CHAPTER I
UNDER FIRE THE FIRST TIME
I WAS born on May 1, 1842, on Fifth Avenue, New York, not a long way north of Washington Square. My father was a distinguished surgeon and owned a large estate on Lake Champlain, where most of my youthful summers were spent. I had three brothers and two sisters; but not for many years have I known where they are, or whether alive or dead. After having had a private tutor at home I was educated by jumps at the Hinesburgh, Vermont, Academy; at the old Troy Conference Academy at Poultney, Vermont, and at the Burlington, Vermont, Academy, where, young as I was, I became deeply interested in the study of medicine, for which I had inherited a pronounced liking; that was the one point on which I seemed to fit in with the family. I did not stay a great while at any institution because of my success in leading the other students into all sorts of dare-devil pranks, to the detriment of discipline and the despair of the dominies. As an evidence of the inclining twig I remember, with still some feeling of pride, that during one of my last summers on Lake Champlain I organized fifteen boys of the neighborhood into an expedition against the Indians of the far West. We were equipped with blankets stolen from our beds, three flasks of powder, and nearly one hundred pounds of lead, which was to be moulded into bullets for the extermination of the redskins of the world. As Commander-in-Chief I carried the only pistol in the party but we expected to seize additional arms on the way to the battlefields. I had scouts ahead of us and on both flanks and by avoiding the roads and the bank of the lake we managed to evade capture until the third day, although the whole countryside was searching for us, in rather hysterical fashion.
After a somewhat scattered series of escapades, which increased the ire of the family and intensified my dislike of their prosaic protestations, my father solemnly declared his intention of sending me to the United States Naval Academy. It was his idea, as he expressed it, that the discipline which prevailed there would be sufficient to restrain me and at the same time my active imagination would find a vent in my inborn love of the sea. I was delighted with this promised realization of my boyhood dream, for it seemed to me that the career of a naval officer presented greater possibilities of adventure than any other. Former Congressman George P. Marsh, of Burlington, Vermont, an old friend of the family, who afterward was sent to Italy as American Minister and died there, arranged to secure my appointment to Annapolis, and I entered a preparatory school to brush up on the studies required by the entrance examination. The machinery to procure my appointment had been set in motion and I was ready to take the examination when the opening gun of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1861.
I was immediately seized with a wild desire to be in the fight, but my father would not consent to it, on account of my age. He would not hear to my going into the army as a private but promised that if I would wait a year, and was still of the same mind, he would try to get me a commission. As I have said, my sympathies were with the South but it was more convenient for me to take the other side, and at that moment I was not particular about principles. The family were duly horrified one evening when I went home, after some things I needed, and told them I had enlisted. The next day my father bought my discharge and hustled me out to the little town of Woodstock, Illinois, where I was placed in charge of an uncle who was abjured to keep me from going to war, without regard to anything else that might happen. He prevented me from joining an infantry regiment which was then forming but I got away with a cavalry regiment which was raised in that section some months later, and was made one of its officers. We went to Cairo, Illinois, and from there by transport to Pittsburg Landing, where we arrived just in time to take part in the battle which was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862. My regiment was pitted against the famous Black Horse Cavalry of Mississippi and we came together at the gallop. I was riding a demon of a black horse and, with the bit in his teeth, he charged into the line two or three lengths ahead of the rest. A Confederate officer came at me with his sabre raised. I ducked my head behind my horse’s neck and shot him between the eyes, but just as my pistol cracked his sword cut through my horse’s head to the brain and the point of it laid open my right cheek, from the ear almost to the chin. The horse fell on my leg and held me there, unconscious. In the evening I was picked up and sent to the general hospital, where I stayed for three weeks.
When I was discharged from the hospital I was too weak for active service so I was sent into the Tennessee mountains in charge of a detachment to intercept contraband which was being sent into the South from Cincinnati. We had been there about ten days when, early in the morning, one of the patrols brought in a fine-looking young man, who had been arrested as a spy. There was a refinement about the prisoner that aroused my suspicions, and during the day I satisfied myself that “he” was a woman. While she would not acknowledge her identity, I had reason to believe, and always have been sure in my own mind, that she was none other than Belle Boyd, the famous Confederate spy. I was born with a fondness for women, which then was strong within me, and besides, my heart was with her cause. Therefore it is without apology that I say I arranged things so that she escaped the next night through a window in the shed in which she was confined.
Soon after my return to headquarters I contracted a bad case of malaria and was sent home, which meant back to Woodstock, where I had eloped with a banker’s daughter just before going to the front. I was disgusted with the war and I expressed myself so freely, and was so outspoken in my sympathy for the South, that I made myself extremely unpopular in a very short time. It probably is true, too, as was charged against me, that I swaggered around a lot and presumed on the reputation I had made. At any rate the people set their hearts on hanging me for being a “damned copperhead,” and they might have done it if old man Wellburn, the proprietor of the hotel at which my wife and I were staying, had not helped me to stand off a mob that came after me. I met them at the door with a revolver in each hand and Wellburn was right behind me with quite an arsenal. They suggested that I come out and renounce my principles and make certain promises, or be hanged at the liberty pole. I told them I would renounce nothing and promise less.
“If I am a copperhead,” I told them, “I am a fighting copperhead, while you are neither kind. If you want a fight why don’t you go to the front and get it, instead of staying home and making trouble for a better man, who has fought and bled for the cause you are shouting about? If you prefer a fight here, come on and get it. I’ve got twelve shots here and there will be just thirteen of us in hell or heaven if you try to make good your threat.”
Old Wellburn was known as a fighter and the sight of his weapons added weight to my words, so the crowd concluded to let me have my way about it, and dispersed. That experience intensified my dissatisfaction with the whole business and I sent in my resignation. It was accepted, and when I had thought it all over I considered that I was lucky to have escaped a court-martial. It was fortunate for me that Governor “Dick” Yates and my father were warm friends. The Governor was thoroughly disgusted with the way I had conducted myself, but he stood by me.
I then moved to Chicago, with my wife. She had a small fortune and I had come into considerable money on my twentieth birthday, so we were in easy circumstances. I bought a vinegar works on Kinzie Street; but the dull routine of business was repulsive to me and I sold it in less than a year, after having operated it at a handsome profit, and went on to New York. We stopped at the old St. Nicholas, at Broadway and Spring Street, which was the fashionable hotel in those days.
I was looking for anything that promised excitement. I had heard that Carlos Manuel de Cespedes was fomenting a revolt in Cuba,—afterward known as the “Ten Years’ War,”—and had conceived the idea of taking a hand in it. To my disappointment, I found that no Junta had been established in this country, nor, so far as I could discover, were there any responsible men in New York who were connected with the revolution. While I was wondering how I could get into communication with Cespedes my interest was aroused by a newspaper story of the new blockade runner “Letter B,” which had made one round trip from Bermuda to Beaufort, North Carolina, and was being looked for again by the Federal fleet. The “Letter B”—its name a play on words—was a long, low, powerful, schooner-rigged steamship, built by Laird on the Mersey. Though classed as a fifteen-knot ship she could do sixteen or seventeen, fast going at that time. The story which attracted my attention told all about her and said there was so much money in blockade running that the owners could well afford to lose her after she had made three successful trips.