Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained.

Charles Carleton Coffin

C. Carleton Coffin.

Charles Carleton Coffin

War Correspondent, Traveller,
Author, and Statesman

By

William Elliot Griffis, D. D.

Author of "Matthew Calbraith Perry," "Sir William Johnson,"
and "Townsend Harris, First American Envoy to Japan."

Boston
Estes and Lauriat
1898

Copyright, 1898 By Sallie R. Coffin

Colonial Press.
Electrotyped and Printed by
C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A.

Dedicated to
The Generation of Young People whom
Carleton
Helped to Educate for American Citizenship.

Preface

Among the million or more readers of "Carleton's" books, are some who will enjoy knowing about him as boy and man. Between condensed autobiography and biography, we have here, let us hope, a binocular, which will yield to the eye a stereoscopic picture, having the solidity and relief of ordinary vision.

Two facts may make one preface. Mrs. Coffin requested me, in a letter dated May 10, 1896, to outline the life and work of her late husband. "Because," said she, "you write in a condensed way that would please Mr. Coffin, and because you could see into Mr. Coffin's motives of life."

With such leisure and ability as one in the active pastorate, who preaches steadily to "town and gown" in a university town, could command, I have cut a cameo rather than chiselled a bust or statue. Many good friends, especially Dr. Edmund Carleton and Rev. H. A. Bridgman, have helped me. To them I herewith return warm thanks.

W. E. G.

Ithaca, N. Y., May 24, 1898.

Contents

Charles Carleton Coffin

INTRODUCTION.

Charles Carleton Coffin had a face that helped one to believe in God. His whole life was an evidence of Christianity. His was a genial, sunny soul that cheered you. He was an originator and an organizer of happiness. He had no ambition to be rich. His investments were in giving others a start and helping them to win success and joy. He was a soldier of the pen and a knight of truth. He began the good warfare in boyhood. He laid down armor and weapons only on the day that he changed his world. His was a long and beautiful life, worth both the living and the telling. He loved both fact and truth so well that one need write only realities about him. He cared little for flattery, so we shall not flatter him. His own works praise him in the gates.

He had blue eyes that often twinkled with fun, for Mr. Coffin loved a joke. He was fond to his last day of wit, and could make quick repartee. None enjoyed American humor more than he. He pitied the person who could not see a joke until it was made into a diagram, with annotations. In spirit, he was a boy even after three score and ten. The young folks "lived in that mild and magnificent eye." Out of it came sympathy, kindness, helpfulness. We have seen those eyes flash with indignation. Scorn of wrong snapped in them. Before hypocrisy or oppression his glances were as mimic lightning.

We loved to hear that voice. If one that is low is "an excellent thing in woman," one that is rich and deep is becoming to a man. Mr. Coffin's tones were sweet to the ear, persuasive, inspiring. His voice moved men, his acts more.

His was a manly form. Broad-footed and full-boned, he stood nearly six feet high. He was alert, dignified, easily accessible, and responsive even to children. With him, acquaintanceship was quickly made, and friendship long preserved. Those who knew Charles Carleton Coffin respected, honored, loved him. His memory, in the perspective of time, is as our remembrance of his native New Hampshire hills, rugged, sublime, tonic in atmosphere, seat of perpetual beauty. So was he, a moral invigorant, the stimulator to noble action, the centre of spiritual charm.

Who was he, and what did he do that he should have his life-story told?

First of all, he was the noblest work of God, an honest man. Nothing higher than this. The New Hampshire country boy rose to one of the high places in the fourth estate. He became editor of one of Boston's leading daily newspapers. On the battle-field he saw the movements of the mightiest armies and navies ever gathered for combat. As a white lily among war correspondents, he was ever trusted. He not only informed, but he kept in cheer all New England during four years of strain. With his pen he made himself a master of English style. He was a poet, a musician, a traveller, a statesman, and, best of all and always, a Christian. He travelled around the globe, and then told the world's story of liberty and of the war that crushed slavery and state sovereignty and consolidated the Union. With his books he has educated a generation of American boys and girls in patriotism. He died without entering into old age, for he was always ready to entertain a new idea. Let us glance at his name and inheritance. He was well named, and ever appreciated his heritage. In his Christian, middle, and family name, is a suggestion. In each lies a story.

"Charles," as we say, is the Norman form of the old Teutonic Carl, meaning strong, valiant, commanding. The Hungarians named a king Carl.

"Carleton" is the ton or town of Carl or Charles.

"Coffin" in old English meant a cask, chest, casket, box of any kind.

The Latin Cophinum was usually a basket. When Wickliffe translated the Gospel, he rendered the verse at Matt. xiv. 20, "They took up of that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve coffins full."

The name as a family name is still found in England, but all the Coffins in America are descended from Tristram Coffin, who sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1642, and in 1660 settled in Nantucket. The most ancient seat of the name and family of the Coffins in England is Portledge, in the parish of Alwington. To his house, and last earthly home, in Brookline, Mass., built under his own eye, and in which Charles Carleton Coffin died, he gave the name of Alwington.

"Carleton's" grandfather, Peter Coffin, married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H., whose ancestors had come from England to Salem, Mass., in 1637, and settled at Bradford. Carleton has told something of his ancestry and kin in his "History of Boscawen." In his later years, in the eighties of this century, at the repeated and urgent request of his wife, Carleton wrote out, or, rather, jotted down, some notes for the story of the earlier portion of his life. He was to have written a volume—had his wife succeeded, after due perseverance, in overcoming his modesty—entitled "Recollections of Seventy Years." To this, we, also, that is, the biographer and others, often urged him. It was not to be.

Excepting, then, these hastily jotted notes, Mr. Coffin never indicated, gave directions, or prepared materials for his biography. To the story of his life, as gathered from his own rough notes, intended for after-reference and elaboration, let us at once proceed, without further introduction.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER II.

OF REVOLUTIONARY SIRES.

The Coffins of America are descended from Tristram Coffin of England and Nantucket. Charles Carleton Coffin was born of Revolutionary sires. He first saw light in the southwest corner room of a house which stood on Water Street, in Boscawen, N. H., which his grandfather, Captain Peter Coffin, had built in 1766.

This ancestor, "an energetic, plucky, good-natured, genial man," married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H. When the frame of the house was up and the corner room partitioned off, the bride and groom began housekeeping. Her wedding outfit was a feather bed, a frying-pan, a dinner-pot, and some wooden and pewter plates. She was just the kind of a woman to be the mother of patriots and to make the Revolution a success. The couple had been married nine years, when the news of the marching of the British upon Lexington reached Boscawen, on the afternoon of the 20th of April, 1775. Captain Coffin mounted his horse and rode to Exeter, to take part in the Provincial Assembly, which gathered the next day. Two years later, he served in the campaign against Burgoyne. When the militia was called to march to Bennington, in July, 1777, one soldier could not go because he had no shirt. Mrs. Coffin had a web of tow cloth in the loom. She at once cut out the woven part, sat up all night, and made the required garment, so that he could take his place in the ranks the next morning. One month after the making of this shirt, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin was born, July 15.

When the news of Stark's victory at Bennington came, the call was for every able-bodied man to turn out, in order to defeat Burgoyne. Every well man went, including Carleton's two grandfathers, Captain Peter Coffin, who had been out in June, though not in Stark's command, and Eliphalet Kilborn. The women and children were left to gather in the crops. The wheat was ripe for the sickle, but there was not a man or boy to cut it. With her baby, one month old, in her arms, Mrs. Peter Coffin mounted the horse, leaving her other children in care of the oldest, who was but seven years old. The heroine made her way six miles through the woods, fording Black Water River to the log cabin of Enoch Little, on Little Hill, in the present town of Webster. Here were several sons, but the two eldest had gone to Bennington. Enoch, Jr., fourteen years old, could be spared to reap the ripened grain, but he was without shoes, coat, or hat, and his trousers of tow cloth were out at the knee.

"Enoch can go and help you, but he has no coat," said Mrs. Little.

"I can make him a coat," said Mrs. Coffin.

The boy sprang on the horse behind the heroic woman, who, between the baby and the boy, rode upon the horse back to the farm. Enoch took the sickle and went to the wheat field, while Mrs. Coffin made him a coat. She had no cloth, but taking a meal-bag, she cut a hole in the bottom for his head, and two other holes for his arms. Then cutting off the legs of a pair of her stockings, she sewed them on for sleeves, thus completing the garment. Going into the wheat field, she laid her baby, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin, in the shade of a tree, and bound up the cut grain into sheaves.

In 1789, when the youngest child of this Revolutionary heroine was four months old, she was left a widow, with five children. Three were daughters, the eldest being sixteen; and two were sons, the elder being twelve. With rigid economy, thrift, and hard work, she reared her family. In working out the road tax she was allowed four pence halfpenny for every cart-load of stones dumped into miry places on the highway. She helped the boys fill the cart with stones. While the boy who became Carleton's father managed the steers, hauled and dumped the load, she went on with her knitting.

Of such a daughter of the Revolution and of a Revolutionary sire was Carleton's father born. When he grew to manhood he was "tall in stature, kind-hearted, genial, public-spirited, benevolent, ever ready to relieve suffering and to help on every good cause. He was an intense lover of liberty and was always true to his convictions." He fell in love with Hannah, the daughter of Deacon Eliphalet Kilborn, of Boscawen, and the couple lived in the old house built by his father. There, after other children had been born, Charles Carleton Coffin, her youngest child, entered this world at 9 A. M., July 26, 1823. From this time forward, the mother never had a well day. After ten years of ill health and suffering, she died from too much calomel and from slow starvation, being able to take but little food on account of canker in her mouth and throat. Carleton, her pet, was very much with her during his child-life, so that his recollections of his mother were ever very clear, very tender, and profoundly influential for good.

The first event whose isolation grew defined in the mind of "the baby new to earth and sky," was an incident of 1825, when he was twenty-three months old. His maternal grandfather had shot a hawk, breaking its wing, and bringing it to the house alive. The boy baby standing in the doorway, all the family being in the yard, always remembered looking at what he called "a hen with a crooked bill." Carleton's recollection of the freshet of August, 1826, when the great slide occurred at the White Mountains, causing the death of the Willey family, was more detailed. This event has been thrillingly described by Thomas Starr King. The irrepressible small boy wanted to "go to meeting" on Sunday. Being told that he could not, he cried himself to sleep. When he awoke he mounted his "horse,"—a broomstick,—and cantered up the road for a half mile. Captured by a lady, he resisted vigorously, while she pointed to the waters running in white streams down the hills through the flooded meadows and telling him he would be drowned.

Meanwhile the hired man at home was poling the well under the sweep and "the old oaken bucket," thinking the little fellow might have leaned over the curb and tumbled in. Shortly afterwards he came near disappearing altogether from this world by tumbling into the water-trough, being fished out by his sister Mary.

In the old kitchen, a pair of deer's horns fastened into the wall held the long-barrelled musket which his grandfather had carried in the campaign of 1777. A round beaver hat, bullet, button, and spoon moulds, and home-made pewter spoons and buttons, were among other things which impressed themselves upon the sensitive films of the child's memory.

Following out the usual small boy's instinct of destruction, he once sallied out down to the "karsey" (causeway) to spear frogs with a weapon made by his brother. It was a sharpened nail in the end of a broomstick. Stepping on a log and making a stab at a "pull paddock," he slipped and fell head foremost into the mud and slime. Scrambling out, he hied homeward, and entering the parlor, filled with company, he was greeted with shouts of laughter. Even worse was it to be dubbed by his brother and the hired man a "mud lark."

Carleton's first and greatest teachers were his mother and father. After these, came formal instruction by means of letters and books, classes and schools. Carleton's religious and dogmatic education began with the New England Primer, and progressed with the hymns of that famous Congregationalist, Doctor Watts. When five years old, at the foot of a long line of boys and girls, he toed the mark,—a crack in the kitchen floor,—and recited verses from the Bible. Sunday-school instruction was then in its beginning at Boscawen. The first hymn he learned was:

"Life is the time to serve the Lord."

After mastering

"In Adam's fall
We sinned all,"

the infantile ganglions got tangled up between the "sleigh" in the carriage-house, and the act of pussy in mauling the poor little mouse, unmentioned, but of importance, in the couplet:

"The cat doth play,
And after slay."

Having heard of and seen the sleigh before learning the synonym for "kill," the little New Hampshire boy was as much bothered as a Chinese child who first hears one sound which has many meanings, and only gradually clears up the mystery as the ideographs are mastered.

From the very first, the boy had an ear sensitive to music. The playing of Enoch Little, his first school-teacher, and afterwards his brother-in-law, upon the bass viol, was very sweet. Napoleon was never prouder of his victories at Austerlitz than was little Carleton of his first reward of merit. This was a bit of white paper two inches square, bordered with yellow from the paint-box of a beautiful young lady who had written in the middle, "To a good little boy."

The first social event of importance was the marriage of his sister Apphia to Enoch Little, Nov. 29, 1829, when a room-full of cousins, uncles, and aunts gathered together. After a chapter read from the Bible, and a long address by the clergyman, the marital ceremony was performed, followed by a hymn read and sung, and a prayer. Although this healthy small boy, Carleton, had been given a big slice of wedding cake with white frosting on the top, he felt himself injured, and was hotly jealous of his brother Enoch, who had secured a slice with a big red sugar strawberry on the frosting. After eating voraciously, he hid the remainder of his cake in the mortise of a beam beside the back chamber stairs. On visiting it next morning for secret indulgence, he found that the rats had enjoyed the wedding feast, too. Nothing was left. His first toy watch was to him an event of vast significance, and he slept with it under his pillow. When also he had donned his first pair of trousers, he strutted like a turkey cock and said, "I look just like a grand sir." Children in those days often spoke of men advanced in years as "grand sirs."

The boy was ten years old when President Andrew Jackson visited Concord. Everybody went to see "Old Hickory." In the yellow-bottomed chaise, paterfamilias Coffin took his boy Carleton and his daughter Elvira, the former having four pence ha'penny to spend. Federal currency was not plentiful in those days, and the people still used the old nomenclature, of pounds, shillings, and pence, which was Teutonic even before it was English or American. Rejoicing in his orange, his stick of candy, and his supply of seed cakes, young Carleton, from the window of the old North Meeting House, saw the military parade and the hero of New Orleans. With thin features and white hair, Jackson sat superbly on a white horse, bowing right and left to the multitude. Martin Van Buren was one of the party.

