Hero Tales from American History
by Henry Cabot Lodge · English · Gutenberg #1864 · 320,731 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Hero Tales from American History
Author: Henry Cabot Lodge
Theodore Roosevelt
Release date: August 1, 1999 [eBook #1864]
Most recently updated: October 10, 2008
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1864
Credits: Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERO TALES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY ***
Produced by Dianne Bean
HERO TALES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
By Henry Cabot Lodge And Theodore Roosevelt
Hence it is that the fathers of these men and ours also, and
they themselves likewise, being nurtured in all freedom and
well born, have shown before all men many and glorious deeds
in public and private, deeming it their duty to fight for
the cause of liberty and the Greeks, even against Greeks,
and against Barbarians for all the Greeks."--PLATO:
"Menexenus."
TO E. Y. R.
To you we owe the suggestion of writing this book. Its purpose, as you
know better than any one else, is to tell in simple fashion the story of
some Americans who showed that they knew how to live and how to die; who
proved their truth by their endeavor; and who joined to the stern and
manly qualities which are essential to the well-being of a masterful
race the virtues of gentleness, of patriotism, and of lofty adherence to
an ideal.
It is a good thing for all Americans, and it is an especially good thing
for young Americans, to remember the men who have given their lives in
war and peace to the service of their fellow-countrymen, and to keep in
mind the feats of daring and personal prowess done in time past by
some of the many champions of the nation in the various crises of her
history. Thrift, industry, obedience to law, and intellectual cultivation
are essential qualities in the makeup of any successful people; but no
people can be really great unless they possess also the heroic virtues
which are as needful in time of peace as in time of war, and as
important in civil as in military life. As a civilized people we desire
peace, but the only peace worth having is obtained by instant readiness
to fight when wronged--not by unwillingness or inability to fight at
all. Intelligent foresight in preparation and known capacity to stand
well in battle are the surest safeguards against war. America will cease
to be a great nation whenever her young men cease to possess energy,
daring, and endurance, as well as the wish and the power to fight the
nation's foes. No citizen of a free state should wrong any man; but it
is not enough merely to refrain from infringing on the rights of others;
he must also be able and willing to stand up for his own rights and
those of his country against all comers, and he must be ready at any
time to do his full share in resisting either malice domestic or foreign
levy.
HENRY CABOT LODGE. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
WASHINGTON, April 19, 1895.
CONTENTS
GEORGE WASHINGTON--H. C. Lodge.
DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY--Theodore Roosevelt.
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST--Theodore
Roosevelt.
THE BATTLE OF TRENTON--H. C. Lodge.
BENNINGTON--H. C. Lodge.
KING'S MOUNTAIN--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE STORMING OF STONY POINT--Theodore Roosevelt.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS--H. C. Lodge.
THE BURNING OF THE "PHILADELPHIA"--H. C. Lodge.
THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" PRIVATEER--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS--Theodore Roosevelt.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND THE RIGHT OF PETITION--H. C. Lodge.
FRANCIS PARKMAN--H. C. Lodge.
"REMEMBER THE ALAMO"--Theodore Roosevelt.
HAMPTON ROADS--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE FLAG-BEARER--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE DEATH OF STONEWALL JACK--Theodore Roosevelt.
THE CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG--Theodore Roosevelt.
GENERAL GRANT AND THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN--H. C. Lodge.
ROBERT GOULD SHAW--H. C. Lodge.
CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL--H. C. Lodge.
SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK--H. C. Lodge.
LIEUTENANT CUSHING AND THE RAM "ALBEMARLE"--Theodore Roosevelt.
FARRAGUT AT MOBILE BAY--Theodore Roosevelt.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN--H. C. Lodge.
"Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all
I shall not look upon his like again."--Hamlet
HERO TALES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
WASHINGTON
The brilliant historian of the English people [*] has written of
Washington, that "no nobler figure ever stood in the fore-front of a
nation's life." In any book which undertakes to tell, no matter how
slightly, the story of some of the heroic deeds of American history,
that noble figure must always stand in the fore-front. But to sketch the
life of Washington even in the barest outline is to write the history
of the events which made the United States independent and gave birth
to the American nation. Even to give alist of what he did, to name his
battles and recount his acts as president, would be beyond the limit and
the scope of this book. Yet it is always possible to recall the man and
to consider what he was and what he meant for us and for mankind He is
worthy the study and the remembrance of all men, and to Americans he is
at once a great glory of their past and an inspiration and an assurance
of their future.
* John Richard Green.
To understand Washington at all we must first strip off all the myths
which have gathered about him. We must cast aside into the dust-heaps
all the wretched inventions of the cherry-tree variety, which were
fastened upon him nearly seventy years after his birth. We must look at
him as he looked at life and the facts about him, without any illusion
or deception, and no man in history can better stand such a scrutiny.
Born of a distinguished family in the days when the American colonies
were still ruled by an aristocracy, Washington started with all that
good birth and tradition could give. Beyond this, however, he had
little. His family was poor, his mother was left early a widow, and he
was forced after a very limited education to go out into the world to
fight for himself He had strong within him the adventurous spirit of
his race. He became a surveyor, and in the pursuit of this profession
plunged into the wilderness, where he soon grew to be an expert hunter
and backwoodsman. Even as a boy the gravity of his character and
his mental and physical vigor commended him to those about him, and
responsibility and military command were put in his hands at an age when
most young men are just leaving college. As the times grew threatening
on the frontier, he was sent on a perilous mission to the Indians, in
which, after passing through many hardships and dangers, he achieved
success. When the troubles came with France it was by the soldiers under
his command that the first shots were fired in the war which was to
determine whether the North American continent should be French or
English. In his earliest expedition he was defeated by the enemy. Later
he was with Braddock, and it was he who tried, to rally the broken
English army on the stricken field near Fort Duquesne. On that day
of surprise and slaughter he displayed not only cool courage but the
reckless daring which was one of his chief characteristics. He so
exposed himself that bullets passed through his coat and hat, and the
Indians and the French who tried to bring him down thought he bore a
charmed life. He afterwards served with distinction all through the
French war, and when peace came he went back to the estate which he had
inherited from his brother, the most admired man in Virginia.
At that time he married, and during the ensuing years he lived the life
of a Virginia planter, successful in his private affairs and serving the
public effectively but quietly as a member of the House of Burgesses.
When the troubles with the mother country began to thicken he was slow
to take extreme ground, but he never wavered in his belief that all
attempts to oppress the colonies should be resisted, and when he once
took up his position there was no shadow of turning. He was one of
Virginia's delegates to the first Continental Congress, and, although
he said but little, he was regarded by all the representatives from
the other colonies as the strongest man among them. There was something
about him even then which commanded the respect and the confidence of
every one who came in contact with him.
It was from New England, far removed from his own State, that the demand
came for his appointment as commander-in-chief of the American army.
Silently he accepted the duty, and, leaving Philadelphia, took command
of the army at Cambridge. There is no need to trace him through the
events that followed. From the time when he drew his sword under the
famous elm tree, he was the embodiment of the American Revolution, and
without him that revolution would have failed almost at the start. How
he carried it to victory through defeat and trial and every possible
obstacle is known to all men.
When it was all over he found himself facing a new situation. He was the
idol of the country and of his soldiers. The army was unpaid, and the
veteran troops, with arms in their hands, were eager to have him take
control of the disordered country as Cromwell had done in England
a little more than a century before. With the army at his back, and
supported by the great forces which, in every community, desire order
before everything else, and are ready to assent to any arrangement which
will bring peace and quiet, nothing would have been easier than for
Washington to have made himself the ruler of the new nation. But that
was not his conception of duty, and he not only refused to have anything
to do with such a movement himself, but he repressed, by his dominant
personal influence, all such intentions on the part of the army. On
the 23d of December, 1783, he met the Congress at Annapolis, and there
resigned his commission. What he then said is one of the two most
memorable speeches ever made in the United States, and is also memorable
for its meaning and spirit among all speeches ever made by men. He spoke
as follows:
"Mr. President:--The great events on which my resignation depended having
at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere
congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself before them, to
surrender into their hands the trust committed to me and to claim the
indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.
Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignity and
pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming
a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I
accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so
arduous a task, which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the
rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the Union,
and the patronage of Heaven.
The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine
expectations, and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence and
the assistance I have received from my countrymen increases with every
review of the momentous contest.
While I repeat my obligations to the Army in general, I should do
injustice to my own feelings not to acknowledge, in this place, the
peculiar services and distinguished merits of the Gentlemen who have
been attached to my person during the war. It was impossible that the
choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been
more fortunate. Permit me, sir, to recommend in particular those
who have continued in service to the present moment as worthy of the
favorable notice and patronage of Congress.
I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my
official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the
protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of
them to His holy keeping.
Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great
theatre of action, and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this
august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my
commission and take my leave of all the employments of public life."
The great master of English fiction, writing of this scene at Annapolis,
says: "Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed--the opening
feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of Washington?
Which is the noble character for after ages to admire--yon fribble
dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword
after a life of spotless honor, a purity unreproached, a courage
indomitable and a consummate victory?"
Washington did not refuse the dictatorship, or, rather, the opportunity
to take control of the country, because he feared heavy responsibility,
but solely because, as a high-minded and patriotic man, he did not
believe in meeting the situation in that way. He was, moreover, entirely
devoid of personal ambition, and had no vulgar longing for personal
power. After resigning his commission he returned quietly to Mount
Vernon, but he did not hold himself aloof from public affairs. On the
contrary, he watched their course with the utmost anxiety. He saw the
feeble Confederation breaking to pieces, and he soon realized that that
form of government was an utter failure. In a time when no American
statesman except Hamilton had yet freed himself from the local feelings
of the colonial days, Washington was thoroughly national in all his
views. Out of the thirteen jarring colonies he meant that a nation
should come, and he saw--what no one else saw--the destiny of the
country to the westward. He wished a nation founded which should cross
the Alleghanies, and, holding the mouths of the Mississippi, take
possession of all that vast and then unknown region. For these reasons
he stood at the head of the national movement, and to him all men turned
who desired a better union and sought to bring order out of chaos. With
him Hamilton and Madison consulted in the preliminary stages which
were to lead to the formation of a new system. It was his vast personal
influence which made that movement a success, and when the convention
to form a constitution met at Philadelphia, he presided over its
deliberations, and it was his commanding will which, more than anything
else, brought a constitution through difficulties and conflicting
interests which more than once made any result seem well-nigh hopeless.
When the Constitution formed at Philadelphia had been ratified by the
States, all men turned to Washington to stand at the head of the new
government. As he had borne the burden of the Revolution, so he now
took up the task of bringing the government of the Constitution into
existence. For eight years he served as president. He came into
office with a paper constitution, the heir of a bankrupt, broken-down
confederation. He left the United States, when he went out of office,
an effective and vigorous government. When he was inaugurated, we
had nothing but the clauses of the Constitution as agreed to by the
Convention. When he laid down the presidency, we had an organized
government, an established revenue, a funded debt, a high credit, an
efficient system of banking, a strong judiciary, and an army. We had a
vigorous and well-defined foreign policy; we had recovered the western
posts, which, in the hands of the British, had fettered our march to the
west; and we had proved our power to maintain order at home, to repress
insurrection, to collect the national taxes, and to enforce the laws
made by Congress. Thus Washington had shown that rare combination of the
leader who could first destroy by revolution, and who, having led his
country through a great civil war, was then able to build up a new and
lasting fabric upon the ruins of a system which had been overthrown.
At the close of his official service he returned again to Mount Vernon,
and, after a few years of quiet retirement, died just as the century in
which he had played so great a part was closing.
Washington stands among the greatest men of human history, and those in
the same rank with him are very few. Whether measured by what he did, or
what he was, or by the effect of his work upon the history of mankind,
in every aspect he is entitled to the place he holds among the greatest
of his race. Few men in all time have such a record of achievement.
Still fewer can show at the end of a career so crowded with high
deeds and memorable victories a life so free from spot, a character
so unselfish and so pure, a fame so void of doubtful points demanding
either defense or explanation. Eulogy of such a life is needless, but it
is always important to recall and to freshly remember just what manner
of man he was. In the first place he was physically a striking figure.
He was very tall, powerfully made, with a strong, handsome face. He
was remarkably muscular and powerful. As a boy he was a leader in all
outdoor sports. No one could fling the bar further than he, and no one
could ride more difficult horses. As a young man he became a woodsman
and hunter. Day after day he could tramp through the wilderness with his
gun and his surveyor's chain, and then sleep at night beneath the stars.
He feared no exposure or fatigue, and outdid the hardiest backwoodsman
in following a winter trail and swimming icy streams. This habit of
vigorous bodily exercise he carried through life. Whenever he was at
Mount Vernon he gave a large part of his time to fox-hunting, riding
after his hounds through the most difficult country. His physical power
and endurance counted for much in his success when he commanded his
army, and when the heavy anxieties of general and president weighed upon
his mind and heart.
He was an educated, but not a learned man. He read well and remembered
what he read, but his life was, from the beginning, a life of action,
and the world of men was his school. He was not a military genius like
Hannibal, or Caesar, or Napoleon, of which the world has had only three
or four examples. But he was a great soldier of the type which the
English race has produced, like Marlborough and Cromwell, Wellington,
Grant, and Lee. He was patient under defeat, capable of large
combinations, a stubborn and often reckless fighter, a winner of
battles, but much more, a conclusive winner in a long war of varying
fortunes. He was, in addition, what very few great soldiers or
commanders have ever been, a great constitutional statesman, able to
lead a people along the paths of free government without undertaking
himself to play the part of the strong man, the usurper, or the savior
of society.
He was a very silent man. Of no man of equal importance in the world's
history have we so few sayings of a personal kind. He was ready enough
to talk or to write about the public duties which he had in hand, but he
hardly ever talked of himself. Yet there can be no greater error than
to suppose Washington cold and unfeeling, because of his silence and
reserve. He was by nature a man of strong desires and stormy passions.
Now and again he would break out, even as late as the presidency, into
a gust of anger that would sweep everything before it. He was always
reckless of personal danger, and had a fierce fighting spirit which
nothing could check when it was once unchained.
But as a rule these fiery impulses and strong passions were under the
absolute control of an iron will, and they never clouded his judgment or
warped his keen sense of justice.
But if he was not of a cold nature, still less was he hard or unfeeling.
His pity always went out to the poor, the oppressed, or the unhappy, and
he was all that was kind and gentle to those immediately about him.
We have to look carefully into his life to learn all these things, for
the world saw only a silent, reserved man, of courteous and serious
manner, who seemed to stand alone and apart, and who impressed every one
who came near him with a sense of awe and reverence.
One quality he had which was, perhaps, more characteristic of the man
and his greatness than any other. This was his perfect veracity of mind.
He was, of course, the soul of truth and honor, but he was even more
than that. He never deceived himself He always looked facts squarely in
the face and dealt with them as such, dreaming no dreams, cherishing no
delusions, asking no impossibilities,--just to others as to himself, and
thus winning alike in war and in peace.
He gave dignity as well as victory to his country and his cause. He was,
in truth, a "character for after ages to admire."
DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY
... Boone lived hunting up to ninety;
And, what's still stranger, left behind a name
For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that GOOD fame,
Without which glory's but a tavern song,--
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
'T is true he shrank from men, even of his nation;
When they built up unto his darling trees,
He moved some hundred miles off, for a station
Where there were fewer houses and more ease;
* * *
But where he met the individual man,
He showed himself as kind as mortal can.
* * *
The freeborn forest found and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions
* * *
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were yet not used for trifles.
* * *
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.
--Byron.
Daniel Boone will always occupy a unique place in our history as the
archetype of the hunter and wilderness wanderer. He was a true pioneer,
and stood at the head of that class of Indian-fighters, game-hunters,
forest-fellers, and backwoods farmers who, generation after generation,
pushed westward the border of civilization from the Alleghanies to the
Pacific. As he himself said, he was "an instrument ordained of God to
settle the wilderness." Born in Pennsylvania, he drifted south into
western North Carolina, and settled on what was then the extreme
frontier. There he married, built a log cabin, and hunted, chopped
trees, and tilled the ground like any other frontiersman. The Alleghany
Mountains still marked a boundary beyond which the settlers dared not
go; for west of them lay immense reaches of frowning forest, uninhabited
save by bands of warlike Indians. Occasionally some venturesome hunter
or trapper penetrated this immense wilderness, and returned with strange
stories of what he had seen and done.
In 1769 Boone, excited by these vague and wondrous tales, determined
himself to cross the mountains and find out what manner of land it was
that lay beyond. With a few chosen companions he set out, making his own
trail through the gloomy forest. After weeks of wandering, he at last
emerged into the beautiful and fertile country of Kentucky, for which,
in after years, the red men and the white strove with such obstinate
fury that it grew to be called "the dark and bloody ground." But when
Boone first saw it, it was a fair and smiling land of groves and glades
and running waters, where the open forest grew tall and beautiful, and
where innumerable herds of game grazed, roaming ceaselessly to and fro
along the trails they had trodden during countless generations. Kentucky
was not owned by any Indian tribe, and was visited only by wandering
war-parties and hunting-parties who came from among the savage nations
living north of the Ohio or south of the Tennessee.
A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions and killed
him, and the others then left Boone and journeyed home; but his
brother came out to join him, and the two spent the winter together.
Self-reliant, fearless, and the frowning defiles of Cumberland Gap, they
were attacked by Indians, and driven back--two of Boone's own sons being
slain. In 1775, however, he made another attempt; and this attempt was
successful. The Indians attacked the newcomers; but by this time the
parties of would-be settlers were sufficiently numerous to hold their
own. They beat back the Indians, and built rough little hamlets,
surrounded by log stockades, at Boonesborough and Harrodsburg; and the
permanent settlement of Kentucky had begun.
The next few years were passed by Boone amid unending Indian conflicts.
He was a leader among the settlers, both in peace and in war. At one
time he represented them in the House of Burgesses of Virginia; at
another time he was a member of the first little Kentucky parliament
itself; and he became a colonel of the frontier militia. He tilled the
land, and he chopped the trees himself; he helped to build the cabins
and stockades with his own hands, wielding the longhandled, light-headed
frontier ax as skilfully as other frontiersmen. His main business was
that of surveyor, for his knowledge of the country, and his ability to
travel through it, in spite of the danger from Indians, created much
demand for his services among people who wished to lay off tracts of
wild land for their own future use. But whatever he did, and wherever he
went, he had to be sleeplessly on the lookout for his Indian foes. When
he and his fellows tilled the stump-dotted fields of corn, one or more
of the party were always on guard, with weapon at the ready, for fear of
lurking savages. When he went to the House of Burgesses he carried his
long rifle, and traversed roads not a mile of which was free from the
danger of Indian attack. The settlements in the early years depended
exclusively upon game for their meat, and Boone was the mightiest of all
the hunters, so that upon him devolved the task of keeping his people
supplied. He killed many buffaloes, and pickled the buffalo beef for
use in winter. He killed great numbers of black bear, and made bacon of
them, precisely as if they had been hogs. The common game were deer and
elk. At that time none of the hunters of Kentucky would waste a shot on
anything so small as a prairie-chicken or wild duck; but they sometimes
killed geese and swans when they came south in winter and lit on the
rivers.
