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ON THE RAMPARTS.

Hurrah ! hurrah ! it is our home where'er thy colors Ay,
We win with thee the victory, or in thy shadow die ! "

THE STORY OF

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

IN WAR AND PEACE

ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS

AUTHOR OF

THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE STORY
OF THE AMERICAN SAILOR

BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY

BY
D. LOTHROP COMPANY.

PRESS OF BERWICK & SMITH,
BOSTON, MASS.

PREFACE.

THE simple story of the American soldier has never yet been told. Whoever
wishes to know him as a man must study numerous confusing episodes,
search through voluminous histories or sift out the man from the material in
the crowding records of innumerable battles.

This is more labor than the busy American cares to undertake, much as
he may delight in the records of American valor and American endeavor.
It is to attempt this for him, to draw from the mass of material already in
print the character and achievements of the fighting man of America even
from the earliest times and to present them in consecutive and connected
narrative that this book has been undertaken.

The description of battles and the causes of wars have not been entered
into. These may be found and studied in detail in any one of the many
excellent histories of the United States with which the libraries and homes of
America abound. In this book the American soldier as an individual is
depicted for the enlightenment and inspiration of Americans young and old.

War is a terrible necessity. Looked at from the standpoint of humanity
there is about it neither picturesqueness, nobility, romance nor delight ; it is
but the emphasis of man's inhumanity to man. And yet there is another
point of view. War has been in the history of the world alike civilizer, peace-
maker and uplifter. There could have been no progress for the race had the
element of strife been lacking. The efforts of those heroic souls

" Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight if need be to die,"

have rung the death-knell of tyranny and moved the world forward toward a
broader freedom.

And so, through all the years that have witnessed the evolution of the
American Republic, the American soldier has been a prime factor in this
development. His valor has illumined history, his steadfastness has redeemed
failure, his loyalty has glorified success. It is for us as Americans to remem-
ber our debt to the heroes of Louisburg and Quebec, of Lexington and
Saratoga and York town, of Lundy's Lane and New Orleans, of Shiloh and
Gettysburg and Appomattox. Without their efforts there would have been
no nation of freemen with sons ready to defend its honor and its life, there
would have been no America to need or to have a soldier

9617 '

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE ... II

CHAPTER II.

THE CONQUISTADORES . 32

CHAPTER III.

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN 56

CHAPTER IV.

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS 78

CHAPTER V.

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY 98

CHAPTER -VI.

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 121

CHAPTER VII.

A LEADERLESS WAR 143

CHAPTER VIII.

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR l66

CHAPTER IX.

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER . 190

vii

viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON .."......, 214

CHAPTER XI.
BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE 232

CHAPTER XII.

FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX 255

CHAPTER XIII.

BOOTS AND SADDLE 2/5

CHAPTER XIV.

THE VETERAN SOLDIER 204

THE ACHIEVEMENTS ()[ THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ...... 313

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER . . . 338

IN " DEX 345

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PACK
On the ramparts . L. J. Bridgman. Fronds.

Initial A war chief of the Mound- Builders . u

Indians attacking the mounds . 14

" lie halted and turned toward the enemy " . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 2\

" I >eath to the Mun-dua ! " . . . 27

Initial A Conquistador 32

DC Soto . . . .V ...... ... 34

" For Santiago and Spain ! " ... ..... 37

Coronado's march . L. J. Bridgman . . 43

The first white man . 53

The revolt of the train-bands tf.T. Smedlcy . . 60

Franklin as a private . . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 65

A muster of Colonial militia on Boston Common . . /'. T. Merrill . . 73

" They hung on the skirts of the retreat "... //'. SanJham . . 82

(ireen Mpimtain Boys on the march ... L. J. Bridgman . 85

The minute-men ... ... Ify. Sandham . . 87

" The British are coming ! " . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 93

The Cambridge elm ... 96

The battle of Oriskany 103

Marion and his men L. J. Bridgman . 105

Washington reviewing the Continental Army . 112

(f'ratti a fainting by J . S. Thompson.)

A garrison of two . L. J. Bridgman . . 117

" Peace by no means brought satisfaction " 123

\ > fees, no executions, no sheriff !" . 129

Sentinel and ploughman 133

The battle of Tippecanoe L. J. Bridgman . . 135

Anthony Wayne 139

Initial James Wilkeson . 143

At work on the fortifications in 1812 147

Captain Hindman at Fort George .... L. J. Bridgman . . 153

Packenham's charge 158

x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Andrew Jackson . 163

The backwoods soldiers 169

In the " anti-rent war " 182

Caricaturing the militia . . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 185

The battle of Buena Vista . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 2or

Marcy's perilous march . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . ' . 223

Good-by ............... 235

Our brother the enemy . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 241

In the recruiting office .........'... 246

Working for the soldiers 251

Initial The heat of battle ...... Kemblc .... 255

Stannard's charge at Gettysburg ........... 258

" Do you want to live forever ?"....... .... 263

Morgan's raiders 267

After the battle ........ Kemble . . . . 271

" The home-coming of the Southern soldiers " . . Kemble .... 278

Custer's last stand . . . . . . . L, J. Bridgman . . 283

Once more a civilian .............. 289

Initial G. A. R. Post 56 294

The story of the fight IV. 7'. Smedley . . 297

The old flag . L. J. Bridgman . . 303

THE STORY OF

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

THE STORY OF

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

CHAPTER I.

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

AWFCKieF

} of the

ITHIN that section of South-
ern Ohio where now stretches
the pleasant County of Ross,
there was enacted, a thousand
years ago, a strange and stir-
ring scene.

Against the almost inky
blackness of an autumn night
blazed up suddenly, with
flash and flare, the climbing
flame of a beacon fire. Its

fitful glare, swayed, now this way and now that, by the keen
November blasts, threw into sudden relief a looming watch-
tower and a long line of frowning battlements that, topped
with a ragged palisade, crested a sharply rising hill and
stretched far away into the encircling gloom.

Another and yet another flaming beacon answer the summons
of fire. One to the right and one to the left, and each a mile
or more away from the central beacon, they light up the inky

12 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

ni^ht. There conies a stir behind those walls of stone. The

sharp, quick rallying cry sounds out. A long line of hurry-
ing forms spring to the solid ramparts, which, rising to the
height of ten feet, and with a width of more than thirty
feet, afford standing place and fighting room for an army of
defenders.

Behind the palisades they gather, wary and watchful, with
bows drawn and spears poised for the fling. Schooled to the
ways of savage warfare the night surprise has found them
ready and alert. They live upon their arms.

From the watchers on the outer towers comes now the shrill
cry of warning. They see the foe. Beyond the flickering rim
of light a mass of crowding forms has been descried a host
of naked, be-feathered warriors, dodging here and there behind
the giant tree-trunks, or drawing stealthily nearer to the rising
wall of that towering hill-fort.

And now with a long, rising whoop of defiance that grows
to a terrible and blood-curdling yell as, one after another,
the myriad throats of that beleaguering host take up the
cry, the mass of naked warriors rush madly within the glare
of the beacon fire and discharge a storm of arrows against

o o

the palisades. From the watchful defenders comes an answer-
ing shower of arrows and of spears, while through the central
entrance swarm out in sudden sortie an attacking force of

stalwart fighting men.

These defenders of the beleaguered fort are dressed, each, in
a belted blouse of woven cloth that falls nearly to the knee.
The left arm of each long-haired soldier upholds a matted shield ;
his right hand firmly grasps a long and deadly spear. Their
bravest war-chief leads the sortie out. A leathern -buckler,
edged with silver and gleaming with its copper boss, protects

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 13

his breast; an iron sword, broad and sharply-pointed, waves
above his head in encouragement and command, and at his side
dangles its copper scabbard.

In close array and with something of martial order the sol-
diers of the fort dash on to the charge, following the feathered
plume and brandished sword of their gallant chief. Straight
into that host of beleaguering savages they dash, regardless of
the flying arrow and the whirling hatchet. Then, with yell and
whoop, true to the tactics of savage strife, the horde of naked
assailants disappears in the gloom only to swarm again before
some less defended point there to let fly their cloud of arrows
at the defenders behind the palisades.

Through the long night again and again are the assault and
the defense, the sortie, flight and fresh attack renewed. Then,
with the dawn, the beleaguering host fades away into the forest
fastnesses. And, as the morning sun rises above that Ohio hill,
the wearied warriors within the fortified town prostrate them-
selves toward the east and offer their thanks and sacrifices to
the great sun-god who has given them the victory.

Thus, then, as the curtain of the centuries is rolled aside for
us, do we obtain a glimpse of the earliest American soldier
the earliest, at least, worthy the name of soldier, who with some-
thing of order and the show and circumstance of war could do
such desperate battle in defense of fortress and of home. It
is, for us, an insight into the ways and manners of that long-
vanished and mysterious people known now but vaguely under
the uncertain name of the Mound Builders a name given
only because of the fast disappearing ruins of the marvelous
works of engineering skill that they so long and valiantly
defended against the ceaseless assaults of a relentless savagery.

The fighting-man is as old as the human race. The com-

I4 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

bative quality in men and nations has never lacked a represen-
tative. Wherever rivalry has been engendered or ambition has
had birth the man of war has ever and always resulted. " All
antiquity," says Renan, " was cruel." No nation exists that does
not rest on the foundation stones of strife and blood.

The American people form no exception to the rule. Their

INDIANS ATTACKING THE MOUNDS.

prehistoric story is written in strife and told in eras of conflict.
Evolved from savagery through long centuries of struggle and
of warfare the early Americans were ever at strife and grew,
apparently, only through the law of the survival of the fittest.

.-l.V OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 15

The stronsr man and the war chief were leaders and rulers in

our prehistoric days.

Invaded mound and rifled tumulus yield, always, among
their meager spoil the inevitable arrow-head of flint or chalced-
ony or hard obsidian. The shell-heaps and " kitchen-middens,"
that speak of a stage of human existence yet nearer to the
brute, disclose, amid their crumbling dust, hatchet and arrow-
head, dagger and knife of rough-hewed stone, while, alongside
the half-fossilized human remains that speak of an almost fab-
ulous antiquity for the American race, have been found the
stone war-club and the beveled lance-head that tell, ever, the
self-same story of conflict and of blood.

Dating thus backward to the very beginning of things the
American fighting-man has always been a product of American
soil. There can, however, but little real identity attach to his
story, until, from the uncertain testimony of the Western
mounds and from the more credible legends of the red Indian
who was the heir of all the ages that here preceded him we
obtain our first tangible impression of the early American
"soldier."

And a soldier this same red barbarian was, despite his forest
tactics and his ignorance of the real " art " of war.

War was the Indian's second nature; it was his business, his
pastime and his life. To attain the eagle's feather was his
highest aim ; to achieve the seat of the war chief by the suf-
frages of his comrades was the end of all ambition. The brave
at home was but a lazy fellow, scorning manual labor and deem-
ing toil as unsuited to one whose duty it was to become a hero.

Hut on the war-path and in the forest foray he was a far dif-
ferent creature. Then, no toil was too severe, no exertion was
too harsh. Intent on the surprise and capture of his hereditary

1 6 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

foeman he brought into play all his knowledge of woodcraft, all
his varied schooling in skill and cunning. With untiring
patience and with an ability that was almost ge'nius he read the
language of broken twig and trodden grass, of disturbed stream

o o o <-*

and of uncertain trail. The story of the intertribal wars of the
American Indian, could this but be fitly told, would possess as
much of courage, of endurance and of artifice as is to be found

O '

in any mythical tradition of Troy's ensanguined plains or in
the stirring legends of the Golden Fleece.

The Roman Horatius, swimming the turbid Tiber, is fully
paralleled by that brave Ojibway father who, burning to revenge
the death of his warrior son, flung himself " with his harness on
his back " into the vaster waters of the " Great Lake " (Supe-
rior) and swam a distance of over two miles, from the island of
La Pointe to the mainland, to join in the deadly battle that his
tribe was waging against the hostile Dakotas.

Ga-geh-djo-wa the Seneca the warrior with the heron's
plume in his crest is the fiery Henry of Navarre of the
American forests. The braves of the warlike Iroquois outshone
in valor and endurance the legionaries of a triumphant Caesar,
the spearmen of an Attila or an Alexander. " When you go
to war," runs the old Ute proverb, " every one you meet is an
enemy; kill all! " W T as not this, too, the policy of a Hannibal,
a Pompey and an Alaric ?

Among the Indians in the old days there were no impress-
ments, there were no conscripts. All were volunteers. The
American warrior was a free man.

But the enlistment was unique. The plan of operations was
according to a set form, as binding as were ever those of any
marshal of France or any paladin of Spain. Let this glimpse
at the military life of the Omahas show us the aboriginal

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 17

American soldier as he existed among the pre-Columbian tribes
of the higher order of intelligence.

Wa-ba-ska-ha the Ponka had suffered a great wrong at the
hands of the Pawnees. His honor and the honor of his tribe
demanded swiftest vengeance. But the initial move could
only come from \Va-ba-ska-ha himself. He and none other
must organize a war party.

With his face bedaubed with clay, to indicate his grief, Wa-
ba-ska-ha wandered among the lodges of his people. And as
he wandered he cried, thus and often, to W 7 a-kan-da, the protect-
ing spirit of the Omahas : " O, Wa-kan-da ! though others have
injured me, do thou help me ! " And the people, hearing his
appeal, said: "What! would you lead out a war-party, Wa-
ba-ska-ha ? Who has wronged you ? Let us hear your story.'*
And then he would recite his wrongs until all his tribe was ac-
quainted with his story.

Thereupon four messengers, friends of Wa-ba-ska-ha, ran as
criers through the village, calling out the name of each warrior
and bidding him come to an assembly. And when all the chiefs
and warriors were gathered together, the war-pipe was filled
and Wa-ba-ska-ha, stretching out his hands in appeal to his
people, said, '* Pity me, my brothers ; do for me as you think
best."

Then said the chief who filled the sacred pipe : " If you are
willing, O warriors, for us to take vengeance on the Pawnees,
put this pipe to your lips. If you are not willing, put it not to
your lips." And every man placed the sacred pipe to his lips
and smoked it. Thus they volunteered for the foray, and
\Ya-ba-ska-ha was glad. Then said the chief, " Now, make a
final decision. Say you, O warriors, when shall we take this
vengeance?" And one of the warriors made answer: "O

1 8 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

chief, the summer comes ; let us eat our food. When the leaves
fall we will take vengeance on the Pawnees."

This was the voice of the whole assembly. But Wa-ba-ska-ha
would not let the matter rest. Through the whole summer, by
day and by night, and even while they accompanied the people
on the summer hunt, his four messengers, or captains, were
continually crying out : " O Wa-kan-da ! pity me ! Help me in
that which keeps me angry." And they would fast through all
the day ; only in the night would they eat and drink.

Then, when the hunt was over, Wa-ba-ska-ha gave the war-
party a feast at his lodge ; and the four captains sat before the
entrance while two messengers sat on either side the door.
And as they ate and drank and sang the sacred war-songs they
determined upon what day the war-path should be taken. And
the five sacred bags, filled with red, blue and yellow feathers,
and consecrated to the war-srocl, were distributed amonf the

O O

chiefs or leaders of the clans of the tribe.

The day having been set the leaders of the war-party selected
their lieutenants and assigned to each of the chiefs of the tribe

a company of twenty warriors. Secretly and at night all the
warriors who had volunteered for the fight slipped out of their
lodges and each company met its chief at a rendezvous agreed
upon. Here they blackened their faces with charcoal or mud
and fasted for four days. And when the four days were past
they washed their faces, put plumes in their hair and gathering
around the principal captains watched the opening of the
sacred bags. Twenty policemen were appointed to keep the
stragglers to their duty and four scouts were sent ahead, keep-
ing from two to four miles in advance of the party.

Directly after breakfast the war-party commenced its march.
First came two of the minor captains, bearing the sacred bags.

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 19

A hundred yards behind marched the chiefs of the tribe, and
following them came the warriors. Frequent halts for rest
were made but, when resting, the party must always keep
close together to avoid surprise.

When the scouts had met the captains at a point agreed
upon and made their report as to traces of the enemy or of
game other scouts were appointed in their place and the march
went on.

So, under bright skies or beneath cloudy ones, the Ponkas
advanced toward their vengeance. Along the forest trails and
across the grassy meadows, ablaze with the nodding flowers of
the early fall, they pressed straight on. But neither sky nor
flower won any thought from them. And as they neared their
foe those who were hot for revenge grew still more fierce and
counseled their comrades to valorous deeds. Chief among
these was Wa-ba-ska-ha ; for as the warriors marched he
sprang in a furious dance before and around them, singing thus:

"O make us quicken our steps !

make us quicken our steps !
Ho, C) war-chief! When I see him

1 shall have my heart's desire !

O war-chief, make us quicken our steps ! "

And after he had thus sung he shouted to the listening
warriors : " Ho, brothers, I have said truly that I shall have my
heart's desire ! Truly, brothers, they shall not detect me at all.
I am rushing on without any desire to spare a life. If I meet
one of the foe I will not spare him."

Each night when they camped for rest and sleep the four
scouts would go out about a mile from the camping ground
one toward the enemy's country, one to the rear, and one to
either side of the camp. And, before the warriors lay down to

2 o AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

sleep, the " mikasi " or coyote dance, to keep up the spirits of
all, would be engaged in by all except the captains.

Before sunrise, each morning, the camp was awake ; break-
fast was hastily eaten and the day's march resumed. At last
the wary scouts far in advance sighted the village of the enemy
and hastening back made their report. The sacred bags were
opened, the scalp yell was raised and each warrior boasted anew
of how he should conduct himself when he met the foe. And
here, as the height of courage, Na-jin-ti-ce, the chief, the friend
of Wa-ba-ska-ha, changed his name before the battle and bade
the crier so proclaim it. And the crier, lifting his hands first
toward the skies and then dropping them toward the earth,
thus proclaimed it ; " Thou deity on either side, hear it ; hear
ye that he has taken another name. He will take the name
Nu-da-nax-a (Cries-for-the-war-path), halloo ! Ye big head-lands,
I tell you and send my voice that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye
clumps of buffalo grass, I tell you and send it to you that ye
may hear it, halloo ! Ye big trees, I tell you and send it to
you that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye birds of all kinds that
walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you
that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye small animals of different sizes,
that walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you
that ye may hear it, halloo! Thus have I sent to you to tell
you, O ye animals ! Right in the ranks of the foe will he kill
a very swift man and come back after holding him, halloo !
He has thrown away the name Na-jin-ti-ce and will take the
name Nu-da-nax-a, halloo ! "

Now that the enemy had been discovered all was interest and
action. The scouts were sent forward to count the lodges and
discover whether the foemen were asleep or awake for it was
nightfall. Then one of the chiefs went himself to make a final

HE HALTED AND Tl'KNKU TOWARD THK ENEMY."

AN OVERTURE O* STRIFE. 23

examination. And at midnight, when all were ready, they
moved stealthily forward ; going by twenties, each warrior hold-
ing the hand of the man next him, they crawled toward the
Pawnee village. Within arrow-shot of the village they halted,
talking in whispers and exhorting each other to deeds of
bravery. Just at daybreak, the leading war-chief drew his bow
and sent an arrow toward the sleeping foe. Its flight could
be distinctly seen by all the watching warriors. The time for
the attack had arrived. The war-chief waved the sacred bag
four times toward the enemy, he shouted his war-cry and at once
the warriors, raising the scalp-yell, let fly their arrows.

That terrible yell, familiar to Indian ears, roused the
sleepers. Snatching at their ever-ready weapons they rushed
out into the chill morning air. Too late ! The surprise was
complete. Every surrounding tree-trunk sheltered a Ponka
brave. Now from this quarter, now from that dashed out a
hostile foeman to strike down or capture an unwary Pawnee.
First to strike down and first to drag away his fallen foeman
was Wa-ba-ska-ha. His vengeance had begun.

For an instant the Pawnees gained the advantage. Mass-
ing themselves for a rush they dashed against their enemy
discharging their arrows as they ran.

The Indian could seldom stand before a combined assault.
His tactics were those of ambuscade and covert. The Ponkas
fled before the Pawnee onset. But even as they ran Wa-ba-
ska-ha heard the cry : " Nu-da-nax-a is killed ! "

The bond of kinship was stronger than the fear of capture.
He halted and turned toward the enemy. " Ho ! I will stop
running," he said. He dashed headlong into the very thick of
the foe and, across the dead body of his friend and kinsman,
Wa-ba-ska-ha fell fighting. His vengeance was completed.

24 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE,

But one such brave turn as his stayed the tide of retreat.
The Pawnees fled at his approach and the Ponkas, following
after, scattered or captured their routed foemen.

The death of the two friends ended the conflict. The
Omahas, to which race the Ponkas belonged, never continued
a fight after a chief had been killed. Gathering up their spoil
and their captives the Ponka warriors turned homeward and
the foray was over. Within the shadow of their own lodges
the victory was celebrated with song and dance, the rewards
for bravery were distributed among the warriors who had most
highly distinguished themselves and the deeds and deaths of
Nu-da-nax-a and Wa-ba-ska-ha were loudly sung. They had
gone in glory to the rewards of Wa-kan-da.

Such heroic deaths as were those of these two friends were
not uncommon amonsf the barbaric warriors of the American

forests. The story of Damon and Pythias could find frequent
parallels in Indian tradition. The " companion warriors " of
the prairie tribes, the " fellowhood " of the Wyandots, the
curious rites of the Zuni " Priesthood of the Bow " these and
similar phases of Indian military life, of which the study
.of American ethnology affords us frequent glimpses, are proof
of a methodical system of war training and a standard of martial
heroism among the naked warriors of the Western world that
not even the days of Roman prowess or the later era of a brutal
knight-errantry could surpass. The cultured Natchez of the
Mississippi Delta had regularly established schools for the
military training of their youth ; Toltec and Aztec, alike, laid
especial stress upon the war-training of their boys ; and in the
farther north Omaha and Iroquois, bravest of the forest races,
gave the military education of their youth into the charge of
efficient and established teachers.

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 25

Schooled thus to war and warlike ways the American Indian
was a born soldier. A barbarian rather than a savage there
was a method in his every move on war-path and in ambuscade
and battle. And this was based on a peculiar school of tactics
that was by no means the brutal hack and hew of the savage
fighter. His art of war was built upon cunning and hedged
about with strategy. It called fora course of fast and vigil that
suggests the preliminaries of battle undertaken by the barbarian
fighters of the so-called days of chivalry. The " knight of
Arthur's court " and the brave of the Mohawk Valley differed
but little in their ways of war. True, the Indian warrior did
not ride out to the slaughter of undefended inferiors sheathed
in steel and guarded at every point by the ingenuity of the
blacksmith and the work of the ironmonger. His was the
more heroic equality of man to man, unhelmeted, naked and
free. His regimentals were his hideous daubs of mud or clay,
his weapons the stone hatchet, the knotty war-club and the
sharpened arrow, his oriflamme the heron's crest or the eagle's
feather, his torture-chamber the forest clearing and the sacrifi-
cial fire.

At once the exigencies and the rivalries of his life made
war an ever-present necessity ; but it was also an ever-pres-
ent opportunity. His heroism was lofty, but it implied craft
and cunning. The warrior who could circumvent was a greater
brave than he who simply shot to kill. Glooskap the Algon-
quin divinity was at once fighter and conjurer. Atotarho the
Iroquois war-god was wizard and warrior as well ; while even
the mythical Hiawatha was quite as much the wonderful
magician as he was champion and diplomat.

Centuries ago there lived on the rocky shores of Lake
Superior a numerous and warlike people known as the Mun-

2 6 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

dua. Presumably of Dakota stock this Indian tribe was fierce
and cunning, relentless and strong. Into their homeland,
forced westward by the all-conquering Iroquois, came the
Ojibways, a people of Algonquin blood. For years the new-
comers lived in continual terror of their ferocious neighbors.
To hunt in the shadows of the Northern forests, to fish on the
waters of the Great Fresh Sea meant for the Ojibways constant
anxiety, and the risk of capture and the stake.

To a people who had faced the Iroquois in fight such a state
of vassalage was not to be endured. In union there is strength,
reasoned the badgered Ojibways. Other tribes, their neighbors
as well, lived like them in terror of the Mun-dua. To these
the Ojibways suggested a confederacy of annihilation. The
chiefs in council pledged their warriors to the attempt, and the
wampum and the war-club were sent in summons among the
lodges of the confederated tribes.

Volunteers responded from every village. The preliminary
rites of fast and vigil, of mystic medicine and sacred dance
were all performed, and on the appointed day there streamed
from out the rendezvous the long and wavering line of a great
war-party. Preceded by their watchful scouts and led on by their
tribal chiefs, the confederated warriors stealthily threaded the
narrow trails of the mighty forest, drawing nearer and yet
nearer to the town of their common enemy, determined, so the
record tells us, " to put out their fire forever."

The '' great town " of the Mun-dua, protected by palisades,
topped a sightly hill that overlooked the mighty lake. From
their outlooks the Mun-dua spied out the advance of the
besiegers ; but confident of their own prowess they laughed
the laugh of scorn and made no movement to check their
rebellious vassals.

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

The encircling forest poured out its host of besiegers. On
every side of the Mun-dua town, save where the waters of the
Great Fresh Sea broke on the rocky beach, the Ojibways and
their allies swarmed before the palisades. With every mark and
gesture of Indian de-
fiance they shouted
their challenge to
the foe. They
danced and sang,
they raised the scalp-
halloo and shot their
flights of arrows at
the unyielding wall.
And yet the Mun-
dua gave no reply ;
they sent out no
force of warriors to
answer the defiance
of their vassals.

At last, after the
first fury of the be-
siegers had expended
itself in war-whoop
and harmless arrow-
flight, the gates of
the village opened
and forth came, to
scatter the presump-
tuous rebels, not the warriors of the tribe, but the boys
of the Mun-dua. The Indian contempt for an inferior foeman
could no farther go. But the indignant allies, turning their

"DEATH T<i THh MUN-DUA I"

2 8 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

bows into rods, beat back the boys of the Mun-dua into the
lodges of their mothers.

" So ; these slaves need harsher chastisement," said the chief-
tains of the Mun-dua. "They shall have it ! : ' And on the
next day they set out against their besiegers the young men of
the tribe, warriors in training only, and bade them prove their
fitness for the war-path on the bodies of these audacious rebels.
But they knew not the valor of the Ojibways. Stung to a
mighty rage by the insolence of their would-be masters these
old Iroquois fighters rushed against the youngsters sent upon
them and driving them back through the open gates pursued
them to the very lintels of 'their lodges. Thus, forcing the
palisades, they held in conquest half the invaded town.

Then, at last, the chiefs of the Mun-dua awoke to their
danger. These were not cowards and cravens that had dared
to rise against their power, but men ; and like men they must
be met. The warriors sprang to arms ; scarred veterans of the
war-path, valorous braves of the foray, stalwart chieftains of
the war parties and the council-fires they rallied now to
repel an invader they could no longer affect to despise. They
smeared themselves with the war-paint, they sang the inspirit-
ing scalp-song, they anxiously consulted the sacred medicine-
bags, and, strong of purpose, they flung themselves upon
their foe.

That day the fight was to the death. All the deepest
passions, all the dearest hopes of man --be he civilized or
savage were met in deadliest strife. To the Ojibways and
their allies the struggle was for release from servitude, for
vengeance and for glory ; to the Mun-dua, brought at last to
bay, it was for mastery, for home, even for life itself.

All the desperate arts, all the daring risks, all the deadliest

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 29

devices of Indian warfare met or were attempted upon the
slopes of that blood-stained hill above the inland sea. The
fight was hand to hand ; and the traditions say that never in
all the story of Indian warfare was ever fight that exceeded
the fierceness of that battle by the Great Fresh Sea.

But victory rested with the Ojibways. Step by step they
drove the warlike Mun-dua back back from the palisades,
back over the hill-top, back to the very edge of the bluff on
which the village stood. The women and children, dreading
capture, threw themselves into the lake, the ground was strewn
with the bodies of the bravest chiefs and warriors of the
Mun-dua ; of all that powerful tribe scarcely a handful was left.
Silently and sadly, but swiftly as their desperate circumstances
demanded, the defeated remnant, under cover of a dense lake
fog that arose as if to shield them, turned and fled from their
relentless enemies and their field of defeat.

But the fog was even more treacherous than their human
foe. For when, after a day and night of weary flight, the fog
at last left them, behold ! there they stood on the very hill-
slope that had held their conquered town and within full view
of their now jubilant foemen. " It is the will of the Great
Spirit that we should perish," said the aged chief who alone of
all their valiant men of war, remained to lead them ; "let us die
like men." Once more they turned at bay. But they were
spent and worn while their enemies were refreshed and strong.
Resistance was useless. Chief and warrior fell side by side, and
when the dispirited remnant turned once more to flight they
were surrounded and captured. Incorporated, as was the
Indian custom, within the victorious tribe the captives became
Ojibways and the name of the Mun-dua disappeared forever
from the page of Indian story.

3 o A A 7 OVERTURE OF STRIFE.

The legends and traditions of those barbaric confederacies
that but sparsely dotted the vast North American continent
four centuries ago are marked throughout by just such para-
graphs as this. Brutal and relentless, shrewd and crafty, actu-
ated by all the selfishness and by all the cunning that domi-
nates the barbaric mind, the American Indian, judged from
his own standards, was still a trained, a valiant and a veteran
soldier. Had but the records of his years of supremacy in this
old New World remained to us, as have the records of Goth
and Vandal, Hun and Celt, we might be able to place in the
galleries of heroism the portraits of American warriors as" bold
as Alaric, as relentless as Attila, as manly as Vercingetorix,
as liberty-loving as Civilis, as stubborn in fight as those noble
old Britons Cassivelaunus and Boadicea and Hereward the
Wake.

Their weapons of warfare were as crude as were their mili-
tary tactics. But both served the purpose of their time and
gave victory to the bravest until matched against the more
intelligent methods of the unconquerable white man. To
as intelligent a use of these latter, the red warrior proved him-
self unequal. Schooled for centuries on a lower plane of
effort and action the American Indian was entirely unable to
assimilate the ways and the weapons of the mailed warriors from
across the western sea. The military empire of Montezuma in
the South, the forest despotism of the Iroquois in the North
went down in defeat before the unattainable precision of Span-
ish arquebuse and English musket. So fell the Natchez, so
fell Creek and Algonquin, Illinois and Ojibway. Conquered in
war as in other matters by the intelligence that was already
regenerating Europe the free warriors of the American forests
yielded to the inevitable. The barbaric nobility of pre-Colum-

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 3 t

bian days, unable to cope with the refined cruelties of the
more powerful white man, speedily degenerated. Daring
became brutality, and valor lapsed into mere ferocity ; harassed
and hunted, their cunning turned to treachery, their skill gave
place to vindictiveness. Forced from lords of the land to
vassals, serfs and hunted fugitives their war-record became now
only a series of losing struggles against manifest destiny.
The history of Indian warfare after the coming of the white
man is but a sickening record of Christian duplicity and Indian
atrocity.

Thus the old day of the earliest American soldier ends.
The overture of strife that sounded through centuries of blood
closes in the war-song of defeat. A new race of fighters from
over the sea, mailed and gauntleted in shining steel now comes
to take up the story of war, of conquest and of blood. The
naked fighter of forest, plain and water-side gives place to the
bearers of the crossletted banner and the next chapter in the
story of the American soldier must be that of the cruel but
valorous Conquistador.

CHAPTER II.

THE COXQUISTADORES.

HE foundations upon which
American sovereignty was
reared were laid in conflict
and cemented with blood.
In no other newly-discovered
continent was the work of
conquest so thorough, so com-
prehensive and so complete.
Asia, though echoing for cen-
turies to the tramp of con-
quering armies, is yet only fringed with the marks of Christian
occupation. Africa, the seat of the earliest civilizations, has
been for ages the " Dark Continent," the mystery of which
Christian science and Christian conquest have hardly yet
unlocked.

In America how different is the record. At once the
genius, the cupidity and the daring of the brightest and bravest
of Europe's adventurers saw in the new world unlimited fortunes
to be won, deathless glory to be achieved and an unbounded
empire to be had only for the taking.

And they came prepared to take. In every vessel, large or
small, that fojlowed the track marked out by Columbus and the

THE CONQCrSTADORES. 33

Cabots across the stormy western ocean came Spanish hidalgo,
French chevalier and English noble armed for battle and for
conquest.

It is true that the first of the white strangers who won
renown on American shores were sailors rather than soldiers ;
navigators rather than conquerors. The sons of Eric the
Northman and "their iron-armed and, stalwart crew" were
fighters, no doubt ; Whitter says of them :

" I see the gleam of axe and spear ;
The sound of smitten shields I hear,
Keeping a harsh and fitting time
To saga's chant and runic rhyme."

But they came to Markland and to Vinland more for dis-
covery than for conquest ; their brief and half-mythical occu-
pation was one of peace and of uncertainty rather than of
determination. Thorvald the Viking died under an Indian
arrow near the present site of Boston. Karlsefne's fight with
the- " skraelings," as the Indians of Vinland were termed, was
but a doubtful conflict. The historic valor of the vikings of
saga and rune seems to have found no place in the legends
of Vinland. The dragon-ships headed homeward and the
Norse occupation of America was over almost before it had
bes;un.

But in cabin and in forecastle on the fleets that followed
the caravels of Columbus the admiral came men who were
more soldier than sailor and more adventurer than either. The
great admiral, himself, believed that he had discovered the
gateway of the earthly paradise. His companions, contem-
poraries and successors loyal sons of the Church and devout
soldiers of the Cross were confident that they had only to

THE CONQUISTADORES.

enter in to conquer and enjoy all the delights and all the bound-
less riches of the toil-free garden of Eden.

So over the sea they came. Castilian nobles brave in
slashed silks and all the display of a powerful and punctilious
court, grim old infidel-fighters in war-scarred coats of mail, gay
young dons with the fluttering love-tokens of dark-eyed senoritas
tucked jauntily into doublet or cap, impecunious hidalgos,
down on their luck but confident of winning abundant fortune
among the pagans whom the Lord had evidently created only

to be the slaves and serfs of these high-
toned gentlemen of Spain !

Amid the blare of trumpets and the
roar of cannon the)' sailed away into
the unknown. Confident, boastful and
valorous their dreams were all of con-
quest ; the possibility of defeat never
entered into their calculations. So sailed
the second expedition of Columbus, his

IJIi SU1U.

seventeen vessels thronged with a bril-
liant following "hidalgos of high rank, officers of the
royal household and Andalusian cavaliers," schooled in arms
and inspired With a passion for hardy achievements by the
romantic wars of Granada ; so sailed the armament of the valor-
ous Ojeda, in ten ships fitted out by the purses of the con-
federated adventurers, bound for fame and fortune ; so too
in quest of empire went Pedro cle Avila, called by men " the
Fury of the Lord," and Diego de Nicuesa, the rival of the fiery
Ojeda, who, " in gay and vaunting style,'' set out for the Golden
Land whereon he needed only to set foot to win. So too sailed
Ponce de Leon, " lord of Bimini and Adelantado of Florida,'
and Cortez, alcalde of Santiago, on the mission that was to

THE CONQUISTADORES. 35

make him famous ; and last, but by no means the least, so sailed
Hernando de Soto prepared for conquest and colonization.

How speedily all these gallant gentlemen and valorous
hidalgos of Spain came to grief history only too graphically
records. High hopes went down in wreck ; fortune and empire
proved but will-of-the-wisps ; and only a fame strangely com-
pounded of mighty valor and the most relentless brutality
remains as their heritage. The world-seeking companions of
Columbus one and all died the deaths of homeless wanderers ;
the gallant but reckless Ojeda, aspiring to an empire that should
rival that of Alexander than whom, says Charlevoix, " none
had a heart more lofty, nor ambition more aspiring" turned
monk and died so poor that he had not even the small pittance
needful to pay for his burial. Avila, cruel-minded to the last,
rose to power in the New World but, deprived of his offices, lin-
gered on, disgraced and forgotten, to the great age of ninety years.
Nicuesa, after a career of romance and disaster almost unpar-
alleled, was expelled from his governorship and seeking flight in
a crazy brigantine was never heard of more. Ponce de Leon,
soldier-like to the end, risked an empire that he was never to
obtain and died from the avenging arrow of the warriors of
that fair Land of Flowers he had hoped to enslave. Upon
the tomb of this stout old cavalier stands the only record of
one whom fate delighted to baffle: " Within this sepulcher rest
the bones of a man who was a lion by name and still more
by nature."

De Soto, bravest and most brutal of all, born for valor and
swayed by greed, saw his gorgeous and gallant following die
man by man beneath the arrows of an outraged people and
the sharper wounds of hardship and disease. Wealth and
fame, power and prestige alike deserted him and at last, he

3 6 THE CONQUISTADORES.

died a wandering outcast in the very wilderness that he had
boasted would yield him the revenues of a richer Mexico and a
more marvelous Peru.

The story of these gallant captains is but that of their
comrades and successors. Hundreds and thousands, drawn
from the very flower of Spanish chivalry, risked their all in a
crusade that was to be, so they fondly imagined, more crowded
with heroism and more gloriously golden in results than was
that against the turbaned infidels of the Holy Land or the
picturesque conflicts beneath the walls of Granada.

u The youth of the nation," says Mr. Irving, " bred up to
daring adventure and heroic achievement, could not brook the
tranquil and regular pursuits of common life, but panted for

some new field of romantic enterprise The

Spanish cavalier embarked in the caravel of the discoverer.
He carried among the trackless wildernesses of the New World
the same contempt of danger and fortitude and suffering; the
same restless, roaming spirit ; the same passion for inroad and
ravage, and vainglorious exploit ; and the same fervent, and
often bigoted zeal for the propagation of his faith, that had
distinguished him during his warfare with the Moors. Instances
in point will be found in the extravagant career of the daring
Ojeda, particularly in his adventures along the coast of Terra
Firma, and the wild shores of Cuba ; in the sad story of the
unfortunate Nicuesa, graced as it is with occasional touches of

high-bred courtesy ; in the singular cruise of that brave but
credulous old cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who fell upon the
flowery coast of Florida in search after an imaginary fountain
of youth ; and above all, in the checkered fortunes of Vasco
Nunez de Balboa, whose discovery of the Pacific Ocean forms
one of the most beautiful and striking incidents in the history

"FOR SANTIAGO AND SPAIN!

THE CONQ.UISTADORES. 39

of the New World, and whose fate might furnish a theme
of wonderful interest for a poem or a drama."

And what fighters they were. Not all their greed for gold,
nor all their brutal ways, not all their vainglorious boastings,
nor all the bigotry of their religious faith can force into the
background their indomitable pluck, their valor or their fury
in war. The golden banner of Spain may have flaunted in
American breezes above superstition, fanaticism, avarice and
cruelty, but beneath its folds fought also as valiant warriors, as
courageous cavaliers, and as gallant gentlemen as ever drew
sword for king, for glory and for renown.

As types of those commingled qualities that made up the
picturesque conquistador of the sixteenth century three names
stand clearly out from the dramatic story of those days of con-
flict and of blood : Alonso de Ojeda, the companion of
Columbus, Pedro de Alvarado, the lieutenant of Cortez and
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado the conqueror of New Mexico.

Ambitious, adventurous, daring, reckless and always over-
sanguine, Alonso de Ojeda was a born fighter. He early
essayed the life of a soldier. Schooled to examples of valor as
a page of the fiery duke of Medina Celi in the Moorish wars he
was scarce more than a boy when he joined the second expe-
dition of Columbus as gentleman-adventurer. From the first
sight we have of him heading a band of ambitious young
cavaliers across the mountains of San Domingo on a search for
the warlike and powerful cacique whom men called " the Lord
of the Golden House," to the very last glimpse that comes to
us when, brought to bay in the streets of San Domingo, he
fought single-handed the whole band of his would-be assassins,
his story is one of continuous adventure and daring deeds. A
perfect horseman and as gallant a cavalier as ever struck home

4 o THE CONQUISTADORES.

for " Santiago and Spain ! '' he was as magnanimous as he was
reckless ; as open-handed in peace as he was irresistible in war.

His capture of Caonabo was a sample of his courage and
recklessness. At the head of ten mailed and mounted followers
he boldly dashed across the mountains and into the very
presence of this fiery Carib chieftain " the Lord of the Golden
House." Though surrounded by dangers that suggested death
at every turn, Ojeda prevailed upon Caonabo reluctantly to
visit Columbus. Separating him from his extensive escort the
Spaniard shrewdly induced the cacique to wear as bracelets a
pair of glittering steel handcuffs. Binding his then unresisting
prisoner upon the fleet horse he had been induced to mount,
Ojeda and his followers galloped away from the swarm of
astounded Caribs and bore the illustrious captive into the very
camp of Columbus.

But recklessness is not leadership and the successful fighter
can rarely prove a match for the scheming politician. Soldierly
in bearing, dashing in devices, terrible in war. restless if not
engaged in some daring and adventurous exploit, Ojeda was
yet perpetually the dupe of some wily gold-getter, and was
always as poor in purse as he was proud in spirit. Success
never attended his endeavors by lining his pockets with the
Carib gold that every Spaniard coveted. Wealth continually
evaded him.

His indomitable spirit, his tireless vigor, his good comradeship,
his ability as a captain, his great personal prowess and his un-
flagging striving for success were more than counterbalanced by
his utter incompetency to rule where he had conquered, his
bigotry, his useless hardihood, his scorn of caution, his waste-
fulness and his impatience of control. These latter all led to
his downfall. " Good management and good fortune," says

THE CONQUISTADORES. 41

Charlevoix, " forever failed him," and the very qualities that
made Alonzo de Ojeda " one of the most fearless and aspiring
of the band of Ocean chivalry that followed the footsteps of
Columbus " combined, also, to make his life a failure and his
career a tragedy.

Of a similar heroic strain but more wisely balanced was the
famous Pedro de Alvaraclo. Stripped of all the bombastic
romancing of the Spanish chroniclers, to whom this fiery
young captain was almost a demi-god, Pedro de Alvarado still
stands forth the very synonym of all that is most fascinating in
the old-time fighter. As chivalrous as fearless, and as resistless
as bold this friend and favorite lieutenant of Cortez added to a
fiery nature a face and form that won for him admirers
among both friends and foes. To .the simple and superstitious
Indians of Mexico this dashing cavalier, cased in armor and
deftly guiding his galloping steed, seemed almost divine. To
them he was To-na-ti-uh the Child of the Sun and in
making him the hero of a most entertaining romance of the
Conquest * General Wallace has but embodied in story many
of the attributes that the conquered Aztecs ascribed to this
paladin of the Mexican causeway, the brightest figure in the
awful " night of sorrow."

Embarking as an adventurer almost before he had become
a man this young soldier of fortune sailed over-sea from his
home in Badajoz to the alluring Land of Promise. Speedily
finding opportunity he was the first to bring to Cuba tidings of
the wealth and power of the Mexico that was to make him
famous. Following the banner of Cortez to the conquest of
that half-mythical tropic empire Alvarado became, next to his

" The Fair God ; or the Last of tue Tzins," by Lew Wallace. A charming and altogether delightful story of th
romantic conquest of Mexico.

42 THE CONQUISTADORES.

general, the central figure of that historic conquest. A born
leader of men he speedily rose to command and wherever
opportunity for fighting occurred or hope of booty beckoned he
was first on the field and established a reputation for daring
and for valor wherever danger threatened or death appeared
most imminent. His personal bravery and personal prowess,
(displayed in such achievements as that famous leap across the
bloody causeway that has now become historic) dwell longest
with the lover of gallant deeds who reads his story and yields to
the fascinations of his warlike feats, but the student of history
sees beneath the knightly bearing the less attractive traits that
were so often discoverable in the make-up of the conquistador.
For this brilliant fighter was far from orod-like. He was

O O

greedy for gold, treacherous toward a trusting foeman, over-
bearing, arrogant and full of craft. " He had," says Prescott,
who recounts with fervor all his great exploits, " a heart rash,
rapacious and cruel." And when the Aztec nation fell and the
Conquest was accomplished few contributed more toward
making both fall and conquest bitter and unchristian than did
this typical conquistador, this valiant u Child of the Sun," Pedro
de Alvarado. It seems but a fitting retribution that his death
in after years should have come in the hour of his defeat by
these very Mexican Indians whom he had conquered and by an
unsoldierly fall from his horse one of those same strange
and mysterious beasts upon whose back in earlier days this
redoubtable To-na-ti-uh had been so irresistible.

Of a very different type and yet quite as distinctively a
Spaniard was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the "conqueror"
of New Mexico. No longer a young man this honest cavalier
of Salamanca was of grave deportment, affable manners and of
fair executive ability. Long residence in Mexico, where he was

THE CONQUISTADORES. 45

established in 1540 as governor of one of the western provinces,
had given him acquaintance with the manners and disposition
of the natives of that conquered land. The impetuosity of
youth had given place to the caution and sedateness of middle
age. A valiant and courageous gentleman, slow to decide and
not always quick to act, he was watchful to prevent disaster,
and while never courting danger, he was cool and brave in
action when danger really came.

Such a leader was certain to command the respect of his
followers, and Coronado seems to have had this and to have in-
spired also both the love and the confidence of his soldiers.
Says one of them, Pedro de Casteneda the chronicler of his
captain's wanderings : " Never was Spanish general in the
Indies more beloved or better obeyed than he."

But grave, circumspect and valiant though he was Coronado
seems to have been compounded of those strangely clashing
elements that united in the Spanish fighter of those olden
times. An unforgiving foeman, terrible in his revenges and
contemptuous of the poor natives over whom he was either
ruler or conqueror, Coronado was, above all, avaricious, super-
stitious and credulous to a degree, with an ever-ready ear for the
big stones of those whom policy, timidity or cunning made
" the brethren of the long bow." Authorized by the viceroy
Mendoza to inquire into certain reports as to an alleged native
empire to the northward Coronado swallowed with true Span-
ish gusto all the wonderful stories of the " Seven Cities of
Cibola " that came to him. Here was a new Mexico to be con-
quered ; here were wealth and empire to be had for the taking;
he was to be a " more successful Cortez, a richer Pizarro ! He
evidently essayed to investigate the reports with caution but he
as evidently accepted as gospel all the crazy fictions of the

46 THE CONQUISTADORES.

crafty Indian, Tejos, all the pleasant fables of his own prede-
cessor, Nuno de Guzman, all the incredible stories of that pict-
uresque tramp Cabeza de Vaca, and all the barefaced falsehoods
told by the monk Marcos, by the Munchasen-like negro
Stephen and by that particularly mendacious native whom the
" Conquerors " called " the Turk."

So, setting out from Compostella, the capital of his province,
in the month of February, 1540, Coronado led into the north-
ern wilderness a gallant array of gentlemen adventurers, sturdy
fighters, and Indian allies.

Never were expectations more utterly blasted; never did
high hopes go down in greater wreck. The expedition faced
toward the north with the most glowing prospects of easy con-
quest and enormous booty. Across the desert the prize
awaited them : " Seven great cities, the houses whereof were
built of lime and stone, two, three, sometimes five stories in
height, ascended on the outside by ladders ; whose inhabitants
clothed themselves in gowns of cotton, in woolen cloth, and in
garments of leather, wearing girdles of turquoises around their
waists, emeralds in their ears and noses ; whose common house-
hold vessels were of gold and silver, and where gold was more
abundant than in Peru, the \valls of the temples being covered
with plates of that precious metal;'

Disappointment met them almost at the outset. But still
they pressed on, lured by the promise that " just beyond " were
the coveted treasures. " The seven cities of Cibola," says Mr.
Skinner, " that reared themselves on the marge of Coronado's

imagination as proudly as would Palmyra and old Tyre dwin-
dled on his approach to ruined villages ; nor could their
occupants guide him to those veins and beds where precious
stones and metals glistened and where they are to-day yielding

THE CONQUISTADORES. 47

up to our nation the wealth of an empire." The gold-seeking
soldiers of Coronado daily spurned untold treasure beneath
their feet and yet they knew it not.

Still on and on they pressed. Across the hills and valleys,
the deserts, plains and water-courses of Arizona and New
Mexico, penetrating, so it is claimed, even into the present con-
fines of Colorado, of Kansas and Nebraska. Then they gave
it up, and turning back retraced their homeward way a disap-
pointed, dispirited and decimated band. Two years of wander-
ing had yielded them neither empire, gold nor booty. Of all
that gallant " army of conquest " only about an hundred tat-
terdemalions dragged themselves back to Mexico and all the
brilliant visions of Coronado ended for him in defeat and dis-
grace. The viceroy Mendoza expended his wrath upon the
unhappy leader, his governorship was taken from him and he
himself died poor, forgotten, and half-crazed, the victim of a
baseless dream of glory.

And yet Coronado deserved a better fate. He had but
obeyed orders as a soldier should. He had found for civiliza-
tion a land that was to be in time the treasure-house of the
world; he had with admirable skill, as General Simpson now
declares, led out an expedition that " for extent in distance trav-
eled, duration in time and the multiplicity of its co-operating
expeditions equalled, if it did not exceed, any land expedition
that has been undertaken in modern times."

In how many instances the story of the conquistador was
but a repetition of that of Coronado the musty pages of the old
chroniclers, couched in crabbed Spanish or still more crabbed
Latin, only too faithfully bear record. It was a time of rash
endeavor, misty promise, and high expectation. Men risked
their all for glory, for booty and for gold. Rumors were tor-

4 8 THE CONQUISTADORES.

tured into facts as across the broad Atlantic marvelous tales of
still more marvelous regions reached the ears of European
nations, already tingling, as Mr. Thompson says, " with the fas-
cinating stories of Columbus and his followers. Mexico," he

adds, " had fallen before Cortez ; Peru had poured her spoils
into the bloody hands of Pizarro. Ships were slipping away
from the ports of Spain with their prows to the southwest.
The wind in their sails was the breath of fortune. When the
ships returned they came loaded down with gold and bearing
the heroes of wild battles, the doers of strange deeds." What
wonder that spendthrift hidalgoes with more pluck than pos-
sessions and avaricious dons, greedy for gold, should take a bond
of fate in lands where glory and booty alike were to be won !

Such an one was the bankrupt farmer, Vasco Nunez called
Balboa, who with an assurance that was almost monumental
turned the contempt of his associates into confidence and forced
their very waywardness to serve his private ends. Achieving
advancement by energy he became successful both as conqueror
and governor, coined the wealth of provinces into castellanos
with which to line his own capacious pockets and became for-
ever immortal as the discoverer of the vast Pacific.

Such, too, was Balboa's most relentless rival, Pedro Arias
de Avila, known as Pedrarias, a sturdy fighter in the Moorish
wars, but a man thoroughly wily, unscrupulous, politic, revenge-
ful and vindictive. With him from San Lucar a gallant array
of two thousand Spanish knights and gentlemen-adventurers
went westward to the fairy-land of the Golden Castile where
gems were as plentiful as Biscay herrings and gold was to be
gathered from the ground in handfuls. It was a fatal harvest.
Within one month after the landing at Darien seven hundred
of that gallant following perished in the clutch of enemies

THE CONQUfSTADORES. 49

more terrible than the infidel Moor famine and disease. Dis-
appointed, suspicious, passionate and envious Pedrarias vented
his spleen upon his rival Balboa. He dispatched him on im-
possible missions, placed him in compromising situations and
fairly forcing him into alleged treachery, brutally persecuted
and finally killed the only man who could have helped him to
the gold and the possessions he so greedily coveted.

Another such, swayed by the hope of gain, was the " Bache-
lor" Martin Fernandez de Enciso. Coming into the American
provinces a speculative lawyer he turned the quarrels of men
to his personal profit and accumulated by his successful law
business a fortune of two thousand castellanos (about $11,000).
Dazzled by the promise of the chief-justiceship of a conquered
province he was tempted into investing his savings in a roman-
tic venture and with strangely varying fortunes became in turn
adventurer, soldier, conqueror, governor, rival, bankrupt, culprit
and prisoner, as feud and faction tore asunder that struggling
colony on the narrow Isthmus.

Such, too, were scores and hundreds of others the dupes
of false rumors, the sport of baseless promises. Led out by the
hope of treasure and the possibility of rebuilding ruined fortunes
they braved every danger and essayed the most reckless endeav-
ors. The old records teem with their stories, compounded of
mingled valor and rapacity, greed and bravery. Morales and
the spoil of the Pearl Islands, Badajos and the gold of Parita,
Gil Gonzales and the treasures of Nicaragua, Grijalva and the
tribute of Vera Cruz, Guzman and the torture-wrung " presents "
of New Galicia the list could be extended for pages, fascinat-
ing as a romance of the paladins, repulsive in the realism of
brutality, replete with heroism and suffering, treachery and
cruelty, valor and strategy and the dash of daring deeds.

5 o THE CONQUISTADORES.

But always, in all this bravery, endurance and show of cour-
age the deadly canker was at work the greed for gold that,
ever, with the conquistador went hand in hand with love of
glory. Once again was the Scripture fulfilled : the love of
money was, indeed, the root of all the evil that to this day has
sullied the record of Spanish pluck and Spanish valor in
America. It made of the cavalier a brute, of the knight a
vulture, of the hidalgo a worse than murderer. It changed
trusting natives into implacable foemen, it engendered hateful
rivalries between leaders and turned the swords of comrades
against one another's breasts.

It embittered the life of Columbus, wrecked the fame of
Cortez and poisoned the glory of Alvarado. It did to death
Balboa and Pizarro, Olid and Nicuesa, Garay and Ponce de
Leon, Coronado and De Soto. It has linked with the memories
of the boldest and bravest the never-dying scorn that a world,
loving gain and gold, still visits upon the usurer, the extortioner
and the assassin. It has capped the most marvelous of con-
quests with the greatest and basest of crimes.

While rightly the story of the old conquistador es belongs to
the regions round about the Indies to Mexico and the Antil-
les, to the Isthmus and the western coasts of South America
still, across the page of Northern story, falls the shadow of the
Spanish warrior, defiant alike in exploration, in conquest and
in defeat. The glitter of Spanish armor and the gleam of Span-
ish spur make picturesque the earlier annals of North American
occupation when the golden banner of Spain floated above
regions claimed for Cross and King beyond the Capes of
Florida, on the shores of the Chesapeake and by the waters of
the Hudson and the Mohawk. The iron heel of Spanish con-
quest left its enduring imprint upon lands that have for genera-

THE CONQUJSTADORES. 51

tions acknowledged occupation only by France or England and
the colonizers of the seventeenth century found in the names
that they presumed to be strictly Indian the traces of Spanish
occupation and conquest of a far earlier day. But no one of
these misty exploits rose to the importance or achieved the
reputation of that wasteful, cruel, heroic and historic march
made in the mid-years of the sixteenth century by De Soto and
his men.

It is a stirring story and one that always bears retelling.
Westward from San Lucar, that port of Seville from which had
gone across the broad Atlantic so many ambitious cavaliers of
Spain as full of hope, as certain of success as these, sailed
Hernando de Soto and six hundred fighting men. Re-embarking
at Havana, nearly a thousand strong, the expedition steered
for its promised land and on the thirtieth of May, 1539, landed
on the Florida coast, just east of the Everglades in that section
of the State now known as Hillsborough Bay.

It was the most formidable expedition yet organized in
America for conquest. Every man was a fighter; there were
few gray hairs in the whole army, and at its head stood Her-
nando de Soto, one of the conquerors of Peru, a man amply
qualified to lead a gallant host to victorious deeds. " In fame,' 1
says Dr. Monette, " he almost equalled the conquerors of Mexico
and Peru themselves ; in courage and perseverance he was not
less. He was in the prime of manhood and only waited some
fit opportunity to signalize himself and hand down his fame to
posterity equally brilliant with that of Cortez and Pizarro."

Whatever was needful for an expedition of such magnitude
was not lacking. There were wood-workers and iron-workers,
there were chemists and miners, scholars and priests; there
were tools for the builders, there was apparatus for assaying the

52 THE CONQUISTADORES.

" find " in gold and silver they were determined to obtain;
there were chains and fetters for the captives, bloodhounds to
pull them clown, cards for the games of chance on which their
captors might stake and hazard them. Nothing, it is asserted,
was omitted from the " furniture " of the expedition " which ex-
perience could suggest or avarice and cruelty could dictate."
The warm sun of Florida flashed down on the steel armor of
the cavaliers glittering with gold ; on coats of mail, on helmets,
on breastplates and on shields; lance and broadsword, spear
and cimeter gleamed in warlike hands; cross-bow and arquebuse
rested upon many a stalwart shoulder and " stimulated by the
love of fame and still more bv the love of <?'old, this roving band

^ O O

of gallant freebooters plunged into the savage wilds " in which
they expected to find empires more magnificent and treasure
more abundant than their comrades had wrested from the con-
quered " emperors " of Mexico and Peru.

