here seemed the chance to reduce that 
 exception to one species. 
 
 Buffalo we had found plentiful, but in detached 
 bunches, as the main herd had not arrived that far north 
 when we drove up the Platte River. Antelope, nearby or 
 far away, most always might be seen in larger or smaller 
 bands grazing quietly or running swiftly over the plains. 
 Deer were seldom seen unless looked for, but along any 
 brush or grove-lined stream they might be driven out by 
 the dogs. Mountain sheep were found only in the high 
 hills, and were captured after laborious climbing and long, 
 patient stalking. 
 
 All these we had hunted to our satisfaction, but this 
 was the first time bear had presented itself for our con- 
 sideration, and we wanted one badly for several reasons. 
 We had lived on the dry meat of hoof and horn game so 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 169 
 
 long that a good fat bear would be a most desirable 
 luxury ; it was almost a necessity for dietary reasons, 
 and we wanted to add one to our list of trophies. 
 
 It was agreed by unanimous vote that we would drive 
 until we found water, and then make a camp and go bear 
 hunting. We soon found a beautiful stream flowing 
 bright and clear from the mountains, made camp, cared 
 for the teams, and George and I ate our dinner. We were 
 ready for business, but where were the two old hunter 
 frontiersmen, the men who were the head and front of our 
 party? The humiliating fact developed that they did not 
 want us two boys along on this important trip ; they had 
 slipped off by themselves while we hearty growing boys 
 were attending to what we considered a more important 
 matter, getting something to eat. George and I called an 
 indignation meeting and resolved, that if the old hunters 
 did not want us there was no law that we knew of that 
 would prevent us from going bear hunting ourselves. 
 We went. The valley where we had stopped proved to be 
 full of game, and all of it seemed to know that we were 
 after bear and would not that day shoot at anything else. 
 
 One insulting gentleman, a magnificent black-tailed 
 buck with a head of antlers that would grace the proudest 
 banquet hall, stood upon a little plateau some fifty feet 
 above us, not more than fifty yards away, and gazed upon 
 us unconcernedly, as much as to say. "Who are you and 
 what are you doing here? Don't you know that I am 
 monarch of this valley?" His insolence was more than I 
 could bear, and I raised my rifle to shoot, but George 
 stopped me, saying, "We can get deer any time we want 
 it. What we want today is bear, and by shooting your 
 rifle you will scare any here into hiding." George was 
 
i/o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 right, and we watched his majesty march away as proud 
 and haughty as any biped king could possibly be, but much 
 more handsome. 
 
 Time had reached mid-afternoon ; we were tired ; we 
 had climbed cliffs and searched valleys, but we had found 
 nothing, and were going leisurely back. On a high bluff 
 overlooking the valley of the stream where camp had been 
 made, we flung ourselves upon the soft needles beneath 
 the pinion trees, and commenced to feast both our 
 aesthetic and physical natures, the former by marking the 
 beauty and grandeur of the scene before us, and the latter 
 by reinforcing a hasty dinner with the pinion nuts which 
 were scattered in profusion upon the ground. 
 
 There was one great advantage in still-hunting in that 
 country at that time. If one got tired of stalking the 
 game and would sit down and be quiet, the game might 
 perhaps stalk him — a fact which proved true that after- 
 noon. We were leisurely enjoying ourselves, when we 
 discovered two bears, an old one and a two-thirds grown 
 cub, that had evidently been down to the river making a 
 meal of the luscious cherries that abounded everywhere 
 along the bank, and now seemed disposed to come up into 
 the bluffs for an added course, or dessert, of pinion nuts. 
 
 We hid ourselves and calculated where they would 
 be likely to climb the cliff. Then, finding a parallel canyon, 
 we commenced climbing the other side of the mountain, 
 thinking when we reached the top we might meet them. 
 We did. As we carefully raised our heads over the edge 
 of the cliff at the summit, they were not six rods away, 
 and looked as big as elephants. A picture of the hasty 
 descent of two boys down that mountain side might be 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 171 
 
 interesting, but inglorious. Not finding ourselves pur- 
 sued, I called a halt and said, "George, this won't do, we 
 came out for bear, and let's have a shot at them any 
 way." 
 
 "But," replied George, "they are grizzlies, and we 
 can't kill them with our guns but they can and will kill 
 us." 
 
 "Are you sure, they are grizzlies?" 
 
 "Yes, sure," said he. "Didn't you see their color?" 1 
 had noticed their color, I had also noted the insufficiency 
 of our arms. George had a squirrel rifle, shooting a ball a 
 hundred to the pound, hardly larger than a buck shot ; 
 I had one about calibre forty ; neither bullet was large 
 enough to even cripple badly a grizzly unless fired into 
 its heart or its brains. 
 
 The chance to put a bullet in either place was exceed- 
 ingly small. Still I did want a shot at the fellows, and so 
 I said to George : "If you are sure these bears are 
 grizzlies, we can safely have a whack at them. A grizzly 
 cannot climb, we can. Let's go up, pick out trees easily 
 mounted, and have our shots at them. If they charge us 
 we can climb our tree." 
 
 George certified that they were grizzlies, and I certi- 
 fied that grizzlies could not climb trees ; then we re- 
 turned to the attack. The plan of battle was this : 
 George, the better shot, was to take the old bear first. If 
 he killed her, I was to take the young one. If he did 
 not kill his game, and she charged, then I was to give 
 her my shot. That failing to down her, we were to take 
 to our previously located trees. We had now recovered 
 from our scare ; George, at least, was as steady as an old 
 veteran. 
 
172 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 We approached our former outlook, the bears had not 
 discovered us and were still in the same place ; they were 
 playing in a little pond of water caught by a cup in the 
 rocks. George waited until his antagonist turned her 
 side squarely towards him; then aiming six inches back 
 of her fore shoulder, he fired. A loud roar, a shrieking 
 yell, some convulsive rollings upon the ground, and all 
 danger was past. The game was ours. 
 
 As for the young bear, his astonishment and dismay 
 were amazing. Not a moment was he still enough for a 
 shot, but I took him on the fly and the bullet just creased 
 his back. He ran for a grove lower down the slope with 
 us after him. Where do you think we found him? Not 
 in a rock-strewn den, nor in a dark, dismal cave, but in 
 the top of the highest tree in the grove from which 
 another bullet soon dropped him. 
 
 These were not grizzlies, nor were they black bear. 
 They were silver tips, of which Kit Carson, the noted 
 scout of that time, said, 'They are as much meaner to 
 fight than the grizzlies as the grizzly is meaner than the 
 black." The only thing that prevented two boys from 
 leaving their bones where no one would ever find them, 
 was revealed when we opened the large brute, and found 
 that George's bullet had gone straight through her heart 
 — an inch either way, the shot would have failed. Then 
 was the time when we could both truly have said we 
 came within an inch of losing our lives. 
 
 Two proud boys returned to camp and our pride was 
 augmented to an almost insufferable point when we found 
 that the old hunters had captured no bear that day, nor 
 did they do so during the whole trip. That afternoon's 
 luck was a God-send to us boys. Heretofore, if, when 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 173 
 
 driving deer, we were placed upon a runway and per- 
 mitted one to pass without killing it, sorry times fell upon 
 us. We were told the utter degeneracy of all our fore- 
 bears and informed of the depths of infamy to which we, 
 without doubt, would descend — all so decidedly and em- 
 phatically told that the surrounding air seemed to get 
 blue. After that day, when such mishap occurred and the 
 customary fireworks began, all we had to do was to men- 
 tion the subject of shooting bear, and peace nestled close 
 in camp. 
 
 It was a beautiful place where we had made our 
 camp. The Purgatory River, then called the "Picket- 
 ware," flowed past, fresh and clear from the snows upon 
 the mountains, playing hide and seek among the cluster- 
 ing trees that reached far away, their magic beauty set 
 forth and heightened by the frowning summits of the 
 
 Residences in Trinidad 
 X: Where George and I killed the two bears in 185Q 
 
174 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 towering precipice upon either side. In all the two years 
 of my western wanderings, in no place did I ever see 
 game so plentiful. The groves and hills swarmed with it. 
 The place was far from civilization: no homes, nor 
 ranches, nor improvements of any kind, were nearer 
 than Denver, two hundred miles north. East and north- 
 east, Bent's Fort was the first neighbor, and beyond that 
 it was four hundred miles to where the white folks of 
 Kansas lived. West, two ranges of mountains and six 
 hundred- miles intervened before one could reach the 
 valley where the Mormons were building their Deseret; 
 south and southwest there was nothing but Indians until 
 the Spanish settlements reaching up from old Mexico 
 came into view. 
 
 What a place for such a bunch of pioneers as we were 
 to take pre-emption claims and settle down ! With pure 
 water abundant, groves and timber for fire and building 
 without end, uncounted game for meat, luxuriant and 
 luscious fruit along the river banks for dessert, and, if we 
 saw fit to use it, even bread in bountiful store beneath the 
 pinions (P. Edulis) upon the hills — what more could we 
 ask? We debated the question, but Charlie, our mentor, 
 decided that the claims were so far away from any settle- 
 ment that they would never be of any value, and so a 
 fortune was lost for all of us. 
 
 When I visited the place in 1918 I found that the 
 city of Trinidad with its bustling business, rattling street 
 cars, paved avenues, and long rows of tall, commercial 
 blocks had wiped out the scene of sylvan beauty which I 
 had left, seemingly only a short — a very short — time ago. 
 When I discovered the easily recognized little plateau 
 from which the black-tailed buck had so scornfully 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 175 
 
 questioned my right to be there, I found a college build- 
 ing. Close up around the ledge where George and I had 
 our adventure was clustered the residential section of a 
 large city. Where deer then fed, now were buildings 
 costing three hundred thousand dollars ; where the cher- 
 ries hung along the river bank, the Santa Fe railroad now 
 displayed its extensive depots and endless yards ; and 
 where we were forced to swim the Picketware River a 
 modern cement bridge spanned the stream. 
 
 We had left the place, seemingly but just the other 
 day, a spot of beauty as Nature had made it — I returned 
 to find it a populous, busy, wide-awake, energetic city, 
 and it had grown up, not during my life time, but during 
 a short period of my mature years. This growth of 
 Trinidad is remarkable, but still more remarkable is the 
 fact that such growth is not exceptional ; it is only a 
 sample of what hundreds of other cities, upon the plains 
 
 Bridge at Trinidad where we Forded the River in 18 
 
 59 
 
1.7' 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and in the mountains of our West, have likewise accom- 
 plished in the same time — some of them to a greater 
 extent. But we, blind to this future, turned our backs 
 to the fortunes lying there awaiting any one's taking 
 and resumed our way toward Arizona. 
 
 A small stream flows out of the Raton Mountains 
 from the south and enters the Picketware, or Purgatory 
 River, near where we had camped. Up this creek fol- 
 lows the Santa Fe trail in order to make the Raton 
 Pass. Here, the water, working day and night, without 
 Sundays or holidays off, for millions of years, has cut a 
 canyon, deep but not wide. Sometimes the stream flows 
 close to the mountains upon one side, and then crosses 
 to the other side of the gorge. Every time the stream 
 did this when we climbed through the pass, we were 
 necessarily compelled to ford each time the stream 
 swerved from one side to the other ; at times after getting 
 
 Street tn Trinidad where the Deer were Running in 1859 
 
THE SETTLING OK THE WEST 177 
 
 into the stream, we might be forced to drive along its 
 bed some distance before we had a chance to emerge upon 
 either bank. Needless to say, it was hard going for 
 wagons, teams, and drivers. When we were near the 
 top of the pass — eight thousand to ten thousand feet 
 altitude — we found an unsually rocky stretch of the trail ; 
 there we had the misfortune to break a wagon wheel — 
 nearly every spoke in it was shattered, and no wagon shop 
 was nearer than the Spanish settlement of New Mexico. 
 
 I thought we should certainly have to leave the wagon 
 and throw away at least part of its load, but I had under- 
 estimated the resources of the boss. He ordered camp 
 made, and under his direction we hewed and whittled 
 out new spokes, drove them into the hubs, built a fire, 
 reset the tire, and went on our way. 
 
 Moro and Toas are the first towns of the Mexican 
 settlement reaching northeast from Old Mexico that we 
 came to, and we made a halt near the first-named place. 
 
 These towns and this territory became ours as the 
 result of the Mexican war. The acquisition of New 
 Mexico and Arizona by the United States was so com- 
 paratively recent, and they were so isolated from our 
 central government that, although in theory they were 
 subject to our jurisdiction, in fact, the customs and laws 
 of Mexico were the only ones observed by the general 
 public. For instance: legally, peons were free after the 
 territory was annexed, but peonage flourished as fully 
 when we were there as it ever did when Mexico governed 
 the land. I saw at one time nearly a dozen peons bucked, 
 gagged, and in this helpless condition exposed for hours 
 to the torment of the flies and mosquitos, just because 
 their creditor had ordered them not to gamble and they 
 had disobeyed him. 
 
1 78 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Other than the soldiers in the army, the only Amer- 
 icans in the country were discharged soldiers who had 
 married Mexican girls and made settlements, outlaws 
 who had "left their country for their country's good ," 
 and wandering hunters and prospectors like ourselves. 
 Under this condition, common and agricultural labor was 
 abundant, but skilled workmen of all varieties exceed- 
 ingly scarce. 
 
 One day I heard a ranchero say he would give fifty 
 cents a bushel for all the charcoal a man could burn in 
 one pit. As I was absolutely without money and it was 
 a "ground-hog-case" with me, I told him if he would haul 
 it from the pit, I would burn it for him : he agreed, and I 
 took the job. I knew nothing about charcoal burning — 
 had never even seen a pit, but it struck me that where 
 wood cost nothing, coal at that price was as good as a 
 gold mine, and a great deal easier worked. 
 
 I risked my ability to make good on this contract upon 
 the peculiar make-up of the American army. It has 
 proved true in all emergencies of both war and peace that 
 should contingencies arise requiring the performance of 
 any particular act of construction or repair, there was 
 always some one in the ranks who knew how it should be 
 done. The first thing I did was to go up to Fort Union 
 and hunt for a soldier who had burned charcoal : I found 
 one, and he gave me all the time and information I 
 wanted. He told me what to do from the time I con- 
 structed my flues and chimney at the start until I finally 
 banked up and put out the fire when carbonization was 
 complete. I succeeded with my coal, but I lost my com- 
 panions of the past season. They concluded to return to 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 179 
 
 the States while my pit was still burning, and I could not 
 afford to leave it and go with them. 
 
 I remained in the vicinity of Fort Union and Mora 
 until late the next spring, when by that time I had learned 
 to sputter a little Mexican Spanish ; had become tired of 
 a country where no crops could be raised without irriga- 
 tion ; had become disgusted with the mongrel, Spanish- 
 Indian "greasers" that inhabited it, and had gathered 
 enough money to purchase an outfit and return to "God's 
 country" as told in the "Passing of the Indian." 
 
i8o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHICH IS THE BETTER HALF OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 The unimpeachable march of events has proved that 
 the explorer was wrong who said that "all west of the 
 meridian of Council Bluffs was a desert that never could 
 be cultivated," and the official was mistaken who placed 
 a meridian line in Missouri where he asserted that "the 
 Almighty had said civilization could never cross." 
 
 Now, in this latter day, come those who take an oppo- 
 site view from these older prophets. They assume the 
 ninety-seventh meridian — near Wichita, Kansas — as the 
 farthest point west where crops can be successfully grown 
 without irrigation, and then they shock all of our precon- 
 ceived ideas and supposedly settled physical facts regard- 
 ing our country by maintaining that the best part of the 
 United States lies west of that line. By the best, they do 
 not mean largest, which may be true, but best in all its 
 material, aesthetic, and life-giving resources. This star- 
 tling proposition, reduced to its lowest terms, means that 
 the part of our country which at my birth was either 
 unknown or considered of little or no value, has, during 
 my lifetime, become worth more than all the portion that 
 we then rightly knew. 
 
 Our western brothers are not without some ground 
 for their optimism. They have the higher peaks, the 
 deeper chasms, the richer mines, and, in places, the better 
 climate for the ailing and the aged. But we of the East 
 possess the larger rivers, the longer line of seaboard, a 
 climate that produces strong men and vigorous women, 
 and, more than all else, we have a much greater extent 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 181 
 
 of food-producing lands. The fact is that cast of the 
 line mentioned, there is probably not more than twenty 
 per cent of the country that cannot be successfully culti- 
 vated ; west of the same, there is not twenty per cent that 
 can be so used. 
 
 The west is a land of contrasts. It has lakes situated 
 many thousands of feet above ocean level and seas nearly 
 as far below. It possesses high-reaching mountain tops 
 covered by perennial snows, sparkling streams, roaring 
 water falls, but also dry places where scarcely a drop of 
 water falls the year around. One can find precipitous 
 clififs nearly a mile high and dark canyons more than that 
 distance deep. Within its borders lie parks, like the 
 Yosemite and Yellowstone, the most beautiful in the 
 world, and wide deserts like Mohave and Death's Valley, 
 the most drear and forbidding in all creation. 
 
 The Grand Canyon, from Mohave Point 
 
182 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 It is new and yet it is old. It is new geologically, 
 because the outcrops of the strata of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains are babes in age compared with the igneous rocks 
 of the Alleghanies ; and the remains of the extinct 
 saurians and other orders, genera, and species that scien- 
 tists are digging out of their hills and valleys, seem so 
 fresh and recent that hunters are still looking to find in 
 distant and unexplored places some of their surviving 
 individuals, and are yet relating to credulous listeners 
 tales of supposed glimpses of the vanished fauna. 
 
 It is old ethnologically because the oldest people now 
 living in our country, the Pueblos, there reside. How old 
 these Indian tribes may be remains yet to be told. They 
 may have traded with the Mound Builders when they 
 occupied the Mississippi Valley. It is also old in its flora, 
 because its gigantic sequoias as much out-rank in age 
 and size our tallest trees as these latter do the bushes that 
 grow at their feet. So immense are some of these ancient 
 monarchs that one single tree built a large church in Santa 
 Rosa, California, from its lowest sill to its topmost finial, 
 and through a cavity in the trunk of another, still grow- 
 ing and flourishing, tourists in a "coach and six" daily 
 drive and have plenty of room to spare. 
 
 The record of erosion that the ages have made in the 
 mesozoic rocks of Arizona and adjoining states would be 
 unbelievable if not demonstrated by facts. For some rea- 
 son, the lands here do not lie in rolling hills, as they do 
 north of the Raton and east of the Rocky mountains, but 
 are found in mesa or table land. 
 
 The most striking instance of this erosion is the 
 Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Here the river has 
 dug a great ditch, as much larger than the Panama Canal 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 i«3 
 
 as the Panama Canal is greater than a three-foot, irrigat- 
 ing acequia; so immense a ditch that the people upon its 
 very brink haul their water one hundred and twenty-five 
 miles rather than raise it up the cliffs from the river that 
 runs at their feet. 
 
 It is a gigantic fissure through a great mesa. In look- 
 ing across the mighty distorted space, the level line of the 
 table-land on the opposite bank can be seen thirteen miles 
 away eonforming to the line upon the side where the 
 beholder is standing. Between the two mesa lines of level 
 table-land is this great canyon, thirteen miles across, one 
 mile deep ; but not an empty canyon : it is filled with 
 gigantic forms, apparently of castles, forts, ships, dens, 
 domes, and grotesque forms resembling animals that 
 might be brothers of the extinct saurians, or cousins of 
 
 Grand Canyon from linn Point 
 
 The apparently little stream in the foreground is the Colorado 
 River, one mile beneath my feet when this was taken 
 
i&4 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 by-gone mammoths — all colored by the varying hues of 
 the rainbow-like strata through which the river has cut its 
 way. It is a sight unsurpassed and unforgetable beyond 
 degree ; the tongue and brain fail when asked to tell its 
 wonders. 
 
 As the weather was stormy when I visited the canyon 
 I remained some days longer than I had intended, because 
 I wanted to see it in all the glory of sunshine as well as 
 through the mystery of fleeting clouds. Afterwards I 
 thanked the storm, for it showed me the canyon in all its 
 glorious beauty, and added thereto an unusual but per- 
 fectly natural phenomenon the production of which re- 
 quires such unusual conditions, that few see it, and they 
 only once in a life time. 
 
 The environment necessary is a precipitous height of 
 half a mile or more on some mountain top or canyon side, 
 a rain cloud directly in front, and a bright morning or 
 evening sun thirty or forty degrees from the horizon be- 
 hind the observer. Such were the surroundings as I stood 
 with a professor of a southwestern university at my side, 
 on Observation Point, a half mile or more directly over 
 Bright Angel Trail. The weather was clearing up and 
 rain clouds before us were rolling through the canyon, 
 revealing and again blotting out the wondrous vision be- 
 fore us as though they were a great curtain shifted before 
 a gigantic stage. 
 
 I said, "Professor, we must watch closely. We might 
 catch a rainbow down there and that would be the only 
 thing that could possibly increase the magnificence of this 
 outlook." I do not know what chair the professor occu- 
 pied in his university, but he was posted in optics and 
 refraction. 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE \\ EST 
 
 185 
 
 He replied, "Conditions are such here that if we should 
 catch a rainbow, it would he a complete one (a full circle) 
 and our shadow ;<'<>it/d be in its center." 
 
 He had hardly stopped speaking when the bow ap- 
 peared to me . I excitedly exclaimed, "Professor! I see 
 a perfectly round rainbow, and my shadow is in the center 
 of it! But where are you?" 
 
 He answered: "Don't you know that two persons can 
 never see the same rainbow? I also have one and my 
 shadow is likewise in its center." 
 
 The scene lasted hut a moment; then the rain cloud 
 passed out of focus and the rainbow vanished. When it 
 had gone the professor said, "I suppose what we have 
 just- seen accounts for the halo we find drawn around the 
 
 View from Observation Point 
 'Bright Anyel Trail" is seen at point marked X 
 
1 86 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 saints of old ; some persons had witnessed what we have 
 just viewed, and not knowing that it was perfectly natural 
 thought it a supernatural manifestation.'' 
 
 Just then the wife of the professor came out upon the 
 platform and turning to her, I said, "If you had been out 
 here a minute ago you could have seen yourself with a 
 halo around you." 
 
 "But," remarked the Professor, "How much better it 
 would be if she could have seen me surrounded by my 
 halo." 
 
 The conclusion of the professor regarding the halo I 
 found verified that very evening. The experience we had 
 undergone I related to the manager of the curio store at 
 the canyon, with whom I had become acquainted. He 
 listened with much surprise and great interest until I was 
 through, and then said, "Why, what you have witnessed, 
 comes to us here as a legend of what a Navajo boy once 
 saw there." From that occurrence, the Bright Angel Trail 
 directly below has been named. 
 
 Considering the stupendous work that nature has done 
 here, one would think it impossible for the water to dis- 
 play any greater evidence of its erosive power; but this 
 exhibition is small compared with what it has performed 
 almost unnoticed elsewhere. Here the energy is more 
 marked, because it has been confined to a restricted dis- 
 trict only thirteen miles wide ; here a great gash has been 
 ploughed through a broad mesa. Elsewhere in many 
 places the action has been reversed; the whole country 
 has been swept away, hundreds of feet deep, leaving only 
 here and there mesas or high tables, small and great, to 
 show the altitude at which the whole surrounding country 
 had at sometime lain. 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 187 
 
 Such conditions may be found at Adamana, where the 
 government reservation for the protection of a petrified 
 forest and painted desert is located. There, geologists 
 and scientific men have searched the rocks, and if they 
 have read them aright, they tell a story more wonderful 
 than any Arabian Nights' Tale. There, in the Mesozoic 
 Age, flourished a grove of carboniferous flora, not less 
 than twelve thousand square miles in extent. Then came 
 some mighty force which levelled the trees to the ground 
 and in places buried them in clay. 
 
 Ages upon- ages passed. The winds or the waves 
 uncovered them, and behold a miracle ! The trees had not 
 decayed, nor turned to coal as usual ; they had turned to 
 jewels, precious stones such as Shah Jehan built into the 
 finest, ornamental parts of Taj Mahal — the gem of the 
 world's construction. The silex in the clay had changed 
 the wood of the trees into "agate, jasper, chalcedony, opal, 
 
 Adamana Reservation 
 
i88 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and other silicates." But the change had left record of the 
 forms of the trees, even to the bark that covered them, 
 and also the annual ring growths of the exogens, marked 
 with all of the colors of the rainbow. 
 
 They are beautiful and will take a polish as fine as 
 a diamond. No wonder that a prominent jeweler of one 
 of our largest cities was said to have tried to get away 
 with a load to make into jewels for his "Four Hundred," 
 but was stopped by the custodian. I saw the load where 
 they told me he had dropped it, and the specimens there 
 shown were no more beautiful than train Loads that were 
 left. 
 
 The erosion did not cease with the uncovering of the 
 trees, but continued, until now we find upon the tops of 
 the high mesa logs in full length, some absolutely un- 
 broken, lying where they fell millions of years ago ; while 
 
 Petrified Forest at Adam ana 
 Petrified Log Bridge over Chasm 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 189 
 
 on the lower mesa many, many feet below them, where 
 the original surrounding earth has been swept away to its 
 present depth, the ground is covered with chips and 
 pieces of trees, from the size of a thumb-nail up to pieces 
 of logs five or six feet in diameter, that have fallen from 
 the upper to the lower level as the earth was swept from 
 beneath them. 
 
 I asked the custodian of the reservation what the 
 extent of these petrified-forest-covered lands was. He 
 said that he had traveled a hundred and twenty-five 
 miles north, eighty miles east, forty-five miles south and 
 thirty miles west, and he had seen petrified trees, in 
 places, in all that scope of country — how much farther 
 they extended he could not say. 
 
 Petrified Logs Lying where they Fell Ages Ago 
 Note the typical manner of their breaking into sections 
 
igo ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 I asked him further, ''Should all these detached 
 forests be consolidated into one grove, what would, in 
 your opinion be its size?" 
 
 He replied : "Of course, any such estimate would be 
 largely a guess ; but I will make the conservative one that 
 it would not be less than a hundred square miles." 
 
 Just think of it ! A hundred square miles of nature's 
 jewelry-shop where precious stones lie thick on the 
 ground for any to come and take at will, provided they 
 do not attempt to carry more than five pounds. Should 
 they attempt such prohibited appropriation, an unpleasant 
 meeting with the custodian or his marshal might result. 
 
 Tall mesas, large and small, abound through this re- 
 gion in all directions. Acoma, one of the oldest pueblos 
 of the Indians, is built upon one. This table is about 
 seventy acres in extent, and stands over three hundred 
 feet high ; there it marks the former level of the whole 
 plain. The sides are so steep that the summit is accessible 
 only by the aid of ladders or of steps cut in the cliff. 
 
 Not far from Acoma lies the "Enchanted Mesa," 
 which until lately was considered unsurmountable. I 
 was told while there that a party recently had come from 
 the East properly equipped, and with the express purpose 
 of climbing to its top. Among other things, they brought 
 from a life saving station a gun whose projectile carried 
 a line. With the aid of this gun, and other appliances, 
 with much work and many calculations, they at last 
 reached the summit of the table-land. To their chagrin 
 they found the Indians had been there perhaps centuries 
 before them. 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 191 
 
 One thing our Southwestern citizens are doing that I 
 believe to be highly commendable. It is a work which 
 will for all time make their part of the country dis- 
 tinctive and interesting. They are creating new styles of 
 architecture, based upon the Pueblo Indian form on the 
 one hand, and the style of the Mission Fathers and their 
 followers on the other. These two new styles are named 
 the "Hopi" for the former and the "Mission" the latter. 
 (See pp. 68, 70, 74.) 
 
 Following and modifying these old forms are a new 
 business block in Albuquerque, the "Hokona" on the 
 campus of the University of New Mexico, and many 
 other buildings in our southwestern cities. This Hokona 
 is representative of all the buildings of the University 
 mentioned, even the Main Edifice is quite as strongly 
 
 FTokona, University of New Mexico 
 
IQ2 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Fine Art Building at Santa Fe 
 
 /. Reproduction of the Indian Cathedral of Acoma 
 
 2. Same of Santa Ana 
 
 3. Same of Laguna 
 
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 wii' 
 
 
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 |Lm% V ^M^UV 
 
 12L 
 
 Ik i 
 
 
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 1 M . 
 
 ^a 
 
 
 "*"' " ' ~~ ' " m 
 
 
 
 
 Laguna Corner of Above 
 
 /w Picture of Original Building see Page 70 
 
 The Indians did the Better Work 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 193 
 
 Hopi in form as the one photographed. Hokona in Indian 
 language means "Squaws' House," so of course this 
 building is the girls' dormitory. 
 
 As the basis of the Mission style, is presented the 
 Indian cathedral at Laguna and the replica, or copy, of 
 the cathedral at Acoma built as part of the fine art 
 building at Santa Fe. Copying the style of these old 
 constructions there has been built, among many others of 
 like orders, the new government land office in Santa Fe 
 and the hotel Alvarado and railroad station at 
 Albuquerque. 
 
 1 in ■'•'I'li.i'ij 
 
 w,3\ wi'i 
 
 Business Block, Albuquerque 
 Hopi Style 
 
194 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Hotel and Depot at Albuquerque 
 Mission Style 
 
 Land Office at Santa Fe 
 Mission Style 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 195 
 
 Our friends of Santa Fe have gone still further in 
 this direction : they have taken both forms of architecture 
 and combined them into one, creating the "Santa Fe 
 style." Here is shown a new Santa Fe dwelling house 
 constructed in this style and furnished according to the 
 requirements of the best society of the city; also a rep- 
 resentation of the "Elks' Home" of the same place, which 
 shows what the style can develop when used upon a 
 public building. I think it is demonstrated already that 
 we are to have, at least in our West, a new and valuable 
 style of architecture, and one that is distinctively Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 Another pecuilarity of this great Southwest is the re- 
 fraction of light in this nearly rainless country. It often 
 presents optical illusions of unexpected and perplexing 
 character. I do not mean that form of mirage which 
 consists in seeing things that do not exist : I have not seen 
 that and do not believe in it. I mean the appearance of 
 things that do exist, but in an unusual and seemingly im- 
 possible manner. An example of this is the plain view of 
 objects that really lie below the horizon and should by 
 natural law be hidden by the curvature of the earth. 
 Another is the appearance of objects as near at hand when 
 in reality they are far distant. 
 
 A story, venerable in the mountains, so clearly illus- 
 trates what I mean that I will tell it, hoping its age is so 
 great it will be new to some. An English tourist, stop- 
 ping at Denver, one morning saw the mountains ap- 
 parently so close and inviting that he suggested to a 
 friend of that city that they walk over and back before 
 dinner. The Denver friend, knowing the hills were forty 
 
ig6 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The "Santa Fe Style''' 
 Hopi and Mission Styles combined. 
 A Residence of Santa Fe's Exclusive "Four Hundred' 
 
 'Santa Fe Style" for Public Buildings 
 The Elks' House at Santa Fe 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 197 
 
 miles away but seeing some fun, agreed. After they had 
 walked a couple of hours the Englishman began to get 
 uneasy, the mountains were no nearer; another hour, 
 and he was quite disturbed — they were as far away as 
 ever; one more hour, and they came to an irrigating 
 acequia about two feet across. He sat down, pulled off 
 his shoes and stockings and was rolling up his trousers 
 when his friend said, "What are you doing?" 
 
 The tourist answered, "I want to get through that 
 stream." 
 
 "Why don't you step over it?" the Denverite sug- 
 gested. 
 
 "Ah! said the Englishman, "What do I know about 
 distances in your blasted country?" 
 
 Scandia Mountain near Albuquerque 
 
 Refraction makes them seem to the eyes to reach the height 
 
 of the mark half way between the horizon and the top 
 
 of the picture 
 
198 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 He did not know anything if he trusted to sight, and 
 the longer one stays in that country the less reliance he 
 places on that faculty for judging distances. A peculiar 
 fact about this illusion, which I would not believe until 
 repeated trials had convinced me of its truth, is that it 
 deceives the eye, but it cannot fool the camera. 
 
 To illustrate what I mean, look at the photograph I 
 present showing the New Mexico camp for war recruits. 
 In the background the Scandia Mountains show dimly 
 and low down in the distance. To the eye, the range 
 looms up apparently thirty degrees in the firmament, as 
 high as the mark shown in the sky, and the groves, cliffs, 
 canyons, snowbanks, and whole mountain scenery are so 
 distinctly plain that one might expect to reach them in an 
 hour or two of walking. The camera alone refused to 
 be misled ; I have tried many times, but never secured 
 any better result than here shown. I do not understand 
 it ; I pass it along to anyone who knows the answer to 
 the riddle. 
 
 My experience of over three-quarters of a century 
 has shown that prophets here in the West have had a 
 very hard time, and seem to have been born chiefly for 
 the purpose of being discredited. Yet with their dire 
 disaster in plain view, I want to foretell one thing — it is 
 this : the plebeian, degraded, much-despised, Indian-made 
 adobe is bound to be the principal building material of 
 arid America, not only for dwellings but also for public 
 buildings. Why should it not be? It is cheap, simply 
 mud and straw properly mixed and sun baked. It is 
 durable ; note the buildings that have stood for centuries 
 in the Southwest. (See also pages 68 and 70.) If it is 
 kept with a dry roof above, and occasionally plastered 
 
Till-; SETTLING OF THE WEST 
 
 iycj 
 
 with a thin coat of the original material on the outside, 
 colored to suit one's fancy, it is as good and looks as well 
 at the end of a century of its life as at its commence- 
 ment. An adobe house is cool in summer and warm in 
 winter. Its outer walls may be marked and colored so 
 as to present as fine an appearance as anything that can 
 be found. What more can be asked of any building ma- 
 terial ? Some have already answered that question in the 
 negative — more will follow, and the guess I leave is, that 
 the very large majority, even of Americans, will finally 
 adopt it. 
 
 The climate of arid America is so pleasant and beauti- 
 ful that land-boomers in that country have, for lo these 
 many years, been selling Eastern innocents "climate by 
 the acre," meaning thereby that many a poor fellow who 
 has bought a ranch of these gentlemen without proper 
 
 Recent Pueblo Houses, San Domingo, New Mexico 
 Adobe 
 
200 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 investigation ultimately found that climate was the only 
 thing of real value he had purchased. It is no idle boast 
 of the far-west people that the dryness of the air de- 
 creases the extreme heat in summer and lessens the in- 
 tense cold in winter. It is the moisture in the air that in 
 cold weather penetrates the clothing and chills the body, 
 and the humidity of hot days that prostrates and threatens 
 sunstroke. 
 
 I can testify personally in this case. In the winter of 
 191 7, when the frost ruined the groves and gardens of 
 Florida, the temperature after the sun rose was over 
 thirty-two degrees, and yet with a heavy overcoat I was 
 compelled to seek a fire to keep warm. The next winter, 
 in New Mexico, I walked out frequently thinking it a 
 warm morning, and passing where water was standing, I 
 would, to my surprise, find it frozen. On the other hand, 
 when I was driving oxen on the plain in summer, I have 
 experienced days when the heat did not seem oppressive, 
 and yet the chains that had lain on the ground in the sun 
 were so hot they could not easily be handled without 
 gloves. 
 
 The Government has taken this matter under observa- 
 tion. An instrument has been installed that is supposed 
 to register the difference between real and apparent heat 
 and cold. The observer has reported that there may be 
 a difference between the two of about forty degrees. This 
 means that a man at Santa Fe, in winter, with the ther- 
 mometer registering zero, would not feel the cold more 
 than a man in Chicago at forty degrees above. And per 
 contra, a person in summer at New York, with the 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 201 
 
 thermometer at seventy degrees, would suffer as much 
 from heat as one in Arizona would at one hundred and 
 ten. 
 
 Whether further observations will sustain this seem- 
 ingly extreme statement remains to be seen. But this is 
 true : although the thermometer in the far Southwest fre- 
 quently goes on a rampage and shows a real heat of much 
 above a hundred degrees, still, the apparent heat is so low 
 that sunstrokes are unknown there, while eighty or ninety 
 is all that New York or Chicago can possibly stand with- 
 out such casualties. 
 
 The great thing that our Westerners rely upon to 
 make their half of the nation more valuable than the 
 East, is spelled I-r-r-i-g-a-t-i-o-n, and many of the 
 enthusiasts talk of it as some new thing. Why, bless your 
 heart ! It is the oldest thing in America ; the Spaniards 
 personally testified to its presence on the Rio Grande 
 River nearly a century before the Pilgrims landed on 
 Plymouth Rock; C. F. Lummis gives us good reason 
 for believing that the Quere Indians were flooding their 
 fields on the Rio de los Frijoles about the time Julius 
 Caesar was stirring up trouble with the Gauls ; and from 
 the old, forgotten, pre-historic, and even pre-legendary 
 irrigation works that are found where our new systems 
 are being installed, it is quite possible that there may have 
 been corn in Arizona that Joseph failed to buy when he 
 ran his great corner in grain in Egypt. 
 
 The Indians taught the Mexicans their system of 
 simply diverting the flow of the river upon the land. 
 Then came the Americans, who improved upon it by 
 building rude dams to raise the head of water to cover 
 new territory; afterwards followed irrigation companies, 
 
202 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 more or less successful, which atempted not only to raise 
 the level of the waters, but also to conserve them for un- 
 certain seasons. Finally appeared Uncle Sam, who took 
 hold of the matter in a systematic and scientific way. 
 
 The Government is now installing great projects like 
 the one at Salt River. There stands the Roosevelt Dam, 
 its summit two hundred and forty feet above the level of 
 the river at its feet. With its mighty strength it holds 
 back the waters of a reservoir covering sixteen thousand 
 eight hundred and thirty-two acres. This is expected to 
 supply two hundred thousand acres of land throughout 
 the dryest season. This project is only one of the twenty- 
 five such, under consideration or completed, which Uncle 
 Sam is building. Taken all together they will supply 
 water for over two million acres. But this is only a 
 small part of the acreage under ditch in the seventeen 
 states that are on the arid list. There was in 1910 a 
 total of thirteen million seven hundred and thirty-eight 
 thousand four hundred and eighty-five acres under irriga- 
 tion. This is about one and two-tenths per cent of the 
 area of the states involved, but the amount so cultivated 
 is annually increasing. 
 
 Irrigation is doing a great thing for our southwestern 
 friends ; but when they, as Smythe did in California, com- 
 pute the population of some of their irrigated valleys as 
 a basis, and then extend that ratio all over their state, 
 irrespective of its agricultural possibilities, thereby reach- 
 ing an estimated future census exceeding the people con- 
 tained in France, they are sure to come out with a wrong 
 conclusion. If that calculation can be made good, and 
 
THE SETTLING OE THE WEST 203 
 
 if the other dry states can do the same, then we, who 
 live east of the ninety-seventh meridian, must look to the 
 West and take off our hats. 
 
 In reaching these optimistic conclusions I am certain 
 they have overlooked several points. First, fertility of 
 soil ; second, water supply ; third, the principal cause of 
 California's growth. Regarding fertility, though it is true 
 that much of the western soil, especially in the valleys, 
 is very productive when once it is watered, still this con- 
 dition is by no means as general as they would have us 
 believe. I examined a report of the soil survey of the 
 Rio Grande River Valley near Albuquerque, and I was 
 surprised at the great variety and wide range in the pro- 
 ductiveness of the soils shown, even here. In places were 
 spots of great fertility, but in close proximity were others 
 almost sterile. 
 
 The Rio Grande River at Albuquerque 
 
204 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The surveyors had, however, been kind to the real 
 estate interest of the valley, and had marked nothing as 
 poor or worthless. Their lowest grade was in effect indi- 
 cated as "productive, if supplied with fertilizers and 
 water." A sand hill could be truly so marked. As I was 
 curious to see what kind of soil would bear that designa- 
 tion, I hunted up one location so marked, and found it 
 was composed entirely, so far as I could see, of coarse 
 gravel and small water- washed stones. Such soil is rare 
 in the valleys, but away from the streams it is more 
 abundant. In places there are hundreds of square miles 
 either too sterile or too rough for cultivation of any kind, 
 even if it had unlimited water. 
 
 The water supply, I think, cannot sufficiently moisten 
 even the lands that are fertile and sufficiently level for 
 irrigation. When Los Angeles is compelled to go three 
 hundred miles for water, and then to take it away from 
 those who need it, and San Francisco is forced to appear 
 before Congress and say that for supply she must have 
 the waters of California's pride, the Yosemite Valley, 
 where will the moisture come from to wet the great San 
 Joaquin and other valleys? 
 
 I know the answer given to that question — any real 
 estate man on Broadway Street in Los Angeles will not 
 only tell it to you, but demonstrate it. It is this: "Buy 
 five or ten acres of land of us (more if you want), then 
 install a pumping outfit upon it sufficient for a small city, 
 and the generous, bountiful, never failing under-flow will 
 water your land and make you rich." This may all be 
 true, but like Mark Twain in another matter, "I am har- 
 rassed by doubts." Government officials report that the 
 flowing wells of Southern California and the Pecos Val- 
 
THE SETTLING OF THE WEST 205 
 
 ley have already reduced this underflow so much that 
 many have stopped running, and "conditions indicate that 
 the quantity of water that can be taken from an under- 
 ground source is as definitely limited as that which can 
 be taken from the streams." 
 
 Our trans-mountain friends, when boasting of the re- 
 markable strides their states have made, are apt to forget 
 that the greater part of the money which has pushed their 
 progress was made in the disdained East. When they 
 point out a magnificent valley filled with beautiful homes, 
 made glorious by blooming flowers and golden fruits, 
 they are apt to infer, if not positively state, that these 
 are the results of fruit growing in their locality, when, as 
 a matter of fact, they are the proceeds of the corn and 
 cereals of Eastern States. 
 
 It is certain a large, very large, proportion of those 
 who live in California, earned their money in the East, 
 and are spending it in their new homes. The beautiful 
 residences in the grand valleys were built and are kept up, 
 not by their citrus groves, but by the annual flow of 
 money over the Rocky Mountains, which, should it be 
 stopped, would cause their homes to be suddenly closed, 
 and a great emigration toward the rising sun would be 
 the immediate result. 
 
 California may sometime have the thirty-eight mil- 
 lion people, that Smythe predicts for her, and the other 
 arid states in like proportion, but when they achieve that 
 result, the States east of the ninety-seventh meridian will 
 have to feed and clothe them. 
 
 While the West has been doing all these things, the 
 East has been a most worthy team-mate of the West in 
 
206 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the great march of progress. What some cities of the 
 East have achieved in population is only an index of her 
 accomplishments everywhere. When I was born in 1840 
 there resided in New York City 391,144 people; now it 
 has over 5,000,000. Buffalo had 18,213; now, 500,000. 
 New York State, 2,428,921 ; now 10,000,000. Cleveland 
 6,048; now 700,000. 
 
 When my life began, the population of the whole 
 United States was 17,069,453, and its center was sixteen 
 miles south of Clarksburg, West Virginia. While I am 
 still living and vigorous, that center has moved west to 
 Whitehall, Indiana, and the numbers have increased 
 about seven hundred per cent, being now more than a 
 hundred million, and no man can predict the future. 
 
 Before another centennial of our history shall come, 
 may not Andrew Carnegie's apostrophe to the United 
 States become as true in his prophecy as in his history? 
 "In 1850 she passed Austria; in i860 it was her Mother 
 Land to whom she held out her hand lovingly as she 
 swept by; in 1870 she overtook and passed France; in 
 1880 she outstripped the German Empire, and now, in 
 1890, she is left without a competitor to contend with, 
 except giant Russia — all others she has left behind. 
 Another decade, and the sound of the rushing Republic 
 close behind will astonish even Russia with its eighty- 
 six millions in Europe; yet another decade, and it, too, 
 like all the rest, will fall behind to watch for a time, the 
 new nation in advance, until it forges so far forward as 
 to pass beyond her ken, when five hundred millions, every 
 one an American, and all boasting a common citizenship, 
 will dominate the world — for the world's good." 
 
PART III 
 
 THE 
 FREEING OF THE NEGRO 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 209 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 LIKE TOPSY, SLAVERY "JUST GROWED." 
 
 The first public meeting I can remember to have at- 
 tended was • in the church building of my native New 
 England village. There I received my first conception of 
 slavery. It was not a bright angel that enlightened me, 
 but a very black, runaway negro who brought the mes- 
 sage and appealed for sympathy and aid. It was a long 
 tale of cruelty and wrong he related, and as proof of his 
 truthfulness he presented the unimpeachable voucher 
 of his own torn and lash-scarred back. 
 
 Then I wondered how, and I am still questioning why, 
 the Institution of slavery, like the old man of the sea 
 upon Sindbad the Sailor, should have settled itself upon 
 the free nation and there clung until four years of Civil 
 War loosened its hold and disposed of it forever. 
 
 Is it a mistake that I capitalized the word Institution ? 
 I think not, because I believe it to have been an entity that 
 demanded personification. It was greater, more power- 
 ful, more lasting than slavery itself or the laws therewith 
 connected. Slavery is dead, buried, and has no mourners 
 even among those who controlled it; the laws it enacted 
 are now mere forceless words upon the obsolete statutes 
 where printed, but the unwritten customs, practices, and 
 prejudices which the Institution bred, still survive to 
 annoy, perplex and curse, equally the white man and the 
 black, both North and South. 
 
 Northerners have written of this black peril from 
 their standpoint; Southerners, from their view of the 
 Institution, lioth have doubtless been honest and have 
 
210 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 told the truth as they found it and understood it, but 
 they have been like witnesses in court. There the law 
 and the judge, realizing the limitations of human and 
 mental capacity, have prescribed what the oath regard- 
 ing the truth shall be. The correct formula, as I have 
 numberless times administered it, is, "You do solemnly 
 swear that the evidence you may give in the cause now 
 pending shall be the truth, and nothing but the truth." 
 No thoughtful judge, or careful clerk, would swear wit- 
 nesses, as is sometimes done, to "tell the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth," because it is impossible 
 to comply with such an oath. No one knows the whole 
 truth about insignificant affairs; therefore no person 
 could possess such unattainable knowledge about the 
 great question of slavery. 
 
 But some writers, I fear, have not tried to tell all the 
 truth they knew. Like lawyers in court, many have 
 purposely omitted from their briefs facts and precedents 
 that did not help to prove their side of the case — a ten- 
 dency always constant, tempting and overpowering to a 
 prejudiced mind. I think I have had unusual opportun- 
 ities to see both sides of this matter, and I purpose to 
 construct no brief for either side of the case. Old age, 
 and friendly relations with the Southern men I once so 
 honestly fought during the Civil War, have obliterated 
 my prejudices; contact and conversation with ex-slave- 
 holders and ex-slaves in every state of the old South 
 since that event, have taught me much. What I may 
 here state shall be written, so far as in me lies, "with 
 charity for all, with malice toward none," and will ap- 
 proach as nearly as can be that impossible trinity, "the 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 211 
 
 The common law of England was the legal heritage 
 of all the colonies from that country, and as that law 
 knew no chattel slavery, nor villeinage, lawyers and courts 
 have many times taken the position that slavery could not 
 exist in this country except by virtue of, and in con- 
 formity to, statutory law. Upon this position Lincoln 
 stood, and it must be legally correct, though it sometimes 
 seems to be historically wrong. 
 
 Our "Magna Charta," the Constitution of the United 
 States, is strongly illustrative of this fact. Even though 
 William Lloyd Garrison did stigmatize it as a "Covenant 
 with death and an agreement with hell," and burned it 
 in public, still, as I read that document, there is no word 
 from its beginning to its close that establishes slavery. 
 It does, however, recognise the Institution under the 
 term "three-fifths of all other persons," and later Con- 
 gress passed laws regulating it ; but in no place, so far as 
 I can find, in the Constitution itself or in the session laws 
 following, is there any law establishing it. 
 
 What is true of the Government at Washington, so far 
 as I can learn, is also true of the individual states North 
 and South. Slavery was a fact that, like Topsy, "Just 
 growed up" until legal action regarding it was necessary. 
 Then it was recognized and regulated in some states, and 
 discarded and made illegal in others, as financial interests 
 and modes of thought dictated. 
 
 The sociological anomaly of a great slave Institution 
 growing up among, and attaching itself to a free people, 
 free by their fundamental law, free by all traditions of 
 their ancestors, and free by the facts of their immigra- 
 tion and settlement, is to me an astonishing anti-climax 
 
212 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 to the hopes and aspirations of those who fought the 
 primitive wilderness and laid the foundations of our re- 
 public. 
 
 To my mind, the reading of the foregoing riddle is 
 something as follows. Although the laws of England 
 knew not chattel slavery nor villeinage, they did recog- 
 nize apprenticeships and servants ; convicts and redemp- 
 tioners might even be bought and sold for service for 
 terms of years. Should one care to examine the gen- 
 ealogy of those whose ancestors settled New England or 
 Jamestown, he may find the record of the time when 
 the persons in question came to the colony, and then the 
 record some years later is likely to read, "Freeman 
 in...." This lapse of time, before the immigrant be- 
 came entitled to full citizenship, might be for various 
 limitations : under-age, non-church membership, and like 
 reasons, but the main deficiency was likely to be because 
 he was a redemptioner, a man who had not yet worked 
 out his term of service for his immigration expenses and 
 was still a quasi-slave until he was declared a freeman. 
 
 The first negroes brought to the colonies were sold in 
 Virginia, as recorded by John Rolfe, in August 1619, 
 when, "a Dutch Man of War sold us twenty nigars." 
 Now under the laws of England, and therefore of 
 Virginia, these "twenty nigars" could not have been 
 slaves ; the English common law would not permit it ; 
 they should have been, and were so considered by some, 
 redemptioners, and entitled to freedom when they had 
 worked out the cost of their purchase. Some such 
 negroes. did establish that fact in law by going into court 
 upon a "Quantum meruit" plea for services rendered, 
 and won their liberty. But such cases, where negroes 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 213 
 
 proved their equity, were very few. Gradually the 
 planters and owners of slaves, North and South, forgot 
 the black man's equity ; he did not fight for his right and 
 it lapsed, and he became by custom and prescription, a 
 hereditary slave. Then came statutes regulating and 
 recognizing such bondage, and the fact of slavery was 
 established. 
 
 In the early days of the black man's bondage there 
 was no question of sectionalism. North and South were 
 equally committed to the same error. In 1708, there were 
 four hundred slaves in Puritan Boston. It was the act 
 of a slave that infuriated the British soldiers to the Bos- 
 ton Massacre ; and Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was 
 one of the five persons who then and there lost their lives, 
 
 'When I was in the South with the Northern Army 
 during the Civil War, the Southerners used to say to 
 me, "You uns ought not to blame we uns for slavery, 
 because you uns caught the slaves and sold them to we 
 uns." At that time I resented the charge as being untrue, 
 but now I know that the South had few ships and fewer 
 sailors, and that our enterprising Yankee skippers could 
 not withstand the tempting risks and rich returns the 
 African slave trade rendered before 1808, and were smart 
 enough and quick enough to secure at least their share of 
 the ill-gotten gains. The negroes scattered through the 
 New England states are probably the remains of cargoes, 
 the bulk of which had been disposed of elsewhere. So 
 far as the introduction of slavery is concerned, the North 
 is equally guilty with the South. In this matter, "pot 
 can't call kettle black." 
 
2i 4 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 During these early years, there was also very little 
 or no debate of right and wrong concerning slavery. It 
 was purely an economic question, "Does it pay?" If 
 there was a moral and religious view at all, the Southern 
 ideal prevailed everywhere, that it was a missionary 
 work, and a fulfilment of divine command, when negroes 
 were brought from their state of ignorance and savagery 
 in Africa and civilized and made Christians in America. 
 The South had no monopoly of this sentiment ; as long ago 
 as 1452, before America was discovered, Gomez Ennes de 
 Azurara, court chronicler of Spain, extolled the acts of 
 the negro stealers then active. He rated them as valiant 
 crusaders of the Christian faith, bringing heathen to 
 Christianity and civilization. That killing and cruelty 
 were necessary he deplored, but considered the evils over- 
 balanced by the saving of the negro's soul. *He admitted 
 that many of them died from the change of climate and 
 hard treatment, but consoled himself that they expired as 
 Christians and therefore were happy. 
 
