25 December 2014

Why Have Women Been Overlooked?

Some 99 years ago, brilliant Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassmann wrote a letter to the Missoulian. Here is Mattie's eloquent comment on women's equality:

Why Have Women Been Overlooked?

Editor of The Missoulian:
   There is an element of humor for the discerning in the fact that those who officiated at the birth of the Geographical society were apparently ignorant touching the presence of women in our state. None of the commendatory letters read o this occasion bore their signature, and they were ignored when it came to the distribution of offices and the naming of committees. And yet it is likely that there are as many women as men within our borders who are well qualified to fill these positions.
   Wherein is Helen Clarke, who was born in Fort Benton when that town was a trading post of the American Fur company, and who is a woman of marked ability and education, less prepared than Duncan MacDonald to give the Indian name of mountain or stream.
   Taking into consideration the personnel of the gathering it may be that political acumen is the main requisite. Then why should Jeanette Rankin be overlooked—the woman who conducted such a brilliant suffrage campaign and led her host to victory last fall?
   If scientific attainments are desirable to obtain recognition surely a botanist like Mrs. Clinton H. Moore is eligible.
   There are many professional women in Montana, and of these Dr. Maria Dean is best known. Yet Dr. Dean has neither part nor lot in the Geographical society, necessarily.
   Executive ability is always a valuable asset in any organization. There are few men who possess this qualification in a greater degree than Mrs. Tylar Thompson. Did Mrs. Thompson receive a special invitation to be present at the meeting held November 29? If so, her regrets were not made public.
   Mrs. Nat Collins is one of the few, if not the only woman who has held office in the Pioneer society. Was Mrs. Collins consulted when the Geographical society was in process of formation? No letter was read from her stating that she “heartily accorded with the plan.”
   The pioneers were extolled at the meeting on Friday, but the pioneers it seems were all of the superior sex. What Montana would have been without its pioneer women can be gathered from the journals of the early fur traders. From the coming to these then western wilds of the wives, sisters and daughters of the pioneers dates the struggle towards a decent standard of living, and the advent of law and order in the community. The women of the west have contributed their full share towards the upbuilding of the states where they reside. In many of these states they have the ballot. Are they always to be a negligible quantity when offices or honors are to be bestowed? Wait a few years and observe, my friends. This is an age of progress, and the day is fast approaching when men will not have the hardihood to risk the criticisms that would follow their modest assertion, “The State—We Are It.”
Martha Edgerton Plassmann.

[The Daily Missoulian 6 November, 1915]

08 December 2014

Samuel Clemens Goes to War and Bails on the Whole Affair

Remembering Our Civil War Heritage and Heroes:
1861-1865

Samuel Clemens Goes to War and Bails on the Whole Affair
By Ken Robison

For The River Press
November 26-December 3, 2014

This is the thirty-second installment of a monthly series commemorating Union and Confederate veterans of the Civil War who came to Montana during or after the war. As a Christmas treat this month features Mark Twain who’s time in the Confederate Army proved a colossal failure. Descendants of Montana Civil War veterans are encouraged to send their stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com.


If the Confederate Army had fought, as did young Samuel Langhorne Clemens [aka Mark Twain], the Civil War would have lasted but a matter of weeks. Clements was not a disinterested soldier, in fact he was keenly interested, but unfortunately for the Confederacy, his interest was how to save his skin and escape from Confederate service. And this he did within weeks.

After growing up in Hannibal, Missouri, young Clemens worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. The outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861 brought a halt to steamboat traffic on the Mississippi. Without a job, Clemens with friends joined a Confederate volunteer militia, the Marion Rangers, intending to serve with General Sterling Price’s Missouri State Guard.

The Rangers would only drill for two weeks before Clemens quit the group. Why he joined and why he quit remain somewhat of a mystery. He defended his actions over the years by describing his confusion while enrolling and explained he was ignorant of the politics behind the war. The best insight into his thinking comes in his tantalizing fictionalized account of his wartime experiences titled “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed.” True of not, it is great fun and vintage Twain.