There was little at their landing-place on Hillsborough Bay
to suggest treasure or empire. And from there even to the end
the Spaniards were the dupes of the tribes they sought to con-
quer and did so cruelly maltreat. Grown wary through experi-
ence of the tortures of earlier white visitors the credulous
Ponce de Leon, the brutal Ayllon, the wretched Narvaez the
Florida Indians sought to rid themselves of these latest comers
by alluring stories of great cities and vast treasures to the north
or west "just beyond!" So, "just beyond," this brilliant
cavalcade was ever pushing, westward and yet further west-
ward, growing each day less brilliant, each day more desperate.
Through morass and swamp and dreary waste of sand, through
tangled thicket and interminable forest, fording rivers, climbing
mountains, fighting hostile hosts, always expectant, but with
never a touch of the' coveted gold, with never a sight of the

7 //A CONQ U 1ST AD ORES.

gorgeous cities, they struggled on a band of baffled ma-
rauders, grown more desperate with each day's disappointment,
more cruel with each savage struggle for supremacy. For three
weary years the zigzag hunt for fortune went slowly on. Up
and down the land where perpetual summer reigns, over that
section of our Southern country now known as the States of
Florida, Georgia,
Alabama, Missis-
sippi, Louisiana
and Arkansas
they wandered
on, a fellowship
of valorous fight-
ers vainly seek-
ing for the im-
possible.

At last came
the tragedy. One
by one cavalier
and artisan,
spearman and
priest dropped by

the way. The bones of their stern but gallant commander
were lowered into their last resting-place, beneath the yellow
waters of the mighty Mississippi ; the wildernesses of the far Red
River country forever dispelled the promise of gold or empire ;
and, with desire, effort and endurance alike dead within them,
tattered, beggared, travel-worn and utterly disheartened, still
fighting their inveterate Indian foemen till the hated land faded
in the distance, they floated down the great river to the greater
Gulf and to the ports of friendly Mexico a miserable remnant

THE FIRST XVHITK MAN

54 THE CONQUISTADORES.

of the gallant array of sflitterins: cavaliers to whom San Lucar

^5 ^ <_? <_>

and Havana had bidden such hearty godspeed and farewell.

In all history there is scarcely to be found a sadder example
of high hopes brought to ruin, of golden expectations unful-
filled. It is a story bright with heroic exploits, black with per-
fidious deeds. " The governor," says Orviedo, his chronicler,
" was very fond of this sport of killing Indians ; '" and the
marks of " the governor's sport " have streaked the winding
trail of his wanderings with blood and left an irradicable stain

upon his memory.

Brighter even than the story of Spanish heroism is the
record of Indian patriotism. Step by step, through all these
three years of wandering did the warlike tribes of the South,
sinking their hereditary feuds, combine to repel the white in-
vader. Stubbornly, tenaciously, heroically they contested the
possession of their home-land and the bloody battle of Mauvilla,
only saved to Spain by the charges of the resistless cavalry,
proved the mettle, the valor and the self-devotion of the native
American soldier.

What De Soto was, what were Ayllon and Guzman, Ojeda
and Balboa, Ponce de Leon and de Cordova, Narvaez and
Cabeza de Vaca, that, also, were the hundreds and thousands
of others fighting men and adventurers of every rank and of
every grade in life who essayed to win fame and fortune in
the New World and who, because of their valiant and intrepid
deeds, their heroic achievements and profitless accumulations,
their high-sounding titles, and never-weakening bombast, their
marches and their battles, their rivalries and their feuds, have
ever been remembered under the name they coveted - el
conquistadores, the conquerors.

With vast opportunities for bloodless and peaceable con-

THE CONQUISTADORES. 55

quest, for Christian enlightenment and a gentler civilization
they wrecked their mighty chances on the fatal reefs of greed.
Never conquerors over themselves they have gone into history
as destroyers and braggarts where they should have been up-
builders and gentlemen. The boast of one of them : " I am
not merely a De Soto though that, by St. James, were
enough for any man. I am a Sotomayor, a Mendoza, a Bova-
dilla, a Losada, a sir! I have blood royal in my veins, and
you dare to refuse my challenge," was fitly answered by the
response of a noble Englishman : " Richard Grenville can show
quarterings, probably, against even Don Guzman Maria Magda-
lena Sotomayor de Soto, or against the bluest blood of Spain.
But he can show, moreover, thank God, a reputation which
raises him as much above the imputation of cowardice, as it
does above that of discourtesy."

Still, with all their shortcomings their vices, their cruel-
ties, their greed, their bombast, their bigotries and their credu-
lity the old Conquistadores were a valiant and picturesque lot.
If their record is smirched with tyranny and their valor is
dimmed with blood, their ancestry and environments may be
proffered as at once the reason and the excuse. They were, at
least, the first link in the chain of fighting men that joins the
new America to the old and have therefore due claim to a
prominent place in our story as typical of that savagely pict-
uresque life, when as Maurice Thompson tells us " priests were
pirates and gentlemen were robbers " those romantic if
brutal days when, according to Theodore Irving, " the knight-
errantry of the Old World was carried into the depths of the
American wilderness."

CHAPTER III.

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

HE claim of Spain to the posses-
sion of the Western world was
not long to remain undisputed.
The audacious " Bull " of that
Pope of Rome, Alexander vi.,
who, himself a Spaniard and the
favorer of his native land, sought
to make all America Iberian -
was a challenge to all the foes of
Spain. And of these none were

hotter, none more fierce than the daring spirits of England and
of France.

At once ships and sailors, adventurers and fighters sailed
over-sea in the very track of Columbus's caravels. Rivalries

led to entanglements and these to relentless wars ; and while
those summer seas that men call the Spanish Main grew red
with blood as Avarice grappled with Greed, and Spanish Blood-
hounds snarled at English Mastiffs, still further to the north,
in Canada and Virginia and along the Atlantic sea-board, the
flao-s of France and England floated above struggling settle-

o o oo o

ment and seaward-looking fort. After the first flush of disap-
pointment at their failure to discover the always-coveted gold

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 57

had passed the freebooter gave place to the trader; explorers
became occupiers and adventurers settled down as colonists.

But, whether as adventurer, trader or colonist, life in the
New World was ever precarious. To the danger of Indian
attack and the personal jealousies of the settlers were added
the race feuds, the religious differences and the international
hostilities that made the American continent a continual bat-
tle-ground. For years one could scarcely dare assert what flag
might on the morrow float above the colony of which he was a
part. On the pine-fringed northern border Frenchman and
Englishman struggled for the possession of Canada and with
defensive fortresses fronted each other on the broken Maine
coast. The valiant Champlain and the fiery Frontenac made
for themselves glorious records as loyal captains of France and
only the unyielding hostility of the warlike Iroquois kept them
from the conquest of the English border-lands. Farther to the
south Dutchman and Englishman quarreled as to the right of
occupancy and colonization in the lands about the Connecticut
and the Manhattans. Dutchman and Swede grappled over the
problem as to which was to have and which to hold the banks
of the Delaware. Rival English factions disputed over their
rights on the Chesapeake and, to the still further south, first
Spaniard and Frenchman and then Spaniard and Englishman
fought for Florida and the Gulf, making the story of Southern
occupation a fearful tragedy, stained with the blood of the
victims of such a butcher as Menendez and the revenges of
such an assassin as Gourges.

These continual disturbances, no less than the ever-present
horrors of Indian hostilities, made every colonist of necessity a
fighter. The trusty matchlock was as indispensable a piece of
church equipment as psalter and prayer-book, and, after the

5 8 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

stern manner of those days of trial, the stoutest arm and the
sturdiest frame were the defense and stay of every settlement.
The block-house and the palisaded fort were near at hand for
convenient retreat and shelter, while every church that crested
the hill-top was sanctuary and bristling arsenal as well.

Such a strong support stout of arm and sturdy of frame
was that doughty Puritan fighter, Miles Standish, the Cap-
tain of Plymouth. Longfellow's portraiture might apply to
many another hardy leader of the colonial fighting-men of those
earlier days :

" Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic,
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of , iron ;
Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November."

Many another, too, might be able to make his professional
boast :

" Look at these arms," lie said, " the warlike weapons that hang here
Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection !
So I take care of my arms as you of your pens and your mkhorn.
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,
And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my soldiers !

Look ! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted
High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose,
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic,
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen.
Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it the better,
Let them come, if they like, be it sagamore, sachem or pow-wow,
Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon ! "

As quick, as choleric and as impetuous, too, was many an-
other Colonial captain, with just as peculiar and by no means

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 59

kid-gloved methods of dealing with the Indian foeman. The
stalwart Captain of Plymouth had little sympathy with the
school of Las Casas and Eliot. Listen, as he sounds his de-
fiance in the council :

" What ! do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses?

Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted

There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils ?

Truly the only tongue that is understood by a savage

Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon!

I^eave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth.
War is a terrible trade ; but in the cause that is righteous,
Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the challenge !"

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, contemptuous gesture,

Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets

Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage,

Saying, in thundering tones : " Here, take it ! this is your answer ! "

Such a fighter, though a much greater braggart, was Cap-
tain John Smith, the " paladin " of Virginia. Such, too, was
Captain John Mason, of the Connecticut colony, victor in the
Pequot War ; and such were Captain Benjamin Church, the
conqueror of " King " Philip, Captain %t Nat " Bacon, the bril-
liant young Virginia fighter and leader in a somewhat remark-
able rebellion, and Major Thomas Trueman, of Maryland, the
murderer of the Susquehannoughs. Intrepid, deliberate and
relentless, hating an Indian even more cordially than a " pa-
pist," their methods were short, sharp and decisive, and to their
tactics and their peculiar plans of action is due, very largely,
the heritage of the America^ nation in Indian hatreds and
Indian wars.

Of all the fighting governors of colonial times Oglethorpe
was the most heroic, Stuyvesant the most picturesque. Andros,
with a full share of the belligerent spirit, was no match for a

COL ONIAL FIG HI 'ING-MEN.

determined people ; Berkeley, a type of the old-time tyrant, could
have made no head against the patriotism of Bacon, had not
death stepped in as his ally. Few, if any, of the royal govern-
ors, with the exception of Oglethorpe and Bienville, could sue-

THE REVOLT OF THE TRAIN-BANDS " I.EISLER, YOU MUST LKM) US ! "

cessfully direct the war-spirit that slumbered in the breasts of
colonial trader and husbandman. It needed the deeper and
underlying home interests of native or naturalized governors
to lead their neighbors to action and to victory. It was Leis-
ler, of New York, the "people's governor," a captain in the

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 61

city train-bands, who awakened in his fellow-countrymen the
first desires for personal liberty and organized the first really
offensive measures against the French power in Canada. It
was Pepperell, the Maine merchant and militiaman, who at
last brought this struggle for supremacy to a crisis and, con-
queror of Louisburg, was the earliest of the native generals
of his King.

For our present purpose it will be sufficient to give brief
mention here to two of the colonial leaders types of the
foreign and the native stock -- who developed the martial spirit
in the people and made out of colonists and farmers the first
real American soldiers. These shall be James Edward Ogle-
thorpe and William Pepperell.

Born to a love of arms, a daring commander of men and a
soldier of tried experience in European wars Oglethorpe yet
came to the government of his Georgia colony desiring only
peace, substantial growth and the good-will of men. That he
was forced into prominence as a successful commander was due
to the aggressions of the power of Spain.

Alarmed at the growth of English colonization in the South
the Spanish rulers in Cuba and Florida determined to crush
out the Saxon. Hostilities were not long in commencing.
Frederica and Saint Augustine were not far apart and the
Spanish attacks on the Georgia settlements were speedily fol-
lowed by the English assault on the Florida fortress.

Oglethorpe was the soul of this latter movement. The
friend of the Wesleys and of Whitfield and an ardent desirer
of peace for his colony he was above all a soldier. If Spain
determined for war, war she should have. His investment of
St. Augustine was brilliant and strategic. Had he but been
properly supported by his associates and subordinates the era

6 2 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

of Spanish occupation in North America would have come to
an end lonsj before its lingering death nearly half a century
later.

But though St. Augustine did not surrender Oglethorpe 's
energetic measures bore instant fruit. Men saw that the aide-

de-camp of Prince Eugene, the hero of Belgrade, had lost
nothing of his old-time valor. Spain awoke to the fact that
she must needs increase her power if she wished to overcome
this old fighter of the Turks. Forced to the defensive until

such time as they were able to prepare a strong and formidable
armament the Spaniards for two years longer kept behind their
stone walls. At last, in the summer of 1742, they gathered for
the decisive blow. In that year this new Spanish Armada
sailed from Havana well equipped for the final and utter ex-
tinction of the English power in the South.

But the spirit of his ancestors lived in the gallant English-
man. As the Oglethorpes of Surrey " in days of good Queen
Bess " had rallied to the resistance of the first and greater

Armada so he, too, determined upon an heroic stand. " If we
have no succor," he wrote, " all we can do is to die bravely in
His Majesty's service."

The Spanish fleet of fifty-one sail, carrying a force of nearly
five thousand soldiers, bore down upon the Georgia coast.
Oglethorpe had but six hundred and fifty men and a few small
vessels. Men looked to see the Georgia colony go down in
blood before the force of Spain.

But to a hero nothing is impossible. " With a bravery and
dash almost beyond comprehension," says Mr. Jones, " by
strategy most admirable, Oglethorpe by a masterly disposition
of the troops at command, coupled with the timidity of the
invaders and the dissensions which arose in their ranks, before

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 63

the middle of July put the entire Spanish army and navy to
flight."

His personal daring turned the battle of the Bloody Marsh
from a rout to a victory ; his inspiring courage beat back the
Spanish galleys from an attack on Frederica and led the pur-
suit under the very guns of their war-ships ; his pluck, his shrewd-
ness and his ability to seize upon opportunities at just the right
moment dismayed and confounded the Spanish commanders
and absolutely drove away the invading army at the very
instant when they might have struck a crippling blow and
obtained a certain victory. There is much of truth, notwith-
standing the apparent exaggeration, in \\ hitfield's enthusiastic
comment : " The deliverance of Georgia from the Spaniards is
such as cannot be paralleled but by some instances out of the
Old Testament." And Mr. Lodge asserts that " Oglethorpe
saved two provinces to England by as gallant fighting and
shrewd generalship as the whole history of the American
colonies can show. A brave soldier, an honest, upright, kind-
hearted gentleman," so Mr. Lodge declares, "he is a man whom
any State might regard with reverence and admiration as its
founder, first ruler and defender."

Of a different character but no less the gentleman and the
soldier was William Pepperell, the merchant of Portsmouth, in
New Hampshire. A colonial shop-keeper with but little knowl-
edge of war, honored and respected rather because of his
thirty years of service as an upright judge and a successful
political adviser than for his acquaintance with military needs
and tactics Pepperell was placed in command of the land forces
in New England's greatest crusade against Canada.

So skillfully did he conduct his part of the operations that
the strong fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton the bul-

64 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

wark of Canada -- fell after an almost bloodless siege of fifty
days. " It was a gallant exploit," says Mr. Lodge, "almost the
only glory of an unsuccessful war." The greatest triumph of
colonial fighting-days was secured by an undisciplined army
" of New England mechanics and farmers and fishermen " led
on by a Yankee merchant.

It was really the first American army. Leisler's force of
invasion, which a half-century before had failed through colonial
jealousies and wrecked the mighty purpose of its energetic pro-
moter, could scarcely assert its claim to be esteemed an American
army. Pepperell's men were largely native-born. And Wil-
liam Pepperell, tradesman though he was, may safely be con-
sidered as the first native military leader produced by the
colonies. Other commanders of American birth there had
been but none had as yet been selected for so exalted a position.
The titled adventurers who were royal governors by favor of
the king of England were far too anxious themselves to pose as
leaders and commanders to permit any mere " provincial "
to usurp their dignities. It is therefore to the credit of Shirley,
the King's Governor in Massachusetts and himself no mean
soldier, that in the famous expedition against Louisburg he
should have selected for chief command so able a native Ameri-
can as William Pepperell. This Canadian success led to imme-
diate honors. The victorious commander was created Sir
William Pepperell. He was acting governor of the colony of
Massachusetts and in 1757 he was commissioned as lieutenant-
general and commander of the Massachusetts militia, now
grown to over seven thousand men. He died on the very eve
of the victorious campaign that gave Canada to England.

Oglethorpe and Pepperell, however, were but the accom-
paniments and the outgrowth of the years that were opening

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 67

the way for the real American soldier. The hardships, the
struggles, the defeats and the slow successes of colonial life
brought to the service many leaders skilled in border war and
toughened the temper of men from whom sturdy fighters came.
Miles Standish's thirteen men, his "great, invincible army,"
could be duplicated in every one of the struggling settlements
that looked out to the eastward upon the stormy Atlantic and
westward into the no less dangerous wilderness. From these
slender homeguards grew, in time, the provincial militia-men
who volunteered for the wars against France and Spain and
prepared the way for the greater revolution.

But not always in fighting Indians or invading hostile
lands were the colonial fighting-men in arms. Too often were
these arms turned against one another. In jealousies of office
and in border disputes, in hair-brained endeavors and in open
rebellion, time upon time, did brother face brother and neighbor
neighbor in the hot encounters of those earliest days.

The very composition of the several colonies fomented dis-
content. The mixed character of the settlers aggravated
disorder. From the time of beginnings, when Captain John
Smith of the Virginia colony " an adventurer of a high order
in an age of adventurers" came into direct conflict with
Governor Wingfield and his other associates, down to that
later day, when in Boston streets Crispus Attucks and his
riotous companions faced, and fell before a platoon of British
soldiers, dissatisfaction, jealousies, desire and unrest stirred up
continual strife which not unfrequently blazed out into open
rebellion. Chief among these popular uprisings, according to
chronological order, were : the Ingle roysterings in Maryland
in 1645, *h e Bacon rebellion in Virginia in 1675, the Culpepper
revolt in North Carolina in 1677, ^ e revolt of the people

68 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

against aristocratic oppression in 1689 led by Bradstreet in
Massachusetts and Leisler in New York; the race "rebellion "
of Father Sebastian Rasle in Maine in 1724, the election riots
in Pennsylvania in 1739, the bloody march of the " Paxton
Boys" on Philadelphia in 1763, and the revolt of the Regula-
tors in South Carolina in 1764. The fight at Golden Hill, in
New York City, and the Boston Massacre both disturbances
of the year 1770, and both rather vaingloriously claimed
as " the first blood of the Revolution" -fitly closed an hun-
dred and fifty years of struggle, sedition and dispute.

But, through all these (by means, even, of some of them)
was the mixed condition of colonial society merging into some-
thing definite, into something American. As it took an hun-
dred years and more to make of the caste-hedged emigrant of
Europe a free American, so, too, did it need fully a century of
emergencies to mold from the pioneer, the borderer and the
partisan the real American soldier. For years the American
colonist was but a transplanted Englishman, an expatriated
Dutchman, an " assisted " German, Frenchman or Swede.
These fought, when necessity compelled them, against Indian
marauder or border enemy; they resisted, when personal griev-
ances inflamed or local leaders uro-ed them, the invasion of their

assumed "rights," but they never marched, as Americans, step
to step and shoulder to shoulder, until the final invasion of
Canada and the first drum-beats of revolution cemented them
together as Americans, as brothers conscious of their own
strength and needs.

It was this lack of union that brought the rebellion of Bacon
and the bold stand of Leisler to naught. And though each

O O

colony, as it grew in numbers and in strength, organized its
able-bodied fighting-men into some semblance of a provincial

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 69

militia, these "bulwarks of the state" did but little in the way
of concerted action, and did that little grudgingly. It takes
a great motive to change a partisan into a patriot.

As, around its church or block-house or ragged fort of logs,
each struggling settlement grew, the earlier home-guards
which might be Captain Standish's

" Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock.
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,"

or might be the " three and fifty raw and tired Marylanders "
whom " that noble, right valiant, and politic soldier " Thomas
Cornwallis led against the Susquehannas developed into
the Train-Bands or Military-Bands common to each colony.

While from time to time the red-coat garrisons of the king
became familiar sights in the larger towns, it was chiefly upon
these Train- Bands, made up of their own numbers, that the
people of the colonies depended for their military strength.
u We know, from more than one incident," says Mr. Doyle,
" that there was no lack of individual courage or soldierly skill
among the settlers."

In every province the able-bodied male " freeholders " were
held subject to military duty. When occasion demanded they
could be called upon for active service. The charter of the
Maryland province invested the proprietors with the right to
" call out and arm the whole fighting population, wage war,
take prisoners, and slay alien enemies ; also to exercise martial
law in case of insurrection." In Massachusetts each town, from
the earliest days, had its own military company, for service in
which every man was liable, excepting the "magistrates, elders,
deacons, shipwrights, millers and fishermen."

The law of 1766 required all males in the colony to attend

?0 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

military exercise and service. Each company of foot in the colo-
nial militia was composed of musketeers and pikemen ; two
thirds bearing the matchlocks and the cumbersome " rest," one
third carrying the long and murderous-looking pikes, or spears.

While the demands of farm and merchandise were held
superior to those of war and while the colonist-soldier was ever
slow to leave these until their protection became an absolute
necessity the records of those old days show the train-band-man
to have been an important factor in the life and growth of
every settlement. " In the seventeenth century," says Mr.
Lodge, " all men went armed ; even the farmers wore swords,
and the military spirit was wide-spread and ardent. All adults
were in the militia and the training-day, when the soldiery went
out to drill with pike and musket, was the great break in the
dark monotony of daily life."

At the outbreak of the great English revolution of 1688 a
revolution that gave fresh impulse to the longings for personal
liberty in America the population of the colonies was less
than two hundred thousand. Of this number perhaps thirty
thousand may be considered a fair estimate for the fighting pop-
ulation the persons able to bear arms. But of this latter esti-
mate a small proportion only were really men-at-arms, members
of the train-bands. Captain Underbill's "army," which, in 1640,
at the instigation of the treacherous and bloody-minded Kieft
he led out from Dutch New York against the defenseless

Indians thereabouts, consisted of but one hundred and twenty
men. The force at the head of which Captain John Mason, in
1637, marched from the Connecticut country to the extermi-
nation of the warlike Pequots was less than an hundred men.
In 1675 the joint " army " of Massachusetts, Connecticut and
Plymouth, raised under the spur of desperate necessity to fight

COLONIAL FJGhTING-MEN. 71

the Indian warrior Philip of Pokanoket and drawn from a
population of some seventy thousand souls, amounted to but
eleven hundred men. The six free companies or train-bands of
New York who in 1689, united under the energetic Leisler to
strike if need be for the Stadtholder king and civil liberty num-
bered less than five hundred men ; the whole provincial force
that in that summer of 1689 responded to the summons of the
first colonial congress and gathered on the northern frontier
for the invasion of Canada fell far below the eight hundred and
fifty men promised by the congress.

In fact, no considerable nor adequate military force was
enlisted in the colonies for warlike purposes until the mid-years
of the eighteenth century showed to England and her colonies,
alike, that if America was to be the heritage of Englishmen the
struggle with France must be a united one and fought to the
bitter end. Then, at last, both king and colonist put forth
their greatest strength. And in the seven years of war that
broke the power of France in America and ended in triumph
on the historic heights of Quebec no small share of the glory
as of the fighting must be accorded to the now-aroused " pro-
vincials " whom British officers and soldiers so affected to
despise.

This studied contempt of regulars for volunteers is but a
part of the always-existing arrogance of military aristocracy.
It held place in the legions of Rome as in the cohorts of
Xerxes and reaches back even to that older day when by the
Wells of Harod the chosen three hundred of Gideon lapped
the water " like a dog " and were alone of all the Israelitish host,
deemed worthy to fight the Midianites.

But never, surely, was there less reason for this professional
bias than in the days of the colonial fighting-men of America.

?2 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

It was the South Carolina militiamen who, rallying to the
defense of their struggling colony in 1706, made so spirited an
attack upon the French invaders that they drove back Le
Feboure in defeat across Charleston bar with nearly one half of
his eight hundred men killed or prisoners. It was the fifty
Carolina volunteers of Governor Moore who, in 1702. plunged
through the Georgia forests to the attack of the boastful Span-
iards and established the claim of England to all the southern
country as far as the walls of Saint Augustine. In the dis-
astrous and horribly mismanaged expedition of 1739, by which
Eno-land was to conquer the Spanish possessions of Mexico and
Peru, it was the "provincials" who won the only fame that
came from that ill-starred endeavor as, all unsupported, they
led in the storming of the San Lazaro fortress of Carthagena ;
while of the thousands who left their bones in that pestilential
climate nine tenths were the contemned " provincials." It was
a New Hampshire volunteer, William Vaughn, who in the
attack on Louisburg in 1745 an enterprise in which, it is
asserted, " the provincial forces displayed courage, activity and
fortitude that would have distinguished veteran troops" cap-
tured the royal French battery and with only thirteen men held
it against all the enemy sent for its retaking. It was John
Stark and his five hundred New Hampshire foresters who
marched through the trackless wilderness that lay between the
Connecticut and the Hudson, compassed the reduction of Crown
Point and shed about the only light that fell upon the disgrace-
ful defeat at Ticonderos;a.

It was Phineas Lyman, the commander of the New England
volunteers u a man of uncommon martial endowments"
who, in 1755, won the victory at Lake George; and, on the
same fatal day of Dieskau's defeat it was Macmnnes and his two

COLONIAL FIGHTING- MEN.

hundred provincials who met and thoroughly defeated a superior
French force at the portage of Fort Kdward. It was Benjamin
Franklin of Pennsylvania, the father of the American militia
(of whom Logan wrote : " I principally esteem Benjamin
Franklin for saving the country by his contriving the militia"),

A MUSTER OK COLONIAL MILITIA ON BOSTON COMMON.

who, when elected in 1744 to the command of one of the reg-
iments he had raised, declined the honor of leadership and him-
self marched in the ranks and did his sentry duty, carrying a
musket as "a humble volunteer." It was Peyronney, the Vir-
ginia captain, who at Braddock's terrible defeat in 1755, "when
those they call regulars ran like sheep before the hounds," still

74 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

held the fight with his valiant colony men until he and nearly
every man in his company were killed. It was George Wash-
ington the Virginia colonel ("that heroic youth/ 1 so wrote
Davies, the New Jersey minister, "whom I cannot but hope
Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some
important service to his country") who, on that same awful
day, when the king's soldiers fell or fled before the Indian
ambuscade, saved the rout from being an utter massacre; though
shot at until two horses fell under him and his coat was riddled
with bullets, he still protected the retreat, with what Braddock
/had contemptuously termed his " raw American militia." It was
the men of Monckton's brigade three out of every four of
them being " provincials" -who stood the chief shock of the
conflict on the Plains of Abraham where on " the battle-field of
the Celtic and Saxon races " the valor of their stand gave victory
to England in that one of the decisive battles of the world that

closed the long struggle for supremacy in America with the
death of the heroic but victorious Wolfe.

Of this final and greatest endeavor of the colonial fighting-
men the story has become a twice-told tale. But it is worth
relating here, as that of a struggle in which the undervalued

O OO

" provincials " bravely bore their part and, waking to a sense of
their real strength, made the Plains of Abraham but the fore-
runner of the yet grander plain known as the Common of
Lexington.

The mid-years of the eighteenth century had come. For
nearly an hundred and fifty years had England and France
been crowding one another in the western world, each claiming

*-* O

its ownership, each determined to possess it. The success of
England, though clearly foreshadowed, had not as yet been
apparent. Canada might be doomed but France defended her-

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 7S

self right valiantly. Louisburg had fallen, Acadia had been
conquered, but to the northwest, above the rock-bound fortresses
of Quebec and Montreal, the Bourbon banner of the fleur-de-lis
still floated in triumph. France still held the key to the con-
tinent and in the great valleys of the west the blue uniforms
x)f her guardsmen garrisoned all the rapidly-growing outposts.

The governors of New France were energetic and aggressive.
To the grim and martial Frontenac had succeeded the politic
De Callieres, the warlike Vaudreuil, the energetic Beauhar-
nais, the wily Galissoniere and La Jonquiere, admiral of France.
Following him came, in turn, the impetuous Ouquesne and yet
another Vaudreuil the last of the French governors. Equal
in valor, though ever at odds with their official superiors, stood
the royal commandants, than -whom none were braver in fight
than the last : Dieskau, who fell at Lake George, and Mont-
calm, the noble and heroic Montcalm, whose career in Canada
has been pronounced "a wonderful struggle against destiny."

England opposed but inferior leaders to these energetic
sons of France. Braddock, the obstinate, fell in utter and
almost ignominious defeat; Shirley and Johnston had neither
the pluck nor the ability to follow up the advantages of success.
Loudon was a pompous do-nothing, Abercrombie a slow and
heavy-witted incapable, Amherst was a stolid and over-cautious
martinet, Webb a timid and dilatory tactician. Only with
Wolfe young, brilliant, energetic and intrepid did anything
like real success come to the arms of England.

Sailing from conquered Louisburg, where his great ability
had already displayed itself, Wolfe, in June, 1759, headed toward
Quebec. The slow methods of England had enabled France to
succor her principal stronghold in Canada and when Wolfe landed
on the Island of Orleans Amherst's twelve thousand men still

7 6

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN.

lingered on the shores of Lake Champlain. "The whole mass
&

of the people of Canada," says Bancroft, " had been called to
arms," and Wolfe, with his less than eight thousand men, found
himself fronted by Montcalm with a force of fourteen thousand,
not counting the Indian allies." The entire summer was wasted
in ineffectual attempts on either side to obtain the advantage;
Amheist and his expected reinforcements did not appear and
at last on the third of September Wolfe decided upon a
movement as adventurous as it was hazardous.

Sick in body but intrepid in spirit he ordered his men to
scale the precipitous heights above Quebec. Here was the one
weak point of the enemy ; here must the assault be made.
Once determined upon this was quickly done. Aided by "sheer
good luck quite as much as by skill and courage " Wolfe and
his little force exactly four thousand eight hundred and
twenty-six in number in the gray of a September morning,
silently pulled themselves up the steep incline and at sunrise,
says Mr. Clinton, " looked down from the Heights of Abraham
.upon the city which for nearly three months they had wearily
watched across the water."

Thus outgeneraled and surprised Montcalm saw that instant
action was his only salvation. With his seventy-five hundred
fighting men he marched to meet the enemy. The battle was
joined at once. On came the French ; but not until they were
within forty yards of the " thin red line " of England was
their fire returned. Then the iron hail burst from the Eng-
lish ranks ; another volley quickly followed and, as the smoke
cleared away, Wolfe charged the wavering French line. The
blue coats broke in panic; alike English and French comman-
der fell mortally wounded and as the French battalions turned
in flight the fate of Canada was sealed. One of the decisive

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 77

battles of the world was fought and won in precisely ten min-
utes by the watch.

Montreal fell in "the following summer. Rogers and his
American rangers captured the western posts and with the
close of 1760 the last hope of France was extinguished. The
lilies of the French king fell in surrender; the red cross of St.
George waved over conquered fortresses and captured posts,
and America was English from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf.

The thirteen colonies were wild with joy. They were saved.
The always-present danger of French conquest was over forever
and its final overthrow was due as much to American valor as to
English discipline. Though British councillors and commanders
might sniff and sneer, the people knew in how great measure
they had helped to the end. " Provincials," says Bancroft,
14 had saved the remnants of Braddock's army; provincials had
conquered Acadia; provincials had defeated Dieskau." And
provincials, too, had captured invulnerable Louisburg, had de-
stroyed Fort Frontenac, reduced Niagara and planted the
English flag in victory on the ruined bastions of Duquesne.

Such a schooling in warfare as that was not to go unheeded.
Alike ranger and forester, militiaman and volunteer gained the
inspiration of victory from this, the last stand against France.
The day for yet greater deeds was close at hand and the colonial
fighting-man was to become the defender and the deliverer of his
home-land. English contempt was to develop into English
tyranny and at the call of their leaders the despised provincials
of the past were to become the patriots of the future. From
the ranks of the village train-bands and the colonial militiamen
was to step ready and armed for resistance the determined and
now immortal Minute-man. The real American soldier was
ready at last.

CHAPTER IV.

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

R. BRATTLE presents
his Duty to his Excel-
lency Gov. Gage, he
apprehends it his Duty
to acquaint his Excel-
lency from Time to
Time with every Thing
he hears and knows to
be true and is of Im-
portance in these trou-
blesome Times, which
is the Apology Mr.
Brattle makes for troubling the General with this Letter.

Capt. Minot of Concord, a very worthy Man, this Minute
informed Mr. Brattle that there had been repeatedly made
pressing Applications to him to warn his Company to meet at
One Minutes Warning, cquipt with Arms and Ammunition,
according to Law ; he had constantly denied them, adding, if
he did not gratify them he should be constrained to quit his
Farms and Town ; Mr. Brattle told him he had better do
that than lose his Life and be hanged for a Rebel."

Thus, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1774, ran the opening

MIXUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 79

of a letter addressed to the commanding officer of the British
troops in Boston by William Brattle, the brigadier in command
of the provincial militia. For Boston was garrisoned by the
troops of King George. The temper of her people was hot
and aggressive toward England and the authorities across the
water had determined to nip rebellion in the bud.

It was a note of warning, but it came too late. Military
rule in America meant an increase of oppression ; and to further
oppression men were unalterably opposed. Resistance was duty.
To this duty the colonists were urged and those especially
who enrolled in the militia were implored to hold themselves
ready for any emergency. And at last the emergency came.

For years the relations between king and colonists had
been growing more r.nd more strained. Freedom from abso-
lute influence of the kingly authority had for more than a gen-
eration been creating in men a desire for greater personal
freedom. There is a mighty impetus toward emancipation in
the un-bridged distance of three thousand miles of sea.

So at last out of dispute came action. Tyranny on the one
side and unyielding opposition on the other ended as it only
could end in blows, and when the clash came the " minute's
warning" had its full effect. The Minute-men were ready and
alert.

The first shock of arms came in the Massachusetts colony.
When the British government sent orders to General Gage,
the commander in Boston, that he should bid his troops fire
upon the people when he should deem it necessary, the match
was put to the tinder. The people's protest showed itself in
the storing of munitions of war for their own defense and in
the drill and continual readiness of the Minute-men. In 1775
came the climax.

8o MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

" On the nineteenth day of April, one thousand seven hun-
dred and seventy-five, a day to be remembered by all Ameri-
cans of the present generation, and which ought and doubtless
will be handed down to ages yet unborn, the troops of Britain,
unprovoked, shed the blood of sundry of the loyal American
subjects of the British king- in the field of Lexington." So ran
what Dr. Hale calls " the prophetic introduction " of the report
of the Battle of Lexington which the provincial congress of
Massachusetts forwarded in haste to England.

Of that notable nineteenth of April how often has the
story been told. And yet, who tires of reading it ? From the
instant when Paul Revere caught the flash of the signal lan-
tern from the pigeon-haunted belfry of the North Church in
Boston town and rode his ride of warning the story grows in
interest.

" And lo ! as he looks, on the belfry's height

A glimmer and then a gleam of light !

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns !

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet :

That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by the steed in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat."

The land was ready to be kindled. The anxious waiting
of Paul Revere as, all

" impatient to mount and ride
Booted and spurred, with a heavv stride,"

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 81

he paced the grassy shore of the "sluggish Charles" was but
typical of the unsettled feeling that pervaded all the colonies.
Not alone in Massachusetts were bold men urging action.
North and south the mysterious " Sons of Liberty " were form-
ing. In more than one section were to be found those who
expressed not only their willingness but their desire to fight.

From that historic seventh of October, 1765, when in the
city of New York, a congress of the thirteen colonies voiced
the protest of the people against the tyranny of England down
to the climax-year that precipitated revolution, the people were
everywhere preparing. The spirit of resistance broke out
again and again. The angry crowd that danced about the
effigy of Oliver the stamp-master, as it dangled from a Boston
elm, the five hundred hard riders who stopped the way of
Ingersoll the Connecticut collector and forced him to resign
his office, fling aloft his hat and hurrah three times for " Liberty
and Property," the New York mob that broke open the stables
of the royal governor, dragged out his coach, mounted his Ex-
cellency's effigy upon it and then burned the whole equipage
on the Bowling Green, the four hundred Marylanders who
assembled at Frederick town armed with " guns and toma-
hawks " and threatened to break up the provincial government,
the indignant people of North Carolina who threatened the
British war-sloop that bore the stamped paper, seized its boat,
which they dragged on a cart to Wilmington and there sur-
rounding the governor's house threatened to burn both house
and governor if he did not accede to their demands, the mut-
terings of opposition in Pennsylvania, in South Carolina and
in Georgia that rose and fell with popular opinion and were
displayed in the customary mobs and effigy burnings all these
were but the precursors of that determined opposition to

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

tyranny that, after ten years of smouldering, was fanned into a
flame by the famous stand of the Minute-men on Lexington
Common and about the old North Bridge at Concord -- the
historic span of America's Rubicon, the sacred spot

" Where once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."

It was that day's fight that showed the courage and tested the
spirit of America's citizen soldiery.

Little need to tell here the story of Lexington. Every school-
boy is familiar with its details and not a few schoolboys of that

distant day seemed to
have been filled with
prophetic inspirations.
It is related that as Lord
Percy's troops marched
out of Boston heading
for the highway that led
toward distant Concord
they played with much
spirit the shrill but sar-
castic strains of Yankee
Doodle. " Ho, ho ! "
jeeringly called out a smart Roxbury boy perched on a con-
venient stone wall, "you fellows go out by 'Yankee Doodle;'
you'll come back fast enough by ' Chevy Chase.' '

And a " Chevy Chase " it was indeed. The Percy of that
famous day essayed the role of his ancestor of three centuries
back only to repeat on Massachusetts highways the story of
that " woful hunting" in Scottish woods. The old ballad tells
us how

THEY HUNG ON THK SKIRTS OK THE RETREAT.

MINUTE-A\fEN AND CONTINENTALS. 83

" To drive the deer with hound and horn

Earl Percy took his way ;
The child may rue that is unborn

The hunting of that day."

The " embattled farmers " of the fair New England fields like
the supporters of another Douglas rallied to protect their home-
lands and by their acts said as did he

" Show me," said he, " whose men you be

That hunt so boldly here,
That, without my consent, do chase

And kill my fallow-deer?"

The Minute-men won the day. Baffled and dispirited the
British marauders straggled back to Boston. Like bull-dogs
the now aroused farmers snapped and growled at their heels ;
they hung on the skirts of the retreat ; with flint-lock and
king's-arm they emphasized their protests and only desisted
when the British troops were safe again beneath the protecting
batteries of Boston town.

Here was war at last. The tidings of that long day's fight
fired the colonies from Maine to Georgia. North, west and
south the stirring tidings sped. It was on Wednesday the
nineteenth of April, 1775, that Lord Percy's routed columns
ran their twenty-mile race with death. On Sunday morning
following, a swift courier clattered down the Broad Way bring-
ing the story of the fight to New York. Elizabeth, New Bruns-
wick, Princeton, Philadelphia, quickly heard the news. On the
twenty-seventh it was in Baltimore and in the early days of
May the southern colonies knew of the bravery of the Massa-
chusetts farmers and cheered the tidings lustily. The Minute-
men of the old Bay colony had precipitated revolution.

84 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

On that very tenth of May when the men of Georgetown in
South Carolina flung aloft their caps at the news of Lexington
fio-ht, away to the North, amid the rolling hills that make so

t5 J

picturesque the verdant shores of Lake Champlain, another
body of New England .Minute-men, gathered from among the
New Hampshire Grants and known as the Green Mountain
Boys, made a dash upon the enemy that has become famous in
history.

Led on by Ethan Allen, a mountain partisan, and Benedict
Arnold, a Connecticut horse-jockey, less than an hundred Green
Mountain Boys surprised the British post of Ticonderoga in
the early dawn of that May morning. Thus unceremoniously
routed from his bed, the sleepy commandant had the distinction
of making the first actual surrender of the king's property to
the revolting colonists, yielding with as good grace as possible
to the rather pompous summons of the blustering Allen who
summoned him to surrender the fort u in the name of the Great
Jehovah and the Continental Congress ! "

"The careful annalists," says Dr. Hale, " observe that the
Continental Congress did not meet until after the surrender of
Ticonderoga." But little did Allen care. He had a point to
make and he made it. No one comprehended better than did
this bold borderer the force of the questionable old adage: "All
is fair in love and war."

Lexington and Ticonderoga were but the awakening.
Minute-man and militiaman, responding to the call of the
Committee of Safety, hurried to the investment of Boston.
They had whipped the British in the open field; now they
would push them into the ocean.

Mr. Frothingham has a story to the effect that when on one
of those last days of May, 1775, the British generals, Howe,

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 85

Clinton and Burgoyne, were sailing into Boston harbor with
reinforcements for the army of the king, they spoke a packet,
outward-bound. Burgoyne hailed the skipper: "What news
above ? " he cried. Back came the answer that Boston town
was surrounded by ten thousand countrymen. " How many

C.RF.FN MOUNTAIN BOYS ON THE MARCH.

regulars in Boston ? " asked the Englishman. " About five
thousand." "What!" shouted Burgoyne, "can ten thousand
Yankee Doodles shut up five thousand soldiers of the king?
Well ; well ! Only let us get in there and we'll soon find
elbow-room."

86 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

But that elbow-room never came. Closer and tighter about
the beleaguered town drew the cordon of besieging yeomanry.
In all the country 'round farmers and village folk grasped
musket and pikes ready for action, and hurried to the places of
rendezvous and on the seventeenth of June the Provincial
Congress, assembled at Watertown, issued an order that ran as
follows :

"WHEREAS the hostile Incursions this Country is exposed to, and the frequent Alarms
we may expect from the Military Operations of our Enemies, make it necessary that the good
People of this Colony be on their Guard and prepared at all Times to resist their Attacks, and
to aid and assist their Brethren : Therefore, Resolved, That it be and hereby is recommended
to the Militia in all Parts of this Colony, to hold themselves m Readiness to march at A
MINUTE'S WARNING, to the Relief of any Place thai may be attacked, or to the Support
of our Army, with at least twenty Cartridges or rounds of Powder and Ball. And. to prevent all
Confusion or Delays, It is further recommended to the Inhabitants of this Colony, living on
the Seacoasts, or within twenty Miles of them, that they carry their Arms and Ammunition
with them to Meeting, on the Sabbath and other Days, \\hen they meet for public Worship."

Summons and caution came none too soon. On that very
seventeenth of June the environed British made one bold push
for release. Their jailers were prepared for them. The battle
of Bunker Hill was fought.

It proved the sturdiness as it tested the courage of the
American Minute-man. A moral victory although an actual
defeat, the battle of Bunker Hill showed alike to English sol-
dier and to Colonial tory that Boston-town was not to be held
in safety for the king.

On the same historic seventeenth of June the Continental
Congress, in session at Philadelphia, appointed as "general-
issimo" of the soldiers of revolt, Colonel George Washington of

o o

Virginia. Fighting men from all the New England colonies,
volunteers from the middle provinces, riflemen from Maryland
and Virginia and the further south, led by their own officers

THK MINUTE-MEN.

M1XUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 89

and making in all a loosely-organized force of more than
sixteen thousand men, encamped upon the hills and plains to
the west of Boston.

Under a spreading elm on the commons of Cambridge
a tree that yet stands, strong and sturdy, the best memorial of
that time of blossoming revolution minute-men and rifle-
men, militiamen and volunteers were mustered on the third of
July, 1775; and there "His Excellency George Washington,
Esquire, Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the
Forces of the Thirteen United Colonies " assumed command
of the soldiers of freedom. Revolution was organized. The
Minute-men of Lexington and Bunker Hill became from that
day forward the Continental Army.

But, before we turn from this opening chapter in the real
story of the American soldier, let us glance at those historic
figures that, by their deeds, so royally illustrate its pages.
These Minute-men, this raw militia, that faced and fought the
well-trained red-coats of England who were they ? What
were they like ?

Soldiers we can scarcely call them, for the soldier presup-
poses discipline, drilling and training. Some crude instruction
of this sort they may have had. Some of the men, indeed,
were veterans of the colonial conflicts that had preceded the
Revolution, but as a rule these first fighters for liberty were
busy toilers all, farm-born or village bred. Hastily summoned
and still more hastily accoutered they left the plough in the
furrow, the tool on the bench, the quill in the ink and, all
unused to war, sprang to arms. In motley uniforms, in half-
uniforms, in no uniform at all, with here a military coat, there
a three-cornered hat or perhaps only a home-made cockade
pinned to the homespun lapels, with the rusty flint-lock

9 o MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

cauo-ht down from above the broad chimney-piece where it had
&

huno- for years as heirloom or trophy, a motley array, lacking in

5 ^

discipline, over-generous of advice to their superiors neighbors,
comrades and brothers all, they had swarmed to the ragged
fences that flanked the king's highway between Concord and
Boston ; they had camped in most unmilitary style on hillside
or in field, fallen behind the hastily-tossed earthworks on
Bunker Hill or died beneath the blossoming apple-trees beside
the flowing Mystic.

And the officers about whom these earlier fighters rallied
were a scarcely less motley group than were the men who but
haltingly acknowledged their authority. Here in the first
fights for freedom, within the straggling camps or meeting in
that first council of war at the: foot of pleasant Prospect Hill
came the waverer, the blusterer, the man of moderate experi-
ence, the would-be martinet, the newly-elected captain, ignorant
of tactics and uncertain as to the proper use of his sword
food for merriment and contempt among the trained warriors
of the English king, but patriotic none the less, formidable
because sheathed in the justice of their cause.

"Thrice is lie armed that hath his quarrel just ;
And lie but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted "-

Surely never did those noble words which the great poet puts
into the mouth of an English king find fitter application than
toward these patriot leaders in the new England across the
seas, where once again the old issue between tyranny and
personal freedom was to be fought to the end.

Here, to the leadership at the camp on Prospect Hill, came
Heath the only colonel or, at least, the first of the colonels;

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 91

here, too, came Artemas Ward, " commander-in-chief " by
sufferance; Prescott of Pepperell, the valiant veteran of the
Canadian campaign; Putnam, the modern Cincinnatus, who
literally turned from the plough to the battle-field; Warren the
Roxbury doctor and busy committee-man, who fought as a
volunteer and fell in the rush from the captured earthworks,
the noblest victim of the stand on Bunker Hill; Knowlton
the brave Connecticut leader ;Gridley the cannonier who had
trained the guns on Louisburg; Stark the doughty Indian
fighter from the New Hampshire Grants and Reed the equally
intrepid son of those granite hills; Brooks, the Medford major;
Thomas the Kingston doctor; Spencer of Connecticut; Greene
of Rhode Island men whose names are indissolubly linked
to those opening days of revolution and whose memories
should linger with their countrymen as of those who by
their courage, their endurance and their sturdy patriotism fired
and cemented the stock from which was to spring the real
American soldier.

"Will he fight?" asked General Gage, as, in the battery on
Copp's Hill the tory lawyer whoXfood by the General's side
pointed out the stalwart figure^rf" his rebel brother-in-law,
rallying the farmers behind the rudely-lined breastworks on
Bunker Hill.

u Fight ! " was the reply, "yes, yes ; you may depend on him
to do that to the very last drop of blood in his veins."

A notable figure in those stirring days was this same rebel
brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott. A type of the Ameri-
can fighters for freedom, his statue to-day fitly crowns the
height which he so valiantly defended and seems to guard the
tall gray shaft that commemorates for us that eventful seven-
teenth of June. Fifty years of age, a splendid figure, handsome

9 2 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

of face, full of energy and of inspiring words, he wore that hot
June day in the trenches a simple uniform the blue coat,
lapped and faced and adorned with a single row of buttons ;
the knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes, and the inevitable
three-cornered hat, while his directing hand grasped the un-
sheathed sword whose temper had already been proven in
battle for that English king who was now no longer his master.

Of a like type and of equal valor were the men who com-
manded and the men who followed, the men who fought and
those who fell in the opening battles of the war.

It was these fighters from the New England farms and their

o o

brethren from the plantations of the further South frank,
fearless, illy-disciplined, determined and alert, who gathered on
the commons of Cambridge and, merging themselves into the

<_> o o

Continental Army, accepted George Washington of Virginia
as their commander and generalissimo.

Such then, when he took command at Cambridge, were the
troops of Washington. " A hardy militia, brave and patriotic,
but illy-armed, undisciplined, unorganized and wanting in almost
everything necessary for successful war."

What could he make of them ?

Full justice can never be done to the ability of the first
American General. Hampered and harassed by the uncer-
tainty of his forces, by the lack of proper munitions of war, by
the half-hearted measures of a hesitating Congress and even

O O

by the wavering desires of the people whose interests he was
to defend, he was yet able, with all the hazards against him,

* o

to drive a disciplined British Army from Boston and to hold
against gathering odds the important city of New York. De-
feated at Brooklyn by a force of British regulars outnumbering
him three to one, he saved his armv bv one of the most mas-

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 95

terly retreats known to history. With forces continually
decimated by desertions and by the unceremonious leave-taking
of militiamen whose short terms of service were constantly ex-
piring, he yet so maneuvered, marched and handled his dis-
heartened forces as to strike, at just the critical moment, at the
very center of Britain's chief dependence the hireling Hes-
sians at Trenton. And thus he grasped out of almost certain
defeat the victory that strengthened the patriotic cause and re-
sulted finally in the one measure that he knew was necessary
for success the organization and establishment of a regular
army.

America's merriest Christmas was, really, the one that
promised to be its sorriest - - that eventful twenty-fifth of
December, 1776, when Washington's meagre force pushed
through the floating ice of the Delaware and captured the
unsuspecting Hessians. " The life of a nation," says Mr.
Lodge, " was at stake." Washington's brief campaign at
Trenton and at Princeton has rightly been characterized as
quite as brilliant and as full of skill and daring as is anything
in the annals of modern warfare. Mr. Lodge asserts that, if
Washington had never fought another battle, this decisive
action on the Delaware would entitle him to the place of a
great commander.

That it was decisive no one who reads history carefully can
question. It reassured a doubting nation, organized strength
out of weakness, brought triumph from disaster and, as one of
its immediate results, merged all the shifting forces of the
unreliable Continentals into the definite and finally victorious
army of the Soldiers of Liberty.

That brief period from the muster beneath the elms of Cam-
bridge Common in the warm July weather of 1775 to the cold

9 6

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS.

Christmas night on the Delaware in the dying days of 1776 is
crowded with incident. It saw the disastrous invasion of Can-
ada that ended in defeat at Montreal and Quebec ; the death of
the gallant Montgomery, one of America's most promising gen-
erals, and the daring of Arnold whose later treason, even, should
not be permitted to eclipse his brilliant record amid Canadian
snows. It saw the patriot victories in North Carolina; the

gallant defense of
Charleston by the
heroic Moultrie ;
the stubborn but
hopeless effort to
hold New York,
the remarkable bat-
tle of Brooklyn, the
spirited engage-
ments at Harlem
Heights and White
Plains. It brought

to the front men
whose names were
TIIK cAMiikiucE ELM. to become famous

as intrepid and gal-
lant fighters; and, through the inefficiency of British generals
and the tireless labors of Washington drew to what was in
fact, if we regard the numbers engaged, but a trifling military
campaign the attention and the plaudits of a watching world.

A large, a veteran and a disciplined army, led by generals
whom England esteemed her best, was out-maneuvered by a
demoralized assemblage of untried and unreliable militiamen,
" not much superior," says General Cullom, " to an armed mob ;

MINUTE-MI-. \ A.\n CONTINENTALS. 97

but the one was held together by a machine-like discipline and
backed by an obstinate tyranny, the other, unsatisfactory
though it might be, was still inspired by a determined patriot-
ism. When disaster seemed most certain triumph came forth,
and out of the most unpromising surroundings there emerged,
to carry the war to its close, the dauntless Soldiers of Liberty.
Henceforward minute-man, militiaman and continental are to
stand through all that struggle for freedom as the veteran
American Soldier.

CHAPTER V.

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

IR, the Hessians have surrendered!"
Thus, in joyful tones, came Baylor's
report as, in a lull in that sharp
morning's fight at Trenton, he gal-
loped up to the anxious Commander-
in-Chief.

" Thank God ! " was Washington's
devout rejoinder. And that fervent
exclamation of gratitude, the sim-
plest and yet the strongest that
man can utter, was freighted with
a still deeper meaning than even
Washington himself could imagine.
For that triumphant report of the
hard-riding Baylor bore in its one

O J

brief sentence the success of the Revolution.

It is always darkest just before the dawn. When Glover's
fishermen-soldiers from Marblehead, on that cold December
night of 1776, pushed out into the floating ice the clumsy boats
that were to carry Washington's troops across the Delaware the
expedition seemed to be but a forlorn hope.

The little force of twenty-five hundred men, whose ill-shod

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 99

feet had literally marked their march across the snow with
blood, constituted almost the entire fighting force at Washing-

o o o

ton's disposal. His army had, as yet, no compelling law to hold
its numbers intact or keep its volunteers reliable. Here to-day
and gone to-morrow seemed to be the rule with the home-raised
militia who had ranged themselves under his banner.

Something must be done. The more than thirty thousand
men who made up the British Army about New York so far
outnumbered the Continental fighting-force that could be counted
on for actual service that ruin to the patriot cause seemed almost
inevitable. But despair formed no part of Washington's in-
domitable nature. Success must be won. In the most somber
of those dark days he wrote to his brother, " I cannot entertain
the idea that our cause will finally sink though it may remain
for some time under a cloud."

And it was from under this cloud that he determined to
bring the cause that was dearer to him than life. When, erect
but anxious, he directed from his open flat-boat the crossing of
his little army from one icy bank to the other he literally, as Mr.
Lodge asserts, " carried the American Revolution in his hands."
This one stroke of Washington's generalship saved the cause
of the colonies. For, apart from the moral effect of the victory,
it aroused a hesitating Congress to agree to Washington's
demand for a standing army.

The enthusiasm that blazes into conflict and breaks into
open rebellion against tyranny not unfrequently fails to stand
the test of prolonged endeavor when the first frenzy of indig-
nation is past.

To a certain extent this was true of the American revolu-
tionists. The valor that lined the fences and thronged the
fields between Concord and Boston, that led the assault on

IOO

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

Ticonderoga and held the breastworks on Bunker Hill grew
lukewarm with long days of inaction in camp. Crops were

o-rowino- in the home farm-lands ; work which seemed quite as
& <^>

important as forcing the English king to yield to colonial demands
had been left to over-burdened housewives or to unskilled
helpers. When their brief term of enlistments came to an
end the volunteers were quite ready to hurry back to their crops,
their stock or their neglected duties at home.

So, again and again, the militia of the land, who acknowl-
edged no central authority and were held only by their pledges
to a short term of actual service would dwindle to a mere
handful or be succeeded by raw levies who must be schooled
to the demands and discipline of warfare.

In a letter to the President of the congress, written after
the defeat on Long Island and that masterly retreat from
Brooklyn, Washington said : " The jealousy of a standing army
and the evils to be apprehended from one are remote and in
my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all
to be dreaded ; but the consequence of wanting one according
to my ideas formed from the present view of things, is certain
and inevitable ruin. For, if I was called upon to declare upon
oath whether the militia have been most serviceable or hurtful,
upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter."

He had his wish at last. On the twenty-seventh of Decem-
ber, 1776, the very day after the brilliant dash upon the Hes-
sians at Trenton, Congress " having maturely considered the
present crisis and having perfect reliance on the wisdom, vigor
and uprightness of General \Yashington," granted him the
power as General of the United States to raise, organize and
officer sixteen battalions of infantry, three thousand light-
horsemen, three regiments of artillery and a corps of engineers.

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 101

This was to be considered as in addition to the eighty-eight
battalions furnished by the separate States.

Here was high-sounding promise indeed, but it was never
fully realized. It accomplished one excellent result, however,
for it paved the way for the attainment of Washington's
desires. For, though the numbers obtained were far too few
for the always pressing needs of the revolted colonies and
though the promises of the States were but meagerly fulfilled,
a plan of enlistments for the term of at least three years kept
up a standing force throughout the rest of the revolution. This
supplied a basis on which Washington as commander-in-chief
could frame his campaigns; while the militia, called out for
extra service when occasion demanded, enabled the Congress
to keep a fair showing of a fighting-force always in the field.

And yet, correct as was Washington's judgment and uncer-
tain as was this fluctuating militia, how often upon their action
did victory depend? It was the minute-men and militia of New
England who gave the lie to the assertion of the bullying peers
of Britain that the Americans would not fight. Before the
guns of these same hastily-gathered militia-men the very flower
of the British army reeled backward down the smoke-wreathed
slope of Bunker Hill. It was the militia of the Mohawk
Valley who stood the brunt of the bloody battle of Oriskany.
It was the militia of New Hampshire and New York who
stormed the earthworks at Bennington, captured or scattered
the Hessian foeman and saved Mollie Stark from widowhood.
It was the militia who triumphed over Burgoyne at Saratoga,
decided the fate of the Revolution and made that famous en-
gagement one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. It
was the militia of the South the men who marched with
Pickens at Charleston, with Campbell and Sevier at King's

I02 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

Mountain, with Stephens at Guilford and with Marion at Eutaw
who came to the assistance of the regular Continental troops
and, again and again, turned defeat into victory.