But whenever Boone went into the woods after game, he had perpetually to
keep watch lest he himself might be hunted in turn. He never lay in wait
at a game-lick, save with ears strained to hear the approach of some
crawling red foe. He never crept up to a turkey he heard calling,
without exercising the utmost care to see that it was not an Indian;
for one of the favorite devices of the Indians was to imitate the turkey
call, and thus allure within range some inexperienced hunter.
Besides this warfare, which went on in the midst of his usual vocations,
Boone frequently took the field on set expeditions against the savages.
Once when he and a party of other men were making salt at a lick, they
were surprised and carried off by the Indians. The old hunter was a
prisoner with them for some months, but finally made his escape and came
home through the trackless woods as straight as the wild pigeon flies.
He was ever on the watch to ward off the Indian inroads, and to follow
the warparties, and try to rescue the prisoners. Once his own daughter,
and two other girls who were with her, were carried off by a band of
Indians. Boone raised some friends and followed the trail steadily for
two days and a night; then they came to where the Indians had killed a
buffalo calf and were camped around it. Firing from a little distance,
the whites shot two of the Indians, and, rushing in, rescued the girls.
On another occasion, when Boone had gone to visit a salt-lick with his
brother, the Indians ambushed them and shot the latter. Boone himself
escaped, but the Indians followed him for three miles by the aid of
a tracking dog, until Boone turned, shot the dog, and then eluded his
pursuers. In company with Simon Kenton and many other noted hunters and
wilderness warriors, he once and again took part in expeditions into the
Indian country, where they killed the braves and drove off the horses.
Twice bands of Indians, accompanied by French, Tory, and British
partizans from Detroit, bearing the flag of Great Britain, attacked
Boonesboroug. In each case Boone and his fellow-settlers beat them off
with loss. At the fatal battle of the Blue Licks, in which two hundred
of the best riflemen of Kentucky were beaten with terrible slaughter by
a great force of Indians from the lakes, Boone commanded the left wing.
Leading his men, rifle in hand, he pushed back and overthrew the force
against him; but meanwhile the Indians destroyed the right wing and
center, and got round in his rear, so that there was nothing left for
Boone's men except to flee with all possible speed.
As Kentucky became settled, Boone grew restless and ill at ease.
He loved the wilderness; he loved the great forests and the great
prairie-like glades, and the life in the little lonely cabin, where from
the door he could see the deer come out into the clearing at nightfall.
The neighborhood of his own kind made him feel cramped and ill at ease.
So he moved ever westward with the frontier; and as Kentucky filled up
he crossed the Mississippi and settled on the borders of the prairie
country of Missouri, where the Spaniards, who ruled the territory, made
him an alcalde, or judge. He lived to a great age, and died out on the
border, a backwoods hunter to the last.
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the
seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the
march,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go the unknown
ways,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
* * * * * * *
The sachem blowing the smoke first towards the sun and then
towards the earth,
The drama of the scalp dance enacted with painted faces and
guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and
slaughter of enemies.
--Whitman.
In 1776, when independence was declared, the United States included only
the thirteen original States on the seaboard. With the exception of a
few hunters there were no white men west of the Alleghany Mountains, and
there was not even an American hunter in the great country out of which
we have since made the States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. All this region north of the Ohio River then formed apart
of the Province of Quebec. It was a wilderness of forests and prairies,
teeming with game, and inhabited by many warlike tribes of Indians.
Here and there through it were dotted quaint little towns of French
Creoles, the most important being Detroit, Vincennes on the Wabash, and
Kaskaskia and Kahokia on the Illinois. These French villages were ruled
by British officers commanding small bodies of regular soldiers or Tory
rangers and Creole partizans. The towns were completely in the power
of the British government; none of the American States had actual
possession of a foot of property in the Northwestern Territory.
The Northwest was acquired in the midst of the Revolution only by armed
conquest, and if it had not been so acquired, it would have remained a
part of the British Dominion of Canada.
The man to whom this conquest was clue was a famous backwoods leader,
a mighty hunter, a noted Indian-fighter, George Rogers Clark. He was a
very strong man, with light hair and blue eyes. He was of good Virginian
family. Early in his youth, he embarked on the adventurous career of
a backwoods surveyor, exactly as Washington and so many other young
Virginians of spirit did at that period. He traveled out to Kentucky
soon after it was founded by Boone, and lived there for a year, either
at the stations or camping by him self in the woods, surveying, hunting,
and making war against the Indians like any other settler; but all the
time his mind was bent on vaster schemes than were dreamed of by the
men around him. He had his spies out in the Northwestern Territory, and
became convinced that with a small force of resolute backwoodsmen he
could conquer it for the United States. When he went back to Virginia,
Governor Patrick Henry entered heartily into Clark's schemes and gave
him authority to fit out a force for his purpose.
In 1778, after encountering endless difficulties and delays, he finally
raised a hundred and fifty backwoods riflemen. In May they started down
the Ohio in flatboats to undertake the allotted task. They drifted and
rowed downstream to the Falls of the Ohio, where Clark founded a log
hamlet, which has since become the great city of Louisville.
Here he halted for some days and was joined by fifty or sixty
volunteers; but a number of the men deserted, and when, after an eclipse
of the sun, Clark again pushed off to go down with the current, his
force was but about one hundred and sixty riflemen. All, however, were
men on whom he could depend--men well used to frontier warfare. They
were tall, stalwart backwoodsmen, clad in the hunting-shirt and leggings
that formed the national dress of their kind, and armed with the
distinctive weapon of the backwoods, the long-barreled, small-bore
rifle.
Before reaching the Mississippi the little flotilla landed, and Clark
led his men northward against the Illinois towns. In one of them,
Kaskaskia, dwelt the British commander of the entire district up to
Detroit. The small garrison and the Creole militia taken together
outnumbered Clark's force, and they were in close alliance with the
Indians roundabout. Clark was anxious to take the town by surprise and
avoid bloodshed, as he believed he could win over the Creoles to the
American side. Marching cautiously by night and generally hiding by day,
he came to the outskirts of the little village on the evening of July 4,
and lay in the woods near by until after nightfall.
Fortune favored him. That evening the officers of the garrison had
given a great ball to the mirth-loving Creoles, and almost the entire
population of the village had gathered in the fort, where the dance
was held. While the revelry was at its height, Clark and his tall
backwoodsmen, treading silently through the darkness, came into the
town, surprised the sentries, and surrounded the fort without causing
any alarm.
All the British and French capable of bearing arms were gathered in the
fort to take part in or look on at the merrymaking. When his men were
posted Clark walked boldly forward through the open door, and, leaning
against the wall, looked at the dancers as they whirled around in the
light of the flaring torches. For some moments no one noticed him.
Then an Indian who had been lying with his chin on his hand, looking
carefully over the gaunt figure of the stranger, sprang to his feet, and
uttered the wild war-whoop. Immediately the dancing ceased and the men
ran to and fro in confusion; but Clark, stepping forward, bade them be
at their ease, but to remember that henceforth they danced under the
flag of the United States, and not under that of Great Britain.
The surprise was complete, and no resistance was attempted. For
twenty-four hours the Creoles were in abject terror. Then Clark summoned
their chief men together and explained that he came as their ally, and
not as their foe, and that if they would join with him they should be
citizens of the American republic, and treated in all respects on
an equality with their comrades. The Creoles, caring little for the
British, and rather fickle of nature, accepted the proposition with joy,
and with the most enthusiastic loyalty toward Clark. Not only that, but
sending messengers to their kinsmen on the Wabash, they persuaded the
people of Vincennes likewise to cast off their allegiance to the British
king, and to hoist the American flag.
So far, Clark had conquered with greater ease than he had dared to hope.
But when the news reached the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit,
he at once prepared to reconquer the land. He had much greater forces at
his command than Clark had; and in the fall of that year he came down to
Vincennes by stream and portage, in a great fleet of canoes bearing five
hundred fighting men-British regulars, French partizans, and Indians.
The Vincennes Creoles refused to fight against the British, and the
American officer who had been sent thither by Clark had no alternative
but to surrender.
If Hamilton had then pushed on and struck Clark in Illinois, having
more than treble Clark's force, he could hardly have failed to win the
victory; but the season was late and the journey so difficult that he
did not believe it could be taken. Accordingly he disbanded the Indians
and sent some of his troops back to Detroit, announcing that when spring
came he would march against Clark in Illinois.
If Clark in turn had awaited the blow he would have surely met defeat;
but he was a greater man than his antagonist, and he did what the other
deemed impossible.
Finding that Hamilton had sent home some of his troops and dispersed
all his Indians, Clark realized that his chance was to strike before
Hamilton's soldiers assembled again in the spring. Accordingly he
gathered together the pick of his men, together with a few Creoles, one
hundred and seventy all told, and set out for Vincennes. At first the
journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy Illinois
prairies, broken by great reaches of lofty woods. They killed elk,
buffalo, and deer for food, there being no difficulty in getting all
they wanted to eat; and at night they built huge fires by which to
sleep, and feasted "like Indian war-dancers," as Clark said in his
report.
But when, in the middle of February, they reached the drowned lands of
the Wabash, where the ice had just broken up and everything was flooded,
the difficulties seemed almost insuperable, and the march became painful
and laborious to a degree. All day long the troops waded in the icy
water, and at night they could with difficulty find some little hillock
on which to sleep. Only Clark's indomitable courage and cheerfulness
kept the party in heart and enabled them to persevere. However,
persevere they did, and at last, on February 23, they came in sight
of the town of Vincennes. They captured a Creole who was out shooting
ducks, and from him learned that their approach was utterly unsuspected,
and that there were many Indians in town.
Clark was now in some doubt as to how to make his fight. The British
regulars dwelt in a small fort at one end of the town, where they had
two light guns; but Clark feared lest, if he made a sudden night attack,
the townspeople and Indians would from sheer fright turn against him. He
accordingly arranged, just before he himself marched in, to send in the
captured duck-hunter, conveying a warning to the Indians and the Creoles
that he was about to attack the town, but that his only quarrel was with
the British, and that if the other inhabitants would stay in their own
homes they would not be molested. Sending the duck-hunter ahead, Clark
took up his march and entered the town just after nightfall. The news
conveyed by the released hunter astounded the townspeople, and they
talked it over eagerly, and were in doubt what to do. The Indians, not
knowing how great might be the force that would assail the town, at once
took refuge in the neighboring woods, while the Creoles retired to their
own houses. The British knew nothing of what had happened until the
Americans had actually entered the streets of the little village.
Rushing forward, Clark's men soon penned the regulars within their
fort, where they kept them surrounded all night. The next day a party
of Indian warriors, who in the British interest had been ravaging the
settlements of Kentucky, arrived and entered the town, ignorant that
the Americans had captured it. Marching boldly forward to the fort,
they suddenly found it beleaguered, and before they could flee they were
seized by the backwoodsmen. In their belts they carried the scalps of
the slain settlers. The savages were taken redhanded, and the American
frontiersmen were in no mood to show mercy. All the Indians were
tomahawked in sight of the fort.
For some time the British defended themselves well; but at length their
guns were disabled, all of the gunners being picked off by the backwoods
marksmen, and finally the garrison dared not so much as appear at a
port-hole, so deadly was the fire from the long rifles. Under such
circumstances Hamilton was forced to surrender.
No attempt was afterward made to molest the Americans in the land they
had won, and upon the conclusion of peace the Northwest, which had been
conquered by Clark, became part of the United States.
THE BATTLE OF TRENTON
And such they are--and such they will be found:
Not so Leonidas and Washington,
Their every battle-field is holy ground
Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.
How sweetly on the ear such echoes sound!
While the mere victor's may appal or stun
The servile and the vain, such names will be
A watchword till the future shall be free.
--Byron.
In December, 1776, the American Revolution was at its lowest ebb. The
first burst of enthusiasm, which drove the British back from Concord
and met them hand to hand at Bunker Hill, which forced them to abandon
Boston and repulsed their attack at Charleston, had spent its force. The
undisciplined American forces called suddenly from the workshop and the
farm had given way, under the strain of a prolonged contest, and had
been greatly scattered, many of the soldiers returning to their homes.
The power of England, on the other hand, with her disciplined army and
abundant resources, had begun to tell. Washington, fighting stubbornly,
had been driven during the summer and autumn from Long Island up the
Hudson, and New York had passed into the hands of the British. Then
Forts Lee and Washington had been lost, and finally the Continental army
had retreated to New Jersey. On the second of December Washington was
at Princeton with some three thousand ragged soldiers, and had escaped
destruction only by the rapidity of his movements. By the middle of the
month General Howe felt that the American army, unable as he believed
either to fight or to withstand the winter, must soon dissolve, and,
posting strong detachments at various points, he took up his winter
quarters in New York. The British general had under his command in his
various divisions twenty-five thousand well-disciplined soldiers, and
the conclusion he had reached was not an unreasonable one; everything,
in fact, seemed to confirm his opinion. Thousands of the colonists were
coming in and accepting his amnesty. The American militia had left the
field, and no more would turn out, despite Washington's earnest appeals.
All that remained of the American Revolution was the little Continental
army and the man who led it.
Yet even in this dark hour Washington did not despair. He sent in every
direction for troops. Nothing was forgotten. Nothing that he could do
was left undone. Unceasingly he urged action upon Congress, and at the
same time with indomitable fighting spirit he planned to attack the
British. It was a desperate undertaking in the face of such heavy odds,
for in all his divisions he had only some six thousand men, and even
these were scattered. The single hope was that by his own skill and
courage he could snatch victory from a situation where victory seemed
impossible. With the instinct of a great commander he saw that his only
chance was to fight the British detachments suddenly, unexpectedly,
and separately, and to do this not only required secrecy and perfect
judgment, but also the cool, unwavering courage of which, under such
circumstances, very few men have proved themselves capable. As Christmas
approached his plans were ready. He determined to fall upon the British
detachment of Hessians, under Colonel Rahl, at Trenton, and there strike
his first blow. To each division of his little army a part in the
attack was assigned with careful forethought. Nothing was overlooked and
nothing omitted, and then, for some reason good or bad, every one of
the division commanders failed to do his part. As the general plan was
arranged, Gates was to march from Bristol with two thousand men; Ewing
was to cross at Trenton; Putnam was to come up from Philadelphia; and
Griffin was to make a diversion against Donop. When the moment came,
Gates, who disapproved the plan, was on his way to Congress; Griffin
abandoned New Jersey and fled before Donop; Putnam did not attempt
to leave Philadelphia; and Ewing made no effort to cross at Trenton.
Cadwalader came down from Bristol, looked at the river and the
floating ice, and then gave it up as desperate. Nothing remained except
Washington himself with the main army, but he neither gave up, nor
hesitated, nor stopped on account of the ice, or the river, or the
perils which lay beyond. On Christmas Eve, when all the Christian
world was feasting and rejoicing, and while the British were enjoying
themselves in their comfortable quarters, Washington set out. With
twenty-four hundred men he crossed the Delaware through the floating ice,
his boats managed and rowed by the sturdy fishermen of Marblehead from
Glover's regiment. The crossing was successful, and he landed about nine
miles from Trenton. It was bitter cold, and the sleet and snow drove
sharply in the faces of the troops. Sullivan, marching by the river,
sent word that the arms of his soldiers were wet. "Tell your general,"
was Washington's reply to the message, "to use the bayonet, for the
town must be taken." When they reached Trenton it was broad daylight.
Washington, at the front and on the right of the line, swept down the
Pennington road, and, as he drove back the Hessian pickets, he heard the
shout of Sullivan's men as, with Stark leading the van, they charged in
from the river. A company of jaegers and of light dragoons slipped away.
There was some fighting in the streets, but the attack was so strong and
well calculated that resistance was useless. Colonel Rahl, the British
commander, aroused from his revels, was killed as he rushed out to rally
his men, and in a few moments all was over. A thousand prisoners fell
into Washington's hands, and this important detachment of the enemy was
cut off and destroyed.
The news of Trenton alarmed the British, and Lord Cornwallis with seven
thousand of the best troops started at once from New York in hot pursuit
of the American army. Washington, who had now rallied some five thousand
men, fell back, skirmishing heavily, behind the Assunpink, and when
Cornwallis reached the river he found the American army awaiting him on
the other side of the stream. Night was falling, and Cornwallis, feeling
sure of his prey, decided that he would not risk an assault until the
next morning. Many lessons had not yet taught him that it was a fatal
business to give even twelve hours to the great soldier opposed to him.
During the night Washington, leaving his fires burning and taking
a roundabout road which he had already reconnoitered, marched to
Princeton. There he struck another British detachment. A sharp fight
ensued, the British division was broken and defeated, losing some five
hundred men, and Washington withdrew after this second victory to the
highlands of New Jersey to rest and recruit.
Frederick the Great is reported to have said that this was the most
brilliant campaign of the century. With a force very much smaller than
that of the enemy, Washington had succeeded in striking the British at
two places with superior forces at each point of contact. At Trenton he
had the benefit of a surprise, but the second time he was between two
hostile armies. He was ready to fight Cornwallis when the latter reached
the Assunpink, trusting to the strength of his position to make up for
his inferiority of numbers. But when Cornwallis gave him the delay of a
night, Washington, seeing the advantage offered by his enemy's mistake,
at once changed his whole plan, and, turning in his tracks, fell upon
the smaller of the two forces opposed to him, wrecking and defeating
it before the outgeneraled Cornwallis could get up with the main army.
Washington had thus shown the highest form of military skill, for
there is nothing that requires so much judgment and knowledge, so much
certainty of movement and quick decision, as to meet a superior enemy at
different points, force the fighting, and at each point to outnumber and
overwhelm him.
But the military part of this great campaign was not all. Many great
soldiers have not been statesmen, and have failed to realize the
political necessities of the situation. Washington presented the rare
combination of a great soldier and a great statesman as well. He aimed
not only to win battles, but by his operations in the field to influence
the political situation and affect public opinion. The American
Revolution was going to pieces. Unless some decisive victory could be
won immediately, it would have come to an end in the winter of 1776-77.
This Washington knew, and it was this which nerved his arm. The results
justified his forethought. The victories of Trenton and Princeton
restored the failing spirits of the people, and, what was hardly
less important, produced a deep impression in Europe in favor of the
colonies. The country, which had lost heart, and become supine and
almost hostile, revived. The militia again took the field. Outlying
parties of the British were attacked and cut off, and recruits once more
began to come in to the Continental army. The Revolution was saved. That
the English colonies in North America would have broken away from the
mother country sooner or later cannot be doubted, but that particular
Revolution Of 1776 would have failed within a year, had it not been
for Washington. It is not, however, merely the fact that he was a great
soldier and statesman which we should remember. The most memorable thing
to us, and to all men, is the heroic spirit of the man, which rose in
those dreary December days to its greatest height, under conditions
so adverse that they had crushed the hope of every one else. Let it
be remembered, also, that it was not a spirit of desperation or of
ignorance, a reckless daring which did not count the cost. No one knew
better than Washington--no one, indeed, so well--the exact state of
affairs; for he, conspicuously among great men, always looked facts
fearlessly in the face, and never deceived himself. He was under no
illusions, and it was this high quality of mind as much as any other
which enabled him to win victories.
