Fremont had now modified his Proclamation; but the logic of events was stronger than President Lincoln. The negroes would throng our camp, and Fremont never permitted a single one to be returned. One slave appropriated a horse, and, guiding him only by a rope about the nose, without saddle or bridle, blanket or spur, rode from Price's camp to Fremont's head-quarters, more than eighty miles, in eighteen hours.
A brigade of regular troops, under General Sturgis, having marched from Kansas City, joined us in Springfield. They were under very rigid discipline, and all their supplies, whether procured from Rebels or Unionists, were paid for in gold. Sturgis was then very "conservative," and some of our people denounced him as disloyal. But, like hundreds of others, inexorable war educated him very rapidly. His sympathies were soon heartily on our side. He afterward, in the Army of the Potomac, won and wore bright laurels.
Freaks of the Kansas Brigade.
The Kansas volunteer brigade, under General "Jim" Lane, also joined us at Springfield. Their course contrasted sharply with that of Sturgis's men. They had a good many old scores to settle up, and they swept along the Missouri border like a hurricane. Sublimely indifferent to the President's orders, and all other orders which did not please them, they received over two thousand slaves, sending them off by installments into Kansas. When the master was loyal, they would gravely appraise the negro; give him a receipt for his slave, named ----, valued at ---- hundred dollars, "lost by the march of the Kansas Brigade," and advise him to carry the claim before Congress!
By some unexplained law, dandies, fools, and supercilious braggarts often gravitate into staff positions; but Fremont's staff was an exceedingly agreeable one. Many of its members had traveled over the globe, and, from their wide experiences, whiled away many hours before the evening camp-fires.
On the 31st of October, the correspondents, under cavalry escort, visited the Wilson Creek battle-ground, ten miles south of Springfield.
The field is broken by rocky ridges and deep ravines, and covered with oak shrubs. Picking his way among the brushwood, my horse's hoof struck with a dull, hollow sound against a human skull. Just beyond, still clad in uniform, lay a skeleton, on whose ghastliness the storms and sunshine of three months had fallen. The head was partially severed; and though the upturned face was fleshless, I could not resist the impression that it wore a look of mortal agony. It was in a little thicket, several yards from the scene of any fighting. The poor fellow was carried there, dying or dead, during the progress of the battle, and afterward overlooked. Among our lost his name was probably followed by the sad word "Missing."
"Not among the suffering wounded;
Not among the peaceful dead;
Not among the prisoners. Missing—
That was all the message said.
"Yet his mother reads it over,
Until, through her painful tears,
Fades the dear name she has called him
For these two-and-twenty years."
Many graves had been opened by wolves. Bones of horses, haversacks, shoes, blouses, gun-barrels, shot, and fragments of shell, were scattered over the field. The trees were scarred with bullets, and hundreds were felled by the artillery. A six-inch shot would cut down one of these brittle oaks a foot in diameter.