You can watch the operation of this quality in every-day business transactions. Your man of grit seems never deficient in news of the markets, though he may employ no telegraph-operator. Thus, about two years ago, a great Boston holder of flour went to considerable expense in obtaining special intelligence, which would, when generally known, carry flour up to ten dollars and a half a barrel. Another dealer, suspecting something, went to him and said, "What do you say flour's worth to-day?"—"Oh," was the careless answer, "I suppose it might bring ten dollars."—"Well," retorted the querist, gruffly, "I've got five thousand barrels on hand, and I should like to see the man who would give me ten dollars barrel for it!"—"I will," said the other, quickly, disclosing his secret by the eagerness of his manner, "Well," was the reply, "all I can say is, then, that I have seen the man."

The importance of this quality as a business power is most apparent in those frightful panics which periodically occur in our country, and which sometimes tax the people more severely than wars and standing armies. In regard to one of the last of these financial hurricanes, that of 1857, there can be little doubt, that, if the acknowledged holders of financial power had been men of real grit, it might have been averted; there can be as little doubt, that, when it burst, if they had been men of real grit, it might have been made less disastrous. But they kept nearly all their sails set up to the point of danger, and when the tempest was on them ignominiously took to their boats and abandoned the ship. And as for the crew and passengers, it was the old spectacle of a shipwreck,—individuals squabbling to get a plank, instead of combining to construct a raft.

Indeed, there was something pitiable in the state of things which that panic revealed in the business centres of the country. Common sense seemed to be disowned by mutual consent; an infectious fear went shivering from man to man; and a strange fascination led people to increase by suspicions and reports the peril which threatened their own destruction. Men, being thus thrown back upon the resources of character, were put to terrible tests. As the intellect cannot act when the will is paralyzed, many a merchant, whose debts really bore no proportion to his property, was seen sitting, like the French prisoner in the iron cage whose sides were hourly contracting, stupidly gazing at the bars which were closing in upon him, and feeling in advance the pang of the iron which was to cut into his flesh and crush his bones.

In invigorating contrast to the panic-smitten, we had the privilege to witness many an example of the grit-inspired. Then it was that the grouty, taciturn, obstinate trader, so unpopular in ordinary times, showed the stuff he was made of. Then his bearing was cheer and hope to all who looked upon him. How he girded himself for the fight, resolved, if he died, to die hard! How he tugged with obstacles as if they were personal affronts, and hurled them to the right and to the left! How grandly, amid the chatter of the madmen about him, came his few words of sense and sanity! And then his brain, brightened, not bewildered, by the danger, how clear and alert it was, how fertile in expedients, how firm in principles, with a glance that pierced through the ignorant present to the future, seeing as calmly and judging as accurately in the tempest as it had in the sunshine. Never losing heart and never losing head, with as strong a grip on his honor as on his property, detesting the very thought of failure, knowing that he might be broken to pieces, but determined that he would not weakly "go to pieces," he performed the greatest service to the community, as well as to himself, by resolutely, at any sacrifice, paying his debts when they became due. It is a pity that such austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integrity so gruff, and their courage so unjoyous, that all the genial graces fly their companionship; and a libertine Sheridan, with Ancient Pistol's motto of "Base is the slave that pays," will often be more popular, even among the creditor portion of the public, than these crabbed heroes, and, if need be, surly martyrs, of mercantile honesty and personal honor.

In regard to public life, and the influence of this rough manliness in politics, it is a matter of daily observation, that, in the strife of parties and principles, backbone without brain will carry it against brain without backbone. A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. The true motto for a party is neither "Measures, not men," nor "Men, not measures," but "Measures in men,"—measures which are in their blood as well as in their brain and on their lips. Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army was equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers; and in a legislative assembly, Mirabeau and John Adams and John Quincy Adams are not simply persons who hold a single vote, but forces whose power thrills through the whole mass of voters. Mean natures always feel a sort of terror before great natures; and many a base thought has been unuttered, many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear inspired by the rebuking presence of one noble man.

Opinions embodied in men, and thus made aggressive and militant, are the opinions which mark the union of thought with grit. A politician of this class is not content to comprehend and wield the elements of power already existing in a community, but he aims to make his individual conviction and purpose dominant over the convictions and purposes of the accredited exponents of public opinion. He cares little about his unpopularity at the start, and doggedly persists in his course against obstacles which seem insurmountable. A great, but mischievous, example of this power appeared in our own generation in the person of Mr. Calhoun, a statesman who stamped his individual mind on the policy and thinking of the country more definitely, perhaps, than any statesman since Hamilton, though his influence has, on the whole, been as evil as Hamilton's was, on the whole, beneficent. Keen-sighted, far-sighted, and inflexible, Mr. Calhoun clearly saw the logical foundations and logical results of the institution of Slavery; and though at first called an abstractionist and a fanatic by the looser thinkers of his own region, his inexorable argumentation, conquering by degrees politicians who could reason, made itself felt at last among politicians who could not reason; and the conclusions of his logic were adopted by thousands whose brains would have broken in the attempt to follow its processes. One of those rare deductive reasoners whose audacity marches abreast their genius, he would have been willing to fight to the last gasp for a conclusion which he had laboriously reached by rigid deduction through a score of intermediate steps, from premises in themselves repugnant to the primal instincts both of reason and humanity. Always ready to meet anybody in argument, he detested all reasoners who attempted to show the fallacy of his argument by pointing out the dangerous results to which it led. In this he sometimes brought to mind that inflexible professor of the deductive method who was timidly informed that his principles, if carried out, would split the world to pieces. "Let it split," was his careless answer; "there are enough more planets." By pure intellectual grit, he thus effected a revolution in the ideas and sentiments of the South, and through the South made his mind act on the policy of the nation. The present war has its root in the principles he advocated. Never flinching from any logical consequence of his principles, Mr. Calhoun did not rest until through him religion, morality, statesmanship, the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of man, were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the most nonsensical as well as detestable of oppressions, was, to him, the most beneficent contrivance of human wisdom. He called it an institution: Mr. Emerson has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the chains of his iron logic were heard clanking on the whole Southern intellect. Reasoning the most masterly was employed to annihilate the first principles of reason; the understanding of man was insanely placed in direct antagonism to his moral instincts; and finally the astounding conclusion was reached, that the Creator of mankind has his pet races,—that God himself scouts his colored children, and nicknames them "Niggers."

It is delicious to watch the exulting and somewhat contemptuous audacity with which he hurries to the unforeseen conclusion those who have once been simple enough to admit his premises. Towards men who have some logical capacity his tone is that of respectful impatience; but as he goads on the reluctant and resentful victims of his reasoning, who loiter and limp painfully in the steps of his rapid deductions, he seems to say, with ironic scorn, "A little faster, my poor cripples!"

So confident was Mr. Calhoun in his capacity to demonstrate the validity of his horrible creed, that he was ever eager to measure swords with the most accomplished of his antagonists in the duel of debate. And it must be said that he despised all the subterfuges and evasions by which, in ordinary controversies, the real question is dodged, and went directly to the heart of the matter,—a resolute intellect, burning to grapple with another resolute intellect in a vital encounter. In common legislative debates, on the contrary, there is no vital encounter. The exasperated opponents, personally courageous, but deficient in clear and fixed ideas, mutually contrive to avoid the things essential to be discussed, while wantoning in all the forms of discussion. They assert, brag, browbeat, dogmatize, domineer, pummel each other with the argumentum ad hominem, and abundantly prove that they stand for opposite opinions; we watch them as we watch the feints and hits of a couple of pugilists in the ring; but after the sparring is over, we find that neither the Southern champion nor the Northern bruiser has touched the inner reality of the question to decide which they stripped themselves for the fight. In regard to the intellectual issue, they are like two bullies enveloping themselves in an immense concealing dust of arrogant words, and, as they fearfully retreat from personal collision, shouting furiously to each other, "Let me get at him!" And this is what is commonly called grit in politics,—abundant backbone to face persons, deficient brain-bone to encounter principles.

