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."



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 minutiae 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.



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 debris 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."



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."



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.



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 debris, 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 debris 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."



CHAPTER XIII.

THE BATTLES IN THE WILDERNESS.

After the exhausting Gettysburg campaign, Carleton was obliged to rest some weeks. So far as his letter-book shows, he did not engage in war correspondence again until the opening of the next year, when he entered upon his fourth hundred of letters, and began a tour of observation through the border States. Traversing those between the Ohio River and the Lakes, besides Missouri and Kansas, he kept the Journal readers well informed of the state of sentiment, and showed the preparations made to pursue the war. At the last of April, we find him in Washington preparing his readers for the great events of the Wilderness, in letters which clearly describe the prospective "valley of decision." The grandest sight, that week, in the city, was the marching of Burnside's veteran corps, in which were not only the bronzed white heroes, following their own torn and pierced battle-flags, but also regiments of black patriots, slaves but a few months before, but now no longer sons of the Dark Continent, but of the Land of Hope and Opportunity. From slavery they had been redeemed in the Free Republic. Unpaid sons of toil once, but free men now, they were marching with steady step to certain victory or to certain death, for at that moment came the sickening details of the massacre of Fort Pillow. On the balcony of the hotel, standing beside the handsome Burnside, was the tall and pale man who, having given them freedom, now recognized them as soldiers. As they halted by the roadside and read the accounts of massacre, their white teeth clenched, and oaths, not altogether profane, were sworn for vengeance.

Out from the broad avenues of the nation's capital, and away from the sight of the marble dome, the great army and its faithful historians moved from sight, to the bloodiest contests of war. No more splendid pageants in the fields, but close, hard, unromantic destruction in the woods and among trenches and craters! One mind now directed all the movements of the many armies of the Union, making all the forces at the control of the nation into one mighty trip-hammer, for the crushing of Slavery's conspiracy against Liberty.

General Grant recognized in Carleton his old friend whom he first met in Cairo, and whom he had invited to take a nail-keg for a seat. Having established his reputation for absolute truthfulness, Carleton won not only Grant's personal friendship, but obtained a pass signed "U. S. Grant," which was good in all the military departments of the country, with transportation on all government trains and steamers. In hours of relaxation, Carleton was probably as familiar with Grant as was any officer on the general's own staff. Carleton profoundly honored and believed in Grant as a trained, regular army officer who could cut loose from European traditions and methods, and fight in the way required in Virginia in 1864 and 1865. Further, Grant wanted the Army of the Potomac to destroy Lee's army without the aid of, or reinforcement from, Western troops.

Carleton comprehended the magnitude of the coming campaign, in which were centred the hopes of eighteen millions of Americans. In his eyes it was the most stupendous campaign of modern times. "It is not the movement of one army merely, but of three great armies, to crush out treason, to preserve the institutions of freedom, and consolidate ourselves into a nation." Butler and Smith were to advance from the Chesapeake, the armies of the South and West were in time to march northward in Lee's rear, while from the West and North were to come fresh hosts to consummate the grand combination.

Carleton's foresight had shown him that, in this campaign, an assistant for himself would be absolutely necessary; for, in one respect, Grant's advance was unique. Instead of, as heretofore, the Union army's having its rear in close contact with the North, and all the lines and methods of communication being open, the soldiers and the correspondents were to advance into the Wilderness, and cut themselves off from the railway, the telegraph, and even the ordinary means of communication by horse, wheel, and boat. Carleton, at short notice to the young man, chose for his assistant his nephew, Edmund Carleton, now a veteran surgeon and physician in New York, but then in the freshness and fullness of youth, health, and strength. Alert and vigorous, fertile in resource, courageous and persevering, young Carleton became the fleet messenger of the great war correspondent. He assisted to gather news, and soon learned the art of winning the soldier's heart, and of extracting, from officers and privates, scraps and items of intelligence. Even as the hunter becomes expert in noting and interpreting signs in air and on earth which yield him spoil, so young Carleton, trained by his uncle, quickly learned how to secure news, and to make a "beat." He kept himself well supplied to the extent of his ability with tobacco,—always welcome to the veterans, for which some "would almost sell their souls;" and with newspapers, for which officers would often give what was worth more than gold,—items of information, from which letters could be distilled, and on which prophecies could be based. Very appropriately, Carleton dedicates his fourth book on the war, "Freedom Triumphant," to his fleet messenger.

