Love of country is a sentiment so universal that it is only on such rare
occasions as called this book into being that there is any need of
discussing it or justifying it. There is a perfectly absurd statement by
Charles Kingsley, in the preface to one of his books, written fifty
years ago, in which he says that, while there can be loyalty to a king
or a queen, there cannot be loyalty to one's country.
This story of Philip Nolan was written in the darkest period of the
Civil War, to show what love of country is. There were persons then who
thought that if their advice had been taken there need have been no
Civil War. There were persons whose every-day pursuits were greatly
deranged by the Civil War. It proved that the lesson was a lesson gladly
received. I have had letters from seamen who read it as they were lying
in our blockade squadrons off the mouths of Southern harbors. I have had
letters from men who read it soon after the Vicksburg campaign. And in
other ways I have had many illustrations of its having been of use in
what I have a right to call the darkest period of the Republic.
To-day we are not in the darkest period of the Republic.
This nation never wishes to make war. Our whole policy is a policy of
peace, and peace is the protection of the Christian civilization to
which we are pledged. It is always desirable to teach young men and
young women, and old men and old women, and all sorts of people, to
understand what the country is. It is a Being. The LORD, God of nations,
has called it into existence, and has placed it here with certain duties
in defence of the civilization of the world.
It was the intention of this parable, which describes the life of one
man who tried to separate himself from his country, to show how terrible
was his mistake.
It does not need now that a man should curse the United States, as
Philip Nolan did, or that he should say he hopes he may never hear her
name again, to make it desirable for him to consider the lessons which
are involved in the parable of his life. Any man is "without a country
who, by his sneers, or by looking backward, or by revealing his
country's secrets to her enemy, checks for one hour the movements which
lead to peace among the nations of the world, or weakens the arm of the
nation in her determination to secure justice between man and man, and
in general to secure the larger life of her people." He has not damned
the United States in a spoken oath.
All the same he is a dastard child.
There is a definite, visible Progress in the affairs of this world.
Jesus Christ at the end of his life prayed to God that all men might
become One, "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also
may be one in us."
The history of the world for eighteen hundred and seventy years since he
spoke has shown the steady fulfilment of the hope expressed in this
prayer.
Men are nearer unity--they are nearer to being one--than they were then.
Thus, at that moment each tribe in unknown America was at war with each
other tribe. At this moment there is not one hostile weapon used by one
American against another, from Cape Bathurst at the north to the
southern point of Patagonia.
At that moment Asia, Africa, and Europe were scenes of similar discord.
Europe herself knows so little of herself that no man would pretend to
say which Longbeards were cutting the throats of other Longbeards, or
which Scots were lying in ambush for which Britons, in any year of the
first century of our era.
Call it the "Philosophy of History," or call it the "Providence of God,"
it is certain that the unity of the race of man has asserted itself as
the Saviour of mankind said it should.
In this growing unity of mankind it has come about that the Sultan of
Turkey cannot permit the massacre of Armenian Christians without
answering for such permission before the world.
It has come about that no viceroy, serving a woman, who is the guardian
of a boy, can be permitted to starve at his pleasure two hundred
thousand of God's children. The world is so closely united--that is to
say, unity is so real--that when such a viceroy does undertake to commit
such an iniquity, somebody shall hold his hands.
The story of Philip Nolan was published in such a crisis that it met the
public eye and interest. It met the taste of the patriotic public at the
moment. It was copied everywhere without the slightest deference to
copyright. It was, by the way, printed much more extensively in England
than it was in America. Immediately there began to appear a series of
speculations based on what you would have said was an unimportant error
of mine. My hero is a purely imaginary character. The critics are right
in saying that not only there never was such a man, but there never
could have been such a man. But he had to have a name. And the choice of
a name in a novel is a matter of essential importance, as it proved to
be here.
Now I had a hero who was a young man in 1807. He knew nothing at that
time but the valley of the Mississippi River. "He had been educated on a
plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer, or a French
merchant from Orleans." He must therefore have a name familiar to
Western people at that time. Well, I remembered that in the preposterous
memoirs of General James Wilkinson's, whenever he had a worse scrape
than usual to explain, he would say that the papers were lost when Mr.
Nolan was imprisoned or was killed in Texas. This Mr. Nolan, as
Wilkinson generally calls him, had been engaged with Wilkinson in some
speculations mostly relating to horses. Remembering this, I took the
name Nolan for my hero. I made my man the real man's brother. "He had
spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas."
