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 AT THK AGE OF FORTY-THKEE.
 
 J^f" 
 
 "^ ! 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMP:S ALLt:N IIARDIE, 
 
 3 wsp^e c l0r- %^ IK val; 
 
 UNITKl) STATI-:S ARMY 
 
 " (Tnly till- actions of tlic Just 
 
 Sine// sivi-ct, iiiii/ /i/ossoiit in tlu- t/iist .' " 
 
 ^PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CI RCV I.ATIOX. 
 
 lu^lAiiavjtciu: 
 
 ,87;. 
 
 • J ' « 4 
 
 »• > 
 • * • • . '
 
 ROBERT ERNEST COWAN
 
 H=6/ D 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 a To the chiklreu of him whose merits and services are 
 t 
 
 ■ herein briefly commemorated, this little volume is afiec- 
 = tionately inscribed by his and their friend, 
 
 The Author. 
 = Washington, D. C, 
 5 January, 'J. an. 
 
 9 
 
 27v'2S4
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The subject of this raemoii' belongs to that class of 
 men whose spheres of action have been sufficiently lai'ge 
 and conspicuous to make the narration of their lives and 
 characters both interesting and useful to those who have 
 known and observed them in life, however little they may 
 have engaged the attention of the world at large. The 
 most cursory perusal of the following pages will show that 
 the life they attempt in some measure to portray was one 
 of activity, and public in its character and usefulness. A 
 more attentive reading will show that it was also the life 
 of a sincere, devoted, and unselfish man, true to his God, 
 his country, and his race. The narrative of such a life, 
 however briefly and imperfectly told, cannot do harm and 
 is certain to do good. 
 
 Those who scan these pages with unwonted care will be 
 more apt to notice what is absent from them than what they 
 contain. To such is due the explanation that the work was 
 undertaken, as a token of gratitude and affection, without 
 time to collect more ample material, or ability to adorn 
 it with literary graces. 
 
 The tone of this little volume is eulogistic, but that 
 scarcely requires explanation. The tale of a life open and 
 full of integrity, Avhen written by a friendly hand for the
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 perusal of friendly eyes, is not to be broken by adverse re- 
 flections, or suggestions of possible flaws iu eitber ebaracter 
 or attainments. Such critical methods belone: to the hiaher 
 plane of history.
 
 Adjutant General's Office, 
 
 Washington, January 8, 1877. 
 
 Military History of James A. Hardie, of the United 
 States Ariuy, as shown by the files of this office. 
 
 Was a cadet at the United States Military Academy, 
 from September 1, 1839, to July 1, 184.'), when he was 
 graduated and promoted in the Army to Brevet Second 
 Lieutenant, First Artillery, July 1, 184o. 
 
 His subsequent commissions and appointments were as 
 follows : 
 
 Second Lieutenant, Third Artillery 28 May, 1846. 
 
 First Lieutenant, Third Artillery 3 March, 1847. 
 
 Captain, Third Artill<?ry -5 October, 1857. 
 
 Transferred to Fifth Artillery 15 May, 1861. 
 
 Major and Assistant Adjutant General 19 February, 1863. 
 
 Colonel and Inspector General 24 March, 1864. 
 
 Major, First N. Y. Vol's 1 August, 1846, to October 26, 1848. 
 
 Lt. Col., and Adfl'l A. D. C. --28 Sept., 1861, to 24 March, 1864. 
 Brig. Gen'l of Volunteers 29 Nov., 1862, to 22 Jan., 1863. 
 
 He was brevetted Brigadier General, United States Army, 
 March 3, 1865, for diligent and faithful services, and Major 
 General, United States Army, March 18, 1865, for faithful, 
 m3ritorious and distinguished services in the Inspector 
 General's Department. 
 
 Service. — He joined his regiment September 30, 1843, 
 and served therewith in garrison at Hancock Barracks, 
 Houltou, Maine, to August 23, 1844; on detached service 
 at United States Militarv Academv, as Assistant Professor
 
 V 1 1 r INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 of Geography, History, aud Ethics, to August 15, 1846 ; iu 
 tlie war with Mexico as INIajor First New York Volunteers, 
 at San Francisco, California, to October 26, 1848; on de- 
 tached service in garrison at San Francisco, California, to 
 March 30, 1849 ; Pii route to join his regiment and on leave 
 of absence to November 8, 1849 ; with regiment iu garrison 
 at Fort Trumbull, Connecticut, to Juue, 1850 ; at Jefferson 
 Barracks, Missouri, to October, 1851 ; as adjutant of the 
 regiment at Fort Adams, Rhode Island, to December 7, 
 1853 ; on detached service as aide-de-camp to Brevet Brig- 
 adier General Wool, Headquarters D>ipartinent of the 
 East, Baltimore, Maryland, to January, 1854, aud Head- 
 quarters Department of the Pacific to May o, 1855; with 
 regiment at Benicia Barracks, California, as adjutant, to 
 April, 1858 ; at San Bernardino, California, to Juue 7, 
 1858; on frontier duty iu the Spokan expedition, to Oc- 
 tober, 1858, being engaged in the battle of Four Lakes, 
 Washington Territory, September 1, 1858, and in the com- 
 bat of Spokan Plains, September 5, 1858 ; at Forts Van- 
 couver and Cascades, Washington Territory, aud Fort 
 Point, California, to July, 1861 ; as aide-de-cam[) to Gen- 
 eral McCU'lhin, from September ;>, 1861, to ]\Iarch 10, 
 1862; as acting assistant adjutant general of the Army of 
 the Potomac during the Virginia Peninsular campaign, to 
 August, 18(>2 ; in the Maryland campaign, September to 
 November, 1862; aud in the Rappahannock campaign, 
 December, 1862, to January, 1863, being on the staff of 
 Major General Buruside, in the battle of Fredericksburg,
 
 INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 December 13, 18(32; as judge advocate geueral of the 
 Army of the Potomac, January 29, to March 20, 1863 ; 
 on special duty in the War Department to August 2, 1866 ; 
 and in charge of the Inspector General's Office, at Wash- 
 ington, March 24, 18G4, to November 1, 1865 ; as member 
 of Board of Inspection of arms and munitions in the 
 arsenals and forts of the United States, August 2, 1866, to 
 August 15, 1867 ; Inspector General at Headquarters of the 
 Army to June 16, 1868 ; President of the Board of Claims 
 to May 17, 1869 ; Inspector General of the Military Divi- 
 sion of the Missouri to October 14, 1872 ; also member of 
 Commission to act on claims of the State of Kansas for 
 moneys expended in raising and equipping troops to aid in 
 suppressing the rebellion ; on inspection duty under the 
 orders of the Secretary of War, and General of the Army 
 to May 29, 1876 ; assistant in the Inspector General's 
 Office, at Headquarters of the Army, to date of death, De- 
 cember 14, 1876. 
 
 Thomas M. Vincent, 
 Assistant Adjutant General.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Chapter I. 
 
 Eurlj- Years 1 
 
 Chapter II. 
 Cadet Life at West Point 7 
 
 Chapter III. 
 California Service daring Mexican War 11 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 Garrison Life after the War 18 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Expedition against Spokan Indians 28 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Service with Army of the Potomac 29 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 Service in the War Department 37 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Service in Inspector General's Department 4o 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Death and Funeral Ceremonies 51 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Personal Traits and Characteristics ^ 57
 
 JAMES ALLEX HARDll! 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ]•: A R L Y YEARS. 
 
 The subject of this memoir was born in the city of New 
 York, May 5, 182o, and was the eldest of eight chiklren, of 
 whom four survive. His father, Allen W. Hardie, was a 
 real estate broker at New York and Albany, and a man of 
 wealth, intelligence and culture. His mother, Caroline Cox ^ 
 belonged to a respectable family of Quaker descent, and 
 possessed those domestic virtues that so generally charac- 
 terize the members of that denomination. The boy was 
 named James after his father's uncle, James Hardie, a pro- 
 fessor in Columbia College, New York, and writer of some 
 repute upon classical and historical subjects, and Allen after 
 his own father. The Hardie family was of Scotch extra- 
 tion, as tjie name itself indicates, but had bean long settled 
 in America, and James had both opportunity and occasion, 
 in his still youthful days, to refer to the services rendered 
 in two wars with England by his ancestry. 
 
 The family residence was at Montrose, on the Hudson, 
 and the earliest years of James were surrounded by those 
 advantages that wealth, taste, and judgment afford to the
 
 2 JAMES ALLEX HARDIE. 
 
 growiflg mind, but us he was by iiatuie intellectual and 
 studious, he needed not to be driven, but only uuided. He 
 neglected the usual amusements and occupations of boys 
 for his books, and like many another precocious scholar, 
 received both scolding and warning from his anxious mother 
 because of his morbid propensity to study. 
 
 At the age of four years, James was able to read, and 
 when eight years old, was placed in charge of a tutor, a 
 talented and pious young man, studying for the ministry. 
 The relations between the two were so affectionate as well 
 as advantageous to the pupil, that when the tutor went to 
 Pittsburgh to fill an instructor's place in the Western Col- 
 legiate Institute under the Rev. Dr. Lacoy, it was arranged 
 that young Hardie should accompany him, and remain in 
 his immediate charge in addition to being regularly entered 
 as a pupil of the institute. James was then just past ten, 
 and the letter is still preserved in which he (Lsjribes to his 
 father, in a handwriting like copper-plate, and with a 
 gravity and perfection of style far beyond his years, his 
 journc^y from New York to Pittsburgh, his impre.ssions of 
 Philadelphia and its fine buildings and water-works, and 
 the situation, surroundings, ami interior an-angemcnts of 
 the Western Collegiate Institute. The letter shows that 
 thus early he was keenly observant of everything in the 
 way of beautiful or striking scenery, a taste that abided 
 with him through life, and gave him many a pleasure that 
 others less favored with a love of nature could not share. 
 
 Before the journey of young flardie to what had hardly
 
 .lAMKS ALLIEN flARDIE. .1 
 
 ceased to ba the " Far West," his father's fortunes had im- 
 dergoue a calamitous chauge, and it was only by measures 
 of a most resolute aud self-sacrificing character that the 
 parent was enabled to preserve to the child, whose high 
 talents and impulses be fully discerned, some part of those 
 advantages of education and training that in his yet pros- 
 perous days he had resolved upon. Happily for both, the 
 boy understood and reciprocated his father's etfbrts for his 
 well being, and he earnestly strove to be all and to do all 
 that the most anxious or exacting of parents could wish. 
 His father's self denying spirit he met half-way. His long- 
 ings for a parental visit at examination time, and for a visit 
 home himself during the "short vacation," he could not, 
 indeed, suppress in his letters, but he accompanied them 
 with expressions of cheerful resignation at foregoing them, 
 that took away the sting of his disappointment. 
 
 In a letter dated December 19, 1833, he tells his father 
 of the approaching public examination at the institute, and 
 expresses the hope that he may not " disgrace " himself in 
 it. His next letter is to his mother, and in a hand even 
 more regular and beautiful than before. After a dutiful 
 and affectionate opening, he describes to her the public 
 examination just held before "a committee composed of 
 some of the eminent gentlemen of the city and neighbor- 
 hood," and explains that he, a boy under eleven, had uo 
 chance to win either of the two handsome medals offered 
 as premiums for excellence in composition and elocution, 
 because among the contestants were " young ladies, eighteen
 
 4 .lAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 or nineteen years old, who were second to uoue in the United 
 States." His own part in the examination, he thns de- 
 scribes : 
 
 " The examination lasted for three days, and I never had such 
 a drilling before. My class in Latin excited groat admiration. 
 I was examined in the greater part of Asia, in the history of 
 Greece and Rome, in English and Latin grammar, in C»sar and 
 in arithmetic, and I spoke Napoleon's Farewell to France." 
 
 His expectations of future study, and his estimate of the 
 uses and pleasures of learning, he thus unfolds : 
 
 " I expect to commence algebra and rhetoric next term, and 
 Mr. K. thinks I shall soon be ready for Greek. * * * Tell 
 
 cousin T to gain learning as fast as he can, ml that, should 
 
 he even be confined to a limited sphere in society, he will yet pos- 
 se.ss a pearl whose intrinsic value, the longer he lives, he will the 
 more truly appreciate, and from which he will derive a pleasure 
 that nothing but the blessing of religious fre'.ing can equal." 
 
 The letters of young Hardic's kind friend and tutor to 
 his pupil's father are full of praise and promise, and the 
 only unfjivorable report that he makes of him is that he 
 has an "extremely quick temper," threatening future 
 trouble if not subdued in youth. That it had existed, and 
 had been subdued, those intimate with him in after life had 
 good reason to believe, for extreme sensitiveness on the one 
 hand and great patience on the other were always marked 
 traits in his character. 
 
 James' stay at the Pittsburgh College was terminated 
 prematurely by the resolution of his tutor, reluctantly 
 taken, to give up teaching and devote himself wholly to 
 theological study under Bishop Mcllvaine, at Kenyon Col-
 
 JAME8 ALLEN HARDIE. 5 
 
 lege. James was too yoiiug to enter that iii.stitution, aud 
 as he had reached an age when he needed more than ever 
 that bracing influence of school-fellowship with other boys 
 that the most devoted private teaching cannot supply, there 
 was nothing to do but for teacher and pupil to part. The 
 former was sad enough over the necessity, for he had long 
 entertained the thought of training the youth up, under 
 his own supervision, for the ministry of the Episcopal 
 Church, to which they both belonged, aud he comforted 
 his young charge and himself by hopes of their coming 
 together again in a few years, and carrying out that pro- 
 ject to the end. 
 
