Book Description

Excerpt from Campaigns of General Custer in the North-West, and the Final Surrender of Sitting Bull The object of this first venture into authorship on the part of one who, until recently, engaged in the engrossing duties of active business life - has had but little leisure for literary pursuits - will be readily apparent to the reader on a perusal of its pages. It purports to be a faithful portrayal of Western life, as experienced by the old settlers at the isolated posts and military stations on the extreme frontier, together with a clear representation of facts concerning the treatment of the Indians of the plains, by the Military and Interior Departments of the Government. The author, heretofore a stranger to the reading public, deems it not amiss to introduce himself to his readers by stating that, when the war of the Rebellion broke out, in 1861, he was a conductor on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, having followed that profession since he was twenty-one years of age. In 1862, just after the siege of Corinth, a request was made from the Army of the Tennessee for experienced men and officers to take immediate charge of the immense transportation. The writer proceeded to Corinth, Miss., and was assigned to duty at Jackson, Tenn., the lamented Major-General James B. McPherson being his immediate superior officer up to the siege of Vicksburg, when, in 1863, just before the surrender of that almost impregnable city, he was captured by the regular Confederate forces, under E. Kirby Smith, whose headquarters were at Shreveport, La. It was soon noised about his quarters that the prisoner had taken a prominent part in railroad management, and the transportation connected with the army under Grant, McPherson and Sherman, and it was decided to banish him so far out of the way that he would not be able to render any further service to the Union cause during the war. His sentence was banishment into Old Mexico, not to return during the war, under penalty of death. The sentence, however, was not read to the writer until he, with his guard, had reached the banks of the Rio Grande, at old Fort Duncan, opposite Predas Nadres, in Old Mexico. He was then thrown across the river among the Greasers, and found himself the only man in that whole section of country who could speak the American language. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.