THE
Taylor-Trotwood Magazine

SUCCESSOR TO

BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE and TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY

Published by THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, 11, 13,
16, 19 Vanderbilt Law Building, Nashville, Tenn.

GOVERNOR BOB TAYLOR and JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editors

Contents for March, 1907

Copyright, 1907, by The Taylor-Trotwood Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
Entered as second-class matter, January 12, 1907, at the post-office at Nashville, Tennessee.

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“Standing at the small gate, now off its hinges, she took in all the surroundings and tried to imagine Ervin amid them”—The Shadow of the Attacoa, [page 626]

THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD
MAGAZINE

FAMOUS THRESHOLDS IN WASHINGTON

THE OCTAGON HOUSE

By Annie Riley Hale

At the northwest corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth Street, within a stone’s throw of the War, State and Navy Department, and almost within the shadow of the Corcoran Art Gallery, is a queer old red brick structure, with stone steps leading up to the white-pillared portico, which is known in Washington as the “Octagon House.”

As a historic mansion, as a “haunted dwelling,” and as a unique piece of Colonial architecture, the Octagon has a triple claim to a place in the catalogue of “famous thresholds.”

Back in 1798—that same year in which George Washington laid the cornerstone of his “two buildings” on North Capitol Street—another Virginian, Colonel John Tayloe, moved by the persuasive arguments of our first President and first real estate boomer for the Federal City, decided to build his “town residence” in Washington, instead of Philadelphia, as was his original intention.

Colonel Tayloe’s Virginia estate, “Mt. Airy,” comprised eight thousand fertile acres along the Rappahannock, with five hundred slaves and a superb villa, all inherited from his father, a member of the House of Burgesses, who built the Mt. Airy country seat in 1758, on a scale of magnificence unsurpassed at that period in this country.

The site of the Octagon was purchased from Mr. Benjamin Stoddert, our first Secretary of the Navy, an office created by the first Adams.

It is related that General Washington was much interested in the Octagon, frequently riding by on horseback to watch the progress of its building, though he was not permitted to witness its completion. Singularly enough, it was begun in the same year, finished in the same year (1801) and designed by the same architect (Dr. Thornton) as his own house on Capitol Hill. The Octagon was well and strongly built and set in a triangular lot which conformed to the street lines. The rear premises, in which were located the stables and servants’ quarters, were enclosed by a high brick wall, now broken in places, and ivy-grown.

When finished, this was the finest private residence in the Federal City, as it antedated the more stately Van Ness mansion by a number of years, and from its unique style of architecture was regarded as the show house of the surrounding country.

The irregular perimeter of its walls—whence the name “Octagon”—includes five sides and six angles for the main body of the house, with two short sides, and a circular swell across the front—demonstrating that the owner had to strain a point and round a curve for its christening. The exterior exhibits many windows of the old-fashioned, small-pane pattern, and from the rear giant old trees fling their flickering shade athwart them.

THE OCTAGON HOUSE

The interior of the house was modeled to fit the outward circumference, the doors, sash and glass in the circular vestibule being made on the circle and all still in working order.

In the niches prepared for them are exhibited two old cast-iron wood stoves, which crackled their good cheer for generations long past, but which evidently owe their present lustre to more recent furbishings. The doors on the ground floor are all of mahogany, and in an excellent state of preservation, as is likewise the railing to the stairway leading from the main hall up to the third story—a frail, insubstantial-looking affair with its slender wooden pilasters and narrow rail; yet, owing to the fact that every fourth pilaster is of iron, and the railing of mahogany, this old stairway has stood the test to which more massive balustrades have succumbed.

The rooms, eleven in all, are few, as compared with the size of the building, but the area of some of them might easily accommodate a modern housekeeping apartment. To the right of the main hall is the spacious drawing room, which has been the scene of many a brilliant assemblage in the days long gone, where the bas-relief figures on the mantel imported from London, watched the going and coming of the men and women who made history. Upon the estimate of an expert, it is said that the cost of reproducing this mantel in marble nowadays would be two thousand dollars.

Opposite the drawing room, to the left of the hall, is the long, high dining room, studded with windows and flooded with western light. Turning back the clock of time for almost a century, one sees gathered around this generous board a distinguished company, including Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams; Hamilton, Marshall, Jay and Pinckney; Webster, Calhoun, Clay and Randolph; Decatur, Porter, Lafayette, Steuben, Sir Edward Thornton and other notabilities.

DRAWING ROOM

Although it is not recorded that any of the Tayloes shone very conspicuously in their country’s annals by reason of any great service rendered in positions of public trust, yet because of their great wealth and social prominence, their lives touched at various points many of the great names which emblazon the pages of history. At the time he took possession of his Octagon home, in 1801, Colonel Tayloe’s income was seventy-five thousand dollars a year—three times as much as the President’s salary at that period—and the unbounded hospitality dispensed from his two households at Mt. Airy and the Octagon, embodied the most splendid features of the regal Old South.

He was married at the early age of twenty-one, to Miss Ann Ogle, daughter of Governor Benjamin Ogle, of Maryland. Descended from the Corbins, Gwynnes, Platers and Fauntleroys, connected by the marriage of his sisters with the Lees, Pages, Washingtons, Carters, Beverleys and Lomaxes of Virginia, and by his own marriage with the Bladens, Taskers, and Ogles, of Maryland, Colonel Tayloe’s social prestige was limitless.

One does not live long in Washington ere he learns to uncover and speak softly before a lineage which reaches to the “Eastern shore,” either of Virginia or of Maryland; and when a line is discovered which connects both these aristocratic strongholds—well, words are but poor things, and a solemn hush is the most approving corollary.

ECLIPSE

Colonel Tayloe was educated at Eton and Cambridge, England. He was noted for the urbanity of his manners, for the splendor of his equipages and for his lavish hospitality. In 1802, conjointly with Governor Ridgeley, of Maryland, Colonel Tayloe laid out the Washington City Race Course on the Holmead Farm, about two miles north of the President’s house, near the present Mount Pleasant. For a number of years, the Colonel was at the head of the turf in his native state at a time when the turf was much affected by the aristocratic sportsmen of the old régime. He kept in his stables at Mt. Airy a large number of blood horses. He owned the celebrated Leviathan, Gallatin, Sir Charles, Sir Archy and others; and from his imported thoroughbreds were descended the most famous coursers in the early annals of the American turf. From the Tayloe stables came Eclipse and Henry—“the North and the South”—who ran the celebrated sectional race on the Long Island course in 1823, in which Henry was beaten, and the success of Eclipse was attributed to the manipulation of a jockey named Purdy. The victory was received with uproarious shouts, Eclipse was led to the stand amid the strains of “The Conquering Hero,” and there followed a jubilee in New York. Whereupon, John Randolph, of Roanoke, who was present, remarked: “I am glad no one on the course thought of nominating Purdy for the Presidency, for it would have been carried by acclamation!”

