W. W. Mills

“ One answered, “To Fort Bliss.” I requested that they would not take me through El Paso, but they decided to do so. Kuhn then said to me that it was all right, I would have a fair trial and so on. I said: “I want no talk with you, sir; you are a scoundrel and a murderer. These soldiers obey orders. You betray for money.” I said more, and offered to fight him if they would give me my pistol. As I expected, this piece of pluck won the chivalrous young Texans. ”

“ With many regrets and self-reproaches and good resolutions for the future, I procured a Government horse and started alone for Fort Craig, riding all night. I arrived at Fort Craig in due time safe and well, but learned that the stage coach had been attacked by Indians and that the driver and two passengers had been killed. It is certainly right to teach schoolboys (as I did forty years ago) that promptness, perseverance, diligence and watchfulness will greatly increase their chances for success, but is it right to teach them that by these means or by any other means they can command success? ”

“ Strategic movements on the part of Davis and Hamilton have filled up the time. Between these two men there can be no comparison. * * *
“On last Friday night the cloud burst, and for a few moments the curse of heaven seemed to hang as a pillar of flame over the convention hall.
“Stern as Davis is, he quivered when Mills of El Paso tore from his bosom the thin gauze with which he hoped to hide the dark, selfish and damning purposes of his heart. Yes, he quivered, but it was for a while only. The devil never deserts his own for a long time at once. ”

“ On my return from Washington City, in 1897, my friend, Zack White, congratulated me upon my appointment as United States Consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, and I told him I had been surprised at receiving so many congratulations and that I believed most of them sincere. He replied, “They are all sincere. It’s like this; half of the people of this town are your friends, and, like me, they are glad of your success, and the other half are glad because you are going away. It’s unanimous.”
I think a man who makes an “even break” among the people of El Paso does fairly well, and I “let it go at that.” ”

“ Their sons, many of them, were the first to enlist in the Confederate ranks. These men doubted the policy of secession, and, with a courage and manhood which have no parallel, denounced the movement and predicted its failure and the ruin of the South. In so doing they knew that they were courting certain political ostracism and defeat, subjecting themselves to danger and perhaps to death, and to what was equally terrible to men of their pride and character—the changing of the love and confidence of their neighbors and friends, and even their kindred, into bitter hatred ”

“ Confederate and Democrat and I was only a frontiersman and Republican, and so they elected him a Judge of the Supreme Court of Texas, as had been done with the lawyer in the case mentioned above. I believe there is a legal maxim, or a legal axiom, or a legal fiction, that there can be no wrong without a remedy, and I am asked why I did not pursue the remedy. Oh, I don’t know. I suppose every man of affairs has sometimes in his life done or neglected things which he could scarcely explain afterward, even to himself. ”

“ Here let me say a word in behalf of the much-abused mule. You have been told that he will kick the hat off your head while you are on his back. This is a slander. A horse will kick when he is violently and cruelly treated, but a mule very seldom does, and ours were as gentle as pet dogs. They roamed unfettered and untethered about the camp day and night, but would come in at call.
On the Concho River we encountered herds of buffalo, now extinct in Texas, not so many as I had often seen on the Northern plains, but many—hundreds and thousands. ”

“ Want of sleep and other annoyances, vexations and privations bring out at times all the ill-nature and selfishness one may possess; and, again, when everything goes smoothly and all are moving leisurely and silently over some long stretch of prairie or plain and the weather is pleasant, men appear to cast all cares and reserve to the wind and converse with each other more frankly and confidentially than elsewhere. ”

“ For ten years, amid all the folly and extravagance and vices of my bachelor youth, I kept one object constantly in view: to acquire and hold and pay taxes on a sufficient number of town lots to make me reasonably independent when the railroads should come, and for a time I owned more desirable property in El Paso than any other individual ever owned except the proprietors of the town tract. ”

“ Hamilton, a man of Southern birth, once a slave-owner, who had been from the start the most prominent, boldest and most eloquent of the Union men of Texas, if not of the whole South. He was a member of Congress in 1861, and denounced secession both there and at home, and later was appointed a brigadier general and Provisional Governor of Texas by President Lincoln, and had gained a national reputation as an orator. And now the usual thing happened. “He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.” The small men in the convention combined to down the greatest one. ”

“ By success I, of course mean what the majority of men mean by the word success—the accumulation of wealth.
Well, during the ten years following my locating at El Paso, I was well and familiarly acquainted with at least fifty active, intelligent, educated young men, of whom it might have been predicted that they would succeed in life. These, if now living, would all have more than three-score years. Several of them died by the hands of the Indians, and some of them by the hands of their own countrymen, a number went to the bad or died early. ”

“ Mills and I then went to the ambulance, Johnnie being already on the box, and Mrs. Mills got inside, but before I could take my seat Kuhn appeared with a cocked pistol in his hand and swore great oaths that if I did not get out he would kill me where I was.
What could I do? My wife was in as much danger as myself, so I attempted to descend from the carriage and make the best fight possible, but Mrs. Mills had more presence of mind than I, and catching hold of me she said to Kuhn: “You cowardly murderer, would you kill a man in the presence of his wife? Get away from here.” ”

