THE WAR CORRESPONDENT'S FIRST DAY.
Looking back over the four years of the war, and noting how indurated I
have at last become, both in body and in emotion, I recall with a sigh
that first morning of my correspondentship when I set out so
light-hearted and yet so anxious. It was in 1861. I was accompanied to
the War department by an _attache_ of the United States Senate. The new
Secretary, Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, referred me to a Mr. Sanford, "Military
Supervisor of Army Intelligence," and after a brief delay I was
requested to sign a parole and duplicate, specifying my loyalty to the
Federal Government, and my promise to publish nothing detrimental to its
interests. I was then given a circular, which stated explicitly the kind
of news termed contraband, and also a printed pass, filled in with my
name, age, residence, and newspaper connection. The latter enjoined upon
all guards to pass me in and out of camps; and authorized persons in
Government employ to furnish me with information.
Our Washington Superintendent sent me a beast, and in compliment to what
the animal might have been, called the same a horse. I wish to protest,
in this record, against any such misnomer. The creature possessed no
single equine element. Experience has satisfied me that horses stand on
four legs; the horse in question stood upon three. Horses may either
pace, trot, run, rack, or gallop; but mine made all the five movements
at once. I think I may call his gait an eccentric stumble. That he had
endurance I admit; for he survived perpetual beating; and his beauty
might have been apparent to an anatomist, but would be scouted by the
world at large. I asked, ruefully, if I was expected to go into battle
so mounted; but was peremptorily forbidden, as a valuable property might
be endangered thereby. I was assigned to the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps
in the anticipated advance, and my friend, the _attache_, accompanied me
to its rendezvous at Hunter's Mills. We started at two o'clock, and
occupied an hour in passing the city limits. I calculated that,
advancing at the same ratio, we should arrive in camp at noon next day.
We presented ludicrous figures to the grim sabremen that sat erect at
street corners, and ladies at the windows of the dwellings smothered
with suppressed laughter as we floundered along. My friend had the
better horse; but I was the better rider; and if at any time I grew
wrathful at my sorry plight, I had but to look at his and be happy
again. He appeared to be riding on the neck of his beast, and when he
attempted to deceive me with a smile, his face became horribly
contorted. Directly his breeches worked above his boots, and his bare
calves were objects of hopeless solicitude. Caricatures, rather than
men, we toiled bruisedly through Georgetown, and falling in the wake of
supply teams on the Leesburg turnpike, rode between the Potomac on one
side and the dry bed of the canal on the other, till we came at last to
Chain Bridge.
There was a grand view from the point of Little Falls above, where a
line of foamy cataracts ridged the river, and the rocks towered gloomily
on either hand: and of the city below, with its buildings of pure
marble, and the yellow earthworks that crested Arlington Heights. The
clouds over the Potomac were gorgeous in hue, but forests of melancholy
pine clothed the sides of the hills, and the roar of the river made such
beautiful monotone that I almost thought it could be translated to
words. Our passes were now demanded by a fat, bareheaded officer, and
while he panted through their contents, two privates crossed their
bayonets before us.
"News?" he said, in the shortest remark of which he was capable. When
assured that we had nothing to reveal, he seemed immeasurably relieved,
and added--"Great labor, reading!" At this his face grew so dreadfully
purple that I begged him to sit down, and tax himself with no further
exertion. He wiped his forehead, in reply, gasping like a triton, and
muttering the expressive direction, "right!" disappeared into a
guard-box. The two privates winked as they removed their muskets, and we
both laughed immoderately when out of hearing. Our backs were now turned
to the Maryland shore, and jutting grimly from the hill before us, the
black guns of Fort Ethan Allen pointed down the bridge. A double line of
sharp abattis protected it from assault, and sentries walked lazily up
and down the parapet. The colors hung against the mast in the dead calm,
and the smoke curled straight upward from some log-huts within the fort.
The wildness of the surrounding landscape was most remarkable. Within
sight of the Capital of the Republic, the fox yet kept the covert, and
the farms were few and far apart. It seemed to me that little had been
done to clear the country of its primeval timber, and the war had
accomplished more to give evidence of man and industry, than two
centuries of occupation. A military road had been cut through the solid
rocks here; and the original turnpike, which had been little more than a
cart track, was now graded and macadamized. I passed multitudes of
teams, struggling up the slopes, and the carcasses of mules littered
every rod of the way. The profanity of the teamsters was painfully
apparent. I came unobserved upon one who was berating his beasts with a
refinement of cruelty. He cursed each of them separately, swinging his
long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in mass. He would
have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little
consideration for the residences along the way. I came to one dwelling
where some pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames, and
imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams; a dead vulture was
pinned over the door by pieces of broken bayonets.
