I suppose that very few casual readers of the _New York Herald_ of
August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths,"
the announcement,--
"NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette _Levant_, Lat. 2° 11'
S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission
House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not
choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the
current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
marriages in the _Herald_. My memory for names and people is good, and
the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to
remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have
paused at that announcement, if the officer of the _Levant_ who
reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died May 11th, THE MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it was as "The Man without a Country" that
poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him
in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who
sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine
with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew
that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at
all.
There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's
story. Reason enough there has been till now ever since Madison's
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy
of honour itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan
in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
corps_ of the profession, and the personal honour of its members, that
to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown--and, I think,
to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the
end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
Washington to one of the Crowninshields--who was in the Navy
Department when he came home--he found that the Department ignored the
whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether
it was a "_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy I do
not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no
naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the
poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of
his story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to
be A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
PHILIP NOLAN was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion
of the West," as the Western division of our army was then called.
When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans
in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as
the Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at
some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked
with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in
short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame
to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the
great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted
letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line
did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the
garrison sneered at him, because he lost the fun which they found in
shooting or rowing while he was working away on these grand letters to
his grand friend. They could not understand why Nolan kept by himself
while they were playing high-low-jack. Poker was not yet invented. But
before long the young fellow had his revenge. For this time His
Excellency, Honourable Aaron Burr, appeared again under a very
different aspect. There were rumours that he had an army behind him
and everybody supposed that he had an empire before him. At that time
the youngsters all envied him. Burr had not been talking twenty
minutes with the commander before he asked him to send for Lieutenant
Nolan. Then after a little talk he asked Nolan if he could show him
something of the great river and the plans for the new post. He asked
Nolan to take him out in his skiff to show him a canebrake or a
cottonwood tree, as he said, really to seduce him; and by the time the
sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time,
though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
great treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that
distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's
Sound is to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial
stage; and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams,
got up, for _spectacles_, a string of courts-martial on the officers
there. One and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to
fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was
evidence enough--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to
be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any whither
with anyone who would follow him had the order been signed, "By
command of His Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies
escaped, rightly for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I
say; yet you and I would never have heard of him, reader, but that,
when the president of the court asked him at the close whether he
wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the
United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy--
"Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
again!"
I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan,
who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had
been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his
madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in
the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had
been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish
officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it
was, had been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I
think he told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private
tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with
an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him
"United States" was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United
States" for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn
on his faith as a Christian to be true to "United States." It was
"United States" which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by
his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because "United States" had
picked you out first as one of her own confidential men of honour that
"A. Burr" cared for you a straw more than for the flat-boat men who
sailed his ark for him. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the
reader why he damned his country, and wished he might never hear her
name again.
He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, Sept. 23,
1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
again. For that half-century and more he was a man without a country.
Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared
George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "God save King
George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into
his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a
sheet, to say:
"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! The Court decides, subject
to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the
United States again."
Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added:
"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and
deliver him to the naval commander there."
The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.
"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty
here this evening. The Court is adjourned without day."
I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the
proceedings of the court to Washington city, and explained them to Mr.
Jefferson. Certain it is that the President approved them--certain,
that is, if I may believe the men who say they have seen his
signature. Before the _Nautilus_ got round from New Orleans to the
Northern Atlantic coast with the prisoner on board, the sentence had
been approved, and he was a man without a country.
The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
Navy--it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I
do not remember--was requested to put Nolan on board a government
vessel bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so
far confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of
the country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much
out of favour; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I
have explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But
the commander to whom he was intrusted--perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
though I think it was one of the younger men--we are all old enough
now--regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
died.
When I was second officer of the _Intrepid_, some thirty years after,
I saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever
since that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in
this way--
WASHINGTON (with a date, which
must have been late in 1807).
Sir,
You will receive from Lieutenant Neale the person of Philip
Nolan, late a lieutenant in the United States army.
This person on his trial by court-martial expressed, with an
oath, the wish that he might never hear of the United States
again.
The Court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.
For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by
the President to this Department.
You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him
there with such precautions as shall prevent his escape.
You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and
clothing as would be proper for an officer of his late rank,
if he were a passenger on your vessel on the business of his
Government.
The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable
to themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to
no indignity of any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be
reminded that he is a prisoner.
But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country
or to see any information regarding it; and you will
especially caution all the officers under your command to
take care, that, in the various indulgences which may be
granted, this rule, in which his punishment is involved,
shall not be broken.
It is the intention of the Government that he shall never
again see the country which he has disowned. Before the end
of your cruise you will receive orders which will give
effect to this intention.
Respectfully yours,
W. SOUTHARD, for the
Secretary of the Navy.
If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no
break in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw,
if it were he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to
his, and I suppose the commander of the _Levant_ has it to-day as his
authority for keeping this man in this mild custody.
