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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF
_Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
VOLUME XVIII.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
124 TREMONT STREET.
1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article.
CONTENTS.
Page
Aunt Judy _J. W. Palmer_ 76
Borneo and Rajah Brooke _G. Reynolds_ 667
Bundle of Bones, A _Charles J. Sprague_ 60
Case of George Dedlow, The 1
Childhood; a Study _F. B. Perkins_ 385
Chimney Corner for 1866, The, VII., VIII., IX.
_Mrs. H. B. Stowe_ 85, 197, 338
Darwinian Theory, The _Charles J. Sprague_ 415
Distinguished Character, A 315
Englishman in Normandy, An _Goldwin Smith_ 64
Fall of Austria, The _C. C. Hazewell_ 746
Farmer Hill's Diary _Mrs. A. M. Diaz_ 397
Five Hundred Years Ago _J. H. A. Bone_ 545
Friedrich Rueckert _Bayard Taylor_ 33
Great Doctor, The, I., II. _Alice Cary_ 12, 174
Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy. VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.
_Charles Reade_ 94, 204, 323, 492, 606
Gurowski _Robert Carter_ 625
How my New Acquaintances Spin _Dr. B. G. Wilder_ 129
Incidents of the Portland Fire 356
Indian Medicine _John Mason Browne_ 113
Invalidism _Miss C. P. Hawes_ 599
Italian Rain-Storm, An _Mary Cowden Clarke_ 356
Johnson Party, The _E. P. Whipple_ 374
Katharine Morne. I., II. _Author of "Herman"_ 559, 697
Life Assurance 308
London Forty Years Ago _John Neal_ 224
Maniac's Confession, A 170
My Heathen at Home _J. W. Palmer_ 728
My Little Boy _Mrs. M. L. Moody_ 361
Norman Conquest, The _C. C. Hazewell_ 461
Novels of George Eliot, The _Henry James, Jr._ 479
Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books. VII., VIII., IX., X.,
XI, XII. 40, 189, 288, 450, 536, 682
Physical History of the Valley of the Amazons. I., II.
_Louis Agassiz_ 49, 159
Pierpont, John _John Neal_ 650
President and his Accomplices, The _E. P. Whipple_ 634
Progress of Prussia, The _C. C. Hazewell_ 578
Reconstruction _Frederick Douglass_ 761
Retreat from Lenoir's, and the Siege of Knoxville.
_H. S. Burrage_ 21
Rhoda _Ruth Harper_ 521
Scarabaei ed Altri _W. J. Stillman_ 435
Singing-School Romance, The _H. H. Weld_ 740
Surgeon's Assistant, The _Caroline Chesebro_ 257
Through Broadway _H. T. Tuckerman_ 717
University Reform _F. H. Hedge_ 296
Usurpation, The _George S. Boutwell_ 506
Various Aspects of the Woman Question _F. Sheldon_ 425
What did she see with? _Miss E. Stuart Phelps_ 146
Woman's Work in the Middle Ages _Mrs. R. C. Waterston_ 274
Year in Montana, A _Edward B. Nealley_ 236
Yesterday _Mrs. H. Prescott Spofford_ 367
POETRY.
Autumn Song _Forceythe Willson_ 746
Bobolinks, The _C. P. Cranch_ 321
Death of Slavery, The _W. C. Bryant_ 120
Friend, A _C. P. Cranch_ 739
Her Pilgrimage _H. B. Sargent_ 396
Late Champlain _H. T. Tuckerman_ 365
Miantowona _T. B. Aldrich_ 446
Miner, The _James Russell Lowell_ 158
My Farm: a Fable _Bayard Taylor_ 187
My Garden _R. W. Emerson_ 665
On Translating the Divina Commedia
_H. W. Longfellow_ 11, 273, 544
Protoneiron _H. B. Sargent_ 576
Released _Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney_ 32
Song Sparrow, The _A. West_ 599
Sword of Bolivar, The _J. T. Trowbridge_ 713
To J. B. _J. R. Lowell_ 47
Voice, The _Forceythe Willson_ 307
ART.
Marshall's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln 643
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Aldrich's Poems 250
American Annual Cyclopaedia, The 646
Bancroft's History of the United States 765
Barry Cornwall's Memoir of Charles Lamb 771
Beecher's Royal Truths 645
Browne's American Family in Germany 771
Carpenter's Six Months at the White House 644
Ecce Homo 122
Eichendorff's Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing 256
Eros, etc. 255
Evangeline, Maud Muller, Vision of Sir Launfal, and
Flower-de-Luce, Illustrated 770
Field's History of the Atlantic Telegraph 647
Fifteen Days 128
Fisher's Life of Benjamin Silliman 126
Gilmore's Four Years in the Saddle 382
Harrington's Inside: a Chronicle of Secession 645
Laugel's United States during the War, and Goldwin Smith's
Address on the Civil War in America 252
Marcy's Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border 255
Miss Ildrewe's Language of Flowers 646
Moens's English Travellers and Italian Brigands, and
Abbott's Prison Life in the South 518
Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, and Syria's Holy Places 125
Reade's Griffith Gaunt 767
Reed's Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac 253
Saxe's Masquerade and other Poems 123
Simpson's History of the Gypsies 254
Wheaton's Elements of International Law 513
Whipple's Character and Characteristic Men 772
Wilkie Collins's Armadale 381
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS 383, 648
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
VOL. XVIII--JULY, 1866.--NO. CV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW.
The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
interest. I ought to add, that a good deal of what is here related is
not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the
personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to
their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
* * * * *
I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of
Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
Rebellion so crippled my father's means that I was forced to abandon my
intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
of Assistant-Surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely, that, before
the term of its service was over, it was merged in the Twenty-First
Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical
officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth
Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste
for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the
position of First-Lieutenant in the Seventy-Ninth Indiana
Volunteers,--an infantry regiment of excellent character.
On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching
along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
of the command of General Rosecrans.
The life we led while on this duty was tedious, and at the same time
dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible,
and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to
levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population seemed
suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerillas "potted" us
industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or hasty earthworks.
Under these various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair
infusion of malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits.
Unfortunately, no proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our
small force (two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of
quinine and stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations
were running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our
commanding officer, Major Terrill, began to be uneasy as to the safety
of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with rations
would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet it was
quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines, which were
what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any part of it,
and the Major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to the post
above us, where the rest of the Seventy-Ninth lay, and whence they could
easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had not left,
or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.
It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only
officer fit to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to
proceed to Block House No. 3, and make the required arrangements. I
started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness
succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time
I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my
act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log-cabin for directions. The
house contained a dried-up old woman, and four white-headed, half-naked
children. The woman was either stone-deaf, or pretended to be so; but at
all events she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away.
On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the
cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my
brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to
pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the
same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered
to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the
effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am
only conscious that I saw about me several Graybacks, for I must have
fallen fainting almost immediately.
When I awoke, I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish.
Ten or twelve guerillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing
lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how
far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm and hand
pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all over until I
touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the
left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder,
emerging behind. The right hand and forearm were cold and perfectly
insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of
sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead
man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that
the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well
divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then
came to me and said, "Reckon you'd best git up. Theyuns is agoin' to
take you away." To this I only answered, "Water, water." I had a grim
sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she
went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly
drank. An hour later the Graybacks returned, and, finding that I was too
weak to walk, carried me out, and laid me on the bottom of a common
cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but
within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning,
which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the
day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a
red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it
with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise
threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely
unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I
screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my
captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,--my own,
I fancy,--and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my
unspeakable relief.
It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
in one of the Rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver Wilson, who
treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
doctor; which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy;
although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
worse than ever,--the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
only alive to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind
with a visit from a local visitor,--I am not sure he was a
preacher,--who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us, or
write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
talk occurred.
"How are you, Lieutenant?"
"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
to pain."
"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,--such will you be if
you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
eternity, all of you will be as that hand,--knowing pain only."
I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We have
none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."
I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
about an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
that the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say
endured--was so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of
parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
torture like that which I had suffered.
I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
knife, I asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the
person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain,
and here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,--slept the sleep of the just,
or, better, of the painless. From this time forward, I was free from
neuralgia; but at a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to
mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.
It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison
life in the South. In the early part of August, 1863, I was exchanged,
and, after the usual thirty days' furlough, returned to my regiment a
captain.
On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in
which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share in
this contest is, as it were, burnt into my memory with every least
detail. It was about six P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under
cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle
slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned
with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and take the
fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement
on its flank.
Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
was common in many fights,--that the enemy had begun to bowl round-shot
at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in
good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we
climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At this
moment a battery opened on our left,--the shots crossing our heads
obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I
can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
flashes,--the long, wavering line,--the sky blue above,--the trodden
furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear. The
ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an
operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two
of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay.
A hospital steward raised my head, and poured down some brandy and
water, while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged
looks, and walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.
"Both thighs," said he; "the Doc's won't do nothing."
"No use?" said I.
"Not much," said he.
"Not much means none at all," I answered.
When he had gone, I set myself to thinking about a good many things
which I had better have thought of before, but which in no way concern
the history of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not
get weaker. At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At
first, things appeared a little hazy; but I remember one which thrilled
me a little, even then.
A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, "When
you've a little leisure, just take a look at my side."
"Do it now," said the doctor.
The officer exposed his left hip. "Ball went in here, and out here."
The Doctor looked up at him with a curious air,--half pity, half
amazement. "If you've got any message, you'd best send it by me."
"Why, you don't say its serious?" was the reply.
"Serious! Why, you're shot through the stomach. You won't live over the
day."
Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. "Anybody got a
pipe?" Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck a
light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently
the doctor came over to him, and asked what he could do for him.
"Send me a drink of Bourbon."
"Anything else?"
"No."
As the doctor left him, he called him back. "It's a little rough, Doc,
isn't it?"
No more passed, and I saw this man no longer, for another set of doctors
were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after,
a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelt the familiar odor of
chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
began to move around from left to right,--then faster and faster; then a
universal grayness came before me, and I recall nothing further until I
awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
myself too weak, hailed an attendant. "Just rub my left calf," said I,
"if you please."