It is in no part the province of this volume to describe in de-
tail the battles of the Revolution. Our duty lies rather in photo-
graphing, as well as we are able, the American Soldier who
fouo-ht for the liberty of his land. The story of the several

engagements that begun at Lexington and ended at Yorktown
has been so often told and re-told that to give it space here
would be but rehearsing a many-times told tale.

But every new battle, whether it ended in defeat or victory,
made the American fighter still more a soldier and ever from
the despair of the moment sprang a hope for the future. In
whatever part of the country the tramp of British regulars
startled the timid and angered the brave, the demand for imme-
diate action brought a ready response. From farm and shop,
from village and from clearing came the excited yeomanry
hurrying to the support of the harassed Continentals.

The very lack of any distinctive uniform among those
hastily-gathered recruits served a double purpose, in that it was
at once a test of their patriotism and a blind to the enemy.

When, at Bennington, the aroused New England farmers
answered the summons of the gallant Stark and encompassed
the rear of Baum's heavily-armed Hessians the very manner of
their coming disarmed suspicion. The detested foreigners were
all regulars, "picked," says Mr. Fiske, "from the bravest of the
troops which Ferdinand of Brunswick had led to victory at
Creveld and Minden." What could a force of unskilled
countrymen do against this historic prowess ? And yet
Yankee shrewdness overmatched German tactics. Stealthily
and leisurely, almost as if seeking protection, the little squads

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 103

of farmers, dressed in their long blue frocks and not over a
dozen in a company, hung on the flanks of the German invaders
or strolled carelessly to the rear. Good General Baum, a vet-
eran of the stately European battle-fields counted these strag-
glers as nothing more than the Tory farmers whom he had

THE BATTLE OF ORISKANY.

expected to come within his lines, seeking protection from their
rebel neighbors. But, ere the sun set, Bennington saw another
sight. For when the Indian fighter Stark, at the head of five
hundred militia, boldly charged the Hessians in front, these
groups of supposed Tory farmers, now grown to five hundred

I04 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

or more, levelled their muskets at the King's troops and, from
rear and flank, poured in a murderous fire. Thus was Ben-
nington made a victory for the Colonists.

In like manner, of the forty-eight hundred men who rallied
around Washington and, on the field of Princeton faced the
veterans troops of England, more than three fifths were mer-
chants, mechanics and farmers, ignorant of war. Inspired by
the daring dash on the Hessian force at Trenton they had
rushed from their homes, careless of mid-winter cold and full of
the hope that, after all, the liberty they had begun to despair
of was not impossible.

When, upon what was at that clay the very outskirts of
civilization, St. Leger and his motley array of seventeen hun-
dred mingled British, Tories and Indians, tramped into the
Mohawk Valley, it was the eisrht hundred and more Dutchmen

j 7 O

of that western frontier who rallied to the call of heroic old
Herkimer and, amid the pelting rush of one of August's fiercest
thunder-storms, fought and won the battle of Oriskany "the
bloodiest and most picturesque battle of the Revolution."

When, later, the pompous declaration of Burgoyne that,
with ten thousand men, he could promenade through America,
ended in utter disaster at Saratoga, it was the supporting
farmers from the country round and from the distant New
England hills who fought that u battle of the husbandman," and
gained a victory, of which it has been said that no martial event,
from the battle of Marathon to that of Waterloo, exerted a
greater influence upon human affairs.

In the south, as has been shown, planters and freeholders
sprang to arms whenever their homes were threatened. The
unsteadiness of the militia in the early battles was nobly atoned
for at King's Mountain, at the Cowpens and at Guilford. The

MARION AMI MIS MK.N.

" < )ur fortress is the JJIKH! greenwood,
Our tent the cypress-tree."

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 107

names of Morgan and Marion stand, side by side, with those of
Herkimer and Stark. " Colonel Marion," complained Corn-
wallis, "so wrought upon the minds of the people that there
was scarcely an inhabitant between the Pedee and the Santee
that was not in arms against us."

Around the name of this dashing Southern leader song and
story have thrown all the glamour of romance. There may be
more of fiction than of fact in the legends that have come down
to us, but even these at least breathe the spirit of the times while
Bryant's stirring lines fitly emphasize the daring and the reck-
lessness that made the name of " Marion's Men " a power in all
that southern land :

" Our band is few, but true and tried.

Our leader frank and bold ;
The British soldier trembles

When Marion's name is told.
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.

Wo to the English soldiery

That little dread us near !
On them shall light at midnight

A strange and sudden fear.
When, waking to their tents on fire,

They grasp their arms in vain,
And they who stand to face us

Are beat to earth again ;
And they who fly in terror, deem

A mighty host behind,
And hear the tramp of thousands

Upon the hollow wind.

Io8 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

Grave men there are by broad Santee,

Grave men with hoary hairs ;
Their hearts are all with Marion,

For Marion are their prayers.
\nd lovely ladies greet our band

With kindliest welcoming,
With smiles like those of summer,

And tears like those of spring.
For them we wear these trusty arms,

And lay them down no more
Till we have driven the Briton,

For ever from our shore."

It would indeed be but scant justice to the Soldiers of
Liberty to omit the praise that is surely due to all such irreg-
ular bodies of fi";htin2: men as were those who followed Marion

o o

and leaders like him. Even to such lawless guerrillas as were
the much-maligned " Skinners " who ranged the shores of the
Hudson, perpetually harassing the British outposts and forever
at deadly feud with their Tory rivals, the " Cowboys," should
be accorded a certain meed of praise. From among these came
the shrewd and watchful three who, disdaining the bribe of
Andre, frustrated the treason of Arnold and without hope of
reward " beyond virtue and an honest sense of duty " saved the
patriot cause from the blackest kind of ruin.

It was the Kentucky frontiersmen led on by George Rogers
Clarke and John Sevicr who turned the tide at the famous
battle of King's Mountain, in South Carolina, and changed
the whole course of the war in the southern department.

But, while unstinted praise may be accorded to restless
militia-man and irregular fighter, it is to the so-called " regular
army of the United States" in the days of revolution known
as the Continentals -- that glory and honor most heartily
belong.

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 109

Never rising much above forty thousand men, falling, in
the last years of the war, to less than twenty thousand, this
army of the Congress was organized, equipped and kept in the
field by the tireless energy of Washington and his supporters
in the councils of the new-born nation. It was upon them
chiefly that their commander depended for discipline, efficiency,
obedience and action. In their uniform of buff and blue they
were a goodly-appearing and sturdy set of fighters, trim when
their coats were new, picturesque even in their rags.

These were the men who stood ever in the gap. Though
suffering often for the very necessities of the hard life of the
camp, they marched even while they grumbled and fought
their bravest even in their direst distress. Believing always in
their great commander, spite of faction in Congress and of cabal
among their officers, they followed him from defeat to defeat
and from victory to victory as loyal through all the hardships
of Valley Forge as in the feverish excitement of Monmouth
and the final triumph at Yorktown.

Their constancy, their valor and their devotion to the cause
of liberty made victory possible. It was because Washington
could depend upon this small but solid nucleus of a regular
army to carry out his often involved plans for stratagem and
action that he was able to wage to its final triumph the slow
but successful war that ended in liberty. It was the stubborn
determination of these same Continentals that, at the last,
flung into utter failure the attempt of the British ministry to
enslave three millions of freemen across the western seas.

There is as much truth as poetry, as much force as fire in
those well-known lines of McMaster which show us the serried
ranks of our first regular army, standing at bay, battling for the
freedom of a people :

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

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 riles .

Of the isles,
From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner of the rampant

Unicorn,
And grummer, gru.mner, 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-breakeis o'er the green-sodded acres

Of the plain ,

And louder, louder, loudtr, cracked the black gunpowder,
Cracking amain !

" Now like smiths at their forges
Worked the red St. George's

Cannoniers ;

And ' the villainous saltpetre'
Rang a fierce, discordant metre
Round their ears.
As the swift
Storm-drift,
With hot sweeping anger, came the horse-guards' clangry

On our flanks.

Then higher higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire
Through the ranks !

" Then the old-fashioned Colonel
Galloped through the white infernal
Powder-cloud ;

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.
i

And his broad-sword was swinging,
And his brazen throat was ringing
Trumpet loud.
Then the blue
Bullets flew,
And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of the leaden

Rifle-breath.

And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron six-pounder
Hurling death ! "

It is one of the unfortunate phases of sudden emancipation
that certain self-seeking elements among the emancipated
assert themselves all too vigorously and strive for position and
for power. The arrogance of a brief authority made far too
many of those who aspired to be directors or leaders selfish
rather than statesman-like, place-hunters rather than patriots.

It is well and wise that in the story of a nation only the
good survives. It is better for us and for the memories of our
forefathers that in our annals the matchless Declaration of
Independence pushes far out of sight the mean-spirited
"Conway Cabal," that Bunker Hill and Saratoga and King's
Mountain leave but scant place for the factions and the feuds,
the spites and the frauds that so often dulled the fires of
patriotism and tarnished the glory of our early American
Soldiers.

Who to-day ever thinks of the possibility of " an old Con-
tinental " being a deserter? And yet there were renegades
both before and after the days of Demont the Adjutant; there
were traitors fully as criminal as Arnold the General. Who
in the victorious America of to-day can believe that in those
times that tried men's souls there were, among those high in
authority in the American Army, men who undervalued and
assailed the measures, the character, even the loyalty of Wash-

112

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

ington ? And yet these hostile elements seemed at some times
to be almost in the majority. Not even the military ability of
Charles Lee, that arrogant soldier of fortune whom men early
in the Revolution styled " the Palladium of America " could
save him from an all-consuming jealousy of the commander-in-

\VAS1IIN(;TON REVIEWING THE CONTINENTAL ARMY.

chief and make him other than a morose comrade, a lagging aid,
a half-hearted traitor. Nor could the hicrh rank and commanding

*^ e}

station of that favorite of the Congress, General Gates, temper
in any degree the vanity, the ambition and the venomous
rivalries of the man who displaced Schuyler and listened to
belittlements of Washington. To one who studies the unlovely
characters of these and such as these even that arch-traitor

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. n 3

Benedict Arnold seems at times their superior. And indeed
Arnold's great act of treachery should not blind us to the
brilliant qualities of this brave and dashing American soldier.
To him may be given much of the credit of the first attack on
Ticonderoga, of the movement against Canada, of the night
dash on Trenton and of the spirited engagement at Freeman's
Farms that made possible the victory at Saratoga. Arrogant
and impetuous though he was, angered because other and less-
deserving officers had been placed above him in rank, harassed
by debt, lightly regarded by Congress, importuned alike by
tories and by Englishmen, we must remember that Benedict
Arnold even up to the hour of his treachery possessed the
confidence and regard of so shrewd a student of men as George
Washington himself. In the very defects of his nature lay the
pity of his great crime. He was utterly lacking in the patri-
otism that can calmly brook negligence, in the virtue that can
proudly endure injustice.

With examples like these among their superiors and
associates it is to the everlasting honor of men like Schuyler
and Knox and Green, of Sterling and Wayne, of Lafayette and
" Light-Horse Harry " Lee that with the help of that esprit de
corps that lived in the ragged ranks of the men of Valley
Forge they could loyally override so hateful and hostile a spirit
as manifested itself in such contemptible conspiracies as " the
Conway Cabal " and others of that ilk.

And so to-day it is the valiant and true-hearted officers of
the Revolution that we gladly recall. A noble and a gallant
list ! Warren, unflinching patriot and valiant soldier, who
fought and fell a volunteer at Bunker Hill ; Knox the Boston
bookseller and dear friend of Washington, brave as a lion, " or
any braver thing ; " Parsons the Connecticut lawyer, an adept

II4 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

tactics, intrepid on the field ; Sterling the impetuous soldier,
quick-witted, far-seeing and born for command; Wooster the
New York man of wealth and ease who spurned the offer of
a command in the British army and used his own fortune to
equip and pay his officers and men ; Greene, " with the possible
exception of Washington," so says Mr. Channing, " the best offi-
cer of high rank in the American army;'' Schuyler, painstak-
ing, unselfish and ever-valorous, standing, says Daniel Webster,
scarcely below Washington in the services he rendered his
country; Lincoln, stubborn and unyielding even to the verge
of obstinacy, but full of the patriotic fervor that no disaster could
dampen ; Putnam, brave and valorous in the field though
ignorant of the science of war ; Henry Lee of Virginia " Light-
Horse Harry " -the Phil Sheridan of the Revolution ; Anthony
Wayne, the impetuous, magnetic Pennsylvania!!, called, at first,
" Dandy Wayne " from his extreme punctiliousness as to dress,
but in time " Mad Anthony," because of his dash, his recklessness
and his daring ; Morgan the brilliant backwoodsman and
George Roo-ers Clarke the brave young Western borderer whose

O C5 J O

gallantry and skill saved the vast western frontier to the
United States.

And how this list could be extended ! From general and
staff officer down through all the grades of rank to the aspiring
lieutenant and the still humbler private the names of those
brave men who heroically faced defeat, distress and death and
made the final triumph possible find, all, their proper place on
the imperishable roll of patriotism. From Sergeant Jasper,
climbing the riddled staff on Fort Moultrie and nailing at its
peak his country's flag amid the whistling storm of British
bullets, to plucky Jack Van Arsdale "shinning up" the crippled
flag-staff on the battery at New York that the banner of the tri-

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. n 5

umphant Colonies might float in triumph above the heads of the
retreating British, the annals of the American Revolution are
replete with heroism. It was Sergeant Ezra Lee of Connecticut
who, moving stealthily among the war-ships of England, tried
with his clumsy infernal machine to blow up the British fleet.
It was William Barton the young Providence captain who
boldly pushed into the enemy's lines and actually kidnaped
the invading commander, the British General Prescott. It
was the boatmen of Arnold the traitor who having, all un-
suspecting, rowed him to the Vulture man-of-war stoutly re-
fused his bribes and threats to induce them to desert. It
was the mutinous soldiers of the Pennsylvania regiments who,
when on the march to Princeton to force from Congress redress

for unendurable negligence, angrily spurned the offers of Sir
Henry Clinton to buy them to his side and hung his messen-
gers as spies. It was the garrison of two that held the fort
at Vincennes against eight hundred British troops and after
the surrender marched proudly out with all the honors of war.
It would be but partial justice to American blood to fail
to remember that in the seven years' contest for freedom there
was another side. There were Americans who fought for

freedom ; there were Americans who remained loyal to their
acknowledged king. It was these latter Royalist, Loyalist,
or Tory, call them what we will who through impulse, inter-
est or a mistaken sense of loyalty remained faithful to the
crown of England. During the long contest waged by the
revolutionists of America it is claimed that fully thirty thou-
sand provincials entered the British army and fought against
their brothers, their neighbors and their former friends. The
striking uniform of green in which these battalions of " Loyal
Americans " were first clothed gave place before the war was

n6 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

over to the brilliant scarlet that was the badge of British
discipline. But all the same whether in green or in scarlet
these thirty thousand followers of the banner of the king were
American Soldiers.

For fully a century the name of " Tory " has, in America, been
the synonym of all that is base in treachery, false in friendship
and cruel in war. While the old feuds rankled in the families
whose heads had taken different ways in that terrible strife,
while personal quarrels intensified political differences this in-
justice toward those of opposing views was perhaps unavoid-
able. But the years that leave those hot days of faction
further and further in the background should brino> to us who

3 O

look back upon them calmness, candor and dispassionate
judgment. If these are to be employed in the study of the
past we must accord to the long-despised Tories of the Revolu-
tion valor, integrity and renown. They wagered their all on
their opinions. They fought and they lost. And we, looking
at the result from their stand-point, can surely say with them

" For Loyalty is still the same
Whether it win or lose the game."

All over the continent, so we have the assurance of his-
torians and observers, the " loyal " provincial regiments proved
on many a stubborn field their worthiness to stand in line
with the veterans of the British army. Sir John Johnson, Tory
though he was, showed himself yet more merciful than did the
" peacock patriots " of Schuyler and the five thousand men
of Sullivan, from whose raid on the Six Nations, in 1779, dates,
so it is asserted, " the inextinguishable hatred of the red-skins
to the United States."

As this struggle between freedom and tyranny was pro-

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 119

longed, the armies of that same " tyranny " received constant
support from local volunteers. In 1779 New York gave
Knyphausen six thousand good troops from among her citizens.
The " Gentleman Volunteers " of Boston were commanded by
Timothy Ruggles, declared even by his foes to be the best
soldier in the colonies. With Clinton in New York in 1782
were over two thousand Loyalists all battle-scarred veterans.
When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown he had with him
detachments from various regiments of American Loyalists
whom continued service and hard righting had converted into
the very best fighting material.

The Pennsylvania Loyalists and the Queen's Rangers of
Philadelphia did efficient service for Great Britain. The Loyal
Light Horse of Colonel James de Lancey successfully with-
stood the combined assault of Washington and his French
allies. The New York Loyal Volunteers decided by their
valor the bloody battle of Eutaw Springs. And these same
Tories from Manhattan, after taking part in many a well-fought
contest were one of the last regiments in the British service to
relinquish their hold on American soil.

The Americans who did not rebel may have been mistaken.
Certainly, when the end came, they suffered for their loyalty
and lost in exile and poverty the stake they had wagered on
their honestly-held opinions. But let us be just. Honor can
surely be given where honor is rightly due. Even in such a
strife as was this, where brother shot down brother and friend
worked vengeance upon friend, we who now look calmly over
those frightful battle-grounds can speak, with pride in their
valor as soldiers even while we regret the mistake that swayed
their judgment and decided their choice, the names of those
whom our ancestors condemned as " detested tories " Drum-

120 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY.

mond of New York, Delancy " the outlaw of the Bronx," Sir
John Johnson the feudal lord of the valley of the Mohawk,
Ruo-o-les of Massachusetts, De Peyster, the hero of King's

Mountain, whose New York " Tories " seven times repelled the
furious charge of the " rebels," Thomas and Hovenden and
James, whose provincials and refugees were invaluable as light
troops while the British lay at Philadelphia these and many
more who might be added prove that even in the tory ranks we
have so long been taught to despise there lived the valor, the
bravery and the self-sacrifice that have ever been the peculiar
pride of the American Soldier.

The smoke of conflict died away when at Yorktown the
charge on the British redoubt led by Hamilton and Lafayette
showed to Cornwallis the absolute impracticability of longer
continuing his defense. The allied troops of America and
France republicanism and absolutism fighting side by side
- made the United States a nation.

The seven years of war were ended. A strife that had been
of slow but certain growth ever since the days when the first
colonists from across the sea set foot on the wild shores of the
New World had come to its logical conclusion and a nation of
freemen was born. On many a stubborn field, in many a
bloody fight the sturdy arm and the valiant heart had proved
the moral strength that lay behind them. The first endeavors
of the real American Soldier had brought from dependence in-
dependence and through patriotism freedom. Henceforth the
troops of America were to be the Army of the People.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

N a certain memorable October morning in
the year 1781 a British drummer boy
climbed to the parapet of an English
redoubt at Yorktown. There, vigorously
plying his drumsticks, he sounded the parley.
Hostilities ceased. Two days afterward, at
two o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth
of October, the British troops marched out of
their works, with colors cased and the soldiers
of King George laid down their arms in sur-
render.

Appropriately enough their drums rattled
out the quickstep " The World turned Upside Down." The
world was indeed turned upside down so far as all the tradi-
tions of power were concerned, for, with that surrender at
Yorktown, the American Revolution practically came to an
end. Tyranny acknowledged itself defeated and a "parcel of
rebels" became a nation of freemen.

But, though the war closed with the surrender of Cornwallis,
not for two full years did the troops of England finally leave
the land they had so confidently come to conquer. On the
twenty-fifth of November, 1783, Sir Guy Carleton evacuated the

121

122

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

city of New York. As the British rear guard pushed off from
the Battery the advance guard of the Americans a troop of
horse, a regiment of infantry and a company of artillery -
filed into the deserted fort. Through the streets of the city
that for fully seven years had lain in possession of the soldiers
of the English king, sounded the joyful roll of the drums.
Escorted by Captain Delavan's " West Chester Light Horse,"
Washington marched into the city with a veteran following of

j *

the Continental troops and the last vestige of England's
authority in her former colonies disappeared forever.

But before that day of evacuation and possession arrived the
army of the United States had practically been disbanded.
When it became evident that no further hostility on the part of
England was to be feared the greater portion of the Continental
troops was dismissed upon long or indefinite furloughs. On
the nineteenth of April, 1783, just eight years to a day from the
time of the historic conflict at Lexington, a cessation of hostil-
ities was publicly announced to the American army, and on the
eighteenth of October in the same year that army was, by
proclamation of the Congress, officially disbanded. This final
act took effect on the second of November following and when,
on the twenty-fifth of the month, the city of New York was
evacuated by the British troops only a small body of veteran
soldiers under the command of General Knox represented the
American army.

Peace brought respite from war, but it by no means brought
satisfaction to those by whom it had been secured. The inspir-
ation of victory is haloed all about with exultation and excite-
ment. The after-happenings of victory are sometimes singularly
lacking in enthusiasm. Patriotism is broad and self-sacrificing

but even patriotism needs to be kept alive by such homely

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

123

necessities as bread and butter. The laborer is worthy of his
hire ; and when long-promised wages were not forthcoming even
the Soldiers of Liberty began to grumble.

The Congress of the United States at a cost of one hundred
and forty millions of dollars had waged the war of revolu-

I'KACE HV NO MEANS WROUGHT SATISFACTION.

tion to a successful termination. But the cost of this war,
small as it may appear in these days of vast expenditures, had
loaded the States with a burden of debt greater than they
seemed willing or able to carry. The Congress, straining every
nerve to force out its plans to success and keep its armies in

I24 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

the field, was scarcely able to meet even the bare necessities of
war and when Cornwallis laid down his arms at Yorktown the
United States of America found themselves largely in arrears
to the very men by whose valor their existence had been ren-
dered possible.

The two years that intervened between the surrender at
Yorktown and the evacuation of New York were full of discon-
tent and orumblins:. Brave men who had sacrificed so much

O <J

for the cause they had enlisted to defend felt that the people in
whose interests they had fought should at least pay to them the
wages that were their due. But even justice seemed to halt.
There were exasperating delays on the part of Congress, punct-
uated only by unfulfilled promises ; there was discontent on the
part of the army interspersed with frequent mutterings that
threatened to break into absolute rebellion. And so the months
went slowly by.

With doubts, not only as to the ability but as to the grati-
tude, even, of the American people the army that had made
them a people disbanded. Already in this very year of 1783
the orowins: discontent amonq; the soldiers had threatened

o O O

to develop into serious action. The half-rebellious Newburg
address which voiced this discontent of the veteran fighters
had in it, looked at from their standpoint, a certain amount of
justice and excuse. But the very circulation of such an address
argued a condition approaching to mutiny; and even injustice
is no excuse for insubordination. Washington was not the sort
of man to tolerate insurrection. He speedily frowned down an
attempt which had the approval even of certain of his col-
leagues and, by his wisdom, his tact and his firmness, prevented
a movement on the part of the army which, if carried out,
would have made the Soldiers of Liberty but little better than

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 125

those military dictators of old the Praetorian Guards of the
soldier-made Caesars of Rome. The Lancaster revolt of the
same year which actually did drive Congress in terror from
its chambers and well-nigh upset the government itself was
another mistaken act on the part of the discontented soldiers.

These mutterings of discontent ran through several years
and were only finally settled by the issue of Continental certifi-
cates for the payment of the soldiers' claims. These paper
promises to pay, however, were not money. Their value was
almost fictitious, and many a poor soldier who had fought for
the liberty of the land, when pressed for the very necessities of
life, was forced to dispose of these Continental certificates at a
ruinous sacrifice sometimes as low as one sixth of their value.

But the war was over and the army was disbanded. In June,
1784, eighty men represented all that remained of the army
of the Congress. Of this number twenty-five were detailed for
service at Fort Pitt on the Ohio frontier and fifty-five guarded
the almost useless munitions of war at West Point. Sturdy
old General Lincoln, the Secretary of War, found himself with
no army to direct and retired to private life.

And yet it was evident that soldiers were a necessity. The
undefended frontier on the north and west demanded attention.
Congress, however, had no power to maintain a standing army
in time of peace and when a motion was made to create such
an army, even though limited to a few hundred men, so loud
was the cry against it by those who deemed it a menace to the
liberties of the people that, as a compromise, the several States
were invited bv Congress to raise their own armies for their own

J O _

defense. Action was taken on this suggestion, and on the
third of June, 1784, an ordinance was passed recommending to
the States of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Penn-

I2 6 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

sylvania that they raise between them a force of seven hundred
men to garrison their frontiers for one year.

When, finally, the Constitution of the United States became
the law of the land there existed, in the year i 788, a United
States army of the magnificent proportions of five hundred and
ninety-five men and two companies of artillery numbering
seventy-one non-commissioned officers and privates. These sol-
diers of the union were distributed among the few military posts
kept up by Congress. A small number were stationed at West
Point; the remainder were on duty at certain of the stockaded
forts in the Western country.

The early years of the new nation were years of disturbance
and discontent. People scarcely knew what was to be the
character of the government under which they were to live.
Until the adoption of the Constitution the several States were
leagued together only by a half-way sort of mutual consent that
was as brittle and uncertain a bond as would be a rope of sand.
Even within the States themselves the law-makers of each com-
monwealth found themselves at variance with the very people
they were elected to represent. Discontent not unfrequently
flamed out into real rebellion, mobs and riots were of common
occurrence and those who had stood in the ranks of liberty
were often all too ready to side with the malcontents and fight
against the very authority they had helped to create.

Disturbances growing out of the question of the rightful
ownership and occupation of land often developed into actual
bloodshed and those who had fought side by side on the battle-
fields of the Revolution found themselves facing each other,
hot and angry, in the strife for possession. One of these inter-
state disturbances was the attempt by Pennsylvania in 1784 to
oust from its hill country about the Wyoming certain families

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 127

from the East who had settled there under the disputed Con-
necticut grants. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fancy-
ing its rights invaded by the coming of these " Yankee "
settlers sent detachments from their State army to drive
away these old-time ** boomers." Coining upon the settlers when
floods and fearful weather had well-nigh disheartened them, the
Pennsylvania militia, led first by the mean-spirited lawyer
Patterson and next by the stern old soldier Armstrong, harried
the settlers with fire and with sword and dealt with them as
ruthlessly and almost as brutally as had the Tories of Butler and
the Indians of Brant in that historic foray that has made the
massacre of Wyoming one of the saddest pictures in the Revo-
lutionary story. But brutality found its Nemesis. Among the
settlers were men who knew what it meant to fight ; and fight
they did. At last even the laws of the State stepped in to put
a stop to the brutality of Patterson and the treachery of Arm-
strong, and when these two leaders attempted to resist the
authority of the State, they fell before the righteous though
eleventh-hour indignation of an awakened people.

It was in the line of similar protests against authority and
law that the " military operations " of the troops of discontent
were conducted during the years that succeeded the close of
the Revolution. Uncertain as to their corporate standing,
slowly feeling their way toward a solid footing among the
nations of the earth, the people of the newly-united States
made many mistakes of judgment, many lapses into faction.

Quick to criticise and all too ready to coin their objections
into threats those among the masses who felt themselves un-
justly treated by the acts of their own law-makers " the
servants of the people" were quickly roused to rebel against
the constituted authority and to dictate where they should

I2g THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

submit. It took long years of harsh experience for the people
of the United States to yield unquestionably to the will of the

majority.

Out of such unsettled conditions and from such popular
protests came much trouble and no little use for the fast-
rustino- muskets of the Revolution. One of the earliest, as one

of the most serious of these disturbances was that known as
Shays' Rebellion.

This celebrated rising grew out of questions as to the
proprietorship of land, out of the pressure of the hard times,
the unwise exactions of those who held claims for money due,
the weaknesses of certain laws enacted and especially the
attempt, in Massachusetts, to levy State and federal taxes.

In the " ranks of the poor " were many who had been
soldiers in the Continental Army. The revolt drew to its sup-
port numbers of people in Western Massachusetts, in New
Hampshire, Vermont, and even in Eastern New York. The
leader was Captain Daniel Shays. He was a man who had
seen service in the Revolution and the malcontents who put
themselves under his command were speedily drilled into some
semblance of military discipline. But an armed mob is much
like a pirate crew. Both are outlaws and all attempts at
discipline or authority are rated only at second-hand. Leader-
ship is an uncertain quantity. Number One is always the main
consideration. So, when the army of Massachusetts, forty-four
hundred strong and marshaled by stout old General Lincoln,
put itself in motion and actually faced the malcontents in
fight the mutinous spirit speedily yielded to the organized
forces of Law. There was much threatening and bluster,
no little show of resistance, and some fighting, even ; but
the determination of Lincoln and his militia carried the day

THE TKOOrS OF DISCONTENT.

129

and saved not alone the State of Massachusetts but the entire
confederation of States from what might have been a disas-
trous and suicidal popular sentiment.

It is in dealing with the troops of discontent that real dis-
cipline best exhibits itself. To be stern and unyielding when
occasion demands, to be lenient and forgiving when superiority
is once established this is the only course that wins in all
encounters with mobs.

When Shays at the head of two thousand men marched
upon the arsenal at Springfield the commandant, General

NO FEES, NO EXECUTIONS, NO SHERIFF !"

Shepard, thinking to frighten the invaders ordered his men to
fire in the air. But the rebel ranks contained too many old
soldiers who had smelled powder on real battle-fields and
Shepard only recovered from his mistake by an actual and dis-
astrous volley. When General Cobb, an old Revolutionary
officer, was menaced by the rioters at Taunton where he was
holding court as judge he faced them without an instant's delay

I30 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

and bade them disperse. " Sirs," he said, " you cannot frighten
me. I shall either sit here as a judge or die here as a general."
" I do not care a rap for your bayonets," shouted that sturdy
Revolutionary veteran, Artemas Ward, a judge of Massachusetts
but an old soldier as well, when the guards of the rioters barred
his way into the court-house at Worcester ; " run 'em through
me if you dare ! I am here to do my duty and I'll do it if I
die for it." Firmness in emergencies is almost certain to win
and firmness was a quality eminently possessed by the old
soldiers of the Revolution.

" No fees, no executions, no sheriff ! " was the demand of the
rioters at a later day around this same court-house at Worcester.
The sheriff, plucky Colonel Greenleaf, looked undismayed upon
the triple line of bayonets levelled to bar his progress. " All
right," he replied calmly ; " if you think the fees for executions
are too high why, I'll hang you all for nothing and high
enough to suit you too." " ' Burgoyne' Lincoln and his army,"
was the cry of the rebels in Western Massachusetts when they
heard of the military advance against them. But Lincoln and
his army were not to be " Burgoyned." The rising of the peo-
ple to oppose the march of the invading British General whose
defeat at Saratoga gave victory to Revolution was not to be
repeated when the invaders and the people were of the same
kin. Lincoln's spirited march through winter snows showed
that this old campaigner, this valiant secretary of war in the Rev-
olutionary days was not to be trifled with and rebellion finally
yielded to law. Defeated and dispirited the Troops of Discon-
tent lay down their arms at the feet of Authority, the rebellion
broke into pieces and the danger that was so widely feared was
at last averted.

This anti-tax rebellion in the North found its counterpart in

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 131

an anti-tax uprising in the South. The protest of the people of
Pennsylvania and Maryland, in 1794, against the federal tax
upon spirit distilled within the United States again awoke the
troops of discontent who provoked that dramatic episode in
American history known as the " Whiskey Insurrection."
Seven thousand men marshaled by Bradford the "Commander-
in-chief " of the revolt pledged themselves to resist to the
last the collection of the objectionable tax and speedily laid
the whole region within the shadow of the Alleghanies under
the terror of mob rule and military despotism. " The whole
western country," says Mr. McMaster, "began in the language
of that time, to bristle with anarchy-poles. From some floated
red flags bearing the name of the rebellious counties. On
others were the words 4 Liberty or Death,' or ' Liberty and
Equality,' or ' No Excise.' '

But the government acted quickly. President Washington
made a requisition on the governors of Maryland, Virginia,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and fifteen thousand men under
the command of " Light Horse Harry "Lee a fighter of the
old wars marched against the malcontents. The battle-cry
of the rebels was " Liberty and no Excise." But Liberty to
them meant License. " No Excise " meant the free distillation
of whiskey. As the troops advanced, the discontented elements
fled before Light Horse Harry's men. They could make no
stand against organized opposition.

The rising was speedily quelled. It was a bloodless rebellion
indeed and though of sufficient force to seem at one time to
threaten the very existence of the Union the strength of the
military force gathered for its overthrow was so irresistible
that danger was averted and once again the Troops of Dis-
content dispersed at the advance of Authority.

I32 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

In one way or another, though less serious than were the
disturbances already cited, did the chafing O f the people of
the new nation under unfamiliar and untried laws display
itself in resistance and revolt. It is unpleasant to note that
the conduct of the soldiers enlisted to quell these insurrections
seems to have been open to criticism. Military power, when
unchecked, frequently becomes tyranny. The brutalities of
Armstrong's troops in the Wyoming trouble of 1784 appear
to have found its counterpart in the outrages by the militia of
the same Quaker State of Pennsylvania during the short-lived
troubles of 1799, known as Fries' Rebellion. These instances
of over-zeal, however, were to be expected in so crude and unor-
ganized a body of troops as was the citizen soldiery of the
United States in the last days of the eighteenth century.

But this crudeness, so prone to display itself in offensive
measures upon unresisting women and children, was compelled
to stand a test of quite another sort when brought into battle
against the red warriors of the frontier.

The Indians of the west resisted with reasonable justice the
encroachments of the settlers who were crowding into their
lands beyond the Ohio. Remonstrance and appeal meeting
with no attention or resulting only in a contemptuous continu-
ance of occupation, the red-men resorted to their final arguments
the torch, the rifle and the tomahawk. "No white man
shall plant corn in Ohio." This was the Indian fiat. " That
the threat was not an empty one/ 1 says Mr. Black, " soon
became apparent. The planter fell in his tracks. The crops
were burned and mangled by unseen hands. Death lurked on
the Kentucky frontier. There must be war."

The settlers demanded protection. The government re-
sponded to their appeal, and in September, 1790, General Josiah

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

'33

Harmar with an army of fourteen hundred and fifty men was
sent into the Ohio country to " discipline " the Indians. But,
alas, the boot was found to be quite upon the other foot !

14 Never before," says Mr. Me Master, "had such a collec-
tion of men been dignified with the name of army." The troops
were without discipline, intelligence or decent equipment. The
officers were jealous, incompetent and ignorant of military
rules. As was to be expected, this collection of " ragged regi-
ments " proved no match for
the wary and warlike Indians.
The expedition ended, as
might have been conjectured,
in defeat and disgrace, and
the remnant of his army, says
Mr. Black, " which Harmar
led back to Cincinnati had
the unsubdued savages al-
most continually at their
heels."

A second expedition au-
thorized by the President was sent against the Ohio Indians
in the autumn of the next year. It mustered two thousand
three hundred regulars and six hundred militia and was under
the command of General Arthur St. Clair the governor of
the Northwest Territory and a prominent officer of the Revolu-
tion. This second army met with an even more disastrous
defeat than did the troops of Harmar.

Torn with official jealousies, weak in discipline and detail,
shamefully supplied with useless equipments by unfaithful
government agents, shaking with chills and fever, hungry, tired,
sick, and altogether heedless as to their surroundings, St. Clair's

ON THE FRONTIER.

I34 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

army was on the third of November, 1791, surrounded, am-
bushed and attacked by a host of Indians led on by Brant the
half-breed u hero of Wyoming " and utterly and terribly
defeated.

Twice outgeneraled and twice so utterly routed ! It was a
bad record for the American soldier a fighter who had proved
his valor on many a bloody field. But American pluck, without
a final struggle, would not leave the Western country to the
victorious Indians.

A fresh force was at once enlisted. Five thousand men
made up this new army of the West. During the winter of
1791-92 these fresh troops were, according to the direction of
President Washington, " trained and disciplined " for the
especial service they had entered upon. " Do not spare powder
and lead," wrote Washington, "so the men be made marksmen."

The result was an army altogether different from those of
Harmar and St. Clair. This army of invasion was rather
pompously styled the Legion of the United States. It was
especially trained to meet the exigencies of Indian warfare and
was divided not into brigades and regiments but into four sub-
legions provided with legionary and sub-legionary officers.

The command was given to one of the most popular of the
Revolutionary heroes, General Anthony Wayne, the conqueror
of Stony Point. " A better officer," says McMaster, "could not
have been found." A born soldier, one whose boyhood had
been passed in constructing mud-forts and teaching his com-
rades how to storm redoubts, this gallant Pennsylvanian had
fought with valor through the Revolution, had been decorated
by Congress for his bravery and enthusiastically nicknamed
by his soldiers and the people " Mad Anthony Wayne."

He assumed the command determined to win. And he

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 137

did win. With an army made efficient through careful drill,
through discipline, appropriate equipment and all the requisites
that its 'unfortunate predecessors had lacked the "Legion of
the United States" marched into the Ohio country, made a
vigorous attack upon the Indians and their Canadian allies
and in the bloody battle of the Maumee fought on the
twentieth of August, 1794, with all the valor of Monmouth
and all the dash of Stony Point, utterly routed and scattered
the Indian foeman. "Such was the impetuosiiy of the charge,
by the first line of infantry," so runs General Wayne's report,
44 that the Indian and Canadian militia and volunteers were
driven from their coverts in so short a time that but a part
of the legion could get up in season to participate in the
action."

Almost as ferocious and still more famous because it made
the record of a brave American soldier and a popular American
president was the battle of Tippecanoe. This celebrated Indian
engagement was fought within the limits of the Illinois country
in the year 1811. Uniting for the annihilation of the white
man, under their politic and patriotic chieftain Tecumthe,
the Indians of the northwest confederated for white destruction,
burst upon the little army of General Harrison in the dark
of the early morning of the seventh of November, 1811. Ft
was an unwise move for the red-man and was brought about,
not by the genius of Tecumthe, but by the influence of his
uncanny-looking kinsman " The Prophet." Harrison's nine
hundred men sturdily stood their ground. The battle was
long and bloody, the loss in officers was especially noticeable,
but the Indians were defeated and Tecumthe's carefully-laid
plan for an Indian confederacy was forever overthrown.

In all the hostile encounters succeeding the Revolution

I3 8 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

there was, indeed, much that must astonish and annoy the
patriotic student of American character who cannot precisely
square the cowardice and unruliness, the crudeness and the
lack of discipline with the standing of Revolutionary veterans
and the traditions of American valor. But, even while admit-
ting the existence of these negative qualities, there must be
found in the story of those immature days much that can
brighten an uninteresting record and illumine an often-clouded
picture.

There was, as we have seen, alike pluck and courage in
the days of discontent. And, even in Harmar's undisciplined
foray, the skill and daring of such true-hearted soldiers as
Major Fontaine of the Regulars shed a certain glory over the
gloom of defeat. The spirited bayonet charge of Colonel
Darke, roused to fury at the fall of his son, almost retrieved
the disasters of St. Clair. The pluck and valor of Anthony
Wayne's nine hundred, who at the Maumee Rapids routed a
British and Indian force of more than twice their number, were
emphatically displayed in deeds of personal prowess that were
inspired by the bravery and bearing of the intrepid commander.

" In what light, sir," demanded the British commandant,
Major Campbell, " am I to view such near approaches of an
American army almost within reach of the guns of a post
belonging to His Majesty the King of Great Britain ? "

" The muzzles of my small arms, sir, in yesterday's fight
gave the most full and most satisfactory answer to your ques-
tion," Wayne defiantly replied. " Had the action continued
until the Indians were driven to the protection of the post you
mention even the guns of that post would not have impeded
the progress of the victorious army under my command."

On the field of Tippecanoe that bloody battle in the dark

THE TKOOPS OF DISCONTENT.

'39

- the vigilance and valor of General Harrison brought to his
name a lasting renown and inspired the men who won that
historic victory; for Tippecanoe, though a triumph dearly
bought, was far-reaching in its results.

" Where is the captain of this company ? " the general
demanded as, peering through the gloom he saw on the high
ground where the prairies meet a little body of men gallantly
holding their own. " Dead, sir," said the young Ensign Tipton.
41 Where are the lieutenants?" "Dead." "Where is the
ensign ? " " I am here." " Stand fast, my
brave fellow," said the general with a look
of approval at the gallant little band and
its no less gallant leader; "one moment
longer and I will relieve you." The relief
came and the victory of Tippecanoe was
assured.

For any lack of valor, of discipline or
of martial moods in the davs of conflict

that make up the story of the Troops of

Discontent and the Soldiers of Immaturity we must look for

the cause to the very composition and methods of the Americans

themselves.

The Revolution was over. A land, wasted by seven years
of war, demanded immediate attention or the work of years of
preparation would be lost. Beyond the battle-scarred land lay
the wildernesses of the vaster West. They were full of
promise, fertile of hope, and called for men to conquer, to settle
and to develop them.

To all such home-builders further strife was repugnant.
The political sky, too, was so clouded, so full of warring ele-
ments, so dark with uncertainties that, to the majority of the

ANT 1 1 UN Y \VAYNK.

I4 o THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

people, the army was an unpleasant and unprofitable national
incubus, the life of the soldier was deemed as but the last resort
of the shiftless, the drone or the outcast.

And yet, notwithstanding the popular objections to a stand-
ing army, Congress managed to have under its control, even
from the very adoption of the Constitution, at least the shadow
of such an army.

The War Department of the United States was organized
on the seventh of August, 1789, with General Knox as the first
Secretary of War. He found a standing force of six hundred
and seventy-two available men as the " bulwark " of the new
nation a weak enough bulwark for so undefended a land!

From the date of the organization of the Department to the
War of 1812 the Secretaries of War were, respectively: Henry
Knox, Timothy Pickering, James Me Henry, Samuel Dexter,
Roger Griswold, Henry Dearborn and William Eustis. Of
these, all except Dexter were veterans of the Revolution, but
the incoherencies, the frail finances and, above all, the national
animosity to a standing army gave our first Secretaries little in
the way of material and much in the way of worry.

As Indian wars and international disputes warranted an
increasing force the troops of the United States grew from the
paltry seven hundred of 1789 to somewhat more respectable
proportions. In 1792 this force was increased to 5120 men, in
1794 it fell to 3629; it rose to 5144 in 1804, dropped to 3278 in
1807, and, in 1810, footed up 7154. Between these years, too,
its generals-in-chief were of an equally shifting character.
Washington was succeeded by Knox in 1783, Knox by Mannar
in 1788, Harmar by St. Clair in 1791, St. Clair by Wayne in
1792, Wayne by Wilkinson in 1796, Wilkinson by Washington
in 1798 and Washington again by Wilkinson in 1800.

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 141

Washington's term as Lieutenant-General began on the third
of July, 1798, just twenty-two years to a day after his assuming
command of the Revolutionary troops on the commons of
Cambridge. It was his last service to the American people and
was the result of the popular war-wave that swept the land
when, in 1/98, the insults of France, steeped in the fanatical
fury of a righteous revolution unrighteously upheld, almost
drove the former allies into war.

Throughout the States the black cockade was the symbol
of patriotism ; the old fervor of the fighting days returned and
the doggerel of the time, sung and whistled in every town, gave
the key note of determination :

" Americans then fly to arms,

And learn the way to use 'em ;
If each man fight to 'fend his rights

The French can't long abuse *em."

The war fever grew. Line-of-battle ships sprang from
hastily-laid stocks. Along the Atlantic coast forts were traced
out, built or strengthened. Volunteers rushed to the militia
recruiting offices and, as the citizen soldiers of America pledged
themselves anew to the defense of the land they loved, they
shouted huzza ! and yet again huzza ! to the most popular of all
the toasts and sentiments of the day: " Millions for defense but
not one cent for tribute ! "

But neither defense nor tribute became necessary. Napo-
leon the Shrewd as well as the Great, recognized the unwisdom
of making another foe in the "nation of debaters " across the
western sea. France recalled her hasty words and stopped
her hostile ways. The allies of old became friends once more
and the army of the United States was reduced to a peace foot-

I42 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT.

in<y. The militia regiments dwindled away; muster days lost
their dramatic expectancies and not until 1812, when the old
antagonist, Britain, sought to force brutality into battle and
contempt into conflict was there need or call for the active
services of the American Soldier.

And as the century died there died with it the great soldier
who had by his wisdom, his strategy and his indomitable will
led the way along which the thirteen colonies marched into free-
dom. In 1799 Washington died the leading historic figure
of the eighteenth century, the soldier who first in war was also
the statesman first in peace and has ever since been the ideal
patriot, first in the hearts of his countrymen.

CHAPTER VII.

A I. E A D E R L E S S WAR.

HERE stood, in the year 1812, in
that far Northwest where the
waters of three great inland seas
unite for their onward course to
the distant ocean, a solitary out-
post garrisoned by the soldiers
of the United States the fort
on Mackinaw. A small but im-
portant post, the country that it
defended had been for generations

the scene of contest. Here French and Indians, here English
and French, here Americans and Englishmen had warred for
the possession of the western water-ways into Lakes Michigan
and Superior. Finally delivered up by the British in 1795 it
was, in this month of July, 1812, held by a little garrison of
fifty-seven American soldiers under command of Lieutenant
Hanks.

Remote from civilization, surrounded only by the waters
and forests of the vast Northwest, this slender band of defenders
heard but little from the world without and still less from their
official superiors the dilatory War Department at Washington.
Forty miles to the northeast, upon St. Joseph's Island in the

'43

I44 A LEADERLESS WAR.

Sault St. Marie, stood the nearest English post, garrisoned by
a small detachment of British regulars under command of
Captain Roberts.

On the morning of the seventeenth of July, 1812, Lieuten-
ant Hanks, looking out from his quarters, was surprised to see
no sio-ns of life in the little fur-trading settlement that had

sprung up below the American post. Sending out to ascertain
the cause he was astounded to learn that, during the preceding
night, a force of more than a thousand men -- British, Cana-
dians and Indians had been led from the British fort above
against the American post. But still more astounded was he
when he learned that war had actually been declared between
Great Britain and the United States, and that a British officer
waited below, flag in hand, as a messenger from Captain Roberts,
demanding the surrender of Fort Mackinaw.

Resistance was impossible. Dazed, overawed and entirely
unprepared for defense Lieutenant Hanks had no alternative
but to surrender. With a negligence that was as stupid as it
was unpardonable the War Department at Washington delayed
sending to the posts on the Western frontier any notification of
the declaration of war. The British authorities had been quick
to act. And thus it came to pass that an important military
post among the great lakes fell without a blow to the alert and
better-informed soldiers of England.

This disaster at Mackinaw was but an index to the conduct
of what is known in the history of America as the War of 1812.

Negligence, delay, " a miserly economy " and an utter lack of
trained troops impeded the American operations from the very
outset. Forts were surrendered, important posts abandoned,
battles lost and plans of invasion disastrously brought to naught
by the utter lack of competent leaders and the timid and

A LEADERLESS WAR. 145

wavering ways of those in authority at Washington. " History,"
says Mr. Roosevelt, " has not yet done justice to the ludicrous
and painful folly and stupidity of which the government founded
by Jefferson and carried on by Madison was guilty, both in its
preparation for and in its way of carrying on this war; nor is it
yet realized that the men just mentioned and their associates
are primarily responsible for the loss we suffered in it and the
bitter humiliation some of its incidents caused us."

It has for years been with too many Americans the fashion
to speak of the War of 1812 as a successful resistance of the
arms of England by the army and navy of the United States.
Of the navy this may have been true ; but so far as the army
was concerned its part in the second war with England was
very far from being a glorious round of successes. This, a
study of the records will only too plainly show. The land
operations of the War of 1812 are, as one writer has declared,
" neither cheerful reading for an American nor interesting to
a military student." Almost the only bright spot in the long
catalogue of disaster was the dramatic battle of New Orleans,
won by a general who, up to that time, had scarcely been
esteemed a leader and fought after peace had been declared
a needless battle and a useless victory.

. Self-inspection is one of the best remedies for a tendency
to boasting and vainglory. Let us hastily glance at the facts.
Quickly following the fall of Fort Mackinaw came the failure
of Hull's campaign on the Michigan frontier, the defeat of Van
Home by Tecumthe and his Indians, the cruel massacre at
Fort Dearborn, now Chicago, and the cowardly surrender of
Detroit. The invasion of Canada by Van Rensselaer ended
with the defeat of the Americans at Queenstown and the
astounding refusal of the American militia-men to cross to the

14 6 A LEADERLESS WAR.

succor of their countrymen. The failure of the ridiculous and
vaporizing Smythe in a second invasion of Canada was in no
deo-ree lightened by the successful defense at Ogdensburg,

& S J

where one thousand Americans succeeded in driving off four
hundred British besiegers ; for, early in the next year of the
war (1813), Ogdensburg fell.

Winchester's terrible defeat on the river Raisin and the
bloody massacre of his troops by the inhuman Proctor was
scarcely retrieved by the defense of Fort Meigs and the brave
stand of Croghan at Fort Stephenson. Harrison's invasion of
Canada did lead to a victory on the Thames where thirty-five
hundred Americans routed an inferior force of sixteen hundred
British and Indians and ended in the death of the heroic
Tecumthe ; but the capture of Fort George by the Americans
was, soon after, altogether neutralized by the spiritless and
unnecessary surrender of the fort to the British. Then came
the utter defeat of Chandler's invasion of Canada, the capture
of Fort Niagara and the destruction of Buffalo, and the total
failure of still another invasion of Canada led on by that
military mountebank, the American general Wilkinson a
commander whom the indignant Scott hotly denounced as "an
unprincipled imbecile."

The army of Hampton on Lake Champlain seemed scarcely
to dare lift a gun in protest while British invaders plundered
Plattsburgh and Burlington. The three principal engagements

<-' i 1 O O

of the year 1813 were little more than routs of incompetent
troops led by incapable generals; they were victories for
England when they should easily have been, instead, victorious
engagements won by superior forces of Americans.

Indeed, the opening years of this War of 1812 were neither
honorable to the American soldier nor helpful to the American

A LEADERLESS WAR. 147

cause. For twelve years the war had been plainly foreseen.
England's tyrannical encroachments upon American commerce,
her contemptuous disregard of treaty stipulations and the rights
of American seamen, her endeavors to antagonize and inflame
the Indians within American territory and her unwarranted

AT WORK ON THE FOR TIKICA T1ONS IN l8l2.

trespassing upon the Western frontier had gradually forced
America into armed resistance. And yet for this resistance no
suitable preparation had been made by the government of the
United States.

It is true that a slight increase had been made in the number

J4 8 A LEADER LESS WAR.

and strength of the regular army. By an act of Congress in
1808 five regiments of infantry, one of riflemen and one each
of lio-ht artillery and light dragoons had been added to the
army. This increased the force, by the year 1810, to nearly
eight thousand men.

But popular approval did not go out kindly to such a
strengthening of the army ; even its slow development therefore

^5 ^5 J

was almost in spite of the protest of the majority. With the
growth of the war-fever, however, bombast developed into action.
When the news of war came to the ears of the people men of
all classes awoke to their need for action and hastened to offer
their services or to bear a helping hand in rearing defenses and
strengthening fortifications.

This sudden haste toward national defense however could
not make up for the lack of material and the supineness of gov-
ernment. President Madison, contrary to his own desires, was
forced into war; but the politicians who had brought about the
conflict had been so lax in military preparations that, as Pro-
fessor Soley says, " while securing a political victory they pre-
pared the way for a series of military defeats."

How discouraging were these defeats during the opening
years of the war we have already seen. And indeed it does
seem almost incredible that a strong and vigorous people,
angered over the invasion of their rights upon the seas and
battling for the possession of those Western frontiers which
they desired to secure as their children's inheritance, should
lack either the warlike spirit or the warrior's valor. It is for
us to remember, however, that it was not so much the lack of
these fighting qualities as the absolute dearth of leaders that
made the land operations of the American Soldier during the
War of 1812 so sorry a page in American history.

A LEADERLESS WAR. 149

The fighting strength of the nation just previous to the
declaration of war was estimated in the militia returns of the
States as very close upon seven hundred thousand men.
Estimates however are not always a safe foundation. Numbers
are often as shrinking as are the volunteers themselves when
the bugles sound for action. The main dependence of a nation
in the early stages of any war must rest rather upon well-fur-
nished officers than upon the long muster-rolls of its recruits.
And it is now generally conceded that the Army of the United
States entered upon the second war with England " with few
officers of professional training or traditions." The generals
to whom commands were at first assigned were but superanu-
ated soldiers who had outlived the fire, as they had the days, of
the distant Revolution. The militia too were crude and

unmanageable, with more taste for discussing the questionable

plans of their superiors than for following them.

And so, with raw levies unable to learn with sufficient speed
the demands of military life and discipline, with incompetent
generals who had either outgrown their fighting days or had
not enough military intelligence to drill or to direct their
followers, with distracted counsels among the rulers of the
nation and with but a grudging support from the very people
who talked the loudest about rights and privileges the United
States of America essaved to cross swords with one of the most

warlike of European nations. It was a power whose soldiers
had faced the victorious armies of the great Napoleon, whose
grenadiers were led on by generals schooled to the ways of war
in the wild Mahratta battles of India or in the more momentous
conflicts that had checked the career of the greatest of modern
conquerors in the stubborn battles of the Spanish peninsula.
1813 was a year of failure for the American arms. 1814

IS o A LEADERLESS WAR.

was but little better. The exigencies of a losing fight were,
however, developing certain capable commanders in the ranks
of American captains. These generals indeed did not rise to
the position of real leaders, but their very impatience over the
disgrace that was clouding the name of the American Soldier

o-ave them so much determination that their earnest examples
&

and their tireless efforts began at last to infuse something like
discipline and effectiveness into the wavering ranks of an
undisciplined army.

In the swamps and morasses of the distant South the sturdy
and unyielding Jackson was learning in the savage school of
Indian warfare that untiring vigilance and sleepless energy that
were to work such terrible results upon the veteran troops
of England in the opening clays of 1815. The victory of
Tohopeka, by which on the twenty-seventh of January, 1814,
General Andrew Jackson, after a furious fight of more than
five hours, broke forever the power of the Creek Confederacy,
found its still create r results in the more ojorious but utterly

C3 *_> J

needless victory at New Orleans. In the north, upon the
Canadian frontier, the patience and persistence of Winfield
Scott imparted a steadiness and efficiency to those uncertain
volunteers who had rallied to the defense of the northern
border. The ludicrous failure of Wilkinson with which the cam-
paign of 1814 had opened was fully retrieved by the gallantry of
Scott's brigade at Chippe.vay and the obstinate courage of that
same band of fighters at Lundy's Lane. And yet neither
Chippeway nor Lundy's Lane can rightfully be claimed as
American victories. They were simply not American defeats;
and it is the chief glory of both these savage actions that they
showed the spirit that really slumbered in American fighting
men and by their obstinacy changed British contempt into

A LEADERLESS WAR. i 5I

British caution. Even William James, most prejudiced of all
the English chroniclers of this war with America, is forced to
admit that, "upon the whole, the American troops fought
bravely ; and the conduct of many of the officers would have
done honor to any service."

And yet that same year of 1814 saw the glory of American
endeavor at Chippevvay and Lundy's Lane clouded by the shame
of American feebleness on the Chesapeake. No page in Ameri-
can history is more disgraceful than that which tells of the
invasion of Maryland by the British troops and how a small
force of the red-coated enemy put to flight a largely superior
force of Americans at Bladensburg, set the whole American
government in hasty and undignified retreat from the American
capital, captured Washington, destroyed the public buildings,
scattered the Americans by a vigorous bayonet charge at North
Point and spread terror and dismay through all the Chesapeake
region.

" That Americans," says Professor Soley, " when properly
led could make as good fighting material as any other people,
had been shown in the Revolution and was still more forcibly
shown, later, in the war with Mexico and in the Civil War;
but in 1812-15 tne Y were without leaders. With the exception
of Brown, Jackson, Scott, Gaines, Harrison, Macomb, and
Ripley, most of whom were at first in subordinate positions,
there were few general officers worthy of the name and it
required only the simplest strategic movement to demonstrate
their incompetency." " The British regulars," says Mr. Roose-
velt, " trained in many wars thrashed the raw troops opposed
to them whenever they had anything like a fair chance. Our
defeats were exactly such as any man might have foreseen
and there is nothing to be learned by the student of military

IS2 A LEADERLESS WAR.

matters from the follies committed by incompetent com-
manders and untrained troops when in the presence of skilled
officers having under them disciplined soldiers."

It is a truth not to be disguised that this War of 1812,
which from the outset was so marred by " the humiliating
surrenders, abortive attacks and panic routs " of the land forces
of the Union, was turned into victory and success by the
darins: and the dash of the American Sailor.

