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Secret Service

<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3> <div class="chapquot"> <div> Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of War. Julius Cæsar. </div> </div> Sancho Panza passed away too early. To-day, he would extend his benediction on the man who invented sleep, to the person who introduced sleeping-cars. The name of that philanthropist, by whose luxurious aid we may enjoy unbroken sleep at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, should not be concealed from a grateful posterity. <div class="sidenote">A Sunday at Niagara Falls.</div> Thus I soliloquized one May evening, when, in pursuit of that "seat of war," as yet visible only to the prophetic eye, or in newspaper columns, I turned my face westward. It were more exact to say, "turned my heels." Inexorable conductors compel the drowsy passenger to ride feet foremost, on the hypothesis that he would rather break a leg than knock his brains out. I was detained for a day at Suspension Bridge; but life has more afflictive dispensations, even for the impatient traveler, than a Sunday at Niagara Falls. Vanity of vanities indeed must existence be to him who could not find a real Sabbath at the great cataract, laying his tired head upon the calm breast of Nature, and feeling the pulsations of her deep, loving heart! Eight years had intervened since my last visit. There [Pg 126] was no second pang of the disappointment we feel in seeing for the first time any object of world-wide fame. In Nature, as in Art, the really great, however falling below the ideal at first glance, grows upon the beholder forever afterward. Though the visiting season had not begun, the harpies were waiting for their victims. Step out of your hotel, or turn a corner, and one instantly pounced upon you. But, though numerous, they were quiet, and decorous manners, even in leeches, are above all praise. Everybody at the Falls is eager to shield you from the extortion of everybody else. The driver, whom you pay two dollars per hour; the vender, who sells you Indian bead-work at a profit of one hundred per cent.; the guide, who fleeces you for leading to places you would rather find without him—each warns you against the other, with touching zeal for your welfare. And the precocious boy, who offers a bit of slate from under the Cataract for two shillings, cautions you to beware of them all. <div class="sidenote"> View from the Suspension Bridge.</div> As you cross the suspension bridge, the driver points out the spot, more than two hundred feet above the water, where Blondin, of tight-rope renown, crossed upon a single strand, with a man upon his shoulders, cooked his aerial omelet, hung by the heels, and played other fantastic tricks before high heaven. <div class="sidenote">Palace of the Frost King.</div> From the bridge you view three sections of the Cataract. First, is the lower end of the American Fall, whose deep green is intermingled with jets and streaks of white. Its smooth surface conveys the impression of the segment of a slowly revolving wheel rather than of tumbling water. Beyond the dense foliage appears another section, parted in the middle by the stone tower on Goat Island. Its water is of snowy whiteness, and looks [Pg 127] like an immense frozen fountain. Still farther is the great Horse-shoe Fall, its deep green surface veiled at the base in clouds of pure white mist. Here, at the distance of two miles, the Falls soothe you with their quiet, surpassing beauty. But when you reach them on the Canada side, and go down, down, beneath Table Rock, under the sheet of water, you feel their sublimity. As you look out upon the sea of snowy foam below, or through the rainbow hues of the vast sweeping curtain above, the earth trembles with the unceasing thunder of the cataract. In winter the effect is grandest. Then, from the bank in front of the Clifton House, you look down on upright rocks, crowned with pinnacles of ice, till they rise half way to the summit, or catch glimpses of the boundless column of water as it strikes the torrent below, faintly seen through the misty, alabaster spray rising forever from its troubled bed. Hundreds of white-winged sea-gulls graze the rapids above, and circle down to plunge in the waters below. Attired in stiff, cold, water-proof clothing, which, culminating in a round oil-cloth cap, makes you look like an Esquimaux and feel like a mummy, you follow the guide far down dark, icy stairs and paths. Look up ninety feet, and see the great torrent pour over the brink. Look down seventy feet from your icy little shelf, and behold it plunge into the dense mist of the boiling gulf. Through its half-transparent sheet, filtered rays of the bright sunshine struggle toward your eyes. You are in the palace of the Frost King. Ice—ice everywhere, from your slippery foothold to the huge icicles, fifty feet long and three feet thick, which overhang you like the sword of Damocles. Admiration without comparison is vague and unsatisfactory. [Pg 128] Less glorious, because less vast, than the matchless panorama seen from the summit of Pike's Peak, this picture is nearly as impressive, because spread right beside you, and at your very feet. Less minutely beautiful than the exquisite chambers of the Mammoth Cave, its great range and sweep make it more grand and imposing. Along