enemies in hostile lines, and then they
felt anew the falseness and the horror of
it all.
There were lively times in Oxford for
the next few days. Every fellow around
the campus was getting ready to go to
war. They recognized no age limit nor
any other obstacle. Lessons they calmly
ignored, at least so far as the ever-dili-
gent faculty would permit. Recruiting
began at once for a college company, the
University Rifles, and the crowd fairly
fought for the privilege to sign up. By
nightfall of the first day there was a wait-
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ing-list, and word was sent to Columbus
that the country was saved. Then came
a few nerve-racking days of suspense,
awaiting marching-orders. You know
what that might mean in a student crowd.
They didn't get afraid or indifferent.
Bless you, no! They just took a sober
second thought that the projected scheme
was not a primrose path of dalliance, and
that there were hosts of important duties
demanding their immediate attention
right at home. Not many of the volun-
teers would have backed down even then,
if the mail service from the home folks
hadn't gone into active operation. Of
course the authorities stubbornly insisted
that these militant youngsters should
have parental consent.
It was soon evident that the Univer-
sity Rifles must use village talent to make
up their quota. Here recruiting was al-
most as easy, and all the way to the capi-
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tal volunteers and camp-followers swelled
the company beyond the legal limit.
Choice of a captain was soon made. Only
one fellow of them all had ever juggled
a musket in regulation way, and he was
a Senior, Ozro J. Dodds, who had been
under Lew Wallace in an Indiana mili-
tary school. Dodds didn't remember
much of his manual except the marching,
but the way he kept those poor perspir-
ing rookies scratching holes in University
greensward would have rejoiced any pa-
triot. The minor offices didn't matter
much: at best they were painfully few.
Why, there were not nearly enough to go
around, even when the captain insisted
on three lieutenants, as there had been at
Crawfordsville.
Finally the company was ready for
departure. You know what always hap-
pened on such occasions. Maybe you
have seen it yourself, or you are sure to
219
W A R
have read the conventional account some-
where. The concourse of admiring and
iViMch bestarched maidens, all sweet and
teary 'round the lashes. The rather awk-
ward file of heroes, sheepishly trying to
appear unconscious of the furore they
were making. The home-made silk ban-
ner, presented with an address and a
benediction by some good old minister,
this time impersonated by Doctor Hall,
of the University. The kindly mothers
in Israel, pressing testaments into the
hands of the young soldiers, and the well-
to-do citizens with their little offerings
of poctet-money. The martial music and
the cheers, the blessings and the hand-
shakes, and then the "chug-chug" of the
locomotive drawing the human freight
away to — God knows what or where.
Perhaps now we can find some humor in
such an episode; can smile blandly at the
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homely earnestness of the participants.
Then it was only a pitiable reality.
The Rifles, as such, achieved no great
distinction. At Columbus ruthless offi-
cials went through the ranks, and brought
them within bounds by sending home
those freshest from the cradle-roll. This
was a dark hour for young Cal. Brice,
who had put more enthusiasm into this
brief military career than he ever did
later into a senatorial campaign. But
"the atrocious crime of being a young
man" was this time beyond pardon, and
the youth was promptly billed for Ox-
ford, his red hair bristling with disgust
and- an occasional big tear winding its
way through his wilderness of freckles.
In a few days the troop was rechristened
as Company B of the 20th Ohio, and was
sent on its way for three months of ser-
vice. From Columbus it moved to Hamil-
ton; then back to Columbus again; later
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to Zanesville, and at last across the
boundary into West Virginia, to wear out
its time in monotonous guard duty along
the railroads. No wonder most of the
members promptly re-enlisted, in search
of some real Avar. Be it known that they
afterwards got it.
Back at Oxford all was still excite-
ment. Every mail brought stacks of let-
ters from the soldier boys, and the air
was charged with war news. The Rifles
had hardly left the station when a new
company — the Home Guards — was being
organized, with Professor MacFarland at
their head. This last was a tactful move,
for the faculty kept its patriotism
cravenly suppressed. Lessons — the base
routine of Latin, Greek and mathematics
— actually went on the same as before!
