CHAPTER XIV

EXPERIENCES AS JOURNALIST DURING THE CIVIL WAR

My obligations to Wendell Phillips are mixed, and one of them was an introduction to _The Tribune_. In the autumn of 1861 I wanted two things: a holiday, and a chance to see something of the war and the negro question at short range. At that time, Mr. Charles A. Dana was managing editor of _The Tribune_, with Mr. Sydney Howard Gay as his first lieutenant. Phillips gave me a letter to Mr. Gay, the result of which was that Mr. Dana asked me to go to South Carolina for _The Tribune_.

A word about Mr. Dana. He had the reputation at that time of being what the cabman called that Mr. John Forster who was, among other things, the friend and biographer of Dickens--"a harbitrary gent." I suppose Mr. Dana was arbitrary; in the sense that every commanding officer must be arbitrary. But my relations with him, or my service under him, lasted some months, during the whole of which period I found him considerate and kindly. He liked, I think, to assign a man to duty and judge him by the result; which meant that the man was left free to work out his {130} own salvation; or damnation, as the case might be.

I was, of course, perfectly new to the business of journalism and, equally of course, made many mistakes. But Mr. Dana was not the kind of manager who fastened on this mistake or that as an occasion for chastising the offender. He judged a man's work as a whole. In the office, I am told, he sometimes thought it needful to speak plainly in order to enforce a steady discipline. He had been known to walk into the room of one of the departmental editors, in full view and hearing of the whole staff, and remark: "Mr. X, you were disgracefully beaten this morning," in the tone in which he might have said it was a fine day. But the next morning Mr. X was not beaten; nor the next.

Very possibly, between me and Mr. Dana's wrath, if I roused it, stood Mr. Gay; a man of soft manners and heart. I cannot remember that, directly or indirectly, any reprimand ever came to me from Mr. Dana. From Mr. Greeley there came more than one; all well deserved. With the business of managing the paper Mr. Greeley did not much concern himself. With the results he sometimes did, and when _The Tribune_ did not contain what he thought it ought to contain, he was apt to make remarks on the omission. While I was at Port Royal in South Carolina there was a skirmish at Williamston in North Carolina, a hundred miles away. Mr. Greeley thought I ought to have been at Williamston. Very likely I ought. {131} But Lord Curzon had not at that time announced his memorable definition of enterprising journalism; "an intelligent anticipation of events that never occur." That epigram, delivered in the House of Commons, may be supplemented by an axiom. The business of a war correspondent is to be, not where he is ordered, but where he is wanted.

In the early days of the Civil War--or, for that matter, in the late days--the American Press had little of the authority it has since acquired. The heads of great departments of Government still held themselves responsible primarily to the President. Berths on battleships were not then at the disposal of the first journalists who wanted one. When I asked Commodore Steadman of the _Bienville_ to take me to Port Royal he politely told me it was against the naval regulations to allow a civilian on board a ship of war. When I asked him who had a dispensing power in such matters, he said: "If the Secretary of the Navy should order me to receive you as a guest, I should do so with pleasure." I thanked him and with the courage of which ignorance is the mother, telegraphed Mr. Welles. No answer. I telegraphed again, saying it was the wish of Mr. Dana that I should go to South Carolina on the _Bienville_. The effect of Mr. Dana's name was magical, and this time an answer came; that Commodore Steadman had orders to give me a berth. I suppose the journalists of to-day will hardly understand how there could have been a difficulty. But there were to be many difficulties. Commodore {132} Steadman was as good as his word, and better; and a kind host.

Admiral Dupont had captured the Port Royal forts by the time I arrived. A finer example of the old type of naval officer than Admiral Dupont our naval service never had. Captain Raymond Rodgers was his flag captain; another example not less fine. General W. T. Sherman was in command of the land forces. The winter passed slowly away. There was not much to do except study the negro question; which was perhaps more attractive when studied at a distance. General Butler, bringing the mind of a lawyer to bear on the problems of war, and desiring a legal excuse for annexing the personal property of the enemy had announced that the negroes were "contraband of war." For him, the maxim that laws are silent amid arms did not hold good. He liked to make laws the servant of arms. The negroes naturally came soon to be known as contrabands. There were some months during which they were called hardly anything else. I called them so in my letters. It was characteristic of Phillips that, after a time, he wrote to me to suggest that Butler's phrase had done its work and that the negro was a negro: a man entitled to freedom on other grounds.

But it was long before the word passed out of use. Butler had chosen the psychological moment. The "contrabands"--with Mr. Phillips's permission--who crowded the camps were mostly from the cotton and rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia. If you were not already {133} a convinced Abolitionist, they were not likely to convert you. But it was becoming daily clearer that the negro had a military value; not at Port Royal, however, where he was only a burden. It was not an eventful winter at Port Royal. There were expeditions by land and sea, and there was the taking of Fort Pulaski, which I saw, but I was glad to return to New York in the spring; and then to join General Frémont in the Shenandoah Valley. The name of that commander was still one of promise. Except the name, there was not much else for the purposes of war, but he had a charm of manner and a touch of romance and a staff on which one or two foreign adventurers had places and did weird things. "General" Cluseret was one; an impostor who afterward found a congenial home in the Paris Commune, with other impostors. That campaign came to nought, and when General Pope, in July, 1862, was put in command of the Army of Virginia, I found my way to the headquarters of that redoubtable warrior.

With him, in command of the Third Army Corps, was General McDowell. I don't know why one's memory chooses trivialities as proper objects of its activity, but it sometimes does. One of the most vivid among the impressions of those days is the stout figure of General McDowell on his horse, which he sat ill, his uniform awry, his sword pushed behind him as far as it would go, his strapless trousers ending abruptly halfway between knee and ankle; then a space of bare flesh, {134} and then some inches of white stocking, and then a shoe. But he had military gifts if not a military air. He was talking with General Pope, whose unhappy proclamation about his headquarters in the saddle had already been issued. Unlike McDowell, Pope looked a better soldier than he was. His six weeks' generalship on the Rappahannock ended with the Second Bull Run, which there was now no Billy Russell to describe in words that blistered yet were honest words; and with Chantilly. The West suited Pope better than the East, and to the West he returned. In these six weeks he had made nothing but mistakes and achieved only defeats.

Personally, General Pope was pleasant to deal with. It was while he commanded the Army of Virginia that Mr. Stanton, then Secretary of War, or perhaps General Halleck, issued orders for the expulsion of all correspondents from the armies in the field. General Pope sent for me and told me of the order. Impressed at that time with the sternness of War Office rule, I answered meekly that I supposed I must go. Said General Pope, "This is not an official interview. I imagine you needn't go till you get the order." A battle was thought to be imminent; any respite was welcome. I thanked him, went back to my tent, took what I most needed, and rode off to an outpost where I had a friend. The official notification may have been sent to my tent but never reached me. And so it happened that I saw such fighting as there was on the Rappahannock, and at the Second {135} Bull Run, better called Manassas. Interesting to a student of war; not inspiriting to a patriot; and not now to be described even in the briefest way. My only aim is to give the reader of to-day some faint notion of what a war correspondent's life in those days was like.

One incident I may note, as an example of what may happen to a general who neglects the most elementary rules and precautions of war. At the end of a day's march, at sundown but the heavens still light, General Pope bethought himself that he should like to see what the country ahead of him looked like. With his staff and a bodyguard of some sixty sabres he rode up a low hill with a broad crest, open ground about it for a hundred yards, and beyond that in front a thick, far-spreading forest line. General Pope and his staff dismounted. The cavalry were ordered to dismount and loosen their saddle-girths. Just as this operation had been completed there came from the wood beyond the open ground a rifle volley. As we stood between the sunset and the enemy we were a pretty fair target. There was no time for orders. Everybody scrambled into his saddle as best he could and away we went.

But the firing woke up the advance guard of our army, and they also began firing. It soon appeared that General Pope had unwittingly passed outside his own lines, so that, as we rode away from the fire of the Rebels we rode into the fire of our own troops. It was hot enough but luckily did not last long. The hill partly protected {136} us from the sharpshooters in grey, and our fire was silenced after a moment. But the horses were well frightened. It was impossible to pull up. We scattered and the horses went on for a mile or so. I never before so much respected the intelligence of that animal. There was nothing to do but sit down in the saddle, but the horses never made a mistake at full speed over an unknown country, stiff with fences and brooks, and nobody came to grief; nor, which seems more wonderful, was anybody hit by the bullets. A good many remarks were made which hit General Pope.

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