Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
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Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
They were discussing this question when they gave vent to a dying groan,
closed their eyes, and then all was still.
The prisoners thought it was all over, and they didn't stir for about
ten minutes. They thought the house had blown away, and left them alive,
and they were inclined to be thankful even for that; when Charley and
Will came down and opened the refrigerator, and told them the storm
was over, but that it was the almightiest cyclone that ever passed over
Kansas.
HOW JEFF DAVIS WAS CAPTURED.
The accounts of the capture of Jeff Davis, in his wife's clothes, which
have been published ever since the war, have caused many to laugh,
and has surrounded the last days of the confederacy with a halo of
ludicrousness that has caused much hard feeling between Mr. Davis and
the American people. His friends would have been much better pleased if
he had bared his breast to the cavalryman who captured him, and been run
through with a sabre, and died with some proud last words on his lips,
such as, “Who will care for mother now,” or “The cause is lost. Send out
a search warrant to find it.”
It was a terribly ridiculous ending to a great struggle, the way we have
been in the habit of reading the story, but now we have a new light on
the subject. Mr. Davis has written a book on the war, and in it he gives
the following particulars of his capture and the bravery he displayed.
Instead of sneaking off in his wife's petticoat, after a pail of
spring water, Mr. Davis describes that escape as being almost a bloody
encounter. He says:
“I had gone perhaps fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up
and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer,
and, dropping the shawl and raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward
him. He leveled his carbine at me, but I expected if he fired he would
miss me, and my intention was, in that event, to put my hand under
his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into his saddle and
attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching, when she saw the
soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around
me. Success depended on instantaneous action, and, recognizing that the
opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp
and chilly, passed on to a fire beyond the tent.”
This puts an entirely different face on the affair, and instead of
being a childish coward, he represents himself to have been an arch
conspirator, who disguised himself as a female to get a good chance to
throw a boy off his horse and steal the horse. We can only admire the
calm determination of the man, as he stood there waiting for the boy to
shoot, so he could rush up, unarmed, put his hand under the soldier's
foot, tip him off the horse, get on himself, without receipting to the
government for the horse, and skedaddle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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