Alfred Bishop Mason

“ The line of march was through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore. They were known locally as "plug-uglies." Like the New York "Bowery boys" of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners' battles, to keep the Massachusetts troops from "polluting the soil of Maryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving Washington. ”

“ With savage haste, he packed his scanty belongings. With a pistol in his hip pocket, with a bowie-knife slung over his left breast beneath his waistcoat, with a vial of chloroform in his valise, Wilkes Booth left Washington on the trail of Tom Strong.
Hunter and hunted were in the same car. Tom little dreamed that a few seats behind him sat a deadly foe, who would stick at nothing to get the precious papers he carried. Washington swarmed with Confederate spies. The face of everybody at the White House was well known to every spy. The hunter did not have to guess where the hunted sat. ”

“ And powder and cannon-balls were not so abundant in the Confederacy that the practice-firing could continue long. Early on the third morning of the voyage, they were in Hampton Roads, borne by the ebbing tide towards the Union squadron that lay under the guns of Fortress Monroe. As the sun rose above the horizon, our flag sprang to the mastheads of the ships. Tom felt like echoing Uncle Mose's triumphant phrase: "De Stars 'n de Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky." ”

“ Then at last the guns of the "Merrimac" spoke. She was close upon her prey now. The sound of her first volley was the voice of doom. Her great cannon sent masses of iron through and through the pitiful wooden walls that had dared to stand up against walls of iron. The shrieks of wounded men, of men screaming their mangled lives away, rolled up to the quarter-deck. A messenger dashed up there.
"Half the gun-crew officers are dead. Send us others!"
"Go below," said Lieutenant Morris, turning to two young midshipmen who stood near Tom, "keep the guns manned." ”

“ Whose death did he seek to compass now? What was the Confederate spy doing here? Tom had scarcely glimpsed the hawk-like features, the pallid face, the flowing black hair of his foe, when Booth disappeared from his sight in the crowded lobby of the theater.
Instantly Tom pursued him. But he was delayed by the little group through whom Booth had elbowed his rough way. And when he reached the ticket-window, he found no money in his pocket with which to buy admittance. He had put on civilian clothes that evening and had left his scanty store of currency in his uniform. ”

“ He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time, but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant fact. ”

“ The two armies were a mass of struggling men, shooting, stabbing, striking. The battle had become a series of duels man to man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian, but the gray-clad giant dodged the bullet, caught his own unloaded musket by the muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt that knocked him off his horse and left him senseless on the ground. ”

“ Tom approached the tent over which headquarters' flag was flying with a beating heart. It beat against the long envelope that lay in the inner pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to finish his task and he was about to see the one successful soldier of the Union, up to that time. The Northern armies had not done well in the East—the defeat had been disgraceful and the panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run, Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere—but in the West Grant was hammering out success. ”

“ Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.
It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderful Gettysburg speech.
The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there for Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train left Washington for Gettysburg. ”

“ There must always be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom. More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to despair. ”

“ Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense of never being afraid. He thought a general should be close to the front, to keep his soldiers' spirits high.
"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana, then Assistant Secretary of War, once asked him.
"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I should follow my natural impulse, I should run away always at the beginning of the danger. The men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth." ”

“ Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes. The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher, had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville and that Union forces were then encamped in strength upon the river, not many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had been steaming upstream to escape capture. ”

“ The second Union flag that was raised that day in Richmond was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their prey. The prisoners poured out, some too weak to do more than smile, others in a frenzy of joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a long lath of a man, had lost none of his spirit. ”

“ Every man was riding hard. Every horse was putting his last ounce of strength into his stride. Within an hour, the hounds saw the slinking fox they chased. Booth, abandoning his exhausted steed, took refuge in a tumble-down barn. A cordon was thrown about it and he was called on to surrender. The reply was a shot. Tom heard the whiz of the bullet as it tore by him. The cavalry pumped lead into the barn. Once, twice, thrice they fired. At the first volley, the trapped murderer had again fired. ”

