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Title: The Southerner
A Romance of the Real Lincoln
Author: Thomas Dixon
Illustrator: J. N. Marchand
Release Date: August 28, 2006 [EBook #19135]
Language: English
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THE SOUTHERNER
_A ROMANCE OF THE REAL LINCOLN_
BY
THOMAS DIXON
_"Have you never realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted
on the West, is essentially, in personnel and character, a Southern
contribution?"_--WALT WHITMAN.
ILLUSTRATED BY J. N. MARCHAND
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THOMAS DIXON
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into all
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_
Printed in the United States of America
* * * * *
DEDICATED TO
OUR FIRST SOUTHERN-BORN PRESIDENT SINCE LINCOLN,
MY FRIEND AND COLLEGEMATE WOODROW WILSON
* * * * *
THE SOUTHERNER
BOOKS BY MR. DIXON
The Southerner
The Sins of the Father
The Leopard's Spots
The Clansman
The Traitor
***
The One Woman
Comrades
The Root of Evil
***
The Life Worth Living
[Illustration: "From a thousand throats rose the cry: 'Lee to the
rear!'"]
TO THE READER
_Lest my readers should feel that certain incidents of this story are
startling and improbable, I wish to say that every word in it relating
to the issues of our national life has been drawn from authentic records
in my possession. Nor have I at any point taken a liberty with an
essential detail in historical scenes._
THOMAS DIXON.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER
I. THE MAN OF THE HOUR
II. JANGLING VOICES
III. IN BETTY'S GARDEN
IV. A PAIR OF YOUNG EYES
V. THE FIRST SHOT
VI. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
VII. LOVE AND DUTY
VIII. THE TRIAL BY FIRE
IX. VICTORY IN DEFEAT
X. THE AWAKENING
XI. THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
XII. LOVE AND PRIDE
XIII. THE SPIRES OF RICHMOND
XIV. THE RETREAT
XV. TANGLED THREADS
XVI. THE CHALLENGE
XVII. THE DAY'S WORK
XVIII. DIPLOMACY
XIX. THE REBEL
XX. THE INSULT
XXI. THE BLOODIEST DAY
XXII. BENEATH THE SKIN
XXIII. THE USURPER
XXIV. THE CONSPIRACY
XXV. THE TUG OF WAR
XXVI. THE REST HOUR
XXVII. DEEPENING SHADOWS
XXVIII. THE MOONLIT RIVER
XXIX. THE PANIC
XXX. SUNSHINE AND STORM
XXXI. BETWEEN THE LINES
XXXII. THE WHIRLWIND
XXXIII. THE BROTHERS MEET
XXXIV. LOVE'S PLEDGE
XXXV. THE DARKEST HOUR
XXXVI. THE ASSASSIN
XXXVII. MR. DAVIS SPEAKS
XXXVIII. THE STOLEN MARCH
XXXIX. VICTORY
XL. WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"From a thousand throats rose the cry: 'Lee
to the rear!'" _Frontispiece_.
"'Be a man among men, for your mother's
sake--'"
"'Good-bye--Ned!' she breathed softly."
"Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm
lips."
"'You're a brave man, Ned Vaughan.'"
"Waving his plumed hat ... he put himself at
the head of his troops and charged."
LEADING CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
1809-1818
_Scene: A Cabin in the Woods_
TOM, A Man of the Forest and Stream.
NANCY, The Woman Who Saw a Vision.
THE BOY, Her Son.
DENNIS, His Cousin.
BONEY, A Fighting Coon Dog.
1861-1865
_Scene: The White House_
SENATOR GILBERT WINTER, The Radical Leader.
BETTY, His Daughter.
JOHN VAUGHAN, A Union Soldier.
NED VAUGHAN, His Brother, a Rebel.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, The President.
MRS. LINCOLN, His Wife.
PHOEBE, Her Maid.
JULIUS CÆSAR THORNTON, Who Was Volunteered.
COLONEL NICOLAY, The President's Secretary.
MAJOR JOHN HAY, Assistant Secretary.
WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN, Who Stole a March.
GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, The Man on Horseback.
ROBERT E. LEE, The Southern Commander.
THE SOUTHERNER
PROLOGUE
I
Tom seated himself at the table and looked into his wife's face with a
smile:
"Nancy, it's a meal fit for a king!"
The supper over, he smoked his pipe before the cabin fire of blazing
logs, while she cleared the wooden dishes. He watched her get the paper,
goose-quill pen and ink as a prisoner sees the scaffold building for his
execution.
"Now we're all ready," she said cheerfully.
The man laid his pipe down with a helpless look. A brief respite flashed
through his mind. Maybe he could sidestep the lessons before she pinned
him down.
"Lord, Nancy, I forgot my gun. I must grease her right away," he cried.
He rose with a quick decisive movement and took his rifle from the rack.
She knew it was useless to protest and let him have his way.
Over every inch of its heavy barrel and polished walnut stock he rubbed
a piece of greased linen with loving care, drew back the flint-lock and
greased carefully every nook and turn of its mechanism, lifted the gun
finally to his shoulder and drew an imaginary bead on the head of a
turkey gobbler two hundred yards away. A glowing coal of hickory wood in
the fire served for his game.
He lowered the gun and held it before him with pride:
"Nancy, she's the dandiest piece o' iron that wuz ever twisted inter the
shape of a weepon. Old 'Speakeasy's her name! She's got the softest
voice that ever whispered death to a varmint or an Injun--hit ain't much
louder'n the crack of a whip, but, man alive, when she talks she says
somethin'. 'Kerpeow!' she whispers soft an' low! She's got a voice like
yourn, Nancy--kinder sighs when she speaks----"
"Well," the wife broke in with a shake of her dark head, "has mother's
little boy played long enough with his toy?"
"I reckon so," Tom laughed.
"Then it's time for school." She gently took the rifle from his hands,
placed it on the buck horns and took her seat at the table.
The man looked ruefully at the stool, suddenly straightened his massive
frame, lifted his hand above his head and cocked his eye inquiringly:
"May I git er drink er water fust?"
The teacher laughed in spite of herself:
"Yes, you big lubber, and hurry up."
Tom seized the water bucket and started for the door.
"Where are you going?" she cried in dismay.
"I'll jest run down to the spring fer a fresh bucket----"
"O Tom!" she exclaimed.
"I'll be right back in a minute, Honey," he protested softly. "Hit's
goin' ter be powerful hot--I'll need a whole bucket time I'm through."
Before she could answer he was gone.
He managed to stay nearly a half hour. She put the baby to sleep and sat
waiting with her pensive young eyes gazing at the leaping flames. She
heard him stop and answer the call of an owl from the woods. A
whip-poor-will was softly singing from the bushes nearby. He stopped to
call him also, and then found an excuse to linger ten minutes more
fooling with his dogs.
The laggard came at last and dropped on his stool by her side. He sat
for five minutes staring helplessly at the copy she had set. Big beads
of perspiration stood on his forehead when he took the pen. He held it
awkwardly and timidly as if it were a live reptile. She took his clumsy
hand in hers and showed him how to hold it.
"My, but yo' hand's soft an' sweet, Nancy,--jest lemme hold that a
while----"
She rapped his knuckles.
"All right, teacher, I'll be good," he protested, and bent his huge
shoulders low over his task. He bore so hard on the frail quill pen the
ink ran in a big blot.
"Not so hard, Tom!" she cried.
"But I got so much strenk in my right arm I jist can't hold it back."
"You must try again."
He tried again and made a heavy tremulous line. His arm moved at a
snail's gait and wobbled frightfully.
"Make the line quicker," she urged encouragingly. "Begin at the top and
come down----"
"Here, you show me how!"
She took his rough hand quietly in hers, and guided it swiftly from
right to left in straight smooth lines until a dozen were made, when he
suddenly drew her close, kissed her lips, and held the slender fingers
in a grip of iron. She lay still in his embrace for a moment, released
herself and turned from him with a sigh. He drew her quickly to the
light of the fire and saw the unshed tears in her eyes.
"What's the use ter worry, Nancy gal?" he said. "Give it up ez a bad
job. I wouldn't fool with no sech scholar ef I wuz you. Ye can't teach
an old dog new tricks----"
"I won't give up!" she cried with sudden energy. "I can teach you and I
will. I won't give up and be nobody. O Tom, you promised me before we
were married to let me teach you--didn't you promise?"
"Yes, Honey, I did----" he paused and his fine teeth gleamed through the
black beard--"but ye know a feller'll promise any thing ter git his
gal----"
"Didn't you mean to keep your word?" She broke in sharply.
"Of course I did, Nancy, I never wuz more earnest in my life--'ceptin
when I got religion. But I had no idee larnin' come so hard. I'd ruther
fight Injuns an' wil' cats or rob a bee tree any day than ter tackle
them pot hooks you're sickin' after me----"
"Well, I won't give up," she interrupted impatiently, "and you'd just as
well make up your mind to stick to it. You can do what other men have
done. You're good, honest and true, you're kindhearted and popular.
They've already made you the road supervisor of this township. Learn to
read and write and you can make a good speech and go to the
Legislature."
"Ah, Nancy, what do ye want me ter do that fur, anyhow, gal? I'd be the
happiest man in the world right here in this cabin by the woods ef you'd
jest be happy with me. Can't ye quit hankerin' after them things,
Honey?"
She shook her dark head firmly.
"You know, Nancy, we wuz neighbors to Dan'l Boone. We thought he wuz
about the biggest man that ever lived. Somehow the love o' the woods an'
fields is always singin' in my heart. Them still shinin' stars up in the
sky out thar to-night keep a callin' me. I could hear the music o' my
hounds in my soul ez I stood by the spring a while ago. Ye know what
scares me most ter death sometimes, gal?" He paused and looked into her
eyes intently.
"No, what?" she asked.
"That you'll make a carpenter outen me yit ef I don't mind."
Again a smile broke through the cloud in her eyes: "I don't think
there's much danger of _that_, Tom----"
"Yes ther is, too," he laughed. "Ye see, I love you so and try ter make
ye happy, an' ef there wuz ter come er time that there wuz plenty o'
work an' real money in it, I'd stick to it jist ter please you, an' be a
lost an' ruined soul! Yessir, they'd carve on my headstone jest one
line:
"BORN A MAN--AND DIED A JACKLEG CARPENTER.
"Wouldn't that be awful?"
The momentary smile on the woman's sensitive face faded into a look of
pain. She tried to make a good-natured reply, but her lips refused to
move.
The man pressed on eagerly:
"O Nancy, why can't ye be happy here? We've a snug little cabin nest,
we've enough to eat and enough to wear. The baby's laughin' at yer heels
all day and snugglin' in her little bed at night. The birds make music
fur ye in the trees. The creek down thar's laughin' an' singing' winter
an' summer. The world's too purty an' life's too short ter throw hit
away fightin' an' scramblin' fur nothin'."
"For something--Tom--something big----"
"Don't keer how big 'tis--what of it? All turns ter ashes in yer hands
bye an' bye an' yer life's gone. We can't live these young days over
again, can we? Ye know the preacher says: 'What shall hit profit a man
ef he gain the whole world an' lose his life?' Let me off'n these
lessons, Honey? I'm too old; ye can't larn me new tricks now. Let me off
fer good an' all, won't ye?"
"No," was the firm answer. "It means too much. I won't give up and let
the man I love sign his name forever with a cross mark."
"I ain't goin' ter sign no more papers nohow!" Tom broke in.
"I signed our marriage bond with a mark, Tom," she went on evenly, "just
because you couldn't write your name. You've got to learn, I won't give
up!"
"Well, it's too late to-night fur any more lessons, now _ain't_ it?"
"Yes, we'll make up for it next time."
The tired hunter was soon sound asleep dreaming of the life that was the
breath of his nostrils.
Through the still winter's night the young wife lay with wide staring
eyes. Over and over again she weighed her chances in the grim struggle
begun for the mastery of his mind. The longer she asked herself the
question of success or failure the more doubtful seemed the outcome. How
still the world!
The new life within her strong young body suddenly stirred, and a
feeling of awe thrilled her heart. God had suddenly signalled from the
shores of Eternity.
When her husband waked at dawn he stared at her smiling face in
surprise.
"What ye laughin' about, Nancy?" he cried.
She turned toward him with a startled look:
"I had a vision, Tom!"
"A dream, I reckon."
"God had answered the prayer of my heart," she went on breathlessly,
"and sent me a son. I saw him a strong, brave, patient, wise, gentle
man. Thousands hung on his words and great men came to do him homage.
With bowed head he led me into a beautiful home that had shining white
pillars. He bowed low and whispered in my ear: 'This is yours, my angel
mother. I bought it for you with my life. All that I am I owe to you.'"
She paused a moment and whispered:
"O Tom, man, a new song is singing in my soul!"
II
The woman rose quietly and went the rounds of her daily work. She made
her bed to-day in trance-like silence. It was no gilded couch, but it
had been built by the hand of her lover and was sacred. It filled the
space in one corner of the cabin farthest from the fire. A single post
of straight cedar securely fixed in the ground held the poles in place
which formed the side and foot rail. The walls of the cabin formed the
other side and head. Across from the pole were fixed the slender hickory
sticks that formed the springy hammock on which the first mattress of
moss and grass rested. On this was placed a feather bed made from the
wild fowl Tom had killed during the past two years. The pillows were of
the finest feathers from the breasts of ducks. A single quilt of ample
size covered all, and over this was thrown a huge counterpane of bear
skins. Two enormous bear rugs almost completely covered the dirt floor,
and a carpet of oak leaves filled out the spaces.
The feather bed beaten smooth, the fur covering drawn in place and the
pillows set upright against the cabin wall, she turned to the two bunks
in the opposite corner and carefully re-arranged them. They might be
used soon. This was the corner of her home set aside for guests. Tom had
skillfully built two berths boat fashion, one above the other, in this
corner, and a curtain drawn over a smooth wooden rod cut this space off
from the rest of the room when occupied at night by visitors.
The master of this cabin never allowed a stranger to pass without urging
him to stop and in a way that took no denial.
A savory dish of stewed squirrel and corn dumplings served for lunch.
The baby's face was one glorious smear of joy and grease at its finish.
The mother took the bucket from its shelf and walked leisurely to the
spring, whose limpid waters gushed from a rock at the foot of the hill.
The child toddled after her, the little moccasined feet stepping
gingerly over the sharp gravel of the rough places.
Before filling the bucket she listened again for the crack of Tom's
rifle, and could hear nothing. A death-like stillness brooded over the
woods and fields. He was probably watching for muskrat under the bluff
of the creek. He had promised to stay within call to-day.
The afternoon dragged wearily. She tried to read the one book she
possessed, the Bible. The pages seemed to fade and the eyes refused to
see.
"O Man, Man, why don't you come home!" she cried at last.
She rose, walked to the door, looked and listened--only the distant
rattle of a woodpecker's beak on a dead tree in the woods. The snow
began to fall in little fitful dabs. It was two miles to the nearest
cabin, and her soul rose in fierce rebellion at her loneliness. It was
easy for a man who loved the woods, the fields and running waters, this
life, but for the woman who must wait and long and eat her heart out
alone--she vowed anew that she would not endure it. By the sheer pull of
her will she would lift this man from his drifting life and make him
take his place in the real battle of the world. If her new baby were
only a boy, he could help her and she would win. Again she stood
dreaming of the vision she had seen at dawn.
The dark young face suddenly went white and her hand gripped the facing
of the door.
She waited half doubting, half amused at her fears. It was only the
twinge of a muscle perhaps. She smiled at her sudden panic. The thought
had scarcely formed before she blanched the second time and the firm
lips came together with sudden energy as she glanced at the child
playing on the rug at her feet.
She seized the horn that hung beside the door and blew the pioneer's
long call of danger. Its shrill note rang through the woods against the
hills in cadences that seemed half muffled by the falling snow.
Again her anxious eyes looked from the doorway. Would he never come! The
trembling slender hand once more lifted the horn, a single wild note
rang out and broke suddenly into silence. The horn fell from her limp
grasp and she lifted her eyes to the darkening sky in prayer, as Tom's
voice from the edge of the woods came strong and full:
"Yes, Honey, I'm comin'!"
There was no question of doctor or nurse. The young pioneer mother only
asked for her mate.
For two fearful hours she gripped his rough hands until at last her
nails brought the blood, but the man didn't know or care. Every
smothered cry that came from her lips began to tear the heart out of his
body at last. He could hold the long pent agony no longer without words.
"My God, Nancy, what can I do for ye, Honey?"
Her breath came in gasps and her eyes were shining with a strange
intensity.
"Nothing, Tom, nothing now--I'm looking Death in the face and I'm not
afraid----"
"Please lemme give ye some whiskey," he pleaded, pressing the glass to
her lips.
"No--no, take it away--I hate it. My baby shall be clean and strong or I
want to die."
The decision seemed to brace her spirit for the last test when the
trembling feet entered the shadows of the dim valley that lies between
Life and Death.
The dark, slender figure lay still and white at last. A sharp cry from
lusty lungs, and the grey eyes slowly opened, with a timid wondering
look.
"Tom!" she cried with quick eager tones.
"Yes, Nancy, yes!"
"A boy?"
"Of course--and a buster he is, too."
"Give him to me--quick!"
The stalwart figure bent over the bed and laid the little red bundle in
her arms. She pressed him tenderly to her heart, felt his breath on her
breast and the joyous tears slowly poured down her cheeks.
III
Before the first year of the boy's life had passed the task of teaching
his good-natured, stubborn father became impossible. The best the wife
could do was to make him trace his name in sprawling letters that
resembled writing and painfully spell his way through the simplest
passages in the Bible.
The day she gave up was one of dumb despair. She resolved at last to
live in her boy. All she had hoped and dreamed of life should be his and
he would be hers. Her hands could make him good or bad, brave or
cowardly, noble or ignoble.
He was a remarkable child physically, and grew out of his clothes faster
than she could make them. It was easy to see from his second year that
he would be a man of extraordinary stature. Both mother and father were
above the average height, but he would overtop them both. When he
tumbled over the bear rugs on the cabin floor his father would roar with
laughter:
"For the Lord's sake, Nancy, look at them legs! They're windin' blades.
Ef he ever gits grown, he won't have ter ax fer a blessin', he kin jest
reach up an' hand it down hisself!"
He was four years old when he got the first vision of his mother that
time should never blot out. His father was away on a carpenter job of
four days. Sleeping in the lower bunk in the corner, he waked with a
start to hear the chickens cackling loudly. His mother was quietly
dressing. He leaped to his feet shivering in the dark and whispered:
"What is it, Ma?"
"Something's after the chickens."
"Not a hawk?"
"No, nor an owl, or fox, or weasel--or they'd squall--they're cackling."
The rooster cackled louder than ever and the Boy recognized the voice of
his speckled hen accompanying him. How weird it sounded in the darkness
of the still spring night! The cold chills ran down his back and he
caught his mother's dress as she reached for the rifle that stood beside
her bed.
"You're not goin' out there, Ma?" the Boy protested.
"Yes. It's a dirty thief after our horse."
Her voice was low and steady and her hand was without tremor as she
grasped his.
"Get back in bed. I won't be gone a minute."
She left the cabin and noiselessly walked toward the low shed in which
the horse was stabled.
The Boy was at her heels. She knew and rejoiced in the love that made
him brave for her sake.
She paused a moment, listened, and then lifted her tall, slim form and
advanced steadily. Her bare feet made no noise. The waning moon was
shining with soft radiance. The Boy's heart was in his throat as he
watched her slender neck and head outlined against the sky. Never had he
seen anything so calm and utterly brave.
There was a slight noise at the stable. The chickens cackled with louder
call. Five minutes passed and they were silent. A shadowy figure
appeared at the corner of the stable. She raised the rifle and flashed a
dagger-like flame into the darkness.
A smothered cry, the shadow leaped the fence and the beat of swift feet
could be heard in the distance.
The Boy clung close to her side and his voice was husky as he spoke:
"Ain't you afraid, Ma?"
The calm answer rang forever through his memory:
"I don't know what fear means, my Boy. It's not the first time I've
caught these prowling scoundrels."
Next morning he saw the dark blood marks on the trail over which the
thief had fled, and looked into his mother's wistful grey eyes with a
new reverence and awe.
IV
The Boy was quick to know and love the birds of hedge and field and
woods. The martins that built in his gourds on the tall pole had opened
his eyes. The red and bluebirds, the thrush, the wren, the robin, the
catbird, and song sparrows were his daily companions.
A mocking-bird came at last to build her nest in a bush beside the
garden, and her mate began to make the sky ring with his song. The
puzzle of the feathered tribe whose habits he couldn't fathom was the
whip-poor-will. His mother seemed to dislike his ominous sound. But the
soft mournful notes appealed to the Boy's fancy. Often at night he sat
in the doorway of the cabin watching the gathering shadows and the
flicker of the fire when supper was cooking, listening to the tireless
song within a few feet of the house.
"Why don't you like 'em, Ma?" he asked, while one was singing with
unusually deep and haunting voice so near the cabin that its echo seemed
to come from the chimney jamb.
It was some time before she replied:
"They say it's a sign of death for them to come so close to the house."
The Boy laughed:
"You don't believe it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I like 'em," he stoutly declared. "I like to feel the cold
shivers when they sing right under my feet. You're not afraid of a
little whip-poor-will?"
He looked up into her sombre face with a smile.
"No," was the gentle answer, "but I want to live to see my Boy a fine
strong man," she paused, stooped, and drew him into her arms.
There was something in her tones that brought a lump into his throat.
The moon was shining in the full white glory of the Southern spring. A
night of marvellous beauty enfolded the little cabin. He looked into her
eyes and they were shining with tears.
"What's the matter?" he asked tenderly.
"Nothing, Boy, I'm just dreaming of you!"
* * * * *
The first day of the fall in his sixth year he asked his mother to let
him go to the next corn-shucking.
"You're too little a boy."
"I can shuck corn," he stoutly argued.
"You'll be good, if I let you go?" she asked.
"What's to hurt me there?"
"Nothing, unless you let it. The men drink whiskey, the girls dance.
Sometimes there's a quarrel or fight."
"It won't hurt me ef I 'tend to my own business, will it?"
"Nothing will ever hurt you, if you'll just do that, Boy," the father
broke in.
"May I go?"
"Yes, we're invited next week to a quilting and corn-shucking. I'll go
with you."
The Boy shouted for joy and counted the days until the wonderful event.
They left home at two o'clock in the wagon. The quilting began at three,
the corn-shucking at sundown.
The house was a marvellous structure to the Boy's excited imagination.
It was the first home he had ever seen not built of logs.
"Why, Ma," he cried in open-eyed wonder, "there ain't no logs in the
house! How did they ever put it together?"
"With bricks and mortar."
The Boy couldn't keep his eyes off this building. It was a simple,
one-story square structure of four rooms and an attic, with little
dormer windows peeping from the four sides of the pointed roof.
McDonald, the thrifty Scotch-Irishman, from the old world, had built it
of bricks he had ground and burnt on his own place.
The dormer windows peeping from the roof caught the Boy's fancy.
"Do you reckon his boys sleep up there and peep out of them holes?"
The mother smiled.
"Maybe so."
"Why don't we build a house like that?" he asked at last. "Don't you
want it?"
The mother squeezed his little hand:
"When you're a man will you build your mother one?"
He looked into her eyes a moment, caught the pensive longing and
answered:
"Yes. I will."
She stooped and kissed the firm mouth and was about to lead him into the
large work-room where the women were gathering around the quilts
stretched on their frames, when a negro slave suddenly appeared to take
her horse to the stable. He was fat, jolly and coal black. His yellow
teeth gleamed in their blue gums with a jovial welcome.
The Boy stood rooted to the spot and watched until the negro
disappeared. It was the first black man he had ever seen. He had heard
of negroes and that they were slaves. But he had no idea that one human
being could be so different from another.
In breathless awe he asked:
"Is he folks?"
"Of course, Boy," his mother answered, smiling.
"What made him so black?"
"The sun in Africa."
"What made his nose so flat and his lips so thick?"
"He was born that way."
"What made him come here?"
"He didn't. The slave traders put him in chains and brought him across
the sea and sold him into slavery."
The little body suddenly stiffened:
"Why didn't he kill 'em?"
"He didn't know how to defend himself."
"Why don't he run away?"
"He hasn't sense enough, I reckon. He's got a home, plenty to eat and
plenty to wear, and he's afraid he'll be caught and whipped."
The mother had to pull the Boy with her into the quilting room. His eyes
followed the negro to the stable with a strange fascination. The thing
that puzzled him beyond all comprehension was why a big strong man like
that, if he were a man, would submit. Why didn't he fight and die? A
curious feeling of contempt filled his mind. This black thing that
looked like a man, walked like a man and talked like a man couldn't be
one! No real man would grin and laugh and be a slave. The black fool
seemed to be happy. He had not only grinned and laughed, but he went
away whistling and singing.
In three hours the quilts were finished and the men had gathered for the
corn-shucking.
Before eight o'clock the last ear was shucked, and a long white pile of
clean husked corn lay glistening in the moonlight where the dark pyramid
had stood at sunset.
With a shout the men rose, stretched their legs and washed their hands
in the troughs filled with water, provided for the occasion. They sat
down to supper at four long tables placed in the kitchen and work room,
where the quilts had been stretched.
Never had the Boy seen such a feast--barbecued shoat, turkeys, ducks,
chickens, venison, bear meat, sweet potatoes, wild honey, corn dodgers,
wheat biscuit, stickies and pound cake--pound cake until you couldn't
eat another mouthful and still they brought more!
After the supper the young folks sang and danced before the big fires
until ten o'clock, and then the crowd began to thin, and by eleven the
last man was gone and the harvest festival was over.
It was nearly twelve before the Boy knelt at his mother's knee to say
his prayers.
When the last words were spoken he still knelt, his eyes gazing into the
flickering fire.
The mother bent low:
"What are you thinking about, Boy? The house you're going to build for
me?"
"No."
"What?"
"That nigger--wasn't he funny? You don't want me to get you any niggers
with the house do you?"
"No."
"I didn't think you would," he went on thoughtfully, "because you said
General Washington set his slaves free and wanted everybody else to do
it too."
He paused and shook his head thoughtfully. "But he was funny--he was
laughin' and whistlin' and singin'!"
V
The air of the Southern autumn was like wine. The Boy's heart beat with
new life. The scarlet and purple glory of the woods fired his
imagination. He found himself whistling and singing at his tasks. He
proudly showed a bee tree to his mother, the honey was gathered and
safely stored. A barrel of walnuts, a barrel of hickory-nuts and two
bushels of chestnuts were piled near his bed in the loft.
But the day his martins left, he came near breaking down. He saw them
circle high in graceful sweeping curves over the gourds, chattering and
laughing with a strange new note in their cries.
He watched them wistfully. His mother found him looking with shining
eyes far up into the still autumn sky. His voice was weak and unsteady
when he spoke:
"I--can--hardly--hear--'em--now; they're so high!"
A slender hand touched his tangled hair:
"Don't worry, Boy, they'll come again."
"You're sure, Ma?" he asked, pathetically.
"Sure."
"Will they know when it's time?"
"Some one always tells them."
"Who?"
"God. That's what the Bible means when it says, 'the stork knoweth her
appointed time.' I read that to you the other night, don't you
remember?"
"But maybe God'll be so busy he'll forget my birds?"
"He never forgets, he counts the beat of a sparrow's wing."
The mother's faith was contagious. The drooping spirit caught the flash
of light from her eyes and smiled.
"We'll watch for 'em next spring, won't we? And I'll put up new gourds
long before they come!"
Comforted at last, he went to the woods to gather chinquapins. The
squirrels were scampering in all directions and he asked his father that
night to let him go hunting with him next day.
"All right, Boy!" was the hearty answer. "We'll have some fun this
winter."
He paused as he saw the mother's lips suddenly close and a shadow pass
over her dark, sensitive face.
"Hit's no use ter worry, Nancy," he went on good-naturedly. "I promised
you not ter take him 'less he wanted ter go. But hit's in the blood, and
hit's got ter come out."
Tom picked the Boy up and placed him on his knee and stroked his dark
head. Sarah crouched at his feet and smiled. He was going to tell about
the Indians again. She could tell by the look in his eye as he watched
the flames leap over the logs.
"Did ye know, Boy," he began slowly, "that we come out to Kaintuck with
Daniel Boone?"
"Did we?"
"Yes sirree, with old Dan'l hisself. It wuz thirty years ago. I wuz a
little shaver no bigger'n you, but I remember jest as well ez ef it wuz
yistiddy. Lordy, Boy, thar wuz er man that wuz er man! Ye couldn't a
made no jackleg carpenter outen him----" He paused and cast a sly wink
at Nancy as she bent over her knitting.
"Tell me about him?" the Boy cried.
"Yessir, Dan'l Boone wuz a man an' no mistake. The Indians would ketch
'im an' keep er ketchin' 'im an' he'd slip through their fingers
slicker'n a eel. The very fust trip he tuck out here he wuz captured by
the Redskins. Dan'l wuz with his friend John Stuart.
"They left their camp one day an' set out on a big hunt, and all of a
sudden they wuz grabbed by the Injuns."
"Why didn't they shoot 'em?" the Boy asked.
"They wuz too many of 'em an' they wuz too quick for Dan'l. He didn't
have no show at all. The Injuns robbed 'em of everything they had an'
kept 'em prisoners.
"But ole Dan'l wuz a slick un. He'd been studyin' Injuns all his life
an' he knowed 'em frum a ter izard. They didn't have nothin' but bows
an' arrers then an' he had a rifle thes like mine. He never got
flustered or riled by the way they wuz treatin' him, but let on like he
wuz happy ez er June bug. Dan'l would raise his rifle, put a bullet
twixt a buffalo's eyes an' he'd drap in his tracks. The Injuns wuz
tickled ter death an' thought him the greatest man that ever lived--an'
he wuz, too. So they got ter likin' him an' treatin' 'im better. For
seven days an' nights him an' Stuart helped 'em hunt an' showed 'em how
ter work er rifle. The Injuns was plum fooled by Dan'l's friendly ways
an' didn't watch 'im so close.
"So one night Dan'l helped 'em ter eat a bigger supper than ever. They
wuz all full enough ter bust, an' went ter sleep an' slept like logs.
Hit wuz a dark night an' the fire burned low, an' long 'bout midnight
Dan'l made up his mind ter give 'em the slip.
"Hit wuz er dangerous job. Ef he failed hit wuz death shore-nuff, for
nothin' makes a Injun so pizen mad ez fer anybody ter be treated nice by
'em an' then try ter get away. The Redskins wuz all sleepin' round the
fire. They wuz used ter jumpin' in the middle o' the night or any
minute. Mebbe they wuz all ersleep, an' mebbe they wasn't.
"Old Dan'l he pertended ter be sleepin' the sleep er the dead, an' I
tell ye he riz mighty keerful, shuck Stuart easy, waked him up an'
motioned him ter foller. Talk about sneakin' up on a wild duck er a
turkey--ole Dan'l done some slick business gettin' away frum that fire!
Man, ef they'd rustled a leaf er broke a twig, them savages would a all
been up an' on 'em in a minute. Holdin' tight to their guns--you kin bet
they didn't leave them--and a steppin' light ez feathers they crept away
from the fire an' out into the deep dark o' the woods. They stopped an'
stood as still ez death an' watched till they see the Injuns hadn't
waked----"
The pioneer paused and his white teeth shone through his black beard as
he cocked his shaggy head to one side and looked into the Boy's wide
eyes.
"And then what do you reckon Dan'l Boone done, sir?"
"What?"
"Waal, ye seed the way them bees made fer their trees, didn't ye, when
they got a load er honey?"
"Yes, that's the way I found their home."
"But you had the daylight, mind ye! And Dan'l was in pitch black night,
but, sir, he made a bee-line through them dark woods straight for his
camp he'd left seven days afore. And, man, yer kin bet they made tracks
when they got clear o' the Redskins! Hit wuz six hours till day an' when
the Injuns waked they didn't know which way ter look----"
Tom paused and the Boy cried eagerly:
"Did they get there?"
"Git whar?" the father asked dreamily.
"Get back to their own camp?"
"Straight ez a bee-line I tell ye. But the camp had been busted and
robbed and the other men wuz gone."
"Gone where?"
Tom shook his shaggy head.
"Nobody never knowed ter this day--reckon the Injuns scalped 'em----"
He paused again and a dreamy look overspread his rugged face.
"Like they scalped your own grandpa that day."
"Did they scalp my grandpa?" the Boy asked in an awed whisper.
"That they did. Your Uncle Mordecai an' me was workin' with him in the
new ground, cleanin' it fur corn when all of a sudden the Injuns riz
right up outen the ground. Your grandpa drapped dead the fust shot, an'
Mordecai flew ter the cabin fer the rifle. A big Redskin jumped over a
log an' scalped my own daddy before my eyes! He grabbed me an' started
pullin' me ter the woods, an' then, Sonny, somethin' happened----"
Tom looked at the long rifle in its buck's horn rest and smiled:
"Old 'Speakeasy' up thar stretched her long neck through a chink in the
logs an' said somethin' ter Mr. Redskin. She didn't raise her voice much
louder'n a whisper. She jist kinder sighed:
"_Kerpeow!_"
"I kin hear hit echoin' through them woods yit. That Injun drapped my
hands before I heerd the gun, an' she hadn't more'n sung out afore he
wuz lyin' in a heap at my feet. The ball had gone clean through him----"
Tom paused again and looked for a long time in silence into the glowing
coals. The little cabin was very still. The Boy lifted his face to his
mother's curiously:
"Ma, you said God counted the beat of a sparrow's wing?"
"Yes."
"Well, what was He doin' when that Indian scalped my grandpa?"
The mother threw a startled look at the bold little questioner and
answered reverently:
"Keeping watch in Heaven, my Boy. The hairs of your head are numbered
and not one falls without his knowledge. We had to pay the price of
blood for this beautiful country. Nothing is ever worth having that
doesn't cost precious lives."
Again the cabin was still. An owl's deep cry boomed from the woods and a
solitary wolf answered in the distance. The Boy's brow was wrinkled for
a moment and then he suddenly looked up to his father's rugged face:
"And what became of Dan'l Boone?"
"Oh, he lit on his feet all right. He always did. He moved on with
Stuart, built him another camp in the deepest woods he could find and
hunted there all winter--jest think, Boy, all winter--every day--thar
wuz a man that wuz a man shore nuff!"
"Yes, sirree!" the listener agreed.
The mother lifted her head and thoughtfully watched the sparkling eyes.
"And do you want to know why Daniel Boone was great, my son?" she
quietly asked.
"Yes, why?" was the quick response.
"Because he used his mind and his hands, while the other men around him
just used their hands. He learned to read and write when he was a little
boy. He mixed brains with his powder and shot."
"Did he, Pa?" the questioner cried.
The father smiled. He could afford to be generous. The Boy looked to him
as the authority on Daniel Boone.
"Yes, I reckon he did. He wuz smart. I didn't have no chance when I wuz
little."
"Then I'm going to learn, too. Ma can teach me." He leaped from his
father's lap and climbed into hers. "You will, won't you, Ma?"
The mother smiled us she slowly answered:
"Yes, Honey, I'll begin to-morrow night when you get back from hunting."
VI
Slowly but surely the indomitable will within the Boy's breast conquered
the cries of aching muscles, and he went about his daily farm tasks
with the dogged persistence of habit. He had learned to whistle at his
work and his eager mind began to look for new worlds to conquer.
At the right moment the tempter appeared. It rained on Saturday and
Austin, his neighbor, came over to see him. They cracked walnuts and
hickory-nuts in the loft while the rain pattered noisily on the board
roof. Austin had a definite suggestion for Sunday that would break the
monotony of life.
"Let's me an' you not go ter meetin' ter-morrow?" the neighbor ventured
for a starter.
"All right!" the Boy agreed. "Preachin' makes me tired anyhow."
"Me, too, an' I tell ye what I'll do. I'll get my Ma ter let me come ter
your house to stay all day, an' when your folks go off ter meetin', me
an' you'll have some fun!"
"What?"
"We'll stay all day on the creek banks, find duck nests, turkey and
quail nests, an',----" Austin paused and dropped his voice, "go in
swimmin' if we take a notion----"
The Boy slowly shook his head.
"No, less don't do that."
"Why?"
"'Cause Ma don't 'low me to go in the creek till June--says I might
ketch my death o' cold."
"Shucks! I've been in twice already!"
"Have ye?"
"Yep!"
"And ye didn't get sick?"
"Do I _look_ sick?"
"Not a bit."
"Well, then?"
"All right--we'll go."
The spirit of freedom born of the fields and woods had grown into
something more than an attitude of mind. He was ready for the deed--the
positive act of adventure. He didn't like to disobey his mother. But he
couldn't afford to let Austin think that he was a molly-coddle, a mere
babe hanging to her skirts. He was doing a man's work. It was time he
took a few of man's privileges.
He revelled in the situation of adventure that night and saw himself the
hero of stirring scenes.
Next morning on Austin's arrival he asked his mother to let him stay at
home and play.
"Don't you want to go to meeting and hear the new preacher?" she asked
persuasively.
"No, I'm tired."
The mother smiled indulgently. He was young--far too young yet to know
the meaning of true religion. She was a Baptist, and the first principle
of her religion was personal faith and direct relations of the
individual soul with God. She remembered her own hours of torture in
childhood.
"All right, Boy," she said graciously. "Be good now, while we're gone."
His big toe was digging in the dirt while he murmured:
"Yes'm."
The wagon had no sooner disappeared than he and Austin were flying with
swift bare feet along the path that led to the creek. It was the hottest
day of the spring--a close air and broiling sun to be remembered longer
than the hottest day of August.
They ran for a mile without a pause, rolled in the sand on the banks of
the creek and shouted their joy in perfect freedom. They explored the
deep cane brakes and stalked imaginary buffaloes and bears without
number, encountering nothing bigger than a grey fox and a couple of
muskrats.
"Let's cross over!" Austin cried. "I saw a bear track on that side one
day. We can trail him to his den and show him to your Pap when he comes
home. Here's a log!"
The Boy looked dubiously, measured it with his eye, and shook his head.
"Nope--it's too little and too high in the air--it'll wobble," he
declared.
"But we can coon it over!" Austin urged. "We can grab hold of a limb
over there and slide down--it's easy--come on!"
Before he could make further objection, the young adventurer quickly
straddled the swaying pole, and, with the agility of a cat, hopped
across, grasped one of the limbs and slipped to the sand.
"Come on!" he shouted. "See how easy it is!"
The Boy looked doubtfully at the swaying sapling and wished he had gone
to hear that preacher after all. It would never do to say he was afraid.
The other fellow had done it so quickly. And it was no use to argue with
Austin that his legs were shorter, his body more compact and so much
easier to hold his balance. The idea of cowardice was something too vile
for thought. The Boy felt that he was doomed to fall before he moved
but he waved a brave little hand in answer:
"All right, I'm comin'!"
Half way across the pole began to tear its roots from the bluff. He felt
it sinking, stopped and held his breath as it suddenly broke with a
crash and fell.
"Look out! Hold tight!" Austin yelled.
He did his best, but lost his balance and toppled head downward into the
deep still water.
His mouth flew open at the first touch of the chill stream; he gasped
for breath and drew into his lungs a strangling flood. The blood rushed
to his brain in a wild explosion of terror. He struck out madly with his
long arms and legs, fighting with desperation for breath and drinking in
only the agony and fear of death. His mother's voice came low and faint
and far away in some other world, saying softly:
"Be good now, while we're gone!"
Again he struck out blindly, fiercely, madly into the darkness that was
slowly swallowing him body and soul.
His hand touched something as he sank, he grasped it with instinctive
terror and knew no more until he waked in the infernal regions with the
Devil sitting on his stomach glaring into his eyes and holding him by
the throat trying to choke him to death. His head was down a steep hill.
With a mighty effort he threw the Devil off, loosed his hold and sucked
in a tiny breath of air, and then another and another, coughing and
spluttering and wheezing foam and water from his mouth and ears and nose
and eyes.
At last a voice gasped:
"Is--that--you--Austin?"
"You bet it's me! I got ye a breathin' all right now--who'd ye think it
wuz?"
The Boy coughed again and squeezed his lungs clear of water.
"Why--I was afraid I was dead and you was the Old Scratch and had me."
"Well, I thought you was a goner shore nuff till yer hand grabbed the
pole I stuck after ye. Man alive, but you did hold onto it! I lakened
ter never got yer hand loose so's I could pull ye up on the bank and
turn ye upside down and squeeze the water outen ye."
"Did you sit on my stomach and choke me?" the Boy asked.
"I set on yer and mashed the water out, but I didn't choke you."
"I thought the Old Scratch had me!"
For an hour they talked in awed whispers of Sin and Death and Trouble
and then the blood of youth shook off the nightmare.
They were alive and unhurt. They were all right and it was a good joke.
They swore eternal secrecy. The day was yet young and it was a glorious
one. Their clothes were wet and they had to be dried before night. That
settled it. They would strip, hang their clothes in the hot sun and
wallow in the sand and play in the shallow water until sundown.
"And besides," Austin urged, "this here's a warnin' straight from the
Lord--me and you must learn ter swim."
"That's so, ain't it?" the Boy agreed.
"It's what I calls a sign from on high--and it pints right into the
creek!"
They agreed that the thing to do was to heed at once this divine
revelation and devote the whole Sabbath day to the solemn work--in the
creek.
They found a beautifully sunny spot with an immense sand bar and wide
shallow safe waters. They carefully placed their clothes to dry and
basked in the bright sun. They practiced swimming in water waist deep
and Austin learned to make three strokes and reach the length of his
body before sinking.
They rolled in the sun again and ate their lunch. They ran naked through
the woods to a branch that flowed into the creek, followed it to the
source and drank at a beautiful spring.
Through the long afternoon they lived in a fairy world of freedom, of
dreams and make-believe. They talked of great hunters and discussed the
best methods of attacking all manner of wild beasts.
The sun was sinking toward the western hills when they hastily picked up
their clothes and found a safe ford across which they could wade,
holding their things above their heads.
The Boy reached the house just as the wagon drove up to the door. He
hurried to help his father with the horse. A sense of elation filled his
mind that he was shrewd enough to keep his own secrets. Of course, his
mother needn't know what had happened. He was none the worse for it.
In answer to her question of how he had spent the day he vaguely
answered:
"In the woods. They're awfully pretty now with the dogwood all in
bloom."
He talked incessantly at supper, teasing Sarah about her jolly time at
the meeting. Toward the end of the meal he grew silent. A curious
sensation began on his back and shoulders and arms. He paid no attention
to it at first, but it rapidly grew worse. The more he tried to shake
off the feeling the more distinct and sharp it grew. At last every inch
of his body seemed to be on fire.
He rose slowly from the table and walked to his stool in the corner
wondering--wondering and fearing. He sat in dead silence for half an
hour. The perspiration began to stand out on his forehead. It was no use
longer to try to fool himself, there was something the matter--something
big--something terrible! A fierce and scorching fever was burning him to
death. He dared not move. Every muscle quivered with agony when he
tried.
The mother's keen eye saw the tears he couldn't keep back.
"What's the matter, Boy?" she tenderly asked while his father was at the
stable putting the wagon under the shed.
"I don't know 'm," he choked. "I'm all on fire--I'm burnin' up----"
She touched his forehead and slipped her arm around his shoulders.
He screamed with pain.
The mother looked into his face with a sudden start.
"Why, what on earth, child? What have you been doing to-day?"
He hesitated and tried to be brave, but it was no use. He felt that he
would drop dead the next moment unless relief came. He buried his face
in her lap and sobbed his bitter confession.
"Do you think I'm going to die?" he asked.
She smiled:
"No, my Boy, you're only sunburned. How long were you naked in the sun?"
"From 'bout ten o'clock till nearly sundown----"
He moved again and screamed with agony.
The mother tenderly undressed the little, red, swollen body. The rough
clothes had stuck to the blistered skin in one place and the pain was so
frightful he nearly fainted before they were finally removed.
For two days and nights she never left his side, holding his hand to
give him courage when he was compelled to move. Almost his entire body,
inch by inch, was blistered. She covered it with cream and allowed only
two greased linen cloths to touch him.
On the second day as he lay panting for breath and holding her hand with
feverish grasp he looked into her pensive grey eyes through his own
bleared and bloodshot with pain and said softly:
"I'm sorry, Ma."
She pressed his hand:
"It's all right, my Boy; your mother loves you."
"I'm not sorry for the pain," he gasped. "What hurts me worse is that
you're so sweet to me!"
The dark face bent and kissed his trembling lips:
"It's all for the best. You couldn't have understood the preacher Sunday
when he took the text: 'The stars in their courses fought against
Sisera.' You learned it for yourself the only way we really learn
anything. God's in the wind and rain, the sun, the storm. All nature
works with him. You can easily fool your mother. It's not what you seem
to others; it's what you are that counts. God sees and knows. You see
and know in your little heart. I want you to be a great man--only a good
man can ever be great."
And so for an hour she poured into his heart her faith in God and His
glory until He became the one power fixed forever in the child's
imagination.
VII
The Boy lost his skin but grew another and incidentally absorbed some
ideas he never forgot.
On the day he was able to put on his clothes, it poured down rain and
work in the fields was impossible. A sense of delicious joy filled him.
He worked because he had to, not because he liked it. He was too proud
to shirk, too brave to cry when every nerve and muscle of his little
body ached with mortal weariness, but he hated it.
The sun rose bright and warm and shone clear in the Southern sky next
morning before he was called. He climbed down the ladder from his loft
wondering what marvellous thing had happened that he should be sleeping
with the sun already high in the heavens.
"What's the matter, Ma?" he asked anxiously. "Why didn't you call me?"
"It's too wet to plow. Your father's going to chop wood in the clearing.
He wanted you to pile brush after him, but I asked him to let you off to
go fishing for me."
He ate breakfast with his heart beating a tattoo, rushed into the
garden, dug a gourd full of worms, drew his long cane rod from the
eaves of the cabin, and with old Boney trotting at his heels was soon on
his way to a deep pool in the bend of the creek.
Fishing for _her_! His mother understood. He wondered why he had ever
been fool enough to disobey her that Sunday. He could die for her
without a moment's hesitation.
It was glorious to have this marvellous day of spring all his own. The
birds were singing on every field and hedge. The trees flashed their
polished new leaves. The sweet languor of the South was in the air and
he drew it in with deep breaths that sent the joy of life tingling
through every vein.
Four joyous hours flew on tireless wings. He had caught five catfish and
a big eel--more than enough for a good meal for the whole family.
He held them up proudly. How his mother's eyes would sparkle! He could
see Sarah's admiring gaze and hear his father's good-natured approval.
He had just struck the path for home when the forlorn figure of a rough
bearded man came limping to meet him.
He stepped aside in the grass to let him pass. But the man stopped and
gazed at the fish.
"My, my, Sonny, but you've got a fine string there!" he exclaimed.
"Pretty good for one day," the Boy proudly answered.
"An' just ter think I ain't had nothin' ter eat in 'most two days."
"Don't you live nowhere?" the youngster asked in surprise.
"I used ter have a home afore the war, but my folks thought I wuz dead
an' moved away. I'm tryin' ter find 'em. Hit's a hard job with a
Britisher's bullet still a-pinchin' me in the leg."
"Did you fight with General Washington?"
"Lordy, no, I ain't that old, ef I do look like a scarecrow. No, I fit
under Old Hickory at New Orleans. I tell ye, Sonny, them Britishers
burnt out Washington fur us but we give 'em a taste o' fire at New
Orleans they ain't goin' ter fergit."
"Did we lick 'em good?"
"Boy, ye ain't never heard tell er sich a scrimmage--we thrashed 'em
till they warn't no fight in 'em, an' they scrambled back aboard them
ships an' skeddaddled home. Britishers can't fight nohow. We've licked
'em twice an' we kin lick 'em agin. But the old soldier that does the
fightin'--everybody fergits him!"
The Boy looked longingly at his string of fish for a moment with the
pride of his heart, and then held up his treasure.
"You can have my fish if ye want 'em; they'll make you a nice supper."
The old soldier stroked the tangled hair and took his string of fish.
"You're a fine boy! I won't fergit you, Sonny!"
The words comforted him until he neared the house. And then a sense of
bitter loss welled up in spite of all.
"Did I do right, Ma?" he asked wistfully.
She placed her hand on his forehead:
"Yes--I'm proud of you. I know what that gift cost a boy's heart. It was
big because it was all you had and the pride of your soul was in it."
The sense of loss was gone and he was rich and happy again.
When the supper was over and they sat before the flickering firelight he
asked her a question over which his mind had puzzled since he left the
old soldier.
"Why is it," he said thoughtfully, "British soldiers can't fight?"
The mother smiled:
"Who said they couldn't fight?"
"The old soldier I gave my fish to. He said we just made hash out o'
them. We've licked 'em twice and we can do it again!"
The last sentence he didn't quote. He gave it as a personal opinion
based on established facts.
"We didn't win because the British couldn't fight," the mother gravely
responded.
"Then why?" he persisted.
"The Lord was good to us."
"How?"
The question came with an accent of indignation. Sometimes he couldn't
help getting cross with his mother when she began to give the Lord
credit for everything. If the Lord did it all why should he give his
string of fish to an old soldier!
The grey eyes looked into his with wistful tenderness. She had been
shocked once before by the fear that there was something in this child's
eternal why that would keep him out of the church. The one deep desire
of her heart was that he should be good.
"Would you like to hear," she began softly, "something about the
Revolution which my old school teacher told me in Virginia?"
"Yes, tell me!" he answered eagerly.
"He said that we could never have won our independence but for God. We
didn't win because British soldiers couldn't fight. We held out for ten
years because we outran them. We ran quicker, covered more ground, got
further into the woods and stayed there longer than any fighters the
British had ever met before. That's why we got the best of them. Our men
who fought and ran away lived to fight another day. General Washington
was always great in retreat. He never fought unless he was ready and
could choose his own field. He waited until his enemies were in snug
quarters drinking and gambling, and then on a dark night, so dark and
cold that some of his own men would freeze to death, he pushed across a
river, fell on them, cut them to pieces and retreated.
"The number of men he commanded was so small he could not face his foes
in the open if he could avoid it. His men were poorly armed, poorly
drilled, half-clothed and half-starved at times. The British troops were
the best drilled and finest fighting men of the world in their day,
armed with good guns, well fed, well clothed, and well paid."
She paused and smiled at the memory of her teacher's narrative.
"What do you suppose happened on one of our battlefields?"
"I dunno--what?"
"When the Red-coats charged, our boys ran at the first crack of a gun.
They ran so well that they all got away except one little fellow who had
a game leg. He stumbled and fell in a hole. A big British soldier raised
a musket to brain him. The little fellow looked up and cried: 'All
right. Kill away, ding ye--ye won't get much!'
"The Britisher laughed, picked him up, brushed his clothes and told him
to go home."
The Boy laughed again and again.
"He was a spunky one anyhow, wasn't he?"
"Yes," the mother nodded, "that's why the Red-coat let him go. And we
never could have endured if God hadn't inspired one man to hold fast
when other hearts had failed."
"And who was he?" the Boy broke in.
"General Washington. At Valley Forge our cause was lost but for him. Our
men were not paid. They could get no clothes, they were freezing and
starving. They quit and went home in hundreds and gave up in despair.
And then, Boy----"
Her voice dropped to a tense whisper:
"General Washington fell on his knees and prayed until he saw the
shining face of God and got his answer. Next day he called his ragged,
hungry men together and said:
"'Soldiers, though all my armies desert, the war shall go on. If I must,
I'll gather my faithful followers in Virginia, retreat to the mountains
and fight until our country is free!'
"His words cheered the despairing men and they stood by him. We were
saved at last because help came in time. Lord Cornwallis had laid the
South in ashes, and camped at Yorktown, his army of veterans laden with
spoils. He was only waiting for the transports from New York to take his
victorious men North, join the army there and end the war, and then----"
She drew a deep breath and her eyes sparkled:
"And then, Boy, it happened--the miracle! Into the Chesapeake Bay in
Virginia, three big ships dropped anchor at the mouth of the York River.
Our people on the shore thought they were the transports and that the
end had come. But the ships were too far away to make out their flags,
and so they sent swift couriers across the Peninsula, to see if there
were any signs in the roadstead at Hampton. There--Glory to God! lay a
great fleet flying the flag of France. The French had loaned us twenty
millions of dollars, and sent their navy and their army to help us. Had
the Lord sent down a host from the sky we couldn't have been more
surprised. They landed, joined with General Washington's ragged men, and
closed in on Cornwallis. Surprised and trapped he surrendered and we
won.
"But there never was a year before that, my Boy, that we were strong
enough to resist the British army had the mother country sent a real
general here to command her troops."
"Why didn't she?" the Boy interrupted.
Again the mother's voice dropped low:
"Because God wouldn't let her--that's the only reason. If Lord Clive had
ever landed on our shores, Washington might now be sleeping in a
traitor's grave."
The voice again became soft and dreamy--almost inaudible.
"And he didn't come?" the Boy whispered.
"No. On the day he was to sail he put the papers in his pocket, went
into his room, locked the door and blew his own brains out. This is
God's country, my son. He gave us freedom. He has great plans for us."
The fire flickered low and the Boy's eyes glowed with a strange
intensity.
VIII
A barbecue, with political speaking, was held at the village ten miles
away. The family started at sunrise. The day was an event in the lives
of every man, woman and child within a radius of twenty miles. Many came
as far as thirty miles and walked the whole distance. Before nine
o'clock a crowd of two thousand had gathered.
The dark, lithe young mother who led her boy by the hand down the
crowded aisle of the improvised brush arbor that day performed a deed
which was destined to change the history of the world.
The speaker who held the crowd spellbound for two hours was Henry Clay.
The Boy not only heard an eloquent orator. His spirit entered for all
time into fellowship with a great human soul.
In words that throbbed with passion, he pictured the coming glory of a
mighty nation whose shores would be washed by two oceans, whose wealth
and manhood would be the hope and inspiration of the world. Never before
had words been given such wings. The ringing tones found the Boy's soul
and set his brain on fire. A big idea was born within his breast. This
was his country. His feet pressed its soil. Its hills and plains, its
rivers and seas were his. His hands would help to build this vision of a
great spirit into the living thing. He breathed softly and his eyes
sparkled. When the crowd cheered, he leaped to his feet, swung his
little cap into the air and shouted with all his might. When the last
glowing picture of the peroration faded into a silence that could be
felt, and the tumult had died away, he saw men and women crowding around
the orator to shake his hand.
"Take me, Ma!" he whispered. "I want to see him close!"
The mother lifted him in her arms above the crowd, pressed forward, and
the Boy's shining eyes caught those of the brilliant statesman. Over the
heads of the men by his side the orator extended his hand and grasped
the trembling outstretched fingers.
He smiled and nodded, that was all. The Boy understood. From that moment
he had an ideal leader whose words were inspired.
The mother's dark face was lit for a moment with tender pride. She made
no effort to reach the orator's side. It was enough that she had seen
the flash from her Boy's eyes. She was content. The day was filled with
a great joy.
The summer camp meetings began the following week. The grounds were
located a mile from the straggling little village which was the center
of the county's activities. All religious denominations used the
spacious auditorium for their services. The Methodists camped there an
entire month. The Baptists stayed but two weeks. The Baptist temperament
frowned on the social frivolities which were inseparable from these long
intimate associations at close quarters. The more volatile temperament
of the Methodists revelled in them, and Methodism grew with astounding
rapidity under the system.
The auditorium was simply a huge quadrangular shed with board roof
uphold by cedar posts. At one end of the shed stood the platform on
which was built the pulpit, a square box-like structure about four feet
high. The seats were made of rough-hewn half logs set on pegs driven in
augur holes. There were no backs to them. A single wide aisle led from
the end facing the pulpit, and two narrow ones intersected the main
aisle at the centre.
In front of the pulpit were placed the mourner's benches facing the
three sides of the space left for the free movement of the mourners
under the stress of religious emotion.
The Boy's mother and father were devout members of the Baptist Church,
but they were not demonstrative. They modestly and reverently took their
seats in an inconspicuous position about midway the building, entering
from one of the small aisles on the side. The Boy had often been to a
regular church service before, but this was his first camp meeting.
Four preachers sat in grim silence behind the pulpit's solid box front.
The Boy could just see the tops of their heads over the board that held
the big gilt-edged Bible.
The entire first two days and nights were given to a series of terrific
sermons on Death, Hell, and the Judgment, with a brief glimpse of the
pearly gates of Heaven and a few strains from the golden harps inside
for the damned to hear by way of contrast. The first purpose of the
preachers was to arouse a deep under-current of religious emotional
excitement that at the proper moment would explode and sweep the crowd
with resistless fire. Usually the fuse was timed to explode on the
morning of the third day. Sometimes, when sermons of extraordinary
power had followed each other in rapid succession, the fire broke out by
a sort of spontaneous combustion on the night of the second day.
It did so this time. The mother had no trouble in keeping the Boy by her
side through these first two days. He felt instinctively the growing
emotional tension about him, and knew in his bones that something would
break loose soon. He was keyed to a high pitch of interest to see just
what it would be like.
The storm broke in the middle of the second sermon on the second night.
The preacher had worked himself into a frenzy of emotional excitement.
His arms were waving over his head, his eyes blazing, his feet stamping,
his voice screaming in anguish as he described the agony of a soul lost
forever in the seething cauldron of eternal hell fire!
A tremulous startled moan, half-wail, half-scream came from a girl just
in front of the Boy, as she dropped her head in her hands.
"What's the matter with her?" he whispered. "Has she got a pain?"
His mother pressed his hand:
"Sh!"
And then the storm broke. From every direction came the startled cries
of long pent terror and anguish. The girl staggered to her feet and
started stumbling down the aisle to the mourners' bench without
invitation, and from every row of seats they tumbled, crowding on her
heels, sobbing, wailing, screaming, groaning.
The preacher ceased to talk and, in a high tremulous voice, that rang
through the excited crowd as the peal of the Archangel's trumpet, began
to sing:
"Come humble sinners in whose breasts
A thousand thoughts revolve!"
The crowd rose instinctively and all who were not mourning, joined in
the half-savage, terror-stricken wail of the song. The sinners that
hadn't given up at the first break of the storm could not resist the
thrill of this wild music. One by one they pushed their way through the
crowd, found the aisle and staggered blindly to the front.
The Boy noticed curiously that it seemed to be the rule for them to
completely cover their streaming eyes with a handkerchief or with the
bare hands and go it blindly for the mourners' benches. If they missed
the way and butted into anything, a church member kindly took them by
the arm and guided them to a vacant place where they dropped on their
knees.
The Boy had leaped on the bench and stood beside his mother to get a
better view of the turmoil. He couldn't keep his eyes off a tall,
red-headed, thick-bearded man just across the aisle three rows behind
who kept twitching his face, looking toward the door and struggling
against the impulse to follow the mourners. Presently he broke down with
a loud cry:
"Lord, have mercy!"
He placed his hands over his face and started on a run to the front.
The Boy giggled, and his mother pinched him.
"Did ye see that red-headed feller, Ma," he whispered. "He didn't do
fair. He peeked through his fingers--I saw his eyes!"
"Sh!"
The preachers had come down from the pulpit now and stood over the
wailing prostrated mourners and exhorted them to repent and believe
before it was forever and eternally too late. Three of them were talking
at the same time to different groups of mourners. The louder they
exhorted the louder the sinners cried. The fourth preacher walked down
the aisle searching for those who were yet hardening their hearts and
stiffening their necks. He paused beside a prim little old maid who had
lately arrived from Tidewater Virginia. Her bright eyes were dry.
"Dear lady, are you a child of God?" the preacher cried.
The prim figured stiffened indignantly:
"No, sir! I'm an Episcopalian!"
The preacher groaned and passed on and the Boy stuffed his fist in his
mouth.
For half an hour the roar of the conflict was incessant, and its
violence indescribable. It was broken now and then by a kindly soul
among the elderly women raising a sweet old-fashioned hymn.
Suddenly an exhorter threw his hands above his head and, in a voice that
soared above the roar of mourners and their attendants, cried:
"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world!"
Quick as a flash came an answering shout from the red-headed man who
leaped to his feet and with wide staring eyes looked up at the roof.
"I see him! I see Jesus up a tree!"
A fat woman lifted her head and shouted:
"Hold him till I get there!"
And she started for the red-headed man. There was a single moment of
strange silence and the Boy laughed aloud.
His mother caught and shook him violently. He crammed his little fist
again into his mouth, but the stopper wouldn't hold.
He dropped to his seat to keep the people from seeing him, buried his
face in his hands and laughed in smothered giggles in spite of all his
mother could do.
At last he whispered:
"Take me out quick! I'm goin' to bust--I'll bust wide open I tell ye!"
She rose sternly, seized his arm and led him a half mile into the woods.
He kept looking back and laughing softly.
She gazed at him sorrowfully:
"I'm ashamed of you, Boy! How could you do such a thing!"
"I just couldn't help it!"
He sat down on a stone and laughed again.
"What makes the fools holler so?" he asked through his tears.
"They are praying God to forgive their sins."
"But why holler so loud? He ain't deaf--is He? You said that God's in
the sun and wind and dew and rain--in the breath we breathe. Ain't He
everywhere then? Why do they holler at Him?"
The mother turned away to hide a smile she couldn't keep back, and a
cloud overspread her dark face. Surely this was an evil sign--this
spirit of irreverent levity in the mind of a child so young. What could
it mean? She had forgotten that she had been teaching him to think, and
didn't know, perhaps, that he who thinks must laugh or die.
After that she let him spend long hours at the spring playing with boys
and girls of his age. He didn't go into the meetings again. But he
enjoyed the season. The watermelons, muskmelons, and ginger cakes were
the best he had ever eaten.
IX
During the Christmas holidays the father got ready for a coon hunt in
which the Boy should see his first battle royal in the world of sport.
Dennis came over and brought four extra dogs, two of his own and two
which he had borrowed for the holidays.
A sudden change came over the spirit of old Boney--short for Napoleon
Bonaparte. He understood the talk about coons as clearly as if he could
speak the English language. He was in a quiver of eager excitement. He
knew from the Boy's talk that he was going, too. He wagged his tail,
pushed his warm nose under his little friend's arm, whining and
trembling while he tried to explain what it meant to strike a coon's
trail in the deep night, chase him over miles of woods and swamps and
field, tree him and fight it out, a battle to the death between dog and
beast!
At two o'clock, before day, his father's voice called and in a jiffy he
was down the ladder, his eyes shining. He had gone to sleep with his
clothes on and lost no time in dressing.
Without delay the start was made. Down the dim pathway to the creek and
then along its banks for two miles, its laughing waters rippling soft
music amid the shadows, or gleaming white and mirror-like in the
starlit open spaces.
In half an hour the stars were obscured by a thin veil of fleecy clouds,
and, striking no trail in the bottoms, they turned to the big tract of
woods on the hills and plunged straight into their depths for two miles.
"Hush!"
Tom suddenly stopped:
Far off to the right came the bark of a dog on the run.
"Ain't that old Boney's voice?" the father asked.
"I don't think so," the Boy answered.
The note of wild savage music was one he had never heard before.
"Yes it was, too," was the emphatic decision. He squared his broad
shoulders and gave the hunter's shout of answer-joy to the dog's call.
Never had the Boy heard such a shout from human lips. It sent shivers
down his spine.
The dog heard and louder came the answering note, a deep tremulous boom
through the woods that meant to the older man's trained ear that he was
on the run.
"That's old Boney shore's yer born!" the father cried, "an' he ain't got
no doubts 'bout hit nother. He's got his head in the air. The trail's so
hot he don't have ter nose the ground. You'll hear somethin' in a minute
when the younger pups git to him."
Two hounds suddenly opened with long quivering wails.
"Thar's my dogs--they've hit it now!" Dennis cried excitedly.
Another hound joined the procession, then another and another, and in
two minutes the whole pack of eight were in full cry.
Again the hunter's deep voice rang his wild cheer through the woods and
every dog raised his answering cry a note higher.
"Ain't that music!" Tom cried in ecstacy.
They stood and listened. The dogs were still in the woods and with each
yelp were coming nearer. Evidently the trail led toward them, but in the
rear and almost toward the exact spot at which they had entered the
forest.
"Just listen at old Boney!" the Boy cried. "I can tell him now. He can
beat 'em all!"
Loud and clear above the chorus of the others rang the long savage boom
of Boney's voice, quivering with passion, defiant, daring, sure of
victory! It came at regular intervals as if to measure the miles that
separated him from the battle he smelled afar. He was far in the lead.
He was past-master of this sport. The others were not in his class.
The Boy's heart swelled with pride.
"Old Boney's showin' 'em all the way!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Yer can bet he always does that, Sonny!" the father answered. "That's a
hot trail. Nigh ez I can figger we're goin' ter have some fun. There's
more'n one coon travelin' over that ground."
"How can you tell?" Dennis asked incredulously.
"Hit's too easy fer the other pups--they'd lose the scent now an' then
ef they weren't but one. They ain't lost it a minute since they struck
it--Lord, jest listen!"
He paused and held his breath.
"Did ye ever hear anything like hit on this yearth!" Dennis cried.
Every dog was opening now at the top of his voice at regular intervals,
the swing and leap of their bodies over the brush and around the trees
registering in each stirring note.
Again Tom gave a shout of approval.
The sound of the leader's voice suddenly flattened and faded.
"By Gum!" the old hunter cried, "they've left the woods, struck that
field an' makin' for the creek! Ye won't need that axe ter-night,
Dennis."
"Why?"
"Wait an' see!" was the short answer.
They hurried from the woods and had scarcely reached the edge of the
field when suddenly old Boney's cry stopped short and in a moment the
others were silent.
"Good Lord, they've lost it!" Dennis groaned.
And then came the quick, sharp, fierce bark of the leader announcing
that the quarry had been located.
Tom gave a yell of triumph and started on a run for the spot.
"Up one o' them big sycamores in the edge o' that water I'll bet!"
Dennis wailed.
"You'll need no axe," was the older man's short comment.
They pushed their way rapidly through the cane to the banks of the creek
and found the dogs scratching with might and main straight down into the
sand about ten feet from the water's edge.
"Well, I'll be doggoned," Dennis cried, "if I ever seed anything like
that afore! They've gone plum crazy. They ain't no hole here. A coon
can't jist drap inter the ground without a hole."
The old hunter laughed:
"No, but a coon mought learn somethin' from a beaver now an' then an'
locate the door to his house under the water line an' climb up here ter
find a safe place, couldn't he?"
"I don't believe it!" Dennis sneered.
"You'll have ter go to the house an' git a spade," Tom said finally.
"It'll take one ter dig a hole big enough ter ever persuade one er these
dogs ter put his nose in that den. Hit ain't more'n a mile ter the
house--hurry back."
Dennis started on a run.
"Don't yer let 'em out an' start that fight afore I git here!" he
called.
"You'll see it all," Tom reassured him.
He made the dogs stop scratching and lie down to rest.
"Jest save yer strenk, boys," Tom cried. "Yer'll need it presently."
They sat down, the father lit his pipe and told the Boy the story of a
great fight he had witnessed on such a creek bank once before in his
life.
Day was dawning and the eastern sky reddening.
The Boy stamped on the solid ground and couldn't believe it possible
that any dog could smell game through six feet of earth.
He lifted Boney's long nose and looked at it curiously. His wonderful
nostrils were widely distended and though he lay quite still in the sand
on the edge of the hole his muscles were quivering with excitement and
his wistful hound eyes had in them now the red glare of coming battle.
It was quick work when Dennis arrived to throw the sand and soft earth
away and open a hole five feet in depth and of sufficient width to allow
all the dogs to get foothold inside.
Suddenly the spade crashed through an opening below and the rasp of
sharp desperate teeth and claws rang against its polished surface.
"Did you hear that?" Tom laughed.
Another spadeful out and they could be plainly seen. How many it was
impossible to tell, but three pairs of glowing bloodshot eyes in the
shadows showed plainly.
Tom straightened his massive figure and gave a shout to the dogs. They
all danced around the upper rim of the hole and barked with fierce
boastful yelps, but not one would venture his nose within two feet of
those grim shining eyes.
"Well, Dennis," Tom sighed, "I reckon I'll have ter shove you down thar
an' hold ye by the heels while yer pull one of 'em out!"
"I'll be doggoned ef yer do!" he remarked with emphasis.
Tom laughed. "You wuz afeared ye wouldn't git here in time ye know."
"Oh, I'm in time all right!"
The hunter put his hands in his pockets and gazed at the warriors below.
"Waal, we'll try ter git a dog ter yank one of 'em out an' then they'll
all come. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that Godamighty ever yet
built a dog that'll stick his nose in that hole. Hit takes three dogs
ter kill one coon in a fair fight. Old Boney's the only pup I ever seed
do it by hisself. But it's askin' too much o' him ter stick his nose in
a place like that with three of 'em lookin' right at him ready ter tear
his eyes out. But they ain't nothin' like tryin'----"
He paused and looked at the old warrior of a hundred bloody fields,
pointed at the bottom of the hole and in stern command shouted:
"Fetch 'em out, Bone!"
With a deep growl the faithful old soldier sprang to the front. With
teeth shining in white gleaming rows he scrambled within a foot of the
opening of the den, circled it twice, his eyes fixed on the flashing
lights below. They followed his every move. He tried the stratagem of
right and left flank movements, but the space was too narrow. He dashed
straight toward the opening once with a loud angry cry, hoping to get
the flash of a coward's back. He met three double rows of white
needle-like teeth daring him to come on.
He squatted flat on his belly and growled with desperate fury, but he
wouldn't go closer. The hunter urged in vain.
"Hit's no use!" he cried at last. "Jest ez well axe er dog ter walk into
a den er lions. I don't blame him."
The Boy's pride was hurt.
"I can make him bring one out," he said.
Tom shook his head:
"Not much. Less see ye?"
The Boy stepped down to the dog's side.
"Look out, ye fool, don't let yer foot slip in thar!" his father
warned.
The Boy knelt beside the dog, patted his back and began to talk to him
in low tense tones:
"Fetch 'im out, Bone! Go after 'm! Sick 'em, boy, sick 'em!"
Closer and closer the brave old fighter edged his way, only a low mad
growl answering to the Boy's urging. His eyes were blazing now in the
red rays of the rising sun like two balls of fire. With a sudden savage
plunge he hurled himself into the den and quick as a flash of lightning
his short hairy neck gave a flirt, and a coon as large as one of the
hounds whizzed ten feet into the air, and, with his white teeth shining,
struck the ground, lighting squarely on his feet. A hound dashed for him
and one slap from the long sharp claws sent him howling and bleeding
into the canes.
But old Boney had watched him in the air, and, circling the pack that
faced the coon, with a quick leap had downed him. Then every dog was
with him and the battle was on. Eight dogs to one coon and yet so sharp
were his claws, so keen the steel-like points of his teeth, he sometimes
had four dogs rolling in agony beside the growling mass of fur and teeth
and nails.
The fight had scarcely begun when one of the remaining coons leaped out
of the den. Tom's watchful eye had seen him. He pulled three dogs from
the first battle group and hurled them on the new fighter. He had
scarcely started this struggle when the third sprang to the top of the
earthen breastwork, surveyed the field and with sullen deliberation,
trotted to the water's edge, jumped in and, placing two paws on a
swaying limb, dared any dog to come.
Here was work for the veteran! Boney was the only dog in the pack who
would dare accept that challenge. Tom choked him off the first coon,
pulled him to the bank and showed him his enemy in the water. He looked
just a moment at the snarling, daring mouth and made the plunge.
The boy had followed the dog and watched with bated breath. He circled
the coon twice, swimming in swift graceful curves. But his enemy was too
shrewd. A flank movement was impossible. The coon's fierce mouth was
squarely facing him at every turn and the dog plunged straight on his
foe.
To his horror the Boy saw the fangs sink into his friend's head, four
sets of sharp claws circle his neck, a tense grey ball of fur hanging
its dead weight below. The water ran red for a moment as both slowly
sank to the bottom.
Eyes wide with anguish he heard his father cry:
"By the Lord, he'll kill that dog shore--he's a goner!"
"No, he won't neither!" the Boy shouted, leaping into the water where he
saw them go down.
Before his father could warn him of the danger his head disappeared in
the deep still eddy.
"Look out for us, Dennis, with a pole I'm goin' ter dive fer 'em!"
In a moment they came to the surface, the man holding the Boy, the Boy
grasping his dog, the coon fastened to the dog's head.
"Well, don't that beat the devil!" Tom laughed, as he carried them to a
little rocky island in the middle of the creek.
The Boy intent on saving his dog had held his breath and was not even
strangled. The dog had buried his nose in the coon's throat and was
chewing and choking with savage determination.
Tom stood over them now on the little island with its smooth stone-paved
battle arena ringed with the music of laughing waters. He threw both
hands above his shaggy head and yelled himself hoarse--the wild cry of
the hunter's soul in delirious joy.
"_Yaaaiih! Yaaaiiih!_"
A moment's pause, and then the low snarl and growl and clash of tooth
and claw! Again the hunter's gnarled hands flew over his head.
"_Yaaaiih! Yaaaaiiih! Yaaiih! Yaaaaiiiihhh!!_"
On the shore Dennis stood first over one group of swirling, rolling,
snarling brutes, and then over the other, yelling and cheering.
The coon on the island suddenly broke his assailant's death-like grip,
and, with a quick leap, reached the water. Boney was on him in a moment
and down they went beneath the surface again.
The Boy sprang to the rescue.
His father brushed him roughly aside:
"Keep out! I'll git 'em!"
Three times the coon made the dash for deep water and three times Tom
carried both dog and coon back to the little island yelling his battle
cry anew.
The smooth stones began to show red. Fur and dog hair flew in little
tufts and struck the ground, sometimes with the flat splash of red
flesh.
The Boy frowned and his lips quivered. At last he could hold in no
longer. Through chattering teeth he moaned:
"He'll kill Boney, Pa!"
"Let him alone!" was the sharp command. "I never see sich a dog in my
life. He'll kill that coon by hisself, I tell ye!"
Again his enemy broke Boney's grim hold on his throat, sprang back four
feet and, to the dog's surprise, made no effort to reach the water.
Instead he stood straight and quivering on his hind legs and faced his
enemy, his white needle-like fangs gleaming in two rows and his savage
fore-claws opening and closing with deadly threat.
The old warrior, taken completely by surprise by this new stratagem of
his foe, circled in a vain effort to reach the flank or rear. Each turn
only brought them again face to face, and at last he plunged straight on
the centre line of attack. With a quick side leap the coon struck the
dog's head a blow with his claw that split his ear for three inches as
cleanly and evenly as if a surgeon's knife had been used.
With a low growl of rage and pain, Boney wheeled and repeated his
assault with the same results for the other ear. He turned in silence
and deliberately crept toward his foe. There would be no chance for a
side blow. He wouldn't plunge or spring. He might get another bloody
gash, but he wouldn't miss again.
This time he found the body, they closed and rolled over and over in
close blood-stained grip. For the first time Tom's face showed doubts,
and he called to Dennis:
"Choke off two dogs from that fust coon an' throw 'em in here!"
They came in a moment and clinched with Boney's enemy. The charge of two
new troopers drove the coon to desperation. The sharp claws flew like
lightning. The new dogs ran back into the water with howls of pain and
scrambled up the bank to their old job.
Boney paid no attention either to the unexpected assault of his friends
or their ignoble desertion. Every ounce of his dog-manhood was up now.
It was a battle to the death and he had no wish to live if he couldn't
whip any coon that ever made a track in his path.
The Boy's pride was roused now and the fighting instinct that slumbers
in every human soul flashed through his excited eyes. He drew near and
watched with increasing excitement and joined with his father at last in
shouts and cheers.
"Did ye ever see such a dog!" he cried through his tears.
"He beats creation!" was the admiring answer.
The Boy bent low over the squirming pair and his voice was in perfect
tune with his dog's low growl:
"Eat him up, Bone! Eat him alive!"
"Don't touch 'em!" Tom warned. "Let 'im have a fair fight--ef he don't
kill that coon I'll eat 'im raw, hide an' hair!"
Boney had succeeded at last in fastening his teeth in a firm grip on the
coon's throat. He held it without a cry of pain while the claws ripped
his ears and gashed his head. Deeper and deeper sank his teeth until at
last the razor claws that were cutting relaxed slowly and the long lean
body with its beautiful fur lay full length on the red-marked stones.
The dog loosed his hold instantly. His work was done. He scorned to
strike a fallen foe. He started to the water's edge to quench his thirst
and staggered in a circle. The blood had blinded him.
The Boy sprang to his side, lifted him tenderly in his arms, carried him
to the water and bathed his eyes and head.
"He's cut all to pieces!" he sobbed at last. "He'll die--I just know
it!"
"Na!" his father answered scornfully. "Be all right in two or three
days."
The Boy went back and looked at the slim body of the dead coon with
wonder.
"Why did this one fight so much harder than the ones on the bank?" he
asked thoughtfully.
"'Cause she's their mother," Tom said casually, "an' them's her two
children."
Something hurt deep down in the Boy's soul as he looked at the graceful
nose and the red-stained fur at her throat. He saw his mother's straight
neck and head outlined again against the starlit sky the night she stood
before him rifle in hand and shot at that midnight prowler.
His mouth closed firmly and he spoke with bitter decision:
"I don't like coon hunting. I'm not coming any more."
"Good Lord, Boy, we got ter have skins h'ain't we?" was the hearty
answer.
"I reckon so," he sorrowfully admitted. But all the way home he walked
in brooding silence.
X
The following winter brought the event for which the mother had planned
and about which she had dreamed since her boy was born--a school!
The men gathered on the appointed day, cut the logs and split the boards
for the house. Another day and it was raised and the roof in place.