Another event, long to be remembered by a child who had never before been out late at night, was when, with a party of boys seven or eight in number, he went a-spearing on Great Pond. In the calm darkness they walked around the pond down the brook to the falls. With a bright jack-light, made of pitch-pine-knots, everything seemed strange and exciting to the boy who was making his first acquaintance of the wilderness world by night. His brother Enoch speared an eel that weighed four pounds, and a pickerel of the same weight. The party did not get home till 2 A. M., but the expedition was a glorious one and long talked over. The only sad feature in this rich experience was in his mother's worrying while her youngest child was away.

This was in April. On the 20th of August, just after sunset, in the calm summer night, little Carleton looked into his mother's eyes for the last time, and saw the heaving breast gradually become still. It was the first great sorrow of his life.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER III.

THE DAYS OF HOMESPUN.

Carleton's memories of school-days have little perhaps that is uncommon. He remembers the typical struggle between the teacher and the big boy who, despite resistance, was soundly thrashed. Those were the days of physical rather than moral argument, of punishment before judicial inquiry. Once young Carleton had marked his face with a pencil, making the scholars laugh. Called up by the man behind the desk, and asked whether he had done it purposely, the frightened boy, not knowing what to say, answered first yes, and then no. "Don't tell a lie, sir," roared the master, and down came the blows upon the boy's hands, while up came the sense of injustice and the longing for revenge. The boy took his seat with tingling palms and a heart hot with the sense of wrong, but no tears fell.

It was his father's rule that if the children were punished at school, they should have the punishment repeated at home. This was the sentiment of the time and the method of discipline believed to be best for moulding boys and girls into law-abiding citizens. In the evening, tender-hearted and with pain in his soul, but fearing to relax and let down the bars to admit a herd of evils, the father doomed his son to stay at home, ordering as a punishment the reading of the narrative of Ananias and Sapphira.

From that hour throughout his life Carleton hated this particular scripture. He had told no lie, he did not know what he had said, yet he was old enough to feel the injustice of the punishment. It rankled in memory for years. Temporarily he hated the teacher and the Bible, and the episode diminished for awhile his respect for law and order.

The next ten years of Carleton's life may be told in his own words, as follows:

"The year of 1830 may be taken as a general date for a new order of social life. The years prior to that date were the days of homespun. I remember the loom in the garret, the great and small spinning-wheels, the warping bars, quill wheel, reels, swifts, and other rude mechanisms for spinning and weaving. My eldest sister learned to spin and weave. My second sister Mary and sister Elvira both could spin on the large wheel, but did not learn to weave. I myself learned to twist yarn on the large wheel, and was set to winding it into balls.

"The linen and the tow cloths were bleached on the grass in the orchard, and it was my business to keep it sprinkled during the hot days, to take it in at night and on rainy days, to prevent mildew. In those days a girl began to prepare for marriage as soon as she could use a needle, stitching bits of calico together for quilts. She must spin and weave her own sheets and pillow-cases and blankets.

"All of my clothes, up to the age of fourteen, were homespun. My first 'boughten' jacket was an olive green broadcloth,—a remnant which was bought cheap because it was a remnant. I wore it at an evening party given by my schoolmate. We were twenty or more boys and girls, and I was regarded by my mates with jealousy. I was an aristocrat, all because I wore broadcloth.

"It was the period of open fireplaces. Stoves were just being introduced. We could play blind man's buff in the old kitchen with great zest without running over stoves.

"It was the period of brown bread, apple and milk, boiled dinners, pumpkin pies. We had very little cake. Pork and beans and Indian pudding were standard dishes, only the pudding was eaten first. My father had always been accustomed to that order. His second marriage was in 1835, and my stepmother, or rather my sister Mary, who was teaching school in Concord and had learned the new way, brought about the change in the order of serving the food.

"Prior to 1830 there was no stove in the meeting-house, and the introduction of the first stove brought about a deal of trouble. One man objected, the air stifled him. It was therefore voted that on one Sunday in each month there should be no fire.

"It was a bitter experience,—riding two and one-half miles to meeting, sitting through the long service with the mercury at zero. Only we did not know how cold it was, not having a thermometer. My father purchased one about 1838. I think there was one earlier in the town.

"The Sunday noons were spent around the fireplaces. The old men smoked their pipes.

"In 1835, religious meetings were held in all the school districts, usually in the kitchens of the farmhouses. There was a deep religious interest. Protracted meetings, held three days in succession, were frequently attended by all the ministers of surrounding towns. I became impressed with a sense of my condition as a sinner, and resolved to become a Christian. I united with the church the first Sunday in May, 1835, in my twelfth year. I knew very little about the spiritual life, but I have no doubt that I have been saved from many temptations by the course then pursued. The thought that I was a member of the church was ever a restraint in temptation."

The anti-slavery agitation reached Boscawen in 1835, and Carleton's father became an ardent friend of the slaves. In the Webster meeting-house the boy attended a gathering at which a theological student gave an address, using an illustration in the peroration which made a lasting impression upon the youthful mind. At a country barn-raising, the frame was partly up, but the strength of the raisers was gone. "It won't go, it won't go," was the cry. An old man who was making pins threw down his axe, and shouted, "It will go," and put his shoulder to a post, and it did go. So would it be with anti-slavery.

The boy Carleton became an ardent abolitionist from this time forth. He read the Liberator, Herald of Freedom, Emancipator, and all the anti-slavery tracts and pamphlets which he could get hold of. In his bedroom, he had hanging on the wall the picture of a negro in chains. The last thing he saw at night, and the first that met his eyes in the morning, was this picture, with the words, "Am I not a man and a brother?"

With their usual conservatism, the churches generally were hostile to the movement and methods of the anti-slavery agitation. There was an intense prejudice against the blacks. The only negro in town was a servant girl, who used to sit solitary and alone in the colored people's pew in the gallery. When three families of black folks moved into a deserted house in Boscawen, near Beaver Dam Brook, and their children made their appearance in Corser Hill school, a great commotion at once ensued in the town. After the Sunday evening prayer-meeting, which was for "the conversion of the world," it was agreed by the legal voters that "if the niggers persisted in attending school," it should be discontinued. Accordingly the children left the Corser Hill school, and went into what was, "religiously speaking," a heathen district, where, however, the prejudice against black people was not so strong, and there were received into the school.

Thereupon, out of pure devotion to principle, Carleton's father protested against the action of the Corser Hill people, and, to show his sympathy, gave employment to the negroes even when he did not need their services. Society was against the Africans, and they needed help. They were not particularly nice in their ways, nor were they likely to improve while all the world was against them. Mr. Coffin's idea was to improve them.

About this time Whittier's poems, especially those depicting slave life, had a great influence upon young Carleton. Learning the poems, he declaimed them in schools and lyceums. The first week in June, which was not only election time, but also anniversary week in Concord, with no end of meetings, was mightily enjoyed by the future war correspondent. He attended them, and listened to Garrison, Thompson, Weld, Stanton, Abby K. Foster, and other agitators. The disruption of the anti-slavery societies, and the violence of the churches, were matters of great grief to Carleton's father, who began early to vote for James G. Birney. He would not vote for Henry Clay. When Carleton's uncle, B. T. Kimball, and his three sons undertook to sustain the anti-slavery agitator, and also interrupter of church services, in the meeting-house on Corser Hill, on Sunday afternoon, the obnoxious orator was removed by force at the order of the justice of the peace. In the disciplinary measures inaugurated by the church, Mr. Kimball and his three sons and daughters were excommunicated. This proved an unhappy affair, resulting in great bitterness and dissension.

Carleton thus tells his own story of amateur soldiering:

"Those were the days of military trainings. In September, 1836, came the mustering of the 21st Regiment, New Hampshire militia. My brother Frederic was captain of the light infantry. I played first the triangle and then the drum in his company. I knew all the evolutions laid down in the book. The boys of Boscawen formed a company and elected me captain. I was thirteen years old, full of military ardor. I drilled them in a few evolutions till they could execute them as well as the best soldiers of the adult companies. We wore white frocks trimmed with red braid and three-cornered pasteboard caps with a bronzed eagle on the front. Muster was on Corser Hill. One of the boys could squeak out a tune on the fife. One boy played the bass drum, and another the small drum.

"We had a great surprise. The Bellows Falls Band, from Walpole, New Hampshire, was travelling to play at musters, and as none of the adult companies hired them, they offered their services to us free.

"My company paraded in rear of the meeting-house. My brother, with the light infantry, was the first company at drill. He had two fifes and drums. Nearly all the companies were parading, but the regimental line had not been formed when we made our appearance. What a commotion! It was a splendid band of about fifteen members,—two trombones, cornets, bugles, clarionets, fife. No other company had more than fifes or clarionets. It was a grand crash which the band gave. The next moment the people were astonished to see a company of boys marching proudly upon the green,—up and down,—changing front, marching by files, in echelon, by platoons.

"We took our place in line on the field, were inspected, reviewed, and complimented by Maj.-Gen. Anthony Colby, afterwards governor of the State.

"When I gave the salute, the crowd applauded. It was the great day of all others in my boyhood. Several of the farmers gave us a grand dinner. In the afternoon we took part in the sham fight with our little cannon, and covered ourselves with glory—against the big artillery.

"I think that I manifested good common sense when, at the close of the day, I complimented the soldiers on their behavior, and resigned my commission. I knew that we could never attain equal glory again, and that it was better to resign when at the zenith of fame than to go out as a fading star."[Back to Content]

CHAPTER IV.

POLITICS, TRAVEL, AND BUSINESS.

Let us quote again from Mr. Coffin's autobiographical notes:

"In 1836 my father, catching the speculation fever of the period, accompanied by my uncle and brother-in-law, went to Illinois, and left quite an amount of money for the purchase of government land. My father owned several shares in the Concord Bank. The speculative fever pervaded the entire community,—speculation in lands in Maine and in Illinois. The result was a great inflation of prices,—the issuing of a great amount of promises to pay, with a grand collapse which brought ruin and poverty to many households. The year of 1838 was one of great distress. The wheat and corn crop was scant. Flour was worth $16 a barrel. I remember going often to mill with a grist of oats, which was bolted into flour for want of wheat. The Concord Bank failed,—the Western lands were worthless. Wool could not be sold, and the shearing for that year was taken to the town of Nelson, in Cheshire County, and manufactured into satinets and cassimeres, on shares. One of the pieces of cassimere was dyed with a claret tinge, from which I had my first Sunday suit.

"Up to this period, nearly all my clothing was manufactured in the family loom and cleaned at the clothing and fulling mill. In very early boyhood, my Sunday suit was a swallow-tailed coat, and hat of the stove-pipe pattern.

"The year 1840 was one of great political excitement,—known to history as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign. General Harrison, the Whig candidate, was popularly supposed to live in a log cabin and drink hard cider. On June 17th, there was an immense gathering of Whigs at Concord. It was one of the greatest days of my life. Six weeks prior to that date, I thought of nothing but the coming event. I was seventeen years old, with a clear and flexible voice, and I quickly learned the Harrison songs. I went to the convention with my brothers and cousins, in a four-wheeled lumber wagon, drawn by four horses, with a white banner, having the words 'Boscawen Whig Delegation.' We had flags, and the horses' heads labelled 'Harrison and Tyler.' We had a roasted pig, mince pies, cakes, doughnuts and cheese, and a keg of cider. Before reaching Concord we were joined by the log cabin from Franklin, with coon skins, bear traps, etc., dangling from its sides. Boscawen sent nearly every Whig voter to the meeting. I hurrahed and sung, and was wild with excitement. I remember three of the speakers,—George Wilson, of Keene, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, a young man, and Henry Wilson, also a young man, both of them natives of New Hampshire. Wilson had attended school with my brother at the academy in Concord, in 1837, then having the high-sounding name of Concord Literary Institute. Wilson was a shoemaker, then residing in Natick, Mass., and was known as the 'Natick Cobbler.' The songs have nearly all faded from memory. I recall one line of our description of the prospective departure of Van Buren's cabinet from the White House:

"'Let each as we go take a fork and a spoon.'

"There was one entitled 'Up Salt River,'—descriptive of the approaching fate of the Democratic party. Another ran:

"'Oh, what has caused this great commotion the country through?
It is the ball, a rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.'

"Then came the chorus:

"'Van, Van, is a used-up man.'

"In 1839, I had a fancy that I should like to be a merchant, and was taken to Newburyport and placed with a firm of wholesale and retail grocers. I was obliged to be up at 4.30, open the store, care for the horse, curry him, swallow my breakfast in a hurry, also my dinner and supper, and close the store at nine. It was only an experiment on my part, and after five weeks of such life, finding that I was compelled to do dishonest work, I concluded that I never would attempt to be a princely merchant, and took the stage for home. It was a delightful ride home on the top of the rocking coach, with the driver lashing his whip and his horses doing their best.

"I think it was in 1841 that Daniel Webster attended the Merrimac County Agricultural Fair at Fisherville, now Penacook. I was there with a fine yoke of oxen which won his admiration. He asked me as to their age and weight, and to whom they belonged. He recognized nearly all of his old acquaintances. I saw him many times during the following year. He was in the prime of life,—in personal appearance a remarkable man."

Thus far it will be seen that there was little in Mr. Coffin's life and surroundings that could not be easily told of the average New England youth. Besides summer work on the farm, and "chores" about the house, he had taken several terms at the academy in Boscawen. During the winter of 1841-42, while unable to do any outdoor work, on account of sickness, he bought a text-book on land-surveying and learned something of the science and art, yet more for pastime than from any expectation of making it useful.

Nevertheless, that book had a powerful influence upon his life. It gave him an idea, through the application of measurement to the earth's surface, of that order and beauty of those mathematical principles after which the Creator built the universe. It opened his eyes to the vast modification of the landscape, and the earth itself, by man's work upon its crust. It gave him the engineer's eye. Henceforth he became interested in the capacity of every portion of the country, which came under his notice, for the roads, fields, gardens, and parks of peace, and for the making of forts, military roads, and the strategy of battle. In a word, the book and its study gave him an enrichment of life which fitted him to enjoy the world by travel, and to understand the arena of war,—theatres of usefulness to which Providence was to call him in after-life.

