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<h3>CHAPTER XXVII.</h3> <div class="chapquot"> <div> ————————— It is held That valor is the chiefest virtue and Most dignifies the haver. If it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpoised. Coriolanus. </div> </div> <div class="sidenote">Reminiscences of General Sumner.</div> During the month of March, Major-General Edwin V. Sumner was in Washington, apparently in vigorous health. He had just been appointed to the command of the Department of the Missouri. One Saturday evening, having received his final orders, he was about leaving for his home in Syracuse, New York, where he designed spending a few days before starting for St. Louis. I went into his room to bid him adieu. Allusion was made to the allegations of speculation against General Curtis, his predecessor in the West. "I trust," said he, "they are untrue. No general has a right to make one dollar out of his official position, beyond the salary which his Government pays him." He talked somewhat in detail of the future, remarking, "For the present, I shall remain in St. Louis; but whenever there is a prospect of meeting the enemy, I shall take the field, and lead my troops in person. Some men can fight battles over a telegraph-wire, but you know I have no talent in that direction." With his friendly grasp of the hand, and his kindly smile, he started for home. It proved to him Home indeed. A week later the country was startled by intelligence of his sudden death. He, who for forty-eight [Pg 328] years had braved the hardships of campaigning and the perils of battle, until he seemed to have a charmed life, was abruptly cut down by disease under his own roof, surrounded by those he loved. <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> "The breast that trampling Death could spare, His noiseless shafts assail."</div> </div> For almost half a century, Sumner had belonged to the Army of the United States; but he steadfastly refused to be put on the retired list. Entering the service from civil life, he was free from professional traditions and narrowness. Senator Wade once asked him, "How long were you at the Military Academy?" He replied, "I was never there in my life." The bluff Ohioan sprang up and shook him fervidly by the hand, exclaiming, "Thank God for one general of the regular Army, who was never at West Point!" <div class="sidenote">His Conduct in Kansas.</div> During the early Kansas troubles, Sumner, then a colonel, was stationed in the Territory with his regiment of dragoons. Unscrupulous as were the Administrations of Pierce and Buchanan in their efforts to force Slavery upon Kansas, embittered as were the people against the troops,—generally mere tools of Missouri ruffians—their feelings toward Sumner were kindly and grateful. They knew he was a just man, who would not willingly harass or oppress them, and who sympathized with them in their fiery trial. From the outbreak of the Slaveholders' Rebellion his name was one of the brightest in that noble but unfortunate army which illustrated Northern discipline and valor on so many bloody fields, but had never yet gathered the fruits of victory. He was always in the deadliest of the fighting. He had the true soldierly temperament. He snuffed the battle afar off. He felt [Pg 329] "the rapture of the strife," and went into it with boyish enthusiasm. <div class="sidenote">A Thrilling Scene in Battle.</div> In exposing himself, he was Imprudence personified. It was the chronic wonder of his friends that he ever came out of battle alive. At last they began to believe, with him, that he was invincible. He would receive bullets in his hat, coat, boots, saddle, horse, and sometimes have his person scratched, but without serious injury. His soldiers related, with great relish, that in the Mexican War a ball which struck him square in the forehead fell flattened to the ground without breaking the skin, as the bullet glances from the forehead of the buffalo. This anecdote won for him the soubriquet of "Old Buffalo." At Fair Oaks, his troops were trembling under a pitiless storm of bullets, when he galloped up and down the advance line, more exposed than any private in the ranks. "What regiment is this?" he asked. "The Fifteenth Massachusetts," replied a hundred voices. "I, too, am from Massachusetts; three cheers for our old Bay State!" And swinging his hat, the general led off, and every soldier joined in three thundering cheers. The enemy looked on in wonder at the strange episode, but was driven back by the fierce charge which followed. <div class="sidenote">How Sumner Fought.</div> This was no unusual scene. Whenever the guns began to pound, his mild eye would flash with fire. He would remove his artificial teeth, which became troublesome during the excitement of battle, and place them carefully in his pocket; raise his spectacles from his eyes and rest them upon the forehead, that he might see clearly objects at a distance; give his orders to subordinates, [Pg 330] and then gallop headlong into the thick of the fight. Hundreds of soldiers were familiar with the erect form, the snowy, streaming hair, and the frank face of that wonderful old man who, on the perilous edge of battle, while they were falling like grass before the mower, would dash through the fire and smoke, shouting:— "Steady, men, steady! Don't be excited. When you have been soldiers as long as I, you will learn that this is nothing. Stand firm and do your duty!" Never seeking a dramatic effect, he sometimes displayed quiet heroism