In 1818 Colonel Tayloe built the old Willard Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, which was enlarged and improved by his son, Mr. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, in 1844, when it became and has since continued the most fashionable hotel of the Federal City.

Colonel Tayloe was in his day the largest contributor to St. John’s Episcopal church, which was the first building erected on Lafayette Square after the War of 1812, and is popularly known as “the President’s church,” from the fact that more Presidents have attended it than any other in the city, probably because of its proximity to the White House. Colonel Tayloe presented to this church the massive silver service which formerly belonged to the old church of Lunenburg, in Richmond County, Virginia.

CIRCULAR ROOM IN WHICH TREATY OF GHENT WAS SIGNED

Colonel Tayloe’s occupancy of the Octagon embraced the administrations of four Presidents—Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams—and ceased in 1828, just as the picturesque figure of “Old Hickory” rose above the Presidential horizon. In 1814, after the burning of the White House by the British, the hospitality of the Octagon was tendered to the homeless President and his bewitching “Dolly,” and for six or eight months it was transformed into “the President’s house,” Colonel and Mrs. Tayloe retiring to their country seat for the nonce. In the circular room over the round vestibule, Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent, February, 1815, which closed our second war with Great Britain. The table at which the treaty was signed is still in the possession of the Tayloe family.

The fact that Madison is esteemed one of our most intellectual and scholarly Presidents, that his state papers exhibit not only statecraft, but literary construction of a high order, and that a distinguished Southern Senator in a recent speech in Congress named him “more than any other man the author of the American Constitution,” gives peculiar piquancy to the following story, which is vouched for by Mr. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe:

When a member of Congress in Philadelphia, Mr. Madison boarded in the house of Mrs. Payne, the mother of “Dolly,” at that time the beautiful Widow Todd. Mr. Madison, attracted by the personal charms of the fascinating young widow, sent her a book to read and requested her opinion of it—presumably with a view to sounding her mental depth. Whereupon, Mrs. Todd, who, Mr. Tayloe says, was always more remarkable for beauty, tact and manner than for depth of intellect, asked Colonel Burr, who boarded there, also, to write her reply to Mr. Madison, which he accordingly did.

Shortly afterward, Madison offered himself to the handsome and intellectual widow, and was accepted. This story tallies with the statement from other sources that Burr made the match between Madison and the sprightly Dolly, but if our accomplished fourth President really was ensnared by the schoolgirl ruse, he certainly had no occasion to complain of his matrimonial bargain. For in the judgment of her contemporaries and of all succeeding generations, no lady has ever done the honors of the White House more gracefully and acceptably to all parties than the gracious and lovely Dolly Madison. Her brilliant levees and various functions at the Octagon during her brief sojourn there are among the richest traditions of early official life in the Federal city.

Dr. William Thornton, the architect of the Octagon, was remarkable for his talents, benevolence and eccentricities. He was the first architect of the Capitol at Washington, and was appointed one of the three original commissioners to lay off the city. At the request of Jefferson, he furnished designs for the University of Virginia. He was born in the West Indies, of Quaker parentage, and educated in England and Scotland. A man of science, he was head of the Patent Office from the time of Washington’s administration to that of Monroe, and claimed to have preceded Fulton in the application of steam as a propeller of boats, and to have made experiments on the Delaware before Fulton made his on the Hudson.

This claim naturally brought the two into collision, and their quarrel consisted in writing pamphlets against each other, apropos of which, Thornton is said to have declared: “I killed Fulton with that last pamphlet of mine!” Dr. Thornton married the daughter of an English lady who kept a fashionable school for young ladies in Philadelphia, and is reputed to have stood much in awe of both his wife and mother-in-law—a condition of mind which finds scant compensation in worldly honors. The ladies were allies in their opposition to his leaning toward the turf, to which, despite his Quaker blood, the Doctor was passionately addicted. This brought him into close association with Colonel Tayloe, and their deaths occurred in the same year, 1828.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Tayloe retired from society, although she continued to make the Washington house her principal home until her death, nearly thirty years later. One of her granddaughters, yet living in the District, is authority for the fact that for more than fifty years the Octagon was lighted solely by candles. Although gas was introduced prior to Mrs. Tayloe’s death, she would never permit its use in the Octagon, looking upon it as a “dangerous innovation,” and clinging to her candles to the last. The granddaughter remembers as one of the distinct impressions of her childhood, the sockets over the doorways which held these wax illuminators.

The Tayloe occupancy of the Octagon ceased with Mrs. John Tayloe’s death, in 1855, though its ownership did not pass from the family until its purchase by the American Institute of Architects, in 1903.

Between the dates 1855 and 1865, the Catholic Sisters of St. Matthew’s Parish taught a girls’ school in the Octagon, and from 1866 to 1879 it was leased by the government for the “Hydrographic Office,” incorporated by Congress in 1866 as a branch of the Navy Department.

Then for nearly twenty years the Octagon was given over to silence, cobwebs, mice and ghosts, the last the inevitable tenants of all deserted dwellings which have been the scene of departed grandeur.

A Virginian of good birth—whose fortunes had fallen on evil days, and who was wont to seek solace in the flowing bowl and nepenthic drug—having been installed as custodian of the place, greatly assisted popular superstition by the recital of his own pipe-dream imaginations. As one of the present Tayloes remarked—“you had only to fee the caretaker, and get a ghost-story spun to your liking.”

HALL AND STAIRWAY, SCENE OF THE REPUTED SUICIDE

Indeed, what with a mythical Miss Tayloe flinging herself over the third story balustrade to escape the pangs of misplaced affection, and a British officer—“nameless here forevermore”—walling up an octoroon slave girl in the wine cellar; with bells ringing at all hours of the night through the empty rooms, and heart-rending sighs breathing from hidden nooks and passages, the Octagon is particularly rich in spooky traditions, which neither the incredulous smile of daylight, nor the disapproving frown of the family can wholly dispel. So often have they been repeated, and so closely interwoven with the history of the old house—whole works of fiction having been built on them—that when one goes from the warm sunlight across this colonial threshold, pushing back the heavy curved door with its iron bar and ponderous key, the sensation in one’s spinal region is distinctly creepy. The eye wanders apprehensively up the thin, winding stairway to the third floor and back to the spot in the hall directly beneath, where the fatal plunge was made; and descending the narrow, worn stairs to the basement, one involuntarily listens in expectant dread for the smothered groan or sigh from behind those mouldy bricks.

