CHAPTER XLV
The women and old men left in the city, and the entire Union army of occupation, read with avidity the first issue of the Chronicle under its new management.
Things in the office were necessarily in a jumble, so there was no original editorial work to do. The news columns told how the Palmetto State, the ironclad Ervin had devised, had been blown up, and how the dense volumes of smoke had risen emblematically and by some weird chance had formed themselves into a symmetrical palmetto tree, its leaves and branches perfectly distinct; some had even seen the rattlesnake coiled about the body. There were tidings, too, of the great fire at the Northeastern railway depot, and of the explosions of gunpowder there, killing more than a hundred men, women and children. But most readers looked eagerly for the editorial page and found there a clipping from the New York Independent.
“BABYLON IS FALLEN.”
So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which the Tribune’s correspondents presented to us on Tuesday morning, of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful, braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders without firing one shot in its own defense. The only heroism of the retiring traitor was in exploding powder for the horrible burning of their old women, children and old men. Having lately robbed both the cradle and the grave, they make a strange variety in their barbarous custom by now heaping the cradles into the graves.
What a hideous sight saluted the eyes of the Union troops as they entered the city—helpless human beings, scalded, burned, mutilated by those who ought to have been their protectors; a city set on fire by its own garrison when not a flame could touch its enemy’s head, but only singe and roast its own inhabitants. Terrible is the self-inflicting retribution which an all-wise Providence has decreed against this cockatrice’s den. Except for Charleston, the rebellion would never have been, and except Charleston had been terribly scourged by the war, poetic justice would have failed. But “vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” No battle and praises—worthy defeat! No stout defense and honorable capitulation! Nothing but the hanging of a hound’s tail between his swiftly running legs! Oh, shame, where is thy blush? Was there any city in the South that specially boasted its chivalry? That city was Charleston! Oh, fallen Babylon! Oh, elegant city of splendid lies! Rear now a monument to thy shame and inscribe the obelisk with the wisdom of Solomon: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall!” Now comes the question, will it ever be worth while to rebuild Charleston? Is her name worth saving? Is her site worth a memory on the maps? Is her sin less guilty than Sodom’s and her punishment to be less heavy than Gomorrah’s?
And underneath it his many friends read with some surprise a note from Bob Dingley, whom the new management styled “a distinguished Union citizen who is now free to express his sentiments.”
The rebellion is at an end, and now why not discard old, worn-out theories? Let every good citizen take the oath of allegiance. These good Union men are our best friends. See how they supply bread to our citizens. What more is there to hope from the flying rebels? Let every true man acknowledge allegiance to the best government that ever was.
Yours for Liberty and Union,
Bob Dingley.
There was a great gathering of abolitionists in the fallen Babylon, and William Lloyd Garrison came to see how abolition prospered, and Colonel Charles Anderson, brother of Major Anderson, arm in arm with Dr. Theodore Tilton, editor of the New York Independent. Two ministers were recorded as being present. Dr. Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. R. S. Storrs, Jr., and many others were in the company. They said brave things over Sumter and raised the flag in triumph.
In those days, too, St. Michael’s saw strange things done within her holy walls. One morning at eight o’clock John Beesley, the sexton, who loved the church as the colonel loved a face of the long ago, came through the north door and found a gathering of men, women and children doing things the like of which had never been done before in those aisles. The old wrought iron hinges that were brought from England in the eighteenth century, were being knocked off the doors of the pews, and the handsome carved work of the pews themselves broken off as souvenirs. Upon the breast of the high and holy pulpit, where men had preached in the days of the Lord Proprietors of the colonies, there was an ancient I. H. N. monogram done in choice inlays of rare woods. The sexton saw with horror that it had been knocked out of its place by someone who had ascended the pulpit of God to do it. These men and women carried away their plunder.
Nor would it be permissible, save to one who would make his story whole, to leap in a sentence the two years of horror and add that the I. H. N. panel was returned to the rector of St. Michael’s some years afterwards by a clergyman whose name is not to be told, with the remarkable statement that he returned the monogram, as there was no place in his church for it.
There were two men who walked in sadness through the deserted city and came at nightfall to the old graveyard of St. Michael’s and entered. It was the hour when the worshippers gathered, a little family band in their home, for the weekly prayer meetings, and the shadows would fall around the old church and rest upon the graves of the departed. Then, while they lingered there with their God and their dead, sometimes the spirits of their fathers would come and join in the service and sprinkle incense upon the fire of their hearts; and the sunbeams would linger a little longer to bear the messages with them before they sped away to their homes beyond the mountains. Thus at the gloaming, when lovers used to meet, would the bridegroom of the Heavens come to prepare the church as a bride adorned for her husband.
It was an old burying ground and many men whom the South loved were buried there. The deepest passion of the ancient city’s soul was her love for her dead. One of the men led the other to where lay the eloquent Hayne, whose silver tongue had brought the great Webster up to his greatest effort. The other was Senator Wilson, Webster’s successor in the Senate. They looked at the graves grown over with weeds, for men had gone rabbit hunting in the shelled districts, and owls filled the offices. The two men were silent, nor could they find words fit for the scene. Their thought was of the great statesman, loved of all men, yet whose doctrines had brought such woe and destruction upon his city. And now the weeds were covering the grave of the apostle of secession and the owls and the bats inhabited the city of his love. With bared heads, in silence they paused while the tears welled into their eyes, then the senator said to his companion, in a broken voice:
“There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
The other answered: “If I had the power of a great painter, I would paint this scene—this ruined city under the heel of the conqueror, this temple defiled by vandals, and I would inscribe it: ‘The successor of Webster at the tomb of Robert Y. Hayne.’”
There was a band of soldiers that heard the ringing words of Henry Ward Beecher when the old flag was raised again on the walls of Fort Sumter, and shouted with the rest when he charged the war upon a proud and impatient aristocracy. These remembered that one was buried in St. Phillips graveyard, the proudest, most dashing of them all. So when there was a respite from duty they turned into the Western Cemetery and were seen by the simple grave of Carolina’s hero. Not a tuft of grass seemed misplaced about it.
“The arch-enemy!” one cried. “Damn—” but he stopped suddenly, like the boys of Dunvegan who must needs go over the hill out of sight of the moss-covered manse and the little red church in under the oaks before they could have heart to swear.
“John Caldwell Calhoun,” another read. “It’s a wonder some of the boys haven’t torn him out of there.”
“The old snook was a slick talker, but he had more sentiment than sense. None of those crazy loons down in here could see that it was too late in the day for slaves.”
It was heartlessly said, yet he, too, had omitted his usual profane word, like the little boy who drops the stolen apple when he sees his mother’s grave.
“Some night someone is going to mistake his grave for hidden treasure and open things up a bit, don’t you think?” the second remarked, with a glance they all understood.
But it had already been done, and by those who had long mistaken John C. Calhoun for hidden treasure. In the deepest quiet of the night, before the heel of the conqueror should tread on hallowed ground, they had come, loosing the sandals from their feet as though God were in every bush in the Western Cemetery; and fearful lest an enemy should touch his holy dust for desecration—tenderly, reverently, they had lifted their hero’s ashes and borne them away in secret till the storm should be overpast.