A 
 
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 3 
 
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 WlTHOt/T 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 41 <There cannot be a man 
 who loves the old t fla<j as 
 3. do, or prays for it as I 
 do, or hopes for it as Ida." 
 39-
 
 ff 
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT 
 A COUNTRY. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 oJOJc 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO., PUBLISHERS. 
 
 3 HAMILTON PLACE. 
 
 1891.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in trie year 1888, by 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANY, 
 in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. GUSHING & Co., BOSTON.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is difficult for young readeis of the pres 
 ent generation to understand or to imagine 
 what was the condition of public feeling in 
 many parts of the United States, at different 
 periods in the Civil War, which lasted from 
 1 86 1 to 1865. 
 
 In the year 1863, a great deal of distrust 
 expressed itself, even in some of the northern 
 states, as to whether it were worth while for 
 the North to make the sacrifices it was mak 
 ing. In the state of Ohio, a prominent states 
 man expressed himself with such contempt as 
 to the national government, that General Burn- 
 side, who was in command of the national 
 army in that region, sent him over the lines 
 to the rebels, saying that he seemed to belong 
 with them, rather than in his own country. 
 It was in that summer that I wrote the story
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 which is in the reader's hands. My wish was 
 simply the wish to show what one's Country 
 is, and what her claims are, without any refer 
 ence to any of the other questions which were 
 involved in the Civil War. I tried to interest 
 my readers in a hero of whom they should 
 know little, except that he had no country, 
 having forfeited the birth-right which all other 
 men have. 
 
 To give this hero a name, and to surround 
 him with circumstances which were in the least 
 probable, I connected him with the movement, 
 still mysterious, of Aaron Burr, near the be 
 ginning of this century. I supposed him to 
 be an officer of the army of the country which 
 he disowned. And, in the slight historical 
 references to Burr and his undertaking, what 
 ever it was, which will be found in the begin 
 ning, I followed the truth of history. 
 
 I wanted a name for the hero which was 
 familiar at that time in the Southwest. I re 
 membered a young man, named Nolan, who 
 was the correspondent and friend of James 
 Wilkinson, who was the general in command
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 of the United States army at the time Burr 
 was arrested. James Wilkinson was a traitor 
 to his country; and a traitor to Burr also, as 
 I believe. That is, I think that he had given 
 Burr encouragement that he would join him 
 in his plan, whatever it was. But when the 
 moment came, he took measures for the ar 
 rest of Burr, and disowned him. With that 
 matter, however, this story has nothing to do. 
 In seeking a name for my hero, I remembered 
 Wilkinson's correspondent, Nolan, and, as it 
 happened, I thought his name was " Stephen 
 Nolan." He is so spoken of in my story, and 
 the reader will find that the hero of this book 
 alludes to Stephen Nolan and to his death in 
 Texas. 
 
 Long after the story was first published, I 
 found that the real name of the true Nolan 
 was Philip, not Stephen. He was an adven 
 turer, who was killed near Waco, in Texas, by 
 the Spaniards in 1801. I had made a mistake 
 in calling him Stephen, and I had transferred 
 his name, to be the name of the imaginary 
 person whom I had created. To this care-
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 lessness or accident, I have owed a large cor 
 respondence, very interesting and instructive 
 to me, with the relatives of the real " Philip 
 Nolan" and others. I have his portrait, as it 
 was painted in a miniature for the lady whom 
 he married. In another book, called "Philip 
 Nolan's Friends," I have given truly the out 
 lines of his tragic history. But his connection 
 with my Philip Nolan was a mere accident. 
 The Philip Nolan of the book in the reader's 
 hands is an imaginary character, who was 
 created for the single purpose of teaching 
 young Americans what it is to have a coun 
 try, what is the duty which they owe to that 
 country, and how central that duty is among 
 all the duties of their lives. I was glad to 
 find, when the story was published, that this 
 moral was appreciated. I have many letters, 
 which I prize highly, from persons who were 
 before strangers to me, who read it in dreary 
 watches at sea, or by the light of camp-fires 
 on shore, when they were risking their lives 
 for the country which had the right to claim 
 their service, and which did not assert that
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 right in vain. I have a memorandum of the 
 death of " Philip Nolan," a black man from 
 Louisiana, to whom that war gave a country, 
 and who laid down his life for her on the 
 banks of the James River. I suppose that 
 this " Philip Nolan " was named from the same 
 Philip Nolan who gave a name to my hero. 
 I have had the pleasure of knowing that my 
 Philip Nolan has made many friends in all 
 parts of this nation. And now that the story 
 is printed as a school-book, I dedicate it to 
 the boys and girls who also are citizens of 
 the United States, with the hope which Philip 
 Nolan expressed to Frederick Ingham when 
 he was a midshipman, and with the injunction 
 which he gave to that boy : 
 
 " For your country, boy, and for that flag, 
 never dream a dream but of serving her, as 
 she bids you, though the service carry you 
 through a thousand hells. No matter what 
 happens to you, no matter who flatters you or 
 who abuses you, never look at another flag ; 
 never let a night pass but you pray God to 
 bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 all these men you have to do with, behind 
 officers and government, the people even, there 
 is the Country Herself, your Country, and that 
 you belong to Her, as you belong to your own 
 mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would 
 stand by your mother, if those devils there 
 had got hold of her to-day. O if anybody 
 had said so to me when I was your age ! "
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that very few casual readers of 
 the New York Herald of August I3th 
 observed, in an obscure corner among the 
 "Deaths," the announcement, 
 
 " NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 
 2 11' S., Long. 131 W., on the nth of May, PHILIP 
 NOLAN." 
 
 I happened to observe it, because I was 
 stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinaw, 
 waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did 
 not choose to come, and I was devouring to the 
 very stubble all the current literature I could 
 get hold of, even down to the deaths and mar 
 riages in the Herald. My memory for names 
 and people is good, and the reader will see, as 
 he goes on, that I had reason enough to remem 
 ber Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of 
 readers who would have paused at that an 
 nouncement, if the officer of the Levant who 
 reported it had chosen to make it thus : " Died, 
 May nth, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 For it was as " The Man without a Country " 
 that poor Philip Nolan had generally been 
 known by the officers who had him in charge 
 during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all men 
 who sailed under them. I dare say there is 
 many a man who has taken wine with him once 
 a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never 
 knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether 
 the poor wretch had any name at all. 
 
 There can now be no possible harm in telling 
 this poor creature's story. Reason enough there 
 has been till now, ever since Madison's adminis 
 tration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, 
 the secrecy of honor itself, among the gentle 
 men of the navy who have had Nolan in succes 
 sive charge. And certainly it speaks well for 
 the esprit de corps of the profession, and the 
 personal honor of its members, that to the 
 press this man's story has been wholly unknown, 
 and, I think, to the country at large also. I 
 have reason to think, from some investigations 
 I made in the Naval Archives when I was 
 attached to the Bureau of Construction, that 
 every official report relating to him was burned 
 when Ross burned the public buildings at 
 Washington. One of the Tuckers, or possibly 
 one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the 
 end of the war; and when, on returning from 
 his cruise, he reported at Washington to one of
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 3 
 
 the Crowninshields, who was in the Navy 
 Department when he came home, he found 
 that the Department ignored the whole business. 
 Whether they really knew nothing about it or 
 whether it was a " Non mi recordo," determined 
 on as a piece of policy, I do not know. But 
 this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly 
 before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in 
 his report of a cruise. 
 
