war; but, historically, it was not the motive. Lincoln's words--"I
will save the Union with slavery, or I will save it without slavery,
as the case may demand"--voiced the feeling prevalent in the military
services, and also the will of the great body of the Northern people,
whom he profoundly understood and in his own mental advance
illustrated. I cannot but think that such an aim was more
statesmanlike than would have been the attempt to overturn immediately
and violently an entire social and economical system, for the
establishment of which the current generation was not responsible. In
the long run, to allow the tares of bondage to stand with the wheat of
freedom was wiser than the wish prematurely to uproot. It had become
the definite policy of the enemies of slavery to girdle the tree, by
strict encompassing lines, leaving it to consequent sure process of
decay. Its friends forced the issue. To the ones and to the others the
harvest of generations, in the form it took, came unexpected and
suddenly--a day of judgment, a crisis, like a thief in the night. It
is a consummate proof of the accuracy of popular instinct, given time
to work, that the uprising of 1861 rested upon recognition of the
fact that the cause of the nation and of the world depended more upon
the preservation of a single authority over all the territory
involved, upon the consequent avoidance of future permanent
oppositions, than it did upon the destruction of a particular
institution, the life of which might be protracted, but under
conditions of union must wane and ultimately expire. The gradual
progress of decision by the American people was wiser than the abrupt
action asked by foreign impatience; and abolition came with less shock
and more finality as a military measure than it could as a political.
Its advisability was more evident. If statesmanship is shown in
bringing popular will to accord with national necessity, Lincoln was
in this most sagacious; but not the least element in the tribute due
him is that he was the barometer of popular impulse, measuring
accurately the invisible force upon which depended the energy of that
stormy period.
Before taking final leave of my shore experiences at the Naval
Academy, I will recall, as among them, the superb comet of the autumn
of 1858, which we at the school witnessed evening after evening in
October of that year, during the release from quarters following
supper. After the lapse of so nearly a half-century, the survivors of
those who saw that magnificent spectacle must be in a minority among
their contemporaries, whether of that day or this. Since its
disappearance there has been visible one other notable comet, which I
remember waking my children after midnight to see; but compared with
that of 1858, whether in size or in splendor, it was literally as
moonlight unto sunlight, or, in impression, as water unto wine. As the
astronomers compute the period of return for the earlier at two
thousand years, more or less, we of that generation were truly
singular in our opportunity of viewing this, among the very few "most
magnificent of modern times." The tail, broadening towards the end,
with a curve like that of a scimitar, was in length nearly a fourth of
the span of the heavens, and its brightness that of a full moon. My
memory retains the image with all the tenacity of eighteen.
* * * * *
Corresponding in some measure to the summer encampment at the Military
Academy, the Naval gave the three months from July to September,
inclusive, to shipboard and the sea. In both institutions the period
was one of study interrupted, in favor of out-door work; but at West
Point it was accompanied by a degree of social entertainment
impossible to ship conditions. There were two theories as to the
conduct of the practice cruises. One was that they should be confined
to home waters, where regular hours and systematized instruction in
"doing things" would suffer little interference from weather; the
other was to make long voyages, preferably to Europe, leaving to the
normal variability of the ocean and the watchful improvement of
occasions the burden of initiating a youth into practical acquaintance
with the exigencies of his intended profession. Personally I have
always favored the latter, being somewhat of the opinion of the old
practical politician--"Never contrive an opportunity." Naturally an
opportunist, the experience of life has justified me in rather
awaiting than contriving occasions. One learns more widely and more
thoroughly by reefing topsails when it has to be done, than by doing
it at a routine hour, without the accompaniments of the wind, the wet,
and the lurching, which give the operation a tone and a tonic--the
real thing, in short. Doubtless we may wait too long, like Micawber,
even for a reef-topsail gale to turn up, though the ocean can usually
be trusted to be nasty often enough; but, on the other hand, one over
sedulously bent on making opportunity is apt to be too preoccupied to
see that which makes itself. Truth, doubtless, lies between the
extremes.
