Christmas Bells (22 page)

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, rendering 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.”

Compounding his dissatisfaction, Charley had not yet received the parcels of supplies Henry had sent weeks before, nor any of the boxes his loving father, siblings, and aunts had sent to him since. He was also still making do with a borrowed horse and a reluctant enlisted man in place of a servant, although army
regulations required him to provide his own. Demand for both horses and servants exceeded supply in the vicinity of the army, so Henry purchased two mares in Boston, a bay and a black, and hired William Locklin, an Irish-born Cambridge laborer in his early fifties, to transport the horses to the cavalry's encampment and to stay on to serve Charley for twenty dollars a month. The horses were the very ideal, Charley noted when he wrote home to thank his father, but regrettably, Locklin had quickly proven poorly suited for the military life. He and the horses had arrived in a torrential downpour, which lasted several days and made it impossible for anyone to dry out. “This rather dampened Locklin's courage,” Charley wrote, “and gave him the rheumatism so that nothing will do but he must go home. He is a very nice man but rather an old bird for the army. You see the young ones stand it the best. I lent him ten dollars to help him home as he had only twelve dollars at hand.”

Henry hired another man to serve Charley in the field as quickly as the matter could be accomplished, frustrated that he could do no more for his son than to conduct such business, send parcels of food and necessities, and write encouraging letters. Charley's letters from the encampment were invariably sanguine and confident despite the dull routine of his duties—preparing official documents for the colonel, exercising his horses, drilling his men, and debating past battles, campaigns yet to come, and the arcane workings of the War Department around the campfire. He expressed great indignation when his general, Fighting Joe Hooker, came under sharp criticism in the press for his failures of command at the Battle of Chancellorsville. “It is wonderful how the papers lie,” he wrote. “They praise up fellows whom we know to be miserable sneaks and others who have done very brave and splendid things are never so much as mentioned.”

Yet neither the controversies encircling his commanding officers nor the failure of the Union Army to win a decisive battle
diminished Charley's enthusiasm for the military life. His letters home revealed that despite his experience of the discomforts of camp and the grim aftermath of battle, somehow he still perceived war as romantic and exciting, and he still considered soldiering the greatest expression of heroism. He longed to ride with General George Stoneman, whose splendid attack on General Lee's rear before the Battle of Chancellorsville had won him great acclaim from Northerners desperate for a Union victory. He expressed great regret that the cavalry had not descended upon Richmond while General Lee was distracted by General Hooker on the Rappahannock, and he overflowed with praise and pride for the First Massachusetts Cavalry. “I hope for the honor of the Regiment that we shall have a good slap at the Rebs yet,” he declared, “as I think our men can whip them all to pieces as we are much better drilled.”

Henry was glad for Charley's good spirits—how much more anxious he would be if his son were demoralized and miserable—but he winced at Charley's hubris and prayed it would not prove to be a fatal flaw.

•   •   •

Henry had long supported an idea that Sumner had championed on the floor of the Senate and elsewhere, that men of color ought to be permitted to take up arms in defense of their country and the liberation of their race. Like thousands of abolitionists throughout the North, he had rejoiced when President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had declared slaves in lands under rebellion henceforth and forever free, and he had welcomed the provision that men of suitable condition among the newly freed slaves would be received into military service.

For months, Henry knew, Governor Andrew and prominent abolitionists from Boston and throughout Massachusetts had been working quietly, diligently, to organize an infantry regiment of
worthy men of color. Henry had contributed to the appeals to raise funds for publicity and travel, and he followed with great interest reports of recruitment efforts, which extended beyond the borders of the Commonwealth into northern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth, as it would be called, would be under the command of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the twenty-five-year-old son of one of Boston's most prominent, prosperous, and staunchly abolitionist families.