February 25, 1863.
This afternoon our
regiment was reviewed by Gen. Saxton in the presence of Gen. Hunter. The staff
and body guards of these two Generals made about a hundred horsemen. I quite
enjoyed the bugle notes as they gallopped into camp and thought how much more
exciting a cavalry regiment must be than infantry. In the course of the
battalion drill our boys were ordered to make a charge toward them and I verily
believe that if the Col. had not been in front, the order "Halt,"
would have passed unheeded till the cavalry had scattered over the field.
All this evening I
have been squeezing Kansas history out of Col. Montgomery, a history with which
he himself is so completely identified that I have really been listening to a
wonderful autobiography. Col. M. is a born pioneer. Ashtabula County, Ohio, is
his native place. Forty-nine years ago, Joshua R. Giddings and Ben Wade were
young men and Montgomery in his boyhood was accustomed to hear their early
pleadings at the bar. So you see how birth and early surroundings fitted him
for a fiercer frontier life. New England life seems puny beside the lusty life
born on the frontier. Of the Colonel's eight children two of his sons are to
hold commissions in his regiment. They are young but as “they don't know the
meaning of fear,” and hate slavery he is sure they will get on. In medicine he
has a weakness for pellets instead of pills. It is humiliating that our two
strong colonels should exhibit such weak points. So long as we remain in good
health I don't know but this foible of homoeopathy is as harmless as any of the
popular vagaries. . . .
Yesterday Mingo
Leighton died. Many weeks ago, I saw him step out of the ranks one day when
upon the double-quick and discovered that he had slight disease of the heart.
He was a noble fellow, black as midnight, who had suffered in the stocks and
under the lash of a savage master, and did not accept any offer of discharge
papers. Later he realized some of his hopes up the St. Mary's, so that he was
very quiet under his fatal congestion of the lungs. He was ill but a few hours
and was very calm when he told me on my first visit that his work was finished.
He never gave me his history, though he regarded me as his friend, but one of
his comrades confirmed my convictions of his worth. This same comrade, John
Quincy, a good old man, who for eight years, paid his master twenty dollars per
month for his time and eight dollars per month apiece for mules, and boarded
himself and animals, this man told me that Mingo was deeply religious, but said
little about it, and that he himself had been "trabblin by dis truth
sometin' like twenty-five year." I have rarely met a man whose trust in
God has seemed to me more immediate and constant.
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