[227] of having his neighbors arrested upon charges of disloyalty, and securing the scoutings and ravages from every house that was not summarily burned to the earth. This had so long been his vocation that he was universally loathed by people of every shade of opinion, and soon brought upon himself the fate common to all such persons in every country, where the spirit of self-defence is an element of human nature. In his search for victims for the prison which was kept at Palmyra, this man was missed; nobody knew when, or where, or how; whether drowned in the river, absconding from the army, or killed by Federal soldiers or concealed Confederates.
His failure to return was made the pretext for a series of the most horrible crimes ever recorded in any country, civilized or barbarous.
John McNeil is a Nova Scotian by birth, the descendant of the expelled tories of the American Revolution, who took sides against the colonists in the rebellion against Great Britain. He is by trade a hatter, who made some money in the Mexican war. He had lived in Saint Louis for many years, simply distinguished for his activity in grog-shop politics. He was soon in the market on the outbreak of the war, and received a colonel's commission. Without courage, military knowledge, or experience, he entered the army for the purpose of murder and robbery.
As the tool of McNeil, W. H. Strachan acted in the capacity of provost marshal general, whose enormities exceed anything in the wicked annals of human depravity.
At the instigation of McNeil, the provost marshal went to the prison, filled with quiet, inoffensive farmers, and selected ten men of age and respectability; among the rest an old Judge of Knox county, all of whom had helpless families at home, in destitution and unprotected.
These names, which should be remembered as among the victims of the reign of the Monster of the Christian era, were as follows:
William Baker, Thomas Huston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. McPheeters of Lewis, Herbert Hudson, John M. Wade, Marion Lavi of Rails, Captain Thomas A. Snyder of Monroe, Eleazer Lake of Scotland, and Hiram Smith of Knox county, were sentenced to be shot without trial or any of the forms of military law, by a military commander whose grade could not have given ratification to a court-martial, had one been held; had the parties been charged with crime, which they were not.
Mr. Humphreys, also in prison, was to have been shot instead of one of those named above, but which one the author has not the means of knowing. The change in the persons transpired in this way:
Early on the morning of the execution, Mrs. Mary Humphreys came to see her husband before his death, to intercede for his release. She first went to see McNeil, who frowned, stormed, and let loose a volley of such horrible oaths at her for daring to plead for her husband's life that she fled away through fear, and when
