rests on an anonymous study in the “Atlantic Monthly,” called “The Man
without a Country,” a sketch of such absolutely lifelike vigor that I,
reading it in camp during the Civil War, accepted it as an absolutely
true narrative, until I suddenly came across, in the very midst of it,
a phrase so wholly characteristic of its author that I sprang from my
seat, exclaiming “_Aut Cæsar aut nullus_; Edward Hale or nobody.” This
is the story on which the late eminent critic, Wendell P. Garrison, of
the “Nation,” once wrote (April 17, 1902), “There are some who look upon
it as the primer of Jingoism,” and he wrote to me ten years earlier,
February 19, 1892, “What will last of Hale, I apprehend, will be the
phrase ‘A man without a country,’ and perhaps the immoral doctrine taught
in it which leads to Mexican and Chilean wars—‘My country, right or
wrong.’”
Be this as it may, there is no doubt that on this field Hale’s permanent
literary fame was won. It hangs to that as securely as does the memory
of Dr. Holmes to his “Chambered Nautilus.” It is the exiled hero of this
story who gives that striking bit of advice to boys: “And if you are ever
tempted to say a word or do a thing that shall put a bar between you and
your family, your home and your country, pray God in his mercy to take
you that instant home to his own heaven!”
President James Walker, always the keenest of observers, once said of
Hale that he took sides upon every question while it was being stated.
This doubtless came, in part at least, from his having been reared in
a newspaper office, or, as he said more tersely, having been “cradled
in the sheets of the ‘Advertiser,’” and bred to strike promptly. His
strongest and weakest points seem to have been developed in his father’s
editorial office. Always ready to give unselfish sympathy, he could not
always dispense deliberate justice. One of his favorite sayings was
that his ideal of a committee was one which consisted of three persons,
one of whom should be in bed with chronic illness, another should be in
Europe, and he himself should be the third. It was one of his theories
that clergymen were made to do small duties neglected by others, and he
did them at a formidable sacrifice of time and in his own independent
and quite ungovernable way. Taking active part for the Nation during the
Civil War,—so active that his likeness appears on the Soldiers’ Monument
on Boston Common,—he did not actually go to the war itself as chaplain of
a regiment, as some of his friends desired; for they justly considered
him one of the few men qualified to fill that position heartily, through
his powerful voice, ready sympathy, and boundless willingness to make
himself useful in every direction.
A very characteristic side of the man might always be seen in his
letters. The following was written in his own hurried handwriting in
recognition of his seventy-seventh birthday:—
April 8, ’99.
DEAR HIGGINSON,—Thanks for your card. It awaited me on my
return from North Carolina last night.
Three score & ten as you know, has many advantages,—and as yet,
I find no drawbacks.
Asa Gray said to me “It is great fun to be 70 years old. You do
not have to know everything!”
I see that you can write intelligibly.
I wish I could—But I cannot run a Typewriter more than a
Sewing-Machine.
Will the next generation learn to write—any more than learn the
alphabet?
With Love to all yours
Truly & always
E. E. HALE.
This next letter was called out by the death of Major-General Rufus
Saxton, distinguished for his first arming of the freed slaves:—
WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 29, 1908.
DEAR HIGGINSON,—I have been reading with the greatest interest
your article on Gen. Saxton.
It has reminded me of an incident here—the time of which I
cannot place. But I think you can;—and if you can I wish you
would write & tell me when it happened—and perhaps what came of
it.
I was coming up in a street [car] when Charles Sumner came in &
took a seat opposite me—The car was not crowded.
Every one knew him, and he really addressed the whole
car—though he affected to speak to me. But he meant to have
every one hear—& they did. He said substantially this,—
“The most important order since the war began has been issued
at the War Department this morning.
“Directions have been given for the manufacture of a thousand
pair of Red Breeches. They are to be patterned on the Red
Trousers of the Zouaves—and are to be the uniform of the First
Negro Regiment.” He surprised the car—(as he meant to).
