University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
COLONEL CARTER IS ENTIRELY VICTORIOUS BEFORE HE
BEGINS HIS CAMPAIGN.

Towards the close of this winter of 1862-3 Banks superseded
Butler, and the New England Division expanded
into the Nineteenth Army Corps. Every one who was
in New Orleans during that season will remember the
amazement with which he and all other persons saw
transport after transport steam up the river, increasing the
loyal forces in and around the city by at least ten thousand
men, which rumor magnified into twenty-five thousand.

Where did they come from, and where were they
going, and what would be the result? Since the opening
of the war no expedition of magnitude had been conducted
with similar secrecy; and every one argued that a general
who could plan with such reticence would execute with
corresponding vigor and ability. While the Secessionists
shrank within themselves, seeing no more hope of freeing
Louisiana from Northern Vandals, our Doctor and his
fellow Loyalists exulted in a belief that the war would soon
be brought to a triumphant close.

“Three mere transports!” exclaimed Ravenel, coming
in from a walk on the levee. “It is a most glorious spectacle,
this exhibition of the power of the Republic. It
equals the greatest military efforts of the greatest military
nations. One is absolutely reminded of consular Rome,
carrying on the war with Hannibal in Italy, and at the
same time sending one great army to Spain and another to
Africa. I pin my faith to the tail of General Scott's anaconda.
In the end it will crush Secessia, break every bone
in its body, and swallow it. I think, Colonel, that we
have every reason to congratulate ourselves on the prospects.”

“I really can't see it,” answered Carter, with a lugubrious
laugh.

“How so? You astonish me.”

“Don't you perceive that I lose my Governorship?”

“Oh, but—I don't anticipate an immediate close of the
struggle. It may last a year yet; and during that time—”

“That is not the point. King Stork has succeeded
King Log. King Stork's men must have the nice places
and King Log's men must get out of them.”

“Oh, but they won't turn you out,” exclaimed Lillie, and
then blushed as she thought how her eagerness might be
interpreted.

“We shall see,” answered the Colonel gravely, and almost
sadly. He was so much in love with this girl that a

life in Capua with her seemed more desirable than the
winning of Cannæ's away from her.

“Here is my fate,” he said when he called on the following
evening, and handed her two official documents,
the one relieving him from his position as Military Governor,
the other assigning him to the command of a brigade.

“Now you must go into the battle again,” she said,
making a struggle to preserve her self-possession.

“I am sorry,—on your account.”

At this answer her effort at stoicism and maidenly
dignity failed; she dropped her head and hid her face in
the sewing work on which she had been engaged. This
was too much for Carter, to whom love had been a rejuvenation
and almost a regeneration, so that he was as gentle,
virginal, and sensitive as if he had never known the
hardening experiences of a soldier and a man about town.
Sitting down beside his betrothed, he pressed her temples
with both his hands and kissed the light, flossy, amber-colored
ripples of her hair. He could feel the half-suppressed
sobs which trembled through her frame, breaking
softly and noiselessly, like summer waves dying on a reedy
shore. How he longed to soothe her by grasping all her
being into his and making her altogether his own! He
was on the point of falling before the temptation which he
had that morning resolved to resist. He knew that he
ought not to marry, with only his colonelcy as a support;
yet he was about to urge an immediate marriage, and
would have done so had he spoken. Lillie would not
have refused him: it would not have been in the nature
of woman: what girl would put off a lover who was going
to the battle-field? Nothing prevented the consummation
of this imprudence but a ring at the door-bell. Miss Ravenel
sprang up and fled from the parlor, fearful of being
caught with tears on her cheeks and her hair disordered.
Mrs. Larue entered, gave the Colonel a saucy courtesy,
cast a keen sidelong glance at his serious countenance,

repressed apparently some flippant remark which was on
her lips, begged him to excuse her for a few moments, and
slid out of the room.

“Confound her!” muttered the Colonel, indignant at
Madame without cause, merely because he had been interrupted.

