The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-05-23
BY JAMns M. GLENN.

At the present time the eyes of the nation are upon the passage of the great warship Mississippi. the largest and most formidable which has ever ascended that stream. up the river of the same name. to receive 6 silver ser- vice from the State for which the gigantic war vessel Is named All the more attention has been at tracted to 1t from the predictions that vessel of such size could not pass up the river to Matches. Another at tractive fact is that this Is the second Mississippi" carrying the Stars and Stripes, that has started up the river. the first having had upon 1t George Dewey. of later Manila fame. and that vessel was consigned, before reaching 1t destination to "Davy Jones locker" by insistent and inhospitable Confederate cannon. Dewey escaping from the Confederates in some manner after his capture.
 Instinctively ones mind goes back to | the time when Grant Farragut and others with their Iimitless resources of men. money ad material. were en- gagged in the narrowing task of dis memberingr the coHfederacy, when be- ieaghfed Vieksburx fell. when Isaac N. | Brown of the Confederate Navy wrote his name on valor's scroll so high a. bove Farragut at Mobile Bay or else- where though so many even in the South have allowed his splendid ach- ievements to pass unnoticed. and when the Confederate gray was lifted to even greater immortality
 Concerning those days, the writer had the pIeasurer. few yeaEs ago. of in- terviewing a most excellenNAgentleman. MT. Frank E. Dey, jeweller, at that time of Greenville, Ala, who in wear ing the gray had a part in the stirring events around Vicksburg. he being Q member of Battery A. 1st Missouri Artillery Such accounts are always most interesting from active and actual participants and so history is most truly written.
 Mir Dey's home was in Glasgow, Mo, town of several thousand people. with, few Southern symathizers. but he at sixteen years of age succeeded in evading the Federal soldiers and en- listed with the South. He was four times wounded and not only was he at the battle of Big Black river. near Vicksburg, where a handful of men, the fragments of three brigades. held Grants entire army in check for sev- eral hours, but was in Vicksburg at the surrender, and came out of Vicks-- burg with his commands colors, given by MIssiouri ladies wrapped around hIs body beneath his clothing. and thus prevented their capture.
 k A Divided State.
 It was .some distance below Vicks- burg. and before its fall, however, that occurred the events connected with the disabling of a Yankee gunboat on the river. at Grand Gulf, and which helps to show how the State of Missouri was divided during the war, as so striking ly shown by Winston Churchill's Crisis"
 we were at Grand Gulf" said MT, Dey. with our battery Of four Parrott kuns, two l0-pounlers and two 2o- pounders. and with us was Captain Grayson's battery of five ship guns. sixty and eighty pounders.
 Seven Federal gunboats dropped down the river to where we were, their approach being heralded by a dense smoke arising over the trees and they swept around bend of the river. They passed up and down before our batteries several times, with heavy firing on both sides. Two of our guns being disabled. we moved up and took charge. of two of the ship guns of Captain Grayson's battery.
 "Our corporal. Virginius Leland, was an excellent gunner, and as the gun boats came steaming past, he singled out one. and with the heavy gun took an especially good aim, quivering all over with excitment. and exclaiminG to me, who was NO. 4." or the one to pull the lanyard in firing the piece:
 "'Wait a minute. walt a minute: don't shoot yet. don't shoot yet: let me get a good aim. and the next mo- ment he yelled. Fire
 "I Jerked the lanyard, there was mighty roar from our gun, and the gunboat dropped out of line, and be. gan drifting about, evidently being un- magaeabie. and entirely out of the
 ''That was a good shot,' yelled our men, when they saw the vessels en- zines stopped. Tt must have gone through a porthole.'
 That said Leland.' is exactly where I was trying to put it."
 'The gunboat drifted off down the river four or five miles. where the men on 1t succeeded in tying it up at lapding.
 About six years after the war, was in New York, and there met a boyhood friend whom had known in our home town in Missouri before hostilities began. I had come South and enlisted while he had gone to New York and enlisted in the Federal navy. There was nothing unusual in that, for in our command when vicksburE was captured was man from Missouri who found among the soldiers who captured the city his own father and brother. whom he had not seen In two years.
 aAs we were dining together there In New York. and. exchapgiug remini-