GOWDY ACKNOWLEDGES HIS SON
Now I leave it to the reader--if I ever have one besides my
granddaughter Gertrude--whether in this case of the trouble of Rowena
Fewkes and her marriage to Magnus Thorkelson, I did anything by which I
ought to have forfeited the esteem of my neighbors, of the Reverend and
Mrs. Thorndyke, or of Virginia Royall. I never in all my life acted in a
manner which was more in accordance to the dictates of my conscience.
You have seen how badly I behaved, or tended to behave in the past, and
lost no friends by it. In a long life of dealing in various kinds of
property, including horse-trading, very few people have ever got the
best of me, and everybody knows that this is less a boast than a
confession; and yet, this one good act of standing by this poor girl in
her dreadful plight degraded me more in the minds of the community than
all the spavins, thorough-pins, poll-evils and the like I ever concealed
or glossed over. We are all schoolboys who usually suffer our whippings
for things that should be overlooked; and the fact that we get off scot
free when we should have our jackets tanned does not seem to make the
injustice any easier to bear.
Dick McGill, the editor of the scurrilous Monterey _Journal_ was, as
usual, the chief imp of this as of any other deviltry his sensational
paper could take a part in. Of course, he would be on Buck Gowdy's side;
for what rights had such people as Magnus and Rowena and I?
"A wedding took place out on the wild shores of Hell Slew last week,"
said this paper. "It was not a case, exactly, of the funeral baked meats
coldly furnishing forth the marriage supper; but the economy was quite
as striking. The celebration of the arrival of the heir of the Manor
(though let us hope not of the manner) was merged in the wedding
festivities. We make our usual announcements: Married at the residence
of J.T. Vandemark, Miss Rowena Fewkes to Mr. Magnus Thorkelson. It's a
boy, standard weight. The ceremonies were presided over by Doctor
Bliven, our genial disciple of Esculapias, and by Elder Thorndyke, each
in his respective sphere of action. Great harmony marked the carrying
out of these usually separate functions. The amalgamation of peoples
goes on apace. Here we have Yankee, Scandinavian and Dutch so
intertwined that it will take no common 'glance of eye, thought of man,
wing of angel' to separate the sheep from the goats in the sequel.
_Nuff ced_."
He little knew the sequel!
I did not read this paper. In fact, I did not read anything in those
days; and I do not believe that Magnus and Rowena knew for some time
anything more about this vile and slanderous item than I did. It was
only by the way we were treated that we felt that the cold shoulder of
the little world of Vandemark Township and Monterey County was turned
toward us. Of course Magnus and Rowena expected this; but I was hurt
more deeply by this injustice than by anything in my whole life.
Grandma Thorndyke came out no more to red up my house, and exhibit her
samples of prospective wives to me. The neighbors called no more. I
began driving over to the new railroad to do my marketing, though it was
twice as close to go to Monterey Centre. When Elder Thorndyke, largely
through the contributions of Governor Wade and Buckner Gowdy, succeeded
in getting his church built, I was not asked to go to the doings of
laying the corner-stone or shingling the steeple. I was an outsider.
I quit trying to neighbor with the Roebucks, Smiths, and George Story,
my new neighbors on the south; and took up with some French who moved in
on the east, the families of Pierre Lacroix and Napoleon B. Bouchard. We
called the one "Pete Lackwire" and the other "Poly Busher." They were
the only French people who came into the township. They were good
neighbors, and fair farmers, and their daughters made some of the best
wives the sons of the rest of us got. One of my grandsons married the
prettiest girl among their grandchildren--a Lacroix on one side and a
Bouchard on the other.
It may well be understood that I now took no part in the township
history, which gets more complex with the coming in of more settlers;
but it was about this time that what is now Vandemark Township began
agitating for a separate township organization. We were attached to
Centre Township, in which was situated the town of Monterey Centre. This
town, dominated by the County Ring, clung to all the territory it could
control, so as to spend the taxes in building up the town. A great
four-room schoolhouse was finished in the summer of 1860; most of it
built by taxes paid by the speculators who still owned the bulk of
the land.