 The boy was brought back to New York, aud eventually 
 entered the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School, a noted estab- 
 lishment of that day, of which Dr. Bartlett, a highly es- 
 teemed instructor and scholar, was principal. While here, 
 he conceived the idea of getting an appointment to the 
 Military Academy as a means of continuing and advancing 
 his studies, his desire for learning increasing with acquisi- 
 tion and the lessening of his opportunities for gratifying it. 
 He addressed himself to the Representatives in Congress 
 from the Hudson river districts, and the tone and style of 
 his letters awakened in them an extraordinary interest aud 
 disposition to serve him, so that from the first their answers 
 were highly encouraging and satisfactory. His youthful- 
 ness was against him, he being considerably less than fifteen 
 years old when he began his efforts, but this objection dis- 
 appeared as time went on, and at last, in September, 1839,
 
 6 .TAMER ALLEN HARDIE 
 
 at the age of sixteen years and three months, he entered '• 
 the Academy. His father, besides being widely known and 
 highly respected,had both a personal and political friendship 
 with the then President, Van Buren, by whose order the ap- 
 pointment was issued. James himself had placed on file in 
 the War Department a formal application for the place, and 
 he thus stated the considerations by which he hoped to 
 move " His Excellency," as he styled him, the Secretary of 
 War : 
 
 " I may have some little claim to noti?e, as my great-grand- 
 father, Bogardus, was a soldier in the Eevolutionary war, and my 
 grandfather and uncle were in the service of the United States 
 during the late war, and our family always have and do now 
 maintain strict administration principle?.'' 
 
 What the youthful conception of " strict administration 
 principles" was there are no means now of ascertaining, 
 but as he speaks of them with pride as the principles of 
 " our family," and the love of truth and honor that at- 
 tended him through life was already a marked feature of 
 his character, it is certain that he took them to be the only 
 principles suitable for the miruitenance of right-minded 
 men.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CADET LIFE AT WEST POINT. 
 
 As already mentioiu-d, James eutered the Military 
 Academy, September 1, 1839, at the age of sixteen years 
 aud three months. Among those who entered the same 
 class with hiin and became distinguished in after life were 
 Generals Grant, Franklin, Augur, and Steele of the Union 
 side, and General Gardner, Confederate commander of 
 Port Hudson, daring the late civil war. The Union Gen- 
 erals, William T. Sherman, George H. Thomas, John F. 
 Reynolds, Nathaniel Lyon, William S. Rosecrans, Horatio 
 G. Wright, Don Carlos Buell, John Pope and John New- 
 ton, and the Confederate Generals Ewell, Lougstreet, Van 
 Dorn and Lovell were already cadets when he eutered, aud 
 duriug his term as cadet, the Union Generals McClellan, 
 Hancock, " Baldy " Smith, Fitz John Porter, Reno, Stone- 
 man, Sturgis, and Charles P. Stone, and the Confederate 
 Generals "Stonewall" Jackson, A. P. Hill, Kirby Smith, 
 Barnard'E. Bee and George E. Pickett entered the classes 
 below him. One of his class-mates was the well-known 
 Father Deshon, of the Redemptorist and Paulist societies 
 of the Roman Catholic Church, and Colonel Garesche, 
 killed at the battle of Stone's river while serving on the 
 staff of General Rosecrans, and a Catholic of extreme 
 piety, was in one of the classes above him. Colonel Dela-
 
 8 .TA>[ES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 field, a promiueut officer of the eugiueei- corps, wa- the 
 Superintendent of the Academy, and Lieutenants Joseph 
 Hooker ami Irvin McDowell, both major-generals in the 
 array now, filled the office of adjutant during the four years 
 of young Hardie's cadet life. 
 
 At the first examination, nine months after his admission. 
 Cadet Hardie was one of the envied five " star " cadets 
 whose names were published in the Army Register in 
 recognition of their merit as students, his rank being 
 two in French, and ten in mathematics, out of a class of 
 sixty members. The next year he stood three in French, 
 five in drawing, eleven in mathematics, and thirteen in 
 ethics, in a class of fifty-three. The third year he stood 
 two in drawing, nine in chemistry, and thirteen in natural 
 philosophy, in a class of forty-one. The fourth year he 
 stood seven in ethics, eight in mineralogy and geology, 
 eleven in artillery, and twelve in infantry tactics, and thir- 
 teen in military and civil engineering ; and was graduated 
 as eleventh among the thirty-nine who remained of the 
 sixty that originally composed the class. His standing in 
 discipline, which concerned chiefly his military bearing and 
 conduct, was an average ninety-eight out of an average 
 membership of two hundred and twenty-three. His whole 
 number of conduct marks in the four years was three hun- 
 dred and ninety-five, while it would have taken eight luin- 
 dred, or one hundred in any half year, to have found iiitn 
 deficient. It is worthy of remark, in this connection, that 
 Don Carlos Buell, known before and during the late war
 
 JAMES ALLEN HAKDIE. 9 
 
 as the strictest discipliuarian in the army, stood iu one year 
 at the foot of the conduct roll of two hundred and nineteen 
 cadets ; such is the seeming inconsistency of human char- 
 acter. 
 
 At the time of Cadet Hardie's entry at West Point, the 
 custom of " hazing the plebs " was in full vigor, and it was 
 his lot to be subjected to it in pretty ample measure, but 
 he boreit'good-naturedly, and many years afterwards, when 
 past middle life, and stern measures were in vogue for its 
 suppression, he spoke of the practice as one that did not 
 call for the official pother made about it, and which was 
 not without its useful influences upon those subjected to it ; 
 while, as to the occasional cruel and excessive instances of 
 it that were made the grounds of official notice and inter- 
 ference, they could and would be most effectually checked 
 by the generosity and sense of honor of the cadets them- 
 selves. 
 
 Of Cadet Hardie's life at West Point, it is only neces- 
 sary to remark that he was the same quiet, diligent, and 
 studious youth that he had ever been, popular with his in- 
 structors, but sufficiently boyish and companionable to be 
 esteemed by his fellow cadets. The examination of his 
 class for graduation, in 1843, was conducted before a visit- 
 ing: committee of which General Winfield Scott was the 
 chairman, and it is not surprising that in a presence re- 
 garded by them as so august and critical, each unfledged 
 military hero was on his mettle, and anxious as to the re- 
 sult. 
 4
 
 10 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 Shortly after his graduation, Cadet Hardie, in accordance 
 with the recommendation of the examining board and his 
 own desire, was assigned to the artillery arm of the service 
 and attached as a brevet or supernumerary second lieuten- 
 ant to the first regiment of artillery, with station at Han- 
 cock Barracks, Maine. After a year's service to teach him 
 the duties of an officer in garrison, he was ordered back to 
 West Point as assistant professor in the department of 
 geography, history, and ethics, all of them subjects in 
 which his heart was enlisted. He was then but a little 
 over twenty-one years of age, but, apart from his profi- 
 ciency, had enough of the gravity of manner that devotion 
 to learning always gives, to be a successful teacher of the 
 youths of sixteen or seventeen that formed his classes.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CALIFORNIA SERVICE DURING MEXICAN WAR. 
 
 In 1846, the administration of President Polk, under 
 the aggressive influence of Governor Marcy, of New York, 
 then Secretary of War, formed the design of raising a vol- 
 unteer regiment of young and picked men, and sending 
 them to California, to be employed as long as need be for 
 military purposes, and then disbanded and left in Califor- 
 nia as a nucleus of defense and extension for the weak and 
 scattered American settlements in that then Mexican prov- 
 ince. The raising and command of the regiment was en- 
 trusted to Jonathan D. Stevenson, a friend of Secretary 
 Marcy's, and in looking about for military talent to asso- 
 ciate with him in the command, his choice fell upon Lieu- 
 tenant Hardie for the post of major. The latter accepted 
 the appointment, and Colonel Stevenson thereupon pro- 
 cured from the Secretary of War an order relieving him 
 from duty at the Military Academy and granting him leave 
 of absence for two yeai's with permission to go abroad. 
 Thus he found himself at the age of twenty-three engaged 
 in an important enterprise, and upon the threshold of re- 
 sponsibilities from which he would, with his sensitive and 
 self-distrusting nature, have shrunk, could he have foreseen 
 them.
 
 12 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 The regiment sailed from New York for California, by 
 way of Cape Horn, in the month of September, 1846, four 
 months after the existence of war between the United States 
 and Mexico had been recognized by Congress. Three 
 merchants ships were chartered by the Government to con- 
 vey the regiment and on one of these, the " Loo Choo," 
 were embarked three and a half companies, and the vessel, 
 with the detachment, was placed under command of Major 
 Hardie, who was furnished with the following letter from 
 the Department of State, signed by the gentleman who 
 subsequently became noted as the negotiator of the treaty 
 of Guadalupe Hidalgo : 
 
 " To the Diplomatic and Consular Agents of the United States of 
 
 America. 
 
 " Devartment of State, 
 
 " Washington, September 14, 1846. 
 " The American ship ' Loo Choo,' having on board troops of 
 the United States commanded by Major James A. Hardie, (under 
 whose orders likewise the master and crew are placed,) is one of 
 three. transport ships of the United States that are to sail imme- 
 diately from New York for the northwest coast of America, in 
 company with the United States sloop-of-war ' Preble.' 
 
 " These vessels will, it is to be presumed, become separated in 
 the course of the voyage, and find themselves under the necessity 
 of seeking, singly, the hospitality of ports of friendly nations, in 
 quest of what they may need. I have accordingly to request 
 that, should this happen in the country where you are accredited, 
 every proper step will be taken by you to obtain for them, with 
 the least possible delay, all the facilities and friendly accommoda- 
 tions to which their actual character as national vessel entitles 
 them under the established usages of comity among nations. 
 
 " N. P. Trist, 
 " Acting Secretary of State."
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 13 
 
 The " Loo Choo " reached San Francisco after a stormy 
 voyage of six months, enlivened by a brief stay at Rio Ja- 
 neiro, where Major Hardie and his officers were magnifi- 
 cently entertained by the young Emperor, now the famous 
 Dom Pedro II. The other two vessels also got in safely 
 with their detachments. A company of the Third Artil- 
 lery, Major Hardie's own regiment, having William T. 
 Sherman as junior First Lieutenant, had already reached 
 there from New York. jNIajor Hardie and his detachment 
 took post at San Francisco, and he came into command 
 and charge of both military and civil affairs in that part 
 of Upper California ; Colonel Mason, who succeeded Colonel 
 Kearney as military commander and governor of the whole 
 district, fixing his headquarters at Monterey, with Lieutenant 
 Sherman for his Chief of Staff. The position of Major 
 Hardie was both arduous and delicate, having to deal with 
 turbulent volunteers, anxious for the field and impatient at 
 the restraints of garrison life, with discontented and sullen 
 natives, and adventurers of all sorts from the United States, 
 between whom and the soldiers the natives found occasion 
 enough to call upon the commandant for redress and pro- 
 tection. * Fears of a native rising against the American 
 occupation were constant and well-founded, and served to 
 keep the commanding officers in a constant state of watch- 
 fulness and anxiety, both with regard to the inhabitants, 
 that they might not take the troops by surprise, and the 
 troops, that they might always be ready to march or fight, 
 as circumstances might demand. In Mexico, too, actual
 
 14 JAMES ALLEN HARBIE. 
 
 aud glorious war was in progress, in which tlie army was 
 gaiuiiig hxurels, and possibly rewards, that those iu Cali- 
 fornia might envy, but saw no prospect of sharing. It 
 was under such iutiuences that Major Hardie, after two 
 months of trial in the command at San Francisco, asked 
 to be relieved from his volunteer rank and command, and 
 ordered upon his commission of Second Lieutenant of 
 Artillery, to join his regiment iu Mexico. Towards this 
 request Colonel Mason, a strict and even harsh disciplina- 
 rian of the " old school," as the phrase was known in those 
 days, took the unusual course of replying under his own 
 hand, and in kindly terms, assuring him that his unenvi- 
 able and perplexing situation was thoroughly recognized ; 
 that his course had been wise and prudent, and was I'ully 
 approved ; that the idea of relieving him was, in view of 
 the public interests connected with the occupation and 
 organization of Upper California, inadmissible, and that he 
 could not, under the circumstances, abandon his rank and 
 command without injuriously affecting his reputation as a 
 military man. This letter seems to have had the effect in- 
 tended, and as his position grew slill more arduous and 
 responsible with the growth and developemeut of American 
 interests and settlements, his cheerfulness and patience kept 
 pace with the demand for their exercise. The selection of 
 San Francisco bay as the rendezvous for the considerable 
 naval force kept on the Californiau coast, threw upon ^lajor 
 Hardie, as the military commandant, the duties of hospi- 
 tality that always arise upon such occasions, and his success
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 15 
 
 in the performance of these social duties contributed largely 
 to the formation and maintenance of that good understand- 
 ing between the two arms of service which succeeded the 
 original conflicts of authority and purpose which are part 
 of the history of the conquest of California. 
 
 In the summer of 1847, Major Hardie, in conjunction 
 with tha naval commander then on the station, selected 
 and reported the reservations to be made for the military, 
 naval, and civil purposes of the General Government at 
 San Francisco. In the following spring he was sent to the 
 Territory of Oregon to enlist, organize, and muster in a 
 battalion of volunteers for service in Lower California, 
 which, though of little value intrinsically, the Government 
 desired to hold for the moral advantages it gave in treating 
 with Mexico for a cessation of the war. But despite the 
 earnest and intelligent efforts -of Major Hardie, which met 
 the warm approval of Colonel Mason, no volunteers could 
 be obtained for such a tame and unattractive service, and 
 a like attempt to raise a battalion among the Mormons 
 having failed, it became necessary to form a detachment 
 from the troops in Upper California, and Major Hardie 
 was ordered to conduct the force to Lower California, and 
 turn it over to the commanding officer of that district. 
 
 It was while on this visit to Oregon that Major Hardie 
 became an open convert to the Roman Catholic religion, 
 towards which he had long been tending, and within whose 
 communion he remained, as devoted, sincere, and useful a 
 member as its laity ever contained, till the day of his death
 
 16 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 Upon his return to San Francisco, he set about the erection 
 of a phice of worship for the use of that church, and in 
 one day succeeded in collecting $3,000, upon which sum 
 the first Catholic church in San Francisco was erected in 
 1848. An unexpected result of his joining the Catholic 
 church at the time he did was his probable preservation 
 from death by assassination, for stepping into the lodgings 
 of a priest one evening to converse with him about his 
 newly-assumed religious duties, he made so long a stay as 
 to wear out the patience of a desperate character who, in 
 revenge for a reprimand administered to him for an act of 
 theft in which he had been detected, had waylaid the Major 
 at a lonely point between the town and the camp at the 
 Presidio, several miles distant, for the purpose of shooting 
 him. This desperado was soon afterwards hung for high- 
 way robbery, and he and his companion in the crime and 
 its punishment played a game of cards to decide which 
 should first swing upon the primitive and single gallows. 
 
