last day of October. Thousands of spectators assembled to behold the
detested Cornwallis surrender the army they had hated and feared.
The Americans, commanded by General Washington in full uniform, and the
French troops, under Count Rochambeau, were drawn up in two lines. At
length a splendid charger issued through the gate, bearing not the hated
Cornwallis as expected, but General O'Hara. So overcome was Lord
Cornwallis with the consciousness of his defeat by the "raw Americans,"
that, feigning illness, he refused to appear.
The British troops in new uniforms, in striking contrast to the worn and
faded garb of the colonists, followed the officer with colors furled.
Coming opposite General Washington, O'Hara saluted and presented the
sword of Cornwallis. A tense silence pervaded the assembly. General
Washington motioned that the sword be given to General Lincoln.
Apparently forgetful of the indignities heaped upon him by the British
at Charleston, the latter returned the sword to General O'Hara,
remarking as he did so, "Kindly return it to his Lordship, Sir."
"Ground arms" came the order from the British officers. The troops
complied sullenly; the humiliation felt by them in their defeat was
everywhere apparent.
The next day the conquered army marched out of Yorktown between the
American and French troops. Their fifers, with a brave show of humor,
played, "The World's turned Upside Down." Washington had directed his
soldiers to show no disrespect nor unkindness to the defeated troops.
But the remembrance of "Yankee Doodle," as played by the Britons in
their times of conquest, in taunting derision of the Americans, proved
too much for the latter to endure without return, when supreme occasion
such as this offered. To the strains of "Yankee Doodle Do," from
American fifes, Lord Cornwallis and his army bade adieu to the scenes
wherein they had once marched as conquerors.
In thanksgiving to God was voiced the nation's exultation. Congress
adjourned the sessions and the members repaired to church to give
thanks; business was suspended in all places. Throughout the land the
voice of the people was raised in a mighty chorus of prayer and praise
to the Almighty.
YORKTOWN
FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill:
Who curbs his steed at head of one?
Hark! the low murmur: Washington!
Who bends his keen, approving glance
Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and plume of snow?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!
The earth which bears this calm array
Shook with the war-charge yesterday;
Plowed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,
Shot down and bladed thick with steel;
October's clear and noonday sun
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun;
And down night's double blackness fell,
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines;
While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,
The conquered hosts of England go;
O'Hara's brow belies his dress,
Gay Tarleton's troops ride bannerless;
Shout from the fired and wasted homes,
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!
Nor thou alone: with one glad voice
Let all thy sister States rejoice:
Let Freedom, in whatever clime
She waits with sleepless eye her time,
Shouting from cave and mountain wood
Make glad her desert solitude,
While they who hunt her, quail with fear;
The New World's chain lies broken here!
WHITTIER.
FROM THE OTHER SIDE
(1812)
THE year 1812 witnessed our second war with Great Britain. In an effort
to prevent emigration from her shores England claimed the right to seize
any of her subjects upon any vessel of the high seas. America denied her
right to do this on American ships. Disagreement broke into open
rupture. War with the mother country was again declared.
The doughty American seamen would not wait for attack upon them, but
went forth aggressively against the squadron of the British. Oddly
enough, considering the condition of the poorly equipped navy, they were
remarkably successful and captured more than two hundred and fifty
prizes. The following year, however, the British gained the ascendency,
and in 1814 came in with sea force and land force and sacked and burned
the Capitol at Washington and all public buildings except the patent
office.
They then proceeded against Baltimore. The land troops were almost in
sight of the city of their desires, when they were halted and held in
check by American troops under General Sticker, whose name, it may be
said, meant as it sounded, and who effectually prevented their further
advance. But the fleet on the waters sailed into the bay of Baltimore
and up to Fort McHenry at the mouth of the Patapsco River, in the
determination to bombard the fortress and compel entrance to the city in
that way. The British admiral had boasted the fort would fall to his
hand an easy prey.
Prior to this, Dr. William Beane, a citizen of Baltimore and a
non-combatant, had been captured at Marlboro and was held a prisoner on
one of the vessels of the British fleet. To secure his release, Francis
Scott Key and John Skinner set out from Baltimore on the ship _Minden_
flying a flag of truce. The British admiral received them kindly and
released Dr. Beane; but detained the three on board ship pending the
bombardment of the fort, lest in their return to land the intentions of
the British might be frustrated.
[Illustration: FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET THEY WATCHED THE SHOT AND SHELL
POURED INTO THE FORT AND NOTED WITH INFINITE JOY THAT THE FLAG STILL
FLEW.]
