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bands under Porter, Poindexter, Cobb, and others. The principal theatre of guerrilla operations was at this time the northeastern division of Missouri, where the almost devilish cruelties of the Yankee commander, the notorious Colonel McNeil, had lashed the people into incontrollable fury.

On the 6th of August, Porter's band was attacked at Kirksville by McNeil with a large force of cavalry and six pieces of artillery. This gallant partisan made a resistance of four hours against overwhelming numbers, and retired only after such a demonstration of valor, leaving the Yankees to claim as a victory an affair in which they had sustained a loss of more than five hundred in killed and wounded, probably double

our own.

The day after the action, a party of Yankee scouts succeeded in capturing, near Edina, Col. F. McCullough, who was attached to Porter's command, and at the time of his capture was quite alone. The next morning a train with an armed escort proceeded from Edina to Kirksville. McCullough was sent along. On arriving at Kirksville, the news of the capture of this famous partisan excited the most devilish feeling among the Yankee troops. He was confined a brief time with the prisoners. Meantime a court-martial was held, and he was sentenced to be shot that very afternoon. He received the information of his fate with perfect composure, but protested against it. Leaning against the fence, he wrote a few lines to his wife. These, with his watch, he delivered to the officer, to be given to her. Upon the way to his execution, he requested the privilege to give the command to fire, which was granted. All being ready, he said: "What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!"

The command taking the soldiers by surprise, one fired sooner than the rest. The ball entering his breast, he fell, while the other shots passed over him. Falling with one leg doubled under the body, he requested to have it straightened out. While this was being done he said: "I forgive you for this barbarous act." The squad having reloaded their pieces, another volley was fired-this time into his body, and he died.

On the 15th of August occurred the more important action of Lone Jack. Large Yankee forces were moved from Lexington, with orders to effect a junction near Lone Jack and

attack the forces under Hughes and Quantrell, supposed to be somewhere in Jackson county. The disaster which met the Yankees here was the most serious of the guerrilla campaign. Their command was defeated, with a loss of three hundred killed and wounded, two pieces of their artillery captured on the field, their routed forces turned back upon Lexington, and that place put in imminent peril. The timely reinforcement of Lexington by all the available forces of the enemy in northeastern Missouri alone saved the place from capture by the Confederates, and disconcerted their plans of relieving their comrades north of the river.

The guerrilla campaign of Missouri is made memorable by the fearful story of the "Palmyra massacre." The important incidents of this tragedy are gathered from the enemy's own publications, and it was from Yankee newspapers that the people of the South first learned the barbarous and exultant news that McNeil had executed ten Confederate prisoners because a tory and spy had been carried off a captive by our forces.

From the enemy's own accounts, it appears that the missing man, Andrew Allsman, was a legitimate prisoner of war; that on the descent of the Confederate forces upon Palmyra he was captured by them; that he belonged to the Federal cavalry, but that being too old to endure all the hardships of active duty, he was detailed as a spy, being "frequently," as one of the Yankee papers states, "called upon for information touching the loyalty of men, which he always gave to the extent of his ability."

When McNeil returned to Palmyra in October, he caused a notice to be issued that unless Allsman was returned in ten days he would shoot ten Confederate prisoners as "a meet reward for their crimes, among which was the illegal restraining of said Allsman of his liberty." The ten days elapsed, and the prisoner was not returned. The following account of what ensued, is condensed from the Palmyra Courier, a "Union" journal, without any variation from the language in which it describes the deed of the demons with whom it was in sympathy:

"The tenth day expired with last Friday. On that day ten rebel prisoners, already in custody, were selected to pay with their lives the penalty demanded. A little after 11 o'clock,

