“I wish I MAY NEVER HEAR OF THE UNITED STATES
AGAIN.'"


The Man
Without
a Country
EDWARD
EVERETT HALE
H. M. CALDWELL CO., PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND BOSTON en este


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
But she had disappeared — no man knows
where — oh! years before I introduced her
on the top of the Andes. I will here şay,
— so careful are critics, — that among many
readers of this story, only one, of whom I
ever heard, observed that the “ Levant,"
when Nolan died on her, was far inland.
She had been placed on the top of the Andes
intentionally.
I took such pains as this to be provided for
defence, if any one should say, as the New
York Observer did courteously, that I was a
liar and a counterfeiter. Liars and counter-
feiters do not intentionally place ships on the
tops of mountains, and none but very igno-
rant editors think they do.
I took full notes of the names of officers
and ships, to be ready for the detail of my
story.
I then read, in full, all that I could find of
Aaron Burr's two voyages down the Missis-
sippi. It is not creditable to this country
that there is no adequate history of Burr's
attempt, whatever it was. I have some-
times thought that Mr. Jefferson himself did
not wish to have any detail known. I am
quite sure, after a good deal of study of the
subject, that the officers of his Administra-
tion did not know every detail, nor one-
half the details, nor one-fiftieth part of them.


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
tember, 1807, at a court-martial at Fort
Adams.
Nobody but myself in New England had
ever heard of Philip Nolan. But in the
Southwest, in Texas and Louisiana, it was
but sixty-two years since the Spaniards mur-
dered him. In truth, it was the death of
Nolan, the real Philip Nolan, killed by one
Spanish governor while he held the safe-con-
duct of another, which roused that wave of
indignation in the Southwest which ended
in the independence of Texas. I think the
State of Texas would do well, to-day, if it
placed the statue of the real Phil Nolan in
the Capitol at Washington by the side of
that of Sam Houston.
Although we were at war, the Atlantic at once
found its way into regions where the real
Phil Nolan was known. A writer in the
New Orleans Picayune, in a careful historical
paper, explained at length that I had been
mistaken all the way through, that Philip
Nolan never went to sea, but to Texas. I
received a letter from a lady in Baltimore
who told me that two widowed sisters of his
lived in that neighborhood. Unfortunately
for me, this letter, written in perfectly good
faith, was signed E. F. M. Fachtz. I was
receiving many letters on the subject daily.
I supposed that my correspondent was con-
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THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
flies escaped, — rightly for all I know.
Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I
say; yet you and I would never have
heard of him, reader, but that; when the
president of the court asked him at the
close whether he wished to say anything
to show that he had always been faith-
ful to the United States, he cried out,
in a fit of frenzy,–
“ Damn the United States ! I wish I
may never hear of the United States
again !”
I suppose he did not know how the
words shocked old Colonel Morgan,
who was holding the court. Half the
officers who sat in it had served through
the Revolution, and their lives, not to
say their necks, had been risked for the
very idea which he so cavalierly cursed
in his madness. He, on his part, had
grown up in the West of those days,
in the midst of “Spanish plot,” “ Or-
leans plot,” and all the rest. He had
been educated on a plantation where
the finest company was a Spanish offi-
cer or a French merchant from Orleans.
His education, such as it was, had been


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
1807, till the day he died, May 11,
1863, he never heard her name again.
For that half-century and more he was
a man without a country.
Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly
shocked. If Nolan had compared
George Washington to Benedict Ar-
nold, or had cried, “God save King
George,” Morgan would not have felt
worse. He called the court into his
private room, and returned in fifteen
minutes, with a face like a sheet, to
say, —
I“ Prisoner, hear the sentence of the
Court! The Court decides, subject
to the approval of the President, that
you never hear the name of the United
States again.”
Nolan laughed. But nobody else
laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn,
and the whole room was hushed dead
as night for a minute. Even Nolan
lost his swagger in a moment. Then
Morgan added, —
“Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to
Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
him to the naval commander there.”


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
The marshal gave his orders and the
prisoner was taken out of court.
Mr. Marshal,” continued old Mor-
gan, “see that no one mentions the
United States to the prisoner. Mr.
Marshal, make my respects to Lieu-
tenant Mitchell at Orleans, and re-
quest him to order that no one shall
mention the United States to the pris-
oner while he is on board ship. You
will receive your written orders from
the officer on duty here this evening.
The court is adjourned without day.”
I have always supposed that Colonel
Morgan himself took the proceedings
of the court to Washington city, and
explained them to Mr. Jefferson. Cer-
tain it is that the President approved
them, — certain, that is, if I may believe
the men who say they have seen his
signature. Before the “ Nautilus” got
round from New Orleans to the North-
ern Atlantic coast with the prisoner on
board, the sentence had been approved,
and he was a man without a country.
The plan then adopted was substantially
the same which was necessarily followed
1ο


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
state-room, “ And by Jove,” said Phil-
lips, “we did not see him for two
months again. And I had to make up
some beggarly story to that English
surgeon why I did not return his
Walter Scott to him.”
That story shows about the time when
Nolan's braggadocio must have broken
down. At first, they said, he took a
very high tone, considered his im-
prisonment a mere farce, affected to
enjoy the voyage, and all that; but
Phillips said that after he came out of
his state-room he never was the same
man again. He never read aloud again,
unless it was the Bible or Shakespeare,
or something else he was sure of. But
it was not that merely. He never
entered in with the other young men
exactly as a companion again. He
was always shy afterwards, when I
knew him, — very seldom spoke, un-
less he was spoken to, except to a very
few friends. He lighted up occasion-
ally, — I remember late in his life hear-
ing him fairly eloquent on something
which had been suggested to him by
20


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
had slaves on board. An officer was
sent to take charge of her, and, after
a few minutes, he sent back his boat
to ask that some one might be sent
him who could speak Portuguese. We
were all looking over the rail when the
message came, and we all wished we
could interpret, when the captain asked
Who spoke Portuguese. But none of
the officers did; and just as the cap-
tain was sending forward to ask if any
of the people could, Nolan stepped out
and said he should be glad to interpret,
if the captain wished, as he understood
the language. The captain thanked
him, fitted out another boat with him,
and in this boat it was my luck to go.
When we got there, it was such a
scene as you seldom see, and never
want to. Nastiness beyond account,
and chaos run loose in the midst of
the nastiness. There were not a great
many of the negroes; but by way of
making what there were understand
that they were free, Vaughan had had
their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked
off, and, for convenience' sake, was
35


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
putting them upon the rascals of the
schooner's crew. The negroes were,
most of them, out of the hold, and
swarming all round the dirty deck,
with a central throng surrounding
Vaughan and addressing him in every
dialect, and patois of a dialect, from
the Zulu click up to the Parisian of
Beledeljereed.
As we came on deck, Vaughan looked
down from a hogshead, on which
he had mounted in desperation, and
said: -
« For God's love, is there anybody
who can make these wretches under-
stand something? The men gave them
rum, and that did not quiet them. I
knocked that big fellow down twice,
and that did not soothe him. And
then I talked Choctaw to all of them
together; and I'll be hanged if they
understood that as well as they under-
stood the English.”
Nolan said he could speak Portuguese,
and one or two fine-looking Kroomen
were dragged out, who, as it had been
found already, had worked for the
36