Thus from the side of the enemy they were constrained to witness the
efforts of destruction urged against the protecting fortress of their
own city. From sunrise to sunset they watched the shot and shell poured
into the fort and noted with infinite joy that the flag still flew.
Through the glare of the artillery, as the night advanced, they caught
now and then the gleam of the flag still flying. Would it be there at
another sunrise? Who could tell! Suddenly the cannonading ceased. The
British, despairing of carrying the fort, abandoned the project. In the
emotion of the hour and inspiration born of the victory, Key composed
the immortal lines now become our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled
Banner."
The flag is preserved in the museum of Washington and is distinctive in
having fifteen stripes and fifteen stars, one of the very few national
flags with this number.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
OH, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thro' the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner; oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that land who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and wild war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
THE DEFENSE OF THE CRESCENT CITY
UPON every recurrence of January the eighth, the city of New Orleans
dons gala attire and shouts herself hoarse with rejoicing. She chants
the _Te Deum_ in her Cathedrals; and lays wreaths of immortelles and
garlands of roses and sweet-smelling shrubs upon the monument of Andrew
Jackson in Jackson Square.
"The Saviour of New Orleans," the inhabitants called Jackson in the
exuberance of their gratitude for his defense of the city, and their
deliverance from threatened peril, that fateful day of January, 1815.
From capture and pillage and divers evil things he saved her, and the
Crescent City has not forgotten.
Neither indeed has the nation become unmindful of his great achievement,
but upon each succeeding anniversary of the battle of New Orleans--that
remarkable battle that gloriously ended the War of 1812, and restored
the national pride and honor so sorely wounded by the fall of
Washington--celebrates the event in the chief cities of the United
States.
During our second clash of arms with England, the Creek War, wherein the
red man met his doom, brought Jackson's name into prominence. At one
bound, as it were, he sprang from comparative obscurity into renown.
In 1814 he was appointed a major general in the United States army, and
established his headquarters at Mobile. He repulsed the English at Fort
Bowyer, on Mobile Point, and awaited orders from Washington to attack
them at Pensacola, where, through the sympathy of the Spaniards who were
then in possession of the Florida peninsula, they had their base of
operations.
Receiving no orders from Washington, he became impatient of delay, and
upon his own responsibility marched his troops against Pensacola and put
the British to flight. "This," says Sumner, "was the second great step
in the war in the Southwest."
Washington had been captured and her principal public buildings burned,
and New Orleans, the Crescent City, would now, it was thought, be the
next point of attack by the British.
To New Orleans, therefore, "to defend a defenseless city, which had
neither fleets nor forts, means nor men," came Jackson.
His entrance into the city was quiet and unostentatious and so devoid of
the pomp and pageantry of a victorious general as to cause question in
the minds of some as to whether or not this was the man expected. His
dress was plain in the extreme, and bore upon it no insignia of rank;
yet those there were, of insight, who saw in his every aspect the man of
power.
From eye and posture and gesture emanated a certain indefinable force
that attracted men to him, and created in them an enthusiasm for his
cause. Old and young who came under his influence were ready to do his
bidding.
To the terrified women and children of New Orleans who appealed to him
for protection from the enemy, he replied:--
"The British shall not enter the city except over my dead body."
His words and his presence inspired confidence. And when his flag was
run up above his headquarters in Royal Street a sense of security was
felt by the inhabitants.
The conditions about him, however, were far from promising, and to a
less determined spirit than that of Jackson would have been appalling.
The troops under him were few in number and poorly equipped for battle.
The Crescent City was ill equipped for defense. The governor and the
Legislature were at loggerheads.
As was his way in a crisis, General Jackson took matters into his own
hands.
He placed the city under martial law and made every man a sailor or a
soldier compelled to the restrictions and the rules governing the army.
He was aware that his action was open to severe censure, but in the face
of the object to be attained he held this as of little consequence.
While engaged in examining a situation for a fortification in one
direction, the British effected a landing in another. They had captured
the American flotilla guarding the entrance to Lake Borgne and were
making ready to advance upon the city.
This information brought consternation to the inhabitants but not to the
indomitable Jackson. Obstacles to him were but objects to be overcome.
He swung his troops into line and went out to meet the enemy. The
advance was checked by a sharp engagement with little loss to either
side.
He then set the little schooner _Carolina_, in the Mississippi, to
bombarding the levee where the British gunners had taken refuge. With
her guns continuously roaring she kept the Britishers at bay for three
whole days, when she succumbed to their heavy fire and exploded. Her
entire crew escaped with the exception of one man killed and six
wounded.
