I am Sir
with much respect
W H McCartney
Capt Comdg—
P.S. I have to beg as a favor, that he may not know: that you receive this information from me.
Thunderstruck, Henry was nonetheless relieved to know where Charley was, that he was under Captain McCartney’s protection, and that the illusion that he had been properly enlisted would prevent him from running off to another unit that would take him in readily, gladly. Though Charley was encamped on the Rappahannock, safely beyond the range of the Confederate guns, he was still too close to danger for Henry’s peace of mind—and since General Hooker was a fighting general, McCartney’s artillery battery would surely soon move upon the fields of war.
Resigned to Charley’s decision, knowing that he was likely to do more harm than good if he tried to extricate him from the army by coercion, Henry resolved instead to secure Charley a commission. The idea of wielding whatever influence his fame and fortune offered to maneuver Charley into a place of privilege he had not earned pricked at Henry’s egalitarian conscience, but he could not refrain from doing all that he could for his boy. He knew well that even junior officers received better food, housing, supplies, and medical care than the most experienced enlisted man—and the harrowing accounts of exchanged prisoners of war confirmed that captured officers received significantly better treatment in Confederate prisons, often making the difference between survival and death. Charley was Henry’s firstborn son, and although he had enlisted without his consent, Henry could not bear to punish him by refusing to provide whatever relative comforts and protection he could.
On March 17, Henry wrote to Sumner, seeking his advice, asking him to call on Captain McCartney if possible, to intervene however necessary to make Charley an officer. As soon as the letter was posted, Henry set out to call on his friend and editor James Fields to ask him to speak with Governor Andrew on Charley’s behalf, but along the way he encountered a military funeral, and the sight so upset him that he returned home and wrote Fields a letter instead. He next wrote to Dr. Edward B. Dalton, a longtime family friend and the medical inspector of the Sixth Army Corps, requesting that he pay a surprise visit on Charley in camp and to report back with all haste.
Before evening fell on that long, distressing day, Henry sent off two more letters, written with great reluctance and pain. The first was to Captain McCartney to inform him that he could proceed with Charley’s enlistment ceremony, for Henry knew that withholding his permission, which the captain had sought out of respect and not legal obligation, would only delay the inevitable. The last letter was to Charley, expressing his love, and that of all the family, and assuring him that he would not insist that Charley return home.
Anxious and increasingly melancholic, Henry awaited word from his eldest son, making do in the interim with secondhand reports from friends. Sumner was the first to reply to his frantic series of letters, informing Henry that he had written to Charley and had invited him to Washington, surmising that Charley would be more amenable to persuasion if he were separated from his would-be comrades in arms. Not surprisingly, Charley had easily detected the stratagem and had replied that he would be most happy to visit Senator Sumner in Washington—after the war was over or his three-year term of service fulfilled.
“I feel better about Charley now than I did at first,” Sumner acknowledged, “partly from thinking of his case, and partly from what has been said to me by others.” He had sought advice from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who understood Henry’s circumstances as well as any father could, for he too had a son who had enlisted without permission. When his son first began agitating to join the army, Secretary Stanton had enrolled him in college in Ohio to remove him from temptation, but soon thereafter his son left school to join up with a Union regiment in Tennessee. Three hundred similar cases had been presented to him at the War Department by parents seeking advice or action, and Secretary Stanton had absolute confidence that the course he had taken with his own son was appropriate for Henry too. “He left his own son in the ranks,” Sumner explained, “fully and fairly to try the life he had selected.” Secretary Stanton also urged them not to secure Charley a commission “until he had really earned it,” for rewarding his deception with a high rank and a staff would encourage “idleness and vulgar dissipations.”
After kindly promising to do whatever he could for Charley, Sumner encouraged Henry to accept the young man’s decision and let him make his own way. “I see clearly that this act is the natural cropping out of Charley’s character,” Sumner added. “It was in him to do so, and, I believe also, it will be in him to persevere. I doubt if you could change him. You could not win him back. He could not return without mortification, that would be worse than any experience before him.”
Henry could imagine an infinite number of terrible experiences on the battlefield that would be far worse than any embarrassment Charley might suffer if he were persuaded to come home. Even so, Sumner’s sympathetic, rational letter—and Secretary Stanton’s wisdom born of experience—helped Henry reconcile himself to the misadventure. So too did the report from Dr. Dalton following his surprise visit to Charley in camp. “He was glad to hear from you,” the doctor wrote, “sent his love, & says he is as happy as a lark all day long—likes his captain, thinks himself very fortunate in getting into this Battery, & says he is ‘the luckiest bird round,’ & would not leave for anything.” Dr. Dalton vowed to look after Charley and care for him personally should he fall ill, but he assured Henry that the battery was encamped on good ground, with no especial danger of disease.
Taking what comfort he could from his friends’ reassurances and advice, Henry sought distraction and solace in Dante as he had so often before, translating a canto each day, staving off depression and paralyzing fear with the beauty of the Italian language and the magnificence of the poet’s vision. His Sudbury Tales was going to press, still in want of a more elegant title, and he had a good deal of correspondence to attend to on its behalf. But distractions were not remedies.