How he really felt we know from what he wrote to Congress on December
20, when he said: "It may be thought that I am going a good deal out of
the line of my duty to adopt these measures or to advise thus freely.
A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessing of
liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse." These were the
thoughts in his mind when he was planning this masterly campaign. These
same thoughts, we may readily believe, were with him when his boat was
making its way through the ice of the Delaware on Christmas Eve. It was
a very solemn moment, and he was the only man in the darkness of that
night who fully understood what was at stake; but then, as always, he
was calm and serious, with a high courage which nothing could depress.
The familiar picture of a later day depicts Washington crossing the
Delaware at the head of his soldiers. He is standing up in the boat,
looking forward in the teeth of the storm. It matters little whether the
work of the painter is in exact accordance with the real scene or not.
The daring courage, the high resolve, the stern look forward and onward,
which the artist strove to show in the great leader, are all vitally
true. For we may be sure that the man who led that well-planned but
desperate assault, surrounded by darker conditions than the storms of
nature which gathered about his boat, and carrying with him the fortunes
of his country, was at that moment one of the most heroic figures in
history.
BENNINGTON
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our guilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host
(Good argument, I hope, we shall not fly),
And time hath worn us into slovenry.
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim,
And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes.
--Henry V.
The battle of Saratoga is included by Sir Edward Creasy among his
fifteen decisive battles which have, by their result, affected the
history of the world. It is true that the American Revolution was saved
by Washington in the remarkable Princeton and Trenton campaign, but
it is equally true that the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, in the
following autumn, turned the scale decisively in favor of the colonists
by the impression which it made in Europe. It was the destruction of
Burgoyne's army which determined France to aid the Americans against
England. Hence came the French alliance, the French troops, and, what
was of far more importance, a French fleet by which Washington was
finally able to get control of the sea, and in this way cut off
Cornwallis at Yorktown and bring the Revolution to a successful close.
That which led, however, more directly than anything else to the final
surrender at Saratoga was the fight at Bennington, by which Burgoyne's
army was severely crippled and weakened, and by which also, the hardy
militia of the North eastern States were led to turn out in large
numbers and join the army of Gates.
The English ministry had built great hopes upon Burgoyne's expedition,
and neither expense nor effort had been spared to make it successful. He
was amply furnished with money and supplies as well as with English and
German troops, the latter of whom were bought from their wretched little
princes by the payment of generous subsidies. With an admirably equipped
army of over seven thousand men, and accompanied by a large force of
Indian allies, Burgoyne had started in May, 1777, from Canada. His plan
was to make his way by the lakes to the head waters of the Hudson, and
thence southward along the river to New York, where he was to unite with
Sir William Howe and the main army; in this way cutting the colonies in
two, and separating New England from the rest of the country.
At first all went well. The Americans were pushed back from their posts
on the lakes, and by the end of July Burgoyne was at the head waters of
the Hudson. He had already sent out a force, under St. Leger, to take
possession of the valley of the Mohawk--an expedition which finally
resulted in the defeat of the British by Herkimer, and the capture
of Fort Stanwix. To aid St. Leger by a diversion, and also to capture
certain magazines which were reported to be at Bennington, Burgoyne sent
another expedition to the eastward. This force consisted of about five
hundred and fifty white troops, chiefly Hessians, and one hundred and
fifty Indians, all under the command of Colonel Baum. They were within
four miles of Bennington on August 13, 1777, and encamped on a hill just
within the boundaries of the State of New York. The news of the advance
of Burgoyne had already roused the people of New York and New Hampshire,
and the legislature of the latter State had ordered General Stark with
a brigade of militia to stop the progress of the enemy on the western
frontier. Stark raised his standard at Charlestown on the Connecticut
River, and the militia poured into his camp. Disregarding Schuyler's
orders to join the main American army, which was falling back before
Burgoyne, Stark, as soon as he heard of the expedition against
Bennington, marched at once to meet Baum. He was within a mile of the
British camp on August 14, and vainly endeavored to draw Baum into
action. On the 15th it rained heavily, and the British forces occupied
the time in intrenching themselves strongly upon the hill which they
held. Baum meantime had already sent to Burgoyne for reinforcements,
and Burgoyne had detached Colonel Breymann with over six hundred regular
troops to go to Baum's assistance. On the 16th the weather cleared, and
Stark, who had been reinforced by militia from western Massachusetts,
determined to attack.
Early in the day he sent men, under Nichols and Herrick, to get into the
rear of Baum's position. The German officer, ignorant of the country
and of the nature of the warfare in which he was engaged, noticed small
bodies of men in their shirtsleeves, and carrying guns without bayonets,
making their way to the rear of his intrenchments. With singular
stupidity he concluded that they were Tory inhabitants of the country
who were coming to his assistance, and made no attempt to stop them. In
this way Stark was enabled to mass about five hundred men in the rear
of the enemy's position. Distracting the attention of the British by a
feint, Stark also moved about two hundred men to the right, and having
thus brought his forces into position he ordered a general assault,
and the Americans proceeded to storm the British intrenchments on every
side. The fight was a very hot one, and lasted some two hours. The
Indians, at the beginning of the action, slipped away between the
American detachments, but the British and German regulars stubbornly
stood their ground. It is difficult to get at the exact numbers of the
American troops, but Stark seems to have had between fifteen hundred and
two thousand militia. He thus outnumbered his enemy nearly three to
one, but his men were merely country militia, farmers of the New England
States, very imperfectly disciplined, and armed only with muskets and
fowling-pieces, without bayonets or side-arms. On the other side Baum
had the most highly disciplined troops of England and Germany under
his command, well armed and equipped, and he was moreover strongly
intrenched with artillery well placed behind the breastworks. The
advantage in the fight should have been clearly with Baum and his
regulars, who merely had to hold an intrenched hill.
It was not a battle in which either military strategy or a scientific
management of troops was displayed. All that Stark did was to place his
men so that they could attack the enemy's position on every side, and
then the Americans went at it, firing as they pressed on. The British
and Germans stood their ground stubbornly, while the New England farmers
rushed up to within eight yards of the cannon, and picked off the
men who manned the guns. Stark himself was in the midst of the fray,
fighting with his soldiers, and came out of the conflict so blackened
with powder and smoke that he could hardly be recognized. One desperate
assault succeeded another, while the firing on both sides was so
incessant as to make, in Stark's own words, a "continuous roar." At the
end of two hours the Americans finally swarmed over the intrenchments,
beating down the soldiers with their clubbed muskets. Baum ordered his
infantry with the bayonet and the dragoons with their sabers to force
their way through, but the Americans repulsed this final charge, and
Baum himself fell mortally wounded. All was then over, and the British
forces surrendered.
It was only just in time, for Breymann, who had taken thirty hours to
march some twenty-four miles, came up just after Baum's men had laid
down their arms. It seemed for a moment as if all that had been gained
might be lost. The Americans, attacked by this fresh foe, wavered; but
Stark rallied his line, and putting in Warner, with one hundred and
fifty Vermont men who had just come on the field, stopped Breymann's
advance, and finally forced him to retreat with a loss of nearly one
half his men. The Americans lost in killed and wounded some seventy men,
and the Germans and British about twice as many, but the Americans took
about seven hundred prisoners, and completely wrecked the forces of Baum
and Breymann.
The blow was a severe one, and Burgoyne's army never recovered from
it. Not only had he lost nearly a thousand of his best troops, besides
cannon, arms, and munitions of war, but the defeat affected the spirits
of his army and destroyed his hold over his Indian allies, who began
to desert in large numbers. Bennington, in fact, was one of the most
important fights of the Revolution, contributing as it did so largely to
the final surrender of Burgoyne's whole army at Saratoga, and the utter
ruin of the British invasion from the North. It is also interesting as
an extremely gallant bit of fighting. As has been said, there was no
strategy displayed, and there were no military operations of the higher
kind. There stood the enemy strongly intrenched on a hill, and Stark,
calling his undisciplined levies about him, went at them. He himself was
a man of the highest courage and a reckless fighter. It was Stark who
held the railfence at Bunker Hill, and who led the van when Sullivan's
division poured into Trenton from the river road. He was admirably
adapted for the precise work which was necessary at Bennington, and he
and his men fought well their hand-to-hand fight on that hot August day,
and carried the intrenchments filled with regular troops and defended by
artillery. It was a daring feat of arms, as well as a battle which had
an important effect upon the course of history and upon the fate of the
British empire in America.
KING'S MOUNTAIN
Our fortress is the good greenwood,
Our tent the cypress tree;
We know the forest round us
As seamen know the sea.
We know its walls of thorny vines,
Its glades of reedy grass,
Its safe and silent islands
Within the dark morass.
--Bryant.
The close of the year 1780 was, in the Southern States, the darkest time
of the Revolutionary struggle. Cornwallis had just destroyed the army of
Gates at Camden, and his two formidable lieutenants, Tarlton the light
horseman, and Ferguson the skilled rifleman, had destroyed or scattered
all the smaller bands that had been fighting for the patriot cause. The
red dragoons rode hither and thither, and all through Georgia and
South Carolina none dared lift their heads to oppose them, while North
Carolina lay at the feet of Cornwallis, as he started through it with
his army to march into Virginia. There was no organized force against
him, and the cause of the patriots seemed hopeless. It was at this hour
that the wild backwoodsmen of the western border gathered to strike a
blow for liberty.
When Cornwallis invaded North Carolina he sent Ferguson into the western
part of the State to crush out any of the patriot forces that might
still be lingering among the foot-hills. Ferguson was a very gallant and
able officer, and a man of much influence with the people wherever
he went, so that he was peculiarly fitted for this scrambling border
warfare. He had under him a battalion of regular troops and several
other battalions of Tory militia, in all eleven or twelve hundred men.
He shattered and drove the small bands of Whigs that were yet in arms,
and finally pushed to the foot of the mountain wall, till he could see
in his front the high ranges of the Great Smokies. Here he learned for
the first time that beyond the mountains there lay a few hamlets of
frontiersmen, whose homes were on what were then called the Western
Waters, that is, the waters which flowed into the Mississippi. To these
he sent word that if they did not prove loyal to the king, he would
cross their mountains, hang their leaders, and burn their villages.
Beyond the, mountains, in the valleys of the Holston and Watauga, dwelt
men who were stout of heart and mighty in battle, and when they heard
the threats of Ferguson they burned with a sullen flame of anger.
Hitherto the foes against whom they had warred had been not the British,
but the Indian allies of the British, Creek, and Cherokee, and Shawnee.
Now that the army of the king had come to their thresholds, they turned
to meet it as fiercely as they had met his Indian allies. Among the
backwoodsmen of this region there were at that time three men of special
note: Sevier, who afterward became governor of Tennessee; Shelby, who
afterward became governor of Kentucky; and Campbell, the Virginian, who
died in the Revolutionary War. Sevier had given a great barbecue, where
oxen and deer were roasted whole, while horseraces were run, and the
backwoodsmen tried their skill as marksmen and wrestlers. In the midst
of the feasting Shelby appeared, hot with hard riding, to tell of the
approach of Ferguson and the British. Immediately the feasting was
stopped, and the feasters made ready for war. Sevier and Shelby sent
word to Campbell to rouse the men of his own district and come without
delay, and they sent messengers to and fro in their own neighborhood to
summon the settlers from their log huts on the stump-dotted clearings
and the hunters from their smoky cabins in the deep woods.
The meeting-place was at the Sycamore Shoals. On the appointed day the
backwoodsmen gathered sixteen hundred strong, each man carrying a long
rifle, and mounted on a tough, shaggy horse. They were a wild and fierce
people, accustomed to the chase and to warfare with the Indians. Their
hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun were girded in by bead-worked
belts, and the trappings of their horses were stained red and yellow.
At the gathering there was a black-frocked Presbyterian preacher, and
before they started he addressed the tall riflemen in words of burning
zeal, urging them to stand stoutly in the battle, and to smite with the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Then the army started, the backwoods
colonels riding in front. Two or three days later, word was brought to
Ferguson that the Back-water men had come over the mountains; that the
Indian-fighters of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the
Western Waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles to the
help of the beaten men of the plains. Ferguson at once fell back,
sending out messengers for help. When he came to King's Mountain,
a wooded, hog-back hill on the border line between North and South
Carolina, he camped on its top, deeming that there he was safe, for he
supposed that before the backwoodsmen could come near enough to attack
him help would reach him. But the backwoods leaders felt as keenly as
he the need of haste, and choosing out nine hundred picked men, the best
warriors of their force, and the best mounted and armed, they made a
long forced march to assail Ferguson before help could come to him. All
night long they rode the dim forest trails and splashed across the fords
of the rushing rivers. All the next day, October 16, they rode, until in
mid-afternoon, just as a heavy shower cleared away, they came in sight
of King's Mountain. The little armies were about equal in numbers.
Ferguson's regulars were armed with the bayonet, and so were some of his
Tory militia, whereas the Americans had not a bayonet among them; but
they were picked men, confident in their skill as riflemen, and they
were so sure of victory that their aim was not only to defeat the
British but to capture their whole force. The backwoods colonels,
counseling together as they rode at the head of the column, decided to
surround the mountain and assail it on all sides. Accordingly the bands
of frontiersmen split one from the other, and soon circled the craggy
hill where Ferguson's forces were encamped. They left their horses in
the rear and immediately began the battle, swarming forward on foot,
their commanders leading the attack.
The march had been so quick and the attack so sudden that Ferguson had
barely time to marshal his men before the assault was made. Most of
his militia he scattered around the top of the hill to fire down at the
Americans as they came up, while with his regulars and with a few picked
militia he charged with the bayonet in person, first down one side of
the mountain and then down the other. Sevier, Shelby, Campbell, and
the other colonels of the frontiersmen, led each his force of riflemen
straight toward the summit. Each body in turn when charged by the
regulars was forced to give way, for there were no bayonets wherewith to
meet the foe; but the backwoodsmen retreated only so long as the charge
lasted, and the minute that it stopped they stopped too, and came
back ever closer to the ridge and ever with a deadlier fire. Ferguson,
blowing a silver whistle as a signal to his men, led these charges,
sword in hand, on horseback. At last, just as he was once again rallying
his men, the riflemen of Sevier and Shelby crowned the top of the ridge.
The gallant British commander became a fair target for the backwoodsmen,
and as for the last time he led his men against them, seven bullets
entered his body and he fell dead. With his fall resistance ceased.
The regulars and Tories huddled together in a confused mass, while the
exultant Americans rushed forward. A flag of truce was hoisted, and all
the British who were not dead surrendered.
The victory was complete, and the backwoodsmen at once started to return
to their log hamlets and rough, lonely farms. They could not stay, for
they dared not leave their homes at the mercy of the Indians. They had
rendered a great service; for Cornwallis, when he heard of the disaster
to his trusted lieutenant, abandoned his march northward, and retired to
South Carolina. When he again resumed the offensive, he found his path
barred by stubborn General Greene and his troops of the Continental
line.
THE STORMING OF STONY POINT
In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old Continentals,
Yielding not,
When the grenadiers were lunging,
And like hail fell the plunging
Cannon-shot;
When the files
Of the isles
From the smoky night encampment bore the banner of the rampant
Unicorn,
And grummer, grummer, grummer, rolled the roll of the drummer,
Through the morn!
Then with eyes to the front all,
And with guns horizontal,
Stood our sires;
And the balls whistled deadly,
And in streams flashing redly
Blazed the fires;
As the roar
On the shore
Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded acres
Of the plain;
And louder, louder, louder cracked the black gunpowder,
Cracked amain!
--Guy Humphrey McMaster.
One of the heroic figures of the Revolution was Anthony Wayne,
Major-General of the Continental line. With the exception of Washington,
and perhaps Greene, he was the best general the Americans developed in
the contest; and without exception he showed himself to be the hardest
fighter produced on either side. He belongs, as regards this latter
characteristic, with the men like Winfield Scott, Phil Kearney, Hancock,
and Forrest, who reveled in the danger and the actual shock of arms.
Indeed, his eager love of battle, and splendid disregard of peril,
have made many writers forget his really great qualities as a general.
Soldiers are always prompt to recognize the prime virtue of physical
courage, and Wayne's followers christened their daring commander "Mad
Anthony," in loving allusion to his reckless bravery. It is perfectly
true that Wayne had this courage, and that he was a born fighter;
otherwise, he never would have been a great commander. A man who lacks
the fondness for fighting, the eager desire to punish his adversary,
and the willingness to suffer punishment in return, may be a great
organizer, like McClellan, but can never become a great general or win
great victories. There are, however, plenty of men who, though they
possess these fine manly traits, yet lack the head to command an army;
but Wayne had not only the heart and the hand but the head likewise.
No man could dare as greatly as he did without incurring the risk of an
occasional check; but he was an able and bold tactician, a vigilant
and cautious leader, well fitted to bear the terrible burden of
responsibility which rests upon a commander-in-chief.
Of course, at times he had some rather severe lessons. Quite early in
his career, just after the battle of the Brandywine, when he was set to
watch the enemy, he was surprised at night by the British general Grey,
a redoubtable fighter, who attacked him with the bayonet, killed a
number of his men, and forced him to fall back some distance from the
field of action. This mortifying experience had no effect whatever on
Wayne's courage or self-reliance, but it did give him a valuable lesson
in caution. He showed what he had learned by the skill with which, many
years later, he conducted the famous campaign in which he overthrew the
Northwestern Indians at the Fight of the Fallen Timbers.
Wayne's favorite weapon was the bayonet, and, like Scott he taught his
troops, until they were able in the shock of hand-to-hand conflict to
overthrow the renowned British infantry, who have always justly prided
themselves on their prowess with cold steel. At the battle of Germantown
it was Wayne's troops who, falling on with the bayonet, drove the
Hessians and the British light infantry, and only retreated under orders
when the attack had failed elsewhere. At Monmouth it was Wayne and his
Continentals who first checked the British advance by repulsing the
bayonet charge of the guards and grenadiers.
Washington, a true leader of men, was prompt to recognize in Wayne a
soldier to whom could be intrusted any especially difficult enterprise
which called for the exercise alike of intelligence and of cool daring.
In the summer of 1780 he was very anxious to capture the British fort at
Stony Point, which commanded the Hudson. It was impracticable to attack
it by regular siege while the British frigates lay in the river, and the
defenses ere so strong that open assault by daylight was equally out of
the question. Accordingly Washington suggested to Wayne that he try a
night attack. Wayne eagerly caught at the idea. It was exactly the kind
of enterprise in which he delighted. The fort was on a rocky promontory,
surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by a neck of land,
which was for the most part mere morass. It was across this neck of
land that any attacking column had to move. The garrison was six hundred
strong. To deliver the assault Wayne took nine hundred men. The
American army was camped about fourteen miles from Stony Point. One July
afternoon Wayne started, and led his troops in single file along the
narrow rocky roads, reaching the hills on the mainland near the fort
after nightfall. He divided his force into two columns, to advance one
along each side of the neck, detaching two companies of North Carolina
troops to move in between the two columns and make a false attack.
