A Lincoln Conscript

by Homer Greene

So did Bob Bannister walk away. He went with bent head and breaking heart. To be denied the right to join with his companions in any demonstration looking to his country’s glory or welfare was, to him, a tragedy. His was one of those natures endowed at birth with a spirit of patriotism. From the time when he could first read he had absorbed the history of his country and her heroes. No colors had ever shone before his eyes more brilliant and beautiful than the red, white, and blue of his country’s flag. With an intuition far beyond his years, he had grasped the meaning and foreseen the consequences of a dissolution of the compact that bound the states together. And when, at last, the storm broke, when Sumter fell, when Bull Run came, an awakening calamity, he threw his whole heart and soul into the cause of the North, and from that time on he lived in spirit, and would have died in body, with the Union armies, fighting, that the old flag and all that it symbolized might prevail. Yet, strange as it may seem, his father, with whom he lived, of whom he was proud and fond, to whom he was loyally obedient, was an outspoken sympathizer with the Southern Confederacy. Perhaps it was the strain of Southern blood in his veins, perhaps it was the underlying aristocracy of feeling of those whose ancestors have owned slaves, perhaps it was the clear logic of his mind running in the narrow grooves that genius so often hollows out, that led Rhett Bannister into his passionate sympathy with the South. Be that as it may, he was no coward. What he was, what he felt, what he thought, was known of all men. Opposition could not conquer him, opprobrious epithets could not cow him, nor could ostracism silence his eloquent tongue.

Notwithstanding the general and fervent loyalty of the community in which Bannister lived, there were, nevertheless, among the people, those who felt that the war was a mistake and a failure, that the issue had been tried out at an awful sacrifice with but indifferent success, and that now peace should be had on any reasonable terms. These were the conservatives, the locofocos. Then there were those who, deeply sympathizing with the South from the beginning of the trouble, were ready to make any legal opposition to a further prosecution of the war by the Federal government, using politics and public speech as their strongest weapons. These were classed in the North as copperheads. Then there were still others who, saying little and clothing their conduct with secrecy, gave what aid, comfort, and active coöperation they could to the enemies of the Federal government. These were plainly spoken of as traitors. Indeed, secret organizations sprang up in the North and West, with their lodges, officers, grips, and passwords, having for their object a concentrated effort to undermine the patriotic efforts of the citizens of the North and the administration at Washington, and to aid indirectly in the defeat of the Union armies in the field. Perhaps the most deeply rooted organization of the kind in the loyal states was known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. But Rhett Bannister was not one of their members. He despised the stab in the dark, and all secret and unfair methods of warfare. Frank, eloquent, and outspoken, he never hesitated to say and to do freely and openly that which he deemed to be right, regardless of the opinions, the condemnation, or even the hate of his neighbors.

It was to this father and to his home that the boy, refused admission into the patriotic ranks of his comrades, now started on his way. At the edge of the village he met Sarah Jane Stark. There are some people who are always known, not only to their friends but to the public also, by their full names. Sarah Jane Stark was one of them. She had lived in Mount Hermon all her life. How long that was it would be ungallant to say, had not Miss Stark herself declared boastfully that she had come within fifteen years of living in two centuries. With no children of her own, she was a mother to all the children in the village. Kind-hearted, sharp-tongued, a terror to evil-doers, “a very present help in trouble” to all the worthy who needed her assistance, the social arbiter of the town, she was the most loved as well as the most feared woman in the community. When she met Bob in the footpath at the roadside, she looked at him sharply.

“Look here, Bob Bannister,” she said, “you’ve been crying. Or if you haven’t, you’ve been so close to it there wasn’t any fun in it. Now you just go ahead and tell me what the matter is.”

Bob knew from previous experience, on many occasions, that it was absolutely useless to attempt evasion with Sarah Jane Stark. Much as his sensitive nature rebelled against complaining of any slight that his fellows had put upon him, he felt that he must make a clean breast of it to his questioner.

“Why, they put me out of the company, Miss Stark,” he said. “I wanted to drill in the company with the other fellows and they wouldn’t let me. That’s all. I s’pose they had a right to do it; of course they had a right.”

“Put you out of the company, did they? And what did they put you out for, I’d like to know? Aren’t you as good a soldier as any of them?”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly it, Miss Stark. They seemed to think that because—well, they thought I wasn’t loyal.”

“Thought you weren’t loyal! Well, that is a note! Why, you—oh, I see! On account of your father, eh? Yes, I see.”

Miss Stark tapped her foot impatiently on the hard soil of the side-path, and looked off toward the blue sky-line of the Moosic range, behind which the sun had already gone down.