December 1865Dr. Tyler Stemp
Physician and Pharmacist
Kearney, Missouri
I was thirty-two years old when the surrender came and, like a weary child, I just wanted to go home. I was a surgeon under Sterling Price and Sidney Marion Keats, and I had seen too much. So when Jax Brown called me into his tent—that last, mad night in camp—and informed me of his plan for empire, I was less than receptive.
“Are you still a patriot, sir? Do you still believe in honor?”
Hopes, dreams, bitterness, and fear all mingled in the air that night, rising, like vapors, to infect all who breathed them.
“Do you love the South, sir?” Jax Brown asked. “Do you believe in glory?”
“No,” I shook my head. “Not any more. I believed in all those things, once, but I’ve seen too much death and too many horrors.”
“Bu