The rest of the force consisted of New Englanders, Pennsylvanians,
and Virginians. Each attacking column was divided into three parts, a
forlorn hope of twenty men leading, which was followed by an advance
guard of one hundred and twenty, and then by the main body. At the time
commanding officers still carried spontoons, and other old-time weapons,
and Wayne, who himself led the right column, directed its movements
spear in hand. It was nearly midnight when the Americans began to press
along the causeways toward the fort. Before they were near the walls
they were discovered, and the British opened a heavy fire of great guns
and musketry, to which the Carolinians, who were advancing between the
two columns, responded in their turn, according to orders; but the men
in the columns were forbidden to fire. Wayne had warned them that their
work must be done with the bayonet, and their muskets were not even
loaded. Moreover, so strict was the discipline that no one was allowed
to leave the ranks, and when one of the men did so an officer promptly
ran him through the body.
No sooner had the British opened fire than the charging columns broke
into a run, and in a moment the forlorn hopes plunged into the abattis
of fallen timber which the British had constructed just without the
walls. On the left, the forlorn hope was very roughly handled, no less
than seventeen of the twenty men being either killed or wounded, but as
the columns came up both burst through the down timber and swarmed up
the long, sloping embankments of the fort. The British fought well,
cheering loudly as their volley's rang, but the Americans would not be
denied, and pushed silently on to end the contest with the bayonet. A
bullet struck Wayne in the head. He fell, but struggled to his feet and
forward, two of his officers supporting him. A rumor went among the
men that he was dead, but it only impelled them to charge home, more
fiercely than ever.
With a rush the troops swept to the top of the wall. A fierce but
short fight followed in the intense darkness, which was lit only by the
flashes from the British muskets. The Americans did not fire, trusting
solely to the bayonet. The two columns had kept almost equal pace, and
they swept into the fort from opposite sides at the same moment. The
three men who first got over the walls were all wounded, but one of
them hauled down the British flag. The Americans had the advantage
which always comes from delivering an attack that is thrust home. Their
muskets were unloaded and they could not hesitate; so, running boldly
into close quarters, they fought hand to hand with their foes and
speedily overthrew them. For a moment the bayonets flashed and played;
then the British lines broke as their assailants thronged against them,
and the struggle was over. The Americans had lost a hundred in killed
and wounded. Of the British sixty-three had been slain and very many
wounded, every one of the dead or disabled having suffered from the
bayonet. A curious coincidence was that the number of the dead happened
to be exactly equal to the number of Wayne's men who had been killed in
the night attack by the English general, Grey.
There was great rejoicing among the Americans over the successful issue
of the attack. Wayne speedily recovered from his wound, and in the joy
of his victory it weighed but slightly. He had performed a most notable
feat. No night attack of the kind was ever delivered with greater
boldness, skill, and success. When the Revolutionary War broke out the
American armies were composed merely of armed yeomen, stalwart men,
of good courage, and fairly proficient in the use of their weapons, but
entirely without the training which alone could enable them to withstand
the attack of the British regulars in the open, or to deliver an attack
themselves. Washington's victory at Trenton was the first encounter
which showed that the Americans were to be feared when they took the
offensive. With the exception of the battle of Trenton, and perhaps of
Greene's fight at Eutaw Springs, Wayne's feat was the most successful
illustration of daring and victorious attack by an American army that
occurred during the war; and, unlike Greene, who was only able to fight
a drawn battle, Wayne's triumph was complete. At Monmouth he had shown,
as he afterward showed against Cornwallis, that his troops could meet
the renowned British regulars on even terms in the open. At Stony Point
he showed that he could lead them to a triumphant assault with the
bayonet against regulars who held a fortified place of strength. No
American commander has ever displayed greater energy and daring, a
more resolute courage, or readier resource, than the chief of the
hard-fighting Revolutionary generals, Mad Anthony Wayne.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. PARIS. AUGUST 10, 1792.
Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Hadriae,
Nec fulminantis magna manus Jovis:
Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae.
--Hor., Lib. III. Carm. III.
The 10th of August, 1792, was one of the most memorable days of the
French Revolution. It was the day on which the French monarchy received
its death-blow, and was accompanied by fighting and bloodshed which
filled Paris with terror. In the morning before daybreak the tocsin had
sounded, and not long after the mob of Paris, headed by the Marseillais,
"Six hundred men not afraid to die," who had been summoned there by
Barbaroux, were marching upon the Tuileries. The king, or rather the
queen, had at last determined to make a stand and to defend the throne.
The Swiss Guards were there at the palace, well posted to protect the
inner court; and there, too, were the National Guards, who were expected
to uphold the government and guard the king. The tide of people poured
on through the streets, gathering strength as they went the Marseillais,
the armed bands, the Sections, and a vast floating mob. The crowd drew
nearer and nearer, but the squadrons of the National Guards, who were to
check the advance, did not stir. It is not apparent, indeed, that they
made any resistance, and the king and his family at eight o'clock lost
heart and deserted the Tuileries, to take refuge with the National
Convention. The multitude then passed into the court of the Carrousel,
unchecked by the National Guards, and were face to face with the Swiss.
Deserted by their king, the Swiss knew not how to act, but still stood
their ground. There was some parleying, and at last the Marseillais
fired a cannon. Then the Swiss fired. They were disciplined troops,
and their fire was effective. There was a heavy slaughter and the
mob recoiled, leaving their cannon, which the Swiss seized. The
Revolutionists, however, returned to the charge, and the fight raged on
both sides, the Swiss holding their ground firmly.
Suddenly, from the legislative hall, came an order from the king to
the Swiss to cease firing. It was their death warrant. Paralyzed by
the order, they knew not what to do. The mob poured in, and most of the
gallant Swiss were slaughtered where they stood. Others escaped from the
Tuileries only to meet their death in the street. The palace was sacked
and the raging mob was in possession of the city. No man's life was
safe, least of all those who were known to be friends of the king, who
were nobles, or who had any connection with the court. Some of these
people whose lives were thus in peril at the hands of the bloodstained
and furious mob had been the allies of the United States, and had fought
under Washington in the war for American independence. In their anguish
and distress their thoughts recurred to the country which they had
served in its hour of trial, three thousand miles away. They sought the
legation of the United States and turned to the American minister for
protection.
Such an exercise of humanity at that moment was not a duty that any man
craved. In those terrible days in Paris, the representatives of foreign
governments were hardly safer than any one else. Many of the ambassadors
and ministers had already left the country, and others were even then
abandoning their posts, which it seemed impossible to hold at such a
time. But the American minister stood his ground. Gouverneur Morris
was not a man to shrink from what he knew to be his duty. He had been
a leading patriot in our revolution; he had served in the Continental
Congress, and with Robert Morris in the difficult work of the Treasury,
when all our resources seemed to be at their lowest ebb. In 1788 he had
gone abroad on private business, and had been much in Paris, where
he had witnessed the beginning of the French Revolution and had been
consulted by men on both sides. In 1790, by Washington's direction, he
had gone to London and had consulted the ministry there as to whether
they would receive an American minister. Thence he had returned to
Paris, and at the beginning Of 1792 Washington appointed him minister of
the United States to France.
As an American, Morris's sympathies had run strongly in favor of the
movement to relieve France from the despotism under which she was
sinking, and to give her a better and more liberal government. But,
as the Revolution progressed, he became outraged and disgusted by
the methods employed. He felt a profound contempt for both sides. The
inability of those who were conducting the Revolution to carry out
intelligent plans or maintain order, and the feebleness of the king and
his advisers, were alike odious to the man with American conceptions
of ordered liberty. He was especially revolted by the bloodshed and
cruelty, constantly gathering in strength, which were displayed by
the revolutionists, and he had gone to the very verge of diplomatic
propriety in advising the ministers of the king in regard to the
policies to be pursued, and, as he foresaw what was coming, in urging
the king himself to leave France. All his efforts and all his advice,
like those of other intelligent men who kept their heads during the
whirl of the Revolution, were alike vain.
On August 10 the gathering storm broke with full force, and the populace
rose in arms to sweep away the tottering throne. Then it was that these
people, fleeing for their lives, came to the representative of the
country for which many of them had fought, and on both public and
private grounds besought the protection of the American minister. Let me
tell what happened in the words of an eye-witness, an American gentleman
who was in Paris at that time, and who published the following account
of his experiences:
On the ever memorable 10th of August, after viewing the destruction of
the Royal Swiss Guards and the dispersion of the Paris militia by a band
of foreign and native incendiaries, the writer thought it his duty
to visit the Minister, who had not been out of his hotel since the
insurrection began, and, as was to be expected, would be anxious to
learn what was passing without doors. He was surrounded by the old Count
d'Estaing, and about a dozen other persons of distinction, of different
sexes, who had, from their connection with the United States, been his
most intimate acquaintances at Paris, and who had taken refuge with
him for protection from the bloodhounds which, in the forms of men and
women, were prowling in the streets at the time. All was silence here,
except that silence was occasionally interrupted by the crying of
the women and children. As I retired, the Minister took me aside, and
observed: "I have no doubt, sir, but there are persons on the watch who
would find fault with my conduct as Minister in receiving and protecting
these people, but I call on you to witness the declaration which I now
make, and that is that they were not invited to my house, but came of
their own accord. Whether my house will be a protection to them or to
me, God only knows, but I will not turn them out of it, let what will
happen to me," to which he added, "you see, sir, they are all persons to
whom our country is more or less indebted, and it would be inhuman to
force them into the hands of the assassins, had they no such claim
upon me."
Nothing can be added to this simple account, and no American can read
it or repeat the words of Mr. Morris without feeling even now, a hundred
years after the event, a glow of pride that such words were uttered at
such a time by the man who represented the United States.
After August 10, when matters in Paris became still worse, Mr. Morris
still stayed at his post. Let me give, in his own words, what he did and
his reasons for it:
The different ambassadors and ministers are all taking their flight,
and if I stay I shall be alone. I mean, however, to stay, unless
circumstances should command me away, because, in the admitted case that
my letters of credence are to the monarchy, and not to the Republic of
France, it becomes a matter of indifference whether I remain in this
country or go to England during the time which may be needful to obtain
your orders, or to produce a settlement of affairs here. Going hence,
however, would look like taking part against the late Revolution, and I
am not only unauthorized in this respect, but I am bound to suppose that
if the great majority of the nation adhere to the new form, the United
States will approve thereof; because, in the first place, we have no
right to prescribe to this country the government they shall adopt,
and next, because the basis of our own Constitution is the indefeasible
right of the people to establish it.
Among those who are leaving Paris is the Venetian ambassador. He was
furnished with passports from the Office of Foreign Affairs, but he
was, nevertheless, stopped at the barrier, was conducted to the Hotel
de Ville, was there questioned for hours, and his carriages examined and
searched. This violation of the rights of ambassadors could not fail, as
you may suppose, to make an impression. It has been broadly hinted to me
that the honor of my country and my own require that I should go away.
But I am of a different opinion, and rather think that those who give
such hints are somewhat influenced by fear. It is true that the position
is not without danger, but I presume that when the President did me the
honor of naming me to this embassy, it was not for my personal pleasure
or safety, but to promote the interests of my country. These, therefore,
I shall continue to pursue to the best of my judgment, and as to
consequences, they are in the hand of God.
He remained there until his successor arrived. When all others fled, he
was faithful, and such conduct should never be forgotten. Mr. Morris
not only risked his life, but he took a heavy responsibility, and laid
himself open to severe attack for having protected defenseless people
against the assaults of the mob. But his courageous humanity is
something which should ever be remembered, and ought always to be
characteristic of the men who represent the United States in foreign
countries. When we recall the French Revolution, it is cheering to think
of that fearless figure of the American minister, standing firm and calm
in the midst of those awful scenes, with sacked palaces, slaughtered
soldiers, and a bloodstained mob about him, regardless of danger to
himself, determined to do his duty to his country, and to those to whom
his country was indebted.
THE BURNING OF THE "PHILADELPHIA"
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him, thus.
--Othello.
It is difficult to conceive that there ever was a time when the United
States paid a money tribute to anybody. It is even more difficult to
imagine the United States paying blackmail to a set of small piratical
tribes on the coast of Africa. Yet this is precisely what we once did
with the Barbary powers, as they were called the States of Morocco,
Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, lying along the northern coast of Africa.
The only excuse to be made for such action was that we merely followed
the example of Christendom. The civilized people of the world were then
in the habit of paying sums of money to these miserable pirates,
in order to secure immunity for their merchant vessels in the
Mediterranean. For this purpose Congress appropriated money, and
treaties were made by the President and ratified by the Senate. On one
occasion, at least, Congress actually revoked the authorization of some
new ships for the navy, and appropriated more money than was required
to build the men-of-war in order to buy off the Barbary powers. The fund
for this disgraceful purpose was known as the "Mediterranean fund," and
was intrusted to the Secretary of State to be disbursed by him in his
discretion. After we had our brush with France, however, in 1798, and
after Truxtun's brilliant victory over the French frigate L'Insurgente
in the following year, it occurred to our government that perhaps
there was a more direct as well as a more manly way of dealing with the
Barbary pirates than by feebly paying them tribute, and in 1801 a small
squadron, under Commodore Dale, proceeded to the Mediterranean.
At the same time events occurred which showed strikingly the absurdity
as well as the weakness of this policy of paying blackmail to pirates.
The Bashaw of Tripoli, complaining that we had given more money to
some of the Algerian ministers than we had to him, and also that we had
presented Algiers with a frigate, declared war upon us, and cut down the
flag-staff in front of the residence of the American consul. At the same
time, and for the same reason, Morocco and Tunis began to grumble at the
treatment which they had received. The fact was that, with nations as
with individuals, when the payment of blackmail is once begun there is
no end to it. The appearance, however, of our little squadron in the
Mediterranean showed at once the superiority of a policy of force over
one of cowardly submission. Morocco and Tunis immediately stopped their
grumbling and came to terms with the United States, and this left us
free to deal with Tripoli.
Commodore Dale had sailed before the declaration of war by Tripoli was
known, and he was therefore hampered by his orders, which permitted
him only to protect our commerce, and which forbade actual hostilities.
Nevertheless, even under these limited orders, the Enterprise, of
twelve guns, commanded by Lieutenant Sterrett, fought an action with the
Tripolitan ship Tripoli, of fourteen guns. The engagement lasted three
hours, when the Tripoli struck, having lost her mizzenmast, and with
twenty of her crew killed and thirty wounded. Sterrett, having no orders
to make captures, threw all the guns and ammunition of the Tripoli
overboard, cut away her remaining masts, and left her with only one spar
and a single sail to drift back to Tripoli, as a hint to the Bashaw of
the new American policy.
In 1803 the command of our fleet in the Mediterranean was taken by
Commodore Preble, who had just succeeded in forcing satisfaction
from Morocco for an attack made upon our merchantmen by a vessel from
Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing
to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia,
forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best
ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while
pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all
her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats, when she was entirely helpless
either to fight or sail. This was a very serious blow to our navy and to
our operations against Tripoli. It not only weakened our forces, but it
was also a great help to the enemy. The Tripolitans got the Philadelphia
off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under
the guns of their forts. They also replaced her batteries, and prepared
to make her ready for sea, where she would have been a most formidable
danger to our shipping.
Under these circumstances Stephen Decatur, a young lieutenant in command
of the Enterprise, offered to Commodore Preble to go into the harbor and
destroy the Philadelphia. Some delay ensued, as our squadron was driven
by severe gales from the Tripolitan coast; but at last, in January,
1804, Preble gave orders to Decatur to undertake the work for which
he had volunteered. A small vessel known as a ketch had been recently
captured from the Tripolitans by Decatur, and this prize was now named
the Intrepid, and assigned to him for the work he had in hand. He took
seventy men from his own ship, the Enterprise, and put them on the
Intrepid, and then, accompanied by Lieutenant Stewart in the Siren, who
was to support him, he set sail for Tripoli. He and his crew were very
much cramped as well as badly fed on the little vessel which had been
given to them, but they succeeded, nevertheless, in reaching Tripoli in
safety, accompanied by the Siren.
For nearly a week they were unable to approach the harbor, owing to
severe gales which threatened the loss of their vessel; but on February
16 the weather moderated and Decatur determined to go in. It is well to
recall, briefly, the extreme peril of the attack which he was about to
make. The Philadelphia, with forty guns mounted, double-shotted, and
ready for firing, and manned by a full complement of men, was moored
within half a gunshot of the Bashaw's castle, the mole and crown
batteries, and within range of ten other batteries, mounting,
altogether, one hundred and fifteen guns. Some Tripolitan cruisers, two
galleys, and nineteen gunboats also lay between the Philadelphia and the
shore. Into the midst of this powerful armament Decatur had to go with
his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns and having a
crew of seventy-five men.
The Americans, however, were entirely undismayed by the odds against
them, and at seven o'clock Decatur went into the harbor between the
reef and shoal which formed its mouth. He steered on steadily toward the
Philadelphia, the breeze getting constantly lighter, and by half-past
nine was within two hundred yards of the frigate. As they approached
Decatur stood at the helm with the pilot, only two or three men showing
on deck and the rest of the crew lying hidden under the bulwarks. In
this way he drifted to within nearly twenty yards of the Philadelphia.
The suspicions of the Tripolitans, however, were not aroused, and when
they hailed the Intrepid, the pilot answered that they had lost their
anchors in a gale, and asked that they might run a warp to the frigate
and ride by her. While the talk went on the Intrepid's boat shoved off
with the rope, and pulling to the fore-chains of the Philadelphia, made
the line fast. A few of the crew then began to haul on the lines, and
thus the Intrepid was drawn gradually toward the frigate.
The suspicions of the Tripolitans were now at last awakened. They raised
the cry of "Americanos!" and ordered off the Intrepid, but it was too
late. As the vessels came in contact, Decatur sprang up the main chains
of the Philadelphia, calling out the order to board. He was rapidly
followed by his officers and men, and as they swarmed over the rails and
came upon the deck, the Tripolitan crew gathered, panic-stricken, in a
confused mass on the forecastle. Decatur waited a moment until his men
were behind him, and then, placing himself at their head, drew his sword
and rushed upon the Tripolitans. There was a very short struggle, and
the Tripolitans, crowded together, terrified and surprised, were cut
down or driven overboard. In five minutes the ship was cleared of the
enemy.
Decatur would have liked to have taken the Philadelphia out of the
harbor, but that was impossible. He therefore gave orders to burn the
ship, and his men, who had been thoroughly instructed in what they were
to do, dispersed into all parts of the frigate with the combustibles
which had been prepared, and in a few minutes, so well and quickly was
the work done, the flames broke out in all parts of the Philadelphia. As
soon as this was effected the order was given to return to the Intrepid.