 Major Hardie had scarcely returned from Oregon and 
 Lower California when a cry went up from Sonoma to 
 headquarters at Monterey of an imminent Indian raid upon 
 the settlements, and he was sent to inquire into the matter 
 and if really necessary, to muster in a temporary force of 
 volunteers. But the cry turned out to be no more than a 
 device to prevent the withdrawal of the com])auy of troops 
 stationed at Sonoma, and whose removal for service else- 
 where threatened to injuriously affect the trade of that 
 struggling town. Every officer who has served on the
 
 JAMES ALLEN HAKDIE. 17 
 
 frontier, as well as the authorities at Washington, have 
 since become familiar with such devices for creating or 
 retaining trade in the settlements, and many a round sum 
 it has cost the Government since 1848. 
 
 In the summer of 1848 the "gold fever" began to rage, 
 and the rush of everybody to the diggings, and the inflation 
 of prices that followed the coming in of the gold, greatly 
 embarrassed the military officers, both in keeping their 
 troops and in keeping themselves. The accounts that have 
 been written of the social disorganization that marked the 
 earlier stages of the developement of gold-mining in Cal- 
 ifornia, seem almost incredible to the distant reader, but 
 the following extract from a letter received in the fall of 
 that year from an intimate friend at Oregon City, the capital 
 of the Territory of that name, will show how little the ac- 
 counts of what happened in California itself are exagge- 
 rated. The writer says : " Our people are all going to Cali- 
 fornia. Our lawyers are all gone — we are, perhaps, none 
 the worse for that — our circuit judge is gone, and I am 
 told our supreme judge is going. Most of our Legislature 
 are gone, and in fact, I am afraid it will dissolve our or- 
 ganization."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GARRISON LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 
 
 The war with Mexico being over, Major Hardie, who 
 had meantime become a First Lieutenant in the Third Ar- 
 tillery, was mustered out of the volunteer service in October, 
 1848, and then, as an officer of the regular army, was 
 assigned to the duty of mustering out and discharging the 
 volunteers in difTereut parts of California. He also served 
 as a member of the Board of Engineers, to establish the 
 city grades of San Francisco, and received a grant of four 
 town lots from the municipality. In the spring of 1849, 
 having seen the last of the volunteers mustered out and 
 paid, he was ordered East, and making the journey safely 
 by way of the Isthmus, was assigned to a quiet garrison 
 life at Fort Trumbull, New London Harbor. He remained 
 here till the summer of 1850, when his assignment as the 
 junior First Lieutenant of Light Company C of his regiment, 
 of which Braxton Bragg was Captain, and William T. 
 Sherman* senior First Lieutenant, carried him to Jeiferson 
 Barracks, near Saint Louis. He was ordered to convey to 
 that station a detachment of recruits, and in addition to 
 the usual interesting experiences of an officer conducting 
 recruits, the long journey down the Ohio river was en- 
 livened by the breaking out of cholera on the slow and 
 motlev-crowded steamboat, which tied-up every four hours
 
 20 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 to bury the victims. By dint of extraordinary exertions 
 in keeping the men of his detachment clean, lively, and 
 abstemious, and with the aid of a citizen physician whom 
 he found on board and hired as surgeon to the detachment, 
 he succeeded in bringing all his recruits safely through the 
 perilous journey. 
 
 During his tour of service at Jefferson Barracks, Lieu- 
 tenant Hardie made the acquaintance of Miss Margaret 
 Hunter, of St. Louis, niece of his old commander in Cali- 
 fornia, Colonel Mason, of the dragoons, and in 1851 they 
 were married in that city. Eight children were born of 
 that marriage, of whom three preceded their father to the 
 grave. Life was pleasant at Jefferson Barracks, and the 
 appointment of judge advocate of a general court-martial 
 convened at that station, gratified the desire of the still 
 youthful ofKcer for mental employment ; but in the fall of 
 1851, the resignation of the regimental uiljutant, now 
 Professor Quinby, of the Rochester University, made a 
 vacancy in that office which the regimental commander, in 
 the solemn and deliberate and somewhat stilted phraseology 
 used by elderly military men in those days in communi- 
 cating with their juniors, tendered to Lieutenant Hardie. 
 The appointment was of course accepted with becoming 
 modesty and expressions of a proper sense of responsibility, 
 and the new adjutant, with his young wife, left Jefferson 
 Barracks for the regimental headquarters at Fort Adams, 
 Newport, Rhode Island. The new position involved plenty 
 of administrative and office work, and in it Lieutenant
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 21 
 
 Hardie strengthened both his reputation for administrative 
 ability and his liking for staff employments. He remained 
 at Newport till nearly the end of 18o3, when, as he was 
 about embarking on the disastrous voyage of the ill-fated 
 " San Francisco " for the Pacific coast, to which station 
 his regiment and its headquarters had been transferred 
 by General Scott, he received an order appointing him 
 one of the aides-de-camp of ^NEajor General Wool, whose 
 headquarters were then at Baltimore, and thus escaped the 
 peril, and possibly the death that overtook so many of his 
 regiment. He shortly after accompanied General Wool 
 to California, when that officer went out to command the 
 Pacific department, and :-erved on his staff till JNIay, 1855, 
 when he resumed his position as regimental adjutant, 
 receiving a very gracious letter from General Wool on 
 retiring, in which that precise and careful writer said to 
 him : " You have served with ability, honesty and %ith- 
 fulness ; indeed, no one could have served better or more 
 to my satisfaction." 
 
 In those early days, California was an unwelcome station 
 to an army officer that happened to be married, and in 
 1854, George H. Thomas, who nearly twenty years after, 
 died at San Francisco a major-general, and in command of 
 the Pacific division, was a captain in the Third Artillery, 
 on duty at West Point, but under orders to join his regi- 
 ment as soon as relieved by Colonel Robert E. Lee. He 
 wrote to Lieutenant Hardie, begging him to send him all 
 the information he could about the several stations of the
 
 95 
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE 
 
 regiment and whether he had better bring his wife, or leave 
 her at home, adding, " I am somewhat inclined to think 
 that California will not be adapted for the residence of 
 ladies for many years to come." 
 
 In California, Lieutenant Hardie, in 1854, found his old 
 comrade, " Tecumseh," or, as he was then universally called, 
 " Bill " Sherman, who, having resigned from the army, was 
 in the full tide of civil life as a banker and broker at San 
 Francisco. They had been closely associated in 1847 and 
 1848, on the same ground, and again at St. Louis in 1850 
 and 1851, and a close and warm intercourse and corres- 
 pondence sprang up between them at once, many of the 
 letters passing between them at Benicia and San Francisco 
 being extant, and showing them both in characters of which 
 their children have no cause to be ashamed. From only 
 one of those letters will any quotation be made, and that 
 because it constitutes an interesting reminiscence of a public 
 event which has grown dim, no doubt, in the memory of 
 Californians. In a letter dated August 29, 1855, from Sher- 
 man to Hardie, the former says : " We are to have a cele- 
 bration on the 10th September, by the California pioneers, 
 and by the people generally. Can't' you join? If you 
 know of any saddle or bridle fixings suitable for parade, 
 put me on the track, as there will be a scarcity. I have 
 saddle and bridle and the promise of a saddle cloth. Still, 
 if I could lay my hand on a full rig, I would be better 
 satisfied, as I havo to act us grand marshal on the occasion.''
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EXPEDITION AGAINST SPOKAN INDIANS, 
 
 In October, 1857, Lieuteuant Hardie reached the grade 
 of captain by regular promotion in his regiment, and left 
 the adjutantcy for the command of a company at San 
 Bernardino. The following year his company formed part 
 of the expedition conducted by Colonel George Wright 
 against the Spokan Indians in Washington Territory, who 
 had become, after their surprise and massacre of part of 
 Coh)nel Steptoe's command, hostile, insolent, and defiant. 
 The story of this expedition was. at its close, written in an 
 interesting manner by Lieutenant Lawrence Kip, of the 
 Third Artillery, and published. Few campaigns in the 
 Indian country have been better planned and executed, or 
 more successful. The pride of the Spokans, and of their 
 allies, the Pelouse, Coeur d'Alene, and Fend d'Orcille bands, 
 was completely broken in two engagements, in which the 
 Indians suffered severely, while the troops, owing to the 
 skillful manao-ement of their commander and the use of 
 the newly-introduced long-range rifle, escaped without any 
 loss of life and with but few wounds. The Indians fought 
 with marked bravery, but this only added to their losses, 
 and increased the moral effects of their defeat. Captain 
 Hardie, being the field-officer of the day at the time of the 
 first engagement, and therefore in charge of the camp, took
 
 24 JAMES ALLEN HAEDIE. 
 
 uo active part therein, but in the second, known as the 
 battle of Spokan Plains, hi.s company was on the skirmish 
 line and bore a prominent part in the action, advancing 
 upon the enemy through the flames of the prairie grass in 
 which the savages had enveloped Colonel Wright and his 
 command. The action lasted seven hours, and at its close 
 the troops found themselves fourteen miles beyond the point 
 of its commencement, worn out, and famished for water. 
 
 Upon the return of the expedition to Fort Walla Walla, 
 its point of assembling and departure, the troops were dis- 
 tributed, and Captain Hardie went to Fort Vancouver ; 
 then to the Cascades ; then back to Vancouver ; then to 
 the Dalles. In July, I860, he became adjutant-general 
 of the Department of Oregon, commanded by Colonel 
 Wright, and continued in that position till ordered east in 
 May, 1861, upon the breaking out of the rebellion. In 
 the fall of 1860, he effected an insurance upon his life, a 
 step that involved a considerable pecuniary sacrifice, for 
 the entries in his memorandum books show how severe was 
 the struggle, from year to year, to provide for the wants of 
 a growing family, in a frontier country, out of the slender 
 pay of an army officer. These mute witnesses of the rigor 
 of the Government in dealing with its faithful servants, 
 plead eloquently for generous treatment of the army in 
 peace, as well as in war. 
 
 The journals and scrap-books of Captain Hardie, kept 
 during the fall of i860, show how intently he watched the 
 progress and attempted to forcrusi the result of the seces-
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 25 
 
 siou inoveiueut in the South. His own purpose to stand 
 by the Government seems to have been all the time clear, 
 but that he yielded no blind obedience may be inferred 
 from his studies upon the right of revolution and armed 
 resistance, considered both upon philosophic and religious 
 grounds. There is also an unfinished study of slavery, 
 in which, though admitting its lawful existence and right 
 of protection till lawfully destroyed, he condemns the 
 system of slavery in general upon high moral grounds, 
 and asserts the equality of man in nature, and the existence 
 of a native feeling of independence in the heart of man 
 that ought to be respected. A poetical composition of 
 great merit, entitled " Stars of my Country's Sky," clipped 
 from a New England paper and constituting an eloquent 
 appeal against the breaking up of the Union, seems to 
 have attracted his especial favor. In December, 18(30, he 
 received a letter from his old company commander at 
 Jefferson barracks, Braxton Bragg, who had left the army 
 and was living as a planter at Thibodeaux, Louisiana. 
 This letter, which was in reference to some matter con- 
 nected with the regiment, and bore evidence of how- 
 impossible it is for an old officer to separate himself iVoin 
 the army by resigning his commission and turning civilian, 
 contained, of course, a reference to the topic then upper- 
 most in men's minds, and in view of the part borne by the 
 writer in the events that followed it in point of time, what 
 he said may be of present interest, it l)eing premised that
 
 26 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 the writer died but a few weeks before the recipient of the 
 letter. The following is the extract : 
 
 " My life has been a verj- retired one in the country, and up to 
 this time as prosperous as man lias the right to expect ; but a 
 change has just come over affairs in our country which you have 
 heard ere this, and which it is shocking to contemplate. Political 
 agitators, for their own selfish ends, have brought us to the verge 
 of civil war, and if we avoid that, I see no way of saving our 
 country. Government is now virtually dissolved ; and whether 
 it can be reconstructed, or whether we are to remain in anarchy, 
 or resort to arms, with friends and brothers opposed, without a 
 reason or an object, no one can foresee. Escaping the horrors of 
 civil war, pecuniary ruin can but overtake those of us who are 
 but partially established. You are to be envied in Oregon and 
 California. Bound to neither party, you may decline the fate of 
 either and .«et up for yourselves. Would that my lot was on the 
 Pacific! " 
 
 Several times duriug his tour of service on the Pacific 
 coast, the name of Lieutenant and Captain Hardie had 
 been forwarded to Washington with recommendations for 
 his promotion and transfer to the general staff, for which 
 branch of the service he had always shown tiiat peculiar 
 aptness that should constitute the chief recommendation 
 for appointment in it. But these appointments lay first in 
 the control of .Jetf'erson Davis, and subseciucntly of John 
 B. Floyd, successive Secretaries of War, with whom the 
 oflicers that recommended Captain Hardie, though men of 
 the first rank and reputation in the army, had no influence, 
 and though political influence was not beyond Ids reach, 
 and the use of it was urged upon him l)y nnuy friend.* 
 anxious for his success, he shrunk tiom resorting to what
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 27 
 
 he regarded as au unmilitary way of gainiug a military 
 advantage. Cousequeutly, when ordered east in May, 1801, 
 he was still a captain of artillery, with no prospect of pro- 
 motion in that small and select arm of the service for years 
 to come. In tbe large increase of the regular army 
 ordered at the beginning of the war, only one regiment 
 was added to the artillery, and to that he was transferred 
 with several other officers of the four regiments of artillery, 
 in order to leaven the new lump w'ith old material. This 
 transfer made him the senior captain in the new regiment, 
 but did not better his prospects of promotion to the rank 
 of major, which does not go regimentally, like the grades 
 below it. His departure from California was sweetened by 
 a farewell letter from the commander of the department, 
 full of hearty and sincere tributes to his personal and pro- 
 fessional character, and the Catholic vicar-general of the 
 diocese in which Oregon was embraced also wrote him an 
 affectionate letter in which he says : " I have this evening 
 recommended to the prayers of the arch-confraternity all 
 the troops that leave, or will leave Oregon and Washing- 
 ton for the terrible struggle that threatens our country."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SERVICE A\ ITU ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 
 
