Complete Prose Works
muskets on their shoulders. In another place, just below me, are some
soldiers squaring off logs to build a shanty--chopping away, and the
noise of the axes sounding sharp. I hear the bellowing, unmusical
screech of the mule. I mark the thin blue smoke rising from camp fires.
Just below me is a collection of hospital tents, with a yellow flag
elevated on a stick, and moving languidly in the breeze. Two discharged
men (I know them both) are just leaving. One is so weak he can hardly
walk; the other is stronger, and carries his comrade's musket. They move
slowly along the muddy road toward the depot. The scenery is full of
breadth, and spread on the most generous scale (everywhere in Virginia
this thought fill'd me.) The sights, the scenes, the groups, have been
varied and picturesque here beyond description, and remain so.
I heard the men return in force the other night--heard the shouting, and
got up and went out to hear what was the matter. That night scene of
so many hundred tramping steadily by, through the mud (some big flaring
torches of pine knots,) I shall never forget. I like to go to the
paymaster's tent, and watch the men getting paid off. Some have
furloughs, and start at once for home, sometimes amid great chaffing and
blarneying. There is every day the sound of the wood-chopping axe, and
the plentiful sight of negroes, crows, and mud. I note large droves and
pens of cattle. The teamsters have camps of their own, and I go often
among them. The officers occasionally invite me to dinner or supper at
headquarters. The fare is plain, but you get something good to drink,
and plenty of it. Gen. Meade is absent; Sedgwick is in command.
PAYING THE 1ST U. S. C. T.
One of my war time reminiscences comprises the quiet side scene of
a visit I made to the First Regiment U. S. Color'd Troops, at their
encampment, and on the occasion of their first paying off, July 11,
1863. Though there is now no difference of opinion worth mentioning,
there was a powerful opposition to enlisting blacks during the
earlier years of the secession war. Even then, however, they had their
champions. "That the color'd race," said a good authority, "is capable
of military training and efficiency, is demonstrated by the testimony
of numberless witnesses, and by the eagerness display'd in the raising,
organizing, and drilling of African troops. Few white regiments make a
better appearance on parade than the First and Second Louisiana
Native Guards. The same remark is true of other color'd regiments. At
Milliken's Bend, at Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, on Morris Island, and
wherever tested, they have exhibited determin'd bravery, and compell'd
the plaudits alike of the thoughtful and thoughtless soldiery. During
the siege of Port Hudson the question was often ask'd those who beheld
their resolute charges, how the 'niggers' behav'd under fire; and
without exception the answer was complimentary to them. 'O, tip-top!'
'first-rate!' 'bully!' were the usual replies. But I did not start out
to argue the case--only to give my reminiscence literally, as jotted on
the spot at the time."
I write this on Mason's (otherwise Analostan) island, under the fine
shade trees of an old white stucco house, with big rooms; the white
stucco house, originally a fine country seat (tradition says the famous
Virginia Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Law, was born here.)
I reach'd the spot from my Washington quarters by ambulance up
Pennsylvania avenue, through Georgetown, across the Aqueduct bridge, and
around through a cut and winding road, with rocks and many bad gullies
not lacking. After reaching the island, we get presently in the midst of
the camp of the 1st Regiment U. S. C. T. The tents look clean and good;
indeed, altogether, in locality especially, the pleasantest camp I have
yet seen. The spot is umbrageous, high and dry, with distant sounds of
the city, and the puffing steamers of the Potomac, up to Georgetown and
back again. Birds are singing in the trees, the warmth is endurable here
in this moist shade, with the fragrance and freshness. A hundred rods
across is Georgetown. The river between is swell'd and muddy from the
late rains up country. So quiet here, yet full of vitality, all around
in the far distance glimpses, as I sweep my eye, of hills, verdure-clad,
and with plenteous trees; right where I sit, locust, sassafras, spice,
and many other trees, a few with huge parasitic vines; just at hand the
banks sloping to the river, wild with beautiful, free vegetation, superb
weeds, better, in their natural growth and forms, than the best garden.
Lots of luxuriant grape vines and trumpet flowers; the river flowing far
down in the distance.
Now the paying is to begin. The Major (paymaster) with his clerk seat
themselves at a table--the rolls are before them--the money box is
open'd--there are packages of five, ten, twenty-five cent pieces. Here
comes the first Company (B), some 82 men, all blacks. Certes, we cannot
find fault with the appearance of this crowd--negroes though they
be. They are manly enough, bright enough, look as if they had the
soldier-stuff in them, look hardy, patient, many of them real handsome
young fellows. The paying, I say, has begun. The men are march'd up in
close proximity. The clerk calls off name after name, and each walks up,
receives his money, and passes along out of the way. It is a real study,
both to see them come close, and to see them pass away, stand counting
their cash--(nearly all of this company get ten dollars and three cents
each.) The clerk calls George Washington. That distinguish'd personage
steps from the ranks, in the shape of a very black man, good sized and
shaped, and aged about 30, with a military mustache; he takes his "ten
three," and goes off evidently well pleas'd. (There are about a dozen
Washingtons in the company. Let us hope they will do honor to the name.)