The Vandemark Township people made a great outcry about the shape of
Centre Township, and called it "The Great Crane," with our township as
the neck, and a lot of other territory back of us for the body, and
Monterey Centre for the head. I took no part in this agitation, for I
was burning with a sense of indignation at the way people treated me;
but the County Ring compromised by building us a schoolhouse on my
southwest corner, now known as the Vandemark School. But I cared nothing
about this. I had no children to go to school, and while I never ceased
to dream of a future with Virginia as my wife, I kept saying to myself
that I never should have a family. Consistency is the least of the
necessaries of our visions and dreams. I never tried to see Virginia. I
avoided the elder and Grandma Thorndyke. I knew that she was disgusted
with me for even an innocent connection with the Thorkelson matter, and
I supposed that Virginia felt the same way. So I went on trying to be as
near to a hermit as I could.
2
I know now that things began to change for me in the minds of the people
when Rowena's baby was christened. This took place early in the winter.
Magnus asked me to go to the church; so I was present when Magnus and
Rowena stood before the altar in a ceremony which Rowena would have
given anything to escape, and Magnus, too, but he believed that the
child's soul could not be saved if it died unchristened, and she yielded
to his urgings in the matter. He held his head high as he stood by her,
as he always stood in every relation in life, witnessing before God and
man that he believed her a victim, and that whatever guilt she may have
incurred, she had paid for it in full. After the responses had been
made, Elder Thorndyke unfolded a paper which had been handed him with
the name of the child on it; then he went on with his part of the
ceremony: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I
baptize thee--" And then he carried on a whispered conversation with the
mother, gave the loudest honk I ever heard him utter, and went on: "I
baptize thee, Owen Lovejoy Gowdy."
They said that Gowdy swore when he heard of this, and exclaimed, "I
don't care about her picking me out; but I hate to be joined with that
damned Black Abolitionist."
The elder seemed dazed after he had done the deed, and looked around at
the new church building as if wondering whether he had not committed
some sort of crime in thus offending a man who had put so much money in
it. He had not, however; for in advertising in this way Gowdy's wrong to
one girl, he ended forever his sly approaches, under the excuses of
getting her some fictitious property, saving his soul, and the like,
to another.
I think it was the word of what Gowdy said about the christening that
finally wrought Magnus up to the act he had all along resolved upon, the
attempt on Gowdy's life. He armed himself and went over to the
Blue-grass Manor looking for Buck; but found that his man had gone to
Kentucky. Magnus left word for Gowdy to go armed and be prepared to
protect himself, and went home. He said nothing to me about this; but
the next spring when Gowdy came back, Magnus started after him again
with a gun loaded with buckshot, and Gowdy, who, I suppose, looked upon
Magnus as beneath him, had him arrested. I went to Monterey Centre and
put my name on Magnus's bond when he was bound over to keep the peace.
I hinted to Magnus that he needn't mind about the bond if he still
believed in his heart that Gowdy needed killing; but Rowena pleaded with
him not to ruin himself, me and her by pursuing his plan of executing
what both he and I believed to be justice on a man who had forfeited his
life by every rule of right. This lapse into lawlessness on his part and
mine can not be justified, of course. It is set forth here as a part of
the history of the place and the time.
I am not equipped to write the history of the celebrated Gowdy Case,
which grew out of these obscure circumstances in the lives of a group of
pioneers in an Iowa township. Probably the writers of history will never
set it down. Yet, it swayed the destiny of the county and the state in
after years, when Gowdy had died and left his millions to be fought over
in courts, in caucuses, in conventions, state and county. If it does not
go into the histories, the histories will not tell the truth. If great
law firms, governors, judges, congressmen and senators, lobbyists and
manipulators, are not judged in the light of the secret as well as the
surface influence of the Gowdy Case, they will not be rightly judged.
The same thing is true of the influence of the loss of the county funds
by Judge Stone. Who was guilty? Was the plan to have the bag of
"treasure" stolen from us by the Bunker gang a part of the scheme of
whoever took the money? Did the Bushyagers know about the satchel? Did
they know it was full of salt instead of money? Of course not, if they
were in the thing.
Did some one mean to fix it so the Bunkers would rob us of the satchel
and thus let everybody off? And if so, what about me? I should have had
to fight for the money, for that was what I was hired for. Was I to be
killed to save Judge Stone, or Governor Wade, and if so, which?