"Calf?" said he, "you ain't none, pardner. It's took off."
"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."
"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."
As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.
"That will do," said I, faintly.
A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where I
filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
severely wounded officers. After my third week, an epidemic of hospital
gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
Then an inspector came out, and we were transferred at once to the open
air, and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining
arm, which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
illustrate these views.
In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
what was then known as the Stump Hospital, South Street. This favor was
obtained through the influence of my father's friend, the late Governor
Anderson, who has always manifested an interest in my case, for which I
am deeply grateful. It was thought, at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the
leg-maker, might be able to adapt some form of arm to my left shoulder,
as on that side there remained five inches of the arm bone, which I
could move to a moderate extent. The hope proved illusory, as the stump
was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was
in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all
times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one
arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who
had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none,
like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place
hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not
very pleasing title of Stump-Hospital.
I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
States Army Hospital for nervous diseases. Every morning I was carried
out in an arm-chair, and placed in the library, where some one was
always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors
lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries, and fed me; and,
save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as
comfortable as kindness could make me.
I amused myself, at this time, by noting in my mind all that I could
learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar
feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the
great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt
the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or
pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful
sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued
unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by
degrees, the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we
may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is
made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its
sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the
spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus
kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the
impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred
by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off,
the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts,
to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and
obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the cut ends of the nerve,
or on its sides, are due often to the changes in the stump during
healing, and consequently cease as it heals, so that finally, in a very
healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
with the lost leg, and, as _les absents ont toujours tort_, it is no
longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine proved
at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
seen in my practice of medicine, passes up the nerves towards the
centres, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
nerve-fibres, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred to that
part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belongs. This pain
keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at
least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he
has not.
Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the man
loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
presence of lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
thumb,--now I feel my little finger." I should also add, that nearly
every person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the
lost member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed
with the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
Another set of cases present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to
account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if
the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh
has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.
As I have said, I was next sent to the United States Army Hospital for
Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville, I
had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the
little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the
real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to
believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with one lost hand to
grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the
sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that
of my legs also.
Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed to the above-named
hospital. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its
gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by
fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis,
St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor
fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once
suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had
become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a
bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning
hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into
his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction
of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by having small
doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder, with a hollow
needle, fitted to a syringe.
As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
In fact, every one had his own grotesquely painful peculiarity. Near me
was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose
office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during
the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When,
however, he lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the
back like wings, and got him the soubriquet of the Angel. In my ward
were also the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any
great change in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in
view at once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one
occasion a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On
my complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was
placed in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more
pleasant.
A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was a
good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction the
phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
various operations already described, I had lost about four fifths of my
weight. As a consequence of this, I ate much less than usual, and could
scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste of
its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced by thinking
and the automatic movements of the viscera.
I observed at this time also, that my heart, in place of beating as it
once did seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
this interval,--a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which I
confess surprised me, for this among other reasons. It is said that a
burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
skin, and apparently none the worse for it.
Still more remarkable, however, were the physical changes which I now
began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
sensation was so novel, that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt
like asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not;
but, well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I
refrained from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my
feelings. At times the conviction of my want of being myself was
overwhelming, and most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a
deficiency in the egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of
the sensitive surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to
the outer world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the
receptive central organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle
things, degenerating rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia,
which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest.
Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to
thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy
enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog
has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs, with which we
breathe and circulate the blood, would be essential; so also would the
liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, and
of course all of the limbs. And as to the nervous system, the only parts
really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent
or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest
terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I
asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual
completeness,--even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were
capable of consciousness? Of course, without them, he could not have it
any more than a dahlia, or a tulip. But with it--how then? I concluded
that it would be at a minimum, and that, if utter loss of relation to
the outer world were capable of destroying a man's consciousness of
himself, the destruction of half of his sensitive surfaces might well
occasion, in a less degree, a like result, and so diminish his sense of
individual existence.
I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
Hartford,--an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
After I had told her my views and feelings, she said: "Yes, I
comprehend. The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the
oneness of the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered
condensation of objective impressions; and, as the objective is the
remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but
focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by
which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed." I am not
quite clear that I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my
ideas, and I felt grateful for her kindly interest.
The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
constantly, that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man
from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
chaplain, within earshot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who
wore a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling, was a tall,
loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue
tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips
being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down
without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and
thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist,
Will feeble,--emotional, but not passionate,--likely to be enthusiast,
or weakly bigot.
I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
chaplain left him.
"Good morning," said he. "How do you get on?"
"Not at all," I replied. "Where were you hit?"
"O, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and the
lightnin' battery will fix it in time. When my time's out I'll go back
to Kearsage and try on the school-teaching again. I was a fool to leave
it."
"Well," said I, "you're better off than I."
"Yes," he answered, "in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
to be able to turn away from earthly things, and hold converse daily
with the great and good who have left the world. We have a circle in
Coates Street. If it wa'n't for the comfort I get there, I should have
wished myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but
this matters little, when one can talk to them daily, and know that they
are in the spheres above us."
"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."
"Believe!" he repeated, "how can you help it? Do you suppose anything
dies?"
"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
changes form."
"But why then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living.
In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
bodily garment. No creed teaches that, and if its new clothing be of
like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must not it then
possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
in which it is reclad?"
"Not very clear," I answered; "but after all, the thing should be
susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."
"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
hear for yourself."
"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."
It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
useless trunk.
On the day following, I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
Coates Street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
pine-table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized the
persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
ill-marked, baggy features, and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine and
several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
vegetarianism is to common sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat a
female,--authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
pallid, care-worn girl, with very red lips, and large brown eyes of
great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him, the
medium, a man named Blake. He was well dressed, and wore a good deal of
jewelry, and had large, black side-whiskers,--a shrewd-visaged,
large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the
pleasant things of sensual existence.
Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.
She said, "Yes," rather feebly.
"Is the spirit present?" he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
affirmation.
"Ah!" said the medium, "the name is--it is the name of a child. It is a
male child. It is Albert,--no, Alfred!"
"Great Heaven!" said the lady. "My child! my boy!"
On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. "I see," he
said, "I see--a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes,--I see above you,
beyond you--" at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.
She turned with a wild start "Where,--whereabouts?"
"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries,--he says,
Mamma, mamma!"
The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
a moment, and, exclaiming, "I come,--I am coming, Alfy!" fell in
hysterics on the floor.
Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
scenes.
After this, several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet card upon
which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
the company proposed that he should leave, of which invitation he took
advantage with a sceptical sneer at the whole performance.
As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
next addressed himself to me, "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the
lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
These things exhaust my nervous system."
"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please,
sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."
Upon this, a wild idea came into my head. I answered, "I am thinking as
you directed me to do."
The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the centre of
the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.
The affirmative raps were twice given.
"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits
present."
His words sent a thrill through my heart.
"Are there two?" he questioned.
A double rap.
"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us
conscious of their names in this world?"
A single knock. "No."
"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
spirits?"
Again came the irregular raps,--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8,
7.
"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits,"
she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"
"Yes," was rapped very quickly.
"Are these numbers?"
"Yes," again.
"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
tapped in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
set down:--
"UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, NOS. 3486, 3487."
The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
"Good gracious!" said I, "they are _my legs! my legs!_"
What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
have communed with the beings of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
strange return of my self-consciousness. I was re-individualized, so to
speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I
arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
form of kindness, and every possible comfort; but, alas! I have so
little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my
pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a
being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a
man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.
SECOND SONNET.
I enter, and see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
THE GREAT DOCTOR.
A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
PART I.
"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git
there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till
this thunder-shower passes over?"
"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've
been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the
horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added,
"Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked
up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck
of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the
folks,--Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"
By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of
dust along the road.
"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit.
My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,--there she is now, at
the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her
seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he
had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled
path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common
flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty
well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned
over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse,
rather than the anxious face of the rider.
"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me
that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain
about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,--a
good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in
the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her
eyes. John was her own boy,--forty years old, to be sure, but still a
boy to her,--and he was very sick.
"Well, I don't know," Mr. Bowen said, opening the mouth of the horse and
looking in it; "we all have our troubles, an' if it ain't one thing it's
another. Now if John wasn't sick, I s'pose you'd be frettin' about
somethin' else; you mustn't think you're particularly sot apart in your
afflictions, any how. This rain that's getherin' is goin' to spile a
couple of acres of grass for me, don't you see?"
Mrs. Walker was hurt. Her neighbor had not given her the sympathy she
expected; he had not said anything about John one way nor another; had
not inquired whether there was anything he could do, nor what the doctor
said, nor asked any of those questions that express a kindly solicitude.
"I am sorry about your hay," she answered, "but I must be going."
"Don't want to hurry you; but if you will go, the sooner the better.
That thunder-cloud is certain to bust in a few minutes." And Mr. Bowen
turned toward the house.
"Wait a minute, Mrs. Walker," called a young voice, full of kindness;
"here's my umberell. It'll save your bonnet, any how; and it's a real
purty one. But didn't I hear you say somebody was sick over to your
son's house?"
"Yes, darlin'," answered the old woman as she took the umbrella; "it's
Johnny himself; he's right bad, they say. I just got word about an hour
ago, and left everything, and started off. They think he's got the
small-pox."
Jenny Bowen, the young girl who had brought the umbrella, looked
terribly frightened. "_They_ won't let me go over, you know," she said,
nodding her head toward the house, "not if it's really small-pox!" And
then, with the hope at which the young are so quick to catch, she added,
"May be it isn't small-pox. I haven't heard of a case anywhere about. I
don't believe it is." And then she told Mrs. Walker not to fret about
home. "I will go," she said, "and milk the cow, and look after things.
Don't think one thought about it." And then she asked if the rest of
them at John Walker's were well.
"If it's Hobert you want to know about," the grandmother said, smiling
faintly, "he's well; but, darlin', you'd better not think about him:
they'll be ag'in it, in there!" and she nodded toward the house as Jenny
had done before her.