Now, 1. I cannot fix the date, can you?
2. Were the negro troops or any regiment of them ever clothed
in the Zouave Uniform?
I remember there was a “Zouave” Regiment from New York City—
[I had the pleasure of informing him that my regiment, which
he mentions, had been the only one disfigured by the scarlet
trousers, which were fortunately very soon worn out and gladly
banished. This was in August, 1862.]
It may be well enough to end these extracts from his correspondence
with one of those bits of pure nonsense in which his impetuous nature
delighted. This was on occasion of his joining the Boston Authors’ Club:—
ROXBURY, Mass., April 10, 1903.
DEAR HIGGINSON,—One sometimes does what there is no need of
doing. What we call here a Duke of Northumberland day is a day
when one does what he darn chooses to do, without reference to
the obligations of the social order. Such is to-day.
Did you ever hear the story of the graduate who never advanced
in his studies farther than that Pythagorean man did who never
could learn more than the first letters of the alphabet? I am
reminded of it by the elegant monogram of our Club.
This young fellow’s friends were very eager to get him through
the university, so they sent him out from Boston in a
C A B
After two days he came
B A C
He then went to Cambridge on a three years’ course by taking
electives which didn’t require him to repeat the alphabet.
He learned to smoke
B A C C A
and at the end of the time the College made him
A B
His friends then sent him to the Cuban War, and he came out a
Field Marshal, so that he was able to become a member of the
A B C F M
This was all I knew about him till this morning I have learned
that after publishing his military memoirs he became a member
of the
B A C
[Boston Authors’ Club]
I am sorry to say that he already drank the Lager which was
furnished him by the AMERICAN BOTTLING COMPANY
So no more at present from your old companion in arms,
EDWARD E HALE
A B 1839.
These letters give a glimpse at the more impetuous and sunny aspects
of his life. Turning again to its severer duties, it is interesting to
notice that in conducting the funeral services of Mr. F. A. Hill, the
Secretary of the State Board of Education, Dr. Hale said in warm praise
of that able man: “He lived by the spirit; I do not think he cared for
method.” The same was Hale’s own theory also, or, at any rate, his
familiar practice. He believed, for instance, that the school hours of a
city should be very much shortened, yet never made it clear what pursuits
should take their places; for it was the habit of his fertile brain
to formulate schemes and allow others to work them out. Many of his
suggestions fell to the ground, but others bore rich fruit. Among these
latter are the various “Lend a Hand” clubs which have sprung up all over
the country, not confining themselves to sect or creed, and having as
their motto a brief verse of his writing. He went to no divinity school
to prepare himself for preaching, and at one time did not see clearly the
necessity of preliminary training for those who were to enter the pulpit.
If his friends undertook laboriously to correct any inaccuracies in his
published writings, he took every such correction with imperturbable
and sunny equanimity, and, taxed with error, readily admitted it. His
undeniable habit of rather hasty and inaccurate statement sprang from
his way of using facts simply as illustrations. They served to prove his
point or exemplify the principle for which he was contending. To verify
his statements would often have taken too much time, and from his point
of view was immaterial. It is hard for the academic mind, with its love
of system, to accept this method of working, and his contemporaries
sometimes regretted that he could not act with them in more business-like
ways. They were tempted to compare his aims and methods to those of
Eskimo dogs, each of which has to be harnessed separately to the sledge
which bears the driver, or else they turn and eat each other up. When it
came to the point, all of yesterday’s shortcomings were forgotten next
morning by him and every one else, in his readiness to be the world’s
errand-boy for little kindnesses. But in the presence, we will not say of
death, but of a life lived for others, which is deathless, the critic’s
task seems ungenerous and unmeaning. This man’s busy existence may not
always have run in the accepted grooves, but its prevailing note was
Love. If the rushing stream sometimes broke down the barriers of safety,
it proved more often a fertilizing Nile than a dangerous Mississippi.
