University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
CAPTAIN COLBURNE RAISES A COMPANY, AND COLONEL
CARTER A REGIMENT.

The settlement of his mother's estate and of his own
pecuniary affairs occupied Colburne's time until the early
part of October. By then he had invested his property as
well as might be, rented the much-loved old homestead,
taken a room in the New Boston House, and was fully
prepared to bid good-bye to native soil, and, if need be,
to life. Miss Ravenel was a strong though silent temptation
to remain and to exist, but he resisted her with the
heroism which he subsequently exhibited in combating
male rebels.

One morning, as he left the hotel rather later than usual
to go to his office, his eyes fell upon a high-colored face
and gigantic brown mustache, which he could not have
failed to recognize, no matter where nor when encountered.
There was the wounded captive of Bull Run, as big
chested and rich complexioned, as audacious in eye and
haughty in air, as if no hurt nor hardship nor calamity had
ever befallen him. He checked Colburne's eager advance
with a cold stare, and passed him without speaking. But
the young fellow hardly had time to color at this rebuff,
when, just as he was opening the outer door a baritone
voice arrested him with a ringing, “Look here!”

“Beg pardon,” continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, coming
up hastily. “Didn't recognize you. It's quite a time
since our pic-nic, you know.”

Here he showed a broad grin, and presently burst out
laughing, as much amused at the past as if it did not contain
Bull Run.

“What a jolly old pic-nic that was!” he went on. “I

have shouted a hundred times to think of myself passing
the wine and segars to those prim old virgins. Just as
though I had bowsed into the House Beautiful, among
Bunyan's damsels, and offered to treat the crowd!”

Again the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed noisily, his insolent
black eyes twinkling with merriment. Colburne
looked at him and listened to him with amazement. Here
was a man who had lately been in what was to him the
terrible mystery of battle; who had fallen down wounded
and been carried away captive while fighting heroically
for the noblest of causes; who had witnessed the greatest
and most humiliating overthrow which ever befel the armies
of the republic; who yet did not allude to any of
these things, nor apparently think of them, but could chat
and laugh about a pic-nic. Was is treasonable indifference,
or levity, or the sublimity of modesty? Colburne thought
that if he had been at Bull Run, he never could have
talked of any thing else.

“Well, how are you?” demanded Carter. “You are
looking a little pale and thin, it seems to me.”

“Oh, I am well enough,” answered Colburne, passing
over that subject with modest contempt, as not worthy of
mention. “But how are you? Have you recovered from
your wound?”

“Wound? Oh! yes; mere bagatelle; healed up some
time ago. I shouldn't have been caught if I hadn't been
stunned by my horse falling. The wound was nothing.”

“But you must have suffered in your confinement,” said
Colburne, determined to appreciate and pity.

“Suffered! My dear fellow, I suffered with eating and
drinking and making merry. I had the deuce's own time
in Richmond. I met loads of my old comrades, and they
nearly killed me with kindness. They are a nice set of
old boys, if they are on the wrong side of the fence. You
didn't suppose they would maltreat a brother West Pointer,
did you?”

And the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed heartily at the civilian
blunder.

“I didn't know, really,” answered the puzzled Colburne.
“I must say I thought so. But I am as poor a
judge of soldiers as a sheep is of catamounts.”

“Why, look here. When I left they gave me a supper,
and not only made me drunk, but got drunk themselves in
my honor. Opened their purses, too, and forced their
money on me.”

All this, it will be noted, was long previous to the time
when Libby Prison and Andersonville were deliberately
converted into pest-houses and starvation pens.

“I am afraid they wanted to bring you over,” observed
Colburne. He looked not only suspicious, but even a little
anxious, for in those days every patriot feared for the faith
of his neighbor.

