Bemidji Daily Pioneer Newspaper, February 22, 1918, Page 7

| “histery’ conveys powerful. lesson of what citizen. ; republio means, none rs a-more searching appeal thi W SRR AR Ry s suppose that. very . few. casual ers of the New York Herald of it 18th observed, in an obscure : . among the “Deaths,” the an- _nouncement ;. ; S “NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Cor- - ;vette Levant, Eat. 2° 11* 8, Long, 131° . ' W, on the 11th of May, Philip Nolan.” T happened to observe it, because '1-was stranded at the old Mission- . “house in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake *. Superior steamer which did not choose ‘come, and I was devouring, to the stubble, ell the current‘literature uld get hold: of, even down to the ~ deaths and marriages in the “Herald.” .My memory for names and people is t n“fl'nouncement. if -the of the Levant who reported it chosen to make it thus: “Died, 11th, ‘The Man without a Coun- 'was a8 “The Man with- | “'out & Country” that peor Philip’Nolan had generally been known by the offi- 0 T8 ‘who had him in charge ‘during ‘some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who had ‘sailed under them. "1 dare- say- there is many a man who - has' taken wine with him once a fort- night, in a three years’ cruise, who never knew- that his name was “No- § 1an,” or whether the poor wretch had . any namb at all. - ¢ There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story. Reason ‘enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's administra- ‘tion went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy,- the secrecy of honor- itself, among-the gentlemen of the navy who ~have had Nolan:in successive charge. ‘And certainly it speaks well for the es- “~prit de corps of the profession and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man’s story has been " . wholly unknown, and, I think, to the ~country at large also.. - " -1 hive reason to think, from some Investigations I made "in the naval archives when I was attached to ‘the bureau of construction, that every of- ' ficial report relating tohim was burned __when Ross burned the public bulldings o 3 bly one atsons, had ki Nogm foe g‘ttth%’engot thn:'m; . and when, on returning from his cruise, Bbe reported at Washington to one of the Crowninshields—who was in the navy department when he.came home .=—he found that the department fig- . mored the whole business.. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a non mi ricordo, de- termined on as a piece of policy, I do not- know. But this I do know, that " mince 1817, and possibly before,-no’ - naval officer has mentioned Nolan in =% his report of a cruise. As I say, there is no meed for se- erecy any longer. And now the poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth :while to tell a little of his story, by way of showing young Americans of today what it is to be = L"A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Leglon of the West,” as ths western diviston of our army was then called. When ‘Aaron Burr made his first dashing ex- pedition down to New Orleans in 1805, t Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as ' the devil wonld have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some dinner party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with (him, took hii a day o8 two's w In' hig’ flatboat, ugd. R ‘at Washington. One of the Tuckers;’ 1 at” your mess more ‘or ‘less ‘often ‘at ‘dinner, - His breakfast he ale in his own stateroom, he always-had a state- | room, which was where a sentinel, hysghed dead as night for | Even Nolan lost his swagger in a mo-| seduce him; and by the time the sall was over, Nolan wag enlisted body and soul. From that-time, though he did not'-yet know it, he lived as “A Man | without a Country.” : o -~ What Burr-meant to do I know no |- more than you, dear reader. ' It1s none. of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jef- | ferson and the -House of Virginia ot that- day undertook ‘to break on.the ' wheel ‘all the possible Clarences:of the 5 House of York, by the. great treason trial at Richmiond, some of the ‘lesser fry in that ‘distant Mississippl valley, which was farther from us than. Puget Sound is today, introduced the | like ‘novelty ‘on' thelr/ provincial stage, | and, to while ‘away. the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for ispectacles, a string of court-martials on the ers there. One and anoth- colonels 'and ‘majors’ were ed, and, to £iI out the list, little No-/ lan; ‘against “whom, 'heaven knows, ‘there was evidence enough, that he was sick ‘of the seryice, had been will- ing to be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march anywhither with anyone ‘who' would follow him, had the order only been signed, “By ‘command of His Exc. A. Burr.”- The courts dragged on. The big fiies es- caped, rightly for all I know. Nolan ‘wasg proved gullty enough, as I say yet you and I would never have heard of him," reader, but that, when the president of the court asked him at the ‘close, whether he wished to say any- thing to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy: ; “D——n the United States! I wish 1 may never hear of the United States againl” . ‘I'suppose. he did not know how the words shocked” old. Colonel Morgan, Y urt. - Half the cavalierly cursed in his madness. 5 on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midat of “Spanish plot,” “Orleans plot,” and all the rest, His education, such ‘as it was, had been ‘perfected in. commercial exped!