Without confusion the men obeyed. It was a moment of great danger, for
fire was breaking out on all sides, and the Intrepid herself, filled
as she was with powder and combustibles, was in great peril of sudden
destruction. The rapidity of Decatur's movements, however, saved
everything. The cables were cut, the sweeps got out, and the Intrepid
drew rapidly away from the burning frigate. It was a magnificent
sight as the flames burst out over the Philadephia and ran rapidly and
fiercely up the masts and rigging. As her guns became heated they were
discharged, one battery pouring its shots into the town. Finally the
cables parted, and then the Philadelphia, a mass of flames, drifted
across the harbor, and blew up. Meantime the batteries of the shipping
and the castle had been turned upon the Intrepid, but although the
shot struck all around her, she escaped successfully with only one shot
through her mainsail, and, joining the Siren, bore away.
This successful attack was carried through by the cool courage of
Decatur and the admirable discipline of his men. The hazard was very
great, the odds were very heavy, and everything depended on the nerve
with which the attack was made and the completeness of the surprise.
Nothing miscarried, and no success could have been more complete.
Nelson, at that time in the Mediterranean, and the best judge of a naval
exploit as well as the greatest naval commander who has ever lived,
pronounced it "the most bold and daring act of the age." We meet no
single feat exactly like it in our own naval history, brilliant as that
has been, until we come to Cushing's destruction of the Albemarle in
the war of the rebellion. In the years that have elapsed, and among the
great events that have occurred since that time, Decatur's burning of
the Philadephia has been well-nigh forgotten; but it is one of those
feats of arms which illustrate the high courage of American seamen, and
which ought always to be remembered.
THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"
A crash as when some swollen cloud
Cracks o'er the tangled trees!
With side to side, and spar to spar,
Whose smoking decks are these?
I know St. George's blood-red cross,
Thou mistress of the seas,
But what is she whose streaming bars
Roll out before the breeze?
Ah, well her iron ribs are knit,
Whose thunders strive to quell
The bellowing throats, the blazing lips,
That pealed the Armada's knell!
The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars
Rose o'er the crimsoned swell,
And, wavering from its haughty peak,
The cross of England fell!
--Holmes.
In the war of 1812 the little American navy, including only a dozen
frigates and sloops of war, won a series of victories against the
English, the hitherto undoubted masters of the sea, that attracted an
attention altogether out of proportion to the force of the combatants
or the actual damage done. For one hundred and fifty years the English
ships of war had failed to find fit rivals in those of any other
European power, although they had been matched against each in turn; and
when the unknown navy of the new nation growing up across the Atlantic
did what no European navy had ever been able to do, not only the English
and Americans, but the people of Continental Europe as well, regarded
the feat as important out of all proportion to the material aspects of
the case. The Americans first proved that the English could be beaten
at their own game on the sea. They did what the huge fleets of France,
Spain, and Holland had failed to do, and the great modern writers
on naval warfare in Continental Europe--men like Jurien de la
Graviere--have paid the same attention to these contests of frigates and
sloops that they give to whole fleet actions of other wars.
Among the famous ships of the Americans in this war were two named the
Wasp. The first was an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which at the very
outset of the war captured a British brig-sloop of twenty guns, after
an engagement in which the British fought with great gallantry, but were
knocked to Pieces, while the Americans escaped comparatively unscathed.
Immediately afterward a British seventy-four captured the victor. In
memory of her the Americans gave the same name to one of the new sloops
they were building. These sloops were stoutly made, speedy vessels which
in strength and swiftness compared favorably with any ships of their
class in any other navy of the day, for the American shipwrights were
already as famous as the American gunners and seamen. The new Wasp, like
her sister ships, carried twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred
and seventy men, and was ship-rigged. Twenty of her guns were 32-pound
carronades, while for bow-chasers she had two "long Toms." It was in
the year 1814 that the Wasp sailed from the United States to prey on the
navy and commerce of Great Britain. Her commander was a gallant South
Carolinian named Captain Johnson Blakeley. Her crew were nearly all
native Americans, and were an exceptionally fine set of men. Instead of
staying near the American coasts or of sailing the high seas, the Wasp
at once headed boldly for the English Channel, to carry the war to the
very doors of the enemy.
At that time the English fleets had destroyed the navies of every other
power of Europe, and had obtained such complete supremacy over the
French that the French fleets were kept in port. Off these ports lay the
great squadrons of the English ships of the line, never, in gale or
in calm, relaxing their watch upon the rival war-ships of the French
emperor. So close was the blockade of the French ports, and so hopeless
were the French of making headway in battle with their antagonists,
that not only the great French three-deckers and two-deckers, but their
frigates and sloops as well, lay harmless in their harbors, and the
English ships patroled the seas unchecked in every direction. A few
French privateers still slipped out now and then, and the far bolder and
more formidable American privateersmen drove hither and thither across
the ocean in their swift schooners and brigantines, and harried the
English commerce without mercy.
The Wasp proceeded at once to cruise in the English Channel and off
the coasts of England, France, and Spain. Here the water was traversed
continually by English fleets and squadrons and single ships of war,
which were sometimes covoying detachments of troops for Wellington's
Peninsular army, sometimes guarding fleets of merchant vessels bound
homeward, and sometimes merely cruising for foes. It was this spot,
right in the teeth of the British naval power, that the Wasp chose for
her cruising ground. Hither and thither she sailed through the narrow
seas, capturing and destroying the merchantmen, and by the seamanship
of her crew and the skill and vigilance of her commander, escaping the
pursuit of frigate and ship of the line. Before she had been long on the
ground, one June morning, while in chase of a couple of merchant ships,
she spied a sloop of war, the British brig Reindeer, of eighteen guns
and a hundred and twenty men. The Reindeer was a weaker ship than the
Wasp, her guns were lighter, and her men fewer; but her commander,
Captain Manners, was one of the most gallant men in the splendid British
navy, and he promptly took up the gage of battle which the Wasp threw
down.
The day was calm and nearly still; only a light wind stirred across the
sea. At one o'clock the Wasp's drum beat to quarters, and the sailors
and marines gathered at their appointed posts. The drum of the Reindeer
responded to the challenge, and with her sails reduced to fighting trim,
her guns run out, and every man ready, she came down upon the Yankee
ship. On her forecastle she had rigged a light carronade, and coming up
from behind, she five times discharged this pointblank into the American
sloop; then in the light air the latter luffed round, firing her guns
as they bore, and the two ships engaged yard-arm to yard-arm. The guns
leaped and thundered as the grimy gunners hurled them out to fire and
back again to load, working like demons. For a few minutes the cannonade
was tremendous, and the men in the tops could hardly see the decks for
the wreck of flying splinters. Then the vessels ground together, and
through the open ports the rival gunners hewed, hacked, and thrust at
one another, while the black smoke curled up from between the hulls. The
English were suffering terribly. Captain Manners himself was wounded,
and realizing that he was doomed to defeat unless by some desperate
effort he could avert it, he gave the signal to board. At the call the
boarders gathered, naked to the waist, black with powder and spattered
with blood, cutlas and pistol in hand. But the Americans were ready.
Their marines were drawn up on deck, the pikemen stood behind the
bulwarks, and the officers watched, cool and alert, every movement of
the foe. Then the British sea-dogs tumbled aboard, only to perish by
shot or steel. The combatants slashed and stabbed with savage fury, and
the assailants were driven back. Manners sprang to their head to lead
them again himself, when a ball fired by one of the sailors in the
American tops crashed through his skull, and he fell, sword in hand,
with his face to the foe, dying as honorable a death as ever a brave man
died in fighting against odds for the flag of his country. As he fell
the American officers passed the word to board. With wild cheers the
fighting sailormen sprang forward, sweeping the wreck of the British
force before them, and in a minute the Reindeer was in their possession.
All of her officers, and nearly two thirds of the crew, were killed or
wounded; but they had proved themselves as skilful as they were brave,
and twenty-six of the Americans had been killed or wounded.
The Wasp set fire to her prize, and after retiring to a French port to
refit, came out again to cruise. For some time she met no antagonist
of her own size with which to wage war, and she had to exercise the
sharpest vigilance to escape capture. Late one September afternoon, when
she could see ships of war all around her, she selected one which was
isolated from the others, and decided to run alongside her and try to
sink her after nightfall. Accordingly she set her sails in pursuit, and
drew steadily toward her antagonist, a big eighteen-gun brig, the Avon,
a ship more powerful than the Reindeer. The Avon kept signaling to two
other British war vessels which were in sight--one an eighteen-gun brig
and the other a twenty-gun ship; they were so close that the Wasp
was afraid they would interfere before the combat could be ended.
Nevertheless, Blakeley persevered, and made his attack with equal skill
and daring. It was after dark when he ran alongside his opponent,
and they began forthwith to exchange furious broadsides. As the ships
plunged and wallowed in the seas, the Americans could see the clusters
of topmen in the rigging of their opponent, but they knew nothing of
the vessel's name or of her force, save only so far as they felt it. The
firing was fast and furious, but the British shot with bad aim, while
the skilled American gunners hulled their opponent at almost every
discharge. In a very few minutes the Avon was in a sinking condition,
and she struck her flag and cried for quarter, having lost forty or
fifty men, while but three of the Americans had fallen. Before the Wasp
could take possession of her opponent, however, the two war vessels
to which the Avon had been signaling came up. One of them fired at the
Wasp, and as the latter could not fight two new foes, she ran off easily
before the wind. Neither of her new antagonists followed her, devoting
themselves to picking up the crew of the sinking Avon.
It would be hard to find a braver feat more skilfully performed
than this; for Captain Blakeley, with hostile foes all round him, had
closed with and sunk one antagonist not greatly his inferior in force,
suffering hardly any loss himself, while two of her friends were coming
to her help.
Both before and after this the Wasp cruised hither and thither making
prizes. Once she came across a convoy of ships bearing arms and
munitions to Wellington's army, under the care of a great two-decker.
Hovering about, the swift sloop evaded the two-decker's movements, and
actually cut out and captured one of the transports she was guarding,
making her escape unharmed. Then she sailed for the high seas. She made
several other prizes, and on October 9 spoke a Swedish brig.
This was the last that was ever heard of the gallant Wasp. She never
again appeared, and no trace of any of those aboard her was ever found.
Whether she was wrecked on some desert coast, whether she foundered
in some furious gale, or what befell her none ever knew. All that is
certain is that she perished, and that all on board her met death in
some one of the myriad forms in which it must always be faced by those
who go down to the sea in ships; and when she sank there sank one of the
most gallant ships of the American navy, with as brave a captain and
crew as ever sailed from any port of the New World.
THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" PRIVATEER
We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die--does it matter when?
--Tennyson.
In the revolution, and again in the war of 1812, the seas were covered
by swift-sailing American privateers, which preyed on the British
trade. The hardy seamen of the New England coast, and of New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, turned readily from their adventurous
careers in the whalers that followed the giants of the ocean in every
sea and every clime, and from trading voyages to the uttermost parts
of the earth, to go into the business of privateering, which was more
remunerative, and not so very much more dangerous, than their ordinary
pursuits. By the end of the war of 1812, in particular, the American
privateers had won for themselves a formidable position on the ocean.
The schooners, brigs, and brigantines in which the privateersmen sailed
were beautifully modeled, and were among the fastest craft afloat. They
were usually armed with one heavy gun, the "long Tom," as it was called,
arranged on a pivot forward or amidships, and with a few lighter pieces
of cannon. They carried strong crews of well-armed men, and their
commanders were veteran seamen, used to brave every danger from the
elements or from man. So boldly did they prey on the British commerce,
that they infested even the Irish Sea and the British Channel, and
increased many times the rate of insurance on vessels passing across
those waters. They also often did battle with the regular men-of-war of
the British, being favorite objects for attack by cutting-out parties
from the British frigates and ships of the line, and also frequently
encountering in fight the smaller sloops-of-war. Usually, in these
contests, the privateersmen were worsted, for they had not the training
which is obtained only in a regular service, and they were in no way to
be compared to the little fleet of regular vessels which in this same
war so gloriously upheld the honor of the American flag. Nevertheless,
here and there a privateer commanded by an exceptionally brave and able
captain, and manned by an unusually well-trained crew, performed some
feat of arms which deserves to rank with anything ever performed by the
regular navy. Such a feat was the defense of the brig General Armstrong,
in the Portuguese port of Fayal, of the Azores, against an overwhelming
British force.
The General Armstrong hailed from New York, and her captain was named
Reid. She had a crew of ninety men, and was armed with one heavy 32
pounder and six lighter guns. In December, 1814, she was lying in Fayal,
a neutral port, when four British war-vessels, a ship of the line, a
frigate and two brigs, hove into sight, and anchored off the mouth of
the harbor. The port was neutral, but Portugal was friendly to England,
and Reid knew well that the British would pay no respect to the
neutrality laws if they thought that at the cost of their violation they
could destroy the privateer. He immediately made every preparation to
resist an attack, The privateer was anchored close to the shore. The
boarding-nettings were got ready, and were stretched to booms thrust
outward from the brig's side, so as to check the boarders as they tried
to climb over the bulwarks. The guns were loaded and cast loose, and the
men went to quarters armed with muskets, boarding-pikes, and cutlases.
On their side the British made ready to carry the privateer by boarding.
The shoals rendered it impossible for the heavy ships to approach,
and the lack of wind and the baffling currents also interfered for the
moment with the movements of the sloops-of-war. Accordingly recourse was
had to a cutting-out party, always a favorite device with the British
seamen of that age, who were accustomed to carry French frigates by
boarding, and to capture in their boats the heavy privateers and armed
merchantmen, as well as the lighter war-vessels of France and Spain.
The British first attempted to get possession of the brig by surprise,
sending out but four boats. These worked down near to the brig, under
pretense of sounding, trying to get close enough to make a rush and
board her. The privateersmen were on their guard, and warned the boats
off, and after the warning had been repeated once or twice unheeded,
they fired into them, killing and wounding several men. Upon this the
boats promptly returned to the ships.
This first check greatly irritated the British captains, and they
decided to repeat the experiment that night with a force which would
render resistance vain. Accordingly, after it became dark, a dozen
boats were sent from the liner and the frigate, manned by four hundred
stalwart British seamen, and commanded by the captain of one of the
brigs of war. Through the night they rowed straight toward the little
privateer lying dark and motionless in the gloom. As before, the
privateersmen were ready for their foe, and when they came within range
opened fire upon them, first with the long gun and then with the lighter
cannon; but the British rowed on with steady strokes, for they were
seamen accustomed to victory over every European foe, and danger had no
terrors for them. With fierce hurrahs they dashed through the shot-riven
smoke and grappled the brig; and the boarders rose, cutlas in hand,
ready to spring over the bulwarks. A terrible struggle followed. The
British hacked at the boarding-nets and strove to force their way
through to the decks of the privateer, while the Americans stabbed
the assailants with their long pikes and slashed at them with their
cutlases. The darkness was lit by the flashes of flame from the muskets
and the cannon, and the air was rent by the oaths and shouts of the
combatants, the heavy trampling on the decks, the groans of the wounded,
the din of weapon meeting weapon, and all the savage tumult of
a hand-to-hand fight. At the bow the British burst through the
boarding-netting, and forced their way to the deck, killing or wounding
all three of the lieutenants of the privateer; but when this had
happened the boats had elsewhere been beaten back, and Reid, rallying
his grim sea-dogs, led them forward with a rush, and the boarding party
were all killed or tumbled into the sea. This put an end to the fight.
In some of the boats none but killed and wounded men were left. The
others drew slowly off, like crippled wild-fowl, and disappeared in the
darkness toward the British squadron. Half of the attacking force had
been killed or wounded, while of the Americans but nine had fallen.
The British commodore and all his officers were maddened with anger and
shame over the repulse, and were bent upon destroying the privateer
at all costs. Next day, after much exertion, one of the war-brigs was
warped into position to attack the American, but she first took her
station at long range, so that her carronades were not as effective as
the pivot gun of the privateer; and so well was the latter handled, that
the British brig was repeatedly hulled, and finally was actually driven
off. A second attempt was made, however, and this time the sloop-of-war
got so close that she could use her heavy carronades, which put the
privateer completely at her mercy. Then Captain Reid abandoned his brig
and sank her, first carrying ashore the guns, and marched inland with
his men. They were not further molested; and, if they had lost their
brig, they had at least made their foes pay dear for her destruction,
for the British had lost twice as many men as there were in the whole
hard-fighting crew of the American privateer.
THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS
The heavy fog of morning
Still hid the plain from sight,
When came a thread of scarlet
Marked faintly in the white.
We fired a single cannon,
And as its thunders rolled,
The mist before us lifted
In many a heavy fold.
The mist before us lifted,
And in their bravery fine
Came rushing to their ruin
The fearless British line.
--Thomas Dunn English.
When, in 1814, Napoleon was overthrown and forced to retire to Elba, the
British troops that had followed Wellington into southern France
were left free for use against the Americans. A great expedition was
organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and at its head was placed
General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the column that delivered
the fatal blow at Salamanca. In December a fleet of British war-ships
and transports, carrying thousands of victorious veterans from the
Peninsula, and manned by sailors who had grown old in a quarter of a
century's triumphant ocean warfare, anchored off the broad lagoons of
the Mississippi delta. The few American gunboats were carried after a
desperate hand-to-hand struggle, the troops were landed, and on December
23 the advance-guard of two thousand men reached the banks of the
Mississippi, but ten miles below New Orleans, and there camped for the
night. It seemed as if nothing could save the Creole City from foes who
had shown, in the storming of many a Spanish walled town, that they were
as ruthless in victory as they were terrible in battle. There were
no forts to protect the place, and the militia were ill armed and ill
trained. But the hour found the man. On the afternoon of the very day
when the British reached the banks of the river the vanguard of Andrew
Jackson's Tennesseeans marched into New Orleans. Clad in hunting-shirts
of buckskin or homespun, wearing wolfskin and coonskin caps, and
carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the
backwoods tramped into the little French town. They were tall men, with
sinewy frames and piercing eyes. Under "Old Hickory's" lead they had
won the bloody battle of the Horseshoe Bend against the Creeks; they
had driven the Spaniards from Pensacola; and now they were eager to pit
themselves against the most renowned troops of all Europe.
Jackson acted with his usual fiery, hasty decision. It was absolutely
necessary to get time in which to throw up some kind of breastworks or
defenses for the city, and he at once resolved on a night attack against
the British. As for the British, they had no thought of being molested.
They did not dream of an assault from inferior numbers of undisciplined
and ill-armed militia, who did not possess so much as bayonets to their
guns. They kindled fires along the levees, ate their supper, and then,
as the evening fell, noticed a big schooner drop down the river in
ghostly silence and bring up opposite to them. The soldiers flocked to
the shore, challenging the stranger, and finally fired one or two shots
at her. Then suddenly a rough voice was heard, "Now give it to them,
for the honor of America!" and a shower of shell and grape fell on
the British, driving them off the levee. The stranger was an American
man-of-war schooner. The British brought up artillery to drive her off,
but before they succeeded Jackson's land troops burst upon them, and
a fierce, indecisive struggle followed. In the night all order was
speedily lost, and the two sides fought singly or in groups in the
utmost confusion. Finally a fog came up and the combatants separated.
