The light and dark of the rebellion

Front matter

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Contents

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I.— What Kind of a War this is 7

II.— The Real Heroes of the War— The Rank and File in

II

The Eeal Heroes of the War— The Bank and Pile in the Hospital.

Five days after the first Bull Hun battle, I went through the improvised military hospitals of Washington. Since those dark days of terror and blood, I have not left the District of Columbia, except for one day.

During these twenty-two months, I have seen, I suppose, not less than forty thousand of our wounded, sick, and disabled soldiers, — at one time hardly less than five thousand being here from my own State (New York). Very few days have gone by in which I have not seen some of their sick or wounded "companions in arms" from nearly all the other loyal States.

But my object is by no means to depict, even if my pen could do it, any very considerable number of scenes of agony, terror, or death. I shall not write a book of horrors ; one rather of cheerfulness, heroism, and hope. There is light even in a Military Hospital. I have wished to "let that light out/' and have it illumine a million of hearts and homes, far away from the halls and chambers that have been consecrated by a sublimity of patriotism, affection, love of home, and unfaltering endurance. One ray of such sunshine is worth more to the bereaved than a whole tale of tragedy, or a night of gloom.

As I could not expand the space allotted to this volume, my difficulty has been in knowing rather what I could best leave out than best put in. I have known some cases I would have gladly introduced, each of which would more than fill a book like this. But I have endeavored to choose, from the wilderness of material, such scenes as would best illustrate the different phases of American character in the field and the hospital. In following this plan, I have preferred to take things somewhat at random; and, in sacrificing order in time and appropriateness of connection, I may have better succeeded (I trust) in bringing scenes more vividly to the mind of my reader.

Every case spoken of in this work I either witnessed myself, or I derived the facts from sources which stamp them with entire authenticity.

The great Prince Eugene once said, "Anybody can be brave in battle under a good leader ; but he alone is the real hero who can be brave when the battle is over."

The decisive conflicts of armies may be, and generally are, short ; but their results last forever.

Those who lead embattled hosts and come home unscarred from the fields where whole battalions melted into the earth, and corj)s d'armees parted never to form in battle-line again, are crowned with the wreath which Victory loves to throw over the brows of its chieftains. Their names embellish the stately pages of history. Their examples live in the dreams of all young soldiers the nights before they leave home for their first campaigns. Monuments rise with their sculptured emblems, " to greet the sun in his coming." The sword or battle-axe they drew, or swung, was in the cause of home, country, and heroism. These monuments become Meccas of human devotion; and to them the men of after-times go, as to sacred shrines, to pay their tributes of admiration and gratitude. But, while these proud names make their undisputed way down through the centuries, the great "rank and file," who won the field by their imperturbable coolness, the iron nerve that held steady when all was at stake, — hacked, hewn, battered, but immovable, — trusting in their leader, —

OE THE REBELLION.' 13

and at last slain, — these are forgotten. They are swept beyond the annals of history and the recollections of men.

Where are the innumerable hosts that followed the ensigns of the conquerors who founded the empires and dynasties of antiquity? Who has written their record? What monuments have preserved their deeds?

We know little on these subjects.

The Roman soldier, who left his wife on the banks of the Tiber, to carry the eagles of Italy to distant lands, was sure that his family would not be forgotten if he fell. If he lived, some part of the soil he helped to conquer became his own farm; and there, as a Roman military colonist, he remained as one of the pioneers of civilization, and a defender of "the Eternal Empire/'

By modern nations it is now considered the duty of government to extend to the disabled soldier all its paternal aid. It is, however, only of recent date that the system of sanitary hospitals has been established, by which all the appliances of modern art should be brought into use to restore the health of the sick, bind up their wounds, and give back once more the shattered veteran to his home and his country.

England and France had been foremost in taking this grand step, to soften the asperities of war by the skill and humanity of science; and especially in the Crimea did the results place the whole world under obligation. With all the advantages of their experiments and demonstrations, our country was enabled to advance the sanitary military system by still further strides. In another portion of this volume I shall find space for some facts and illustrations on the matter, which I think legitimately appertain to the object I have

III. The Work of the Pen in this War

A thousand books will be written about this Kebellion. Let them all come: the world will need them. Let every scene worth remembering be recorded by each looker-on. Let each man tell how the battle which he saw raged, — how his comrades fought and fell, — how each battalion answered to the order, Charge! — how each regiment closed in solid column, and each division formed its last line of defence or attack. Let no well-authenticated fact be lost. For we must not forget — least of all should the men who hold the pen — that, while we are straining our vision with these strange sights, we become the sacred depositaries of materials from which the artists of a later age will mature their sublime and finished pictures.