 Captiiiii Hardie reached New York in safety, and in the 
 late summer of 1861, made his way to Washington. Con- 
 gress was in special session, and had been at work on the 
 army, and his first experience was that the lieutenants who 
 had been serving on the staff at Washinaton with the tern- 
 porary rank of captain, and were therefore on the ground 
 to look after their interests, had, by the potency of an act 
 of Congress, been legislated at one bound into the perma- 
 nent rank of major, and so exchanged places with those 
 who but yesterday were their seniors in rank, as they still 
 were in years and in length of service. No censure at- 
 tached to these young officers for getting such promotion as 
 they could in the general infiation of the number and rank 
 of army officers to meet the necessities of the war that had 
 become flagrant, but it was a bitter, though perhaps only 
 a brief trial to those officers who had been relatively re- 
 duced iu rank by this act of legislation, and especially to 
 those who, like Captain Hardie, had been prevented by 
 absence on distant service from obtaining any advantage 
 from the new legislation during the short time only in 
 which there were any promotions available. After an un- 
 successful effort to get a staff' appointment to his liking, he
 
 30 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 joined the headquarters of the new reguneiit of artillery to 
 which he had been transferred, and which at the time con- 
 sisted only of officers. He was ordered to the New England 
 States on recruiting service, S^^ptember 2, LSGl, and was 
 turning over and over the problem as to where recruits for 
 the regular army could be found when every State was 
 exerting itself to raise its ([uota of volunteers under the 
 call issued immediately after the battle of Bull Run, when 
 he was recalled to Washington by a telegram which noti- 
 fied him of his appointment to a lieutenant colonelcy on 
 the stafl' of Major-General MeClcllan, who had been as- 
 sio-ned to the command of the army upou the retirement of 
 General Scott, This was indeed a welcome change of rank 
 and duty. On reporting to General McClellan, he was 
 associated with Brigadier General Williams, the adjutant 
 general of the Army of the Potomac, in conducting the 
 great and increasing business of the adjutant u'eneral's de- 
 partment of that ever growing army. The duty was con- 
 o-enial, and, within the knowledge of everv division and 
 brigade commander of the army, was ;idiniral)ly performed. 
 One of the special charges of Colonel Hardic was to keep 
 constantly informed of the organization of tlie army with 
 respect to the composition of its brigades and divisions ; 
 also the names of the regimental and other commanders, 
 the locations of the camps, avaihible strength of the organ- 
 izations, means of transportation, character of armament, 
 and other like particulars. This information he kept in 
 small mrinoranilum ])oeket books, so us to have it at all
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. ol 
 
 times available, and the tabular statements in which he 
 presented it are models of patience and ingenuity. 
 
 Colonel Hardie accompanied General McClellan in the 
 Peninsular and Maryland campaigns of 1862, and was 
 retained by General Burnside, who had served with him 
 in by-gone years, when both were Lieutenants in the Third 
 Artillery. At the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 
 1862, he was sent by Gonenil Buruside to remain with 
 General Franklin, and report the progress of the operations 
 under charge of that officer on the left, and this duty he 
 performed with such intelligence and fidelity, that when an 
 unfortunate controversy arose between the two com- 
 manders as to the responsibility ibr the failure of those 
 operations, they both referred to the field despatches of 
 General Hardie, for he had just been appointed a brigadier 
 general of volunteers, as exhibiting a true statement of 
 the orders given and of the operations that occurred. 
 
 IMention has just been made of Colonel Hardie's 
 advancement to the rank of brigadier general. Before 
 the removal of General McClellan from the command of 
 the Army of the Potomac, Colonel Hardie had contem- 
 plated ail effort to see whether the influence he had gained 
 during his service at headquarters, added to his military 
 record of twenty years, would not secure him a larger field 
 of action, together with the promotion that so many of his 
 contemporaries had received through their better fortune, 
 but he had taken no steps in the matter, and the removal 
 of General McClellan terminated his plans for the time
 
 32 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE 
 
 being. He soon learned, however, that General Biirnside, 
 with characteristic generosity, had no sooner acquired the 
 influence resulting from his appointment to the command 
 of the array, than he forwarded the name of Colonel 
 Hardie to the War Department lor promotion to the rank 
 of britradier, and had obtained from several of his divi- 
 sional commanders endorsements of his own recommenda- 
 tion. The subject being thus broached, and in a manner 
 gratifying to the modest nature of Colonel Hardie, the latter 
 applied to several officers of high rank, who knew him well, 
 to add their testimonials of his merit and fitness to those 
 voluntarily forwarded to Washington by General Burnside. 
 From the recommendations thus placed on record in the 
 War Office, the following extracts, selected as being 
 of probable interest to the readers of this Memoir, are 
 given below : 
 
 " Colonel Hardie was a cltiss-mate of mine, and consequently 
 an acquaintance of over twenty-three years has existed. I do 
 not hesitate to say that he is well qualified for the position of 
 brigadier general, having served continuously in the army from 
 the time of his graduation to the present time, and always enjoy- 
 ing the confidence of those with whom he has been associated. 
 * * The service is already retarded by the appointment of so 
 manj' men without military experience, that I feel as if a great 
 benefit had been done every time an officer of his class is 
 advanced." — General Grant. 
 
 " 1 beg leave to add my own recommendation, based upon a 
 long acquaintance with that most meritorious officer, and a full 
 knowledge of his eminent qualifications for the promotion for 
 which his name is presented." — General Burnside, 
 
 " I desire to add my testimonj' to that of many others to his
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 33 
 
 eminent qualifications for that station. He is familiar with the 
 duties, and will be earnest, zealous and devoted, in the discharge 
 of them." — General Hooker. 
 
 " Lieutenant Colonel Hardie was one of mj- aides-de-camp in 
 California. I always found him an intelligent, active and efficient 
 officer. Should he obtain the office of brigadier general, I have 
 no doubt he would discharge his duties with ability and distinc- 
 tion. I would be delighted to have him under my command." — 
 General Wool. 
 
 " Lieutenant Colonel Hardie is an excellent and talented officer, 
 and would worthily till the position of brigadier general of 
 volunteers. I trust he may be so commissioned. I have been 
 acquainted with Colonel Hardie for twenty-two years ; he has 
 been a faithful officer in every position in the army in which he 
 has been placed.'" — General Hancock. 
 
 " Lieutenant Colonel Hardie has served in the same regiment 
 with myself for over eighteen years, and it gives me great pleasure 
 to bear testimony to his soldierly qualities and ability, his faithful 
 and assiduous devotion to his profession. His usefulness in his 
 present position as adjutant general on the staff" at headquarters 
 has, I conceive, been a bar to his advancement, up to the present 
 time, which in justice ought no longer to be allowed to remain." 
 — General Keynolds, of Gettysburg. 
 
 " No officer of his rank can show a record of continuous hard 
 service which will excel Captain Hardie's." — General Frank- 
 lin. 
 
 " I take the liberty of uniting my testimony to that already re- 
 ceived as to his eminent fitness for the duties belonging to the rank 
 of a general officer. * * I have had the opportunity of noting 
 his rare devotion to duty, bis talents, his high qualifications as a 
 cultivated officer, and his fine qualities as a soldier." — General 
 Humphreys. 
 
 " My confidence in his ability and his merits are such that it 
 would give me great pleasure to have him assigned to duty with 
 me if the President should confer the appointment upon him.' — 
 General Butterfieli).
 
 34 , JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 It being evident that the battle of Fredericksburg would 
 be followed by a repose of several weeks at least, General 
 McClellaii, who was anxious to have the services of Gen- 
 eral Hardie iu the preparation of his report on the organi- 
 zation and operations of the Array of the Potomac between 
 the dates of his assignment to, and removal from its com- 
 mand, applied to the War Department for them, and with 
 the consent of General Burnside, he was sent to General 
 McClellau in New York, and did a great deal of work in 
 preparing material for the document upon which General 
 McClellan purposed to rely for the vindication of his 
 military character, and, possibly, the redemption of his 
 military fortunes. Upon the appointment of General 
 Hooker to the command of the Army of the Potomac, 
 that officer, finding the discipline of the army somewhat 
 loosened by the events of the two preceding mouths, re- 
 solved, as one of the means of restoring it, to improve the 
 character of trials by courts martial and courts of inquiry, 
 which had become somewhat uncertain and inefficient in 
 their operations, as well as unduly numerous. He there- 
 fore cast about for a fitting officer to place on duty as judge 
 advocate general of his army and settled upon General 
 Hardie, whose return to headquarters he therefore solicited. 
 At the same time his services were applied for by the Ad- 
 jutant General, whose duties had so grown under the con- 
 tinual enlargement of the array, and the raultiplication of 
 commands, organizations, and military districts and station.'^, 
 as the national forces spread themselves over the >Suutli,
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. do 
 
 that the need of additional assistants of experience and 
 skill in army administration had become imperative. Gen- 
 eral Hooker was not disposed to surrender his project of 
 making General Hardie the judge advocate general of his 
 army, but yielded at length to the representations from 
 Washington, and General Hardie, seeing that he was in- 
 evitably destined for staff duty and receiving the tender of 
 a major's rank in the adjutant general's department at once, 
 with assurances that his withdrawal from the field should 
 not prejudice his claims to future consideration, accepted 
 the offer and assurances, and, vacating his volunteer rank 
 of brigadier, entered upon duty as assistant to the adjutant 
 general, with his rank as lieutenant colonel and aide-de- 
 camp.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SERVICE IN THE WAR DEPARTMENT. 
 
 Colonel Hardie's duties as assistant adjutant general 
 brought him into personal acquaintance with Secretary 
 Stanton, who had in a high degree the faculty of judging 
 the character and capacities of men instantaneously, and 
 it was not long before the Secretary, whose own labors, 
 herculean as they already were, were ever increasing, 
 found Colonel Hardie so valuable to himself that his 
 services in the Adjutant General's Office were terminated 
 by his transfer to the staff of the Secretary of War. 
 
 In the latter part of June, 1863, while the Army of the 
 Potomac was endeavoring by forced marches to intercept 
 General Lee in his advance into Pennsylvania, and Gen- 
 eral Hooker was hoping by a successful issue to the 
 impending battle to retrieve the reputation he had lost at 
 Chaucellorsville, the authorities at Washington determined 
 to supersede him by General Meade, commander of one of 
 his corps. The motives for this action have nothing to do 
 with this narrative, and are not therefore discussed. Gen- 
 eral Hooker, naturally reluctant to abandon the chance of 
 recovering his fortunes, was at last made to see that it was 
 not intended to entrust him with the conduct of the great 
 and decisive battle which was clearly foreseen, and on June 
 27, the orders of the President for the change of com- 
 
 27v2Sl
 
 38 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE 
 
 raanders were made out at the War Department. Secretary 
 Stanton, who seemed to have a special anxiety as to the 
 manner in which these orders should be communicated and 
 executed, called Colonel Hardie into the room where he 
 was closeted with President Lincoln and General Halleck, 
 bade him read carefully the orders and memorize their sub- 
 stance, and then directed him to leave at once by rail for 
 Frederick City, at which point the Federal army had ar- 
 rived on its northward march, and finding General Meade, 
 without communicating his mission to anybody, accompany 
 that officer to the headquarters of General Hooker, and 
 see the command transferred to him both formally and 
 actually. He was further directed to remain long enough 
 to ascertain the positions of the army, and the plans and 
 dispositions of the new commander, and then return to 
 Washington and report. Should the railway be cut by 
 the raiding Confederate cavalry, he was directed to avail 
 himself of whatever other opportunity there was of getting 
 to Frederick City, and if necessary to destroy the orders 
 to prevent their coming into the hands of the enemy, he 
 was still, if he could reach Frederick City, to communicate 
 them verbally and insist upon their execution, as both his 
 person and his position were well known to the two officers 
 concerned. 
 
 Colonel Hardie reached Frederick City in safety, though 
 not without several alarms, and found the town and the 
 roads leading to the camps beyond full of carousing 
 soldiery. Ascertaining that General Meade's headquarters
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 39 
 
 were several miles out of town, he obtained a conveyance 
 with great difficulty — it being long past midnight — -and 
 after a slow and troublesome progress past the throng of 
 soldiers returning to their camps, reached General Meade's 
 headquarters and peneti-ated to his tent without disclosing 
 his name, rank or business. General Meade, awakened 
 from the brief rest he was taking, after the labors of the 
 day and night, by Colonel Hardie's colloquy with the 
 sentinel in front of the tent, and recognizing his visitor, ex- 
 pressed astonishment at seeing him there, and, when 
 informed that it was business from Washington that 
 brought him, was so little prepared for the nature of that 
 business, that his comments showed his fears that calumny 
 and intrigue had been busy with him, as with so many 
 other officers of rank in that army. When he had read 
 the order of the President and realized its import, he soon 
 made his visitor aware that nothing but his sense of im- 
 plicit obedience to any lawful command would induce him 
 to obey it, and he shrunk, as did Colonel Hardie himself, 
 from the preordained manner of executing it, by going 
 secretly to the headquarters of General Hooker and de- 
 manding possession of the chief command, instead of 
 permitting General Hooker to be first made aware of the 
 state of affiiirs, so that he might send for his successor and 
 invest him with it in his own time and manner. But as 
 even this part of the programme had been carefully con- 
 sidered at Washington, doubtless there appeared good 
 reasons at the time to the authorities why the feelings of
 
 40 .TAMES ALLEN HAKDIE. 
 
 two meritorious officers like Generals Hooker and Meade 
 should be sacrificed to a public exigency, and certainly 
 some thoughtfulness was shown in sending Colonel Hardie 
 to supervise so delicate a transaction; he being on terms of 
 intimacy with both officers, and known to them both as 
 sensitive and thoughtful in his dealings with his fellow-men 
 to the last degree. 
 