the Great Western Railway of Canada, the country closely resembles northern Ohio; but the people have uncompromising English faces. A well-dressed farmer and his wife rode upon our train all day in a second-class car, without seeming in the least ashamed of it—a moral courage not often exhibited in the United States. At Detroit, an invalid, pale, wasted, unable to speak above a whisper, was lying on a bed hastily spread upon the floor of the railway station. Her husband, with their two little boys bending over her in tears, told us that they had been driven from New Orleans, and he was now taking his dying wife to their old home in Maine. There were few dry eyes among the lookers-on. A liberal sum of money was raised on the spot for the destitute family, whose broken pride, after some persuasion, accepted it. <div class="sidenote">Chicago Rising from the Earth.</div> The next morning we reached Chicago. In that breezy city upon the lake shore, property was literally rising. Many of the largest brick and stone blocks were being elevated five or six feet, by a very nice system of screws under their walls, while people were constantly pouring in and out of them, and the transaction of business was not impeded. The stupendous enterprise was undertaken that the streets might be properly graded and drained. This summoning a great metropolis to rise from its vasty deep of mud, is one of the modern miracles [Pg 129] of mechanics, which make even geological revelations appear trivial and common-place. <div class="sidenote">Mysteries of Western Currency.</div> The world has many mysteries, but none more inscrutable than Western Currency. The notes of most Illinois and Wisconsin banks, based on southern State bonds, having depreciated steadily for several weeks, gold and New York exchange now commanded a premium of twenty per cent. The Michigan Central Railway Company was a good illustration of the effect of this upon Chicago interests. That corporation was paying six thousand dollars per week in premiums upon eastern exchange. Yet the hotels and mercantile houses were receiving the currency at par. One Illinois bank-note depreciated just seventy per cent., during the twelve hours it spent in my possession! In Chicago I encountered an old friend just from Memphis. His association with leading Secessionists for some time protected him; but the popular frenzy was now so wild that they counselled him, as he valued his life, to stay not upon the order of his going, but go at once. The Memphians were repudiating northern debts, and, with unexampled ferocity, driving out all men suspected of Abolitionism or Unionism. More than five thousand citizens had been forced or frightened away, and in many cases beggared. A secret Committee of Safety, made up of prominent citizens, was ruling with despotic sway. Scores of suspected persons were brought before it daily, and, if they could not exculpate themselves, sentenced to banishment, with head half shaved, to whipping, or to death. Though, by the laws of all slave States, negroes were precluded from testifying against white men, this inquisition received their evidence. My friend [Pg 130] dared not avow that he was coming North, but purchased a ticket for St. Louis, which was then deemed a Rebel stronghold. <div class="sidenote"> A Horrible Spectacle in Arkansas.</div> As the steamer passed Osceola, Arkansas, he saw the body of a man hanging by the heels, in full view of the river. A citizen told him that it had been there for eight days; that the wretched victim, upon mere suspicion of tampering with slaves, was suspended, head downward, and suffered intensely before death came to his relief. All on board the crowded steamboat pretended to be Secessionists. But when, at last, nearing Cairo, they saw the Stars and Stripes, first one, then another, began to huzza. The enthusiasm was contagious; and in a moment nearly all, many with heaving breasts and streaming eyes, gave vent to their long-suppressed feeling in one tumultuous cheer for the Flag of the Free. Of the one hundred and fifty passengers, nearly every man was a fleeing Unionist. The all-pervading railroad and telegraph in the North began to show their utility in war. Cairo, the extreme southern point of Illinois, now garrisoned by Union troops, was threatened by the enemy. The superintendent of the Illinois Central Railway (including branches, seven hundred and four miles in length) assured me that, at ten hours' notice, he could start, from the various points along his line, four miles of cars, capable of transporting twenty-four thousand soldiers. <div class="sidenote"> Patriotism of the Northwest.