The Man Without a Country Page 2
was signed E. F. M. Fachtz. I was receiving many letters onthe subject daily. I supposed that my correspondent was concealing hername, and was really "Eager for More Facts." When in reality I had thepleasure of meeting her a year or two afterwards, the two widowedsisters of the real Phil Nolan were both dead.
But in 1876 I was fortunate enough, on the kind invitation of Mr. Miner,to visit his family in their beautiful plantation at Terre Bonne. ThereI saw an old negro who was a boy when Master Phil Nolan left the oldplantation on the Mississippi River for the last time. Master Phil Nolanhad then married Miss Fanny Lintot, who was, I think, the aunt of myhost. He permitted me to copy the miniature of the young adventurer.
I have since done my best to repair the error by which I gave PhilipNolan's name to another person, by telling the story of his fate in abook called "Philip Nolan's Friends." For the purpose of that book, Istudied the history of Miranda's attempt against Spain, and of JohnAdams's preparations for a descent of the Mississippi River. Theprofessional historians of the United States are very reticent in theirtreatment of these themes. At the time when John Adams had a little armyat Cincinnati, ready to go down and take New Orleans, there were noWestern correspondents to the Eastern Press.
Within a year after the publication of the "Man without a Country" inthe "Atlantic" more than half a million copies of the story had beenprinted in America and in England. I had curious accounts from the armyand navy, of the interest with which it was read by gentlemen on duty.One of our officers in the State of Mississippi lent the "Atlantic" to alady in the Miner family. She ran into the parlor, crying out, "Here isa man who knows all about uncle Phil Nolan." An Ohio officer, whoentered the city of Jackson, in Mississippi, with Grant, told me that hewent at once to the State House. Matters were in a good deal ofconfusion there, and he picked up from the floor a paper containing theexamination of _Philip Nolan_, at Walnut Springs, the old name ofVicksburg. This was before the real Philip's last expedition. The UnitedStates authorities, in the execution of the neutrality laws, had calledhim to account, and had made him show the evidence that he had thepermission of the Governor of New Orleans for his expedition.
In 1876 I visited Louisiana and Texas, to obtain material for "PhilipNolan's Friends." I obtained there several autographs of the real PhilNolan,--and the original Spanish record of one of the trials of thesurvivors of his party,--a trial which resulted in the cruel executionof Ephraim Blackburn, seven years after he was arrested. That wholetransaction, wholly ignored by all historians of the United States knownto me, is a sad blot on the American administration of the Spanishkings. Their excuse is the confusion of everything in Madrid between1801 and 1807. The hatred of the Mexican authorities among ourfrontiersmen of the Southwest is largely due to the dishonor and crueltyof those transactions.
EDWARD E. HALE.
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
I [Note 1] suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald"of August 13, 1863, observed, [Note 2] in an obscure corner, among the"Deaths," the announcement,--
"NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette 'Levant,' [Note 3] Lat. 2? 11' S.,Long. 131? W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old MissionHouse in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did notchoose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the currentliterature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages inthe "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and the readerwill see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember PhilipNolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at thatannouncement, if the officer of the "Levant" who reported it had chosento make it thus: "Died, May 11, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it wasas "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had generally beenknown by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as,indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many aman who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years'cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poorwretch had any name at all.
There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's [Note 4]administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy ofhonor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan insuccessive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit decorps_ of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that tothe press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, tothe country at large also. I have reason to think, from someinvestigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to theBureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him wasburned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of theTuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the endof the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported atWashington to one of the Crowninshields,--who was in the Navy Departmentwhen he came home,--he found that the Department ignored the wholebusiness. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a"_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no navalofficer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poorcreature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of hisstory, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be AMAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
PHILIP NOLAN was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion ofthe West," as the Western division of our army was then called. WhenAaron Burr [Note 5] made his first dashing expedition down to NewOrleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, hemet, as the Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow;at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walkedwith him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, inshort, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame topoor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the greatman had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted lettersthe poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he havein reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneeredat him, because he lost the fun which they found in shooting or rowingwhile he was working away on these grand letters to his grand friend.They could not understand why Nolan kept by himself while they wereplaying high-low jack. Poker was not yet invented. But before long theyoung fellow had his revenge. For this time His Excellency, HonorableAaron Burr, appeared again under a very different aspect. There wererumors that he had an army behind him and everybody supposed that he hadan empire before him. At that time the youngsters all envied him. Burrhad not been talking twenty minutes with the commander before he askedhim to send for Lieutenant Nolan. Then after a little talk he askedNolan if he could show him something of the great river and the plansfor the new post. He asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff to showhim a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as he said,--really to seducehim; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body andsoul. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MANWITHOUT A COUNTRY.
What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is noneof our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, andJefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break onthe wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by thegreat treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distantMississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound isto-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, towhile away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, forspectacles, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One andanother of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out thelist, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidenceenough,--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be falseto it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any onewho would follow him had the order been signed, "By com
mand of His Exc.A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,--rightly for allI know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I wouldnever have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of thecourt asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to showthat he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, ina fit of frenzy,--
"Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United Statesagain!"
I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan,[Note 6] who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it hadserved through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks,had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in hismadness. He, on his part, had grown up in the