On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

He commanded the Army of West Virginia, and later on was assigned to the command of cavalry under Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan. His services during the war were of the most gallant and important nature, not at all inferior to his campaigns against the western tribes, but it was of the latter only that this treatise was intended to speak and to these it has been restricted.

The funeral services were held at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the remains had lain in state. The Rev. Dr. MacPherson conducted the services, assisted by Doctors Clinton Locke, Fallows, Thomas, and Swing. The honorary pall-bearers were Colonel James F. Wade, Fifth Cavalry, Colonel Thaddeus H. Stanton, Pay Department, John Collins, Omaha, General W. Sooy Smith, Potter Palmer, ex-President R. B. Hayes, Marshall Field, W. C. De Grannis, Wirt Dexter, Colonel J. B. Sexton, Judge R. S. Tuthill, Mayor D. C. Cregier, John B. Drake, General M. R. Morgan, General Robert Williams, P. E. Studebaker, J. Frank Lawrence, George Dunlap, Judge W. Q. Gresham, John B. Carson, General W. E. Strong, John M. Clark, W. Penn Nixon, H. J. MacFarland, and C. D. Roys. The casket was escorted to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot by a brigade of the Illinois National Guard, commanded by Brigadier-General Fitzsimmons and by the members of the Illinois Club in a body.

The interment, which took place at Oakland, Maryland, March 24, 1891, was at first intended to be strictly private, but thousands of people had gathered from the surrounding country, and each train added to the throng which blocked the streets and lanes of the little town.

Among those who stood about the bereaved wife, who had so devotedly followed the fortunes of her illustrious husband, were her sister, Mrs. Reed, Colonel Corbin, Colonel Heyl, Colonel Stanton, Major Randall, Major Roberts, Lieutenant Kennon, Mr. John S. Collins, Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Hancock, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, Andrew Peisen, who had been the General’s faithful servant for a quarter of a century, and Dr. E. H. Bartlett, who had been present at the wedding of General and Mrs. Crook.

One of the General’s brothers—Walter Crook, of Dayton, Ohio—came on with the funeral train from Chicago, but another brother was unable to leave Chicago on account of a sudden fit of illness.

Three of the soldiers of the Confederacy who had formed part of the detachment—of which Mrs. Crook’s own brother, James Daily, was another—that had captured General Crook during the closing years of the Civil War and sent him down to Libby prison, requested permission to attend the funeral services as a mark of respect for their late foe. While the Rev. Dr. Moffatt was reciting prayer, two of them whispered their names, May and Johnson, but the third I could not learn at the moment. I have since heard it was Ira Mason.

Among those who attended from Washington were General Samuel Breck, Captain George S. Anderson, Captain Schofield, Hon. George W. Dorsey, M. C. from Nebraska, Hon. Nathan Goff, ex-Secretary of the Navy, and Hon. William McKinley, M. C. from Ohio, who during the Civil War had served as one of General Crook’s confidential staff officers, and who through life had been his earnest admirer and stanch friend.

As the earth closed over the remains of a man whom I had known and loved for many years, and of whose distinguished services I had intimate personal knowledge, the thought flitted through my mind that there lay an exemplification of the restless energy of the American people. Ohio had given him birth, the banks of the Hudson had heard his recitations as a cadet, Oregon, Washington, California, and Nevada witnessed his first feats of arms, West Virginia welcomed him as the intelligent and energetic leader of the army which bore her name, and Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, both Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah owed him a debt of gratitude for his operations against the hostile tribes which infested their borders and rendered life and property insecure.

No man could attempt to write a fair description of General Crook’s great services and his noble traits of character unless he set out to prepare a sketch of the history of the progress of civilization west of the Missouri. I have here done nothing but lay before the reader an outline, and a very meagre outline, of all he had to oppose, and all he achieved, feeling a natural distrust of my own powers, and yet knowing of no one whose association with my great chief had been so intimate during so many years as mine had been.

Crook’s modesty was so great, and his aversion to pomp and circumstance so painfully prominent a feature of his character and disposition, that much which has been here related would never be known from other sources.