In my day long cruises had unquestioned preference; and, whatever
their demerits otherwise, they were certainly eye-openers, even to
those who, like myself, had obtained some intelligent impression of
ships at sea. As instruction in seamanship was then never attempted,
neither by work nor book, until after the second year, we went on
board not knowing one mast from another, so far as teaching went. How
far initial ignorance could go may be illustrated by an incident, to
be appreciated, unluckily, only by seamen, which happened in my
hearing. We had then been nearly two months on board, when one who had
improved his opportunities was displaying his acquirements by the
pleasing method of catechising another. He asked: "Do you know what
the topsail-tie is?" The rejoinder, perfectly serious, was: "Do you
mean the cross-tie?" The topsail-tie being one of the principal
"ropes" in a ship, the ignorance was really symptomatic of character;
and had not the hero of it been long dead, I would not have preserved
it, even incog. I fear it may be cited against my view of practice
cruises, as proving that systematic training is better than
picking-up; to which my reply would be that the picking-up showed
aptitude--or the reverse--if only some means could be devised of
making it tell in selection, as it assuredly did in character. But at
the beginning, despite any little previous inklings, we were all quite
green. I still recall the innocent astonishment when we anchored in
Hampton Roads, after the run down the Chesapeake, and the boatswain,
as by custom, pulled round the ship to see the yards square and
rigging taut. Semaphore signalling was not then used, as later; and
his stentorian lungs conveyed to us distinct sounds, bearing meanings
we felt could never be compassed by us. "Haul taut the main-top
bowlines!" "Haul taut the starboard fore-topgallant-sheet." "Maintop,
there! Send a hand up and square the bunt gaskets of the
topgallant-sail!" "By Jove!" said one of the admiring listeners,
"there's seamanship for you!" We all silently agreed, and I dare say
many thought we might as well give it up and go home. Such excellence
was not for us.
The subsequent process of picking-up was attended sometimes by
comical, as well as painful, incidents. Peter Simple's experiences, as
told by Marryat, were not yet quite obsolete in practice. A story ran
of one, not long before my "date," who, having been sent on two or
three bootless errands by unauthorized jesters, finally received from
a person in due authority the absurd-sounding, but legitimate, message
to have the jackasses put in the hawse-holes.[7] "Oh no," he replied,
resentfully, "I have been fooled often enough! That I will not do." I
can better vouch for another, which happened on my first practice
cruise. In a sailing-ship properly planned, the balance of the sails
is such that to steer her on her course the rudder need not be kept
more to one side than the other; the helm is then amidships. But error
of design, or circumstances, such as a faulty trim of the sails or the
ship inclining in a strong side-wind, will sometimes so alter the
influencing forces that the helm has to be carried steadily on one
side, to correct the ship's disposition to turn to that side. She is
then said to carry weather helm or lee helm, as the case may be; and
the knowing ones used to assert noticeable differences of sailing in
certain conditions. In many ships to carry a little weather helm was
thought advantageous, and it was told of a certain deck-officer--he
who repeated the story to me made the late Admiral Porter the
hero--that the ship being found to sail faster in his watch than in
any other, the commander sent for him and asked the reason. "Well,
sir," replied the lieutenant, "I will tell you my secret. As soon as
the officer I relieve is gone below and out of sight, while the watch
is mustering, I walk forward, look round at things generally, and say
casually to the captain of the forecastle: 'Just slack off a little of
this jib-sheet.' Then about ten minutes before eight bells, after the
last log of the watch has been hove, while the men are rousing to go
below, I go forward again and say, 'Come here, half a dozen of us, and
get a pull of the jib-sheet;' and I turn the deck over to my relief
with the jib well flattened in." In result, the frigate during his
watch, and his only, carried a weather helm. My own experience of
sailing ships was neither prolonged enough nor responsible enough to
estimate just what weight to attach to these impressions, but they
existed; and in any case, as the helm varying far from amidships
showed something wrong, the question was frequent to the helmsman,
"How does she carry her helm?" varied sometimes to, "What sort of helm
does she carry?" Now we had among our green midshipmen one from the
West, tall, angular, swarthy, with a coal-black eye which had a trick
of cocking up and out, giving a queer, perplexed, yet defiant cast to
his countenance; moreover, he stuttered a little, not from
imperfection of organs, but from nervous excitability. We had also a
lieutenant from far down East, red-haired, sanguine of complexion,
bony of structure, who had a gesture of tossing his hair and head
back, and looking tremendously leonine and master of the
situation--monarch of all he surveyed. The two were naturally
antagonistic, as was amusingly shown more than once; but on this
occasion the midshipman was at the "lee wheel," not himself steering,
but helping the steersman in the manual labor. To him the lieutenant,
pausing in his stride and tilting his chin in the air, says: "Mr.