Followed and imitated by multitudes, justly beloved for his warmth of
heart and readiness of hand, he had a happy and busy life, sure to win
gratitude and affection when it ended, as it did at Roxbury on June 10,
1909. The children and the aged loved him almost to worshiping, and is
there, after all, a better test?
XIII
A MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL, RUFUS SAXTON
A MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL, RUFUS SAXTON
Complaint has sometimes been made of Massachusetts that the state did not
provide a sufficient number of officers of high grade for the regular
army during the Civil War. Be that as it may, one of the most eminent of
such officers has just died, being indeed one whose actual fame may yet
outlast that of all the others by reason of its rare mingling of civil
and military service.
General Rufus Saxton was born at Greenfield, Massachusetts, on October
19, 1824, graduated at the military academy in 1849, was made brevet
second lieutenant, Third United States Artillery, July 1, 1849, second
lieutenant, Fourth Artillery, September 12, 1850, and captain and
assistant quartermaster, May 13, 1861. He was chief quartermaster on the
staff of General Lyon in Missouri and subsequently on that of General
McClellan in western Virginia, and was on the expeditionary corps to Port
Royal, South Carolina. In May and June, 1862, he was ordered north and
placed in command of the defenses at Harper’s Ferry, where his services
won him a medal of honor; after which he was military governor of the
Department of the South, his headquarters being at Beaufort, South
Carolina; this service extended from July, 1862, to May 18, 1865, when
he rose to be colonel and brevet brigadier-general of volunteers. He was
mustered out of the volunteer service January 15, 1866, but rose finally
to be colonel and assistant quartermaster-general in the regular army,
March 10, 1882. He retired from active service October 19, 1888, having
been made on that date a brigadier-general on the retired list. This is
the brief summary of what was, in reality, a quite unique career.
The portion of this honorable life upon which his personal fame will
doubtless be founded is that from 1862 to 1865, when he was military
governor of the Department of the South. In this capacity he first proved
possible the distribution of the vast body of free or fugitive slaves
over the Sea Islands, which had been almost deserted by their white
predecessors. This feat was accompanied by what was probably in the end
even more important,—the creation of black troops from that centre. The
leadership in this work might have belonged under other circumstances
to Major-General Hunter, of Washington, District of Columbia, who had
undertaken such a task in the same region (May 3, 1862); but General
Hunter, though he had many fine qualities, was a thoroughly impetuous
man; whimsical, changeable, and easily influenced by his staff officers,
few of whom had the slightest faith in the enterprise. He acted,
moreover, without authority from Washington, and his whole enterprise
had been soon disallowed by the United States government. This was the
position of things when General Saxton, availing himself of the fact
that one company of this Hunter regiment had not, like the rest, been
practically disbanded, made that the basis of a reorganization of it
under the same name (First South Carolina Infantry). This was done under
express authority from the War Department, dated August 25, 1862, with
the hope of making it a pioneer of a whole subsequent series of slave
regiments, as it was. The fact that General Saxton was a Massachusetts
man, as was the colonel whom he put in charge of the first regiment,—and
as were, indeed, most of the men prominent from beginning to end in the
enlistment of colored troops,—gave an unquestioned priority in the matter
to that state.
