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MARITIME LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Crisis and Legitimacy in

Atlantic American
Narratives of Piracy
1678–1865
Alexandra Ganser
 Maritime Literature and Culture

Series Editors
Alexandra Ganser
Department of English and American Studies
University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Meg Samuelson
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, Australia

Charne Lavery
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
This series offers new rubrics for literary and cultural studies by focusing
on maritime and coastal regions, in contrast to nation, continent and
area. In doing so, it engages with current debates on comparative and
world literatures, globalization, and planetary or Anthropocene thought
in illuminating ways. Broadly situated in the humanities and in rela-
tion to critical theory, it invites contributions that focus particularly on
cultural practices – predominantly literary scholarship, but potentially also
performance studies, cultural histories and media and film studies. The
geographical scope allows for enquiries into single maritime regions or
coastal areas but also encourages inter-ocean perspectives.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15773
 Alexandra Ganser

Crisis and Legitimacy

in Atlantic American
Narratives of Piracy
1678–1865
Alexandra Ganser
Department of English and American Studies
University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund

Maritime Literature and Culture

ISBN 978-3-030-43622-3 ISBN 978-3-030-43623-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43623-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access
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For Martin, Rio, and Elvira, my favorite time pirates: thank you for all
the love.
 Acknowledgments

This study, opening up the series “Maritime Literature and Culture” that
my colleagues Charne Lavery and Meg Samuelson are co-editing with
me at Palgrave Macmillan, has been generously supported by my family
and friends as well as by a number of colleagues who have kindly shared
their expertise and their suggestions with me and encouraged my work at
various stages. First and foremost, I would like to thank Heike Paul for her
unfailing, enthusiastic as well as critical support of this project—thank you
through all the years we worked together! My heartfelt gratitude goes to
all those colleagues, family, and friends who supported in so many ways,
big and small, the project and the completion of this manuscript: Eugen
Banauch, Ralph Bauer, Hester Blum, Michela Borzaga, Sabine Broeck,
Barbara Buchenau, Daniel Cohen, Tim Conley, Tim Cresswell, Birgit
Däwes, Michael Draxlbauer, the late Emory Elliott, Richard Frohock,
Agnes and Josef Ganser, Bernd and Helga Ganser-Lion and my nephews
Nils and Lars, Sun-Hee Geertz, Nina Gerassi-Navarro, Ezra Greenspan,
Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Marcel Hartwig, Alexandra Hauke, April Haynes,
Udo Hebel, Sean Hill, Karin Höpker, Peter Hulme, Tabea Kampf,
Antje Kley, Wim Klooster, Christian Krug, Susanne Lachenicht, Klaus
Lösch, Gesa Mackenthun, Thomas Massnick, Walter Mignolo, Meredith
Newman, Helena Oberzaucher, Andrea Pagni, Nicole Poppenhagen, Julia
Pühringer, Marcus Rediker, Stefanie Schäfer, Sonja Schillings, Eva Schör-
genhuber, Monika Seidl, John David Smith, Heike Steinhoff, Michael
Winship, Gretchen Woertendyke, Michael Zeuske, Cornel Zwierlein, my
students at Erlangen and Vienna and my colleagues of the American

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Studies colloquia at the Universities of Erlangen and Regensburg, as well

as Udo Hebel and Gesa Mackenthun, also for their willingness to write
reviews (whose praise I can only hope this book deserves) for submitting
this study as a Habilitation at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-
Nuremberg, and the two anonymous reviewers for the Austrian Research
Fund (FWF), whose Elise Richter Program I am indebted to for funding
much of the research necessary for this study. My project research assis-
tant, Eléonore Tarla, deserves special praise for her unfailingly dedicated,
patient, and careful editorial assistance.
A collective thank you goes to all the colleagues with whom I had
the opportunity to meet and discuss my work at various conferences in
Europe, the U.S., and Canada, and to all conference organizers who
invited me to a number of inspiring scholarly events and cities. I am very
grateful to various institutions that enabled me to present parts of my
study and pursue my research in various contexts: the German Associa-
tion for American Studies (DGfA) for granting me a Christoph Daniel
Ebeling Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester;
Paul Erickson and the staff and curators at the American Antiquarian
Society, especially Elizabeth Pope and Ashley Cataldo; the New York
Public Library Rare Books Division and its helpful staff; and Axel Schäfer
and the Bruce Center for American Studies at Keele University, where I
held the European fellowship in American Studies. The Austrian cultural
association KonaK and its functionaries, Christian Cwik and Verena Muth,
provided me with an opportunity to conduct research in the Caribbean:
in the National Archives of Panama, Panama City; in Port-au-Prince, at
the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago (NATT), and among the
Emberá and the Kuna islanders, to whom I am infinitely grateful for
sharing their cultural memories about pirates along their coasts. Last but
not least, I thank the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan, especially
Rachel Jacobe, Thomas René, and Allie Troyanos for their continuous
professional and friendly support throughout the various stages of this
book, as well as my brilliant series co-editors Charne Lavery and Meg
Samuelson.
Parts of this study have been published in earlier and different essay
versions: parts of 1.1. in Agents of Transculturation: Border Crossers, Medi-
ators, Go-Betweens, ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Sebastian Jobs (Munster:
Waxmann, 2013); parts of 1.2. in Pirates, Drifters, Fugitives: Figures of
Mobility in the U.S. and Beyond, a collection I co-edited with Heike
Paul and Katharina Gerund (Heidelberg: Winter, 2012); parts of 2.3.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

in a German version in Populäre Piraten: Vermessung eines Feldes (ed.

Irmtraud Hnilica and Marcel Lepper, Berlin: Kadmos, 2016); parts of
3.2 in Contact Spaces in American Culture: Globalizing Local Phenomena,
ed. Petra Eckhard, Klaus Rieser, and Silvia Schultermandl (Vienna: LIT,
2012), and parts of 3.3. in Atlantic Studies: Global Currents (15.4, 2018).
 Contents

1 Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis

and Legitimacy 1
Works Cited 20

2 Pirate Narratives and the Colonial Atlantic 27

2.1 The Buccaneer-Pirates: Articulations of Cultural
Contact and Crisis, 1678–1699 27
2.1.1 The Caribbean Scenario in the Late Seventeenth
Century 27
2.1.2 The Buccaneer in Literature: Points
and Counterpoints 31
2.1.3 The Caribbean Buccaneer-Pirate
as an Embodiment of Crisis 35
2.1.4 Exquemelin’s Zee-Roovers/Buccaneers
of America 41
2.1.5 Attempts at Consolidation: Pirate-Scientists’
Texts 52
2.1.6 The Creole Pirate 64
2.2 Puritans and Pirates: The New England Anti-Piracy
Sermon, 1700–1730 65
2.2.1 Piracy in New England 65
2.2.2 Cotton Mather’s Anti-Piracy Sermons 67
2.2.3 “To Direct the Course of Sea-Men” 69

xi
xii CONTENTS

2.2.4 (Re-)Anglicization, Puritan Exceptionalism,

Conversion 75
2.2.5 Economies of Salvation 79
2.2.6 “The Complicated Plot of Piracy”:
Hybridization, Resistance, Counterpoints 83
2.2.7 The Gallows Literature of Piracy: “Let Not
the Lust of the Eye Poison & Pervert You!” 91
Works Cited 104