Not so was it when two debaters like Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster engaged in the contest of argument. Take, for example, as specimens of pure mental manliness, their speeches in the Senate, in 1833, on the question whether or not the Constitution is a compact between sovereign States. Give Mr. Calhoun those two words, "compact" and "sovereign," and he conducts you logically to Nullification and to all the consequences of Nullification. Andrew Jackson, a man in his kind, of indomitable resolution, intended to arrest the argument at a convenient point by the sword, and thus save himself the bother of going farther in the chain of inferences than he pleased. Mr. Webster grappled with the argument and with the man; and it is curious to watch that spectacle of a meeting between two such hostile minds. Each is confident of the strength of his own position; each is eager for a close hug of dialectics. Far from avoiding the point, they drive directly towards it, clearing their essential propositions from mutual misconception by the sharpest analysis and exactest statement. To get their minds near each other, to think close to the subject, to feel the griding contact of pure intellect with pure intellect, and, as spiritual beings, to conduct the war of reason with spiritual weapons,—this is their ambition. Conventionally courteous to each other, they are really in the deadliest antagonism; for their contest is the tug and strain of soul with soul, and each feels that defeat would be worse than death. No nervous irritation, no hard words, no passionate recriminations, no flinching from unexpected difficulties, no substitution of declamatory sophisms for rigorous inferences—but close, calm, ruthless grapple of thought with thought. To each, at the time, life seems to depend on the issue—not merely the life which a sword-cut or pistol-bullet can destroy, but immortal life, the life of immaterial minds and personalities, thus brought into spiritual feud. They know very well, that, whatever be the real result, the Webster-men will give the victory of argument to Webster, the Calhoun-men the victory of argument to Calhoun; but that consideration does not enter their thoughts as they prepare to close in that combat which is to determine, not to the world, but to each other, which is the stronger intellect, and which is in the right Few ever appreciate great men in this hostile attitude, not of their passions, but of their minds; and those who do it the least are their furious partisans. Most people are contented with the argument that tells, and are apt to be bored with the argument which refutes; but a true reasoner despises even his success, if he feels that two persons, himself and his opponent, know that he is in the wrong. And the strain on the whole being in this contest of intellect with intellect, and the reluctance with which the most combative enter it unless they are consciously strong, is well illustrated by Dr. Johnson's remark to some friends, when sickness had relaxed the tough fibre of his brain,—"If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me."

A peculiar kind of grit, not falling under any of the special expressions I have noted, yet partaking in some degree of all, is illustrated in the character of Lieutenant-General Grant. Without an atom of pretension or rhetoric, with none of the external signs of energy and intrepidity, making no parade of the immovable purpose, iron nerve, and silent, penetrating intelligence God has put into him, his tranquil greatness is hidden from superficial scrutiny behind a cigar, as President Lincoln's is behind a joke. When anybody tries to coax, cajole, overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with Grant, the General listens and—smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. While you are wondering what kind of man this creature without a tongue is, you are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory, proving that behind the cigar, and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare among the generals of the Republic.

It is curious to mark a variation of this intellectual hardihood and personal force when the premises are not in the solidities, but in the oddities of thought and character, and whim stands stiffly up to the remotest inferences which may be deduced from its insanest freaks of individual opinion. Thus it is said that in one of our country towns there is an old gentleman who is an eccentric hater of women; and this crotchet of his character he carries to its extreme logical consequences. Not content with general declamation against the sex, he turns eagerly, the moment he receives the daily newspaper, to the list of deaths; and if he sees the death of a woman recorded, he gleefully exclaims,—"Good! good! there's another of 'em gone!"

We have heard of a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way, they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in its annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccentric hatred of the eighteenth century, its manners, morals, politics, religion, and men. He has expressed this in various ways for thirty years; but in his last work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice reached its logical climax in the assertion, that the only sensible thing the eighteenth century ever did was blowing out its own brains in the French Revolution.

Again, in discussion, some men have felicity in replying to a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert skeptic asked Martin Luther where God was before He created heaven, Martin stunned his querist with the retort,—"He was building hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect the story of the self-complacent cardinal who went to confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation to get the reputation of a saint.

"I have been guilty of every kind of sin," snivelled the cardinal.

"It is a solemn fact," replied the impassive monk.

"I have indulged in pride, ambition, malice, and revenge," groaned the cardinal.

"It is too true," answered the monk.

"Why, you fool," exclaimed the enraged dignitary, "you don't imagine that I mean all this to the letter!"

"Ho! ho!" said the monk, "so you have been a liar, too, have you?"

This relentless rebuker of shams furnishes us with a good transition to another department of the subject, namely, moral hardihood, or grit organized in conscience, and applying the most rigorous laws of ethics to the practical affairs of life. Now there is a wide difference between moral men, so called, and men moralized,—between men who lazily adopt and lazily practise the conventional moral proprieties of the time, and men transformed into the image of inexorable, unmerciful moral ideas, men in whom moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice of their weak and selfish natures, connects the notion of virtue with the reality of sacrifice, then, in that sharp pinch, they become suddenly apprised of the difference between rhetoric and rectitude, and find that their speeches have been far ahead of their powers of performance. Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is a scene in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and in ten seconds the young moralist is crossing swords with his antagonist in a duel.

But the characteristic of moral grit is equality with the occasions which exact its exercise. It is morality with thews and sinews and blood and passions,—morality made man, and eager to put its phrases to the test of action. It gives and takes hard blows,—aims not only to be upright in deed, but downright in word,—silences with a "Thus saith the Lord" all palliations of convenient sins,—scowls ominously at every attempt to reconcile the old feud between the right and the expedient and make them socially shake hands,—and when cant taints the air, clears it with good wholesome rage and execration. On the virtues of this stubborn conscientiousness it is needless to dilate; its limitations spring from its tendency to disconnect morality from mercy, and law from love,—its too frequent substitution of moral antipathies for moral insight,—and its habit of describing individual men, not as they are in themselves, but as they appear to its offended conscience. Understanding sin better than it understands sinners, it sometimes sketches phantoms rather than paints portraits,—identifies the weakly wicked with the extreme of Satanic wickedness,—and in its assaults, pitches at its adversaries rather than really pitches into them. But, in a large moral view, the light of intellectual perception should shine far in advance of the heat of ethical invective, and an ounce of characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. Indeed, moral grit, relatively admirable as it is, partakes of the inherent defect of other and lower kinds of grit, inasmuch as its force is apt to be as unsympathetic as it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is invincible. It drives rather than draws, cuffs rather than coaxes. Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all forms of human excellence which do not square with its own conceptions of right; and its philanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a subtile misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sacrificing, and flinching from no consequences which its principles may bring upon itself, it flinches from no consequences which they may bring upon others; and its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted imperfection is almost as sourly belligerent as towards those of instituted iniquity.

Men of this austere and somewhat crabbed rectitude may be found in every department of life, but they are most prominent and most efficient when they engage in the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in manners, institutions, or religion; and here they never shrink from the rough, rude work of the cause they espouse. They are commonly adored by their followers, commonly execrated by their opponents; but they receive the execration as the most convincing proof that they have performed their duties, as the shrieks of the wounded testify to the certainty of the shots. Indeed, they take a kind of grim delight in so pointing their invective that the adversaries of their principles are turned into enemies of their persons, and scout at all fame which does not spring from obloquy. As they thus exist in a state of war, the gentler elements of their being fall into the background; the bitterness of the strife works into their souls, and gives to their conscientious wrath a certain Puritan pitilessness of temper and tone. In the thick of the fight, their battle-cry is, "No quarter to the enemies of God and man!"—and as, unfortunately, there are few men who, tried by their standards, are friends of man, population very palpably thins as the lava-tide of their invective sweeps over it, and to the mental eye men, disappear as man emerges.

The gulf which yawns between uncompromising moral obligation and compromising human conduct is so immense that these fierce servants of the Lord seem to be fanatics and visionaries. But history demonstrates that they are among the most practical of all the forces which work in human affairs; for, without taking into account the response which their inflexible morality finds in the breasts of inflexibly moral men, their morality, in its application to common life, often becomes materialized, and shows an intimate connection with the most ordinary human appetites and passions. They commune with the mass of men through the subtile freemasonry of discontent. Compelled to hurl the thunderbolts of the moral law against injustice in possession, they unwittingly set fire to injustice smouldering in unrealized passions; and their speech is translated and transformed, in its passage into the public mind, into some such shape as this:—"These few persons who are dominant in Church and State, and who, while you physically and spiritually starve, are fed fat by the products of your labor and the illusions of your superstition, are powerful and prosperous, not from any virtue in themselves, but from the violation of those laws which God has ordained for the beneficent government of the universe. Their property and their power are the signs, not of their merits, but of their sins." The instinctive love of property and power are thus addressed to overturn the present possessors of property and power; and the vices of men are unconsciously enlisted in the service of the regeneration of man. The motives which impel whole masses of the community are commonly different from the motives of those reformers who urge the community to revolt; and their fervent denunciations of injustice bring to their side thousands of men who, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, only desire a chance to be unjust. The annals of all emancipations, revolutions, and reformations are disfigured by this fact. Better than what they supplant, their good is still relative, not absolute.