 But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any 
 longer. And now the poor creature is dead, 
 it seems to me worth while to tell a little of 
 his story, by way of showing young Americans 
 of to-day what it is to be A MAN WITHOUT A 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as 
 there was in the " Legion of the West," as the 
 Western division of our army was then called. 
 When Aaron Burr made his first dashing ex 
 pedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort 
 Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he 
 met, as the Devil would have it, this gay, dash 
 ing, bright young fellow, at some dinner-party, 
 I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, 
 walked with him, took him a day or two's voy 
 age in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated 
 him. For the next year, barrack-life was very 
 tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed
 
 4 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 himself of the permission the great man had 
 given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, 
 stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote 
 and copied. But never a line did he have in 
 reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys 
 in the garrison sneered at him, because he sac 
 rificed in this unrequited affection for a politician 
 the time which they devoted to Monongahela, 
 hazard, and high-low-jack. Bourbon, euchre, 
 and poker were still unknown. But one day 
 Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came 
 down the river, not as an attorney seeking a 
 place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. 
 He had defeated I know not how many district- 
 attorneys ; he had dined at I know not how 
 many public dinners ; he had been heralded in 
 I know not how many Weekly Arguses, and it 
 was rumored that he had an army behind him 
 and an empire before him. It was a great day 
 his arrival to poor Nolan. Burr had not 
 been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. 
 That evening he asked Nolan to take him out 
 in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cotton- 
 wood tree, as he said, really to seduce him ; 
 and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was 
 enlisted body and soul. From that time, though 
 he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITH 
 OUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 What Burr meant to do I know no more than
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 5 
 
 you, dear reader. It is none of our business 
 just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe 
 came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia 
 of that day undertook to break on the wheel all 
 the possible Clarences of the then House of 
 York, by the great treason-trial at Richmond, 
 some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi 
 Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's 
 Sound is to-day, introduced the like novelty on 
 their provincial stage, and, to while away the 
 monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got 
 up, for spectacles, a string of court-martials on 
 the officers there. One and another of the 
 colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out 
 the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven 
 knows, there was evidence enough, that he 
 was sick of the service, had been willing to be 
 false to it, and would have obeyed any order to 
 march any-whither with any one who would 
 follow him had the order been signed, "By 
 command of His Exc. A. Burr." The courts 
 dragged on. The big flies escaped, rightly 
 for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty 
 enough, as I say ; yet you and I would never 
 have heard of him, reader, but that, when the 
 president of the court asked him at the close, 
 whether he wished to say anything to show 
 that he had always been faithful to the United 
 States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy,
 
 6 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 " D n the United States ! I wish I may 
 never hear of the United States again ! " 
 
 I suppose he did not know how the words 
 shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding 
 the court. Half the officers who sat in it had 
 served through the Revolution, and their lives, 
 not to say their necks, had been risked for the 
 very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his 
 madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the 
 West of those days, in the midst of " Spanish 
 plot," " Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had 
 been educated on a plantation where the finest 
 company was a Spanish officer or a French mer 
 chant from Orleans. His education, such as it 
 was, had been perfected in commercial expedi 
 tions to Vera Cruz, and I think he told me his 
 father once hired an Englishman to be a private 
 tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had 
 spent half his youth with an older brother, hunt 
 ing horses in Texas ; and, in a word, to him 
 " United States " was scarcely a reality. Yet 
 he had been fed by " United States " for all the 
 years since he had been in the army. He had 
 sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to 
 "United States." It was "United States" 
 which gave him the uniform he wore, and the 
 sword by his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was 
 only because " United States " had picked you 
 out first as one of her own confidential men of
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. / 
 
 honor that " A. Burr" cared for you a straw more 
 than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for 
 him. I do not excuse Nolan ; I only explain to 
 the reader why he damned his countfy, and 
 wished he might never hear her name again. 
 
 He never did hear her name but once again. 
 From that moment, September 23, 1807, till the 
 day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her 
 name again. For that half-century and more 
 he was a man without a country. 
 
 Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. 
 If Nolan had compared George Washington to 
 Benedict Arnold, or had cried, " God save King 
 George," Morgan would not have felt worse. 
 He called the court into his private room, and 
 returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a 
 sheet, to say, 
 
 " Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court ! 
 The Court decides, subject to the approval of 
 the President, that you never hear the name of 
 the United States again." 
 
 Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. 
 Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole 
 room was hushed dead as night for a minute. 
 Fven Nolan lost his swagger in a moment. 
 Then Morgan added, 
 
 " Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans 
 in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval 
 commander there."
 
 O THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 The Marshal gave his orders, and the pris 
 oner was taken out of court. 
 
 "Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see 
 that no one mentions the United States to the 
 prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to 
 Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request 
 him to order that no one shall mention the 
 United States to the prisoner while he is on 
 board ship. You will receive your written or 
 ders from the officer on duty here this evening. 
 The court is adjourned without day." 
 
 I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan 
 himself took the proceedings of "the court to 
 Washington City, and explained them to Mr. 
 Jefferson. Certain it is that the President ap 
 proved them, certain, that i6, if I may believe 
 the men who say they have seen his signature. 
 Before the Nautilus got round from New Or 
 leans to the Northern Atlantic coast with the 
 prisoner on board the sentence had been ap 
 proved, and he was a man without a country. 
 
 The plan then adopted was substantially the 
 same which was necessarily followed ever after. 
 Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of 
 sending him by water from Fort Adams and 
 Orleans. The Secretary of the Navy it 
 must have been the first Crowninshield, though 
 he is a man I do not remember was requested 
 to put Nolan on board a government vessel
 
 THE MAX NYITllOUT A COUNTRY. 9 
 
 bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he 
 should be only so far confined there as to make 
 it certain that he never saw or heard of the 
 country. We had few long cruises then, and 
 the navy was very much out of favor ; and as 
 almost all of this story is traditional, as I have 
 explained, I do not know certainly what his 
 first cruise was. But the commander to whom 
 he was intrusted, perhaps it was Tingey or 
 Shaw, though I think it was one of the younger 
 men, we are all old enough now, regulated 
 the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, 
 and according to his scheme they were carried 
 out, I suppose, till Nolan died. 
 
 When I was second officer of the Intrepid, 
 some thirty years after, I saw the original paper 
 of instructions. I have been sorry ever since 
 that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, 
 however, much in this way : 
 
 "WASHINGTON (with a date, which 
 must have been late in 1807). 
 
 " SIR, You will receive from Lieutenant 
 Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late a Lieu 
 tenant in the United States Army. 
 
 "This person on his trial by court-martial- 
 expressed with an oath the wish that he might 
 'never hear of the United States again.' 
 
 " The Court sentenced him to have his wish 
 fulfilled.
 