Tom volunteered to make the teacher's table and chair and benches for
the scholars. He had the best set of tools in the county and he wished
to do it because he knew it would please his wife. There was no money in
it but his life was swiftly passing in that sort of work. He was too
big-hearted and generous to complain. Besides the world in which he
lived--the world of field and wood, of dog and gun, of game and the open
road was too beautiful and interesting to complain about it. He was glad
to be alive and tried to make his neighbors think as he did about it.
When the great day dawned the young mother eagerly prepared breakfast
for her children. She wouldn't allow Sarah to help this morning. It must
be a perfect day in her life. She washed the Boy's face and hands with
scrupulous care when the breakfast things were cleared away, and her
grey eyes were shining with a joy he had never seen before. He caught
her excitement and the spirit of it took possession of his imagination.
"What'll school be like, Ma?" he asked in a tense whisper.
"Oh, this one won't be very exciting; maybe in a little room built of
logs. But it's the beginning, Boy, of greater things. Just spelling,
reading, writing and arithmetic now--but you're starting on the way that
leads out of these silent, lonely woods into the big world where great
men fight and make history. Your father has never known this way. He's
good and kind and gentle and generous, but he's just a child, because
he doesn't know. You're going to be a man among men for your mother's
sake, aren't you?"
She seized his arms and gripped them in her eagerness until he felt the
pain.
"Won't you, Boy?" she repeated tensely.
He looked up steadily and then slowly said:
"Yes, I will."
She clasped him impulsively in her arms and hurried from the cabin
leading the children by the hand. The Boy could feel her slender fingers
trembling.
When they drew near the cross roads where the little log house had been
built, she stopped, nervously fixed their clothes, took off the Boy's
cap and brushed his thick black hair.
They were the first to arrive, but in a few minutes others came, and by
nine o'clock more than thirty scholars were in their seats. The mother's
heart sank within her when she met the teacher and heard him talk. It
was only too evident that he was poorly equipped for his work. He could
barely read and could neither write nor teach arithmetic. The one
qualification about which there was absolute certainty, was that he
could lick the biggest boy in school whenever the occasion demanded it.
He conveyed this interesting bit of information to the assemblage in no
uncertain language.
The mother could scarcely keep back her tears. By the end of the week it
was plain that her children knew as much as their teacher.
"What's the use?" Tom asked in disgust. "Hit's a waste o' time an'
money. Let 'em quit!"
"No, I can't take them out!" was the firm reply. "They may not learn
much, but if the school keeps going, don't you see, a better man will
come bye and bye, and then it will be worth while."
Tom shook his head, but let her have her own way.
"Besides," she went on, "he'll learn something being with the other
children."
"Learn to fight, mebbe," the husband laughed.
He did, too, and the way it came about was as big a surprise to the Boy
as it was to the youngster he fought.
The small bully of the school lived in the same direction as the Boy and
Sarah. They frequently walked together for a mile going or coming and
grew to know one another well. The Boy disliked this tow-head urchin
from the moment they met. But he was quiet, unobtrusive and modest and
generally allowed the loud-mouthed one to have his way. The tow-head
took the Boy's quiet ways for submission and insisted on patronizing his
friend. The Boy good-naturedly submitted when it cost him nothing of
self-respect.
At the close of school, the tow-head whispered:
"Come by the spring with me, I want to show you somethin'!"
"No, I don't want to," he replied.
"Let Sarah go on an' we'll catch her--I got a funny trick ter show you.
You'll kill yourself a-laughin'."
The Boy's curiosity was aroused and he consented.
They hastened to the spring where the embers of a fire at which the
scholars were accustomed to warm their lunch, were still smouldering.
The tow-headed one drew from the corner of the fence a turtle which he
had captured and tied, scooped a red-hot coal from the fire with a
piece of board and placed it on the turtle's back.
The poor creature, tortured by the burning coal, started in a scramble
trying to run from the fire. The tow-head roared with laughter.
The Boy flushed with sudden rage, sprang forward and knocked the coal
off.
The two faced each other.
"You do that again an' I'll knock you down!" shouted the bully.
"You do it again and I'll knock you down," was the sturdy answer.
"You will, will you?" the tow-head cried with scorn. "Well, I'll show
you."
With a bound he replaced the coal.
The Boy knocked it off and pounced on him.
The fight was brief. They had scarcely touched the ground before the Boy
was on top pounding with both his little, clinched fists.
"Stop it--you're killin' me!" the under one screamed.
"Will you let him alone?" the Boy hissed.
"You're killin' me, I tell ye!" the tow-head yelled in terror. "Stop it
I say--would you kill a feller just for a doggoned old cooter?"
"Will you let him alone?"
"Yes, if ye won't kill me."
The Boy slowly rose. The tow-head leaped to his feet and with a look of
terror started on a run.
"You needn't run, I won't hit ye again!" the Boy cried.
But the legs only moved faster. Never since he was born did the Boy see
a pair of legs get over the ground like that. He sat down and laughed
and then hurried on to join Sarah.
He didn't tell his sister what had happened. His mother mustn't know
that he had been in a fight. But when he felt the touch of her hand on
his forehead that night as he rose from her knee he couldn't bear the
thought of deceiving her again and so he confessed.
"It wasn't wrong, was it, to fight for a thing like that?" he asked
wistfully.
"No," came the answer. "He needed a thrashing--the little scoundrel, and
I'm glad you did it."
XI
The school flickered out in five weeks and the following summer another
lasted for six weeks.
And then they moved to the land Tom had staked off in the heart of the
great forest fifteen miles from the northern banks of the Ohio. He would
still be in sight of the soil of Kentucky.
The Boy's heart beat with new wonder as they slowly floated across the
broad surface of the river. He could conceive of no greater one.
"There _is_ a bigger one!" his father said. "The Mississippi is the
daddy of 'em all--the Ohio's lost when it rolls into her
banks--stretchin' for a thousand miles an' more from the mountains in
the north way down to the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans."
"And it's all ours?" he asked in wonder.
"Yes, and plenty more big ones that pour into hit from the West."
The Boy saw again the impassioned face of the orator telling the
glories of his country, and his heart swelled with pride.
They left the river and plunged into the trackless forest. No roads had
yet scarred its virgin soil. Only the blazed trail for the first ten
miles--the trail Tom had marked with his own hatchet--and then the
magnificent woods without a mark. Five miles further they penetrated,
cutting down the brush and trees to make way for the wagon.
They stopped at last on a beautiful densely wooded hill near a stream of
limpid water. A rough camp was quickly built Indian fashion and covered
with bear skins.
The next day the father put into the Boy's hand the new axe he had
bought for him.
"You're not quite eight years old, Boy," he said, encouragingly, "but
you're big as a twelve-year-old an' you're spunky. Do you think you can
swing an axe that's a man's size?"
"Yes," was the sturdy answer.
And from that day he did it with a song on his lips no matter how heavy
the heart that beat in his little breast.
At first they cut the small poles and built a half-faced camp, and made
it strong enough to stand the storms of winter in case a cabin could not
be finished before spring. This half-faced camp was made of small logs
built on three sides, with the fourth open to the south. In front of
this opening the log fire was built and its flame never died day or
night.
To the soul of the Boy this half-faced camp with its blazing logs in the
shadow of giant trees was the most wonderful dwelling he had ever seen.
The stars that twinkled in the sky beyond the lacing boughs were set in
his ceiling. No king in his palace could ask for more.
But into the young mother's heart slowly crept the first shadows of a
nameless dread. Fifteen miles from a human habitation in the depths of
an unmarked wilderness with only a hunter's camp for her home, and she
had dreamed of schools! To her children her face always gave good cheer.
But at night she lay awake for long, pitiful hours watching the stars
and fighting the battle alone with despair.
Yet there was never a thought of surrender. God lived and her faith was
in Him. The same stars were shining above that sparkled in old Virginia
and Kentucky. Something within sang for joy at the sight of her
Boy--strong of limb and dauntless of soul. He was God's answer to her
cry, and always she went the even tenor of her way singing softly that
he might hear.
His father set him to the task of clearing the first acre of ground for
the crop next spring. It seemed a joke to send a child with an axe into
that huge forest and tell him to clear the way for civilization. And yet
he went with firm, eager steps.
He chose the biggest tree in sight for his first task--a giant oak three
feet in diameter, its straight trunk rising a hundred feet without a
limb or knot to mar its perfect beauty.
The Boy leaped on the fallen monarch of the woods with a new sense of
power. Far above gleamed a tiny space in the sky. His hand had made it.
He was a force to be reckoned with now. He was doing things that counted
in a man's world.
Day after day his axe rang in the woods until a big white patch of sky
showed with gleaming piles of clouds. And shimmering sunbeams were
warming the earth for the seed of the coming spring. His tall thin body
ached with mortal weariness, but the spirit within was too proud to
whine or complain. He had taken a man's place. His mother needed him and
he'd play the part.
The winter was the hardest and busiest he had ever known. He shot his
first wild turkey from the door of their log camp the second week after
arrival. Proud of his marksmanship he talked of it for a week, and yet
he didn't make a good hunter. He allowed his father to go alone oftener
than he would accompany him. There was a queer little voice somewhere
within that protested against the killing. He wouldn't acknowledge it to
himself but half the joy of his shot at his turkey was destroyed by the
sight of the blood-stained broken wing when he picked it up.
The mother watched this trait with deepening pride. His practice at
writing and reading was sheer joy now. Her interest was so keen he
always tried his best that he might see her smile.
It was time to begin the spring planting before the heavy logs were
rolled and burned and the smaller ones made ready for the cabin. The
corn couldn't wait. The cabin must remain unfinished until the crop was
laid by.
It had been a long, lonely winter for the mother. But with the coming of
spring, the wooded world was clothed in beauty so fresh and marvellous,
she forgot the loneliness in new hopes and joys.
Settlers were moving in now. Every week Tom brought the news of another
neighbor. Her aunt came in midsummer bringing Dennis and his dogs with
fun and companionship for the Boy.
The new cabin was not quite finished, but they moved in and gave their
kin their old camp for a home, all ready without the stroke of an axe.
Dennis was wild over the hunting and proposed to the Boy a deer hunt all
by themselves.
"Let's just me and you go, Boy, an' show Tom what we can do with a rifle
without him. You can take the first shot with old 'Speakeasy' an' then
I'll try her. The deer'll be ez thick ez bees around that Salt Lick
now."
The Boy consented. Boney went with him for company. As a self-respecting
coon dog he scorned to hunt any animal that couldn't fight with an even
chance for his life. As for a deer--he'd as lief chase a calf!
Dennis placed the Boy at a choice stand behind a steep hill in which the
deer would be sure to plunge in their final rush to escape the dogs when
close pressed in the valley.
"Now the minute you see him jump that ridge let him have it!" Dennis
said. "He'll come straight down the hill right inter your face."
The Boy took his place and began to feel the savage excitement of his
older companion. He threw the gun in place and drew a bead on an
imaginary bounding deer.
"All right. I'll crack him!" he promised.
"Now, for the Lord's sake, don't you miss 'im!" Dennis warned. "I don't
want Tom ter have the laugh on us."
The Boy promised, and Dennis called his dogs and hurried into the
bottoms toward the Salt Lick. In half an hour the dogs opened on a hot
trail that grew fainter and fainter in the distance until they could
scarcely be heard. They stopped altogether for a moment and then took up
the cry gradually growing clearer and clearer. The deer had run the
limit of his first impulse and taken the back track, returning directly
over the same trail.
Nearer and nearer the pack drew, the trail growing hotter and hotter
with each leap of the hounds.
The Boy was trembling with excitement. He cocked his gun and stood
ready. Boney lay on a pile of leaves ten feet away quietly dozing.
Louder and louder rang the cry of the hounds. They seemed to be right
back of the hill now. The deer should leap over its crest at any moment.
His gun was half lifted and his eyes flaming with excitement when a
beautiful half grown fawn sprang over the hill and stood for a moment
staring with wide startled eyes straight into his.
The savage yelp of the hounds close behind rang clear, sharp and
piercing as they reared the summit. The panting, trembling fawn glanced
despairingly behind, looked again into the Boy's eyes, and as the first
dog leaped the hill crest made his choice. Staggering and panting with
terror, he dropped on his knees by the Boy's side, the bloodshot eyes
begging piteously for help.
The Boy dropped his gun and gathered the trembling thing in his arms. In
a moment the hounds were on him leaping and tearing at the fawn. He
kicked them right and left and yelled with all his might:
"Down, I tell you! Down or I'll kill you!"
The hounds continued to leap and snap in spite of his kicks and cries
until Boney saw the struggle, and stepped between his master and his
tormenters. One low growl and not another hound came near.
When Dennis arrived panting for breath he couldn't believe his eyes. The
Boy was holding the exhausted fawn in his lap with a glazed look in his
eyes.
"Well, of all the dam-fool things I ever see sence God made me, this
takes the cake!" he cried in disgust. "Why didn't ye shoot him?"
"Because he ran to me for help--how could I shoot him?"
Dennis sat down and roared:
"Well, of all the deer huntin', this beats me!"
The Boy rose, still holding the fawn in his arms.
"You can take the gun and go on. Boney and me'll go back home----"
"You ain't goin' ter carry that thing clean home, are you?"
"Yes, I am," was the quiet answer. "And I'll kill any dog that tries to
hurt him."
Dennis was still laughing when he disappeared, Boney walking slowly at
his heels.
He showed the fawn to his mother and told Sarah she could have him for a
pet. The mother watched him with shining eyes while he built a pen and
then lifted the still trembling wild thing inside.
Next morning the pen was down and the captive gone. The Boy didn't seem
much surprised or appear to care. When he was alone with his mother she
whispered:
"Didn't you go out there last night and let it loose when the dogs were
asleep?"
He was still a moment and then nodded his head.
His mother clasped him to her heart.
"O my Boy! My own--I love you!"
XII
The second winter in the wilderness was not so hard. The heavy work of
clearing the timber for the corn fields was done and the new cabin and
its furniture had been finished except the door, for which there was
little use.
The new neighbors had brought cheer to the mother's heart.
An early spring broke the winter of 1818 and clothed the wilderness
world in robes of matchless beauty.
The Boy's gourds were placed beside the new garden and the noise of
chattering martins echoed over the cabin. The toughened muscles of his
strong, slim body no longer ached in rebellion at his tasks. Work had
become a part of the rhythm of life. He could sing at his hardest task.
The freedom and strength of the woods had gotten into his blood. In this
world of waving trees, of birds and beasts, of laughing sky and rippling
waters, there were no masters, no slaves. Millions in gold were of no
value in its elemental struggle. Character, skill, strength and manhood
only counted. Poverty was teaching him the first great lesson of human
life, that man shall eat his bread in the sweat of his brow and that
industry is the only foundation on which the moral and material universe
has ever rested or can rest.
Solitude and the stimulus of his mother's mind were slowly teaching him
to think--to think deeply and fearlessly, and think for himself.
Entering now in his ninth year, he was shy, reticent, over-grown,
consciously awkward, homely and ill clad--he grew so rapidly it was
impossible to make his clothes fit. But in the depths of his hazel-grey
eyes there were slumbering fires that set him apart from the boys of his
age. His mother saw and understood.
A child in years and yet he had already learned the secrets of the toil
necessary to meet the needs of life. He swung a woodman's axe with any
man. He could plow and plant a field, make its crop, harvest and store
its fruits and cook them for the table. He could run, jump, wrestle,
swim and fight when manhood called. He knew the language of the winds
and clouds, and spoke the tongues of woods and field.
And he could read and write. His mother's passionate yearning and
quenchless enthusiasm had placed in his hand the key to books and the
secrets of the ages were his for the asking.
He would never see the walls of a college, but he had already taken his
degree in Industry, Patience, Caution, Courage, Pity and Gentleness.
The beauty and glory of this remarkable spring brought him into still
closer communion with his mother's spirit. They had read every story of
the Bible, some of them twice or three times, and his stubborn mind had
fought with her many a friendly battle over their teachings. Always too
wise and patient to command his faith, she waited its growth in the
fulness of time. He had read every tale in "Æsop's Fables" and brought a
thousand smiles to his mother's dark face by his quaint comments. She
was dreaming now of new books to place in his eager hands. Corn was ten
cents a bushel, wheat twenty-five, and a cow was only worth six dollars.
Whiskey, hams and tobacco were legal tender and used instead of money.
She had ceased to dream of wealth in goods and chattels until conditions
were changed. Her one aim in life was to train the minds of her children
and to this joyous task she gave her soul and body. It was the only
thing worth while. That God would give her strength for this was all she
asked.
And then the great shadow fell.
The mother and children were walking home from the woods through the
glory of the Southern spring morning in awed silence. The path was
hedged with violets and buttercups. The sweet odor of grapevine,
blackberry and dewberry blossoms filled the air. Dogwood and black-haw
lit with white flame the farthest shadows of the forest and the music of
birds seemed part of the mingled perfume of flowers.
The boy's keen ear caught the drone of bees and his sharp eye watched
them climb slowly toward their storehouse in a towering tree. All nature
was laughing in the madness of joy.
The Boy silently took his mother's hand and asked in subdued tones:
"What is the pest, Ma, and what makes it?"
"Nobody knows," she answered softly. "It comes like a thief in the
night and stays for months and sometimes for years. They call it the
'milk-sick' because the cows die, too--and sometimes the horses. The old
Indian women say it starts from the cows eating a poison flower in the
woods. The doctors know nothing about it. It just comes and kills,
that's all."
The little hand suddenly gripped hers with trembling hold:
"O Ma, if it kills you!"
A tender smile lighted her dark face as the warmth of his love ran like
fire through her veins.
"It can't harm me, my son, unless God wills it. When he calls I shall be
ready."
All the way home he clung to her hand and sometimes when they paused
stroked it tenderly with both his.
"What's it like?" he asked at last. "Can't you take bitters for it in
time to stop it? How do you know when it's come?"
"You begin to feel drowsy, a whitish coating is on the tongue, a burning
in the stomach, the feet and legs get cold. You're restless and the
pulse grows weak."
"How long does it last?"
"Sometimes it kills in three days, sometimes two weeks. Sometimes it's
chronic and hangs on for years and then kills."
Every morning through the long black summer of the scourge he asked her
with wistful tenderness if she were well. Her cheerful answers at last
brought peace to his anxious heart and he gradually ceased to fear. She
was too sweet and loving and God too good that she should die. Besides,
both his father and mother had given him a lesson in quiet, simple
heroism that steadied his nerves.
He looked at the rugged figure of his father with a new sense of
admiration. He was no more afraid of Death than of Life. He was giving
himself without a question in an utterly unselfish devotion to the
stricken community. There were no doctors within thirty miles, and if
one came he could but shake his head and advise simple remedies that did
no good. Only careful nursing counted for anything. Without money,
without price, without a murmur the father gave his life to this work.
No neighbor within five miles was stricken that he did not find a place
by that bedside in fearless, loving, unselfish service.
And when Death came, this simple friend went for his tools, cut down a
tree, ripped the boards from its trunk, made the coffin, and with tender
reverence dug a grave and lowered the loved one. He was doctor, nurse,
casket-maker, grave-digger, comforter and priest. His reverent lips had
long known the language of prayer.
With tireless zeal the mother joined in this ministry of love, and the
Boy saw her slender dark figure walk so often beside trembling feet as
they entered the valley of the great shadow, that he grew to believe
that she led a charmed life. Nor did he fear when Dennis came one
morning and in choking tones said that both his uncle and aunt were
stricken in the little half-faced camp but a few hundred yards away. He
was sorry for Dennis. He had never known father or mother--only this
uncle and aunt.
"Don't you worry, Dennis," the Boy said tenderly. "You'll live with us
if they die."
They both died within a few days. The night after the last burial,
Dennis crawled into the loft with the Boy to be his companion for many a
year.
And then the blow fell, swift, terrible and utterly unexpected. He had
long ago made up his mind that God had flung about his mother's form the
spell of his Almighty power and the pestilence that walked in the night
dared not draw near. An angel with flaming sword stood beside their
cabin door.
Last night in the soft moonlight a whip-poor-will was singing nearby and
he fancied he saw the white winged sentinel, and laughed for joy.
When he climbed down from his loft next morning his mother was in bed
and Sarah was alone over the fire cooking breakfast.
His heart stood still. He walked with unsteady step to her bedside and
whispered:
"Are you sick, Ma?"
"Yes, dear, it has come."
He grasped her hot outstretched hand and fell on his knees in sobbing
anguish. He knew now--it was the angel of Death he had seen.
XIII
Death stood at the door with drawn sword to slay not to defend, but the
Boy resolved to fight. She should not give up--she should not die. He
would fight for her with all the hosts of hell and single-handed if he
must.
He rose from his knees still holding her hand, his first hopeless burst
of despair over, his heart beating with desperate resolution.
"You won't give up, will you, Ma?" he whispered.
She smiled wanly and he rushed on with breathless intensity: "I'm not
going to let you die. I won't--I tell you I won't. I'll fight this
thing--and you've got to help me--won't you?"
"I'm ready for God's will, my Boy," she said simply.
"I don't want you to say that!" he pleaded. "I want you to fight and
never give up. Why you can't die, Ma--you just can't. You're my only
teacher now. There ain't no schools here. How can I learn books without
you to help me? Say you'll get well. Please say it for me--please, just
say it----"
He paused and couldn't go on for a moment, "Say you'll try then--just
for me--please say it!"
"I'll try, Boy," she said tenderly at last.
He flew to the creek bank and in two hours came home with an armful of
fresh sarsaparilla roots. He cut and pounded them into a soft pulp and
made a poultice. Sarah helped him put it in place. He made his mother
drink the bitters every hour. He got stones ready and had them hot to
wrap in cloths and put to her feet the moment they felt cold. He
wouldn't take her word for it either. He kept slipping his little hands
under the cover to feel.
The mother smiled at his tender, eager touch.
"Now, Boy," she said softly. "I'm feeling comfortable, will you do
something for me?"
"What is it?" he cried eagerly.
She smiled again:
"Read to me. I want to hear your voice."
"All right--what?"
"The Bible, of course."
"What story?"
"Not a story this time--the twenty-third Psalm."
The Boy took the worn Bible from the shelf, sat down on the edge of the
bed, opened, and began in low tones to read:
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want----"
His voice choked and he stopped:
"O, Ma, I just can't read that now--why--why did he let this come to you
if He's your Shepherd--why--why--why!"
He buried his face in his hands and her slender fingers touched his
hair:
"He knows best, my son--read on--the words are sweet to my soul from
your lips."
With an effort he opened the Book again:
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
"He leadeth me beside the still waters.
"He restoreth my soul:
"He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
"I will fear no evil; for thou art with me----"
Again the voice choked into silence and he closed the Book.
"I can't--I can't read it. I'm afraid you're going to give up!" he
sobbed. "O Ma, you won't, will you? Please say you won't?"
"No, no, I won't give up, my Boy," she said soothingly. "I'm just ready
for anything He sends----"
"But I don't want you to say that!" he broke in passionately. "You must
fight. You mustn't be ready. You mustn't think about dying. I won't let
you die--I tell you!"
She stroked his forehead with gentle touch:
"I won't give up for your sake----"
"It's a promise now?" he cried.
"Yes, I promise----"
"Then I'm going for a doctor right away----"
"You can't find him, Boy," his father said. "It's thirty miles across
the Ohio into Kentucky where he lives. An' in all this sickness he ain't
at home. Hit's foolishness ter go----"
"I'll find him," was the firm response.
The father made no further protest. He helped him saddle the horse,
buckled the stirrups to fit his little bare legs and gave him as clear
directions as he could.
"The moon'll be shinin' all night, Boy," were his last words. "Yer can
cross the river before eight o'clock. Ef ye git lost on t'other side ax
yer way frum the fust house ye come to----"
The Boy nodded, and when had fixed his bare toes in the stirrups he
leaned low and whispered:
"You won't give up, Pa, will ye? You'll fight for her till I get back?"
The big gnarled fist closed over the little hand on the pommel of the
saddle, and the father's voice was husky:
"As long as there's breath in her body--hurry now."
The last command was not needed. The horse felt the quiver of tense
suffering in the low voice and the nervous touch of the switch on his
side. With a quick bound he was off at a full gallop down the trail
toward the river.
The sun had set before they reached the open country beyond the great
forest, but by seven o'clock the Boy saw from the hill top the shining
mirror of the river in the calm moonlit valley. Before night he had
succeeded in rousing the ferryman and reached the opposite shore.
He lost the way once about nine o'clock and a settler whose light he saw
in the woods called sharply from the door with his rifle in hand:
"Who are you?"
"I'm just a little boy," the voice faltered. "I'm trying to find the
doctor's house. My mother's about to die and I'm lost. I want you to
show me the road."
The rifle was lowered and the cabin stirred. The man dropped back and a
woman appeared in the door way.
"Won't ye come in, Honey, and rest a minute and me give ye somethin' to
eat while Pa's gettin' ready to go with ye a piece?"
"No'm I can't eat nuthin'----"
He didn't dare go near that tender voice that spoke so clearly its
sympathy in the night. He would be crying in a minute if he did and he
couldn't afford that.
The settler caught a horse and rode with him an hour to make sure he
wouldn't miss the way again.
He reached the doctor's house by eleven o'clock, and to his joy found
him at home. The rough old man refused to move an inch until he had fed
his horse and eaten a hearty meal.
The Boy tried to eat, but couldn't. The food stuck squarely in his
throat. It was no use.
He went outside and waited beside his horse until the doctor was ready.
It seemed an eternity, the awful wait. How serene the still beauty of
the autumn night! Not a breath of wind stirred. The full moon hung in
the sky straight overhead, flooding the earth with silver radiance,
marking in clear and vivid lines the shadows of the trees on the ground.
Bitter wonder and rebellion filled his young soul. How could God sit
unmoved among those shining stars and leave his mother to die!
The doctor came at last and they started.
In vain he urged that they gallop.
"I won't do it, sir!" the old man snapped. "Your horse has come thirty
miles. I'll not let you kill him and I'm not going to kill myself
plunging over a rough road at night."
They reached the cabin at daylight. The Boy saw the glow of the flame in
the big fireplace through the woods and his heart beat high with new
hope. Now that the doctor was here he felt sure her life could be saved.
The Boy stood close by his side when he felt her pulse, and looked at
the strange whitish-brown coating on her tongue.
"You can do something, Doctor?" he asked anxiously.
"Yes," was the short answer.
He asked for a towel and bowl and opened his saddlebags. He examined the
point of his lancet and bared the slender arm.
"What are ye goin' ter do?" Tom asked with a frown.
"Bleed her, of course. It's the only thing to do----"
The Boy suddenly pushed himself between the doctor and the bed and
looked up into his stern face with a resolute stare:
"You shan't do it. I don't know nothin' much about doctorin' but I got
sense enough to know that'll kill her--and you shan't do it!"
The doctor looked angrily at the father.
"I say so, too," Tom replied. "She's too weak for that."
With a snort of anger, the old man threw the lancet into his saddlebags,
snapped them together and strode through the cabin door.
The Boy followed him wistfully to the stable, and when he seized the
bridle to put on the horse, caught his hand and looked up:
"Please don't go," he begged. "I'm mighty sorry I made you mad. I didn't
go to do it. You see----" his voice faltered--"I love her so I just
couldn't let you cut her arm open and see her bleed. I didn't mean to
hurt your feelings. Won't you stay and help us? Can't ye do somethin'
else for her? I'll pay ye. I'll go work for ye a whole year or five
years if ye want me--if you'll just save her--just save her, that's
all--don't go--please don't!"
Something in the child's anguish found the rough old man's heart. His
eyes grew misty for a moment, he slipped one arm about the Boy's
shoulders and drew him close.
"God knows I'd stay and do something if I could, Sonny, but I don't know
what to do. I'm not sure I'm right about the bleeding or I'd stay and
make you help me do it. But I'm not sure--I'm not sure--and I can do no
good by staying. Keep her warm, give her all the good food her stomach
will retain. That's all I can tell you. She's in God's hands."
With a heavy heart the Boy watched him ride away as the sun rose over
the eastern hills. The doctor's last words sank into his soul. She was
in God's hands! Well, he would go to God and beg Him to save her. He
went into the woods, knelt behind a great oak and in the simple words of
a child asked for the desire of his heart. Three times every day and
every night he prayed.
For four days no change was apparent. She was very weak and tired, but
suffered no pain. His prayer was heard and would be answered!
The first symptom of failure in circulation, he promptly met by placing
the hot stones to her feet. And for hours he and Sarah would rub her
until the cold disappeared.
On the morning of the seventh day she was unusually bright.
"Why, you're better, Ma, aren't you?" he cried with joy.
Her eyes were shining with a strange excitement:
"Yes. I'm a lot better. I'm going to sit up awhile. I'm tired lying
down."
She threw herself quickly on the side of the bed and her feet touched
the bear-skin rug. She rose trembling and smiling and took a step. She
tottered a bit, but the Boy was laughing and holding her arm. She
reached the chair by the fire and he wrapped a great skin about her feet
and limbs.
"Look, Pa, she's getting well!" the Boy shouted.
Tom watched her gravely without reply.
She took the Boy's hand, still smiling:
"I had such a wonderful dream," she began slowly--"the same one I had
before you were born, my Boy. God had answered my prayer and sent me a
son. I watched him grow to be a strong, brave, patient, wise and gentle
man. Thousands hung on his words and the great from the ends of the
earth came to do him homage. With uncovered head he led me into a
beautiful home with white pillars. And then he bowed low and whispered
in my ear: 'This is yours, my angel mother. I bought it for you with my
life. All that I am I owe to you'----"
Her voice sank to a whisper that was half a sob and half a laugh.
"See how she's smiling, Pa," the Boy cried. "She's getting well!"
"Don't ye understand!" the father whispered. "Look--at her eyes--she's
not tellin' you a dream--she's looking through the white gates of
heaven--it's Death, Boy--it's come--Lord God, have mercy!"
With a groan he dropped by her side and her thin hand rested gently on
his shaggy head.
The Boy stared at her in agonizing wonder as she felt for his hand and
feebly held it. She was gazing now into the depths of his soul with her
pensive hungry eyes.
"He good to your father, my son----" she paused for breath and looked at
him tenderly. She knew the father was the child of the future--this Boy,
the man.
"Yes!" he whispered.
"And love your sister----"
"Yes."
"Be a man among men, for your mother's sake----"
"Yes, Ma, I will!"
The little head bent low and the voice was silent.
They went to work to make her coffin at noon. An unused walnut log of
burled fibre had been lying in the sun and drying for two years, since
Tom had built the furniture for the cabin. Dennis helped him rip the
boards from this dark, rich wood, shape and plane it for the pieces he
would need.
The Boy sat with dry eyes and aching heart, making the wooden nails to
fasten these boards together.
He stopped suddenly, walked to the bench at which his father was working
and laid by his side the first pins he had whittled.
"I can't do it, Pa," he gasped. "I just can't make the nails for her
coffin. I feel like somebody's drivin' 'em through my heart!"
The rugged face was lighted with tenderness as he slowly answered:
"Why, we must make it, Boy--hit's the last thing we kin do ter show our
love fur her--ter make it all smooth an' purty outen this fine dark
wood. Yer wouldn't put her in the ground an' throw the cold dirt right
on her face, would you?"
The slim figure shivered:
"No--no--I wouldn't do that! Yes, I'll help--we must make it beautiful,
mustn't we?"
And then he went back to the pitiful task.
They dug her grave, these loving hands, father and son and orphan waif,
on a gentle hill in the deep woods. As the sun sank in a sea of scarlet
clouds next day, they lowered the coffin. The father lifted his voice in
a simple prayer and the Boy took his sister's hand and led her in
silence back to the lonely cabin. He couldn't stay to see them throw
the dirt over her. He couldn't endure it.
[Illustration: "'Be a man among men for your mother's sake--'"]
He had heard of ghosts in graveyards, and he wondered vaguely if such
things could be true. He hoped it was. When the others were asleep, just
before day, he slipped noiselessly from his bed and made his way to her
grave.
The waning moon was shining in cold white splendor. The woods were
silent. He watched and waited and hoped with half-faith and half-fear
that he might see her radiant form rise from the dead.
A leaf rustled behind him and he turned with a thrill of awful joy. He
wasn't afraid. He'd clasp her in his arms if he could. With firm step
and head erect, eyes wide and nostrils dilated, he walked straight into
the shadows to see and know.
And there, standing in a spot of pale moonlight, stood his dog looking
up into his eyes with patient, loving sympathy. He hadn't shed a tear
since her death. Now the flood tide broke the barriers. He sank to the
ground, slipped his arm around the dog's neck, and sobbed aloud.
He wrote a tear stained letter to the only parson he knew. It was his
first historic record and he signed his name in bold, well rounded
letters--"A. LINCOLN." Three months later the faithful old man came in
answer to his request and preached her funeral sermon. Something in the
lad's wistful eyes that day fired him with eloquence. Through all life
the words rang with strange solemn power in the Boy's heart:
"O Death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Blessed are
they that die in the Lord! Death is not the chill shadow of the
night--but the grey light of the dawn--the dawn of a new eternal day.
Lift up your eyes and see its beauty. Open your ears and hear the stir
of its wondrous life!"
When the last friend had gone, the forlorn little figure stood beside
the grave alone. There was a wistful smile on his lips as he slowly
whispered:
"I'll not forget, Ma, dear--I'll not forget. I'll live for you."
Nor did he forget. In her slender figure a new force had appeared in
human history. The peasant woman of the old world has ever taught her
child contentment with his lot. And patient millions beyond the seas
bend their backs without a murmur to the task their fathers bore three
thousand years ago.
Free America has given the race a new peasant woman. Born among the
lowliest of her kind, she walks earth's way with her feet in the dust,
her head among the stars.
This one died young in the cabin beside the deep woods, but not before
her hand had kindled a fire of divine discontent in the soul of her son
that only God could extinguish.
_The Story_
CHAPTER I
THE MAN OF THE HOUR
"It's positively uncanny----"
Betty Winter paused on the top step of the Capitol and gazed over the
great silent crowd with a shiver.
"The silence--yes," Ned Vaughan answered slowly. "I wondered if you had
felt it, too."
"It's more like a funeral than an Inauguration."
The young reporter smiled:
"If you believe General Scott there may be several funerals in
Washington before the day's work is done."
"And you _don't_ believe him?" the girl asked seriously.
"Nonsense! All this feverish preparation for violence----"
Betty laughed:
"I'm afraid you're not a good judge of the needs of the incoming
administration. As an avowed Secessionist--you're hardly in their
confidence."
"Thank God, I'm not."
"What are those horses doing over there by the trees?"
"Masked battery of artillery."
"Don't be silly!"
"It's true. Old Scott's going to save the Capital on Inauguration Day
any how! The Avenue's lined with soldiers--sharpshooters posted in the
windows along the whole route of the Inaugural procession, a company of
troops in each end of the Capitol. He has built a wooden tunnel from the
street into the north end of the building and that's lined with guards.
A squad of fifty soldiers are under the platform where we're going to
sit----"
"No!"
"Look through the cracks and see for yourself!" Vaughan cried with
scorn.
The sparkling brown eyes were focused on the board platform.
"I do see them moving," she said slowly, as a look of deep seriousness
swept the fair young face. "Perhaps General Scott's right after all.
Father says we're walking on a volcano----"
"But not that kind of a volcano, Miss Betty," Vaughan interrupted.
"Senator Winter's an Abolitionist. He hates the South with every breath
he breathes."
Betty nodded:
"And prays God night and morning to give him greater strength with which
to hate it harder--yes----"
"But you're not so blind?"
"There must be a little fire where there's so much smoke. A crazy fool
might try to kill the new President."
Ned Vaughan's slender figure stiffened:
"The South won't fight that way. If they begin war it will be the most
solemn act of life. It will be for God and country, and what they
believe to be right. The Southern people are not assassins. When they
take Washington it will be with the bayonet."
"And yet your brother had a taste of Southern feeling here the night of
the election when a mob broke in and smashed the office of the
_Republican_."
"A gang of hoodlums," he protested. "Anything may happen on election
night to an opposition newspaper. The Southern men who formed that mob
will never give this administration trouble----"
"I'm so anxious to meet your brother," Betty interrupted. "Why doesn't
he come?"
"He's in the Senate Chamber for the ceremonies. He'll join us before the
procession gets here."
"He's as handsome as everybody says?" she asked naïvely.
"I'll admit he's a good-looking fellow if he is my brother."
"And vain?"
"As a peacock----"
"Conceited?"
"Very."
"And a woman hater!"
"Far from it--he's easy. He may not think so, but between us he's an
easy mark. I've always been afraid he'll make a fool of himself and
marry without the consent of his younger brother. He's a great care to
me."
The brown eyes twinkled:
"You love him very much?"
Ned Vaughan nodded his dark head slowly:
"Yes. We've quarrelled every day since the election."
"Over politics?"
"What else?"
"Love, perhaps."
The dark eyes met hers.
"No, he hasn't seen you yet----"
Betty's laugh was genial and contagious.
He had meant to be serious and hoped that she would give him the opening
he'd been sparring for. But she refused the challenge with such
amusement he was piqued.
"You're from Missouri, but you're a true Southerner, Mr. Vaughan."
"And you're a heartless Puritan," he answered with a frown.
She shook her golden brown curls:
"No--no--no! My name's an accident. My father was born in Maine on the
Canada line. But my mother was French. I'm her daughter. I love sunlight
and flowers, music and foolishness--and dream of troubadours who sing
under my window. I hate long faces and gloom. But my father has
ambition. I love him, and so I endure things."
Ned Vaughan looked at her timidly. For the life of him he couldn't make
her out. Was she laughing at him? He half suspected it, and yet there
was something sweet and appealing in the way she gazed into his eyes. He
gave it up and changed the subject.
He had promised to bring John to-day and introduce him. He had been
prattling like a fool about this older brother. He wished to God now
something would keep him. The pangs of jealousy had already began to
gnaw at the thought of her hand resting in his.
From the way Betty Winter had laughed she was quite capable of flying
two strings to her bow. And with all the keener interest because
they happened to be brothers. Why had she asked him so pointedly
about John? He had excited her curiosity, of course, by his silly
brother--hero-worship. He had told her of his brilliant career in New
York under Horace Greeley on the _Tribune_--of Greeley's personal
interest, and the flattering letter he had written to Colonel Forney,
which had made him the city editor of the New Party organ in
Washington--of his cool heroism the night the mob had attacked the
_Republican_ office--and last he had hinted of an affair over a woman in
New York that had led to a challenge and a bloodless duel--bloodless
because his opponent failed to appear. It was his own fault, of course,
if Betty was keeping him at arm's length to-day. No girl could fail to
be interested in such a man--no matter who her father might be--Puritan
or Cavalier.
His arm trembled in spite of his effort at self-control as he led her
down the stately steps of the eastern façade toward the Inaugural
platform. He paused on the edge of the boards and pointed to the huge
bronze figure of the statue of Liberty which had been cast to crown the
dome of the Capitol. It lay prostrate in the mud and the crowds were
climbing over it.
"I wonder if Miss Liberty will ever be lifted to her place on high?" he
said musingly.
"If they do finish the dome," Betty replied, "and crown it with that
bronze, my father should sue for damages. One of his most eloquent
figures of speech will be ruined. That prostrate work of art lying in
the mud has given thousands of votes to the Republicans. I've caught
myself crying over his eloquence at times myself."
Ned Vaughan smiled:
"A queer superstition has grown up in Washington that the dome of the
Capitol will never be completed----"
"Do you believe it?"
"No. It will be finished. But I'm not sure whether Abraham Lincoln or
Jefferson Davis will preside on that occasion."
"And I haven't the slightest doubt on that point," Betty said with quick
emphasis.
"I thought you were not a student of politics?" he dryly observed.
"I'm not. It's just a feeling. Women know things by intuition."
The young man glanced upward at the huge crane which swung from the
unfinished structure of the dome.
"Anyhow, Miss Betty," he said smilingly, "your Black Republican
President has a beautiful day for the Inaugural."
"We'll hope it's a sign for the future--shall we?"
"I hope so," was the serious answer. "God knows there haven't been many
happy signs lately. It was dark and threatening at dawn this morning and
a few drops of rain fell up to eight o'clock."
"You were up at dawn?" the girl asked in surprise.
"Yes. The Senate has been in session all night over the new amendment to
the Constitution guaranteeing to the South security in the possession of
their slaves."
"And they passed it?"
"Yes----"
"Over my father's prostrate form?"
"Yes--an administrative measure, too. I've an idea from the 'moderation'
of your father's remarks that there'll be some fun between the White
House and the Senate Chamber during the next four years. For my part I
share his scorn for such eleventh hour repentance. It's too late. The
mischief has been done. Secession is a fact and we've got to face it."
"But we haven't heard from the new President yet," Betty ventured.
"No. That's why this crowd's so still. For the first time since the
foundation of the government, the thousands banked in front of this
platform really wish to hear what a President-elect has to say."
"Isn't that a tremendous tribute to the man?"
"Possibly so--possibly not. He has been silent since his election. Not a
word has fallen from his lips to indicate his policy. He has more real
power from the moment he takes the oath of office than any crowned head
of Europe. From his lips to-day will fall the word that means peace or
war. That's why this crowd's so still."
"It's weird," Betty whispered. "You can feel their very hearts beat. Do
you suppose the new President realizes the meaning of such a moment?"
"I don't think this one will. I interviewed Stanton, the retiring
Attorney General of Buchanan's Cabinet, yesterday. He knows Lincoln
personally--was with him in a lawsuit once before the United States
Court. Stanton says he's a coward and a fool and the ugliest white man
who ever appeared on this planet. He has already christened him 'The
Original Gorilla,' or 'The Illinois Ape'----"
"I wonder," Betty broke in with petulance, "if such a man could be
elected President? I'm morbidly curious to see him. My father, as an
Abolitionist, had to vote for him and he must support his administration
as a Republican Senator. But his favorite name for the new Chief
Magistrate is, 'The Illinois Slave Hound.' I've a growing feeling that
his enemies have overdone their work. I'm going to judge him fairly."
Vaughan's lips slightly curved.
"They say he's a good stump speaker--a little shy on grammar, perhaps,
but good on jokes--of the coarser kind. He ought to get one or two good
guffaws even out of this sober crowd to-day."
"You think he'll stoop to coarse jokes?"
"Of course----"
"Is that your brother?" Betty asked with a quick intake of breath,
lifting her head toward a stalwart figure rapidly coming down the wide
marble steps.
Ned Vaughan looked up with a frown:
"How did you recognize him?"
"By his resemblance to you, of course."
"Thanks."
"You're as much alike as two black-eyed peas--except that you're more
slender and boyish."
"And not quite so good-looking?"
A low mischievous laugh was her answer as John lifted his hat and stood
smiling before them.
"Miss Winter, this is my brother, whose praises I've long been chanting.
I've a little work to do in the crowd--I'll be back in a few minutes."
There was just a touch of irony in the smile with which the younger man
spoke as he hurried away, but the girl was too much absorbed in the
striking picture John Vaughan made to notice. The sparkling brown eyes
took him in from head to foot in a quick comprehending flash. The fame
of his personal appearance was more than justified. He was the most
strikingly good-looking man she had ever seen, and to her surprise there
was not the slightest trace of self-consciousness or conceit about him.
His high intellectual forehead, thick black hair inclined to curl at the
ends and straight heavy eyebrows suggested at once a man of brains and
power. He looked older than he was--at least thirty, though he had just
turned twenty-six. The square strong jaw and large chin were eloquent of
reserve force. Two rows of white, perfect teeth smiled behind the black
drooping moustache and invited friendship. The one disquieting feature
about him was the look from the depths of his dark brown eyes--so dark
they were black in shadow. He had been a dreamer when very young and
followed Charles A. Dana to Brook Farm for a brief stay.
Before he had spoken a dozen words the girl felt the charm of his
singular and powerful personality.
"I needn't say that I'm glad to see you, Miss Winter," he began, with a
friendly smile. "Ned has told me so much about you the past month I'd
made up my mind to join the Abolitionists, and apply for a secretaryship
to the Senator if I couldn't manage it any other way."
"And you'll be content to resume a normal life after to-day?"
She looked into his eyes with mischievous challenge. She had recovered
her poise.
He laughed, and a shadow suddenly swept his face:
"I wonder, Miss Winter, if any of us will live a normal life after
to-day?"
"You've seen the Rail-splitter, our new President?"
"No, I didn't wait in the Senate Chamber. I came out here to make sure
of my seat beside you----"
"To hear every word of the Inaugural, of course," Betty broke in.
"Yes, of course----" he paused and the faintest suggestion of a smile
flickered about the corners of his eyes. "Ned told me you had three good
seats. I am anxious to hear what he says--but more anxious to see him
when he says it. I can read his Inaugural, but I want to see the soul of
the man behind its conventional phrases----"
"He'll use conventional phrases?"
"Certainly. They all do. But no man ever came to the Presidential chair
with as little confidence back of him. The Abolitionists have already
begun to denounce him before he has taken the oath of office. The rank
and file of the party that elected him are not Abolitionists and never
for a moment believed that the Southern people were in earnest when they
threatened Secession during the campaign. We thought it bluff. To say
that the whole North and West is panic-stricken is the simple truth.
"Horace Greeley and the _Tribune_ are for Secession.
"'Let our erring sisters go!' the editor tells the millions who hang on
his words as the oracle of heaven.
"The North has been talking Secession for thirty years, and now that the
South is doing what they've been threatening, we wake up and try to
persuade ourselves that no such right exists in a sovereign state. Yet
we all know that Great Britain surrendered to the thirteen colonies as
sovereign states and named each one of them in her articles of surrender
and our treaty of peace. We know that there never would have been a
Constitution or a Union if the men who drew it and created the Union had
dared to question the right of either of these sovereign states to
withdraw when they wished. They didn't dare to raise the question. They
left it for their children to settle. Now we're facing it with a
vengeance.
"Our fathers only dreamed a Union. They never lived to see it. This
country has always been an aggregation of jangling, discordant,
antagonistic sections. How is this man who comes into power to-day, this
humble rail-splitter, this County Court advocate, to achieve what our
greatest statesmen have tried for nearly a hundred years and failed to
do? Seward, the man he has called to be Secretary of State, has been
here for two months, juggling with his enemies. He's a Secessionist at
heart and expects the Union to be divided----"
"Surely," Betty interrupted, "you can't believe that."
"It's true. We don't dare say this in our paper, but we know it. So sure
is Seward of the collapse of the Lincoln administration that he withdrew
his acceptance of the post of Secretary of State, only day before
yesterday. It's uncertain at this hour whether he'll be in the
cabinet----"
"Why?" Betty asked in breathless surprise.
The young editor was silent a moment and spoke in low tones:
"You can keep a secret?"
"State secrets--easily."
"Mr. Seward expects to be called to a position of greater power than
President----"
"You mean?"
"The Dictatorship. That's the talk in the inner circles. Nobody in the
North expects war or wants war----"
"Except my father," Betty laughed.
"The Abolitionists don't count. If we have war there are not enough of
them to form a corporal's guard--to say nothing of an army. The North is
hopelessly divided and confused. If the South unites--if North Carolina,
Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri and Maryland join the
Confederacy under Davis, the Union is lost. What's going to hinder them
from uniting? They are all Slave States. They believe the new President
is a Black Abolitionist Republican. He isn't, of course, but they
believe it. How can he reassure them? The States that have already
plunged into Secession have hauled the flag down from every fort and
arsenal except Sumter and Pickens. The new President can only retake
these forts by force. The first shot fired will sweep every Slave State
out of the Union and arraign the millions of Democratic voters in the
North solidly against the Government. God pity the man who takes the
oath to-day to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution!"
When John Vaughan's voice died away at last into a passionate whisper,
Betty stood looking at him in a spell. She recovered herself with a
start and a smile.
"You've mistaken your calling, Mr. Vaughan," she said with emotion.
"Why do you say that?"
"You're a statesman--not an editor--you should be in the Cabinet."
"Much obliged, Miss Betty--but I'm not in this one, thank you. Besides,
you're mistaken. I'm only an intelligent observer and reporter of
events. I've never had the will to do creative things."
"Why?"
"The responsibility is too great. Fools rush in where angels fear to
tread. Only God Almighty can save this Nation to-day. It's too much to
expect of one man."
"Yet God must use man, mustn't He?"
"Yes. That's why my soul goes out in sympathy to the lonely figure who
steps out of obscurity and poverty to-day to do this impossible thing.
No such responsibility was ever before laid on the shoulders of one man.
In all the history of the world he has no precedent, no guide----"
Ned interrupted the flow of John's impassioned speech by suddenly
appearing with uplifted hand.
"Never such a crowd as this!"
"Why, they say it's smaller than usual!" Betty exclaimed.
"I don't mean size," Ned went on rapidly. "It's their temper that's
remarkable. An Inauguration crowd should support the administration. The
Lord help the Rail-splitter if that sullen dumb mob are his
constituents! Half of them are downright hostile----"
"Washington's a Southern town," John remarked.
"They are not Washington folks--not one in a hundred. And the only
honest backers old Abe seems to have are about a thousand serious young
fellows from the West, whom General Scott has armed as a special guard
to circle the crowd."
He paused and pointed to a group of a dozen Westerners standing beside a
bush in the outer rim of the throng.
"There's a bunch of them--and there's one stationed every ten yards. The
artillery in position, the infantry in line, the sharpshooters masked in
windows, the guard under the platform with muskets cocked, and a
thousand volunteers to threaten the crowd from without, I think the new
President should get a respectful hearing! The procession is coming up
the Avenue now with a guard of sappers and miners packed so closely
around the open carriage you can't even see the top of old Abe's
head----"
"Let's get our seats!" Betty cried.
They had scarcely taken them when a ripple of excitement swept the crowd
as every head was turned toward the aisle that led down the centre of
the platform.
"Oh, it's Mrs. Lincoln and the children and her sisters!" Betty
exclaimed. "What perfect taste in her dress! She knows how to wear it,
too. What a typical, plump, self-poised Southern matron she looks. And,
oh, those darling little boys--aren't they dears! She's a Kentuckian,
too--the irony of Fate! A Southerner with a Southern wife entering the
White House and eight great Southern States seceding from the Union
because of it. It's a funny world, isn't it?"
"The South hardly claims Mr. Lincoln as a Southerner," Ned remarked
dryly.
"Claim it or not, he is," John declared, nodding toward Betty, "as truly
a Southerner as Jefferson Davis. They were both born in Kentucky almost
on the same day----"
Another ripple of excitement and the Diplomatic Corps entered with
measured stately tread, their gorgeous uniforms flashing in the sun.
They took their seats on the left of the canopy, Lord Lyons, the British
minister, seated beside the representative of the Court of France, two
men destined to play their parts in the drama of Life and Death on whose
first act the curtain of history was slowly rising.
The black-robed Supreme Court of the Republic, in cap and gown, slowly
followed and took their places on the right, opposite the Diplomatic
Corps.
The Marine band struck the first notes of the National Hymn amid a
silence whose oppressiveness could be felt. The tension of a great fear
had gripped the hearts of the crowd with icy fingers. The stoutest soul
felt its spell and was powerless to shake it off.
Was it the end of the Republic? Or the storm clouded dawn of a new and
more wonderful life? God only could tell, and there were few men present
who dared to venture a prediction.
A wave of subdued excitement rippled the throng and every eye was
focused on the procession from the Senate Chamber.
"They're coming!" Betty whispered excitedly.
The contrast between the retiring President, James Buchanan, and Abraham
Lincoln was startling even at the distance of the first view from the
platform. The man of the old era was heavy and awkward in his movements,
far advanced in years, with thin snow white hair, his pallid full face
seamed and wrinkled and his head curiously inclined to the left
shoulder. An immense white cravat like a poultice pushed his high
standing collar up to the ears. The sharp contrast of the black
swallow-tailed coat, with the dead white of cravat, collar, face and
hair, suggested the uncanny idea of a moving corpse.
With his eyes fixed on Buchanan, John suddenly exclaimed:
"A man who's dead and don't know it!"
Only for a moment did the actual President hold the eye. The man of the
hour loomed large at the head of the procession and instantly fixed the
attention of every man and woman within the range of vision. His giant
figure seemed to tower more than a foot above his surroundings.
Everything about him was large--an immense head, crowned with thick
shock of coarse black hair, his strong jaws rimmed with bristling new
whiskers, long arms and longer legs, large hands, big features, every
movement quick and powerful. The first impression was one of enormous
strength. He looked every inch the stalwart backwoods athlete, capable
of all the feats of physical strength campaign stories had credited to
his record. One glance at his magnificent frame and no one doubted the
boast of his admirers that he could lift a thousand pounds, five hundred
in each hand, or bend an iron poker by striking it across the muscle of
his arm.
As he reached the speaker's stand beneath the crowded canopy, there was
an instant's awkward pause. In his new immaculate dress suit with black
satin vest, shining silk hat and gold-headed cane, he seemed a little
ill at ease. He looked in vain for a place to put his hat and cane and
finally found a corner of the railing against which to lean the stick,
but there seemed no place left for his new hat. Senator Stephen A.
Douglas, his defeated Northern opponent for the Presidency, with a
friendly smile, took it from his hands.
As Douglas slipped gracefully back to his seat, he whispered to the lady
beside him:
"If I can't be President, at least I can hold his hat!"
The simple, but significant, act of courtesy from the great leader of
the Northern Democracy was not lost on the new Chief Magistrate. He
could hardly believe what his eyes had seen at first, and then he
smiled. Instantly the rugged features were transformed and his whole
being was lighted with a strange soft radiance whose warmth was
contagious.
Betty's eyes were dancing with excitement.
"He's not ugly at all!" she whispered.
Ned softly laughed:
"He certainly is not a beauty?"
"Who expects beauty in a real man?" she answered, with a touch of scorn.
And Ned shot a look of inquiry at John's handsome face. But the older
brother was too intent on the drama before him to notice. The editor's
eyes were riveted on the new President, studying every detail of his
impressive personality. He had never seen him before and was trying to
form a just and accurate judgment of his character. Beyond a doubt he
was big physically--this impression was overwhelming--everything
large--the head with its high crown of skull and thick, bushy hair, deep
cavernous eyes, heavy eyebrows which moved in quick sympathy with every
emotion, large nose, large ears, large mouth, large, thick under lip,
very high cheek bones, massive jaw bones with upturned chin, a sinewy
long neck, long arms, and large hands, long legs, and big feet. A giant
physically--and yet somehow he gave the impression of excessive
gauntness and about his face there dwelt a strange impression of sadness
and spiritual anguish. The hollowness of his cheeks accented by his
swarthy complexion emphasized this.
The crowd had recognized him instantly, but without the slightest
applause. The silence was intense, oppressive, painful. John glanced up
and saw the huge figure of Senator Wigfall, of Texas, looking down on
the scene from the base of one of the white columns of the central
façade. He waved his arm defiantly and laughed. His presence in the
Senate after all his associates had withdrawn was the subject of keen
speculation. He was believed to be a spy of the Confederate Government.
He had asked General Scott, half in jest, if he would dare to arrest a
Senator of the United States for treason. The answer was significant of
the times. Looking the Senator straight in the eye the old hero slowly
said:
"No--I'd blow him to hell!"
Evidently the Senator was not as yet unduly alarmed. His expression of
triumphant contempt for the evident lack of enthusiasm could not be
mistaken. When John Vaughan recalled the confusion in the ranks of the
triumphant party he knew that the Senator's scorn would he redoubled if
he but knew half the truth. Again he turned toward the tall, lonely man
with sinking heart.
The ceremony moved swiftly. The silence was too oppressive to admit
delay. Senator Baker, of Oregon, the warm personal friend of Lincoln,
stepped quickly to the edge of the platform. With hand outstretched in
an easy graceful gesture, he said:
"Fellow Citizens: I introduce to you Abraham Lincoln, the
President-elect of the United States of America."
Again the silence of death, as the once ragged, lonely, barefoot boy
from a Kentucky cabin stepped forward into the fiercest light that ever
beat on human head.
He quickly adjusted his glasses, drew his tall figure to its full
height, and began to read his address, his face suddenly radiant with
the poise of conscious reserve power, oblivious of crowd, ceremony,
hostility or friendship. His voice was strong, high pitched, clear,
ringing, and his articulation singularly and beautifully perfect. His
words carried to the outer edge of the vast silent throng.
Betty watched his mobile features with increasing fascination. His bushy
eyebrows and the muscles of his sensitive face moved and flashed in
sympathy with every emotion. In a countenance of such large and rugged
lines every movement spoke unusual power. The lift of an eyebrow, the
curve of the lip, the flash of the eye were gestures more eloquent than
the impassioned sweep of the ordinary orator's arm. He made no gesture
with hand or arm or the mass of his towering body. No portrait of this
man had ever been made. She had seen many pictures and not one of them
had suggested the deep, subtle, indirect expression of his
face--something that seemed to link him with the big forces of nature.
The crowd was feeling this now and men were leaning forward from their
seats on the platform. The venerable Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
Roger B. Taney, whose clear, accurate and mercilessly logical decision
on Slavery had created the storm which swept Lincoln into power, was
watching him with bated breath, and not for an instant during the
Inaugural address did he lower his sombre eyes from the face of the
speaker.
John C. Breckenridge, the retiring Vice-President, his defeated opponent
from the Southern States, the proud Kentucky chevalier, was listening
with keen and painful intensity, his handsome cultured features pale
with the consciousness of coming tragedy.
His opening words had been reassuring to the South, but woke no response
from the silent thousands who stood before him as he went on:
"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the
institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have
no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
The simplicity, directness and clearness of this statement could find no
parallel in the pompous words of his predecessors. The man was talking
in the language of the people. It was something new under the sun.
And then, with the clear ring of a trumpet, each syllable falling clean
cut and sharp with marvellous distinctness, he continued:
"I hold that the Union of these States is perpetual----"
He paused for an instant, his voice suddenly failing from deep emotion
and then, as if stung by the silence with which this thrilling thought
was received, he uttered the only words not written in his manuscript,
and made the only gesture of his entire address. His great fist came
down with a resounding smash on the table and in tones heard by the last
man who hung on the edge of the throng, he said:
"No State has the right to secede!"
And still no cheer came from the strangely silent crowd--only a vague
shiver swept the hearts of the Southern people before him. If the North
loved the Union they were giving no tokens to the tall, lonely figure on
that platform.
At last the sentences, big with the fate of millions, were slowly and
tenderly spoken:
"I shall take care that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in
all the States. Doing this I deem to be a simple duty on my part, and I
shall perform it----"
At last he had touched the hidden powder magazine with an electric
spark, and a cheer swept the crowd. It died away at last--rose with new
power and rose a third time before it subsided, and the clear voice went
on:
"I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared
purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain
itself. In doing this there needs be no bloodshed or violence; and there
shall be none unless it be forced upon the National authority. The power
confided in me will be used to hold and occupy and possess the property
and places belonging to the Government."
Again the powder mine exploded, and a cheer rose. The grim walls of Fort
Sumter and Pickens, in far off Southern waters, flashed red before every
eye.
The applause suddenly died away into the old silence, and a man in the
crowd before the platform yelled:
"We're for Jefferson Davis!"
There was no answer and no disorder--only the shrill cry of the
Southerner through the silence, and the speaker continued his address.
Senator Douglas looked uneasily over the crowd toward the spot from
whence came the cry. His brow wrinkled with a frown.
John Vaughan leaned toward Betty and whispered half to himself:
"I wonder if those cheers were defiance after all?"
But the girl was too intent on the words of the speaker to answer. His
next sentence brought a smile and a nod of approval from Senator
Douglas.
"But beyond what may be necessary for those objects, there will be no
invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere----"
Again and again Douglas nodded his approval and spoke it in low tones:
"Good! Good! That means no coercion."
And then, followed in solemn tones, the fateful sentences:
"In _your_ hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in _mine_
is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail
_you_ unless you _first_ assail _it_. You can have no conflict without
yourselves being the aggressors. _You_ have no oath registered in Heaven
to destroy the Government, while _I_ shall have the most solemn one to
'preserve, protect and defend' it. _You_ can forbear the _assault_ upon
it; _I_ can _not_ shrink from the _defense_ of it----"
Again he paused, and the crowd hung spellbound as he began his closing
paragraph in tender persuasive accents throbbing with emotion, his clear
voice breaking for the first time:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every
battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all
over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The closing words fell from his sensitive lips with the sad dreamy eyes
blinded by tears.
At last he had touched the hearts of all. The sincerity and beauty of
the simple appeal for the moment hushed bitterness and passion and the
cheer was universal.
The black-robed figure of the venerable Chief Justice stepped forward
with extended open Bible. His bony, trembling fingers and cadaverous
intellectual face gave the last touch of dramatic contrast between the
old and new régimes.
The tall, dark man reverently laid his left hand on the open Book,
raised his right arm, and slowly repeated the words of the oath:
"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so
help me God!"
The words had scarcely died on his lips when the distant boom of cannon
proclaimed the new President. The crowd on the platform rose and stood
with uncovered heads, while the procession formed in the same order as
at its entrance and returned to the White House.
"What do you think of it?" Betty asked breathlessly, turning to Ned.
The firm young lips came together with sudden passion:
"The argument has ended. To your tents, O Israel! It means war----"
"Nonsense," John broke in impetuously. "It means anything or nothing.
It's hot and cold--a straddle, a contradiction----"
He paused and turned to Betty:
"What do you think?"
"Of the President?" she asked dreamily.
"Of his Inaugural," John corrected.
"I don't know whether it means peace or war, not being a statesman, but
of one thing I'm sure----"
She paused and Ned leaned close:
"Yes?"
"That a great man has appeared on the scene----"
Both men laughed and she went on with deep earnestness:
"I mean it--he's splendid--he's wonderful! He's a poet--a dreamer--and
so typically Southern, Mr. Ned Vaughan. I could easily picture him
fighting a duel over a fine point of honor, as he did once. He's
patient, careful, wise, cautious--very tender and very strong. To me
he's inspired----"
Again both men laughed.
"I honestly believe that God has sent him into the Kingdom for such a
time as this."
"You get that impression from his rambling address with its obvious
effort to straddle the Universe?" John asked incredulously.
"Not from what he said," Betty persisted, "so much as the way he said
it--though I got the very clear idea that his purpose is to save the
Union. He made that thought ring through my mind over all others."
"You really like him?" Ned asked with a cold smile.
"I love him," was the eager answer. "He's adorable. He's genuine--a man
of the people. We've had many Presidents who wore purple and fine linen
and professed democracy--now we've the real thing. I wonder if they'll
crucify him. All through his address I could see the little ragged
forlorn boy standing beside his mother's grave crying his heart out in
despair and loneliness. He's wonderful. And he's not overawed by these
big white pillars above us, either. The man who tries to set up for a
Dictator while he's in the White House will find trouble----"
"The two leading men he has called to his cabinet," John broke in
musingly, "hold him in contempt."
"There's a surprise in store for Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase," Betty
ventured.
"I'm afraid your father will not agree with you, Miss Betty," Ned
laughed, glancing toward Senator Winter. "I foresee trouble for you."
"No danger. My father never quarrels with me over politics. He just
pities my ignorance and lets it go at that. He never condescends to my
level----"
She stopped suddenly and waved her hand toward the group of excited men
who had gathered around Senator Winter.
A smile of recognition lighted the sombre Puritan face, as he pushed his
friends aside and rapidly approached.
"How's my little girl?" he cried tenderly. "Enjoy the show?"
"Yes, dear, immensely--you know Mr. John Vaughan, Father, don't you?"
The old man smiled grimly as he extended his hand:
"I know who he is--though I haven't had the honor of an introduction.
I'm glad to see you, Mr. Vaughan--though I don't agree with many of your
editorials."
"We'll hope for better things in the future, Senator," John laughed.
"What's your impression of the Inaugural, Senator?" Ned asked, with a
twinkle of mischief in his eye.
"You are asking me that as a reporter, young man, or as a friend of my
daughter?"
"Both, sir."
"Then I'll give you two answers. One for the public and one for you.
I've an idea you're going to be a rebel, sir----"
"We hope not, Senator," John protested.
"I've my suspicions from an interview we had once. But you're a good
reporter, sir. I trust your ability and honesty however deeply I suspect
your patriotism. As a Republican Senator I say to you for publication:
The President couldn't well have said less. It might have been unwise to
say more. To you, as a budding young rebel and a friend of my daughter,
I say, with the utmost frankness, that I have no power to express my
contempt for that address. From the lips of the man we elected to
strangle Slavery fell the cowardly words:
"'I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the
institution of Slavery in the States where it exists'----"
The grim blue-grey eyes flashed with rage, he paused for breath and
then, livid with suppressed emotion, continued:
"For fifty years every man who has stood on this platform to take the
oath as President has turned his face to the South and bowed the knee to
Baal. We hoped for better things to-day----" He paused a moment and his
eyes filled with angry tears:
"How long, O Lord! How long!"
"But you mustn't forget, Senator, that he didn't run and we didn't win
on an Abolition platform. We only raised the issue of the extension of
Slavery into the new territories----"
"Yes!" the old man sneered. "But you didn't fool the South! They are
past masters in the art of politics. The South is seceding because they
know that the Republican Party was organized to destroy Slavery--and
that its triumph is a challenge to a life and death fight on that issue.
It's a waste of time to beat the devil round the stump. We've got to
face it. I hate a trimmer and a coward!--But don't you dare print that
for a while, young man----"
"Hardly, sir," Ned answered with a smile.
"I've got to support my own administration for a few days at least--and
then!--well, we won't cross any bridges till we come to them."
He stopped abruptly and turned to John:
"Come to see us, Mr. Vaughan. Your paper should be a power before the
end of the coming four years. I know Forney, your chief. I'd like to
know you better----"
"Thank you, Senator," the young editor responded cordially.
"Can't you dine with us to-morrow night, Mr. Vaughan?" Betty asked,
unconsciously bending toward his straight, well poised figure. Ned
observed her with a frown, and heard John's answer in a sudden surge of
anger.
"Certainly, Miss Betty, with pleasure."
To Ned's certain knowledge it was the first invitation of the kind he
had accepted since his advent in Washington. Again he cursed himself for
a fool for introducing them.
Betty beamed her friendliest look straight into his eyes and softly
said:
"You'll come, of course, Mr. Ned?"
For the life of him he couldn't get back his conventional tones for an
answer. His voice trembled in spite of his effort.
"Thank you," he said slowly, "it will not be possible. I've an
assignment at the White House for that evening."
He turned abruptly and left them.
CHAPTER II
JANGLING VOICES
The roar of the Inauguration passed, and Washington was itself again--an
old-fashioned Southern town of sixty thousand inhabitants, no longer
asleep perhaps, but still aristocratic, skeptical, sneering in its
attitude toward the new administration.
Behind the scenes in his Cabinet reigned confusion incredible. The tall
dark backwoodsman who presided over these wrangling giants appeared at
first to their superior wisdom a dazed spectator.
He had called them because they were indispensable. Now that the issues
were to be faced, Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Bates
realized that the country lawyer who had won the Presidency over their
superior claims knew his weakness and relied on their strength,
training, and long experience in public affairs.
Certainly it had not occurred to one of them that his act in calling the
greatest men of his party, and the party of opposition as well, into his
Cabinet was a deed of such intellectual audacity that it scarcely had a
parallel in history.
Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, had reluctantly consented to enter
the Cabinet at the last moment as an act of patriotism to save the
country from impending ruin too great for any other man to face. His
attitude was a reasonable one. He was the undoubted leader of the
triumphant party.
Without a moment's hesitation on the first day of his service as
Secretary of State he assumed the position of a Prime Minister, whose
duties included a general supervision of all the Departments of
Government, as well as a Regent's supervision over the Executive.
Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, at once took up the
gauntlet thrown down by his rival. He not only regarded the President
with contempt, but he extended it to the political trickster who dared
to assume the airs of Premiership in a Democratic Republic.
To these Cabinet meetings came no voices of comfort from the country.
The Abolitionist press, which represented the aggressive conscience of
the North, continued to ridicule and denounce the Inaugural address in
unmeasured terms.
The simple truth was soon apparent to the sombre eyes of the President.
He was facing the gravest problem that ever confronted a statesman
without an organized party on which he could depend for support. But two
of his Cabinet had any confidence in his ability or genuine
loyalty--Gideon Welles, a Northern Democrat, and Montgomery Blair, a
Southern aristocrat.
The problem before him was bigger than faction, bigger than party,
bigger than Slavery. Could a government founded on the genuine
principles of Democracy live? Could such a Union be held together
composed of warring sections with vast territories extending over
thousands of miles, washed by two oceans extending from the frozen
mountains of Canada to the endless summers of the tropics?
If the Southern people should unite in a slave-holding Confederacy, it
was not only a question as to whether he could shape an army mighty
enough to conquer them, the more urgent and by far the graver problem
was whether he could mould into unity the warring factions of the
turbulent, passion-torn North. These people who had elected him--could
he ever hope to bind them into a solid fighting unit? If their
representatives in his Cabinet were truly representatives the task was
beyond human power.
And yet the tall, lonely figure calmly faced it without a tremor. In the
depths of his cavernous eyes there burned a steady flame but few of the
men about him saw, or understood if they saw--that flame was something
new in the history of the race--a faith in the common man which dared to
give a new valuation to the individual and set new standards for the
Democracy of the world. He believed that the heart of the masses of the
people North, South, East and West was sound at the core and that as
their Chief Magistrate he could ultimately appeal to them over the heads
of all traditions--all factions, and all accepted leaders.
He was the most advised man and the worst advised man in history. It
became necessary to think for himself or cease to think at all.
General Scott, the venerable hero of Lundy Lane, in command of the army,
had suggested as a solution of the turmoil the division of the country
into four separate Confederacies and had roughly drawn their outlines!
Horace Greeley had made the _Tribune_ the most powerful newspaper in the
history of America. The Republicans throughout the country had been
educated by its teachings and held its authority second only to the Word
of God. And yet from the moment of Lincoln's election the chief
occupation of this powerful paper was to criticize and condemn the
measures and policies of the President.
Over and over he repeated the deadly advice to the Nation:
"If the Cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the
Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace."
He serenely insisted:
"If eight Southern States, having five millions of people, choose to
separate from us, they cannot be permanently withheld from doing so by
Federal cannon. The South has as good right to secede from the Union as
the Colonies had to secede from Great Britain. If they choose to form an
independent Nation they have a clear moral right to do so, and we will
do our best to forward their views."
Is it to be wondered at that the Southern people were absolutely clear
in their conception of the right to secede if such doctrines were taught
in the North by the highest authority within the party which had elected
Abraham Lincoln?
If his own party leaders were boldly proclaiming such treason to the
Union how could he hope to stem the tide that had set in for its ruin?
The thousands of conservative men North and South who voted for Bell and
Everett demanded peace at any price. An orator in New York at a great
mass meeting dared to say:
"If a revolution of force is to begin it shall be inaugurated at home!
It will be just as brutal to send men to butcher our brothers of the
South as it will be to massacre them in the Northern States."
The business interests of the Northern cities were bitterly and
unanimously arrayed against any attempt to use force against the South.
The city of New York was thoroughly imbued with Secession sentiment, and
its Mayor, through Daniel E. Sickles, one of the members of Congress,
demanded the establishment of a free and independent Municipal State on
the island of Manhattan.
Seward had just written to Charles F. Adams, our minister to England:
"Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly
disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. This Federal
Republican country of ours is, of all forms of Government, the very one
which is the most unfitted for such a labor."
This letter could only mean one of two things, either that the first
member of the Cabinet was a Secessionist and meant to allow the South to
go unmolested, or he planned to change our form of Government by a _coup
d'état_ in the crisis and assume the Dictatorship. In either event his
attitude boded ill for the new President and his future.
Wendell Phillips, the eloquent friend of Senator Winter, declared in
Boston in a public address:
"Here are a series of states who think their peculiar institutions
require that they should have a separate government. They have the right
to decide that question without appealing to you or me. Standing with
the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? Abraham
Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. There is no longer a
Union. You can not go through Massachusetts and recruit men to bombard
Charleston or New Orleans. Nothing but madness can provoke a war with
the Gulf States."
The last member of his distracted, divided, passion-ridden Cabinet had
gone at the close of its first eventful sitting. The dark figure of the
President stood beside the window looking over the mirror-like surface
of the Potomac to the hills of Virginia.
The shadow of a great sorrow shrouded his face and form. The shoulders
drooped. But the light in the depths of his sombre eyes was growing
steadily in intensity.
Old Edward, the veteran hallman, appeared at the door with his endless
effort to wash his hands without water.
"A young gentleman wishes to see you, sir, a reporter I think--Mr. Ned
Vaughan, of the _Daily Republican_."
Without lifting his eyes from the Virginia hills, the quiet voice said:
"Let him in."
In vain the wily diplomat of the press sought to obtain a declaration of
policy on the question of the relief of Fort Sumter. In his easy,
friendly way the President made him welcome, but only smiled and slowly
shook his head in answer to each pointed question, or laughed aloud at
the skillful traps he was invited to enter.
"It's no use, my boy," he said at last, with a weary gesture. "I'm not
going to tell you anything to-day----" he paused, and the light suddenly
flashed from beneath his shaggy brows, "----except this--you can say to
your readers that my course is as plain as a turnpike road. It is marked
out by the Constitution. I am in no doubt which way to go. I am going to
try to save the Union."
"In short," Ned laughed, "you propose to stand by your Inaugural?"
"That's a pretty good guess, young man! I'm surprised that you paid such
close attention to my address."
"Perhaps I had an interpreter?"
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
"A very beautiful young woman, Mr. President," Ned answered serenely.
The hazel-grey eyes twinkled:
"What's her name, sir?"
"Miss Betty Winter."
"Not the daughter of that old grizzly bear who's always camping on my
trail?"
"The same, sir."
The swarthy face lighted with a radiant smile:
"What did she say about my Inaugural?"
"That it was the utterance of a wise, patient, great man."
Two big hands suddenly closed on Ned's and the tall figure bent low.
"Thank you for telling me that, my boy. It helps me after a hard day!"
"She said many other things, too, sir," Ned added.
"Did she?"
"With enthusiasm."
"Tell her to come to me," the President said slowly. "I want to talk to
her."
He paused, turned to his desk and seized a pen:
"I'll send a subpoena for her--that's better."
On one of his cards he quickly wrote:
"MY DEAR MISS WINTER:
"You are hereby summoned to immediately appear before the Chief
Magistrate to testify concerning grave matters of State.
A. LINCOLN."
He slipped his long arm around Ned's shoulder and walked with him to the
door:
"Serve that on her for me, will you, right away?"
With a nod and a smile, the reporter bowed and turned his steps toward
the Senator's house.
CHAPTER III
IN BETTY'S GARDEN
Ned Vaughan paused with a moment of indecision before the plain,
old-fashioned, brick house in which Senator Winter lived on the Capitol
Hill. It was a confession of abject weakness to decline her invitation
to dinner with his brother and jump at the first chance to butt in
before the dinner hour.
Why should he worry? She was too serious and honest to play with any
man, to say nothing of an attempt to flirt with two at the same time.
He refused to believe in the seriousness of any impression she had made
on his brother's conceited fancy. His light love affairs had become
notorious in his set. He was only amusing himself with Betty and she was
too simple and pure to understand. Yet to warn her at this stage of the
game against his own brother was obviously impossible.
He suddenly turned on his heel:
"I'm a fool. I'll wait till to-morrow!"
He walked rapidly to the corner, stopped abruptly, turned back to the
door and rang the bell.
"Anyhow, I'm not a coward!" he muttered.
The pretty Irish maid who opened the door smiled graciously and
knowingly. It made him furious. She mistook his rage for blushes and
giggled insinuatingly.
"Miss Betty's in the garden, sor; she says to come right out there----"
"What?" Ned gasped.
"Yiss-sor; she saw you come up to the door just now and told me to tell
you."
Again the girl giggled and again he flushed with rage.
He found her in the garden, busy with her flowers. The border of tall
jonquils were in full bloom, a gorgeous yellow flame leaping from both
sides of the narrow walkway which circled the high brick wall covered
with a mass of honeysuckle. She held a huge pair of pruning shears,
clipping the honeysuckle away from the budding violet beds.
She lifted her laughing brown eyes to his.
"Do help me!" she cried. "This honeysuckle vine is going to cover the
whole garden and smother the house itself, I'm afraid."
He took the shears from her pink fingers and felt the thrill of their
touch for just a moment.
His eyes lingered on the beautiful picture she made with flushed face
and tangled ringlets of golden brown hair falling over forehead and
cheeks and white rounded throat. The blue gingham apron was infinitely
more becoming than the most elaborate ball costume. It suggested home
and the sweet intimacy of comradeship.
"You're lovely in that blue apron, Miss Betty," he said with
earnestness.
"Then I'm forgiven for making home folks of you?"
"I'm very happy in it."
"Well, you see I had no choice," she hastened to add. "I just had to
finish these flowers before dressing for dinner. I'm expecting that
handsome brother of yours directly and I must look my best for him, now
mustn't I?"
She smiled into his eyes with such charming audacity he had to laugh.
"Of course, you must!" he agreed, and bent quickly to the task of
clearing her violet bed of entangled vines. In ten minutes his strong
hand had done the work of an hour for her slender fingers.
"How swiftly and beautifully you work, Ned!" she exclaimed as he rose
with face flushed and gazed a moment admiringly on the witchery of her
exquisite figure.
"How would you like me for a steady gardener?"
"I hope you're not going to lose your job on your brother's paper?"
"It's possible."
"Why?"
"We don't agree on politics."
"A reporter don't have to agree with an editor. He only obeys orders."
"That's it," Ned answered, with a firm snap of his strong jaw. "I'm not
going to take orders from this Government many more days from the
present outlook."
Betty looked him straight in the eye in silence and slowly asked:
"You're not really going to join the rebels?"
