- Joined
- Jul 23, 2017
- Location
- Southwest Missouri
(1 August 1861) Brigadier-General Jeff. Thompson, Commandant of the Missouri State Guard of the first
military district, headquarters at Bloomfield, Stoddard County, issued a characteristic pronunciamento, in which he exhorted the people of Missouri to strike while the iron was hot ; to leave their plows in the furrow, their ox to the yoke, and rush like a tornado upon their invaders, and sweep them like a hurricane from the face of the earth ; adding : "We have plenty of ammunition, and the cattle on ten thousand hills are ours."
Ten thousand ! Just nine thousand more than the Psalmist claimed as the Lord's.*
A short time after the publication of this proclamation, Gen. Thompson, being in great need of beef cattle for his troops and not one on the " ten thousand hills" coming at his call, seized upon the only cow of a widow in the vicinity and was in the act of driving her to his camp. The widow went to him and protested : "Why, General, is it possible you intend to rob a widow of the only cow she has in the world, when, as you have said in your proclamation, the cattle on ten thousand hills are yours? " The General, who always enjoyed a joke, retreated from the widow and her cow.
Source - The Commonwealth of Missouri
Alternative title - The Swamp Fox out foxed
military district, headquarters at Bloomfield, Stoddard County, issued a characteristic pronunciamento, in which he exhorted the people of Missouri to strike while the iron was hot ; to leave their plows in the furrow, their ox to the yoke, and rush like a tornado upon their invaders, and sweep them like a hurricane from the face of the earth ; adding : "We have plenty of ammunition, and the cattle on ten thousand hills are ours."
Ten thousand ! Just nine thousand more than the Psalmist claimed as the Lord's.*
A short time after the publication of this proclamation, Gen. Thompson, being in great need of beef cattle for his troops and not one on the " ten thousand hills" coming at his call, seized upon the only cow of a widow in the vicinity and was in the act of driving her to his camp. The widow went to him and protested : "Why, General, is it possible you intend to rob a widow of the only cow she has in the world, when, as you have said in your proclamation, the cattle on ten thousand hills are yours? " The General, who always enjoyed a joke, retreated from the widow and her cow.
Source - The Commonwealth of Missouri
Alternative title - The Swamp Fox out foxed