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Civil War Harper's Weekly, November 22, 1862

This site has online versions of all the Harper's Weekly newspapers printed during the Civil War. These newspapers enable you to watch the events unfold week by week. These reports were created by eye-witnesses to the actual events. They serve as a great way to learn more about this war.

(Scroll Down to See Entire Page, or Newspaper Thumbnails below will take you to a specific page of interest)

 

Governor Horatio Seymour

Horatio Seymour

McClellan Removed From Command

McClellan Removed from Command

Burnside Takes Command

Burnside Takes Command

Loudon Valley

Loudon Valley

Catharine Wilson

Execution of Catharine Wilson

Army of the Ohio

Army of the Ohio

Rufus Ingalls

Rufus Ingalls

General Stanley

General Stanley

McClellan Fired

General McClellan Relieved of Command

Maryland Heights

Maryland Heights Sunrise

Vanderbilt

US Warship "Vanderbilt"

Gen. Thomas

General Thomas

Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley

Army of the Ohio

Army of the Ohio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[NOVEMBER 22, 1862.

746

THE ARMY OF THE OHIO.

WE devote pages 744 and 745 to illustrations of THE ARMY OF THE OHIO ON THE MARCH, from sketches by Mr. Henry Mosler. Of the centre picture Mr. M. writes:

"On 26th October we started from Mount Vernon toward Somerset on our way to Bowling Green. It had snowed all the day before, and the mountain road had become one mass of mud, in some places knee-deep. The scene, however, was very imposing. The foliage was still green; autumn had not yet tinged the leaves with its gaudy colors, and it contrasted finely with the white sheet of snow which covered the ground. The trees and branches, heavily snow-laded, drooped gracefully toward the earth, and every now and then some great bough too heavily freighted fell with a resounding crash. After a weary march of fifteen miles the troops encamped for the night at Somerset, without tents. You may fancy how they enjoyed the cold night, in their chilled, wet condition, sleeping in the open air.

"WILD CAT is a place where a battle was fought on 21st October, 1861. In the fore-ground I represent part of the earth-works thrown up at that time. The hills on the right, which are very high, command all the surrounding strong-holds. The scenery is picturesque, and in a military point of view I think the height is impregnable.

"Another picture represents a MARCH IN THE RAIN. This scene is well impressed on my memory, as I got a good ducking, my India rubber being of no use whatever.

"CLEARING THE ROAD OF FELLED TREES was a daily operation on our march. The rear of Bragg's retreating army felled every tree which stood near enough the road to fall across it, and our advance column had to clear away the obstructions. We were often so close in pursuit that we could hear the crash of the falling trees.

"The other pictures explain themselves."

AN ARM FOR A HEART.

ONE of Mrs. Meredith's "evenings" was two thirds over. The lights shone gayly over fair women. Eyes sparkled, jewels flashed, silken raiment glistened, filmy laces shook odors out upon the air. The dance music sounded merrily; for it was only the February of '61, and people used to dance then —before the nation had been turned into two classes only, soldiers and mourners. Ethel Darricott was tired. She had been on the floor all the evening. She was glad now to obey her partner's lead, and stop for a moment to rest upon a sofa, in the recess formed by a bay-window. The little nook was deserted just then, as it chanced, and it looked quiet and inviting—a little withdrawn from the confusion, and yet in sight of all the light, and glitter, and movement.

Miss Darricott had danced more than half the evening with this same partner—Howard Revere. He was a handsome, haughty, indolent man; young still, scarcely twenty-five, indeed; but with an air of command, careless yet absolute, that made you think him much older. There was something inscrutable, something which piqued your curiosity, in the expression of his face—a look in his dark eyes which might mean so many things that you lost yourself in a mist of speculation. He was tall and vigorous, with muscles that would have set the "strong man" crazy with envy; and yet a lazy, nonchalant air, as if he would like some one to save him the trouble of lifting his own fingers.