In August, 1843, in his twenty-first year, he became a student at Pembroke Academy. The term of ten weeks seemed ever afterwards in his memory one of the golden periods of his life. The teacher, Charles G. M. Burnham, was enthusiastic and magnetic, having few rules, and placing his pupils upon their honor. It was not so much what Carleton learned from books, as association with the one hundred and sixty young men and women of his own age, which here so stimulated him.

From the academy he advanced to be teacher of the district school on Corser Hill, in West Boscawen, but after three weeks of pedagogy was obliged to leave on account of sickness. He passed the remainder of the winter in lumbering, rising at 4 A. M. to feed his team of horses. While breakfast was preparing he studied books, ate the meal by candle-light, and then was off with his lunch of cold meat, bread, and apple pie. From the woods to the bank of the Merrimac the distance was three miles, and three or four trips were made daily in drawing the long and heavy logs to the water. Returning home after dark, he ate supper by candle-light, fed his horses, and gave an hour to study before bedtime.

The summer of 1844 was one of hard toil on the farm. In July he became of age, and during the autumn worked on his brother-in-law's farm, rising at five and frequently finishing about 9 P. M. It is no wonder that all through his life Mr. Coffin showed a deep sympathy, born of personal experience, with men who are bound down to physical toil. Nevertheless, the fine arts were not neglected. He had already learned to play the "seraphine," the instrument which has been developed into the reed organ. He started the project, in 1842, of getting one for the church. By great efforts sixty dollars were raised and an instrument purchased in Concord. Mr. Coffin became the "organist," and also taught singing in the schoolhouse. Three of his nieces, excellent singers, assisted him.

The time had now come for the young man to strike out in the world for himself. Like most New England youth, his eyes were on Boston. With a recommendation from his friend, the minister, he took the stage to Concord. The next day he was in Boston, then a city of 75,000 people, with the water dashing against the embankment of Charles Street, opposite the Common, and with only one road leading out to Roxbury. Sloops and schooners, loaded with coal and timber, sailed over the spot where afterwards stood his house, at No. 81 Dartmouth Street. In a word, the "Back Bay" and "South End" were then unknown. Boston city, shaped like a pond lily laid flat, had its long stem reaching to the solid land southward on the Dorchester and Roxbury hills.

Young Carleton went to Mount Vernon Church on Ashburton Place, the pastor, Dr. E. N. Kirk, being in the prime of his power, and the church crowded. The country boy from New Hampshire became a member of the choir and enjoyed the Friday night rehearsals. He found employment at one dollar a day in a commission store, 84 Utica Street, with the firm of Lowell & Hinckley. The former, a brother of James Russell Lowell, had a son, a bright little boy, who afterwards became the superb cavalry commander at the battle of Cedar Creek in 1864. Carleton boarded on Beacon Street, next door to the present Athenæum Building. The firm dissolved by Mr. Lowell's entering the Athenæum. Carleton returned to his native town to vote. He became a farm laborer with his brother-in-law, passing a summer of laborious toil, frequently fourteen and sixteen hours, with but little rest.

It was time now for the old Granite State to be opened by the railway. The Northern Railroad had been chartered, and preliminary surveys were to be made. Young Carleton, seizing the opportunity, went to Franklin, saw the president, and told him who he was. He was at once offered a position as chainman, and told to report two weeks later. The other chainman gave Carleton the leading end, intending that the Boscawen boy, and not himself, should drag it and drive the stake. Carleton did not object, for he was looking beyond the chain.

The compass-man was an old gentleman dim of eyesight and slow of action. Young Carleton drove his first stake, at a point one hundred feet north of the Concord railway depot, which was opened in the month of August, 1845. The old compass-man then set his compass for a second sight, but before he could get out his spectacles and put them on, young Carleton read the point to him. When, through his glasses, the old gentleman had verified the reading, he was delighted. Promotion for Carleton was now sure. Before night he was not only dragging the chain, but was sighting the instrument. The result, two days later, was promotion to the charge of the party. What he had learned of land surveying was producing its fruit. In the autumn he was employed as the head of a party to make the preliminary survey of the Concord and Portsmouth road.

Unfortunately, during this surveying campaign, he received a wound which caused slight permanent lameness and disqualified him for military service. It came about in this way. He was engaged in some work while an axe-man behind him was chopping away some bushes and undergrowth. The latter gave a swing of the axe which came out too far and cut through the boot and large tendon of Carleton's left ankle. With skilled medical attention, rest, and care, the wound would have soon healed up, but owing to lack of skill, and to carelessness and exposure, the wound gave him considerable trouble, and once reopened. In after-life, when overwearied, this part of the limb was very troublesome.

It was not all toil for Carleton. The time of love had already come, and the days of marriage were not far off. The object of his devotion was Miss Sally Russell Farmer, the daughter of Colonel John Farmer, of Boscawen. On February 18, 1846, amid the winter winds, the fire of a holy union for life was kindled, and its glow was unflickering during more than fifty years. In ancestry and relationship, the Farmers of Boscawen were allied with the Russells of England,—Sir William, of bygone centuries, and Lord John, of our own memory. Carleton found a true "help-meet" in Sally Coffin. Though no children ever came to bless their union, it was as perfect, though even more hallowed and beautified, on the day it was severed, as when first begun.

The following summer was one full of days of toil in the engineering department of the Northern railway, Carleton being engaged upon the first section to be opened from Concord to Franklin. The engineering was difficult, and the work heavy. Breakfast was eaten at six in the morning, and dinner wherever it could be found along the road. Seldom could the young engineer rise from his arithmetical calculations until midnight.

Weary with such exacting mental and physical labor, he resigned his position, and became a contractor. First he supplied the Concord railroad with 200,000 feet of lumber, which he purchased at the various mills. This venture being profitable, he engaged in the lumber trade, furnishing beams for a large factory, timber for a new railway station at Concord, and for a ship at Medford. It was while transacting some business in Lowell, that he saw President Polk, James Buchanan, Levi Woodbury, and other political magnates of the period, who, however, were rather coldly received on account of the annexation of Texas, and war with Mexico.

Wishing for a home of his own, Carleton now bought a farm in West Boscawen, and began housekeeping in the following November. He carried on extensive lumber operations, hiring a large number of men and teams. He rose between four and five in the morning, and was in the woods, four miles away, at sunrise, working through the day, and reaching home after dark to care for the cattle and horses and milk the cows. None of his men worked harder than he.

Although railroad building stimulated prices and gave activity to business men, the flush times were followed by depression. To secure the construction of a railway to the mast yard, Carleton subscribed to the stock, and, under the individual liability law of that period, was compelled to take as much more to relieve the company from debt. Soon he found, however, in spite of hard work for both himself and his wife, that farming and lumbering together rendered no adequate returns. Relief to mind and body was found in the weekly arrival of Littell's Living Age and two or three weekly papers, in agricultural meetings at Concord and Manchester, and in the formation of the State Agricultural Society, of which Carleton was one of the founders.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER V.

ELECTRICITY AND JOURNALISM.

The modern age of electricity was ushered in during Mr. Coffin's early manhood. The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the first to experiment with the new power—old as eternity, but only slowly revealed to man—was Carleton's brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, whose services to science have never yet been adequately set forth.

This inventor in 1851 invited Mr. Coffin to leave the farm temporarily, to construct a line of wire connecting the telegraphs of Boston with the Cambridge observatory, for the purpose of giving uniform time to the railroads. In this Carleton was so successful that, in the winter and spring of 1852, he was employed by Mr. Moses Farmer to construct the telegraph fire alarm, which had been invented by his brother-in-law. The work was completed in the month of May, and Charles Carleton Coffin gave the first alarm of fire ever transmitted by the electric apparatus. The system was a great curiosity, and many distinguished men of this country, and from Europe, especially from Russia and France, came to inspect its working.

Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy, who had returned from his brilliant expedition in Antarctic regions, but who had not yet made himself notorious by a capture of the Confederate commissioners, proposed to use this electric system in ascertaining the velocity of sound. Cannon were stationed at various points, the Navy Yard, Fort Constitution, South Boston, and at the Observatory, in front of which was an apparatus and telegraph connecting with the central office. Each cannon, when fired, heated the circuit. Each listener at the various points was to snap a circuit key the moment the sound reached him. In the central office was a chronograph which registered each discharge in succession. The distances from each cannon muzzle had been obtained by triangulation. In the calm, still night, Commodore Wilkes and Professor Farmer stood in the cupola of the State House with the chronograph, holding their watches, and noting the successive flashes.

The experiments were not very satisfactory. Mr. Coffin, perhaps, possibly, because he was not a skilled artillerist, had the mortifying experience of seeing the apparatus in front of his cannon blown into fragments, but he made notes of the other reports. After a series of trials, the approximate result was obtained, that in a moderately humid atmosphere the velocity of sound was a little under nine hundred feet per second.

The exactions of the fire alarm service, owing to its crude construction, which compelled the attendants to be ever on the alert, told severely on Carleton's' nervous system. He therefore resigned in October, and went to Cincinnati to get the system introduced there. Herds of hogs then roamed the streets, picking up their living around the grain houses, and in the gutters. After three weeks of exhibition and canvassing, he found that Cincinnati was not yet ready for such a novelty, and so he returned to Boston.

The following winter was passed in Boscawen without financially remunerative employment, but in earnest study, though in the spring a supply of money came pleasantly and unexpectedly. He undertook to negotiate a patent for an invention of Professor Farmer's, and after considerable time disposed of it to a New York gentleman. Carleton's net profits were $1,850.

This was an immense sum to him, and he once more resolved to try Boston, and did so. He made his home, however, in Malden, renting half of a small house on Washington Street. Having inked his pen on agricultural subjects, descriptive pieces, and even on a few poems, he took up newspaper work. Entering the office of the Boston Journal he worked without pay, giving the Journal three months' service in writing editorials, and reporting meetings. This was simply to educate himself as a journalist. At that time very few reporters were employed on the daily papers. What he says of this work had better be told in his own words:

"It was three months of hard study and work. I saw that what the public wanted was news in condensed form; that the day for stately editorials was passing away; that short statements and arguments, which went like an arrow straight to the mark, were what the public would be likely to read. I formed my style of writing with that in view. I avoided long sentences. I thought that I went too far in the other direction and clipped my sentences too short, and did not give sufficient ornamentation, but I determined to use words of Saxon rather than of Latin or Norman origin, to use 'begin,' instead of 'commence,' as stronger and more forcible.

"I selected the speeches of Webster, Lord Erskine, Burke, and other English writers, for careful analysis, but soon discarded Brougham and Burke. I derived great benefit from Erskine and Webster, for incisive and strong statement,—also Shakespeare and Milton. At that time I read again and again the rhapsodies of Christopher North, Professor Wilson, and the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' and found great delight, also, in reading Bryant's poems.

"It was the period of white heat in the anti-slavery struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace,—red hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to study stenography, but the system then in use was complex and inadequate,—hard to learn. I was informed by several stenographers that if I wanted a condensed report it would be far better to give the spirit, rather than attempt the letter."

During the summer of 1854, Mrs. Coffin being in poor health, they visited Saratoga together, passed several weeks at the Springs, and visited the battle-field where his grandfather, Eliphalet Kilborn, had fought. Carleton picked up a bullet just uncovered by the plow, and in that bright and beautiful summer's day the whole scene of 1777 came back before him. From the author's map in "Burgoyne's Defence," giving a meagre sketch of the battle, he was able to retrace the general lines of the American breastworks. This was the first of scores of careful study on the spot and reproduction in imagination of famous battles, which Carleton made and enjoyed during his life.

He was also present at the International Exhibition in New York, seeing, on the opening day, President Franklin Pierce and his Cabinet. The popular idol of the hour was General Winfield Scott, of an imposing personal appearance which was set off by a showy uniform. He was the hero of the two wars, and expected to be President. In personal vanity, in bravery, and in military science, Scott was without a superior, one of the ablest officers whose names adorn the long and brilliant roll of the United States regular army.

Carleton wrote of General Scott: "A man of great egotism, an able general, but who never had any chance of an election. He was the last candidate of a dying political party which never was aggressive and which was going down under the slave power, to which it had allied itself."

Mr. Coffin writes further: "The passage of the Compromise Measures of 1850 gave great offence to the radical wing of the anti-slavery party. The members of that wing were very bitter towards Daniel Webster for his part in its passage. I was heart and soul in sympathy with the grand idea of anti-slavery, but did not believe in fierce denunciation as the best argument. I did not like the compromise, and hated the odious fugitive slave law, but I nevertheless believed that Mr. Webster was sincere in his desire to avert impending trouble. I learned from Hon. G. W. Nesmith, of Franklin, president of the Northern railroad, that Mr. Webster felt very keenly the assaults upon him, and the manifest alienation of his old friends. Mr. Nesmith suggested that his old-time neighbors in Boscawen and Salisbury should send him a letter expressive of their appreciation of his efforts to harmonize the country, and that the proper person to write the letter was the Rev. Mr. Price, ex-pastor of the Congregational church in West Boscawen, in whom the county had great confidence. A few days later, at the invitation of Mr. Price, I went over the rough draft with him in his study. The letter was circulated for signatures by Worcester Webster, of Boscawen, distantly related to Daniel. It is in the published works of the great statesman, edited by Mr. Everett, together with his reply."

In May, 1854, Carleton saw the Potomac and the Capitol at Washington for the first time. The enlargement of the house of the National Legislature had not yet begun. He studied the paintings in the rotunda, which were to him a revelation of artistic power. He spent a long time before Prof. Robert W. Weir's picture of the departure of the Pilgrims for Delfshaven.

Here are some of his impressions of the overgrown village and of the characters he met:

"Washington was a straggling city, thoroughly Southern. There was not a decent hotel. The National was regarded as the best. Nearly all the public men were in boarding-houses. I stopped at the Kirkwood, then regarded as very good. The furniture was old; there was scarcely a whole chair in the parlor or dining-room. It was the period of the Kansas struggle. The passions of men were at a white heat. The typical Southern man wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. Many had long hair and loose flowing neckties. There was insolence and swagger in their deportment towards Northern men.