The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met "the man
without a country" was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No
mess liked to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all
talk of home or the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of
peace or of war--cut off more than half the talk men liked to have at
sea. But it was always thought too hard that he should never meet the
rest of us, except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system.
He was not permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by.
With officers he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he
chose. But he grew shy, though he had favourites: I was one. Then the
captain always asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession
took up the invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship,
you had him at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast
he ate in his own state-room--he always had a state-room--which was
where a sentinel or somebody on the watch could see the door. And
whatever else he ate or drank, he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when
the marines or sailors had any special jollification, they were
permitted to invite "Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan
was sent with some officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of
home while he was there. I believe the theory was that the sight of
his punishment did them good. They called him "Plain-Buttons,"
because, while he always chose to wear a regulation army-uniform, he
was not permitted to wear the army-button, for the reason that it bore
either the initials or the insignia of the country he had disowned.
I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
the older officers from our ship and from the _Brandywine_, which we
had met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo
and the Pyramids. As we jogged along (you went on donkeys then), some
of the gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long
since changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and someone told the
system which was adopted from the first about his books and other
reading. As he was almost never permitted to go on shore, even though
the vessel lay in port for months, his time at the best hung heavy;
and everybody was permitted to lend him books, if they were not
published in America and made no allusion to it. These were common
enough in the old days, when people in the other hemisphere talked of
the United States as little as we do of Paraguay. He had almost all
the foreign papers that came into the ship, sooner or later; only
somebody must go over them first, and cut out any advertisement or
stray paragraph that alluded to America. This was a little cruel
sometimes, when the back of what was cut out might be as innocent as
Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's battles, or one of
Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole, because on the
back of the page of that paper there had been an advertisement of a
packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's message. I say
this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which afterwards I
had enough and more than enough to do with. I remember it, because
poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion to
reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the Cape
of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I ever
knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in
these, was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was
the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of,
but which most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been
published long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of
anything national in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out
the "Tempest" from Shakespeare before he let Nolan have it, because he
said "the Bermudas ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day."
So Nolan was permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of
them sat on deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such
things so often now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal
of time so. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book
and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in
the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border
chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily
through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and
then began, without a thought of what was coming:
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"--
It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
still unconsciously or mechanically--
"This is my own, my native land!"
Then they all saw that something was to pay; but he expected to get
through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,
"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?--
If such there breathe, go, mark him well--"
By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was
any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence
of mind for that; he gagged a little, coloured crimson, and staggered
on--
"For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name.
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self--"
and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up,
swung the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "And by
Jove," said Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I
had to make up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did
not return his Walter Scott to him."
That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have
broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered
his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he
never was the same man again. He never read aloud again unless it was
the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was
not that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly
as a companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew
him--very seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few
friends. He lighted up occasionally--I remember late in his life
hearing him fairly eloquent on something which had been suggested to
him by one of Fléchier's sermons--but generally he had the nervous,
tired look of a heart-wounded man.
When Captain Shaw was coming home--if, as I say, it was Shaw--rather
to the surprise of everybody they made one of the Windward Islands,
and lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were
sick of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came
home. But after several days the _Warren_ came to the same rendezvous;
they exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound
men letters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps
to the Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat
back to try his second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told
to get ready to join her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky
to know that till that moment he was going "home." But this was a
distinct evidence of something he had not thought of, perhaps--that
there was no going home for him, even to a prison. And this was the
first of some twenty such transfers, which brought him sooner or later
into half our best vessels, but which kept him all his life at least
some hundred miles from the country he had hoped he might never hear
of again.
It may have been on that second cruise--it was once when he was up the
Mediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of
those days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the
Bay of Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English
fleet, and there had been great festivities, and our men thought they
must give a great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on
board the _Warren_ I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the
_Warren_, or perhaps ladies did not take up so much room as they do
now. They wanted to use Nolan's state-room for something, and they
hated to do it without asking him to the ball; so the captain said
they might ask him, if they would be responsible that he did not talk
with the wrong people, "who would give him intelligence." So the dance
went on, the finest party that had ever been known, I dare say; for I
never heard of a man-of-war ball that was not. For ladies they had the
family of the American consul, one or two travellers who had
adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English girls and matrons,
perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.
Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking
with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke
to him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the
fellows who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any
_contretemps_. Only when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said,
perhaps--called for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened.
Everybody then danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath,
conferred as to what "American dances" were, and started off with
"Virginia Reel," which they followed with "Money Musk," which, in its
turn in those days, should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen."
But just as Dick, the leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and
bent forward, about to say, in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen,'
gentlemen and ladies!" as he had said "'Virginny Reel,' if you
please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if you please!" the captain's boy tapped
him on the shoulder, whispered to him, and he did not announce the
name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on the air, and they all
fell to--the officers teaching the English girls the figure, but not
telling them why it had no name.
But that is not the story I started to tell. As the dancing went on,
Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said: so much so, that it
seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff and
say:
"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the
honour of dancing?"
He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was with him, could not
hinder him. She laughed and said:
"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all
the same," just nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave Mr.
Nolan to her, and led him off to the place where the dance was
forming.
Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
and at other places had met her, and this was a godsend. You could not
talk in contra-dances as you do in cotillions, or even in the pauses
of waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as
for eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and
Vesuvius, and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had
that long talking time at the bottom of the set, he said boldly--a
little pale, she said, as she told me the story years after--
"And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"
And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
looked through him!
"Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to
hear of home again!"--and she walked directly up the deck to her
husband, and left poor Nolan alone, as he always was.--He did not
dance again. I cannot give any history of him in order; nobody can
now; and, indeed, I am not trying to.
These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I believe them, from
the myths which have been told about this man for forty years. The
lies that have been told about him are legion. The fellows used to say
he was the "Iron Mask;" and poor George Pons went to his grave in the
belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was being punished
for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not very strong
in the historical line.
A happier story than either of these I have told is of the war. That
came along soon after. I have heard this affair told in three or four
ways--and, indeed, it may have happened more than once. But which ship
it was on I cannot tell. However, in one at least, of the great
frigate-duels with the English, in which the navy was really baptised,
it happened that a round-shot from the enemy entered one of our ports
square, and took right down the officer of the gun himself, and almost
every man of the gun's crew. Now you may say what you choose about
courage, but that is not a nice thing to see. But, as the men who were
not killed picked themselves up, and as they and the surgeon's people
were carrying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in his
shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had
been the officer, told them off with authority--who should go to the
cock-pit with the wounded men, who should stay with him--perfectly
cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all is right and
is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with his own
hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed, captain
of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy
struck--sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he
was exposed all the time--showing them easier ways to handle heavy
shot--making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders--and when the
gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any
other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward by way of
encouraging the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said:
"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir."
And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree; the
commodore said:
"I see you do, and I thank you, sir; and I shall never forget this
day, sir, and you never shall, sir."
And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's
sword, in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he
said:
"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."
And when Nolan came, he said:
"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
to-day; you will be named in the despatches."
And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it
to Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it.
Nolan cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword
since that infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards on
occasions of ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the
commodore's.
The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was
about the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at
Washington, and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on
because there was nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession
of the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter,
his father, Essex Porter--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this
Essex. As an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West,
Nolan knew more about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades,
and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right
goodwill in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it
was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That
would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should
have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station
in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this
little watering-place, would have found it was preoccupied. But
Madison and the Virginians, of course, flung all that away.
All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine
his life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in
every sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a
formal way, more officers in our service than any man living knows. He
told me once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so
methodical a life as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask,
and you know how busy he was." He said it did not do for anyone to try
to read all the time, more than to do anything else all the time; and
that he used to read just five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep
up my note-books, writing in them at such and such hours from what I
have been reading; and I include in these my scrap-books." These were
very curious indeed. He had six or eight, of different subjects. There
was one of History, one of Natural Science, one which he called "Odds
and Ends." But they were not merely books of extracts from newspapers.
They had bits of plants and ribbons, shells tied on, and carved scraps
of bone and wood, which he had taught the men to cut for him, and they
were beautifully illustrated. He drew admirably. He had some of the
funniest drawings there, and some of the most pathetic, that I have
ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have Nolan's scrap-books.
Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession.
My Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more.
The men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had
to satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small
game. He was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about
the habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can
tell you whether they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for
telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you
when you strike them--why Linnæus knew as little of that as John Foy
the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily
"occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew
very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise;
and I never heard that he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was
the kindest nurse in the world; and he knew more than half the
surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or died, or if the captain
wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was always ready to read
prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.
My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after
the English war, on my first voyage after I was appointed a
midshipman. It was in the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty,
while the Reigning House, which was still the House of Virginia, had
still a sort of sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of
the Middle Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were
in the South Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I
believe I thought Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain--a chaplain with a
blue coat. I never asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange
to me. I knew it was green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought
there was a "Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our
mess once a week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing
was to be said about home. But if they had told us not to say anything
about the planet Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have
asked why; there were a great many things which seemed to me to have
as little reason. I first came to understand anything about "the man
without a country" one day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner
which had slaves on board. An officer was sent to take charge of her,
and, after a few minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that someone
might be sent him who could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over
the rail when the message came, and we all wished we could interpret,
when the captain asked who spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers
did; and just as the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the
people could, Nolan stepped out and said he should be glad to
interpret, if the captain wished, as he understood the language. The
captain thanked him, fitted out another boat with him, and in this
boat it was my luck to go.