It must be remembered that this was long before Governor Andrew had
received permission to recruit a colored regiment, the Fifty-Fourth
Massachusetts, whose first colonel was Robert Gould Shaw, a young hero
of Boston birth. The fact that this was the first black regiment
enlisted at the North has left a general impression in Massachusetts
that it was the first colored regiment; but this is an error of five
months, General Saxton’s authority having been dated August 25, 1862,
and that of Governor Andrew January 26, 1863. The whole number of black
soldiers enlisted during the war was 178,975 (Heitman’s “Historical
Register,” page 890), whose whole organization may fairly be attributed,
in a general way, to the success of General Saxton’s undertaking. In
making this claim, it must be borne in mind that the enlistments made by
General Butler at almost precisely the same time in New Orleans consisted
mainly of a quite exceptional class, the comparatively educated free
colored men of that region, the darkest of these being, as General Butler
himself once said, “of about the same complexion as the late Daniel
Webster.” Those New Orleans regiments would hardly have led to organizing
similar troops elsewhere, for want of similar material. Be this as
it may, the fact is that these South Carolina regiments, after their
number was increased by other colored regiments from various sources,
were unquestionably those who held the South Carolina coast, making
it possible for Sherman to lead his final march to the sea and thus
practically end the war. As an outcome of all this, General Saxton’s
name is quite sure to be long remembered.
It is fair now to recognize the fact that this combination of civil
and military authority was not always what Saxton himself would have
selected. There were times when he chafed under what seemed to him
a non-military work and longed for the open field. It is perhaps
characteristic of his temperament, however, that at the outset he
preferred to be where the greatest obstacles were to be encountered,
and this he certainly achieved. It must be remembered that the early
organizers and officers of the colored troops fought in a manner with
ropes around their necks, both they and their black recruits having been
expressly denied by the Confederate government the usual privileges of
soldiers. They had also to encounter for a long time the disapproval of
many officers of high rank in the Union army, both regular and volunteer,
this often leading to a grudging bestowal of supplies (especially,
strange to say, of medical ones), and to a disproportionate share of
fatigue duty. This was hard indeed for Saxton to bear, and was increased
in his case by the fact that he had been almost the only cadet in his
time at West Point who was strong in anti-slavery feeling, and who thus
began with antagonisms which lasted into actual service. To these things
he was perhaps oversensitive, and he had to be defended against this
tendency, as he was, by an admirable wife and by an invaluable staff
officer and housemate, Brevet Major Edward W. Hooper, of Massachusetts,
who was his volunteer aide-de-camp and housemate. The latter was, as many
Bostonians will remember, of splendid executive ability, as shown by his
long subsequent service as steward and treasurer of Harvard University; a
man of rare organizing power, and of a cheerfulness which made him only
laugh away dozens of grievances that vexed General Saxton.
As an organizer of troops General Saxton’s standard was very high, and he
assumed, as was proper, that a regiment made out of former slaves should
not merely follow good moral examples, but set them. As all men in that
day knew, there was a formidable variation in this respect in different
regiments, some of the volunteer officers whose military standard was the
highest being the lowest in their personal habits. General Saxton would
issue special orders from time to time to maintain a high tone morally in
the camp, as he did, indeed, in the whole region under his command. He
was never in entire harmony with General Gillmore, the military commander
of the department, whose interest was thought to lie chiefly in the
artillery service; and while very zealous and efficient in organizing
special expeditions for his own particular regiments, Saxton kept up, as
we thought at the time, a caution beyond what was necessary in protecting
the few colored regiments which he had personally organized. When the
Florida expedition was planned, which resulted in the sanguinary defeat
at Olustee, he heartily disapproved of the whole affair. This he carried
so far that when my own regiment was ordered on the expedition, as we all
greatly desired, when we had actually broken camp and marched down to
the wharf for embarkment in high exultation, we were stopped and turned
back by an order, just obtained by General Saxton from headquarters,
countermanding our march and sending us back to pitch our tents again.
It was not until some days later had brought the news of the disastrous
battle, and how defective was the judgment of those who planned it, that
General Saxton found himself vindicated in our eyes. The plain reason for
that defeat was that the Confederates, being on the mainland and having
railway communications, such as they were, could easily double from the
interior any force sent round by water outside. This was just what had
been pointed out beforehand by General Saxton, but his judgment had been
overruled.