On the field of Chalmette, a few miles below New Orleans, the opposing
armies threw up intrenchments from the same soft ooze and mud, so close
they now stood to each other. From an upper room of the McCarte mansion
house--the home of a wealthy Creole--General Jackson surveyed the
operations of the enemy; and directed the movements of his own troops.
December the 28th an advance was made by the British on the American
lines but without significant results. On New Year's Day another attack
was made.
In the interim between these assaults went out an order from General
Jackson to Governor Claiborne that involved the general for years
thereafter in legal complications with the Louisiana Legislature. News
was borne to General Jackson on the field that the Legislature was
preparing to capitulate New Orleans in the belief that the city would be
captured.
"Tell Claiborne," said the irate Jackson, "to blow them up."
Later, he wrote to Governor Claiborne, in case the report was true, to
place a guard at the door of the legislative hall and keep the members
in it; where they could, he satirically remarked to a friend, have full
time to make some wholesome laws for the State without distraction from
outside matters.
Through mistake in the execution of the order, the enraged lawmakers
were kept outside of the assembly hall instead of in it, and the session
was broken up.
* * * * *
At break of dawn that memorable day of January 8th, 1815, the British
were prepared to attack.
Jackson and his valorous volunteers were ready. A pygmy force were they
against a mighty one! Raw recruits contending against the trained
veterans of Wellington's army, led by the gallant Pakenham!
The signal rocket went up.
The long red lines advanced over the field.
But to what a fate!
"Don't shoot till you can see the whites of their eyes!"--Jackson had
instructed.
"_Fire!_"
When the smoke cleared, British soldiers, dead and dying, thickly
strewed the ground.
Intrenched behind their barricades of cotton bales and sand and mud, the
Americans were scarcely touched.
The murderous fire went on.
The British columns reeled and broke.
General Pakenham heroically waved his troops forward and fell, wounded
to death.
General Gibbs, second in command, was struck down.
General Keane was disabled.
The leaders were fallen! The troops were disordered.
In the distance the red lines receded.
_Jackson had won._
* * * * *
In less than thirty minutes the unequal conflict had ended, save in the
silencing of the guns, which required two hours to accomplish.
Never in the annals of history has such a victory been recorded.
The loss to the English was two thousand killed, wounded, and captured.
The American loss was but eight killed and thirteen wounded.
General Jackson marched his victorious troops into New Orleans, where he
was received with the wildest enthusiasm.
The whole country applauded and rejoiced.
_Andrew Jackson had become the Hero of the Nation._
At Ghent, two weeks before the battle, the Treaty of Peace between
England and the United States had been signed; but the ship bearing the
news had not then reached this country.
But--Jackson had finished the war--had "finished the war in GLORY!"
THE CIVIL WAR
(1861)
THE War between the States in 1861 was one of the most terrible
conflicts known to modern times.
Many causes led up to it, chief among which was a difference in the
interpretation of the Constitution by the people of the North and of the
South. The slavery question was also a point of dispute; and several
minor causes brought about a dissension in the two sections that
resulted in the gigantic struggle of friend against friend, brother
against brother, father against son.
The early engagements of the contending forces were ones of signal
victory to the South. The disunion of the nation was so seriously
threatened as to bring grave concern to the Federal government. As the
weeks and months wore away, victory perched above the banner of the
Federals, and the climax was reached in the surrender of General Lee at
Appomattox, after four years of deadly strife.
Both sides fought valiantly. Both won; in that the glory of the Republic
was to stand henceforth supreme among foreign nations, the greatness of
the combatants to receive a recognition never to be effaced.
Through a perspective of fifty years of peace, the heroism displayed on
either field by those engaged therein is, to the most partisan observer,
silhouetted upon the mental vision in glowing lines of light. Justly we
term it "Our most Heroic Period."
Not the least remarkable of this aftermath, transcending all experiences
of other nations, is the brotherhood, the kindly feeling of sympathy and
understanding, that after the passage of but half a century now binds
the once warring sections in indissoluble bonds of unity.
CHARLESTON
CALM as that second summer which precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds,
The city bides the foe.
As yet, behind their ramparts, stern and proud,
Her bolted thunders sleep,--
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
Looms o'er the solemn deep.
No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scaur
To guard the holy strand;
But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war
Above the level sand.
And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,
Unseen, beside the flood,--
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched,
That wait and watch for blood.
Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.
And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim,
Over a bleeding hound,
Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
Whose sword she sadly bound.
Thus girt without and garrisoned at home,
Day patient following day,
Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome,
Across her tranquil bay.
Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands
And spicy Indian ports,
Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands,
And summer to her courts.
But still, along yon dim Atlantic line,
The only hostile smoke
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine,
From some frail floating oak.
Shall the spring dawn, and she, still clad in smiles,
And with an unscathed brow,
Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles,
As fair and free as now?
We know not; in the temple of the Fates
God has inscribed her doom:
And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits
The triumph or the tomb.
HENRY TIMROD.
FREDERICKSBURG
Dec. 13, 1862
THE increasing moonlight drifts across my bed,
And on the church-yard by the road, I know
It falls as white and noiselessly as snow.
'Twas such a night two weary summers fled;
The stars, as now, were waning overhead.
Listen! Again the shrill-lipped bugles blow
Where the swift currents of the river flow
Past Fredericksburg: far off the heavens are red
With sudden conflagration: on yon height,
Linstock in hand, the gunners hold their breath:
A signal-rocket pierces the dense night,
Flings its spent stars upon the town beneath:
Hark! the artillery massing on the right,
Hark! the black squadrons wheeling down to Death!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
CIVIL WAR[2]
"RIFLEMAN, shoot me a fancy shot
Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette;
Ring me a ball in the glittering spot
That shines on his breast like an amulet!"
"Ah, Captain! here goes for a fine-drawn bead,
There's music around when my barrel's in tune!"
Crack! went the rifle, the messenger sped,
And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon.
"Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatch
From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood;
A button, a loop, or that luminous patch
That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud!"
"O, Captain! I staggered, and sunk on my track,
When I gazed on the face of that fallen vidette,
For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,
That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet."
"But I snatched off the trinket,--this locket of gold;
An inch from the center my lead broke its way,
Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,
Of a beautiful lady in bridal array."
"Ha! Rifleman, fling me the locket!--'tis she,
My brother's young bride, and the fallen dragoon
Was her husband--Hush! soldier, 'twas Heaven's decree,
We must bury him there, by the light of the moon!
"But hark! the far bugles their warnings unite;
War is a virtue,--weakness a sin;
There's a lurking and loping around us to-night;
Load again, rifleman, keep your hand in!"
CHARLES DAWSON SHANLY.
[2] The above has been sometimes entitled "The Fancy Shot." It
appeared first in a London weekly and is commonly attributed to
Charles Dawson Shanly, who died in the late seventies.
'ROUND SHILOH CHURCH
WITHIN Shiloh Church that fateful day of 1862, no sound of song or
praise was heard. But all without the leaden missiles rang and sang in
chorus of red death. Green blades of grass, dew-tipped, sprang up to
greet the sun that April morn, but ere night fell were bowed to earth
with weight of human blood. Ne'er before had little church looked out on
such a scene. Ten thousand homes and hearts of North and South were
there made desolate; and twice ten thousand men gave up their lives. The
world looked on and wondered.
Albert Sidney Johnston, the hero of three wars, had staked his life and
cause that April day, for victory or defeat.
He met--both.
It was recognized by both the Northern and Southern armies that Johnston
was a formidable antagonist. That he was a man of most magnetic
personality as well as a brave officer.
Where he led men followed.
The Black Hawk War made his name familiar throughout the country. In the
War with Mexico he won distinction.
As he reviewed his troops at Shiloh, he beheld on every side his friends
of other days, and men who had served under him on other fields.
When the War between the States came on, Johnston was a brigadier
general in the United States Army; and although he was offered any
position he might desire with the Federal government, he resigned to
cast his lot with the South, and against the land of his ancestry, for
he was a son of Connecticut. Texas had been his home, and to the Lone
Star State he felt his allegiance due.
Disappointment, as pertained to his life ambitions, had often before
waited upon his footsteps when the thing desired seemed ready to his
grasp. Yet, seeing his duty clearly, he did it.
To his sister by marriage, when she, in surprise at his action in
resigning, wrote him in California, where he was then stationed, he
replied that he was deeply sensible of the "calamitious condition" of
the country; and that whatever his part thereafter regarding it, he
congratulated himself that no act of his had aided in bringing it about;
that the adjustment of the difficulties by the sword was not in his
judgment the remedy.
Secession was to him a grievous thing.
Arriving at Richmond from the West, General Johnston was given the
command of the Western Department of the Confederacy.
From September to February, 1862, he held the line against heavy odds at
Bowling Green, Ky., when he retreated to Corinth, Miss., where he
assembled his entire army and attacked Grant at Shiloh Church near
Pittsburg Landing, Tenn.
In the flush tide of a great victory, he was struck by a Minie ball and
expired in a few moments.