"Langley's,"--a few plank-houses, clustering around a tavern and a
church,--is one of those settlements whose sounding names beguile the
reader into an idea of their importance. A lonesome haunt in time of
peace, it had lately been the winter quarters of fifteen thousand
soldiers, and a multitude of log huts had grown up around it. I tied my
horse to the window-shutter of a dwelling, and picked my way over a
slimy sidewalk to the ricketty tavern-porch. Four or five privates lay
here fast asleep, and the bar-room was occupied by a bevy of young
officers, who were emptying the contents of sundry pocket-flasks. Behind
the bar sat a person with strongly-marked Hebrew features, and a
watchmaker was plying his avocation in a corner. Two great dogs crouched
under a bench, and some highly-colored portraits were nailed to the
wall. The floor was bare, and some clothing and miscellaneous articles
hung from beams in the ceiling.
"Is this your house?" I said to the Hebrew.
"I keepsh it now."
"By right or by conquest?"
"By ze right of conquest," he said, laughing; and at once proposed to
sell me a bootjack and an India-rubber overcoat. I compromised upon a
haversack, which he filled with sandwiches and sardines, and which I am
bound to say fell apart in the course of the afternoon. The watchmaker
was an enterprising young fellow, who had resigned his place in a large
Broadway establishment, to speculate in cheap jewelry and do itinerant
repairing. He says that he followed the "Army Paymasters, and sold
numbers of watches, at good premiums, when the troops had money."
Soldiers, he informed me, were reckless spendthrifts; and the prey of
sutlers and sharpers. When there was nothing at hand to purchase, they
gambled away their wages, and most of them left the service penniless
and in debt. He thought it perfectly legitimate to secure some silver
while "going," but complained that the value of his stock rendered him
liable to theft and murder. "There are men in every regiment," said he,
"who would blow out my brains in any lonely place to plunder me of these
watches."
At this point, a young officer, in a fit of bacchanal laughter,
staggered rather roughly against me.
"Begurpardon," he said, with an unsteady bow, "never ran against person
in life before."
I smiled assuringly, but he appeared to think the offence unpardonable.
"Do asshu a, on honor of gentlemand officer, not in custom of behaving
offensively. Azo! leave it to my friends. Entirely due to injuries
received at battle Drainesville."
As the other gentlemen laughed loudly here, I took it for granted that
my apologist had some personal hallucination relative to that
engagement.
"What giggling for, Bob?" he said; "honor concerned in this matter,
Will! Do asshu a, fell under Colonel's horse, and Company A walked over
small of my back." The other officers were only less inebriated and most
of them spoke boastfully of their personal prowess at Drainesville. This
was the only engagement in which the Pennsylvania Reserves had yet
participated, and few officers that I met did not ascribe the victory
entirely to their own individual gallantry. I inquired of these
gentlemen the route to the new encampments of the Reserves. They lay
five miles south of the turnpike, close to the Loudon and Hampshire
railroad, and along both sides of an unfrequented lane. They formed in
this position the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, and had been
ordered to hold themselves in hourly readiness for an advance. By this
time, my friend S. came up, and leaving him to restore his mortified
body, I crossed the road to the churchyard and peered through the open
door into the edifice. The seats of painted pine had been covered with
planks, and a sick man lay above every pew. At the ringing of my spurs
in the threshold, some of the sufferers looked up through the red eyes
of fever, and the faces of others were spectrally white. A few groaned
as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in pain from the glare
of the light. Medicines were kept in the altar-place, and a doctor's
clerk was writing requisitions in the pulpit. The sickening smell of the
hospital forbade me to enter, and walking across the trampled yard, I
crept through a rent in the paling, and examined the huts in which the
Reserves had passed the winter. They were built of logs, plastered with
mud, and the roofs of some were thatched with straw. Each cabin was
pierced for two or more windows; the beds were simply shelves or berths;
a rough fireplace of stones and clay communicated with the wooden
chimney; and the floors were in most cases damp and bare. Streets,
fancifully designated, divided the settlement irregularly; but the
tenements were now all deserted save one, where I found a whole family
of "contrabands" or fugitive slaves. These wretched beings, seven in
number, had escaped from a plantation in Albemarle county, and
travelling stealthily by night, over two hundred miles of precipitous
country, reached the Federal lines on the thirteenth day. The husband
said that his name was "Jeems," and that his wife was called "Kitty;"
that his youngest boy had passed the mature age of eight months, and
that the "big girl, Rosy," was "twelve years Christmas comin'." While
the troops remained at Langley's, the man was employed at seventy-five
cents a week to attend to an officer's horse. Kitty and Rose cooked and
washed for soldiers, and the boys ran errands to Washington and
return,--twenty-five miles! The eldest boy, Jefferson, had been given
the use of a crippled team-horse, and traded in newspapers, but having
confused ideas of the relative value of coins, his profits were only
moderate. The nag died before the troops removed, and a sutler, under
pretence of securing their passage to the North, disappeared with the
little they had saved. They were quite destitute now, but looked to the
future with no foreboding, and huddled together in the straw, made a
picture of domestic felicity that impressed me greatly with the
docility, contentment, and unfailing good humor of their dusky tribe.