- tions to Vera Cruz; and I think he told me: his father. once hired an English- man to be a private tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had spent haif his youth with an older brother, hunt- ing horses in Texas; and, in a word, to “] Wish | May Never Hear of the United States Againl”, nim “United States” was scarcely a reality.. Yet he had been'fed by “Unit- ed States” for all the years since he tad been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to “United States.” It was “United States” which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side, - Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because “United States” had picked you out first as one of her own confidential men of honor, that “A. Burr” cared tor you a straw more than for the flat- poat men who sailed his ark for him. { do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his coun- try, and wished he might never hear ber name again. He never did hear her name but once again, . From that moment, Septem- ber 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name sgain. For that half century and “saw or heard of the country. We ha ment. Then Morgan add: Marshal, takethe prisoner t Orleans in’ an armed boat, and deliver him t the naval commander there.” ; ‘The marshal gave® his orders, and the prisoner was taken out of court. - “Mr. Marshal,” continued ol gan, “see that no one mentions United States: to the prison ‘Marshal, ‘make my. respects to-Lieu- tenunt Mitchell at Orleans, and re- quest .bim to order that no one shall mention the United Sthtes to the pris- oner. while he’is on board ship. You will receive your wrjtten orders. from the ‘officer on duty here this evening. | The court is adjourned without. day, 1 have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings of the court to Washington City, and explained them to-Mr, Jefterson. Cer- tain: it is that the president approved them, ceitain, that 1s; it I'may beliéve the men who say they have seen his| signature. o e e The plan: then adopted was ‘sub- stantially the same which was neces- ‘sarily followed ever after. Perhaps it: was suggested by the ‘necessity of . sending him by water. from Fort Adams and Orleans. - The secretary. of the navy was requested to put®Nolan. on board'a government vessel bound; on a long cruise, and to direct that he ‘should”be only so far confined there as to make it certaln that he neve! few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of favor; and as almost ‘all of this story is traditional, as I have explained, I do not know cer- tainly what his first cruise was. But the commander to whom he was in- trusted—perhaps - it ‘was- Tingey or Shaw, though I'think it was one of the younger men—we are all old enough now—regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and according. to, his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan died. When I was second officer of the In- trepid some thirty years after, I saw the original paper of instructions, 1 have been sorry ever since that Idid not copy the whole of it. It ran, how- ever, much in this way: 2 “Washington,” (with the date, which must ‘have been -late in 1807). 2 “the “wish that he might never hear of the Unied States again. *'Bhe. court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled. 2 “For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by the president of this department. 3 “You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him there with such precautions as shall prevent his escape. “You will provide him "with: such quarters, rations, and -clothing as would be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were a passenger on your vessel on the business of his gov- ernment. “The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable to them- selves regarding his soclety. He is to be exposed to no indignity of any kind nor is he ever unnecessarily to be re- minded’ that he is a prisoner. _“But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or to see any information regarding it; and you will .especially caution all the officers under your command to take care that, in the various indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which his pun- ishment is involved, ‘shall ' not be broken. “1t is the intention of the govern- ment that he shall never agaln see the country which he has disowned. Before the end of your cruise you will recelve orders which will give effect -| to this intention. “Respectfully-yours, “W. SOUTHARD, “for the Secretary of the Navy.” If 1 had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it was he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his. The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met “The Man without a Country” was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of war—cut off more than half the talk men like to have at sea. - But it was always thought too hard that ha should never meet the rest of us, except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one sys- tem, He was not permitted to talk with the men unless an officer was by, ‘With officers he had unrestrained in- tercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he grew shy, though he had favor- ites: I was one. Then the captain always asked him to dinner on Mon- day. Every mess In succession took up the invitation in its turn, Aécord- ing to the size of the ship, you had him )| any’special jollification, they wer: | mitted to invite “Plain-Buttons, {:they ‘called him. * Then Nolan' was sent I"svith some officer, and the men were /| torbidden ‘to speak of home while he ‘|'chose to wear a regulation army uni- /| form, he was not permitted to. wear 1 the army button, for the reason that it ‘bore either the initials or the in- Alexandria. We had leave to make & . party and go up to Cairo and the Pyra- allusion to 1t.-‘These were common . books from an officer, which, in those somebody ‘on the watch, door. . And whateyer else b drank he ate or drank ‘alone. f times, when the marines or sailors had was there. They called him “Plain Buttons,” because, while he always signia of the country he had disowned. 1 remember, soon after I joined the ‘navy, I.was on shore with some of the older officers from our ship and from the Brandywine, which we had met at mids. As we jogged along some of the gentlemen fell to talking about No- 1an, and someone told " the' system which was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. 