Part 3

After being bedeviled for a week or two, I became despondent and homesick, especially as no cadets would recognize me in any friendly manner or speak to me on any but official subjects, except to jeer and deride me.

One day, I was accosted by an old cadet (whom I afterwards learned to be George H. Crosman), the first friendly salutation I had since my entrance. Learning I was from Indiana, he said he was glad to hear it, as it was his State (which was not true) and began asking me if I knew certain persons from that State, some of whom I did. Crosman seemed glad to make my acquaintance and asked me to call on him.

In camp I was assigned to A Company and Crosman belonged to D. Hoping for some relief from extreme despondency and homesickness by making one friend among the higher class, I proceeded to his tent. I found him lying down in his underclothes smoking a meerschaum pipe.

He greeted me cheerfully, invited me to a seat and asked me if I smoked. He expressed astonishment at my reply and stated I would never graduate, that no man ever had graduated who did not smoke, and that I had better begin at once.

I did not wish to smoke and said so.

"Well, that's all right," he replied, "but examine that pipe. That is a fine pipe--a first class meerschaum pipe."

I took the pipe and began to examine it, when, placing his own pipe on the side of his body opposite the sentry walking his beat outside, he called "Number seven, do you see this plebe smoking?"

Immediately the sentry cried, "Corporal of the guard, number seven."

I said, "Mr. Crosman, you are not going to report me for smoking, are you?"

"Well," said he, "if I should, are you going to deny it? What's the use? Didn't that sentry see you with a pipe in your hand and this tent full of smoke? How could you deny it?"

I moved, my impulse being to return to my tent. "But," said he, "don't be a coward, plebe, face the music. Don't run away."

So I sat still waiting results. Shortly I saw a corporal with two men armed with muskets approaching. They marched up facing me, one on each side. Then the corporal sternly ordered me to take my place between them.

When I refused to move each member of the patrol placed an arm under mine, lifting me from my seat. They dragged me along, the corporal placing his bayonet against my back. I was placed in the prisoners' tent. This was in June and the weather was very warm. The walls of the tent were lowered and a sentinel placed over me and I was ordered to take what was then known as the Shanghai step. The tactics had just been changed from Scott's to Hardie's, Hardie's step being quicker and longer than the step formerly used. The exercise I was ordered to take was marking time by raising the feet as high as possible, bringing the knee up against the stomach.

I did this until wet with perspiration and so exhausted that I almost fell. Presently the sentinel called, "Turn out the guard, Officer of the Day," when they hustled me with other prisoners to form on the left of the guard.

The officer of the day was Cadet Lieutenant Porter, whom I had met. My hopes brightened, thinking I would be released as soon as the circumstances became known. When he came to me, he remarked, "Why, plebe, what are you confined for?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Well," said he, "if you don't know, I think I will keep you in confinement until you find out."

I remained a prisoner until late in the evening, exercised frequently, when the guard was again turned out. This time, as the officer of the day said, "Well, plebe, have you found out yet what you are confined for?" I replied, "Yes, sir."

"Well, what is it?"

"For smoking," said I.

"That's not a very serious offense. Will you promise not to let it occur again if I release you?"

"Certainly," I replied, and was released.

I resolved to punish Crosman physically, but at the January examination he was deficient and discharged. Before he left he came to see me. "Plebe," he said cheerfully, "I am going away. Here's a set of text books for your next course. If you will accept them, I will give them to you." My impulse was to refuse and force him from my room, but, on better thought, I accepted the books and thanked him.

He afterwards became a captain in the Tenth Infantry.

This was an extreme case of hazing of the kind that eventually brought it into disrepute. I believe hazing held within bounds is of benefit to the academy, in teaching the bumptious and presumptuous how little they are prepared to enter a life of absolute discipline, and how little imaginary personal, social, or political superiority has to do with their future training.

Long experience as a commanding officer has borne out my belief that the graduate (by reason of the cadet being placed upon honor in all communications with his superiors) is generally superior to other commissioned officers. But I am willing to admit that Crosman's apparent cruelties and other similar vicissitudes better qualified me to fight successfully my long battle of life.

One of the things that impressed me most during my stay at the academy was the painting above the chancel, "Peace and War" by Professor Robert Wier. Underneath it was written, "_Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people_." The painting was so beautiful and the sentiments so inspiring that it impressed me all my life.

Among the two hundred and fifty cadets was more diversity in dialect, pronunciation, and ways of thought than there had been at Charlotteville. One could soon tell, after a brief conversation, what part of the country one's companion was from. There was so little traveling from State to State that almost every State had its own dialect, as well as peculiar theories of morals, politics and government. The Kansas troubles were then at their height and there were many encounters between the extremists of the North and the extremists of the South, but, after a year or two at the academy, each became reconciled to the other's ways so that the corps, as a body, was more homogeneous than the people at large.

