An Original Belle

by Edward Payson Roe

Lee and his great army, flushed with recent victories, were not all that Hooker had to contend with, but there was a man in Washington, whose incapacity and ill-will threatened even more fatal difficulties. Gen. Halleck, Commander-in-Chief, hung on the Union leader like the "Old Man of the Sea." He misled the noble President, who, as a civilian, was ignorant of military affairs, paralyzed tens of thousands of troops by keeping them where they could be of no practical use, and by giving them orders of which General Hooker was not informed. The Comte de Paris writes, "Lee's projects could not have been more efficiently subserved," and the disastrous defeat of General Milroy confirms these words. It was a repetition of the old story of General Miles of the preceding year, with the difference that Milroy was a gallant, loyal man, who did all that a skilful officer could accomplish to avert the results of his superior's blundering and negligence.

Hooker was goaded into resigning, and of the army of the Potomac the gifted French author again writes, "Everything seemed to conspire against it, even the government, whose last hope it was;" adding later: "Out of the 97,000 men thus divided (at Washington, Frederick, Fortress Monroe, and neighboring points) there were 40,000, perfectly useless where they were stationed, that might have been added to the army of the Potomac before the 1st of July. Thus reinforced, the Union general could have been certain of conquering his adversary, and even of inflicting upon him an irreparable disaster."

The fortunes of the North were indeed trembling in the balance. We had to cope with the ablest general of the South and his great army, with the peace (?) faction that threatened bloody arguments in the loyal States, and with General Halleck.

The people were asking: "Where is the army of the Potomac? What can it be doing, that the invasion goes on so long unchecked?" At Gettysburg this patient, longsuffering army gave its answer.

Meanwhile the North was brought face to face with the direst possibilities, and its fears, which history has proved to be just, were aroused to the last degree. The lull in the excitement which had followed the first startling announcement of invasion was broken by the wildest rumors and the sternest facts. The public pulse again rose to fever-heat. Farmers were flying into Harrisburg, before the advancing enemy; merchants were packing their goods for shipment to the North; and the panic was so general that the proposition was made to stop forcibly the flight of able-bodied men from the Pennsylvanian capital.

As Mr. Vosburgh read these despatches in the morning paper, Marian smiled satirically, and said: "You think that Mr. Merwyn is under some powerful restraint. I doubt whether he would be restrained from going north, should danger threaten this city."

And many believed, with good reason, that New York City was threatened. Major-General Doubleday, in his clear, vigorous account of this campaign writes: "Union spies who claimed to have counted the rebel forces as they passed through Hagerstown made their number to be 91,000 infantry and 280 guns. This statement, though exaggerated, gained great credence, and added to the excitement of the loyal people throughout the Northern States, while the disloyal element was proportionately active and jubilant." Again he writes: "There was wild commotion throughout the North, and people began to feel that the boast of the Georgia Senator, Toombs, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument, might soon be realized. The enemy seemed very near and the army of the Potomac far away." Again: "The Southern people were bent upon nothing else than the entire subjugation of the North and the occupation of our principal cities."

These statements of sober history are but the true echoes of the loud alarms of the hour. On the morning of the 20th of June, such words as these were printed as the leading editorial of the New York Tribune: "The rebels are coming North. All doubt seems at length dispelled. Men of the North, Pennsylvanians, Jerseymen, New-Yorkers, New-Englanders, the foe is at your doors! Are you true men or traitors? brave men or cowards? If you are patriots, resolved and deserving to be free, prove it by universal rallying, arming, and marching to meet the foe. Prove it NOW!"

Marian, with flashing eyes and glowing cheeks, read to her father this brief trumpet call, and then exclaimed: "Yes, the issue is drawn so sharply now that no loyal man can hesitate, and to-day Mr. Merwyn cannot help answering the question, 'Are you a brave man or a coward?' O papa, to think that a MAN should be deaf to such an appeal and shrink in such an emergency!"

At that very hour Merwyn sat alone in his elegant home, his face buried in his hands, the very picture of dejection. Before him on the table lay the journal from which he had read the same words which Marian had applied to him in bitter scorn. An open letter was also upon the table, and its contents had slain his hope. Mrs. Merwyn had answered his appeal characteristically. "You evidently need my presence," she wrote, "yet I will never believe that you can violate your oath, unless your reason is dethroned. When you forget that you have sworn by your father's memory and your mother's honor, you must be wrecked indeed. I wonder at your blindness to your own interests, and can see in it the influence which, in all the past, has made some weak men reckless and forgetful of everything except an unworthy passion. The armies of your Northern friends have been defeated again and again. I have means of communication with my Southern friends, and before the summer is over our gallant leaders will dictate peace in the city where you dwell. What then would become of the property which you so value, were it not for my influence? My hope still is, that your infatuation will pass away with your youth, and that your mind will become clear, so that you can appreciate the future that might be yours. If I can only protect you against yourself and designing people, all may yet be well; and when our glorious South takes the foremost place among the nations of the earth, my influence will be such that I can still obtain for you rank and title, unless you now compromise yourself by some unutterable folly. The crisis is approaching fast, and the North will soon learn that, so far from subduing the South, it will be subjugated and will gladly accept such terms as we may deem it best to give. I have fulfilled my mission here. The leading classes are with us in sympathy, and it will require but one or two more victories like that of Chancellorsville to make England our open ally. Then people of our birth and wealth will be the equals of the English aristocracy, and your career can be as lofty as you choose to make it. Then, with a gratitude beyond words, you will thank me for my firmness, for you can aspire to the highest positions in an empire such as the world has not seen before."