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THE MARCH TO THE CAPITOL.
ARGUMENT.
The fall of Sumter was immediately followed by a movement of Virginia rebels on the Capitol. The President's proclamation, calling for troops to defend Washington, was answered by a spontaneous rising of the loyal states. The Poem here describes the enthusiasm of the people, and the prompt action of Massachusetts. Her first regiment reached Baltimore four days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, and on a day memorable to our country as the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington. This regiment, the Sixth Massachusetts, was attacked by a rebel mob, and fought its passage through Baltimore with the loss of several men. The stirring incidents of the march, illustrated in this poem, are all vouched for as having taken place as chronicled.
Hath sons of valiant mould—
Bright-eyed and gentle-featured,
Strong-limbed and stalwart-souled!
Within her lap she holds them—
Her lap of fruitful soil;
And, bosomed on her fragrant hills,
They drink the milk of toil.
And so they wax to manliness,
By bread of Freedom nursed;
And so they love, all lands above,
Old Massachusetts first!
From blue Potomac's stream
To woods of far Aroostook,
There flashed a lightning gleam:
In scrolls of fire electric
The battle-word went forth—
Like burning brand from hand to hand,
Through all the loyal North:
“The Capitol's in danger!”—
So every soul rehearsed,
And passed the brand from hand to hand—
Old Massachusetts first!
And up from every wold,
The sturdy yeomen mustered,
Like minute-men of old.
From all the marts of merchants,
And all the fields of toil,
And left the iron at the forge,
The ploughshare in the soil!
And down, to save the Capitol,
In gallant haste they burst—
From hill and glen, like Minute-Men,
And Massachusetts first!
And Mohawk's storied gorge—
From Bunker Hill and Monmouth,
And ice-bound Valley Forge;
As Bread and Wine, to strengthen souls,
Ye draw from sacred pyx,
So drew we from our battle-fields
The strength of 'Seventy-six!
And then, to save the Capitol
From Treason's power accurst,
With warlike throes the States arose—
Old Massachusetts first!
O day remembered well!
The greybeards and the schoolboys
Its hallowed legends tell;
How four score years and six have gone,
Since Freedom's snow-white bud,
New-blossoming then, from heroes' hearts,
Grew red with priceless blood;
At Lexington and Concord—
When Freedom's flower out-burst,
With fragrance bland to fill the land—
Old Massachusetts first!
How thrilled our loyal land,
When marched the Union soldiers
O'er Susquehanna's strand:
By dark Patapsco's flood,
And Maryland's magnolia white
Grew red with martyrs' blood!
The old, old strife of Freedom
With Freedom's foes, rehearsed,
Alike the Day, alike the Fray—
Old Massachusetts first!
Beside the road we formed:
Around us gathering, wolf-like,
The howling traitors swarmed:
To left and right, still mustering,
With swift and fierce attacks,
They taunted us, and spat on us,
And smote us at our backs!
But on we marched, unfaltering,
Nor answered, while they cursed,
With yells of hate, each loyal State—
Old Massachusetts first!
They trailed the Union Flag,
And flaunted in our faces
Secession's hateful rag.
Our blood grew hot, like flame—
And one brave man, with daring hand,
Struck down the thing of shame!
And dared them to their worst—
And so we bore, through Baltimore—
Old Massachusetts first!
Their iron rain they cast;
With coward shots, from casements,
They pierced us as we passed!
Then sank our youngest comrade—
All torn with cruel scars—
And raised aloft his bleeding hands,
And hailed the Union stars!
“All hail! the Stars and Stripes!” he cried;
And thus his bold heart burst;
And thus we gave our soldiers brave—
Old Massachusetts first!
She bears no craven sons:
Through heroes and through martyrs
Her life-blood sweetly runs!
And when from dark Patapsco,
The death-news swiftly sped,
“Bring back,” she said, “my loyal ones—
“Bear tenderly my dead!”
And soldiers' arms reversed,
To glory's bed we bore the dead—
Old Massachusetts first!
The strong Atlantic breaks;
And swiftly stride the whirlwinds
O'er stormy Northern lakes;
And grandly roll the rivers
Through Western vales and hills;
But stronger—swifter—grander far,
Is Freedom—when she WILLS!
And wheresoe'er her trumpet
Shall sound, with lofty burst,
You'll find in camp, with loyal tramp,
Old Massachusetts first!