In the history of religious reforms, few men better illustrate this hard moral manliness, as distinguished from the highest moral heroism, than the sturdy Scotch reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thoroughly honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all physical and moral fear, destitute equally of fine sentiments and weak emotions, blurting out unwelcome opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in words which hit and hurt like knocks with the fist, he is one of those large, but somewhat coarse-grained natures, that influence rude populations by having so much in common with them, and in which the piety of the Christian, the thought of the Protestant, and the zeal of the martyr are curiously blended with the ferocity of the demagogue. Jenny Geddes, at the time when Archbishop Laud attempted to force Episcopacy upon Scotland, is a fair specimen of the kind of character which the teachings and the practice of such a man would tend to produce in a nation. This rustic heroine was present when the new bishop, hateful to Presbyterian eyes, began the service, with the smooth saying, "Let us read the Collect of the Day." Jenny rose in wrath, and cried out to the surpliced official of the Lord,—"Thou foul thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug?" and hurled her stool at his head. Then rose cries of "A Pope! a Pope! Stone him!" And "the worship of the Lord in Episcopal decency and order" was ignominiously stopped. And in the next reign, when the same thing was attempted, the Covenanters, the true spiritual descendants of Knox, opposed to the most brutal persecution a fierce, morose heroism, strangely compounded of barbaric passion and Christian fortitude. They were the most perfect specimens of pure moral grit the world has ever seen. In the great theological humorist of the nineteenth century, the Reverend Sydney Smith, the legitimate intellectual successor of the Reverend Rabelais and the Reverend Swift and the Reverend Sterne, their sullen intrepidity excites a mingled feeling, in which fun strives with admiration. In arguing against all intolerance, the intolerance of the church to which he belonged as well as the intolerance of the churches to which he was opposed, he said that persecution and bloodshed had no effect in preventing the Scotch, "that metaphysical people, from going to heaven in their true way instead of our true way"; and then comes the humorous sally,—"With a little oatmeal for food and a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with one hand and grasping his Calvinistical creed with the other, Sawney ran away to the flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles." But from the graver historian, developing the historic significance of their determined resistance to the insolent claims of ecclesiastical authority, their desperate hardihood elicits a more fitting tribute. "Hunted down," he says, "like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of bands of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair."

But the man who, in modern times, stands out most prominently as the representative of this tough physical and moral fibre is Oliver Cromwell, the greatest of that class of Puritans who combined the intensest religious passions with the powers of the soldier and the statesman, and who, in some wild way, reconciled their austere piety with remorseless efficiency in the world of facts. After all the materials for an accurate judgment of Cromwell which have been collected by the malice of his libellers and the veneration of his partisans, he is still a puzzle to psychologists; for no one, so far, has bridged the space which separates the seeming anarchy of his mind from the executive decision of his conduct. A coarse, strong, massive English nature, thoroughly impregnated with Hebrew thought and Hebrew passion,—democratic in his sympathy with the rudest political and religious feelings of his party, autocratic in the consciousness of superior abilities and tyrannic will,—emancipated from the illusions of vanity, but not from those of ambition and pride,—shrinking from no duty and no policy from the fear of obloquy or the fear of death,—a fanatic and a politician,—a demagogue and a dictator,—seeking the kingdom of heaven, but determined to take the kingdom of England by the way,—believing in God, believing in himself, and believing in his Ironsides,—clothing spiritual faith in physical force, and backing dogmas and prayers with pikes and cannon,—anxious at once that his troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,—with a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,—we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his will. Whatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical emergency ever found him deficient either in sagacity or resolution, however it might have found him deficient in mercy. He overrode the moral judgments of ordinary men as fiercely as he overrode their physical resistance, crushing prejudices as well as Parliaments, ideas as well as armies; and whether his task was to cut off the head of an unmanageable king, or disperse an unmanageable legislative assembly, or massacre an unmanageable Irish garrison, or boldly establish himself as the uncontrolled supreme authority of the land, he ever did it thoroughly and unrelentingly, and could always throw the responsibility of the deed on the God of battles and the God of Cromwell. In all this we observe the operation of a colossal practical force rather than an ideal power, of grit rather than heroism. However much he may command that portion of our sympathies which thrill at the touch of vigorous action, there are other sentiments of our being which detect something partial, vulgar, and repulsive even in his undisputed greatness.

In truth, grit, in its highest forms, is not a form of courage deserving of unmixed respect and admiration. Admitting its immense practical influence in public and private life, conceding its value in the rough, direct struggle of person with person and opinions with institutions, it is still by no means the top and crown of heroic character; for it lacks the element of beauty and the element of sympathy; it is individual, unsocial, bigoted, relatively to occasions; and its force has no necessary connection with grandeur, generosity, and enlargement of soul. Even in great men, like Cromwell, there is something in its aspect which is harsh, ugly, haggard, and ungenial; even in them it is strong by the stifling of many a generous thought and tolerant feeling; and when it descends to animate sterile and stunted natures, endowed with sufficient will to make their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfruitful force is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the cause of truth and right; but it has also done bad work for the cause of falsehood and wrong: for evil has its grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses, or subordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important portion of a complete manhood; for it not only loses the perception of beauty, but the power of passing into other minds. It never takes the point of view of the persons it opposes; its object is victory, not insight; and it thus fails in that modified mercy to men which springs from an interior knowledge of their characters. Even when it is the undaunted force through which moral wrath expresses its hatred of injustice and wrong, its want of imaginative perception makes it somewhat caricature the sinners it inveighs against. It converts imperfect or immoral men into perfect demons, which humanity as well as reason refuses to accept; and it is therefore not surprising that the prayer of its indignant morality sometimes is, "Almighty God, condemn them, for they know what they do!" But we cannot forget that there sounds down the ages, from the saddest and most triumphant of all martyrdoms, a different and a diviner prayer,—"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

Indeed, however much we may be struck with the startling immediateness of effect which follows the exercise of practical force, we must not forget the immense agency in human affairs of the ideal powers of the soul. These work creatively from within to mould character, not only inflaming great passions, but touching the springs of pity, tenderness, gentleness, and love,—above all, infusing that wide-reaching sympathy which sends the individual out of the grit-guarded fortress of his personality into the wide plain of the race. The culmination of these ideal powers is in genius and heroism, which draw their inspiration from ideal and spiritual sources, and radiate it in thoughts beautifully large and deeds beautifully brave. They do not merely exert power, they communicate it. If you are overcome by a man of grit, he insolently makes you conscious of your own weakness. If you are overcome by genius and heroism, you are made participants in their strength; for they overcome only to invigorate and uplift. They sweep on their gathering disciples to the object they have in view, by making it an object of affection as well as duty. Their power to allure and to attract is not lost even when their goal is the stake or the cross. They never, in transient ignominy and pain, lose sight and feeling of the beauty and bliss inseparably associated with goodness and virtue; and the happiest death-beds have often been on the rack or in the flame of the hero-martyr. And they are also, in their results, great practical influences; for they break down the walls which separate man from man,—by magnanimous thought or magnanimous act shame us out of our bitter personal contentions, and flash the sentiment of a common nature into our individual hatreds and oppositions. As grit decomposes society into an aggregate of strong and weak persons, genius and heroism unite them in one humanity. Thus, not many years ago, we were all battling about the higher law and the law to return fugitive slaves. It was argument against argument, passion against passion, person against person, grit against grit. The notions advanced regarding virtue and vice, justice and injustice, humanity and inhumanity, were as different as if the controversy had not been between men and men, but between men and cattle. There were no signs among the combatants that they had the common reason and the common instincts of a common nature. Then came a woman of genius, who refused to credit the horrible conceit that the diversity was essential, who resolutely believed that the human heart was a unit, and whose glance, piercing the mist of opinions and interests, saw in the deep and universal sources of humane and human action the exact point where her blow would tell; and in a novel unexampled in the annals of literature for popular effect, shook the whole public reason and public conscience of the country, by the most searching of all appeals to its heart and imagination.



THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE.

My name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it is a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my name with a positive statement, I am not unaware that a catastrophe lies coiled up in the juxtaposition. But I cannot help writing plainly that I am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington, I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so.

Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way, said,—"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but benignant protectors, in the State of New Hampshire.

During my boyhood, the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was this:—"Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage. Superior blood was probably concerned in getting up the Pettibones. Hold your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your high lineage."