Mr. Glenn Brown, the accommodating secretary of the American Institute of Architects, which now owns and occupies the Octagon, tells of a more objectionable class of tenantry than the ghosts, when the architects first took charge of the building in 1899. The faithless caretaker had rented out the rooms to irresponsible negroes, and the architects found several families of them domiciled in the erstwhile abode of Presidents. To remove the squalor and damage consequent upon such occupancy, and to restore and preserve the colonial architecture of the once splendid mansion, the Institute expended three thousand dollars, resulting in handsome and artistic headquarters, in all respects worthy of such an organization.

It may not be generally known that prior to 1850, the profession of architecture was not in good repute in America; that carpenters and contractors were much more highly esteemed than architects, the former, in contrast to the latter, being classified as “practical persons.”

In 1857, in the city of New York, a dozen young architects met in the office of Richard Upjohn, for the purpose of considering the organization of a society of architects, whose object should be the promotion of schools for architecture, the publication of journals and raising the standard of public taste in regard to it. This was the genesis of the American Institute of Architects, which now numbers eight hundred members and ten past presidents, of whom Richard Upjohn was the first; another, Thomas U. Walter, designed the present wings of the Capitol, and another, Richard M. Hunt, designed the Administration Building, at the World’s Fair, and the famous “Biltmore,” at Asheville, North Carolina.

The circular room on the second floor of the Octagon, once President Madison’s executive office, is now the business office of the Institute, and Dolly Madison’s bedroom has been converted into an exhibit room for the American Academy in Rome.

Through the courtesy of the secretary, the writer was permitted to explore the back yard and peep into the stable lot, in which is located a large stone block—“whereby hangs a tale.”

A granddaughter of Colonel Tayloe’s, who spent much of her youth at the Octagon, affirms that this stone was used by the postilions in mounting. Yet to the frenzied fancy of more than one chronicler of local history, this was the “slave block,” from which were auctioned some of those five hundred slaves ascribed to John Tayloe, and is referred to in pompous and melodramatic phrase as “doing satanic duty through the years.” Opposed to this is the well authenticated fact that Colonel Tayloe never sold any of his dusky retinue, and his wife’s reply when questioned as to the number of her husband’s slaves: “He has five hundred servants, but only one slave. I am slave to them all,” is fraught with much historic truth which is pretty generally overlooked in the portrayal of ante-bellum types of Southern women.

Other pious visitors to the Octagon kitchen, looking through the same lens as the discoverers of the “slave block,” beheld in the long iron “spits,” used for roasting meats, unique instruments of torture for the hapless slaves!

These stories indicate that other imaginations besides the inventors of ghostly legends, have been busy with the long-suffering Octagon; these encrustations of false over the true cannot, however, detract from the real interest of the history of this dignified old mansion.

FATE’S IRONY

He fought against his weakness; weary,

Heartsick, he, amid his failures, died.

Then one who knew him, knew how near he

Came to conq’ring with the hurts he bore;

Knew the reachings of his nature,

And the sweetness of his heart at core;

Knew the baffled will, the down-crushed pride;

From his effort plucked up courage,

Turned the failure into story,

From it won renown and glory.

Amy E. Blanchard.

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER XVIII—THE BLUNDERS OF SHILOH

By John Trotwood Moore

The more one studies Shiloh, the more contradictory it becomes. It will ever remain an incongruous battle. On the Union side it was a battle of unpreparedness—though not of dishonorable surprise—and on both sides a battle of blunders. And never in any battle of any war that I have ever read did Chance—old-fashioned, historic, blind Chance—play a more conspicuous part.

Some of the big chances, standing out in the light of to-day like gray ghosts above the battlefield, are:

First—The chance that cut Buell off one day too late for the Union cause.

Second—The chance that put him there one day too soon for the Confederates.

Third—The chance which Grant took—and which he says in his autobiography he would not have taken with the riper knowledge gained later in the war—of not entrenching.

Fourth—The chance of mud and rain, which delayed Johnston one day in bringing on the fight.

Fifth—The chance of one fateful bullet amid ten thousand harmless ones, striking an artery not hit once in ten thousand times in battle, and striking from the boards the only head on either side which had absolutely a clear conception of the entire battle to be, planned by himself with consummate skill and executed, till stricken to death, like a thunderbolt of Jove in the brain of Mars. He alone, I repeat, of all the host of generals, Federals and Confederates, who swarmed booted and bedecked around the contending hosts of that day, had definite plans, knew what was to be done, and held the doing of it in the hollow of his hand, and his name was Albert Sidney Johnston.

Sixth—The great chance Beauregard had for ending the fight on the first day, instead of calling off the troops until the fatal to-morrow.

Seventh—The chance—ay, the blunder—of Grant in recalling Lew Wallace from a position which a most gracious and generous fate had given him. A chance which gave to Wallace the opportunity for his own fame and the fame of Grant’s army—the chance of falling upon the flank and rear of the eager, neglectful, front-fighting Confederates, of breaking their hearts as Johnston’s death could never have done. This was a greater chance than Jackson had at Fredericksburg when he utterly defeated the Yankee army; it was as great as the chance Blücher had at Waterloo; greater than Bonaparte’s at Austerlitz.

In thinking of Stonewall Jackson and Johnston, did God in His wisdom know it was best that the Confederacy should not be, as we all now know it, and take these two men from life that it might not come to pass?

And there we are at it again: For God’s decision is man’s destiny.

Now, are not these chances enough? Or is it Law, Cause and Effect, Adjustment, Nature—God?

To know—to see clearly—to understand that one paragraph, who would not be willing to go hence to-night? For if it is God and immortality, there would be no fears, doubts, pitiless days of self communion, ending in that pale despair which strikes into the soul of every man whose soul is his own and who thinks. And if it is all Chance (a thought repellant and unbelievable to one who thinks), or even the Great Unchance of fixed, immutable, but unloving and uncaring Law—as many believe—then why suffer to this palsied, dust-turning end?

GENERAL LEW WALLACE

From the lips of babes, from the humble and the ignorant, what wisdom! Here is some of it:

On a morning after a cyclone where I once lived, amid the death of nearly threescore people, and the wreck of homes, a friend met an old negro, whose wife and children had been killed, and his home blown away. There was the usual compassion and condolence and trust from the learned man, who had lost nothing. But the old negro said: “Marster, the man that you calls God—yo’ God—it ’pears to me that he do about as much harm as he do good!”

I have wondered since—often and often—if our God—the God our little minds have been able to grasp—to whom some people falsely attribute revenge and cruelty and murder—if he is not as the old negro said; and I have prayed that I might live to know the God Which Is, and that he would permit me to understand the things which do stagger me now!

Were these things really chances? Take each one of them and sift it to its very beginning—follow up the broad stream of each till you find the first drop of its water trickling over the blind bluff of the thing unknown which staggers and stops you, and even to that last tiny drop you will stand and find no answer to the question, and before that drop you will stop again, look up at the stars and ask the same question: “Is it Chance, is it Law, or is it God?”