But, fully as the incidents of the war have photographed themselves through the press, countless facts and scenes worthy of record may never get their place in history. We have been making history faster than all the pens could write it.

This conflict has had to pass in review before the honest face of the Daguerrean lens : thus it has, in a certain sense, been compelled to write its own annals. But what would otherwise, at best, be only a lifeless and meaningless mass of material, has with the magic touch of the pen been instantly made instinct with life and radiant with significance. The empire of the pen can never be broken. The long line of its masters shows no interregnum. In leaping some chasm in the Dark Ages, we find the light of one great author flashing from one side of the gulf, and the light of an earlier writer streaming in to meet it. We who are humbler members of the great Republic of Letters must look for no exemption from the great law : the lesser must yield to the greater. The working million cannot hope to be remembered as units. They toil, and think, and fight, and write, as armies. They weep and exult, they forge and produce ; but they can have no place in far-off history. They march through the desert; but they must leave the glory of eternal remembrance to Moses, who leads them through.

Authors form no exception. There are only a few books of much value long after they are written. A thousand historians wrote about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, during fourteen centuries, till Gibbon constructed from the bewildering mass his imperishable work. Away into oblivion that host of authors floated, — beyond the reach of all but the learned and the curious. But their labors were not lost. It was a long stretch of Time's river in its sluggish passages. But it bore on its bosom the slowly accumulating records of the centuries, and they poured their treasures into Gribbon's hands. He saved them forever.

IV. Heroism in the Hospital

* * * * The surgeon said, "He can hardly .live."

He laid the hand down softly, and left this patient, to pass through the ward.

It seemed to say that all that earth could do had heen done, to save the life of the gallant young soldier. I followed the Burgeon a few steps on the routine of duty. We stopped, and looked each other in the face. He knew I wanted to know the whole truth.

" Must this boy die V

" There is a shadow of a chance. I will come again after midnight."

I went back, with a heavy heart, to the cot we had left, and, knowing something of hospitals and dying men, I sat down to wait and see what new symptoms would occur, with the full directions of the surgeon in any event. •

The opiate, or whatever it may have been, which I had last administered, could not take effect at once; and, somewhat worn out with the day's labors, I sat down to think. To sleep, was out of the question ; for I had become so deeply interested in this young man it seemed to me I could not give him up.

It was nearly midnight. The gas had been turned off just enough to leave the light needed, and twilight was grateful to the sick-room; for in this vast chamber there were more than two hundred sick men. Now and then came a suppressed moan from one couch, or a low plaint of hopeless pain, — while at intervals thrilled from the high ceiling the shrill scream of agony. But all the while the full harvestmoon was pouring in all the lustrous sympathy and effulgence it could give, as it streamed over the marble pile called the Patent Office, the unfinished north wing of which had been dedicated to this house of suffering.

Almost noiselessly, the doors of this ward opened every few moments, for the gentle tread of the night nurses, who came, in their sleepless vigils, to see if in these hours they could render some service still to the stricken, the fallen, and yet not comfortless.

Leaving my young friend for a few moments, I walked through the north aisle; and it seemed to me — so perfect was the regime of the hospital, so grand were its architectural proportions — more like walking through some European cathedral by moonlight, than through a place for sick soldiers. The silence greater than speech, the suffering unexpressed, the heroism which did not utter one complaint, the completeness of the whole system of care and curative process, made one of those sights and scenes which I would not tear away from my memory if I could ; for they have mingled themselves with associations that will link each month and year of time to come with all the months and years gone before them.

I felt a strange interest in this young man, whom I had left in what I supposed was his last quiet slumber ; and yet I knew he would wake once more before he died. I approached his cot again. He was still sleeping, and so tranquilly I felt a little alarmed lest he might never wake, till I touched his pulse and found it still softly beating.

I let him sleep, and thought I would sit by his side till the surgeon came. —

I took a long, free breath, for I supposed it was all hopelessly over. Then I thought of his strange history : — I knew it well.

2*

He was born not far from Trenton Falls, — the youngest son, among several brothers, of one of the brave tillers of that hard soil. He had seen his family grow up nobly and sturdily, under the discipline of a good religion and good government, and with a determination to defend both. When his country's troubles began, his first impulses thus found expression to his brothers: — "Let me go; for you are all married; and if I fall, no matter."

He went. He had followed the standard of the Republic into every battle-field where the struggle carried him, till, worn out, but not wounded, he was borne to this hospital in Washington, a sick boy. He seemed to have a charmed life, for on several occasions his comrades had been shot dead or wounded on either side; and when his last cartridge had done execution, he carried ofi" two of his wounded companions from the field, bearing them and their muskets to the rear, — if there were a rear in the flight from the Bull Run of July, ;61, — and nourished and watched and stood by these comrades till they died, and then got the help of a farmer to carry them with his cart, a whole day afterward, to be buried in a place which he chose.

This boy's example had inspired that farmer with such benevolence — if he were not inspired by patriotism already — that he made honored graves for them; and the writer of this work knoivs where their ashes rest.

When this was all over, the boy came back, as a kind of rear-guard, of one, in the flight of the army of the Potomac, and, having reached the city of Washington and reported himself to his commander, fell senseless on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was taken to a neighboring house and well cared for; and I saw him in the hospital of which I have spoken.

But this was only his life as a soldier. There was another and a deeper life than that. The great loadstone that led him away was the magnet of his nation. Another loadstone held his heart at home : it was the magnet of Love.

His wild and wayward history, — wild only with adventure and wayward only with romance, he seemed to me, as I looked upon his face, so calm, and chiselled into sculptured beauty, I thought, either he looked like an Apollino with his unstrung bow, or a nautilus, cast on the turbulent ocean, to be wafted to some unknown clime, or sink forever, on the floor of the deep sea, to find a coral sepulchre.

His dark eyelashes — bent up in such clear relief against their white ground — slowly and calmly began to move.

I sprang to my feet; for it seemed tome there was a chance yet.

The surgeon was long in coming; and yet I knew he would come. He did. His sharp and experienced eye, as he approached the cot, opened with surprise. Touching my shoulder, he said, with surprise, —

"He is still alive."

In an instant, taking the hand of the dying or dead boy, — I scarcely knew which, — a faint smile passed over the surgeon's face.

"lam not sure but he may come up yet. If he revives, there is one chance left for him, if it be but one in a thousand. But I will work for that chance, and see what it will come to ' Here Art triumphs, if it triumphs at all.' "

The pulse seemed to be coming as he took the hand.

"It acts strangely; but I have seen two or three cases very much like it. Mind you, I do not think we can do much with this case; but you stay and watch, and I will come back in half an hour."

So, while he went through some other wards, I watched the patient. The last glimmer of life, which had given some light as this scene was being enacted, faded into what seemed to me the calmest repose of death.

But then, I thought, it is a strange sight, a heart filled with the earnest passions of youth, in the first hopes of life budding into their fruition beneath his own primeval forestshades, where if there he an element that ever sanctified an early life it would have built a sanctuary — for the love he must have borne to the fair being for whom he had treasured up his boyhood's jewels, for whom he gave up every thing of the earth earthy, to rescue a Republic, and then go back after this episode of suffering to inaugurate the life of a citizen farmer on the bleak hills of New York : — if all this could not sustain him, what could? —

In former visits to him he had made me his confidant in regard to these matters. He seemed to be haunted with the idea that he would, after all, return to Utica, and once more see those he loved ; and yet he also seemed to me like one whose days were numbered, and the surgeon had told me, after repeated counsels with his professional brethren, that it was next to impossible to save his life, and that I must not expect it.

All the while I clung to the belief that some vitality of faith, or love, or hope, or patriotism, or divine aid, would still send that boy back to the banks of the Mohawk.

I saw another nervous twitch around the temples. I felt his pulse. It was an indication of hope, or sudden death.

The surgeon came by again.

"That boy has wonderful vitality," he said, as he looked at his face. Whether it was purely my fancy, my hope, or a fact, I did not know, but twilight seemed to pass over his face.