My part in the affair was never much spoken of in the hot newspaper and
stump-speech quarrels over the matter; but after a while, when I had had
time to figure it all out, I began to think I had not been treated quite
right; but what was I anyhow? This was another thing that made me sore
at all the Monterey Centre crowd, including the elder and grandma, with
their truckling to Gowdy and Wade and Stone and the rest who helped the
elder build his church. I suppose that the stolen money, some of it,
went to pay for that church; but if every church had remained unbuilt
that has stolen money in it, there would be fewer temples pointing, as
the old song says, with taper spire to heaven, wouldn't there?
Of course these scandalous matters were soon lost sight of in the
excitement of the Civil War. This thing which changed all our lives the
way war does, came upon me like a clap of thunder. I was living like a
hermit, and working like a horse, not trying to make any splurge, as I
might have done, even having given up the idea of getting me a team of
horses, which I had been thinking of for a while back with the notion of
maybe getting a buggy and beginning to take Virginia out buggy-riding,
and thus working up in a year or two to popping the question to her. But
now I sulked in my cabin.
3
I guess the war surprised the people who read about it as much as it did
me. I often thought of the poor slaves, and liked Dunlap and Thatcher,
the men I had run into back in Wisconsin on the road in 1855, for going
down into Kansas to fight for Free Soil; but as for fighting in which I
should have any interest; bless you, it never occurred to any of us,
either North or South. The trouble was always going to be off somewhere
else. I guess that's the way with the oncoming of wars. If we knew they
would come to us, we'd be less blood-thirsty.
I heard of the Dred Scott Decision, and thought J.P. Roebuck was talking
foolishness when he came to me one day over in my back field to borrow a
chew of tobacco--he was always doing that--and said that this decision
made slavery a general thing all over the Union. I didn't see any
slavery around Vandemark Township, and no signs of any. I heard of Old
John Brown, and had a hazy idea that he was some kind of traitor who
ought to have been hanged, or the government wouldn't have hanged him.
You see how inconsistent I was. But wars are fought by inconsistent men
who suffer and die for other people's ideas: don't you think so? Abraham
Lincoln was nominated about corn-planting time; but I was not thrilled.
I had never heard of him. The nation was drifting down the rapids to the
falls; and for all the deafening roar that came to our ears, we did not
know or think of the cataract we were to be swept over.
I was a voter now, and so was Magnus; but he was for Lincoln, and I was
not. It seemed to me that the Republican Party was too new. And yet I
was not satisfied with Douglas. Why? It was merely because I had got it
into my mind that he had been beaten in a debate by Lincoln, and it
seemed that this defeat ought to put him out of the running for
president. I sat down a few rods from the polls and thought over the
matter of choosing between Edward Everett and John C. Breckenridge,
pestered by Governor Wade and H.L. Burns and N.V. and the rest, until
finally they left me and when I had made my decision, I found that the
polls had closed. I was a good deal relieved.
I am giving you a glimpse into the mind of a conscientious and ignorant
voter. If I had read more, my mind would have been made up beforehand,
but by some one else. I was not a fool; I was just slow and bewildered.
The average voter shoots at the flock and gets it over with. He has had
his mind made up for him by some one--and maybe it's just as well: for
when he tries, as I did, to make it up for himself, he is apt to find
that he has no basis for judgment. That is why all governments, free and
the other kind, have always been minority governments, and always will
be. And I reckon that's just as well, too.
Lincoln's first call for volunteers took only a few men out of the
county, and none from Vandemark Township, except George Story. I had not
begun to take much interest in the matter; and when in the summer of
1861 there began to be war meetings to spur up young men to enlistment
the speakers all shouted to us that the war was not to free the slaves,
but to save the Union. Now this was a new slant on the question, and I
had to think over it for a while.
Sitting in the wagon of history with my feet dangling down and facing
the rear, as we all ride, I can now see that the thing was as broad as
it was long. The Union could not be preserved without freeing the
slaves, for all of what Lincoln said when he stated that he would save
the Union by freeing the slaves if he could do that, or by keeping them
slaves if he could do that, or by freeing some of them and leaving the
rest in servitude if he could do that; but that save the Union he would.