Let us take the first one: Why was Buell a day late? A thousand little things—a march from Nashville to Savannah, planned with ample time, yet delayed. What delays? Hundreds of them—follow up any one of them and it will end in the drop.

Let me give you one which came under my personal recollection: Some ten years ago I stopped one night at a hotel in Chicago, known as the Kuhn House. After registering, the proprietor sought me out. He had been one of Buell’s chief engineers, and upon seeing where I was from—Columbia, Tennessee—he wanted to know if the old bridge across Duck River at that point was still standing. “It was there,” he said, “that we saved Grant’s army and made him President instead of prisoner. I was given two days”—I think that is the time he stated—“to repair the bridge, the flooring of which had been torn up and the structure half burned before we reached it. But we had heard rumors of a great battle pending near Savannah and though we had received messages from General Grant saying there was no need for undue haste, we were marching for all we were worth. I felt, somehow, that great things were at stake, and I doubled my force and worked day and night completing the repairs so that the artillery might pass over in just half the time given me; and that time saved, put us in Savannah twelve hours to our good. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken my full time to repair that old bridge over Duck River at Columbia.”

Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!

Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell’s fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.

In his very able article in The Century, Buell demonstrates at least very clearly to his own mind:

First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.

Second. That Grant’s army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.

Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.

Fourth. That they were whipped.

Fifth. and (Q. E. D.) that Buell saved them.

Here is Buell’s very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:

“An army comprising seventy regiments of infantry, twenty batteries of artillery and a sufficiency of cavalry lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army, claimed to be superior in numbers, twenty miles distant in its front, while the commander made his headquarters and passed his nights nine miles away, on the opposite side of the river. It had no line or order of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, to give warning or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized head during the absence of the regular commander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle, without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the unguarded army, advanced upon it the next morning, penetrated its disconnected lines, assaulted its camps in front and flank, drove its disjointed members successively from position to position, capturing some and routing others, in spite of much heroic individual resistance, and steadily drew near the landing and depot of its supplies in the pocket between the river and an impassable creek. At the moment, near the close of the day, when the remnant of the retrograding army was driven to refuge in the midst of its magazines, with the triumphant enemy at half-gunshot distance, the advance division of a reinforcing army arrived on the opposite bank of the river, crossed and took position under fire at the point of attack; the attacking force was checked and the battle ceased for the day. The next morning at dawn the reinforcing army and a fresh division belonging to the defeated force advanced against the assailants, followed or accompanied by such of the broken columns of the previous day as had not lost all cohesion, and, after ten hours of conflict, drove the enemy from the captured camps and the field.”

It will be seen from the statement in his article that one of the strongest points he made as to the unpreparedness of Grant’s army is the repeated fateful turning of the flanks of the different divisions throughout the day, in one of which Prentiss was captured. He says:

“The outflanking so common in the Union report at Shiloh is not a mere excuse of the inferior commanders. It is the practical consequence of the absence of a common head and the judicious use of reserves to counteract partial reverses and preserve the front of battle.”

GENERAL GRANT.

As he appeared at the time of Shiloh

From this alone he argues all the misfortunes of the different divisions acting independently and without a common head. Their flanks turned again and again as each fell back with no warning from the others. And this is his graphic statement of the critical ending of the first day’s fight:

“Before the incumbrance of their success was entirely put out of their day, the Confederates pressed forward to complete a seemingly assured victory, but it was too late. John K. Jackson’s brigade and the Ninth and Tenth Mississippi of Chalmer’s brigade crossed Dill’s ravine, and their artillery on the south side swept the bluff at the landing, the missiles falling into the river far beyond. Hulbert had hurriedly gotten into line in rear of the siege guns, as they are called in the official report, posted a half-mile from the river, but for five hundred yards from the landing there was not a soldier or any organized means of defense. Just as the danger was perceived Colonel Webster, Grant’s Chief of Artillery, rapidly approached Colonel Fry and myself. The order of getting the battery which was standing in park into action was expressed simultaneously by the three of us, and was promptly executed by Colonel Webster’s immediate exertion. General Grant came up a few minutes later, and a member of his escort was killed in that position. Chalmer’s skirmishers approached within one hundred yards of the battery. The number in view was not large, but the gunners were already abandoning their pieces, when Ammen’s brigade, accompanied by Nelson, came into action. The attack was repelled and the engagement ended for the day.... We know from the Confederate report that the attack was undertaken by Chalmer’s and Jackson’s brigade, as above stated; that the reserve artillery could effect nothing against the attacks from under the shelter of Dill’s ravine; that the fire of the gunboats was equally harmless on account of the elevation which it was necessary to give the guns in order to clear the top of the bluff, and that the final assault, owing to the show of resistance, was delayed. Jackson’s brigade made its advance without cartridges, and when they came to the crest of the hill and found the artillery supported by infantry, they shrank from the assault by bayonet alone. Jackson went in search of co-operation and support, and in the meantime the attack was superseded by the order of the Confederate commander calling off his troops for the day.”

His description of how things looked when he landed at Pittsburg Landing, of the demoralized condition of Grant’s army, is graphic in the extreme:

“On the shore I encountered a scene which has often been described. The face of the bluff was crowded with stragglers from the battle. The number that at different times has been estimated at five thousand in the morning to fifteen thousand in the evening. The number at nightfall would never have fallen short of fifteen thousand, including those who had passed down the river, and the less callous, but still broken and demoralized, fragments about the camps on the plateau near the landing. At the top of the bluff all was confusion. Men mounted and on foot and wagons with their teams and excited drivers, all struggling their way closest to the river, were mixed up in apparently inextricable confusion with a battery of artillery which was standing in park without men or horses to man or move it.”

There lives near me in honor and good name, General Gates P. Thruston, one of the greatest scholars of the South, and perhaps the greatest living ethnologists of this country. He was with Buell, and corroborates his chief, and he refers me to General Lew Wallace’s oration, delivered at Shiloh, April 6th, 1903, in which General Wallace uses the following language:

“Did any of you, my friends, ever hear of an army fighting a battle without a commander? No? Well, that was the case with the Army of the Tennessee at the beginning of the first day here. The five divisions on the field had each its chief, to be sure; but none of the five chiefs was in general command. Instead of one supreme governing will, nowhere so essential as in battle, there were five officers, each independent of the others. Between them things were done by request, not orders. No one of them was responsible for what the others did. I am sure you will see the enormity of the disadvantage. You will even wonder that there was any resistance made.

“I may not pass this point without an explanation. To do so would be grossest injustice. General Grant, as everybody knows, was in command of the Army of the Tennessee at the time. By order of General Halleck, his headquarters were at Savannah, ten miles below Pittsburg Landing. Hearing the guns, he made all haste to the scene of action, arriving there four hours after the attack began. It was then too late for him to change the day. The battle had passed beyond his control.