By the time that Lillie had dried her eyes, washed her
face and composed herself so far as to dare return to
the parlor, Mrs. Larue, ignorant of the good or mischief
that she was accomplishing, was there also. Consequently,
although Carter stayed late into the evening, there was no
second opportunity for the perilous trial of a tête-a-tête
farewell.

Next day he went by the first train to Thibodeaux. As
commanding officer of a brigade he exhibited his usual
energy, practical ability, and beneficent despotism. The
colonels were ordered to make immediate inspections of
their regiments, and to send in reports of articles necessary
to complete the equipment of their men, with requisitions
for the same on the brigade quartermaster. During several
consecutive days he personally went the rounds of his
grand guards and outlying videttes, choosing for this
purpose midnight, or a wet storm, or any other time when
he suspected that men or officers might relax their vigilance.
In such a pelting rain, as if the Father of Waters
had been taken up to heaven and poured back into Louisiana,
he came upon a picket of five men who had sought
refuge in some empty sugar-hogsheads. The closed-up
heads were toward the road, because from that direction
came the wind; and such was the pattering and howling
of the tempest, that the men did not hear the tramp of the
approaching horse. Reining up, the Colonel shouted,
“Surrender! The first man that stirs, dies!”

Not a soul moved or answered. For a minute or two
Carter sat motionless, smiling grimly, with the water
streaming down his face and uniform. Then he ordered:

“Come out here, one of you. I want to see what this
picket is made of.”

A corporal crawled out, leaving his gun behind him in
the recumbent hogshead. His face was pale at his first
appearance, but it turned paler still when he recognized
his brigade commander.

“I—I thought it was a secesh,” he stammered.

“And so you surrendered, sir!” thundered the Colonel.
“You allowed yourself to be surprised, and then you surrendered!
Give me your name, sir, and the names of
your men.”

Twenty minutes afterward a detachment from the reserve
relieved the culprits, and marched them into camp
as prisoners. Next day the corporal and the soldier whose
turn it had been to stand as sentry, went before a court-martial,
and in a week thereafter were on their way to
Ship Island, to work out a sentence of hard labor with
ball and chain.

On the midnight following this adventure Carter ordered
the outlying videttes to fire three rounds of musketry,
and then rode from camp to camp to see which regiment
got into line the quickest.

The members of his staff, especially his Adjutant-General
and Aid, found their positions no sinecures. Every
night one or other of these young gentlemen made the
rounds of the pickets some time between midnight and
daybreak, and immediately on his return to head-quarters
reported to the Colonel the condition of the line as regarded
practical efficiency and knowledge of the formalities.
If the troops fell in at three in the morning to go through
the drill of taking position to repel an imaginary enemy,
they had at least the consolation of knowing that some
poor staff-officer had been roused out of bed half an hour
before to disseminate the order. A staff-officer inspected
every guard-mounting and every battalion-drill, and made
a report as to how the same was conducted. A staff-officer
rode through every regimental camp every morning, and

made a report of its condition as to cleanliness. If the explosion
of a rifle was heard any where about the post, a
staff-officer was on the spot in five minutes to learn the
circumstances of the irregularity, to order the offender to
the guard-house, and to make his report to the all-pervading
brigade commander. A false or incomplete statement
he did not dare to render, so severe was the cross-questioning
which he was liable to undergo.

“Did you see it yourself, Lieutenant?” the Colonel
would ask.

“I saw the man cleaning his piece, sir; and he confessed
that he had discharged it to get the ball out.”

“Who was the man?”

“Private Henry Brown, Company I, Ninth Barataria.”

“Very well, Mr. Brayton.” (In the regular army a
lieutenant is Mr.) “Now have the kindness to take my
compliments to the Colonel of the Ninth Barataria and the
field-officer of the day, and request them to step here.”

First comes the commanding officer of the regiment in
which the offence has been committed.

