Cavalry Poem

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[JUNE 13, 1863.

370

(Previous Page) al Logan's division, were soon charged by the enemy. The charge was upon the right flank, but the previous disposition of troops frustrated it, and a sharp engagement of an hour ensued. The enemy were repulsed.

"General Crocker's division coming up, was disposed to the right, left, and reserve by General McPherson, and the line immediately advanced. The rebels, being driven from their position, retreated through the town toward Jackson. and our troops occupied Raymond. Our loss was 52 killed and 198 wounded. Among the killed was Colonel Richards. Colonel McCook was wounded."

THE CAVALRYMAN'S STORY.

"TELL again," the grandsire faltered,

Sitting by the farm-house door,

"Tell again the tale unaltered,

How you rode of yore;

It will quicken the slow beating

Of my pulse once more."

And the bronzed and bearded yeoman,

Of the wondrous, daring ride,

Through the country of the foeman

In the bright springtide,

Told with homely grace the story

By the old man's side.

"Good twelve thousand were we, gran'ther;

Every man of us was tough

As the wiry, brown-haired panther,

And our hands were rough

As the clothes you wore when granny

Spun and wove the stuff.

"We had wintered by the river

In the muddy, hutted camps,

Where we had to fight forever

With the twitching cramps

That came prowling round at night-time

Through the fogs and damps.

"But the sunny spring had brought us

Round as right as men could be;

Had you been there you had thought us

Each a gnarled oak-tree;

I could eat of leathery bacon

Then enough for three.

"Dashed we through the Rappahannock,

By brave Stoneman gayly led,

Each man eager for a square knock

On an F. F.'s head:

How our horses stirred the mud up

In the river's bed!

"Oh! the wild, exciting gallop

Round behind the traitors' lair;

Where a foe was left to wallop

Surely we were there,

Terror through the basements sending

Of his rising hair.

"Hissed the delicate-handed ladies,

Shrill between their rage and fear;

But the dark-eyed, half-bleached babies

Grinned from ear to ear,

And their sable, gladdened mothers

Never showed a sneer.

"And the brawny bondmen weary,

Stood up once erect and high,

As upon their midnight dreary

Broke a morning sky:

Guess it was the light of freedom

Flashed as we went by.

"The defenseless and the lowly

Tenderly we left unharmed;

God had made their weakness holy

And their safety charmed;

But we pounced, like sudden falcons,

On the traitors armed.

"How we thundered down the highways

To the frightened villages;

How we scouted all the by-ways

Underneath the trees;

How we stung the rebel minions

Like a swarm of bees!

"Over swamps and dusty ridges

Rushed we to the sacred streams,

And the ponderous wooden bridges,

Tracked for iron teams,

Quick as thought went bursting skyward,

With their clamps and beams.

"Flamed the well-filled army storehouse—

Bacon smoked as ne'er before;

Burst the doors of every warehouse,

Ruined was their store;

Many a rebel missed his rations

For a month and more.

Rumor buzzed along before us,

Threatening death to every man,

And at times its shadow o'er us

Darkened like a ban;

But we rode so swift that

Rumor Hardly kept the van.

Then at dark we camped so wary

Out upon the lonely heights,

With the solemn heavens starry

Holding all our lights;

And the picket's tread was muffled

Through the silent nights.

"Ten long, reckless days of danger

Swept we through the foeman's land,

Every keen-eyed, daring ranger

Bearing in his hand

All of life's uncounted value

Lightly as his brand.

"Though the perils gathered thickly

Hour by hour on every hand—

Fiery signals leaping quickly

Onward through the land—

Through a hundred leagues of foemen Scathless came our band.

"Oh! the memories of battle

Stir me, gran'ther, by your side;

I can hear the fiery rattle

Echo far and wide;

And forever in my dreaming

That wild raid I ride."

HARPER'S WEEKLY

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1863.

TO ADVERTISERS.

HARPER'S WEEKLY has a circulation of OVER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND COPIES, which are scattered over the whole country. Every number is probably read by eight or ten persons, so that advertisements in its pages reach the eye of more individuals than advertisements in any other periodical. It is essentially a home paper, and is found in every country house whose inmates take an interest in the thrilling events of the day. It is not destroyed after being read, as daily papers are, but is kept, and in many cases bound, placed in a library, and referred to from time to time. Advertisers who wish to bring their business to the notice of the public at large, and especially of the householding class, can find no medium so suitable for their purpose as Harper's Weekly.

