Rufus Ingalls

 

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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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOVEMBER 22, 1862.]

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

747

Margaret must commence the developing process; so Mrs. Dayta took her to Rome, spent four years between there and Venice—for she was in no hurry. She considered haste the sign-manual of weakness, + his mark. During those years Margaret's mother died and her father took a second wife—a vulgar, shrewish woman; from that time Bagdad would have been as eligible an abiding place in her thought as the lonely farm-house in Virginia; and Sweet Air, Mrs. Dayta's country seat, where they quietly settled on their return, became in truth her home: so pleasant a one that she rarely thought of the cloud, no larger than a man's hand, on her horizon—her utter dependence and isolation.

There had been two days of pitiless fog and drizzle, borrowed of November, with no hope of clearing till late in the afternoon, when a cold gleam showed above the hills, followed by a flash and sparkle of sunshine, a sudden blaze of the sun low down in the west, and a surge and rush of clouds, burning fiercely at their ragged edges, reft, broken through by long quivering gleams of brightness, darker than scarlet, deeper than gold; in its turn caught, embosomed, swept away in the purple rout toward the sea, or tossed high toward mid-heaven, bursting out in rosy flushes through the tangle and the fluttering of the trees; and Margaret, wrapped in a cloak and hood, watching it an from the crumbling bank overlooking the river.

She was not too pleased to hear some one coming down the walk. It sounded like Roscoe Baring's step; if not, it must be Lucius Marvin, familiarly known as "Lucy." Hard to tell which she disliked the most! It proved, however, to be Douglas Erfut. What sent him there? She had thought him a fixture near Mrs. Dayta.

He came and stood beside her silently and reverently till the glory was quite gone—then,

"Thank you," said Margaret, turning around. "I know no one else who would have had so much sense. Only the gag could have hindered them from breaking in on the divine service that has been going on."

Douglas smiled at her, not with his lips but out of the depths of a remarkable pair of blue eyes—answered quite irrelevantly,

"You must come in. This wind it too cool for you."

"On the contrary I am thawing out. When I came out I was a petrifaction of disgust. The waters of small talk have been dropping on me for the past two days, and every good and pleasant feeling is nearly turned into stone."

"Your own fault."

"You know nothing at all about it. You are all day with your books, and your busy, stirring life. The quiet that is stagnation to me is rest to you. The rose that has been running its thorns into me all day shows you only blushes. Here, too, when you are tired, you can play billiards, smoke your cigars, and talk politics in your detestable slang, though I protest I had rather hear it than the nonsense about Ada Pentable and her diamonds, and Sam Masser's match, Mrs. Devant's housekeeping, her rouge, and her d'Aloncon shawl. I am interested in neither flannels nor silk. I don't care whether Selina's aunt was Miss Eastman or Miss Portman. I like none of these things."

"You need not let them injure you."

"Que faire? It is all our life. Dressing, driving, gossiping, with such dreary variations as Lucy's 'I say now, Miss Margaret, ain't that jolly?' or Roscoe Baring's 'A person of your fine mind can not but appreciate,' etc."

Margaret mimicked tone and manner with precision. Douglas looked astonished.

"I beg your pardon, but really I have always thought you were trying to decide which of those two gentlemen is the most bearable."

Margaret's cheeks flamed even in the darkness, but she answered, half-defiantly,

"Well, could I do better?"

"Yes, if you dare."

They were close upon the house; no time then to ask his meaning even if she had wished. In the drawing-room the people were all gathered about the fire, and their entrance was hardly noticed.

Douglas sat down by Margaret in the shadow.

"Dare you?" he asked, as if in continuation of their conversation.

"Dare I what?"

Sudden flame shot up in their faces. Mrs. Dayta had quietly lighted a lamp swinging near them, and stood scanning them.

"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she asked.

"We had no walk at all. I found Miss Margaret shivering on the bank, and brought her in."

"Most grandmotherly of you! But seriously, Margaret, you look as if you were thoroughly chilled; go over by the fire, my love."

Margaret went over to the hearth, and stood there holding up a little walking boot to the dancing blaze, and looking into it with dreaming eyes, listening perhaps to the wind beating up against the broad front of the house, and gibbering in the chimney.