</div> The Rebels now began to perceive their mistake in counting upon the friendship of the great Northwest. Indeed, of all their wild dreams, this was wildest. They expected the very States which claimed Mr. Lincoln as from their own section, and voted for him by heavy majorities, to help break up the Union because he was elected! Though learning their delusion, they never [Pg 131] comprehended its cause. After the war had continued nearly a year, <cite>The New Orleans Delta</cite> said: <div class="blockquot"> "The people of the Northwest are our natural allies, and ought to be fighting on our side. It is the profoundest mystery of these times how the few Yankee peddlers and school-marms there have been able to convert them into our bitter enemies." </div> On the mere instinct of nationality—the bare question of an undivided republic—the West would perhaps fight longer, and sacrifice more, than any other section. Its people, if not more earnest, are much more demonstrative than their eastern brethren. Their long migration from the Atlantic States to the Mississippi, the Missouri, or the Platte, has quickened and enlarged their patriotism. It has made our territorial greatness to them no abstraction, but a reality. No one else looks forward with such faith and fervor to that great future when man shall "fill up magnificently the magnificent designs of Nature;" when their Mississippi Valley shall be the heart of mightiest empire; when, from all these mingling nationalities, shall spring the ripe fruitage of free schools and free ballots, in a higher average Man than the World has yet seen. Our train from Chicago to St. Louis was crowded with Union troops. Along the route booming guns saluted them; handkerchiefs fluttered from windows; flags streamed from farm-houses and in village streets; old men and boys at the plow huzzaed themselves hoarse. Thus, at the rising of the curtain, the northwestern States, worthy offspring of the Ordinance of Eighty-seven, were sending out— <div class="blockquot"> "A multitude, like which the populous North Poured never from her frozen loins." </div> Four blood-stained years have not dimmed their faith [Pg 132] or abated their ardor. "Wherever Death spread his banquet, they furnished many guests." What histories have they not made for themselves! Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin—indeed, if we call their roll, which State has not covered herself with honor—which has not achieved her Lexington—her Saratoga—her Bennington—though the battle-field lie beyond her soil?9 <div class="sidenote"> Missouri Rebels bent on Revolution.</div> In St. Louis I found at last a "seat of war." Recent days had been full of startling events. The Missouri Legislature, at Jefferson City, desired to pass a Secession ordinance, but had no pretext for doing so. The election of a State Convention, to consider this very subject, had just demonstrated, by overwhelming Union majorities, the loyalty of the masses. Claiborne Fox Jackson, the Governor, was a Secessionist, and was determined to plunge Missouri into revolution. This flagrant, open warfare against the popular majority, well illustrated how grossly the Rebels deceived themselves in supposing that their conduct was impelled by regard for State Rights, rather than by the inherent antagonism between free and slave labor. Camp Jackson, commanded by Gen. D. M. Frost, was established at Lindell Grove, two miles west of St. Louis, "for the organization and instruction of the State Militia." It embraced some Union men, both officers and privates. Frost and his friends claimed that it was loyal; but the State flag, only, was flying from the camp, and its streets were named "Davis Avenue," "Beauregard Avenue," etc. [Pg 133] <div class="sidenote">Nathaniel Lyon and Camp Jackson.</div> An envoy extraordinary, sent by Governor Jackson, had just returned from Louisiana with shot, shell, and mortars—all stolen from the United States Arsenal at Baton Rouge. The camp was really designed as the nucleus of a Secession force, to seize the Government property in St. Louis and drive out the Federal authorities. But the Union men were too prompt for the Rebels. Long before the capture of Fort Sumter, nightly drills were instituted among the loyal Germans of St. Louis; and within two weeks after the President's first call for troops, Missouri had ten thousand Union soldiers, armed, equipped, and in camp. The first act of the Union authorities was to remove by night all the munitions from the United States Arsenal near St. Louis, to Alton, Illinois. When the Rebels learned it, they were intensely exasperated. The Union troops were commanded by a quiet, slender, stooping, red-haired, pale-faced officer, who walked about in brown linen coat, wearing no military insignia. He was by rank a captain; his name was Nathaniel Lyon. On the tenth of May, Capt. Lyon, with three or four hundred regulars, and enough volunteers to swell his forces to five thousand, planted cannon upon the hills commanding Camp Jackson, and sent to Gen. Frost a note, reciting conclusive evidence of its treasonable intent, and concluding as follows: <div class="blockquot"> "I do hereby demand of you an immediate surrender of your command, with no other conditions than that all persons surrendering shall be humanely and kindly treated. Believing myself prepared to enforce this demand, one-half hour's time will be allowed for your compliance." </div> This contrasted so sharply with the shuffling timidity of our civil and military authorities, usual at this period, [Pg 134] that Frost was surprised and "shocked." His reply, of course, characterized the demand as "illegal" and "unconstitutional." In those days there were no such sticklers for the Constitution as the men taking up arms against it! Frost wrote that he surrendered only upon compulsion—his forces being too weak for resistance. The encampment was found to contain twenty cannon, more than twelve hundred muskets, many mortars, siege-howitzers, and shells, charged ready for use—which convinced even the most skeptical that it was something