“A strange circumstance that, certainly; but what will you say to this I offer you next? The Confederate army left Corinth for Pittsburg Landing on Thursday, in the afternoon. It moved in three corps—Hardee’s, Bragg’s, Polk’s—with Breckinridge’s three brigades in reserve. The intention was to attack the Army of the Tennessee Saturday morning, but it was not until late Saturday afternoon that the entire army reached its destination and was deployed. Here, now, is the marvel. How was it possible to move the three great army corps into as many lines of battle, each behind the other, within two miles of Shiloh Church, without making their presence known? Were there any Union pickets out? How far out could they have been? Had they no eyes, no ears? It would seem not. For at five o’clock Sunday morning, when Hardee moved to the attack—I give you all permission to wonder while you listen—neither General Grant at Savannah nor one of his division commanders on the field knew of the peril, or even suspected it.”

Of the other great chance or blunder of Shiloh—Grant’s recall of Lew Wallace—let us now speak. Early in my study of this battle I stumbled on this so unexpectedly that it filled me with surprise. It was beyond doubt the greatest opportunity of Shiloh, as I mentioned in a previous paper. The story of it by Lew Wallace himself, is the most interesting paper ever written about that battlefield. For many years the distinguished author of “Ben-Hur” was made the scapegoat of Shiloh. He bore it like the man he was, but history will now vindicate him and nothing has given me greater pleasure than to contribute my share toward his vindication in this series of papers. At the time I arrived at the conclusion I did concerning General Wallace’s brilliant movement during the first day’s fight, I did not know that he had ever explained it himself, but seeing the position I took, and the conclusions I deduced, a friend has sent me the account General Wallace wrote of it himself and turned it over to General James Grant Wilson to be published by General Wilson after the death of the author. This was done last January by the Appletons,[1] and it is useless to add that the author of “Ben-Hur” has told in no usual way the graphic story of that blunder of his superior which made Wallace a scapegoat instead of a hero of that much misunderstood fight. I quote only part of it, but this part bristles with interest, and is enough:

“On the 6th, the memorable Sunday, a sentinel woke me from sleep on the steamboat serving me for headquarters. He reported cannonading up the river. When I reached the hurricane deck dawn was breaking. The air was humid and heavy, but still. The guns were quite audible. Five minutes—ten—and then the irregular pounding, sometimes distinct, sometimes muffled, kept scurrying down the yellow flood of the river. Directly the camp on the bluff became astir.

“My staff officers reported to me. One of them (Lieutenant Ware) I sent to Colonel Smith with directions to form his brigade and conduct it to ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ Another (Major James R. Ross) was dispatched at speed to Colonel Thayer with orders to have everything ready to move; continuing his ride, he bore an order to Colonel Wood of the Third Brigade to break camp, send baggage and property to the landing (Crump’s) and bring his regiments to the rendezvous at ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ The purpose of these orders was to have the division ready for movement when General Grant, who was at Savannah for the night, should pass in his dispatch boat going up the river.

“About 8:30 o’clock General Grant drew alongside, and a conversation, substantially (almost literally) the following, took place:

“‘Have you heard the firing?’ he asked.

“‘Yes, I have been listening to it since daybreak.’

“‘What do you think of it?’

NASHVILLE PIKE, NEAR SPRING HILL, DOWN WHICH ROAD BUELL MARCHED

“‘It is undoubtedly a general engagement.’

“‘What have you in your front?’

“‘There is nothing reported.’

“He then said, after thought: ‘Very well. Hold yourself in readiness for orders.’

“‘But, General, I ordered the concentration about daylight. I am ready now.’

“Again he reflected. He seemed uncertain. It afterwards came out that he believed the real attack would be on me. Presently he repeated: ‘Hold yourself in readiness to move in any direction.’ The pilot bell rang, the lashings were removed and his steamer put off up-stream hard as it could go.

“There was general disappointment among my officers. I was disappointed; but without remark I left the boat. My last order at the Landing was to have a horse saddled and bridled and hitched to a tree on the bluff, that a messenger coming down the river with an order for me might bring it without delay. Thereupon I rode out to ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ where Smith and Thayer were waiting, arms stacked. The Third Brigade had not yet arrived.

“The men were clustered together in groups. They were doing little talking. Their faces were turned to the south, listening. Occasionally musketry could be heard accompanying the artillery. Smith and Thayer and their staff officers collected around me, and were surprised when I told them the order General Grant had left me.

“Ten o’clock, and still the air laden with noises of the struggle going on—still no order; 10:30—yet no order. Smith got into his saddle and rode away, saying: ‘I guess Grant sees he can get along without us.’

“Eleven o’clock. The firing was no longer continuous, but at intervals and in outbursts. Thayer suggested that an order might have been started and the messenger intercepted. I thought not; for if the situation on the field called for us, the possibility of an accident to a courier by land would necessitate sending him by boat. So I ordered a staff officer, Major Ross, to ride to the landing and see if anything had come down by the river. About half a mile down the road he met an officer on the horse I had left, who asked him where General Wallace was. Ross told him; then he asked, in turn, if he had orders for General Wallace. The officer said he had, and gave the Major a paper, which the Major read. In a short time Captain Baxter, a Q. U. of General Grant’s, introduced himself to me and placed the paper in my hand, saying: ‘Here is an order.’

“Our watches showed 11:30 o’clock. The officers of my staff and of Thayer’s closed around me while I read. The paper was a half sheet of foolscap, dented with boot heels and soiled with tobacco juice, and it was folded, not enveloped. The writing was in pencil. Strangest of all, no signature was attached. I passed the paper to Thayer to read, and, turning to Baxter, asked: ‘How is the fighting going, Captain?’

“Baxter replied: ‘Very well. We are repulsing them all along the line.’

“The paper was returned to me, and I read it a second time, and, noticing its deficiencies, inquired:

“‘Who is this from, Captain?’

“‘General Grant.’

“‘Why is it not signed?’

“He then explained: ‘I received the order verbally. Not being used to carrying orders, I picked the paper from the floor of the cabin as I came down and wrote what you see. I was afraid I might make a mistake.’

“General Grant, speaking of the order, has several times said that he sent it to me not later than 10 o’clock; that it directed me to march to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road; that he gave it verbally to a staff officer, and did not know what it was when delivered to me. Of course, he could not know, but I do; and others, some dead, some living, who read it, have given their accounts of it, so that I can speak with confidence. Here it is—as I received it, mark you—almost verbatim:

“‘You will leave a sufficient force at Crump’s Landing to guard the public property there; with the rest of your division march and form junction with the right of the army, your line at right angles with river, and be governed by circumstances.’

“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a naked direction for me to march and form junction with the right of the army.

“Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover, by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt. It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I never blamed him.

“My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short, Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which, by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s camp.

“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer, but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind; and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I had the achievement of some special glory in purpose?