In Clemens own words, he explained why he didn’t do anything in the war,
   “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. These, by their very numbers, are respectable and therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a loud one, but a modest one, not a boastful one but an apologetic one. They ought not be allowed much space among better people, people who did something. I grant that, but they ought at least be allowed to state why they didn't do anything and also to explain the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light must have some sort of value.
   “Out west [in Missouri] there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the first months of the great trouble, a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way then that, and then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an example of this. I was piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 20th of December, 1860. My pilot mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen to me with any patience, my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my father had owned slaves. I said in palliation of this dark fact that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong and he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing, anyone could pretend to a good impulse, and went on decrying my Unionism and libeling my ancestry.
   “A month later the secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi and I became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his fair share of the rebel shouting but was opposed to letting me do mine. He said I came of bad stock, of a father who had been willing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was piloting a Union gunboat and shouting for the Union again and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew but he repudiated that note without hesitation because I was a rebel and the son of a man who owned slaves.
   “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 [Claiborne F.] 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 so long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. . .
   “We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary, then toward midnight we stole in couples and from various directions to the Griggith place beyond town. From that place we set out together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme southeastern corner of Marion County, on the Mississippi river. Our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away in Ralls County.
   “The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The steady drudging became like work, the play had somehow oozed out of it, the stillness of the woods and the somberness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the spirits of the boys and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word.
   “Now we approached a log farmhouse where, according to reports, there was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt, and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon the house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. We realized with a cold suddenness that here was no jest--we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision. We said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers he could go ahead and do it, but if he waited for us to follow him he would wait a long time.
   “Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us into it, but it had no effect. Our course was plain in our minds, our minds were made up. We would flank the farmhouse, go out around. And that was what we did.
   “We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region and we sat down, blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed but the rest of us were cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horse play and laughing began again. The expedition had become a holiday frolic once more.
   “Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and depression. Then about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, heel blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us, except Stevens, in a sour and raspy humor and privately down on the war. We stacked our shabby old shotguns in Colonel Ralls's barn and then went in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican war.
   “Afterward he took us to a distant meadow, and there, in the shade of a tree, we listened to an old fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder and glory, full of that adjective piling, mixed metaphor and windy declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and region and then he swore on a bible to be faithful to the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil no matter whence they may come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us considerably and we could not just make out what service we were involved in, but Colonel Ralls, the practiced politician and phrase juggler, was not similarly in doubt. He knew quite clearly he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbor, Colonel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Ray and he accompanied this act with another impressive blast.
   “Then we formed in line of battle and marched four hours to a shady and pleasant piece of woods on the border of a far reaching expanse of a flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war, our kind of war.
   “We pierced the forest about half a mile and took up a strong position with some low and rocky hills behind us, and a purling limpid creek in front. Straightaway half the command was in swimming and the other half fishing . . .
   “We occupied an old maple sugar camp whose half rotted troughs were still propped against the trees. A long corn crib served for sleeping quarters for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, were Mason's farm and house, and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers began to arrive from several different directions with mules and horses for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which, they judged, might be about three months. The animals were of all sizes all colors and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time, for we were town boys and ignorant of horsemanship.
   “The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active he could throw me off without difficulty and it did this whenever I got on. Then it would bray, stretching its neck out, laying its ears back and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the grounds it would sit down and brace back and no one could ever budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources and I did presently manage to spoil this game, for I had seen many a steamboat aground in my time and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corncrib so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle and fetched him home with the windlass.
   “I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride after some days' practice, but never well. We could not learn to like our animals. They were not choice ones and most of them had annoying peculiarities of one kind or another . . .
   “However, I will get back to where I was, our first afternoon in the sugar camp. The sugar troughs came very handy as horse troughs and we had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed my mule, but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be a dry nurse to a mule it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed that this was insubordination but I was full of uncertainties about everything military so I let the matter pass and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule, but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven year old horse gives you when you lift up his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain and asked if it were not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn't serve on anyone's staff and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try. So, of course, the matter had to be dropped, there was no other way.
   “Next, nobody would cook. It was considered a degradation so we had no dinner. We lazed the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing under trees, some smoking cob pipes and talking sweethearts and war, others playing games. By late supper time all hands were famished and to meet the difficulty, all hands turned to on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the evening meal.
   “Afterward everything was smooth for a while then trouble broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the higher office so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular army at all.
   “However, with the song singing and yarn spinning around the campfire everything presently became serene again, and by and by we raked the corn down one level in one end of the crib and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to the door so he would neigh if anyone tried to get in . . .
   “We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon, then, afternoons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles and visited the farmer's girls and had a youthful good time and got an honest dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.
   “For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war 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 not for 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 three other officers, but the privates made such a fuss about being left out we had to allow them to remain, for they were already present and doing most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so flurried that nobody even seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were approaching from over Hyde's prairie our course was simple. All we had to do was not retreat toward him, another direction would suit our purposes perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was and how wise, so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decide 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. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the night grew very black and rain began to fall, so we had a troublesome time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark and soon some person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other, and then Bowers came along with the keg of powder in his arms, while the command were all mixed together, arms and legs on the muddy slope, and so he fell, of course, with the keg and this started the whole detachment down the hill in a body and they landed in a brook at the bottom in a pile and each that was undermost was pulling the hair, scratching and biting those that were on top of him and those that were being scratched and bitten scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this brook this time and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the country along with him, and all such talk as that which was dismal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy, maybe, coming along at any moment.