 IO THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 
 
 " For the present, the execution of the order is 
 intrusted by the President to this Department. 
 
 " You will take the prisoner on board your 
 ship, and keep him there with such precautions 
 as shall prevent his escape. 
 
 " You will provide him with such quarters, 
 rations, and clothing as would be proper for an 
 officer of his late rank, if he were a passenger 
 on your vessel on the business of his Govern 
 ment. 
 
 " The gentlemen on board will make any 
 arrangements agreeable to themselves regard 
 ing his society. He is to be exposed to no 
 indignity of any kind, nor is he ever unneces 
 sarily to be reminded that he is a prisoner. 
 
 " But under no circumstances is he ever to 
 hear of his country or to see any information 
 regarding it ; and you will specially caution all 
 the officers under your command to take care, 
 that, in the various indulgences which may be 
 granted, this rule, in which his punishment is 
 involved, shall not be broken. 
 
 " It is the intention of the Government that 
 he shall never again see the country which he 
 has disowned. Before the end of your cruise 
 you will receive orders which will give effect to 
 this intention. 
 
 " Respectfully yours, 
 
 "W. SOUTHARD, 
 
 " For the Secretary of the Navy."
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. II 
 
 If I had only preserved the whole of this 
 paper, there would be no break in the beginning 
 of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, 
 if it were he, handed it to his successor in the 
 charge, and he to his, and I suppose the com 
 mander of the Levant has it to-day as his au 
 thority for keeping this man in this mild cus 
 tody. 
 
 The rule adopted on board the ships on 
 which I have met "the man without a country'' 
 was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. 
 No mess liked to have him permanently, be 
 cause his presence cut off all talk of home or of 
 the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of 
 peace or of war, cut off more than half the 
 talk men liked to have at sea. But it was 
 always thought too hard that he should never 
 meet the rest of us, except to touch hats, and 
 we finally sank into one system. He was not 
 permitted to talk with the men, unless an 
 officer was by. With officers he had unre 
 strained intercourse, as far as they and he 
 chose. But he grew shy, though he had favor 
 ites : I was one. Then the captain always 
 asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess 
 in succession took up the invitation in its turn. 
 According to the size of the ship, you had 
 him at your mess more or less often at dinner. 
 His breakfast he ate in his own state-room,
 
 12 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 he always had a state-room, which was where 
 a sentinel or somebody on the watch could see 
 the door. And whatever else he ate or drank, 
 he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the 
 marines or sailors had any special jollification, 
 they were permitted to invite " Plain-Buttons," 
 as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with 
 some officer, and the men were forbidden to 
 speak of home while he was there. I believe 
 the theory was that the sight of his punishment 
 did them good. They called him " Plain-But 
 tons," because, while he always chose to wear 
 a regulation army-uniform, he was not permitted 
 to wear the army-button, for the reason that it 
 bore either the initials or the insignia of the 
 country he had disowned. 
 
 I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I 
 was on shore with some of the older officers 
 from our ship and from the Brandywine, which 
 we had met at Alexandria. We had leave to 
 make a party and go up to Cairo and the Pyra 
 mids. As we jogged along (you went on don 
 keys then), some of the gentlemen (we boys 
 called them "Dons," but the phrase was long 
 since changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and 
 some one told the system which was adopted 
 from the first about his books and other reading. 
 As he was almost never permitted to go on 
 shore, even though the vessel lay in port for
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUXTRV. 13 
 
 months, his time at the best hung heavy ; and 
 everybody was permitted to lend him books, if 
 they were not published in America and made 
 no allusion to it. These were common enough 
 in the old days, when people in the other hemi 
 sphere talked of the United States as little as 
 we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the for 
 eign papers that came into the ship, sooner or 
 later ; only somebody must go over them first, 
 and cut out any advertisement or stray para 
 graph that alluded to America. This was a 
 little cruel sometimes, when the back of what 
 was cut out might be as innocent as Hesiod. 
 Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's battles, 
 or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would 
 find a great hole, because on the back of the 
 page of that paper there had been an advertise 
 ment of a packet for New York, or a scrap from 
 the President's message. I say this was the 
 first time I ever heard of this plan, which after 
 wards I had enough and more than enough to 
 do with. I remember it, because poor Phillips, 
 who was of the party, as soon as the allusion to 
 reading was made, told a story of something 
 which happened at the Cape of Good Hope on 
 Nolan's first voyage ; and it is the only thing I 
 ever knew of that voyage. They had touched 
 at the Cape, and had done the civil thing with 
 the English Admiral and the fleet, and then,
 
 14 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 leaving for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, 
 Phillips had borrowed a lot of English books 
 from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed 
 in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, 
 as the Devil would order, was the " Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel," which they had all of them 
 heard of, but which most of them had never 
 seen. I think it could not have been published 
 long. Well, nobody thought there could be 
 any risk of anything national in that, though 
 Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tem 
 pest " from Shakespeare before he let Nolan 
 have it, because he said " the Bermudas ought 
 to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." 
 So Nolan was permitted to join the circle one 
 afternoon when a lot of them sat on deck smok 
 ing and reading aloud. People do not do such 
 things so often now; but when I was young we 
 got rid of a great deal of time so. Well, so it 
 happened that in his turn Nolan took the book 
 and read to the others ; and he read very well, 
 as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a line 
 of the ,poem, only it was all magic and Border 
 chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. 
 Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth 
 canto, stopped a minute and drank something, 
 and then began, without a thought of what was 
 coming, 
 
 " Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
 Who never to himself hath said."
 
 THE .MAN WiTHOlT A COUNTRY. 15 
 
 It seems impossible to us that anybody ever 
 heard this for the first time ; but all these fel 
 lows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, 
 still unconsciously or mechanically, 
 
 " This is my own, my native land I 1 ' 
 
 Then they all saw something was to pay ; but 
 he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a 
 little pale, but plunged on, 
 
 "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
 As home his footsteps he hath turned 
 
 From wandering on a foreign strand ? 
 If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"- 
 
 By this time the men were all beside them 
 selves, wishing there was any way to make him 
 turn over two pages ; but he had not quite 
 presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, 
 colored crimson, and staggered on, 
 
 " For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
 High though his titles, proud his name, 
 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, 
 Despite these titles, power, and pelf, 
 The wretch, concentred all in self," - 
 
 and here the poor fellow choked, could not go 
 on, but started up, swung the book into the sea, 
 vanished into his state-room, "And by Jove," 
 said Phillips, " we did not see him for two months 
 again. And I had to make up some beggarly
 
 1 6 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 story to that English surgeon why I did not 
 return his Waiter Scott to him." 
 
 That story shows about the time when No 
 lan's braggadocio must have broken down. At 
 first, they said ; . he took a very high tone, con 
 sidered his imprisonment a mere farce, affected 
 to enjoy the voyage, and all that ; but Phillips 
 said that after he came out of his state-room he 
 never was the same man again. He never read 
 aloud again, unless it was the Bible or Shake 
 speare, or something else he was sure of. But it 
 was not that merely. He never entered in with 
 the other young men exactly as a companion 
 again. He was always shy afterwards, when I 
 knew him, very seldom spoke, unless he was 
 spoken to, except to a very few friends. He 
 lighted up occasionally, I remember late in 
 his life hearing him fairly eloquent on some 
 thing which had been suggested to him by one 
 of Flechier's sermons, but generally he had 
 the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded man. 
 