“Walk in, Colonel,” says the brigade commander.
“Take a seat, sir. Colonel, a rifle has been fired by one
of your men this morning. How is that?”

“It was against my orders, sir. The man is in the
guard-house.”

“This is not the first offence of the kind—it is the third
or fourth within a week.”

“The fact is, sir, that the men have no ball-screws.
Their rifles get wet on picket duty, and they have no
means of drawing the loads. Consequently they are
tempted to discharge them, notwithstanding the orders.”

“Ah! You must give them the devil until they learn
to resist temptation. But no ball-screws! How is that?”

“I was not aware, sir, of the deficiency.”

“Not aware of it? My God, Colonel! Not aware of
such a deficiency of equipment in your own regiment?”

“I am extremely sorry, sir,” apologizes the humiliated

Colonel, who does not know what might be done to him
for such neglect, and who, although only three months in
the service, is a conscientious officer, anxious to do his
whole duty.

“Send up a requisition for ball-screws and for every other
lacking article of ordnance,” says the brigade commander.
“I will forward it to head-quarters and see that you are
supplied. But, by the way, how did this fellow get outside
your camp-guard with his gun? That is all wrong.
Have the goodness to haul your officer of the guard over
the coals about it. Make him understand that he is responsible
for such irregularities, and that he may get dismissed
the service if he doesn't attend to his duties. That
is all, Colonel. Will you take a glass of brandy? Good
morning, sir.”

Then, turning to the Adjutant-General: “Captain, make
out a circular directing commandants of regiments to see
that targets are set up in proper places where the relieved
guards may discharge their rifles. The best marksman to
be reported to regimental head-quarters, and to be relieved
from all ordinary duty for twenty-four hours.”

The field-officer of the day is now announced by the orderly.

“Come in, Captain; take a seat, sir. Are you aware,
Captain, that a rifle has been fired this morning, outside
the camps, in violation of general orders?”

“I—I think I heard it,” stammers the Captain, taking
it for granted that he is guilty of something, but not knowing
what.

“Do you know who the offender is?” demands the Colonel,
his brow beginning to blacken like a stormy heaven
over the ignoramus.

“I do not, sir. I will inquire, if you wish, Colonel.”

“If I wish! My God, sir! of course I wish it. Haven't
you already inquired? My God, sir! what do you suppose
your duties are?”

“I didn't know that this was one of them,” pleads the
now miserable Captain.

“Don't you know, sir, that you are responsible for every
irregularity that happens within the grand guards and
outside the camps, while you are field-officer of the day?
Don't you know that you are responsible for the firing of
this rifle?”

“Responsible,” feebly echoes the Captain, not seeing
the fact as yet, but nevertheless very much troubled.

“Yes, sir. It is your business, if any thing goes wrong,
to know it, and discover the perpetrators, and report them
for punishment. It was your business, as soon as that
gun was fired, to find out who fired it, to have him put
under guard, and to see that he was reported for punishment.
You haven't attended to your duty, sir. And because
the officers of the day don't know and don't do their
duty, I have to make my staff-officers ride day and night,
and knock up their horses. Here is my Aid, who has been
doing your business. Mr. Brayton, give the Captain this
man's name, &c. Do you know, Captain, why muskets
should not be fired about the camps at the will and pleasure
of the enlisted men?”

“I suppose, sir, to prevent a waste of ammunition.”

“Good God! Why, yes, sir; but that isn't all—that
isn't half, sir. The great reason, the all-important reason,
is that firing is a signal of danger, of an enemy, of battle.
If the men are to go shooting about the woods in this
fashion, we shall never know when we are and when we
are not to be attacked. Without orders from these head-quarters
no firing is permissible except by the pickets, and
that only when they are attacked. This matter involves
the safety of the command, and must be subjected to the
strictest discipline. That is all, Captain. Good morning,
sir.”

As the poor officer of the day goes out, the heavens seem
to be peopled with threatening brigade commanders, and

the earth to be a wilderness of unexlored and thorny responsibilities.