The slender boyish figure suddenly straightened and his lips quivered:
"Perhaps."
"You can't mean it!" she cried incredulously.
"Would you care?" he asked slowly.
"Very much," was the quick answer. "I should be shocked and disappointed
in you. I've never believed for a moment that you meant what you said. I
thought you were only debating the question from the Southern side."
"Tell me," Ned broke in, "does your father mean half he says about
Lincoln and the South?"
"Every word he says. My father is made of the stuff that kindles martyr
fires. He will march to the stake for his principles when the time
comes."
"You admire that kind of man?"
"Don't you?"
"Yes. And for that reason I can't understand why you admire a trimmer
and a time server."
"You mean?"
"The Rail-splitter in the White House."
"But he's not!" Betty protested. "I can feel the hand of steel beneath
his glove--wait and see."
Ned laughed:
"Let Ephraim alone, he's joined to his idols! As our old preacher used
to say in Missouri. Your delusion is hopeless. It's well the President
is safely married."
Betty's eyes twinkled. Ned paused, blushed, fumbled in his pocket and
drew out the card the President had given him to deliver.
"I am ordered by the administration," he gravely continued, "to serve
this document on the daughter of Senator Winter."
Betty's eyes danced with amazement as she read the message in the
handwriting of the Chief Magistrate.
"He sent this to me?"
[Illustration: "'Good-bye--Ned!' she breathed softly."]
"Ordered me to serve it on you at once--my excuse for coming at this
unseemly hour."
"But why?"
"I gave him a hint of your opinion of his Inaugural. I think it's a case
of a drowning man grasping a straw."
"Well, this is splendid!" she exclaimed.
"You take it seriously?"
"It's a great honor."
"And are you going?"
"I'd go to-night if it were possible--to-morrow sure----"
She looked at the card curiously.
"I've a strange presentiment that something wonderful will come of this
meeting."
"No doubt of it. When Senator Winter's daughter becomes the champion of
the 'Slave Hound of Illinois' there'll be a sensation in the Capital
gossip to say nothing of what may happen at home."
"I'll risk what happens at home, Ned! My father has two great passions,
the hatred of Slavery and the love of his frivolous daughter. I can
twist him around my little finger----"
She paused, snapped her finger and smiled up into his face sweetly:
"Do you doubt it, sir?"
"No," he answered with a frown, dropping his voice to low tender tones.
"But would you mind telling me, Miss Betty, why you called me 'Mr. Ned'
the other day when I introduced you to John?"
The faintest tinge of red flashed in her cheeks:
"I must have done it unconsciously."
"Please don't do it again. It hurts. You've called me Ned too long to
drop it now, don't you think?"
"Yes."
Her eyes twinkled with mischief as she took his hand in parting.
"Good-bye--Ned!" she breathed softly.
And then he did a foolish thing, but the impulse was resistless. He bent
low, reverently kissed the tips of her fingers and fled without daring
to look back.
CHAPTER IV
A PAIR OF YOUNG EYES
When Betty's card was sent in at the White House next morning, a smile
lighted the sombre face of the President. He waved his long arms
impulsively to his Secretaries and the waiting crowd of Congressmen:
"Clear everybody out for a few minutes, boys; I've an appointment at
this hour."
The tall figure bowed with courtly deference over the little hand and
his voice was touched with deep feeling:
"I want to thank you personally, Miss Betty, for your kind words about
my Inaugural. They helped and cheered me in a trying moment."
"I'm glad," was the smiling answer.
"Tell me everything you said about it?" he urged laughingly.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Lincoln might not like it!" she said demurely.
"We'll risk it. I'm going to take you in to see her in a minute. I want
her to know you. Tell me, what else did you say?"
He spoke with the eager wistfulness of a boy. It was only too plain that
few messages of good cheer had come to lighten the burden his
responsibilities had brought.
A smile touched her eyes with tender sympathy:
"You won't be vain if I tell you exactly what I said, Mr. President?"
"After all the brickbats that have been coming my way?" he laughed. No
man could laugh with more genuine hearty enjoyment. His laughter
convulsed his whole being for the moment and fairly hypnotized his
hearer into sympathy with his mood.
"Out with it, Miss Betty, I need it!" he urged.
"I said, Mr. President, that you were very tender and very strong----"
she paused and looked straight into his deep set eyes "----and that a
great man had appeared in our history."
He was still for a moment and a mist veiled the light at which she
gazed. He took her hand in both his, pressed it gently and murmured:
"Thank you, Miss Betty, I shall try to prove worthy of my little
champion."
"I think you do things without trying, Mr. President," she answered.
"And you don't want an office, do you?"
"No."
"You have no favors to ask for your friends, have you?"
"None whatever."
"And you're Senator Winter's daughter?"
"Yes."
"The old grizzly bear! He hates me--but I've always liked him----"
"I hope you'll always like him," Betty quickly broke in.
"Of course I will. I've never cherished resentments. Life's too short,
and the office I fill is too big for that. Do you know why I've sent for
you?"
Betty smiled:
"To have me flatter you, of course. All men are vain. The greater the
man, the greater his vanity."
Again he laughed with every muscle of his face and body.
"Honestly--no, that's not the reason," he said confidentially. "I want
you to accept a position in my Cabinet."
"I didn't know that women were admitted?"
"They're not, but I've always been in favor of votes for women and I'm
going to make a place for you."
Betty's lips trembled with a smile:
"What's the salary?"
"No salary, save the eternal gratitude of your Chief--will you accept?"
"I'll consider it--what duty?"
He looked steadily into her brown eyes:
"You have very bright, clear eyes, Miss Betty, I can see myself in them
now more distinctly than in that mirror over the mantel. I'd like to
borrow your eyes now and then to see things with. Will you accept the
position?"
"If I can be of service, yes."
"The White House is open to you at all hours, and I shall send for you
sometimes when I'm blue and puzzled and want a pair of pure, beautiful,
young eyes--you understand?"
Betty extended her hand and her voice trembled:
"You have conferred on me a very great honor, Mr. President."
"For instance now," he said dreamily: "You endorse my Inaugural?"
"I'm sure it was wise, firm, friendly, dignified."
"I couldn't have said less than that I must possess and hold the
property of the Government, could I? Well, I must now order a fleet to
sail for Charleston Harbor to relieve our fort or allow the men who wear
our uniform and fly our flag to die of starvation or surrender. Pretty
poor Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy if I do that, am I not?
Suppose I send a fleet to provision our men in Fort Sumter, not
reinforce it--mind you, merely provisions for the handful of men who are
there,--and suppose the Southern troops manning those land batteries
open fire on our flag and force Major Anderson to surrender--what would
happen in the North?"
He paused and looked at her steadily. The fine young figure suddenly
stiffened:
"Every man, woman and child would say fight!"
The big jaws came together with firm precision and his huge fist struck
the table:
"That's what I think. And at the same time something else would be
happening over there----" His long arm swept toward the hills of
Virginia, dark and threatening on the horizon. "The moment that shot
crashes against our fort, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and
Tennessee will join the Confederacy, to say nothing of what may happen
in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri--all Slave States. The
shock will be felt on both sides with precisely opposite effects.
Sometimes we must do our duty and leave the rest to God, mustn't we?
Yes--of course we must--and now, I've kept you too long, Miss Betty.
It's a bargain, isn't it? You accept the position in my Cabinet?"
"Of course, Mr. President,--but if my duties are no heavier than I find
them on this occasion, I fear I shall be of little help."
"You've been of the greatest service to me. You've confirmed my decision
on a great problem of State. Come now and see Mother and the children. I
want you to know them and like them."
He led her quickly into the family apartment and introduced her to Mrs.
Lincoln. He found her in the midst of a grave discussion with Lizzie
Garland, her colored dressmaker.
"This is old Grizzly's lovely daughter, Miss Betty Winter, Mother. She
has joined the administration, stands squarely with us against the
world, the flesh, the devil--and her father! I told her you'd give her
the keys to the house----"
With a wave of his big hand he was gone.
Mrs. Lincoln's greeting was simple and hearty. In half an hour Betty had
found a place in her heart for life, the boys were claiming her as their
own, and a train of influences were set in motion destined to make
history.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST SHOT
The first month of the new administration passed in a strange peace that
proved to be the calm before the storm. On the first day of April, All
Fool's Day, Mr. Seward decided to bring to a definite issue the question
of supreme authority in the government. That Abraham Lincoln was the
nominal President was true, of course. Mr. Seward generously decided to
allow him to remain nominally at the head of the Nation and assume
himself the full responsibilities of a Dictatorship.
The Secretary of State strolled leisurely into the executive office more
careless in dress than usual, the knot of his cravat under his left ear,
a huge lighted cigar in his hand. He handed the President a folded sheet
of official paper, bowed carelessly and retired.
He had drawn up his proclamation under the title:
SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S CONSIDERATION.
In this remarkable document he proposed to assume the Dictatorship and
outlined his policy as director of the Nation's affairs.
He would immediately provoke war with Great Britain, Russia, Spain and
France!
The dark-visaged giant adjusted his glasses and read this paper with a
smile of incredulous amazement. He wiped his glasses and read it again.
And then without consultation with a single human being, and without a
moment's hesitation he wrote a brief reply to the great man and his
generous offer. There was no bluster, no wrath, no demand for an apology
to his insulted dignity, but in the simplest and friendliest and most
direct language he informed his Secretary that if a dictator were needed
to save the country he would undertake the dangerous and difficult job
himself inasmuch as he had been called by the people to be their
Commander-in-Chief, and that he expected the coöperation, advice and
support of _all_ the members of his Cabinet.
He did not even refer to the wild scheme of plunging the country into
war with two-thirds of the civilized world. The bare announcement of
such a suggestion would have driven the Secretary from public life. The
quiet man who presided over the turbulent Cabinet never hinted to one of
its members that such a document had reached his hands.
But as the shades of night fell over the Capitol on that first day of
April, 1861, there was one distinguished statesman within the city who
knew that a real man had been elected President and that he was going to
wield the power placed in his hands without a tremor of fear or an
instant's hesitation.
It took many months for other members of his Cabinet to learn this--but
there was no more trouble with his Secretary of State. He became at once
his loyal, earnest and faithful counsellor.
On April the 6th, the fleet was sent to sea under sealed orders to
relieve Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The
President had been loath to commit the act which must inevitably provoke
war--unless the whole movement of Secession in the South was one of
political bluff. The highest military authority of the country had
advised him that the fort could not be held by any force at present
visible, and that its evacuation was inevitable in any event.
His Cabinet, with two exceptions, were against any attempt to relieve
it. The sentiment of the people of the North was bitterly opposed to war
on the South.
On April the 7th, the fleet was at sea on its way to the Southern coast,
its guns shotted, its great battle flags streaming in the wind.
In accordance with the amenities of war the President notified General
Beauregard, Commander of the Southern forces in Charleston Harbor, that
he had sent his fleet to put provisions into Sumter, but not at present
to put in men, arms or ammunition, _unless the fort should be attacked_.
On the night this message was dispatched Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia,
made a speech in Charleston, from the balcony of the Mills Hotel to
practically the entire white population of the city. Its message was
fierce, direct, electric. It was summed up in a single sentence:
"Strike the first armed blow in defense of Southern rights and within
one hour by Shrewsbury clock, old Virginia will stand, her battle flags
flying, by your side!"
On the morning of the 11th General Beauregard sent Pryor as a special
messenger to Major Anderson demanding the surrender of Fort Sumter, and
on his refusal, which was a matter of course, instructed him to go at
once to the nearest battery and order its Commander to open fire.
The formalities at Sumter quickly ended, Pryor repaired to Battery
Johnson, met the young Captain of artillery in command and presented his
order.
With a shout the Captain threw his arms around the messenger and with
streaming eyes cried:
"Your wonderful speech last night made this glorious thing possible! You
shall have the immortal honor of firing the first gun!"
And then a strange revulsion of fooling--or was it a flash of foreboding
from the hell-lit, battle-scorched future! The orator hesitated and
turned pale. It was an honor he could not now decline and yet he
instinctively shrank from it.
He mopped the perspiration from his brow and looked about in a helpless
way. His eye suddenly rested on a grey-haired, stalwart sentinel passing
with quick firm tread. He recognized him immediately as a distinguished
fellow Virginian, a man of large wealth and uncompromising opinions on
Southern rights.
When Virginia had refused to secede, he cursed his countrymen as a set
of hesitating cowards, left the State and moved to South Carolina. He
had volunteered among the first and carried a musket as a private
soldier in spite of his snow-white hairs.
Pryor turned to the Commandant:
"I appreciate, sir, the honor you would do me, but I could not think of
taking it from one more worthy than myself. There is the man whose
devotion to our cause is greater than mine."
He introduced Edmund Ruffin and gave a brief outline of his career. The
boyish Commandant faced him:
"Will you accept the honor of firing the first shot, sir?"
The square jaw closed with a snap:
"By God, I will!"
The old man seized the lanyard and waited for the Captain and messenger
to reach the front to witness the effect of the shot.
They had scarcely cleared the enclosure when the first gun of actual
civil war thundered its fateful message across the still waters of the
beautiful Southern harbor.
They watched the great screaming shell rise into the sky, curve downward
and burst with sullen roar squarely over the doomed fort.
The deed was done!
Instantly came the answering cry of fierce, ungovernable wrath from the
millions of the North. The four remaining Southern States wheeled into
line, flung their battle flags into the sky, and the bloodiest war in
the history of the world had begun.
CHAPTER VI
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
The wave of fiery enthusiasm for the Union which swept the North was
precisely what the clear eyes of the President had foreseen. A half
million men would have sprung to their arms if there had been any to
spring to. The whole country, North, South, East and West was utterly
unprepared for war. The regular army of the United States consisted of
only sixteen thousand men scattered over a vast territory.
The President called for seventy-five thousand volunteer militiamen for
three months' service to restore order in the Southern States. Even this
number was more than the War Department could equip before their terms
would expire and the President had no authority to call State troops for
a longer service.
On the day following the call, Massachusetts started three fully
equipped regiments to the front. The first reached Baltimore on the
19th. On their march through the streets to change cars for Washington,
they were attacked by a fierce mob and the first battle of the Civil War
was fought. The regiment lost four killed and thirty-six wounded and the
mob, twelve killed and a great number wounded. Grimed with blood and
dirt the troops reached Washington at five o'clock in the afternoon, the
first armed rescuers of the Capital. They were quartered in the
magnificent Senate Chamber on the Capitol Hill.
The President was immediately confronted by the gravest crisis. The
first blood had stained the soil of the only Slave State, which lay
between Washington and the loyal North. If Maryland should join the
Confederacy it would be impossible to hold the Capital. The city would
be surrounded and isolated in hostile territory.
From the first he had believed that the only conceivable way to save the
Union was to prevent the Border Slave States of Maryland, Kentucky and
Missouri from joining the South. For the moment it seemed that Maryland
was lost, and with it the Capital of the Nation. A storm of fury swept
through the city of Baltimore and the whole State over the killing of
her unarmed citizens by the "Abolition" troops from Massachusetts!
The Mayor of Baltimore sent a committee to the President who declared in
the most solemn tones:
"It is not possible for more soldiers to pass through Baltimore unless
they fight their way at every step."
And to make sure that the attempt would not be repeated he burned the
railroad bridges connecting the North and cut every telegraph wire
completely isolating the Capital.
Gilbert Winter, with his cold blue eyes flashing their slumbering fires
of hate, stalked into the White House as the Baltimore committee were
passing down the steps. Without announcement he confronted the
President.
"In the name of the outraged dignity of this Republic," he thundered, "I
demand that these traitors be arrested, tried by drumhead court-martial
and hanged as spies!"
The patient giant figure lifted a big hand in a gesture of mild protest:
"Hardly, Senator!"
"And what was your answer?"
"I have written the Governor and the Mayor," the quiet voice went on,
"that for the future troops _must_ be brought here, but I make no point
of bringing them through Baltimore----"
"Indeed!" Winter sneered.
"All I want is to get them here. I have ordered them to march around
Baltimore. And in fulfilment of this promise I've sent a regiment back
to Philadelphia to come by water----"
"Great God--could cowardice sink to baser crawling!"
The tall man merely smiled--his furious visitor starting for the door,
turned and growled:
"It is absolutely useless to discuss this question further?"
"Absolutely, Senator."
"And you will not order our regular troops to take Baltimore immediately
at the point of the bayonet?"
"I will not."
"Good day, sir!"
"Good day, Senator."
With a muttered explosion of wrath Gilbert Winter shook the dust of the
White House floor from his feet and solemnly promised God it would be
many moons before he degraded himself by again entering its portals.
The President had need of all his patience and caution in dealing with
Maryland. The next protest demanded that troops should not pass by way
of Annapolis or over any other spot of the soil of the State.
He calmly but firmly replied:
"My troops must reach Washington. They can neither fly over the State of
Maryland nor burrow under it: therefore, they must cross it, and your
people must learn that there is no piece of American soil too good to be
pressed by the foot of a loyal soldier on his march to the defense of
the Capital and his country."
During these anxious days while the fate of Maryland hung in the balance
the Government was given a startling revelation of what it would mean to
have Maryland hostile territory.
For a week the President and his Cabinet were in a state of siege. They
got no news. They could send none save by courier. The maddest rumors
were daily afloat. The President was supposed to be governing a country
from which he was completely isolated.
The tension at last became unbearable. The giant figure stood for hours
alone before his window in the White House, his sombre hazel-grey eyes
fixed on the hills beyond the Potomac. When the silence could no longer
be endured the anguish of his heart broke forth in impassioned protest:
"Great God! Why don't they come? Why don't they come! Is our Nation a
myth? Is there no North?"
And then the tide turned and the troops poured into the city.
His patient, careful and friendly treatment of the Marylanders quickly
proved its wisdom. A reaction in favor of the Union set in and the State
remained loyal to the flag. The importance of this fact could not be
exaggerated. Without Maryland, Washington could not have been held. And
the moment the Capital should fall Europe would recognize the
Confederacy.
The saving of Maryland for the Union, in fact, established Washington as
the real seat of Government, though it was destined to remain for years
but an armed fortress on the frontiers of a new Nation.
The stirring events at Sumter and Baltimore brought more than one family
to the grief and horror of brother against brother and father against
son.
John Vaughan stood in his room livid with rage confronting Ned on the
first day that communication was opened with the outside world.
"You are not going to do this insane thing I tell you, Ned!"
The boyish figure stiffened:
"I am going home to Missouri on the first train out of Washington, raise
a company and fight for the South."
The older man's voice dropped to persuasive tones:
"Isn't there something bigger than fighting for a section? Let's stand
by the Nation!"
"That's just what I refuse to do. The United States have never been a
Nation. This country is a Republic of Republics--not an Empire. The
South is going to fight for the right of local self-government and the
liberties our fathers won from the tyrants of the old world. The South
is right eternally and forever right. The States of this Union have
always been sovereign."
"All right--all right," John growled impatiently, "granted, my boy.
Still Secession is impossible. A Nation can't jump out of its own skin
once it has grown it. This country has become a Nation. Steam and
electricity have made it so. Railroads have bound us together in iron
bands. Can't you see that?"
"No, I can't. Right is right."
"But if we have actually grown into a mighty united people with one
tongue and one ideal is it right to draw the sword to destroy what God
has joined together? Silently, swiftly, surely during the past thirty
years we have become one people and the love of the Union has become a
deathless passion----"
"You've had a poor way of showing it!" Ned sneered.
"Still, boy, it's true. I didn't realize it myself until that fort was
fired on and the flag hauled down. And then it came to me in a blinding
flash. Old Webster's voice has been hushed in death, but his soul lives
in the hearts of our boys. There's hardly one of us who hasn't repeated
at school his immortal words. They came back to me with thrilling power
the day I read of that shot. They are ringing in my soul to-day----"
John paused and a rapt look crept into his eyes, as he began slowly to
repeat the closing words of Webster's speech:
"'When mine eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments
of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent;
or a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, with
fratricidal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather
behold the gracious ensign of the Republic, now known and honored
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not
a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable
interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of
delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward," but everywhere,
spread all over with living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as
they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the
whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every American
heart--"Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and inseparable----"'"
He paused, his voice choking with emotion, as he seized Ned's arm:
"O, Boy, Boy, isn't that a greater ideal? That's all the President is
asking to-day--to stand by the Union----"
"He is making war on the South!"
"But only as the South is forcing him reluctantly to defend the Union by
force. The South is mad. She will come to her senses after the shock of
the first skirmish is over. With the Southern members in their places,
they have a majority in Congress against the President. He can move
neither hand nor foot. What has the South to gain by Secession? They
always controlled the Union and can continue to do so if they stand
united with their Northern friends. In the end their defeat is as sure
as that twenty millions of free white Americans can whip five millions
of equal courage and daring. They have everything to lose and nothing to
gain. It's madness--it surpasses belief!"
"That's why I'm going to fight for them!" Ned's answer flashed. "They
stand for a principle--their equal rights under the Republic their
fathers created. They haven't paused to figure on success or failure.
Five million freemen have drawn the sword against twenty millions
because their rights have been invaded. Might has never yet made right.
The South's daring is sublime and, by God, I stand with them!"
His words had the ring of steel in their finality. The two men faced
each other for a moment, tense, earnest, defiant.
The younger extended his hand:
"Good-bye, John."
The handsome face of the older brother went suddenly white and he shook
his head:
"No. From to-day we are no longer brothers--we can't be friends!"
Ned smiled, waved his hand and from the door firmly answered:
"As you like--from to-day--foes----"
He closed the door and with swift step turned his face toward the house
of Senator Winter.
CHAPTER VII
LOVE AND DUTY
The pretty Irish maid nodded and smiled with such a sympathetic look as
she ushered Ned into the cosy back parlor, he wondered if it meant
anything. Could she have guessed Betty's secret? She might give him a
hint that would lift the fear from his heart.
He smiled back into her laughing eyes and began awkwardly:
"Oh, I say, Peggy----"
She dropped a pretty courtesy:
"Yiss-sor?"
Somehow it wouldn't work. The words refused to come. Love was too big
and sweet and sacred. It couldn't be hinted at to a third person. And so
he merely stammered:
"Will you--er--please--tell Miss Betty I'm here?"
"Yiss-sor!" Peggy giggled.
He was glad to be rid of her. He drew his handkerchief, mopped the
perspiration from his brow and sat down by the open window to wait. His
heart was pounding. He looked about the room with vague longing. He had
spent many a swift hour of pain and joy in this room. The sight and
sound of her had grown into his very life--he couldn't realize how
intimately and how hopelessly until this moment of parting perhaps
forever.
The portrait of her mother hung over the mantel--a life-size oil
painting by a noted French artist, the same brilliant laughing eyes, the
same deep golden brown hair, its wayward ringlets playing loosely about
her fine forehead and shell-like ears.
Beyond a doubt this pretty mother with the sunshine of France in her
blood had known how to flirt in her day--and her beautiful daughter was
enough like that picture to have been her twin sister.
On the mantel beneath this portrait sat photographs in solid silver
frames, one of Wendell Phillips, one of William Lloyd Garrison and one
of John C. Fremont, the first Republican candidate for President.
Directly opposite on the wall hung an oil painting of John Brown. Ned
caught the flash of the fanatic in the old madman's eye and was startled
at the striking resemblance to Senator Winter. He had never thought of
it before. Gilbert Winter might have been his brother in the flesh as he
undoubtedly was in spirit.
The thought chilled. He looked out the window with a sigh and wondered
how far the old tyrant would carry his hatred of the South into his
daughter's life. His eye rested for a moment on the row of lilacs in
full bloom in the garden and caught the flash of the big new leaves of
the magnolia which shadowed the rear wall. The early honeysuckle had
begun to blossom on the south side, and the violet beds were a solid
mass of gorgeous blue. Through the open window came the rich odor of the
long rows of narcissus in full white glory where the jonquils had flamed
a month ago.
What a beautiful world to be beaten into a scarred battlefield!
For just a moment the thought wrung the heart of youth and love. It was
hard just when the tenderest and sweetest impulses that ever filled his
soul wore clamoring for speech, to turn his back on all, say good-bye
and go--to war--perhaps to kill his own brother.
And there could be no mistake, war had come. Overhead he caught the
steady tramp of Senator Winter's feet, a caged lion walking back and
forth with hungry eyes turned toward the South. He could feel his deadly
hostility through the very walls.
A battery of artillery suddenly roared through the streets, the dull
heavy rattle of its wheels over the cobblestones, and the crack of the
driver's whip echoing and reëchoing through the house. Behind it came
the steady tramp, tramp, of a regiment of infantry, the loud call of
their volunteer officers ringing sharply their orders at the turn of the
street. Far off on the Capitol Hill he heard the sharp note of a bugle
and the rattle of horses' hoofs. Every hour the raw troops were pouring
into the city from the North, the East and the West.
He wondered with a strange catch in his throat what difference this was
going to make between him and the girl he loved. There was no longer any
question about the love. He marvelled that he had been too stupid to
realize it and speak before this shadow had fallen between them. She
knew that his sympathies were with the South and he knew with equal
certainty she had never believed that he would fight to destroy the
Union when the test should come. He dreaded the shock when he must tell
her.
His heart grew sick with fear. What chance had he with everything
against him--her old, fanatical father who loved her with the tender
devotion of his strong manhood--her own blind admiration for the new
President, whose coming had brought war--and worst of all he must go and
leave John by her side! His brother had given no hint of his real
feelings, but his deeds had been more eloquent than words. He had seen
Betty every week since the day they had met--sometimes twice. This he
knew. There may have been times he didn't know.
All the more reason why he must put the thing to the test. Besides he
_must_ speak. His hour had struck. His country was calling, and he must
go--to meet Death or Glory. The woman he loved must know.
He heard the soft rustle of her dress on the stairs and sprang to his
feet. She paused in the doorway a vision of ravishing beauty in full
evening dress, her bare arms and exquisite neck and throat gleaming in
the shadows.
She smiled graciously, her brown eyes sparkling with the conscious power
which youth and beauty can never conceal.
She held out her soft warm hand and his trembling cold fingers grasped
it.
"I'm sorry to have kept you, Ned," she began softly, "but I was dressing
for the reception at the White House. I promised Mrs. Lincoln to help
her."
"I didn't mind the wait, Miss Betty," he answered soberly. "Come into
the garden--I can talk better there among your flowers--I never mind
waiting for you."
"Why?"
"I've time to dream."
"Before you must wake?" she laughed.
"I'm afraid it's so this time----"
"Why so serious--what's the matter?"
"I'm going to the front."
"So are thousands of brave men, Ned. I've always known you'd go when the
test came."
He bit his lips and was silent. It was hard, but he had to say it:
"I am going to fight for the South, Miss Betty."
The silence was painful. She looked steadily into his dark earnest eyes.
There was something too big and fine in them to be met with anger or
reproach. He was deadly pale and waited breathlessly for her to speak.
"I'm sorry," she breathed softly.
"You know that it costs me something to say this to you," he stammered.
"Yes, I know----"
"But it must be. It's a question of principle--a question that cuts to
the bone of a fellow's life and character. A man must be true to what he
believes to be right, mustn't he?"
His voice was tender, wistful, pleading. The sweet, young face upturned
to his caught his mood:
"Yes, Ned."
"I couldn't be a real man and do less, could I?"
"No--but I'm sorry"--she paused and suddenly asked, "Your brother agrees
with you?"
Ned frowned: "Why do you ask that question?"
"Because I was sure that he was on our side----"
"Is that all?"
"And I've always supposed he was a sort of guardian----"
"Only because he has always been my big brother and I've loved and
admired him very much. I cried my eyes out the day he left home out in
Missouri and came East to college."
"And you're going to fight him?"
"It's possible."
"It's horrible!"
"And yet, men who are not savages could only do such things drawn by the
mightiest forces that move a human soul--you must know that, Miss
Betty."
"Yes."
"There's only one thing in life that's bigger----"
"And that?"
"Is love. I've held it too high and holy a word to speak lightly. I
shall tell but one woman that I love her----"
She looked at him tenderly:
"You glorious, foolish boy!"
Pale and trembling he took her hand, led her to a seat and sank on his
knees by her side.
"I love you, Betty!" he gasped. "I've loved you from the moment we met,
tenderly, madly, reverently. I've been afraid to touch your hand lately
lest you feel the pounding of my heart and know. And now it's come--this
hour when I must say I love you and good-bye in the same breath! Be
gentle and sweet to me. I'm afraid to ask if you love me. It's too good
to be true. I'm not worthy to even touch your little hand--and yet I'm
daring to hold it in mine----"
He paused and bowed his head, overcome with emotion.
Betty gently pressed his trembling fingers. Her voice was low.
"I'm proud of your love, Ned. It's very beautiful----"
"But you don't love me?" he groaned.
"Not as you love me."
He looked searchingly and hungrily into her brown eyes:
"Is it John?"
She shook her head slowly and thoughtfully:
"No."
"And it's no one else?"
"No."
"Then I won't take that answer!" he cried with desperate earnestness.
"I'm going to win you. I'll love you with a love so big and true I'll
make you love me. Everything's against me now. Your father's against me.
I'm going to fight your country and your people. You admire the new
President. I despise him. The passions of war have separated us, that's
all. But I won't give up. The war can't last long. You'll see things in
a different way when it ends."
Betty smiled into his pleading eyes:
"How little you know me, Boy! Nothing on this earth could separate me
from the man I love----" she paused and breathed quickly "----I'd follow
him blindfold to the bottomless pit once I'd given him my heart!"
Ned rose suddenly to his foot and drew Betty with him. His hand now was
hot with the passion that fired his soul.
"Then you're worth fighting for. And I'm going to fight--fight for what
I believe to be right and fight for you----"
He stopped suddenly and his slender figure straightened:
"I'm coming back to you, Betty!" he said with clear ringing emphasis.
"I'm coming back to Washington. I'll be with an army conquering,
triumphant, because they are right. There'll be a new President in the
White House and I'll win!"
He bowed and reverently kissed the tips of her fingers.
"You glorious boy!" she sighed. "It's beautiful to be loved like that!
I'm proud of it--I'll hold my head a little higher with every thought of
you----"
"And you'll think of me sometimes when war has separated us?"
"I'll never forget!"
"And remember that I'm fighting my way back to your side?"
A tender smile played about the corners of her eyes and mouth:
"I'll remember."
With a quick, firm movement he turned, passed through the house, and
strode toward the iron gate.
He suddenly confronted John entering.
The two brothers faced each other for a moment angrily and awkwardly,
and then the anger slowly melted from the younger man's eyes.
"You are taking dinner with Miss Betty to-night?" Ned asked in friendly
tones.
"Yes, I'm going with her to the White House," was the cold reply.
"I'm leaving in an hour. Don't you think it's foolish for two brothers
who have been what you and I have been to each other to part like this?
We may not see one another again."
John hesitated and then slowly slipped his arm around the younger man,
holding him in silence. When his voice was steady he said:
"Forgive me, Boy. I was blind with anger. It meant so much to me. But
we'll face it. We'll have to fight it out--as God gives us wisdom to see
the right----"
Ned's hand found his, and clasped it firmly:
"As God gives us to see the right, John--Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Boy,--it's hard to say it!"
They clung to each other for a moment and slowly drew apart as the
shadows of the soft spring night deepened.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TRIAL BY FIRE
The troops transformed Washington from a lazy Southern town of sixty
thousand inhabitants into an armed fortress of the frontier, swarming
with a quarter of a million excited men and women. Soldiers thronged the
streets and sidewalks and sprawled over every inch of greensward, their
uniforms of every cut and color on which the sun of heaven had shone
during the past two hundred years of history.
When the tumult and the shouts of departing regiments had died away from
the home towns in the North and the flags that were flying from every
house had begun to fade under the hot rays of the advancing summer, the
patriotic orators and editors began to demand of their President why his
grand army of seventy-five thousand lingered at the Capital. When he
mildly suggested the necessity of drilling, equipping and properly
arming them he was laughed at by the wise, and scoffed at as a coward by
the brave.
Mutterings of discontent grew deeper and more threatening. They demanded
a short, sharp, decisive campaign. Let the army wheel into line, march
straight into Richmond, take Jefferson Davis a prisoner, hang him and a
few leaders of the "rebellion," and the trouble would be over. This
demand became at length the maddened cry of a mob:
"On to Richmond!"
Every demagogue howled it. Every newspaper repeated it. As city after
city, and State after State took up the cry, the pressure on the man at
the helm of Government became resistless. It was a political necessity
to fight a battle and fight at once or lose control of the people he had
been called to lead.
The Abolitionists only sneered at this cry. They demanded an answer to a
single insistent question:
"What are you going to fight about?"
A battle which does not settle the question of Slavery they declared to
be a waste of blood and treasure. If the slave was not the issue, why
fight? The South would return to the Union which they had always ruled
if let alone. Why fight them for nothing?
Gilbert Winter, their spokesman at Washington, again confronted the
President with his uncompromising demand:
"An immediate proclamation of emancipation!"
And the President with quiet dignity refused to consider it.
"Why?" again thundered the Senator.
His answer was always the same:
"I am not questioning the right or wrong of Slavery. If Slavery is not
wrong, nothing is wrong. But the Constitution, which I have sworn to
uphold in the Border States of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky,
guarantees to their people the right to hold slaves if they choose. We
have already eleven Southern States solidly arrayed against us. Add the
Border States by such a proclamation, and the contest is settled before
a blow is struck. I know the power of State loyalty in the South. I was
born there. Many a mother in Richmond wept the days the stars and
stripes were lowered from their Capitol. And well they might--for their
sires created this Republic. But they brushed their tears away and sent
their sons to the front next day to fight that flag in the name of
Virginia. So would thousands of mothers in these remaining Slave States
if I put them to the test. I'm going to save them for the Union. In
God's own time Slavery will be destroyed."
Against every demand of the heart of the party which had given him
power, he stood firm in the position he had taken.
But there was no resisting the universal demand for a march on Richmond.
The cry was literally from twenty millions. He must heed it or yield the
reins of power to more daring hands.
To add to the President's burden, his Secretary of State was still
dreaming of foreign wars. He had drawn up a letter of instruction to our
Minister to Great Britain which would have provoked an armed conflict.
When the backwoodsman from Southern Illinois read this document he was
compelled to lay aside his other duties and practically rewrite it. His
work showed a freedom of mind, a balance of judicial temperament, an
insight into foreign affairs, a skill in the use of language, a delicacy
of criticism, a mastery of the arts of diplomacy which placed him among
the foremost statesmen of any age, and all the ages.
He saved the Nation from a second disastrous war, as a mere matter of
the routine of his office, and at once turned to the pressing work of
the approaching battle.
John Vaughan had joined the army as correspondent for his paper, and
Betty had been his companion on many tours of inspection through camp,
hospitals and drill grounds. Her quick wit and brilliant mind were an
inspiring stimulus. She was cool and self-possessed and it rested him to
be near her. She was the only restful woman he had ever encountered at
short range. He was delighted that she seemed content without
love-making. There was never a moment when he could catch the challenge
of sex in a word or attitude. He might have been her older brother, so
perfect and even, so free and simple her manner.
Betty had watched him with the keenest caution. The first glance at
John's handsome face had convinced her of his boundless vanity and
beneath it a streak of something cruel. She would have liked him
instantly but for this. His vanity she could forgive. All good-looking
men are vain. His character was a study of which she never tired. He
strangely distressed and disturbed her--and this kept puzzling and
piquing her curiosity. Every time she determined to end their
association this everlasting question of the man's inner character came
to torment her imagination.
She was a little disappointed at his not volunteering at the first call
as his gallant young brother had done. Yet his reasoning was sound.
"What's the use?" he replied to her question. "Five men have already
volunteered for every one who can be used. I'm not a soldier by
profession or inclination. A campaign of thirty days, one big battle and
the war's over. The President has more men than he can arm or equip. My
paper needs me----"
The army encamped along the banks of the Potomac received orders to
advance for the long expected battle in the hills of Virginia.
Betty stood with the crowds of sweethearts and wives and sisters and
mothers and watched them march away through the dust and heat and grime
of the Southern summer, drums throbbing, banners streaming, bayonets
flashing and bands playing.
John Vaughan was in the ranks of a New York regiment. He pressed Betty's
hand with a lingering touch he hadn't intended. She seemed unconscious
that he was holding it.
"You are going to march in the ranks?" she asked in surprise.
"Yes. I want to see war as it is. These boys are my friends from New
York."
"You will fight with them?"
"No--just see with their eyes--that's all. And then tell you exactly
what happened. I can hide behind a barn or a tree without being
court-martialed."
She looked at him quickly with a new interest, pressed his hand again
and said:
"Good luck!"
"And home again soon!" he cried with a wave of his arms as he hurried to
join his marching men.
The army camped at Centreville, seven miles from Beauregard's lines, and
spent the 19th and 20th of July resting and girding their loins for the
first baptism of fire. The volunteers were eager for the fray. The first
touch of the skirmishers had resulted in fifteen or twenty killed. But
the action had been too far away to make any serious impression.
Between the two armies crept the silvery thread of the little stream of
Bull Run, its clear beautiful waters flashing in the July sun.
Saturday night, the 20th, orders were issued to John's regiment to be in
readiness to advance against the enemy at two o'clock before day on
Sunday morning. A thrill of fierce excitement swept the camp. They were
loaded down with overcoats, haversacks, knapsacks and baggage, baggage,
baggage without end. The single New York regiment to which he had
attached himself required forty wagons to move its baggage. They had a
bakery and cooking establishment that would have done credit to
Broadway. They hurriedly packed all they could carry in readiness for
the march into battle. What would happen to the rest God only knew, but
they hoped for the best. Of course, the battle couldn't last long. It
was only necessary for this grand army to make a demonstration with its
drums throbbing, its fifes screaming, its bayonets flashing and its
magnificent uniforms glittering in the sun--the plumes, the Scotch
bonnets, the Turkish fez, the Garibaldi shirts, the blue and grey and
gold, the black and yellow, and the red and blue of the fire
Zouaves--when the rebel mob saw these things they would take to their
heels.
What the boys were really afraid of was that every rebel would escape
before they could use their handcuffs and ropes. This would be too bad
because the procession through the crowded streets at home would be
incomplete without captives as a warning to future traitors. They were
going to have a load to carry with their blanket rolls, haversack and
knapsack and the full fighting rounds of cartridges, but they were not
going to leave the handcuffs. If they had to drop anything on the march
they might ease up on a blanket or half their heavy cartridges.
John found sleep impossible, and was ready to move at one o'clock. The
dust was rising already in parched clouds from the dry Virginia roads.
He walked to the edge of the woods and gazed over the dark moonlit hills
around Centreville. A gentle breeze began to stir the leaves overhead
but it was hot and lifeless. He caught the smell of sweating horses in a
battery of artillery, hitched for the march. It was going to be a day of
frightful heat under the clear blazing sun of the South, this Sunday,
the 21st of July, 1861. He could see already in his imagination the long
lines of sweating half fainting marchers staggering under the strain.
Yet not for a moment did he doubt the result.
From a store on the hill at Centreville came the plaintive strains of a
negro's voice accompanied by a banjo. A crowd of Congressmen had driven
out from Washington on a picnic to see the spectacle of the first and
last battle of the "Rebellion." They were drinking good whiskey and
making merry.
For the first time a little doubt crept into his mind. Were they all too
cocksure? It might be a serious business after all. It was only for a
moment and his fears vanished. He was glad Ned was not in those grey
lines in front. His company had been formed promptly, and he had been
elected first lieutenant, but they were still in Southern Missouri under
General Sterling Price. He shouldn't like to come on his brother's body
dead or wounded after the battle--the young dare-devil fool!
Promptly at two o'clock the sharp orders rang from the regimental
commander:
"Forward march!"
The lines swung carelessly into the powdered dust of the road and moved
forward into the fading moonlight, talking, laughing, chatting, joking.
War was yet a joke and the contagious fire of patriotism had flung its
halo even over this night's work. Except here and there a veteran of the
Mexican War, not one of these men had ever seen a battle or had the
remotest idea what it was like.
John was marching with Sherman's brigade of Tyler's division. At six
o'clock they reached the stone bridge which crossed Bull Run. On the
hills beyond stretched a straggling line of grey figures. It couldn't be
an army. Only a few skirmishers thrown out to warn off an attempt to
cross the bridge. A white puff of smoke flashed on a hill toward the
South, and the deep boom of a Confederate cannon echoed over the valley.
Tyler's guns answered in grim chorus. The men gripped their muskets and
waited the word of command. John's brigade was deployed along the edge
of a piece of woods on the right of the Warrenton turnpike and stood for
hours. A rumble of disgust swept the lines:
"What t'ell are we waitin' for?"
"Why don't we get at 'em?"
"And this is war!"
And no breakfast either. An hour passed and only an occasional crack of
a musket across the shining thread of silver water and the slow sullen
echo of the artillery. They seemed to be just practising. The shots all
fell short and nobody was hurt.
Another hour--it was eight o'clock and still they stood and looked off
into space. Nine o'clock passed and the fierce rays of the climbing
July sun drove the men to the shelter of the trees.
"If this is war," yelled a red-breeched, fierce young Zouave, "I'll take
firecrackers and a Fourth of July for mine!"
"Keep your shirt on, Sonny," observed a corporal. "We _may_ have some
fun yet before night."
At ten o'clock something happened.
Suddenly a thousand grey clad men leaped from their cover over the hills
and swept up stream at double quick. A solid mass of dust-covered
figures were swarming below the stone bridge.
The regiment's battery dashed into position, its guns were trained and
their roar shook the earth. The swarming grey lines below the bridge
paid no attention. The shots fell short and Sherman sent for heavier
guns.
The men in grey had formed a new line of battle and faced the Sudley and
New Market road. Far up this road could now be seen a mighty cloud of
dust which marked the approach of the main body of McDowell's Union
army. He had made a wide flank movement, crossed Bull Run at Sudley Ford
and was attempting to completely turn the Confederate position, while
Sherman held the stone bridge with a demonstration of force.
A cheer swept the line as the dust rose higher and denser and nearer.
Banks of storm clouds were rising from the horizon. The air was thick
and oppressive, as the two armies drew close in tense battle array. The
turning movement had only been partly successful. It had been discovered
before complete and a grey line had wheeled, gripped their muskets and
stood ready to meet the attack.
The dust, cloud suddenly fell. McDowell's two divisions of eighteen
thousand men spread out in the woods and made ready for the shock.
The sun burst through the gathering clouds for a moment and the edge of
the woods flashed with polished steel.
A Federal battery dashed into position and placed one of its big
black-wheeled guns in the front yard of a little white-washed farmhouse.
The farmer's wife faced the commander with indignant fury:
"Take that thing outen my front yard!"
The dust-and sweat-covered men paid no attention. They quickly sunk the
wheels into the ground and piled their shells in place for work.
The old woman stamped her foot and shouted again: "Take that thing away
I tell you--I won't have it here!"
The captain seized his lanyard, trained his piece and the big black lips
roared.
With a scream of terror the woman covered her ears, rushed inside and
slammed the door. They found her torn and mangled body there after the
battle. An answering shell had crashed through the roof and exploded.
Sherman's men, standing in the woods before the stone bridge waiting
orders, saw the white and blue fog of battle rise above the tree tops
and felt the earth tremble beneath their feet.
And then came to John's ears the first full crash of musketry fire in
close deadly range. As company, regiment and brigade joined in volley
after volley, it was like the sound of the continuous ripping of heavy
canvas, magnified on the scale of a thousand. As the storm cloud swept
over the smoke-choked field the rattle of musketry sounded as if an
angry God rode somewhere in their fiery depths, and with giant hand was
ripping the heavens open!
An hour passed and a shout of triumph swept the Federal lines. They
charged and drove the Confederate forces back a half mile from their
first stand. There was a lull--a strange silence brooded over the
flaming woods and the guns opened from their new position--the
artillery's deep thunder and the ripping crash of muskets. Another hour
and another wild shout of victory. They had driven the Southerners three
quarters of a mile further.
The shouts suddenly stopped. They had struck something.
The grim dust-covered figure of a Southern Brigadier General on a little
sorrel horse had barred the way. His bulging forehead with its sombre
blue eyes hung ominously over the pommel of his saddle.
General Bee, of South Carolina, rallying his shattered, broken brigade,
pointed his sword to the strange figure and shouted to his men:
"See Jackson standing like a stone wall--rally to the Virginians!"
A bursting shell struck him dead in the next instant, but the world had
heard and the name "Stonewall" became immortal.
With the last shout, the cry of victory had swept the field to the
farthest line of reserves. John Vaughan secured a horse, galloped to the
nearest telegraph line and sent the thrilling news to his paper. Already
the wires were flashing it to the farthest cities of the North and
West.
Victory! The first and last battle of the war had been settled. He
spurred his horse through the blistering heat back to his regiment to
join in the pursuit of the flying enemy.
They were just dashing across Bull Run going into action, their battle
flag flying and their band playing. They were not long in finding the
foe. The obstruction still remained in the path of the advancing hosts.
The grim figure on the little sorrel horse had just ordered his brigade
to fix bayonets.
In sharp tones his command was snapped:
"Charge and take that battery!"
A low grey cloud rose from the hill, swept over the crack Federal
battery of Ricketts and Griffin and captured their guns.
John's regiment reached the field just in time to see the cannoneers
fall in their tracks at the first deadly volley from the charging men.
Every horse was down dead or wounded. The pitiful cries of the stricken
horses rang over the field above the roar of the battle, pathetic,
heartrending, sickening.
The two armies had clinched now in the grim struggle which meant defeat
or victory. It was incredible that the army which swept the field for
four terrible hours should fail. The new regiments formed in line and
with a shout of desperation charged Jackson's men and retook the
captured battery.
Again the men in grey rallied and tore the guns a second time from the
hands of their owners.
John saw a shell explode directly beneath a magnificent horse on which
a general sat directing his men. The horse was blown to atoms, the
general was hurled twenty feet into the air and struck the ground on his
feet. He was unhurt, called for another horse, mounted and led the third
charge to recover the guns. For a moment the two battle lines mingled in
deadly hand to hand combat and once more the guns were retaken.
It had scarcely been done before Jackson's men rallied, turned and swift
as a bolt of lightning from the smoke-covered hill captured the guns the
third time and held them.
And then the unexpected, unimaginable thing happened. A new dust cloud
rose over the hill toward Manassas Junction. The Southerners were hoping
against hope that it might be Kirby Smith with his lost regiment from
the Shenandoah Valley. The regiment had been expected since noon. It was
now half past three o'clock. General McDowell, the Union Commander, was
hoping against hope that Patterson's army from the Shenandoah would join
his.
They were not long in doubt. The fresh troops suddenly swung into
position on McDowell's right flank. If they were allies all was well. If
they were foes! Suddenly from this line of battle rose a new cry on the
face of the earth. From two thousand dusty throats came a
heaven-piercing, soul-shivering shout, the cry of the Southern hunter in
sight of his game, a cry that was destined to ring over many a field of
death--the fierce, wild "Rebel Yell."
They charged McDowell's right flank with resistless onslaught. Kirby
Smith fell desperately wounded and Elzey took command. Beckham's battery
unlimbered and poured into the ranks from the rear a storm of shell.
McDowell swung his battle line into a fiery crescent and made his last
desperate stand.
Jubal Early, Elzey's brigade, and Stonewall Jackson charged at the same
signal--and then--pandemonium!
Blind, unreasoning panic seized the army of the North. They broke and
fled. Brave officers cursed and swore in vain. The panic grew. Men
rushed pell mell over one another, white with terror. They threw down
their muskets, their knapsacks, their haversacks and ran for their
lives, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. In vain
the regular army, with splendid discipline, formed a rear guard to
effect an orderly retreat. The crack of their guns only made the men run
faster.
The wildest rumors flew from parched tongue to throbbing ear.
An army of a hundred thousand fresh troops had fallen on their tired,
bloody ranks. They were led by Jeb Stuart at the head of four thousand
Black Horse Cavalry. If a single man escaped alive it would be for one
reason, only they could outrun them. It was a crime for officers to try
to round them up for a massacre. That's all it was--a massacre! With
each mad thought of the rushing mob the panic grew. They cut the traces
of horses from guns and left them on the field. The frantic mob engulfed
the buggies and carriages of the Congressmen and picnickers from
Washington who had come out to see the Rebellion put down at a single
blow. The road became a mass of neighing, plunging horses, broken and
tangled wagons, ambulances and riderless artillery teams. Horses neighed
in terror more abject than that which filled the hearts of men. Men
once had reason--the poor horse had never claimed it. The blockades on
the road formed no barrier to the flying men on foot. They streamed
around and overflowed into the woods and fields and pressed on with new
terror. God in Heaven! They pitied the poor fools engulfed in those
masses of maddened plunging brutes and smashing wagons. It was only a
question of a few minutes when Stuart's sabres would split every skull.
John Vaughan was swept to the rear on the crest of this wave of terror.
Up to the moment it began he had scarcely thought of danger. After the
first few minutes of nerve tension under fire his spirit had risen as
the combat raged and deepened. It didn't seem real, the falling of men
around him. He had no time to realize that they were being torn to
pieces by shot and shell and the hail of lead that whistled from those
long sheets of flaming smoke-banks before him.
And then the panic had seized him. He had caught its mad unreasoning
terror from the men who surged about him. And it was every man for
himself. The change was swift, abject, complete from utter
unconsciousness of fear to the blindest terror. Some ran mechanically,
with their eyes set in front as if stiff with fear, expecting each
moment to be struck dead, knowing it was useless to try but going on and
on because involuntary muscles were carrying them.
A fat man caught hold of John's coat and held on for half a mile before
he could shake him off. He begged piteously for help.
"Don't leave me, partner!" he panted. "I'm a sinful man. I ain't fit to
die. You're young and strong--save me!"
The dead weight was pulling him down and John shook the fellow off with
an angry jerk.
"To hell with you!"
They suddenly came to a lot of horses hid in the woods, rearing and
plunging and neighing madly.
John swerved out of their way and an officer rushed up to him crying:
"Why don't you take a horse?"
He looked at him in a dazed way before he could realize his meaning.
"Take a horse!" he yelled. "The rebels will get 'em if you don't----"
The men were too intent on running to try to save horses. Horses would
have to look out for themselves.
It suddenly occurred to John that a horse might go faster. Funny he
hadn't thought of it at once. He turned, seized one, mounted, and
galloped on. There was a quick halt. A panting mob came surging back
over the way they had just fled. A ford in front had been blocked, and
in the scramble the cry was raised that Stuart's cavalry were on them
and cutting every soul down in his tracks at the crossing.
John leaped from his horse, turned, and ran straight for the woods. He
didn't propose to be captured by Stuart's cavalry, that was sure. He
turned to look back and ran into a tree. He climbed it. If he could only
get to the top before they saw him. He had been an expert climber when a
boy in Missouri and he thanked God now for this. He never paused for
breath until he had reached the very top, where he drew the swaying
branches close about his body to hide from the coming foe. The sun was
yet hanging over the trees in the woods--a ball of sullen red fire
lighting up the hiding place of the last poor devil for the eyes of the
avenging hosts who were sweeping on. If it were night it would be all
right. But this was no place for a man with an ounce of sense in broad
daylight. The sharpshooters would see him in that tall tree sure. They
couldn't take him prisoner up there--they would shoot him like a
squirrel just to see him tumble and, by the Lord Harry, they would do
it, too!
He got down from the tree faster than he climbed up and from the edge of
the woods spied a dense swamp. He never stopped until he reached the
centre of it, and dropped flat on his stomach.
"Thank God, at last!" he sighed.
The Northern army fleeing for Washington had left on the field
twenty-eight guns, four thousand muskets, nine regimental flags, four
hundred and eighty-one dead, a thousand and eleven wounded and fourteen
hundred captured. The road to the rear was literally sown with pistols,
knapsacks, blankets, haversacks, wagons, tools and hospital stores.
And saddest of all the wreck, lay the bright new handcuffs with coils of
hang-man's rope scattered everywhere.
The Southern army had lost three hundred and eighty-seven killed,
including two brigadier generals, Bee and Barton, and fifteen hundred
wounded. They were so completely scattered and demoralized by their
marvellous and overwhelming victory that any systematic pursuit of their
foe was impossible.
The strange silent figure on the little sorrel horse turned his blue
eyes toward Washington from the last hilltop as darkness fell, lifted
his head suddenly toward the sky, and cried:
"Ten thousand fresh troops and I'd be in Washington to-morrow night!"
The troops were not to be had, and Stonewall Jackson ordered his men to
bivouac for the night and sent out his details to bury the dead and care
for the wounded of both armies.
Monday morning dawned black and lowering and before the sun rose the
rain poured in steady torrents. Through every hour of this desolate
sickening day the weary, terror-stricken stragglers trailed through the
streets of Washington--their gorgeous plumes soaked and drooping, the
Scotch bonnets dripping the rain straight down their necks and across
their dirty foreheads, the Garibaldi shirts, the blue and grey, the
black and yellow and gold and blazing Zouave uniforms rain-soaked and
mud-smeared.
Betty Winter bought out a peddler's cake and lemonade stand on the main
line of this ghastly procession and through every bitter hour from
sunrise until dark stood there cheering and serving the men without
money and without price, while the tears slowly rolled down her flushed
cheeks.
CHAPTER IX
VICTORY IN DEFEAT
The President had risen at daylight on the fateful Sunday morning. He
was sorry this first action must be fought on Sunday. It seemed a bad
omen. The preachers from his home town of Springfield, Illinois, had
issued a manifesto against his election without regard to their party
affiliations on account of his supposed hostility to religion. It had
hurt and stung his pride more than any single incident in the campaign.
His nature was profoundly religious. He was not a church member because
his religion had the unique quality of a personal faith which refused
from sheer honesty to square itself with the dogmas of any sect. The
preachers had not treated him fairly, but he cherished no ill will. He
knew their sterling worth to the Republic and he meant to use them in
the tremendous task before him. He had hoped the battle would not be
joined until Monday. But he knew at dawn that a clash was inevitable.
At half past ten o'clock, though keenly anxious for the first news from
the front, he was ready to accompany Mrs. Lincoln to church. The breeze
was from the South--a hot, lazy, midsummer heavy air.
The Commander-in-Chief bent his giant figure over a war map, spread on
his desk, fixed the position of each army by colored pins, studied them
a moment and quietly walked with his wife to the Presbyterian Church to
hear Dr. Gurley preach. He sat in reverent silence through the service,
his soul hovering over the distant hills.
Before midnight the panic stricken Congressmen began to drop into the
White House, each with his story of unparalleled disaster. At one
o'clock the President stood in the midst of a group of excited,
perspiring statesmen who had crowded into the executive office, the one
cool, shrewd, patient, self-possessed courageous man among them. He
reviewed their stories quietly and with no sign of excitement, to say
nothing of panic.
They marvelled at his dull intellect.
He was listening in silence, shaping the big new policy of his
administration.
He spent the entire night calmly listening to all these stories,
speaking a word of good cheer where it would be of service.
Mr. Seward entered as he had just finished a light breakfast.
The Secretary's hair was disheveled, his black string tie under his ear,
and he was taking two pinches of snuff within the time he usually took
one.
In thirty minutes the outlines of his message to Congress and his new
proclamation were determined. Mr. Seward left with new courage and a
growing sense of reliance on the wisdom, courage and intellectual power
of the Chief he had thought to supplant without a struggle.
At eight o'clock the man with a grievance made his first appearance. His
wrath was past the boiling point, in spite of the fact that his
handsome uniform was still wet from the night's wild ride.
He went straight to the point. He was a volunteer patriot of high
standing in his community. As a citizen of the Republic, wearing its
uniform, he represented its dignity and power. He had been grossly
insulted by a military martinet from West Point and he proposed to test
the question whether an American citizen had any rights such men must
respect.
The President lifted his calm, deep eyes to the flushed angry face,
glanced at the gold marks of his rank, and said:
"What can I do for you, Captain?"
"I've come to ask you, Mr. President," he began with subdued intensity,
"whether a volunteer officer of this country, a man of culture and
position, is to be treated as a dog or a human being?"
The quiet man at the desk slipped his glasses from his ears, polished
them with his handkerchief, readjusted them, and looked up again with
kindly interest:
"What's the trouble?"
"A discussion arose in our regiment on the day we were ordered into
battle over the expiration of our enlistment. I held, as a lawyer, sir,
that every day of rotten manual labor we had faithfully performed for
our country should be counted in our three months military service. Our
time had expired and I demanded that we be discharged then and
there----"
"On the eve of a battle?"
"Certainly, sir--what had that to do with our rights? We could have
reënlisted on the spot. I refused to take orders from the upstart who
commanded our brigade."
"And what happened?" the calm voice asked.
"He dared to threaten my life, sir!"
"Who was he?"
"A Colonel in command of our brigade--named Sherman!"
"William Tecumseh Sherman?"
"Yes, sir."
"What did he say to you?"
"Swore that if I moved an inch to leave his command he'd shoot me----"
"He said that to you?"
"Swore he'd shoot me down in my tracks like a dog!"
The President gravely rose, placed a big hand on the young officer's
shoulder and in serious, friendly tones said:
"If I were in your place, Captain, I wouldn't trust that man Sherman--I
believe he'll do it!"
The astonished volunteer looked up with a puzzled sheepish expression,
turned and shot out of the room.
The long figure dropped into a chair and doubled with laughter. He rose
and walked to his window, looking out on the trees swaying beneath the
storm, still laughing.
"They say that every cloud has its silver lining!" he laughed again.
"I'll remember that fellow Sherman."
Late in the day a report reached him of a beautiful young woman serving
refreshments without pay to the straggling, broken men.
He turned to Nicolay, his secretary:
"Get my carriage, find her, and bring her to me. I want to see her."
Betty's eyes were still red when she walked into his office.
He sprang to his feet, and with long strides met her. He grasped her
hand in both his and pressed it tenderly.
"So it's _you_!" he whispered.
Betty nodded.
"My little Cabinet comforter----"
"I'm afraid I'll be no good to-day," she faltered.
"Then I'll cheer _you_," he cried. "I just wanted to thank the woman
who's been standing behind a lemonade counter through this desolate day
giving her time, her money, and her soul to our discouraged boys----"
"And you are not discouraged?" Betty asked pathetically.
"Not by a long shot, my child! Brush those tears away. Jeffy D.'s the
man to be discouraged to-day. This will be a dearly bought victory. Mark
my word. For the South it's the glorious end of the war. While they
shout, I'll be sawing wood. It needed just this shock and humiliation to
bring the North to their senses. Watch them buckle on their armor now in
deadly earnest. The demagogues howled for a battle. They pushed us in
and they got it. Some of the Congressmen who yelled the loudest for a
march straight into Richmond without a pause even to water the horses
got tangled up in that stampede from Bull Run. They thought Jeb Stuart's
cavalry were on them and lost their lunch baskets in the scramble.
They've seen a great light. I'll get all the money I ask Congress for
and all the soldiers we need for any length of time. I've asked for four
hundred million dollars and five hundred thousand men for three years.
I shouldn't be surprised if they voted more. The people will have sense
enough to see that this defeat was exactly what they should have
expected under such conditions."
His spirit was contagious. Betty forgot her shame and fear.
"You're wonderful, Mr. President," the girl cried in rapt tones. "Now I
know that you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this."
"And so have you, my child," he answered reverently. "And so has every
brave woman who loves this Union. That's what I wanted to say to you and
thank you for your example."
Betty left the White House with a new sense of loyal inspiration. She
walked on air unconscious of the pouring rain. She paused before a
throng that blocked the sidewalk.
Some of them were bareheaded, the rain drops splashing in their faces,
apparently unconscious of anything that was happening.
She pushed her way into the crowd. They were looking at the bulletin
board of the _Daily Republican_, reading the first list of the dead and
wounded. Her heart suddenly began to pound. John Vaughan had not
reported his return. He might be lying stark and cold with the rain
beating down on his mangled body. She read each name in the list of the
dead, and drew a sigh of relief. But the last bulletin was not cheering.
It promised additional names for a later edition. Besides, the War
Department might not be relied on for reports of non-combatants. A
newspaper correspondent was not enrolled as a soldier. His death might
remain unrecorded for days.
On a sudden impulse she started to enter the office and ask if he had
returned, stopped, blushed, turned and hurried home with a new fear
mingled with a strange joy beating in her heart.
CHAPTER X
THE AWAKENING
John Vaughan had secured a loose horse on emerging from his friendly
swamp. The shadows of night had given him the chance to escape. His
horse was fresh, the rain had begun to fall, the heat had abated and he
made good time.
He reached the office before midnight, took his seat at his desk, pale
and determined to tell the truth. He wrote an account of the battle and
the panic in which it had ended so vivid, so accurate, so terrible in
its confession of riot and dismay, the editor refused to print it.
"Why not?" John sternly demanded.
"It won't do."
"It's true!"
"Then the less said about it the better. Let's hush it up."
John smiled:
"I'm sorry. I would like to see that thing in type just as I saw and
felt and lived it. It's a good story and it's my last--it's a pity to
kill it----"
"Your last? What do you mean?" the chief broke in.
"That I'm going into the ranks, and see if I am a coward--" he paused
and scowled--"it looked like it yesterday for a while, and my
curiosity's aroused. Besides, the country happens to need me."
"Rubbish," the editor cried, "the country will get all the men it needs
without you. You're a trained newspaper man. We need you here."
"Thanks. My mind's made up. I'm going to Missouri and raise a company."
The chief laid a hand on John's shoulder. "Don't be a fool. Stand by the
ship. I'll put your damned story in just as you wrote it if that's what
hurts."
John flushed and shook his head:
"But it isn't. You may be right about the stuff. If I were editor I'd
kill it myself. No. My dander's up. I want a little taste of the real
thing. I saw enough yesterday to interest me. The country's calling and
I've got to go."
The boys crowded around him and shook hands. From the door he waved his
good-bye and they shouted in chorus:
"Good luck!"
Arrived at his room, he wrote a note to Betty Winter. He read it over
and it seemed foolishly cold and formal. He tore it up and wrote a
simpler one. It was flippant and a little presumptuous. He destroyed
that and decided on a single line:
"MY DEAR MISS BETTY:
"Can I see you a few minutes before leaving to-night?
"JOHN VAUGHAN."
He sent it and began hurriedly to dress, his mind in a whirl of nervous
excitement. His vanity had not even paused to ask whether her answer
would be yes. He was sure of it. The big exciting thing was that he had
made a thrilling discovery in the midst of that insane panic. He was in
love--for the first time in life foolishly and madly in love. Fighting
and elbowing his way through that throng of desperate terror-stricken
men and horses it had come to him in a flash that life was sweet and
precious because Betty Winter was in it. The more he thought of it the
more desperate became his determination not to be killed until he could
see and tell her. Through every moment of his wild scramble through
woods and fields and crowded road, up that tree and down again, his
heart was beating her name:
"_Betty--Betty--Betty!_"
What a blind fool he had been not to see it before! She, too, had been
blind. It was all clear now--this mysterious power that had called them
from the first, neither of them knowing or understanding.
When Betty took his note from the maid's hand her eyes could see nothing
for a moment. She turned away that Peggy should not catch her white
face. She knew instinctively the message was from John Vaughan. It may
have been written with his last breath and sent by a friend. She broke
the seal with slow, nervous dread, looked quickly, and laughed aloud
when she had read, a joyous, half hysterical little laugh.
"The man's waiting for an answer, Miss," the maid said.
Betty looked at her stupidly, and blushed:
"Why, of course, Peggy, in a moment tell him."
She wrote half a page in feverish haste, telling him how happy she was
to know that he had safely returned, read it over twice, flushed with
anger at her silly confusion and tore it into tiny bits. She tried
again, but afraid to trust herself, spread John's note out and used it
for a model,
"MY DEAR MR. VAUGHAN:
"Certainly, as soon as you can call.
"BETTY WINTER."
And then she sat down by her window and listened to the splash of the
rain against the glass, counting the minutes until he should ring her
door bell.
And when at last he came, she had to stand before her clock and count
the seconds off for five minutes lest she should disgrace herself by
rushing down stairs.
Their hands met in a moment of awkward silence. The play of mind on mind
had set each heart pounding. The man of easy speech found for the first
time that words were difficult.
"You've heard the black news, of course," he stammered.
"Yes----"
Her eyes caught the haggard drawn look of his face with a start.
"You saw it all?" she asked.
"I saw so much that I can never hope to forget it," he answered
bitterly.
He led her to a seat and she flushed with the sudden realization that he
had been holding her hand since the moment they met. She drew it away
with a quick, nervous movement, and sat down abruptly.
"Was it really as bad as it looks to-day?" she asked with an attempt at
conventional tones.
"Worse, Miss Betty. You can't imagine the sickening shame of it all. I
was never in a battle before. I wouldn't mind repeating that experience
at close quarters--but the panic----"
"The President is the coolest and most courageous man in the country
to-day," she put in eagerly. "It's inspiring to talk to him."
A bitter speech against a Commander-in-Chief who could allow himself to
be driven into a battle by the chatter of fools rose to his lips, but he
remembered her admiration and was silent. He fumbled at his watch chain
and pulled the corner of his black moustache with growing embarrassment.
The thing was more difficult than he had dreamed.
"I have resigned from the paper," he said at last.
"Resigned?" she repeated mechanically.
"Yes. I'm going back home to-night and help raise a company in answer to
the President's proclamation."
The room was very still. Betty turned her eyes toward the window and
listened to the splash of the wind driven rain.
"To your home town?" she faltered.
"Yes. To Palmyra."
"Where your brother went to raise a company to fight us--strange, isn't
it?" Her voice had a far-away sound as if she were talking to herself.
"Yes--to fight us," he repeated in low tones.
Again a silence fell between them. He looked steadily into her brown
eyes that were burning now with a strange intensity, tried to speak, and
failed. He caught the gasp of terror in the deep breath with which she
turned from his gaze.
"My chief was bitter against my going--I--I hope you approve--Miss
Betty?" He spoke with pauses which betrayed his excitement.
"Yes, I'm glad----"
She stopped short, turned pale and fumbled at the lace handkerchief she
carried.
"Every brave man who loves the Union must feel as you do to-day--and
go--no matter how hard it may be for those who--for those he leaves at
home----"
She paused in embarrassment at the break she had almost made, and
flushed scarlet.
He leaned close:
"I'm afraid I'm not brave, Miss Betty. I ran with the rest of them
yesterday, ran like a dog for my life"--he paused and caught his
breath--"but I'm not sorry for it now. In the madness of that scramble
to save my skin I had a sudden revelation of why life was sweet----"
He stopped and she scarcely breathed. Her heart seemed to cease beating.
Her dry lips refused to speak the question she would ask. The sweet
moment of pain and of glory had come. She felt his trembling hand seize
her ice-cold fingers as he went on impetuously:
"Life was sweet because--because--I love you, Betty."
She sprang to her feet trembling from head to foot. He followed,
whispering:
"My own, I love you--I love you----"
With sudden fierce strength he clasped her in his arms and covered her
lips with kisses.
She lifted her trembling hands:
"Please--please----"
Again he smothered her words and held her in mad close embrace.
"Let me go--let me go!" she cried with sudden fury, thrusting him from
her, breathless, her eyes blinded with tears.
"Tell me that you love me!" he cried with desperate pleading.
The splendid young figure faced him tense, quivering with rage.
"How dare you take me in your arms like that without a word?" Her eyes
were flashing, her breast rising and falling with quick furious
breathing.
He seized her hand and held it with cruel force. Her eyes blazed and he
dropped it. She was thinking of the scene with his slender chivalrous
brother. She could feel the soft kiss on the tips of her fingers and the
blood surged to her face at the thought of this man's lips pressed on
hers in mad, strangling passion without so much as by your leave! She
could tear his eyes out.
He looked at her now in a hopeless stupor of regret.
"Forgive me, Betty," he faltered. "I--I couldn't help it."
Her eyes held his in a cold stare:
"I suppose that's all any woman has ever meant to you, and you took me
for granted----"
He lifted his hand in protest.
"Please, please, Miss Betty," he groaned.
"You may go now," she said with slow emphasis.
He looked at her a moment dazed, and a wave of sullen anger slowly
mounted his face to the roots of his black tangled hair, which he
suddenly brushed from his forehead.
Without a word he walked out into the storm, his jaws set. The door had
scarcely closed, when the trembling figure crumpled on the lounge in a
flood of bitter tears.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Before the sun had set on the day of storm which followed the panic at
Bull Run, the President had selected and summoned to Washington the man
who was to create the first Grand Army of the Republic--a man destined
to measure the full power of his personality against the Chief
Magistrate in a desperate struggle for the supremacy of the life of the
Nation itself.
General George Brinton McClellan, in answer to the summons, reached
Washington on July the 20th, and immediately took command of the Army of
the Potomac--or of what was left of it.
The President did not make this selection without bitter opposition and
grave warning. He was told that McClellan was an aggressive pro-slavery
Democrat, a political meddler and unalterably opposed to him and his
party on every essential issue before the people. These arguments found
no weight with the man in the White House. He would ask but one
question, discuss but one issue:
"Is McClellan the man to whip this new army of 500,000 citizens into a
mighty fighting machine and level it against the Confederacy?"
The all but unanimous answer was:
"Yes."
"Then I'll appoint him," was the firm reply. "I don't care what his
religion or his politics. The question is not _whether I shall save the
Union--but that the Union shall be saved_. My future and the future of
my party can take care of themselves--if they can't, let them die!"
The new Commander was a man of striking and charming personality, but
thirty-four years old, and graduated from West Point in 1846. He had
served with distinction in the war against Mexico, studied military
science in Europe under the great generals in command at the Siege of
Sebastopol, and had achieved in West Virginia the first success won in
the struggle with the South. He had been opposed in West Virginia by
General Robert E. Lee, the man of destiny to whom the President, through
General Scott, had offered the command of the Union army before Lee had
drawn his sword for Virginia. He was a past master of the technical
science of engineering, defense and military drill.
In spite of his short physical stature, he was of commanding appearance.
On horseback his figure was impressively heroic. It took no second
glance to see that he was a born leader of men.
On the first day of his active command he had already conceived the idea
that he was a man of destiny. He wrote that night to his wife:
"I find myself in a new and strange position here--President, Cabinet,
General Scott and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of
magic, I seem to have become the power of the land----"
Three days later he wrote again of his sensational reception in the
Senate Chamber:
"I suppose half a dozen of the oldest members made the remark I am
becoming so much used to:
"'Why how young you look and yet an old soldier!'
"They give me my way in everything, full swing and unbounded confidence.
All tell me that I am held responsible for the fate of the Nation, and
that all its resources shall be placed at my disposal. It is an immense
task that I have on my hands, but I believe I can accomplish it. When I
was in the Senate Chamber to-day and found those old men flocking around
me; when I afterward stood in the library looking over the Capital of a
great Nation, and saw the crowd gathering to stare at me, I began to
feel how great the task committed to me. How sincerely I pray God that I
may be endowed with the wisdom and courage necessary to accomplish the
work. Who would have thought when we were married, that I should so soon
be called upon to save my country?"
Nor was McClellan the only man who saw this startling vision. He made
friends with astounding rapidity, and held men to him with hooks of
steel.
With utter indifference to his own fame or future, the President joined
the public in praise of the coming star. The big heart at the White
House rejoiced in the strength of his Commanding General. But the man
who measured the world by the fixed standards of an exact science had no
powers of adjustment to the homely manners, simple unconventional ways,
and whimsical moods of Abraham Lincoln.
McClellan's one answer to all inquiries about his relation to the Chief
Executive was:
"The President is honest and means well!"
The smile that played about the corners of his fine, keen, blue eyes
when he said this left no doubt in the mind of his hearer as to his real
opinion of the poor country lawyer who had by accident been placed in
the White House.
And so the inevitable happened. The suggestions of the President and his
War Department were early resented as meddling with affairs which did
not concern them.
The President saw with keen sorrow that there were brewing schemes
behind the compelling blue eyes of the "Napoleon" he had created. The
talk of McClellan's aspirations to a military dictatorship, which would
include the authority of the Executive and the Legislative branches of
the Government, had been current for more than two months. His recent
manner and bearing had given color to these reports.
The splendor and ceremony of his headquarters could not have been
surpassed by Alexander or Napoleon. His growing staff already included a
Prince of the Royal Blood, the distinguished son of the Emperor of
France, and the Comte de Paris his attendant. His baggage train was
drawn by one hundred magnificent horses perfectly matched, hitched in
teams of four to twenty-five glittering new vans. His Grand Army spread
over mile after mile of territory far back into the hills of Virginia.
The autumnal days were brilliant with fresh uniforms, stars, sabres,
swords, spurs, plate, dinners, wines, cigars, the pomp and pride and
glory of war.
Men stood in little groups and discussed in whispers the significance of
his continued stay in the Capital.
"If the President has any friends, the hour has come when they've got
to stand by him!" The speaker was a man of fifty, a foreigner who had
made Washington his home and liked Lincoln.
"Nonsense, my dear fellow," a tall Westerner replied, "we may have to
get a few rifles and guard the White House from somebody's attempt to
occupy it, but we'll not need any big guns."
"If you'd heard the talk last night," the foreigner replied, with a
shrug of his shoulder, "you'd change your mind----"
The Westerner shook his head:
"No! The General's not that big a fool and the men around him have
better sense. And if they haven't--if they all should go crazy--it
couldn't be done. They couldn't control the army."
"Did you ever hear the army cheer as 'Little Mac' rides along the line?"
"Yes, but it don't mean an Emperor for all that----"
"I'm not so sure!"
And there were men of National reputation who considered the chances of
the man on horseback good at this moment. Such a man had openly attached
himself to the General as his attorney--no less a personage than the
distinguished Attorney General of the late Cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton.
During the closing days of Buchanan's crumbling administration Stanton
had become the dominating force of the Capital. His daring and his skill
had defeated the best laid schemes of the Southern party and broken its
grip on the administration. He had remained in Washington as a lawyer
practicing before the Supreme Court and had become the most aggressive
observer and critic of Lincoln and his Cabinet. His scorn for the
President knew no bounds.
"No one," he wrote to General John A. Dix, "can imagine the deplorable
condition of this city and the hazard of the Government, who did not
witness the weakness and the panic of the administration and the painful
imbecility of Lincoln."
To Buchanan, his ex-Chief, he wrote:
"A strong feeling of distrust in the candor and sincerity of Lincoln's
personality and of his Cabinet has sprung up. It was the imbecility of
this administration which culminated in the catastrophe of Bull Run.
Irretrievable misfortune and National disgrace never to be forgotten are
to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and National bankruptcy
as the result of Lincoln's running the machine for five months.
Jefferson Davis will soon be in possession of Washington."
Not only in letters to the leaders of public opinion in the Nation did
the aggressive and powerful lawyer seek to destroy the Government, but
in his conversation in Washington he was equally daring, venomous and
personal in his abuse of the President. "A low, cunning clown" and "the
original gorilla" were his choice epithets.
Stanton's influence over McClellan was decided and vital from the moment
of their introduction. It was known among the General's intimate friends
that he had advised again and again that he use his power as Commander
of the Army to declare a Dictatorship, depose the President and dissolve
the sittings of Congress until the war should be ended.
How far McClellan had dallied with this dangerous and alluring scheme
was a matter of conjecture. It is little wonder that the wildest rumors
of intrigues, of uprisings, of mutiny, filled the air.
McClellan had doggedly refused either to move his army or to formally go
into winter quarters until the middle of December, when he took to his
bed and announced that he was suffering from an attack of typhoid fever.
The President was further embarrassed by the course of his Secretary of
War, Cameron, who, while laboring under the censure of Congress for the
conduct of his office, had allowed Senator Winter to stab his chief in
the back by recommending in his report that the slaves be armed by the
Government and put into the ranks of the armies. Senator Winter, as the
Radical leader, knew that to meet such an issue once raised the
President must rebuke his Secretary and apologize to the Border Slave
States. He would thus alienate from his support all Cameron's friends,
and all friends of the negro. The Senator did not believe the President
would dare to fight on such an issue.
He had misjudged his man. The President not only rebuked his Secretary
by suppressing his report and revising its language, he demanded and
received his resignation, notwithstanding the fact that Cameron was the
most powerful politician in the most powerful State of the North.
He at once sought a new Secretary of War, free from all party
entanglements, who could not be influenced by contractors or jobbers or
scheming politicians, who was absolutely honest and who had a boundless
capacity for work.
Strangely enough, his eye rested on Edward M. Stanton, his arch enemy,
the man who had become McClellan's confidential attorney.
As an aggressive patriotic Democrat, Stanton had won the confidence of
the public in the last administration. His capacity for work had proved
limitless. He was under no obligations to a living soul who could ask
aught of Lincoln's administration. He was savagely honest. At the moment
the discovery of gigantic frauds practiced on the War Department by
thieving contractors, coupled with fabulous expenditures in daily
expenses, had destroyed the confidence of the money lenders in the
integrity of the Government. The Treasury was facing a serious crisis.
And then the astounding thing happened. Without consulting a soul inside
his Cabinet or out, Abraham Lincoln appointed his bitterest foe from the
party of his enemies his Secretary of War. He offered the place to Edwin
M. Stanton.
Perhaps the most astonished man in America was Stanton himself. To the
amazement of his friends, as well as his critics, he promptly accepted
the position.
Senator Winter, whose radical temperament had found in Stanton a
congenial spirit, though as wide as the poles apart in politics, met him
in the lobby of the Senate Chamber on the day his appointment was
confirmed.
He broke into a cynical laugh and asked:
"And what will you do?"
Stanton's keen spectacled eyes bored him through in silence as he
snapped:
"I may make Abe Lincoln President of the United States."
Evidently another man was entering the Cabinet under the impression that
the hands of an impotent Chief Magistrate needed strengthening. The
merest glance at this man's burly thick set body, his big leonine head
with its shock of heavy black hair, long and curling, his huge grizzly
beard and full resolute lips, was enough to convince the most casual
observer that he could be a dangerous enemy or a powerful ally.