Carleton's first letter in the last long campaign is dated May 4, 1864, from Brandy Station. There four corps were assembled: the Second, Hancock's; the Fifth, Warren's; the Sixth, Sedgwick's; the Ninth, Burnside's. With Sheridan's riders, these made a great city of tents. The cavalry was not the cavalry of Scott's day, but was in its potency a new arm of the service. From this time forth, the Confederate authorities, by neglecting this arm of their service, furnished one chief cause of final failure, while those in Washington steadily increased in generous recognition of the power of union of man and horse. In equal ability of brute and rider to endure fatigue, the Union cavalryman under Sheridan was a veritable centaur.

While the great army lay waiting and expectant at Brandy Station, it was significant to Carleton when the swift-riding orderlies suddenly left headquarters carrying sealed packages to the corps commanders. First began the tramping of the cavalry. Next followed the movement of two divisions of the Fifth Corps. All night long was heard the rumble of artillery. Carleton wrote: "Peering from my window upon the shadowy landscape at midnight, I saw the glimmering of thousands of camp-fires, over all the plain. Hillside, valley, nook, and dell, threw up its flickering light. Long trains of white canvas wagons disappeared in the distant gloom.

"At three A. M., the reveille, the roll of innumerable drums, and the blow of bugles sounded, and as morning brightened, dark masses of armed men stood in long line. With the first beams of the sun peering over the landscape, they moved from the hills. Disjointed parts were welded together, regiments became brigades, brigades grew into divisions, and divisions became corps. The sunlight flashed from a hundred thousand bayonets and sabres." Thus in a few hours a great city of male inhabitants, numbering over the tenth of a million, disappeared. By night-time, in a rapid march, Grant was in headquarters in a deserted house near the Germania Ford. There Carleton noticed the general's simple style of living. Unostentatious in all his habits, he smoked constantly, often whittling a stick while thinking, and wasting no words. Grant had stolen a march upon Lee, and was as near Richmond as were the Confederates, who must attack him in flank and retard him if possible. Knowing every road and bridle-path in the Wilderness, Lee, having drawn all the resources of the Confederacy east of Georgia into his lines, had gathered an army the largest and the most complete he had yet commanded. He must now cut up Grant's host; or, if unable to do so, even without defeat, must begin a march which meant some American Saint Helena as its end.

The campaign which followed in that densely wooded part of Virginia, a few miles west of the former battle-field of Chancellorsville, had not been paralleled for hardship during the whole war. In the ten days succeeding May 4th, when the army broke camp at Culpeper and Brandy Station, there had been a march of eighteen miles, the crossing of the Rapidan with hard fighting on May 5th, and on the 6th, the great battle in the Wilderness, among the trees from which the foe could hardly be distinguished. On the 7th, there was fighting all along the line, with the night march after Spottsylvania, and on Sunday, the 8th, under the burning sun, a sharp fight by the Fifth Corps. On the 9th, another terrific battle followed, in which three corps were engaged, one of them, the Sixth, losing its noble commander, Sedgwick, with a score or two of able officers. On the 10th, in the afternoon, a pitched battle was fought all along the line, lasting until midnight, in which all the corps were engaged. On Wednesday, the 11th, skirmishing and picket firing formed the order of the day along the whole front. On Thursday, the 12th, at daybreak, the Second Corps began its attack, capturing twenty-three guns and several thousand prisoners. Sunday, the 13th, was a time of rain, hard work, hunger, and fatigue. In a word, within twelve days there had been four great pitched battles, with heavy fighting, mainly in the woods, and hard pounding on both sides, with many thousands of dead and wounded.

During the war Carleton had seen no such fighting, suffering, patience, determination. General Grant freely admitted that the fighting had been without a parallel during the war. There was little work done by the artillery. Swords and bayonets were but ornaments or emblems. Only lead had the potency of death in it. Even the cavalry dismounted, sought cover, shooting each other out of position with their carbines. Bullets, which do the killing, were the fixed forces. In war it is musketry that kills, and it was a question which side could stand murder the longest.

At the end of the Wilderness episodes, Carleton, after first answering those critics far in the rear, who, to all the noble tenacity of Grant and his army, queried "Cui bono" wrote: "I confidently expect that he [Grant] will accomplish what he has undertaken, because he is determined, has tenacity of purpose, measures his adversary at his true value, expects hard fighting, and prepares for it." It was trying almost to discouragement, to this brave, honest, patient seeker after truth, to find with what chaff and husk of imaginary news, manufactured in Washington and elsewhere, the editors of newspapers had to satisfy the hungry souls of the waiting ones at home.