" Yes, yes — I — I — wait — a moment. Oh, I shall not die I"

He opened his eyes calmly, and then a glow which I shall never forget suffused his cheek, and, lifting his emaciated hands for the first time in several weeks, — feebly, it is true, but they seemed to me strong, — he exclaimed, in a natural voice, "How floats the old flag now, boys?"

The transition from death to life seemed like enchantment. I could scarcely believe my senses. And yet I knew that if he ever rallied this would be the way.

OF THE KEBELLION. 21

I now feared that his excitement would carry him beyond his strength. I could not keep him from talking. I was bending over him to see if he would remember me. Looking me steadily in the eyes, his brows knit with perplexity for a few seconds, when with a smile of delight and surprise he said,

" Yes ! yes ! It is you, Mr. L . I am glad you stayed with

me. I have been dreaming about you while I've been asleep; and I must have been asleep a great while. How long ?"

I told him enough to let him understand how ill he had been, — how long, — and how weak he still was. He did not realize it. His eyes wandered down to his thin hands, white as alabaster, and through which the pale-blue thread-like veins wandered.

"Oh ! Is it I? — so lean? I was not so when I fell sick." — And large tears rolled down his cheeks.

I implored him to be quiet and rest, and I promised him he should get better every day, and be able to go home in a short time. But he grew impatient the more I tried to soothe and restrain him.

He looked at me beseechingly, and asked, " Won't you let me talk a little ? I must know something more, or it seems to me I shall go crazy. Please put your ear down to me : I won't speak loud, — I won't get excited."

I did. — " Have you got any letters for me V

"Yes, but they are at my office. You shall have them to-morrow. They are all well at home."

"And Bella?"

"Yes."

" Oh, God be praised !"—

After a few moments of repose, he again opened his eyes wide. —

"I have been gone so long from the army! It seemed as though I never could get back when I got home. I got away; and I wandered, and wandered. — Oh, how tired I was ! Where is McDowell ? — Is General Scott dead? They said so.

Did they carry off Old Abe ? How did lie get back ? Did the Rebels get into Washington that night? How long have I been sick? "What place is this? — Oh, my head! my head I"

I was frightened. He had risen from the deep ocean into the sunlight for a brief hour, and now he seemed to be going down to come up no more. The tender chord of memory had given way. In a little while the surgeon came by, and I told him what had happened.

"I was afraid of that. But I think we can manage it. If he wakes again within two hours, give him this powder on his tongue, and a sip of the liquid. If he does not, wake him gently."

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And so that anxious night wore away. In the morning he woke bright and clear; and from that hour he began to get well. But for whole days his life was pulsating in its gossamer tenement, fluttering over the misty barriers of the spiritworld.

Bella's letters, received during his extreme illness, could now be read. They were among the noblest ever written by woman.

"Our heart-prayers for you have been answered by our Father. We now wait only for your return. When we parted, it was not with repining : you had gone to the altar of your country in solemn and complete dedication. I too was prepared for the sacrifice. I expected it, although I knew how crushingly the blow would fall. But if you had not loved your country better than Bella, it would have broken her heart. I hope now in a few weeks you will be again by my side. When your health is once more restored, I will promise in advance, as you desire, not to try to keep you from rejoining your regiment; and if the stars have written that

Walter shall not be my husband, God has decreed that I shall die a widow never married."

He did return to the Mohawk Valley. He married Bella. He returned to the war ; and on the eve of the great day of Antietam he heard that his son was born, and the hero-father died by the side of Hooker. — Sic transit gloria mundi.

24 THE LIGHT AND DAKK

Mount Vernon in Other Days.

The stream of Time, which sweeps almost every thing human to oblivion, passes without injury by the everlasting column of Washington's fame. Those convulsions which threaten the permanence of our Union, and sicken us with the strifes of parties and the gore of battle, only render more and more dear the name of the Father of the American Republic.

The nations of the Old World, as they lift their wearied and half-palsied arms to strike for Liberty, utter the name of Washington with veneration, gratitude, and love. Wherever the all-glowing sun lights up the homes of earth's children, — through all the continents and islands, along all the shores and rivers, on every green mountain's side, and down every blushing valley, — the old tell his history to the young, and all nations rise up and call him blessed. .

All that belonged to him has become dear to mankind. The ground his feet pressed is sacred. The trees he planted with his own hand, the groves through which he walked at evening, still seem to breathe his name as they rustle their zephyr-music. Even the sparkling ripples of that majestic stream which flows on by Mount Vernon seem to utter intelligible words to the ear of the pilgrim who from that green lawn looks through the bending boughs by moonlight on the glistening waters.