At the table, how quickly the Major handles the bills, counts without
trouble, everything going on smoothly and quickly. The regiment numbers
to-day about 1,000 men (including 20 officers, the only whites.)
Now another company. These get $5.36 each. The men look well. They, too,
have great names; besides the Washingtons aforesaid, John Quincy Adams,
Daniel Webster, Calhoun, James Madison, Alfred Tennyson, John Brown,
Benj. G. Tucker, Horace Greeley, &c. The men step off aside, count their
money with a pleas'd, half-puzzled look. Occasionally, but not often,
there are some thoroughly African physiognomies, very black in color,
large, protruding lips, low forehead, &c. But I have to say that I do
not see one utterly revolting face.
Then another company, each man of this getting $10.03 also. The pay
proceeds very rapidly (the calculation, roll-signing, &c., having been
arranged beforehand.) Then some trouble. One company, by the rigid rules
of official computation, gets only 23 cents each man. The company (K)
is indignant, and after two or three are paid, the refusal to take the
paltry sum is universal, and the company marches off to quarters unpaid.
Another company (I) gets only 70 cents. The sullen, lowering,
disappointed look is general. Half refuse it in this case. Company G, in
full dress, with brass scales on shoulders, look'd, perhaps, as well as
any of the companies--the men had an unusually alert look. These, then,
are the black troops,--or the beginning of them. Well, no one can see
them, even under these circumstances--their military career in its
novitiate--without feeling well pleas'd with them.
As we enter'd the island, we saw scores at a little distance, bathing,
washing their clothes, &c. The officers, as far as looks go, have a fine
appearance, have good faces, and the air military. Altogether it is a
significant show, and brings up some "abolition" thoughts. The scene,
the porch of an Old Virginia slave-owner's house, the Potomac rippling
near, the Capitol just down three or four miles there, seen through the
pleasant blue haze of this July day.
After a couple of hours I get tired, and go off for a ramble. I write
these concluding lines on a rock, under the shade of a tree on the banks
of the island. It is solitary here, the birds singing, the sluggish
muddy-yellow waters pouring down from the late rains of the upper
Potomac; the green heights on the south side of the river before me.
The single cannon from a neighboring fort has just been fired, to signal
high noon. I have walk'd all around Analostan, enjoying its luxuriant
wildness, and stopt in this solitary spot. A water snake wriggles down
the bank, disturb'd, into the water. The bank near by is fringed with a
dense growth of shrubbery, vines, &c.
FIVE THOUSAND POEMS
There have been collected in a cluster nearly five thousand big and
little American poems--all that diligent and long-continued research
could lay hands on! The author of 'Old Grimes is Dead' commenced
it, more than fifty years ago; then the cluster was pass'd on and
accumulated by C. F. Harris; then further pass'd on and added to by the
late Senator Anthony, from whom the whole collection has been bequeath'd
to Brown University. A catalogue (such as it is) has been made and
publish'd of these five thousand poems--and is probably the most curious
and suggestive part of the whole affair. At any rate it has led me to
some abstract reflection like the following.
I should like, for myself, to put on record my devout acknowledgment not
only of the great masterpieces of the past, but of the benefit of _all_
poets, past and present, and of _all_ poetic utterance--in its entirety
the dominant moral factor of humanity's progress. In view of that
progress, and of evolution, the religious and esthetic elements, the
distinctive and most important of any, seem to me more indebted to
poetry than to all other means and influences combined. In a very
profound sense _religion is the poetry of humanity_. Then the points of
union and rapport among all the poems and poets of the world, however
wide their separations of time and place and theme, are much more
numerous and weighty than the points of contrast. Without relation as
they may seem at first sight, the whole earth's poets and poetry--_en
masse_--the Oriental, the Greek, and what there is of Roman--the oldest
myths--the interminable ballad-romances of the Middle Ages--the hymns
and psalms of worship--the epics, plays, swarms of lyrics of the British
Islands, or the Teutonic old or new--or modern French--or what there is
in America, Bryant's, for instance, or Whittier's or Longfellow's--the
verse of all tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects, from primitive
times to our own day inclusive--really combine in one aggregate and
electric globe or universe, with all its numberless parts and radiations
held together by a common centre or verteber. To repeat it, all poetry
thus has (to the point of view comprehensive enough) more features of
resemblance than difference, and becomes essentially, like the planetary
globe itself, compact and orbic and whole. Nature seems to sow countless
seeds--makes incessant crude attempts--thankful to get now and then,
even at rare and long intervals, something approximately good.
THE OLD BOWERY
_A Reminiscence of New York Plays and Acting Fifty Years Ago_
In an article not long since, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth," in "The
Nineteenth Century," after describing the bitter regretfulness to
mankind from the loss of those first-class poems, temples, pictures,
gone and vanish'd from any record of men, the writer (Fleeming Jenkin)
continues:
If this be our feeling as to the more durable works of art, what
shall we say of those triumphs which, by their very nature, la
no longer than the action which creates them--the triumphs of the