3 Pirate Narratives and the Revolutionary Atlantic

in the Early Republic and the Antebellum Period 113
3.1 Pirate Narratives and the Romance of the Revolution 113
3.2 Crises of Authority and National Identity in James
Fenimore Cooper’s Red Rover (1827) 117
3.2.1 Cooper’s Maritime Nationalism 117
3.2.2 The Invention of Tradition: The Red Rover
as Realist Romance 119
3.2.3 Legal Ambivalence and Independence 123
3.2.4 Crises of Authority and the Absent Presence
of Slavery 131
3.3 Cross-Dressing and Piracy in Lt. Murray’s Fanny
Campbell (1844) 137
3.3.1 “Values and Virtues in Crisis” 137
3.3.2 Popular Novelettes and Piratical Adventure 139
3.3.3 Fanny: A Tale of the Revolution? 141
3.3.4 Female Pirates and Cross-Dressing Women
Warriors 148
3.3.5 “Crises Elsewhere”: Class, Citizenship,
Ethnicity, and Race 155
3.3.6 Fanny, the Patriot 160
Works Cited 167

4 Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis

Over Slavery 173
4.1 Entanglements: Piracy and Slavery 173
4.1.1 From Exploration to Exploitation 173
4.1.2 Barbary Pirate Narratives and U.S. Slavery 177
 CONTENTS xiii

4.2 Slavery and Piracy in the First Anglo-Caribbean

Novel: M.M. Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca ([1854]
1997) 185
4.2.1 The Ship and Black Atlantic Literature 185
4.2.2 The First Anglo-Caribbean Novel 187
4.2.3 Slavery, Piracy, Legitimacy 190
4.2.4 “A Literature of Revenge” 194
4.3 Piracy and Crises of Perception and Narration
in Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (1855/1856) 199
4.3.1 Text and Contexts 199
4.3.2 The Gray Atlantic: Narrating Epistemological
Crisis 203
4.3.3 Suspicion, Repression, and the Kaleidoscope
of Piracy 210
4.3.4 From the Black Atlantic to the Bleak Atlantic 216
4.4 The Figure of the Pirate at the Onset of the Civil War 218
4.4.1 The (Il)Legitimacy of Secession 218
4.4.2 The “Piracy” Cases of 1860/1861 221
4.4.3 Piracy on Union Envelopes 223
4.4.4 The Iconography of Slavery and Piracy 235
Works Cited 244

Coda 253

Works Cited 259

Index 285
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Engraving in Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America, used

in both the Dutch original and the English translations
(Courtesy of Library of Congress) 45
Fig. 2.2 Map of the Isthmus of Darién and Bay of Panama,
from William Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World
(Courtesy of Linda Hall Library) 57
Fig. 3.1 The title page of Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate
Captain (Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society) 154
Fig. 4.1 Two prints on Union envelopes asking for the death of
Southern “Pirates” (Figures courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society) 226
Fig. 4.2 Union envelope covered in its entirely by “The Pirate
Flag,” representing eight seceded states through eight
stars and referencing President “Jeff. Davis” and Vice
President A. (Alexander) H. (Hamilton) Stephens
(Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society) 227
Fig. 4.3 Bearing a tattered skull-and-crossbone flag pointing to
the doom of the seceded states, this envelope adds “A. L.
His Marks” to draw a color contrast between the ‘dark’
forces of the South and Abraham Lincoln’s stainlessness
(Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society) 228
Fig. 4.4 A caricature decorating a Union envelope on the left
hand corner, portraying Jefferson Davis as barely keeping
at bay the pirates he created (Courtesy of American
Antiquarian Society) 229

xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.5 Union envelopes with satirical cartoons, probably

published as a series and hence anticipating the comic
strip. These two tell a narrative in which a proud
“Union Game Cock” confronts a piratical “Secession
Shanghae” on his “March on Washington,” ridiculing
“Jeff”’s inadequacy to “get here” (Courtesy of American
Antiquarian Society) 230
Fig. 4.6 Satirical cartoon decorating a Union envelope with
a “Secession Web” and a piratical spider, asking the
flies (representative of single states) to “[w]alk into my
parlor” and thus to certain death (Courtesy of American
Antiquarian Society) 231
Fig. 4.7 Union envelope decorated with a caricature of the
Southern “Knave-y” (Courtesy of American Antiquarian
Society) 232
Fig. 4.8 The international dimension of the conflict and the
C.S.A.’s plea for recognition by England is referenced
in this decoration envelope (Courtesy of American
Antiquarian Society) 233
Fig. 4.9 Ridiculing Southern naval capabilities: a “Horse Marine”
of the Confederate States adorning a Union envelope
(Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society) 234
Fig. 4.10 “Jeff the Dictator as He Is” and “Jeff the Dig-Tater-er As
He Should Be.” Decorated Union envelope interrelating
slavery and piracy (Courtesy of American Antiquarian
Society) 236
Fig. 4.11 Decorated Union envelope; “TRAITOR JEFF” Davis,
pirate flag in hand, is abducted by Uncle Sam’s Eagle,
putting a family of plantation slaves in commotion.
Notably, it is the female slave who comments on “Mas’a
Jeff’s” “bad fix” (Courtesy of American Antiquarian
Society) 237
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure

of Crisis and Legitimacy

Pirates are everywhere today. Over the last decade, there have been
numerous reports of Somali and new Caribbean ‘piracy’ in the news; data
‘pirates’ are persecuted by the defendants of copyright law and intellec-
tual property; eco-activist groups on the high seas, often on the border
of transgressing laws that protect global corporate business rather than
oceanic ecosystems, are termed pirates in the media while they themselves
have also adopted piratical symbols like the skull and crossbones. Similarly,
“Pirate Parties” throughout Europe, though perhaps past their heyday,
have used the label to question the future of representative democracy in
favor of more direct forms of government. In popular cultural contexts,
pirate symbols are used by the fashion and many other industries and,
since Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series and a number of pirate-
themed computer games, have become prominent figures on the screen
again. All of these examples actively draw on the figure of the pirate and
its ambiguous semiotic qualities as a symbol used for both Othering and
identification.
In an Anglophone Atlantic context, it is between the colonial era and
the mid-nineteenth century that pirates emerged as prominent figures.
In prose writing alone, the popular cultural, sensational appeal of pirate-
inspired adventure stories, captivity narratives, popular histories and
romances, and many other genres-in-the-making, was used in terms of
the figure’s potential to articulate moments of ontological instability and

© The Author(s) 2020 1

A. Ganser, Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives
of Piracy, Maritime Literature and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43623-0_1
2 A. GANSER

epistemological crisis through an adequate ambivalent trope.1 The present

study critically examines literary renditions of the pirate from 1678, the
publication year of the earliest and probably most widely known book-
length pirate narrative, A. O. Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America, to the
American Civil War, when the pirate figure was used in battling the legit-
imacy of Southern Secession. Prose narratives of piracy were significant
for the formation and development of a number of popular genres in
print culture across the Atlantic: published trial reports, gallows narra-
tives, execution sermons, broadsides, and criminal biographies in the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in which condemned
pirates occasionally found an opportunity to justify their actions; popular
history and the historical romance in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, which romanticized the pirate as a revolutionary outlaw; the
captivity narrative during the so-called U.S. ‘Barbary Wars’ against North
African city-states (1801–1805, 1815), in which former American captives
of Muslim ‘pirates’ in the Mediterranean who were sold into slavery
compared these corsairs to the triangular slave-traders; or caricatures of
Southern ‘pirates’ at the beginning of the Civil War, which were printed
on Union envelopes to deplore Secession.
The etymological source of the word “piracy,” the Greek verb peiran
(to attempt, attack, from the root per-, which literally means “to attempt
something”), refers to ventures into risky business or the unknown,
activities which characterized Mediterranean marauders in classical antiq-
uity who became known as pirates (Rennie 2013, 11). Historians often
characterize pirates by their shifting, and hence unreliable, national,
racial/ethnic, and at times even gender affiliations (e.g., Rediker 2004;
Creighton and Norling 1996)—the main reason why they have vexed
political theorists and legal scholars for centuries in their attempts to
define the pirate’s legal status and his/her illegitimacy. Disputes about
who was to be called pirate have always articulated power relationships
and struggles over authority and legitimate violence, as the famous anec-
dote of the pirate and the emperor, related in St. Augustine’s City of
God, illustrates: “For elegant and excellent was the pirate’s answer to
the great Macedonian Alexander, who had taken him: the king asking
him how he durst molest the sea so, he replied with a free spirit, ‘How
darest thou molest the whole world? But because I do with a little ship
only, I am called a thief: thou doing it with a great navy, art called an
emperor’” (Book IV, quoted in Pérotin-Dumon 1991, 196).2 Taking
up related questions raised by various strands of pirate scholarship (e.g.,
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE PIRATE AS A FIGURE OF CRISIS AND LEGITIMACY 3

