F ^r.TT^^.'T^S'i^i Ji.r 4' ■v^t^'^'vSl r h LINCOLN ROOM »:: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY /A n^ Mi ; K S>^ i; "7 ^ 5-/^^ >^ JUU. Stories of Adventure in The Young United States Bu ALFRED BISHOP MASON Tom Strong, Washington's Scout Illustrated, $1.30 net Tom Strong, Boy-Cafiain Illustrated, $1.30 net Tom Strong, Junior Illustrated. $1.30 net Tom Strong, Third Illustrated. $1.30 net HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Publishers New York St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT A STORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS By ALFRED BISHOP MASON Author of "Tom Strong, Washington's Scout, ' "Tom Strong, Boy-Captam," " Tom Strong, Junior," and " Tom Strong, Third " ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1919 Copyright, iqiq BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY gftt eutnn & goben Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY q-1% ■iL(oJ DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT INSPIRER OF PATRIOTISM, A GREAT AMERICAN f. CS^ evareit bav LON* ISI.AMO.M.V. Auguat 3l8t, 1917, Detr Mr. Mason: All right, I shall break my rule andhave you dedicate that book to Be> Thank you/ Faithfully youre. Mr. Alfred B. Mason, University Club, Ken Ycrk City. Jr-i^iJ^^^w:.^^ /"S^^r^^tJ^^^s:-^^ FOREWORD Many of the persons and personages who ap- pear upon the pages of this book have already Uved, some in history and some in the pages of " Tom Strong, Washington's Scout," ** Tom Strong, Boy-Captain," " Tom Strong, Junior," or '' Tom Strong, Third." Those who wish to know the full story of the four Tom Strongs, great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son, should read those books, too. CONTENTS CHAPTER I (< PAGE Tom Rides in Western Maryland — Halted BY Armed Men — John Brown — The At- tack UPON Harper's Ferry — The Fight — John Brown's Soul Goes Marching On . CHAPTER H Our War with Mexico — Kit Carson and His Lawyer, Abe Lincoln — Tom Goes to Lin- coln's Inauguration — S. F. B. Morse, In- ventor OF THE Telegraph — Tom Back in Washington 22 CHAPTER III Charles Francis Adams — Mr. Strong Goes TO Russia — Tom Goes to Live in the White House — Bull Run — ** Stonewall " Iackson — Geo. B. McClellan — Tom Strong, Second-Lieutenant, U. S. A. — The Battle of the ** Merrimac " and the Monitor " 40 CHAPTER IV Tom Goes West — Wilkes Booth Hunts Him — Dr. Hans Rolf Saves Him — He Deliv- ers Despatches to General Grant . . 71 ix PAGE X Contents CHAPTER V Inside the Confederate Lines — " Sairey " Warns Tom — Old Man Tomblin's " Set- TLEMiNT " — Stealing a Locomotive — Wilkes Booth Gives the Alarm — A Wild Dash for the Union Lines . . 90 CHAPTER VI Tom up a Tree — Did the Confederate Of- ficer See Him? — The Fugitive Slave Guides Him — Buying a Boat in the Dark — Adrift in the Enemy's Country . .117 CHAPTER VII Tov^ser Finds the Fugitives — Tov^ser Brings Uncle Moses — Mr. Izzard and His Yan- kee Overseer, Jake Johnson — Tom Is Pulled Down the Chimney — How^ Un- cle Moses Choked the Overseer — The Flight of the Four 129 CHAPTER VIII Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life — News- paper Abuse of Lincoln — The Emancipa- tion Proclamation — Lincoln in His Nightshirt — James Russell Lowell — " Barbara Frietchie " — Mr. Strong Comes Home — The Russian Fleet Comes to New York — A Backwoods Jupiter . . 160 CHAPTER IX Tom Goes to Vicksburg — Morgan's Raid — Gen. Basil W. Duke Captures Tom — Gettysburg — Gen. Robert E. Lee Gives Tom His Breakfast — In Libby Prison — Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg . . 182 Contents xi PAGE CHAPTER X Tom Is Hungry — He Learns to " Spoon " by Squads — The Bullet at the Window — Working on the Tunnel — " Rat Hell " — The Risk of the Roll-call — What Hap- pened TO Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy — Tom in Libby Prison — Hans Rolf Attends Him — Hans Refuses to Escape — The Flight Through the Tunnel — Free, but How to Stay So? 213 CHAPTER XI Tom Hides in a River Bank — Eats Raw Fish — Jim Grayson Aids Him — Down the James River on a Tree — Passing the Pa- trol Boats — Cannonaded — The End of the Voyage 249 CHAPTER XII TowsER Welcomes Tom to the White House — Lincoln Re-elected President — Grant Commander-in-Chief — Sherman Marches FROM Atlanta to the Sea — Tom on Grant's Staff — Five Forks — Fall of Richmond — Hans Rolf Freed — Bob Saves Tom from Capture — Tom Takes a Bat- tery INTO Action — Lee Surrenders — Tom Strong, Brevet-Captain, U. S. A. . . 265 CHAPTER XIII The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln . 307 CHAPTER XIV Tom Hunts Wilkes Booth — The End of the Murderer — Andrew Johnson, President OF THE United States — Tom and Towser Go Home 315 ILLUSTRATIONS Abraham Lincoln Frontispiece St. Gaudens Statue, Lincoln Park, Chicago PAGE John Brown lo The Attack upon the Engine House . . 17 Battle of the "Monitor"'' and the " Mer- RIMAC '* 66 Admiral Farragut 72 Mississippi River Gunboats .... 85 The Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal . . 106 TowsER 157 General Duke Samples the Pies . . . 191 Arlington 198 Gen. Robert E. Lee on Traveler . . . 201 LiBBY Prison after the War . . . .214 Fighting the Rats 224 LiBBY Prison and the Tunnel .... 229 Abraham Lincoln in 1864 .... 269 Gen. W. T. Sherman ...... 272 St. Gaudens Statue, Central Park Plaza, New York Bob 275 Gen. Philip H. Sheridan 278 Sheridan Square Statue, Washington. D. C. Tom Takes a Battery into Action . . 292 The McLean House, Appomattox Court- house 299 Lee Surrenders to Grant 302 Gen. U. S. Grant 304 MAP Eastern Half of United States ... 