Detail to Paris Exposition
In 1876, being senior captain of cavalry and expecting promotion, I obtained six months' leave of absence, but, on organization of General Crook's expedition to the Powder River I surrendered my leave until the Sioux trouble should be ended. When I returned to Camp Sheridan, the six months' leave was renewed, and we started for Washington. I met General Crook at Fort Laramie. We stopped a day or two before proceeding in our ambulance toward the railroad at Cheyenne. We were twelve miles from Laramie when the Adjutant General, Nickerson, overtook us, with a message from General Crook, who had not known of our departure, stating his appreciation of my services during the campaign, adding that he felt under more obligations to me than to any other officer in the campaign, and that if there was any official favor possible for him to obtain, I had only to ask. Sure of my majority in a short time, I could see nothing to ask that he might procure for me, but, after Nickerson departed, Nannie assured me that she could find something, and jokingly referred to her remark while in Arizona that she was going to Europe with me some day. So, when we arrived in Washington, she said, "There is to be an international exposition in Paris next May, 1878. Why don't you ask the General to recommend you for a detail there?" I took her advice and made application to be so detailed, to the Secretary of War.
Colonel Reynolds, of my regiment, had been retired, and Colonel Devin, whom I had never met, joined the headquarters at Fort D. A. Russell.
I sent my application to the Secretary of War through the adjutant, Johnson, who knew my history, supposing that General Crook would endorse it favorably. But, in spite of the fact that everybody in the regiment knew I would be promoted before my leave expired, the papers were endorsed by the Colonel, "Respectfully forwarded disapproved. This officer's services are needed with his company." It was successivelyendorsed by General Crook at Omaha, General Sheridan at Chicago, and General Sherman at Washington, "Respectfully forwarded disapproved."
These advices to the Secretary seemed to me unfair. I was introduced to him, and told him I had been unfairly treated. He encouraged me to explain, which I did, adding that I had served in my proper command more constantly since I entered the service than any officer in the army. I knew little of the record of my colonel, but I asked to have our records examined, and that if he had not been absent from his command two days to my one I would withdraw my application; but that if I were correct I asked to have the colonel's unfavorable endorsement and those influenced by it ignored. A day or two afterward the Secretary sent for me. "I am more surprised at the result than by your statement," he said. "It is short of the facts, and I shall consider the endorsements valueless; but," he added, "why do you suppose the President will send an attaché to that exposition?"
"Mr. Secretary," I replied, "because he ought to. The President sent McClellan and other attachés to previous expositions, such as the Crystal Palace Exposition in London. Officers who have served in the Civil and Indian Wars are as much entitled to such benefits as General McClellan." The next day a note from him stated the President had decided to appoint three attachés, one from each arm of the service. This announcement in the press immediately prompted numerous applications, but Secretary McCrary assured me my appointment would issue shortly.
Nannie and I sat at a table at the Ebbitt House next to that of General Sherman. As we went in to dinner that day, General Sherman stretched out his hand to Nannie, saying, "Mrs. Mills, I want to congratulate you." Nannie diplomatically replied, "What for?" though she knew well. "Why, you are going to Paris. The President detailed your husband as military attaché to the Paris Exposition today." Nannie replied, "I thank you, General Sherman." General Sherman then statedin his frank and noble way, "Don't thank me, Mrs. Mills; I had nothing to do with it."
These details show Nannie was my inspiration. She approved of every move made in the matter and was more elated than I at the result.
We sailed in March, 1878, on a Cunard steamer. My insurance policy required that I obtain permission to visit a foreign country, but at the offices of the Knickerbocker I was told that the company would issue such a permit only if I agreed to forfeit my policy should I enter any city in which there was an epidemic. I told them to "go to," that I would live longer than their company, and surrendered my policy, on which I had paid eleven assessments.
Within three years their company went into bankruptcy, and I am still living!
We had an uneventful passage, although very distressing to Nannie on account of sea-sickness. During a two weeks' stop in London we visited Nannie's relatives, Mrs. Langworthy, at Guys House, Maidenhead, near Windsor Castle. The Langworthys were delightful people and our acquaintance a very agreeable experience, although it began in a rather embarrassing way.