The current number of the Miami Month-
ly is a bit amusing at this point. "The
paucity of students," remarked the
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editor, "has not in the least interfered
with the operations of the College. Daily
chapel exercises have been just as regu-
lar as they were before, and the door
bolted against stragglers, after the sec-
ond bell, just as securely as ever. Les-
sons have been just as long, and the pro-
fessors as unintermitting in their en-
deavors. Grading has been as carefully
observed as previously, and war has had
no effect on the number of zeros. In a
word, our number, but not our equani-
mity, has been disturbed. Students may
stop, but college does not. War may go
on, but so does Miami University. As
long as one man remains, there are eight
professors to teach him." The same is-
sue is loaded down with the usual
weighty discussions of "Detail in Land-
scape Painting" and "Ferdousi: the Per-
sian Homer."
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WAR
It was no child 's-play to preserve
academic tranquility in those days. Even
the simon-pure patriots were obstreper-
ous enough at times; and there were just
a few disgruntled, cross-grained fault-
finders hanging about, who were "agin
the government" and kept busy picking
trouble with the rest. One of these was
promptly handled by the faculty for
"uttering treasonable sentiments and
hurrahing for Jeff. Davis and the so-
called Southern Confederacy." Later a
definite rule was formulated against the
public parading of such sentiments. Pa-
triotism effervesced in all sorts of scrapes
and antics, man}^ of them clustering about
those fatal "George Days." In the ab-
sence of other military features, the army
canteen was patronized liberall}^ about
this time. A fellow had to do something
like a soldier. Perhaps young Brice was
only in practice for foraging duty when
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WAR
he was called on the carpet for confis-
cating wood and shmgles from respected
Oxford citizens.
In Juno, '62, the Home Guards got
their opportunity. A fresh call was made
for troops, and those fellows who had
double-quicked and counter-marched
about town for more than a year could
be kept down no longer. Professor Mac,
their drill-master, was urged to take com-
mand. The faculty argued that he should
go, since they felt largely responsible for
the fortunes of these reckless lads en-
trusted to their care. At length he con-
sented, obligating himself to accept no
appointment that would remove him from
his boys. Again came the mustering at
Columbus, this time with the 86th Ohio;
and again the weary weeks of guard duty
in West Virginia. Those performances
in Oxford had their reward at last though,
for Captain Mac's boys were soon fa-
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WAR
mous — and accordingly puffed up — as
being the best drilled company in the
regiment; and the captain himself, true
to his pledge, was kept busy turning
down promotions.
Before this three-months' service had
expired, Miami was called upon once
more to save her country, this time in one
of the opera-bouffe episodes of the war.
Kirby Smith and his famous rebel raiders
were on the war-path chanting the scalp-
song, and rumor had it they were headed
straight for Cincinnati. Volunteers were
called for in a panicky way all over the
state, and Oxford was promptly in the
field, with Charley Fisk of Kentucky in
the lead. The company that recruited on
the campus was a miscellaneous assort-
ment of town and country boj^s, with
such students as were still on the prem-
ises. No time had they for the gaudy
fripperies of war. Uniforms were un-
228
WAR
thought of, tactics were delightfully un-
orthodox, and weapons were of all ages,
sizes and varieties, just what they were
able to wheedle away from grand-dad's
care or purloin somewhere in the name of
the state. Such nondescript methods
everywhere gave to the assembled horde
the appropriate name "Squirrel-Hunt-
ers," the most picturesque of all Ohio's
soldiery. The Oxford company made its
exit with as much eclat as anybody, and
did yeoman service for a week or so,
patrolling a lonesome railroad bridge
which nobody had the remotest intention
of crossing.
Still a fourth organized body of Miami
men went out to war, once more com-
manded b}^ popular Captain Mac. This
time, however, the ratio of gown to town
was much smaller and to this corporal's
guard Professor MacFarland was not
obligated so closely as before. He soon
229
W A R
became Lieutenant-Colonel of the regi-
ment, wliicli was his old 86th, reorganized
for six months more of duty. Once again
the little Miami delegation was the
leaven of the grimy blue lump, and a sore
temptation to its former captain to show
rank favoritism in his new authority.
These youngsters drilled and plodded
faithfully through the routine of war,
volunteered among the first for danger-
ous assignments, and cheerfully over-
stayed their time two months just to
break the stubborn resistance of Cumber-
land Gap. That little siege was a clever
one though; and only a great-browed
mathematician, skilled in permutation
and combination, would have hit upon
the final plan of shuffling numbers on the
soldiers' caps, till the Southern spies be-
lieved the handful of regiments a vast
and crushing army. Some veterans of
Tennessee are wondering 3^et what ba-
sso
WAR
came of all the Yanks who besieged that
pass.
