"Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"
"Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,"
put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough. Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and goodold Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot into a long bundle, had been effectually gagged with his own whip, had been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which the food had been hurriedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down.
"I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself into it that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised, and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr. Izzard might return in searchof his overseer at any moment. The overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood—the mighty hound had been pried off his foe with difficulty—that the man lay in a faint until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now. Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered. When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again. Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum." He was going in search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his dark prison beneaththe bed for fortyeight hours before he was found. One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself to the outer air. On the second day of his unexplained absence, Mr. Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a reward for his finding. The discovery of his horse in a distant part of the plantation had concentrated the search there. The darkies who finally got the reward did not rejoice much in it, for in finding the overseer, they knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and his cruel whip. But the story of his discomfiture by three negroes, for he had never known that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon spread through the countryside. He became a neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's overseer. Leaving this place deprived him of his immunity from conscription. He was promptly seized by the nearest Confederate officer and impressed into the army. The Izzard negroeshad the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex-overseer marched off under guard to a Confederate camp, to serve as a private soldier.
Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again.
Two nights they rowed down the river, almost without a word, afraid to speak lest someone in the infrequent houses and still more infrequent villages along the banks should hear them. Wise old Towser knew enough not to bark when men about him kept so still. He lay always where with nose or paw or tail he could touch Tom. The latter was the commander of the expedition and Towser felt it and became his abject slave accordingly. At the close of the second night they had reached the Tennessee River. By day they camped upon shore in some hidden place, first craftily secreting the boat amid rushes and reeds. From their second hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confederate gunboat, a small stern-wheel steamboat, with cotton-bales at her bow and stern screening her two guns. Though she was makingall possible speed up the current, she moved but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes. The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher, had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville and that Union forces were then encamped in strength upon the river, not many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had been steaming upstream to escape capture.
When darkness came, they embarked again upon what proved to be the last chapter in the history of the old flat-boat. The next morning, caught in an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift tributary of the Tennessee, she whirled about, the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten seams, she filled and sank. She dropped so swiftly beneath them that before they realizedtheir danger they were all floundering in water over their heads. Tom could swim like a fish. That is one of the first things a boy should learn to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses was also surprisingly at home in the water, considering his years. Towser accepted the situation as something he did not understand, but which was doubtless entirely all right, as his lord and master, Tom, was in the water too. Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and saw only certain death before him. He gave a yell of terror as he went under. That yell came near costing them dear. As he rose to the surface, Tom on one side and Uncle Mose on the other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a shoulder under him, and started to swim to shore with him. Again he yelled. This time Moses lost patience.
"Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs to be 'mersed."
With this whispered menace, he reached up one hand and ducked Morris's head quite under water. That stopped all further sound fromhim. And by this time their feet had touched bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser wagging a triumphant tail, shaking himself and sending showers of spray over them. There they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in the world except the dripping clothes they wore. And there was no hiding-place near. For half a mile on either side of them a cleared field lay open to the day and the day was upon them. They had tempted Fate by rowing on too long after the first signs of dawn. Fate had turned the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above the eastern horizon at their back. It showed them, not half a mile away, a plantation house. It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming to the day's toil. It showed them a mounted overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding up to the flat range of the field from a ravine that had hidden him. He had heard Morris's yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at them, calling out:
"What are you niggers doin' here?"
Tom stepped forward to meet him. His twocompanions were useless in an emergency like this. They cowered back and were dumb. Towser strode ahead beside Tom and barked. The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was dealing with a white man, or rather with a white boy. The circumstances were suspicious. Who were these three dripping ragamuffins? But since one of them was white, the man's tone changed and he modified his question.
"Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here?"
"I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom answered, "by the river. My boat sunk just off shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give me another boat?"
"I mout 'n I moutn't."
"I am carrying dispatches," said Tom, sternly. "You will delay me at your peril. I shall take one of those boats, whether you consent or not."
With this he pointed at the most encouraging thing the sunrise had shown him. This was a line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing-place by the river.
"I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horseman, "and these are runaway niggers. You and they must come up to the big house with me. If you're all right, we'll send you on your way. If you're not, well, we know what to do with Yanks and runaway niggers! March!"
