A Rebel's Recollections

CHAPTER VII.

SOME QUEER PEOPLE

Generals would be of small worth, indeed, if there were no lesser folk than they in service, and the interesting people one meets in an army do not all wear sashes, by any means. The composition of the battery in which I served for a considerable time afforded me an opportunity to study some rare characters, of a sort not often met with in ordinary life, and as these men interested me beyond measure, I have a mind to sketch a few of them here in the hope that their oddities may prove equally entertaining to my readers.

In the late autumn of 1861, after a summer with Stuart, circumstances, with an explanation of which it is not necessary now to detain the reader, led me to seek a transfer to a light battery, in which I was almost an entire stranger. When I joined this new command, the men were in a state of partial mutiny, the result of a failure to receive their pay and clothing allowance. The trouble was that there was no one in the battery possessed of sufficient clerical skill to make out a proper muster and pay roll. Several efforts had been made, but to no purpose, and when I arrived the camp was in a state of turmoil. The men were for the most part illiterate mountaineers, and no explanations which the officers were able to give served to disabuse their minds of the thought that they were being swindled in some way. Learning what the difficulty was, I volunteered my services for the clerical work required, and two hours after my arrival I had the pleasure of paying off the men and restoring peace to the camp. Straightway the captain made me sergeant-major, and the men wanted to make me captain. The popularity won thus in the outset served me many a good turn, not the least of which I count the opportunity it gave me to study the characters of the men, whose confidant and adviser I became in all matters of difficulty. I deciphered the letters they received from home and wrote replies from their dictation, and there were parts of this correspondence which would make my fortune as a humorous writer, if I could reproduce here the letters received now and then.

The men, as I have said, were for the most part illiterate mountaineers, with just a sufficient number of educated gentlemen among them (mostly officers and non-commissioned officers) to join each other in a laugh at the oddity of the daily life in the camp. The captain had been ambitious at one time of so increasing the company as to make a battalion of it, and to that end had sought recruits in all quarters. Among others he had enlisted seven genuine ruffians whom he had found in a Richmond jail, and who enlisted for the sake of a release from durance. These men formed a little clique by themselves, a sort of miniature New York sixth ward society, which afforded me a singularly interesting social study, of a kind rarely met with by any but home missionaries and police authorities. There were enough of them to form a distinct criminal class, so that I had opportunity to study their life as a whole, and not merely the phenomena presented by isolated specimens.

All of these seven men had seen service somewhere, and except as regarded turbulence and utter unmanageability they were excellent soldiers. Jack Delaney, or "one-eyed Jack Delaney," as he was commonly called, was a tall, muscular, powerful fellow, who had lost an eye in a street fight, and was quite prepared to sacrifice the other in the same way at any moment. Tommy Martin was smaller and plumper than Jack, but not one whit less muscular or less desperately belligerent. Tim Considine was simply a beauty. He was not more than twenty-one years of age, well-built, with a fair, pearly, pink and white complexion, regular features, exquisite eyes, and a singularly shapely and well-poised head. His face on any woman's shoulders would have made her a beauty and a belle in a Brooklyn drawing-room. I group these three together because they are associated with each other in my mind. They messed together, and occupied one tent. Never a day passed which brought with it no battle royal between two or all three of them. These gentlemen, – for that is what they uniformly called themselves, though they pronounced the word "gints," – were born in Baltimore. I have their word for this, else I should never have suspected the fact. Their names were of Hibernian mold. They spoke the English language with as pretty a brogue as ever echoed among the hills of Galway. They were much given to such expletives as "faith" and "be me sowl," and "be jabers," and moreover they were always "afther" doing something; but they were born in Baltimore, nevertheless, for they solemnly told me so.

I am wholly unable to give the reader any connected account of the adventures and life struggles through which these men had passed, for the reason that I was never able to win their full and unreserved confidence; but I caught glimpses of their past, here and there, from which I think it safe to assume that their personal histories had been of a dramatic, not to say of a sensational sort. My battery was sent one day to Bee's Creek, on the South Carolina coast, to meet an anticipated advance of the enemy. No enemy came, however, and we lay there on the sand, under a scorching sub-tropical sun, in a swarm of sand-flies so dense that many of our horses died of their stings, while neither sleep nor rest was possible to the men. A gun-boat lay just out of reach beyond a point in the inlet, annoying us by throwing at us an occasional shell of about the size and shape of a street lamp. Having a book with me I sought a place under a caisson for the sake of the shade, and spent an hour or two in reading. While I was there, Jack Delaney and Tommy Martin, knowing nothing of my presence, took seats on the ammunition chests, and fell to talking.

"An' faith, Tommy," said Jack, "an' it isn't this sort of foightin' I'm afther loikin' at all, bad luck to it."

"An' will ye tell me, Jack," said his companion, "what sort of foightin' it is, ye loikes?"

"Ah, Tommy, it's mesilf that loikes the raal foightin'. Give me an open sea, an' close quarthers, an' a black flag, Tommy, an' that's the sort of foightin' I'm afther 'oikin', sure."

"A-an' I believe it's a poirate ye are, Jack."

"You're roight, Tommy; it's a poirate I am, ivery inch o' me!"

Here was a glimpse of the man's character which proved also a hint of his life story, as I afterwards learned. He had been a pirate, and an English court, discovering the fact, had "ordered his funeral," as he phrased it, but by some means or other he had secured a pardon on condition of his enlistment in the British navy, from which he had deserted at the first opportunity. Jack was very much devoted to his friends, and especially to those above him in social or military rank; and a more loyal fellow I never knew. The captain of the battery and I were tent mates and mess mates, and although we kept a competent negro servant, Jack insisted upon blacking our boots, stretching our tent, brushing our clothes, looking after our fire, and doing a hundred other services of the sort, for which he could never be persuaded to accept compensation of any kind.

When we arrived in Charleston for the first time, on our way to the post assigned us at Coosawhatchie, we were obliged to remain a whole day in the city, awaiting transportation. Knowing the temper of our "criminal class," we were obliged to confine all the men strictly within camp boundaries, lest our Baltimore Irishmen and their fellows should get drunk and give us trouble. We peremptorily refused to let any of the men pass the line of sentinels, but Jack Delaney, being in sad need of a pair of boots, was permitted to go into the city in company with the captain. That officer guarded him carefully, and as they were returning to camp the captain, thinking that there could be no danger in allowing the man one dram, invited him to drink at a hotel counter.

"Give us your very best whisky," he said to the man behind the bar; whereupon that functionary placed a decanter and two glasses before them.

Jack's one eye flashed fire instantly, and jumping upon the counter he screamed, "What d'ye mean, ye bloody spalpeen, by insultin' me captain in that way? I'll teach ye your manners, ye haythen." The captain could not guess the meaning of the Irishman's wrath, but he interfered for the protection of the frightened servitor, and asked Jack what he meant.

"What do I mean? An' sure an' I mean to break his bit of a head, savin' your presence, captain. I'll teach him not to insult me captain before me very eyes, by givin' him the same bottle he gives Jack Delaney to drink out of. An' sure an' me moother learnt me betther manners nor to presume to drink from the same bottle with me betthers."

The captain saved the bar-tender from the effects of Jack's wrath, but failed utterly to convince that well-bred Irish gentleman that no offense against good manners had been committed. He refused to drink from the "captain's bottle," and a separate decanter was provided for him.

On another occasion Jack went with one of the officers to a tailor's shop, and, without apparent cause, knocked the knight of the shears down and was proceeding to beat him, when the officer commanded him to desist.

"An' sure if your honor says he's had enough, I'll quit, but I'd loike to murdher him."

Upon being questioned as to the cause of his singular behavior, he explained that the tailor had shown unpardonably bad manners by keeping his hat on his head while taking the lieutenant's measure.

These men were afraid of nothing and respected nothing but rank; but their regard for that was sufficiently exaggerated perhaps to atone for their short-comings in other respects. A single chevron on a man's sleeve made them at once his obedient servants, and never once, even in their cups, did they resist constituted authority, directly asserted. For general rules they had no respect whatever. Anything which assumed the form of law they violated as a matter of course, if not, as I suspect, as a matter of conscience; but the direct command of even a corporal was held binding always. Jack Delaney, who never disobeyed any order delivered to him in person, used to swim the Ashley River every night, at imminent risk of being eaten by sharks, chiefly because it was a positive violation of orders to cross at all from our camp on Wappoo Creek to Charleston.