 When Captain Shaw was coming home, if 
 as I say, it was Shaw, rather to the surprise 
 of everybody, they made one of the Windward 
 Islands, and lay off and on for nearly a week. 
 The boys said the officers were sick of salt- 
 junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they 
 came home. But after several days the Warren 
 came to the same rendezvous ; they exchanged
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUN1KV. I/ 
 
 signals ; she sent to Phillips and these home 
 ward-bound men letters and papers, and told 
 them she was outward-bound, perhaps to -the 
 Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his 
 traps on the boat back to try his second cruise. 
 He looked very blank when he was told to get 
 ready to join her. He had known enough of the 
 signs of the sky to know that till that moment 
 he was going "home." But this was a distinct 
 evidence of something he had not thought of, 
 perhaps, that there was no going home for 
 him, even to a prison. And this was the first 
 of some twenty such transfers, which brought 
 him sooner or later into half our best vessels, 
 but which kept him all his life at least some 
 hundred miles from the country he had hoped 
 he might never hear of again. 
 
 It may have been on that second cruise, it 
 was once when he was up the Mediterranean, 
 that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty 
 of those days, danced with him. They had been 
 lying a long time in the Bay of Naples, and the 
 officers were very intimate in the English fleet, 
 and there had been great festivities, and our men 
 thought they must 'give a great ball on board 
 the ship. How they ever -did it on board the 
 Warren I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it 
 was not the Warren, or perhaps ladies did not 
 take up so much room as they do now. They
 
 1 8 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 wanted to use Nolan's state-room for something, 
 and they hated to do it without asking him to 
 the ball ; so the captain said they might ask 
 him, if they would be responsible that he did 
 not talk with the wrong people, "who would 
 give him intelligence." So the dance went on, 
 the finest party that had ever been known, I 
 dare say ; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball 
 that was not. For ladies they had the family of 
 the American consul, one or two travellers, who 
 had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of Eng 
 lish girls and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton 
 herself. 
 
 Well, different officers relieved each other in 
 standing and talking with Nolan in a friendly 
 way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to 
 him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after 
 a while even the fellows who took this honorary 
 guard of Nolan ceased to fear any contretemps. 
 Only when some English lady Lady Hamil 
 ton, as I said, perhaps called for a set of 
 "American dances," an odd thing happened. 
 Everybody then danced contra-dances. The 
 black band, nothing loath, conferred as to what 
 "American dances" were, and started off with 
 "Virginia Reel," which they followed with 
 " Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those 
 days, should have been followed by "The Old 
 Thirteen." But just as Dick, the leader, tapped
 
 THE .MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. IQ 
 
 for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about 
 to say, in true negro state, "'The Old Thir 
 teen,' gentlemen and ladies ! " as he had said 
 " ' Virginny Reel,' if you please ! " and " 'Money- 
 Musk,' if you please ! " the captain's boy tapped 
 him on the shoulder, whispered to him, and he 
 did not announce the name of the dance ; he 
 merely bowed, began on the air, and they all 
 fell to, the officers teaching the English girls 
 the figure, but not telling them why it had no 
 name. 
 
 But that is not the story I started to tell. 
 As the dancing went on, Nolan and our fellows 
 all got at ease, as I said, so much so, that it 
 seemed quite natural for him to bow to that 
 splendid Mrs. Graff, and say, 
 
 " I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss 
 Rutledge. Shall I have the honor of dancing ?" 
 
 He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was 
 by him, could not hinder him. She laughed 
 and said, 
 
 " I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. 
 Nolan ; but I will dance all the same," just nod 
 ded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave Mr. 
 Nolan to her, and led him off to the place where 
 the dance was forming. 
 
 Nolan thought he had got his chance. He 
 had known her at Philadelphia, and at other 
 places had met her, and this was a Godsend.
 
 2O THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 You could not talk in contra-dances, as you do 
 in cotillions, or even in the pauses of waltzing ; 
 but there were chances for tongues and sounds, 
 as well as for eyes and blushes. He began with 
 her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius, and the 
 French ; and then, when they had worked down, 
 and had that long talking-time at the bottom of 
 the set, he said, boldly, a little pale, she said, 
 as she told me the story, years after, 
 
 "And what do you hear from home, Mrs. 
 Graff?" 
 
 And that splendid creature looked through 
 him. Jove ! how she must have looked through 
 him ! 
 
 " Home ! ! Mr. Nolan ! ! ! I thought you were 
 the man who never wanted to 'hear of home 
 again ! " and she walked directly up the deck 
 to her husband, and left poor Nolan alone, as he 
 always was. He did not dance again. 
 
 I cannot give any history of him in order; 
 nobody can" now ; and, indeed, I am not trying 
 to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, 
 as I believe them, from the myths which have 
 been told about this man for forty years. The 
 lies that have been told about him are legion. 
 The fellows used to say he was the " Iron 
 Mask " ; and poor George Pons went to his 
 grave in the belief that this was the author of 
 "Junius," who was being punished for his cele-
 
 Till: MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 21 
 
 brated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was 
 not very strong in th/j historical line. A hap 
 pier story than either of these I have told is of 
 the War. That came along soon after. I have 
 heard this affair told in three, or four ways, 
 and, indeed, it may have happened more than 
 once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell. 
 However, in one, at least, of the great frigate- 
 duels with the English, in which the navy was 
 really baptized, it happened that a round-shot 
 from the enemy entered one of our ports square, 
 and took right down the officer of the gun him 
 self, and almost every man "of the gun's crew. 
 Now you may say what you choose about cour 
 age, but that is not a nice thing to see. But, as 
 the men who were not killed picked themselves 
 up, and as they and the surgeon's people were 
 carrying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in 
 his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, 
 and, just as if he had been the officer, told them 
 off with authority, who should go to the cock 
 pit with the wounded men, who should stay with 
 him, perfectly cheery, and with that way which 
 makes men feel sure all is right and is going to 
 be right. And he finished loading the gun with 
 his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. 
 And there he stayed, captain of that gun, keep 
 ing those fellows in spirits, till the enemy struck, 
 sitting on the carriage while the gun was
 
 22 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 cooling, though he was exposed all the time, 
 showing them easier ways to handle heavy shot, 
 making the raw hands laugh at their own 
 blunders, and when the gun cooled again, get 
 ting it loaded and fired twice as often as any 
 other gun on the ship. The captain walked for 
 ward by way of encouraging the men, and Nolan 
 touched his hat and said, 
 
 "I am showing them how we do this in the 
 artillery, sir.'' 
 
 And this is the part of the story where all 
 the legends agree ; and the Commodore said, 
 
 " I see you do, and I thank you, sir ; and I 
 shall never forget this day, sir, and you never 
 shall, sir." 
 