Jackson drew off four or five miles and camped.
The British had been so roughly handled that they were unable to advance
for three or four days, until the entire army came up. When they did
advance, it was only to find that Jackson had made good use of the time
he had gained by his daring assault. He had thrown up breastworks of
mud and logs from the swamp to the river. At first the British tried to
batter down these breastworks with their cannon, for they had many more
guns than the Americans. A terrible artillery duel followed. For an
hour or two the result seemed in doubt; but the American gunners showed
themselves to be far more skilful than their antagonists, and gradually
getting the upper hand, they finally silenced every piece of British
artillery. The Americans had used cotton bales in the embrasures, and
the British hogsheads of sugar; but neither worked well, for the cotton
caught fire and the sugar hogsheads were ripped and splintered by the
roundshot, so that both were abandoned. By the use of red-hot shot the
British succeeded in setting on fire the American schooner which had
caused them such annoyance on the evening of the night attack; but she
had served her purpose, and her destruction caused little anxiety to
Jackson.
Having failed in his effort to batter down the American breastworks,
and the British artillery having been fairly worsted by the American,
Pakenham decided to try open assault. He had ten thousand regular
troops, while Jackson had under him but little over five thousand men,
who were trained only as he had himself trained them in his Indian
campaigns. Not a fourth of them carried bayonets. Both Pakenham and the
troops under him were fresh from victories won over the most renowned
marshals of Napoleon, andover soldiers that had proved themselves on a
hundred stricken fields the masters of all others in Continental Europe.
At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position infinitely
stronger than that held by Jackson, and yet Soult had under him a
veteran army. At Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they
had carried by open assault fortified towns whose strength made
the intrenchments of the Americans seem like the mud walls built by
children, though these towns were held by the best soldiers of France.
With such troops to follow him, and with such victories behind him in
the past, it did not seem possible to Pakenham that the assault of the
terrible British infantry could be successfully met by rough backwoods
riflemen fighting under a general as wild and untrained as themselves.
He decreed that the assault should take place on the morning of the
eighth. Throughout the previous night the American officers were on
the alert, for they could hear the rumbling of artillery in the British
camp, the muffled tread of the battalions as they were marched to their
points in the line, and all the smothered din of the preparation for
assault. Long before dawn the riflemen were awake and drawn up behind
the mud walls, where they lolled at ease, or, leaning on their long
rifles, peered out through the fog toward the camp of their foes. At
last the sun rose and the fog lifted, showing the scarlet array of the
splendid British infantry. As soon as the air was clear Pakenham gave
the word, and the heavy columns of redcoated grenadiers and kilted
Highlanders moved steadily forward. From the American breastworks
the great guns opened, but not a rifle cracked. Three fourths of the
distance were covered, and the eager soldiers broke into a run; then
sheets of flame burst from the breastworks in their front as the wild
riflemen of the backwoods rose and fired, line upon line. Under the
sweeping hail the head of the British advance was shattered, and the
whole column stopped. Then it surged forward again, almost to the foot
of the breastworks; but not a man lived to reach them, and in a moment
more the troops broke and ran back. Mad with shame and rage, Pakenham
rode among them to rally and lead them forward, and the officers sprang
around him, smiting the fugitives with their swords and cheering on the
men who stood. For a moment the troops halted, and again came forward
to the charge; but again they were met by a hail of bullets from the
backwoods rifles. One shot struck Pakenham himself. He reeled and fell
from the saddle, and was carried off the field. The second and third
in command fell also, and then all attempts at further advance were
abandoned, and the British troops ran back to their lines. Another
assault had meanwhile been made by a column close to the river, the
charging soldiers rushing to the top of the breastworks; but they were
all killed or driven back. A body of troops had also been sent across
the river, where they routed a small detachment of Kentucky militia; but
they were, of course, recalled when the main assault failed.
At last the men who had conquered the conquerors of Europe had
themselves met defeat. Andrew Jackson and his rough riflemen had
worsted, in fair fight, a far larger force of the best of Wellington's
veterans, and had accomplished what no French marshal and no French
troops had been able to accomplish throughout the long war in the
Spanish peninsula. For a week the sullen British lay in their lines;
then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they marched back to the ships
and sailed for Europe.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND THE RIGHT OF PETITION
He rests with the immortals; his journey has been long:
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong!
So well and bravely has he done the work be found to do,
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever true.
--Whittier.
The lot of ex-Presidents of the United States, as a rule, has been
a life of extreme retirement, but to this rule there is one marked
exception. When John Quincy Adams left the White House in March, 1829,
it must have seemed as if public life could hold nothing more for him.
He had had everything apparently that an American statesman could hope
for. He had been Minister to Holland and Prussia, to Russia and England.
He had been a Senator of the United States, Secretary of State for
eight years, and finally President. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the
greatest part of his career, and his noblest service to his country,
were still before him when he gave up the Presidency.
In the following year (1830) he was told that he might be elected to
the House of Representatives, and the gentleman who made the proposition
ventured to say that he thought an ex-President, by taking such a
position, "instead of degrading the individual would elevate the
representative character." Mr. Adams replied that he had "in that
respect no scruples whatever. No person can be degraded by serving
the people as Representative in Congress, nor, in my opinion, would an
ex-President of the United States be degraded by serving as a selectman
of his town if elected thereto by the people." A few weeks later he was
chosen to the House, and the district continued to send him every two
years from that time until his death. He did much excellent work in the
House, and was conspicuous in more than one memorable scene; but here
it is possible to touch on only a single point, where he came forward
as the champion of a great principle, and fought a battle for the right
which will always be remembered among the great deeds of American public
men.
Soon after Mr. Adams took his seat in Congress, the movement for the
abolition of slavery was begun by a few obscure agitators. It did not at
first attract much attention, but as it went on it gradually exasperated
the overbearing temper of the Southern slaveholders. One fruit of this
agitation was the appearance of petitions for the abolition of slavery
in the House of Representatives. A few were presented by Mr. Adams
without attracting much notice; but as the petitions multiplied, the
Southern representatives became aroused. They assailed Mr. Adams for
presenting them, and finally passed what was known as the gag rule,
which prevented the reception of these petitions by the House. Against
this rule Mr. Adams protested, in the midst of the loud shouts of
the Southerners, as a violation of his constitutional rights. But
the tyranny of slavery at that time was so complete that the rule was
adopted and enforced, and the slaveholders, undertook in this way
to suppress free speech in the House, just as they also undertook to
prevent the transmission through the mails of any writings adverse to
slavery. With the wisdom of a statesman and a man of affairs, Mr. Adams
addressed himself to the one practical point of the contest. He did not
enter upon a discussion of slavery or of its abolition, but turned his
whole force toward the vindication of the right of petition. On every
petition day he would offer, in constantly increasing numbers, petitions
which came to him from all parts of the country for the abolition of
slavery, in this way driving the Southern representatives almost to
madness, despite their rule which prevented the reception of such
documents when offered. Their hatred of Mr. Adams is something difficult
to conceive, and they were burning to break him down, and, if possible,
drive him from the House. On February 6, 1837, after presenting the
usual petitions, Mr. Adams offered one upon which he said he should like
the judgment of the Speaker as to its propriety, inasmuch as it was a
petition from slaves. In a moment the House was in a tumult, and
loud cries of "Expel him!" "Expel him!" rose in all directions. One
resolution after another was offered looking toward his expulsion or
censure, and it was not until February 9, three days later, that he was
able to take the floor in his own defense. His speech was a masterpiece
of argument, invective, and sarcasm. He showed, among other things, that
he had not offered the petition, but had only asked the opinion of the
Speaker upon it, and that the petition itself prayed that slavery should
not be abolished. When he closed his speech, which was quite as savage
as any made against him, and infinitely abler, no one desired to reply,
and the idea of censuring him was dropped.
The greatest struggle, however, came five years later, when, on January
21, 1842, Mr. Adams presented the petition of certain citizens of
Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying for the dissolution of the Union
on account of slavery. His enemies felt that now, at last, he had
delivered himself into their hands. Again arose the cry for his
expulsion, and again vituperation was poured out upon him, and
resolutions to expel him freely introduced. When he got the floor to
speak in his own defense, he faced an excited House, almost unanimously
hostile to him, and possessing, as he well knew, both the will and the
power to drive him from its walls. But there was no wavering in Mr.
Adams. "If they say they will try me," he said, "they must try me. If
they say they will punish me, they must punish me. But if they say that
in peace and mercy they will spare me expulsion, I disdain and cast away
their mercy, and I ask if they will come to such a trial and expel me. I
defy them. I have constituents to go to, and they will have something
to say if this House expels me, nor will it be long before the gentlemen
will see me here again." The fight went on for nearly a fortnight,
and on February 7 the whole subject was finally laid on the table. The
sturdy, dogged fighter, single-handed and alone, had beaten all the
forces of the South and of slavery. No more memorable fight has ever
been made by one man in a parliamentary body, and after this decisive
struggle the tide began to turn. Every year Mr. Adams renewed his motion
to strike out the gag rule, and forced it to a vote. Gradually the
majority against it dwindled, until at last, on December 3, 1844, his
motion prevailed. Freedom of speech had been vindicated in the American
House of Representatives, the right of petition had been won, and the
first great blow against the slave power had been struck.
Four years later Mr. Adams fell, stricken with paralysis, at his place
in the House, and a few hours afterward, with the words, "This is
the last of earth; I am content," upon his lips, he sank into
unconsciousness and died. It was a fit end to a great public career. His
fight for the right of petition is one to be studied and remembered, and
Mr. Adams made it practically alone. The slaveholders of the South and
the representatives of the North were alike against him. Against him,
too, as his biographer, Mr. Morse, says, was the class in Boston to
which he naturally belonged by birth and education. He had to
encounter the bitter resistance in his own set of the "conscienceless
respectability of wealth," but the great body of the New England people
were with him, as were the voters of his own district. He was an old
man, with the physical infirmities of age. His eyes were weak and
streaming; his hands were trembling; his voice cracked in moments of
excitement; yet in that age of oratory, in the days of Webster and Clay,
he was known as the "old man eloquent." It was what he said, more than
the way he said it, which told. His vigorous mind never worked more
surely and clearly than when he stood alone in the midst of an angry
House, the target of their hatred and abuse. His arguments were strong,
and his large knowledge and wide experience supplied him with every
weapon for defense and attack. Beneath the lash of his invective and his
sarcasm the hottest of the slaveholders cowered away. He set his back
against a great principle. He never retreated an inch, he never yielded,
he never conciliated, he was always an assailant, and no man and no
body of men had the power to turn him. He had his dark hours, he felt
bitterly the isolation of his position, but he never swerved. He had
good right to set down in his diary, when the gag rule was repealed,
"Blessed, forever blessed, be the name of God."
FRANCIS PARKMAN
(1822-1893)
He told the red man's story; far and wide
He searched the unwritten annals of his race;
He sat a listener at the Sachem's side,
He tracked the hunter through his wild-wood chase.
High o'er his head the soaring eagle screamed;
The wolfs long howl rang nightly; through the vale
Tramped the lone bear; the panther's eyeballs gleamed;
The bison's gallop thundered on the gale.
Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife,
Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize:
Which swarming host should mould a nation's life;
Which royal banner flout the western skies.
Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod
Native and alien joined their hosts in vain;
The lilies withered where the lion trod,
Till Peace lay panting on the ravaged plain.
A nobler task was theirs who strove to win
The blood-stained heathen to the Christian fold;
To free from Satan's clutch the slaves of sin;
These labors, too, with loving grace he told.
Halting with feeble step, or bending o'er
The sweet-breathed roses which he loved so well,
While through long years his burdening cross he bore,
From those firm lips no coward accents fell.
A brave bright memory! His the stainless shield
No shame defaces and no envy mars!
When our far future's record is unsealed,
His name will shine among its morning stars.
--Holmes.
The stories in this volume deal, for the most part, with single actions,
generally with deeds of war and feats of arms. In this one I desire
to give if possible the impression, for it can be no more than
an impression, of a life which in its conflicts and its victories
manifested throughout heroic qualities. Such qualities can be shown in
many ways, and the field of battle is only one of the fields of human
endeavor where heroism can be displayed.
Francis Parkman was born in Boston on September 16, 1822. He came of
a well-known family, and was of a good Puritan stock. He was rather a
delicate boy, with an extremely active mind and of a highly sensitive,
nervous organization. Into everything that attracted him he threw
himself with feverish energy. His first passion, when he was only about
twelve years old, was for chemistry, and his eager boyish experiments in
this direction were undoubtedly injurious to his health. The interest in
chemistry was succeeded by a passion for the woods and the wilderness,
and out of this came the longing to write the history of the men of the
wilderness, and of the great struggle between France and England for the
control of the North American continent. All through his college career
this desire was with him, and while in secret he was reading widely to
prepare himself for his task, he also spent a great deal of time in the
forests and on the mountains. To quote his own words, he was "fond of
hardships, and he was vain of enduring them, cherishing a sovereign
scorn for every physical weakness or defect; but deceived, moreover, by
the rapid development of frame and sinew, which flattered him into the
belief that discipline sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an
athlete, he slighted the precautions of a more reasonable woodcraft,
tired old foresters with long marches, stopped neither for heat nor for
rain, and slept on the earth without blankets." The result was that his
intense energy carried him beyond his strength, and while his muscles
strengthened and hardened, his sensitive nervous organization began to
give way. It was not merely because he led an active outdoor life. He
himself protests against any such conclusion, and says that "if any pale
student glued to his desk here seek an apology for a way of life whose
natural fruit is that pallid and emasculate scholarship, of which New
England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this
sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no
better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or
the oar."
The evil that was done was due to Parkman's highly irritable organism,
which spurred him to excess in everything he undertook. The first
special sign of the mischief he was doing to himself and his health
appeared in a weakness of sight. It was essential to his plan of
historical work to study not only books and records but Indian life from
the inside. Therefore, having graduated from college and the law-school,
he felt that the time had come for this investigation, which would
enable him to gather material for his history and at the same time
to rest his eyes. He went to the Rocky Mountains, and after great
hardships, living in the saddle, as he said, with weakness and pain, he
joined a band of Ogallalla Indians. With them he remained despite his
physical suffering, and from them he learned, as he could not have
learned in any other way, what Indian life really was.
The immediate result of the journey was his first book, instinct with
the freshness and wildness of the mountains and the prairies, and called
by him "The Oregon Trail." Unfortunately, the book was not the only
outcome. The illness incurred during his journey from fatigue and
exposure was followed by other disorders. The light of the sun became
insupportable, and his nervous system was entirely deranged. His
sight was now so impaired that he was almost blind, and could neither
read nor write. It was a terrible prospect for a brilliant and ambitious
man, but Parkman faced it unflinchingly. He devised a frame by which
he could write with closed eyes, and books and manuscripts were read to
him. In this way he began the history of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac,"
and for the first half-year the rate of composition covered about six
lines a day. His courage was rewarded by an improvement in his health,
and a little more quiet in nerves and brain. In two and a half years he
managed to complete the book. He then entered upon his great subject of
"France in the New World." The material was mostly in manuscript, and
had to be examined, gathered, and selected in Europe and in Canada.
He could not read, he could write only a very little and that with
difficulty, and yet he pressed on. He slowly collected his material and
digested and arranged it, using the eyes of others to do that which he
could not do himself, and always on the verge of a complete breakdown
of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee,
which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely
depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head,
resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity
of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange,
undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived
by one who has felt them." The resources of surgery and medicine were
exhausted in vain. The trouble in the head and eyes constantly recurred.
In 1858 there came a period when for four years he was incapable of the
slightest mental application, and the attacks varied in duration from
four hours to as many months. When the pressure was lightened a little
he went back to his work. When work was impossible, he turned to
horticulture, grew roses, and wrote a book about the cultivation of
those flowers which is a standard authority.
As he grew older the attacks moderated, although they never departed.
Sleeplessness pursued him always, the slightest excitement would deprive
him of the power of exertion, his sight was always sensitive, and at
times he was bordering on blindness. In this hard-pressed way he fought
the battle of life. He says himself that his books took four times as
long to prepare and write as if he had been strong and able to use his
faculties. That this should have been the case is little wonder, for
those books came into being with failing sight and shattered nerves,
with sleeplessness and pain, and the menace of insanity ever hanging
over the brave man who, nevertheless, carried them through to an end.
Yet the result of those fifty years, even in amount, is a noble one, and
would have been great achievement for a man who had never known a sick
day. In quality, and subject, and method of narration, they leave little
to be desired. There, in Parkman's volumes, is told vividly, strongly,
and truthfully, the history of the great struggle between France and
England for the mastery of the North American continent, one of the
most important events of modern times. This is not the place to give
any critical estimate of Mr. Parkman's work. It is enough to say that it
stands in the front rank. It is a great contribution to history, and
a still greater gift to the literature of this country. All Americans
certainly should read the volumes in which Parkman has told that
wonderful story of hardship and adventure, of fighting and of
statesmanship, which gave this great continent to the English race and
the English speech. But better than the literature or the history is
the heroic spirit of the man, which triumphed over pain and all other
physical obstacles, and brought a work of such value to his country
and his time into existence. There is a great lesson as well as a lofty
example in such a career, and in the service which such a man rendered
by his life and work to literature and to his country. On the tomb of
the conqueror of Quebec it is written: "Here lies Wolfe victorious."
The same epitaph might with entire justice be carved above the grave of
Wolfe's historian.
"REMEMBER THE ALAMO"
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.
* * *
The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are past;
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
--Theodore O'Hara.
"Thermopylae had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none." These
were the words with which a United States senator referred to one of
the most resolute and effective fights ever waged by brave men against
overwhelming odds in the face of certain death.
Soon after the close of the second war with Great Britain, parties of
American settlers began to press forward into the rich, sparsely settled
territory of Texas, then a portion of Mexico. At first these immigrants
were well received, but the Mexicans speedily grew jealous of them, and
oppressed them in various ways. In consequence, when the settlers
felt themselves strong enough, they revolted against Mexican rule, and
declared Texas to be an independent republic. Immediately Santa Anna,
the Dictator of Mexico, gathered a large army, and invaded Texas. The
slender forces of the settlers were unable to meet his hosts. They were
pressed back by the Mexicans, and dreadful atrocities were committed
by Santa Anna and his lieutenants. In the United States there was great
enthusiasm for the struggling Texans, and many bold backwoodsmen and
Indian-fighters swarmed to their help. Among them the two most famous
were Sam Houston and David Crockett. Houston was the younger man, and
had already led an extraordinary and varied career. When a mere lad he
had run away from home and joined the Cherokees, living among them for
some years; then he returned home. He had fought under Andrew Jackson in
his campaigns against the Creeks, and had been severely wounded at the
battle of the Horse-shoe Bend. He had risen to the highest political
honors in his State, becoming governor of Tennessee; and then suddenly,
in a fit of moody longing for the life of the wilderness, he gave up his
governorship, left the State, and crossed the Mississippi, going to join
his old comrades, the Cherokees, in their new home along the waters
of the Arkansas. Here he dressed, lived, fought, hunted, and drank
precisely like any Indian, becoming one of the chiefs.
