This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter
47
: freedmen's aid societies and an act of congress creating a Bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands
Chapter
55
:
first
appropriation by congress for the bureau; the reconstruction Act,
March
2
,
1867
; increase of educational work
Chapter
60
: opposition to Bureau and reconstruction work became personal; the
Congregational Church of
Washington
Chapter
62
: life in
Washington, D. C.
,
1866
to
1874
; assigned to duty in regular army as commander,
Department of the Columbia
Chapter
63
: in the
Northwest
, among the
Indians
; trip to
Alaska
; life in
Portland, Ore.
;
1874
to
1881
Chapter
64
: superintendent of the
United States military Academy
; commanding
Department of the Platte
,
Omaha, Neb.
Chapter
68
:
French
army maneuvers,
1884
; promotion to
Major General
,
United States army
,
San Francisco
1886
-
88
[477] On June 17th we were on St. Frederick's Sound. It appeared like an inland lake, as smooth as a mill pond, and surrounded by hills large and small and mountains covered with snow. It being Bunker Hill Day, we fired a salute with our single cannon. Near evening I gave to the passengers the story of Gettysburg, using some red chalk on an improvised blackboard. At ten o'clock at night I was still talking to the people while the sun was considerably above the horizon. That night we noticed that there was but little space from twilight to dawn, not more than an hour. It was difficult for Mrs. Howard to persuade the children to go to bed when the sun was shining. After our return, October, 1875, I received word that a British general was moving along our border between Canada and the United States to make inspections, and that he would be in the vicinity of Fort Walla Walla before many days. Taking my staff with me, I went up to meet him, October 12th. Just as we were setting out from the fort, mounted, my aiddecamp, Captain J. A. Sladen, undertook to ride a horse that had not been recently used. The horse had only a snaffle bit, and the captain, who was a good rider, had hardly reached the saddle before the animal sprang forward and leaped a newly opened ditch, just grazing a tree against which Captain Sladen was thrown. With a leg badly fractured he could see the bottom of his foot, and as he lay on the ground he cried out in prayer: “O Lord, help me 1” Just as I reached him he looked into my face and smiled, saying: “We always do so when we get into trouble.” I remember that I answered: “Sladen, sometimes the trouble is permitted for that reason!” Thq captain's leg had to be amputated and he was
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.