   “The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and complaining continued straight along while the brigade pawed around the pasty hill side and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things; consequently we lost considerable time at this, and then 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 in among the rugged little ravines and wasted a deal of time finding the way again so it was after nine 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 a 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 helpless at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the Civil War.
   “There was light enough and to spare, for the Mason's 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 . . .
   “We now went into the house and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made himself very frank and said we were a curious breed of soldiers and guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no governor could afford the expense of the shoe leather we should cost it trying to follow us around.
   "’Marion Rangers! Good name, b'gosh,’ said he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket guard at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumor, and so on and so forth, till he made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not so half enthusiastically welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low spirited . . .
   “Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our activities were not over for the night, for about two o'clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it could find. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this time himself. He hurried us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide ourselves and our telltale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It was raining heavily.
   “We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture land which offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he black guarded the war and everybody connected with it, and gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we huddled ourselves under the streaming trees and sent the negro back home. It was a dismal and heart breaking time.
   “We were like to be drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the campaign and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that.
   “The long night wore itself out at last, and then the Negro came to us with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one and that breakfast would soon be ready. Straightaway we were light-hearted again and the world was bright and full of life, as full of hope and promise as ever; for we were young then . . .
   “The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast in Missourian abundance, and we needed it. Hot biscuits, hot wheat bread, prettily crossed in a lattice pattern on top, hot corn pone, fried chicken, bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk etc. and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal of such a breakfast, as is cooked in the South.
   “We stayed several days at Mason's . . . Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave orders that our camp should be guarded from surprise by the posting of pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in Hyde's prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight, and, just as I was expecting, he said he wouldn't do it. I tried to get others to go but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather, but the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn't go in any kind of weather. This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there was no surprise in it at the time. On the contrary, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy independence and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by Tom, Dick, and Harry, who they had known familiarly all their lives in the village or the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that this same thing was happening all over the South . . .
   “The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General Thomas A. Harris [Second Division, Missouri State Guard]. He was a townsman of ours, a first rate fellow and well liked, but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and modest-salaried operator in the telegraph office, where he had to send about one dispatch a week in ordinary times and two when there was a rush of business. Consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day on the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort in a large military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from the assembled soldiery.
   "’Oh, now what'll you take to don't, Tom Harris?’
   “It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were hopeless material for the war. And so we seemed in our ignorant state, but there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade, learned to obey like machines, became valuable soldiers, fought all through the war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night and called me an ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.
   “I did secure my picket that night, not by authority but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bower's monotonous growling at the war and the weather, then we began to nod and presently found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle, so we gave up the tedious job and went back to the camp without interruption or objection from anybody and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. Everybody was asleep, at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the daytime . . .
   “Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumors would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumors always turned out to be false, so at last we even began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn crib with the same old warning, the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said, “Let him hover.”
   “We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins--for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horseplay and schoolboy hilarity, but that cooled down and presently the fast waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon uneasy—worried and apprehensive. We had said we would stay and we were committed. We could have been persuaded to go but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it.
   “An almost noiseless movement began in the dark by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there, all there with our hearts in our throats and staring out towards the sugar-troughs where the forest footpath came through. It was late and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shapes of objects.
   “Presently a muffled sound caught our ears and we recognized the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away, a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had such little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback, and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got a hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said "Fire!" I pulled the trigger, I seemed to see a hundred flashes and a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his game.
   “Somebody said, hardly audibly, "Good, we've got him. Wait for the rest!" But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just the perfect stillness, an uncanny kind of stillness which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late night smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept out stealthily and approached the man. When we got to him, the moon revealed him distinctly. He was laying on his back with his arms abroad, his mouth was open and his chest was heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt front was splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe.
   “Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought with a new despair, "This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he."
   “In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half-hour sorrowing over him and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be and if he was a spy, and saying if they had it to do over again, they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon turned out that mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others, a division of the guilt which was a great relief to me since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at once but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.
   “The man was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying on me every night, I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business, that war was intended for men and I for a child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldier-ship while I could retain some remnant of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.
   “The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another and eating up the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary they were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it . . .
   “The last camp which we fell back on was in a hollow near the village of Florida where I was born, in Monroe County. Here we were warned one day that a Union Colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were getting ready themselves to fall back on some place or another, and we were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at any moment, so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back and didn't need any of Harris's help, we could get along perfectly without him and save time too. So, about half of our fifteen men, including myself, mounted, and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion, and stayed--stayed through the war.
   “An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his company, his staff probably, but we could not tell; none of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back, but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a whole regiment in his wake and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance, so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little bit, but it was of no use, our minds were made up. We had done our share, killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the rest and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last year; he was wearing white hair and whiskers.
   “In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent [was] General [Ulysses S.] Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, ‘Grant--Ulysses S Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.’ It seems difficult to realize there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made, but there was, I was within a few miles of the place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.
   “The thoughtful will not throw this war paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value; it is not an unfair picture of what went on in many a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence of trained leaders, when all their circumstances were new and strange and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then history has been, to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet, it learned it's trade presently and helped to fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.”