The face of the young girl flushed,--not with confusion, but with
self-asserting and defiant brightness that seemed to say, "Let them do
their worst." The thunder rattled sharper and nearer, bursting right
upon the flash of the lightning, and then came the rain. But it proved
not one of those bright, brief dashes that leave the world sparkling,
but settled toward sunset into a slow, dull drizzle.
Jenny had her milking, and all the other evening chores, done betimes,
and with an alertness and cheerfulness in excess of her usual manner,
that might have indicated an unusual favor to be asked. She had made her
evening toilet; that is, she had combed her hair, tied on a pair of
calf-skin shoes, and a blue checked apron, newly washed and ironed; when
she said, looking toward a faint light in the west, and as though the
thought had just occurred to her, "It's going to break away, I see.
Don't you think, mother, I had better just run over to Mrs. Walker's,
and milk her cow for her?"
"Go to Miss Walker's!" repeated the mother, as though she were as much
outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the
waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being
very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,--so scant, in fact, as to reveal
the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the
knees, that were almost suggestive of a skeleton, and now, as she put
herself in position, as it were, stood up with inordinate prominence.
Her hands were big in the joints, ragged in the nails, and marred all
over with the cuts, burns, and scratches of indiscriminate and incessant
toil. But her face was, perhaps, the most sadly divested of all womanly
charm. It had, in the first place, the deep yellow, lifeless appearance
of an old bruise, and was expressive of pain, irritation, and fanatical
anxiety.
"Go to Miss Walker's!" she said again, seeing that Jenny was taking down
from its peg in the kitchen-wall a woollen cloak that had been hers
since she was a little girl, and her mother's before her.
"Yes, mother. You know John Walker is very sick, and Mrs. Walker has
been sent for over there. She's very down-hearted about him. He's
dangerous, they think; and I thought may be I'd come round that way as I
come home, and ask how he was. Don't you think I'd better?"
"I think you had better stay at home and tend to your own business.
You'll spile your clothes, and do no good that I can see by traipsin'
out in such a storm."
"Why, you would think it was bad for one of our cows to go without
milking," Jenny said, "and I suppose Mrs. Walker's cow is a good deal
like ours, and she is giving a pailful of milk now."
"How do you know so much about Miss Walker's cow? If you paid more
attention to things at home, and less to other folks, you'd be more
dutiful."
"That's true, mother, but would I be any better?"
"Not in your own eyes, child; but you're so much wiser than your father
and me, that words are throwed away on you."
"I promised Mrs. Walker that I would milk for her to-night," Jenny
said, hesitating, and dropping her eyes.
"O yes, you've always got some excuse! What did you make a promise for,
that you knowed your father wouldn't approve of? Take your things right
off now, and peel the potaters, and sift the meal for mush in the
morning; an' if Miss Walker's cow must be milked, what's to hender that
Hobe, the great lazy strapper, shouldn't go and milk her?"
"You forget how much he has to do at home now; and one pair of hands
can't do everything, even if they are Hobert Walker's!"
Jenny had spoken with much spirit and some bitterness; and the bright
defiant flush, before noticed, came into her face, as she untied the
cloak and proceeded to sift the meal and peel the potatoes for
breakfast. She did her work quietly, but with a determination in every
movement that indicated a will not easily overruled.
It was nearly dark, and the rain still persistently falling, when she
turned the potato-peelings into the pig-trough that stood only a few
yards from the door, and, returning, put the cloak about her shoulders,
tied it deliberately, turned the hood over her head, and, without
another word, walked straight out into the rain.
"Well, I must say! Well, I _must_ say!" cried the mother, in exasperated
astonishment. "What on airth is that girl a-comin' to?" And, resting her
elbows on her knees, she leaned her yellow face in her hands, and
gathered out of her hard, embittered heart such consolation as she
could.
Jenny, meantime, tucked up her petticoats, and, having left a field or
two between her and the homestead, tripped lightly along, debating with
herself whether or not she should carry out her will to the full, and
return by the way of Mr. John Walker's,--a question she need hardly have
raised, if unexpected events had not interfered with her
predeterminations. At Mrs. Walker's gate she stopped and pulled half a
dozen roses from the bush that was almost lying on the ground with its
burden,--they seemed, somehow, brighter than the roses at home,--and,
with them swinging in her hand, had wellnigh gained the door, before she
perceived that it was standing open. She hesitated an instant,--perhaps
some crazy wanderer or drunken person might have entered the
house,--when brisk steps, coming up the path that led from the
milking-yard, arrested her attention, and, looking that way, she
recognized through the darkness young Hobert Walker, with the full pail
in his hand.
"O Jenny," he said, setting down the pail, "we are in such trouble at
home! The doctor says father is better, but I don't think so, and I
ain't satisfied with what is being done for him. Besides, I had such a
strange dream,--I thought I met you, Jenny, alone, in the night, and you
had six red roses in your hand,--let me see how many have you." He had
come close to her, and he now took the roses and counted them. There
were six, sure enough. "Humph!" he said, and went on. "Six red roses, I
thought; and while I looked at them they turned white as snow; and then
it seemed to me it was a shroud you had in your hand, and not roses at
all; and you, seeing how I was frightened, said to me, 'What if it
should turn out to be my wedding-dress?' And while we talked, your
father came between us, and led you away by a great chain that he put
round your neck. But you think all this foolish, I see." And, as if he
feared the apprehension he had confessed involved some surrender of
manhood, he cast down his eyes, and awaited her reply in confusion. She
had too much tact to have noticed this at any time; but in view of the
serious circumstances in which he then stood, she could not for the life
of her have turned any feeling of his into a jest, however unwarranted
she might have felt it to be.
"My grandmother was a great believer in dreams," she said,
sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and,
if she was right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert,
let us go into the house: it's raining harder."
"How stupid of me, Jenny, not to remember that you were being drowned,
almost! You must try to excuse me: I am really hardly myself to-night."
"Excuse you, Hobert! As if you could ever do anything I should not think
was just right!" And she laughed the little musical laugh that had been
ringing in his ears so long, and skipped before him into the house.
He followed her with better heart; and, as she strained and put away the
milk, and swept the hearth, and set the house in order, he pleased
himself with fancies of a home of which she would be always the charming
mistress.
And who, that saw the sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the
house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the
artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have
blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was
sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often,
troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another
would have incited the keenest ridicule in the mind of Jenny Bowen, but
in Hobert it was well enough; nay, more, it was actually fascinating,
and she would not have had him otherwise. These characteristics--for her
sake we will not say weaknesses--constantly suggested to her how much
she could be to him,--she who was so strong in all ways,--in health, in
hope, and in enthusiasm. And for him it was joy enough to look upon her
full bright cheek, to see her compact little figure before him; but to
touch her dimpled shoulder, to feel one tress of her hair against his
face, was ecstasy; and her voice,--the tenderest trill of the wood-dove
was not half so delicious! But who shall define the mystery of love?
They were lovers; and when we have said that, is there anything more to
be said? Their love had not, however, up to the time of which we write,
found utterance in words. Hobert was the son of a poor man, and Jenny
was prospectively rich, and the faces of her parents were set as flints
against the poor young man. But Jenny had said in her heart more than
once that she would marry him; and if the old folks had known this, they
might as well have held their peace. Hobert did not dream that she had
talked thus to her heart, and, with his constitutional timidity, he
feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his
conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his
poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he
must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most
inopportune,--such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,--O no,
not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she
only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro
before him, trifling away the time with pretence of adjusting this thing
and that; but at last expedients failed, and reaching for her cloak,
which hung almost above him as he sat against the wall, she said it was
time to go. As frostwork disappears in the sunshine, so his brave
resolutions vanished when her arm reached across his shoulder, and the
ribbon that tied her beads fluttered against his cheek. With a motion
quite involuntary, he snatched her hand. "No, Jenny, not yet,--not quite
yet!" he said.
"And why not?" demanded Jenny; for could any woman, however innocent, or
rustic, be without her little coquetries? And she added, in a tone that
contradicted her words, "I am sure I should not have come if I had known
you were coming!"
"I dare say not," replied Hobert, in a voice so sad and so tender
withal, as to set the roses Jenny wore in her bosom trembling. "I dare
say not, indeed. I would not presume to hope you would go a step out of
your way to give me pleasure; only I was feeling so lonesome to-night, I
thought may be--no, I didn't think anything; I certainly didn't hope
anything. Well, no matter, I am ready to go." And he let go the hand he
had been holding, and stood up.
It was Jenny's privilege to pout a little now, and to walk sullenly and
silently home,--so torturing herself and her honest-hearted lover; but
she was much too generous, much too noble, to do this. She would not for
the world have grieved poor Hobert,--not then,--not when his heart was
so sick and so weighed down with shadows; and she told him this with a
simple earnestness that admitted of no doubt, concluding with, "I only
wish, Hobert, I could say or do something to comfort you."
"Then you will stay? Just a moment, Jenny!" And the hand was in his
again.
"Dear Jenny,--dear, dear Jenny!" She was sitting on his knee now; and
the rain, with its pattering against the window, drowned their
heart-beats; and the summer darkness threw over them its sacred veil.
"Shall I tell you, darling, of another dream I have had to-night--since
I have been sitting here?" The fair cheek bent itself close to his to
listen, and he went on. "I have been dreaming, Jenny, a very sweet
dream; and this is what it was. You and I were living here, in this
house, with grandmother; and she was your grandmother as well as mine;
and I was farmer of the land, and you were mistress of the dairy; and
the little room with windows toward the sunrise, and the pretty bureau,
and bed with snow-white coverlet and pillows of down,--that
was"--perhaps he meant to say "_ours_," but his courage failed him, and,
with a charming awkwardness, he said, "yours, Jenny," and hurried on to
speak of the door-yard flowers, and the garden with its beds of thyme
and mint, its berry-bushes and hop-vines and bee-hives,--all of which
were brighter and sweeter than were ever hives and bushes in any other
garden; and when he had run through the catalogue of rustic delights, he
said: "And now, Jenny, I want you to tell me the meaning of my dream;
and yet I am afraid you will interpret it as your grandmother used to
hers."
