Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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Unlike most of the gamblers and roughs, who for the most part sympathized with the Confederates, Pinkham was an intense Union man. He never lost an opportunity to proclaim his attachment for the Union cause, and denounced as traitors all who opposed it. No fear of personal injury restrained him in the utterance of his patriotic sentiments, and as he always avowed a readiness to fight for them, his opponents were careful to afford him no opportunity. At every election in Idaho City after the organization of the Territory, he was found at the polls surrounded by a set of plucky fellows armed to the teeth, ready at his command for any violent collisions with secessionists that the occasion might arouse. His tall form, rendered more conspicuous by the loud and inspiring voice with which, to the cries of “negro worshippers,” “abolitionists,” and “Lincoln hirelings,” he shouted back “secessionists,” “copperheads,” “rebels,” and “traitors,” was always the centre of a circle of men who would oppose force to force and return shot for shot.