"I spent much time in the gallery of the Senate. Thomas Benton, of Missouri, was perhaps the most notable man in the Senate. Slidell, of Louisiana, whom I had seen in New Hampshire the winter before, speaking for the Democracy, and Toombs, of Georgia, were strongly marked characters. Toombs made a speech doubling up his fists as if about to knock some one down."

From Washington, Carleton went to Harrisburg, noticing, as he passed over the railway, the difference between free and slave territory. "A half dozen miles from the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was sufficient to change the characteristics of the country." The Pennsylvania railway had just been opened, and Altoona was just starting. Carleton visited the iron and other industries at Pittsburg, and described his journey and impressions in a series of letters to the Boston Journal. Having inherited from his father eighty acres of land in Central Illinois, near the town of Lincoln, he went out to visit it. At Chicago, a bustling place of 25,000 inhabitants, he found the mud knee-deep. Great crowds of emigrants were arriving and departing. Going south to La Salle he took steamer on the Illinois River to Peoria, reaching there Saturday night. Not willing to travel on Sunday, he went ashore. After attending service at church, he asked the privilege of playing on the organ. A few minutes later, he found a large audience listening with apparent pleasure.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER VI.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The time had now come for the formation of a new political party, and in this Carleton had a hand, being at the first meeting and making the acquaintance of the leading men, Henry Wilson, Anson Burlingame, George S. Boutwell, N. P. Banks, Charles Sumner, and others. His connection with the press brought him into personal contact with men of all parties. He found Edward Everett more sensitive to criticism than any other public man.

In 1856 Carleton was offered a position on the Atlas, which had been the leading Whig paper in Massachusetts. He attended the first great Republican gathering ever held in Maine, at Portland, at which Hannibal Hamlin, Benjamin Wade, and N. P. Banks were speakers. On the night of the Maine election, which was held in August, as the returns, which gave the first great victory of the Republican party in the Fremont campaign, thrilled the young editor, he wrote a head-line which was copied all over the country,—"Behold How Brightly Breaks the Morning."

In Malden, where he was then residing, a Fremont Club was formed. Carleton wrote a song, to the melody "Suoni La Tromba," from one of the operas then much admired, which was sung by the glee men in the club. Political enthusiasm rose to fever heat. In the columns of the Atlas are many editorials which came seething hot from Carleton's brain, during the campaign which elevated Mr. James Buchanan to the presidency.

When the storm of politics had subsided, Carleton wrote a series of articles for an educational periodical, The Student and Schoolmate. Inspired by his attendance on the meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he penned a series of astronomical articles for The Congregationalist. He also attended the opening of the Grand Trunk railroad from Montreal to Toronto, celebrated by a grand jubilee at Montreal. During the winter, when Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, failed to appear on the lecture platform, Carleton was called upon at short notice to give his lecture entitled "The Savage and the Citizen."

He was welcomed with applause, which he half suspected was in derision. At the end, he received ten dollars and a vote of thanks. The lecture system was then just beginning, and its bright stars, Phillips, Holmes, Whipple, Beecher, Gough, and Curtis were then mounting the zenith.

Carleton made another trip West in 1857, seeing the Mississippi, when the railway was completed from Cincinnati to St. Louis. When the crowd was near degenerating into a drunken mob,—the native wine of Missouri being served free to everybody,—the committee in charge cut off the supply of drink, and thus saved a riot. From St. Louis he went to Liverpool, on the Illinois River, to see about his land affairs. He enjoyed hugely the strange frontier scenes, meals in log cabins, and the trial of a case in court, which was in a schoolroom lighted by two tallow candles.

The Boston Atlas, unable to hold up the world, had summoned the Bee to its aid, yet did not even then stand on a paying basis. Finally it became absorbed in the Boston Traveller. Carleton again entered the service of the Boston Journal as reporter. Yet life was a hard struggle. Through the years 1857, 1858, 1859, Carleton was floating around among the newspapers getting a precarious living,—hardly a living. He wrote a few stories for Putnam's Magazine, for one of which he was paid ten dollars. One of the bright spots in this period of uncertainty was his attendance, at Springfield and Newport, upon the meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also became more or less acquainted with men who were afterwards governors of Massachusetts, or United States senators, with John Brown and Stephen A. Douglas.

The political campaign which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency is described in Mr. Coffin's own words:

"During the winter of 1859, George W. Gage, proprietor of the Tremont House at Chicago, visited Boston. I had known him many years. Being from the West, I asked him who he thought would be acceptable to the Republicans of the West as candidate for the presidency. The names prominently before the country were those of W. H. Seward, S. P. Chase, Edward Bates, and J. C. Fremont.

"'We shall elect whomsoever we nominate,' said Mr. Gage. 'The Democratic party is going to split. The Northern and Western Democrats will go for Douglas. The slaveholders never will accept him. The Whig party is but a fragment. There will certainly be three, if not four candidates, and the Republican party can win. We think a good deal of old Abe Lincoln. He would make a strong candidate.'

"It was the first time I had heard the name of Lincoln in connection with the presidency. I knew there was such a man. Being a journalist, I had some knowledge of his debate with Douglas on the great questions of the day, but he had been defeated in his canvass for the Senate, and had dropped out of sight. It was about this time that he gave his lecture at Cooper Institute, New Haven, and Norwich. I did not meet him in Boston. His coming created no excitement. The aristocracy of Boston, including Robert C. Winthrop, Edward Everett, George S. Hilliard, and that class, were Whigs, who did not see the trend of events. Lincoln came and went, having little recognition. The sentiment of Massachusetts Republicans was all in favor of the nomination of Seward.

"The remark of Mr. Gage in regard to Lincoln set me to thinking upon the probable outcome of the presidential contest. The enthusiasm of the Republican party was at fever heat. The party had nearly succeeded in 1856, under Fremont, and the evidences of success in 1860 multiplied, as the days for nominating a candidate approached. The disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston made the election of the Republican candidate certain.

"I determined to attend the Convention to be held at Chicago, and also that of the Whig party, to be held earlier at Baltimore.

"I visited Washington and made the acquaintance of many of the leading Republican members of Congress. Senator Wilson gave me a seat on one of the sofas in the south chamber. He was sitting by my side when Seward appeared. He stopped a moment in the passage, and leaned against the wall.

"'There is our next President,' said Wilson. 'He feels that he is to be nominated and elected. He shows it.'

"It was evident that Mr. Seward was conscious of the expected honor. It did not display itself in haughty actions, but in a fitting air of dignity. He knew the galleries were looking down upon him, men were pointing him out, nodding their heads. He was the coming man."

The Whig Convention in Baltimore, which Carleton attended, "was held in an old church from which the worshippers had departed,—a fitting place to hold it. The people had left the Whig party, which had departed from its principles and was ready to compromise still further in slavery."

On leaving Baltimore for Chicago, and conversing with people everywhere, Carleton discovered in Pennsylvania a hostility to Seward which he had not found elsewhere. It was geographical antagonism, New York glorying in being the Empire State, and Pennsylvania in being the Keystone of the arch. "Pennsylvania could not endure the thought of having New York lead the procession." Arriving in Chicago several days before the Convention opened, Carleton noticed a growing disposition to take a Western man. The contest was to be between Seward and Lincoln. On the second day the New York crowd tried to make a tremendous impression with bands and banners. Entering the building, they found it packed with the friends of Lincoln. Carleton sat at a table next to Thurlow Weed. "When the drawn ballot was taken, Weed, pale and excited, thrust his thumbs into his eyes to keep back the tears."

Mr. Coffin must tell the rest of the story:

"I accompanied the committee to Springfield to notify Lincoln of his nomination. Ashman, the president of the committee, W. D. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, Amos Jack, of New Hampshire, Sweet, of Chicago, and others made up the party. We went down the Illinois Central. It was a hot, dusty ride. Reached Springfield early in the evening. Had supper at the hotel and then called on Lincoln. His two youngest boys were on the fence in front of the house, chaffing some Democratic urchins in the street. A Douglas meeting was going on in the State House, addressed, as I learned, by A. McClernand,—afterwards major-general. Lincoln stood in the parlor, dressed in black frock coat. Ashman made the formal announcement. Lincoln's reply was brief. He was much constrained, but as soon as the last word was spoken he turned to Kelly and said:

"'Judge, you are a pretty tall man. How tall are you?'

"'Six feet two.'

"'I beat you. I'm six feet three without my high-heeled boots on.'

"'Pennsylvania bows to Illinois, where we have been told there were only Little Giants,' said Kelly, gracefully alluding to Douglas, who was called the Little Giant.

"One by one we were introduced by Mr. Ashman. After the hand-shaking was over, Mr. Lincoln said:

"'Mrs. Lincoln will be pleased to see you gentlemen in the adjoining room, where you will find some refreshments.'

"We passed into the room and were presented to Mrs. Lincoln. Her personal appearance was not remarkably prepossessing. The prevailing fashion of the times was a gown of voluminous proportions, over an enormous hoop. The corsage was cut somewhat low, revealing plump shoulders and bust. She wore golden bracelets. Her hair was combed low about the ears. She evidently was much gratified over the nomination, but was perfectly ladylike in her deportment.

"The only sign of refreshments visible was a white earthen pitcher filled with ice-water. Probably it was Mr. Lincoln's little joke, for the next morning I learned that his Republican neighbors had offered to furnish wines and liquor, but he would not allow them in the house; that his Democratic friends also sent round baskets of champagne, which he would not accept.

"I met him the next morning in his law office, also his secretary, J. G. Nicolay. It was a large, square room, with a plain pine table, splint-bottomed chairs, law books in a case, and several bushels of newspapers and pamphlets dumped in one corner. It had a general air of untidiness.

"During the campaign I reported many meetings for the Boston Journal, and was made night editor soon after Mr. Lincoln's election. The position was very laborious and exacting. It was the period of secession. Through the live-long night, till nearly 3 A. M., I sat at my desk editing the exciting news. The reporters usually left the room about eleven, and from that time to the hour of going to press, I was alone,—save the company of two mice that became so friendly that they would sit on my desk, and make a supper of crackers and cheese, which I doled out to them. I remember them with much pleasure.

"The exacting labors and sleepless nights told upon my health. The disturbed state of the country made everybody in business very cautious, so much so that the proprietor of the Journal, Charles A. Rogers, began to discharge his employees, and I was informed that my services were no longer needed. I had been receiving the magnificent sum of ten dollars per week, and this princely revenue ceased."

After President Lincoln had been inaugurated, Mr. Coffin went to Washington, during the last week in March. His experiences there must be told by himself:

"I took lodgings at a private boardinghouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, where there was a poverty-stricken Virginian, of the old Whig school, after an office. He did 'not think his State would secede.' I saw much of the Republican members of Congress, who said if I wanted a position they would do what they could for me. Senator Sumner suggested that I would make a good secretary of one of the Western territories.

"I called upon my old schoolmate Sargeant who had been for many years in the Treasury. Having constructed the telegraph fire-alarm, and done something in engineering, I thought I was competent to become an examiner in the patent office. I made out an application, which was signed by the entire Massachusetts delegation, recommending me. I dropped it into the post-office, and that was the last I saw or even thought of it, for the great crisis in the history of the country was so rapidly approaching, and so evident, that,—newspaper man as I was,—accustomed to forecast coming events, I could see what many others could not see.

"I was walking with Senator Wilson up E Street, on a bright moonlight night. The moon's rays, falling upon the unfinished dome of the Capitol, brought the building out in bold relief."

"'Will it ever be finished?' I asked. The senator stopped, and gazed upon it a moment in silence.

"'We are going to have a war, but the people of this country will not give up the Union, I think. Yet, to-day, that building, prospectively, is a pile of worthless marble.'"[Back to Content]

CHAPTER VII.

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.

When the long gathering clouds broke in the storm at Sumter, and war was precipitated in a rain of blood, Charles Carleton Coffin's first question was as to his duty. He was thirty-seven years old, healthy and hearty, though not what men would usually call robust. To him who had long learned to look into the causes of things, who knew well his country's history, and who had been educated to thinking and feeling by the long debate on slavery, the Secession movement was nothing more or less than a slaveholders' conspiracy. His conviction in 1861 was the same as that held by him, when more than thirty years of reflection had passed by, that the inaugurators of the Civil War of 1861-65 were guilty of a gigantic crime.

In 1861, with his manhood and his talent, the question was not on which side duty lay, or whether his relation to the question should be active or passive, but just how he could most and best give himself to the service of his country. Whether with rifle or pen, he would do nothing less than his best. He inquired first at the recruiting office of the army. He was promptly informed that on no account could he be accepted as an active soldier, whether private or officer, on account of his lame heel. Rejected here, he thought that some other department of public service might be open to him in which he could be more or less directly in touch with the soldiers. While uncertain as to his future course, he was, happily for his country, led to consult his old friend, Senator Henry Wilson, who immediately and strenuously advised him to give up all idea of either the army, the hospital, the clerical, or any other government service, but to enter at once actively upon the work of a war correspondent.

"Your talent," said Wilson, "is with the pen, and you can do the best service by seeing what is going on and reporting it."

The author of the "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America" intimated that truth, accurately told and published throughout the North, was not only extremely valuable, but absolutely necessary. It would not take long for a thoroughly truthful reporter to make himself a national authority. The sympathizers with disunion would be only too active in spreading rumors to dishearten the upholders of the Union, and there would be need for every honest pen and voice.

After this conversation, Carleton was at peace. He would find his work and ask no other blessedness. But how to find it, and to win his place as a recognized writer on the field was a question. Within our generation, the world has learned the value of the war correspondent. He has won the spurs of the knighthood of civilization. He wears in life the laurel wreath of fame. He is respected in his calling. He goes forth as an apostle of the printed truth. The resources of wealthy corporations are behind him. His salary is not princely, but it is ample. Though he may lose limb or life, he is honored like the soldier, and after his death, the monument rises to his memory. In the great struggle between France and Germany, between Russia and Turkey, between Japan and China, and in the minor wars of European Powers against inferior civilizations, in Asia and Africa, the "war correspondent" has been a striking figure. He is not the creation of our age; but our half of this century, having greater need of him, has equipped him the most liberally. He has his permanent place of honor. If the newspaper is the Woden of our century and civilization, the war correspondent and the printer are the twin Ravens that sit upon his shoulder. The one flies afar to gather the news, the other sits at home to scatter the tidings.