I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile sports with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why not. Aunt Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she meant.

"My child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, "our family no doubt came of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our ancestors, it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow up you will not regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with butchers' offspring."

I felt mortified that I had ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any but kings' sons or sultans' little boys. I longed to be among my equals in the urchin-line, and fly my kite with only high-born youngsters.

Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-enchantment on the part of the sisters, who assumed all the port and feeling that properly belong to ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced before their dim eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equipages, and a general grandeur of some sort loomed up in the future for the American branch of the House of Pettibone.

It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which my aunts were never tired of nursing; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it. All the members of our little household held up their heads, as if each said, in so many words, "There is no original sin in our composition, whatever of that commodity there may be mixed up with the common clay of Snowborough."

Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshipped while she gazed. The youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had constant zoological visions of lions, griffins, and unicorns, drawn and quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College. The Reverend Hebrew Bullet, who used to drop in quite often and drink several compulsory glasses of home-made wine, encouraged his three parishioners in their aristocratic notions, and extolled them for what he called their "stooping down to every-day life." He differed with the ladies of our house only on one point. He contended that the unicorn of the Bible and the rhinoceros of to-day were one and the same animal. My aunts held a different opinion.

In the sleeping-room of my Aunt Patience reposed a trunk. Often during my childish years I longed to lift the lid and spy among its contents the treasures my young fancy conjured up as lying there in state. I dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratification, as I had often been told I was "too little" to estimate aright what that armorial box contained. "When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt Mary Ann used to say to me; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in vain. I must have the virtue of years before I could view the treasures of past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden sarcophagus. Once I saw the faded sisters bending over the trunk together, and, as I thought, embalming something in camphor. Curiosity impelled me to linger, but, under some pretext, I was nodded out of the room.

Although my kinswomen's means were far from ample, they determined that Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three came freighted with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and other low-toned accomplishments. The book of life, at that period, opens readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give the schoolboy no envious pangs.

I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call them hoary, because they had been built more than fifty years. To me they seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snuffed antiquity in the dusty purlieus. I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the past. I saw clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts, especially if the former had been entombed a thousand years, and if the latter were well done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began to reverence royal lines of deceased monarchs, and longed to connect my own name, now growing into college popularity, with some far-off mighty one who had ruled in pomp and luxury his obsequious people. The trunk in Snowborough troubled my dreams. In that receptacle still slept the proof of our family distinction. "I will go," quoth I, "to the home of my aunts next vacation and there learn how we became mighty, and discover precisely why we don't practise to-day our inherited claims to glory."

I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before her impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she must explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no doubt, destroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape of parchment or paper implying nobility had ever been discovered in Snowborough, or elsewhere. But—there had been preserved, for many years, a suit of imperial clothes, that had been worn by their great-grandfather in England, and, no doubt, in the New World also. These garments had been carefully watched and guarded; for were they not the proof that their owner belonged to a station in life, second, if second at all, to the royal court of King George itself? Precious casket, into which I was soon to have the privilege of gazing! Through how many long years these fond, foolish virgins had lighted their unflickering lamps of expectation and hope at this cherished old shrine!

I was now on my way to the family repository of all our greatness. I went up stairs "on the jump." We all knelt down before the well-preserved box; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat reverent manner, turned the key. My heart,—I am not ashamed to confess it now, although it is forty years since the quartette, in search of family honors, were on their knees that summer afternoon in Snowborough,—my heart beat high. I was about to look on that which might be a duke's or an earl's regalia. And I was descended from the owner in a direct line! I had lately been reading Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus"; and I remembered, there before the trunk, the lines,—

"O sacred receptacle of my joys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility!"

The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments, which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that interior lives with me to this day; and I grow faint with the memory of that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncovered, and at last the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes.

Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But, whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and still live!

When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I had been to college; I had studied Burke's "Peerage"; I had been once to New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact station in noble British life to which that suit of clothes belonged. I could; I saw it all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I dared not look my poor deluded female relatives in the face.

"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big buttons betoken?" cried all three.

"It is a suit of servant's livery!" gasped I, and fell back with a shudder.

That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there, perturbed body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!

"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"



UP THE ST. MARY'S.

If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister. If not in all respects the ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking Color-Sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly: superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth. Of course his interest in the war and in the regiment was unbounded; he did not take to drill with especial readiness, but he was insatiable of it and grudged every moment of relaxation. Indeed, he never had any such moments; his mind was at work all the time, even when he was singing hymns, of which he had endless store. He was not, however, one of our leading religionists, but his moral code was solid and reliable, like his mental processes. Ignorant as he was, the "years that bring the philosophic mind" had yet been his, and most of my young officers seemed boys beside him. He was a Florida man, and had been chiefly employed in lumbering and piloting on the St. Mary's River, which divides Florida from Georgia. Down this stream he had escaped in a "dug-out," and after thus finding the way, had returned (as had not a few of my men, in other cases) to bring away wife and child. "I wouldn't have leff my child, Cunnel," he said, with an emphasis that sounded the depths of his strong nature. And up this same river he was always imploring to be allowed to guide an expedition.

Many other men had rival propositions to urge, for they gained self-confidence from drill and guard-duty, and were growing impatient of inaction. "Ought to go to work, Sa,—don't believe in we lyin' in camp, eatin' up the perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard with joy. Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda, jotted down by a nickering candle, from the evening talk of the men,—notes of vulnerable points along the coast, charts of rivers, locations of pickets. I prized these conversations not more for what I thus learned of the country than for what I learned of the men. One could thus measure their various degrees of accuracy and their average military instinct; and I must say that in every respect, save the accurate estimate of distances, they stood the test well. But no project took my fancy so much, after all, as that of the delegate from the St. Mary's River.

The best peg on which to hang an expedition in the Department of the South, in those days, was the promise of lumber. Dwelling in the very land of Southern pine, the Department authorities had to send North for it, at a vast expense. There was reported to be plenty in the enemy's country, but somehow the colored soldiers were the only ones who had been lucky enough to obtain any, thus far, and the supply brought in by our men, after flooring the tents of the white regiments and our own, was running low. An expedition of white troops, four companies, with two steamers and two schooners, had lately returned empty-handed, after a week's foraging; and now it was our turn. They said the mills were all burned; but should we go up the St. Mary's, Corporal Sutton was prepared to offer more lumber than we had transportation to carry. This made the crowning charm of his suggestion. But there is never any danger of erring on the side of secrecy, in a military department; and I resolved to avoid all undue publicity for our plans, by not finally deciding on any until we should get outside the bar. This was happily approved by my superior officers, Major-General Hunter and Brigadier-General Saxton; and I was accordingly permitted to take three steamers, with four hundred and sixty-two officers and men, and two or three invited guests, and go down the coast on my own responsibility. We were, in short, to win our spurs; and if, as among the Araucanians, our spurs were made of lumber, so much the better. The whole history of the Department of the South had been defined as "a military picnic," and now we were to take our share of the entertainment.

It seemed a pleasant share, when, after the usual vexations and delays, we found ourselves gliding down the full waters of Beaufort River, the three vessels having sailed at different hours, with orders to rendezvous at St. Simon's Island, on the coast of Georgia. Until then, the flag-ship, so to speak, was to be the "Ben De Ford," Captain Hallett,—this being by far the largest vessel, and carrying most of the men. Major Strong was in command upon the "John Adams," an army gunboat, carrying a thirty-pound Parrott gun, two ten-pound Parrotts, and an eight-inch howitzer Captain Trowbridge (since promoted Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment) had charge of the famous "Planter," brought away from the Rebels by Robert Small; she carried a ten-pound Parrott gun, and two howitzers. The John Adams was our main reliance. She was an old East-Boston ferry-boat, a "double-ender," admirable for river-work, but unfit for sea-service. She drew seven feet of water; the Planter drew only four; but the latter was very slow, and being obliged to go to St. Simon's by an inner passage, would delay us from the beginning. She delayed us so much, before the end, that we virtually parted company, and her career was almost entirely separated from our own.

From boyhood I have had a fancy for boats, and have seldom been without a share, usually more or less fractional, in a rather indeterminate number of punts and wherries. But when, for the first time, I found myself at sea as Commodore of a fleet of armed steamers,—for even the Ben De Ford boasted a six-pounder or so,—it seemed rather an unexpected promotion. But it is a characteristic of army life, that one adapts one's self, as coolly as in a dream, to the most novel responsibilities. One sits on court-martial, for instance, and decides on the life of a fellow-creature, without being asked any inconvenient questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quinsigamond. If military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility under any circumstances, this would perhaps have been a good opportunity to begin its practice. But as the "Regulations" clearly contemplated nothing of the kind, and as I had never met with any precedent which looked in that direction, I had learned to check promptly all such weak proclivities.