At long last the post brought a letter from Charley himself, his pride and exuberance fairly leaping off the page. “You dont know how glad I am to hear that you wont make me come back,” he wrote, entirely mistaking Henry’s restraint for approval. “I would not back out now for anything in the world.” He was in the best Massachusetts battery, he boasted, and their captain was “a tip top soldier,” and with great enthusiasm he described guard duty, the “little huts” in which the soldiers slept, recent snows, drills undertaken, horses tended, comrades befriended. “If I had taken my pick of our whole army I don’t think I could have joined anything more to my idea than this Battery,” he declared, unwittingly paining Henry with every word. Charley concluded his letter with a request for certain essential belongings—his India-rubber coat, his largest pair of brogans, a few cents’ worth of matches, whatever preserves the family could spare from the larder—and he warned Henry to fasten the box securely, for nearly every shipment received by the battery of late had been broken into during transit and half the contents removed.
Henry immediately set himself to the task of gathering the things Charley required, his efforts mechanical, a strange, fatalistic grief welling up within him. Somehow Charley’s first letter from the encampment marked a milestone, a point beyond which he would not return home except as a veteran soldier—if he returned at all. Henry fought back tears as he bound up the parcel, the twine digging painfully into his hands as he pulled the strands fiercely tight.
“Would you like some help?”
It was Ernest, lingering tentatively in the study doorway. “Yes, please, my dear boy,” said Henry, forcing heartiness into his voice. Ernest hurried over and helped him hold the twine, tie the knots, and cut the loose ends, and when all was done to Henry’s satisfaction, Ernest offered to see the box sent on its way.
Ernest picked up the parcel, but he hesitated befo
re carrying it off. “Papa?”
“Yes, Ernie?”
“I understand the trouble and worry Charley has caused, even if he doesn’t.” Ernest shifted the box in his arms, and suddenly Henry was struck by the realization that Charley’s impetuous act had placed a very real burden of worry upon his younger siblings, one that in his fears for his eldest son Henry had neglected to assuage. “I want you to know that even though I’m almost eighteen, and I love my country no less than Charley does, I promise I’ll never enlist without your permission.”
Henry’s throat constricted, but he forced himself to speak steadily. “Do you seek it?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ernest shook his head. “What I would really like, Papa, is to go to West Point and study mathematics and engineering.”
Ernest was already diligently studying both subjects at the Scientific School in Cambridge, and Henry thought one soldier in the family was quite enough, but he said, “I’ll inquire about how you might obtain an appointment.”
As Ernest nodded and departed with his brother’s parcel, Henry sank into a chair, rested his head in his hands, and prayed that the war would be brought to a swift and merciful end before Ernest could join his brother in the army, before Charley experienced more of soldiering than camping and drilling and tending horses.
For days, Henry had been mulling over the advice Stanton had given and Sumner had seconded, and Charley’s letter finally convinced him to follow it. Just as he reconciled himself to the idea of Charley serving as a private, he received a telegram from Lieutenant Colonel Greely S. Curtis of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, sent from Potomac Creek, Virginia. “Col Sargent recommends Charles Longfellow for commission today,” read the terse message, rendering Henry more mystified than hopeful. Colonel Curtis was engaged to Hatty Appleton, the daughter of Nathan Appleton and his second wife, which made her Charley’s “half-aunt,” though she was only three years his elder. Whatever Charley might want for himself, the Appletons would consider it unseemly for a member of their illustrious family to serve as a lowly enlisted man.
Soon thereafter, a letter from Charley elaborated upon the cryptic telegram. “The day before yesterday I had a call from Lieut. Col. Curtis,” Charley wrote, “and he said he had come to offer me a commission in his cavalry. Yesterday I rode over to the camp of the 1st and was introduced to the Colonel, he said he would write to Boston for my commission that afternoon so now that Col Sargent has recommended me I suppose I shall get it.”
Whether Charley had managed to impress his superior officers during his very brief tenure as a private, or whether someone from the wealthy and powerful Appleton side of the family had arranged for the commission, Henry could only wonder, although he suspected Hatty Appleton had taken a particular interest in her nephew’s military career. However it had come about, Charley was appointed a second lieutenant with the First Massachusetts Cavalry under General Joseph Hooker.
While Charley awaited his commission and deployment, he continued to serve under Captain McCartney with Battery A, practicing the care and management of horses, learning cavalry exercises from one of the sergeants, enjoying the camaraderie of the campfire. In the meantime, back in Cambridge, Henry hastened to assemble the clothes and equipment required by a cavalry lieutenant, carefully following the list Curtis had provided. “A good young horse, not white, short backed, quick & meant for work not show,” the list began, followed by “a servant who must be young & used to horses,” and continuing with a lengthy inventory of saddles, tack, and other supplies for the horse; garments for Charley’s uniform, including spurs and a long blue overcoat; a sword, revolver, pistol, and ammunition as well as the appropriate belts to carry them; items for grooming and cleanliness; a three-volume work on cavalry tactics; a rubber blanket; and a strong leather traveling bag that Henry could not imagine would accommodate it all. He was astounded by the expense, but he bore it willingly for Charley’s sake.
