Part 5 (2/2)
There was a cheer for that man when he left the camp, and anyone who had proposed shooting him would himself have been riddled.
13. THE PALMYRA BUTCHERY
As long as Pete Donan was the editor of the Lexington Caucasian, that paper once each year published an account substantially in this wise:
”So long as G.o.d gives us life and the earth is cursed with the presence of McNeil we feel it to be our solemn duty to rehea.r.s.e once every year the story of the most atrocious and horrible occurrence in the annals of barbarous warfare.”
”On Friday, the 17th day of October, 1862, a deed was enacted at the fair grounds at Palmyra, Mo., which sent a thrill of horror through the civilized world.”
”Ten brave and true and innocent men were taken from their prison, driven to the edge of the town, seated on their rough board coffins, for no crime of their own, and murdered like so many swine.”
”Murdered!”
”Butchered!!”
”By the h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned and h.e.l.l-bound, trebly d.a.m.ned old blotch upon creation's face, John McNeil, until recently by the grace of bayonets, Tom Fletcher, and the devil, sheriff of St. Louis county.”
”Murdered!”
”Shot to death!!”
”There was our poor, handsome, gallant boyhood friend Tom Sidener-”
”As pure a soul as ever winged its flight from blood-stained sod to that G.o.d who will yet to all eternity d.a.m.n the fiendish butcher, McNeil.”
”Poor Tom!”
”He was engaged to be married to a young lady in Monroe county.”
”When he learned he was to be shot, he sent for his wedding suit, which had just been made, declaring that if he couldn't be married in it; he intended to die in it.”
”Arrayed in his elegant black broad cloth, and his white silk vest, when he mounted his coa.r.s.e plank coffin, in the wagon that was to bear him to his death he looked as if he was going to be married instead of shot.”
”The very guards cried like children when they bade him goodbye.”
”Raising his cap and bowing to the weeping women who lined the streets, he was driven from their sight forever!”
”Half an hour afterward six musket b.a.l.l.s had pierced his n.o.ble heart, and his white silk vest was torn and dyed with his martyr blood!”
”There was poor old Willis Baker, his head whitened with the snows of more than seventy winters-”
”Heroic old man!”
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