Captain Hallett proved the most frank and manly of sailors, and did everything for our comfort. He was soon warm in his praises of the demeanor of our men, which was very pleasant to hear, as this was the first time that colored soldiers in any number had been conveyed on board a transport, and I know of no place where a white volunteer appears to so much disadvantage. His mind craves occupation, his body is intensely uncomfortable, the daily emergency is not great enough to call out his heroic qualities, and he is apt to be surly, discontented, and impatient even of sanitary rules. The Southern black soldier, on the other hand, is seldom sea-sick, (at least, such is my experience,) and, if properly managed, is equally contented, whether idle or busy; he is, moreover, so docile that all needful rules are executed with cheerful acquiescence, and the quarters can therefore be kept clean and wholesome. Very forlorn faces were soon visible among the officers in the cabin, but I rarely saw such among the men.

Pleasant still seemed our enterprise, as we anchored at early morning in the quiet waters of St. Simon's Sound, and saw the light fall softly on the beach and the low bluffs, on the picturesque plantation-houses which nestled there, and the graceful naval vessels that lay at anchor before us. When we afterwards landed, the air had that peculiar Mediterranean translucency which Southern islands wear; and the plantation we visited had the loveliest tropical garden, though tangled and desolate, which I have ever seen in the South. The deserted house was embowered in great blossoming shrubs, and filled with hyacinthine odors, among which predominated that of the little Chickasaw roses which everywhere bloomed and trailed around. There were fig-trees and date-palms, crape-myrtles and wax-myrtles, Mexican agaves and English ivies, japonicas, bananas, oranges, lemons, oleanders, jonquils, great cactuses, and wild Florida lilies. This was not the plantation which Mrs. Kemble has since made historic, although that was on the same island; and I could not waste much sentiment over it, for it had belonged to a Northern renegade, Thomas Butler King. Yet I felt then, as I have felt a hundred times since, an emotion of heart-sickness at this desecration of a homestead,—and especially when, looking from a bare upper window of the empty house upon a range of broad, flat, sunny roofs, such as children love to play on, I thought how that place might have been loved by yet innocent hearts, and I mourned anew the sacrilege of war.

I had visited the flag-ship Wabash ere we left Port-Royal Harbor, and had obtained a very kind letter of introduction from Admiral Dupont, that stately and courtly potentate, elegant as one's ideal French marquis; and under these credentials I received polite attention from the naval officers at St. Simon's,—Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Budd, U. S. N., of the gunboat Potomska, and Acting Master Moses, U. S. N., of the barque Fernandina. They made valuable suggestions in regard to the different rivers along the coast, and gave vivid descriptions of the last previous trip up the St. Mary's, undertaken by Captain Stevens, U. S. N., in the gunboat Ottawa, when he had to fight his way past batteries at every bluff in descending the narrow and rapid stream. I was warned that no resistance would be offered to the ascent, but only to our return; and was further cautioned against the mistake, then common, of underrating the courage of the Rebels. "It proved impossible to dislodge those fellows from the banks," my informant said; "they had dug rifle-pits, and swarmed like hornets, and when fairly silenced in one direction, they were sure to open upon us from another." All this sounded alarming, but it was nine months before that the event had happened; and although nothing had gone up the river since, I was satisfied that the resistance now to be encountered was very much smaller. And something must be risked, anywhere.

We were delayed all that day in waiting for our consort, and improved our time by verifying certain rumors about a quantity of new railroad-iron which was said to be concealed in the abandoned Rebel forts on St. Simon's and Jekyll Islands, and which would have much value at Port Royal, if we could only unearth it. Some of our men had worked upon these very batteries, so that they could easily guide us; and by the additional discovery of a large flatboat we were enabled to go to work in earnest upon the removal of the treasure. These iron bars, surmounted by a dozen feet of sand, formed an invulnerable roof for the magazines and bomb-proofs of the fort, and the men enjoyed demolishing them far more than they had relished their construction. Though the day was the 24th of January, 1863, the sun was very oppressive upon the sands; but all were in the highest spirits, and worked with the greatest zeal. The men seemed to regard these massive bars as their first trophies; and if the rails had been wreathed with roses, they could not have been got out in more holiday style. Nearly a hundred were obtained that day, besides a quantity of five-inch plank with which to barricade the very conspicuous pilot-houses of the John Adams.

Still another day we were delayed, and could still keep at this work, not neglecting some foraging on the island, from which horses, cattle, and agricultural implements were to be removed, and the few remaining colored families transferred to Fernandina. I had now become quite anxious about the missing steamboat, as the inner passage, by which alone she could arrive, was exposed at certain points to fire from Rebel batteries, and it would have been unpleasant to begin with a disaster. I remember, that, as I stood on deck, in the still and misty evening, listening with strained senses for some sound of approach, I heard a low continuous noise from the distance, more wild and desolate than anything in my memory can parallel. It came from within the vast girdle of mist, and seemed like the cry of a myriad of lost souls upon the horizon's verge; it was Dante become audible: and yet it was but the accumulated cries of innumerable sea-fowl at the entrance of the outer bay.

Late that night the Planter arrived. We left St. Simon's on the following morning, reached Fort Clinch by four o'clock, and there transferring two hundred men to the very scanty quarters of the John Adams, allowed the larger transport to go into Fernandina, while the two other vessels were to ascend the St. Mary's River, unless (as proved inevitable in the end) the defects in the boiler of the Planter should oblige her to remain behind. That night I proposed to make a sort of trial-trip up stream, as far as Township Landing, some fifteen miles, there to pay our respects to Captain Clark's company of cavalry, whose camp was reported to lie near by. This was included in Corporal Sutton's programme, and seemed to me more inviting, and far more useful to the men, than any amount of mere foraging. The thing really desirable appeared to be to get them under fire as soon as possible, and to teach them, by a few small successes, the application of what they had learned in camp.

I had ascertained that the camp of this company lay five miles from the landing, and was accessible by two roads, one of which was a lumber-path, not commonly used, but which Corporal Sutton had helped to construct, and along which he could easily guide us. The plan was to go by night, surround the house and negro cabins at the landing, (to prevent an alarm from being given,) then to take the side path, and if all went well, to surprise the camp; but if they got notice of our approach, through their pickets, we should, at worst, have a fight, in which the best man must win.

The moon was bright, and the river swift, but easy of navigation thus far. Just below Township I landed a small advance force, to surround the houses silently. With them went Corporal Sutton; and when, after rounding the point, I went on shore with a larger body of men, he met me with a silent chuckle of delight, and with the information that there was a negro in a neighboring cabin who had just come from the Rebel camp, and could give the latest information. While he hunted up this valuable auxiliary, I mustered my detachment, winnowing out the men who had coughs, (not a few,) and sending them ignominiously on board again: a process I had regularly to perform, during this first season of catarrh, on all occasions where quiet was needed. The only exception tolerated at this time was in the case of one man who offered a solemn pledge, that, if unable to restrain his cough, he would lie down on the ground, scrape a little hole, and cough into it unheard. The ingenuity of this proposition was irresistible, and the eager patient was allowed to pass muster.

It was after midnight when we set off upon our excursion. I had about a hundred men, marching by the flank, with a small advanced guard, and also a few flankers, where the ground permitted. I put my Florida company at the head of the column, and had by my side Captain Metcalf, an excellent officer, and Sergeant McIntyre, his first sergeant. We plunged presently into pine woods, whose resinous smell I can still remember. Corporal Sutton marched near me, with his captured negro guide, whose first fear and sullenness had yielded to the magic news of the President's Proclamation, then just issued, of which Governor Andrew had sent me a large printed supply;—we seldom found men who could read it, but they all seemed to feel more secure when they held it in their hands. We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of the frogs in a neighboring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a dog, as we passed the hut of some "cracker." This yelping always made Corporal Sutton uneasy: dogs are the detective officers of Slavery's police.