Jenny laughed gayly. "That is just what I will do, dear Hobert," she
said; "for she used to say that only bad dreams went by contraries, and
yours was the prettiest dream I ever heard."
The reply to this sweet interpretation was after the manner of all
lovers since the world began. And so, forgetting the stern old folks at
home,--forgetting everything but each other,--they sat for an hour at
the very gate of heaven. How often Hobert called her his sweetheart, and
his rosebud, and other fond names, we need not stop to enumerate: how
often he said that for her sake he could brave the winter storm and the
summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but
that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any
lady of them all,--how often he said all these things, we need not
enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness
to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in
fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed
insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would
dare to do it?
No royal mantle could have been adjusted with tenderer and more reverent
solicitude than was that night the coarse cloak about the shoulders of
Jenny. The walk homeward was all too short; and whether the rain fell,
or whether the moon were at her best, perhaps neither of them could have
told until they were come within earshot of the Bowen homestead; then
both suddenly stood still. Was it the arm of Jenny that trembled so? No,
no! we must own the truth,--it was the arm through which hers was drawn.
At her chamber window, peering out curiously and anxiously, was the
yellow-white face of Mrs. Bowen; and, leaning over the gate, gazing up
and down the road, the rain falling on his bent shoulders and gray
head, was the father of Jenny,--angry and impatient, past doubt.
"Don't stand looking any longer, for mercy's sake!" called the querulous
voice from the house. "You'll get your death of cold, and then what'll
become of us all? Saddle your horse this minute, and ride over to John
Walker's,--for there's where you'll find Jinny, the gad-about,--and
bring her home at the tail of your critter. I'll see who is going to be
mistress here!"
"She's had her own head too long a'ready, I'm afeard," replied the old
man, turning from the gate, with intent, probably, to execute his wife's
order.
Seeing this, and hearing this, Hobert, as we said, stood still and
trembled, and could only ask, by a little pressure of the hand he held,
what was to be said or done.
Jenny did not hesitate a moment. "I expected this or something worse,"
she said. "Don't mind, Hobert; so they don't see you, I don't care for
the rest. You must not go one step farther: the lightning will betray
us, you see. I will say I waited for the rain to slack, and the two
storms will clear off about the same time, I dare say. There, good
night!"--and she turned her cheek to him; for she was not one of those
impossible maidens we read of in books, who don't know they are in love,
until after the consent of parents is obtained, and blush themselves to
ashes at the thought of a kiss. To love Hobert was to her the most
natural and proper thing in the world, and she did not dream there was
anything to blush for. It is probable, too, that his constitutional
bashfulness and distrust of himself brought out her greater confidence
and buoyancy.
"And how and where am I ever to see you again?" he asked, as he detained
her, against her better judgment, if not against her will.
"Trust that to me,"--and she hurried away in time to meet and prevent
her father from riding forth in search of her.
Of course there were fault-finding and quarrelling, accusations and
protestations, hard demands and sullen pouting,--so that the home, at no
time so attractive as we like to imagine the home of a young girl who
has father and mother to provide for her and protect her, became to her
like a prison-house. At the close of the first and second days after her
meeting with Hobert, when the work was all faithfully done, she ventured
to ask leave to go over to John Walker's and inquire how the sick man
was; but so cold a refusal met her, that, on the evening of the third
day, she sat down on the porch-side to while away the hour between
working and sleeping, without having renewed her request.
The sun was down, and the first star began to show faintly above a strip
of gray cloud in the west, when a voice, low and tender, called to her,
"Come here, my child!" and looking up she saw Grandmother Walker sitting
on her horse at the gate. She had in the saddle before her her youngest
granddaughter, and on the bare back of the horse, behind her, a little
grandson, both their young faces expressive of the sorrow at home. Jenny
arose on the instant, betraying in every motion the interest and
sympathy she felt, and was just stepping lightly from the porch to the
ground, when a strong hand grasped her shoulder and turned her back. It
was her father who had overtaken her. "Go into the house!" he said. "If
the old woman has got any arrant at all, it's likely it's to your mother
and me."
Nor was his heart melted in the least when he learned that his friend
and neighbor was no more. He evinced surprise, and made some blunt and
coarse inquiries, but that was the amount. "The widder is left purty
destitute, I reckon," he said; and then he added, the Lord helped them
that helped themselves, and we mustn't fly in the face of Providence.
She had her son, strong and able-bodied; and of course he had no
thoughts of encumbering himself with a family of his own,--young and
poverty-struck as he was.
Mrs. Walker understood the insinuation; but her heart could not hold
resentment just then. She must relieve her burdened soul by talking of
"poor Johnny," even though it were to deaf ears. She must tell what a
good boy he had been,--how kind to her and considerate of her, how
manly, how generous, how self-forgetful. And then she must tell how hard
he had worked, and how saving he had been in order to give his children
a better chance in the world than he had had; and how, if he had lived
another year, he would have paid off the mortgage, and been able to hold
up his head amongst men.
After all the ploughing and sowing,--after all the preparation for the
gathering in of the harvest,--it seemed very hard, she said, that Johnny
must be called away, just as the shining ears began to appear. The
circumstances of his death, too, seemed to her peculiarly afflictive.
"We had all the doctors in the neighborhood," she said, "but none of
them understood his case. At first they thought he had small-pox, and
doctored him for that; and then they thought it was liver-complaint, and
doctored him for that; and then it was bilious fever, and then it was
typhus fever; and so it went on, and I really can't believe any of them
understood anything about it. Their way seemed to be to do just what he
didn't want done. In the first place, he was bled; and then he was
blistered; and then he was bled again and blistered again, the fever all
the time getting higher and higher; and when he wanted water, they said
it would kill him, and gave him hot drinks till it seemed to me they
would drive him mad; and sure enough, they did! The last word he ever
said, to know what he was saying, was to ask me for a cup of cold water.
I only wish I had given it to him; all the doctors in the world wouldn't
prevent me now, if I only had him back. The fever seemed to be just
devouring him: his tongue was as dry as sand, and his head as hot as
fire. 'O mother!' says he, and there was such a look of beseeching in
his eyes as I can never forget, 'may be I shall never want you to do
anything more for me. Cold water! give me some cold water! If I don't
have it, my senses will surely fly out of my head!' 'Yes, Johnny,' says
I,--and I went and brought a tin bucketful, right out of the well, and
set it on the table in his sight; for I thought it would do him good to
see even more than he could drink; and then I brought a cup and dipped
it up full. It was all dripping over, and he had raised himself on one
elbow, and was leaning toward me, when the young doctor came in, and,
stepping between us, took the cup out of my hand. All his strength
seemed to go from poor Johnny at that, and he fell back on his pillow
and never lifted his head any more. Still he kept begging in a feeble
voice for the water. 'Just two or three drops,--just one drop!' he said.
I couldn't bear it, and the doctor said I had better go out of the room,
and so I did,--and the good Lord forgive me; for when I went back, after
half an hour, he was clean crazy. He didn't know me, and he never knowed
me any more."
"It's purty hard, Miss Walker," answered Mr. Bowen, "to accuse the
doctors with the murder of your son. A purty hard charge, that, I call
it! So John's dead! Well, I hope he is better off. Where are you goin'
to bury him?"
And then Mrs. Walker said she didn't charge anybody with the murder of
poor Johnny,--nobody meant to do him any harm, she knew that; but, after
all, she wished she could only have had her own way with him from the
first. And so she rode away,--her little bare-legged grandson, behind
her, aggravating her distress by telling her that, when he got to be a
man, he meant to do nothing all the days of his life but dig wells, and
give water to whoever wanted it.
It is not worth while to dwell at length on the humiliations and
privations to which Jenny was subjected,--the mention of one or two will
indicate the nature of all. In the first place, the white heifer she had
always called hers was sold, and the money tied up in a tow bag. Jenny
would not want a cow for years to come. The piece of land that had
always been known as "Jenny's Corner" was not thus denominated any more,
and she was given to understand that it was only to be hers
_conditionally_. There were obstacles put in the way of her going to
meeting of a Sunday,--first one thing, then another; and, finally, the
bureau was locked, and the best dress and brightest ribbon inside the
drawers. The new side-saddle she had been promised was refused to her,
unless she in turn would make a promise; and the long day's work was
made to drag on into the night, lest she might find time to visit some
neighbor, and lest that neighbor might be the Widow Walker. But what
device of the enemy ever proved successful when matched against the
simple sincerity of true love? It came about, in spite of all restraint
and prohibition, that Jenny and Hobert met in their own times and ways;
and so a year went by.
One night, late in the summer, when the katydids began to sing, Jenny
waited longer than usual under the vine-covered beech that drooped its
boughs low to the ground all round her,--now listening for the expected
footstep, and now singing, very low, some little song to her heart, such
as many a loving and trusting maiden had sung before her. What could
keep Hobert? She knew it was not his will that kept him; and though her
heart began to be heavy, she harbored therein no thought of reproach. By
the movement of the shadow on the grass, she guessed that an hour beyond
the one of appointment must have passed, when the far-away footfall set
her so lately hushed pulses fluttering with delight. He was coming,--he
was coming! And, no matter what had been wrong, all would be right now.
She was holding wide the curtaining boughs long before he came near; and
when they dropped, and her arms closed, it is not improbable that he was
within them. It was the delight of meeting her that kept him still so
long, Jenny thought; and she prattled lightly and gayly of this and of
that, and, seeing that she won no answer, fell to tenderer tones, and
imparted the little vexing secrets of her daily life, and the sweet
hopes of her nightly dreams.
They were seated on a grassy knoll, the moonlight creeping tenderly
about their feet, and the leaves of the drooping vines touching their
heads like hands of pity, or of blessing. The water running over the
pebbly bottom of the brook just made the silence sweet, and the evening
dews shining on the red globes of the clover made the darkness lovely;
but with all these enchantments of sight and sound about him,--nay,
more, with the hand of Jenny, his own true-love, Jenny, folded in
his,--Hobert was not happy.
"And so you think you love me!" he said at last, speaking so sadly, and
clasping the hand he held with so faint a pressure, that Jenny would
have been offended if she had not been the dear, trustful little
creature she was.