2 xiii TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT THE EASTERN UNITED STATES (Showing places mentioned in this book) TOM STRONG, LINCOLN'S SCOUT CHAPTER I Tom Rides in Western Maryland — Halted by Armed Men — John Brown — The Attack UPON Harper's Ferry — The Fight — John Brown's Soul Goes Marching On. /^N a beautiful October afternoon, a man and a boy were riding along a country road in Western Maryland. To their left lay the Potomac, its waters gleaming and sparkling beneath the rays of the setting sun. To their right, low hills, wooded to the top, bounded the view. They had left the little town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, an hour before; had crossed to the Maryland shore of the Potomac; and now were looking for some country inn or friendly farmhouse where they and their horses could be cared for overnight. The man was Mr. Thomas Strong, once Tom 3 4 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout Strong, third, and the boy was his son, another Tom Strong, the fourth to bear that name. Like the three before him he was brown and strong, resolute and eager, with a smile that told of a nature of sunshine and cheer. They were look- ing for land. Mr. Strong had inherited much land in New York City. The growth of that great town had given him a comfortable for- tune. He had decided to buy a farm somewhere and a friend had told him that Western Mary- land was almost a paradise. So it was, but this Eden had its serpent. Slavery was there. It was a mild and patriarchal kind of slavery, but it had left its black mark upon the countryside. Across the nearby Mason and Dixon's line, Pennsylvania was full of little farms, tilled by their owners, and of little towns, which reflected the wealth of the neighboring farmers. West- ern Maryland was largely owned by absentee landlords. Its towns were tiny villages. Its farms were few and far between. The free State was briskly alive; the slave State was sleepily dead. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 5 The two riders were splendidly mounted, the father on a big bay stallion, Billy-boy, and the son on a black Morgan mare, Jennie. Billy-boy was a descendant of the Billy-boy General Washington had given to the first Tom Strong, many years before. Jennie was a descendant of the Jennie Tom Strong, third, had ridden across the plains of the great West with John C. Fremont, ^' the Pathfinder," first Republican candidate for President of the United States. ** We haven't seen a house for miles, Father," said the boy. " And we were never out of sight of a house when we were riding through Pennsylvania. There's always a reason for such things. Do you know the reason?" "No, sir. What is it?" " The sin of slavery. I don't believe I shall buy land in Maryland. I thought I might plant a colony of happy people here and help to make Maryland free, in the course of years, but Fm beginning to think the right kind of white peo- ple won't come where the only work is done by 6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout slaves. We must find soon a place to sleep. Perhaps there'll be a house around that next turn in the road. Billy-boy whinnies as though there were other horses near." Billy-boy's sharp nose had not deceived him. There were other horses near. Just around the turn of the road there were three horses. Three armed men were upon them. Father and son at the same moment saw and heard them. '' You stop ! Who be you? " The sharp command was backed by uplifted pistols. The Strongs reined in their horses, with indignant surprise. Who were these three farmers who seemed to be playing bandits upon the peaceful highroad? The boy glanced at his father and tried to imitate his father's cool de- meanor. He felt the shock of surprise, but his heart beat joyously with the thought : '' This is an adventure!" All his young life he had longed for adventures. He had deeply enjoyed the novel experience of the week's ride with the father he loved, but he had not hoped for a thrill like this. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 7 Mr. Strong eyed the three horsemen, who seemed both awkward and uneasy. " What does this mean?" he asked. '' Now, thar ain't goin' to be no harm done you nor done bub, thar, neither," the leader of the highwaymen answered, with a note almost of pleading in his voice. " Don't you be oneasy. But you'll have to come with us " " And spend Sunday with us " broke in another man. " Shet up. Bill. I'll do all the talkin' that's needed." " That's what you do best," the other man grumbled. " Well, Tom," said Mr. Strong, turning with a smile to his son, " we seem to have found that place to spend the night." He faced his captors. " This is a queer performance of yours. You don't look like highwaymen, though you act like them. Do you mean to steal our horses?" he added, sharply. " We ain't no boss thieves," replied the leader. " You've got to come with us, but you 8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout needn't be no way oneasy. You, Bill, ride ahead!" Bill turned his horse and rode ahead, Mr. Strong and Tom riding behind him, the other two men behind them. It was a silent ride, but not a long one. Within a mile, they reached a rude clearing that held a couple of log huts. The sun had set; the short twilight was over. Firelight gleamed in the larger of the huts. The prisoners were taken to it. A man who was lounging outside the door had a whispered talk with the three horsemen. Then he turned rather sheepishly; said: ''Come in, mister; come in, bub;" opened the door, called within: " Prisoners, Captin' Smith," and stepped aside as father and son entered. There were a dozen men in the big room, farmers all, apparently. They were all on their feet, eyeing keenly the unexpected prisoners. Their eyes turned to a tall man, who stepped forward and held out his hand, saying: '' Sorry the boys had to take you in, but you and your bosses are safe and we won't Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 9 keep you long. The day of the Lord is at hand." There was a grim murmur of approval from the other men. The Lord's day, as Sunday is sometimes called, was at hand, for it was then the evening of Saturday, October 15, 1859. ^^t that was not what the speaker meant. He was not what his followers called him. Captain Smith. He was John Brown, of North Elba, New York, of Kansas ("bleeding Kansas" it was called then, when slaveholders from Mis- souri and freedom-lovers under John Brown had turned it into a battlefield), and he was soon to be John Brown of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, first martyr in the cause of Freedom on Vir- ginian soil. To him " the day of the Lord " was the day when he was to attack slavery in its birthplace, the Old Dominion, and that attack had been set by him for Sunday, October 16. His plan was to seize Harper's Ferry, where there was a United States arsenal, arm the slaves he thought would come to his standard from all Virginia, and so compass the fall of 10 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout the Slave Power. A wild plan, an impossible plan, the plan of an almost crazy fanatic, and a splendid dream, a dream for the sake of which he was glad to give his heroic life. He had rented this Maryland farm in July^, giving his name as Smith and saying he expected to breed horses. By twos and threes his fol- lowers had joined him in this solitary spot, until now there were twenty-one of them. The few folk scattered through the