PLAIN BUTTONS

Edward Everett Hale’s Story, “The Man Without A Country,” retold by Edna S. Knapp.

Once there was a man, an officer in the American army, who said something dreadful, when he was only a mere boy; he cursed his native country! He pretended for a while that he did not care when he was punished, but in the end he was very, very sorry. Because he wore his uniform without the official buttons, the sailors on the ships where he spent his life called him “Plain Buttons.”

His name was Philip Nolan. He had been brought up on a southern plantation where the most welcome guests were Spanish or French officers. He spent half his time with an older brother hunting horses inTexas. The “United States” meant almost nothing to him.

Still, when he grew up he became an officer in the army of the “United States;” he swore, on his faith as a Christian, to be true to the “United States.” Nolan was a lieutenant in the “Legion of the West,” as our western army was called in those early days, one hundred years ago.

At that time the Mississippi valley was the “far West” to most people, and seemed a very distant land indeed. We had a number of forts along the river bank and Nolan was stationed in one of these. Nolan’s idol was the brilliant and dashing Aaron Burr, who visited the fort several times between 1805 and 1807. He paid some attention to Nolan and obtained a very strong influence over him.

Burr got into trouble and some of his friends were tried for treason, Nolan among them. It was very plain that Nolan would do anything Burr told him; that he would obey Burr far quicker than his country, in spite of his oath.

So when the President of the court asked Nolan, at the close of the trial, 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, “Curse the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court, turned white as a sheet. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolutionary War and had risked their lives, not to say their necks, cheerfully andloyally for the country which Nolan so lightly cursed in his madness. Colonel Morgan, terribly shocked, called the court into his private room and returned in fifteen minutes to say:

“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! The Court decides, subject to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United States again.”

Nolan laughed, but the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Then Colonel Morgan added, “Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat and deliver him to the naval commander there. Request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship.”

Colonel Morgan himself went to Washington and President Jefferson approved the sentence, so a plan was formed to keep Nolan constantly at sea. Our navy took few long cruises then, but one ship could carry the prisoner as far away as it was going, then transfer him to another vessel before it sailed for home.

Nolan wore his uniform, but with plain buttons. He always had a sentry before his door, but the men were as good to him as his sentence permitted. No mess wanted to have him with them too steadily because they could never talk about home matters when he was present,—more than half the talk men liked to have at sea. They took turns inviting him todinner, and the captain always asked him on Mondays. He could have any books or papers not printed in America. Newspapers having any mention of America had to be gone over, and the allusions cut out. He used to join the men as they were reading on deck and take his turn in reading aloud. Once, when they were cruising around the Cape of Good Hope, somebody got hold of Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which was then new and famous. Nolan was reading when he came to this passage:

“Breathes there the man with soul so deadWho never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land?Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,As home his footsteps he hath turnedFrom wandering on a foreign strand?If such there breathe, go, mark him well;For him no minstrel raptures swell;High though his titles, proud his name,Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—Despite those titles, power and pelf,The wretch, concentred all in self”—

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?

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;For him no minstrel raptures swell;High though his titles, proud his name,Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—Despite those titles, power and pelf,The wretch, concentred all in self”—

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—

Despite those titles, power and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self”—

Here the poor fellow choked, and could not go on, but started up and flung the book into the sea and fled to his stateroom. It was two months before he dared join the men again.

There was a change in Nolan after this. He never read aloud from anything unless he was sure of it, likethe Bible or Shakespeare. He was always shy afterwards, and looked like a heart-wounded man.

Sometimes he tried to trap people into mentioning his country, but he never succeeded; his sentence was too well known among the men who had him in charge. I think there was only one day that he was really happy except when he knew his lonely life was closing. Once, during the war of 1812, the ship on which he was staying had a fight with an English frigate. A round shot entered a port and killed the officer of the gun and many of the gun’s crew. The surgeon’s people carried off the wounded and then Nolan appeared in his shirt-sleeves with a rammer in his hand and took command. He finished loading the gun with his own hands, aimed it and bade the men fire. There he stayed until the enemy struck, getting that gun loaded and fired twice as often as any other gun on the ship. The old Commodore thanked Nolan publicly, gave him his own sword, and mentioned him in the dispatches.

At another time Nolan went with a young officer named Vaughan to overhaul a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board. Nolan was the only one who could speak Portuguese, the language used by the slavers. There were but few of the negroes. Vaughan had their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off and put these on the rascals of the schooner’s crew. Then Nolan told the blacks that they were free and that Vaughan would take them to Cape Palmas.

Now, Cape Palmas was a long way from their native land, and they said, “Not Palmas. Take us home, take us to our own country, take us to our own pickaninnies and our own women.” One complained that he had not heard from home for more than six months. It was terribly hard for Nolan, but he translated these speeches, and told the negroes Vaughan’s answer in some fashion.

As they were rowing back he said to a young midshipman of whom he was fond, “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 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.

“And for your country, boy, and for that flag, 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 who 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.”

And then Nolan added, almost in a whisper, “Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age!”

Years passed on, and Nolan’s sentence was unrevoked, though his friends had once asked for a pardon.

The end came when he had been nearly fifty years at sea, and he asked the ship’s doctor for a visit from another midshipman, Danforth, whom he liked. Danforth tells us about Nolan’s last hours and calls him “dear old Nolan,” so we know his love was returned.

The boy saw what a little shrine poor Nolan had made of his stateroom. Up above were the stars and stripes, and around a portrait of Washington he had painted a majestic eagle with lightnings blazing from his beak, and his foot just clasping the whole globe. Nolan said, with a sad smile, “Here, you see, I have a country.” Over the foot of the bed was a great map of the United States, drawn from memory. Queer old names were on it, names such as he had learned, like “Indian Territory” and “Louisiana Territory.”

“Danforth,” he said, “I know I am dying. I am sure that you know 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. Tell me something,—tell me everything before I die!”

Then the young midshipman redrew the map and tried to tell all that had happened to our great and growing country in fifty years. Only he could not wound his friend by mentioning the Civil War.

Nolan drank it all in and enjoyed it more than we can tell. After that he seemed to grow weary and asked for his Bible, telling Danforth to look in it after he was gone. This is the text he had marked: “They desire a country, even a heavenly: whereforeGod is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.”

On a 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:

In Memory ofPHILIP NOLAN,Lieutenant in the Army of the United States

“He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.”

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