Advertisements on the last page of Harper's Weekly ONE DOLLAR per line; inside SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS per line. The space allotted to advertisements is limited, and an early application is advisable to secure a place.

WOULD-BE MARTYRS.

NOW that Mr. Vallandigham is comfortable among people of his own way of thinking down South, we presume that the noble army of would-be martyrs will undergo a diminution. It is still asserted, we perceive, by Vallandigham's friends, that the atrocious tyranny of which he has been the victim will have the effect of making him Governor of Ohio; and quite a number of aspiring politicians, anxious to be Governors or Senators, or at least Congressmen, are trying busily to get themselves locked up or exiled with a view to the honors and profits of martyrdom. We are, however, not so sure as some of our friends seem to be that the people of Ohio will send to the Court of Jeff Davis for a successor to Governor Tod. Ohio has nearly 100,000 men in the field who are shedding their blood in a deadly struggle with rebels who welcome, appreciate, and extol Vallandigham; these citizen-soldiers and their friends will wait at all events until the war is over before they send to the enemy's camp for a Governor and Commander-in-Chief. For our part, we think that Mr. Vallandigham is effectually extinguished. By whatever specious ingenuity he may have heretofore exculpated himself from charges of disloyalty, it is patent now that he is a welcome guest among the enemies of his country, and is eating their salt, and probably sharing their counsels. They may trust him hereafter; the North never can.

As to the smart talkers and writers who are aiming at the Capitol or the White House by way of Fort Lafayette, we fear their ambition will be disappointed. The price of provisions is advancing daily, and the Government is already at expense enough for the support of troops, without undertaking to fatten traitors likewise. It would be no small gain to many of these New York and New Jersey patriots, who declaim against the destruction of our liberties, to get their board gratis this summer. But Mr. Lincoln can not afford such luxuries. The peace orators had far better give up the idea of getting free board and lodging, with eventual contingencies in the shape of a martyr's reputation, and betake themselves to some honest trade.

When the war is over, the public will probably be apt to scan rather closely the record which public men made for themselves while it was raging. At that time, protests against being classed as a some-time Copperhead will abound. The men who are now noisiest against the atrocious despotism of Lincoln will then call Heaven to witness that they were loyal supporters of the Government. For it will then be as odious to have been false to the country in her hour of greatest peril as it was eighty years ago to have joined the Tories in the Revolution. Already there are indications that public sentiment is being formed in this direction. Even among persons not over-friendly to the Government, "ticket-of-leave" men from Fort Lafayette are beginning to be shunned. Pretty soon the public will make no great distinction between a rascal who was sent to State's Prison for burglary and a traitor who was sent to Fort Warren for treason. And the stigma will stick. Our children will be brought up in holy horror of traitors, and the time will come when innocent creatures, now unborn or mere infants, will be pursued through life with the bitter and unbearable taunt that, in the dark and dreary days of the Great Rebellion, their father was a Copperhead!

THE LOUNGER.

DESPOTISM.

WHEN the rebels, in a kind of mad spite, talk of the despotism which prevails at the North—speak of the President as his "Majesty Abraham First," or "King Lincoln"—and congratulate themselves upon being relieved from the contamination of Northern society, the dull humor can hardly excite a smile among men who have the earnest work of the war upon their hands and hearts.

But when papers and orators among ourselves print and reiterate every thing that can possibly paralyze the spirit and perplex the activity of loyal men, appealing to the basest prejudices and the meanest passions, intent only upon a party warfare while the nation is in deadly peril from armed rebels—insisting that the danger to the country from the despotism of the Government of the United States is greater than that from the desperate rebellion of Davis and his associates—and in the same breath declaring that the proof of that despotism is its interference with free speech; there can be but one emotion in every loyal mind, and that, a feeling of unutterable contempt.

