University of Virginia Library

[Description: 564EAF. Page 052. In-line image of man holding a piece of paper aloft and smiling. He is free of shackles, which lie unfastened on the ground at his feet.]

4. CHAPTER IV.
MILES O'REILLY PARDONED.

WE are gratified to be able to announce that the
President, always attentive to the cry of suffering
and deserving soldiers, has granted a free pardon
to Private Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh regiment
New York Volunteers, now a prisoner on
Morris Island, South Carolina. The President takes

the view that O'Reilly's original offence was but
“an innocent joke” in his own eyes, however contrary
to the letter or spirit of the Revised Regulations
for the Army. O'Reilly has been ordered
North, and is expected here by the next steamer.
Mr. Lincoln, in giving instructions to Colonel E. D.
Townsend, Assistant Adjutant-General, for issuing
the order of pardon, referred to the old proverb
about “making the ballads of a nation, and allowing
any one else to make the laws.” It is believed that
Miles will be confidentially employed at the White
House in rendering into popular verse the stories
and traditions of the great Northwest; and no doubt
such a volume—the materials and anecdotes furnished
by Mr. Lincoln, and the verses by the Bard
of Green Erin—will be quite equal to anything in
the same line since the days of æsop's Fables, translated
by the poet Gay.

It is said that the immediate impelling cause of
this step on the part of the President—a very strong
one in view of the stand taken with regard to Private
O'Reilly by certain high authorities in the Navy
Department—was a song brought to the notice of
His Excellency by Captain Arthur M. Kinzie, of the
Illinois Cavalry, a very deserving young officer, who,

in the “halcyon days long ago,” collected, drilled,
and disciplined the first regiment of Colored Troops
that had been raised in the United States since the
days of General Andrew Jackson, who was of opinion
—concurring therein with General George Washington—that
colored men could stop a ball or fill a pit
as well as better; and that the exclusive privilege
of being killed or maimed in battle, or worked to
death in the trenches, was not that kind of privilege
for the exclusive right of which any great number
of earnest and sensible white men could long contend.
Capt. Kinzie, in the letter transmitting the
following verses to the President, declared that they
had been of the utmost value in reconciling the
minds of the soldiery of the old 10th Army Corps
to the experiment of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.
The verses were as follows; and although the
author never declared himself, they were universally
attributed through the Department of the South to
Private Miles O'Reilly:—

SAMBO'S RIGHT TO BE KILT.

Air—“The Low-backed Car.”

Whatever may be thought of the spirit animating
this ditty—which certainly is extremely devoid
of any philanthropic or humanitarian cant—the practical
results of its popular diffusion redounded undoubtedly
to the best interests of the service, “with
a view to soup.” The white soldiers of the Department
began singing it round their camp-fires at
night, and humming it to themselves on their sentry-beats.
It made them regard the enlistment of
the despised sons of Ham as rather a good joke at
first; and next, as a joke containing some advantages
to themselves. Very quickly they became
reconciled to the experiment; and it was not long
before they commenced to take in the movements

and doings of their humble colored allies, that sort
of half-ludicrous, half-pathetic interest which a jolly-hearted,
full-grown elder brother takes in the first
awkward attempts at manly usefulness that are
made by “little Bub,” who is some score of years
his junior. This was General Hunter's object in all
his orders and other measures relative to the organization
of colored regiments. He urged the matter
forward purely as a military measure, and without
one syllable or thought of any “humanitarian proletarianism.”
Every black regiment in garrison
would relieve a white regiment for service in the
field. Every ball stopped by a black man would
save the life of a white soldier. Besides, if the
blacks are to have liberty, the strictness of military
discipline is the best school in which their elevation
to the plane of freedom can be conducted. It was
Hunter's chief misfortune, and the greatest curse of
his Department, that this purely military experiment
was interfered with by a swarm of blackcoated,
white-chokered, cotton-speculating, long-faced,
philanthropy-preaching fanatics—the grand hierarch
of whom appeared of opinion that “a white man,
by severe moral restraint and constant attendance
upon his (the grand hierarch's) preaching, might in
time elevate himself to something very like an
equality with an average buck-nigger just fresh
from the plantations.” For the presence of these
civilians in the Department, General Hunter was
not responsible; nor for the evil effects of their
mischievous, and only mischievous, interference
should he be blamed.

“That song,” said the President, on hearing it
read by Colonel Hay, “reminds me of what Deacon
Stoddard, away down in Menard County, said one
day, when a woman that was of suspected repute
dropped a half eagle into the collection plate, after
one of his charity sermons: `I don't know where
she gets it, nor how she earns it; but the money's
good, and will do good. I wish she had some better
way of getting it than she is thought to have;
and that those who do get their money better, could
be persuaded to make half as good a use of it.' I
have no doubt, Hay, that O'Reilly, in whom you
seem to take such an interest, might be a great deal
better man than he is. But that song of his is both
good and will do good. Let McManus step over to
Colonel Townsend, and say that I want to see him.”
It was under these circumstances that Private Miles
O'Reilly obtained his pardon.