TO VIKU

In the absence of telegraph communication and fast mail facilities, it often became necessary for some of these aids to be entrusted with full discretionary executive powers, particularly those who were to act on the southern and northwestern border, remote from the Executive office and not in ready communication with it, and in no case were those powers exceeded or abused, but were used with eminent ability in the promotion of the public good.

Among these men one of the most determined and persevering was G. M. Dodge. In the commencement of the war one of the greatest needs was arms. For the purpose of obtaining them the Governor issued the following commission:

Capt. G. M. Dodge:

EXECUTIVE CHAMBER,
DES MOINES, Iowa, May 25, 1861.

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DEAR SIR-I hereby confide to you a communication to MajorGen. Harney, at St. Louis, desiring from him, or, through him, from the Secretary of War, 3,000 stand of arms from the command at Fort Kearney, Neb. Should it be deemed proper by you, when at St. Louis, upon conference with Gen. Harney, to go to Washington City in order the more readily to obtain these arms, I desire you to go there at once. When the order is obtained you will report to me immediately for further instructions.

Respectfully,

SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD,
Governor of Iowa.

Gen. Dodge at this time was captain of an independent military company, which he had some years before organized, and which was known as the "Council Bluffs Guard." He tried to get it into the First Regiment, and, failing here, into the Second, but Governor Kirkwood refused to enlist it in either, thinking it would be needed for the protection of the southern border from Missouri Secessionists or the western Indians.

So anxious was Dodge to enter upon active military service that he told the Governor he should seek service in the Regular Army. The Governor then issued to him the

above commission, which he at once proceeded to execute. Failing to get arms, either at St. Louis or Fort Leavenworth, he went direct to Washington. On his arrival there, Cameron, then Secretary of War, said "every State was applying for arms and he had none to give them." Gen. Fitz Henry Warren went with him, and they urged the matter so strenuously that Cameron told Dodge that if he could find any arms, he could take them. He did find some arms, and he took them, for he had a friend in the Ordnance Department that put him on track of 6,000 smooth-bore Springfield muskets, which he got upon the order, which he sent at once, in charge of a man, to Davenport and Quincy, where they were used to arm the Second and Third Iowa Regiments and afterwards the Fourth. Some of them were used to displace old guns formerly issued that were so old, thin and poor they were as likely to kill those who fired them as those at whom they were fired.

Cameron offered him a captaincy in the Fifteenth United States Infantry, and after obtaining the arms, the colonelcy of the Fourth Iowa. The latter was tendered him, as Cameron said, in consideration of his successful efforts in obtaining arms, when such men as Senator Grimes, Gen. S. R. Curtis and others had failed. He telegraphed the Governor, "Shall I accept?" and got an affirmative answer.

Cameron and Warren both wished him to take the brigadier-generalship afterwards offered to and finally obtained by Curtis, but he declined it, not then having confidence in himself of being able to fill it, and lacking in experience, though he had a thorough and complete military education.

Gen. Grant, in after years, said he was the best railroad builder and the best railroad destroyer in the Federal army. In destroying Rebel railroads he could give the heated rails a twist which nothing but Federal ingenuity and Federal machinery could untwist.

Of the military company under Capt. Dodge and other ones like it, Governor Lowe, in his last message, said:

"There are several independent military companies in the State to whom arms have been distributed. Yet there is no law of the State under which they are organized, or that would strictly authorize the Executive to call them into the field in cases requiring their services."

The Governor has never been blessed with children of his own, and yet his home has rarely been without more or less of those of his own kindred, and it has been a great gratification to him, as well as to his matronly wife, to have them under their parental care. The Kirkwood hearthstone has always been one around and on which children were welcome to prank and play, and a couple of grandchildren, son and daughter of an adopted daughter of Governor and Mrs. Kirkwood, are occupying it for that purpose to-day; and there they will be welcome as long as the embers remain warm upon it. The one who was most near and dear to them was one who bore his name, Samuel Kirkwood Clark, son of his brother-in-law, Hon. Ezekiel Clark, and he went to live with his uncle almost from the time of leaving his cradle, his mother dying when he was but five years old, and he grew up to the age of incipient manhood, if not the pet, at least the pride of the family. He was endowed with all those stern, rugged virtues in his love of truth and justice that would have made him, with his training under his uncle, a fit person upon whom the mantle of that uncle could most fitly fall when it should leave the shoulders of him who had first worn it. But though he was the crown jewel of the family, he was a willing offering on the altar of his country's good. He gave himself to her service at his nation's call, enlisting November, 1861, at the age of eighteen, in the Fourth Iowa Cavalry. He filled the post of second lieutenant until his promotion to the position of adjutant in the Twenty-fifth Iowa Infantry. Engaging in the battle of Arkansas Post, on the 11th of January, 1863, he received a severe wound,