countryside had be- gun to be suspicious of this strange gathering of men. All sorts of wild stories circulated, though none was as wild as the truth. The men them- selves were tense under the strain of the long wait. They feared discovery and attack. For the three days before '' the day of the Lord " they had patrolled the one road, looking out for soldiers or for spies. Tom and his father had been their sole captives. John Brown was one of Nature's noblemen and among his friends in Massachusetts and New York were some of the foremost men of their time, so he had learned to know a real man JuHN BruWN Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout ii when he met one. He soon found out that Mr. Strong was a real man. He told him of his plans, and urged him to join in the projected foray on Harper's Ferry. But when Mr. Strong refused and tried to show him how mad his project was, the fires of the fanatic blazed within him. " Did not Joshua bring down the walls of Jericho with a ram's horn? " he shouted. '' And with twenty armed men cannot I pull down the walls of the citadel of Slavery? Are you a true man or not? Will you join me or not? Answer me yes or no." No," was the response, quiet but firm. You shall join me; you and your boy," thundered the crusader, hammering the table with his mighty fist. " Here, Jim, put these people under guard and keep them until we start." Tom and his father were well-treated, but they were kept under guard until the next night and were then taken along by John Brown's t( ({ 12 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " army," which trudged off into the darkness afoot, while Billy-boy and Jennie and the other horses in the corral whinnied uneasily, sensing, as animals do, the stir of a departure which is to leave them behind. In the center of the little column the two captives marched the five miles to Harper's Ferry and started across the bridge that led to that tiny town. A brave man, one Patrick Hoggins, was night- watchman of the bridge. He heard the tramp- ling of many feet upon the plank-flooring. He hurried towards the strange sound. '* Halt! " shouted somebody in the column. " Now I didn't know what ' halt ' mint then," Patrick testified afterwards, " anny more than a hog knows about a holiday." But he had seen armed men and he turned to run and give an alarm. A bullet was swifter than he, but not swifter than his voice. He fell, but his shouts had alarmed the town. There were two or three watchmen at the arsenal. They came forward, only to be made prisoners. The few citizens who had been Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 13 aroused could do nothing. The " army " seized the arsenal without difficulty. Five miles from Harper's Ferry lived Col. Lewis W. Washington, gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, great-grand-nephew of another gentleman-farmer and slave-owner, George Washington. At midnight, Colonel Washing- ton was awakened by a blow upon his bedroom door. It swung open and the light of a burning torch showed the astonished Southerner four armed men, one of them a negro, who bade him rise and dress. They were a patrol sent out by Brown. Their leader, Stevens, asked: '' Haven't you a pistol Lafayette gave George Washington and a sword Frederick the Great sent him? " " Yes." "Where are they?" " Downstairs." His four captors tramped downstairs with him. Pistol and sword were found. I'll take the pistol," said Stevens. " You H T»1 hand the sword to this negro." 14 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout John Brown wore this sword during the fight- ing that followed. It is now in the possession of the State of New York. While its being sent George Washington by Frederick the Great is doubtful — the story runs that the Prussian king sent with it a message " From the oldest gen- eral to the best general " — its being surrendered by Lewis Washington to the negro is true. Lewus was then on the stafif of the Governor of Virginia, and had acquired in this way his title of Colonel. He was put into his own car- riage. His slaves, few in number, were bundled into a four-horse farm-wagon. They were told to come and fight for their freedom. Too scared to resist, they came as they were bidden to do, but they did no fighting. At Harper's Ferry they and their fellow-slaves, seized at a neigh- boring plantation, escaped back to slavery at the first possible moment. Not a single negro vol- untarily joined John Brown. He had expected a widespread slave insurrection. There was nothing of the sort. By Monday morning he knew he had failed, failed utterly. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 15 Before Monday's sun set, Harper's Ferry was full of soldiers, United States regulars and State militia. Brown, his men and his white captives, eleven of the latter, were shut up in the fire- engine house of the armory. The militia refused to charge the engine-house, saying that this might cost the captives their lives. Many of them were drunk; all of them were undisci- plined; their commander did not know how to command. The situation changed with the ar- rival of the United States Marines led by Lieut.-Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards the fa- mous chief of the army of the Confederate States. By this time Tom was beginning to think he had had enough adventure. He had enjoyed that silent tramp through the darkness beside his father. He had enjoyed it the more because they were both prisoners-of-war. Being a pris- oner was an amazingly thrilling thing. He was sorry when brave Patrick Hoggins was shot and glad to know the wound was slight, but sharing in the skirmish, even in the humble capacity of i6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout a captive, had excited the boy immensely. Now that there was almost constant firing back and forth, when two or three wounded men were lying on the floor, and when his father and he and Colonel Washington were perforce risking their lives in the engine-house, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, and when scanty sleep and little food had tired out even his stout little body, Tom felt quite ready to go home and have his adored mother " mother " him. His father saw the homesickness in his eyes. " Steady, my son," said Mr. Strong. " This won't last long. No stray bullet is apt to reach this corner, where Captain Brown has put us. The only other danger is when the regulars rush in here, but unless they mistake us for the raiders, there'll be no harm done then. Steady." He looked through a bullet-hole in the boarded- up window and added: "Here comes a flag of truce. Listen." The scattering fire died away. The hush was broken by a commanding voice, demanding sur- render. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 17 " There will be no surrender," quoth grim John Brown. At dawn of Tuesday, two files of United States Marines, using a long ladder as a batter- ing ram, attacked the door It broke at the THE ATTACK ON THE ENGINE-HOUSE second blow. The marines poured in, shooting and striking. The battle was over. John Brown, wounded and beaten to the floor, lay there among his men. The captives were free. Their captors had changed places with them. Colonel Washington took Mr. Strong and Tom home with him, for a rest after the strain i8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout of the captivity. He was much interested when he found out that Tom's great-grandfather had visited General Washington at Mount Vernon and Tom was intensely interested in seeing the home and home life of a rich Southern planter. The Colonel asked his guests to stay until after the trial of their recent jailer. They did so and Mr. Strong, after some hesitation, decided to take Tom to the trial and afterwards to the final scene of all. He wrote to his wife: "Life is rich, my dear, in proportion to the number of our experiences and their depth. Ordinarily, I would not dream of taking Tom to see a criminal hung. But John Brown is no ordinary criminal. He is wrong, but he is heroic. He faces his fate — for of course they will hang him — like a Roman. I think it will do Tom good to see a hero die." Whether or no his father was right, Tom was given these experiences. He sat beside his father and Colonel Washington at the trial. He heard them testify. He noted the angry stir of the mob in the court-room when Mr. Strong Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 19 made no secret of his admiration for the great criminal. Robert E. Lee, who captured Brown, said: " I am glad we did not have to kill him, for I believe he is an honest, conscientious old man." Virginia, Lee's State, thought she did have to kill this invader of her soil and disturber of her slaves. November 2, John Brown was sentenced to be hung December 2. The next day he added this postscript to a letter he had already written to his wife and children : *' P.S. Yesterday Nov. 2d I was sentenced to be hanged on Decem 2d next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still quite cheerful. God bless you all." Northern friends offered to try to help him to break jail. He put aside the offer with the calm statement: ''I am fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose." December 2, John Brown started on his last 20 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout journey. He sat upon his coffin in a wagon and as the two horses paced slowly from jail to gal- lows, he looked far afield, over river and valley and hill, and said : '' This is a beautiful country." He was sure he was upon the threshold of a far more beautiful country. The gallows were guarded by a militia company from Richmond, Virginia. In its ranks, rifle on shoulder, stood Wilkes Booth, a dark and sinister figure, who was to win eternal infamy by assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Beside the militia was a trim lot of cadets, the fine boys of the Virginia Mili- tary Institute. With them was their professor, Thomas J. Jackson, " Stonewall " Jackson, one of the heroic figures upon the Southern side of our Civil War. When the end came, Stonewall Jackson's lips moved with a prayer for John Brown's soul; Colonel Washington's and Mr. Strong's eyes were wet; and Tom Strong sobbed aloud. Albany fired a hundred guns in John Brown's honor as he hung from the gallows. In 1859 United States troops captured him that he Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 21 might die. In 1899 United States troops fired a volley of honor over his grave in North Elba that the memory of him might live. Victor Hugo called him " an apostle and a hero." Emerson dubbed him " saint." Oswald Gar- rison Villard closes his fine biography of John Brown with these words: ''Wherever there is battling against injustice and oppression, the Charlestown gallows that became a cross will help men to live and die." CHAPTER II Our War with Mexico — Kit Carson and His Lawyer, Abe Lincoln — Tom Goes to Lin- coln's Inauguration — S. F. B. ^Iorse, In- ventor OF the TeldltRaph — Tom Back in Washington. T N 1846, Mr. Strong, long enough out of Yale to have begun TDUsiness and to have married, had heard his country's call and had helped her fight her unjust war with Mexico. General Grant, who saw his first fighting in this war and who fought well, says of it in his Memoirs that it was '' one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." Much more important things were happening here then than the Mexican War. In 1846 Elias Howe invented the sewing-machine. In 1847 Robert Hoe invented the rotary printing press. Great inventions like these are the real milestones of the path of progress. 22 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 23 Mr, Strong served as a private in the ranks throughout the war. He refused a commission offered him for gallantry in action because he knev^ he did not know enough then to command men. It is a rare man who knows that he does not know. His regiment was mustered out of service at the end of the war in New Orleans. The young soldier decided to go home by way of St. Louis because of his memories of that old town in the days when he had followed Fremont. He went again to the Planters' Hotel and there by lucky accident he met again the famous frontiersman Kit Carson. Carson was away from the plains he loved because of a lawsuit. A sharp speculator was trying to take away from him some land he had bought years ago near the town, which the growth of the town had now made quite valuable. Carson was heartily glad to see his " Tom-boy " once more. He insisted upon his staying several days, took him to court to hear the trial, and introduced him to his lawyer, a tall, gaunt, slab-sided, slouching, plain person from the neighboring 24 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout State of Illinois. Everybody who knew him called him '' Abe." His last name was Lincoln. " I'd heard so much of Abe Lincoln," said Carson, '' that when this speculator who's trying to do me hired all the big lawyers in St. Louis, I just went over to Springfield, Illinois, to get Abe. When