 When the South in later years, from its pulpits, in its 
 press, and through its business and social channels, stood 
 in defense of its peculiar Institution upon this ground of 
 divine commands, it was advancing nothing new : it had 
 the authority of a world opinion of at least three hun- 
 dred years upholding and sustaining it. The mistake our 
 Southern friends made was not that they permitted slav- 
 ery at that time, but that they failed later to move for- 
 ward to higher views in line with more progressive people 
 here and in Europe. 
 
 As stated before, the question of slavery was at that 
 time almost purely an economic one : families both North 
 and South owned negroes largely as evidence of wealth 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 215 
 
 and social standing. But no economic institution can 
 rise or fall upon that basis alone ; in the long run, to 
 succeed, it must create wealth, not spend it; it must supply 
 money to pay taxes, feed and clothe the wife and chil- 
 dren, and provide necessities and comforts, or it will 
 fail. 
 
 The negro then had no mechanical ability. Therefore, 
 to make slavery pay demanded some field crop that would 
 employ the hands all, or nearly all, the year round, and 
 that possessed a sure and reasonably constant market. 
 The North had no such crop; the nearest approach the 
 South possessed was tobacco, but the price of the negro 
 was so low and he was so easy to get that the planters 
 soon ruined the tobacco market by oversupplying it. 
 
 About this time, came the Revolutionary War and 
 that immortal Declaration, "We hold these truths to be 
 self-evident, that all men are created equal." That was a 
 challenge not only to Great Britain and the world at 
 large, but to every slave holder ; there was no escaping 
 from it ; either the Declaration was a lie, or the negro was 
 not a man. 
 
 The challenge of the "Declaration" together with the 
 non-economic value of slavery at that time would, I be- 
 lieve, have then wiped it from the face of the nation, 
 North and South, had there been an available place 
 where the liberated slaves could have been sent and 
 segregated. It was the undisputed theory in the South, 
 held firmly up to the time of the Civil War, that the two 
 races, black and white, could not live together except by 
 the slavery of the former. Even Lincoln, before his 
 Emancipation Proclamation, tried to find some place or 
 country that wanted the negro, but failed. Conditions 
 
2i6 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 soon after the Revolution were such on the plantation, 
 that, as John Randolph once expressed it, the necessity 
 would soon come that, "in case the slave should not elope 
 from his master, the master would run away from him." 
 
 The Revolutionary War finally ended, and the ques- 
 tion of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" having 
 been settled for the white man, the North and South 
 faced the problem, in its application to the black man. 
 Many prominent men in the South were as honestly anti- 
 slavery as those of the North. Thomas Jefferson was a 
 stronger believer than Abraham Lincoln in the rights of 
 the negro. With Lincoln he objected to bondage extend- 
 ing to any new states, and in 1781 said, "To suffer the 
 continuance of the slaves in states already overrun with 
 them may be pardonable, because unavoidable, but to 
 introduce them into countries where none exist, can never 
 be forgiven." 
 
 He went even further than Lincoln : he wished to have 
 it abolished in Virginia where it had existed from its 
 very first introduction, and tried to frame an amendment 
 to disestablish it. In support of this course he said in 
 J 7&5> "Virginia is the next state to which we may turn 
 our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict 
 with avarice and oppression ; a conflict in which the 
 sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx oi 
 young men, grown and growing up. These have sucked in 
 the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mother's 
 milk, and it is to these that I look with anxiety to turn 
 the fate of the question." 
 
 Jefferson's hope was not realized ; the young men of 
 Virginia did not rally to freedom's side ; public opinion 
 was opposed to emancipation, the cause in that state was 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 217 
 
 lost. But though he lost the fight in his own state, he 
 had many friends and a strong following. Washington 
 was one; he earnestly wished for some plan "by which 
 slavery would be abolished." Of the one hundred and 
 forty-three emancipation societies that existed in the 
 country at large, just prior to the introduction of Whit- 
 ney's cotton gin, one hundred and three were in the South. 
 This shows that a strong, honest, and energetic effort was 
 made in that section to give the slave his right, even 
 though it failed. We must not forget that the fight was 
 made but lost. 
 
 Between the years 1777 and 1804 the Northern states, 
 one by one, emancipated the slaves within their borders 
 by more or less gradual methods. In 182 1, Ohio, being 
 willing to share with the South the cost of freedom, 
 proposed the emancipation in all the states of all slaves 
 as they reached the age of twenty-one and their removal 
 to Liberia, the general government to pay the expenses. 
 Eight other Northern states concurred in this resolution, 
 but as six Southern states refused, the cause was lost. 
 
 In both North and South, the slavery question was 
 double-headed moral and economic. First, was the negro 
 a man and entitled to his "life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness?" Second, did it pay to keep him as a slave, 
 provided right to do so was established? 
 
 As heretofore stated, to make slavery profitable a 
 country must have some agricultural crop that will em- 
 ploy hands the year round, and for which crop there is a 
 fairly constant market. The North never developed such 
 a commodity ; discussions and statistics proved that for 
 temporary work such as it had, free labor was cheaper 
 and better than the keeping of slaves the year round. The 
 
218 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 moral view was warmly debated, and the decree was 
 given that the black fellow was a man, and entitled to a 
 man's rights. Therefore, in the part of our Union where 
 the snow lies deepest, it was decided that we had no right 
 to keep slaves, and it would not pay to own them if we 
 had such authority. 
 
 With the people of the South the case was reversed. 
 They had a product, tobacco, that answered the economic 
 requirements, but they had "killed the goose that laid 
 the golden egg' by over-supplying their market ; so, even 
 with them, for several decades after the Revolution, 
 slavery did not pay financially. Then was the time of 
 emancipation societies in the South; then was when some 
 method would have been found to free the slaves could 
 any available place have been found to send them. In the 
 North blacks were few. But in the South the tobacco 
 industry had so multiplied the negroes that the idea of 
 freeing them and allowing them to remain with the 
 whites was, at that time among planters, altogether un- 
 thinkable. 
 
 It was disastrously unfortunate for the country just 
 at that time, when the scales of freedom and slavery were 
 so evenly balanced, that cotton came and changed the 
 economic conditions and settled slavery upon the nation. 
 It was a simple little piece of machinery that accomplished 
 this great result. It had been realized for years that 
 cotton of finest quality could be raised, and that its 
 planting, picking, marketing, and separating of seed from 
 lint, would employ slaves the year round ; also that the 
 market was sure. The trouble with cotton was, that the 
 process of separating the seed of the plant from the lint 
 that it carried, was so slow as to greatly limit the quantity 
 
THE FREEING UE THE NEGRO 219 
 
 of product and make it unprofitable. But in 1793 Whit- 
 ney came with his inexpensive cotton gin that stripped 
 the lint from the seed cheaply, quickly, and cleanly, and 
 henceforth, at least in the South, "Cotton was King." 
 
 With the change in economic value of the slave, came 
 a change in sentiment concerning him. It was one thing 
 to free a chattel that was an incumbrance and not paying 
 the bother and expense of care and keep, but it was a 
 different matter to emancipate one who was earning, net, 
 from five hundred to a thousand dollars a year. 
 
 With the alteration in the economic idea came also a 
 revision in the moral sentiment, and the question was 
 examined more closely. It might be true that all men 
 were created equal, but could not that equality be lost? 
 Criminals in penal institutions had lost it, and might not 
 others have done the same? Then theologians came to 
 the rescue with a new teaching: How, through an ac- 
 cident occuring when Noah over-did the use of the vine- 
 yard he planted, Ham was sentenced, "Cursed be Canaan, 
 a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." By 
 what ethnologic proof the negro became Ham, and we 
 white Saxons his brothers, I know not, but it was doubt- 
 less demonstrated to the satisfaction of the pulpit in the 
 South, and the joy of the pew. The New Testament also 
 was quoted, especially the Apostle Paul's warning to 
 servants, "be obedient to your master in the flesh" ; and 
 ministers dwelt strongly upon the time when the same 
 Apostle caught a runaway slave, Onesimus, and returned 
 him to his master, Philemon, with a letter bespeaking 
 mercy. 
 
 Also the theory, centuries old, was ready for use, that 
 it was missionary work to bring the savage heathen from 
 
220 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Africa and civilize and christianize them here. This was 
 revamped, brought down to date, and modernized. When 
 these opinions and theories, and many others like them, 
 were taught to the Southern people from their youth up, 
 in the pulpit, from the rostrum, by the press, and in the 
 home, it is almost certain they would at last believe them 
 to be right. 
 
 I have known many Southern people ; I have found 
 them, like the Northerners and Westerners, mighty fine 
 folks. I think we are all pretty much alike, and under 
 the same conditions act pretty much in the same manner. 
 We are equally affected by the same environment, submit 
 in the same way to outward impressions, and strive as 
 mightily after those ideals in manners, morals, and ma- 
 terial success that are held before us as most desirable 
 of attainment in the communities in which we live. I am 
 forced to confess that if the chance for financial profit 
 in slavery had been presented to the North that was de- 
 veloped in the South, and if the same dogmas regarding 
 the rights of the black man and the duties of the white 
 Christian toward him, taught by the church, state, and 
 press, had obtained in Massachusetts that were urged in 
 Virginia, I verily believe I should have been born the 
 son of a slaveholder or else I should have been pushed 
 to the other inevitable end of every slave-holding com- 
 munity, and should have first opened my eyes on some 
 hill of the old Bay State as one of the many "poor white 
 trash" that the plantation system most surely evolves. 
 
 The working relations between the negro and his 
 master after the Institution of slavery had thus grown 
 up among us were as varied as the personality of both 
 master and slave. Planters who knew most concerning 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 221 
 
 it differed greatly. Some of them extolled the faithful- 
 ness, attachment, industry, and obedience of their slaves 
 as fully as their language would permit. Others charged, 
 'They lie and steal and are not to be trusted out of sight 
 or hearing." Another asserted, "In working niggers we 
 must calculate they will not labor at all except to avoid 
 punishment." And one more sufferer says, "It seems on 
 the plantations as if they took pains to break all the 
 tools and spoil all the cattle they possibly could." 
 
 All these planters were probably testifying from their 
 own experience, but the causes of the wide differences of 
 opinion are as diverse as the make-up of the actors in- 
 volved. Whether you consider the negro as a man or an 
 animal, he displays — like the white man — characteristics 
 of both. Tell a good horseman about an outlawed, balky, 
 worthless horse, and he instantly demands, "What kind 
 of a driver has he?" He knows that a horse uncontrol- 
 able by one man is true to its last breath to another. 
 
 There was a wealth of philosophy in the old settler 
 whom I knew during my backwoods experience. He 
 loved to circulate among the camp-fires of emigrants on 
 their way to early Minnesota, when they were resting for 
 the night near his place, and quiz them concerning their 
 social relations in the country from which they came. He 
 would ask one party, "What kind of neighbors did you 
 have where you came from?" 
 
 The reply might be, "They were the meanest, low- 
 down, tattling and quarreling lot you can imagine. I 
 was glad to get away from there." 
 
 The" old man would say, "I am sorry, but you will 
 not find them any better where you are going." 
 
222 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Another to whom the same question was propounded 
 might reply, "Well, neighbor, that is the deep regret my 
 wife and I had when we left the old place. We had the 
 finest neighbors and friends in the world, kind, helpful, 
 and true. It really broke our heart to part with them." 
 
 The old man would then place his hand on the emi- 
 grant's shoulder, and say, "Never mind, you will find 
 them just as good in your new home." 
 
 In our merchant marine and in our navy, we have 
 what the sailors call "happy ships" and those that are 
 "veritable hells." The reason why these vessels are the 
 one or the other may often be found, not among the deck 
 hands and sailors but among the officers, behind the mast, 
 or with the captain upon the bridge. 
 
 What is true in all these cases was also true where 
 African slavery held sway. On some plantations the negro 
 was well-cared for, well-fed, kindly and considerately 
 used : the response to such treatment was likely to return 
 fidelity, industry, and trustworthiness. On other planta- 
 tions, most probably the large ones, he was ill-fed and 
 worked hard ; no consideration was given his wants or 
 comfort, and the result might be laziness, carelessness, 
 and even wanton damage to tools and property. 
 
 So long as human nature is the uncertain and despotic 
 thing we often find it, "happy plantations" and those that 
 were "hells upon earth" must have existed wherever 
 slavery lived; and the tendency of the Institution itself 
 was towards the latter condition. The master, or his over- 
 seer or driver as his agent, was the absolute controller 
 of the slave, his property, his domestic relations, his 
 liberty — even his life. That all slave-holding States made 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 223 
 
 the malicious and unnecessary killing of the negro slave 
 a capital offense does not alter or modify the above 
 statement, because it was held that "a slave dying under 
 moderate corrections was not murder." As no negro 
 could testify, and only those implicated in such death 
 could be witnesses, malicious and unnecessary killing 
 would be nearly impossible of proof. 
 
 Some of the axioms enforced by the Institution, rec- 
 ognized and really necessary for its preservation, were : 
 "Slave labor depends upoiri) physical force, abundant 
 enough, swift enough, and thorough enough, to compel 
 obedience and break down insubordination." 
 
 "If slavery is allowable, anything to keep it up is 
 justifiable." 
 
 "The control of slaves by any severity necessary to 
 preserve slavery is deeply inwrought in the whole fabric 
 of Southern society." 
 
 "For man, woman and child, the only ultimate sanc- 
 tion for command is force, and the community did not 
 feel kindly toward masters who spoil their slaves by 
 leaving them uncorrected." 
 
 A leading opinion given by Chief Justice Ruffin, of 
 North Carolina, in 1829, in a suit where a master was 
 prosecuted for beating his slave, and acquitted upon the 
 ground that he had a right to punish short of death, 
 reads : "The end is the profit of the master, and the 
 public safety; the subject is doomed in his own person, 
 and his posterity, without knowledge and without capac- 
 ity to make anything his own. . . .such services can only 
 be expected from one who has no will of his own, who 
 surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. 
 
224 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Such is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority 
 over the body. There is nothing else can operate to pro- 
 duce the effect. The power of the master must be abso- 
 lute to render the submission of the slave perfect." In 
 his obiter dictum he says, "As a principle of right, every 
 person in his retirement must repudiate it, but in the 
 actual condition of things it must be so; there is no 
 remedy for it. This discipline belongs to the state of 
 slavery. It constitutes the curse of slavery, both to the 
 bond and free portion of our population." 
 
 The Institution even dictated to the Supreme Court, 
 and Judge Taney found in obedience thereto that, in 
 effect, "a negro had no rights that a white man was 
 bound to respect." 
 
 These quotations and opinions sound barbaric — they 
 were cruel; but careful consideration leads to the con- 
 clusion that such views were necessary if slavery was to 
 be kept alive. The negro in his African home was never 
 a persistent laborer ; his work was intermittent and light, 
 and by the heredity of ages he was a trifler and an idler 
 even when he was working for himself. Bringing him 
 to this country and placing him on a plantation and re- 
 quiring him to work for some one else did not improve 
 his desire for industry. In Africa his habit was to get 
 up in the morning or lie in bed as his desire predominated. 
 Here, if he was on a plantation, the horn blew one hour 
 before daylight and commanded him to get up and pre- 
 pare his breakfast and dinner and be ready to go into 
 the field at break of day. At home, he worked or not 
 as he saw fit ; here, as soon as it was light enough to see, 
 he must go into the field and work, work, work, with only 
 one hour of rest (to eat the dinner he brought with him) 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 225 
 
 until sun set at least, but often as long as daylight lasted, 
 and then go home and get his supper. And this order 
 both for man and woman continued six days in the week, 
 fifty-two weeks in the year, Fourth of July day and 
 Christmas week only excepted. 
 
 What was it that could transform this idler into such 
 a constant worker ? It could not be love for the men who 
 burned his villages in Africa, killed his relatives, and 
 brought him in chains to dire servitude ; it was not fear 
 of imprisonment, because that would be to him a rest ; he 
 would have to be fed and would not be compelled to 
 work; it was impossible to punish him by fines, for he 
 had no property. Whatever might be done with house 
 servants, and individual cases on small plantations, I 
 know not; but on large plantations there was but one 
 answer, one method only to compel him to labor — physical 
 force. The whip was the chief exponent of this form of 
 education. Overseers and drivers carried it always and 
 used it, sometimes from necessity, many times perhaps in 
 passion. As these men might be degenerates, they may 
 have used the whip sometimes in spite, or even compel 
 compliance to demands that shall be nameless here. 
 Wherever the blackman labored in slavery, there the 
 whip flourished as a compelling force, and no one spoke a 
 word against such use. Even Washington, on his planta- 
 tion, emancipator that he wanted to be, humanitarian 
 that he was, used it, and wrote to his overseer, "Let 
 Abram get his deserts when taken, but don't let Crow 
 give it to him." 
 
 I do not say that there were no places where the 
 whip was not used, because I know such was not the 
 case. Many were the city and country houses and smaller 
 
226 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 plantations where justice and kindness were found in the 
 big house, and obedience, love, and affection in the cabin. 
 This condition was no doubt the rule, where the slaves 
 had been born and bred (as in the older states) servants 
 to the same people, and associated with them from genera- 
 tion to generation. I have met and talked with many of 
 these old negroes who are as proud of "their old families" 
 and as loyal to their traditions as any of the white mem- 
 bers of the same could possibly be. But even here the whip 
 waved in the background, and they might feel it any time 
 should necessity sell them south or financial disaster or 
 sure death meet their beloved master. These brighter 
 spots in the dark picture of slavery represent only a por- 
 tion of the broad view ; the great mass of slaves were 
 worked on large plantations where they came in contact 
 with few whites except the overseers and drivers. On 
 such plantations they were worked for the money there 
 was in them. 
 
 When we consider the tendency of the facts presented, 
 it is strange that the Institution was not more brutal, 
 more demoralizing, and more fatal and deadly than it 
 ultimately became. The reason for this restraint was that 
 the Southern planter in his kindness of heart, his con- 
 sideration for the helpless, and his love of fair play, was 
 unquestionably more just, generous, and sympathetic than 
 the Institution that controlled him. I say "controlled 
 him," having full view of the significance of these words. 
 The negro was no more the slave of his owner than his 
 owner was the slave of the Institution, and the slave no 
 more dared disobey his master than the master dared dis- 
 obey the rules, laws, and customs of that Institution. 
 
 Can this be true? Let us consider the case. A planter 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 227 
 
 might have a half-brother as white as himself but who 
 was his slave. They might have been brought up to- 
 gether, as many were, might have been nursed by the same 
 foster mother, played together from childhood, and loved 
 each other as brothers should. But could he educate him ? 
 The Institution says No ; we will send you to the peniten- 
 tiary if you do. Could he sit at the table and eat with 
 him? No; society would ostracize him forever should 
 he do so. If the slave was unjustly charged with crime, 
 and being innocent, resisted arrest, could the white brother 
 save him from the gallows? No. Should the master 
 be charged with some assault against a white man, and 
 his slave brother knew he was innocent, would the slave 
 brother be allowed to testify and save the master brother 
 from the penitentiary? No. Would the master be per- 
 mitted to treat his brother in any way as an equal ? No. 
 The Institution had drawn a line that no Southern man 
 dared cross. 
 
 Any person who had a drop of negro blood in his 
 veins, even so slight that it was impossible to detect it, 
 was as fully a negro as the blackest Senegambian that 
 ever came from Africa, and one who would treat him 
 in any way different would be debarred from white so- 
 ciety. 
 
 The master might be a drunkard, a gambler, an adult- 
 erer or even a murderer, and still maintain his caste ; but 
 to eat with a half-brother as white, as able, and as intel- 
 ligent as himself, was an unforgivable sin. Why? Be- 
 cause it was necessary to so rule in order to maintain the 
 Institution, and no one dared disobey. The Institution 
 controlled the master financially, as well as legally and 
 socially. Years after the war, in a club room in Mobile, 
 
228 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Alabama, I was talking with a Virginia ex-slave-holder 
 who said to me, "There is one thing you Yanks do not 
 understand ; it is that when you freed the negro you also 
 freed the master. I was the worst worked slave on my 
 plantation when emancipation came." He represented a 
 large class of Southern slave owners who lived outside 
 the cotton belt and where slaves could not be profitably 
 worked. He believed the blacks were men and women, 
 and refused, like George Washington, to sell them on the 
 market like so many cattle. The certain result in this 
 case followed : the plantation sooner or later became over- 
 run with darkies who could not raise enough to pay their 
 annual expense, and the sheriff was a more or less con- 
 stant visitor at the owner's door. 
 
 The only solution of this condition seemed to be, either 
 to sell some negroes or set them free ; most owners were 
 compelled to adopt the plan of selling. Richmond papers 
 in the fall of 1836 say, "Estimates by intelligent men 
 placed Virginia's export in slaves the preceding year at 
 one hundred and twenty thousand." Part of these emi- 
 grated with their masters, but the most were sold and 
 exported by traders. This method of cleaning up a plan- 
 tation was almost universal. To planters who were con- 
 scientiously opposed to selling men like cattle, the second 
 plan mentioned, emancipation was forbidden by the 
 Institution unless the owner filed bonds to support the 
 negroes after they became free. These bonds might be 
 hard to procure, and would only increase the financial 
 troubles of the already over-burdened planter. Whatever 
 others may think in this matter, my sympathy is extended 
 to the most down-trodden and hard-working slave on 
 such a plantation — the master and owner. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 229 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 SERVITUDE "BEFO 'DE WAH" 
 
 The last slave in Massachusetts had died just before I 
 made my appearance there in 1840. I had the distinction 
 to be born in almost the only state in the Union that had, 
 at that time, no slaves. New Hampshire still had one; 
 Rhode Island, five ; Connecticut, seventeen ; and even 
 newly admitted Iowa, my future home, sixteen. 
 
 During the sixty years ending in 1850, slaves in the 
 New England and the Middle Atlantic States, by slow 
 manumission and death, had decreased from 40,086 to 
 236, while, during the same time in the Southern states 
 they had increased from 657,538 to 3,324,060. 
 
 Slavery during my boyhood was probably at the pin- 
 nacle of its financial success and political power. In its 
 pride, it thought at one time to make a slave state out of 
 Illinois, which had previously been admitted to the Union 
 with a free constitution. The efTort was made, but de- 
 feated by a vote of the people. During the heat of that 
 contest a member of the Illinois legislature, by the sug- 
 gestive name of John Grammar, made the following ap- 
 peal in favor of slavery. 
 
 "Having rights on my side, I don't fear, Sir. Twill 
 show that that ar proposition is unconstitutionable, illegal, 
 and forninst the compact. Don't everybody know, or at 
 least-wise ought to know, that Congress that sat at Vin- 
 cennes guaransheed to all French inhabitants the right to 
 their niggers, and ain't I got as much rights as any 
 Frenchman in the state? Answer me that." 
 
2 3 o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 In spite of this appeal, or perhaps because of it, 
 voters of the state refused to change their constitution 
 from freedom to slavery, by a ballot of six thousand six 
 hundred and forty against such change to four thousand 
 nine hundred and seventy-two in favor of it. 
 
 The first step leading to the prosperity of the South 
 was the closing of the African slave trade. The North 
 and South had united in supporting this legislation ; the 
 North from humanitarian and political reasons, and the 
 South from the same cause, with this added thought, 
 that such act would increase the value of her slaves then 
 on hand, and thereby tend to decrease the over-production 
 that was ruining her market. 
 
 Both these forecasts were correct. Prime field hands 
 that before the foreign trade closed could have been 
 bought for two hundred dollars rose in price to three hun- 
 dred in 1820, to six hundred in 1830, a thousand to twelve 
 hundred in 1840, and the price was soaring towards two 
 thousand just before the war. For two decades, at least, 
 before that time there was a general rule for the price of 
 slaves, more or less closely followed ; a good field hand 
 was worth a hundred dollars for every cent to the pound 
 that cotton sold for. If cotton sold for twelve cents a 
 pound, a good picker was worth twelve hundred dollars. 
 Thus the price of slaves marched alongside the price of 
 cotton, both advancing, owing to the scarcity of slave 
 labor. 
 
 But the inability of the northeastern slave states — 
 Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and others — to supply 
 the wants of the newer southwestern plantations, broke 
 the hundred dollar rule and sent prices so high that there 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 231 
 
 was a loud call from the lower South to open again the 
 African slave trade. This might have been done had not 
 the Civil War settled forever the slave question in Amer- 
 ica. 
 
 Although the old slave-producing states failed to 
 supply the growing wants of the new southwest cotton 
 district, they certainly performed wonders in that direc- 
 tion. They had taken this want seriously into considera- 
 tion, as shown from a letter from one James Corbin, who 
 wrote to James Madison in 18 19, saying that wheat rais- 
 ing compared with tobacco raising was "by no means as 
 conducive to the health of our negroes upon whose in- 
 crease our principal profit depends." As mentioned be- 
 fore, Virginia in one year was estimated to have sent out 
 a hundred and twenty thousand negro slaves. Census 
 tables show that there must have immigrated into the 
 states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi 
 during the first half of the nineteenth century from a half 
 to three-quarters of a million slaves. 
 
 These had not all been sold from one master to the 
 other. Some masters had emigrated with their slaves. 
 They had disposed of their worn-out plantations in the 
 older states, taken all their removable chattels — men, 
 women, children, horses, mules, and everything else — 
 and like Abraham of old, had moved to a new and better 
 country. Only a person who has enjoyed the penetrating 
 of a new country under the conditions of clean, outdoor 
 life — the moving wagon-top by day and the shelter of a 
 tent by night — can realize the chances which such an ag- 
 gregation as I have mentioned might have for enjoyment. 
 I doubt not the darkies of such a group, if they had a good 
 master, turned the march into a jolly picnic, and had 
 
232 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 such a time that its memories entranced their listening 
 children and grandchildren in long following years. 
 
 But the slave "coffles" of the traders who handled the 
 larger number of migrants were far different. The men, 
 women, and children who composed them had been torn 
 from their homes, their friends, perhaps their wives or 
 husbands or parents, and were driven hopelessly to a 
 destiny they had always coupled with slow death. They 
 were going unwillingly, and only as far and as fast as 
 the force of the Institution could compel them. These 
 coffles contained, most likely, some of the insubordinate, 
 unruly, and perhaps criminal slaves of the community 
 from which they had been drawn. 
 
 What could two or three men do with a hundred or 
 more such unwilling, hopeless, possibly desperate, men or 
 women, in order to protect their own lives and property 
 from loss? The answer is obvious. Therefore, when I 
 read, "Overland coffles from border states to the lower 
 plantations resembled those spoken of by Mungo Park in 
 Africa, the slaves being manacled and chained," I do not 
 doubt that it represents the facts, because if I had under- 
 taken any such business and had ventured my money and 
 my life in any such property, I do not see how I could 
 have felt safe a minute of the day did I not have every 
 one within absolute control. 
 
 If it was right to buy and sell men, it was necessary to 
 carry them to a market where sale was possible. The 
 men who risked the transfer were in equity entitled to 
 protect themselves from loss of either life or property 
 during the change. The shame for these manacles and 
 chains lies not with the men who put them on, but with 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 233 
 
 the Institution that compelled the trade and forced the 
 brutality upon its followers. 
 
 The black fellows who wore these shackles carried 
 them far differently : some with deep disgrace, some with 
 deadly defiance, some as a matter of course, and some as 
 a joke. I remember reading of one case where a traveler, 
 meeting such a coffle, found a young fellow and a middle 
 aged man coupled together and leading the column. The 
 young man was whistling and singing, and as they met 
 he sang out, "Dis de way to do it. When you trabble, 
 go in style." But the other man was disconsolate. The 
 first was foot loose, with no ties of heart or home to bind 
 him, but the other had been torn from his family and 
 everything that, to him, made life worth living. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the negro traders who were 
 the financial salvation of the planters of the northeastern 
 slave states, were looked down upon and refused affilia- 
 tion with the planters they rescued. The slave owners 
 would sell their surplus chattels to one another for much 
 less price than to these men. They would resort to all 
 other means of disposing of them before patronizing the 
 firms organized and operated for that purpose. The 
 Yankee farmer was no more keen or alive to the necessity 
 of disposing of his surplus chattels than a Virginian or 
 Carolina planter was when he found, as the saying went 
 with them, "that he had to eat a nigger" in order to keep 
 the sheriff from his door for another year. 
 
 The planter had one advantage the Yankee farmer had 
 not. He could call a darkey into his office and say : "Sam, 
 I am in a tight place financially, and I have to sell one of 
 you boys. You are a good hand, and I could get a thousand 
 
234 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 dollars for you to go South on a plantation; but I don't 
 want to do it. Now I will give you a pass to go where 
 necessary and a letter vouching for you, and if you can 
 find a new master whom you want, I will let him have 
 you for eight hundred dollars if he keeps you from the 
 trader." There were many cases on record where the 
 chattel was thus sent around to sell himself, but how 
 often this method was used and how successful were 
 the results, "deponent saith not." 
 
 The traders, in the meantime, cared little for the 
 ostracism of the planter. They knew that at last the 
 surplus negro population of these non-cotton and worn-out 
 states must come to them, and they realized that the 
 blacker the ostracism was the fewer men would be in the 
 business and the greater the profits to those who continued 
 therein. So they established their buying agencies in the 
 northeastern slave states and their selling barracoons and 
 establishments in the West and Southwest. They moved 
 their chattels by marching coffles across the country, by 
 "coon cars" on railroads when convenient, or by coast 
 ships if buying and selling places were both near the coast 
 line. 
 
 By 1850, firms with barracoons for handling the sale 
 of slaves had been established in all the principal cities 
 of the Southwest. These companies handled their slave 
 consignments at the usual price of thirty-seven and one- 
 half cents per day for confinement, exhibition, and board, 
 and two and one-half per cent commission on sales, 
 owner s risk. 
 
 Touching working method, I have tried faithfully to 
 find out what were the usual conditions that prevailed on 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 235 
 
 the Average plantation in the South. I have read what has 
 been written by both Northerners and Southerners, I have 
 talked with ex-plantation owners and ex-plantation slaves 
 from many slave states, and I think I know as fully as 
 can be ascertained by one who did not live in it, what the 
 environment was of the plantation slaves who constituted 
 three-fourths of the old slave population of the South. 
 
 As I have already stated, it is true that the plantation 
 owner and his agents, the overseer and his driver, had 
 undisputed sway over the person of the slave, his prop- 
 erty, his domestic relations, his wife, his children, his 
 liberty, and his life, saving only that they must not let a 
 white man see them kill a slave maliciously and unneces- 
 sarily. The slaves, were not permitted to leave the limits 
 of the plantation without the written pass of their master 
 or overseer. To prevent their doing so, the country was 
 constantly patrolled night and day, and any caught out- 
 side the limits without a pass were either soundly flogged 
 or put into the calaboose for their masters to attend to. 
 No attempts of the slave to learn to read were permitted. 
 A scrap of newspaper or any other printing found in a 
 cabin subjected its occupant to severe punishment. 
 
 The almost universal ration consisted of one peck of 
 corn or meal, and three pounds of pork a week, with 
 occasional molasses, salt, etc., at the planter's option. 
 Cooking must be done by the slave outside working hours. 
 Two suits of clothes were allowed the men each year — a 
 heavy one for winter, and a light one for summer. The 
 material was usually rough, plantation cloth, spun, woven, 
 and made up on the plantation. One pair of home-made 
 
236 OXE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 shoes was also given them for winter wear. A Georgia 
 planter, estimated the value of these articles as follows : 
 
 Weekly peck of corn. . . . $13.00 per year 
 
 Two suits of clothes 7.00 per year 
 
 One pair of shoes 1.00 per year 
 
 Total $21.00 per year 
 
 Add to this "occasional meat, salt molasses, and med- 
 ical attendance," and the total cost per capita to support 
 men and women might be somewhere near thirty-five dol- 
 lars a year. Women received in the place of suits, home- 
 spun cloth, needles, thread and buttons with which to 
 make their own Clothing. Both men and women were 
 given one blanket every three years. Another planter 
 estimated the cost of keeping a negro to be forty dollars a 
 year. Others estimated such cost at from fifteen to fifty 
 dollars a year, medical attendance not included. 
 
 Marriage could be contracted only by permission of 
 the master, and he usually required it to be made only 
 between his own slaves. It might be solemnized in church, 
 made legal by a civil officer, or be simply a common law 
 living together, as circumstances required or the master 
 dictated. This carelessness regarding the marital rela- 
 tions, fostered in slavery, has not been entirely stamped 
 out to this day among the negro population. 
 
 Women, married and single, were considered full field 
 hands. In computing a field force a discount of only ten 
 per cent was made for "breeders and suckers." The nurs- 
 ing mothers were not excused from the field, but the 
 babies were placed under the care of some decrepit old 
 "mammy," and the mothers were permitted to go to them 
 four times during the day for half an hour each time. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 237 
 
 One old ex-slave told me that on his plantation the boss 
 had fixed up a long box-like body on old carriage wheels 
 and had partitioned the bottom into little baby-sized com- 
 partments. This vehicle, loaded with babies and drawn by 
 an old horse, the mammy would bring at stated intervals 
 to the waiting mothers. Very young children were put to 
 work, helping somehow and somewhere. At twelve or 
 fourteen years of age they went to the field, many times 
 as full plow hands. 
 
 The first horn for work blew an hour before day- 
 break, when all hands must get up, eat their breakfast, and 
 prepare to go to work. As day was breaking the plow 
 hands started out, and at daylight the second horn blew 
 for the hoe hands to commence work. At noon, work 
 was stopped for an hour for the purpose of eating the 
 dinner they had brought to the field. Then work con- 
 tinued until sundown on some plantations, but until dark 
 upon others. Curfew blew at nine or nine-thirty o'clock, 
 at which time all must be in their cabins and in their beds. 
 
 These hours of labor were long, but there.is evidence 
 that the planters, anxious to produce crops, and overseers 
 desiring to make records, were disposed to work the 
 hands longer. One planter, Hammond, laid down this 
 rule for his overseer : "No work must be required after 
 dark." South Carolina found it necessary to pass a law 
 limiting the hours of slave labor to fourteen in winter and 
 fifteen in summer. Upon sugar plantations in the Gulf 
 states, during grinding season, eighteen hours was a day's 
 work. Imagine what labor union men would say if such 
 hours were required of them! 
 
 The whip as a means of discipline and education on 
 the plantation might be, and often was, reinforced by 
 
238 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tying up the slave by the thumbs, bucking and gagging 
 him, or any other means of discomfort and pain that 
 ingenuity or circumstances might dictate. The laws in 
 most states also came to the planters' aid by making 
 death the penalty for the following acts : resisting punish- 
 ment or arrest, striking an overseer or master, striking 
 any member of the master's family, conspiracy, burglary 
 or arson. 
 
 What cause turned the children of the black women 
 coffee-colored, and the progeny of these to near-white, I 
 will not discuss; but whatever the cause may have been, 
 the process continued until the census reports that nearly 
 three-tenths of those listed as negroes are mulattoes, and 
 in parts of the South, especially in the cities, fully black 
 men with purely African features are almost an exception. 
 
 This fact must make gray the hair of ushers whose 
 duty it is to keep the two races separate. I remember at 
 a circus performance in Mobile, where I saw a white- 
 looking couple, as nicely dressed as you could find in 
 any city, eater the tent and start towards the negroes' 
 seats. An usher rushed after them, and, stopping them 
 said, "You can't go there. Those are reserved for 
 'niggers.' " 
 
 The man quietly replied, "Beg pardon, but we belong 
 there. Although we are not 'niggers,' we are negroes." 
 
 Cotton held sway so despotically in Dixie Land that 
 other field crops and manufactures were neglected until 
 the South was dependent upon the North for all kinds of 
 supplies. This condition made a rich market for the cities 
 of the North, and they vied with each other to please 
 the Southern people and to control their trade. This ac- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 239 
 
 counts for much pro-slavery sentiment in the North and 
 the riots in which abolitionists were maltreated and 
 mobbed. Between 1833 and 1836, over twenty-five riots 
 occurred in the North, and anti-slavery men were mal- 
 treated and even killed by the communities in which they 
 lived in order to prove to the South that non-interference 
 with slavery was the policy north of the Mason- uixou 
 line. This desire upon the part of the North to conciliate 
 the South, both to protect the Union and to secure trade, 
 led the free states to surrender the political control of the 
 nation to the slave Institution. 
 
 For nearly half a century, from 181 5 to i860, its policy 
 governed the country almost completely. Only Southern 
 men, or Northern men dominated in their official actions 
 at least by pro-slavery ideas, filled the presidential chair. 
 Adams, Van Buren, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan were 
 Northern men who held the office during that period, but 
 not one stood for anti-slavery principles while in office. 
 During all that time no one who was recognized as an 
 anti-slavery man was appointed to any important post- 
 mastership, to the Federal bench, to a collectorate, or 
 even as foreign counsel or minister. 
 
 During the last two decades before the Civil War, the 
 Northern people were so anxious to keep on living terms 
 with the South that they even agreed to turn themselves 
 into deputy sheriffs and constables, and catch and return 
 slaves to their masters across the line. The Fugitive 
 Slave Act of 1850 was to that effect, and such no doubt 
 was the intent of a large majority of the Northern people. 
 But some would not agree thereto. Even though it was 
 illegal and punishable by fine and imprisonment, they 
 
2 4 o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 appealed to the "Higher Law" and organized and con- 
 ducted their "Underground Railroad" with its many 
 branches reaching from the border of slavery to the free- 
 dom of Canada. 
 
 Nothing can so fully illustrate the change of senti- 
 ment in the South from the time of Jefferson to the 
 time of Lincoln as the widely diverging opinion of the 
 South regarding the two men. Thomas Jefferson in his 
 day was the idol of the South, its pride, its love, and its 
 mentor; Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime, to the 
 South and to the anti-war wing of the Democratic party 
 at the North, was a tyrant and a fool. "Gorilla in the 
 White House," "Fool Jester in the Capitol," Black 
 Abolition Tyrant at Washington" are only a few of the 
 dainty compliments that I have heard and read that were 
 passed upon him on account of his slavery idea. 
 
 And yet Jefferson and Lincoln stood upon identically 
 the same ground as far as the question at issue was con- 
 cerned. Both insisted slavery should not be extended 
 into new territory, and both looked upon it as a bearable 
 evil, where it had been already established. Jefferson was 
 the stronger abolitionist of the two: he advocated active, 
 legal enactments to kill it where it was established, but 
 Lincoln did not. Yet the South loved the former, and 
 at the commencement of the war hated the latter. Today, 
 however, knowing Lincoln better, it joins hands with the 
 North in appreciation of his life and work. 
 
 Northerners and Southerners, at that time, mutually 
 misunderstood and misjudged each other as a whole, as 
 badly and as wrongfully as the latter had misunderstood 
 and misjudged our martyred Lincoln. The average North- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 241 
 
 erner looked upon the Southerner as a braggart, void of 
 kindness, eourage, or any sense of justice or mercy; one 
 who with passion and without pity was by cruelty and 
 craft forcing from the black man the means of his wealth 
 and luxury. The Southerner looked upon the Northerner 
 as a crude, uncouth money-getter, whose aspirations and 
 ideas never rose above the material wealth he was tying 
 up ; who did not for the world dare meet a Cavalier in 
 conflict, and who would not, had he dared, leave his dol- 
 lars to fight for any cause whatever, and especially not 
 for such a non-cash-producing idea as patriotism. 
 
 Both sides were wrong; both paid for their mistake 
 in conflict, in disaster, in defeat, and in death. On the 
 bloody soil of over six hundred hard-fought fields of a 
 fratricidal battle-line that stretched its gory length from 
 the Atlantic Ocean at the East to the Rocky Mountains 
 at the West, they learned to know and appreciate each 
 other. When the final shot was fired at Appomattox, no 
 two separate classes of men in the world entertained 
 greater mutual respect and admiration for each other than 
 the men in blue and the men in gray, who, all over the 
 country, in spirit, shook hands and wished a mutual 
 "Good-bye and God-speed." 
 
 Had they in 1861 known each other as they did in 1865 
 there would have been no Civil War. I testify, with the 
 confidence of knowledge and the experience of half a 
 century, that next after the men these soldiers fought and 
 marched with, the men of the Confederate Camps South 
 and the Union Posts North respect and enjoy meeting the 
 men they fought against. 
 
242 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 During my boyhood and early manhood the system 
 of slavery was firmly entrenched in the Union, and held 
 therein a seemingly impregnable position. Very few 
 persons, North or South, dared question the right to 
 slaves in the states where they existed, and opposition 
 to the extension of slavery was neither organized nor 
 popular. The slave Institution, however, was thoroughly 
 organized, energetic, arrogant, domineering, and efficient 
 in politics. It passed fugitive slave laws and enforced 
 them through the North, many times with circumstances 
 of brutality that aroused the opposition of those who had 
 heretofore been tolerant. This was one of the first and 
 minor mistakes that the Institution made. Chasing its 
 slaves into Northern territory and exhibiting the system 
 to the Northern people, thus compelling them to look it 
 in the face and think about it, was a mistake that scattered 
 wide the seeds of the coming Civil War ; but the Southern 
 leaders were so certain that the North would not dare 
 resist that they persisted in the blunder. The Missouri 
 Compromise, at this time, alone prevented the slave 
 Institution from overflowing its boundaries, settling where 
 it would, and establishing itself where it wished. 
 
 The election of 1852, which took place when I was 
 twelve years old, illustrates and proves the power of the 
 Institution at that time. Franklin Pierce, the candidate 
 of the Democratic party which the South controlled, car- 
 ried at that election all but four of the then thirty-one 
 states. Out of two hundred and ninety-six electoral 
 votes, two hundred and fifty-four were in his favor. After 
 such an election no wonder the slave Institution thought 
 that it could do anything it saw fit to undertake. No 
 wonder the slave-holders thought the Missouri Com- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 243 
 
 promise a bar to their triumphant progress, and wished 
 it cleared away. They did once more what with them 
 was an old proceeding — dangled the bright hope of the 
 presidency before the eyes of the Northern man who 
 would do their work for them. Thus Hon. Steven A. 
 Douglas reached for the prize, did their bidding, and was 
 by them, at the Democratic convention in Charleston in 
 i860, slaughtered in payment for his services. Many be- 
 lieved Douglas died soon after of a broken heart as a 
 result of his disappointed aspirations. 
 
 What small events often produce great results ! 
 Douglas' defeat was caused by the answer regarding slav- 
 ery that Lincoln forced from him at Freeport, Illinois, 
 in the senatorial debate of 1858. Had Douglas been 
 nominated, he would have been elected, for nothing then 
 could have withstood the united Democratic party ; there 
 would have been no secession at that time, and what 
 would have been the history of our country no man can 
 guess. 
 
 If the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law was 
 a mistake, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854 was a blunder. As safely 
 might one throw a piece of meat between two starving 
 dogs and expect them to remain quiet as to open up the 
 territories to Douglas "Squatter Sovereignty" and expect 
 the two sections of our country to shrink from the strife 
 for the rich prize. 
 
 Kansas, situated above the Missouri Compromise line 
 of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north, was the 
 first pawn in the game of events. The North immediately 
 decided if it was to be a free or slave state, depending 
 
244 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 upon who first settled there, it should be free ; even if it 
 had to deplete its population to make it so. The New 
 England Emigrant Society and others of a like nature 
 were organized, and a long line of emigrants with their 
 families started for new homes in Kansas. Then the 
 South discovered its error. If colonization was to decide 
 the fate of the new territory, it could not compete with 
 the North; slave holders did not dare to migrate and 
 risk their slaves to the uncertain results ; and if men who 
 were not slave holders were sent from the South they 
 were apt to become anti-slavery in their new surround- 
 ings and vote accordingly, as they had already done in 
 California. 
 
 The Institution was thus beaten on the issue of 
 "Squatter Sovereignty," but it would not give up the fight. 
 It had two weapons left, its Congress and its President. 
 It still refused to admit Kansas except as a slave state on 
 a constitution modeled after that of Missouri, and adopted 
 by the help of Missouri men whose only home in Kansas 
 was the saddle. Nor did it become a State until 1861, 
 after Lincoln's election,' when a greater question super- 
 seded and overshadowed it. 
 
 "Squatter Sovereignty" and the Kansas fight dis- 
 rupted every political party in the country. Even the 
 great Democratic party was split in halves. All over 
 the North, without convention, organization, or pre-ar- 
 rangement, appeared as if by magic, Anti-Kansas-Ne- 
 braska men, who, disregarding all previous issues and 
 adopting the disused title of Republicans, organized them- 
 selves into the first distinctly Anti-Slavery Party that 
 succeeded in carrying an electoral vote. So good an ac- 
 count did these men give of themselves in the presiden- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 245 
 
 tial election of 1856, which came in the midst of the 
 Kansas contest, that they took the popular vote away 
 from the Democratic nominee and carried most of the 
 free States. 
 
 But the slave Institution was doomed to commit one 
 more blunder. This was accomplished when Judge Taney, 
 one of its principal upholders and Chief Justice of. the 
 Supreme Court, rendered judgment in the Dred Scott 
 Case in 1857. His technical decision put the appellant, 
 Dred Scott, out of court on the ground that "a slave or 
 the descendant of a slave, could not be a citizen of the 
 United States or have any standing in federal courts." 
 In the obiter dictum of the opinion, he said that the negro 
 was "so far inferior that he had no rights the white man 
 was bound to respect." The history and conditions of 
 the case were such that the decision really meant legally : 
 First, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, 
 as the purpose of the constitution was the protection of 
 property, and slaves were recognized as property by that 
 document. Therefore Congress was bound to protect, not 
 prohibit, slavery in the territories. Second, that a slave- 
 holder could bring a slave into any Northern state, or 
 into every free territory, and keep him there for years, 
 and yet carry him away, still a slave, whenever he saw 
 fit to return South. 
 
 This was the last straw that broke the back of many a 
 man's love for his old Democratic party and sent him 
 rendering into the Republican ranks. This position of 
 Judge Taney was as far from that of Thomas Jefferson 
 on the question of slavery, as one pole of the earth is 
 from the other, but it was adopted by the South. Thus 
 the issue between the North and the South was joined. 
 
246 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Republican party and the mass of the Northern 
 people held the Jeffersonian view, that slaves were not 
 property but persons held to service by local state laws, 
 whose liberty in the territories it was the duty of Congress 
 to protect. 
 
 It was upon these issues, thus joined, that the two 
 great parties fought the next presidential campaign. So 
 many Democratic recruits did the new party gain that in 
 i860 the first person in the history of the United States 
 who was not a slave owner, or who in effect — by affilia- 
 tion and official ideas — was not a pro-slavery man, Ab- 
 raham Lincoln, won the presidential election. 
 
 The result of this election surprised the North and 
 astonished the South. It seemed impossible that the Insti- 
 tution, by its change of front on the slavery question from 
 the position of Thomas Jefferson to that of Judge Taney, 
 had so alienated and affronted the North that the con- 
 trol of the government, which the Democrats held in 1852 
 by a majority of two hundred and fifty-four electoral 
 votes out of two hundred and sixty-nine, had been lost 
 to them so woefully that in i860 they controlled only 
 seventy-two such votes out of three hundred and three. 
 
 When the election came the legislature of South 
 Carolina, convened to designate its presidential electors, 
 remained in session until the returns from the general 
 election announced that Lincoln was elected. Then, on 
 November 10th, it called a convention to consider the 
 question of secession. This convention passed an ordinance 
 of secession, and proceeded to form a separate state gov- 
 ernment ; to enact laws ; to elect officials ; to establish an 
 army and navy; and to perform all the acts of an inde- 
 
THE FREEING OE THE NEGRO 247 
 
 pendent nation. Six other states followed immediately. 
 On February 8th, 1861, the "Confederate States of Amer- 
 ica" was born and the government established at Mont- 
 gomery, Alabama. 
 
 Less than ninety days after the news of the result of 
 the election could have reached the Southern states, they 
 had seceded, formed state conventions, elected delegates 
 to a national convention, and formed a new nation. This 
 was such an expedition of attained results that it pointed, 
 almost conclusively, to a thoroughly pre-arranged plan. 
 
 In vain Lincoln pleaded with the Southern states, and 
 showed them he stood on less anti-slavery grounds than 
 Thomas Jefferson, and that no formidable party thought 
 of interfering with the Institution where it was already 
 established. In vain was it pointed out that their slaves 
 would be less safe should the North be a foreign country, 
 like Canada. They considered not that they still con- 
 trolled the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, 
 and that no laws could be passed to injure them should 
 injury be intended. The Institution still held three out 
 of the four departments of our government, but that was 
 not sufficient. They must have all four or none. Nothing 
 could prevent their separation : it was inevitable, and the 
 crime was perpetrated. "Verily, Verily," the axiom still 
 obtains, now as two thousand years ago : 
 "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad." 
 
248 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 WHEN THE "JUBILEE" CAME 
 
 It is a peculiar fact that the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion, at the time it was issued, effected the practical free- 
 dom of very few slaves in the United States. The prac- 
 tical freeing of the slaves was a progressive movement. 
 It commenced in the East in May, 1861, when General 
 Butler fixed the condition of the negro as a "contraband 
 of war," and in the West in August when General Fre- 
 mont issued his "confiscation and emancipation" procla- 
 mation; it was furthered when Congress, March 3rd, 
 1862, passed an act forbidding, under penalty of dismissal, 
 any officer of the army from returning fugitive slaves to 
 their masters; it was foretold in Lincoln's proclamations 
 of September 11, 1862, and January 1, 1863, and it was 
 finally legally consummated by the ratification of the 
 Thirteenth Amendment November 18, 1865. But all of 
 these hopes and anticipations together with their ultimate 
 fruition would not have been worth the paper they were 
 written on had not April 9th, 1865, seen Lee's surrender to 
 Grant at Appomattox. 
 
 It is true that Lincoln's Proclamation omitted from 
 its application the loyal slave states and specified portions 
 of the disloyal states. This made a legal distinction be- 
 tween the two sections, but the practical working out 
 under conditions above specified amounted to almost the 
 difference one would find between six and a half dozen. 
 In both sections, if a negro wanted freedom and had 
 good legs and a small amount of spunk, all he had to do 
 was to reach the union lines and the prize was won. This 
 was true because slaves of rebel masters had been con- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 249 
 
 fiscated by Congress since August, 1861, and even if his 
 master was a Union man no officer dare give him the 
 negro. The extent of the authority of union commanders 
 was to make a record of the fact of the negro coming 
 into the lines and let the owner bring the case before 
 congress for recompense. This proceeding hurt not the 
 negro nor benefited the master. 
 
 Regarding the negroes who stayed on the plantation, 
 here again the difference between the two sections was 
 legally great but practically small. Both in loyal and 
 disloyal states the Proclamation when promulgated had 
 no effect whatever, because to the former it did not apply 
 and in the latter it could not be enforced until Lee's 
 surrender. After the close of the war the parts of the 
 country disloyal January 1st, 1863, were legally com- 
 pelled to pay their former slaves wages, while those at 
 that time loyal still continued slavery conditions until 
 the thirteenth amendment demolished the Institution. This 
 difference was apparent more than real, for the southern 
 planter then seldom paid more wages than it would cost 
 to keep the negroes in food and clothes during slavery 
 times. 
 
 It follows, then, that there could have been no one 
 time of general slave rejoicing, and the "Year of Jubilee" 
 to them was a symbolic exaltation which the frecdmen 
 met at various times and under such circumstances as 
 the advance of the Federal armies and the laws of con- 
 gress dictated. 
 
 ( )f all the people, black or white, living in the North 
 or in the South, the negro slaves were the very first to 
 realize that the result of the war was to be their freedom. 
 
2SO ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Hcfw they came by that idea is one of the unexplainable 
 things of that time. They did not get it from their 
 masters, for all the information they received from that 
 source was certainly very uncomplimentary to us. We 
 were represented to the negroes as savages who would 
 kill them and commit all sorts of atrocities upon them; 
 they were told that we were so low down in the animal 
 creation we had not yet shed the horns of our bestial fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 The colored people did not get the idea of liberty from 
 us, because we ourselves did not believe they were to be 
 made free. Sometimes I have heard the "Unpleasant- 
 ness" of 1861 to 1865, called the "War of Emancipation." 
 Never was there a greater mistake, either as relating to 
 the masses of the people of the North or to the soldiers 
 who fought their battles in the South. I believe my com- 
 pany represented fairly the sentiment of the Union army, 
 and among its one hundred men there was only one 
 abolitionist, only one who believed the slaves should be 
 free and thought that the war would have any effect 
 upon their condition. The other boys of the company 
 were so scandalized at his views that they made life 
 miserable for him by many petty indignities and un- 
 friendly acts. But one day he aroused himself from his 
 usual pacific attitude ; he tackled one of the largest and 
 most aggressive of his tormentors, threw him down and 
 sat on him until he agreed to behave himself. For the 
 remainder of the war "Abolitionist" retained his opinions 
 in peace. 
 