Rennie 2013; Schillings 2017), I explore the pirate’s primary discursive

function as that of a personified question about legitimacy in diverse
critical contexts. Throughout this book, I am asking in what ways a
transoceanic American cultural imaginary teased out the pirate’s ambiva-
lent potential as a figure of identification and Othering, as outlaw folk
hero and deplorable criminal, to negotiate scenarios of legitimacy and
crisis in Anglophone North America.3
Because of their semantic ambiguity and the elusiveness of their iden-
tity, pirates have defied normative regimes of representation; as a literary
trope, piracy has allowed for a symbolic (re-)negotiation of various iden-
tity constructions (such as British colony versus independent Republic; or
united versus divided, free or slaveholding States during the War of Seces-
sion). My study inquires into ways in which narratives of piracy articulate,
on both the textual and the meta-textual levels, oppositional discursive
positions regarding questions of legitimacy, using piracy’s destabilizing
potential with regard to constructions of racial, ethnic, and gender differ-
ence. I argue that narratives of piracy continuously and dynamically
swerve between dominant and resistant cultural positions, between, for
instance, resistance to the Atlantic slave trade and participation in it; or
between the subversion and affirmation of normative gender roles. In
addition, narratives of piracy frequently turned the pirate from an agent of
disruption, questioning the social order, into a figure of affirmation and
containment.4 This study hence casts piracy as a discursive category on a
continuum between the propagation of colonial adventure and accumu-
lation on the one hand and critical commentary on exploitation, colonial
violence, and racialized, gendered, and class oppression on the other. This
dismantles the mythology of piracy as either leftist, anarchic utopia (e.g.,
Bey; Kuhn; Wilson) or capitalist avant-garde (e.g., Leeson, Storr)—one
of the main oppositions critics have relied on in various conceptualiza-
tions of the pirate. In what follows, pirates appear as repentant sinners
on the verge of execution; as defiant rebels against colonial authori-
ties; as crafty tradesmen whose aim is profit and gain, but also as fast
and excessive spenders; as radical philosophers and religious dissenters; as
slave-holders and as liberators of slaves; as cartographers, scientists, and
picaresque traveler-adventurers on the margins of empire; as atrocious and
as egalitarian masters; and as multinational proponents of an alternative
order.
4 A. GANSER

One of my main hypotheses is that pirate narratives articulate a

Freudian return of the repressed—of colonial violence and resistance—
in critical moments of North American history. Defined by maritime
theft and illegitimacy, the pirate figure represents the “specter of slav-
ery” and “the phantom of luxury,” as David Shields labels the two crucial
hauntings of colonialism (and later imperialism) in the Americas in refer-
ence to the British imperium pelagi (‘empire of the seas,’ 1990, 18).
I aim to show that textual economies of piracy, despite their narrative
resistance to a race-, class- and increasingly nation-based Atlantic order,
are always already undermined by the enslavement and exploitation of
indigenous and African/Afrodiasporic populations as well as by the trian-
gular trade increasingly encompassing the entire Atlantic world in the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Literary and cultural studies of piracy by scholars such as Gesa Macken-
thun, Nina Gerassi-Navarro, or Paul Baepler—to name but a few—have
explored the narratives forming the basis of most theories of piracy,
contributing significantly to the current state of piracy research and
enabling us to see piracy as a complex phenomenon that cannot be
contained within either a Marxist or a free-market grand narrative.
Instead, the figure of the pirate is informed by both its implication in colo-
nial political economies and its dissociation from, even scorn of, dominant
colonial practice. The plethora of Anglo-American texts on piracy from
the late seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries dismantles any
‘either/or’ preconceptions in the characterization of piracy. In any case,
pirates appear as textual constructions recalling historical agents that
provoked colonial authorities in a multipolar (post-)colonial Atlantic
world to write back, to contain the pirate: to turn him (and to a much
lesser extent her) from an agent of disruption, questioning the social
order, into a figure of affirmation.
The simplistic opposition between pirates as figures either of a colo-
nial avant-garde or of resistance will be complicated by a close analysis
of a variety of pirate narratives. My study introduces pirates as figures
symptomatic of intense ontological and epistemological periods of crisis,
in which perpetual struggles over (cultural, legal, political, economic)
categorization and meaning were more intensely debated than at other
times and intermittently resolved—in one direction or another—by a
plethora of cultural narratives. These texts tease out the complexity of
piracy as a cultural and economic phenomenon as well as the many contra-
dictions at the heart of the fledgling merchant empires and their slave
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE PIRATE AS A FIGURE OF CRISIS AND LEGITIMACY 5

economies. Voicing both critique and complicity, pirate narratives and

images, I am arguing, functioned as seismographs for the turmoil and
upheavals produced by this trans-Atlantic and increasingly trans-Pacific
economy. Located at the intersections of Atlantic American and hemi-
spheric studies, (post-)colonial studies, and a New Historicist approach
that reads texts from the angle of their historical-cultural context while
viewing literature itself as productive of this very context, this book sets
out to explore the pirate’s popular appeal in Anglophone America from
a transatlantic angle, taking into account the figure’s history of transla-
tion from Europe to the Americas and focusing on the function of pirate
narratives and the “cultural work” (Tompkins 1985) these texts perform.
In the context of historical crisis scenarios (see below), the figure of the
pirate raises questions about the stability and legitimacy of (legal, political,
cultural) categorization. I ask in what ways narratives of piracy act as mani-
festations of a perceived crisis and analyze the pirate in popular narratives
as negotiating interlocking ideas of legitimacy not only due to the figure’s
ambivalent discursive position but also because the term “pirate” itself
evokes a categorical putting-at-risk of self and society. Reading narratives
of piracy as symptomatic of categorical crisis, I explore in what ways the
pirate was imbued with (de)legitimatory meaning in the context of histor-
ical crisis scenarios, both in canonical and popular literature, which each
interpellated their readerships to reflect on pressing issues of legitimacy.
The oceanic element in definitions of piracy has traditionally
contributed an element of wilderness (as historically opposed to civi-
lization) that has been crucial for various political and juridical debates
over piracy and its definition, in which legitimacy has always been deci-
sive: “The binary opposition between the pirate and civilization is …
manifested by an actor who represents piracy and a state which repre-
sents civilization” and “civilized order” (Schillings 2011, 297; also 2017
for a more detailed analysis). Consequently, the pirate has been imag-
ined as lacking allegiance with any state, as “a fragment of the sea, i.e.
the ungovernable wilderness” (297). Piracy’s oceanic setting, defined
by “exceptional legal rules” (Heller-Roazen 2009, 10), has invited the
proclamation of a state of exception that legitimizes the reduction of
political subjects to “bare life.” Civil rights and other norms are fully
suspended (though not abandoned) and exceptional measures are taken,
as Giorgio Agamben explores in his work on biopolitics and Western
political thinking’s definition of sovereignty as power over life. The state
of exception, Agamben explains, “is neither external nor internal to
6 A. GANSER