But this is the darker side of the annals. It would indeed
be a disgraceful stain on the soldier's record of American valor if

the story of our second war with England rested here. With
a brave people, out of defeat springs new determination ; out
of humiliation, heroism.

It is this regal purpose that we can read between the lines
as we trace that record of disaster by land and of victory on
the sea. The story of the land operations which began in loss
at Mackinaw and ended in triumph at New Orleans is an ever-
increasing assurance of the growing valor, persistence and
patriotism of the American Soldier. Hampered by all the
restrictions that must spring from a weak and wavering govern-
ment, from internal dissensions and political strifes, from raw
and unsteady comrades and from the disheartening incom-
petency of generals who would be leaders but could not, the
soldiers of the United States learned steadiness from disaster
and determination from disgrace, and gradually developed
into seasoned fighters who could play on even terms with
the British invaders.

Thus, step by step, the militia-man became the veteran.
The gallantry of Croghan and his weakened garrison at Fort
Stephenson. the irresistible charge of the mounted riflemen of
Kentucky who broke the line of Proctor's regulars at the

A LEADERLESS WAR. 155

battle of the Thames showed, each of them, that even thus
early in the war the old-time American valor was by no means
a forgotten quantity.

The terrible bayonet charge with which in fair fight the
valiant fellows of Scott's brigade hurled backward in flight an
equal force of British regulars and turned the day at Chippeway ;
the inspiring valor with which at Lundy's Lane the modest but
gallant Miller led his men against the battery on the hill and
carried it by an assault that was as full of danger as it was
of bravery ; the equal gallantry with which Ripley and his
comrades held that same captured hill-top against three des-
perate assaults by the enemy's entire force; the bold and
masterly sortie from beleaguered Fort Erie, by which General
Gaines scattered the British besiegers, saved his post and,
indeed, the whole New York frontier a dash which for
brilliancy, so one author asserts, " has never been excelled by
any event in the same scale in military history' these, as the
war progressed, were convincing proofs that American courage
only needed opportunity to display itself even upon the most
uncertain field.

When at Lundy's Lane Colonel James Miller was ordered
to storm and capture the British battery to which reference has
already been made and which, crowning a hill-top, was really
the key to the enemy's position he made but the simple reply :
"I'll try, sir" -and took it! "If success attend my steps,"
wrote, in a letter to his father, that General Pike who in 1813
led into Canada the successful invasion that cost him his life,
" honor and glory await my name ; if defeat still shall it be said
that we died like brave men and conferred honor, even in death,
on the American name." " We demand the joint use with you
of this Lake Ontario as a public highway, or you shall not

i 5 6 A LEADERLESS WAR.

detach your troops," said Colonel Van Rensselaer, standing
under a flag of truce in British headquarters. This audacious
demand being denied, the young American colonel declared
that all negotiations for an armistice were at an end. The

boldness of his stand angered the British officers. They sprang
to their feet while General Sheaffe, their commander, signifi-
cantly placing his hand on his sword-hilt said sternly, " Sir, you
take hi^h oround." Nothing daunted by this hostile attitude

o o o J

of his enemies Van Rensselaer as quickly clapped hand to his
own sword-hilt and replied " I do, sir, and will maintain it ; but
you dare not detach the troops/' Such pluck found recognition
from the British soldier; he begged Van Rensselaer's pardon
for his hastiness and agreed to the joint use of the Lake. On
the ninth of May, 1813, there came a lull in the vigorous bom-
bardment of Fort Meigs. Under a flag of truce Major Cham-
bers representing the British besiegers was introduced into the
presence of General Harrison, the commander of the American
post. He presented a demand for the immediate surrender of
the fort. " Assure General Proctor," was Harrison's reply,
" that he will never have this post surrendered to him upon any
terms. Should it fall into his hands it will be in a manner
calculated to do him more honor than any capitulation could
possibly do." So pluckily did Harrison keep his word that the
" butcher of Frenchtown " fell back baffled and defeated.

The spirit that lived in such words as these that came from
the lips of officers, gradually found its counterpart in the sub-
ordinates or privates who fought under them. The younger
officers quickly imbibed this growing confidence and determi-
nation. We read of one passage of arms within sound of the
roar of Niagara marked for especial brilliancy and valor in
which not a single American officer en<ra<red in the ficrht was

A LEADERLESS WAR. 157

above the rank of captain. It was here that young Captain
Wool destined to become in years after a grizzled veteran in
the Mexican War already sorely wounded but still eager for
action, under a killing fire from the enemy charged up the hill
at Fort George and won the heights of Lewiston. It was this
same brave young fellow of twenty-four who later in the day
when a less daring brother officer would have displayed the
flag of surrender indignantly snatched the fluttering handker-
chief from the bayonet point and cheered on his men to such a
desperate bayonet charge that the enemy broke before his
impetuosity while the Forty-Ninth Grenadiers, one of the most
famous of the British regiments, turned and fled in dismay.
The " I'll try, sir! " of Miller at Lundy's Lane was a text upon
which thereafter many a dashing officer and many a valiant
private preached by his acts a stirring sermon on American
valor.

Notwithstanding the lack of example in the higher officers
in this leaderless war the records of the privates who fought
through it are by no means barren of pluck and heroism. It is
said that when Winchester surrendered his command to the
British butcher Proctor many of the soldiers declared that they
would not submit to the terms. They had come there to fight
the British and fight they would. They plead with their officers
to stand firm ; some even wept tears of disgrace and mortifica-
tion and declared they would rather die on the field. When
ordered finally to lay down their arms in surrender they threw
them upon the ground with such rage and indignation as to
shiver the stocks from the barrels and they declared to the
British soldiers that their general had sold out " the greatest
set of game-cocks that ever came from old Kentuck."

At the time of the disastrous British attack on Washing-

'58

A LEADEKLESS WAR.

ton and the surrounding country in 1814 Private John O'Neil
was the only faithful militia-man in the " Potato Battery " at
Havre de Grace. When all his comrades had fled he sturdily
stuck to his guns while fifteen British barges pounded away at
the little fort. While the grapeshot flew thickest about him

PACKENHAM'S CHARGE AT THE BATTLE OF NK\V ORLEANS.

he coolly loaded, served and fired the nine-pounder mounted on
the battery and then, being wounded by the recoil, retreated to
a nail factory where he kept up the fight until his powder was
exhausted. Wounded and without ammunition then onlv did

he admit himself defeated and surrender himself and his two
empty muskets to a British officer.

A LEADERLESS WAR. 159

On the eve of battle near Fort Wayne, General Harrison
read to the volunteers under his command some of the
regulations and restrictions that were made necessary by the
articles of war. He then declared that if any among the
volunteers did not feel willing to submit to such restrictions
they might return home. Only one man availed himself of
this offer. Thereupon several of his acquaintances, receiving
permission to escort him out of the camp, mounted him upon a
rail, carried him to the river and there ruthlessly ducked him
again and again in order as they said " to wash away all his
patriotism."

At the battle of Frenchtown Major Graves, gallantly leading
his men against an overwhelming force of the enemy, fell with
a shot in his knee. Still cheering on his men he cried out,
41 Boys, I am wounded ; never mind me, but fight on."

At the capture of Fort George, Hindman a Maryland
captain, belying the suggestion of his name, was almost the
first man in the fort. Hearing a rumor that the enemy were
to blow up the works rather than let them pass into American
hands Hindman at the sword's point, compelled a British ser-
geant to lead him to the magazine. Careless of personal danger
he snatched away the rapidly burning fuse that was fast ap-
proaching the powder and thus saved the fort and his comrades.

Instances of personal valor such as these could be multiplied
in proof of the assertion that while this leaderless War of 1812
was deficient in the brilliant enterprises and dashing achieve-
ments that, more than all else, give to war its romance and
its glitter, there still lived in the hearts of the people that
individual bravery and dauntless courage without which, when
pushed to the wall by its foes, a nation cannot hope for
success.

l6o A LEADERLESS WAR.

Militia-men might hesitate, waver and run away; regulars
might fail when most they should have been relied upon;
commanders might blunder, wrangle and even show the white
feather, but the valor of one man can often save a host from
disgrace ; the desperation of a forlorn hope outlives the cowardice

of an army.

So through the war, marked as it was with records of
American imbecility and British inhumanity, the development
of the national courage went slowly forward. Out of unsteadi-
ness grew discipline, out of foolish boastings came stern deter-
mination, out of faintheartedness sprang valor. The irrespon-
sible State detachments, amenable to their own officers, jealous
of the regulars and of the war-department officers, gradually
merged their personalities and their local names of " Fusileers,"
" Hussars," and " Rifles " into the broader title of American
Soldiers and proved, in such fights as Chippeway, their right to
the name of warriors and in such engagements as New Orleans
their appreciation of what that name really meant.

" We have now got an enemy who fights as bravely as our-
selves," wrote an English officer after the battle of Chippeway.
"They have now proved to us that they only wanted to acquire
a little discipline; they have now proved to us what they are
made of; and they are the same sort of men as those who cap-
tured whple armies under Burgoyne and Corn wall is ; they are
neither to be frightened nor to be silenced."

The great battle of the war was unquestionably the action
at New Orleans. Had but the ocean cable then spanned the
Atlantic, like a living cord uniting the nations, the news of
peace flashed beneath the waters would have rendered New
Orleans unnecessary. But on the other hand it would have
withheld from the crest of the American soldier one of his

A LEADERLESS WAR. 161

most proudly-worn trophies ; it would have taken from the
hereditary taunt of the hater of England its severest sting.
Bloody and unnecessary though it was, it stands in history as
so notable a monument to the skill of a great commander and
the valor of a volunteer army that it finds fitting mention in
the story of the American Soldier.

As first looked at this battle of New Orleans seems full of
inconsistencies. Ten thousand British regulars, the bravest
and most hardy of the veteran fighters of Wellington's Penin-
sular Army, with a record of six years of uninterrupted success,
were to face in fight less than five thousand soldiers drawn from
the fighting stock of a nation deficient at that time in all the
elements that constitute successful warfare. To be sure the
undisciplined five thousand were shielded behind mud-breast-
works ; but what was that to the valiant warriors who had
stormed the fortifications at Toulouse, and Badajos, and Ciudad
Rodrigo?. With the exception of Wellington no general
officer in the British army was counted the equal of Sir Edward
Packenham. Opposed to him was a leader unskilled in the
science of war, sadly deficient in the knowledge of tactics and
utterly lacking in those personal qualifications necessary to
what is known as the courtesy of camps. He was in the eyes
of the brilliant British general only " a grizzled old bush-fighter
whose name had never been heard of outside of his own
swamps."

But it is the unexpected that is always happening. If
Jackson was lacking in the art of war he was possessed of that
higher military genius that rises superior to science and to
tactics. His conquest of the warlike Indian tribes of the South
had taught him a wariness that could never know surprise, an
energy that was tireless, and a courage that was as unfaltering

1 62 A LEADERLESS WAR.

as it was obstinate. With almost no support from the demor-
alized national government, drawing his soldiery (with the
exception of seven hundred regulars) from the widely-scattered
settlements of the southern border, he massed his men behind
a low line of mud-breastworks, manned his guns with frontier
fighters who were sharp of eye and sure of aim and waited for
the morning.

It was the eighth of January, 1815. "At last," says Mr.
Roosevelt, " the sun rose. As its beams struggled through
the morning mist they glinted on the sharp steel bayonets of
the English, where their scarlet ranks were drawn up in battle
array, but four hundred yards from the American breastworks.
There stood the matchless infantry of the island king, in the
pride of their strength and the splendor of their martial glory ;
and as the haze cleared away they moved forward, in stern
silence, broken only by the angry, snarling notes of the brazen
bugles. At once the American artillery leaped into furious
life ; and, ready and quick, the more numerous cannon of the
invaders responded from their hot, feverish lips. Unshaken
amid the tumult of that iron storm the heavy red column moved
steadily on toward the left of the American line, where the
Tennesseeans were standing in motionless, grim expectancy.
Three fourths of the open space was crossed, and the eager sol-
diers broke into a run. Then a fire of hell smote the British
column. From the breastwork in front of them the white smoke
curled thick into the air, as, rank after rank, the wild marksmen
of the backwoods rose and fired, aiming low and sure. As
stubble is withered by flame, so withered the British column
under that deadly fire ; and, aghast at the slaughter, the reel-
ing files staggered and gave back. Packenham, fit captain for
his valorous host, rode to the front, and the troops, rallying

A LEADERLESS WAR. 163

round him, sprang forward with ringing cheers. But once
again the pealing rifle-blast beat in their faces ; and the life of
their dauntless leader went out before its scorching and fiery
breath.

" With him fell the other general who was with the
column, and all of the men who were leading it on ; and, as a
last resource, Keane brought up his stalwart Highlanders; but
in vain the stubborn mountaineers rushed on, only to die as
their comrades had died before them, with unconquerable cour-
age, facing the foe, to the last. Keane himself was struck
down ; and the shattered wrecks of the
British column, quailing before certain
destruction, turned and sought refuge
beyond reach of the leaden death that had
overwhelmed their comrades.

" Nor did it fare better with the
weaker force that was to assail the right
of the American line. This was led by
the dashing Colonel Rennie, who, when

ANDREW JACKSON.

the confusion caused by the mam attack

was at its height, rushed forward with impetuous bravery along
the river bank. With headlong fury Rennie flung his men at
the breastworks and, gallantly leading them, sword in hand,
he, and all around him, fell, riddled through and through by
the balls of the riflemen. Brave though they were, the British
soldiers could not stand against the singing, leaden hail, or if
they stood it was but to die. So in rout and wild dismay they
fled back along the river bank, to the main army."

" By eight o'clock," says Mr. Thompson, " the harvest was
over; the red field of the eighth of January had been mowed.
In front of Humphrey's batteries stretched the tangled wind-

,6 4 A LEADERLESS WAR.

rows of mangled dead ; prone beneath the deadly riflemen of
Beale's little command the red-coats lay in heaps ; the swaths
cut down by Carrol and Adair were horrible to see. What
slaughter; what a victory ! Over two thousand British lay
dead or helpless on the field. And what of Jackson's little
army? How many killed? Just eight men! How many
wounded ? Thirteen men, and no more ! "

It was a victory as complete as it was surprising. But
while the Creoles of New Orleans fought with a valor all the
more desperate because they were defending their homes from
pillage, while the rifles of Tennessee and Kentucky spread a
havoc that was as certain as it was terrible, while the pirates of
Barataria and the sailor-volunteers added alike picturesqueness
and ferocity to that dim fighting in a fog it must not be for-
gotten that the credit of the victory at New Orleans mainly
belongs to the man whose foresight planned and whose courage
effected the result Andrew Jackson, the general.

It was a brilliant close to a war that lacked brilliancy. It
was a dramatic ending to a conflict that, upon the land at least,
had, for the most part, been listless and tame indeed ; it was the
final vindication, in an era when such a setting H or lit seemed

O O

almost impossible, of the pluck and the bravery, the steadfast-
ness and the valor of the American Soldier.

Great generals rise but seldom above the level of their
troops. Signal victories, attained by the indomitable will of
one leader, are almost exceptions in history. Without the rank
and file the commander would be less than a unit. But the
battle of New Orleans was one of these exceptions. The
genius of its valiant leader rose superior to all obstacles.

The credit for the one victory of the War of 1812 rightly
belongs to one man Andrew Jackson of Tennessee " who,"

A LEADERLESS IV AR. 165

once more to quote from Mr. Roosevelt's summing-up of the
fight, " with his cool head and quick eye, his stout heart and
strong hand, stands out in history as the ablest general the
United States produced from the outbreak of the Revolution
down to the beginning of the great Rebellion." The leaderless
war was closed by a leader indeed.

CHAPTER VIII.

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

HE bells of 1815 as they rang out the
glad tidings of peace lulled a nation to
rest. The war was over. The people
were thankful. The good ship For-
tune, sailing into New York harbor on

the eleventh of February in that year
of peace with the news of the treaty
of Ghent, bore precious freight. The
rancors of divided councils were settled
and a distracted land set to work to
recover as speedily as possible from the
loss of the hundred million hard dollars
and the thirty thousand good lives that the war had cost.

The motley militia-men of the several States returned to
their homes; at least three thousand of those thirteen thousand
stiff parade hats and uncomfortable-looking uniforms that had
been the distino-uishino- mark of the regulars of 1812 were laid

o o o

aside and the army of the United States was reduced to a
peace footing of less than ten thousand men.

But though at peace with the outside world there was still
call for musket and bayonet, saber and spur. The feeble
power of Spain though ever so feebly defended was a menace

1 66

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 167

to the growth of the republic in the south and west. The
constant intrigues of intriguing England kept alive a continual
boundary trouble in the north. Upon the fringe of forest that
marked the country's vast frontier rested the ever-present dread
of Indian attack and ferocity. It behooved the nation to sleep
on its arms.

Scarcely had the echoes of the victorious guns at Ne\v
Orleans died away when trouble broke out in that section oi
the southern land known as East Florida. British agents
stirred the Indians to hostility and the blacks to revolt,
working their inhuman schemes in the Spanish territory that
touched the American border. Here first, in 1816, Colonel
Clinch took the field against the half-breed marauders and
with a picked force of United States regulars stormed the
combined negro and Indian stronghold which the English
had established on the Appalachicola River; but trouble stilt
continued and was only brought to an end by the prompt
energetic and decisive measures of that indomitable Jackson
whom men, for his toughness and his integrity, loved to call
" Old Hickory."

Spain's power was weakening. Across the boundary, lured
on by hope of booty, there swarmed in the spring of 1817 that
motley crowd of picturesque adventurers and piratical tramps
self-styled the "Patriot Army of the Republics of New Granada
and Venezuela." With a name that meant nothing but a cover
for rascality, as lawless as they were irresponsible, this crowd
of old-time "boomers" burst across the Spanish borders and
forced the timorous commandant to lower the flag of his king
before their insolent demands.

The government of the United States, unwilling to allow
a band of desperadoes to occupy, lawfully or unlawfully, by

!68 'WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

conquest or otherwise, any portion of the land that should be
American only, sent troops into Florida, drove out the ques-
tionable " Patriots " and took possession of the country.

Folio wins: this came the Seminole trouble of 1818. An

Indian outbreak that scarcely rose above the dignity of a savage
foray it was openly fostered by British influence and winked at
by Spanish incompetency.

Then it was that Jackson with a slender army of invasion
marched against the Indians. With his sharpshooters and his
home-raised militia he fell upon the red-men, burned their vil-
lages, drove them into the swamps and morasses of the lower
peninsula, captured and hung the British agents and taking
possession of the last Spanish post of Pensacola sent the gar-
rison flying across the water to Havana. It was an act of
usurpation as high-handed as it was patriotic. But, in periods
of great public danger, might is ever esteemed as right, and

O i O O O

Jackson's energetic measures saved the southern border from
pillage and made Florida forever American.

This was in 1818. In 1821 Florida passed by sale and treaty
into the possession of the United States. Once an American
territory settlement grew. The American settler has always
been restless under restrictions. Seeking to conquer the forest
and the plain with axe and plough, he has always held as an
enemy those earlier red possessors of the soil to whom axe and
plough have ever been but the hated instruments of the white
men's hated ways. From the days of the earliest colonization
this hostility has burned or smouldered according to opportunity
and every acre of border cultivation has been won only in the
face of bitter opposition or of open " outrage " on the part of
the Indian. The occupation of Florida proved no exception to
the rule. Inch by inch the Indians in the north of the flowery

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

169

peninsula were pressed into the swamps, the forests and the
fastnesses of the south. Protest led to recrimination ; to this
succeeded open hostilities. In 1835 Indian retaliation broke
out into warfare and a United States military force, comprising
fourteen companies of regular troops, was dispatched against

JACKSON'S SHARPSHOOTERS.

the Florida Indians. Force and ferocity met face to face and
the government of the United States had upon its hands that
series of battles and conflicts known to history as the Florida
or "Seminole " War.

This was no new experience either to government or army.

I7 o WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

Already in the west a still more formidable because better
organized Indian war had been met, grappled with and forced
to a successful termination. In 1827 the Winnebagoes of Illi-
nois had risen against the occupation of their land by the lead
miners of Galena and joining to themselves the still more war-
like Sioux plunged the country into war. The miners were
formed into companies and equipped for action. Illinois volun-
teers hurried to the scene of trouble and six hundred United
States regulars were added to the army. The Winnebago War
was of short duration. The show of force brought by the
authorities speedily overawed the hostile savages and the poor
Winnebagoes, as many another Indian has done, before and
since, abandoned their prairies to the greedy grasp of the white
man. The only noble figure that stands out against the back-
ground of this little war cloud is that of the noble Sioux chieftain

Red Bird who, when the Winnebagoes whom he had incited to
hostility were pressed into defeat by the victorious white men,
offered himself as the voluntary sacrifice for those whom he
would not desert. Robed in skins and bearing a white flag, he
rode into the United States camp and surrendered himself a
voluntary prisoner with the spirit of one who though conquered
was yet a conqueror. To the shame of American justice it
must be said that this heroic "savage" was, without compunc-
tion, thrown into prison where he sickened and died of the
humiliation of restraint.

But out of this Winnebago war rose speedily the greater
and much more serious trouble known as the Black Hawk War.
That celebrated Indian patriot known to the white men as
Black Hawk, the chief of the Sacs, had allied himself with the
Winnebagoes, had suffered imprisonment at the hands of the
white conquerors and was filled with resentment against

ir.-l#S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 171

the settlers becausq of this indignity and because of the per-
sistent encroachments of the white men upon the lands of his
tribe. Removed under protest to the region beyond the Mis-

sissippi he chafed under this action and as soon as the military
were withdrawn he returned to the Illinois country with a band
of warriors as determined as was he. There on the fourteenth
of May, 1832, he fell upon the United States soldiers on Syca-
more Creek and defeated them with considerable loss. The
settlers flew to arms. General Winfield Scott was assigned to
the command and hastened westward with one thousand regu-
lars to the assistance of the border volunteers who had taken
the field against the redoubtable Indian chieftain. The war of
course could have but one issue. In all the history of Indian
warfare in America the final victory has always been vouch-
safed to the white men ; but before that victorv had been

attained the conflict had known, as well on the savage as on
the civilized side, many an instance of courage and valor, of
self-sacrifice and renown, of cruelty and cowardice. Black
Hawk was a born warrior. A Kentuckian and therefore an
Indian hater, in his story of the action of Sycamore Creek
referred to above, asserted that the Indian army came against
them not in the old-style skulking way of the savage but in
solid column, deploying in the form of a crescent upon the
borders of the prairie and with accuracy and precision in every
movement. It must be said of this same Kentuckian private
that perhaps his eyes played him false as his heart certainly
did, for when the battle was joined he became a sadly-demora-
lized fighter. As the Indian attack fell upon his column he
confesses that he made a retrograde movement and remained
some time meditating what further he could do in the service
of his country. " Then a random ball came whistling by my

I72 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

ear and whispered to me : ' Stranger, you have no further
business here.' ' Upon hearing this, he confesses, he followed
the example of his companions in arms " and broke for the tall
timber, and the way I ran was not a little."

But there were those who did not run. The war was prose-
cuted with firmness and energy on the part of the United
States, with obstinacy and determination by Black Hawk and
his followers. The battle of the Wisconsin however as the
first decisive battle of the war threw the advantage and the
victory into the hands of the Americans. The battle of the
Bad Axe, fought on the second of August, 1832, drove the
Indians into the Mississippi and defeat.

There never has been a war on American soil, since first
the republic was proclaimed, that did not exhibit certain phases
of that never-ending jealousy that has always seemed to exist
between the regulars and the militia. Even in this Black
Hawk War a local disturbance only so far as the country at
large was concerned the success of the Illinois militia under
General Henry, u the hero of the Wisconsin " as his own peo-
ple loved to call him, was belittled by the officers of the regular
army and overslaughed by Henry's own fellow officers who
were jealous of their comrade's brilliant success. Honor to
whom honor is due ; and even at this late day it would seem
but a slight acknowledgment of duty done and valor displayed
to give alike the credit and the honor of the Black Hawk Cam-
paign to the volunteers of the western border and to their
energetic commander General James B. Henry whose intre-
pidity and good judgment turned defeat into victory in the
battle of the Wisconsin and ended the war at Bad Axe.

Although General Scott did not actually assume command
of the army in the Black Hawk War until after Henry and

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 173

Alexander had practically closed the campaign, the trouble
was virtually concluded under his direction and when the
Seminole trouble in Florida, in 1835, assumed serious propor-
tions he was dispatched to the front by the War Department
with a considerable and well-organized army. It was largely
under his direction that the Florida war was waged.

From the start this war was fought out by the Indians with
divided counsels. It sprang originally from an alleged infraction
of treaty and leading chiefs of the Seminoles were still inclined
to adhere to their promises as made under the treaty. The
Seminole war was therefore not directly due to the leading
Indians but was fostered and kept alive by the unyielding
hatred and persistence of one man Asseola (mistakenly called
Osceola) the half-breed. Compounded of many diverse ele-
ments, with a character that was in many respects alien to
Indian life and laws, Asseola added to the obstinacy of the
Scotchman the worst traits of the red-man, and the Florida
war was one long record of treacheries, inhumanities, surprises
and dogged determination that, to a certain extent, explains
how, in so narrow a strip of country as is the Florida peninsula,
hostilities could be kept alive for nearly seven years.

The courage of the soldiers sent to the war by the settlers
of the South and by the War Department was high; their
desires for deeds of prowess were strong; but the fight was
a long and wasting one and was based upon the customary
Indian tactics of predatory forays, ambush and secrecy. The
bravery of the soldier could only be shown in his continual
wariness, his ability to ferret out the hiding foeman, his resort
to stratagem and decoy, and his facing the Indian obstinacy
with that higher persistence and determination with which
intelligence always confronts savagery.

I74 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

From 1835 to 1842 the war dragged on. Gaines, Scott,
Call, Jesup, Taylor and Armistead each, in turn, succeeded to
the general command or were superseded in it. The trouble
was finally brought to a close after the expenditure of many
lives and a large sum of money by that dashing soldier whose
valor was to be even more severely tested on the plains of
Mexico General Thomas Worth. He succeeded to the com-
mand of the army in Florida in 1841. Conqueror in an active
campaign, he penetrated into the inaccessible swamps and fast-
nesses where the Seminoles had taken refuge, forced them to
a final surrender and to a removal to the far West. Already
in 1836 Asseola the half-breed had been captured by stratagem
and fraud and thrown into prison never to emerge alive. And
thus another chapter in the sad story of the hopelessness of
savage patriotism was written in blood and loss.

As typical of the Indian determination and the American
persistence which, as has already been said, joined issue in this
Seminole War, and as presenting all the varying phases
of surprise and strategy, of ferocity and revenge, must ever
stand the terrible story of that heroic defense made in the
swamps of the Withlacoochee by Major Dade and his brave
one hundred.

Ambushed and attacked by a strong party of savages on the
morning of the twenty-eighth of December, 1835, while chang-
ing camp north of the Little Withlacoochee the troops quickly
recovered from their surprise and charged the hidden foe.
Beneath the thin shadow of the palmettoes where a stretch of
hio-h Southern crass almost concealed the skulking enemy the

<-> <_> c.5 j

combatants met and fought hand to hand. Scalping knife and
bayonet, clubbed musket and murderous hatchet clashed in the
death grapple and even before the red-men had been driven

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. I7S

back, Major Dade fell dead. His successor Captain Gardiner
at once proceeded to throw up a slender breastwork which
should serve as a slight obstacle to the assaults of the Indians
again gathering for the attack. Before the feeble defense had
risen to the height of two and a half feet the Indians, now
largely reinforced, swarmed down upon the gallant little band.
The yells of the savages drowned the noise of the muskets.
In large numbers they surrounded that frail breastwork and
shot down every man who attempted to serve the one gun that
was its sole defense. Officer after officer was killed. At last
only one remained. This was Lieutenant Bassinger. As he
saw the last one above him in rank fall beneath the murderous
fire he called out pluckily, " I'm the only officer left, boys ; but
we'll all do the best we can."

Poor fellows! their best was but to die bravely. And that
they did. A fair prototype of that later day when on Western
plains the brave fellows of Custer's command went down to a
man, so now the forlorn hope of the gallant Dade stood val-
iantly to their work and the fight ended only when life and
ammunition gave out together. Over the frail inclosure burst
the victorious savages but there were no defenders left. Every
man in that brave little company save one who managed to
escape with the tidings of defeat, lay dead or dying within the
space of their defenses. And when the Indians had taken their
customary toll of scalps and departed, the runaway negroes
who had sided with the Indians a step lower down in savagery
than were their red allies completed the work of slaughter-
ing the defenseless and pillaging the dead. But no indignity
could efface the glory of that day's heroism. The valor of
defeat is sometimes more deathless than is the jubilee shout
of triumph.

17 6 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

The Black Hawk campaign and the Seminole War were the
leading military events of that era of national peace that
bridged the years between the treaty of Ghent and the war with
Mexico. And yet within that time there were rumors of war
forever in the air, there were internal disturbances that kept
the War Department ever on the alert.

Most serious of all these internal dissensions, in its possible
results (although the determined stand of one man stamped
sternly out the incipient revolt which his over-sternness had
nearly brought about), were the " Nullification Troubles " of
1832 when South Carolina, enraged at President Jackson's
position upon the question of State rights, sought to nullify
certain customs laws passed by Congress and openly defied the
power of the United States.

The same stern sense of duty, the same inflexible courage
that had broken the Creek confederacy at Horse Shoe Bend, that
had hurled back the army of Packenham from the mud breast-
works before New Orleans and had sent the Spaniards flying
from Pensacola aorain asserted themselves and could find in the

defiant position of a hot-headed Southern State only a greater
incentive to patriotism, only the demand for a justice that must
be inexorable. Andrew Jackson was not a man to yield.

" By the Eternal ! " the stout old soldier-president declared
in one of his favorite explosives, " the Union must and shall
be preserved. Send for General Scott ! "

Quick to respond to the call of his country General Scott
came and, with most of the available troops of the United
States army, he was hurried at once to the city of Charleston,
the center of the threatened insurrection.

But though the military of the State was duly ordered out
to repel the " invaders " the determined stand of the stout old

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 177

hero of New Orleans had almost instant effect. Defiance
changed to compliance, and this earliest attempt of a State to
revolt against the nation of which it was a component part
was itself " nullified " by the unyielding patriotism of that
nation's chief executive and by the bristling bayonets of that
nation's regular soldiery.

The country v. r as growing rapidly. A ceaseless flow of
immigration was changing the forests into farm lands, the
prairies into pastures and wheat-fields. But growth implies
unrest and the three decades between 1815 and 1845 were
marked with vain attempts at hostility or by vague rumors of
trouble that never came. East, west and south this spirit
of unrest repeatedly appeared and the ill effects of intrigue
in politics or diplomacy seemed continually to threaten a
contest.

Now it was the Mormons who were reported to be aiming
to subvert the institutions and the religion of the land. Against
them the people protested even to the verge of open assault
and both the destruction of Nauvoo in Illinois and the anti-
Mormon riots in Missouri called for the service of the soldiers
of those States to scatter the militant sect.

Again it was that outbreak of 1842 in Rhode Island known
as Dorr's Rebellion a protest unjustly derided, the real his-
tory of which is yet to be written that called the fighting
men to arms ; or it was that serio-comic " invasion of Canada "
in 1839 when seven hundred restless New Yorkers led by a
descendant of the patroons of Rensselaer offered themselves
as allies and supporters of a Canadian revolt against England,
and the troops of the United States were hurried northward to
enforce American neutrality and protect the disturbed frontiers.
There were many local disturbances such as the " Anti-rent

178 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

war " in New York and the " Bank mobs " in Maryland that
demanded the service of the military arm to scatter or punish
while even the political party cry of the presidential campaign
of 1844: "fifty-four forty or fight!" -a demand for north-
western boundaries that threatened a third war with England
filled the land with anxiety and fired the hearts of those
ambitious for military glory.

These and such as these, however serious, however ridicu-
lous they might be, created, each, a certain demand for resist-
ance by a show of force that should summon either the
scattered ranks of the slender regular armv or the uncertain

O J

files of an ail-too uncertain militia. In a free country the
citizen is not inclined to do anything more than play at soldier
until a real and stern demand calls him to duty and often to
death.

From a very early day, however, this playing at soldier has
held an important place in American life. As early as 1666
the colonial laws required all males among the colonists to
attend military exercises and services. Companies were exercised
six days annually, the captain opening every such training
with prayer. The law of i 790 required every able-bodied male
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to meet with his
military company four times each year for training and dis-
cipline and the United States law of 1792 sought to establish
a general militia system throughout the entire country. The
Revolution had given a new impetus to the martial spirit ; the
imbecilities of 1812 gave it a spasmodic growth; and thus
through the first half of the present century the "general
training" and the muster day of the spring and fall were the
red letter days of the year in all. American towns. Let us for
a moment, dear reader, be the " Father and I" of that rattling

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

179

old jingle that has now become historic those two spectators
who, say, in the early twenties or even in the early thirties

Went down to camp
Along with Cap'n Gooding,
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty-pudding."

They are thick hereabouts and no mistake. People every-
where. And as Cap'n Gooding leaves us and we shake from
our shoes the dust of the dry road along which we have plodded
to the camp we stand now upon the broad green or "Common"
just beyond the limits of the county town. The field is
flanked with peddler's wagons and with booths and stands of
every description hastily knocked together for " this day only."
Muster day is a great incentive to inordinate appetite for
indigestible stuffs and both at the town tavern close at hand
and here in this encircling encampment of booths and wagons
everything deemed most palatable in the way of eatables and
drinkables is offered for sale alike to citizen and soldier.

The shrill fife and the roll of drum call the soldiers to
their stations. And now the regiment gathers together a
sight to behold. We stand on tiptoe to view the muster and
the evolutions, for these are the days of simplicity in the
republic and no such aristocratic luxuries as grand stands or
tiers of seats are provided for the spectators. The regiment
embraces the four divisions of the military service artillery,
grenadiers, light infantry, and riflemen with a dash of cavalry
to add excitement to the scene. Here, too, come the ununi-
formed raw recruits known as the " floodwood companies."

The spectators are all agog. They are full of admiration for
the cavalrymen, mounted on horses of every degree of mettle

!8o WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

and decked out in black suits faced, and corded with red.
These sit astride their cumbrous saddles terrible with clanking
cutlasses and formidable holsters into which are thrust the
huo-e horse pistols of that ante-revolver day. The red leather
helmets of the grenadiers gleam in the hot sun. Soft hats are
as yet a thing unknown and the stiff black beavers of the
riflemen in their quiet uniform of gray, and the black leather
cap of the infantry, topped each with a black and red feather
are as comfortless as they are unpicturesque. The infantry
we shall look at again and again. Theirs is the most gorgeous

o o o o

of uniform. It is composed of white trousers and black coats
the latter criss-crossed with white belts to which are chained
priming wires, brushes and extra flints. The " floodwood ' :
men are, as a rule, innocent of uniform. Only a tin badge dis-
played in the front of their hat and bearing the letters L. I.
tells us that these undecorated recruits (who generally outnumber
the uniformed companies two to one) are really martial members
of the Light Infantry of the State. They are a prosaic patch
in a field of color.

The color would seem to be the only picturesque element
however, for the art of military tailoring was of a low grade in
the twenties and thirties. Thoreau once said, " Wrap a salt-fish
around a boy and he would have a coat much in the fashion of
many a one I have seen worn at muster."

And now conies inspection. The dull lines of the " flood-
woods " (sober in their sheep's gray and blue jeans and
armed with rifles, muskets and fowling pieces of every con-
ceivable pattern) are ordered to "toe the mark" a literal
mark literally toed. Man by man the platoons are inspected
and then along the line rides the Colonel and his staff,
resplendent in brass buttons, big epaulets and vast cocked

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 181

hats. The music crashes out. It is more voluminous than
harmonious for the instruments have come from all the towns
about. Its only uniformity is its tendency to play out of tune.
With a roll and a rattle the snare and kettle-drums burst out ;
boom ! go the basses and high and shrill rise the notes of fife
and clarionet, with here and there, perhaps, a Kent bugle
the father of the cornet. Still clashing out of tune the band
gathers around the colonel while the regiment forms itself
into a hollow square. And the colonel doffing his chapeau,
poses like the great Napoleon and after addressing a few
complimentary words to his faithful regiment retires from
the field.

Inspection over, dinner follows. Then the noon gun calls
the regiment back to the parade ground where each company
tries to outdo the others in a competitive drill and evolutions
the movements of which are all unknown to modern tactics. "

A break in the maneuvers is caused by those who, lacking
cartridges, cannot, to the letter, obey the command : " Open
pan; tear cartridge; point; shut pan; ram down cartridge!
Ready! Aim! Fire!" Each cartridge-less one must go down
into his breeches pocket for the well-filled powder-flask from
which to prime his pan. And more than one unfortunate in
the excitement of the moment, explodes his magazine in his
capacious pocket and retires from the field singed and scorched
wrecked in whiskers, hair or eyebrows.

Or perhaps the captain shouts " Lock-step and sit down ! "
Then in single file the company march about, forming a circle
in the center of which stands the captain.^ To slow music the
circle draws toward the center falling into the " lock-step " now
only known to convict gangs. " Sit ! " cries the captain, and
down goes each man in the lap of his neighbor for all the

182

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

world like a company of leap-frogs preparing to jump. In the
center, perched high on a mackerel keg, stands the valiant
captain with uplifted sword; the music rises shrill and high
and the admiring spectators wildly applaud the tableau.

And now comes what the crowd consider the great event of
the day the sham battle. In a rudely constructed house of

IN THE "ANTI-RENT WAR.

boards and boughs, excluding air and light and supposed to
represent a fort, one of the militia companies huddles impris-
oned. Advancing by platoons the infantry men of the regiment
march upon the fort, discharge their guns in air, wheel outward
and retire to re-load. From the top of a neighboring hill boom
out the blank charges of the artillery a battery of bloodless

WAXS AND KCMORS OF WAR. 183

besiegers. Still farther away the black coats of the cavalry
charge and swerve in a sham fight on their own account. The
air is filled with noise and smoke until the sweltering defenders
of the fort, overcome by heat, rather than by heroism, gladly
capitulate and marching out with all the honors of war give
place in the fort to another company who immediately take
possession of it, likewise to swelter and surrender.

And when the sham fight is over the day's training at last is
done. " Father and I " leave the field and return with Cap'n
Gooding convinced that a muster is a grand and glorious sight.
And yet, notwithstanding this semi-annual exercise and
evolution, it is asserted that in .all those early days there was
scarcely a company of militia-men really well drilled or pro-
ficient in even the most simple military movement.

Practically the United States were at peace from the close
of the War of 1812 to the opening of the war with Mexico in
1846. Military duties were slighted and shirked by the majority
of Americans who could poorly spare any of the precious time
necessary to the noble science of money-making for such
" fol-de-rols " as muster and parade. Gradually, so great was
the contempt visited upon " belonging to the military " that the
militia system itself fell into disrepute and became a butt and a
reproach. That typical raw recruit of the Biglow Papers,
41 Mr. Birdofredom Sawin," was, we know, ceaselessly critical of
the fuss and feathers of muster'day. Real war when he had to
face it, he declared,

" ain't a mite like our October trainin',

A chap could clear right out from there ef 't only looked like rainin',
An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners,
An* send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners
(Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter
Ef he fired awav his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water."

!84 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

The "forced volunteers" of the West men drafted to
serve in the militia of a State in which they had neither
time nor desire to serve not unfrequently protested against
discipline and proscription. So the militia system gradually
fell into disrepute. In a land where caste and rank find
but little footing and where social distinctions are of small
account obedience in playing at war is but a grudging, a
contemptuous or a good-humored concession.

" See here, Brown/' a militia officer is said to have called
out to one of the privates (who when at home, was the pompous
captain's employer), " I reckon I'll have to report you for dis-
respect to your superior officer."

" Report and be hanged ! " returned the private, with no
little emphasis in his tone. " When we get home I reckon I'll
have to discharge you."

President Lincoln once stated that, previous to the Mexican
war, so great a bore did militia trainings become to the people
of Illinois that they tried in every way to put them down.
Not being able to do this by repealing the militia laws they
tried hard to burlesque them. And so, according to Mr.
Lincoln's story, they elected one Gordon Adams, a village
"bummer" and ne'er-do-well, as colonel of a Springfield regi-
ment. The new colonel's uniform, contributed by his subordi-
nates, was truly startling. One leg of his trousers was of one
color and material, the other was in direct contrast. He wore
a pasteboard cap about six feet long, looking much like an
inverted ox-yoke. The shanks of his spurs were fully eight
inches long and furnished with rowels as big as saucers. His
sword was of pine wood and at least nine feet long. Among
the regimental rules and regulations were incorporated certain
absurd clauses, as for instance this : " No officer shall wear

< ARICATURING TMK MII.ITIA.
President Lincoln's story of " Colonel " Gordon Adams.

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 187

more than twenty pounds of codfish for epaulets, nor more than
thirty yards of Bologna sausage for a sash." Upon the regi-
mental banner was borne aloft these words : " We'll fight till

we run and run till we die." The appearance of u Colonel "
Adams according to Mr. Lincoln's narrative ended militia
training in Springfield. It was killed by caricature !

A certain Indiana major, filled with an importance of the
pomp and circumstance of mimic war as embodied in " general
training" day and his own ability to lead was once elected to com-
mand in a Wayne County regiment. He was not an imposing
figure. He had, so the record declares, " like Julius Caesar, a
weak body but the military ambition of a Charles the Twelfth."
What he lacked in stature he sought to make up in uniform.
The muster day arrived. The adjutant spurred from the head-
quarters and with a loud voice issued his orders : " Officers, to
your places. Marshal your men into companies. Separate
the barefooted from those wearing shoes or moccasins ; place
the guns, sticks and corn-stalks in separate platoons, and form
in line to receive the major!"

The line was formed and then, into the field, amid the
clash of music, dashed the major and his aids. The little
officer was almost lost in his gorgeous uniform. He wore a
blue coat, covered with gold lace and big gilt buttons ; upon
his head was a chapeau, copied after Jackson's at the Horse
Shoe fight, above which towered a red plume tipped with white.
Great epaulets weighed down his narrow shoulders ; his sword-
scabbard reached to his feet ; his legs were cased in Suwarrow
boots that over-topped his pistol-stuffed holster and were graced
with gilt spurs fully a foot long. Facing the waiting regiment
the little major reined in his rearing horse, rose in his stirrups
and shouted bravely: "Attention, the whole!"

l8 8 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR.

But, alas! his voice was weak. It broke on the "Atten-
tion!" It rose into a fifelike squeak on "the whole." And
just then from the extreme end of the regimental line came
piping back an exact imitation of the major's squeak : " Chillun !
Come out 'er the swamp. You'll get snake-bit ! "

Down the line dashed the enraged major. " Who dares
insult me?" he demanded with fury in his eyes. And for
reply there came all along the line the same mocking squeak:
" Snake-bit ; snake-bit ; you'll get snake-bit ! "

Mortified and angered beyoi:d endurance the poor little
major's assumption of pomp and ceremony fell to dust and
ashes. He dashed his chapeau from his head ; he flung his
sword to the ground ; he tore his commission to pieces and
resigned his office on the spot. There was no recovery from
so open a farce and the last militia muster had been held in
the White Water country.

On a certain " trainin' " day in New Hampshire a fuss-and-
feathers captain ordered the double-quick. Away dashed the
command but presently the captain, throwing a glance over his
shoulder to note the effect of the maneuver was thunder-
struck to find himself running alone. Going back to hunt up
his missing company he found them, over the fence chasing
chickens !

Down in Virginia the captain of a militia company fell into
hot dispute with his adjutant on training day. The whole
parade was demoralized. Just as the war of words rose hottest
a three-hundred pound hog, worried by the dogs, dashed across
the parade ground and darting between the legs of the angry
captain sent him sprawling to the ground. With shrieks of
laughter and loud hand-clapping soldiers and citizens applauded
the overthrow. But springing to his feet the doughty captain

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 189

tore off his military coat, with all its entangling straps and
belts, flung aside his sword and rolling up his shirt sleeves,
shouted out in a fury: "Come on, you! I'll lick the whole
company ! " The tall file leader who stood nearest him, " bent
like a willow-wand " in the brawny captain's grasp. Such valor
was not to be disputed. Awed by their captain's physical
powers more than by his " panoply of war " the company was
re-formed and the mutiny was quelled.

But if the militia in those "piping times of peace" was a
crudt-, unorganized and graceless sort of body a very emphasis,
in fact, of the unwarlike character of the American people when
nothing urges them to conflict the eight thousand soldiers
who made up the slender regular army were carefully drilled
and thoroughly organized. Hampered by many restrictions
and enwrapped in much departmental red tape, it was yet
officered by men who, learning a lesson from the failures of
1812, resolved never again to permit the army of the United
States to be a stumbling block and a reproach.

Gallant officers and rigid disciplinarians, such men as Brown,
Macomb and Scott, were generals of the army between the
years 1815 and 1846. Their vigor, their energy and their de-
termination to give to the service strength and standing, put
into soldierly training the little force at whose head in turn
they stood, and educated men and officers alike to be ready for
efficient service in the two years' war that was fast drawing near.

CHAPTER IX.

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

EXICO land of sunlight
and of shadow, of peon
and planter, of simplicity
and superstition, of cour-
tesy and cupidity, of lazy
manners and of flaming
passions what spirit of
evil could have induced a
powerful northern nation
to seek the humbling and
the spoiling of so pictur-
esque and yet so ambi-
tious, so distracted and
yet so devoted, so patri-
otic and yet so partisan
a sister republic ? Fired
by the example of the

Northern colonies in their revolt against English tryanny the
land of the Aztecs had in 1815 declared itself independent and
in 1821 had thrown off the yoke of Spain.

The republic of Mexico ! Surely here was an effort toward

progress and freedom worthy to be fostered and upheld by that

190

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 191

great people whose success had given it being. What if it was
torn by faction and jealousies, a hot-bed of revolutions and of
unfulfilled opportunities ? Ought it not to have been all the
more a land to be befriended by a people who had conquered
circumstances and obtained success? And yet in 1846 the
northern eagles swooped down upon the southern doves and
dyed the tricolored banner of Mexico in the blood of her
bravest and her best.

It is not the province of this volume to enter into the
causes of those various wars in which the American soldier has
played his part. But it must be admitted that no conflict in
which the republic of the United States had been one of the
principals was ever more unnecessary, heartless or unjust. A
little cool judgment on the part of our national leaders, a little
friendly concession toward a weaker neighbor, a determined
effort toward that arbitration which to-day is the great pacificator
of the world and the willful waste of blood and treasure, the
shame and taint of our war against Mexico might never have
sullied the name of the United States.

A war conceived in the interests of slavery, advocated
as a political necessity and precipitated by the unwarranted
occupation of a strip of foreign, or at least of neutral ground
such was the war with Mexico! No wonder our justice-
loving Northern poet cried out in wrath

" Where's now the flag of that old war ?

Where flows its stripe ? Where burns its star?

Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,

Dark vale of Palms, red Monterey ;

Where Mexic freedom, young and weak,

Fleshes the northern eagle's beak ;

Symbol of terror and despair,

Of chains and slaves, go seek it there ! "

I92 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER,

And yet so incongruous is fate, so unreasoning is heroism,
the very war that should have been distasteful to freemen a
war in behalf of oppression, offensive and not defensive, aggres-
sive and not resistant, wrong and not right this was the one
war of all others, up to that stage of American history, most
replete with daring, heroism and resistless successes. Fought,
always, against fearful odds, in a strange land and in an
unfriendly climate, from first to last the war was full of triumph
for the stars and stripes. The march of the American soldiers
across the Mexican borders and into the old Aztec capital was
but one continuous series of victories.

The nation was ready for war. Schooled by the imbecilities
and reverses of 1812 to an appreciation of military needs the
regular army of the United States, as has already been said,
though small in numbers was admirably drilled and vet more

O ^ J

admirably officered. The military academy at \Yest Point,
founded by act of Congress in 1802, had been reorganized in

J O O

1812 and placed upon such a basis of excellence and effort that
its graduates left it soldiers in training as well as in theory.

The men who led and who fought in the ranks of the

United States army in 1846 and 1847, were men indeed -
picked from the fighting stock of a nation which, notwithstand-
ing the farces of muster days and the empty pomp of "general
training," had still at base the valor, the endurance and the
pluck that was the heritage of that time that tried men's souls
threescore years before the outcome of those historic clays
when men rallied for the right and laid down their lives for
Liberty.

Professor Soley, carefully studying the details of the Mexican
war, asserts that "the skill and daring of the officers, and the
discipline, endurance and couracre o f the men durins: the war

OVER THE Af EX 1C AN BORDER. r 93

with Mexico, were as noticeable as was the absence of these
qualities during the War of 1812." Here was no leaderless
war. The names of Taylor and of Scott, of Worth and Wool,
of Quitman and Kearney, of McKenzie and Shields belonged
alike to leaders and to soldiers and, in the lack of competent
Mexican generals, afford one reason for the unvarying suc-
cesses of the American arms.

The determined efforts of Texas (largely settled by Ameri-
cans) to free itself from the Mexic-Spanish yoke, the heroic
stand at the Alamo that "Thermopylae of America" the
dreary tragedy of Goliad, the valorous and triumphant conflict
at San Jacinto lost the Lone Star republic to Mexico, brought
her at last into the confederation of the United States and
aroused the world to a fresh sympathy with brave men nerved
to heroic endeavor by a great desire. What man with fighting
blood in his veins or the inspiration of courage in his heart
would not be stirred to admiration by the heroism of Travis
and his brave two hundred and fifty at the Alamo and by the
desperate valor of San Houston's eight hundred at San
Jacinto ? Valor begets enthusiasm, and when at last war against
Mexico was declared there was but little reasoning among those
who saw., in the fight over a new empire, opportunity for great
deeds and martial experiences. To him who longed to shoulder
a musket or swing a saber the question as to right or wrong
counted for but little. The invasion of Mexico might be " a
political necessity," the contest might be only a " war of pre-
text " both invasion and contest afforded, at least, a pretext
for valorous deeds, a necessity for sturdy fighters and, to the
soldiers, these were as all in all.

So off to the wars they marched regulars and volunteers
alike, all filled with a desire for action, all swayed with the hope

I94 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

of glory. Their general was that Zachary Taylor whose army
nickname of " Old Rough and Ready " sufficiently indicates
his character. Rough indeed he was when warlike necessities
called for vigorous actions ; and ready, too, the record shows
him to have been whether responding to the government's call
for the immediate occupation of the disputed territory or storm-
ing against the host of foeman below the rocky heights that
frowned on Angostura.

Seizing the disputed stretch of territory that lay, two
hundred miles in width, along the eastern bank of the Rio
Grande, General Taylor with his Army of Occupation, twenty-
five hundred strong, rendezvoused at Point Isabel not far from
the mouth of the Great River. His force comprised one
thousand regulars and less than fifteen hundred volunteers
drawn from the southwestern States. It consisted of one
regiment of cavalry ("dragoons"), four companies of light
artillery, five regiments of infantry and one regiment of artil-
lery acting as infantry. Over the camp at Point Isabel floated
the American flag and this was deemed by the Mexicans alike
an insult and an invitation to war. And war beo;an.

The Mexican bombardment of Fort Brown, a hastily con-
structed fortification thrown up by the Americans on the banks
of the river opposite Matomoras, was the signal for battle.
The battle followed speedily. It was a double engagement
fought with all the faith that comes from superiority of numbers
by the over-confident Mexicans and with all the valor of des-
peration by the little American army. Along the easterly
side of the Rio Grande North .and South met in conflict.
In this double fight the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca
de la Palma, in both of which the Mexican array of over six
thousand men outnumbered the Americans almost three to

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

'95

one the courage of the northern army and the ability of its
leader stood the test of battle and gave the key-note to this
epic of war. A five hours' fight at Palo Alto the "tall
trees " on the eighth of May gave the victory to the North-
ern arms. On the ninth the yet fiercer fight at Resaca de la
Palma sent the Mexicans flying across the river in full retreat
and the first victory was won. The Mexican contempt for
their Northern antagonists was changed to consternation.
With one seventh of their number wounded or prisoners, the
Mexican soldiers fled before the northern bayonet, enraged
yet defeated and as one American officer has testified "throw-
ing their muskets at our men in the spirit of desperation,
swearing that they were devils incarnate." It was a sad revela-
tion to the too-confident Mexicans. The victory they so
unquestioningly expected was but bitter defeat. The wail of
disaster lives in the lines of one of their native poets:

" Dark is Palo Alto's story,

Sad Resaca Pal ma's rout ;
On those fatal fields so gory

Many a gallant life went out.

" On they came, those Northern horsemen,

On like eagles through the sun ;
Followed then the Northern bayonet,

And the field was lost and won."

The field indeed was lost and won. General Taylor crossed
the Rio Grande. The Army of Occupation became the Army
of Invasion. The effect of these battles on the American peo-
ple was like an elixir. It fired them to ambitious and determined
action. The president issued a call for fifty thousand volun-
teers. Ten times that number responded. The Government
could not handle the host and only the number called for was

I9 6 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

sent south. It was divided into three sections the Army of
Occupation, the Army of the Center and the Army of the
West. Sixty-five hundred men shouldered their flint-locks and
at once the forward march was taken for this modern conquest
of Mexico.

It is characteristic of human nature to honor heroism and
to emphasize, in the story of a successful war, not the blood but
the bravery that it displays. As the years go by and the real
horrors of conflict and carnage are weakened by remoteness so
are the valorous deeds intensified and made to appear gleaming
and glorious.

The triumphal march on Mexico made by the American
soldiers takes to itself as we now look back upon it all the
glitter and romance of the historic deeds of those old conquis-
tadorcs of Spain who, amid these same hills and valleys, turned
a race of progressive barbarians into a nation of slaves. Alva-
rado's mighty leap across the broken causeway, Sandoval's
dashing charge up the bloody stairway of the Aztec temple and
Olid's fiery valor at Otumba are recalled by May's terrific
charge upon the Mexican batteries at Resaca de la Palma, by
Smith's furious onset at Contreras and by Ouitman's stubborn
defense of the San Belen c:ate.

And as we are apt, in the glamour of Spanish victory, to lose
sight of the bravery of those heroic * tzins of the Aztec Cacama
and Guatamo so we place in our records of this modern con-
quest but scant mention of that brave Mexican color-sergeant'
who on the stricken field of Palo Alto left the fioiit, the last

of his regiment, wrapped in the folds of the flag he had so
valiantly defended the tattered banner of the Tampico Vete-
rans; we find but brief reference to that gallant old Revolu-

tionary leader Bravo and his young cadets of the Mexican

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 197

military academy who held the hill of Chapultepec against the
terrible charge of their Northern foeman. It is time for us to
give up the old fable that the Mexicans who withstood our
arms were only greasers and cowards. It is proper for us to
bear in mind that in the Mexican calendar Cherubusco and
Chapultepec are celebrated as victories instead of defeats the
birthdays of patriotism and valor. That these patriots were foe-
men worthy of our steel full many a northern soldier on those
bloody fields learned to his cost.

14 The Mexican army of that day," says General Grant, " was
hardly an organization. The private soldier was poorly clothed,
worse fed and seldom paid ; yet I have seen as brave stands made
by some of these men as I have ever seen made by soldiers."

Honoring those whose names gave emphasis to victory we
read the record of this unnecessary but fascinating war with no
little enthusiasm. Our caps are flung aloft at each recurring
victory and we almost resent with indignation the grumbling
criticisms of that same grumbling volunteer of the " Biglow
Papers " who, after the war was over, declared with equally bad
grace and bad grammar :

" But somehow, wen we'd fit an* licked, I oilers found the thanks

Clut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low down ez the ranks ;

The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the Gunnels next, an' so on,

\Ve never gut a blasted might o' glory ez I know on ;

An* s'pose we hed, I wonder how you 're goin' to contrive its

Division so's to give a piece to twenty thousand privits ;

}'.{ you should multiply by ten the portion o* the brav'st one,

You wouldn't git mor'n half enough to speak of on a grave-stun ;

We git the licks we're jest the grist thet's put into War's hoppers ;

Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps pick up the coppers.

It may suit folks thet go agin a body with a soul in 't ;

An' ain't contented with a hide without a bagnet hole in 't ;

But glory is a kin' o' thing /sha'n't pursue no furder,

Coz thet's the offcers parquisite, yourn's on'y jest the murder."

I9 8 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

Looked at from the standpoint of right the war against
Mexico was unwarranted, unnecessary and inexcusable ; re-
garded from the standpoint of action it was thrilling, inspiring
and glorious. Inch by inch through a hostile country, against
a myriad odds, with an enemy outnumbering it many times
over, the American army pushed on from assault to assault and
from victory to victory until the stars and stripes waved in
triumph above the halls of the Montezumas. The valor at
Palo Alto, the dogged determination at Resaca de la Palma
formed but the proem to this epic of war. The only time in
its history that the United States invaded a foreign country
the story of that invasion is one unbroken record of daring and
success.