 General Meade had shared the opinion of the whole 
 army, that if General Hooker were to be superseded, Gen- 
 eral Reynolds, commauder of the First Corps, should and 
 would be appointed to the chief command, and as they 
 were devoted friends, his anxiety to confer with Reynolds 
 was intense, but had to give way to the imperative order 
 to assume command of the army at once. So, attended by 
 Colonel Hardie, he proceeded to the headquarters of Gen- 
 eral Hooker, where, with only such manifestation of feeling 
 as w'as natural upon the occasion, the operation that had 
 been so anxiously planned at Washington was quietly per- 
 formed. Colonel Hardie remained nearly all the day of 
 June 28, and took a leading part in the preparation of the 
 orders of Generals Hooker and Meade announcing the 
 change of command, adding to the latter, with the warm 
 approval of General Meade, a })aragraph paying a 
 generous tribute to ^he past glories of the retiring chief 
 Then, as soon as General Meade had ascertained the posi- 
 tions of his army, and determined upon his general plan 
 of operation. Colonel Hardie returned to Washington and 
 made his report to the Secretary of War.
 
 JAMES ALLEX IIAKDIE. 41 
 
 In the fall of 18(>8, Secretary Stautou made his theu 
 famous trip to the west to meet General Grant and fix 
 upon a plan for combining all the military forces and 
 operations in the southwest under that officer, and as it 
 was necessary, in the absence of Assistant Secretary Wat- 
 son, to have some one designated, under the sign-manual 
 of the President, to perform the indispensable duties of 
 the Secretary at Washington, he drew up and the Presi- 
 dent signed, the following instrument : 
 
 " Uctoher 17, 1863. 
 " Lt. Col. James Hardie is authorized to perform the duties of 
 Secretary of "War during the temporary absence of the Secretary 
 and Assistant Secretar\-. 
 
 " Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 This appointment Colonel Hardie held till the return of 
 Mr. Stanton. 
 
 In the early spring of 1864, Secretary Stanton, knowing 
 that the plans of General Grant for the coming campaign 
 would, in the progress of their execution, uncover Wash- 
 ington so far as his army was concerned, and possibly 
 render necessary a reduction of the garrison to reinforce 
 the troops at the front, an event that really happened, 
 became anxious for accurate information as to the state of 
 the defenses of Washington, and how they could be im- 
 proved and strengthened to meet the two contingencies 
 above mentioned. He sent for Colonel Hardie, and, ex- 
 plaining to him his ideas upon the subject, directed him 
 to make an exhaustive and personal inspection of the
 
 42 .TAMILS ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 defeiisey, and report both upon the actual state of the 
 works and their garrisons, and what was needed to increase 
 the strength of the first and the morale and efficiency of 
 the last. This was native and congenial duty, and it is 
 not surprising that it was so well performed as to greatly 
 add to the good opinion already held by the Secretary as 
 to the talents and industry of his military assistant, and at 
 the same moment an opportunity arose of manifesting his 
 regard in a substantial manner of which he was not slow 
 to avail himself The death of Colonel Van Kensselaer, 
 Inspector General, an aged officer of the army, being 
 reported to the AVar Department March 24, 1864, Mr. 
 Stanton immediately made out the nomination of Colonel 
 Hardie for the vacant place and carried it to the President, 
 who as promptly signed it and transmitted it to the Senate, 
 where it received the unusual compliment of an immediate, 
 as well as a unanimous confirmation. The manner in 
 which this appointment was conferred was thus as gratify- 
 ing as the promotion it gave of two grades in the perma- 
 nent branch of that profession to which Colonel Hardie 
 had devoted his life. Thus, too, was redeemed the promise 
 that his withdrawal from the field to take a less conspic- 
 uous l)ut more useful post in that departtncnt, without 
 whose efficient working achievements in tlu- field would be 
 impossible or vain, should not bar his advancement.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SERVICE IN INSPECTOR GENERAl's DEPARTMENT. 
 
 The transfer of Colonel Hardie to the inspection branch 
 of the array was agreeable to himself because, both as a 
 line and a staff officer, and as a result of his observation 
 and of his military studies, and without any idea that his 
 fate would ever carry him into the post of au Inspector 
 General, he had always held high views of the necessity 
 and advantage of a good inspection service for an army. 
 Being put in charge of the Inspection Bureau at Washing- 
 ton, in addition to his duties under the Secretary of War, 
 he exerted himself to do his part towards developing and 
 improving the service and thus to magnify his office in the 
 best meaning of that phrase. An embarrassment to a man ' 
 of his nature was that three of the officers of the depart- 
 ment of which he was made the acting chief were his 
 seniors in rank, but he so dealt with this subject as to be 
 free fronl apprehensions of any feelings of resentment on 
 their parts wheu the mutations of service should reverse, 
 as it afterwards did, his and their positions. 
 
 Colonel Hardie well repaid to the inspectiou service the 
 preferment it had given him. When assailed, as it subse- 
 quently and repeatedly was, both in and out of the army, 
 his historical and professional studies stood it in good
 
 44 .TAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 stead, and brought to its defense the very kind of weapons 
 that it had always needed and which few, from the bent of 
 their minds, were so well fitted to handle. He would show 
 to disputants or critics what sudden and marked changes 
 were wrought in the discipline, economy, and efficiency of 
 the Revolutionary army through the labors of Baron 
 Steuben after his appointment, at the urgent request of 
 Washington, as Inspector General of the Continental army, 
 and referring to the elaborate and careful provision made 
 in all European armies for the dignity, power and efficiency 
 of the inspection department, would argue as to the exist- 
 ence of the same needs in our own military system. The 
 time, patience, and labor spent by Colonel Hardie, during 
 the last ten years of his life, on objects connected with the 
 inspection service may, perhaps, justify what might seem 
 like a digression if it did not tend to illustrate that 
 conscientiousness and industry that exert-d themselves 
 upon every object deemed useful or pregnant, however 
 lacking in the conspicuous interest required to bring the 
 actor into notice. 
 
 In the spring of 18()") Colonel Hardie was brevetted to 
 the rank of brigadier general upon the lecommendation 
 of Lieutenant General Grant, and was subsequently 
 advanced to the rank of brevet major general. 
 
 An incident of General Hardie's service in the War 
 Department, under Mr. Stanton, that gave him great pain, 
 was the publication in a prominent New York journal 
 th:it li:ul :i standini:- <|uarrcl with the Secretary, of a
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 45 
 
 somewhat lengthy aud detailed statement, alleging that 
 Mr. Stanton had interf'erred with the religious consolations 
 of the unfortunate Mrs. Surratt, after her conviction aud 
 sentence, by refusing a pass to her spiritual adviser to visit 
 her, unless he would promise to be silent thenceforward 
 with regard to his known convictions of her innocence ; 
 and that General Hardie was made the bearer of the 
 shameful proposition. It is needless to say that this pub- 
 lication was a scandalous perversion and misconnection of 
 facts and occurrences entirely blameless in themselves, 
 and was destitute of the sanction of the worthy clergyman 
 who was made, by a false suggestion, to stand as sponsor 
 for it. Deeply as it wounded General Hardie, and aggra- 
 vated as the wound was by the wide and prolonged 
 currency given to the story by the press at large, and by 
 the political uses made of it, he would have borne it in 
 silence, had he alone been injured, but he felt so pained 
 and indignant at the baseless attack on Mr. Stanton, 
 whose first knowledge of the matter actually came from 
 the slanderous article itself, and who had so often, in other 
 cases, acted the very reverse of the manner attributed to 
 him in the article, as General Hardie well knew, that he 
 resorted to the distasteful means of publishing a denial of 
 the story, and a full account of the entirely innocent 
 circumstances out of which it luid been constructed, over 
 his own signature. This he did much more for the vindi- 
 cation of his superior officer than himself, but he had his 
 own consolation in the large number of letters he received
 
 46 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 fVoni a variety of persons and places, some reminding him 
 of acts he had done that might well be set circumstautlally 
 against those he was now accused of doing, and all ex- 
 pi-essiug disbelief that he had done anything in the matter 
 of Mrs. Surratt inconsistent with the character of a 
 Christian gentleman. Some friends had not even waited 
 for his own explanation, but had themselves undertaken 
 his defense upon their knowledge of his character. One 
 fact that scarcely anybody beyond Mr. Stanton and him- 
 self knew, was that, owing to his reputation as a devoted 
 Catholic, among those belonging to that denomination, 
 he was constantly applied to in behalf of the spiritual 
 members and establishments of that church in the South, 
 who hoped to escape from some of the dangers and rigors 
 entailed upon them by the state of war through an 
 influential presentation of their cases at Washington. 
 General Hardie, from both conscientious and prudential 
 motives, rarely acted upon such cases himself, as in matters 
 of secular or non-Catholic origin, but always laid them, just 
 as presented to him, before the Secretary of War, whose 
 patience and liberality in dealing with them excited the 
 surprise as well as the admiration of his subordinate, who 
 was always prone to fear that he was wearing out his 
 welcome when giving the least trouble to anybody. This 
 almost confidential relation between the two officials made 
 the assault on Mr. Stanton, which has been mentioned, 
 seem doubly grievous to his assistant, and doubtless nerved 
 him to the hateful task of going befoi'e the public in de-
 
 JAMES ALLEX ITARDIE. 47 
 
 fense of their characters. Before leaving the subject it may 
 be well, in illustration of the nature of some of the services 
 that General Hardie, in the manner stated, rendered to 
 members of his church, to give the following extracts from 
 letters addressed to him by the superiors of two convents 
 in different parts of the country. The first extract is as 
 follows : 
 
 " Our hospital was restored to us July 1 and all arrears paid in 
 full. For this, many a blessing is invoked on you by grateful 
 hearts, and the little children bless the distant benefactor whom 
 they maj'^ never see, but whose name thej' will hold in benedic- 
 tion." 
 
 The following is the second extract : 
 
 " Memory will have failed us when we cease to be grateful for 
 the kind and generous efforts you have made in our behalf. * * * 
 Kest assured, at the foot of the altar where we so often assemble, 
 the name oftenest on our lips, in petitioning for divine graces and 
 blessings, shall be that of our kind benefactor." 
 
 In the fall of 1866, the labor of disbanding the volunteer 
 army and of reorganizing the regular establishment having 
 been accomplished, Secretary Stanton turned his attention 
 to the arsenals, for the purpose of determining what stores 
 and bui'ldiugs to retain, what to .sell, break up, or other- 
 wise dispose of, and what force of operatives and other 
 employees to continue in .service. In order to accurately 
 inform himself on these points he associated General 
 Hardie with an artillery officer of rank and reputation in 
 an inspection of the forts and arsenals throughout the 
 country, and this duty, with the voluminous reports it in-
 
 48 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 volved, occupied him for nearly six mouths. Meautime 
 the examiuatiou, classificatiou, aud settlement of claims 
 arising out of the war and the rebellion was becoming an 
 onerous and important branch of the business connected 
 with closing up the war, aud, upon his return to Washing- 
 ton, Geuei'al Hardie was at once placed on this service. 
 He was appointed the agent of the Government before the 
 special commission appointed to audit the claim of the 
 State of Massachusetts for arming the sea-coast against the 
 threatened raids of Confederate cruisers, and was next sent 
 to Kansas to investigate the claims of her citizens for 
 material, supplies, and services connected with the defen- 
 sive preparations made after the Quantrell and other raids 
 into that State. This investigation was a model of indus- 
 try, patience, and ingenuity. Under the impulse of the 
 fear caused by the Confederate raids, and owing to the 
 want of capable aud careful othcers, orders had been given 
 for supplies with reckless prodigality as to quantity 
 and price; and, worse still, in many cases vouchers 
 acknowledging the receipt of the goods were issued when 
 the orders were given, and w hen, in fact, either the supplies 
 were sold " to arrive," or the sellers were directed to keep 
 them till wanted. Consequently the vouchers were of 
 little use as evidence of facts, and it became necessary to 
 reconstruct plans and estimates of the various barracks, 
 stables, storehouses, and hospitals that had hi'eii erected, 
 l)ut long since removed, to see what material was actually 
 used, to examine the books aud papers of the claimants to
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE 49 
 
 get at their actual transactious, aud to take a vast number 
 of statements and depositions of informants ami witnesses. 
 The result of this refining process was that the amounts 
 reported by General Hardie as just and lawful were actu- 
 ally paid, regardless of the vouchers; though, without 
 this separation of the accounts into good, bad, and doubt- 
 ful, it is not likely that any settlement could or would 
 have been made at all. Something of the same experience 
 was had, at later periods of his life, with the Indian war 
 claims of Montana and Dakota and the "Modoc claims" 
 in Oregon, all of which were audited by General Hardie, 
 under various acts of Congress. 
 
