Scott’s comrades had set about saving him in a characteristic way. They had called a meeting, and appointed a committee, with power to use all the resources of the regiment in his behalf. Strangers in Washington, the committee had resolved to call on me for advice, because I was a Vermonter, and they had already marched from the camp to my office since daylight that morning.
The Captain took all the blame from Scott upon himself. Scott’s mother opposed his enlistment on the ground of his inexperience, and had only consented on the Captain’s promise to look after him as if he were his own son. This he had wholly failed to do. He must have been asleep or stupid himself, he said, when he paid no attention to the boy’s statement that he had fallen asleep during the day, and feared he could not keep awake the second night on picket. Instead of sending some one or going himself in Scott’s place, as he should, he had let him go to his death. He alone was guilty—“If any one ought to be shot, I am the fellow, and everybody at home would have the right to say so.” “There must be some way to save him, judge!” (They all called me judge.) “He is as good a boy as there is in the army, and he ain’t to blame. You will help us, now, won’t you?” he said, almost with tears.
The other members of the committee had a definite, if not a practicable, plan. They insisted that Scott had not been tried, and gave this account of the proceeding. He was asked what he had to say to the charge, and said he would tell them just how it all happened. He had never been up all night that he remembered. He was “all beat out” by the night before, and knowing he should have a hard fight to keep awake, he thought of hiring one of the boys to go in his place, but they might think he was afraid to do his duty, and he decided to “chance it.” Twice he went to sleep and woke himself while he was marching, and then—he could not tell anything about it—all he knew was that he was sound asleep when the guard came. It was very wrong, he knew. He wanted to be a good soldier, and do all his duty. What else did he enlist for? They could shoot him, and perhaps they ought to, but he could not have tried harder; and if he was in the same place again, he could no more help going to sleep than he could fly.
One must have been made of sterner stuff than I was not to be touched by the earnest manner with which these men offered to devote even their farms to the aid of their comrade. The Captain and the others had no need of words to express their emotions. I saw that the situation was surrounded by difficulties of which they knew nothing. They had subscribed a sum of money to pay counsel, and offered to pledge their credit to any amount necessary to secure him a fair trial.
“Put up your money,” I said. “It will be long after this when one of my name takes money for helping a Vermont soldier. I know facts which touch this case of which you know nothing. I fear that nothing effectual can be done for your comrade. The courts and lawyers can do nothing. I fear that we can do no more; but we can try.”
I must digress here to say that the Chain Bridge across the Potomac was one of the positions upon which the safety of Washington depended. The Confederates had fortified the approach to it on the Virginia side, and the Federals on the hills of Maryland opposite. Here, for months, the opposing forces had confronted each other. There had been no fighting; the men, and even the officers, had gradually contracted an intimacy, and, having nothing better to do, had swapped stories and other property until they had come to live upon the footing of good neighbors rather than mortal enemies. This relation was equally inconsistent with the safety of Washington and the stern discipline of war. Its discovery had excited alarm, and immediate measures were taken to break it up. General W. F. Smith, better known as “Baldy” Smith, had been appointed Colonel of the Third Vermont Regiment, placed in command of the post, and undertook to correct the irregularity.
General Smith, a Vermonter by birth, a West-Pointer by education, was a soldier from spur to crown. In the demoralization which existed at the Chain Bridge, in his opinion, the occasional execution of a soldier would tend to enforce discipline, and in the end promote economy of life. He had issued orders declaring the penalty of death for military offences, among others that of a sentinel sleeping upon his post. His orders were made to be obeyed. Scott was, apparently, their first victim. It was perfectly clear that any appeal in his behalf to General Smith would lead to nothing but loss of time.
The more I reflected upon what I was to do, the more hopeless the case appeared. Thought was useless; I must act upon impulse, or I should not act at all.
“Come,” I said, “there is only one man on earth who can save your comrade. Fortunately, he is the best man on the continent. We will go to President Lincoln.”
I went swiftly out of the Treasury over to the White House, and up the stairway to the little office where the President was writing. The boys followed in a procession. I did not give the thought time to get any hold on me that I, an officer of the government, was committing an impropriety in thus rushing a matter upon the President’s attention. The President was the first to speak.