There is always a public common sense which understands the intention of speeches and articles which are skillfully prepared to seem to favor what they really attack. That common sense is perfectly aware that a man who, in this critical period of our history, steadily depreciates every act and maligns every motive of the Administration, under pretense of supporting the "Government," is a man who delights in our defeats and rejoices in rebel successes. The supposition that Mr. Fernando Wood is more interested in the maintenance of personal rights than General Burnside, or that the party known as Copperhead is more unswervingly devoted to the maintenance of the supreme constitutional authority of the Government than the President of the United States, is too gross for any one, except a man who believes that Mr. Rynders really respects the right of free speech.

The people of this country have invested the authorities with unusual powers for carrying on the war and restoring the Government. Nobody supposes that summary proceedings may not be often necessary, and every body knows that in case of any extravagant and dishonest use of such powers, every officer will be held to the strictest account. But the spirit and method of public criticism indicate unerringly whether it is made from real sympathy with the cause of the country or from secret hostility to it. Does any thoughtful, intelligent, loyal man believe that the liberties of American citizens are in more danger from the action of the authorities than from the rebellion? Does such a man truly believe that a Copperhead convention is more jealous of the national honor, or more earnestly desirous of a just and permanent peace than those who prefer even to see some rights temporarily abridged rather than all rights finally destroyed?

THE WESTERN BOYS.

WHILE we write, the fate of Vicksburg is undecided. But whatever that fate may be, the sturdy and splendid prowess of the Western soldiers who have fought for a month in the very heart of the rebellion will be one of the most glorious traditions of the war.

They stand beside the river which is their river. They fight not only for the great and general cause of the Government and of civil order which inspires all our troops, but they strike for a palpable, present object, the control of the river, which is the life-current of their prosperity, which is the natural highway to the sea of ten millions of free men between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains, the vast, central basin of the continent, the valley of imperishable empire.

They fight for it with a heroism proportioned to the grandeur of the stake, with the inspiration of men who know that justice, law, necessity, national life itself, are on their side. To the wiles of demagogues and desperate traitors they oppose a glistering front of silent steel. They know that no treaty with a foreign power can secure to them the navigation of that river so certainly as its unobstructed control by a powerful undivided nation from the lakes to the Gulf. They know that to seek that control by separation from the Eastern and union with the Southern part of that nation would be to renounce the guarantee of a great sovereign power for the uncertain alliance of a faction which shows no regard for honorable engagements, and repudiates the unity of parts as an essential condition of collective force.

Throughout the loyal land, and through our history, the praise of these men rings and shall ring forever. Men of the West, whether this time Vicksburg falls before your conquering hands, or whether its fall be yet delayed, remember that every stalwart blow you strike rivets all true hearts in the land together, and binds yet more closely the bonds that hold our common country! In the East and the West, from the river to the sea, all hearts follow you with hopes, and prayers, and pride, and the children of our children shall bless you!

FROM A DIARY.

THE Lounger is glad to hear once more from his friend the Diarist, who continues to jot down his little daily experiences.

I was sitting in Edward's office the other morning when John came in and announced that the world was a d—d fool; that it spun round in one place forever; that nothing ever radically changed; and that when Edward was older he would know that a man was an ass who supposed there was any social progress or amelioration. It is needless for me to record that John is a full-blown Copper-head. He continued that he prided himself on his consistency. He vowed that he had never changed; that he started in life with certain fixed principles, but that while other people had budged he had been steady.

"Yes," said Edward, dryly, "I have heard of such people before. The Bourbons never changed. They had a fixed principle. It was to butt their heads against a stone-

wall. And they butted until they were jelly. Do you present this quality of yours as a subject of admiration? For you really seem to be pluming yourself upon it."

"I mean," said John, "that I don't change my views of right and wrong."

"Well, who does?" replied Edward, smiling.

"Why, I should rather think you did," continued John. "for I heard Ebony the other day—think of it!—Ebony, the Abolitionist—the Abolitionist, by Jupiter!—actually praising you, my dear Edward. And I was truly sorry for you."

"How does that show any change of my view of right and wrong?"

"Why, didn't he use to scorch you because you believed in slavery?"

"I never believed in slavery."

"The devil you didn't."

"No—I thought that it ought to be let alone, and that it would cure itself. But since the slave-drivers began to upset the country to save slavery, I am for upsetting slavery to save the country, and for upsetting it so thoroughly that there shall be nothing left of it. My view of the right or wrong of slavery is precisely the same. But my view of the true policy in regard to its treatment has changed. Does that penetrate your brain my dear John? But, John—?"