He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw a pistol. Tom was already making the same gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's had gone to the bottom. It was pure bluff on both sides. And in a moment, seeing this and being Americans, both laughed. But none the less the overseer demanded that they should go to the big house. Tom, protesting, but apparently half-yielding, edged along until he was near the landing-platform. Then, shouting "Come on, boys!" he ran to it, the frightened negroes following at his heels and Towser running ahead. He hustled them into the boat at the eastern end of the pier, jumped in himself, jerked the rope off the wooden peg that insecurely held it, and pushed off. The overseer, angrily protesting, stood a moment watching hisprey escape and then galloped like mad for the big house, shouting "Yanks! spies!! thieves!!! Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a dozen men in Confederate gray, roused by his yells. They were officers who had spent the night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted at daybreak, and were just about to mount for their day's march when the overseer gave the alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that officers do not carry anything bigger than pistols. A fusillade of revolver-bullets all fell short of the fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an oar apiece—they had found but two in the boat—with a desperate energy. But it was unlucky for the fugitives that they had not thought to steal or to scuttle the other two boats. This was Tom's fault, for he was captain.
"I'll know better next time," said Tom to himself ruefully, as he saw three men spring into each boat for the pursuit. "I'll know better next time—if there ever is a next time."
It did not seem likely that there would be a next time. One of the pursuing boats fell behind,to be sure. In it, too, there were but two oars and the men who plied them could not match the black man and the white boy who rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But in the other boat, two strong men each pulled two oars, while the third man crouched in the bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instructions. This boat gained upon them, bit by bit. The fugitives could hear the lookout call "Port, hard-a-port!" and could almost see the extra weight thrown into the sweep of the starboard oars to send the boat's head the right way. Once the man at the bow took a chance on a long shot. His bullet fell harmlessly two hundred feet astern of Towser who stood in the stern of the fleeing boat, barking savagely. Thrice they turned a sharp bend and were out of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each time there was a shorter interval before the enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his shoulder and measured the distance with his eye.
"We can just make that next point," he panted. "Soon as we do, we'll land and run. It's our only chance."
"I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, "but you'se right, Massa Tom. Dey'll catch us ef we keep a-rowin'."
They had almost reached the bend. Another strong pull would have sent them around it. But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into a prodigious pull. The handle, released from all pressure, flew through the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a fierce vigor, feeling the victory won. Morris gave one last pull with his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend.
"And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread arms used to tell the tale thereafter, "and derewuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de ribber—'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky!"
TOWSERTOWSER
And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their freedom and Tom came to his own. Towser became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon this and Towser highly approved of it. The giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was speedily put to work driving a four-mule team for the commissary department of General Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having food and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed quite natural to be given sleeping quarters (usually under the canvas cover of the wagon he drove) and rations, but it took him some months to recover from the shock of actually being paid wages for his work. When this too became natural, he felt that he was really free. Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of thing. He was bewildered by the rough and teeming life of an army-camp. He clung to Tom, was as devoted to him as Towser was, and much more helpless than the dog was. Towser madefriends and important friends at once. It happened that food was rather short at headquarters the day after the fugitives found safety. Tom, waiting for a chance to go North, had been asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to eat at headquarters' mess. An hour before dinner, one of his hosts was bewailing the scanty fare they were to have when Towser sidled around the corner of the tent with a fat chickenin his mouth and laid it with respectful devotion at his master's feet. There was a shout of applause and a roar from the assembled officers of "Good dog, good dog, Towser, do it again!" Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his mighty tail, he disappeared for a few minutes and did do it again. When the second chicken was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was assured. He was named an orderly by acclamation and was given a collar made of an old army belt, with the magic letters "U. S. A." upon it, a collar which he wore proudly through his happy life.
Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of pay were handed him, decided to give himself a treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is the best kind of treat man or boy can give himself. Make somebody else happy and you will be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when he finally started back for Cairo and Washington he took both Uncle Moses and Towser with him. Neither of them had ever been on a railroad train before. Equally bewildered andequally happy, they sped by steam across the thousand miles between Cairo and Washington. In those days dogs could travel with their masters, without being banished to the baggage-car. As the three neared the latter city, the great dome of the Capitol sprang into sight. Tom eagerly pointed it out.
"Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's the Capitol."
"Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk' Mose.
And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion, barked joyfully. He felt at home, too, because he was with Tom.
Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life—Newspaper Abuse of Lincoln—The Emancipation Proclamation—Lincoln in His Night-shirt—James Russell Lowell—"Barbara Frietchie"—Mr. Strong Comes Home—The Russian Fleet Comes to New York—A Backwoods Jupiter.
Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life—Newspaper Abuse of Lincoln—The Emancipation Proclamation—Lincoln in His Night-shirt—James Russell Lowell—"Barbara Frietchie"—Mr. Strong Comes Home—The Russian Fleet Comes to New York—A Backwoods Jupiter.
Tom neared the White House with a beating heart. He had done what Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large advantage of the President's smiling suggestion that he might occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had volunteered to go with Andrews on the railroad raid, which was to take a week, and he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the army-rolls as "missing."Would the President think of him as a truant, who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted with the winning smile he knew so well and to be congratulated both on his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally getting back to the Union lines.
The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping, her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were nervously twisting the petition someone had prepared for her to present to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's entrance had interrupted.
"So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins?" he asked.
"No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed thewoman. "He said—he said it was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and would be shot at—at—sunrise tomorrow."
The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one moment of blessed oblivion. Jim, "the only son of his mother and she a widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hurried before a court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. Admitted at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly refused.
"The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her. "We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's lifeto that of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, "it is unfortunate that the life happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise. Good-day."
He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was with Lincoln. There was no six days' wait at the White House for the mother of a Union soldier.
When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to Mrs. Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of Mrs. Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from wreck and herlife from long anguish. He pointed to the petition which had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor.
"Hand me that paper, Tom."
He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold letters: "This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as she came back to consciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jenkins's pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke into a torrent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside.
"You see, ma'am," said the President, "I don't believe the way to keep the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb: 'Never drown a boy baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to givehim a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him. Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a bit. Good-by—and God bless you."
Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that "money talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last cent on her journey to Washingtonand her six days' stay there. Abraham Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of "the high tide of the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander, saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough to write Jim Jenkins' mother a letter about her dead son's gift of his life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her soldier son.
Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody hated to come in contact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. "Nicolay wants me to take some people to see Stanton," he said. "I would rather make the tour of a smallpox hospital."
Lincoln always shrank from studying the records of court-martials, but he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by mercy. He caught at every chance of showing mercy. A man had been sentenced to be shot for cowardice.
"Oh, I won't approve that," said the President. "'He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him."
The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and had reached Mexico.
"I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. "We can't catch him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana, 'as they run.'"
At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New YorkTribuneand the foremost man in a group of great editors such as the country has never seen since. They were Horace Greeley of theTribune, Henry J. Raymond of theNew York Times, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.)Republican. Bowles wrote: "Lincoln is a Simple Susan"; Raymond demanded that he be "superseded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause, said Lincoln ruled "a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country."
In Tom's boyhood, the names of the threewere household words and names by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous Emancipation Proclamation, which with its sequence the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon. It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he called together his Cabinet, not to advisehim about it, but to hear from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout-hearted attack at the very nick of time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its members when a meeting of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in the Alabama canebrake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little journeys, Tad Lincoln oftenwent with him, his small white hand clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Although Moses knew nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a great event in the world's history.
"I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet, instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year.
The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He wrote that evening in his diary: "They all seemed to feel a sort of new andexhilarated life; they breathed freer; the President's Proclamation had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of appropriating that horrible name." The Proclamation made it respectable to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it succeeds.
The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has made a New Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in bondage—emancipation was to take place wherever the Stars-and-Stripes flew on January 1, 1863—such a man must have a wonderful glow of reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it.
Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's office. Lincoln was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot telescope to his eyes, itsother end resting upon his toes. He was looking at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head, called out: "Come in, Tommy."
Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a telegram in his hand, saying:
"Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is behaving very badly."
"Smith," answered Lincoln, "is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll never hear of it."
He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds.
That night Tom sat up late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk was the delight of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when the door opened quietly and thePresident slipped into the room. Never had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short nightshirt and carpet-slippers. He was smiling as he entered.
"Hear this, boys," he said. "It's from the 'Biglow Papers.' That fellow Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee words into Jeff Davis's mouth:
"'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times overWun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
"'An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times overWun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz doneWuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz doneWuz them that wuz too unambitious to run.
An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the dayConsists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the dayConsists in triumphantly gettin' away!'
