About three days after the council, we commenced our return march to Fort Randall, taking with us the Indian prisoners, who marched in rear of the column with the camp guard. We crossed the Missouri on the ice and marched up on the east bank, where the land was more level and the distance somewhat shorter owing to the curvature of the river towards the west. We crossed the Vermillion River, almost without noticing it, where it passed through a piece of prairie. The snow being so deep that the banks were scarcely distinguishable. We accomplished the distance in three days' marching, and were fortunate not to encounter a snow storm.
About noon on the last day of the march, I succumbed to the severe fatigue of marching through the deep snow for the first time during my service. I was exhausted and unable to go further. I was put into one of the sleighs, hauled by six mules, into which some other worn out and half frozen soldiers had preceded me. We arrived at the fort after dark, where I discovered that some of my toes on both feet were badly frozen. It was about three weeks before I was able to do duty again. A number of the soldiers had been frost-bitten, but none seriously.
After a while Big Drum, accompanied by some Indians of his tribe, came to the fort, and remained for some time. He had several interviews with the colonel in command, which finally resulted in the four Indian prisoners being set free.
No further trouble occurred during the remainder of the winter. I began to count the days that remained before the expiration of my service on March 31, 1859. When the day arrived I received my discharge from the service, but remained with my company as their guest until I could get transportation to the States. A soldier of my company whose term of service had expired about the same time as mine, had built himself a staunch boat with two paddle wheels to be worked by hand power. He proposed to descend the Missouri in this boat to St. Louis, and invited me to make the journey with him. However, I preferred to wait for a steamboat. He started on his trip alone about the middle of April, but we never heard how he got along.
The ice in the Missouri broke up about a week earlier than usual, and the latter part of April I began to make frequent ascents of some of the highest hills about Fort Randall. From their summits I could look for many miles down the river and watch for a steamboat, for I was impatient to return to civilization. Finally the boat arrived on the evening of the first day of May, somewhat sooner than we had expected her. On this boat came Major James Longstreet, who was a paymaster in the United States Army and destined to become a Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army, and a conspicuous figure all through the war of the Rebellion.
Major Longstreet, with the assistance of his clerk, J. T. Bradley, paid off the troops at the fort next morning. I received all my due pay, and my retained pay of two dollars per month. The retained pay was the amount held back by the Government from each soldier since the pay had been raised in 1854, to be given to him at the expiration of his service. I also received more than fifty dollars, which I had saved on my clothing allowance and mileage to New York City, the place of my enlistment. All this amounted to over three hundred dollars—quite a sum of money for a boy not eighteen years old. It made me feel wealthy. From the pay of every soldier throughout his service there was a monthly deduction of twelve and a half cents, which went towards the maintenance of the Soldiers' Home at Washington, D.C., an institution of great benefit to old and indigent soldiers.
I engaged cabin passage on the steamer to St. Louis, as did a few other discharged soldiers, among them Sergeant John Brown of my company, whom I had first met as cockswain of the Governor's Island barge. Sergeant Brown had re-enlisted, and was going on a furlough. Later on he was made an Ordnance Sergeant. A few other discharged and furloughed soldiers took deck passage. I had sold or given away my clothing and bedding, and bought a suit of citizens' clothing at the sutler's store—regular wild western store clothes. I took with me a collection of Indian pipes, moccasins, bows and arrows, etc., and about three days after the arrival of the steamboat, I bade farewell to my comrades and to the officers of my company, receiving some good advice from Captain Gardner.
Many of my comrades advised me to remain in the west, and grow up with the country; and I came near doing so, but a strong desire to go to New York and see my mother overcame all other considerations. I was still very young, hopeful and ambitious to succeed in civil life, and I was strong and healthy in spite of the hardship and sufferings I had endured in my tender years.
I little thought at that time that in a year I should re-enlist and serve in the same company throughout the Civil War, in the Army of the Potomac. Neither did I think that I was too young and inexperienced at that time for success in civil life, or that it would require another term of service of harder experience to mature and prepare me for a permanent career outside of the army.
There were a few furloughed officers on the steamboat, among them Brevet Major Henry W. Wessells of my regiment, an estimable officer who was taking his eldest son, H. W. Wessells, Jr., whom I knew very well, to place in a school at Danbury, Connecticut. Young Wessells became a Second Lieutenant in the Army in 1865, while his father was retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General in 1871.