1861.] A TRAGEDY OF SLAVERY. 179 far from its base, and Wise ran too fast for capture. We had five thousand troops, who were ill-disciplined and discontented. General Cox was then fresh from the Ohio Senate. After more field experience, he became an excellent officer. When I returned through the valley, I found Charleston greatly excited. A docile and intelligent mulatto slave, of thirty years, had never been struck in his life. But, on the way to a hayfield, his new overseer began to crack his whip over the shoulders of the gang, to hurry them forward. The mulatto shook his head a little defiantly, when the whip was laid heavily across his back. Turning instantly upon the driver, he smote him with his hayfork, knocking him from his horse, and laying the skull bare. The overseer, a large, athletic man, drew his revolver; but, before he could use it, the agile mulatto wrenched it away, and fired two shots at his head, which instantly killed him. Taking the weapon, the slave fled to the mountains, whence he escaped to the Ohio line. • ST. LOUIS, August 19, 1861. In the days of stage-coaches, the trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis was a very melancholy experience; in the days of steamboats, a very tedious one. Now, you leave Cincinnati on a summer evening; and the placid valley of the Ohio-the almost countless cornfields of the Great Miami (one of them containing fifteen hundred acres), where the exhaustless soil has produced that staple abundantly for fifty years-the grave and old home of General Harrison, at North Bend-the dense forests of Indiana-the Wabash Valley, that elysium of chills and fever, where pumpkins are "fruit," and hoop-poles "timber" the dead-level prairies of Illinois, with their 180 THE FUTURE OF ST. LOUIS. [1861. oceans of corn, tufts of wood, and painfully white villages the muddy Mississippi, "All-the-Waters," as one Indian tribe used to call it-are unrolled in panorama, till, at early morning, St. Louis, hot and parched with the journey, holds out her dusty hands to greet you. No inland city ever held such a position as this. Here is the heart of the unequaled valley, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies, and from the great lakes to the Gulf. Here is the mighty river, which drains a region six times greater than the empire of France, and bears on its bosom the waters of fiftyseven navigable streams. Even the rude savage called it the "Father of Waters," and early Spanish explorers reverentially named it the "River of the Holy Ghost." St. Louis, "with its thriving young heart, and its old French limbs," is to be the New York of the interior. The child is living who will see it the second city on the American continent. Three Rebel newspapers have recently been sup pressed. The editor of one applied to the provost-marshal for permission to resume, but declined to give a pledge that no disloyal sentiment should appear in its columns. He was very tender of the Constitution, and solicitous about "the rights of the citizen." The marshal replied: "I cannot discuss these matters with you. I am a soldier, and obey orders." "But," remonstrated the editor, " you might be ordered to hang me." "Very possibly," replied the major, dryly. "And you would obey orders, then?" "Most assuredly I would, sir." The Secession journalist left, in profound disgust. ON the 10th of August, at Wilson Creek, two hundred and forty miles southwest of St. Louis, occurred the hardest-fought battle of the year. General Lyon had pursued the Rebels to that corner of the State. He had called again and again for re-enforcements, but at Washington nothing could be seen except Virginia. Lyon's force was five thousand two hundred men. The enemy, under Ben McCulloch and Sterling Price, numbered over eleven thousand, according to McCulloch's official report. Lyon would not retreat. He thought that would injure the Cause more than to fight and be defeated. To one of his staff-officers, the night before the engagement, he said: "I believe in presentiments, and, ever since this attack was planned, I have felt that it would result disastrously. But I cannot leave the country without a battle." On his way to the field, he was silent and abstracted; but when the guns opened, he gave his orders with great promptness and clearness. He had probably resolved that he would not leave the field alive unless he left it as a victor. By a singular coincidence, the two armies marched out before daybreak on that morning each to attack the other. They met, and for many hours the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. Lyon's little army fought with conspicuous gallantry. 182 DARING EXPLOIT OF A KANSAS OFFICER. [1861. It contained the very best material. The following is a list-from memory, and therefore quite incomplete of some officers, who, winning here their first renown, afterward achieved wide and honorable reputation : .Brigadier-General. ... Brigadier-General. . Captain.. . Captain.. .Captain.. Geo. W. Deitzler.. .... Colonel. T. W. Sweeney... .Captain... Geo. L. Andrews..... .Lieutenant-Colonel... Brigadier-General. .Brigadier-General. During the battle, Captain Powell Clayton's company of the First Kansas Volunteers, becoming separated from the rest of our forces, was approached by a regiment uniformed precisely like the First Iowa. Clayton had just aligned his men with this new regiment, when he detected small strips of red cloth on the shoulders of the privates, which marked them as Rebels. With perfect coolness, he gave the order: "Right oblique, march! You are crowding too much upon this regiment." By this maneuver his company soon placed a good fifty yards between itself and the Rebel regiment, when the Adjutant of the latter rode up in front, suspicious that all was not right. Turning to Clayton, he asked: "What troops are these?" 1861.] THE DEATH OF LYON. "First Kansas," was the prompt reply. ment is that?" "Fifth Missouri, Col. Clarkson." "Southern or Union?" 183 "What regi "Southern," said the Rebel, wheeling his horse; but Clayton seized him by the collar, and threatened to shoot him if he commanded his men to attack. The Adjutant, heedless of his own danger, ordered his regiment to open fire upon the Kansas company. He was shot dead on the spot by Clayton, who told his men to run for their lives. They escaped with the loss of only four. Toward evening Lyon's horse was killed under him. Immediately afterward, his officers begged that he would retire to a less exposed spot. Scarcely raising his eyes from the enemy, he said: "It is well enough that I stand here. I am satisfied." While the line was forming, he turned to Major Sturgis, who stood near him, and remarked: "I fear that the day is lost. I think I will lead this charge." Early in the day he had received a flesh-wound in the leg, from which the blood flowed profusely. Sturgis now noticed fresh blood on the General's hat, and asked where it came from. "It is nothing, Major, nothing but a wound in the head," replied Lyon, mounting a fresh horse. Without taking the hat that was held out to him by Major Sturgis, he shouted to the soldiers: "Forward, men! I will lead you." Two minutes later he lay dead on the field, pierced by a rifle-ball through the breast, just above the heart. Our officers held a hurried consultation, and decided not only to retreat, but to abandon southwest Missouri. Strangely enough, the coincidence of the morning was |