In one of the engagements, when our right wing had been forced by the Confederates; when the loud rebel yells were heard so near that the teamsters of the Sixth Corps were frightened into a panic, and, cutting the traces, ran so far and wide that it was two days before they were got together again; when, to many army officers, it seemed the day had been lost,—as lost it had been, save for the stubborn valor of the Sixth Corps; when many a face blanched, Carleton looked at Grant. There was the modern Silent One, tranquil amid the waves of battle. Sitting quietly, with perfect poise, eyes on the ground, and steadily smoking, he whittled a stick, neither flesh nor spirit quailing. "He himself knew what he would do." And he did wait, and, in waiting, won. Carleton's faith in Grant, strong from the first, was now as a mountain, unshakable.



CHAPTER XIV.

CAMP LIFE AND NEWS-GATHERING.

The story of the Wilderness campaign, during which were fought the greatest musketry battles in the history of the world, with their awful slaughter, has been told by hundreds of witnesses, and by Carleton himself in his books; but the life of the camp and how the great army was handled, how the news was forwarded, and how Carleton beat the government couriers and all his fellow historians of the hour, getting the true report of the awful struggle before the country, has not been told, or at least, only in part. Let us try to recall some of the incidents.

In the first place, this was the time of the year when the flies and manifold sort of vermin, flying, crawling, hopping, hungry, and ever biting, were in the full rampancy of their young vigor. It was not only spiteful enemies in human form, that sent crashing shells and piercing bullets, but every kind of nipping, boring, sucking, and stinging creatures in the air and on the earth, that our brave soldiers, and especially our wounded, had to face. Even to the swallowing of a mouthful of coffee, or the biting of a piece of hard tack, it was a battle. Flies, above, around, and everywhere, made it difficult to eat without taking in vermin also. Even upon the most careful man, the growth of parasites in the clothing or upon the person was a certainty. Within twenty-four hours the carcass of a horse, left on the field of battle, seemed to move with new and multitudinous life suddenly generated. The stench of the great battle-fields was unspeakable, and the sudden creation of incalculable hosts of insects to do nature's scavenger work was a phenomenon necessary, but to human nerves horrible. The turkey-buzzards gathered in clouds for their hideous banquet.

All this made the work of the surgeons greater, and the sufferings of the wounded more intense; yet, redeeming the awful sight of torn and mangled humanity, was the splendid discipline and order of the medical staff. Upon the first indications of a battle, the regimental wagons of each corps would be driven up to some real or supposed safe place. It was the work of but a few moments for the tables to be spread with all their terrible array of steel instruments, while close at hand would be the stores of lint, bandages, towels, basins, and all the paraphernalia which science and long experience had devised. These diminished, in some measure, the horrors of the battle for at least the wounded. It was a sublime and beautiful sight, as compared with the wars of even a century ago, when the surgeon had scarcely a recognized position in the army. In the very midst of the hell of fire and flame and noise, the relief parties, with their stretchers, would go out and return with their burdens. Soon the neighborhood of the surgeon's wagon looked like a harvest-field with the windrows of cut grain upon it. Strange as it may seem, there was often more real danger in this going and coming from rear to front, and from front to rear, than on the very battle line itself. Many a man preferred to stand in the fighting files with the excitement and glory, than to get out into the uncertain regions of wandering balls and bursting shells. The Carletons, both uncle and nephew, had often, while out collecting news, to scud from cover to cover, and amid the "zip, zip" of bullets. Dangerous as the service was, there was little reward to the eyesight, for the Confederate army, like the Japanese dragon of art, was to be seen only in bits, here and there.

How easy for us now, in the leisure of abundant time and with all the fresh light that science has shed upon surgery, and focussed upon the subject of gunshot wounds, to criticise the surgeons of that day, who, with hundreds of men each awaiting in agony his turn, were obliged to decide within minutes, yea, even seconds, upon a serious operation, without previous preparation or reinforcement of the patient. The amputation, the incision, the probing had to be done then and there, on the instant. It is even wonderful that the surgeons did as well as they did. Often it was a matter of quick decision as to whether anything should be attempted. One look at many a case was enough to decide that death was too near. Often the man died in the stretcher; sometimes, when marked for the operating-table, he was asleep in his last sleep before his turn came. Surgeons, hospital stewards, nurses, detailed men, had to concentrate into moments what in ordinary hospital routine may require hours.