While Mark Twain’s humorous story of young Samuel Clemens’ experience in the Civil War is fictionalized, it likely hits close to the truth. For whatever the reason, Clemens left the military and never looked back. He later described the Civil War in general as: “A blot on our history, but not as great a blot as the buying and selling of Negro souls.”

In the summer of 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Orion Clemens secretary of Nevada Territory. Orion appointed Sam, his younger brother, as his secretary. Sam tried prospecting but failed to strike it rich, so he became a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. By 1863 he began signing his articles “Mark Twain,” and the rest is history.

By now, after reading Mark Twain’s musings about the war, you are surely asking, “What does this have to do with Montana?” To which I answer, “Mark Twain, the woeful Confederate soldier, barnstormed through Montana in 1895 performing his, by then famous evening lectures. Evening performances in Great Falls, Butte, Anaconda, Missoula, and Helena brought smiles to the faces and cheers to the lips of many Montanans.

Only in Great Falls did Twain falter and harshly judge his own performance to be subpar. The audience that evening in the Great Falls Opera House didn’t know any better, but Twain did. In short, he was worn out by a hard day of sightseeing around the bustling Electric City including a carriage ride to Giant Springs. This, coupled with the disruption in the theatre caused by a steady stream of late arriving noisy patrons drove Twain to distraction.

So, as a bit of Christmas cheer I share with you Mark Twain’s account of his Civil War service for General Sterling Price’s Missouri State Guard—after all he was in Montana almost as long as he was in the Confederate Army.

Ken Robison is a local historian and author of Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price’s Army and Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the Battlefield.



26 October 2014

John Mason Brown: From Adventures on the Upper Missouri to Combat in Civil War Kentucky

John Mason Brown: From Adventures on the Upper Missouri to Combat
in Civil War Kentucky
By Ken Robison

For The River Press
October 29, 2014

This is the thirty-first installment of a monthly series commemorating Union and Confederate veterans of the Civil War who came to Montana during or after the war. This month features dashing young John Mason Brown who journeyed twice to the Upper Missouri before leading Union Kentucky Cavalry forces in combat against famed Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Descendants of Montana Civil War veterans are encouraged to send their stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com.

Young John Mason Brown made two exciting trips to the Upper Missouri during 1861-1862 before becoming embroiled in the Civil War in his native Kentucky. On his first trip up the Missouri River on the steamboats Chippewa and Spread Eagle in 1861, he became friends with Andrew Dawson, Chief Factor of the Upper Missouri Outfit of Pierre Chouteau, Jr. & Company, the famed American Fur Company. Dawson, with other illustrious travelers during that two-month river trip including Charles P. Chouteau, head of company operations, and colorful Malcolm Clarke, fueled Brown’s quest for knowledge and adventure.