the juridical order, and the problem of defining it concerns precisely a

threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not
exclude each other but rather blur with each other” (2005, 23). Defined
in such a relation of exception, the pirate is included in the legal order
only by her/his exclusion through the sovereign (1998, 18). Conceptu-
alizing exception as a “limit figure” that embodies the “radical crisis” at
the heart of legitimacy and political authority (24–25), Agamben high-
lights its ambiguity as a ‘both/and’ concept that cannot be made to
denote one thing or the other (here: inside or outside).5 The operation
of sovereignty—the inclusion of subjects that essentially defy categorical
insertion into a binary order by the claim to an exception—thus produces
“bare life” as its originary activity (83).
Since classical antiquity, maritime pirates have been contrasted with
land-based thieves because of their greater motility (i.e., capability of
movement) and the sea allowing for a more rapid escape:6 piracy negated
territorial and political borders, operating from spaces which were initially
beyond the claims of states and empires (Beasley-Murray 2005, 220,
222). In the mobile world of the various Atlantic migrations, from the
Puritan Great Migration to the triangular slave trade and nineteenth-
century immigration, the figure of the pirate encompasses traits of all
the major characters of that mobile world: the trader, the adventurer,
the pilgrim, the slave, and the indentured laborer as well as the slave-
holder and-trader. In historical and literary discussions of piracy, major
anxieties about an increasingly mobile society were voiced. Discourses
about legitimate and illegitimate mobility appear as a defining aspect in
pirate narratives, as piratical mobilities have been cast as both a threat
to and as supportive of European colonial expansion and the imperialist
project. The menace of uncontrollable geographical and social mobility
that pirates signified was therefore closely related to social mobility and
discontent with one’s inherited class position. In the early modern era,
just as control over people’s mobility was increasingly nationalized (Cress-
well 2006, 12–13), pirates emerged as emblematic of another new world:
“the world of Hobbes, Galileo, and Harvey, … an infinite, restless entan-
glement of persistent movement” in which “happiness itself was based
on the freedom to move” (14). Piracy narratives articulated this emer-
gent world, a world full of colonial dreams and nightmare realities. Ships
and the sea, coasts and islands are main settings of this literature, which
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I wrote immediately to George H. Stuart of Philadelphia, President of
the Christian Commission, stating the condition of affairs at the Point
of Rocks Hospital, requesting lumber for kitchen, lime for chimney,
two first-class ranges, a thousand tin cups and platters, and all the
necessary supplies to start a kitchen.
My letter was promptly received, and Mr. Stuart answered by
telegram:—
“Everything ordered will be sent this afternoon. Also crates
of dishes. Go ahead. You shall have all you need.”
I had already telegraphed to Mrs. E. W. Jones, one of my most
reliable workers, to come to me immediately, and Miss Hattie Noyes,
another superior worker.
They both came as fast as steam could bring them, reaching there
before the kitchen was completed. A cabin had been prepared for
them; but as shingles were not at hand, it was covered with canvas.
As the ladies were entirely competent to complete the
arrangements, I left them for another point. In less than a week a
most remarkable change had been wrought in that hospital. When
the first meals were issued from that well-regulated kitchen in the
nice white dishes and bright tinware, the sick men, many of them,
cried and kissed the dishes, and said it seemed most like getting
home. Instead of the slops dished out of vessels that looked like
swill-buckets, there came to the beds of the very sick and severely
wounded, baked potatoes, baked apples, beef-tea, broiled beefsteak
(when allowed), and especially to the wounded, toasts, jellies, good
soup, and everything in the best home-like preparation.
The surgeon looked on in utter surprise. But the patients fared
better than my heroic women. There came a beating, driving rain,
and their canvas roof leaked like a sieve. They wrapped rubber
blankets about their clothing, put rubber blankets on their bed,
raised their umbrellas, and slept. Of this trial Mrs. Jones wrote me. I
quote from her letter:—
 “This has been a trying day. All night and all day the rain
has come down in torrents in our quarters and the
kitchen, as well as out-of-doors. Quarts of water ran off
our bed while we slept. Almost everything had to be dried,
even to bed and bedding, and in the kitchen it was even
worse. But to-night finds us in good spirits, and our zeal
undampened, though our work has been most thoroughly
soaked.
Affectionately,
E. W. J.”
The putting on of new roofs was only a question of a day or two,
and they had no more trouble from rain after that.
This hospital became so large that another kitchen had to be
established, and three other ladies were added to the force.
These kitchens were the most important in the entire service,
except, possibly, the great kitchen at Cumberland Hospital, Nashville,
Tenn. The fame of the cookery there extended all along the line.
Surgeons came long distances to see for themselves if the reports
were true about them. To many it seemed incredible that the
cooking for the very sick could be so well managed right along the
front lines in these field hospitals.
At my request. General Grant, commanding the United States forces
with headquarters at City Point, visited these famous kitchens.
Himself and two of his staff went in disguise.
With his slouch hat drawn down, and coming in citizen’s clothing, no
one noticed him. They stood by the door of the largest kitchen,
while the dinner was issued. He asked, when the food had been sent
out, a few questions and looked at the bill of fare, then followed to
the wards to see the patients receive it.
He said, when I next came down from Washington and called at
headquarters, that he thought it was the most wonderful thing he
had ever seen. He was unusually enthusiastic.
“Why,” said he, “those men live better than I do; and so many of
them too. How they manage to cook such a variety for so many
hundreds is what puzzles me.”
Then he told me about his going through the wards while they were
taking their dinner, and noticing how greatly they enjoyed the food.
And when told that the most of this food came from the commutation of
government rations, he was still more surprised.

When he was passing through one of the wards, a convalescing

soldier, taking him to be a delegate of the Christian Commission,
called out, “Say, Christian, won’t you bring me a pair of socks?”
“I’ll see that you get a pair,” the general responded, and passed out;
but he arranged to have the man get a pair of socks.
But where are the noble women who labored there with so much
energy and zeal years ago?
Mrs. Jones, a most saintly woman, the widow of a Presbyterian
minister, sits serene in the evening of life—her work done and well-
done—at Wellesley, Mass., where her daughter is the attending
physician of the college.
All the years of her life have been given to benevolent and reform
work, and now she waits and listens for the heavenly voice and the
rustle of the angel’s wings.
Miss Noyes is in Canton, China, where she has been in mission work
ever since the close of the war. A few years ago a beautiful poem
written by her, entitled, “Toiling All Night,” was extensively published
in this country. She has several times returned on a visit to her
native land, and was, when she came to us, the same bright,
cheerful, earnest-hearted woman, as when, amid the thunders of
battle, she ministered to the sick and wounded soldiers of the
Republic.
Fortune has not dealt generously with some of the others who
labored there. One, a competent worker, is now poor. She lives in
Illinois.
Another married and settled on a land claim. Her husband died from
overwork and exposure, leaving her in the wilderness, without help
to bury him, for days. After he was laid away, she struggled on,
determined to hold the claim; but a fearful snowstorm one winter
came, and buried her and her two little girls under the snow, till the
top of the house was level with the plain.
They remained buried for many days before being dug out. Some
men thought about her, and travelled miles to ascertain if she was all
right.
They searched long before they could find her shanty, and when
they did, had to dig tons of snow away before they could get her
out. She now lives in Colorado.
These years have wrought great changes; but all the workers will
look back, no matter how bright or how dark the hours that may
come to them, with great satisfaction on their heroic work at Point of
Rocks, Va.
 THE SWEET SINGER OF THE
HOSPITALS.

