154 A BELLIGERENT CHAPLAIN. [1861. During the engagement, the Rev. William A. Pile, Chaplain of the First Missouri Infantry, with a detail of four men, was looking after the wounded, when, coming suddenly upon a party of twenty-four Rebels, he ordered them to surrender. Strangely enough, they laid down their arms, and were all brought, prisoners, to General Lyon's head-quarters by their five captors, headed by the reverend representative of the Church militant and the Church triumphant. Messrs. Thomas W. Knox and Lucien J. Barnes, army correspondents, zealous to see the first battle, narrowly escaped with their lives. Appearing upon a hill, surveying the conflict through their field-glasses, they were mistaken by General Lyon for scouts of the enemy. He ordered his sharpshooters to pick them off, when one of his aids recognized them. BOONEVILLE, Mo., June 21. The First Iowa Infantry has arrived here. On the way, several slaves, who came to its camp for refuge, were sent back to their masters. The regiment contains many educated men, and that large percentage of physicians, lawyers, and editors, found in every far-western community. On the way here, they indulged in a number of freaks which startled the natives. At Macon, Mo., they took possession of The Register, a hot Secession sheet, and, having no less than forty printers in their ranks, promptly issued a spicy loyal journal, called Our Whole Union. The valedictory, which the Iowa boys addressed to Mr. Johnson, the fugitive editor, in his own paper, is worth perusing. แ "VALEDICTORY. "Johnson, wherever you are-whether lurking in recesses of the dim woods, or fleeing a fugitive on open plain, under the broad canopy 1861.] HUMORS OF THE IOWA SOLDIERS. 155 of Heaven-good-by! We never saw your countenance-never expect to-never want to-but, for all that, we won't be proud; so, Johnson, good-by, and take care of yourself! "We're going to leave you, Johnson, without so much as looking into your honest eyes, or clasping your manly hand-even without giving utterance, to your face, of God bless you!' We're right sorry, we are, that you didn't stay to attend to your domestic and other affairs, and not skulk away and lose yourself, never to return. Oh, Johnson! why did you how could you do this? "Johnson, we leave you to-night. We're going where bullets are thick and mosquitos thicker. We may never return. If we do not, old boy, remember us. We sat at your table; we stole from your 'Dictionary of Latin Quotations;' we wrote Union articles with your pen, your ink, on your paper. We printed them on your press. Our boys set' em up with your types, used your galleys, your 'shooting-sticks,' your chases,' your 'quads,' your 'spaces,' your 'rules,' your every thing. We even drank some poor whisky out of your bottle. "And now, Johnson, after doing all this for you, you won't forget us, will you? Keep us in mind. Remember us in your evening prayers, and your morning prayers, too, when you say them, if you do say them. If you put up a petition at mid-day, don't forget us then; or if you awake in the solemn stillness of the night, to implore a benison upon the absent, remember us then! "Once more, Johnson-our heart pains us to say it-that sorrowful word!—but once more and forever, Johnson, GOOD-By! If you come our way, Call! Johnson, adieu!" One of the privates in the regular army has just been punished with fifty lashes on the bare back, for taking from a private house a lady's furs and a silk dress. This morning I passed a group of the Iowa privates, resting beside the road, along which they were bringing buckets of water to their camp. They were debating the question whether a heavy national debt tends to weaken or to strengthen a Government! These are the men whom the southern Press calls "ignorant mercenaries." 156 CAMP TALES OF THE MARVELOUS. [1861. ST. LOUIS, July 12. The Missouri State Journal, which made no disguise of its sympathy with the Rebels, is at last suppressed by the military authorities. It was done today, by order of General Lyon, who is pursuing the Rebels near Springfield, in the southwest corner of the State. Secessionists denounce it as a military despotism, but the loyal citizens are gratified. Are you fond of the marvelous? If so, here is a camp story about Colonel Sigel's late engagement at Carthage : A private in one of his companies (so runs the tale), while loading and firing, was lying flat upon his face to avoid the balls of the Rebels, when a shot from one of their six-pounders plunged into the ground right beside him, plowed through under him, about six inches below the surface, came out on the other side, and pursued its winding way. It did not hurt a hair of his head, but, in something less than a twinkling of an eye, whirled him over upon his back! If you shake your head, save your incredulity for this: A captain assures me that in the same battle he saw one of Sigel's artillerists struck by a shot which cut off both legs; but that he promptly raised himself half up, rammed the charge home in his gun, withdrew the ramrod, and then fell back, dead! This is, at least, melo-dramatic, and only paralleled by the ballad-hero "Of doleful dumps, Who, when his legs were both cut off, Still fought upon his stumps." It was a relief to escape the excitement and bitterness of Missouri, and spend a few quiet days in the free States. Despite Rebel predictions, grass did not grow in the streets of Chicago. In sooth, it wore neither an Arcadian nor a funereal aspect. Palatial buildings were everywhere rising; sixty railway trains arrived. and departed daily; hotels were crowded with guests; and the voice of the artisan was heard in the land. Michigan Avenue, the finest drive in America, skirting the lake shore for a mile and a half, was crowded every evening with swift vehicles, and its sidewalks thronged with leisurely pedestrians. It afforded scope to one of the two leading characteristics of Chicago residents, which are, holding the ribbons and leaving out the latch-string. I did not hear a single cry of "Bread or Blood!" As the city had over two million bushels of corn in store, and had received eighteen million bushels of grain during the previous six months, starvation was hardly imminent. War or peace, currency or no currency, breadstuffs will find a market. Corn, not cotton, is king; the great Northwest, instead of Dixie Land, wields the sceptre of imperial power. The elasticity of the new States is wonderful. Wisconsin and Illinois had lost about ten millions of dollars 158 CURIOUS REMINISCENCES OF CHICAGO. [1861. through the depreciation of their currency within a few months. It caused embarrassment and stringency, but no wreck or ruin. Reminiscences of the financial chaos were entertaining. New York exchange once reached thirty per cent. The Illinois Central Railroad Company paid twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars premium on a single draft. For a few weeks before the crash, everybody was afraid of the currency, and yet everybody received it. People were seized with a sudden desire to pay up. The course of nature was reversed; debtors absolutely pursued their creditors, and creditors dodged them as swindlers dodge the sheriff. Parsimonious husbands supplied their wives bounteously with means to do family shopping for months ahead. There was a "run" upon those feminine paradises, the dry-goods stores, while the merchants were by no means anxious to sell. Suddenly prices went up, as if by magic. Then came a grand crisis. Currency dropped fifty per cent., and one morning the city woke up to find itself poorer by just half than it was the night before. The banks, with their usual feline sagacity, alighted upon their feet, while depositors had to stand the loss. Persons who settled in Chicago when it was only a military post, many hundred miles in the Indian country, relate stories of the days when they sometimes spent three months on schooners coming from Buffalo. Later settlers, too, offer curious reminiscences. In 1855, a merchant purchased a tract of unimproved land near the lake, outside the city limits, for twelve hundred dollars, one-fourth in cash. Before his next payment, a railroad traversed one sandy worthless corner of it, and the company paid him damages to the amount of eleven hundred dollars. Before the end of the third year, when |