The President was warned of this appointment, but his confidence was
unshaken. His reply was a revelation of personality:
"I have faith in affirmative men like Stanton. They stand between a
nation and perdition. He has shown a loyalty to the Union that rose
above his own partisan creed of a lifetime. I like that kind of a man."
"He'll run away with the whole concern," was his friend's laconic reply.
The President's big generous mouth moved with a smile:
"Well, we may have to treat him as they sometimes did a Methodist
minister I knew out West. He was a mighty man in prayer and exhortation.
At times his excitement rose to such threatening heights the elders put
brick bats in his pockets to hold him down. We may be obliged to serve
Stanton the same way----"
He paused and laughed.
"But I guess we'll let him jump awhile first!"
The men who knew the inner secrets of Stanton's relations to McClellan
watched this drama with keen interest. Had he gone into the Cabinet to
place the General in supreme power in a moment of crisis? Or had he at
heart deserted the Commander with the intention of using the enormous
power of the War Department to further a scheme of equal daring for
himself? They could only watch the swiftly moving scenes of the war
pageant for their answer.
One fact was standing out each day with sharp and clean cut
distinctness, a struggle of giants was on beneath the surface. Startling
surprise had followed startling surprise during the past months. Men
everywhere were asking one another, what next? The air of Washington was
foul with the breath of passion and intrigue. Purposes and methods were
everywhere assailed. Men high in civil life were believed to be plotting
with military conspirators to advance their personal fortunes on the
ruins of the Republic.
Around two men were gathering the forces whose clash would decide the
destiny of the Nation--the struggle between the supremacy of civil
authority in the President, and the war-created strength of the Military
Commander represented by McClellan. Could the Republic survive this war
within a war?
CHAPTER XII
LOVE AND PRIDE
Betty Winter had found her fierce resolution to blot John Vaughan from
her life a difficult one to keep. The first two weeks were not so hard.
Every instinct of her pure young girlhood had cried out against the
conceit which had imagined her conquest so easy. The memory of his arms
about her crushing with cruel force, his hot lips on hers in mad,
unasked kisses brought the angry blood mounting to her cheeks. She
walked the floor in rage and dropped at last exhausted:
"I could kill him!"
The memory which stung deepest was the terror she had felt in his
arms--the sudden fear of the brute quivering in tense muscles and
throbbing in passionate kisses. She had thought this man a gentleman. In
that flash of self-revealing he was simply a beast. It had unsettled her
whole attitude toward life. For the first time she began to suspect the
darker side of passion. If this were love, she would have none of it.
Again she resolved for the hundredth time, to banish the last thought of
him. If there were no cleaner, more chivalrous men in the world she
could live without them. But there were men with holier ideals. Ned
Vaughan was one. She drew from the drawer the only letter she had
received from him and the last she would probably get in many a day, as
he had crossed the dead line of war and was now somewhere in the great
silent South. She read it over and over with tender smiles:
"DEAR MISS BETTY;
"I can't disappear behind the battle lines without a last word to
you. I just want to tell you that every hour, waking or dreaming,
the memory of you is my inspiration. The hardest task is easy
because my heart is beating with your name with every stroke. For
me the drums throb it, the bugle calls it. I hear it in the tramp
of soldiers, the rumble of gun, the beat of horses' hoofs and the
rattle of sabre,--for I am fighting my way back, inch by inch, hour
by hour, to you, my love!
"You cannot answer this. There will be no more mails from the
South--no more mails from the North until I see you again on the
Capitol Hill in Washington. There has never been a doubt in my
heart that the South shall win--that I shall win. And when I stand
before you then it will not be as conqueror, though victorious. I
shall bow at your feet your willing slave. And I shall kiss my
chains because your dear hands made them. I can expect no answer to
this. I ask none. I need none. My love is enough. It's so big and
wonderful it makes the world glorious.
"NED."
How sharp and bitter the contrast between the soul of this chivalrous
boy and his vain conceited brother! She loathed herself for her blind
stupidity. Why had she preferred him? Why--why--why! The very question
cut her. It was not because John Vaughan had chosen to cast his lot with
her people of the North. Rubbish! She had a sneaking admiration for Ned
because he had dared her displeasure in making his choice. There must be
something perverse in her somewhere. She could see it now. It must be so
or the evil in John Vaughan's character would not have drawn her as a
magnet from the first. She hadn't a doubt now that all the stories about
his fast life and his contempt for women were true and much more than
gossip had dreamed.
He would write a letter of apology, of course, in due season. He was too
shrewd a man of the world, too skillful an interpreter of the whims of
women to write at once. He was waiting for her to cool--waiting until
she should begin to be anxious. It was too transparent. She would give
him a surprise when his letter came. The shock would take a little of
the conceit out of him. She would return his letter unopened by the next
mail.
When four weeks passed without a word the first skirmish between love
and pride began. Perhaps she had been unreasonable after all. Was it
right to blame a man too harshly for being mad about the woman he loved?
In her heart of hearts did she desire any other sort of lover? Tears of
vexation came in spite of every effort to maintain her high position.
She had to face the plain truth. She didn't desire a cold lover. She
wished him to be strong, manly, masterful--yes, masterful, that was
it--yet infinitely tender. This man was simply a brute. And yet the
memory of his mad embrace and the blind violence of his kisses had
become each day more vivid and terrible--terrible because of their
fascination. She accepted the fact at last in a burst of bitter tears.
And then came the announcement in the _Daily Republican_ of his return
to the city and his attachment to the company of cavalry at McClellan's
headquarters. The thought of his presence sent the blood surging in
scarlet waves to her face. There was no longer any question in her mind
that she had wounded him too deeply for forgiveness. Her dismissal had
been so cold, so curt, it had been an accusation of dishonor. She could
see it clearly now. He had poured out his confession of utter love in a
torrent of mad words and clasped her in his arms without thought or
calculation, an act of instinctive resistless impulse. He had justly
resented the manner in which she had repulsed him. Yet she had simply
followed the impulse of her girlish heart, and she would die sooner than
apologize.
She accepted the situation at last with a dull sense of pain and
despair, and tried to find consolation in devotion to work in the
hospitals which had begun to grow around the army of drilling
volunteers.
Events were moving now with swift march, and her championship of the
President gave her days of excitement which brought unexpected relief
from her gloomy thoughts. She was witnessing the first movements of the
National drama from the inside and its passion had stirred her
imagination. Her father's growing hatred of Abraham Lincoln left her in
no doubt as to whose master hand had guided the assaults on the rear of
his distracted administration.
The fall of Cameron, the Secretary of War, had been the work of her
father, with scarcely a suggestion from without. The Abolitionist had
determined to force Lincoln to free the slaves at once or destroy him
and his administration. They also were whispering the name of their
chosen dictator who would assume the reins of power on his downfall.
The President was equally clear in his determination not to allow his
hand to be forced and lose control of the Border Slave States, whose
influence and power were becoming each day more and more essential to
the preservation of the Union. He had succeeded in separating the
counties of Western Virginia and had created a new State out of them.
His policy of conciliation and forbearance was slowly, but surely,
welding Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland to the Nation.
Any tinkering at this moment with the question of Slavery would imperil
the loyalty of these four States. He held them now and he refused to
listen to any man or faction who asked him to loosen that grip.
The true policy of the Radicals, Senator Winter realized, was to fire
into the President's back through his generals in the field in an
emancipation crusade which would work the North into a frenzy of
passion. He had shrewdly calculated the chances, and he did not believe
that Lincoln would dare risk his career on a direct order revoking such
a proclamation.
General Hunger was the first to accept the mutinous scheme. He issued a
proclamation declaring all slaves within the lines of the Union army
forever free, and a wave of passionate excitement swept the North. The
quiet self-contained man in the White House did not wait to calculate
the force of this storm. He revoked Hunter's order before the ink was
dry on it.
Again Senator Winter invaded the Executive office:
"You dare, sir," he thundered, "to thus spit in the face of the
millions of the loyal North who are pouring their blood and treasure
into this war?"
"I do," was the even answer. "I am the President of the United States
and as Commander-in-Chief of its Army and Navy I will not be disobeyed
by my subordinates on an issue I deem vital to the Nation's existence.
If in the fulness of God's time an emancipation proclamation must be
issued in order to save the Union, I know my duty and I'll do it without
the interference of any of my generals in the field----"
He paused and glanced over the rims of his spectacles with a sudden
flash from his deep set eyes:
"Do I make myself clear?"
Winter's face went white with anger as he slowly answered:
"Perfectly. It seems you have learned nothing from the wrath with which
your sacrifice of John C. Fremont to appease the slave power was
received?"
"So it seems," was the laconic response. "Fremont issued, without
consulting me, his famous proclamation last August. I saw your hand,
Senator, in that clause 'freeing' the slaves in the State of Missouri."
"And I warn you now," the Senator growled, "that the storm of
indignation which met that act was nothing to one that will break about
your head to-morrow! The curses of Fremont's soldiers still ring in your
ears. The press, the pulpit, the platform and both Houses of Congress
gave you a taste of their scorn you will not soon forget. Thousands of
sober citizens who had given you their support, whose votes put you in
this office, tore your picture down from their walls and trampled it
under their feet. For the first time in the history of the Republic the
effigy of a living President was burned publicly in the streets of an
American city amid the jeers and curses of the men who elected him. Your
sacrifice of Fremont has made him the idol of the West. He is to them
to-day what Napoleon in exile was to France. This is a Government of the
people. Even a President may go too far in daring to override public
opinion!"
The giant figure slowly rose and faced his opponent, erect, controlled,
dignified:
"But the question is, Senator, who is a better judge of true public
opinion, you or I? It remains to be seen. In the meantime I must tell
you once more that I am not the representative of a clique, or faction.
I am the Chief Magistrate of all the people--I am going to save this
Union for them and their children. I hope to live to see the death of
Slavery. That is in God's hands. My duty to-day is as clear as the
noonday sun. I can't lose the Border Slave States at this stage of the
game and save the Union--therefore I must hold them at all hazards. Let
the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things if they will----"
"Then it's a waste of breath to talk!" the Senator suddenly shouted.
The rugged head bowed gracefully:
"I thought so from the first--but I've tried to be polite----"
"Good day, sir!"
"Good day, Senator," the President laughed, "come in any time you want
to let off steam. It'll make you feel easier and it won't hurt me."
Abraham Lincoln knew the real cause of public irritation and loss of
confidence. The outburst of wrath over Fremont was but a symptom. The
disease lay deeper. The people had lost confidence in his War Department
through the failure of his first Secretary and the inactivity of the
army under McClellan. He had applied the remedy to the first cause in
the dismissal of Cameron and the appointment of Stanton. It remained to
be seen whether he could control his Commanding General, or whether
McClellan would control the Government.
The situation was an intolerable one--not only to the people who were
sacrificing their blood and money, but to his own inherent sense of
honor and justice. He had no right to organize and drill a mighty army
to go into winter quarters, drink and play cards, and dance while a
victorious foe flaunted their flag within sight of the Capitol.
Besides, the Western division under two obscure Generals, Grant and
Sherman, had moved in force in mid-winter and with a mere handful of men
compared to the hosts encamped in Washington had captured Fort Henry and
Fort Donelson and taken fourteen thousand prisoners. The navy had
brilliantly coöperated on the river, and this fact only made more
painful the disgrace of the Confederate blockade of the Capital by its
half dozen batteries on the banks of the Potomac.
The President was compelled to test the ugly question of the extent and
power of General McClellan's personal support.
He returned from a tour of inspection and stood on the hilltop
overlooking McClellan's miles of tents and curling camp fires. He turned
to Mrs. Lincoln, who had accompanied him:
"You know what that is?"
"The Army of the Potomac, of course, Father."
"No!" he replied bitterly, "that's only McClellan's body guard--a
hundred and eighty thousand."
The General had persistently refused to take any suggestion from his
superior as to the movement of his army. Would Lincoln dare to force the
issue between them and risk the mutiny of this Grand Army undoubtedly
devoted to their brilliant young leader? There were many who believed
that if he dared, the result would be a _coup d'état_ which would place
the man on horseback in supreme power.
The moment the President reached the point where he saw that further
delay would mean grave peril to the Nation, he acted with a promptness
which stunned the glittering military court over which the young
Napoleon presided. From the White House, as Commander-in-Chief of the
Army and Navy, he issued a military order for the advance of McClellan's
forces on Richmond!
The idea of such an order coming from a backwoods lawyer without
military training was preposterous. Its audacity for a moment stunned
the Commander of all the divisions of the army, but when the excitement
had subsided on the day it was done, General McClellan, for the first
time, squarely faced the fact that there was a real man in the White
House.
The issue was a square one. He must obey that order or march on the
Capital with his army, depose the President, and declare a dictatorship.
He decided to move on Richmond. He wrangled over the route he would
take, but he moved, when once in motion, with remarkable swiftness.
Within two weeks a magnificent army of one hundred and twenty thousand
men, fourteen thousand horses, forty-four batteries with endless trains
of wagons, supplies, and pontoon bridges were transported by water two
hundred miles to the Virginia Peninsula without the loss of a life.
The day was a glorious one toward the end of March, when Betty stood on
the hill above Alexandria and watched, with heavy heart, the magnificent
pageant of the embarking army. The spring was unusually early. The grass
was already a rich green carpet in the shaded lanes. Jonquils were
flaming from every walkway, the violets beginning to lift their blue
heads from their dark green leaves and the trees overhead were hanging
with tassels behind which showed the clusters of fresh buds bursting
into leaf.
The armed host covered hill and plain and stretched out in every
direction as far as the eye could reach. Four hundred ships had moved up
the river to receive them. Companies and regiments of magnificently
equipped soldiers were marching to the throb of drum and the scream of
fife. Thousands of cavalrymen, in gay uniforms, their golden yellow
shining in the sun, were dashing across a meadow at the foot of the
hill. The long lines of infantry stretched from the hills through the
streets of Alexandria down to the water's edge. Everywhere the
regimental bands were playing martial music.
Somewhere among those marching, cheering, laughing, shouting thousands
was the man she loved, leaving without a word.
An awkward private soldier passed with his arm around his sweetheart.
Her eyes were red and she leaned close. They were not talking any more.
But a few minutes were left and he must go--perhaps to die. Words had
ceased to mean anything.
Her heart rose in fierce rebellion against the wall of silence her pride
had reared. A group of magnificently equipped young officers passed on
horseback. Perhaps of General McClellan's staff! She looked in vain
among them for his familiar face. If he passed she would disgrace
herself--she felt it with increasing certainty. Why had she come here,
anyway? As well tell the truth--in the vague hope of a meeting.
The quick beat of a horse's hoof echoed along the road. She looked and
recognized John Vaughan! He was coming straight toward her.
Instinctively and resistlessly she moved to meet him.
She waved her hand in an awkward little gesture as if she had tried to
stop after beginning the movement. His eye had been quick to see and
with a graceful pull on his horse's bridle he had touched the pommel of
the saddle, leaped to his feet, cap in hand, and stood trembling before
her.
"It's too good to be true!" he exclaimed breathlessly.
She extended her bare hand and he held it without protest. It was
trembling violently.
"You were going to leave without an effort to see me?" she asked in low
tones.
"I was just debating that problem when I saw you standing by the road,"
he answered soberly. "I don't think I could have done it. It's several
hours before we embark. I was just figuring on how I could reach you in
time."
"Really?" she murmured.
"Honestly."
"Well, if you had gone without a word, I couldn't have blamed you"--she
paused and bit her lips--"I was very foolish that day."
"It was my fault," he broke in, "all my fault. I was a brute. I realized
it too late. I'd have eaten my pride and gone back to see you the day I
reached Washington if I had thought it any use. I have never seen such a
look in the eyes of a woman as you gave me that day, Miss Betty. If
there had been any love in your heart I knew that I had killed it----"
She looked into his eyes with a tender smile:
"I thought you had----"
He pressed her hand tenderly.
"But now?"
"I know that love can't be killed by a kiss."
She stopped suddenly, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him. He
held her close for a moment, murmuring:
"My sweetheart--my darling!"
Through four swift beautiful hours they sat on a log, held each other's
hands, and told over and over the old sweet story. Another long, tender
embrace and he was gone. She stood on the little wharf, among hundreds
of weeping sisters and mothers and sweethearts, and watched his boat
drift down the river. He waved his handkerchief to her until the big
unfinished dome of the Capitol began to fade on the distant horizon.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRES OF RICHMOND
To meet three great armies converging on Richmond along the James under
McClellan, from the North under McDowell, and the West by the Shenandoah
Valley, the South had barely fifty-eight thousand men commanded by
Joseph E. Johnston and eighteen thousand under Stonewall Jackson.
The Southern people were still suffering from the delusion of Bull Run
and had not had time to adjust themselves to the amazing defeats
suffered at Fort Henry and Fort Donaldson, to say nothing of the
stunning victory of the _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, which had opened the
James to the gates of the Confederate Capital.
Jackson was ordered into the Shenandoah Valley to execute the apparently
impossible task of holding in check the armies of Fremont, Milroy, Banks
and Shields, and at the same time prevent the force of forty thousand
men under McDowell from reaching McClellan. The combined forces of the
Federal armies opposed thus to Jackson were eight times greater than his
command. And yet, by a series of rapid and terrifying movements which
gained for his little army the title of "foot cavalry," he succeeded in
defeating, in quick succession, each army in detail.
McDowell was despatched in haste to join Fremont and crush Jackson. And
while his army was rushing into the Shenandoah Valley, Jackson withdrew
and quietly joined the army before Richmond which moved to meet
McClellan.
Little Mac, with his hundred and twenty thousand men, had moved up the
Peninsula with deliberate but resistless force, Johnston's army retiring
before him without serious battle until the Army of the Potomac lay
within sight of the spires of Richmond. Faint, but clear, the breezes
brought the far-off sound of her church bells on Sunday morning.
The two great armies at last faced each other for the first clash of
giants, McClellan with one hundred and ten thousand men in line,
Johnston with seventy thousand Southerners.
John Vaughan rode along the lines of the Federal host on the afternoon
of May 30th, to inspect and report to his Commander. Through the opening
in the trees the Confederate army could be plainly seen on the other
side of the clearing. The Federal scouts had already reported the
certainty of an attack.
The Confederates that night lay down on their arms with orders to attack
at daylight. Dark clouds had swirled their storm banks over the sky
before sunset and the heavens were opened. The rain fell in blinding
torrents, until the sluggish little stream of the Chickahominy had
become a rushing, widening, treacherous river which threatened to sweep
away the last bridge McClellan had constructed.
The Confederate Commander was elated. The army of his enemy was divided
by a swollen river. The storm increased until it reached the violence of
a hurricane. Through the entire night the lightning flashed and the
thunder pealed without ceasing. At times the heavens were livid with
blinding, dazzling light. Tents were a mockery. The earth was
transformed into a vast morass.
The storm had its compensations for the Northern army though divided.
Its frightful severity had so demoralized the Confederates that it was
nearly noon before General A. P. Hill moved to the attack.
The entrenched army was ready. The Union pickets lay in the edge of the
woods and every soldier in the pits had been under cover for hours
awaiting the onset.
With a shout the men in grey leaped from their shelter, pouring their
volleys from close charging columns. The rifle balls whistled through
the woods, clipping boughs, barking the trees, and hurling the Federal
pickets back on their support. In front of the abatis had been planted a
battery of four guns. The grey men had fixed their eyes on them. General
Naglee saw their purpose and threw his four thousand men into the open
field to meet them. Straight into each other's faces their muskets
flamed, paused, and flamed again. The Northern men fixed their bayonets,
charged, and drove the grey line slowly back into the woods. Here they
met a storm of hissing lead that mowed their ranks. They broke quickly
and rushed for the cover of their rifle pits.
The grey lines charged, and for three hours the earth trembled beneath
the shock of their continued assaults.
Suddenly on the left flank of the Federal army a galling fire was poured
from a grey brigade. The movement had been quietly and skillfully
executed. At the same moment General Rodes' brigade rushed on their
front with resistless force. The officers tried to spike their guns and
save them, but were shot down in their tracks to a man. Their guns were
lost, and in a moment the men in grey had wheeled them and were pouring
a terrible fire on the retreating lines.
The Confederates now charged the Federal centre, and for an hour and a
half the fierce conflict raged--charge and countercharge by men of equal
courage led by dauntless officers. The Union right wing had already been
crumpled in hopeless confusion, the centre had yielded, the left wing
alone was holding its own. It looked as if the whole Union army on the
South side of the Chickahominy would be wiped out.
At Seven Pines Heintzelman had made a stubborn stand. General Keyes saw
a hill between the lines of battle which might save the day if he could
reach it in time. He must take men between two battle lines to do so.
The Confederate Commander, divining his intention, poured a galling fire
into his ranks and began a race with him for the heights. Keyes won the
race and formed his line in the nick of time. The tremendous fire poured
down from this new position was too much for the assaulting Southern
column and it halted.
The Confederate forces had forced the Federal lines back two miles as
the river fog and the darkness slowly rose and enveloped the field.
General Johnston ordered his men to sleep on the fields and camps they
had captured. A minute later he was hurled from his horse by an
exploding shell and was borne from the field dangerously wounded. The
first day's struggle had ended in reverses for the invading enemy. The
Confederates had captured ten guns, six thousand muskets, and five
hundred prisoners, besides driving McClellan's forces two miles from the
opening battle lines.
Between the two smoke-grimed, desperate armies locked thus in close
embrace there could be no truce for burying the fallen or rescuing the
wounded. Over the rain-soaked fields and woods for two miles behind the
Confederate front lay the dead, the dying, and the wounded, the blue
side by side with their foes in grey. Dim fog-ringed lanterns flickered
feebly here and there like wounded fireflies over the dark piles on the
ground.
The Southern ambulance corps did its best at its new trade. Their long
lines of wagons began to creep into Richmond and fill the hospitals.
Shivering white-faced women, wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters were
there looking for their own, praying and hoping. All day they had
shivered in their rooms at the deep boom of cannon, whose thunder
rattled the glass in the windows through which they gazed on the
deserted streets. It was the first lesson in real war, this hand to hand
grip of the two giants whose struggle must decide the fate of Richmond.
The wagons left their loads and rattled back over the rough cobble
stones and out on the muddy roads to the front again. The night would be
all too short for their work.
In their field hospital, the surgeons, with bare, bloody arms, were busy
with knife and saw. Boys who had faced death in battle without a tremor,
now pale and trembling, watched the growing pile of legs and arms. Alone
in the darkness beyond the voice or touch of a loved hand they must face
this awful thing and hobble through life maimed wrecks. They looked
over their shoulders into the murky darkness and envied the silent forms
that lay there beyond the reach of pain and despair. All night the grim
tragedy of the knife and saw, and the low moans that still came from the
darkness of the woods!
Sunday morning, the second day of June, dawned over the battle-scarred
earth--an ominous day for the armies of the Republic--for the sun rose
on a new figure in command of the men in grey. Robert E. Lee had taken
the place of Joseph E. Johnston.
General G. W. Smith, second in command when Johnston fell, had formed
his plan of battle, and the new head of the Confederacy, with his high
sense of courtesy and justice, permitted his subordinate to direct the
conflict for the day.
As the sun rose, red and ominous through the dark pine forest, General
Smith quickly advanced his men at Fair Oaks Station, down the railroad,
and fell with fury on the men in blue, who crouched behind the
embankment. The men were less than fifty yards apart, and muskets blazed
in long level sheets of yellow flame. No longer could the ear catch the
effect of ripping canvas in the fire of small arms. The roar was
endless. For an hour and a half the two blazing lines mowed each other
down in their tracks without pause. The grey at last gave way and fell
back to the shelter of their woods and gathered reinforcements. The
Union lines had been cut to pieces and suddenly ceased firing while
their support advanced.
The roaring hell had died into a strange ominous stillness. John Vaughan
had just dashed up to the embankment with orders from McClellan to hold
this position until Haskin's division arrived. He sprang on the
embankment and looked curiously at the long piles of grey bodies lying
in an endless row as far as the eye could reach. Over the tree tops,
faintly mingling with the low cry of a dying boy of sixteen, came the
sweet distant notes of a church bell in Richmond.
"God in heaven--the mockery of it!" he cried.
A great shout swept the blue lines. Hooker's magnificent division of
fresh troops swept into view, eager for the fray. They rapidly deployed
to the right and left. In front of them lay the open blood-soaked field,
and beyond the deep woods bristling with Southern bayonets. The new
division leaped into this open field, with a wild shout, their eyes set
on the woods. They paused, only to fire, and their double quick became a
race.
The Southern batteries followed and tore great holes in their ranks.
They closed them with low quick sullen orders sweeping on. They reached
the edge of the woods and poured into its friendly shelter. And then
above the tops of oak and pine and beech and ash and tangled undergrowth
came the soul-piercing roar of two great armies, fearless, daring,
scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man, for what they
believed to be right.
The people in church turned anxious faces toward the sound. Its roar
rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir.
Bayonet clashed on bayonet, as regiment after regiment were locked in
close mortal combat. Hour after hour the stubborn unyielding hosts held
fast on both sides. The storm weakened and slowly died away. Only the
intermittent crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness.
There was no shout of victory, no sweep of cheering hosts--only silence.
The Confederate General in command for the day had lost faith in his
battle plan and withdrew his army from the field. The men in blue could
move in and camp on the ground they had held the day before if they
wished.
But there was something more important to do now than maneuver for
position in history. The dead and the dying and wounded crying for water
were everywhere--down every sunlit aisle of the forest they lay in
heaps. In the open fields they lay faces up, the scorching Southern sun
of June beating piteously down in their eyes--the blue and the grey side
by side in death as they fought hand to hand in life.
The trenches were opened and they piled the bodies in one on top of the
other, where they had fallen. They turned their faces downward, these
stalwart, brave American boys that the grave-diggers might not throw the
wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. O, aching hearts in far-away homes,
at least you were not there to see!
Both armies paused now to gird their loins for the crucial test. General
Lee was in the saddle gathering every available man into his ranks for
his opening assault on McClellan's host. Jackson was in the Shenandoah
Valley holding three armies at bay, defeating them in detail and
paralyzing the efficiency of McDowell's forty thousand men at
Fredericksburg, by the daring uncertainty of his movements.
The first act of Lee was characteristic of his genius. Wishing to know
the exact position of McClellan's forces, and with the further purpose
of striking terror into his antagonist's mind for the safety of his
lines of communication, he conceived the daring feat of sending a picked
body of cavalry under the gallant J. E. B. Stuart completely around the
Northern army of one hundred and five thousand men.
On June the 12th, Stuart with twelve hundred troopers, fighting,
singing, dare-devil riders to a man, slipped from Lee's lines and
started toward Fredericksburg. The first night he bivouacked in the
solemn pines of Hanover. At the first streak of dawn the men swung into
their saddles in silence.
Turning suddenly to the east he surprised and captured the Federal
pickets without a shot. In five minutes he confronted a squadron of
Union cavalry. With piercing rebel yell his troopers charged and
scattered their foes.
Sweeping on with swift, untiring dash they struck the York River
Railroad, which supplied McClellan's army, surprised and captured the
company of infantry which guarded Tunstall's Station, cut the wires and
attacked a train passing with troops.
Riding without pause through the moonlit night they reached the
Chickahominy at daybreak. The stream was out of its banks and could not
be forded. They built a bridge, crossed over at dawn, and the following
day leaped from their saddles before Lee's headquarters and reported.
A thrill of admiration and dismay swept the ranks of the Northern army
and started in Washington a wave of bitter criticism against McClellan.
No word of reply reached the world from the little Napoleon. He was busy
digging trenches, felling trees and pushing his big guns steadily
forward and always behind impregnable works. He was a born engineer and
his soul was set on training his great siege guns on the Confederate
Capital.
On the 25th of June his advance guard had pressed within five miles of
the apparently doomed city. His breastworks bristled from every point of
advantage. His army was still divided by the Chickahominy River, but he
had so thoroughly bridged its treacherous waters he apparently had no
fear of coming results.
On June the 27th Stonewall Jackson had slipped from the Shenandoah
Valley, baffling two armies converging on him from different directions,
and with a single tiger leap had landed his indomitable little army by
Lee's side.
Anticipating his arrival, the Confederate general had hurled Hill's
corps against the Union right wing under Porter. Throughout the day of
the 26th and until nine o'clock at night the battle raged with unabated
fury. The losses on both sides were frightful and neither had gained a
victory. But at nine o'clock the Federal Commander ordered his right
wing to retreat five miles to Gaines Mill and cover his withdrawal of
heavy guns and supplies. They were ordered at all hazards to hold
Jackson's fresh troops at bay until this undertaking was well under way.
It was a job that called for all his skill in case of defeat. It
involved the retreat of an army of one hundred thousand men with their
artillery and enormous trains of supplies across the mud-scarred marshy
Peninsula. Five thousand wagons loaded to their utmost capacity, their
wheels sinking in the springy earth, had to be guarded and transported.
His siege guns, so heavy it was impossible to hitch enough horses to
move them over roads in which they sank to the hubs, had to be saved.
Three thousand cattle were there, to be guarded and driven, and it was
more than seventeen miles to the shelter of his gunboats on the James.
During the night his wagon trains and heavy guns were moved across the
Chickahominy toward his new base on the James.
The morning of the 27th dawned cool and serene. Under the cover of the
night the silent grey army had followed the retiring one in blue. The
Southerners lay in the dense wood above Gaines Mill dozing and waiting
orders.
A balloon slowly rose from the Federal lines and hung in the scarlet
clouds that circled the sun. The signal was given to the artillery that
the enemy lay in the deep woods within range and a storm of shot and
shell suddenly burst over the heads of the men in grey and the second
day's carnage had begun.
For once Jackson, the swift and mysterious, was late in reaching the
scene. It was two o'clock when Hill again unsupported hurled his men on
the Federal lines in a fierce determined charge. Twenty-six guns of the
matchless artillery of McClellan's army threw a stream of shot and shell
into his face. Never were guns handled with deadlier power. And back of
them the infantry, thrilled at the magnificent spectacle, poured their
hail of hissing lead into the approaching staggering lines.
The waves of grey broke and recoiled. A blue pall of impenetrable smoke
rolled through the trees and clung to the earth. Under the protection of
their great guns the dense lines of blue pushed out into the smoke fog
and charged their foe. For two hours the combat raged at close quarters.
A division of fresh troops rushed to the Northern line, and Lee
observing the movement from his horse on an eminence, ordered a general
attack on the entire Union front.
It was a life and death grapple for the mastery. Jackson's corps was now
in action. A desperate charge of Hood's division at last broke the Union
lines and the grey men swarmed over the Federal breastworks. The lines
broke and began to roll back toward the bridges of the Chickahominy. The
retreat threatened to become a rout. The twilight was deepening over the
field when a shout rose from the tangled masses of blue stragglers by
the bridge. Dashing through them came the swift fresh brigades of French
and Meager. General Meager, rising from his stirrups in his shirt
sleeves, swung his bare sword above his head, hurled his troops against
the advancing Confederate line and held it until darkness saved Porter's
division from ruin.
McClellan's one hope now was to pull his army out of the deadly swamps
in which he had been caught and save it from destruction. He must reach
the banks of the James and the shelter of his gunboats before he could
stop to breathe. At every step the charging grey lines crashed on his
rear guard. Retreating day and night, turning and fighting as a hunted
stag, he was struggling only to escape.
That there was no panic, no rout, was a splendid tribute to his
organizing and commanding powers. His army was an army at last in fact
as well as in name--a compact and terrible fighting machine. The
oncoming Confederate hosts learned this to their sorrow again and again
in the five terrible days which followed.
On July 1st, McClellan reached the shelter of his gunboats and
intrenched himself on the heights of Malvern Hill. On its summit he
placed tier after tier of batteries swung in crescent line, commanding
every approach. Surmounting those on the highest point he planted seven
of his great siege guns. His army surrounded this hill, its left flank
resting on the James and covered by his gunboats.
It was late in the afternoon before Lee ordered a general attack. The
grey army was floundering in the mud in a vain effort to reach its
fleeing enemy in force. At noon they were still burying the dead on the
blood-soaked field of Glendale where McClellan's gallant rear guard had
stood until the last wagon train had safely arrived at Malvern Hill.
Ned Vaughan's company had been hurried from the West to the defense of
Richmond, and reached the field on the night of the 30th, too late for
the battle of Glendale, but in time to walk over its scarred soil in the
soft moonlight and get his first glimpse of war. He was yet to see a
battle.
A group of grey schoolboy comrades were burying one of their number
beneath a tall pine in the edge of an old field. He joined the circle
and watched them. They dug the grave with their bayonets, tenderly
wrapped the body in the battle flag of the South and covered it with
their hands. One of them recited a beautiful Psalm from memory, and not
a word was spoken as they drew the damp earth up into a mound. A
whip-poor-will began his song in the edge of the woods as he passed on.
A few yards further a man in grey was cutting a forked limb into a
crutch. Something dark lay huddled on the brown straw. It was a wounded
man in blue. The Southerner lifted his enemy, and placed the crutch
under him.
"Now, partner," he said cheerfully, "you're all right. You'll find the
hospital down there by them lights. They'll look out for ye."
Ned wondered vaguely how he would really feel under his first baptism of
fire. He was only a private soldier in this company which had been
ordered East. He had resigned from the first he had helped to raise--the
ambitions and intrigues of its officers had aroused his disgust and he
had taken a place in the ranks of the first company sent to Virginia. He
had made up his mind he would wear no signs of rank that were not fairly
won on the field of battle.
To-morrow he was going to face it at short range. Everywhere were strewn
canteens, knapsacks, broken guns and blankets. He came suddenly on a
trench behind which the men in blue had fought from dark to dark. It was
full of dead soldiers.
His regiment was up before day to move at dawn. His company had been
assigned to a regiment of veterans who had fought at Bull Run and had
been in three of the battles before Richmond. Their ranks were thin and
the Western boys were given a royal welcome.
The seasoned men were in good humor, the new company serious. Ned was
carefully shaving by the flickering light of the camp fire.
"What the divil are you doin' that for?" his Irish messmate asked in
amazement.
"You want to know the truth, Haggerty?" Ned drawled.
"That's what I want----"
"We're going into our first battle, aren't we?"
"Praise God, we are!"
"And we may come out a corpse?"
"Yis----"
"I'm going to be a decent one."
"Ah, go'long wid ye--ye bloody young spalpeen--ye're no more afraid than
I am!"
"Maybe not, Haggerty, but it's a solemn occasion, and I'm going to look
my best."
"Ye'll live ter see many a scrap, me bye!"
"Same to you, old man! But I'm going to be clean for this one, anyhow."
The regiment marched toward Malvern Hill at the first streak of dawn. It
was slow work. Always the artillery ahead were sticking in the mud and
the halts were interminable.
The new company grew more and more nervous:
"What's up ahead?"
They asked it at every halt the first three hours. And then their
disgust became more pronounced.
"What in 'ell's the matter?" Ned groaned.
"Don't worry, Sonny," an old corporal called, "you'll get there in time
to see more than you want."
The regiment reached the battle lines at one o'clock. The morning hours
had been spent in driving in the skirmishers and feeling the enemy's
positions. Lee had given orders for a general charge on a signal yell
from Armistead's brigade. He was now waiting the arrival of all his
available forces before attacking.
Late in the afternoon General D. H. Hill heard a shout followed by a
roar of musketry and immediately ordered his division to charge. No
other General seemed to have heard it and the charge was made without
support. It was magnificent, but it was not war, it was sheer butchery.
No army could have stood before the galling fire of those massed
batteries.
Ned's regiment had deployed in a wood on the edge of a wide field at the
foot of the hill. Their movement caught the eye of a battery on the
heights which opened with six guns squarely on their heads.
The struggling, shattered remnants of a regiment which had been all but
annihilated fell back through these woods, stumbling against the waiting
men.
Ned saw a soldier with a Minie ball sticking in the centre of his
forehead, the blood oozing from the round, clean-cut hole beside the
lead. He was walking steadily backward, loading and firing with
incredible rapidity. The company halted behind the troops held in
reserve, but the man with the ball in his forehead refused to go to the
rear. He wouldn't believe that he was seriously hurt. He jokingly asked
a comrade to dig the ball out. He did so, and the fellow dropped in his
tracks, the blood gushing from the wound in a stream.
The uncanny sight had sickened Ned. He looked at his hand and it was
trembling like a leaf.
And this division was charging up that awful hill again. Ned saw a
private soldier who belonged to one of its regiments deliberately walk
across the field alone and join his comrades as if nothing of importance
were going on. And yet the bullets were whistling so thickly that their
"Zip! Zip!" on the ground kept the air filled with flying dirt and tufts
of grass--a veritable hail of lead through which a sparrow apparently
couldn't fly.
The fellow was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do
such a thing _alone_--maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a
maniac _could_ do it alone--Ned was sure of that.
A shell smashed through the top of a tree, clipped its trunk in two and
down it came with a crash that sent the men scampering.
A solid shot came bounding leisurely down the hill and rolled into the
woods. A man just in front put out his foot playfully to stop it and it
broke his leg.
The shriek of shell and the whistle of lead increased in terrifying roar
each moment and Ned felt a queer sensation in his chest--a sort of
shortness of breath. In a moment he was going to bolt for the rear! He
felt it in his bones and saw no way to stop it. He lifted his eyes
piteously toward the Colonel who sat erect in his saddle stroking the
neck of a restless horse with his left hand.
The veteran saw the boy's terror under his trial of fire and his heart
went out to him in a wave of fatherly sympathy.
He rode quickly up to Ned:
"Won't you hold my horse's bridle a minute, young man, while I use my
glasses?" he asked coolly.
Ned's trembling hand caught the reins as a drowning man a straw. The act
steadied his shaking nerves. As the Colonel slowly lowered his glasses
Ned cried through chattering teeth:
"D-d-d-on't y-you think--I-I-I--am d-d-doing p-pretty well, C-colonel,
f-f-f-for my f-f-ffirst battle?"
The Colonel nodded encouragingly:
"Very well, my boy. It's a nasty situation. You'll make a good
soldier."
And then the order to charge!
Across the level field torn by shot and shell, the regiment swept in
grey waves. The gaps filled up silently. They started up the hill and
met the sleet of hissing death. The hill top blazed streams of yellow
flame through the pall of smoke. Men were falling--not one by one, but
in platoons and squads, rolling into heaps of grey blood-soaked flesh
and rags. The regiment paused, staggered, reeled and rallied.
Haggerty fell just in front of Ned, who was loading and firing with the
precision of a machine. If he had a soul--he didn't know it now. The men
were ordered to lie down and fire from the ground.
Haggerty caught Ned's eye as it glanced along his musket searching for
his foe through the cloud of blue black smoke that veiled the world.
"Roll me around, Bye," the Irishman cried, "and make a fince out of
me--I'm done for."
Ned paid no attention to his call, and Haggerty pulled his mangled body
down the hill and doubled himself up in front of his friend.
"Keep down behind me, Bye," he moaned. "I'll make a good fort for ye!"
It was useless to protest, he had erected the fort to suit himself and
Ned was fighting now behind it. The sight of his dying friend steadied
his nerves and sent a thrill of fierce anger like living fire through
his veins. His eye searched the hilltop for his foe. The smoke rolled in
dark grey sulphurous clouds down the slope and shut out the sky line. He
waited and strained his bloodshot eyes to find an opening. It was no use
to waste powder shooting at space. He was too deadly angry now for
that.
A puff of wind lifted the clouds and the blue men could be seen leaping
about their guns. They looked like giants in the smoke fog. Again he
fired and loaded, fired and loaded with clock-like, even steady, hand.
It was tiresome this ramming an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket
lying flat on the ground. But with each round he was becoming more and
more expert in handling the gun. His mouth was black with powder from
tearing the paper ends of the cartridges. The sulphurous taste of the
powder was in his mouth.
From the centre of the field rose the awful Confederate yell again. A
regiment of Georgians, led by Gordon were charging. Waiting again for
the smoke to clear in front Ned could see the grey waves spread out and
caught the sharp word of command as the daring young officers threw
their naked swords toward the sky crying:
"Forward!"
And then they met the storm. From grim, black lips on the hill crest
came the answer to their yell--three hundred and forty mighty guns were
singing an oratorio of Death and Hell in chorus now from those heights.
Half the men seemed to fall at a single crash and still the line closed
up and rushed steadily on, firing and loading, firing and
loading,--running and staggering, then rallying and pressing on again.
On the right ten thousand men under Hill slipped out into line as if on
dress parade--long lines of handsome boyish Southerners. The big guns
above saw and found them with terrible accuracy. A wide lane of death
was suddenly torn through them before they moved. They closed like clock
work and with a cheer swept forward to the support of the men who were
dying on the blood-soaked slope.
Ned's heart was thumping now. He felt it coming, that sharp low order
from the Colonel before the words rang from his lips. His hour had come
for the test--coward or hero it had to be now. It was funny he had
ceased to worry. He had entered a new world and this choking, blinding
smoke, the steady thunder of guns, the long sheets of orange fire that
flashed and flashed and blazed in three rings from the hill, the ripping
canvas of musketry fire in volleys, the dull boom of the great guns on
the boats below, were simply a part of the routine of the new life. He
had lived a generation since dawn. The years that had gone before seemed
a dream. The one real thing was Betty's laughing eyes. They were looking
at him now from behind that flaming hill. He must pass those guns to
reach her. Not a doubt had yet entered his soul that he would do it. Men
were falling around him like leaves in autumn, but this had to be. He
saw the end. No matter how fierce this battle, McClellan was only
fighting to save his army from annihilation. Lee was destroying him.
The order came at last. The Colonel walked along in front of his men
with bared head.
"Now, boys,--that battery on the first crest--we've half their
men--charge and take those guns!"
The regiment leaped to their feet and started up the hill. They had lost
two hundred men in their first sweep. There were six hundred left.
"Hold your fire until I give the word!" the Colonel shouted.
The smoke was hanging low, and they had made two hundred yards before
the blue line saw them through the haze. The hill blazed and hissed in
their faces. The massed infantry behind the guns found their marks. Men
dropped right and left, sank in grey heaps or fell forward on their
faces--some were knocked backwards down the slope. Yet without a pause
they climbed.
Three hundred yards more and they would be on the guns. And then a sheet
of blinding flame from every black-mouthed gun in line double shotted
with grape and canister! The regiment was literally knocked to its
knees. The men paused as if dazed by the shock. The sharp words of cheer
and command from their officers and they rallied. From both flanks
poured a murderous hail of bullets--guns to the right, left and front,
all screaming, roaring, hissing their call of blood.
The Colonel saw the charge was hopeless and ordered his men to fire and
fall back fighting. The grey line began to melt into the smoke mists
down the hill and disappeared--all save Ned Vaughan. His eyes were fixed
on that battery when the order to fire was given. He fired and charged
with fixed bayonet alone. He never paused to see how many men were with
him. His mind was set on capturing one of those guns. He reached the
breastworks and looked behind him. There was not a man in sight. A blue
gunner was ramming a cannon. With a savage leap Ned was on the boy,
grabbed him by the neck and rushed down the hill in front of his own gun
before the astounded Commander realized what had happened. When he did
it was too late to fire. They would tear both men to pieces.
The regiment had rallied in the woods at the edge of the field from
which they had first charged.
Ned Vaughan led his prisoner, in bright new uniform of blue, up to the
Colonel and reported.
"A prisoner of war, sir!"
The Colonel took off his hat and gazed at the pair:
"Aren't you the boy who held my horse?"
Ned saluted:
"Yes, sir."
"Then in the name of Almighty God, where did you get that man?"
Ned pointed excitedly to the hilltop:
"Right yonder, sir,--there's plenty more of 'em up there!"
The Colonel scratched his head, looked Ned over from head to heel and
broke into a laugh.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said at last. "Take him to the rear and
report to me to-night. I want to see you."
Ned saluted and hurried to the rear with his prisoner.
The sun was slowly sinking in a sea of blood. The red faded to purple,
the purple to grey, the grey into the shadows of night and still the
guns were thundering from their heights. It was nine o'clock before they
were silent and Lee's torn and mangled army lay down among their dead
and wounded to wait the dawn and renew the fight. They had been
compelled to breast the most devastating fire to which an assaulting
army had been subjected in the history of war. The trees of the woods
had been literally torn and mangled as if two cyclones had met and
ripped them to pieces.
The men dropped in their tracks to snatch a few hours' sleep.
The low ominous sounds that drifted from the darkness could not be
heeded till to-morrow. Here and there a lantern flickered as they picked
up a wounded man and carried him to the rear. Only the desperately
wounded could be helped. The dead must sleep beneath the stars. The low,
pitiful cries for water guided the ambulance corps as they stumbled over
the heaps of those past help.
The clouds drew a veil over the stars at midnight and it began to pour
down rain before day. The sleeping, worn men woke with muttered oaths
and stood against the trees or squatted against their trunks seeking
shelter from the flood. As the mists lifted, they looked with grim
foreboding but still desperate courage to the heights. Every rampart was
deserted. Not one of those three hundred and forty guns remained.
McClellan had withdrawn his army under the cover of the night to
Harrison's Landing.
It would be difficult to tell whose men were better satisfied.
"Thank God, he's gone from there anyhow!" the men in grey cried with
fervor.
Now they could get something to eat, bury their dead and care for all
the wounded. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign had ended. His Grand Army
had melted from a hundred and ten thousand fighting men in line to
eighty-six thousand. The South had lost almost as many.
From the wildest panic into which the advance of his army had thrown
Richmond, the Confederate Capital now swung to the opposite extreme of
rejoicing for the deliverance, mingled with criticism of their leaders
for allowing the Federal army to escape at all.
The gloom in Washington was profound.
An excited General rushed to the White House at two o'clock in the
morning, roused the President from his bed and pleaded for the immediate
dispatch of a fleet of transports to Harrison's Landing as the only
possible way to save the army from annihilation.
The President soothed his fears and sent him home. He was not the man to
be thrown into a panic. Yet the incredible thing had happened. His army
of more than two hundred thousand men, under able generals, had been
hurled back from the gates of Richmond in hopeless, bewildering defeat,
and he must begin all over again.
One big ominous fact loomed in tragic menace from the smoke and flame of
this campaign--the South had developed two leaders of matchless military
genius--Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It was a fact the President
must face and that without fear or favor to any living man in his own
army.
He left Washington for the front at once. He must see with his own eyes
the condition of the army. He must see McClellan. The demand for his
removal was loud and bitter. And fiercest of all those who asked for his
head was the iron-willed Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, his former
champion.
CHAPTER XIV
THE RETREAT
John Vaughan had become one of his General's trusted aides. His services
during the month's terrific struggle had proven invaluable. The
Commander was quick to discern that he was a man of culture and
possessed a mind of unusual power. More than once the General had called
him to his headquarters to pour into his ears his own grievances against
the authorities in Washington. Naturally his mind had been embittered
against the man in the White House. The magnetic personality of
McClellan had appealed to his imagination from their first meeting.
The General was particularly bitter on the morning the President was
expected. His indignation at last broke forth in impassioned words to
his sympathetic listener.
The tragic consequence of the impression made in that talk neither man
could dream at the moment.
Pacing the floor with the tread of a caged lion McClellan suddenly
paused and his fine blue eyes flashed.
"I tell you, Vaughan, the wretches have done their worst. They can't do
much more----"
He stopped suddenly and drew from his pocket the copy of a dispatch he
had sent to the war office. He read it carefully and looked up with
flashing eyes:
"I'll face the President with this dispatch to Stanton in my hands, too.
They would have removed me from my command for sending it--if they had
dared!"
He slowly repeated its closing words:
"I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle from
a defeat to a victory. As it is, the Government must not and cannot hold
me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly to-night. I have
seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the
Government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the
game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no
thanks to you, or to any other person in Washington. You have done your
best to sacrifice this army----"
He paused and his square jaws came together firmly.
"And if that be treason, they can make the most of it!"
"I am curious to know how he meets you to-day," John said with a smile.
An orderly announced the arrival of the President and the Commanding
General promptly boarded his steamer. In ten minutes the two men were
facing each other in the stateroom assigned the Chief Magistrate.
Lincoln's tall, rugged figure met the compact General with the easy
generous attitude of a father ready to have it out with a wayward boy.
His smile was friendly and the grip of his big hand cordial.
"I am satisfied, sir, that you, your officers and men have done the best
you could. All accounts say that better fighting was never done. Ten
thousand thanks, in the name of the people for it."
The words were generous, but the commander put in a suggestion for more.
"Never, Mr. President," he said emphatically, "did such a change of
base, involving a retrogressive movement under incessant attacks from a
vastly more numerous foe partake of so little disaster. When all is
known you will see that the movement just completed by this army is
unparalleled in the annals of war. We have preserved our trains, our
guns, our material, and, above all, our honor."
"Rest assured, General," the quiet voice responded, "the heroism and
skill of yourself, officers and men, is and forever will be
appreciated."
The President returned to Washington profoundly puzzled as to his duty.
He was alarmed at the display of self esteem which his defeated General
had naïvely made, and his loyalty was boldly and opened questioned by
his advisers, and yet he was loath to remove him from command. Down in
his square, honest heart he felt that with all his faults, McClellan was
a man of worth, that he had never been thoroughly whipped in a single
battle and that he hadn't had a fair trial.
Any other man in power than Abraham Lincoln would have removed him
instantly on the receipt of his insolent and insulting dispatch.
Instead, the President had gone to see him with an open mind. He
returned determined to strengthen his military council by the addition
of an expert in Washington as his Commander-in-Chief.
He called to this post Henry W. Halleck. Although McClellan had waived
the crown of such power aside with lofty words of unselfish patriotism,
he received the announcement of Halleck's promotion and his
subordination with sullen rage.
"In this thing," he wrote his wife, "the President and those around him
have acted so as to make the matter as offensive as possible to me."
And yet against every demand that McClellan should be removed from
command the President was obdurate. Again and again his friends urged:
"McClellan is playing for the Presidency."
The tall man merely nodded:
"All right. Let him. I am perfectly willing that he shall have it if he
will only put an end to this war."
But if the President refused to remove him from command, Halleck and
Stanton managed quickly to strip him of half his army by detaching and
sending it to join the new army of General Pope. McClellan, with the
remainder of his men, had been sent by transport back to Alexandria.
General John Pope was summoned from the West to take command of the new
"Army of Virginia," composed of the divisions of Fremont, Banks and
McDowell, and the detached portion of McClellan's men.
All eyes were now centred on the new Commander. The West had only seen
success--Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Shiloh, and Island No.
10.
The new General on the day he began his advance against Lee and Jackson
issued an address to his army which sent a chill to the heart of the
President.
"I have come to you from the West," he proclaimed, "where we have always
seen the backs of our enemies--from an army whose business has been to
seek the adversary and beat him when found. I desire you to dismiss from
your minds certain phrases which I am sorry to find much in vogue among
you. I hear constantly of 'lines of retreat' and 'bases of supplies.'
Let us discard such ideas. Let us look before us, not behind. From
to-day my headquarters will be in the saddle."
Every man in the Army of the Potomac which McClellan had created and
fought with such fierce and terrible, if unsuccessful power, resented
this address as an insult. McClellan himself was furious. For some
reason only part of the forces from his army which were detached ever
reached Pope, and those who did were not enthusiastic. It was expecting
too much of human nature to believe that they could be.
The outlook for the coming battle was ominous.
CHAPTER XV
TANGLED THREADS
Betty Winter received a telegram from John Vaughan announcing his
arrival at Alexandria with McClellan on the last day of August. Her
heart gave a bound of joy. She could see him to-morrow. It had been five
years instead of five months since she had stood on that little pier and
watched him float away into the mists of the river! All life before the
revelation which love had brought was now a shadowy memory. Only love
was real. His letters had been her life. They hadn't come as often as
she had wished. She demanded his whole heart. There could be no
compromise. It must be all, _all_ or nothing.
She tried to sleep and couldn't. Her brain was on fire.
"I must sleep and look my best!" she laughed softly, buried her face in
the pillow and laughed again for joy. How could she sleep with her lover
standing there alive and strong with his arms clasping her to his heart!
She rose at daylight and threw open her window. The air was crisp with
the breath of fall. She watched the sun rise in solemn glory. A division
of cavalry dashed by, the horses' hoofs ringing sharply on the cobble
stones, sabres clashing. Behind them came another and another, and in a
distant street she heard the rumble of big guns, the crack of their
drivers' whips and the sharp cries of the men urging the horses to a
run.
Something unusual was on foot. The sun was barely up and the whole city
seemed quivering with excitement.
She dressed hurriedly, snatched a bite of toast and drank a cup of
coffee. In twenty minutes she entered the White House to get her pass to
the front. She wouldn't go to the War Department. Stanton was rude and
might refuse. The hour was absurd, but she knew that the President rose
at daylight and that he would see her at any hour.
She found him seated at his desk alone pretending to eat an egg and
drink his coffee from the tray that had been placed before him. His
dishevelled hair, haggard look and the pallor of his sorrowful face
showed only too plainly that he had not slept.
"You have bad news, Mr. President?" Betty gasped.
He rose, took her hand and led her to a seat.
"Not yet, dear, but I'm expecting it."
"We lost the battle yesterday?" she eagerly asked.
"Apparently not. You may read that. I trust you implicitly."
He handed her the dispatch he had received from General Pope after the
first day's fight at Manassas. Betty read it quickly:
"We fought a terrific battle here yesterday with the combined forces of
the enemy, which lasted with continuous fury from daylight until dark,
by which time the enemy was driven from the field which we now occupy.
The enemy is still in our front, but badly used up. We lost not less
than eight thousand men killed and wounded, but from the appearance of
the field the enemy lost two to one. The news has just reached me from
the front that the enemy is retreating toward the mountains."
Betty looked up surprised:
"Isn't that good news?"
"Nothing to brag about. It's the last sentence that worries me----"
"But that seems the best!"
"It might be but for the fact that Jackson is leading that retreat
toward the mountains! I've an idea that he will turn up to-day on Pope's
rear with Lee's whole army on his heels. Jackson is in the habit of
appearing where he's least expected----"
He paused, paced the floor a moment in silence and threw his long arms
suddenly upward in a hopeless gesture:
"If God would only give me such a man to lead our armies!"
"Is General McClellan at Alexandria to-day?" Betty suddenly asked.
"I'm wondering myself. He should be on that field with every soldier
under his command."
"I've come to ask you for a pass to Alexandria----"
"Then my worst fears are confirmed!" he broke in excitedly. "Your
sweetheart's on McClellan's staff--his men will never reach the field in
time!"
He dropped into a chair, hurriedly wrote the pass and handed it to
Betty.
"God bless you, child. See me when you get back and tell me all you
learn of McClellan and his men to-day. The very worst is suspected----"
"You mean?"
"That this delay and deliberate trifling with the most urgent and
positive orders is little short of treason. Unless his men reach Pope
to-day and fight, the Capital may be threatened to-morrow."
"Surely!" Betty protested.
"It's just as I tell you, child, but I'll hope for the best. Be eyes and
ears for me to-day and you may help me."
The agony of his face and the deep note of tragedy in his voice had
taken the joy out of her heart. She threw the feeling off with an
effort.
"What has it all to do with my love!" she cried with a toss of her
pretty head as she sprang into the saddle for the gallop to Alexandria.
The cool, bracing air of this first day of September, 1862, was like
wine. The dew was yet heavy on the tall grass by the roadside and a song
was singing in her heart that made all other music dumb.
John had dismounted and was standing beside the road, the horse's bridle
hanging on his arm in the very position he had stood and looked into her
soul that day.
She leaped to the ground without waiting for his help and sprang into
his arms.
"I like you better with that bronzed look--you're handsomer than ever,"
she sighed at last.
His answer was another kiss, to which he added:
"No amount of sunburn could make you any prettier, dear--you've been
perfect from the first."
"Your General is here?" Betty asked.
"Yes."
"And you can give me the whole day?"
"Every hour--the General is my friend."
The moment was too sweet to allow any shadow to cloud it. The girl
yielded to its spell without reserve. They mounted and rode side by side
over the hills. And the man poured into her ears the unspoken things he
had felt and longed to say in the lonely nights of camp and field. The
girl confessed the pain and the longing of her waiting.
They mounted the crest of a hill and the breeze from the southwest
brought the sullen boom of a cannon.
Instinctively they drew rein.
"The battle has begun again," John said casually.
"It stirs your blood, doesn't it?" she whispered.
A frown darkened his brow:
"Not to-day."
The girl looked with quick surprise.
"You don't mean it?"
"Certainly. Why get excited when you know the end before it begins."
"You know it?"
"Yes."
"Victory?"
He laughed cynically:
"Victory for a pompous braggart who could write that address to an army
reflecting on the men who fought Lee and Jackson before Richmond with
such desperate courage?"
"You are sure of defeat then?"
"Absolutely."
Betty looked at him with a flush of angry excitement:
"General McClellan is counting on Pope's defeat to-day?"
"Yes."
"Then it's true that he is not really trying to help him?"
"Why should he wish to sacrifice his brave men under the leadership of a
fool?"
"He is, in fact, defying the orders of the President, isn't he?"
"You might say that if you strain a point," John admitted.
Again the long roar of guns boomed on the Western horizon, louder,
clearer. The dull echoes became continuous now, and the quickening
breeze brought the faint din from the vast field of death whose blazing
smoke covered lines stretched over seven miles.
"_Boom-boom-boom, boom!--boom! boom!_"
Again they drew rein and listened.
John's brow wrinkled and his right ear was thrown slightly forward.
"Those are our big guns," he said with a smile. "The Confederate
artillery can't compare with ours--their infantry is a terror--stark,
dead game fighters----"
"_Boom--Boom!----Boom! Boom! Boom!_"
"How do you know those are our guns?" Betty asked with a shiver.
"The rebels have none so large. They'll have some to-night."
Again an angry flush mounted her cheeks:
"You wish them to be captured?"
"It will be a wholesome lesson."
Betty leaned closer and grasped his hand with trembling eagerness.
"O John--John, dear, this is madness! General McClellan has been
accused of treason already--this surely is the basest betrayal of his
country----"
The man shook his head stubbornly:
"No--it's the highest patriotism. My Commander is brave enough to dare
the authorities at Washington for the good of his country. The sooner
this farce under Pope ends the better--no man of second rate ability can
win against the great Generals of the South."
The girl's keen brown eyes looked steadily into his and her lips
trembled.
"I call it treachery--the betrayal of his country for his selfish
ambitions! I'm surprised that you sympathize with him."
John frowned, was silent and then turned to her with a smile:
"Let's not talk about it, dear. The day's too beautiful. We're alone
together. This is not your battle--nor mine--it's Pope's--let him fight
it out. I love you--that's all I want to think about to-day."
The golden brown curls were slowly shaken:
"It _is_ your battle and it's mine--O John dear, I'm heartsick over it!
The President's anguish clouded the morning for me, but the thought of
you made me forget. Now I'm scared. You've surprised and shocked me."
"Nonsense, dear!" he pleaded.
She looked at him with quick, eager yearning.
"You love me?" she asked.
"Can you doubt it?"
"With every beat of your heart?"
"Yes."
"Will you do something for me?" she begged.
"What is it?"
"Just for me, because I ask it, John, and you love me?"
"If I can."
"I want you to resign immediately from McClellan's staff, report at the
War Department and let the President give you new duties----"
The man shot her a look of angry amazement:
"You can't mean this?"
Again the soft, warm hand that had slipped its glove grasped his. He
could feel her slim, little fingers tremble. She had turned very pale:
"I'm in dead earnest. I love you, dear, with my whole heart, and it's my
love that asks this. I can't think of you betraying a solemn trust. The
very thought of it cuts me to the quick. If this is true, General
McClellan should be court-martialed."
The man's square jaws closed with a snap:
"Let them try it if they dare----"
"The President will dare if he believes it his duty."
"Then he'll hear something from the hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
who have served under McClellan."
The little hand pressed harder.
"Won't you, for my sake, dear,--just because I'm your sweetheart and you
love me?"
The stalwart figure suddenly stiffened:
"And you could respect a man who would do a thing like that?"
"For my sake?--Yes."
"No, you think you could. But you couldn't. No woman can really love a
poltroon or a coward."
"I'm not asking you to do a cowardly thing----"
"To desert my leader in a crisis?"
"To wash your hands of treachery and selfish ambitions."
"But it's not true," he retorted. "You mustn't say that. McClellan's a
leader of genius--brave, true, manly, patriotic."
"I've a nobler ideal of patriotism----"
"Your blundering backwoodsman in the White House?"
"Yes. He has but one thought--that the Union shall be saved. He has no
other ambition. If McClellan succeeds, he rejoices. If he fails, he is
heartbroken. I know that he has defended him against the assaults of his
enemies. He has refused to listen to men who assailed his loyalty and
patriotism. This generous faith your Chief is betraying to-day. That you
defend him is horrible--O John, dear, I can't--I won't let you stay! You
must break your connection with this conspiracy of vain ambition. The
country is calling now for every true, unselfish man--please!"
He lifted his hand in firm protest:
"And for that very reason I stand firmly by the man I believe destined
to save my country."
"You won't change Commanders because I ask it?"
He was silent a moment and a smile played about the corners of his lips:
"Would you change because I asked it?"
"Yes."
"Then come over from Lincoln to McClellan," he laughed.
"And join your group of conspirators--never!"
"Not if I ask it, because I love you?"
[Illustration: "Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips."]
Her brown eyes sparkled with anger:
"You'll not find this a joke!"
"That's why I treat it seriously, my dear," was the firm reply. "If I
could throw up my position in this war on the sudden impulse of my
sweetheart, I'd be ashamed to look a man in the face--and you would
despise me!"
"If your Commander succeeds to-day in bringing disaster to our army I'll
despise you for aiding him----"
"Let's not discuss it--please, dear!" he begged with a frown.
"As you please," was the cold reply.
They rode on in silence, broken only by the increasing roar of the great
guns at Manassas. Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips.
Her anger steadily rose with every throb of Pope's cannon. Each low
thunder peal on the horizon now was a cry for help from dying mangled
thousands and the man she loved refusing to hear.
Suddenly the picture of his brother flashed before her vision, the
high-strung, clean young spirit, chivalrous, daring, fighting for what
he knew to be right--right because right is right, and wrong is wrong.
She looked at John Vaughan with a feeling of fierce anger. Between the
two men she preferred the enemy who was fighting in the open to win or
die. Her soul went out to Ned in a wave of tender admiration. Her wrath
against his brother steadily rose.
Suddenly she drew her rein:
"You need come no further. I'll ride back home alone."
He bit his lips without turning and was silent. She touched her horse
with her whip and galloped swiftly toward Washington.
* * * * *
The last day of Pope's brief campaign ended in the overwhelming disaster
of the second battle of Bull Run. The sound of his cannon reached
McClellan's ears, but the organizer of the Army of the Potomac, though
ordered to do so, never joined his rival.
Once more the army of the Union was hurled back on Washington in panic,
confusion and appalling disaster. Lee and Jackson had crushed Pope's
hosts with a rapidity and case that struck terror to the heart of the
Nation. General Pope lost fifteen thousand men in a single battle. Lee
and Jackson lost less than half as many.
The storm broke over McClellan's head at Washington on his arrival.
Stanton and Halleck and Pope accused him of treachery. The hot heads
demanded his arrest and trial by court-martial.
The President shook his head, but sadly added:
"He has acted badly toward Pope. He really wanted him to fail."
And then began the search to find the man once more to weld the
shattered army into an efficient fighting force.
Abraham Lincoln asked himself this question with a sense of the deepest
and most solemn responsibility. He must answer at the bar of his
conscience before God and his country. Again he brushed aside every
adviser inside and outside his Cabinet and determined on his choice
absolutely alone.
Early on the morning of September 2nd John Vaughan looked from the
window of General McClellan's house and saw the giant figure of the
President approaching, accompanied by Halleck.
When his aide announced this startling fact, the General coolly said:
"It means my arrest, no doubt. I'm ready. Let them come."
The President was not kept waiting this time. His General was there to
receive him.
The rugged face was pale and drawn.
"General McClellan," he began without ceremony, "I have come to ask you
to take command of all the returning troops for the defense of
Washington."
The short, stalwart figure of the General suddenly straightened, his
blue eyes flashed with amazement and then softened into a misty
expression. He bowed with dignity and quietly said:
"I accept the position, sir."
"I need not repeat," the President went on, "that I disapprove some
things you have done. I have made this plain to you. I do this because I
believe it's best for our country. I assume its full responsibility and
I expect great things of you."
The President bowed and left the astonished General and his still more
astonished aide gazing after his long swinging legs returning to the
White House.
He had done the most unpopular act of his entire administration. His
decision had defied the fiercest popular hostility. He faced a storm of
denunciation which would have appalled a less simple and masterful man.
The Cabinet meeting which followed the startling news was practically a
riot. He listened to all his excited Ministers had to say with
patience. When they had spoken their last word of bitter disapproval he
quietly rose and ended the tumultuous session with two or three
sentences which none could answer:
"There is no one in the army who can man these fortifications and lick
these troops of ours into shape half as well as he can. McClellan is a
great engineer--of the stationary type, perhaps. But we must use the
tools we have! If he cannot fight himself, at least he excels in making
others ready to fight."
He waited for an answer and none came. He had not only averted a Cabinet
crisis but his remorseless common sense and his unswerving adherence to
what he saw was best had strengthened his authority over all his
councillors.
When the rest had gone he turned to the young man who knew him best, his
Secretary, John Nicolay, and gripped his arm with a big hand which was
trembling:
"The most painful duty of my official life, Boy! There has been a
design, a purpose in breaking down Pope without regard to the
consequences to the country that is atrocious. It's shocking to see and
know this, but there is no remedy at present. McClellan has the army
with him and I must use him."
CHAPTER XVI
THE CHALLENGE
"One war at a time," the President said to his Secretary of State when
he proposed a foreign fight. He must now strangle Northern public
opinion to enforce this principle.
Captain Wilkes had overhauled the British Steamer _Trent_ on the high
seas, searched her and taken the Confederate Commissioners Mason and
Slidell by force from her decks.
The people of the North were mad with joy over the daring act. Congress,
swept off its feet by the wave of popular hysteria, proclaimed Wilkes a
hero and voted their thanks. The President did not move with current
opinion. He had formed the habit in boyhood of thinking for himself, and
had never allowed himself to take his cues for action from second-hand
suggestions. From the first he raised the question of Wilkes' right to
stop the vessel of a friendly nation on the high seas, search her and
take her passengers prisoners by force of arms.
The backwoods lawyer questioned, too, the right of a naval officer to
turn his quarter-deck into a court and decide questions of international
law offhand. He raised the point at once whether these men thus captured
might not be white elephants on the hands of the Government. Moreover
he reminded his Cabinet that we had fought England once for daring to do
precisely this thing.
Great Britain promptly drew her sword and made ready for war.
Queen Victoria's Government not only demanded that the return of these
passengers be made at once with an apology, but did it in a way so
offensive that a less balanced man in power would have lost his head and
committed the fatal blunder.
The tall, quiet Chief Magistrate was equal to the occasion. Great
Britain had ordered her navy on a war footing, dispatched eight thousand
troops to Canada to strike by land as well as sea, allowing us but seven
days in which to comply with all her demands or hand Lord Lyons his
passports.
The President immediately dictated a reply which forced her Prime
Minister to accept it and achieved for the Nation the establishment of a
principle for which we had fought in vain in 1812.
He ordered the prisoners returned and an apology expressed. His apology
was a two-edged sword thrust which Great Britain was compelled to take
with a groan.
"In 1812," the President said, "the United States fought because you
claimed the right to stop our vessels on the high seas, search them and
take by force British subjects found thereon. Our country in making this
surrender, adheres to the ancient principle for which we contended and
we are glad to find that Her Majesty's Government in demanding this
surrender thereby renounces an error and accepts our position."
Lord Palmerston made a wry face, but was compelled to accept the
surrender, and with it seal his own humiliation as a beaten diplomat.
War with England at this moment would have meant unparalleled disaster.
France had ambitions in Mexico and she was bound in friendship to
England. The two great Nations of Europe would have been hurled against
our divided country with the immediate recognition of the Confederacy.
The President forced this return of the prisoners and apparent surrender
to Great Britain in the face of the blindest and most furious outbursts
of popular rage.
Gilbert Winter rose in the Senate and in thunderous oratory voiced the
well-nigh unanimous feeling of the millions of the North of all parties
and factions:
"I warn the administration against this dastardly and cowardly surrender
to a foreign foe! The voice of the people demand that we stand firm on
our dignity as a Sovereign Nation. If the President and his Cabinet
refuse to listen they will find themselves engulfed in a fire that will
consume them like stubble. They will find themselves helpless before a
power that will hurl them from their places!"
The President was still under the cloud of public wrath over this affair
when the crisis of the problem of emancipation became acute. The gradual
growth of the number of his bitter foes in Washington he had seen with
deep distress. And yet it was inevitable. No man in his position could
administer the great office whose power he was wielding without fear or
favor and not make enemies. And now both friend and foe were closing in
on him with a well-nigh resistless demand for emancipation.
Hour after hour he sat patiently in his office receiving these
impassioned delegations.
Old Edward was standing at the door again smiling and washing his hands:
"A delegation of editors, presenting Mr. Horace Greeley's 'Prayer of
Twenty Millions.'"
The patient eyes were lifted front his desk, and the strong mouth firmly
pressed:
"Let them in."
The President rose in his easy, careless manner:
"I'm glad to see you, gentlemen. You are the leaders of public opinion.
The people rule this country and I am their servant. What is it?"
The Chairman of the Committee stepped forward and gravely handed him an
engrossed copy of Greeley's famous editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty
Millions," demanding the immediate issue of a proclamation of
emancipation.
The Chairman bowed and spoke in earnest tones:
"As the representatives of millions of readers we present this 'Prayer'
with our endorsement and the request that you act. In particular we call
your attention to these paragraphs:
"'A great portion of those who brought about your election and all those
who desire the unqualified suppression of the rebellion, are sorely
disappointed, pained and surprised by the policy you seem to be pursuing
with regard to the slaves of rebels. I write to set before you
succinctly and unmistakably what we require, what we have a right to
expect and of what we complain.
"'We think you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the
representations and the menaces of certain fossil politicians from the
Border Slave States, knowing as you do, that the loyal citizens of these
States do not expect that Slavery shall be upheld, to the prejudice of
the Union.
"'We complain that the Union cause has suffered and is now suffering
immensely from the mistaken course which you are pursuing and
persistently cling to, in defense of slavery. We complain that the
confiscation act which you approved is being wantonly and wholly
disregarded by your Generals, apparently with your knowledge and
consent.
"'The seeming subserviency of your policy to the slave holding, slave
upholding interest is the perplexity and the despair of statesmen of all
parties. Whether you will choose to listen to their admonishment or wait
for your verdict through future history, or at the bar of God, I do not
know. I can only hope.'"
The President's sombre eyes met his with a penetrating flash and rested
on Senator Winter who remained in the background. He took the paper,
laid it carefully on his desk, threw his right leg across the corner of
the long table in easy, friendly attitude and began his reply
persuasively:
"The editor of the _Tribune_, gentleman, if on my side, is equal to an
army of a hundred thousand men in the field. I've known this from the
first. Against me he throws this army in the rear and fires into my
back. My grievance is that his Prayer which you have made yours is being
used for ammunition in this rear attack. It should have been presented
to me first, if it were a genuine prayer. I have read it carefully. It
is full of blunders of fact and reasoning, but it fairly expresses the
discontent in the minds of many. Its unfair assumptions will poison
millions of readers against me----"
He paused, opened a drawer in his desk, took from it a sheet of paper on
which he had written in firm, clear hand a brief message in reply, and
turned to his petitioners:
"And therefore, gentlemen, I have written a few words in answer to this
attack. I ask you to give it the same wide hearing you have accorded the
assault. I'll read it to you:
"'Dear Sir:--I have just read yours of the 19th instant addressed to
myself through the _New York Tribune_.
"'If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact, which I know
to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them.
"'If there be any influences which I believe to be falsely drawn, I do
not now and here argue against them.
"'If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I
waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always
supposed to be right.
"'As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have not meant
to leave anyone in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it in the
shortest way under the Constitution.
"'The sooner the National authority can be restored, the nearer the
Union will be,--the Union as it was.
"'If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at
the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them.
"'If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at
the same time destroy Slavery, I do not agree with them.
"'_My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or
destroy Slavery_.
"'If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it. And
if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it. And if I
could save it by freeing some, and leaving others alone, I would also do
that.
"'What I do about Slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it
helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union.
"'I shall do less whenever I believe what I am doing hurts the cause,
and I shall do more, whenever I believe doing more will help the cause.
"'I shall try to correct errors, when shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
"'I have stated my purpose, according to my view of official duty, and I
intend no modification of my oft expressed personal wish, that all men
everywhere could be free.'"
A moment of death-like stillness followed the reading. The members of
the committee had unconsciously pressed nearer. Some of them stood with
shining eyes gazing at the rugged, towering figure as if drawn by a
magnet. The stark earnestness and simplicity of his defense had found
their hearts. The daring of it fairly took their breath.
Senator Winter turned to his nearest neighbor and growled:
"Bah! The trouble is Lincoln's a Southerner--born in the poisoned slave
atmosphere of the South. He grew up in Southern Indiana and Illinois.
His neighbors there were settlers from the South. He has never breathed
anything but Southern air and ideals. It's in his blood. Only a man born
in the South could have written that document----"
The listener looked up suddenly:
"I believe you are right. Excuse me--I want to speak to the long-legged
Southerner. I've never seen him before."
To the astonishment of the Senator, the editor pushed his way into the
group who were shaking hands with the President.
He paused an instant, extended his hand and felt the rugged fingers
close on it with a hearty grip. Before he realized it he was saying
something astounding--something the farthest possible removed from his
thoughts on entering the room.
"I want to thank you, sir, for that document. The heart of an unselfish
patriot speaks through every word. I came here to criticise and find
fault. I'm going home to stand by you through thick and thin. You've
given us a glimpse inside."
Both big hands were now clasping his and a mist was clouding the
hazel-grey eyes.
"The Senator accuses you," he went on, "of being a Southerner. He must
be right. No Northern man could have seen through the clouds of passion
to-day clearly enough to have written that letter. You can see things
for all the people, North, South, East and West. God bless you--I'm
going home to fight for you and with you----"
In angry amazement Senator Winter saw most of the men he had led to
this carefully planned attack walk up and pledge their loyalty to his
smiling foe. He turned on his heel and left, his jaw set, his blue eyes
dancing with fury.
Old Edward was again rubbing his hands apologetically at the door:
"A body of clergymen from Chicago, sir----"
"Clergymen from Chicago?"
"Yes, sir."
"I didn't know they ever used such things in Chicago!"
He caught his knee in his big hands, leaned back and laughed heartily.
The doorman looked straight ahead and managed to keep his solemn
countenance under control.
"All right, let them in, Edward."
The reverend gentlemen solemnly filed into the executive office. They
looked around in evident amazement at its bare poverty-stricken
appearance. They had been shocked at the threadbare appearance of the
White House grounds as they entered. This room was a greater shock--this
throbbing nerve centre of the Nation. In the middle stood the long,
plain table around which the storm-racked Cabinet were wont to gather.
There was not a single piece of ornamental or superfluous furniture
visible. It appeared almost bare. A second-hand upright desk stood by
the middle window. In the northwest corner of the room there were racks
with map rollers, and folios of maps on the floor and leaning against
the wall.
The well-dressed, prosperous-looking gentlemen gazed about in a critical
way.
Their spokesman was a distinguished Bishop who knew that he was
distinguished and conveyed the information in every movement of his
august body.
"We have come, Mr. President," he solemnly began, "as God's messengers
to urge on you the immediate and universal emancipation of every slave
in America."
The faintest suggestion of a smile played about the corners of the big,
firm mouth as he rose and began a reply which greatly astonished his
visitors. They had come to lecture him and before they knew it the lamb
had risen to slay the butchers.
"I am approached, gentlemen," he said softly, "with the most opposite
opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain
that they represent the Divine Will. I am sure that either one or the
other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects,
both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is
probable that God would reveal His will to others on a point so
connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly
to me----"
He paused just an instant and his bushy eyebrows were raised a trifle as
if in search of one friendly face in which the sense of humor was not
dead. He met with frozen silence and calmly continued:
"Unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest
desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn
what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles,
and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct
revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain
what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right. The
subject is difficult and good men do not agree----"
"We are all agreed to-day!" the leader interrupted.
"Even so, Bishop, but we are not all here to-day."
The gentle irony was lost on the great man, and the President went on
good-naturedly:
"What good would a proclamation of emancipation do as we are now
situated? Shall I issue a document that the whole world will see must be
of no more effect that the Pope's bull against the comet? Will my words
free the slaves when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel
States? Is there a single court or magistrate, or individual that will
be influenced by it there? I approved the law of Congress which offers
protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within
our lines. Yet I can not learn that the law has caused a single slave to
come over to us.
"Now then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would
follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire? The greatest
evils might follow it--among them the revolt of the Border Slave States
which we have held loyal with so much care, and the desertion from the
ranks of our armies of thousands of Democratic soldiers who tell us
plainly that they are not fighting and they're not going to fight to
free negroes!
"Understand me, I raise no objection against it on legal grounds. As
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy in time of war, I suppose I have
a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy. Nor do I
urge objections of a moral nature in view of possible consequences of
servile insurrection and massacre in the South. I view this matter now
as a practical war measure. Has the moment arrived when I can best
strike with this weapon?
"Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned objections. They
indicate some of the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action
in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a
proclamation of liberty to the slaves. I hold the matter under
advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day
and night more than any other. What shall appear to be God's will I will
do----"
He stopped suddenly and a smile illumined his dark face:
"But I cannot see, gentlemen, why God should be sending his message to
me by so roundabout route as the sinful city of Chicago. I trust that in
the freedom with which I have canvassed your views and expressed my own,
I have not in any respect injured your feelings."
The ice was broken at last and the men of God began to smile, press
forward and shake his hand. They came his critics, and left his friends.
And yet no hint was given to a single man present that his Emancipation
Proclamation had been written two months before and at this moment was
lying in the drawer of the old desk before which he sat. Long before the
revelation of God's will through these clergymen he had discussed its
provisions before his Cabinet and enjoined absolute secrecy. Men from
all walks of life came to advise the backwoods lawyer on how to save the
country. He listened to all and then did exactly what he believed to be
best.
His plan had long been formed on the subject of the destruction of
Slavery. His purpose was to accomplish this great task in a way which
would give his people a just and lasting peace. He held the firm
conviction that the North was equally responsible with the South for the
existence of Slavery, and that the Constitution which he had sworn to
defend and uphold guaranteed to the slave owner his rights. He was
determined to free the slaves if possible, but to do it fairly and
honestly and then settle the question for all time by colonizing the
negro race and removing them forever from physical contact with the
white.
At his request Congress had already passed a bill providing for the
colonization of emancipated slaves. He now sent for a number of
representative negroes to hear his message and deliver it to their
people.
Old Edward ushered them into his office with a look of unmistakable
superiority.
It was a strange meeting--this facing for the first time between the
supreme representative of the dominant race of the new era and the freed
black men whose very existence the President held to be an eternal
menace against the Nation's future. It is remarkable that the first
words Abraham Lincoln ever addressed as President to an assemblage of
negroes should have been the words which fell from his lips.
The ebony faces, their cream-colored teeth showing with smiles and their
wide rolling eyes roaming the room made a striking and dramatic contrast
to the rugged face and frame of the man who addressed them.
"Your race is suffering," he began with distinct, clean cut emphasis,
"in my judgment the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even
when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed
on an equality with the white race. On this broad continent not a
single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go
where you are treated best and the ban is still upon you. I cannot alter
it if I would.
"It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. One of the
principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free
colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it. For the
sake of your race you should sacrifice something of your present
comfort. In the American Revolution sacrifices were made by the men
engaged in it. They were cheered by the future.
"The Colony of Liberia is an old one, is in a sense a success and it is
open to you. I am arranging to open another in Central America. It is
nearer than Liberia--within seven days by steamer. You are intelligent
and know that success does not so much depend on external help as on
self-reliance. Much depends on yourself. If you will engage in the
enterprise, I will spend some of the money intrusted to me. This is the
practical part of my wish to see you. I ask you then to consider it
seriously, not for yourselves merely, _nor for your race and ours for
the present time, but for the good of mankind_."
He dismissed his negro hearers and sent again for the representatives of
the Border Slave States. Here his plan must be set in motion. He
proposed to pay for the slaves set free and arrange for their
colonization.
He spoke with deep emotion. His soul throbbed with passionate tenderness
in every word.
"You are patriots and statesmen," he solemnly declared, "and as such I
pray you to consider this proposition, and at the least commend it to
the consideration of your States and people. Our common country is in
grave peril demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring it
speedy relief. You can make it possible to accomplish the just
destruction of this curse of our life. It will bring emancipation as a
voluntary process, leaving the least resentment in the minds of our
slave-holders. It will not be a violent war measure, to be remembered
with fierce rebellious anger. It will pave the way for good feeling at
last between all sections when reunited. It is reasonable. It is just.
It will leave no cause for sectional enmity. This plan of gradual
emancipation with pay for each slave to his owner will secure peace more
speedily and maintain it more permanently than can be done by force
alone. Its cost could be easier paid than the additional cost of war and
would sacrifice no blood at all.
"In giving freedom to the _slave_, we _assure_ freedom to the
_free_--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall
nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may
succeed. This could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous,
just--a way which if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God
must forever bless."
His tender, eloquent appeal fell on deaf ears. The men who represented
the Border Slave States refused to permit the question of tampering with
Slavery to be submitted to their people--no matter by what process, with
or without pay.
They demanded with sullen persistence that the President defy all shades
of Northern opinion and stand squarely by his Inaugural address. In vain
he pointed out to them that the fact of a desperate and terrible war,
costing two million dollars a day and threatening the existence of the
Government itself, had changed the conditions under which he made that
pledge.
When the President at last introduced into Congress through his
spokesman the bill appropriating fifteen million dollars with which to
pay for their slaves, the men from the Border States united with the
Democrats and defeated it!
With a sorrowful heart and deep forebodings of the future he turned to
his desk and drew forth the document he had written declaring as an act
of war against the States in rebellion that their slaves should be free.
He read its provisions again with the utmost care. He made no attack on
Slavery, or the slave-holder. He was striking the blow against the
wealth and power of the South for the sole purpose of crippling her
resources and weakening her power to continue the struggle to divide the
Union. There was in it not one word concerning the rights of man or the
equal rights of black and white men. His mind was absolutely clear on
that point. The negro when freed would be an alien race so low in the
scale of being, so utterly different in temperament and character from
the white man that their remaining in physical contact with each other
in our Republic was unthinkable. In the Emancipation Proclamation
itself, therefore, he had written the principles of the colonization of
the negro race. The two things were inseparable. He could conceive of no
greater calamity befalling the Nation than to leave the freed black man
within its borders as an eternal menace to its future happiness and
progress.
He called his Secretary and ordered a Cabinet meeting to fix the date on
which to issue this momentous document to the world--a challenge to
mortal combat to his foes in all sections.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DAY'S WORK
Betty Winter held John Vaughan's note in her hand staring at its message
with increasing amazement:
"DEAR LITTLE SWEETHEART:
"The President has just called General McClellan again to the chief
command. His act vindicates my loyalty. Our quarrel is too absurd.
Life is too short, dear, for this--it's only long enough for love.
May I see you at once?
"JOHN."
Could it be true? For a moment she refused to believe it. The President
had expressed to her his deep conviction of McClellan's guilt. How could
he reverse his position on so vital and tremendous a matter over night?
And yet John Vaughan was incapable of the cheap trick of lying to make
an engagement.
A newsboy passed yelling an extra.
"Extra--Extra! General McClellan again in the saddle! Extra!"
It was true--he had made the appointment. What was its meaning? Had they
forced the President into this humiliating act? If the General were
really guilty of destroying Pope and overwhelming the army in defeat,
his treachery had created the crisis which forced his return to power.
The return under such conditions would not be a vindication. It would be
a conviction of crime.
She would see the President at once and know the truth. The question cut
the centre of John Vaughan's character. The orderly who brought the note
was waiting for an answer.
She called from the head of the stairs:
"Tell Mr. Vaughan there is no answer to-day."
"Yes, Miss."
With quick salute he passed out and Betty stood irresolute as she
listened to the echo of his horse's hoof-beat growing fainter. It was
only six o'clock, but the days were getting shorter and it was already
dark. She could walk quickly down Pennsylvania Avenue and reach the
White House before dinner. He would see her at any hour.
In five minutes she was on the way her mind in a whirl of speculation on
the intrigue which might lie behind that sensational announcement. She
was beginning to suspect her lover's patriotism. A man could love the
South, fight and die for it and be a patriot--he was dying for what he
believed to be right--God and his country. But no man could serve two
masters. Her blood boiled at the thought of a conspiracy within the
lines of the Union whose purpose was to betray its Chief. If John
Vaughan were in it, she loved him with every beat of her heart, but she
would cut her heart out sooner than sink to his level!
She became conscious at last of the brazen stares of scores of
brutal-looking men who thronged the sidewalks of the Avenue.
Gambling dens had grown here like mushrooms during the past year of
war's fevered life. The vice and crime of the whole North and West had
poured into Washington, now swarming with a quarter of a million strange
people.
The Capital was no longer a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, but a
vast frontier post and pay station of the army. And such a pay station!
Each day the expenditures of the Government were more than two millions.
The air was electric with the mad lust for gain which the scent of
millions excites in the nostrils of the wolves who prey on their fellow
men. The streets swarmed with these hungry beasts, male and female. They
pushed and crowded and jostled each other from the sidewalks. The roar
of their whiskey-laden voices poured forth from every bar-room and
gambling den on the Avenue.
A fat contractor who had made his pile in pasteboard soles for army
shoes and sent more boys to the grave from disease than had been killed
in battle, touched elbows with the hook-nosed vulture who was sporting a
diamond pin bought with the profits of shoddy clothes that had proven a
shroud for many a brave soldier sleeping in a premature grave.
They were laughing, drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling and all
shouting for the flag--the flag that was waving over millions they hoped
yet to share.
A feeling of sickening fear swept the girl's heart. For the first time
in her life she was afraid to be alone on the brightly lighted streets
of Washington at dusk. The poison of death was in the air. Every
desperate passion that stirs the brute in man was written in the
bloodshot eyes that sought hers. The Nation was at war. To cheat,
deceive, entrap, maim, kill the enemy and lay his home in desolation was
the daily business now of the millions who backed the Government.
Whatever the lofty aims of either of the contending hosts, they sought
to win by war and this was war. It was not to be wondered at that this
spirit should begin to poison the springs of life in the minds of the
weak and send them forth to prey on their fellows. It was not to be
wondered at that men planned in secret to advance their own interests at
the expense of their fellows, to climb the ladder of wealth and fame in
this black hour no matter on whose dead bodies they had to walk.
With a pang of positive terror Betty asked herself the question whether
the man she loved had been touched by this deadly pestilence? A wave of
horror swept her. A drunken brute brushed by and thrust his bloated face
into hers.
With a cry of rage and fear she turned and ran for two blocks, left the
Avenue at the corner and hurried back to her home.
She would wait until morning and see the President before the crowd
arrived.
He greeted her with a joyous shout:
"Come right in, Miss Betty!"
With long, quick stride he met her and grasped her hand, a kindly
twinkle in his eye:
"And how's our old grizzly bear, your father, this morning?"
"He's still alive and growling," she laughed.
The President joined heartily:
"I'll bet he is," he said, "and hates me just as cordially as ever?"
Betty nodded.
"But his beautiful daughter?"
"Was never more loyal to her Chief!"
"Good. Then my administration is on a sound basis. You want no office.
You ask no favors. Such clear, pure, young eyes in the morning of life
don't make mistakes. They know."
"But I've come to ask you something this morning----"
The smile faded into a look of seriousness.
"What's the matter?" he asked quickly.
Betty hesitated and the red blood slowly mounted to her cheeks. He led
her to a seat, beside his chair, touched her hand gently and whispered:
"Tell me."
"I hope you won't think me presumptuous, Mr. President, if I ask you to
tell me why you recalled General McClellan?"
The rugged face suddenly flashed with a smile.
"Presumptuous?" he laughed. "My dear child, if you could have heard a
few things my Cabinet had to say to me in this room on that subject! The
tender deference with which you put the question is the nearest thing to
an endorsement I have so far received! Go as far as you like after that
opening. It will be a joy to discuss it with you. Presumptuous--Oh, my
soul!"
He caught his knee between his hands and rocked with laughter at the
memory of his Cabinet scene.
Reassured by his manner Betty leaned closer:
"You remember the morning you gave me the pass to Alexandria?"
"To see a certain young man?"
"Yes."
"Perfectly."
"You distinctly gave me the impression that morning that you were sure
General McClellan was betraying his trust in his failure to support
General Pope and that your confidence in him was gone forever."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
"Then it wasn't far from the truth," he gravely admitted.
"And yet you recalled him to the command of the army?"
"I had to."
"Had to?"
"It was the only thing to do."
Betty spoke in a whisper:
"You mean that their conspiracy had become so dangerous there was no
other way?"
He threw her a searching look, was silent a moment and slowly said:
"That's a pointed question, isn't it?"
"I'm a member of your Cabinet, you know----"
"Yes, I know--but why do _you_ happen to ask me such a dangerous
question at this particularly trying moment? Come, my little bright
eyes, out with it?"
"The certain young man and I are not very happy----"
"You've quarrelled?"
"Yes."
"About what?"
"You."
"You don't mean it, Miss Betty?" he said incredulously.
Her eyes were dim and she nodded.
"But why about me?"
"I saw things which confirmed your suspicions. He admitted his desire
that General Pope should fail and defended McClellan's indifference. We
quarrelled. I asked him to resign from the staff of his Chief----"
"You didn't!" he exclaimed softly, his deep eyes shining.
"I did--and he refused."
Again the big hands both closed on hers:
"God bless you, child! So long as I hold such faith from hearts like
yours, I know that I'm right. They can say what they please about
me----"
"You see," she broke in, "if he is in this conspiracy and they have
forced you to this surrender, he is equally guilty of treachery----"
"And you hold him responsible for his Commander's ambitions?"
"Yes."
The President sprang to his feet and paced the floor a moment, stopped
and gazed at her with a look of curious tenderness:
"By jinks, Miss Betty, if I had a few more like you in my Cabinet I
wouldn't be so lonesome!"
"They did force you?" she demanded.
"Not as you mean it, my child. I'm not going to pretend to you that I
don't understand the seriousness of the situation. The Army of the
Potomac is behind McClellan to a man. It amounts to infatuation. I
sounded his officers. I sounded his men. To-day they are against me and
with him. If the issue could be sprung--if the leaders dared to risk
their necks on such a revolution, they might win. They don't know this
as clearly as I do. Because they are not so well informed they are
afraid to move. I have chosen to beat them at their own game----"
He paused and laughed:
"I hate to shatter your ideal, Miss Betty, but I'm afraid there's
something of the fox in my make-up after all. Will it shock you to learn
this?"
"I shall be greatly relieved to know it," she responded firmly.
"Think, then, for a moment. I suspend McClellan for his failure and
replace him with a man I believe to be his superior. The army sullenly
resent this change. They do not agree with me. They believe McClellan
the greatest General in sight. It's a marvellous thing this power over
men which he possesses. It can be used to create a Nation or destroy
one. It's a dangerous force. I must handle it with the utmost care. So
long as their idol is a martyr the army is unfit for good service. The
moment I restore the old commander, in whom both officers and men have
unbounded faith, I show them that I am beyond the influence of the
political forces which demand his destruction--don't I?"
"Yes."
"And the moment I dare to brave popular disapproval and restore their
commander don't you see that I win the confidence of the army in my
fairness and my disinterested patriotism?"
"Of course."
"See then what must happen. Now mind you, I would never have restored
McClellan to command if I did not know that at this moment he can do the
work of putting this disorganized and defeated army into fighting shape
better than any other. McClellan thus returned to power must fight. He
must win or lose. If he wins I am vindicated and his success is mine. If
he loses, he loses his power over the imagination of his men and at last
I am master of the situation. I shall back him with every dollar and
every man the Nation can send into his next campaign. No matter whether
he wins or loses, I _must_ win because the supremacy of the civil power
will be restored."
"I see," Betty breathed softly.
She rose with a new look of reverence for a great mind.
"And the civil power was not supreme when you restored McClellan to his
command?"
"Miss Betty, you'd make a good lawyer!" he laughed.
"Was it?" she persisted.
"No."
"Thank you," she said, rising and extending her hand. "I learned exactly
what I wished to know."
"And you'll stop quarreling?"
"If he's reasonable----"
He lifted his long finger in solemn warning.
"Remember now! This administration is honestly and sincerely backing
General McClellan for all it's worth. It has always done this. We are
going to try to make even a better record in the next campaign----"
"When will it open?"
"Sooner than any of us wish it, if our scouts report the truth. Flushed
with his great victory over Pope, General Lee is sure to invade
Maryland. The campaign will be a dangerous and crucial one. The moment
Lee crosses the Potomac, his communications with Richmond will be
imperiled. If he dares to do it we can crush his army in a great battle,
cut his communications with Richmond, drive his men into the Potomac and
end the war. I have given McClellan the opportunity of his life. I pray
God to give success----"
Edward appeared at the door.
"Well, what is it?"
"The crowd, sir--they are clamoring to get in."
Betty hurried into the family apartments to speak to Mrs. Lincoln, her
mind in a whirl of resentment against John Vaughan.
The President turned to the crowd which had already poured into the
room.
As usual, the cranks and inventors led the way. The inventors found the
President an easy man to talk to. His mind was quick to see a good point
and always open to conviction. He had once patented a device for getting
flat boats over shoals himself. His immediate approval of the first
model of Ericsson's famous _Monitor_ had led to its adoption in time to
meet and destroy the _Merrimac_ in Hampton Roads on the very day the
iron terror had sent his big ships to the bottom. He allowed no inventor
to be turned from the door of the White House no matter how ridiculous
his hobby might appear. The inventions relating to the science of war he
would test himself on the big open field between the White House grounds
and the river.
The first inventor in line carried the model of a new rifle which would
shoot sixteen times. The army officers believed in the idea of a single
shell breech loader on account of the simplicity of its mechanism. Our
muskets were still muzzle loaders and the men were compelled to use
ramrods to load.
The President examined the new gun with keen interest, pulled his black,
shaggy beard thoughtfully, looked at the breathless inventor, and slowly
mused:
"Well, now as the fat girl said when she pulled on her stocking, it
strikes me there's something in it!"
The inventor laughed with nervous joy, and watched him write a card of
endorsement:
"Take that to the War Department, and tell them I like your idea--I want
them to look into it."
His face wreathed in smiles, the man pushed his way through the crowd,
and hurried to the War Department.
The next one was a little fellow who had a gun of marvellous model,
double-barrelled, with the barrels crossed. The President adjusted his
spectacles and took a second look before he made any comment. He lifted
his bristling eyebrows:
"What's it for?"
"For cross-eyed men, sir!" he whispered.
"You don't say?" he roared.
"Yes, sir," the little man continued eagerly. "The cross-eyed men ain't
never had no chance in this war. They turn 'em all down. They won't take
'em as soldiers. That gun'll fix 'em. Push a regiment o' good cross-eyed
men to the front with that gun a-pourin' hot lead from two barrels at
the same time an' every man er cross firin' at the enemy an' we'll jist
natchally make hash outen 'em, sir----"
"And we may need the cross-eyed men, too, before the war ends." The
sombre eyes twinkled thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend, when I draft
the cross-eyed men come in again and we'll talk it over. Your heart's
in the right place, anyhow."
He glanced doubtfully at the little skillet-shaped head and reached over
his shoulder for the next one. It was a bullet proof shirt for
soldiers--a coat of mail which weighed fifty pounds.
"How long do you think a man could march with that thing on and the
thermometer at ninety-eight in the shade?"
He handed it back with a shake of his head and grasped the next one--a
model water-tight canoe to fit the foot like a snow shoe.
"What's the idea?" he asked.
"Shoe the army with _my_ canoes, sir, and they can all walk on
water----"
"And yet they say the age of miracles has passed! Take it over to old
Neptune's office. He's a sad man at times and I like him. This ought to
cheer him."
The next one was a man of unusually interesting face. A typical Yankee
farmer with whiskers spilling over his collar from his neck and
bristling up against his clean shaven chin. He handed the President a
model of a new musket. He examined it with care and fixed the man with
his gaze:
"Well, sir?"
"Hit's the rekyle, sir," he explained softly. "Hit's the way she's hung
on the stock."
"Oh----"
"Ye see, sir," he went on earnestly, "a gun ought not to rekyle, and ef
hit rekyles at all, hit ought to rekyle a leetle forred----"
"Right you are!" the President roared with laughter. "Your logic's sound
whether your gun kicks or not. I say so, too. A gun ought _not_ to
rekyle at all, and if it does rekyle, by jinks, it ought to rekyle and
hit the other fellow, not us!"
The tall figure dropped into the chair by his desk and laughed again.
"Come in again, Brother 'Rekyle' and we'll talk it over when I've got
more time."
The stocky, heavy set figure of the Secretary of War suddenly pushed
through the crowd and up to the desk. Stanton's manner had always been
rude to the point of brusqueness and insult. The tremendous power he was
now wielding in the most important Department of the Government had not
softened his temper or improved his manners. The President had learned
to appreciate his matchless industry and sterling honesty and overlooked
his faults as an indulgent father those of a passionate and willful
child.
Stanton's eyes were flashing through his gold rimmed glasses the wrath
he found difficult to express.
The President looked up with a friendly smile:
"Well, Mars, what's the trouble now?"
Stanton shook his leonine locks and beard in fury at the use of the
facetious word. He loathed levity of any kind and the one kind he could
not endure was the quip that came his way.
He regarded himself seriously every day, every hour, every minute in
every hour. He was the incarnate soul of Mars on earth. He knew and felt
it. He raged at the President's use of the term because he had a
sneaking idea that he was being laughed at--and that by a man who was
his inferior and yet to whom he was rendering indispensable service.
An angry retort rose to his lips, but he suppressed the impulse. It was
a waste of breath. The President was a fool--he would only laugh again
as he had done before. And so he plunged straight to the purpose of his
call:
"Before you get to your usual batch of passes and pardons this morning I
want to protest again, Mr. President, against your persistent
interference with the discipline of the army and the affairs of my
Department. Your pardons are hamstringing the whole service, sir. It
must stop if you expect your generals to control their men!"
"Is that all, Mars?" the even voice asked.
"It is, sir!"
"Thanks for the spirit that prompts your rage. I know you're right about
most of these things. I'll do my best to help and not hinder you----"
"There's a woman coming here this morning to present a petition over my
head."
"Oh, I see----"
"I have refused it and I demand that you support, not make a fool of
me."
He turned without waiting for an answer and strode from the room.
The President whispered to Nicolay:
"We may have to put a few bricks in Stanton's pocket yet, John!"
He glanced toward the waiting crowd and whispered again:
"Any news to-day from the front before I go on?"
Nicolay drew a telegram from his file:
"Only this dispatch, sir, announcing the capture of fifty mules and two
brigadier generals by Stuart's cavalry----"
"Fifty mules?"
"And two brigadier generals."
"Fifty mules--and they're worth two hundred dollars a piece. Tell 'em to
send a regiment after those mules. Jeffy D. can have the generals."
A slender little dark-haired girl about fifteen years old, with big
wistful blue eyes, had taken advantage of the pause to slip close. When
the President lifted his head she caught his eyes. He rose immediately
and drew her to his side.
"You're all alone, little girl?"
"Yes, sir," she faltered.
"And what can I do for you?"
"If you please, I want to pass through the lines to Virginia--my
brother's there--he was shot in the last battle. I want to see him."
"Of course you do," the kindly voice agreed, "and you shall."
He wrote the pass and handed it to her.
She murmured her thanks and he placed his big hand on her dark head and
asked casually:
"Of course you're loyal?"
The young lips quivered, she hesitated, looked up into his face through
dimmed eyes, and the slender body suddenly stiffened, as she slowly
said:
"Yes--to the heart's core--to Virginia!"
The trembling fingers handed the pass back and the tears rolled down her
cheeks.
The tall man dared not look down again. Something about this slim
wistful girl brought back over the years the memory of the young mother
who had come from the hills of old Virginia.
He was still for a moment, stooped, and took her hand in his. His voice
was low and tender and full of feeling:
"I know what it cost you to say that, child. You're a brave, glorious
little girl, if you are a rebel. I love you for this glimpse you've
given me of a great spirit. I'm sure I can trust you. If I let you go,
will you promise me faithfully that no word shall pass your lips of what
you've seen inside our lines?"
"I promise!" she cried, smiling through her tears.
He handed her back the pass and slowly said:
"May God bless you--and speed the day when your people and mine shall be
no longer enemies."
He turned again to his desk, and beside it stood a quiet woman dressed
in black.
He bowed to her with easy grace:
"And how can I serve you, Madam?"
She smiled hopefully:
"You have children, Mr. President?"
A look of sorrow overspread the dark face.
"Yes," he said reverently, "I have two boys now. I had three, but God
has just taken one of them."
"I had two," the mother responded. "Both of them went into the army to
fight for their country and left me alone. One has been killed in
battle. I tried to be brave about it. I said over and over again, 'the
Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed is the name of the Lord!'
But I had to give up. I'm all alone in my little place in the mountains
of Pennsylvania and I can't endure it. I know they say I have no right
to ask, but I want my last boy to come home. All night I lie there alone
and cry. Can't you let me have my boy back? He's all I've got on
earth--others have more. I have only this one. I'm just a
woman--lonely, heartsick and afraid. They say I can't have him. But I've
come to ask you. I've heard that you have a loving heart----"
She stopped suddenly.
"You have seen Stanton?" the President asked.
"Yes. He wouldn't listen. He swore I shouldn't have him."
The hazel-grey eyes gazed thoughtfully out the window across the shining
river for a moment.
"I have two," he murmured, "and you have only one. It isn't fair. You
shall have your boy."
He turned to his desk and wrote the order for his discharge. The mother
pressed close, gently touched with the tips of her fingers his thick
black hair and softly cried while he was writing.
She took the precious paper, tried to speak and choked.
"Go away now," the President whispered, "or you'll have me crying in a
minute."
When the last man had gone he stood alone before his window in brooding
silence. A tender smile overspread his face and he drew a deep breath.
In the hills of Pennsylvania he saw a picture--a mother in the door of a
humble home waiting for her boy. He is coming down the road with swift,
strong step. She sees and rushes to meet him with a cry of joy, holds
him in her arms without words a long, long while and will not let him
go. And then she leads him into the house, falls on her knees and thanks
God.
He smiles again and forgets the burden of the day.
CHAPTER XVIII
DIPLOMACY
In the whirlwind of passion, intrigue, slander and hate which had
circled the head of the new President since the day of his Inauguration,
the mother of his children had not been spared.
The First Lady of the Land had found her position as difficult in its
way as her husband had found his. She had met the cynical criticism at
first with dignity, reserve, and contempt. But as it increased in
violence and virulence she had more than once lost her temper. She had
never been blessed with the serenity of spirit that with Lincoln in his
trying hours touched the heights of genius.
She was just a human little woman who loved her husband devotedly and
hated every man and woman who hated him. And when her patience was
exhausted she said things as she thought them, with a contempt for
consequences as sublime as it was dangerous.
From the moment of the opening of the war she hated the South, not only
because the Southern people had flung the shadow of death over her
splendid social career and blighted the brightest dream of her life by
war, but she had a more intimate and personal reason for this hatred.
Her own flesh and blood had gone into the struggle against her and the
husband she loved. Both her brothers born in the South, were in the
Confederate army fighting to tear the house down over her head. One of
these brothers had been made the Commandant of Libby Prison in Richmond.
The woman in her could never forgive them.
And yet men in the North who sought the destruction of her husband saw
how they might use the fact of her Southern kin to their own gain, and
did it with the most cruel and bitter malignity.
One thing she was determined to do--maintain her position in a way to
put it beyond the reach of petty spite and gossip. She had always
resented the imputation of boorishness and lack of culture his enemies
had made against the man she loved. She held it her first duty,
therefore, to maintain her place as the First Lady of the Land in a way
that would still those slanderous tongues. For this reason her dresses
had been the most elaborate and expensive the wife of any Chief
Magistrate of the Republic had ever worn. Her big-hearted, careless
husband had no more idea of the cost of such things than a new-born
babe.
Lizzie Garland, the negro dressmaker, to whom she had given her
patronage, practically spent her entire time with the President's wife,
who finally became so contemptuous of unreasonable public criticism in
Washington that she was often seen going to Lizzie Garland's house to be
fitted.
As Lizzie bent over her work basting the new seams in fitting her last
dress, the Mistress of the White House suddenly stopped the nervous
movement of her rocking-chair.
"He demands a thousand dollars to-night, Lizzie?"
"Swears he'll take the whole account to the President to-morrow unless
he gets it, Madam."
"You tried to make him reasonable?"
"Begged him for an hour."
"That's what I get for trading with a little rat in Philadelphia. I'll
stick to Stewart hereafter."
She rose with a gesture of nervous rage:
"Well, there's no help for it then. I must ask him. I dread it. Mr.
Lincoln calls me a child--a spoiled child. He's the child. He has no
idea of what these things cost. Why can't a Nation that spends two
millions a day on contractors and soldiers give its President a salary
he can live on?"
She threw herself on the lounge and gave way for a moment to despair.
"He'll give it to you, of course, when you ask it," Lizzie ventured
cheerfully.
"If I'm diplomatic, yes. But I hate to do it. He's harassed enough. I
wonder sometimes if he's human to stand all he does. If he knew the
truth--O my God----"
"Don't worry, Madam," Lizzie pleaded. "It will come out all right. The
President is sure to be re-elected."
"That's it, is he? I'm beginning to lose faith. He'll never win if the
scoundrels in Washington can prevent it. There's just one man in
Congress his real friend. I can't make him see that the hypocrites he
keeps in his Cabinet are waiting and watching to stab him in the back.
But what's the use to talk, I've got to face it to-day--ask Phoebe to
come here."
"Let me go, Madam," Lizzie begged. "I hate the sight of that woman. I
suspect her of nosing into our affairs."
"Nonsense!" was the contemptuous answer. "Phoebe's just a big, fat,
black, good-natured fool. It rests me to look at her--she's so much
fatter than I am."
With a shrug of her shoulders the dressmaker rose and rang for the
colored maid, who had just entered Mrs. Lincoln's service.
Phoebe walked in with a glorious smile lighting her dusky face. Seeing
her mistress lying down at the unusual hour of eleven o'clock in the
morning, she rushed to her side:
"Laws of mussy, Ma'am, ain't you well!"
"Just a little spell of nerves, Phoebe, something that never worries
your happy soul----"
"No, Ma'am, dat dey don't!" the black woman laughed.
"Hand me a pencil and pad of paper."
Phoebe executed her order with quick heavy tread, and stood looking
while her mistress scribbled a note to her husband.
"Take that to the President, and see that he comes."
Phoebe courtesied heavily:
"Yassam, I fetch him!"
The Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, was engaged with
the President when Phoebe presented herself at the door of the executive
office.
John Hay tried in vain to persuade her to wait _a_ few minutes. Phoebe
brushed the young diplomat aside with scant ceremony.
"G'way fum here, Boy!" she laughed. "Miss Ma'y sent me ter fetch 'im
right away. An' I gwine ter fetch 'im!"
She threw her ponderous form straight through the door and made for the
Chief Magistrate.
Mr. Chase was delivering an important argument, but it had no weight
with her.
She bowed and courtesied to the President.
"Excuse me, Governor," he said with a smile. "Good morning, Phoebe."
"Good mornin', sah."
She extended the note with a second dip of her ponderous form:
"Yassah, Miss Ma'y send dis here excommunication ter you, sah!"
"You don't say so?" the President cried, breaking into a laugh.
"Yassah."
"Then I'm excommunicated, Governor!" he nodded to Chase. "I must read
the edict." He adjusted his glasses and glanced at the note:
"Your mistress is lying down?"
"Yassah, she's sufferin' fum a little spell er nervous prosperity,
sah--dat's all--sah----"
"Oh, that's all?"
"Yassah."
The President roared with laughter, in which Phoebe joined.
"Thank you, Phoebe, tell her I'll be there in a minute----"
"Yassah."
"And Phoebe----"
The maid turned as she neared the door:
"Yassah?"
"I hope you'll always bring my messages from your mistress----"
"Yassah."
"I like you, Phoebe. You're cheerful!"
"I tries ter be, sah!" she laughed, swinging herself through the door.
The President threw his big hands behind his head, leaned back, and
laughed until his giant frame shook.
The dignified and solemn Secretary of the Treasury scowled, rose, and
stalked from the room.
"Sorry I couldn't talk longer, Chase."
"It's all right," the Secretary replied, with a wave of his hand.
The President found his wife alone.
"I hope nothing serious, Mother?" he said tenderly.
"I've a miserable headache again. Why were you so long?"
"I was with Governor Chase."
"And what did the old snake in the grass want this time?"
The President glanced toward the door uneasily, sat down by her side and
touched her hand:
"You should be more careful, Mother. Servants shouldn't hear you say
things like that----"
The full lips came together with bitter firmness:
"I'll say just what I think when I'm talking to you, Father--what did he
want?"
"He offered his resignation as my Secretary of the Treasury."
His wife sprang up with flashing eyes:
"And you?"
"Refused to accept it."
"O my Lord, you're too good and simple for this world! You're a babe--a
babe in the woods with wolves prowling after you from every tree and you
won't see them! You know that he's a candidate against you for the
Presidency, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You know that he never loses an opportunity to sneer at you behind your
back?"
"I've heard so."
"You know that he's hand in glove with the conspirators in Congress who
are trying to pull you down?"
"Perhaps."
"You know that he's the greatest letter writer of the age? That he
writes as many letters to your generals in the field as old Winter--that
he writes to every editor he knows and every politician he can
influence, and that the purpose of these letters is always the same--to
pull you down?"
"Possibly."
"You have this chance to put your foot on this frozen snake's head and
yet you bring him into your house again to warm him into life?"
"Chase is a great Secretary of the Treasury, my dear. The country needs
him. I can't afford to take any chances just now of a change for the
worse."
"He has no idea of leaving. He's only playing a game with you to
strengthen himself--can't you see this?"
"Maybe."
"And yet you submit to such infamy in your own Cabinet?"
"It's not a crime, Mother, to aspire to high office. The bee is in poor
Chase's bonnet. He can't help it. I've felt the thing tickle myself. If
he can beat me let the best man win----"
"Don't--don't--don't say such fool things," his wife cried. "I'll
scream! You need a guardian. You have three men in your Cabinet who are
using their positions to climb into the Presidency over you--old Seward,
Chase and now Stanton, and you smile and smile and let them think you
don't know. You'll never have a united and powerful administration until
you kick those scoundrels out----"
"Mother--Mother--you mustn't----"
"I will--I'll tell you the truth--nobody else does. I tell you to kick
these scoundrels out and put men in their places who will loyally
support you and your policies!"
"I've no right in such an hour to think of my own ambitions, my dear,"
was the even, quiet answer. "Seward is the best man for his place I know
in the country. Stanton is making the most efficient War Secretary we
have ever had. Chase is a great manager of our Treasury. I'm afraid to
risk a new man. If these men can win over me by rendering their country
a greater service than I can, they ought to win----"
"But can't you see, you big baby, that it isn't the man who really gives
the greatest service that may win? It's the liar and hypocrite
undermining his Chief who may win. Won't you have common sense and send
those men about their business? Surely you won't lose this chance to get
rid of Chase. Won't you accept his resignation?"
"No."
There was a moment's tense silence. The wife looked up appealingly and
the rugged hand touched hers gently.
"I think, Father, you're the most headstrong man that God ever made!"
The dark, wistful face brightened:
"And yet they say I'm a good-natured, easy-going fellow with no
convictions?"
"They don't know you----"
"I'm sorry, Mother, we don't see it the same way, but one of us has to
decide these things, and I suppose I'm the one."
"I suppose so," she admitted wearily.
"But tell me," he cried cheerfully, "what can I do right now to make you
happy? You sent for me for something. You didn't know that Chase was
there, did you?"
She hesitated and answered cautiously:
"It doesn't matter whether I did or not. You refuse to listen to my
advice."
He bent nearer in evident distress:
"What can I do, Mother?"
"I need some money. Since Willie's death last winter I've thought
nothing of my dresses for the next season. I must begin to attend to
them. I need a thousand dollars."
"To-day?"
"Yes."
He looked at her with a twinkle playing around the corner of his eyes as
he slowly rose:
"Send Phoebe in for the check."
"Ring for her, please."
He pulled the old-fashioned red cord vigorously, walked back to the
lounge, put his hands in his pockets and looked at his wife in a comical
way.
"Mother," he said at last, "you're a very subtle woman. You'd make a
great diplomat if you didn't talk quite so much."
CHAPTER XIX
THE REBEL
While Betty Winter was still brooding in angry resentment over the
problem of John Vaughan's guilt in sharing the treason of his Chief, the
army was suddenly swung into the field to contest Lee's invasion of
Maryland.
The daring venture of the Confederate leader had developed with
startling rapidity. The President was elated over the probable
annihilation of his army. He knew that half of them were practically
barefooted and in rags. He also knew that McClellan outnumbered Lee and
Jackson two to one and that the Southerners, no longer on the defensive,
but aggressors, would be at an enormous disadvantage in Maryland
territory.
That Lee was walking into a death trap he was morally sure.
The Confederate leader was not blind to the dangers of his undertaking.
Conditions in the South practically forced the step. It was of the
utmost importance that he should have full and accurate information
before his move, and a group of the coolest and bravest young men in his
army were called on to go into Washington as scouts and spies and bring
this report. Men who knew the city were needed.
Among the ten selected for the important mission was Ned Vaughan. He had
been promoted for gallantry on the field at Malvern Hill, and wore the
stripes of a lieutenant. He begged for the privilege of risking his life
in this work and his Colonel could not deny him. He had proven on two
occasions his skill on secret work as a scout before the second battle
of Bull Run. His wide circle of friends in Washington and the utter
change in his personal appearance by the growth of a beard made his
chances of success the best of any man in the group.
He was anxious to render his country the greatest possible service in
such a crisis, but there was another motive of resistless power. He was
mad to see Betty Winter. He knew her too well to believe that if he took
his life in his hand to look into her eyes she could betray him.
His disguise in the uniform of a Federal Captain was perfect, his forged
pass beyond suspicion. He passed the lines of the Union army
unchallenged and spent his first night in Washington in Joe Hall's
famous gambling saloon on Pennsylvania Avenue. He arrived too late to
make any attempt to see Betty. He stood for half an hour on the corner
of the street, gazing with wistful eyes at the light in her window. He
dared not call and involve her in the possibility of suspicion. He must
wait with caution until she left the house and he could speak to her
without being recognized. If he failed to get this chance he would write
her as a last resort.
In Hall's place he found scores of Congressmen and men from every
department of the Government service. Old Thaddeus Stevens, the leader
of the war party in the House, was playing for heavy stakes, his sullen
hard face set with grim determination.
He watched a young clerk from the War Department stake his last dollar,
lose, and stagger from the table with a haunted, desperate look. Ned
followed him into two saloons and saw the bartenders refuse him credit.
He walked through the door of the last saloon, his legs trembling and
his white lips twitching, stopped and leaned against the wall of the
little bookstore on the corner, the flickering street lamp showing dimly
his ghastly face and eyes.
Ned glanced uneasily behind him to see that he had not been followed. He
had left under the impression that a secret service man had seen them
both leave. He knew that Baker, the head of the Department, might know
the name of every clerk who frequented a gambling den. No one was in
sight and he debated for a moment the problem of offering this boy the
bribe to get from Stanton's office the information he wanted.
It was a question of character and his judgment of it. Could he speak
the word to this boy that might send one or both to the gallows? He was
well born. His father was a man of sterling integrity and a firm
supporter of the Union. The boy was twenty-two years old and had been a
pet in the fast circle of society in which he had moved for the last
three years. If his love for his country were the real thing, he would
hand Ned over as a spy without a moment's hesitation. If the mania for
gambling had done its work he would do anything for money.
Ned's own life was in the decision. He took another look into the
haggard face and made up his mind.
He started on as if to pass him, stopped suddenly and extended his hand:
"Hello, Dick, what's up?"
The boy glowered at him and answered with a snarl:
"I don't know you----"
Ned drew a sigh of relief. One danger was passed. He couldn't recognize
him. The rest should be easy.
"You don't need to, my boy," he whispered. "You're looking for a
friend--money?"
"Yes. I'll sell my soul into hell for it right now," he gasped.
"You don't need to do that." Ned drew two hundred dollars in gold from
his pocket and clinked the coin.
"You see that gold?"
"Yes, yes--what do you want for it?"
"I want you to get for me to-morrow morning the exact number of men in
McClellan's army. I want the figures from Stanton's office--you
understand. I want the name of each command, its numbers and its
officers. I know already half of them. So you can't lie to me. Give me
this information here to-morrow night and the gold is yours. Will you do
it?"
The boy glanced at Ned for a moment:
"I'll see you in hell first. I've a notion to arrest you--damned if I
don't----"
He wheeled and started toward the corner.
Ned's left hand gripped his with the snap of a steel trap, his right
holding his revolver.
"Don't you be a fool. I know that you're ruined. I saw you in Joe
Hall's----"
The boy's jaw dropped.
"You saw me?" he stammered.
"Yes. You're done for, and you know it. Bring me those figures and I'll
double the pile--four hundred dollars."
The weak eyes shifted uneasily. He hesitated and faltered:
"All right. Meet me here at seven o'clock. For God's sake, don't speak
to me if there's anyone in sight."
All next day Ned watched Betty's house in vain. At dark, in despair and
desperation, he wrote a note.
"DEAR MISS BETTY:
"For one look into your dear eyes I am here. I've tried in vain to
meet you. I can't leave without seeing you. I'll wait in the park
at the foot of the avenue to-morrow night at dusk. Just one touch
of your hand and five minutes near you is all I ask----"
There was no signature needed. She would know. He mailed it and hurried
to his appointment.
The boy was prompt. There was no one in sight. Ned hurriedly examined
the sheet of paper, verified the known commands and their numbers and,
convinced of its genuineness, handed the money to the traitor.
"For God's sake, never speak to me again or recognize me in any way," he
begged through chattering teeth. "I got those things from Stanton's desk
and copied them."
Ned nodded, placed the precious document in his pocket, and watched the
fool hurry with swift feet straight to Joe Hall's place and disappear
within.
Betty failed to come at the appointed time and he was heartsick. He
would finish his work in six hours to-morrow and he should not lose a
moment in passing the Federal lines. The precious figures he had bought
were memorized and the paper destroyed. In six hours next day he
completed the drawings of the fort on which information had been asked
and was ready to leave.
But he had not seen Betty. He tried to go and each effort only led him
to the corner from which he watched her house. He lingered until night
and waited an hour again in the dark. And still she had not come. And
then it slowly dawned on him that she must have realized from the moment
she read his message the peril of his position and the danger of his
betrayal in their meeting.
He turned with quick, firm tread to pass the Federal lines without
delay, and walked into the arms of two secret service men.
Without a word he was manacled and led to prison. The boy he had bribed
had been under suspicion since his first visits to Joe Hall's. Stanton
had discovered that his desk had been rummaged. Five of his nine
Southern comrades had been arrested and he was the sixth. The rage of
the Secretary of War had been boundless. He had thrown out a dragnet of
detectives and every suspicious character in the city was passing
through it or landing in prison.
The men stripped him and searched with the touch of experts every stitch
of his clothing, ripped the lining of his coat, opened the soles of his
shoes, split the heels and found nothing. He had been ordered to dress
and given permission to go, when suddenly the officer conducting the
search said:
"Wait!"
Ned stopped in the doorway. It was useless to protest.
"Excuse my persistence, my friend," he said apologetically. "You seem
all right and my men have apparently made a mistake, all the same I'm
going to examine your mouth----"
Ned's eyes suddenly flashed and his figure unconsciously stiffened.
"I thought so!" the officer laughed.
The door was closed and the guard stepped before it.
And then, with quick sure touch as if he saw the object of his search
through the flesh, the detective lifted Ned Vaughan's upper lip and drew
from between his lips and teeth the long, thin, delicately folded
tinfoil within which lay the tissue drawing of the fort.
The drumhead court-martial which followed was brief and formal. The
prisoner refused to give his name or any clue to his identity. He was
condemned to be hanged as a spy at noon the next day and locked in a
cell in the Old Capitol Prison.
On his way they passed Senator Winter's house. Six hours' delay just to
look into her face had cost him his life, but his one hopeless regret
now was that he had failed to see her.
Betty Winter read the account of the sensational arrest and death
sentence. He had been arrested at the trysting place he had appointed.
She dropped the paper with a cry and hurried to the White House. She
thanked God for the loving heart that dwelt there.
Without a moment's hesitation the President ordered a suspension of
sentence and directed that the papers be sent to him for review.
In vain Stanton raged. He shook his fist in the calm, rugged face at
last:
"Dare to interfere with the final execution of this sentence and I shall
resign in five minutes after you issue that pardon! I'll stand for some
things--but not for this--I warn you!"
"I understand your position, Stanton," was the quiet answer. "And I'll
let you know my decision when I've reached it."
With a muttered oath, the Secretary of War left the room.
Betty bent close to his desk and whispered:
"You'll give me three days to get his mother here?"
"Of course I will, child, six days if it's necessary. Get word to her.
If I can't save him, she can say good-bye to her boy. That can't hurt
anybody, can it?"
With a warm grasp of his hand Betty flew to the telegraph office and
three days later she saw for the first time the broken-hearted mother.
The resemblance was so startling between the mother and both sons she
couldn't resist the impulse to throw her arms around her neck.
"I came alone, dear," the mother said brokenly, "because his father is
so bitter. You see we're divided at home, too. I'm with John in his love
for the Union--but his father is bitter against the war. It would do no
good for him to come. He hates the President and says he's responsible
for all the blood and suffering--and so I'm alone--but you'll help me?"
"Yes, I'll help and we'll fight to win."
The mother held her at arms' length a moment:
"How sweet and beautiful you are! How happy I am that you love my John!
I'm proud of you. Is John here?"
Betty's face clouded:
"No. I telegraphed him to come. He answered that a great battle was
about to be fought and that it was absolutely useless to ask for
pardon----"
"But it isn't--is it, dear?"
"No, we'll fight. John doesn't know the President as I do. We'll never
give up--you and I--Mother!"
Again they were in each other's arms in silence. The older woman held
her close.
And then came the long, hard fight.
The President heard the mother's plea with tender patience and shook his
head sorrowfully.
"I'm sorry, dear Madam," he said at last, "to find this case so
dangerous and difficult. Our army is approaching a battle. Tremendous
issues hang on the results. It looks now as if this battle may end the
war. The enemy have as good right to send their brave scouts and spies
among us to learn our secrets as we have to send ours to learn theirs.
They kill our boys without mercy when captured. I have just asked
Jefferson Davis to spare the life of one of the noblest and bravest men
I have ever known. He was caught in Richmond on a daring errand for his
country. They refused and executed him. How can I face my Secretary of
War with such a pardon in my hands?"
The mother's head drooped lower with each sorrowful word and when the
voice ceased she fell on her knees, with clasped hands and streaming
eyes in a voiceless prayer whose dumb agony found the President's heart
more swiftly and terribly than words.
"O my dear little mother, you mustn't do that!" he protested, seizing
her hands and lifting her to her feet. "You mustn't kneel to me, I'm not
God--I'm just a distracted man praying from hour to hour and day to day
for wisdom to do what's right! I can't stand this--you mustn't do such
things--they kill me!"
He threw his big hands into the air with a gesture of despair, his face
corpse-like in its ashen agony. He took a step from her and leaned
against the long table in the centre of the room for support.
Betty whispered something in the mother's ear and led her near again.
"If you'll just give my boy to me alive," she went on in low anguish,
"I'll take him home and keep him there and I'll pledge my life that he
will never again take up arms against the Union----"
"You can guarantee me that?" he interrupted, holding her gaze.
"I'm sure of it. He's noble, high-spirited, the soul of honor. He was
always good and never gave me an hour's sorrow in his life until this
war came----"
The long arm suddenly swung toward his Secretary:
"Have the prisoner, Ned Vaughan, brought here immediately. When he
comes, Madam, I'll see what can be done."
With a sob of joy the mother leaned against Betty, who took her out into
the air until the wagon from the jail should come.
They had led Ned quickly into the President's office before his mother
and Betty knew of his arrival. His wrists were circled with handcuffs.
The President looked over his spectacles at the irons and spoke sharply:
"Take those things off him----"
The guard hesitated, and the high pitched voice rang with angry
authority:
"Take off those handcuffs, I tell you. His mother'll be here in a
minute--take 'em off!"
The guard quickly removed the manacles and the President turned to him
and his attendants:
"Clear out now. I'll call you when I want you."
Ned bowed:
"Thank you, sir."
"I hope I can do more than that for you, my boy. It all depends on
you----"
The mother's cry of joy stopped him short as she walked into the door.
With a bound she reached Ned's side, clasped him in her arms and kissed
him again and again with the low caressing words that only a mother's
lips can breathe. He loosened her hands tenderly:
"I'm glad you came, dear. It's all right. You mustn't worry. This is
war, you know."
"But we're going to save you, my darling. The President's going to
pardon you. I feel it--I know it. That's why he sent for you. God has
heard my prayer."
"I'm afraid you don't understand these things, dear," Ned replied
tenderly. "The President can't pardon me--no one understands that better
than I do----"
"But he will, darling! He will----"
Ned soothed her and turned to Betty.
"Just a moment, Mother, I wish to speak to Miss Betty."
He took her hand and looked into her face with wistful intensity.
"One long look at the girl of my dreams and I'll wait for you on the
other side! This is not the way I told you I would return, is it? But
it's war. We must take it as it comes--good-bye--dearest----"
"O Ned, Boy, the President will pardon you if you'll be reasonable. You
must, for her sake, if not because I ask it."
"It's sweet of you to try this, dearest, but of course, it's useless.
The President must be just."
The tall figure rose and Ned turned to face his desk.
"Young man," he began gently, "you're a soldier of exceptional training
and intelligence. You knew the danger and the importance of your
mission. You have failed and your life is forfeited to the Nation, but
for your mother's sake, because of her love and her anguish and her
loyalty, I have decided to trust you and send you home on parole in her
custody if you take the oath of allegiance----"
The mother gave a sob of joy.
"I thank you, Mr. President," was the firm reply, "for your generous
offer for my mother's sake, but I cannot take your oath. I have sworn
allegiance to another Government in the righteousness and justice of
whose cause I live and am ready to die----"
"Ned--Ned!" the mother moaned.
"I must, Mother, dear," he firmly went on. "Life is sweet when it's
worth living. But man can not live by bread alone. They have only the
power to kill my body. You ask me to murder my soul."
He paused and turned to the President, whose eyes were shining with
admiration.
"I believe, sir, that I am right and you are wrong. This is war. We must
fight it out. I'm a soldier and a soldier's business is to die."
The tall figure suddenly crossed the space that separated them and
grasped his hand:
"You're a brave man, Ned Vaughan, the kind of man that saves this world
from hell--the kind that makes this Nation great and worth saving whole!
I wish I could keep you here--but I can't. You know that--good-bye----"
"Good-bye, sir," was the firm answer.
The mother began to sob piteously until Betty spoke something softly in
her ear.
Ned turned, pressed her to his heart, and held her in silence. He took
Betty's hand and bent to kiss it.
"You shall not die," she whispered tensely. "I'm going to save you."
She felt the answering pressure and knew that he understood.
Betty held the mother at the door a moment and spoke in low tones:
"I can get permission from the President to delay the execution until
his sister may arrive and say good-bye to him in prison the night before
the execution. Wait and I'll get it now."
The mother stood and gazed in a stupor of dull despair while Betty
pressed to his desk and begged the last favor. It was granted without
hesitation.
[Illustration: "'You're a brave man, Ned Vaughan.'"]
The President wrote the order delaying the death for three days and
handed her his card on which was written:
"Admit the bearer, the sister of the prisoner, Ned Vaughan, the
night before his execution to see him for five minutes.
"A. LINCOLN."
"I'm sorry, little girl, I couldn't do more for _your_ sake--but you
understand?"
Betty nodded, returned the pressure of his hand and hurriedly left the
room.
The hanging was fixed for the following Friday at noon. The pass would
admit his sister on Thursday night. Betty had three days in which to
work. She drew every dollar of her money and went at her task swiftly,
silently, surely, until she reached the guard inside the grim old
prison, who held the keys to the death watch.
She couldn't trust the sister with her daring plan. She might lose her
nerve. She must impersonate her. It was a dangerous piece of work, but
it was not impossible. She had only to pass the inspectors. The guards
inside were her friends.
On Thursday night at eight o'clock a carriage drew up at the little red
brick house, on whose door flashed the brass plate sign:
ELIZABETH GARLAND, MODISTE
She had made an appointment with Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker and arranged
for it at this late hour. She must not be seen leaving her father's
house to-night.
She drove rapidly to the Capitol, stopped her carriage at the north end,
entered the building through the Senate wing, quickly passed out again,
and in a few minutes had presented her pass to the commandant of the Old
Capitol Prison.
The woman inspector made the most thorough search and finding nothing
suspicious, allowed her to enter the dimly lighted corridor of the death
watch.
The turnkey loudly announced:
"The sister of the prisoner, Ned Vaughan!"
She met him face to face in the large cell in which the condemned were
allowed to pass their last night on earth. The keen eyes of a guard from
the Inspector's office watched her every act and every movement of her
body.
Ned stared at her. His heart beat with mad joy. She was going to play
his sister's part! He would take her in his arms for the first time and
feel the beat of her heart against his and their lips would meet. He
laughed at death as he looked into her eyes with the hunger of eternity
gleaming in his own.
There could be no hesitation on her part.
She threw both arms around his neck crying:
"Brave, foolish boy!"
He held her close, crushed her with one mad impulse, and slowly relaxed
his arms. She would forgive him for this moment of delirium on the brink
of the grave, but he must be reasonable.
"I am ready to die, now, dearest," he murmured.
She slowly lifted her lips to his in a long kiss--a kiss that thrilled
body and soul--and pressed into his mouth a tiny piece of tissue paper.
She stood holding both his hands for a moment and hesitated, glancing at
the guard from the corner of her eye. He was watching with steady
stolid business-like stare. She must play her part to the end carefully
and boldly.
"I've only this moment just to say good-bye, Boy," she faltered. "I
promised not to stay long." Slowly her arms stole round his neck, and
the blood rushed to his face in scarlet waves.
"Love has made death glorious, dearest," he breathed tenderly. "God
bless you for coming, for all you have done for me, and for all this
holy hour means to my soul--you understand."
The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. The plan might fail after
all--the gallows was there in the jail yard lifting its stark arms in
the lowering sky. She pressed his hands hysterically:
"Yes, yes, I understand."
She turned and hurried to the guard:
"Take me out quickly. I'm going to faint. I can't endure it."
The guard caught her arm, supporting her as she made her way to the
street.
In fifteen minutes she had returned to the dressmaker's and from there
called another carriage and went home.
The guard had no sooner turned his back than Ned Vaughan quickly opened
and read the precious message which gave the plan of escape.
When the sentinel on his corridor was changed at midnight the blond,
blue-eyed boy would be his friend and explain.
When he found the rope ladder concealed on the roof it was raining. He
fastened it carefully in the shadow of an offset in the outer wall and
waited for the appearance of the guard. As he passed the gas lamp post
and the flickering light fell on his face he studied it with care. He
was stupid and allowed the rain to dash straight into his fat face. It
should be easy to reach the shadows by a quick leap when he turned
against the rain and reached the length of his beat.
He calculated to a second the time required to make the descent, threw
himself swiftly to the end of his rope and dropped to the pavement.
In his eagerness to strike the ground on the run, his foot slipped and
he fell. The guard heard and ran back, blinking his stupid eyes through
the rain. He found a young sport who had lost his way in the storm.
"I shay, partner," the fallen drunk blubbered. "What'ell's the matter
here? Ain't this Joe Hall's place?"
"Not by a dam sight."
"Ah, g'long with yer, f-foolishness--man--and open the door--I'm an old
customer--I ain't no secret service man--I'm all right--open her up----"
"Here, here, get up an' move on now, I can't fool with you," the guard
growled good-naturedly. He lifted Ned to his feet and helped him to the
end of his beat, waved him a jolly good-night, and turned to his steady
tramp. The rope was still dangling next morning ten feet above his head.
The sensation that thrilled the War Department was one that made history
for the Nation, as well as the individuals concerned, and for some
unfortunately who were not concerned.
CHAPTER XX
THE INSULT
The day General Lee's army turned toward the north for the Maryland
shore, the President, with the eagerness of a boy, hurried to
McClellan's house to shake his hand, bid him God's speed and assure him
of his earnest support and good wishes.
The absurdity of the ruler of a mighty Nation hurrying on foot to the
house of one of his generals never occurred to his mind.
The autocratic power over the lives and future of millions to which he
had been called had thrown no shadow of vanity or self pride over his
simple life. Responsibility had only made clearer his judgment,
strengthened his courage, broadened and deepened his love for his fellow
man.
He wished to see his Commanding General and bid him God's speed. The
General was busy and he wished to take up but a few minutes of his time.
And so without a moment's hesitation he walked to his house accompanied
only by Hay, his Assistant Secretary.
On the way he was jubilant with hope:
"We've got them now, Boy--we've got them, and this war must speedily
end! Lee will never get into Maryland with fifty thousand effective men.
With the river hemming him in on the rear I'll have McClellan on him
with a hundred thousand well shod, well fed, well armed and with the
finest artillery that ever thundered into battle. We're bound to win."
"If McClellan can whip him, sir?"
"Yes, of course, he's got to do that," was the thoughtful answer. "And
you know I believe he'll do it. McClellan's on his mettle now. His army
will fight like tigers to show their faith in him. He's vain and
ambitious, yes--many great men are. Ambition's a mighty human motive."
"I'm afraid it's bad diplomacy, sir, to go to his house like this--he is
vain, you know," the younger man observed with a frown.
"Tut, tut, Boy, it's no time for ceremony. Who cares a copper!"
The clock in the church tower struck ten as Hay sprang up the steps and
rang the bell.
"I hope he hasn't gone to bed," the Secretary said.
"At ten o'clock?" the President laughed, "a great general about to march
on the most important campaign of his life--hardly."
The straight orderly saluted and ushered them into the elegant reception
room--the room so often graced by the Prince de Joinville and the Comte
de Paris, of the General's staff.
The orderly sniffed the air in a superior butler style:
"The General has not come in yet, gentlemen."
"We'll wait," was the President's quick response.
They sat in silence and the minutes dragged.
The young Secretary, in rising wrath, looked again and again at the
clock.
"Don't be so impatient, John," the quiet, even voice said. "Great bodies
move slowly, they say--come here and sit down--I'll tell you a secret.
The Cabinet knows it--and you can, too."
He leaned his giant figure forward in his chair and touched an official
document which he had drawn from his pocket.
"Great events hang on this battle. I've written out here a challenge to
mortal combat for all our foes, North, South, East and West. I'm going
to free the slaves if we win this battle and we're sure to win it----"
Hay glanced at the door with a startled look.
"McClellan and I don't agree on this subject and he mightn't fight as
well if he knew it. It's a thing of doubtful wisdom at its best to hurl
this challenge into the face of my foe. But the time has come and it
must be done. We have made no headway in this war, and we must crush the
South to end it. If the Copperhead leaders should get control of the
Democratic party because of it--well, it means trouble at home. Douglas
is dead and the jackal is trying to wear the lion's skin. He may
succeed, but then I must risk it. I'll lose some good soldiers from the
army but I've got to do it. All I'm waiting for now is a victory on
which to launch my thunderbolt----"
A key clicked in the front door and the quick, firm step of McClellan
echoed through the hall.
The orderly was reporting his distinguished visitor. They could hear his
low words, and the sharp answer.
The General mounted the stairs and entered the front room overhead. He
was there, of course, to arrange his toilet. He was a stickler for
handsome clothes, spotless linen and the last detail of ceremony.
Again the minutes dragged. The tick of the clock on the mantel rang
through the silent room and the face of the younger man grew red with
rage.
Unable to endure the insolence of a subordinate toward the great
Chieftain, whom he loved with a boy's blind devotion, Hay sprang to his
feet:
"Let's go, sir!"
The big hand was quietly raised in a gesture of command and he sank into
his seat.
Five minutes more passed and the sound of approaching footsteps were
heard quickly, firmly pressed with military precision.
The President nodded:
"You see, my son!"
But instead of the General the handsome figure of his aide, John
Vaughan, appeared in the doorway:
"The General begs me to say, Mr. President, that he is too much fatigued
to see any one this evening and has retired for the night."
The orderly stepped pompously to the door to usher them out and John
Vaughan bowed and returned to his commander.
Hay sprang to his feet livid with rage and spoke to his Chief with
boyish indignation.
"You are not going to take this insult from him?"
The tall figure slowly rose and stood in silence.
"Remove him from his command," the younger man pleaded. "For God's sake
do it now. Write the order for his removal this minute--give it to me!
I'll kick his door open and hand it to him."
The deep set dreamy eyes were turned within as he said in slow intense
tones:
"No--I'll hold McClellan's horse for him if he'll give us one victory!"
CHAPTER XXI
THE BLOODIEST DAY
The struggle opened with disaster for the Union army. Though Lee's plan
of campaign fell by accident into McClellan's hands, it was too late to
frustrate the first master stroke. Relying on Jackson's swift,
bewildering marches, Lee, in hostile territory and confronted by twice
his numbers, suddenly divided his army and hurled Jackson's corps
against Harper's Ferry. The garrison, after a futile struggle of two
days, surrendered twelve thousand five hundred and twenty men and their
vast stores of war material.
The contrast between General White, the Federal officer in command who
surrendered, and Jackson, his conqueror, was strikingly dramatic. The
Union General rode a magnificent black horse, was carefully dressed in
shining immaculate uniform--gloves, boots and sword spotless. The
Confederate General sat carelessly on his little shaggy sorrel, dusty,
travel-stained and carelessly dressed.
The curiosity of the Union army which had surrendered was keen to see
the famous fighter. The entire twelve thousand prisoners of war lined
the road as Jackson silently rode by.
A voice from the crowd expressed the universal feeling as they gazed:
"Boys, he ain't much for looks, but, by God, if we'd had him we
wouldn't have been caught in this trap!"
The first shock of Lee's and McClellan's armies was at South Mountain,
where the desperate effort was made to break through and save Harper's
Ferry. The attempt failed, though the Union forces won the fight. Lee
lost twenty-seven hundred men, killed and wounded and prisoners, and the
Federal general, twenty-one hundred.
Lee withdrew to Sharpsburg on the banks of the Antietam to meet
Jackson's victorious division sweeping toward him from Harper's Ferry.
On the first day the Confederate commander made a display of force only,
awaiting the alignment of Jackson's troops. His men were so poorly shod
and clothed they could not be brought into line of battle. When the
fateful day of September 17th, 1862, dawned, still and clear and
beautiful over the hills of Maryland, more than twenty thousand of Lee's
men had fallen by the roadside barefooted and exhausted. When the first
roar of McClellan's artillery opened fire in the grey dawn, they hurled
their shells against less than thirty-seven thousand men in the
Confederate lines. The Union commander had massed eighty-seven thousand
tried veterans behind his guns.
The President received the first news of the battle with a thrill of
exultation. That Lee's ragged, footsore army hemmed in thus with
Antietam Creek on one side and the broad, sweeping Potomac on the other
would be crushed and destroyed he could not doubt for a moment.
As the sun rose above the eastern hills a gleaming dull-red ball of
blood, the Federal infantry under Hooker swept into action and drove
the Confederates from the open field into a dense woods, where they
rallied, stood and mowed his men down with deadly aim. Hooker called for
aid and General Mansfield rushed his corps into action, falling dead at
the head of his men as they deployed in line of battle.
For two hours the sullen conflict raged, blue and grey lines surging in
death-locked embrace until the field was strewn with the dead, the dying
and the wounded.
Hooker was wounded. Sedgwick's corps swept into the field under a sharp
artillery fire and reached the shelter of the woods only to find
themselves caught in a trap between two Confederate brigades massed at
this point. In the slaughter which followed Sedgwick was wounded and his
command was saved from annihilation with the loss of two thousand men.
While this desperate struggle raged in the Union right, the centre was
the scene of a still bloodier one. French and Richardson charged the
Confederate position with reckless valor. A sunken road lay across the
field over which they rushed. For four terrible hours the men in grey
held this sunken road until it was piled with their bodies, and when the
last charge of the resistless blue lines took it, they found but three
hundred living men who had been holding it against the assaults of five
thousand--and "Bloody Lane" became immortal in American history.
It was now one o'clock and the men had fought almost continuously since
the sun rose. The infantry fire slowly slackened and ceased in the Union
right and centre.
Burnside, who held the Union left, was ordered to advance by the
capture of the stone bridge over the Antietam. But a single brigade
under General Toombs guarding this bridge held an army at bay and it was
one o'clock before the bridge was captured.
Burnside now pushed his division up the heights against Sharpsburg to
cut Lee's line of retreat. The Confederates held their ground with
desperate courage, though outnumbered here three to one. At last the
grey lines melted and the men in blue swept triumphantly through the
village and on its edge suddenly ran into a line of men clad in their
own blue uniform.
They paused in wonder. How had their own men gotten in such a position?
They were not left long in doubt. The blue line suddenly blazed with
long red waves of flame squarely in their faces. It was Hill's division
of Jackson's corps from Harper's Ferry. The ragged men had dressed
themselves in good blue suits from the captured Federal storehouse. The
shock threw the Union men into confusion and a desperate charge of the
strange blue Confederates drove them back through the village, and night
fell with its streets still held by Lee's army.
For fourteen hours five hundred pieces of artillery and more than one
hundred thousand muskets had thundered and hissed their cries of death.
On the hills and valleys lay more than twenty thousand men killed and
wounded.
Lee's little army of thirty-seven thousand had been cut to pieces,
having lost fourteen thousand. He had but twenty-three thousand left.
McClellan had lost twelve thousand, but had seventy-five thousand left.
And yet so desperate had been the deadly courage with which the grey
tattered army had fought that McClellan lay on his arms for three days.
The day's work had been a drawn battle, but the President's heart was
broken as he watched in anguish the withdrawal of Lee's army in safety
across the river. It was the last straw. McClellan had been weighed and
found wanting. He registered a solemn promise with God that if the great
Confederate Commanders succeeded in making good their retreat from this
desperate situation he would remove McClellan.
The Confederates withdrew, rallied their shattered forces safely in
Virginia, and Jeb Stuart once more rode around the Northern army!
The President issued his Emancipation Proclamation, challenging the
South to war to the death, and flung down the gauntlet to his rival, the
coming leader of Northern Democracy, George Brinton McClellan, by
removing him from command.
CHAPTER XXII
BENEATH THE SKIN
John Vaughan saw the blow fall on McClellan's magnificent headquarters
in deep amazement. The idol of the army was ordered to turn over his
command to General Burnside and the impossible had happened.
Instead of the brilliant _coup d'état_ which he and the entire staff had
predicted, the fallen leader obeyed and took an affectionate leave of
his men.
McClellan knew, what his staff could not understand, that for the moment
the President was master of the situation. He still held the unbounded
confidence of his officers, but the rank and file of his soldiers had
become his wondering critics. They believed they had crushed Lee's army
at Antietam and yet they lay idle until the skillful Southern Commander
had crossed the Potomac, made good his retreat, and once more insulted
them by riding around their entire lines. The volunteer American soldier
was a good fighter and a good critic of the men who led him. He had his
own ideas about how an army should be fought and maneuvered. As the idol
of fighting men, McClellan had ceased to threaten the supremacy of the
civil law. There was no attempt at the long looked for _coup d'état_. It
was too late. No one knew this more clearly than McClellan himself.
But his fall was the bitterness of death to the staff who adored him and
the generals who believed in him. Burnside, knowing the condition of
practical anarchy he must face, declined the command. The President
forced him to accept. He took it reluctantly with grim forebodings of
failure.
John received his long leave of absence from his Chief and left for
Washington the night before the formal farewell. His rage against the
bungler who ruled the Nation with autocratic power was fierce and
implacable.
His resentment against the woman he loved was scarcely less bitter. It
was her triumph, too. She believed in the divine inspiration of the man
who sat in the chair of Washington and Jefferson. Great God, could
madness reach sublimer folly! She had written him a letter of good
wishes and all but asked for a reconciliation before the battle. Love
had fought with pride through a night and pride had won. He hadn't
answered the letter.
He avoided his newspaper friends and plunged into a round of
dissipation. Beneath the grim tragedy of blood in Washington flowed the
ever widening and deepening torrent of sensual revelry--of wine and
women, song and dance, gambling and intrigue.
The flash of something cruel in his eye which Betty Winter had seen and
feared from the first burned now with a steady blaze. For six days and
nights he played in Joe Hall's place a desperate game, drinking,
drinking always, and winning. Hour after hour he sat at the roulette
table, his chin sunk on his breast, his reddened eyes gleaming beneath
his heavy black brows, silent, surly, unapproachable.
A reporter from the _Republican_ recognized him and extended his hand:
"Hello, Vaughan!"
John stared at him coldly and resumed his play without a word. At the
end of six days he had won more than two thousand dollars from the
house, put it in his pocket, and, deaf to the blandishments of smooth,
gentlemanly proprietor, pushed his way out into the Avenue.
It was but four o'clock in the afternoon and he was only half drunk. He
wandered aimlessly down the street and crossed in the direction of
hell's half-acre below the Baltimore depot. His uniform was wrinkled,
his boots had not been blacked for a week, his linen was dirty, his hair
rumpled, his handsome black moustache stained with drink, but he was
hilariously conscious that he had two thousand dollars of Joe Hall's
ill-gotten money in his pocket. There was a devil-may-care swing to his
walk and a look in his eye that no decent woman would care to see twice.
He ran squarely into Betty Winter in the crowd emerging from the depot.
The little bag she was carrying fell from her hands, with a cry of
startled anguish:
"John--my God!"
He made no effort to pick up the fallen bag or in any way return the
greeting. He merely paused and stared--deliberately stood and stared as
if stupefied by the apparition. In fact, he was so startled by her
sudden appearance that for a moment he felt the terror of a drunkard's
first hallucination. The thought was momentary. He knew better. He was
not drunk. The girl was there all right--the real thing--living,
beautiful flesh and blood. For one second's anguish the love of her
strangled him. The desire to take her in his arms was all but resistless
in its fierce madness. He bit his lips and scowled in her face.
"John--John--dearest," she gasped.
The scowl darkened and he spoke with insulting deliberation: "You have
made a mistake. I haven't the honor of your acquaintance."
Before Betty could recover from the horror of his answer he had brushed
rudely past her and disappeared in the crowd. She picked up her bag in a
stupor of dumb rage and started home. She was too weak for the walk she
had hoped to take. She called a hack and scarcely had the strength to
climb into the high, old-fashioned seat.
Never in all her life had blind anger so possessed her soul and body. In
a moment of tenderness she had offered to forgive and forget. It was all
over now. The brute was not worth a tear of regret. She would show him!
Two weeks later John Vaughan stared into the ebony face of a negro who
had attached himself to his fortune somewhere in the revelry of the
night before. Washington was swarming with these foolish black children
who had come in thousands. They had no money and it had not occurred to
them that they would need any. Their food and clothes had always been
provided and they took no thought for the morrow.
John had forgotten the fact that he had taken the negro in his hack for
two hours and finally adopted him as his own.
He sat up, pressed his hand over his aching head and stared into the
grinning face:
"And what are you doing here, you imp of the devil?"
Julius laughed and rolled his eyes:
"I'se yo' man. Don't you min' takin' me up in de hack wid you las'
night?"
"What's your name?"
"Julius Cæsar, sah."
"Then it's all right! You're the man I'm looking for. You're the man
this country's looking for. You're a born fighter----"
"Na, sah, I'se er cook!"
"Sh! Say not so--we're going back to war!"
"All right, sah, I'se gwine wid you."
"I warn you, Julius Cæsar, don't do it unless you're in for a fight! I'm
going back to fight--to fight to kill. No more red tape and gold braid
for me. I'm going now into the jaws of hell. I'm going into the ranks as
a private."
"Don't make no difference ter me, sah, whar yer go. I'se gwine wid yer.
I kin look atter yer shoes an' cook yer sumfin' good ter eat."
"I warn you, Julius! When they find your torn and mangled body on the
field of Death, don't you sit up and blame me!"
"Don't yer worry, sah. Dey ain't gwine fin' me dar, an' ef dey do, dey
ain't gwine ter be nuttin' tore er mangled 'bout me, I see ter dat,
sah!"
Three weeks later Burnside's army received a stalwart recruit. Few
questions were asked. The ranks were melting.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE USURPER
The answer which the country gave the President's Proclamation of
Emancipation was a startling one, even to the patient, careful
far-seeing man of the people in the White House. For months he had
carried the immortal document in his pocket without even allowing his
Cabinet to know it had been written. He had patiently borne the abuse of
his party leaders and the fierce assaults of Horace Greeley until he
believed the time had come that he must strike this blow--a blow which
would rouse the South to desperation and unite his enemies in the North.
He had finally issued it with grave fears.
The results were graver than he could foresee. More than once he was
compelled to face the issue of its repeal as the only way to forestall a
counter revolution in the North.
Desertions from the army became appalling--the number reached frequently
as high as two hundred a day and the aggregate over eight thousand a
month. His Proclamation had provided for the enlistment of negroes as
soldiers. Not only did thousands of men refuse to continue to fight when
the issue of Slavery was injected, but other thousands felt that the
uniform of the Republic had been dishonored by placing it on the backs
of slaves. They refused to wear it longer, and deserted at the risk of
their lives.
The Proclamation had united the South and hopelessly divided the North.
How serious this Northern division was destined to become was the
problem now of a concern as deep as the size and efficiency of General
Lee's army.
The election of the new Congress would put his administration to a
supreme fight for existence. If the Democratic Party under its new
leader, Clay Van Alen of Ohio, should win it meant a hostile majority in
power whose edict could end the war and divide the Union. They had
already selected in secret George B. McClellan for their coming standard
bearer.
For the first time the question of Union or Disunion was squarely up to
the North in an election. And it came at an unlucky moment for the
President. The army in the West had ceased to win victories. The
Southern army under Lee was still defending Richmond as strongly as
ever.
There was no evading the issue at the polls. The Proclamation had
committed the President to the bold, far-reaching radical and aggressive
policy of the utter destruction of Slavery. The people were asked to
choose between Slavery on the one hand and nationality on the other. The
two together they could not again have.
The President had staked his life on his faith that the people could be
trusted on a square issue of right and wrong.
This time he had underestimated the force of blind passions which the
hell of war had raised.
Maine voted first and cut down her majority for the administration from
nineteen thousand to a bare four thousand. The fact was ominous.
Ohio spoke next and Van Alen's ticket against the administration swept
the State, returning fourteen Democrats and only five Republicans to
Congress.
Indiana, the State in which the President's mother slept, spoke in
thunder tones against him, sending eight Democrats and three
Republicans. Even the rockribbed Republican stronghold of Pennsylvania
was carried by the opposition by a majority of four thousand, reversing
Lincoln's former majority of sixty thousand.
In New York the brilliant Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was
elected Governor on a platform hostile to the administration by more
than ten thousand majority. New Jersey turned against him, Michigan
reduced his majority from twenty to six thousand. Wisconsin evenly
divided its delegates to Congress.
Illinois, the President's own State, gave the most crushing blow of all.
His big majority there was completely reversed and the Democrats carried
the State by over seventeen thousand and the Congressional delegates
stood eleven to three against him.
And then his Border State Policy, against which the leaders of his party
had raged in vain was vindicated in the most startling way. True to his
steadfast purpose to hold these States in the Union at all hazards, he
had not included them in his Emancipation Proclamation.
One of the reasons for which they had refused his offer of United States
bonds in payment for their slaves was they did not believe them worth
the paper they were written on. A war costing two million dollars a day
was sure to bankrupt the Nation before the end could be seen.
And yet because he had treated them with patience and fairness, with
justice and with generosity, the Border States and the new State of West
Virginia born of this policy, voted to sustain the President, saved his
administration from ruin and gave him another chance to fight for the
life of the Union.
It was a close shave. His working majority in Congress was reduced to a
narrow margin, the opposition was large, united and fierce in its
aggression, but he had been saved from annihilation.
The temper of the men elected to the Legislatures, both State and
National, in the great Northern States was astounding.
So serious was the situation in Indiana that Governor Morton hastened to
Washington to lay the crisis before the President.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you," the Governor began, "but we must face
it. The Democratic politicians of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois now called
to power assume that the rebellion will not be crushed----"
"And therefore?"
"That their interests are antagonistic to New England and in harmony
with the South. Another three months like the last six and we are lost,
sir--hopelessly lost!"
"Is it as bad as that Governor?" the sad even voice asked.
A smile flickered across the stern, fine face of the war Governor:
"If you think me a pessimist remember that Van Alen their leader, has
just presided over a Democratic jubilee meeting in Ohio which was swept
again and again by cheers for Jefferson Davis--curses and jeers for the
Abolitionists. His speech has been put in the form of a leaflet which is
being mailed in thousands to our soldiers at the front----"
"You know that to be a fact?" the President asked sharply.
"The fact is notorious, sir. It will be disputed by no one. The outlook
is black. Meeting after meeting is being held in Indiana demanding peace
at any price, with the recognition of the Southern Confederacy--and,
mark you, what is still more significant the formation of a Northwestern
Confederacy with its possible Capital at your home town of Springfield,
Illinois----"
"No, no!" the President groaned.
"Your last call for three hundred thousand volunteers," the Governor
went on, "as you well know was an utter failure. Only eighty-six
thousand men have been raised under it. I was compelled to use a draft
to secure the number I did in Indiana. It is useless to call for more
volunteers anywhere----"
"Then we'll have to use the draft," was the firm response.
"If we can enforce it!" the Governor warned. "A meeting has just been
held in my State in which resolutions were unanimously passed demanding
that the war cease, denouncing the attempt to use the power to draft
men, declaring that our volunteers had been induced to enter the army
under the false declaration that war was waged solely to maintain the
Constitution and to restore the Union----"
"And so it is!" the President interrupted.
"Until you issued your Proclamation, freeing the slaves----"
"But only as a war measure to weaken the South, give us the victory and
restore the Constitution!"
"They refuse to hear your interpretation; they make their own. Van Alen
boldly declares that ninety-nine men out of every hundred whom he
represents in Congress breathe no other prayer than to have an end of
this hellish war. When news of victory comes, there is no rejoicing.
When news of our defeat comes there is no sorrow----"
"Is that statement really true?" the sorrowful lips asked.