"What are you thinking of?" asked Roscoe Baring, who had been watching her. "You look mutinous, what the Scotch call 'raised.' Did you meet a spirit in your walk?"

"I don't know—perhaps."

"Your destiny, of course."

Margaret started. Groping in the dark Roscoe had struck fall at what in her mind was most antagonistic to him.

"A destiny!" she answered, with spirit. "I doubt if it will be mine. I don't like it."

"Ah!"

It was Mrs. Dayta exclaiming at the other end of the room. In walking about the billiard-table she had struck her little jeweled back-comb against a bracket, or caught her braid in it, or, at any rate, there it was, all down around her, her superb hair, longer even than Margaret's, of that lovely brown that here and there brightens into reddish gold; and what with gossamer sleeves falling away from her handsome arms as she put it back, and the white gleaming of little hands in the

soft-clinging mass, and the sparkle of diamonds catching the light, making a very pretty picture for all whom it might concern—Mr. Erfut, for instance. Perhaps Margaret didn't think it pretty. At any rate she turned her back, brought out from a blue silk nest a thimble, which, if thimbles can feel, must have been not a little astonished at its unusual perch on her finger, and sewed savagely all the evening, not even stopping for coffee; but after a while a well-shaped masculine hand, on which sparkled a certain familiar signet ring, set down a tiny cup before her, and Douglas Erfut said in her ear,

"Miss Margaret, listen to this apropos of our conversation: "'Suffering and sacrifice is the price of truth and good. Roads slope easily downward, and climb painfully upward, but at the end of one a ditch awaits you; the other winds into the very rose and sapphire of heaven itself.'"

"Whose writing is that?" asked Margaret, looking up in surprise, but dropping her eyes the instant after under his steady, meaning look, and crimsoning to the temples at her own simplicity; while Mrs. Dayta, watching them with jealous, wrathful eyes over her coffee-cup, cried out, like Athaliah, "treason" in her heart.

It was at this juncture that she had favored them with the declaration with which we commence; ominous enough for Margaret, energetically hating the fate chosen for her by Mrs. Dayta in the person of Lucius, or Roscoe Baring, just awakened to the possibility of resistance, half shrinking from the struggle, wholly uncertain of her own strength. At this time they left Sweet Air for their usual winter's stay in town.

Douglas came daily, so did Roscoe and Lucius; and the world said that Mrs. Dayta would become Mrs. Erfut, and that Margaret was coquetting, quoting the proverb about "two stools," etc., and nearing the truth as closely as usual.

Came that memorable 13th of April, the rising of the North, the pouring forth of volunteers, and foremost among them, enlisting as a private, and for the war, Douglas Erfut. When they heard of it, Margaret and Mrs. Dayta both turned white, looked at each other stealthily, saw only a blank, and resigned themselves to wait as only women can.

It was the evening before Douglas's going, Margaret's birth-night also; music sounding out in the drawing-room, airy flutterings, whisperings, and rustlings every where; lights springing from the burning hearts of brazen flowers, or streaming moon-like from alabaster globes, pale honey-suckles hanging over broad-brimmed marble vases, lilies, scarlet fuschias, purple and golden leaved pansies crowded in their centre, or swinging in baskets of cool moss from the walls, Mrs. Dayta calm and watchful, Margaret starting at every new arrival, and looking like a spirit; that was the way Douglas found them. He was nervous too in his way. He would not be hindered by the crowd, he would not be detained by Mrs. Dayta, but cut his way through it all like Saladin's sword, and as if by instinct found Margaret sitting alone for the instant. She tried hard for composure, but her cheeks would burn, her voice would tremble.

"How late you were! I thought you were not coming at all."

"You could never have believed that—besides, I am not the latest. I see Roscoe and Lucy are not here yet."

"I don't think they will honor us."

Something in Margaret's tone made him start, look earnestly for a moment, then smile.

"You have done it, then."

"Done what? How malicious you look! I have told you nothing."

Douglas put such trifling on one side with a wave of his hand:

"I am serious now. What will Mrs. Dayta say?"

