You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently....
In that summer—of 1861—the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the
shores of Missouri. Our state was invaded by the Union forces. They took
possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. The
Governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.
I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been
spent—Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret
place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom
Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military
experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no
first lieutenant; I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen
of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we
called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one
found fault with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well.
The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of
the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric
novels and singing forlorn love ditties. He had some pathetic little
nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was
Dunlap; detested it partly because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.
So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: _d’Unlap_. That
contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new
name the same old pronunciation—emphasis on the front end of it. He then
did the bravest thing that can be imagined—a thing to make one shiver
when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and
affectations; he began to write his name so: _d’Un Lap_. And he waited
patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of
art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name
accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it by people who had
known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as
familiar as the rain and sunshine for forty years. So sure of victory at
last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by consulting
some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and originally
written d’Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into English it
would mean Peterson: _Lap_, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock,
same as the French _pierre_, that is to say Peter; _d’_ of or from;
_un_, a or one; hence, d’Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that is
to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter—Peterson. Our
militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them; so
they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way; he
named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was “no
slouch,” as the boys said.
That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweler—trim built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, educated,
but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to
him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was
simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked upon it in
the same way; not consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not
think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of
unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four
in the morning for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new
occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I
did not go into the details; as a rule, one doesn’t at twenty-four.
Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn’t; he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.
Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;
lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an
experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,
and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training,
but was allowed to come up just anyway. This life was serious enough to
him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and the
boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made
corporal.
These samples will answer—and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how; but really what was justly to be expected of
them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did....
For a time life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to
mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was
rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction from over Hyde’s
Prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general consternation.
It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The rumor was but a
rumor—nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion, we did not know
which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at all, in these
uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to maintain that
attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humor to put up
with insubordination. So he yielded the point and called a council of
war—to consist of himself and the three other officers; but the privates
made such a fuss about being left out that we had to allow them to
remain, for they were already present, and doing the most of the
talking, too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so
flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman.
He explained in a few calm words that, inasmuch as the enemy was
approaching from over Hyde’s Prairie, our course was simple; all we had
to do was not to retreat _towards_ him; any other direction would answer
our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was, and
how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided that
we should fall back on Mason’s farm.
It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the
enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and
things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at
once.
We heard a sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be
the enemy coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough
like a cow; but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and
struck out for Mason’s again, as briskly as we could scramble along in
the dark. But we got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and
wasted a deal of time finding the way again, so it was after nine
o’clock when we reached Mason’s stile at last; and then before we could
open our mouths to give the countersign several dogs came bounding over
the fence, with great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by
the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not
shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to; so
we had to look on helplessly, at what was perhaps the most mortifying
spectacle of the Civil War. There was light enough, and to spare, for
the Masons had now run out on the porch with candles in their hands. The
old man and his son came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but
Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his
combination; he was of the bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale
time-lock; but they got him loose at last with some scalding water, of
which Bowers got his share and returned thanks.
_FROM_ “THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC”