Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

  CHAPTER IX

  TOM GOES TO VICKSBURG--MORGAN'S RAID--GEN. BASIL W. DUKE CAPTURES TOM--GETTYSBURG--GEN. ROBERT E. LEE GIVES TOM HIS BREAKFAST--IN LIBBY PRISON--LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.

  Late in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. Thesewere then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The long siege ofthat town, held by a considerable Confederate force under GeneralPemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, butthat could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and thistime there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight abit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. Hewas a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way ofit.

  July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederatecavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River atBurkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashedtogether. None but he and his second in command knew whither theproposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thoughtMorgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creekwent along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a"salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines.He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he hadbeen through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of evergetting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all thesalt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks ofCalfkills Creek."

  Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H.Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward fromCairo. No one dreamed that Morgan would dare do what he did do. TheConfederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or twoskirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought forthe South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southernIndiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damagesuch as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men wereAmericans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms waskilled. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies weretaken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweepwas made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was insad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgansaid, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing wasperfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.

  Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was theone upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken cameto a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag wasfuriously waved.

  "Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held theflag.

  Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders hadcut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from theeastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horsesbefore them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came tono one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons,in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobodyreally knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing togetherwhat they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that thetrack had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and thatthe quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across theshort gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could findno one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directionswere showered upon him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warningsto one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. Hestarted eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of thefugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but theprice Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.

  All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederateshad wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every littlebridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, theties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burningties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally ahot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set ofloops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. Thetelegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into abroken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirelydisappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streamswhich the burned bridges had spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked asif some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated inits destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again runupon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect ashis system of horse-stealing.

  A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, soTom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but thelittle streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, forJune had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passedwere shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countrysidebare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of aregion normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed tosee a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind,but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came,he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead.He was so sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to thenorthward that he galloped gayly up to the house--and, perforce,presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entireraid.

  The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house wasclosed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he wouldfind the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him.Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turnedthe corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. Amounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon,was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bentclose to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of themen was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plungedand kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from thesaddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was ratheran abject position in which to be captured. The Southerners roared withgood-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled atthe boy's plight.

  Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozenappetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer'swife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they mightpropitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house fromdestruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war thatway. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this openoffer of the pies.

  "They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.

  At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tombutted in upon them and was seized.

  "Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when thelittle scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval andTom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when theofficer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend aswell as the commander of his rude soldiery.

  "I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."

  He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected noforeign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them downTom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.

  "Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn'tyou? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"

  He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his facebronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercingblack eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair abovea beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth--altogether a vivid man. Hismustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincolnwas plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southernaristocrat,
the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusiveresemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness ofboth men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their commonportion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.

  From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co. GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES]

  Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors and then saluted withreal respect as he replied:

  "I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A."

  "Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. Ifyou had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would haveturned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us."

  Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound,in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead ofit the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aidebeside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finestsoldiers he had ever seen. And so he was. He was Gen. Basil W. Duke,brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. Hewas a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one.

  A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant fighting, much of itwith home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight himhard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americansshould, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety ofWest Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom.Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off fromcrossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take theprisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with himrecrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville,Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, hesurrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallantband. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officersnot as captured soldiers but as arrested bandits. They were sent to theOhio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring escape not longafterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tomhad been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison,at the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia.

  His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except forthe gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and hismoney had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turnedover to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongingsdisappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was pluckedfrom his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, whomeant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finallyturned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army,commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and hadnothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the raggedremains of what had once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, heldabout his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievablydirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given himat Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom alwaysbelieved to be Barbara Frietchie.

  It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade haddefeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun todawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back fromthe great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond,trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general.

  * * * * *

  Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escapeafter Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln wasdeeply grieved.

  "We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. "Wehad only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours. And nothing Icould say or do could make our army move."

  Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter,one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent Meadeinto attacking, came to the White House.

  "Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him.

  "Because nobody stopped him."

  And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war wouldhave ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proofof Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Ourarmy held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not closeit," he added at once: "Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for thegreat service he did at Gettysburg."

  * * * * *

  Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the daring cavalry commanderof the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase aboutWashington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts ofhis countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Pointand in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers inthe United States army when the war between the States began. He lovedhis country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that hisloyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the OldDominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col.Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made tokeep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief commandof our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offersmade him, resigned his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond.

  Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers, crowns a hill on theVirginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet.The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of theold-fashioned house, a portico upheld by many columns, one can looktowards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight byclustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington ParkeCustis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858,directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee,his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gavethem passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedomto his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas,to his wife: "In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but willacknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and politicalevil in any country.... I think it is a greater evil to the white thanthe black race."

  ARLINGTON Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York.]

  Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks withGeorge Washington, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise couldbe greater. When "the Lost Cause," as the Southerners fondly call theirgreat fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisivedefeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself agreat patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President ofWashington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, hisname was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as theSouthern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies ofhim was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, atWashington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best bloodof Massachusetts honored the best blood of Virginia. Our country wasthen again one country and all of it was free.

  * * * * *

  Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northernofficers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee'sheadquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye rangedover the long lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gavesuch shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legionsof the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts werecooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, therecame an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger theharder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent.

  Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in soundand shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand.Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; andevery throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting
thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head agallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache,seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famousTraveler.

  GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER]

  It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his ironself-control almost broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which hewas hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched invain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost asred as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept intohis eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where theUnion prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them,he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in thefront line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranksLee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in thoseranks. The Confederacy, by this time almost bled white, was said tohave "robbed the cradle and the grave" to keep its armies at fightingstrength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not beendriven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of theUnion.

  "Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group.

  "Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.

  "Your rank?"

  "Second-lieutenant, sir."

  "Where were you captured?"

  "In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."

  Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism.As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col.Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstoodthe movement. His lip curled with disgust as he said:

  "Are you--a boy--drunk?"

  Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen othersanswered for him.

  "Not drunk, but hungry, General."

  "I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, "but at least youshall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfastuntil you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent.He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed,he had refused to leave "Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. Hewore the remains of a Confederate uniform. "Pompey, give thesegentlemen our breakfast. We will wait."

  "But--but--Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'."

  "Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a gentle smile as he turned tothe prisoners, "will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee."

  And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with itwere nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck uponthe feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudelyto old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelingswere deeply hurt. When the Union officer hurled after him a word of foulabuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, andsaid:

  "I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck deunicorn."

  After that the "unicorn" and the fine old negro who wore it were bothamply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisonerswere ordered to fall in line. Their guards stood in front of the littlecolumn, beside it, behind it.

  "Forward, march!"

  They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming,somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closedbehind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough tobear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, wasto be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.

  * * * * *

  It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderfulGettysburg speech.

  The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died therefor Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake ofwhat they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congressmade the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to itsgreat memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special trainleft Washington for Gettysburg. It carried President Lincoln, Secretaryof State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two privatesecretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, WayneMacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister toItaly, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. ThomasStrong, who had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kindthoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story ofLincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment, but longsince recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature.

  The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment that November night, whenthe President's train arrived. It was full of people and bands andwhisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen andcalling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite fortalky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touchingspeech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a mostdisgusting and drunken speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of hisparty of course had no share in all this brawling merriment. He andSeward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening.

  On the way up from Washington, the President had sat in a sadabstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him.Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southernmagnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a wearysmile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "Youcan fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the peoplepart of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Thenhe became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on themorrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts,a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had beenGovernor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of State,United States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished, graceful. Theungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil toEverett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to comerolling in like "the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett hadgraduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin. Both must face on themorrow the same audience.

  The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. Fromthe aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper,thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in theopposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his greatknotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck outsome words and added others, read his completed task and did not find itgood. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into hispocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.

  At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on thebattlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of ferventspeech, fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness againstthe men he called "the Southern rebels." His speech was literature andhis voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration ended athunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambledto the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrastingsharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silvertongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voiceto reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeakingfalsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln stopped speaking.There were a few seconds of painful silence. Then he came to his own.With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again andfinished his Gettysburg speech. Here it is:

  "Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on thisContinent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to theproposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in agreat civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, soconceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a greatbattlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as afinal resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nationmight live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate
, we cannot consecrate, wecannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, whostruggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add orto detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we sayhere, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, theliving, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which theywho fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us tobe here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from thesehonored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which theyhere gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolvethat these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, underGod, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of thepeople, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

  The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applausesuch as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods.There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed throughthe silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitudedispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincolnhad said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President'sspeech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest thingseven he ever did.

  Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The PerfectTribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would knowwhat manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The PerfectTribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederateofficer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking: "Thespeech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people thatwhen it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath--there wasnot a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord'sprayer--it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it--down to the lowest.There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all thatgreat throng--it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfecttribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."

  The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment. It is for all time.