“The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless, covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the rear and asked:

“‘Are you General Wallace?’

“Without pulling rein, I replied.

“‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry up.’

“Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a few minutes.’

“The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which, if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in error, would have prompted calling him back for question.

“So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on. Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’ From the position my column was then in, the left of our army should have been well down toward the river in an almost easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to dispose of the only mistake General Grant attributes to me in the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’

“Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of his reckoning, if not lost.

“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high excitement.

JOHNSTON’S MONUMENT AT SHILOH

“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’

“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’

“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’

“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’

“‘To join Sherman.’

“‘Sherman!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.

“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’

“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant.

“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.

“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’

“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’

“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find a crossing into the river road before the head of the column would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted to a right-about of column.

“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the south facing north, it was to march completely around the left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning, but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained lost in the woods an hour longer!”

[1] Appleton’s Magazine, January, 1906.

SOME BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH

MISS ALETHA VARDAMAN
Daughter of the Governor of Mississippi

Sweeney, Jackson

MRS. J. C. W. BECKHAM
Wife of the Governor of Kentucky

G. B. Waggener, Philadelphia

MISS EULALIE GORMAN
Dallas

Voorhees & DeVoe, Dallas

MRS. THEODORE PERRY SHONTS, OF WASHINGTON

MRS. WILLIAM ATKINSON JONES
Warsaw, Virginia

AUNT HETTY ON THE “WET AND THE DRY”

By Louise Clarke Pyrnelle

[The editors feel that they will not be treating their readers fairly unless they call especial attention to this picture of Alabama negro life and the unusual cleverness of the dialect.—Editors Taylor-Trotwood.]

The town of Luckville had been from its very beginning “wet;” that is, there had always been a saloon or “doggery,” at which whisky could be bought by the pint, quart or gallon.

But the discovery of phosphate beds in the river near town had brought in a number of new residents, many of them “temperance folks.” So at the next election the town voted “dry,” and no liquor could be bought there except from the drug store by a doctor’s prescription.

This law remained in force for three years, and now, on the verge of another election, the opposing factions were busily and earnestly at work for their respective sides. It was at this time and under these conditions that Aunt Hetty began loudly to proclaim her opinions on the “wet and the dry.”

“Humph! De whi’ fo’ks is all de time er-gittin’ up some kin’ er ructions er nuther ’long uv deyse’fs! Dat’s des whut mek me say whut I does—dat de whi’ fo’ks is de cuttin’upist an’ de gwineonist fo’ks dat de good Lawd evah made! Dey’s er-votin’, er dey’s er-fightin’, er dey’s er-co’tin’ up teh de cote-house, er dey’s er-doin’ sump’n er-nudder dat-a-way de whole indurin’ resistunce uv dey time! Now dey’s ’scussin’ uv de ’wet an’ de dry’! Humph!

“Hit’s all one teh me! I knows I ain’t er-gwine teh hab no bar-room mahse’f, an’ I ain’t er-gwine teh pestah nobuddy frum habin’ er bar-room ef dey wants one. Dat’s des perzac’ly whar I stan’s.

“I done seen de wuckin’s uv de bar-rooms, an’ ergin, on de yutheh han’, I done seen de wuckin’s uv de drug-sto’. I done study uv ’em bofe thu’ de ’newvehmunts uv dat ole niggah Pomp, whut nomuhnates hisse’f mah husbun’—do’ I ain’t nevah seen no mighty ’mount uv husbun’ ’bout him. He’s des er lazy, biggity, ornerary ole black niggah, whut got hisse’f tied up in de bon’s er macremony des feh teh git his vittles an’ his lodgmunts. But he done bin er-livin’ er-long uv me now er-gwine on a mighty heap uv yeahs, an’ I got so used teh see him er-hangin’ ’roun’ mah house tell hit ’pyears lak I cyarn’ do bedoutin’ him—lak sump’n’s er-missin’ ef he ain’t dar.

“But ’scusin’ all dat, he sho’ is de ontemperatist man, white er black, dat evah wuz bawn! He des natch’ly bleedged feh teh drink ef he knows dar’s enny kin’ uv liquidmunts er-roun’! W’en de whi’ fo’ks had de bar-rooms ole Pomp he got pow’ful pyeart! He tuck’n tuck my ax an’ went all er-bout er-splittin’ an’ er-cuttin’ up wood—but de Lawd knows he ain’t nevah cut an’ split none feh me! An’ den he digged in de blossom patches feh de whi’ fo’ks. An’ let er-lone all er dat, mah hens got teh doin’ mighty cur’s—dey’d cackle lak dey wuz er-layin’ pow’ful, but I nevah could fin’ de fust rudemunts uv er aig. I mought er done a onjustice to de po’ ole niggah, but I ’spicioned him ’caze I hearn tell uv him er-sellin’ aigs, an’ hit don’t ’pyeah natch’l feh er man teh sell aigs w’en he ain’ got no hens uv his own feh teh lay ’em. Dem two ingrejunces—hens an’ aigs—des ’pintedly b’long to one er-nuther. Ef you got hens you’ll git aigs, an’ ef you ain’t you won’t. Dat is, not natch’ly! Uv co’se dey is shawt cuts you kin take feh to git ’em, an’ I ’spicioned mah ole man uv takin’ dem vehy cuts—an’ mah aigs wid ’em.

“Well, dem an’ his wuckin’s fotch him in a little sal’ry, an’ evah night he’d go teh de bar-room. Ef he had fo’ bits he’d buy er fo’-bit bottle; ef he had two bits he’d buy er two-bit bottle; so, ’cordin’ teh his bits wuz de size uv his bottle. Den he’d stan’ er-roun’ an’ tell his ’speriunces an’ notate his tales, an’ sing his chunes, an’ de gen’l’mun would treat him to beeh an’ segahs. An’ des es long es dat bar-room stay open, ole Pomp, he’d stay dar. An’ evah night hit wuz de same thing! Evah regitimate cent Pomp could scrape up stopped slap dar in dat bar-room!

“So I wusht teh de Lawd de whi’ fo’ks ’d shet up dem bar-rooms, an’ bless de Libbin’ Goodness, dey tuck’n done dat vehy thing!