General Saxton was a man of fine military bearing and a most kindly and
agreeable face. Social in his habits, he was able to go about freely
for the rest of his life in the pleasant circle of retired military men
and their families in Washington. He and his wife had always the dream
of retiring from the greater gayety of the national metropolis to his
birthplace at Deerfield, Massachusetts. Going there one beautiful day
in early summer, with that thought in mind, they sat, so he told me, on
the peaceful piazza all the morning and looked out down the avenue of
magnificent elms which shade that most picturesque of village streets.
During the whole morning no wheels passed their place, except those
belonging to a single country farmer’s wagon. Finding the solitude to be
somewhat of a change after the vivacity of Washington, they decided to
go down to Greenfield and pass the afternoon. There they sat on a hotel
piazza under somewhat similar circumstances and saw only farmers’ wagons,
two or three. Disappointed in the reconnoissance, they went back to
Washington, and spent the rest of their days amid a happy and congenial
circle of friends. He died there February 23, 1908. To the present
writer, at least, the world seems unquestionably more vacant that Saxton
is gone.
XIV
ONE OF THACKERAY’S WOMEN
ONE OF THACKERAY’S WOMEN
Some years since, there passed away, at Newport, Rhode Island, one who
could justly be classed with Thackeray’s women; one in whom Lady Kew
would have taken delight; one in whom she would have found wit and
memory and audacity rivaling her own; one who was at once old and young,
poor and luxurious, one of the loneliest of human beings, and yet one
of the most sociable. Miss Jane Stuart, the only surviving daughter
of Gilbert Stuart, the painter, had dwelt all her life on the edge of
art without being an artist, and at the brink of fashion without being
fashionable. Living at times in something that approached poverty, she
was usually surrounded by friends who were rich and generous; so that
she often fulfilled Motley’s famous early saying, that one could do
without the necessaries of life, but could not spare the luxuries. She
was an essential part of the atmosphere of Newport; living near the “Old
Stone Mill,” she divided its celebrity and, as all agreed, its doubtful
antiquity; for her most intimate friends could not really guess within
fifteen years how old she was, and strangers placed her anywhere from
sixty to eighty. Her modest cottage, full of old furniture and pictures,
was the resort of much that was fashionable on the days of her weekly
receptions; costly equipages might be seen before the door; and if,
during any particular season, she suspected a falling off in visitors,
she would try some new device,—a beautiful girl sitting in a certain
carved armchair beneath an emblazoned window, like Keats’s Madeline,—or,
when things grew desperate, a bench with a milk-pan and a pumpkin on
the piazza, to give an innocently rural air. “My dear,” she said on
that occasion, “I must try something: rusticity is the dodge for me”;
and so the piazza looked that summer like a transformation scene in
“Cinderella,” with the fairy godmother not far off.
She inherited from her father in full the Bohemian temperament, and
cultivated it so habitually through life that it was in full flower at
a time when almost any other woman would have been repressed by age,
poverty, and loneliness. At seventy or more she was still a born mistress
of the revels, and could not be for five minutes in a house where a
charade or a mask was going on without tapping at the most private door
and plaintively imploring to be taken in as one of the conspirators.
Once in, there was nothing too daring, too grotesque, or too juvenile
for her to accept as her part, and successfully. In the modest winter
sports of the narrowed Newport circle, when wit and ingenuity had to be
invoked to replace the summer resources of wealth and display, she was
an indispensable factor. She had been known to enact a Proud Sister in
“Cinderella,” to be the performer on the penny whistle in the “Children’s
Symphony,” to march as the drum major of the Ku-Klux Klan with a muff for
a shako, and to be the gorilla of a menagerie, with an artificial head.
Nothing could make too great a demand upon her wit and vivacity, and her
very face had a droll plainness more effective for histrionic purposes
than a Grecian profile. She never lost dignity in these performances,
for she never had anything that could exactly be described by that name;
that was not her style. She had in its stead a supply of common sense
and ready adaptation that took the place, when needed, of all starched
decorum, and quite enabled her on serious occasions to hold her own.