Miss Darricott was happy sitting there by his side, both of them silent, with the bright dresses and fair faces circling mazily in front of them, and the dance music so merry that it was sad with its own madness of mirth sounding in their ears. They looked on for a while without speaking— then Miss Darricott said, musingly:

"A great many pretty faces, aren't there?"

"I suppose so. I was just wondering why none of them looked particularly pretty to me. I wonder is it always so, Ethel—that when a man truly loves one he sees some defect in all others because they are not just like her?"

He had never called her Ethel before. It quickened her heart-beats a little, and she did not answer him because she did not know what to say. He did not notice, at least he went on speaking slowly, half involuntarily as it were, words which would be said.

"I don't know why I tell you now, Ethel. I surely did not mean to when I made you sit down here; but I love you. I want you to be mine, my wife, by my side forever—to fill up a great void there is in my life. What does your heart say? Can you come?"

Miss Darricott did not speak for a little while. She was asking herself his question over again—it was not whether she loved him, but whether she could share his destiny, be his wife. She grew pale a little before she answered, but her reply, when it came, was firmly spoken—

"No!"

Howard Revere turned and looked at her a moment—looked into her eyes and at her face, whose language was firm as her tone had been. He did not expostulate with her or entreat her. It would not have been like him. He only bowed.

"Will you dance?" he said, rising a moment after, as a new set was forming. She put a cold hand into his, and went again among the dancers.

Miss Darricott had a cousin—a year older, a little less beautiful, but with a keen insight into men and things. She was an orphan, living with the family of her Uncle Darricott almost as a daughter. That night the two lingered over the fire in the little dressing-room between their two rooms, and talked together as girls do after balls. Only Ethel was more silent than usual, and her cousin Grace watched her anxiously but furtively.

"Have you not lost something?" Grace inquired at length, with a covert meaning in her tone.

"No, I believe not," glancing at rings and bracelets.

"Lost was not a good word, perhaps. I mean have you not thrown away something to-night which you will want, and seek for vainly as the years go on?"

Ethel's eye fell beneath the keen yet kindly glance which searched her face. Her cheeks colored. Her answer was a question scarcely to the point.

"How do you know every thing, Grace? How did you guess this?"

"I saw it all in pantomime. Words could not have been so expressive as your face and his. I was sorry, for I believe you love him."

"I fear I do. But he did not ask me that; he only asked if I could be his wife."

"And you told him no? I am sorry, for I do not think he will ever ask again. If you love him
why not marry him?"

"Because I feared I might stop loving him some day. To live the listless, aimless life we women
do is bad enough. It offends both my taste and my principles to see a man idling away life in this world, where so many harvest fields are waiting."

Grace looked at her cousin with a changed expression.

"I thought I understood you, Ethel, and yet I should never have given you credit for such a reason. What you say is certainly right and true in the main, only I do not think it applies to Mr. Revere. There is a difference between an idle, aimless life, and one of waiting till one's right work comes."

"What makes you reckon Mr. Revere among the waiters?"

"Because it is not in his nature to like idleness or inaction. I can see that he is restive under it. But he is not fond of vain labor, of wasting strength. Did you never learn that those who wait serve also? Howard Revere's time will come, and his life will be one not to shame any woman that loved him. But it's useless talking now. It would not be like him ever to say over again what he said to-night."

Ethel Darricott tried to be light-hearted when she was alone; but it was a miserable failure, and she gave up at last to the tears that would come. Her cousin's words disquieted her strangely. Had she indeed thrown away the one pure pearl Fate would proffer her in this life, and would its white glory never again gladden heart and eyes, though she should seek a place of repentance even with tears?

So it went on till the surrender of Sumter, and the call which summoned the loyal North to arms. Among the first to volunteer his services was the man she had thought so fond of ease and self, so fearful of fatigue, so laggard in the race of life. His name was enrolled as a private at first, but his company chose him unanimously for captain, and so Captain Revere led them on to the defense of Washington.