"How can I tell? You heard her the other morning. You need not look so. I have counted the cost. I have the instincts of my race—I love all this (looking about her) with passion even. The bright colors, the fragrant air, the luxury, the very winding of the stairs are to me hourly pleasure; but I can accept the details even of a poor and squalid life better than disgust and death in life, with Roscoe Baring or Lucy. Once I thought it might be endured—"

She stopped short, arrested by the triumph of Douglas's eyes, tried to rally, flushed all over her pale face, stammered, fell into hopeless confusion, and bending low her proud head began to pull a honey-suckle to pieces leaf by leaf. Douglas caught the little destroying hands and held them fast in his own.

"How is it with me, Margaret?" he asked, softly. "Let me hear my sentence too. Would life with me be death in life also?"

Margaret was silent, but she offered no resistance when he drew her close to his heart.

"Margaret, do you love me?"

"Oh, hush!—you know."

"No, I am unbelieving as Thomas. I can't take in so much happiness. Set it to music. Say Douglas I love you."

"I—"

"Well—"

"Oh, I can't; you know that I do."

Douglas took off his ring—a shield of onyx, bearing the word Mizpah in Hebrew lettering, each quaint character picked out in diamond sparks.

"You will wear this, and remember its meaning," he said. "The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another. My darling, you will think of me often."

"What else shall I have to do?"

" I hope nothing more distasteful; yet I wish I was not so inexorably hurried away. I don't half like leaving you to the tender mercies of Mrs. Dayta."

"Hush!" whispered Margaret; voices and steps were in perilous neighborhood, people coming to look for cloaks and hoods. Douglas found time for only one word more, as they were standing in the door-way.

"You will write me often?"

"Of course."

The words were spoken half in a whisper, Douglas held her hand but an instant, but Mrs. Dayta caught both words and look, and the shadow that had haunted her face for the last few weeks deepened and darkened as she went back into the bright deserted rooms. Margaret had not yet gone up stairs but seated herself on the first sofa that fell in her way, unconscious of any thing but her own thought, not smiling, but reflecting in face and air some inward glory. This radiance completed Mrs. Dayta's exasperation. The sullen wrath that had smouldered so long flamed up in fierce invective. Margaret had set aside the purpose and the ambition of years as a very little thing, had stolen from her the only love she had ever valued. She had waited till doubting was at an end. Now she raged all the more furiously, because of her long self-control. Margaret listened, at first bewildered and half-terrified, grew then indignant, answered at last coolly contemptuous. Between these two truce could never exist again. No refuge was left Margaret now but her father's house, and the welcome, if the clammy fingers and the cool, unfriendly scrutiny of her step-mother could be called by so warm a name. Up the hill Difficulty lay Margaret's road from this time; her father had never loved her overmuch, had ceased to think of her as his; her step-mother said openly,

"That if she didn't care enough for her family to stay with them, she would have more spirit than to come back to take the bread out of their mouths when her fine friends shoved her off."

Unjust as well as cruel, since Margaret worked, not indeed over wash-tub and stove, but with children and sewing, night and day.

One only consolation was left her. She must hear from Douglas soon. She had written to him a week ago, but the days went on into weeks, and at last Margaret said to herself with a shudder, "It is a month." Two months, and hope began to fade; three, and it died quite away. Douglas had not cared to answer; she was deserted; utterly alone in life. People don't thrive on convictions of that sort; and Margaret drooped so fast that at last even her father saw, and pulling the work from her hands roughly told her to let it alone, and stay out in the air till she could look a little less like a ghost. She obeyed, but always in the same listless, hopeless way. The mountains could give her none of their solemn peace and assurance, and when she sought it from above, she only groped for it in the dark, asked it of a God far off, and was not answered.

