William Walker, the "Grey-eyed Man of Destiny," who was in 1854 more
talked about than any other man in the country, was our guest for
several days in Richmond. Whether he came to accept a dinner given him
by the city, or whether the dinner was the result of the visit, I cannot
remember. Although we knew him to be an interesting character, we were
unprepared for the throng that filled our house every day while he was
with us. Beginning early in the day, they poured in until night, and
remained, spellbound by the magnetism of this wonderful man. As we could
not invite them to leave for the three o'clock dinner (the dinner-hour
in Virginia varied then to suit individual convenience), I took counsel
of my blessed old negro cook, and following her advice, I spread a
table every day with cold dishes,—tongue, ham, chickens, birds, salads,
etc.,—to which all were made welcome. The sideboard ably supplemented
this informal meal. Old Madeira could be had in those days, and in lieu
of the cocktail of the present time, we brewed an appetizer, crowned
with "the herb that grows on the grave of good Virginians."
The Richmond market was insufficient for sudden demands. We depended
largely upon the small, covered country carts, intercepting them as they
passed on their way to the grocers', who bartered things dry and liquid
for the farmers' poultry, eggs, and butter. At this time of my distress,
no carts hove in sight, but I knew a grocer with a noble soul,—one Mark
Downey,—to whom I made a personal appeal, and he promised to send me,
daily, everything he could gather, from a roasting pig to a reed-bird.
My good cook rose to the occasion: "Ain't that Gin'al gone yet?" was
her morning salutation, hastily adding, "Nem-mine, honey! We-all kin
git along."
In some of the biographical sketches of William Walker I find him
painted as little better—in fact, no better—than a pirate; a man of
an unbounded stomach for power and place, regarding as nothing life,
property, or his own word, and finally, justly forsaken and punished.
Others present him to posterity as a scholar, an author, a graduate of
colleges, a student at Heidelberg, also a hero of the first water, brave
beyond compare; a maker of republics, statesman, dictator,—in all things
fearless and dashing. When I turn to the storehouse of my own memory, I
find a modest, courtly gentleman, with a strong but not ungentle face:—
"The mildest mannered man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat."
Of course I could not appear in the crowd that hung upon his lips all
day, but when we gathered around the evening lamp he was never too
weary to talk to me—but not about his conquests nor his ambitions. For
a woman's ear he had gentler themes than these.
One night I startled my husband by asking, "What church do you belong
to, General?"
[Illustration: WILLIAM WALKER.]
"I have recently become a Catholic," he answered gravely; "it is the
faith for a man like me! I have seen the poor wounded fellows die with
great serenity after the ministration of their priest."
I recall a striking remark by the General to my husband. He said men
are commonly equally courageous, the difference between them being that
one man, from keener sensibility, sees a danger of which another is
stolidly insensible. The former is really courageous, while the latter
is indifferent from lack of apprehension. Himself incapable of fear, a
higher authority on the subject cannot be imagined.
When he took leave of us, he gave me a perfect ambrotype picture of
himself, probably the only genuine one extant. "Here I am, Madam,
and I've always been called an ugly fellow." I ventured the usual
deprecatory remark, but he shook his head:—
"I'm afraid there's no doubt about it! On my way here I heard a man
close to my car-window sing out, 'Whar's the Gray-eyed Man of Destiny?'
As he was close to me, I leaned out and said in a low tone, '_Here_,
my friend!' 'Friend nothin,' he sneered; 'an' you'd better take in your
ugly mug.'"
He looked back from the carriage that took him to the depot and answered
my waving handkerchief: "Good-by, good-by, dear lady! I'm going to make
Nicaragua a nice place, fit for you!"
Just as we were about to engage in our own life-and-death struggle, we
heard he had been betrayed, as Napoleon was betrayed, by the English,
to whom, after defeat, he had fled for protection, and had met his death
bravely.
His dream had been to win Nicaragua, as Houston had won Texas, and
then annex it to the United States, thus strengthening the power of the
South.
I have been told that many superstitions and legends have sprung up in
Nicaragua and Honduras to cluster around the memory of William Walker,
but in none is there a firmer belief than that his ghost appears on
the anniversary of his death, and will so appear until he is avenged. A
Tennessee boy, William G. Erwin, now helping to superintend the digging
of the Panama Canal, has told the legend, in Senator Taylor's magazine,
from which I select a few verses:—
_"One night each year in Honduras, they clear the roads for his
ghost,
Their long dead Gringo President—who rides with his phantom host.
He sweeps o'er the land in silence and the cowering natives hide,
From the Wraith of William Walker—who haunts the land where he
died._
"Thus it was the wild tale started—that when dying on the sand,
Walker smiled and sternly told them, 'Till avenged I'll haunt your
land!'
And now on snow-white stallion once a year at midnight's spell,
Across the land from sea to sea—rides the form that all know well.
"His head is high, his blade is bare, his white steed spurns the
ground,
A phantom troop charge close behind—but all make never a sound;
While his blood cries yet for vengeance against this murderous
herd—
He will ever come to warn them, that the day is but deferred.
"To the sons of old Honduras as they view him through the gloom,
The Gray-eyed Man of Destiny looks the Avatar of Doom;
In his face they read a warning like the writing on the wall,
'Tis, '_Beware, one day the Gringos will avenge their chieftain's
fall!_'"
My husband entered with great zeal and efficiency into the fight against
"The Know-nothing party," or, as they proudly styled themselves, the
"American party."