worthy of history's brightest pages. Once, quite unconsciously reproducing a historic scene, he repeated, almost word for word, the address of the great Frederick to his officers, before the battle of Leuthen. It was on the bloody field of Fair Oaks, at the end of the second day. He commanded the forces which had crossed the swollen stream. But before the other troops came up, the bridges were swept away. The army was then cut in twain; and Sumner, with his three shattered corps, was left to the mercy of the enemy's entire force. On that Sunday night, after making his dispositions to receive an attack, he sent for General Sedgwick, his special friend and a most trusty soldier:— "Sedgwick, you perceive the situation. The enemy will doubtless open upon us at daylight. Re-enforcements are impossible; he can overwhelm and destroy us. But the country cannot afford to have us defeated. There is just one thing for us to do; we must stand here and die like men! Impress it upon your officers that we must do this to the last man—to the last man! We may not meet again; good-by, Sedgwick." The two grim soldiers shook hands, and parted. [Pg 331] Morning came, but the enemy, failing to discover our perilous condition, did not renew the attack; new bridges were built, and the sacrifice was averted. But Sumner was the man to carry out his resolution to the letter. <div class="sidenote">Ordered Back by McClellan.</div> Afterward, he retained possession of a house on our old line of battle; and his head-quarter tents were brought forward and pitched. They were within range of a Rebel battery, which awoke the general and his staff every morning, by dropping shot and shell all about them for two or three hours. Sumner implored permission to capture or drive away the hostile battery, but was refused, on the ground that it might bring on a general engagement. He chafed and stormed: "It is the most disgraceful thing of my life," he said, "that this should be permitted." But McClellan was inexorable. Sumner was directed to remove his head-quarters to a safer position. He persisted in remaining for fourteen days, and at last only withdrew upon a second peremptory order. The experience of that fortnight exhibited the ever-recurring miracle of war—that so much iron and lead may fly about men's ears without harming them. During the whole bombardment only two persons were injured. A surgeon was slightly wounded in the head by a piece of shell which flew into his tent; and a private, while lying behind a log for protection, was instantly killed by a shot which tore a splinter from the wood, fracturing his skull; but not another man received even a scratch. After Antietam, McClellan's ever-swift apologists asserted that his corps commanders all protested against renewing the attack upon the second morning. I asked General Sumner if it were true. He replied, with emphasis:— [Pg 332] "No, sir! My advice was not asked, and I did not volunteer it. But I was certainly in favor of renewing the attack. Much, as my troops had suffered, they were good for another day's fighting, especially when the enemy had that river in his rear, and a defeat would have ruined him forever." <div class="sidenote">Love for His Old Comrades.</div> At Fredericksburg, by the express order of Burnside, Sumner did not cross the river during the fighting. The precaution saved his life. Had he ridden out on that fiery front, he had never returned to tell what he saw. But he chafed sadly under the restriction. As the sun went down on that day of glorious but fruitless endeavor, he paced to and fro in front of the Lacy House, with one arm thrown around the neck of his son, his face haggard with sorrow and anxiety, and his eyes straining eagerly for the arrival of each successive messenger. He was a man of high but patriotic ambition. Once, hearing General Howard remark that he did not aspire to the command of a corps, he exclaimed, "General you surprise me. I would command the world, if I could!" He was called arbitrary, but had great love for his soldiers, especially for old companions in arms. A New York colonel told me a laughable story of applying to him for a ten days' furlough, when the rule against them was imperative. Sumner peremptorily refused it. But the officer sat down beside him, and began to talk about the Peninsular campaign—the battles in which he had done his duty, immediately under Sumner's eye; and it was not many minutes before the general granted his petition. "If he had only waited," said the narrator, "until I recalled to his memory some scenes at Antietam, I am sure he would have given me twenty days instead of ten!" His intercourse with women and children was characterized [Pg 333] by peculiar chivalry and gentleness. He revived the old ideal of the soldier—terrible in battle, but with an open and generous heart. To his youngest son—a captain upon his staff—he was bound by unusual affection. "Sammy" was his constant companion; in private he leaned upon him, caressed him, and consulted him about the most trivial matters. It was a touching bond which united the gray, war-worn veteran to the child of his old age. We have had greater captains than Sumner; but no better soldiers, no braver patriots. The words which trembled upon his dying lips—"May God bless my country, the United States of America"—were the key-note to his life. Green be the turf above him! <div class="sidenote">Traveling Through the Northwest.