Page:The woman in battle .djvu/60

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50
SECESSION TIMES.


resistance, he yielded, and consented to have my mother and brother visit me in St. Louis. My brother, after becoming acquainted with my husband, esteemed him highly, and finally the bad feeling which had been caused by my clandestine marriage wore away, my father alone treating me with a coolness which he had never previously shown. When I met him for the first time after my marriage, he turned his cheek to me, saying, "You can never impress a kiss on my lips after a union with my country's enemy,"—from which I concluded that it was not so much my marriage without his consent, as my alliance with an American soldier that imbittered him.

After the Mormon expedition had returned, my husband met me at New Orleans, and from thence took me to Fort Leavenworth, then a remote frontier town. The living accommodations at this place were miserable, and the cooking, especially, was atrociously bad. I bore every discomfort, however, without a murmur, out of deference to my husband's feelings, and in every way endeavored to make myself as little of a burden to him as possible. In course of time I became a good American in thought and manner, and despite the inconveniences of life at a frontier post, was as happy as I could wish to be.

In the spring of 1860 I returned to St. Louis, while my husband went to Fort Arbuckle. During his separation from me, our third babe was born and died. In October of the same year he returned, having received a summons from his father a resident of Texas to the effect that there was reason to believe a war was about to break out between the North and the South, and desiring him to resign.

About this time my two remaining children died of fever, and my grief at their lo&s probably had a great influence in reviving my old notions about military glory, and of exciting anew my desires to win fame on the battle-field. I was dreadfully afraid that there would be no war, and my spirits rose and sank as the prospects of a conflict brightened or faded. When my husband's State determined to secede, I brought all my influence to bear to induce him to resign his commission in the United States army, and my persuasions, added to those of his father, finally, induced him, very reluctantly, to yield. It was a great grief for him to forsake the uniform he had worn so long with honor, and to sever the bonds which existed between him and his comrades. He much doubted, too, the wisdom of the Southern States in