 The negroes did not get their ideas of freedom from 
 us or from their masters, yet they had them throughout 
 
THE FREEING OE THE NEGRO 251 
 
 the South from the center to the coniference of slave 
 
 territory. I looker Washington relates how the slaves in 
 South Carolina sang, 
 
 "Well soon be free 
 We'll soon be free 
 When dc Lord ivill call us home." 
 
 and with so much fervor and apparent application that 
 the authorities stopped the singing. He also says, "I re- 
 member well a time when I was awakened one morning, 
 before the break of day, by my mother bending over me 
 where I lay on a bundle of rags in the corner of my 
 master's kitchen, and hearing her pray that Abraham 
 Lincoln and his soldiers might be successful and that she 
 and I might one day be free." 
 
 My cavalry regiment often penetrated far into con- 
 federate territory in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi 
 where never a Yankee soldier had been seen before. 
 There, despite the diabolical descriptions of our persons 
 and characteristics which their masters had given of us, 
 we always found the slaves with grinning teeth and 
 shining eyes waiting to welcome our coming. So many 
 would often want to return to our lines with us that they 
 would have to be refused for fear of encumbering and 
 retarding the movements of our column so far inside the 
 enemy's territory. 
 
 That the welcome we thus met was not caused by any 
 fear or any ideas of personal conciliation, is undisputably 
 demonstrated when in the place of appearing to them in 
 the pomp of an irresistible force, one of our number 
 came to any of their cabins as an escaped prisoner, help- 
 less, friendless, exhausted, starving, his welcome was 
 
252 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 instant and cordial. Under such circumstances of need 
 the relief rendered to him was limited only by the content 
 of the cabin and the ability of the host. These humble 
 black men would shelter my escaped comrade, give him 
 all their rations if necessary and risk floggings and even 
 their lives to guide him on his way. 
 
 In grateful appreciation of such aid rendered to many 
 of my fellow soldiers during the war, I wish here to 
 make this remarkable record : In the thousands of cases 
 where such application must have been made to them, 
 not once did I ever hear of my comrades being betrayed 
 to the Southern master or the Confederate patrol, or ever 
 denied the relief asked if it was possible to supply it. 
 
 The feeling of the negro race toward their masters 
 was passing strange. The negro longed for freedom. 
 He had waited for it, had prayed for it. To acquire it 
 he was willing to undergo any privation, to endure any 
 hardship, to suffer any pain. And yet he seemed to hold, 
 as a rule, no grudge against the master who had held him 
 in slavery; on the contrary, there was often a feeling of 
 sympathy and sometimes real love and affection between 
 the big house of the planter and the cabin of the slave. 
 Many a body-servant of a Confederate soldier has faith- 
 fully and joyfully followed his master through every 
 suffering which the long war brought, not flinching even 
 from death in his behalf. 
 
 This strange sentiment of the slave was demonstrated 
 beyond controversy in thousands of cases. I have seen 
 hundreds of plantations where every white man, volun- 
 tarily or involuntarily, had gone into the Confederate 
 service, and the negroes alone were left to protect the 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 253 
 
 women and children and raise the crops. In all the 
 South, I have never heard of a case where absence of 
 the master was taken advantage of by the slave to abuse 
 persons or destroy property. Heaven knows the negro 
 has sins and failures in plenty to answer for, but when 
 they are all charged up against him let this record I have 
 made be not forgotten. 
 
 There was one thing the negro did not do for the 
 Confederacy, he did not fight for it in the ranks of the 
 Confederate army. True it is, a company of negroes was 
 organized for the Confederate service at Memphis, Ten- 
 nessee, and a regiment of blacks in New Orleans for the 
 same purpose, but I was on duty at headquarters in 
 Memphis where it was our business to know the military 
 history of the city, and we were informed, beyond all 
 doubt, that this company was disbanded before going 
 into service. 
 
 In regard to the New Orleans regiment, I was told by 
 a one-time colored sergeant of one of our own negro 
 regiments, now a very intelligent man of wealth and 
 standing in his community, that he knew the facts of the 
 organization of this regiment and that he had served in 
 the army with some of its members. He was certain that 
 the only fighting any of the soldiers of that command 
 ever did was under the Stars and Stripes of Old Glory 
 after they had renounced the Confederate flag and had 
 reorganized themselves as the First Louisiana Native 
 Guards under General Butler. They had the honor to 
 be the first regiment of colored troops to fight for the 
 Union. 
 
254 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 I do not say the negroes were of no help to the Con- 
 federacy, for they were of the greatest assistance. They 
 raised the provisions, built the fortifications, drove the 
 teams, cooked the food, and filled numberless vocations 
 which, except for them, would have taken active, fighting 
 men from the ranks. But as a Confederate soldier, in 
 Confederate gray or at the battle front, I have yet to 
 hear he was ever found. 
 
 Nothing can so forcibly demonstrate the absolute lack 
 of anything like the idea of vindictive retaliation for 
 wrongs committed by the whites upon the negroes as the 
 circumstance told by a Confederate colonel who was 
 captured by negro troops on the disastrous Sturgis Expe- 
 dition in Northern Mississippi. It was about the time of 
 the "Fort Pillow Massacre," when the Confederates were 
 accused of slaughtering the negro soldiers after surrender 
 and afterwards threatening they would take no prisoners, 
 white or black, in any movement wherewith black soldiers 
 were connected. At the very moment of the incident 
 mentioned the Southern troops were needlessly killing the 
 defeated, disorganized, and exhausted Northern soldiers, 
 black and white, of the Sturgis command. Surely, if a 
 black man could feel vindictive and disposed to ratalia- 
 tion, it would be then. 
 
 At this time and under these conditions, this Confed- 
 erate Colonel ordered his men to charge upon a detach- 
 ment of negroes who, in the disaster and defeat of the 
 day, had still preserved their organization. Waving his 
 saber, he led them to the attack; but the negroes re- 
 ceived his men with such a fierce fire that the attacking 
 party concluded to postpone to a more convenient season 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 255 
 
 the killing of that bunch of darkies. Thus the colonel 
 found himself alone, surrounded by colored troops with 
 loaded guns pointed at his breast. He instantly threw 
 down his saber and said, "Good God, gentlemen, don't 
 kill me !" Did the black soldiers then tally one score in 
 revenge for the Fort Pillow Massacre? Did they even 
 remember the hundreds of their helpless comrades who 
 had been killed that day? No, negro-like, all was for- 
 gotten, and the black sergeant threw up the muzzles of the 
 pointing guns saying, "Ya! Ya! Don't shoot, boys. Dat's 
 de fust time de likes of him ever called de likes of us 
 gentlemen." They brought him safely and civilly a 
 prisoner to camp. This is no hearsay evidence I have been 
 relating. I wish it were, for I had the misfortune to be 
 there and the multiplied horrors of that day have been 
 with me more than half a century. 
 
 Why was it that the ex-slave seemed to be without 
 such retaliatory feelings toward his former masters? It 
 was not because he did not realize the wrong of Slavery 
 — his determination for freedom proved that. It was not 
 because he lacked courage — the perils he risked for 
 escaped prisoners and the records of many battlefields 
 proved that. What then was the cause? 
 
 If I were to attempt to guess the unguessable or ex- 
 plain the unexplainable, I would hazard the idea that the 
 negro, by some instinctive sense, realized his immediate 
 master was not alone responsible for the wrongs com- 
 mitted upon him, but that their source lay far back in 
 some force, or law, or Institution, that controlled master 
 and slave alike. If that was his thought, may it not be 
 a correct answer to the conundrum? 
 
256 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Civil War by its resulting conditions and forced 
 military necessity, liberated about three millions slaves- 
 slaves, who for generations had toiled for others with 
 never a thought of tomorrow; slaves, whose idea of the 
 difference between slavery and freedom was : a slave 
 would be compelled to work, but a freeman could rejoice 
 in idleness; slaves who possessed not one cent in money 
 and did not even own the clothes on their backs. They 
 were slaves, without education, whose knowledge of the 
 wofld was that of a child, and who were disposed to put 
 full confidence in any who claimed to be their friends — 
 slaves, to whom freedom loomed up before them as one 
 long, glorious, continual holiday. 
 
 Before you blame the negro for his opinion upon the 
 question of labor, remember he came by it honestly. He 
 learned it from his master and his master's friends, who 
 considered work was a deep disgrace. A proof of this last 
 statement is an interview that took place between General 
 Rosecrans at Corinth, Mississippi, and some near-by 
 planters, while my company was body guard for that 
 General. These planters called to complain that their 
 slaves were leaving them and that they were short of 
 hands to secure their crops, and demanded help in the 
 matter. The General could see no way in which he 
 could assist them. They then said, "But what can we do 
 General ?" 
 
 Rosecrans replied, "I do not see but what you will 
 have to do as we do in the North, go to work yourself." 
 "Work !" they answered, "Work ! We want you to under- 
 stand, General, that before we would degrade ourselves 
 by going to work, we will take a pistol and go on the road 
 and rob travelers." 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 257 
 
 Such being the opinions of the masters, what could be 
 expected of newly liberated slaves? Is it any wonder 
 there was confusion? Is it any surprise there should be 
 disappointment? Is it strange there should be unrest? 
 The only surprising or strange thing about the whole 
 matter was that there was not more confusion, Sis- 
 appointment and unrest than actually took place. The 
 surprise is that revolution and bloodshed did not appear 
 in their most direful form. Many Southerners expected 
 such an uprising; as preparation for it they tried to buy 
 Spencer carbines of us, which were at that time the only 
 magazine rifle and the most efficient firearm in use. 
 
 The actions of the negroes when they ascertained 
 they were free were as varied, as grotesque, and as tragic 
 as the various conditions under which freedom found 
 them. On the better plantations where the masters had 
 the confidence of their slaves, they were called together, 
 frankly told they were free, and at liberty to go where 
 they would ; but at the same time they were told that if 
 they would remain on the old place and work as before, 
 they would be paid their wages. Where this was done 
 they remained, as a rule, and things moved along very 
 much as of old — even the old title of master not being 
 omitted in their mutual dealings. In one case where the 
 planter told his old slaves, after hiring them, "Now you 
 are free, I don't own you and you must not call me master 
 any more." The darkies instantly replied, "Yes, Massa ; 
 we understand, Massa ; we won't do it any more, Massa." 
 
 In other places where there was not immediate and 
 cordial acknowledgment of their freedom, or where there 
 was no confidence existing between the big house of the 
 
258 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 whites and the cabin of the blacks, the negroes left the 
 plantation in search of what their new-found freedom 
 had in store for them. It was natural when they were 
 free that they should feel there should be some change in 
 their condition to prove to them that they had received 
 their long-hoped-for, many-times-prayed- for freedom. If 
 the planters acknowledged their freedom and paid wages, 
 the negroes were generally satisfied, but if it was not 
 done, they felt that they must test the question themselves 
 by making some move on their own volition; so they 
 often wandered away from better conditions to poorer 
 ones, but were happy because the change had proved the 
 glorious truth that they were really free. After so try- 
 ing their fortunes elsewhere, there was a disposition to 
 return to their old homes if conditions there were bear- 
 able. 
 
 There was one movement of these ex-slaves that al- 
 most amounted to a general migration. The negroes who 
 had been sold from the Northeastern slave states into 
 the West and Southwest, wanted to return to the places 
 where they were born, and where their friends and rel- 
 atives still lived. These filled the roads and crowded the 
 lines of transportation until the government had to ex- 
 tend relief. Mingled with these also were those who had 
 been moved by their masters to escape the Federal armies. 
 
 An old negro related to me the circumstance of such 
 attempted removal. His master had resolved to push his 
 slaves from Mississippi into Texas to get away from the 
 Yankees who operated about Vicksburg. Very secretly 
 he brought a company of Confederate cavalry on the 
 plantation after dark, and made arrangements. Ten of 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 259 
 
 the leading negroes the master thought necessary to chain. 
 If that were done he thought the rest would go without 
 trouble. The plan was to keep everything secret until 
 curfew, then when all were in their cabins and asleep, 
 quietly to call these men one by one to the house and 
 chain them. After that to awake the rest and with the 
 aid of the cavalry get them on a boat in the Mississippi 
 River near-by. 
 
 Everything moved as outlined until time to call up 
 the men to be chained. Quietly the overseer went to the 
 cabin of the first man — he was not there; the family of 
 Sambo did not know where he was — "He went to bed 
 at curfew and then got up and went out; they had seen 
 nothing of him since." At the cabins of the other selected 
 men the same scene was repeated ; and their in great haste 
 an examination of all the negro quarters was made ; not 
 an able-bodied negro was found on the plantation. "Boots 
 and saddles" was instantly blown in the cavalry company, 
 and every road and known path within ten miles of the 
 place was patrolled all night and all next day, but not a 
 negro was found. Thanks to a hint given by a house 
 servant they had all escaped by paths known only to the 
 negroes and had made their way to Port Hudson where 
 they found Federal troops and liberty. 
 
 It was but natural that these simple-minded folks 
 should look to the men who freed them for solution of 
 the next step in freedom. So many others followed the 
 example of the negroes from this plantation and crowded 
 about the military stations that it was necessary to make 
 regular details and assignments to care for them. They 
 were set to work on abandoned plantations, hired out for 
 
260 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 wages to planters, and put at any work the Government 
 had, connected or not connected with the army. 
 
 We, the soldiers in the ranks, retained a great many 
 of them for our private and individual use. The average 
 man hates to cook, and we were no exception to that 
 rule. Our culinary department was not systematised 
 then as fully as it was later in the World War. The 
 company with us, when in the field, was divided for that 
 purpose into self-assorted squads. The members of these 
 either took turns in cooking or "went it alone" as .they 
 mutually agreed or disagreed. When such a squad found 
 men anxious to serve them, who wanted no wages, who 
 thought our rations were luxurious, who were willing to 
 wear out our old clothes and be glad of the chance, the 
 temptation was irresistible to install one as cook without 
 demanding any credentials as "chef" from any former 
 employer. The results of such indiscretion were usually 
 satisfactory, but sometimes were astonishing. There was 
 one mutual-admiration squad named "Casey, Curley, Pap 
 and Steers" — why so named, nobody knows. These four, 
 and no more, had formed a closed mess of their own and 
 installed a colored brother by the name of Jack as their 
 chef. Jack had not proved altogether satisfactory. One 
 thing, his coffee failed to reach the proper standard, until 
 one evening it was especially fine. The boys sat around 
 the open-top can that contained it, drinking deeply and 
 extolling its excellences until "Steers," dipping more 
 deeply into the beverage than the others had done, 
 brought up a nondescript article, which had no more 
 than been brought to light when Jack excitedly exclaimed, 
 "Fo de Lord sake, boys, dat da is my sock." The squad, 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 261 
 
 finally, after mature consideration, concluded not to kill 
 Jack because- the sock had perhaps been washed before 
 being hung over the open coffee kettle to dry. 
 
 There is one thing I wish I could find words to record ; 
 it is a matter difficult to explain and harder yet to under- 
 stand. This unsolved problem is the position taken on the 
 emancipation question by many of the extreme Southern- 
 ers of the Judge Taney school of thought. They were 
 honest and sincere in their idea that the negro was hardly 
 human — a sort of half step between animal and man. 
 Upon emancipation, their grievance against the Govern- 
 ment, and their serious objection to the proclamation, 
 was the unfairness and (as they thought) cruelty of the 
 act that had deprived the negro of his only natural pro- 
 tector, his former owner, not the fact that the planter 
 had been deprived of his property. 
 
 This idea of the doubtful humanity of the negro died 
 hard in the South ; it has not expired yet. Within the 
 last decade I have heard Southern men cursing their state 
 officers for the useless expenditure of so much money in 
 "educating baboons," as some still want to consider the 
 negroes. Yet these men were not all of them hard mas- 
 ters or the enemies of the negroes personally, as you 
 might expect them to be; the fact was frequently the 
 reverse with the honest planter. The thought that his 
 slaves were helpless, depending absolutely upon him for 
 everything, aroused his chivalry and frequently made 
 him the kindest of masters and the strongest of pro- 
 tectors for them. 
 
 Under this view of the case there could be no caste 
 lost in his associations with them. Any one can fondle 
 
262 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and be as kind to his dog or his horse as he wishes ; they 
 were animals, and mixing with them as he may, he low- 
 ers not himself ; upon some grounds like this he might 
 cherish and be intimate with his slaves, yet not degrade 
 himself. The life-long friendship between master and 
 black man, so often seen in slavery times, was formed 
 on that basis and was so mutually accepted by both. 
 
 Senators Vardaman and Tillman, it would seem, were 
 men of this type ; they did not believe in the advance of 
 the negro as a race, but their intimate relations with him 
 were kindly and generous. Richard Carrol, who was a 
 negro worker and the founder of an industrial home for 
 negro orphans in South Carolina, told Booker Washing- 
 ton that Senator Tillman had been his constant, personal 
 friend and assistant in all he had attempted to do for the 
 negro race. Even Judge Taney, who on the Supreme 
 Court bench rendered the extreme decision that negroes 
 were only property, gave a lie to his own rulings by 
 liberating his slaves. 
 
 The great desire of the f reedmen was for land ; their 
 idea of heaven upon earth was to possess "forty acres and 
 a mule." I fear it was the greatest mistake of the gov- 
 ernment that it did not see they achieved it. This desire 
 was taken advantage of by many white rascals and 
 schemers, but principally by their old objects of aversion, 
 the "poor white trash" of the South. Now, this poor 
 white man had a chance to pay off old scores ; the negroes 
 were helpless and improvident — he gladly embraced the 
 opportunity. Pretending to sell the freedman land was 
 the principal source of the rascal's revenue. Some of 
 them would sell four painted sticks, assuring the buyer 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 263 
 
 that they came from Washington and by federal author- 
 ity would pass title to him for the forty acres they might 
 enclose. The negro would pay his hard-earned dollars 
 for them, and then set one at each of the four corners 
 of the best piece of ground he could find, perhaps in the 
 center of his former master's best field, and go to work 
 upon it as his own private ground. The resulting trouble 
 that this poor darkey got into can be better imagined than 
 described. 
 
 Others sold certificates of purchase, telling the buy- 
 ers they must not say anything about it until time was 
 given the seller to see that proper transfer of the title 
 was made at Washington. When the stipulated time had 
 passed, and the swindlers had cleaned out that community 
 and gone elsewhere, the negroes would produce the deeds 
 to their holdings for perhaps most of the best property 
 of the whites of their county. The wrath of the whites 
 and the despair of the deluded blacks was in such cases 
 beyond telling. 
 
 As soldiers under the Stars and Stripes the negroes 
 made an enviable record. Over a hundred and seventy- 
 eight thousand of them were mustered into the United 
 States service, and nearly thirty-eight thousand were re- 
 ported killed, wounded, or missing. This is a loss of 
 more than twenty-one per cent. As the loss in the whole 
 Northern Army, during the entire period of the War was 
 about twenty per cent; and as the negro troops were 
 only engaged during the smaller part of that time, it 
 follows that the loss of the colored troops, length of 
 service taken into consideration, was more than double 
 that of their white comrades. 
 
264 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 They helped storm Fort Hudson; they successfully 
 resisted the attack of a superior force at Milliken's Bend ; 
 they assisted in the ferocious assault on Fort Wagner, 
 in which forty per cent of the attacking party was lost 
 and in which Sergeant Carney, though wounded four 
 times, carried the flag of his regiment across an open 
 field swept by a fierce rebel fire and then passed it to his 
 comrades saying, "Dey got me, boys, but de ol flag neber 
 touched de ground." They fought subsequently at Honey 
 Hill, South Carolina; at Olustee, Florida; and it was a 
 negro soldier who, at the end of the war, hauled down 
 the flag that flew over the capital of the Confederacy in 
 Richmond. This honorable service shows these gallant 
 soldiers were men, not property. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 265 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 FIVE DECADES OF LIBERTY 
 
 When General Sheridan threw his line of blue across 
 the front of the broken and exhausted Confederate army 
 at Appomattox Court House on the ninth day of April, 
 1865, and compelled Lee to make formal surrender to 
 Grant in McLean's humble cottage, it was then, and not 
 until then, that the Emancipation Proclamation was made 
 effective, and over three million slaves had their freedom 
 made secure. Then they became really free — free as the 
 wild beasts and birds — free as the white man ; but un- 
 like these, they had never learned to provide for them- 
 selves. 
 
 They were without money, without property of any 
 kind — even the clothes on their backs belonged to their 
 masters — without education, without experience, and 
 without any idea whatever of self-protecting care. Worse 
 than all (owing to the example of the masters) they 
 were without the ability to discriminate between liberty 
 and idleness, and had yet to learn the first element of self- 
 success, "If a man would eat he must work." Yet true 
 to his race and his temperament, thinking only of today 
 and never of tomorrow, he was happy as the blithest lark 
 that ever raised his cheery notes from the heights of the 
 morning sky. He had one thing that overbalanced all 
 these handicaps — his freedom. 
 
 He also possessed two more resources that he did 
 not at that time value, but which in the end became his 
 salvation: First, centuries of slave life had taught him 
 to work, to work long hours, to work steadily and per- 
 
266 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 sistently when conditions had finally convinced him that 
 he must. Second, he had acquired the habit of living on 
 one peck of corn and three pounds of pork a week, and 
 could be happy over it. These blind, groping millions of 
 new-made freemen needed a guiding hand. Who would 
 extend it to them ? The Emancipation Proclamation had 
 released the Southern planter from any further respons- 
 ibility in the matter. As one such told me, and he spoke 
 the truth, "When you set the slave free you also set the 
 owner free." Therefore nothing could be expected right- 
 fully from that source, only as the planter could make the 
 negro profitable to himself in the future as he had done 
 in the past. 
 
 But help for these helpless people must come from 
 some source. Many of them were sick or decrepit from 
 old age or accident, and unable to work for their living. 
 Who should care for them? The South had been dis- 
 charged from that responsibility by the act of the North 
 in depriving the masters of the command of their slaves ; 
 and even were they disposed to care for them, they were 
 too impoverished to do so. In many cases the masters 
 returned to their homes at the end of the war as poor as 
 their bondsmen and much less able to care for themselves. 
 
 The negro himself settled the controversy as to who 
 should care for him, by looking to the power that set 
 him free to tell him how to use his freedom. This solu- 
 tion was as simple as it was just. The sociological and 
 financial burden that was thrown upon the North by 
 emancipation was as great, in many respects, as the one 
 that grew out of secession. The North met that respons- 
 ibility bravely without flinching; generously, without 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 267 
 
 stint. For the education, protection, and uplifting of the 
 negro, it poured out its wealth without asking return, and 
 gave up of its best citizens without seeking reward. 
 
 But in this great work, say some critics and many 
 partisans, "There were great mistakes made." Certainly. 
 The infallible mortal has never been found ; and when 
 fallible men seek to solve such a new, and difficult prob- 
 lem, mistakes are unavoidable. There was misappropria- 
 tion of funds, of course. Even among the carefully 
 selected, twelve apostles of Christ there was one grafter ; 
 and the men who, in the stress of emergency, selected 
 the workers among the freedmen in the South may con- 
 gratulate themselves that the defalcations of their ap- 
 pointees were proportionately not more than one-tenth as 
 great as this. 
 
 There was bickering and conflict of authority, and 
 quarreling among the various commissions, schools, and 
 divisions. This is true, too true. But the person who 
 belongs to a lodge that has no differences of opinion, a 
 church that has no quarrel, or a political party without 
 division, let him cast the first stone. If such home organi- 
 zations formed among friends, and for the purposes of 
 their own good, cannot always agree, how would it be 
 possible for nation-wide ones composed of men of all 
 creeds, nationalities, and conditions, who sometimes carry 
 conflicting instructions covering perhaps overlapping 
 territory, be expected to get along without misunder- 
 standings ? 
 
 But back, beyond, moving and overshadowing these 
 comparatively petty pitfalls and stumbling blocks, stood 
 the great mass of the Northern people firmly insisting 
 
268 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 that a square deal for the greatest good for the greatest 
 number be given. I am proud to say that what I saw 
 and knew of its work during the war and the record of 
 its doings, read without prejudice or partnership, as I 
 have tried to read it, proved that they accomplished their 
 purpose as thoroughly as the times and circumstances 
 would permit. 
 
 Every general in the Union army, first met the ques- 
 tion and struggled with it in various ways. Butler at 
 Fortress Monroe and New Orleans; Hunter in Georgia 
 and Florida ; Sherman at Port Royal and Sea Island ; 
 Grant in the Mississippi valley ; Fremont at St. Louis ; 
 and indeed, every general of independent or semi-inde- 
 pendent command, wherever located, found himself with 
 thousands of negroes on his hands to tax his labors by 
 day and break his sleep by night. 
 
 To the aid of these perplexed generals came societies 
 like the Educational Association of Boston, the National 
 Freedman's Relief Association of New York, the Friend's 
 Association of Philadelphia, and kindred organizations 
 from cities of any size all over the North. Many of 
 these various commissions and organizations that often 
 interfered with and overlapped each other, had all their 
 differences adjusted and objects harmonized in March, 
 1865, by being consolidated into the Freedman's Bureau 
 under supervision and control of the United States War 
 Department. 
 
 This Bureau was strongly opposed by planters in the 
 South and by the Democratic Party in general. The 
 former insisted that the Bureau placed an obstacle be- 
 tween the negro and his best friend — the Southern man; 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 269 
 
 and the latter looked upon it as a great Republican politi- 
 cal machine, set up needlessly, extravagantly, and un- 
 constitutionally. 
 
 The hostility which these opposers felt toward the 
 Bureau, and the Republican Party which formed and 
 supported it, was transferred to and inflicted upon the 
 generally well-meaning, self-sacrificing, intelligent, and 
 frequently cultured agents and employees of that organi- 
 zation. Teachers, male and female, who with missionary 
 zeal devoted themselves to the education of the negroes, 
 found the doors of Southern society, and even Christian 
 communion effectually closed to them. So strong and 
 far-reaching was the opposition and prejudice that any 
 family, even though it be Southern by nativity and resi- 
 dence, who would open its doors to these "detestable nig- 
 ger teachers," would be as completely ostracized as the 
 guests these families had entertained. 
 
 The officers of the Bureau also had no sinecure of 
 easy indulgence : charges of nonfeasance, misfeasance, 
 and malfeasance were constantly being hurled against 
 them by opposing parties at all times, for all things, and 
 sometimes for nothing at all. 
 
 Of these charges some were doubtless true, but many, 
 very many, were as groundless, as foolish, and made with 
 as little investigation as the resolution introduced in 
 Congress by Fernando Wood, in 1870, charging General 
 Howard, among other things, with fraudulently receiv- 
 ing three salaries : one as general, one as Commissioner 
 of the Freedman's Bureau, and one as head of Howard 
 University. The slightest investigation would have 
 shown that the accusations were false, and that, like all 
 
2;o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 other officers employed by the Bureau, the only pay he 
 received was that to which he was entitled by virtue of 
 his rank in the army. The charges must have been made 
 solely for political effect. Upon an investigation by a 
 committee appointed by Congress the General was not 
 only acquitted but complimented. 
 
 General O. O. Howard, who was head of the Freed- 
 man's Bureau, had commanded the right wing of Sher- 
 man's army from "Atlanta to the sea," and in the grand 
 parade at Washington rode by his side as acknowledged 
 equal. He was not only a skilled and trusted officer, but 
 also a Christian gentleman, and in the whole army no 
 officer's record, word, or reputation stood higher. No 
 person who has studied his history, followed the Flag 
 with him, and entertained him at his own table as I have 
 done, could ever believe he would, for a moment, be 
 knowingly connected with anything savoring of. corrup- 
 tion. Errors in such a vast government were certain, 
 mistakes unavoidable, and accidents sure to happen, but 
 fraud, by him, never should be thought of. 
 
 He divided the South into eleven districts, and as 
 Assistant Commissioners to conduct their affairs, ap- 
 pointed eleven well known and approved army officers. 
 The Assistant Commissioners again appointed sub-offic- 
 ers, largely from those already holding commissions in 
 the army. These appointments, more than anything else 
 could have done, assured a capable and honest conduct of 
 affairs. 
 
 Whatever else can be said of the officers of the army, 
 the rule is that when they have been placed in charge of 
 affairs of this kind (in the Indian Bureau or elsewhere) 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 271 
 
 their sense of honor has been high, their sympathy with 
 their charges has been acute, their sense of justice equit- 
 able, and their temptation to go wrong zero. They had 
 every reason to do their best ; their future promotion and 
 standing in the army depended upon their success. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the South ostracised the 
 negro teachers sent them by the Bureau and in places 
 burned the churches and schoolhouses built for them, 
 still it expended on education alone, between June 1, 
 1865, and September, 1871, over five million dollars. At 
 that date it had 4239 schools, 9307 teachers, and 247,333 
 day and Sunday pupils. Other charitable Northern organ- 
 izations also spent for the same purpose large amounts 
 of money and with as satisfactory results. 
 
 Relief was extended to all who needed it, black or 
 white, Union or Secessionist alike. The Bureau pos- 
 sessed at various times sixty-seven hospitals and asylums, 
 at which were treated 579,296 cases, black and white; 
 and probably over a million cases had outside treatment. 
 Over a million rations were distributed to needy whites 
 and blacks, and nearly eight hundred thousand dollars 
 were expended in returning these persons to their homes 
 from which they had been driven, or sending them where 
 labor could be obtained. 
 
 The Bureau also stood as "next friend" to the negro 
 in all business transactions; made his contracts and saw 
 that they were fulfilled ; secured him reasonable wages 
 and saw they were paid ; appeared for him in court when 
 without such aid he could not have enforced his rights ; 
 and at all times tried to perform the object of its mission. 
 This mission, briefly told, was to sec that the destitute 
 
272 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 of any color were helped, and that the condition of the 
 black man did not become, what it at one time threatened 
 to be, more unendurable under freedom than it had been 
 under slavery. 
 
 In reckoning the sources of help for the freedman, 
 the assistance of the kindly and well-disposed among his 
 former masters must not be forgotten. These men were 
 then, and still are, the negroes' best friends. They would 
 have been glad to see the negro collect property and build 
 a home for his family. Some of them were willing the 
 black man should testify in court, and even vote, pro- 
 vided he would cast his ballot as the white man wished. 
 
 However, judging by the laws passed by the Southern 
 state governments during the period of the Johnsonian 
 Plan, when they might and did pass such legislation as 
 they saw fit regarding the negro, there were not enough 
 of such liberally disposed men to protect the freedman 
 from a peonage that was worse than the vanished heredi- 
 tary slavery. For example, take the "Black Code" of 
 Louisiana, as reported by Judge Tourjee, which was 
 enacted after the war to control the freedman. These 
 laws required that all agricultural laborers should be 
 compelled to make contracts for the year, within the first 
 twelve days of January; and if they did not do so, they 
 were arrested as vagrants and their labor sold by the 
 sheriff at public auction to the highest bidder. Once the 
 contract was made, or the vagrant bought, he was not 
 allowed to leave the plantation of the buyer or contractor 
 except by permission. If so found away from home by 
 the patrol, he could be arrested and punished as in the 
 days of slavery. The master was permitted to be the only 
 judge in making deductions in the freedman's wages, and 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 273 
 
 for almost any possible cause. Thus it would seem the 
 freedman would have left, at the end of the year, only 
 so much money as the master in his bounty was willing 
 he should possess. 
 
 When one considers that the costs which the so-called 
 freedman had to pay for arrests for vagrancy were from 
 thirty to fifty dollars, and that planters often combined 
 to reduce the sums paid for their labor to as low some- 
 times as two dollars a month, it does not take long to con- 
 clude that, bad as Mexican peonage is, it would be prefer- 
 able to the condition of the freedman under the Black 
 Laws enacted by some Southern States before recon- 
 struction. 
 
 The ideas of the just and generous Southern men 
 found no expression in the Black Codes because they 
 were outnumbered. There were two elements, which, for 
 different reasons, thought Judge Taney correct and that 
 the "negro had no rights that the white man was bound 
 to respect." They were, first, the great planters who had 
 always worked the negro from daylight to dark, and 
 pushed him without mercy to squeeze every dollar pos- 
 sible out of his labor; and second, the "poor white trash" 
 whose jealousy would not permit a "nigger" to possess 
 more property than they held. Their slogan was, "A 
 nigger shall not ride a hoss when a white man has to 
 walk." 
 
 This feeling was no local affair ; it was general 
 throughout the slave states, and was the natural result 
 of centuries of slavery. So strong was it that whenever a 
 negro by industry and economy had succeeded in reaching 
 that acme of negro ambition, "forty acres of land and a 
 
274 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 mule," he would be likely to receive, and in many cases 
 did receive, a notice something like this : "The Regulators 
 has met and decided that no nigger shan't be allowed to 
 own no hoss nor run no crop on his own account here 
 arter. Now we gives you three days to get away, ef 
 your here when that time is over, the buzzards would 
 have a bait that has been right scarce since the war was 
 over." 
 
 And the worst of it was, if the negro did not leave 
 the country the threat was likely to be made good — even 
 to the ham-stringing of his horses, the destruction of his 
 property, or the assault, mahem, or murder of himself 
 and family. There is no necessity of quoting any authority 
 to prove this statement ; it can be found amply proven in 
 the report of the joint Congressional Committee touch- 
 ing these matters. This report comprises thirteen close- 
 printed, octavo volumes, six thousand pages, all concern- 
 ing matters of this kind. 
 
 This period of jealousy has not died out yet. I wit- 
 nessed a curious exhibition of it one evening in a club 
 room at Mobile, Alabama, where I had been hospitably 
 received and my sick body made gratefully comfortable. 
 A squad of Southern young men, who had been brought 
 up in idleness and with the antipathy of that section to 
 manual labor, were discussing the negro question and 
 criticising their state officials for expending the state 
 moneys in educating "baboons." Just then an old planter, 
 apparently of the broad-minded, generous type I have 
 tried to describe, came in. This man, after listening 
 awhile to their half-formed opinions and illogical views, 
 finally interrupted by saying: 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 275 
 
 "Do you want me to tell what is the matter with you 
 fellows?" The young men were surprised, but finally 
 agreed they did want that information. 
 
 *'\\'ell/' continued the old planter, "I go along the 
 street in the city and see a big business block being 
 erected. Who is building it? It's not you fellows, it's 
 the niggers. I see a great bridge being built, who's doing 
 the work? It's not you fellows, it's the niggers. I see 
 in the suburban parts of the city little bungalows being 
 constructed, surrounded by gardens making cozy homes 
 for wives and kids. Whose are they ? They don't belong 
 to you fellows, they're owned by the niggers. I tell you 
 right now what's the matter with every one of you : 
 d — n you, you are jealous." 
 
 One strictly essential safeguard to freedom which the 
 Southern governments established by Johnson failed to 
 give the colored man, although they had three years in 
 which to do it, was to bestow upon him the right of being 
 able to protect his life, liberty, and property by going into 
 court and testifying in cases of controversy between him 
 and the white man. One of their speakers outlined the 
 almost universal sentiment of the South, at that time, 
 when he said, "What! Allow a nigger to testify? We've 
 been outraged and insulted. Our best men have been 
 put under ban ; but we have not got so low as to submit 
 to that, yet. Our rights are too sacred to be put at the 
 mercy of negro perjurors." 
 
 It was certainly hard for a white man to be brought 
 into court by a former slave whom he had ever looked 
 upon as being a chattel, little higher than his dog or his 
 
276 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 horse. But if that man was now free and permitted to 
 live in the community, it was a right that he certainly 
 must possess. 
 
 The most potent and disturbing factor affecting the 
 progress of the freedmen was the Ku Klux Klan. It 
 is contended by the South that this organization, bad as 
 it finally proved to be, was urgently necessary to pre- 
 vent the entire ruin of the Southern states by negro votes 
 under the Reconstruction Government set up by federal 
 authority in 1868. That the best citizens of the South 
 were convinced of the need of this organization to pre- 
 vent their being altogether submerged by what they 
 feared would become a negro semi-civilization or savag- 
 ery is certain. That the Ku Klux Klan was eventually 
 used for this purpose is true, but that it was organized 
 for that purpose is not so clear. 
 
 The Reconstruction government was not organized 
 until July, 1868, and before that time the Ku Klux Klan 
 was in full operation all over the South. In the first nine 
 months of that year, 1868, there were eighteen hundred 
 and sixty-two cases of maltreating, wounding, and killing 
 in one state alone. This shows that the Ku Klux Klan 
 was not organized because of what Reconstruction had 
 done, although it may have been established from fear 
 of what they supposed it might do. 
 
 It was the legitimate successor of the patrol system 
 of slavery by which bands of young men were detailed 
 nightly to patrol the county and see that negroes kept 
 their place, flogging or otherwise chastising those they 
 found out of bounds as circumstances or sentiment sug- 
 gested. Then, their vocation was not only legal, but by 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 277 
 
 slave law required, and they went without disguise. Now 
 their acts were illegal, and they covered themselves and 
 their horses completely with grotesque uniforms and 
 terrified the superstitious darkey population by represent- 
 ing themselves as ghosts from the battle fields of the late 
 war. 
 
 To convince the negro of their ghostly nature they 
 resorted to many devices. One was to call for a drink 
 of water, and when cup or gourd was so filled and handed 
 to them they would say, "No, give me the bucket." Then, 
 with aid of a viewless contrivance, they would drink the 
 whole bucketful, and with a sigh of satisfaction exclaim, 
 "That's the first drink I've had since I was killed at 
 Gettysburg." The ghostly visitors then gave the fright- 
 ened blacks orders as to what they were to do or not to 
 do to avoid being haunted in future in some worse 
 manner. 
 
 Even the better class of Southern people thought such 
 "visitations" were justifiable for the purpose of prevent- 
 ing the negro from voting the Republican ticket, and the 
 purpose was accomplished. The white voters regained 
 the control of the state government. Nor was the rejoic- 
 ing for this accomplishment confined to the Southern 
 states ; the North wanted only to see the negro have a 
 chance; it never for a moment wanted to see him in his 
 ignorance rule the Saxon race. To this purpose the better 
 people of the South expected the Ku Klux Klan to con- 
 fine its operations, but, as is usual when illegal measures 
 are invoked, the unlawful force becomes unmanageable, 
 and may prove a veritable "Frankenstein" to perplex its 
 creator. The doctrine that "the ends justify the means" 
 often brings results that may destroy its sponsors. 
 
278 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Thus the Ku Klux Klan, so far as the better part of 
 the Southerners knew and authorized, was organized 
 simply to frighten and to keep away from the polls 
 enough negroes so that the whites could control their 
 several states. Finding safety in their disguise, entire 
 immunity from punishment for their proceedings, and 
 realizing they could do anything they wished without 
 hazard to themselves, the members of the Klan naturally 
 progressed from ghostly visitations to whipping and mal- 
 treatment, from whipping and maltreatment to arson and 
 mahem, and from these to robbery and murder. So 
 atrocious were some of these crimes that Reverdy John- 
 son, counsel for a Ku Klux man under indictment, horri- 
 fied by the testimony against his own client, threw up 
 his hands and exclaimed, "It is simply savagery, for 
 which there can be no excuse nor palliation." 
 
 The motion picture play, "The Birth of a Nation," 
 which was exhibited in 1917-1918, introduces a view upon 
 which is quoted the statement made by Judge Tourgee to 
 the efTect that the casualties during the Ku Klux Klan's 
 domination were greater than those at Gettysburgh. 
 This would indicate over fifty thousand killed, or muti- 
 lated. 
 
 Whether this estimate is too small or too large, I do 
 not know, but I do know something which the motion 
 picture does not state, namely, that with very few excep- 
 tions, these so estimated fifty thousand victims were 
 helpless negroes or Union men. Further, that scarcely 
 one of them had a chance to die or defend himself in fair 
 fight, but was aroused at the midnight hour by over- 
 powering bands of armed men, who, at their pleasure 
 
THE FREEING OF 'J' I II': NEGRO 279 
 
 and without danger to themselves, worked their fiendish 
 desire upon him — a purpose as brutal as that of a Sioux 
 Indian in the heat of retaliatory warfare. 
 
 Who committed all these outrages? Was it the 
 chivalry of the South? God forbid! They started the 
 movement for the purpose mentioned, and then "went to 
 sleep at the switch." They realized not what was being 
 done, and when the bottom dropped out of the whole 
 thing they were horrified, and were glad to see the crea- 
 ture they had created brought to the bar of justice, con- 
 demned, and destroyed. 
 
 Should a Southern man, almost anywhere in the 
 South, be asked the question, "How are you getting along 
 with the negroes in your section?" the reply would very 
 likely be in effect, "We are getting along nicely. We have 
 the niggers down and they are making no trouble." The 
 question of "keeping the negro down" is one having many 
 phases, applications and explanations. He may be kept 
 down politically, he may be kept down socially, he may 
 be kept down educationally, or he may be kept down in- 
 dustrially. Each proposition may be right or wrong ac- 
 cording to the interpretation placed upon it. 
 
 Take the first statement. If the negro is prevented 
 from exercising the elective franchise by Ku Klux Klan 
 methods, it is not only barbarous but criminal. But if he 
 is prevented from voting as is now done in most of the 
 Southern states, by making the just demand that every 
 elector should be able to read his ballot, and that before 
 he casts it he should have paid his taxes, it is a step to- 
 ward true democracy and is worthy of emulation. I for 
 one would be glad to see it incorporated into the laws of 
 my own Northern state of Iowa. 
 
28o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The other propositions are equally open to as many 
 definitions and explanations. I care not here to discuss 
 them further than to say, a race can not be "kept down" 
 by any method however gentle, just, or necessary, without 
 to a greater or less degree, placing a handicap upon its 
 upward progress. This fact should be kept in mind as 
 we consider. what the negro has accomplished, despite his 
 handicap, since he gained his freedom. 
 
 My personal observation also shows that the negro is 
 moving not towards barbarism as has often been said but 
 away from it, and considering his handicap, is making 
 most satisfactory strides in that direction. In Mississippi, 
 in about the blackest parts of the negro South, I asked a 
 doctor of my acquaintance, "How are the negroes getting 
 along here now?" 
 
 He replied, "Fine, sir, fine. Why, there is that Sam. 
 I had a sick case in his family and I never expected to get 
 a cent for it, but I met him the other day and I said, 
 'Sam when are you going to pay me for those visits?' and 
 what does the blamed black rascal do but put his hand in 
 his pocket and take out a check book and give me a 
 check for it." Barbarians do not usually have checking 
 accounts in the bank. 
 
 I asked a storekeeper at another place the same ques- 
 tion. His answer was, "Splendid, A darkey by the 
 name of Pompey owed me about three thousand dollars 
 for horses, seed and provisions, and he paid me out of 
 this year's crop over. two thousand dollars." Barbarians 
 do not usually have a credit of three thousand dollars, 
 and it is more rare still when they earn and pay two 
 thousand dollars as the result of one year's labor. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 281 
 
 I found, not only here but everywhere, that the 
 negroes were making every sacrifice to permit their chil- 
 dren to attend all school privileges that were offered them. 
 I think they were much more appreciative of such op- 
 portunities than the poor whites. I was told of one case 
 where a poor white man moved from the mountains into 
 town and placed his children in the factory to work for 
 wages in place of in the school for education. His wife 
 from the proceeds of the children's labor, having more 
 money than she ever possessed before, played the lady 
 and hired a black woman to do her work. It turned out 
 that the black servant was the owner of the house in 
 which the white lady lived as tenant. The black house 
 owner was still working hard that her children might 
 have an education ; the white tenant was depriving hers 
 of their schooling to have a chance to play lady. This 
 yarn may not be true but I have seen some things that 
 looked very much like it. 
 
 I noted the little churches scattered around the 
 country and saw the weekly attendance that there as- 
 sembled with their respectable conveyances, cleanly 
 dressed men, and brilliantly clad women. Barbarians do 
 not spend money freely to maintain any form of Chris- 
 tian worship. Whoever called these people barbarians 
 made a mistake. 
 
 When I was in the South during the Civil War there 
 was no negro church organization. The preacher at a 
 negro meeting was almost sure to be slave, and being 
 a slave could neither read nor write. He was usually a 
 man of some psychologic force, enthusiastic, honest, and 
 could lead the singing. With this slight equipment he 
 
282 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 was able to carry his less intelligent audience where he 
 would. The gathering (for it lacked the organization 
 that the term congregation would imply) was mostly 
 composed of slaves, present from adjoining plantations 
 by consent of their masters. They were simple, impul- 
 sive, and excitable nearly to the point of hysteria. 
 
 When the minister came to his sermon little was ex- 
 pected of him — it was thought the Lord would by some 
 miraculous 'power fill his mouth with words fit for the 
 occasion. The Lord may have performed such miracles 
 at some time or place, but never when I was present. No 
 matter how stumblingly the pastor may have been pro~ 
 ceeding he would be encouraged by loud shouts of, 
 "Amen! Bless the Lord! Glory! Hallelujah!" inter- 
 spersed by inimitable negro songs and the "Patting of 
 Juba." The excitement would rise higher and higher, 
 the people eventually jumping, laughing and crying, until, 
 in the excitement, some fainted, some went into an appa- 
 rent trance, and the whole scene resembled a savage 
 incantation rather than a Christian service. Such was 
 negro worship during slavery, and such it was during the 
 time near and succeeding the Civil War. As such I have 
 remembered it, as such I think the large part of the 
 Northern people still think of it. 
 
 It follows without saying that I was not prepared for 
 the change I found. From the directory of the city of 
 San Antonio, Texas, I chanced to select the Second 
 Baptist Church for investigation. I went to the designated 
 location and stopped — I must have made a mistake — this 
 beautiful, eighty thousand dollar edifice, that would 
 ornament any town or city, North or South, could not 
 be the negro church I was looking for. I returned for 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 283 
 
 further investigation, and after ascertaining that the fine 
 building I had located was really the negro church, I then 
 looked for the pastor. 
 
 I found him in his study, a courteous, colored gentle- 
 man, and a college graduate who did not murder the 
 king's English as atrociously as I myself did. I learned 
 that the edifice was nearly paid for, that the church had a 
 congregation of about two thousand regular attendants, 
 and twelve hundred actual church communicants. It 
 had an armual budget for church expenses of four 
 thousand five hundred dollars, besides other special col- 
 lections for building and missionary funds. Beyond all 
 this, they, as scrupulously as the Jew, took care of their 
 own poor, permitting none either to beg or become de- 
 pendent upon the city. This is a showing that would do 
 honor to any white congregation. 
 
 This is not the only negro church in the city. There 
 are five others of equal standing as to pastor, member- 
 ship, attendance, wealth, and equipment. Also there are 
 fifteen smaller ones, but among the whole fifteen smaller 
 congregations there is not one pastor who has not had 
 at least a normal school training. The advance here 
 shown, in a religious way, stands as an illustration and 
 symbol of the negro's growth in other directions. 
 
 In lower Tennessee, near the Alabama line, I inter- 
 viewed the white merchant of a small town, the center of 
 a cotton growing district. "Do you supply the negro 
 croppers with what they need to raise their cotton ?" 
 
 "Yes, certainly, I do or some other man in town does." 
 
 "Do you get your pay?" 
 
 "Every time." 
 
284 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 "Does the cropper have anything left after paying 
 you?" 
 
 "Sometimes he does have quite a lot, and sometimes 
 he does not. When he comes out with a surplus he has 
 one grand, glorious time, and when he comes out short 
 he and his family live on the slavery ration of a peck of 
 corn a week and a little bacon, and are still the happiest 
 people in the world in either condition/' 
 
 "Are any of them getting ahead ?" 
 
 "Oh yes; there is John, and Henry, aricl Sam and 
 Bill, who own their own farms, and old man Day, who 
 can draw as large a check and have it honored, and dis- 
 count at the bank as big a note of his own making as any 
 man in the country." 
 
 Continuing the examination, I asked. "Are there any 
 white men growing cotton here ?" 
 
 "Not to any perceptible degree," he answered. 
 
 "What would you do if the negroes should stop rais- 
 ing cotton?" 
 
 "If the negroes did not raise cotton, or some other 
 paying crop, we should have to shut up our stores and 
 move out, for there are not enough white men who will 
 work on a farm to keep us in the salt we want on our 
 potatoes." 
 
 On the street of a not far-away city, I met a darkey, 
 who with a broad grin, saluted me by saying, "I know 
 what dat ar button means," and he pointed to my Grand 
 Army of the Republic insignia on the lapel of my coat. 
 
 "If you know that," I replied, "I guess you are an ex- 
 slave." 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 285 
 
 ''Deed, I is, massa," he answered. 
 
 "Well," I continued, "How are you getting along?" 
 
 "Fine, massa, fine. I owns a quarter section ob land 
 all paid for, and plenty stock and machinery to work it. 
 Ise all right, sure." 
 
 Down in the Yazoo delta, I understand more than half 
 of the negroes own their own farms in sizes ranging 
 from forty to six hundred acres, and that one negro there 
 living is worth seventy-five to eighty thousand dollars 
 with quite a number of others crowding him for a close 
 second. 
 
 In Kentucky I talked with an old time ex-planter, and 
 asked him how they were getting along with the negroes ? 
 
 "All right," said he. "We have got them down and 
 they are making no trouble, though they were a great 
 deal better off in slavery." 
 
 "How do you make that out?" I replied. 
 
 "Well," he answered, "they are so improvident and 
 reckless. They are receiving good wages and will work 
 a while until they get a bunch of money together and 
 then, like all niggers, they will have a grand time, perhaps 
 buy an auto and joy-ride until the cash has disappeared, 
 then go to work again." 
 
 "Like all niggers !" Yes, thought I, the negro is "the 
 happiest man on earth" and is bound to have a good time 
 if possible, even though there may be dark days ahead. 
 Here comes to me a thought. Should we not take a leaf 
 out of their philosophy, we Saxons, who work hard all 
 our lives, never having a grand, good time, just so we 
 may leave money that likely will do our children more 
 
286 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 harm than good ? In my mind I could not help contrast- 
 ing the slave as I saw him in 1861-5, working from day- 
 light until dark, living on plantation rations and dressed 
 in plantation clothes, with these joy-riders the planter 
 described. The idea that their former condition was bet- 
 ter than the latter is absurd. 
 
 They do not all spend thoughtlessly everything they 
 make. A very large part of their number are saving 
 more or less of their income. While pleasure-walking 
 through one Southern city I passed a new, very tasteful, 
 and apparently commodious bungalow. A colored man 
 was putting on some finishing touches around the yard, 
 and I said to him, "That's a cozy looking bungalow. 
 Whose is it?" 
 
 He straightened himself up, his face shone with honest 
 pride as he answered, "It is mine, sir, and it is paid for." 
 
 I complimented him by saying, "You have done well 
 to save money enough to build such a fine home for your- 
 self and family." 
 
 "I hab not done so well as I ort to," he replied. "I 
 might just as well had one or two more like dis if I had 
 only sabed my money and not spent it as fast as I earned 
 it. But I done stopped dat ar foolishness now." 
 
 "It is too bad more of your race do not follow your 
 example," I said. 
 
 "They are doin' it now," said the negro. "Mong de 
 workin' men dat I know, mos' every one dat is earnin' 
 twelve dollars a week or mo is makin' payment on some 
 lot or buildin' for a home. I ain't de only one here dat 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 287 
 
 has got his own house. Dat, and dat, all is owned by 
 negroes," and he pointed out nearly one-third of the 
 houses within sight. 
 
 But these are all individual and special cases ; how 
 about the negro as a whole? There is but one place where 
 authoritative information on that subject can be found, 
 and that is the United States Census Reports. It is un- 
 fortunate that 1910 is the latest compilation of facts 
 available, because, from my personal observation there 
 has been no time when the negro has advanced as rapidly 
 as since that year up to the present time, 1919. 
 
 Therefore, it should be kept strongly in mind that the 
 progress of the race is very much greater than the figures 
 I am able to produce from the last Census Report. From 
 facts therein stated, I find that in five of the Southern 
 states, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and 
 Louisiana, the negroes operated from forty to sixty per 
 cent of all the farms in those states, and in the South 
 alone upon the farms owned or rented by negroes, they 
 raised in 1910, as shown in round numbers: 
 
 Two hundred and seventy million dollars worth of 
 cotton. 
 
