Shoshone journal. [volume] (Shoshone, Idaho) 1884-1931, 1908-04-17
Incidents of the Civil War
and Frontier Life.
W. N. SchilIins, of Rupert, Talks
EntertainingIy of the Strenu-
Gus Days Of the Sixties.

1t is a pleasure to meet veteran of
the Civil war when he is in a reminiscent
mood and listen to a narrative of the
stirring events in which he participated
but when the narrator happens to be
also a veteran of the western range,
the pleasure of the interview becomes
intensified to positive delight.
Such meeting took place when the
writer entered the office of Frank T.
Disney, after the adjournment of the
Republican county central committee
last week, and met w. N. Schilling,
the popular postmaster at Rupert and
2 delegate in the convention.
After a formal introduction and the
transaction of a little routine business,
Mr. Disney with a shrewdness worthy
OF an attorney turned the conversation
into wartime channels into which the
Rupert delegate drifted with the ease
and grace of a raconteur. Mr.. Schil-
ling entered the service as Michigan
.cavalryman and served under the dash
ing Custer and the renowned Sheridan.
He was with his regiment on the
morning of October 10, 1864, endeavor-
ing to stem the route of battle in the
Shenandoah when Sheridan rode up on
his black charger, white with foam,
and rallied his flying soldiers and turned
defeat into brilliant victory. He
was on the field of Gettysburg and wit
messed those three days of awful con-
lict that proved the turning point of
the war. Instead of being mustered
out after Appomattox his regiment was
ordered out onto the plains to take
hand in the Indian wars that ragged
from time to time in those unsettled
days.
After being mustered out of the mil
itary service Mr.. Schilling, instead OF
returning to the peaceful avocations Of
his native state, yielded to the call OF
the wild and entered the government
telegraph service on the frontier and
witnessed the Indian wars that fol-
lowed. In the Bannock war his chum
was shot down at his side and he was
daily exposed to the viscissitudes Of
savage warfare And it was Mr.. Schil-
ling who, in 1876, flashed over the
wires the first news of that terrible
massacre on the Little Big Horn river,
when Custer and his gallant troops OF
the Seventh cavalry entered what to
them proved to be the valley of the
shadow of death.
The subject of this sketch was in
Colorado and Montana as early as 1865
and in Utah and Idaho in 1865, and was in
Salt Lake City and heard Brigham
Young test the acoustic properties of
the new tabernacle when the west was
young.
After casting his maiden vote for
Abraham Lincoln his time was so con-
stantly spent in the western territories
that his second presidential vote was
for William Mckinley. In 1884 ne was
a delegate in the Republican national
convention and cast his vote for James
G. Blaine, the idol of western Repub-
licans.
At the present time Mr.. Schilling is
postmaster at Rupert, an office that is
paying $1,000 a year, and the rapid
growth of population in the Minidoka
tract insures an advance in grade OF
tho P,nart Office with a corresponding
increase of salary. Uncle Sam can well
afford to deal literally with the vet
Grams of the Civil war and the Repub-
lican party will not forget the boys in
blue who made its future possible.