----, what sort of helm does she carry?" ----, who had never heard of
weather or lee helms, and probably was not yet recovered from the
effects of the boatswain's seamanship, twisted his eye and his head,
looking more than ever confounded and saucy, and stammered: "I--I--I'm
not sure, sir, but I think it's a wooden one." Tableau!--as the French
say.
In position on board we were midshipmen indeed, in a sense probably
somewhat different from that which first gave birth to the title. We
were not seamen; and it could scarcely be claimed that we were in any
full sense officers, much as we stuck to that designation. We stood
midway. There was a tradition in the British service that a
midshipman, though in training for promotion, did not, while in the
grade, rank with the boatswain or gunner, who had no future prospects,
and who, with the carpenter, stood in a class by themselves. Marryat,
who doubtless drew his characters from life, tells us that the gunner
who sailed with Mr. Midshipman Easy was strong on the necessity for
the gunner mastering navigation, and had many instances in point where
all the officers had been killed down to the gunner, who in such case
would have been sadly handicapped by ignorance of navigation. I fancy
the doubt seldom needed to be settled in service; the duties of
midshipman and boatswain could rarely come into collision, if each
minded his own business. By luck, just after writing these words, I
for the first time in my life have found a plausible derivation for
midshipman.[8] It would appear that in the days immediately after the
flood the vessels were very high at the two ends, between which there
was a deep "waist," giving no ready means of passing from one to the
other. To meet this difficulty there were employed a class of men,
usually young and alert, who from their station were called
midshipmen, to carry messages which were not subject for the trumpet
shout. If this holds water, it, like forecastle, and after-guard, and
knightheads, gives another instance of survival from conditions which
have long ceased.
Whatever the origin of his title, it well expressed the anomalous and
undefined position of the midshipman. He belonged, so to say, to both
ends of the ship, as well as to the middle, and his duties and
privileges alike fell within the broad saying, already quoted, that
what was nobody's business was a midshipman's. When appointed as such,
in later days, he came in "with the hay-seed in his hair," and went
out fit for a lieutenant's charge; but from first to last, whatever
his personal progress, he remained, as a midshipman, a handy-billy. He
might be told, as Basil Hall's first captain did his midshipmen, that
they might keep watch or not, as they pleased--that is, that the ship
had no use for them; or he might be sent in charge of a prize, as was
Farragut, when twelve years old, doubtless with an old seaman as
nurse, but still in full command. Anywhere from the bottom of the hold
to the truck--top of the masts--he could be sent, and was sent; every
boat, that went ashore had a midshipman, who must answer for her
safety and see that none got away of a dozen men, whose one thought
was to jump the boat and have a run on shore. Between times he passed
hours at the mast-head in expiation of faults which he had
committed--or ought to have committed, to afford a just scapegoat for
his senior's wrath. As Marryat said, it made little difference: if he
did not think of something he had not been told, he was asked what his
head was for; if he did something off his own bat, the question arose
what business he had to think. In either case he went to the mast-head.