 And after the whole thing was over, and he 
 had the Englishman's sword, in the midst of the 
 state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he 
 said, 
 
 "Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to 
 come here." 
 
 And when Nolan came, the captain said, 
 
 " Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you 
 to-day ; you are one of us to-day ; you will be 
 named in the despatches." 
 
 And then the old man took off his own sword 
 of ceremony, and gave it to Nolan, and made 
 him put it on. The man told me this who saw 
 it. Nolan cried like a baby, and well he might.
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 23 
 
 He had not worn a sword since that infernal 
 day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards, on 
 occasions of ceremony, he wore that quaint old 
 French sword of the Commodore's. 
 
 The captain did mention him in the despatches. 
 It was always said he asked that he might be par 
 doned. He wrote a special letter to the Secre 
 tary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As 
 I said, that was about the time when they began 
 to ignore the whole transaction at Washington, 
 and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry 
 itself on because there was nobody to stop it 
 without any new orders from home. 
 
 I have heard it said that he was with Porter 
 when he took possession of tlie Nukahiwa Is 
 lands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Por 
 ter, his father, Essex Porter, that is, the old 
 Essex Porter, not this Essex. As an artillery 
 officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan 
 knew more about fortifications, embrasures, 
 ravelins, stockades, and all that, than any of 
 them did ; and he worked with a right good-will 
 in fixing that battery all right. I have always 
 thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him 
 in command there with Gamble. That would 
 have settled all the question about his punish 
 ment. We should have kept the islands, and at 
 this moment we should have one station in the 
 Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when
 
 24 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 they wanted this little watering-place, would 
 have found it was preoccupied. But Madison 
 and the Virginians, of course, flung all that 
 away. 
 
 All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan 
 was thirty then, he must have been near eighty 
 when he died. He looked sixty when he was 
 forty. But he never seemed to me to change a 
 hair afterwards. As I imagine his life, from 
 what I have seen and heard of it, he must have 
 been in every sea, and yet almost never on land. 
 He must have known, in a formal way, more 
 officers in our service than any man living 
 knows. He told me once, with a grave smile, 
 that no man in the world lived so methodical a 
 life as he. " You know the boys say I am the 
 Iron Mask, and you know how busy he was." 
 He said it did not do for any one to try to read 
 all the time, more than to do anything else all 
 the time ; but that he read just five hours a day. 
 "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, 
 writing in them at such and such hours from 
 what I have been reading; and I include in 
 these my scrap-books." These were very curi 
 ous indeed. He had six or eight, of different 
 subjects. There was one of History, one of 
 Natural Science, one which he called " Odds 
 and Ends." But they were not merely books 
 of extracts from newspapers. They had bits
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 25 
 
 of plants and ribbons, shells tied on, and 
 carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had 
 taught the men to cut for him, and they were 
 beautifully illustrated. He drew admirably. 
 He had some of the funniest drawings there, 
 and some of the most pathetic, that I have ever 
 seen in my life. I wonder who will have Nolan's 
 scrap-books. 
 
 Well, he said his reading and his notes were 
 his profession, and that they took five hours 
 and two hours respectively of each day. 
 "Then," said he, "every man should have a 
 diversion as well as a profession. My Natural 
 History is my diversion. 1 ' That took two hours 
 a day more. The men used to bring him birds 
 and fish, but on a long cruise he had to satisfy 
 himself with centipedes and cockroaches and 
 such small game. He was the only naturalist 
 I ever met who knew anything about the habits 
 of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those 
 people can tell you whether they are Lepidop- 
 tera or Steptopotem ; but as for telling how you 
 can get rid of them, or how they get away from 
 you when you strike them, why Linnaeus 
 knew as little of that as John Fox the idiot 
 did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular 
 daily "occupation." The rest of the time he 
 talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he 
 went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his
 
 26 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 exercise ; and I never heard that he was ill. If 
 any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse 
 in the world ; and he knew more than half the 
 surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or 
 died, or if the captain wanted him to, on any 
 other occasion, he was always ready to read 
 prayers. I have said that he read beautifully. 
 My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan 
 began six or eight years after the War, on my 
 first voyage after I was appointed a midship 
 man. It was in the first days after our Slave- 
 Trade treaty, while the Reigning House, which 
 was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort 
 of sentimentalism about the suppression of the 
 horrors of the Middle Passage, and something 
 was sometimes done that way. We were in 
 the South Atlantic on that business. From 
 the time I joined, I believe I thought Nolan 
 was a sort of lay chaplain, a chaplain with a 
 blue coat. I never asked about him. Every 
 thing in the ship was strange to me. I knew it 
 was green to ask questions, and I suppose I 
 thought there "was a " Plain- Buttons " on every 
 ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a 
 week, and the caution was given that on that 
 day nothing was to be said about home. But if 
 they had told us not to say anything about the 
 planet Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I 
 should not have asked why ; there were a great
 
 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 2/ 
 
 many things which seemed to me to have as 
 little reason. I first came to understand any 
 thing about "the man without a country " one 
 day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner 
 which had slaves on board. An officer was 
 sent to take charge of her, and, after a few 
 minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some 
 one might be sent him who could speak Portu 
 guese. We were all looking over the rail when 
 the message came, and we all wished we could 
 interpret, when the captain asked who spoke 
 Portuguese. But none of the officers did ; and 
 just as the captain was sending forward to ask 
 if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out 
 and said he should be glad to interpret, if the 
 captain wished, as he understood the language. 
 The captain thanked him, fitted out another 
 boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck 
 to go. 
 
 When we got there, it was such a scene as 
 you seldom see, and never want to. Nastiness 
 beyond account, and chaos run loose in the 
 midst of the nastiness. There were not a great 
 many of the negroes ; but by way of making 
 what there were understand that they were 
 free, Vaughan had had their hand-cuffs and 
 ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience' 
 sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the 
 schooner's crew. The negroes were, most of
 
 28 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 them, out of the held, and swarming all round 
 the dirty deck, with a central throng surround 
 ing Vaughan and addressing him in every dia 
 lect, and. patois of a dialect, from the Zulu click 
 up to the Parisian of Beledelj creed. 
 
 As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down 
 from a hogshead, on which he had mounted m 
 desperation, and said : - 
 
 " For God's love, is there anybody who can 
 make these wretches understand something ? 
 The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet 
 them. I knocked that big fellow down twice, 
 and that did not soothe him. And then I talked 
 Choctaw to all of them together ; and I'll be 
 hanged if they understood that as well as they 
 understood the English." 
 
 Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and 
 one or two fine-looking Kroomen were dragged 
 out, who, as it had been found already, had 
 worked for the Portuguese on the coast at Fer 
 nando Po. 
 
 "Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; 
 "and tell them that these rascals are to be 
 hanged as soon as we can get rope enough." 
 
 Nolan "put that into Spanish," that is, he 
 explained it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen 
 could understand, and they in turn to such of 
 the negroes as could understand them. Then 
 there was such a yell of delight, clinching of
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 2Q 
 
 fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's 
 feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead 
 by way of spontaneous worship of Vaughan, as 
 the dens ex macJdna of the occasion. 
 
