196 SIGEL, HUNTER, POPE, ASBOTH, MCKINSTRY.

[1861.

Sigel is slender, pale, wears spectacles, and looks more like a student than a soldier. He was professor in a university when the war broke out.

Hunter, at sixty, and agile as a boy, is erect and grim, with bald head and Hungarian mustache.

Pope is heavy, full-faced, brown-haired, and looks like a man of brains.

Asboth is tall, daring-eyed, elastic, a mad rider, and profoundly polite, bowing so low that his long gray hair almost sweeps the ground.

McKinstry is six feet two, sinewy-framed, deep-chested, firm-faced, wavy-haired, and black-mustached. He looks like the hero of a melodrama, and the Bohemians term him "the heavy tragedian."

WARSAW, Mo., October 22.

An officer of New York mercantile antecedents, recently appointed to a high position, reached Syracuse a few days since, under orders to report to Fremont. He would come no farther than the end of the railroad, but turned abruptly back to St. Louis. Being asked his reason, he made this reply, peculiarly ingenuous and racy for a brigadier-general and staff-officer:

"Why, I found that I should have to go on horseback !"

With two fellow-journalists, I left Syracuse four days ago. Asboth's and Sigel's divisions had preceded us. The post-commandant would not permit us to come through the distracted, guerrilla-infested country without an escort, but gave us a sergeant and four men of the regular army.

On the way we spent the supper hour near Cole Camp. Our Falstaffian landlord informed us that two brothers, Jim and Sam Cole, encamped here in early

1861.]

SIGEL'S TRANSPORTATION TRAIN.

197

days, to hunt bears, and that the creek was named in remembrance of them. Being asked with great gravity the extremely Bohemian question, "Which of them?" he relapsed into a profound study, from which he did not afterward recover.

We made the trip-forty-seven miles-in ten hours. This is a strong Secession village. Half its male inhabitants are in the Rebel army. Our officers quarter in the most comfortable residences. At first the people were greatly incensed at the "Abolition soldiery," but they now submit gracefully. One of the most malignant Rebel families involuntarily entertains a dozen German officers, who drink lager-beer industriously, smoke meerschaums unceasingly, and at night sing unintermittently.

We are quartered at the house of a lady who has a son in Price's army, and a daughter in whom education. and breeding maintain constant warfare with her antipathies toward the Union forces. Being told the other evening that one of our party was a Black Republican, she regarded him with a wondering stare, declaring that she never saw an Abolitionist before in her life, and apparently amazed that he wore the human face divine!

Sigel, as usual, is thirty miles ahead. He has more go in him than any other of our generals. Several division commanders are still waiting for transportation, but Sigel collected horse-wagons, ox-wagons, mule-wagons, familycarriages, and stage-coaches, and pressed animals until he organized a most unique transportation train three or four miles long. He crossed his division over the swift Osage River-three hundred yards wide-in twenty-four hours, upon a single ferry-boat. The Rebels justly name him "The Flying Dutchman."

The Missourians along our line of march have very extravagant ideas about the Federal army. We stopped at

198

A COUNTRYMAN'S ESTIMATE OF TROOPS.

[1861. the house of a native, where ten thousand troops had passed. He placed their number at forty thousand!

"I reckon you have, in all, about seventy thousand men, and three hundred cannon, haven't you?" he asked.

"We have a hundred and fifty thousand men, and six hundred pieces of artillery," replied a wag in the party. "Well," said the countryman, thoughtfully, "I reckon you'll clean out old Price this time !"

1861.]

A "KID-GLOVED" CORPS.

199

CHAPTER XVI.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead!-King Henry V.

GENERAL FREMONT'S Body Guard was composed of picked young men of unusual intelligence. They were all handsomely uniformed, efficiently armed, and mounted upon bay horses. They cultivated the mustache, with the rest of the face smooth-at least, not a more whimsical decree than the rigid regulation of the British army, which compelled every man to shave and wear a stock under the burning sun of the Crimea. Many denounced the Guard as a "kid-gloved," ornamental corps, designed only to swell Fremont's retinue.

Major Zagonyi, commandant of the Guard, with one hundred and fifty of his men, started with orders to reconnoiter the country in front of us. When near Springfield, they found the town held by a Rebel force of cavalry and infantry, ill organized, but tolerably armed, and numbering two thousand.

Zagonyi drew his men up in line, explained the situation, and asked whether they would attack or turn back for re-enforcements. They replied unanimously that they would attack.

They did attack. Men and horses were very weary. They had ridden fifty miles in seventeen hours; they had never been under fire before; but history hardly parallels their daring.

The Rebels formed in line of battle at the edge of a wood. To approach them, the Guard were com

200

CHARGE OF THE BODY GUARD.

[1861.

pelled to ride down a narrow lane, exposed to a terrible fire from three different directions. They went through this shower of bullets, dismounted, tore down the high zig-zag fence, led their horses over in the teeth of the enemy, remounted, formed, and, spreading out, fan-like, charged impetuously, shouting "Fremont and the Union.”

The engagement was very brief and very bloody. Though only in the proportion of one to thirteen, the Guard behaved as if weary of their lives. Men utterly reckless are masters of the situation. At first, the Confederates fought well; but they were soon panicstricken, and many dropped their guns, and ran to and fro like persons distracted.

The Guard charged through and through the broken ranks of the Rebels, chased them in all directions-into the woods, beyond the woods, down the roads, through the town and planted the old flag upon the Springfield court-house, where it had not waved since the death of Lyon.

Armed with revolvers and revolving carbines, members of the Guard had twelve shots apiece. After delivering their first fire, there was no time to reload, and (the only instance of the kind early in the war) nearly all their work was done with the saber. When they mustered again, almost every blade in the command was stained with blood.

Of their one hundred and fifty horses, one hundred and twenty were wounded. A sergeant had three horses shot under him. A private received a bullet in a blacking-box, which he carried in his pocket. They lost fifty men, sixteen of whom were killed on the spot.

"I wonder if they will call us fancy soldiers and kidgloved boys any longer?" said one, who lay wounded in the hospital when we arrived.