THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.
When the long gathering clouds broke in the storm at Sumter, and war
was precipitated in a rain of blood, Charles Carleton Coffin's first
question was as to his duty. He was thirty-seven years old, healthy
and hearty, though not what men would usually call robust. To him who
had long learned to look into the causes of things, who knew well his
country's history, and who had been educated to thinking and feeling
by the long debate on slavery, the Secession movement was nothing more
or less than a slaveholders' conspiracy. His conviction in 1861 was
the same as that held by him, when more than thirty years of
reflection had passed by, that the inaugurators of the Civil War of
1861-65 were guilty of a gigantic crime.
In 1861, with his manhood and his talent, the question was not on
which side duty lay, or whether his relation to the question should
be active or passive, but just how he could most and best give himself
to the service of his country. Whether with rifle or pen, he would do
nothing less than his best. He inquired first at the recruiting office
of the army. He was promptly informed that on no account could he be
accepted as an active soldier, whether private or officer, on account
of his lame heel. Rejected here, he thought that some other department
of public service might be open to him in which he could be more or
less directly in touch with the soldiers. While uncertain as to his
future course, he was, happily for his country, led to consult his old
friend, Senator Henry Wilson, who immediately and strenuously advised
him to give up all idea of either the army, the hospital, the
clerical, or any other government service, but to enter at once
actively upon the work of a war correspondent.
"Your talent," said Wilson, "is with the pen, and you can do the best
service by seeing what is going on and reporting it."
The author of the "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America"
intimated that truth, accurately told and published throughout the
North, was not only extremely valuable, but absolutely necessary. It
would not take long for a thoroughly truthful reporter to make himself
a national authority. The sympathizers with disunion would be only too
active in spreading rumors to dishearten the upholders of the Union,
and there would be need for every honest pen and voice.
After this conversation, Carleton was at peace. He would find his work
and ask no other blessedness. But how to find it, and to win his place
as a recognized writer on the field was a question. Within our
generation, the world has learned the value of the war correspondent.
He has won the spurs of the knighthood of civilization. He wears in
life the laurel wreath of fame. He is respected in his calling. He
goes forth as an apostle of the printed truth. The resources of
wealthy corporations are behind him. His salary is not princely, but
it is ample. Though he may lose limb or life, he is honored like the
soldier, and after his death, the monument rises to his memory. In the
great struggle between France and Germany, between Russia and
Turkey, between Japan and China, and in the minor wars of European
Powers against inferior civilizations, in Asia and Africa, the "war
correspondent" has been a striking figure. He is not the creation of
our age; but our half of this century, having greater need of him, has
equipped him the most liberally. He has his permanent place of honor.
If the newspaper is the Woden of our century and civilization, the war
correspondent and the printer are the twin Ravens that sit upon his
shoulder. The one flies afar to gather the news, the other sits at
home to scatter the tidings.
In 1861 it was very different. The idea of spending large sums of
money, and maintaining a staff-corps of correspondents who on land and
sea should follow our armies and fleets, and utilize horse, rail car,
and telegraph, boat, yacht, and steamer, without regard to expense,
had not seized upon newspaper publishers in the Eastern States. Almost
from the first, the great New York journals organized bureaus for the
collection of news. With relays of stenographers, telegraphers, and
extra printers, they were ready for all emergencies in the home
office, besides liberally endowing their agencies at Washington and
cities near the front, and equipping their correspondent, in camp and
on deck. In this, the New England publishers were far behind those on
Manhattan Island. Carleton, when in Washington, wrote his first
letters to the Boston _Journal_ and took the risk of their being
accepted for publication. He visited the camps, forts, and places of
storage of government material. He described the preparations for war
and life in Washington with such spirit and graphic power, that from
June 15 to July 17, 1861, no fewer than twenty-one of his letters were
published in the _Journal_.
The great battle of Bull Run gave him his opportunity. As an
eye-witness, his opportunity was one to be coveted. He wrote out so
full, so clear, and so interesting an account, that the proprietors of
the _Journal_ engaged him as their regular correspondent at a salary
of twenty-five dollars a week, with extra allowance for
transportation. His instructions were to "keep the _Journal_ at the
front. Use all means for obtaining and transmitting important
information, regardless of expense." This, however, was not to be
interpreted to mean that he should have assistants or be the head of
a bureau or relay of men, as in the case of the chief correspondent of
at least three of the New York newspapers. It meant that he was to
gather and transmit the news and be the whole bureau and staff in
himself. Nevertheless, during most of the war, the Boston _Journal_
was the only New England paper that kept a regular correspondent
permanently not only in Washington, but at the seat of war. Carleton
in several signal instances sent news of most important movements and
victories ahead of any other Northern correspondent. He achieved a
succession of what newspaper men call "beats." In those days, on
account of the great expense, the telegraph was used only for
summaries of news, and rarely, if ever, for long despatches or
letters. The ideas and practice of newspaper managers have greatly
enlarged since 1865. Entering upon his work at the very beginning of
the war, he was, we believe, almost the only field correspondent who
continued steadily to the end, coming out of it with unbroken health
of body and mind.