</div> Louisville, Kentucky, April 5, 1863. For the last week I have been traveling through the States of the Northwest. The tone of the people on the war was never better. Now that the question has become simply one of endurance, their Northern blood tells. "This is hard pounding, gentlemen," said Wellington at Waterloo; "but we will see who can pound the longer." So, in spite of the Copperheads—"merely the dust and chaff on God's thrashing-floor"—the overwhelming sentiment of the people is to fight it out to the last man and the last dollar. You have been wont to say: "The West can be depended on for the war. She will never give up her great outlet, the Mississippi." True; but the inference that her loyalty is based upon a material consideration, is untrue and unjust. The West has poured out its best blood, not on any petty question of navigation, or of trade, but upon the weightier issues of Freedom and Nationality. The New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian may believe in [Pg 334] the greatness of the country; the Kansan or Minnesotian, who has gone one or two thousand miles to establish his prairie home, walks by sight and not by faith. To him, the Great Republic of the future is no rhetorical flourish or flight of fancy, but a living verity. His instinct of nationality is the very strongest; his belief the profoundest. May he never need Emerson's pungent criticism: "The American eagle is good; protect it, cherish it; but beware of the American peacock!" Have you heard Prentice's last, upon the bursting of the Rebel bubble that Cotton is King? He says: "They went in for cotton, and they got worsted!" <div class="sidenote">A Visit to Rosecrans's Army.</div> Murfreesboro, Tennessee, April 10. A visit to Rosecrans's army. I rode yesterday over the historical battle-ground of Stone River, among rifle-pits and breastworks, great oaks, with scarred trunks, and tops and branches torn off, and smooth fields thickly planted with graves. It is interesting to hear from the soldiers reminiscences of the battle. Rosecrans may not be strong in planning a campaign, but the thundering guns rouse him to the exhibition of a higher military genius than any other general in our service has yet displayed. The "grand anger of battle" makes him see at a glance the needs of the occasion, and stimulates those quick intuitions which enable great captains, at the supreme moment, to wrest victory from the very grasp of defeat. Peculiarly applicable to him is Addison's description of Marlborough:— <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> "In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed; To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid; Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage."</div> </div> [Pg 335] <div class="sidenote">Rosecrans in a Great Battle.</div> During the recent great conflict which began with disaster that would have caused ordinary generals to retreat, he seemed omnipresent. A devout Catholic, he performed, before entering the battle, the solemn rites of his Church. A profound believer in destiny, he appeared like a man who sought for death. A few feet from him, a solid shot took off the head of Garasche, his loved and trusted chief of staff. "Brave men must die," he said, and plunged into the battle again. He had a word for all. Of an Ohio regiment, lying upon the ground, he asked:— "Boys, do you see that strip of woods?" "Yes, sir." "Well, in about five minutes, the Rebels will pour out of it, and come right toward you. Lie still until you can easily see the buttons on their coats; then drive them back. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." "Well, it's just as easy as rolling off a log, isn't it?" They laughingly assented, and "Old Rosy," as the soldiers call him, rode along the line, to encourage some other corps. This is an army of veterans. Every regiment has been in battle, and some have marched three thousand miles during their checkered campaigning. Their garments are old and soiled; but their guns are bright and glistening, and on review their evolutions are clockwork. They are splendidly disciplined, of unequaled enthusiasm, full of faith in their general and in themselves. Rosecrans is an erect, solid man of one hundred and seventy-five pounds weight, whose forty-three years sit lightly on his face and frame. He has a clear, mild-blue eye, which lights and flashes under excitement; an intensified [Pg 336] Roman nose, high cheek-bones, florid complexion, mouth and chin hidden under dark-brown beard, hair faintly tinged with silver, and growing thin on the edges of the high, full, but not broad, forehead. In conversation, a winning, mirthful smile illumines his face. As Hamlet would take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds, so you would trust that countenance in a stranger as indicating fidelity, reserved power, an overflowing humor, and imperious will. <div class="sidenote">A Scene in Memphis.</div> Memphis, Tennessee, April 20. Riding near the Elmwood Cemetery, yesterday, I witnessed a curious feature of Southern life. It was a negro funeral—the <del>cortége</del><ins>cortège</ins>, a third of a mile in length, just entering that city of the dead. The carriages were filled with negro families, and, almost without exception, they were driven by white men. If such a picture were exhibited in Boston, would those who clamor in our ears about negro equality ever permit us to hear the last of it? <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 337] <h2>III. THE DUNGEON.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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