 Seventy-seven million dollars worth of corn. 
 
 Forty-seven million dollars worth of cotton-seed. 
 
 Ten million dollars worth of tobacco. 
 
 Seven million dollars worth of sweet potatoes. 
 
 Five million dollars worth of hay. 
 
 Also oats and other produce, making the amount 
 produced from field crops nearly five hundred million 
 dollars, all this upon farms owned or operated by negroes. 
 
2SS ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 They own in fee simple 221,535 farms, of which 
 174,853 are fully paid for. They also own 285,055 city 
 and town homes, of which 214,884 are free of incum- 
 brance and fully paid for. 
 
 To state the fact in round numbers and a little 
 plainer : the negro, either as owner or renter, operated 
 nearly two million homes, including both city and farm.' 
 Of these he owned about five hundred thousand, and of 
 those that he owned, seventy-five per cent were free from 
 incumbrance and fully paid for. The value of the farms 
 belonging to the blacks alone, together with the property 
 thereon, in 1910 was over two billion dollars and I think 
 at the present time it would be nearly double that amount. 
 
 This census shows there were of persons not gainfully 
 employed, white male, nineteen and four-tenths per cent; 
 of negro male, twelve and six-tenths per cent; of white 
 female, eighty-two and three-tenths per cent; and negro 
 female, forty-five and two-tenths per cent. The eighty- 
 seven and four-tenths per cent of the negroes who were 
 gainfully employed could be found in every condition, 
 trade, and profession from that of cleaning the pig pen 
 to filling the pulpit or professor's chair. 
 
 In regarding illiteracy, the negroes are making rapid 
 progress. As I have said before, they are keen to embrace 
 every opportunity given them for education, I think the 
 various state legislatures of the South have been provid- 
 ing for their needs in that direction as fully as their 
 finances will permit. From an illiteracy of one hundred 
 per cent at emancipation, these people have reduced the 
 rates to fifteen and one-tenth per cent in 1910, and it is 
 doubtless still less at the present time. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 289 
 
 This showing of the progress that the freedman has 
 made — religiously, educationally, and materially — is more 
 than could reasonably be expected. The wonder is, not 
 that he has advanced so little, but that considering his 
 handicaps he has progressed so far as he has. 
 
 There is only one thing that the Census records show 
 as detrimental to his standing, and that is capable of a 
 partial explanation. This is where his record, in propor- 
 tion to numbers, shows more than twice as many delin- 
 quents among the negro as among the white population. 
 But the Census itself cautions against accepting these 
 figures as proofs of actual offenses having been com- 
 mitted, and gives the following reasons why they should 
 not be so accepted : 
 
 1. Racial prejudice, which impels prosecution of the 
 negro sooner than the white man. 2. A negro once ac- 
 cused is more likely to be without friends or money to 
 make adequate defense. 3. If fine or imprisonment is 
 the penalty, lack of money may compel the black man to 
 receive the latter in place of the former. In addition to 
 these three causes urged by the Census, I add two more 
 reasons which the negroes state with great probability of 
 truth. 4. If a white man intends committing a crime, 
 he is likely to black his face and pretend to be a negro. 
 5. Where laws against gambling are enforced it is com- 
 paratively easy to catch the negro at his game of craps, 
 while the white man in his club room, playing his game 
 of poker, is rarely arrested. 
 
 When these causes are taken into consideration, the 
 delinquencies of the black man are probably not more 
 than his previous history and condition might lead us to 
 
290 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 expect, especially when we must consider that a very- 
 large proportion of illiterates and many of the delinquents 
 are the degenerate products of slavery time. 
 
 Since the world began, no nation has from the depths 
 of abject slavery, in a short half century, made the 
 advance, intellectually and materially, that the negro has. 
 It was slow at first, but is now increasing more rapidly 
 and, properly used — as I believe it will be — this advance- 
 ment will make of these people such a substantial and 
 essential part of our future nation that we could not well 
 get along without them. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 291 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PROVIDENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE OF 
 THE FREEDMAN 
 
 It is the easiest and most usual thing in the world to 
 be mistaken. In common with a very large majority of 
 white people both North and South, I had the idea if 
 there was anything settled regarding the negro, it was 
 that he spent his money lavishly and thoughtlessly; and 
 when helplessness and old age overtook him he settled 
 comfortably into the almshouses of the Saxon for main- 
 tenance. 
 
 To my surprise I have found that, however foolishly 
 he may spend his money, it is false that he has an ab- 
 normal tendency toward the poor house. The census 
 statistics show, out of each hundred thousand persons of 
 each race, there are in the almshouses of the United 
 States, a little over sixty-nine negroes, sixty-seven native 
 whites, and two hundred and forty-nine foreign-born 
 whites. This would make trie average of the two classes 
 of whites a little over one hundred and sixty-three, which 
 is more than double the number of so-called improvident 
 and lazy negroes. The reading of this riddle, which I 
 think I found by personal investigation, I am glad to 
 report. 
 
 The first explanation I found in the fact that the 
 churches of San Antonio did not permit their members 
 to receive outside help. But the actions of a few congre- 
 gations clfd not impress me as of great moment in effect- 
 ing any total result. 
 
292 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 I was still so obsessed with the idea that when I was 
 talking with the principal of one of the colored schools of 
 the city, a white man, who had spent twenty-nine years as 
 teacher among the colored people, I still was bemoaning 
 the idea that the negro spent his money foolishly and let 
 the white man care for him when disaster came. The 
 professor stopped me and said, "Mr. Burnap, you are 
 mistaken ; the average negro today is saving his wages 
 more closely and investing them more carefully than the 
 average white man or Mexican, and further, calls for less 
 help than either of the last named." The statement was a 
 shock to all my previous ideas. I did not believe it, and 
 was ungentlemanly enough to tell him so. He replied, 
 "So far as the saving and investing of his money is con- 
 cerned, that is the result of my observation and difficult 
 of proof or disproof. But so far as charity help is con- 
 cerned, that is a matter of statistics and you can very 
 easily find out whether I am telling the truth or not by 
 consulting the proper authorities." 
 
 As I did want to know the truth I went directly to 
 the office of the United Charities of that city and con- 
 sulted the workers who were white people. I found the 
 professor was right. The information there given me 
 proved that, according to relative numbers of the different 
 races, the negroes made fewer applications for relief 
 than either the whites or Mexicans ; that his fewer appli- 
 cations were for shorter time, demanded less money, and 
 usually had more satisfactory result. It was up to me 
 to eat humble pie. I immediately sought out the profes- 
 sor and thanked him for setting me right in the matter, 
 so far as San Antonio was concerned. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 293 
 
 But was the fact general? Was it not a local con- 
 dition applying to this particular city? I concluded to 
 investigate. I went to Houston, and consulted the super- 
 intendent of charity work. She was not prepared to give 
 definite figures; she thought in proportion to population 
 there was not much difference, but what difference 
 existed was in favor of the negroes. 
 
 I went to Galveston. The secretary of charity work 
 said, "It is not true that the negroes are beggars; on the 
 contrary they do not ask help when they should, and we 
 many times have to seek out the needy and deserving 
 cases. Up to a year ago there was no record kept of 
 money distributed separately to the black and white 
 people, but the idea was so strong and prevalent and com- 
 plaints so many that the negroes were receiving an undue 
 and unjust proportion of the funds that this year I have 
 kept the expenditures separate with the following result : 
 Galveston's population is substantially two-thirds white 
 one-third black, consequently the blacks would be entitled 
 to one-third of the charity money. They have drawn only 
 one-fourth, and there are many well-to-do negroes in the 
 city who contribute to the fund, perhaps as much or even 
 more than is drawn by them." That answered the ques- 
 tion for Galveston. 
 
 I met a charity worker from Oklahoma, who told me 
 that in the town where she worked the pro rata applica- 
 tions for relief from the negroes were proportionally less 
 than they were from the whites. 
 
 At Jackson, Mississippi, the Secretary of the Asso- 
 ciated Charities said, "We have a few families of colored 
 people whom we care for, but they do not make calls 
 
294 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 upon the society nearly so much as white people. Whether 
 it is because they are afraid to, or because the black 
 people take care of their own race, I do not know." 
 
 Finally I went to St. Louis. Here, if anywhere, 
 should be a gathering of those who demanded charity aid, 
 because St. Louis is the mecca of every down-and-out 
 negro in the greater part of the South. A darkey who 
 cannot make a living anywhere else goes to St. Louis. If 
 the negroes are not demanding special aid here, I doubt 
 if they are doing it in any part of the United States. 
 
 I found that the usual United Charity work is here 
 done by the St. Louis Provident Association. All cases 
 coming to its attention, whether from the white or black, 
 are given equal and personal examinations, and such 
 assistance rendered as seems desirable, without regard to 
 color or race. 
 
 In its reports, they have not kept the financial help 
 given the negro separate, but they have so segregated 
 them under the head of "Family Assisted." The year 
 1916-1917, its workers told me, was a fairly normal year, 
 and during the twelve months from November first to 
 October thirty-first next there were three thousand five 
 hundred and sixty-three families assisted, of which six 
 hundred and nineteen were colored. The proportion of 
 colored population of St. Louis to white is practically 
 ten per cent. Figured upon this basis, this ten per cent 
 of the city's population has received seventeen per cent 
 of the "assistance." But the term "assistance" does not 
 mean financial help ; it may, and most frequently does, 
 mean advice, situations found, or differences adjusted. 
 Under the heading of "material assistance" they record 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 295 
 
 all help consisting of moneys furnished or articles thai- 
 cost money to procure. Under this head, of three hun- 
 dred and twenty-two black families "assisted," only for- 
 ty-one received material help ; at the same time of eleven 
 hundred and seventy-eight white families so "assisted," 
 three hundred and seventy-eight had material help, and 
 in each case usually double what a black family would 
 require. Only twelve per cent of the blacks and thirty- 
 two per cent of the whites "assisted" had received ma- 
 terial aid. This shows what the negroes wanted largely 
 was advice, and what the whites wanted was cash ; and 
 the negro, here as elsewhere, so far as material help was 
 concerned, was the donee of the much smaller propor- 
 tional amount. 
 
 I ascertained during this investigation a fact which I 
 did not before know, and which I think is not generally 
 understood, namely, that the negro, like the Jew, has in 
 a great degree that racial pride which Booker Washing- 
 ton so earnestly tried to cultivate ; a pride which impels 
 him to the best of his ability to care for his own race. 
 By the combined efforts of their secret societies, their 
 insurance and burial associations, and their churches, 
 they are coming a close second to the Jewish race in the 
 good work of caring for their own people. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the negro in his pros- 
 perity does not think of the future ; some phases of it he 
 considers more closely than the white man. Very few 
 men or women among the white race have their funerals 
 provided and paid for; there are very few negroes (at 
 least in the cities of the South") who have not so arranged 
 for their final exit from this world. By small weekly or 
 
296 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 monthly payments, which perhaps have continued for 
 many years, they have assured themselves of a fitting 
 burial. The inference follows without saying, that a race 
 which will almost uniformly make provision for death 
 would not be entirely neglectful regarding disease and 
 old age ; and it is a fact that a very large proportion carry 
 old age and accident insurance. 
 
 There is one senseless illusion, more or less current, 
 both North and South. I have found it everywhere, even 
 among the summer-outing lakes of the park region of 
 Minnesota. It was stated to me there by a broad-minded 
 man of education and culture, a minister of the gospel. 
 He believed that the negro was better of! as a slave than 
 as a free man. I asked him if he had ever seen the negro 
 in slavery. No, he had not. I asked him if he had visited 
 the South since emancipation. No, nor had he ever been 
 south of Mason and Dixon's line. I asked him upon what 
 grounds he based his opinion and he replied, 
 
 "The Southerners say so and they ought to know." 
 
 "What part of the Southerners say so?" I enquired. 
 
 "Both blacks and whites," he replied, "and that should 
 be positive proof." 
 
 He was right when he said both whites and blacks 
 make the statement, but he would also have been equally 
 correct had he said that both blacks and whites made 
 exactly the reverse of it. Some men of both races make 
 it but the white man has doubts of its truth ; the black 
 man tells it and doesn't believe a single word of it ; and 
 both sides have, for them, sufficient reasons for their 
 statement. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 297 
 
 The average ex-planter honestly believes today that 
 slavery is dead; that it was a bad Institution for the na- 
 tion and for both the blacks and whites. But he likes to 
 think that the negro was better off as a slave, because, 
 if that be true, the crime of his fathers is to a large 
 extent justified. It is not strange that he should feel that 
 way, and when his father's old slaves come to him and 
 tell how much better off they were in slavery he begins 
 to believe it and tells it as a fact to his Northern visitor. 
 
 So much for the planter. What of the negro? 
 
 He does not believe a single syllable of what he says 
 in that regard, and would fight to his death against any 
 return to slavery. He has not the slightest idea of again 
 exposing his back to the lash or robbing his children of 
 their schools and plunging them back into the ignorance 
 of darkest Africa. He has not the slightest wish to ex- 
 change his comfortable wages or his self-tilled and per- 
 haps self-owned acres and personal freedom for a peck 
 of corn and three pounds of pork a week, constant servi- 
 tude and confinement to plantation bounds ; nor has he 
 the faintest desire to have his boys sold to a slave trader 
 for a foreign market, his daughter to the city underworld, 
 or his wife prostituted by some brutal overseer. Not for 
 a second would we have any of these things again occur. 
 
 Then why does he say, "I was better off in slavery?" 
 Simply for this reason : centuries of life as a slave, the 
 horrors of the Ku Klux Klan, and fifty years as a f reed- 
 man have taught him he gets along with the white man 
 much better when he agrees with him. He is keen enough 
 to know there is not the slightest danger of his again be- 
 ing made a slave ; he has found out the Southern people 
 
298 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 like to hear his song and as they like to hear it and it 
 costs nothing to sing it, it is entirely inside the scope of 
 the negro's philosophy to give it to them, especially when 
 an expected favor or generous tip may be forthcoming at 
 the end of the melody. 
 
 I have spent so much time in the South that I am 
 sometimes taken for a Southerner. One day a young 
 colored dandy picked me up on the dock at Mobile and 
 started the music. He had evidently sized me up as a 
 planter from up the river, and calculated to sing a dollar 
 or two out of me. "Fo de lub of ole times, Boss." The 
 fellow was young, better dressed than I, and apparently 
 never had done an honest day's work in his life. I list- 
 ened until an old negro who had evidently been a slave 
 was passing, when I stopped him, saying, "See here, 
 Uncle, this young chap says you negroes were better off 
 as slaves than now when free. I guess you have been a 
 slave, what do you think about it?" The old man turned 
 in scorn to the young blood, and replied : "Dat blamed 
 fool, coffee-colored nigger don't know wat he talking 
 about. Snake dem fancy clos off him ; put him in an ol 
 plantation suit, and git ma ol massa's oberseer arter him 
 and he change his tune mighty quick sure!' 
 
 The fact is, neither the Northerner nor the Southerner 
 can stand cross-examination upon this subject. Should 
 you commence to ask them what phase of slavery the 
 negro is especially anxious to return to, they immediately 
 hedge by saying, "Oh, we don't mean whipping and keep- 
 ing them in ignorance and selling them — that was all 
 wrong; we mean their personal, physical condition." In 
 other words, they mean slavery without force, without 
 ignorance, without barter and sale — an absolute impos- 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 299 
 
 sibility. As well might you expect to have the Christian 
 religion without Christ as slavery without those three 
 
 elements. 
 
 Then again, should the negro voluntarily desire to 
 remain a slave, the absence of any motive to constrain his 
 acts would so ruin his economic value that John Ran- 
 dolph's ultimatum would come true, "If the negro did not 
 run away from his master, the master would have to run 
 away from his slave." 
 
 But for argument's sake, we will admit the impossible 
 and try to compare two conditions that are really incom- 
 parable. The slaves were practically divided into two 
 classes — house servants and field hands. The house serv- 
 ants were the aristocracy of the race; the brighter, more 
 intelligent, and more reliable. But they had no wages, 
 must be in constant attendance on the master or mistress, 
 and were under constant control. They ate the remains 
 from their owner's table, — which without doubt was 
 plenty — dressed in cast off clothes, often little worn and 
 very fine. As a rule they had no private rooms in the 
 main house or elsewhere, but slept in halls and passages 
 or in outbuildings. They could not leave the house with- 
 out permission, or be out of town at any time or in town 
 after curfew without a written pass. Compare that con- 
 dition with the negro aristocracy of today : the educated 
 and successful lawyers, doctors, ministers, teachers, busi- 
 ness men, and expert mechanics, with their homes and 
 families around them, all free to go where pleasure might 
 suggest or business dictate. It requires no argument to 
 decide these freemen have infinitely more of personal 
 comfort and intellectual satisfaction in life, to say noth- 
 ing of liberty and possession of family and property. 
 
300 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Take the field hands as compared with the wage-earn- 
 ers of today. Each week the field hand was given a peck 
 of corn and three pounds of salt pork, which in ordinary 
 times would not cost more than seventy-five cents, and 
 during the year, clothing that would cost not over twelve 
 dollars — statistics quoted elsewhere say eight. This 
 would make his weekly wages less than a dollar a week, 
 which agrees with actual experience elsewhere shown. 
 In ordinary times, he now earns as a freedman from one 
 to three dollars a day, and in these present war times 
 from two to five dollars a day. Again, with the wage 
 worker as with the house servant, there appears a condi- 
 tion that requires no debate to establish his present 
 incalculably superior condition. I never found a black 
 man honestly speaking who did not say it was foolish 
 to consider otherwise. 
 
 A successful business man, born a slave in Virginia, 
 sold and sent to Texas, who had worked upon plantations 
 and also had been a house servant, told me "an ordinary 
 wage worker in the city today is ten times better off than 
 a plantation slave of the past" ; also "the condition of the 
 higher and more intelligent portion of the negroes now 
 is so far above that of house servants that no comparison 
 could be made." 
 
 A retired negro preacher said that he was a slave, 
 full-grown, when emancipation came. He was a house 
 servant for a while, then hired his time of his master and 
 worked for a firm of negro traders who bought slaves in 
 Virginia and sold them in the Southwest. He had seen 
 slavery in all its forms, and he stoutly asserted that house 
 servants were the best used of all slaves, yet a negro in 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 301 
 
 the lowest industrial position, a daily wage earner, is 
 today ten times better off in every way than such house 
 servants though privileged as they were. 
 
 Both these men told me that they never heard a negro 
 say when talking frankly among themselves that they 
 were in any way better off as slaves. 
 
 The principal of the colored high school at San 
 Antonio was surprised when I asked him the question, 
 and refused to believe there were any people who even 
 thought slaves were better off in any respect than frced- 
 men; I had to prove by instances and facts of such opin- 
 ion before I could make him believe I was in earnest. 
 Then he said, very indignantly, "The idea is preposterous 
 and has no foundation whatever in fact." 
 
 Another man, principal of a graded school, said, "I 
 have taught and been constantly with negroes twenty- 
 nine years, in country and city, sometimes where the 
 whites persecuted the blacks almost unbearably, but I 
 never heard a negro say he was in any respect better off 
 as a slave." 
 
 The last resort of those who believe the slave was 
 better off than the freedman is to admit, as they are 
 compelled to, that the negroes who have won professions, 
 or are teaching, or in paying business, or even wage 
 earners, are better off; but they insist that they are im- 
 provident, do not save their money, and when they get 
 old they have no one to care for them now as when in 
 slavery. However little money the freedman may save, 
 he certainly accumulates more than he did in slavery, and 
 I think I have shown that the care and assistance the 
 negro people mutually give each other is more abundant 
 
302 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and far preferable to the doled and uncertain sustenance 
 of their former owners. If I have not made my argument 
 clear allow me to call some expert evidence. 
 
 She was hobbling through the street of San Antonio, 
 gray-haired, bent double with age, crippled, but her eye 
 was keen and her mind alert. 
 
 "How old are you, Auntie?" I asked. 
 
 "Lawsy, child! I'se near a hundred," she replied — a 
 favorite age for an old darkey. 
 
 "Where were you born?" 
 
 "In ol Kentuck, Massa." 
 
 "Then you have been a slave?" 
 
 "Yes, Massa, many, many years." 
 
 "Were you a field hand or a house servant?" 
 
 "I war a field han' until I boke my shoulder, thar, as 
 you see, den I war in de house." 
 
 "Now, Auntie, I am one of those 'Yanks' who came 
 down here and helped set you free, and now people up 
 North are telling me that you were better off as slaves. I 
 want to know what you think. Was it a good or a poor 
 job done when you were set free?" 
 
 "Law, Massa! It was a mighty good job — a mighty 
 good job; I can't tell how good it was cause wes free 
 now." 
 
 "Yes, I understand that, Auntie ; nobody can buy and 
 sell you, but we will pass that by ; I want to know about 
 your personal comforts. Do you darkies as a whole have 
 more or less to eat than you had as slaves?" 
 
 "We gets lots mo' to eat and its better dan de ration 
 of pork and corn we had on de plantation." 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 303 
 
 "How about clothes ; are they better or poorer ?" 
 
 "Law, Massa, dey ar lots better now dan den." 
 
 "Now, Auntie, I don't mind what you darkies tell to 
 the white people, but when darkies talk among them- 
 selves, did you ever hear any of them say that they were 
 better off when slaves than when free?" 
 
 "Nebber, sir, nebber, and a darky would be a low 
 down, no count, crazy nigger who would say so." 
 
 And having so expressed her utmost scorn at the 
 foolish idea, she hobbled away. This was what might be 
 called "expert evidence" on that question; it certainly is 
 not hearsay. She had been helpless and sick both as a 
 slave and a free woman, and was fully qualified to 
 testify. 
 
 Here is another person also fully able to qualify as 
 a witness. She was over seventy years old, living in St. 
 Louis. She said: "I was a pretty well-grown girl at 
 emancipation. I was a house servant in Nashville, Ten- 
 nessee. House servants did not have rooms to them- 
 selves, but slept on the floor, in halls, or outside rooms. 
 I am a great deal better off now. Although it is some- 
 times hard to work to get things to eat and wear, I have 
 more than I would get as a slave, to say nothing of being 
 my own boss and not being in danger of a whipping at 
 the whim of some one else. Anyone who says a negro 
 was better off as a slave is a fool. He better go 'way 
 back and sit down." 
 
 I could fill a volume with such interviews were it 
 desirable, but they would all be testimony to the same 
 condition — a needless repetition. The epitome of the 
 
304 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 whole may be condensed into this : In all my investigation 
 I have never met a negro who sincerely said or thought 
 he was better off in any respect in slavery than in freedom, 
 and I have never met one who had heard another negro 
 honestly express that idea. The whole proposition is 
 false : the black man is incomparably better off as a f reed- 
 man. He is not falling into barbarism; he is rising into 
 civilization, very slowly at first, but now with increas- 
 ing rapidity. 
 
 Whether we like it or not, the negro is with us to 
 stay. He is too numerous to send away to any foreign 
 land even if he wanted to go, and he does not wish to 
 leave us, nor — to tell the truth — do we desire to have 
 him; we need his brawn and his strength as much as he 
 our brain and wealth. The South has learned to live 
 with him as a freeman who has rights they are bound 
 to respect. It is now helping him educationally and ma- 
 terially, and they are pulling together so harmoniously 
 and effectively that the North will have to look to its 
 laurels or the South will take industrial supremacy away 
 from it. 
 
 Those who have worked the longest with the negro, 
 and have done the most to help him, have the greatest 
 confidence in, and hope for, his ultimate success. 
 
 In the greater part of the South he is now given a 
 chance for education, is permitted an equal opportunity 
 to work for a living and to save and expend his earnings 
 as he sees fit. So long as this condition continues — and 
 I believe it will to an increasing degree — I have no fear 
 but that the negro will become an essential part of our 
 nation. 
 
THE FREEING OF THE NEGRO 305 
 
 He will not become so by amalgamation or social con- 
 solidation — that is desired by neither race — but as a com- 
 plement of, a factor in, our growing nation that will carry 
 it to its assured future greatness. Such was the hope of 
 the great leader of the black race, Booker T. Washington, 
 and such, I devoutly trust, may be the fruition of his 
 life-long desire. 
 
PART IV 
 
 SOME 
 FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 
 
SOME MX DINGS OF THREE WARS 3<>J 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 Section I. Its Opening and Civil Conditions 
 
 Like the bursting of a thunder-storm on a level plain, 
 like the whirl of a cyclone on a pleasant day, like the 
 downpour of a cloudburst in a mountain canyon, came 
 the Civil War to the people of the North. I was twenty 
 years old when it happened ; I was teaching school and 
 was reasonably well versed in the affairs of my country. 
 But, like my friends and neighbors, I did not expect such 
 a calamity. Of course we knew that the Southern people 
 had objected to the Missouri Compromise, because it pre- 
 vented them from taking their slaves to the territory 
 north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes. We realized that 
 the Southern states had complained with more or less 
 reason of losing their negroes by their running away to 
 the North, and we had good reason to remember that 
 they had, at one time, violently opposed our protective 
 tariff laws, because they had no factories to be benefited. 
 
 But all these wrongs, real or imagined, we supposed 
 had been set right. The tariff had been reduced nearly 
 to a revenue basis, and no opposition had we heard from 
 our Southern brothers on that score for years. The Mis- 
 souri Compromise had been declared unconstitutional by 
 the "Dred Scott Decision." "Fugitive Slave Laws" had 
 been passed, permitting slave-holders to follow their 
 slaves to any Northern city, hamlet, or farm, and re- 
 quiring any Northern man, regardless of sympathy, to 
 aid the master and refrain from helping the slaves. What 
 more could be done to satisfy our Southern brothers ? 
 
310 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 History had told us that the South, through the 
 Democratic party which it controlled, had for years held 
 possession of all the branches of government — legislative, 
 judicial, executive; and for nearly half a century only 
 such men as it endorsed could hold any appointive office, 
 either in the United States or as minister to any foreign 
 court, or consul to any commercial city abroad. All this 
 being true, why should any Southern state want to se- 
 cede ? It was preposterous : we could not believe it. 
 
 To make our assurance doubly sure, we remembered 
 that once before, in 1832, South Carolina had tried 
 secession, under the name of nullification, and a president 
 of her own nativity and choice had told her in no un- 
 certain terms, that, ' k by the Eternal, the Union must and 
 should be maintained." Surely, Andrew Jackson was 
 good authority for any Southern Democrat, and that 
 ought to settle the matter. 
 
 But there were three things that the Northern people 
 did not know, or, knowing, did not consider : First, that 
 the Southern people deemed the states supreme, and the 
 general government only an agent therefor. Second, that 
 they had been watching politics more closely than we of 
 the North, and that they foresaw, clearer than we, a time 
 coming when their supposed agent, the United States, 
 would not be as subservient to them as in the past. Third, 
 that their leaders had seen a vision of a great slave- 
 ocracy, composed of the slave states of the South, 
 together with Cuba, Nicaragua, and perhaps Mexico, 
 wherein the the slave owner should reign supreme, 
 untroubled by abolition ideas, and unvexed by any negro 
 uplift work. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 311 
 
 Already it was a Southern slogan, "Cuba must be an- 
 nexed," willingly or unwillingly, and Nicaragua had 
 already been invaded by filibusters like "Walker's men," 
 -nine of whom I knew well. These men, unchallenged 
 by our administration, had at one time gained control of 
 that country, annulled its free constitution, and made it 
 a slave nation. These leaders and dreamers of the South 
 joyfully hailed the separation from the North as the first 
 long step in the direction of their desire. 
 
 Meanwhile we of the North, lulled in the. arms of 
 ignorance and confidence, slept while the South was ap- 
 propriating our forts, arsenals, and arms, and was vigo- 
 rously drilling her men preparatory to active war. It was 
 not until the 12th and 13th of April, 1861, when the rebel 
 batteries at Fort Moultrie, Cummings Point, and Castle 
 Pinckney were pouring their devastating shower of 
 cannon ball, bursting shell, and red-hot shot upon our 
 little band of Union men, at Fort Sumter, who under 
 this fearful storm and amid the flames of their own burn- 
 ing barracks refused to surrender. Not until then, while 
 millions of people in the North stood at the telegraph 
 offices listening to the hourly reports of that tragic event, 
 were we at last convinced that there was war in the 
 land — war with all its terror, all its costs, and all its 
 death toll. Braving the issue, we immediately set about 
 preparing for it. 
 
 The indignation over the insult to our flag and the 
 determination to sustain the Union were at the North as 
 general as our previous apathy and doubt had been 
 dilatory and slothful. President Lincoln immediately 
 called for seventy-five thousand men, who were promptly 
 
312 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tendered by the states many times over. But even yet 
 the magnitude of the strife that was before us was not 
 conceived. Our thought was that these seventy-five 
 thousand men — the largest army ever mustered on this 
 continent — would march irresistibly to Richmond and 
 return with everything properly settled within the three 
 months for which they were enlisted. We even called our 
 later-time hero, W. T. Sherman, crazy and he was dis- 
 credited in the service because he understood conditions 
 at the South and foresaw more correctly the size of the 
 war to come. We still thought that to re-establish the 
 Union was a picnic job, and that no serious fighting would 
 be involved. 
 
 But the nation was doomed to a rude awakening. 
 The awakening came on the 21st day of July, 1861, about 
 three o'clock p. m., from the top of Henry House hill. 
 It was the culmination of a battle-field that had been well 
 planned, gallantly conducted, and, up to that time, vic- 
 toriously fought. Then and there Generals Kerby Smith 
 and J. A. Earle brought their two fresh Confederate 
 brigades upon the flank of our Union boys, who had then 
 been marching and fighting since 2 130 o'clock that morn- 
 ing, and changed the apparent victory of Bull Run into a 
 dire defeat — a defeat that afterwards grew into causeless 
 and shameful panic. It was a panic such as any troops 
 not yet ninety days in service might at any time be sub- 
 ject to, but a panic that did not extend to the units of 
 the regular army and older organizations. It was a dis- 
 organization that the victorious enemy was not entirely 
 exempt from, for even General Johnston, their com- 
 mander says, "Our army was more disorganized by vic- 
 tory than the United States by defeat." 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 313 
 
 The nation at first stood paralyzed by surprise. But 
 the next day when Congress answered that defeat by 
 authorizing the mobilization of 500,000 men, and Lincoln, 
 in conformity thereto, called out three hundred thousand, 
 it was ready. From all over the North, from Maine to 
 California, from field and workshop, from schoolhouse 
 and office and store, from all trades and all professions 
 came the answer, "We are coming, Father Abraham, six 
 hundred thousand more." During the coming long war, 
 this song rang over the land again and again, until more 
 than three times six hundred thousand men went to the 
 front. 
 
 The day after the news of the battle of Bull Run 
 came, I enlisted, like thousands of other young men. 
 The excitement was intense everywhere. Not a city was 
 so large nor a village so small that it did not have the 
 flag flying and the fife and drum calling recruits to the 
 standard. Nothing in the Great War anywhere ap- 
 proached it. 
 
 The conditions of organization in the two wars were 
 different, and methods of assembling diverse. In the 
 Civil War the volunteer was the rule, and the drafted 
 man the exception. In the Great War, the drafted man 
 was the rule and the volunteer the exception. In the first 
 war each town or village, without any outside aid, 
 gathered its own men who elected their own officers be- 
 fore starting and became a complete smaller or larger 
 unit before leaving their own home. 
 
 In the Great War the recruiting or drafting officer of 
 the general government took the recruits as fast as they 
 volunteered, or were selected, to some general rendez- 
 
314 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 vous. There they were placed in units as required and 
 given such officers as the government designated, without 
 regard to the desires of the men or where they came 
 from. Even brothers might be placed in different units. 
 
 It can readily be seen that the Civil War method 
 would cause the more enthusiasm, and bring forth the 
 greater show of patriotism. Combine a circus, a general 
 election, and a Fourth of July celebration into one demon- 
 stration, and it might somewhere nearly approach the 
 appearance and excitement of an average town where 
 several companies were being recruited at the same time. 
 The flying colors, the martial music, the strenuous recruit- 
 ing method, and the lavish expenditures of would-be 
 officers, together with the efforts of "their wives, their 
 sisters, their cousins, and their aunts" to induce the 
 boys, first to enlist, and then to join the right companies, 
 made a scene never before equaled in the history of this 
 nation, and, owing to our present better methods, never 
 to be seen again. 
 
 It was fitting and certain that the departure of such 
 units, enlisted, organized and officered at the home town, 
 would be a formal and ever memorable event. All the 
 town participated, and the boys in such leave-taking were 
 sent away with much feasting, many speeches, loud 
 cheers, and in a blaze of glory that conditions did not 
 permit in our late war. 
 
 But the home partings — sons from parents, husbands 
 from wives, brothers from sisters, and nearest one from 
 dearest ones, partings that "took the life from out young 
 hearts" — were as full of sadness and forboding in one 
 war as in the other. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 315 
 
 hi both wars there were millions of homes in which 
 there were such partings. But this difference obtained: 
 there were, in the North alone, tlirice as many homes 
 desolated in the first war as in the last. There were, by 
 government statistics, over three times as many men in the 
 Civil war who did not return as in the Great War ; three 
 times as many hearts broken; three times as many vacant 
 chairs ; three times as many graves to decorate. But what 
 was the comparative cost of the two wars to the home 
 circle! Three times as many men died from less than 
 one-third as great a population — making over nine times 
 as great pro rata loss. Only he who, like myself, has 
 lived through both conflicts can realize the relative mag- 
 nitude. 
 
 How anxious we new recruits were to get to the 
 front! The cars did not run fast enough, the boats that 
 carried us were too slow, the camps of instruction held 
 us too long. We were afraid the war would end before 
 we had a hand in it. We had not the slightest conception 
 of the magnitude of the struggle upon which we were 
 entering; I am certain I had not. When I called my 
 pupils that last morning and told them that school was 
 dismissed for I was going to the war, and then turned 
 my back and fled from the sobbing children, I had not 
 the slightest idea that four and a half years would elapse 
 before I should return, and that upon my discharge 
 would be. certified twenty-seven battles and skirmishes in 
 which I had been personally engaged. 
 
 What a mob there was of us when we got together in 
 camp ! The depth of our ignorance in military matters 
 would be difficult to comprehend by a person of this day. 
 "Coxey's Army" which marched upon Washington in 
 
316 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the last years of the past century, was a disciplined organ- 
 ization alongside of us. Between a colonel and a corp- 
 oral we hardly knew which one outranked, and the worst 
 of it was we did not especially see the necessity of know- 
 ing. This dense ignorance would have been amusing if 
 it had not been tragic. 
 
 Think of it ! These thousands of young men, the pick 
 of the country, honest, patriotic, with their lives in their 
 hands, and willing to give those lives for their country, 
 went into battle, "the blind leading the blind" into those 
 "Bull Runs" of death and disaster, big and little, that 
 dotted our long battle line during the first year and a half 
 of the Civil War. All because the North was so peace- 
 fully inclined that she had ceased preparing for war and 
 had ridiculed our old New England training-days out of 
 existence. 
 
 The South, on the other hand, had retained its mili- 
 tary traditions and habits, and when the war came it had 
 a much greater nucleus of trained and semi-trained men 
 upon which to build their army than we of the North. 
 This great advantage on the Southern side decided many 
 results, especially in the early part of the conflict, 
 
 In talking to me of those days of disunion and seces- 
 sion, a young man not long ago said, "I suppose, Mr. 
 Burnap, every one in the North was loyal at that time." 
 The young man was wrong, but he voiced the idea cur- 
 rent among the younger generation today, an idea born 
 and perpetuated in their minds by careless or ignorant 
 writers and teachers upon that subject. Even within the 
 last few days I have encountered this error in two stand- 
 ard works. One, written on the question of secession 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 317 
 
 from the Southern viewpoint, says, "South Carolina and 
 the South rose as one man." The other, from a North- 
 ern outlook, says : "The effect produced by the capture of 
 Fort Sumter was instantaneous and universal." Both 
 writers were wrong, as everyone knows who is old 
 enough to remember those times. Neither the North nor 
 the South was unanimous either for or against the war. 
 
 Consider the case of the South. She had two distinct 
 classes of white citizens. First, the large planters and 
 those connected with their interests ; these resided largely 
 in the level lands and fertile valleys. Second, the so 
 called "poor white trash," who lived to a great extent in 
 the mountain districts of the Alleghanies in Virginia, the 
 Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 
 in the East, and the Ozarks in Missouri and Arkansas in 
 the West. 
 
 These mountains extend their rolling hills much 
 farther than any of our atlases begin to show, and the 
 people who inhabit them constituted a very large part of 
 the population of these states, three-fourths, Burgess says 
 — and they had no love for either slavery or slave 
 institutions. These so-called "crackers" were not the 
 worthless, degenerate scum of the earth that they are 
 usually painted. They were mainly a mixture of Scotch- 
 Irish and Huguenot stock, with perhaps a dash of 
 British, Swiss, and Welsh. They had remained poor, 
 ignorant, and uncouth, not from any inherited disability 
 to be otherwise, but because in their isolation and inde- 
 pendence they had grown to disdain the things by us 
 called better. Many a "cracker" father, as proud and 
 haughty as the old Earl Douglas in Marmion, could say 
 so far as education is concerned: 
 
318 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 "Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine, 
 Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line; 
 So swore I, and I swear it still, 
 Let my boy-bishop, fret his fill/' 
 
 These hunters and rifle dead shots of the mountains, 
 like the mail-clad warriors of old, looked upon letters as 
 needless accomplishments, not as things to be desired, 
 but as feminine and priestly attainments to be avoided; 
 for stalwart men had more important work to do. 
 
 While the Puritans of New England had been build- 
 ing up New York, Ohio, and the Northern Northwest, 
 these English dissenters, Scotch Covenanters, and 
 Huguenot refugees — certainly the Calvinist Puritans of 
 the South — had sent their children down the western 
 slope of the Alleghany mountains, and populated Ten- 
 nessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and southern 
 Indiana and Illinois. No better men were ever given a 
 great work, and they became, in the main, uneducated 
 and unpolished, not because they lacked ability, but be- 
 cause they could not see how learning and art would help 
 them fight the Indians, or clear their land, or raise their 
 crops. General O. O. Howard, who commanded the 
 right wing of Sherman's army from "Atlanta to the 
 Sea" became interested in these mountaineers, and after 
 the war closed, engaged in promoting schools for them. 
 He told me that pupils from these institutions would 
 compare favorably with any in the land. 
 
 The presidential chair at Washington can also give 
 testimony to this fact ; at least three of its occupants have 
 come from these people and their environment. Andrew 
 Jackson was born in a small log cabin in a locality so 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 319 
 
 little noted it is uncertain on which side of the line be- 
 tween the two Carolinas it stood. His book education 
 "consisted of hardly more than the three R's," "and 
 even in that limited sphere his attainments were not 
 large." Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin in the 
 state of Kentucky, was mainly self-educated, his father 
 could neither read nor write except to scrawl his name. 
 Andrew Johnson learned to read and write from his wife 
 after he was married. He was very poor as a boy, and 
 his father was unknown. Whatever else can be said of 
 these men, no one can accuse them of lack of native talent. 
 
 These mountain whites would have made themselves 
 far more strongly felt in secession times than they did 
 had it not been their habit to leave politics to the planters, 
 and had not the John Brown raid upon Harper's Ferry 
 led them to fear a negro insurrection in case the North 
 succeeded. 
 
 As it was, all things considered, they accomplished 
 wonders. They split Virginia into two parts, and 
 founded the State of West Virginia. Despite the seces- 
 sion executives of Kentucky and Missouri, they kept 
 these states both in the Union; and in Tennessee, the 
 Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi they were 
 a veritable "thorn in the flesh" to the Confederate govern- 
 ment. They furnished thousands of individual men and 
 many complete regiments to the Union Army. Surely 
 that is a long way from the statement that "South Caro- 
 lina and the South rose as one man." 
 
 This matter with me is no "hearsay evidence." Prob- 
 ably few men now living can testify to the actual facts in 
 this case with more personal knowledge than I. For 
 
320 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 years my regiment served alongside of military units 
 composed of men whose homes were in this part of the 
 South, and it fought and campaigned through the most of 
 the states mentioned. From individual observation and 
 conversation with these people, both then and later, I 
 know for a certainty something of what they did and 
 suffered. 
 
 We laud a young man who in the excitement of an 
 enlistment campaign, with every inducement of future 
 emoluments, present renown, and urged by the smiles of 
 .his girl friends, volunteers in his country's cause, and it 
 is well we should do so. But what greater praise should 
 that one deserve, who, braving the scorn of the ruling 
 class of his town and section, and sacrificing his hopes 
 for future recognition and advancement therein, shall, at 
 the risk of his life, hiding days and traveling nights, 
 without shelter or food, walk hundreds of miles for the 
 same purpose. Yet that was what thousands of these 
 Southern "crackers" did. 
 
 The devices these men found to keep out of the con- 
 federate army were many and ingenious. When scouting 
 through their country, as elsewhere in the South, we 
 found no able-bodied men at home; but here, in place of 
 their being in the rebel army, they were "Greenwood 
 Volunteers." They were hid out in the mountains to 
 escape the conscript officers. When the women were told 
 that we might remain in their locality for several days, 
 "grape vine despatches" were sent out and the men ap- 
 peared for a short visit at their own homes, but the 
 moment we left they again vanished. Here the Con- 
 federate conscripting officer's outfit required a pack of 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 321 
 
 bloodhounds and a strong force of men — the hounds to 
 find the men, and the force to capture them when found. 
 Of what value men so recruited were I have my doubts, 
 but I do know that during the war many such deserted 
 from the Confederates and came to us. 
 
 This devotion and sacrifice of the Union men of the 
 South is little understood, and many times is so com- 
 pletely misrepresented, that I cannot refrain from corro- 
 borating what I have said by making extracts from the 
 modestly-told story of L. H. Naron, or "Chickasaw" as 
 he was known to our army. Chickasaw was so named 
 for the county of Mississippi from which he came. At 
 one time he was connected with the same cavalry corps 
 headquarters where I served for one year ; he as chief of 
 spies and scouts, while I was in charge of the Adjutant 
 General's office and commanded the orderlies. 
 
 He was known and absolutely trusted by Generals 
 Sherman, Pope, Rosecrans, Dodge, and others, who com- 
 manded in that department at various times. His reports 
 of the positions and activities of the enemy, as ascer- 
 tained by personal investigation by himself or subordi- 
 nates, was always believed and acted upon — once only 
 excepted. This exception was when he first came to us 
 from the South and reported to General Sherman at 
 Pittsburg Landing that the rebels were moving upon him 
 in full force. Sherman did not believe him, and the 
 disaster of that first day's battle at that place was the 
 result. 
 
 After that, during three years' active and nearly con- 
 tinual service with our army, his report was never 
 doubted. lie told his experiences to a comrade of mine, 
 
322 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Sergt. R. W. Surby, of 7th Illinois Cavalry, who pub- 
 lished them in 1865, and from that publication I make 
 extracts. Every word between quotation marks is 
 "Chickasaw's," and may be relied upon, for the whole 
 army, time and again, risked death or disaster upon his 
 veracity, and never were deceived. Remember the 
 astonishing fact that in the quotations presented the nar- 
 rator is talking of Chickasaw County, Mississippi, almost 
 the center of the Confederacy. 
 
 "In the spring of 1861 I secretly organized three 
 hundred Union men in Mississippi, with the promise of 
 nine hundred more, making a full regiment. It was my 
 intention, at that time, to place the regiment at the serv- 
 ice of Governor Pettis, of Mississippi, for the purpose of 
 enforcing the state of South Carolina to adhere to the 
 Union. Some six weeks afterward an answer was re- 
 ceived from Governor Pettis, saying he would accept our 
 services to the gallows." What a surprise this may be to 
 some! A Union regiment raised not far from Central 
 Mississippi and tendered to its government to crush out 
 the rebellion! 
 
 "The Governor soon found it necessary to organize 
 a Vigilance Committee for the purpose of subduing the 
 strong Union feeling then rising in that part of the state. 
 The manner in which this committee was formed was 
 as follows : the Governor appoined the probate clerk of 
 each county to act as president of the county committee, 
 which consisted of twelve men; the probate clerks ap- 
 pointed five sub-presidents, to act in their respective dis- 
 tricts, and take cognizance of all the acts and words 
 of the people, and report the same to the president — 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 323 
 
 probate clerk. The first proceeding of this committee 
 was — under pretense that the Confederate government 
 needed all the arms in the country to be placed at the 
 disposal of volunteers in the field — to issue an order for 
 citizens to turn over, at the county seat, all arms in their 
 possession, for which they would receive receipts. The 
 committee then seized upon all • the ammunition in the 
 stores throughout the country." Note the successful plan 
 to disarm all Union men and deprive them of ammuni- 
 tion. 
 
 "Some two weeks after this, one of my friends had 
 business in town, and upon arriving he learned there was 
 a company formed for the Confederate army. He was 
 so nearly beaten to death by some of said company that 
 he had to be carried home. Shortly after this, the com- 
 pany in town was ordered to leave and rendezvous at 
 West Point. The majority of them concluded it would 
 not be safe to leave behind them myself and friends, all 
 of whom they threatened to hang, calling us d — d aboli- 
 tionists." This method of converting Union men to seces- 
 sionists was not special in Chickasaw County or to Mis- 
 sissippi — it was general all over the South. 
 
 "I will here mention that at this time no citizen could 
 travel a short distance without a pass from the president 
 of the committee of his district, and no one could travel 
 a long distance without a pass from the probate clerk of 
 the county, with the county seal affixed to it, and no man 
 suspected of Union sentiments could obtain one." The 
 union people now were not only disarmed, but practically 
 confined, and prevented from communication with the 
 North. 
 
324 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 'The threats of hanging were now put in force ; two 
 of my best friends, more innocent than myself, were 
 hanged, but, thank God, I escaped. This naturally created 
 great excitement, and some of the most resolute Union 
 men expressed their opinion that now was the time — they 
 must fight. We met and counseled together, but our con- 
 dition was such that it was not deemed advisable to com- 
 mence fighting. We possessed but few arms and a scant 
 supply of ammunition, with no prospect of obtaining 
 more in the country, and no means of communication by 
 telegraph or railroad with our friends abroad. We con- 
 sidered our case desperate." This was the unfortunate 
 condition of nearly all the mountain districts of the 
 South. Could any position be more helpless ? 
 
 "People were wild with excitement and loudly pro- 
 claimed that every d — d Tory must hang. A number of 
 my nearest friends, who at one time flocked together be- 
 neath my banner, afterwards joined the Confederate 
 army, to save themselves (they say) from disgrace or 
 the hemp." Can anyone blame them when you consider 
 that these men, not only had their own lives at stake, but 
 the safety of their wives, their children, and their prop- 
 erty? 
 
 "I lost all hope of raising a force, or maintaining the 
 Union at home. In the meantime, two companies had 
 been raised for the Confederate cause, and I was offered 
 a commission which would place me in command of 
 either one. I rejected the offer, telling them I would not, 
 for any consideration, aid by any act of mine the bogus 
 Confederacy. Every previous confidence was lost, and 
 every man doubted his neighbor." Chickasaw was a 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 325 
 
 Mexican War veteran ; the Confederates wanted his serv- 
 ices and were trying to buy him ; his brother was a Con- 
 federate and did take command of one of these com- 
 panies. 
 
 "They (the rebels) swore that I could not reside in 
 the country ; that I must die." "A few weeks after this, 
 on returning home one evening, about dusk, and while in 
 my stable lot, putting up my horse, I found myself sur- 
 rounded by a body of armed men, who ordered me to 
 surrender. I recognized among them a few members of 
 the Vigilant Committee. They at once ordered me to 
 
 accompany them to the town of A , stating that I 
 
 should there appear before the Vigilant Committee. I 
 asked permision to go to the house, but, no, I must go 
 with them. After proceeding about a half mile we came 
 to a halt, when one of them remarked that 'here was the 
 place and there was the tree,' and all the committee that 
 was required was here. ,, "A portion of them rushed at 
 me with a rope, shouting, with loud oaths, Let us hang 
 him ! Let us hang him ! I said, 'Stand back, gentlemen, 
 I want to speak. I have taken an oath to support the 
 Union, this government, which every man has to do that 
 holds either civil or military office, and he who violates 
 it is guilty of perjury. Now, I have said all I want to 
 say. You can hang me or let me go.' 
 
 "This speech somewhat cooled their anger, and, with 
 the exception of a few, they desired to let me escape this 
 time, but reminded me I was not safe by any means — 
 that they intended to kill me." This was after he had 
 refused to take command of one of the Confederate 
 companies. 
 
326 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 As showing how the Confederates created sentiment 
 by false reports and false statements, note the following. 
 He was at one time asked, "Now, sir ; suppose the North- 
 ern army should come down here and commence con- 
 fiscating our negroes and our property, killing our chil- 
 dren, and ravishing our wives, would you fight them?' 
 
 "I replied, I would, most certainly. 
 
 "He continued : 'Then why not fight them now ? They 
 have commenced it already, both in Baltimore and St. 
 Louis.' 
 
 "I said, 'Gentlemen, I do not believe it — we have no 
 proof of it.' *** Matters went along very quietly with 
 me for a few weeks, when I was cautioned by a few 
 friends to be on my guard — that four of my most bitter 
 enemies were riding about, carrying their guns, watching 
 for an opportunity to shoot me." "Thus matters stood 
 when I concluded to leave home." He did leave home and 
 succeeded in breaking through the Confederate line and 
 reached our army in time to tell General Sherman what 
 the rebels were doing just before the battle of Pittsburgh 
 Landing. After he left his county, his property was 
 taken and destroyed ; his home and buildings burned, and 
 his wife and children made destitute and homeless. More 
 fortunate than most such families, however, they reached 
 our lines and were provided for. These excerpts merely 
 hint at a long, dark, bloody tale of devotion and suffering 
 by Union men all over the mountain regions of the 
 South, that never has been, never can be, and perhaps at 
 this late date, never should be, told. 
 
 The Civil War, both North and South, was carried 
 through by the enthusiasm, devotion, self sacrifice, and 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 327 
 
 real or mistaken patriotism of the majorities, rather than 
 by unanimity of action on either side. The North was 
 no more united than the South. Lincoln was elected by 
 little more than one-third of the popular vote of the whole 
 country (37 per cent) and fully half of the people of the 
 North were not even in sympathy with the principles of 
 the President or his party. 
 
 Had not Stephen A. Douglas, upon the firing upon 
 Fort Sumter, taken immediate and unqualified stand 
 with Lincoln, and insisted that the Union men should be 
 maintained, it never would have survived. Then the 
 Democratic party was split once more into war, or 
 Douglas Democrats, who loyally supported Lincoln, and 
 Peace Democrats, as they called themselves, or ''Copper- 
 heads," as we of the war party preferred to call them. 
 
 No more patriotic or determined men lived than the 
 War Democrats of the North; without them the Union 
 never could have been maintained. Douglas, by throwing 
 his great influence unreservedly on the side of the Union, 
 amply atoned for any wrongs he may have committed by 
 dallying with the South in hopes of the presidency or 
 presenting and pushing to enactment the Kansas-Nebras- 
 ka Bill. He, then, a broken hearted man, lay down and 
 died, but his influence remained with us during the whole 
 conflict. 
 
 Nor was opposition to the vigorous prosecution of the 
 war confined to those who voted against Lincoln. Many 
 who had been his most ardent supporters, like Horace 
 Greeley, with the tremendous influence of his New York 
 Tribune, urged that if any of the Southern states wanted 
 to secede we should "let our erring sisters depart in 
 
328 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 peace." These men, however, after hostilities com- 
 menced, supported the administration unitedly. 
 
 Throughout the conflict for the Union, the West was 
 always its strong supporter, but, knowing the inside facts 
 as I did, I yet shudder to think what might, and but for 
 the War Democrats would have, taken place. 
 
 As the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and 
 Iowa, and the whole of Missouri, had been very largely 
 settled by men from the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, 
 and Tennessee, it was but natural they should be more 
 or less in sympathy with their native states on all ques- 
 tions of the day. There were many places in all these 
 states that were as disloyal as South Carolina, and where 
 it was as unsafe for one to express Union sentiments as 
 it would have been in that state. I know this personally, 
 for even in loyal Iowa, I, as a veteran United States 
 soldier, wearing my blue uniform, and being on furlough, 
 rode through settelments where I was jeered and insulted, 
 and my life even placed in jeopardy. 
 
