XXII
Sam as a strategist
Agatha's second progress northward was far more difficult of accomplishment than the first had been. Under McClellan's skilled vigilance the armed mob which he found "cowering on the Potomac" in August, had been converted into an army, drilled, disciplined, and familiar with every detail of that military art which it was called upon to practise. The lines west of Washington were far more rigidly drawn and more fully manned than before, and the officers and men who held them exercised a vigilance that had not been thought of a few months earlier.
And this was not the only difficulty that Agatha encountered in her effort to reach Baltimore. A passport system had been inaugurated at the North, under operation of which those who would travel, and especially those who travelled toward Baltimore,—a city whose loyalty to the Union lay under grave suspicion,—must give a satisfactory account of themselves in order to secure the necessary papers. War had begun to bring the country under that despotism which military force always and everywhere regards as the necessary condition of its effectiveness.
It was a strange spectacle that the country presented during that four years of fratricidal strife. A great, free people, the freest on earth, fell to fighting, one part with another part. Each side was battling, as each side sincerely believed, for the cause of liberty; each was unsparingly spending its blood and treasure in order, in Mr. Lincoln's phrase, that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people might not perish from the earth." Yet on both sides a military rule as rigorous as that of Russia laid its iron hand upon the people, and the people submitted themselves to its exactions almost without a murmur. Arbitrary, inquisitorial, intolerant, this military despotism wrought its will both at the North and at the South, overriding laws and disregarding constitutions, making a mockery of chartered rights, and restraining personal liberty in ways that would have caused instant and universal revolt, had such things been attempted by civil authority.
The military arm is a servant which is apt to make itself the unrelenting master of those who invoke its assistance.
Agatha encountered this difficulty while yet inside the Confederate lines. She was not permitted to pass in any northward direction upon any pretence. The authorities at one place under Confederate control forbade her to go to another place under like control. She appealed to Stuart in this emergency, and although his authority did not extend into the Shenandoah Valley, he made such representations to the commandants in that quarter as were sufficient for her purposes.
To get within the Federal lines was a still more perplexing problem. One device after another proved ineffectual, and the girl was almost in despair. She appealed at last to the general in command of the cavalry in that region,—one of those to whom Stuart had written in her behalf,—and he promptly responded:
"At precisely what point have you friends in coöperation with you?"