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THE
SCOUT AND RANGER:
BEING THE
PERSONAL ADVENTURES
OF
CORPORAL PIKE.
OF THE FOURTH OHIO CAVALRY.
AS A TEXAN RANGER, IN THE INDIAN WARS, DELINEATING WESTERN ADVENTURE;
AFTERWARD A SCOUT AND SPY, IN TENNESSEE, ALABAMA,
GEORGIA, AND THE CAROLINAS, UNDER GENERALS MITCHELL,
ROSECRANS, STANLEY, SHERIDAN, LYTLE,
THOMAS, CROOK, AND SHERMAN.
FULLY ILLUSTRATING THE SECRET SERVICE.
TWENTY-FIVE FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS.
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CINCINNATI & NEW YORK:
J. R. HAWLEY & CO.
1865.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
J. R. HAWLEY & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of Ohio.
DEDICATION.
TO
MY LATE COMRADES IN ARMS,
THIS BOOK
Is Respectfully Dedicated
BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
Whatever aids in illustrating the spirit of the late great struggle,
through which the nation has so successfully passed, must be of interest
to the American reader. The occurrences of the late rebellion will ever
form a study for the free citizens of the Republic, of far deeper
interest than those of any other event in the world's history; and few
will be content with the perusal of mere outlines, or of battle
descriptions, however vivid, but which are only repetitions, though of a
magnified type, of what the world has witnessed at almost every decade,
since the dawn of civilization; and hence they will search out details,
and incidents, which will lead them into the spirit of a conflict, to
which they are indebted for their national greatness, material
prosperity, and civil and religious freedom; and those incidents may be
as readily learned in connection with the career of the Private Soldier,
as with that of the Major General.
The simple but touching narratives of one who has survived the horrors
of a rebel prison; or the little hillock which covers the remains of one
of the murdered victims of rebel cruelty, are far more perfect
illustrations of the civilization of the ruling classes in the South,
and the malignity of their character, than the whole career of the
ablest of our commanders.
Thousands of incidents in the life of every soldier, were they recorded,
would be invaluable in illustrating the history of the late war; but the
mass of these will soon be forgotten, and the actors themselves fill
unknown graves. Men who, in any other era, would be singled out, and
known as heroes to a whole nation for their gallant deeds, will pass
through life as but one of millions, and must rest content with a
general tribute to the great mass.
We are now to have a national literature, as well as a national
existence. American writers of romance and the drama, will no longer
seek the antiquated regions of Europe for scenes and heroes; America has
supplied all that is necessary to the most vivid of pictures; and no
pen, even though the plot be fiction, need ever exaggerate in incidents
or descriptions. He who tells the simple truth, narrates more of the
strange and the heroic, than could be conceived by the fertility of a
Dickens, or a Dumas.
The writer of this narrative, throughout, has adhered strictly to facts,
without any attempt at embellishment. The wild chases after the
Comanches; the stern duties of war; and the hardships of prison life,
have left him little time to cultivate elegant diction, and as he has an
abiding conviction that unvarnished truth is ever more acceptable than
high wrought fiction, he is content with the simple narrative, which is
spread before the reader in the pages which follow.
THE AUTHOR.
HILLSBORO, OHIO, June 21, 1865.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
MY FIRST EFFORT AT SEEING LIFE--A TRIP TO TEXAS 19