A HOLD UP.
Soon after the above incident, I went one night about 9 o’clock to call for my wife, who was visiting some friends near McGoffin’s place. As I walked unarmed and with my overcoat thrown over my shoulder, I heard and saw a man walking suspiciously behind me, and determined to watch him, but as he followed a different street at a junction I dismissed him from my mind. Suddenly he sprang from the bushes about fifteen feet from the road, with a very large pistol directed at me, and the following dialogue ensued:
He—“Halt! Your money or your life.”
I—“My friend, I haven’t a damn cent.”
He—“Er, er. Hold up your hands.”
I did as requested.
He—“Ain’t you got no jewelry nor nothin’?”
I—“I told you no.”
He—“I believe you are a d—n liar.”
I—“Ain’t it bad enough to be broke without being insulted about it?”
He—“I’ve a damn notion to kill you, any how.”
I—“I am afraid you will. You don’t intend to kill me, but that pistol is pointed right at me, and you are nervous and it might go off.”
I positively saw that man move his pistol so that, had it been discharged, the bullet would have missed me by several feet. His voice quivered and I could see him tremble.
He—“Throw off that overcoat and step to one side.”
I complied.
I—“When you take the coat please take the papers from the pocket and leave them in the road.”
More conversation, and then:
He—“Pick up your coat and walk straight down the middle of the road; no bad breaks, now, or by —— I will kill you.”
And though I was never a Populist, I walked that night down the “middle of the road.”
One day I passed where two strange roughs were evidently critisizing some new comer who they thought was claiming honors which did not belong to him. I heard one of them say contemptuously: “Calls himself the Deadwood Kid! Why, he’s no more the Deadwood Kid than I am. Why, the Deadwood Kid has killed half a dozen men, an’ I don’t believe that ‘moke’ ever killed anybody!”
Early one morning I heard a saloonkeeper talking to his friend, evidently about some row he had had the day or night before. He said, “Well, no; I don’t think I was too drunk. Well, I was just about like I am now; and if he had got the best of me I wouldn’t have said a word. But my own opinion is, I would have gone through him p-r-o-p-e-r-l-y.”
The next day after the notorious ex-convict and desperado, Wesley Harden, was killed on San Antonio street by a worse man than himself, who was a constable or something, people, though not sorry at Harden’s taking off, were shocked at the manner of it, but feared to condemn the act, because no one knew who would be the next victim. I was passing along the street, and a merchant friend called to me and said, seriously and in a low tone of voice, “What do YOU think about this killing of Harden?” I placed my hand at the side of my mouth and whispered, “I’ll tell you if you say nothing about it. I have just been down to the undertakers and I saw Harden, and I think—I think he’s dead!” I believe my friend kept my secret.
Some years ago my friend, Mr. Park Pitman, now (1900) the efficient clerk of El Paso County, was a candidate for a county office on the Democratic ticket, and was the only candidate of his party defeated—possibly because he was the best man on that ticket. Soon thereafter, I was a candidate for a city office on the Republican ticket, and was the only Republican defeated (whether we voted for each other or not is nobody’s business). Soon after my defeat, I met Pitman with a party of friends, and I said to him: “Let us mingle our tears.” He replied, “I am writing a book which is to be entitled, ‘Bleeding Inwardly,’ I will compliment you with a copy.”
On my return from Washington City, in 1897, my friend, Zack White, congratulated me upon my appointment as United States Consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, and I told him I had been surprised at receiving so many congratulations and that I believed most of them sincere. He replied, “They are all sincere. It’s like this; half of the people of this town are your friends, and, like me, they are glad of your success, and the other half are glad because you are going away. It’s unanimous.”
I think a man who makes an “even break” among the people of El Paso does fairly well, and I “let it go at that.”
The North American Review, November, 1889.
THE UNION MEN OF THE SOUTH.
By W. W. Mills.
In every Southern State at the commencement of the rebellion there lived a class of men, prominent and influential in political and social life, whose patriotism, devotion to principle, wisdom and courage, trials and sufferings, have been scarcely touched upon by late writers upon the war and its causes and results. Most of them were then of mature years; all of them had been born and reared in the South and were slave-owners. Many of them were Democrats; none of them were then Republicans. Most of them were disappointed at the election of Mr. Lincoln, and feared that his administration and that of the Republican party, which they considered sectional and aggressive, would be unfriendly, if not actually hostile, to the welfare of their section, where their pride, interests, and sympathies were all centered. Many of their wives, mothers and daughters were Secessionists. Their sons, many of them, were the first to enlist in the Confederate ranks. These men doubted the policy of secession, and, with a courage and manhood which have no parallel, denounced the movement and predicted its failure and the ruin of the South. In so doing they knew that they were courting certain political ostracism and defeat, subjecting themselves to danger and perhaps to death, and to what was equally terrible to men of their pride and character—the changing of the love and confidence of their neighbors and friends, and even their kindred, into bitter hatred; and yet these men through all those dreary, doubtful years of war, some at their homes, some in the mountains, some in exile, some in prison and others on the battlefield beneath the stars and stripes, never wavered or lost hope in the success of the one cause for which they had sacrificed and dared so much—the success of the Union arms.
Their voices were never heard among the croakers; when they could not approve the policy of the government, they fought on in silence; when colored troops were enlisted, they faltered not; when the Emancipation Proclamation swept away their fortunes, they did not complain. The success of one political party or the other was no victory to them, except as it indicated the determination of the people to preserve the government by suppressing the rebellion. They did not regard the war, as many writers do, as a “war between the North and South,” or a “war between the States,” but a war between those everywhere who loved their government and those who wished to see it die; and if their hearts were not too full of sadness to harbor bitter feelings, those feelings went out toward the Northern “Copperhead” rather than toward their misguided or even their vicious neighbors. They did not consider it a rebellion of State, but a rebellion of rebels. They knew that they were sustained in their own section by thousands of Southerners as courageous and patriotic as themselves, and by hundreds of thousands who, though unable to give them active support, were praying for success.
Next to their devotion to the Union their desire for peace, good government in the South through a liberal policy by the victorious party was the aim and hope of these men. Then came reconstruction and the reorganization of political parties in the South. It must be written that the National Republican party, controlled by Northern politicians, in the exercise of its powerful political influence and the bestowal of its great patronage, in every Southern State and in almost every instance rejected the counsel of these brave and experienced men, and sought to build upon three elements only—the negro, the carpetbagger, and a few new converts from the Confederate element. This is the only blur upon the otherwise magnificent record of that party.