Cadet life then was much simpler than now. Our dining table was without covering, our tableware heavy Delft, and the diet very simple. Years afterward my classmate Samuel Cushing and I were guests in the barracks at the centennial commencement. To our astonishment the adjutant read an order: "Cadets of the first class (graduating) will turn in their napkin rings immediately after guard mount." Cushing jokingly drew his sleeve across his mouth indicative of the absence of napkins in our day.

My experience with the Kentucky rifle had made me one of the best shots in the corps. After marching off guard, it was the custom for each member to go to the target range and fire at a target, the man making the best shot being excused from his next tour of guard duty. I frequently got excused for this excellence.

In camp, I drew a beautiful musket, new, clean, undented, with a curled walnut stock, and my mechanical experience enabled me to make it the handsomest gun in the corps. At guard mount it was the adjutant's duty to select three cadets having the cleanest uniforms and rifles for the "color guard." When the corps stacked muskets at dress parade in the morning, these three color guards walked post in front of these rifles for two hours only, after which they were given freedom for the day. I frequently was detailed on this guard.

We were not allowed to go off the reservation without permission, but on one occasion I was seized with a desire to "run it." Getting a ferryman to take me across the Hudson to Cold Springs, I procured a bottle of brandy. As it was contraband, I placed it under my tent floor.

We were required to keep our brasses and other trimmings bright, but were prohibited from using oxalic acid. Nevertheless, many of the cadets used acid for cleaning brasses, keeping the bottle well hidden.

Unfortunately, I placed my brandy near my oxalic acid bottle. At my suggestion my tentmate, Andrews, drew out what he supposed was the brandy, pouring out a drink. It burned his mouth, so he spit it out, saying, "That's not brandy."

"Of course it is. Give it to me," I said, impetuously taking a big swallow. Immediately it began to burn. Lighting a candle, Andrews cried, "Mills, you have taken acid." Someone called out I was poisoned, and older cadets begged me to run to the hospital. I ran through the sentinel's post without permission or my cap to the surgeon's office. The German steward produced a ball of chalk about the size of a small orange and told me to eat! It was an unsavory meal, but I swallowed it; and the steward told me I would be all right, which I was.

The story spread through the whole corps, even to the instructing officers, and I never heard the last of it.

It was then the custom for cadets to settle private quarrels by personal combat. Cadet Wesley Merritt, of my company and class, and I, each weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, were five feet ten and a half inches in height, as near physically equal as any two men could be. A question of veracity arising between us, our friends decided we should go down by Dade's monument and settle the matter. Merritt selected his tentmate, Alfred T. Smith, and I mine, John N. Andrews, to act as seconds.

Although our hearts were not in it, and we were always the best of friends afterward, we had one of the hardest fights that took place while I was at the academy. We were finally separated by our seconds, covered with blood, and started back to camp, when, like Roderick's Clan Alpines in the Lady of the Lake, nearly a hundred cadets, secretly assembled as spectators, arose from the surrounding foliage.

General Scott was a great friend of the academy and of the cadets, and often visited us. Once when a plebe in camp, I was on post No. 1 at the guard house. As was his habit when walking out, General Scott wore all the gaudy uniform to which he was entitled. The corporal of the guard called out to me: "Be careful; General Scott is approaching."

As he arrived at the proper distance, I called out, "Turn out the guard; Commander-in-Chief of the United States forces."

General Scott halted, faced me, threw his right hand to his military chapeau with its flaming plume, raised it high in his hand, and called out in a very stern military manner: "Never mind the guard, sir."

He was the most formidable, handsome, and finest-looking man I have ever seen, and carried himself with all the pomp of his high position. Every military man admired him.

Congress had passed a law making the course at West Point five, instead of four years, which necessitated dividing the class ahead of mine in two parts, so that our class was more than twice as large as either of the two classes preceding it. It may be that there was more or less disposition to equalize the classes. However that may be, in the February examination, I was found deficient in mathematics and resigned. Although realizing that I had no just complaint, I was so greatly humiliated, I was ashamed to go home.

I therefore wrote my father that, as he had favored me above the rest of his children, I wished him to leave me out of any consideration in the distribution of his property, but to give it exclusively to my brothers and sisters, and that I would show the world I could make a living for myself.

Although not a graduate, I have always had the greatest respect for the teachings and discipline of the academy. I believe the U. S. Military Academy has turned out the best officers known to the world's history. Schaff says, in "The Spirit of old West Point," that my class was not only the largest, but the most distinguished during that period. Of this class nine became general officers, and nine were killed in battle.