Before he left he called to bid Ethel good-by; but other guests were in the drawing-room, and he did not see her alone. Only when he was leaving she stepped to the door with him, and he held her hand for a moment. Perhaps that touch conjured his soul to his lips. At any rate he said what he had not meant to say.

"You are not all to me that I once hoped you would be, Ethel; but you are my friend, are you not? You will think of me sometimes, and be sorry for me a little if I fall?"

"You will not fall," Ethel said, resolutely, forcing back the tears that threatened to choke her. "I shall think of you, and when you come back I shall welcome you, and be proud of my friend."

"If I do not come back," he said, wringing her hand as he turned away, "God bless you. I have not changed in my estimation of you because your heart would not let you be altogether mine."

He went away with those words, and then Ethel knew how she had loved him.

The next day came—the soldiers were gone, and Ethel Darricott tried to take up cheerfully the remnant of life which was left to her. The best half and the dearest, she felt, was gone with him; but much remained to do, somewhat even to rejoice in. She was not more exacting of others than she was of herself. To have yielded idly to her grief would have been to be false to her ideal. Even her own father saw no change in her.

So the months passed on for more than a year, even to the terrible six days of fighting before Richmond. In all this time Captain Revere had never been seriously wounded, and had never left the post of duty. Other men took furloughs—some on slight pretexts — and came home; he never. Perhaps he felt that he had no true home, and no hope to lure him Northward, and so grew reckless of life. Miss Darricott meanwhile watched the papers anxiously. She saw his name often where brave deeds were told, heroic valor praised; and still he was unharmed. She began to believe that the ball was not yet cast which should work him woe; and sometimes, when she thought of the future, a sweet, scarcely recognized hope began to flutter its wings tremblingly in her heart. Grace might not have been right, after all. He might come back yet, and say over again the words for whose remembered music her soul thirsted.

But at last Fate and the Rebels were too strong for him. In the battle of Centreville he lost an arm, and was severely wounded besides in the hip. The hospitals were full; and as soon as he could bear moving he was sent home. It was some weeks before he could walk at all, and then he was told that sea air would help to recruit his exhausted energies, and sent off by his physician to Newport. Perhaps he went the more willingly because he knew that the Darricotts had a summer cottage there, and in his secret heart he was conscious of a longing to see Ethel again. And yet Grace had been right when she divined that he would never ask a second time the question he had asked on that February night. To have been twice rejected by the same woman would have been to him a moral impossibility. He hardly knew himself why he wanted to see her, or what vague hope he had.

He had been in Newport a week before he called on her. He had trusted to meeting her first by

some accident. But she was evidently very retired. He concluded that fortune was not on his side; and as he really wanted to see her very much gave over waiting for lucky chances, and went there.

She was alone when his card was brought to her. She knew of his wound—knew what changes to expect in seeing him. She staid in her own room long enough to fortify herself, and make sure that she would betray no uncalled-for emotion. With face and manner schooled to mere friendliness she went down. Her self-command almost failed her as he came to meet her with halting step, and she saw the empty coat-sleeve hanging at his side. It was so pitiful to note the decay of that fine, vigorous, manly strength—to think of the good right arm that he would never use more.

"I am home for good now," he said, with an evident effort to bear himself cheerfully. "It is a great disappointment. I had so hoped to be able to help on the good cause till it reached the triumphal end, which is sure to come."

"Then you have no doubts of the final result?" Ethel asked, forcing herself to speak, and knowing that she could not trust her voice on any subject less general.

"Not a doubt! The great cause of human liberty is not to receive its death-blow in this land or this day. The world has been tending for centuries toward this culminating point. The battle is not between North and South merely, but between anarchy and government, honor and dishonor, right and wrong. Our country is only the great battle-ground for the conflict of all the ages. Do you think in such an epoch the right could fail?"

Ethel's face kindled in response to his eager glance. Then she looked at his arm, and sighed as she said, softly,

"How much it costs!"