David Crockett was born soon after the Revolutionary War. He, too, had
taken part under Jackson in the campaigns against the Creeks, and had
afterward become a man of mark in Tennessee, and gone to Congress as a
Whig; but he had quarreled with Jackson, and been beaten for Congress,
and in his disgust he left the State and decided to join the Texans. He
was the most famous rifle-shot in all the United States, and the most
successful hunter, so that his skill was a proverb all along the border.
David Crockett journeyed south, by boat and horse, making his way
steadily toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging their
life-and-death fight. Texas was a wild place in those days, and the old
hunter had more than one hairbreadth escape from Indians, desperadoes,
and savage beasts, ere he got to the neighborhood of San Antonio, and
joined another adventurer, a bee-hunter, bent on the same errand as
himself. The two had been in ignorance of exactly what the situation in
Texas was; but they soon found that the Mexican army was marching toward
San Antonio, whither they were going. Near the town was an old Spanish
fort, the Alamo, in which the hundred and fifty American defenders of
the place had gathered. Santa Anna had four thousand troops with
him. The Alamo was a mere shell, utterly unable to withstand either a
bombardment or a regular assault. It was evident, therefore, that those
within it would be in the utmost jeopardy if the place were seriously
assaulted, but old Crockett and his companion never wavered. They were
fearless and resolute, and masters of woodcraft, and they managed to
slip through the Mexican lines and join the defenders within the walls.
The bravest, the hardiest, the most reckless men of the border were
there; among them were Colonel Travis, the commander of the fort, and
Bowie, the inventor of the famous bowie-knife. They were a wild and
ill-disciplined band, little used to restraint or control, but they were
men of iron courage and great bodily powers, skilled in the use of their
weapons, and ready to meet with stern and uncomplaining indifference
whatever doom fate might have in store for them.
Soon Santa Anna approached with his army, took possession of the town,
and besieged the fort. The defenders knew there was scarcely a chance
of rescue, and that it was hopeless to expect that one hundred and
fifty men, behind defenses so weak, could beat off four thousand trained
soldiers, well armed and provided with heavy artillery; but they had no
idea of flinching, and made a desperate defense. The days went by, and
no help came, while Santa Anna got ready his lines, and began a furious
cannonade. His gunners were unskilled, however, and he had to serve the
guns from a distance; for when they were pushed nearer, the American
riflemen crept forward under cover, and picked off the artillerymen.
Old Crockett thus killed five men at one gun. But, by degrees, the
bombardment told. The walls of the Alamo were battered and riddled; and
when they had been breached so as to afford no obstacle to the rush of
his soldiers, Santa Anna commanded that they be stormed.
The storm took place on March 6, 1836. The Mexican troops came on well
and steadily, breaking through the outer defenses at every point,
for the lines were too long to be manned by the few Americans. The
frontiersmen then retreated to the inner building, and a desperate
hand-to-hand conflict followed, the Mexicans thronging in, shooting
the Americans with their muskets, and thrusting at them with lance and
bayonet, while the Americans, after firing their long rifles, clubbed
them, and fought desperately, one against many; and they also used their
bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect. The fight reeled to and
fro between the shattered walls, each American the center of a group of
foes; but, for all their strength and their wild fighting courage, the
defenders were too few, and the struggle could have but one end. One by
one the tall riflemen succumbed, after repeated thrusts with bayonet and
lance, until but three or four were left. Colonel Travis, the commander,
was among them; and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting
disease, but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in
the final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with
his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then these
fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy Crockett.
Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his back to the wall,
ringed around by the bodies of the men he had slain. So desperate was
the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who thronged round about him
were beaten back for the moment, and no one dared to run in upon him.
Accordingly, while the lancers held him where he was, for, weakened
by wounds and loss of blood, he could not break through them, the
musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined
to give him mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he
was taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his fate
cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was left alive.
At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over. Every one of the
hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in death. Yet they died well
avenged, for four times their number fell at their hands in the battle.
Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his bloody and
hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling Texas plains, going
north through the Indian Territory, had told Houston that the Texans
were up and were striving for their liberty. At once in Houston's mind
there kindled a longing to return to the men of his race at the time of
their need. Mounting his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was
hailed by the Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their
forces, eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto,
he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of "Remember the
Alamo." Almost immediately, the Mexicans were overthrown with terrible
slaughter; Santa Anna himself was captured, and the freedom of Texas was
won at a blow.
HAMPTON ROADS
Then far away to the south uprose
A little feather of snow-white smoke,
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes
Was steadily steering its course
To try the force
Of our ribs of oak.
Down upon us heavily runs,
Silent and sullen, the floating fort;
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,
And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath,
From her open port.
* * *
Ho! brave hearts, that went down in the seas!
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,
Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
Shall be one again,
And without a seam!
--Longfellow
The naval battles of the Civil War possess an immense importance,
because they mark the line of cleavage between naval warfare under the
old, and naval warfare under the new, conditions. The ships with
which Hull and Decatur and McDonough won glory in the war of 1812 were
essentially like those with which Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher had
harried the Spanish armadas two centuries and a half earlier. They were
wooden sailing-vessels, carrying many guns mounted in broadside, like
those of De Ruyter and Tromp, of Blake and Nelson. Throughout
this period all the great admirals, all the famous single-ship
fighters,--whose skill reached its highest expression in our own
navy during the war of 1812,--commanded craft built and armed in a
substantially similar manner, and fought with the same weapons and under
much the same conditions. But in the Civil War weapons and methods
were introduced which caused a revolution greater even than that which
divided the sailing-ship from the galley. The use of steam, the casing of
ships in iron armor, and the employment of the torpedo, the ram, and the
gun of high power, produced such radically new types that the old
ships of the line became at one stroke as antiquated as the galleys of
Hamilcar or Alcibiades. Some of these new engines of destruction were
invented, and all were for the first time tried in actual combat, during
our own Civil War. The first occasion on which any of the new methods
were thoroughly tested was attended by incidents which made it one of
the most striking of naval battles.
In Chesapeake Bay, near Hampton Roads, the United States had collected
a fleet of wooden ships; some of them old-style sailing-vessels, others
steamers. The Confederates were known to be building a great iron-clad
ram, and the wooden vessels were eagerly watching for her appearance
when she should come out of Gosport Harbor. Her powers and capacity
were utterly unknown. She was made out of the former United States
steam-frigate Merrimac, cut down so as to make her fore and aft decks
nearly flat, and not much above the water, while the guns were mounted
in a covered central battery, with sloping flanks. Her sides, deck,
and battery were coated with iron, and she was armed with formidable
rifle-guns, and, most important of all, with a steel ram thrust out
under water forward from her bow. She was commanded by a gallant and
efficient officer, Captain Buchanan.
It was March 8, 1862, when the ram at last made her appearance within
sight of the Union fleet. The day was calm and very clear, so that the
throngs of spectators on shore could see every feature of the battle.
With the great ram came three light gunboats, all of which took part in
the action, harassing the vessels which she assailed; but they were
not factors of importance in the fight. On the Union side the vessels
nearest were the sailing-ships Cumberland and Congress, and the
steam-frigate Minnesota. The Congress and Cumberland were anchored not
far from each other; the Minnesota got aground, and was some distance
off. Owing to the currents and shoals and the lack of wind, no other
vessel was able to get up in time to take a part in the fight.
As soon as the ram appeared, out of the harbor, she turned and steamed
toward the Congress and the Cumberland, the black smoke rising from her
funnels, and the great ripples running from each side of her iron prow
as she drove steadily through the still waters. On board of the Congress
and Cumberland there was eager anticipation, but not a particle of fear.
The officers in command, Captain Smith and Lieutenant Morris, were two
of the most gallant men in a service where gallantry has always been
too common to need special comment. The crews were composed of veterans,
well trained, self-confident, and proud beyond measure of the flag whose
honor they upheld. The guns were run out, and the men stood at quarters,
while the officers eagerly conned the approaching ironclad. The Congress
was the first to open fire; and, as her volleys flew, the men on the
Cumberland were astounded to see the cannon-shot bound off the sloping
sides of the ram as hailstones bound from a windowpane. The ram
answered, and her rifle-shells tore the sides of the Congress; but for
her first victim she aimed at the Cumberland, and, firing her bow
guns, came straight as an arrow at the little sloop-of-war, which lay
broadside to her.
It was an absolutely hopeless struggle. The Cumberland was a
sailing-ship, at anchor, with wooden sides, and a battery of light guns.
Against the formidable steam ironclad, with her heavy rifles and steel
ram, she was as powerless as if she had been a rowboat; and from the
moment the men saw the cannon-shot bound from the ram's sides they knew
they were doomed. But none of them flinched. Once and again they fired
their guns full against the approaching ram, and in response received a
few shells from the great bow-rifles of the latter. Then, forging
ahead, the Merrimac struck her antagonist with her steel prow, and the
sloop-of-war reeled and shuddered, and through the great rent in her
side the black water rushed. She foundered in a few minutes; but her
crew fought her to the last, cheering as they ran out the guns, and
sending shot after shot against the ram as the latter backed off after
delivering her blow. The rush of the water soon swamped the lower decks,
but the men above continued to serve their guns until the upper deck
also was awash, and the vessel had not ten seconds of life left. Then,
with her flags flying, her men cheering, and her guns firing, the
Cumberland sank. It was shallow where she settled down, so that her
masts remained above the water. The glorious flag for which the brave
men aboard her had died flew proudly in the wind all that day, while the
fight went on, and throughout the night; and next morning it was still
streaming over the beautiful bay, to mark the resting-place of as
gallant a vessel as ever sailed or fought on the high seas.
After the Cumberland sank, the ram turned her attention to the Congress.
Finding it difficult to get to her in the shoal water, she began to
knock her to pieces with her great rifle-guns. The unequal fight between
the ironclad and the wooden ship lasted for perhaps half an hour. By
that time the commander of the Congress had been killed, and her
decks looked like a slaughterhouse. She was utterly unable to make
any impression on her foe, and finally she took fire and blew up. The
Minnesota was the third victim marked for destruction, and the Merrimac
began the attack upon her at once; but it was getting very late, and as
the water was shoal and she could not get close, the rain finally
drew back to her anchorage, to wait until next day before renewing and
completing her work of destruction.
All that night there was the wildest exultation among the Confederates,
while the gloom and panic of the Union men cannot be described. It
was evident that the United States ships-of-war were as helpless as
cockle-shells against their iron-clad foe, and there was no question
but that she could destroy the whole fleet with ease and with absolute
impunity. This meant not only the breaking of the blockade; but the
sweeping away at one blow of the North's naval supremacy, which was
indispensable to the success of the war for the Union. It is small
wonder that during that night the wisest and bravest should have almost
despaired.
But in the hour of the nation's greatest need a champion suddenly
appeared, in time to play the last scene in this great drama of sea
warfare. The North, too, had been trying its hand at building ironclads.
The most successful of them was the little Monitor, a flat-decked, low,
turreted, ironclad, armed with a couple of heavy guns. She was the first
experiment of her kind, and her absolutely flat surface, nearly level
with the water, her revolving turret, and her utter unlikeness to any
pre-existing naval type, had made her an object of mirth among most
practical seamen; but her inventor, Ericsson, was not disheartened in
the least by the jeers. Under the command of a gallant naval officer,
Captain Worden, she was sent South from New York, and though she almost
foundered in a gale she managed to weather it, and reached the scene
of the battle at Hampton Roads at the moment when her presence was
all-important.
Early the following morning the Merrimac, now under Captain Jones (for
Buchanan had been wounded), again steamed forth to take up the work she
had so well begun and to destroy the Union fleet. She steered straight
for the Minnesota; but when she was almost there, to her astonishment
a strange-looking little craft advanced from the side of the big
wooden frigate and boldly barred the Merrimac's path. For a moment the
Confederates could hardly believe their eyes. The Monitor was tiny,
compared to their ship, for she was not one fifth the size, and her
queer appearance made them look at their new foe with contempt; but the
first shock of battle did away with this feeling. The Merrimac turned on
her foe her rifleguns, intending to blow her out of the water, but
the shot glanced from the thick iron turret of the Monitor. Then the
Monitors guns opened fire, and as the great balls struck the sides of
the ram her plates started and her timbers gave. Had the Monitor been
such a vessel as those of her type produced later in the war, the ram
would have been sunk then and there; but as it was her shot were not
quite heavy enough to pierce the iron walls. Around and around the two
strange combatants hovered, their guns bellowing without cessation,
while the men on the frigates and on shore watched the result with
breathless interest. Neither the Merrimac nor the Monitor could dispose
of its antagonist. The ram's guns could not damage the turret, and the
Monitor was able dexterously to avoid the stroke of the formidable
prow. On the other hand, the shot of the Monitor could not penetrate the
Merrimac's tough sides. Accordingly, fierce though the struggle was, and
much though there was that hinged on it, it was not bloody in character.
The Merrimac could neither destroy nor evade the Monitor. She could not
sink her when she tried to, and when she abandoned her and turned to
attack one of the other wooden vessels, the little turreted ship was
thrown across her path, so that the fight had to be renewed. Both sides
grew thoroughly exhausted, and finally the battle ceased by mutual
consent.
Nothing more could be done. The ram was badly damaged, and there was
no help for her save to put back to the port whence she had come. Twice
afterward she came out, but neither time did she come near enough to the
Monitor to attack her, and the latter could not move off where she would
cease to protect the wooden vessels. The ram was ultimately blown up by
the Confederates on the advance of the Union army.
Tactically, the fight was a drawn battle--neither ship being able to
damage the other, and both ships, being fought to a standstill; but
the moral and material effects were wholly in favor of the Monitor. Her
victory was hailed with exultant joy throughout the whole Union, and
exercised a correspondingly depressing effect in the Confederacy; while
every naval man throughout the world, who possessed eyes to see, saw
that the fight in Hampton Roads had inaugurated a new era in ocean
warfare, and that the Monitor and Merrimac, which had waged so gallant
and so terrible a battle, were the first ships of the new era, and that
as such their names would be forever famous.
THE FLAG-BEARER
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never beat retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat;
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
--Julia Ward Howe.
In no war since the close of the great Napoleonic struggles has the
fighting been so obstinate and bloody as in the Civil War. Much has
been said in song and story of the resolute courage of the Guards
at Inkerman, of the charge of the Light Brigade, and of the terrible
fighting and loss of the German armies at Mars La Tour and Gravelotte.
The praise bestowed, upon the British and Germans for their valor, and
for the loss that proved their valor, was well deserved; but there were
over one hundred and twenty regiments, Union and Confederate, each of
which, in some one battle of the Civil War, suffered a greater loss than
any English regiment at Inkerman or at any other battle in the Crimea,
a greater loss than was suffered by any German regiment at Gravelotte or
at any other battle of the Franco-Prussian war. No European regiment in
any recent struggle has suffered such losses as at Gettysburg befell the
1st Minnesota, when 82 per cent. of the officers and men were killed and
wounded; or the 141st Pennsylvania, which lost 76 per cent.; or the 26th
North Carolina, which lost 72 per cent.; such as at the second battle
of Manassas befell the 101st New York, which lost 74 per cent., and
the 21st Georgia, which lost 76 per cent. At Cold Harbor the 25th
Massachusetts lost 70 per cent., and the 10th Tennessee at Chickamauga
68 per cent.; while at Shiloh the 9th Illinois lost 63 per cent., and
the 6th Mississippi 70 per cent.; and at Antietam the 1st Texas lost
82 percent. The loss of the Light Brigade in killed and wounded in its
famous charge at Balaklava was but 37 per cent.
These figures show the terrible punishment endured by these
regiments, chosen at random from the head of the list which shows the
slaughter-roll of the Civil War. Yet the shattered remnants of each
regiment preserved their organization, and many of the severest losses
were incurred in the hour of triumph, and not of disaster. Thus, the 1st
Minnesota, at Gettysburg, suffered its appalling loss while charging a
greatly superior force, which it drove before it; and the little huddle
of wounded and unwounded men who survived their victorious charge
actually kept both the flag they had captured and the ground from which
they had driven their foes.
A number of the Continental regiments under Washington, Greene, and
Wayne did valiant fighting and endured heavy punishment. Several of the
regiments raised on the northern frontier in 1814 showed, under Brown
and Scott, that they were able to meet the best troops of Britain on
equal terms in the open, and even to overmatch them in fair fight with
the bayonet. The regiments which, in the Mexican war, under the lead of
Taylor, captured Monterey, and beat back Santa Anna at Buena Vista, or
which, with Scott as commander, stormed Molino Del Rey and Chapultepec,
proved their ability to bear terrible loss, to wrest victory from
overwhelming numbers, and to carry by open assault positions of
formidable strength held by a veteran army. But in none of these three
wars was the fighting so resolute and bloody as in the Civil War.
Countless deeds of heroism were performed by Northerner and by
Southerner, by officer and by private, in every year of the great
struggle. The immense majority of these deeds went unrecorded, and
were known to few beyond the immediate participants. Of those that were
noticed it would be impossible even to make a dry catalogue in ten such
volumes as this. All that can be done is to choose out two or three acts
of heroism, not as exceptions, but as examples of hundreds of others.
The times of war are iron times, and bring out all that is best as well
as all that is basest in the human heart. In a full recital of the civil
war, as of every other great conflict, there would stand out in naked
relief feats of wonderful daring and self-devotion, and, mixed among
them, deeds of cowardice, of treachery, of barbarous brutality. Sadder
still, such a recital would show strange contrasts in the careers of
individual men, men who at one time acted well and nobly, and at another
time ill and basely. The ugly truths must not be blinked, and the
lessons they teach should be set forth by every historian, and learned
by every statesman and soldier; but, for our good fortune, the lessons
best worth learning in the nation's past are lessons of heroism.
From immemorial time the armies of every warlike people have set the
highest value upon the standards they bore to battle. To guard one's own
flag against capture is the pride, to capture the flag of one's enemy
the ambition, of every valiant soldier. In consequence, in every war
between peoples of good military record, feats of daring performed
by color-bearers are honorably common. The Civil War was full of such
incidents. Out of very many two or three may be mentioned as noteworthy.