“Well, Mr. Brayton, what was the cause of the firing?”
inquired Carter one midnight, when the Aid returned from
an expedition of inquiry.

“A sentinel of the Ninth shot a man dead, sir, for neglecting
to halt when challenged.”

“Good, by” (this and that), exclaimed the Colonel.
“Those fellows are redeeming themselves. It used to be
the meanest regiment for guard duty in the brigade. But
this is the second man the Ninth fellows have shot within
a week. By” (that and the other) “they are learning
their business. What is the sentinel's name, Mr. Brayton?”

“Private Henry Brown, Company I. The same man,
sir, that was punished the other day for firing off his rifle
without orders.”

“Ah, by Jove! he has learned something—learned to
do as he is told. Mr. Brayton, I wish you would go to
the Colonel of the Ninth in the morning, and request him
from me to make Brown a corporal at the first opportunity.
Ask him also to give the man a good word in an order,
to be read before the regiment at dress parade to-morrow.
By the way, who was the fellow who was shot?”

“Private Murphy of the Ninth, who had been to Thibodeaux
and over-stayed his pass. He was probably drunk,
sir—he had a half-empty bottle of whiskey in his pocket.”

“Bully for him—he died happy,” laughed the Colonel.
“You can go to bed now, Mr. Brayton. Much obliged to
you.”

A few days later the brigade commander looked over
the proceedings of the court-martial which he had convened,
and threw down the manuscript with an oath.

“What a stupid—what a cursedly stupid record! Orderly,
give my compliments to Major Jackson, and request
him” (here he rises to a roar) “to report here immediately.”

Picking up the manuscript, he annotated it in pencil until
Major Jackson was announced.

“My God, sir!” he then broke out. “Is that your style
of conducting a court-martial? This record is a disgrace
to you as President, and to me for selecting you for such
duty. Look here, sir. Here is a private convicted of
beating the officer of the guard—one of the greatest offences,
sir, which a soldier could commit—an offence which
strikes at the very root of discipline. Now what is the
punishment that you have allotted to him? To be confined
in the guard-house for three months, and to carry a
log of wood for three hours a day. Do you call that a
suitable punishment? He ought to have three years of
hard labor with ball and chain—that is the least he ought
to have. You might have sentenced him to be shot. Why,
sir, do you fully realize what it is to strike an officer, and
especially an officer on duty? It is to defy the very soul
of discipline. Without respect for officers, there is no army.
It is a mob. Major Jackson, it appears to me that
you have no conception of the dignity of your own position.
You don't know what it is to be an officer. That is
all, sir. Good morning.”

“Captain,” continues the Colonel, turning to his Adjutant-General,
“make out an order disapproving of all the
proceedings of this court, and directing that Major Jackson
shall not again be detailed on court-martial while he
remains under my command.”

Carter was a terror to his whole brigade—to the stupidest
private, to every lieutenant of the guard, to every commandant
of company, to the members of his staff, and even
to his equals in grade, the colonels. He knew his business
so well, he was so invariably right in his fault-findings, he
was so familiar with the labyrinth of regulations and general
orders, through which almost all others groped with
many stumblings, and he was so conscientiously and
gravely outraged by offences against discipline, that he
was necessarily a dreadful personage. To use the composite

expression, half Hibernian and half Hebraic, of Lieutenant
Van Zandt, he was a regular West Point Bull of
Bashan in the volunteer China-shop. But while he was
thus feared, he was also greatly respected; and a word of
praise from him was cherished by officer or soldier as a
medal of honor. And, stranger still, while he was exercising
what must seem to the civilian reader a hard-hearted
despotism, he was writing every other day letters full of
ardent affection to a young lady in New Orleans.