 In March, 1867, General Hardie succeeded the late 
 General Canby as president of the Special Claims Commis- 
 sion created in the War Department, aud retained that 
 position for over two years, serving, also, part of the time, 
 as Inspector General on the staff of the General of the 
 Army, and being sent, in that capacity, to represent the 
 War Department at the councils held by the Indian Peace 
 Commissioners with the hostile bands in 1867 and 1868. 
 In the fall of 1869, he went to Chicago to act as Inspector 
 General of the Military Division of the Missouri, under 
 Lieutenant General Sheridan, and began that series of 
 inspections of the military posts and establishments which, 
 with the addition of special assignments, finally carried 
 him to nearly every post and depot in the Indian country 
 and on the Pacific coast, and which did not end till 1875. 
 He was stationed at Chicago at the time of the disastrous 
 9
 
 50 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 fire of I'STl, and being assigned to the duty of receiving 
 and issuing the relief supplies so promptly furnished by 
 the Government, won golden opinions from the citizens by 
 the manner in which he performed that duty, and many 
 other services of a kindred nature, during that time of 
 distress and disorganization.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DEATH AND FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 
 
 Upon the completion of an especially arduous inspection 
 tour in 1875, involving most of the discomforts and some 
 of the dangers of an actual campaign, in Arizona and 
 New Mexico, General Hardie was granted a respite from 
 field labor, and an opportunity of completing his reports 
 and spending some time with his family at a station of his 
 own choosing. He took up his residence at Philadelphia, 
 and the last summer of his life — being that of 1876 — was 
 spent at Haddonliekl, a pretty village near that city. His 
 letters from this place to his intimate friends were lively 
 and interesting, and l)ore evidence of the peace and 
 domestic enjoyment he appreciated so highly after his 
 nomadic life of several years. In July he was called to 
 Washington, and upon reporting, was ordered to make a 
 complete military inspection of the troops and posts in the 
 Southern* States, for the purpose of enabling the War 
 Department to consult economy of expenditure and the 
 capabilities of company officers in the movements and 
 distributions about to be ordered by the political depart- 
 ment of the Government. It was on this trip that he is 
 thought to have caught the malarial taint that was the 
 predisposing cause of his subsequent fatal illness. In
 
 52 .Ix^MES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 September, 187(), after his southeru inspection was com- 
 pleted, he was ordered on duty in the Inspector General's 
 Bureau at Washington, and, leaving his family to follow 
 later in the fall, reported at once and entered upon service. 
 He soon developed symptoms of jaundice, but supposing 
 them to be the outcome of the malaria taken in the system 
 on his southern trip, and which the frosts of the approach- 
 ing winter would destroy, he resisted the advice of friends 
 to resort to medical assistance, and struggled along, un- 
 complaining, and deprecating the anxiety of his family, 
 who had joined him. till towards the end of the first week 
 in December, when he took to his bed and a physician was 
 sent ibr by the family without informing him. The de- 
 rangement of the liver had become so acute that the 
 physician at once detected the hopelessness of the case, 
 but miscalculating by some days the duration of life, pre- 
 served silence for the time being. 
 
 On Wednesday, December 13, the patient was cheerful, 
 interested in the affairs of life, and active enough to read 
 the newspapers himself The next day, though weaker 
 and occasionally delirious, his condition was not alarming, 
 and the physician, at his late evening call, found nothing 
 to excite apprehension of an unquiet" night. But soon after 
 the physician luul left, Mrs. Hardie, who was in personal 
 attendance in the sick-room, noticed an unusual disturb- 
 ance on the part of tlie patient, who was moving uneasily 
 and moaning, and almost as soon as she reached the bed- 
 side, and before Mr. Connolly, an old soldier of the Third
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 53 
 
 Artillery, and for many years a faithful subordiuate and . 
 companion of the General's, could fairly get in from the 
 adjoining room, the husband of the one and old com- 
 mander of the other was dead. There is no reason to 
 believe that he anticipated a fatal result to his illness, and 
 at the moment of death he was unconscious. But from 
 the days of his youth upwards, and especially during the 
 last thirty years of his life, he had so lived that let death 
 come when and how it might, it would not find him unpre- 
 pared. On his behalf, therefore, the deprivation of time 
 and knowledge is no source of regret — it is only they 
 whose bereavement might have been softened by antici- 
 pation and the presence of sustaining friends that demand 
 our sympathies for an irreparable and untimely loss. 
 
 The funeral services took place at St. Matthew's Church, 
 which General Hardie and family always attended when 
 resident at Washington, on Sunday afternoon the 17th of 
 December, and were as quiet, simple and sincere, as the 
 man himself. The military escort, suitable to the rank of 
 the deceased, which General Sherman kindly offered, was 
 declined, and the only military feature of the funeral pro- 
 cession *was the detachment of eight artillerymen that 
 served as coifin-bearers at the house, the church, and the 
 cemetery in which the remains were temporarily deposited, 
 to be thereafter removed to the family burial place near 
 New York. Eight pall-bearers were selected from the 
 army and navy officers resident at Washington, at the 
 head of whom stood two devoted and almost life-long
 
 54 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 friends, General Sherman and Adjutant (General Townseud. 
 All that savored of display was excluded from the last, 
 sad offices, and none but sincere mourners found induce- 
 ment to share in the final duties to the earthly remains of 
 the dead. That these were numerous is the greater tribute 
 to the virtues of him who alone was tranquil throughout 
 the trying scene, nor has absence prevented others, as 
 sincere and devoted, fi*om giving fit expression to their 
 sorrow for him who has departed, and sympathy with 
 those who remain. Such consolations as are possible to a 
 stricken household, this household have in abundance — 
 generous tributes to virtues and talents which, however 
 modestly exercised, were yet not hid — the silent contem- 
 plation, as well as the discussion in the broken family 
 circle, of those acts and traits that made up the sum of a 
 life so well spent as almost to deserve the appellation of 
 perfect, and the daily resolutions and efforts of those to 
 whom he has left the precious legacy of a " good name 
 among men " to so order their lives as that they may not 
 seem unworthy beside his own. 
 
 Upon earlier pages of this volume have been spread the 
 testimonials of distinguished officers to the merits and 
 talents of the then Colonel Hardie, when it was thought 
 by his immediate superiors that the time had come when 
 be should be advanced to higher rank and a larger field 
 of action. His death gave one more, and probably the 
 last occasion lui- the t'ormal expression l)y men eminent in 
 his own profession, of thiir view of his military character,
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 55 
 
 and as a period of fourteeu years had intervened between 
 the two occasions, it cannot be otherwise than interesting 
 to quote from these hiter testimonials in the same manner 
 as before. The following extracts are therefore given : 
 
 "Our acquaintance began in 1839, at West Toint, where we 
 were both cadets, and from that date to the daj- of his death, 
 with brief intervals, we served in the same general sphere of 
 action, * * * so that I think I can bear the fullest testimony 
 to his worth as a military officer and gentleman. He was always 
 noted for his zeal and marked intelligence, self-denying and 
 laborious." — General Sherman. 
 
 " General Hardie's whole history, from his entry into the army 
 in 1843, until his death, a period of over thirty-three years, shows 
 a conscientious devotion to every duty to which he was assigned. 
 
 * * * His death was a great loss to the Government, as no one 
 in its service was more faithful and honest." — Lieut General 
 Shekidan. 
 
 " He was an officer of marked ability, and rendered most 
 valuable service. Not only was he able, but he was also most 
 laborious, attentive and indefatigable."— Major General Mc- 
 Clellan. 
 
 " Daring his service of more than thirty years he took an hon- 
 orable part in the Mexican war, in operations against hostile 
 Indians in Washington and Oregon Territories, and in our late 
 civil war. * * * He was entrusted with many responsible and 
 important duties, which he performed with intelligence, zeal, and 
 fidelity. He was an officer of irreproachable character and con- 
 duct."— Major General Hancock. 
 
 " My acquaintance with General Hardie commenced when he 
 joined the First Artillery at Houlton, Maine, July '43, and con- 
 Linued throughout his lifetime. * * * I soon became a great 
 admirer of his from his many noble qualities. I always found 
 him honorable, genei-ous, brave, and devoted to his profession. * 
 
 * * I question if the Government ever had in its service a more 
 conscientious and devoted servant." — Major General Hooker.
 
 56 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 " General Hardic's service was a jjoculiarly honorable and 
 meritorious one, without being of tlu; kind which brought his 
 name prominently before the public. * * * In the first battle 
 of Fredericksburg, December 13, I8*>2, General Burn-ide sent 
 him to be near me during the day, and I can vouch fur the fact 
 that no one excelled him during that fearful fight in bravery and 
 coolness. * * * He was as honest and conscientious an oflicer 
 as ever held a commission He was a master of the military pro- 
 fession, and as well versed in military law and in the innumerable 
 details of an officer's duties as any man in service. He brought 
 all his ability to bear in the transaction of the Government busi- 
 ness, and his example should be commended to young officers." — 
 Major General Franklin. 
 
 " I knew him well from early in 1862, when he was on duty in 
 the Adjutant General's Department, at the headquarters of the 
 Army of the Potomac, where 1 witnessed the faithful, conscien- 
 tious and efficient manner in which he performed the duties of 
 his position, not only acceptably to the commander of the army 
 and chief of his own department, but to everj' one who had 
 dealings at the headquarters, thus winning the confidence and 
 esteem of all. And this same faithful, patient and efficient 
 service he continued to the last." — Major General Humphreys. 
 
 " General Hardie's death has deprived the army of an officer 
 of large experience, thorough knowledge of our military insti- 
 tutions, and of the persormel of the army, and of a gentleman 
 who will be remembered with honor and affection at almost every 
 military post from the Atlantic to the Pacific."— Quartermaster 
 General Meigs.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PERSONAL TRA.ITS AND CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 la person, General Hardie was of prepossessing and 
 rather distinguished appearance, of medium height and 
 build, and, in later years, with the stoop of the scholar and 
 sedentary. This came naturally, for the pen was seldom 
 out of his hand except upon compulsion of duty or cir- 
 cumstance, or in exchange for a book. His countenance 
 was animated and pleasing, and a slight setting forward of 
 the ears, and a noticeable twinkling of the eyes, gave his 
 face a humorous expression in keeping with his life-long 
 propensity to see the amusing side of everything. This 
 propensity, though properly kept in bounds by the force of 
 his intellectual and moral character, was to a large extent 
 the inducing cause of that cheerful and elastic tempera- 
 ment that made him so welcome and helpful a companion 
 amid difficult and discouraging surroundings. He had a 
 broad, intellectual forehead, and this, with the flowing 
 military whiskers and moustache that he habitually wore, 
 happily relieved and carried off a tendency of his features 
 towards an overfull and fleshly look, at variance with his 
 habits and disposition. His eyes were gray and deeply 
 set, his nose inclined to the aquiline cast, his mouth was 
 firm and his chin unusually broad, as well as full. His 
 
 hair was light brown and his complexion florid, and he 
 10
 
 58 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 looked the Scotchman that he was by descent on the pater- 
 nal side. His manner was quiet, graceful, and unstudied. 
 He was the most accessible of men and always interesting 
 in conversation, though not stilted on the one hand or 
 flippant on the other. He neither paraded his knowledge, 
 nor drew attention to it by affecting to be ignorant. Only 
 the studious would know him for a student and the learned 
 for a scholar. That he was a gentleman in the nobler 
 sense of that term a very short acquaintance would reveal, 
 nor was he lacking in anything that pertained to the out- 
 ward demeanor and appearance of one; yet so plain was 
 he in dress and bearing that it would require more than 
 one look at him to fix his profession or calling, or his place 
 in society. The loftiness of his moral sentiments he could 
 not have concealed if he would, for they were his work-a- 
 day garments and not a mere holiday suit ; but so free 
 were his casual utterances from dogmatism that he might 
 as readily be taken by strangers for a utilitarian as the 
 devout religionist that he was in profession and practice. 
 Though sincerity was a guiding principle of his intercourse 
 with his fellow-men, the unconscious mobility of his de- 
 meanor was such that he always seemed at home in what- 
 ever society chance had for the moment placed him, and 
 his disregard of small discomforts and vexations, and his 
 sociability with all who observed the cardinal forms of 
 propriety, no matter who and what they were, made him 
 a delightful and interesting fell iw -traveller. In all situa- 
 tions, his manner and conversation were so considerate and
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 59 
 
 helpful that, though he bore unwelcome news, the unhappy 
 subject of his errand was glad, at least, that he had come. 
 Those duties of benevolence and charity that he executed 
 with the fidelity of a religious devotee he was mindful of 
 even in his speech, and no man ever lived closer up to the 
 benevolent axiom : 
 
 " Count that day lost, whose low, declining sun 
 Views, from thy hand, no generous action done ! " 
 
 His early ideas as to the original nobility, if not actual 
 divinity, of human nature colored his entire intercourse 
 with his fellow-man, and made courtesy not only a pleasing 
 form, but a sacred duty to all, however humble, or, per- 
 chance, erring. Indeed, towards human failings of every 
 kind he was uniformly patient and charitable, but for 
 meanness of character, or any form of wilful, deliberate 
 depravity, had that open and hearty detestation which was 
 but one proof among many of his possession of the strong, 
 Anglo-Saxon common sense that gives full play to benevo- 
 lence, while keeping a firm hand upon any tendency to 
 vapid sentimentalisra. 
 
 In m&tters of taste, General Hardie was as robust as his 
 way of life, his lines of study and investigation, and his 
 intellectual bias would naturally make him. Under some 
 circumstances he might have grown austere, but from 
 austerity he was saved by his lively interest in human life 
 and toil, and by that keen sense of humor to which refer- 
 ence has been made already. Although he readily
 
 60 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 adapted himself to his surroundings, and could rough it 
 with the best, and be the most cheerful of men under the 
 most discouraging circumstances, he relished highly the 
 quietness, grace, and dignity that always mark the pres- 
 ence of true gentility, and it was when enjoying these that 
 he himself was at his best. In all matters that fall within 
 the cognizance of taste his intuitions were wonderfully 
 correct, and despite his isolation from the centres of civil- 
 ization during the larger part of his life, and his almost 
 incessant employment, he contrived to keep himself abreast 
 of current knowledge throughout the domains of culture. 
 But, then, he wasted no time upon inferior products of 
 either art or literature, and had little patience with those 
 who did. With the treasures of human genius over- 
 abundant, he could not brook the encouragement given to 
 the heaping up of dross. Among the gentler arts he 
 loved music best, and in music his taste was for the grand 
 and solemn rather than the sweet and melodious. It was 
 the same with poetry, to the reading of which he was not 
 much given, though he had a fair acquaintance with and 
 earnest appreciation of the higher j)oets and their loftier 
 themes. Only once in his life did he ever copy verses, and 
 they were some that fell under his notice but a few months 
 before his death, and at a time when his thoughts were 
 turned towards the theme of mortality by the sudden tak- 
 ing-off of a intimate friend, and a marked decline in his 
 own health that proved to be the forerunner of his fatal 
 disorder. The copy so made he sent to a sister of his
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 61 
 
 deceased friend with a letter of condolence, and it is 
 characteristic of his antipathy to sentimentalism in general 
 that he justifies the act of sending the verses, not only by 
 hoping that they might have their little influence upon a 
 sorrowing mind, but by calling attention to the solid 
 earnestness and the real philosophy that set oft' the mere 
 beauty of expression and balance the poetic aftlatus. 
 These verses, which were published in 1870, in the London 
 Magazine, " St. Pauls," with only the initials J. P. to 
 indicate the author, are appended. 
 