“Den dey made de law dat nobuddy could git er drink ’ceptin’ ef dey wuz sick an’ had de doctah’s subscription feh teh git it by. W’en dat ole Pomp got er clear ondehstan’in’ uv dat ’ar law he des hump hisse’f! De niggah wuck so hahd an’ step er-roun’ so pyeart, an’ look so ’ligious-minded dat I got mighty holped up erbout him. But, umph-umph, honey, dat ole niggah, he sho’ sly! W’en Sat’d’y night come he ties er hank’cheh ’roun’ his ole jaws an’ gits him er stick an’ limps up teh de drug sto’. W’en de doctah notice him he say, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy-Lawdy,’ lak he mos’ daid. An’ de doctah ax him, ‘Whut’s de mattah wid you, Uncle Pomp?’ An’ dat weekid ole Christyun niggah, whut’s es strong es er natch’l bawn oxen, he ’lowed, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy, doctah, I feels pow’ful bad, thank Gawd!’ ‘Whut seem teh huht you now?’ sez de doctah, an’ ole Pomp ’spon’s back teh him, ‘Well, suh, I don’t perzac’ly know des whut it is. I got er miz’ry in de off side, an’ I’se afeerd I’se busted de rim outeh mah stomach. I knows I got a achin’ in de pit uv mah back, an’ mah livah’s all gummed up! An’ dis laig—o-o-oh—hit seem lak hit ain’t hung right er sump’n—hit ain’t plum, somehow. So I thought I’d ax you ef you’d be so onscruperlous, suh, as teh gib me er subscription teh git a drap uv whisky teh rub on intun’ly, suh, on dese stiff ole j’ints uv mine, ef you please, suh.’

“So dat ole backslidin’ niggah, he wuck on de doctah’s symphonies tell de doctah gib him de subscription, an’ he gib de doctah fo’ bits. An’ on top uv dat he hatter gib er dollar an’ er quawteh fo’ de vehy same kin’ an’ same remount uv whisky dat he git frum de bar-room feh fo’ bits befo’! Lawzy, chillun, hit wuz des lak I bin er-tellin’ you! An’ evah week hit wuz de same prefawmunts tell hit set me teh studyin’. An’ I done ’pintedly come to dis ’clusion, dat ef er man is got teh hab whisky—des natch’ly boun’ an’ ’bleedged feh teh hab it, hit don’t mek much diff’unce whedder it come frum de bar-room er frum de drug sto’. An’ ef dey calls de bar-room de ‘wet’ an’ de drug sto’ de ‘dry,’ den de mos’ diff’unce is ’twixt an’ ’tween er dollah an’ six bits—countin’ de subscription—an’ fo’ bits. So I tells you dis, honey, w’en it comes to bar-rooms an’ drug sto’s hit’s des nip an’ tuck—mos’ly tuck.”

MY LOVE

By LILLIAN WESTER

You have been mine, O Love!

One fair, sweet day;

Last night you left the courts of men

And passed my way.

I did not ask, O Love!

In wish nor prayer,

For one so strong, so wholly good,

To think me fair.

I did but hope, O Love!

From humble sphere,

To sing one song so true that you

Might pause to hear;

Might pause, and find, O Love!

That path more sweet,

When Chance should bring you once again

Where strayed my feet.

But then you came, O Love!—

’Twas night with me—

You smiled and drove the shadows far,

And I could see.

You took my hands, O Love!

And with your eyes

You looked my soul away from me

To where yours lies.

I weep, my Life, my Love!

But then the tears

Are for the days before you came,

Not coming years.

You came, my King, my Love!

And in your eyes

I lost the fear of days, and found

A Paradise!

OLD HICKORY

BORN AT WAXHAW SETTLEMENT, MARCH 15, 1767

DIED AT THE HERMITAGE, JUNE 8, 1845

By Robert L. Taylor

The most noted character in American history, one whom the coming ages will number among the truly great, was born at a point so obscure that its exact location is still in dispute. On the remote frontier of the Carolina colony, whose boundary lines were uncertain; far up on the forest-clad banks of the Catawba, whose slopes were just beginning to feel the pioneer’s axe; on the fifteenth day of March, 1767, Andrew Jackson was presented to humanity.

The story of his mother partakes of the tragic, the heroic and the pathetic. The daughter of a fairly prosperous linen weaver of Carrickfergus, she linked her destiny with young Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irishman, and, after a few years at home, they left the shores of the Emerald Isle, seeking fortune in the new colonies. Scarcely had they fixed their abode in the Waxhaw Settlement and begun to make a home, when death claimed the young husband, and the bereaved widow was left almost destitute, with two young sons, Hugh and Robert, her sole dependence. Within a few days Andrew was born, and necessity forced her to send her eldest son, Hugh, to live with a relative, while she and the two younger made their home with another.

Here in the primeval forests young Andrew began to imbibe that love of liberty which fitted him later so to bless humanity. His education was obtained in the old field school, but, impatient of its restraints and loving best the rifle and the chase, he spent the earlier years in developing the sinews of a vigorous manhood.

When yet a mere lad the sweep of the Revolution reached the Waxhaw Settlement, and Mrs. Jackson willingly gave her two older boys to the service of the colonies, but clung to her youngest born until the insult of a British officer gave intensity to an inclination that was destined to cost England so dear.

OLD HICKORY

Peace found young Andrew bereft of mother, brothers and worldly inheritance, but with a vigorous constitution, a chivalrous sense of moral duty and a deep, abiding love for his country, he set out resolutely upon an unexampled career, the chief characteristic of which in earlier years was reckless daring, in which he was unconsciously laying the foundations for that intrepid adherence to right principle that later set him apart and above his fellows. Of uncommon mental endowment, he easily acquired such education as was then obtainable and adopted the profession of law, and when but twenty-one years of age he fell in with the adventurous spirit of the times on the frontier and made his way with the pioneers into the Southwest Territory. After lingering in the Watauga settlements a time, he followed the trail still farther into the wilderness until he reached the beautiful basin of the Cumberland, where he took up his final abode.

There, from the first, he took his place easily and naturally as a leader of men and began to work out that great destiny which will link his name indissolubly with liberty and free government as long as men love to be free, the symbol of the soundest and strongest fundamental principle in government ever conceived by man.

Measured by the moral standards now obtaining, many of his acts and habits in those earlier years cannot be justified, although there is little to indicate that they were held to be reprehensible then. His chief characteristic was towering and intolerant mastery of men, his greatest foible was his love for a race-horse, and he left nothing further to be done in following both bents, and yet he was actuated in everything by the highest conception of honor and principle, and imparted dignity and the virtue of his own indomitable character to every transaction in which he engaged.

The annals of men do not afford, and fiction has never conceived, an instance of more sublime devotion to womanhood than Andrew Jackson held for his wife. He loved her with an intensity of tenderness that was the exact antithesis of that fierce and stormy love of adventure and aptitude for arms that possessed him; and if nothing else were known of him but this, it would enshrine his name forever. She could not have been less than a charming, loving woman to have deserved the devotion of such a man and held it to the end, and she sleeps now by his side under a slab inscribed with a tribute by his hand that for entreating tenderness of sweet affection is scarcely paralleled:

“Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor, to the wretched a comforter, to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God.”