In 1861 it was very different. The idea of spending large sums of money, and maintaining a staff-corps of correspondents who on land and sea should follow our armies and fleets, and utilize horse, rail car, and telegraph, boat, yacht, and steamer, without regard to expense, had not seized upon newspaper publishers in the Eastern States. Almost from the first, the great New York journals organized bureaus for the collection of news. With relays of stenographers, telegraphers, and extra printers, they were ready for all emergencies in the home office, besides liberally endowing their agencies at Washington and cities near the front, and equipping their correspondent, in camp and on deck. In this, the New England publishers were far behind those on Manhattan Island. Carleton, when in Washington, wrote his first letters to the Boston Journal and took the risk of their being accepted for publication. He visited the camps, forts, and places of storage of government material. He described the preparations for war and life in Washington with such spirit and graphic power, that from June 15 to July 17, 1861, no fewer than twenty-one of his letters were published in the Journal.

The great battle of Bull Run gave him his opportunity. As an eye-witness, his opportunity was one to be coveted. He wrote out so full, so clear, and so interesting an account, that the proprietors of the Journal engaged him as their regular correspondent at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, with extra allowance for transportation. His instructions were to "keep the Journal at the front. Use all means for obtaining and transmitting important information, regardless of expense." This, however, was not to be interpreted to mean that he should have assistants or be the head of a bureau or relay of men, as in the case of the chief correspondent of at least three of the New York newspapers. It meant that he was to gather and transmit the news and be the whole bureau and staff in himself. Nevertheless, during most of the war, the Boston Journal was the only New England paper that kept a regular correspondent permanently not only in Washington, but at the seat of war. Carleton in several signal instances sent news of most important movements and victories ahead of any other Northern correspondent. He achieved a succession of what newspaper men call "beats." In those days, on account of the great expense, the telegraph was used only for summaries of news, and rarely, if ever, for long despatches or letters. The ideas and practice of newspaper managers have greatly enlarged since 1865. Entering upon his work at the very beginning of the war, he was, we believe, almost the only field correspondent who continued steadily to the end, coming out of it with unbroken health of body and mind.

How he managed to preserve his strength and enthusiasm, and to excel where so many others did well and nobly, is an open secret. In the first place, he was a man of profoundest religious faith in the Heavenly Father. Prayer was his refreshment. He renewed his strength by waiting upon God. His spirit never grew weary. In the darkest days he was able to cheer and encourage the desponding. He spoke continually, through the Journal, to hundreds of thousands of readers, in tones of cheer. Like a great lighthouse, with its mighty lamps ever burning and its reflectors and lenses kept clean and clear, Carleton, never discouraged, terrified, or tired out, sent across the troubled sea and through the deepest darkness the inspiriting flash of the light of truth and the steady beam of faith in the Right and its ultimate triumph. He was a missionary of cheer among the soldiers in camp and at the front. His reports of battles, and his message of comfort in times of inaction, wilted the hopes of the traitors, copperheads, cowards, and "nightshades" at home, while they put new blood in the veins of the hopeful.

Carleton was always welcome among the commanders and at headquarters. This was because of his frankness as well as his ability and his genial bonhomie and social qualities. He did not consider himself a critic of generals. He simply described. He took care to tell what he saw, or knew on good authority to be true. He did probe rumors. From the very first he became a higher critic of assertions and even of documents. He quickly learned the value of camp reports and items of news. By and by his skill became the envy of many of less experienced readers of human nature, and judges of talk and despatches. While shirking no hard work in the saddle, on foot, on the rail, or in the boat, he found by experience that by keeping near headquarters he was the better enabled to know the motions of the army as a whole, to divine the plans of the commanding general, and thus test the value of flying rumors. He had a genius for interpreting signs of movement, whether in the loading of a barge, the riding of an orderly, or the nod of a general's head. His previous training as an engineer and surveyor enabled him to foresee the strategic value of a position and to know the general course of a campaign in a particular district of country. With this power of practical foresight, he was often better able even than some of the generals to foresee and appraise results. This topographical knowledge also gave him that power of wonderful clearness in description which is the first and best quality necessary to the narrator of a series of complex movements. A battle fought in the open, like that at Gettysburg, or one of those which took place during the previous campaigns, on a plain, along the river, and in the Peninsula, is comparatively easy to describe, especially when viewed from an eminence. These battles were like those in ordinary European history; but after Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac, a reversion to something like the American colonial methods in the forest took place. The heaviest fighting was in the woods, behind entrenchments, or in regions where but little of the general scheme, and few of the operations, could be seen at once. In either case, however, as will be seen by reading over the thousand or so letters in Carleton's correspondence, his power of making a modern battle easily understood is, if not unique, at least very remarkable. With his letters often went diagrams which greatly aided his readers.

Carleton's personal courage was always equal to that of the bravest. Too sincerely appreciative of the gift of life from his Creator, he never needlessly, especially after his first eagerness for experience had been satiated, exposed himself, as the Dutch used to say, with "full-hardiness," or as we, corrupting the word, say, with "foolhardiness." He got out of the line of shells and bullets where there was no call for his presence, and when the only justification for remaining would be to gratify idle curiosity. Yet, when duty called, when there was need to know both the facts, and the truth to be deduced from the facts, whistling bullets or screeching shells never sufficed to drive him away. His coolness with pen and pencil, amid the dropping fire of the enemy, made heroes of many a soldier whose nerves were not as strong as was the instinct of his legs to run. The lady librarian of Dover, N. H., thus writes:

"An old soldier whom I was once showing through the library stopped short in front of Coffin's books and looked at them with much interest. He said that at his first battle,—I think it was Fredericksburg, but of this I am not sure,—he was scared almost to death. He was a mere boy, and when his regiment was ordered to the front and the shot was lively around him, he would have run away if he had dared. But a little distance off, he saw a man standing under the lee of a tree and writing away as coolly as if he were standing at a desk. The soldier asked who he was, and was told it was Carleton, of the Journal. 'There he stood,' said the man, 'perfectly unconcerned, and I felt easier every time I looked at him. Finally he finished and went off to another place. But that was his reputation among the men all through the war,—perfectly cool, and always at the front.'"

Carleton was able to withstand four years of mental strain and physical exposure because he knew and put in practice the right laws of life. His temperance in eating and drinking was habitual. Often dependent with the private soldier, while on the march and in camp, on raw pork and hardtack; helped out in emergencies with food and victuals, by the quartermaster or his assistants; not infrequently reaching the verge of starvation, he did not, when reaching city or home, play the gourmand. He drank no intoxicating liquor, always politely waving aside the social glass. He was true to his principles of total abstinence which had been formed in boyhood. It would have been easy for him to become intemperate, since in early boyhood he acquired a fondness for liquors, through being allowed to drink what might remain in the glass after his sick mother had partaken of her tonic. He demonstrated that man has no necessity for alcoholic drinks, however much he may enjoy them.

Only on one occasion was he known to taste strong liquor. In the Wilderness, when in a company of officers on horseback, the bloodcurdling Confederate yells were heard but a short distance off, and it seemed as though our line had been broken and the day was lost for the Union army. At that dark moment, one of the officers on General Meade's staff produced a flask of brandy, and remarking—with inherited English prejudice—that he would fortify his nerves with "Dutch courage," to tide over the emergency, he quaffed, and then handed the refreshment to his companion. In the momentary and infectious need for stimulant of some sort, Mr. Coffin took a sip and handed it on. Though himself having no need of and very rarely making use of spirits, even medicinally, he was yet kindly charitable towards his weaker brethren. It is too sadly true that many of the military officers, who yielded to the temptation of temporarily bracing their nerves at critical moments, became slaves to the bottle, and afterwards confirmed drunkards. Carleton made no use of tobacco in any form.

Carleton's wonderful prescience of coming events, and his decisions rightly made as to his own whereabouts in crises, enabled him to concentrate without wasting his powers. He then gave himself to his work with all ardor, and without sparing brain or muscle, risking limb and life at Bull Run, on the Mississippi, at Fort Donelson, at Antietam and Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, at Savannah, and in Richmond. His powers in toil were prodigious. He could turn off an immense amount of work, and keep it up. When the lull followed the agony, he went home to rest and recruit, spending the time with his wife and friends, everywhere diffusing the sunshine of hope and faith. When rested and refreshed, he hied again to the front and the conflict. The careers of most army correspondents in the field were short. Carleton's race was long. His was the promise of the prophet's glorious burden in Isaiah xl. 28-31.

It was between his thirty-eighth and forty-second year, when in the high tide of his manly strength, that Carleton pursued the profession of letters amid the din of arms. His pictures show him a handsome man, with broad, open forehead and sunny complexion, standing nearly six feet high, his feet cased in the broad and comfortable boots which he always wore. Over his ordinary suit of clothing was a long and comfortable overcoat with a cape, around which was a belt, to which hung a spy-glass. Later in the war he bought a fine binocular marine glass. He gave the old "historic spy-glass" to his nephew Edmund, from under whose head it was stolen by some camp thief. In his numerous and capacious pockets, besides a watch and a pocket compass, was a store of note-books, in which he was accustomed to jot his rapid, lightning-like notes, which meant "reading without tears" for him, but woe and sorrow to those who had to knit their brows in trying to decipher his "crow-tracks." During the first part of the war he bought horses as often as he needed them, and these were not always of the first quality as to flesh or character. He usually found it difficult to recover his beast after having been away home. In the later campaigns he possessed finer animals for longer spaces of time, taking more pains, and spending more money to recover them on his return from absences North.

Nevertheless, in order to beat other correspondents, to be at the front, in the right moment, in order to satisfy the need for news, he counted neither the life nor the ownership of his horse as worth a moment's consideration. In comparison with the idea of stilling the public anxiety, and giving the news of victory, he acted upon the principle of his Master,—"Ye are of more value than many sparrows." One man, using plain English, says, "Uncle Carleton got the news, goodness knows how, but he got it always and truly. He was the cheekiest man on earth for the sake of the Journal, and the people of New England. He used to ask for and give news even to the commander-in-chief. Often the staff officers would be amazed at the cheek of Carleton in suggesting what should be done. His bump of locality and topography was well developed, and he read the face of the country as by intuition. He would talk to the commander as no civilian could or would, but Meade usually took it pleasantly, and Grant always welcomed it, and seemed glad to get it. I have seen him (Grant) in long conversations with Mr. Coffin, when no others were near."[Back to Content]

CHAPTER VIII.

WITH THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.

Carleton's account of the battle of Bull Run, where the Union forces first won the day, and then lost it through a panic, was so graphic, accurate, and comprehensive, that the readers of the Boston Journal at once poured in their requests that the same writer should continue his work and reports.

From his position with the Union batteries he had a fine view of the whole engagement. Many of the statements which he made were, as to their accuracy, perfect. For example, when the Confederates fired continuous volleys, making one long roll of musketry, mingled with screams, yells, and cheers, while their batteries sent a rain of shell and round shot, grape and canister, upon a body of three companies of Massachusetts men, Carleton stood with his watch in his hand to see how long these raw troops could stand such a fire. It is wonderful to read to-day his volume of "Army Correspondence," and find so little to correct.

Besides letters written on the field during the first of four battles, he wrote from Washington in review of the whole movement. He was not at all discouraged by what had happened, believing that the bitter experience, though valuable, was worth its cost. He does not seem to have been among the number of those who expected that the great insurrection would be put down in a few months. Like every one else, he was at first smitten with that glamour which the Western soldiers, led by Grant, soon learned to call "McClellanism." It was with genuine admiration that he noticed the untiring industry and superb organizing powers of "Little Mac;" who, whatever his later faults may have been, was the man who transformed a mob of militia into that splendid machine animated by an unquailing soul, "The Army of the Potomac." Yet in the cool light of history, we must rate Gen. George B. McClellan as the military Erasmus of this war of national reformation, while Grant was its Luther.

Late in August, after ten days' rest at home to recruit exhausted energies, Carleton was once more at his post in the "City of Magnificent Distances—and big lies," attempting to draw out the truth from whole maelstroms of falsehood. He writes: "Truly this is a city given to lying." He had a habit of hunting down falsehoods, of tracing rumors to their holes. Many an hour in the blazing sun, consuming his strength, did this hater of lies spend in chasing empty breaths. Once he rode forty miles on horseback, simply to confirm or reject an assertion. Very early, however, he learned to put every report upon the touchstone, and under the nitric acid of criticism. He quickly gained experience, and saved much vexation to himself and his readers. In this way his letters became what they are, like coins put in the pyx, and mintage that survives the best of the goldsmiths. When read thirty-five years after the first drying of the ink, we have a standard of truth, needing correction, for the most part, only here and there, in such details as men clearly discern only in the perspective of time.

Under McClellan's strict orders, Washington became less of a national bar-room. The camps were made models of cleanliness, hygiene, and comfort, and schools of strict preparation for the stern work ahead. Carleton often rode through them, and out on the picket-line. Among his other studies, being a musician, he soon learned the various notes and tones of round and conical bullet, of globular and case shot, of shell and rocket, as an Indian learns the various sounds and calls of birds and beasts. Never wearing eye-glasses, until very late in life, and then only for reading, he was able, when standing behind or directly before a cannon, to see the missile moving as a black spot on the invisible air, and from a side view to perceive the short plug of condensed air in front of a ball, which is now clearly revealed by instantaneous photography. He soon noted how the variation in the charge of powder, and the curve of the rifle, changed the pitch of the ball, and how and why certain shells with ragged edges of lead scream like demons, and work upon the nerves by their sound and fury rather than their total of results. He soon discovered that in a battle the artillery, except at short ranges, and in the open, bears no comparison in its killing power to the rifles of the infantry. Like an old soldier, he soon came to look with something like contempt upon the ponderous cannon and mortars, and to admire the low firing of the old veteran musket-men.