The bloody streets of Monterey, the smoked-filled defiles
of Buena Vista, the echoing batteries of Vera Cruz, the

stricken tower of Cerro Gordo, the ragged lava beds of Con-
treras, the fated fortress of Cherubusco, the shattered structure
of Molino Del Rey, the storied height of Chapultepec, the bat-
tered gates of Mexico alike bore terrible evidence of the stub-
bornness and bravery, the valor and the resistless sweep of that
little army of Northern invaders who, at every step, forced
victory out of desperate chances and sowed the seeds of an
international enmity that not forty years of peace have yet
removed. The war with Mexico retrieved the inbecilities of
1812 and raised the name of the American soldier to a place
of glory and honor that found its after fruits in the desperate
life struggle of the nation where valor met valor, as brother
grappled with brother on Virginian battle-fields and on the
banks of the mighty Mississippi.

It was a war to make the philanthropist shudder and the
soldier loudly huzza. Whittier's glimpse of the terrible battle

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 199

of Buena Vista is not all romance and poetry ; it is a picture*
of passion photographed by philanthropy :

" Look forth once more, Ximena I ' Ah ! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there the troop of Minon wheels ;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.

" ' Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now retreat and now advance !
Right against the blazing cannons shivers Puebla's charging lance I
Down they go, the brave young riders ; horse and foot together fall ;
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball.'

" l,ook forth once more, Ximena ! ' Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind;
Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in the dust the wounded strive ;
Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou Christ of God, forgive ! '

"Sink, O Night, among thy mountains, let the cool gray shadows fall ;
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all !
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled,
In its sheath the saber rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.

" Not wholly lost, O Father ! is this evil world of ours;
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white winged angels hover dimly in our air 1 "

There are triumphs of brain quite as marvelous as those of
muscle ; there are victories of strategy more complete than those
of sword and bayonet. Such was Taylor's masterly retreat
from Agua Nueva by which was secured the wonderful victory
of Buena Vista ; such, too, was that shrewd change of base by
which Scott avoided the trap set for him by the wily Santa
Anna and opened the way for his almost unresisted march upon
the Mexican capital.

And, as typical of those displays of valor in which general-
ship overcame numbers and brute force yielded to discipline,

2OO

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

none of the engagements of the war stand out with greater
distinctness than does the victory at Buena Vista and that des-
perate fight which/waged near the convent at Cherubusco, won
the way to Mexico.

In both engagements the Mexicans outnumbered the
Americans almost four to one; but Buena Vista was fought
almost under the shadows of that uncertainty as to the real
fighting-qualities of Mexico's legions and the real persistence of
America's bayonets which not even the valor of Palo Alto and
Resaca de la Palma nor all the bloody memories of the deter-
mined fury at Monterey could yet quite remove; Cherubusco
was almost the last of that unbroken series of victories that
had, by that time, made America over-confident and Mexico
despondent.

Pressing through the narrow defiles of those high Sierras

o o o

that flank the open table-lands of Northern Mexico came, rank
after rank, on the twenty-second of February, 1847, the army of
Santa Anna, twenty thousand strong. Encamped upon a cir-
cumscribed plateau, that commanded the approaches upon every
side, the little force of General Taylor, a scant five thousand
men, awaited the onset of the foe. The army of the stout old
American commander had been shorn of half its fighting
strength, taken for the reinforcement of Scott's new army that
was to march upon Mexico from the sea. This demand had
withdrawn from Taylor's army, already small enough for oper-
ations in a hostile country, nearly all of the regulars, Worth's
volunteers and Quitman's and Twiggs' commands. Enraged at
the defeats in the north the Mexicans, in overwhelming num-
bers, had gathered under the lead of their wariest and most
successful general to fall upon and utterly crush out this little
remnant of northern invasion that had retreated from Airua

THE liATTLK OK Bf

" Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls;
Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God have mercy on their souls ! "

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 203

Nueva and between whom and destruction there only waited
the merciless order of the Mexican leader to slay and spare not.
The situation was desperate indeed.

" You are surrounded by twenty thousand men," came the
summons of Santa Anna to Taylor. " You cannot avoid being
cut to pieces with your troops. Surrender at once and you
shall be treated with that consideration that belongs to the
Mexican character."

And back went the brief but plucky reply of " Old Rough
and Ready: " " I decline to accede to your request."

Then Ampudia's light infantry rushed to the attack. The
battle was joined:

" Like the fierce northern hurricane

That sweeps his great plateau,

Flushed with the triumph yet to gain

Came down the serried foe.

Who heard the thunder of the fray

Break o'er the field beneath

Knew well the watchword of that day

\Va* Victory or Death ! '*

Hut Ampudia's men fire wildly. The American riflemen
are sure and steady of aim. And when the sun sank behind

the overhanging hills the Americans still hold with stubborn
determination the 'key to their position La Angostura, "The
Narrows," that pass of scanty width just south of the farm
house of Buena Vista, through which the main portion of
Santa Anna's army must push their way if they hope to gain
the expected victory. And so night fell upon the field.

Hut the sun rose on a renewed struggle. Strongly rein-
forced, Ampudia's men drive in the American pickets. From
five different positions the Mexicans press to the attack.

2o 4 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

Destruction seems inevitable. The Indiana troops turn in
flight, O'Brien's battery, deprived of its support, is overwhelmed
and captured by the Mexican host it has so valiantly held at
bay. The American left is turned. Fleeing soldiers rush
wildly into Buena Vista crying that the day is lost.

But still the Americans hold the narrow pass. Charge as
they will the men of Villamie's column cannot dislodge the
little American battery that commands the roadway through
the defile of Angostura. Victory trembles in the balance.
Suddenly loud cheers ring out at Buena Vista and in a column
of dust, spurring to the aid of his boys at bay in the Narrows,
Old Rough and Ready comes riding from Saltillo where he has
been arranging for the protection of his rear-guard.

"Never mind Villamie," he cried; "he's done for. Wash-
ington can hold the pass. Send the Mississippi riflemen to the
left. Bring up the Third Indiana. Let Sherman's battery
support them. May, ride with your dragoons to the upper
plateau. Ampudia must be checked !"

And Ampudia was checked. The Mexican lancers, fifteen
hundred strong, the special pride of Santa Anna, the flower of
Mexico's army, go down like grain beneath the fire of the
northern riflemen. The left is strengthened. The Mexicans,
blind to the real key to the field, give over their assault on the
Narrows. With a last mighty clash of arms the battle centers
about the little hamlet of Buena Vista and almost before they
know it the field is won.

The men of Kentucky and Arkansas bear back Ampudia's
dashing cavalry. Forced backward, step by step, in a desperate
hand-to-hand fight on horseback, go Torrejon and his dragoons.
The commands of Ampudia and Pachcco, overwhelming in
numbers are hemmed in between the narrow defiles and

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 205

pounded at by three American batteries. Six thousand Mexi-
cans are almost caught in a trap of their own making when a
white flag flutters from the Mexican lines and Santa Anna
coolly demands : " What does General Taylor want ? "

The batteries cease firing, the troops rest for an armistice
and the hemmed-in Mexicans escape from their trap. This
at all events, is just what the wily Santa Anna wants; and
when this is effected, clash ! go his sabers ; bang ! go his
guns again.

Hut not saber clash nor bang of gun can save the day for
Mexico. Down in the dust before the pitiless grape and
canister of O'Brien's batteries go Villamie's reserves; back to
the hills flies the renegade brigade of San Patricio ; Ampudia's
men are in full retreat. Santa Anna himself, spent with this
fruitless hurling of his masses against such undaunted men,
gives up the battle with the sun. Night falls again upon
Angostura and Buena Vista and, before morning dawns, the
crippled Mexican army melt away and the stubborn fight of
that twenty-third of February becomes the historic victory of
Buena Vista really the decisive battle of the war. Twenty-
five hundred in killed and wounded, with four thousand mis-
sing and deserters is what- Mexico paid for that dismal defeat;
two hundred and sixty-four in killed, four hundred and fifty in
wounded is the cost of America's triumph :

" Full many a norther's breath has swept

O'er Angostura's plain,
And long the pitying sky has wept

Above the mouldered slain.
The raven's scream or eagle's flight,

Or shepherd's pensive lay,
Alone now wakes each solemn height

That frowned on that dread fray."

2o6 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

Buena Vista was the key-note of victory in the north ; in
somewhat different fashion, but as surely, the pivotal battle in
the south was the furious fight of Cherubusco. Zachary
Taylor had broken the power of Mexico ; now to complete
the conquest came, with a well-disciplined force of ten thousand
Americans regulars, volunteers and war-ships* -Winfield
Scott, the victor of Lundy's Lane, the commander-in-chief
of the armies of the United States.

It was the spring of 1847. On the twenty-third of March
Vera Cruz, the chief seaport of the Southern Republic, fell
before the destructive cannonade of the American batteries.
On the eighteenth of April Twiggs' brigade carried by storm
the entrenchments on the bristling heights of Cerro Gordo ; the
men of Shields' and Rilev's commands charged the fort and

j O

batteries; Santa Anna's fifteen thousand fled for their lives
toward the capital, and the famous wooden leg of their artful
but intrepid commander was left on the field as a reminder of
his hasty flight.

By August the soldiers of Scott had climbed the Sierras
from whose crest, as had Cortez and his men three centuries
before, they looked down into the lovely Valley of Mexico.
From Pueblo to the city of Mexico, the National Road, which
was the main approach to the capital, was defended by every
device known to a desperate people and an army of over thirty
thousand men had rallied to Santa Anna's call to repel the
northern invasion.

But, nothing daunted, Scott advanced to Ayatta and
looking off at the capital city only fifteen miles distant awaited
the report of his engineers. " The Mexicans outnumber us

* General Scott's invading force comprised four regiments of artillery, eight of infantry, one of mounted
riflemen, and detachments of dragoons " the then standing army of the United States; " added to these regulars were
eight volunteer regiments of infantry and one of cavalry.

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 207

four to one," they said. " Yonder fortress of El Penon,
between the lakes, commands the road. Its capture will cost
you fully a third of your army."

" Is there no other approach to the city?" Scott inquired.

" None but the mule-path around Lake Chalco, to the
south, and over the lava beds," was the reply.

44 Can we get our cannon and wagons over the mule-path ? "
the general asked.

"Only by hard work," said the engineers.

" Then make it passable," Scott commanded. " We'll go
by the mule-path. The best way to march on an enemy is by
the way he least expects you to take."

The road was "fixed"; the detour around the lakes was
made; and by the mule-path and over the ragged lava beds
Scott's ten thousand eluded the entrenched enemy and
approached their capital. The city of Mexico, beautiful for
situation, the historic metropolis of Montezuma's fabled king-
dom, was, at the time of Scott's advance, inhabited by one hun-
dred and fifty thousand people and defended by thirty-five
thousand soldiers.

At the hill of Contreras, in the valley beyond the lava
beds, forty-five hundred Americans burst like a storm upon
Valencia's seven thousand and in an action of seventeen
minutes sent them flying toward Cherubusco with a loss of
seven hundred dead, and nine hundred prisoners.

Around the fortified convent of San Pablo de Cherubusco
Santa Anna had concentrated an army of thirty thousand men.
Scott's available force was scarcely more than eight thousand,
but it was a determined and jubilant eight thousand, flushed
with victory and confident of success.

The convent-castle bristled with cannon. The Mexican

2 o8 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

guns commanded every approach. The Mexican army was
in position, determined now to strike one last and overwhelm-
ing blow for victory against the northern invaders.

But no such obstacles as fortress, guns or masses of men
can stay the march of the Americans. Right on they push.
Through the maguey groves, through the cornfields and
vegetable gardens, through the ambuscade of dense and over-
hanging foliage their resistless march goes on. On front and
flank they fall remorselessly, while the Third Infantry, with a
furious charge, clash at the embattled convent, breached by
Taylor's battery, and carry it by storm. Useless to contend
against such merciless fighters as these, O, Mexican patriots!
Yet fight they do and nobly, though to little purpose.
Straight against those wavering ranks ride Kearney's cavalry-
men, down upon them charge Shields and Pierce, across the
ditches, careless of shot and shell, spring Worth's infantrymen.
The Mexicans give way, they turn to flight and streaming
along the causeway, " in one wild, panic-stricken mass " they
seek the uncertain security of the city's walls while the victori-
ous riders of Harney's cavalry-troop pursue them even to the
very gate of their imperiled capital.

On that twentieth of August the fate of Mexico was decided.
Ten thousand Mexicans were lost to the Republic as killed,
wounded or prisoners ; of the Americans, less than a thousand
fell. Looked at as a stirring episode of war it was one of
the most wonderful and complete victories ever attained on
American soil. American pluck and American discipline had
overcome unorganized and ill-led bravery in the mass.

Less than a month later, despite the wily ways and des-
perate treachery of Santa Anna, and after the terrible fights at
Molino del Rey, upon the storied hill of Chapultepec and at

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 209

the gates of the city, the capital fell. Scott's little army of
less than seven thousand men marched into the fallen town and
Mexico lay at the feet of her conquerors. The war was over.

It was a war brilliant in execution, dramatic in action, mar-
velous in success. It was the most picturesque contest waged
on American soil since the days of the conquistadores ; it
was crowded with excitement, prolific of peril, tingling with
achievement.

Politically the war against Mexico was a grave mistake.
Waged for aggrandizement and conquest against a weaker and
less intelligent neighbor it was a blot on American justice, a
stain on American honor. The new territory that it added to
the United States and which might have been peacefully pur-
chased for twenty-five millions of dollars cost the North Ameri-
can Republic one hundred and thirty millions of dollars and
twenty thousand lives. Its very success brought about section-
alism and bickering and its final fruits were the war between
the States. It was, so far as the American people were con-
cerned, a contest that must ever recall the query of little Peter-
kin and the reply of old Casper in Southey's well-known ballad:

" ' And everybody praised the Duke

Who this great fight did win.'

' l!ut what good came of it at last?*

Quoth little Peterkin.

' Why, that I cannot tell,' said he,

4 But 'twas a famous victory.'"

But how few of us regard the utilitarian side of a question
when our ears are filled with the sound of martial music, our
eyes fixed on the doing of martial deeds. Politically the war
against Mexico was a grave mistake ; popularly it was a mighty

2IO

Ol'ER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

success. Against the greatest odds the ability of the American
soldier had been tested and his valor proven to all. It trained
the citizen to warfare and afforded a school of instruction from
which graduated those whose names in the greater conflict of
twenty years after became as household words in the North and
South.

" The Mexican war," says Professor Soley, " showed few
mistakes, because the officers were well trained, and as a neces-
sary consequence the troops were in a short time well trained
also. The War of 1812 on the American side was a war of ama-
teurs ; that with Mexico was a war of professional soldiers and
strategists."

It was military skill as well as personal valor that forced
the fighting at Palo Alto, and held the key to the position at
Buena Vista ; that made Doniphan's victorious march into
Chihuahua "as arduous and exacting of courage and persist-
ency as Hannibal's crossing the Appenines;" that circumvented
a wily foeman by the detour through the lava beds about
Lake Chalco and directed the assault up the rocky sides of
Chapultepec. The leaders in the Mexican war were indeed
no amateurs.

And, despite the grumbling of such suppositions soldiers as
Mr. Lowell's " Birdofredum Sawin " there was glory both for
general and private from the banks of the Rio Grande and the
fortresses of Vera Cruz to the passes of the Sierras and the
gates of Mexico. In every battle was the prowess of the Amer-
ican soldier displayed. It was no holiday war no victory over
cowards and cravens. The Americans accomplished a task in
their modern conquest of Mexico beset with greater difficulties
than was that of Cortez and his companions. The foemen they
encountered, so Mr. Ober declares, were "active and intelligent,

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 211

equally well equipped and versed in the science of war with
themselves ; the country throughout its length and breadth was
alive with hatred of the invaders." Every battle was stub-
bornly contested. " The Mexicans," says Mr. Ladd, " poured
out their blood like water in the defense of their country's
honor. But the courage and perseverance of the Americans
were more than equal for their desperation and patriotism."

Against Mexican bravery was pitted American valor. In
every action the stars and stripes waved above gallant endeavor
and dashing deed. Blake's intrepid reconnoissance in face of
all the foe at Palo Alto ; May's marvelous charge at Resaca
de la Palma; the stubborn courage of Doniphan's dauntless
Missouri fighters at Sacramento ; the exploits of " the Bloody
First " at Monterey; O'Brien's plucky stand at Beuna Vista;
Harney's fearless climb up the slope of Cerro Gordo ; Persifal
Smith's gallant capture of the fortified camp of Contreras (con-
sidered by General Scott one of the most brilliant feats in all
the annals of war); the terrific charge of the Third Infantry at
Cherubusco ; Mclntosh's desperate dash at Molino del Rey ;
Howard's scaling of the walls of Chapultepec ; McKenzie's
resistless rush through the San Cosme gate these are but
selected episodes of battle that had their counterparts in every
engagement of the war and placed the daring of the American
soldier on a par with the generalship and skill of the great
leaders in the conflict Taylor and Kearney, Scott and
Worth and those other general officers whose names are insep-
arably linked with the records of our war against Mexico.

And those who fell ! Disease, more dread than lance thrust
or saber stroke, than musket wound or crash of booming
cannon,cut down five to one of those who fell in battle. There
is no poetry in wasted bodies or ruined character; these find no

212 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.

blazoning line on roll of bravery or certificate of honor. Theirs
is the record on the dark and repellent side of war. Only the
heroic dead are honored.

And above all those who fell in the fury and carnage of
this expensive and unnecessary war the noblest monument
reared by those who honored them was surely that stirring
threnody of their comrade, the soldier-poet, Theodore O'Hara
of Kentucky:

"The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldiers 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 liivouac of the Dead.

" No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind ;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts

Of loved ones left behind ;
No vision of the morrow's strife

The warrior's dream alarms ;
No braying horn, nor screaming fife

At dawn shall call to arms.

" The neighboring 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 nevermore may feel

The rapture of the fight.

"Sons of the dark and bloody ground

Ye must not slumber there
Where stranger steps and tongue resound

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 213

Along the heedless air ,
Your own proud land's heroic soil

Should be your fitter grave ,
She claims from war its richest spoil

The ashes of her brave.

" Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead !

Dear as the blood ye gave ;
No impious footsteps here shall tread

The herbage of your grave.
Nor shall your glory be forgot

While Fame her record keeps
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
\\ here Valor proudly sleeps."

CHAPTER X.

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

THE Mexican War was a practical school of
the soldier. Its thorough but rapid turning
of recruits into fighters, its forced marches,
frequent engagements, hard service and dar-
ing deeds all in a hostile country and
against heavy odds tested the endurance
as it tried the courage of men, while the
enthusiasm of success strengthened the

weak, inspired the .timid and gave to every
man upon whose pistol belt gleamed the
northern eagle, the manner and appearance
of the veteran soldier.

The men of Doniphan's command, Mis-
souri volunteers all, who marched two
thousand miles overland to the invasion
of Chihuahua, saw nine months of hard service before receiv-
ing a dollar of pay. But as they stood on Sacramento Hill,
twelve hundred 'and sixty weary men facing five thousand fresh
and determined Mexicans, their leader rode from rank to rank.
"I could see nothing," he says, "but the stern resolve to con-
quer or to die. There was no trepidation and no pale faces."
Half-rations, hard marches, no clothes and no pay had neither

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 215

conquered their determination nor dampened their valor.
" They curse and praise their country in the same breath,"
said Colonel Doniphan; "but they fight for her all the time!"

And the undaunted spirit that filled these overworked
Missouri volunteers and gave them victory at Brazito, Sacra-
mento, and Chihuahua lived as well in the breasts of all volun-
teers and regulars alike who made up the victorious armies of
conquest and occupation in the Mexican War.

To those who imagine that the soldiers of the Mexican
\Var were furnished by the Southern States alone, the figures
will tell a different story. Of the hundred thousand fighting
men who marched across the Mexican border, twenty-seven thou-
sand were United States regulars; Texas, naturally, as the sec-
tion directly interested in the conflict, headed the roll of vol-
unteers with eight thousand troops; Louisiana, as the nearest
neighbor, came next with nearly eight thousand also ; but Illi-
nois and Ohio contributed quite as many men as did Kentucky
and Tennessee ; New York sent nearly twice as many as did
Virginia; Massachusetts and South Carolina furnished an equal
number; Pennsylvania sent more than Mississippi; Michigan
more than North Carolina; New Jersey more than Florida;
Indiana more than Georgia, Maryland and Arkansas combined.
Despite the claim that it was " the Southerners' war " it was
the Nation's war, in which men of the North and the South
marched shoulder to shoulder and fought with equal bravery on
bloody fields.

The war was over. The volunteers returned to their
homes. The fighting strength of the regulars, grown to over
thirty thousand, was reduced to a peace footing of ten thou-
sand. Once again the watchword of the nation was that of
the good old Roman emperor: /Equanimitas.

216 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

If the war against Mexico, among the numerous practical
results that it brought about in the more efficient development
of the school of the soldier, created a stronger feeling of comrad-
ship and union among the officers and men of the regular army
than had before existed, it also improved the condition and
soldierly standing of the militia engaged therein and sent the
volunteers back to their respective States more thoroughly
soldiers than they had ever been before.

A marked improvement in the State soldiery was every-
where apparent and the fuss and farce of the old-time drill and
muster-days gave place to something like soldierly bearing
and real military organization. There was still existing in
the tactics that directed the training and evolutions of the
regiments much that was cumbersome, old-fashioned and
unnecessary. Hardee's Tactics had, indeed, superseded those
prepared by General Scott and which were as involved and
unwieldy as the flint-lock musket upon the use of which this
old-time manual of arms was based. But not all the drilling
was done by Hardee's tactics "which was nothing more,"
declares General Grant, " than common-sense and the progress
of the age applied to Scott's system" -until well on toward
the opening of the Civil War. In 1855 Hardee's Tactics were
adopted by the Government as the manual for West Point and
in the regular army, but in many of the militia regiments the
"halt" and "forward march" that preceded and followed every
change in the order of march showed that the evolutions of
those by-gone days of the flint-lock had not entirely lost their
sway.

The military academy at West Point, in the mid-years of
the nineteenth century, was increasing in importance and
acquiring for itself a wider and more kindly sentiment of

HOXSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 217

popular respect than had been its due in the earlier stage
of its existence.

First suggested in 1783 by Colonel Pickering the quarter-
master-general of the Revolutionary army, authorized by Con-
gress in 1794 and established in 1802 with forty artillery cadets
and ten engineers, it grew but slowly until the War of 1812
proved the incapacity and the lack of training among the officers
of the army. From that date the school grew alike in numbers
and in efficiency. And yet, despite its real usefulness, this
" school for generals " was esteemed by the people at large as
little better than an expensive toy that the Government would
better do away with. In fact, in December, 1839, a bill was intro-
duced into Congress looking to the abolishment of the military
academy. Though this bill never passed the fact of its being in-
troduced is an indication of that popular disapproval of the exist-
ence of such a school in a peaceful nation which, in a ruder way,
was illustrated by an anecdote that General Grant tells of his early
career. Returning after his graduation to his home in Ohio, as
big a man, in his own estimation as General Scott, the command-
er-in-chief himself, and in all the glory of a new uniform his
pride experienced a grievous fall through the " humor " of the
dissipated stable man of the village tavern. Returning to his
home one day young Grant, as he tells us, found this facetious
stable-man " parading the streets of Bethel and attending to his
duties in tl\e stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen
pantaloons just the color of my uniform trousers with a strip
of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imita-
tion of mine." It is significant, as indicative of the popular
estimation of "West Pointers" at that day that, as General
Grant declares, " the joke was a huge one in the minds of many
of the people and was much enjoyed by them." This incident

2I 8 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

of his " salad days " had its effect on all his after life and gave
him, he says, a distaste for military uniforms from which he
never recovered.

This antagonism to "regular army" ways and methods
often displayed itself in times of peace. There was, too, always
existing the positive, if unspoken feud born of unnecessary con-
tempt on one side and of equally unnecessary jealousy on the
other between the regulars and the militia. Holding the rank

O CJ

of lieutenant in the regular army General Burnside, in 1855,
was appointed by the State of Rhode Island major-general of
the State militia. In this capacity he once ordered a court-
martial for the trial of a commander of a Providence corps.
This doughty leader, it seems, had refused to occupy the place
in a certain Fourth of }uly procession to which the General
had assigned him, alleging as the reason for his non-appearance
that the day was rainy and that he did not wish to damage the
new uniforms of his men. But when the court-martial for the
trial of this disobedient officer had been ordered the governor
of the State, as commander-in-chief, interfered and dissolved the
court. General Burnside promptly resigned his commission as
major-general of the State militia whereupon the State Legisla-
ture as a rebuke to the "arrogance " of a regular army officer
elected as his successor the very officer who was to have been
tried for disobedience to orders. Far too often have the
exigencies and expediences of politics interfered with military
discipline and success.

There are always those in every community who, in time of
peace are ready to prepare for war. And this is well. States-
men may see the value and proclaim the necessity of an organ-
ized militia. "The United States," wrote Washington in 1793,
" ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 219

of human events, they will forever keep at a distance those
painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other
nation abounds. . . . The devising and establishing of a

o o

well-regulated militia would be a genuine source of legislative
honor and a perfect title to public gratitude." " As the great-
est danger to liberty," said Franklin, " is from large standing
armies, it is best to prevent them by an effectual provision for
a good militia." " Whenever the militia comes to an end or is
despised and neglected," wrote John Adams in 1823, " I shall
consider this Union dissolved and the liberties of North
America lost forever. National defense is one of the cardinal
duties of a statesman."

But statesmen, as a rule, are not the real organizers of the
righting material of a nation. Such work must come from
those who represent that outgrowth of the martial spirit that,
even among a people absorbed in trade, is ever asserting itself.

The days of peace that intervened between the close of the
war with Mexico and the opening of the rebellion exhibited a
better conception and a more practical solution of the militia
problem than had the earlier years of the century. The old
days of the " umbrella and cornstalk militia " of the village
muster and carousing " training time " had given place to a
better discipline. In certain States the composition and
efficiency of the so-styled " crack " regiments gave real impor-
tance to the organization of what was known as the National

Guard and the countrv, when its time of stress arrived found

j *

itself the possessor of a fair number of trained soldiers whose
schooling in arms could be put to practical use and who by
their promptness, their zeal and their excellence in discipline
really stood in the gap and offered the first successful barrier
to armed rebellion. Such regiments, to name certain examples,

2 2o HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

were the Sixth and Eighth Massachusetts and the Seventh
New York.

But, after all, the little regular army of the United States -
amounting in 1850 to less than twelve thousand men was the
only actual fighting force that, during the years of peace,
upheld the name and kept alive the record of the American
Soldier. Commanded by Major-General Winfield Scott, a
veteran of three wars, the rank and file of the army "horse,
foot and dragoon" did much to help in the opening and
development of the new lands that, with each new year, were
becoming the homes of busy and persistent communities.

Conveying emigrant trains to the widening West, garrison-
ing the coast-line and the frontier, fighting Indians, escorting
exploring expeditions the life of the American Soldier even
in " the piping times of peace," was by no means the profitless
and lazy profession that so many pictured it.

The officers were, for the most part, men trained in the
military academy of the nation to command and care for those
placed under their leadership and charge. They were, as
General Marcy assures us, "generally men of intelligence and
culture, who entertained the most exalted conceptions of integ-
rity and moral personal responsibility."

That they were brave on occasion the record of many a
frontier fight will prove ; that they were not lax in discipline
the thousand tales of garrison life attest- - one post comman-
dant might be mentioned whose police service was so thorough-
that he has been known, on discovering a quid of tobacco or
the stump of a cigar lying in the walks on the parade ground,
to call out a police party of several men with hand carts and
shovels to remove the obnoxious obstructions ; that they were
jealous, each, of their own individual arm of the service and had

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 221

an exalted opinion of their respective duties is shown by the
anecdote told of General Bragg of the artillery and a Mexican
veteran, who resigned from the army in 1856 because Jefferson
Davis, then Secretary of War, ordered him with his battery to
the Indian country, as Bragg expressed it, "to chase Indians
with six-pounders."

As to the men themselves who filled the ranks of the
slender army when on a peace footing it must be admitted that
they were of "all sorts and conditions." The regular army
was the last resort of those who, unsuccessful or indolent in the
field of active labor and of business pursuits, shirked the hot
fire of competition before which men must rise or fall by their
own exertions and contented themselves with beingf mere

musket-bearers, at the beck and call of their appointed leaders.

Many good men, really fond of the soldiers' life, were to be
found in the ranks, but there was both pith as well as reason in
the excuse of an old soldier, put on his defense for some breach
of garrison discipline, that the court "could scarcely expect to
find the entire catalogue of cardinal virtues embodied in every
individual specimen of a class of men who only received for
their services the paltry compensation of six dollars a month."

It was a "paltry compensation " for what was in the main a
dull routine. But dull routine can be hard and tiring work.
Listen to this extract from a soldier's diary as, off on New
Mexican plains in the year 1854 a tired trumpeter recorded his
labors for the day: "February ist. I commenced the day this
morning by being orderly bugler for the commanding officer,
and at half-past eight in the morning attended guard-mounting ;
immediately after, saddled up and rode two miles and assisted
at digging a grave ; returned at half-past twelve and started again
at one with the funeral procession, after which was marched

222

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

home ; dressed for evening parade, marched back again to the
corral or stable, assisted in flogging a deserter, came home, ate
supper, and here I am, scratching it down in the old journal.
Some people surmise that a soldier's life is a lazy one, but
soldiers themselves think otherwise."

It was dull routine, but even out of this comes sometimes
brilliant flashes of bravery, instances of duty doggedly done
yet with a persistence that amounts to heroism. What more
dramatic than the equal duel -- man to man and gun to gun -
of Lieutenant David Bell and White Wolf the Apache chief,
each with twenty-three followers? It was during the Indian
troubles in New Mexico in the fifties and White Wolf had
been guilty of an especially atrocious outrage which Lieu-
tenant Bell burned to avenge. Both parties met on a scout.
A parley led only to perplexities and as words were of no avail,
lieutenant and chief, dragoon and brave, each picked out an
opponent and, man to man, sought to fight it out. With shout
and war-whoop, with cavalry charge and erratic Indian dash, all
the time giving shot for shot was this duel by wholesale fought
out; twenty-one of the forty-six combatants were killed or
wounded; scarcely a man on either side was without hurt of
some sort. At last White Wolf fell ; the remnant of his band
fled and the duel was ended.

So, too, Lieutenant Hood with but seventeen men, ambushed
by over fifty Lipan and Comanche warriors, in those same risky
days on the plains, showed both pluck and endurance that were
heroic in the extreme. Outnumbered, three to one, he yet
encouraged his men to fight for their lives. Again and again,
with ringing cheers the brave seventeen charged the yelling
savages and mingled in a hand-to-hand conflict. The odcls
were against the seventeen. Six had already fallen beneath the

MARCY'S I'KKII.OUS MARCH.

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 225

Indian fire, Hood's saber arm hung useless at his side, back and

still backward were they pressed, their rifles empty, their
strength almost spent. " Out with your revolvers, boys,"
shouted Hood, courageous to the last; 4; one more shot; we
mustn't give it up! " Inspired by his superb courage the little
command turned on the enemy in a fierce revolver charge.
It was the desperate last chance and so impetuous was it that
the Indians fell back, turned and fled. Then with empty re-
volvers the troopers, leaving twenty-two of their antagonists
dead or dying galloped from the field that had well-nigh been
their grave, victors over an ambuscade that it seemed impossi-
ble to break.

As plucky, too, though in endurance rather than in des-
perate fight, were the men of Marcy's command who, in No-
vember, 1857, went westward from Fort Bridger on an expe-
dition for exploration and relief. Through an almost trackless
wilderness, across lofty and rugged mountains they struggled
on in the very depth of winter loyal to their duty and striving
for results that to them personally could be of but little value
or advantage. The snows grew deeper and deeper ; the cold
became more and more intense ; their horses and pack-ani-
mals starved and fell by the way; supplies gave out; the suf-
fering grew almost unbearable and yet not a man murmured or
complained. They had volunteered for this desperate service
and they would keep their promise or die. For fifty-one days
the weary march continued. The path through tbe snow could
only be made to bear weight by the efforts of the advance men
of the party who on hands and knees pressed and hardened the
treacherous and impalpable mass. For the last twelve days of
the march the only food was the tough " mule-steak " cut from
the starved beasts of burden and sprinkled with gunpowder in

226 HORSE, FOOT AND DXAGOON.

lieu of salt and pepper. " I am indebted," wrote General Marcy,
years after, " for my existence at this moment to the unpar-
alleled fortitude, endurance and sufferings of a noble little band
of soldiers who nearly sacrificed their own lives to extricate me
from the perils of a winter's journey over the snow-clad summits
of the Rocky Mountains."

Almost as full of hardships and quite as eloquent in deter-
mination, pluck and a dogged perseverance, was Colonel Wash-
ington's march to Sante Fe in 1849, in which Lieutenant Stein
and his company of the Second Dragoons fought against
Indians, thirst and hunger on New Mexican deserts and "brave
and vigilant, never murmured, but showed the noblest traits of
men and soldiers." The private's weary march and patient
round of duty has often contained more of romance and dis-

played more of real valor than all the momentary excitement
of the headlong charge or the fiery crash of battle.

^y ^j

However hard was the private soldier's life that of the officer
whom he was bound to obey was scarcely easier because of rank
or station. General Albert Sidney Johnston, paymaster of the
army from 1849 to 1854, made six annual tours of the Texas
frontier traveling each year, in rouh country riding, over four

O J O J O

thousand miles. Lieutenant William P. Sanders, in pursuit of
deserters, in 1857, accompanied by but one man, rode from
Fort Crittenden, Utah, to Los Angeles, California, over a rugged
and dangerous road, captured and delivered up the deserters
and returned to Fort Crittenden, a journey of sixteen hundred
miles, in less than sixty days. Lieutenant A. E. Burnside in
1857 rode with special dispatches twelve hundred miles from
El Paso to Washington, facing and escaping all sorts of dan-
gers and reaching Washington fully a month before the civilian
who was his rival in the race.

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 227

A soldier's first duty is obedience. The. " thinking bayonet "
which was a popular characterization of the intelligent soldier
during the Great Rebellion has really no place in the ranks
of those enlisted men known as the regular army musket
bearers, who must know no duty but unquestioning obedience.
Whether the authority in power ordered troops to put down
threatened insurrection in South Carolina in 1832, or to guard
in Boston streets a fugitive slave sent back to his owners by
due process of law in 1854 the soldiers who, north or south, east
or west, marched in the ranks of the regulars had no business
to question the orders of their superiors :

"Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do or die."

It is this blindness to everything but duty, this readiness to
obey orders lead where they may, that gives to the "regulars"
a certain assurance and stamp of real authority that neither
volunteer nor militia-man can possess save by long service and
experience. The " regulars " are the representatives of Gov-
ernment and the Law. Their measured tread and machine-
like discipline are able to stay every wave of opposition, every
advance of warring factions and of unlawful organization. The
majesty of authority that attached to the legionaries of old
Rome has been the attribute of every regular army from ancient
times even to the present day.

This, so far as the United States Army is concerned, was
especially noticeable in the unhappy days of the Kansas
troubles of 1856, when the new State, torn by civil feud and
rent by the strife for possession waged by " Free Soilers " and
" Pro-Slavery men," became the scene of disorder, of outrage
and of blood. The appearance of the United States Regulars

2 2 8 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

dispatched to the disturbed sections could always stay the
fratricidal strife and establish law and order where none before
existed. General Cooke in his reminiscences of army life at
that time says : " It was part of the education of both parties
that they still respected national authority. There was but one
flag yet. At Lecompton I rode alone leaving my forces far
behind in front of an army of thousands, who with cannon-
matches lighted, were about to attack that territorial capitol,
and ordered them to retire, and the nation's representative was
obeyed. The Second Dragoons were prominent in these im-
portant services, but with them were the First Cavalry, the
Sixth Infantry and a battery of the Fourth Artillery. This
force was afterward interposed between a regularly organized
army of twenty-seven hundred men and the town of Lawrence
which they had marched to attack."

The time came when rebellion rose above authority, and
neither regular army nor national government had power to
stay the tide of civil war. Hut when that day came many of
those whose position gave strength and form to the army of
the United States themselves deserted their post and were false
to their oaths of allegiance. And when leaders fall away how
can the army maintain itself intact? It is said that General

Sherman, who, when the rebellion broke out, was the super-
intendent of the Louisiana Military Academy recognized
months afterwards in the prisoners taken in war most of the
cadets of his institution who when the conflict came hastened to
enlist in the Confederate army. So, too, West Point men and
brother officers of the regular army found themselves divided
by questions of duty and of loyalty and met as enemies on
bloody fields in the stubborn battles of the Civil War.

For that desperate hour, indeed, officers and men through

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 229

all the years that intervened between the Mexican War and
the attack on Sumter were all unconsciously preparing. The
military incidents of these days of peace were but few and far
between, but the efficiency and discipline that were displayed
by the small standing army of the United States (never in all
those years exceeding twelve thousand men), by certain of the
militia regiments of the National Guard and by such superbly-
drilled private organizations as Ellsworth's Zouaves all bore
fruit when the call to arms rang out in the opening days of the
Great Rebellion.

There were certain uneasy Americans who were anxious for
excitement or ambitious for gain and so made haste to join
themselves to the filibustering expeditions of Lopez the Span-
iard and of William Walker the American (that " gray-eyed
man of destiny" who fell a victim to his own unlawful schemes).
They all met at last with defeat, but even in this lawless adven-
turing they were but schooling themselves for the days of real
war that were coming on apace. The militia-men who responded
to the call to put down riot in New York City in 1849 and in
Kansas in 1856 were quick to respond to the call for more seri-
ous duty when the iron hail rattled against the walls of Sumter.

And on Western plains the brave regulars who penetrated
untrodden wildernesses and braved hunger and thirst, weariness
and cold for the punishment of restless Indians or the exten-
sion of the governmental authority acquired a steadiness and
a nerve that were to serve them well when the War Depart-
ment at last ordered them to act as the nucleus of the nation's
defenders in a war that was to lift the American soldier, North,
as well as South, to the foremost position among the fighting-
men of the world.

" Horse, foot and dragoon " alike were being schooled for

2 3 o HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON.

greater and more serious service. The dull routine of camp
life and of garrison duty, -the countless ways in which officers
and men sought to relieve the tedium of monotony and manu-
facture excitement out of unpromising surroundings were soon
to be exchanged for active service and stirring times. But of
these neither militia-man nor regular yet dreamed. The one
like the sober business man he was, stood behind his counter or
sat at his desk thinking more of dollars than of rifle and saber;
the other in sea-coast garrison or in frontier post lived careless
of the future, weary only of the present; or perhaps, off on a
scout in the far Indian country he slept serenely with his holsters
as his pillow and the sky as his tent cover, ready to spring to
arms when the summons came. With pride in his horse, his
uniform and his accoutrements he could sing with ringing and
sturdy notes this song of " The Light Dragoons," written by
one of his comrades : *

" Good cheer, my steed !

Let thy headlong speed
Dash the dew from the prairie grass.

Shrink not, in the track,

Let the hills fall back
As the ranks of our squadron pass.

" At the fall of night,

In the gray twilight,
When I've combed thy tangled mane,

'Xeath the light of the moon

Then the light dragoon
Will lie down by his steed again.

" When sleep is done,
And the rising sun
Shall have burnished thy glossy hair,

* Lieutenant L. P. Davidson ; an officer of the First U. S. Dragoons.

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 231

To horse again
And we'll scour the plain
And beat up the red-man's lair."

And after each verse, with a boisterous energy that would
set the echoes ringing through all those western hills, his
comrades would roll out the chorus :

Then up, my steed !

The wind's wild speed
Is but slow to thy headlong flight ;

And we'll rein up soon,

And the light dragoon
With his charger shall sleep to-night.

CHAPTER XI.

HOYS OF S I X T Y - O N E .

O the States arrayed against
the national authority, the
greatest of American presi-
dents said in his first in-
augural, " in your hands,
my dissatisfied fellow-coun-
trymen, and not in mine
is the momentous issue of
civil war. The Govern-
ment will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the
aggressors."

All too soon did Abraham Lincoln receive the answer to
his message of kindly forbearance. And when, at half-past
four o'clock on that dark and raw April morning in iS6i that
answer came in -the shot that went hurtling over the water
toward the dimly-outlined ramparts of beleagured Sumter all
men knew its import. Civil war had begun.

The result of that bombardment of a national fortress by
the nation's recreant sons proved vastly different from the
popular prophecies. There was but one uprising in the North,
but one in the South. The armed protests against war which,

OYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 233

so it was conjectured, would be made both North and South
failed to materialize. There was no attempt at coercion in
favor of union in the South, none in favor of secession in the
North. "The Union forever!" and "Hurrah for Liberty!"
were the only shouts that rallied young patriots in the North
and young rebels in the South around the tables of the recruit-
ing sergeants.

Enthusiasm is contagious. Of it great enterprises are
born, from it great achievements gain their noblest impulses.
Hut unorganized enthusiasm is of no lasting value ; men must
be molded as well as inspired if results are to be attained.

When, the day after Sumter, President Lincoln's call for
seventy-five thousand volunteers came as an appeal for instant
succor, twice that number of Northern men clamored to be led
against the nation's foes. In response to the call for fifty
thousand troops to make good the assertions of the new " Con-
federacy " over three hundred thousand men were offered by
the South. Sixteen Northern States and seven Southern ones
in that historic spring of 1861 stood facing each other in the
attitude of war. Hut neither the North nor the South was
prepared for the conflict. Arms and appointments were lack-
ing. The recruits who were accepted were raw, undisciplined
and inexperienced. In the first great clash of arms at Bull
Run the forces of disorganization met and men awoke to the
knowledge, dearly bought, of how valueless for real results is
enthusiasm alone. Defeated in that bloody encounter the
North was still the greater gainer, for Bull Run was a deeper
disaster to the Confederate than to the Union forces. By it,
the latter were stiffened into determined action, the former,
lulled by false hopes, relaxed the vigor their desperate for-
tunes needed.

234 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

Brought face to face with stern and sudden need the nation

learned its own incompetency. The slender regular army,
upon which it should have relied until its reserve fighting
force could be gathered for the master-stroke, was scattered far
and wide, deliberately dismembered by the shrewd treachery of
the traitorous war-secretary Floyd. On the fifth of April,
1 86 1, less than four hundred out of the seventeen thousand
troops who constituted the regular army were available for the
defense of Washington. The rest were distributed throughout

O O

the entire country with but imperfect facilities to bring them
to the threatened Capitol. This distribution, according to
General Scott's detailed report, was as follows: Department
of the East, 3894; Department of the West, 3584; Department
of Texas, 2258; Department of New Mexico, 2624; Depart-
ment of Utah, 685 ; Department of the Pacific, 3382 ; miscel-
laneous, 686; grand total, officers and men, 17,113.

And upon these, even if available, who could rely? It was
a time for breaking faith. Men, educated at Government ex-
pense, were proving recreant to their oaths of fealty and desert-
ing the flag they had sworn to defend. Twiggs, a veteran fighter
of the Mexican War, treacherously surrendered his entire
command, the Department of Texas (nineteen army posts in all
together with twelve hundred thousand dollars worth of mili-
tary property), to the authorities of that far-off State. Even
the sole safeguard of the imperilled nation seemed slipping
away.

And yet there was loyalty in the regular army worthy of
eternal remembrance. The ranks were faithful though their

leaders might prove false. It is asserted that there were,
in 1 86 1, military posts abandoned by all the commissioned
officers, of which not one of the enlisted men proved untrue.

HOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

2 35

The regulars surrendered by Twiggs in Texas, threatened to
kill any man who attempted to disarm them and marched
away with the stained and bullet-torn old flag of the Eighth

C.OOD-HY.

Regiment streaming above them while their band played na-
tional airs.

And against the hesitating disloyalty of such notable
leaders as Lee and the two Johnstons there shone brightly out

236 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

the unwavering fidelity of others, also Southern born, to whom
loyalty to the old flag and fealty to their plighted word were
paramount to the fictitious claims of any rebellious State. " I
am a Southern man," said Major Robert Anderson, the hero of
Sumter, " but I have been assigned to the defense of Charles-
ton Harbor, and I intend to defend it." And Winfield Scott,
the o-eneral of the armv, the veteran of many a fio'ht, when

o J J

ur^ed to " follow his State " unhesitatingly declared : " Such a
proposal is a mortal insult. I have served my country under
the flag of the Union for more than fifty years, and as long as
God permits me to live I will defend that flag with my sword,
even if my own native State assails it."

But if the regulars could not be made at once available

their place was made good by those next to them in efficiency
and discipline. The uniformed militia were quick to respond.
Within forty-eight hours after the President had issued his call
for troops the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts was on its way
to Washington, and, before another forty-eight hours had passed,
had dyed the stones of Baltimore with the first blood of the

civil war.

Hard behind them pressed the New York Seventh and the
Massachusetts Eighth. Other regiments followed fast. The
beleaguered capital was saved. So surely can discipline conquer
doubt. For it is said that as the New York Seventh marched
up Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to the White House,
"with their well-formed ranks, their exact military step, their
soldierly bearing, their gayly floating flags, and the inspiring
music of their splendid regimental band, they seemed to sweep
all thought of danger and all taint of treason not only out of
that great national thoroughfare, but out of every human
heart in the Federal city. The presence of this single regi-

13OYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 237

ment seemed to turn the scales of fate. Cheer upon cheer
greeted them, windows were thrown up, houses opened, the
population came forth upon the streets as for a holiday. It was
an epoch in American history. For the first time, the com-
bined spirit and power of Liberty entered the nation's
capital." *

Recruiting went on rapidly. New regiments were commis-
sioned with marvelous speed. Volunteers poured into Wash-
ington at the rate of four thousand a day. The whole loyal
North was on fire. Such incidents as the first shot against
Sumter, the attack on the Massachusetts Sixth in Baltimore,
and the famous order of General Dix: " If any man attempt
to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot ! " were
the strongest incentives to patriotism. In teeming city, and
bustling village, in gossipy cross-road store and in the quiet
farmhouse on western prairie and eastern hillside, the stout
young fellows who were not carried away with the hurrah of
enthusiasm felt keenly, as one private expressed it, that he
should have to go at last or forfeit his birthright as an Ameri-
can citizen. War was in the air. The labors of peaceful life
were neglected. The citizen-soldier was awaking to a sense
of his duty.

A city of tents sprang up along the Potomac. Soldiers
were everywhere. They came from every Northern State, their
speech " bewraying " them, as it did the men of Galilee. Yankee
and Hoosier, Knickerbocker and Buckeye, Green Mountain
boy and men of the prairies and the lakes they were comrades
in camp, brothers in effort and duty. They were of all stages
of greenness and all grades of efficiency from the raw recruit
who scarcely knew the " right face ! " from the " shoulder

Nicolay & Hay: " Abraham Lincoln. A History."

238 SOYS OF 'SIXTY-OA T E.

arms!" and the equally fresh captain who would command his
company to " Gee around that hole ! " to the crack militia-man
or the veteran Indian fighter, the \Yest Point graduate and the
dignified general of division.

Eternal drilling is the price of discipline. It must come
before advance or victory but it is tedious work to the enthu-
siastic soldier whose one desire is a chance to display his valor.
"There are some things," says Private Goss remembering those
first days of preparation, "that take down even excess of patriot-
ism. The musket after an hour's drill seemed heavier and less
ornamental than it had looked to be. It takes a raw recruit
some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey.
Some never do learn. I doubt if my patriotism during my first
three weeks' drill was quite knee-high."

But true patriotism outlives the drudgery of drill even as it
burns high and clear before the supreme act of enlistment.
And how high and clear that flame did burn, the silent records
of many a Northern home could well attest. The young blood
of the nation was surgfinsf toward the field of action, too hot to

o o

be cooled by thought of drudgery, too rapid to be stayed by
plea or threat or any home restriction. The opening months
of that first war summer, when men were seeking the recruiting

o o

office or steadily pressing southward were among the most
dramatic phases of the nation's stirring story. One of the
noblest of the many noble war poems* has grandly caught and
kept the inspiration :

"The drum's wild roll awakes the land, the fife is calling shrill;
Ten thousand starry banners blaze on town and bay and hill;
Our crowded streets are throbbing with the soldiers' measured tram]);
Among our bladed cornfields gleam the white tents of the camp,

* A poem by Klbridge Jefferson Cutler read before the Pin lieta Knpp.1 Society of Harvard College in iS6i.

BOYS OF J SIXTY-ONE. 239

The thunders of the rising war hush Labor's drowsy hum,
And heavy to the ground the first dark drops of battle come;
The souls of men flame up anew, the narrow heart expands,
And woman brings her patient faith to nerve her eager hands.
Thank God ! we are not buried yet, though long in trance we lay
Thank Clod ! the fathers need not blush to own their sons to-day !

" Oh ! sad and slow the weeks went by each held his anxious breath,

Like one who waits in helpless fear some sorrow great as death.

Oh! scarcely was there faith in God, nor any trust in man,

While fast along the southern sky the blighting shadow ran.

It veiled the stars one after one, it hushed the patriot's song,

And stole from men the sacred sense that parteth right and wrong ;

Then a red flash, like lightning, across the darkness broke.

And, with a voice that shook the land, the guns of Sumter spoke :

Wake, sons of heroes, wake ! the age of heroes dawns again,

Truth takes in hand her ancient sword and calls her loyal men,

IM, brightly o'er the breaking day shines Freedom's holy star!

Peace cannot cure the sickly time all hail the healer, War !

"That call was heard by Plymouth Rock, 'twas heard in Boston Bay;

Then up the piney streams of Maine sped on its ringing way,

N ? ew Hampshire's rocks, Vermont's green hills, it kindled into flame,

Rhode Island felt her mighty :.oul bursting her little frame.

The Kmpire City started up, her golden fetters rent,

And meteor-like across the Xorth the fiery message sent,

Over the breezy prairie lands by bluff and lake it ran,

Till Kansas bent his arm, and laughed to find himself a man.

Then on by cabin and by camp, by stony wastes and sands,

It rang exultant down the sea, where the golden city stands.

" And wheresoe'er the summons came there rose an angry din,

As when upon a rocky coast a stormy tide comes in.

Straightway the fathers gathered voice, straightway the sons arose,

With flushing cheek, as when the East with day's red current glows.

Hurrah ! the long despair is past, our fading hopes renew,

The fog is lifting from the land, and lo, the ancient blue!

We learn the secrets of the deeds the sires have handed down,

To fire the youthful soldier's zeal and tend his green renown.

Who lives for country, though his arm feels all her forces flow,

Tis easy to be brave for truth as for the rose to blow.

240 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

"O Law, fair form of Liberty, God's light is on thy brow,

O Liberty, thou soul of Law, God's very self art thou !

One, the clear river's sparkling flood, that clothes the bank with green,

And one, the line of stubborn rock that holds the water in ;

Friends whom we cannot think apart, seeming each other's foe,

Twin flowers upon a single stalk, with equal grace that grow ;

O, fair ideas ! we write your names across our banner's fold,

For you the sluggard's brain is fire, for you the coward bold ;

O, daughter of the bleeding past ! O, hope the prophets saw!

God give us Law in Liberty, and Liberty in Law !

" Full many a heart is aching with mingled joy and pain,

For those who go so proudly forth and may not come again ;

And many a heart is aching for them it leaves behind,

As a thousand tender histories throng in upon the mind ;

The old men bless the young men, and praise their bearing high,

The women in the doorways stand to wave them bravely by :

One threw her arms about her boy and said, ' Good-by, my son,

God help thee do the valiant deeds thy father would have done ! '

One held up to a bearded man a little child to kiss,

And said, ' I shall not be alone, for thv dear love and this.'

And one, a rosebud in her hand, leant at a soldier's side,

'Thv country needs thee first,' she said, 'be I thy second bride!'

"O, mothers, when around your hearths ye count your cherished ones,

And miss from the enchanted ring the flower of all your sons;

O, wives, when o'er the cradled child ye bend at evening's fall.

And voices which the heart can hear across the distance call ,

O, maids, when in the sleepless nights ye ope' the little case,

And look till ye can look no more upon the proud young face,

Not only pray the Lord of Life who measures mortal breath.

To bring the absent back unscathed out of the fire of death :

O, pray with that divine content which God's best favor draws,

That whosoever lives or dies He save His holy cause.

" So out of shop and farmhouse, from shore and inland glen,

Thick as the bees in clover time are swarming armed men;

Along the dusty roads in haste the eager columns come,

With flash of sword and muskets' gleam, the bugle and the drum;

Ho! comrades, see the starry flag broad-waving at our head,

Ho! comrades, mark the tender light on the dear emblems spread!

OUR IIROTHF.R THE ENEMY.

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 243

Our fathers' blood has hallowed it, 'tis part of their renown,
And palsied be the caitiff hand would pluck its glories down ;
Hurrah ! hurrah ! it is our home where'er thy colors fly,
\Ve win with thce the victory, or in thy shadow die !

" O, women, drive the rattling loom, and gather in the hay,

For all the youth, worth love and truth, are marshaled for the fray ;

Southward the hosts are hurrying, with banners wide unfurled,

From where the stately Hudson floats the wealth of half the world ;

From where amid his clustered isles Lake Huron's waters gleam.

From where the Mississippi pours an unpolluted stream ;

From where Kentucky's fields of corn bend in the southern air,

From broad Ohio's luscious vines, from Jersey's orchards fair;

From where, between his fertile slope;., Nebraska's rivers run.

From Pennsylvania's iron hills, from woody Oregon;

And Ma>sachu>etts led the van, as in the days of yore.

And gave her reddest blood to cleanse the stones of Baltimore.

"O, iiu>ther>>, skiers, daughters, spare the tears ye fain would shed,

Who seem to die in such a cause, ye cannot call them dead ;

They live upon the lips of men. in picture, bust and song.

And Nature fold> them in her heart, and keeps them safe from wrong.

O, length of days i> not a Ixwm the brave man prayeth for.

There are a thousand evils wqrse than death or any war ;

Oppression with his iron strength fed on the souls of men.

And License with the hungry brood that haunt his ghastly den;

Hut like bright stars ye fill the eye, adoring hearts ye draw,

O sacred grace of Liberty ' O majesty of Law '

" Hurrah ! the drums are beating, the fife is calling shrill,
Ten thousand starry banners flame on town, and bay, and hill ;
The thunders of the rising war drown Labor's peaceful hum,
Thank (lod that we have lived to see the saffron morning come.
The morning of the battle-call, to even- soldier dear,
O joy ! the cry is " Forward ! " O joy ! the foe is near !
For all the crafty men of peace have failed to purge the land,
Hurrah! the ranks of battle close, God takes his cause in hand.''

Who, now living, that remembers those stirring days of
'sixty-one would forego the recollection ? It was a time of
intense excitement, North and South alike of flag-raising in

244 BOYS OF '

every town and debate and decision in every home ; of eloquent
appeals to patriotism in pulpit and on stump; of drilling on
every village common ; of tenders af troops from every State
capital; of warlike preparations in every city ; of hurried orders
for war material in workshop and foundry ; of daily parades ; of
flag-presentations ; of soul-stirring songs and ringing cheers at
every patriotic utterance ; of quick action ; of tearful partings ;
of hurried ^ood-bves ; of tear-wruns: God bless vous ; of ne^-

O ^ *-> * O

lected private business ; of eternally rolling drums and endlessly
marching regiments ; of lint-scraping and bandage-tearing; of
excitement, enthusiasm and stern determination everywhere.
Drake DeKay, a fervid and practical young patriot, stirred by
the President's call, closed his shipping office in New York with
no more ceremony than to pin this notice on his door : " Gone
to Washington. Back at close of war." The youth of the
South frenzied with an even intenser excitement clamored to be
led against "the mud-sills of the North." The land was mad
for war, crazed with enthusiasm, *and men on either side the
line marked by the doubtful border States, felt each that they
alone were right and echoed the poet's cry :

" For all the crafty men of peace have failed to purge the land,
Hurrah ! the ranks of battle close ; Cod takes his cause in hand."

There were many impatient souls that as the spring grew
to summer felt that Providence "took his cause in hand'' all
too slowly, there were many trusting hearts that could not
fathom why action did not follow enthusiasm and push the war
to an instant conclusion. The murder of the gallant Ellsworth,
the heroic death at Big Bethel of Grcble the young West
Pointer and of Winthrop, the brilliant writer, were not, it
seemed, quickly avenged. And so out of impatience and desire

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 245

came the mad demand of those who waited and watched at
home: "Onto Richmond!" .Americans are always prone to
rebel at the old adage that bids us " make haste slowly." Presi-
dent and cabinet, military leaders and advisers yielded to the
unwise demand of the people. Bull Run was fought against
the better judgment of those who should have delayed the
hostile meeting it was fought and the North, in bitter humil-
iation, saw its legions streaming back to the capital, routed and
panic-stricken.