EARLY DAYS IN TEXAS

I went to Texas, then a small State, _via_ the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans, thence up the Red River to Shreveport, and from there to McKinney, Colin County, on foot, arriving in April, 1857.

Here I made the acquaintance of Judge R. L. Waddell, the judge of that district, formerly a member of Congress from Kentucky. He offered to get me a school, stating that he had five children who ought to be taught, and gave me the privilege of studying law with him. As I had nothing else to do, I commenced teaching a class of sixty scholars, studying and reciting law to him meanwhile.

Judge Waddell had a plantation near the town and, in his absence on the circuit, placed me in charge of his affairs, including the management of the plantation and his thirty slaves. A strong Union man and earnestly opposed to slavery, Judge Waddell often told me that if his slaves could make a living for themselves he would freely manumit them. But they could not, and he was justified in holding them for their own sakes as long as he could. It was here that I became acquainted with the negro character, its childish simplicity and numerous admirable traits.

The judge was a remarkable man and a most worthy character, unselfish and law abiding. I have often heard him refuse cases because he could not defend clients believing them guilty. He treated me as a son, giving me much good advice. He never entered a saloon and advised me not to, which advice I practically have followed all my life.

At McKinney I met Sam Houston, a personal friend of Judge Waddell. Although then an old man and I a very young one, he took quite an interest in me, and we took many walks together in Trinity Bottom, where, one day, he cut a stick of osage orange (bois d'arc) which he fashioned into a cane and presented to me, and which I have to this day.

In teaching school at McKinney, I adopted Charlie Naylor's methods of avoiding corporal punishment, but there was a surly rowdy about eighteen years old, as large as I was, who often made trouble with the other scholars, even after I threatened to punish him if he did not change. One afternoon, a little boy ran up to me, saying: "Master, you better look out for Tom Shane; he's got a pistol, and he's going to shoot you."

Tom, as usual, was late. When I saw him coming, I placed myself just inside the door. As he entered I seized him by the collar, saying, "Tom, give me that pistol!" He was so overcome by surprise that he handed it to me without a word.

I took it to Tom's father, a blacksmith. Young Shane probably received a more severe punishment that night than I could have given him. After that, I had no more trouble.

At this time there was great excitement between North and South, caused principally by the troubles resulting from the settlement of Kansas and the many conflicts between those who were taking slaves there and those who were determined it should be a free State. The negroes became so excited the legislature passed a law making it a felony for any person to teach a negro how to read or write. The new statute also prohibited free negroes from living in the State, and set a date on which all free negroes who had failed to choose a master would be sold into slavery.

One Sunday, a large free negro blacksmith about twenty-eight or thirty years old came into Judge Waddell's office and asked me if it were true that he would have to choose a master or be sold into slavery. I told him it was. He then asked me to be his master, that he might avoid being sold to another. For many reasons I declined, though I could have sold him for a thousand dollars. As he had means, I advised him to go where he would not be sold. I never knew what became of him.

During the winter there were four or five times as many fires in adjacent counties as there had ever been before. It was generally believed that Northern abolition influence had been communicated to the negroes, and that they were trying to terrorize their masters. Consequently, a law was passed forbidding negroes to remain out at night, and authorizing anyone to arrest and take to jail more than two negroes found together.

I remained in McKinney about a year, when the Butterfield Overland Mail was chartered from St. Louis to San Francisco, an eighteen-day journey, with daily service each way. El Paso was a promising Mexican settlement, and would probably be the half-way house, and eventually a place of some importance. I therefore bid Judge Waddell good-bye and started for El Paso. Before going, however, I visited my father, going with a Mr. Ditto of Kentucky through the Cherokee Nation, where we bought a small drove of very beautiful little Indian ponies, and drove them to St. Louis and sold them. I remained a month or so with my father and, upon returning to Texas, on my father's advice, took my brother Will to McKinney, and he took up school teaching where I left off.

EL PASO EXPERIENCES

The journey to El Paso, where I arrived on the eighth of May, 1858, was through the most desolate country, with Indians on all sides, some hostile and some friendly. Coyotes and other wild animals abounded, but most interesting were the numerous buffalo east of the Pecos. There were literally millions. I have seen the plains black with them and, when moving, which they did at a kind of lope or gallop, I have felt the earth tremble under the impress of their heavy shoulders. When we encountered one of these moving herds, so impetuous in its advance no obstacle could resist it, we would turn the coach horses in the direction of its flight and the passengers would dismount and fire their guns to scare the buffalo away.

At a station, near the Pecos River, that had been robbed by the Indians, we had to remain two or three days, until we received fresh horses. The Indians had carried off all the eatables, except some corn and sugar, and we parched and ground the corn into meal with the coffee mill and boiled it with sugar to keep us alive until relief came.

