ness to shoulder a musket, if necessary, in defence of the Union. This getting to the ears of the rebels, he was compelled, like many others, to leave home, and hide in the woods and caves to avoid being murdered. After being a fugitive from home several months, he learned that the Union troops had taken possession of Albany, and thought that he would venture to return home to see his family. Upon his arrival, one of his rebel neighbors, Durham Graham, notified Champ and his gang of Mr. Tabor's return. Mustering up courage. they started immediately upon their bloody mission, Graham accompanying them.

Like a pack of thieves, they quietly stole up to his house, and rushing upon the old man, took him prisoner. His wife begged and pleaded with them not to kill her husband, but, if they were determined to kill him, she begged them to kill him at home, and not take him away and do it. The lying fiends assured her that they did not intend to kill him. They ordered the old man to get up behind Graham, the villain who had betrayed him. (This Graham had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States Government.) All being ready, they started down the lane leading from his house to the main road. They had not proceeded far, when Mr. Tabor was pushed violently from the horse. This was the signal for them to commence their bloody work. Champ and his gang, as soon as the old man's feet struck the ground, fired at him, until he fell pierced with bullets. The old man still surviving, Champ jumped from his 'horse, and drawing his knife, cut him until he was satisfied that life was entirely extinct.

Mounting his horse, he rode off with an air of triumph, leaving the body in the road, to be buried by his distressed family.

Mr. Tabor had four sons in the Union army, and that was the cause, with his being a Union man, the fiends had for murdering him.*

FIRING ON DROWNING MEN.

DURING the spirited engagement between the gunboats Mound City, St. Louis, Lexington, and Conestoga, and the rebel batteries, at St. Charles, on the White river, a shot from one of the batteries penetrated the port casement of the Mound City, a little above and forward of the gunport, killing three men in its flight, and exploding her steam-drum. As a consequence, many of the crew leaped overboard, for whose rescue boats were immediately sent. But the rebels, instead of compassionating, and seeking to deliver, actually fired upon these scalded and drowning men, and those sent to their rescue, wounding many and killing others.

Says Rear-Admiral C. H. Davis, then commanding the Western Flotilla, in his report of June 19th, 1862, to the Hon. Secretary of the Navy:

"The victory at St. Charles, which has probably given us command of White river, and secured our connection with General Curtis, would be unalloyed with regret but for the fatal accident to the steam-drum and heater of the Mound City.

"Of the crew, consisting of one hundred and seventyfive, officers and men, eighty-two have already died, fortythree were killed in the water or drowned, and twentyfive are severely wounded.

* Dr. J. D. Hale, of Tennessee.

"After the explosion took place the wounded men were shot by the enemy, while in the water, and the boats of the Conestoga, Lexington, and St. Louis, which which went to the assistance of the scalded and drowning men of the Mound City, were fired into both with great guns and muskets, and were disabled, and one of them forced on shore to prevent sinking.

"The department and the country will contrast these barbarities of a savage enemy with the humane efforts made by our own people to rescue the wounded and disabled, under similar circumstances, in the engagement of the 6th instant."

In his report of June 18th he says: "Many must have been killed by the enemy while they were struggling in the water. I was close to the spot, and distinctly saw and remarked on the cowardly act, at the moment they were perpetrating it."

MASSACRE OF AMERICANS AND GERMANS IN TEXAS.

In the latter part of 1862, a party of rebel murderers, commanded by that prince of fiends, Captain J. M. Duff, visited the counties of Keer, Gillespie, and Kendall, in Texas, having been ordered there by the rebel government to crush the Union sentiment that was known to exist there. As soon as he arrived with his command, which consisted of five hundred of the worst desperadoes. that ever polluted the soil of Texas, he issued an order to confiscate all the property of every Union man in the above-named counties, who refused to take an oath to support the Confederate Government within ten days. He also ordered his men to take no Union man prisoner

who was found away from his home, but shoot him down on the spot. A few days after the above order was issued, some twelve or sixteen Unionists were hung. They begged for a trial, but he refused to hear their defence; so they had to die without it.

In a creek near the town of Fredericksburg, some Unionists found the bodies of four men who had been drowned, each one having a large stone tied to his neck. It was believed that these men were drowned by order of Duff. After committing enough murders to satisfy his savage propensities, he started to break up a settlement of Americans and Germans, near Grand Cape, on Johnson's Creek, in the same State, which was known to the Confederate authorities to be strictly loyal. The settlers being informed that Duff was coming, gathered together a small force to stop his progress, and protect their families from such a vile scoundrel. For a while the settlers held them in check, but they were soon overpowered and forced to fly to the mountains for protection. After having arrested all the men he could find, Duff started away with his command, pretending to go to Fredericksburg, but soon returned, expecting to find that the Unionists had come out of their hidingplaces in the mountains and returned home. In this he was mistaken, for they were used to such tricks, and stayed away from the settlement. Duff finding this to be the case, commenced an indiscriminate plunder of every farm, running off the stock, destroying crops, and the like. He also burned a great many of the Unionists' houses, and arresting the families, sent them away as prisoners. The refugees learning this, concluded to fly -to Mexico, as they knew it was the determination of Duff to hunt them up and murder them. As the fugitives were making their escape, they were joined by a great

many others who were on the same errand, until their numbers were swollen to seventy. In consequence of the bad roads, their progress was slow, and before they reached the Rio Grande, they were overtaken by a party of two hundred rebel fiends, who were sent after them. The refugees made a desperate resistance, but the rebels were soon reinforced, and all excepting twelve were killed or captured. They who were captured were shot or murdered in some other way. Of the twelve who made their escape, only three ever reached Mexico. The other nine, covered with wounds, wandered about until they were captured, when they were immediately shot or hung.

When Dr. Adolph Deval, the celebrated German traveller, heard of the above affair, he stated as follows:

"I know personally the most of these unfortunate victims who have been murdered so mercilessly, not because they rebelled against the Government, but because they would not act against the Union, and would rather fly to Mexico. These murdered Union men were some of the greatest benefactors of the State. They had done the hardest pioneer work in it; cleared it from the wild beasts and Indians; they had saved it to civilization through more than one period of pestilence and famine, and had secured their present persecutors against the incursions of the Indians, and had done the best service as volunteers in the Mexican war, and the wars on the frontier. They placed the arts and sciences in Texas as well as they could be found anywhere among the American Germans. They furnished proof that they could cultivate sugar and cotton without the least damage to health, and increase the riches of the country many " millions of dollars, and the foregoing sufferings are their reward."*

* Colonel William McNair, of California.