more than a school for instruction. The garrison, eight hundred strong, were marched out under guard. There were many thousands of spectators. Hills, fields, and house-tops were black with people. In spite of orders to disperse, crowds followed, jeering the Union troops, throwing stones, brickbats, and other missiles, and finally discharging pistols. Several soldiers were hurt, and one captain shot down at the head of his company, when the troops fired on the crowd, killing twenty and wounding eleven. As in all such cases, several innocent persons suffered. Intense excitement followed. A large public meeting convened that evening in front of the Planter's House—heard bitter speeches from Governor Jackson, Sterling Price, and others. The crowd afterward went to mob <cite>The Democrat</cite> office, but it contained too many resolute Unionists, armed with rifles and hand-grenades, and they wisely desisted. <div class="sidenote">Sterling Price Joins the Rebels.</div> Sterling Price was president of the State Convention—elected as an Unconditional Unionist. But, in this whirlwind, he went over to the enemy. An old feud existed between him and a leading St. Louis loyalist. Price had a small, detached command in the Mexican war. Afterward, he was Governor of Missouri, and candidate [Pg 135] for the United States Senate. An absurd sketch, magnifying a trivial skirmish into a great battle, with Price looming up heroically in the foreground, was drawn and engraved by an unfortunate artist, then in the Penitentiary. It pleased Price's vanity; he circulated it largely, and pardoned out the suffering votary of art. <div class="sidenote">Severe Loss to the Unionists.</div> When the Legislature was about voting for United States Senator, Frank Blair, Jr., then a young member from St. Louis, obtained permission to say a few words about the candidates. He was a great vessel of wrath, and administered a terrible excoriation, pronouncing Price "worthy the genius of a convict artist, and fit subject for a Penitentiary print!" Price was defeated, and the rupture never healed. At the outbreak of the Rebellion, Price was far more loyal than men afterward prominent Union leaders in Missouri. In those chaotic days, very slight influences decided the choice of many. By tender treatment, Price could doubtless have been retained; but neither party regarded him as possessing much ability. His defection proved a calamity to the Loyalists. He was worth twenty thousand soldiers to the Rebels, and developed rare military talent. Like Robert E. Lee, he was an old man, of pure personal character, sincerity, kindness of heart, and unequaled popularity among the self-sacrificing ragamuffins whom he commanded. He held them together, and induced them to fight with a bravery and persistency which, Rebels though they were, was creditable to the American name. With a good cause, they would have challenged the world's acclamation. At this time the President was treating the border slave States with marvelous tenderness and timidity. [Pg 136] The Rev. M. D. Conway declared, wittily, that Mr. Lincoln's daily and nightly invocation ran: <div class="blockquot"> "O Lord, I desire to have Thee on my side, but I must have Kentucky!" </div> Captain Lyon was confident that if he asked permission to seize Camp Jackson, it would be refused. So he captured the camp, and then telegraphed to Washington—not what he proposed to do, but what he had done. At first his act was disapproved. But the loyal country applauded to the echo, and Lyon's name was everywhere honored. Hence the censure was withheld, and he was made a Brigadier-General! <div class="sidenote">St. Louis in a Convulsion.</div> Governor Jackson burned the bridges on the Pacific Railroad; the Missouri Legislature passed an indirect ordinance of Secession, and adjourned in a panic, caused by reports that Lyon was coming; a Union regiment was attacked in St. Louis, and again fired into the mob, with deadly results. The city was convulsed with terror. Every available vehicle, including heavy ox wagons, was brought into requisition; every outgoing railway train was crowded with passengers; every avenue was thronged with fugitives; every steamer at the levee was laden with families, who, with no definite idea of where they were going, had hastily packed a few articles of clothing, to flee from the general and bloody conflict supposed to be impending between the Americans and the Dutch, as Secessionists artfully termed the two parties. Thus there became a "Seat of War." Heart-rending as were the stories of most southern refugees, some were altogether ludicrous. In St. Louis, I encountered an old acquaintance who related to me his recent experiences in Nashville. Grandiloquent enough they sounded; for his private conversation always ran into stump speeches. [Pg 137] <div class="sidenote">A Nashville Experience.