One occurred at Fredericksburg on the day when half the brigades
of Meagher and Caldwell lay on the bloody slope leading up to the
Confederate entrenchments. Among the assaulting regiments was the 5th
New Hampshire, and it lost one hundred and eighty-six out of three
hundred men who made the charge. The survivors fell sullenly back behind
a fence, within easy range of the Confederate rifle-pits. Just before
reaching it the last of the color guard was shot, and the flag fell
in the open. A Captain Perry instantly ran out to rescue it, and as he
reached it was shot through the heart; another, Captain Murray, made
the same attempt and was also killed; and so was a third, Moore. Several
private soldiers met a like fate. They were all killed close to the
flag, and their dead bodies fell across one another. Taking advantage of
this breastwork, Lieutenant Nettleton crawled from behind the fence to
the colors, seized them, and bore back the blood-won trophy.
Another took place at Gaines' Mill, where Gregg's 1st South Carolina
formed part of the attacking force. The resistance was desperate, and
the fury of the assault unsurpassed. At one point it fell to the lot of
this regiment to bear the brunt of carrying a certain strong position.
Moving forward at a run, the South Carolinians were swept by a fierce
and searching fire. Young James Taylor, a lad of sixteen, was carrying
the flag, and was killed after being shot down three times, twice rising
and struggling onward with the colors. The third time he fell the flag
was seized by George Cotchet, and when he, in turn, fell, by Shubrick
Hayne. Hayne was also struck down almost immediately, and the fourth
lad, for none of them were over twenty years old, grasped the colors,
and fell mortally wounded across the body of his friend. The fifth,
Gadsden Holmes, was pierced with no less than seven balls. The sixth
man, Dominick Spellman, more fortunate, but not less brave, bore the
flag throughout the rest of the battle.
Yet another occurred at Antietam. The 7th Maine, then under the command
of Major T. W. Hyde, was one of the hundreds of regiments that on many
hard-fought fields established a reputation for dash and unyielding
endurance. Toward the early part of the day at Antietam it merely took
its share in the charging and long-range firing, together with the New
York and Vermont regiments which were its immediate neighbors in the
line. The fighting was very heavy. In one of the charges, the Maine men
passed over what had been a Confederate regiment. The gray-clad soldiers
were lying, both ranks, privates and officers, as they fell, for so many
had been killed or disabled that it seemed as if the whole regiment was
prone in death.
Much of the time the Maine men lay on the battle-field, hugging the
ground, under a heavy artillery fire, but beyond the reach of ordinary
musketry. One of the privates, named Knox, was a wonderful shot, and had
received permission to use his own special rifle, a weapon accurately
sighted for very long range. While the regiment thus lay under the storm
of shot and shell, he asked leave to go to the front; and for an hour
afterward his companions heard his rifle crack every few minutes. Major
Hyde finally, from curiosity, crept forward to see what he was doing,
and found that he had driven every man away from one section of a
Confederate battery, tumbling over gunner after gunner as they came
forward to fire. One of his victims was a general officer, whose horse
he killed. At the end of an hour or so, a piece of shell took off the
breech of his pet rifle, and he returned disconsolate; but after a few
minutes he gathered three rifles that were left by wounded men, and went
back again to his work.
At five o'clock in the afternoon the regiment was suddenly called upon
to undertake a hopeless charge, owing to the blunder of the brigade
commander, who was a gallant veteran of the Mexican war, but who was
also given to drink. Opposite the Union lines at this point were some
haystacks, near a group of farm buildings. They were right in the center
of the Confederate position, and sharpshooters stationed among them were
picking off the Union gunners. The brigadier, thinking that they were
held by but a few skirmishers, rode to where the 7th Maine was lying
on the ground, and said: "Major Hyde, take your regiment and drive the
enemy from those trees and buildings." Hyde saluted, and said that he
had seen a large force of rebels go in among the buildings, probably two
brigades in all. The brigadier answered, "Are you afraid to go, sir?"
and repeated the order emphatically. "Give the order, so the regiment
can hear it, and we are ready, sir," said Hyde. This was done, and
"Attention" brought every man to his feet. With the regiment were two
young boys who carried the marking guidons, and Hyde ordered these to
the rear. They pretended to go, but as soon as the regiment charged came
along with it. One of them lost his arm, and the other was killed on the
field. The colors were carried by the color corporal, Harry Campbell.
Hyde gave the orders to left face and forward and the Maine men marched
out in front of a Vermont regiment which lay beside them; then, facing
to the front, they crossed a sunken road, which was so filled with dead
and wounded Confederates that Hyde's horse had to step on them to get
over.
Once across, they stopped for a moment in the trampled corn to
straighten the line, and then charged toward the right of the barns.
On they went at the double-quick, fifteen skirmishers ahead under
Lieutenant Butler, Major Hyde on the right on his Virginia thoroughbred,
and Adjutant Haskell to the left on a big white horse. The latter was
shot down at once, as was his horse, and Hyde rode round in front of the
regiment just in time to see a long line of men in gray rise from behind
the stone wall of the Hagerstown pike, which was to their right, and
pour in a volley; but it mostly went too high. He then ordered his men
to left oblique.
Just as they were abreast a hill to the right of the barns, Hyde, being
some twenty feet ahead, looked over its top and saw several regiments of
Confederates, jammed close together and waiting at the ready; so he gave
the order left flank, and, still at the double quick, took his column
past the barns and buildings toward an orchard on the hither side,
hoping that he could get them back before they were cut off, for they
were faced by ten times their number. By going through the orchard he
expected to be able to take advantage of a hollow, and partially escape
the destructive flank fire on his return.
To hope to keep the barns from which they had driven the sharpshooters
was vain, for the single Maine regiment found itself opposed to portions
of no less than four Confederate brigades, at least a dozen regiments
all told. When the men got to the orchard fence, Sergeant Benson
wrenched apart the tall pickets to let through Hyde's horse. While he
was doing this, a shot struck his haversack, and the men all laughed at
the sight of the flying hardtack.
Going into the orchard there was a rise of ground, and the Confederates
fired several volleys at the Maine men, and then charged them. Hyde's
horse was twice wounded, but was still able to go on.
No sooner were the men in blue beyond the fence than they got into
line and met the Confederates, as they came crowding behind, with
a slaughtering fire, and then charged, driving them back. The color
corporal was still carrying the colors, though one of his arms had been
broken; but when half way through the orchard, Hyde heard him call out
as he fell, and turned back to save the colors, if possible.
The apple-trees were short and thick, and he could not see much, and the
Confederates speedily got between him and his men. Immediately, with the
cry of "Rally, boys, to save the Major," back surged the regiment, and
a volley at arm's length again destroyed all the foremost of their
pursuers; so they rescued both their commander and the flag, which was
carried off by Corporal Ring.
Hyde then formed the regiment on the colors, sixty-eight men all told,
out of two hundred and forty who had begun the charge, and they slowly
marched back toward their place in the Union line, while the New Yorkers
and Vermonters rose from the ground cheering and waving their hats.
Next day, when the Confederates had retired a little from the field,
the color corporal, Campbell, was found in the orchard, dead, propped up
against a tree, with his half-smoked pipe beside him.
THE DEATH OF STONEWALL JACKSON
Like a servant of the Lord, with his bible and his sword,
Our general rode along us, to form us for the fight.
--Macaulay.
The Civil War has left, as all wars of brother against brother must
leave, terrible and heartrending memories; but there remains as an
offset the glory which has accrued to the nation by the countless deeds
of heroism performed by both sides in the struggle. The captains and the
armies that, after long years of dreary campaigning and bloody, stubborn
fighting, brought the war to a close, have left us more than a reunited
realm. North and South, all Americans, now have a common fund of
glorious memories. We are the richer for each grim campaign, for each
hard-fought battle. We are the richer for valor displayed alike by
those who fought so valiantly for the right, and by those who, no less
valiantly, fought for what they deemed the right. We have in us nobler
capacities for what is great and good because of the infinite woe and
suffering, and because of the splendid ultimate triumph. We hold that it
was vital to the welfare, not only of our people on this continent, but
of the whole human race, that the Union should be preserved and slavery
abolished; that one flag should fly from the Great Lakes to the Rio
Grande; that we should all be free in fact as well as in name, and that
the United States should stand as one nation--the greatest nation on the
earth. But we recognize gladly that, South as well as North, when the
fight was once on, the leaders of the armies, and the soldiers whom they
led, displayed the same qualities of daring and steadfast courage, of
disinterested loyalty and enthusiasm, and of high devotion to an ideal.
The greatest general of the South was Lee, and his greatest lieutenant
was Jackson. Both were Virginians, and both were strongly opposed to
disunion. Lee went so far as to deny the right of secession, while
Jackson insisted that the South ought to try to get its rights inside
the Union, and not outside. But when Virginia joined the Southern
Confederacy, and the war had actually begun, both men cast their lot
with the South.
It is often said that the Civil War was in one sense a repetition of
the old struggle between the Puritan and the Cavalier; but Puritan and
Cavalier types were common to the two armies. In dash and light-hearted
daring, Custer and Kearney stood as conspicuous as Stuart and Morgan;
and, on the other hand, no Northern general approached the Roundhead
type--the type of the stern, religious warriors who fought under
Cromwell--so closely as Stonewall Jackson. He was a man of intense
religious conviction, who carried into every thought and deed of his
daily life the precepts of the faith he cherished. He was a tender and
loving husband and father, kindhearted and gentle to all with whom he
was brought in contact; yet in the times that tried men's souls, he
proved not only a commander of genius, but a fighter of iron will and
temper, who joyed in the battle, and always showed at his best when
the danger was greatest. The vein of fanaticism that ran through his
character helped to render him a terrible opponent. He knew no such word
as falter, and when he had once put his hand to a piece of work, he did
it thoroughly and with all his heart. It was quite in keeping with his
character that this gentle, high-minded, and religious man should, early
in the contest, have proposed to hoist the black flag, neither take nor
give quarter, and make the war one of extermination. No such policy was
practical in the nineteenth century and in the American Republic; but it
would have seemed quite natural and proper to Jackson's ancestors, the
grim Scotch-Irish, who defended Londonderry against the forces of the
Stuart king, or to their forefathers, the Covenanters of Scotland, and
the Puritans who in England rejoiced at the beheading of King Charles I.
In the first battle in which Jackson took part, the confused struggle at
Bull Run, he gained his name of Stonewall from the firmness with which
he kept his men to their work and repulsed the attack of the Union
troops. From that time until his death, less than two years afterward,
his career was one of brilliant and almost uninterrupted success;
whether serving with an independent command in the Valley, or acting
under Lee as his right arm in the pitched battles with McClellan, Pope,
and Burnside. Few generals as great as Lee have ever had as great a
lieutenant as Jackson. He was a master of strategy and tactics, fearless
of responsibility, able to instil into his men his own intense ardor
in battle, and so quick in his movements, so ready to march as well as
fight, that his troops were known to the rest of the army as the "foot
cavalry."
In the spring of 1863 Hooker had command of the Army of the Potomac.
Like McClellan, he was able to perfect the discipline of his forces
and to organize them, and as a division commander he was better
than McClellan, but he failed even more signally when given a great
independent command. He had under him 120,000 men when, toward the
end of April, he prepared to attack Lee's army, which was but half as
strong.
The Union army lay opposite Fredericksburg, looking at the fortified
heights where they had received so bloody a repulse at the beginning of
the winter. Hooker decided to distract the attention of the Confederates
by letting a small portion of his force, under General Sedgwick, attack
Fredericksburg, while he himself took the bulk of the army across the
river to the right hand so as to crush Lee by an assault on his flank.
All went well at the beginning, and on the first of May Hooker found
himself at Chancellorsville, face-to-face with the bulk of Lee's
forces; and Sedgwick, crossing the river and charging with the utmost
determination, had driven out of Fredericksburg the Confederate division
of Early; but when Hooker found himself in front of Lee he hesitated,
faltered instead of pushing on, and allowed the consummate general to
whom he was opposed to take the initiative.
Lee fully realized his danger, and saw that his only chance was, first
to beat back Hooker, and then to turn and overwhelm Sedgwick, who was in
his rear. He consulted with Jackson, and Jackson begged to be allowed
to make one of his favorite flank attacks upon the Union army; attacks
which could have been successfully delivered only by a skilled and
resolute general, and by troops equally able to march and to fight. Lee
consented, and Jackson at once made off. The country was thickly covered
with a forest of rather small growth, for it was a wild region, in which
there was still plenty of game. Shielded by the forest, Jackson marched
his gray columns rapidly to the left along the narrow country roads
until he was square on the flank of the Union right wing, which was held
by the Eleventh Corps, under Howard. The Union scouts got track of the
movement and reported it at headquarters, but the Union generals thought
the Confederates were retreating; and when finally the scouts brought
word to Howard that he was menaced by a flank attack he paid no heed to
the information, and actually let his whole corps be surprised in broad
daylight. Yet all the while the battle was going on elsewhere, and
Berdan's sharpshooters had surrounded and captured a Georgia regiment,
from which information was received showing definitely that Jackson was
not retreating, and must be preparing to strike a heavy blow.
The Eleventh Corps had not the slightest idea that it was about to be
assailed. The men were not even in line. Many of them had stacked their
muskets and were lounging about, some playing cards, others cooking
supper, intermingled with the pack-mules and beef cattle. While they
were thus utterly unprepared Jackson's gray-clad veterans pushed
straight through the forest and rushed fiercely to the attack. The first
notice the troops of the Eleventh Corps received did not come from the
pickets, but from the deer, rabbits and foxes which, fleeing from their
coverts at the approach of the Confederates, suddenly came running over
and into the Union lines. In another minute the frightened pickets came
tumbling back, and right behind them came the long files of charging,
yelling Confederates; With one fierce rush Jackson's men swept over
the Union lines, and at a blow the Eleventh Corps became a horde of
panicstruck fugitives. Some of the regiments resisted for a few moments,
and then they too were carried away in the flight.
For a while it seemed as if the whole army would be swept off; but
Hooker and his subordinates exerted every effort to restore order. It
was imperative to gain time so that the untouched portions of the army
could form across the line of the Confederate advance.
Keenan's regiment of Pennsylvania cavalry, but four hundred sabers
strong, was accordingly sent full against the front of the ten thousand
victorious Confederates.
Keenan himself fell, pierced by bayonets, and the charge was repulsed
at once; but a few priceless moments had been saved, and Pleasanton had
been given time to post twenty-two guns, loaded with double canister,
where they would bear upon the enemy.
The Confederates advanced in a dense mass, yelling and cheering, and the
discharge of the guns fairly blew them back across the work's they had
just taken. Again they charged, and again were driven back; and when the
battle once more began the Union reinforcements had arrived.
It was about this time that Jackson himself was mortally wounded. He had
been leading and urging on the advance of his men, cheering them with
voice and gesture, his pale face flushed with joy and excitement,
while from time to time as he sat on his horse he took off his hat and,
looking upward, thanked heaven for the victory it had vouchsafed him.
As darkness drew near he was in the front, where friend and foe were
mingled in almost inextricable confusion. He and his staff were fired
at, at close range, by the Union troops, and, as they turned, were fired
at again, through a mistake, by the Confederates behind them. Jackson
fell, struck in several places. He was put in a litter and carried back;
but he never lost consciousness, and when one of his generals complained
of the terrible effect of the Union cannonade he answered:
"You must hold your ground."
For several days he lingered, hearing how Lee beat Hooker, in detail,
and forced him back across the river. Then the old Puritan died. At the
end his mind wandered, and he thought he was again commanding in battle,
and his last words were.
"Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade."
Thus perished Stonewall Jackson, one of the ablest of soldiers and one
of the most upright of men, in the last of his many triumphs.
THE CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG
For the Lord
On the whirlwind is abroad;
In the earthquake he has spoken;
He has smitten with his thunder
The iron walls asunder,
And the gates of brass are broken!
--Whittier
With bray of the trumpet,
And roll of the drum,
And keen ring of bugle
The cavalry come:
Sharp clank the steel scabbards,
The bridle-chains ring,
And foam from red nostrils
The wild chargers fling!
Tramp, tramp o'er the greensward
That quivers below,
Scarce held by the curb bit
The fierce horses go!
And the grim-visaged colonel,
With ear-rending shout,
Peals forth to the squadrons
The order, "Trot Out"!
--Francis A. Durivage.
The battle of Chancellorsville marked the zenith of Confederate good
fortune. Immediately afterward, in June, 1863, Lee led the victorious
army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania. The South was now the
invader, not the invaded, and its heart beat proudly with hopes of
success; but these hopes went down in bloody wreck on July 4, when word
was sent to the world that the high valor of Virginia had failed at last
on the field of Gettysburg, and that in the far West Vicksburg had been
taken by the army of the "silent soldier."
At Gettysburg Lee had under him some seventy thousand men, and his
opponent, Meade, about ninety thousand. Both armies were composed mainly
of seasoned veterans, trained to the highest point by campaign after
campaign and battle after battle; and there was nothing to choose
between them as to the fighting power of the rank and file. The Union
army was the larger, yet most of the time it stood on the defensive;
for the difference between the generals, Lee and Meade, was greater
than could be bridged by twenty thousand men. For three days the battle
raged. No other battle of recent time has been so obstinate and so
bloody. The victorious Union army lost a greater percentage in killed
and wounded than the allied armies of England, Germany, and the
Netherlands lost at Waterloo. Four of its seven corps suffered each a
greater relative loss than befell the world-renowned British infantry
on the day that saw the doom of the French emperor. The defeated
Confederates at Gettysburg lost, relatively, as many men as the defeated
French at Waterloo; but whereas the French army became a mere rabble,
Lee withdrew his formidable soldiery with their courage unbroken, and
their fighting power only diminished by their actual losses in the
field.
The decisive moment of the battle, and perhaps of the whole war, was
in the afternoon of the third day, when Lee sent forward his choicest
troops in a last effort to break the middle of the Union line. The
center of the attacking force was Pickett's division, the flower of the
Virginia infantry; but many other brigades took part in the assault, and
the column, all told, numbered over fifteen thousand men. At the same
time, the Confederates attacked the Union left to create a diversion.
The attack was preceded by a terrific cannonade, Lee gathering one
hundred and fifteen guns, and opening a fire on the center of the Union
line. In response, Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, and Tyler, of
the artillery reserves, gathered eighty guns on the crest of the gently
sloping hill, where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one till
three, the cannonade lasted, and the batteries on both sides suffered
severely. In both the Union and Confederate lines caissons were blown up
by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in
heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down
and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate
cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three
o'clock Hunt ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool, to be
ready for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had
silenced the hostile artillery, and for a few minutes their firing
continued; then, suddenly, it ceased, and there was a lull.
The men on the Union side who were not at the point directly menaced
peered anxiously across the space between the lines to watch the next
move, while the men in the divisions which it was certain were about
to be assaulted, lay hugging the ground and gripping their muskets,
excited, but confident and resolute. They saw the smoke clouds rise
slowly from the opposite crest, where the Confederate army lay, and the
sunlight glinted again on the long line of brass and iron guns which had
been hidden from view during the cannonade. In another moment, out of
the lifting smoke there appeared, beautiful and terrible, the picked
thousands of the Southern army coming on to the assault. They advanced
in three lines, each over a mile long, and in perfect order. Pickett's
Virginians held the center, with on their left the North Carolinians
of Pender and Pettigrew, and on their right the Alabama reg
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