Tommy Martin and Tim Considine were bosom friends, and inseparable companions. They fought each other frequently, but these little episodes worked no ill to their friendship. One day they quarreled about something, and Considine, drawing a huge knife from his belt, rushed upon Martin with evident murderous intent. Martin, planting himself firmly, dealt his antagonist a blow exactly between the eyes, which laid him at full length on the ground. I ran at once to command the peace, but before I got to the scene of action I heard Considine call out, from his supine position, —

"Bully for you, Tommy! I niver knew a blow better delivered in me loife!" And that ended the dispute.

One night, after taps, a fearful hubbub arose in the Irish quarter of the camp, and running to the place, the captain, a corporal, and I managed to separate the combatants; but as Jack Delaney had a great butcher knife in his hands with which it appeared he had already severely cut another Irishman, Dan Gorman by name, we thought it best to bind him with a prolonge. He submitted readily, lying down on the ground to be tied. While we were drawing the rope around him, Gorman, a giant in size and strength, leaned over us and dashed a brick with all his force into the prostrate man's face. Had it struck his skull it must have killed him instantly, as indeed we supposed for a time that it had.

"What do you mean by that, sir?" asked the captain, seizing Gorman by the collar.

Pointing to a fearful gash in his own neck, the man replied, —

"Don't ye see I'm a dead man, captain? An' sure an' do ye think I'm goin' to hell widout me pardner?"

The tone of voice in which the question was asked clearly indicated that in his view nothing could possibly be more utterly preposterous than such a supposition.

Charley Lear belonged to this party, though he was not a Celt, but an Englishman. Charley was a tailor by trade and a desperado in practice. He had kept a bar in Vicksburg, had dug gold in California, and had "roughed it" in various other parts of the world. His was a scarred breast, showing seven knife thrusts and the marks of two bullets, one of which had passed entirely through him. And yet he was in perfect health and strength. He was a man of considerable intelligence and fair education, whose association with ruffians was altogether a matter of choice. He was in no sense a criminal, I think, and while I knew him, at least, was perfectly peaceful. But he liked rough company and sought it diligently, taking the consequences when they came. He professed great regard and even affection for me, because I had done him a rather important service once.

Finding it impossible to govern these men without subjecting the rest of the company to a much severer discipline than was otherwise necessary or desirable, we secured the transfer of our ruffians to another command in the fall of 1862, and I saw no more of any of them until after the close of the war. I went into a tailor's shop in Memphis one day, during the winter of 1865-66, to order a suit of clothing. After selecting the goods I was asked to step up-stairs to be measured. While the cutter was using his tape upon me, one of the journeymen on the great bench at the end of the room suddenly dropped his work, and, bounding forward, literally clasped me in his arms, giving me a hug which a grizzly bear might be proud of. It was Charley Lear, of course, and I had the utmost difficulty in refusing his offer to pay for the goods and make my clothes himself without charge.

Our assortment of queer people was a varied one, and among the rest there were two ex-circus actors, Jack Hawkins and Colonel Denton, to wit. Hawkins was an inoffensive and even a timid fellow, whose delight it was to sing bold robber songs in the metallic voice peculiar to vocalists of the circus. There was something inexpressibly ludicrous in the contrast between the bloody-mindedness of his songs and the gentle shyness and timidity of the man who sang them. Everybody domineered over him, and he was especially oppressed in the presence of our other ex-clown, whose assumption of superior wisdom and experience often overpowered stronger men than poor John Hawkins ever was. Denton was one of those men who are sure, in one way or another, to become either "colonel" or "judge." He was sixty-five years old when I first knew him, and had been "the colonel" longer than anybody could remember. He was of good parentage, and until he ran away with a circus at the age of eleven had lived among genteel people. His appearance and manner were imposing always, and never more so than when he was drunk. He buttoned his coat with the air of a man who is about to ride over broad ancestral acres, and ate his dinner, whatever it might consist of, with all the dignity of a host who does his guests great honor in entertaining them. He was an epicure in his tastes, of course, and delighted to describe peculiarly well-prepared dinners which he said he had eaten in company with especially distinguished gentlemen. He was an expert, too, he claimed, in the preparation of salads and the other arts of a like nature in which fine gentlemen like to excel even professional cooks. When rations happened to be more than ordinarily limited in quantity or worse than usual in quality, Denton was sure to visit various messes while they were at dinner, and regale them with a highly wrought description of an imaginary feast from which he would profess to have risen ten minutes before.