Now in my narrow way, I could see some point in freeing the slaves, but
as for the Union, I hardly knew whether it was important or not. I
needed to think it over. It might be just as well not to fight to
preserve the Union; and when I had heard men say, "I enlisted to save
the Union, and not to free niggers," as a lot of them did, I scratched
my head and wondered why I could not feel so devoted to the Union as
they did. Looking back from the tail-end of the wagon, I now see what
Lincoln meant by the importance of keeping us all under one flag; but I
didn't know then, and I don't believe one man in a hundred who shouted
for the Union knew why the Union was so important. There never was a
better cause than the one we sung for in "The Union, the Union forever!"
but thousands and thousands sang and shouted it, and died for it--how
bravely and wonderfully they died for it!--who knew as little what it
meant as I did. And the rebels--how gallantly they died for their cause,
too. Not for slavery, as we blindly thought, misjudging them as we must
always misjudge our foes (or we should not have the hate in our hearts
to fight them); but for the very thing we were fighting for--liberty, as
they believed.
Both sides are always right in war.
I finally began to see light when I thought one night of my old life on
the canal, and asked myself how it would affect us in Iowa if York
State and the East should secede, as the South was trying to do. It
would put them in shape to starve us of the West by levying duties on
our crops when going to market. But, said I to myself, we could then
ship down the Mississippi; but the river was already closed and would
always be controlled by the Confederacy. This was serious; but when I
said to myself that the East would never secede, the question, Why not?
could not be answered if the principle of secession could once be set up
as correct and made good by victory. Then, it came into my mind after a
month or two of thinking, that any state or group of states could secede
whenever they liked; that others would go to war with them to keep such
unions as were left; and we should never be at peace long: so after all,
the Union _was_ important, and must be preserved.
The question must be settled now in this war.
But I don't know how long I should have studied this matter over in my
lonely benightedness, if I had not seen Virginia one night at a war
meeting that I sneaked into in the Centre, with a young man dressed in
store clothes whom I afterward knew as Will Lockwood, the principal of
the Monterey Centre school, who seemingly was going forward to put his
name down as enlisted. I jumped in ahead of him, so as to show Virginia
that her fellow was not the only patriot, and beat him to it.
"So you are going to fight Kaintucky?" said she to me as if I had
engaged to ruin everything she held dear.
"We must save the Union," I said. "I didn't think of you being on the
other side!"
"Mr. Lockwood," said she, "this is Teunis Vandemark, an old friend of
mine. He's going to fight my friends, too."
In two or three minutes I found that he was from Herkimer County, had
lived along the Erie Canal, and was actually the son of my old teacher
Lockwood, to whom I had gone when I was wintering with Mrs. Fogg in the
old canalling days. He was my best friend during all my service as a
soldier--which you will soon see was not long. We left him on the field
at Shiloh.
4
The recruiting officer got us uniforms--or somebody did; and during the
nice weather--it was October when I enlisted--our company did some
drilling. We had no arms, but used shotguns, squirrel rifles, and even
sticks. Will Lockwood tried to drill us, but made a bad mess of it. Then
one day Buckner Gowdy, who had also enlisted, took charge of a squad of
men and in ten minutes showed that he knew more about drill than any one
else in the county. He had been educated at a military school
in Virginia.
All the skill in drill that we ever got, we owed to him. The sharp word
of command; the quick swing to the proper position; the snappy step;
everything that we knew more than a lot of yokels might be expected to
know, we got from Buck Gowdy. Magnus admitted it, even; but he turned
pale whenever he was in a squad under Gowdy's command. It was gall and
wormwood for me, and worse for him; but when it came to electing a
captain of our company, I voted for Gowdy, and under the same conditions
would do it again. It was better to have a real captain who was a
scoundrel, than a man who knew nothing but kept the Commandments. War
is hell in more than one respect. I felt that Gowdy would be more likely
to bring us safe out of any bad hole in which we might find ourselves,
than any one else. But I was glad, sometimes, when he was rawhiding us
into shape, that Magnus Thorkelson was drilling with a wooden gun. I
wondered how the new captain himself felt about this.