Said General Scott, worn out with worry and the criticism
that follows failure: " I am the greatest coward in America, sir.
I will prove it. I have fought this battle against my judgment;
I think the President of the United States ought to remove me
to-day for doing it. As God is my judge, after my superiors
had determined to fight it I did all in my power to make the
army efficient. I deserve removal because I did not stand up,
when my army was not in a condition for fighting, and resist
it to the last."

Hull Run tried the temper as it strengthened the will of the
North ; it exaggerated the valor as it disorganized the caution
of the South. " Brethren, we'd better adjourn this camp-meet-
ing and go home and drill," cried an Illinois minister as the
news of the defeat interrupted his sermon. " A few more Bull
Run thrashings will bring the Yankees once more under the
yoke as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian chattels,"
announced a Southern newspaper.

Really a rout for both sides this first pitched battle of the
war was an acknowledged defeat only for those whose legs
were longest. Jefferson Davis, seeing the streams of Confeder-
ate fugitives pouring from the field considered the day lost.
"Battles are not won," said he, "where two or three unhurt

246

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

men are seen leading away one that is wounded." Private
John Tinkham of a Northern regiment declared that after
o-ettino- the order to retreat he should not have stopped run-

> 5

ning short of Boston if he had not been halted by a soldier
with a musket on the Washington end of Long Bridge.

IN THK RKCRUTTINU OKKICK.

Checked enthusiasm either dies out altogether or is changed
into a glorious, because stern and unyielding determination.
Out of the gloom of Bull Run sprang such a determination on
the part of the North. Its patriotism was too sincere to be
wrecked by one set-back, its purpose too deep to yield to the

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 247

appeals of timidity or the arrogance of successful rebellion.*
The people, united in a resolution that was only strengthened by
disaster, ground their set teeth and bent to their task. Fresh
troops were enlisted, new regiments were hastened to the front.
Three hundred regiments of fully a thousand men each were
dispatched to what were esteemed the places in immediate
danger. The statistical record of men present for duty shows
that on the first of January, 1862, there were five hundred and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and four Union soldiers in
the volunteer army of the United States as against one hun-
dred and fifty-seven thousand on July first.

Of this total nearly two hundred thousand men were upon
the muster-rolls of the Army of the Potomac. The disaster at
Hull Run had there led to instant change. Worn out by age
and infirmities General Scott had resigned and General George
B. McClellan, whose brilliant achievements among the hills of
Western Virginia had made him a popular hero, was given the
command of the Army of the Potomac. At once he proceeded
upon his herculean task of organization and discipline.

East and west the forces of union and disunion held back
from immediate conflict, striving, instead, to complete the organ-
ization so necessary to successful action. The border line was
seamed with earthworks, the blockaded coasts bristled with for-
tifications. The hostile armies faced each other, glaring across
a death line that reached from the Atlantic to the mountains of
New Mexico a battle front of fully two thousand miles.
This was practically divided into three sections. In the East,
McClellan with the Army of the Potomac was opposed to Lee
and Johnston with the Army of Northern Virginia; in the

* " Had Johnston or Beauregard pushed their success and occupied Washington," says General Sherman,
"it would not have changed the result, because twenty millions of freemen would never have submitted tamely to
the domination of the slave-holder faction."

248 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

center Buell with the Army of the Ohio had for his antagonist
Albert Sidney Johnston with the Army of the Cumberland; in
the west Hal leek with the Army of the Missouri was confronted
by McCulloch and the Army of the Mississippi.

At last, though all too slowly to suit the impatient North,
the tug of war came. It came with varying results and with
uncertain efforts, each side as yet feeling its way. Of the half-
dozen engagements that took place between the disastrous July
of 1 86 1 and the opening months of 1862 scarce one was deci-
sive or really important until the fall of Fort Donelson on the
sixteenth of February drew all eyes to the operations in the
west that culminated in the famous two days' fight at Shiloh
the first great battle of the Civil War.

So, after all, it was from the west that the first note of victory,
the first prophecy of final triumph came. In the east,
McClellan now raised to the command of all the armies of the
United States, was displaying his wonderful ability as the best
organizer of armed troops known to American history ; but so
jealous was he of his own forces, so desirous of putting every
available man into the Army of the Potomac, that he had but
scant sympathy for the other divisions of the great army of
which he was commanding general. " Every man sent to any
other department," says a recent authority, " he regarded as a
sort of robbery of the Army of the Potomac." Day after day
the same report went to the North : " All quiet on the Potomac ; "
day after day president and people grew more anxious, more
critical, more impatient.

Who then can wonder that the news from the west sent a
thrill of joy through the waiting, weary heart of the north.
Grant's stern reply to Buckner, the commander at Fort Donel-
son : "No terms except an unconditional and immediate

ROYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 249

surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately
upon your works," was the answer to the nation's prayer
for prompt action and immediate results. They came
speedily. Donelson and its fifteen thousand men surren-
dered to the Union arms. Grant was made a major-general
of volunteers. His name was upon every lip. And then came
Shiloh.

In the country round about that little log church in
Southwestern Tennessee that gave its name to what has been
called " the most famous and to both sides the most interesting
of the battles of the war," for two long days the bloody conflict
raged. Furious, deadly and stubbornly contested this bloodiest
battle ever fought west of the Alleghanies gave the key-note to
all the succeeding contests of the war it was fighting to kill
because it was fighting to conquer. Forty thousand Northern
troops joined battle with an equal number of Southern soldiers.
It was a duel to the death. " The troops on both sides," says
General Grant, "were American and, united, they need not fear
any foreign foe." Divided, alas, their obstinate fight was terri-
ble in its intensity, terrible in its results. Every inch of ground
was disputed stubbornly, every possible device for wresting
victory from defeat was made use of by both parties. And
when after a two days' fight the Southern army turned in
flight, its leader dead, its object defeated, its high hopes
dashed to earth the loss entailed by that terrible struggle was
as appalling as the victory was complete. At least eleven
thousand men was the roll in killed and wounded on either side.
" If we should read," says Mr. Johnson, "that by some disaster
every man, woman and child in the city of Concord, New
Hampshire, had been either killed or wounded, and in the next
day's paper that the same thing had happened in Montgomery,

250 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

Alabama, the loss in life and limb would only equal what took
place on the mournful field of Shiloh."

It was a test battle. For the first time Southern dash and
discipline had grappled with Northern endurance and dis-
cipline, on equal terms and on a fair field. It was the first
real battle of the war. For this the Boys of 'Sixty-one had
drudged and drilled, for this North and South had been
clamorously calling. After Shiloh the Southern boast that
a Southern gentleman could whip five Yankees was no more
heard ; the Northern bravado that the war could not outlast
one fair battle died away forever. Both sides now understood
that war meant work and that it meant a stubborn death-
grapple ere the end could come. Every man who outlived the
heated fire of " the hornet's nest " at Shiloh came from the
conflict with a higher regard of the fighting qualities of " his
brother the enemy'' than he had held before.

But though, before Shiloh, no real battle had been fought,

C!> v^

the dozen or more engagements had shown the temper of the
men who had sprung to arms. Ellsworth at Alexandria and
Baker at Ball's Bluff had shown how daring and foolhardiness
may run side by side. Lyon the gallant Westerner, shot down
while heading a charge at Wilson's Creek "the bloodiest bat-
tle, up to that date, ever fought on American soil " - showed
how deep was his patriotism, how determined his purpose by
leaving, by his will, his entire fortune to the United States for
use in defense of the imperilled nation ; Mulligan, holding with
but twenty-eight hundred men his post at Lexington, Missouri,
against an overwhelming force of fourteen thousand did but
prophesy by his bravery his still greater valor which on a later
day, at Winchester fight, caused him to say to those who bore
him dying, from the field, " Lay me down and save the flag;"

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

25'

Smith, of the regulars, a loyal " West Pointer," could answer
the insinuations that hinted at his disloyalty as he listened
with flashing eyes: " Oh ! never mind; they'll take it back
after my first battle." And "they" did. And this same
magnetic leader showed the stuff of which brave men are
made when leading a charge at Fort Donelson, cap twirling on
sword-point, he shouted: "No flinching now, my lads. Here

- this is the way ; come on ! "
and so dashed through to vic-
tory.

For a while the exuberant
spirits of those first volunteers
who rushed to the war as to
some prolonged picnic lost
alike their elasticity and their
enthusiasm even, under the
routine of the camp and the
depressing effect of their sur-
roundings. The men who had
gone to the front, swarming
over the roofs of freight cars

H>K TIIK SOI.IUKKS.

or clinging to the breezy " cow-
catcher," who had scaled the walls of the Capitol and frisked
like monkeys along its high-hung cornices and water-tables,
who had rushed into the water with drawn knives to "tackle"
the voracious and deadly sharks and worried the souls of slow-
witted "contrabands " by their gibes and pranks these found
discipline a hard word to construe and duty but too -often
drudgery and weariness. "Mud," says Private Goss, "took
the military valor all out of a man. Any one would think
from reading the Northern papers that we had macadamized

252 SOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

roads over which to charge at the enemy. It would have
pleased us much to have seen these 'on to Richmond' people
put over a five-mile course in the Virginia mud, loaded with a
forty-pound knapsack, sixty rounds of cartridges and haversacks
filled with four clays' rations."

"The Confederate army," says General Beauregard, "was
filled with generous youth who had answered the first call to
arms. For certain kinds of field work they were not yet
adapted, many of them having come with their baggage and
servants. These they had to dispense with, but not to offend
their susceptibilities I exacted the least work from them apart
from military drills even to the prejudice of important field
work when I could not f^et sufficient ne^ro labor. They ' had

O O J

come to fight and not to handle the pick and shovel,' they
declared emphatically."

It was hard too for recruits to learn that there is really no
place in the ranks for the " thinking bayonet" as some unmili-
tary folk liked to call the volunteer of '61. " I thought, sir-
a certain private began, but was speedily interrupted. " Think!
think!" roared the colonel: "what right have you to think ?
I do the thinking for this regiment. Go to your quarters ! "
The rank and file and under officers of a regiment are not
taken into the confidence of their superiors. Their duty is
simply to obey orders.

And gradually they learned to obey. As the days rolled by
and none knew how soon the test of battle might come, dis-
cipline came to the aid of duty and made of the raw recruits
soldierly fellows, anxious to make proof of their training and
show their valor in the face of the foe. " Every army has its
driftwood soldiers," says Mr. Coffin, "valiant at the mess table,
brave in the story about the bivouac fire, but faint of heart

BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 253

when the battle begins." That this is but too true every battle
shows. Bull Run was its earliest proof and even at Shiloh the
ten thousand National and Confederate deserters showed the
yet uncertain morale of the armies but these recreants are
the exception, the minority when the bugle sounds "fall in" and
the stirring command to charge means desperate work at hand.
In all those early months of tedious preparation for the
greater conflict to which Shiloh was the prelude the soldiers
North and South were learning the hard lesson of how to obey.
The unwritten romance of the camps could tell of many a fight
with pride and many a conquest over self in the hard school of
the daily drill and of the lonely picket-line. There is often
more of heroism in this latter dangerous duty than on the
noisier line of battle and in the daylight charge to death. The
silent hero is often the most valorous. The pathetic poem of
disputed authorship, so popular during the war, told all too
vividly the story of the lonely picket:

" All quiet along the Potomac," they say,

" Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his heat to and fro,

By a rifleman hid in. the thicket ;
'Tis nothing a private or two now and then

Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost only one of the men,

Moaning out, all alone, his death-rattle."

" There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,

As he tramps from the rock to the fountain.
And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed

Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack his face, dark and grim,

Grows gentle with memories tender,
And he mutters a prayer for the children asleep.

For their mother may Heaven defend her!

254 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE.

" He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree

The footstep is lagging and weary ;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,

Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves ?

Was it moonlight so suddenly flashing ?
It looked like a rifle. . . . ' Ila ! Mary, good-by !

And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.

" All quiet along the Potomac to-night ;

No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead

The picket's off duty forever ! "

CHAPTER XII.

FROM SHILOH TO Al'POMATTOX.

N a certain July morn-
ing in the year 1863
three young fellows
in their early teens
walked into a yet
scarcely - awakened
Connecticut village.
They were on a
short vacation
tramp between
New York and
Boston, stiffening
their muscles and
strengthening their

* > C3

legs as a prepara-
tion, it might be,
for that real marching that all young fellows of those stirring
war-times hoped or expected some day to do on Southern
battlefields. For two days they had heard but little of the
outside world. Twenty-seven years ago tidings from abroad
did not penetrate the country sections as speedily as now.
And these lads were so anxious for news! How could it be

-35

256 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

otherwise with them ? They were wide-awake New York
boys steeped in the seething excitements of those restless days
when all America seemed -to live from clay to day upon the
anxious seat.

Suddenly, as they passed a yet unopened house, one of the
boys spied a discarded newspaper of the previous day lying
where it had been thrown aside upon the trim green lawn.
Instinctively they all stole in and confiscated the vagrant sheet.
And as one unfolded it and the others peered over his shoulder
all three gave a shout of joy: "The Great Union Victory at
Gettysburg!" " Vicksburg Ours!" Here was news indeed.
Exultant and thankful the three lads laid down the borrowed
newspaper and went their way with swinging steps and light-
ened hearts, prouder than ever of the boys at the front, with
whom they hoped some day to cast in their lot.

It was indeed great news for all the North. The greatest
from Sumter to Appomattox. For Gettysburg and Vicksburg
marked the turning-point of the war. And yet not the greatest.
There was one occurrence, not military indeed but national,
that hastened results more than any other achievement. It
was a simple dip into the inkstand, a single act of justice. But
when Abraham Lincoln laid down the pen that signed the
immortal proclamation of emancipation the days of rebellion
were numbered. The Edict of Freedom was America's master-
stroke.

But those who in Northern homes watched and waited in
those troublous times, finding criticism so easy, patience so
hard, did not then appreciate to the full the importance of this
greatest state paper of the century. To those eager boys
Gettysburg and Vicksburg meant more than any presiden-
tial proclamation. And so to all the North the tidings

FROM SHJLOH TO APPOMATTOX. 257

from Gettysburg and Vicksburg were both welcome and
wonderful.

When the conflict that had raged so furiously through
three terrible days gained its first note of victory from the
wonderful charge of Stannard's brave brigade and closed with
the bloody repulse of Pickett's magnificent charge on Cemetery
Ridge the tide of rebel invasion was swept backward from the
Pennsylvania hills and the greatest stroke of the Confederacy
was brought to naught.

At that very moment that Gibbon was holding the ridge

* O O

at Gettysburg, and, with a loss of half his force, hurled back
the last effort of invasion, Grant, outside the ramparts of far-off
Vicksburg, was writing to Pemberton the rebel commander:
" I have no terms but the unconditional surrender of the
city and garrison." The Fourth of July, 1863, was a notable
national holiday. For on that anniversary of American Inde-
pendence the might of American freemen was fully asserted
the last great attempt of rebellion at invasion was thwarted and
the Mississippi was made free from the Lakes to the Gulf.

In both these pivotal happenings the American Soldier was
at once the cause and instrument. For this he had labored
through many weary months, for this he had gone through all
the hard routine of drill and discipline, for this he had borne
the brunt at Shiloh and gone through the terrible experience
of the Seven Days' Battle in Virginia swamps, for this had he
closed in hand-to-hand fight at Perrysville and turned at bay
on Malvern Hill, for this had he stood the test at Murfrees-
boro' and Antietam. East and West had worked and struggled
toward victory. To East and West at almost the same hour
had come the glorious consummation.

But through how much of heart-ache and despondency,

258 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

through how much defeat and disaster had this outlook toward
peace been reached. From Shiloh to Gettysburg had been,
indeed, a hard road to travel.

And yet there had been but little \vavering in will, there had

been no shrinkage in the determination to win.

Through all

CHARCK OK STANNARDS I'.RIC.ADK AT CK T T VS]!l'K(i.

these days of delay and inaction, of impatience and expectation,
of doubtful battle and balked endeavor, of incompetency in
leadership and division in council the baffled North again and
again had sent its reinforcements to the field. Tramp ! tramp !
tramp! with firm and measured tread, steadily, solidly, cease-

FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 259

lessly, from every Northern State the soldiers of the Union set
their faces southward, dispatched for the strengthening of their
brethren at the front. Tramp! tramp! tramp! in all the
mechanical evolutions of review and drill, of advance and
retreat and the charge of desperate battle the blue coats all
along that shifting death line that stretched from the Mississippi
to the sea marched and countermarched, fought and fell.

And still more men were needed. The cause of war was as
insatiate as was that horse-leech of whom Scripture tells, who
"hath two daughters whose only cry is: Give, give, give!"
South as well as North this cry for fresh blood rang out again
and again ; South as well as North the fighters fell into line
until it seemed to those who watched at home as if none would
be left as bread-winners when so many went away.

To the first call of President Lincoln on April 15, 1861, for
75,000 men, the enthusiasm inspired by Sumter's fall yielded at
once an hundred thousand in reply. The later calls of May
and July, 1861, for 500,000 men brought the Government nearly
700,000 in response. And yet, with the next year, came another
call for 300^000 volunteers and from every quarter they rallied
by thousands while, of those already in service, other thousands
re-enlisted "for three years or the war."

The verses of that unknown author whose measures found
an echo in many a loyal heart recall to us the steady outpour
of Northern vigor that came as the answer to the president's
call of July, 1862 :

" We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,

From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore ;

We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear,

With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;

We dare not look behind ns, but steadfastly before :

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more !

260 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

" If you look across the hilltops that meet the Northern sky,

Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry ;

And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,

And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride,

And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour :

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more !

" If you look all up our valleys where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line ;
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door :
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more !

" You have called us and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide.

To lay us down, for Freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside,

Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the murderous blade,

And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before :

We are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! "

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true had gone before.
In the spring of 1862 a force of 637,126 men was in the service of
the Union, but the waste of this gallant force by the guns of
the enemy and by that still deadlier foe disease had not
been offset by successive battle. The ill-fortune of the Union
arms through 1862 made still more troops necessary and
the August call for yet another three hundred thousand men
taxed alike the patience and the patriotism, the resources and
the conscience of the loyal North.

4 The defeat of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg and
the capture of Vicksburg," says General Sherman, "should
have ended the civil war --but no! the leaders demanded the
'last ditch' and their followers seemed willing." And so the
war went on. New levies of troops were called for, new en-
listments ordered; to McClellan the dilatory drill-master sue-

J-KOM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 261

ceeded at length Grant " the hammerer," and the blue and the
gray closed in the last desperate struggle for supremacy.

It was not all young blood alone that responded to these
later calls. In 1863 a regiment went from Iowa known as "the
gray-beard regiment," not a man of which was under forty-five
and many in which were over sixty years of age. It was said
of this "gray-beard regiment " that they had already contributed
fourteen hundred sons and grandsons to the war.

In the long period of conflict a period stretching from
the fall of Sumter on the fifteenth of April, 1861, to the death
of Lincoln on the fourteenth of April, 1865, four years to a day
the number of men recruited for the service of the United
States was 2,690401 ; the number enrolled in the armies of the
Confederacy has never been fairly determined, but was at least
a million and a half. For the first years of the war, as we have
seen, recruiting was spontaneous and enthusiastic, but as the
conflict "strung out" to its close the call for volunteers was

less generously responded to until at the last service in the
North was only obtainable through an ineffectual draft and the
payment of large sums of money in "bounties" a premium
for enlistment, and in the South by a sweeping conscription of
all white men resident in the Confederacy between the ages of
sixteen and sixty a measure of which it was remarked that
the Confederates were robbing the cradle and the grave to fill
their armies.

The four million Americans who took up arms for or against
the government of the United States may be classed under
three general heads the " hurrah " boys, the duty soldiers and
the purchase-money men. To these should properly be added
the conscripts, North and South soldiers against their will,
who marched in spite of themselves and fought under protest.

2 6 2 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

The smoke of Surnter lingered long in the air but, gradu-
ally, the reckless enthusiasm of the early days of the conflict
subsided into astern sense of duty. To enlist " just for the fun
of it" became less and less frequent and men sought the
recruiting office because they felt that they must rather than
from a mere love of fighting.

And yet it was these " duty soldiers " who gave strength to
the national cause and showed by a sacrifice of life to conscience
that the end could only come in victory for the Union.

" I think about the dear, brave boys

My mates in other years,
Who pine for home and those they love,

Till I am choked with tear>.
With shouts and cheers they marched away

On glory's shining track ,
Hut ah ! how long, how long they sta\

How few of them come back !

" And when I kneel and try to pray,

My thoughts are never free,
But cling to those who toil and fight

And die for you and me.
And when I pray for victory,

It seems almost a sin
To fold my hands and ask for what

I will not help to win."

Such men as this, struggling with the two-sided question of
duty generally found their way at last to the recruiting office
and helped to win the victory for which they had prayed.

And at last through blood and tears " glory's shining track "
led on to victory. The " cjreat hammerer" (as Grant has well

j O

been called) with the strength of a nation behind him and
veteran fighters at his command finally beat down the weaken-
ing cause of rebellion and closed at Appomattox in generous

'1XJ YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?"

FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 265

conditions to a conquered foe the four long years of stubborn
strife.

Who can rightly sum up in few words the heroisms and the
valor of those days of struggle ? They were exhibited in every
small encounter, they were displayed in every mighty battle.
Neither side could claim the monopoly of bravery. The War
for Secession was a revelation to the world of American cour-
age, American pluck jjn'd American endurance. The bloody
angle at Spottsylvania, the "slaughter pen" on the slope of
Little Round Top at Gettysburg, the " hornet's nest " at Shiloh,
the last grand dash at Chickamauga these and countless
other places of crisis and posts of danger stand in the memory
of those who yet survive as proof of the courage and persistence
of the American soldier.

And so from Bull Run to Shiloh, from Shiloh on to Gettys-
burg and Appomattox the "cruel war" went on with defeat
here, with victory there, with plans frustrated one day and
realized the next, with reconnaissance and sortie, with artillery
duels and hand-to-hand encounters, with the "ping" of bullets
from the rifle pits and the unrecorded romances of the picket
line, with the furious charge, the death-clamber over hostile
ramparts, the battle, the capture, the prison-pen and escape,
until at last came the end and the furled flags and the silent
cannon told that the conflict between brothers was over and
that the brave men, North and South, were brothers indeed
once more.

Not all the fighters in blue were Hectors, nor was every
one in gray an Achilles. Though there is an inspiration in
valor, heroism is not always "catching." Cowardice is as old
as Cain and while time calls for tests of bravery so long will
there be those who flinch before the test. It is a mistake to

2 66 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

suppose that soldiers dash into battle with avidity or double-
quick to a charge without a tremor. Many a time have the
fighters needed to be fairly driven into fight, as even a blooded
racer may balk before a five-barred gate. " Come on, come on,
my men ! " cried a fiery rebel colonel at Malvern Hill, as before
a charge his men seemed to hesitate ; " what are you waiting
for? Do you want to live forever ? In with you ! " and " in "
they went. Over the wires once went the facetious dispatch
of the observant operator : " The Seventeenth Pennsylvania
Cavalry just passed here, furiously charging to the rear."

Many a private's knee shook when the order "Fall in,
men!" came and he knew a battle was at hand; more than
one boaster, valiant only at mess, has dived into hiding as
with shriek and whirr the deadly shell has cut the air above
him, as certain that his doom was its mission as was poor
Darky Bill, the company cook, who declared that every shell
that sent him "kiting" into cover was shrieking: "Ah-h-h,
where's dat nigger! where's dat nigger! where s dat nigger! "

Civilians do not have a monopoly of terror and the men
that " skedaddled '' before Morgan's picturesque raid in the
NorCh and Sherman's historic "bummers" in the South some-
times wore uniforms and carried sword and musket.

For not alone does the occasional private show the white
feather. The weakness of knees has sometimes been known to
affect also the officer, whom favoritism or official patronage has
put in command of men braver than he. " Why don't you get
behind a tree, Jim?" shouted one private to another as, in one of
the Virginia battles, the " zip " of the flying balls sent many
a man dodging for shelter. "Tree!" yelled the unsheltered
private ; " confound it ! There ain't enough for the officers."

There were " weak-kneed brothers " and " number one " out-

FROM SHILOH TO APIOMATTOX.

267

lookers in every regiment. Worse than these, there were desert-
ers on both sides, there were cravens and skulkers and " bounty-
jumpers," as in every community the bad find place among the
good and God's cleansing rain falls alike on just and unjust.
But discipline conquers insubordination and brings even
timidity steadily into line. The men who fought from a sense

MORGAN'S RAIDKRS.

of duty far outnumbered those who were weak of heart or
treacherous in faith. And these won the victories.

" There is something grand," says the drummer-boy Harry
Kieffer in his sprightly recollections, " in the promptitude with

2 68 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

which the order to ' fall in ' is obeyed. Every man is at his
post. Forcing its way as best it can through the tangled under-
orowth of briers and bushes, across ravines and through
swamps, our whole magnificent line advances, until after a half-
hour's steady work, we reach the skirmish line, which, hardly
pressed, falls back into the advancing column of blue as it
reaches a little clearing in the forest."

The heroes of that greatest of great rebellions were many.
To name them would need a volume, to set down the deeds of
valor done would be but an endless repetition of heroisms.
How could we even commence the list ? Grant the general,
" the commander that never took a step backward ; " Sherman
the persistent; McClellan the matchless engineer; Sheridan
the fiery rider; Hancock "the superb; " Custer with the heart
of flame ; Kearney " who knew not to yield " and Thomas the
"rock of Chickamauga," according to Greeley "the greatest
soldier of them all." Every patriot at the North had his
favorite to cheer to the echo or to run into the current "patter-
songs " of the day. And even yet history cannot weigh reputa-
tions perfectly nor say who was " best " among them all. And
on the other side the line how shall that roll be fitly com-
menced Lee, recreant but royal, perhaps, all things con-
sidered, the greatest leader that ever generaled a lost cause -
fighting ever a losing battle, prolific in device, masterly in ex-
ecution ; Albert Sidney Johnston, a gallant soldier, a born
leader, who died on the field of Shiloh, a martyr to his own
indomitable energy ; " Stonewall " Jackson, " Lee's right arm,"
rapid, bewildering, magnetic ; Polk, " priest and warrior ; " Stuart,
perhaps the best cavalryman America has ever produced and a
thousand others mistaken in judgment, brave in action
American soldiers all.

FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 269

And, following their leaders, from the ranks on either side
a countless host emerges brothers in bravery as in speech, if
foemen in the hour of fight.

A driver in the regular artillery, shot through the body at
Olustee, with his life blood streaming from this mortal wound,
struggled to extricate his team from the deadly tangle and to
carry off his gun until, his strength not being equal to his valor,
he fell dead in the resolute but vain attempt.

And in that same Olustee fight, the rebel lieutenant Col-
quitt was a conspicuous object to the troops on both sides as,
galloping in front of the Confederate ranks, he waved a battle
flag and exhorted the men to stand fast and not to lie down or
shelter themselves lest the enemy should suppose they had
broken.

In Russell's brilliant charge on the redoubts of the Rappa-
hannock Sergeant Roberts of the Sixth Maine was first inside
the works. Finding himself alone he deemed discretion the
better part of valor and cried out " I surrender." But, turning,
he saw his comrades tumbling over the parapet. "No, no; I
take it back ! " he yelled, made a dash for the rebel colors and
captured them.

Colonel Terry, the Texas crack shot, coolly aiming his piece,
dropped the United States flag at Fairfax Court House by
cutting the halyards with a rifle shot, dashed into the melee
and carried off the flag.

At Spottsylvania Corporal Weeks captured, all unaided, the
rebel colors and their guard of six lusty Confederates, and on
the same bloody day Sergeant Fasnacht performed precisely
the same feat with the single argument of an empty musket.
On the official list of those to whom medals of honor were
awarded for bravery during the war of the rebellion two hun-

27 o FROM SHILOH TO APl'OMATTOX.

dred and eighty-six men in the ranks were honored for this
same dangerous action gallantry in the capture of the
enemy's flag.

In Sheridan's great Richmond raid the First North Carolina
charged the Sixth New York battery. In the crush and strug-
gle a Confederate officer cut his way straight to the rear piece
and laying his hand on the gun exclaimed : " This is my piece."
" Not by a darned sight," replied a New York cannonier, leap-
ing- on his un as with a u scientific " blow from the shoulder he

o o

planted his fist between the eyes of the rebel colonel, knocked
him off his horse and took him prisoner.

At that brief but bloody fight at Olustee, already referred
to, Colonel Fribley's colored troops met the enemy at short
range though they had never had a day's experience in load-
ing and firing. " Old troops," says General Hawley, " finding
themselves so greatly overmatched, would have run a little and
re-formed with or without orders. The black men stood to
be killed or wounded losing more than three hundred out of
five hundred and fifty men."

Bravery in battle is heralded far and wide, repaid with the
medal of honor and the applause of a hero-loving world. But
there is a moral bravery greater even than that which faces
cannons or springs forward to the deadly charge. Such was
the conduct of that Ohio regiment left without supplies, suffer-
ing for food, desperate enough to appropriate anything that
should come in their way. In the dead of night they hear the
rumble of wagon wheels. " Grub ! " they yell, alive with the
joy of approaching relief, and springing into the road stand
ready to help unload. But the heavy wagon goes straight on
without stopping. Furious at such neglect a dozen strong
hands catch at the horses' heads, a swarm of blue-coats clamber

FROM SH1LOH TO APPOMATTOX.

271

cres.

into the wagon. Down tumble the supplies; off go the heads
of barrels, the tops of cracker boxes. Hunger stops at nothing.
"Not for us, eh? "comes the indignant cry in response to the
threats and appeals of the drivers. " Well, I guess ! Nobody
else is going to have this. We're hungry enough to eat you
and your horses." "But, boys, boys! for God's sake hold
on," the overpowered driver
4< Tliis grub is for
Wisconsin fellows
below you. They have been
without food twenty-four
hours longer than you have.
They're starving!" With-
out a word, with scarcely a
moment's hesitation, box-
lids are hammered down,
supplies reloaded and the
hungry heroes with a part-
ing cheer send on the load
untouched to those whose
necessity is even greater
than theirs.

In May, 1X63, a force
of rebel cavalry swooping

down on Stoneman's advance captured Lieutenant Paine of
the First Maine cavalry and his men. While crossing a rapid
stream with the prisoners Lieutenant Henry, the commander
of the rebel force, was suddenly swept from his horse by the
rushing water. No hand among his own men was lifted to
save him, but, quick as a flash, the Yankee prisoner, Paine,
sprang from his horse, seized his drowning foeman by the

AFTKR THK BATTI.K.

2 7 2 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX.

collar and swam with him to the shore. For this act of heroism
General Fitzhugh Lee gave Paine his liberty without parole or
condition and, such are the strange conditions of war, the
plucky Yankee lieutenant on reaching Washington found the
rebel lieutenant whose life he had saved a prisoner in the Old
Capitol prison and there again befriended him.

And Bayard Wilkeson the Sidney of the war let his

j *

name have place in this all too brief suggestion of brave
deeds. Scarcely more than a boy, only nineteen, he held his
command -- Battery G Fourth U. S. Artillery, of which he
was lieutenant in an exposed position on the Union right
at Gettysburg until the rebel General Gordon ordered two
batteries to train every gun upon him. Then desperately
wounded. \Yilkeson fell from his horse and draped himself

into the rebel lines. There, lying wounded to the death, he
asked for water. A canteen was brought him but as he took it
a wounded soldier, probably one of the enemy, saw it and
cried : '' For God's sake give me some." The young hero passed
the canteen untouched to the sufferer who greedily drank every
drop. Then Wilkeson, courteous to the end, smiled on the
man, turned slightly and died. Rightly named; Bayard in

O J O ^ .,

truth ; not even the old cavalier of far-off days sans pcur et
sans reprochc did ever a nobler or more knightly deed.

But why increase the list ? There have been heroes in
every conflict as there are brave men always, as well in peace
as war, but the annals of that bloody war for secession are em-
phasized throughout by valor and punctuated with heroism :

"Oh, not alone the hoary Past

Spilled precious princely blood ;
< *h, not alone its sons were cast

In knightly form and mood ;

J-KOM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 273

Perennial smells of sacrifice

Make sweet our sickened air;
And truth as leal as Sidney's, lies

Around us everywhere.

" Renown stands mute beside the graves

With which the land is scarred ;
Unheralded our splendid braves

Went forth unto the Lord ;
No poet hoards their humble names

In his immortal scrolls,
Hut none the less the darkness flames

With their clear-shining souls "

Courage, it used to be asserted, was the cheapest thing in
the Army of the Potomac, but so too was it equally common
in the army of the center and the army of the west. Of physi-
cal courage and contempt of death, says Rossiter Johnson, " no
generation of Americans has shown any lack. From Louis-
burg to Petersburg a hundred and twenty years, the full span
of four generations they have stood to their guns and been
shot down in greater comparative numbers than any other race
on earth." Wearied and disheartened but plucky to the last the
Confederate soldier made his homely butternut the badge of
bravery and shed about a lost and desperate cause the halo of
a deathless valor; stern and unyielding and never despairing of
the right, the boys in blue glorified the hour of vicjory by their
kindly helpfulness toward a fallen foe and by their mighty
achievements made the name and the power of the American
Republic honored and feared throughout the world.

The last stand had been made, the last blow given, the last
dashing charge attempted and repelled. With Appomattox the
war ended. And the picture that General Porter draws so
vividly may apply with equal truth to all the opposing forces
that with folded banners drew backward, one to the North the

2 7 4 FROM SHILOH TO APPOATATTOX.

other to the South, from that wavering death-line that had
stretched for so many months from the sierras to the sea :
" The charges were withdrawn from the guns, the camp-fires
were left to smoulder in their ashes, the flags were tenderly
furled those historic banners, battle-stained, bullet-riddled,
many of them but remnants of their former selves with scarcely
enough left of them on which to imprint the names of the
battles they had seen and the Army of the Union and the
Army of Northern Virginia, turned their backs upon each
other for the first time in four long, bloody years."

CHAPTER XIII.

BOOTS AND SADDLE.

OME again ! The gallant but
hopeless defense of Rich-
mond, which has given to
Lee's wasted line the right
to the name of heroes, had
ended in the surrender at
Appomattox and the war
was over. The armies of
the conqueror and the con-
quered were disbanded or
melted away, peace at last
rested upon the land and the
soldiers, North and South,
became once again citizens
and bread-winners.

Six hundred thousand
lives and six thousand million dollars had been the cost in
blood and treasure at which the conflict had been waged ; but
it had made the United States a nation and had put to rest
forever the terror of civil war.

Quickly the work of disbanding went on. The great
reviews of the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth of May, 1865,

275

276 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

when, first, the Army of the Potomac and, next, the Army that,
led by Sherman, had made its historic march to the sea and
"swuno- around the circle " of the Confederacy marched in close

o J

column, twenty-four deep, around the gleaming Capitol and
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the reviewing stand at the
White House. Two hundred thousand men and more, bronzed
of face but with a free and steady step and the elastic spring
which only the veteran soldier knows -- the remnants of mighty
regiments, their smoke-stained battle-flags torn by wind and
fight, they marched in grand review before the President of
the United States and the chiefs of the nation. The president
-but not their president ! Not the one man of royal soul and
of homely face who through four weary years of war had never
faltered, never despaired, but had worked steadily on for the
end he knew would come, the end that now the grand review,
the throbbing music of regimental bands, the streaming
banners, the thronging streets of Washington welcomed with
so much of pomp and exultation. Their captain their presi-
dent where was he? "He had lived to enter the enemy's
capital, lived to see the authority of the United States
restored over the whole country and then was snatched away,
when the people were as much as ever in need of his genius
for the solution of new problems that suddenly confronted
them."

How many a soldier in that great review, missing the kindly
face, the rugged features, the gaunt, ungainly frame that were
as familiar as they were dear to all loyal Americans, felt as did
the most American of all our American poets* when, out of the
anguish of his soul, he wrote his grandest verse " My Captain " :

Walt Whitman, whom Sir Kilwin Arnold describes as " that e;rand old poet of yours whom America does not
seem to appreciate."

BOOTS AND SADDLE. 277

" O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done ;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won ;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart ! heart ! heart !
O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead !

" O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells :
Rise up for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills ;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here, Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head ;

It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.

" My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will :
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread.

Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead."

The soldiers of the blue went home to welcoming throngs,
gay flaunting banners, cheers and shouts of ' Well done ! "
The soldiers of the gray --that gray faded almost out of remem-
brance, tattered and travel-torn almost beyond repair went
home to welcomes just as warm. They may have met regrets and
murmurings perhaps over the end that had been defeat, but it
was defeat bravely kept at bay through many bitter months;
and so, after all, the home-coming of the Southern soldier was
a time of happiness and of joy to the war-spent veterans who
had left their arms and artillery parked and stacked at Appo-
mattox, at Raleigh, or at Shreveport and had taken nothing to

278 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

their homes but their well-worn uniforms and a sense of duty
as they had understood it valiantly done.

The ravages of war had worked havoc in many a gallant
command. Every Northern regiment had lost heavily in battle
and yet more heavily under the fell hand of disease. Of the
Fourth Iowa Infantry, comprising thirteen hundred men, fully

THE HOMK-COMIN<; OK THE SOUTHERN SOLDIERS.

one thousand had laid down their lives for their country. Of
the Fifth Iowa Infantry which enlisted with 967 men and officers
and received 70 recruits, 89 were killed in battle, 90 died of
disease, 281 were wounded, 221 broken in health were dis-
charged for disability and 96 were captured only to die of neg-
lect in rebel prisons a terrible tale of loss. These figures

BOOTS AND SADDLE. % 279

could be paralleled by the records of every State and not a
veteran, back from the wars, but brought with him tender
memories of comrades left behind and of nameless graves scat-
tered all over the sunny South. That officers' reunion so deli-
cately pictured by Major Halpine could find its counterpart in
many an after-war celebration :

" Three years ago to-day

We raised our hands to heaven,
And on the rolls of muster

Our names were thirty-seven ;
There were just a thousand bayonets,

And the swords were thirty-seven,
And we took the oath of .service

With our right hands raised to heaven.

" Oh ! 'twas a gallant day,

In memory still adored,
That day of our sun-bright nuptials

With the musket and the sword !
Shrill rang the fifes, the bugles blared,

And beneath a cloudless heaven
Twinkled a thousand bayonets,

And the swords were thirty-seven.

" Of the thousand stalwart bayonets

Two hundred march to-day ;
Hundreds lie in Virginia swamps,

And hundreds in Maryland clay;
And other hundreds, less happy, drag

Their shattered limbs around,
And envy the deep, long, blessed sleep

Of the battle-field's holy ground.

" For the swords one night, a week ago,

The remnant, just eleven,
Gathered around a banqueting board

With seats for thirty-seven ;

2 So BOOTS AND SADDLE.

-5

There were two limped in on crutches,

And two had each but a hand

To pour the wine and raise the cup
As we toasted ' Our flag and land ! '

" And the room seemed filled with whispers

As we looked at the vacant seats,
And. with choking throats, we pushed aside

The rich but untasted meats;
Then in silence we brimmed our glasses,

As we rose up just eleven
And bowed as we drank to the loved and the dead

Who had made us thirty-seven ! "

Within six months after the fall of the Confederacy the
million or more soldiers of the Union had returned to their
homes. The vast Volunteer Army of the United States was
a thing of the past. The regular army being a national organi-
zation was still kept at its full standard of fifty thousand men
and was employed in garrison duty and post service in the
South and West. The United States was divided into five
Military Divisions and these were subdivided into nineteen
Departments. Among these departments the standing army of
the United States was distributed.

Foreign nations had declared that so larofe a force of armed

o o

men could not be disbanded without trouble and possible anar-
chy. Events proved the falsity of this prophecy and the re-
action of restlessness that is to be looked for after every great
war found expression in but two brief and purposeless eruptions
-the "Fenian" excitement of 1866 and the "Ku-Klux" dis-
orders of 1867-69. Both were erratic, both were foolhardy
and, to a certain degree, picturesque. Both called for military
intervention to overawe and disintegrate them and neither of
them were in step with the desires or the spirit of the .Amer-
ican people.

BOOTS AND SADDLE, 281

General Thomas \V. Sweeney, the leading spirit in the
Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866, was a brave and dashing
American soldier. He had lost an arm at Cherubusco, while
serving under Scott in Mexico; he had in 1851 held Fort Yuma
in California against a large Indian force, though he and his men
were at starvation's door; he had bravely kept his charge of
the United States arsenal in St. Louis, with but forty men,
against three thousand clamorous Secessionists saying: "I'll
blow it up and you with it before I surrender; there are only
forty of us to die ! he had served under Grant at Donelson
and been made a brigadier-general for his bravery in the
war.

With Sweeney in the Canadian invasion of 1866 were other
veteran soldiers, filled with Irish enthusiasm and hatred of
England. But the United States, wisely, was true to her
treaty-promises. General Meade and a sufficient force were
dispatched to the border, the invader's supplies were cut off
and the adventurers finally surrendered to the power of the
United States. A later Fenian outbreak in 1870 was repelled
by the Canadian militia and scattered by a United States
marshal.

The Southern restlessness was more serious because more
secret. Dissatisfied men, rendered venomous by defeat and
angered by the seeming inequalities of "reconstruction " sought
to reverse the decision of the war, to terrorize the negro and
keep Northern life and capital from the land that so needed
this aid to right development. With a secrecy and an organi-
zation that smacked of mediaeval barbarism they banded
together under an oath more picturesque than practical : " I
swear that by daylight and darkness, at all times and on all
occasions, the steel shall pay the debt of steel, the lead shall

282 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

recompense for lead, the Southern Cross shall yet defy the
world ! "

There was much more to the same effect, but the valor that
skulks in the shadow and strikes in the dark is the weakest
sort of courage and usually comes to grief. Under vigorous
measures and the presence of the United States soldier in the
disturbed sections the attempt at air American vendetta was
stamped out and the K. K. K. is now only a phase of the
picturesque lunacies of America.

So too in the reconstruction troubles through which the

Southern States had naturally to pass before entire peace
and unimpeded law were restored the soldiers of the United
States called repeatedly to unquiet sections, established the
national authority and brought rest to the yet disorganized
communities.

Gradually the East grew quiet; the after-grumblings of
strife were stilled ; the ravages of war were charitably covered
over by a growing respect between men and by the healing forces
of nature. Only in the West was there disquiet and unrest.
There cavalrymen became hunters and soldiers scouts as the
musket and sword that had conquered on Southern battle-fields
were turned against the red-men of the plains, the canons and
the lava beds.

For years the Indians of the far West have been the tool
and sport of American mismanagement. Injustice always
breeds discontent and this, in the simple mind, leads to a desire
for revenge. The barbarian is ever a child and must strike
when struck or abuse when abused. So Navajo and Piegan,
Apache and Modoc, Sioux and Nez Perce and Ute, tricked in
trade, robbed by agents, worried by settlers, alternately cajoled
and threatened, petted and harried, have turned protests into

CUSTKR'S LAST

BOOTS AND SADDLE.

285

uprisings and pleas into massacres until alike good and bad
have fallen beneath their vengeance, the army has been kept
on the alert and the red-man himself, always defeated, .is
becoming more and more a dependent and a serf.

From the Apache and Cheyenne troubles of 1863 and '64
until the successful policy of General Crook in 1883, the
twenty years of frontier trouble have been full of peril, of
action and of blood.

The Indian policy of the Government has been fickle,
illiberal, faithless and bad, the moral influence of the soldiers
upon the red-men has been of the worst character, the military
rule to which they have been subjected has been autocratic,
tyrannical and full of harm, and the Indian wars of the United
States have been, largely, of the nation's own making.

But, as has before been shown, the causes of a war do not
always govern the character of the fighters in that war and the
bravery of the American soldier in his encounters with the
"hostiles" of the mountains and the plains has been above
criticism, positive and obstinate. Shirland and his California
volunteers, the captors of Mangas Colorado the Apache; Chiv-
ington and his avengers at the camp of Black Kettle the Chey-
enne; Fetterman and his eighty-four regulars making their
last tragic stand against two thousand Northern Indians on
Lodge Trail Ridge ; Powell and his thirty men at bay, but
finally defeating with terrible loss Red Cloud and his twenty-
five hundred Sioux ; Miles and his brave four hundred in the
Wolf Mountains; the half-dozen cavalrymen of the gallant
Sixth, holding their ground for thirty-six hours against a force
of splendidly-mounted Kiowas and Comanches, twenty-five to
one ; Crook and his plucky New Mexican riders wherever
the bugle has sounded " boots and saddle ! " the Indian fighter

2 86 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

who wears the blue has proved his right to the name of fighter
indeed.

But, in all the sad and sorry story of Indian atrocity and
American treachery, of Indian bravery and American valor
there is no paragraph more startling, more bloody or more
dramatic than is that which tells of the last gallant stand of
Custer and his men the Battle of Little Big Horn.

It is the climax of all Indian warfare from the days of
Philip of Pokanoket to those of Sitting Bull the Sioux and
Geronimo the Apache, and is all the more absorbing because
of the mystery that shrouds it and its hints at desperate valor
which, alas ! no man of all that brave four hundred lives to
prove or disprove.

General George Armstrong Custer of the Seventh U. S.

o o

Cavalry was, in many respects, America's bcati sabrcur. The
choice of McClellan and the favorite of Sheridan, he was the
idol of his own hard-riders and the envy of his Indian foemen.
His very appearance was striking and picturesque as, in his
broad cavalier's hat, his gold-bedizened jacket and high cavalry
boots, with his long yellow hair flying in the wind he would
ride like a tornado against rebel cavalrv or Indian warrior a

O ^

subject worthy Vandyke's pencil, the very type of the dash-
ing trooper of romance.

The war over, he was assigned to duty on the plains and
became the most daring and most successful of the Indian
fighters of 1870. On the fifteenth of May, 1876, Custer was
ordered to lead his regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, as the
advance of a joint expedition against the hostile Sioux. On
the morning of the twenty-fifth of June, with five companies of
his command amounting to not over four hundred men, he fell
into a cleverly-arranged ambuscade of the confederated Sioux

BOOTS AND SADDLE. 2 g 7

backed by a force of at least three thousand Indian warriors.
A desperate fight ensued. Valiantly holding his ground, vainly
looking for the help that came not, stubbornly at bay but calm,
cool and courageous to the last Custer fell fighting and his
devoted soldiers to a man fell, also fighting, around the body of
their chief.

Blinded by a savage ruse, himself the victim of political
wiles that had stirred up his fighting blood and driven him to a
determination to " make his mark " once more, Custer's un-
guarded advance and reckless charge were, perhaps, unwise
generalship, but they were the chief ingredients of heroism and
a dauntless courage and as such have given him an immortality
that will ever make him the typical Indian fighter of the nine-
teenth century. Much is forgiven to valor; a brave man's
death covers all mistakes.

Of other instances of soldierly courage in the Indian fights
that have become a part of American history since 1865, there
are many on record. There is always a fascination to us around
the stories of life " among the red-skins," and, ignoring always
the Indian's side of the question, we listen with quickened pulse
and brightening eyes to the account of how Clark and his forty-
eight men held over seven hundred " hostiles " at bay for
fully three hours of battle; how Sergeant Taylor at the risk of
his life rescued his lieutenant (now Captain Charles King, the
soldier-novelist) from Apache arrows, supporting his wounded
officer with one arm and with the other managing his deadly
carbine; how private John Nihill acted as a " flanker " to his
eight comrades of the Fifth Cavalry in the heart of the White-
stone mountains and held forty Indians at bay so that his
brother-soldiers could escape from the ambush ; how Amos
Chapman, the scout of the Third Cavalry, leaped across the

2 88 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

body of his fallen comrade and held off the circling Comanclies
until he could " shoulder " the wounded man and bear him out
of the death-trap into which he had fallen ; how private William
Evans, of the Seventh Infantry, at the imminent risk of his life
carried dispatches for General Crook through a country inhab-
ited by hostile Sioux, dodging death all the way ; how Sergeant
William Lewis of the Third Cavalry won a medal from Con-
gress for volunteering to discover the whereabouts of Little
Wolf and his Cheyenne warriors all these we hear with
pride as we do the countless other tales of risk and daring, of
dash and valor that illumine the otherwise dull details of
army life on the plains and make vivid finger-marks on the
annals of Indian warfare.

And that later element in American military life the
black soldier, what of him ? Admitted to citizenship the negro
has also been raised to equality, and his service as a soldier
dates from Fort Wagner and its bloody assault. They are now
faithful soldiers in the Regular army. Certain regiments, as
for instance the Tenth United States Cavalry, are composed of
negro soldiers and have seen active service on the plains. Will
they fight ? That question, says Mr. Remington, " is easily
answered. They have fought many, many times. The old
sergeant sitting near me, as calm of feature as a bronze statue,
once deliberately walked over a Cheyenne rifle-pit and killed
his man. One little fellow near him once took charge of a lot

of stampeded cavalry-horses when Apache bullets were flying-
loose and no one knew from what point to expect them next.
These little episodes prove the sometimes doubted self-reliance
of the negro."

Equally savage with the wild warriors of the plains, the " wolf-
reared children " of Eastern civilization have now and again

BOOTS AND SADDLE. 289

proved the need of the restraining arm of power. The same
brutal element that in the New York draft riots of 1863,
terrorized a great city until the veterans from the front could

ONCK MUKE A CIVILIAN.

master and quell them, has, since the war-days, on two or three
occasions sprung with snarl and growl at the throat of society
and sought to strangle where it could not rule.

290 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

The Orange riots of 1871 in New York City, the Railroad
strikes of the Middle and Western States in 1877 and the anar-
chist plots of a later day have been quelled only by the law
of the bullet and the bayonet while in one case at least the
militia of the States showed that even when the sympathy of
the soldier was with the victim of capital's oppression his duty
as an instrument of law and order rose superior to his sym-
pathies. Only the loyalty of the militia and the superb dis-
cipline of the regulars kept the two weeks of terror in 1877
from developing into a time of anarchy and mob-domination.

The peaceful work of the soldier in the years since the
Rebellion has been of no little value to American life and
progress. The great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 was made
a marvel of regularity and good order by the directing hand of
one of the nation's bravest soldiers, General Hawley of Con-
necticut. And in the elaborate display made by the United
States government at that great exposition the part contributed
by the War Department was both suggestive and creditable.
Here were model monitors, huge Rodman guns, pontoons,
bridge trains and army wagons. Cartridge making went on
before the eyes of the spectators and the exhibits entered by the
Engineer Corps and the Signal Service were especially valuable.

From the davs of Pike and Lon to those of Fremont

^ O

and the later explorers of our Western lands, the army of the
United States has been foremost in expeditions of research and
discovery in the remote and unknown sections of the nation's
broadening empire. And, in these recent years, the cause of
science owes to the brave investigations, under most adverse
circumstances, of two gallant American soldiers, Schwatka and
Greely, its latest information as to the lands and peoples about
the frozen Pole.

HOOTS AND SADDLE. 291

Of the four presidents of the United States, elected to that
office since the death of Lincoln, three have been soldiers, with
enviable records for leadership, valor and ability in the great
Rebellion and in the series of centennial celebrations, stretch-
ing through the years from 1876 to 1889, the military displays
have formed at once a picturesque and most important part.

There has been much cheap wit expended by so-called
humorists and caricaturists upon the regular army of the
United States. There have been querulous and dismal prophe-
cies indulged in by many self-appointed critics as to the meager-
ness and uselessness of this little force; but it is worthy of note
that in a free country whose citizens have equal voice in making
and executing laws and who, in time of stress are to be depended
upon to furnish from their eight million available fighting
men force enough to meet and repel any hostile endeavor that
foreign foes may make, the peace policy and the small army
enable all the vast resources of so great a nation to be consis-
tently developed and made serviceable. The standing armies
of Europe exceed two millions of men, the regular army of the
United States is but twenty-five thousand; the arable land of
the United States is fully two square miles to Europe's one,
the war-debt of the American republic is less than half
the war-debt of Europe; in the embattled nations of Europe,
one in five of all the able-bodied men is a soldier in active serv-
ice, in the United States only one in four hundred is a soldier.

The "standing army" of the United States, therefore, is not
and can never be a menace to the liberties of the people. It
is not even a standing army. It is, as General Kautz has
well demonstrated, " nothing more than the custodian of what
military knowledge exists in the country."

But the lessons of past experience show how long and how

292 BOOTS AND SADDLE.

expensive a task it is to convert the volunteer into a veteran.
The hope of the nation is its volunteer militia and it should be
the desire as it is the duty of the people of America to devise
some system by which, discounting the necessity that it is
hoped may never arise, the National Guard of the United
States shall be so schooled and disciplined as to convert them
into sturdy and available fighters whenever the occasion for
answering the call to arms shall arise.

New occasions demand new duties. The old fighters are
dropping away one by one. The leaders whose names were
household words during the years of civil war are becoming
only honored and enduring memories. But American pluck
and valor, strength and sturdiness, will and loyalty yet live and
it is possible for the future to repeat the glories and achieve-
ments of the past.

It has a noble example as its guide. The American soldier
in the Civil War and in the years that followed those days of
peril and endeavor has never had his equal in the generations
that went before, nor been excelled in courage, in manliness
and humanity in any army that ever marched to conquest or
valiantly fought for liberty.

"There never was a war," wrote Mr. Hugh McCullough,
"in which the best qualities of soldiers courage, patience,
endurance were so conspicuous on both sides. I do not
exaggerate when I say that Napoleon, who startled the world
by his brilliant achievements, had not under his command,
when nearly all Europe was at his feet, lieutenants of higher
accomplishments as soldiers than C. F. Smith and McPherson
and Reynolds and Sedgwick and W. H. Wallace, and Couch
and Custer and Curtis and Humphreys and Gilmore and
Sickles and Kearney and Reno and Lyttle and Doubleday

BOOTS AND SADDLE. 293

and Cox and Lew Wallace and Stoneman and Hayes and
Gresham and Ricketts and Granger and Wood and Palmer
and Steadman and Gearey and Mitchell and Wadsworth and
Sumner and scores of others of the same stamp whose names
are inscribed on the rolls of their country's honor. Many of
them sealed with their blood their devotion to the Union.
Their names will always be especially dear to their country-
men. Not to Grant alone, but to such as these and to the
hundreds of thousands of men officers and privates who
imperilled their lives in its support is the nation indebted for
its integrity."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

N the first of May, 1889, as
the third in the series of
great centennial parades
in the city of New York
swept by the crowded
reviewing stand, there
marched for inspection
before the President of
the United States eight
battalions of New York
schoolboys. With eyes
front, with heads erect

and with swinging steps perfectly timed the three thousand
young paraders went clown the brilliant Avenue, their measured
tramp tramp tramp telling alike of superb discipline and
of boyish determination to do well the part assigned them.
For fully half an hour the steady march went on and as the
president, in supreme delight, watched the rigid lines of fresh
young faces, he declared emphatically that in all the thousands
that had passed before him in review none had appeared more
soldier-like than these. And while General Sherman vowed

that the boys marched better than veterans and all the air was

294

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 295

white with fluttering handkerchiefs and vocal with approving
cheers, one enthusiastic on-looker was heard to exclaim : " Thank
God I am an American ! "

It was a prophecy of the future. All the day before the
flower of America's citizen soldiery had passed that same re-
viewing stand, a token of the triumphant present. But in
those serried ranks of young Americans marched the promise
of the nation ; for what the schoolboys of one city in the land
can do that can the lads of all the land perform. Come peace
or war, come need or cause for service it is upon such as these
that the nation must" depend for worth and valor, it is from
such as these that alike volunteer and veteran must be made.
The youth of the Republic hold ever its keeping and its life
in their hands.

The promise of the Future fitly followed in that national
display the grandeur of the Present and the glory of the Past.
On the second day of that historic parade and from that same
reviewing stand, the President of the United States had looked
down upon a gallant host the Nation's tribute to the memory
of its first soldier-president. What his twenty-second successor
saw was, as one chronicler has described it: "An army larger
than that first called into the field by President Lincoln to sup-
press the Rebellion, and alongside of which the Continental
forces in many a famous Revolutionary battle seem a corporal's
guard, called, most of it, from the pursuits of peace, yet
still maintaining the discipline and outward show of actual
warfare; Hitterinor ranks of infantry, battalion after battalion,

7 O O *

whose infinite variety of color and movement alone prevent the
tiring of all the senses; cavalry, and artillery clattering in their
gorgeous red and yellow uniforms over the smooth cobble-
stones; the dashing staff, all lace and plumes; generals of brig-

296 THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

ade, generals of division, Governors of States, an almost endless
file of the varied representatives of the military strength of the
Nation, gathered to be reviewed by its Chief Magistrate a
picture notable in the history of this pacific Republic."

