Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1886 — Fearless General Rosecrans. [ARTICLE]

Fearless General Rosecrans.

“General Eosecrans was the most fearless, as well as the most popular, man in the powder business that I ever met. Some years ago he was experimenting with nitro-glycerine and chloride of potash. He was also trying to make a new kind of percussion cap. Every afternoon he would go out to the old stone-quarry and make experiments with dynamite there, the Mayor having granted him permission to do so. He had taken quite a fancy to me, and he’d come around and take me out there with him. I never saw a man experiment with explosives as carelessly as he aid, and, as I did not care to be blown to pieces myself, I kept warning him of the risks he kept incurring. His only reply was: ‘When a man’s time comes it comes.’ He appeared to be a fatalist, and would not believe that a person could be killed before it was allotted for him to die. One day he had some nitro glycerine in a pan and was doing something with it. I knew it would explode in the hot sun and said: ‘General, look out. That’s going to explode.’ He did not seem to care, and I warned him again, but he kept on with his experiments, repeating that phrase of his about a men’s time coming only when it was appointed. He needed some tool that was lying a short distance off and wentover to get it. He was about twenty or thirty feet away xvlien the nitro-glycer-ine exploded. It did not disconcert him in the least. He remarked without any emotion: ‘Well, that was a pretty close call,’ and resumed his experiments. It was a wonder to me how he ever escaped death out there.”