Of course, at a certain age one "turns to mirth all things of earth,
as only boyhood can;" and the contemporary records of the steerage
brim over with unforced jollity, like that notable hero of Marryat's
"who was never quite happy except when he was d----d miserable."
Such undefined standing and employments taught men their business, but
provided no remedy for the miscellaneous social origin of midshipmen.
In the beginning of things they were probably selected from the smart
young men of the crew; often also from the more middle-aged--in any
event, from before the mast. Even in much later days men passed
backward and forward from midshipman to lower ratings; Nelson is an
instance in point. When a man became a lieutenant, he was something
fixed and recognized, professionally and socially. He might fall below
his station, but he had had his chance. In the British navy many most
distinguished officers came from anywhere--through the hawse-holes, as
the expression ran; and a proud boast it should have been at a time
when every Frenchman in his position had to be of noble blood. What
was all very well for captains and lieutenants, once those ranks were
reached, was not so easy for midshipmen. We know in every walk of life
the woes of those whose position is doubtful or challenged; and what
was said to his crew by Sir Peter Parker, an active frigate captain
who was killed in Chesapeake Bay in 1814, "I'll have you touch your
hat to a midshipman's jacket hung up to dry" (curiously reminiscent of
William Tell and Gessler's cap), not improbably testifies to
equivocalness even at that late date. The social instinct of seamen is
singularly observant and tenacious of their officers' manners and
bearing. I have known one, reproved for a disrespect, say, sullenly:
"I have always been accustomed to sail with gentlemen." In the
instance the comment was just, though not permissible. Deference might
be conceded to the midshipman's jacket, but it could not cover defects
of a certain order.
The midshipman's berth, as attested by contemporary sketches, was
peopled by all sorts in age, fitness, and manners. In one of the many
tales I devoured in youth, a middle-aged shellback of a master's mate,
come in from before the mast, says with an oath to an aristocratic
midshipman: "Isn't my blood as red as yours?" Still, even in the
British navy, with its fine democratic record, the social rank was
more regarded than the military. His Majesty's ship _So-and-So_ was
commanded by John Smith, Esquire; and I have heard this point of view
stated by competent authority as accounting for the address--George
Washington, Esquire--placed by Howe on the letter which Washington
refused to accept because not carrying the rank conferred on him by
Congress. This does not, however, explain away the "etc., etc.," which
followed on the cover. John Byng, Esquire, Admiral of the Blue, would
thus be of higher consideration as Esquire than as Admiral. Even in
our own service I remember an old log, the pages of which were headed,
"Cruise of the U. S. Ship _Preble_, commanded by J. B. M----,
Esquire."
In the practice cruises the social question did not arise. Independent
of the democratic tendency of all boys' schools, where each individual
finds his level by natural gravitation, the Naval Academy, for reasons
before alluded to, has been remarkably successful in assimilating its
heterogeneous raw material and turning out a finished product of a
good average social quality. Beyond this, social success or failure
depends everywhere upon personal aptitudes which no training can
bestow. But as officers we were nondescript. There were too many of
us; and for the most the object was to acquire a sufficient seaman's
knowledge, not an officer's. Yet, curiously enough, so at least it
seemed to me, there was a disposition on the part of some to be
jealous of any supposed infringement of our prerogative to be treated
as "a bit of an officer." Ashore or afloat, we made our own beds or
lashed our own hammocks, swept our rooms, tended our clothes, and
blacked our boots; our drills were those of the men before the mast,
at sails and guns; all parts of a seaman's work, except cleaning the
ship, was required and willingly done; but there was a comical
rebellion on one occasion when ordered to pull--row--a boat ashore for
some purpose, and almost a mutiny when one lieutenant directed us to
go barefooted while decks were being scrubbed, a practice which,
besides saving your shoe-leather, is both healthy, cleanly, and, in
warm weather, exceedingly comforting. Some asserted that the
lieutenant in question, who afterwards commanded one of the
Confederate commerce-destroyers, and from his initials (Jas. I.) was
known to us as Jasseye, had done this because he had very pretty feet
which he liked to show bare, and we must do the same; much as Germans
are said to train their mustaches with the emperor's. At all events,
there was great wrath, which I supposed I should have shared had I not
preferred bare feet--not for as sound reasons as the lieutenant's. It
stands to reason, however, that that imputation was slanderous, for
there were no appreciative observers, unless himself. Why waste such
sweetness on the desert air of a lot of heedless midshipmen? With so
many details regulated--if not enforced--from the length of our hair
to the cut of our trousers, it did seem hypercritical to object to
going shoeless for an hour. But who is consistent? The uncertainty of
our position kept the chip on the shoulder.