In the course of the war, more than
four hundred Miami men, young and old,
in dusty blue and spattered gray, tried
out their courage in the field. They found
every grade of service, from major gen-
eral of volunteers to high private in the
rearmost rank; and you might well have
met a few of them ably driving commis-
sary mules. It is an open question
whether in those four grim years the real
life of Miami was being lived along the
wind-swept corridors of the old Main
Building, or about the camp-fires
of Georgia and Tennessee. The local
heroes of many college generations
had become at a leap swift-moving
ministers of awful vengeance to the
enemy. No wonder that the paltry
narrative of schemes and escapades
and rainbow-hued romance is soon
^31
WAR
forgotten when the minstrel strings
his harp and chants passionately of such
martial deeds. Unft)rtunatel.y for us, no
minstrel arose when these stirring songs
were fresh and new, to weave from them
the heroic epic of Miami in the War; and
only a fragment or so must serve us now.
Probably the oldest offspring of
Miami in the conflict, and certainly the
most exalted, was General Robert C.
Schenck. He had done so much before
the war began, and reached such national
prominence, that his very honors won in
politics almost thwarted a military ca-
reer. All the opposition papers shook
their yellow sides and howled with glee
when Schenck was appointed brigadier-
general, over the heads of a score or so
West-Pointers who knew the manual of
arms backwards. ''Turn him over to an
orderly-sergeant," they shrieked, "and
make him drill like the Devil for a month !
232
WAR
Maybe then he'll know enough of war to
command a company." Schenck only
sawed wood. Out on the London and
Hampshire Railroad there were signs of
trouble, and before long he was sent to
patrol the line with a force of men on
flat-cars, and a locomotive pushing in
the rear. They ran straight into an am-
bush of several times their own num-
bers; and the engineer, at the first shots,
unhooked his couplings and left them to
fight it out. General Schenck fought
much like a man who knew how, and a
clean victory against great odds showed
the wisdom of Lincoln's choice. But his
friends the papers took care to belittle
the conflict, and tacked upon him the
well-earned title "Hero of Vienna."
Only they gave it a queer sarcastic twist
sometimes discerned lately in such
honorable expressions as "Hero of San
Juan Hill."
233
W A R
Maybe the old political campaigner
had much to learn of the technicalities
of real war. Anyhow he had mastered
one fundamental fact worth knowing:
the necessity of the soldier ^s absolute
obedience to orders, no matter what the
cost. Some of his younger, book-taught
critics were a bit unsteady in this sort
of underpinning. The first battle of Bull
Run, where Schenck commanded a brig-
ade, gave a mighty good exhibition of
the fighting stuff that men had in them.
Just as the Northern retreat began, the
General got orders to withdraw his
troops as far as Centreville, halt there,
and arrange to hold that point against
the enemy. He did so as a matter of
course, just as he might have put away
his supper or polished his boots for pa-
rade. But his regimental officers took
occasion to look about them. Beyond
them and on either side panted and
234
WAR
struggled a retreating horde of wild-
eyed, panic-stricken men in blue. Hot
in pursuit came the Southern forces,
eager, confident and overwhelming. It
was suicide to halt here, said these colo-
nels among themselves, and then they
formally protested against the order.
But the old General had learned his one
lesson well. This position at Centreville
must be maintained. The colonels per-
sisted; Schenck threatened them with
court-martial. Off in the distance there
was a sound of rebel musketry, and regi-
ment after regiment was rapidly thrown
once more into rough marching order
and headed straight for Washington.
General Schenck was left to hold Centre-
ville with his immediate staff and one
orderly! Fortunately he soon received
fresh orders, relieving him from the un-
pleasant necessity of surrounding and
capturing the whole Southern army.
235
WAR
But here lies the point. Military ex-
perts have since decided that this was
the critical moment and Centreville the
strategic point at which the Northern re-
treat might have been turned into vic-
tory, and all the discouragement and an-
guish of that disaster prevented. If this
much-maligned son of Miami had been
supported b,y his men, the hero of Vienna
would have been hailed by the united
North as savior of his country. As it
was, several of the retreating colonels
got to Washington in time to be pro-
moted for gallant and meritorious con-
duct.