During those humiliating days, when the stars and bars waved upon Munson's Hill within sight of the Capitol, Carleton saw much of the Confederates through his glass. Picket-firing, though irregular and, probably, from a European point of view, unmilitary, trained the troops to steadiness of nerve. Many things in the first part of the war were done which were probably not afterwards often repeated; for example, the meeting of officers on the picket-lines, who had communications with each other, because they were freemasons. In September, the Confederates fell back from Munson's Hill, and on October 21st the battle at Poolsville, or Ball's Bluff, took place, in which, out of 1,800 Federals engaged, over one-third were killed, wounded or missing. The Fifteenth Massachusetts regiment suffered heavily. Colonel Devens, afterwards major-general and attorney-general, covered himself with glory, but the brave Colonel Baker lost his life.

Edward Dickinson Baker, born in England, had come to the United States in his youth. Between his thirtieth and fortieth year he had served in Congress as representative from Illinois. Then removing to California, he became a popular orator of the Republican party. In 1860 he was elected United States Senator from Oregon. I remember reading with a thrill his speech in the Senate, and his rebuke of Breckinridge. A few days later he was in Philadelphia holding a commission as colonel. He visited in their different halls the volunteer fire companies of our Quaker City. In torrents of overwhelming eloquence, he called on them to enlist in his famous "California Regiment," which was quickly clothed, equipped, and given the first rudiments of military instruction. I remember his superb, manly figure, in the very prime of life, his rosy English face set in a glory of hair just turning to silver. With hat off, he rode up and down the line, as the regiment stood in "company front" on Federal Street, between the old Cooper Shop (which was destined later to be the great Volunteers' Refreshment Saloon) and the Baltimore Depot, where they were to take cars for the seat of war. Like the "ten thousand" with Klearchos, foreigner, but also friend and commander, of whom Xenophon in the "Anabasis" speaks, it was already uncertain whether the Philadelphia men most feared or loved their lion-hearted leader. A few weeks went by, the tragedy of Ball's Bluff took place, and in Independence Hall I saw the brave Colonel Baker's body lying in state. In that hall of heroes, it seemed to my imagination as though the painted eyes of the Revolutionary heroes looked down in sympathy and approval. There, if not already among them, soon hung also the picture of Lieutenant Henry Greble, friend and neighbor, killed at Big Bethel, and the first officer in the regular army slain during the war. Colonel, afterwards General, Charles Devens, Jr., whose acquaintance Mr. Coffin made about this time, distinguished himself from this early engagement at Ball's Bluff throughout the war, and until the closing scene at Appomattox Court House, rising to the rank of brevet major-general. Long afterwards, in Boston, having been attorney-general of the United States, I knew him as the judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, meeting him socially more than once, and noticing the warm friendship between the famous war correspondent and this dignified interpreter of law.

After the battle of Ball's Bluff, seeing in detail the other and the hideous side of war in the mutilation of the human frame, and the awful horror of wounds, Carleton took a long ride through Eastern Maryland to look at the rebel batteries along the lower Potomac and to study the roads, the food products, and the black and white humanity of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac regions, besides informing himself as to the Union flotilla. In the absence of active military operations, he wrote of the religious life of the soldiers. He was appalled at the awful profanity around him, and his constant prayer to God was for strength to resist the demoralizing influences around him, which seemed to him a hell on earth. His wife's words followed him "like a strain of music," and "the infinite purity of Jesus" was his inspiring influence.

He made himself thoroughly acquainted with the New England regiments, and studied the details in the "mosaic of the army." He became so expert in studying the general composition of the regiments, their physical appearance, and ways of life, peculiarities of thought, speech, and action, that usually within five minutes he could tell from what State, and usually from what locality a regiment had come. He writes:

"A regiment from Vermont is as unlike a regiment from Pennsylvania almost as a pea from a pumpkin. Both are excellent. Both are brave. Both will fight well; but in the habits of life, in modes of doing a thing, they are widely different."

"Just look at the division that crosses the Potomac, and see the mosaic of McClellan's army. Commencing on the right there is McCall's division, one grand lump of Pennsylvania coal and iron. There is Smith's division, containing a block of Vermont marble; then Porter's tough conglomerate of Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island; then McDowell's, a splendid specimen of New York; then Blenker's, a magnificent contribution from Germany, with such names as Stahl, Wurnhe, Amsburg, Bushbeck, Bahler, Steinwick, Saest, Betje, Cultes D'Utassy, Von Gilsa, and Schimmelpfennig, who talk the language of their Fatherland, sing the Rhine songs, and drink a deluge of lager beer,—slow, sure, reliable men, of the stock that stood undismayed when all things were against them, in the times of Frederick the Great, who lost everything except courage, and, that being invincible, regained all they had lost. Then there are the Irish brigades and regiments from a stock which needs no words of praise, for their deeds are written in history. Without enumerating all the divisions, we see Yankees, Germans, Irish, Scotch, Italians, Frenchmen, Norwegians, and Dutchmen,—all in one army; and, grandest spectacle of all, moved by one common impulse to put down this rebellion, and to save for all future time the principle upon which this government is founded."

Weeks and months passed, and Carleton became acquainted with all the minutiæ of camp life. He studied the peculiarities of the sutler, the army mule, the government rations, and the pies concocted in New York. He enjoyed the grand reviews, noting with his quick eye the difference, in the great host, between the volunteers and the regulars. Of the type of that noble band of officers and men, none the less patriotic because more thoroughly educated in drills than the volunteers, he wrote: "His steps are regulated,—his motions, his manners,—he is a regular in all these. The volunteer stoops beneath the load on his back. He is far more like Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress,' with his burden of sin, than the regular. His steps are uneven, his legs are more unsteady. He carries his gun at a different angle. He lacks the finish which is obtained only by hard drill, and exact discipline." He closed this letter with a tribute of praise to Tidball's superb battery of artillery.

At this time the cavalry were not in good repute, General Scott not being in favor of any horsemen, except for scouting purposes. In this arm of the service the Confederates were far ahead of the Union soldiers. Grant, Sheridan, and Ronald McKenzie had not yet transformed our Northern horsemen into whirlwinds of fire. After various other experiences, including a long ride through Western Maryland, Carleton, within a few days before Christmas, was called by his employers to leave the Army of the Potomac, to go west to the prospective battle-field, where the heavy blows were soon to be struck. He was succeeded in Washington by Mr. Benjamin Perley Poore. A few noble words of farewell in his 109th letter, dated Washington, December 21, 1861, closed Carleton's first campaign in the East, his acquaintance with the Army of the Potomac having begun on the 12th of June. Having won the hearts of the soldiers in camp, and their friends at home, he left for "the next great battle-field" in the West, where, as he said, "history will soon be written in blood." He would see how the navy, as well as the army, was to bring peace by its men of valor, and its heavy guns,—"preachers against treason." His experience was to be of war on the waters, as well as on land.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER IX.

"HO, FOR THE GUNBOATS, HO!"

His first letter from the Army of the West, he dated, Cincinnati, December 28, 1861. Instead of a comparatively circumscribed Utica (on the Potomac), to confine his powers, our modern Ulysses had a line a thousand miles long, and a territory larger than several New Englands to look over. His first work, therefore, was to invite his readers to a panorama of Kentucky and the Mississippi Valley. Thus far in the war there had been no masterly moves, but, on the contrary, masterly inactivity. With such splendid chances for heroes, who would improve them? Neither Wolfe nor Washington had played Micawber, but had created opportunities. Carleton wrote, "Now is the time for the highest order of military genius.... We wait for him who shall improve the propitious hours." So in waiting went out the gloomy year of 1861. At Louisville, Ky., Carleton made the acquaintance in detail of General Buell's army. The commander, Don Carlos Buell, did not enjoy the presence of correspondents, and those from Cincinnati and New York papers had been expelled from the camp; nor was Carleton's letter from the Secretary of War, asking that "facilities consistent with public interests" be granted him, of any avail. He wrote on New Year's day, "No more troops are needed here, or on the Potomac at present; what is wanted is activity,—activity,—activity."

Following Horace Greeley's advice, Carleton went West. On January 4th, having surveyed the land and people, he sent home two letters, then moved on to Rolla, in the heart of Missouri, and, having got out of St. Louis with his passes, he found himself, January 11th, at Cairo. There the New England men were warm in their welcome of the sole representative of the press of the Eastern States, though St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and New York journals were also represented. Among these were A. D. Richardson, of the New York Tribune, and Whitelaw Reid, of the Cincinnati Gazette. Unlike General Don Carlos Buell, General U. S. Grant, in command at Cairo, had no horror of newspaper correspondents, and granted them all reasonable facilities. For the first time Carleton looked upon the gunboats, "three being of the coal-transport pattern, and five of the turtle style," with sides sloping inward, both above and below the deck. A shot from the enemy would be likely either to fly up in the air or "go into the realms of the catfish." As to the army, Carleton noticed that, as compared with the Army of the Potomac, discipline was much more severe in the East, while real democracy was much more general in the West. Men seemed less proud of their shoulder-straps. The rules of military etiquette were barely observed.

"There is but very little of the soldier about these Western troops. They are armed citizens, brave, active, energetic, with a fine physique, acquainted with hardships, reared to rough life ... but it is by no means certain that they will not be quite as effective in the field. The troops here are a splendid set of men, all of them young.... There is more bone and muscle here, but less culture ... I have heard far less profanity here than on the Potomac, among officers and men." He believed there were fewer profane words used and less whiskey drunk than among the troops in the East. There was not as much attention paid to neatness and camp hygiene.

It was at Cairo that Carleton made the personal acquaintance, which he retained until their death, of General Ulysses S. Grant and Commodore Foote. The latter had already made a superb reputation as a naval officer in Africa and China. Before Foote was able to equip and start his fleet, or Grant could move his army southward, on what proved to be their resistless march, Carleton made journeys into Kentucky, wrote letters from Cincinnati and Chicago, and arrived back in time to join General Grant's column. He went down the river, seeing the victorious battle and siege operations. First from Cairo, and then from Fort Donelson, he penned brilliant and accurate accounts of the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, which opened the Southern Confederacy to the advance of the Union army. While Grant beat the rebels, Carleton beat his fellow correspondents, even though he had first to spend many hours among the wounded. The newspaper men from New York had poked not a little fun at the "Boston man," chaffing him because they thought the New England newspapers "slow" and "out of date in methods." They fully expected that Carleton's despatches would be far behind theirs in point of time as well as in general value. Their boasting was sadly premature. Carleton beat them all, and their humiliation was great.

The matter was in this wise. He had hoped by taking the first boat from Fort Donelson to Cairo to find time to write out an account of the siege and surrender of the great fortresses; but during his travel of one hundred and eighty miles on the river, the steamer had in its cabin and staterooms two hundred maimed soldiers and officers with their wounds undressed. Instead of occupation with ink-bottle, pen, and paper, Carleton found himself giving water to the wounded, and holding the light for surgeons and nurses. Then, knowing that no other correspondent had the exact and copious information possessed by himself, he took the cars, writing his letters on the route from Cairo to Chicago, where he mailed them.

No doubt at this time, while Carleton was writing so brilliantly to a quarter of a million readers, many of them envied him his opportunities. Distance lent enchantment to the view. "But let me say," wrote Carleton, "if they were once brought into close contact with all the dreadful realities of war,—if they were obliged to stand the chances of getting their heads knocked off, or blown to atoms by an unexpected shell, or bored through with a minie ball,—to stand their chances of being captured by the enemy,—to live on bread and water, and little of it, as all of the correspondents have been obliged to do the past week,—to sleep on the ground, or on a sack of corn, or in a barn, with the wind blowing a gale, and the snow whirling in drifts, and the thermometer shrunk to zero,—and then, after the battle is over and the field won, to walk among the dying and the dead, to behold all the ghastly sights of trunkless heads and headless trunks,—to see the human form mutilated, disfigured, torn, and mangled by shot and shell,—to step in pools of blood,—to hear all around sighs, groans, imprecations, and prayers from dying men,—they would be content to let others become historians of the war. But this is not all; a correspondent must keep ever in view the thousands that are looking at the journal he represents, who expect his account at the earliest possible moment. If he is behindhand, his occupation is gone. His account must be first, or among the first, or it is nothing. Day and night he must be on the alert, improving every opportunity and turning it to account. If he loses a steamboat trip, or a train of cars, or a mail, it is all up with him. He might as well put his pencil in his pocket and go home."

Carleton had a hearty laugh over a letter from a friend who advised him "to take more time and rewrite his letters," adding that it would be for his benefit. To Carleton, who often wrote amid the smoke of battle or on deck amid bursting shells, or while flying over the prairies at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour, in order, first of all, to be ahead of his rivals, this seemed a joke. In after-years of calm and leisure, when writing his books, he painted word pictures and finished his chapters, giving them a rhetorical gloss impossible when writing in haste against the pressure of rushing time. Although Boston was two hundred miles farther from Cairo than New York, yet all New England had read Carleton's account in the Journal before any correspondent's letters from Fort Donelson or Henry appeared in the newspapers of Manhattan.

After the fall of Columbus, the next point to which army and navy were to give attention was the famous Island Number Ten. Here the Confederates were concentrating all that were available in men and cannon. Thousands of negroes were at work upon the trenches, and it was believed that the fight would be most desperate. After long waiting for his armament and the training of his men, Commodore Foote was ready. Carleton wrote at Cairo, March 10, 1862, in the exhilaration of high hopes:

"Like the waves of the Atlantic is the tide of events. How they sweep! Henry, Donelson, Bowling Green, Nashville, Roanoke, Columbus, Hampton Roads, Manassas, Cedar Creek,—wave upon wave, dashing at the foundation of a house built upon the sand.

... The gigantic structure is tottering. A few more days like that of the immediate past, and the Confederacy will have a name and a place only in history. And what a history it will be! A most stupendous crime. A conspiracy unparalleled, crushed out by a free people, and the best government of all times saved to the world! How it sends one's blood through his veins to think of it! Who would not live in such an age as this? Before this reaches you, the telegraph, I hope, will have informed you that the Mississippi is open to New Orleans."

So thought Carleton then. Who at that time was wiser than he?

