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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (May 25, 1899)
JSi 10 Conservative * gave the conuunnds : "Attention , bat- tnliou ! Ready aim firol" The mov ing mass was decimated and staggered. Its heavy loss , its very density , pre vented a vigorous reply A heavy fire was poured upon thorn in their deploy ment. But soon our men began to fall thick and fast. Thou wo sought the shelter of the trees , for wo were in a heavy oak timber , pretty free from un- dorbrush. This position was held until our unsupported right and loft were being - ing turned , when wo fell back from tree to tree to avert being enveloped. Every step was stubbornly disputed. Our men were mostly hunters , who would have scorned shooting a squirrel or wild tur key but through the head , and were cool. The "Johnnies" yelled vocifer ously , "Bull Run ! " "Bull Run ! " and our men shouted back in defiance : "Why don't you some on ? " Indeed , the withering fire they received at first made them chary of pressing us , and wo could hear and see the efforts of their officers urging them on. These were among the first casualties on the field ; and , doubtlessly , the wounded and many of the killed were carried off , but the num ber of dead found here after the battle was appalling. Thus we resisted the advance of the enemy until our color-line was reached. "With all that was at stake before , now we had our camp to defend. Hero we had had our daily dress-parades and pomp of war ; now had come the circum stance. Colonel Peabody , always elec trifying , was doubly so now. Wo were not whipped , but simply outnumbered. With a look of mortified pride , but great determination in his handsome face , he conjured the men to hold their ground. Pointing to the words in golden letters on our flag , he cried out : "Lexington , men ; Lexington 1 Remember Lexing ton ! " How long wo held the enemy at bay at this line I cannot say ; it is beyond the range of human skill to estimate ac curately the flight of time in battle. Behind trees in the company streets , and simply tents that screened us from sight , wo kept up a constant fire. The enemy could not dislodge us. Ho dared not charge over the comparatively open ground between us. For the same rea son , our disorganized condition and his vastly superior numbers , wo could not charge him ; but we held him at musket range , and expected , momentar ily , support. We thought we had him permanently checked , and would soon drive him back. Since the battle was on , the entire army could have assem bled on our line had it followed the sim ple maxim of war : "In the absence of orders , march to the sound of battle. " And wo longed for field guns to start him back , and lamented they did not come. There was a precoptiblo lull in the roar of musketry at the loft , and my attention was diverted from the front by a rifle ball striking a tree and filling the right of my neck with small pieces of oak bark. Stung by the sharp pain , and enthused by seeing a dun-horse battery coming from the loft at full run , I ex claimed : "Wo will give them hell now , a battery is coming. " My brother Wil liam had hardly finished chiding me for using such language , when it whirled into battery about two hundred yards away and opened upon us with grape and canister. Horror of horrors 1 Even nhead of the deafening reports of the guns came storms of missiles screaming and shrieking through the air , ripping through tents , smashing tent-poles , knocking from the trees limbs that rained upon us , tearing up the ground , and raising a blinding dust. Crash ! crash 1 came in rapid succession the showers of iron hail. A solid shot plunged through a tree , and a shell burst in a mud bake-oveu , and covered us with a cloud of dust and beat us with clods and splinters. We couldn't help it wo had to let go. Could these be the guns whoso reports carried the first tidings of the battle to Grant , at the breakfast table at Savan nah , twelve miles away ? Just in the rear of the line of field officers' touts , a knot of us made another stand. Here Colonel Peabody's horse passed us , riderless , and stirrups flap ping in the air. Wo know our brave and noble colonel had fallen. His body was found near by after the battle , and subsequently it was sent to Springfield , Massachusetts. In the cemetery there , a monument , draped with his country's flag bearing the words , "Lexington , Shiloh , 25th Mo. Vol. Inf'y. " all cut in marble , marks his grave the grave of the hero of Shiloh , the man whoso de votion cost him his life , whose vigilance , energy and bravery saved the army from utter surprise and defeat , and the Union cause from all the far-reaching consequences. . Probably no man of our armies in our entire history rendered his country at one time more valuable services , and yet , outside the few sur vivors of his regiment , his name is hardly known , and is unhouored and unsung. ( TO BE CONTINUED. ) When THE CONSERVATIVE - SERVATIVE landed . i u Nebraska i n 1854 these plains , from the Missouri river on the east , to the foothills of the Rocky mountains on the west , were alive w'fch herds of buffalo , bauds of an telope nnd of deer. The first ter ritorial legislative assembly met in Jan uary , 1855. Laws looking to the preser vation of game were formulated and enacted immediately. But they proved impossible of enforcement. They were wholly inefficient. The homo-seekers began moving westward , towards inter ior Nebraska , killing game as they jour neyed and talking of the time when capital should como in and build mills , and railroads upon these prairies. Hardy frontiersmen feared neither sav ages nor capital. They rather longed for millionaires to come into Nebraska and , in their childlike reasoning , niado out that money , mountains of money , would bo a good thing with which to develop its sleeping capabilities. And while they wrote , and talked , and plead for capital to como in , they hardly no ticed that the buffalo , deer , elk and an telope were going out. The inefficiency of game laws for preserving wild ani mals in Nebraska while it was being set tled with a meat-eating and strenuous race of adventurers who carried rifles and shotguns on all occasions was hardly realized. And now after all game laws have failed. When the largo game is all gone and even prairie Gone. chickens are scarce it is exceedingly easy to see how per fectly the whole commonwealth could have been made a game conserve. The people's party , populist party , free silver party and their agglomeration should have been organized in Nebraska during the first year of its territorial ex istence. If the real genuine plain pee ple's friend could have then aligned the voters and the laws of Nebraska against capital , against railroads and against corporations generally we should still have buffalo , kiotes , deer , antelope and Indians in every county. If Nebraska could have been furnished with capital cursors like Clem Deaver and Bryan , corporation baiters like Poyiiter and Smytho and their followers in 1854 Nebraska prairies would be to day alive with buffalo and Indians. Capital would not have scared them out with its railroads and plutocratic fac tories. The first thing . fore a presidential campaign and then properly organized seems to be appetites. Banquets with vast stomach-stuffing and brain-com posing amounts of food are now , there fore , in order. After a man has been fertilized with viands and irrigated with champaign he is in condition to turn off a luxuriant crop of promises and bloom ing aspirations. Party politics in the United States seem merely organized and disciplined appetites for banquets and offices. NO KIGIIT IN THIS PKEMISES. In Ireland recently a quarrel had taken place at a fair , and a culprit was being sentenced for manslaughter- The doctor , however , had given evidence to show that the victim's skull was abnor mally thin. The prisoner , on being asked if he had anything to say for him self , replied : "No , yer Honor ; but I would ask was that a skull for a man to go to a fair wid ? " Argonaut.