And, not the least impressive sight in all that gallant array
that met the President's eye, was the appearance in line of the
more than eight thousand veterans in blue the representa-
tives of that comradeship of old soldiers known as the Grand
Army of the Republic.

The warm spring sun only served to emphasize by its
searching brilliancy the worn and faded shreds of bunting, held
proudly aloft above the ranks of blue those wind-torn and
bullet-riddled banners that were all that remained of the old-
time battle-flags. There were gray heads and grizzled beards
in plenty, for the years have touched alike the vigor and the
looks of those who, a quarter of a century back, were sturdy
and valiant young fighters in the ranks of Liberty and Law.
An empty sleeve here, a halting step there, a shrunken form or
a scarred face showed that, for these veterans of the nation's
mightiest conflict, the great parade of 1889 was as much a duty
to old memories as a pendant to present glory. In the ranks
of those eight thousand veterans, beneath the tattered and
faded battle-flags, marched the living presence of the storm-
awakened spirit of 1 86 1.

The comradeships of war are its choicest memorials. .The
fellow-soldiers who have touched elbow and kept step together,
comrades at mess, on picket, in drill, in march and battle, who
have suffered together, grumbled together, "skylarked" to-
gether and, together, experienced all the woes and worries, the
fun and frolic, the drills and disciplines, the excitements and
exultations of life in camp and service in the field become

THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

297

brothers in arms, indeed, and develop a fraternity and spirit
of kinship that, even though sometimes clannish and assertive,
still welds all the firmer that bond of brotherhood that holds
them fast as comrades and as friends long after the deeds that

THE STORY OK THE FIGHT.

brought them into sympathy have become but indistinct
memories.

It is asserted that, not long ago, at a concert in a Western
town a veteran in the audience whose knowledge of music was
less positive than his loyalty to old associations broke out into
such uproarious applause over the music of the noble Twelfth
Mass that the ushers hastened to quiet his enthusiasm. " Keep

298 THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

quiet?" he replied indignantly. "Not much I mustn't, not
when that is being played. I used to belong to that regiment,
and I'll shout for the boys as long as the Almighty gives me
breath." " That regiment ; what do you mean ? " asked the
usher, puzzled at this reply. " Why, that's what I mean," said
the veteran, pointing to a number on the programme. " There
it is. Twelfth Mass. That's my regiment. The old Twelfth

./ <^-j

Massachusetts. We fought from Bull Run to Five Forks."
And it was only when he was convined that the Twelfth Mass
was a piece of church music and not a regimental march that
the loyal old comrade quieted down again.

The American Soldier has ever loved to keep up the old
associations though the hand that has held the musket and the
foot that has kept the rhythmic step have both lost their old-time
precision and forgotten their old-time cunning.

Before the Army of the Revolution was disbanded, on the
fifteenth of April, 1783, General Henry Knox suggested the
permanent organization of the surviving officers of those days
of struggle into a society that should keep the old friendships
alive and extend needed help to its members. The plan found
favor with the brother-officers of Washington's trusted friend
and Chief-of-staff. The society was duly organized and taking
its name from the old Roman patriot Cincinnatus was called
the Society of the Cincinnati. At the first meeting after the
disbanding of the army, held at the City Tavern in Philadelphia
in 1784, Washington was elected President-General. The presi-
dents of the Society since Washington have been Alexander
Hamilton, Charles C. Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, Aaron
Ogden, Morgan Lewis, William Popham, Henry A. S. Dear-
born and Hamilton Fish.

The objects of the Society of the Cincinnati, as proclaimed

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 2 99

at its organization, were : " To perpetuate the remembrance of
the achievement of national independence as well as the mutual
friendships which have been formed under the pressure of com-
mon danger and in many instances cemented by the blood of
the parties." It was further asserted that it was the unalterable
determination of the members of the Cincinnati " to promote
and cherish between the respective States that union and
national honor so essentially necessary to the happiness and
future dignity of the American Empire."

Harmless and patriotic as these proclaimed purposes would
seem there still existed in the breasts of the earliest American
democrats so strong a feeling against anything that smacked
of the aristocratic element they had confederated to put down
that a bitter opposition against the new society was speedily
abroad and for years its members were regarded with suspicion
and denounced by over-zealous patriots. Mirabeau saw in the
society the seed of ruin to the new republic and declared that
in less than a century, it would have reduced America to the
condition of old Rome a nation divided into patricians and
plebeians.

It is scarcely necessary to say that alike the opposition of
fellow-countrymen and the prophecies of foreign critics were
unnecessary. The Society of the Cincinnati has ever remained
the same honorable and harmless association of heroes and the
sons of heroes that its founders contemplated. It has been for
years an honored American order of moderate dimensions
and of quiet ways, meeting semi-occasionally at banquets and
reunions and always loyal to the one toast, drank standing and
in silence : " To the memory of Washington !

The \Var of 1812 and that against Mexico had their associa-
tions of veterans while the great strife against secession has

300 THE VETERAA? SOLDIER.

left as its legacy to friendship the strong and active organiza-
tion known as the " Grand Army of the Republic."

SprinsfinG: from humble beginnings in the brain of an Illi-

i C5 C5 *3> o*

nois physician who had served as a surgeon in the war of the
Rebellion -- Dr. Benjamin F. Stephenson this organization
of veteran Union soldiers has, since its modest beginning at
Decatur, Illinois, on the sixth of April, 1866, grown to great
proportions and now possesses a membership of fully four hun-
dred thousand.

Its objects, according to the proclamation of its first national
convention, are : " to preserve and strengthen those kind and
fraternal feelings which bind together the soldiers, sailors and
marines who united to suppress the late Rebellion and to per-
petuate the memory and history of the dead. To assist such
former comrades in arms as need help and protection, and to
extend needful aid to the widows and orphans of those who
have fallen. To maintain true allegiance to the United States

of America based upon a paramount respect for and fidelity to
its constitution and laws, to discountenance whatever tends to
weaken loyalty, incites to insurrection, treason and rebellion or
in any manner impairs the efficiency and permanency of our
free institutions ; and to encourage the spread of universal
liberty, equal rights and justice to all men."

Here certainly is nothing that would seem to indicate an
attempt at political dictation or a design upon the treasury of
the United States for the unlimited pensioning of all who have
worn the blue. And yet, such are the criticisms made against
this noble organization of old friends and comrades by those
who seek to belittle its worth or to misjudge its motives.
Surely no veteran soldier of the United States who still loves
the old flag for which he risked life and home and all he held

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 3 oi

most dear would now seek to sully his past or degrade the
tattered banner to which he proudly points as the chief relic of
that stirring time of war, by placing a premium on patriotism
and declaring that the government to whose salvation he freely
and willingly devoted his life should now reimburse him for his
patriotism and make merchandise of his loyalty ! *

It is estimated that there are now some nine hundred thou-
sand veteran soldiers, the survivors of those two and a half
millions of volunteers who took up arms in defense of the
Union. Distributed through all the departments of American
life and labor, from president to plowman, nothing has become
them so well as the readiness with which they fell into the old
life again and changed from soldiers to citizens, nothing has so
emphasized the real manhood of those who followed the flag as
the kindly spirit which they display toward those who were
their foemen in the field. The friendliness that pervaded the
opposing camps in war time and ' displayed itself in acts of
courtesy on the picket line and in deeds of kindliness at Appo-
mattox lived on after the war had closed. " When the Union
veteran returned to the North," says Mr. Kilmer, " he did not
disguise his faith in the good intentions of the Southern fight-
ing man, and for a number of years after peace was made, the
process of fraternization went quietly forward. The business
relations of the sections and the interchange of settlers brought
into close communication the rank and file of both armies, and
the spirit of good-will that had been manifested in a manner so
unique at the front was found to be a hearty and general
sentiment.''

That the United States has been generous to the old soldiers of the nation and to those they left behind
may be judged from the fact that, to-day, the United States pension rolls contain nearly half a million of names.
The expenditures for pensions in 1888 amounted to $82,000,000, while the total outlay of the National Govern-
ment was ^267,000,000. The expenditures of the German War Office for the year ending March 31, 1888, were
about 86,000,000. The cost of the British army for the years 1886-87, inclusive of pensions, was about $91, 000,000.

302 THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

There is truth indeed in the old saying that nothing so
makes men respect one another as standing up in the ranks and
firing at one another. The cordial manner in which the vete-
rans of the blue have extended again and again the right hand
of fellowship to the veterans of the gray is the best proof of
American manliness, the best assurance of American stability
and the best exposition of that noble hope with which the
greatest victim of that bloody strife closed his matchless second
inaugural: "With malice toward none, with chanty for all, with
firmness in the right as God giveth us to see the right, let us
strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's
wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for
his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations."

On each recurring Decoration Day the flowers of remem-
brance drop on the graves of "Yank" and "Johnnie" alike;
in the reunions of war veterans, greetings as cordial are given
to old foemen as to old friends; and in all this the grizzled

boys in blue and those in gray are but carrying out the spirit
that displayed itself twenty years ago when in the cemetery at
Columbus, Mississippi, the Southern women let fall upon the
graves of those whom they deemed their enemies the flowers
they had gathered to strew above the ashes of their own loved
ones. How much of real Christlikeness there is in the lines*
that commemorated this act of kindliness and chanty:

" By the flow of the inland river

Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,

Asleep are the ranks of the dead;

* Written by Frances Miles Finch, and first published in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1867.

THE OLD FLAG.

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 105

Under the sod and the dew

Waiting the judgment day;
Under the one, the Blue;
I'ncler the other, the Gray.

" These, in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat ;
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day ;
Under the laurel, the Blue ;
Under the willow, the (iray.

" From the silence of sorrowful hours

The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers

Alike for the friend and the foe ;
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;
Under the roses, the Blue;
Under the lilies, the Gray.

" So with an equal splendor
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all ;
Under the sod and the dew.

Waiting the judgment day ;
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.

" So when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain;
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day ;
Wet with the rain, the Blue;
Wet with the rain, the Gray.

306 THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

" Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done ;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won ;
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue;
Under the garlands, the Gray.

" Xo more shall the war-cry sever,

( >r the winding rivers be red ;
They banish our anger forever,

"When they laurel the graves of our dead:
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Grav.''

For twenty-five years the noise of battle has been absent
from the land. The flight of the murderous bullet sent for the
subjection or the subjugation of the last protesting red-man
becomes less and less frequent. Since Caster's gallant but
fatal fight no Indian hostilities have risen to the importance
of battle. The humdrum of garrison life and the narrowing
sphere of duty in the one hundred and twenty-five army posts
scattered throughout the land are relaxing for the soldiers of
peace the rigors and disciplines of war. Progress is modifying
the methods and transforming the tactics of evolution and

action. " In another decade," General Kautz declares, u there
will not be left a military remnant of our last experience that
could be utilized, for the improvement and changes that have
been made in the means of warfare will require new and original
adaptations of our resources." The hope and the welfare
of our national defense is to lie not in a small and alien-
recruited regular army, but in an intelligent, well-disciplined

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 307

and patriotic State militia, drawn from the youth of the land
and cemented by a system of national organization into the
volunteer army of the United States the National Guard of
the Republic.

According to the latest statistics the National Guard of the
several States now amounts in the aggregate to a little over
one hundred thousand men. Of these New York State leads
with thirteen thousand ; Pennsylvania comes next with eighty-
five hundred ; Ohio and Massachusetts follow after with fifty-
six hundred and fifty-one hundred respectively, while South
Carolina, Georgia and California are next in rank with re-
spective forces of forty-eight hundred, forty-six hundred and
forty-four hundred. Nevada's valiant four hundred and far-off
Wyoming's slender forty-five are the lowest figures in the list.

The officers of high rank and many of the company com-
manders, according to Major Brust, have been taken from those
who served in the war, while those officers who did not see
service there, he says, are chiefly young men who are " being
moulded and influenced by these veterans; and this influence
will last long after the old soldiers are gone." The ranks of
the State Militia, Major Brust asserts, are filled by "self-sus-
taining young men who are unequaled in love of country, sol-
dierly qualities, education and habits."

The volunteer militia has, even from earliest times, been
ever the chief dependence of the nation for the maintenance of
its honor and the certainty of its defense. Some of the exist-
ing militia organizations are of great age. The Ancient and
Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts is the oldest
existing volunteer association in America and, with the excep-
tion of two or three regiments in the Austrian and British serv-

ice, the oldest military organization in the world. It was a

3 o8 THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

development of the earliest colonial train-bands and dates its
incorporation from 1637. The First Corps of Cadets of Mas-
sachusetts was chartered in 1741 ; the First Company of Gov-
ernor's Foot Guards of Connecticut dates from 1 771 ; the second
company was organized just before the battle of Lexington.
The First Troop of Philadelphia City Cavalry, the possessor
of the original " stars and stripes," the First Light Infantry
Association of Providence, the Albany Burgess Corps and the
State Fencibles of Philadelphia all date back to the early years ot
the nineteenth century and the famous Seventh Regiment of
New York was organized in 1824. How important a factor in
the military history of this land these militia regiments have
been is instanced by the fact that in the ranks of the Seventh
Regiment of New York over six hundred men who fought as
officers of the army and navy in the Civil War were trained to
service including three major-generals, nineteen brigadier-gen-
erals, twenty-nine colonels and forty-six lieutenant colonels.
Tfie first Lio^ht Infantry of Rhode Island furnished five c^en-

O J O

erals, nine colonels and nearly two hundred lesser officers, while
nearly every member of Ellsworth's famous Chicago Zouaves

> J O

received a commission during the war.

There was a time when service in the militia was esteemed
of small account and the material as well as the morale of the
volunteers was quite below the standard. Of recent years there
has been a decided improvement stimulated by the awakening
interest in the necessity and the wisdom of an armed force as
the best surety of national defense. The adjutant-general of
the United States Army in his latest report spoke in high
terms of the promising condition of the National Guard and
said that " the steadily increasing interest manifested by the
militia of the States is evidenced by the high percentage of

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 3 o 9

attendance at the annual encampments and the general excel-
lent military spirit of the troops."

In war as in peace the American people are equal to every
emergency. Should war visit the land again as come it may
-the "superb personality" of those who will rally to the
defense of their home-land will be as ready as ever to assert
itself in willing obedience to the demands and duties of the
hour.

As a people we do not love war. The best generals have
been those whose sympathies and inclinations were against
bloodshed. Grant and Sheridan, typical soldiers both, had an
utter abhorrence of war and the gallant cavalry leader has been
heard to declare that " the time is coming when the killing of
a thousand men in battle will be looked upon as a thousand
murders."

But, when occasion demanded, these leaders were quick in
action, furious in battle, relentless in methods. War is no
parlor play ; it is terrible, repulsive, brutalizing. But horrible
as it is, it has been a factor in the world's enlightenment ; bar-
barous as it appears it has been an instrument for the world's
refinement. Duty sometimes compels to desperate deeds and
when such occasion arises the fiercest fighter is the strongest
inducement toward peace.

It is said that in the ranks of the Confederate army there
was one soldier, at least, who sought to wage a bloodless war.
He was a member of the Forty-First Georgia regiment. He
was in every battle fought by. his regiment, in every skirmish
in which his company was engaged, in every charge made by
his command, but he never fired his gun. He had conscien-
tious scruples against bloodshed, though none against armed
aggression. He simply did not believe in killing men. He

3 io THE VETERAN SOLDIER.

frequently charged the enemy with a yell, and saw his comrades
fall by his side, but whether routing the Union soldiers or being
routed by them he would not shoot. He was always ready for
duty stood guard, remained at the picket post, and obeyed
implicitly every command of his superior officers except to
draw cartridges, load his gun and shoot.

Had the armies been composed throughout of such material
of course no result could have been reached. To fight to
conquer is to fight to kill.

And so, whatever the future may have in store, the Ameri-
can volunteer will not be found wanting. Never again, upon
the battle-fields of their own land, will Americans be pitted
against Americans ; but the question now is, as a recent writer
puts it, " whether American volunteers of the future shall enter
upon the campaign against a foreign foe, when war is forced
upon them, as an army of well-trained citizen soldiery, or,
speaking from a military point of view, as a heterogeneous
mob. Conditions have changed'since military men now living
acquired their experience, and they will continue to change.
Unless our methods of preparation are in keeping with the
times, we must one day pay dearly for the oversight."

It is due to the past valor and the present efficiency of the
American volunteer that this oversight shall never be permitted.
What is worth having is worth defending and the price of
liberty, as we know from national experience, is eternal vigilance.

" The past at least is secure ! " Whatever the future of the
American Soldier shall be its successes, its changes or its
failures cannot rob him of the luster of his ancient glory or
becloud the record of his old renown. The progress of inven-
tion in the science and art of war may render unnecessary the
"serried lines" that have for many a century made up the

THE VETERAN SOLDIER. 3II

poetry and panoply of battle; smokeless powder and noise-
less guns may add to the terrors of the fight the horror of
a death-dealing silence ; military maneuvers may become but
the accompaniments to the horrid hiss of steam and the
silent mystery of electricity ; enthusiasm may be but the work-
ing-out of a scientific formula and valor but a thing of cogs
and cranks ; but spite of all mechanical advances and of every
progressing change the American Soldier will be the soldier
still. Still will he be patient, courageous, impetuous; as stout
of heart, as stern of will, as full of pluck and heroism as when
in the days gone by he stood for liberty at Lexington and
Bunker Hill, at Monmouth and Saratoga and Yorktown, for
stubborn spirit and unconquerable arm at Lundy's Lane and
New Orleans, for dash and daring at Monterey and Buena
Vista and Chapultepec, for patriotism, valor, undying loyalty
and deathless fame at Shiloh and Gettysburg, at Antietam and
Chickamauga, at Malvern Hill and Petersburg and Atlanta,
for desperate bravery unconquerable even in savage death at
the Withlacoochee and the Little Big Horn, and, above all, for
generosity, for manliness and the charity that never faileth
the nineteenth century chivalry that held out to a conquered
foe the hands of brotherly love and forgiveness across the
furled flags and the silent drums of historic Appomattox.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

WITH CERTAIN HAI'l'ENINC.S THAT HAVE AFFECTED HIS STORY PRESENTED IN
CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

Not all the fighting nor all the military operations that have had place on American soil
may be properly credited to the American soldier. Explorer, conqueror and adventurer from
over-sea were not native to the soil ; the real American soldier was the fighter evolved from
those foreign wars that were transplanted to American soil or from the early struggles with
those earlier soldiers of the sod the red Americans. In this chronological story, therefore,
the American Soldier will be esteemed as actually dating from the days of revolution, although
a few antecedent dates are given as indicative of the several stages of progress which pre-
pared the way for the real American.

1622. Indian massacre in Virginia March 22.

1635. Clayborne's rebellion in Virginia and Maryland.

1637. War with the Pequods.

1644. Second Indian massacre in Virginia April 18.

1645. Ingle and Clayborne's rebellion in Maryland.

1655. Civil War in Maryland between Puritan and Catholic. \ew Sweden (now Dela-
ware) conquered by Stuyvesant December.

1664. New Netherlands surrendered to a British fleet September 24.

1675. Outbreak of King Philip's War in New England. Indian War in Virginia.

1676. Death of Philip and end of War. Bacon's rebellion in Virginia.
1686. Bostonians rose in revolt and imprisoned Governor Andros.

1688. Popular revolt against Governor Sothel in North Carolina.

1689. Popular uprising against Andros in Massachusetts and New York.

1690. First French and Indian War.
1702. Queen Anne's War.

1710. Capture of Port Royal by colonists.

1732. Hirth of George Washington February 22.

1740. Oglethorpe invested St. Augustine.

1742. Oglethorpe repulsed Spanish attack on Georgia colony.

1744. King George's War began.

1745. I.ouisburg captured by the colonists June 17.
1748. King George's War ended.

1754. Battle of Great Meadows. Capture of Fort Necessity.

1755. French driven from Acadia. General Braddock defeated by French and Indians
July 9. Dieskau defeated at Lake George September 8.

1756. French and Indian War. Montcalm captures Fort Oswego August 14.

1757. Surrender of Fort William Henry.

1758. Defeat of Abercrombie July 8. Capture of Louisburg July 27. Colonists cap-
ture Fort Frontenac August 27. Capture of Fort Duquesne November 25.

3'3

3 i4 ACHIEVEMENTS OF 7^HE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

1759. General Wolfe captured Quebec September 13. Capture of Ticonderoga and
Crown Point.

1763. Pontiac's War.

1765. Stamp Act passed March 8.

1768. A garrison of British soldiers under General Gage entered Boston September 26.

1770. Fight between citizens and soldiers at "Golden Hill," New York City January 18.
The "Boston Massacre" March 5.

1771. Fifteen hundred North Carolina "Regulators" dispersed by the governor with one
thousand militia May 16.

I 773- "Boston Tea Party" December 16.

1774. General Gage made Commander-in-Chief of British forces in America April 2.

1775. The Battle of Lexington. British driven from Concord to Boston by the enraged
farmers April 19. Ticonderoga surprised and captured by Ethan Allen May 10. Wash-
ington appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army June 1 5. The Americans made a heroic
stand at the Battle of Bunker Hill June 17. Montreal captured by General Montgomery.
Ethan Allen sent as prisoner to England September 25. General Montgomery killed in an
assault on Quebec December 31.

1776. The British evacuated Boston March 17. Fort on Sullivan's Island, Charleston,
repulsed the British Tune 28. Declaration of Independence adopted July 4. Fort
Washington attacked and captured by General Howe November 16.

1777. The Americans victorious at the Battle of Princeton January 3. Jane McCrea,
daughter of a New Jersey clergyman, murdered near Fort Edward by the Indian allies of
Burgoyne July 27. Fort Schuyler surrounded by British and Indians. General Herkimer
failed in an attempt at relief. General Arnold succeeded August 3. General Putnam sent
his famous message to Governor Tryon who had demanded the release of a prisoner taken by
Putnam as a spy August 7. General Stark defeated the British at Bennington, Vt., and
uttered his memorable words: "There, my boys, are your enemies; you must beat them or
Molly Stark sleeps a widow to-night" August 16. The Battle of Brandy wine fought.
Defeat of Americans opened Philadelphia to the British September n. General Burgoyne
defeated at the Battle of Stiliwater September 19. The " Massacre of Paoli " resulted from
the surprise and defeat of General Wayne September 20. Sir William Howe occupied
Philadelphia for the British September 27. Burgoyne again defeated October 7. Bur-
goyne surrendered at Saratoga October 17.

1778. British evacuated Philadelphia June 18. Washington attacked them at Monmouth
with slight success June 28. A party of loyalists and Indians, led by John Butler, massacred
most of the inhabitants in Wyoming Valley, Pa., while the able-bodied men were away at the
war July 4. The British took Savannah December 29.

1779. General Wayne captured Stony Point July 16. D'Estaing and Lincoln defeated at
Savannah October 9.

1780. Fort Moultrie surrendered to the British May 6. Lord Cornwallis reached Peters-
burg, Va., on his northern march May 29. The Americans defeated at Camden, S. C.,with
great loss August 16. Major Andre captured by American guerrillas September 23.
Major Andre hanged as a spy October 2.

1781. General Greene defeated the British in the Battle of the Cowpens [anuary 17.
Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown October 19.

1783. An agreement for the cessation of hostilities between England and America Janu-
ary 20. Treaty of Peace between Great Britain and United States signed at Paris
September 3. The British evacuated New York November 25. General Washington
retired to private life December 23.

1786. Daniel Shays prevented the holding of the courts at Worcester and Springfield,
Mass. December.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE A ME K 1C 'AN SOLDIER. 3 r 5

1787. Shays and two thousand men fled from Springfield. General Lincoln pursued them,
took many prisoners and dispersed the rest January.

1789. Death of Ethan Allen the leader of the "Green Mountain Boys " in the Revolution

February 13. Washington was inaugurated at New York and accorded military honors
April 30.

1794. The Whiskey Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania brought to an end October 24.
1799. (ieneral Washington died December 14.

1811. Battle of Tippecanoe fought by General Harrison November 7.

1812. Declaration of War between United States and Great Britain June 19. "The
Federal Republican " riot broke out in Baltimore. Many were killed and wounded before the
military appeared on the scene July 27. General Hull surrendered Detroit to the British
military stores, three thousand men and the whole of Michigan Territory August 16.

1813. Americans landed at Sackett's Harbor and captured British stores and prisoners at
York April 25. Americans occupied Detroit September 29. General Harrison defeated
the British and Indians in the Battle of the Thames. Tecumseh killed October 5.

1814. Generals Scott and Ripley defeated the British at the battle of Chippewa July 4.
The British were repulsed with heavy loss at the battle of Lundy's Lane July 25. A large
British force repulsed in an attack on I,ake Erie August 15. City of Washington captured
by (ieneral Ross. National Library, Capitol, President's House and other public buildings
burned August 24. American land forces defeated near Baltimore September 12.
Treaty of peace between England and United States signed at Ghent December 24.

1815. (ieneral Jackson victorious at the Battle of New Orleans January 8.

1819. Treaty with Spain ceding Florida to the United States signed at Washington
February 23.

1824. General I^afayette received at New York with the greatest honor August 15.

1825. Corner stone of Bunker Hill monument was laid, Lafayette assisting at the cere-
mony June 17. l^afayette set sail for France after his triumphal tour through the United
States Sept 8.

1832. President Jackson sent troops to Charleston to protect the revenue officers. The
Black- Hawk War brought to a close August 2.

1834. Militia called out to suppress riot at the New York City election April 8. A
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York was broken up by a mob
July 4.

1835. Texas proclaimed its independence December 22. Major Dadeand over one hun-
dred men ambushed and massacred by the Seminoles December 28.

1836. The office of an abolitionist paper at Cincinnati was attacked and pillaged. Mili-
tary called out July 29,

1837. The Seminoles defeated by General Taylor at the battle of Lake Okechobee
December 25.

1842. The Dorr Rebellion began in Rhode Island May 3. General Fremont's exploring
expedition to the Rocky Mountains returned to St. Louis October 17.

1843. John C. Fremont set out on a second exploring expedition to Oregon and California

May 29.

1846. Mexicans defeated by Taylor at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma May 8 and 9.
Monterey surrendered to General Taylor September 24.

1847. General Taylor with five thousand men defeated twenty thousand Mexicans at Buena
Vista February 22. Vera Cruz surrendered to General Scott March 29. Scott defeated
the Mexicans in the battle of Cerro Gordo April 18. Heights of Chapultepec stormed and
captured by the American army under General Scott September 12. City of Mexico taken

September 13. The fort at Walla Walla, Oregon, captured by the Indians. Indians pur-
sued and defeated in three battles November 29.

316 ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

1848. Colonel Washington marched from Monterey to Santa Fe, Major Graham to Cali-
fornia. Object to defend the frontier. Treaty of peace signed with Mexico at Guadalupe
Hidalgo, ceding New Mexico and California February 2.

1849. " Astor Place Riot " dispersed by the Militia May 10. Proclamation of the Presi-
dent against Lopez's expedition. Expedition fails. Major Stein defeated a party of Apaches
near Placer Mines. A Detachment left Santa Fe for Texas to protect the settlers against the
Comanches and filibusters August 1 1.

1850. Lopez with six hundred men took Cardenas but was compelled to evacuate in a few
hours. Returned to New Orleans May 19. Lopez with three hundred and twenty-three men
defeated a force of thirteen hundred near Las Pozas August.

1851. Proclamation of the President against second expedition. This expedition also
failed. William Walker proclaimed the Republic of Sonora. Carvajal, a Mexican bandit,
captured by Lieutenant Gibbon. Four hundred and eighty men under General Lopez
invaded Cuba August n. Lopez captured and executed for high treason.

1852. Captain R. B. Marcy, Fifth Infantry, together with Brevet-Captain G. B. McClellan
(afterwards General) made an exploring trip along the Red River.

1855. Indian War April 25-29. General Harney gains an important victory over the
Sioux at Bluewater, Nebraska September 3. Election riots and insurrection in Kansas.
Congress organized four new regiments to protect the frontier. William Walker, the filibuster,
took Granada.

1856. Kansas troubles continued. William Walker defeated March. Walker again
victorious. Elected President and recognized by U. S. Government April. Massacre at
Pottawatomie, Kan., where John Brown was encamped May 25. Captain Pate and thirty
men captured at Black Jack, Kan. June 2. Free State legislature forcibly dispersed at
Topeka by U. S. troops under Colonel Sumner July 4. Free State men captured Colonel
Titus and twenty men near Lecompton August 14. John Brown at Osawatomie made a
brave defense against D. R. Atchison but was defeated August 29. A party frum Missouri
forced one hundred and fifty men to go to St. Louis September i. Two thousand Missourians
retire from before the military near Lawrence. Major Heintzelman defeated Cortina's
forces near Rio Grande city December 14.

1857. A riot of the employes of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad quelled by the military
after a desperate fight May i Troops march to support the new governor of Utah May
to June. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Kansas insurrection quelled. William Walker
met with reverses and was captured September. William Walker landed at Nicaragua
again November. William Walker retaken December.

1858. Tranquillity restored in Utah. Captain Marcy and sixty-five men made a heroic
march of fifty-one days in the dead of winter from Fort Bridger to Fort Massachusetts.
William Walker taken again at the mouth of the Mississippi October.

1859. John Brown captured Harper's Ferry October 16. John Brown executed
December 2. General Harney sent troops to San Juan island near Vancouver's to protect
American settlers against the British who claimed it as a part of their territory.

1860. General Walker's Filibustering Expedition to Sonora, Nicaragua and Honduras.
William Walker captured Honduras June. William Walker shot at Truxillo Septem-
ber 3. Military display in New York in honor of the Prince of Wales October n. South
Carolina seceded from the Union. The first State to go out December 20. Major Ander-
son occupied Fort Sumter December 26.

1861 Fort Moultrie fired the first shot of the war at the steamer Star of the West
January 9. The Confederate States of America organized Februarys. President Lincoln
called for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months April. Bombardment of Fort
Sumter began April 12. Major Anderson surrendered the Fort April 13. Norfolk, Va..
occupied by the Confederates April 21. President Lincoln called for eighty-three thousand

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 317

men to serve for " three years or the war " May 3. The first steel guns made in this coun-
try, at Trenton, were declared ready for use July i. The Unionists were defeated at the
battle of Bull Run fought at Manassas July 21.

1862. General Thomas defeated General Zollicoffer at Mill Spring, Ky. January 19. Fort
Henry evacuated by the Confederates February 6. The occupation of Fort Donelson by General
Grant gave the Federal armies control of Kentucky and a large part of Tennessee February
16. General Sigel defeated the Rebels at Pea Ridge, Arkansas March 6 and 7. Grant
nearly defeated by A. S. Johnston at the Battle of Shiloh, death of Johnston April 5.
Grant, reinforced, drove Beauregard back April 6. Island No. 10 surrendered to Pope after
twenty-three days' bombardment April 7. General Butler's army landed in New Orleans
April 25. Yorktown evacuated by the Confederates May 3. General McClellan defeated
General Johnston at Fair Oaks, V'a. May 31. Memphis occupied by the Federals June 6.
"Seven days fight " began between Lee and McClellan at Oak Grove June 25. Lee victo-
rious at Games' Mill June 27. Drove the Union forces till July i. McClellan repulsed
Lee at Malvern Hill July i. General Karly led a raid up the Shenandoah and defeated
General Wallace on the Monocacy in Maryland. Went very near to Washington July 9.
Second Battle of Bull Run. Pope defeated by Jackson and Lee August 28 and 29. Harper's
Ferry surrendered to Stonewall Jackson September 1 5. Confederates under Lee repulsed
at Antietam by McClellan Septeml>er 17 Confederates retreated into Virginia September
19. Lee repulsed Burnside at Fredericksburg December 13. Rosecrans worsted by Bragg
at Murfreesboro' December 31.

1863. President Lincoln proclaimed the freedom of the slaves in the seceded States Jan-
uary i. Rosecrans forced Bragg to retreat at Murfreesboro' January 2. A Conscription
Act passed by Congress for drafting able-bodied men into the army February 26. General
Hooker defeated by I,ee at Chancellorsville and the Wilderness May 2, 3 and 4. Grant
began the siege of Vicksburg May 18. The Battle of Gettysburg l>egan July I. Siege of
Vicksburg ended. Pemberton surrendered. Lee retreated hastily from Gettysburg July 4.
Port Hudson was surrendered to General Banks. This opened the whole Mississippi River
July 8 The Draft Riots in New York lasted for several days befoie they were put down
by the military who were away at the time July 13. Rosecrans driven back at Chickamauga
by General Bragg. General Thomas held his ground and saved Union Army September 19
and 20. Union troops drove Bragg's army from the summit of Missionary Ridge Novem
ber 25. <ii-iu-i.il Longstreet repulsed by Genera! Burnside at Knoxville November 29.
General I-ongstreet again repulsed at Knoxville He retreated into Virginia December i

1864. President Lincoln ordered a draft of five hundred thousand men to begin on March 10
for three years, or the war February i . March 1 5 called for two hundred thousand volunteers.
July 18 called for five hundred thousand volunteers and on December 20 for three hundred
thousand. General Grant made Lieutenant-General of all the forces in the United States
April 2. The Fort Pillow Massacre was ordered by General Forrest April 12. The great
Battle of the Wilderness was fought May 5 and 6. Battle of Spottsylvania Court House
May 9-13. Battle at Resaca, Ga., between the armies of Sherman and Johnston May 15.
Battle of Cold Harbor. Grant repulsed by Lee June 3. Grant crossed the James and
joined Butler June 15. Attack of Grant upon Petersburg failed June 16. General Sher
man fought a sharp battle at Atlanta July 20. July 22 another battle was fought. Still
another, the Confederates continuing to sustain Sherman's flank movements July 27. A
mine was exploded under the Confederate works at Petersburg. It demolished the works, but
the Union assault that followed was repulsed July 30. The town completely flanked.
Hood abandoned it August. City of Atlanta occupied by General Sherman. From this
city began his famous march to the sea September 2. Sheridan defeated Early at the Battle
of Winchester. September 19. Sheridan made his famous ride October 19. Sherman
l>egan his march to the sea November 14. Sherman reached Savannah December 10.

3 i8 ACIIIErEMEXTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDJEK.

General Thomas defeated (General Mood at Nashville. This battle ended the war in that
region December 15. Sherman occupied Savannah December 21. General Butler re-
pulsed from Fort Fisher December 25.

1865. General Terry took Fort Fisher, the last open port of the Rebels January 15. Un-
successful meeting of President Lincoln and Seward with Vice-President Stephens of the
Confederacy for the purpose of arranging a peace February 2. Columbia, S. C., occupied
by Sherman's forces, was destroyed that night by fire. Charleston evacuated by Hardee also
destroyed by fire February 17. Charleston occupied by Federals February 18. The Con-
federates took Fort Stedman. It was quickly retaken by the Federals March 25. Grant
began his movements to drive Lee out of the defenses of Petersburg March 29. The siege
of Petersburg ended April i. Confederate government fled from Richmond. Lee's army
followed during the night April 2. General Lee surrendered to Grant April 9. Presi-
dent Lincoln assassinated April 14. General Johnston surrendered to Sherman April
26. Jefferson Davis captured while fleeing the country. Imprisoned at Fortress Monroe
May 1 1. General Stuart, the cavalry leader, killed in a fight with Sheridan at Yellow Tavern,
Ya. May 12.

1866. General Meade checked the Fenian design of invading Canada April 19.

1870. Fenian raid into Canada repelled by the militia. O'Neill, the leader, captured by the
United States Marshal May 26. General Robert E. Lee died October 12.

1871. The military put down a serious riot in New York between the Orangemen and the
Roman Catholics. Sixty-two rioters killed and many wounded July 12. An attempted raid
into Manitoba prevented by United States troops October.

1873. The Modocs defeated the United States troops January 17. State of Civil War
prevailed in New Orleans for a time February The Modoc.s treacherously kill General
Canby and Mr. Thomas, disregarding a flag of truce April 11.

1875. Government troops ejected several illegally elected members from the Louisiana
Legislature.

1876. General Caster and his soldiers massacred in Montana by the Indians under Sitting
Hull June 25. Centennial anniversary of American Independence at Philadelphia with
many military reviews May 10- November 10.

1877. The " most serious labor riot ever known in America " began on the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad. Riots occurred at Pittsburg, Baltimore, Reading, Chicago and other places.
Finally put down by military force. Ten million dollars worth of property destroyed July 14.
Joseph, chief of the Nez Perce Indians, captured with five hundred followers October i.

1879. General Grant received at San Francisco with a grand procession after his two
years' tour round the world September 20. General Merrill relieved Captain Payne's
Company after a five days' siege by the Utes at Milk River, Col. October 6. Overland
Arclic Expedition led by Lieutenant Schwatka.

1883. Armed citizens put down a revolt of the prisoners in the Missouri Penitentiary
February 23. General Sherman retired from the command in-chief of ihe army of the United
Stales. General Sheridan succeeded him November i. Centennial Anniversary of close of
Revolulion an occasion of greal display Statue of Washington unveiled November 25.

1884. Troops called out to quell the riots in Cincinnati due to incompetent administration
of justice March 29.

1885. The dedication of the Washington Monument. The soldiers took a prominent part
February:>i. General Grant died July 23. Twenty-five thousand soldiers took part in
the interment of General Grant at Riverside Park, New York City. Also members of the
G. A. R. August 7. General McClellan died October 29.

1886. The Apache, Geronimo, surrendered to Lieutenant Marrs March 21. Troops
sent to Kansas City to protect the mails against the strikers on the western railroads March
22. Geronimo escaped to the mountains March 31. Sheriff dispersed a labor riot at Fort

ACHIEVEMENTS Of* THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

3'9

Worth, Texas April 3. The McCormick Reaper Works, Chicago, defended against
rioters by policemen May i. Militia put down a labor riot at Milwaukee May 5.

1887. Geronimo surrendered to General Miles September 6. Grand military procession in
Philadelphia at the centennial celebration of the adoption of the Constitution September 16.

1888. General Phil. Sheridan died August 5.

1889. Centennial of the Inauguration of Washington celebrated at New York. Monster
parade of the military April 30.

As an addendum to this chronological account of the achievements of the
American Soldier the following tabulated facts as regards his superiors, his
battles and his strength, are offered. It is but proper to explain that these
lists form part of a new and very valuable work on the curious facts in United
States history, compiled, after great research, by Mr. Malcolm Townsend, and
soon to be published under the comprehensive title " U. S."

THE AIOIY.

COMMANUEIMN-ClllEr, THE PRESIDENT. [( Olistil lltioil, AllT. II., 1.]

On* <;enend. )|ip ^^.^^ \ Expired August 5, 18H8.

Three Major-(jcnerals,

(Six Brigadier-Ciencrals.

DEPARTMENT*, Adjutant-General, Inspcctor.ficncral, Quartermaster-General, Ord-
nance, Medical and Pay, Corp* of Engineers, Battalion or Engineer Soldiers, Sigual
Office, Bureau of Military Justice, Thirty Pout ami Four Regular Chaplains.
Five Regiment! of Artillery,
Ten Kcginicnts of Cavalry.
Twenty five Regiments of Inliiiitry.

Kt'.iM N! OP ARTILLERY.

Twrlvc Batteries,

One Colonel,

One Lieut-Colonel,

One Major (for every four batteries),

One Adjutant.

One Quartermaster and Commissary,

One Sr|-i'Mlit-Majiir.

One Oaartermaftter-oergeant,

One < lnt I Musician.

BATTKICY OF ARTII.I.KRY.

One Captain,

Two First I. lent*., One Second Lieut.,
One First Sergeant, OneQiiartcrinaster-

Sergeant,

Four Sergeant*, Four Corporals,
Two Musician*, Two Artificers,

One Wagoner,

A* many privates, not exceeding 1222, as
the {'resident may direct [may add one
Second Lieut., two Serge-ants and four
.Corporate].

ItKlilNENT OP CAVALRY.

Twelve troops,

One Colonel,

One Lieut. -Colonel,

Three Majors,

One Surgeon,

One Ass't Surgeon, One Adjutant,

One Quartermaster, One Veterinary Sur-
geon.

OneSergcaiit-Major.Onc (Quartermaster-
Sergeant,

One Sadler Sergeant, One Chief Musi-
cian,

One Trumpeter.

TROOP or CAVALRY.

One Captain,

One First Lieut., One Second Ijeut.,
One First Sergeant, One Quartermaster-

Sergeant,
Five Sergeant,-, Four Corporal*, Two

Trumpeters,

Two Farmers, One Saddler, One Wag-
oner.
A* many private* not exceeding 78, as

the President may direct.
[Enlisted men of two troops are colored.]

REGIMENT OP INFANTRY.

Consist* of Ten Companies,

One Colonel,

One Lieut. -Colonel,

One Major,

One Adjutant,

One Quartermaster. One Serg't-Major,
One Quartermaster-Sergeant.
One Chief and Two Principal Musician*,
A Chaplain, Thirtv Post Chaplains.

COMPANY OP INFANTRY.

One Captain,

One First Lieut., One Second Lieut.,

One First Sergeant, One Quartermaster-
Sergeant,

Four Sergeants, Four Corporals, Two
Artificers,

Two Musicians, One Wagoner,

Fifty Privates.

The' President may increase to 100 in
emergency.

[Enlisted men of two regiments are
colored.]

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

Army Corps, two or more Divisions under one command.

A Division, two or more Brigades.

A Jirigade, two or more regiments of Infantry or Cavalry.

A Kegimtnt, two or more Battalions.

A Battalion, an aggregation of from two to eight companies.

A Company, consists on a war footing, of 100 men.

A Platoon, two equal parts of a company.

PUESCBIBED DUTIES.

General, none (being next, to the President).

Lieut. -General, such as issued by the President, by general, regular or special orders

Major-General, commands a Division, oftentimes an army corps.

Jirigadier-General, commands a Brigade, sometimes ; i Division.

Colonel, command" a Regiment ot eight or more companies.

Lieut. -Colonel, principally executive, under direction of the Colonel.

Major, assists the Colonel, sometimes commands a separate battalion or regiment.

Captain, commands a Company varying from 50 to 100 privates.

Lieutenant, under direction of the Captain.

PRESIDENT

* < 7.
*t-~

e -r. t-

: ~

TEUM

SECRETARY OP WAR

NAME STATE ! APPOINTED

Washington..
Washington. .
Washington. .
Washington . .
Adams
Adams

1
2
2
2
3
3
;j

1 Henry Kno.x
2 Henry Knox
2 Timothy Pickering
2 James Mcllenry
James Mel Icnrv
John Mar-hall
. Samuel Dexter...

Massachusetts..
Massachusetts..
Massachusetts..
Maryland
Maryland
Virginia
Massachusetts..
Connecticut....
Massachusetts..
Massachusetts..
Massachusetts..
New York
New York

Sept.12,1789
Meh. 4, 179.3
Jan. 2, 1795
Jan. 27, 1796
Mch. 4, 1797
May 7, 1800
May 13,1800
Feb. 3, 1*01
Mch. 5, 1801
Mch. 4, 1805
Mch. 7,1809
Jan. 13, 1813
Mch. 4,1813
Sept .27,1814
Aug. 1,1815
Mch. 5,1817
April 7,1817
Oct. 8, 1817
Mch. 5,1821
Mch. 7, 1825
May 26,1828
Mch. 9, 1829
Aug. 1, 1831
Mch. 4,1833
Mch. 3,1837
Mch. 7, 1837
Mch ii 1841

3 Roirer Griswold

Jefferson
Jefferson
Madison
Madison
Madison

6
6

2
1
1

2
>

Henry Dearborn
Henry Dearborn
William Eustis
John Armstrong
John Armstrong

Madison

7
8
8
8
9
10

2
1
1
1

William H. Crawford...
Isaac Shelby
George Graham (ad. in.)

Kentucky
Virginia
South Carolina.
South Carolina.

Monroe..

Monroe

Adams

ID
11
11

i
i

Peter B. Porter

New York

Lewis Cass

Ohio
Ohio

Jackson 1'.! '2
VanBuren.. . . 13

Benjamin F. Butler....
Joel' H. Poinsett
John Bell

New York ....
South Carolina

Tyler : 14 ,

John Bell

April 6, 1841
Sept.13,1841
Oct. 12,1841
Mch. 8, 1843
Feb. 15, 1844
Mch. 5,1845
Mch. 6, 1849
July 20,1800
Aug. 15,1850
Mch. 5, 1853
Mch. 6, 1857
Jan. 18, 1861
Mch. 6, 1861
Jan. 15, 1802
Mch. 4,1805
Apr. 15,1865
Ani'.12,1867
Feb.21, 1868
Mav 28,1868
Mch. 11, 1869
Sept. 9, 1869
Oct. 25, 18159
Mch. 4,1873
Mch. 8,1876
Mav 22,1870
Mch. 12,1877
Dec. 10, 1879
Mch. 5,1881
Sept .21,1881
Mch. ii, 1K83
Mch. 5, 1889

T'vler J- 1

Ohio

Tvler
T'vler

14
14
14

l.i

:::::

John (.'. Spencer
James M. Porter
William Wilkms
William L. Marcy
George W. Crawford...
Edmund Bates

New York
Pennsylvania. . .
Pennsylvania. . .
New York
Georgia
Missouri
Louisiana.
Mississippi ....
Virginia
Kentucky
Pennsylvania. . .
Ohio
Ohio
Ohio
Illinois

New York
Illinois

Tvler
Polk

Tavlor 16

Fiilmore 16
Fillmoro 16

Charles M. Conrad....
Jefferson Davis
John B. Flovd
Joseph Holt

Buchanan. . . .
Buchanan. . . .
Lincoln
Lincoln
Lincoln
Johnson
Johnson
Johnson
Johnson

18
18
19

1!)
20
20
20
20
20
21
21
21
22
22
22
23
2:?

i
i

1
1
1
2
2

Simon Cameron
Edwin M. Stantoti
Edwin M. Stanton
Edwin M. Stanton
IT. S. Grant, (ad. in.). ..
Lorenzo Thomas (ail. in.)
John M. Schofield

William T. Sherman.-..
William W Belknap. . .

Ohio

William W. Belknap. . .|Iowa ..
Alphoiiso Taft Ohio

James I). Cameron Pennsylvania...

Haves

Hayes

Garficld 24
Arthur 24
Cleveland.... 2.)
Harrison 2f>

Robert T. Lincoln jlllinois
Robert T. Lincoln Illinois
William C. Endicott Massachusetts..
Redlield Proctor Vermont

15
16

22
23

24
25

"26*
27
28
29
30
31

33
34
35

37
38
39

' ''
42

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 321
COMMANDERS OF THE ARMY OP THE U. S.

[Under the President as Commander-in-Chief.]

Major-general George Washington. June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783. Resigned.

Born at Pope's Creek, Va., February 22, 1732. Died at Mount Vernon, Va., December 14,
i7W-

Major-General Henry Knox December 13, 1783, to June 2, 1784. Disbanded. Born
at Boston, Mass., July 25, 1750 Died at Thomaston, Me., October 25, 1806.

Lieutenant-Colonel Josiah Harmer. (General-in-Chief by brevet, July 3 1 , 1787.) Resigned.

June 3, 1784, to March 4, 1791. Born at Philadelphia, Pa., 1753. Died at Philadelphia,
Pa., August 20, 1813.

Major-General Arthur St Clair. March 4, 1791, to March 5, 1792. Resigned. Born at
Thurso, Scotland, 1734. Died at Greensburg, Pa., August 31, 1818.

Major-General Anthony Wayne. March 5, 1792, to December 15, 1796. Died. Born at
Kasitown, Pa , January i, 1745 Died at Krie, Pa.. December 15, 1796.

Major-(ieneral James Wilkinson. December 15, 1796, to July 2, 1798. Resigned.
liorn at Benedict, Md , 1757 Died at City of Mexico, December 28, 1825.

Lieutenant-General George Washington. July 31, 1708, to March 3, 1799.

General George Washington, March 3, 1799, to December 14, 1799. Died. Born at
Pope's Creek, Va., February 22, 1732. Died at Mount Vernon, Va., December 14, 1799.

Major-General Alexander Hamilton December 15. 1799, to June 15,1800. Born on
Isle of Nevis, Eng., January u, 1757. Died at Weehawken, N. J., July 12, 1804.

Brigadier-General James Wilkinson. June 15. 1800, to January 27, 1812. Resigned.
Born at Benedict, Md., 1757. Died at City of Mexico, December 28, 1825.

Major-General Henry Dearborn. January 27, 1812, to June 15, 1815. Mustered out.
Born at N Hampton, N H., February 23, 1751. Died at Roxbury, Mass., June 6, 1829.

Major-General Jacob Brown. June 15, 1815, to February 24, 1828. Died. Born at
Bucks Co., Pa., May 9, 1775. Died at Washington, D. C., February 24, 1828.

Major-General Alexander Macomb. May 28, 1828, to June 25, 1841. Died. -> Born at
Detroit, Mich., April 3, 1782. Died at Washington, June 25, 1841.

Major-General Wmfield Scott. (Brevet Lieut. -General.) July 5, 1841, to November 6,
1861. Retired Born near Petersburg, Va., June 13, 1786. Died at West Point, N. Y.,
May 29, 1866

Major-Cieneral George Brinton McClellan. November i, 1861, to March n, 1862. Re-
signed Porn at Philadelphia, December 3, 1826. Died at Orange, N. J., October 29,
1885.

[No Generals as Commanders from March n to July 23, 1862.]

Major-General Henry Wager Halleck. July 23, 1862,10 March 12, 1864. Retired.
Born at Westernville, N. Y., January 16, 1815. Died at Louisville, Ky., January 9, 1872.

Lieutenant-General Ulysses Simpson Grant. March 12, 1864, to July 25, 1866.

General Ulysses Simpson Grant. July 25, 1866, to March 4, 1869. Resigned. Born at
Point Pleasant, O., April 27, 1822. Died at Mount Gregor, N. Y., July 23, 1885.

General William Tecumseh Sherman. March 5, 1869, to November i, 1883. Born at
I .am aster, O., February 8, 1820.

Lieutenant-General Philip Henry Sheridan. November i. 1883, to June i, 1888.

General Philip Henry Sheridan. June i, 1888, to August 5, 1888. Died. Born at
Albany, N Y., March 6, 1831. Died at Nonquitt, Mass., August 5, iSSS.

Major-(k;neral John McAllister Schofield. August 14, 1888, to Born at Chau-
tauqiia Co., N. Y., September 29, 1831.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN" SOLDIER.

TITLES OP GENERAL AND LIEUT.-GENERAL.

May 28. 1798, an act was passed by Congress, one section of which
empowered the President to appoint, with the consent of the Senate.
" a commander of the army which may he raised by virtue of this act,
and who being commissioned as Lieutenant-General, may be author-
ized to command the Armies of the United States."

[July 3. 1798, as the result of a message to the Senate from Presi-
dent John Adams, the Senate unanimously consented to the appoint-
ment of Washington ' as Lieutenant-General."]

March 3, 1799. Congress made a change in the title to the effect
" that a commander of the army of the United States shall be ap-
pointed and commissioned by the style of ' General of the armies of
the United States,' and the present office and title of Lieutenant-Gen-
eral shall thereafter be abolished."

FebriHtry 15. 185,1, further legislation restored Lieutenant-General ;
by resolution of Congress :

" That the grade of Lieutenant-General ho, and the same is hereby revived in the army
of the United States in order that when, in tin- opinion of the President and Senate, it shall
be deemed proper to acknowledge eminent services of a Major-General of the army in the
late war with Mexico, in the mode already provided for in subordinate grades, the grade of
Lieutenant-General may be specially conferred by brevet,* and by brevet only, to take
rank from the date of such service or services. Provided, however, that when the said
grade of Lieutenant-General by brevet shall have once been filled, and have become
vacant, this joint resolution shall thereafter expire and be of no.fti'cct."

[W infield Scott was appointed brevet Lieutenant-General.]

Man-h 2, 18(!4, Lieutenant-General conferred on U. S. Grant, the
grade having been revived early in the year by Congress.

July 25, 18()(>, the grade of General created and conferred by Con-
gress on U. S. Grant.

In 18(!9 Congress provided that " the offices of General and Lieu-
tenant-General of the Army shall continue until a vacancy shall occur
in the same, and no longer." (Sherman became General and Sheridan
Lieutenant-General.

June 1, 1888, by act of Congress:

" The President is hereby authorized when IIP shall deem it expedient to appoint by and
with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, a General of the Army of the
United States to be selected from among those otlicers in the military service of the United
States most distinguished for courage, skill and ability, who, being commissioned as
General, may be authorized under the direction and during the pleasure of the President,
to command the armies of the United States."

Under this act P. II. Sheridan was made General, so that he was the
last Lieutenant-General and the last General of the Army; both titles
disappearing with his death; as for practical purposes the titles were
considered disproportionate, with an army of only 25.000 enlisted
men.

* BREVET. (Fr. lireret, from Lat. brerix, short.) Implies in France a royal act, con-
ferring some privilege of distinction; in iMigland it is applied to a commission giving
nominal rank higher' than that for which pav is received.

In the U. S. Army by trrtrrt is conferred by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate, for " gallant actions or meritorious services." A brevet rank gives no right of
command in the particular corps to which the officer brevetted belongs and can be ex-
ercised only by special assignment of the President.

The first'f iine it was used in the U. S. Army was in 1812, when Captain Zachary Taylor,
afterwards President, was promoted to Jfajor bybrecet for his defense of Fort Harrison.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

323

WARS OF THE U. S.

(As Colonists and us a Nation.)

WARS OP THR U. ft.

COMMENCED

ENDED

TKOOP8 ENGAGED

BEuir-

LAK

MILITIA A
VOLUN.

TOTAL

Apr. 19,1775

Apr. 11,1783

130,711

58,750
105,300

309,791
8,983
4,593
3,330
910
13,781
605,046

Northwestern lndian((jen.St.('iair)
* With France

Sept. 19,1790
July 9, 1798

Aug. 3, 1795
Sept.30,1800
June 4, 1805
Nov. 11, 1811
Aug. 9, 1814
Feb. 17,1815
June 28,1815
Get. 21, 1818
Sept.31,1832
1837
Scpt.30,1837
Aug.14,1843
1839
July 4, 1848
! .
1854
1858
May 11,1865
1862
June 1873
1876
Oct. 1877
1879

* With Tripoli
Tecuiuseh Indian (Gen. IIarn>onj.

June 10,1801
Sept.11,1811
Aug.13,1813
June 19,181-2
May 1815
Nov. 20,1817
Apr. 21,1831
1836
Mav ft, 1836
Dei-. 23.183J
1838
Apr. 24,1846
1849
1854
1856
Apr. 21,1861
1862
1872
June2">,lH76

600
33,424

660
13,181
471,622

** 1812 " with (ireat Britain

1,000
1,339

6,911
5,126
9,494
12,483
29,953
1,500
73,776
1,061
503
2,687

7,911
6,465
9,494
13,418
41,122
1,500
101,282
1,061
503
2,687
2,859,132

Cherokee DUturbaure or lieiuovu

935
11,100

27,506

The "Civil" or " Rebellion "

M i i r

1877
187U

Ute Indian

* Naval warfare.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

Cause : Firl, The conflicting territorial claims of France and England.
Sfcond, The long-standing national animosity of the two nations.
Thirtl A conflict between the frontiersmen of the two nations in attempting
to colonize tho Ohio Valley. (Treaty made at Paris, Feb. 10, 1763.)

(OMMANIJEUS

WIIKUK FOfOIIT

ENGLISH

March

1754 Present Pittsburgh, Pa.

Tues. May 23,1754 <Jreat Meadows, Pa

Wed . July 3, 1754 Fort Necessity, Pa

Wed. July '.', 1755 Braddock's Field, Pa

Mon. Sep. 8,
Man. Sep. K,
Wed. Aug.ll,
Wed. Sep. H,
Wed. July 6,
ThursJuly 6,
Sun. Aug. 27,
Sat. Nov. 25,
TucsJiily 24,
TliiirsJnly2 1
Tues. July "!,

Thur*.Sep.l3.17V> Qi

1755 Near Lake George, N. Y..
17.V. Near Fort Edward, N. Y..

1756 Oswego, N. Y

1756 Kittaning, Pa

1757 Fort William Henry, N. Y.
17X Tironderoga, N. Y

1758 Fort F route n:i<

Trent

Washington..
Washington..

Itruddock

Williams

Johnson

. Mercer

. Armstrong...

. Monntc

. Abercrombie.

Bradstr

FKENCIl

Junionville...

Villiers

Beaujen and

Dumas

Dieskau

Dicskau

Montcalm

Indians

Montcalm

Mi n ill -aim

8UCCE99-

Ft'L
I'ARTV

1758 Fort Du. Quesne, Pa....

1759 Fort Niafjara, N. Y

1759 Ticondcropi

1759 Montmorenci

Washinpton..

Prideaux

Amherst

Murray and
Townshend...
Wolfe

D'Auhry....

Montcalm

Montcalm... .

.. French
. . English
.. French

.. French

. . French

. . English

. . French

. . English

. . French

. English

. French
. English

KEY TO TABLES. (War of 1812 and after.)

