1861.]

GOOD SOLDIERS FOR SCALING WALLS.

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threats; but since their recent severe admonition that Unionists, too, can use fire-arms, and that it is not discreet to attack United States soldiers, they do not execute them.

Captain Lyon, who commands, is an exceedingly prompt and efficient officer, attends strictly to his business, exhibits no hunger for newspaper fame, and seems to act with an eye single to the honor of the Government he has served so long and so faithfully.

Among our regiments is the Missouri First, Colonel Frank P. Blair. Three companies are made up of German Turners-the most accomplished of gymnasts. They are sinewy, muscular fellows, with deep chests and wellknit frames. Every man is an athlete. To-day a party, by way of exercise, suddenly formed a human pyramid, and commenced running up, like squirrels, over each other's shoulders, to the high veranda upon the second story of their building. In climbing a wall, they would not require scaling-ladders. There are also two companies from the Far West-old trappers and hunters, who have smelt gunpowder in Indian warfare.

Colonel Blair's dry, epigrammatic humor bewilders some of his visitors. I was sitting in his head-quarters when a St. Louis Secessionist entered. Like nearly all of them, he now pretends to be a Union man, but is very tender on the subject of State Rights, and wonderfully solicitous about the Constitution. He remarked:

"I am a Union man, but I believe in State Rights. I . believe a State may dissolve its connection with the Government if it wants to."

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"O yes," replied Blair, pulling away at his ugly mustache, "yes, you can go out if you want to. Certainly you can secede. But, my friend, you can't take with you one foot of American soil!"

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MISSOURI AND THE SLAVEHOLDERS.

[1861.

A citizen of Lexington introduced himself, saying: "I am a loyal man, ready to fight for the Union; but I am pro-slavery-I own niggers.”

“Well, sir,” replied Blair, with the faintest suggestion of a smile on his plain, grim face, "you have a right to. We don't like negroes very much ourselves. If you do, that's a matter of taste. It is one of your privileges. But if you gentlemen who own negroes attempt to take the State of Missouri out of the Union, in about six months you will be the most

set of individuals that you ever heard of!"

niggerless

CAIRO, as the key to the lower Mississippi valley, is the most important strategic point in the West. Immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, it was occupied by our troops.

As a place of residence it was never inviting. To-day its offenses smell to heaven as rankly as when Dickens evoked it, from horrible obscurity, as the "Eden" of Martin Chuzzlewit. The low, marshy, boot-shaped site is protected from the overflow of the Mississippi and Ohio by levees. Its jet-black soil generates every species of insect and reptile known to science or imagination. Its atmosphere is never sweet or pure.

On the 13th of June, Major-General George B. McClellan, commander of all the forces west of the Alleghanies, reached Cairo on a visit of inspection. His late victories in Western Virginia had established his reputation for the time, as an officer of great capacity and promise, notwithstanding the high heroics of his ambitious proclamations. This was before Bull Run, and before the New York journals, by absurdly pronouncing him "the Young Napoleon," raised public expectation to an embarrassing and unreasonable hight.

In those days, every eye was looking for the Coming Man, every ear listening for his approaching footsteps,

142

A LITTLE SPEECH-MAKING.

[1861.

which were to make the earth tremble. Men judged, by old standards, that the Hour must have its Hero. They had not learned that, in a country like ours, whatever is accomplished must be the work of the loyal millions, not of any one, or two, or twenty generals and statesmen.

McClellan was enthusiastically received, and, to the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner," escorted to headquarters. There, General Prentiss, who had so decided a penchant for speech-making, that cynics declared he always kept a particular stump in front of his office for a rostrum, welcomed him with some rhetorical remarks:

* "My command are all anxious to taste those dangers which war ushers in-not that they court danger, but that they love their country. We have toiled in the mud, we have drilled in the burning sun. Many of us are ragged-all of us are poor. But we look anxiously for the order to move, trusting that we may be allowed to lead the division."

The soldiers applauded enthusiastically-for in those days the anxiety to be in the earliest battles was intense. The impression was almost universal throughout the North that the war was to be very brief. Officers and men in the army feared they would have no opportunity to participate in any fighting!

McClellan responded to Prentiss and his officers in the same strain:

* * "We shall meet again upon the tented field; and Illinois, which sent forth a Hardin and a Bissell, will, I doubt not, give a good account of herself to her sister States. Her fame is world-wide: in your hands, gentlemen, I am sure it will not suffer. The advance is due to you."

Then there was more applause, and afterward a review of the brigade.

1861.]

PENALTY OF WRITING FOR THE TRIBUNE.

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General McClellan is stoutly built, short, with light hair, blue eyes, full, fresh, almost boyish face, and lip tufted with a brown mustache. His urbane manner truly indicates the peculiar amiability of character and yielding disposition which have hurt him more than all other causes. An officer once assured me that McClellan had said to him: "My friends have injured me a thousand times more than my enemies." It was certainly true.

Now, seeing his features the first time, I scanned them anxiously for lineaments of greatness. I saw a pleasant, mild, moony face, with one cheek distended by tobacco; but nothing which appeared strong or striking. Tinctured largely with the general belief in his military genius, I imputed the failure only to my own incapacity for reading "Nature's infinite book of secrecy."

One evening, at Cairo, a man, whose worn face, shaggy beard, matted locks, and tattered clothing marked him as one of the constantly arriving refugees, sought me and asked:

"Can you tell me the name of The Tribune correspondent who passed through Memphis last February?" He was informed that that pleasure had been mine.

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'Then," said he, "I have been lying in jail at Memphis about fifty days chiefly on your account! The three or four letters which you wrote from there were peculiarly bitter. Of course, I was not aware of your presence, and I sent one to The Tribune, which was also very emphatic. The Secessionists suspected me not only of the one which I did write, but also of yours. They pounced on me and put me in jail. After the disbanding of the Committee of Safety I was brought before the City Recorder, who assured me from the bench of his profound regrets that he could find no law for hang