Lexington weekly intelligencer. (Lexington, Mo.) 1871-1887, 1885-06-06
sHELBY'S BRIGADE.
Maj. Edwards, in St. 10. Gazette. I

A movement is OH foot, beginning in
Lafayette county, to effect an organi-
zatlOn among the survivors of this IA.
nous confederate cavalry command
and perpetuate it in the two holy
names OF comradeship and charity.
1t IS well. The organization cannot
be large. Composed at the beginning
of only four regiments and battery.
how the attrition of four long years OF
desperate fighting eat into its iron
ranks here and there, but ALWAYS eat.
ing and eating! All! so many, SO
many had fresh, beardless faces in
those earlier days, when they rode
away to their first battle singing
And afterward? All! so many. so
many, pallid faces though they were,
seemed to be lit up, even in death, as
though each hand had been touched bv
a sunbeam. Could it have been the
touch of an angels wing? Who
knOwsP In this world there are
touching illusions that perhaps i'm the
other are sublime realities. Following
the angel call, who knows again but
what each dead soldier went to where
the snowy blossoms never wither on
the everlasting hills, and the autumn
never braids its scarletfringing through
the green of eternal simmer?
Shelby's brigade was all iron. There
had been as good brigades in either
army during the great civil war, plen-
ty OF them, but none better. TO make
one better would have been an impos-
sibllity. Shelby fashioned it after
model of his own, this eagle of the
foray, who changed his down for his
feathers at single bound. "Boys,'
he said thousand times, s'there is war
IN the land. People are going to get
killed-many people. There will be
waste, and pillage, and devilish deeds
done everywhere. You are here to
fight. Mark you, l said fight. No
foolishness. No dress parades. No
struggling. No lodging. will not
order you to go where l will not lead
you; but when we have to move for
ward, either on foot or on horseback, |
expect you to charge the devil"
Then his discipline was as inexora-
BILE as death. Three things he never
forgave: cowardice in battle; an in
suit to woman; the mistreatment of a
prisoner. He lived with his men:
slept as they slept; Jared as they Jared.
If thelhaversack was empty, very well,
so only the cartridge box was full. He
took boys and made them veterans i'm
month. He had twenty captains who
were not twenty years old, and the
captain to the regiment is what the
foundation is to the house. When that
stands everything stands. Another
thing helped to make him the idol of
his brigade-he never abandoned his
wounded. Hence, on his raids. he
could go farther, fight harder, do more
damage, and secure more results than
almost any other calvaryman the war
produced. His men knew that no
matter how desperately any of them
were wounded, while life lasted they
would not be given up, or left any
where to the mercy of a pursuing
column.
Every soldier on earth who goes
much into battle is necessarily fatal
ist. Fatalism, however, does not
always mean superstition. Shelby
had belief, which was the same as
superstition with him, that as long as
he rode sorrel horse into battle he
would never be killed. When shot at
Helena he was on white horse. When
shot at Westport he was riding yray.
When shot at Newtonia he was on an
other white horse-a splendid stallion.
And when shot at Marshall he was rid |
ing bay. Neither of these horses was
touched, but OF the seventeen horses
killed under him first and last during
Inc war, every single one was sOrreI. |
The horse was taken; the rider spared. |
Inc mans superstition became by
and by to be peculiar reality.
These retrospects, or rather this gos-
slping, is intended more to show the |
nature of the soldier who fashioned
the brigade, the surviving members of
which propose to perfect an organiza-
ten, than to give even the faintest
glimpse of its history.
Organize by all means. The most
of you who are living are prosperous.
Some of you are rich. Perhaps a half.
dozen or so of you are very rich, but
your manned and helpless, those who
are left of them, are still with YOU.
One, lieutenant living in LAFAYETTE
had both eyes shot out. An
other, north of the river, had both arms
shot off. Another lost both hands. You
once had list of sixteen needing char
lty, who had each but leg. Some,
racked with rheumatism or neuraluia
from desperate wounds, are physically
unable to work. A few are suffering
from incurable diseases brought on by
rigorous exposure in a most rigorous
service.
The most of you who survive, how
ever, are prosI erous. You have land,
.attle, money in bank, money aC
interest, and you have been blessed
with stalwart sons and dutiful dau"h-
ers.
lie who writes these lines knows all
his, because he has been at your homes.
seen how good the God of battles has
leen to you, eaten of your salt and
fingered at your firesides. Therefore,
organize i'll the name of charity and
,omradeship. and be ready, when the
!ine comes, to give literally of your
substance to those who were as brave
Is you, who went as far as any of YOU
'Ver did, and who have been unfortu-
late not because they were not gener-
'us, truthful, chivalrous and devoted;
'ut because fate willed that they should
,e unfortunate.
And when Shelby comes to marshal .
'ou, and go up and down your ranks. ,
worm now, and old, and curiously
Irrayed, what then? All. Shelby
would not be Shelby if all the past did
lot come back to him i'm one swift re-
no linz,