One of the most forward of the
delegates had neither cuffs nor collar, and his shirt had manifestly
not been near a laundry for a long time. He apologized to the
President for his appearance, saying that he had been sleeping in the
woods where toilet accommodations were very indifferent. Two or three
of the men bore marks of battle with the guerrillas, in patched-up
faces, and one of them carried an arm that had been disabled by a gun
shot in a red handkerchief sling. In speaking of these visitors, the
President afterwards jocularly referred to them as "those crackerjacks
from Missouri."
A formal address was presented, the principal point being that, as the
Missouri Unionists had furnished many thousand recruits to the Federal
Army, they had a right to look to the Government for soldiers to
assist in protecting their families and their property. And here it
will do no harm to state that, notwithstanding the heavy drain made by
the Confederacy, Missouri, during the war, furnished 109,000 men to
the national army.
After their formal address had been presented to the President, the
members of the delegation tackled him, one after the other, as the
spirit moved them, and it can truthfully be said that in some of the
bouts that ensued he did not come out "first best.
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