“I suppose they did,” replied Carter carelessly, as if he
saw nothing extraordinary in the idea. “Of course they
did. They need all the help that they can get. In fact
the rebel Secretary of War paid me the compliment of
making me an offer of a regiment, with an assurance that
promotion might be relied on. It was done so delicately
that I couldn't be offended. In fact it was quite natural,
and he probably thought it would be bad taste to omit it.
I am a Virginian, you know; and then I was once engaged
in some southern schemes and diplomacies—before this
war broke out, you understand—oh, no connection with
this war. However, I declined his offer. There's a patriot
for you.”

“I honor you, sir,” said Colburne with a fervor which
made the Lieutenant-Colonel grin. “You ought at be rewarded.”

“Quite so,” answered the other in his careless, half-joking
style. “Well, I am rewarded. I received a letter
yesterday afternoon from your Governor offering me a regiment.
I had just finished an elegant dinner with some
good fellows, and was going in for a roaring evening. But

business before pleasure. I took a cold plunge bath and
the next train for New Boston, getting here at midnight.
I am off at ten to see his Excellency.”

“I am sincerely delighted,” exclaimed the young man.
“I am delighted to hear that the Governor has had such
good sense.”

After a moment's hesitation he added anxiously, “Do
you remember your invitation to me?”

“Certainly. What do you say to it now? Will you
go with me?”

“I will,” said Colburne emphatically. “I will try. I
only fear that I can neither raise nor command a company.”

“Never fear,” answered Carter in a tone which pooh-poohed
at doubt. “You are just the man. Come round to
the bar with me, and let's drink success to our regiment.
Oh, I recollect; you don't imbibe. Smoke a segar, then,
while we talk it over. I tell you that you are just the
man. Noblesse oblige. Any gentleman can make a good
enough company officer in three months' practice. As to
raising your men, I'll give you my best countenance,
whatever that may amount to. And if you actually don't
succeed in getting your quota, after all, why, we'll take
somebody else's men. Examinations of officers and consolidations
of companies bring all these things right, you
know.”

“I should be sorry to profit by any other man's influence
and energy to his harm,” answered the fastidious
Colburne.

“Pshaw! it's all for the good of the service and of the
country. Because a low fellow who keeps a saloon can
treat and wheedle sixty or eighty stout fellows into the
ranks, do you suppose that he ought to be commissioned
an officer and a gentleman? I don't. It can't be in my
regiment. Leave those things to me, and go to work without
fear. Write to the Adjutant-General of the State to-day
for a recruiting commission, and as soon as you get it,

open an office. I guarantee that you shall be one of the
Captains of the Tenth Barataria.”

“Who are the other field officers?” asked Colburne.

“Not appointed yet. I am alone in my glory. I am
the regiment. But the Lieutenant-Colonel and Major
shall be of the right stamp. I mean to have a word to say
as to the choice. I tell you that we'll have the bulliest
regiment that ever sprang from the soil of New England.”

“Well, I'll try. But I really fear that I shall just get
my company recruited in time for the next war.”

“Never fear,” laughed Carter, as though war were a
huge practical joke. “We are in for a four or five years'
job of fighting.”

“You don't mean it!” said the young man in amazement.
“Why, we citizens are all so full of confidence.
McClellan, every body says, is organizing a splendid army.
Did Bull Run give you such an opinion of the superior
fighting qualities of the southerners?”

“Not at all. Both sides fought timidly, as a rule, just as
greenhorns naturally would do. The best description of
the battle that I have heard was given in a single sentence
by my old captain, Lamar, now in command of a Georgia
regiment. Said he, `There never was a more frightened
set than our fellows—except your fellows.—Why, we outfought
them in the morning; we had them fairly whipped
until Johnston came up on our right. The retreat was a
mathematical necessity; it was like saying, Two and two
make four. When our line was turned, of course it had
to retreat.”

“Retreat!” groaned Colburne in bitterness over the recollection
of that calamitous afternoon. “But you didn't
see it. They ran shamefully, and never stopped short of
Washington. One man reached New Boston inside of
twenty-four hours. It was a panic unparalleled in history.”

“Nonsense! Beg your pardon. Did you never read of
Austerlitz and Jena and Waterloo? Our men did pretty

well for militia. I didn't see the panic, to be sure;—I
was picked up before that happened. But I have talked
with some of our officers who did see it, and they told me
that the papers exaggerated it absurdly. Newspaper
correspondents ought not to be allowed in the army.
They exaggerate every thing. If we had gained a victory,
they would have made it out something greater than
Waterloo. You must consider how easily inexperience is
deceived. Just get the story of an upset from an old stage-driver,
and then from a lady passenger; the first will tell
it as quite an ordinary affair, and the second will make it
out a tragedy. Now when some old grannies of congressmen
and some young ladies of newspaper reporters, none
of whom had ever seen either a victory or a defeat before,
got entangled among half a dozen disordered regiments
they naturally concluded that nothing like it had happened
in history. I tell you that it wasn't unparalleled, and
that it ought not to have been considered surprising.
Whichever of those two green armies got repulsed was
pretty sure to be routed. That was a very pretty
manœuvre, though, that coming up of Johnston on
our right. Patterson ought to be court-martialed for his
stupidity.”

“Stupidity! He is a traitor,” exclaimed Colburne.

“Oh! oh!” expostulated the Colonel with a cough.
“If we are to try all our dull old gentlemen as traitors,
we shall have our hands full. That's something like
hanging homely old women for witches.—By the way,
how are the Allstons? I mean the—the Ravenels. Well,
are they? Young lady as blooming and blushing as ever?
Glad to hear it. Can't stop to call on them; my train
goes in ten minutes.—I am delighted that you are going
to fall in with me. Good bye for to-day.”

Away he went, leaving Colburne in wonder over his
contrasts of slanginess and gentility, his mingled audacity
and insouciance of character, and all the picturesque ins
and outs of his moral architecture, so different from the

severe plainness of the spiritual temples common in New
Boston. The young man would have preferred that his
future Colonel should not drink and swear; but he would
not puritanically decide that a man who drank and swore
could not be a good officer. He did not know army men
well enough to dare judge them with positiveness; and
he certainly would not try them by the moral standards
according to which he tried civilians. The facts that
Carter was a professional soldier, and that he had shed
his blood in the cause of the country, were sufficient to
make Colburne regard with charity all his frank vices.

I must not allow the reader to suppose that I present
Carter as a type of all regular officers. There were men
in the old army who never tasted liquors, who never
blasphemed, who did not waste their substance in riotous
living, who could be accused of no evil practices, who
were models of Christian gentlemen. The American service,
as well as the English, had its Havelocks, its Headly
Vicars, its Colonel Newcomes. Nevertheless I do venture
to say that it had also a great many men whose moral
habits were cut more or less on the Carter pattern, who
swore after the fashion of the British army in Flanders,
whose heads could carry drink like Dugald Dalgetty's,
and who had even other vices concerning which my discreet
pen is silent.

Within a week after the conversation above reported
Colburne opened a recruiting office, advertised the “Putnam
Rangers” largely, and adorned his doorway with a
transparency representing Old Put in a bran-new uniform
riding sword in hand down the stone steps of Horseneck.
His company, as yet in embryo, was one of the ten
accepted out of the nineteen offered for Carter's regiment.
It was supposed that the name of a West Point colonel
would render the organization a favorite one with the enlisting
classes; and accordingly all the chiefs of incomplete
companies throughout the State of Barataria wanted to
sieze the chance for easy recruiting. But Colburne