She stood one evening as she had stood a year before, watching the day go out. Heavy clouds rushed to bar out the sinking sun, and the dying light had risen against it in blood-red revolt, scaled the dark mass, hurled down on it such flakes of flame as might pave the road to heaven, shot out over it in long arrowy gleams, filled all the west with awful living splendor. The hills below her were already asleep in shadow, the mountain gloomed above, its still fields dark to the very top, but uplifting the woods on its crest into the very heart of the intolerable glory; and the brown leaves burned darkly in the clear light, and about the cool, dark green of pines and cedars writhed scarlet vines, and showing, through trembling boughs of larch, yellows and crimson blended in a wild mosaic.

" 'Pears like as ef de Lord was jes dar," said old Juliet, once Margaret's nurse, drawing near. "Dat some sech burnin' as de Holy ob Holies. I clar I'se most feared to look, I feels him so close."

"Not to me, Juliet. It only seems wrathful and burning. I can't find the Lord."

"Kase you looks too fur, honey chile. Tell ye he's close by; he's got hole ob your hand jes now, poor lamb! He's been callin' you dis long time; now he's waitin' for you to come."

"He has taken away every thing from me," exclaimed Margaret, passionately. "He has left me nothing. I am desolate—bereaved."

"Do don't say dat, Miss Margret. De Lord's ways not man's ways. Tink how he led Moses clar to de back ob de desert, and what he showed 'Lijah in de cave in de mountain, like dis yer, p'raps, and how our blessed Jesus preached in de wild places 'cause de prince ob dis world stopped de eyes and ears in de cities, jes as he done wid you; and ef you feels cast down, tink ob dat poor soul Joseph sold away among strangers, younger dan you. Spec his heart went down like lead sometimes when he was in dat yer prison, clean forgot ob every one. But he come out all glorious in de end—'member dat, Miss Margret."

"I can't think. I want comfort, not thought; that is driving me mad already," sighed Margaret. "I am alone, deserted altogether."   ,

"No, you ain't, you precious chile. Tell you Christ jes here; not fur off, way up 'mong de stars, as you tink. Try and believe, poor chile; only put out yer hand and say, Lord help, I will come. Needn't be afraid to step, Miss Margret, he'll ketch you; won't let you fall, no more'n he let Peter drown; only try and see!" exclaimed Juliet, tears streaming fast down her face.

A blank must come here. Of that abiding of Christ with flesh and blood those only can know who dare take his promises fully to themselves. Words are not sufficient for the things of the spirit. Enough that Margaret found that peace that passeth all understanding.

The times grew stormier. War made itself heard and felt even there; parties of scouts belonging to either side grew to be no infrequent visitors. Margaret viewed them with utter indifference. What were their wars and fightings to her? But one night she caught the tones of a voice that made her heart leap up with a sickening throb, and turning short she met the incredulous look of a pair of blue eyes that certainly in the old time belonged to Douglas Erfut.

"Margaret!"

"Douglas!"

And then hesitation and reproach on either side. "How cruel you have been to hide yourself here without a word!"

"You have forgotten me."

"Forgotten! I have looked for you every where. Why didn't you write?"

"I did."

"I have never received a line. I have been trying to find you for the last six months. I had commenced to despair."

And then Margaret told him all the story of that sorrowful year, ending with a glance at the ring.

"So you see, Douglas, the Lord did watch between us." And so she found rest, for be sure he did not leave her long in that dreary house, but took her into his life and to his heart forever.

THE "VANDERBILT."

WE publish on page 748 a picture of the United States steamship VANDERBILT, which has just gone in chase of the pirate Alabama. This magnificent vessel, the finest man-of-war in our navy, was built, at a cost of nearly one million of dollars, for Commodore Vanderbilt by Mr. Jeremiah Simonson some five years ago, and was last year presented to the Government as a free gift by her owner. She is 340 feet long, 49 feet beam, 33 feet depth of hold, and 5268 tons. She is propelled by two engines of 2500-horse power, and is notoriously the fastest vessel afloat, as well as one of the strongest. To prepare her for fighting, all her upper works on the main-deck have been cut away, leaving her deck flush from bow to stern. She carries twelve nine-inch Dahlgren guns, six on a side, and two 100-pound Parrott guns, one forward and the other aft. Her power as a ram has often been described. Being solid for fifty feet from the bow, she could run down any vessel in the world. She is commanded by Commander Baldwin. We hope he may meet the Alabama.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL STANLEY.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL DAVID S. STANLEY, whose portrait we give on page 749, is a native of Ohio. He entered the Military Academy in 1848, and graduated ninth in the large class of 1852. His first service, after the usual routine of duty at the cavalry school of practice at Carlisle, was with the Surveying Expedition to the Pacific under Lieutenant Whipple. On the return of the expedition he was assigned to duty with his regiment, on the Western frontier, where, in several conflicts with the Indians, he distinguished himself for energy and courage. Lieutenant-General Scott, in his brief notices of events connected with the campaigns of 1859, says: "The prompt and gallant First Lieutenant David S. Stanley, First Cavalry from Fort Arbuckle, with Company D of his regiment, pursued into the Wishita Mountains a party of Comanches thirty minutes after receiving his orders. After an exciting steeple-chase of several miles over rocks, the detachment killed and left dead on the field seven Comanches."