And again:--"he was catching wild horses in Texas with his adventurous
cousin." [Note: Young authors may observe that he is called a brother in
one place and a cousin in another, because such slips would take place
in a real narrative. Proofreaders do not like them, but they give a
plausibility to the story.] I had the impression that Wilkinson's
partner was named Stephen, and as Philip and Stephen were both
evangelists in the Bible, I named my man Philip Nolan, on the
supposition that the mother who named one son Stephen would name another
Philip. It was not for a year after, that, in looking at Wilkinson's
"Memoirs" again, I found to my amazement, not to say my dismay, that
Wilkinson's partner was named Philip Nolan. We had, therefore, two
Philip Nolans, one a real historical character, who was murdered by the
Spaniards on the 21st of March, 1801, at Waco in Texas; the other a
purely imaginary character invented by myself, who appears for the first
time on the 23d of September, 1807, at a court-martial at Fort Adams.
I supposed nobody but myself in New England had ever heard of Philip
Nolan. But in the Southwest, in Texas and Louisiana, it was but
sixty-two years since the Spaniards murdered him. In truth, it was the
death of Nolan, the real Philip Nolan, killed by one Spanish governor
while he held the safe-conduct of another, which roused that wave of
indignation in the Southwest which ended in the independence of Texas.
I think the State of Texas would do well, to-day, if it placed the
statue of the real Phil Nolan in the Capitol at Washington by the side
of that of Sam Houston.
In the midst of the war the story was published in the "Atlantic
Monthly," of December, 1863. In the Southwest the "Atlantic" at once
found its way into regions where the real Phil Nolan was known. A writer
in the "New Orleans Picayune," in a careful historical paper, explained
at length that I had been mistaken all the way through, that Philip
Nolan never went to sea, but to Texas. I received a letter from a lady
in Baltimore who told me that two widowed sisters of his lived in that
neighborhood. Unfortunately for me, this letter, written in perfectly
good faith, was signed E. F. M. Fachtz. I was receiving many letters on
the subject daily. I supposed that my correspondent was concealing her
name, and was really "Eager for More Facts." When in reality I had the
pleasure of meeting her a year or two afterwards, the two widowed
sisters of the real Phil Nolan were both dead.
But in 1876 I was fortunate enough, on the kind invitation of Mr. Miner,
to visit his family in their beautiful plantation at Terre Bonne. There
I saw an old negro who was a boy when Master Phil Nolan left the old
plantation on the Mississippi River for the last time. Master Phil Nolan
had then married Miss Fanny Lintot, who was, I think, the aunt of my
host. He permitted me to copy the miniature of the young adventurer.
I have since done my best to repair the error by which I gave Philip
Nolan's name to another person, by telling the story of his fate in a
book called "Philip Nolan's Friends." For the purpose of that book, I
studied the history of Miranda's attempt against Spain, and of John
Adams's preparations for a descent of the Mississippi River. The
professional historians of the United States are very reticent in their
treatment of these themes. At the time when John Adams had a little army
at Cincinnati, ready to go down and take New Orleans, there were no
Western correspondents to the Eastern Press.
Within a year after the publication of the "Man without a Country" in
the "Atlantic" more than half a million copies of the story had been
printed in America and in England. I had curious accounts from the army
and navy, of the interest with which it was read by gentlemen on duty.
One of our officers in the State of Mississippi lent the "Atlantic" to a
lady in the Miner family. She ran into the parlor, crying out, "Here is
a man who knows all about uncle Phil Nolan." An Ohio officer, who
entered the city of Jackson, in Mississippi, with Grant, told me that he
went at once to the State House. Matters were in a good deal of
confusion there, and he picked up from the floor a paper containing the
examination of _Philip Nolan_, at Walnut Springs, the old name of
Vicksburg. This was before the real Philip's last expedition. The United
States authorities, in the execution of the neutrality laws, had called
him to account, and had made him show the evidence that he had the
permission of the Governor of New Orleans for his expedition.
In 1876 I visited Louisiana and Texas, to obtain material for "Philip
Nolan's Friends." I obtained there several autographs of the real Phil
Nolan,--and the original Spanish record of one of the trials of the
survivors of his party,--a trial which resulted in the cruel execution
of Ephraim Blackburn, seven years after he was arrested. That whole
transaction, wholly ignored by all historians of the United States known
to me, is a sad blot on the American administration of the Spanish
kings. Their excuse is the confusion of everything in Madrid between
1801 and 1807. The hatred of the Mexican authorities among our
frontiersmen of the Southwest is largely due to the dishonor and cruelty
of those transactions.