 "Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, 
 "that I will take them all to Cape Palmas." 
 
 This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas 
 was practically as far from the homes of most 
 of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was ; 
 that is, they would be eternally separated from 
 home there. And their interpreters, as we 
 could understand, instantly said, " Ah, non 
 Palmas," and began to propose infinite other 
 expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan 
 was rather disappointed at this result of his lib 
 erality, and asked Nolan eagerly what they said. 
 The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead, 
 as he hushed the men down, and said : 
 
 "He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us 
 home, take us to our own country, take us to our 
 own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and 
 our own women.' He says he has an old father 
 and mother who will die if they do not see him. 
 And this one says he left his people all sick, and 
 paddled down to Fernando to beg the white 
 doctor to come and help them, and that these 
 devils caught him in the bay just in sight of 
 home, and that he had never seen anybody from 
 home since then. And this one says," choked
 
 3<3 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 out Nolan, " that he has not heard a word from 
 his home in six months, while he has been 
 locked up in an infernal barracoon." 
 
 Vaughan always said he grew gray himself 
 while Nolan struggled through this interpre 
 tation. I, who did not understand anything of 
 the passion involved in it, saw that the very 
 elements were melting with fervent heat, and 
 that something was to pay somewhere. Even 
 the negroes themselves stopped howling, as they 
 saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan' s almost equal 
 agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get 
 words, he said : 
 
 " Tell them yes, yes, yes ; tell them they shall 
 go to the Mountains of the Moon if they will. 
 If I sail the schooner through the Great White 
 Desert they shall go home ! " 
 
 And after some fashion Nolan said so. And 
 then they all fell to kissing him again, and 
 wanted to rub his nose with theirs. 
 
 But he could not stand it long ; and getting 
 Vaughan to say he might go back, he beckoned 
 me down into our boat. As we lay back in the 
 stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to 
 me : " Youngster, let that show you what it is 
 to be without a family, without a home, and 
 without a country. And if you are ever tempted 
 to say a word or to do a thing that shall put a 
 bar between you and your family, your home,
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 3! 
 
 and your country, pray God in his mercy to 
 take you that instant home to his own heaven. 
 Stick by your family, boy ; forget you have a 
 self, while you do everything for them. Think 
 of your home, boy ; write and send, and talk 
 about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your 
 thought, the farther you have to travel from it ; 
 and rush back to it, when you are free, as that 
 poor black slave is doing now. And for your 
 country, boy," and the words rattled in his 
 throat, " and for that flag," and he pointed to 
 the ship, "never dream a dream but of serving 
 her as she bids you, though the service carry 
 you through a thousand hells. No matter what 
 happens to you, no matter who flatters you or 
 who abuses you, never look at another flag, 
 never let a night pass but you pray God to bless 
 that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these 
 men you have to do with, behind officers, and 
 government, and people even, there is the 
 Country Herself, your Country, and that you 
 belong to Her as you belong to your own 
 mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would 
 stand by your mother, if those devils there had 
 got hold of her to-day ! " 
 
 I was frightened to death by his calm, hard 
 passion ; but I blundered out, that I would, by 
 all that was holy, and that I had never thought 
 of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to
 
 32 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 hear me ; but he did, almost in a whisper, say : 
 " O, if anybody had said so to me when I was 
 of your age ! " 
 
 I think it was this half-confidence of his, 
 which I never abused, for I never told this 
 story till now, which afterward made us great 
 friends. He was very kind to me. Often he 
 sat up, or even got up, at night, to walk the 
 deck with me, when it was my watch. He ex 
 plained to me a great deal of my mathematics, 
 and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. 
 He lent fne books, and helped me about my 
 reading. He never alluded so directly to his 
 story again ; but from one and another ofiicer 
 I have learned, in thirty years, what I am tell 
 ing. When we parted from him in St. Thomas 
 harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more 
 sorry than I can tell. I was very glad to meet 
 him again in 1830; and later in life, when I 
 thought I had some influence in Washington, I 
 moved heaven and earth to have him discharged. 
 But it was like getting a ghost out of prison. 
 They pretended there was no such man, and 
 never was such a man. They will say so at 
 the Department now! Perhaps they do not 
 know. It will not be the first thing in the ser 
 vice of which the Department appears to know 
 nothing ! 
 
 There is a story that Nolan met Burr once
 
 THK MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 33 
 
 on one of our vessels, when a party of Amer 
 icans came on board in the Mediterranean. 
 But this I believe to be a lie; or, rather it is .a 
 myth, ben trovuto, involving a tremendous blow 
 ing-up with which he sunk Burr, asking him 
 how he liked to be "without a country." But 
 it is clear from Burr's life that nothing of the 
 sort could have happened ; and I mention this 
 only as an illustration of the stories which get 
 a-going where there is the least mystery at 
 bottom. 
 
 So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. 
 I know bv i4 " one fate more dreadful ; it is the 
 fate reserved for those men who shall have one 
 day to exile themselves from their country be 
 cause they have attempted her ruin, and shall 
 have at the same time to see the prosperity and 
 honor to which she rises when she has rid her 
 self of them and their iniquities. The wish of 
 poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not 
 because his punishment was too great, but be 
 cause his repentance was so clear, was precisely 
 the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who 
 broke a soldier's oath two years ago, and of 
 every Maury and Barren who broke a sailor's. 
 I do not know how often they have repented. 
 1 do know that they have done all that in them 
 lay that they might have no country, that all 
 the honors, associations, memories, and hopes
 
 34 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 which belong to " country " might be broken up 
 into little shreds and distributed to the winds. 
 I know, too, that their punishment, as they 
 vegetate through what is left of life to them 
 in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, 
 where they are destined to upbraid each other 
 till they die, will have all the agony of Nolan's, 
 with the added pang that every one who sees 
 them will see them to despise and to execrate 
 them. They will have their wish, like him. 
 
 For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, 
 and then, like a man, submitted to the fate he 
 had asked for. He never intentionally added 
 to the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of 
 those who had him in hold. Accidents would 
 happen ; but they never happened from his 
 fault. Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when 
 Texas was annexed, there was a careful discus 
 sion among the officers, whether they should 
 get hold of Nolan's handsome set of maps, and 
 cut Texas out of it, from the map of the 
 world and the map of Mexico. The United 
 States had been cut out when the atlas was 
 bought for him. But it was voted, rightly 
 enough, that to do this would be virtually to 
 reveal to him what had happened, or, as Harry 
 Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had suc 
 ceeded. So it was from no fault of Nolan's 
 that a great botch happened at my own table.
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 35 
 
 when, for a short time, I was in command of 
 the George Washington corvette, on the South 
 American station. We were lying in the La 
 .Plata, and some of the officers, who had been 
 on shore, and had just joined again, were enter 
 taining us with accounts of their misadventures 
 in riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. 
 Nolan was at table, and was in an unusually 
 bright and talkative mood. Some story of a 
 tumble reminded him of an adventure of his 
 own, when he was catching wild horses in Texas 
 with his adventurous cousin at a time when he 
 must have been quite a boy. He told the story 
 with a good deal of spirit, so much so, that 
 the silence which often follows a good story 
 hung over the table for an instant, to be broken 
 by Nolan himself. For he asked perfectly un 
 consciously : 
 
 " Pray, what has become of Texas ? After 
 the Mexicans got their independence, I thought 
 that province of Texas would come forward very 
 fast. It is really one of the finest regions on 
 earth ; it is the Italy of this continent. But I 
 have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near 
 twenty years." 
 