I saw him I rather hesitated about hiring such a looking skeesicks, but when I came to talk with him, he did the hesitating. I asked him what he'd charge for defending a land-suit in St. Louis. He told me. I sez : * All right. You're hired. You're my lawyer/ " ' Wait a bit,' sez he. " ' What for? ' sez I. ' I'll pay what you said.' " * That ain't all,' sez he. ' Before I take your money, Kit, I've got to know your side of the case is the right side/ " ' What difiPerence does that make to a lawyer? ' sez I. " ' It makes a heap o' difference to this lawyer,' sez he. * You've got to prove your case to me before I'll try to prove it to the court. If Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 25 you ain't in the right, Abe Lincoln won't be your lawyer.' " Darned if he didn't make me prove I was in the right, too, before he'd touch my money. No wonder they call him ' Honest Abe.' " It took Lincoln a couple of days to win Kit Carson's suit. During those two days young Strong saw much of him and came to admire the sterling qualities of the man. Lincoln, too, liked this young college-bred fellow from the East, unaffected, well-mannered, friendly, and gay. There was the beginning of a friendship between the Westerner and the Easterner. Thereafter they wrote each other occasionally. When Lincoln served, his one brief term in Congress, Mr. Strong spent a week with him in Washington and asked him (but in vain) to visit him in New York. So, when this new giant came out of the West and Illinois gave her greatest son to the country, as its President, Mr. Strong went to Washington to see him inaugurated and took with him his boy Tom, as his father had taken 26 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout him in 1829 to Andrew Jackson's inaugura- tion. Washington was still a great shabby village, not much more attractive March 4, 1861, than it was March 4, 1829. The crowds at the two inaugurations were much alike. In both cases the favorite son of the West had won at the polls. In both cases the West swamped Wash- ington. But in 1829 there was jubilant victory in the air. In 1861 there was somber anxiety. Seven Southern States had " seceded " and had formed another government. Other States were upon the brink of secession. Was the great democratic experiment of the world about to end in failure? Would there be civil war? What was this unknown man out of the West going to do? Could he do anything? Mr. Strong and Tom, with a few thousand other people, went to the reception at the White House on the afternoon of March fourth. President Lincoln was laboriously shaking hands with everybody in the long line. Almost every one of them seemed to be asking him for Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 27 something. He was weary long before Tom and his father reached him, but his face bright- ened as he saw them. A boy always meant a great deal to Abraham Lincoln. " There may be so much in a boy," he used to say. He greeted the two warmly. ''Howdy, Strong? Glad to see you. This your boy? Howdy, sonny?" Tom did not enjoy being called '' sonny " much more than he had enjoyed being called '' bub," but he was glad to have this big man with a woman's smile call him anything. He wrung the President's offered hand, stammered something shyly, and was passing on with his father, when Lincoln said : *' Hold on a minute. Strong. You haven't asked me for anything." '' I've nothing to ask for, Mr. President. I'm not here to beg for an office." " Good gracious ! You're the only man in Washington of that kind, I believe. Come to see me tomorrow morning, will you?" " Most gladly, sir." 28 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout The impatient man behind them pushed them on. They heard him begin to plead : " Say, Abe, you know I carried Mattoon for you; I'd hke to be Minister to England." Boys and girls always appealed to the Presi- dent's heart. When there were talks of vital import in his office, little Tad Lincoln often sat upon his father's knee. At a White House re- ception, Charles A. Dana once put his little girl in a corner, whence she saw the show. The father tells the story. When the reception was over, he said to Lincoln : '' * I have a little girl here who wants to shake hands with you.' He went over to her and took her up and kissed her and talked to her. She will never for- get it if she lives to be a thousand years old." The next morning Tom followed his father into a room on the second floor of the White House. Lincoln sat at a flat-topped desk, piled high with papers. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with shabby black trousers, coarse stockings. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 29 and worn slippers. He stretched out his long legs, swung his long arms behind his head, and came straight to the point. '' Strong, I'm going to need you. Your coun- try is going to need you. I want you to go straight home and fix up your business affairs so you can come whenever I call you. Will you do it?" "Yes, sir." President and citizen rose and shook hands upon it. The citizen was about to go when Tom, with his heart in his mouth, but with a fine resolve in his heart, suddenly said: "Oh, Father! Oh, Mr. President " Then he stopped short, too shy to speak, but Lincoln stooped down to him, patted his young head and said with infinite kindness in his tone: "What is it, Tom? Tell me." " Oh, Mr. President, I'm only a boy, but can't I do something for my country, right now? Can't I stay here? Father will let me, won't you. Father? " 30 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout ^Ir. Strong shook his head. The boy's face fell. It brightened again when Lincoln told him : " When I send for your father, I'll send for you, Tom." With that promise ringing in his ears, Tom went home to New York City. Home was a fine brick house at the northeast corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, The house was a twin brother of those that still stand on the north side of Washington Square. Tom had been born in it. Not long after his birth, his parents had given a notable dinner in it to a notable man. Tom had been present at the dinner, and he remembered nothing about it. As he was at the table but a few minutes, in the arms of his nurse, and less than a year old, it is not surprising that he did not remember it. His proud young mother had exhibited him to a group of money magnates, gathered at Mr. Strong's shining mahogany table for dinner, at the fashionable hour of three p.m., to see another young thing, almost as young as Tom. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 31 This other young thing was the telegraph, just invented by Samuel F. B. ^lorse, at the Uni- versity of the City of New York, which then filled half of the eastern boundary of Washing- ton Square. While Tom waited in the old brick house and played in Washington Square, history was mak- ing itself. Pope Walker, first Secretary of War of the Confederate States, sitting in his office at the Alabama Statehouse at Montgomery, the first Confederate capital, said: ''It is time to sprinkle some blood in the face of the people." So he telegraphed the fateful order to fire on Fort Sumter, held by United States troops in Charleston harbor. Sumter fell. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, the famous Old Dominion, '' the ^Mother of Presidents " — Wash- ington, Jefferson, Madison, and ]vIonroe were Virginians — seceded. The war between the States began. IMr. Strong found in his mail one day this letter: 32 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " The Executive Mansion, Washington, April 17, 1861. Sir: The President bids me say that he would hke to have you come to Washington at once and bring your son Tom with you. Respectfully, John Hay, Assistant Private Secretary.'* Tom and his father started at once, as the President bade them. At Jersey City, they found the train they had expected to take had been pre-empted by the Sixth Massachusetts, a crack militia regiment of the Old Bay State, which was hurrying to Washington in the hope of getting there before the rebels did. The cars were crammed with soldiers. A sentry stood at every door. No civilian need apply for passage. However, a civilian with a letter from Lincoln's secretary bidding him also hurry to Washington was in a class by himself. With the help of an officer, the father and son ran the Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 33 blockade of bayonets and started southward, the only civilians upon the train. It was packed to suffocation with soldiers. Mr. Strong sat with the regimental officers, but he let Tom roam at will from car to car. How the boy enjoyed it. The shining gun-barrels fascinated him. He joined a group of merry men, who hailed him with a shout: " Here's the youngest recruit of all." "Are you really going to shoot rebels?" asked Tom. " If we must," said Jack Saltonstall, breaking the silence the question brought, '' but I hope it won't come to that." " The war will be over in three months," Gordon Abbott prophesied. " Pooh, it will never begin, — and I'm sorry for that," said Jim Casey, " I'd like to have some real fighting." Within about three hours, Jim Casey was to see fighting and was to die for his country. The beginning of bloodshed in our Civil War was in the streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, just 34 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout eighty-six years to a day from the beginning of bloodshed in our Revolution on Lexington Com- mon. Massachusetts and British blood in 1775; Massachusetts and Alaryland blood in 1861. When the long train stopped at the wooden car-shed which was then the Baltimore station, the regiment left the cars, fell into line and started to march the mile or so of cobblestone streets to the other station where the train for Washington awaited it. The line of march was through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore. They were known locally as '' plug- uglies." Like the New York " Bowery boys " of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners' battles, to keep the ^Massachusetts troops from " polluting the soil of ^laryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving Washington. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 35 A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed the head of the marching column. Tom was startled by it. He turned to his father. The two were walking side by side, in the center of the column, between two companies of the militia. He found his father had already turned to him. " Keep close to me, Tom," said ^Ir. Strong. The storm of words that beat upon them in- creased. At the next corner, stones took the place of words. The mob surged alongside the soldiers, swearing, stoning, striking, finally stab- bing and shooting. The Sixth ^Massachusetts showed admirable self-restraint, which the " plug-uglies " thought was cowardice. They pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five thou- sand rioters broke the line of the thousand troops. The latter were forced into small groups, many of them without an officer. Each group had to act for itself. Tom and his father found themselves part of a tiny force of about twenty men, beset upon every side by des- peradoes now mad with liquor and with the lust 36 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout of killing. Jack Saltonstall took command by common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of rioters. " Forward, march ! " As he uttered the words, he pitched forward, shot through the chest. A giant '' plug-ugly " bellowed with triumph over his successful shot, yelled "kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon them. But Mr. Strong had snatched Salton- stall's gun as it fell from his nerveless hands, had leveled and aimed it, and had shouted "fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang out. The mob-leader whirled about and dropped. Half-a-dozen other " plug-uglies " lay about him. This section of the mob broke and ran. Some of them fired as they ran, and Jim Casey's life went out of him. " Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong. The boy took it, reloading it as he marched, while his sturdy father lifted the wounded Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered forward with the body in his arms. Casey and two other men were dead. Their bodies had to Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 37 be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall Hved to fight to the end. As the survivors of the twenty pressed forward, the mob behind fol- lowed them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly near. Twice, at Mr. Strong's command, the men faced about and fired a volley. In both these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He had hunted before, but never such big game as men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since it was apparently a case of " kill or be killed," he shot to kill. Whether he did kill, he never knew. The tv/o volleys checked two threaten- ing rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong to bring what was left of the gallant little band safely to the railroad station. An hour later the Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. Dur- ing that hour Tom had been violently sick upon the train. He was new to this trade of man- killing. At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon filled with camps. Soldiers poured in on every train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artil- lery surrounded the Capitol. And from its 38 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout dome Tom saw a Confederate flag, the Stars- and-Bars, flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria. Those were dark days. There were Confed- erate forces within a few miles of the White House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Vir- ginia seceded on the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell into Southern hands on the i8th. The Sixth Massachusetts had fought its way through Bal- timore on the 19th. Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in our army on the 20th and left Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long ■ train of army and navy oflicers whose loyal sup- port, now lost forever, had seemed a national necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his private office, searching with a telescope the reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop- laden transports were expected. Once, when he thought he was alone, John Hay heard him call out " with irrepressible anguish " : '' Why don't they come? Why don't they come?" In pub- lic he gave no sign of the anxiety that was eat- ing up his heart. He had the nerve to jest about it. The Sixth Massachusetts, the Seventh Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 39 New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had all hurried to save Washington from the capture that threatened. When the Massachusetts men won the race and marched proudly by the White House, Lincoln said to some of their officers: '' I begin to believe there is no North. The Sev- enth Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another. You are the only real thing." They were very real, those men of Massachusetts, and they were the vanguard of the real army that was to be. CHAPTER III Charles Fraxcis Adams — Mr. Strong Goes to Russia — Tom Goes to Live ix the White House — Bull Rux — '* Stoxewall " Jackson — Geo. B. McClellax — Tom Stroxg, Secoxd Lieutexaxt, U. S. a. — The Battle of the " MeRRIMAC " AXD THE '' MoXITOR." A FEW days passed before the President had time to see ]Mr. Strong and Tom. When they were finally ushered into his working-room, they found there, already interviewing Lincoln, the hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York, scholar, statesman, and gentleman, and a short, grizzled man, the worthy inheritor of a great tradition. He was Charles Francis Adams of Boston, son and grandson of two Presidents of the United States. He had been appointed ^linister to England, just then the most important foreign 40 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 41 appointment in the world. What England was to do or not do might spell victory or defeat for the Union, IMr. Adams had come to receive his final instructions for his all-important work. And this is what happened. Shabby and uncouth, Lincoln faced his two well-dressed visitors, nodding casually to the two New Yorkers as they entered at what should have been a great moment. " I came to thank you for my appointment," said Adams, '' and to ask you " " Oh, that's all right," replied Lincoln, " thank Seward. He's the man that put you in." He stretched out his legs and arms, and sighed a deep sigh of relief. " By the way, Governor," he added, turning to Seward, '' I've this morn- ing decided that Chicago post-ofifice appoint- ment. Well, good-by." And that was all the instruction the IMinister to Great Britain had from the President of the United States. Even In those supreme days, the rush of office-seekers, the struggle for the spoils, the mad looting of the public offices for partisan 42 J :zz Srr?iig, Li /s Scout jwwiliiiai c: %XJ *=±-*Ar'- .5 5. : T ^ :3BC iEar to 5::^ :...: : .^. _^. :r ^f^e" ^itsi initre5:5 :: our I>c-uOVcg. " : sy^bcm in cify , Mjiiiscnlar, big n jrfifows ab: t itr:- - , rs and bdovr a 5C ^ - - ' uwi with 1 gata^g g rsi frbflr litair T'jit flit — 1- 1 1 ' •: i:: _ ?al- 7 5 he _:^0!Q. i_ie ^Cj- --- "^=^'*r*^^! rr^e cji^erf. : "rd Abc2 Tom S:r '2^. L' : "/- bsfedk, Mic i£!e m: Linciln's gres-t ; : ' " ' ^igfec3S«d i#« & "*"\.irT T. il lO ^ ^^=r:7- ^■u.m;;^ W T- --5: ^t: 7 5a to hold &c^ - _ hi-re 2^ rf i: " there. lr_ : . ~ . 1 t- r-iJEja. _ -"\' — "'■ I" ■ —I K ^MiUI - 1 — - ^t^TB" x-Z*~T^^ he hid b^ner ke^r :c "is^lih > " Xe^w- York.* 44 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout '' Why not let him come to school in Wash- ington?" asked Lincoln. '* In the school of the world? You see," he added, while that irresisti- ble smile again softened the firm outlines of his big man's mouth, '* you see I've taken a sort of fancy to your boy Tom. S'pose you give him to me while you're away. There are things he can do for his country." It was perhaps only a whim, but the whims of a President count. A month later, Mr. and Mrs. Strong started for St. Petersburg and Tom reported at the White House. He was wel- comed by John Hay, a delightful young man of twenty-three, one of the President's two private secretaries. The welcome lacked warmth. " You're to sleep in a room in the attic," said Hay, '' and I believe you're to eat with Mr. Nicolay and me. I haven't an idea what you're to do and between you and me and the bedpost I don't believe the Ancient has an idea either. Perhaps there won't be anything. Wait a while and see." The Ancient — this was a nickname his secre- Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 45 taries had given him — had a very distinct idea, which he had not seen fit to tell his zealous young secretary. Tom found the w^aiting not unpleasant. He had a good many unimportant things to do. '' Tad " Lincoln, though younger, w^as a good playmate. The White House staff was kind to him. Even Hay found it difficult not to like him. Then there was the sensation of being at the center of things, big things. He saw men whose names were household words. Half a dozen times he lunched with the Presi- dent's family, a plain meal with plain folks. Even the dinners at the White House, except the state dinners, were frugal and