from the Department of Missouri and another
from the Department of Arkansas witnessed the proceedings and received
the documents. When all was finished, Jeff. Thompson had his men
assemble on the levee in front of a steamboat, from the cabin-deck of
which he delivered his farewell address. I stood by his side while he
spoke, and expected every moment to see him pierced by some
well-directed bullet from the crowd on shore, but he was allowed to
finish his address without interruption, after which the men slunk out
of sight, and before evening the whole motley crowd had left the town
with the determination, as I verily believe, to follow the good advice
of their general. The address deserves a place among our papers, and I
will read it, as it appeared a few weeks later in Harper's Magazine,
from a _verbatim_ report made by one of my officers. He said:

'Many of the eight thousand men I now see around me, very many of you,
have been skulking for the last three years in the swamps within a few
miles of your own homes,--skulking duty,--and during that time have
not seen your own children. I see many faces about me that have not
been seen by mortal man for the last three years; and what have you
been doing all that time? Why, you have been lying in the swamps until
the moss has grown six inches long on your backs, and such men call
themselves "chivalrous soldiers." A few weeks ago Gen. Reynolds sent a
flag of truce to my headquarters, and I sent out to gather a
respectable force to meet those officers, and not one of you
responded. A few days later, when Col. Davis and Capt. Bennett, of
Gen. Dodge's staff, bore dispatches to me from that general, I
attempted again to call about me enough of you to make a respectable
show, and how many of these brave men reported at the call? One
sore-eyed man with green goggles. But you rally like brave and gallant
men around Uncle Sam's commissary stores, and I have now come to
surrender you, and hope that you will make better citizens than you
have soldiers.

* * * * *

'Those of you who had arms, with a few exceptions, have left them at
home, and those who had government horses have failed to report them
here. Now let me say to you, one and all, those of you who have
retained your arms, as soon as you get home take them to the nearest
military post and deliver them up, or burn them, or get rid of them in
some manne