 There were two Texan officers at the table. 
 The reason he had never heard of Texas was 
 that Texas and her affairs had been painfully 
 cut out of his newspapers since Austin began
 
 36 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 his settlements ; so that, while he read of Hon 
 duras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of 
 California, this virgin province, in which his 
 brother had travelled so far, and, I believe, had 
 died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and 
 Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at 
 each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward 
 Morris 'had his attention attracted by the third 
 link in the chain of the captain's chandelier. 
 Watrous was seized with a convulsion of sneez 
 ing. Nolan himself saw that something was to 
 pay, he did not know what. And I, as master 
 of the feast, had to say, 
 
 " Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have 
 you seen Captain Back's curious account of Sir 
 Thomas Roe's Welcome ? " 
 
 After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I 
 wrote to him at least twice a year, for in that 
 voyage we became even confidentially intimate ; 
 but he never wrote to me. The other men 
 tell me that in those fifteen years he aged 
 very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he 
 was still the same gentle, uncomplaining, silent 
 sufferer that he ever was, bearing as best he 
 could his self-appointed punishment, rather 
 less social, perhaps, with new men whom he did 
 not know, but more anxious, apparently, than 
 ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, 
 some of whovn fairly seemed to worship him-
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 37 
 
 And now it seems the dear old fellow is dead. 
 He has found a home at last, and a country. 
 
 Since writing this, and while considering 
 whether or no I would print it, as a warning to 
 the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tat- 
 nalls .of to-day of what it is to throw away a 
 country, I have received from Danforth-, who is 
 on board the Levant, a letter which gives an 
 account of Nolan's last hours. It removes all 
 my doubts about telling this story. 
 
 To understand the first words of the letter, 
 the non-professional reader should remember 
 that after 1817, the position of every officer who 
 had Nolan in charge was one of the greatest 
 delicacy. The government had failed to renew 
 the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a 
 man to do ? Should he let him go ? What, 
 then, if he were called to account by the De 
 partment for violating the order of 1807? 
 Should he keep him ? What, then, if Nolan 
 should be liberated some day, and should bring 
 an action for false imprisonment or kidnapping 
 against every man who had had him in charge ? 
 I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I 
 have reason to think that other officers did the 
 same thing. But the .Secretary always said, as 
 they so often do at Washington, that there were 
 no special orders to give, and that we must act
 
 38 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 on our own judgment. That means, " If you 
 succeed, you will be sustained ; if you fail, you 
 will be disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, 
 all that is over now, though I do not know but 
 I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on 
 the evidence of the very revelation I am 
 making. 
 
 Here is the letter : 
 
 " LEVANT, 2 2' S. (a 131 W. 
 
 "DEAR FRED : I try to find heart and life 
 to tell you that it is all over with dear old Nolan. 
 I have been with him on this voyage more than 
 I ever was, and I can understand wholly now 
 the way in which you used to speak of the dear 
 old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, 
 but I had no idea the end was so near. Tne 
 doctor has been watching him very carefully, 
 and yesterday morning came to me and told me 
 that Nolan was not so well, and had not left his 
 state-room, - a thing I never remember before. 
 He had let the doctor come and see him as he 
 lay there, the first time the doctor had been 
 in the state-room, and he said he should like 
 to see me. O dear ! do you remember the 
 mysteries we boys used to invent about his 
 room, in the old Intrepid -days ? Well, I went 
 in, and there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in 
 his berth, smiling pleasantly as he gave me his
 
 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 39 
 
 hand, but looking very frail. I could not help 
 a glance round, which showed me what a little 
 shrine he had made of the box he was lying in. 
 The stars and stripes were triced up above and 
 around a picture of Washington, and he had 
 painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing 
 from his beak and his foot just clasping the 
 whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. 
 The dear old boy saw my glance, and said, with 
 a sad smile, ' Here, you see, I have a country ! ' 
 And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, 
 where I had n(3t seen before a great map of the 
 United States, as he had drawn it from memory, 
 and which he had there to look upon as he lay. 
 Quaint, queer old names were on it, in large 
 letters : ' Indiana Territory,' ' Mississippi Ter 
 ritory,' and ' Louisiana Territory,', as I suppose 
 our fathers learned such things ; but the old 
 fellow had patched in Texas, too ; he had carried 
 his western boundary all the way to the Pacific, 
 but on that shore he had defined nothing. 
 
 " ' O Danforth,' he said, ' I know I am dying. 
 I cannot get home. Surely you will tell me 
 something now ? Stop ! stop ! Do not speak 
 till I say what I am sure you know, that there 
 is not in this ship, that there is not in America, 
 God bless her ! a more loyal man than I. 
 There cannot be a man who loves the old flag as 
 I do, or prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I
 
 4O THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Dan- 
 forth. I thank God for that, though I do not 
 know what their names are. There has never 
 been one taken away : I thank God for that. I 
 know by that that there has never been any suc 
 cessful Burr. O Danforth, Danforth,' he sighed 
 out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's 
 idea of personal fame or of separate sovereignty 
 seems, when one looks back on it after such a 
 life as mine ! But tell me, tell me something, 
 tell me everything, Danforth, before I die ! ' 
 
 " Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a 
 monster that I had not told him everything 
 before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no 
 delicacy, who was I, that I should have been 
 acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, 
 sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in 
 his whole manhood's life, the madness of a boy's 
 treason ? ' Mr. Nolan,' said I, ' I will tell you 
 everything you ask about. Only, where shall I 
 begin ? ' 
 
 " O the blessed smile that crept over his white 
 face ! and he pressed my hand and said, ' God 
 bless you !' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and 
 he pointed to the stars on the flag. ' The last 
 I know is Ohio. My father lived in Kentucky. 
 But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and 
 Mississippi, that was where Fort Adams is, 
 they make twenty. But where are your other
 
 THE MAX WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 4! 
 
 fourteen ? You have not cut up any of the old 
 ones, I hope ? ' 
 
 "Well, that was not a bad text, and I told 
 him the names in as good order as I could, and 
 he bade me take down his beautiful map and 
 draw them in as I best could with my pencil. 
 He was wild with delight about Texas, told me 
 how his cousin died there ; he had marked a 
 gold cross near where he supposed his grave 
 was ; and he had guessed at Texas. Then he 
 was delighted as he saw California and Oregon ; 
 that, he said, he had suspected partly, because 
 he had never been permitted to land on that 
 shore, though the ships were there so much. 
 'And the men/ said he, laughing, 'brought off a 
 good deal besides furs.' Then he went back 
 heavens, how far! to ask about the Chesa 
 peake, and what was done to Barren for 
 surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether 
 Burr ever tried again, and he ground his teeth 
 with the only passion he showed. But in a 
 moment that was over, and he said, ' God for 
 give me, for I am sure I forgive him.' Then he 
 asked about the old war, -told me the true 
 story of his serving the gun the day we took 
 the Java,- asked about dear old David Porter, 
 as he called him. Then he settled down more 
 quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in 
 an hour the history of fifty years.
 