Human nature was reduced to its lowest terms when hunger made the possessors of a stomach forget whether they were men or wolves. The heat was so intense, the marching so severe, that many of the men would throw away blankets, rations, and equipments, and then make up in camp by stealing. Severe punishment was meted out when ammunition was thrown away. The debris on the line of march, and the waste, was tremendous. Only strict military discipline made property respected. Even then, the new conscript had to look out for his bright and serviceable musket when the old veteran's arms were lost or out of order. The newspaper correspondent owning a good horse had to keep watch and ward, while so many dismounted cavalrymen whose horses had been shot were as restless as fish out of water. It was hard enough even for the soldiers to get rations during the Wilderness campaign, harder often for the men of letters. Had it not been for kind quartermasters, and the ability of the correspondents to find the soft side of their hearts, they must have starved. Yet the rapidity with which soldiers on their forced marches could turn fences into fires and coffee into a blood-warmer was amazing. The whole process from cold rails to hot coffee inside the stomach often occupied less than twenty minutes. In these "ramrod days," "pork roasts"—slices of bacon warmed in the flame or toasted over the red coals—made, with hard tack, a delicious breakfast.

Once when the Second Corps had captured several thousand Confederate prisoners, who were corralled in an open field in order to be safely guarded, and their commander brought into the presence of General Grant, the former remarked that his men had had nothing to eat for the past twenty-four hours. Instantly Grant gave the order for several wagon-loads of crackers to be brought up and distributed to the hungry. Thereupon appeared a spectacle that powerfully impressed young Carleton. The six-muled teams appeared in a few moments and were whipped up alongside of the Virginia rail fence. Then the stalwart teamsters, aided by some of the boys in blue, stood beside the wagons to distribute boxes. Two men, taking each the end of a box in hand, after two or three preparatory swings, heaved the box full of biscuit up in the air and off into the field. Within the observation of young Carleton, no box, while full, ever reached the ground, but was seized while yet in the air, gripped and ripped open by the men that waited like hungry wolves. They tore open the packed rows of crackers and fairly jammed them down their famished mouths, breaking up the hard pieces in their hands while waiting for their teeth to do its hasty work. Humanity at its noblest, in Grant's instantly ordering food, and in its most animal phase of necessity, in the hungry rebels devouring sustenance, were illustrated on that day.

After work with the pen concerning the great battles in the Wilderness, Carleton's great question was how to get his letters to Boston. The first bundle was carried by Mr. Wing, of the New York Tribune, the second by Mr. Coffin's nephew, Edmund Carleton. The nearest point occupied by the Union army, which had communication with the North by either boat, mail or telegraph, was Fredericksburg, more than forty miles to the eastward. To reach this place one must ride through a region liable at any moment to be crossed by regular Confederate cavalry, Mosby's troops, or rebel partisans. There were here and there outposts of the Union cavalry, but the danger, to a small armed party, and much more to a single civilian rider, was very great. Nevertheless, young Carleton was given his uncle's letters, with the injunction to ride his horse so as not to kill it before reaching Fredericksburg. "The horse's life is of no importance, compared with the relief of our friends' anxiety; and, if necessary to secure your purpose of prompt delivery, let the horse die, but preserve its life if you can."

To make success as near to certainty as possible, young Carleton took counsel with the oldest and wisest cavalrymen. He then concluded to take the advice of one, who told him to give his horse a pint of corn for breakfast and allow the animal plenty of time to eat and chew the fodder well. Then, during the day, let the beast have all the water he wanted, but no food till he reached his destination. Fortunately, his horse, being "lean," was the one foreordained in the proverb for the "long race." The young messenger lay down at night with his despatches within his bosom, his saddle under his head, and his horse near him. The bridle was fastened around his person, and all his property so secured that the only thing that could be stolen from him without his being awakened was his hat and haversack,—though this last was under his saddle-pillow. Nothing else was loose.

The young man rose early. Alas! he had been bereaved indeed. Not only his hat, but his haversack, with all toilet articles, his uncle's historic spy-glass, and his personal notes of the campaign, were gone. While his horse chewed its corn he found a soldier's cap, vastly too small, but by ripping up the back seam he was able to keep it on his head and save himself from sunstroke. Mounting his horse, he set out eastward at sunrise. When some miles beyond the Federal lines, he was challenged by horsemen whom he found to be of the 13th Pennsylvania cavalry on outpost duty and just in from a foraging trip. They hesitated to release him even after examining his passes, but "that from Butler fetched them." Even then, they did not like him to proceed, assuring him that it was too dangerous for anybody to cross such unprotected territory. He would be "a dead man inside of an hour." However, they examined his horse's shoes, and gave him a strip of raw pork, the first food he had tasted for many an hour. Finally they bade him good-by, promising him that he was going "immediately to the devil." Some miles further on, he saw near him two riders. Mutually suspicious of each other, the distance was shortened between the two parties until the character of each was made known. Then it was discovered that all three were on the same errand, the solitary horseman for Boston private enterprise, and the two cavalrymen in blue for General Grant to the Government, were conveying news.