How he managed to preserve his strength and enthusiasm, and to excel
where so many others did well and nobly, is an open secret. In the
first place, he was a man of profoundest religious faith in the
Heavenly Father. Prayer was his refreshment. He renewed his strength
by waiting upon God. His spirit never grew weary. In the darkest days
he was able to cheer and encourage the desponding. He spoke
continually, through the _Journal_, to hundreds of thousands of
readers, in tones of cheer. Like a great lighthouse, with its mighty
lamps ever burning and its reflectors and lenses kept clean and clear,
Carleton, never discouraged, terrified, or tired out, sent across the
troubled sea and through the deepest darkness the inspiriting flash of
the light of truth and the steady beam of faith in the Right and its
ultimate triumph. He was a missionary of cheer among the soldiers in
camp and at the front. His reports of battles, and his message of
comfort in times of inaction, wilted the hopes of the traitors,
copperheads, cowards, and "nightshades" at home, while they put new
blood in the veins of the hopeful.
Carleton was always welcome among the commanders and at headquarters.
This was because of his frankness as well as his ability and his
genial bonhomie and social qualities. He did not consider himself a
critic of generals. He simply described. He took care to tell what he
saw, or knew on good authority to be true. He did probe rumors. From
the very first he became a higher critic of assertions and even of
documents. He quickly learned the value of camp reports and items of
news. By and by his skill became the envy of many of less experienced
readers of human nature, and judges of talk and despatches. While
shirking no hard work in the saddle, on foot, on the rail, or in the
boat, he found by experience that by keeping near headquarters he was
the better enabled to know the motions of the army as a whole, to
divine the plans of the commanding general, and thus test the value of
flying rumors. He had a genius for interpreting signs of movement,
whether in the loading of a barge, the riding of an orderly, or the
nod of a general's head. His previous training as an engineer and
surveyor enabled him to foresee the strategic value of a position and
to know the general course of a campaign in a particular district of
country. With this power of practical foresight, he was often better
able even than some of the generals to foresee and appraise results.
This topographical knowledge also gave him that power of wonderful
clearness in description which is the first and best quality necessary
to the narrator of a series of complex movements. A battle fought in
the open, like that at Gettysburg, or one of those which took place
during the previous campaigns, on a plain, along the river, and in the
Peninsula, is comparatively easy to describe, especially when viewed
from an eminence. These battles were like those in ordinary European
history; but after Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac, a
reversion to something like the American colonial methods in the
forest took place. The heaviest fighting was in the woods, behind
entrenchments, or in regions where but little of the general scheme,
and few of the operations, could be seen at once. In either case,
however, as will be seen by reading over the thousand or so letters in
Carleton's correspondence, his power of making a modern battle easily
understood is, if not unique, at least very remarkable. With his
letters often went diagrams which greatly aided his readers.
Carleton's personal courage was always equal to that of the bravest.
Too sincerely appreciative of the gift of life from his Creator, he
never needlessly, especially after his first eagerness for experience
had been satiated, exposed himself, as the Dutch used to say, with
"full-hardiness," or as we, corrupting the word, say, with
"foolhardiness." He got out of the line of shells and bullets where
there was no call for his presence, and when the only justification
for remaining would be to gratify idle curiosity. Yet, when duty
called, when there was need to know both the facts, and the truth to
be deduced from the facts, whistling bullets or screeching shells
never sufficed to drive him away. His coolness with pen and pencil,
amid the dropping fire of the enemy, made heroes of many a soldier
whose nerves were not as strong as was the instinct of his legs to
run. The lady librarian of Dover, N. H., thus writes:
"An old soldier whom I was once showing through the library stopped
short in front of Coffin's books and looked at them with much
interest. He said that at his first battle,--I think it was
Fredericksburg, but of this I am not sure,--he was scared almost to
death. He was a mere boy, and when his regiment was ordered to the
front and the shot was lively around him, he would have run away if he
had dared. But a little distance off, he saw a man standing under the
lee of a tree and writing away as coolly as if he were standing at a
desk. The soldier asked who he was, and was told it was Carleton, of
the _Journal_. 'There he stood,' said the man, 'perfectly unconcerned,
and I felt easier every time I looked at him. Finally he finished and
went off to another place. But that was his reputation among the men
all through the war,--perfectly cool, and always at the front.'"
