I believe every young American of spirit has a natural desire for some romantic adventure requiring unusual exertion and involving some danger. I possessed this desire and it was fully gratified. That the Confederate soldiers manifested magnificent courage and devotion I freely grant. They once preserved my life from what General Scott termed “the fury of the non-combatants;” but I am glad that my feeble efforts were put forth in behalf of a cause which the civilized world has approved and the righteousness of which no one now questions, I believe. I have met many bitter partisans in my time, but I have never heard any one attempt to defend or excuse the actions of Twiggs or Loring or Sibley or Garland or any of the officers who connived at or assisted in and about the disgraceful surrender of Major Lynde as related in these pages. Few young men ever came home from the perils of camp, prison and battlefield more victorious or better vindicated than did the writer to El Paso with the Federal forces in 1862. The very _charge_ against me then was that I had been the leader of the Union people of this frontier. While the advocates of secession had been more active and boisterous in their display of power than the friends of the Government had been, there was a strong latent Union sentiment even among the Americans, and with the Mexicans it was universal; so that a large majority approved of my course and rejoiced at my safe return. Some who had bitterly opposed and even wronged me came to make peace (and promises), and I repulsed no man, because I felt that I could afford to be generous and desired to live in peace with my neighbors. There were a few who still cherished the hope and belief that the Confederate cause would ultimately succeed, and that the El Paso Valley would be recaptured, and I would fare even worse than before; and the very few of these latter who are yet living, while they do not now, as then, denounce me as a “Union man” or as being “false to my home and fireside,” still occasionally intimate that I must have been guilty of _something_ wrong—but they do not specify what the wrong was. I organized the Republican party in El Paso County, and for a decade I controlled its politics. Yes; a political “boss,” if you will have it so, but I never purchased any votes nor juggled any man out of an election after he had won it, as was done in the case of Adolph Krakaner after he had been fairly and honestly elected Mayor of El Paso in April, 1889. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A STORY WITHOUT A MORAL.