Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1902-10-27
YANKEE RUSE THAT FOOLED AN
IRATE ARKANSAS COLONEL.
MARCH DOWN WHITE RIVER
Refusal to Swap Animals Resulted in
Forced Trade, Much to the Ad-
vantage of a Wisconsin Regiment
Captain Birds Yarn of War
Days.

served his state in two regiments dur
{ ing the war. He enlisted Aug. 6, 1861,
in the Eleventh Wisconsin, and was
made QUartermaster sergeant. Aug.
| II, 1861, he was commissioned second
lieutenant of Company B of the
| twentieth regiment where he rose to
the rank of captain. He was wounded
at the battle of Prairie Grove, and was
mustered out August. 1865.
Being asked to tell something of his
( service in Arkansas in the summer of
| 1852, the captain went back in thought
to that eventful summer forty years
ago, and became reminiscent. These
are some of the things he told:
"From May 16, '62, until June %,
vile, on White river, in the northern
part of Arkansas. We needed corn
| for our horses and mules, and I
started out to find some. After driv-
! ing for some time we met native
and asked him if he had some corn
| that he could sell us. He said he had
no corn, but that his neighbor had. We
asked where his neighbor lived. He
answered, over on the divide, be-
tween the Jeems and the Findley, in
the bresh, sort O. like
"Now, this direction was rather in
definite, but it was about as straight
as any Arkansas traveller was likely
| to get, and so we went on. We found
the divide, between the Jeems and
the Findely,' all right, yet just where
! it was in the bresh, sort O. like that
the neighbor with the corn lived, we
could not find out. But we drove on
along the divide between the Jeems
and the Findley' till we came to a
point on the White River fifteen or
sixteen miles above Batesville, where
we were fortunate enough to discover
on the bank lot of pole corn cribs
| containing thousands of bushels of
corn, that had been gathered to send
down the river to the confederate
army. We loaded our wagons and
ply of provender. We drew corn
from those cribs to feed our teams as
| long as we remained at Batesville.
| 1--WE left Batesville June %, and
marched down the White river. After
going about twelve miles we came to
| the farm of a Col. Magness. They
have about as many colonies there as
in Kentucky. This particular colonel
had large farm-the finest in all that
country.
while passing one of the fields
saw a negro reaping grain. The team
he was driving consisted of two of the
! best mules I ever saw-large and
strong. 1t occurred to me that they
would do good army service, and so
proposed a trade-that he should let
us have the big mules for pair of lit
| tie leaders on one Of our wagons. The
darkey said:
ooh, no, Massa, deed I couldn't
make dat trade, nohow! Dem mules
don't b'long to me, sab. Massa Cunnel
Magness, he owns dem mules.
couldn't make no trade wild dem, no.
howl
''I told Sambo that I'd do the trad
| ing myself. And so we made the
change. Sambo took the attitude of
one who must, if he must, and made
! the most of the matter. He made so
little ado about the forced trade that
I concluded he was a good unionist
and would just as lief as not that his
master, the colonel, should do some
thing for the good of the cause. Any
/ how, we drove the big fat mules away
with us.
when we got those mules into
camp that night, about twelve miles
further along, the boys transformed
them-they reached their names:
| that is, cut them pompadour, trim
med their tails so that they had paint
brushes at the end, and put on each of
them a United States stamp-oh, no,
not a postage stamp, just u. Sand
tied them among the others.
"When Sambo left the field and
drove those little mules up to the big
house and told the story of the trade,
there was, I am quite sure, fighting
mad colonel on that farm. I don't
know what he did to Sambo, but he
took after our army with blood in his
| eye. having Wei IdhGu us, liz uuuJSu
up our colonel Harris, and demanded
| the return of those mules, sah!' Col.
Harris seemed to sympathize with him,
and went at once to find the mules.
| There were mules and mules tied
along that rope, some asleep, others
thinking of the days befo' de wah,
some kicking, and others 'yaw-yawing'
Col. Harris asked his brother colonel
to find his team. Well. he went
clear down the line and then back
again, and then said that he reckoned
some other regiment must have them.
And so he left us to tell his story to
| another colonel. I must say that his
departure gave me bit Of a sense of
relief, for I was not certain that Col.
Harris would approve of my manner
| of trading.
eve were getting very short of
J food on this march. The weather
was hot, the roads were bad, and we
| had the very poorest of water to