BIOGRAPHICAL 21 



and night sessions, and at its close each and all the law- 

 yers engaged showed evident signs of exhaustion, except 

 Major Lacey. He seemed to me as fresh and vigorous as 

 at the beginning. 



He had been a youthful soldier and officer in the great 

 Civil War, and he has unconsciously disclosed much of 

 his own heroic career in the sketches he has drawn of 

 General Samuel A. Rice and Major-General Frederick 

 Steele. 3 While in those sketches he modestly refrains 

 from saying scarcely anything of himself, the halo he has 

 shed upon the career of his subjects reflects itself upon 

 his own, for he was an active participant in the scenes he 

 describes. 



To the Oskaloosa Daily Herald of October 4, 1913, 1 am 

 indebted for many of the details of his military services. 

 On the outbreak of the Civil War, when not fully out of 

 his teens, he was among the first to respond to the Pres- 

 ident's call for volunteers, and was the fifth person to get 

 his name down upon the enlistment muster roll. He left 

 Oskaloosa on his twentieth birthday, May 30, 1861, to en- 

 ter the service as a private in Company H of the Third 

 regiment of Iowa Infantry. This regiment was sworn 

 into service at Keokuk, Iowa, in June, 1861. The details 

 of its service will be found in Stuart's Iowa Colonels and 

 Regiments, page 83. Its early service was in north Mis- 

 souri and its first severe battle was that of Blue Mills 

 Landing, on the Missouri River, not far below Kansas 

 City, and nearly opposite the town of Liberty. The com- 

 mand was under the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel John 

 Scott. The engagement was a severe one, and Lacey 

 among others was taken prisoner, and carried to Lexing- 

 ton, Mo. He was later paroled, and discharged as a pa- 

 roled prisoner, in November, 1861. He was fully released 

 by subsequent exchange of prisoners. 



3 Annals of Iowa, vol. iii, third series, 424. 