 In Illinois, in a town near Lincoln's home, sixteen 
 Union soldiers who were home on furloughs were 
 attacked by the Knights of the Golden Circle, in open 
 day and in a crowded court yard, and all but five killed. 
 
 In Indiana, these Southern sympathizers so controlled 
 the legislators that they refused to vote the military sup- 
 plies the Governor requested, and even in Ohio, after 
 Valandingham had been convicted of treason and sent out 
 of the Union lines, disloyalty was so open and outspoken 
 that, though the traitor was in an alien country and could 
 not set his foot on his native land, they dared to run 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 329 
 
 him for governor of the state. To the undying credit of 
 Ohio, he was beaten at the polls by a hundred thousand 
 majority. 
 
 These opposers of the war were confined to no one 
 status in life, to no trade, no profession, no social stand- 
 ard. Even after the seceded states had withdrawn their 
 representatives, the legislative halls at Washington still 
 contained men who did their utmost to discredit and 
 oppose the administration. "Fool jester," "Bloody 
 tyrant," "Gorilla in the White house," "Imbecile," 
 "Despot," were a few of the epithets hurled at President 
 Lincoln both in and out of the halls of Congress. 
 
 As an almost universal rule, the sympathizers with 
 the South were Democrats, mistaken men who would 
 listen to no person outside of their own party. Therefore, 
 such men as Blair of Missouri, Logan and McClernard 
 of Illinois, Morton of Indiana, and thousands of Demo- 
 crats like them, men who, disregarding future civil pro- 
 motion, and many times, social standing, threw party and 
 politics to the wind and ranged themselves under a Re- 
 publican president to help preserve the Union. To these 
 the country owes a debt of gratitude it can never pay ; I, 
 as one, if deemed worthy, wish to lay my humble tribute 
 at their feet. 
 
 John A. Logan, called "Black Jack" by his people, 
 who adored him, was an example of the men I mean. He 
 was from the southern part of Illinois, in the country we 
 then called Egypt, owing to its backward development. 
 His district and the surrounding country seemed certain 
 to side with the seceding states. But "Black Jack" feared 
 neither man nor devil, and breaking allegiance to his 
 
330 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 party, threw himself so unreservedly into the contest that 
 he turned the tide, and no state has a better war record 
 than Illinois. 
 
 I never met Logan during the service, and saw him 
 only once. This was upon an occasion which I shall 
 never forget. It was at the Republican Convention in 
 Chicago, where Grant was first nominated for president. 
 Grant's nomination was a foregone conclusion, and the 
 convention was merely expected to put the stamp of reg- 
 ularity on the almost-universal demand of the Republican 
 party. Such being the case, ambitious delegates from all 
 over the nation had been jumping to their feet at all kinds 
 of out-of-order times, and calling, "Mr. Chairman, I 
 nominate U. S. Grant for president," only to be laughed 
 down by the convention. 
 
 At last, the Committee on Credentials having reported, 
 and the time for nomination having actually arrived, men 
 sprang to their feet from all over the hall, demanding 
 recognition. Then John A. Logan, sitting at the head of 
 the Illinois delegation, arose and throwing back his long, 
 black hair, in the same ringing voice that rallied the re- 
 tiring right wing of our army at Atlanta, where McPher- 
 son was killed, said, "Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of 
 order." This being a privileged question he was given 
 the floor. Then in a manner that only Black Jack could 
 command, he placed Grant in nomination for president. 
 
 The scene that followed is the one that remains with 
 me. This climax had been expected and provided for; 
 pandemonium broke loose; in parquet, balcony, and gal- 
 leries, handkerchiefs, hats, flags and banners were waved, 
 while delegates, visitors and reporters shouted them- 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 331 
 
 selves hoarse. The curtain at the back of the stage was 
 raised and there was displayed a cartoon by Nast that 
 rilled the whole space; while red, white, and blue doves 
 were liberated, to fly around the auditorium as emblems 
 of the nominee's never-dying words, "Let us have Peace." 
 
 Section II. — The Campaign of 1861 
 
 I have not time, space, ability nor desire to write a 
 history of the Civil War, its battles, its generals, or its 
 events. Such a work would require the labor of a life- 
 time and the ability of a superman. The chronological 
 list of battles as compiled by the government contains the 
 names of over twenty-two hundred engagements ; and the 
 Pension Bureau, demanding closer and more particular 
 information and noting smaller affairs, is said to have an 
 alphabetical list of battles, minor conflicts, and skirmishes 
 deemed worthy of note, reaching the incredible number of 
 over six thousand eight hundred separate events. What 
 an immense library these completed stories would make! 
 
 What I shall try to do will be to present an epitome 
 of the strategy of the war as I understand it, and en- 
 deavor to illustrate it by an outline map. This appeal 
 to the eye will note the deciding battles of each season's 
 campaign, and also thereon will be marked the Con- 
 federate defensive lines of battle at the commencement of 
 the war, July, 1861, and the close of each year's cam- 
 paign. My text I have tried to make brief but sufficiently 
 explicit so that any one may understand what the ob- 
 jectives of each year's campaign were, and decide how 
 much or how little of each yearly purpose was accom- 
 plished. 
 
332 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME • 
 
 This method has triple advantage : First, it will present 
 the history of that war to the eye more than to the ear. 
 Second, I hope in this way to give a more satisfactory 
 and comprehensive view of the great events there shown. 
 Third, it will allow me to tell more easily the personal 
 story of my regiment, and where and how it tried to do 
 its little part in the war for the Union. Mine was a 
 cavalry regiment. Should I linger in relating its history 
 it will be because this part of the army has now been 
 superseded by the aeroplane and motor, and I wish here 
 to record some memories of the organization, life, and 
 exploits of this gallant and dashing by-gone service. 
 
 To facilitate the text and the map in their joint ex- 
 planation of the various movements, I have placed num- 
 bers in each that refer the one to the other. It is impos- 
 sible to draw these strategic lines to any scale or with any 
 certainty, because they were constantly wavering during 
 each season and there would have been differences of 
 opinion between the contestants as to exactly where these 
 lines lay at any one time, but I am certain they are 
 sufficiently near their proper places to convey to the 
 reader the correct information regarding the yearly ob- 
 jectives won or lost. 
 
 The Confederate battle line as first formed early in 
 1861 commenced in the East, near Washington, at 
 Manassas or Bull Run (2) where General Beauregard 
 commanded, and reached west into the Shenandoah Val- 
 ley to Winchester (3), where General Johnston's force 
 was stationed. It then crossed the mountains into West 
 Virginia at Philippi (4), where Colonel Porterfield with 
 Virginia Volunteers was located, then by the way of Rich 
 
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SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 333 
 
 Mountain (5), and Scary Creek (6), in the Kanawha 
 Valley, it was thrown toward the Kentucky line in the 
 direction of Prestonburg (n). 
 
 Kentucky tried to remain neutral, and forbade both 
 Northern and Southern armies to invade her soil. This 
 prohibition was maintained until September when Con- 
 federate General Polk advanced a force and took pos- 
 session of Columbus, Kentucky (8). A few days later, 
 General Zollicofler advanced from Columbus Gap to 
 Cumberland Ford (10), General Buckner on the 15th 
 occupied Bowling Green (9), and in the same month 
 Colonel Williams threw a Confederate force into east 
 Kentucky near Prestonburg (11). 
 
 Thus was the neutrality of Kentucky broken by the 
 Confederates. The different movements made so nearly 
 at the same time and their several objectives forming so 
 complete a line, demonstrated that the orders to invade 
 the state had originated at one and a supreme source. 
 That source could have been only Richmond. 
 
 In Missouri Governor Jackson, an ardent secessionist, 
 at first pretty well controlled things through the state 
 militia on the west side of the Missouri River. His princi- 
 pal hostile movement was to gather his forces at Camp 
 Jackson (13), near St. Louis (12), with the view of tak- 
 ing possession for the Confederate States of the arms, 
 ammunition, and supplies of the United States in the 
 arsenal of that city. 
 
 Thus was the Confederate line drawn and the prob- 
 lem for the North to solve was, "Shall our erring sisters 
 be allowed to depart in peace, or shall that line be brok- 
 en?" The answer was, "Break the line!" 
 
334 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 This was first done at Philippi (4), on the 6th day of 
 May, by Colonels Kelly and Morris with some West 
 Virginia and Ohio troops. The Confederates retreated so 
 promptly and so hastily, and the Union troops chased 
 them so closely and rapidly that the engagement became 
 locally known as the "Philippi Races." 
 
 About a week later came the Confederate defeat at 
 Rich Mountain (5), and in July General Cox met a force 
 under General Wise, ex-governor of Virginia, at Scary 
 Creek and Tyler Mountains in the Kanawha Valley (6), 
 and drove them into the southeastern part of the state. 
 
 The Confederate government was anxious to save 
 West Virginia to itself, and felt the importance so greatly 
 it sent its best general, Lee, into the Kanawha Valley in 
 October to endeavor to reconquer it; but he, with his 
 subordinates, Generals Wise and Floyd, were so badly 
 defeated at Gurley Bridge and Carnafex Ferry (7) by 
 the Union forces under General Rosecrans that they were 
 driven through the Alleghanies, which mountains from 
 this time on, remained the frontier of the Confederacy 
 in Virginia. 
 
 This West Virginia campaign, even though the en- 
 gagements and the numbers of men employed were com- 
 paratively small, was important: First, because it sep- 
 arated that state from Virginia and saved it for the 
 Union. Second, because General McClellan had com- 
 manded the early part of it, and had made it so prominent 
 by Napoleonic dispatches to the government and the 
 people, that it was probably the deciding factor in mak- 
 ing him subsequently the commander of all the Union 
 forces. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 335 
 
 East of the mountains, the North met a severe re- 
 verse, General McDowell attempted to make another 
 break in the Confederate line at Bull Run (2), on the 21st 
 day of July, 1861, and failed, as I have heretofore told. 
 
 Then General George B. McClellan, with the prestige 
 of his West Virginia campaign, was brought from that 
 state and given command. Even though he organized a 
 magnificent army, fully equipped and amply provided, 
 for some unaccountable reason, he did nothing with it to 
 retrieve the disaster of Bull Run, but permitted it to 
 remain idle the whole year. Thus, the battle line east of 
 the mountains remained practically the same at the close 
 of the year as when it was first established. 
 
 In Kentucky, General Nelson with Ohio and Ken- 
 tucky troops broke the Confederate line at Prestonburg 
 (11) and drove Colonel Williams into Virginia through 
 Pound Gap of the Cumberland Mountains (17) ; and, as 
 part of the 1861 campaign, a few days after the first of 
 January, 1862, General Thomas engaged Generals Zolli- 
 coffer and Crittenden at Mill Springs near Cumberland 
 Ford (10), killed Zollicoffer and drove Crittenden and 
 his men through Cumberland Gap (18) and out of the 
 state. Eastern Kentucky was thus cleared of Confederate 
 forces, but in the west they still retained the line from 
 Bowling Green (9) to Columbus (8). 
 
 In Missouri, General Lyon broke up Camp Jackson 
 (13) on the 10th of May, followed the retreating Gover- 
 nor Jackson and state troops to Jefferson City (14) on 
 the 14th, and to Boonville (15) on the 17th, where he 
 dispersed the Missouri State Militia there gathered and 
 drove Governor Jackson, General Price, and their sup- 
 
336 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 porters to the southwestern part of the state. There the 
 Confederates were reinforced and the desperate battle 
 of Wilson's Creek near Springfield (19), was fought 
 August 10th. Here although, according to Confederate 
 admission, the Union troops were outnumbered two to 
 one, and although General Lyon was killed, the battle 
 was practically a drawn one, and the Confederates did 
 not care to follow our withdrawal. 
 
 If the map be now examined, the findings of the 
 1861 campaign will be shown as follows : East of the 
 mountains the Confederate line was unbroken and re- 
 mained as first formed. West of the mountains, in West 
 Virginia and in eastern Kentucky, the line was broken 
 and the Confederates were driven across the Alleghanies 
 and out of those states; in western Kentucky, from 
 Bowling Green (9) to Columbus (8) the line remained 
 as formed; in Missouri it was forced back from the 
 Missouri River into the southern and southwestern part 
 of that state. 
 
 Meanwhile, the navy, with the assistance of the army, 
 retained, or achieved by force, valuable lodgement at 
 Fortress Monroe, Cape Hatteras, Palmico and Nassau 
 Sounds, and Port Royal. 
 
 During this entire year the Second Iowa Cavalry, my 
 regiment, had been learning to kill live rebels by flourish- 
 ing wood sabres. We had worked hard introducing wild, 
 unbroken horses that never had felt saddle or bridle, to 
 raw men who hardly knew upon which part of their 
 mounts these articles belonged. We had worked diligently 
 trying to distinguish instantly which was our right and 
 which our left flank, and earnestly endeavoring to make 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 337 
 
 our left foot reach the ground in somewhere near the 
 proper cadence and correct position. When, at last in 
 the late fall, the boys learned to form a fairly decent 
 line on foot, and could move it carefully without its 
 formation becoming too winding or ragged, and when 
 they had also succeeded in being able to ride their horses 
 faster than a walk without too many falling off, we 
 were given navy revolvers and sabres. 
 
 Then we thought we were fierce warriors ready for 
 the field and to be feared in fight. We did not realize in 
 our innocence that a steady regiment of infantry could 
 completely annihilate us if we were so incautious as to 
 get within range of their guns. Later in the war when 
 we had received our carbines and learned to listen for, 
 and promptly obey, the order, "Dismount to fight," we 
 became an important element in the Union army and an 
 organization for the "Johnnies" to consider seriously. 
 
 We were in Camp Joe Holt in Davenport, Iowa, until 
 December 7th, 1861, when we sailed down the Mississippi 
 to Benton Barracks in St. Louis. Here we met the 
 greatest, most unconquered enemy of the Civil War 
 veteran — death by disease, an enemy that during that 
 conflict claimed and took nearly twice as many men as 
 all other causes combined. We were in these ill-con- 
 structed barracks but. sixty days when we had lost by 
 death over five per cent of our men, and the others were 
 so weakened that some of the strongest companies some- 
 times appeared on dress parade with only ten of their 
 hundred men in line. Fortunately, we escaped from that 
 camp on the 17th of February. Again we embarked on 
 steamers and landed at Bird's Point, opposite Cairo, 
 Illinois, ready to take part in the campaign of 1862. 
 
338 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1861 
 
 (See map, pages 332-333) 
 Objectives 
 
 (Seemed never to have been fully formulated, but 
 were left to the development of circumstances.) 
 
 East of the mountains : 
 
 The popular cry was, "On to Richmond !" 
 
 West of the mountains: 
 
 The Donnybrook Fair strategy seemed to obtain : 
 
 When a head was shown, "Hit it." 
 Decisive Battles 
 
 East of the mountains : 
 
 Bull Run, or Manassas. 
 
 West of the mountains : 
 
 Philippi, Rich Mountain, Curley Bridge and Carnafax 
 Ferry, Mill Springs, Booneville, Springfield. 
 Findings 
 
 East of the mountains : 
 
 "On to Richmond" failed and the Confederate battle 
 line remained unchanged. 
 
 West of the mountains: 
 
 In West Virginia and southeastern Kentucky the 
 battle line was driven out of these states and across the 
 mountains. 
 
 In Missouri it was pushed from the Missouri River 
 into the southern part of the state. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 339 
 
 Section III. The Campaign of 1862 
 
 The desired objectives of the Federal Generals for 
 the campaign of 1862 were as follows : 
 
 First, in the East, Richmond, the capitol of the Con- 
 federacy, was to be captured. 
 
 Second, in the West, the Confederates were to be 
 driven out of Missouri and as much farther south as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Third, our forces were to be pushed into east Ten- 
 nessee in order to relieve and liberate the many Union 
 sympathizers living there. This was President Lincoln's 
 pet movement, and he and McClellan insisted upon it 
 above all others. 
 
 Fourth, the people urged that the Mississippi River be 
 opened for commerce. 
 
 The first movement in 1862 was in the extreme west. 
 The Federal General S. R. Curtis, advanced to attack 
 General Price and the Confederate force, which had 
 wintered in and near Springfield (19), Missouri. Curtis 
 ( drove Price's command from his camp and out of the 
 state into Arkansas, where he was joined by Generals 
 McCulloch, Mcintosh, and Pike. On March 3rd, General 
 Earl Van Dorn took command of the combined Confed- 
 erate force and prepared to give battle to the Federals 
 who had followed Price into Arkansas. 
 
 General Curtis, the Union commander, was outnum- 
 bered — 16,000 to 11,000 — and so he retired to Pea Ridge 
 (22), an out-thrown spur of the Ozark Mountains, and 
 there awaited Van Dorn's attack. The conflict came on 
 
340 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 March 3rd, and in a two day's fierce battle the Confed- 
 erates were so thoroughly defeated that objective No. 2 
 was decisively gained. 
 
 Regarding the third objective: look at the map, note 
 the two rivers that flow into the Ohio at the south end 
 of Illinois; the northern (25) is the Cumberland, and 
 the southern (26) the Tennessee. These rivers are 
 navigable a long distance up, and command and use of 
 them were of great importance to either Federals or 
 Confederates. Until now the latter had controlled them 
 completely, and to prevent the Union from acquiring 
 their use they built, during the winter of 1861-1862, 
 Fort Henry (23) on the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson 
 (24) on the Cumberland. 
 
 The Confederate defense still remained upon the 
 Columbus-Bowling Green line (8-9). Even a non- mili- 
 tary man could see that a Union force could not carry out 
 President Lincoln's pet scheme and push troops down 
 into east Tennessee until this line (8-9) was broken. The 
 Federal generals concluded that the best way to break 
 that line would be to send our newly built iron-clad fleet 
 with an ample land force up the Tennessee River and 
 capture the two forts there built. 
 
 On the 5th of February the fleet under Commodore 
 Foote and a land force under General Grant, arrived at 
 Fort Henry (23), with the intention of capturing it. This 
 object they achieved. On the 6th, the garrison retreated 
 to Fort Donelson (24). General Grant followed the 
 Confederates to the latter fort, which he pressed so 
 energetically and successfully that on the 16th, General 
 Buckner, the Confederate general there commanding, 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 341 
 
 hung out flags of truce and asked terms of surrender. 
 This brought from Grant a reply the effective part of 
 which was, "No terms but an unconditional and imme- 
 diate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move im- 
 mediately on your works." The surrender was "imme- 
 diately" made, together with about fifteen thousand 
 prisoners and their entire equipment. 
 
 This severe blow to the Confederates broke their line 
 so effectively they evacuated Columbus (8), Bowling 
 Green (9), and middle Tennessee, and formed a new line 
 of defense from Memphis (27) to Chattanooga (29) 
 along the Memphis and Charleston line of railroad that 
 ran near the south line of Tennessee and connected the 
 two cities. Thus the retirement of the Confederate line 
 made objective number three possible of accomplishment. 
 
 After the capture of Donelson, and Grant's famous 
 dispatch, the significance of the initials of his name, U. 
 S. was popularly changed from Ulysses Simpson to 
 "Unconditional Surrender," and thereafter he was affec- 
 tionately known in the North as Unconditional Surrender 
 Grant. 
 
 The fourth objective of the campaign, the opening of 
 the Mississippi, was intrusted to Major General John 
 Tope, who on the 21st of February assembled his troops 
 and gunboats at Commerce (31), for an expedition by 
 land and river to New Madrid (30), which would place 
 him below the forts and obstructions which the Confed- 
 erates had built in the Mississippi River at Island No. 10 
 (32). To this expedition my regiment was attached. 
 
 General Pope with his forces reached New Madrid 
 March 13th, drove the enemy out and captured the fort 
 
342 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 with twenty heavy guns, thousands of small arms, large 
 stores of ammunition and supplies, and, above all, secured 
 a strong position south of, and down the river from, the 
 enemy's forts and forces at Island No. 10 (32). 
 
 By April 4th gunboats had run the batteries at Island 
 No. 10, and transports had been floated through a channel 
 cut across a bend in the river. Then General Pope, 
 having consolidated his forces on Point Pleasant below 
 New Madrid, and his gunboats having silenced the Con- 
 federate batteries on the opposite shore, crossed the river 
 and captured the Island, together with seven thousand 
 prisoners, one hundred and fifty-eight cannon, seven 
 thousand stands of small arms, and an immense amount 
 of stores of all kinds. After this victory Pope proceeded 
 down the Mississippi River to Fort Pillow, just above 
 Memphis (27), and commenced to bombard it; but before 
 he had time to complete its reduction he was ordered to 
 bring his army to Pittsburg Landing (28), on the Tennes- 
 see River. 
 
 Meanwhile an equally successful movement toward 
 attaining objective No. 4, was in progress from the mouth 
 of the Mississippi. Commodore Farragut entered the 
 river accompanied by General Butler's land forces, April 
 18th; he bombarded Forts St. Philip and Jackson (33). 
 On the 24th, the navy ran past them and destroyed the 
 Confederate fleet. The next day it reached New Orleans 
 (35), and took possession thereof. Then the fleet moved 
 up the river, occupied Baton Rouge (36) on the 9th of 
 May, Natchez on the 12th, and was not stopped till 
 Vicksburg was reached on the 18th (38). 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 343 
 
 At that time the up-river and the ocean fleets might 
 have met and shaken hands but for the Confederate bat- 
 teries at Vicksburg. For a while these fleets commanded 
 the whole river except in front of the batteries of that 
 city and nearly secured objective No. 4. Later, to prevent 
 the entire separation between the sections of the South 
 situated on the two sides of the river, the Confederates 
 constructed a strong fort at Port Hudson (37), 135 
 miles above New Orleans, and thereby regained control 
 of the river between the fort so located and Vicksburg. 
 
 At the very time when Pope was making his success- 
 ful capture of Island No. 10, General Grant at Pitts- 
 burg Landing (28), about twenty miles above Corinth, 
 Mississippi (39), was there fighting for the salvation of 
 his army. He had gone from Fort Henry up the Ten- 
 nessee River to the landing mentioned, for the purpose 
 of breaking the Confederates' second line of defense on 
 the Memphis and Charleston railroad at Corinth (39), 
 where the Southern army had gathered to meet him. 
 
 At daybreak on the morning of April 6th, General 
 Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding the Confederate 
 troops from Corinth (39), assaulted General Grant's 
 lines with the intention of surprising him and capturing 
 his army before his reinforcements under General Buell 
 could reach him. Perhaps no battle of the war has been 
 so discussed, so falsified, and so eulogized as this, but 
 two controlling facts now seem certain. Johnston did 
 succeed in surprising Grant and driving his troops back 
 to the support of the gunboats on the Tennessee, but al- 
 though he lost his life, he did not capture the Federal 
 forces or even break their lines. 
 
344 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 What would have happened the next day had Buell 
 and his forces not arrived during the night is open to 
 conjecture. General Grant said that with his own forces, 
 which now were all on the ground, he could have taken 
 the offensive the next morning and driven the enemy 
 from the field. The Confederates said, that had Buell not 
 arrived they could and would have destroyed Grant's 
 army. 
 
 What might have been is uncertain, but Buell did 
 come, did cross the river during the night, and the next 
 day, April 7th, General Grant did drive the Confederates, 
 now under Beauregard, from the field and back toward 
 Corinth. There they reorganized, reinforced their army, 
 fortified the town, and prepared to hold it to the last. 
 
 The situation was now so critical that General Halleck 
 came and personally took command of all the troops. 
 This left General Grant to the uncertain and unsatisfac- 
 tory position of second in command. He found the 
 situation so annoying that he would have resigned his 
 commission and left the army had not General Sherman 
 induced him to reconsider his- determination. 
 
 General Halleck now marched by cautious steps to- 
 ward Corinth, intrenching his army as it slowly advanced. 
 He recalled General Pope from Fort Pillow, and utilized 
 his army as the left wing of his grand command ; he 
 constituted Buell as his right wing, and made Grant's old 
 army the center, with General Thomas in command. 
 
 He did not commence his march until May 1st, and 
 it was the 30th before he reached Corinth (39), about 
 twenty miles away, and found it evacuated. The Con- 
 federates had left and their second line for 1862 was 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 345 
 
 broken, and the evacuation of Fort Pillow followed on 
 June 4th. This permitted the gunboats under Commo- 
 dore Foote to reach Memphis (27) six days later, to 
 wipe out the Confederates' fleet and take possession of 
 that city, thereby smashing the Confederates' second line 
 a second time. 
 
 The enemy fell back once more to a third, uncertain 
 and disputable, line from Vick^burg (38), on the Mis- 
 sissippi river, to Chattanooga (29), in the mountains of 
 Tennessee. 
 
 After the Confederates' successes east of the moun- 
 tains they tried to force this line back again to the north. 
 General Price at Iuka, twenty-five miles east of Corinth 
 (39), General Van Dorn at Corinth, General Bragg at 
 Plymouth, Kentucky (57), and Murfreesboro, Tennes- 
 see (41), all ultimately failed; and the Vicksburg (38), 
 Chattanooga (29), line still remained as the Confederate 
 defense at the end of the campaign of 1862. 
 
 Had the success that met our arms in the West been 
 duplicated in the East — as it seems it might have been 
 after the battles of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks, when 
 Confederate General Johnston was wounded and his dis- 
 organized army driven into Richmond — the war would 
 have ended in the campaign of 1862. But 
 
 "There's a destiny that shapes our ends 
 Rough-hew them as we will," 
 
 and it is almost certain that it is fortunate for the 
 country that peace was not made at that time. Then, 
 neither North nor South was ready for emancipation. 
 The only issue that had then been joined was Union or 
 Disunion, consequently that was the only one which 
 
346 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 would have been settled. If Lincoln was right when he 
 said, "This nation cannot exist half slave and half free," 
 the question of slavery would have been left to be fought 
 out at some later time. 
 
 The campaign in the East was not so successful as in 
 the West. In May, General McClellan with his army was 
 moved via Fortress Monroe (42), and proceeded up the 
 York River Peninsula (43), and along the bank of the 
 Chickahominy River (44) to attempt the capture of 
 Richmond (21). 
 
 Of the heroic devotion and brave fighting there 
 shown by the Union Army, many writers have told. Of 
 the many bloody battles there fought between May 31, 
 and July 1 — Seven Pines, Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, 
 Gains' Mills, Peach Orchard, Savage Station, Glendale, 
 Frazer's Farm, and Malvern Hill — history rightfully 
 relates. 
 
 General Pope's disastrous defeat at Cedar Mountain 
 (45), Groveton (46), and Manassas (2), are, to our 
 shame, all on record. General Lee's attempt to invade 
 the North and his defeat at Sharpsburg or Antietam (48), 
 historians without number have told, and the country still 
 mourns for its sons lost in the last movement of the 
 1862 campaign in the East — Fredricksburg (49). 
 
 It is not my purpose to repeat this much told history 
 more than to show the final outcome. The only conclu- 
 sion and finding of all this conflict was that the battle 
 line east of the mountains had been driven a little nearer 
 Richmond ; on the sea-coast of Virginia and North 
 Carolina and about Pamlico Sound the Federals had 
 established greater control. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 347 
 
 West of the mountains the Confederate's line of de- 
 fense had been twice broken and driven from the 
 Columbus-Bowling Green-Prestonburg line (8-9-10-11), 
 to a dubious one reaching from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to 
 Chattanooga, Tennessee, and west of the Mississippi as 
 far down as Little Rock, Arkansas (61). 
 
 The work of my regiment, whether or not it was 
 heroic and decisive of results, was most certainly active. 
 It chased Jeff Thompson's Cavalry in southeastern Mis- 
 souri until it was disbanded. It waded through the Mis- 
 souri swamps in Pope's Island No. 10 campaign where 
 the water for miles reached the sides of the horses, and 
 at the capture of that place it was first in possession of 
 the forts on the island, and was so awarded the honor 
 by proper authority. At one time while chasing Jeff 
 Thompson's cavalry, the printers of my company took 
 charge of the deserted office of the Charleston Courier, a 
 rabid rebel paper, and issued at least one number of that 
 publication that was soundly patriotic. 
 
 With General Pope's army we reached Pittsburg 
 Landing after the great battle, and advanced with Hal- 
 leck's command to the siege and capture of Corinth (39). 
 While not one man in ten of the infantry of the command 
 heard a bullet whistle or had a chance to fire a shot at 
 the enemy in that movement, my regiment had no less 
 than five distinct encounters with them. In one of these 
 conflicts, according to official report, we charged, as a 
 forlorn hope, a battery of twenty-four guns which was 
 supported by fifteen thousand infantry, and by this seem- 
 ingly futile charge saved General Paine's division from 
 capture. 
 
348 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Long after the war I was detailed to write a descrip- 
 tion of this charge for one of my regimental reunions. 
 As it was well received at that time and at other gather- 
 ings of veterans, and because, so far as I can learn, it is 
 the only description of a cavalry charge written by one 
 who personally participated, I dare insert it here. Our 
 success was not because we killed so many of the enemy, 
 for their loss was few ; but because the dash was so bold 
 they thought it was the signal for a general advance of a 
 large force, and while they stopped to place themselves 
 on the defensive, General Paine and his men escaped. 
 
 For verification of my story see Byer's History of 
 Iowa in war time, page 576; also Government official re- 
 ports on the war, Series I, Vol X, Part 1, pages 729 and 
 7&. 
 
 THE CHARGE AT FARMINGTON 
 
 The Army 
 
 'Midst opening groves of greenest hue, 
 
 On rolling landscape fair to view, 
 Where white-walled tents in long lines stand, 
 
 And batteries planted on each hand, 
 And neighing horse at picket rope, 
 
 And stacks of arms on every slope, 
 And banners flying in the air, 
 
 And lines of guards drawn everywhere, 
 And bands at play, and bugle bray, 
 
 Halleck at siege of Corinth lay. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 349 
 
 The Regiment 
 
 The clay was fair; the southland breeze 
 
 Was whispering softly through the trees. 
 
 Our regiment, as soldiers will, 
 
 Was killing time with dext'rous skill ; 
 
 Some read the news; some letters write; 
 
 Some tell the tale of recent fight ; 
 
 Some in seclusion of their tent 
 
 Strive to repair some garment rent, 
 
 And as their only suit they mend 
 
 The sight would fright their dearest friend ; 
 
 Some Juba pat ; and some sans care 
 
 Are blanket-tossed into the air; 
 
 Some sing the lay of "John Brown's" day; 
 
 While some at cards stake their last pay. 
 
 The Alarm 
 
 But hark! With sudden crash and roar, 
 Headquarters' guns the signals pour, 
 That General Paine, who last night lay 
 Detached, exposed, is brought to bay 
 And must have help at any cost, 
 Or all his men and guns are lost. 
 All things are dashed from hasty hands, 
 And every man expectant stands, 
 Till "drum beat" pours its stern alarms 
 And bugles blow the call, "To arms !" 
 Now all is hurry, rush, and din. 
 First sergeants shout, "Fall in! Fall in!" 
 While soldiers rushing to and fro 
 For pistol, sword, and carbine go, 
 And then "Assembly!" fills the air, 
 And ranks are formed in hurry there, 
 While sergeants dress our lines and call 
 The roll of names, now dear to all, 
 For many answering "Here !" that time 
 Are sleeping now in southern clime. 
 And then we wait and wait, and wait, 
 For what may be our coming fate. 
 
350 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Advance 
 
 See ! dashing- couriers orders bring, 
 
 And "Boots and Saddles IV bugles ring. 
 
 The boys break ranks and bridles grasp, 
 
 And blankets fold and saddles clasp, 
 
 And all are with the utmost speed 
 
 Swift-buckled on each snorting steed. 
 
 Then loud, "To Horse !" the bugles flout, 
 
 And sergeants call, "Lead out ! Lead out !" 
 
 Then horse and man with bit in hand 
 
 Close side by side in long line stand. 
 
 "Prepare to mount !" the order fleets, 
 
 Then, "Mount!" The troopers take their seats 
 
 With knees clasped close, and bridle-hand 
 
 The charger ready to command, 
 
 And steady seat and flashing eye, 
 
 All ready now to do or die. 
 
 "Fours, Right!" and "Head of Column, Right!" 
 
 And we are speeding toward the fight. 
 
 Going into Battle 
 
 What thoughts and fears unbidden come 
 
 Of death, defeat, or distant home, 
 
 As soldiers view the sickening sight 
 
 That fills the rear of every fight ! 
 
 For here spent balls go whistling by, 
 
 While bursting shells shriek through the sky, 
 
 And cowards slink, and loose steeds fly, 
 
 While wounded men for water cry ; 
 
 And caissons rushing to the rear 
 
 To be refilled from wagons near 
 
 Make seeming sure defeat appear. 
 
 Here brave men feel they need their zeal 
 
 And here the coward turns the heel. 
 
 But when the soldier takes the front 
 
 And mixes in the battle's brunt, 
 
 And sees long lines unbroken stand, 
 
 And columns moving at command, 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 351 
 
 And rushes met and charges given 
 O'er ground by shot and shrapnel riven, 
 And feels our flag in battle fly, 
 And hears brave men exultant die, 
 The sight shown them by fighting men 
 Might bring the dead to life again. 
 
 The Battle-Field 
 
 We reach the front and there we spy 
 
 A scene 'tw're worth a life to buy. 
 
 Six thousand men with General Paine 
 
 Are fighting an escape to gain 
 
 From twenty thousand of the foe 
 
 That like a serpent sure and slow 
 
 Are coiling round the near-doomed men 
 
 For slaugther or for prison pen. 
 
 One single bridge Paine's men must pass, 
 
 But rebel guns sweep it, alas ! 
 
 No help seems near in their distress, 
 
 To ease the awful battle press 
 
 Of rebels near, in flank and rear, 
 
 Or let one ray of hope appear. 
 
 The Forlorn Hope 
 
 One desperate chance is still at hand : 
 
 Our regiment unbroken stand. 
 
 If we are given to slaughter dire 
 
 To charge the foe and draw their fire, 
 
 We may perhaps check that advance 
 
 And give Paine's men some little chance. 
 
 Such hope forlorn escape to gain, 
 
 Up to our front dashed General Paine : 
 
 Like crash of drums the order comes : 
 
 ''Charge those batteries ! Take the guns !" 
 
3S2 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The Charge 
 
 Now springs our blood with quickest leaps, 
 
 For battle conflict nigh; 
 We settle firmly in our seats 
 
 And draw our curb-lines high. 
 On yonder hill are twenty guns 
 
 That death and slaughter deal ; 
 Behind them fifteen thousand men, 
 
 With burnished rows of steel; 
 And we five hundred men alone 
 
 Must charge that grand array, 
 And save our men, as best we can, 
 
 Or die with them today. 
 "Attention !" loud the order rings 
 
 Throughout the smoke-dimmed air; 
 W r e calm our steeds as best we may 
 
 And dress our lines with care. 
 "Draw, Sabre !" and like lightning flash 
 
 Our swords gleam bright and high. 
 Then, "Forward, March !" adown the ranks 
 
 Resounds the bugle's cry. 
 With stirrup click and scabbard clang 
 
 And hoof -beat steady fall, 
 We forward march in battle line 
 
 And list the bugle's call. 
 "Trot, March !" it sounds. Our line like wave 
 
 On storm-swept ocean runs. 
 The foe cease firing on Paine's men 
 
 And turn on us their guns. 
 Then, "Gallop, March !" and on we dash 
 
 Through smoke and cannon's roar, 
 While shot and shell, a battle-hell, 
 
 Into our ranks they pour. 
 "Charge!" rings the order out; 
 "Charge!" all the bugles flout; 
 "Charge !" hear the answering shout ; 
 And our steeds with flying leap 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 353 
 
 O'er the ground a cyclone sweep. 
 
 O'er a ditch and plowed field, then 
 
 Over line of our own men. 
 
 On, on the colors fly ; 
 
 "On !' e'en the wounded cry ; 
 
 "On !" shout the boys reply. 
 Now, the guns are near at hand ; 
 Smoke-grimed gunners round them stand. 
 Now the sabre shows its powers; 
 Now the smoking guns are ours. 
 
 "Halt !" Bugles sound "Recall !" 
 
 Halt ! many comrades fall. 
 
 Halt ! or we perish all. 
 General Paine is safe once more ; 
 O'er the bridge his troops now pour. 
 Needless now our longer stay; 
 Now retire while yet we may. 
 Rescuing our wounded men, 
 Past the ditch and field again, 
 Scattered wide as best betide 
 Our broken force, we quickly ride. 
 
 Query 
 
 Was it a victory or defeat? 
 
 We'll let the nation say. 
 We saved Paine's men from prison pen, 
 
 Or utter rout that day. 
 
 In another movement my regiment with the Second 
 Michigan Cavalry made what the War Department re- 
 ports call, "the first cavalry raid of the war." We 
 passed around the Confederates' right flank and broke 
 the communication below Corinth in their rear, captured 
 two thousand prisoners, destroyed much property, and 
 compelled the evacuation of Corinth. (See Volume i, 
 Page 144, Sheridan's Memoirs.) 
 
354 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 But for this expedition, General Phil Sheridan miglit 
 never have been known to the country except as an 
 efficient quartermaster. General Elliott, one time the 
 colonel of my regiment, at a reunion of that organization 
 held long after the war, related to a squad of us these 
 facts : When the raid was ordered General Elliott, then 
 Colonel Elliott, was commanding a brigade composed of 
 my regiment, the Second Iowa Cavalry, and the Second 
 Michigan Cavalry, which last had no efficient commander. 
 Colonel Elliott went to General Halleck and said, "Do 
 you consider the raid you have ordered me to make to be 
 important ?" 
 
 General Halleck replied, "It is of the utmost import- 
 ance that you make it. a success." 
 
 "It is impossible to succeed in the movement with the 
 present commander of the Second Michigan Cavalry," 
 replied the Colonel, "but if you will give me the man I 
 want to command this regiment I will promise you it 
 shall be everything you want." 
 
 "Who is the man you want?" 
 
 "Capt. Phil. Sheridan," said Elliott. 
 
 "Impossible," replied General Halleck, "We cannot 
 spare him from the quartermaster department where he 
 has brought order from confusion." 
 
 In vain Colonel Elliott pleaded, saying, "Captain 
 Sheridan is doing duty any good wagon master could 
 perform and we need him in the line of battle." 
 
 But General Halleck was obdurate, and to close the 
 discussion said, "You have no political pull in Michigan 
 and could not get him commissioned if I should let you 
 have him, and that is the end of the matter." 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 355 
 
 But it was not the end of the matter. Governor Blair 
 was visiting the wounded Michigan men on the field, and 
 Colonel Elliott went immediately to him and stated the 
 case. The result was, the Governor took a used official 
 envelope from his pocket, tore it apart and upon the 
 unused side wrote an informal commision saying, "When 
 I get back to Michigan I will send a formal commission 
 of this date." This commission, coupled with the neces- 
 sity of a successful raid and the pleadings of Colonel 
 Elliott, compelled General Halleck to yield, and that 
 night Colonel Sheridan with a borrowed pair of Eagles 
 on his captain's uniform led his regiment upon this first 
 raid of the war. 
 
 In closing his statement General Elliott said, "General 
 Sheridan in his memoirs says, in effect, that he does not 
 know who recommended him for the position. The truth 
 is so many had claimed the honor he dared not make a 
 host of enemies out of warm friends by stating the facts, 
 but he knows them and I know them and that is enough 
 for us." 
 
 It was also enough for us, his hearers, and should be 
 enough for the country. We knew nothing could compel 
 General Elliott to -misrepresent a word, and here there 
 was not the slightest inducement for a false statement. 
 The successful result of the raid made Colonel Elliott 
 General Elliott. He was taken away from us and given 
 a division of infantry, and Colonel Sheridan succeeded to 
 the command of the brigade. 
 
 After Corinth was evacuated we were almost con- 
 stantly in the field, frequently skirmishing with the 
 enemy. On July 1st, with our chum regiment, the Second 
 
356 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Michigan Cavalry, we met the Confederate General 
 Chalmers at Booneville, who outnumbered us over five 
 to one — eight hundred to four thousand — and whipped 
 him so thoroughly that it stripped the newly found eagle 
 from the shoulder of the commander of our brigade, 
 Phil Sheridan, and gave him the first star of his final 
 cluster. For particulars of that brilliant fight, see Sheri- 
 dan's Memoirs, Volume I, Page 156. This gave our two 
 regiments the unusual record of making two brigadier 
 generals, Elliott and Sheridan, within sixty days. 
 
 We participated in the Battles of Iuka and Corinth in 
 September and October, and when General Grant made 
 the only campaign in which he failed, his fruitless and 
 little mentioned campaign toward Vicksburg in Novem- 
 ber and December. Either alone or in conjunction with 
 other cavalry units we formed, as was our duty, the front 
 of the advance, the rear of the retirement; and, as cir- 
 cumstances happened to require it, did most of the fight- 
 ing developed in that movement. 
 
 Let a few facts show the strenuous character of this 
 first and little noticed Vicksburg campaign. From No- 
 vember 2nd until December 25th we, the cavalry, were 
 away from our camp and garrison equipment, slept on 
 the ground with only our blankets and ponchoes for 
 covering, and lived largely on what the country afforded 
 — sometimes abundant, sometimes scarce, sometimes 
 entirely wanting. In the last thirty days of the campaign 
 we averaged 41^ miles a day, crossing bridgeless 
 streams, climbing through mountain trails, and skirmish- 
 ing with the "Johnnies." 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 357 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1862 
 
 (See map, pages 33 2 ~333) 
 Objectives 
 
 East of the mountains : 
 
 1. The Confederate Capitol, Richmond. 
 West of the mountains : 
 
 2. To drive the Confederates out of Missouri. 
 
 3. To reach and relieve the Union men in East Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 4. To open the Mississippi River. 
 
 Decisive Battles 
 
 East of the mountains : 
 
 General McClellan's many bloody encounters on the 
 Chickahominy River. 
 
 General Pope's engagements in his disastrous move- 
 ment in Virginia ; Antietam, Fredericksburg. 
 
 West of the mountains : 
 
 Pea Ridge, Forts Henry and Donelson, Pittsburg 
 Landing, Corinth. 
 
 Island No. 10, Memphis, Forts Jackson and St. 
 Philips, New Orleans. 
 
 Perryville, Murfreesboro. 
 
 Findings 
 
 East of the mountains: 
 
 Objective No. 1 failed. The Confederate battle line 
 remained practically unchanged. 
 
 West of the mountains: 
 
358 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Objective No. 2 fully attianed. 
 
 Objective No. 3 made possible for next year. 
 
 Objective No. 4 attained except the space between 
 Port Hudson and Vicksburg. 
 
 The battle line was pushed across nearly two states, 
 and as far south as a line running from Little Rock, 
 Arkansas, via Vicksburg and Chattanooga to the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Section IV. The Campaign of 1863 
 
 In this year the Union armies had five objectives. 
 East of the mountains there was still the one of the year 
 before: Richmond. West of* the mountains there re- 
 mained two of the. year before, the relief of East Ten- 
 nessee and the opening of the Mississippi ; and then two 
 more in connection with these : to push the Confederate 
 line west of the river as far south as possible, and to 
 capture Chattanooga. These four objectives in the West 
 might be summed up in one: to break the enemy's third 
 line of defense, from Little Rock, through Vicksburg 
 and Chattanooga to the Alleghany mountains. 
 
 General Grant had collected his army on the river 
 bank opposite Vicksburg (38) early in the year and had 
 kept it busy digging a canal across a bend of the Missis- 
 sippi, exploring the Yazoo, and other movements from 
 which he did not expect greater results than that of keep- 
 ing the army awake and fit for his coming campaign. 
 
 His plan conceived for the capture of the city was a 
 daring one and none of his officers approved it. It in- 
 volved a violation of many rules of military procedure, 
 even General Sherman, his loyal supporter at all times, 
 wrote him protesting against it, saying in effect he wsfs 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 359 
 
 placing his army voluntarily where the enemy would be 
 willing to expend many men and much money to have it. 
 This plan was to march his army down the west bank of 
 the river until he found an available crossing, then to have 
 the gunboats and some of the transports run the batteries 
 of Vicksburg and proceed down the river until they 
 reached him. With their help, he would then cross to the 
 east side of the stream with his whole army. Having thus 
 found footing on the Vicksburg side of the river south 
 of that city, his intention was to cut all his communica- 
 tions, march boldly into the country, throw his army 
 between those of Johnston at Jackson (52) and Pember- 
 ton at Vicksburg (38) and prevent their meeting. This 
 being accomplished, he proposed to whip Johnston first, 
 then turn upon Pemberton, defeat him, and drive his 
 forces back into Vicksburg. Should all this succeed, he 
 would follow Pemberton to Vicksburg and would be in a 
 position to lay siege to the city. 
 
 The plan worked so perfectly that its general outline 
 as made before the expedition, filled in with particulars 
 of dates and locations of engagements, would have made 
 a perfect report after the movement was completed. 
 
 By the 17th of April the Federal forces had marched 
 twenty miles below Vicksburg to near New Carthage 
 (53) on the west bank of the river. There they met the 
 gunboats that had run the batteries. On the 22nd five 
 transports reached them by the same thrillingly hazardous 
 route, and the troops were ferried across the river. May 
 1st Grant took Fort Gibson (54) on the east side of the 
 river, cut his communications, and started for the interior 
 of Mississippi. 
 
360 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 General Grant had not informed Washington officials 
 of his intended plan, he dared not do it. Had he done so 
 it would have been overruled. Only after he had cut his 
 communications did Washington headquarters realize 
 what he was doing. When it was there understood, con- 
 sternation reigned. Dispatch after dispatch was sent to 
 recall him and save his army, as they thought, from sure 
 destruction. Grant had anticipated just this when he 
 cut off his communications, and he took great care that 
 no orders from his superiors should reach him until he 
 had either succeeded or failed. 
 
 But Grant did not fail. On the 12th of May he fought 
 the battle of Raymond (55), and placed his army between 
 Johnston and Pemberton as he had planned. On the 14th 
 he defeated Johnston at the city of Jackson (52), then 
 turned upon Pemberton and met him at Champion Hill 
 (56) on the 1 6th, and drove him, both here and at the 
 crossing of Black River, with great loss and thorough 
 disorganization, into Vicksburg (38). By the 19th, the 
 city was fully invested and the first assault made. On 
 the 22nd a better organized and more costly assault was 
 delivered, but as both failed the Federal army settled 
 down to a close and determined siege. The siege term- 
 inated on the 4th day of July at which time Pemberton 
 surrendered the city with 32,000 men, 72 cannon, and 
 huge stores of small arms and war'materials. 
 
 While Grant had been besieging Vicksburg, General 
 Banks and Admiral Porter were endeavoring to capture 
 Port Hudson (37), and had made several unsuccessful 
 assaults thereon. As soon as it was proved to the Con- 
 federate commander of Port Hudson that Vicksburg had 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 361 
 
 fallen, he immediately capitulated with all his men and 
 supplies. The Mississippi was now open from its source 
 to the sea, never again to be closed, and the greatest 
 objective in the West was finally obtained. The opening 
 of the river cost the Confederates in their defeat sixty to 
 seventy thousand men, a number over four times what 
 the victory cost the Federals. It was a blow the South 
 never recovered from. 
 
 But Yicksburg and Port Hudson were not the only 
 victories in the West. General Rosecrans, who since his 
 victory at Murfreesboro (41), had been there recruiting 
 and reorganizing his army, advanced in the latter part 
 of June upon the Confederate forces under General 
 Bragg and by the 6th of July compelled him to retire to 
 Chattanooga (29) with a loss of two thousand men, 
 against five hundred lost by the Federals. 
 
 In the early days of September Burnside and Rosecrans 
 made a simultaneous movement. Burnside started from 
 Lexington, Kentucky (57), through the gaps of the 
 Cumberland Mountains (18), drove General Buckner and 
 his Confederate forces away from Knoxville (58), cap- 
 tured that city, and accomplished President Lincoln's long 
 desired objective — the relief of the Union men of east 
 Tennessee. 
 
 Meanwhile Rosecrans, above Chattanooga, had de- 
 ceived the Confederates into thinking he intended to go 
 into eastern Tennessee and join Burnside. But instead of 
 so doing he crossed the Tennesse River at Bridgeport 
 (59) without opposition, gained the mountain passes 
 southwest of Chattanooga, and directed his march toward 
 the railroad at Dalton (60), the base of supplies of 
 
362 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Bragg's army. This compelled the Confederate general 
 to evacuate Chattanooga and that valuable military center 
 became ours on the 9th of September. 
 
 This war-center was far too valuable to lose without 
 further effort. General Bragg was reinforced by General 
 Longstreet from Richmond, and on the 19th and 20th of 
 September one of the most hotly contested battles of the 
 war was fought on the banks of the Chickamauga, a 
 stream about ten miles south of the captured city. 
 
 This battle has usually been considered a Confederate 
 victory, but I cannot so view it. The whole campaign and 
 the battle itself were conducted for the possession of 
 Chattanooga. We retained that place then and ever since. 
 The victory, certainly in the campaign if not in the battle, 
 was ours. That gallant Confederate general, D. H. Hill, 
 who participated in the fight, seems to agree with me 
 when he writes, "And Chattanooga, the objective point of 
 the campaign, was held. That barren victory sealed the 
 fate of the southern Confederacy." 
 
 As soon as Bragg discovered that Rosecrans intended 
 to hold Chattanooga, he posted his forces along Mission- 
 ary Ridge and Lookout Mountain overlooking the city 
 from the south, and commenced a close siege. His bat- 
 tery upon Lookout Mountain commanded the Tennessee 
 River and the Memphis and Charleston railroad, and 
 prevented any ammunition, rations, or materials reach- 
 ing the Federals from that direction. The only method 
 of obtaining such necessary supplies was to haul them 
 by wagon over almost impassable roads from Jasper, 
 twenty-five miles away as the crow flies, but the distance 
 was made nearly sixty by the windings and elevations of 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 363 
 
 the Walden Mountains through which the road ran. 
 Worse yet, General Wheeler with his cavalry succeeded 
 in reaching the road and in destroying our wagon trains. 
 Forage became so scarce for the animals of the Federals 
 that they starved by thousands, until none were left to 
 move artillery, wagons, or even ambulances. The men 
 were given shorter and shorter rations until a half pound 
 of pork and four crackers and a little beef "dried on the 
 hoof" were an allowance for three days. 
 
 It was now the middle of October. Rosecrans had 
 decided to retreat, but to prevent that disaster he was 
 relieved from duty on the 17th of that month. General 
 Thomas was put in his place, and General Grant was 
 assigned to the command of the whole Military Division 
 of the Mississippi. General Grant immediately tele- 
 graphed Thomas that he must "hold Chattanooga at all 
 hazards and he would come to him without delay." The 
 prompt reply came, "We will hold the town until we 
 starve." The army in Chattanooga did not starve ; it held 
 the town, and in the latter part of the month the "Cracker 
 Line" was opened and the famishing men and few re- 
 maining animals received full rations once more. 
 
 Less than a month from the time of this relief, the 
 Army of the Cumberland, which had been driven back 
 from Chickamauga, held, according to Confederate re- 
 ports, "prisoners in Chattanooga and compelled to board 
 itself," and which had submitted during all this time to 
 many insults and jeers from the enemy overlooking it, 
 had at last ample chance for revenge, and gallantly it 
 embraced the opportunity. With Hooker on its right, 
 who came to it from the east, and Sherman on its left, 
 who had reinforced it from the west, on the 23rd, 24th, 
 
364 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 and 25th of November it charged the enemy under Gen- 
 eral Bragg on Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, 
 and Tunnel Hill, broke his front, captured his artillery, 
 drove him, defeated and disorganized, toward his base 
 of supplies at Dalton (60), Georgia. This defeat of 
 Bragg drove Longstreet, Buckner, and all other Confed- 
 erate forces out of east Tennessee, and the Alleghany 
 Mountains from this time on became the limit of the 
 Confederate permanent occupation as far south as 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 The same month General Schofield cleaned Kansas 
 and north Arkansas of Confederate forces and took pos- 
 session of Little Rock (61) and the north bank of the 
 Arkansas River. 
 
 Thus the campaign of 1863 west of the mountains 
 closed, as in 1862, triumphantly for the Federal arms, 
 all of the desired objectives west of the mountains hav- 
 ing been completely won. 
 