IN the fall of 1864, when the Union army was massing against
Richmond, Va., the hospitals in and around Washington were very
much overcrowded.
Under special orders from Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, and with
the hearty co-operation of President Lincoln, I had previously
assumed the general supervision of the special-diet kitchens of the
United States army hospitals all along the lines.
It also devolved upon me to select the lady superintendents for that
important service, two for each kitchen. The food for the very sick
and the severely wounded, on orders of the ward surgeons, was
prepared under their supervision.
In some of these special-diet kitchens as many as 1,000, and in
some 1,500 patients, were supplied with carefully prepared food in
great variety three times a day.
It will be readily seen that competent women were needed to take
the management of this important work. They had not only to
command a force of twenty or thirty men in these kitchens, and
maintain discipline and good order, but they had, under hospital
authority, the entire responsibility of supplying the proper
preparation of food, on time and without the least delay or
confusion.
Their high position also demanded that they should be ladies of
culture and social standing, who could command the respect and
confidence of officers and surgeons in charge. It is greatly to the
honor of the patriotic women of the North, that scores of
accomplished ladies of high social position volunteered to fill these
important places.
Great care had to be taken in their selection, and none were
accepted unless highly indorsed.
One day there came to my headquarters in Washington a young lady
from Pawtucket, R.I. She was twenty-two years old, as I afterwards
learned; but she was so childlike in appearance that she seemed
much younger.
“I am Lizzie B——,” she said by way of introduction. “I was ready
and waiting, and just as soon as I received your letter containing
pass and orders to come, I started.”
My heart sank within me. I was expecting Lizzie B——, but I had
anticipated meeting a very different-looking person.
Every letter of recommendation had said: “Although Miss B—— is
young in years, she is mature in character, and is of the highest type
of American womanhood, and will command respect anywhere. We
commend her to you as one of our noblest women, who will be
equal to any position, and one who will never fail nor falter in the
line of duty.”
I had naturally expected a woman of stately and commanding
presence, and one who would be equal to any emergency; but she
seemed to me to be only a child in years and experience.
“I have ordered up my baggage,” she said with childlike simplicity,
“and I have brought my little melodeon with me. I thought it might
be useful.”
Sure enough, when her luggage came, and the box containing the
instrument was opened, she took out the smallest melodeon I ever
saw.
“What shall I do with that dear little child from Rhode Island and her
little melodeon?” I said to my secretary, Mary Shelton, now Mrs.
Judge Houston of Burlington, Iowa. But she could not solve the
problem.
When the heavy work of the day was through, weary and full of care
and anxiety, we joined Miss B—— in the parlor. After some
conversation, she said,—
“Would you like to have me play and sing?”
We assented, and she sat down at the instrument and began to play
and sing.
We were amazed and charmed. It seemed as though the curtains of
heaven were lifted, and the songs of an angel were floating down
upon us.
The tones of the little melodeon were soft and clear, and the voice of
the singer was sweet and remarkably sympathetic. Her notes thrilled
one; there was life and spirit in them. After listening to her for an
hour or more, weariness and anxiety were gone, and I knew just
what to do with Lizzie B——.
There were tens of thousands of aching and burdened hearts all
about us; and she, with her wonderful gift of song, could lift some
drooping spirit, and pour the balm of peace into some wounded,
fainting hearts. I took her and her melodeon to Campbell Hospital
the next morning, and told her to sing as she had opportunity.
The sick and wounded were quartered in great wooden barracks
eighty feet long. There were rows of cots on either side of the room.
That very day she went into one of these wards. She had never
been in a hospital before; and when she entered and saw the long
rows of cots, and all the faces of the men, whether they were lying
down or sitting up, turned towards her, she grew faint and dizzy, and
her courage almost failed her. She seemed powerless to do anything
but to walk on down the long aisle.
At last a soldier called to her from his bed,—
“Say, miss, won’t you write a letter for me?”
It was a great relief to have the oppressive silence broken and to
have something to do. As she sat down beside his cot, she asked,—
“To whom shall I write?”
“My mother.”
And he thrust his hand down under his pillow, and drew forth a
letter which she read with tears.
“What shall I say to her?”
“Tell her that the surgeons think that I may live a week or two yet.”
“Oh! but you may get well.”
“No; I can never recover. I have a fatal disease.”
“Shall I ask your mother to come to you?”
“No; she cannot come. She is too poor, and she can’t leave the
younger children; but she is praying for me.”
“Would you like to have me to pray for you?”
“Yes, miss, if you will.”
Lizzie B—— took one of his thin, cold hands in her own and knelt
beside his cot, and offered up one of those low, sweet, sympathetic
prayers that come from the heart and ascend straight to the throne
of mercy.
When she arose, every man who could leave his bed was standing
about the cot, and many were wiping away the tears they could not
restrain.
“Would you like to have me sing something?” she questioned,
looking kindly into their faces.
“Oh! do—please do,” they all urged; and she sang one of the sweet
songs of the gospel that she could sing so well.
Of course they were all delighted, and begged that she would come
again.
“I have a melodeon,” she said, as she left them; “and I’ll come to-
morrow and have that brought into the ward, if the surgeon says I
may.”
As they looked wistfully after her, one of the soldiers, wiping the
tears from his eyes, said,—
“She looks like a woman, but she sings like an angel.”
The next day the little melodeon was carried into that ward, and
Lizzie B—— sang for them, and the surgeon in charge was one of
the auditors. He was so delighted with the influence of her singing,
that he gave orders that she be allowed to sing in all the wards of
that hospital.
From that time on, she devoted her time to the service of song, till
all the hundreds in that hospital had been cheered again and again
by her tender words and sweet, sympathetic voice.
The effects of her singing were so uplifting and comforting that I
extended her field, and had an ambulance placed at her command
that she might visit other hospitals. After that she made the rounds
among the hospitals at Washington, going day by day from one
hospital to another. Everywhere her coming was hailed with joy.
Mothers and wives who were watching hopelessly beside their dying
ones were lifted in heart and hope towards God and heaven. Men
who had been strong in battle to do and to dare, but who now lay
sorely wounded and weak, and heart and flesh well-nigh failing
them, were lifted on billows of hope and faith and felt strong to live
and to do, or to suffer and die.
Thousands were cheered and saved from despair by this wonderful
singer of the hospitals.
I found her afterwards in other work, equal to the management of
large interests. She could have taken charge of a special-diet
kitchen, but I have always thanked God that her time was given
instead to songs in the hospitals. She has changed her name since
then. She is now the wife of a Congregational minister; but her voice
still holds, by its sweet, sympathetic cadences, the listening
congregations.
 A YOUNG NURSE AT GETTYSBURG.

LITTLE SADIE BUSHMAN, who was not quite ten years old at the
time of the battle of Gettysburg, proved herself a little heroine. Mr.
and Mrs. Bushman, learning that the battle would rage in all
probability on or near their premises, sent this child with her brother
to her grandmother’s, two miles away, while the parents gathered up
the other children and undertook to follow.
Sadie took hold of her brother’s hand, and they hurried on as fast as
their feet could carry them. But it was not long before their pathway
led them into the thick of the fight along Seminary Ridge. The roar
of the artillery was continuous, but they could not retreat. There
came a blinding flash and a deafening roar. A shell whizzed past
them. A gray-haired officer seized the children, and hurried them
down the ridge toward their destination.
But scarcely less danger awaited them there, as their grandmother’s
house and yard was converted into a hospital. The first work of the
child when she reached this place was to hold a cup of water to a
soldier’s lips while one of his legs was sawed off.
She was separated from her parents two weeks before they knew
she was alive, but all that time she was ministering to the wounded
soldiers. She carried soup and broth, and fed those who could not
help themselves. She worked under the orders of the surgeons, and
was furnished with supplies by the Christian Commission as long as
the hospitals were kept open in Gettysburg. She is now a married
woman—Sadie Bushman Junkerman—and lives near Oakland, Cal.;
but the scenes of the Gettysburg battle years ago are vividly
remembered by her.
 A BUT’FUL GUV’MENT MULE.