"Of the majority who elected him, yes. In the Northwest, distrust and
despair are strangling the hearts of the people. More and more we hear
the traitorous talk of arraying ourselves against New England and
forming a Confederacy of our own. More than two thousand six hundred
deserters have been arrested within a few weeks in Indiana. It generally
requires an armed detail. Most of the deserters, true to the oath of the
order of the Knights of the Golden Circle, desert with their arms----"
"Is it possible?"
"And in one case seventeen of these fortified themselves in a log cabin
with outside paling and ditch for protection, and were maintained by
their neighbors. Two hundred armed men in Rush County resisted the
arrest of deserters. I was compelled to send infantry by special train
to take their ringleaders. Southern Indiana is ripe for Revolution.
"I have positive information that the incoming Democratic Legislature of
my State is in quick touch with the ones gathering in Illinois and
Ohio. In Illinois, your own State, they have already drafted the
resolutions demanding an armistice and a convention of all the States to
agree to an adjustment of the war. It is certain to pass the Illinois
House.
"My own Legislature has put this resolution into a more daring and
dangerous form. They propose boldly and at once to acknowledge the
Southern Confederacy and demand that the Northwest dissolve all further
relations with New England. When they have passed this measure in
Indiana, they expect Ohio and Illinois to follow suit.
"Their secret order which covers my State with a network of lodges,
whose purpose is the withdrawal of the Northwestern States from the
Union, has obtained a foothold in the army camps inside the city of
Washington itself----"
The President rose with quick, nervous energy and paced the floor. He
stopped suddenly in front of Morton, his deep set eyes burning a steady
flame:
"And what do you propose?"
"I haven't decided yet. I have the best of reasons to believe that the
first thing my Legislature will do when it convenes is to pass a
resolution refusing to receive any message from me as Governor of the
State!"
"Will they dare?"
"I'm sure of it. It will be composed of men sworn to oppose to the
bitter end any prosecution of this war. They intend to recognize the
Southern Confederacy, and dissolve their own Federal relation with the
United States. It may be necessary, sir----" he paused and fixed the
President with compelling eyes, "---it may be necessary to suspend the
civil government in the North in order to save the Union!"
The President lifted his big hand in a gesture of despair:
"God save us from that!"
"I came here to tell you just this," the Governor gravely concluded. "If
the crisis comes and I must use force I expect you to back me----"
Two big rugged hands grasped the one outstretched:
"God bless you, Governor Morton,--we've got to save the Union, and we're
going to do it! Since the day I came into this office I have fought to
uphold the supremacy of the civil law. My enemies may force me to use
despotic powers to crush it for larger ends!----But I hope not. I hope
not. God knows I have no vain ambitions. I have no desire to use such
power----"
The Governor left him gazing dreamily over the river toward Virginia a
great new sorrow clouding his soul.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONSPIRACY
Lord Lyons, the British Minister, was using smooth words to the
Secretary of State. Mr. Seward, our wily snuff dipper, was fully his
equal in expressions of polite friendship. What he meant to say, of
course, was that he could plunge a poisoned dagger into the British Lion
with the utmost pleasure. What he said was:
"I am pleased to hear from your lordship the expressions of good will
from her Gracious Majesty's Government."
"I am sorry to say, however," the Minister hastened to add, "that the
Proclamation of Emancipation was not received by the best people of
England as favorably as we had hoped."
"And why not?" Seward politely asked.
"Seeing that it could have no effect in really freeing the slaves until
the South is conquered it appeared to be merely an attempt to excite a
servile insurrection."
The Secretary lifted his eyebrows, took another dip of snuff, and softly
inquired:
"And may I ask of your lordship whether this would not have been even
more true in the earlier days of the war than now?"
"Undoubtedly."
"And yet I understand that her Gracious Majesty's Government was cold
toward us because we had failed to take such high moral grounds at once
in the beginning of the war?"
His lordship lifted his hands in polite admission of the facts.
"The trouble you see is," he went on softly, "Europe begins to feel that
the division of sentiment in the North will prove a fatal weakness to
the administration in so grave a crisis. Unfortunately, from our point
of view, of course, your Government is a democracy, the sport of every
whim of the demagogue of the hour----"
Seward lifted his eyes with a quick look at his lordship and smiled:
"Allow me to reassure her Gracious Majesty's Government on that point
immediately. The administration will find means of preserving the
sovereign power the people have entrusted to it. For example, my lord, I
can touch the little bell on my right hand and order the arrest without
warrant of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the little bell on my left
hand and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power
on earth except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen
of Great Britain do as much?"
His lordship left apparently reassured.
The tinkle of the little bell on the desk of the Secretary of State
which had begun to fill the jails of the North with her leading
Democratic citizens did not have the same soothing effect on American
lawmakers, however. These arrests were made without warrant and the
victim held without charges, the right to bail or trial.
The President had dared to suspend the great _writ of habeas corpus_
which guaranteed to every freeman the right to meet his accuser in open
court and answer the charge against him.
The attitude of the bold aggressive opposition was voiced on the floor
of the House of Representatives in Washington in no uncertain language
by Daniel Voorhees of Indiana, in a speech whose passionate eloquence
was only equalled by its reckless daring.
"The present Executive of the Government," he declared, "has usurped the
powers of Law and Justice to an extent subversive of republican
institutions, and not to be borne by any free people. He has given
access to the vaults of prisons but not to the bar of justice. It is a
part of the nature of frail men to sin against laws, both human and
divine; but God Himself guarantees him a fair trial before punishment.
Tyrants alone repudiate the justice of the Almighty. To deny an accused
man the right to be heard in his own defense is an echo from the dark
ages of brutal despotism. We have in this the most atrocious tyranny
that ever feasted on the groans of a captive or banqueted on the tears
of the widow and the orphan.
"And yet on this spectacle of shame and horror American citizens now
gaze. The great bulwark of human liberty which generations in bloody
toil have built against the wicked exercise of unlawful power has been
torn away by a parricidal hand. Every man to-day from the proudest in
his mansion to the humblest in his cabin--all stand at the mercy of one
man, and the fawning minions who crouch before him for pay.
"We hear on every side the old cry of the courtier and the parasite. At
every new aggression, at every additional outrage, new advocates rise
to defend the source of patronage, wealth and fame--the department of
the Executive! Such assistance has always waited on the malignant
efforts of tyranny. Nero had his poet laureate, and Seneca wrote a
defense even for the murder of his mother. And this dark hour affords us
ample evidence that human nature is the same to-day as two thousand
years ago."
Such speeches could not be sent broadcast free of charge through the
mails without its effect on the minds of thousands. The great political
party in opposition to the administration was now arrayed in solid
phalanx against the war itself on whose prosecution the existence of the
Nation depended.
Again the Radical wing of his party demanded of the President the
impossible.
The Abolitionists had given a tardy and lukewarm support in return for
the issue of the Proclamation of Emancipation. Their support lasted but
a few days. Through their spokesman, Senator Winter, they demanded now
the whole loaf. They had received but half of their real program. They
asked for a policy of reconstruction in the parts of Louisiana and
Tennessee held by the Union army in accordance with their ideas. They
demanded the ballot for every slave, the confiscation of the property of
the white people of the South and its bestowment upon negroes and
camp-followers as fast as the Union army should penetrate into the
States in rebellion.
Senator Winter's argument was based on sound reasoning theoretically
whatever might be said of its wisdom as a National policy.
"Your Emancipation Proclamation," he declared to the President,
"provides for the arming and drilling of negro soldiers to fight for the
Republic. If they are good enough to fight they are good enough to vote.
The ballot is only another form of the bayonet which we use in time of
peace----"
"Correct, Senator," was the calm reply, "if we are to allow the negro
race to remain in America in physical contact with ours. But we are not
going to do this. No greater calamity could befall our people.
Colonization and separation must go hand in hand with the emancipation
of these children of Africa. I incorporated this principle in my act of
emancipation. I have set my life on the issue of its success. As a
matter of theory and abstract right we may grant the suffrage to a few
of the more intelligent negroes and the black soldiers we may enroll
until they can be removed----"
"Again we deal with a Southerner, Mr. President!" the Senator sneered.
"So be it," was the quiet answer. "I have never held any other views.
They were well known before the war. But two years before my election I
said in my debate with Douglas:
"'I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way,
the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes,
nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with white
people. I will say in addition to this that there is a physical
difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will
forever forbid the two living together on terms of social and political
equality."
"Yet," the Senator sneered, "you can change your mind. You said in your
Inaugural that you had no intention or right to interfere with the
institution of Slavery. You did so just the same."
"As an act of war to save the Union only. But mark you, I have always
hated Slavery from principle for the white man's sake as well as the
negro's. I am equally determined _on principle_ that the negro race
after it is free shall never be absorbed into our social or political
life!"
"You'll change your principles or retire to private life!" the old man
snapped.
"When I have saved the Union we shall see. Time will indicate the wisdom
of my position. I have no longer any ambition except to give the best
that's in me to my people."
The breach between the President and the most powerful leaders of his
own party was now complete. It was a difference that was fundamental and
irreconcilable. They asked him to extend the autocratic power he wielded
to preserve the Union in a time of war to a program of revenge and
proscription against the South as it should fall before the advancing
army. His answer was simple:
"Secession was void from the beginning. The South shall not be laid
waste as conquered territory when the Union is restored. They shall
return as our brethren to live with us in peace and good will with the
curse of Slavery lifted from them and their children. Nor will I permit
the absorption of this black blood into our racial stock to degrade our
National character. When free, the negro must return to his own."
With fierce, sullen determination the Radical wing of his party
organized a secret powerful conspiracy to drive Abraham Lincoln from
public life.
Behind this first line of attack stood the Democratic party with its
millions of loyal voters now united under George B. McClellan. The
Radicals and the Democrats hated each other with a passion second only
to their hatred of the President. They agreed to remove him first and
then settle their own differences.
CHAPTER XXV
THE TUG OF WAR
Betty Winter, having made up her mind to put John Vaughan out of her
life for all time, volunteered for field service as a nurse and by
permission of the President joined Burnside's army before
Fredericksburg.
The General had brought its effective fighting force to a hundred and
thirteen thousand. Lee's army confronted him on the other side of the
Rappahannock with seventy-five thousand men. A great battle was
impending.
Burnside had reluctantly assumed command. He was a gallant, genial,
cultured soldier, a gentleman of the highest type, a pure, unselfish
patriot with not a trace of vulgar ambition or self-seeking. He saw the
President hounded and badgered by his own party, assaulted and denounced
in the bitterest terms by the opposition, and he knew that the remedy
could be found only in a fighting, victorious army. A single decisive
victory would turn the tide of public opinion, unite the faction-ridden
army and thrill the Nation with enthusiasm.
He determined to fight at once and risk his fate as a commander on the
issue of victory or defeat. His council of war had voted against an
attack on Lee's army in Fredericksburg. Burnside brushed their decision
aside as part of the quarrel McClellan has left. Even the men in the
ranks were fighting each other daily in these miserable bickerings and
intrigues. A victory was the remedy for their troubles, and he made up
his mind to fight for it.
The General received Betty with the greatest courtesy:
"You're more than welcome at this moment, Miss Winter. The surgeons
won't let you in some of their field hospitals. But there's work to be
done preparing our corps for the battle we're going to fight. You'll
have plenty to do."
"Thank you, General," she gravely answered.
Burnside read for the second time the gracious letter from the President
which Betty presented.
"You're evidently pretty strong with this administration, Miss Betty,"
he remarked.
"Yes. The patience and wisdom of the President is a hobby of mine."
"Then I'll ask you to review the army with me. You can report to him."
Within an hour they were passing in serried lines before the Commander.
Betty watched them march with a thrill of patriotic pride, a hundred and
thirteen thousand men, their dark blue uniforms pouring past like the
waters of a mighty river, the December sun gleaming on their polished
bayonets as on so many icicles flashing on its surface.
Her heart suddenly stood still. There before her marched John Vaughan in
the outer line of a regiment, his eyes straight in front, looking
neither to the right nor the left. He was a private in the ranks, clean
and sober, his face rugged, strong and sun-tanned.
For a moment there was a battle inside that tested her strength. He had
not seen her and was oblivious of her existence apparently. But she had
noted the regiment under whose flag he marched. It would be easy to find
him if she wished.
When the first moment of love-sickness and utter longing passed, she had
no desire to see him. The dead could bury its dead. Her love was a thing
of the past. The cruel thing in this man's nature she had seen the first
day was there still. She saw it with a shudder in his red, half-drunken
eyes the day they met in Washington, saw it so plainly, so glaringly,
the memory of it could never fade. He was sober and in his right mind
now, his cheeks bronzed with the new life of sunshine and open air the
army had given. The thing was still there. It spoke in the brute
strength of his powerful body as his marching feet struck the ground, in
the iron look about his broad shoulders, the careless strength with
which he carried his musket as if it were a feather, and above all in
the hard cold glint from his shining eyes set straight in front.
She lay awake for hours on the little white cot at the headquarters of
the ambulance corps reviewing her life and dropped to sleep at last with
a deep sense of gratitude to God that she was free, and could give
herself in unselfish devotion to her country. Her last waking thoughts
were of Ned Vaughan and the sweet, foolish worship he had laid at her
feet. She wondered vaguely if he were in those grey lines beyond the
river. Ned Vaughan was there this time--back with his regiment.
Lee, Jackson and Longstreet had known for days that a battle was
imminent. Their scouts from over the river had brought positive
information. The Confederate leaders had already planned the conflict.
Their battle lines circled the hills beyond Fredericksburg, spread out
in a crescent, five miles long. Nature had piled these five miles of
hills around Fredericksburg as if to build an impregnable fortress. On
every crest, concealed behind trees and bushes, the Confederate
artillery was in place--its guns trained to sweep the wide plain with a
double cross fire, besides sending a storm of shot and shell straight
from the centre. Sixty thousand matchless grey infantry crouched among
those bushes and lay beside stone walls, in sunken roadways or newly
turned trenches.
The great fan-shaped death-trap had been carefully planned and set by a
master mind. Only a handful of sharpshooters and a few pieces of
artillery had been left in Fredericksburg to dispute the passage of the
river and deceive Burnside with a pretense of defending the town.
The Confederate soldier was ragged and his shoes were tied together with
strings. His uniform consisted of an old hat or cap usually without a
brim, a shirt of striped bed-ticking so brown it seemed woven of the
grass. The buttons were of discolored cow's horn. His coat was the color
of Virginia dust and mud, and it was out at the elbow. His socks were
home-made, knit by loving hands swift and tender in their endless work
of love. The socks were the best things he had.
The one spotless thing about him was his musket and the bayonet he
carried at his side. His spirits were high.
A barefooted soldier had managed to get home and secure a pair of boots.
He started back to his regiment hurrying to be on time for the fight.
The new boots hurt him so terribly he couldn't wear them. He passed
Ned's regiment with his precious footgear hanging on his arm.
"Hello, Sonny, what command?" Ned cried.
"Company E, 12th Virginia, Mahone's brigade!" he proudly answered.
"Yes, damn you," a soldier drawled from the grass, "and you've pulled
your boots off, holdin' 'em in yer hand, ready to run now!"
The laugh ran along the line and the boy hurried on to escape the chaff.
A well-known chaplain rode along a narrow path on the hillside. He was
mounted on an old horse whose hip bones protruded like two deadly fangs.
A footsore Confederate was hobbling as fast as he could in front of him,
glancing back over his shoulder now and then uneasily.
"You needn't be afraid, my friend," the parson called, "I'm not going to
run over you."
"I know you ain't," the soldier laughed, "but ef I wuz ter let you pass
me, and that thing wuz ter wobble I'll be doggoned ef I wouldn't be
gored ter death!"
The preacher reined his steed in with dignity and spoke with wounded
pride:
"My friend, this is a better horse than our Lord rode into Jerusalem
on!"
The soldier stepped up quickly, opened the animal's mouth and grinned:
"Parson, that's the very same horse!"
A shout rose from the hill in which the preacher joined.
"Dod bam it, did ye ever hear the beat o' that!" shouted a pious fellow
who was inventing cuss words that would pass the charge of profanity.
A distinguished citizen of Fredericksburg passed along the lines wearing
a tall new silk hat. He didn't get very far before he changed his line
of march. A regular fusillade poured on him from the ranks.
"Say, man, is dat a hat er a bee gum?"
"Come down now!"
"Come down outen that hat an' help us with these Yanks!"
"Come down I say--I know you're up there for I can see your legs!"
When the silk hat vanished, a solemn country boy with slight knowledge
of books began to discuss the great mysteries of eternity.
Ned had won his unbounded faith and admiration by spelling at the
first trial the name of his native village in the Valley of
Virginia--McGaheysville. Tom held this fact to be a marvellous
intellectual achievement.
"What I want to know, Ned, is this," he drawled, "who started sin in
this world, anyhow? What makes a good thing good and what makes a bad
thing bad, and who said so first?"
"That's what I'd like to know myself, Tom," Ned gravely answered.
"An' ye don't know?"
"I certainly do not."
"I don't see why any man that can spell like you don't know everything."
He paused, picked up a pebble and threw it at a comrade's foot and
laughed to see him jump as from a Minie ball.
"You know, Ned," he went on slowly, "what I think is the prettiest piece
of poetry?"
"No--what?"
"Hit's this:
"'The men of high condition
That rule affairs of State;
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.'"
"Pretty good, Tom," was the quick reply, "but I think I can beat it with
something more hopeful. I got it in Sunday School out in Missouri:
"'The sword and spear, of needless worth,
Shall prune the tree and plough the earth;
And Peace shall smile from shore to shore
And Nations learn to war no more.'"
The country boy's eyes gleamed with eager approval. He had fought for
nearly two years and the glory of war was beginning to lose its glamour.
"Say that again, Ned," he pleaded. "Say it again! That's the prettiest
thing I ever heard in my life!"
He was silent a moment:
"Yes, I used to think it would be glorious to hear the thunder of guns
and the shriek of shells. I've changed my mind. When I hear one of 'em
comin' now, I begin to sing to myself the old-fashioned tune I used to
hear in the revivals:
"'Hark from the tomb a doleful sound!
'My thoughts in dreadful subjects roll damnation and the dead----'
"I've an idea we're going to sing some o' them old songs on this field
pretty soon."
Again Ned thought of John and offered a silent prayer that he might not
be in those blue lines that were going to charge into the jaws which
Death had opened for them in the valley below.
John Vaughan in his tent beyond the Rappahannock was wasting no energy
worrying about the coming battle. Death had ceased to be a matter of
personal concern. He had seen so many dead and wounded men as he had
ridden over battlefields he had come to take them as a matter of course.
He was going into action now for the first time in the ranks as a
private soldier and he would see things happen at closer range--that was
all. He wished to see them that way. He had reached the point of utter
indifference to personal danger and it brought a new consciousness of
strength that was inspiring. He had stopped dreaming of the happiness of
love after the exhibition he had made of himself before Betty Winter and
the brutal insult with which he met her advances. Some girls might
forgive it, but not this proud, sensitive, high strung daughter of the
snows of New England and the sunlight of France. And so he had
resolutely put the thought out of his heart.
Julius had proven himself a valuable servant. He was the best cook in
the regiment, and what was still more important, he was the most
skillful thief and the most plausible liar in the army. He could defend
himself so nobly from the insinuations of the suspicious that they would
apologize for the wrong unwittingly done his character. John had not
lived so well since he could remember.
"Julius, you're a handy man in war!" he exclaimed after a hearty supper
on fried chicken.
"Yassah--I manage ter git 'long, sah."
Julius took up his banjo and began to tune it for an accompaniment to
his songs. He had a mellow rhythmical voice that always brought the
crowd. He began with his favorite that never failed to please his
master. The way he rolled his eyes and sang with his hands and feet and
every muscle of his body was the source of unending interest to his
Northern audience.
He ran his fingers lightly over the strings and the men threw down their
dirty packs of cards and crowded around John's tent. Julius only sang
one line at a time and picked his banjo between them to a low wailing
sound of his own invention:
"O! far' you well, my Mary Ann;
Far' you well, my dear!
I've no one left to love me now
And little do I care----"
He paused between the stanzas and picked his banjo to a few prose
interpolations of his own.
"Dat's what I'm a tellin' ye now, folks--little do I care!"
He knew his master had been crossed in love and he rolled his eyes and
nodded his woolly head in triumphant approval. John smiled wanly as he
drifted slowly into his next stanza.
"An' ef I had a scoldin' wife
I'd whip her sho's yer born,
I'd take her down to New Orleans
An' trade her off fer corn----"
Julius stopped with a sudden snap and whispered to John:
"Lordy, sah, I clean fergit 'bout dat meetin' at de cullud folks'
church, sah, dat dey start up. I promise de preacher ter fetch you,
sah--An' ef we gwine ter march ter-morrow, dis here's de las' night
sho----"
The concert was adjourned to the log house which an old colored preacher
had converted into a church. It was filled to its capacity and John
stood in the doorway and heard the most remarkable sermon to which he
had ever listened.
The grey-haired old negro was tremendously in earnest. He could neither
read nor write but he opened the Bible to comply with the formalities of
the occasion and pretended to read his text. He had taken it from his
master who was a clergyman. Ephraim invariably chose the same texts but
gave his people his own interpretation. It never failed in some element
of originality.
The text his master had evidently chosen last were the words:
"And he healeth them of divers diseases."
Old Ephraim's version was a free one. From the open Bible he solemnly
read:
"An' he healed 'em of all sorts o' diseases an' even er dat wust o'
complaints called de Divers!"
He plunged straight into a fervent exhortation to sinners to flee from
the Divers.
"I'm gwine ter tell ye now, chillun," he exclaimed with uplifted arms,
"ye don't know nuttin' 'bout no terrible diseases till dat wust er all
called de Divers git ye! An' hit's a comin' I tell ye. Hit's gwine ter
git ye, too. Ye can flee ter the mountain top, an' hit'll dive right up
froo de air an' git ye dar. Ye kin go down inter de bowels er de yearth
an' hit'll dive right down dar atter ye. Ye kin take de wings er de
mornin' an' fly ter de ends er de yearth--an' de Divers is dar. Dey kin
dive anywhar!
"An' what ye gwine ter do when dey git ye? I axe ye dat now? What ye
gwine ter do when hit's forever an' eternally too late? Dese doctors
roun' here kin cure ye o' de whoopin'-cough--mebbe--I hain't nebber seed
'em eben do dat--but I say, mebbe. Dey kin cure ye o' de measles, mebbe.
Er de plumbago or de typhoid er de yaller fever sometimes. But I warns
ye now ter flee de wrath dat's ter come when dem Divers git ye! Dey
ain't no doctor no good fer dat nowhar--exceptin' ye come ter de Lord.
For He heal 'em er all sorts er diseases an' de wust er all de
complaints called de Divers!
"Come, humble sinners, in whose breast er thousand thoughts revolve!"
John Vaughan turned away with a smile and a tear.
"In God's name," he murmured thoughtfully, "what's to become of these
four million black children of the tropic jungles if we win now and set
them free! Their fathers and mothers were but yesterday eating human
flesh in naked savagery."
He walked slowly back to his tent through the solemn starlit night. The
new moon, a silver thread, hung over the tree tops. He thought of that
dusky grey-haired child of four thousand years of ignorance and
helplessness and the tragic role he had played in the history of our
people. And for the first time faced the question of the still more
tragic role he might play in the future.
"I'm fighting to free him and the millions like him," he mused. "What am
I going to do with him?"
The longer he thought the blacker and more insoluble became this
question, and yet he was going into battle to-morrow to fight his own
brother to the death on this issue. True the problem of national
existence was at stake, but this black problem of the possible
degradation of our racial stock and our national character still lay
back of it unsolved and possibly insoluble.
The red flash of a picket's gun on the shore of the river and the quick
answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before
the sterner fact of the swiftly approaching battle.
He snatched but a few hours sleep before his regiment was up and on the
march to the water's edge. A dense grey fog hung over the river and
obscured the town. The bridge builders swung their pontoons into the
water and soon the sound of timbers falling into place could be heard
with the splash of the anchors and the low quick commands of the
officers.
The grey sharpshooters, concealed on the other shore, began to fire
across the water through the fog. The sound was strangely magnified. The
single crack of a musket seemed as loud as a cannon.
The work went quickly. The bullets flew wide of the mark. The fog
suddenly lifted and a steady fusillade from the men hidden in the hills
of Fredericksburg began to pick off the bridge builders with cruel
accuracy. At times every man was down. New men were rushed to take their
places and they fell.
The signal was given to the artillery and a hundred and forty-seven
great guns suddenly began to sweep the doomed town. Houses crumpled like
egg-shells and fires began to blaze.
The sharpshooters fell back. The bridges were laid and the grand army of
a hundred and thirteen thousand began to pour across. The caissons, with
their huge black, rifled-barrel guns rumbling along the resounding
boards in a continuous roar like distant thunder.
On the southern shore the deep mud cut hills put every team to the test
of its strength and the utmost skill of their drivers. Hundreds of men
were in the mud at the wheels and still they would stick.
And then the patient heavens above heard the voices of army teamsters in
plain and ornamental swearing! Such profanity was probably never heard
on this earth before and it may well be hoped will not be heard again.
The driver whose wheels had stuck, cracked his whip first and yelled. He
yelled again and cracked his whip. And then he began to swear, loudly,
and angrily at first and then in lower, steadier, more polite terms--but
always in an unending nerve-racking torrent.
He cursed his mules individually by name and the whole team
collectively, and consigned it to the lowest depth of the deepest hell
and then the devil for not providing a deeper one. Each trait of each
mule, good and bad, he named without fear or favor and damned each alike
with equal emphasis. He named each part of each mule's anatomy and
damned it individually and as a whole, with full bill of particulars.
He swore in every key in the whole gamut of sound and last of all he
damned himself for his utter inability to express anything he really
felt.
The last big gun up the hill and the infantry poured into the town of
Fredericksburg, halting in regiments and brigades in its streets. Only a
few shots had been exchanged with the men in grey. They had withdrawn to
the heights a mile beyond. The assault had been a mere parade. Many of
the inhabitants had fled in terror at the approach of the men in blue.
Some of the lower types of soldiers in the Northern army broke into
these deserted houses and began to rob and pillage.
Julius "found" many delicacies lying about on lawns and in various
unheard-of places. His master never pressed him with rude questions when
his zeal bore such good results for their table.
Ned Vaughan had been very much amused at an old woman who had been
driven from her home by marauders. She had piled such goods and chattels
as she could handle into an ox cart and drove past the grey battle
lines, hurrying as fast as she could Southward. Her wrinkled old face
beamed with joy at the sight of their burnished muskets and her eyes
flashed with the gleam of an Amazon as she shouted:
"Give it to the damned rascals, boys! Give 'em one fer me--one fer me
and don't you forget it!"
Far down the line she could be heard delivering her fierce exhortation.
The men smiled and answered her good-naturedly. The day of wrath and
death had dawned. It was too solemn an hour for boastful words.
For two days the grand army in blue poured across the river and spread
out through the town of Fredericksburg. The fateful morning of the 13th
of December, 1862, dawned in another heavy fog. Its grey mantle of
mystery shrouded the town, clung wet and heavy to the ground in the
silent valley before the crescent-shaped hills and veiled the face of
their heights.
Under the cover of this fog the long waves of blue spread out in the
edge of the valley and took their places in battle line. The grey men in
the brown grass on the hills crouched behind their ditches and stone
walls, gripped their guns and waited for the foe to walk into the trap
their commanders had set.
An unseen hand slowly lifted the misty curtain and the sun burst on the
scene. The valley lay like the smooth ground of some vast arena prepared
for a pageant and back of it rose the silent hills, tier on tier like
the seats of a mighty amphitheatre. But the men crouching on those seats
were not spectators--they were the grimmest actors in the tragedy.
For a moment it was a spectacle merely--the grandest display of the
pageantry of war ever made on a field of death.
Franklin's division suddenly wheeled into position for its united
assault on the right.
Ned Vaughan, from his lair on the hill, could see the officers in their
magnificent new uniforms, their swords flashing as they led their men. A
hundred thousand bayonets were gleaming in the sparkling December sun.
Magnificent horses in rich tasselled trappings were plunging and
prancing with the excitement of marching hosts, some of them keeping
time to the throb of regimental bands.
The bands were playing now, all of them, a band for every thousand men,
the shrill scream of their bugles and the roar of their drums sending a
mighty chorus into the heavens that echoed ominously against the silent
hills.
And flags, flags, flags, were streaming in billowy waves of red, white
and blue, as far as the eye could reach!
"Isn't that pretty, boys!" Ned sighed admiringly.
Tom lifted his solemn eyes from the grass.
"Lord, Lord, look at them new warm clothes, an' my elbows a-freezin' in
this cold wind!"
"Ain't it a picture?"
"What a pity to spile it!"
A ripple of admiration ran along the crouching lines as fingers softly
felt for the triggers of their guns.
A quick order from John Vaughan's Colonel sent their battery of
artillery rattling and bounding into position. The cannoneers sprang to
their mounts. A handsome young fellow missed his foothold and fell
beneath the wheels. The big iron tire crushed his neck and the blood
from his mouth splashed into John's face. The men on the guns didn't
turn their heads to look back. Their eyes were searching the brown hills
before them.
The long roll beat from a thousand drums, the call of the buglers rang
over the valley--and then the strange, solemn silence that comes before
the shock--the moment when cowards collapse and the brave falter.
John Vaughan's soul rose in a fierce challenge to fate. If he died it
was well; if he lived it was the same. He had ceased to care.
At exactly eight-thirty, General Meade hurled his division, supported by
Doubleday and Gibbon, against Jackson's weakest point, the right of the
Confederate lines. Their aim was to seize an opposing hill. The curving
lines of grey were silent until the charging hosts were well advanced in
deadly range and then the brown hills flamed and roared in front and on
their flanks.
The blue lines were mowed down in swaths as though the giant figure of
Death had suddenly swung his scythe from the fog banks in the sky.
Again and again came those awful volleys of musketry and artillery
cross-firing on the rushing lines. The men staggered and recovered,
reformed and charged again over the dead bodies of their comrades
carrying the crest for a moment. They captured a flag and a handful of
prisoners only to be driven back down the hill with losses more
frightful in retreat than when they breasted the storm.
In the centre the tragedy was repeated with results even more terrible.
As the charging lines fell back, staggering, bleeding and cut to pieces,
fresh brigades threw down their knapsacks, fixed their bayonets and
charged through their own melting ranks into the jaws of Death to fall
back in their turn.
With a mighty shout the blue line swept across the railroad, took the
ditches at the point of the bayonet and captured two hundred grey
prisoners. But only for a moment. From the supporting line rang the
rebel yell and they were hurled back, shattered and cut to pieces.
These retreats were veritable shambles of slaughter. The curved lines on
the hills raking them with their deadly accurate cross-fire.
John Vaughan's regiment leaped to the support of the falling blue waves.
A wounded soldier had propped himself against a stone and smiled as the
cheering men swept by. He could rest a while now.
A battery of artillery suddenly blazed from the hill-crest and his
Colonel threw his command flat on their stomachs until the storm should
slacken. John heard the shrill deadly swish of the big shots passing two
feet above.
He lifted his eyes to the hill and a frightened pigeon suddenly swooped
straight down toward his head. He ducked quickly, sure he had escaped a
cannon ball until the laugh of the man at his side told of his mistake.
They rose to charge. The knapsack of the man who had laughed was struck
by a ball and a deck of cards sent flying ten feet in the air.
"Deal me a winning hand!" John shouted.
A shot cut the sword belt of the first lieutenant, left him uninjured,
glanced and killed the captain. The lieutenant picked up his sword, took
his captain's place and led the charge.
Men were falling on the right and left and John Vaughan loaded and fired
with steady, dogged nerve without a scratch.
Four times the blue billows had dashed against the hills only to fall
back in red confusion. The din and roar were indescribable. The
color-bearer of the regiment confused by conflicting orders paused and
asked for instructions. The Colonel, mistaking his act for retreat,
tore the colors from his hand and gave them to another man. The boy
burst into tears. The new color-bearer had scarcely lifted the flag
above his head when he fell. The disgraced soldier snatched the
tottering flagstaff and, lifting it on high, dashed up the hill ahead of
his line of battle.
The men were ducking their heads low beneath the fierce hail of lead and
staggering blindly.
John saw this boy waving his flag and shaking his fist back at the
halting line. He was not a hundred feet from the Confederate trenches.
"Come on there!" he shouted. "Damn it, what's the matter with you?"
Ned Vaughan and his grey men behind the little mound of red dirt were
watching this drama with flashing eyes. Beside him crouched a boy whose
early piety had marked him for the ministry. But he had wandered from
the fold in the stress of army life. Ned heard his voice now in low,
eager prayer:
"O Lord, drive 'em back! Drive 'em back, O Lord!"
He fired his musket down the hill and prayed harder:
"Lord, drive 'em back! I've sinned and come short, but drive 'em, O
Lord!"
He paused and whispered to Ned as he reached for another cartridge:
"Are they comin' or goin'?"
"Coming!"
Again he prayed with fervor:
"Drive 'em back, Lord Goddermighty, we're weak and you're strong--help
us now! Drive 'em--just this time, O Lord, and you can have me--I'll be
good!"
He paused for breath and turned to Ned:
"Now look!--Comin' or goin'?"
"That follow with the flag cussin' the men has dropped----"
"Thank God!"
"Another's lifted it----"
"Lord, save us!"
"Why don't you lie down, ye damn fool," Tom shouted. "I'm huggin' the
ground so close now I don't want a piece of paper under me, and if
there's got to be a piece I don't want no writin' on it!"
"Now look, are they comin'?" the pious boy gasped.
Ned made no answer. His wide set eyes were staring at the man who had
caught that color-bearer in his arms and was carrying him to the rear.
It was John Vaughan!
His lips were moving now in silent prayer and his sword hung limp in his
hands.
Through chattering teeth he cried:
"Don't shoot that fellow carrying his friend down the hill, boys!"
"They're runnin' now?" the pious one asked.
"It isn't war--it's a massacre!" Ned sighed.
The man of prayer leaped on the ditch bank suddenly and shook his fist
defiantly.
"Come back here, you damned cowards!" he yelled. "Come back and we'll
whip hell out o' you!"
Slowly the shattered regiment fell back down the bloody slope, stumbling
over their dead and wounded. The dim smoke-bound valley was a slaughter
pen. Where magnificent lines of blue had marched with flashing bayonets
and streaming banners at eight o'clock, the dead lay in mangled heaps,
and the wounded huddled among them slowly freezing to death.
John saw a magnificent gun a heap of junk with four dead horses and
every cannoneer on the ground dead or freezing where they fell. A single
shell had done the work. Riderless horses galloped wildly over the
field, shying at the grim piles of dark blue bodies, sniffing the blood
and neighing pitifully.
Twelve hundred men in his regiment had charged up that hill. But two
hundred and fifty came down.
From the steeple of the Court House in Fredericksburg General Couch, in
command of the Second Corps, stood with his glasses on this frightful
scene. He whispered to Howard by his side:
"The whole plain is covered with our men fallen and falling--I've never
seen anything like it!"
He paused, his lips quivering as he gasped:
"O my God! see them falling--poor fellows, falling--falling!"
He signalled Burnside for reinforcements.
General Sumner's division on the Union right had charged into the
deadliest trap of all.
Down the road toward the foot of Marye's Heights his magnificent army
swept at double quick. The Confederate batteries had been specially
trained to rake this road from three directions, right, and left flank
and centre.
Steadily, stoically the men in blue pressed into this narrow way in
silence and met the flaming torrent from three directions. Rushing on
over the bodies of their fallen comrades the thinning ranks reached the
old stone wall at the foot of the hill. General Cobb lay concealed
behind it with three thousand infantry. The low quick order ran along
his line:
"Fire!"
Straight into the faces of the heroic Union soldiers flashed a level
blinding flame from three thousand muskets, slaying, crushing, tearing
to pieces the proud army of an hour ago. A thousand men in blue fell in
five minutes. The ground was piled with their bodies until it was
impossible to charge over them effectively.
For a moment a cloud of smoke pitifully drew a soft grey veil over the
awful scene while the men who were left fell back in straggling broken
groups.
Five times the Union hosts had charged those terrible brown hills and
five times they had been rolled back in red waves of blood.
Late in the day a fierce bitter wind was blowing from the north. There
was yet time to turn defeat into victory. The desperate Union Commander
ordered the sixth charge.
The men in blue pulled their hats down low as if to shut out the pelting
hail of lead and iron and without a murmur charged once more into the
mouth of hell. The winds had frozen stiff the bodies of their dead. The
advancing blue lines snatched these dead men from the ground, carried
them in front, stacked them in long piles for bulwarks, and fought
behind them with the desperation of madmen. There was no escape. The
keen eyes of the Confederate Commanders had planted their right and left
flanking lines to pour death into these ranks no matter how high their
corpses were piled. The crescent hill blazed and roared with unceasing
fury. Only the darkness was kind at last.
And then the men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their comrades
along the outer battle line as dummy sentinels, and under cover of the
night began to slip back through Fredericksburg and across the silver
mirror of the Rappahannock to their old camp, shattered, broken,
crushed.
It was four o'clock in the morning before John Vaughan's regiment would
give up the search for their desperately wounded. Only the strongest
could endure that bitter cold. Through the long, desolate hours the
pitiful cries of the wounded men rang through the black, freezing night,
and few hands stirred to save them. A great army was fighting to save
its flags and guns and reach the shelter beyond the river.
Amid the few flickering lanterns could be heard the greetings of friends
in subdued tones as they clasped hands:
"Is that you, old boy?"
"God bless you--yes--I'm glad to see you!"
A dying man in blue was pitifully calling for water somewhere, in the
darkness in front of Ned Vaughan's ditch. He took his canteen, got a
lantern and went to find him. It might be John. If not, no matter, he
was some other fellow's brother.
As the light fell on his drawn face Ned murmured:
"Thank God!"
He pressed the canteen to his lips and held his head in his lap. It was
only too plain from the steel look out of the eyes that his minutes were
numbered. He moved and turned his dying face up to Ned:
"Why is it you always whip us, Johnny?"
He paused for breath:
"I wonder--every battle I've been in we've been defeated--why--why--why,
O God, why----"
His head drooped and he was still.
Ned wondered if some waiting loved one on the shores of eternity had
given him the answer. He wrapped him tenderly in his blanket and left
him at rest at last.
As he turned toward his lines the unmistakable wail of a baby came
faintly through the darkness--a wee voice, the half smothered cry
sounding as if it were nestling in a mother's arms. He followed the
sound until his lantern flashed in the wild eyes of a young woman who
had fled from her home in terror during the battle and was hugging her
baby frantically in her arms.
Ned led her gently to an officer's quarters and made her comfortable.
The glory of war was fast fading from his imagination. A grim spectre
was slowly taking its place.
John's shattered regiment lay down on the field with the rear guard at
four o'clock to snatch an hour's sleep, their heads pillowed on the
bodies of the dead. The cold moderated and a light mantle of snow fell
softly just before day and covered the field, the living and the dead.
When the reveille sounded at dawn, the bugler looked with awe at the
thousands of white shrouded figures and wondered which would stir at his
note. The living slowly rose as from the dead and shook their white
shrouds. Thousands lay still, cold and immovable to await the
archangel's mightier call at the last.
Beyond the river, through the long night, Burnside, wild with anguish,
had paced the floor of his tent. Again and again he threw his arms in a
gesture of despair toward the freezing blood-stained field:
"Oh, those men--those men over there! I'm thinking of them all the
time----"
As the rear guard turned from the field at sunrise, John Vaughan looked
back across the valley of Death and saw the ragged brown and grey
figures shivering in the cold, as they swarmed down from the hills and
began to shake the frost from the new, warm clothes they were stripping
from the dead.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE REST HOUR
For two terrible days and nights Betty Winter saw the endless line of
ambulances creep from the field of Fredericksburg. Some of these men lay
on the frozen ground for forty-eight hours before relief came. Many of
the wounded might have lived but for the frightful exposure to cold
which followed the battle. They died in hundreds.
Thousands were placed on the train for Washington and so great was the
pitiful suffering among them Betty left with the first load. There would
be more work in the hospitals there than in Burnside's camp. It would be
many a day before his shattered army could be ready again to give
battle.
The worst trouble with it was not the bleeding gap torn through its
ranks by Lee's shot and shell. Not only was its body wounded, its soul
was crushed. Its commanding generals were divided into warring factions,
the rank and file of its stern fighting men discouraged.
Again an epidemic of desertions broke out and ten thousand men were lost
in a single month.
Burnside assumed the full responsibility for the disaster and asked to
be relieved of his command. The third Union General had gone down before
Lee--McClellan, Pope and Burnside.
The President, heartsick but undismayed, called to the head of the army
the most promising general in sight, Joseph Hooker, popularly known as
"Fighting Joe Hooker." There was inspiration to the thoughtless in the
name, yet the Chief had misgivings.
On sending him the appointment he wrote his new general a remarkable
letter:
"GENERAL:
"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of
course, I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient
reasons; and yet I think it best for you to know that there are
some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
"I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier--which of course
I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your
profession--in which you are right. You have confidence in
yourself--which is a valuable if not indispensable quality. You are
ambitious--which within reasonable bounds does good rather than
harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the
army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as
much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country,
and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer.
"I have heard in such a way as to believe of you recently saying
that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course
it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I gave you the
command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up as
dictators.
"What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the
dictatorship.
"The Government will support you to the utmost of its
ability--which is neither more nor less than it has done and will
do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have
aided to infuse into the army of criticising their commander and
withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall
assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor
Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army
while such a spirit prevails in it.
"And now beware of rashness--but with energy and sleepless
vigilance go forward and give us victories."
While Hooker lay in winter quarters reorganizing his army his picket
lines in speaking distance with those of his opponent across the river,
the President bent his strong shoulders to the task of cheering the
fainting spirits of the people. On his shaggy head was heaped the blame
of all the sorrows, the failures and the agony of the ever deepening
tragedy of war. Deeper and deeper into his rugged kindly face were cut
the lines of life and death, and darker grew the shadows through which
his sensitive lonely soul was called to walk.
And yet, through it all, there glowed with stronger radiance the charm
of his quaint genius and his magnetic personality--tragic, homely,
gentle, humorous, honest, merciful, wise, laughable and lovable.
He found time to run down to Hampton Roads with Gideon Welles, his loyal
Secretary of the Navy, to inspect the ships assembled there. He saw a
narrow door bound with iron.
"What is that?" he asked sharply.
"Oh, that is the sweat box," the Secretary replied, "used for
insubordinate seamen----"
"Oh," the rugged giant exclaimed, "how do you work it?"
"The man to be punished is put inside and steam heat is turned on. It
brings him to terms quickly."
The tall figure bent curiously examining the contrivance:
"And we apply this to thousands of brave American seamen every year?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Let me try it and see what it's like."
It was useless to protest. He had already taken off his tall silk hat
and there was a look of quiet determination in his hazel-grey eyes.
He stepped quickly into the enclosure, which he found to be about three
feet in length and about the same in width. His tall figure of six feet
four was practically telescoped.
"Close your door now and turn on the steam," he ordered. "I'll give you
the signal when I've had enough."
The door was closed and the steam turned on.
He stood it three minutes and gave the signal of release.
He stepped out, stretched his long legs, and breathed deeply. He mopped
his brow and there was fire in his sombre eyes as he turned to Welles:
"Mr. Secretary, I want every one of those things dumped into the sea.
Never again allow it to be found on a vessel flying the American flag!"
In an hour every sailor in the harbor had heard the news. The old salts
who had felt its shame and agony lifted their caps and stood with bared
heads, cheering and crying as he passed.
One by one, every country of Europe heard the news and the sweat box
ceased to be an instrument of discipline on every sea of the civilized
world.
Seated at his desk in the White House, he received daily the great and
the humble, and no man or woman came and left without a patient hearing.
There were over thirty thousand cases of trial and condemnations by
court-martial every year now--only a small portion with the death
penalty attached--but all had the right to appeal. They were not slow in
finding the road to the loving heart.
Stanton, worn out by vain protests against his pardons, sent Attorney
General Bates at last.
The great lawyer was very stern as he faced his Chief:
"I regret to say it, Mr. President, but you are not fit to be trusted
with the pardoning power, sir!"
A smile played about the corner of the big kindly mouth as he glanced
over his spectacles at his Attorney General:
"It's my private opinion, Bates, that you're just as pigeon-hearted as I
am!"
Judge Advocate General Holt was sent to labor with him and insist that
he enforce the law imposing the death penalty.
"Your reasons are good, Holt," he answered kindly, "but I can't promise
to do it. You see, so many of my boys have to be shot anyhow. I don't
want to add another one to that lot if I can help it----"
He paused and went on whimsically:
"I don't see how it's going to make a man better to shoot him,
anyhow--give them another trial."
In spite of all Holt's protests he steadfastly refused to sanction any
death warrant against a man for cowardice under fire. "Many a man," he
calmly argued, "who honestly tries to do his duty is overcome by fear
greater than his will--I'm not at all sure how I'd act if Minie balls
were whistling and those big shells shrieking in my ears. How can a poor
man help it if his legs just carry him away?"
All these he marked "leg cases," put them in a separate pigeon hole and
always suspended their sentence.
He would smile gently as he filed each death warrant away:
"It would frighten that poor devil too terribly to shoot him. They
shan't do it."
On one he wrote:
"Let him fight again--maybe the enemy will shoot him--I won't."
Betty Winter came with two cases. The first was a mother to plead for
her boy sentenced to die for sleeping at his post on guard.
"You see, sir," the mother pleaded, "he'd been on watch once that night
and had done his duty faithfully. He volunteered to take a sick
comrade's place. He was so tired he fell asleep. He was always a
big-hearted, generous boy--you won't let them shoot him?"
"No, I won't," was the quick response.
The mother laughed aloud through her tears and threw her arms around
Betty's neck.
The President bent over the paper and wrote across its back:
"Pardoned. This life is too precious to be lost."
Betty waited until the crowd had passed out and he was alone with
Colonel Nicolay. She hurried to his desk with her second case which she
had kept outside in the corridor until the time to enter.
A young mother walked timidly in, smiling apologetically. She carried a
three-months-old baby in her arms. She was evidently not in mourning,
though her eyes were red from weeping.
"What's the matter now?" the President laughed, nodding to Betty.
"Tell him," she whispered.
"If you please, sir," the woman began timidly, "we ain't been married
but a little over a year. My husband has never seen the baby. He's in
the army. I couldn't stand it any longer, so I come down to Washington
to get a pass to take the baby to him. But they wouldn't let me have it.
I've been wandering 'round the streets all day crying till I met this
sweet young lady and she brought me to you, sir----"
The President turned to his secretary:
"Let's send her down!"
The Colonel smiled and shook his head:
"The strictest orders have been given to allow no more women to go to
the front----"
The big gentle hand stroked the shaggy beard.
"Well, I'll tell you what we can do," he cried joyfully, "give her
husband a leave of absence and let him come to see them here!"
The secretary left at once for the Adjutant General's office and the
President turned to the laughing young mother, who was trying to thank
Betty through her tears:
"And where are you stopping, Madam?"
"Nowhere yet, sir. I went straight from the depot to the War Department
and then walked about blind with crying eyes until I came here."
"All right then, we'll fix that. I'll give Miss Betty an order to take
you and your baby to her hospital and care for you until your husband
comes and he can stay there a week with you----"
The mother's voice wouldn't work. She tried to speak her thanks and
could only laugh.
The big hand pressed Betty's as she left:
"Thank you for bringing her, little girl, things like that rest me."
The hour was swiftly coming when he was going to need all the strength
that rest could bring body and soul. His enemies were sleepless. The
press inspired by Senator Winter had begun to strike below the belt.
CHAPTER XXVII
DEEPENING SHADOWS
Again the eyes of the Nation were fixed on the Army of the Potomac and
its new General. The President went down to his headquarters at Falmouth
Heights opposite Fredericksburg to review his army of a hundred and
thirty thousand men.
Riding up to Hooker's headquarters through the beautiful spring morning
his weary figure was lifted with new hope as he breathed the perfume of
the flowers and blooming hedgerows.
The driver only worried him for the moment. He was swearing eloquently
at his team in the pride of his heart at the honor of hauling the Chief
Magistrate of the Nation. He swore both plain and ornamental oaths with
equal unction.
The President endured it a while in amused silence. He was deeply
annoyed, but too much of a gentleman to hurt his patriotic driver's
feelings.
At last he observed:
"I see you are an Episcopalian, driver."
The man turned in surprise:
"Oh, no, sir, I'm Methodist."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes, sir, Methodist--why, sir?"
A whimsical smile played about the big kindly mouth:
"I thought you must be an Episcopalian because you swear exactly like
Mr. Seward, and he's a churchwarden!"
A deep silence fell on the sweet spring air. The driver glanced over his
shoulder with a sheepish grin, and cracked his whip without an oath:
"G'long there, boys!"
As the serried lines of blue, with bayonets flashing in the warming sun
of April, marched past the tall giant on horseback, they were in fine
spirits. They cheered the President with rousing enthusiasm.
John Vaughan did not join. He marched past with eyes straight in front.
The President hurried back to Washington to keep his vigil from his
window overlooking the Potomac, and Hooker began the execution of his
skillful plan of attack. On the day his advance began he had one hundred
and thirty thousand men and four hundred and forty-eight great guns in
seven grand divisions. Lee, still lying on the crescent hills behind
Fredericksburg, had sixty-two thousand men and one hundred and seventy
guns. He had detached Longstreet's corps for service in Tennessee.
The Federal Commander was absolutely sure that he could throw the flower
of this magnificent army across the river seven miles above
Fredericksburg, get into Lee's rear, hurl the remainder of his forces
across the river as Burnside had done, and crush the grey army like an
egg shell. It was well planned, but in war the unexpected often happens.
Again the unexpected thing turned up in the shape of the strange, dusty
figure on his little sorrel horse.
The night before Hooker moved, Julius met with an accident which
delayed John's supper. He was just approaching the camp after a
successful stroll over the surrounding territory, carrying on his back a
sheep he meant to cook for the coming march. A rude and unsympathetic
guard arrested him. Julius was greatly grieved at his unkind remarks.
"Lordy, man, you ought not ter say things lak dat ter me! I nebber steal
nutting in my life. I wasn't even foragin' dis time----"
"The hell you weren't!"
"Na, sah. I wasn't even foragin'. I know dat de General done issue dem
orders agin hit, an' I quit long ergo----"
"This sheep looks like it----"
"Dat sheep?"
"That's what I said, you black thief!"
"Say, man, don't talk lak dat ter me--you sho hurts my feelin's. I
nebber stole dat sheep. I nebber go atter de sheep, an' I weren't
studyin' 'bout no animals. I was des walkin' long de road past a man's
house whar dis here big, devilish-lookin' old sheep come er runnin'
right at me wid his head down--an' I lammed him wid er stick ter save my
life, sah. An' den when he fell, I knowed hit wuz er pity ter leave him
dar ter spile, an' so I des nachelly had ter fetch him inter de camp ter
save him. Man, you sho is rude ter talk dat way."
The guard was obdurate until Julius began to describe how he cooked
roast mutton. He finally agreed to accept his version of the battle with
the sheep as authentic if he would bring him a ten pound roast to test
the truth of his conversation.
Julius was still harping on the rudeness of this guard as he fanned the
flies off John's table with a sassafras brush at supper.
"I don't know what dey ebber let sech poor white trash ez dat man git in
er army for, anyhow!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"We have to take 'em as they come now, Julius. There's going to be a
draft this summer. No more volunteers now. Wait till you see the
conscripts."
"Dey can't be no wus dan dat man. He warn't no gemman 'tall, sah."
John rose from his hearty supper and strolled along the line of his
regiment, recruited again to its full strength of twelve hundred men.
Two fellows who were messmates were scrapping about a question of gravy.
One wanted lots of gravy and his meat done brown. The other insisted on
having his meat decently cooked, but not swimming in grease. The man in
favor of gravy was on duty as cook at this meal and stuck to his own
ideas. They suddenly clinched, fell to the ground, rolled over, knocked
the pan in the fire and lost both meat and gravy.
John smiled and passed on.
A lieutenant was sitting on a stump holding a letter from his sweetheart
to the flickering camp fire. He bent and kissed the signature--the fool!
For a moment the old longing surged back through his soul. He wondered
if she ever thought of him now. She had loved him once.
He started back to his tent to write her a letter before they broke camp
to-morrow morning. Nature was calling in the balmy spring night wind
that floated over the waters of the river.
Nature knew naught of war. She was pouring out her heart in budding leaf
and blossom in the joy of living.
And then the bitterness of shame and stubborn pride welled up to kill
the tender impulse. There were slumbering forces beneath the skin the
scenes through which he was passing had called into new life. They were
bringing new powers both of mind and body. They added nothing to the
gentler, sweeter sources of character. He began to understand how men
could feed their ambitions on the bodies of fallen hosts and still
smile.
He had felt the brutalizing touch of war. With a cynical laugh he threw
off his impulse to write and turned into his blanket dreaming of the red
carnival toward which they would march at dawn.
As the sun rose over the new sparkling fields of the South on the
morning of the 27th of April, 1863, the great movement began.
The Federal commander ordered Sedgwick's division to cross the
Rappahannock below Fredericksburg and deploy in line of battle to
deceive Lee as to his real purpose while he secretly marched his main
army through the woods seven miles above to throw them on his rear.
As the men stood, thousands banked on thousands, awaiting the order to
march, John Vaughan saw, for the first time, the grim procession pass
along the lines carrying a condemned deserter, to be shot to death
before his former comrades. His hands were tied across his breast with
rough knotted rope and he was seated on his coffin.
The War Department had gotten around the tender heart in the White
House at last. The desertions had become so terrible in their frequency
it was absolutely necessary to make examples of some of these men. The
poor devil who sat forlornly on his grim throne riding through the sweet
spring morning had no mother or sister or sweetheart to plead his cause.
The men stared in silence as the death cart rumbled along the lines. It
halted and the man took his place before the firing squad but a few feet
away.
A white cloth was bound over his eyes. The sergeant dealt out the
specially prepared round of cartridges--all blank save one, that no
soldier might know who did the murder.
In low tones they were ordered to fire straight at the heart of the
blindfolded figure. The muskets flashed and the man crumpled in a heap
on the soft young grass, the blood pouring from his breast in a bright
red pool beside the quivering form.
And then the army moved.
The stratagem of the Commander was executed with skill. But there was an
eagle eye back of those hills of Fredericksburg. Lee was not only a
great stark fighter, he was a past master in the arts of war. He had
divined his opponent's plan from the moment of his first movement.
By April the 30th, Hooker had effected his crossing and slipped into the
rear of Lee's left wing. The Southerner had paid little attention to
Sedgwick's menace on his front. He left but nine thousand men on Marye's
Heights to hold in check this forty thousand, and by a rapid night march
suddenly confronted Hooker in the Wilderness before Chancellorsville.
So strong was the Union General's position he issued an exultant order
to his army in which he declared:
"The enemy must now flee shamefully or come out of his defences to
accept battle on our own ground, to his certain destruction."
The enemy had already slipped out of his defenses before Fredericksburg
and at that moment was feeling his way through the tangled vines and
undergrowth with sure ominous tread.
The soul of the Confederate leader rose with elation at the prospect
before him. In this tangle called the Wilderness, broken only here and
there by small, scattered farm houses and fields, the Grand Army of the
Republic had more than twice his numbers, and nearly three times as many
big guns, but his artillery would be practically useless. It was utterly
impossible to use four hundred great guns in such woods. Lee's one
hundred and seventy were more than he could handle. It would be a fight
between infantry at close range. The Southerner knew that no army of men
ever walked the earth who would be the equal, man for man, with these
grey veteran dead shots, who were now silently creeping through the
undergrowth of their native woods.
On May the 1st, their two lines came into touch and Lee felt of his
opponent by driving in his skirmishers in a desultory fire of artillery.
On the morning of May the 2nd, the two armies faced each other at close
range.
With Sedgwick's division of forty thousand men now threatening Lee's
rear from Fredericksburg, his army thus caught between two mighty lines
of blue, Hooker was absolutely sure of victory. The one thing of which
he never dreamed was that Lee would dare, in the face of such a death
trap, to divide his own small army. And yet this is exactly what the
Southerner decided to do contrary to all the rules of military science
or the advice of the strange, silent figure on the little sorrel horse.
When Lee, Jackson and Stuart rode along the lines of Hooker's front that
fatal May morning, Jackson suddenly reined in his little sorrel and
turned his keen blue eyes on his grey-haired Chief:
"There's just one way, General Lee. The front and left are too strong. I
can swing my corps in a quick movement to the rear while you attack the
front. They will think it a retreat. Out of sight, I'll turn, march for
ten miles around their right wing, and smash it from the rear before
sundown."
Lee quickly approved the amazing plan of his lieutenant, though it
involved the necessity of his holding Hooker's centre and left in check
and that his nine thousand men behind the stone wall on Marye's Heights
should hold Sedgwick's forty thousand. He believed it could be done
until Jackson had completed his march.
He immediately ordered his attack on the centre and left of his enemy.
The artillery horses were cropping the tender dew-laden grass with
eagerness. They had had no breakfast. The riders sprang to their backs
at seven o'clock and they dashed into position.
Lee's guns opened the fateful day. For hours his lines blazed with the
steady sullen boom of artillery and rattle of musketry. Hooker's hosts
replied in kind.
At noon a shout swept the Federal lines that Lee's army was in retreat.
Sickles' division could see the long grey waves hurrying to the rear.
They were close enough to note the ragged, dirty, nondescript clothes
Jackson's men wore. No man in all the Union hosts doubted for a moment
that Lee had seen the hopelessness of his position and was hurrying to
save his little army of sixty-two thousand men from being crushed into
pulp by the jaws of a hundred and thirty thousand in two grand divisions
closing in on him. It was a reasonable supposition--always barring the
utterly unexpected--another name for Stonewall Jackson, whom they seemed
to have forgotten for the moment.
Sickles, seeing the "retreat," sent a courier flying to Hooker, asking
for permission to follow the fugitives with his twenty thousand men.
Hooker consented, and Sickles leaped from his entrenchments and set out
in mad haste to overtake the flying columns. He got nearly ten miles in
the woods away from the battle lines before he realized that the ghostly
men in grey had made good their escape. Certainly they had disappeared
from view.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Jackson's swift, silent
marchers began to draw near to the unsuspecting right wing of Hooker's
army under the command of General Howard.
Ned Vaughan was in Jackson's skirmish line feeling the way through the
tender green foliage of the spring. The days were warm and the leaves
far advanced--the woods so dense it was impossible for picket or
skirmisher to see more than a hundred yards ahead--at some points not a
hundred feet.
The thin, silent line suddenly swept into the little opening of a negro
cabin with garden and patch of corn. A kindly old colored woman was
standing in the doorway.
She looked into the faces of these eager, slender Southern boys and they
were her "children." The meaning of war was real to her only when it
meant danger to those she loved.
She ran quickly up to Ned, her eyes dancing with excitement:
"For de Lawd's sake, honey, don't you boys go up dat road no fudder!"
"Why, Mammy?" he asked with a smile.
"Lordy, chile, dey's thousan's, an' thousan's er Yankees des over dat
little hill dar--dey'll kill every one er you all!"
"I reckon not, Mammy," Ned called, hurrying on.
She ran after him, still crying:
"For Gawd's sake, come back here, honey--dey kill ye sho!"
She was calling still as Ned disappeared beyond the cabin into the woods
redolent now with the blossoms of chinquepin bushes and the rich odors
of sweet shrub.
They climbed the little ridge on whose further slope lay an open field,
and caught their first view of Howard's unsuspecting division. They
halted and sent their couriers flying with the news to Jackson.
Ned looked on the scene with a thrill of exultation and then a sense of
deepening pity. The boys in blue had begun to bivouac for the night,
their camp fires curling through the young green leaves. The men were
seated in groups laughing, talking, joking and playing cards. The horses
were busy cropping the young grass.
"God have mercy on them!" Ned exclaimed.
It was nearly six o'clock before Jackson's men had all slipped silently
into position behind the dense woods on this little slope--in two long
grim battle lines, one behind the other, with columns in support, his
horse artillery with their big guns shotted and ready.
Ned saw a slight stir in the doomed camp of blue. The men were standing
up now and looking curiously toward those dense woods. A startled flock
of quail had swept over their heads flying straight down from the lull
crest. A rabbit came scurrying from the same direction--and then
another. And then another flock of quail swirled past and pitched among
the camp fires, running and darting in terror on the ground.
An officer drew his revolver and potted one for his supper.
The men glanced uneasily toward the woods but could see nothing.
"What'ell ye reckon that means?"
"What ails the poor birds?"
"And the rabbits?"
They were not long in doubt. The sudden shrill note of a bugle rang from
the woods and Jackson's yelling grey lines of death swept down on their
unprotected rear.
The first regiments in sight were blown into atoms and driven as chaff
before a whirlwind. Behind them lay twenty regiments in their trenches
pointed the wrong way. The men leaped to their guns and fought
desperately to stay the rushing torrent. Beyond them was a ragged gap of
a whole mile without a man, left bare by the chase of Sickles' division
now ten miles away. Without support the shattered lines were crushed
and crumpled and rolled back in confusion. Every regiment was cut to
pieces and pushed on top of one another, men, horses, mules, cattle,
guns, in a tangled mass of blood and death.
Ned was sent to bring the supporting column to drive them on and on. He
mounted a horse and dashed back to the reserve line yelling his call:
"Hurry! Hurry up, men!"
"What's the hurry?" growled a grey coat.
"Hurry! Hurry!" Ned shouted. "We've captured fifty pieces of artillery
and ten thousand prisoners!"
"Then what'ell's the use er hurryin' us on er empty stomach--but we're
a-comin', honey--we're a-comin'!"
The colonel of a regiment snatched his hat off and was getting his men
ready for the charge. He waved his hand toward Ned:
"Make that damn-fool get out of the way. I'm going to charge. Now you
men listen--listen to me, I say! not to that fellow--listen to me!"
Ned could hear him still talking excitedly to his eager men as he dashed
back to the battle line.
General Hooker sat on the porch of the Chancellor House, his
headquarters. On the east there was heavy firing where his men were
attempting to carry out his orders to flank Lee's retreating army.
Sickles' and Pleasanton's cavalry were already in pursuit. By some
curious trick of the breeze or atmospheric conditions not a sound had
reached him from the direction of his right wing. A staff officer
suddenly turned his glasses to the west.
"My God, here they come!"
Before the astounded Commander could leap from the porch to his horse
the flying stragglers of his shattered right were pouring into
view--men, wagons, ambulances, in utter confusion. Hooker swung his old
division under General Berry into line and shouted to his veterans:
"Forward with the bayonet!"
The sturdy division plowed its way through the receding blue waves of
panic-stricken men and dashed into the face of the overwhelming hosts.
Major Keenan, in command of the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, charged with
his gallant five hundred into the face of almost certain death and held
the grey lines in check until the artillery of the Third Corps was saved
and turned on the advancing Confederates. He fell at the head of his
men.
The fighting now became a battle. It was no longer a rout.
Ned saw a lone deaf man in blue standing bareheaded, fighting a whole
army so intent on his work he hadn't noticed that his regiment had
retreated and left him.
Two men in grey raised their muskets and fired point blank at this man
at the same instant. The unconscious hero fell.
"I hit him!" cried one.
"No, I hit him!" said the other.
And they both rushed up and tenderly offered him help.
A grey soldier came hurrying by taking two prisoners to the rear. A
cannon ball from the rescued battery cut off his leg and he dropped
beside Ned shouting hysterically:
"Pick me up! Pick me up! Why don't you pick me up?"
The blue prisoner looked back in terror at the battery and started to
run. A grey soldier stopped them:
"Here! Here! What'ell's the matter with you? Them's your own guns. What
are ye tryin' to get away from 'em for?"
Men were falling now at every step.
Ned had advanced a hundred yards further when the boy on his right
suddenly threw his hands over his head and his leg full to the ground,
cut off by a cannon ball, Ned leaped to his side and caught him in his
arms. A look of anguish swept his strong young face as he gasped:
"My poor old mother! O my God, what'll she do now?"
Ned tied his handkerchief around the mangled leg, twisted the knot, and
stayed the blood gushing from the severed arteries, and rushed back to
his desperate work.
Four horses dashed by his side dragging through the woods a big gun to
train on the battery that was plowing through their lines. A solid shot
crashed straight through a horse's head, blinding Ned with blood and
brains.
He threw his hand to his face and buried it in the hot quivering mass,
exclaiming:
"My God, boys, my brains are out!"
"You've got the biggest set I ever saw then!" the Captain said, helping
him to clear his eyes.
A shell exploded squarely against the gun carriage, hurling it into junk
and piling all four horses on the ground. Their dying cries rang
pitifully through the smoke-wreathed woods. One horse lifted his head,
placed both fore feet on the ground and tried to rise. His hind legs
were only shreds of torn flesh. He neighed a long, quivering,
soul-piercing shriek of agony and a merciful officer drew his revolver
and killed him.
A cannoneer lay by this horse's side with both his legs hopelessly
crushed so high in the thick flesh of the thighs there was no hope. He
was moaning horribly. He turned his eyes in agony to the officer who had
shot the horse:
"Please, Captain--for the love of God--shoot me, too, I can't live----"
The Captain shook his head.
"Have mercy on me--for Jesus' sake--kill me--you were kind to my
horse--can't you do as much for me?"
The Captain turned away in anguish. He couldn't even send for morphine.
The South had no more morphine. The blockade's iron hand was on her
hospitals now.
Ned fought for half an hour behind a tree. Twice the bullets striking
the hark knocked pieces into his eyes. He was sure at least fifty Minie
balls struck it.
A bald-headed Colonel rushed by at double quick leading a fresh regiment
into action to support them. The hell of battle was not so hot the
Southern soldier had lost his sense of humor. They were glad to see this
dashing old fighter and they told him so in no uncertain way.
"Hurrah for Baldy!"
"Sick 'em, Baldy--sick 'em----"
"I'll bet on old man Baldy every time----"
"Hurrah for the bald-headed man!"
The Colonel paid no attention to their shouts. The flash of his muskets
in the deepening twilight turned the tide in their favor. The big guns
had been unlimbered and pulled back deeper into the blue lines.
John Vaughan's line was swung to support the charge of Hooker's old
division which first halted the rush of Jackson's men. In the field
beyond the Chancellor House stood a huge straw stack. As the regiment
rushed by at double quick the Colonel spied a panic-stricken officer
crouching in terror behind the pile.
The Colonel slapped him across the shoulders with his sword:
"What sort of a place is this for you, sir?"
Through chattering teeth came the trembling response:
"W-w-hy, m-my God, do you think the bullets can come through?"
The Colonel threw up his hands in rage and pressed on with his men.
A wagon loaded with entrenching tools, on which sat half a dozen negroes
rattled by on its way to the rear. A solid shot plumped squarely into
the load.
John saw picks, spades, shovels and negroes suddenly fill the air. Every
negro lit on his feet and his legs were running when he struck the
ground. They reached the tall timber before the last pick fell.
The regiments were going into battle double quick, but they were not
going so fast they couldn't laugh.
"Hurry up men!" the Colonel called. "Hurry up, let's get in there and
help 'em!"
A moment more and they were in it.
The man beside John threw up both hands and dropped with the dull,
unmistakable thud of death--the soldier who has been in battle knows the
sickening sound.
They were thrown around the Third Corps battery to protect their guns
which had been dragged to a place more securely within the lines. Still
their gunners kept falling one by one--falling ominously at the crack of
a single gun in the woods. A Confederate sharpshooter had climbed a tree
and was picking them off.
A tall Westerner spoke to the Colonel:
"Let me go huntin' for him!"
The Commander nodded and John went with him--why? He asked himself the
question before he had taken ten steps through the shadowy underbrush.
The answer was plain. He knew the truth at once. The elemental brutal
instinct of the hunter had kindled at the flash in that Westerner's eye.
It would be a hunt worth while--the game was human.
For five minutes they crept through the bushes hiding from tree to tree
in the open spaces. They searched the tops in vain, when suddenly a
piece of white oak bark fluttered down from the sky and struck the
ground at their feet.
The Westerner smiled at John and stood motionless:
"Well, I'm damned!"
They waited breathlessly, afraid to look up into the boughs of the
towering oak beneath which they were standing.
"Don't move now!" the man from the West cried, "and I'll pot him."
Slowly he stepped backward, softly, noiselessly, his eye fixed in the
treetop, his gun raised and finger on the trigger.
He stopped, aimed, and fired.
John looked up and saw the grey figure fall back from the tree trunk and
plunge downward, bounding from limb to limb and striking the ground
within ten feet of where he stood with heavy thud. The blood was gushing
in red streams from his nose and mouth.
They turned and hurried back to their lines--another fierce attack was
being made on those guns. The men in grey charged and drove them a
hundred feet before they rallied and pushed them back with frightful
loss on both sides.
John's Captain fell, dangerously wounded, and lay fifty feet beyond
their battle line. The dry leaves in the woods had taken fire from a
shell and the blaze was nearing the wounded men. The Westerner coolly
leaped from his position behind a tree, walked out in a hail of lead,
picked up his wounded Commander, and carried him safely to the rear. He
had just stepped back to take his stand in line by John's side when a
flying piece of shrapnel tore a hole in his side. He dropped to his
knees, sank lower to his elbow, turned his blue eyes to the darkening
sky and slowly muttered as if to himself:
"Poor--little--wife--and--babies!"
The night was drawing her merciful veil over the scene at last. Jackson
having crushed and mangled Hooker's right wing and rolled it back in red
defeat over five miles in two hours, was slowly feeling his way on his
last reconnaissance for the day to make his plans for the next. Through
a fatal misunderstanding he was fired on by his own men and borne from
the field fatally wounded.
A shiver of horror thrilled the Southerners when the news of Jackson's
fall was whispered through the darkness.
At midnight Sickles led his division back into the dense woods and for
three terrible hours the men on both sides fought as demons in the
shadows. The long lines of blazing muskets in the darkness looked like
the onward rush of a forest fire. At times two solid walls of flame
seemed to leap through the tree tops into the starlit heavens. A small
portion of the captured ground was recovered at a frightful loss--and no
man knows to this day how many gallant men in blue were shot down by
their own comrades in the darkness and confusion of that mad assault.
Hooker sent a desperate call to Sedgwick to hurry to his relief by
carrying out his plan of sweeping Marye's Heights and falling on Lee's
rear.
At dawn Stuart in command of Jackson's corps led the new charge on
Hooker's lines, his grey veterans shouting:
"Remember Jackson!"
Through the long hours of the terrible third day of May the fierce
combat of giants raged. During the morning Hooker's headquarters were
reached by the Confederate artillery and the old Chancellor House,
filled with the wounded, was knocked to pieces and set on fire. The
women and children and slaves of the Chancellor family were shivering in
its cellar while the shells were hurling its bricks and timbers in
murderous fury on the helpless wounded who lay in hundreds in the yard.
The men from both armies rushed into this hell and carried the wounded
to a place of safety.
General Hooker was wounded and the report flew over the Federal army
that he had been killed. To allay their fears the General had himself
lifted into the saddle and rode down his lines and out of sight, when he
was taken unconscious from his horse.
Sedgwick was fighting his way with desperation now to force Marye's
Heights and strike Lee's rear.
Once more the stone wall blazed with death for the gallant men in blue.
They dashed themselves against it wave on wave, only to fall back in
confusion. They tried to flank it and failed. Hour after hour the mad
charges rolled against this hill and broke in deep red pools at its
base. There were but nine thousand men holding it against forty
thousand, but it was afternoon before the grey lines slowly gave way and
Sedgwick's victorious troops poured over the hill toward Lee's lines.
Hooker had asked him to appear at daylight. The long rows and mangled
heaps of the dead left on Marye's bloody slopes was sufficient answer to
all inquiries as to his delay.
But the way was still blocked. The receding line of grey was suddenly
supported by Early's division detached from Lee's reserves. Again
Sedgwick was stopped and fought until dark.
[Illustration: "Waving his plumed hat ... he put himself at the head of
his troops and charged."]
As the sun was sinking over the smoke-wreathed spring-clothed trees of
the wilderness, Stuart gathered Jackson's corps for a desperate assault
on Hooker's last line of defense. Waving his plumed hat high above his
handsome bearded face, he put himself at the head of his troops and
charged, chanting with boyish enthusiasm his improvised battle song:
"Old--Joe--Hooker,
Won't you come out o' the Wilderness!
Come out o' the Wilderness!
Come out o' the Wilderness!
Old--Joe--Hooker--
Come out o' the Wilderness--
Come--come--I say!"
The cheering grey waves swept all before them and left Lee in full
possession of Chancellorsville and the whole position the Federal army
had originally held.
As the Confederates rolled on, driving the fiercely fighting men in blue
before them, Lee himself rode forward to encourage his men and then it
happened--the thing for which the great have fought, and longed, and
dreamed since time dawned--the spontaneous tribute of the brave to a
trusted leader.
His victorious troops went wild at the sight of him. Above the crash and
roar of battle rose the shouts of the Southerners:
"Hurrah for Lee!"
"Lee!"
"Lee!"
From lip to lip the thrilling name leaped until the wounded and the
dying turned their eyes to see and raised their feeble voices:
"Lee!--Lee!--Lee!"
It was at this moment that he received the note from Jackson announcing
that he was badly wounded. With the shouts of his men ringing in his
ears, he drew his pencil and wrote across the pommel of his saddle:
"GENERAL: I have just received your note informing me that you are
wounded. I cannot express my regret at the occurrence. Could I have
directed events, I should have chosen, for the good of the country,
to be disabled in your stead.
"I congratulate you upon the victory which is due to your skill and
energy.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"R. E. LEE,
"GENERAL."
It was quick, bloody work next day for the Southerner to turn and spring
on Sedgwick with the ferocity of a tiger, crush and hurl his battered
and bleeding corps back on the river.
Under cover of a storm General Couch, in command of Hooker's army,
retreated across the Rappahannock. The blue and grey picket lines that
night were so close to each other the men could talk freely. The
Southern boys were chaffing the Northerners over their oft repeated
defeats. Through the darkness a Yankee voice drawled:
"Ah, Johnnie, shut up--you make us tired! You're not so much as you
think you are. Swap Generals with us and we'll come over and lick hell
out of you!"
A silence fell over the boasting ones and then the listening Yankee
heard a low voice chuckle to his comrade:
"I'm damned if they wouldn't, too!"
When the grey dawn broke through the storm they began to bury the dead
and care for the wounded. The awful struggle had ended at last.
The Northern army had lost seventeen thousand men, the Southerners
thirteen thousand.
It was a great victory for the South, but a few more such victories and
there would be none of her brave boys left to tell the story.
John Vaughan's company had been detailed to help in cleaning the field.
The day before, on Sunday morning, they had eaten their breakfast seated
on the ground among hundreds of dead bodies whose odor poisoned the air.
It is needless to say, Julius was not present. He had kept the river
between him and the roar of contending hosts.
The suffering of the wounded had been terrible. Some of them had fallen
on Friday, thousands on Saturday, and it was now Monday. All through the
blood-soaked tangled woods they lay groaning and dying. And everywhere
the flap of black wings. The keen-eyed vultures had seen from the sky
where they fell.
John found a brave old farmer from Northern New York lying beside his
son. He had met them in the fight at Fredericksburg in December.
"Well, here we are, Vaughan," the father cried feebly. "My boy's dead,
and I'll be with him soon--but it's all right--it's all right--my
country's worth it!"
They were lying in a bright open space, where the warm sun of May had
pushed the wood violets into blossom in rich profusion. The dead boy's
head lay in a bed of blue flowers.
Some of the bodies further on were black and charred by the flames that
had swept the woods again and again during the battles. Some of them had
been wounded men and they had been burned to death. Their twisted bodies
and the agony on their cold faces told the hideous story more plainly
than words. The odor of burning flesh still filled the air in these
black spots.
With a start John suddenly came on the crouching figure of a Confederate
soldier kneeling behind a stump, the paper end of the cartridge was in
his teeth and his fingers still grasped the ball. He was just in the act
of tearing the paper as a bullet crashed straight through his forehead.
A dark streak of blood marked his face and clothes. His gun was in his
other hand, the muzzle in place to receive the cartridge, the body cold
and rigid in exactly the position death had called him.
A broad-shouldered, bearded man in blue had just fallen asleep nearby.
The body was still warm, the blue eyes wide open, staring into the
leaden sky. On his breast lay an open Bible with a bloody finger mark on
the lines:
"The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures--
He restoreth my soul."
A hundred yards further lay a dead boy from his own company. The stiff
hands were still holding a picture of his sweetheart before the staring
eyes. Near him lay a boy in grey with a sweetheart's letter clasped in
his hand. They had talked and tried to cheer one another, these dying
boys--talked of those they loved in far off villages as the mists of
eternity had gathered about them.
It was late that night before the wounded had all been moved. Through
every hour of its black watches the surgeons, with their sleeves rolled
high, their arms red, bent over their tasks, until legs and arms were
piled in ghastly heaps ten feet high.
As John Vaughan turned from the scene where he had laid a wounded man to
wait his turn, his eye caught the look of terror on the face of a
wounded Southern boy. He was a slender little dark-haired fellow, under
sixteen, a miniature of Ned. The surgeon had just taken up his knife to
cut into the deep flesh wound for the Minie ball embedded there. John
saw the slender face go white and the terror-stricken young eyes search
the room for help. His breath came in quick gasps and he was about to
faint.
John slipped his arm around him:
"Just a minute, Doctor----"
He pressed his hand and whispered:
"Come now, little man, you're among your enemies. You've got to be
brave. Show your grit for the South. I've got a brother in your army who
looks like you. No white feather now when these Yankees can see you."