John Mason Brown was born in Frankfort, capital of Kentucky, on April 26, 1837, in imposing Liberty Hall, built for his grandfather, John Brown, a leading lawyer and one of Kentucky’s first two senators. John Mason Brown's father, Mason was a substantial landowner and slaveholder, holding fifty-one slaves in 1860 and wielding considerable political influence. Young John Mason graduated from Yale College in 1856, returned to Frankfort where he taught school and studied law. In April 1860, he opened a law practice in St. Louis, Missouri.
During Brown’s first trip up the Missouri on the American Fur Company’s Spread Eagle steamboat in the spring of 1861, he had long conversations with a new friend, Andrew Dawson, as well as other frontiersmen. During this trip Dawson wrote, “In St. Louis there was not a pistol to be had for love or money. Nothing is talked of but soldiering and even here on the S[teamboat] Boat the passengers have formed themselves into a Company and go through daily drill” organized by John Mason Brown. The fifteen “Spread Eagle Guards” were armed with government annuity rifles provided by Charles Chouteau—arms being taken up river for distribution under treaty obligation to the various native nations.

Throughout this trip, Brown kept a remarkable diary that contained daily entries describing the many hazards of the trip up the Missouri River, his travels throughout what later became western Montana Territory as well as geographical features of the Rocky Mountains.

Boarding the steamer Chippewa at Fort Union, the travelers soon encountered tragedy. A careless crewman ignited 200 kegs of gunpowder in the hold of the steamer, and the boat blew up. Brown and the other passengers survived but suffered a long delay until wagons and horses could be sent from Fort Benton. Brown’s diary provides excellent insight into the trip from Fort Union to Fort Benton. After arriving at Fort Benton, adventurous Brown traveled along the Mullan Military Wagon Road via the Government Blackfoot Farm at Sun River, observing the Indians, the violence, the quest for gold, and the deeply divided loyalties of white residents. Brown wrote extensively of his travels along the Mullan Road to Fort Walla Walla, and on to San Francisco and home via the California overland route.

On his second trip up the Missouri, he left St. Louis May 10, 1862 on the company steamer Spread Eagle, renewed his friendship with Dawson and Clarke, and met the legendary trader Alexander Culbertson and his Blackfoot wife Natawista. Again Brown kept a diary with daily entries describing the trip up the Missouri River from St. Joseph, Missouri to Fort Benton, his encounters with traders, miners and hunters, as well as various Indian tribes in the Northern Plains, Rocky Mountains and Alberta, then British America, and the return trip down the Missouri.

A highlight of Brown’s second trip occurred when he joined a prospecting expedition made by a party of Bentonites consisting of Matt Carroll, James M. Arnoux, Dr. Atkinson, Paul Longleine, Henry Bostwick, Edward Williamson, David Carafel, George Magnum, and John Munroe. They proceeded north of Chief Mountain in July 1862, searching for gold that they had learned about from a man named La Rue. La Rue, who had lived among the Blackfoot for several years as a self-appointed priest, had sent a package to Dawson with word that it was gold bearing sand. The sand was washed and found to contain an exceptional amount of gold. The party formed quickly at Fort Benton and prospected along every stream from the Marias River to the Willows, a point about twenty-five miles south of the Hudson Bay Company’s Fort Edmonton.

The prospectors found light gold colors along the way, but nothing to warrant working. La Rue could not be found and the frustrated prospectors concluded that he had deceived them so in September they returned to Fort Benton. His sense of adventure satisfied, John Mason Brown likely joined a party of miners returning down river to St. Louis by mackinaw boat.

Brown's return to Missouri and Kentucky and the reality of the Civil War must have presented a dilemma to the young man. The Border States were deeply polarization into Union and Confederate camps, largely over the issue of slavery. In the war, nowhere were the divisions more acute than in the Kentucky and Tennessee since slaves made up about 20 percent of the population in the former and 25 percent in the latter. Tennessee seceded while Kentucky did not. By comparison slaves in Missouri formed 10 percent of the total population. Despite the slave owning background of the Brown family, John Mason never waivered, no doubt influenced by his years at Yale College and St. Louis as well as the summers on the Upper Missouri.
Within five days of his return from the second trip to the Upper Missouri in October 1862, Brown was commissioned Major in the 10th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment. He wrote to Andrew Dawson, known to friends as “Sorrell Top,” from the Camp of 10th Kentucky Cavalry” on March 15th 1863:

