Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

"Bully for him—he died happy," laughed the Colonel. "You can go to bed now, Mr. Brayton. Much obliged to you."

A few days later the brigade commander looked over the proceedings of the court-martial which he had convened, and threw down the manuscript with an oath.

"What a stupid—what a cursedly stupid record! Orderly, give my compliments to Major Jackson, and request him" (here he rises to a roar) "to report here immediately."

Picking up the manuscript, he annotated it in pencil until Major Jackson was announced.

"My God, sir!" he then broke out. "Is that your style of conducting a court-martial? This record is a disgrace to you as President, and to me for selecting you for such duty. Look here, sir. Here is a private convicted of beating the officer of the guard—one of the greatest offences, sir, which a soldier could commit—an offence which strikes at the very root of discipline. Now what is the punishment that you have allotted to him? To be confined in the guard-house for three months, and to carry a log of wood for three hours a day. Do you call that a suitable punishment? He ought to have three years of hard labor with ball and chain—that is the least he ought to have. You might have sentenced him to be shot. Why, sir, do you fully realize what it is to strike an officer, and especially an officer on duty? It is to defy the very soul of discipline. Without respect for officers, there is no army. It is a mob. Major Jackson, it appears to me that you have no conception of the dignity of your own position. You don't know what it is to be an officer. That is all, sir. Good morning."

"Captain," continues the Colonel, turning to his Adjutant-General, "make out an order disapproving of all the proceedings of this court, and directing that Major Jackson shall not again be detailed on court-martial while he remains under my command."

Carter was a terror to his whole brigade—to the stupidest private, to every lieutenant of the guard, to every commandant of company, to the members of his staff, and even to his equals in grade, the colonels. He knew his business so well, he was so invariably right in his fault-findings, he was so familiar with the labyrinth of regulations and general orders, through which almost all others groped with many stumblings, and he was so conscientiously and gravely outraged by offences against discipline, that he was necessarily a dreadful personage. To use the composite expression, half Hibernian and half Hebraic, of Lieutenant Van Zandt, he was a regular West Point Bull of Bashan in the volunteer China-shop. But while he was thus feared, he was also greatly respected; and a word of praise from him was cherished by officer or soldier as a medal of honor. And, stranger still, while he was exercising what must seem to the civilian reader a hard-hearted despotism, he was writing every other day letters full of ardent affection to a young lady in New Orleans.

In a general way one is tempted to speak jestingly of the circumstance of a well-matured man falling in love with a girl in her teens. By the time a man gets to be near forty, his moral physiognomy is supposed to be so pock-marked with bygone amours as to be in a measure ludicrous, or at least devoid of dignity in its tenderness. But Carter's emotional nature was so emphatic and volcanic, so capable of bringing a drama of the affections to a tragic issue, that I feel no disposition to laugh over his affair with Miss Ravenel, although it was by no means his first, nor perhaps his twentieth. Considering the passions as forces, we are obliged to respect them in proportion to their power rather than their direction. And in this case the direction was not bad, nor foolish, but good, and highly creditable to Carter; for Miss Ravenel, though as yet barely adolescent, was a finer woman in brain and heart than he had ever loved before; also he loved her better than he had ever before loved any woman.

He could not stay away from her. As soon as he had got his brigade into such order as partially satisfied his stern professional conscience, he obtained a leave of absence for seven days, and went to New Orleans. From this visit resulted one of the most important events that will be recorded in the present history. I shall hurry over the particulars, because to me the circumstance is not an agreeable one. Having from my first acquaintance with Miss Ravenel entertained a fondness for her, I never could fancy this match of hers with such a dubious person as Colonel Carter, who is quite capable of making her very unhappy. I always agreed with her father in preferring Colburne, whose character, although only half developed in consequence of youth, modesty, and Puritan education, is nevertheless one of those germs which promise much beauty and usefulness. But Miss Ravenel, more emotional than reflective, was fated to love Carter rather than Colburne. To her, and probably to most women, there was something powerfully magnetic in the ardent nature which found its physical expression in that robust frame, that florid brunette complexion, those mighty mustachios, and darkly burning eyes.