A fine old fellow was Schenck, always
ready where the nation needed him. For
a time he did a charming imitation of St.
Patrick, and entirely freed Baltimore of
a plague of "copper-heads." Then he
]3lunged into the fight once more, and
had his sword-hand shattered at the sec-
236
WAR
ond battle of Bull Eun. Here his old
stubbornness blazed out again, in
another Quixotic trick. As his hand fell
limp and useless at his side, the sword he
was brandishing flew out of his grasp
and was lost sight of. But Schenck
wanted that sword. He was in the most
exposed portion of the field, with bullets
whistling all around him. His men were
trying their best to get him to the rear
out of further danger. Yet he would not
budge an inch till the sword was found
and restored to its bloody scabbard.
This accident ended his military career,
for during convalescence he was elected
once more to Congress and persuaded
that his larger usefulness lay there.
In the course of the war, it is a fair
estimate that there were several thou-
sand retreats stopped — or almost stop-
ped, charges led, ramparts taken, and
days saved. Time has a way of playing
237
W A R
strange pranks with militaiy reminis-
cences into the bargain. But it is sur-
prising, when you go to figuring on these
psychological moments of conflict — as
the novelists say — how many times you
find a man from little old Miami right at
the pivot of the whole event. This is no
place to try to cite them all. Somebody
would be sure to be omitted and his rela-
tives would feel hurt. You are familiar
already with the few that follow.
In the engagement at Stone River
fought a young Colonel of Cavalry,
Minor Millikin by name. In college he
was the Adonis of his class, the nimblest
athlete and the politest gentleman about
the campus. In the few years since
graduation he had studied and traveled
abroad, and founded him a home almost
in the shadows of the Oxford hills. Dur-
ing the battle his regiment was ordered
to rei)el the attacks of Rebel cavalry
238
WAR
upon the rear. These had become so
serious that nothing but a charge would
affect them. Tlie enemy's forces were
much larger, but Millikin himself led the
regiment in a mad gallop across the
fields. In a few minutes he found him-
self, with a handful of followers, cut off
from his command. Surrender was not
thought of; they must cut their way out.
The Colonel was a master of sword-craft,
and was fast making way against a
group of desperate foes; but just as
safety was in sight, one angry opponent
whipped out a pistol and shot him dead,
while he was parrying the fierce thrusts
of the others.
The fortunes of war spared another
child of Miami, with the same signs
upon his shoulders, to lead his regiment
of Ohio lads in the charge that made
Stone River a Northern victory. Thus
it happened that when the Army of the
239
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Cumberland entered Murfreesboro, it
was Col. Thomas C. Bell — once just Tom
Bell, of '57 — that rode in triumph at the
head of the column. Col. James H. Childs
was paid in diiferent coin for the daring
he displayed, plunging his troops into
the fatal chaos of Gettysburg. His was
the coin that Millikin accepted, the pure
red gold of heroic sacrifice.
Enough of this empty tabulating.
Turn to a like picture whose details were
stamped for life on the receptive mind
of our own soldier-poet, and are re-
counted by him with the stirring
old-time eloquence at which Runkle
is adept enough. "How well I re-
member," runs his reminiscence, "that
15th of May, 1864, now more than
forty years agone, when at Resaca the
division in which I was serving swung
into column and moved to the support of
the 4th corps attacking the enemy's en-
240
WAR
trencliments. Wounded men were being
hurried to the rear: ambulances stream-
ing blood drove rapidly past us. Moving
into line we, there in full view, waited
and watched the ebb and flow, the surg-
ing rush of battle ; saw the long blue lines
with flying colors — nowhere do those
colors stand out so magnificently grand
as in the tumult of battle — with flying
colors move up through the withering
fire, while the throbbing guns, like trem-
endous heartbeats, kept time to the
battle stride. Forward and back and for-
ward, again and again, swayed the lines;
heavier grew the pall of gray smoke
while the deadly rattle of the rifles and
shriek of shells told that men were dying
in red anguish by the hundred. At last
the Union lines swept over the works;
the battle flags leaped clear of the smoke
as their bearers sprang on the parapets.
The enemy gave way. Cheers rang down
241
WAR
the eliarging lines and rolled back to the
supports as out of the confusion and car-
nage came the remnant of a volunteer
brigade with four captured guns; and
the leader who took them in, and brought
them out victorious, was Ben Harrison
of Miami. When he was made President
of a saved Republic a great man found
his reward."