On the first day of April, Charley received word that his commission had been granted. He promptly reported to the First Massachusetts Cavalry’s camp at Potomac Creek, Virginia, where Henry arranged for his uniforms and equipment to be delivered. Soon afterward, Henry received a letter from Captain McCartney written the day Charley left the battery. “It affords me much pleasure to say of him: that he exhibits all the characteristics of a thorough soldier,” the captain wrote. “I am also very much pleased to know; that I have contributed somewhat; to his success—present—and that which awaits him, in the future.” Henry firmly believed that the solicitous captain had done even more for Charley than he modestly claimed; if he had not taken the impetuous young man under his protection, Charley surely would have run off to enlist elsewhere, and might never have received his commission, and might even at that moment be on the front lines, mere yards away from the enemy’s bayonets. As a token of his gratitude, and after consulting with Sumner to make sure it did not violate any War Department regulations, Henry arranged for a basket of champagne to be delivered to Captain McCartney, with his most sincere compliments.
He found himself unexpectedly heartened by the captain’s praise, and he could not help wondering if perhaps his impulsive son had at last found his true calling. It was not the profession Henry would have chosen for him, but as his kind and thoughtful friends had reminded him when Charley first ran off to enlist, and as William Godwin elucidated so well in his essays, a son is a being independent of his father, and will not necessarily follow him, and the sooner the father accepts this, the better.
But not even the first stirrings of pride in his son’s burgeoning career could diminish the sharp pangs of guilt he felt when he recalled the promise he had made to his beloved wife one summer night in the garden as they had watched a comet blaze in the night sky, in the north near the constellation of the Great Bear.
• • •
For two weeks Charley encamped at Potomac Creek with the First Massachusetts Cavalry, drilling, foraging for provisions, drilling, spending idle hours in talk and card games, drilling, passing in review, and yet more drilling. The new second lieutenant wrote enthusiastically about the improved rations his higher rank had bestowed, and he described his comrades and their training, especially their mishaps, with characteristic good humor.
When the muddy roads dried enough to become passable, the Army of the Potomac broke winter camp and began to move, and on April 10, Charley embarked on his first campaign as the cavalry marched out to the Orange and Alexandria Railroad and took up positions along the Rappahannock to guard the river crossings. Back home at Craigie House, his family anxiously awaited his letters and studied the papers for news of the cavalry’s movements. At the end of that first day’s march, Charley later reported with casual pride, Colonel Curtis had appointed him regimental adjutant, which was “a mighty fine position,” he wrote, “as you see so much of what is going on.” His new role had other benefits, he noted in his next letter. “My tent has to be next to Col Curtises so as to be handy for orders which is very pleasant, we are now sitting out in front of our tents on logs toasting our boots before the fire.”
Then followed several long days of silence.
When word reached Cambridge of the fierce and bloody Battle of Chancellorsville, Henry felt sick with fear, haunted by gruesome visions of battlefield carnage. So certain was he that Charley must have been wounded in the terrible defeat that he wrote to his brother Samuel in New York and asked him to hurry to Washington City to meet him at the trains carrying the injured from the battlefield to hospitals in the capital.
It was just as well that Samuel decided to wait for an official report from the regiment before setting out, for a few days later, Henry received a letter from Charley expressing his disgust and disappointment that the First Massachusetts Cavalry had missed the entire engagement. Their first day’s march had brought them within range of the Confederate army’s artillery, but heavy rains had swelled the Rappahannock, ren
dering the fords too hazardous to cross. Instead the regiment had watched in consternation while rebel troops on the opposite shore constructed earthworks from which they could easily control the fords. The cavalry was commanded to withdraw, then ordered to make another advance that brought them near White Sulphur Springs, a town on the northern fork of the Rappahannock near Warrington. There too heavy rains had prevented them from mounting an attack. “It seems as if Providence was against us really although it is wicked to say so,” grumbled Charley, “for if we once got across and the rivers did not rise and cut off our supplies we should sweep the whole country west of the Rappahannock.”
Even as Charley lamented that “these confounded rains spoil all the General’s plans,” Henry could not help blessing the storms that had prevented his son from joining in so costly a battle. It was a great relief to know that his son had spent most of the campaign guarding wagon trains, occasionally able to hear the distant roar of cannon and disturbed by the grim parade of wounded being carried to the rear in ambulances, but otherwise safe and sound. Henry knew it would not always be thus.
Henry’s unquiet mind rested easier when he learned that the First Massachusetts Cavalry had returned to camp at Potomac Creek, exhausted from the twenty-four-day campaign if not truly battle-scarred and blooded. After the excitement of the battlefields, even though Charley had not penetrated much beyond the fringes, the camp life he had once found so invigorating now seemed dull and tedious. “It is mighty stupid coming back to this old camp again,” he wrote, disgusted. “It is ten times as pleasant to be in the field on the march. I enjoy that very much, one has such an appetite after a days march, and it seems so good to lie at full length on the ground and stretch yourself under the trees. You cant imagine our feelings at this bringing the troops back to this side of the river just as we had received orders to hold ourselves in readiness for an immediate and rapid pursuit of the enemy.”
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