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But a suggestion that they should defend their own homes and families astonishes our Missouri friends. General Lyon established Home-Guards throughout the State, and armed them with several thousand Springfield muskets taken from the arsenal at St. Louis. Most of these muskets are now in Price's army, and are the most formidable weapons he has.
But his regiments were not his sole reliance; he is a believer in riflemen, a fighting class of which Kentucky was full. These he summoned to his assistance, and was met by a ready and hearty response: they came trooping to him by hundreds. Among others, Garrett Davis, United States Senator, led a company of Home-Guards to Lexington.
Not Flora nor Anna nor Victorine nor Doctor Sevier nor Dick Smith's lone mother nor any one else among all those thousands of masters, mistresses and man-and maid-servants, or these thousands of home-guards at home under their mosquito-bars, with uniforms on bedside chairs and with muskets and cartridge-belts close by not one of all these was aware, I say, that however else this awful war might pay its cost, it was the knell of slavery they heard, and which they, themselves, in effect, were sounding.
In some instances the Rebels enlisted in the Home-Guards and thus controlled the organization, carrying whole companies into Price's ranks. In other cases bands of Rebels scoured the country, went to the house of every Home-Guard, and took away his musket. In the German settlements alone the Guards still preserve their organization and their arms.
Groups of home-guards were nearly always about, as picturesque in their homely costume as Leather-stocking himself, and many of our officers and men were hardly less expert as woodsmen. Constant activity was the order of the day, and the whole command grew hardy and self-reliant with great rapidity. Stanton, the Secretary of War.
It may be said here that Corydon was the principal place in which any strong opposition was made by the people, the militia being concentrated at the large towns, which Morgan took care to avoid, pursuing his way through the panic-stricken villages and rural districts. There were other brushes with the home-guards, but none of much importance.
Indeed, he says the latter were called by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at York Factory "their home-guards." One thing seems certain, viz., that the Crees got their firearms from the English at Hudson Bay in the 17th century.
He has been grinding corn near Stockton, and has now food enough for another journey. His army numbers twenty thousand men, of whom five thousand have no arms. The rest carry everything, from double-barrelled shot-guns to the Springfield muskets taken from the Home-Guards.
Some anecdotes of the famous ride may here be fitly given. At one point on his ride through Indiana Morgan left the line of march with three hundred and fifty of his men to visit a small town, the main body marching on. Dashing into the place, he found a body of some three hundred home-guards, each with a good horse. They were dismounted and their horses tied to the fences.
In a moment a veil of smoke hid ships and shore, yet fearfully true persisted the enemy's aim. To home-guards, rightly hopeless of their case and never before in action, every hostile shot was like a volcano's eruption, and their own fire rapidly fell off.
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