</div> "One day," said he, "I was waited on by a party of leading Nashville citizens, who remarked: 'Captain May, we know very well that you are with us in sentiment; but, as you come from the North, others, less intimate with you, desire some special assurance.' I replied: 'Gentlemen, by education, by instinct, and by association, I am a Southern man. But, gentlemen, when you fire upon that small bit of bunting known as the American flag, you can count me, by Heaven, as your persistent and uncompromising foe!' The committee intimated to me that the next train for the North started in one hour! You may stake your existence, sir, that the subscriber came away on that train. Confound a country, anyhow, where a man must wear a Secession cockade upon each coat-tail to keep himself from being kicked as an Abolitionist!" Inexorable war knows no ties of friendship, of family, or of love. Its bitterest features were seen on the border, where brother was arrayed against brother, and husband against wife. At a little Missouri village, the Rebels raised their flag, but it was promptly torn down by the loyal wife of one of the leaders. I met a lady who had two brothers in the Union army, and two among Price's Rebels, who were likely soon to meet on the battle-field. In St. Louis, a Rebel damsel, just about to be married, separated from her Union lover, declaring that no man who favored the Abolitionists and the "Dutch hirelings" could be her husband. He retorted that he had no use for a wife who sympathized with treason; and so the match was broken off. <div class="sidenote">Bitterness of Old Neighbors.</div> I knew a Union soldier who found at Camp Jackson, among the prisoners, his own brother, wounded by two Minié rifle balls. He said: "I am sorry my brother [Pg 138] was shot; but he should not have joined the traitors!" Of course, the bitterness between relatives and old neighbors, now foes, was infinitely greater than between northerners and southerners. The same was true everywhere. How intensely the Virginia and Tennessee Rebels hated their fellow-citizens who adhered to the Union cause! Ohio and Massachusetts Loyalists denounced northern "Copperheads" with a malignity which they never felt toward South Carolinians and Mississippians. St. Louis, May 20, 1861. When South Carolina seceded, the slave property of Missouri was worth forty-five millions of dollars; hence she is under bonds to just that amount to keep the peace. With thirteen hundred miles of frontier, she is "a slave peninsula in an ocean of free soil." Free Kansas, which has many old scores to clear up, guards her on the west. Free Iowa, embittered by hundreds of Union refugees, watches her on the north. Free Illinois, the young giantess of the prairie, takes care of her on the east. This loyal metropolis, with ten Union regiments already under arms, is for her a sort of front-door police. Missouri, in the significant phrase of the frontier, is corraled.10 Here, at least, as <cite>The Richmond Whig</cite>, just before going over to the Rebels, so aptly said: "Secession is Abolitionism in its worst and most dangerous form." Rebels glare upon Union men like chained wild beasts. Citizens, walking by night, remember the late assassinations, and, like Americans in Mexican towns, cast suspicious glances behind. Secessionists utter fierce [Pg 139] threats; but since their recent severe admonition that Unionists, too, can use fire-arms, and that it is not discreet to attack United States soldiers, they do not execute them. Captain Lyon, who commands, is an exceedingly prompt and efficient officer, attends strictly to his business, exhibits no hunger for newspaper fame, and seems to act with an eye single to the honor of the Government he has served so long and so faithfully. <div class="sidenote">Good Soldiers for Scaling Walls.</div> Among our regiments is the Missouri First, Colonel Frank P. Blair. Three companies are made up of German Turners—the most accomplished of gymnasts. They are sinewy, muscular fellows, with deep chests and well-knit frames. Every man is an athlete. To-day a party, by way of exercise, suddenly formed a human pyramid, and commenced running up, like squirrels, over each other's shoulders, to the high veranda upon the second story of their building. In climbing a wall, they would not require scaling-ladders. There are also two companies from the Far West—old trappers and hunters, who have smelt gunpowder in Indian warfare. Colonel Blair's dry, epigrammatic humor bewilders some of his visitors. I was sitting in his head-quarters when a St. Louis Secessionist entered. Like nearly all of them, he now pretends to be a Union man, but is very tender on the subject of State Rights, and wonderfully solicitous about the Constitution. He remarked: "I am a Union man, but I believe in State Rights. I believe a State may dissolve its connection with the Government if it wants to." "O yes," replied Blair, pulling away at his ugly mustache, "yes, you can go out if you want to. Certainly you can secede. But, my friend, you can't take with you one foot of American soil!" [Pg 140] <div class="sidenote"> Missouri and the Slaveholders.</div> A citizen of Lexington introduced himself, saying: "I am a loyal man, ready to fight for the Union; but I am pro-slavery—I own niggers." "Well, sir," replied Blair, with the faintest suggestion of a smile on his plain, grim face, "you have a right to. We don't like negroes very much ourselves. If you do, that's a matter of taste. It is one of your privileges. But if you gentlemen who own negroes attempt to take the State of Missouri out of the Union, in about six months you will be the most ---- niggerless set of individuals that you ever heard of!" <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 141] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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