The slender figure stiffened and his eyes flashed:
"All right!" the sturdy lips cried. "Let him go ahead--I'm ready now!"
John held his hand, while the knife cut through the soft young flesh and
found the lead. The grip of the slim fingers tightened, but he gave no
cry. John handed him the bullet to put in his pocket and left him
smiling his thanks.
He began to wonder vaguely if he had lost his cook forever. Julius
should have found the regiment before this. It was just before day that
he came on him working with might and main at a job that was the last
one on earth he would have selected.
He had been seized by a burying squad and put to work dragging corpses
to the trenches from the great piles where the wagons had dumped them.
The black man rolled his eyes in piteous appeal to his master:
"For Gawd's sake, Marse John, save me--dese here men won't lemme go. I
been er throwin' corpses inter dem trenches since dark. I'se most dead
frum work, let 'lone bein' scared ter death."
"Sorry, Julius," was the quick answer, "we've all got to work at a time
like this. There's no help for it."
Julius bent again to his horrible task. The thing that appalled him was
the way the dead men kept looking at him out of their eyes wide and
staring in the flickering light of the lanterns.
John stood watching him thoughtfully. He had finished one pile of
bodies, dragging them by the heels one by one, and throwing them into
the trenches. He was just about to begin on the last stack when he saw
that he had left one lying a little further back in the shadows.
Julius looked at it dubiously and scratched his head. He didn't like the
idea of going so far back in the dark, away from the light, but there
was no help for it. The guard stood with his musket scowling:
"Get a move on you--damn you, don't stand there!" he growled.
Julius walled his eyes at his tormentor and ran for the body. It
happened to be the sleeping form of a tired guard who had been up three
nights. The negro grabbed his legs and rushed toward the lights and the
trenches.
He had almost reached the grave when the corpse gave a vicious kick and
yelled:
"Here--what'ell!"
Julius didn't stop to look or to answer. What he felt in his hands was
enough. With a yell of terror he dropped the thing and plunged straight
ahead.
"Gawd, save me!" he gasped.
His foot slipped on the edge of the trench and he rolled in the dark
hole. With the leap of a frightened panther he reached the solid earth
and flew, each leap a muttered prayer:
"Save me! Lawd, save me!"
Standing there beside the grim piles of his dead comrades John Vaughan
joined the guard in uncontrollable laughter. It was many a day before he
saw his cook again.
The laughter suddenly stopped, and he turned from the scene with a
shudder.
"I wonder," he muttered, "if I live through this war, whether I'll come
out of it with a soul!"
The report from Chancellorsville drifted slowly, ominously, appallingly,
over Washington with the clouds and mists of the storm which swept up
the Potomac and shrouded the city in a grey mantle of mourning. The
White House was still. The dead were walking through its great rooms of
state. The anguished heart who watched by the window toward the hills of
Virginia saw and heard each muffled footfall.
He walked to the table with stumbling, uncertain step at last, his face
ghastly and rigid, its color grey ashes, his deep set eyes streaming
with tears, sank helplessly into a chair, and for the first time gave
way to despair:
"O my God! My God! what will the country say!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE MOONLIT RIVER
Betty Winter was quick to answer the hurry call for more nurses in the
field hospital at Chancellorsville. The results at the end of three
days' carnage had paralyzed the service.
She left the Carver Hospital on receipt of the first cry for help and
hurried to her home to complete her preparations to leave for the front.
Her father was at breakfast alone.
She called her greeting from the hall, rushed to her room, packed a bag,
and quickly came down.
She slipped her arm around his neck, bent and kissed him good-bye. He
held her a moment:
"You must leave so early, dear?"
"I must catch the first bout for Aquia. The news from the front is
hideous. The force there is utterly inadequate. They've asked for every
nurse that can be spared for a week. The wounded lay on the ground for
three days and nights, and hundreds of them can't be moved to
Washington. The woods took fire dozens of times and many of the poor
boys were terribly burned. The suffering, they say, is indescribable."
The old man suddenly rose, with a fierce light flashing in his eyes:
"Oh, the miserable blunderer in the White House--this war has been one
grim and awful succession of his mistakes!"
Betty placed her hand on his arm in tender protest:
"Father, dear, how can you be so unreasonable--so insanely unjust? Your
hatred of the President is a positive mania----"
"I'm not alone in my affliction, child; Arnold is his only friend in
Congress to-day----"
"Then it's a shame--a disgrace to the Nation. Every disaster is laid at
his door. In his big heart he is carrying the burden of millions--their
suffering, their sorrows, their despair. You blamed him at first for
trifling with the war. Now you blame him for the bloody results when the
army really fights. You ask for an effective campaign and when you get
these tragic battles you heap on his head greater curses. It isn't
right. It isn't fair. I can't understand how a man with your deep sense
of justice can be so cruelly inconsistent----"
The Senator shook his grey head in protest:
"There! there! dear--we won't discuss it. You're a woman and you can't
understand my point of view. We'll just agree to disagree. You like the
man in the White House. God knows he's lonely--I shouldn't begrudge him
that little consolation. His whole attitude in this war is loathsome to
me. To him the Southerners are erring brethren to be brought back as
prodigal sons in the end. To me they are criminal outlaws to be hanged
and quartered--their property confiscated, the foundations of their
society destroyed, and every trace of their States blotted from the
map----"
"Father!"
"Until we understand that such is the purpose of the war we can get
nowhere--accomplish nothing. But there, dear--I didn't mean to say so
much. There is always one thing about which there can be no dispute--I
love my little girl----"
He slipped his arm about her tenderly again.
"I'm proud of the work you're doing for our soldiers. They tell me in
the big hospital that you're an angel. I've always known it, but I'm
glad other people are beginning to find it out. In all the horrors of
this tragedy there's one ray of sunshine for me--the light that shines
from your eyes!"
He bent and kissed her again:
"Run now, and don't miss your boat."
In the five swift days of tender service which followed, Betty Winter
forgot her own heartache and loneliness in the pity, pathos, and horror
of the scenes she witnessed--the drawn white faces--the charred flesh,
the scream of pain from the young, the sigh of brave men, the last
messages of love--the gasp and the solemn silences of eternity.
When the strain of the first rush had ended and the time to follow the
lines of ambulance wagons back to Washington drew near, the old anguish
returned to torture her soul. She told herself it was all over, and yet
she knew that somewhere in that vast city of tents, stretching for miles
over the hills and valleys about Falmouth Heights, was John Vaughan. She
had put him resolutely out of her life. She said this a hundred
times--yet she was quietly rejoicing that his name was not on that black
roll of seventeen thousand. All doubt had been removed by the
announcement in the _Republican_ of his promotion to the rank of
Captain for gallantry on the field of Chancellorsville.
She hoped that he had freed himself at last from evil associates. She
couldn't be sure--there were ugly rumors flying about the hospital of
the use of whiskey in the army. These rumors were particularly busy with
Hooker's name.
Seated alone in the quiet moonlight before the field hospital, the balmy
air of the South which she drew in deep breaths was bringing back the
memory of another now. The pickets had been at their usual friendly
tricks of trading tobacco and coffee and exchanging newspapers. From a
Richmond paper she had just learned that Ned Vaughan had fought in Lee's
army at Chancellorsville. Somewhere beyond the silver mirror of the
Rappahannock he was with the men in grey to-night. Her heart in its
loneliness went out to him in a wave of tender sympathy. Again she lived
over the tragic hours when she had fought the battle for his life and
won at last at the risk of her own.
A soldier saluted and handed her a piece of brown wrapping paper, neatly
folded. Its corner was turned down in the old-fashioned way of a
schoolboy's note to his sweetheart.
She went to the light and saw with a start it was in Ned Vaughan's
handwriting. She read, with eager, sparkling eyes.
"DEAREST: I've just seen in a Washington paper which our boys
traded for that you are here. I must see you, and to-night. I can't
wait. There will be no danger to either of us. Our pickets are on
friendly terms. I've arranged everything with some good tobacco
for your fellows. Follow the man who hands you this note to the
river. A boat will be ready for you there with one of my men to row
you across. I will be waiting for you at the old mill beside the
burned pier of the railroad bridge.
"NED."
Betty's heart gave a bound of joy, and in half an hour she was standing
on the shining shore of the river before the old mill. Its great wheel
was slowly turning, the water falling in broken crystals sparkling in
the moonlight. Through the windows of the brick walls peered the
black-mouthed guns trained across the water.
She looked about timidly for a moment while the man in grey who had
rowed her over made fast his boat.
He tipped his old slouch hat:
"This way, Miss."
He led her down close, to the big wheel, crossed the stream of water
which poured from its moss-covered buckets, and there, beneath an apple
tree in bloom, stood a straight, soldierly figure in the full blue
uniform of a Federal Captain, exactly as she had seen Ned Vaughan that
night in the Old Capitol Prison.
The soldier saluted and Ned said:
"Wait, Sergeant, at the water's edge with your boat."
He was gone and Ned grasped both Betty's hands and kissed them tenderly:
"My glorious little heroine! I just had to tell you again that the life
you saved is all, all yours. You are glad to see me--aren't you?"
"I can't tell you how glad, Boy! How brown and well you look!"
"Yes, the hard life somehow agrees with me. It's a queer thing, this
army business. It makes some men strong and clean, and others into
beasts."
"And why did you wear that dangerous uniform, sir?" she asked, with a
smile.
"In honor of a beautiful Yankee girl, my guest. I've not worn it since
that night, Betty, until now----"
His voice dropped to a whisper:
"It has been a holy thing to me, this blue uniform that cost me the life
which you gave back at the risk of your own----"
"I was in no danger. I had powerful friends."
"They might not have been powerful enough--but it's sacred for another
reason--as precious to me as the seamless robe for which the Roman
soldiers cast lots on Calvary--I wore it in the one glorious moment in
which I held you in my arms, dearest."
"O Ned, Boy, you shouldn't be so foolish!"
"I'm not. I'm sensible. I've done no more scout work since. I said that
my life was yours and I had no right to place it again in such mad
danger----"
"And so you face death on the field!"
"Yes, come sit here, dearest, I've made a seat for you of the broken
timbers from the bridge. We can see the moonlit river and the lazy turn
of the old wheel while we talk."
He led her to the seat in the edge of the moonlight and Betty drew a
deep breath of joy as she drank in the beauty of the entrancing scene.
The shadows of night had hidden the scars of war. Only the tall stone
piers standing, lone sentinels in the river, marked its ravages where
the bridge had fallen. The moon had flung her sparkling silver veil over
the blood-stained world.
"You know," Ned went on eagerly, "those big pillars won't stand there
naked long. We'll put the timbers back on them soon and run our trains
through to Washington----"
"Sh, Ned," Betty whispered, touching his arm lightly, "be still a
moment, I want to feel this wonderful scene!"
The air was sweet with the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the
old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into
the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far
down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but
still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in the lilac bushes.
The girl looked at Ned with curious tenderness, and wondered if she had
known her own heart after all--wondered if the fierce blinding passion
she had once felt for his brother had been the divine thing that links
the soul to the eternal? A strange spiritual beauty enveloped this
younger man and drew her to-night with new power. There was something
restful in its mystery. She wondered vaguely if it were possible to love
two men at the same moment. She could almost swear it were. If she had
never really loved John Vaughan at all! Why had his powerful, brutal
personality drawn her with such terrible power? Was such a force love?
It was something different from the tender charm which enveloped the
slender straight young figure by her side now. She felt this with
increasing certainty.
Ned took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.
The touch of his lips sent a thrill through her heart. It was sweet to
be worshipped in this old-fashioned, foolish way. Whatever her own
feeling's might be, this was love--in its divinest flowering. It drew
her to-night with all but resistless tug.
"May I break the silence now, dearest, to ask you something?" he said
softly.
"Yes."
"Haven't you realized yet that you are going to be mine?"
"Not in the way you mean----"
"But you are, dearest, you are!" he whispered rapturously. "You love me.
You just haven't really faced the thing yet and put it to the test in
your heart. War has separated us, that's all. But there's never been a
moment's doubt in my soul since I looked into your eyes that night in
the old prison. Their light made the cell shine with the glory of
heaven! And when you kissed me, dearest----"
"You know why I did that, Ned," she murmured.
"You're fooling yourself, darling! You couldn't have done what you did,
if you hadn't loved me. It came to me in a flash as I held you in my
arms and pressed you to my heart. There can be no other woman on earth
for me after that moment. I lived a life time with it. Say you'll be
mine, dearest?"
"But I don't love you, Ned, as you love me----"
"I don't ask it now. I can wait. The revelation will come to you at last
in the fullness of time--promise me, dearest--promise me!"
For an hour he poured into her ears his passionate tender plea, until
the rapture of his love, the perfumed air of the spring night, and the
shimmer of moonlit waters stole into her lonely heart with resistless
charm.
She lifted her lips to his at last and whispered:
"Yes."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE PANIC
The morning after Betty returned to Carver Hospital from the front, a
mother was pouring out her heart in a burst of patriotic joy over a
wounded boy.
She thought of the lonely figure in the White House treading the wine
press of a Nation's sorrow alone and asked the mother to go with her to
the President, meet him and repeat what she had said. She consented at
once.
For the first time Betty failed to gain admission promptly. Mr.
Stoddard, his third Secretary, was at the door.
"We must let him eat something, Miss Winter," he whispered. "All night
the muffled sound of his footfall came from his room. I heard it at
nine, at ten, at eleven. At midnight Stanton left his door ajar and his
steady tramp, tramp, tramp, came with heavier sound. The last thing I
heard as I left at three was the muffled beat upstairs. The guard told
me it never stopped for a moment all night."
Betty was surprised to see his face illumined by a cheerful smile as she
entered. She gazed with awe into the deep eyes of the man whose single
word could stop the war and divide the Union. She wondered if he had
fought the Nation's battle alone with God through the night until his
prophetic vision had seen through cloud and darkness the dawn of a new
and more wonderful life.
She spoke softly:
"I've brought you a good mother who lost a son at Fredericksburg. She
has a message for you."
The tall form bent reverently and pressed her hand. A wonderful smile
transfigured his rugged face as he listened:
"God help you in your trials, Mr. President, as he has helped me in
mine----"
"And you lost your son at Fredericksburg?"
"Yes. It was long before I could feel reconciled. But I've been praying
for you day and night since----"
"For me?"
"You must be strong and courageous, and God will bring the Nation
through!"
"You say that to me, standing beside the grave of your son?"
"Yes, and beside the cot of my other boy who is here wounded from
Chancellorsville. I'm proud that God gave me such sons to lay on the
altar of my country. Remember, I am praying for you day and night!"
Both big hands closed over hers and he was silent a moment.
"It's all right then. I'll get new strength when I remember that such
mothers are praying for me."
He pressed Betty's hand at the door:
"Thank you, child. You bring medicine that reaches soul and body!"
The hour of despair had passed and the President returned to his task
patient, watchful, strong.
Daily the shadows deepened over the Nation's life. Blacker and denser
rose the clouds. Four Northern Generals had now gone down before Lee's
apparently invincible genius--McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, and
with each fall the corpses of young men were piled higher.
Again the clamor rose for the return of McClellan to command. This cry
was not only heard in the crushed Army of the Potomac, it was backed by
the voice of two million Democrats who had chosen the man on horseback
as their leader.
It was for precisely this reason that McClellan could not be considered
again for command. His party had fallen under the complete control of
its Copperhead leaders who demanded the ending of the war at once and at
any sacrifice of principle or of the Union.
The only way the President could stop desertions and prevent the actual
secession of the great Northern States of the Middle West, now under the
control of these men, was to use his arbitrary power to suspend the
civil law and put them in prison. Through the State and War Departments
he did this sorrowfully, but promptly.
His answer to his critics was the soundest reasoning and it justified
him in the judgment of thinking men.
"I make such arrests," he declared, "because these men are laboring to
prevent the raising of troops and encouraging desertion. Armies cannot
be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the penalty of
death.
"I will not shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, and refuse to
touch a wily agitator who induces him to commit the crime. To silence
the agitator and save the boy is not only Constitutional, but withal a
great mercy."
Volunteers were no longer to be had and a draft of five hundred thousand
men had been ordered for the summer. The Democratic leaders in solid
array were threatening to resist this draft by every means in their
power, even to riot and revolution.
The masses of the North were profoundly discouraged at the unhappy
results of the war. In thousands of patriotic loyal homes, men and women
had begun to ask themselves whether it were not cruel folly to send
their brave boys to be slaughtered.
The prestige of the Southern army was at its highest point and its
terrible power was nowhere more gravely realized than in the North,
whose thousands of mourning homes attested its valor.
Europe at last seemed ready to spring on the throat of America. Distinct
reports were in circulation in the Old World that the Emperor of France,
Napoleon III, intended to interfere in our affairs. On the 9th of
January, the French Government denied this. The Emperor himself,
however, sent to the President an offer of mediation so blunt and
surprising it could not be doubted that it was a veiled hint of his
purpose to intervene. Beyond a doubt he expected the Union to be
dismembered and he proposed to form an alliance between the Latin Empire
which he was founding in Mexico and the triumphant Confederate States.
Great Britain was behind this Napoleonic adventure. Outwitted by the
President in the affair of the _Trent_, the British Government was eager
for the chance to strike the Republic.
To cap the climax of disasters Lee was preparing to invade the North
with his victorious army. The announcement struck terror to the Northern
cities and produced a condition among them little short of panic.
The move would be the height of audacity and yet Lee had good reasons
for believing its success possible and probable. His grey veterans were
still ragged and poorly shod. With Southern ports blockaded and no
manufacturing this was inevitable, but they had proven in two years'
test of fire Lee's proud boast:
"There never were such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and
do anything if properly led."
This opinion was confirmed to the President by Charles Francis Adams, a
veteran of his own Army of the Potomac, whom he summoned to the White
House for a conference.
"I do not believe," said Adams gravely, "that any more formidable or
better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that
which Lee is now leading toward the North. It is essentially an army of
fighters--men who individually, or in the mass, can be depended on for
any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accomplish. They will
blanch at no danger. Lee knows this from experience and they have full
confidence in him."
He could not hope to enter Pennsylvania with more than sixty-five
thousand men, but his plan was reasonable. With such an army he had
hurled McClellan's hundred and ten thousand soldiers back from the gates
of Richmond and scattered them to the winds. With a less number he had
all but annihilated Pope's men and flung them back into Washington a
disorganized rabble. With thirty-seven thousand grey soldiers he had
repelled in a welter of blood McClellan's eighty-six thousand at
Antietam and retired at his leisure. With seventy thousand men he had
crushed Burnside's host of one hundred and thirteen thousand at
Fredericksburg. With sixty thousand he had just struck Hooker's grand
army of a hundred and thirty thousand men and four hundred and
thirty-eight guns, rolled it up as a scroll and thrown it across the
Rappahannock in blinding, bewildering defeat.
From every prisoner taken at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville he knew
the Northern army was discouraged and heartsick. That he could march his
ragged men, the flower of Southern manhood, into Pennsylvania and clothe
and feed them on her boundless resources he couldn't doubt. Virginia was
swept bare, and the demoralization of Hooker's army with the profound
depression of the North left his way open.
To say that Lee's invasion, as it rapidly developed under such
conditions, struck terror to the Capital of the Republic is to mildly
express it. The movement of his army from Culpepper in June indicated
clearly that his objective point was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If the
Capital of the State fell, nothing could withstand the onward triumphant
rush of his army into Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
To meet the extraordinary danger the President called for one hundred
thousand militia for six months' emergency service from the five States
clustering around Pennsylvania. And yet as the two armies drew near to
each other, General George Meade, the new Union Commander who had
succeeded Hooker, had but one hundred and five thousand against Lee's
sixty-two thousand. So terrible had been the depression following
Chancellorsville, so rapid the desertions, so numerous the leaves of
absence, that the combined forces of the Army of the Potomac with the
State troops under the new call reached only this pitiful total.
Lee's swift column penetrated almost to the gates of Harrisburg before
Meade's advance division of twenty-five thousand men had caught up with
his rear at Gettysburg on July 1st.
Seeing that a battle was inevitable, Lee drew in his advance lines and
made ready for the clash. The Northern army was going into this fight
with the smallest number of men relatively which he had ever met--though
outnumbering him nearly two to one. The difference was that here the
North was defending her own soil.
It was not surprising that on the eve of such a battle in the light of
the frightful experiences of the past two years that Washington should
be in a condition of panic. A single defeat now with Lee's victorious
army north of the Capital meant its fall, the inevitable dismemberment
of the Union, and the bankruptcy and ruin of the remaining Northern
States.
Brave men in Congress who had fought heroically with their mouths
inveighing with bitter invective against the weak and vacillating policy
of the President in temporizing with the South were busy packing their
goods and chattels to fly at a moment's notice.
The President realized, as no other man could, the deep tragedy of the
crisis. He sat by his window for hours, his face a grey mask, his
sorrowful eyes turned within, the deep-cut lines furrowed into his
cheeks as though burned with red hot irons.
He was struggling desperately now to forestall the possible panic which
would follow defeat.
He had sent once more for McClellan and in painful silence, all others
excluded from the Executive Chamber, awaited his coming.
"You are doubtless aware, General," the President began, "that a defeat
at Gettysburg might involve the fall of the Capital and the
dismemberment of the Union?"
"I am, sir."
"First, I wish to speak to you with perfect frankness about some ugly
matters which have come to my ears--may I?"
The compelling blue eyes flashed and the General spoke with an accent of
impatience:
"Certainly."
"A number of Secret Societies have overspread the North and Northwest,
whose purpose is to end the war at once and on any terms. I have the
best of reasons for believing that the men back of these Orders are now
in touch with the Davis Government in Richmond. I am informed that a
coterie of these conspirators, a sort of governing board, have gotten
control or may get control of the organization of your Party. I have
heard the ugly rumor that they are counting on you----"
"Stop!" McClellan shouted.
The General sprang to his feet, the President rose and the two men
confronted each other in a moment of tense silence.
The compact figure of McClellan was trembling with rage--the tall man's
sombre eyes holding his with steady purpose.
"No man can couple the word treason with my name, sir!" the General
hissed.
"Have I done so?"
"You are insinuating it--and I demand a retraction!"
The President smiled genially:
"Then I apologize for my carelessness of expression. I have never
believed you a traitor to the Union."
"Thank you!"
"I don't believe it now, General. That's why I've sent for you."
"Then I suggest that you employ more caution in the use of words if this
conversation is to continue."
"Again I apologize, General, with admiration for your manner of meeting
the ugly subject. I'm glad you feel that way--and now if you will be
seated we can talk business."
McClellan resumed his seat with a frown and the President went on:
"I have sent for you to ask an amazing thing----"
"Hence the secrecy with which I am summoned?"
"Exactly. I'm going to ask you to take my place and save the Union."
McClellan's handsome face went white:
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I've said."
"And your conditions?" the General asked, with a quiver in his voice.
"They are very simple: Preside to-morrow night at a great Democratic
Union Mass Meeting in New York and boldly put yourself at the head of
the Union Democracy----"
"And you?"
"I will withdraw from the race."
"What race?"
"For the next term of the Presidency."
"Oh----"
"My convention is but ten months off. Yours can meet a day earlier. I
will withdraw in your favor and force my Party to endorse you. Your
election will be a certainty."
The General lifted his hand with a curious smile:
"You're in earnest?"
"I was never more so. It is needless for me to say that I came into this
office with high ambitions to serve my country. My dream of glory has
gone--I have left only agony and tears----" He paused and drew a deep
breath.
"I did want the chance," he went on wistfully, "to stay here another
term to see the sun shine again, to heal my country's wounds, and show
all my people, North, South, East, and West, that I love them! But I
can't risk this new battle, if you will agree to take my place and save
the Union. Will you preside over such a meeting?"
"No," was the sharp, clear answer.
"I am sorry--why?"
"Perhaps I am already certain of that election without your assistance?"
"Oh--I see."
"Besides, what right have you to ask anything of me?"
"Only the right of one who sinks all thought of himself in what he
believes to be the greater good."
"You who, with victory in my grasp before Richmond, snatched it away!
You, who nailed me to the cross on the bloody field of Antietam with
your accursed Proclamation of Emancipation and removed me from my
command before I could win my campaign!"
The big hand rose in kindly protest:
"Can't you believe me, General, when I tell you, with God as my witness,
that I have never allowed a personal motive or feeling to enter into a
single appointment or removal I have made? What I've done has always
been exactly what I believed was for the best interests of the country.
Can't you believe this?"
"No."
"In spite of the fact that I risked the dissolution of my Cabinet and
the united opposition of my party when I restored you to command?"
"No--you had to do it."
"Grant then," the persuasive voice went on, "that I have treated you
unfairly, that I had personal feelings. Surely you should in this hour
of my reckoning, this hour of my Golgotha, when I climb the hill alone
and ask the man I have wronged to take my place--surely you should be
content with my humiliation? I shall not hesitate to proclaim it from
the housetop when I ask for your election. If I have wronged you, my
anguish could not be more pitifully complete! Will you do as I ask, and
assure the safety of our country?"
"I'll do my best to save my country," was the slow, firm answer, "but in
my own way."
The General rose, bowed stiffly and left the President standing in
sorrowful silence, his deep eyes staring into space and seeing nothing.
On the morning of July 1st the two armies were rapidly approaching each
other, marching in parallel lines stretched over a vast distance--the
extreme wings more than forty miles apart.
Buford, commanding the advance guard of the Union army, struck Hill's
division of the Confederates before the town of Gettysburg and the first
gun of the great battle echoed over the green hills and valleys of
Pennsylvania.
The President caught the flash of the shock from the telegraph wires
with a sense of sickening dread. The rear guard of his army was yet
forty miles away. What might happen before they were in line God alone
could tell. He could not know, of course, that but twenty-two thousand
Confederates had reached the field and stood confronting twenty-four
thousand under John F. Reynolds, one of the ablest and bravest generals
of the Union army.
Through every hour of this awful day he sat in the telegraph office of
the War Department and read with bated breath the news.
The brief reports were not reassuring. The battle was raging with
unparalleled fury. At ten o'clock General Reynolds fell dead from his
horse in front of his men, and when the news was flashed to Meade he
sent Hancock forward riding at full speed to take command.
The President read the message announcing Reynolds' death with quivering
lip. He put his big hand blindly over his heart as if about to faint.
At three o'clock the smoke which had enveloped the battle line was
lifted by a breeze as Hancock dashed on the field. He had not arrived a
moment too soon. His superb bearing on his magnificent horse, his
shouts of confidence, his promise of heavy reinforcements, stayed the
tide of retreat and brought order out of chaos.
The day had been won again by Lee's apparently invincible men. They had
driven the Union army from their line a mile in front of Gettysburg back
through the town and beyond it, captured the town, taken five thousand
men in blue prisoners with two generals, besides inflicting a loss of
three thousand killed and wounded, including among the dead the gallant
and popular commander, John F. Reynolds.
When this message reached the President late at night he had eaten
nothing since breakfast. He rose from his seat in the telegraph office
and walked from the building alone in silence. His step was slow,
trance-like, and uncertain as if he were only half awake or had risen
walking in his sleep.
He went to his bedroom, locked the door and fell on his knees in prayer.
Hour after hour he wrestled alone with God in the darkness, while his
tired army rushed through the night to plant themselves on the Heights
beyond Gettysburg, before Lee's men could be concentrated to forestall
them.
Over and over again, through sombre eyes that streamed with tears, the
passionate cry was wrung from his heart:
"Lord God of our fathers, have mercy on us! I have tried to make this
war yours--our cause yours--if I have sinned and come short, forgive! We
cannot endure another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. Into thy
hands, O Lord, I give our men and our country this night--save them!"
CHAPTER XXX
SUNSHINE AND STORM
When the sun rose over Gettysburg on the second day of July, the Union
army, rushing breathlessly through the night to the rescue of its
defeated advance corps, had reached the heights beyond the town. Before
Longstreet had attempted to obey Lee's command to take these hills,
General Meade's blue host had reached them and were entrenching
themselves.
The Confederate Commander discovered that in the death of Jackson, he
had lost his right arm.
It was one o'clock before Longstreet moved to the attack, hurling his
columns in reckless daring against these bristling heights. When
darkness drew its kindly veil over the scene, Lee's army had driven
General Sickles from his chosen position to his second line of defense
on the hill behind, gained a foothold in the famous Devil's Den at the
base of the Round Tops, broken the lines of the Union right and held
their fortifications on Culp's Hill.
The day had been one of frightful slaughter.
The Union losses in the two days had reached the appalling total of more
than twenty thousand men. Lee had lost fifteen thousand.
The brilliant July moon rose and flooded this field of blood and death
with silent glory. From every nook and corner, from every shadow and
across every open space, through the hot breath of the night, came the
moans of thousands, and louder than all the long agonizing cries for
water. Many a man in grey crawled over the ragged rocks to press his
canteen to the lips of his dying enemy in blue, and many a boy in blue
did as much for the man in grey.
Fifteen thousand wounded men lay there through the long black hours.
At ten o'clock a wounded Christian soldier began to sing one of the old,
sweet hymns of faith, whose words have come ringing down the ages wet
with tears and winged with human hopes. In five minutes ten thousand
voices of blue and grey, some of them quivering with the agony of death,
had joined. For two hours the woods and hills rang with the songs of
these wounded men.
All through this pitiful music the Confederates were massing their
artillery on Seminary Ridge, replacing their wounded horses and
refilling their ammunition chests.
The Union army were burrowing like moles and planting their terrible
batteries on the brows of the hills beyond the town.
At Lee's council of war that night Longstreet advised his withdrawal
from Gettysburg into a more favorable position in the mountains. But the
Confederate Commander, reinforced now by the arrival of Pickett's
division of fifteen thousand men and Stuart's cavalry, determined to
renew the battle.
At the first grey streak of dawn on the 3rd the Federal guns roared
their challenge to the Confederate forces which had captured their
entrenchments on Culp's Hill. Seven terrible hours of bombardment,
charge and counter charge followed until every foot of space had claimed
its toll of dead, before the Confederates yielded the Hill.
At noon there was an ominous lull in the battle. At one o'clock a puff
of smoke from Seminary Ridge was followed by a dull roar. The signal gun
had pealed its call of death to thousands. For two miles along the crest
of this Ridge the Confederates had planted one hundred and fifty guns.
Two miles of smoke-wreathed flame suddenly leaped from those hills in a
single fiery breath.
The longer line of big Federal guns on Seminary Ridge were silent for a
few minutes and then answered gun for gun until the heavens were
transformed into a roaring hell of bursting, screaming, flaming shells.
For two hours the earth trembled beneath the shock of these volcanoes,
and then the two storms died slowly away and the smoke began to lift.
An ominous sign. The grey infantry were deploying in line under Pickett
to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand gallant men
against an impregnable hill held by seventy thousand intrenched
soldiers, backed by the deadliest and most powerful artillery.
They swept now into the field before the Heights, their bands playing as
if on parade--their grey ranks dressed on their colors. Down the slope
across the plain and up the hill the waves rolled, their thinning ranks
closing the wide gaps torn each moment by the fiery sleet of iron and
lead.
A handful of them lived to reach the Union lines on those heights.
Armistead, with a hundred men, broke through and lifted his battle flag
for a moment over a Federal battery, and fell mortally wounded.
And then the shattered grey wave broke into a spray of blood and slowly
ebbed down the hill. The battle of Gettysburg had ended.
For the first time the blue Army of the Potomac had won a genuine
victory. It had been gained at a frightful cost, but no price was too
high to pay for such a victory. It had saved the Capital of the Nation.
The Union army had lost twenty-three thousand men, the Confederate
twenty thousand. Meade had lost seventeen of his generals, and Lee,
fourteen.
When the thrilling news from the front reached Washington on July 4th,
the President lifted his big hands above his head and cried to the crowd
of excited men who thronged the Executive office:
"Unto God we give all the praise!"
None of those present knew the soul significance of that sentence as it
fell from his trembling lips. He seated himself at his desk and quickly
wrote a brief proclamation of thanks to Almighty God, which he
telegraphed to the Governor of each Union State, requesting them to
repeat it to their people.
While the North was still quivering with joy over the turn of the tide
at Gettysburg, Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, hurried into
the President's office and handed him a dispatch from the gunboat under
Admiral Porter coöperating with General Grant announcing the fall of
Vicksburg, the surrender of thirty-five thousand Confederate soldiers of
its garrison, and the opening of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of
Mexico.
The President seized his hat, his dark face shining with joy:
"I will telegraph the news to General Meade myself!"
He stopped suddenly and threw his long arms around Welles:
"What can we do for the Secretary of the Navy for this glorious
intelligence? He is always giving us good news. I cannot tell you my joy
over this result. It is great, Mr. Welles, it is great!"
With the eagerness of a boy he rushed to the telegraph office and sent
the message to Meade over his own signature.
For the first time in dreary months the sun had burst for a moment
through the clouds that had hung in endless gloom over the White House.
The sorrowful eyes were shining with new hope. The President felt sure
that General Lee could never succeed in leading his shattered army back
into Virginia. He had lost twenty thousand men out of his sixty-two
thousand--while Meade was still in command of a grand army of eighty-two
thousand soldiers flushed with victory. The Potomac River was in flood
and the Confederate army was on its banks unable to recross.
It was a moral certainty that the heroic Commander who had saved the
Capital at Gettysburg could, with his eighty-two thousand men, capture
or crush Lee's remaining force, caught in this trap by the swollen
river, and end the war.
The men who crowded into the Executive office the day after the news of
Vicksburg, found the Chief Magistrate in high spirits. Among the cases
of deserters, court-martialed and ordered to be shot, he was surprised
to find a negro soldier bearing the remarkable name of Julius Cæsar
Thornton. John Vaughan had telegraphed the President asking his
interference with the execution of this cruel edict.
The President was deeply interested. It was the beginning of the use of
negro troops. He had consented to their employment with reluctance, but
they were proving their worth to the army, both in battle and in the
work of garrisons.
Julius was brought from prison for an interview with the Chief
Magistrate.
Stanton had sternly demanded the enforcement of the strictest military
discipline as the only way to make these black troops of any real
service to the Government. He asked that an example be made of Julius by
sending him back to the army to be publicly shot before the assembled
men of his race. He was convicted of two capital offenses. He had been
caught in Washington shamelessly flaunting the uniform he had disgraced.
Julius faced the President with an humble salute and a broad grin. The
black man liked the looks of his judge and he threw off all
embarrassment his situation had produced with the first glance at the
kindly eyes gazing at him over the rims of those spectacles.
"Well, Julius Cæsar Thornton, this is a serious charge they have lodged
against you?"
"Yassah, dat's what dey say."
"You went forth like a man to fight for your country, didn't you?"
"Na, sah!"
"How'd you get there?"
"Dey volunteered me, sah."
"Volunteered you, did they?" the President laughed.
"Yassah--dat dey did. Dey sho' volunteered me whether er no----"
"And how did it happen?"
"Dey done hit so quick, sah, I scacely know how dey did do hit. I was in
de war down in Virginia wid Marse John Vaughan--an' er low-lifed
Irishman on guard dar put me ter wuk er buryin' corpses. I hain't nebber
had no taste for corpses nohow, an' I didn't like de job--mo' specially,
sah, when one ob 'em come to ez I was pullin' him froo de dark ter de
grave----"
"Come to, did he?" the President smiled.
"Yassah--he come to all of er sudden an' kicked me! An' hit scared me
near 'bout ter death. I lit out fum dar purty quick, sah, an' go West.
An' I ain't mor'n got out dar 'fore two fellers drawed dere muskets on
me an' persuaded me ter volunteer, sah. Dey put dese here cloze on me
an' tell me dat I wuz er hero. I tell 'em dey must be some mistake 'bout
dat, but dey say no--dey know what dey wuz er doin'. Dey keep on tellin'
me dat I wuz er hero an', by golly, I 'gin ter b'lieve hit myself till
dey git me into trouble, sah."
"You were in a battle?"
Julius scratched his head and walled his eyes:
"I had er little taste ob it, sah,----"
"Well, you tried to fight, didn't you?"
"No, sah,--I run."
"Ran at the first fire?"
"Yas, _sah_! An' I'd a ran sooner ef I'd er known hit wuz comin'----"
Julius paused and broke into a jolly laugh:
"Dey git one pop at me, sah, 'fore I seed what dey wuz doin'!"
The President suppressed a laugh and gazed at Julius with severity:
"That wasn't very creditable to your courage."
"Dat ain't in my line, sah,--I'se er cook."
"Have you no regard for your reputation?"
"Dat ain't nuttin' ter me, sah, 'side er life!"
"And your life is worth more than other people's?"
"Worth er lot mo' ter me, sah."
"I'm afraid they wouldn't have missed you, Julius, if you'd been
killed."
"Na, sah, but I'd a sho missed myself an' dat's de pint wid me."
The President fixed him with a comical frown:
"It's sweet and honorable to die for one's country, Julius!"
"Yassah--dat's what I hear--but I ain't fond er sweet things--I ain't
nebber hab no taste fer 'em, sah!"
"Well, it looks like I'll have to let 'em have you, Julius, for an
example. I've tried to save you--but there doesn't seem to be any thing
to take hold of. Every time I grab you, you slip right through my
fingers. I reckon they'll have to shoot you----"
The negro broke into a hearty laugh:
"G'way fum here, Mr. President! You can't fool me, sah. I sees yer
laughin' right now way back dar in yo' eyes. You ain't gwine let 'em
shoot me. I'se too vallable a nigger fer dat. I wuz worth er thousan'
dollars 'fore de war. I sho' oughter be wuth two thousan' now. What's de
use er 'stroyin' er good piece er property lak dat? I won't be no good
ter nobody ef dey shoots me!"
The President broke down at last, leaned back in his chair and laughed
with every muscle of his long body. Julius joined him with unction.
When the laughter died away the tall figure bent over his desk and wrote
an order for the negro's release, and discharge from the army.
One of the things which had brought the President his deepest joy in the
victory of Vicksburg was not the importance of the capture of the city
and the opening of the Mississippi so much as the saving of U. S. Grant
as a commanding General.
From the capture of Fort Donelson, the eyes of the Chief Magistrate had
been fixed on this quiet fighter. And then came the disaster to his army
at Shiloh--the first day's fight a bloody and overwhelming defeat--the
second the recovery of the ground lost and the death of Albert Sydney
Johnston, his brilliant Confederate opponent.
As a matter of fact, in its results, the battle had been a crushing
disaster to the South. But Grant had lost fourteen thousand men in the
two days' carnage and it was the first great field of death the war had
produced. McClellan had not yet met Lee before Richmond. The cry against
Grant was furious and practically universal.
Senator Winter, representing the demands of Congress, literally stormed
the White House for weeks with the persistent and fierce demand for
Grant's removal.
The President shook his head doggedly:
"I can't spare this man--he fights!"
The Senator submitted the proofs that Grant was addicted to the use of
strong drink and that he was under the influence of whiskey on the
first day of the battle of Shiloh.
In vain Winter stormed and threatened for an hour. The President was
adamant.
He didn't know Grant personally. But he had felt the grip of his big
personality on the men under his command and he refused to let him go.
He turned to his tormentor at last with a quizzical look in his eye:
"You know, Winter, that reminds me of a little story----"
The Senator threw up both hands with a gesture of rage. He knew what the
wily diplomat was up to.
"I won't hear it, sir," he growled. "I won't hear it. You and your
stories are sending this country to hell--it's not more than a mile from
there now!"
The sombre eyes smiled as he slowly said:
"I believe it _is_ just a mile from here to the Senate Chamber!"
The Senator faced him a moment and the two men looked at each other
tense, erect, unyielding.
"There may or may not be a grain of truth in your statements, Winter,"
the quiet voice continued, "but your personal animus against Grant is
deeper. He is a Democrat married to a Southern woman, and is a
slave-holder. You can't be fair to him. I can, I must and I will. I am
the President of all the people. The Nation needs this man. I will not
allow him to be crushed. You have my last word."
The Senator strode to the door in silence and paused:
"But you haven't mine, sir!"
The tall figure bowed and smiled.
The President found the task a greater one than he had dreamed. So
furious was the popular outcry against Grant, so dogged and persistent
was the demand for his removal he was compelled to place General Halleck
in nominal command of the district in which his army was operating until
the popular furor should subside. In this way he had kept Grant as
Second in Command at the head of his army, and Vicksburg with
thirty-five thousand prisoners was the answer the silent man in the West
had sent to his champion and protector in the White House.
The thrilling message had come at an opportune moment. The new commander
of the army of the Potomac had defeated General Lee at Gettysburg and
for an hour his name was on every lip. The President and the Nation had
taken it for granted that he would hurl his eighty-two thousand men on
Lee's army hemmed in by the impassable Potomac.
So sure of this was Stanton that he declared to the President:
"If a single regiment of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia in an
organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to be
Secretary of War."
Once more the impossible happened. Lee did get back into Virginia, his
army marching with quick step and undaunted spirit, ready to fight at
any moment his rear guard came in touch with Meade's advancing hosts. He
not only crossed the Potomac with his army in perfect fighting form with
every gun he carried, but with thousands of fat cattle and four thousand
prisoners of war captured on the field of Gettysburg.
The President's day of rejoicing was brief. As Lee withdrew to his old
battle ground with his still unconquered lines of grey, the man in the
White House saw with aching heart his dream of peace fade into the
mists of even a darker night than the one through which his soul had
just passed.
Slowly but surely the desperate South began to recover from the shock of
Gettysburg and Vicksburg and filled once more her thinning battle lines.
General Lee, sorely dissatisfied with himself for his failure to win in
Pennsylvania, tendered his resignation to the Richmond Government,
asking to be relieved by a younger and abler man. As no such man lived,
Jefferson Davis declined his resignation, and he continued his
leadership with renewed faith in his genius by every man, woman and
child in the South.
General Meade, stung to desperation by the bitter disappointment of the
President and the people of the North, also tendered his resignation.
For the moment the President refused to consider it, though his eyes
were fixed with growing faith on the silent figure of Grant. One more
victory from this stolid fighter and he had found the great commander
for which he had sought in vain through blood and tears for more than
two years.
The first task to which he must turn his immediate attention was the
filling of the depleted ranks of the Northern armies. Volunteering had
ceased, the terms of the enlisted men would soon expire, and it was
absolutely necessary to enforce a draft for five hundred thousand
soldiers.
The President had been warned by the Democratic Party, at present a
powerful and aggressive minority in Congress, that such an act of
despotism would not be tolerated by a free people.
The President's answer was simple and to the point:
"The South has long since adopted force to fill her ranks. If we are to
continue this war and save the Union it is absolutely necessary, and
therefore it shall be done."
The great city of New York was the danger point. The Government had been
warned of the possibility of a revolution in the metropolis, whose
representatives in Congress had demanded the right to secede in the
beginning of the war. And yet the warning had not been taken seriously
by the War Department. No effort had been made to garrison the city
against the possibility of an armed uprising to resist the draft.
Demagogues had been haranguing the people for months, inflaming their
minds to the point of madness on the subject of this draft.
On the night before the drawing was ordered in New York the leading
speaker had swept the crowd off their feet by the daring words with
which he closed his appeal:
"We will resist this attempt of Black Republicans and Abolitionists to
force the children of the poor into the ranks they dare not enter. Will
you give any more of your sons to be food for vultures on the hills of
Virginia? Will you allow them to be torn from your firesides and driven
as dumb cattle into the mouths of Southern cannon? If you are slaves,
yes,----if you are freemen, no!"
When the lottery wheel began to turn off its fatal names at the
Government Draft Office at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Third
Avenue on the morning of July 14th, a sullen, determined mob packed the
streets in front of the building. Among them stood hundreds of women
whose husbands, sons and brothers were listed on the spinning wheel of
black fortune.
Their voices were higher and angrier than the men's:
"This is a rich man's war--but a poor man's fight----"
"Yes, if you've got three hundred dollars you can hire a substitute from
the slums----"
"But if you happen to be a working man, you can stand up and be shot for
these cowards and sneaks!"
"Down with the draft!"
"To hell with the hirelings and their wheel!"
"Smash it----"
"Burn the building!"
A tough from the East Side waved his hand to the crowd of frenzied men
and women:
"Come on, boys,----"
With a single mighty impulse the mob surged toward the doors, and
through them. A sound of smashing glass, blows, curses. A man rushed
into the street holding the enrollment books above his head:
"Here are your names, men--the list of white slaves!"
The mob tore the sheets from his grasp and fell on them like hungry
wolves. In ten minutes the books were only scraps of paper trampled into
the filth of Third Avenue. Wherever a piece could be seen men and women
stamped and spit on it.
They smashed the wheel and furniture into kindling wood, piled it in the
middle of the room and set fire to it. No policemen or firemen were
allowed to approach. Every officer of the law, both civil and military,
had been chased and beaten and disappeared.
Half the block was in flames before the firemen could break through and
reach the burning buildings.
Down the Avenue, the maddened mob swept with resistless impulse,
jelling, cursing, shouting its defiance.
"Down with the Abolitionists!"
"Hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple tree!"
"To the _Tribune_ Office!"
Howard, a reporter of the _Tribune_, was recognized:
"Kill him!"
"Hang him!"
The mob seized the reporter, dragged him to a lamp post and were about
to put the rope around his neck when a blow from a cobblestone felled
him to the sidewalk, the blood trickling down his neck.
A man bending over his body, shouted to the crowd:
"He's dead--we'll take the body away!"
A friend helped and they carried him into a store and saved his life.
For three days and nights this mob burned and killed at will and fought
every officer of the law until the streets ran red with blood. They
burned the Negro Orphan Asylum, beat, killed or hanged every negro who
showed his face, sacked the home of Mayor Opdyke, at 79 Fifth Avenue,
and attempted to burn it. They smashed in the _Tribune_ building, gutted
part of it and would have reduced it to ashes but for the brave defense
put up by some of its men.
On the third day the announcement was made that the draft was suspended.
Five thousand troops reached the city and partly succeeded in restoring
order.
More than a thousand men had been killed and three thousand
wounded--among them many women.
The Democratic papers now boldly demanded that the draft should be
officially suspended until its constitutionality could be tested by the
courts. The State and Municipal authorities of New York appealed to the
President to suspend the draft.
He answered:
"If I suspend the draft there can be no army to continue the war and the
days of the Republic are numbered. The life of the Nation is at stake."
They begged for time, and he hesitated for a day. The victories of
Gettysburg and Vicksburg were forgotten in the grim shadow of a possible
repetition of the French Revolution on a vast scale throughout the
North. The mob had already sacked the office of the _Times_ in Troy,
broken out in Boston, and threatened Cincinnati.
The President gave the Governor of New York his final answer by sending
an army of ten thousand veterans into the city. He planted his artillery
to sweep the streets with grape and cannister, and ordered the draft to
be immediately enforced.
The new wheel was set up, and turned with bayonets. The mobs were
overawed and the ranks of the army were refilled.
CHAPTER XXXI
BETWEEN THE LINES
Betty Winter found to her sorrow that the memory of a dead love could be
a troublesome thing. Ned Vaughan's tender and compelling passion had
been resistless in the moonlight beneath a fragrant apple tree with the
old mill wheel splashing its music at their feet. She had returned to
her cot in the hospital that night in a glow of quiet, peaceful joy.
Life's problem had been solved at last in the sweet peace of a tender
and beautiful spiritual love--the only love that could be real.
All this was plain, while the glow of Ned's words were in her heart and
the memory of his nearness alive in the fingers and lips he had kissed.
And then to her terror came stealing back the torturing vision of his
brother. Why, why, why could she never shut out the memory of this man!
Over and over again she repeated the angry final word:
"He isn't worth a moment's thought!"
And yet she kept on thinking, thinking, always in the same blind circle.
At last came the new resolution,
"Worthy or unworthy, I've given my word to a better man and that settles
it."
The fight had become in her inflamed imagination the struggle between
good and evil. The younger man with his chivalrous boyish ideals was
God, Love, Light. The older with his iron will, his fierce ungovernable
passion, was the Devil, Lust and Darkness. She trembled with new terror
at the discovery that there was something elemental deep within her own
life that answered the challenge of this older voice with a strange
joyous daring.
She had just risen from her knees where she had prayed for strength to
fight and win this battle when the maid knocked on her door. She had
left the hospital and returned home for a week's rest, tottering on the
verge of a nervous collapse since her return from the meeting with Ned.
"A letter, Miss Betty," the maid said with a smile.
She tore the envelope with nervous dread. It bore no postmark and was
addressed in a strange hand.
Inside was another envelope in Ned's handwriting, and around it a sheet
of paper on which was scrawled,
"DEAR MISS WINTER: The bearer of this letter is a trusted spy of
both Governments. I have friends in Washington and in Richmond. In
Richmond I am supposed to betray the Washington Government. In
Washington it is known that I am at heart loyal to the Union, and
all my correspondence from Richmond to the Confederate agents in
Canada and the North I deliver to the President and Stanton. This
one is an exception. I happened to have met Mr. Ned. Vaughan and
like him. I deliver this letter to you unopened by any hand. I've a
sweetheart myself."
With a cry of joy, Betty broke the seal and read Ned's message. It was
written just after the battle of Gettysburg.
"DEAREST: I am writing to you to-night because I must--though this
may never reach you. The whole look of war has changed for me since
that wonderful hour we spent in the moonlight beside the river and
you promised me your life. It's all a pitiful tragedy now, and
love, love, love seems the only thing in all God's universe worth
while! I don't wish to kill any more. It hurts the big something
inside that's divine. I'm surprised at myself that I can't see the
issues of National life as I saw them at first. Somehow they have
become dwarfed beside the new wonder and glory that fills my heart.
And now like a poor traitor, I am praying for peace, peace at any
price. Oh, dearest, you have brought me to this. I love you so
utterly with every breath I breathe, every thought of mind and
every impulse of soul and body, how can I see aught else in the
world?
"In every scene of these three days of horror through which we've
just passed, my thought was of you. The signal gun that called the
men to die boomed your name for me. I heard it in the din and roar
and crash of armies. The louder came the call of death, the sweeter
life seemed because life meant you. Life has taken on a new and
wonderful meaning. I love it as I never loved it before and I've
grown to hate death and I whisper it to you, my love, my own--to
hate war! I want to live now, and I'm praying, praying, praying for
peace. My mind is yet clear in its conviction of right or I could
not stay here a moment longer. But I'm longing and hoping and
wondering whether God will not show us the way out of your tragic
dilemma.
"During the battle I found a handsome young Federal officer who had
fallen inside out lines. With his last strength he was trying to
write a message to his bride who was waiting for him behind the
Union lines. I couldn't pass by. I stopped and got his name, gave
him water and made him as comfortable as possible. I got
permission from my General while the battle raged and sent his
message with a flag of truce to his wife. She came flying to his
side at the risk of her life, got to the rear and saved him.
Perhaps I wasn't an ideal soldier in that pause in my fight. But I
had to do it, dearest. It was your sweet spirit that stopped me and
sent the white flag of love and mercy.
"And the strangest of all the things of the war happened that
night. I spent six hours among the wounded, helping the poor boys
all I could--both blue and grey--and I suddenly ran into John at
the same pitiful work. It's curious how all the bitterness is gone
out of my heart.
"I grabbed him and hugged him, and we both cried like two fools. We
sat down between the lines in the brilliant moonlight and talked
for an hour. I told him of you, dearest, and he wished me all the
happiness life could give, but with a queer hitch in his voice, and
after a long silence, which made me wonder if he, too, had not been
loving you in secret. I shouldn't wonder if every man who sees you
loves you. The wonder to me is they don't.
"Our band is playing an old-fashioned Southern song that sets my
heart to beating with joyous madness again. I'm dreaming through
that song of the home I'm going to build for you somewhere in the
land of sunshine. Don't worry about me. I'm not going to die. I
know I'm immortal now. I had faith once. Now I know--because I love
you and time is too short to tell and all too short to live my
love.
"NED."
She read it over twice through eyes that grew dim with each foolish,
sweet extravagance. And then she went back and read for the third time
the line about John, threw herself across her bed and burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE WHIRLWIND
The draft of half a million men was scarcely completed when Rosecrans'
Western army, advancing into Georgia, met with crushing defeat at
Chickamauga, "The River of Death." His shattered hosts were driven back
into Chattanooga with the loss of eighteen thousand men in a rout so
complete and stunning that Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of
War, telegraphed the President from the front that it was another "Bull
Run."
Rosecrans himself wired that he had met with a terrible disaster. The
White House sent him words of cheer. The Confederate Commander, General
Bragg, rapidly closed in and began to lay siege to Chattanooga, and the
defeated Federal army were put on short rations.
The President turned his eyes now from Meade and his army of the Potomac
which Lee's strategy had completely baffled and gave his first thought
to the armies of the West. He sent Sherman hurrying from the Mississippi
to Rosecrans' relief and Hooker from the East. In the place of Rosecrans
he promoted George H. Thomas, whose gallant stand had saved the army
from annihilation and won the title, "The Rock of Chickamauga." And most
important of all he placed in supreme command of the forces in Tennessee
the silent man whom his patience and faith had saved to the Nation, the
conqueror of Vicksburg--Ulysses S. Grant.
On November the 24th and 25th, the new Commander raised the siege of
Chattanooga, and drove Bragg's army from Missionary Ridge and Lookout
Mountain back into Georgia.
At last the President had found the man of genius for whom he had long
searched. Grant was summoned to Washington and given command of all the
armies of the United States East and West.
The new General at once placed William Tecumseh Sherman at the head of
an army of a hundred thousand men at Chattanooga for the purpose of
reinvading Georgia, sent General Butler with forty thousand up the
Peninsula against Richmond along the line of McClellan's old march,
raised the Army of the Potomac to one hundred and forty thousand
effective fighters, took command in person and faced General Lee on the
banks of the Rapidan but a few miles from the old ground in the
Wilderness around Chancellorsville where Hooker's men had baptized the
earth in heroic blood the year before.
Grant's army was the flower of Northern manhood and with its three
hundred and eighteen great field guns the best equipped body of fighting
men ever brought together on our continent. His baggage train was over
sixty miles long and would have stretched the entire distance to
Richmond.
By the spring of 1864 when he reached the Rapidan Lee's army had been
recruited again to its normal strength of sixty-two thousand.
A great religious revival swept the Southern camps during the winter
and its meetings lasted into the spring almost to the hour of the
opening guns of the Wilderness campaign. Had whispers from the Infinite
reached the souls of the ragged men in grey and told them of coming
Gethsemane and Calvary?
Certain it is that though Lee's army were ragged and poorly fed their
courage was never higher, their faith in their Commander never more
sublime than in those beautiful spring mornings in April when they
burnished their bayonets to receive Grant's overwhelming host.
The Chaplain of Ned Vaughan's regiment was leading a prayer meeting in
the moonlight. An earnest brother was praying fervently for more
manhood, and more courage.
A ragged Confederate kneeling nearby didn't like the drift of his
petition and his patience gave out. He raised his head and called.
"Say, hold on there, brother! You're getting that prayer all wrong. We
don't need no more courage--got so much now we're skeered of ourselves
sometimes. What we need is provisions. Ask the Lord to send us something
to eat. That's what we want now----"
The leader took the interruption in good spirit and added an eloquent
request for at least one good meal a day if the Lord in his goodness and
mercy could spare it.
No persimmon tree was ever stripped without the repetition of their old
joke. They all knew the words by heart,
"Don't eat those persimmons--they're not good for you!"
"I know it, man, I'm just doin' it to pucker my stomach to fit my
rations!"
Ned was passing the door of a cabin in which a prayer meeting of
officers was being held. He was walking with his Colonel who was fond of
a sip of corn whiskey at times. He was slightly deaf.
The leader of the meeting called from the door:
"Won't you join us in prayer, Colonel?"
"Thank you, no, I've just had a little!" he answered innocently.
Ned roared and the brethren inside the cabin joined the laugh.
No body of men of any race ever marched to death with calmer faith than
those ragged lines of grey now girding their loins for the fiercest,
bloodiest struggle in the annals of the world.
Lee allowed Grant to cross the Rapidan unopposed and penetrate the
tangled wilds of the Wilderness. The Southerner knew that in these dense
woods the effectiveness of his opponent's superior numbers would be
vastly reduced. Longstreet's corps had not yet arrived from Gordonsville
where he had been sent to obtain food, and he must concentrate his
forces.
The days were oppressively hot, as the men in blue tramped through the
forest aisles of the vast Virginia jungle--a maze of trees, underbrush
and dense foliage. A pall of ominous silence hung over this labyrinth of
desolation, broken only by the chirp of bluebird or the distant call of
the yellowhammer.
Not waiting for the arrival of Longstreet on his forced march from
Gordonsville, Lee suddenly threw the half of his army on Grant's
advancing men with savage energy. Their march was halted and through
every hour of the day and far into the night the fierce conflict raged.
As darkness fell the Confederates had pushed the blue lines back,
captured four guns and a number of prisoners.
But Longstreet had not come and Lee's army of barely forty thousand men
were in a dangerous position before Grant's legions.
Both Generals renewed the fight at daylight. The Federals attacked Lee's
entire line with terrific force. Just as the Confederate right wing was
being crushed and rolled back in disorder, Longstreet reached the field
and threw his men into the breach. Lee himself rode to the front to lead
the charge and reëstablish his yielding lines.
From a thousand throats rose the cry:
"Lee to the rear!"
"Go back, General Lee!"
"This is no place for you!"
"We'll settle this!"
The men refused to move until their Commander had withdrawn. And then
with their fierce yell they charged and swept the field.
Lee repeated the brilliant achievement of Jackson at Chancellorsville.
Longstreet was sent around Hancock's left to turn and assail his flank.
The movement was a complete success. Hancock's line was smashed and
driven back a mile to his second defenses.
General Wadsworth at the head of his division was mortally wounded and
fell into the hands of the on-sweeping Confederates. Just as the
movement had reached the moments of its triumph which would have
crumpled Grant's army in confusion back on the banks of the river,
Longstreet fell dangerously wounded, struck down by a volley from his
own men in exactly the same way and almost in the same spot where
Jackson had fallen. General Jenkins, who was with him, was instantly
killed.
The charging hosts were halted by the change of Commanders and the
movement failed of its big purpose, though at sunset General John B.
Gordon broke through Sedgwick's Union lines, rolled back his right
flank, drove him a mile from his entrenchments and captured six hundred
prisoners with two brigadier generals.
The mysterious fate which had pursued the South had once more stricken
down a great commander in the moment of victory, and snatched it from
his grasp--at Shiloh, Albert Sydney Johnston; at Seven Pines, Joseph E.
Johnston; at Chancellorsville, Jackson, and now Longstreet.
Grant in two days lost seventeen thousand six hundred and sixty-six men,
a larger number than fell under Hooker when he had retreated in despair.
Any other General than Grant, the stolid bulldog fighter, would have
retreated across the Rapidan to reorganize his bleeding lines.
As one of his Generals rode up the following morning out of the
confusion and horror of the night, Grant, chewing on his cigar, waved
his right arm with a quick movement:
"It's all right, Wilson; we'll fight again!"
Next day the two armies lay in their trenches facing each other in grim
silence. Grant determined again to turn Lee's right flank and get
between him and Richmond.
Lee divined his purpose before a single regiment had begun to march.
Spottsylvania Court House lay on his right. The Confederate Commander
hurried his advance guard to the spot and lay in wait for his opponent.
The day of the 19th was spent by both armies in adjusting lines and
constructing breastworks. These fortifications were made by digging huge
ditches and on the top of their banks fastening heavy logs. In front of
these, abatis were made by filling the trees and cutting their limbs in
such a way that the sharp spikes projected toward the breasts of the
advancing foe.
While placing his guns in position General Sedgwick was killed by a
sharpshooter's bullet--a commander of high character and fearless
courage and loved by every man in his army.
On the morning of the 10th Hancock attempted to turn Lee's rear by
crossing the Po. The movement failed and he was recalled with heavy
losses under Early's assault as he recrossed the river.
Warren led his division in a determined charge on the Confederate front
and they were mowed down in hundreds by Longstreet's men behind their
entrenchments. They reached the abatis and one man leaped on the
breastworks before they fell back in bloody confusion. General Rice was
mortally wounded in this charge.
On the left of Warren, Colonel Emory Upton charged and broke through the
Confederate lines capturing twelve hundred prisoners, but was driven
back at last with the loss of a thousand of his men. Grant made him a
Brigadier General on the field.
The first day at Spottsylvania ended with a loss of four thousand Union
men. Lee's losses were less than half that number.
The 11th they paused for breath, and Grant sent his famous dispatch to
Washington:
"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
On the morning of the 12th Hancock was ordered to charge at daylight.
Lee's lines were spread out in the shape of an enormous letter V.
Hancock's task was to capture the angle which formed the key to this
position.
In pitch darkness under pouring rain his four divisions under Birney,
Mott, Barlow and Gibbon slipped through the mud and crept into position
within a few hundred yards of the Confederate breastworks.
As the first streaks of dawn pierced the murky clouds, without a shot,
the solid, silent lines of blue rushed this angle and leaped into the
entrenchments before the astounded men in grey knew what had happened.
So swift was the blow, so surprising, so overwhelming in numbers, the
angle was captured practically without a struggle and the three thousand
men within it were forced to surrender with every cannon, their muskets,
colors and two Generals. It was the most brilliant single achievement of
"Hancock the Superb."
Pressing on, Hancock's men advanced against the second series of
trenches a half mile beyond. Here the fight really began.
Into their faces poured a terrific volley of musketry and General John
B. Gordon led his men in a desperate charge to drive the invaders back.
Lee, seeing the dangerous situation, rode to the front with the evident
intention of joining in this charge.
Again the cry rang from the hearts of the men who loved him:
"Lee to the rear!"
They refused to move until he was led out of range of the fire. Gordon's
men charged and drove the Federal hosts back until at last they stood
against the entrenchments they had captured. Reinforcements now poured
in from both sides and the fighting became indescribable in its mad
desperation. Thousands of men in blue and men in grey fought face to
face and hand to hand. Muskets blazed in one another's eyes and blew
heads off. The dead were piled in rows four and five deep, blue and grey
locked in each other's arms. The trenches were filled with the dead and
cleared of bodies again and again to make room for the living until they
in turn were thrown out.
Ned Vaughan saw a grey color-bearer's arm shot away at the shoulder, the
quivering flesh smeared with mud, stained with powder and filled with
the shreds of his grey sleeve--and yet, without blenching, he grasped
his colors with the other hand and swept on into the jaws of this
flaming hell at the head of his men. The rain of musketry fire against
the trees came to Ned's ears in low undertone like the rattle of myriads
of hail stones on the roof of a house.
A grey soldier was fighting a duel to the death with a magnificently
dressed officer in blue, bare bayonet against bare sword. The soldier,
with a sudden plunge, ran his opponent through. With a shudder, Ned
looked to see if it were John.
A company of men in blue were caught and cut off by a grey wave and
were trying to surrender. Their officers with drawn revolvers refused to
let them.
"Shoot your officers!" a grey man shouted. In a moment every Commander
dropped and the men were marched to the rear.
Hour after hour the flames of hell swirled in an endless whirlwind
around this "Bloody Angle." Battle line after battle line rushed in
never to return. Ned saw an oak tree two feet in diameter gnawed down by
musket balls. It fell with a crash, killing and wounding a number of
men.
Color-bearers waved their flags in each other's faces, clinched and
fought like demons. Two soldiers, their ammunition spent, choked each
other to death on top of the entrenchment and rolled down its banks
among the torn and mangled bodies that filled the ditch.
In the edge of this red whirlwind Ned Vaughan saw a grim man in grey
standing beside a tree using two guns. His wounded comrade loaded one
while he took deliberate aim and fired the other. With each crack of his
musket a man in blue was falling.
In the centre of this mass of struggling maniacs the men were fighting
with gun swabs, handspikes, clubbed muskets, stones and fists.
The night brought no rest, no pause to succor the wounded or bury the
dead. Through the black murk of the darkness they fought on and on until
at last the men who were living sank in their tracks at three o'clock
before day and neither line had given from this "Bloody Angle."
The rain ceased to fall, the clouds lifted and the waning moon came out.
Ned Vaughan passing over the outer field saw a long line of men lying
in regular ranks in an odd position. He turned to the Commander.
"Why don't you move that line of battle now to make it conform to your
own?"
"They're all dead men," was the quiet answer. "They are Georgia
soldiers."
John Vaughan, on the other side, crossing an open space, came on a blue
battle line asleep rank on rank, skirmishers in front and battle line
behind, all asleep on their arms. There was no one near to answer a
question. They were all dead.
The blue and grey men were talking to one another now.
"Well, Johnnie," a Yankee called through the shadows, "I can't admit
that you're inspired of God, but after to-day I must say that you are
possessed of the devil."
"Same to you, Yank! Your papers say we're all demoralized anyhow--so
to-morrow you oughtn't have no trouble finishin' us!"
"Ah, shut up now, Johnnie, and go to sleep!"
"All right, good-night, Yank, hope ye'll rest well. We'll give ye hell
at daylight!"
For five days Grant swung his blue lines in circles of blood trying in
vain to break Lee's ranks and gave it up. He had lost at Spottsylvania
eighteen thousand more men. The stolid, silent man of iron nerves was
terribly moved by the frightful losses his gallant army had sustained.
He watched with anguish the endless lines of wagons bearing his stricken
men from the field. Lee's forces had been handled with such consummate
and terrible skill, his crushing numbers had made little impression.
Grant was facing a new force in the world. The ordinary methods of war
which he had used with success in the West went here for nothing. The
devotion of Lee's men was a mania. Small as his army was the bulldog
fighter saw with amazement that it was practically unconquerable in a
square, hand-to-hand struggle.
Once more he was forced to maneuver for advantage in position. He
ordered a new flank movement by the North Anna River.
He had opened his fight with Lee on the 5th, and in two weeks he had
lost thirty-six thousand men, without gaining an inch in the execution
of his original plan of thrusting himself between the Confederate leader
and his Capital. Lee's army was apparently as terrible a fighting
machine as on the day they had met.
A truce now followed to bury the dead and care for the wounded. So sure
had Grant been of crushing his opponent he had refused to agree to this
during the struggle.
They found them piled six layers deep in the trenches, blue and grey,
blue and grey. Black wings were spread over the top with red beaks
tearing at eyes and lips while deep down below, yet groaned and moved
the living wounded.
God of Love and Pity, draw the veil over the scene! No pen can tell its
story--no heart endure to hear it.
The stop was brief. Already the cavalry were skirmishing for the next
position.
Again the keen eye of Lee had divined his enemy's purpose. By a shorter
road his men had reached the North Anna before Grant. When the Union
leader arrived on the scene he found the position of his advance
division dangerous and quickly withdrew with the loss of two thousand
men.
Once more he determined to turn Lee's flank and hurled his army toward
Cold Harbor. This time he reached his chosen ground before his opponent
and on the 31st, Sheridan's cavalry took possession of the place. The
two armies had rushed for this point in waving parallel lines, flashing
at each other death-dealing volleys as they touched.
Both armies immediately began to entrench in their chosen positions.
Lee, familiar with his ground, had chosen his position with consummate
skill. On June the 1st, the preliminary attack was made at six o'clock
in the afternoon. It was short and bloody. The Northern division under
Smith and Wright charged and lost two thousand two hundred men in an
hour.
Again Lee had placed his guns and infantry in a fiery crescent on the
hills arranged to catch both flanks and front of an advancing army.
Grant's soldiers knew that grim work had been cut out for them on that
fatal morning the third day of June. As John Vaughan walked along the
lines the night before he saw thousands of silent men busy with their
needle and thread sewing their names on their underclothing.
The hot, close weather of the preceding days had ended in a grateful
rain at five o'clock, which continued through the night and brought the
tired, suffering men gracious relief.
Grant decided to assault the whole Confederate front and gave his orders
for the attack at the first streak of dawn at four-thirty.
The charging blue hosts literally walked into the crater of a volcano
flaming in their faces and pouring tons of steel and lead into their
stricken flanks. Nothing like it had ever before been seen in the
history of war.
_Ten thousand men in blue fell in twenty minutes!_
The battle was practically over at half past seven o'clock.
General Smith received an order from Meade to renew the assault and
flatly refused.
The scene which followed has no parallel in the records of human
suffering. Its horror is inconceivable and unthinkable. Through the
summer nights the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying rose in
pitiful endless waves. And no hand was lifted to save. For three days
they lay begging for water, groaning and dying where they had fallen. It
was certain death to venture in that storm-swept space. Only a few brave
men fought their way through to rescue a fallen comrade.
It was not until the 7th that a truce was arranged to clear this shamble
and then every man in blue was dead save two. Everywhere blood, blood,
blood in dark slippery pools--dead horses--dead men--smashed guns, legs,
arms, torn and mangled pieces of bodies--the earth plowed with shot and
shell.
Thirty days had passed since Grant met Lee in the tangled Wilderness and
the Northern army had lost sixty thousand men, two thousand a day.
It is small wonder that he decided not to try longer "to fight it out on
that line."
Lee had put out of combat as many men for his opponent as he had under
his command at any time and his army with the reinforcements he had
received was now as strong as the day he met Grant.
For twelve days the two armies lay in their entrenchments on this field
of death while the Federal Commander arranged a new plan of campaign.
The sharpshooting was incessant. No man in all the line of blue could
stand erect and live an instant. Soldiers whose time of service had
expired and were ordered home, had to crawl on their hands and knees
through the trenches to the rear.
The new Commander, on whose genius the President and the people had
planted their brightest hopes, had just reached the spot where McClellan
stood in June, 1862. And he might have gotten there by the James under
cover of his gunboats without the loss of a single life.
Again John Vaughan's memory turned to McClellan with desperate
bitterness. The longer he brooded over the hideous scenes of the past
month, the higher rose his blind rage against the President.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE BROTHERS MEET
When Julius, who had returned to John Vaughan's service, saw those piles
of dead men on the field of Cold Harbor he lost faith in the Union
Cause. He made up his mind that the past month's work had more than paid
for that letter to the President and he took to the woods on his own
hook.
He lay down to sleep the night he deserted in a clump of trees near the
Confederate outposts and rested his head on a pillow of pine straw. When
he waked in the morning at dawn he felt something tickle his nose. He
cautiously reached one hand up to see what it was and felt a lock of
hair. He rose slowly, fearing to look till he had gained his feet. He
turned his eyes at last and saw that he had been sleeping on a dead
man's head protruding through the shallow dirt and pine straw that had
been hastily thrown over it the first day of the battle.
With a yell of terror he started on a run for his life.
He never stopped until he had flanked Lee's army by a wide swing, made
his way to the rear and joined the Confederacy.
Grant had now changed his plan of campaign. He determined to capture
Petersburg by a _coup_ and cut the communication of Lee and Richmond
with the South. The _coup_ failed. The ragged remnants of Lee's army
which had been left there to defend it, held the trenches until
reinforcements arrived.
He determined to take it by a resistless concerted assault. On the 16th
he threw three of his army corps on Beauregard's thin lines before
Petersburg, capturing four redoubts. At daylight, on the 17th, he again
hurled his men on Beauregard and drove his men out of his first line of
defense. All day the defenders held their second line, though Grant's
crack divisions poured out their blood like water. As night fell the
dead were once more piled high on the Federal front and the Confederate
dead filled the trenches.
As the third day dawned the fierce, assault was renewed, but Lee had
brought up Anderson's Corps with Kershaw and Field's division and the
blue waves broke against the impregnable grey ranks and rolled back,
leaving the dead in dark heaps.
As the shadows of night fell, Grant withdrew his shattered lines to
their trenches.
_He had lost ten thousand five hundred more men and had failed._
He began to burrow his fortifications into the earth around Petersburg
and try by siege what had been found impossible by assault. Further and
further crept his blue lines with pick and axe and spade and shovel,
digging, burrowing, piling their dirt and timbers. Before each blue
rampart silently grew one in grey until the two siege lines stretched
for thirty-seven miles in bristling, flaming semicircle covering both
Richmond and Petersburg.
Again Grant planned a _coup_. He chose the role of the fox this time
instead of the lion. He selected the key of Lee's long lines of defense
and set a regiment of Pennsylvania miners to work digging a tunnel under
the Confederate fort known as "Elliot's Salient," which stood but two
hundred yards in front of Burnside's corps.
The tunnel was finished, the mine ready, the fuses set, and eight
thousand pounds of powder planted in the earth beneath the unsuspecting
Confederates.
Hancock's division with Sheridan's cavalry were sent to make a
demonstration against Richmond and draw Lee's main army to its defense.
The ruse was partly successful. There were but eighteen thousand behind
the defenses of Petersburg on the dark night when Grant massed fifty
thousand picked men before the doomed fort. The pioneers with their axes
cleared the abatis and opened the way for the charging hosts. Heavy guns
and mortars were planted to sweep the open space beyond the Salient and
beat back any attempted counter charge.
The time set for the explosion was just before dawn. The fuse was lit
and fifty thousand men stood gripping their guns, waiting for the shock.
A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened. An ominous silence
brooded over the dawning sky. The only sounds heard were the twitter of
waking birds in the trees and hedgerows. The fuse had failed. Two heroic
men crawled into the tunnel and found it had spluttered out in a damp
spot but fifty feet from the powder. It required an hour to secure and
plant a new fuse. Day had dawned. Just in front of John Vaughan's
regiment a Confederate spy was caught. He could hear every word of the
pitiful tragedy.
He was a handsome, brown-eyed youngster of eighteen.
He glanced pathetically toward the doomed fort, and shook his head:
"Fifteen minutes more and I'd have saved you, boys!"
He turned then to the executioners:
"May I have just a minute to pray?"
"Yes."
He knelt and lifted his head, the fine young lips moving in silence as
the first rays of the rising sun flooded the scene with splendor.
"May I write just a word to my mother and to my sweetheart?" he asked
with a smile. "They're just over there in Petersburg."
"Yes."
They gave him a piece of paper and he wrote his last words of love, and
in a moment was swinging from the limb of a tree. Only a few of the more
thoughtful men paid any attention. It was nothing. Such things happened
every day. God only kept the records.
The new fuse was set and lighted. The minutes seemed hours as the men
waited breathlessly. With a dull muffled roar from the centre of the
earth beneath their very feet the fort rose two hundred feet straight
into the sky, driven by a tower of flame that stood stark and red in the
heavens. And then with blinding crash the mighty column of earth, guns,
timbers and three hundred grey bodies sank into the yawning crater. The
pit was sixty-five feet wide and three hundred feet long.
The explosion had been a complete success. The undermined fort had been
wiped from the landscape. A great gap opened in Lee's lines marked by
the grave of three hundred of his men.
Burnside's division rushed into the crater and climbed through the
breach. His men were met promptly by Ransom's brigade of North
Carolinians and held. The Union support became entangled in the hole,
stumbled and fell in confusion.
General Mahone's brigades hastily called, rushed into position, and a
general Confederate charge was ordered. In silence, their arms trailing
by their sides, they quickly crossed the open space and fell like demons
on the confused blue lines which were driven back into the crater and
slaughtered like sheep. The Confederate guns were trained on this
yawning pit whose edges now bristled with flaming muskets. Regiment
after regiment of blue were hurled into this hell hole to be torn and
cut to pieces.
A division of negro troops were hurried in and the sight of them drove
the Southerners to desperation. It took but a moment's grim charge to
hurl these black regiments back into the pit on the bodies of their
fallen white comrades. The crater became a butcher's shambles.
When the smoke cleared four thousand more of Grant's men lay dead and
wounded in the grave in which had been buried three hundred grey
defenders.
Lee's losses were less than one third as many. Grant asked for a truce
to bury his dead and from five until nine next morning there was no
firing along the grim lines of siege for the first time since the day
Petersburg had been invested.
So confident now was Lee that he could hold his position against any
assault his powerful opponent could make, he detached Jubal Early with
twenty thousand men and sent him through the Shenandoah Valley to strike
Washington.
Grant was compelled to send Sheridan after him. In the meantime he
determined to take advantage of Lee's reduced strength and cut the
Weldon railroad over which were coming all supplies from the South.
Warren's corps was sent on this important mission. His attack failed and
he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men. He entrenched
himself and called for reinforcements. Hancock's famous corps was
hurried to the assistance of Warren.
John Vaughan's regiment was now attached to Hancock's army. As they were
strapping on their knapsacks for this march, to his amazement Julius
suddenly appeared, grinning and bustling about as if he had never
strayed from the fold. His clothes were in shreds and tatters.
"Where have you been all this time, nigger?" John asked.
"Who, me?"
"And where'd you get that new suit of clothes?"
"Well, I'm gwine tell ye Gawd's truf, Marse John. Atter dat Cold Harbor
business I lit out fur de odder side. I wuz gittin' 'long very well dar
wid General Elliot in de Confederacy when all of er sudden somfin'
busted an' blowed me clean back inter de Union. An' here I is--yassah.
An' I'se gwine ter stick by you now. 'Pears lak de ain't no res' fur de
weary no whar."
John was glad to have his enterprising cook once more and received the
traitor philosophically.
Lee threw A. P. Hill's corps between Warren and Hancock's advancing
division. Hancock entrenched himself along-the railroad which he was
destroying.
Hill trained his artillery on these trenches and charged them with swift
desperation late in the afternoon. The Union lines were broken and
crushed and the men fled in panic. In vain "Hancock the Superb," who had
seen his soldiers fall but never fail, tried to rally them. In agony he
witnessed their utter rout. His trenches were taken, his guns captured
and turned in a storm of death on his fleeing men. He lost twelve stands
of colors, nine big guns and twenty-five hundred men.
As the darkness fell General Nelson A. Miles succeeded in rallying a new
line and stayed the panic by a desperate countercharge.
Once more the grapple was hand to hand, man to man, in the darkness.