 42 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 " How I wished it had been somebody who 
 knew something ! But I did as well as I could. 
 I told him of the English war. I told him about 
 Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told 
 him about old Scott, and Jackson ; told him all 
 I could think of about the Mississippi, and New 
 Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky. 
 And do you think, he asked who was in com 
 mand of the ' Legion of the West.' I told him 
 it was a very gallant officer named Grant, and 
 that, by our last news, he was about to establish 
 his head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, ' Where 
 was Vicksburg ? ' I worked that out on the 
 map ; it was about a hundred miles, more or 
 less, above his old Fort Adams ; and I thought 
 Fort Adams must be a ruin now. ' It must be 
 at old Vick's plantation, at Walnut Hills,' said 
 he : ' well, that is a change ! ' 
 
 "I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to 
 condense the history of half a century into that 
 talk with a sick man. And I do not now know 
 what I told him, of emigration, and the means 
 of it, of steamboats, and railroads, and tele 
 graphs, of inventions, and books, and litera 
 ture, of the colleges, and West Point, and the 
 Naval School, but with the queerest interrup 
 tions that ever you heard. You see it was Rob 
 inson Crusoe asking all the accumulated ques 
 tions of fifty-six years !
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 43 
 
 " I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who 
 was President now ; and when I told him, he 
 asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lin 
 coln's son. He said he met old General Lincoln, 
 when he was quite a boy himself, at some Indian 
 treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Ken- 
 tuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of 
 what family ; he had worked up from the ranks. 
 ' Good for him ! ' cried Nolan ; ' I am glad of 
 that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have 
 thought our danger was in keeping up those 
 regular successions in the first families.' Then 
 I got talking about my visit to Washington. I 
 told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, 
 Harding ; I told him about the Smithsonian, and 
 the Exploring Expedition ; I told him about the 
 Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and 
 Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washing 
 ton : Ingham, I told him everything I could 
 think of that would show the grandeur of his 
 country and its prosperity ; but I could not 
 make up my mouth to tell him a word about 
 this infernal Rebellion ! 
 
 "And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I can 
 not tell you. He grew more and more silent, 
 yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I 
 gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his 
 lips, and told me not to go away. Then he 
 asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of
 
 44 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 Public Prayer/ which lay there, and said, with a 
 smile, that it would open at the right place, 
 and so it did. There was his double red mark 
 down the page ; and I knelt down and read, and 
 he repeated with me, ' For ourselves and our 
 country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, 
 notwithstanding our manifold transgressions for 
 Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy' 
 marvellous kindness,' and. so to the end of 
 that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end 
 of the same book, and I read the words more 
 familiar to me : ' Most heartily we beseech Thee 
 with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, 
 the President of the United States, and all oth 
 ers in authority,' and the rest of the Episco 
 pal collect. ' Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated 
 those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty- 
 five years.' And then he said he would go to 
 sleep. He bent me down over him and kissed 
 me ; and he said, ' Look in my Bible, Danforth, 
 when I am gone.' And I went away. 
 
 " But I had no thought it was the end. I 
 thought he was tired and would sleep. I knew 
 he was happy and I wanted him to be alone. 
 
 " But in an hour, when the doctor went in 
 gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life 
 away with a smile. He had something pressed 
 close to his lips. It was his father's badge of 
 the Order of the Cincinnati.
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 45 
 
 " We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip 
 of paper at the place where he had marked the 
 text : 
 
 "'They desire a country, even a heavenly: 
 wherefore God is not ashamed to,be called their 
 God : for he hath prepared for them a city.' 
 
 " On this slip of paper he had written : 
 
 " ' Bury me in the sea ; it has been my home, 
 and I love it. But will not some one set up a 
 stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orle 
 ans, that my disgrace may not be more than I 
 ought to bear ? Say on it : 
 
 ''/>/ Memory of 
 '"PHILIP NOLAN, 
 
 " 'Lieutenant in the Army of the United States. 
 
 " ' He loved his country as no other man has loved her, 
 but no man deserved less at her hands.' "
 
 WORKS OF EDWARD E. HALE, 
 
 CHRISTMAS IN NARRAGANSETT. 
 
 This collection brings together all the more prominent characters 
 in Mr. Male's stories, and, for the season, disposes of them all. 
 
 Cloth, $1.00. 
 FORTUNES OF RACHEL. 
 
 " In this novel the author has seized upon that element of ro 
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 OUR CHRISTMAS IN A PALACE. 
 
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 No American writer of fiction is more highly appreciated than 
 Edward Everett Hale." Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 IN HIS NAME. 
 
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 TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 
 
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 TEN-TIMES-ONE CIRCULARS. 
 
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 EASTER. 
 
 A collection consisting of twelve Sermons and twelve Easter 
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 RED AND WHITE. 
 
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 WHAT IS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? 
 
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 In the present volume is pictured an ideal manufacturing town in 
 
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 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
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 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
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 $0.25 ; pap., $0.20. 
 
 This ingeniously wrought story, now well known, first appeared 
 during the Civil War, and at a time most opportune. Its purpose is to 
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 to be banished, but placed so that he cannot even hear from or about his 
 country the rest of his life. 
 
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 By EDWARD EVERETT HALE. $0.50; pap., $0.20. 
 These are statements of eight important points in the discussion of 
 the American System of Tariff. They show that it is meant not for a 
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 LIFE OF COLONEL JACK. 
 
 By DANIEL DE FOE. Edited by EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 This story is often spoken of as the second Robinson Crusoe. The 
 first edition was published in London, 1722. The book has perhaps 
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 The hero is brought from England as a white slave to Virginia, 
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 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO., Publishers, Boston.
 
 A NEW SCHOOL READER. 
 
 Edward Everett Bale's Patriotic Story, 
 
 "THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY." 
 
 This little book, written during the war, and intended 
 to assist in raising the standard of love of country and 
 true patriotism, is well fitted for the study of our young 
 people to-day. 
 
 Its pure English and vivid descriptions, added to 
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 supplementary reading in grammar and high schools. 
 
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 Cloth, 50 cents ; board covers, 25 cents ; 
 paper covers, 20 cents. 
 
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 We are glad to send sample copies to superintendents 
 or. teachers of schools for 1 5 cents. 
 
 \Ve make a liberal discount to schools. 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO., 
 
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 3 Hamilton Place, Boston, Mass.
 
 Lend a Hand Monthly, 
 
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 EDWARD E. HALE, D.D., Editor. 
 JOHN STILMAN SMITH, Manager. 
 
 Subscription, $2.00 a Year* Single Numbers, 20 cents. 
 
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 For the Wadsworth Clubs, or any of the orders using the Wadswrrth 
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 LORIN MOOROCK. 
 
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