“When the Southern flag was brought forward, a MISCREANT catching the flag, tore it from its staff.—
Balt. Repub. (Secession), April 19.“One of the Massachusetts men was killed by a great piece of iron, thrown from a house-top, striking him on the head.—
Philadelphia Press, April 20.“After the soldiers from the old ‘Bay State’ had been brutally shot down, a young man scarcely twenty years old, lay upon the ground mortally wounded. With his eyes fast growing dim, he raised himself erect, and throwing his arms wildly about, exclaimed, ‘All hail to the Stars and Stripes,’ and fell back dead.”—
Extract from a Letter.The Governor of Massachusetts sent the following dispatch to the Mayor of Baltimore.
“I pray you to cause the bodies of our Massachusetts soldiers dead in Baltimore, to be immediately laid out, preserved in ice, and tenderly sent forward by express to me.’
SUMTER.
ARGUMENT.
In 1860, Major Robert Anderson (who had served with distinction under General Scott, in Mexico, and received a severe wound at the battle of El Molino del Rey, where he displayed a signal courage), was appointed to command the forts in Charleston, S. C. When hostilities were threatened by the rebels, he was in occupation of Fort Moultrie; but deeming that position untenable by his small force, he evacuated it, and raised the National Flag on Fort Sumter, Dec. 27, 1860. Assembling his little garrison, soldiers and workmen around the flag-staff, and holding the cord himself, he knelt reverently down, many of the group following his example. The chaplain offered an earnest prayer, and the men, with deep feeling, responded “Amen!” Major Anderson then drew the cord, and the Starry Flag ascended, to the music of “Hail Columbia.” ...
The rebels assaulted Fort Sumter from seven batteries, pouring an incessant storm of shot and shell against it, during thirty-four hours. Pending the battle, Fort Sumter's barracks took fire. The defenders were reduced to their last cartridges. They had consumed their last crust of bread before commencing the fight. They were nearly suffocated by smoke, and feeble from fatigue. In this condition, the brave commander listened to terms of capitulation. Overpowered by numbers, by famine, and by the elements, Major Anderson evacuated Fort Sumter on the 14th of April, 1861. “I marched out,” so reads the official report, “with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.” ...
The tall palmetto grows;
And there the soft gossypium blooms,
All white, like drifted snows;
And there the evergreen mosses
The evergreen oaks enfold,
And the laurel shines like silver,
And the orange bloom like gold;
And there, where groves of jasmine
O'erran the olden strands,
Down by the Southern rivers
Fort Sumter's citadel stands;
By Charleston's sandy bars,
And the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
The birds and bees we heard;
And under the yearning fallows
The tender grasses stirred:
New life out of death was breaking,
By breath of Spring-time kissed,
Until from Southland shadows
Crept up the chill of a mist;
And out of the Southern rivers,
And up from Southern leas,
A moaning arose, as of tempest,
And troubled the April breeze:
And the heart of our loyal nation
Awoke, as with cannon-jars,
When the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
Fort Sumter's walls ye spy,
And seven miles in, Fort Moultrie stands,
On Sullivan's Isle hard by;
Where erst, in the days of heroes,
Brave Moultrie held his own,
King George's royal throne:
When Marion stood by Moultrie,
With Etchoee's rangers brave,
And Jasper leaped o'er the ramparts,
Our fallen flag to save;
And nailed it aloft, to a merlon,
With cannon-rods for spars,
In the days when British invaders
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
We pledged our loyal troth:
In the hush of the holy Sabbath
We swore our Union Oath!
We prayed to the God of our fathers,
And knelt down, side by side—
Every loyal heart blessing the banner,
As a priest might bless the bride!
Then we swung to the air, like incense,
The smoke of our morning guns—
And we flung out the Stars of the Union,
To marry the winds and the suns!
And they rose up, sweetly and grandly,
And streamed from Sumter's spars—
Till the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
We watched the rolling suns;
For a hundred morns and a hundred eves
They blushed on our idle guns;
And under our idle casemates
We heard the hammers fall,
That, day by day, with iron strokes,
Were strengthening Moultrie's wall:
And the rebel drums awoke us
From idle sleep, each morn;
And the rebel flags, on rebel forts,
Out-flashed with rebel scorn!
By Charleston's sandy bars,
Till the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
Ten thousand beleaguered us round;
But over the ramparts of Sumter
Our giant columbiads frowned.
Might have opened each cannon's mouth—
Might have sent forth a fiery-tongued gospel
Far down through the traitorous South!
