Show INGERSOLLS ELOQUENCE Col Bob Paroled for Four Ho Would Steal the Confederate Army I served in Co1 BobIn erols command said n veteran of the Ochiltree club at the panorama of Bull Run this morning and whenever I want to have a good laugh I recall re-call to my mind the incidents connected with his capture in Tennessee I have seen somewhere a cruel paragraph to the effect that the colonel surrendered very willingly and I want to brand that falsehood for just what it is A braver man I never saw in five years of service We were scattered over a good deal of territory surrounding a village at the time the colonel was taken in and tired for by the Confederates We were in a skirmish at the time and the colonel was trying to get to a demoralized wing of his command As lie was passing through a series of cattle pens he was surrounded by a lot of Confederates and commanded to surrender but he didnt do it worth cent He kept right on running at breakneck speed He was not so stout then a now and a a pedestrian he was no slouch The bullets were flying about him thick as hail I he could get to another branch of his command he felt that he could rally the boys and win the fight A number of his men saw that he was in imminent peril and that if he didnt surrender he would be killed and they yelled at him at the top of their voices to stop and surrender He heeded but I could se that he did so with regret addis ad-dis ust Here i where the humor began When the colonel stopped he threw up h hands and screamed out Stop firing Ill acknowledge your old Confederacy The colonel was taken over to a store for safekeeping safe-keeping and he proved to be a great curiosity curios-ity People flocked around him listened to his stories laughed and declared that they were having more fun than they ever had in all their lives That night the colonel sat around the store till a goodly number of the Confederates came in and he began to treat and tell yarns Finally the crowd overflowed the place and blocked up the entrance to it Then the colonel went outside The boys were all feeling feel-ing well under the potency of words and drinks and every man woman and child within the sound of his voice loved him I Directly the colonel was asked to make a speech This was what he was working for i and a minute later ho was on a box and addressing ad-dressing the crowdand it was a right rough crowd too No lecture that great orator has ever delivered contained so much that was goo in it It fairly bubbled over with good will and the milk of human kindness go pictured how regretfully the north took up arms against tha south reminding his hearers that they had fired the first shot in their assault sault upon Fort Sumter Then he went off on slavery placing the poor whites before be-fore him in the place of the unfortunate nate blacks a people with soW and all the instincts of the whites but downtrodden trodden for no other reason than that they were black He pictured the scene when those who had held human souls in bondage were called before the judgment throne to answer for deeds done in the flesh It was a touching appeal and brought out streams of tears and storms of applause from the very men who had but few hours before shot at and captured him At the moment when the most pathetic passages in his speech were being delivered Gen Forrest the Con federate cavalryman whose command had made the capture rushed into the crowd all aglow with excitement but not anger and exclaimed Here Ingersoll stop that speech and rll exchange you for a government mule A short tune afterward Col Ingersoll was paroled He demoralizing the whole of the command and would have had it revolting re-volting against its commander had he been allowed to go on for two or three days as he had on the first dayNew York Sun |