 East of the mountains, the objective was still Rich- 
 mond, and the story was somewhat different. General 
 Hooker commanding the Federal forces, crossed the 
 Rappahannock River on the 28th of April. He met the 
 enemy at Chancellorsville (67), on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 
 of May, and was so badly defeated that Lee felt safe to 
 again invade the North. 
 
 On the third day of June he started with his army 
 from Culpepper Court House (45) and crossed the 
 Potomac near Sharpsburg (48) and Hagerstown (65). 
 By the 28th his forces had penetrated Pennsylvania as 
 far as York (62) and Wrightsville (63) toward the east 
 and Chambersburg (64) toward the west. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 365 
 
 On the 30th the two armies met on the Chambersburg 
 road just east of Gettysburg (66) and prepared for the 
 greatest conflict of the war, the renowned "Battle of 
 Gettysburg," fought on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd days of 
 July. In the battle fifty thousand men were killed or 
 wounded, the Confederate army was defeated, and the 
 Southern cause received its death blow. 
 
 For some reason Lee was permitted to withdraw his 
 defeated forces across the Potomac River and the cam- 
 paign of 1863 practically closed with that engagement. 
 
 We find by consulting the map that, as the result of 
 the campaign of 1863 east of the mountains, the Confed- 
 erate battle line practically remained unchanged, but 
 west of the mountains it had been pushed from Vicksburg 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, out of east Tennessee and central 
 Arkansas, and again broken at Chattanooga. 
 
 Working in connection with General Grant's second 
 movement toward Vicksburg, my regiment in this cam- 
 paign started from La Grange, Tennessee, the morning 
 of March 10th. We were sent to destroy a railroad 
 bridge across the Tallahatchie River near Waterford, 
 Mississippi. Thirty-six hours, almost continuously in the 
 saddle, saw the work accomplished, the bridge burned, 
 and men and horses exhausted. 
 
 Our orders having been obeyed and our objective won, 
 we expected to take a little rest, but such blessing was not 
 ours to enjoy. Our supper was not over before news 
 came that a rebel force four times our number was be- 
 tween us and our camp at La Grange waiting to inter- 
 cept us in the morning. In our worn-out condition we 
 should not fight such odds if possible to avoid it. There- 
 
366 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 fore, "Boots and Saddles" was blown, and — thanks to 
 the guidance of a Union citizen who knew all the paths 
 of the country — with almost unprecedented hard riding 
 for men and horses, we slipped around the waiting 
 enemy, and made our camp in safety. 
 
 When we reached this safe haven many of the boys 
 had to be lifted from the saddles upon the backs of their 
 nearly dying horses. They had been in those saddles 
 almost continuously three days and two nights. Not a 
 man was lost ; but as horses gave out they had, as usual, 
 been exchanged for any riding beast opportunity offered 
 or a trooper's fancy might choose. 
 
 It is strange how much sleep troopers in these circum- 
 stances may catch. I have been along the line of our 
 company in the night, when the column was traveling at 
 the regular rate and found hardly a man awake. They 
 slept as long as the column moved as usual, but awoke if 
 it accelerated its pace or stopped. There was no danger 
 in riders falling off, and little danger of the horses leaving 
 the ranks and taking the men they knew not where. 
 Ninety-nine horses in a hundred would stick to their 
 company and to their places in the company as long as 
 life was in them, the one hundredth, had to be watched 
 for. In the rear of each all-night ride, was kept a rear 
 guard of the least fatigued men to watch for straying 
 horses carrying off sleeping soldiers. 
 
 On the 17th of April our regiment, the Second Iowa 
 Cavalry, in company with the Sixth and Seventh Illinois 
 Cavalry, all under command of Colonel B. H. Grierson 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 367 
 
 of the 6th Illinois, started out on the celebrated Grierson 
 raid ordered by General Grant to divert attention from 
 his movements south and in the rear of Vicksburg. 
 
 Colonel Grierson was ordered to leave the Memphis 
 and Charleston road at La Grange near Memphis, break 
 through the enemy's lines and raid from north to south 
 through central Mississippi. We were directed to tear 
 up railroads as we could, destroy all military stores and 
 supplies as we might, fight the enemy as we dared, and 
 if possible join our own forces stationed at Baton Rouge 
 in Louisiana. 
 
 Courage, caution, and good luck combining, we were 
 enabled to comply with our orders most satisfactorily. 
 Sixteen days from the time the brigade started upon its 
 raid the men of the Sixth and Seventh Illinois Cavalry, 
 having ridden nearly eight hundred miles, dusty, dirty, 
 half-dead from long hours in saddle and from want of 
 sleep, but proud as peacocks, with their long line of 
 prisoners and record of work well done, rode into Baton 
 Rouge and modestly acknowledged the cheers of every 
 citizen and soldier who could possibly go there to greet 
 them. 
 
 But where was the Second Iowa Cavalry? That is 
 another story. Our raid, in strategy, resembled that of 
 the three darkies after chickens. The only obstacle to 
 success was a big savage bull dog. When they reached 
 the coop they agreed that Sambo should catch the dog 
 and hold him while Pomp and Caesar chased out the 
 chickens and got the glory. How Sambo was to get 
 away from the dog was left for him to accomplish as 
 best he could. Such was the strategy in this raid. We 
 
368 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 broke through the Confederate lines and marched slowly 
 and prominently southward. Our forces were counted 
 to a man by the enemy, and our weapons to a gun. The 
 idea was to induce the Confederates to collect all their 
 forces between us and our base of supplies at La Grange 
 to capture us. We succeeded admirably in the first part 
 of that project. By the time we had gone as far south 
 as West Point, the enemy had collected plenty of men, 
 as they thought, to capture the whole expedition. 
 
 Now was the time to act. My regiment was detailed 
 to catch and "hold the dog." In other words we were 
 to stop and fight the whole of the following forces and, 
 if possible, make the enemy believe we were the entire 
 expedition, and draw them off after us toward Columbus, 
 while Grierson with the other two regiments were to put 
 spurs to their horses and burn the ground to get beyond 
 following distance while we were attending to the dog. 
 With mutual God-speeds and well-wishes, the boys 
 parted, doubting much if they would ever meet again 
 unless it be in some rebel prison. 
 
 The stratagem succeeded perfectly. We had not the 
 slightest trouble in getting the "Johnnies" to fight us, 
 and we were so successful in covering the course of our 
 comrades that the enemy hung on to us for thirty-six 
 hours, thinking they were engaging the whole expedition. 
 That length of time placed Grierson and his men beyond 
 their pursuit; so it was time then for us to "let go of 
 the dog" and get away, if we could. 
 
 It was a stiff problem to "let go." We were on the 
 south side of the Tippah River, whose every known ford 
 where we could cross was guarded. Cross we must in 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 369 
 
 order to reach our own lines, for there were enough 
 Confederates around us on the south side of the river to 
 "eat us up" if they could only get a square chance at us. 
 Many a commander has surrendered under a less gloomy 
 outlook than this, but Hatch was no such leader. He 
 found a negro who guided us through a swamp, miles 
 away from any guarded ford. There we found lodged 
 flood-wood that would permit the men to cross on foot 
 with saddles, arms, and ammunition. As the night was 
 densely dark, large fires were built on each side of the 
 stream to light the men across the flood-wood. Then the 
 troopers pushed horses one at a time, off the steep bank 
 on the south side of the river and coaxed and drove them 
 until they swam across to the north bank where bugles 
 blew stable-call and men waited to help them up the 
 precipitous north shore. 
 
 Thus, by daylight we were across the river, again in 
 our saddles, with our lines in front and the enemy in the 
 rear. We felt ourselves now fully competent to show the 
 "Johnnies" a clean set of heels, and we proceeded to do 
 so; but not so recklessly as to forget to take with us to 
 camp six hundred fresh horses and two hundred able- 
 bodied darkies who "adhered" to us, and quite a number 
 of prisoners. 
 
 But this was not all of our services in 1863. We 
 went, with other regiments, toward Senatoba in May, and 
 at Wall Hill so shamefully used Confederate General 
 Chalmers and his forces that the ladies of the first-men- 
 tioned place presented the gallant General with a hoop 
 skirt and a corncob pipe. 
 
370 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 In June we were on the Mississippi River hunting 
 trouble, and again after General Chalmers. In July we 
 fought General Forrest near Jackson, Tennessee. In 
 August, under command of our own Colonel D. E. Coon, 
 we made a raid to Granada, Mississippi, and captured the 
 place together with sixty locomotives, five hundred cars 
 of all kinds, and materials too numerous and extensive to 
 mention, all of which were completely destroyed. 
 
 From the 27th of August until the first of November 
 our government, to our disgust, gave us a chance to rest 
 from our raiding by cooping us up in the city of Memphis 
 with little duty to perform. Gladly we escaped from this 
 idle camp on the time stated, and for the last sixty days 
 of the year we were more or less constantly employed 
 through northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee, 
 scouting and fighting with varying success Confederate 
 Generals George, Forrest, and S. D. Lee. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1863 
 (See map, pages 33 2 ~333) 
 
 Objectives 
 
 East of the Alleghany Mountains : 
 
 1. The capitol of the Confederacy, Richmond. 
 West of the Alleghanies : 
 
 2. To complete the opening of the Mississippi River. 
 
 3. To push the Confederate line west of that river as 
 far south as possible. 
 
 4. To finish the expedition for the relief of Union 
 men in east Tennessee. 
 
 5. To break the enemy's line at Chattanooga. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 371 
 
 Decisive Battles 
 
 East of the Alleghanies: 
 
 Chancellorsville, Gettysburg. 
 
 West of the Alleghanies: 
 
 Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Vicksburg, Port 
 Hudson, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge. 
 
 Findings 
 
 East of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Objective failed, but the battle line was forced part 
 way toward Richmond. 
 
 West of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Objective No. 2' attained. 
 
 Objective No. 3 attained and the battle line driven 
 south to the Arkansas River. 
 
 Objective No. 4 attained by the occupation of Knox- 
 ville by General Burnside. 
 
 Objective No. 5 attained. 
 
 Section V. The Campaign of 1864 
 
 In the west, after the indecisive and more or less dis- 
 appointing movements by Banks in Louisiana and Sher- 
 man and Sooy Smith in Mississippi, the grand campaign 
 for the year was commenced. 
 
 General Grant had been placed in command of all the 
 armies of the United States on the second day of March, 
 and soon issued orders that placed the whole Federal 
 forces, east and west, in motion at the same time, under 
 one plan, one control, and for one united purpose with 
 
372 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 two objectives: first, the destruction of Lee's army and its 
 base of supplies at Richmond; second, Johnston's army 
 and its base of supplies at Atlanta. 
 
 In the west, Sherman, who had succeeded Grant in 
 command of all forces between the mountains and the 
 Mississippi River, was to use the three armies — of Cum- 
 berland under Thomas, Tennessee under McPherson, and 
 Ohio under Schofield — attack, and, if possible, destroy 
 General Joseph E. Johnston who had collected all the 
 Confederate forces of any size or importance west of the 
 mountains at Dalton (60), Georgia. 
 
 In the- east, Generals Gilmore and Butler were to 
 combine their forces and take possession of City Point 
 (71), on the James River about twenty miles southeast 
 of Richmond. Burnside and Meade were to unite their 
 armies and march on Richmond from the north. 
 
 All armies commenced their movements in unison on 
 the first days of May; Grant making his headquarters 
 with the army of the Potomac commanded by General 
 Meade. 
 
 The operations in the west will be first considered. 
 Sherman put his troops in motion from Chattanooga to- 
 ward Dalton on the 6th of May. General Johnston, com- 
 manding the Confederate forces, was one of the most 
 skillful generals that the enemy possessed. His army was 
 not as large as the Federal, but he was fighting at home ; 
 he had no long line of railroad to guard and repair; he 
 was not compelled to supply his troops from a far distant 
 base; and more than all, the country back from Dalton 
 (60), to Atlanta (74), was mountainous with many pas- 
 ses that made defense easy, and offense difficult. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 37A 
 
 General Johnston adopted the Fabian policy of avoid- 
 ing a conflict where possible, but covering continually all 
 approaches to his base, Atlanta. Sherman also avoided 
 front attacks and vigorous assaults whenever he could, 
 and flanked his enemy out of position whenever and 
 wherever circumstances permitted. 
 
 It is about one hundred and twenty miles from 
 Chattanooga (29) to Atlanta (74), the vicinity of which 
 latter place Sherman reached July 18th. Notwithstand- 
 ing both commanders had been averse to unnecessary con- 
 flict between their forces, there had been at least seven- 
 teen different sharp battles in which very considerable 
 parts of their armies had been engaged, and skirmishing 
 and picket clashes had been almost continuous. 
 
 General Sherman says, "When the Federals reached 
 Atlanta, at a most opportune time for them the Confed- 
 erate government rendered us a most valuable service. 
 It relieved General Johnston and placed General Hood in 
 command of its army." Hood was a fighter. President 
 Davis gave him command for that very reason. He in- 
 structed him to come out of Atlanta, defeat the Federals, 
 and then march north and retake Nashville (68). He 
 did his best to obey orders. He came out of the entrench- 
 ments of Atlanta, and fought Sherman in the open, but 
 was defeated in every engagement until by September 
 2nd Sherman was occupying Atlanta and the Confeder- 
 ates were driven out of the entrenchments of that city. 
 
 •Hood found that he could not defeat Sherman in open 
 right, and now, having lost his defensive position in 
 Atlanta, he was driven to the second clause of President 
 Davis' instructions — to invade the North and capture 
 
374 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Nashville. This was just what Sherman hoped Hood 
 would try to do, and he is reported to have said, "I will 
 build Hood a silver bridge if' he will cross the Tennessee 
 upon it." The silver bridge did not have to be built foi 
 Hood, he crossed the Tennessee on his own volition and 
 in the last days. of October started for Nashville. 
 
 Sherman, thereupon, placed Thomas in charge of the 
 defense of that city and gave him what troops seemed 
 necessary for the purpose. Hood reached Franklin, 
 Tennessee (69), on the 30th of November, where attempt- 
 ing to capture Schofield with his small force and large 
 supply train, he was defeated with great loss in both 
 officers and men. The depressing effect of so many suc- 
 cessive defeats upon Hood's troops is shown by this story. 
 A citizen asked one of Hood's men who had survived the 
 battle at Franklin, and was marching toward Nashville, 
 "How many men have you in your army?" 
 
 "About enough for two more killings," came the re- 
 ply. 
 
 Results developed that the soldier, discouraged as he 
 seemed to be, was still too optimistic. One killing was 
 proved sufficient to destroy Hood's whole force as an 
 army and send its disorganized remnants flying through 
 untold hardships back across the Tennessee River. This 
 last "killing" was inflicted on the 15th and 16th of Decem- 
 ber by Gen. Thomas before Nashville, to which city Hood 
 had laid siege. It was a reverse so severe that the army 
 was ruined, and Hood retired in disgrace from its com- 
 mand. 
 
 As soon as Hood was across the Tennessee on his 
 way to Nashville, Sherman was ready for his march from 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 375 
 
 "Atlanta to the Sea." He commenced the march on the 
 16th of November, and entered Savannah (70) three 
 hundred miles away, on the 20th of December, having 
 practically severed the Confederacy again, taken and de- 
 stroyed a hundred million dollar's worth of stores and 
 supplies, brought in thousands of negroes, and nearly 
 destroyed a large extent of country as a source of sup- 
 plies to the enemy's army. Here ended the campaign of 
 1864 in the western army. 
 
 In the east as heretofore stated, Generals Meade and 
 Butler moved on the offensive at the same time that 
 Sherman advanced from Chattanooga. Butler sailed up 
 the James River and occupied City Point (71) as ordered, 
 but failed of any further effective work. 
 
 General Meade, accompanied by General Grant, 
 crossed the Rapidan River, May 4th, and entered the so- 
 called "Wilderness." This was an undefined stretch of 
 rough, hilly country, lying west of Fredericksburg and 
 near Chancellorsville (49, 67), a land covered by woods, 
 groves, and ravines. Its tangled thickets of pine, scrub 
 oak, and cedar were so dense as to prevent easy passage 
 and to obstruct both near and distant vision. 
 
 On June 15th, Grant's army, fighting continually and 
 moving by its left flank, reached the James River and pre- 
 pared to cross. Since entering the "Wilderness" May 
 4th, it had fought six bloody battles, four in the "Wilder- 
 ness," one at North Anna, and a most costly one at Cold 
 Harbor, near the Chickahominy (44), the scene of 
 McClellan's "Seven Days Battle" in 1862. 
 
 After the Cold Harbor engagement Grant came to 
 the same conclusion that McClellan had arrived at in 1862 
 
376 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 when he retired to Malvern Hill : that the proper approach 
 for a siege of Richmond was from the south. Therefore 
 he crossed the river, attempted the capture of Petersburg 
 (75) but failed. He then laid siege to that city and spent 
 the rest of the season attempting to push the left of his 
 army across the railroad communications south of Rich- 
 mond. 
 
 The campaign of 1864 produced great victories for 
 the Union cause, and ended with the Confederacy cut into 
 three parts as shown by the map. Nearly all the effective 
 forces of the South were in the northeast section under 
 Lee at Richmond and Johnston with a new army in North 
 Carolina. 
 
 Sherman with his army was in the south of this sec- 
 tion and Grant in the north, and it seemed certain that 
 when these two forces should march to meet in the fol- 
 lowing spring the end must come. 
 
 At this time it was my misfortune to be compelled 
 to leave my company and my place in the battle line. The 
 cause of this change illustrates one of the differences of 
 organizing and conducting the Civil War and the Great 
 War, and is one of the many reasons why the former, 
 though a greater war, so far as we were concerned, yet 
 cost in dollars and cents only about one-sixth as much as 
 the latter. General Sherman once said, "If a man should 
 be needed for any particular work, no matter how tech- 
 nical, he could always be found in the ranks of the army." 
 This was as true in the Great War as in the Civil War, 
 but the difference was in the way such men were handled 
 when found. The Civil War man was detailed from his 
 company for the work, and no matter how important it 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 377 
 
 was he would receive only the pay his rank in the line 
 entitled him. At one time I displaced a civilian who was 
 receiving six times my pay. 
 
 In the Great War such soldier was commissioned and 
 placed on staff duty. Many civilians were also commis- 
 sioned on this staff for various duties not connected with 
 the line of battle, and the Pullman cars throughout the 
 country and the office desks at Washington are scratched 
 with the spurs of "cavalry officers" of our late war who 
 dare not for their lives mount a fractious horse and who 
 could not possibly form a troop of cavalry upon any line 
 unless it be at a pie-counter or along a refreshment bar. 
 
 When I joined my company I was without acquaint- 
 ance and had no pull of any kind ; I expected no office, 
 and got none. Our officers elected by the company were 
 all professional men, probably good ones, but their knowl- 
 edge was worthless in the army. When our company 
 drew their horses, these men who had spent their lives 
 at their office desks were lost, but I came into my king- 
 dom. 
 
 Anyone who has read my "Passing of the Indian" 
 must realize that I was almost half-brother to a horse, 
 was an out-door man and a fairly good rider. The army 
 tactics, a sealed book to many, were open to me. With all 
 these advantages, it did not take long to demonstrate that 
 I could do more with the raw men and the unbroken 
 horses than the commissioned officers. I succeeded so 
 well that a company in the 4th Iowa Cavalry, seeing my 
 work, off crcd me a commission with them. The boys of 
 my company and the officers of both company and regi- 
 ment did not want me to leave, and so in loyalty I re- 
 
378 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 mained with them. They did the best they could for me : 
 they made me a first sergeant of Company I, 2nd Iowa 
 Cavalry. 
 
 A company was then allowed three commissioned of- 
 ficers, a captain and two lieutenants. In our company 
 one of these officers was habitually "disabled from duty/' 
 but notwithstanding a court martial he still had enough 
 force, personally and politically, to hold his commission 
 whether he did his duty or not. Another officer was on 
 "detached service" and never, except for a few days, was 
 with the company during the war. The methods of the 
 Great War would have made short work of that tangle. 
 The court-martialled officer would have been dismissed ; 
 the one on detached service would have been transferred 
 to "staff duty," and that would have made two vacancies 
 for commissions in my company, of which I should with- 
 out doubt have received one. 
 
 It takes little mathematics to figure out the fact that 
 one lieutenant and I were left to perform all the duties 
 of four men — three commissioned officers and the first 
 sergeant. This condition was a money-saver for Uncl-e 
 Sam, but I did not then, nor do I yet, fully appreciate its 
 justice. Of this four-fold job, despite the willingness 
 of the lieutenant, I necessarily had to perform much the 
 larger half; it would not have been proper for him to 
 attend to my first sergeant's duties, and when it came 
 to the officers' duties he never drilled the company during 
 the period of my service with it. This being the 
 case, it does not take a prophet to know who was com- 
 pelled to handle it in the field and in the fight. The only 
 order I ever heard the captain of my company give 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 379 
 
 while under fire from the enemy was, "Dismount and 
 ohey your First Sergeant." This condition lasted two and 
 a half years through camp, and march, and raid, and in 
 twenty-seven battles and skirmishes that are certified to 
 on my discharge. I could stand the physical and mental 
 strain no longer ; both body and mind were giving way 
 and I resigned. 
 
 Both men and officers refused to accept my resigna- 
 tion. But a few days later, when the boys had rolled me 
 up in a blanket and carried me to the hospital, and the 
 doctor had reported upon my condition, they were satis- 
 fied I had done the proper thing and permitted me to fight 
 for my life. I never did recover from the effects of that 
 service, but I regained my health sufficiently to accept a 
 staff detail to the head-quarters of the Cavalry Corps of 
 which General B. H. Grierson, of Grierson raid fame, 
 was commander. 
 
 My duties then were essential and exacting, both in 
 the field and in the office, and under World War condi- 
 tions I should have been commissioned. But I performed 
 them willingly and gladly on the pay of my rank, and 
 what I say for myself I can speak for the many other 
 men I knew who were thus "detached." 
 
 Proof that my work in the regiment was appreciated 
 came when there was finally a vacancy in the commis- 
 sioned officers of my company. The officers of the regi- 
 ment heartily endorsed me for promotion as captain. 
 Doubtless T should have received such commission had I 
 not, on account of health and other reasons, stopped the 
 proceeding myself. I wrote Governor Kirkwood declin- 
 ing the position, and suggesting that the Lieutenant with 
 
3 8o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 whom I had worked so long be commissioned. My letter 
 solved a long uncertainty, the lieutenant received the 
 commission, and we had a banquet at his expense and in 
 my honor. 
 
 With the cavalry corps staff I participated in the 
 Sturgis Raid, that tragic campaign — for its size the most 
 lamentable movement of the Civil War. It started from 
 Memphis June first for the express purpose of whipping 
 General Forrest who was stationed near Guntown, Miss. 
 Three brigades of infantry — two white and one colored — 
 and two brigades of cavalry were the forces employed — 
 about seventy-five hundred men. General W. C. Mc- 
 Millan commanded the infantry; General B. H. Grierson, 
 the cavalry ; and General Sturgis, the army. 
 
 I dislike to recall the horrors of that campaign. But 
 it is little understood, has never been correctly told to the 
 people, and some writers have unfairly laid the blame of 
 it upon General Grierson. Justice, therefore, as well as 
 regard for the truth, compel me to tell what I know of 
 the affair. Circumstances were such that few men saw 
 more of the whole conflict than I. 
 
 On the 8th Sturgis passed Ripley, about eighty miles 
 southeast of Memphis, and camped at Stubbs' farm 
 fourteen miles beyond. About ten o'clock on the morn- 
 ing of the 9th the cavalry, having marched about eleven 
 miles from camp, crossed a small stream and came to 
 Brice's cross-roads where we struck the enemy who were 
 awaiting us there in force. General Grierson immediately 
 went to the cross-roads and took command at the front. 
 He at once reported the condition to General Sturgis, 
 and expressed his doubts of the desirability of fighting in 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 381 
 
 such an unfavorable position, with little space to move 
 troops and a muddy stream directly in the rear. 
 
 Sturgis, in place of coming to the front and viewing 
 the ground, or sending a staff officer to do it for him, 
 disregarded Grierson's better judgment and gave the 
 order, "Hold the cross-roads at all hazards." Grierson 
 did not, as has been charged, urge Sturgis to advance to 
 this point — he did the very reverse. But when he was 
 ordered to hold the cross-roads he did write that he could 
 not hold them long against Forrest's combined forces of 
 cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and if they must be held 
 the infantry should be brought up soon. These facts I 
 am certain of because it was my duty to know and record 
 all such correspondence. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when the cavalry went into line of 
 battle and Grierson reported to Sturgis. It was a hot day. 
 The sun beat down with almost tropic fierceness on the 
 soft, sandy road between the tall pine trees. Over this 
 road and under these conditions Sturgis pushed his men 
 to. the last point of endurance. I sat on my horse at the 
 forks of the road and saw them go into the fight pant- 
 ing from the heat and fatigue, much better subjects for 
 hospital treatment than for fighting a battle. 
 
 In this condition these men went into the fight regi- 
 ment by regiment, and regiment by regiment they were 
 defeated until about sundown, when the whole battle line 
 gave way and demoralization of the infantry was com- 
 plete. The result was no reflection on the bravery of the 
 men who were thus pushed into the fight; they were so 
 handled that they never had a chance to win ; defeat was a 
 foregone conclusion. 
 
382 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 The cavalry had been withdrawn from the front and 
 mounted when the infantry arrived, and were still in 
 fighting condition. But one brigade was soon lost from 
 service where needed, and that by Sturgis's command. 
 I know this because I heard him give the order. The 
 division and brigade commanders had gathered near and 
 behind the stream I spoke of, the defeated army was 
 crowding past, no longer an army but a formless mob. An 
 infantry colonel rode in haste to General Sturgis and 
 anxiously pleaded, "General, we are holding the 'Johnnies' 
 on the creek. Give us ammunition and we will whip them 
 yet." 
 
 Sturgis replied, "I don't know anything about the 
 ammunition." Then turning to Colonel Warring, 
 commander of the First Brigade of cavalry, the only 
 organization that had not been more or less broken, he 
 said, "Colonel Warring, take your brigade and make a 
 hole to Memphis." With this brigade General Sturgis 
 retired from the field, and General Grierson took com- 
 mand. This left only' one brigade of cavalry to protect 
 from the enemy what was left of five thousand infantry. 
 We were enough to whip any and all cavalry that the 
 Confederates then had, but when their infantry or artil- 
 lery came up in force we had to retire. Conditions re- 
 solved themselves into this proposition : as long as our 
 troops kept moving at a marching gait they could be 
 protected, but any who stopped or who gave out from 
 wounds or fatigue were left to the mercy of an enraged 
 enemy. 
 
 Pause here a moment and try to realize what the men 
 of that army endured — I mean the infantry. We of the 
 cavalry had no jolly picnic, but it is the foot soldiers to 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 3S3 
 
 whom I refer. At ten o'clock in the morning, carrying 
 their full marching load, they were ordered to ''Double 
 quick, March!" in deep sand, under a blazing sun and 
 through a breathless canyon edged by tall pines. This 
 killing pace, as often as possible, was kept up until two 
 o'clock in the afternoon when, in an almost fainting 
 condition, those who had not already fallen from exhaus- 
 tion, were pushed into a fierce engagement. They fought 
 from that time until sunset a losing battle. 
 
 A losing battle ! How many know or can realize what 
 that means? Even a victorious fight demands all of life's 
 energies. The excitement, the risk of life and limb, the 
 thirst-provoking and stifling gunpowder fumes, the de- 
 pending uncertainties, all make drafts upon the soldier 
 that even the enthusiasm and joy of victory cannot re- 
 place. But when to that is added the depression of defeat, 
 it would seem impossible that those soldiers at night 
 could even move themselves for any purpose. 
 
 Had it not been a case of life or death these men would 
 not have moved, but most wonderful is the reserve force 
 nature has given us which can be called upon in necessity. 
 These men made drafts upon that force and traveled all 
 that night — twenty-five miles to Ripley ; they marched, or 
 walked, or crawled all the next day and all the next night. 
 In some way they kept moving; with insufficient food, 
 with water at uncertain and too infrequent intervals, with 
 supposed certain death behind and promised life in front, 
 many of them kept going, somehow, nearly one hundred 
 miles, before reaching rest, rations, and safety. 
 
 Over the scenes of that hundred miles of horrors I 
 draw a veil, except as to one particular which must be 
 
384 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 answered, both for the Fort Pillow event and the Sturgis 
 disgrace. Were our soldiers, white and black, needlessly 
 killed? 
 
 After a lapse of over half a century, "With charity 
 for all and with malice toward none," I am compelled to 
 admit what the Confederates themselves who knew did 
 not deny: they were so killed. Even General R. E. Lee 
 does not deny it regarding Fort Pillow, and says, "I assert 
 that our officers endeavored to prevent the effusion of 
 blood, and as evidence of this I refer you to the fact that 
 both white and colored prisoners were taken and are now 
 in our hands." This last statement is true, but look at 
 the figures. As nearly as the facts can be ascertained, 
 there were at Fort Pillow five hundred soldiers and 
 refugees killed or driven into the river and drowned, and 
 only about two hundred, including the wounded, taken 
 prisoners. Those simple figures prove conclusively need- 
 less slaughter. In justice to the Confederates we must 
 consider that we had just armed a servile race, and they 
 thought these black soldiers would, in revenge for cen- 
 turies of slavery, murder and violate their people with- 
 out mercy — a fear that proved absolutely groundless. 
 They were brought up as feudists to believe that it was 
 right to kill enemy or friend on sufficient provocation. 
 They considered our act as sufficient provocation. We 
 were notified, unofficially, that no negro soldiers or white 
 men in company with negro soldiers would be taken 
 prisoners. I dare not ask myself what I would have 
 done, with their education and their supposed cause for 
 revenge; an honest reply might lead to an unpleasant 
 conclusion. Let Him who alone "doeth all things well" 
 the verdict find. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 385 
 
 For the cavalry I wish to tell of the thrilling cam- 
 paign of Nashville, because its bare narrative so forcibly 
 defines the duties and work of the cavalry arm of service 
 before and during the Civil War — duties now lost to them 
 forever. 
 
 When Hood crossed the Tennessee River on his 
 march to Nashville, my regiment with others formed the 
 5th Division Cavalry Corps M. D. M., under command of 
 my old Colonel Edward Hatch. This division met Hood 
 at that river and fought his advance mile by mile for 
 over a hundred miles until he laid siege to the city. 
 
 The cavalry was then "the eye of the army" and its 
 duty was, at all times to know just where the enemy's 
 army was and, so far as possible, its strength, component 
 parts, and numbers. This could be done only by fighting 
 it hard enough to compel a display of forces. It was our 
 daily work to fight and fall back, fight and fall back, until 
 such time as General Thomas, our commander, was ready 
 to try final conclusions in one great battle. Some of these 
 conflicts were small, but some, like the engagement of 
 Franklin, were severe; and it was not an unusual thing 
 for regiments to lose more men in the little fights than in 
 a big battle. 
 
 Our division met Hood's army on the 6th day of 
 November and fought it daily until the 2nd day of De- 
 cember, when it arrived in the vicinity of Nashville and 
 settled down to a siege of that city. There our men were 
 given ten days of rest to prepare for the battle at that 
 place. Let a few facts give some idea of the isolation of 
 this division and of the suffering of its men and horses. 
 When it reached Columbus it received its first mail for 
 
386 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 sixty-five days. An inspection of horses showed that in 
 the Second Iowa Cavalry, out of four hundred examined, 
 only sixty-five were fit for service, all the rest, from 
 excessive service, lack of feed, and wading through 
 Tennessee mud, were worthless for present needs. The 
 men were little better. They did not see their tents or 
 knapsacks between the months of September and Decem- 
 ber; their beds had been the mud and snow of the Ten- 
 nessee hills, their blankets and the sky their only cover- 
 ing of nights; while hard riding and uncertain rations, 
 with plenty of fighting, had been their fare all these days. 
 
 When the Battle of Nashville took place on the 15th 
 of December, the Fifth Division — rested, mounted, and 
 re-clothed — was ready to make a new record for the 
 cavalry service. It was stationed on the right of the Fed- 
 eral line. It was dismounted, and the horses had been 
 sent to the rear. The men were lying on the ground, and 
 a fort of the enemy upon a hill in front was shelling them. 
 To lie still and receive the enemy's fire with no chance to 
 reply will test the nerve of any soldier. Consequently 
 when General Hatch rode along the line and said, "Boys, 
 let's go up and take that fort," there was a cheer of ap- 
 proval, and they rushed and captured it. Not only did 
 they capture this fort but when, after entering they found 
 that it was enfiladed by a second one, and that they must 
 either surrender the one they had captured or go on and 
 take the second, they delayed not a moment in their choice, 
 but went on and took the second fort likewise. 
 
 So unprecedented was this success of ours that when 
 the capture of the first fort was reported to General 
 1 nomas he replied, "Tut, tut, impossible, impossible, sir ! 
 Such a thing as cavalrymen carrying forts by assault has 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 387 
 
 never been heard of." Seeing is believing, and the General 
 rode to the right of his line in time to witness with his 
 own eyes our capture of the second fortification. 
 
 Just before the charge upon the second fort was made, 
 an incident occurred that demonstrates the Civil War 
 soldier's determination to perform his assigned duty 
 despite interference from any source. The capture of the 
 first fort, and the pursuit and gathering in of the prison- 
 ers, had scattered the men of the regiment badly. As it 
 was necessary to gather them, Colonel Horton, to attract 
 their attention, took the flag from the color bearer, 
 Sergeant John F. Hartman, and rode among them calling, 
 "Fall in, boys, fall in!" 
 
 Hartman stood for a moment dazed, then risking 
 court-martial and disgrace, he seized the Colonel's horse 
 by the bits and demanded, "Colonel Horton, that flag is 
 mine until I disgrace it. Give it back to me. I'll carry it 
 as far as you dare to." 
 
 The Colonel was a gentleman, he saw his mistake, and 
 handed the flag back saying, "I know you will, Sergeant, 
 and a great deal farther." Hartman carried his flag into 
 the second fort, planted it there with his dying hand and, 
 when found, still held it with his last death grip. 
 
 That day the boys of our division seemed to acquire 
 the habit of capturing cannon, for during the battle of 
 Nashville and the long pursuit of Hoods' broken army 
 afterward the Confederates never discharged a piece of 
 artillery at them that our boys did not raise a shout, make 
 a charge, and capture it. 
 
 It was during this pursuit that two men of my com- 
 pany, Ben rlammet and Horace Bennet, were captured by 
 
388 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the Confederates and were promptly started on the way to 
 a rebel prison. These boys knew something about the bed 
 and board the South was furnishing guests of their varie- 
 ty, and concluded they would not be prisoners but would 
 either escape or die in the attempt. The Confederates had 
 so many captives they could not well find buildings to 
 put them in at night, and so were compelled to let them 
 lie upon the ground in the open fields. The captured men 
 were required to lie as closely together as possible, and 
 guards, who walked their beats all night long, were placed 
 around them. 
 
 The train of captives and guards proceeded toward 
 the south until it came to a part of the country through 
 which our regiment had scouted and fought and which 
 Hammet and Bennett both knew. They here decided that 
 now or never was the time to make their dash for liberty 
 or death. That night they laid their blankets down as 
 close to the guard line as possible, wrapped themselves 
 up, and pretended deep sleep. 
 
 About midnight, when everything had quieted down, 
 they waited until the guard of their part of the line ap- 
 proached their location and then, as he was passing, they 
 sprang to their feet, threw their arms around him, gun 
 and all, and despite the shouts, commands, and rifle shots 
 of the other guards, who dared not leave their beats or, 
 on account of their kidnapped comrade, dared not shoot 
 to kill, they carried him out of sight and range of camp 
 and there left him — in what condition "deponent saith 
 not." By hiding days and traveling nights, guided and 
 provisioned by the negroes, they reached the Tennessee 
 River, hailed a boat, and finally returned safely to the 
 company. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 389 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1864 
 (See map, pages 332-333) 
 
 Objectives 
 
 East of the Alleghany Mountains : 
 
 Lee's army and the Confederate capitol, its base of 
 supplies, Richmond, Virginia. 
 
 West of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Johnston's army and its base of supplies at Atlanta, 
 Georgia. 
 
 The execution of the campaign for the first was placed 
 in the hands of General Meade under personal direction 
 of General Grant. 
 
 That of the last to General Sherman under more gen- 
 eral direction from the same source. 
 
 For the first time, all the armies moved at one time, 
 under one direction (Grant's), for one general purpose. 
 
 Decisive Battles 
 
 East of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Grant's series of battles in the Wilderness, North 
 Anna, Cold Harbor, Petersburg. 
 
 West of Alleghanies : 
 
 Sherman's series of battles from Dalton to Atlanta, 
 Savannah ; Nashville. 
 
 Findings 
 
 East of the Alleghanies : 
 
 The capture of the base of supplies, Richmond, not at- 
 tained, but General Lee was so closely besieged there that 
 he could not detach troops against Sherman. 
 
390 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 West of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Objective attained. 
 
 Johnston's base of supplies, Atlanta, captured, his 
 army under General Hood destroyed, and the Confed- 
 eracy east of the Mississippi River practically cut into 
 two sections by the march from "Atlanta to the Sea." 
 
 Section VI. The Campaign of 1865 and Closing Events 
 
 The contemplated movements for this year were but 
 continuations of the plan made in the spring of 1864, 
 namely : that General Sherman should destroy Johnston's 
 army at Dalton, Georgia ; that General Meade, under 
 General Grant's supervision, should destroy General Lee's 
 army at Richmond, Virginia ; and that the one who first 
 succeeded in attaining his objective should march to the 
 assistance of the other. 
 
 General Sherman was first to perform his task. The 
 army of General Johnston, eventually under General 
 Hood, had been completely destroyed, and in conformity 
 to the preconceived and agreed plan, General Sherman 
 had already marched three hundred miles "from Atlanta 
 to the sea," and now the finishing strokes of the war came. 
 
 In the latter part of January, Sherman left Savannah 
 upon what proved to be the last long offensive march of 
 the war. He crossed the Salkehatichie River in face of 
 the enemy on the 3rd of February, struck and defeated 
 the Confederates at Orangeburg (76), captured Columbia 
 (yy) on the 17th, marched across the state line of North 
 Carolina on March 8th, left Fayetteville (78) for Golds- 
 boro on the 15th, foiled Johnston's attempt to destroy his 
 army in detail at Bentonville on the 21st, and reached 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 391 
 
 Goldsboro (79) on the 23rd. He then formed a junction 
 with Schofield and Terry, who, by his orders, had 
 marched up from Wilmington (73). 
 
 Sherman's army, now all united, had two direct lines 
 of railroad to the ocean, and was ready to communicate 
 and co-operate with Grant at Petersburg (75). There- 
 fore Sherman on the 27th went to Grant's headquarters 
 at City Point (71) to consult personally with him regard- 
 ing the final movements to destroy the Confederate 
 armies. 
 
 At this time General Sherman said: "But one move 
 was left to Lee on the chess board of war: make a junc- 
 tion with Johnston in North Carolina, fall upon and de- 
 stroy me, if possible — a fate I did not apprehend ; then 
 turn on Grant, sure to be in close pursuit, and defeat 
 him." This move, from subsequent events seemed to have 
 been Lee's intention. He communicated it to President 
 Davis, who had agreed that such movement should be 
 made as soon as the ground settled and troops could pos- 
 sibly be moved in the spring. 
 
 But General Grant did not wait until troops could be 
 reasonably marched. He started Meade's army moving 
 by its left flank on the 29th day of March when the roads 
 were impassable to any troops but those that were in the 
 lightest marching order and of the most determined dis- 
 position. 
 
 Notwithstanding the adverse opinions of subordinates, 
 he marched his men through mud and rain at a time of 
 which General Horace Porter said : "The Country was 
 densely wooded and the ground swampy. By evening 
 of the 30th whole fields had become beds of quicksand 
 
392 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 in which horses sank to their bellies, wagons threatening 
 to disappear altogether, and it seemed as if the bottom 
 had fallen out of the roads. The roads had become sheets 
 of water and it looked as if the saving of the army would 
 require the services, not of a Grant, but of a Noah. 
 Soldiers would call out to officers as they rode along, "I 
 say! when are the gunboats coming up?" 
 
 Under these unfavorable conditions General Sheridan 
 with the cavalry and one corps of infantry, moved south- 
 west to Dinwiddie Court House on the 31st, there threat- 
 ening the Richmond and Danville railroad, the Confeder- 
 ates' principal source of supplies. General Lee imme- 
 diately detached a large part of his army to drive Sheri- 
 dan and his forces away. This brought on the fierce 
 battle of Five Forks on the 1st and 2nd days of April. 
 Sheridan was not driven away, but Lee's men were so 
 badly defeated he was forced to conclude that the Con- 
 federates could no longer hold Richmond and Petersburg. 
 On the morning of the 2nd, therefore, he notified Presi- 
 dent Davis, who immediately left the church services, 
 where the message found him, and commenced prepar- 
 ing for precipitate flight. 
 
 Now began a race between General Lee's and General 
 Grant's armies to determine which could first reach 
 Burkeville (81), the junction of the Danville and South- 
 side railroads, the key to direct communication between 
 General Lee's army in Virginia and General Johnston's 
 army in North Carolina. The indefatigable Sheridan 
 with his Union forces was first there, and the battle of 
 Sailor's Creek on April 6th, in which General Ewell and 
 his whole corps was captured, demonstrated our ability to 
 retain the key. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 393 
 
 This success of the Union army compelled Lee to 
 change the direction of his retreat toward his secondary 
 base of supplies, Lynchburg, and the race continued along 
 the Southside Railroad toward that objective. 
 
 Here again Sheridan was the winner. He first reached 
 Appomattox Station (82), captured the supplies Lee had 
 ordered there to feed his now famishing men, then formed 
 a line of cavalry and infantry across Lee's line of retreat, 
 so strong that the Confederate forces made no serious 
 attempt to break it when they reached it on the morning 
 of April 9th, 1865. 
 
 Then the end came. In McLean's cottage at Appo- 
 mattox Court House, Lee surrendered. There and then 
 his officers and men were paroled on liberal terms that 
 allowed all to return to their homes "not to be disturbed 
 by the United States authorities so long as they observed 
 their paroles and the laws in force where they resided." 
 
 Johnston's army on the 26th surrendered to Sherman 
 at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the same terms. Other 
 commanders in various parts of the now re-established 
 Union also followed the example of their illustrious 
 leaders as rapidly as the news reached them and 
 
 THE WAR WAS OVER. 
 
 The wave of rejoicing that swept the North at this 
 culmination is impossible to describe. Tliose who par- 
 ticipated in the celebration of the Armistice at the close 
 of the Great War can imagine something of what it might 
 have been were this last demonstration multiplied by the 
 ratio of the importance of the two events. The Civil War 
 lasted twice as long as the Great War. Relatively, to the 
 country engaged in it, the cost, in endeavor, in heart 
 
394 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 distress, in destruction of property, and in loss of life 
 was nine times as great in the former as in the latter, and 
 the resulting greater benefits of the struggle to our na- 
 tion's present standing and future progress were beyond 
 comparison. Figure these facts out and then imagine, if 
 you can, the outburst of enthusiasm that swept the North 
 like a cyclone when the telegraph wires clicked out, "Lee 
 has surrendered." 
 
 After the surrender of Appomattox my regiment was 
 stationed at Selma, Alabama, performing patrol and re- 
 construction work until the following September. Here 
 we met the Confederate boys who, worn-out, tired, and 
 dejected, were coming to a none too cordial welcome at 
 their homes. The people of that part of the South had 
 suffered comparatively little from the war. They had 
 been told continuously that their troops were victorious 
 over the North. They thought the surrender was un- 
 called-for, that their soldiers should have fought longer, 
 and they treated them as slackers. Later they knew better 
 and appreciated the services of their men at their true 
 worth; but there, just after the surrender, I believe that 
 we, the "Yanks," were the best friends the returning Con- 
 federate soldiers in that city had. We knew and appre- 
 ciated so well what they had done that we nearly im- 
 poverished ourselves helping them on their way home. 
 
 Almost a generation after tfie war closed a letter came 
 from Mobile, Alabama, to the secretary of our regi- 
 mental organization. The writer was an ex-confederate 
 soldier who wanted to send the best carriage that he had 
 in his shop to that member of the Second Iowa Cavalry 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 395 
 
 who furnished him a horse and saddle at Selma, Alabama, 
 and helped him on his way home when he had become 
 completely exhausted. 
 
 This circumstance was not exceptional, it was general, 
 almost universal. The friendship which grew up between 
 the "Yanks" and "Johnnies" who fought each other dur- 
 ing our Civil War was a most strange thing, and the more 
 frequent and closely contested their conflicts had been, if 
 square and honest, the warmer and closer that friendship 
 was. 
 
 No better example of this exists than that of my regi- 
 ment, and the Second Missouri Confederate Cavalry. 
 They were as well armed and disciplined as we, and no 
 matter how much odds in numbers or position we were 
 willing to assume with the other Confederate Cavalry 
 regiments, when we met that one body of men we could 
 not afford to give one single advantage in either numbers 
 or conditions. When we met, which was quite often, 
 chance or the "God of Battle" had to decide the issue of 
 the clash. The result was mutual respect and warm 
 friendship. If we made one of them prisoner, the best 
 that we had in camp was not too good for him ; and if 
 they caught one of us, we received the same treatment 
 from them. Today I would travel farther to meet a Second 
 Missouri man than for any other person in the world 
 outside my own family or regiment. 
 
 This friendship between the old soldiers of the North 
 and the South did more to bridge the chasm that separated 
 the two sections than any other influence then or now 
 extant. Civilians upon both sides could not see us veter- 
 ans fraternizing so fully as we always did, without modi- 
 
396 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 fying the prejudices and resentments that a life-time of 
 misinformation and misunderstanding may have fixed 
 upon them. 
 
 Some time after the war when I told the boys of my 
 Grand Army Post that I was going south they said, "You 
 will have to take the Grand Army button off your coat 
 when you get there." 
 
 "No, I will not," I replied. "For two reasons I decline 
 to do it. First, I will not take it off for any person or 
 circumstance whatever, and second, I think I know those 
 "Johnnies" well enough to understand they will think bet- 
 ter of me if I wear it than if I should take it off and put 
 it in my coat pocket." I soon happened to be in Mobile, 
 Alabama, when the Confederate camps of the state had 
 their reunion there. I thought it would be a good chance 
 to try the effect of my G. A. R. button. 
 
 I went to their place of meeting. An old gentleman 
 met me with extended hand, saying, "Are you an old 
 soldier?" I answered, "Yes, I served over four years, but 
 in the Northern army. I am a 'Yank'." 
 
 "We are just as glad to see you," he replied. "Every- 
 thing we have is yours." I went to their place of meeting. 
 A musket-armed sentinel met me with "Arms apart," and 
 challenged, "Are you a delegate?" 
 
 "No, I am not," I said, "I am an old Yankee soldier." 
 
 "Pass in," he answered. 
 
 I seated myself in the first row of the dress circle, but 
 soon found I was surounded by delegates, so reaching for 
 my hat I said to those around me, "I guess I will move 
 back. I am not a delegate. I am not even a Confederate. 
 I am a Yankee soldier." 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 397 
 
 Immediately several hands hit my back in friendly 
 salutation and unanimous orders given to me. "Sit down, 
 we have got you prisoner now if we never had you be- 
 fore." Needless to say I stayed where I was, and was 
 never better used in my life. 
 
 I wish I commanded words fit to portray a scene of 
 comradeship that I saw in Mobile on one of the Confed- 
 erate Decoration Days. After decorating the graves of 
 the Confederate dead the whole long column of Confed- 
 erate veterans, state militia, school cadets, and citizens 
 marched to our National Cemetery; there they halted, 
 saluted, and a speaker of them, and for them, presented 
 to its superintendent a beautiful floral emblem, symboli- 
 cally to decorate the graves of the Northern soldiers there 
 buried. It was a sympathetic act gallantly performed, 
 and one that I believe never did occur and never could 
 occur in any land save ours. I was then standing by the 
 superintendent and noticed the captain of the Mobile Con- 
 federate Camp motion to his adjutant; soon two grey 
 uniformed ex-"Johnnies" stepped out of their ranks and 
 captured me, a willing prisoner to assist them in com- 
 pleting the duties of the day. 
 
 There are no men in the world more loyal to. the "Stars 
 and Stripes" than those who fought hardest to separate 
 themselves from it. I have talked with hundreds of old 
 Confederates in every state of the Union and managed 
 to work into our conversation this question or its equal : 
 "Now, 'Johnny,' you have had about a half century to 
 test the question, and what do you really think? Would 
 it have been as well if you had succeeded, or is it better as 
 it is now?" Think what it must mean to that man if he 
 
398 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 answers in the way I would have him. It means that 
 Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jack- 
 son, and many other men whom he adores as we do 
 Abraham Lincoln, were wrong; it means that all his com- 
 rades who were killed, died in vain; and it means that his 
 own service and suffering and trials went for nothing. 
 Yet, in spite of all this, I have not had a single one who 
 refused to answer, and every one cordially said, "It is 
 better as it now is." Truly, there is no North, no South, 
 no East, nor no West. We are one people in everything 
 except sectional politics, and may God hasten the day 
 when that division, like others that have vanished, shall 
 be, like them, known no more. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1865 
 
 (See map, pages 332-333) 
 Objective 
 
 East of the Alleghany Mountains : 
 
 At the commencement of the 1864 campaign it was 
 understood between Generals Sherman and Grant that the 
 one who first attained his 1864 objective should march to 
 the other's assistance. 
 
 Pursuant to this plan, after Sherman had captured 
 Atlanta and dispersed Johnston's army, he had marched 
 his forces into the East, and both Grant's and Sherman's 
 Sole Objective for 1865 was the destruction of the Con- 
 federate armies and capture of Richmond. 
 
 West of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Nothing of importance. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 399 
 
 Decisive Engagements and Events 
 
 East of the Alleghanies : 
 
 Fort Fisher, Sherman's march from Savannah to 
 Goldsboro; Petersburg. 
 
 The series of battles caused by Grant's army moving 
 by its left flank and cutting off communication with 
 Johnston's army. 
 
 Capture of Lee's army at Appomattox. 
 
 Findings 
 
 Both East and West: 
 
 The surrender of the Confederate forces wherever 
 they were found. 
 
 Peace for the whole country. 
 
4 oo ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 
 
 Section I. Its Commencement and Causes 
 
 During the last decade of the last century our next- 
 door neighbor and closest commercial friend, Cuba, was 
 engaged in a deadly, almost despairingly desperate, revolt 
 against the demoralizing and impoverishing tyranny of 
 Spain. i 
 
 Few persons outside of Cuba realize the courage and 
 valor the people of that island exhibited, the sufferings 
 they endured, or the horrors they survived. During the 
 Santiago campaign circumstances were such that the 
 Cuban forces did no fighting in the trenches, and were of 
 little assistance elsewhere except as scouts; many formed 
 the hasty conclusion that their revolution was one of fuss, 
 feathers, and furor, and were led to belittle their fighting- 
 qualities and minimize their patriotism. 
 
 To correct that impression, allow me to present a few 
 facts. I will count as nothing the great cruelty, destruc- 
 tion of property and irregular war methods permitted 
 by Spain during the "Ten Years War" which closed in 
 President Grant's time; I will take no account of the 
 failure of that country to carry out her definite promises 
 of reform, solemnly made to end that conflict ; and I will 
 base my demonstration upon findings during the last re- 
 volt of that island that began in February, 1895, and 
 ended when Santiago fell, July 17, 1898. 
 
 General Funston, who served in the ranks of the 
 Cuban army from private to lieutenant colonel, had great 
 admiration for their fighting qualities. Even though they 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 401 
 
 may not excel in fine tactics, precise evolutions, and 
 powerful mass formation, yet as loose fighters and rapid 
 scouters, they proved themselves brave and efficient. 
 
 I understand that the war records of this last revolu- 
 tion have been carefully compiled and are now on file in 
 Havana. These records show during the three years of 
 the War 53,744 men served in their army a longer or 
 shorter time. Of this number 5,180 were battle losses — ■ 
 killed or died of wounds — and 3,437 died of disease. 
 These are not estimates, they are records showing the 
 company and regiment of each deceased soldier, the en- 
 gagement where he was killed, and the date of his death. 
 These figures prove a battle loss of over ninety-five men 
 to the thousand enrolled, while the disease loss was only 
 about two-thirds of that number. 
 