A. M., the next day, three government wagons drove to the jail. One contained four, and each of the others three rough board coffins. The condemned men were conducted from the prison and seated in the wagons, one upon each coffin. A sufficient guard of soldiers accompanied them, and the cavalcade started for the fatal grounds. The ten coffins were removed from the wagons and placed in a row, six or eight feet apart, forming a line north and south. Each coffin was placed upon the ground with its foot west and head east. Thirty soldiers of the 2d M. S. M. were drawn up in a single line, extending north and south, facing the row of coffins. The arrangements completed, the men knelt upon the grass between their coffins and the soldiers. At the conclusion of a prayer by the army chaplain, each prisoner took his seat upon the foot of his coffin, facing the muskets which in a few moments were to launch them into eternity. They were nearly all firm and undaunted. The most noted of the ten was Captain Thomas A. Sidner of Monroe county, whose capture at Shelbyville, in the disguise of a woman, we related several weeks since. He was now elegantly attired in a suit of black broadcloth, with a white vest. luxurious growth of beautiful hair rolled down upon his shoulders, which, with his fine personal appearance, could not but bring to mind the handsome but vicious Absalom. There was nothing especially worthy of note in the appearance of the others. A few moments after 1 o'clock the chaplain in attendance shook hands with the prisoners. Two of them accepted bandages for the eyes, the rest refused. A hundred spectators had gathered around the amphitheatre to witness the impressive scene. The stillness of death pervaded the place. The officer in command now stepped forward, and gave the word of command-Ready! afm! fire!' The discharges, however, were not made simultaneously-probably through want of a perfect understanding of the orders to fire. Two of the rebels fell backwards upon their coffins and died instantly. Capt. Sidner sprang forward and fell with his head towards the soldiers, his face upwards, his hands clasped upon his breast, and the left leg drawn half way up. He did not move again, but died immediately. He had requested the soldiers to aim at his heart, and they obeyed but too implicitly. The other

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seven were not killed outright; so the reserves were called in, who dispatched them with their revolvers."

The "Palmyra massacre" was destined to a long and painful remembrance by the people of the South, not only because of its tragic interest, but because it was a comment scrawled in blood on that weak and remiss policy of our government, which had so long submitted to the barbarous warfare of the enemy and hesitated at the rule of retaliation.

THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL SITUATION.

A slight survey of the military situation at this time adds something to the list of our disasters, and is necessary to understand the proportions of the crisis at which the fortunes of the South had arrived.

The capture of Galveston on the coast of Texas, on the 9th of October, was another repetition of the almost invariable story of disaster at the hands of the enemy's naval power. It was made almost without resistance. In the early part of the war, the defenceless condition of Galveston had been represented to the government, as in fact there was no ordnance available there but a lot of old cannon captured from the United States. These representations in the letters and petitions of the people of Galveston were made without effect, until at last, some time in the summer of 1861, a deputation of citizens waited upon the authorities at Richmond, begging piteously a few cannon to defend them from the enemy. The whole extent of the response of the government to this and other appeals was to send to Galveston eleven or thirteen guns, two of which were rifled; and transportation for these was only given to New Orleans, whence they had to be dragged over piney hills and throngh swamps to their destination. The consequence was, that the enemy had made an easy prize of one of our principal seaports; when, after threatening it for eighteen months, he at last found it practically defenceless.

The fall of Galveston again turned the perplexed attention of the people of the South to the enormous and rapid increase of the enemy's naval power in this war as one of its most painful subjects of interest. This arm had grown to such size as to threaten us in many respects more seriously than the ene

my's land forces. It was calculated that, with the completion of their vast number of naval structures already on the stocks, the Yankees would have 388 vessels, mounting 3,072 gunsnearly nine guns to the vessel. Of these, thirty were ironclad, mounting ninety of the heaviest guns in the world, each weighing 42,240 pounds, and throwing a solid shot, fifteen inches in diameter, weighing 480 pounds.

It is not wonderful that in view of these vast preparations in the North, the people of the South should have watched with intense interest the long lines of their sea-coast, and been on the tiptoe of expectation for the fleets of the Yankees, which were to sweep upon them in numbers and power yet unequalled by any naval demonstration of the enemy in this war. It was easy to see that the South would have to look to its foundries to set-off the naval power of the enemy. When we could match their naval armaments with our batteries on shore, we might expect to hold our sea-coast against their fleets. The authorities at Richmond were instructed that there was but one way of replying to the Yankee iron-clads on equal terms; and that was by iron-clad batteries, with powerful guns in them, and with the use of steel-pointed or wrought-iron projectiles.

In the Southwest, the strong tenure which we maintained of Vicksburg was a stumbling-block to the Yankee schemes for the conquest of Mississippi. The fate of that State was also confidently intrusted to the brave troops under the command of Gen. Pemberton, who was assisted by Van Dorn and Price. and an increasing army.

But it was to Tennessee that the minds of the intelligent were turned to look for the earliest and severest conflict of the campaign in the West. The enemy already held the western portion of the State and a part of the middle, and evidently desired to obtain possession of the eastern portion. He was reported to be coming down from Kentucky for the purpose, in heavy columns, under Gen. Rosecrans, by way of Nashville; and there was reason to suppose that he would endeavor to make a flank movement on Knoxville, and, at the same time, capture Chattanooga, as the key of North Alabama and Georgia.

In Virginia a lull had followed the famous summer campaign,

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