Island Number Ten, so named quite early in history, by the pilots descending the river, was a place but little known in the East. To the writer it was one of interest, because here had lived for a year or so a beloved sister whose letters from the plantation and home at which she was a guest were not only frequent, but full of the fun and keen interest about things as seen on a slave plantation by a bright young girl of twenty from Philadelphia. Well do I remember the handsome planter of commanding form and winning manners who had made my sister's stay in the family of the Merriwethers so pleasant, and who at our home in Philadelphia told of his life on the Mississippi. This was but two or three years before the breaking out of the war. This same plantation on Island Number Ten was afterwards sown thickly with the seed of war, shot, and shell. In front of it took place the great naval battle, which Carleton witnessed from the deck of the gunboat Pittsburg, which he has described not only in his letters but also in the books written later. After the destruction of the rebel fleet followed the heavy bombardment which, after many days of constant rain of iron, compelled the evacuation of the forts early in April. Even after these staggering blows at the Confederacy, Carleton expatiated on the mighty work that yet remained to be done before Secessia should become one of the curiosities of history in the limbo of things exploded.

A month of arduous toil and continuous activity on foot, on deck, and on horseback followed. On the river and in Tennessee and in Mississippi the tireless news-gatherer plied his tasks. Then came tidings of the capture of New Orleans, the evacuation of Fort Pillow, in or near which Carleton wrote two of his best letters; the retreat of the Confederates from Memphis, and the annihilation of the rebel fleet in a great water battle, during which Carleton had the very best position for observation, only two other journalists being present to witness it with him. Owing to a week's sickness, he did not see the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, but he arrived on the ground very soon after, and went over the whole field with participants in the struggle and while the débris was still fresh. He made so thorough a study of this decisive field of valor, that he was able to write with notable power and clearness both in his letters at the time and later in his books.

We find him in Chicago, June 17th, in Boston, June 21st, where, in one of his letters, numbering probably about the two hundredth, he welcomes the sweet breezes of New England, her mountains, the deep-toned diapason of the ever-sounding sea, the green fields, the troops of smiling children, the toll of church bells, and the warm grasp of hands from a host of kind-hearted friends; and, best of all, the pure patriotism, the true, holy devotion of a people whose mighty hearts beat now and ever "for union and liberty, one and inseparable."[Back to Content]

CHAPTER X.

AT ANTIETAM AND FREDERICKSBURG.

The opening of the battle-summer of 1862 found the seat of war in the East, in the tidewater region of Virginia. These were the days when "strategy" was the word. General George B. McClellan's leading idea was to capture Richmond rather than destroy the Confederate army. His own forces lay on both sides of the Chickahominy, in the peninsula below Richmond. The series of five battles had already begun when Carleton arrived in Baltimore, July 2d. A peremptory order from Washington having stopped every one from reaching Fortress Monroe, he had therefore to do the next best thing as collector and reviser of news. After studying the whole situation, he wrote a long and detailed letter from Baltimore.

Spending most of the summer at home, he was able to rejoin the army early in September, when Lee began his daring invasion of the North,—a political even more than a military move. Then Confederate audacity was fully matched by Pennsylvania's patriotism. Although the State had already one hundred and fifty regiments in service, Governor Andrew D. Curtin called for fifty thousand more men. Within ten days that number of militia were armed and equipped, and in the field. Millionaires and wage-earners, professors and students, ministers and their congregations were in line guarding the Cumberland Valley. Neither disasters nor the incapacity of generals chilled the fierce resolve of Pennsylvania's sons, who were determined to show that the North could not be successfully invaded, even by veterans led by the bravest and most competent generals of the age.

Carleton was in the saddle as soon as he learned that Lee had moved. From Parkton to Hanover Junction, to Westminster, to Harrisburg, to Green Castle, to Hagerstown, to Keitisville he rode, and at these places he wrote, hoping to be in at the mightiest battle which, until this time, had ever been fought on American soil. For many days it was a mystery to the Washington authorities, and to the Army of the Potomac, where Lee and his divisions were; but, with his usual good fortune, Carleton was but nine miles distant, at Hagerstown, when the booming of the cannon at Antietam roused him from his sleep. It was not many minutes before he was in saddle and away. Instead of the ride down the Sharpsburg pike that would have brought him in rear of the enemy, he rode down the Boonsboro road, reaching the right wing of the Union army just as Hooker was pushing his columns into position. Striking off from the main road, through fields and farms, he came to Antietam creek. He found a ford, and reached a pathway where a line of wagons loaded with the wounded was winding down the slope. On the fields above was a squadron of cavalry to hold back stragglers. In the first ambulance he descried a silver star, and saw the face of the brave General Richardson, dead, with a bullet through his breast. At the farmhouses, rows of men were already lying in the straw, waiting their turn at the surgeon's hands, while long lines of men were bringing the fallen on stretchers. With hatred of war in his heart, but with faith in its stern necessity, Carleton rode on to see the fight which raged in front of Sumner, noticing that the cannon of Hooker and Mansfield were silent, cooling their lips after the morning's fever. Of the superb Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, which he had seen a year ago at review, there was now but a remnant. He ascended the ridge, where thirty pieces of cannon were every moment emptying their black mouths of fire and iron.

All day long Carleton was witness of the battle, and then sent home from Sharpsburg, September 19th, in addition to his preliminary letter, a long and comprehensive account in five columns of print. It was so animated in style, so exact in particulars, and so skilful and clear in its general grouping, that its writer was overwhelmed with congratulations by the best of all critics, his fellow correspondents. In two other letters from Sharpsburg, he reviewed the whole subject judicially, and then returned home for a few days' recuperation.

From Philadelphia we find two of his letters, one describing the transport of troops and the monitors then on the stocks, or in the Delaware, and another reviewing the account of Antietam which he had read in the Charleston Courier. Indeed, all through the war, Mr. Coffin took pains to inform himself as to Southern opinion, and the methods of its manufacture and influence by the press. He was thus able to correct and purify his own judgments. He preserved his copies of the Southern papers, and gradually accumulated, during and after the war, a unique collection of the newspapers of the South. His first opinion about the battle of Antietam, written October 8, 1862, is the same as that which he held thirty years later:

"In reviewing the contest, aided by the Southern account, it seems that all through the day, complete, decisive, annihilating victory lay within our grasp, and yet we did not take it."

Let us read further from the closing paragraph of that letter, which he wrote in Philadelphia, before moving West to the army in Kentucky:

"In saying this, I raise no criticism, make no question or blame, but prefer to look upon it as a controlling of that Providence which notices the fall of every sparrow. The time had not come for complete victory,—for annihilation of the rebel army. We are not yet over the Red Sea. The baptism of blood is not yet complete. The cause of the war is not yet removed,—retribution for crime is not yet finished. We must suffer again. With firmer faith than ever in the ultimate triumph of right, truth, and justice, let us accept the fiery ordeal."

Like the pendulum of an observatory clock, the bob-point of which touches at each vibration the mercury which transmits intelligence of its movements to distant points, Carleton now swung himself to Cincinnati. In Louisville he gave an account, from reports, of the battle of Perryville. It was written in the utmost haste, with one eye upon the hands of his watch moving on to the minute of the closing of the mail. In such a case, according to his custom, he wrote a second letter, when possessed with fuller data from eye-witnesses. In the heart of Kentucky he was able to see the effects of the President's Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued but three weeks before. He described the coming of the Confederate army into Kentucky as "the Flatterer, dressed in a white garment, who with many fair speeches would have turned Christian and Faithful from the glittering gates of the Golden City, shining serene and fair over the land of Beulah." The robe having dropped from Flatterer's limbs, the Kentuckian saw that the reality was hideous, and that to follow him was to go back again to the City of Destruction. The Confederates moved southward, laden with plunder, while General Buell, with his army of one hundred and forty thousand men, after having mildly pursued them for twenty-one days, returned to Louisville. Carleton's comment upon these movements is, "Such is strategy."

Finding himself again in the trough of inactivity, and ever ready to mount on the wave of opportunity, Carleton moved again to the East, writing in the cars while whirling to Virginia. His first letters from the East were penned at Harper's Ferry. Then began his zigzag movements, like a planet. We find his pen active at Berlin, Md., Purcellville, Va., Upperville, Va., where, beside the cavalry battles between Pleasanton and Stewart, he saw that seven corps were in motion. From Gainesville, Warrenton Junction, Orleans, Warrenton, Catlett's Station, and again and often from Washington, and from Falmouth, he sent his letters, which, if not always full of battle, kept the heart of New England patient and courageous.

McClellan had been removed, and Burnside, taking command, led his army to the riverside before Fredericksburg. Carleton was witness of the bombardment of the city by the Federal artillery. From his coign of vantage at General Sumner's headquarters, on the piazza of an elegant mansion, one hundred feet above the Rappahannock, and about three-quarters of a mile from it, he could see, as though it were a great cartoon and he a weaver of the Gobelins tapestry of history, the awful pattern of war. Beyond the sixteen rifled Rodman guns of large calibre and long range, mounted on the river bluff and thrust out through sand-bags, behind the masses of infantry, the pontoon and artillery trains, Carleton stood and saw the making of a bridge in fifteen minutes, in the face of a terrific musketry fire from the opposite shore. Then followed views of the street fight in the doomed city, the shattered houses, the cloudless sky, the setting sun, the gorgeous sunset dyes, the deepening shadows, the masses of men upon the opposite hills, the screaming shells, the puffs of white smoke, the bursting storms of iron, the blood-red flames illuminating the ruin of dwellings, the battle smoke settling in the valley, so densely as to obscure or hide the flashes. All this was before Carleton on that afternoon and evening of that winter's day, December 11th. Then he spread his blanket for a little sleep, expecting to awake to behold one of the greatest battles of modern times; but the sun set without the two great armies coming to close quarters.

The next day was a hard one, for Carleton was in the field until night, now watching a bombardment, now a charge, and again a long and stubborn, persistent musketry fire. The shells sang near him, and at one time he was evidently the target for a whole Confederate battery; for, within a few seconds, a round shot struck a few rods in front of him, a second fell to the right, a third went over his head, a fourth skimmed along the surface of the ground, just over the backs of a regiment, lying flat on their faces. As he moved to the shelter of the river bank, a shot dropped obligingly in the water before him. All day long the lines of batteries on the hills smoked like Etna and Vesuvius. Sometimes, between ordnance and musketry, there were twenty thousand flashes a minute. Carleton thus far had seen no battles where the fire equalled that which was poured upon Sumner's command during the last grand, but hopeless, charge at sunset. At nightfall, when the wearied soldiers could lie down for rest, Carleton began the work of writing his letter. Among other things he said:

"With the deference to military strategics, my own common sense deprecated attempting the movements which were made, as unnecessary and unwise,—which must be accomplished with fearful slaughter, and which I believed would be unsuccessful....

"It is a plain of Balaklava, where the Light Brigade, renowned in song, made their fearful charge."

Then follows a simple but sufficient diagram of the Confederate impregnable position, where, with only common printer's type, and the "daggers" of punctuation standing for Blakesley and Armstrong guns, printer's ink told the story. Though nearly exhausted by his manifold labors of brain and muscle, Carleton, on the 15th, visited the battle-field, which did not exceed one hundred acres, and the city in which the troops were quietly quartered, but in which a Confederate shell was falling every ten minutes. After surveying the near and distant scenes from the cupola of an already well-riddled house, Carleton followed the army when it withdrew to Falmouth, seeing through his glass the Confederates leaping upon the deserted entrenchments and staring at the empty town.

Returning to Washington, he reviewed as usual the battle, and then returned homeward, according to his wont, for three weeks of rest and refreshment. His last letter, before leaving the front, was a noble and inspiriting plea for patience and continuance. He wrote: "The army is ready to fight, but the people are despondent. The army has not lost its nerve, its self-possession, its balance; it is more powerful to-day than it has ever been. It has no thought of giving up the contest. The cause is holy. It is not for power or dominion, but for the rich inheritance decreed by our fathers."

The same bugle call of inspiration sounded from his lips and pen, when he rejoined the army on the Rappahannock, and Hooker was in command. He wrote: "The army needs several things; first, to be supported by the people at home. There is nothing which will so quickly take the strength out of the soldier as a blue letter from home, and on the other hand there is nothing which would give him so much life as a cheerful, hopeful letter from his friends. Let every one look beyond the immediate present into the years to come, and think of the inheritance he is to bequeath to his children. Let him see the coming millions of our people on this continent; let him lay his ear to the ground, and hear the tread of that mighty host which is to people the Mississippi Valley; which will climb the mountains of the West, to coin the hidden riches into gold; let him see the great cities springing up on the Pacific Coast; let him understand that this nation is yet in its youth; that this continent is to be the highway between China and Europe; let him behold this contest in its vast proportion, reaching through all coming time, and affecting the entire human race forever; let him resolve that, come weal or come woe, come life or come death, that it shall be sustained, and it will be."

Another letter deals in rather severe sarcasm with a friend who belonged to "the Nightshade family," one of those individuals who thrive on darkness. He wrote: "People of New England, are you not ashamed of yourselves? Away with your old womanish fears, your shivering, your timidity, your garrulousness.... Sustain your sons by bold, inspiring, patriotic words and acts; act like men.... This army, this government must be sustained. It will be."[Back to Content]

CHAPTER XI.

THE IRONCLADS OFF CHARLESTON.

After five letters from Washington, in the first of which he had predicted that in a few days, for the first time in war, there would be the great contest between ironclads and forts, and the stroke of fifteen-inch shot against masonry, Carleton set off for salt water, determining to see the tug-of-war on the Atlantic coast. It was on Saturday afternoon, February 7th, that he stood on deck of the steamer Augusta Dinsmore as she moved through the floating masses of ice down the Hudson River to the sea. This new ship was owned by Adams's Express Company, and with her consort, Mary Sandford, was employed in carrying barrels of apples, boxes of clothing, messages of love, and tokens of affection between the Union soldiers along the coast and their friends at home. Heavily loaded with express packages, with fifty or sixty thousand letters, and with several hundred fifteen-inch solid shot, packed ready for delivery by Admiral Du Pont at or into Fort Sumter, the trim craft passed over a sea like glass, except that now and then was a dying groan or heave of the storm of a week before. A pleasant Sunday at sea was spent with worship, sermon, and song. After sixty hours on salt water, Carleton's ear caught the boom of the surf on the beach. The sea-gulls flitted around, and after the sun had rent the pall of fog, the town of Beaufort appeared in view.