 No better, braver men ever faced each other than the 
 two armies who fought during the three years of our own 
 Civil War and yet our battle loss was only fifty-five men 
 to the thousand, while our disease loss was three times 
 that number. 
 
 No one ever doubted the bravery of our boys who 
 fought the Mexican War, yet their battle loss was only 
 sixteen to the thousand, while their disease loss was over 
 sixty-two. The most surprising comparison of all, per- 
 haps, is that the Cuban army of little more than 53,000 
 men, during its last revolt, lost in three years more men 
 killed and died of wounds than the United States suffered 
 from its hundreds of thousands of enrolled men who 
 served in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish 
 and Philippine Wars combined. 
 
402 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 A careful consideration of these statistics, especially 
 when comparison of relative battle losses and death losses 
 is made, reaches the unavoidable conclusion that the Cu- 
 ban fought bravely and well. 
 
 The suffering the Cuban and his family endured and 
 the horrors they survived, never can be, never will be, and 
 perhaps never should be told. A plain mathematical state- 
 ment is sufficient to prove the unspeakable distress of it 
 all. 
 
 On February ioth, 1896, General Weyler took com- 
 mand of the island as governor and captain-general, and 
 issued his concentration orders. This policy grew out of 
 the fact that so long as the wives and children of the 
 insurgent soldiers were left upon their little farms to 
 raise crops for food and forage, it would be impossible 
 to conquer the men — the Ten Years War had established 
 this fully. Weyler therefore concluded that the only way 
 to put down the revolt would be to require that all farm- 
 ers and families "concentrate," leave their farms, let them 
 lie idle, and live in towns occupied by Spanish soldiers. 
 Failure to do this proved the delinquent to be a rebel and 
 he was treated accordingly. 
 
 The Consul General of the United States, Fitshugh 
 Lee, officially reports in December 1897, that tne effect 
 of this policy was to take four hundred thousand inhabi- 
 tants, independent small farmers and families, who were 
 taking care of themselves, and place them in camps where 
 they must be fed and clothed by others. This crime was 
 all the darker because they were not cared for and fed, 
 and by far the greater number of these persons were 
 women and children. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 403 
 
 What the results of such forced concentration would 
 be could easily be imagined, but no effort in that direc- 
 tion is necessary because the same authority states to our 
 government, that in the province of Havana alone, out of 
 a hundred and one thousand concentrados, fifty-two 
 thousand had died. Here one may give his imagination 
 full flight and its loftiest soaring cannot visualize the 
 disease, distress, and despair actually present. 
 
 The United States was neither a willing nor an unsym- 
 pathetic witness of all this devastation. During the "Ten 
 Years War" her patience had been exhausted, and Gen- 
 eral Grant during his presidency would have intervened 
 had not Spain definitely pledged reforms. 
 
 Now that Spain's misgovernment had begun anew, 
 the people of our country could have patience no longer. 
 In September 1897, through our minister to Spain, Gen- 
 eral Woodford, President McKinley sent a note to the 
 Spanish government stating the position of the United 
 States and demanding an adjustment of Cuban affairs. 
 The minister also had authority to state, "The president 
 instructs me to say that we do not want Cuba. He also 
 instructs me to say with equal clearness, that we do wish 
 immediate peace in Cuba." 
 
 This demand had its effect. Weyler was recalled by 
 Spain, the concentration orders were modified, and on the 
 17th of October General Blanco was appointed under 
 liberal instructions and a pledge by the new ministry to 
 grant autonomy to Cuba. 
 
 But this reform came too late — the country was 
 ruined. Senator Proctor, who visited the island said, 
 "Outside of Havana, all is changed. It is not peace, it is 
 
4 04 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 not war. It is desolation, distress, misery and starva- 
 tion." Neither the Spanish citizens of Cuba, nor the 
 .Cubans, now wanted autonomy. The Spanish objected 
 because it would put the island under Cuban rule, and the 
 Cubans had experienced all of Spain's sovereignty they 
 desired to tolerate. 
 
 Whether this new government would have succeeded 
 or not, no person knows, because on the 15th day of Feb- 
 ruary, 1898, before it had endured long enough to test 
 its acceptability, the tragedy of the sinking of the Maine 
 occurred in Havana's harbor and the people of the United 
 States went wild with excitement and demanded imme- 
 diate and effective intervention. 
 
 The idea that a battleship of our navy, making a 
 friendly visit, anchored where designated by Spanish 
 officials, should be destroyed, blown up by a torpedo, 
 and two hundred and fifty-two of our sailors killed by 
 Spain, could not for one moment be tolerated without 
 war. Yielding to the influence of calmer parties, the 
 country breathlessly awaited the report of experts sent 
 to Havana to ascertain the cause of the ship's loss. There 
 was no doubt that an explosion had occurred in the 
 Maine's magazine, and this question was submitted to the 
 commission : Was this explosion the cause of the destruc- 
 tion of the vessel or was it only secondary, and a result 
 of some greater explosion outside the ship? After long 
 and careful examination by these expert deep-sea divers 
 and others, this commission reported their findings to be, 
 that the battleship had been sunk by an explosion from 
 the outside so severe that its bottom had been raised 
 thirty-four feet from its true level. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 405 
 
 Who fired the torpedo is not known to this day, but 
 no evidence could convince the American people that any 
 one except Spain was the guilty party. The time for 
 debate was past, the time for action had come, and with- 
 out regard to party affiliations, social distinction, or place 
 of birth, the country demanded that Spain, which had 
 exploited and victimized Cuba for these hundreds of 
 years, should get out of the island at once and forever. 
 War was declared April 21, 1898; both houses concurred 
 by resolutions without regard to party. 
 
 President Roosevelt once stated, "That the most strik- 
 ing thing about the war with Spain was the preparedness 
 of the navy and the unpreparedness of the army." 
 Whether or not this statement was absolutely true as to 
 the navy, it most certainly was correct as to the army. 
 On the 9th dayof March, foreseeing the conflict, Congress 
 had voted $50,000,000 as a fund to be used for the 
 defence of the United States, and President McKinley as 
 custodian of that fund had strictly confined its use to 
 defensive expenditures. Therefore, when war was de- 
 clared no preparation of any kind had been made for 
 offensive movements. 
 
 President McKinley made his first call for 125,000 
 volunteer troops on the 23rd of April, and on the 25th of 
 May his second of 75,000, making 200,000 volunteers 
 called into the field. The grand total of the army for this 
 war, including regulars and all levies, was approximately 
 275,000 men. 
 
 There was no necessity for a draft to raise these men. 
 The veterans of the Civil War, who wore the blue, and 
 those who wore the grey, together with their sons, con- 
 
4 o6 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 tested each other for the right and honor of defending 
 the old flag. The question that most seriously troubled 
 the administration at Washington was not how many 
 men should be required from each state, but how many 
 men each state should be permitted to furnish. 
 
 As far as possible to acclimate these new troops to 
 conditions in Cuba, they were mobilized in four camps all 
 in the South : one at Chickamauga, under General J. R. 
 Brooke ; one at New Orleans, under General W. R. 
 Shafter; one at Mobile under General J. J. Coppinger; 
 and the fourth at Tampa under General J. F. Wade ; and 
 this mobilization in camp was all the war service that 
 many Spanish War veterans ever saw. This counts not 
 against their patriotism; they did their share and were 
 ready ; some men sick in hospitals and unfit for any serv- 
 ice, when it was rumored their regiments were to be sent 
 out, left their wards without permission and reported for 
 duty in their companies. 
 
 For moving these troops the government contract 
 with the railroads was, "that day coaches should be used ; 
 one seat should be allowed to each man and his equipage 
 and, when the run was over twenty-four hours, sleeping 
 cars should be provided ; one section to each three men." 
 When the veterans of the Civil War, both North and 
 South, remembered how they were piled upon open flat 
 cars, or crowded into box cars — "side door Pullmans," 
 the boys called them — or assigned to "palace cars" that 
 hogs and cattle usually occupied, and thought it was all 
 right so we only "got there"" on time, they could not help 
 smiling quietly when they heard some sleeping car soldier 
 complain of the hardships he endured traveling. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 407 
 
 Section II. Movements and Attained Results 
 
 The general plan for the war, contemplated by the 
 commanding officers of the army and navy, were : First, 
 to require Admiral Dewey to attend to the far eastern 
 fleet of the Spanish navy, under Admiral Montojo, and 
 see that it neither sailed across the. Pacific Ocean and 
 attacked our western coast nor went through the Suez 
 canal to vex our eastern cities. Second, to invade Cuba 
 at or near the city of Havana. Third, to care for Cervera's 
 Spanish Fleet in the West. Fourth, to capture Puerto 
 Rico by the way of the city of San Juan. 
 
 Circumstances changed all this. Dewey's unexpected 
 destruction of the Spanish fleet made a land expedition 
 to the Philippine Islands necessary to secure and com- 
 plete his victory. Cuba was finally invaded, not at Havana 
 but at Santiago, and Puerto Rico not at San Juan, but 
 at Ponce. 
 
 President McKinley had most properly decided that a 
 part of the $50,000,000 voted in March for defense should 
 be applied to the navy. Therefore, the opening of the 
 war found Admiral Dewey and his fleet at Hong Kong, 
 China, fully coaled, stripped for action, and painted grey 
 for a fight. 
 
 The very day Spain declared war, April 24th, Dewey 
 was notified, and ordered to proceed against the Spanish 
 fleet. The next day he left Hong Kong looking for 
 trouble with Admiral Montojo and his command — he 
 found them in Manila Bay. 
 
 Notwithstanding the supposed danger, Admiral 
 Dewey, about midnight of April 30th, led his fleet past, 
 and directly in range of the batteries of Caballo. The 
 
408 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Spanish garrison seemingly never woke up until the fleet 
 was fully abreast of their guns and then succeeded in 
 firing only a few harmless shots at the vessels which had 
 already passed. If any torpedoes had been planted, the 
 enemy were too surprised to fire them. 
 
 Admiral Dewey's fighting fleet consisted of six ves- 
 sels, not one of them iron-clad, but only partly protected 
 ships. He at once prepared to engage the Spanish fleet 
 and fortifications near Manila. Admiral Montojo had 
 drawn up his nine ships in line of battle where they were 
 supported by five strong shore batteries, two at Cavite 
 arsenal and three at Manila, and all behind a line of 
 mines. 
 
 Stripped for action and ready for fight, Admiral 
 Dewey's fleet sailed across Manila Bay in single file, the 
 Olympia, Dewey's flagship, leading. Then followed in 
 order, at proper distances, the Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrol, 
 Concord, and Boston. 
 
 About daylight they reached Cavite and Montojo's 
 fleet, and when within 5600 yards Dewey quietly said to 
 the captain of the Olympia, "You can fire when you are 
 ready, Gridley." The battle was on — nine ships and five 
 batteries in home surroundings, and many of the men in 
 the sight of wives and children, against six ships from the 
 antipodes. 
 
 Our vessels passed Cavite and Montojo's fleet sailing 
 in an oval back and forth discharging one broadside of 
 their ships on one tack and the other broadside on their 
 return. All the time the shore batteries and the Spanish 
 fleet replied vigorously but for some cause very non- 
 efTectively. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 409 
 
 Three times our ships circled thus before the enemy, 
 and the result of the fight sounds like an "Arabian Night's 
 Tale" — on the American side victory, and only seven men 
 slightly wounded, not a ship injured; on the Spanish side, 
 defeat, and three hundred and eighty-one men killed and 
 wounded, the entire fleet burned, sunk or destroyed, and 
 three shore batteries silenced. 
 
 The cause of this great difference of result is hard to 
 comprehend. Many people dismiss discussion of the 
 matter by saying that Montojo's fleet was obsolete and 
 that he had no effective ships or armament. I so thought 
 until I found that at least three of his ships, the Isla De 
 Luson, the Isla de Cuba, and the Don Juan de Austria, 
 were constructed and launched about the time three of 
 Dewey's were commissioned, that a fourth, the Rieni 
 Christina, was a steel vessel, of which class Dewey had 
 none ; further, that on the Spanish fleet and in the silenced 
 batteries were thirty-six modern guns of approximately 
 five and six inch caliber that should have pierced our 
 wooden ships through and through, and that they had 
 within two as many rapid fire guns as we used. 
 
 These facts considered, one is compelled to seek some 
 other reason. Those who have been placed in a position 
 to best know locate the cause in these sources : first, ne- 
 glected equipment ; second, faulty ammunition ; third, the 
 reported custom of Spain to supply its men with intoxicat- 
 ing drink prior to engagements ; and last, but not least, to 
 the men behind the guns. 
 
 The best guns and the most forceful ammunition is of 
 no effect unless markmanship is good. The Spaniards, in 
 their fleet and batteries, had more guns and a great many 
 more men than the Americans, and during the heat of 
 
410 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the conflict must have fired more rounds of ammunition 
 than Dewey's men, but with far different results. Our 
 ships were uninjured; the Spanish fleet was destroyed. 
 
 Admiral Dewey's victory over the fleet and the shore 
 batteries placed Manila Bay and the City of Manila under 
 his control. The latter he could take by bombardment at 
 any time, but not having troops to garrison it he refrained 
 from such destruction and referred the matter to his gov- 
 ernment for instruction and action: 
 
 A land force under General Wesley Merritt was 
 organized, equipped and sent to Manila with the least 
 possible delay. But the first detachment did not reach 
 there until June 30th and the city and its garrison were 
 not captured until August 14th, at which time the Philip- 
 pine Islands were forever released from Spain's tyranny. 
 
 Thus the first objective of the war was more than 
 fully obtained. 
 
 The second, the invasion of Cuba, was hastened by 
 the movement of the second Spanish fleet under the com- 
 mand of Admiral Cervera. He left Cape De Verde 
 Islands April 29th. What his destination was no person 
 this side of the Atlantic knew. The government thought 
 it must be the West Indies Islands, but each city along 
 the Atlantic coast imagined that its port would be the 
 point of attack, and in the wildest panic called upon the 
 government for protection. May 12th the fleet was re- 
 ported off Martinique; on the 19th it entered Santiago 
 Bay; on the 23rd Commodore Schley was ordered to 
 blockade it there ; on the 28th the blockade was effectively 
 established, and the cities of the Atlantic coast were re- 
 lieved from the dread of bombardment. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 411 
 
 This movement of Cervera's fleet compelled the United 
 States to change the objective point of the invasion of 
 Cuba from Havana to Santiago, and General Shafter 
 with his command of about 17,000 men was ordered to 
 that place. 
 
 He left the United States June 7th, was recalled and 
 delayed one week by a "phantom Spanish fleet scare," but 
 finally made a surf landing at Daiquiri, Cuba, near San- 
 tiago, June 2 1st, without serious loss or delay, and im- 
 mediately commenced his advance upon that city. 
 
 During this advance occurred the most serious fighting 
 of the land forces. The first engagement was at Las 
 Guasimas, June 24th. Here the Spanish made the surpris- 
 ing report of the battle : "We defeated the enemy, but he 
 kept on fighting, and we had to retire." Upon July 1st, 
 came the fight at El Caney, and later, the same day, the 
 battle at San Juan Hill, both brilliant victories for the 
 American army which resulted in the practical invest- 
 ment of the city. 
 
 On July 3rd General Shafter demanded the surrender 
 of Santiago. General Toral, commanding the Spanish 
 forces, refused compliance but said that he would submit 
 General Shafter's terms to higher authority for orders. 
 This was done, and after many consultations and much 
 correspondence, the city was surrendered on the 17th 
 of July, with twenty-four thousand prisoners, all their 
 arms, materials and over a million rations. Thus was the 
 second objective obtained. 
 
 The campaign that had produced this result had been 
 short as to time and economical as to losses. Only twenty- 
 
412 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 three days had elapsed, and our killed and wounded had 
 been only 1,688 — 243 of former, and 1,445 of the latter. 
 
 No wonder General Toral wanted authority to sur- 
 render 24,000 men, one-half of whom were fully in- 
 trenched, all well-protected from the torrential rains and 
 fully rationed, to an enemy of only three-fourths of his 
 number, in open trenches subject to deluging storms, and 
 nearly prostrate from the effects of malarial and yellow 
 fevers. Had he not done so he might have faced a court 
 martial in Spain. The Spanish report of the Las Guasi- 
 mas fight, "We defeated the enemy but he kept on fight- 
 ing and we had to retire," must have affected his nerve 
 and shaken his courage. 
 
 On the 3rd day of July, the day General Shafter de- 
 manded the surrender of Santiago, the Spanish officials, 
 foreseeing the fall of the city, were forced to a decision as 
 to the fate of Cervera's fleet still lying in its harbor. 
 Should it be surrendered or destroyed, or should it dare 
 a fight with the American navy outside? Cervera refused 
 to take the responsibility of the last alternative without 
 orders. Captain General Blanco decided the question by 
 directing that the fleet should be neither surrendered nor 
 destroyed without a fight. 
 
 Obeying these orders, at 9 145 that Sunday morning 
 Cevera sailed out of the harbor with his six fighting ships. 
 He passed the uselessly wrecked Merrimac, and entered 
 the open ocean to meet such fate as was before him. It 
 was a fierce, quick, running fight that he found. By 1:15 
 P. M. it was all over, and the Colon, his last remaining 
 ship, went on shore and surrendered seventy-five miles 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 413 
 
 west of Santiago. The others were all wrecks strewn 
 along the beach at various points within twenty miles of 
 the harbor from which they came. 
 
 It was a naval battle second only to Dewey's victory 
 in Manila Bay. Of the six American ships that took part 
 in this engagement not one was injured, and of their 
 crews only one man was killed and one injured; while of 
 the Spanish ships every one was destroyed and about six 
 hundred of their crews were killed or wounded. Where 
 in the annals of naval warfare can two such brilliant vic- 
 tories be found? 
 
 In this glorious and most successful manner the second 
 and third objectives were reached. 
 
 The fourth objective was the invasion of Puerto Rico. 
 
 General Miles took personal command of this expedi- 
 tion. In place of proceeding against San Juan on the 
 north side of the island as contemplated, he landed near 
 Ponce on the south side and to the great delight of its 
 citizens occupied it on the 28th day of July. Two expedi- 
 tions were then organized to drive the Spanish out of the 
 island : one under Generals Nelson and Brooke, whose ob- 
 jective was San Juan via Aibonito, that would sweep the 
 eastern portion of the island ; and the other under Gener- 
 als Henry and Schwan, to clear the west, with Arecibo as 
 its final objective. These expeditions, both well-planned, 
 had been successfully inaugurated, and would without 
 doubt have been victoriously terminated had they not been 
 stopped by the close of the war. 
 
 This Spanish-American war has been much belittled 
 and subjected to harsh, even brutal, criticism by citizens 
 and volunteer soldiers. It seems to me that, although 
 
414 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 comparatively small and unexpectedly brief, it is one of 
 which the nation should be proud. War was declared 
 April 21, 1898, and peace was concluded August 13th of 
 the same year — only three months and twenty-two days. 
 It found our navy in a reasonable condition of prepara- 
 tion, but, save a squad of 26,000 regular troops, we had 
 no army, no serviceable arms, equipment, ammunition, 
 clothing or provisions for one ; yet in the time mentioned 
 263,000 men had^been mobilized, armed, equipped, clothed, 
 rationed, and sent upon three separate victorious expedi- 
 tions that had acquired the objectives for which they had 
 been sent, and had materially assisted the navy in wip- 
 ing the Spanish fleet from off the ocean. That is a record 
 which every American should appreciate. 
 
 But there were complaints — loud complaints — espe- 
 cially from the soldiers of the Santiago campaign. These 
 came from the new volunteers; from the regular troops, 
 there were none. It was unavoidable that there should 
 be complaints from the new volunteers. One who has 
 served among them as long as I, knows what kind of a man 
 a fresh volunteer may be. He is brave, patriotic, and 
 will stand any privation and even die for his country, but 
 he reserves fully the citizens' right to kick when anything 
 does not go to suit him, especially when it interferes with 
 his regular three meals a day; and he wants his people at 
 home to know what great sacrifices he is undergoing for 
 his country. The curious thing is that the fewer comforts 
 he has at home, the louder he will cry when deprived of 
 them in the army. 
 
 A friend of mine came to me in tears to relate the 
 privation which her son was enduring in this army. When 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 415 
 
 m 
 
 I investigated the real facts of the boy's complaint I found 
 his grievance was that his brutal officers would not let 
 him set up in his tent a modern bedstead with spring 
 mattress. When I had explained a little of army life to 
 this mother, she went away comforted. This stage of the 
 war volunteer's experience does not last -long, especially 
 if he is given really serious fighting to do; he soon takes 
 his hardships without whimpering or makes a joke of 
 them, as our Civil War boys did at Gravelly Springs 
 when they were living on mouldy corn in the ear. 
 
 Now Shafter's men had been only a few weeks away 
 from home. They were having pretty hard times, and 
 they wanted the people at home to know all about their 
 trials. There were eighty-six correspondents of news- 
 papers, over five to each regiment, more than one for each 
 batallion, to help him tell about them. These correspond- 
 ents had to earn their money and furnish copy for their 
 papers, and to many a reporter a "good story" must be 
 told, its truth or falsity being a matter of secondary con- 
 sideration. It came about, therefore, that along with the 
 mass of true and proper news sent by these men from the 
 front there were many items which falsified facts, sland- 
 ered officials, discredited the soldiers, magnified a suffi- 
 ciently bad condition, and caused many needless, sleepless 
 nights and weeping eyes to thousands of loving ones at 
 home. 
 
 That war was a good fight well won, but as an Ameri- 
 can citizen I am more proud of what we did for Cuba 
 after her independence than of our aid in gaining it. 
 
 When we took control of their affairs there was no 
 government, except locally in the cities and towns. We 
 
416 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 m 
 
 established a democratic sovereignty that has remained 
 until now and may long continue to last. We found her 
 cities plague-smitten with yellow fever and other tropic 
 diseases; we installed modern sanitary measures that 
 cleaned them up, and the yellow fever, for the first time 
 since its introduction into Cuba, was swept out of its per- 
 ennial stronghold, Havana. We re-organized their 
 schools, built public works, and established hospitals, we 
 paid for it all out of the revenues of the island ; and left 
 a surplus of $1,792,109.52 in the treasury when we sur- 
 rendered our trust — an unprecedented condition for a 
 Cubian government. We found them a starving, poverty- 
 stricken, disorganized aggregation of humanity; we left 
 them a prosperous, growing, happy people. These are a 
 few of the blessings which the Spanish-American War 
 brought to the Cuban Republic, and I for one am proud of 
 our part in it. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE 
 SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 
 April 21 — August 13, 1898 
 General Objective 
 
 The Freeing of Cuba from Spain. 
 Campaign Objectives 
 
 1. Admiral Montojo's Spanish fleet in the Pacific. 
 
 2. The invasion of Cuba by way of Havana. 
 
 3. Admiral Cervera's Spanish fleet in the Atlantic. 
 
 4. The invasion of Porto Rico by way of San Juan. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 417 
 
 Decisive Engagements 
 
 1. Battle with Admiral Montojo's fleet in Manila Bay. 
 
 2. Siege and battles near Santiago, Cuba. 
 
 3. Fight with Admiral Cervera's fleet near Santiago. 
 
 4. Siege and battle at City of Manila, Luzon. 
 
 Findings 
 
 General Objective 
 
 Fully attained, Cuba delivered from the sovereignty 
 of Spain and made a republic. 
 
 Camp aign bjec tives 
 
 1 Admiral Montojo's fleet completely destroyed. 
 
 2. Cuba invaded, not at Havana but at Santiago, and 
 that city captured. 
 
 3. Cervera's fleet entirely disposed of. 
 
 4. Porto Rico invaded and captured, not by way of 
 San Juan, but at Ponce. 
 
418 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 THE WORLD WAR 
 
 Section I. Our Work in America 
 
 Never, so long as nations shall live and history endure, 
 
 will the fatal act committed at forty minutes past ten 
 
 the morning of June 27, 19 14, on the street of Serajevo, 
 
 Bosnia, by an eighteen-year old school boy, be forgotten. 
 
 Whether Gavrilo Prinzep, the boy who fired the shots 
 that then killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir pre- 
 sumptive of the Austro-Hungarian throne, was a brutal 
 murderer, a crazy fanatic, or a self-sacrificing patriot 
 endeavoring to right the wrongs of Bosnia and Herzego- 
 vina, makes no difference to the catastrophe that followed. 
 Whether the Archduke, who lost his life was a wise and 
 just ruler or a bigoted tyrant, matters not in the world 
 war of nations that followed. But the simple act count- 
 ed for much : it furnished the excuse for a conflict long- 
 desired and long-sought for by Hohenzollern war lords. 
 
 The flash of Prinzep's' pistol was not the cause of the 
 war that ensued ; it simply furnished the spark that set 
 into a furious flame an accumulation of combustible con- 
 ditions that European nations had for many decades been 
 assembling. Unrighted wrongs, unrealized ambitions, 
 disappointed hopes, commercial rivalry, racial prejudices, 
 competition in military and naval armaments carried to 
 the extreme of endurance, the servitude of Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina on the Adriatic and of Alsace and Lor- 
 raine on the banks of the Rhine, all stimulated by the 
 vaulting egotism and ambition of Prussian junkers and 
 war lords, constituted a condition that was bound to bring 
 war ; when, mattered but little ; how, mattered not at all. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 419 
 
 The resulting crash threatened to destroy Europe 
 and involved the whole world. Asia, Africa, both Amer- 
 icas and the isles of the seas were all more or less silent 
 or active participants in the conflict that ensued. Ger- 
 many declared war in July, 1914, and before the year 
 expired nine nations were actively in conflict with the 
 Teutonic powers or their ally Turkey ; before the close 
 of 1915, two more followed; by the end of 1916 three 
 more lined up on the battle front; during 1917, eight 
 others joined and still more came, until, when the end 
 arrived, November 11, 1918, twenty-four sovereign 
 states, large and small, had rallied for the right upon 
 the battle field against Germany and her allies, while six 
 others had severed relations with her. 
 
 This was the greatest war of all times, ancient or 
 modern. The fabled hordes of Xerxes and Alexander 
 the Great were far surpassed and outnumbered by the 
 corps, divisions, and regiments that here fought. Statis- 
 tics show that 59,414,700 men were by the eleven leading 
 nations — seven of Allies and four of the Teutonic powers 
 — placed in battle line; that these nations suffered 
 30,293,501 casualties from all causes, and that 7,450,200 
 of these men were killed or died from wounds. National 
 debts of only five nations were increased from twenty- 
 two and one-half billions of dollars in 19 14 when the 
 war began, to the inconceivable amount of one hundred 
 and thirty-five billions at its close. 
 
 Large and fertile portions of seven nations were 
 battle scarred or battle ruined, and it is estimated that 
 six thousand ships were sunk or destroyed, and that 
 from one hundred and fifty to two hundred billions was 
 
420 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the direct money cost to the nations involved. Such are 
 a few of the bare facts of the gigantic struggle that a 
 boy's pistol flashed upon humanity. Truly it was a "shot 
 that echoed around the world." 
 
 It is not my purpose to follow even briefly the rec- 
 ord of that great war, but simply in an epitomized form 
 to note something of the part taken in it by the United 
 States. 
 
 When the war commenced the position which our 
 country officially assumed was one of strict neutrality. 
 Such was the attitude of our government, but such could 
 not be the feeling of a great majority of our people. 
 Gathered here in our midst were citizens from every 
 land that was engaged in the fighting abroad, and, al- 
 though they might, and largely did, honestly render to 
 this, the country of their adoption, their first and highest 
 allegiance, their sympathy and love to a greater or less 
 degree reverted to their old homes and relatives. 
 
 Thus, when children of different warring - nations 
 were thrown together in the public meeting, on the rail- 
 road train, at the hotel table, and even in the family 
 circle, clashes of opinion and arguments, hot and high, 
 were bound to come. So great was the danger in our 
 midst that President Wilson issued this appeal asking 
 our people to guard against this danger : "I venture, 
 therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn 
 word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, 
 most essential breach of neutrality which may- spring out 
 jf partisanship, out of passionately taking sides." 
 
 It follows, without saying, that as soon as hostilities 
 commenced upon the other side, there was a loud call 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 421 
 
 upon us for war munitions, to which our manufacturing 
 plants responded quickly, abundantly, and so profitably 
 that they were enabled to raise the wages of laboring 
 men and women to unheard of heights. 
 
 Owing to the command of the ocean by Allied navies, 
 these materials of war could go only to the Allies, and 
 none to the Teutonic powers. No matter how loyal a 
 German citizen might be to the United States, if he was 
 a man of strong sympathies and abiding affections, it 
 was hard for him to see shiploads of ammunition by the 
 score sent across the water to kill his old friends and 
 neighbors, and not one to help them. It made him doubt 
 the real neutrality of America. It was no answer to him 
 when we said, "We will sell our goods to Germany just 
 as quickly and as cheaply as to England, but if Germany 
 cannot come and get these supplies as readily as England, 
 it is a fact we may deplore but cannot remedy." 
 
 Now that the struggle is all past, and we can think 
 calmly of the conditions, I believe the wonder is, not 
 that some of our German citizens were restive or dazed 
 by the fearful condition, but that so generally they gave 
 the land of their adoption their loyalty and support. 
 
 For two years and eight months, the United States 
 with great difficulty preserved her neutrality. The new 
 weapon of naval warfare — the submarine — was the princ- 
 ipal cause of breaking her peaceful relations with the 
 Teutonic powers. The submarine being an entirely new 
 branch of war service, the rules and regulations under 
 which it might conduct its operations had not been devel- 
 oped by long experience and compromise, but were made 
 by each belligerent in its own interests. 
 
422 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Germany and the world at large soon clashed in re- 
 gard to the correct method of submarine warfare. The 
 world, outside of Germany and her allies, while dis- 
 agreeing largely as to conditions under which ships might 
 properly be torpedoed, were a unit upon the question of 
 non-combatants, especially women and children who 
 were upon the vessels so destroyed. The world said that 
 no submarine had the right to sink any vessel, other 
 than a warship or transport, without giving its crew 
 and passengers every opportunity to escape. But Germa- 
 ny and her allies refused to be bound by any such rule, 
 and not only made no allowance for the safety of the 
 lives of those who were unfortunate enough to be on 
 board the craft they destroyed, but time after time were, 
 accused of firing upon the luckless men, women and chil- 
 dren who were trying to escape on the small boats of 
 their sinking ships. 
 
 Protest after protest President Wilson made against 
 such destruction of our boats and killing of our citizens ; 
 and as often as such protest was made, the government 
 at Berlin promised investigation and cessation of the 
 outrage — promises so seldom and slightly fulfilled as 
 nearly to demonstrate non-intention of performance on 
 the part of the giver. This submarine slaughter con- 
 tinued with increasing recklessness and brutality until 
 January 31, 19 17, when the German government, dis- 
 regarding all pledges formerly made, announced that 
 "regardless of consequences, on February 1, it would 
 commence a general, unrestricted, and energized cam- 
 paign of submarine warfare against all ships of hostile 
 nations." 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 423 
 
 This order was also to apply to all neutral nations 
 unless they should mark their ships in a special manner, 
 confine their course to a narrow lane, limit their vessels 
 in number, and make their schedules of sailing at certain 
 hours of particular days of each week. 
 
 The answer of the United States to that preposterous 
 proposition that so limited our commerce was war, and 
 on the 6th of April, 1917, Congress, agreeing with the 
 President, so made declaration. 
 
 That the United States would have escaped war with 
 Germany had there been no submarine question, is doubt- 
 ful. There is no question that many Germans — the 
 Kaiser being one — looked to our wealth to indemnify 
 them for the enormous expenses of the war and to whom 
 the Cologne Volkszeitung gave voice when it said that 
 Germany was "entitled to a thumping war indemnity 
 from America, since other states which had sacrificed 
 immense sums would be unable to pay it, therefore 
 America, which had earned thousands and millions 
 through munitions and supplies, will have to unbutton 
 its pockets." But it is useless to consider "what might 
 have been." A state of war was declared, and imme- 
 diately the country stripped itself for the conflict. 
 
 The sad experience in army unpreparedness the 
 Cnited States underwent during the Spanish-American 
 War had taught us a lesson ; therefore the opening of 
 the World War found our arsenals and supply depots 
 ready with artillery, rifles, and clothing to place in the 
 field the largest army military men had dee reed the 
 I 'nited States would ever require — 500,000 men. But 
 500,000 men were a mere bagatelle to the number unex- 
 
424 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 pectedly called for. Four million, eight hundred thous- 
 and soldiers and sailors were summoned and placed in 
 the ranks of the army and navy. The difference between 
 the supposed greatest needs of the country and the num- 
 ber actually required was 4,300,000; and for this enorm- 
 ous force everything required by an army or a soldier 
 must be procured. It was a Herculean task, but in its 
 results well-fulfilled. When the nation called for men, 
 24,234,021 appeared at the appointed places and regist- 
 ered themselves. 
 
 This mighty force of four million eight hundred 
 thousand required five men out of each one hundred 
 citizens. Sixty per cent were raised by selective draft 
 and forty per cent enlisted as volunteers. They were 
 commanded by two hundred thousand officers secured as 
 follows : three per cent from the regular army ; six per 
 cent from the national guard; eight per cent by promo- 
 tion from the ranks; thirteen per cent from civil life; 
 twenty-one per cent were medical officers ; and forty- 
 eight per cent came from officers' training camps. These 
 last forty-eight per cent were men of education who had 
 volunteered for training and had passed the required 
 drill and examinations in officers' schools. 
 
 Officers and men were then placed in sixteen large 
 canvas camps in the South and sixteen cantonments or 
 barracks in the North, and given intensive and special 
 drill for their overseas work. It was the intention of the 
 government to give, six months training in this country 
 and two months in France, and the men who were in the 
 service long enough did receive it. 
 
 The tactics and organization of the new army were 
 greatly changed from those used in the Civil War. The 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 425 
 
 tactics were simplified and every extra motion cut in 
 order to speed up movements in the field under rapid fire 
 guns. The new organization bothered us old soldiers 
 greatly until we had a chance to study it out. Of old, one 
 hundred men made a company, ten companies a regiment, 
 three regiments a brigade, three brigades a division, and 
 three divisions an army corps. Now, under the new 
 organization, two hundred and fifty men make a com- 
 pany, four companies a battalion, three battalions a regi- 
 ment, and about nine regiments of all arms a division, 
 twenty-eight thousand men — twice the size of a German 
 or French division and nearly three times the size of our 
 old ones. 
 
 The economy in officers of high rank in this new 
 organization is apparent, and I suppose our scarcity of 
 such men compelled such consolidation. Under the old 
 organization, it would require twenty-seven colonels, 
 nine brigadier generals, and four major generals to com- 
 mand substantially the same number of men that eight 
 colonels, one brigadier general, and one major general 
 do under this new formation. 
 
 A division is now the lowest complete military unit ; 
 it contains every sub-unit required in modern warfare, 
 namely: 
 
 Four Regiments of Infantry, 
 
 One Brigade (3 regiments) Artillery, 
 
 One Regiment Engineers, 
 
 One Trench Mortar Battery, 
 
 One Signal Battalion, 
 
 Tanks, Wagon Train, Headquarter Staff, 
 
 Military Police, Medical and other Units. 
 
426 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Six such divisions make a corps, and three to five 
 corps an army. 
 
 Before the war closed fifty-three such divisions had 
 been organized, composed of troops and numbered as 
 follows : 
 
 20 Divisions of Regulars, Nos. I to 20, 
 
 16 Divisions of National Guards, Nos. 26 to 42, 
 
 Vj Divisions of National Army Guards, Nos. 76 to 93. 
 
 Forty-two of these divisions crossed the sea. These, 
 with various unattached units, made about two million 
 men who did duty there. The remaining 2,000,000 never 
 left this country nor saw active duty of any kind. This 
 was no fault of the enlisted men; as a rule they were 
 anxious to be sent across the ocean. 
 
 Of the forty-two divisions that reached France, 
 twenty-nine went to the battle front and participated in 
 combat service for longer or shorter periods, the 1st 
 division the longest, six and one-half months, the 41st 
 the shortest, only a few days. 
 
 Illustrative of the fighting spirit of the A. E. F. men 
 who crossed the sea, is the fact that all wished to see 
 service in the trenches. So disappointed were those 
 whose divisions were placed on S. O. S. (Service of 
 supply) duty that many ran the risk of court martial 
 punishment and disgrace by being A. W. O. L. (absent 
 without leave) and going into the active sectors and 
 participating in the actual fighting there. 
 
 This became so great a disorganizing disturbance that 
 General Pershing was compelled to regulate it by is- 
 
• SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 427 
 
 suing an order that ''trained men, as a special reward for 
 good service behind the lines, might have a chance to go 
 to the front and take part in the fighting." 
 
 The First division, composed of regular soldiers and 
 commanded by General Pershing, was the first to cross 
 the ocean. They were received in France with enthusiasm 
 by waiting crowds of French people. This division 
 crossed in June, 1917, went into line in October, and into 
 active sector, April 25, 1918. 
 
 This entry dates the commencement of the two hun- 
 dred days during which the United States took continuous 
 part in the combat service which ended November nth 
 when the Armistice was signed. These two hundred days 
 will always be known in history as the period of the 
 great world conflict in which Germany gathered its ut- 
 most resources to crush the Allies before we could organi- 
 ize our armies and cross the ocean to help. It was a 
 battle that drove the Allies back thirty-five miles, and as 
 we anxiously stood around the bulletin boards and noted 
 the constant and seemingly irresistible advance of the 
 German forces it appeared to us that they were sure to 
 succeed. The Allies' only hope now was America, and 
 they called loudly to us for assistance. 
 
 Our reply was, "Send us ships and we will fill them 
 with men." Great Britain complied, and immediately 
 occurred the greatest transportation of troops the world 
 ever knew. As many as 306,000 troops were carried 
 across the ocean in one month. June, 19 18, found the 
 tables turned ; the German drive stopped, and the Allies 
 mustered the greater number of troops. What would 
 have happened had the United States not entered the 
 
428 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 war at this time, no one can tell, but that her entry into 
 it was the turning point in the great conflict is undis- 
 puted and indisputable. 
 
 This result was attained in the United States only by 
 the combined effort and heroic work of the patriotic 
 people at home. A few of the things they finally accom- 
 plished were : A million dollars an hour was spent for 
 over two years — two million a day the first three months, 
 twenty-two millions a day the next year and forty-four 
 millions a day the final ten months closing April, 1919, 
 making a total sum of twenty-two billion dollars. In 
 addition to this, ten billion dollars was loaned to the Al- 
 lies. 
 
 There was delivered to the army between April 6, 
 1917, and May 31, 1918, 13 months, clothing as follows: 
 
 Wool socks, 131,800,000 pair. 
 
 Under shirts, 85,000,000. 
 
 Under drawers, 83,600,000. 
 
 Shoes, 30,700,000 pair. 
 
 Flannel shirts, 26,500,000. 
 
 Blankets, 21,700,000. 
 
 Wool coats, 13,900,000. 
 
 Overcoats, 8,300,000. 
 There had been expended in constructing buildings for 
 factories, warehouses, and cantonments for soldiers 
 enough money to build two Panama canals. Our engi- 
 neers had built in France a thousand miles of standard 
 gauge railroad and five hundred and thirty-eight miles of 
 narrow gauge track ; the signal corps had strung a thou- 
 sand miles of wire, and forty thousand motor trucks were 
 there helping the war along. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 429 
 
 Greatest work of all, we had selected and called into 
 the army and navy four million eight hundred thousand 
 men with two hundred thousand officers ; we had drilled, 
 uniformed, armed, organized into divisions, provisioned 
 and transported across the Atlantic ocean over two mil- 
 lion of these men and had the remainder preparing to go 
 when needed. 
 
 The veterans of the Civil War had grave fears of 
 what would happen when these new troops of ours who, 
 officers and men alike, had never been in battle, came to 
 meet the disciplined veteran army of Germany. We re- 
 membered with well-enforced apprehension the panic of 
 our new Federal troops at Bull Run, the huddled mass 
 of uninjured and fear-struck men on the banks of the 
 Tennessee River in rear of Grant's struggling troops at 
 Pittsburg Landing, and the many times we had seen new 
 regiments recoil and break when some unexpected event 
 or superior force was encountered at the front. We fully 
 remembered what new troops had done in the past, and 
 we were anxious to know what these new troops going 
 to France might do when they got there. 
 
 It was not that new troops lacked bravery, because 
 the battle-stricken men of Bull Run and Pittsburg Land- 
 ing proved they did not by afterwards becoming the best 
 of soldiers. As a usual thing the reverse was true ; the 
 new men were daring to recklessness, and many times 
 they rushed into places where old veterans dare not fol- 
 low. This was plainly shown when our boys relieved 
 the French at Chateau Thierry. The foreign troops 
 advised our marines who were taking their places "not to 
 go up a certain hill because many nests of German ma- 
 chine guns were located there." 
 
430 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Our men replied, "If that's the case, that's where we 
 are going; we came three thousand miles to find those 
 very things." And they went. 
 
 There was nothing strange in that action. It is char- 
 acteristic of new troops to dash into dangerous places, 
 The strange and unusual thing was they stayed. They 
 let nothing rush them, nothing confuse them, nothing 
 strike them with battle panic. They gave a victorious 
 answer to the doubt we had, and we became inordinately 
 proud of them. 
 
 What was true of our men here at Chateau Thierry 
 was true throughout the war. They fought with the dash 
 and abandon of new men and — almost miraculous to tell 
 — the steadiness of veterans ; no better troops fought on 
 either front than they. 
 
 Two effective causes had produced this most desir- 
 able result: First, the intensive drill the men had re- 
 ceived, coupled with a 3000 mile journey, had prepared 
 their minds for serious and dangerous work. Second, 
 the judicious mixing of our new troops with the veterans 
 who had been long fighting there. It was proven during 
 our Civil War, that if an old regiment that had lost as 
 high as fifty per cent, or even more of its numbers, was 
 filled up with new, even untrained men, nothing of its 
 efficiency was lost — it was equal to a full regiment of 
 veterans. 
 
 What was true of individual soldiers was true of 
 military units. Our men at first were placed in battle 
 line with perhaps a veteran French regiment on its right 
 flank and an old British regiment upon its left ; and so 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 431 
 
 long as the veteran regiments held their ground the new 
 regiment would stand — unless it was all yellow, and we 
 did not send any yellow regiments across the sea. 
 
 Section II. What our Boys Did "Over There" 
 
 The line of battle extending through Belgium and 
 France, from the North Sea on the west to Switzerland 
 on the east, was somewhere from three to four hundred 
 miles long as it lengthened by salient angles driven by 
 the Teutonic powers into the territory of the Allies, or 
 shortened, as these drives were forced back and the 
 salients smoothed out. 
 
 Of this long battle line the Americans were assigned 
 to the right wing, next to Switzerland, and took charge 
 of ten kilometers in January, 1918; twenty-six in Feb- 
 ruary; twenty-eight, in March; fifty, in May; fifty-eight, 
 in June; one hundred, in July; 125, in August; 157, in 
 September ; and 162 kilometers in October. 
 
 When the Armistice came in November the United 
 States was holding of the battle front 22% 
 The British 19% 
 
 The French and Belgians 59% 
 
 100 
 Thus, at the close of the war, the United States held 
 a longer battle front than the British and this had been 
 true since August of that year. 
 
 By March 18, 1918, the Germans, having concluded 
 peace with Russia, had brought all their troops from 
 that front to the Hindenburg line. Germany there con- 
 centrated all her forces to break the Allies' front, cap- 
 
432 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 ture Paris, and make a peace with France and Great 
 Britain before the Americans came in any great numbers. 
 
 Now commenced the two hundred days' battle in 
 which our American troops participated. During all this 
 time there was fighting somewhere along that line; and 
 in a certain sense the two hundred days of conflict was 
 one battle. But military authorities have during this 
 time recognized tactically and strategetically thirteen 
 contests having definite local objectives and more or less 
 separate movements. Eleven of these were on the Franco- 
 Belgian front, where our troops principally fought. Five 
 of these offensives were German wherein the Germans 
 made the attack and the Allies were on the defensive. In 
 six of them the Allies made the attack, and the Germans 
 the defense. 
 
 It will be my effort herein to epitomize only the main 
 achievements of the Americans in these engagements, as 
 the facts came to us by telegraphic news, verified stories 
 and official reports. These so-called major movements 
 have been given different names by various authors who 
 have written concerning them. I have followed the 
 nomenclature used by the chief of the statistical branch of 
 the general staff in his report to Secretary of War Baker, 
 because I think it the most lucid and understandable, 
 and also as one that in no way disagrees with General 
 Pershing's report to the same authority. 
 
 First, in order of telling as it was in time of event, 
 came the movement of the Somme (i), March 21 to 
 April 6, so-called because it was fought largely along the 
 valley of that stream, and its objective seemed to be the 
 city of Amiens on that river. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 
 
 433 
 
 GERMAN OFFENSIVES 1918 
 
 1. Somme, March 21 to April 6. 
 
 2. Lys, April 9 to May 27. 
 
 3. Aisne, May 27 to June I. 
 
 4. Noyon-Montdidier, June 9 to 15. 
 
 5. Champaigne-Marne, July 15 to 18. 
 
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 AMERICAN UNITS DEFENDING IN ABOVE 
 
 1. Medical, Engineers, Air 2,200 
 
 2. Medical, Air 500 
 
 3. Division 2 part of 3 and 28 27,500 
 
 4. Division 1 27,000 
 
 5. Divisions 3, 42, part of 28 85,000 
 
434 
 
 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 ALLIED OFFENSIVES 1918 
 
 1. Aisne-Marne, July 18 to August 6. 
 
 2. Somme, August 8 to November 11. 
 
 3. Oise-Aisne, August 18, to November 11. 
 
 5. St. Mihiel, September 12 to September 16. 
 
 6. Meuse-Argonne, 'September 20 to November 11. 
 
 tfoll.n*fl 
 
 \ folia** 
 
 
 of^ 1 * 
 
 A. E. F.DIVISIONS AND MEN ENGAGED IN ABOVE 
 
 1. Divisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 26, 38, 32 270,000 
 
 2. Divisions 29, 30, part of 33 54,000 
 
 3. Divisions 28, 32, 77 85,000 
 
 4. Divisions 27, 30, 37, 98 108,000 
 
 5. Divisions 3, 33, 35, 78, 91, 80, 24, 1, 2, 4, 5, 
 
 28, 42, 82, 89, 90 550,000 
 
 6. Divisions 35, 37, 42, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 89, 
 
 90, 91, 92. 6 Div. in Reserve 1,260.000 
 
 Nos.- 5 and 6 were American Offensives. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 435 
 
 The attack fell on the ever memorable 21st of March, 
 1918. The Germans had been two months preparing for 
 it. They had invited the correspondents of all leading- 
 German papers, as to a review, to witness their tri- 
 umphant march. They crossed the Hindenburg line on a 
 fifty mile front with some eighty divisions of fighting 
 men, and attacked the unprepared Allies with overpower- 
 ing force. 
 
 I use the term unprepared only in a limited sense. 
 The Allies had been expecting the drive and had done all 
 they could to receive it. But Germany had moved her 
 divisions by foot to this front, inarching only in the night 
 and hiding in the woods from the air scouts by day, so 
 that the French and English had been unable to decide 
 where the blow would fall. 
 
 The inevitable result followed : the Allies were driven 
 back, sometimes hastily, sometimes slowly. Often, where 
 defensive grounds were found, they contested every inch 
 and made the enemy pay dearly for the ground he gained ; 
 they never suffered a battle panic, they never permitted 
 their line to long be broken and never lost heart. 
 
 At this desperate stage General Foch was made Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of all the Allied forces, and General 
 Pershing placed all the American forces at his disposal 
 at whatever point he might use them. This action thrilled 
 both France and America. As Rochambeau had placed 
 himself under the command of Washington in our Revo- 
 lution, so now Pershing placed himself under Foch; and 
 thus upon the debt that the United States owed France 
 the first payment was made. 
 
436 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Only about twenty-two hundred Americans were 
 engaged in this battle of the Somme, and these were 
 largely medical men and air units. The only Americans 
 on the fighting line were a detachment of engineers who, 
 when emergency came, threw away their tools, formed 
 themselves into fighting units, and attached themselves 
 to General Cavies' scratch brigade. They fought the 
 enemy furiously and helped hold him back as the Allies 
 slowly retired from the vicinity of St. Quentin to near 
 Noyon. 
 
 Though the Allies were compelled to fall back before 
 the overpowering German forces they inflicted far 
 greater loss upon their enemies than they suffered them- 
 selves. The Americans report that at one place the Ger- 
 mans advanced in seven successive battle fronts or waves, 
 one hundred yards apart and each wave ten men deep. 
 The slaughter that rapid fire and machine guns would 
 make in such a formation must have been fearful. Our 
 men reported that they were sickened at the shambles 
 they created. 
 
 The second movement was on the Lys from April 
 9th to May 27th. The Germans having supposedly drawn 
 the major fighting forces of the Allies to their front for 
 the defense of Amiens, now concentrated a new attack on 
 the river Lys, evidently with the purpose of reaching 
 Calais if possible. The principal fighting was done near 
 the village of Armentires, the name of which place is 
 sometimes used to designate this battle. Only five hun- 
 dred Americans here participated in the battle and those 
 were air units. During the progress of this engagement 
 our forces were also in active combat in the Toul sector 
 at the eastern end of the fighting line. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 437 
 
 On April ioth the Germans there made a raid upon 
 the Americans in the Toul sector of the battle front that 
 had been given the Americans to hold. The Germans 
 evidently meant to try the temper of the raw American 
 soldiers. They organized a special force of shock troops 
 and rehearsed the raid for two or three weeks ; their ob- 
 jective was the third line of our defense. The morning 
 came. The Germans opened their barrage of artillery, 
 and the men sprang from their trenches to assault our 
 first line ; but instead of penetrating to our third line of 
 defense as was their aim, they never even captured the 
 first. The Americans without waiting rocket signal had 
 opened a counter barrage and sweeping "no man's land" 
 with their automatic rifles and machine guns covered it 
 with the bodies of German dead. Their own loss was 
 slight. 
 
 On the 12th, after a night of fearful bombardment 
 with gas shells, the enemy tried our American lines 
 again, and failed! Once more on the 13th, preceded by 
 intense bombardment of high explosives and gas shells, 
 with picked troops, they stormed our lines only to be 
 driven back after terrific hand-to-hand fighting. A 
 fourth time they attacked on the 14th, with picked troops 
 from the Russian front ; and although the Americans 
 were outnumbered they once more repulsed the Germans 
 and drove them back to their trenches. 
 
 Rut these four defeats did not satisfy the Germans. 
 They now — so prisoners that we took stated — prepared 
 "to teach the Americans a lesson" — the object of the 
 instruction evidently being to keep them out of future 
 important movements. 
 
438 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 On the 20th of April, having carefully prepared for 
 the object lesson, with a body of men that outnumbered 
 the Americans — twelve to one some observers said — with 
 everything frightful in their military store — liquid fire, 
 poison-gas, and rain of shells of all calibers and composi- 
 tions, the Germans fell upon a mile front of our line west 
 of Toul. The attack was given with such suddenness 
 and desperation that the Americans were compelled to 
 retire, but made the Germans pay dearly in loss by death 
 for every inch of ground they left. The enemy broke 
 through the first lines and captured the village of Seiche- 
 prey, but the Americans returned, recaptured it, and be- 
 fore the next morning had re-established their lines as 
 before the assault. 
 
 As the Germans gained no ground in all the fighting, 
 as they failed to break the American lines, and as their 
 battle casualty loss was in a ratio of three Germans to 
 two Americans, the "lesson" did not show the result the 
 enemy intended. That particular course of instruction 
 closed : it closed, a failure from the German standpoint, 
 but brilliantly satisfactory from the Allies' outlook. The 
 French said the Germans "had broken their noses" in 
 this first serious fighting with the Americans. 
 
 The third general offensive May 27th to June 1st, is 
 designated the Aisne from a river upon whose banks it 
 was largely fought. The enemy, having failed in their 
 rush toward Calais and having drawn as many of the 
 Allied forces as possible away from the defense of the 
 most desirable objective, Paris, now, with utmost force 
 and every means available, made a drive for that city. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 439 
 
 In the defense of this movement 27,500 Americans par- 
 ticipated, namely, the 2nd division, which included the 
 marines, and part of the 3rd and 28th. 
 