But the word came not to Anderson—
The word passed not his lips;
And we looked out vainly for succor—
All vainly for Federal ships;
Till we saw them lie idle at anchor,
By Charleston's sandy bars,
While the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
The midnight shadows passed;
Below us the surges were sobbing—
Around us moaned the blast;
And the mist from ocean drifted,
In salt tears over the wall;
And the clouds hung low on the ramparts,
Like folds of a funeral pall,—
When swiftly a shell, out of Moultrie,
Curved upward, with fiery arc;
Like a sword, outdrawn from the scabbard,
It smote through the mist and the dark!
And the clouds and the waves around us
Were cloven with cannon-jars,
When the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
And crashing of cannon-balls,
As they hurtled above our ramparts,
And battered our yielding walls:
Thrice to that traitorous parley
We answered, and then lay dumb,
And crouched in our lampless casemates,
And prayed for the morn to come:
And out, through mist and murk,
We flung three cheers for the Union,
And rose to our battle work;
While the traitor flags of Charleston
Waved out, from countless spars,
And the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
Our foes ten thousand strong;
Seven forts around us storming,
We battled them all day long:
And our giant wall was shattered—
And the “Old Flag” shut from its hold;
But 'twas nailed up again by our gallant Hart,
As 'twas nailed by Jasper, of old:
Through the fiery day, and fiery night,
It soared on the battle cloud,
And it waved, still waved, in the morning,
O'er Sumter's fiery shroud,
When the citadel lay like a ruin,
All scathed with battle's scars,
And the rebels a last shot of triumph
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
Fort Sumter's story passed—
Like fiery seed, in the fallows,
From all the free winds cast:
And upward, in crimson blossoms,
It flowers through all the land—
And upward, in loyal season,
It ripens to Harvest grand:
From the fiery seed of Sumter,
From crimson leaves and flowers,
Upsprings the Harvest of Freedom
Through all this land of ours!
Though scathed by battle's scars,
That the rebels of Carolina
Fired on the Banner of Stars!
The early discoverers found the present site of Charleston overgrown with jasmine, down to the river banks.
General William Moultrie defended Sullivan's Island against the British fleet and forces, under Sir Peter Parker, the latter withdrawing after severe losses. Marion and Sergeant Jasper were in the Fort, June 20, 1776.
The battle of Etchoee was won by Marion, with his Rangers, against a large force of Cherokee Indians, June 7, 1761.
Sergeant Jasper, seeing the staff of the American flag cut by a ball, sprang after it, over the ramparts, fastened it to the rammer of a cannon, mounted the parapet, and in the face of a hot fire from the enemy, hoisted it anew.
After Anderson's evacuation of Fort Moultrie the Rebels set a thousand negroes at work, repairing and strengthening it during more than three months.
Although U. S. steam vessels were lying in the offing, they offered no assistance to Major Anderson in his defence of Sumter.
From that moment until daylight the scene was grand beyond description. The dark embankment of clouds which fringed the horizon formed a sombre background, against which the graceful curves of the bombs, the exploding flash and the thick white ball of smoke arising from burst shells, formed a picture which can never be forgotten.—
Eye Witness.Major Anderson did not open again until seven o'clock, the cause of his remaining quiet being the want of oil to light up his casemates.
Peter Hart, an officer of the New York Police force, accompanied Mrs. Anderson in her visit to her husband in Fort Sumter. When the barracks took fire, during the engagement, he exerted himself gallantly to extinguish the flames, while shot fell and shells were bursting around him: and when the flag was shot down, and the rebels' fire was concentrated on the flag-staff, to prevent a rehoisting of the colors, Hart nailed the flag upon the wall, under a storm of shot, and amid the cheers of our brave troops in the Fort. ... On the occasion of a presentation of medals to the defenders of Sumter, by the New York Chamber of Commerce, Peter Hart was introduced amid great applause by the following remarks of Gen. Anderson, who held his hand: “I am happy, gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce, that you honor a man, who, though not a soldier, was of the greatest value to me at Fort Sumter. He was with me in Mexico and was a soldier under me there. At Fort Sumter he was a confidential friend, and had charge of our marketing and our mails.” He is the man who is represented on this picture as nailing the flag to the mast.
“A column of white smoke rose high in the air, and in a few minutes more the entire fort was one unbroken body of flame, which seemed as if it were to be the winding-sheet of the brave men whom it environed. Still floating above was the banner of the Stars and Stripes.”—
Letter from Charleston.“It was as if the Genius of Destruction had tasked its energies to make the thing complete. Brooded over by the desolation of ages it scarce could have been developed to a more full maturity of ruin. The walls of the internal structure, roofless, bare, blackened and perforated by shot and shell, hung in fragments, and seemed in instant readiness to totter down.”—
Charleston Mercury, the day of surrender. | Ballads of the war | |