Neither of us had much experience in "high society," or had the money to flourish in it. We carried to Guys House no other clothing than that in our traveling bags. At the depot, a great retinue of lackeys clad in knee breeches, and coach and baggage wagon apparently waited for some great personage. But Mr. Edward Langworthy, the son, introduced himself, and asked for our luggage, when we rather shamefacedly confessed that we had only our two valises.
We were dressed simply, like most Americans, but we had America's courage, and met the situation without much chagrin. The Langworthys dressed for dinner, but we had to make the best of what we had. We had a bedroom lit by candles and without fire, although it was March and the weather very cold.
In the ante-room the next morning I saw a large washtub in the middle of the bare floor, two-thirds full of water, and a chair containing some towels and soap. I remarked, "Nannie, look at that. Do they expect us to bathe in that cold room in that cold water? I will not do it."
Nannie replied, "Well, I am too proud to have them think we do not wash," and, seizing the soap, she made a lot of lather and sprinkled water on the floor to leave conclusive evidence that we really were civilized.
Mrs. Langworthy asked me, "How do you get about in London?" I replied that we used the omnibus, as Nannie thought the "Hansom cabs" unsafe, and refused to ride in them. Mrs. Langworthy said, "You shouldn't do that. Only tradespeople and banker's clerks ride in omnibuses."
Before going to Paris my commission as major in the 10th Cavalry arrived. A military tailor made me a uniform, which, with the gay attire Nannie bought in both London and Paris, satisfied Mrs. Langworthy on our second visit, made after returning from Paris, that we Americans could do right after all! We enjoyed our visits in their beautiful house, a fine English estate, and always recalled our acquaintance with our delightful English relatives with much pleasure.
We were in Paris at the opening of the exposition, where we met the other attachés. Among the Americans we met Lucien Young, a very interesting naval officer, in whose carriage Nannie and I rode to the opening. Our uniforms conformed much with the Prussian style, especially my helmet. Leaving the exposition immediately behind the Prince of Wales' entourage, the French took us for Germans, and looked upon us very coldly. Some bright Frenchman, discovering on my helmet the words, "E Pluribus Unum," called out to his countrymen that we were Americans, when we received almost as many cheers as the Prince of Wales himself.
Invited by President McMahon to a review of thirty thousand cavalry, I was informed that a French captain would have a mount for me in the Bois de Boulogne. There were eightAmerican officers in Paris, most of them in official capacity, and when I arrived they were all there. As the senior, they insisted I approach the French officer. Speaking little French, I was somewhat embarrassed. But with the assurance of an American, I called out to the dapper young French artillery officer, "Good morning, captain; do you speak English?" "No, I do not," he replied, "but I speak American, which is much better. I spent four years as military attaché in Washington, the most beautiful city in the world."
It is needless to say that his diplomacy made us all his friends.
As Nannie had anticipated, this year's service at the Paris Exposition was the greatest practical and instructive education of my life. A practical skilled mechanic, I understood the intricacies of mechanics, and here in one building was assembled all the latest and most novel machinery of the world. The sewing machine was then in the height of its progressive construction. England, hitherto the foremost nation in machinery construction, was fast losing its place to America and France. The English machine was distinguished by its clumsy, angular and heavy parts and the difficulty of keeping it in order. The French machines were better, but the American machine stood first in all that made it handy, graceful, symmetrical and useful. And so it was with all the other machinery. Electric light and power was in its infancy, but here, as in all else, the best appliances for its use were American.
I started out in the hope of learning a great deal from the foreign nations in my conceived invention and construction of a woven cartridge belt and other web equipment, which I felt sure could be made as strong and of as firm consistency as leather, and much better than leather because it was lighter, more flexible, did not require oiling, and was less likely to break in the process of wetting and drying when exposed to the weather. However, after visiting factories in France,England and Germany, I found that they knew less about weaving such fabrics than we did in America.
Nannie and I traveled much during our stay abroad.
France had been humiliated by Germany's conquest and exaction of the then unheard of indemnity, but she was not despondent. In the dining room of our boarding house, 44 Rue de Clichy, were two female figures on pedestals representing Alsace and Lorraine, tears streaming down their cheeks; and when the proprietress, Madame Thierry, would speak of them the tears would roll down her cheeks, too. The sympathy of Americans was generally with France.