In explanation of wars, the marginal references will be indicative of the following :
. An Action. -A Bombardment. An EgjedMon. A Skirmish

I An tEff- '' A SK An'^npatiOU. 4 slrrendfr.

* A Battle. ' A Defense. A Siege.

324 ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIEK.

3UITISH
LOSSES

i W & M

r R888 !! s s ^ j

"tj

a
3

s:-iss(
[ NVOIH:

;

r* vT5

^f f-i*OCOrH CO CO r i d O

c-f i-T

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(fa

)X
A

<a<
~|"

SOOOOOOO"- O ~O~Q~
O O C " O O ' O O
uT c o O C c: O :/? OJ 'MO

1"
rt

<f4

-3
o

-I-" i -t O oTo 1-1 1-1 I r-T Ci-ioT
Tl r-l

"c
O

^ K

] REVOLU

-j
o

T!
C
ci

'i.

ve of Colonial li

S AND TKOOPS

O
H

"Sj5
pj?

*"- __^~-~ ^ _ ^

ANDER

fc
S

O_- O>^OCO-fO -I- -OO

co : O'I-TCO n"co" : : of i-T

:
-

K
~
O

S JS j ij j : j j jjS j | j

3AGEMENTS (

3
1

;fi

-= 3

3 "S

*= 5

S -^ -
s "

AMERICAN

^*-"- -sS -8 -^3

fc
(2

2 s
T. P

' ; ; : i^ 1 ; '. '. '. '. '. '.

PRINCIPAL :

"3:
'C

r
a

a
H

::
H

jSiX/i , The passage by ]
enforcement with the L

PRINCIPAL ENGAGEMENTS

DATE WHERE FOUGUn

1775 Weil. Apl. 19 Lexington, Mass...

Wed. May 10 Ticonderoga, X. Y.
Fri. May 12 Crown Point, N. Y.

t ^-- igElg-il^S 1 I'S

I || Stt.i^|i|l5 |f

t Ci ^H oo 1 CC O :O CO O t CO O rH

1 II !}

CC WSj ^HSxHrHl/iS? '/3H
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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 325

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 327

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOI.DIEK.

MEXICAN WAR.

War formally declared by the U. S.,May 13, 1846. (House voting 174 to 14, Senate 40 to 2.)
War formally declared by Mexico, May 23, 1846.

Causes: First, Mexico claimed Texas as part of her territory, notwithstanding its in-
dependence was acknowledged by the United States, England, France and
other governments. The U. S., by annexation, claimed the Kio Grande as
the Texan boundary, while Mexico alleged the western limit of the Province
never extended west of the Nueces Iliver. The crossing by (Jen. Taylor
considered as the commencement of war, and Mexico made the attack.
Second, Impoverished by civil war, Mexico did not hesitate to replenish her
treasury by plundering American vessels in the Gulf of Mexico, also con-
fiscated property of American merchants within its borders covered by
treaty, 1831, but not lived up to.
Third, Internal politics, on both sides.

ENGAGEMENTS

COMMANDERS AND TROOPS

DATE WHERE FOUGHT

AMERICAN

MEN

MEXICAN

MEN

1846 Sat. Apr. 25 > 3 Ft. Brown
Sun. May 3-9 * Ft. Brown

Thornton .
* Brown

* Torrejou . . .

Fri. May 8 J'alo Alto
Sat. May 9 4 Kessaca de la Palma. .
Won. Mav 18 ls Matamoras

* Tavlor 2,:',00 Ari.-ta
* Taylor j 2,000' Arista

6,000

5,000

Wed Aug 19' 13 Matamora- .... '

Mon. Sep. 21-23 4 Monterey ;* Taylor

0,600

Amptidia . . .

10,000

Mon. Dec. 7 l:i San Bernardino

* Doniphan. . .

500

Ponce de Leon

1,200

Sat Jan 9 13 Plains of JN'e^i

Sat. Jan. 23 '* Kncarnacion i

Thurs Feb. 4 1:l Pueblo de Taos

Mon. Feb 22 23 8 Buena Vista

*Taylor 4,700 Santa Anna..

17,000

Sun. Feb. 28 * Chihuahua

* Doniphan. . . 900 Trias

4,000

Wed. Mar. 24 1:! Pnente del Medic

Thur.Mar.25-29' 12 VeraCrnz

* Scott 12,000' Morales

6,1)00

Sat. Apr. 17-1S; 4 Cerro Gordo

* Scott

8,500; Santa Anna..

12,000

Mon July 12 7 Culabosa K

Fri. An!?. 13 * Mera Flores

Mon. Ail". 16 13 OkaLaka

*P. F. Smith.
* Worth

4,000: Valencia
K.O(X) Santa Anna..

7,000
25,000

Fri. Au. 20 4 Ghimibusco

Wed. Sep. 8 4 Kl Molino del Hey ... * Worth

3,500 Santa Anna..
7,200 Santa Anna..

14,000
25,000

Sep 13 to Oct ]> 8 t Puebl-i

Mon. Sep. 13-14 'i Citv of Mexic * Scott
Sat. Oct. 9 T Ilnainantla *I,anc
Tues Oct 121 i Atlixco

6,000 Santa Anna..
500;Santa Anna..

1.000

Tues. Nov. 2 1S Agua Frio i

Wed. Nov. 24 " Galaxara Pass...

Treaty concluded at Gnadalupe, Hidalgo, Feb. 2, 1848.
* Victorious party. t Besieged 2S days.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 329

TROOPS ENLISTED DURING THE REVOLUTION,
INCLUDING CONTINENTALS AND MILITIA.

(Ettimated.)

1775

1776

1777
J.I--.
12,591
6,563
2,048
5,332
2,908
9,464
1,299
7,565
11,013
I..-:
2,000
2,173

1778 1779 1780

1781
700
5,298
3,921
464
1,178
823
1,346
89
2,107
6,119
3,545
3,000
750

1782 1783

V Hampshire..

M:l";l< Illl-i tt-

2,824
16,444
4,507
1,193
2,075

4,01S
20,372
13,127
1,900
8,094
9,086
10,395
754
3,329
6,181
4,134

2,301

1,783

13,437
4,010
3,056
2,194
2,586
3,684
349
3,307
7,830
1,287
3,650
3,873

1,226! 1,777
7,738i 7,889
3,544 3,687
1,2631 915
3,756: 4,847
1,276 1,267
3,476 3,337
317: 556
2,849 2,065
8,573i 6,986
4,920 3,000
4,500: 6,000
837. 750

744
4,423
1,732
481
1,198
660
1,265
164
1,280
2,204
1,105
2,000
750

733
4,370
1,740
372
1,169
676
1,598
235
974
629
697
139
145

Rhode Island
New York

Pennsylvania

400

3,1*0
2,000
4,01 NJ
1,000

North Carolina...
South Carolina....
Georgia

"WAR OF 1812."

( Kc:.'iil.ir service an approximation.)

11ATK

OFFICERS

MEN

TOTAL 1

July, 1812

301
1,476
2,395
2,396

6,385
17,560
35,791
31,028

6,683
19,036
, [gl

33,424

Feb 1813

Sept., 1814
Feb., 1815

WHOLE MILITIA FORCK

Officers ",1,210

Men 440,412

Total.. .4TT622

Casualties (as reported) : Killed, 1,377; wounded, 3,737; total, 5,614.

WAR WITH MEXICO 1846-48.

Number of Men and Casualties in the Regular and Volunteer forces.

!""

KILLED
DIED OK

w'ns

worxo-

u ,

- C

$**

KILLKI)

O a' Q
a s ? a
*'* s a

Regulars, inc. marines 27,506
Alabama 3,028
\rkan'is . 1 323

536

408

2,102
32

7,016
425
2,396
935
5,536
2,503
1,077
5,865
8,018
1,320
146
585

344

;; 46

New Jersey
New York

156

Ohio

18
21
30
43
42

"l4

26
6
4

39
162
216
129
29
j

(ieorgia '. 2.132
Illinois 6 123

M
47

"l2

8
160
92

Indiana ; 4,585
Iowa ' 253

Texas

Kentucky ' 4 842

1 .
8

4
2
3

105
8
21

"ios

Maryland, an I'D. C..! l!355
Massachusetts 1,057
Michigan 1,103
Mississippi 2,423

Re-mustered volun-
teers formed out of
12 mouths vols
Total . . .

104U

1
"508

3420

! '-._-_

ACHIEVEMENTS Oh' THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

H
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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 331

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ACHIEVEMENTS Of-' THE AMERICA* SOLD IE K.

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 335

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

CONFEDERATE

COMMANDEUS j MEN

--'-

111

i 1

c- 3 o o o

0=0 00-
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COMMANUEKS

C-< C<!) 'E

x^iusrt w

"L'

4 i*Sherman
4 j'Sherunan

4 oGrant & Meade
1
4 Grant
2 "Grant
8 oStoncman

1 cGrant
1 cCanby
R. Adiu. Thatcher...

iiii

. pLt.-Col. Priehard

i *Col. Barrett
. cCanby

PRINCIPAL ENGAGEMENTS

LOCATION

;-s

: : 5 s :::=::

: :^ :::<-::

Poeotaligo, S. C
Charleston, S. C

Ft. Anderson, N. C

' S -

^ * ^

1 1^

1 I 5 *

Kinston, N. C
Averysboro & Moor's C'ros

,-f! (|P^I><^

ildi-^^i^lo

Cent. Alabama & Georgia.
Raleigh & Ilillsboro, N. C

Tallahassee, Fla

Irwinsville, Fla
Chalk Bluff, Ark
Palmetto Handle, Tex...
New Orleans, La

DATE

-'-^

: : " :s : :

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CO^

7.
fn

US*

** %

ji -d

_: 2

Z 2

^ H

i 3 ij !

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Hi-

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

337

ARMY STRENGTH OF THE UNION FORCES,

DATE

\-\-.\.-\.\ i

ABSENT

AGGREGATE

GRAND

TOTAL

I!- (,'" ir

Regulars

Volnntr's

Regulars

Jan. 1,1861
Jan. 1, 1802
Jan. 1, 1863
Jan. 1, 1864
Jan. 1, I860
Mar .31 ,1809
Mav 1.

28,771
19,871
19,1(59
17,237
14,661
; 1,880

169,480
507,333
670,633
694,013
606.263
643,867

4,018
2,564

6,294
7,399
7,358
7,789

849
46,159
213,095
242.IISS
331,178
314,550

" 32,789 ~
22,425
25,463
24,636
22,019
21,669

I7< >..._"..
553,492
892,728
836,101
937,411
958,417

203,118
575,917
918,191
860,73?
959,460
980,086

*'" "'""

AGGREGATE TROOPS FURNISHED UNION ARMY,
1861-1865.

KTATE on
TKBBITOKY

MEN

1 1 I.M-lllli
'

COLORED

: <

FAILED

Tit
REPORT

KXKMPTKD

n.'KNIMIIKD
SUB. OR
PAID FINE

HELD

PEB CENT j

OK TKOOP8 *

AOOREGATE

(reduced to
at/tree yearn,
standard) 1

Arkansas ..
California..

780

2,0(0

8,289
15,725

1.
5,526

1.5
4.1

II..

12.4
4 5

! J.-.
22.4
.9
.0
15.1
14.6
11.3
18.8
6.8
.7
11.5
7.3
12.3
11.9
14.5
.0
9.2
10.9
15.7
10.6
12.0
7.0
12.0
.3
13.6
3.4
12.5
13.6
.0

1,611
7,836
15,725
3,697
50,623
206
10,322
11,506
1,290

214,133
153,576
68,630
18,706
70,832
4,654
66,776
41,275
124,104
80,111
19,693
545
86,530
2,175
1,080
30,349
57,908
4,432
392,270
3,156
240,514
1,773
265,517
17,866

Colorado T.
Connecticut
Dakota Tcr.
Delaware . .
Dint, of Col.
Florida

4,903

95 ...

44,797

57,37'J
206
13,670
16,872
1,290

1,764 12,031

1,014 r, F Mi|

3,842

202

13,935
13,973

!'.'4
3,209
1,044

! 8,635
, 14,338

1,443
5,954

4,170
5,665

2,534
1,751

425
968

Georgia

Illinois
Indiana. ...

244,496
199,788
79,521
12,931
100,782

'"73,587

70,905

l ..,,.

95,007
26,326

259,147
197,147
76,309
20,151
79,025
6,224
72,114
60,316
152,048
89,372
25,052
645
109,111
3,157
1,080

1,811
1,637

440
2.0SO
23,703
3,486
104
8,718
3,966
1,387
104
17,869
8,344

32,085
41,158
7,548
1,420
29,421

27,324
29,319
41,582
22,122
10,796

9.519
6,235
702
419
9,503

3,760
9,207
5,167
4,294
2,058

'.,:,:,:,
15,478
2,446
287
8,088

'i : 2,wi
11,011

27,070
7,130
4,449

5,459
5,966
1,264
210
5,787

' 4',946
6,134
8,383
3,773
1,291

3,538
7,597
1,862
119
1,860

' V,99i
1,426
912
1,809
862

K.m;i-
Kentucky.
Louisiana..
Maine

Maryland. .

HIM

Michigan ..
Minnesota..
IfiMiMippi

Missouri. ..
NeltraskaT.
Nevada ....

122,496

21,519

9,444 .-1.TM

1,638

1,031

Ni W II.IIU|l.

New Jersey
N.Mexi.oT
New York..
N. Carolina
Ohio

35,897
92,820

34,629
81,010
6 561

125
1,185

10,80*5
32,325

461
6,205

5,478
8,224

3,654
9,650

210
951

507,148
1,560
306,322

467,047
3,156
319,659
1,810
36(5,107
23,639

4,125
6,035
6,092

151,488

31,745

68,000

31,529

3,210

50,400

19,751

10,988

4,241

Oregon

18,898

8,612
1,837
6 462

178,873
4,321

31,309
249

70,913
lj t

40,807
1,142

8,615
117

R. Island .
8. Carolina .
Tennessee..
Texas

1,560

31,092
1,965
35,262

20,133
47
120

2.8
.3
11.2
.0
8.3
8.1
12.4

26,394
1,632
29,068

964
27,714
79,260
3,530
91,789

Vermont . .

32,074

7,743

429

4,096

2,646

437

Wash. Ter.
W. Virginia
Wisconsin .
Iiul. Nation

( . !. 1 i,.,.| -

964
32,068
96,424
3 530

34,463
109,080

196
165

3,180
38,395

1,014
11,742

569
14,732

219
6,718

242
3,722

93,441

Total

2,763,670

2,859,1321143,304

776,829il61,244,315,509i

160,331

46,347

9.1

2,319,272

' Per cent, of troops furnished to population.

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE
AMERICAN SOLDIER.

The literature of war is legion. Military history, tactics and operations,
biography and reminiscence, romance, fiction, poetry and song the story of
the American soldier has been treated in its manifold phases by pens of every
degree of excellence. To select a list of one hundred books and say that these
are the best is an arbitrary and perhaps unfair process of selection. The one
hundred here presented may be considered rather as an attempt toward a per-
fect list than as such a list itself. The books relating to the war for secession
alone would make an extensive library, and the number of regimental histories
would seem to be limited only by the number of regiments engaged in the
great struggle. For all practical purposes however the list here given and
offered only in the way of selection may be sufficient to act as a help to those
who desire to go deeper into the details of the story of the American soldier.

Bancroft (George).

History of the United States. Latest Edition. Author's last revision. 6 vols. Svo. Xe\v

.York, 1883-85.

"By far the most elaborate and the most carefully prepared history of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods yet
published." CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS.
Billings (John IX).

Hardtack and Coffee. Svo. 111. 406 pp. Boston, 1887.

The unwritten story of Army Life in the Civil War.
Birkheimer (Lieutenant).

Historical Sketch of the Organization, Administration, Materiel and Tactics of the Artillery.

United States Army. 606 pp. Washington, 1884.

A most satisfactory work.
Boynton (Edward C.).

History of West Point. Svo. 111. 416 pp. New York, 1871.

Crackett (Albert G.).
History of the United States Cavalry from the formation of the Federal Government to
June, 1863. i2mo. 111. 337 pp. Xew York, 1865.
An important and most excellent record of the cavalry arm of the U. S. service.
Brockett (Linus P.).

The Camp, the Battlefield and the Hospital ; or, Lights and Shadows of the Great Rebel-
lion. Svo. 512 pp. Philadelphia, 1866.
Brooks (Elbridge S.), Editor.

The Story of the States. Svo. 111. Boston, 1888.

A series of graphic historical narrations by American authors, telling the Story of the States of the American
Union from the earliest beginnings to the present day. The series (which touches alike the civil and the military
story of each American Commonwealth) will eventually comprise all the States of the Union. The Story of New '

33S

IU-.ST I/UXDRKD HOOKS OX Till- AM ERIC AX SOLDIER. 339

York(Elbridge S Brooks), The Story of Ohio (Alexander Black), The Story of Louisiana (Maurice Thompson),
The Story of Vermont (John L. Heaton), The Story of Kentucky (Emma M. Connelly) and The Story of Massa-
chusetts (Edward Everett Hale) are now ready

Browne (Francis F.).

Bugle Echoes: a collection of poems of the Civil War. 8vo. New York, 1886.

( )ne of the best collections of War poems, North and South
Brownell (H. H.).

War Lyrics, izmo. 192 pp. New York, 1866.

" They are to all the drawing-room battle |x>ems as the torn flags of our victorious armadas to the stately ensigns
that dressed their ships in the harbor " OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Bryant (Wm. Cullen) and Gay (Sydney Howard).

A 1'opular History of the United States. 4 vols. 8vo. 111. New York, 1880.
Carrington (Henry B.).

I tattles of the American Revolution. Svo. 111. 712 pp. New York, 1876.

Historical and military criticism.

Coffin (Charles Carleton).

The Story of Liberty.

( >ld Times in the Colonies.

The Boys of '76.

Building the Nation.

The Drum-Beat of the Nation.

Marching to Victory.

Vivid and picturesque presentations of different phases of American history.
Cooke (John Esten).

A Life of (General I.ee. 8vo. 111. 577 pp. New York, 1871.
Comte de Paris.

History of the Civil War in America. Translated by Louis F. Tasistro. Edited by Henry

Coppee. A military history. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1875.

" The first successful attempt to give a full and careful account of the stupendous conflict.' 1 C. K. ADAMS.

Cooper (James Fenimore).

" His writings are instinct with the spirit of nationality. In his productions every American must take an honest
pride. For surely m> one has succeeded like Cooper in the portraiture of American character or has given such glow-
ing and eminently truthful pictures of American scenery." WM. H. PRESCOTT.

NOVELS.

Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, 1829.
A tale of King Philip's War.

Last of the Mohicans, 1826.
Deals with Indian participation in the the Old French War, 1756-60.

Lionel Lincoln, 1825.
Laid at the siege of lioston and Bunker Hill, 1775.

The Spy, 1821.

A tale of the Neutral Ground, 1*70.

" A portrait from life of a revolutionary patriot who was willing to risk his life and subject his character to tempo-
rary suspicion for the service of his country." DUVCKINCK.
The Chain-Bearer, 1845.
A story of the Revolution.
Custer (Elizabeth B.).

i:. nits and Saddle. i2mo. 111. 312 pp. New York, 1885.

Tenting on the Plains. General Custer in Kansas and Texas. Svo. 111. 702 pp. New
York, 1887.
Dodge (Theodora A.).

A T.ird's-Eye View of our Civil War. Svo. 111. 346pp. Boston, 1883.

340 BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

Drake (Francis S.).
Memorials of the Cincinnati. 8vo. 111. 565 pp. Boston, 1873.

The best and most comprehensive history of the Society.
Drake (James M.).

Fast and Loose in Dixie. I2mo. III. 310 pp. New York. 1880.

Personal experience as a prisoner of war at Libby.
Dunn (J. P. Jr.).

Massacre of the Mountains: a history of the Indian Wars of the Far West. Svo. 111.

New York, 1886.

The best general statement and story of the later Indian Wars.
Eggleston (Edward).

The Household History of the United States and Its People for Young Americans. Svo.

111. 396 pp. Xew York, 1889.
Eggleston (George Cary).

A Rebel's Recollections. i6mo. 260 pp: New York, 1875.
Fiske (John).

The Critical Period of American History, 1783-89. I2mo. 111. 368 pp. Boston, 1888.

The War of Independence. 161110. 200 pp. Boston, 1889.

Riverside library for young people.
Fremont (John Charles).

Memoirs of My Life. Chicago, 1887.
A personal record of a most romantic career.
v Garden (Alexander).

Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War. Svo. 459 pp. Charleston, 1822.
Gay (Sydney Howard). See Bryant (Win. C.).
Oilman (Arthur).

A History of the American People. I2mo. 111. 66S pp. Boston, 1883.

" On its own ground and for its clearly denned purpose, we have nothing as good and are not likely to have."
The Independent. t

Gilmor, (H).

Four Years in the Saddle.
\f Gilmore (James R.). "Edmund Kirkc."

The Rear Guard of the Revolution. 121110. 111. 317 pp. New York, iSS6.

A history of events that took place chiefly in North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.
Glazier (Willard W.).

Heroes of Three Wars. I2mo. 111. 450 pp. Philadelphia, 1882.
Grant (Ulysses S).

Personal Memoirs. 2 vols. Svo. 111. New York, 1885-86.
Greeley (Horace).

The American Conflict, 1860-64. 2 vols. Royal, Svo. Hartford, 1864-67.

Rather more political than military.

" It is one of the most valuable as it is quite the most interesting of the numerous accounts of our great civil con-
test." C. K. ADAMS.
y Hale (Edward Everett).
' How the War (Revolution) Began. Svo. 40 pp. Boston, 1875.

A series of sketches from original authorities.
jt Halpine (Charles Graham).

Life and Adventures, Songs, Services and Speeches of " Private Miles O'Reilly." 47th Regi-
ment. N. Y. Volunteers. New York, 1864.
Hamersly (T. H. ^.).

Complete Army and Navy Register, 1776-1887. 2 parts. 215 pp. and 381 pp. New York,

1888.

A full collection of notes upon the statiiatory and administrative history of the U. S. Army.

BEST HUNDKl-'D BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIEK. 341

Hay (John). See Nicolay (John G.).
Headley (Joel T.).

The Great Rebellion. Svo. 111. Hartford, 1866.
Washington and his Generals. i2mo. 111. New York, 1877.
VHigginson (Thomas \V.).

Army Life in a Black Regiment, i^mo. 296pp. Boston, 1870.
Hildreth (Richard).

The History of the United States of America, from the discovery of America to the end of
the sixteenth Congress. Svo. 6 vols. New York, 1854-55.
New edition, 1879.

" Still probably the most valuable single work on American History." CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS.
Ingersoll (Charles J.).

Historical Sketch of the Second War between the United States of America and Great Brit-
ain. 1812-15. - vo ' s - 8vo. Philadelphia, 1845-49.

With all its faults it is probably the best history of the War of 1812 yet produced." CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS.
" Though this book is sketchy and rambling it shows power." JUSTIN WINSOR.
Irving (Washington).

Life of Washington 5 vols. Svo. 111. N. Y., 1881.
An American classic. The best pictuie of the great patriot and his times.

Johnson-Buel.

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clar-
ence Clotigh Buel. 4 vols. 111. Over 3000 pp. New York, 1888.

The greatest work on the War for Secession ever undertaken in this country. It consists for the most part of con-
tributions by Union and Confederate officers based upon the war series originally published in the Century Magazine.

Johnson (Richard W.).

A Soldier's Reminiscences in Peace and War. Svo. 111. 428 pp. Philadelphia, 1886.
Johnson (Rossiter).

A short History of the War of Secession, 1861-1865. '^ vo - 55 2 PP- Boston, 1888.
The best and latest story of the Civil War; concise, impartial and entertaining.
Keyes (K. D.).

Fifty Years Observation of Men and Events, Civil and Military. New York, 1884.
Knox (Thomas W.).

Decisive Battles since Waterloo. 111. New York, 1888.

An excellent work by a picturesque and practical writer. Contains accounts of the Mexican War and the critical
battles of the Rebellion.

Ladd (Horatio O.).

History of the War with Mexico. New York, 1883.
A brief but good general view of the War, convenient and satisfactory.
Lanier (Sidney).

Tiger Lilies. New York, 1867.
"His own prison experience at Point Lookout, Florida.

W Logan (John A.).

The Volunteer Soldier of America. Svo. 111. 706 pp. Chicago, 1887.
A plea for the militia based upon its services.
The Great Conspiracy. Its Origin and History. Svo. 111. 810 pp. New York, 1886.

Long (Amistead L. ).

Memoirs of Rol>ert E. Lee. Svo. 707 pp. New York, 1886.

Longfellow (Henry W.).

Poems: Courtship of Miles Standish, Paul Revere's Ride, Arsenal at Springfield, Killed at
the Ford.

34 2 BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

Losing (Benson J.).

The Pictorial Field Book of the War of 18 1 2. Long Svo. 111. 1084 pp. New York, 1869.

Hours with the Living Men and Women of the Revolution. I2ino. HI. 239 pp. New

York, 1889.

The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. 2 vols. 8vo. III. New York, 1851-52.

Pictorial History of the Civil War. 3 vols. 111. New York, 1868.

Popular Cyclopaedia of United States History. 2 vols. 8vo. 111. New York, 1886.

Lowell (James Russell).

Poems. Biglow Papers (First Series), Mexican War, Biglow Papers (Second Series), and

Commemoration Ode. Civil War.
McClellan (George B.).

McClellan's Own Story. 8vo. 111. 678 pp. New York, 1887.

MacElroy (John).

Anderson ville. Svo. 654 pp. Toledo, 1879.
A story of Rebel Military Prisons.

MacMaster (John B.).

A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. 5 vols.

Svo. New York, 1883.
Mann ( Herman).

The Female Review. Small 410. 111. 267 pp. Boston, 1866.

Life of Deborah Sampson, the female soldier of the Revolution.

Marcy (Randolph B.).

Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border. Svo. 442 pp. New York, 1866.
Moore (Frank) Editor.

The Rebellion Record. i2mo. 111. Svols. New York, 1861-69.
Nicolay (John G.) and Hay (John).

Abraham Lincoln: A History. (Soon to be republished in book form from the papers in
the Century Magazine.}

A masterly study of the man and his times.
Parton (James).

Life of Andrew Jackson. New York, 1860.
Parkman (Francis).

The Pioneers of North America. 8 vols. Svo. Boston. New Edition, 1880.

" In the ' Conspiracy of Pontiac ' we have a more vivid picture of Indian life and warfare a hundred years ago than
is to be found in any other work." CHARLES KENI>AI.I. ADAMS

Montcaim and Wolfe. 2 vols. Svo. Boston and London, 1884.

" Very brilliant, scholarly and valuable. " CHARI.E-. KENL/AU. ADAM*.
j^tPinkerton (Allan).

The Spy of the Rebellion. Svo. 111. 688 pp. New York, 1883.

A true history of the spy system.

Plum (William R.).

The Military Telegraph during the Civil War. 2 vols. Svo. 111. Chicago, 1882.
Pollard (E. A.).

Southern History of the War for Secession (1862-66). 4 vols.

The best Southern History of the War
Read (Thomas Buchanan).

Poems. The Wagoner of the Alleghanies. Philadelphia. 1862. Poem of the Revolution

in the South. Sheridan's Ride. (Poem of the Rebellion.) Philadelphia, 1867.
Richardson (A. D.).

The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon and the Escape, 1865.

BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. ' 343

Ripley (Eliz. M.).

brom Flag to Flag. i6mo. 296 pp. New York, 1889.
A wuman's experience of the Civil War.
Ripley (Roswell S.).

The War with Mexico. New York, 1849.
The best military History of the War.
Rodenbough (Theo.T.).

From Kverglades to Canon with the Second Dragoons. 8vo. 111. 561 pp. New York

1875.

Uncle Sam's Medal of Honor. 8vo. 111. New York, 1886.

A sketchy account of " some of the noble deeds for which the U. S. Medal of Honor has been awarded, described
by those who have won it." (iS6i-86).
Roosevelt (Theodore).

The Naval War of 1812. 8vo. 541 pp. 111. New York, 1883.

Although a Naval History of the War it has a chapter detailing the Battle of New Orleans in a masterly manner.
Sabine (Ix>renzo).

Biographical Sketches of Loyalists during the American Revolution. 2 vols. Boston, 1864.

A complete and suggestive work prepared with great care and research.
Scott (Winfield).

The Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott. Written by Himself. New York, 1864.
Sheridan (Philip Henry).

Personal Memoirs. 2 vols. 8vo. 111. New York, 1888.
Sherman (\Vm. T.).

Personal Memoirs. 3 vols. 8vo. New York, 1875. Revised edition, 2 vols. 1886.
Sprague (J. T.).

( >rigin, Progress, etc. of the Florida War.
Sumner (Wm. G.).
Swinton (William).

Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (1861-65).

The Twelve decisive Battles of the War of the Rebellion, 1867.

Andrew Jackson. American Statesman Series. i6mo. 402 pp. Boston, 1882.
Taylor (Zachary).

General Taylor and His Staff. With Anecdotes of the Mexican War. i2mo. 111. 284 pp.

Philadelphia, 1848.
Walker (Francis A.).

History of the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac. 8vo. 111. 737 pp.

New York, 1886.
Ward (Wm. H). Editor.

History of the G. A. R. In records of its members 8vo. 111. 624 pp. San Francisco,

iS86.
White (Richard Grant).

Poetry of the Civil War. Small 8vo. New York, 1866.
Winsor (Justin).

Narrative and Critical History of America. 7 vols. 8vo. 111. Boston 1884-89.

A monumental work ; a library of information for the student of American History.

INDEX.

ALAMO, The, heroic stand at, 193.

Allen's, Ethan, surprise of Ticonderoga, 82.

Alvarado, Pedro de, chivalrous life, 41; treachery and
death, 42.

American bravery in Mexican War, 211, 215.

American loyalists under Cornwallis, 119.

American soldier, molding of, 66.

Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massa-
chusetts, 307 .

Anderson, Major Hubert, at Fort Sumter, 236.

Andre, his bribe, too.

Andros, Governor, 59.

Anti-rent war in New York, 177.

Anti-tax rebellion in South, or Whiskey Insurrection,
'}>

April i9th, 1775, ever-memorable to Americans, 78.

Appomattox ends the Rebellion, 273.

Arizona and New Mexico, Coronado's exploration of,
47

Arnold, Benedict, daring of, 90; his defects and merits,
105 ; his treason fmstrated, toX.

Arnold, Sir Kdwin, on Walt Whitman, 276.

Arms, first shock of in Mass., 77.

Army, regular, antagonism to, 218; routine in, 221 ; in
Kansas troubles, 227 ; disposal of in 1861,234; loy-
alty of privates in, 234 : after rebellion, 280; present
state of, 291.

Asseola, the Seminole chieftain, 173.

Avila's, Pedro de, expedition, 34 ; his rise and disgrace,
35 ; his fatal journey, 46.

Aztec and Toltec, war training, 24.

Aztec worship f Alvarado, 41.

BACON'S rebellion, 59, 67, 68.
Bad Axe, battle of, 172.
Badajos and the gold of Parita, 49.
Baker, Colonel, at Ball's Bluff, 250.
Balboa, Vasco Nunez dc, the adventurer, 46; his dis-
covery of the Pacific, ((>: death of, 49.
Bancroft's praise of " Provincials," 75.
Bank mobs in Maryland, 178.
Barton, Capt. Win., kidnaps British General, 115.
Bassinger, Lieutenant, bravery of, at Dade's massacre,

"75-

Beauregard, General, on Confederate troops, 252.
Bell, Lieutenant, duel with Apaches. 222.
Bennington earthworks stormed by the militia, 101 ;

farmers at, deceive aud conquer Hessians, 102.

Berkeley's fight against Bacon, 60.

Bienville's successful direction of colonial war-spirit, 60.

" Biglow Papers," The, see Lowell.

" Birdofredom Sawin," see Lowell.

Black, Alexander, on Indian threats in Ohio, 132.

Black Hawk War, 170, 176.

Bladensburg, the defeat at, 151

Bloody Marsh, battle of, 63.

Boston Massacre, 68.

Bragg, General, resigns in 1856, 221.

Brant's ambush, 134.

Brattle, Wm., letter to Gov. Gage, 78; his warning too
late, 79.

Bravo, General, and his cadets at Chapultepec, 197.

Brooklyn, remarkable battle at, 96 ; Washington's mas-
terly retreat from, 92.

Hrust, Major, on the militia of the present, 307.

Bryant's poem, " Marion's Men," 107.

Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga due to militia, 101.

Buena Vista, battle of, 200 , importance of, 206.

Bull Run. battle of, 245; its effects, 233.

Bunker Hill tests courage of Minute-man, 86.

Btirnside, General A. E., as commander of Rhode
Island militia, 218; his Ion..: ride, 226.

CADETS of Massachusetts, First Corps, The, 308.

Canadian revolt of 1839, 177.

Caonabo, the " Lord of the Golden House," Ojeda's
search for, 39, 40.

Casteneda. Pedro de. chronicler of Coronado's wander-
ings, 45.

Carleton, Sir Guy, evacuates N. Y. city, 121.

Centennial parade of iXfy, the, 295.

Charlevoix's verdict on Ojeda, 41.

Champlain and Frontenac, valiant captains of France,

57-

Chevy Chase and Lexington compared, 82, 83.
Chippeway, verdict of English officers on bravery of

Americans at, 160.

Church, Capt. Benj., conqueror of King Philip, 59.
Civil disturbances following Revolution, 126.
Cincinnati, society of, The, 298.
Clarke, Geo. Rogers^saved western frontier to U. S.,

114.

Cobb, Gen., bravery at Taunton, 129.
Coffin, Charles Carleton, on " Driftwood Soldiers," 252.
Congress grants Washington power as General of the

U. S. to raise an army, 100.

345

346

lA'DEX.

Congnistadores,vy\\a.i\\. and picturesque, 56: how they
won the name, 55 ; their sad fates, 47, 48. ^

Continentals, braver}' of, 108.

Con way Cabal, in, 113.

Colonists and King, strained relations between, 79.

Colonists, the, fighters of necessity, 57.

Colonial army, size of in 171)1 century, 70.

Colored troops at Olustee, 270 ; in regular army, 288.

Columbus and Cabot followed by Spanish hidalgos, 33.

Cooke, General, on Kansas troubles, 228.

Cornwallis, verdict on Marion, 107.

Coronado, Francisco V'asquez de, " Conqueror" of New
Mexico; character, 42: his expedition, 46; his cre-
dulity, 45, beloved by his men, 45 ; in Mexico, 45.

Cortez, voyage to New World, 31, 41

Courage, Indian proof of by change of name, 20.

Courage, national its steady development in war of
1812, 160

Crispus Attucks and British soldiers, 67.

Culpepper's revolt, 67.

Custer, General George A., his character, 287; his last
stand, 288.

Cutter, Elbridge Jefferson, poem on the response to
the call to arms of 1861, 238.

DADE, Major, massacre of, 174.

Damon and Pythias find parallels among Indians, 24

Darien, Avilas landing at, 48

Davis, Jefferson, as Secretary of War, 221 ; on Bull Run,

245

Dearborn. Port, now Chicago, massacre at, 145.

Dearth of leaders in War of 1812, 148, 149.

Declaration of Independence pushes " Conway Cabal *'
out of sight, in.

De Lancey's Loyal Light Horse, 119.

De Peyster, hero of King's Mountain, 120.

Deserters at Bull Run and Shiloh, 253.

De Soto, Hernando; his expedition, 35. his hard for-
tunes, 35, 36; heroic march, 51, 52, his burial and
failure of expedition, 54.

Detroit, surrender of, 145.

Dix, General, his celebrated order, 237

Domphan's march into Chihuahua, 210; valor of his
soldiers, 214.

Dorr's Rebellion, 177.

Duquesne, Fort, captured by British, 77.

ELLSWORTH'S ZOUAVES, 229.
Ellsworth, death of, 244; at Alexandria, 250.
Enciso, Martin Fernandez de, expeditions of, 49.
English generals inferior to French in French and In-
dian War, 75.

Eric the Northman, adventurer more than soldier, 33
Eutaw Springs, bloody battle of, 119.

" FENIAN ' excitement, 280

" Fifty-forty or fight," 178.

Finch, Frances M , poem, "The Blue and the Gray,"

.I'M-

First Light Infantry Association of Providence, 308.
Florida (EasO, hostilities in, 167.

Florida Indians, stories of treasures, 52.

Floyd, General, as Secretary of War, 234.

" Forced volunteers," 184.

Fort Brown, bombardment of, 194.

Fortune, ship, brings news of Treaty of Ghent, 166.

France, insults of, in 1798, 141.

Franklin, Benjamin, father of American militia, 73.

Frederica and Saint Augustine, hostilities between, 63.

France and England's struggle for supremacy in New

World, 57

French surrender makes America English, 77.
French war averted, 141.
Pries' Rebellion, 132.
Frothingham's story of Burgoyne's futile boast, 85.

GA-GEH-DJO-WA the Seneca, the " Henry of Na-
varre " of America, 16

Gaines, General, his sortie from Fort Erie, 155.

Gage, General , his orders to tire upon colonists when
necessary were the sparfc to the tinder, 79.

Gardiner, Captain, massacre of, 175.

Georgia under Oglethorpe, Spanish attacks on, 63.

Gettysburg, Battle of, turning point of the Rebellion,
256.

Gibbons at Gettysburg, 257.

Gil Gonzales and treasures of Nicaragua, 49.

Goliad, massacre at, 193

Goss, Warren, on drilling, 238; on Virginia mud, 251.

Governor's Foot Guards of Connecticut, 308.

Grand Army of the Republic, the, 296, 300.

Grant, General U. S , on Mexican soldiers, 197; on
" tactics," 216; as a West Pointer, 217; at Fort Dim-
elson, 248, made Major-General, 249, at Shiloh,
249; on Battle of Shiloh, 249; at V'icksburg, 257:
national backing of, 2(12.

Graves, Major, at battle of Frenchtown, 159.

"Gray-beard Regiment," the, 261.

Greely, Lieutenant, see Schwatka.

Green Mountain Boys capture Ticonderoga, 84.

Green, General Nathaniel, 91.

Greenleaf's, Colonel, plucky reply to Shays, 130.

Grenville, Sir Richard, proud reply to Spanish challenge,
55-

Grijalva, and the tribute of Vera Cruz, 49.

Guzman, Nuno de, fictions of, 46; his "presents" of
New Galicia, 49.

HALE, Edward Everett, on Ethan Allen's challenge,
84; on Battle of Lexington, 80.

Halpine, Charles G., poem, 279.

Hanks, Lieutenant, commander of Fort Mackinaw in
1812, 143

Harlem Heights and White Plains, spirited engagement
at, 96.

Harmar, Gen. Josiah, sent to Ohio to " discipline In-
dians," 133.

Harrison, General, defeats Tecumthe at Tippecanoe,
137; his brave reply to General Proctor at defense of
Fort Meigs, 156; his address before the battle of Fort
Wayne, 159.

INDEX.

347

Hawley, General, on colored troops at Olustee, 170:

successful direction of Centennial Exhibition of 1876,

290.

Heath, first of American " colonels," 90.
Henry, General James B., " the hero of the Wisconsin "

in I'.lack Hawk War, 172.
Hessian, their surrender at Trenton, 95, 98 ; led by

Haum, 103.

Hillsborough Bay, landing of De Soto at, 51.
Hood, Lieutenant, his bravery, 222.
Houston, General Samuel, at San Jacinto, 193.

INDIAN, war his second nature, 15; art of war, 25;
records of bravery incomplete, 30; crude war-weapons,
30; gives place to Cunyiiistm/ares, 31 ; warfare after
contact with white man, 31 , patriotism of, 54.

Indian fighters in the army, bravery of, 285, 288

Indian threats again-.! Ohio settlers, 132.

Indian troubles after 1865, 282.

Ingersoll, British collector, forced to shout for " Liberty
and property," 81.

Ingle roysterings in Maryland, 67.

Irving, Theodore, or knight-errantry in New World, 55

Irving, Washington, verdict on Spanish cavaliers in the
New World, 36

.1 M k><)N. General Andrew, rktory of Tohopeka,
150; credit due for the one victory of 1812, 164; mili-
tary genius of, 161, 164; assumes command in East
Florida, 167; quells the " nullification troubles," 176.

James, William, his verdict upon American troops after
battle of C'hippeway, 151.

Jasper, Sergeant, nails flag on Fort Moultrie, 114

Johnson, Sir John, merciful, 116.

Johnson. Rossiter, on itattle of Shiloh, 249. on courage
of American soldier, 273

Johnson, General- Albert Sidney, paymaster of the
army, 226.

KANSAS troubles, 227.

Karlsefne's fight with Indians of Vinland, or the
" skraelings," 33.

Kautz, General, on the "standing army," 291 . on de-
cline of military 1 experience, 306

Keane's Highlanders defeated at New Orleans, 163

Kieffer, Harry, on discipline, 268

Kilmer. George I. , on kindliness of Union veterans, 301

King's Mountain, Itattle of, 108.

Knox, (General Henry, first Secretary of War, 140;
founds the Society of the Cincinnati, 298.

Ku Klux Klan, 280, 281, 282

LADD, H. () , on Mexican bravery, 211

Lancaster revolt, 125.

Lee, Charles, jealousy of Washington, 112.

Lee, Sergeant Ezra, attempts to blow up the British

fleet, 115

Lee, R. E , General, 23$.
\x Feboure's defeat, 72.
Leisler, Jacob, of New York, the " people's governor,"

60 : his army ; his strife for civil liberty, 71.

Lexington, news of flies fast, 83.

Lincolu^Abraliam, story of " trainin' times," 184 ; his
first inaugural, 232; call for volunteers, 232, 259;
death of, 276; second inaugural, 304.

Lincoln, General, marshals army of Massachusetts
against Shay's malcontents, 128; his bravery, 130.

Little Withlacoochee, battle of, 175.

Lodge, Henry Cabot, praise of gallant siege of Lewis-
burg, 64; on military spirit of colonists, 70.

Logan's praise of Franklin, 73.

Longfellow's picture of Miles Standish, 58, 59.

Lopez the filibuster, 229.

Lnuisburg, fall of fortress, 64.

Lowell, James Russell, on "raw recruits," 183; on
Mexican war, 197, 210.

Loyalists, see Tories.

Lundy's Lane and Chippeway, 150.

Lyman, his victory at Lake George, 72.

Lyon, General, at Wilson's Creek, 250.

MACGINNES' victory at Fort Edward, 72.

Mackinaw, Fort, in 1812, 143 ; surrenders without a
blow, 144.

Madison, President, forced into war, 148.

Marcy, General, on the Regulars, 220 ; courage of men
during his celebrated march, 225.

Massachusetts Sixth in Baltimore, 236, 337.

Marion's dash and bravery, 107, 108

Mason, Captain John, 70.

Maumee, bloody Indian battle of, 137, 138.

Mauvi'la, battle of, 54.

May at Resaca de la Palma, 196.

McMaster, John Bache, on Harmar's army, 133.

McMaster's, Guy H , spirited poem on the " Old Con-
tinentals," no, in

McClellan, General George B., commands the Army of
the Potomac, 247 ; his ability, 248.

McCullough, Hugh, on the valor of the American sol-
dier, 292.

Meads, General, puts down Fenian Invasion, 281.

Meigs, Fort, defense of, 146, 156.

Mendoza's wrath aga:i<st Coronado, 47.

Mexican Army, bravery of, 197, 211.

Mexico, war against. 191, 196, 198, 209, 215; not a
" Southerner's War,** 215.

.Ifikati, the Indian war dance, 20.

Militia, dwindles down during Revolution, 100; laws
governing service in, 178; caricaturing the, 186, 187,
188. efficiency of after Mexican war, 219; value of,
307; strength of, 307 ; length of service of certain
regiments and companies of, 307 ; morale of, 308.

Militia-men's gallantry, 72 ; on Plains of Abraham, 74 :
readiness of, 229.

Miller, Colonel James, his gallant storming of battery
at Lundy's Lane, 155

Military duty in the provinces, 69

Minot, Captain of Concord, asked to warn his company
to meet at "One Minute's Warning," 78.

Minute-men, preparations of and alertness, 77, 79;
often turned tide of battle, 101 . at Lexington, 82 ;
their character and training, 89.

34*

INDEX.

Monette, Dr., on De Soto, 51.

Montcalm, his " struggle against destiny," 75 ; action

before Quebec, 76

Montezuma's defeat due to Spanish arquebuse, 30.
Montgomery, death of, 96.
Montreal, fall of, 77.
Morales and spoils of Pearl Island, 49.
Mormon troubles, 176.

Moultrie's heroic defense of Charleston, 96.
Mound Builders; battle of earliest American soldier,

'3.

Mulligan, Colonel, at Lexington, Mo., 250
Mun-dua Indians besieged by Ojibways, 26-29.
Muster day, 179

NAME, change of, Indian, proof of courage, 20.

National Guard, organization of, 219; strength of, 307.

Navy surpassed army in War of 1812, 152.

Newburg address voiced soldiers' discontent ; Washing-
ton's firmness, 124.

New France, governors of, 75,

New Galicia, " Presents" of, 49.

New Mexico, Coronado, conqueror of, 42.

New Orleans, greatest battle of 1812, 160, 165.

Niagara, Fort, captured ; Buffalo destroyed, 146.

Nicaragua, treasures of, 49.

Niceuesa, Diego de, expedition of, 34; his romantic
history, 36.

North Bridge at Concord, America's Rubicon, 82.

" Nullification Troubles" of 1832, 176

Natchez Indians, military schools, found among, 24.

OCT. 7, 1765, an historic date; protest of people

against F.ngland's tyranny, 81.
Officers in command of minute-men, gt.
Officers of Revolution, glance at valiant, 113, 114
Ogdensburg, defense and fall of, 146
Oglethorpe, James Edward, most heroic fighting gov-
ernor, 59; brilliant investment of St. Augustine, 61 ,

attack on Spanish fleet, 63
Ohio, beacon of the Mound builders, 11
Ojeda, Alonso de, companion of Columbus, 39: Ins

armament, 34; his life, 49; death of, 35.
Ojibways conquer Mun-duas and incorporate their tribe,

29.

Oliver, stamp-master in effigy, 81.
Olustee, Battle of, 270.

Omahas, military life of, 16 ; military education of, 24
O'Neil, private John, faithful to his post at Havre de

Grace, 158.

Orange riots of 1871, 291.
Onskany, most picturesque battle of the Revolution.

101, 104.

Orviedo on De Solo's love for killing Indians, 54
Osceola, see Asseola.

Pacific Ocean, Balboa's discovery of, 39.

Packenham, Sir Edward, leader in battle of New

Orleans, 161.
Palo Alto, Battle of, 195.
Parita, gold of, 49.

Patriot army of the Republics of New Granada and

Venezuela, 167.
Patterson and Armstrong harry settlers in Wyoming

Valley, 127.

Pawnees, Ponka vengeance upon, 17-24.
" Paxton Boys " march, 68.
Pearl Island, spoils of, 49.
Pedrarias' (Avilas') vengeance on Balbua, 49.
Pension policy of the United States, 301.
Pepperell, William, of Maine, earliest native general,

61 ; commands land forces against Canada, 63 : first

American general, 64.
Percy's land troops go out by " Yankee Doodle," come

back by " Chevy Chase," 82.
Peyronney and his valiant colony men, 73.
Philip of Pokanoket, army against, 71.
Philadelphia City Cavalry, first troop, 308.
Picket Line, the, ^5j.
Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, 257.
Pike, General, invasion of Canada, 141, 155.
Plnitsburgh and Burlington plundered by British, 146.
Ponce de Leon's voyage, 34; his death and epitaph, 35.
Porter, General, on close of rebellion, 274.
Prescott, W. H., on Alvarado's character, 42.
Prescott, Colonel William, his notable figure and

bravery on Copp's Hill, 91.
Princeton, raw iroops at, 104.

Proctor; Winchester's men refuse to surrender to, 157.
" Provincials," bravery in storming San Lazaro for-
tress, 72.
Puinam, Israel, modern Cincmnatus, 94.

Quebec, Wolfe's assault on, 76.
Quebec, Aino'.d's assault on, 9^.
Quitman at San Helen gate, 196.

RAILROAD, strikes of, 1877, 290.

Rebellion, The, heroes of, 268, 272.

Red Bird, Sioux chief, surrender of, 170.

Regular army in Revolution deserving of honor, 108.

Remington, Frederick, on colored troopers, 288.

Renan's verdict on antiquity, 14

Renme's dash on the breastworks at New Orleans, 163.

Resaca de la Palma, Battle of, 193

Resistance to British tyranny breaks out in various
forms, 8 1

Revere's, Paul, ride described by Longfellow, So.

Revolution ended. Makes the I" in ted States a nation,
120

Revolutionary army disbanded, 122. 125.

Revolutionary war, cost of, 123

Roosevelt, Theodore, sharp criticism on conduct of
War of 1X12, 145, on cause of defeat in 1812, 151 ,
description of battle of New Orleans, 162, 163.

Roxbury boy's prophecy of Lord Percy's defeat, S>

Ruggles, Timothy, commander of " Gentleman Volun-
teers ' of Boston. 1 u>

SAILOR, American, redeemed the cause of 1812, lost

by soldier, 152.
Sanders, Lieutenant William P his long ride, 22^1.

1\DEX.

349

San Jacinto, Battle of, 193.

Saratoga, Burgoyne's defeat at, 104.

Schoolboys of New York as paraders, 294.

Schwatka and Greely, value of services, 290.

Scott, General Winfield, his patience and persistence,
150; commands in Black Hawk war, 171 ; in " Nulli-
fication troubles," 176; made general of the army,
189 ; escapes from Santa Anna, 199, 207 ; commander
of army in Mexico, 206 ; his march on Mexico, 207,
209; commander-in-chief, 220; his loyalty in 1861,
236 ; after Bull Kim, 245 ; resigns, 247.

Secretaries of war between 1789 and 1812, 140.

Seminole war, 168, 173, 176.

Seventh Regiment of New York, 308.

Sevier, John and Clarke, Geo. Rogers' bravery of at
battle of King's Mountain, 108.

Shay's Rebellion, 128.

Shell-heaps' and " kitchen-middens' " disclosures of
weapons, 15.

Shepard, Gen. ; mistake in meeting Shay's, 129.

Sheridan, General Philip, on horrors of war, 311.

Sherman, General W. T. and his cadets, 228 : on effects
of Bull Run, 247; on Confederate defeats at Gettys-
burg and Vicksburg, 260 ; on the Schoolboy's Parade,
94-

Shiloh, Battle of. 248. 249.

Shirley's selection c:f William Pepperell, 64.

'Sixty-one, days of, 244.

Skinner, C. M., on Coronado's expedition, 46.

" Skinners " and Cowboys, 108.

" Skraelings," Indians of Vinland, 33.

Soldiers as presidents, 29.

Soldiers of 1812 gradually learn steadiness from disaster.
153.

Soldiers of Revolution, fail to receive their salaries,
124-

Soley, Prof, J Russell, on fighting qualities of Ameri-
cans in 1812, 151 : on Mexican war, 192, 210.

Spanish chivalry in New World. 36.

Spanish fighters, indomitable valnr of, 39

Spirit of liberty in 1776 in North and South, 81.

Smith at Contreras, 196.

Smith, General, loyalty of, 251.

Smith, John, valiant fighter, 59; his troubles with Gov.
Wingfield, 67.

St. Clair, Gen. Arthur; marches against Ohio Indians,
33. "34-

St. Joseph's Island, English garrison on, under Capt.
Roberts, 143.

St. Ledger; defeated by New York Dutchmen under
Herkimer, 104.

Standing army, necessity of recommended by Congress,
125; arguments for, 218, 225.

StandUh, Captain Miles, doughty Puritan fighter, 58;
his howitzer "a preacher," 58; his challenge to
Indians, 59.

Stannard's charge at Gettysburg, 257.

Stark, Captain John, doughty Indian fighter, 91 ; cap-
tures Crown Point, 72 ; his charge on the Hessians,
3-

Kencibles of Philadelphia, 308.

Stephenson, Dr. Benjamin F., originator of the Grand
Army of the Republic, 300.

Strangers, the first white, sailors rather than soldiers,
33

Stuyvesant, Petrus, most picturesuque governor of Col-
onial times, 59.

Sullivan's raid on Six Nations in 1779, 116.

Sweeney, General Thomas W., leader of Fenian In-
vasion, 281.

Sycamore Creek, Battle of, 171.

TACTICS in u*, 216.

Tampico veterans, their brave sergeant of, 196.

Taylor, General Xachary, commands in Mexican War,

194; successes in, 195; at Agua Nueva, 199; at

Buena Vista, 203, 206.

Tecumthe, defeats Van Home, 145; defeated by Harri-
son, 137; his death, 14').

Texas, Republic of, efforts toward independence, 193.
" Thinking bayonet " the, no place for, 227.
Thompson, Maurice, on Sp.ini-li greed for conquest,

48 : on gentlemen-robbers, 56 : on Jackson at New

Orleans, 163
Thorvald the Viking, death near present site of Boston,

33
Ticonderoga, defeat at, redeemed by Stark and his

militia, 72

Tip|>ecanoe, battle of, won by Harrison, 137, 138, 139.
Tipton, Ensign, his bravery at Tippecanoe, 139.
Tory loyalty to King, 107, 108.
Tories, honor due to, as well as to those who rebelled,

Train-bands, development of, 69.
"Trainin* time," see Musters.
Travis at the Alamo, 193
Troops, U. S., number and officers of , from 1789-1800,

140

Truen-.an, Maj. Thomas, 59.
Twiggs, General, surrenders his command, 235.

UNITED STATES Army, see Army.
Underbill's army, 70.

VACA, Cabeza de, a picturesque tramp, 46.

Valley Forge, hardships of, io<).

Van Arsdale, Jack, nails American flag on Battery at
New York above retreating British, 114.

Van Rensselaer, Colonel, his bold stand, 156.

Vaughn's, William, brave attack on I.ouisburg, 72.

Vera Cruz, tribute of, 49; capture by Scott.

Vicksburg, turning-point of the Rebellion, 256.

Vinland, discovery of, 33.

Volunteers respond to President's call in 1861, 236, 247,
259; bravery of in Rebellion, 257, 265; classification
of, 261 ; cowardice among, 266; disbandment of after
Rebellion, 275 ; review of, 276; losses of, 278.

Veteran soldier, the, comradeship of, 296: associations
of, 298, 299, 300, kindly spirit of, 301

WA-BA-SKA-HA the Ponka, story of, 17; his heroic
death, 24.

IXDEX.

Wa-kan-da, protecting spirit of the Oniahas, 17.

Walker, William, the filibuster, 229.

Wallace's " Fair God," Alvarado among Aztecs the
hero, 41.

War, Indian's second nature, 15.

War of 1812, mismanagement on American side, 144;
discouraging defeats in, 14^.

Ward, Artemas, " Commander-in-chief " by courtesy,
91 : his coolness in Shay's revolt, 130.

Warren, Joseph, Roxbury doctor, noblest victim on
Hunker Hill, ,,..

Washington, Colonel, march to Santa Fe, 226.

Washington, George, his bravery at Braddock's defeat,
74; appointed ''generalissimo," S6 : his masterly
retreat from Brooklyn, 88; his crossing the Delaware
a forlorn hope, eft ; L<xlge's comment on crossing of
Delaware, 99; his small righting force, 99; and Con-
tinental army, 109; enters New York, 122; as Lieu-
tenant General, 141: his death, 142.

Washington elm, the, in Cambridge, S<>.

Watertown, Provincial Congress at, issues orders for
militia to be ready to march at a minute's warning, 86.

Wayne, General Anthony, his nicknames, n;; takes
command of Legion of United States, 134, 135: his
defiance of Great Britain, 13*.

West Point, military academy at, 2i*>.

" Whiskey Insurrection " met by Washington and
" Light Horse Harry Lee," 131.

Whitfield's comment on Oglethorpe's marvelous de-
fense of Georgia, 63.

Whitman, Walt, on Lincoln, 277.

White Wolf, the Apache chief, his duel with Bell and
his soldiers, 222.

Wilkeson, Bayard, the " Sidney" of the Rebellion, 272.

Wilkinson, General, his imbecility denounced by Scott,
146.

Wilson's Creek, Battle of, 250.

Winchester's defeat, 146.

Winnebago War, 170.

Wisconsin, battle of, The, 172.

Wolfe, General, at Quebec, 75; heroic death of, 76.

Wool, Captain, bold charge at Fort George, 157.

" World Turned Upside Down," quickstep sounded by
British troops at surrender of Yorktowu, 121.

Worth, General Thomas, ends the Seminole War, 174.

Wyoming, brutality of Pennsylvania to New England
.settlers, 127.

YO.RKTOWN, surrender of, 121.
ZUN'I, " Priesthood of the Bow," 24.

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