"We set small value, you know, on that which we do not buy dear," he answered, with that grand, brave smile of his. "I think no price could be too great to pay. I would have given life as cheerfully as I gave what I did; but then that is not so much to say for a man who has no ties to make life precious."

"Would you have staid at home if I had answered you differently that night?"

Ethel never could tell how she came to ask this question. The words seemed to utter themselves without her volition. She could have bitten her tongue off for speaking them a moment after.

He looked at her, a little surprised perhaps, yet not displeased, for the kindness of his smile did not change, and his voice was almost tender as he replied,

"No, I should not have staid at home even in that case. Duty is duty just as much when a man has every thing to make it hard to do it, as when any great disappointment makes all sacrifices easy. And yet I might not have been so fearless in the hour of danger if I had thought there was one at home whose heart and life were linked so indissolubly to mine—who knows?"

He had spoken the last words musingly, as if more to himself than her. Embarrassed beyond expression by the question she had asked, she did not know how to take up the conversation. Just then her cousin Grace came in, and made her task easy. Never was interruption more welcomed.

After that they met often; but the old subject was not again hinted at between them. Now, strangely enough, something like intimacy seemed to be springing up between Captain Revere and her cousin Grace. At first the sight of it cost her a bitter pang, but she conquered it bravely—conquered it so entirely that she was able to love Grace as before, and to kiss her tenderly night and morning, as she had done ever since she was a little child. Yet she was but a woman, with a woman's weak, defenseless heart, and sometimes it ached with a keen, sharp pain when she saw Grace drive away by Captain Revere's side, in the low, easy-going carriage in which he passed hours of every day upon the beach.

In one of these drives Captain Revere surprised his companion by saying, with a quiver of pain in his voice:

"Grace, if I were not the miserable cripple that I am, I should ask you to love me; but I should not do it without telling you how dear I once held your cousin Ethel."

Grace Darricott fairly trembled. She had never dreamed of this. She had grown so intimate with him only for Ethel's sake, in order that a time might come when she could honorably and delicately let him know the state of her cousin's heart. Of supplanting that cousin she had never dreamed. And yet—poor human nature—she was tempted for just one sorrowful moment. Howard Revere had long seemed to her the embodiment of her noblest conception of manhood. A thrill of troubled joy at his words told her how easy it would be to love him. For a moment her heart panted after this bliss beyond her hopes, adorned with all the grace and glory she had dwelt on through dreaming years. Then resolutely she put from her the cup she had no right to taste, and saved the sweet draught for another. Her voice, when she spoke, was as calm as if she had passed through no perilous crisis of emotion.

"You know women very slightly, Captain Revere, if you do not know that one who loved you would love you all the better, esteem it all the more an honor to be your wife, because of what the whole country would recognize as a badge of glory. But, pardon me, I think you ought not to use the past tense about your love for Ethel. I can not believe that it is dead, any more than is her love for you."

"Ethel! Her love for me! You do not mean that she ever loved me?"

He spoke with a changed manner, a wild, glad eagerness, which would have augured poorly for Grace's hopes of happiness with him had she been mad enough to cherish any. It was easy to see now, in kindling glance and earnest tone, whom he loved—whom he would always love. Grace smiled

—most women can when a heartache lies underneath.

"Yes, I am sure. She would not like it, perhaps at present she would not forgive it, if she dreamed that I had let you know; but I can not think two lives ought to be sacrificed to the delicate scruples of maidenly pride. Ethel does love you. She loved you all the time."

"And yet," he said with a puzzled tone, as if it all seemed a mystery beyond his solving, "she certainly refused me."

"That was because of some Quixotic notions of hers. She thought then that you were an idler in the vineyard—a man living without a purpose, and she hesitated to ally her life with yours lest both might be a failure. It was only that she did not quite understand you then. When you went to the war she began to see you in a new light. If you had asked her the same question that day she would not have said no."

