Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-01-10

SrOW1eQ when Mck1nnOn tentatively
began to talk about Benton and La
due, but later they listened-most men
willard when he returned three
days later to his court at the capital
and made report to certain confiden-
tial officers at the department, it must
be admitted that, though he took back
with him far less of compromising
character concerning Benton than he
expected and hoped, he left a lot be-
hind him.
And all this time there lay at the
old capitol prison, awaiting needed
evidence to prove him spy, a very
luckless young soldier, Paul Ladue.
All this time there fumed and chafed,
confined in arrest to the limits of Greble
Barracks and the adjoining square in
which were the officers quarters, Capt.
Fred Benton, A. D. c., well-nigh for
hidden to be seen by anybody save
secret service specimens detailed for
the purpose. All this time there was
man that could have thrown light on
the situation, but most 1naccountably
had he disappeared. Jennings was
again at large, and the department de-
clared it knew not whittier he had
gone. He had been released, was the
Observation-Disclosures it would
appear that he had only done what
humanity archaeological and nursed
half drowned, half fever-burned, half
dying man.
Then the squire came out from the
west, and that lusty patriot happened
to be at odds with state officials over
some regimental appointment. The
great president was now confronted by
new and direful problems
side had demanded the dismissal
of several of his generals or else
mis- own. A new chief of the army
had to be chosen at this crisis of its
history. No wonder the mighty cap
tain could not anchor his craft in the
rush of the rapids, and lower a boat
for the little boys apple. No wonder
he had no time to personally investi-
gate the case of Benton's beloved son.
''The new housekeeper," he said
would quit without notice rather than
submit to interference" With sor-
rowing, suffering, anxious heart he let
Burnside go, and set Burnside's fiercest
critic, himself to lose his head few
weeks later, in Burnside's place, and
then the great, loyal, triple-tried army
went in again, with overwhelming
numbers, to round up that thin gray
line along the southwark heights
Again the fords were ribboned with the
pale blue columns, as a dozen great
divisions circled the confederate left
Again did Jackson dare to drop every
thing at the front, swing clear round
the Outermost line and come crushing
in on an astonished and bewildered
flank. Never" say the confederates,
and God knows they know, did the
Yanks fight harder than at Chancellors-
ville''-that is, those who fought at all,
for only fourth of their entire array
got chance, but again Back to the
fords!" was the order, and, cursing
their luck and praying for fair fight
and no favor, back the fourth time
went the army. Then came the sum-
mer the race for the Potomac, and the
rush at last to the high-water mark
of rebellion on the shores of the Sus-
quehanna.
But meantime there had been a scene
or two at Washington, never men
toned in the chronicles of the day
and in the midst of alarms and dis
fractions such as Washington had
never known before. Such matters
as the public cowhiding of an army
officer almost in front of the white
house would be ''scare-headed'' from
Maine to Manila to-day, but the papers
had no space for it then. Squire Ben
ten had touched up McKinnon's new
uniform to the tune Of 30 lashes before
the police could step in and spoil the
sport. and only in local journal and
one or two in the far west was the
affair referred to.
Paul Ladue, convalescent, had been
twice subjected to rigid questioning
with the hope of establishing the guilty
connivance in his escape of a certain
Baltimore household, as we'll as a GER
tain union officer, and with the result
Of establishing nothing beyond the fact
that even in his weakness he had more
strength and sand" than the prosecu-
ton. Then he was rendered release
failed to unearth thing to warrant
detention as spy.
A romantic turn in the tide Of affairs
had come when a certain senator called
on the secretary and offered to show
that the discriminating papers which
Benton had refused to surrender and
which Miss Benton now would be will
ing to show, if necessary to save the
prisoners life, were personal letters
and nothing more. Stanton knew this,
probably, as well as the senator, but
was wroth that any one else should
know it, and furious that an officer
should dare refuse to surrender them,
no matter what or whose they were.
Then Ladue's Baltimore friends had
he %ho%