Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout

aptures Tom-Gettysburg-Gen. Robert E. Lee Gives Tom His

force under General Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this time there had been no sugge

id was to lead. People about their starting-point thought Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a "salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines. He expected to g

South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies wer

upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken came to a s

ck just ahead," shouted t

terror to tell, but nobody really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find no one who wo

ron. Occasionally a hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown

ted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind, but he was still in an Eden without an Ada

ted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared a

efore she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from destructi

izened," one tr

tating between hunger and fear, Tom

This met instant approval and Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when the office

pling," he said.

ected no foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one

at uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're t

l brow, dazzling white teeth-altogether a vivid man. His mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the

ures of the Civil W

UKE SAMPL

of his captors and then saluted

g, sir, second-lie

s. If you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I

r rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest soldiers he had ever seen. And so

brigade had been cut off from crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville, Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, he surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant band. Our go

cap was plucked from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who meant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finally turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army, commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had nothing to wear except an old Confederate

he Confederacy had begun to dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from the great of

had let Lee escape after Gettysburg. He did not at

g arms. "We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were

t fighter, one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur

ape?" Lincoln ea

nobody st

ful proof of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand and

nd was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finall

. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in 1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858, directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee, his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave them passes thro

ing

derwood & Under

general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself a great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the Southern side of Mason and Dix

ed over the long lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions of the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty br

d them; those who had not waved their arms; and every throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsem

T E. LEE O

heeks and a mist crept into his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the Union prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them, he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks Lee led. Many an old

ee, as he checked Trav

g, sir," answ

r ra

lieutena

ere you

ir, by Gene

st answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col. Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who cau

u-a boy

wer, but Rose and a half-do

but hungry

have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent. He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed, he had refused to l

t, I'se dun got real

gentle smile as he turned to the prisone

e feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings were

ssonal cussin', sah, but y

cted. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners were ordered to fall

ard,

ison. Its doors closed behind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough to bear. This new kind of

at Abraham Lincoln made his

The morning before a special train left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried President Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two private secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, Wayne MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to Italy, and

nd calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a most d

he time; you can fool all the people part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of

a package of books in the opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out some words and ad

is peroration ended a thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting sharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silver tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice to rea

ve. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fough

One long stir of emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of wh

e officer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking: "The speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath-there was not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud th

was not for the mome