“ The new El Paso got away from me. Que sea por Dios.
Our merchandise and supplies were brought from St. Louis, a distance of sixteen hundred miles, or from Port Lavaca, Texas, a distance of nine hundred miles, by large trains of immense freight wagons, “Schooners of the Plains,” drawn by fourteen to eighteen mules, usually four abreast, at a cost of twelve and one-half to fifteen cents per pound for freight only. These trains were usually accompanied by twenty-five to forty men, including the drivers, all of whom were well armed, and stood guard like soldiers. ”

“ Meantime our two Colorado companies had done good service on our left. They were dressed in gray like our militia, and the Texans, mistaking them for Mexicans, charged them recklessly. The Colorado men reserved their fire for close quarters, and emptied many saddles at the first fire. The remainder retired in disorder.
The New Mexican volunteers were keeping the enemy from the water and skirmishing briskly at times. There was now, at 2 o’clock p. m., a lull in the fighting. Some of us had lunch and talked of the prospects. So far all was favorable to us except the repulse of Selden. ”

“ In a late communication to the El Paso Herald the colonel says: “Captain French killed or rather massacred Capt. James Skillman, who was in the C. S. A. and on picket duty in the Davis mountains. They had been personal friends, and through treachery French had located Skillman and killed him. It has been said that the matter so preyed on French’s mind that it became unbalanced before his death.”
Colonel Baylor is himself an old soldier, justly proud of his record, and he should be careful not to place too much reliance on the statements of others. ”

“ I could see no good in rebellion. I was willing to make some sacrifices and incur some dangers for my flag and country.
Colonel Loring at that time commanded the United States troops in the adjoining territory of New Mexico. There was a garrison at Fort Fillmore, fifty miles north of El Paso, but United States officers who had resigned (?) and passed through El Paso going south, gave out that Loring was “with the South.”
By this time a small force of Texas troops were en route to El Paso and New Mexico and it was claimed that Fort Fillmore would be surrendered without a fight. ”

“ Violence? Yes, but such acts were usually the result of sudden anger or of a feeling that under the conditions then existing each man must right his own wrongs or they would never be righted. Their ideas of right and wrong were peculiar, but they had such ideas nevertheless. I knew a young man who was well liked and had good prospects, who violated confidence and attempted to betray his benefactor. ”

“ Well, the greater portion of this valuable property was taken from me by corrupt courts and officials and by faithless lawyers and supposed friends, and by other means which I may or may not refer to in these writings. If any man says he would have defended himself and his rights better or more courageously than I did, I can only reply that I think I was fortunate to escape with my life! ”

“ One of them, Kelly, secession editor of the Mesilla newspaper, said: “So you are a spy.” I replied: “No, who says I am?” He said: “I do.” “Then you are a liar.” He struck at me, but I avoided the blow and placed a cocked pistol at his breast. He threw up his arms and said, “Don’t fire,” and I put up my pistol. Kelly was soon after killed by Colonel Baylor in a street fight at Mesilla. (Kelly was from Michigan.) There was at that time, at El Paso, a German named Kuhn, whom I knew, and who had the reputation of being a bad man. ”

“ In 1864 the United States District Judge for New Mexico, himself a Southern man, held that his Court had the power to libel and confiscate the real estate of such citizens of El Paso County, Texas, as were then in arms against the United States. He based this claim upon an Act of Congress approved March 3d, 1863, which provided that “The jurisdiction of the United States Court for New Mexico is hereby extended over the citizens of El Paso County only in cases not instituted by indictment.” ”

“ Common trials and dangers united the two races as one family, and the fact that one man was a Mexican and another an American was seldom mentioned, and I believe as seldom thought about. Each man was esteemed at his real worth, and I think our estimates of each other’s characters were generally more correct than in more artificial societies. ”

“ A train of wagons would arrive from Mexico with silver or other products and in a few days the El Paso merchant would sell or exchange thousands of dollars’ worth of goods, and then for weeks he might not have a customer worthy of his attention.
Another man would labor almost incessantly night and day for a time in filling some Government contract, and then for months, perhaps, no other opportunity would offer for the exercise of his energy. ”

“ It is not usual to awaken a man to steal his property. That man’s hand surely held a knife and he was feeling for my heart! I have always felt sure that the man who entered my room was not an enemy, but a hireling. ”

“ As they approached my brother, pretending to be very drunk, Skillman saw and understood the maneuver, and, springing to the rescue, called out: “Look out there, Mills; they are going to kill you.”
When the secession talk commenced, it was known to me and to a few others that Skillman, although his associates were nearly all Confederates, inclined strongly to the Union side; but he finally “went with his State,” and in 1864 he, with a small band of Confederates, was acting as a scout and keeping up communication between San Antonio and the Confederate colony at Juarez, Mexico, near El Paso. ”

“ Major Smith soon saw certain defeat before him, and withdrew, and I was unanimously elected.
During April of that year, I went in a buggy, with a single companion, Hon. W. P. Bacon, Judge of our district, to San Antonio, en route to Austin, seven hundred and forty miles, in seventeen days, without change of animals (two horses) . We “camped out” and did our own cooking, and traveled much at night, because marauding Indians were then abundant on that route. I arrived at Austin a total stranger to every soul in that capital. The convention had ninety delegates, only ten of whom were Democrats. ”

“ I never had the desire, as many had, to wantonly butcher these lubberly animals, but almost every man has inherited the hunter’s instinct, and I indulged it to some extent, making the excuse that we needed fresh meat, as indeed we did. ”

“ Profits were often great and risks were always great. I do not think the desire for money, for its own sake, was as strong as in older communities, and this led to what we called liberality and what the wise call extravagance. ”