In a general way one is tempted to speak jestingly of
the circumstance of a well-matured man falling in love
with a girl in her teens. By the time a man gets to be
near forty, his moral physiognomy is supposed to be so
pock-marked with bygone amours as to be in a measure
ludicrous, or at least devoid of dignity in its tenderness.
But Carter's emotional nature was so emphatic and volcanic,
so capable of bringing a drama of the affections to a
tragic issue, that I feel no disposition to laugh over his
affair with Miss Ravenel, although it was by no means his
first, nor perhaps his twentieth. Considering the passions
as forces, we are obliged to respect them in proportion to
their power rather than their direction. And in this case
the direction was not bad, nor foolish, but good, and highly
creditable to Carter; for Miss Ravenel, though as yet
barely adolescent, was a finer woman in brain and heart
than he had ever loved before; also he loved her better
than he had ever before loved any woman.

He could not stay away from her. As soon as he had
got his brigade into such order as partially satisfied his
stern professional conscience, he obtained a leave of absence
for seven days, and went to New Orleans. From
this visit resulted one of the most important events that
will be recorded in the present history. I shall hurry over
the particulars, because to me the circumstance is not an
agreeable one. Having from my first acquaintance with
Miss Ravenel entertained a fondness for her, I never could
fancy this match of hers with such a dubious person as

Colonel Carter, who is quite capable of making her very
unhappy. I always agreed with her father in preferring
Colburne, whose character, although only half developed
in consequence of youth, modesty, and Puritan education,
is nevertheless one of those germs which promise much
beauty and usefulness. But Miss Ravenel, more emotional
than reflective, was fated to love Carter rather than Colburne.
To her, and probably to most women, there was
something powerfully magnetic in the ardent nature which
found its physical expression in that robust frame, that
florid brunette complexion, those mighty mustachios, and
darkly burning eyes.

The consequence of this visit to New Orleans was a sudden
marriage. The tropical blood in the Colonel's veins
drove him to demand it, and the electric potency of his
presence forced Miss Ravenel to concede it. When he held
both her hands in his, and, looking with passionate importunity
into her eyes, begged her not to let him go again
into the flame of battle without the consolation of feeling
that she was altogether and for ever his, she could only
lay her head on his shoulder, gently sobbing in speechless
acquiescence. How many such marriages took place during
the war, sweet flowers of affection springing out of
the mighty carnage! How many fond girls forgot their
womanly preference for long engagements, slow preparations
of much shopping and needle-work, coy hesitations,
and gentle maidenly tyrannies, to fling themselves into the
arms of lovers who longed to be husbands before they
went forth to die! How many young men in uniform left
behind them weeping brides to whom they were doomed
never to return!

This sad little snatch from the chorus of a common-place
song Lillie often repeated to herself, with tears in

her eyes, when Carter was at the front, without minding a
bit the fact that her “brave boy” was thirty-six years old.

The marriage cost the Doctor a violent pang; but he
consented to it, overborne by the passion of the period.
There was no time to be lost on bridal dresses, any more
than in bridal tours. The ceremony was performed in
church by a regimental chaplain, in presence of the father,
Mrs. Larue, and half a dozen chance spectators, only two
days before the Colonel's leave of absence expired. Neither
then nor afterward could Lillie realize this day and hour,
through which she walked and spoke as if in a state of
somnambulism, so stupefied or benumbed was she by the
strength of her emotions. The lookers-on observed no
sign of feeling about her, except that her face was as pale
and apparently as cold as alabaster. She behaved with an
appearance of perfect self-possession; she spoke the ordained
words at the right moment and in a clear voice—
and yet all the while she was not sure that she was in her
right mind. It was a frozen delirium of feeling, ice without
and fire within, like a volcano of the realms of the
pole.

Once in the hackney-coach which conveyed them home,
alone with this man who was now her husband, her master,
the ice melted a little, and she could weep silently upon
his shoulder. She was not wretched; neither could she
distinctly feel that she was happy; if this was happiness,
then there could be a joy which was no release from pain.
She had no doubts about her future, such as even yet
troubled her father, and set him pacing by the half-hour
together up and down his study. This man by her side,
this strong and loving husband, would always make her
happy. She did not doubt his goodness so much as she
doubted her own; she trusted him almost as firmly as if
he were a deity. Yes, he would always love her—and she
would always, always, always love him; and what more
was there to desire? All that day she was afraid of him,
and yet could not bear to be away from him a moment.