AFTER the fall of Richmond it was found that the people were in a
very destitute condition, many of them being almost in a state of
starvation.
Every agency was at once used to furnish them with food.
The government issued rations as they came in, and the Sanitary
and Christian Commissions distributed large supplies.
Among those who assisted in distributing the supplies of the
Christian Commission was the Rev. John O. Foster, now living in
Chicago, Ill.
Each day the supplies would be issued according to the amount on
hand and the number standing in line.
Slowly the procession would march up with baskets to get what was
offered; black and white, rich and poor, old and young, all fared and
shared alike.
One evening after the issue had been made and the room cleared,
an old colored man, who had been sitting off in one corner on a box,
arose and shuffled along towards Mr. Foster. Taking off his old torn
hat he made a low bow.
“Why, you’re too late; why didn’t you come up when the others did?”
“No, massa, I izent. Ben’s done gone and got my rashuns. I’se cum
har on bizness.”
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“I’ze mos’ ’shamed to tell you, Capt’n,” and he put his old hat to his
face and chuckled heartily. Then continued, “You see, Capt’n, day’s
sellin’ lot uv guv’ment mules cheap, mighty cheap, mos’ as cheap as
dirt, and I cud make a fortin if I could buy one; day’s sellin’ for
twenty dollars, massa—but’ful guv’ment mules.” Then there was an
awkward pause.
“Well?”
“I thot mebbe you’d len’ me de money.”
Foster laughed heartily.
“How would you ever pay me back?”
“By haulin’; dar’s a big speculation in it; make a fortin right off.”
“Where will you get a wagon?”
“Oh, I’ze got a wagin; one ole massa throde away and I mended up.
An’ I’ze got ropes and ebery ting ’cept de mule; dat’s all I want
now.”
“You think you will pay me back?”
“Sartin, massa. If I don’t pay, I guvs up de mule.”
Again Mr. Foster laughed at the thought of that mule coming back on
his hands.
“Well, I think you ought to have the mule now,” was Foster’s
generous reply; “and here is twenty dollars to buy one, but you must
pay it back,” and he handed him a ten-dollar and two five-dollar bills.
“My Lor, massa! Neber had so much money ’fore in all my life. If I
dun fail to pay it back, de mule’s yourn, sure.”
“Now, don’t allow yourself to be robbed or cheated out of it.”
“No, massa; I hain’t goin’ to let nobody know I’ze got nuthin’ till I git
hole on de mule.”
Two days passed, and he saw nothing of the colored man. On the
evening of the third day the colored man came in late, and took a
seat in the corner on a box. But after all had left the room he came
close up to Foster with his hand on his pocket.
“Well, did you get the mule?”
“Yes, massa; I got de most beautifullest mule dat you ever seed—de
bes’ kind uv government mule.” Then he took from his pocket two
clean, crisp five-dollar bills, and handed them to Mr. Foster. “’Fore
Sat’day night I gwine to pay all, I ’spects; I’ze doin’ a busten
bus’ness.”
The next Saturday evening the colored man was there; and as soon
as the room was cleared he came forward, and, making sure that no
one else would see, he took out quite a roll of bills, and from them
selected a clean, crisp ten-dollar bill and handed it to Mr. Foster.
“How in the world did you make so much money?”
“I tole you, massa, der war a speculashun in it, an’ der war. Me and
de mule and Ben arned ev’ry dollah. He’s the beautifullest mule you
ever seed. Ben brung him round so as you could see ’em.”
Mr. Foster went to the door. There, sure enough, stood a good,
strong mule, as docile, as quiet and sedate, as though he had not
hauled the artillery into the fight, and stood near the big guns amid
the thunders of battle; for Ben said, with great pride,—
“Dis mule is one uv dem best mules dat pulled de big guns ober de
hills. Oh, he’s an awful strong hos!”
Little Ben sat on a board placed as a seat at the front of the wagon,
his white, even teeth showing from ear to ear, and his eyes sparkling
with gladness. Ben managed to buy a lot on a back alley and build
himself a shanty and a little stable for the government mule.
Judging from his thrift, he is, no doubt, if alive, one of the wealthy
colored men of Richmond now.
 COULD YOU GET ME A RAW ONION
AND SOME SALT?

A LITTLE company of my best workers were sent to Wilmington,

N.C., in charge of my secretary, Mary Shelton, in the spring of 1865,
to care for the sick being gathered there, and the half-starved
prisoners being sent in for exchange.
The dangers and hardships of the journey were very great; but after
many delays they finally reached there and were able to render
valuable service.
Among these chosen workers was Amanda Shelton, now Mrs.
Stewart of Mount Pleasant, Ia., who, strong of body and courageous
of soul, was untiring in her ministrations. One day, as she walked
among the hundreds of the sick and half-starved men, ministering to
them as best she could, the surgeon of the ward called her attention
to a soldier who lay as one dead.
“That man,” he said, “is starving to death. We can’t get him to eat
anything. If you can tempt him to eat he may possibly recover.”
Miss Shelton went to the soldier, and tried to get his attention; but
he lay with closed eyes, in seeming indifference. She tried to tempt
him by mentioning every delicacy she could think of; but he shook
his head and moaned impatiently.
As she remained standing beside his cot, trying to think of
something else, he opened his eyes, and, looking her earnestly in
the face, asked in pitiful, appealing tones,—
“Say, miss, don’t you think you could get me a raw onion and some
salt?”
“Yes, I think I can,” she answered, and hastened away to try to find
some onions.
Fortunately, a lot of supplies had just come in, and a sack of onions
was among the goods received.
She hastened back with an onion in her hand and a cup of salt. He
seized the onion eagerly, and began eating it as one would eat an
apple or a peach, dipping it in the salt cup each time as he ate
greedily.
The onion and salt was the balm of life to him; and from that time
he began to amend, and was soon able to be about the ward and
eat everything the surgeons would allow him to.
“Oh, that onion did the business for me! If I ever get home I will
raise a big lot of them,” he said.
Shortly afterwards he was shipped North, and as the war soon
afterwards closed, no doubt he reached his home safely.
 MEN WHO COMMANDED
THEMSELVES AND DID NOT SWEAR.