There was, indeed, a slight reproach in her accent as she answered,
"_Think_ I love you, Hobert? No, I don't think anything about it,--I
_know_."
"And I know I love you, Jenny," he replied. "I love you so well that I
am going to leave you without asking you to marry me!"
For one moment Jenny was silent,--for one moment the world seemed
unsteady beneath her,--then she stood up, and, taking the hand of her
lover between her palms, gazed into his face with one long, earnest,
steadfast gaze. "You have asked me already, Hobert," she said, "a
thousand times, and I have consented as often. You may go away, but you
will not leave me; for 'Whither thou goest I will go, where thou diest
will I die, and there will I be buried.'"
He drew her close to his bosom now, and kissed her with most passionate,
but still saddest tenderness. "You know not, my darling," he said, "what
you would sacrifice." Then he laid before her all her present
advantages, all her bright prospects for the future,--her high chamber
with its broad eastern windows, to be given up for the low dingy walls
of a settler's cabin, her free girlhood for the hard struggles of a
settler's wife! Sickness, perhaps,--certainly the lonesome nights and
days of a home remote from neighbors, and the dreariness and hardship
inseparable from the working out of better fortunes. But all these
things, even though they should all come, were light in comparison with
losing him!
Perhaps Hobert had desired and expected to hear her say this. At any
rate, he did not insist on a reversal of her decision, as, with his arms
about her, he proceeded to explain why he had come to her that night
with so heavy a heart. The substance of all he related may be
recapitulated in a few words. The land could not be paid for, and the
homestead must be sold. He would not be selfish and forsake his mother,
and his young brothers and sisters in their time of need. By careful
management of the little that could be saved, he might buy in the West a
better farm than that which was now to be given up; and there to build a
cabin and plant a garden would be easy,--O, so easy!--with the smile of
Jenny to light him home when the day's work was done.
In fact, the prospective hardships vanished away at the thought of her
for his little housekeeper. It was such easy work for fancy to convert
the work-days into holidays, and the thick wilderness into the shining
village, where the schoolhouse stood open all the week, and the sweet
bells called them to church of a Sunday; easy work for that deceitful
elf to make the chimney-corner snug and warm, and to embellish it with
his mother in her easy-chair. When they parted that night, each young
heart was trembling with the sweetest secret it had ever held; and it
was perhaps a fortnight thereafter that the same secret took wing, and
flew wildly over the neighborhood.
John Walker's little farm was gone for good and all. The few sheep, and
the cows, and the pig, and the fowls, together with the greater part of
the household furniture, were scattered over the neighborhood; the smoke
was gone from the chimney, and the windows were curtainless; and the
grave of John, with a modest but decent headstone, and a rose-bush newly
planted beside it, was left to the care of strangers. The last visits
had been paid, and the last good-byes and good wishes exchanged; and the
widow and her younger children were far on their journey,--Hobert
remaining for a day or two to dispose of his smart young horse, as it
was understood, and then follow on.
At this juncture, Mr. Bowen one morning opened the stair-door, as was
his custom, soon after daybreak, and called harshly out, "Jinny! Jinny!
its high time you was up!"
Five minutes having elapsed, and the young girl not having yet appeared,
the call was repeated more harshly than before. "Come, Jinny, come! or
I'll know what's the reason!"
She did not come; and five minutes more having passed, he mounted the
stairs with a quick, resolute step, to know what was the reason. He came
down faster, if possible, than he went up. "Mother, mother!" he cried,
rushing toward Mrs. Bowen, who stood at the table sifting meal, his gray
hair streaming wildly back, and his cheek blanched with amazement,
"Jinny's run away!--run away, as sure as you're a livin' woman. Her
piller hasn't been touched last night, and her chamber's desarted!"
And this was the secret that took wing and flew over the neighborhood.
THE RETREAT FROM LENOIR'S AND THE SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE.
Late in October, 1863, the Ninth Army Corps went into camp at Lenoir's
Station, twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville, East Tennessee. Since
April, the corps had campaigned in Kentucky, had participated in the
siege of Vicksburg, had accompanied Sherman into the interior of
Mississippi in his pursuit of Johnston, had returned to Kentucky, and
then, in conjunction with the Twenty-third Army Corps, marching over the
mountains into East Tennessee, in a brief but brilliant campaign under
its old leader and favorite, Burnside, had delivered the loyal people of
that region from the miseries of Rebel rule, and had placed them once
more under the protection of the old flag. But all this had not been
done without loss. Many of our brave comrades, who, through a storm of
leaden hail, had crossed the bridge at Antietam, and had faced death in
a hundred forms on the heights of Fredericksburg, had fallen on these
widely separated battle-fields in the valley of the Mississippi. Many,
overborne by fatigue and exposure, had laid down their wasted bodies by
the roadside and in hospitals, and had gently breathed their young lives
away. Many more, from time to time, had been rendered unfit for active
service; and the corps, now a mere skeleton, numbered less than three
thousand men present for duty. Never did men need rest more than they;
and never was an order more welcome than that which now declared the
campaign ended, and authorized the construction of winter quarters.
The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts Volunteers--then in the First Brigade,
First Division, Ninth Corps--was under the command of Major
Draper,--Lieutenant-Colonel Goodell having been severely wounded at the
battle of Blue Springs, October 10. The place selected for the winter
quarters of the regiment was a young oak grove, nearly a quarter of a
mile east of the village. The camp was laid out with unusual care. In
order to secure uniformity throughout the regiment, the size of the
log-houses--they were to be ten feet by six--was announced in orders
from regimental head-quarters. The work of construction was at once
commenced. Unfortunately, we were so far from our base of supplies--Camp
Nelson, Kentucky--that nearly all our transportation was required by the
Commissary Department for the conveyance of its stores. Consequently,
the Quartermaster's Department was poorly supplied; and the only axes
which could be obtained were those which our pioneers and company cooks
had brought with them for their own use. These, however, were pressed
into the service; and their merry ringing, as the men cheerfully engaged
in the work, could be heard from early morning till evening. Small oaks,
four and five inches in diameter, were chiefly used in building these
houses. The logs were laid one above another, to the height of four
feet, intersecting at the corners of the houses like the rails of a
Virginia fence. The interstices were filled with mud. Shelter-tents,
buttoned together to the size required, formed the roof, and afforded
ample protection from the weather, except in very heavy rains. Each
house had its fireplace, table, and bunk. On the 13th of November the
houses were nearly completed; and as we sat by our cheerful fires that
evening, and looked forward to the leisure and quiet of the winter
before us, we thought ourselves the happiest of soldiers. Writing home
at that time, I said that, unless something unforeseen should happen, we
expected to remain at Lenoir's during the winter.
That something unforeseen was at hand; and our pleasant dreams were
destined to fade away like an unsubstantial pageant, leaving not a rack
behind. At four o'clock on the morning of the 14th I was roused from
sleep by loud knocks on the new-made door. In the order which followed,
"Be ready to march at daybreak," I recognized the familiar, but
unwelcome voice of the Sergeant-Major. Throwing aside my blankets, and
leaving the Captain dreamily wondering what could be the occasion of so
unexpected an order, I hurried to the quarters of the men of Company D,
and repeated to the Orderly Sergeant the instructions just received. The
camp was soon astir. Lights flashed here and there through the trees.
"Pack up! pack up!" passed from lip to lip. "Shall we take everything?"
Yes, everything. The shelter-tents were stripped from the houses,
knapsacks and trunks were packed. The wagon for the officers' baggage
came, was hurriedly loaded, and driven away. A hasty breakfast followed.
Then, forming our line, we stacked arms, and awaited further orders.
The mystery was soon solved. Longstreet, having cut loose from Bragg's
army, which still remained in the vicinity of Chattanooga, had, by a
forced march, struck the Tennessee River at Hough's Ferry, a few miles
below Loudon. Already he had thrown a pontoon across the river, and was
crossing with his entire command, except the cavalry under Wheeler,
which he had sent by way of Marysville, with orders to seize the heights
on the south bank of the Holston, opposite Knoxville. The whole movement
was the commencement of a series of blunders on the part of the Rebel
commanders in this department, which resulted at length in the utter
overthrow of the Rebel army of the Tennessee. General Grant saw at once
the mistake which the enemy had made, and ordered General Burnside to
fall back to Knoxville and intrench, promising reinforcements speedily.
Knoxville was Longstreet's objective. It was the key of East Tennessee.
Should it again fall into the enemy's hands, we would be obliged to
retire to Cumberland Gap. Lenoir's did not lie in Longstreet's path. If
we remained there, he would push his columns past our right, and get
between us and Knoxville. It was evident that the place must be
abandoned; and there was need of haste. The mills and factories in the
village were accordingly destroyed, and the wagon-train started north.
The morning had opened heavily with clouds, and, as the day advanced,
the rain came down in torrents. A little before noon, our division, then
under the command of General Ferrero, moved out of the woods; but,
instead of taking the road to Knoxville, as we had anticipated, the
column marched down the Loudon road. We were to watch the enemy, and, by
holding him in check, secure the safety of our trains and material, then
on the way to Knoxville.
A few miles from Lenoir's, while we were halting for rest, General
Burnside passed us on his way to the front. Under his slouched hat there
was a sterner face than there was wont to be. There is trouble ahead,
said the men; but the cheers which rose from regiment after regiment, as
with his staff and battle-flag he swept past us, told the confidence
which all felt in "Old Burnie."
Chapin's brigade of White's command (Twenty-third Army Corps) was in the
advance; and about four o'clock his skirmishers met those of the enemy,
and drove them back a mile and a half. We followed through mud and rain.
The country became hilly as we advanced, and our artillery was moved
with difficulty. At dark we were in front of the enemy's position,
having marched nearly fourteen miles. The rain had now ceased. Halting,
we formed our lines in thick woods, and stacked our arms,--weary and
wet, and not in the happiest of moods.
During the evening a circular was received, notifying us of an intended
attack on the enemy's lines at nine o'clock, P. M., by the troops of
White's command; but, with the exception of an occasional shot, the
night was a quiet one.