They rode pleasantly together for a few minutes, but when Carleton noticed that their horses were fat and too well-fed to go very fast, he bade his companions good-by. He put spurs to his horse. Though it was the hottest day of the year, he reached Fredericksburg about the middle of the forenoon, thirsty and hungry, having eaten only the generous cavalryman's slice of raw pork on the way. He found there a train loading with the wounded of several days' battle. He at once began helping to carry the men on the cars. Volunteering as a nurse, where nurses were most needed, though at first refused by the surgeons, he got on board the train. From the Sanitary Commission officers, he received the first "square meal" eaten for many days. At Acquia Creek, he took the steamboat, and after helping to transfer the wounded from cars to boat, he remained on board, sleeping on a railing seat. Next morning he was in Washington, before the newspaper bureaus were open.

He sent by wire a brief account of the Wilderness battles. At first the operator was very reluctant to transmit the message, since he was sure that none had been received by the Government, and he feared reprimand or discharge for sending false reports. Indeed, this information sent by Carleton was the first news which either President Lincoln or Secretary Stanton had of Grant's latest movements.

From the telegraph office, young Carleton went to the Boston Journal Bureau, on 14th Street. There he had to wait some time, since Mr. Coffin's successor in Washington, not expecting any tidings, was leisurely in appearing. By the first mail going out, however, a "great wad of manuscript," put in envelopes as letters, was posted. Again the Journal beat even the official messengers and the other newspapers in giving the truthful reports of an eye-witness. Thus, Charles Carleton Coffin scored another triumph.

How to get back to the army was now a question for young Carleton. The orders of the Secretary of War were peremptory that no one should leave Washington for the front. The correspondents who were there might stay, but no fresh accessions could be made to the ranks of the news-gatherers. How, then, could young Carleton pierce through the hedge of authority?

But the man diligent in business shall stand before kings. Young Carleton, securing a commission as nurse from Surgeon-General Hammond, went down to the riverside, and, going on board a steamer arriving with wounded, he helped to unload its human freight. When the last man had been carried over the gunwales, young Carleton stayed on board. When far down the river, on the returning boat, he ceased being something like a stowaway, and became visible. No one challenged or disturbed him. At Acquia Creek, he found that General Augur, having sent all his wounded North, was just abandoning the communication. Young Carleton then went to Belle Plain, and thence marched three days with three companies of the Veteran Invalid Corps, and rejoined the army on its forced march, when Grant moved by the left flank down towards Petersburg.

Meanwhile, the pride of Mr. Coffin, the journalist, and the conscience of Mr. Coffin, the man, the uncle, and the Christian, had been at civil war. He was berating himself for having let his nephew go on so dangerous an errand. When the news flew round the camp that "young Carleton's back," Mr. Coffin rushed up to his nephew, wrung his hand, and cried out, with beaming face, "Ed, you're a brick."



CHAPTER XV.

"THE OLD FLAG WAVES OVER SUMTER."

By this time, Mr. Coffin was himself nearly exhausted, having been worn down by constant service, day and night, in one of the most exhausting campaigns on record. Knowing that both armies would have to throw up entrenchments and recuperate, he came home, according to custom, to rest and freshen for renewed exertion. Leaving immediately after the battle of Cold Harbor, that is, on June 7th, he was back again in Washington on June 22d, and in Petersburg, June 26th. The lines of offence and defence were now twenty miles long, and the great battle of Petersburg, which was to last many months, the war of shovel and spade, had begun. Mr. Coffin remained with the army, often riding to City Point and along the whole front of the Union lines, reading the news of the sinking of the Alabama by the Kearsarge, and the call of the President for a half million of men, seeing many of the minor contests, the picket firing, the artillery duels, and learning of the splendid valor of the black troops.