It was a beautiful spring morning, many years ago, when we set out from Washington to visit for the first time this Mecca of Liberty. The balmy air wafted through the carriagewindows the fragrance of early flowers, just peeping out from the warm banks of the Potomac. The sun came calmly up over the old dome of the Capitol, and the mists rose from the bosom of the river to greet him, and then floated far away into the blue sky, as spirits go when they leave us for that bright land

" Where everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers."

We could not say that there was a gay or glad heart among us : there would have been some, had we not been going to the Tomb of the Father of his country. But there was something so holy in the thought that we were approaching the spot where the greatest and purest of mankind rested from his heroism, that we felt mirth had no place in our feelings, and into that day levity could not enter.

But it was a cheerful ride, and an inspiring day. We do not remember that a cloud moved over our little party during the excursion ; nor was our cheerfulness interrupted till we had reached the shrine of our pilgrimage and stood before the sarcophagus where the dust of Washington reposes.

No matter for our ride along the river, nor for its picturesque bends, or banks, or lawns, or woodlands. At every turn in the road we saw the calm waters of the silver stream, around which linger memories that are sanctified by all that is brave in chivalry and touching in patriotism.

A long ride through the oak forests brought us to the venerable mansion where Washington lived and died. At the porter's lodge we stopped to see the only living servant of the Patriot. She lived in the lodge, and still watched the gate.

She was fifteen years old when " the general" came back from the wars, covered with victory ; and he remembered her well as he rode through the gate, and said, "Ah. my little Sylvia, the Britishers didn't hit me, after all : and they have all gone back to Old England, and I have come home to live and die on the estate :" — and young Sylvia seized " the general's" hand and wet it with her tears. She saw Washington die;

she saw him when be was dead : and when she spoke of hini she looked up to heaven, and, pointing her hand away, said, u Well, if we ever go there we shall see him again."

We left this octogenarian keeper, and she said many a kind word to us as we went on slowly threading our way to the mansion, — through deep ravines from which only the upper sky was visible, and now emerging on eminences from which we hoped to get at least a glimpse of' the mansion. But holier feelings filled up the interval.

We were passing over new ground, where, warm with life and radiant with beneficence, the form of the hero so often passed. Even the air seemed haunted by his presence : every step we took was an epic.

See the outlines of the great historical picture. Passing this same rugged avenue, first the youth George Washington, with his surveying-instruments, to measure off the vast wilderness of the West, the happy homes he was afterwards to offer his brothers made free : — young Major Washington, setting out to instruct them in the art of war, to prepare them to achieve their independence: — Colonel Washington, on his departure to repel foreign and savage invaders: — the Representative, passing to and from the Congress of the patriots: — the heroic general, coming at long intervals' through that war of fraternal blood, and going forth again to the sanguinary struggles of the Revolution, where brave men staked Liberty in the desperate game with King, Lords, and Commons : — the Farmer, going out to and returning from his fields: — the President, on his way to administer the government of a people he had led through the exhausting perils of an ail-but exterminating war: — and, last of all, the citizen Washington, who had scorned a crown, as too base a reward for his longservices in the cause of human freedom — returning by the same road we were travelling, his great heart filled with longings for home.

The carriage rising an eminence gave us a glimpse of the

OF THE KEBELLION. 27

wall and observatory of the Home of Washington. We were not ashamed of a few tears which .came unbidden to our eyes.

We reached the gate of the mansion. A ruin — an old ruin — stood before us. It was not a feudal castle, with deep trench once filled with water; nor draw-bridge, over which once clattered the hoofs of warriors' steeds; nor massive arch, under which bent the plume of knight; nor spacious court-yard, in which the spears of an heroic band flashed in the moonlight; nor vast banquet-hall, that rang to the clangor of Crusader or the merry shout of victorious warrior who had come from measuring lance with the Infidel, to tell his tale of adventure to the startled ear of Europe. There was no watch-word; no vesper-chime stealing softly on the evening air; no hollow chant nor monkish prayer in gloomy chapel; no moon-lit watch on the overlooking tower. No one of all these. It was grander, better, dearer, than all this heroic legend.