The next morning, the usual reveille was omitted; and, at daybreak,
noiselessly our lines were formed, and we marched out of the woods into
the road. But it was not an advance. During the night General Ferrero
had received orders to fall back to Lenoir's. Such, however, was the
state of the roads, that it was almost impossible to move our artillery.
At one time our whole regiment was detailed to assist Roemer's battery.
Near Loudon we passed the Second Division of our corps, which during the
night had moved down from Lenoir's, in order to be within supporting
distance. But the enemy did not seem disposed to press us. We reached
Lenoir's about noon. Sigfried, with the Second Division, followed later
in the day. Our brigade (Morrison's) was now drawn up in line of battle
on the Kingston road, as it was thought that the enemy, by not pressing
our rear, intended a movement from that direction. And such was the
fact. The enemy advanced against our position on this road, about four
o'clock, and drove in our pickets. The Eighth Michigan was at once
deployed as skirmishers. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
Pennsylvania at the same time moved forward to support the skirmishers,
and formed their line of battle in the woods, on the left of the road.
Just at dusk, the enemy made a dash, and pressed our skirmishers back
nearly to our line, but did not seem inclined to advance any further.
A portion of the Ninth Corps, under Colonel Hartranft, and a body of
mounted infantry, were now sent towards Knoxville, with orders to seize
and hold the junction of the road from Lenoir's with the Knoxville and
Kingston road, near the village of Campbell's Station. The distance was
only eight miles, but the progress of the column was much retarded. Such
was still the condition of the roads that the artillery could be moved
only with the greatest difficulty. Colonel Biddle dismounted some of his
men, and hitched their horses to the guns. In order to lighten the
caissons, some of the ammunition was removed from the boxes and
destroyed; but as little as possible, for who could say it would not be
needed on the morrow? Throughout the long night, officers and men
faltered not in their efforts to help forward the batteries. In the
light of subsequent events, it will be seen that they could not have
performed any more important service. Colonel Hartranft that night
displayed the same spirit and energy which he infused into his gallant
Pennsylvanians at Fort Steadman, in the last agonies of the Rebellion,
when, rolling back the fiercest assaults of the enemy, he gained the
first real success in the trenches at Petersburg, and won for himself
the double star of a Major-General.
Meanwhile, Morrison's brigade remained on the Kingston road in front of
Lenoir's. The enemy, anticipating an evacuation of the place, made an
attack on our lines about ten o'clock, P. M.; but a few shots on our
part were sufficient to satisfy him that we still held the ground.
Additional pickets, however, were sent out to extend the line held by
the Eighth Michigan. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
Pennsylvania still remained in line of battle in the woods. Neither
officers nor men slept that night. It was bitter cold, and the usual
fires were denied us, lest they should betray our weakness to the enemy.
The men were ordered to put their canteens and tin cups in their
haversacks, and remain quietly in their places, ready for any movement
at a moment's notice. It was a long, tedious, fearful night; what would
the morrow bring? It was Sunday night. The day had brought us no
rest,--only weariness and anxiety. No one could speak to his fellow; and
in the thick darkness, through the long, long night, we lay on our arms,
waiting for the morning. Ah, how many hearts there were among us, which,
overleaping the boundaries of States, found their way to Pennsylvanian
and New England homes,--how many, which, on the morrow, among the hills
of East Tennessee, were to pour out their young blood even unto death!
At length the morning came. It was cloudy as the day before. White's
division of the Twenty-third Corps was now on the road to Knoxville;
and, besides our own brigade, only Humphrey's brigade of our division
remained at Lenoir's. About daybreak, as silently as possible, we
withdrew from our position on the Kingston road, and, falling back
through the village of Lenoir's, moved towards Knoxville, Humphrey's
brigade covering the retreat. Everything which we could not take with us
was destroyed. Even our baggage and books, which, for the want of
transportation, had not been removed, were committed to the flames. The
enemy at once discovered our retreat, but did not press us till within a
mile or two of the village of Campbell's Station. Humphrey, however,
held him in check, and we moved on to the point where the road from
Lenoir's unites with the road from Kingston to Knoxville. It was
evidently Longstreet's intention to cut off our retreat at this place.
For this reason he had not pressed us at Lenoir's, the afternoon
previous, but had moved the main body of his army to our right. But the
mounted infantry, which had been sent to this point during the night,
were able to hold him in check, on the Kingston road, till Hartranft
came up.
On reaching the junction of the roads, we advanced into an open field on
our left, and at once formed our line of battle in rear of a rail fence,
our right resting near the Kingston road. The Eighth Michigan was on our
left. The Forty-fifth Pennsylvania was deployed as skirmishers. The rest
of our troops were now withdrawing to a new position back of the village
of Campbell's Station; and we were left to cover the movement. Unfurling
our colors, we awaited the advance of the enemy. There was an occasional
shot fired in our front, and to our right; but it was soon evident that
the Rebels were moving to our left, in order to gain the cover of the
woods. Moving off by the left flank, therefore, we took a second
position in an adjoining field. Finding now the enemy moving rapidly
through the woods, and threatening our rear, we executed a left
half-wheel; and, advancing on the double-quick to the rail fence which
ran along the edge of the woods, we opened a heavy fire. From this
position the enemy endeavored to force us. His fire was well directed,
but the fence afforded us a slight protection. Lieutenant Fairbank and a
few of the men were here wounded. For a while, we held the enemy in
check, but at length the skirmishers of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania,
who were watching our right, discovered a body of Rebel infantry pushing
towards our rear from the Kingston road. Colonel Morrison, our brigade
commander, at once ordered the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Eighth
Michigan to face about, and establish a new line, in rear of the rail
fence on the opposite side of the field. We advanced on the
double-quick; and, reaching the fence, our men with a shout poured a
volley into the Rebel line of battle, which not only checked its
advance, but drove it back in confusion. Meanwhile, the enemy in our
rear moved up to the edge of the woods, which we had just left, and now
opened a brisk fire. We at once crossed the fence in order to place it
between us and his fire, and were about to devote our attention again to
him, when orders came for us to withdraw,--it being no longer necessary
to hold the junction of the roads, for all our troops and wagons had now
passed. The enemy, too, was closing in upon us, and his fire was the
hottest. We moved off in good order; but our loss in killed and wounded
was quite heavy, considering the length of time we were under fire.
Among the killed was Lieutenant P. Marion Holmes of Charlestown, Mass.,
of whom it might well be said,
"He died as fathers wish their sons to die."
Lieutenant Holmes had been wounded at the battle of Blue Springs a
little more than a month before, and had made the march from Lenoir's
that morning with great difficulty. But he would not leave his men. On
his breast he wore the badge of the Bunker Hill Club, on which was
engraved the familiar line from Horace, which Warren quoted just before
the battle of Bunker Hill,--"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." In
the death of Lieutenant Holmes, the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts offered
its costliest sacrifice. Frank, courteous, manly, brave, he had won all
hearts, and his sudden removal from our companionship at that moment
will ever remind us of the great price with which that morning's success
was bought.
The enemy now manoeuvred to cut us off from the road, and pressed us
so hard that we were obliged to oblique to the left. Moving on the
double-quick, receiving an occasional volley, and barely escaping
capture, we at length emerged from the woods on the outskirts of the
little village of Campbell's Station. We were soon under cover of our
artillery, which General Potter, under the direction of General
Burnside, had placed in position on high ground just beyond the village.
This village is situated between two low ranges of hills, which are
nearly a mile apart. Across the intervening space, our infantry was
drawn up in a single line of battle, Ferrero's division of the Ninth
Corps held the right, White's division of the Twenty-third Corps held
the centre, and Hartranft's division of the Ninth Corps held the left.
Benjamin's, Buckley's, Getting's, and Van Schlein's batteries were on
the right of the road. Roemer's battery was on the left. The
Thirty-sixth Massachusetts supported Roemer.
The enemy, meanwhile, had disposed his forces for an attack on our
position. At noon he came out of the woods, just beyond the village, in
two lines of battle, with a line of skirmishers in front. The whole
field was open to our view. Benjamin and Roemer opened fire at once; and
so accurate was their range, that the Rebel lines were immediately
broken, and they fell back into the woods in confusion. The enemy, under
cover of the woods on the slope of the ridge, now advanced against our
right. Christ's brigade, of our division, at once changed front. Buckley
executed the same movement with his battery, and, by a well-directed
fire, checked the enemy's progress in that direction. The enemy next
manoeuvred to turn our left. Falling back, however, to a stronger
position in our rear, we established a new line about four o'clock in
the afternoon. This was done under a heavy fire from the enemy's
batteries. Ferrero was now on the right of the road. Morrison's brigade
was placed in rear of a rail fence, at the foot of the ridge on which
Benjamin's battery had been planted. The enemy did not seem inclined to
attack us in front, but pushed along the ridge, on our left, aiming to
strike Hartranft in flank and rear. He was discovered in this attempt;
and, just as he was moving over ground recently cleared, Roemer,
changing front at the same time with Hartranft, opened his three-inch
guns on the Rebel line, and drove it back in disorder, followed by the
skirmishers. Longstreet, foiled in all these attempts to force us from
our position, now withdrew beyond the range of our guns, and made no
further demonstrations that day. Our troops were justly proud of their
success; for, with a force not exceeding five thousand men, they had
held in check, for an entire day, three times their own number,--the
flower of Lee's army. Our loss in the Ninth Corps was twenty-six killed,
one hundred and sixty-six wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Of these,
the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts lost one officer and three enlisted men
killed, three officers and fourteen enlisted men wounded, and three
enlisted men missing.
At six o'clock, P. M., Ferrero's division, followed by Hartranft's,
moved to the rear, taking the road to Knoxville. White's division of the
Twenty-third Corps covered the retreat. Campbell's Station is a little
more than sixteen miles from Knoxville; but the night was so dark, and
the road so muddy, that our progress was much retarded, and we did not
reach Knoxville till about four o'clock the next morning. We had now
been without sleep forty-eight hours. Moreover, since the previous
morning we had marched twenty-four miles and fought a battle. Halting
just outside of the town, weary and worn, we threw ourselves on the
ground, and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. Early in the day--it
was the 17th of November--General Burnside assigned the batteries and
regiments of his command to the positions they were to occupy in the
defence of the place. Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the
Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land,
which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet
above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek.
Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still
farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this
table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is
bounded by a second creek. Beyond this is College Hill; and still
farther to the southwest is a high ridge, running nearly parallel with
the road which enters Knoxville at this point. Benjamin's and Buckley's
batteries occupied the unfinished bastion-work on the ridge just
mentioned. This work was afterwards known as Fort Sanders. Roemer's
battery was placed in position on College Hill. These batteries were
supported by Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps, his line extending
from the Holston River on the left to the point where the East Tennessee
and Georgia Railroad crosses the creek mentioned above as Second Creek.
Hartranft connected with Ferrero's right, supporting Getting's and the
Fifteenth Indiana Batteries. His lines extended as far as First Creek.
The divisions of White and Hascall, of the Twenty-third Corps, occupied
the ground between this point and the Holston River, on the northeast
side of the town, with their artillery in position on Temperance and
Mayberry's Hills.
Knoxville at this time was by no means in a defensible condition. The
bastion-work, occupied by Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries, was not
only not finished, but was little more than begun. It required two
hundred negroes four hours to clear places for the guns. There was also
a fort in process of construction on Temperance Hill. Nothing more had
been done. But the work was now carried forward in earnest. As fast as
the troops were placed in position, they commenced the construction of
rifle-pits. Though wearied by three days of constant marching and
fighting, they gave themselves to the work with all the energy of fresh
men. Citizens and contrabands also were pressed into the service. Many
of the former were loyal men, and devoted themselves to their tasks with
a zeal which evinced the interest they felt in making good the defence
of the town; but some of them were bitter Rebels, and, as Captain Poe,
Chief-Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, well remarked, "worked with a
very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve." The
contrabands engaged in the work with that heartiness which, during the
war, characterized their labors in our service.
At noon, the enemy's advance was only a mile or two distant; and four
companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts--A, B, D, G--were thrown out
as skirmishers,--the line extending from the Holston River to the
Kingston road. But the enemy was held in check at some little distance
from the town by Sanders's division of cavalry. The hours thus gained
for our work in the trenches were precious hours, indeed. There was a
lack of intrenching tools, and much remained to be done; but all day and
all night the men continued their labors undisturbed; and, on the
morning of the 18th, our line of works around the town presented a
formidable appearance.
Throughout the forenoon of that day there was heavy skirmishing on the
Kingston road; but our men--dismounted cavalry--still maintained their
position. Later in the day, however, the enemy brought up a battery,
which, opening a heavy fire, soon compelled our men to fall back. The
Rebels, now pressing forward, gained the ridge for which they had been
contending, and established their lines within rifle range of our works.
It was while endeavoring to check this advance that General Sanders was
mortally wounded. He was at once borne from the field, and carried into
Knoxville. While a surgeon was examining the wound, he asked, "Tell me,
Doctor, is my wound mortal?"
Tenderly the surgeon replied, "Sanders, it is a fearful wound, and
mortal. I am sorry to say it, my dear fellow, but the odds are against
you."
Calmly the General continued, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have made
up my mind upon that subject. I have done my duty, and have served my
country as well as I could."
The next day he called the attention of the surgeon to certain symptoms
which he had observed, and asked him what they meant.
The surgeon replied, "General, you are dying."
"If that be so," he said, "I would like to see a clergyman."
Rev. Mr. Hayden, chaplain of the post, was summoned. On his arrival, the
dying soldier expressed a desire that the ordinance of baptism should be
administered. This was done, and then the minister in prayer commended
the believing soul to God,--General Burnside and his staff, who were
present, kneeling around the bed. When the prayer was ended, General
Sanders took General Burnside by the hand. Tears--the language of that
heartfelt sympathy and tender love belonging to all noble souls--dropped
down the bronzed cheeks of the chief as he listened to the last words
which followed. The sacrament was now about to be administered, but
suddenly the strength of the dying soldier failed, and like a child he
gently fell asleep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friends."
The enemy did not seem inclined to attack our position at once, but
proceeded to invest the town on the north bank of the Holston. He then
commenced the construction of a line of works. The four companies of the
Thirty-sixth Massachusetts which had been detailed for picket duty on
the morning of the 17th, remained on post till the morning of the 19th.
Thenceforward, throughout the siege, both officers and men were on
picket duty every third day. During this twenty-four hours of duty no
one slept. The rest of the time we were on duty in the trenches, where,
during the siege, one third, and sometimes one fourth, of the men were
kept awake. The utmost vigilance was enjoined upon all.
Meanwhile, day by day, and night by night, with unflagging zeal, the
troops gave themselves to the labor of strengthening the works.
Immediately in front of the rifle-pits, a _chevaux-de-frise_ was
constructed. This was formed of pointed stakes, thickly and firmly set
in the ground, and inclining outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees.
The stakes were bound together with wire, so that they could not easily
be torn apart by an assaulting party. They were nearly five feet in
height. In front of Colonel Haskins's position, on the north side of the
town, the _chevaux-de-frise_ was constructed with the two thousand pikes
which were captured at Cumberland Gap early in the fall. A few rods in
front of the _chevaux-de-frise_ was the abatis, formed of thick branches
of trees, which likewise were firmly set in the ground. Still farther to
the front, were wire entanglements stretched a few inches above the
ground, and fastened here and there to stakes and stumps. In front of a
portion of our lines another obstacle was formed by constructing dams
across First and Second Creeks, so called, and throwing back the water.
The whole constituted a series of obstacles which could not be passed,
in face of a heavy fire, without great difficulty and fearful loss.
Just in rear of the rifle-pits occupied by the Thirty-sixth
Massachusetts was an elegant brick mansion, of recent construction,
known as the Powell House. When the siege commenced, fresco-painters
were at work ornamenting its parlors and halls. Throwing open its doors,
Mr. Powell, a true Union man, invited Colonel Morrison and Major Draper
to make it their head-quarters. He also designated a chamber for the
sick of our regiment. Early during the siege, the southwestern and
northwestern fronts were loopholed by order of General Burnside, and
instructions were given to post in the house, in case of an attack, two
companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. When the order was
announced to Mr. Powell, he nobly said, "Lay this house level with the
ground, if it is necessary." A few feet from the southwestern front of
the house, a small earthwork was thrown up by our men, in which was
placed a section of Buckley's battery. This work was afterwards known as
Battery Noble.
Morrison's brigade now held the line of defences from the Holston
River--the extreme left of our line--to Fort Sanders. The following was
the position of the several regiments of the brigade. The Forty-fifth
Pennsylvania was on the left, its left on the river. On its right lay
the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. Then came the Eighth Michigan. The
Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) formed the garrison of Fort
Sanders. Between the Eighth Michigan and Fort Sanders was the One
Hundredth Pennsylvania (Roundheads).
On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and
drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston
road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house,
and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters,
which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the
fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our
part was slight.
For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth
Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill.
While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings
of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee,
these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a
vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us
pleasant and comfortable quarters.
The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed
works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of
their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November,
however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our
lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our
front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer
works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.
With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased;
and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the
question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there
was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's
ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south
bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off.
Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole
country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging
parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon
collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour,
was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations.
Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither
sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.
The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the
Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry.
Floating this down the swift current of the stream, he hoped to carry
away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country
beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length,
was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the
direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to
end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was
fifteen hundred feet in length.
On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in
front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back,
our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should
become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus
destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light
of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the
Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under
the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back
the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.
The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced
parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest
bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before
the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh
troops which the enemy had at hand.
On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed
the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to
occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in
planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the
river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This
position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to
defilade the fort.
November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside
issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be
observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the
rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival
we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of
the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the
day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him
who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly
preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with
thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the
loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find
little cheer at the table and by the fireside.
Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort
Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line,
held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest
bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort,
from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of
eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the
direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and
Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made
as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art
admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were
constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from
the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements,
running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels
were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built
for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one
position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts
(Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery),
and two three-inch guns.
Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel
lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they
were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which
separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant
met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I
could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so
recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing
away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the
day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting
this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night;
but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the
afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our
front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the
day wore away without further demonstrations.
A little after eleven o'clock, P. M., November 28th, I was aroused by
heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night,
and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish
any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of
an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack
had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what
success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first
driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked
_our_ line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front,
however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated,
and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade
officer of the day.
It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it
be made? All that long, cold night--our men were without overcoats--we
stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this
demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from
other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some
thought. Gradually the night wore away.
A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a
furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but
several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer
immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the
enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell,
in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the
roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and
then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled.
It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on
the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to
scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,--O, whose? The yells again
died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,--"Hurrah, hurrah,
hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost
breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had
been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising
fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,--O glorious sight!--we
dimly saw that our flag was still there.
Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort
Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault.
The men were picked men,--the flower of his army. One brigade was to
make the assault, two brigades were to support it,[A] and two other
brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five
regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These
were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They
were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their
artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of
the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much
broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a
greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened
his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column
carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge
was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were
endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to
sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin
also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over
the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve
now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet
of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were
swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied
of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered.
They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three
hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two
hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch
alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies
of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our
hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth
Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and
five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter
laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort
Sanders,--Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.
Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in
Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside
now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, P. M. It was accepted
by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in
removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours
were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun
was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork
opposite, and the truce was at an end.
The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines,
General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At
noon, a single gun--we were short of ammunition--was fired from Battery
Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches,
gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for
reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy
knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December,
withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by
the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who
had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.
It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat
of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters,
among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season,
they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of
any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with
occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the
expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the
open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards
heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I
must pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic
endurance.
The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the
admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege
was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he
said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and
the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever
cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely
separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their
fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it
will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's
Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."
FOOTNOTES:
[A] This statement is confirmed by the following extract from Pollard's
(Rebel) "Third Year of the War." Speaking of his charge on Fort Sanders,
he says: "The force which was to attempt an enterprise which ranks with
the most famous charges in military history should be mentioned in
detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaw's division;--that of
General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia
Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia Legions; that of General
Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and
Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and a brigade composed of General
Anderson's and Bryant's brigades, embracing, among others, the Palmetto
State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first,
Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia Regiments."--pp. 161, 162.