My very esteemed old friend ‘Sorrell Top.’
            I have this day caused to be shipped to ‘Andy Dawson, care of P Chouteau Jr & Co St. Louis’ by Adams Express, in a sea-worthy keg, a small portion of good whiskey which I hope you will find awaiting you on your arrival from Ft Benton- And in case it arrive all right I hope that you will condescend to touch it to the good luck of your young Ky. friend, who owes so much of the pleasant life he led in the Far North West to your kindness and friendship- If [Malcolm] Clarke ever departs from his ascetic rule of cider and ale I trust he will join you in the glass-
   I wrote you, via Walla Walla, in [Frank L.] Worden’s care, immediately after reaching St. Louis- Even if that letter miscarried you heard I presume of our progress from Hotchkiss and Gerard [likely William D. Hodgkiss of Fort Union and J. J. Gerard of Fort Berthold]- Suffice it to say now that we got down safe, and in 5 days after my return to Kentucky I found myself Major of the 10th Regiment of Kentucky cavalry, busily engaged in drilling my men- This position I have held ever since but am now (I am informed by the Genl. Comdy [general commanding]) to be put in command of a regiment of my own- the immediate cause being the fact that I got my clothes badly torn in some recent fights- The Lord in his mercy Grant that the promotion may come!
   Gerard commissioned me as I passed Fort Berthold to buy a horse for him to be sent up this Spring by the Company’s boat. He directed me to write to [D. A.] Constable on the subject which I did but received no answer- I found it impossible to get the kind of horse he desired for the sum he specified and in the absence of instructions from Constable I thought it best not to invest for him.
   I feel very much annoyed to hear that Dr Atkinson and that Carpenter Neill had industriously circulated lying accounts of our trip up to Chief Mountain, to my prejudice- Not that I imagined it at all likely that you or Clarke or George Steele would ever believe that I would sell 10 or 15 pounds of meat to a man out of provisions for a dozen bullets or demean myself even towards those characters otherwise than as a gentleman should- But I had really done a good deal for Neil, fed him and lent him a horse for two days, and had supposed Atkinson to be a friend of mine- Carroll had done a great deal for both of them. Neil even to this day owes the undersigned for money paid out for him after we left Fort Union. Enough of the damned rascals- I only regret that I can’t have half an hours talk with them.
   I most sincerely hope that your health is greatly improved and that your legs are again fully up to their duty- [Dawson had been badly crippled in an earlier fall at Fort Benton.] Let me have a short letter from you, if you can find the time, directed to Frankfort Kentucky- whence it will be forwarded to me.
   Please do not fail to remember me most sincerely to Clarke, Carroll and Geo Steele—friends whom, with yourself I can never forget—and whose numerous kindnesses make Fort Benton seem a home to me- If it were possible that I could be in Frankfort, at my own home I would insist on you and Clarke spending a day or two with me if the time could possibly be squeezed out of your short allowances, but I am as I told you a cavalry officer and one day in Kentucky, the next probably in Tennessee—uncertain as to times and places- Please try and let Atkinson know my exact opinion of him which is that he is a damned double-faced lying scoundrel—by doing which you will peculiarly oblige.
                                    Most truly & sincerely yr friend
                                                Jno Mason Brown
Do me the favor to express to me at Frankfort a couple dozen buffalo tongues if any have come down—and send bill collectable on deliver of freight.”

The 10th Kentucky Cavalry had been raised by Col. Joshua Tevis, a veteran of the Mexican War, and organized at Maysville in northeastern Kentucky during the summer of 1862. During July-September Confederate generals Braxton Bragg, Kirby Smith, and Humphrey Marshall invaded Kentucky, and the 10th encounter the enemy at the battle of Perryville. After that battle on October 8th, the Confederates retreated from Kentucky, and the 10th participated in the pursuit, following Gen. Humphrey Marshall's men through the mountains, capturing prisoners, horses and arms. The 10th remained on duty in Kentucky during the principal part of its service with excursions into Tennessee and [West] Virginia.

Major John Mason Brown joined the 10th on October 27th, and assumed command of two companies forming a battalion for a two-month scouting expedition. On December 25, Maj. John Mason Brown’s battalion moved through London and Barboursville to Big Creek Gap, and engaged in numerous skirmishes along the way.

Major Brown’s battalion rejoined the regiment in central Kentucky and remained on active service through the winter and spring of 1863, operating from the borders of Virginia to Somerset. During this time Col. Charles J. Walker and LtCol. Maltby commanded the 10th.