Save for this one delay, we made this distressing journey without stopping night or day except for meals. If I gave up my seat at a station there was no certainty that I would get a place in the next coach, so we all stuck to our seats, although passengers sometimes became crazed for want of sleep, and one or two had dashed into the desert and been lost.

After seven days' and nights' travel, when I arrived at the bluffs overlooking the valley of the Rio Grande, I thought it was the most pleasant sight I had ever seen. When we drove into the town, which consisted of a ranch of some hundred and fifty acres in cultivation in beautiful grape, apple, apricot, pear, and peach orchards, watermelons, grain, wheat and corn, it seemed still more beautiful, especially when, under the shade of the large cottonwood trees along the acequias (canals for irrigation), we saw Mexican girls selling fruits of all kinds grown on the opposite side of the river at what was known as Paso del Norte, a city of thirteen thousand people, controlled by well-to-do and educated Spaniards.

The town on the American side was simply a ranch owned by "Uncle Billy" Smith, an illiterate Kentuckian. One Franklin Coontz asked to be made postmaster, and when the Post Office Department informed him he would first have to name the office, he named it after himself, "Franklin."

Mr. Smith was generous, but unbusiness-like. He had given or sold small parcels of land to many who built without any survey having been made. Two or three hundred people lived here, mostly Mexicans and their families, engaged in cultivating the ranch. There were three wholesale stores which sold goods brought up by mule trains from Kansas City via Santa Fe to supply the needs of Paso del Norte, Chihuahua City and other towns in Chihuahua. The Butterfield Overland Mail established a headquarters with many employees and made Franklin somewhat of a money center. The Mexican disposition to gamble and the wild and lawless character of the times brought perhaps twenty professional gamblers to Franklin.

The Texan war with Mexico for independence, in 1836, and the war between the United States and Mexico, in 1847, together with the hostile Indians on the north of the Rio Grande during the early Spanish settlement, forced most of the population and wealth to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Few towns on the American side were of any importance. The county seat of El Paso County was then San Elisario, twenty miles below Franklin, with about twelve hundred inhabitants. When I arrived in El Paso it was dangerous to go far from the village. Mesquite root gatherers were attacked, the men killed and the animals driven off within a half-mile from the village.

But on the Mexican side were large, wealthy towns, with good society and well ordered governments. After the Doniphan expedition to Chihuahua, our government had established Fort Bliss, a mile and a half below El Paso, with seven companies of infantry and mounted rifles. I made the acquaintance of the officers, finding several who had been cadets with me at the academy, among them a classmate, Will Jones, the adjutant. Through them I got an earlier standing among the people than would otherwise have been possible for me to do.

The act of annexation of Texas to the United States provided that Texas retain her public lands. The El Paso and Presidio land district included all territory west of the Pecos River (El Paso and Presidio Counties), an area larger than New Jersey.

With the recommendation of the army officers and Judge Crosby of that judicial district, I was appointed surveyor for that district by the State government. Immediately I had plenty of work on pending locations for two hundred miles below Franklin, many tracts embracing five thousand acres each, and also the reservations leased by the War Department for the posts of Quitman, Davis, Stockton, and Fort Bliss. All of them I surveyed within the next year.

The Overland Mail Company also employed me to build a station covering almost an entire block.

At my suggestion, Judge J. F. Crosby, J. S. and H. S. Gillett, W. J. Morton, and V. St. Vrain formed a company with Mr. Smith, the owner of the Ponce grant, on which Franklin was located, employing me to lay out a town, as Freemont's projected Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad, the advent of the Overland Mail and westward immigration made it necessary to enlarge the village.

I made a survey and a plan of the town. As the houses had been built at random, without a survey, on plots given by Mr. Smith, the few streets were neither parallel nor at right angles. I had difficulty in making a plan agreeable to the then owners. I made several different sketches before I produced one that all six proprietors adopted and signed. All these original sketches, together with a copy of the first map, are still preserved in the El Paso Public Library. (Cut, 56, 57.)

The work, which I was glad to get, occupied me two months. My pay was one hundred dollars and four lots--Nos. 116, 117, 134 and 137--valued at fifty dollars each.

Franklin Coontz turned out an undesirable citizen, and it was suggested that I rename the city. As this was not only the north and south pass of the Rio Grande through the Rocky Mountains but also the only feasible route from east to west crossing that river, for hundreds of miles, I suggested that El Paso would indicate the importance of the location. It was decided to so name it.

According to an act of Congress, approved June 5, 1858, a commission to establish the boundary between Texas and the Territory of New Mexico was organized. John H. Clark was appointed United States Commissioner and Major William R. Scurry, Texas Commissioner. After they established the initial point near what is now called Anthony, there was a disagreement, and the Texas Commission surveyor resigned. Major Scurry appointed me in his place.