 The Germans had tested to their satisfaction the fight- 
 ing spirit of the Americans in the Toul sector, and now 
 the Allies also deserved a like demonstration. Just west 
 of Cantigny, about twenty miles southeast of Amiens, the 
 Germans held a salient that it was desirable to flatten 
 out, and the Americans were purposely given the task of 
 driving the enemy from it. Prominent French officers 
 were stationed where they could see the assault, and vet- 
 eran troops were placed where they could help if the 
 Americans got into too deep trouble. But our boys did 
 not need any help. The French bulletin reported, "Amer- 
 icans, supported by our tanks, brilliantly occupied a salient 
 along a front of two kilometers and the strongly fortified 
 village of Cantigny, capturing prisoners and war mater- 
 ials and repulsing counter attack." Cantigny settled for 
 the Allies the question of America's fighting spirit; and 
 the next time General Foch called them it was to a point 
 of greater danger and higher honor. 
 
 This third German offensive reached high water mark 
 May 31st, at which time they were in force on the direct 
 road to Paris, only thirty-one miles from it, and still 
 progressing. Loud calls for help were sent out ; the best 
 men at the earliest possible moment, was the military de- 
 mand. The second division and part of the third were 
 among those within reach, and after the American records 
 made at Seicheprey and Cantigny they were deemed 
 worthy. They were loaded upon camions, busses, trucks, 
 
44o ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 anything, and rushed to the front. What our boys did 
 when they reached the front would take volumes to tell 
 and I have not pages to spare. 
 
 Would you know American history that will quicken 
 your blood, get General Catton's book, "With the help 
 of God and a few marines," and read how the marines 
 charged Bois de Belleau and Boureschis, and carried 
 them, and stayed there under the Germans' fiercest fire 
 for five days, sending out only for rations and ammuni- 
 tion. You will also learn how our infantry met the 
 French troops at Chateau-Thierry, which for days had 
 been fighting fiercely, almost hoplessly, and how the 
 American officer said to them in the best French he could 
 muster, "You are tired. You get away. Our job," and 
 how cleanly and thoroughly that job was performed! 
 
 The German drive toward Paris was stopped upon 
 that line. Not another mile did it reach toward that city. 
 When General Foch six weeks later commenced the great 
 counter-offensive, the Americans were still given the 
 honor they here won of covering the approach to the 
 French Capital. 
 
 The fourth major movement, June 9th to 15th, is 
 named the Noyon Montdidier drive, because on a line 
 with these two towns the Germans advanced their forces. 
 The enemy, held back on the Somme River, stopped on 
 the Lys, defeated on the Aisne and Marne, now attempted 
 to reach Paris by pushing down the valley of the Oise. 
 They were compelled to fight now whether they wanted 
 to or not. General Ludendorff had pushed them into a 
 salient thirty-five miles deep and like a runner with a 
 football they must keep going or the game would be lost. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 441 
 
 Their drives demonstrated their decreasing effective force. 
 ( >n the Somme they presented a battle front of fifty 
 miles, on the Aisne twenty-five miles, and now on the 
 Noyon-Montdidier offensive only twenty miles. 
 
 Owing to the fearful battle casualties that Germany 
 had invited by presenting her troops in mass formation to 
 the easy slaughter of our artillery, machine guns, and 
 rifle fire, she was rapidly losing her fighting men and 
 had no source from which to replenish them. The Allies, 
 on the other hand, were fighting in open formation and 
 were receiving constantly increasing reinforcements from 
 America. General Ludendorff realized that it was now 
 or never that Germany must win. It was a forlorn hope, 
 because he poured his troops in unstinted mass for- 
 mation upon General Foch's forces which had discovered 
 his stratagem and prepared for it. For six days the con- 
 flict raged ; not even at Verdun was there such desperate 
 and cruel loss of life. The movement ended with the 
 Allies' lines impenetrated and the Germans in possession 
 of a few more miles of worthless territory. 
 
 During all this fighting the divisions of the American 
 army participated with the French and British wherever 
 ordered, and always with credit to the uniform they wore 
 and the country they represented. Not until after this 
 German drive had been stopped, did our troops have any 
 engagements except in the Toul sector and Cantigny that 
 were especially their own. In the Montdidier sector on 
 June 19th, near Cantigny — scene of former success — 
 they stormed some German trenches and machine gun 
 nests that prisoners said they had received orders to "hold 
 at all hazards," and swept them clean of the enemy. In 
 
442 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 the Marne sector they kept busy about Chateau Thierry, 
 and made some brilliant attacks and effective reprisals. 
 
 The work that America was doing in France now 
 commenced to show. English papers woke up to the fact 
 and called their readers' attention to it. The correspon- 
 dent of the London Daily Express, in a week's tour 
 along the line of communications, visited docks built by 
 American labor and with American material, traveled on 
 American railways, sent telegrams over American wires, 
 telephoned to Paris over an American system served by 
 "hello" girls from the United States, bought stores at 
 American shops, and motored in American automobiles. 
 On a journey of over a hundred miles he was never more 
 than half an hour out of sight of an American camp. 
 There were American towns and villages of wood on 
 both sides the railway line; cavalry depots, remount de- 
 pots, casualty clearing stations, hospitals, all of the para- 
 phernalia of war, every scrap of it was American. 
 
 Notwithstanding the urgent call for speed in the 
 German offensive, General Ludendorff was compelled to 
 take one whole month to recuperate his forces shattered 
 in the last offence and prepare for a new drive. 
 
 Meanwhile, to break the nervous strain of the tedious 
 waiting, came our Fourth of July. Never before was 
 there such a celebration of our natal day as this, and 
 probably there will never be another like it. Cities in 
 both North and South America celebrated with heretofore 
 untold enthusiasm. Across the ocean in every town of 
 any size in the score or more of the nations alongside of 
 which we were fighting, the Stars and Stripes were flying ; 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 443 
 
 in France, not a city or town or hamlet but what was 
 overflowing with American fervor, patriotism, and speech. 
 
 England for the first time recognized the day offi- 
 cially. All royalty attended the celebration. King George 
 cast the first ball over the plate at the American army vs. 
 navy game, and for the first time since America became a 
 nation a British Ambassador (Lord Derby) spoke at a 
 Fourth of July celebration. I11 that speech he said "Even 
 if we had not been Allies, I should have come. I say 
 now that I wish to thank America for the best licking we 
 ever got; it has done us both a lot of good. We are 
 grateful to you because that licking taught us how to 
 treat our children ; it is the reason why we have Australia 
 and Canada and even South Africa fighting beside us 
 today." That celebration was so far-flung, so universal, 
 and so enthusiastic that Hope might mark it the Inde- 
 pendence Day of the World. 
 
 At last after the Germans had spent a long month in 
 repairing losses, gathering ammunition, assembling new 
 divisions, and refilling old ones, General Ludendorff ad- 
 vanced to his fifth, last, and most desperate, drive, and 
 suffered his most serious defeat on the French-Belgian 
 front. The offense No. 5 is called the Champagne- 
 Marne movement, July 15th to 18th, so-called because 
 fought in Champagne and partly on the Marne river. 
 
 The Crown Prince had the honor, or dishonor, of be- 
 ing the father of this movement. Tn a heated discussion 
 between him and the Kaiser and leading generals, as to 
 whether Paris or the sea coast should be the objective of 
 the next drive, the Prince had won. and Paris via Chalons 
 was the order laid down. 
 
444 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Look at the map, and even a citizen could see it was 
 grand strategy if it could be made to work. Chalons is 
 not far from St. Mihiel then occupied and fortified by 
 the Germans and in direct communication with their 
 great base of supply, Metz. It is also on a direct line 
 between St. Mihiel and Chateau Thierry. Could the 
 Germans push their forces from the latter place to 
 Chalons they would have a large force of the Allies 
 out-flanked right and left, and a pinching process could 
 be inaugurated between their Chalons and St. Mihiel 
 armies that would compel the Allies to get out of the 
 sack as best they could or surrender. In either case 
 long- fought- for Verdun, the town for which thousands 
 of men had been sacrificed, would be won by Germany, 
 and a direct road toward Paris from Metz via St. Mihiel, 
 Chalons, and Chateau Thierry secured. 
 
 It was a good scheme the Crown Prince — or one of 
 his underlings — hatched out, but to succeed it must be a 
 surprise. Divisions were, therefore, moved up only un- 
 der cover of night. The battle line extended from Cha- 
 teau Thierry to Rheims and some distance southeast of 
 that city. Victory demanded that Rheims be captured or 
 the movement would be ruined. The desperate attack 
 was made on July 15th with utmost secrecy and with the 
 absolute limit of Germany's resources and strength. It 
 was intended to be a complete surprise and it was, but the 
 Germans and not the Allies were the surprised parties. 
 
 The Allies had some time before captured a letter, 
 written by one of Germany's Imperial household, telling 
 of the disagreement before mentioned and the plans per- 
 fected. As a further stroke of good luck, on the 14th the 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 445 
 
 Allies captured a prisoner who told them where all Ger- 
 man forces were placed and the tactical arrangements 
 for the next day, even to the time the barrage would 
 start, how long it would continue, and the moment the 
 troops would make their assault. 
 
 With this information in hand, the Allies knew exactly 
 what to do. In places where their secondary lines were 
 strong they withdrew from their first line of defense, 
 leaving only a few men who voluntarily dared almost 
 certain death to keep up an appearance of occupation, and 
 permitted the enemy to expend their ammunition and 
 tierce energy upon almost unoccupied trenches. Then 
 when they had passed the outer line flushed with sup- 
 posed victory, they were mowed down before the secon- 
 dary line in great numbers. In few places was there any 
 retirement along our line, and that only temporarily. 
 When three days' fierce fighting was ended, our lines 
 were substantially back where they were when the move- 
 ment began. The Germans had been driven back, every- 
 where beaten, and LudendorfFs great western offensive 
 for 19 18 closed, a complete and final failure. 
 
 Eighty-five thousand Americans participated in this 
 defense,' and of the record they made America may well 
 be proud. They most soundly whipped some of Germa- 
 ny's choicest divisions, until even the Guard, against all 
 precedent in Prussian history, refused longer to attack. 
 Here an American commander dared court martial and 
 disgrace by sending his superior officer the following 
 communication : "We regret being unable on this occasion 
 to follow the counsels of our masters, the French, but the 
 American flag has been forced to retire; this is unendur- 
 
446 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 able and none of our people would understand our not 
 being asked to do whatever is necessary to repair a situa- 
 tion so humiliating to us and unacceptable to our coun- 
 try's honor. We are going to counter attack." They did 
 counter attack and more than recovered lost ground. A 
 multitude of such incidents could be and should be re- 
 corded, but not here. 
 
 The check to Ludendorfl was so decisive, the result 
 of the "surprise" was so disastrous, and the new Ameri- 
 can troops had shown such unexpected fighting efficiency, 
 that a counter offensive by the Allies against the Germans, 
 which had not been contemplated as possible before 
 another spring, was now proposed. General Pershing 
 warmly recommended it, and promised two hundred 
 thousand Americans to help on the front line. As to the 
 honor of this unexpected initiative it was said, "Foch 
 gave the word of attack, Petain worked out the plan, and 
 both took Pershing at his word." 
 
 The first assault by the Allies upon the Germans was 
 made on July 18th in the Aisne-Marne movement, so 
 called because it was commenced at the river Marne and 
 pushed toward the Aisne. The strategy of the move- 
 ment as agreed upon by Foch, Petain and Pershing was 
 designed, if possible, to trap Ludendorff's forces in the 
 salient he had driven between Soissons and Rheims with 
 its apex at Chateau Thierry. If General Foch could suc- 
 ceed in pushing his army across the mouth of the salient 
 there presented, the Germans would be caught like rats in 
 a trap of their own making. The Allies nearly succeeded ; 
 at one time they had the mouth of the salient closed down 
 to less than ten miles. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 447 
 
 Ludendorff early comprehended Foch's plan and plac- 
 ing his best divisions at the two angles of attack, Sois- 
 sons and Rheims, immediately commenced retreating as 
 rapidly as possible. He succeeded in retreating, but not 
 without serious loss in men, who were pushed into 
 slaughter without mercy, and in munitions and provisions 
 that were either destroyed to avoid capture or taken by 
 the Allies. 
 
 The Americans made the longest advance of any 
 troops involved : from Chateau Thierry where they 
 started July 18th to Fismes where they drove the Germans 
 across the Vesle river on August 3rd is forty kilometers. 
 This represents an amount of marching and fighting, 
 difficult if not impossible to describe here, or to tell either 
 in print or out of print. 
 
 General Foch, having flattened out the Soissons- 
 Rheims salient and thoroughly started the Germans in a 
 retreat on that front, now left enough of his troops fol- 
 lowing them to see that they kept moving in the right 
 direction and then struck his second, the Somme offensive, 
 in the Somme River valley. 
 
 Here as on the Marne, the blow was a surprise to the 
 enemy, and a success to us. After the first day's advance 
 the air men reported lines of transports going to the rear 
 carrying what munitions the Germans could save, fires 
 burning supplies which could not be transported, and a 
 general German retreat everywhere. 
 
 The Cantigny-Montdidier salient was wiped out. 
 Peronne and Noyon were recovered, and the advance 
 continued with more or less regularity — not stopping 
 even for the Hindenburg line — until the Armistice of 
 
448 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 November nth called a halt on the farthest line of ad- 
 vance. Fifty-four thousand Americans were engaged in 
 this offensive, and they fully maintained the brilliant 
 record of gallant fighting set for them by their comrades 
 on the Marne. 
 
 General Foch, having struck one stinging blow with 
 his right on the Marne river, July 18th, and another with 
 his left in the Somme Valley on August 8th, now on 
 August 1 8th struck a double offensive: the Oise-Aisne on 
 the right of his battle front, a continuation of the Aisne- 
 Marne movement and called the third offensive; the 
 Ypres-Lys on the Lys River nearly at his extreme left, 
 counted as the fourth offensive. Both these offensives, 
 like the two that preceded, were successful beyond all 
 expectation. By September 5th the troops of the four 
 offensives had extended and connected their wings until 
 they were all smashing forward, a united battle front one 
 hundred and forty miles long, reaching nearly from the 
 Lys to the Marne. Almost everywhere before the whole 
 line the enemy had given way and was retreating before 
 it. 
 
 Nor did the line slow down its battle rush until eight 
 weeks to a day after Foch's counter offensive began on 
 the Marne. When the September torrential rains flooded 
 the low lands and made moving practically impossible, the 
 Germans had been driven back to the Hindenburg line, 
 and the Allies had captured a large part of that sup- 
 posedly impenetrable defense. Eighty-five thousand 
 Americans fought on the Oise-Aisne and a hundred and 
 eight thousand in the Ypres-Lys movement. It is enough 
 to say they all fought like Americans. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 449 
 
 From the month of March when General Pershing 
 put the American forces at General Foch's disposal, until 
 September, they had been mixed with veteran British and 
 French troops. Now they had become veterans them- 
 selves. They had proved their steadiness and reliability 
 upon so many fields that the time for segregation had 
 come. They were drawn from other fronts and con- 
 centrated in the Toul sector under the command of Gen- 
 eral Pershing. 
 
 The St. Mihiel salient, near which this American army 
 was thus gathered, had been driven into the French ter- 
 ritory in 19 14, and the Germans had occupied it all this 
 time, fortified it to the best of their ability and had main- 
 tained it for four years despite all French efforts to 
 extract this thorn from their side. The reduction of this 
 salient was the Allies' fifth offensive and the task was 
 given to the Americans to perform. It was to be an all- 
 American movement in the sense that it was planned 
 and commanded by American officers and mainly fought 
 by American soldiers — the Allies giving a helping hand to 
 us here as we had to them elsewhere. 
 
 The attack was made all along the line on the morning 
 of the 1 2th of September. At one o'clock the bombard- 
 ment of the enemy commenced, at four minutes of five 
 our barrage opened one continuous roar, and at five our 
 forces "went over the top." The result was our usual 
 story of success. Every objective was made on time. The 
 supposedly untakable fortifications around St. Mihiel and 
 the city of St. Mihiel itself were captured the first day, 
 and before the 15th the whole salient was practically 
 wiped out. 
 
150 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 Thirteen thousand prisoners were taken. Cannons, 
 machine guns, tons of ammunition, and war stores in great 
 quantities were a part of the profit gathered. But the 
 greatest beneficial result was the demonstration of what 
 a movement commanded by American officers and fought 
 mainly by American troops could accomplish. So satis- 
 factory was the work of the American forces that they 
 were given immediately a still greater task to perform 
 alone : this was the Meuse-Argonne offensive, No. 6. 
 
 In this movement a sector was given to our men lying 
 mostly behind the Hindenburg line that had been since 
 1914, and still was, occupied and fortified by the Ger- 
 mans. This sector formed an acute triangle, with its 
 base extending from the Argonne Forest east about 
 twenty-five miles, and reaching to and across the Meuse 
 River, with its apex at Sedan thirty-five miles distant. 
 General Pershing was given thirty-five divisions of Amer- 
 icans and some French Colonial troops to clean the Ger- 
 mans out of this strongly fortified position. The French 
 Fourth Army also had a sector given immediately upon 
 our left with the same objective, Sedan, in view. Thus 
 commenced a friendly rivalry, lasting through forty-seven 
 days of battle, as to which force would first reach that 
 battle-noted city. 
 
 The attack was made by both forces upon the morning 
 of September 20th, and on the 7th of November both 
 armies reached the Meuse River opposite Sedan so nearly 
 at the same time that it is impossible to state whether 
 the American or the French first saw that objective, but 
 the French first succeeded in crossing the Meuse River 
 and entering the city. 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 451 
 
 On October 10th, the Americans got through the 
 Krimhilde line on a front of four miles, and smashed the 
 last organized defense west of the Meuse River. They 
 were still pushing toward the Belgian frontier when the 
 Armistice stopped their progress. 
 
 Even had I limitless space and unlimited ability it 
 would be impossible to ascertain and record the many 
 feats of gallantry, bravery, and devotion that our boys 
 displayed here and elsewhere. General Foch's words 
 given to an audience of American correspondents on 
 January 15, 1919, and meant for the whole American 
 people, epitomizes their achievements. 
 
 "This is for me a happy opportunity to tell you all 
 the good things I think of the American Army and the 
 part it played on our side. Your soldiers are superb. 
 They came to us young, enthusiastic, and carried forward 
 by a vigorous idealism, and they marched to battle with 
 admirable gallantry — yes, they were superb, there is no 
 other word. When they appeared, our armies were, as 
 you know, fatigued by three years of relentless struggle 
 and the mantle of war lay heavily upon them. We were 
 magnificently comforted by the vitality of your Ameri- 
 cans. The youth of the United States brought a renewal 
 of the hope that hastened victory. Not only was this 
 moral aid of the greatest importance, but you also brought 
 material aid, and the wealth which you placed at our 
 disposal contributed to the final success. No one among 
 us will ever forget what America did, and you know 
 what happened on the field of battle since July : first the 
 Marne, then in the region of Verdun. General Pershing 
 wished as far as possible to have his army concentrated 
 
452 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 in an American sector. The Argonne and the heights of 
 the Meuse was a sector hard to tackle, there were con- 
 siderable obstacles there. 'All right,' I said to him, 'your 
 men have the devil's own punch, they will get away with 
 all that, go to it,' and finally everything went well. Every- 
 thing went so well that we are here on the Rhine." 
 
 April pth f 1865, and November nth, 19 18! 
 
 Few men in their maturity have the privilege of 
 participating in two such events ; the first closed the 
 Civil War at Appomattox Court House and the last 
 silenced thousands of heavy guns along the far-flung 
 battle front in western Europe. Two great days termi- 
 nated two great wars, but they were as different in their 
 control, their happenings, and their surroundings as a 
 prayer meeting and a 4th of July celebration. The first 
 was quiet and almost sad. A few officers met in McLean's 
 cottage at Appomattox where the victors dictated gener- 
 ous terms to the vanquished foe. Outside, the two ar- 
 mies stood in full view of each other. From the moment 
 that peace had seemed possible, in order to prevent need- 
 less loss of life, not a gun had been fired. When the re- 
 sult was known, the defeated Confederates silently and 
 tearfully laid down their arms, while through the Union 
 ranks not a salute was fired, not a cheer was raised. This 
 silence and immobility was broken only when the victors 
 opened their haversacks to the famishing vanquished and 
 bade them share their contents. 
 
 In the European war the end was dramatic and tragic 
 in the extreme. In the morning the officers on both sides 
 knew that the armistice would begin at eleven o'clock, 
 but the rank and file knew only that their orders were to 
 
SOME FINDINGS OF THREE WARS 453 
 
 attack at eight o'clock. They obeyed. They rushed for- 
 ward against wire entanglements, deep trenches, and the 
 fierce firing of the enemy : they met death, suffering, and 
 life-lasting wounds for three hours, while officers stood 
 with watches in their hands waiting for the prescribed 
 hour. At five minutes of eleven the battle was raging a c 
 fiercely as at any time during the war. Heavy guns were 
 bombarding distant objectives, light artillery was sweep- 
 ing many a barrage, trench mortars, rifle fire, machine 
 guns, and hand grenades were still searching far too suc- 
 cessfully their victims. Eleven o'clock came — and dead 
 silence — a silence more startling and unexpected to the 
 men in the ranks than the previous storm had been. What 
 could it mean? The astonished soldier looked in amaze- 
 ment for a reason. At five minutes past eleven runners 
 had rushed the news, "The war is over." Salvos of re- 
 joicing burst forth. "The landscape was filled with 
 cheering men ; no Fourth of July ever saw such fireworks 
 as those red, green, and blue streaks across that foggy 
 sky." "One minute before eleven it would have meant 
 death to show one's self above shelter — not more than a 
 minute after the hour the rolling plain was alive with 
 cheering, shouting, care-free men."* 
 
 This ending was dramatic to its utmost limit, but was 
 it worth all the death toll and life-enduring wounds caused 
 by the three hours' needless fighting along hundreds of 
 miles of battle front? "Sabe Dios, ah! God knows." 
 
 ♦This account of the way the men at the front received the 
 armistice is probahly based on newspaper reports, and may 
 have been true for some sectors, but it was by no means true 
 generally. In some places the men knew beforehand that an 
 armistice had been signed and that it would go into effect at 
 eleven o'clock. In some it was ordered that there should be no 
 demonstration. In regard to the fireworks, the most frequent 
 testimony I get is that when evening came the men simplv shot 
 off what ammunition they had. — F. R. C. 
 
454 ONE MAN'S LIFETIME 
 
 No more fitting tribute to the men who made Ameri- 
 ca's record for valor across the sea, or more effective con- 
 clusion to the history they made, can here be given, than 
 the following consolidated record of each division's serv- 
 ice. This record shows the days they were on both quiet 
 and active sectors, the offensives participated in, kilo- 
 meters advanced, prisoners captured, casualties suffered, 
 death losses endured, and replacements from all causes. 
 
 I have taken great pains to compile it from the most 
 authoritative sources, and believe it to be substantially 
 correct. That it should be absolutely correct, is an im- 
 possibility, for facts will be developing for years that will 
 make slight changes therein. Such as it is, I dedicate it 
 to those recorded in the column of "Battle Deaths." 
 
BATTLE RECORD 
 
 Of Each Division that Reached the France- Belgium Front 
 
 Regular Army 
 
 > 
 
 Days in 
 
 Sector Offensive Participated in 
 
 Kilometers 
 
 Prisoners 
 
 C&suaJtics 
 
 Battle 
 
 Replacem't 
 
 Q 
 
 Quiet 
 
 Active German 
 
 Allies 
 
 Advanced 
 
 Captured 
 
 
 Deaths 
 
 all Causes 
 
 1 
 
 127 
 
 93 4 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 51 
 
 6,469 
 
 23,345 
 
 4,204 
 
 30,206 
 
 2 
 
 71 
 
 66 3-5 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 60 
 
 12,026 
 
 25,076 
 
 4,419 
 
 35,343 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 86 3-5 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 41 
 
 2,240 
 
 18,154 
 
 3,102 
 
 24,033 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 38 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 24y 2 
 
 2,756 
 
 14,183 
 
 2,598 
 
 19,599 
 
 5 
 
 71 
 
 32 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 29 
 
 2,356 
 
 9,883 
 
 1,908 
 
 12,611 
 
 6 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 567 
 
 97 
 
 2,784 
 
 7 
 
 31 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 69 
 
 1,818 
 
 302 
 
 4,112 
 
 National Guard 
 
 26 
 
 14S 
 
 45 
 
 1-5-6 
 
 37 
 
 3,148 
 
 15,168 
 
 2,168 
 
 14,411 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 2-4 
 
 11 
 
 2,357 
 
 11,218 
 
 1,791 
 
 5,355 
 
 28 
 
 31 
 
 49 3-5 
 
 1-3-5-6 
 
 10 
 
 921 
 
 16,277 
 
 2,531 
 
 21,717 
 
 29 
 
 59 
 
 23 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 2,187 
 
 6,159 
 
 940 
 
 4,977 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 56 
 
 2-4 
 
 29% 
 
 3,848 
 
 11,082 
 
 1,652 
 
 2.384 
 
 32 
 
 GO 
 
 35 
 
 1-3-6 
 
 36 
 
 2,153 
 
 13,884 
 
 2,898 
 
 20,140 
 
 33 
 
 32 
 
 27 
 
 2-5-6 
 
 36 
 
 3,987 
 
 9,253 
 
 1,002 
 
 5,413 
 
 35 
 
 92 
 
 5 
 
 5-6 
 
 12V2 
 
 781 
 
 7,854 
 
 960 
 
 10,605 
 
 36 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 6 
 
 21 
 
 549 
 
 2,710 
 
 591 
 
 3,397 
 
 37 
 
 50 
 
 11 
 
 4-6 
 
 30% 
 
 1,495 
 
 5,923 
 
 992 
 
 6,282 
 
 42 
 
 125 
 
 39 5 
 
 5-6 
 
 55 
 
 1,317 
 
 16,005 
 
 2,713 
 
 17,253 
 
 National Army 
 
 77 47 
 
 66 
 
 3-6 
 
 17i/2 
 
 750 
 
 11,596 
 
 1,992 
 
 12,718 
 
 78 17 
 
 21 
 
 5-6 
 
 21 
 
 432 
 
 8,159 
 
 1,359 
 
 3,190 
 
 79 28 
 
 17 
 
 6 
 
 191/2 
 
 1,077 
 
 7,590 
 
 1,396 
 
 6,246 
 
 80 1 
 
 17 
 
 5-6 
 
 38 
 
 1,813 
 
 6,763 
 
 1,141 
 
 4,495 
 
 81 31 
 
 
 
 
 51/2 
 
 101 
 
 1,051 
 
 250 
 
 1,984 
 
 82 70 
 
 27 
 
 5-6 
 
 17 
 
 845 
 
 8,228 
 
 1,338 
 
 8,402 
 
 88 28 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 90 
 
 27 
 
 731 
 
 89 55 
 
 28 
 
 5-6 
 
 48 
 
 5,061 
 
 8,813 
 
 1,419 
 
 7,669 
 
 90 42 
 
 26 
 
 5-6 
 
 28i/ 2 
 
 1,876 
 
 8,010 
 
 1,387 
 
 4,437 
 
 91 15 
 
 14 
 
 4-5-6 
 
 34 
 
 2.412 
 
 6,496 
 
 1,390 
 
 12,530 
 
 92 51 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 38 
 
 1,680 
 
 185 
 
 2,920 
 
 Other Uni 
 
 its 1-2- 
 
 3-4-5 1-2-3-4-5-6 
 
 
 
 6,471 
 
 2,170 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Abolitionist, in army, 250. 
 
 Acoma, Pueblo of, 74, 190; Cathedral 
 of, 192. 
 
 Adamana Reservation, 187. 
 
 Adobe, pueblo of, 75, 199; as building 
 material, 198. 
 
 Agriculture of Pueblo Indians, 72. 
 
 Aistie offensives, 438, 446. 
 
 Albuquerque, Indian exhibit at, 68; 
 business block, 193; hotel and depot, 
 194; Rio Grande River at, 203. 
 
 Alkali, poisoned cattle, 163. 
 
 American, units in World War, 433; 
 labor and supplies, 442. 
 
 Anti-Nebraska men, 244. 
 
 Anti-slavery, 244. 
 
 Apache Indians, 25. 
 
 Appomatox Court House, 265, 393, 
 452. 
 
 Arapahoe Indians, 27, 38. 
 
 Arkansas River, 11, 15, 29. 
 
 Armv, sense of honor, 270; recruiting 
 fof, 313. 
 
 Atlanta, 37-2. 
 
 Ax. stolen, 61. 
 
 Baking, in the ashes, 20. 
 
 Banks, 139. 
 
 Battle, of Hull Run, 312, 335; Wilson's 
 Creek, :::;<;; Pea Ridge, 339; Pittsburg 
 Landing, 342; Farmington, 348; 
 (hickamauga, 362; Gettysburg, 365; 
 Nashville, 374; Wilderness, 375; a 
 losing, 383; Five Forks, 392; losses, 
 nil, 419; of Manila Bay, 407; line, 
 in World War, 431; casualties, of 
 Germans, 438; record of Americans, 
 455. 
 
 Bear hunt, 167. 
 
 Beauty, a pony, 55. 
 
 Belleau Wood, 440. 
 
 Bennett, Horace, 387. 
 
 Bent, William, 13. 
 
 Bent's Fort, 11, 27, 38, 63. 
 
 Bible and slavery, 219. 
 
 Big Timbers, 12, 27. 
 
 Bill of fare, Pueblo Indian dinner, 70. 
 
 "Birth of a Nation," 278. 
 
 Black Code, 272. 
 
 Blackhawk War, 49. 
 
 Black Kettle, Indian chief, 40. 
 
 Black Partridge, chief, 88, 89. 
 
 Blair, Governor of Michigan, 355. 
 
 Blanco, General, 403, 412. 
 
 Blanket Indians, 29. 
 
 Blizzards, 125. 
 
 Blue and Gray, mutual respect, 241. 
 
 Boulder, 166. 
 
 Boston, slaves in, 213. 
 
 Bragg, General, 361. 
 
 Bright Angel Trail, 184. 
 
 Buell, General, 343. 
 
 Buffalo, numbers of, killed, 63; hunting, 
 56, 1")7; grass, 151. 
 
 Buffalo Bill, 58. 
 
 Bull Run, battle of, 312, 335. 
 Bureau, Indian, 47; Freedmen's, 267. 
 Burnap, personal history of, 5, 16, 26, 
 
 52, 77, 80, 85, 92, 97, 112, 119, 141, 
 
 162, 167, 178, 184, 280, 309, 313, 
 
 330, 336, 347, 365, 376, 396. 
 Burnside, General, 361. 
 Buster, grandson, 85. 
 Butler, General, 248, 253, 268, 342. 
 California, Trail, 147; irrigation in, 
 
 202; eastern money in, 205. 
 Campaign, of 1861, 331; of 1862, 339; 
 
 of 1863, 358; of 1864, 371; of 1865, 
 
 390. 
 Camps, of plainsmen, 19, 58; in 
 
 Spanish-American War, 406. 
 Canal, Illinois and Michigan, 94. 
 Cantigny, 439. 
 Carver, Captain, 47. 
 Cathedral, at Acoma, 74; at Laguna, 76. 
 Carroll, Richard, 262. 
 Cattle, stampede, 161; poisoned by 
 
 alkali, 164. 
 Cavalry, escort, 18, 22; charge, 348; see 
 
 Second. 
 Cervera, Admiral, 410. 
 Charcoal burning, 178. 
 Charge, at Farmington, 348. 
 Charity work for negroes, 292. 
 Charley, 23, 154. 
 
 Champagne-Marne movement, 443. 
 Chateau Thierry, 429. 
 Chattanooga, 345, 358, 361, 372. 
 Cheyenne, Indians, 27, 38; city of, 161. 
 Chicago, massacre, 85; water supply, 
 
 102; fire, 104. 
 Chicago and Northwestern Railway, 45, 
 
 113. 
 Chickamauga, battle of, 362. 
 "Chickasaw," see Naron. 
 Chivington, Colonel J. M., 40. 
 Churches, of negroes, 281. 
 Civil War, Chapter XVII, 309; com- 
 parative death losses in, 401; close, 
 
 453. 
 Cochiti, pueblo of, 77. 
 Coffles of slaves, 232. 
 Colonel, Confederate, captured by negro 
 
 soldiers, 254. 
 Colorado, governor of, 40; see Grand 
 
 Canyon. 
 Comanche Indians, 18. 
 Commissions, in Civil War vs. Great 
 
 .War, 377. 
 Community House, at San Domingo, 75. 
 Company I, 2nd Iowa Cav., 377. 
 Compass plant, 145. 
 Concentration, of Cubans, 402. 
 Confederate, States, 247; recruiting, 
 
 323; battle line, 332; prisoners, 388; 
 
 soldiers as slackers, 394; Decoration 
 
 Day, 307. 
 Conversation of Indians, 30. 
 Coon, Colonel D. E., 370. 
 "Copperheads," 327, 
 
458 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Corinth, 344, 347. 
 Coronado, 15, 67. 
 Correspondents, newspaper, with armies, 
 
 415. 
 Cost, of keeping a slave, 236; Civil War 
 
 vs. Great War, 376, 428. 
 Costume of Pueblo woman, 73. 
 Cotton, and slavery, 218; raised by- 
 negroes, 283. 
 Council Bluffs, 144, 146. 
 Court House, of Chicago: first, 92; 
 
 second, 96; third, 99; fourth, 103; 
 
 fifth, 105; sixth, 106. 
 Court, testimony in, by negroes, 275. 
 Cowboy, 16. 
 
 "Crackers" of the South, 317. 
 Crown Prince, 443. 
 Cuba, annexation of, 311; soldiers of, 
 
 400; reorganization of, 416. 
 Cumberland River, 340. 
 Currency, Pueblo, 71; pioneer, 139. 
 Dances, of Indians, 31. 
 Davenport, Sioux Indians at, 33. 
 Declaration of Independence and 
 
 slavery, 215. 
 Delinquents, negro, 289. 
 Democracy, of Pueblo Indians, 75. 
 Democratic Party, split by Dred Scott 
 
 decision, 245; opposed Freedmen's 
 
 Bureau, 268; split on war, 327. 
 Denver in 1859, 109, 166; English 
 
 tourist at, 195. 
 Desert, the "Great American," 52. 
 Destruction, by emigrants, 38, 62. 
 Detached duty, 378. 
 Dewey, Admiral, 407. 
 Disease, Indian fear of, 36; in the 
 
 army, 337; losses, 401. 
 Disloyalty in North, 328. 
 Donelson, Fort, 340. 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 243, 327. 
 Dred Scott case, 245. 
 Drinking, by railroad men, 113; by 
 
 pioneers, 138. 
 "Dudah" gravy, 128. 
 Eastern money in California, 205. 
 Eastman, Doctor, 31. 
 Economic basis of slavery, 214. 
 Education, of Indians, 32; of negroes, 
 
 271, 281, 304. 
 Election, of 1856, 245; of 1860, 246, 
 
 327. 
 Elks' House at Santa Fe, 196. 
 Elliott, General, 354. 
 Emancipation, 217; forbidden, 228; 
 
 Proclamation, 248. 
 Emigrants, destruction by, 38, 62. 
 Enchanted Mesa, 190. 
 England, did not recognize slavery, 212. 
 Enlistment, in Civil War, 313; Spanish- 
 American War, 405. 
 Erosion in Grand Canyon, 182. 
 Farmington, charge at, 348. 
 Fine Art Building, Santa Fe, 192. 
 Fire, alarm by bell, 100; in Chicago, 
 
 104; on prairie, 132. 
 Five Forks, battle of, 392. 
 
 Fleet, in Manila Bay, 407; Cervera's, 
 
 410. 
 Foch, General, 435, 451. 
 Food, of Indians, 24. 
 Fording streams, 131. 
 Fourth of July, 36, 442. 
 Fraternizing, between former enemies, 
 
 395. 
 Freedmen, and the Black Code, 272. 
 Freedmen's Bureau, 267. 
 Freedom, how received, 257, 265; 
 
 worse for negro than slavery, 296. 
 Fremont, General, 52, 248, 268. 
 Frijoles, Rio de Los, 77; eaten in 
 
 Yucatan, 78. 
 Fugitive Slave Act, 239, 242, 309. 
 Funston, General, 400. 
 Galena and Chicago Railroad, 94, 97, 
 
 112. 
 Galveston, negroes in, 293. 
 George, 36, 167. 
 
 German, citizens, 421; methods of sub- 
 marine warfare, 422; offensives, 433. 
 Gettysburg, battle of, 364. 
 Gold, at Pike's Peak, 143, 165. 
 Goldsboro, 390. 
 
 Grand Army of the Republic, 396. 
 Grand Canyon, 17, 181, 183. 
 Grant, General, 268; nominated for 
 
 president, 330; in Tennessee, 340; at 
 
 Pittsburg Landing, 343; at Vicksburg, 
 
 356, 358; in command of all Union 
 
 armies, 371, 391. 
 Great American Desert, 52, 146, 150, 
 
 180. 
 Great Mystery, of Indians, 28, 37, 51. 
 Great War, see World War. 
 "Greenwood Volunteers," 320. 
 Grierson, Colonel, 366; General, 379. 
 Halleck, General, 344, 354. 
 Hammett, Ben, 387. 
 Hartman, Serg. John F., 387. 
 Hatch, Colonel, 369, 385, 
 Heald, Captain, 89. 
 Helm, Mrs., 88. 
 Henry, Fort, 340. 
 Hokona, 191. 
 
 Honor, of Indians, 48; in army, 270. 
 Hood, General, 373, 385. 
 Hopi, Building, 74; Point, 183; style of 
 
 architecture, 191. 
 Horton, Colonel, 387. 
 Hospitality, of Indians, 24, 32, 48, 61; 
 
 of pioneers, 130, 156. 
 Hours of work for slaves, 224, 237. 
 "How," Indian greeting, 24, 60. 
 Howard, General O. O., 269, 318. 
 Hunting, buffalo, 157; bear, 169. 
 Illinois a free state, 229. 
 Illiteracy, of negroes, 288; of the 
 
 "crackers," 317. 
 Improvidence, of negroes, 291. 
 Indian, Passing of the, Part I, 11; 
 
 strategy, 23; numbers of the, 45. 
 Inkpaduta, 43, 143. 
 Institution of slavery, 209; controlled 
 
 the master, 2g0; mistakes of the, 242. 
 
INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Iowa, land sale, 115; winter, 124. 
 
 Irrigation, 29, 201. 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 318. 
 
 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 41. 
 
 Jackson, Mississippi, 293. 
 
 Jefferson, an abolitionist, 216, 240. 
 
 "Jerking" meat, 20, 158. 
 
 Jew, negro resembles, in racial pride, 
 
 295. 
 "Johnnies," friendship of, for "Yanks," 
 
 395. 
 Johnson, Andrew, 319. 
 Johnson, Charley, 23. 
 Johnston, General A. S., 161, 343. 
 Johnston, General J. E., 312, 359, 372, 
 
 391. 
 Kansas, 63. 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 243. 
 Kearney, Fort, 35, 147. 
 Kentucky, neutrality, 333; campaign, 
 
 335. 
 Kiva, of Pueblo Indians, 65, 77. 
 Knights of the Golden Circle, 328. 
 Ku Klux Klan, 276. 
 Labor, see Work. 
 LaCrosse, railroad to, 113. 
 Land, from Indians, 14, 38; opening in 
 1857, 115; in 1892, 118; office at Santa 
 
 Fe, 194; negro desire for, 262. 
 Laramie, Fort, 147, 159. 
 Law, of Pueblo Indian, 72. 
 Laguna, cathedral at, 76, 192. 
 Lee, Fitshugh, 402. 
 Lee, Robert E., 265, 334, 346, 364, 384, 
 
 391. 
 Lincoln, pardoned Indians, 33; on 
 
 slavery, 240; proclamation of, 248; 
 
 early life, 319; election, 327; opposi- 
 tion to, in congress, 329. 
 Logan, John A., 329. 
 Longfellow, describes compass- plant, 
 
 145. 
 Lookout Mountain, 362. 
 Los Angeles, water supply of, 204. 
 Loyalty, not universal, 316, 327; of 
 
 the "crackers," 320; of German 
 
 citizens, 421. 
 Ludendorff, General, 440. 
 Lyon, General, 13, 336. 
 Lys movement, 436. 
 McClellan, General, 334, 346. 
 McKinley, President, 403. 
 Maine, explosion of the, 404. 
 Manila Bay, battle of, 407. 
 "Marmon," quotation from, 317. 
 Marriage, of Pueblos, 71; of slaves, 
 
 236. 
 "Massa," as title of address, 257, 285, 
 
 302. 
 Massacre, at New Ulm, 33; Sand 
 
 Creek, 40; of Moravian Indians, 50; 
 
 at Chicago, 85; Mountain Meadow, 
 
 152; Boston, 213; Fort Pillow, 254, 
 
 384. 
 Maya Indians, 77. 
 
 Meade, General, 391. 
 
 Medicine man, Indian, 35. 
 
 Men, numbers of, in World War, 419. 
 
 Mendoza, Antianco de, 67. 
 
 Merritt, General, 410. 
 
 Mesa, formation, 182; Enchanted, 190. 
 
 Meuse-Argonne offensive, 450. 
 
 Mexicans, 17, 177. 
 
 Michigan Avenue, 102. 
 
 Michigan Southern Railroad, 94. 
 
 Migration with slaves, 231. 
 
 Miles, General, 413. 
 
 Milwaukee and Chicago Railway, 113. 
 
 Milwaukee and LaCrosse Railroad, 113. 
 
 Minneapolis in 1857, 109. 
 
 Mission style of architecture, 191. 
 
 Missionary work, slave trading as, 214, 
 219. 
 
 Mississippi, Union men in, 322; River, 
 341, 361. 
 
 Missouri, River, 149; Compromise, 242, 
 309; and secession, 333; campaign, 
 335. 
 
 Mobile, reunion in, 396. 
 
 Montojo, Admiral, 407. 
 
 Monument, of Chicago Massacre, 87. 
 
 Moravian Indians, 50. 
 
 Mormons, 44, 148. 
 
 Mound builders, 82. 
 
 Names, of Pueblo Indians, 71. 
 
 Naron, L. H., 321. 
 
 Nashville, Tenn., 303, 373, 385. 
 
 Navajo blankets, 70. 
 
 Navy, in Civil War, 336, 342. 
 
 Negro, sold in Chicago, 95; as redemp- 
 tioner, 212; and master, 220, 252; 
 getting freedom, 248; in army, 253, 
 263, 384; cook, 260; better off in 
 slavery? 296. 
 
 Neutrality, of Kentucky, 33; in World 
 War, 420. 
 
 New Mexico, 177; University buildings, 
 191; troops' in battle, 429. 
 
 New Ulm, Indians at, 33, 43. 
 
 North, shared in slave trade, 213; pro- 
 slavery sentiment in, 239; vs. South 
 in military training, 316; disloyalty 
 in, 328. 
 
 Northern views of South, 241, 310. 
 
 Noyon-Mondidier drive, 440. 
 
 Observation Point, 184. 
 
 Offensives in 1918, German, 433; Allied, 
 434. 
 
 Officers, commissioning of, 377; train- 
 ing of, 424. 
 
 Oise-Aisne movement, 448. 
 
 Omaha in 1859, 109, 146. 
 
 Organization of armies, 424. 
 
 Osage, land sale at, 115. 
 
 Outfit, of plainsmen, 19. 
 
 Paine, General, 347. 
 
 Paris as German objective, 438. 
 
 Pea Ridge, battle of, 339. 
 
 Peons, of Yucatan, 79; in New Mexico, 
 177. 
 
460 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pershing, General, 426, 435. 
 
 Petrified forest, 187. 
 
 Pettis, Governor, 322. 
 
 Philippi, battle of, 334. 
 
 Pierce, selection of, 242. 
 
 Pike's Peak, gold rush to, 143; caravans 
 to, 153, 159. 
 
 Pillow, Fort, 254, 384. 
 
 Pinion nuts, 170. 
 
 Pioneer, men, 116; life, 124; hospitality, 
 130. 
 
 Pittsburg Landing, battle of, 343, 429. 
 
 Plantation hours of work, 224, 237. 
 
 Platte River, 149. 
 
 "Poor white trash," 317. 
 
 Pope, General, 341, 346. 
 
 Population, growth of, 206. 
 
 Port Hudson, 343, 360. 
 
 Preachers, negro, 281. 
 
 Prices, 138; of slaves, 230. 
 
 Prinzep, Gavrilo, 418. 
 
 Prisoners, aided to escape by negroes, 
 
 251; dash for liberty, 388. 
 Proctor, Senator, 403. 
 Property, descent of, among Pueblos, 
 
 76; acquired by negroes, 273, 285. 
 Pueblo Indians, 65, 182. 
 Pullman, Geo. M., 98; cars, 406. 
 Punishments for slaves, 237. 
 Purgatory River, 173. 
 Quaker treaty with Indians, 44. 
 Ouivira, 67. 
 
 Raid by cavalry, 353, 365, 367, 370. 
 Railroads, to Chicago, 94; celebration, 
 101; building, 112; men, 113; train 
 boy, 115. 
 Rainbow, in complete circle, 185. 
 Ration for slaves, 235, 300. 
 Raton, Pass, 16, 176; Range, 167. 
 Reconstruction, 276. 
 Redemptioners, 212. 
 Regiment, see Second. 
 Religion of Pueblos, 71. 
 Republican, Party, 246; national conven- 
 tion, 330. 
 Responsibility, of all for a few, 42. 
 Reunion of Confederates, 396. 
 Rheims, attack on, 444. 
 Richmond, objective of Civil War, 346, 
 
 358, 364, 372; flight from, 392. 
 Roads, primitive, 15, 144, 149. 
 Rocky Mountains, beauty of, 164. 
 Roosevelt, Dam, 202; President, 405. 
 Rosecrans, General, 256, 334, 361. 
 St. Louis, colored families assisted in, 
 
 294; barracks, 337. 
 St. Mihiel salient, 449. 
 St. Paul in 1857, 109. 
 San Antonio, negro church in, 282, 291, 
 
 301. 
 Sand Creek massacre, 40, 62. 
 San Domingo, Community House at, 75. 
 Santa Fe, 11, 149; Trail, 14, 63, 176; 
 Fine Art Building, 192; land office, 
 194; residences, 196. 
 
 Santanta, Kiowa chief, 62. 
 Savannah, 390. 
 Scalping, 49. 
 Scandia Mountain, 197. 
 Scott, General, 49. 
 Scott's Bluff, 36. 
 Scout, an old, 52. 
 Secession, 246. 
 
 Second Iowa Cavalry, 251, 336, 347, 
 365, 385, 394; officers in Company I, 
 377; in Sturgis' Raid, 380. 
 Second Michigan Cavalry, 353. 
 Second Missouri Cavalry, 395. 
 Severity, necessary to slavery, 223. 
 Sliafter, General, 406, 411. 
 Sheridan, General, 48, 354, 392. 
 Sherman, General W. T., 401, 312, 358, 
 
 372, 390. 
 Sign language, 30. 
 Sioux Indians, 28, 33, 35, 43. 
 Sisseton Reservation, 33, 46, 118. 
 Skeletons, of buffalo, 63. 
 Slave, sold in Chicago, 95; Institution, 
 
 209. 
 Slavery, grew, never established, 211; 
 seemingly impregnable, 242; better for 
 negro than freedom? 296. 
 Slaves, freed by war, 249, 256; house 
 
 servants vs. field hands, 299. 
 Sleeping cars, for soldiers, 406. 
 Soldier, filing for homesteads, 119; 
 
 charcoal burner, 178. 
 Soldiers, issue a paper, 347. 
 "Soldiers' Rest," in Chicago, 102. 
 Somme, movement of the, 432. 
 South, spent for education of negroes, 
 
 271; Union sentiment in, 319. 
 South Carolina, secession of, 246; nulli- 
 fication, 310. 
 South Dakota, land opening, 118. 
 Southern views of, Jefferson and 
 Lincoln, 240; the North, 241; the 
 Civil War, 397. 
 Spanish American War, Chapter XVIII, 
 
 400. 
 Spanish language, 17, 179. 
 Speculators, at land opening, 116; 
 
 profits and losses of, 121. 
 Spirit Lake, outrages at, 43. 
 Squatter sovereignty, 244. 
 Staff duty, 376. 
 Stampede, of stock, 161. 
 Strategy, of Indians, 23, 25. 
 Streets, of early Chicago, 95, 96, 98. 
 Sturgis expedition, 254, 380. 
 Submarine, in World War, 421. 
 Sumter, Fort, 311. 
 Supreme Court, 245. 
 Surby, Sergt. R. W., 322. 
 Surrender, of Lee and Johnston, 393. 
 Taney, Judge, 245, 262. 
 Taxes, on non-residents, 121, 127. 
 Teachers, of negroes, 269, 271. 
 Telegraph, first in Chicago, 97, 98. 
 Temperature, real and apparent, 200. 
 
INDEX 
 
 461 
 
 Tennessee River, 340. 
 
 Thieving, by Indians, 54, 59, 61. 
 
 Thirteenth Amendment, 248. 
 
 Thomas, General, 835, 363, 386. 
 
 Tillman, Senator, 262. 
 
 Tobacco and slavery, 215, 218. 
 
 Tonl sector, 437. 
 
 Trader, Indian as, 25; Pueblo, 68; slave, 
 233. 
 
 Transportation, of soldiers, 406; across 
 ocean, 427. 
 
 Trapper, dress of, 17, 26. 
 
 Traveling outfit, 16, 19, 26. 
 
 Treaties, with Indians, 14, 38, 44, 47, 
 49. 
 
 Tremont House, in Chicago, 98. 
 
 Trkiidad, 173. 
 
 Truth, impossible to tell the whole, 210; 
 Indian regard for, 48. 
 
 Tunnelled rock, 29. 
 
 Union, Fort, 167, 179; men in the 
 South, 322. 
 
 Vallandingham, 328. 
 
 Van Voores, Dr., 88. 
 
 Vardaman, Senator, 262. 
 
 Vargels, Diego de, 68. 
 
 Vicksburg, 343, 356. 
 
 Vigilance committee, 322. 
 
 Virgin feasts, of Indians, 34. 
 
 Volunteers, methods of handling, 313; 
 in war with Spain, 405; qualities of, 
 414; in World War, 424. 
 
 Wages, to former slaves, 257; of f reed- 
 men, 300. 
 
 Walker's men, 311. 
 
 War, with Indians, 41; Civil, Chapter 
 XVII, 309; Spanish-American, Chap- 
 ter XVIII, 400; World War, Chapter 
 XIX, 418. 
 
 Washington, Booker, 251, 262, 295, 
 305. 
 
 Washington, George,- views of slavery, 
 217, 225, 228. 
 
 Water, supply of Chicago, 102; boy on 
 train, 113. 
 
 Wells, Captain, 89, 90. 
 
 West, Settling of, Part II, 83; wilder- 
 ness of the, 64; compared witli East, 
 180; Virg.nia campaign, 334. 
 
 Weyler, General, 402. 
 
 Wheat, marketing of, 127. 
 
 Whip, for slaves, 225. 
 
 Whipple, Bishop, 47. 
 
 White Antelope, Indian chief, 40. 
 
 White Earth Agency, 45. 
 
 Wilderness, of the Southwest, 64; 
 battles of the, 375. 
 
 Wilson, President, 420. 
 
 Wilson's Creek, battle of, 13, 336. 
 
 Wise, Governor, 13. 
 
 Women, Indian, 34; as field hands, 236. 
 
 Wood, Fernando, 269. 
 
 Work, hours for slave, 224, 237; 
 Southern view of, 256; learned by 
 negro, 265. 
 
 World War, Chapter XIX, 418; com- 
 pared with Civil War, 315, 376, 393, 
 452. 
 
 "Yanks," fraternize with Confederates, 
 394. 
 
 Y. M. C. A., in early Chicago, 97. 
 
 Ypres-Lys movement, 448. 
 
 Yucatan, Maya Indians in, 77.