“We are coming, Father Abraham, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE!”
This was in response to the President’s appeal for men to go to the front, and the vast levies this called for made men turn pale and maidens tremble.
The Union army was being defeated, and its ranks depleted by disease and expiration of terms of service—the enemy was victorious and defiant, and foreign powers were wavering. In England aristocracy wanted a confederacy—the Commoners wanted an undivided Union. The North responded to the appeal, mothers gave up their sons, wives their husbands, maidens their lovers, and six hundred thousand “boys in blue” marched away.
In August, 1862, I enlisted to serve Uncle Sam for “three years or during the war.” In January, 1865, I reenlisted to serve another term; but the happy termination of the conflict made it unnecessary. I do not write this boastingly, but proudly. There are periods in our lives we wish to emphasize and with me this is the period in my life.
The years from 1861 to 1865—memorable for all time, I look back to now as a dream. The echo of the first gun on Sumter startled the world. Men stood aghast and buckling on the sword and shouldering the musket they marched away. Brave men from the North met brave men from the South, and, as the clash of arms resounded throughout our once happy land, the Nations of the World with bated breath watched the destinies of this Republic.
After four years of arbitration on many sanguinary fields, we decided at Appomattox to live in harmony under one flag. The soldiers are satisfied—“the Blue and the Gray” have joined hands; but the politicians, or at least some of them, seem to be unaware that the war is over, and still drag us into the controversy.
“The Boys in Blue?” Why, that was in 1866, and this is 1896—thirty years after we had fulfilled our contract and turned over the goods; and was ever work better done?
Then we could have anything we wanted; now we are “Old Soldiers” and it is 16 to 1 against us when there is work to do. A new generation has arisen, and the men of 1861 to 1865 are out of “the swim,” unless their vote is wanted. We generally vote right. We were safe to trust in “the dark days” and we can be trusted now; but Young America is in the front rank and we must submit.
The soldier was a queer “critter” and could adapt himself to any circumstance. He could cook, wash dishes, preach, pray, fight, build bridges, build railroads, scale mountains, dig wells, dig canals, edit papers, eat three square meals a day or go without and find fault; and so with this experience of years,—the eventful years of 1861 and 1865 before me, when the door is shut and I am no longer effective and cannot very well retire—to the poor-house, have concluded to write a book. I am not so important a character as either Grant, Sherman, Sheridan or Logan; but I did my share toward making them great. I’ll never have a monument erected to my memory unless I pay for it myself; but my conscience is clear, for I served more than three years in Uncle Sam’s army and I have never regretted it and have no apologies to make. I did not go for pay, bounty or pension, although I got both the former when I did enlist and am living in the enjoyment of the latter now. I would not like to say how much my pension is, but it is not one hundred a month by “a large majority”—and so, I have concluded, upon the whole, to profit by a portion of my experience in the great “Sioux War” in Minnesota and Dakota in 1862 (for I campaigned both North and South) and write a book and thus “stand off” the wolf in my old age.