V
MY FIRST CRUISE AFTER GRADUATION--NAUTICAL CHARACTERS
1859-1861
At the moment of graduation, in the summer of 1859, I had a narrow
escape from the cutting short of my career, resembling that which a
man has from a railway accident by missing the train. To a certain
extent the members of classes were favored in forming groups of
friends, and choosing the ship to which they would be sent. Myself and
two intimates applied for the sloop-of-war _Levant_, destined for the
Pacific by way of Cape Horn; our motive being partly the kind of
vessel, supposed by us to favor professional opportunity, and partly
the friendship existing between one of us and the master of the
_Levant_, a graduate of two or three years before, who had just
completed his examinations for promotion. Luckily for us, and
particularly for me, as the only one of the three who in after life
survived middle age, the frigate _Congress_ was fitting out, and her
requirements for officers could not be disregarded. The _Levant_
sailed, reached the Pacific, and disappeared--one of the mysteries of
the deep. We very young men had the impression that small vessels were
better calculated to advance us professionally, because, having fewer
officers, deck duty might be devolved on us, either to ease the
regular watch officers or in case of a disability. This prepossession
extended particularly to brigs, of which the navy then had several.
This was a pretty wild imagining, for I can hardly conceive any one
in trusting such a vessel to a raw midshipman. It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say they were all canvas and no hull--beautiful as a
dream, but dangerous to a degree, except to the skilful. As it was, an
unusual proportion of them came to grief. Our views were doubtless
largely, if unconsciously, affected by the pleasing idea of
prospective early importance as deck officers. The more solid opinion
of our seniors was that we would do better to pause awhile on the
bottom step, under closer supervision; while as for vessel, the order,
dignity, and scale of performance on big ships were more educative,
more formative of military character, which, and not seamanship, is
the leading element of professional value. "Keep them at sea," said
Lord St. Vincent, "and they can't help becoming seamen; but attention
is needed to make them learn their business with the guns." I have
already mentioned that, at the outbreak of the War of Secession, it
was this factor which decided the authorities to give seniority to the
very young lieutenants over the volunteers from the merchant service,
most of whom had longer experience and (though by no means all of
them) consequent ability as seamen.
After graduating, my first cruise was upon what was then known as the
Brazil Station; by the British called more comprehensively the
Southeast Coast of America. After the war the name and limits were
judiciously changed. It became then the South Atlantic Station, to
embrace the Cape of Good Hope, and, generally, the coasts of South
America and Africa, with the islands lying between, such as St. Helena
and the Falklands. From the point of view of healthy activity for the
ships and their companies, and specifically for the education of
younger officers, this extension was most desirable. In the earlier
time long periods were spent in port, because there really was not
enough that required doing. Our captain once kept the ship at sea for
a fortnight or more, "cruising;" that is, moving about within certain
limits back and forth. In war-time this is frequent, if not general;
but then it is for a specific purpose, conducive to the ends of war.
In peace, cruising ends in itself; it is like a "constitutional;"
beneficial, no doubt, but not to most men as healthily beneficial as
the walk to the office, with its definite object and the incidental
amusement of the streets. A _terminus ad quem_ is essential to the
perfection of exercise, bodily or mental. As it was, Montevideo, in
the river La Plata, and Rio de Janeiro were the two chief ports
between which we oscillated, with rare and brief stays elsewhere or at
sea.