Carleton was able to withstand four years of mental strain and
physical exposure because he knew and put in practice the right laws
of life. His temperance in eating and drinking was habitual. Often
dependent with the private soldier, while on the march and in camp, on
raw pork and hardtack; helped out in emergencies with food and
victuals, by the quartermaster or his assistants; not infrequently
reaching the verge of starvation, he did not, when reaching city or
home, play the gourmand. He drank no intoxicating liquor, always
politely waving aside the social glass. He was true to his principles
of total abstinence which had been formed in boyhood. It would have
been easy for him to become intemperate, since in early boyhood he
acquired a fondness for liquors, through being allowed to drink what
might remain in the glass after his sick mother had partaken of her
tonic. He demonstrated that man has no necessity for alcoholic drinks,
however much he may enjoy them.
Only on one occasion was he known to taste strong liquor. In the
Wilderness, when in a company of officers on horseback, the
bloodcurdling Confederate yells were heard but a short distance off,
and it seemed as though our line had been broken and the day was lost
for the Union army. At that dark moment, one of the officers on
General Meade's staff produced a flask of brandy, and remarking--with
inherited English prejudice--that he would fortify his nerves with
"Dutch courage," to tide over the emergency, he quaffed, and then
handed the refreshment to his companion. In the momentary and
infectious need for stimulant of some sort, Mr. Coffin took a sip and
handed it on. Though himself having no need of and very rarely making
use of spirits, even medicinally, he was yet kindly charitable towards
his weaker brethren. It is too sadly true that many of the military
officers, who yielded to the temptation of temporarily bracing their
nerves at critical moments, became slaves to the bottle, and
afterwards confirmed drunkards. Carleton made no use of tobacco in any
form.
Carleton's wonderful prescience of coming events, and his decisions
rightly made as to his own whereabouts in crises, enabled him to
concentrate without wasting his powers. He then gave himself to his
work with all ardor, and without sparing brain or muscle, risking limb
and life at Bull Run, on the Mississippi, at Fort Donelson, at
Antietam and Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, at Savannah, and in
Richmond. His powers in toil were prodigious. He could turn off an
immense amount of work, and keep it up. When the lull followed the
agony, he went home to rest and recruit, spending the time with his
wife and friends, everywhere diffusing the sunshine of hope and
faith. When rested and refreshed, he hied again to the front and the
conflict. The careers of most army correspondents in the field were
short. Carleton's race was long. His was the promise of the prophet's
glorious burden in Isaiah xl. 28-31.
It was between his thirty-eighth and forty-second year, when in the
high tide of his manly strength, that Carleton pursued the profession
of letters amid the din of arms. His pictures show him a handsome man,
with broad, open forehead and sunny complexion, standing nearly six
feet high, his feet cased in the broad and comfortable boots which he
always wore. Over his ordinary suit of clothing was a long and
comfortable overcoat with a cape, around which was a belt, to which
hung a spy-glass. Later in the war he bought a fine binocular marine
glass. He gave the old "historic spy-glass" to his nephew Edmund, from
under whose head it was stolen by some camp thief. In his numerous and
capacious pockets, besides a watch and a pocket compass, was a store
of note-books, in which he was accustomed to jot his rapid,
lightning-like notes, which meant "reading without tears" for him, but
woe and sorrow to those who had to knit their brows in trying to
decipher his "crow-tracks." During the first part of the war he bought
horses as often as he needed them, and these were not always of the
first quality as to flesh or character. He usually found it difficult
to recover his beast after having been away home. In the later
campaigns he possessed finer animals for longer spaces of time, taking
more pains, and spending more money to recover them on his return from
absences North.
Nevertheless, in order to beat other correspondents, to be at the
front, in the right moment, in order to satisfy the need for news, he
counted neither the life nor the ownership of his horse as worth a
moment's consideration. In comparison with the idea of stilling the
public anxiety, and giving the news of victory, he acted upon the
principle of his Master,--"Ye are of more value than many sparrows."
One man, using plain English, says, "Uncle Carleton got the news,
goodness knows how, but he got it always and truly. He was the
cheekiest man on earth for the sake of the _Journal_, and the people
of New England. He used to ask for and give news even to the
commander-in-chief. Often the staff officers would be amazed at the
cheek of Carleton in suggesting what should be done. His bump of
locality and topography was well developed, and he read the face of
the country as by intuition. He would talk to the commander as no
civilian could or would, but Meade usually took it pleasantly, and
Grant always welcomed it, and seemed glad to get it. I have seen him
(Grant) in long conversations with Mr. Coffin, when no others were
near."