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The Man Without a Country
By Edward Everett Hale (1917)
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ManOut.shtml
I suppose that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths", the announcement: NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvelette Levant, Lat. 2 deg; 11" S., Long. 131 deg; W., on the 11th of May, Philip Nolan.
I happened to observe it, because I was
stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinac, 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 the 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 be now 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 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 Watson, 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 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.
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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
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 Pudget'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 another
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, 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 the
"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 the "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" 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 can only explain to the reader
why he damned his country, and why he wished he might never hear her
name again.
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He never did hear her name but once
again. From that moment, September 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 the approval of the President that
you never hear the name of the United States."
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 his name 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 entrusted - 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.
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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 no copy the
whole of it. It ran, however , much in this way:
Washington, (with the date, which must have been late in 1807) Sir, - You will receive from Ltd. 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 entrusted 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 gentleman 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.
Resp'y Yours,
W. SOUTHARD, for the Sec'y 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 was 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 his 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 like 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
stateroom - 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-buttons, for the reason that it
bore either the initials or the insignia of the country he had
disowned.
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I remembered, soon after I joined the
navy, I was on shore with some of the older officers from our ship
and from the Brandy wine, which we had met at Alexandria. We had to
leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and the Pyramids. As we
jogged along (you went on donkeys them) some of the gentlemen (we
boys called them "Dons", but the phrase was long since
changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one 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 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 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 the
reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the
Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first 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 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 it 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 that 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:
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"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 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, colored 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 very 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 Flechier's sermons - but generally he had the nervous, tired look
of a heart-wounded man.
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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; the 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 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 adventured so far, and a
nice bevy of English girls and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton
herself.
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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 contre-temps. Only when some
English lady- Lady Hamilton, as I said - called for a set of
"American dances" an odd thing happened. Everybody then
danced contradances. 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 fiddlers to begin, and bent
forward, about to say, in true negro state '"The Old Thirteen,'
gentlemen and ladies!" as he said, "'Virginny Reel,' if
you please!" "'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, - he 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 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 honor of dancing?"
He did it so quickly, that Shubrick, who
was by 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
Shubrick, as if to say he must 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 -
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"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 I
cannot tell. However, in one, at least, of the great frigate duels
with the English, in which the navy was really baptized, 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 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 cockpit 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:
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"I am showing them how we do this
in the artillery, sir."
And this is a part of the story where
all the legends agree: that 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 quarterdeck, he said:
"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan
to come here."
And when Nolan came, the captain 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 dispatches."
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
dispatches. It was always said that 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 good will 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 pre-occupied. But Madison and the
Virginians, of course, flung all that away.
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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 at 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 any one to try to read
all the time, more than to do anything else all the time; but that
he 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 them my scrapbooks."
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 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." 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 have
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 Linnaeus 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 walked and
talked.
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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 any other
occasion, he was always ready to read prayers. I have remarked that
he read beautifully.
My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan
began six or eight years 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 business. From the time I joined, I believed 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 one
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 sent to take charge of her, and after a few minutes
he sent back his boat to ask that some one 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 o 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 would 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.
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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 their handcuffs and
ankle-cuff's knocked off, and, for convenience' 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 sooth 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 these rascals are to be hanged as
soon as we can get rope enough."
Nolan "put that into Spanish,"
that is, explained it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen could
understand, in 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.
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 man down, and said:
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"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 pickaninnies and our 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 peddled 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", chocked
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 his 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; 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
worlds 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 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!"
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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, "Oh, 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 afterwards 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 harbor, 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 of 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
last mystery at bottom.
So poor Philip Nolan had his wish
fulfilled. I know but one fate more dreadful; it is the fate
reserved for those men who shall never have one day to exile
themselves from their country because they attempted her ruin, and
shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to which
she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities. The
wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because of
his punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so
clear, was precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who
broke a soldier's oath two years ago, and of every Maurry and Barron
who broke a sailor's. I do not know how often they have repented. I
do know that they have done all that in them lay that they might
have no country - that all the honors, associations, memories, and
hopes which belong to "country" might be broken up into
little shreds and distributed to the winds. I know, too, that their
punishment, as they vegetate through what is left of life to them in
wretched Boulognes and Leicester Square, where they are destined to
upbraid each other till they die, will have all the agony of
Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will see
them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
like him.
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For him, poor fellow, he 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
they never happened from his fault. Lieutenant Truxton told 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 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 the 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 brother Stephen, 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 near 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 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 traveled so far and, I believe, had died, had
ceased to be with him. Waters and Williams, the two Texas men,
looked grimly at each other, and tried no 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:
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"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 the dear old fellow is dead.
He had found a home at last, and a country.
Since writing this, and while
considering whether or no 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.