 UNTIL THE DAY BREAK. 
 
 Will it pain me then forever, 
 
 Will it leave me happy never, 
 This weary, weary, gnawing of the old, dull pain ? 
 
 Will the sweet, yet bitter yearning, 
 
 That at my heart is burning, 
 Throb on and on forever, and forever be in vain ? 
 
 O weary, weary longing ! 
 
 O sad, sweet memories thronging 
 From the sunset-lighted woodlands of the dear and holy past ! 
 
 O hope and faith undying ! 
 
 Shall I never cease from sighing V 
 Must my lot among the shadows forevermore be cast ? 
 
 Shall I never see the glory 
 
 That the Christ-knight of old story. 
 Sir Galahad, my hero, saw folded round his sleep ? 
 
 The full completed beauty 
 
 With which God gilds dull duty 
 For hearts that burn towards heaven from the everlasting deep, 
 
 From the conflict ceasing never, 
 From the toil increasing ever,
 
 S2 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 From the hard and bitter battle with the cold and callous world ? 
 
 Will the sky grow never clearer ? 
 
 Will the hills draw never nearer 
 Where the golden city glitters, in its rainbow mists impcarled ? 
 
 Ah me ! that golden city ! 
 
 Can God, then, have no pity V 
 I have sought it with such yearning for so many bitter years ! 
 
 And yet the hills' blue glimmer. 
 
 And the portals' golden shimmer, 
 Fade ever with the evening, and the distance never nears ! 
 
 O weary, weary living ! 
 
 O foemen unforgiving ! 
 O enemies that meet me on the earth and in the air ! 
 
 O flesh, that clogs my yearning ! 
 
 O weakness, aye returning ! 
 Will ye never cease to trouble ? Will ye never, never, spare ? 
 
 Will my soul grow never purer ? 
 
 AVill my hope be never surer ? 
 Will the mist-wreaths and the cliff-gates from my path be never 
 rolled ? 
 
 Shall I never, never win it. 
 
 That last ecstatic minute, 
 When the journey's guerdon waits me behind the hills of gold ? 
 
 Alas ! the clouds grow darker, 
 
 And the hills loom ever starker 
 Across the leaden mist-screen of the heavens, dull and gray ! 
 
 — Thou must learn to bear thy burden, 
 
 Thou must wait to win thy guerdon. 
 Until the daybreak cometh, and the shadows flee away ! 
 
 In his habits, General Hardie was plain, frugal, and 
 remarkably industrious. His hand and brain were forever 
 l)usy, and recreation meant not repose, but change of 
 employment. He was a fluent writer, as well as a prolific
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 63 
 
 one, and besides the ease and directness of his style, there 
 were both a quaintness and liveliness of expression that 
 made his letters always interesting to the reader. Exigen- 
 cies of time and space forbid an effort to collect for 
 publication large selections from his correspondence, but 
 the following are given, — the first as illustrating the 
 manner in which he met the difficulty of expressing 
 heartfelt sympathy for a bereaved household in natural 
 and sincere language ; and the second as giving his views 
 concerning that awful change in his own state of existence 
 that was so soon to overtake him. 
 
 To the mother of the friend whose death has been 
 alluded to, he writes in these terms : 
 
 " I know how very empty are words of human consolation in 
 a trial such as yours. But, then, 1 want to express to you my 
 deep sorrow that this bereavement has been sent to you, so unan- 
 ticipated, and in the order of nature a calamity it would not 
 have been expected to call on you to encounter. But your son — 
 it should make you proud, even in the depth of your atHiction 
 to think of — was eminent in his vocation, distinguished among 
 men, pure in his conscience ; and he maintained, from first to 
 last, too, the elevated state of a true gentleman. That such a 
 useful and honorable man should be called early from his earthly 
 sphere to the society of the brightest and best of our humanity, 
 who are safe everlastingly in the enjoyment of a happiness of 
 which, it is said, that we cannot conceive of its height ; that a 
 man so much beloved by mother and brothers and sisters and 
 wife and children, should have so soon gone before, all is a 
 mystery that human respect and aflfection cannot comprehend. 
 But, you know, the issues of life and death are in the hands of 
 the Creator — when He calls, we must go. At the best, a few 
 years or a few days are very little to us, and we may find repose
 
 64 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 in the thought that we get to the end. If we believe that there 
 is an end worth having, surely it is the better for us. 
 
 " I do not for a moment suppose that I can measure the extent 
 of your affliction. But I try to think it out. I have had my 
 experiences. It is utterly usele.ss to try to stop the flood of grief 
 by anything I could say or do ; I can only offer you the expression 
 of my profound sympathies, and through you, to all who know 
 you as their centre. * * I am sure that the beneficent Creator 
 means this event for good. That you can see it, and that He will 
 give you and yours strength and consolation is my .sincere wish." 
 
 Of his own state of iniud towards death, he thus speaks 
 in the letter accompanying the verses lately quoted : 
 
 " I have a very keen desire to live, and 1 am certainly grateful 
 that I am as well as I am. But I have been so often and so close 
 up to death, and have had to face it, that I don't think it can ever 
 alarm me. I have been looked at by a physician, indeed, and 
 told I must die. Then shot and shell kill people, and I have had 
 to contemplate my almost certain destruction from these. 
 
 " Not that I feel that I am better than the rest. no ! And 
 life has always been sweet tt) me. There's nothing morbid about 
 me. I have the happiest home; moderate comfort; means not 
 large, but sufficient for the day. Yet, when the time comes, I 
 will try to have my knapsack packed and to march off under my 
 orders. Surely, I shall have no chance for a good post in the 
 " ewigkeit " but in my share in the liedeemer's wonderful scheme 
 of humanity's redemption ; yet, surely, I will trust my luck. 
 
 " Now, this dread idea of death — an event which, as a fact, is 
 recognized as certain by people, but hardly ever realized — sets us 
 all astray. But if Christianity amounts to " a row of pins," why 
 shouldn't we want to go to a place where we are better off than 
 we are here, when we have got through our task here ? Is 
 Christianity a failure? To us? 
 
 " This is a life of trouble, anyway, sind we have to stand trouble 
 to the end. 1 just nnw feel, in these days of accusation, when 
 every black nuiiler can assail one, that m_y trust in the future is a 
 happier foundation for a reasonable condition of comfort than
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 65 
 
 my confidence in the prespnt. I think, even, I would like to get 
 out." * * * 
 
 In his public correspondence he was not always so plain 
 and felicitous as in his private writings. He seemed appre- 
 hensive that words used by him in one sense might be taken 
 in another, or inferences drawn from them that he had no 
 thought of suggesting, and that somebody might be pained 
 or prejudiced thereby without his intending it in the least; 
 hence, in the effort to make his phrases and sentences 
 absolutely unmistakable and innocuous, he would change 
 and refine them till their pith and point were oft-times 
 gone. Still, this dilution of the style, when it occurred, 
 never extended to the matter itself, and his official papers 
 were always models in the sense of exhibiting masterly 
 knowledge of the subjects to which they related, and clear 
 conceptions of the relations of cause and effect as con- 
 nected with them. Where, too, the topics discussed were 
 such as gave no occasion for such fears as just described, 
 the style was as easy, direct, and flowing as the most hyper- 
 critical taste could desire. This literary blemish, if it may 
 rightly be so called, was due to the reflex action of his 
 own super-sensitive mind, which made him so quick to 
 feel criticism or reproach, that an unguarded word or 
 gesture from a superior, or one of any rank whom he held 
 in esteem, threw him at once off the balance established 
 by his even, cheerful temper, and made him wretched. 
 Closely connected with this delicate trait of character was 
 the scrupulous and sincere respect that he always paid to 
 11
 
 66 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 authority of any grade or form. He often lamented the 
 decline of authority, not only iu matters of faith, but 
 matters of government also, and feared that it was loosen- 
 ing the bonds of society as well as religion. He contended 
 that it was better for men to sometimes bestow their allegi- 
 ance unwisely than to lose the habit of allegiance altogether. 
 General Hardie was endowed by nature with rare intel- 
 lectual powers, which he improved by sedulous cultivation 
 all his life. His knowledge was not only extensive, but 
 always solid, and, in respect to those subjects in which he 
 took a professional or personal interest, usually profound. 
 His memory, though not phenomenal, was good, and he 
 possessed the higher faculty of so applying his reason to 
 the analysis and concentration of whatever came within 
 the range of his observation or hearing, as to have the 
 virtual command, at any moment, of all he ever knew 
 upon a given subject. Indeed, it was a frequent experience 
 to find himself so embarrassed with material for argument 
 or illustration, drawn from memory, or gleaned by his 
 wonderful industry in research and accumulation, as to be 
 unable to use it all within the limits of the topic in hand. 
 Hence his writings were never padded with empty words, 
 even if otherwise defective. With regard to the art of 
 reasoning, his preference was for the synthetical over the 
 analytical method, and he often remarked that the syn- 
 thetical was the method of great intellects and great results, 
 while the analytical was the method of plodding, if useful, 
 minds. His mental bias was realistic rather than imagin-
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 67 
 
 ative, and hi?; dogged conservatism on all matters connected 
 with the problems of human life was little lesss than 
 maddening to enthusiasts and reformers generally. He 
 contended, with respect to the human mind and conscience, 
 that mankind would continue to be impelled bv the same 
 desires, restrained by the same fears, and controlled by 
 the same agencies as of old, modified only in degree and 
 not in kind, or in form and not in substance, and that the 
 growth and spread of religious infidelity was dangerous to 
 the body politic, in undermining the ancient foundations 
 of society without putting anything solid and adaptable 
 in their places. He had no faith in the earthly millenium 
 which so many anticipate as the ultimate, occult conse- 
 quence of the vast intellectual movements now in progress, 
 and though he kept himself in line with the scientists in 
 the onward march of their methods and discoveries, he 
 declined to take part in the projection of the scientific 
 mind beyond the visible and firm ground of fact. His 
 commentary upon the famous Belfast address of Professor 
 Tyndall was that when it came to going beyond demon- 
 strative knowledge and taking to faith, he preferred the 
 old faith, which, apart from the respect due to its age, 
 had more of hope and consolation in it for human kind 
 than anything he had been able to discern in the newly- 
 evolved " scientific creeds." As illustrative of his 
 sympathy for human life as it is, it may be mentioned that 
 his interest in scientific progress was always most active 
 with regard to inventions and discoveries calculated to
 
 68 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 ameliorate the lot of man in his earthly state, as we now 
 know it, and he often spoke of the probability of the 
 electric force proving to be the beneficieut agent of the 
 near future for lightening the toils and multiplying the 
 physical blessings of mankind. An amusing instance of 
 his persistency in taking an earthly view of human 
 motives is connected with the secession of the once famous 
 Perfe Hyacinth, from the Catholic church. To a friend 
 who sought to obtain his view of the origin and result of 
 what was then the nine days' wonder of the secular as well 
 as the religious world, he made answer in about the 
 following words : " The explanation is easy enough. It 
 has happened with the pere as with others of his kind 
 before him. There is a woman in the case. He wants to 
 marry, and is raising a dust of controversy to cover his 
 real motive. He'll get married, and that will be the end 
 of him and his new church." From this purely human 
 and abased view of the matter he refused to be moved, nor 
 would he discuss the subject further, and so soon did the 
 perfe turn himself into a husband, and his critic into a 
 prophet, that the trouble of refusing to talk about the 
 matter was soon spared to the latter. 
 
 Two qualities of General Hardie's mind deserve some 
 notice, as they were chiefly instrumental, it is believed, in 
 preventing him from reaching to that degree of eminence 
 outside the ranks of his own profession that his character 
 and talent earned for him within it. The first was a shy- 
 ness or self-distrust, that would not only have restrained
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE, 69 
 
 him from pushing himself into notice in any immodest or 
 unduly selfish manner in the absence of any higher re- 
 straint, but which kept him back from that degree of self- 
 seeking which is universally regarded as natural and proper 
 when both the objects and the means pursued are honor- 
 able. Except where his professional or personal reputation 
 was concerned, he was not a self-regarding man, but 
 seemed always content to do his whole duty in whatever 
 station he might be called to fill, and, having thus satisfied 
 his conscience, to leave all else to Providence and those set 
 over him in authority. Such preferment as he got usually . 
 came to him unsolicited and unexpected, and there are 
 instances in his career where he retired, or attempted to 
 retire, from advantageous positions which he thought he 
 could not hold consistently with honor. One such instance 
 is notable as occurring in his younger days, when such 
 ambition as a man has is strongest, and apt to outweigh 
 more delicate sensibilities. He sought to resign the adju- 
 tantcy of his regiment and return to a lower place in the 
 line, because he suspected that the regimental commander, 
 who had selected him for that position, had been supplanted 
 in the command by means not entirely open and fair, and 
 he only abandoned the design when the new commandant 
 at headquarters, apparently won by the frankness and 
 sensitiveness of the young ofiicer, condescended to vindicate 
 himself from suspicions which, however plausible, were 
 unfounded. This incident, too, furnished an early but not 
 the only proof that its subject neither worshipped the rising
 
 70 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 sun, nor turned his back upon the sun that was declining. 
 The other quality referred to as having an appreciable 
 influence in keeping him back from opportunities of public 
 distinction was a mental timidity that made him shrink 
 from venturing what he had for the prospect of gaining 
 by the venture. It is possible that the crash of his father's 
 fortunes, at an age when he was young enough to receive 
 a lasting impression of its consequences, may have had 
 something to do with this bent of his mind ; but whatever 
 the cause, it is certain that his aversion to speculative en- 
 terprises and experiments generally was marked in his own 
 conduct and his counsel to others. Had these mental 
 qualities of shyness and timidity been unbalanced by those 
 other qualities of mind and heart that made him cheerful 
 and contented in toiling on zealously in whatsoever situa- 
 tion fate had placed him, he might have chafed at the 
 limits set to the exercise of his industry and talent, and 
 the results derivable therefrom, and so have substituted a 
 morose and ignoble existence for the full, rounded, and 
 edifying life that he really lived. 
 