On the breaking out of the rebellion General Stanley was a captain of the First (now the Fourth) Cavalry, and with his Company was distinguished in several engagements with the rebels in Missouri: in the affair at Forsyth having his horse killed under him. He acted a most conspicuous part at New Madrid and Island No. 10, at Iuka, and, last, at the battle of Corinth, in command of a division, where he gallantly led the brilliant charge of the Eleventh Missouri and Twenty-seventh Ohio, which was the crowning act in that glorious victory.

CHIEF QUARTER-MASTER
INGALLS.

ON page 749 we give a portrait of COLONEL RUFUS INGALLS, Chief Quarter-master of the Army of the Potomac, and one of our best soldiers. The following sketch will explain who the General is:

Rufus Ingalls, United States Army, Chief Quarter-master of the Army of the Potomac, entered West Point as Cadet in 1839, and graduated in 1843. He was born in Denmark, Maine, August 23, 1820; was first sent to duty in Louisiana, with the celebrated rifle regiment, formerly Second Dragoons, now the Second Cavalry, and served under the late rebel General Twiggy, on the borders of Texas, when that State was a Republic.

In the year 1845 he was promoted to a Lieutenancy in the First Dragoons, and joined that regiment at Fort Leavenworth in May of that year. At the breaking out of the Mexican War he was Adjutant of that post, which was most of the time under General Kearney, and assisted in mustering in and drilling Doniphan's famous regiment. He marched afterward into New Mexico with General Kearney, where he served in various parts of the Territory until the autumn of 1847, when he was relieved and ordered to California.

He was present in the conflicts at Embudo and Pueblo-de-Taos, during the insurrection in the early part of 1847; and when Captain Burgeoin fell in the latter battle, February 4, 1847, he was by his side, and assumed command of the regulars on the field. He was brevetted for "gallantry and good conduct" on that occasion.

In January, 1848, he was made a Captain in the Quarter-master's Department, and in April following sailed for California, via Cape Horn, with the first recruits that were sent to that coast.

After a long period of service on the Pacific he returned to the Atlantic States. Before the attack on Fort Sumter he sailed with the command of Colonel Brown, as his Chief Quarter-master, to reinforce Fort Pickens, where he served until July, 1861, when he was withdrawn, and ordered to duty as Chief Quarter-master on the south side of the Potomac, at Arlington, where his duties were laborious and responsible, and where he served with signal success; in consideration of which he was appointed an Aid-de-camp, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, to General McClellan. When it was decided by General M'Clellan to move against Richmond by the Peninsula, Colonel Ingalls was appointed to take the direct charge of the transportation and supplies of his army.

It is well known to all who have been with the army what his labors have been; with what judgment and promptness every want has been anticipated, in the changing of depots from Fortress Monroe, via Ship Point, Cheeseman's Creek, Yorktown, and the White House, on the Pamunky, around to Harrison's Landing, on the James River, with numerous fleets of vessels and trains of wagons.

On the 12th of January, 1862, he was made a Major in the Quarter-master's Department, by act of Congress, for fourteen years' faithful service in that department, and on the retirement of General Van Vliet, Colonel Ingalls was announced as Chief Quarter-master of the Army of the Potomac.


 

 

  

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