He came to Washington and Baltimore, when the news of Early's raid up the Shenandoah Valley was magnified into an invasion of Maryland by General Lee, with sixty thousand men behind them. Carleton, however, was not one to catch the disease of fear through infectious excitement. Finding Grant, the commander-in-chief of all the armies in the field walking alone, quietly and unostentatiously, with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and smoking a cigar, neither excited nor disturbed, Carleton felt sure that the raid had been anticipated and was well provided for. Both then, as well as on July 18th, when he had to argue with friends who wore metaphorically blue glasses, he wrote cheerfully and convincingly of his calm, deliberate judgment, that the prospects of crushing the rebellion were never so bright as at that moment. He concluded his letter thus, "Give Grant the troops he needs now, and this gigantic struggle will speedily come to an end."

While Lee, disappointed in the results of Early's menace of Washington, was summoning all his resources to resist the long siege, and while Grant was awaiting his reinforcements and preparing the cordon, which, like a perfect machine, should at the right moment be set in motion to grind in pieces the armies of rebellion, Carleton was chosen by the people of Boston to accompany their gift of food which they wished to send to Savannah, to relieve the needy. Between Tuesday and Thursday of one week, thirty thousand dollars were contributed. The steamer Greyhound a captured blockade-runner, was chartered. Taking in her hold one-half of the provisions, she left Boston Harbor at 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, January 23, 1865. With the committee of relief, Carleton arrived in Savannah in time to ride out and meet the army of Sherman. After attending meetings of the citizens, seeing to the distribution of supplies, and writing a number of letters, he now scanned all horizons, feeling rather than seeing the signs of supreme activity. Whither should he go?

Sherman's army was about to move north to crush Johnston, and then join Grant in demolishing Lee's host. Mr. Coffin could easily have accompanied this marvellous modern Anabasis, which, however, instead of retreat meant victory. He had an especially warm invitation from Major-General A. S. Williams, commander of the 20th Corps, to be a guest at his headquarters. There were many arguments to tempt him to proceed with Sherman's army. Nevertheless, from the war correspondent's point of view, it seemed wiser not to go overland, but to choose the more unstable element, water. For nearly a month, perhaps more, the army would have no communication with any telegraph office, and for long intervals none with the seacoast.

Carleton knew that after Gilmore's "swamp angel" and investing forces had done their work, Charleston must soon be empty. He longed to see the old flag wave once more over Sumter. So, bidding farewell to Sherman's army, he took the steamer Fulton at Port Royal, which was to stop on her way to New York at the blockading fleet off Charleston. Happy choice! He arrived in the nick of time, just as the stars and stripes were being hoisted over Sumter. It was on February 18th, at 2 P. M., that the Arago steamed into Charleston Bay, where he had before seen the heaviest artillery duel then known in the history of the world, and the abandonment of the attack by the floating fortresses. Now a new glory rose above the fort, while in the distance rolled black clouds of smoke, from the conflagration of the city. He penned this telegram to the Boston Journal:

"The old flag waves over Sumter, Moultrie, and the city of Charleston.

"I can see its crimson stripes and fadeless stars waving in the warm sunlight of this glorious day.

"Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory."

Carleton had but a few minutes to write out his story, for the steamer Fulton was all ready to move North. How to get the glorious news home, and be first torch-bearer in the race that would flash joy over all the North, was now Carleton's strenuous thought. As matter of fact, this time again, as on several occasions before, he beat the Government and its official despatch-bearers, and all his fellow correspondents.

How did he do it?

While other knights of the pen confided their missives to the purser of the despatch steamer, Arago, Carleton put his in the hands of a passing stranger, who was going North. Explaining to him the supreme importance of rapidity in delivery of such important news, he instructed him as follows:

"When your steamer comes close to the wharf in New York, it will very probably touch and then rebound before she is fast to her moorings. Do you stand ready on the gunwale, and when the sides of the vessel first touch the dock, do not wait for the rebound; but jump ashore, and run as for your life to the telegraph office, send the telegram, and then drop this letter in the post-office."

Carleton's friend did as he was told. He watched his opportunity. In spite of efforts to hold him back, he was on terra firma many minutes before even the Government messenger left the boat; while, unfortunately for the New York newspapers, the purser kept the various correspondents' despatches in his pocket until his own affairs had been attended to. It was about 8 o'clock in the morning when Carleton's messenger faced the telegraph operators. Then, as Carleton told the story in 1896, "they at first refused to take the story, as they did not believe its truth, and said it would affect the price of gold. In those days, there was a censorship of the telegraph, and nothing was allowed to be sent which might affect the price of gold.