Governor Wade gave us a great entertainment at his farm just before we
marched--still without guns--to the railroad to take the cars for
Dubuque, where boats were supposed to be waiting to take us down the
river--if we could make it before navigation was closed by the ice. His
great barns were cleared out for tables, and the house was open, and
there were flags and transparencies expressing the heroism of those who
were willing to do anything to get us into the fight.
Everybody was there--except Judge Stone. I remember looking through the
open door at the great iron safe into which he had put the county
satchel--I am careful not to commit myself as to the money part of
it--and all the events of the previous visit came back through my mind;
but mainly how angry I had been with Virginia for being kissed by Bob
Wade. And Bob was there, too, all spick and span in his new lieutenant's
uniform with Kittie Fleming hanging on his arm, her eyes drinking him in
with every glance. The governor was in no position to make a row about
this. The occasion had caused an armistice to be signed as to all our
neighborhood quarrels, and Bob Wade was emancipated from the stern
paternal control, as Jack had been when he went off with the first
flight in the original seventy-five thousand--emancipated by the
uniform. Bob and Kittie sailed along in the face and eyes of the
governor and his wife in spite of the fact that such association was
forbidden--and sailed down to Waterloo where they were married before we
went off hurrahing for the cause.
Virginia was there with the elder and grandma. The old preacher and his
wife looked more shabby than I had ever seen them, grandma's gloves more
extensively darned, the elder's clothes shinier, his cuffs in all their
whiteness more frayed, and there were beautifully darned places in the
stiff starched bosom of his shirt. He pressed my hand warmly as he said,
"God bless you, Jacob, and bring you safe back to us, my boy!" Grandma's
eyes glistened as she echoed his sentiments and began asking me about my
underwear and especially my socks. Virginia looked the other way; but
when I went off by myself, Will Lockwood came and drew me away into a
corner to talk with me about old times along the canal; and suddenly we
found Virginia there, and Will all at once thought of some one he wanted
to speak to and left us together.
"I didn't mean that I thought you ought not to go to the war, Teunis,"
said she. "You must go, of course."
"Maybe your friends," I said after standing dumb for a while, "will be
on the Union side."
"No," said she. "I have no relations--and few friends there; but all I
have will be on the other side, I reckon. It makes no difference.
They've forgotten me by this time. Everybody has forgotten me that once
liked me--everybody but Elder Thorndyke and Mrs. Thorndyke. They love
me, but nobody else does."
"I thought some others acted as if they did," I said.
"You thought a lot about it!" she scoffed. Then we sat quite a while
silent. "I shall think every day," said she at last, "about the only
happy time I have had since Ann took sick--and long before that. The
only happy time, and the happiest, I reckon, that I ever'll have. I'll
think of it every day while you're at the front. I want you to know when
you are suffering and in danger that some one thinks of the kindest
thing you ever did--and maybe the kindest thing any boy ever did. You
don't care about it now, maybe; but the time may come when you will."
"What time was that?" I asked.
"You know, Teunis," the tears were falling in her lap now. "Those days
when we were together alone on the wide prairie--when you took me in and
was so good to me--and saved me from going wild, if not from anything
else bad. I remember that for the first few days, I was not quite easy
in my feelings--I reckon your goodness hadn't come to me yet; but one
day, after you had been away for a while, there in the grove where we
stayed so long, you looked so pale and sorry that I began talking to you
more intimately, you remember, and we suddenly drew close to each other,
and for the first time, I felt so safe, so safe! Something has come
between us lately, Teunis. I partly know what; and partly I don't; but
something--"
She stopped in the middle of what she seemed to be saying. At first I
thought she had choked up with grief, but when I looked her in the face,
except for her eyes shining very bright, I could not see that she was at
all worked up in her feelings. She spoke quite calmly to some one that
passed by. I was abashed by the thought that she was giving me credit
for something I was not entitled to. She spoke of the day when I was in
my heart the meanest: but how could I explain? So I said nothing, much,
but hummed and hawed, with "I--" and "Yes, I--," and nothing to the
point. Finally, I bogged down, and quit.