Jackson’s character as a warrior and a statesman are so conspicuous as to dwarf by comparison his record as a lawyer. It is said that he filed seventy lawsuits for clients in the first month of his practice, and that out of one hundred and ninety-two cases before the court in 1790 he was counsel in forty-two. Three years later his cases numbered seventy-two out of one hundred and fifty-five, and the next year he increased this to two hundred and twenty-eight out of three hundred and ninety-seven. It was no inconspicuous lawyer who could make such record as this. But for his other resplendent traits, his reputation as a jurist might rest more securely, but it doubtless suffered much by his own indisposition to build his fame upon it.

He was only eight years in Tennessee before being made Major-General of militia, which in those times meant active service in the field. His career as a soldier needs scant recapitulation here to establish the statement that it was characterized by a most unselfish patriotism. He hesitated at nothing when his country’s interests were in jeopardy, creating opportunities and anticipating the power to meet them, daring even to invade a friendly territory, to disobey superior orders, to take fate and destiny in his own hands at any peril to himself.

It was this same unchanging, unconquerable spirit of invincible daring that characterized his administration of the government and nerved him to defy and conquer the money power that was then dominating the country through the United States Bank and gave him power to meet and quell the turbulent and dangerous doctrine of the right of a state to nullify a proper act of Congress.

The most conspicuous service rendered to mankind by Andrew Jackson was the creation and enforcement of the political cult that is expressed in his name. “Andy Jackson Democracy” has no mere partisan significance, but it denotes a principle and power in popular government that is to save to America forever the right of the people to rule themselves—the invincible strength of a central government based upon the supreme power of the separate states acting in harmony.

What was the secret of Jackson’s power? Whence came the attraction that drew men to him as the magnet draws the needle? It is not difficult to find the secret of his popularity with the pioneers. He appealed to them through his devotion to the “sport of kings,” for no man loved a fast horse or would risk more upon its prowess than he, and he led the sport in which the people most delighted. And then he stood first in all the feats of daring to which frontiersmen were addicted—a perfect shot, swift of foot, a mighty wrestler, capping it all off with a spirit of chivalrous gallantry and a gentlemanly bearing that rendered him superb. But what drew the sage of Monticello to him? What gave him such mastery in statecraft and charmed men to his standard? It was his inherent, unswerving love of human liberty, his tense loyalty and stern faith in the institutions of his country, his immaculate conception of right and duty, and the superb fearlessness that possessed him, that made the man convincing.

It is said that Jackson has more biographers than any other national character. His career was so replete with incidents inviting interpretation that writers are drawn to it like flies about the sugar-bowl. Of no other man can historians resort to panegyric in substitute of statement and be justified by public criticism. There are perhaps more anecdotes told of him than any other public man, and never one that does not denote courage and power and strength. Indicative of his intuitive powers of quick decision is the story that when the subject of a site for a new treasury building to replace that burned by the British was broached one day, he was walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. With instant emphasis, he struck his stick upon the ground and said: “Put it here!” And there it stands to-day.

No man has lived who had a simpler human way of loving his friends and hating those who hurt him than Andrew Jackson. His fiercest wrath, however, was reserved for those who dared traduce his wife. In his Florida campaign, when supplies failed the army, he set the example of eating nuts and roots and berries. One of his friends at the other end of a long table at a barbecue became involved in a difficulty, which Jackson no sooner perceived than he cried, “I’m coming!” and, mounting the table, strode its full length to the rescue. He was singularly tender to little folks. How touching is the picture of this grim warrior, the seasoned duelist, the fierce hater, tenderly wrapping a sugar-rag for a ragged papoose found in a Creek village after a battle, and nursing it until he could send it to a friendly woman in Montgomery! Such was his hold upon the affections of his people that a certain traveler, reaching a Tennessee town the day after he was elected President, found the populace engaged in applying tar and feathers to two reckless burghers who had dared to vote against the General! And there is still a happy valley somewhere in remote Arcadia, we are told, where the old men hobble to the polls quadrennially in November and cast a loyal vote for “Andy Jackson.”

His faculty for remembering faces and names was marvelous. In 1832, returning from Washington to Nashville, he was tendered a reception at Cincinnati. A rough-looking fellow was seen trying to make his way past the reception committee. The General’s keen eye spied him and at once he darted forward. “Hello, Ned!” was his hearty greeting, and, turning to his bewildered committee, he explained: “One of my old boys in the Fourth Infantry, gentlemen—had to release him from the guard-house once or twice for fighting or stealing chickens, but he was a good soldier, gentlemen.” “How long since you have seen him, General?” asked one of the committee. “Oh,” was the matter-of-course answer, “it’s about twelve years. I saw him on guard at the Governor’s house the day I left Pensacola.”

Early in the spring of 1845, after his arduous campaign in Polk’s behalf, General Jackson’s health began to fail. He met the idea of death with that same fortitude which nerved him when a lad of thirteen to suffer a sabre cut rather than black a British officer’s boots.

His career, which had been like the blaze of the sun in the fierceness of its glory, melted into a passing away as tranquil as a summer evening. The majestic energy of an indomitable will gave way to the gentleness of a heart rich in the tenderest affections. No man in private life more completely possessed the hearts of all around him; no man ever retired from public life with more complete mastery of the affections of the people. No man was more truly and typically American in his ideas; no man expressed them more boldly or more sincerely. He was always, under all circumstances, wholly sincere and true. I cannot do better, in closing, than to quote from George Bancroft, the historian.

“Up to the last,” he says, “he dared do anything that it was right to do. He united personal and moral courage beyond any man of whom history keeps the record.

“Before the nation, before the world, before coming ages, he stands forth the representative, for his generation, of the American mind. And the secret of his greatness is this; by intuitive conception he shared and possessed all the creative ideas of his country and his time; he expressed them with dauntless intrepidity; he enforced them with an immovable will; he executed them with an electric power that attracted and swayed the American people. The nation, in his time, had not one thought of which he was not the boldest and clearest expositor.

“Not danger, not an army in battle array, not wounds, not widespread clamor, not age, not the anguish of disease, could impair in the least degree the vigor of his steadfast mind. The heroes of antiquity would have contemplated with awe the unmatched hardihood of his character; and Napoleon, had he possessed his disinterested will, could never have been vanquished. He conquered the wilderness; he conquered the savage; he conquered the bravest veterans trained on the battlefields of Europe; he conquered everywhere in statesmanship; and when death came to get the mastery over him, he turned the last enemy aside as tranquilly as he had done the feeblest of his adversaries, and passed from earth in the triumphant consciousness of immortality.”

Notwithstanding the fact of his incomparable successes at the bar, on the bench, in Congress and on the field of battle, which demonstrate his sense and genius, and although his state papers compare well with those of any President, there are yet those living who believe him to have been illiterate. If Colonel Colyar’s masterly “Life and Times of Andrew Jackson” had naught else to commend it, it would deserve the commendation of the American people in its complete refutation of the charge of illiteracy, all-sufficient and incontestable.[2]