Edward E. Hale - The Man Without a Country
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Edward E. Hale >> The Man Without a Country
[Frontispiece caption:] "He cried out, in a fit of frenzy, 'Damn the
United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!'"
The Man Without A Country
by
Edward E. Hale
Author of "In His Name," "Ten Times One," "How to Live," etc.
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863,
By TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,
BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,
BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,
BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the your 1888,
BY J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANY
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
Copyright, 1891, 1897, 1900, 1904,
BY EDWARD E. HALE.
Copyright, 1898, 1905,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction
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.
EDWARD E. HALE.
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
I [Note 1] suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald"
of August 13, 1863, observed, [Note 2] in an obscure corner, among the
"Deaths," the announcement,--
"NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette 'Levant,' [Note 3] 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 11, 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 [Note 4]
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
honor 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 honor 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 [Note 5] 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, Honorable
Aaron Burr, appeared again under a very different aspect. There were
rumors 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 cotton-wood 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 court-martials 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 any one
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,
[Note 6] 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 honor 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
favor; 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 of 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 favorites: 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.