“ There were no sleeping cars [Pg 78] then. People slept in their seats, if they slept at all. Booth's tones grew soothing, almost tender. They served as a lullaby. Tom slept. The spy beside him drew a long, triumphant breath. His time had come.
Some time before, he had shifted his traveling-bag to this seat. Now he drew from it, gently, quietly, the little bottle of chloroform and a small sponge, which he saturated with the stupefying drug. Then he slipped his arm under the sleeping boy's head, drew him a little closer to himself, and glanced through the dusky car. Nearly everybody was asleep. ”

“ But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into a prodigious pull. The handle, released from all pressure, flew through the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a fierce vigor, feeling the victory won. Morris gave one last pull with his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend. ”

“ Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern magnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "You can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. ”

“ For above the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and beyond them he saw a half-dozen small craft, negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He crawled into a hiding-place in the bank. He was so hungry that he cried. But not for long. Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long. If he could not escape in a boat fashioned by man's hands, why not in one fashioned by God? ”

“ But there was nothing clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow at the touch of Tom's heel on his flank. It was a beautiful, bright April morning, too beautiful a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently, however, it did not seem so to the commander of a company of Confederate cavalry, who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly galloped. He heard a sharp order to halt. He saw men ride across the road in front of him. ”

“ They were looking for land. Mr. Strong had inherited much land in New York City. The growth of that great town had given him a comfortable fortune. He had decided to buy a farm somewhere and a friend had told him that Western Maryland was almost a paradise. So it was, but this Eden had its serpent. Slavery was there. It was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but it had left its black mark upon the countryside. Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's line, Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by their owners, and of little towns, which reflected the wealth of the neighboring farmers. ”

“ The Confederate guns were shelling the hillside up which the plunging horses drew our cannon. There were six horses in each team, an artilleryman riding each near horse and holding the off horse of the pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with orders and was standing by General Wright as the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood behind his master, whinnying a bit with excitement.
General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.
"They're ten minutes late," he complained. "We're beaten if we don't get 'em into action instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first gun to destruction!" ”

“ Suddenly the old woman said to him:
"Where wuz you born, bub?"
"New—New——" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young to understand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils a boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.
"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly. ”

“ Sullenly and savagely, fighting until darkness forbade more fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the west, with the Union forces pounding away at them. They left a mass of dead upon the battlefield, lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and they also left as prisoners six general officers and seven thousand men. More than a third of all the prisoners taken in the battles before the final surrender were taken at the battle of Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to his new arm of the service through the three hours of fighting. The guns had been continually advanced as the Southerners retreated. ”

“ Thenceforth, as long as Tom stayed at the White House, Towser stretched his yellow bulk across the threshold of his door every night and slept there the sleep of the utterly happy.
There were no utterly happy men under the White House roof. Lincoln's presidential term was drawing to a close. He was renominated by the Republicans, but his re-election at times seemed impossible. The Democrats had put forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief commander of the Union forces, but a pitiful failure as an aggressive general. ”

“ There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things even he ever did.
Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The Perfect Tribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect Tribute." ”

“ He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred [Pg 218] intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. ”

“ What had been Jake Johnson, Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed their own spy.
It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done to death was too much for Tom. ”

“ Lewis was then on the staff of the Governor of Virginia, and had acquired in this way his title of Colonel. He was put into his own carriage. His slaves, few in number, were bundled into a four-horse farm-wagon. They were told to come and fight for their freedom. Too scared to resist, they came as they were bidden to do, but they did no fighting. At Harper's Ferry they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a neighboring plantation, escaped back to slavery at the first possible moment. Not a single negro voluntarily joined John Brown. He had expected a widespread slave insurrection. ”

“ Then Lincoln spoke again:
"You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom. This may take you into the enemy's country sometimes. If you were captured and were a civilian, it might go hard with you. So I've had you commissioned as a second lieutenant. If you should slip into a fight occasionally I wouldn't blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, kicked about it. ”

“ The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man. [Pg 130] He was a most good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom, he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. ”