soon found that the dullness of a young lawyer's office
was none too prosy an exordium for the dullness of a recruiting
office at this particular period. Passed was that
springtide of popular enthusiasm when companies were
raised in a day, when undersized heroes wept at being rejected
by the mustering officer, when well-to-do youths
paid a hundred dollars to buy out a chance to be shot at.
Bull Run had disenchanted some romantic natures concerning
the pleasures of war, and the vast enlistments of
the summer had drawn heavily on the nation's fighting
material. Moreover, Colburne had to encounter obstacles
of a personal nature, such as did not trouble some of his
competitors. A student, a member of a small and shy social
circle, neither business man nor one of the bone and
sinew, not having belonged to a fire company or militia
company, nor even kept a bar or billiard-saloon, he had no
retainers nor partisans nor shopmates to call upon, no rummy
customers whom he could engage in the war-dance on
condition of unlimited whiskey. He had absolutely no
personal means of influencing the classes of the community
which furnish that important element of all military organizations,
private soldiers. For a time he remained almost
as solitary in his office as Old Put in the perilous
glory of his breakneck descent. In short the raising of his
company proved a slow, vexatious and expensive business,
notwithstanding the countenance and aid of the Colonel.

Miss Ravenel was much spited in secret when she saw
his advertisement; but she was too proud to expose her
interest in the matter by opposition. What object had
she in keeping him at home and out of danger? Moreover,
after the fashion of most southern women, she believed
in fighting, and respected a man the more for drawing
the sword, no matter for which party. After a while,
when his activity and cheerfulness of spirit had returned
to him, she began to talk with her old freedom of expression,
and indulged in playful prophecies about the Bull

Runs he would fight, the masterly retreats he would accomplish,
and the captivities he would undergo.

“When you are a prisoner in Richmond,” she said, “I'll
write to my Louisiana friends in the southern army and
tell them what a spiteful abolitionist you are. I'll get them
to put a colored friend and brother into the same cell with
you. You won't like it. You'll promise to go back to
your law office, if they'll send that fellow to his plantation.”

The Doctor was all sympathy and interest, and brimmed
over with prophecies of Colburne's success. He
judged the people of Barataria by the people of Louisiana;
the latter preferred gentlemen for officers, and so of course
would the former. Notwithstanding his hatred of slavery
he was still somewhat under the influence of its aristocratical
glamour. He had not yet fully comprehended
that the war was a struggle of the plain people against an
oligarchy, and that the plain people had, not very understandingly
but still very resolutely, determined to lead the
fighting as well as to do it. He had not yet full faith
that the northern working-man would beat the southern
gentleman, without much guidance from the northern
scholar.

“Don't be discouraged,” he said to Colburne. “I feel
the utmost confidence in your prospects. As soon as it is
generally understood who you are and what your character
is, you will have recruits to give away. It is impossible
that these bar-tenders and tinkers should raise good
men as easily as a gentleman and a graduate of the university.
They may get a run of ruff-scuff, but it won't
last. I predict that your company will be completed
sooner and composed of better material than any other in
the regiment. I would no more give your chance for that
of one of these tinkers than I would exchange a meteorite
for its weight in old nails.”

The Doctor abounded in promising but unfruitful
schemes for helping forward the Putnam Rangers. He

proposed that Colburne should send a circular to all the
clergymen and Sabbath-school superintendents of the
county, calling upon each parish to furnish the subscriber
with only one good recruit.

“If they do that,” said he, “as they unquestionably
will when the case is properly presented to them, why the
company is filled at once.”

He advised the young man to make an oratorical tour,
delivering patriotic speeches in the village lyceums, and
circulating an enlistment paper at the close of each performance.
He told him that it would not be a bad move
to apply to his professional brethren far and near for aid
in rousing the popular enthusiasm. He himself wrote favorable
notices of the captain and his company, and got
them printed in the city journals. One day he came home
in a hurry, and with great glee produced the evening edition
of the New Boston Patriot.

“Our young friend has hit it at last,” he said to Lillie.
“He has called the muses to his aid. Here is a superb
patriotic hymn of his composition. It is the best thing of
the kind that the literature of the war has produced.”
(The Doctor was somewhat given to hyperbole in speaking
well of his friends.) “It can't fail to excite popular
attention. I venture to predict that those verses alone
will bring him in fifty men.”