Side by side with the heroism and
the suffering must come the romance of
war. Somehow Runkle always suggests
that combination, whether you look upon
him today with his wavy diadem of grey
locks above his glittering regimentals, or
picture him maimed and left for dead at
Pittsburg Landing, while "Agate," scrib-
bling out a reputation at the front, paused
in his grisly enumeration of dead and
missing to publish to the world his tribute
to the man he fought and loved in college
halls. Reid, too, suggests in his person
242
WAR
aucl career the romance of the conflict.
When the first gun was fired he was a
rather delicate stripling of twenty-three,
recently promoted from a country news-
paper to a staff position with the Cincin-
nati Gazette — stipulated salary, $6.00 per
week. Almost as soon as he settled upon
West Virginia with pad and pencil, his
vividly picturesque correspondence be-
gan attracting national attention.
He praised McClellan until that gen-
tleman was called to Washington and pro-
moted. Later he criticised him till the
Gazette owners were called upon to apolo-
gize. He followed Rosecrans and com-
mented on certain weaknesses in the Gen-
eral's policy in a way that was particu-
larly pleasing to the Rebel commanders
who read Northern newspapers. In
Donelson and Shiloh Reid found his
rarest opportunity, and the fine virile pic-
tures of those intense struggles which he
243
WAR
scratched off amid tlie din of battle, not
only enthralled his eager public then, but
are still known as masterpieces of their
kind. From the field to Washington;
from reporter to editor and proprietor;
from journalist to diplomat: such prog-
ress reads like a fairy tale. But the wise
ones will tell you how they predicted all
of it, some fifty years ago, in the old top-
floor sanctum of the Erodelphian Society.
This very day there is in Oxford a fine
old family that is never without a re-
spectable and well-mannered cat at its
fireside. And the name of this cat is al-
ways Joe Battle. When newcomers ask
foolish questions, they learn that the
name is a tradition of the household, run-
ning back before the war, when Grand-
father Cone kept the now dismantled
Mansion House and knew and loved the
Miami boys. His favorite was Joel Allen
Battle, a lithe, keen-eyed dare-devil of a
244
WAR
Southerner, with a silver tongue, a tender
heart and a temper of fire. Nobody ever
questioned Battle's ability. The faculty
never ranked him with the " Dignissimi. "
He hadn't time for that. But in the liter-
ary hall he found few to match him in
the tangles of debate; and often amused
himself, when he had floored a rather easy
victim, by coming back with a telling ar-
gument in behalf of the opposition.
Joe Battle was a fellow of strong likes
and dislikes. His circle of friends fairly
worshiped him. Outside the circle, un-
der the stress of those hot-headed ante-
bellum days, he often strained his temper
to the breaking point and got his name on
the faculty minutes. Apparently his was
a name that had a real significance. Dear
old Ben Battle, of glorious memory, was
never intended more definitely to be a
"soldier bold." The process of getting
used to war's alarms came soon enough.
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WAR
Preparatoiy to it came a series of pranks
and wilder escapades, winding up with a
specimen of the manly art of self-asser-
tion which sent little Dutchy Roemler in-
to arnica and bandages for a period of
days.
Finally Battle was graduated in due
order with the class of '59. He soon mar-
ried a girl from the North and settled in
Cincinnati to study law. He realized that
a national conflict was impending, and
frequently declared to friends that when
it came he could not fight against the
flag, nor yet against his kinsfolk, and
would probably go abroad during the
struggle. But the call of the South, echo-
ing in the guns about Sumter, came to
him, as to many another fine young fel-
low, in the tone that could not be ignored
or disobeyed. He became adjutant of his
father's regiment, the 20th Tennessee,
and received his first wound at the battle
of Mill Springs.
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WAR
It was Tuesday morning, the eighth
of April, 1862. The 41st Illinois and the
31st Indiana were encamped on opposite
sides of a crude roadway through the
woods about a mile from Pittsburg Land-
ing. For miles about were the relics of
the great conflict. Nine thousand corpses
from both armies strewed the battle-field,
and fifteen thousand wounded were re-
ceiving such care as was possible. Out
of a tent on the Indiana side staggered
Clifford Ross, a bit unsteady from the