The eyes of the children were large and lustrous, and they revealed the
clear pearls beneath their lips as they clung bashfully to their
mother's lap. The old lady was smoking a clay pipe; the man running over
some castaway jackets and boots. I remarked particularly the broad
shoulders and athletic arms of the woman, whose many childbirths had
left no traces upon her comeliness. She asked me, wistfully: "Masser,
how fur to de nawf?"
"A long way," said I, "perhaps two hundred miles."
"Lawd!" she said, buoyantly--"is dat all? Why, Jeems, couldn't we foot
it, honey?"
"You a most guv out before, ole 'oman," he replied; "got a good ruff
over de head now. Guess de white massar won't let um starve."
I tossed some coppers to the children and gave each a sandwich.
"You get up dar, John Thomas!" called the man vigorously; "you tank de
gentleman, Jefferson, boy! I wonda wha your manners is. Tank you,
massar! know'd you was a gentleman, sar! Massar, is your family from ole
Virginny?"
It was five o'clock when I rejoined S., and the greater part of our
journey had yet to be made. I went at his creeping pace until courtesy
yielded to impatience, when spurring my Pegasus vigorously, he fell into
a bouncing amble and left the _attache_ far behind. My pass was again
demanded above Langley's by a man who ate apples as he examined it, and
who was disposed to hold a long parley. I entered a region of scrub
timber further on, and met with nothing human for four miles, at the end
of which distance I reached Difficult Creek, flowing through a rocky
ravine, and crossed by a military bridge of logs. Through the thick
woods to the right, I heard the roar of the Potomac, and a finger-board
indicated that I was opposite Great Falls. Three or four dead horses lay
at the roadside beyond the stream, and I recalled the place as the scene
of a recent cavalry encounter. A cartridge-box and a torn felt hat lay
close to the carcasses: I knew that some soul had gone hence to its
account.
The road now kept to the left obliquely, and much of my ride was made
musical by the stream. Darkness closed solemnly about me, with seven
miles of the journey yet to accomplish, and as, at eight o'clock, I
turned from the turnpike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools,
and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time
possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs,
darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The
phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll,
and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star
floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the
moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and from the
far distance broke the faint howl of farm dogs. A sense of insecurity
that I would not for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my
blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me
reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately,
like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I
looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me
and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could
see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep
challenge came directly from the thicket, and I saw the flash of a
sabre, as I stammered a reply. Led to a cabin close at hand, my pass
was examined by candle-light, and I learned that the nearest camp of the
Reserves was only a mile farther on, and the regiment of which I was in
quest about two miles distant. After another half hour, I reached Ord's
brigade, whose tents were pitched in a fine grove of oaks; the men
talking, singing, and shouting, around open air fires; and a battery of
brass Napoleons unlimbered in front, pointing significantly to the West
and South. For a mile and a half I rode by the light of continuous
camps, reaching at last the quarters of the ----th, commanded by a
former newspaper associate of mine, with whom I had gone itemizing,
scores of times. His regiment had arrived only the same afternoon, and
their tents were not yet pitched. Their muskets were stacked along the
roadside, and the men lay here and there wrapped in their blankets, and
dozing around the fagots. The Colonel was asleep in a wagon, but roused
up at the summons of his Adjutant, and greeting me warmly, directed the
cook to prepare a supper of coffee and fried pork. Too hungry to feel
the chafing of my sores and bruises, I fell to the oleaginous repast
with my teeth and fingers, and eating ravenously, asked at last to be
shown to my apartments. These consisted of a covered wagon, already
occupied by four teamsters, and a blanket which had evidently been in
close proximity to the hide of a horse. A man named "Coggle," being
nudged by the Colonel, and requested to take other quarters, asked
dolorously if it was time to turn out, and roared "woa," as if he had
some consciousness of being kicked. When I asked for a pillow, the
Colonel laughed, and I had an intuition that the man "Coggle" was
looking at me in the darkness with intense disgust. The Colonel said
that he had once put a man on double duty for placing his head on a
snowball, and warned me satirically that such luxuries were preposterous
in the field. He recommended me not to catch cold if I could help it,
but said that people in camp commonly caught several colds at once, and
added grimly that if I wished to be shaved in the morning, there was a
man close by, who had ground a sabre down to the nice edge of a razor,
and who could be made to accommodate me. There were cracks in the bottom
of the wagon, through which the cold came like knives, and I was
allotted a space four feet in length, by three feet in width.
Being six feet in height, my relation to these Procrustean quarters was
most embarassing; but I doubled up, chatteringly, and lay my head on my
arm. In a short time I experienced a sensation akin to that of being
guillotined, and sitting bolt upright, found the teamsters in the
soundest of Lethean conditions. As the man next to me snored very
loudly, I adopted the brilliant idea of making a pillow of his thigh;
which answered my best expectations. I was aroused after a while, by
what I thought to be the violent hands of this person, but which, to my
great chagrin, proved to be S., intent upon dividing my place with me.
Resistance was useless. I submitted to martyrdom with due resignation,
but half resolved to go home in the morning, and shun, for the future,
the horrible romance of camps.