To understand the first words of the
letter, the non-professional reader should remember that after 1817
the position of every officer who had Nolan in charge was one of the
greatest delicacy. 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 one day, and should bring an action for
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 do so often 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:
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Levant, 2 deg; 2" S. @131 deg; W. Dear Fred, - I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used to speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but I had no idea that the end was so near. The doctor had been watching him very carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was not so well, and had not left his state-room - a thing I never remembered before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there, - the first time the doctor had been in the stateroom, and he said he should like to see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightning blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!' And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before a great map of the United States, as he had drawn it from memory, and which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,' and 'Louisiana,' as I supposed our fathers learned such things; but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too: he had carried his western boundary all the way to the Pacific but on that shore he had defined nothing.
"Oh Danforth," he said,
"I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely you will tell me
something now? - Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say what I am sure
you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is not in
America - God bless her! - a more loyal man than I. There cannot be
a man who loves the old flag as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There
are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that,
though I do not know what their names are. There has never been one
taken away; I thank God for that. I know by that, that there has
never been any successful Burr. Oh, Danforth, Danforth," he
sighed out, "how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of
personal fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back
on it after such a life as mine! But tell me - tell me something -
tell me everything, Danforth, before I die!"
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Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like
a monster that I had not told him anything before. Danger or no
danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who was I that I should have been
acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old man, who
had years ago expiated, in his whole manhood's life the madness of a
boy's treason? "Mr. Nolan," said I, "I will tell you
everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?"
"Oh, the blessed smile that crept
over his white face! and he pressed my hands and said, "God
bless you! Tell me their names," he said, and he pointed to the
stars on the flag. "The last I know is Ohio. My father lived in
Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and Mississippi is
- that was where Fort Adams is - they make twenty. But where are
your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I
hope?"
Well, that was not a bad text, and I
told him the names, in as good order as I could , and he bade me
take down his beautiful map and draw them in as I best could with my
pencil. He was wild with delight about Texas, told me how his
brother died there; he had marked a gold cross where he supposed his
brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas. Then he was
delighted as he saw California and Oregon - that, he said, he had
suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on
that shore, though the ships were there so much. "And the
men", said he, laughing, "brought off a good deal more
besides furs." Then he went back - heavens, how far! - to ask
about the Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron for surrendering
her to the Leopard, and whether ever Burr tried again - and he
ground his teeth with the only passion he showed. But in a moment
that was over, and he said, "God forgive me, for I am sure I
forgive him." Then he asked about the old war - told me the
true story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java - asked
about dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down
more quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the
history of fifty years.
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How I wished it had been somebody who
knew something! But I did as well as I could. I told him about
Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott and
Jackson; told him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New
Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he
asked who was in command of the 'Legion of the West', I told him it
was a very gallant officer, named Grant, and that, by our latest
news, he was about to establish his headquarters at Vicksburg. Then,
"Where was Vicksburg?" I worked that out on the map; it
was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his old Fort Adams;
and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. "It must be at old
Vick's plantation," said he; "well that is a change!"
I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing
to condense the history of half a century into that talk with that
sick man. And I do not know what I told him, - of emigration and the
means of it - of steamboats and railroads and telegraphs - of
inventions and books and literature - of the colleges and West Point
and the Naval School - but with the queerest interruptions that ever
you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated
questions of fifty-six years!
I remember he asked, all of a sudden,
who was President now; and when I told him, he asked if old Abe was
General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He said he had met General Lincoln,
when he was quite a boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no,
that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him
of what family; he had worked up from the ranks. "Good for
him!" cried Nolan; "I am glad of that. As I have brooded
and wondered, I thought our danger was in keeping those regular
successions in the first families." Then I got talking about my
visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
Harding; I told him about Smithsonian and the exploring Expedition;
I told him about the Capitol - and the statues for the pediment -
and Crawford's Liberty - and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told
him everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of this
country and its prosperity: but I could not make up my mouth to tell
him a word about this infernal Rebellion!
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And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I
cannot tell you. He grew more and more silent, yet I never thought
he was tired or faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just wet
his lips, and told me not to go away. Then he asked me to bring the
Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer', which lay there, and said,
with a smile, that it would open at the right place - and so it did.
There was his double red mark down the page; and I knelt down and
read, and he repeated with me, "For ourselves and our country,
O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold
transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy
marvelous kindness" - and so to the end of that thanksgiving.
Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words
more familiar to me: "Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy
favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United
States, and all others in authority - and the rest of the Episcopal
collect. "Danforth," said he, "I have repeated those
prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five years." And
then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over him and
kissed me; and he said, "Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I am
gone." And I went away.
But I had no thought it was the end. I
thought he was tired and would sleep. I knew he was happy, and I
wanted to be alone.
But in an hour, when the doctor went in
gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life away with a smile. He
had something pressed close to his lips. It was his father's badge
of the Order of Cincinnati.
We looked in his Bible, and there was a
slip of paper, at the place where he had marked the text:
"They desire a country, even a
heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for
he hath prepared for them a city."
On this slip of paper he had written,
"Bury me in the sea; it has been my
home, and I love it. But will not some one set up a stone for my
memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more
than I ought to bear? Say on it:
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IN MEMORY OF PHILIP NOLAN,
LIEUTENANT IN THE ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ManOut.shtml |