He had such an authority over her—his look and voice
and touch so tyrannized her emotions, that he was an object
of something like terror; and yet the sense of his
domination was so sweet that she could not wish it to be
less, but desired with her whole beating brain and heart
that it might evermore increase. I give no record of her
conversation at this time. She said so little! Usually a
talker, almost a prattler, she was now silent; a look from
her husband, a thought of her husband, would choke her
at any moment. He seemed to have entered into her
whole being, so that she was not fully herself. The words
which she whispered when alone with him were so sacred
with woman's profoundest and purest emotions that they
must not be written. The words which she uttered in the
presence of others were not felt by her, and were not
worth writing.

After two days, there was a parting; perhaps, she
wretchedly thought, a final one.

“Oh! how can I let you go?” she said. “I cannot. I
cannot bear it. Will you come back? Will you ever
come back? Will you be careful of yourself? You
won't get killed, will you? Promise me.”

She was womanish about it, and not heroic, like her
Amazonian sisters on the Rebel side. Nevertheless she
did not feel the separation so bitterly as she would have
done, had they been married a few months or years, instead
of only a few hours. Intimate relations with her
husband had not yet become a habit, and consequently a
necessity of her existence; the mere fact that they had exchanged
the nuptial vows was to her a realization of all
that she had ever anticipated in marriage; when they left
the altar, and his ring was upon her finger, their wedded
life was as complete as it ever would be. And thus, in
her ignorance of what love might become, she was spared
something of the anguish of separation.

She was thinking of her absent husband when Mrs.
Larue addressed her for the first time as Mrs. Carter; and

yet in her dreaminess she did not at the moment recognize
the name as her own: not until Madame laughed and
said, “Lillie, I am talking to you.” Then she colored
crimson and throbbed at the heart as if her husband himself
had laid his hand upon her shoulder.

Very shortly she began to demand the patient encouragements
of her father. All day, when she could get at
him, she pursued him with questions which no man in
these unprophetic days could answer. It was, “Papa, do
you think there will be an active campaign this summer?
Papa, don't you suppose that Mr. Carter will be allowed
to keep his brigade at Thibodeaux?”

She rarely spoke of her husband except as Mr. Carter.
She did not like his name John—it sounded too common-place
for such a superb creature; and the title of Colonel
was too official to satisfy her affection. But “Mr. Carter”
seemed to express her respect for this man, her husband,
her master, who was so much older, and, as she thought,
morally greater than herself.

Sometimes the Doctor, out of sheer pity and paternal
sympathy, answered her questions just as she wished
them to be answered, telling her that he saw no prospect
of an active campaign, that the brigade could not possibly
be spared from the important post of Thibodeaux, etc. etc.
But then the exactingness of anxious love made her want
to know why he thought so; and her persevering inquiries
generally ended by forcing him from all his hastily
constructed works of consolation. In mere self-defence,
therefore, he occasionally urged upon her the unpleasant
but ennobling duties of patience and self-control.

“My dear,” he would say, “we cannot increase our
means of happiness without increasing our possibilities of
misery. A woman who marries is like a man who goes
into business. The end may be greatly increased wealth,
or it may be bankruptcy. It is cowardly to groan over
the fact. You must learn to accept the sorrows of your
present life as well as the joys; you must try to strike a

rational balance between the two, and be contented if you
can say, `On the whole, I am happier than I was.' I beg
you, for your own sake, to overcome this habit of looking
at only the darker chances of life. If you go on fretting,
you will not last the war out. No constitution—no woman's
constitution, at any rate—can stand it. You positively
must cease to be a child, and become a woman.”

Lillie tried to obey, but could only succeed by spasms.