"We are very poor," said she, nodding toward the elder and grandma. "So,
ignorant as I am, I kept a school last summer--did you know that?"
"Yes," I said, "I knew about it. Over in the Hoosier settlement."
"I ain't a good teacher," she said, "only with the little children; but
sometimes we shouldn't have had the necessaries of life, if it hadn't
been for what I earned. I can't do too much for them. They have been
father and mother to me, and I shall be a daughter to them. If--if they
want me to go with--with--in circles which I--I--don't care half so much
about as for--for the birds, and flowers--and the people back in our
grove--and for people who don't care for me any more--why, I don't think
I ought to disobey Mrs. Thorndyke. But I don't believe as she does--or
did--about things that have happened to you since--since we parted and
got to be strangers, Teunis. And neither does any one else, nor she
herself any more. People respect you, Teunis. I wanted to say that to
you, too, before you go away--maybe forever, Teunis!"
She touched on so many things--sore things and sacred things--in this
speech, that I only looked at her with tears in my eyes; and she saw
them. It was the only answer I could make, and before she could say any
more, the elder and his wife came and took her home. I had got half-way
to Cairo, Illinois, before I worked it out that by "the people back in
our grove," she must have meant me; for the only others there had been
that gang of horse-thieves: and if so she must have meant me when she
spoke of "people who don't care for me any more"--but it was too late to
do anything in the way of correcting this mistake then. All I could
pride myself on was having a good memory as to what she said. I guess
this proves my relationship to that other Dutchman who took so long to
build the church. Remember, though, that he finally built it.
5
The Civil War is no part of the history of Vandemark Township; and I had
small part in the Civil War. But one thing that took place on the field
of Shiloh does belong in this history. Most of the members of my company
enlisted in October, 1861, but we did not get to the front until the
very day of the Battle of Shiloh. I was in one of the two regiments
whose part in the battle has caused so much controversy. I gave Senator
Cummins an affidavit about it only the other day to settle something
about a monument on the field.
We came up the Tennessee River the night of the day before the battle,
and landed at Pittsburgh Landing at daybreak of the first day's fight.
We had not had our guns issued to us yet. Some have thought it a little
hard on us to be shoved into a great battle without ever having loaded
or fired our muskets. When we were landed the guns were issued to my
company, and we were given about half an hour's instruction in the way
they were worked. Of course most of us had done shooting, and were a
little better than green hands; but Will Lockwood during the fight
loaded his gun until it was full of unfired loads, and forgot to put a
cap on. Then he discovered his mistake, and put on a cap, and would have
blown off his own head by firing all the stuff out at once, when Captain
Gowdy saw what he was doing and snatched the gun away from him calling
him a damned fool, and broke the stock off the musket on the ground.
There were plenty of guns for Will to select from by that time which
were not in use, so he picked up another and made a new start; but
not for long.
After the guns were issued to us, we stood there on the bank, and
lounged about on the landing, waiting for the issue of cartridges. An
orderly came to me with Magnus following him, and gave me the captain's
order to report to him in the cabin of the transport which lay tied up
at the river bank. We looked at each other in wonder, but followed the
orderly into the cabin, where we stood at attention. The captain
returned our salutes, dismissed the orderly, and after his footsteps had
gone out of hearing, turned to us.
"Thorkelson and Vandemark," said he, "I have a few words to say to you.
I don't find anything in the books covering the case, and am speaking as
man to man."
"Yes, sir," said I.
"Ay hare," said Magnus.
"Thorkelson," Gowdy went on, "you have had an ambition to put an end to
me. Well, now's your chance, or will be when we get out there where the
shooting is going on. You've had a poor chance to practise marksmanship;
but maybe you can shoot well enough to hit a man of my size from the
rear--for my men will be to the rear of me in a fight"
He stopped and looked straight in Magnus's eyes; and Magnus stared
straight back. At last, Gowdy's eyes swept around toward me, and then
back again.
"Well," said he, "what do you and your friend say? The bond to keep the
peace doesn't run in Tennessee."
"I think," said I, "as man to man, that you deserve shooting; but maybe
this ain't the place for it. I voted for you for captain because you
seem to know your business--and I don't b'lieve we've got another that
does. That's how I feel."