The harbor was full of schooners which had come from up North, bringing potatoes, onions, apples, and Yankee notions for the great blue-coated community at Newburgh. Carleton moved up the poverty-stricken country through marsh, sea-sand, pitch-pine, swamp, and plain. Here and there were the shanties of sand-hillers, negro huts, and scores of long, lank, scrimped-up, razor-backed pigs of the Congo breed, as to color; but in speed, racers, outstripping the fleetest horses. Making his headquarters at Hilton Head, Carleton made a thorough study of the military and naval situation. He visited the New England regiments. He saw the enlistment of negro troops, and devoted one letter to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson's first South Carolina regiment of volunteers.

With his usual luck, that is, the result of intelligence and energy which left nothing to mere luck, Carleton stood on the steamer Nantasket, off Charleston, April 7, 1863. Both admiral and general had recognized the war correspondents as the historians of the hour. At half past one, the signal for sailing was displayed from the flag-ship. Then the ugly black floating fortresses moved off in a line, each a third or a half a mile apart, against the masses of granite at Sumter and Moultrie, and the earthen batteries on three sides. "There are no clouds of canvas, no beautiful models of marine architecture, none of the stateliness and majesty which have marked hundreds of great naval engagements. There is but little to the sight calculated to excite enthusiasm. There are eight black specks, and one oblong block, like so many bugs. There are no human beings in sight,—no propelling power visible."

A few minutes later, "the ocean boils." Columns of spray are tossed high in air, as if a hundred submarine mines were let instantly off, or a school of whales were trying which could spout highest. There is a screaming in the air, a buzzing and humming never before so loud.

"You must think the earth's crust is ruptured, and the volcanic fires, long pent, have suddenly found vent."

"There she is, the Weehawken, the target of probably two hundred and fifty or three hundred guns, at close range, of the heaviest calibre rifled cannon, throwing forged bolts and steel-pointed shot turned and polished to a hair in the lathes of English workshops, advancing still, undergoing her first ordeal, a trial unparalleled in history. For fifteen minutes she meets the ordeal alone."

Soon the other four monitors follow. Seventy guns a minute are counted, followed by moments of calm, and scattering shots, but only to break out again in a prolonged roar of thunder. In the lulls of the strife, Carleton steadied his glass, and when the southwest breeze swept away the smoke, he could see "increasing pock-marks and discolorations upon the walls of the fort, as if there had been a sudden breaking out of cutaneous disease."

We now know, from the Confederate officers then in Fort Sumter, that the best artillery made in England, and the strongest powder manufactured in the Confederacy, were used during this two and a half hours of mutual hammering, until then unparalleled in the history of the world. Near sunset, at 5.20 P. M., signals from the flag-ship were read; the order was, "Retire."

The red sun sank behind the sand hills, and the silence was welcomed. During the heavy cannonade,—like the Union soldiers who, obedient to the hunter's instinct, stopped in the midst of a Wilderness battle to shoot rabbits,—a Confederate gunner had trained his rifled cannon upon the three non-combatant vessels, the Bibb, the Ben Deford, and the Nantasket, which lay in the North Channel at a respectful distance, but quite within easy range of Sullivan's Island. Having fired a half a dozen shot which had fallen unnoticed, the gunner demoralized the little squadron, and sent hundreds of interested spectators running, jumping, and rolling below deck, by sending a shot transversely across the Nantasket. It dropped in the sea about a hundred yards from the bow of the Ben Deford. Another shot in admirable line fell short. Shells from Cummings Point had also been tried on the ships laden with civilians, but had failed to reach them. However, the correspondents claim to have silenced the batteries,—by getting out of the way; for in a few minutes the cables had been hauled in, paddle-wheels set in motion, and distance increased from the muzzles of the battery.

When the fleet returned, Carleton leaped on board of the slush deck of the monitor Catskill, receiving hearty response from Captain George Rodgers, who reported "All right, nobody hurt, ready for them again." I afterwards saw all these monitors covered with indentations like spinning-top moulds or saucers. They were gouged, dented, and bruised by case-shot that had struck and glanced sidewise. Here and there, it looked as though an adamantine serpent had grooved its way over the convex iron surface, as a worm leaves the mark of its crawling in the soft earth under the stone. The Catskill had received thirty shots, the Keokuk a hundred. Inside of the Nahant, Carleton found eleven officers and men badly contused by the flying of bolt-heads in the turret; but, except from a temporary jam, her armor was intact. On the Patapsco a ball had ripped up the plating and pierced the work beneath. This was the only shot that had penetrated any of the monitors. The Weehawken had in one place the pittings of three shots which, had they immediately followed each other, might, like the arrows of the Earl of Douglas in Scott's "Lady of the Lake," split each other in twain. Except leaving war's honorable scar, these three bolts hurt not the Weehawken. Out of probably three thousand projectiles shot from behind walls, about three hundred and fifty took effect, that is, one shot out of six. Three tons of iron were hurled at Fort Sumter, and probably six tons at the fleet. Fighting inside of iron towers, the Union men had no one killed, and but one mortally wounded. The Keokuk, the most vulnerable of all the ships engaged, sank under the northwest wind in the heavy sea of the next day.

It was long after midnight when Carleton finished the closing lines of his letter, and then stepped out upon the steamer's guard for a little fresh air. Over on Sumter's walls the signal-light was being waved. The black monitors lay at their anchorage. Ocean, air, and moonbeams were calm and peaceful. From the flag-ship, which the despatch steamer visited, the report was, "The engagement is to be renewed to-morrow afternoon." Nevertheless, the next day, Admiral Du Pont, dissenting from the opinions of his engineers and inspectors, as to a renewal of the attack, moreover finding his own officers differing in their opinions as to the ability of the fleet to reduce Fort Sumter, ordered no advance. The enterprise was, for the present, at least, given up. So Carleton, after another letter on white and black humanity in South Carolina, which showed convincingly the results of slavery, sailed from Hilton Head.

Like the war-horse of Hebrew poetry, he smelt the battle afar off, and looked to Virginia. He reached home just in time to hear of the great conflict at Chancellorsville. Rushing to Washington, and gathering up from all sources news of the disaster, he presented to the readers of the Journal a clear and connected story of the battle. During the latter part of May and until the middle of June, the previous weeks having been times of inaction in the military world, Carleton recruited his strength at home. Like a falcon on its perch, he awaited the opportunity to swoop on the quarry.[Back to Content]

CHAPTER XII.

GETTYSBURG: HIGH TIDE AND EBB.

When Lee and his army, leaving the front of the Union army and becoming invisible, when President and people, general and chief and privates, Cabinet officers and correspondents, were wondering what had become of the rebel hosts, and when the one question in the North was, "Where is General Lee?" Carleton, divining the state of affairs, took the railway to Harrisburg. Once more he was an observer in the field. His first letter is dated June 16th, and illuminates the darkness like an electric search-light.

General Lee, showing statesmanship as well as military ability, had chosen a good time. The Federal army was losing its two years' and nine months' men. Vicksburg was about to fall. Something must be done to counterbalance this certain loss to the Confederates. Paper money in the South was worth but ten per cent. of its face value. Recognition from Europe must be won soon, or the high tide of opportunity would ebb, nevermore to return. Like a great wave coming to its flood, the armed host of the Confederacy was moving to break at Gettysburg and recede.

Yet, at that time, who had ever thought of, or who, except the farmers and townsmen and students in the vicinity, had ever seen Gettysburg? At first Carleton supposed that Harper's Ferry might be the scene of the coming battle. Again he imagined it possible for Lee to move down the Kanawha, and fall upon defenceless Ohio. He wrote from Harrisburg, from Washington, from Baltimore, from Washington again, from Baltimore once more, from Frederick, where he learned that Hooker had been superseded, and Meade, the Pennsylvanian, put in command. On June 30th, writing from Westminster, Md., he described the rapid marching of the footsore and hungry Confederates, and the equally rapid pedestrianism of the Federals. He revels in the splendors of nature in Southern Pennsylvania, which the Germans once hailed as a holy land of comfort and liberty, and which, by their industry, they had made "fair as the garden of the Lord." As Carleton rode with the second corps from Frederick to Union Town, and thence to Westminster, he penned prose poems in description of the glorious sight, so different from his native and stony New Hampshire.

"The march yesterday was almost like passing through paradise. Such broad acres of grain rustling in the breeze; the hills and valleys, bathed in alternate sunlight and shade; the trees so green; the air so scented with clover-blossoms and new-made hay; the cherry-trees ruby with ripened fruit, lining the roadway; the hospitality of the people, made it pleasant marching."

Thus like the great forces of the universe, which make the ocean's breast heave to and fro, and send the tides in ebb and flood, were the great energies which were now to bring two hundred thousand men in arms, on the field of Gettysburg, in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Forty years before, as it is said, a British officer surveying the great plain with the ranges of hills confronting each other from opposite sides, with many highroads converging at this point, declared with admiration that this would be a superb site for a great battle. Now the vision of possibility was to become reality, and Carleton was to be witness of it all. Since mid-June he had been on the rail or in the saddle. He was now to spend sleepless nights and laborious days that were to tax his physical resources to their utmost.

With his engineer's eye, and from the heights overlooking the main field, he took in the whole situation. From various points he saw the awful battles of July 2d and 3d, which he described in two letters, written each time after merciful night came down upon the field of slaughter. He saw the charges and defeats, the counter-charges and the continued carnage, and the final cavalry onset made by the rebels. He was often under fire. An impression that lasted all his life, and to which he often referred, was the result of that great movement of Pickett's division across the field, after the long bombardment of the Federal forces by the Confederate artillery. Retiring before the heavy cannonade, Carleton had remained in the rear, until, hearing the cheers of the Union soldiers, he reached the slope in time to see the gray and brown masses in the distance.

As the great wave of human life receded, that for a moment had pierced the centre of the Union forces, only to be hurled back and broken, Carleton rode out down the hill and on the plain into the wheat field. Then and there, seeing the awful débris, came the conviction that the rebellion had seen its highest tide, and that henceforth it would be only ebb.

When is a battle over, and how can one know it? That night, Friday, and the next day, Saturday, Carleton felt satisfied that Lee was in full retreat, though General Meade did not seem to think so. Carleton's face was now set Bostonwards. Not being able to use the army telegraph, he gave his first thought to reaching the railroad. The nearest point was at Westminster, twenty-eight miles distant, from which a freight-train was to leave at 4 P. M.

Rain was falling heavily, but with Whitelaw Reid as companion, Carleton rode the twenty-eight miles in two hours and a half. Covered with mud from head to foot, and soused to the skin, the two riders reached Westminster at 3.55 P. M. As the train did not immediately start, Carleton arranged for the care of his beast, and laying his blanket on the engine's boiler, dried it. He then made his bed on the floor of the bumping car, getting some sleep of an uncertain quality before the train rolled into Baltimore.

At the hotel on Sunday morning he was seized by his friend, E. B. Washburn, Grant's indefatigable supporter and afterwards Minister to France, who asked for news. Carleton told him of victory and the retreat of Lee. "You lie," was the impulsive answer. Washburn's nerves had for days been under a strain. Then, after telling more, Carleton telegraphed a half-column of news to the Journal in Boston. This message, sent thence to Washington, was the first news which President Lincoln and the Cabinet had of Gettysburg. After a bath and hoped-for rest, Carleton was not allowed to keep silence. All day, and until the train was entered at night for New York, he was kept busy in telling the good news.

The rest of the story of this famous "beat," as newspaper men call it, is given in Carleton's own words to a Boston reporter, a day or two before the celebration of his golden wedding in February, 1896:

"Monday I travelled by train to Boston, writing some of my story as I rode along, and wiring ahead to the paper what they might expect from me. When I reached the office I found Newspaper Row packed with people, just as you will see it now on election night, and every one more than anxious for details.

"It was too late, however, for anything but the morning edition of Tuesday, but the paper wired all over New England the story it would have, and the edition finally run off was a large one.

"I locked myself in a room and wrote steadily until the paper went to press, seeing no one but the men handling the copy, and, when the last sheet was done, threw myself on a pile of papers, thoroughly exhausted, and got a few hours' sleep. I went to my home in the suburbs, the next day, but my townspeople wouldn't let me rest. They came after me with a band and wagon, and I had to get out and tell the story in public again.

"The next day I left for the front again, riding forward from Westminster, where I had left my horse, and thus covering about 100 miles on horseback, and 800 miles by rail, from the time I left the army until I got back again.

"Coffee was all that kept me up during that time, but my nerves did not recover from it for a long time. In fact, I don't think I could have gone through the war as I did, had I not made it a practice to take as long a rest as possible after a big battle or engagement."

In his letter written after the decisive event of 1863, Carleton pays a strong tribute of praise to the orderly retreat which Lee made from Pennsylvania. He was bitterly disappointed that the defeated army should have been allowed to escape. With the soldiers, he looked forward with dread to another Virginia campaign. Nevertheless, he was all ready for duty. Having found his horse and resumed his saddle, he spent a day revisiting the Antietam battle-field. It was still strewn with the débris of the fight: old boots, shoes, knapsacks, belts, clothes all mouldy in the dampness of the woods. He found flattened bullets among the leaves, fragments of shells, and, sickening to the sight, here and there a skull protruding from the ground, the bleaching bones of horses and men. The Dunkers' church and the houses were rent, shattered, pierced, and pitted with the marks of war.

Even until July 15th, when he sent despatches from Sharpsburg, he nourished the hope that Lee's army could still be destroyed before reaching Richmond. This was not to be. Like salt on a sore, and rubbed in hard, Carleton's sensibilities were cut to the quick, when, on again coming home, he found the people in Boston and vicinity debating the question whether the battle of Gettysburg had been a victory for the Union army or not. Some were even inclined to consider it a defeat. Carleton's letter of July 24th, written in Boston, fairly fumes with indignation at the blind critics and in defence of the hard work of the ever faithful old Army of the Potomac, "which has had hard fighting,—terrible fighting, and little praise." He lost patience with those staying at home depreciating the army and finding fault with General Meade. He wrote: "Frankly and bluntly, I cannot appreciate such stupidity. Why not as well ask if the sun rose this morning? That battle was the greatest of the war. It was a repulse which became a disastrous defeat to General Lee." He sarcastically invited critics, "instead of staying at home to weaken the army by finding fault, to step into the ranks and help do the 'bagging,' the 'cutting up,' and the 'routing' which they thought ought to have been done."[Back to Content]