MAC. PITTMAN.
CAPTAIN MAC PITTMAN.
I was born in Baltimore in 1834. My ancestors were driven away from Arcadia by the English, on account of their Roman Catholic proclivities.
I was educated at two Catholic colleges, St. Mary's, at Baltimore; and St. Mary's at Wilmington, Delaware. At eighteen years of age, on account of the tyranny of my father, I ran away from home, and shipped in the United States Navy as a common sailor. I went around to San Francisco, and there joined "the gray-eyed man of destiny," General Walker.
I joined his expedition in September, 1885, and arrived in Nicaragua in October, the following month—the third day of October. There was a civil war then in progress in Nicaragua; and the pretense of this expedition was that we were hired by one of the parties to take part in it. Walker was to furnish three hundred Americans, who were to get one hundred dollars a month and five hundred acres of land, and their clothes and rations, of course. When I first arrived there, we were to escort specie trains across the isthmus—there are but twelve miles of land from water to water—from San Juan del Sur to Virgin Bay. I was one of the guard over the celebrated State prisoners, General Coral and the Secretary of War, whose name I forget, who were both executed. I was inside of the seventieth man who joined this expedition; when I joined him, Walker had but sixty men. The re-enforcements that came over made just one hundred men. He had sixty men, I think, and we numbered forty. With this one hundred men we took the city of Grenada, which had a population of twelve thousand, on the morning of October 13, 1855. A small division of men was sent to the town of Leon on the Pacific coast. The natives of that section of the country were all in favor of Walker; that part—the western part—is the Democratic part of the country. On our return to Grenada, on the 11th day of April, 1856, we went into the Battle of Rivas, after marching sixty-five miles. We fought from eight o'clock in the morning until two the next morning, by the flash of guns. I lost my arm that morning; and was promoted from the rank of sergeant to that of first lieutenant for taking a cannon in advance of the army. I returned to Grenada, and lay there for several months, and then returned to America. I went back with the re-enforcements from New York in the following August. In October, 1856, I resigned, and came back to America.
At the breaking out of the civil war, on the first call for troops, I refused a commission in the Federal army, and joined the Confederate forces.
In 1861 we formed the First Maryland regiment. The last six months of the war I spent as a prisoner in Fort Delaware, charged with the murder of the eleven men who were killed in Baltimore during the riot, on the 19th of April, 1861. I was court-martialed in Washington City, in the latter part of 1864, and was sent in irons to Fort Delaware, and remained there until May, 1865, when I was released.
From Fort Delaware I went to New York, and from there went to Virginia, where I married the great granddaughter of the illustrious patriot, Patrick Henry, at Danville. In January, 1866, I migrated to Texas, where I spent the little patrimony my grandfather had given me. When I left there, I took the position of commercial and marine editor of the Savannah News.
I never had given a thought to religion or my hereafter before this time. To illustrate this: When they amputated my arm, they asked me distinctly if I had any religion. They told me afterward they expected me to die. I said: "Yes, I have been raised a Catholic." They wanted to send for a priest. I said: "No, I do not want you to send for a priest." They asked me why? "Well," I said, "as I have lived, thus will I die; I don't have much faith in the hereafter business." I did not have much faith in hell, I meant.