We had halted once or twice, to close up the ranks, and had marched some two miles, seeing and hearing nothing more. I had got all I could out of our new guide, and was striding on, rapt in pleasing contemplation. All had gone so smoothly that I had merely to fancy the rest as being equally smooth. Already I fancied our little detachment bursting out of the woods, in swift surprise, upon the Rebel quarters,—already the opposing commander, after hastily firing a charge or two from his revolver, (of course above my head,) had yielded at discretion, and was gracefully tendering, in a stage attitude, his unavailing sword,—when suddenly——

There was a trampling of feet among the advanced guard as they came confusedly to a halt, and almost at the same instant a more ominous sound, as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader of an approaching party, mounted on a white horse and reining up in the pathway; others, again, declare that he drew a pistol from the holster and took aim; others heard the words, "Charge in upon them! Surround them!" But all this was confused by the opening rifle-shots of our advanced guard, and, as clear observation was impossible, I made the men fix their bayonets and kneel in the cover on each side the pathway, and I saw with delight the brave fellows, with Sergeant McIntyre at their head, settling down in the grass as coolly and warily as if wild turkeys were the only game. Perhaps at the first shot, a man fell at my elbow. I felt it no more than if a tree had fallen,—I was so busy watching my own men and the enemy, and planning what to do next. Some of our soldiers, misunderstanding the order, "Fix bayonets," were actually charging with them, dashing off into the dim woods, with nothing to charge at but the vanishing tail of an imaginary horse,—for we could really see nothing. This zeal I noted with pleasure, and also with anxiety, as our greatest danger was from confusion and scattering; and for infantry to pursue cavalry would be a novel enterprise. Captain Metcalf stood by me well in keeping the men steady, as did Assistant-Surgeon Minor, and Lieutenant, now Captain, Jackson. How the men in the rear were behaving I could not tell,—not so coolly, I afterwards found, because they were more entirely bewildered, supposing, until the shots came, that the column had simply halted for a moment's rest, as had been done once or twice before. They did not know who or where their assailants might be, and the fall of the man beside me created a hasty rumor that I was killed, so that it was on the whole an alarming experience for them. They kept together very tolerably, however, while our assailants, dividing, rode along on each side through the open pine-barren, firing into our ranks, but mostly over the heads of the men. My soldiers in turn fired rapidly,—too rapidly, being yet beginners,—and it was evident, that, dim as it was, both sides had opportunity to do some execution.

I could hardly tell whether the fight had lasted ten minutes or an hour, when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was heard to mutter, indignantly,—"Why de Cunnel order Cease firing, when de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day?" Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without interrupting the main course of thought. Thus I know, that, in one of the pauses of the affair, there came wailing through the woods a cracked female voice, as if calling back some stray husband who had run out to join in the affray,—"John, John, are you going to leave me, John? Are you going to let me and the children be killed, John?" I suppose the poor thing's fears of gunpowder were very genuine, but it was such a wailing squeak, and so infinitely ludicrous, and John was probably ensconced so very safely in some hollow tree, that I could see some of the men showing all their white teeth in the very midst of the fight. But soon this sound, with all others, had ceased, and left us in peaceful possession of the field.

I have made the more of this little affair because it was the first stand-up fight in which my men had been engaged, though they had been under fire, in an irregular way, in their small early expeditions. To me personally the event was of the greatest value: it had given us all an opportunity to test each other, and our abstract surmises were changed into positive knowledge. Hereafter it was of small importance what nonsense might be talked or written about colored troops; so long as mine did not flinch, it made no difference to me. My brave young officers, themselves mostly new to danger, viewed the matter much as I did; and yet we were under bonds of life and death to form a correct opinion, which was more than could be said of the Northern editors, and our verdict was proportionately of greater value.

I was convinced from appearances that we had been victorious, so far, though I could not suppose that this would be the last of it. We knew neither the numbers of the enemy, nor their plans, nor their present condition: whether they had surprised us or whether we had surprised them was all a mystery. Corporal Sutton was urgent to go on and complete the enterprise. All my impulses said the same thing; but then I had the most explicit injunctions from General Saxton to risk as little as possible in this first enterprise, because of the fatal effect on public sentiment of even an honorable defeat. We had now an honorable victory, so far as it went; the officers and men around me were in good spirits, but the rest of the column might be nervous; and it seemed so important to make the first fight an entire success, that I thought it wiser to let well alone; nor have I ever changed this opinion. For one's self, Montrose's verse may be well applied,—"To win or lose it all." But one has no right to deal thus lightly with the fortunes of a race, and that was the weight which I always felt as resting on our action. If my raw infantry force had stood unflinching a night-surprise from "de hoss cavalry," as they reverentially termed them, I felt that a good beginning had been made. All hope of surprising the enemy's camp was now at an end; I was willing and ready to fight the cavalry over again, but it seemed wiser that we, not they, should select the ground.

Attending to the wounded, therefore, and making as we best could stretchers for those who were to be carried, including the remains of the man killed at the first discharge, (Private William Parsons of Company G,) and others who seemed at the point of death, we marched through the woods to the landing,—expecting at every moment to be involved in another fight. This not occurring, I was more than ever satisfied that we had won a victory; for it was obvious that a mounted force would not allow a detachment of infantry to march two miles through open woods by night without renewing the fight, unless they themselves had suffered a good deal. On arrival at the landing, seeing that there was to be no immediate affray, I sent most of the men on board, and called for volunteers to remain on shore with me and hold the plantation-house till morning. They eagerly offered; and I was glad to see them, when posted as sentinels by Lieutenants Hyde and Jackson, who stayed with me, pace their beats as steadily and challenge as coolly as veterans, though of course there was some powder wasted on imaginary foes. Greatly to my surprise, however, we had no other enemies to encounter. We did not yet know that we had killed the first lieutenant of the cavalry, and that our opponents had retreated to the woods in dismay, without daring to return to their camp. This at least was the account we heard from prisoners afterwards, and was evidently the tale current in the neighborhood, though the statements published in Southern newspapers did not correspond. Admitting the death of Lieutenant Jones, the Tallahassee "Floridian" of February 14th stated that "Captain Clark, finding the enemy in strong force, fell back with his command to camp, and removed his ordnance and commissary and other stores, with twelve negroes on their way to the enemy, captured on that day."

In the morning, my invaluable surgeon, Dr. Rogers, sent me his report of killed and wounded; and I have been since permitted to make the following extracts from his notes:—"One man killed instantly by ball through the heart, and seven wounded, one of whom will die. Braver men never lived. One man with two bullet-holes through the large muscles of the shoulders and neck brought off from the scene of action, two miles distant, two muskets; and not a murmur has escaped his lips. Another, Robert Sutton, with three wounds,—one of which, being on the skull, may cost him his life,—would not report himself till compelled to do so by his officers. While dressing his wounds, he quietly talked of what they had done, and of what they yet could do. To-day I have had the Colonel order him to obey me. He is perfectly quiet and cool, but takes this whole affair with the religious bearing of a man who realizes that freedom is sweeter than life. Yet another soldier did not report himself at all, but remained all night on guard, and possibly I should not have known of his having had a buck-shot in his shoulder, if some duty requiring a sound shoulder had not been required of him to-day." This last, it may be added, had persuaded a comrade to dig out the buck-shot, for fear of being ordered on the sick-list. And one of those who were carried to the vessel—a man wounded through the lungs—asked only if I were safe, the contrary having been reported. An officer may be pardoned some enthusiasm for such men as these.

The anxious night having passed away without an attack, another problem opened with the morning. For the first time, my officers and men found themselves in possession of an enemy's abode; and though there was but little temptation to plunder, I knew that I must here begin to draw the line. I had long since resolved to prohibit absolutely all indiscriminate pilfering and wanton outrage, and to allow nothing to be taken or destroyed but by proper authority. The men, to my great satisfaction, entered into this view at once, and so did (perhaps a shade less readily, in some cases) the officers. The greatest trouble was with the steamboat-hands, and I resolved to let them go ashore as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however, before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a piano-forte, for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which I should be covertly attacked, and nothing else; and as this house was destined to the flames, I should have left the piano in it, but for the seductions of that box. With such a receptacle all ready, even to the cover, it would have seemed like flying in the face of Providence not to put the piano in. I ordered it removed, therefore, and afterwards presented it to the school for colored children at Fernandina. This I mention because it was the only article of property I ever took or knowingly suffered to be taken, in the enemy's country, save for legitimate military uses, from first to last; nor would I have taken this, but for the thought of the school, and, as aforesaid, the temptation of the box. If any other officer has been more rigid, with equal opportunities, let him cast the first stone.

I think the zest with which the men finally set fire to the house at my order was enhanced by this previous abstemiousness; but there is a fearful fascination in the use of fire, which every child knows in the abstract, and which I found to hold true in the practice. On our way down river we had opportunity to test this again.

