Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1898 — FAME FOR SHAFTER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FAME FOR SHAFTER.

HOW THE CONQUEROR OF SANTI* AGO HAS RISEN. Hl*Career an Example of America** Possibilities - Yearne-l for Military Life While Working Upon a FarmSapid Promotion in the Civil War. His Glory Self-Won. Major General William Rufus Shatter, conqueror of Santiago, military hero In the war with Spain, was born, and grew to manhood near Galesburg, Micb., and many are tbe stories that are being told of bis boyhood by men Who knew him when he was a lanky, barefooted lad, working on his father's farm. General Shatter’s career is an object lesson upon the glorious possibilities of this land of the free. He was like Abrabam Lincoln. He was a commoner. He grew right up out of the soil. If the civil war had not come along it is possible thajt General Shafter would still be a Michigan farmer. He never had a taste for tbe husbaudman’fl life. As a boy he groaned over his work—not that he did not like work,

but that he detested what work he had to do. His father was the plainest of plain farmers. Ills mother was a farmer’s wife, whose life's horizon was bounded by her kitchen, her poultryyard, her “front room” and the meet-ing-house. The elder Shatter was a Michigan pioneer who hewed wood and drew water and built the traditional log house with its one and a half stories, and brought up his two sons, John

and William, In tbe fear of God and to hard work. The military soul of William—and of John, for that matter—revolted against the field and harvest and the sowing and the reaping. William had an ambition to go to West Point, but the military academy was as far beyond his reach as was the lost Pleiad. He might as well have pined for the crown of Russia. He knew he wished to be one thing—a soldier—and he knew there was not the remotest chance to gratify his ambition. One thing, however, he could do. He could read books. Higher education does not particularly help a man to make hay and guide a plow, and young Shafter got no schooling. But he read history, chiefly about battles and armies and arms. He saw mistakes that were made by the world's generals. He read up on mathematics, and carried his intellect high among the refinements of ratios and . equations. He studied the growth of the modern regiment from the battle line of the Greeks through the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion down to the modern soldier with his cartridges and his gun. So was spent his youth and his manhood. Working on the farm, reading his books, longing and thirsting for opportunity with the military academy on another planet! He was born in the log house his father built and lived within Its narrow walls until he was 25 years old. The old house still stands. Hugh Shafter, the father, and Mrs. Shafter died long since, and their graves are within a five minutes’ walk of the house. Hugh Shafter was a model father, and John and William were model sons. They were obedient and filial. The life of that family was as dull and uneventful as that of any agricultural household. William’s ambition for militarism was apparentlyhopeless, and he had just begun to reconcile himself to a life of drudgery when the bugle blast from the lips of “tbe great commoner” in tbe White House roused the nation to arms and thrilled the very nerves of the whole people. Young Shafter was at last to have his way. The two brothers went to the war and the patriotic father bade them a sturdy good-by. William enlisted as a lieutenant in the Seventh Michigan infantry. His commission bore date of Aug. 22, 1861. He was exceptionally gallant. War to him was pabulum. He burned with it. He fought so well that he was a major within a month. Two years later he was made a lieutenant colonel, and toward the end of the war he was brevetted brigadier general. Career in the Civil War. William Shatter’s exploits in the war cover the siege of Yorktown, West Point, Fair Oaks, Savage Station, Glendale and Malvern Hill. His broth-. er John had meanwhile won the rank of captain. When peace came they returned to the farm and went to plowing, sowing and reaping once more. But both entered applications for commissions in the regular army. After two years of woodchopping the brothers were ordered to St. Louis to pass the examination. Both came out of it with flying colors, and were about to be commissioned when the father objected. One of his boys must stay at home, and John, owing to bis. inferior rank, agreed to let his brother have the prize. William Shafter was given a lieutenant colonelcy and was ordered to the Forty-first Infantry. For thirty yeears he lived beyond the mountains or in them, and the people of the East did not know his name. For nearly twenty years he was the colonel of tbe First infantry, and saw men rise from posts subordinate to his to be brigadier generals. He did what be thought wag best for his regiment, and not always what his officers would have Uked him to do. He bore up brarely node? tbe strew o t tbie oppo> tfn !f w if* w*n m\m

McKinley made him a brigadier general. When the general got his brigadier’s straps he was placed In command at San Francisco. His life In the West and on the coast bad the usual effect It made him a heavy weight. He Is a tremendously big man. Almost six feet tall—rare stature for a commander—he weighs 300 pounds, and his avoirdupois has been the occasion of many a jest which be hss taken pretty welt He has a will that Is In keeping with his physique. What he wills to do he does, He has the heroic stuff of a Grant in bis make-up.

GEN. WM. R. SHIAFTER.

LOG HOUSE IN WHICH GEN. SHAFTER WAS BORN.