“Let me see,” said Lillie, making an impatient snatch
at the paper; but the Doctor drew it away, desirous of enjoying
the luxury of his own elocution. To read a good
thing aloud and to poke the fire are simple but real pleasures,
which some people cannot easily deny themselves—
and which belong of right, I think, to the head of a family.
The Doctor settled himself in an easy chair, adjusted
his collar, put up his eyeglass, dropped it, put on his
spectacles in spite of Lillie's remonstrances, and read as
follows—

“Let me see it,” persisted Lillie, making a second and
more successful reach for the paper. She read the verses
to herself with a slight flush of excitement, and then
quietly remarked that they were pretty. It has been suspected

that she kept that paper; at all events, when her
father sought it next morning to cut out the verses and
paste them in his common-place book, he could not find it;
and while Lillie pretended to take an interest in his search,
she made no distinct answer to his inquiries. I am told
by persons wise in the ways of young ladies that they
sometimes lay aside trifles of this sort, and are afterwards
ashamed, from some inexplicable cause, of having the fact
become patent even to their nearest relatives. It must
not be understood, by the way, that Miss Ravenel had lost
her slight admiration for that full-blown specimen of the
male sex, Colonel Carter. He was too much in the style
of a Louisiana planter not to be attractive to her homesick
eyes. She welcomed his rare visits with her invariable
but nevertheless flattering blush, and talked to him with
a vivacity which sent flashes of pain into the soul of Colburne.
The young man admitted the fact of these spasms,
but tried to keep up a deception as to their cause. In his
charity towards himself he attributed them to an unselfish
anxiety for the happiness of that sweet girl, who, he feared,
would find Carter an unsuitable husband, however grandiose
as a social ornament and accomplished as an officer.

In spite of these sentimental possibilities of disagreement
between the Colonel and the Captain, their friendship
daily grew stronger. The former was not in the
least influenced by lovelorn jealousy, and set much store
by Colburne as being the only officer in his regiment who
was precisely to his taste. He had desired, but had not
been able to obtain, the young gentlemen of New Boston,
the sons of the college professors, and of the city clergymen.
The set was limited in number and not martial nor
enthusiastic in character. It had held aristocratically
aloof from the militia, from the fire companies, from personal
interference in local politics, from every social enterprise
which could bring it into contact with the laboring
masses. It needed two years of tremendous war to break
through the shy reserve of this secluded and almost monastic

little circle, and let loose its sons upon the battle-field.
The Colonel was disgusted with his raft of tinkers
and tailors, as he called his officers, although they were
mostly good drill-masters and creditably zealous in learning
the graver duties of their new profession. The regular
army, he said, had not been troubled with any such
kind of fellows. The brahminism of West Point and of
the old service revolted from such vulgar associations. It
required the fiery breath of many fierce battles, in which
the gallantry of volunteers shone conspicuous, to blow this
feeling into oblivion.

One day the Colonel related in confidence to the Doctor
a circumstance which had given him peculiar disgust.
The Governor having permitted him to nominate his own
Lieutenant-Colonel, he had selected an ex-officer of a three
months' regiment who had shown tactical knowledge, and
gallantry. The field position of Major he had finally resolved
to demand for Colburne. Hence an interview, and
an unpleasant one, with the chief magistrate of Barataria.

“Governor,” said Carter, “I want that majority for a
particular friend of mine, the best officer in the regiment
and the best man for the place that I know in the State.”

The Governor was in his little office reclining in a high-backed
oaken chair, and toasting his feet at a fire. He
was a tall, thin, stooping gentleman, slow in gait because
feeble in health, with a benign dignity of manner and an
unvarying amiability of countenance. His eyes were a
pale blue, his hair a light chesnut slightly silvered by fifty
years, his complexion had once been freckled and was still
fair, his smile was frequent and conciliatory. Like President
Lincoln he sprang from the plain people, who were to
conquer in this war, and like him he was capable of intellectual
and moral growth in proportion to enlargement of
his sphere of action. A modest, gentle-tempered, obliging
man, patriotic in every impulse, devout in the severe
piety of New England, distinguished for personal honor

and private virtues, he was in the main a credit to the
State which had selected him for its loftiest dignity.