The ruined town of St. Mary's had at that time a bad reputation, among both naval and military men. Lying but a short distance above Fernandina, on the Georgia side, it was occasionally visited by our gunboats. I was informed that the only residents of the town were three old women, who were apparently kept there as spies,—that, on our approach, the aged crones would come out and wave white handkerchiefs,—that they would receive us hospitably, profess to be profoundly loyal, and exhibit a portrait of Washington,—that they would solemnly assure us that no Rebel pickets had been there for many weeks,—but that in the adjoining yard we should find fresh horse-tracks, and that we should be fired upon by guerrillas the moment we left the wharf. My officers had been much excited by these tales; and I had assured them, that, if this programme were literally carried out, we would straightway return and burn the town, or what was left of it, for our share. It was essential to show my officers and men, that, while rigid against irregular outrage, we could still be inexorable against the enemy.

We had previously planned to stop at this town, on our way down river, for some valuable lumber which we had espied on a wharf; and gliding down the swift current, shelling a few bluffs as we passed, we soon reached it. Punctual as the figures in a panorama, appeared the old ladies with their white handkerchiefs. Taking possession of the town, much of which had previously been destroyed by the gunboats, and stationing the color-guard, to their infinite delight, in the cupola of the most conspicuous house, I deployed skirmishers along the exposed suburb, and set a detail of men at work on the lumber. After a stately and decorous interview with the queens of society at St. Mary's,—is it Scott who says that nothing improves the manners like piracy?—I peacefully withdrew the men when the work was done. There were faces of disappointment among the officers,—for all felt a spirit of mischief, after the last night's adventure,—when, just as we had fairly swung out into the stream and were under way, there came, like the sudden burst of a tropical tornado, a regular little hailstorm of bullets into the open end of the boat, driving every gunner in an instant from his post, and surprising even those who were looking to be surprised. The shock was but for a second; and though the bullets had pattered precisely like the sound of hail upon the iron cannon, yet nobody was hurt. With very respectable promptness, order was restored, our own shells were flying into the woods from which the attack proceeded, and we were steaming up to the wharf again, according to promise.

Who shall describe the theatrical attitudes assumed by the old ladies as they reappeared at the front door—being luckily out of direct range—and set the handkerchiefs in wilder motion than ever? They brandished them, they twirled them after the manner of the domestic mop, they clasped their hands, handkerchiefs included. Meanwhile their friends in the wood popped away steadily at us, with small effect; and occasionally an invisible field-piece thundered feebly from another quarter, with equally invisible results. Reaching the wharf, one company, under Lieutenant (now Captain) Danilson, was promptly deployed in search of our assailants, who soon grew silent. Not so the old ladies, when I announced to them my purpose, and added, with extreme regret, that, as the wind was high, I should burn only that half of the town which lay to leeward of their house, which did not, after all, amount to much. Between gratitude for this degree of mercy and imploring appeals for greater, the treacherous old ladies manoeuvred with clasped hands and demonstrative handkerchiefs around me, impairing the effect of their eloquence by constantly addressing me as "Mr. Captain"; for I have observed, that, while the sternest officer is greatly propitiated by attributing to him a rank a little higher than his own, yet no one is ever mollified by an error in the opposite direction. I tried, however, to disregard such low considerations, and to strike the correct mean betwixt the sublime patriot and the unsanctified incendiary, while I could find no refuge from weak contrition save in greater and greater depths of courtesy; and so melodramatic became our interview that some of the soldiers still maintain that "dem dar ole Secesh women been a-gwine for kiss de Cunnel," before we ended. But of this monstrous accusation I wish to register an explicit denial, once for all.

Dropping down to Fernandina unmolested after this affair, we were kindly received by the military and naval commanders,—Colonel Hawley, of the Seventh Connecticut, (now Brigadier-General Hawley,) and Lieutenant-Commander Hughes, U. S. N., of the gunboat Mohawk. It turned out very opportunely that both of these officers had special errands to suggest still farther up the St. Mary's, and precisely in the region where I wished to go. Colonel Hawley showed me a letter from the War Department, requesting him to ascertain the possibility of obtaining a supply of brick for Fort Clinch from the brickyard which had furnished the original materials, but which had not been visited since the perilous river-trip of the Ottawa. Lieutenant Hughes wished to obtain information for the Admiral respecting a Rebel steamer—the Berosa—said to be lying somewhere up the river, and awaiting her chance to run the blockade. I jumped at the opportunity. Berosa and brickyard,—both were near Woodstock, the former home of Corporal Sutton; he was ready and eager to pilot us up the river; the moon would be just right that evening, setting at 3h. 19m. A. M.; and our boat was precisely the one to undertake the expedition. Its double-headed shape was just what was needed in that swift and crooked stream; the exposed pilot-houses had been tolerably barricaded with the thick planks from St. Simon's; and we further obtained some sand-bags from Fort Clinch, through the aid of Captain Sears, the officer in charge, who had originally suggested the expedition after brick. In return for this aid, the Planter was sent back to the wharf at St. Mary's, to bring away a considerable supply of the same precious article, which we had observed near the wharf. Meanwhile the John Adams was coaling from naval supplies, through the kindness of Lieutenant Hughes; and the Ben De Ford was taking in the lumber which we had yesterday brought down. It was a great disappointment to be unable to take the latter vessel up the river; but I was unwillingly convinced, that, though the depth of water might be sufficient, yet her length would be unmanageable in the swift current and sharp turns. The Planter must also be sent on a separate cruise, as her weak and disabled machinery made her useless for my purpose. Two hundred men were therefore transferred, as before, to the narrow hold of the John Adams, in addition to the company permanently stationed on board to work the guns. At seven o'clock on the evening of January 29th, beneath a lovely moon, we steamed up the river.

Never shall I forget the mystery and excitement of that night. I know nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown river, leading far into an enemy's country, where one glides in the dim moonlight between dark hills and meadows, each turn of the channel making it seem like an inland lake, and cutting you off as by a barrier from all behind,—with no sign of human life, but an occasional picket-fire left glimmering beneath the bank, or the yelp of a dog from some low-lying plantation. On such occasions, every nerve is strained to its utmost tension; all dreams of romance appear to promise immediate fulfilment; all lights on board the vessel are obscured, loud voices are hushed; you fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged in a sort of anxious trance. Three times I have had in full perfection this fascinating experience; but that night was the first, and its zest was the keenest. It will come back to me in dreams, if I live a thousand years.

I feared no attack during our ascent,—that danger was for our return; but I feared the intricate navigation of the river, though I did not fully know, till the actual experience, how dangerous it was. We passed without trouble far above the scene of our first fight,—the Battle of the Hundred Pines, as my officers had baptized it; and ever, as we ascended, the banks grew steeper, the current swifter, the channel more tortuous and more incumbered with projecting branches and drifting wood. No piloting less skilful than that of Corporal Sutton and his mate, James Bezzard, could have carried us through, I thought; and no side-wheel steamer less strong than a ferry-boat could have borne the crash and force with which we struck the wooded banks of the river. But the powerful paddles, built to break the Northern ice, could crush the Southern pine as well; and we came safely out of entanglements that at first seemed formidable. We had the tide with us, which makes steering far more difficult; and, in the sharp angles of the river, there was often no resource but to run the bow boldly on shore, let the stern swing round, and then reverse the motion. As the reversing machinery was generally out of order, the engineer stupid or frightened, and the captain excited, this involved moments of tolerably concentrated anxiety. Eight times we grounded in the upper waters, and once lay aground for half an hour; but at last we dropped anchor before the little town of Woodstock, after moonset and an hour before daybreak, just as I had planned, and so quietly that scarcely a dog barked, and not a soul in the town, as we afterwards found, knew of our arrival.

As silently as possible, the great flatboat which we had brought from St. Simon's was filled with men. Major Strong was sent on shore with two companies,—those of Captain James and Captain Metcalf,—with instructions to surround the town quietly, allow no one to leave it, molest no one, and hold as temporary prisoners every man whom he found. I watched them push off into the darkness, got the remaining force ready to land, and then paced the deck for an hour in silent watchfulness, waiting for rifle-shots. Not a sound came from the shore, save the barking of dogs and the morning crow of cocks; the time seemed interminable; but when daylight came, I landed, and found a pair of scarlet trousers pacing on their beat before every house in the village, and a small squad of prisoners, stunted and forlorn as Falstaff's ragged regiment, already in hand. I observed with delight the good demeanor of my men towards these forlorn Anglo-Saxons, and towards the more tumultuous women. Even one soldier, who threatened to throw an old termagant into the river, took care to append the courteous epithet "Madam."

