These same miscreants, however, would call at any house they pleased, and, by threats, compel even women, in the absence of their husbands, to cook the last morsel of food in the house, scraped together by poor feeble women to keep their children from starving to death.
Did I ever do that? No, never! Did I ever punish a man for feeding a Federal? Did I ever shoot a man for not reporting to me the fact of having seen a Federal pass along the road? If that was really my mode of proceeding, I would deserve the stigma cast upon my name.
My enemies say that I am a “Bushwhacker.” Very well, what is a “Bushwhacker?” He is a man who shoots his enemies. What is a regular army but a conglomerate mass of Bushwhackers? But we frequently conceal ourselves in the woods, and take every advantage! So do the regular armies. But a Bushwhacker will slip up and shoot a man in the night! Certainly, and a regular army will slip up and shoot a thousand.
But a Bushwhacker lives by plundering his enemies! So did Sherman in Georgia, and a host of others, with this difference: That I never charged my government with a single ration, while they did so at all times. Besides, I never made war upon women and children, neither did I ever burn a house; while the great marching, house-burning, no battle hero, turned his attention to nothing else.
In fact, the “Independent Bushwhacking Department” is an essential aid in warfare, particularly in a war like ours proved to be. There are a class of cowardly sneaks, a gang of petty oppressors—like the Big river mob—who can be reached in no other way. A large regular army might pass through where they were a dozen times without ever finding one of them.
As I stated before, barbarities were committed by a certain band of Federals, that warranted our interference.
Capt. Bolin, myself and nine other men mounted our horses and started on another trip, about the first day of December, 1862.
We crossed the St. Francis, and traveled several nights, until we reached West Prairie, in Scott county, Missouri, where we came upon a squad of Federals, thirty in number, like an old-fashioned earthquake.
Imagining themselves perfectly safe, they had placed out no pickets; so we ran suddenly on them, and before they had time to do any fighting they were so badly demoralized they knew not how to fight.
We killed four, wounded several more, and charged on through their camp, as was our custom; in half an hour we returned to renew the attack, but found nobody to fight.