The principles of this party were naturally evolved from the fact that
the ignorant foreign vote was influencing elections[2] in the cities,
that votes were freely sold, and that drunken aliens frequently had
charge of the polls. The mythical order of Washington in a time of
peculiar danger was remembered:
"Put none but Americans on guard to-night!"
It seemed reasonable and fitting that Americans, who had won this
country from the savage, and fought all its early battles with the
French and English, should govern the country they had redeemed. One
thing led to another, until it was resolved to form a secret society,
with the view of excluding all foreigners and many Roman Catholics from
any part in the councils of the nation.
This, briefly, seems to have been at the root of the great Know-nothing
movement. The immediate and practical aim in view was that foreigners
and Catholics should be excluded from all national, state, county, and
municipal offices; that strenuous efforts should be made to change the
naturalization laws, so that the immigrant could not become a citizen
until a resident of twenty-one years in this country. My husband at once
perceived the pernicious tendency of the movement, which was sweeping
the Northern states with resistless force. Secret lodges were formed
everywhere, secret ceremonies inaugurated—grip, passwords, and signs.
The country was in a ferment of excitement, followed by outrageous
lawlessness. Bands of women made raids on bar-rooms and smashed the
glasses, broke the casks, and poured the liquor into the streets. Our
one exemplar of similar enterprises should have lived in those days!
Garrison burned the Constitution of the United States at an open-air
meeting in Framingham, Massachusetts; and the crowd, in spite of a
few hisses, shouted "Amen." A mob broke into the enclosure around the
Washington Monument, and broke the beautiful block of marble from the
Temple of Concord at Rome, which had been sent by the pope as a tribute
to Washington. A street preacher, styling himself the Angel Gabriel,
incited a crowd at Chelsea, Massachusetts, to deeds of violence. They
smashed the windows of the Catholic church, tore the cross from the
gable and shivered it to atoms. These were only a few of the outrages
growing out of the excitement engendered by the Know-nothing party.
The _Enquirer_ always claimed the credit of unearthing and exposing the
signals, passwords, and ceremonies of the society. "I don't know" was
one of the answers to the "grip" when brother met brother, and hence the
popular name of the organization. Though Virginia had but few Catholics
and few immigrants, yet, upon principle, she withstood and stayed the
Know-nothing torrent that had hitherto swept over every other state.
Party feeling ran high during the election of a Virginia governor,
and the junior editor of the _Enquirer_ bore his part boldly and with
vigor. For the first few years of his editorial life he devoted himself
to study, confining himself closely to his office. A contemporary
writer says of him: "Pryor evidently studied the highest standards
in his reading, and his editorials were a revelation of strength and
purity in classic English. It was impossible, however, for a man of his
tastes and force not to drift into politics outside of the sanctum of
his paper, and the public soon recognized him as one of the ablest and
most eloquent speakers upon the hustings and in the bitter discussions
that marked the proceedings of every gathering of the people in those
years. In the mutterings and threatenings of the storm that was soon
to break in fury upon a hitherto peaceful and peace-loving land, he
found abundant opportunity for the cultivation and display of those rare
powers of oratory in debate which subsequently forced him to the front
of the forum."[3] I can only add to this tribute from a candid historian
of the time one observation—the success was great: the memory of it
sweet, but—it was bought with a price! The stern price of unremitting
labor and self-abnegation.
It was a terrible time in Virginia. Henry A. Wise was the
Anti-Know-nothing candidate for governor, and hard and valiant was the
fight my husband made for his election. It involved him in two duels—not
bloodless, but, thank God, not fatal. It is unnecessary to allude to
my own fearful anxiety. It will be understood by all women who, like
myself, have been and are sufferers from the false standard demanded
by the "code of honor," in countries where, to ignore it, would mean
ruin and disgrace. We were most devoted adherents of Mr. Wise, and
ready to go to the death in his defence, standing as he did in the
front, as we believed, of the battle for right, justice, and humanity.
Finally, he was triumphantly elected, the pestilent society quenched,
and comparative peace for a brief period reigned in Virginia.
The Democratic party was grateful for my husband's hard work, and gave
him a beautiful service of silver, inscribed with the appreciation of
the party for his "brilliant talents, eminent worth, and distinguished
service."
Not long afterward he became the editor of _The Richmond South_, for
which I had the honor to select a motto—"_Unum et commune periclum una
salus_." Perhaps a pen picture of my "Harry Hotspur," as he was called,
may amuse those whose kind eyes follow his venerable figure as it passes
to-day. "The day after our arrival at the Red Sweet Springs we noticed
among a crowd of gentlemen a face which strikingly contrasted with
the faces around him. He was a slight figure, with a set of features
remarkable for their intellectual cast; a profusion of dark hair falling
from his brow in long, straight masses over the collar of his coat gave
a student-like air to his whole appearance. We unconsciously rose to our
feet on hearing his name, and found ourselves in the actual presence of
the far-famed editor of the _South_ and in such close vicinity, too!
Why, our awe increased almost to trepidation; we felt as if locked
in a vault full of inflammable gas, likely to explode with the first
light introduced into it. Indeed, five minutes wore away in preliminary
explanations before we could be brought to identify the youthful
person before us—who might pass for a student of divinity or a young
professor of moral philosophy—with the fiery and impetuous editor of
the _Richmond South_. He is, we believe, considered one of the ablest
political writers in all the South, and his articles were said to be
highly influential in the late party controversy. For ourselves we
regard with admiration," etc. "His young family cannot fail to create
an immediate interest in the eyes of the most casual observer.... And
then his beautiful, noble-looking children; they might serve as models
for infant Apollos, such as Thorwaldsen or Flaxman might have prayed
for."
They _were_ lovely—my boys—my three little boys!