Gowdy laughed, that friendly, warm, musical laugh of his, just as he
would have laughed in a horse trade, or over the bar, or while helping
the church at a donation party.
"Well," said he, "I called you in here--especially you, Thorkelson--to
say that if you feel bound by any vow you've made, to shoot me, why, you
may shoot and be damned. I shan't pay any attention to the matter. From
the way it sounds out there at the front, it will be only one bullet
added to a basketful. That's all, Thorkelson."
"Captain Gowdy," said Magnus.
"Go on, Thorkelson," said Gowdy.
"Van Ay bane svorn in," said Magnus, "Ay take you for captain. You bane
a dam good-for-nothing rascal, but you bane best man for captain. Ay
bane tied up. You bane necessary to maybe save lives of a hundred dam
sight better men dan you. Ay not shoot. You insult me ven you talk
about it."
"In spite of the somewhat uncomplimentary and insubordinate language in
which you express yourself," said Gowdy, "which I overlook under the
peculiar circumstances, I reckon I must admit that I did assume an
attitude on your part of which you are incapable, and that such an
assumption was insulting--if a private can be insulted by a commissioned
officer. This being man to man, I apologize. You may go, Thorkelson."
Magnus clicked his heels together in the way he had learned in the old
country, and saluted; Captain Gowdy returned the salute, and Magnus
marched out with his head high, and his stomach drawn in.
"Devilish good soldier!" said Gowdy as he went out. "Well, that clears
the atmosphere a little! So, Vandemark, you think I need killing, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it's all in the point of view," said he, leaning toward me and
smiling that ingratiating smile of his. "Sometimes I think so, too; but
there's only one policy for me--lose 'em and forget 'em. I sometimes
think that the time may come when I shall wish I had married that girl.
Have you seen the baby lately?"
"I used to see it every few days," said I. "It's runnin' all over the
place."
"Look like me?"
"It will when it gits older."
"When you go back," said he, "if I don't, will you do me and this little
offspring of mine--and its mother--a favor?"
"I'll have to wait and see what it is," said I.
"Same old cautious Vandemark!" said he, laughing. "Well, that's why I
picked you to do this, if you will be so good. You can look the matter
over in case it comes to anything, and act if you think best; but I
think you will decide to act. Please go to Lusch in Waterloo and ask for
a packet of papers I left there, to be opened in your presence and at
your request if I wink out in this irrepressible conflict. Remember, I
shall be on the other side of Jordan or some other stream. Inside of the
outer envelope will be a letter to Rowena, which please deliver. There
will also be one for you, with some securities and other things to be
held in trust for the benefit of Rowena's boy--and mine. I hate that
'Owen Lovejoy' part of his name; but he is entitled to the name of
Gowdy, and in view of the fact that he has it, I want him to have a good
chance--as good as he can have in view of the irregularity of his birth.
To tell you the plain truth, as my affairs are now situated, I'm giving
him more than he could take as my son if he were legitimate--for as
neighbor to neighbor, I'm practically bu'sted. All I'm doing is hanging
on for land to rise. Now this isn't much to do, and you won't have to
act unless you want to. Will you have the papers opened, and act for the
dead scoundrel if it seems the proper thing to do? You see, there's
hardly anybody else who is satisfactory to me, and at the same time a
friend to the other parties."
"I'll have the papers opened," said I; "but remember, this don't take
back what I said a few minutes ago. I think you ought to be killed."
"Thank you," said he. "Private Vandemark! You may go!"
Now I have told this story over and over again in court, to
commissioners taking testimony, to lawyers in their offices, to lawyers
out at my farm. It has been printed in court records, including the
Reports of the Supreme Court of Iowa. Judges of the Supreme Court of
Iowa have been nominated or refused nomination because of their views,
or their lack of views, or their refusal to state in advance off in
some hole and corner, what their views would be on the legal effect of
this conversation between me and Buckner Gowdy in the cabin of the
transport on the morning of the first day's battle of Shiloh--so N.V.
says--but this is the first time I have had a chance to tell it as it
was, without some squirt of a lawyer pointing his finger at me and
trying to make me change the story; or some other limb of the law
interrupting me with objections that it was incompetent, irrelevant and
immaterial, not the best evidence, hearsay, a privileged communication,
and a lot of other balderdash. This is what took place, just as I have
stated it; and this is all the Vandemark Township, Monterey County, or
Iowa history there was in the battle so far as I know--except that Iowa
had more men in that fight than any other state in proportion to her
population.