I took a survey of the premises. The chief house, a pretty one with picturesque outbuildings, was that of Mrs. A., who owned the mills and lumber-wharves adjoining. The wealth of these wharves had not been exaggerated. There was lumber enough to freight half a dozen steamers, and I half regretted that I had agreed to take down a freight of bricks instead. Further researches made me grateful that I had already explained to my men the difference between public foraging and private plunder. Along the river-bank I found building after building crowded with costly furniture, all neatly packed, just as it was sent up from St. Mary's when that town was abandoned. Pianos were a drug; china, glass-ware, mahogany, pictures, all were here. And here were my men, who knew that their own labor had earned for their masters these luxuries, or such as these; their own wives and children were still sleeping on the floor, perhaps, at Beaufort or Fernandina; and yet they submitted, almost without a murmur, to the enforced abstinence. Bed and bedding for our hospitals they might take from those store-rooms,—such as the surgeon selected,—also an old flag which we found in a corner, and an old field piece, (which the regiment still possesses,)—but after this the doors were closed and left unmolested. It cost a struggle to some of the men, whose wives were destitute, I know; but their pride was very easily touched, and when this abstinence was once recognized as a rule, they claimed it as an honor, in this and all succeeding expeditions. I flatter myself, that, if they had once been set upon wholesale plundering, they would have done it as thoroughly as their betters; but I have always been infinitely grateful, both for the credit and for the discipline of the regiment,—as well as for the men's subsequent lives,—that the opposite method was adopted.

When the morning was a little advanced, I called on Mrs. A., who received me in quite a stately way at her own door with "To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit, Sir?" The foreign name of the family, and the tropical look of the buildings, made it seem (as, indeed, did all the rest of the adventure) like a chapter out of "Amyas Leigh"; but as I had happened to hear that the lady herself was a Philadelphian and her deceased husband a New-Yorker, I could not feel even that modicum of reverence due to sincere Southerners. However, I wished to present my credentials; so, calling up my companion, I said that I believed she had been previously acquainted with Corporal Robert Sutton? I never saw a finer bit of unutterable indignation than came over the face of my hostess, as she slowly recognized him. She drew herself up, and dropped out the monosyllables of her answer as if they were so many drops of nitric acid. "Ah," quoth my lady, "we called him Bob!"

It was a group for a painter. The whole drama of the war seemed to reverse itself in an instant, and my tall, well-dressed, imposing, philosophic Corporal dropped down the immeasurable depth into a mere plantation "Bob" again. So at least in my imagination; not to that personage himself. Too essentially dignified in his nature to be moved by words where substantial realities were in question, he simply turned from the lady, touched his hat to me, and asked if I would wish to see the slave-jail, as he had the keys in his possession.

If he fancied that I was in danger of being overcome by blandishments and needed to be recalled to realities, it was a master-stroke.

I must say, that, when the door of that villainous edifice was thrown open before me, I felt glad that my main interview with its lady proprietor had passed before I saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the floor was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, two of which had smaller as well as larger holes, evidently for the feet of women or children. In a building near by we found something far more complicated, which was perfectly unintelligible till the men explained all its parts: a machine so contrived that a person once imprisoned in it could neither sit, stand, nor lie, but must support the body half raised, in a position scarcely endurable. I have since bitterly reproached myself for leaving this piece of ingenuity behind; but it would have cost much labor to remove it, and to bring away the other trophies seemed then enough. I remember the unutterable loathing with which I leaned against the door of that prison-house; I had thought myself seasoned to any conceivable horrors of Slavery, but it seemed as if the visible presence of that den of sin would choke me. Of course it would have been burned to the ground by us, but that this would have involved the sacrifice of every other building and all the piles of lumber, and for the moment it seemed as if the sacrifice would be righteous. But I forbore, and only took as trophies the instruments of torture and the keys of the jail.

We found but few colored people in this vicinity; some we brought away with us, and an old man and woman preferred to remain. All the white males whom we found I took as hostages, in order to shield us, if possible, from attack on our way down river, explaining to them that they would be put on shore when the dangerous points were passed. I knew that their wives could easily send notice of this fact to the Rebel forces along the river. My hostages were a forlorn-looking set of "crackers," far inferior to our soldiers in physique, and yet quite equal, the latter declared, to the average material of the Southern armies. None were in uniform, but this proved nothing as to their being soldiers. One of them, a mere boy, was captured at his own door, with gun in hand. It was a fowling-piece, which he used only, as his mother plaintively assured me, "to shoot little birds with." As the guileless youth had for this purpose loaded the gun with eighteen buck-shot, we thought it justifiable to confiscate both the weapon and the owner, in mercy to the birds.

We took from this place, for the use of the army, a flock of some thirty sheep, forty bushels of rice; some other provisions, tools, oars, and a little lumber, leaving all possible space for the bricks which we expected to obtain just below. I should have gone farther up the river, but for a dangerous boom which kept back a great number of logs in a large brook that here fell into the St. Mary's; the stream ran with force, and if the Rebels had wit enough to do it, they might in ten minutes so choke the river with drift-wood as infinitely to enhance our troubles. So we dropped down stream a mile or two, found the very brickyard from which Fort Clinch had been constructed,—still stored with bricks, and seemingly unprotected. Here Sergeant Rivers again planted his standard, and the men toiled eagerly, for several hours, in loading our boat to the utmost with the bricks. Meanwhile we questioned black and white witnesses, and learned for the first time that the Rebels admitted a repulse at Township Landing, and that Lieutenant Jones and ten of their number were killed,—though this I fancy to have been an exaggeration. They also declared that the mysterious steamer Berosa was lying at the head of the river, but was a broken-down and worthless affair, and would never get to sea. The result has since proved this; for the vessel subsequently ran the blockade and foundered near shore, the crew barely escaping with their lives. I had the pleasure, as it happened, of being the first person to forward this information to Admiral Dupont, when it came through the pickets, many months after,—thus concluding my report on the Berosa.

Before the work at the yard was over, the pickets reported mounted men in the woods near by, as had previously been the report at Woodstock. This admonished us to lose no time; and as we left the wharf, immediate arrangements were made to have the gun-crews all in readiness, and to keep the rest of the men below, since their musketry would be of little use now, and I did not propose to risk a life unnecessarily. The chief obstacle to this was their own eagerness; penned down on one side, they popped up on the other; their officers, too, were eager to see what was going on, and were almost as hard to cork down as the men. Add to this, that the vessel was now very crowded, and that I had to be chiefly on the hurricane-deck with the pilots. Captain Clifton, master of the vessel, was brave to excess, and as much excited as the men; he could no more be kept in the little pilot-house than they below; and when we had passed one or two bluffs, with no sign of an enemy, he grew more and more irrepressible, and exposed himself conspicuously on the upper deck. Perhaps we all were a little lulled by apparent safety; for myself, I lay down for a moment on a settee in a state-room, having been on my feet, almost without cessation, for twenty-four hours.

Suddenly there swept down from a bluff above us, on the Georgia side, a mingling of shout and roar and rattle as of a tornado let loose; and as a storm of bullets came pelting against the sides of the vessel and through a window, there went up a shrill answering shout from our own men. It took but an instant for me to reach the gun-deck. After all my efforts, the men had swarmed once more from below, and already, crowding at both ends of the boat, were loading and firing with inconceivable rapidity, shouting to each other, "Neber gib it up!" and of course having no steady aim, as the vessel glided and whirled in the swift current. Meanwhile the officers in charge of the large guns had their crews in order, and our shells began to fly over the bluffs, which, as we now saw, should have been shelled in advance, only that we had to economize ammunition. The other soldiers I drove below, almost by main force, with the aid of their officers, who behaved exceedingly well, giving the men leave to fire from the open port-holes which lined the lower deck, almost at the water's level. In the very midst of the melee, Major Strong came from the upper deck, with a face of horror, and whispered to me,—"Captain Clifton was killed at the first shot by my side."

If he had said that the vessel was on fire, the shock would hardly have been greater. Of course, the military commander on board a steamer is almost as helpless as an unarmed man, so far as the risks of water go. A seaman must command there. In the hazardous voyage of last night, I had learned, though unjustly, to distrust every official on board the steamboat except this excitable, brave, warm-hearted sailor; and now, among these added dangers, to lose him! The responsibility for his life also thrilled me; he was not among my soldiers, and yet he was killed. I thought of his wife and children, of whom he had spoken; but one learns to think rapidly in war, and, cautioning the Major to silence, I went up to the hurricane-deck and drew in the helpless body, that it should be safe from further desecration, and then looked to see where we were.