 The fact has escaped mention in a more appropriate 
 place that, in his early years. General Hardie was destined 
 for the profession of the law and his youthful studies were 
 that way directed. All his life he was a lover and student 
 of that lofty science, and his legal attainments were such 
 as to command the attention ami respect of men I'ininent 
 in their vocation as lawyers. 
 
 General Hardie's life was so inueli inlhienced by his
 
 JAMES ALLEK HARDIE. 
 
 71 
 
 religious character that any account of him, however brief, 
 would be incomplete without some mention of it. From 
 his boyhood he was pious and always interested in the out- 
 ward observances of religion. His father was a member 
 of the Episcopal congregation of Grace Church, New 
 York, and the son also joined the same communion. His 
 musical and artistic tastes were gratified by the ceremonies 
 and customs of the Episcopal church, and the same tastes 
 led him to favor the ritualistic movements then beginning 
 to be active. A visit of the famous Dr. Pusey to West 
 Point while he was a cadet had a powerful influence in 
 wedding him to the views of that eminent divine, and as 
 with so many of the hitter's followers, the route pursued 
 led him at last into the communion of the Catholic church. 
 His open adherence to that church did not occur till he 
 had thoroughly satisfied the demands of his mind and con- 
 science as to the wisdom and righteousness of the step, and 
 he entered it so fully prepared and persuaded, that the 
 mental peace and happiness that it brought him were 
 never thereafter marred by a doubt or regret. Being 
 always religious, as well as high-minded, no radical change 
 in his outward life was wrought by his public profession of 
 Catholicism, but his intellectual activities were quickened 
 in the investigation of religious truth, and he busied him- 
 self in religious enterprises and sought the companionship 
 and correspondence of pious Catholics, both among the 
 clergy and laity. With many such men he formed life- 
 long friendships and the records of these intimacies bear
 
 72 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 convincing testimony to the sincerity, purity, and fervor of 
 his and their religious characters. An extract from a 
 letter sent him by a former fellow cadet at West Point, in 
 1850, in answer to a request for information upon some 
 religious subject, will admirably suggest the kind of men 
 and the topics that engaged his affections after his pro- 
 fession of the Catholic faith. After referring him to some 
 other co-religionist, the letter continues : 
 
 " If my present condition justified my dictating any instruc- 
 tions, I would gladly do it, but the state of my lungs will not 
 permit it. I am lingering out my existence here and expect only 
 to live a few days longer. You must pray for me, especially after 
 I am dead, and when I get to heaven I will take care not to forget 
 you." 
 
 Some readers of this little volume may gain a new idea 
 of the life and character of the Catholic clergy, from a 
 perusal of the following charming letter from one of that 
 
 profession : 
 
 " East Boston, December 20, 1856, 
 
 " My Dear Captain H. 
 
 " Delighted I am to hear of your address, and more, of the 
 excellent health enjoyed by yourself and amiable partner ; and 
 as to the little ones,— I know not how many,— may every 
 blessing, spiritual and temporal, be with you. Had I written as 
 often as prayed that success might attend your every movement, 
 you would have a folio ere tliis. It is only now I learned of 
 your location, though sometime since I heard with joy of your 
 promotion. 
 
 " You perceive that I, too, write from another quarter, but 
 still working on in the same sphere. Born with a little bit of a 
 mallet, my forte seems to be pioneering ; still thumping among 
 stone and mortar. All having been completed at Newport, 
 quite unexpectedly to myself, I was requested by authority to
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDlE. 73 
 
 remove to this city to undertake iiiiother uhurcli. Upon this, I 
 have amused myself for the past sixteen months and have taken 
 possession. The congregation being about five thousand, the 
 church just completed, is of course larger than that of New- 
 port, and though Gothic, and of solid material — granite — it is of 
 early pointed style, and consequently admits of less ornament ; 
 though it is pronounced the handsomest building in the city. 
 That may be for others to look upon, but in reality, " our Lady 
 of the Isle," is the gem. Too happy and comfortable was I, a 
 wretched sinner, to be permitted to remain at that quiet, lovely, 
 retired island home. 
 
 "If, in the estimation of others, I was needed here, my good 
 fortune in the exchange added fifty-odd thousand dollars to my 
 credit as financier, as I found that debt was to be assumed soon 
 after my exchange. So thus am I doomed to pick up the load of 
 others and move onwards ; and when, with a little disappoint- 
 ment I told the Bishop of my surprise, he looked very compla- 
 cently, and kindly said : Oh ! You'll put it through ! 
 
 " Well ! well ! and this is all ego, ego, as usual. But what of 
 your family and numbers? How like you California? Would 
 that I was permitted to look upon you all once more ! And who 
 knows what changes may be yet in futuro ? 
 
 "Of our mutual friend Kos6 I have not heard for a long, long 
 while, nor do I know of his whereabouts, but wherever he may 
 be, he is indomitable in his perseverance of well doing — I know 
 he must be. 
 
 " Do at some leisure moment let us hear from you ; while, with 
 dearest remembrances, I remain, sincerely, 
 
 The journals left by General Hardie contain fragments 
 of a study on the religious basis of the civil power as the 
 only valid claim to obedience, but his democratic principles 
 were strong enough to qualify the position taken by re- 
 quiring likewise the consent of the governed. He pub- 
 lished also, while in California, an article in the 
 12
 
 74 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 " Freeman's Journal " of New York, on the oppressive 
 bearing upon the consciences of tlie Catholic soldiers, who 
 constituted so large a part of the rank and file of the 
 army, of the regulations concerning attendance upon 
 divine worship, and the custom of appointing permanent 
 post chaplains and choosing them exclusively from 
 Protestant denominations. No Catholic could write on 
 such a subject with a freer conscience than himself, for 
 bigotry never found a lodgment in his constitution. He 
 gave to merit and sincerity all that they were worth, and 
 was notably free from prejudices of race or religion. His 
 friendships were among men of all beliefs and opinions 
 and he never in the slightest degi'ee infringed upon that 
 freedom of conscience and religious choice that he regarded 
 as among the greatest of temporal blessings. Some 
 friends, not Catholics, and among them the writer of this 
 Memoir, have at times wondered how a man of such 
 liberality, independence, and learning managed to submit 
 himself to what they had been taught to regard as the 
 dogmatic tyranny of an oligarchy of priests, and what his 
 account of his experiences and feelings about it would be 
 if he ever revealed them. Happily for his sincerity and 
 intellectual fame he did commit them briefly to paper a 
 few months before his death in a letter to a valued friend 
 in wliom he seemed to have discovered the existence of the 
 curiosity above mentioned. In the belief that the publica- 
 tion of this letter to his friends who are to he the readers 
 of this Memoir is the readiest and most satisfactory way
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARBIE. 75 
 
 of doing him justice iu respect to the most important and 
 delicate act of judgment to be exei'cised in respect to his 
 character, all the material and relevant parts of the letter 
 are here given. 
 
 In seeming reply to a criticism upon the dogma of the 
 papal infallibility, and the compulsory force of dogmas 
 generally, he says : 
 
 " Now, as to tho power of the church, there is no more tyranny 
 in the being obliged to submit to the truth as one sees it in 
 religion, than there is in your being obliged to recognize mathe- 
 matical truth in the multiplication table. Practical experience 
 exhibits the entire freedom otherwise of the Catholic organization, 
 so far as the laity is concerned. No priest or bishop ever spoke 
 politics to me in all my life, unless we might meet socially and 
 an opinion might be expressed. The papal infallibility is only 
 the insisting of a decision of the head of the supreme bench of 
 the church being binding, when the case is formally brought up. 
 In administration, the Pope may make mistakes, and he does so, 
 I know, in some instances, in ecclesiastical appointments. It is 
 only in faith and morals, where there must be doubts and where 
 there must be the right to settle them in the organization, that 
 the authority to settle questions is confined to the head of the 
 church. There is a charming freedom in worship ; nobody pays 
 attention to anybody else. There are no social tyrannies in the 
 case. 
 
 "That human motives control human actions in the use or 
 abuse ofauthority in the case of the clergy is certainly true. But 
 the history of all denominations shows that grace does'nt always 
 prevail over the carnalism of our poor nature, however high 
 may be our place in the sanctuary. * * * Indeed, if the beauty 
 of Catholicism hadn't been besmirched by the unworthiness of the 
 clergy and laity often, and by the intrusion into its administration 
 of secularism — often a necessity of charity originally, and then 
 crystallized upon its organization as a matter of course — there 
 would have been no ' raison d'etre ' for any separation. It is for
 
 76 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 every Catholic to say ' niea culpa ! mea culpa ! niea maxuna 
 culpa ! ^ If from the time of the first Bishop of Rome we had 
 done our square work, we should not, in our old age, be naked 
 before our enemies. The fact is, thore is too much of small truth 
 told against us, and we must reap the harvest. 
 
 " But, after all, we believe in the efficacy of the Saviour's most 
 condescendingly generous mission, and we believe that his blood, 
 so copiously and lovingly poured out for our miserable humanity's 
 redemption, was not poured out in vain. We believe that He has 
 not been a failure, and most of us mean to do what He has 
 directed, oven in ever so poor a way, sometimes very badly, 
 sometimes not at all, but always getting up when we fall and 
 starting anew. And so we believe God will save us, if we mean 
 salvation." 
 
 His rejection of the scientific creeds of the present day 
 has been mentioned some pages back, and in the letter 
 now before us he alludes to them in the following 
 words : 
 
 " Now, about belief, what I think is simply this, — the trouble 
 is not that some believe too little, and others believe what many 
 think is too much, but that most arc getting nut to believe at all ; 
 God is left out of his own creation. There are no moral standards 
 better than those of the Spartans set up among the mo.-t 
 honorable of the non-believers and the scientists now accepted as 
 teachers. Think ! what will be the condition of a society which 
 knows not God and His laws, in Imlf a century ? Naturally go 
 back to the times of old Pagan Rome with its nameless infamies 
 in personal life and the social organization.'' 
 
 It is probable that among the influences that contributed 
 to the bringing in of General Ilardie to the Catholic fold 
 was his personal experience and observation of the piety, 
 zeal, and devotion of the missionary priests who had been 
 for so many decades laborers and even martyrs among the
 
 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 77 
 
 Indian tribes of the Northwest, and certainly if anything 
 can inspire trust in the Christian faith as worked out in 
 the Catholic organization it is a view of the labors and 
 achievements of the Jesuit missions among the North 
 American Indians. One of his long time and close friends 
 among these missionaries was the well known and vener- 
 ated Father De Smet, through whose personal solicitation 
 of the Pope in 1865 he received some of those marks of 
 religious favor that are so gratifying to pious and devout 
 Catholics whose virtues are thus recognized. 
 
 The moral constitution of General Hardie would have 
 made him generous and charitable, whatever his religious 
 creed, but what, in the absence of religious feelings, might 
 have been a mere intellectual gratification became, as well, 
 a pious duty. He never turned away a street beggar 
 empty-handed, lest, as he explained in self defense, he 
 might in his ignorance fail in giving to the worthy. As a 
 friend who knew him thoroughly fervidly expresses it, " he 
 wanted always to do and to be right." At one time when 
 the public necessity had led to the most stringent orders 
 from the Secretary of War against the further discharge 
 of soldiers on any grounds other than expiration of service 
 or disability, he took such pity upon a poor woman who 
 had found her way to the War Department upon what 
 seemed to be a hopeless errand, that, not venturing to 
 incur the risk of a personal rebuff, he sent the following 
 message to the Secretary's private room, written on an 
 envelope :
 
 78 JAMES ALLEN HARDIE. 
 
 " There is a woman, sick and poor, in the room here, who has 
 four sons in the military and naval service. She begs, for the 
 sake of charity, to let the youngest go. Shall I do it ? It seems 
 so hard a case that I cannot resist this appeal." 
 
 The answer came out at once to discharge the boy and 
 the poor woman was sent off rejoicing. 
 
 Here, in the contemplation of that noblest of the 
 Christian virtues, Charity, fittingly may end this brief but 
 earnest tribute to the memory of a man whom it would 
 not have been unseemly to call great, had not the ambition 
 and greed of mankind resulted in restricting the ordinary 
 use of that term to its lower and narrower meanings. For 
 what has written the fervent pen of Channing, himself 
 incontestably great in every meaning of the word ? 
 
 " There are diflerent orders of greatness. Among these, the 
 lirst rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magna- 
 nimity, that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the 
 love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and death, to truth 
 and duty ; espouses as its own the interests of human nature ; 
 scorns all meanness and defies all peril ; hears in its own conscience 
 a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the 
 powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause oF 
 freedom and religion ; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in tlie 
 darkest hour, and is ever ready to be offered upon the altar of its 
 country or of mankind " 
 
 For this sublime study of true greatness, the man whose 
 name adorns these pages might have stood as the living 
 and complete model. And — to use his own words — "that 
 such a useful and honorable man slmuld be called early 
 from his earthly sjihrrc" would be a prdioundir source of
 
 JAMES ALLEN HAKBIE. 79 
 
 grief thau those who knew aud loved him now feel it, 
 were it not for the consoling reflection that only the inferior 
 and the jDerishable parts of him are lost to earth, while 
 the better and the lasting parts remain to them and to 
 mankind. All that he ever bestowed upon his fellow-men of 
 help, encouragement, sympathy, aud example is as potent 
 as when he dwelt among them, and the countless influences 
 that went out from him while he lived will not perish now 
 that he is dead. These comforting thoughts, struggling 
 for means of expression, will find none more eloquent or 
 fitting than in these words of another great divine, who, 
 for the solace and inspiration of the living, made himself 
 the masterly interpreter of the Voices of the Dead : 
 
 " The friend with whom we took sweet counsel is removed 
 visibly from the outward eye ; but the lessons that he taught, the 
 grand sentiments that he uttered, the holy deeds of generosity by 
 which he was characterized, the moral lineaments and likeness of 
 the man, still survive, and appear in the silence of eventide, and 
 on the tablets of memory, and in the light of morn and noon and 
 dewy eve; and being dead, he yet speaks eloquently and in the 
 midst of us." 
 
 .. THE END.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY 
 
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