RELEASED.
A little low-ceiled room. Four walls
Whose blank shut out all else of life,
And crowded close within their bound
A world of pain, and toil, and strife.
Her world. Scarce furthermore she knew
Of God's great globe, that wondrously
Outrolls a glory of green earth,
And frames it with the restless sea.
Four closer walls of common pine:
And therein lieth, cold and still,
The weary flesh that long hath borne
Its patient mystery of ill.
Regardless now of work to do;
No queen more careless in her state;
Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;
For other hands the work may wait.
Put by her implements of toil;
Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;
She made a Sabbath when she died,
And round her breathes a Rest Divine.
Put by, at last, beneath the lid,
The exempted hands, the tranquil face;
Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,
And bear her gently from the place.
Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,
Out from that threshold on the night;
The narrow bourn she crosseth now;
She standeth in the Eternal Light.
Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,
Those broken steps that reach the door;
Henceforth with angels she shall tread
Heaven's golden stair forevermore!
FRIEDRICH RUeCKERT.
The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten
years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of
Friedrich Rueckert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the
higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names.
Yet, although with these poets in time, Rueckert was not of them in the
structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No
author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the
long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no
one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be
Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks
of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of
Bosrah.
Rueckert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been
singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the
usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary
sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which
the _Jahrbuecher_ of Halle dealt out to him for several years in
succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since
his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that
death--which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author
makes upon his generation--cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In
life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his
successes were permanent achievements.
He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old
town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited
Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and
literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became
connected with the _Morgenblatt_, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The
year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and
established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a
native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality
with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and
literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the
result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,--the first time in 1826,
when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University
of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place
in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both
these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill
them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain
impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life
than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral
seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.
One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates
his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental
songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which,
despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the
swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to
translate the first stanza:--
"Out of the dust of the
Town o' the king,
Into the lust of the
Green of spring,--
Forth from the noises of
Streets and walls,
Unto the voices of
Waterfalls,--
He who presently
Flies is blest:
Fate thus pleasantly
Makes my nest!"[B]
The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly
half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the
Orient--the native land of his brain--seems to have disturbed him.
Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few
poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not
indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so
happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing,
according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness
of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see
him,--especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial
nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was
nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was
rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually
became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace,
depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took
from him more than the mere time lost.
When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to
make Rueckert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been
refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern
lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his
wonderful translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri, and felt sure that he
would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song
he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few
families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,--that
many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had
never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.
It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the
Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the
habit of consulting Rueckert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered
at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the
meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate,
just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke
Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly
hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without
discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic
atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the
landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above
the trees.
My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and
entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we
were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I
perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of
late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their
fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened
himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than Rueckert. I
believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that
his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to
him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience
a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,--a sort
of loose, commodious blouse,--at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered
some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and
looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"
The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room
on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled
with hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before Rueckert made his
appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a
moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I
come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his
eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you
have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was
self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.
He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity
of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom
seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first
impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one
looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature
strongly marked,--the brow high and massive, the nose strong and
slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square,
and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his
forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were
deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he
became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt
expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible
to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the
hour of prayer.
I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be
guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the
subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge,
and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so
rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was
astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had
elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting
himself to the good Frau Rueckert, the "Luise" of her husband's
_Liebesfruehling_ (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a
grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her
younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest
upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she
whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an
opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."
But we must not lose sight of Rueckert's poetical biography. His first
volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at
Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his
famous _Geharnischte Sonette_ (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read
and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the
Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he
has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which
the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language
acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very
evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so
much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.
These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the
Tyrtaean strains of Arndt and Koerner, are nevertheless full of stately
and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,--
"In Milton's hand,
The thing became a trumpet,"--
and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment
which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years
flourished so greenly upon its ruins.
Shortly afterwards, Rueckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy,"
which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to
general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822.
Three years before, Goethe had published his _Westoestlicher Divan_, and
the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to his
venerable predecessor, in stanzas which express the most delicate, and
at the same time the most generous homage. I scarcely know where to
look for a more graceful dedication in verse. It is said that Goethe
never acknowledged the compliment,--an omission which some German
authors attribute to the latter's distaste at being surpassed on his
latest and (at that time) favorite field. No one familiar with Goethe's
life and works will accept this conjecture.
It is quite impossible to translate this poem literally, in the original
metre: the rhymes are exclusively feminine. I am aware that I shall
shock ears familiar with the original by substituting masculine rhymes
in the two stanzas which I present; but there is really no alternative.
"Would you taste
Purest East,
Hence depart, and seek the selfsame man
Who our West
Gave the best
Wine that ever flowed from Poet's can:
When the Western flavors ended,
He the Orient's vintage spended,--
Yonder dreams he on his own divan!
"Sunset-red
Goethe led
Star to be of all the sunset-land:
Now the higher
Morning-fire
Makes him lord of all the morning-land!
Where the two, together turning,
Meet, the rounded heaven is burning
Rosy-bright in one celestial brand!"
I have not the original edition of the "Oriental Roses," but I believe
the volume contained the greater portion of Rueckert's marvellous
"Ghazels." Count Platen, it is true, had preceded him by one year, but
his adaptation of the Persian metre to German poetry--light and graceful
and melodious as he succeeded in making it--falls far short of Rueckert's
infinite richness and skill. One of the latter's "Ghazels" contains
twenty-six variations of the same rhyme, yet so subtly managed, so
colored with the finest reflected tints of Eastern rhetoric and fancy,
that the immense art implied in its construction is nowhere unpleasantly
apparent. In fact, one dare not say that these poems are _all_ art. In
the Oriental measures the poet found the garment which best fitted his
own mind. We are not to infer that he did not move joyously, and, after
a time, easily, within the limitations which, to most authors, would
have been intolerable fetters.
In 1826 appeared his translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri. The old
silk-merchant of Bosrah never could have anticipated such an
immortality. The word _Makamat_ means "sessions," (probably the Italian
_conversazione_ best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short
narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed
prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of
alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless
grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work
of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of
narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The
Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"--the name of the hero of the
story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to
reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least
affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it
is unique in literature.
As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the
spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and
the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary
muscular habits, so is the language of Rueckert in this work to the
language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show
of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions,
whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric
music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands,"
until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word
leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony.
One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen
of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a
representative work. The Arabic title, misunderstood, has given birth
to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed
_Makamen_ in German literary society.
Rueckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages;
he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his
translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or
the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilkais, Poet and King." In addition
to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840,
the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental
themes,--"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab,"
and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere
of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own
independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets.
Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,)
they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture of his
own brain.
Some of Rueckert's critics have asserted that his extraordinary mastery
of all the resources of language operated to the detriment of his
poetical faculty,--that the feeling to be expressed became subordinate
to the skill displayed by expressing it in an unusual form. They claim,
moreover, that he produced a mass of sparkling fragments, rather than
any single great work. I am convinced, however, that the first charge is
unfounded, basing my opinion upon my knowledge of the poet's simple,
true, tender nature, which I learned to appreciate during my later
visits to his home. After the death of his wife, the daughter who
thereafter assumed her mother's place in the household wrote me frequent
accounts of her father's grief and loneliness, enclosing manuscript
copies of the poems in which he expressed his sorrow. These poems are
exceedingly sweet and touching; yet they are all marked by the same
flexile use of difficult rhythms and unprecedented rhymes. They have
never yet been published, and I am therefore withheld from translating
any one of them, in illustration.
Few of Goethe's minor songs are more beautiful than his serenade, _O
gib' vom weichen Pfuehle_, where the interlinked repetitions are a
perpetual surprise and charm; yet Rueckert has written a score of more
artfully constructed and equally melodious songs. His collection of
amatory poems entitled _Liebesfruehling_ contains some of the sunniest
idyls in any language. That his genius was lyrical and not epic, was not
a fault; that it delighted in varied and unusual metres, was an
exceptional--perhaps in his case a phenomenal--form of development; but
I do not think it was any the less instinctively natural. One of his
quatrains runs:--
"Much I make as make the others;
Better much another man
Makes than I; but much, moreover,
Make I which no other can."
His poetical comment on the translation of Hariri is given in
prose:--"He who, like myself, unfortunate man! is philologist and poet
in the same person, cannot do better than to translate as I do. My
Hariri has illustrated how philology and poetry are competent to
stimulate and to complete each other. If thou, reader, wilt look upon
this hybrid production neither too philologically nor over-poetically,
it may delight and instruct thee. That which is false in philology thou
wilt attribute to poetic license, and where the poetry is deficient,
thou wilt give the blame to philology."
The critics who charge Rueckert with never having produced "a whole,"
have certainly forgotten one of his works,--"The Wisdom of the Brahmin,
a Didactic Poem, in Fragments." The title somewhat describes its
character. The "fragments" are couplets, in iambic hexameter, each one
generally complete in itself, yet grouped in sections by some connecting
thought, after the manner of the stanzas of Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
There are more than _six thousand_ couplets, in all, divided into
twenty books,--the whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with
such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if
sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial
Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I
should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I
never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is
quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of
serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which Rueckert ever wrote
so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of
these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and
their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.
With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other
ballads, the amatory poems of Rueckert have attained the widest
popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to
music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that
subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting
the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason
they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most
cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain,
which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole
song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible.
An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript)
will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the
order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and
third lines.
"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder;
My heart 'gan beating
In timid wonder:
Could I guess whether
Thenceforth together
Our paths should run, so long asunder?
"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder,
With guile to cheat me,--
My heart to plunder.
Was't mine he captured?
Or his I raptured?
Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!
"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder:
Spring-blessings greet me
Spring-blossoms under.
What though he leave me?
No partings grieve me,--
No path can lead our hearts asunder!"
The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the
German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,)
has been successful in rendering one of Rueckert's ghazels. I am
specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general
resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.