In the spring of 1863, Confederate Cavalry returned to raid Kentucky. On March 5th, confederate Col. R. S. Cluke's 8th Kentucky Cavalry crossed the Cumberland river at Stigall's Ferry below Somerset, and made its way to Richmond, Winchester, Mount Sterling, and other points. The 10th Cavalry opposed Col. Cluke, advanced from Crab Orchard, and skirmished at Lancaster. Pushing on, it encountered Cluke's men at many points. Among them was a fight about half way from Winchester to Mount Sterling where, as reports indicate, Maj. Brown checked a fierce attack, and with the 44th Ohio coming up, the enemy fled. In this pursuit of Cluke the 10th Kentucky marched 135 miles.

At one time Col. Cluke’s force of eight hundred men at Winchester, was charged and driven out; then by feigning to go to Paris he drew the Federal forces in that direction, and returned to Mount Sterling where he fell upon a portion of the 10th under Capt. Ratcliffe, who defended his men from homes in the town. Cluke resorted to the torch, and after burning the place captured Ratcliffe and paroled him and his men. On March 28th the 10th, cooperating with the 5th Kentucky Cavalry, succeeded in driving Col. Cluke out of Kentucky and into Virginia.

On June 30, 1863, Maj. John Mason Brown assumed command of the 10th for a month. In July a portion of the 10th under Maj. Brown captured Confederate Gen. Humphrey Marshall's "artillery." A report of Col. Cluke described the action, "Gen. Marshall is in forty miles of this place moving on with sixteen hundred cavalry. He lost his artillery the other night. The guard placed over it went to sleep, and some 'Home Guards' slipped in on him, and carried off the gun, leaving the carriage and caisson."

Throughout this period the 10th Cavalry protected Eastern Kentucky, and had numerous engagements with the enemy in which it suffered loss. Among their battles were Elk Fork, Tenn., Glasdesville, Va., Mount Sterling, Triplet's Bridge, and Lancaster, Ky. It participated in the pursuit and rout of Pegram and Scott; in the course of its service it was rarely at rest, being on active duty all over Eastern Kentucky, and into East Tennessee and West Virginia. The depleted 10th was mustered out of service September 17, 1863, at Maysville.

In the fall of 1863 Brown was promoted to Colonel to recruit and assume command of the 45th Kentucky Mounted Rifles. Mustered in on October 10th, the 45th served at Mount Sterling, and covered the front from Cumberland Gap to Louisa until March 1864. At that time, Col Brown was appointed commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Division, District of Kentucky.

In May 1864, confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan rode into Kentucky through Pound Gap on his last cavalry raid into the state. Federal cavalry under Col. Brown, Col. Wickliffe Cooper, and others attacked Morgan at Cynthiana, Mount Sterling, and Augusta. At Mount Sterling, Morgan dismounted his men to burn enemy supplies and scour the countryside for horses. Morgan left his dismounted element and his maneuvering with his mounted force succeeded in confusing Union commanders. Col. Brown, commanding the 2nd Brigade, gained sufficient intelligence to convince his commander, General Burbridge, to change direction and descend on Mount Sterling to attack Morgan’s men. In this attack Col. Brown’s soldiers smashed through the outposts and into the unsuspecting Confederate camp. This attack decimated Morgan’s men, killing or capturing about 314 officers and men.

Overall, during his raid into Kentucky, Gen. Morgan lost over half of his men and finally was driven into east Tennessee, where he was killed at Greenville on September 4th. Col. Brown’s earlier command of the 10th and 45th together with his leadership in the engagements that drove notorious Col. John Hunt Morgan’s Confederate cavalry from Kentucky, earned him a reputation as an exceptional soldier. One official report stated, “There was no more gallant and efficient officer than Col. John Mason Brown . . . [who is] young, ardent, intelligent, and peculiarly acquainted with Kentucky.”

Leaving service in December 1864, Brown resumed his law practice at Frankfort. There he married Mary O. Preston, eldest daughter of confederate Brig. Gen. William Preston, and raised a family. Later moving to Louisville, he became one of the leading citizens, standing at the head of the bar and business enterprises and becoming a founder of the famed Filson Club. Upper Missouri adventurer and exceptional Civil War leader Colonel John Mason Brown practiced law until his death on January 29, 1890 and is interred in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville.

Ken Robison is a local historian and author of Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price’s Army and Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the Battlefield.

Photo:
1. Major Brown served with distinction during the Civil War.


2. Col. John Mason Brown’s grave in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Ky.