"Well."

"You say that you heard Ebony, the Abolitionist, praise me?"

"Yes."

"Well, Ebony and I both go in for Union, and liberty as its security. But the other day I heard Scale, the meanest of Copperheads, praising you without stint. I have heard you blamed for many things in other days, and laughed. But, by George, I blushed this time to hear you praised for doing all you could to help the rebels, under a plea of 'concern for the Union and Government!' To be praised by a fanatic for liberty, and decency, and honor, and Union, and human rights, does not trouble me very much. But to be praised by a fanatic for slavery, indecency, dishonor, and disunion, that, I think, Master John, would be a little tough. What do you think?"

"I'm not in favor of Slavery."

"What?"

"I have always been consistent. I have always said that whenever any body would say how Slavery could be abolished in a way most beneficial to master and slave, I would consider the proposition."

"Generous man! And, John, I am not abstractly in favor of theft. I say only that whenever somebody will point out to me how thieving can be done away with, with a due regard to the rights of property and of theft, I will consider it maturely. But meanwhile I must be permitted to promote theft by saying that the Bible recognizes it, for it expressly speaks of thieves breaking through and stealing. Besides, thieving in some form has always prevailed, and must therefore be considered Providential, and society expects thieving and is adjusted to that expectation; and some men are clearly made to be thieves or they wouldn't be thieves; and what on earth do you propose to do with the thieves it you abolish theft? Your position and your reasoning, John, do equal honor to your brains and your heart. You are what Darwin would call a Copperhead by natural selection."

John smiled vaguely and turned over the papers.

"I am really very much concerned about Vicksburg," he said.

"Yes, of course you are, for there is a chance of Jeff's losing it," answered Edward.

John smiled still more faintly.

"Oh, you are such a horrid Abolitionist," said he, as he walked out.

REBELS AND COPPERHEADS.

THE Copperheads and the rebels have an equally sensitive regard and veneration for the Constitution of the United States. It was a favorite and universal theory of the rebels at the time of Mr. Lincoln's election that the Constitution did not permit the Government to save itself. Mr. Russell, in his Diary, mentions by name and initials certain notorious Copperheads of to-day who were of the same opinion. And the Copperhead journals, which struggle to show that there is no terrorism at the South, which magnify our disasters, and nobly sneer at "Sambo," appear day after day without one single word of hearty abhorrence of the rebellion, but with painfully-elaborated columns of complaint that the Constitution of the United States is in imminent danger of destruction by—Davis and his crew? Not at all; but by the Government.

It is, indeed, marvelous to see what profound respect for the Constitution the rebels have who are slaughtering loyal citizens by the thousands to overthrow it, and the Copperheads who are doing all that men can do to secure the success of the rebellion. Meanwhile, if the may credit Copperhead or rebel authority, the Government of the United States, which acts sometimes summarily, and the great mass of the loyal people who support the Government, are wickedly regardless of the august instrument; so that, according to these doctors, the only hope of maintaining the authority of the Constitution and restoring unity lies in Jeff Davis and his men at the South, and in their friends at the North, like Messrs. Vallandigham and Rynders.

It is not surprising, therefore, since Copperhead is only the Northside view of a rebel, to find an absolute likeness in the phrases by which the rebel and Copperhead papers and orators describe the process of subverting the Constitution in which the Government is engaged. It is instructive, as showing the identity of spirit which animates them. By way of illustration. Can any reader tell at sight whether these criticisms of "the performance at Cincinnati" are taken from rebel or Copperhead sources? The "new campaign for consolidating all power....and ferociously stamping down the last murmurs and struggles of those liege subjects who used to be citizens." "By gradations of infamy he (the President) sits on a kingly throne and aspires to a regal crown."

It would not be possible to distinguish. But one is rebel and the other Copperhead, and the reader may see exactly how much to believe of the professions of veneration for the Constitution, the Government, or the Union which proceed from either.

A LITTLE DISH OF "PEACE."

MR. WALL, of New Jersey, who was confined in Fort Lafayette a year or two ago, and afterward sent to the United States Senate to complete to vacant term, lately made a speech in Philadelphia. The feeling in regard to the orator, who is known (Next Page)