'As was almost never:permitted to go on ‘shore, even though the vessel 1ay 1n port for months, bis time, at the best, hung heavy; and everybody was per mitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and made no enough ‘in the old days,” when people in the other hemisphere: talked of the United States as little as we do of Paraguay. He had aimost all the for- eign papers that came into the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must- £0 over them first, and cut ‘out any advertisement or stray paragraph thaf alluded to America. Right In the “‘midst of one of Napoleon's battles, or one of Canning’s speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an’advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the president’s message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, L which ‘afterwards I*had enough, and more than enongh, to do with. I re- ‘member {t, because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allu- sion to reading was made, told a story of something which' happened at the Cape of Good Hope on:Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I ever knew of that voyage. = They had touched at the Cape, and had done the civil thing with the English admiral and the fleet; and then, leaving for a long cruise up the Indian ocean, Phil- lips had borrowed a lot of English days, as indeed in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which they had all of them heard of, but which most of them had never seen, I think it could not have been published long., ~ Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of any- thing national in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had -cut out the “he let Nolan'f “The Bermudas ought to be ours and, by Jove, should‘be one day.” :So No- lan was permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so_often now, but when I was young' we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well, so it happened that In his turn Nolan ; took the book and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. No- body In the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and bor- der chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a min- ute and drank something, and then be- gan, without a thought of what was coming— Brea'ahend there the man, with soul so ead, Who never .to ‘himself hath sald— It seems impossible to us that any- body ever heard this for the first time; but all these fe!'.ws did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still un- consciously or mechanically— This is my own, my native land! Then they all-saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on— Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on & foreign strand?— 1t such- there breathe, go, mark him well. By this time the men were all be- side themselves, wishing there was any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on: For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name,. Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite these titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentered all in self,~ and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung the book -into the sea, vanished into his stateroom, “and by Jove,” said Phil- lips, “we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why 1 did not return his Wal- ter Scott to him.” That story shows about the time when Nolan’s braggadocio must have broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his stateroom he never was the same man dgain. He never read aloud again, unless it was the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was not that merely. He never en- tered 1n with the other young men ex- actly as a companion again. He was always shy afterward, when I knsw calm, ‘hard passion; but T bluél!ered out that 1 would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to. hear, me; but, he did, almost in & whisper, say: “Oh, if anybody bad 8ald 50 to me when I was of your age!” I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abuséd, for 1 never told ‘this story till now, which after- ward made us great friends. He was very kind to me, Often he sat up, or even got-up, at night to walk the deck with me when It was my watch. He ‘explained to me a.great deal of my mathematics. “He lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He nev- er alluded so directly, :to his: story again; bnt from one and another offi- cer ‘I haye learned, fn thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise,:I was more sorry than I can tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when I thought I had some in- fluence in Washington, I moved heav- en and earth to have him discharged. But it was ke getting a ghost out of on. They pretended there was no such man, and never was:such a man. They. will say so at the now! Perhaps they'do not know. It will not be the first thing in ice of which the department appears to know nothing! by ' There is & story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. . But this-I be- lieve to be a lie; or. rather, it 1s & myth, ben trovato, involving & tre- niendous blowing-up with which he sank Burr, asking him how he liked to be “without & country.” But it is clear, from Burr's life, that nothing of. the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least 'mystery at bottom. So Philip Nolan had his wish ful- filled. Poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man, submitted to the fate he had asked for. He nev- er intentionally.added to the dificulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold. Accidents would happen ; but they never happened from his fault. Lieutenant Truxton told me that when Texas was annexed, there was a careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of Nolan’s handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it, from the map of the world and the map of ‘Mexico, The United States had been cut out .when the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted rightly enough, that to do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table, when, for a short time, I was in command of the “George Washington corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata, and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and of Buenos ‘and was “~ Hushed the Men Down. talkative mood. Some story of a tum- ble reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild horses in Texas with his brother Steph- en, at a time when he must have been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal-ef spirit—so-much so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the