The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1893-04-29

10 move the troops there, everything de-
pended upon getting word TO Burnside,
The telegraph manager In Louisville re-
ceiyed the word at midnight, and wiring it
In cipher to the four Union offices nearest
Knoxville ordered the men In charge to
secrete the messages on their persons and
make their way by hook and crook through
the hostile lines to the beleaguered town.
Some of them got through, and Burnside
held out until succor was at hand.
Stephen l.. Robinson, an operator and
cipherer attached TO General A. j. Smiths
raiding expedition into Mississippi In 1884,
had disastrous adventure while carrying
his dispatches across country on horseback.
Smith sent his cavalry under Grierson ON
ahead to clear the road of Forrest cavalry
and after giving him a start ordered Rob-
inson to overtake him with some important
dispatches The operator had two orderlies
for escort. When the party was well out Of
the army lines, it fell into a guerrilla am
bush, and Robinson received the full con-
tents of a double barreled gun loaded with
slugs and buckshot. Seven of the ugly
missiles lodged in his person, disabling his
right leg, hip, arm and shoulder. He was
stripped of his instruments and dispatches
and set adrift In the woods, where his or
derlies and some of the cavalry found him.
Operators were grit to the backbone when
It came to sticking out the dangers involved
in the calling. While Banks army was
evacuating Winchester in 1862, pursued by
Stonewall Jackson's soldiers, the operator,
Frank Drummond, sat at the key long after
the troops had gone.
The Confederate "yell" was sounding
nearer and nearer, like the baying Of
hounds, and from all quarters came the
rattle Of musketry. Drummond had Sc
creted all his dispatches on his person and
was detaching the instrument from the
board to keep it out Of the enemy's hands
when q belated orderly rushed in with
O message for the commander Of reserves
at Harper's Ferry. With one hand on the
key, calling Harper's Ferry, he burned
his dispatches with the other. No an
swer came to his call. His horse, standing
ready saddled at the door, was getting nerv-
Gus at the firing, and he dropped the key
to tie him. Going back, he called Harper's
Ferry again, and getting no reply seized
his instrument and dashed it to pieces on a
stone outside. The Confederates were fir
ing down the street after some retreating
soldiers, and Drummond ran the gantlet
of bullets only to fail into the hands OF
Ashby's Confederate cavalry. A term in
Libby was his reward for sticking to his
post.
From the Confederate side comes story
scarcely paralleled for devotion to duty,
though the idea was a mistaken one. When
the Confederate army abandoned Little
Rock in 1863, one of the military operators,
David o. Dodd, staid back and lived some
time In the Union lines He was lad of
IL. Shortly after the town was Unionized
he left there, ostensibly to go to Mississip-
pi, but returned in few days and fingered
a short time in his old haunts. A second
time nc passed out of the picket lines unre-
strained until he reached the outposts,
where the guards searching him discovered
some curious pencil marks in memoran-
dunn book carried openly in his pocket.
He was arrested, and at headquarters the
marks were shown to be telegraphic dots
and dashes that gave a full description of
the Union Notifications and the distribu-