Mark Twain's Civil War by Mark Twain David Rachels

Author:Mark Twain, David Rachels [Mark Twain, David Rachels]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813124742
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2007-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Absalom C. Grimes (reprinted by permission of Yale University Press).

Clemens, Bowen, and I lived in and near Hannibal, Missouri. We decided to go home and visit our families a few weeks (none of us were married) and by that time the secession disturbance would be settled and we could obtain licenses without taking the oath. We went to Hannibal and while there we three pilots visited the levee every morning when the regular Keokuk packets came up from St. Louis and landed there. On the fourth morning we were sitting on a pile of skids about two hundred yards below the landing. The steamer Hannibal City came up the river and landed about nine o’clock. To our surprise a Federal lieutenant and four privates came off the boat. After a few words with Jerry Yancey (the boat agent) they turned and walked down the levee to where we were sitting. The lieutenant bade us good morning and pulling a document out of his pocket, asked if our names were Grimes, Bowen, and Clemens? We assented. He said, “I have an order from General John B. Grey, commander of the District of St. Louis, to escort you three gentlemen to his headquarters.” We demurred, but upon his statement that he had been ordered to take us to St. Louis and if we went peacefully would treat us like gentlemen, while if we resisted he would be obliged to put us in irons and take us by force, we decided to cause him (and ourselves) no trouble. He and the privates accompanied us to our homes in Hannibal to get our clothing and bid our families farewell. We took the next boat for St. Louis, the steamer Harry Johnson. We were permitted to sleep in staterooms with guards at our doors. The boat left Hannibal at six in the afternoon and arrived at St. Louis at seven o’clock the next morning. We remained aboard until ten o’clock, when we were escorted to General Grey’s headquarters in the Oak Hall Building on the northeast corner of Fourth Street and Washington Avenue, where the Norvell-Shapleigh Hardware Company’s building now stands.

The lieutenant introduced us by name, in turn, to General Grey and handed him the commission which he had read to us in Hannibal. The general dismissed him and his men. When they had gone he turned to us and said: “Gentlemen, I understand you three men are pilots and were in Hannibal on a vacation. It seems that the pilots are nearly all Secesh, as they are hard to get hold of. I want to send a lot of boats (carrying soldiers) up to Boonville, on the Missouri River, the latter part of this week.” We told him we were not Missouri River pilots and knew only the Mississippi River. He said: “You could follow another boat up the Missouri River if she had a Missouri pilot on her, could you not?” We had to admit that we could accomplish that. “That is all that is necessary,” he rejoined.

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