THE Mississippi River was very much swollen in the spring of 1863,
and a bayou near Helena offered a possible channel in the direction
of Vicksburg. It was broad and deep enough to admit the passage of
steamers and gunboats, but too narrow for a boat to turn around.
A fleet of steamers, bearing a well-chosen force, and accompanied
by gunboats, was sent down this bayou. The fleet of boats had not
gone far till the way was found blockaded. Large trees had been cut
down, so that in falling they bridged the narrow stream from shore
to shore. But determined men can overcome almost any obstacle.
They did not stop to cut the trees to pieces, but loosened them from
the stumps, attached ropes and chains to them, and with their
hands, by main force, pulled them out onto the dry land.
Overhanging branches had to be cut away, and yet all the outworks
of the boats were torn to pieces. Finding that this channel of
approach was impracticable, a retrograde movement was made.
There was but one way to get the boats out, and that was to back
out stern foremost.
But while they were pushing on, the enemy had been felling the
trees behind them, and the same hard work of pulling them out by
human hands became necessary; and it was done.
It was my privilege to see the fleet of boats as it came in to join the
force opposite Vicksburg, and a more dilapidated, ragged-looking lot
of boats and men was never seen on the earth.
They looked as though they had been through a dozen battles. Little
was left of the boats but the substantial framework. The flags hung
in tatters; the smoke-stacks had been carried away; the pilot-houses
torn to pieces; the guards and outworks were gone; the wheel-
houses torn away, and the broken wheels left bare.
As heroes returning from battle, the soldiers of that expedition were
welcomed by hearty cheers, as boat after boat came in, by their
comrades. One boat, the first to enter the bayou, was the last to
come in, and arrived about ten o’clock at night.
The landing was made alongside our Sanitary boat, where the
agents and workers of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions were
quartered. There were a number of ladies there; and their
sympathies were deeply moved, that men who had been out on
such hard service should be marched out through the rain and mud
at so late an hour to make their camp.
“Why can they not stay under shelter where they are till morning?”
was the indignant question that passed from lip to lip, as we stood
out on the guards looking down upon them.
By the flambeau that burned with a weird, lurid light, we could dimly
see them fall into line and march away, with their knapsacks on their
backs and their guns in their hands. But they were a jolly set; and as
they plunged into the mud, which was nearly knee-deep, some wag
among them cried out, in imitation of boatmen taking the depth of
the channel, “No bottom! no bottom!” Every soldier seemed to
instantly join in the chorus; and “No bottom! no bottom!” rang out
from hundreds of throats, which was soon varied to “No chickens!”
“No coffee!” “No ’taters!” as they plunged on in the darkness.
Of course such conduct was not consistent with military dignity, and
so the colonel tried to stop them. But the noise was so loud that he
failed at first to make himself heard.
“Halt!” he cried in thunder tones.
Immediately there was entire quiet; every man stood still just where
he was to hear what his commanding officer had to say; not a foot
moved.
“Soldiers, you forget yourselves,” said the colonel. “I know it is
raining, and the mud is deep, and the fare and the work have been
hard; but you are in the midst of a great army, the commanding
general’s quarters are near; what will be thought of such noise and
confusion? You misrepresent yourselves; we will march quietly to
camp. Forward, march!”
Not a passionate or profane word was spoken. We were all curious
to know who the officer was who could command himself as well as
his men.
The next day I was at General Grant’s quarters; and I inquired as to
who the officer was, and told the story.
“I do not know him,” I said earnestly, “but I am sure he ought to be
promoted. A man who can govern himself as he did last night ought
to wear a general’s shoulder-straps.”
“That was Colonel Legget. He is a good man, and a very fine officer,”
was the general’s reply.
“Do you know, General, that there is a great deal of profanity among
the officers and men?”
“Yes, I know; I am sorry that it is so.”
“I am glad to hear you say that you are sorry.”
“I never swear.”
“Indeed! It is encouraging to hear a man of your influence say that.
I am glad you have so much moral principle.”
“It is not moral principle,” he answered quickly. “I never contracted
the habit of profanity. I should not utter an oath if I knew what I
was about; and, not having the habit, I would not likely do so
unconsciously. Profanity does not comport with the dignity of the
military service.”
“No; nor with Christianity, which lifts a higher standard. I wish you
could have said that Christian principles furnished an added
restraint.”
“I believe in the Christian system, and have great respect for
Christian people. They are doing a grand work in the army; but I am
not a Christian as you understand it.”
“I wish you were. You walk amid dangers, and many of us feel
anxious about you—many prayers go up for your safety. I would feel
that you were safer for both worlds if you were a Christian.”
“I would like to be a Christian.”
Just then General Rawlins, one of the grandest men of the war, who
was his chief of staff, came forward with some documents for
examination, and the close conversation was interrupted, and I took
my leave. I am glad to know that afterward he professed faith in the
Divine Redeemer.
 HE DIED CHEERING THE FLAG.

A. M. SHIPMAN, an Ohio volunteer, who was confined for eight

months as a hostage, was in Vicksburg jail during the siege, and was
released when Pemberton surrendered.
For a time he had a fellow-prisoner named John B. Marsh, who had
been forced into the Rebel army. Marsh made an attempt to join the
Union forces, but was recaptured, and condemned to be shot. Just
before his execution he managed to get the following note into Mr.
Shipman’s hands:—
“Kind Friend,—If ever you reach our happy lines, have this
put in the Northern papers, that my father, the Rev.
Leonard Marsh, who lives in Maine, may know what has
become of me, and what I was shot for. I am to be shot
for defending my country. I love her, and am willing to die
for her. Tell my parents that I am also happy in the Lord.
My future is bright. I hope to speak to you as I pass out to
die.”
One of the guards told Mr. Shipman afterward, that when young
Marsh was placed in position ready to receive the fire of his
executioners, he was told he could speak if he desired to do so.
Looking calmly upon the crowd for a moment, he shouted out in
strong, clear tones, “Three cheers for the old flag and the Union!”
There was no response to his patriotic sentiment. He paused for a
moment, and then shouted at the top of his voice, “Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah!” A volley of musketry struck him in the breast, and stopped
the beating of his brave, loyal heart.
 HOW PRESIDENT LINCOLN
RECEIVED THE NEWS OF
SHERIDAN’S VICTORY.

I WAS personally acquainted with President Lincoln, and sat talking

with him in his public office when the telegram was brought in
announcing General Sheridan’s second victory in the Shenandoah
Valley, which resulted in the defeat of General Early.
When the messenger came in, Mr. Lincoln was talking very
earnestly; and although he laid down the telegram with the
announcement, “An important telegram, Mr. President,” Mr. Lincoln
took no notice of it.
The messenger went as far as the door of the room, and seeing that
Mr. Lincoln had not taken up the telegram he returned, and laying it
a little nearer to him on the desk, repeated,—
“An important telegram, Mr. President.”
But as the president kept on talking, and took no notice of it, the
messenger retired.
He was at that time talking of the sanitary condition of the army; the
relation of food to health, and the influence of the special-diet
kitchen system in restoring the soldiers to health, and its effect in
lessening the number of furloughs.
I, too, talked earnestly; as, while pushing the work of the special-
diet kitchens, I believed most heartily in furloughs.
But earnest as I was, I was exceedingly anxious to know the
contents of that telegram.
There was during that interview, that far away look in his eyes, that
those seeing could never forget.
At last he paused and took up the despatch, and after looking over it
read it aloud.
“This is good news indeed,” he said, and a smile lit up his rugged
features as he went on with his comments.
“This Sheridan,” he said, “is a little Irishman, but he is a big fighter.”
Soon after I arose to take my leave. He, too, arose and stood like a
giant before me, as he extended his hand, and said, “Well, success
to you. Come in again.”
I did not realize his greatness at that time, but now all the world
knows that Abraham Lincoln will stand out a colossal figure as long
as American history is read. A thousand years will not dim the lustre
of his name or fame.
When his armies were pushed back till they built their camp-fires
under the shadow of the nation’s Capitol, and treason glared at him
from the near palaces, and the ship of state rocked in the trough of
the waves of civil war and social revolution, he stood firm and strong
at the helm, with calm, unwavering trust in God. In a rougher
mould, he possessed the majesty of a Clay, the sagacity of a
Franklin, the wit of a Ben Jonson, the benevolence of a Howard, and
the social qualities of the Adamses. No heart in all the land throbbed
with a truer, kindlier charity towards all, than did the great heart of
Abraham Lincoln when the assassin’s bullet stopped its generous
beating. Among philanthropists, in all ages, Lincoln will stand out as
The Great Emancipator, who brought liberty to an enslaved and
cruelly wronged race; and Right will laurel-crown him as a martyr.
No one bullet ever went forth on a deadlier mission, or struck so
heavy a blow to friends and foes alike, as did the bullet that laid
Abraham Lincoln low in the dust.
Victor and vanquished, who had come up out of a great struggle
with their garments rolled in blood to ground their arms at his feet,
and who had received his benediction of peace and good-will to all,
were alike mourners when the assassin’s bullet did its deadly work.
It was as though there was one dead in every house. The mourners
went about the streets uncomforted. Men forgot their love for gold
and their lust for power; statesmen groped about like blind men for
some hand to lead. The world was in mourning; for all the world
knew that he had come to the kingdom for such a time as that.
The lives of such men as Abraham Lincoln are measured by deeds,
and not by length of days. His work was wrought in a few short
years. He answered the question of the wisdom and solidity of a
republican form of government by hurling its betrayers from power.
He established human liberty on the immutable rock of intelligent
public sentiment. When he proclaimed above the sleeping heroes of
Gettysburg, “a government of the people, by the people, and for the
people,” he sounded forth an endless jubilee that has echoed and re-
echoed through the world, till the people of every kindred and
tongue have heard the glad tidings, and human slavery has been
branded as a crime, and outlawed by all the civilized nations of the
earth.
The saviour of his people, the liberator of the oppressed, the great-
hearted friend of humanity, he will stand out a colossal figure in
history while men love liberty more than life, while men love
freedom more than chains, and while human sympathy links us to
each other and draws us toward God and heaven.
It seems fitting, as there was not one of all the millions who loved
him, and who would have shielded him at any cost, but knew not of
his peril, that the flag he loved should have become his avenger, and
caught the foot of the assassin in its loyal folds, and hurled him
away to certain death. That flag, kept securely in a glass case, is
held sacred in the treasure-house of the nation. The swift-footed
years have gone by, till twenty-nine have passed; but Lincoln is not
forgotten: his memory is as fresh and sweet as it was at the first.
The robins come to build their nests, and the bluebirds sing their
sweet spring songs, just as they did twenty-nine years ago this April-
time; but he is not forgotten, for his work goes on. The flag that
Lincoln upheld is the banner honored of all nations, the principles he
sustained and taught are more and more becoming the heritage of
the world, and will be universal.
 HOW I GOT THE COTTON.