And here," continued the President, utterly unaware of the oddity of his garb, "and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the 'cussed fools' in America could read it. Hear this:
"'An' why should we kick up a mussAbout the Pres'dent's proclamation?It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate usEf we don't like emancipation.The right to be a cussed foolIs safe from all devices human.It's common (ez a gin'l rule)To every critter born o' woman.'"
"'An' why should we kick up a mussAbout the Pres'dent's proclamation?It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate usEf we don't like emancipation.The right to be a cussed foolIs safe from all devices human.It's common (ez a gin'l rule)To every critter born o' woman.'"
Lincoln strode out again, "seemingly utterly unconscious," says Hay's diary, "that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at."
"That fellow Lowell" was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet, and essayist, later our Minister to England.
One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was. The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to his mother:
"See what Tommy has given me."
"Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln.
"My father," the boy answered. "He sent me good news. He's coming home right away."
"Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of the table.
"What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land.
"You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said to Tom: "The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen was to decree that he had 'deserved well of the Republic.' That can be said of your father now. He has deserved well of the Republic. Before long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he spoke to his wife, "until then we'd better not talk about it."
This talk was in early June of 1863. By September the whole world, or at least all the governments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had done after Lincoln sent him abroad.The whole world saw the symbol of his work, without in many cases knowing what the symbol signified. That symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in September of 1863.
The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it unless our blockade of Southern ports was broken. The people of both France and England had little to say as to what their governments would do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief, however, splendidly. In the height of what was called "the cotton famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of thefleecy staple and when the Lancashire mill-operatives were facing actual starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising, etc., was considerable. Someone suggested charging an admission fee. It was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything. Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the meeting. When it was over, the baskets were found to hold over four bushels of pennies and ha'pennies. The starving poor of Lancashire had given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding want.
This was the widow's mite, many times multiplied.
The crafty Napoleon the Third, "Napoleon the Little," as the great French poet and novelist,Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the proposed crime, but finally said it was inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead, if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is called a holographic letter, that is, a letter entirely in his own handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his fleet on the unholy raid that was in contemplation.
Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Liberty is a contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St. Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia and of our extra-officialrepresentative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong, Despotism stood by Liberty. The Russian Czar wrote the French Emperor that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the proposed attack upon the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron appeared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates.
This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and Russia. It explains why New York and Washington went mad in those September days of 1863 in welcoming the Russian fleet and the Russian officers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had "deserved well of the Republic."
It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom:
"What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy?"
"Tycoon" and "the Ancient" were nameshis rather irreverent secretaries had given Lincoln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him. Their nicknames for him were born of affection.
"Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on:
"I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a backwoods Jupiter. He sits here and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A backwoods Jupiter!"
Tom Goes to Vicksburg—Morgan's Raid—Gen. Basil W. Duke Captures Tom—Gettysburg—Gen. Robert E. Lee Gives Tom His Breakfast—In Libby Prison—Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg.
Tom Goes to Vicksburg—Morgan's Raid—Gen. Basil W. Duke Captures Tom—Gettysburg—Gen. Robert E. Lee Gives Tom His Breakfast—In Libby Prison—Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg.
Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. These were then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The long siege of that town, held by a considerable Confederate force under General Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this time there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight a bit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. He was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way of it.
July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the proposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a "salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines. He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever getting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all the salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of Calfkills Creek."
Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H. Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from Cairo. No one dreamed that Morganwould dare do what he did do. The Confederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in sad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgan said, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing was perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.
Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he hadtaken came to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was furiously waved.
"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the flag.
Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses before them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons, in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions were showered uponhim. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings to one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. He started eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but the price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.
All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederates had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the ties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally a hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams which the burned bridges hadspanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as if some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated in its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as his system of horse-stealing.
A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind, but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came, he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead. He was sosure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the northward that he galloped gayly up to the house—and, perforce, presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire raid.
The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him. Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned the corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the saddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was rather an abject positionin which to be captured. The Southerners roared with good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at the boy's plight.
Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open offer of the pies.
"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.
At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom butted in upon them and was seized.
"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the little scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval and Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forwardto the table when the officer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend as well as the commander of his rude soldiery.
"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."
He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.
"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"
He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth—altogether a vivid man. His mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusive resemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness of both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their common portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.