On the morning of the 10th day of October, I was called to General Blunt's tent, where he informed me he would give me a furlough to take home the effects of my brother. He also gave me an order on the quartermaster at Fort Scott for my brother's horse, that had carried the first messenger to Scott after the disaster.
As I was packing up the things I wished to take home, he handed me a package of papers that had been taken from my brother's desk. At the time, I had the hat alluded to in my hands to put in the box I was packing. He noticed the hat, and said: "Let me see that hat."
I laid it in his hands and he asked me why I wanted to take it. I said, "General, the man that struck that cruel lick is named Storey, and if he is not killed in this war the civil law will hang him when peace is restored. And that hat will be a good witness, and I may want it."
"Y-e-s," he said in a drawling way; "that's all right."
I was not yet eighteen years old, and did not really foresee the effect it would have on my mother. When she gazed on the grewsome sight of that blood-stained and gashed hat, she stood mutely looking for a moment; then placing both hands over her heart uttered a deep sigh and was staggering backwards, when I caught her in my arms and led her to a lounge in another room. She survived the ordeal and passed on in 1891 to that Beulah Land she loved so well to sing about, and her last words were, "I will soon be drinking at the fountain."
It has been said that all is fair in love and war; and that the end justifies the means. I have an abiding respect for the Confederate soldier who did his duty in the light in which he saw it at that time. Yes, I have an admiration for him. He was an American, and did he not fight on with a dogged perseverance even after the backbone of rebellion broke at Gettysburg, a victim of a hopeless and mistaken course, staying with his forlorn hope to the end, and as a rule accepting the results? Yes; all true soldiers have a profound respect for the enemy that will meet him in the open, his true colors and garb in evidence, the honest tell-tale of who and what he is. This is not only true in a military sense, but it is true in a moral and political sense. But fiends incarnate, who respect neither moral, civil, nor military law, should be hunted like cougars. But, be it said to the credit of the Confederacy, these border freebooters had no legal status. Such was the position of Quantrill and his followers. Go to Aubrey, Olathe, Shawneetown, Lawrence, Centralia, Mo., Rossville, Ark., and the hundreds of lonely ravines and hollows along the Missouri border, where death reaped a greater harvest in the period of four years from '61 to '65 by murder in guerrilla warfare than any like area since time began.
The first camp-fires of the slaveholders' rebellion were kindled on Kansas soil, five years before P. G. T. Beauregard fired the shot on Fort Sumter that was heard around the world, and saddened every home in our land. The horde of Border Ruffians that had bent every energy from 1856 and 1857 to fasten the system of human slavery in Kansas Territory having dismally failed, after leaving a trail of blood and carnage behind them, "silently folded their tents" and recrossed the border. But when actual hostilities came in 1861 on a national scale, the spirit of revenge came to the front and Kansas must suffer. Men of desperate character from Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana came out, and up to join the Missourians to help them even up with Kansans for their failure to make Kansas a Slave State.
And what a field for operations! At that time the border on both sides of the line was sparsely settled, from Kansas City to the Indian Territory and to the Arkansas line, thus affording many quiet hiding-places between depredations committed.
After being home a few days I returned to Fort Scott, to learn that my company had marched to Fort Smith, Ark. I was placed in a stragglers' camp to await the time that Colonel Tom Moonlight was to take us down the western border of Arkansas to Fort Smith. He mounted us on a fresh supply of horses that were going down to fill vacancies. There were nearly one hundred of us, artillerymen, cavalrymen and infantrymen, going to join our respective commands. Moonlight was given a free lance. The only condition was to keep on and near the left flank of a large transportation train bound for Fort Smith, Ark. It is needless to say that on the trip down the border and over the Boston Mountains several old scores were evened up. We arrived at Fort Smith in late December, and on January 1, 1864, my regiment was reunited, except H Company, and kept so until the close of the war. Its history is briefly written in marches, counter-marches, foraging expeditions, the Shreveport campaign and fighting guerrillas—all this was the order of the times.
We were mustered out of service at Little Rock, Ark., June 30th, 1865, and finally discharged, paid off, and disbanded at Lawrence, Kansas, July 20th.