A FEW days after the first fleet ran the blockade at Vicksburg,
another fleet, composed entirely of wooden steamers, ran through
that fiery channel.
The plans of the government coming to my knowledge, I sent a note
to the medical director, offering to ship a lot of hospital supplies, and
asking him to designate the boat on which I should ship them. My
note came back indorsed,—
“Send supplies down on the Tigress.”
I still have that letter on file.
The Tigress was a trim, stanch little craft which General Grant had
used for headquarters. And feeling sure the swift, trim little steamer
would make the passage safely, I shipped a heavy lot of supplies on
her.
There were six wooden steamers, with barges in tow, laden with
army supplies.
On the night of the 26th of April, 1863, they ran the blockade.
All the important machinery was protected by bales of cotton and
bales of hay.
All the boats got through safely, except the Tigress.
In the midst of the fiery channel a solid shot cut through the heavy
gunwales of the barge she was towing, and went through her hull,
just below the water-level. Her crew deserted her, and made their
escape in the small boats which were there for that purpose.
She filled with water so slowly that she drifted down into the Union
lines before she sank, sinking near the shore on the Louisiana side
of the river.
Two days afterwards I received a letter from an Iowa colonel, whose
name I have forgotten, whose regiment was in camp opposite where
the Tigress sank, informing me that the men of his command were
willing to wade out neck-deep and secure the cotton about the
engine of the Tigress, if the commanding general would give it to
me for sanitary purposes; and that as he was coming up to Young’s
Point with empty wagons for supplies, he would gladly deliver it
there.
I was very much perplexed as to what I had best do, but finally sent
the colonel’s letter to General Grant, who had gone below Vicksburg
with his army, with a brief letter, saying that “If the granting of this
request is entirely consistent with your sense of honor, and the best
interest of yourself and of the government, I would be glad to
receive the cotton, as I shipped a heavy lot of supplies on the
Tigress, and they have all been lost.”
As soon as my letter was received, the order was issued, and sent
up by a special messenger. I sent it immediately to that generous
Iowa colonel, with a most kindly message.
I do not know how deep the Iowa soldiers waded out to secure the
cotton; but I do know that a heavy lot came up in good condition
very promptly, and that I shipped it to St. Louis to Partrage & Co. for
sale, and that it was sold for $1,950, which I charged to my account,
and which enabled me to more than double the amount of supplies I
had lost.
I see by bills in my possession that I bought immense quantities of
supplies in St. Louis. There is one bill of seventy-five bushels of dried
apples, while all the onions in the market were bought up, and
lemons and other antiscorbutics; and when our forces surrounded
Vicksburg, heavy supplies were rushed in to meet their pressing
wants, especially those who were sick and wounded in hospital and
camp.
Somehow I lost the address of that Iowa colonel; but although more
than thirty years have passed, I have never ceased to feel the most
profound gratitude to that colonel and his men for their heroic
services. If this should fall under the eyes of any of them, I should
be very glad to hear from them, and to thank them personally.
 THE SEQUEL TO “UNCLE TOM’S
CABIN.”

THE name of Harriet Beecher Stowe recalls the story of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.” It was a story that thrilled and moved the people of this
country as no other story has ever done. Its influence was not a
sentimental and transitory one. The shafts of truth were sent home
to men’s consciences, and were abiding; they live to-day.
It may not, however, be generally known that the hero of “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin” did not die till a few years ago—in 1883.
I knew him personally, and have heard the story from his own lips.
Mrs. Stowe was acquainted with Uncle Tom, and read a sketch of his
life which had been published by the Anti-Slavery Society before she
wrote her book.
His history and work after the beating he had received, which
brought him down to death’s door, are more remarkable than those
that had preceded, which she records, and where she leaves him
dead. He recovered, and afterwards had an opportunity to escape
with his family from slavery. He used such sagacity in planning his
journey, preparing for months for the great event, that he was able
to elude his pursuers, and reach Canada in safety. Two of his four
children were too small to travel on foot such a long journey. So he
made a sack with straps over his shoulders, and carried them on his
back out of slavery. At times his back was so sore, from the heat and
friction, that the blood ran down to his heels.
It was a heroic effort for freedom for himself, and his children, and
his wife.
He was, as far as I am able to judge, the most remarkable colored
man that has ever lived on this continent.
His home, which I have visited, was on the Sydenham River, near
the town of Dresden, Ontario, Canada. It was a most comfortable
one.
He did not know one letter from another when he reached Canada.
He became a scholar, and in a few years spoke the English language
correctly and without the Southern accent.
He had neither money nor credit when he settled in Canada, but he
owned at the time of his death one of the finest farms in the
Dominion.
He had never studied oratory, but he became one of the most
eloquent speakers in Canada and England. He could fill Exeter Hall,
England, without effort. Lords and ladies entertained him at their
castles, and on invitation of Queen Victoria he visited her at Windsor
Palace.
His name was Josiah Henson. I visited him in August, 1882, at his
home. He was then nearly ninety-three years of age. In March,
1883, having turned into his ninety-fourth year, he died. His mind
was clear, his conversation intelligent and logical. The pathetic story
of his running away from slavery would have been, if touched by
Mrs. Stowe’s pen, far in advance of anything in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
He was a friend of the slaves, and for several years before, and
especially during the war, was one of the conductors and guides on
the underground railroad to Canada.
He founded a colony near Dresden.
He was well acquainted with Mrs. Stowe, and frequently visited her
at her home in Boston.
He wrote his life before she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
His anti-slavery speeches in England won him a great reputation for
oratory.