Holding office, especially going to Congress, had never entered any
wish or scheme of mine. Office seemed to me ever a badge of bondage. I
knew too much of the national capital to be allured by its evanescent
and lightsome honors. When the opportunity sought me out none of its
illusions appealed to me. But after a long uphill fight for personal
and political recognition in Kentucky an election put a kind of seal
upon the victory I had won and enabled me in a way to triumph over my
enemies. I knew that if I accepted the nomination offered me I would
get a big popular vote—as I did—and so, one full term, and half a term,
incident to the death of the sitting member for the Louisville district
being open to me, I took the short term, refusing the long term.
Though it was midsummer and Congress was about to adjourn I went to
Washington and was sworn in. A friend of mine, Col. Wake Holman, had
made a bet with one of our pals I would be under arrest before I had
been twenty-four hours in town, and won it. It happened in this wise:
The night of the day when I took my seat there was an all-night
session. I knew too well what that meant, and, just from a long
tiresome journey, I went to bed and slept soundly till sunrise. Just as
I was up and dressing for a stroll about the old, familiar, dearly
loved quarter of the town there came an imperative rap upon the door
and a voice said: “Get up, colonel, quick! This is a sergeant at arms.
There has been a call of the House and I am after you. Everybody is
drunk, more or less, and they are noisy to have some fun with you.”
It was even as he said. Everybody, more or less, was drunk—especially
the provisional speaker whom Mr. Randall had placed in the chair—and
when we arrived and I was led a prisoner down the center aisle
pandemonium broke loose.
They had all sorts of fun with me, such as it was. It was moved that I
be fined the full amount of my mileage. Then a resolution was offered
suspending my membership and sending me under guard to the old Capitol
prison. Finally two or three of my friends rescued me and business was
allowed to proceed. It was the last day of a very long session and
those who were not drunk were worn out.
When I returned home there was a celebration in honor of the bet Wake
Holman had won at my expense. Wake was the most attractive and lovable
of men, by nature a hero, by profession a “filibuster” and soldier of
fortune. At two and twenty he was a private in Col. Humphrey Marshall’s
Regiment of Kentucky Riflemen, which reached the scene of hostilities
upon the Rio Grande in the midsummer of 1846. He had enlisted from Owen
county—“Sweet Owen,” as it used to be called—and came of good stock,
his father, Col. Harry Holman, in the days of aboriginal fighting and
journalism, a frontier celebrity. Wake’s company, out on a scout, was
picked off by the Mexicans, and the distinction between United States
soldiers and Texan rebels not being yet clearly established, a drumhead
court-martial ordered “the decimation.”
This was a decree that one of every ten of the Yankee captives should
be shot. There being a hundred of Marshall’s men, one hundred
beans—ninety white and ten black—were put in a hat. Then the company
was mustered as on dress parade. Whoso drew a white bean was to be held
prisoner of war; whoso drew a black bean was to die.
In the early part of the drawing Wake drew a white bean. Toward the
close the turn of a neighbor and comrade from Owen county who had left
a wife and baby at home was called. He and Wake were standing together,
Holman brushed him aside, walked out in his place and drew his bean. It
turned out to be a white one. Twice within the half hour death had
looked him in the eye and found no blinking there.
I have seen quite a deal of hardihood, endurance, suffering, in both
women and men; splendid courage on the field of action; perfect
self-possession in the face of danger; but I rather think that Wake
Holman’s exploit that day—next to actually dying for a friend, what can
be nobler than being willing to die for him?—is the bravest thing I
know or have ever been told of mortal man.
Wake Holman went to Cuba in the Lopez Rebellion of 1851, and fought
under Pickett at the Battle of Cardenas. In 1855-56 he was in
Nicaragua, with Walker. He commanded a Kentucky regiment of cavalry on
the Union side in our War of Sections. After the war he lived the life
of a hunter and fisher at his home in Kentucky; a cheery, unambitious,
big-brained and big-hearted cherub, whom it would not do to “projeck”
with, albeit with entire safety you could pick his pocket; the soul of
simplicity and amiability.
To have known him was an education in primal manhood. To sit at his
hospitable board, with him at the head of the table, was an inspiration
in the genius of life and the art of living. One of his familiars
started the joke that when Wake drew the second white bean “he got a
peep.” He took it kindly; though in my intimacy with him, extending
over thirty years, I never heard him refer to any of his adventures as
a soldier.
It was not possible that such a man should provide for his old age. He
had little forecast. He knew not the value of money. He had humor,
affection and courage. I held him in real love and honor. When the
Mexican War Pension Act was passed by Congress I took his papers to
General Black, the Commissioner of Pensions, and related this story.
“I have promised Gen. Cerro Gordo Williams,” said General Black,
referring to the then senior United States Senator from Kentucky, “that
his name shall go first on the roll of these Mexican pensioners.
But”—and the General looked beamingly in my face, a bit tearful, and
says he: “Wake Holman’s name shall come right after.” And there it is.