Just to show you that I didn't run away, I must tell you that we had
ammunition issued to us after a while, and were told how to use it. We
got forty rounds of cartridges at first and ten rounds right afterward.
Then we formed and marched, part of the time at the double, out into a
cotton-field. In front of us a few hundred yards off, was a line of
forest trees, and under the trees were tents, that I guess some of our
other men were driven out of that morning. Here we were at once under a
hot fire and lost a lot of men. We went into action about half-past nine
or ten o'clock in the forenoon, and two regiments of us stood the enemy
off along that line until about noon. Then they rushed us, and such of
us as could went away from there. Those that didn't are most of them
there yet. I stayed, because of a shot through my leg which splintered
the bone. The enemy trampled over me as they drove our men off the
field, and a horse stepped on my shoulder, breaking the collar-bone.
Then, when the Johnnies were driven back, I was mauled around again, but
don't remember much except that I was thirsty. And then, for months and
months, I was in one hospital or another; and finally I was discharged
as unfit for service, because I was too lame to march. I can feel it in
frosty weather yet; but it never amounted to much except to the dealers
in riding plows and the like. So ended my military life. I had borne
arms for my country for about three hours!
It was the eighth of January, 1863, when I got home. I rode from the
railroad to Foster Blake's in his sleigh, looked over my herd which he
was running on shares for me, and crossed Vandemark's Folly Marsh on the
hard snow which was over the tall grass and reeds everywhere. How my
grove had grown that past summer! I began to feel at home, as I warmed
the little house up with a fire in the stove, and rolling up in my
blankets, which for a long time were more comfortable to me than a bed,
went to sleep on the floor. I never felt the sense of home more
delightfully than that night. I would set things to rights, and maybe go
over to Monterey Centre and see Virginia next day. I could see smoke at
Magnus's down the road. I felt a pleasure in thus sneaking in without
any one's knowing it.
I had not gone to see Mr. Lusch in Waterloo, for I had learned that so
far from being killed, Captain Gowdy had come through Shiloh without a
scratch, and that he had soon afterward resigned and gone back to
Monterey County. It has always been believed, but I don't know why, that
he was allowed to resign either because of his relationship to the
great Confederate families of Kentucky, or because of his record there
before he went to Iowa. Anyhow, he never joined the G.A.R. or
fellowshipped with the soldiers after the war. I always hated him; but I
do him the justice to say here that he was a brave man, and except for
his one great weakness--the weakness that I am told Lord Byron was
destroyed by--he would have been a good man. I feel certain that if he
had been given a chance to make a career in either army, he would have
been a general before the war was over.
That afternoon, J.P. Roebuck, who had seen my smoke, came over to
welcome me home and to talk politics with me. We must have a township
for ourselves, he said. Now look at the situation in the school. We had
a big school in the Vandemark schoolhouse, thirteen scholars being
enrolled. We had a good teacher, too, Virginia Royall. But there wasn't
enough fuel to last two days, and those Monterey Centre folks were dead
on their feet and nobody seemed to care if the school closed down. He
went on with his argument for a separate township organization; I all
the time thinking with my mind in a whirl that Virginia was near, and I
could see her next day. When he said that we would have to get the vote
of Doc Bliven, who was a member of the Board of Supervisors, I began to
take notice.
"Bliven always seemed to like you," said Roebuck. "We all kind of wish
you'd see what you can do for us with him."
"I think I can get his vote," I said, after thinking it over for a
while--and as I thought of it, the Dubuque ferry in 1855, the arrest of
Bliven in the queue of people waiting at the post-office, my smuggled
passenger, and the uplift I felt as the Iowa prairie opened to my view
as we drew out of the ravines to the top of the hills--all this rolled
over my memory. Roebuck looked at me like a person facing a medium in
a trance.
"Yes," I said, "I believe I can get his vote. I'll try."