He had risen from his chair and saluted the Colonel
with marked respect. Although he did not like his moral
ways, he valued him highly for his professional ability
and courage, and was proud to have him in command of a
Baratarian regiment. To his shy spirit this aristocratic
and martial personage was in fact a rather imposing phenomenon.
Carter had a fearful eye; by turns audaciously
haughty and insolently quizzical; and on this occasion
the Governor felt himself more than usually discomposed
under its wide open, steady, confident stare. He seemed
even a little tremulous as he took his seat; he dreaded to
disagree with the representative of West Point brahminism;
and yet he knew that he must.

“Captain Colburne.”

“Oh—Captain Colburne,” hesitated the Governor. “I
agree with you, Colonel, in all that you say of him. I
hope that there will be an opportunity yet of pushing him
forward. But just now,” he continued with a smile that
was apologetical and almost penitent, “I don't see that I
can give him the majority. I have promised it to Captain
Gazaway.”

“To Gazaway!” exclaimed Carter. A long breath of angry
astonishment swelled his broad breast, and his cheek
would have flushed if any emotion could have deepened
the tint of that dark red bronze.

“You don't mean, I hope, Governor, that you are resolved
to give the majority of my regiment to that boor.”

“I know that he is a plain man,” mildly answered the
Governor, who had begun life himself as a mechanic.

“Plain man! He is a plain blackguard. He is a toddy-mixer
and shoulder-hitter.”

The Governor uttered a little troubled laugh; he was
clearly discomposed, but he was not angry.

“I am willing to grant all that you say of him,” he answered.
“I have no personal liking for the man. Individually

I should prefer Captain Colburne. But if you
knew the pressure that I am under—”

He hesitated as if reflecting, smiled again with his habitual
gentleness, folded and unfolded his hands nervously,
and proceeded with his explanation.

“You must not expose our little political secrets, Colonel.
I am obliged to permit certain schemes and plots
which personally I disapprove of. Captain Gazaway lives
in a very close district, and influences a considerable number
of votes. He is popular among his class of people, as
you can see by the ease with which he filled his company.
He and his friends insist upon the majority. If we refuse it
we shall probably lose the district and a member of Congress.
That is a serious matter at this time when the
administration must be supported by a strong house, or
the nation may be shipwrecked. Still, if I were left alone
I would take the risk, and appoint good officers and no
others to all our regiments, satisfied that success in the
field is the best means of holding the masses firm in
support of the Government. But in the meantime Burleigh,
who is our candidate in Gazaway's district, is defeated,
we will suppose. Burleigh and Gazaway understand
each other. If Gazaway gets the majority, he
promises to insure the district to Burleigh. You see the
pressure I am under. All the leading managers of our
party concur in urging upon me this promotion of Gazaway.
I regret extremely that I can do nothing now for
your favorite, whom I respect very much. I hope to do
something for him in the future.”

“When an election is not so near at hand,” suggested
Carter.

“Here,” continued the Governor, without noticing the
satire, I have been perfectly frank with you. All I ask in
return is that you will have patience.”

“'Pon my honor, I can't of course find fault with you
personally, Governor,” replied the Colonel. “I see how
the cursed thing works. You are on a treadmill, and

must keep stepping according to the machinery. But by
—! sir, I wish this whole matter of appointments was in
the hands of the War Department.”

“I almost wish it was,” sighed the Governor, still
without a show of wounded pride or impatience.

It was this conversation which the Colonel repeated to
the scandalized ears of Doctor Ravenel, when the latter
urged the promotion of Colburne.

“I hope you will inform our young friend of your efforts
in his favor,” said the Doctor. “He will be exceedingly
gratified, notwithstanding the disappointment.”

“No,” said the Colonel. “I beg your pardon; but
don't tell him. It would not be policy, it would not be
soldierly, to inform him of any thing likely to disgust him
with the service.”