In Germany we found a remarkable condition. In one sense unspoiled by her great victories, so cheaply bought, and the acquisition of so much wealth in indemnity, the nation was just starting two propagandas. One was to organize productive industry and encourage the sciences and arts, with the object of making their nation foremost as a commercial producer. At the same time, Germany planned to carry her products to the four corners of the earth, in which, for forty years, she was entirely successful.
The second, as unholy and unrighteous as the first, was praiseworthy, was militarism, in which the rulers of the nation sought to make the profession of the soldier universal, with the deliberate and cold-blooded purpose of conquering the rest of the world, as Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar and Napoleon had planned before. Germany had in view also the creation of a navy which could overcome England's, so she might rule the world on both land and sea. But for the heroism and self-sacrifice of the little kingdom of Belgium, with only eight millions of people, they would have succeeded.
We saw many idle soldiers lying on the grassy parapets of their forts smoking, while near them women dressed in rags carried dirt in wheelbarrows to form additional parapets. Nannie instinctively foresaw the future. She even then denounced those people as barbarous and inhuman, and for the rest of her life she hated bitterly German militarism.
In England we found the people divided into numerous classes, royalty, nobility, gentlemen, tradespeople, and common people. Many of these latter, for want of the ambition and self-reliance necessary to bring about success, had become sordid and drunken.
There were hundreds of street cars in Paris and its environs broad-mindedly labeled "American Railway," but hardly one in England.
In Manchester (then a larger city than New York), an apparently intelligent Scotch policeman, recognizing me as an American, proudly pointed to a brand new street car with one horse, and remarked, "I suppose you don't have anything like that in America?" When I replied that every city in the United States having twenty thousand population had a street car system, he evidently regarded me as a sort of American Baron Munchausen.
The upper classes relied upon their control of the sea by the largest navy in the world, indirectly to extort taxes from their millions of subjects in their vast possessions, governed without their consent. Suppressing ambition for democracy and restraining maritime commerce of other nations, is perhaps not as cruel and barbarous as the intended control of the world by Germany, but is quite as unrighteous and has been and still is detrimental to the progress and advancement of weaker peoples.
Of all countries we visited, Switzerland seemed to possess the best free democratic government and the people were the happiest. They looked you in the face with a cheerful smile wherever you met them and were content with their condition, as they have been for over three hundred years.
The difference between Europeans and Americans we found to be marked. For instance, on one of the Lake Geneva passenger steamers from Vevey to Geneva we found a thousand passengers, composed about equally of Americans, English, French, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians. While talking to a well-dressed American of perhaps twenty-five years of age,a band of about thirty Italians appeared on the upper deck, where most of the passengers were assembled.
Most of the passengers, especially the English, would not speak to each other without a formal introduction, so social greetings were few. When the band had played a few minutes, this American took off his hat and placed a handkerchief over it and carried it through the crowd, remarking, "Something for the band, please." He approached every passenger on deck. Europeans stared, astonished at the action of this man from the "Woolly West," but Americans smiled encouragement. He obtained probably the largest contribution the leader had ever received. He proceeded to the band and every man and woman was gazing at him in perfect silence when he turned over the handkerchief to the leader, until some American clapped and every American joined in. We were all proud of our countryman.
At 44 Rue de Clichy our son, Anson Cassel, was born on November 19, 1878. He was our joy for the next fifteen years. His birth delayed our return until March, 1879, when we took passage on a Cunarder. In Washington I received orders to proceed to the headquarters of the 10th Cavalry.
Inscription in Nannie's Family Bible, Dated 1614.Inherited from Hannah Hippisly Martin.Translated and in Modern Handwriting, It Reads as Below:
Inscription in Nannie's Family Bible, Dated 1614.
Inherited from Hannah Hippisly Martin.
Translated and in Modern Handwriting, It Reads as Below:
Ellis Crooker: his book; ifany man chance to find it;let him restore it home againand he shall be rewarded for his pains,God Save the King!
Ellis Crooker: his book; ifany man chance to find it;let him restore it home againand he shall be rewarded for his pains,God Save the King!