John Vaughan had fired the last load, save one, from his revolver, and
sword in hand, was cheering his men in a mad effort to regain their lost
entrenchments. Blue and grey were mixed in black confusion. Only by the
light of flashing guns could friend be distinguished from foe. A musket
flamed near his face and through the deep darkness which followed a
sword thrust pierced his side. He sprang back with an oath and clinched
with his antagonist, feeling for his throat in silence. For a minute
they wheeled struggled and fought in desperation, stumbling over
underbrush, slipping to their knees and rising. Every instinct of the
fighting brute in man was up now and the battle was to the death for
one--perhaps both.
John succeeded at last in releasing his right hand and drawing his
revolver. His enemy sprang back at the same moment and through the
darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood
following the blade as it was snatched away, raised his revolver and
fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle was less than two
feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both
brothers recognizing each other in the same instant.
"John--my God, it's you!"
"Yes--yes--and it's you--God have mercy if I've killed you!"
In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered
it gently on the leaves.
"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped. "If I had to die it's just
as well by your hand. It's war--it's hell--all hell--anyhow--what's the
difference----"
"But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I
tell you!"
"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life
was--just--becoming--real--beautiful--wonderful----"
He stopped and drew a deep breath.
John bent lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers
touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.
"I'm--afraid--I--got--you,--too,--John----"
"No, I'm all right--brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours
together--we've both got it--and live!"
The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.
"Now, look here, Ned, old man--this'll never do--don't--don't--give up!"
The answer came faint and low:
"Tell--Betty--when--you--see--her--that--with--my--last--breath--I--spoke
--her--name--her--face--lights--the--dark--way----"
"You're going, Ned?"
"Yes----"
"Say you forgive me!"
"There's--nothing--to--forgive--it's--all--right--John--good-bye----"
The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. The woods were still. The
older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young
chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to
hear the call of Death.
He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too,
were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the
beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.
His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the
first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and
wounded after battle--sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor
in thirty days--ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against
Petersburg--four thousand in the crater--five thousand five hundred more
now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure--not an inch of
ground gained.
These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump
into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only
loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the
army to move.
Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields
bent a brother, a father, a mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard
their cries of anguish until all other sounds were dumb.
The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh
were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and
clothes soaked with red--he saw them with the eyes of love--scene on
scene in hideous review--the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they
were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his
jaws locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and
artery. And those saws gnawing through bones--God in heaven, he could
hear them all now--they were cutting and tearing those he loved.
He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he
realized what they meant.
"Give them the bayonet now----"
The low, savage, subdued tones of the officer had once thrilled his
soul. The memory sickened him.
He could hear the impassioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat
on their faces in the grass--the click of bayonets in their places--the
look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to
their feet at the call:
"Charge!"
And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy
of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of
mingled rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to
his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and
crashes hard against his hip bone. The man with his strength seizes the
gun, snatches it from his bleeding thigh and swings it over his head to
brain his new antagonist, when the first boy, with a savage laugh,
plunges his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a
dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies
quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He
understood now--these were not soldiers obeying orders--they were
fathers and brothers and playmates, killing and maiming and tearing each
other to pieces.
Lord God of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!
It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern,
came on him huddled against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms,
staring into the dead face.
CHAPTER XXXIV
LOVE'S PLEDGE
Again Betty Winter found in her work relief from despair. She had hoped
for peace in the beauty and tenderness of Ned's chivalrous devotion. Yet
his one letter reporting the meeting had revealed her mistake. The
moment she had read his confession the impulse to scream her protest to
John was all but resistless. She had tried in vain to find a way of
writing to Ned to tell him that she had deceived him and herself, and
ask his forgiveness.
It was impossible to write to John under such conditions and she had
suffered in silence. And then the wounded began to pour into Washington
from Grant's front. The like of that procession of ambulances from the
landing on Sixth Street to the hospitals on the hills back of the city
had never been seen. The wounded men were brought on swift steamers from
Aquia Creek. Floors and decks were covered with mattresses on which they
lay as thickly as they could be placed. As the wounded died on the way
they were moved to the bow and their faces covered.
At the landing tender hands were lifting them into the ambulances which
slowly moved out in one line to the hospitals and back in a circle by
another. These ambulances stretched in tragic, unbroken procession for
three miles and never ceased to move on and on in an endless circle for
three days and nights.
In an agony of anxiety Betty asked to be transferred to the landing that
she might watch them fill the wagons. Her soul was oppressed with the
certainty that John Vaughan would be found in one of them.
On the morning of the third day they were still coming in never-ending
streams from the steamer decks. She wrung her hands in a moment of
despair:
"Merciful God! Are they bringing back Grant's whole army?"
The patience of these suffering men was sublime. Only a sigh from one
who would rise no more. Only a groan here and there from parched lips
that asked for water.
At last came the ominous news for which she had watched and waited with
sickening forebodings. The _Republican_ printed the name of Captain John
Vaughan among the wounded in the fight of Warren and Hancock's corps
over the Weldon Railroad. There were only two thousand wounded men sent
in on the steamers from the front after this battle, and they arrived at
night.
Betty hurried to the landing and found that the ambulances had begun to
move. She searched every face in vain, and when the last stretcher had
passed out walked with trembling steps and scanned each silent covered
face in the bow.
"Thank God," she murmured, "he's not there!"
She must begin now the patient search among the eighty thousand sick and
wounded men in the city of sorrows on the hills.
She secured a hack and tried to reach the head of the procession and
find the destination of the first wagons that had left before her
arrival.
It was after midnight. A thunder storm suddenly rolled its dense clouds
over the city and smothered the street lamps in a pall of darkness. The
rain burst with a flash of lightning and poured in torrents. The
electric display was awe-inspiring. The horses in one of the ambulances
in the long line stampeded and smashed the vehicle in front. The
procession was stopped in the height of the storm. The vivid flame was
now continuous and Betty could see the wagons standing in a mud-splashed
row for a mile, the lightning play bringing out in startling outline
each horse and vehicle.
From every ambulance was hanging a fringe of curious objects shining
white against the shadows when suddenly illumined. Betty looked in pity
and awe. They were the burning fevered arms and legs and heads of the
suffering wounded men eager to feel the splash of the cooling rain.
A full week passed before her search ended and she located him in one of
the big new buildings hastily constructed of boards.
With trembling step she started to go straight to his cot. The memory of
his brutal stare that day stopped her and she scribbled a line and sent
it to him:
"John, dear, may I see you a moment?
"BETTY."
The doctor assured her that he was rapidly recovering, though restless
and depressed. She caught her breath in a little gasp of surprise at the
sight of his white face, pale and spiritual looking now from the loss of
blood.
Her eyes were shining with intense excitement as she swiftly crossed the
room, dropped on her knees beside his cot and seized his hands:
"O John, John, can you ever forgive me!"
He slipped his arm around her neck and held her a long time in silence.
The men in the room paid no attention to the little drama. It was
happening every day around them.
"Oh, dearest," she went on eagerly, "I tried to put you out of my heart,
but I couldn't. I am yours, all yours, body and soul. Love asks but one
question--do you love me?"
"Forever!" he whispered.
"In my loneliness and despair I tried to give myself to Ned, but I
couldn't, dear. I would have told him so had I been able to reach
him--though I dreaded to hurt him."
John drew her hands down and looked at her with a strange expression.
"He's beyond the reach of pain and disappointment now, dear----"
"Dead?" she gasped.
The man only nodded, and clung desperately to her hands while her head
sank in a flood of tears.
"We'll cherish his memory," he said in a curiously quiet voice, "as one
of the sweetest bonds between us, my love----"
"Yes--always!" was the low answer.
For the life of him John Vaughan couldn't tell the terrible fact that
his hand had struck him down. God alone should know that.
When she had recovered from the shock of the announcement Betty caressed
his hand gently:
"We just love whom we love, dearest, and we can't help it. I am yours
and you are mine. It's not a question of good or bad, right or wrong. We
love--that's all."
"Yes, we love--that's all and it's everything. There's no more doubt,
dear?"
"Not one," she cried. "I'm going to bring back the red blood to your
cheeks now and take that fevered look out of your eyes----"
The weeks of convalescence were swift and beautiful to Betty--her
ministry to his slightest whim a continuous joy. The only cloud in her
sky was the strange, feverish, unquiet look in his eyes. On the day of
his discharge he received a letter from his mother which deepened this
expression to the verge of mania.
"What is it, dear?" Betty asked in alarm.
"One of those unfortunate things that have been happening somewhere
every day for the past year--an arrest and imprisonment for treasonable
utterances----"
"Who has been arrested?"
"This time my father in Missouri."
"Your father?" she gasped.
"Yes. He has been a bitter critic of the war. He seems to have gone too
far. There was a riot of some sort in the village and he took the wrong
side."
There was an ominous quiet in the way he talked.
"I'll take you to see the President, dearest," she said soothingly.
"We'll ask for his release. It's sure to be granted."
John's eyes suddenly flashed.
"You think so?"
"Absolutely sure of it."
"We'll try it then," he said, with a cold ring in his voice that chilled
Betty's heart, and sent her home wondering at its meaning.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE DARKEST HOUR
In the summer of 1864 the President saw the darkest hours of his life.
The change in his appearance was startling and pitiful. His sombre eyes
seemed to have sunk into their caverns beneath the bushy brows and all
but disappeared. Their gaze was more and more detached from earth and
set on some dim, invisible shore. Deeper and deeper sank the furrows in
his ashen face. The shoulders drooped beneath a weight too great for any
human soul to bear.
To Betty Winter's expression of loyalty and sympathy he answered sadly:
"It's success I need, child,--not sympathy. My own burdens of cares are
as nothing to my soul. It's our cause--our cause--the Union must live or
I shall die!"
He sat sometimes by his window for hours immovable as a marble statue,
his deep, hungry eyes gazing, gazing forever over the shining river
toward the Southern hills. His Secretaries stepped softly about the room
in silent sympathy with the Chief they loved with passionate devotion.
Grant had crossed the Rapidan on that glorious spring morning in May
with his magnificent army accompanied by the highest hopes of millions.
And there had followed those awful sickening battles, one after
another, until he had fallen back in failure before the impassable
trenches around Petersburg.
The star of Grant, the conquering hero of the West, had apparently set
in a sea of blood.
Lee, with inferior numbers, alert, resourceful, vigilant, had checked
and baffled him at every turn, and Richmond's fall was no nearer to
human eye than in 1862.
The miles and miles of hospital barracks in Washington, crowded to their
doors with wounded, dying men, were the living witnesses of the Nation's
mortal agony. Every city, town, village, hamlet and county in the North
was in mourning. Death had literally flung its pall over the world.
From these thousands of stricken homes there had slowly risen a storm of
protest against the new leader of the Army. The word "Butcher" was on
every lip. General Grant, they said, possessed merely the qualities of
the bulldog fighter--tenacity and persistence. He held what he had won
so long as men were poured into his ranks by tens of thousands to take
the place of the dead. They declared that he possessed no genius, no
strategic skill, no power to originate plans and devise means to
overcome his skillful and brilliant antagonist. The demand was pressed
on the President for his removal.
His refusal had brought on him the blame for all the blood and all the
suffering and all the failures of the past bitter year.
His answer to his critics was remorseless in its common sense, but added
nothing to his hold on the people.
"We must fight to win," he firmly declared. "Grant is the ablest general
we have yet developed. His losses have been appalling--but the struggle
is now to the bitter end. Our resources are exhaustless. The South can
not replace her fallen soldiers--her losses are fatal, ours are not."
In the face of a political campaign he prepared a call by draft for five
hundred thousand more men and issued a proclamation appointing a day of
Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.
The spirits of the people touched the lowest tide ebb of despair.
The war debt had reached the appalling total of two thousand millions of
dollars and its daily cost was four millions. The paper of the Treasury
was rapidly depreciating and the premium on gold rising until the value
of a one dollar green-back note was less than fifty cents in real money.
The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to
refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest.
The bounty offered to men for reënlistment in the army when their terms
expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred
dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the
favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being
stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting
force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued.
The enlisted man deserted in three weeks and reappeared at the next post
and reënlisted again, collecting his bounty with each enrollment.
The enemies of the President in his own party, led by Senator Winter, to
make sure of his defeat before the convention, which was about to meet
in Baltimore, held a National convention of Radical Republicans in
Cleveland and nominated John C. Fremont for the Presidency. Their
purpose was by this party division to make Lincoln's nomination an
impossibility. Fremont's withdrawal was the weapon with which they would
fight the President before the regular Republican convention and after.
Senator Winter voiced the feeling of this convention in a speech of
bitter and vindictive eloquence.
"I denounce the administration of Abraham Lincoln," he declared, "as
imbecile and vacillating. We demand not only the crushing of Lee's army,
but a program of vengeance against the rebels, which will mean their
annihilation when conquered. We demand the confiscation of their
property, the overthrow of every trace of local government and the
reduction of their States to conquered provinces under the control of
Congress. The milk and water policy of Lincoln is both a civil and a
military failure, and his renomination would be the greatest calamity
which could befall our Nation!"
A week later the regular party convention met at Baltimore. On the night
before this meeting the President's renomination was not certain.
On every hand his enemies were assailing him with unabated fury. Every
check to the National arms was laid at his door--every mistake of civil
or military management. The ravages of the Confederate cruisers which
were built in England and had swept the seas of our commerce were blamed
on him. He should have called Great Britain to account for these
outrages and had two wars instead of one!
The cost of the great struggle mounting and mounting into billions was
his fault. The draft might have been avoided with the Government in
abler hands. The emancipation policy had not freed a single negro and
driven the whole Democratic Party into opposition to the war. His Border
State policy had held four Slave States in the Union, but crippled the
moral power of his position as anti-Slavery man. Every lie, every
slander of four years were now repeated and magnified.
A competent man must be put into the White House. The Rail-splitter must
go!
The real test of strength would come in the secret meeting of the Grand
Council of the Union League--the Secret Society which had been organized
to defeat the schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In this
meeting men will say exactly what they think. In the big convention
to-morrow all will be harmony and peace. The convention will do what
these powerful leaders from every State in the North tell them to do.
The assembly is dignified and orderly. The men who compose it are the
eyes and ears and brains of the party they represent. They are the real
rulers of the Nation. The party will obey their orders. These are the
men who do the executive thinking for millions. The millions can only
reject or ratify their wills. We are a democracy in theory, but in
reality here is assembled the aristocracy of brains which constitutes
our government.
The Grand President Edmunds raps for order and faces a crowd of keen,
intelligent leaders of men his equal in culture and will.
The meeting is called for but one purpose. With swift, direct action the
battle begins. A friend of the President offers a resolution endorsing
his administration, preceded by a preamble which declares it to be
unwise to swap horses while crossing a stream.
The big guns open on this battle line without a moment's hesitation.
Senator Winter has not thought it wise to make this opening speech. The
prominent part he took in organizing and launching the Fremont
convention has put him in the position of an avowed bolter. He has
already put forward a colleague from the Senate who is supposed to be
friendly to the administration.
The Senator is a man of blunt speech and dominating personality. He
speaks with earnestness, conviction and eloquence. He does not mince
words. All the petty grievances and mistakes and disappointments of his
four years under the tall, quiet man's strong hand are firing his soul
now with burning passion.
He boldly accuses the President of tyranny, usurpation, illegal acts, of
abused power, of misused advantages, of favoritism, stupidity, frauds in
administration, timidity, sluggish inaction, oppression, the willful
neglect of suffering and the willful refusal to hear the cry of the
down-trodden slave.
He turns the battery of his scorn now on his personal peculiarities, his
drawn and haggard and sorrow marked face, his heartlessness in reading
and telling funny stories, and last of all his selfish ambition which
asks a second term at the sacrifice of his party and his country.
A Congressman of unusual brilliance and power follows this assault with
one of even greater eloquence and bitterness.
Two more in quick succession and all demand with one accord the same
thing:
"Down with Lincoln!"
Not a voice has been lifted in his favor. If he has a friend he is
apparently afraid to open his mouth.
And then the giant form of Jim Lane slowly rises. He looks quietly over
the crowd as if passing in review the tragic events of four years. Is he
going to add his voice to this chorus of rage? A year ago in the same
Grand Council he had a bitter grievance against the President and
assailed him furiously. Yesterday he was at the White House and came
away with a shadow on his strong face.
He stood for a long time in silence and seemed to be scanning each
individual in the crowd of tense listeners.
And then his deep voice broke the stillness. His words rang like the
boom of cannon and their penetrating power seemed to pierce the brick
walls of the room.
"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Grand Council:
"To stir up sore and wounded hearts to bitterness requires no skill or
power of oratory. To address the minds of men sickened by disaster,
wearied by long trial, heated by passion, bewildered by uncertainty,
heavy with grief, and cunningly to turn them into one vindictive
channel, into one blind rush of senseless fury requires no great power
of oratory and no great mastery of the truth. It may be the trick of a
charlatan!"
He paused and gazed with deliberate and offensive insolence into the
faces of the men who had spoken. Their eyes blazed with wrath, and a
fierce thrill of excitement swept the crowd.
"For a man to address himself to an assembly like this, however, goaded
to madness by suffering, sorrow, humiliation, perplexity--and now roused
by venomous arts to an almost unanimous condemnation of the innocent--I
say to address you, turn you in your tracks and force you to go the
other way--that would indeed be a feat of transcendent oratorical power.
I am no orator--but I am going to tell you the truth and the truth will
make you do that thing!"
Men began to lean forward in their seats now as with impassioned faith
he told the story of the matchless work the great lonely spirit had
wrought for his people in the White House during the past passion-torn
years. His last sentence rang like the clarion peal of a trumpet:
"Desert him now and the election of _George B. McClellan_ on a
'Peace-at-any-Price' platform is a certainty--the Union is dissevered,
the Confederacy established, the slaves reshackled, the dead dishonored
and the living disgraced!"
His last sentence was an angry shout whose passion swept the crowd to
its feet. The resolution was passed and Lincoln's nomination became a
mere formality.
But Senator Winter had only begun to fight. His whole life as an
Abolitionist had been spent in opposition to majorities. He had no
constructive power and no constructive imagination. His genius was
purely destructive, but it was genius. Without a moment's delay he began
his plans to force the President to withdraw from his own ticket in the
midst of his campaign.
The one ominous sign which the man in the White House saw with dread was
the rapid growth through these dark days of a "Peace-at-any-Price"
sentiment within his own party lines in the heart of the loyal North.
Again Horace Greeley and his great paper voiced this cry of despair.
The mischief he was doing was incalculable because he persisted in
teaching the millions who read his paper that peace was at any time
possible if Abraham Lincoln would only agree to accept it. As a
Southern-born man, the President knew the workings of the mind of
Jefferson Davis as clearly as he understood his own. Both these men were
born in Kentucky within a few miles of each other on almost the same
day. The President knew that Jefferson Davis would never consider any
settlement of the war except on the basis of the division of the Union
and the recognition of the Confederacy. When Greeley declared that the
Confederate Commissioners were in Canada with offers of peace, the
President sent Greeley himself immediately to meet them and confer on
the basis of a restored Union with compensation for the slaves. The
Conference failed and Greeley returned from Canada angrier with the
President than ever for making a fool of him.
In utter disregard for the facts he continued to demand that the
Government bring the war to an end. The thing which made his attack
deadly was that he was rousing the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in
thousands of homes whose loved ones had fallen.
Thoughtful men and women had begun to ask themselves new questions:
"Is not the price we are paying too great?"
"Can any cause be worth this ocean of tears, this endless deluge of
blood?"
The President must answer this bitter cry with the positive assurance
that he would make peace at any moment on terms consistent with the
Nation's preservation or both he and his party must perish.
He determined to draw from Mr. Davis a positive declaration of the terms
on which the South would accept peace. He dared not do this openly, as
it would be a confession to Europe of defeat and would lead to the
recognition of the Confederacy.
He accordingly sent Colonel Jaquess, a distinguished Methodist clergyman
in the army, and J. R. Gilmore, of the _Tribune_, on a secret mission to
Richmond for this purpose. They must go without credentials or
authority, as private individuals and risk life and liberty in the
undertaking.
Both men promptly accepted the mission and left for Grant's headquarters
to ask General Lee for a pass through his lines.
The Democratic Party was now a militant united force inspired by the
Copperhead leaders, who had determined to defeat the President squarely
on a peace platform and put General McClellan into the White House.
Behind them in serried lines stood the powerful Secret Orders clustered
around the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Positive proofs were finally laid before the President that these
Societies had planned an uprising on the night of the election and the
establishment of a Western Confederacy.
Edmunds, the President of the Union League, handed him the names of the
leaders.
"Now, sir, you can strike!" he urged.
The tall, sorrowful man slowly shook his head.
"You doubt the truth of these statements?" Edmunds asked.
"No. They are too true. Let sleeping dogs lie. One revolution at a time.
We have all we can manage at present. If we win the election they won't
dare rise. If we lose, it's all over anyhow--and it makes no difference
what they do."
With patient wisdom he refused to stir the dangerous hornet's nest.
And to cap the climax of darkness, Jubal Early's army suddenly withdrew
from Lee's lines, swept through the Shenandoah Valley and invaded
Maryland and Pennsylvania.
With three-quarters of a million blue soldiers under arms, the daring
men in grey were once more threatening the Capital. They seized and cut
the Northern railroads, burning their bridges and capturing trains; they
threatened Baltimore, captured Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, burned it,
spread terror throughout the State and surrounding territory, and
brushing past Lew Wallace's six thousand men at Monocacy, were bearing
down on Washington with swift ominous tread.
It was incredible! It was unthinkable, and yet the reveille of Early's
drums could be heard from the White House window.
John Bigelow, our _Chargé d'Affaires_ at Paris, had sent warning of a
conversation with the Emperor of France, at which the President had only
smiled.
"Lee will take Washington," the Emperor had declared, "and then I shall
recognize the Confederacy. I have just received news that Lee is
certain to take the Capital."
The message was flashed to Grant for help. The city was practically at
Early's mercy if he should strike. He couldn't hold the Capital, of
course, but if he took it even for twenty-four hours the Government
would lose all prestige and standing in the Courts of Europe.
For twenty-four hours the panic in Washington was complete. The
Government clerks were rushed into the trenches and hastily armed.
Early threw one shell into the city, which crashed through a house, his
cavalry dashed into the corporate limits and took a prisoner and later
burned the house of Blair, a member of the Cabinet.
The Sixth Corps arrived from Petersburg; a thousand men were killed and
wounded in the skirmishing of two days, but the Capital escaped by the
skin of its teeth.
Grant laconically remarked:
"If Early had been one day earlier he would have entered the Capital."
While he had not actually taken Washington, Lee's strategy was a
masterly stroke. He had cleared the Shenandoah Valley, which was his
granary, and enabled the farmers to reap their crops. He had showed the
world that his army was still so terrible a weapon that with it he could
hold Grant at bay, drive his enemy from the Valley, invade two Northern
States, burn their cities and destroy their railroads, and throw his
shells into Washington.
A wave of incredulous sickening despair swept the North. If this could
be done after three and a half years of blood and tears and two
billions of dollars spent, where could the end be?
Early had done in Washington what neither McDowell, McClellan, Pope,
Burnside, Hooker, Meade nor Grant had yet succeeded in doing for
Richmond--thrown shells into the city and taken a prisoner from its very
streets. Had he arrived a day earlier--in other words, had not Lew
Wallace's gallant little army of six thousand delayed him twenty-four
hours--he could have entered the city, raided the Treasury and burned
the Capitol.
Senator Winter was not slow to strike the blow for which he had been
eagerly waiting a favorable moment. He succeeded in detaching from the
President in this moment of panic a group of men who had stood squarely
for his nomination at Baltimore. He agreed to withdraw Fremont's name if
they would induce the President to withdraw and a new convention be
called.
So deep was the depression, so black the outlook, so certain was
McClellan's election, that the members of the National Republican
Executive Committee met and conferred with this Committee of traitors to
their Chief.
No more cowardly and contemptible proposition was ever submitted to the
chosen leader of a great party. It was not to be wondered at that Winter
and his Radical associates could stoop to it. They were theorists. To
them success was secondary. They would have gladly and joyfully damned
not only the Union--they would have damned the world to save their
theories. But that his own party leaders should come to him in such an
hour and ask him to withdraw cut the great patient heart to the quick.
He agreed to consider their humiliating proposition and give them an
answer in two weeks. Nicolay, his first Secretary, wrote to John Hay,
who was in Illinois:
"DEAR MAJOR: Hell is to pay. The politicians have a stampede on
that is about to swamp everything. The National Committee are here
to-day. Raymond thinks a commission to Richmond is the only salt to
save us. The President sees and says it would be utter ruin. The
matter is now undergoing consultation. Weak-kneed damned fools are
on the move for a new candidate to supplant the President.
Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement. Our men see
giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows of the opposition, and
are about to surrender without a blow. Come to Washington on the
first train. Every man who loves the Chief must lay off his coat
now and fight to the last ditch. He's too big and generous to be
trusted alone with these wolves. He is the only man who can save
this Nation, and we must make them see it."
Worn and angry after the long discussion with his cowardly advisers, the
President retired to his bedroom, locked the door, laid down, and tried
to rest. Opposite the lounge on which he lay was a bureau with a
swinging mirror. He gazed for a moment at his long figure, which showed
full length, his eye resting at last on the deep cut lines of the
haggard face. Gradually two separate and distinct images grew--one
behind the other, pale and death-like but distinct. He looked in wonder,
and the longer he looked the clearer stood this pale second reflection.
"That's funny!" he exclaimed.
He rose, rubbed his eyes, and walked to the mirror, examining it
curiously. He had always been a man of visions--this child of the woods
and open fields.
"I wonder if it's an illusion?" he muttered. "I'll try again."
He returned to the couch and lay down. Again it grew a second time
plainer than before, if possible. He watched for a long time with a
feeling of awe.
"I wonder if I'm looking into the face of my own soul?" he mused.
He studied this second image with keen interest. It was five shades
paler than the first. The thing had happened to him once before and his
wife had declared it a sign that he would be elected to a second term,
but the paleness of the second image meant that he would not live
through it. It was uncanny. He rose and paced the floor, laid down
again, and the image vanished. What did it mean?
Only that day a secret service man had come to warn him of a new plot of
assassination and beg him to double the guard.
"What is the use, my dear boy, in setting up the gap when the fence is
down all around?"
"Remember, sir, they shot a hole through your hat one night last week on
your way to the Soldiers' Home."
"Well, what of it? If a man really makes up his mind to kill me he can
do it----"
"You can take precautions."
"But I can't shut myself up in an iron box--now, can I? If I am killed I
can die but once. To live in constant dread of it is to die over and
over again. I decline to die until the time comes--away with your extra
guards! I've got too many now. They bother me."
He threw off his depression and took up a volume of Artemus Ward's funny
sayings to refresh his soul with their quaint humor. He must laugh or
die. He had promised to see Betty Winter with a friend who had a
petition to present at ten o'clock. He would rest until she came.
John Vaughan had insisted on her coming at this unusual hour. She
protested, but he declared the chances of success in asking for his
father's release would be infinitely better if she took advantage of the
President's good nature and saw him alone at night when they would not
be interrupted.
As they neared the White House grounds, crossing the little park on the
north side, Betty's nervousness became unbearable. She stopped and put
her hand on John's arm.
"Let's wait until to-morrow?" she pleaded.
"The President is expecting us----"
"I'll send him word we couldn't come."
"But, why?"
She hesitated and glanced at him uneasily:
"I don't know. I'm just nervous. I don't feel equal to the strain of
such an interview to-night. It means so much to you. It means so much to
me now that love rules my life----"
He took her hands in his and drew her into the friendly shadows beside
the walk.
"Love does rule life, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely. I'm frightened when I realize it," she sighed.
"You are all mine now? In life, in death, through evil report and good
report?"
"In life, in death, through evil report and good report----yours
forever, dearest!"
He took her in his arms and held her in silence. She could feel him
trembling with deep emotion.
"There's nothing to be nervous about then," he said, reassuringly, as
his arms relaxed. "Come, we'll hurry. I want to send a message to my
father to-night announcing his release."
At the entrance to the White House grounds they passed a man who shot a
quick glance at John, and Betty thought his head moved in a nod of
approval or recognition.
"You know him?" she asked nervously.
"One of Baker's men, I think--attempt on the President's life last week.
They've doubled the guard, no doubt."
They passed another, strolling carelessly from the shadows of the white
pillars of the portico.
"They seem to be everywhere to-night," John laughed carelessly.
The White House door was open and they passed into the hall and ascended
the stairs to the Executive Chamber without challenge. Little Tad, the
President's son, who ran the House to suit himself at times, was in his
full dress suit of a lieutenant of the army and had ordered the guard to
attend a minstrel show he was giving in the attic.
The President had agreed to meet Betty in his office at ten o'clock and
told her to bring her friend right upstairs and wait if he were not on
time.
They sat down and waited five minutes in awkward silence. Betty was
watching the strange glittering expression in John Vaughan's eyes with
increasing alarm.
She heard a muffled footfall in the hall, stepped quickly to the door,
and saw the man they had passed at the entrance to the grounds.
She returned trembling.
"The man we passed at the gate is in that hall," she whispered.
"What of it?" was the careless answer. "Baker's secret service men come
and go when they please here----"
He paused and glanced at the door.
"He has his eye on us maybe," he added, with a little laugh.
He studied Betty's flushed face for a moment, curiously hesitated as if
about to speak, changed his mind, and was silent. He drew his watch from
his pocket and looked at it.
"I've ordered a carriage to wait for you at the gate at a quarter past
ten," he said quickly. "I forgot to tell you."
"Why--it may take us longer than half an hour?"
"That's just it. We may be talking two hours. Such things can't be
threshed out in a minute. You can introduce me, say a good word, and
leave us to fight it out----"
"I want to stay," she interrupted.
"Nonsense, dear, it may take hours. Besides, I may have some things to
say to the President, and he some things to say to me that it were
better a sweet girl's ears should not hear----"
"That's exactly what I wish to prevent, John, dear," she pleaded. "You
must be careful and say nothing to offend the President. It means too
much. We must win."
"I'll be wise in the choice of words. But you mustn't stay, dear. I'm
not a child. I don't need a chaperone."
"But you may need a friend----"
"He does wield the power of kings--doesn't he?"
"With the tenderness and love of a father, yes."
"And yet I've wondered," he went on in a curious cold tone, "why he
hasn't been killed--when the death of one man would end this carnival of
murder----"
"John, how can you say such things?" Betty gasped.
"It's true, dear," he answered calmly. "This man's will alone has
prevented peace and prevents it now. The soldiers on both sides joke
with one another across the picket lines. They get together and play
cards at night. Before the battle begins, our boys call out:
"'Get into your holes, now, Johnnie, we've got to shoot.'
"Left to themselves, the soldiers would end this war in thirty minutes.
It's the one man at the top who won't let them. It's hellish--it's
hellish----"
"And you would justify an assassin?" Betty asked breathlessly.
"Who is an assassin, dear?" he demanded tensely. "The man who wields a
knife or the tyrant who calls the fanatic into being? Brutus or Cæsar,
William Tell or Gessler? Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God----"
"John, John--how can you say such things--you don't believe in
murder----"
"No!" he breathed fiercely. "I don't now. I used to until I had a
revelation----"
He stopped short as if strangled.
"Revelation--what do you mean?" Betty whispered, watching his every
movement, with growing terror.
He looked at her with eyes glittering.
"I didn't want to tell you this," he began slowly. "I meant to keep the
black thing hidden in my own soul. But you'll understand better if I
speak. I killed Ned Vaughan with my own hands----"
"You're mad----" Betty shivered.
"I wish I were--no--I was never sane before that flash of red from hell
showed me the truth--showed me what I was doing. We fought in the
darkness of a night attack, hand to hand, like two maddened beasts. He
ran me through with his sword and I sent the last ball left in my
revolver crashing through his breast. In the glare of that shot I saw
his face--the face of my brother! I caught him in my arms as he fell and
held him while the life blood ebbed away through the hole I had torn
near his heart. And then I saw what I'd been doing, saw it all as it
is--war--brother murdering his brother--the shout and the tumult, the
drums and bugles, the daring and heroism of it all, just that and
nothing more--brother cutting his brother's throat----"
His head sank into his hands in a sob that strangled speech.
Betty slipped her arm tenderly around his shoulder and stroked the heavy
black hair.
"But you didn't know, dear--you wouldn't have fired that shot if you
had----"
He lifted himself suddenly and recovered his self-control.
"No. That's just it," he answered bitterly. "I wouldn't have done it had
I known--nor would he, had he known. But I should have seen before that
every torn and mangled body I had counted in the reckoning of the glory
of battle was some other man's brother, some other mother's boy----"
He paused and drew himself suddenly erect:
"Well I'm awake now--I know and see things as they are!"
His hand unconsciously felt for his revolver, and Betty threw her arms
around his neck with a smothered cry of horror:
"Merciful God--John--my darling--you are mad--what are you going to do?"
"Why nothing, dear," he protested, "nothing! I'm simply going to ask the
President whose power is supreme to give my father a fair trial or
release him--that's all--you needn't stay longer--the carriage is
waiting. I can introduce myself and plead my own cause. If he's the
fair, great-hearted man you believe, he'll see that justice is done----"
"You are going to kill the President!" Betty gasped.
"Nonsense--but if I were--what is the death of one man if thousands
live? I saw sixty thousand men in blue fall in thirty days--two thousand
a day--besides those who wore the grey. At Cold Harbor I saw ten
thousand of my brethren fall in twenty minutes. Why should you gasp over
the idea that one man may die whose death would stop this slaughter?"
"John, you're mad!" she cried, clinging to him desperately. "You're mad,
I tell you. You've lost your reason. Come with me, dear--come at
once----"
"No. I was never more sane than now," he answered firmly.
"Then I'll warn the President----"
He held her with cruel force:
"You understand that if it's true, my arrest, court-martial and death
follow?"
"No. I'll warn him not to come. I alone know----"
She broke his grip on her arm and started toward the door. He lifted his
hand in quick commanding gesture:
"Wait! my men are in that hall--it's his life or mine now. You can take
your choice----"
The girl's figure suddenly straightened:
"Take your men out and go with them at once!"
"No. If he does justice, I may spare his life. If he does not----"
"You shall not see him----"
"It's my life or his--I warn you----"
"Then it's yours--I choose my country!"
She walked with quick, firm step to the door leading into the family
apartments of the President. On the threshold her feet faltered. She
grasped the door facing, turned, and saw him standing with folded arms
watching her--with the eyes of a madman. Her face went white. She lifted
her hand to her heart and slowly stumbled back into his arms.
"God have mercy!" she sobbed. "I'm just a woman--my love--my
darling--I--I--can't--kill you----"
Her arms relaxed and she would have fallen to the floor had he not
caught the fainting form and carried her into the hall.
Two men were at his side instantly.
"Take Miss Winter downstairs," he whispered. "There's a carriage at the
gate. Bring it quietly to the door--one of you take her to the Senator's
home. The other must return here immediately and wait my orders. There's
no guard in this outer hall at night. The one inside is with the boy.
Keep out of sight if any one passes."
The men obeyed without a word and John Vaughan stepped quickly back into
the Executive office, drew the short curtains across the window, turned
the lights on full, examined his revolver, and sat down in careless
attitude beside the President's desk. He could hear his heavy step
already approaching the door.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE ASSASSIN
John Vaughan's face paled with the sudden realization of the tremendous
deed he was about to do. It had seemed the only solution of the Nation's
life and his own, an hour ago. The air of Washington reeked with deadly
hatred of the President. Every politician who could not control his big,
straightforward, honest mind was his enemy. The gloom which shrouded the
country over Grant's losses and the failure of his campaign had set
every hound yelping at his heels in full cry. He spent much of his time
in the hospitals visiting and cheering the wounded soldiers. These men
were his friends. They believed in his honesty, his gentleness and his
humanity, and yet so deadly had grown the passions of war and so bitter
the madness of political prejudice that the majority of the wounded men
were going to vote against him in the approaching election.
An informal vote taken in Carver Hospital had shown the amazing result
of three to one in favor of McClellan!
John Vaughan, in his fevered imagination, had felt that he was rendering
a heroic service to the people in removing the one obstacle to peace.
The President was the only man who could possibly defeat McClellan and
continue the war. He was denounced by the opposition as usurper, tyrant,
and dictator. He was denounced by thousands of men in his own party as
utterly unfit to wield the power he possessed.
And yet, as he heard the slow, heavy footfall approaching the door, a
moment of agonizing doubt gripped his will and weakened his arm. His eye
rested on a worn thumbed copy of the Bible which lay open on the desk.
This man, who was not a church member, in the loneliness of his awful
responsibilities, had been searching there for guidance and inspiration.
There was a pathos in the thought that found his inner conscience
through the mania that possessed him.
Well, he'd test him. He would try this tyrant here alone before the
judgment bar of his soul--condemn him to death or permit him to live, as
he should prove true or false to his mighty trust.
His hand touched his revolver again and he set his square jaws firmly.
The tall figure entered and closed the door.
A flash of blind rage came from the depths of John Vaughan's dark eyes
at the first sight of him. He moved forward a step and his hand trembled
in a desperate instinctive desire to kill. He was a soldier. His enemy
was before him advancing. To kill had become a habit. It seemed the one
natural thing to do.
He stopped with a shock of surprise as the President turned his haggard
eyes in a dazed way and looked about the room.
The light fell full on his face increasing its ghost-like pathetic
expression. The story of anxiety and suffering was burnt in letters of
fire that left his features a wrinkled mask of grey ashes. The drooping
eyelids were swollen, and dark bags hung beneath them. The muscles of
his massive jaws were flaccid, the lines about his large expressive
mouth terrible in their eloquence. His sombre eyes seemed to gaze on the
world with the anguish of millions in their depths.
For a moment John Vaughan was held in a spell by the unexpected
apparition.
"You are alone, sir?" the quiet voice slowly asked.
"Yes."
"I had expected Miss Winter----"
"She came with me and was compelled to leave."
"Oh--will you pull up a chair."
The tall form dropped wearily at his desk. His voice had a far-away
expression in its tones.
"And what can I do for you, sir?" he asked.
"My name is Vaughan--John Vaughan----"
The dark head was lifted with interest:
"The brother of Ned Vaughan, who escaped from prison?"
John nodded:
"The son of Dr. Richard Vaughan, of Palmyra, Missouri."
"Then you're our boy, fighting with Grant's army--yes, I heard of you
when your brother was in trouble. You've been ill, I see--wounded, of
course?"
"Yes."
The President rose and took his visitor's hand, clasping it with both
his own:
"There's nothing I won't do for one of our wounded boys if I can--what
is it?"
"My mother writes me that my father has been arrested without warrant,
is held in prison without bail and denied the right to trial----"
He paused and leaned on the desk, trembling with excitement which had
increased as he spoke.
"I have come to ask you for justice--that he shall be confronted by his
accusers in open court and given a fair trial----"
A frown deepened the shadows in the dark, kindly face:
"And for what was he arrested?"
"For exercising the right of free speech. In a public address he
denounced the war----"
The President shook his head sorrowfully:
"You see, my boy, your house is divided against itself--the symbol in
the family group of our unhappy country. Of course, I didn't know of
this arrest. Such things hurt me, so I refuse to know of them unless I
must. They tell me that Seward and Stanton have arrested without warrant
thirty-five thousand men. I hope this is an exaggeration. Still it may
be true----"
He stopped, sighed, and shook his head again:
"But come, now, my son, and put yourself in my place. What can I do?
I've armed two million men and spend four millions a day to fight the
South because they try to secede and disrupt the Union. My opponents in
the North, taking advantage of our sorrows, harangue the people and
elect a hostile legislature in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. They are
about to pass an ordinance of secession and strike the Union in the
back. If secession is wrong in the South it is surely wrong in the
North. Shall I fight secession in the South and merely argue politely
with it here? Instead of shooting these men, I've consented to a more
merciful thing, I just let Seward and Stanton lock them up until the
war is over and then I'll turn them all loose.
"Understand, my boy, I don't shirk responsibility. No Cabinet or
Congress could conduct a successful war. There must be a one man power.
I have been made that power by the people. I am using it reverently but
firmly. And I am backed by the prayers, the good will and the confidence
of the people--the silent millions whom I don't see, but love and trust.
"This war was not of my choosing. Once begun, it must be fought to the
end and the Nation saved. It will then be proved that among free men
there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and
that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the
cost. To preserve the life of the Constitution I must strain some of its
provisions in time of war----"
"And you will not interfere to give these accused men a trial?" John
Vaughan interrupted in hard tones.
"I cannot, my boy, I dare not interfere. The civil law must be suspended
temporarily in such cases. I cannot shoot a soldier for desertion and
allow the man to go free who, by denouncing the war, causes him to
desert. It cuts to the very heart of the Nation--its life is
involved----"
He rose again and paced the floor, turning his back on his visitor in
utter unconsciousness of the dangerous glitter in his eyes.
He paused and placed his big hand gently on John's arm:
"I know in doing this I am wielding a dangerous power--the power of
kings--not because I love it, but because I must save my country. And
I'm the humblest man who walks God's earth to-night!"
In spite of his bitterness, the simplicity and honesty of the President
found John Vaughan's heart. No vain or cruel or selfish man could talk
or feel like that. In the glow of his eager thought the ashen look of
his face disappeared and it became radiant with warmth and tenderness.
In dreamy, passionate tones he went on as if talking to convince himself
he must not despair. The younger man for the moment was swept
resistlessly on by the spell of his eloquence.
"They are always asking of me impossible things. Now that I shall remove
Grant from command. I know that his battles have been bloody. Yet how
else can we win? The gallant, desperate South has only a handful of men,
ragged and half starved, yet they are standing against a million and I
have exhaustless millions behind these. With Lee they seem invincible
and every move of his ragged men sends a shiver of horror and of
admiration through the North. Yet, if Grant fights on he must win. He
will wear Lee out--and that is the only way he can beat him.
"Besides, his plan is bigger than the single campaign against Richmond.
There's a grim figure at the head of a hundred thousand men fighting his
way inch by inch toward Atlanta. If Sherman should win and take Atlanta,
Lee's army will starve and the end is sure. I can't listen to this
clamor. I will not remove Grant--though I've reasons for believing at
this moment that he may vote for McClellan for President.
"Don't think, my son, that all this blood and suffering is not mine. It
is. Every shell that screams from those big guns crashes through my
heart. The groans of the wounded, the sighs of the dying, the tears of
widows and orphans, of sisters and mothers--all--blue and grey--they are
mine. I see and hear it all, feel all, suffer all.
"No man who lives to-day is responsible for this war. I could not have
prevented it, nor could Jefferson Davis. We are in the grip of mighty
forces sweeping on from the centuries. We are fighting the battle of the
ages.
"But our country's worth it if we can only save it. Out of this agony
and tears will be born a united people. We have always been cursed with
the impossible contradiction of negro slavery.
"There has never been a real Democracy in the world because there has
never been one without the shadow of slavery. We must build here a real
government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's not a
question merely of the fate of four millions of black slaves. It's a
question of the destiny of millions of freemen. I hear the tread of
coming generations of their children on this continent. Their destiny is
in your hand and mine--a free Nation without a slave--the hope, refuge
and inspiration of the world.
"This Union that we must save will be a beacon light on the shores of
time for mankind. It will be worth all the blood and all the tears we
shall give for it. The grandeur of our sacrifice will be the birthright
of our children's children. It will be the end of sectionalism. We can
never again curse and revile one another, as we have in the past. We've
written our character in blood for all time. We've met in battle. The
Northern man knows the Southerner is not a braggart. The Southerner
knows the Yankee is not a coward.
"There can be but one tragedy, my boy, that can have no ray of
light--and that is that all this blood should have flowed in vain, all
these brave men died for nought, that the old curse shall remain, the
Union be dismembered into broken sections and on future bloody fields
their battles be fought over again----"
He paused and drew a deep breath:
"This is the fear that's strangling me! For as surely as George B.
McClellan is elected President, surrounded by the men who at present
control his party, just so surely will the war end in compromise,
failure and hopeless tragedy----"
"Why do you say that?" John asked sharply.
"Because standing here on this very spot, before the battle of
Gettysburg I offered him the Presidency if he would preside at a great
mass meeting of his party and guarantee to save the Union. I offered to
efface myself and give up the dearest ambition of my soul to heal the
wounds of my people--and he refused----"
"Refused?" John gasped.
"Yes."
The younger man gazed at the haggard face for a moment through dimmed
eyes, sank slowly to a seat and covered his face in his hands in a cry
of despair!
The reaction was complete and his collapse utter.
The President gazed at the bent figure with sorrowful amazement, and
touched his head gently with the big friendly hand:
"Why, what's the matter, my boy? I'm the only man to despair. You're
just a captain in the army. If to be the head of hell is as hard as
what I've had to undergo here I could find it in my heart to pity Satan
himself. And if there's a man out of hell who suffers more than I do, I
pity him. But it's my burden and I try to bear it. I wish I had only
yours!"
John Vaughan sprang to his feet and threw his hands above his head in a
gesture of anguish:
"O my God, you don't understand!"
He quickly crossed the space that separated them and faced the President
with grim determination:
"But I'm going to tell you the truth now and you can do what you think's
right. In the last fight before Petersburg I killed my brother in a
night attack and held his dying body in my arms. I think I must have
gone mad that night. Anyhow, when I lay in the hospital recovering from
my wounds, I got the letter about my father and made up my mind to kill
you----"
He paused, but the sombre eyes gave no sign--they seemed to be gazing on
the shores of eternity.
"And I came here to-night for that purpose--my men are in that hall
now!"
He stopped and folded his hands deliberately, waiting for his judge to
speak.
A long silence fell between them. The tall, sorrowful man was looking at
him with a curious expression of wonder and self pity.
"So you came here to-night to kill me?"
"Yes."
Again a long silence--the deep eyes looking, looking with their strange
questioning gaze.
"Well," the younger man burst out at last, "what is my fate? I deserve
it. Even generosity and gentleness have their limit. I've passed it.
And I've no desire to escape."
The kindly hand was lifted to John Vaughan's shoulder:
"Why didn't you do it?"
"Because for the first time you made me see things as you see them--I
got a glimpse of the inside----"
"Then I won you--didn't I?" the President cried with elation. "I've been
talking to you just to keep my courage up--just to save my own soul from
the hell of despair. But you've lifted me up. If I can win you I can win
the others if I could only get their ear. All I need is a little time.
And I'm going to fight for it. Every act of my life in this great office
will stand the test of time because I've put my immortal soul into the
struggle without one thought of saving myself.
"I've told you the truth, and the truth has turned a murderer into my
friend. If only the people can know--can have time to think, I'll win.
You thought me an ambitious tyrant--now, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Great God!--I had my ambitions, yes--as every American boy worth his
salt has. And I dared to dream this vision of the White House--I, the
humblest of the humble, born in a lowly pioneer's cabin in the woods of
Kentucky. My dream came true, and where is its glory? Ashes and blood.
And I, to whom the sight of blood is an agony unendurable, have lived
with aching heart through it all and envied the dead their rest on your
battlefields----"
He stopped suddenly and fixed John with a keen look:
"You'll stand by me, now, boy, through thick and thin?"
"I'd count it an honor to die for you----"
"All right. I give you the chance. I'm going to send you on a dangerous
mission. I need but two things to sweep the country in this election and
preserve the Union--a single big victory in the field to lift the people
out of the dumps and make them see things as they are, and a declaration
from Mr. Davis that there can be no peace save in division. I know that
he holds that position, but the people in the North doubt it. I've sent
Jaquess and Gilmore there to obtain his declaration. Technically they
are spies. They may be executed or imprisoned and held to the end of the
war. They go as private citizens of the North who desire peace.
"I want another man in Richmond whose identity will be unknown to report
the results of that meeting in case they are imprisoned. You must go as
a spy at the double risk of your life----"
"I'm ready, sir," was the quick response.
The big hand fumbled the black beard a moment:
"You doubtless said bitter things in Washington when you returned?"
"Many of them."
"Then you were approached by the leaders of Knights of the Golden
Circle?"
"Yes."
"Good! You're the man I want without a doubt. You can use their signs
and pass words in Richmond. Besides, you have a Southern accent. Your
chances of success are great. I want you to leave here in an hour. Go
straight through as a scout and spy in Confederate uniform. If Jaquess
and Gilmore are allowed to return and tell their story--all right, your
work with them is done. If they are imprisoned, get through the lines to
Grant's headquarters, report this fact and Mr. Davis' answer, and it
will be doubly effective--you understand?"
"Perfectly, sir."
"That's your first job. But I want you to go to Richmond for a double
purpose--to take the train for Atlanta, get through the lines and give a
message to a man down South I've been thinking about for the past month.
The world has forgotten Sherman in the roar of the great battles Grant
has fought. I haven't. Slowly but surely his grim figure has been
growing taller on the horizon as the smoke lifts from each of his
fights. Grant says he is our biggest general. Only a great man could say
that about a subordinate commander. That's another reason I won't listen
to people who demand Grant's removal.
"Sherman is now a hundred and fifty miles in Georgia before Atlanta. His
road is being cut behind him every other day. You might be weeks trying
to get to him by Chattanooga. The trains run through from Richmond. I
want you to reach him quick, and give him a message from me. I can't
send a written order. It wouldn't be fair to Grant. I'll give you
credentials that he'll accept that will cost you your life in Richmond
if their meaning is discovered.
"Tell General Sherman that if he can take Atlanta the blow will thrill
the Nation, carry the election, and save the Union. Grant is deadlocked
at Petersburg and may be there all winter. If he can fight at once and
give us a victory, it's all that's needed. I'll send him an order to
strike. Tell him to destroy it if he wins. If he loses--I'll publish it
and take the blame on myself. Can you do this?"
"I will or die in the effort," was the quick reply.
"All right. Take this card at once to Stanton's office. Ask him to send
you by boat to Aquia--by horse from there. Return here for your papers."
In ten minutes John had dispatched a note to Betty:
"DEAREST: God saved me from an act of madness. He sent His message
through your sweet spirit. I am leaving for the South on a
dangerous mission for the President. If I live to return I am all
yours--if I die, I shall still live through eternity if only to
love you.
"JOHN."
Within an hour he had communicated with the commander of the Knights,
his arrangements were complete, and he was steaming down the river on
his perilous journey.
CHAPTER XXXVII
MR. DAVIS SPEAKS
John Vaughan arrived in Richmond a day before Jaquess and Gilmore. His
genial Southern manner, his perfect accent and his possession of the
signs and pass words of the Knights of the Golden Circle made his
mission a comparatively easy one.
He had brought a message from the Washington Knights to Judah P.
Benjamin, which won the confidence of Mr. Davis' Secretary of State and
gained his ready consent to his presence on the occasion of the
interview.
The Commissioners left Butler's headquarters with some misgivings.
Gilmore took the doughty General by the hand and said: "Good-bye, if you
don't see us in ten days you may know we have 'gone up.'"
"If I don't see you in less time," he replied, "I'll demand you, and if
they don't produce you, I'll take two for one. My hand on that."
Under a flag of truce they found Judge Ould, the Exchange Commissioner,
who conducted them into Richmond under cover of darkness.
They stopped at the Spottswood House and the next morning saw Mr.
Benjamin, who agreed to arrange an interview with Jefferson Davis.
Mr. Benjamin was polite, but inquisitive.
"Do you bring any overtures from your Government, gentlemen?"
"No, sir," answered Colonel Jaquess. "We bring no overtures and have no
authority from our Government. As private citizens we simply wish to
know what terms will be acceptable to Mr. Davis."
"Are you acquainted with Mr. Lincoln's views?"
"One of us is fully," said Colonel Jaquess.
"Did Mr. Lincoln in any way authorize you to come here?"
"No, sir," said Gilmore. "We came with his pass, but not by his request.
We came as men and Christians, not as diplomats, hoping, in a frank talk
with Mr. Davis, to discover some way by which this war may be stopped."
"Well, gentlemen," said Benjamin, "I will repeat what you say to the
President, and if he follows my advice, he will meet you."
At nine o'clock the two men had entered the State Department and found
Jefferson Davis seated at the long table on the right of his Secretary
of State.
John Vaughan was given a seat at the other end of the table to report
the interview for Mr. Benjamin.
He studied the distinguished President of the Confederate States with
interest. He had never seen him before. His figure was extremely thin,
his features typically Southern in their angular cheeks and high cheek
bones. His iron-grey hair was long and thick and inclined to curl at the
ends. His whiskers were small and trimmed farmer fashion--on the lower
end of his strong chin. The clear grey eyes were full of vitality. His
broad forehead, strong mouth and chin denoted an iron will. He wore a
suit of greyish brown, of foreign manufacture, and as he rose, seemed
about five feet ten inches. His shoulders slightly stooped.
His manner was easy and graceful, his voice cultured and charming.
"I am glad to see you, gentlemen," he said. "You are very welcome to
Richmond."
"We thank you, Mr. Davis," Gilmore replied.
"Mr. Benjamin tells me that you have asked to see me to----"
He paused that the visitors might finish the sentence.
"Yes, sir," Jaquess answered. "Our people want peace, your people do. We
have come to ask how it may be brought about?"
"Withdraw your armies, let us alone and peace will come at once."
"But we cannot let you alone so long as you repudiate the Union----"
"I know. You would deny us what you exact for yourselves--the right of
self-government."
"Even so," said Colonel Jaquess, "we can not fight forever. The war must
end sometime. We must finally agree on something. Can we not agree now
and stop this frightful carnage?"
"I wish peace as much as you do," replied Mr. Davis. "I deplore
bloodshed. But I feel that not one drop of this blood is on my hands. I
can look up to God and say this. I tried all in my power to avert this
war. I saw it coming and for twelve years I worked day and night to
prevent it. The North was mad and blind, and would not let us govern
ourselves and now it must go on until the last man of this generation
falls in his tracks and his children seize his musket and fight our
battle, _unless you acknowledge our right to self-government_. We are
not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence, and that or
extermination we _will_ have."
"We have no wish to exterminate you," protested the Colonel. "But we
must crush your armies. Is it not already nearly done? Grant has shut
you up in Richmond. Sherman is before Atlanta."
"You don't seem to understand the situation," Mr. Davis laughed. "We're
not exactly shut up in Richmond yet. If your papers tell the truth it is
your Capital that is in danger, not ours. Lee, whose front has never
been broken, holds Grant in check and has men enough to spare to invade
Maryland and Pennsylvania and threaten Washington. Sherman, to be sure,
is before Atlanta. But suppose he is, the further he goes from his base
of supplies, the more disastrous defeat must be. And defeat may come."
"But you cannot expect," Gilmore said, "with only four and one half
millions to hold out forever against twenty?"
Mr. Davis smiled:
"Do you think there are twenty millions at the North determined to crush
us? I do not so read the returns of your elections or the temper of your
people."
"If I understand you, then," Jaquess continued, "the dispute with your
government is narrowed to this, union or disunion?"
"Or, in other words, independence or subjugation. We will be free. We
will govern ourselves. We will do it if we have to see every Southern
plantation sacked and every Southern city in flames."
The visitors rose, and after a few pleasant remarks, took their leave.
Mr. Davis was particularly cordial to Colonel Jaquess, whom he knew to
have been a clergyman.
John was surprised to see him repeat the habit of Abraham Lincoln, of
taking the hand of his visitor in both his in exactly the same cordial
way.
He had forgotten for the moment that both Lincoln and Davis were
Southerners, born in the same State and reared in precisely the same
school of thought and social usage.
"Colonel," the thin Southerner said in his musical voice, "I respect
your character and your motives and I wish you well--every good wish
possible consistent with the interests of the Confederacy."
As they were passing through the door, he added:
"Say to Mr. Lincoln that I shall at any time be pleased to receive
proposals for peace on the basis of our independence. It will be useless
to approach me with any other."
Next morning the visitors waited in vain for the appearance of Judge
Ould to convey them once more into the Union lines. Visions of a long
term in prison, to say nothing of a possible hang-man's noose, began to
float before their excited fancy. They had expected the Judge at eight
o'clock. It was three in the afternoon when he entered with the laconic
remark:
"Well, gentlemen, if you are ready, we'll walk around to Libby Prison."
Certain of their doom, the two men rose and spoke in concert:
"We are ready."
They followed the Judge downstairs and found the same coal black driver
with the rickety team that had brought them into Richmond.
Gilmore smiled into the Judge's face:
"Why were you so long coming?"
Ould hesitated and laughed:
"I'll tell you when the war's over. Now I'll take you through the Libby
and the hospitals, if you'd like to go."
When they had visited the prison and hospitals, Gilmore again turned to
the Judge:
"Now, explain to us, please, your delay this morning--we're curious."
Ould smiled:
"I suppose I'd as well tell you. When I called on Mr. Davis for your
permit, Mr. Benjamin was there impressing on the President of the
Confederate States the absolute necessity of placing you two gentlemen
in Castle Thunder until the Northern elections are over. Mr. Benjamin is
a very eloquent advocate, and Mr. Davis hesitated. I took issue with the
Secretary of State and we had a very exciting argument. The President
finally reserved decision until two o'clock and asked me to call and get
it. He handed me your pass with this remark:
"It's probably a bad business for us, but it would alienate many of our
Northern friends if we should hold on to these gentlemen."
In two hours the visitors had reached the Union lines, John Vaughan had
obtained his passes and was on his way to Atlanta.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE STOLEN MARCH
John Vaughan's entrance into Atlanta was simple. His credentials from
Richmond were perfect. His exit proved to be a supreme test of his
nerve.
The two lines of siege and battle stretched in wide semicircle for miles
over the ragged wood tangled hills about the little Gate City of the
South.
Sherman had fought his way from Chattanooga one hundred and fifty miles
since May with consummate skill. His march had been practically a
continuous series of battles, and yet his losses had been small compared
to General Grant's. In killed, wounded and prisoners he had only lost
thirty-two thousand men in four months. The Confederate losses had been
greater--at least thirty-five thousand.
Hood, the new Southern Commander, had given him battle a month before
and suffered an overwhelming defeat, losing eight thousand men, Sherman
but thirty-seven hundred. The Confederate forces had retired behind the
impregnable fortifications of Atlanta and Sherman lay behind his
trenches watching in grim silence.
The pickets at many places were so close together they could talk. John
Vaughan attempted to slip through at night while they were chaffing one
another.
He lay for an hour in the woods near the Southern picket line watching
his chance. The men were talking continuously.
"Why the devil don't you all fight?" a grey man called.
"Uncle Billy says it's cheaper to flank you and make you Johnnies run to
catch up with us."
"Yes--damn you, and we've got ye now where ye can't do no more flankin'.
Ye got ter fight!"
"Trust Uncle Billy for that when the time comes----"
"Yes, and we've got Billy Sherman whar we want him now. We're goin' to
blow up every bridge behind ye and ye'll never see home no more----"
"Uncle Billy's got duplicates of all your bridges fast as ye blow 'em
up."
"All right, we're goin' ter blow up the tunnels through the
mountains----"
"That's nothin'--we got duplicates to all the tunnels, too!"
John Vaughan began to creep toward the Federal lines and muskets blazed
from both sides. He dropped flat on the ground and it took two hours to
crawl to a place of safety.
He felt these lines next morning where they were wider apart and found
them too dangerous to attempt. The pickets, at the point he approached,
were in an ugly mood and a desultory fire was kept up all day. The men
had bunched up two together and entrenched themselves, keeping a deadly
watch for the men in blue. He stood for half an hour close enough to see
every movement of two young pickets who evidently had some score to pay
and were hunting for their foe with quiet, deadly purpose.
"There's a Yank behind that clump," said one.
"Na--nothin' but a huckleberry bush," the other replied.
"Yes there is, too. We'll decoy and pot him. I'll get ready now and you
raise your cap on a ramrod above the hole. He'll lift his head to fire
and I'll get him."
The speaker cautiously slipped his musket in place and drew a bead on
the spot. His partner placed his hat on his ramrod and slowly lifted it
a foot above their hiding place.
The hat had scarcely cleared the pile of dirt before the musket flashed.
"I got him! I told you he was there!"
John turned from the scene with a sense of sickening horror. He would
die for his country, but he hoped he would not be called on to kill
again.
He made a wide detour and attempted to cross the lines five miles
further from the city and walked suddenly into a squad of grey soldiers
in command of a lieutenant.
The officer eyed him with suspicion.
"What's your business here, sir?" he asked sharply.
"Looking over the lines," John replied casually.
"So I see. That's why I asked you. Show your pass."
"Why, I haven't one."
"I thought not. You're a damned spy and you'd just as well say your
prayers. I'm going to hang you."
The men pressed near. Among them was a second lieutenant, a big,
strapping, quiet-looking fellow.
"You've made a mistake, gentlemen," John protested.
"I'm a newspaper man from Atlanta. The chief sent me out to look over
the lines and report."
"It's a lie. We've forbidden every paper in town to dare such a
thing----"
John smiled:
"That's just why my office sent me, I reckon."
"Well, he sent you once too often----"
He turned to his orderly:
"Get me a bridle rein off my horse."
In vain John protested. The Commander shook his head:
"It's no use talking. You've passed the deadline here to-day. This is a
favorite spot for scouts to cross. I'm not going to take any chances;
I'm going to hang you."
"Why don't you search me first?"
He was sure that his dangerous message was so skillfully sewed in the
soles of his shoes they would not be discovered.
"I can search you afterwards," was the laconic reply.
He quickly tied the leather strap around his neck and threw the end of
it over a limb. The touch of his hand and the rough way in which he had
tied the leather stirred John Vaughan's rage to boiling point. All sense
of danger was lost for the moment in blind anger. He turned suddenly and
faced his executioner:
"This is a damned outrage, sir! Even a spy is entitled to a trial by
drumhead court-martial!"
"Yes, that's what I say," the big, quiet fellow broke in.
"I'm in command of this squad!" thundered the lieutenant.
"I know you are," was the cool answer, "that's why this outrage is going
to be committed."
The executioner dropped the rein and faced his subordinate:
"You're going to question my authority?"
"I've already done it, haven't I?"
A quick blow followed. The quiet man, in response, knocked his commander
down and the men sprang on them as they drew their revolvers.
John Vaughan, with a sudden leap, reached the dense woods and in five
minutes was inside Sherman's lines.
The bridle rein was still around his neck and the blue picket helped him
untie the ugly knot.
"I've had a close call," he panted, with a glance toward the woods.
"You look it, partner. You'll be wantin' to see General Sherman, I
guess?"
"Yes--to headquarters quick--you can't get there too quick to suit me."
He had recovered his composure before reaching the farm house where
General Sherman and his staff were quartered.
The day was one of terrific heat--the first of September. The
President's description of the famous fighter and the tremendous
responsibility which was now being placed on his shoulders had roused
John's curiosity to the highest pitch.
The General was seated in an arm chair in the yard under a great oak.
His coat was unbuttoned and he had tilted back against the tree in a
comfortable position reading a newspaper. His black slouch hat was
pulled far down over his face.
John saluted:
"This is General Sherman?"
"Yes," was the quick, pleasant answer as the tall, gaunt form slowly
rose.
John noted his striking and powerful personality--the large frame,
restless hazel eyes, fine aquiline nose, bronzed features and cropped
beard. His every movement was instinct with the power of perfect
physical manhood, forty-four years old, the incarnation of health and
wiry strength.
"I come from Washington, General," John continued, "and bear a special
message from the President."
"From the President! Oh, come inside then."
The tall figure moved with quick, nervous energy. In ten minutes
couriers were dashing from his headquarters in every direction.
At one o'clock that night the big movement of his withdrawal from the
siege lines began. He had no intention of hurling his men against those
deadly trenches. He believed that with a sure, swift start undiscovered
by the Confederates he could by a single battle turn their lines at
Jonesboro, destroy the railroad and force General Hood to evacuate
Atlanta.
His sleeping men were carefully waked. Not a single note from bugle or
drum sounded. The wheels of the artillery and wagons were wrapped with
cloth and every sound muffled.
Through pitch darkness in dead silence the men were swung into marching
lines. The moving columns could be felt but not seen. Each soldier
followed blindly the man before. Somewhere in the black night there must
be a leader--God knew--they didn't. They walked by faith. The wet
grounds, soaked by recent rains, made their exit easier. The sound of
horses' hoofs and tramping thousands could scarcely be heard.
The ranks were strung out in long, ragged lines, each man going as he
pleased. Something blocked the way ahead and the columns butted into one
another and pinched the heels of the men in front.
In their anger the fellows smarting with pain forgot the orders for
silence. A storm of low muttering and growling rumbled through the
darkness.
"What 'ell here!"
"What's the matter with you----"
"Keep off my heels!"
"What 'ell are ye runnin' over me for?"
"Hold up your damned gun----"
"Keep it out of my eye, won't you?"
"Damn your eye!"
They start again and run into a bog of mud knee deep cut into mush by
the artillery and wagons which have passed on.
The first men in line were in to their knees and stuck fast before they
could stop the lines surging on in the dark. They collide with the
bogged ones and fall over them. The ranks behind stumble in on top of
the fallen before word can be passed to halt.
The night reeks with oaths. The patient heavens reverberate with them.
The mud-soaked soldiers damned with equal unction all things visible and
invisible on the earth, under it and above it. They cursed the United
States of America and they damned the Confederate States with equal
emphasis and wished them both at the bottom of the lowest depths of the
deepest pit of perdition.
As one fellow blew the mud from his mouth and nose he bawled:
"I wish Sherman and Hood were both in hell this minute!"
"Yes, and fightin' it out to suit themselves!" his comrade answered.
On through the black night the long blue lines crept under lowering
skies toward their foe, the stern face of William Tecumseh Sherman
grimly set on his desperate purpose.
CHAPTER XXXIX
VICTORY
Betty had found the President at the War Telegraph office in the old
Army and Navy building. He was seated at the desk by the window where in
1862 he had written his first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation on
pieces of pasteboard.
"You have heard nothing yet from General Sherman?" she asked
pathetically.
"Nothing, child."
"And no message of any kind from John Vaughan since he left!" she
exclaimed hopelessly.
"But I'm sure, remember, sure to a moral certainty--that he reached
Richmond safely and left there safely."
"How do you know?"
"Gilmore has just arrived with his reply from Jefferson Davis. It will
be worth a half million votes for us. From his description of the
'reporter' with Benjamin I am sure it was our messenger."
"But you don't know--you don't know!" Betty sighed.
The President bent and touched her shoulder gently:
"Come, dear, it's not like you to despair----"
The girl smiled wanly.
"How long since any message arrived from General Sherman?"
"Three days, my child. I know the hole he went in at, but I can't tell
where he's going to come out----"
"If he ever comes out," Betty broke in bitterly.
"Oh, he'll come out somewhere!" the President laughed. "It's a habit of
his. I've watched him for months--sometimes I can't hear from him for a
week--but he always bobs up again and comes out with a whoop, too----"
"But we've no news!" she interrupted.
"No news has always been good news from Sherman----"
He paused and looked at his watch:
"Wait here. I'll be back in a few moments. We're bound to hear something
to-day. I've an engagement with my Committee of Undertakers. They are
waiting for me to deliver my corpse to them--and they are very restless
about it because I haven't given up sooner, I'm full of foolish hopes.
I'm going to adjourn them until we can get a message of some kind----"
He returned in half an hour and sat in silence for a long time listening
to the steady, sharp click of the telegraph keys.
Betty was too blue to talk--too heartsick to move.
At last the tall figure rose and walked back among the operators. They
knew that he was waiting for the magic call, "Atlanta, Georgia." It had
been three years and more since that heading for a message had flashed
over their wires. Every ear was keen to catch it.
The President bent over the table of Southern wires and silently
watched:
"You can't strain a little message through for me, can you, my boy?"
The operator smiled:
"I wish I could, sir."
The President returned to the front room and shook his head to Betty:
"Nothing."
"He entered Atlanta a spy, didn't he?" she said despairingly.
"Yes--of course."
"They couldn't execute him without our knowing it, could they?"
"If they trap him--yes--but he's a very intelligent young man. He'll be
too smart for them. I feel it. I know it----"
He stopped and looked at her quizzically:
"I've a sort of second sight that tells me such things. I saw General
Sickles in the hospital after Gettysburg. They said he couldn't live. I
told him he would get well and he did."
Again the President returned restlessly to the operator's room and Betty
followed him to the door. He waited a long time in silence, shook his
head and turned away. He had almost reached the door when suddenly the
operator sprang to his feet livid with excitement:
"Wait--Mr. President!--It's come--my God, it's here!"
Every operator was on his feet listening in breathless excitement to the
click of that Southern wire.
The President had rushed back to the table.
"It's for you, sir!"
"Read it then--out with it as you take it!" he cried.
"Atlanta, Georgia, September 3rd, 1864."
"Glory to God!" the President shouted.
"Atlanta is ours and fairly won. W. T. Sherman."
"O my soul, lift up thy head!" the sorrowful lips shouted. "Unto thee, O
God, we give all the praise now and forever more!"
He seated himself and quickly wrote his thanks and congratulations:
"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
"WASHINGTON, D. C.
"September 3, 1864.
"The National thanks are rendered by the President to Major General
W. T. Sherman and the gallant officers and soldiers of his command
before Atlanta, for the distinguished ability and perseverance
displayed in the campaign in Georgia, which under Divine favor has
resulted in the capture of Atlanta. The marches, battles and sieges
that have signalized this campaign must render it famous in the
annals of war, and have entitled you to the applause and thanks of
the Nation.
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
"_President of the United States_."
His sombre eyes flamed with a new light. He took the copy of his message
from Sherman and started to the White House with long, swift strides.
Betty greeted him outside with tearful joy still mixed with deep
anxiety.
"You have no word from him, of course?"
"Not yet, child, but it will come--cheer up--it's sure to come. You see
that he reached Atlanta and delivered my message!"
"We are not sure. The city may have fallen, anyhow----"
"Yes, yes, but it didn't just fall, anyhow. Sherman took it. He got my
message. I know it. I felt it flash through the air from his soul to
mine!"
His faith and enthusiasm were contagious and Betty returned home with
new hope.
In half an hour the Committee who were waiting for his resignation from
the National Republican ticket filed into his office to receive as they
supposed his final surrender.
The Chairman rose with doleful countenance:
"Since leaving you, Mr. President, we have just heard a most painful and
startling announcement from the War Department. We begged you to
withhold the new draft for five hundred thousand men until after the
election. Halleck informs us of the discovery of a great combination to
resist it by armed force and General Grant must detach a part of his
army from Lee's front in order to put down this counter revolution. This
is the blackest news yet. We trust that you realize the impossibility of
your administration asking for indorsement at the polls----"
With a sign of final resignation he sat down and the tall, dark figure
rose with quick, nervous energy.
"I, too, have received important news since I saw you an hour ago."
He held the telegram above his head:
"I'll read it to you without my glasses. I know it by heart. I have just
learned that my administration will be indorsed by an overwhelming
majority, that the defeat of George B. McClellan and his platform of
failure is a certainty. The war to preserve the Union is a success. The
sword has been driven into the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman has
captured Atlanta--the Union is saved!"
The Committee leaped to their feet with a shout of applause and crowded
around him to congratulate and praise the man they came to bury. There
was no longer a question of his resignation. The fall of Atlanta would
thrill the North. A wave of wild enthusiasm would sweep into the sea the
last trace of gloom and despair. They were practical men--else, as rats,
they would never have tried to desert their own ship. They knew that the
tide was going to turn, but it was a swift tide that could turn before
they could!
They wrung the President's hands, they shouted his praise, they had
always gloried in his administration, but foolish grumblers hadn't been
able to see things as they saw them--hence this hue and cry! They
congratulated him on his certain triumph and the President watched them
go with a quiet smile. He was too big to cherish resentments. He only
pitied small men, he never hated them.
CHAPTER XL
WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE
General Grant fired a salute in honor of the Atlanta victory with
shotted guns from every battery on his siege lines of thirty-seven miles
before Richmond and Petersburg. To Sherman he sent a remarkable
message--the kind which great men know how to pen:
"You have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any
General in this war, with a skill and ability which will be acknowledged
in history as unsurpassed if not unequaled."
From the depths of despair the North swung to the wildest enthusiasm and
in the election which followed Abraham Lincoln was swept into power
again on a tidal wave. He received in round numbers two million five
hundred thousand votes, McClellan two millions. His majority by States
in the electoral college was overwhelming--two hundred and twelve to his
opponent's twenty-one.
The closing words of his second Inaugural rang clear and quivering with
emotion over the vast crowd:
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves
and with all nations."
As the last echo died away among the marble pillars above, the sun burst
through the clouds and flooded the scene. A mighty cheer swept the
throng and the guns boomed their second salute. The war was closing in
lasting peace and the sun shining on the finished dome of the Capitol of
a new nation.
Betty Winter, leaning on John Vaughan's arm, was among the first to
grasp his big, outstretched hand:
"A glorious day for us, sir," she cried, "a proud one for you!"
With a far-away look the President slowly answered:
"And all that I am in this world, Miss Betty, I owe to a woman--my angel
mother--blessings on her memory!"
"I trust her spirit heard that beautiful speech," the girl responded
tenderly.
She paused, looked up at John, blushed and added:
"We are to be married next week, Mr. President----"
"Is it so?" he said joyfully. "I wish I could be there, my children--but
I'm afraid 'Old Grizzly' might bite me. So I'll say it now--God bless
you!"
He took their hands in his and pressed them heartily. His eyes suddenly
rested on a shining black face grinning behind John Vaughan.
"My, my, can this be Julius Cæsar Thornton?" he laughed.
"Yassah," the black man grinned. "Hit's me--ole reliable, sah, right
here--I'se gwine ter cook fur 'em!"
* * * * *
From the moment of Abraham Lincoln's election the end of the war with a
restored Union was a foregone conclusion.
In the fall of Atlanta the heart of the Confederacy was pierced, and it
ceased to beat. Lee's army, cut off from their supplies, slowly but
surely began to starve behind their impregnable breastworks. Sherman's
march to the sea and through the Carolinas was merely a torchlight
parade. The fighting was done.
When Lee's emaciated men, living on a handful of parched corn a day,
staggered out of their trenches in the spring and tried to join
Johnston's army they marched a few miles to Appomattox, dropping from
exhaustion, and surrendered.
When the news of this tremendous event reached Washington, the Cabinet
was in session. Led by the President, in silence and tears, they fell on
their knees in a prayer of solemn thanks to Almighty God.
General Grant won the gratitude of the South by his generous treatment
of Lee and his ragged men. He had received instructions from the loving
heart in the White House.
Long before the surrender in April, 1865, the end was sure. The
President knowing this, proposed to his Cabinet to give the South four
hundred millions of dollars, the cost of the war for a hundred days, in
payment for their slaves, if they would lay down their arms at once. His
ministers unanimously voted against his offer and he sadly withdrew it.
Among all his councillors there was not one whose soul was big enough to
understand the far-seeing wisdom of his generous plan. He would heal at
once one of the Nation's ugliest wounds by soothing the bitterness of
defeat. He knew that despair would send the older men of the South to
their graves.
Edmund Ruffin, who had fired the first shot against Sumter and returned
to his Virginia farm when his State seceded, was a type of these ruined,
desperate men. On the day that Lee surrendered he placed the muzzle of
his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger with his foot, and blew his own
head into fragments.
When Senator Winter demanded proscription and vengeance against the
leaders of the Confederacy, the President shook his head:
"No--let down the bars--let them all go--scare them off!"
He threw up his big hands in a vivid gesture as if he were shooing a
flock of troublesome sheep out of his garden.
"Triumphant now, you will receive our enemies with open arms?" the
Senator sneered.
"Enemies? There are no such things. The Southern States have never
really been out of the Union. Their Acts of Secession were null and
void. They know now that the issue is forever settled. The restored
Union will be a real one. The Southern people at heart are law-abiding.
It was their reverence for the letter of the old law which led them to
ignore progress and claim the right to secede under the Constitution.
They will be true to Lee's pledge of surrender. I'm going to trust them
as my brethren. Let us fold up our banners now and smelt the guns--Love
rules--let her mightier purpose run!"
So big and generous, so broad and statesmanlike was his spirit that in
this hour of victory his personality became in a day the soul of the New
Republic. The South had already unconsciously grown to respect the man
who had loved yet fought her for what he believed to be her highest
good.
He was entering now a new phase of power. His influence over the people
was supreme. No man or set of men in Congress, or outside of it, could
defeat his policies. Even through the years of stunning defeats and
measureless despair his enemies had never successfully opposed a measure
on which he had set his heart.
His first great work accomplished in destroying slavery and restoring
the Union, there remained but two tasks on which his soul was set--to
heal the bitterness of the war and remove the negro race from physical
contact with the white.
He at once addressed himself to this work with enthusiasm. That he could
do it he never doubted for a moment.
His first care was to remove the negro soldiers from the country as
quickly as possible. He summoned General Butler and set him to work on
his scheme to use these one hundred and eighty thousand black troops to
dig the Panama Canal. He summoned Bradley, the Vermont contractor, and
put him to work on estimates for moving the negroes by ship to Africa or
by train to an undeveloped Western Territory.
His prophetic soul had pierced the future and seen with remorseless
logic that two such races as the Negro and Caucasian could not live side
by side in a free democracy. The Radical theorists of Congress were
demanding that these black men, emerging from four thousand years of
slavery and savagery should receive the ballot and the right to claim
the white man's daughter in marriage. They could only pass these
measures over the dead body of Abraham Lincoln.
The assassin came at last--a vain, foolish dreamer who had long breathed
the poisoned air of hatred. It needed but the flash of this madman's
pistol on the night of the 14th of April to reveal the grandeur of
Lincoln's character, the marvel of his patience and his wisdom.
The curtains of the box in Ford's theatre were softly drawn apart by an
unseen hand. The Angel of Death entered, paused at the sight of the
smile on his rugged, kindly face, touched the drooping shoulders, called
him to take the place he had won among earth's immortals and left to us
"the gentlest memory of our world."
THE END
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