table for an in- stant, to be broken by Nolan himself, For he asked, perfectly unconsciously, “Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their independ- ence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near twenty years.” There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never heard of Texas was that Texas and her af- fairs had been painfully out of his newspapers since Austin’ began his gettlements; go that, while he read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California, this virgin province, in which his' brother had traveled so far and, I believe, had died, had ceased to be with him. Walters and Willlams, the two Texas ‘men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted-by -the third link in the chain of the ~captain’s chan- delier. Watrous was seized with a con- vulsion of sneezing. - Nolan.himsell saw that something was to pay, he did just ol vere_entertains. with of:thelr ining ventures In riding the half-wild horses 1 e B i 0 say he must leave Mr. N and led him off to:the place where the dance was forming,: " 000 Nolan thought he 2ad got his chance, - He had known ‘hef at Philadelphis, ° d at other places had met her, and .You could not . this was a godsend. : talk In contredances, as you do In cotillions, or even in the pauses ‘of tongues and sounds, as well as for eyes and blushes.. 'He began with her travels, and Burope, and-Vesuvius, and the French; and then, when they had worked down; and had that long talk- - ing time at the bottom of the set, he said boldly, a little pale, she said, as she told me the story, years after: “And what do'you hear from home, Mrs. Graft?" 2 And that splengld creature looked through him. ' Jove! how she must have looked through him! “Home!! man who never wanted to hear of home again!” and she walked directly. up the/deck to her husband, and left poor-Nolan alone, ag he always was, —He did not dance again. 1 cannot give any history of him in order; nobody can now; and, indeed, 1 am not trying to. These are the tra- ditions, which I sort out, as I believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for forty years. The fellows used to say he was the “Iron Mask;" and poor George Pons went' to his grave in the belief that this was the author of “Junius,” who was being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not very strong in the historical line. A happler story than either of these I ‘'have told is of the war. That came along soon after. I have heard this affair told in three or four ways, and, indeed; it may have happened more than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell. However, in one, &t least, of the great frigate duels with the English, in which the navy was really baptized, it happened that a round shot from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down the officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now' you may say what you choose -about courage, but that is not & nice thing to see. But as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and the surgeon's people were car- rying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in his shirt sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had been the officer, told them oft with authority, who should go to the cock- pit with the wounded men, who should stay with him, perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all 18 right and is golng to be right. And he finished loading the gun with his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed, captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the encmy struck, sitting on the carriage while the gun: was cooling, though he i-as exposed all the time, showing tl. iy easier ways to handle heavy shot, mak- ing the raw. hands laugh at their own blunde when.. again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any other gun on the ship. The. cAptiin walkéd' forwiird, by way, of encouraging the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said: “I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir.” And this is a part of the story where all the legends agree ; that the commo» dore sald: “1 see you do, and I thank you, sirg and 1 shall never forget this day, sir, and you never shall, sir.” And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman’s sword, in the midst of the state and ceremony; of the quarterdeck, he said: ' “Where is Mr, Nolan? Ask Mr. No» lan to come here.” And, when Nolan came, the captaia sald: “Mr, Nolan, we are all very grateful to you today; you are one of us today; you will be named in the dispatches.” And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that Anfernal day at Fort Adams. But al ways afterward, on occasions of cere- mony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the commodore’s. The captain did mention him in the dispatches. It was always sald he asked that he might be pardoned. He of war. But nothing ever came of 1% As I sald, that was about the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington, and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry, itself on because there was nobody to stop it without any new orders from home, 2 1 have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of the Nukahiwa islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his father, Essex Porter, that 1s, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As an artil- lery officer, who had seen service In the West, Nolan knew more about for- tifications, embrasures, ravelines, stockades, and all that, than any of them did; and-he worked with a right good will in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question rbout his punishment. - We ‘should nave kept the islands, and at this mo- ment we should have one station im the Pacific ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little wa- tering place, would have found it was pre-occupled. But Madison and the _Virginians, of course, flung all that away. All that was near fifty years ago. It Nolan was thirtr then. be maM (To be continued). ———t waltzing; but there were chances: for Mr. Nolan'l!! -1 thought you were'the ° and when. the. gun. cooled wrote a special letter to the secretary,, AN