When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never
want to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of
the nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way
of making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had
had their handcuffs, and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for
convenience's sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the
schooner's crew. The negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and
swarming all round the dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding
Vaughan and addressing him in every dialect, and _patois_ of a
dialect, from the Zulu click up to the Parisian of Beledeljereed.
As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he
had mounted in desperation, and said--
"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches
understand something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet
them. I knocked that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe
him. And then I talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be
hanged if they understood that as well as they understood the
English."
Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had
worked for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."
Nolan "put that into Spanish," that is, he explained it in such
Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such
of the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
Cape Palmas."
This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from
the homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is
they would be eternally separated from home there. And their
interpreters, as we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non
Palmas_" and began to propose infinite other expedients in most
voluble language. Vaughan was rather disappointed at this result of
his liberality, and asked Nolan eagerly what they said. The drops
stood on poor Nolan's white forehead, as he hushed the men down, and
said:
"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother who will die
if they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick,
and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help
them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of
home, and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And
this one says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from
his home in six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal
barracoon."
Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's
almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he
said:
"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of
the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White
Desert, they shall go home!"
And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to
kissing him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.
But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go
back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me: "Youngster, let that
show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and
without a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to 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. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self,
while you do everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and
send, and talk about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought,
the farther you have to travel from it; and rush back to it when you
are free, as that poor black slave is doing now. And for your country,
boy," and the words rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he
pointed to the ship, "never dream a dream but of serving her as she
bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No
matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses
you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray
God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you
have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even,
there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her
as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would
stand by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her
to-day!"
I was frightened to death by his, calm, hard passion; but I blundered
out that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought
of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did,
almost in a whisper, say: "O, if anybody had said so to me when I was
of your age!"
I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for
I never told this story till now, which afterward made us great
friends. He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at
night, to walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to
me a great deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for
mathematics. He lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He
never alluded so directly to his story again; but from one and another
officer I have learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we
parted from him in St. Thomas harbour, at the end of our cruise, I was
more sorry than I can tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830;
and later in life, when I thought I had some influence in Washington,
I moved heaven and earth to have him discharged. But it was like
getting a ghost out of prison. They pretended there was no such man,
and never was such a man. They will say so at the Department now!
Perhaps they do not know. It will not be the first thing in the
service of which the Department appears to know nothing!
There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when
a party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
believe to be a lie; or, rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_,
involving a tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him
how he liked to be "without a country." But it is clear from Burr's
life, that nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this
only as an illustration of the stories which get a-going where there
is the least mystery at bottom.
Philip Nolan, poor fellow, repented of his folly, and then, like a
man, submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally
added to the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him
in hold. Accidents would happen; but never from his fault. Lieutenant
Truxton told me that, when Texas was annexed, there was a careful
discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of Nolan's
handsome set of maps and cut Texas out of it--from the map of the
world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that
to do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or,
as Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it
was from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own
table, when, for a short time, I was in command of the _George
Washington_ corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in
the La Plata, and some of the officers, who had been on shore and had
just joined again, were entertaining us with accounts of their
misadventures in riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan
was at table, and was in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some
story of a tumble reminded him of an adventure of his own when he was
catching wild horses in Texas with his adventurous cousin, at a time
when he must have been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal
of spirit--so much so, that the silence which often follows a good
story hung over the table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan
himself. For he asked perfectly unconsciously:
"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for
nearly twenty years."
There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never
heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut
out of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that,
while he read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of
California--this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled
so far, and I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and
Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at each other and tried not
to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted by the third link
in the chain of the captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a
convulsion of sneezing. Nolan himself saw that something was to pay,
he did not know what. And I, as master of the feast, had to say:
"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's
curious account of Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome?"
After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least
twice a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially
intimate; but he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in
those fifteen years he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but
that he was still the same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that
he ever was, bearing as best he could his self-appointed
punishment--rather less social, perhaps, with new men whom he did not
know, but more anxious, apparently, than ever to serve and befriend
and teach the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now
it seems the dear old fellow is dead. He has found a home at last, and
a country.
Since writing this, and while considering whether or not I would print
it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of
to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from
Danforth, who is on board the _Levant_, a letter which gives an
account of Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling
this story.
The reader will understand Danforth's letter, or the beginning of it,
if he will remember that after ten years of Nolan's exile everyone who
had him in charge was in a very delicate position. The government had
failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an
action of false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had
had him in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have
reason to think that other officers did the same thing. But the
Secretary always said, as they so often do at Washington, that there
were no special orders to give, and that we must act on our own
judgment. That means, "If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you
fail, you will be disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over
now, though I do not know but I expose myself to a criminal
prosecution on the evidence of the very revelation I am making.
Here is the letter:
LEVANT, 2° 2' S. at 131° W.