Captain Revere turned a face over which the dawn of a new day had broken to his companion. "I can not thank you fitly," he said. "You knew me better than I knew myself when you told me my love for Ethel was not dead. And yet I thought I had conquered it. I took her so fully at her word that night. If she did not care for me then, I thought she never would—I have never cherished any shadow of hope since."

It was not quite sunset when they reached home. Ethel was in the yard, just returned from a walk. "Come with me and see the sunset, will you not?" Captain Revere asked in a tone which seemed to take her compliance for granted. She was tempted to say "No," out of sheer perverseness; but she reflected that she should be punishing herself as well as him. Already the clouds were turning to flame; the sea was radiant, the air balm. Why should she not enjoy it all with him—her friend—he was at least that.

She stepped into the low carriage by his side and they rolled away. Soon he gave her the reins —he was tired of driving, he said. Leaning back, as if enjoying the luxurious ease of his position, the swift motion, the sunset goldenly glorious, he was silent for a time. After a while he began talking to her—talking as he had never talked before—lamenting the loss of his arm because of the idle, aimless life to which it would compel him. He told her how alone in the world he was—Fate had taken his arm, his power of usefulness, and given him no compensation—no wife, no child, no love true and tender enough to conquer all the ills of life. It was hard.

His words, his bitter, despairing mood, so unlike himself, touched her to the heart's core. She turned her tearful eyes to his sad face. She forgot the conviction she had begun of late to entertain that he loved her cousin—forgot pride and womanly scruples—forgot herself, and thought only of comforting him.

"Would the heart you once asked for be any compensation?" she whispered, in tones so low that he could scarcely hear them.

His face kindled

"Ethel, why do you ask? It would make life rich beyond asking or hoping. It would pay me all I lost ten thousand fold."

"Then I will tell you, Howard; I loved you then and ever since."

Was ever sunset like that sunset? Did ever waves break upon the strand with such a summer song, such passion of melody and joy? Let what would come thereafter they could not lose that memory. They had lived because they had loved.

When they reached home Ethel found her cousin waiting for her in her own room. She did not know then—she never will know—the agency that cousin had had in bringing about the great joy of her life. She told her secret in a tone of gentle pride:

"Grace, I am engaged to Captain Revere."

"Indeed! Then I suppose you set me down as a false prophet. I thought he would never ask you again."

Ethel blushed a little.

"I believe he did not. I am afraid it was I who
asked him."

The kiss of congratulation which Grace pressed upon the fair face raised to hers was not the less warm and true because of some silent tears she had wept that night, as she sat looking out toward the sea and the sunset—tears which only God saw.

MIZPAH.

MRS. DAYTA looked up from the alabaster shell that she was filling with fuschias.

"I think," she said, in her soft, deliberate way, "that Mr. Mainwaring is quite right. If I had a daughter who refused the position for which I had educated her, on any absurd pretext of not loving or fancying the man who offered it, I should most certainly disinherit her, as he has done, and leave her at full liberty to act out her romantic notions unhindered by me:" at which Douglas Erfut whistled softly to himself, and Margaret went on sewing with an ominous sparkle under her downcast lashes.

Matters were thus:

Four years ago Mrs. Dayta brought home Margaret Johns, then sixteen. Mrs. Dayta majestically styled it a whim; for Whim, be it known, is a parasite aristocratic. Fortune may toss diamonds in the lap of parvenus, but Whim is a thing of birth and breeding. Society allows it only to those who sit at her round table. Mrs. Dayta had been a Peyton, was connected with the Massers and Pentables; fortified in such a Bastile of respectability, she could afford to keep a whim and parade it. The cars had been thrown from the track and she stranded at a country inn; heard there of a forgotten fossil cousin; saw at her house her daughter, Margaret Peyton Johns; said to her, "Your dress is atrocious, your hair and your manner worse; but you are a very handsome girl, and if you will come with me I will develop you;" overcame doubts and hesitation, carried her off in triumph.

Mr. Dayta was recently dead. Grief was tedious.


 

 

  

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