plain. Lin- coln drank little or no wine. He never used tobacco. This was something of a miracle in the case of a man from the West, for in those days, particularly in the unconventional West, practically every man both smoked and chewed tobacco. The filthy spittoon was everywhere conspicuous. We fiercely resented the tales told our English cousins, first by Mrs. Trollope and then by Charles Dickens, about our tobacco- 46 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout chewing, but the resentment was so fierce be- cause the tales were so true. Those were dirty days. In i860 there were few bathrooms except in our largest cities. Those that existed were mostly new. In 1789, when the present Govern- ment of the United States came into being, in New York City, there was not one bathroom in the whole town. At these family luncheons, Tom was apt to become conscious that Lincoln's eyes were bent beneath their shaggy eyebrows full upon him. There was nothing unkind in the glance, but the boy felt it go straight through him. He wondered what it all meant. Why was he not given more work to do? Had he been weighed and found wanting? He waited in suspense a good many months. The early months of waiting were not merry months. In July, 1861, the first battle of Bull Run had been fought and had been lost. Our troops ran nearly thirty miles. Telegram after telegram brought news of disgrace and defeat to the White House. In the afternoon Lincoln Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 47 went to see Gen. Winfield S. Scott, then com- mander-in-chief of our armies. The fat old general was taking his afternoon nap. Awak- ened with difficulty, he gurgled that everything would come out well. Then he fell asleep again. Before six o'clock it was known that everything had turned out most badly. Washington itself was threatened by the Confederate pursuit. Lincoln had no sleep that night. The gray dawn found him at his desk, still receiving dispatches, still giving orders. When he left the desk, Washington was safe. It was at the beginning of the battle of Bull Run, when the Confederates came near running away but did not do so because the Union troops ran first, that '' Stonewall " Jackson got his fa- mous nickname. The brigade of another South- ern soldier. Gen. Bernard Bee, was wavering and falling back. Its commander, trying to hearten his men, called out to them: ''Look! there's Jackson standing like a stone wall! " The men looked, rallied, and went on fighting. It may have been that one thing of Jackson's example 48 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout that turned the tide at Bull Run, gave the bat- tle to the South, and prolonged the war by at least two years. Stonewall Jackson's soldiers were called foot-cavalry, because under his in- spiring leadership they made marches which would have been a credit to mounted men. It was his specialty to be where it was impossible for him to be, by all the ordinary rules of war. He was a thunderbolt in attack, a stone wall in defense. In November of that sad year of 1861, the President made another noteworthy call upon the then commander-in-chief, Gen. George B. McClellan. President and Secretary of State, escorted by young Hay and younger Tom, called upon the General at the latter's house, in the evening. They were told he was out, but would return soon, so they waited. McClellan did re- turn and was told of his patient visitors. He walked by the open door of the room where they were seated and went upstairs. Half an hour later Lincoln sent a servant to tell him again Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 49 that they were there. Word came back that General McClellan had gone to bed. John Hay's diary justly speaks of " this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes." As the three men and the boy walked back to the White House, Hay said : '* It was an insolent rebuff. Something should be done about it." Lincoln's almost godlike patience, however, had not been worn out. " It is better," the great man answered, " at this time not to be making a point of etiquette and personal dignity." The President, however, stopped calling upon the pompous General. After that experience, he always sent word to AlcClellan to call upon him. One day, at the close of a family luncheon, the President said to Tom : " Come upstairs with me." In the little private office, Lincoln took off his coat and waistcoat with a sigh of relief and 50 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout lounged into his chair. He bade Tom take a chair nearby. Then he looked at the boy for a moment, while his wonderful smile overflowed his strong lips. '' Tve been studying you a bit, Tom. I think you'll do. Now I'll tell you what I want you to do." The smile died quite away. " Are you sure you can keep still when you ought to keep still? Balaam's ass isn't the only ass that ever talked. Most asses talk — and al- ways at the wrong time." " The last thing Father told me," Tom answered, '^ was never to say anything to anybody 'less I was sure you'd want me to say it." '* Your father is a wise man, my boy. Pray God he does what I hope he will in Russia." The serious face grew still more serious. The long figure slouching in the chair straightened and stiffened. The sloping shoulders seemed to broaden, as if to bear steadfastly a weight that Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 51 would have crushed most men. The dark eyes gleamed with a solemn hope. Tom longed to ask what his father was to try to do, but he was not silly enough to put his thought into words. Another good-by counsel his father had given him was never to ask the President a question, unless he had to do so. There was silence for a moment. Then Lincoln spoke again : " You're to carry dispatches for me, Tom. This may take you into the enemy's country sometimes. If you were captured and were a civilian, it might go hard with you. So I've had you commissioned as a second lieutenant. If you should slip into a fight occasionally I wouldn't blame you much. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, kicked about it. He said he didn't believe in giving commissions to babies. I told him you could almost speak plain and could go 'round without a nurse. Finally he gave in. I haven't much influence with this Administration " — here Tom looked puzzled until the President smiled over his own jest — 52 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout "but I did get you the commission. Here it is." He laid the precious parchment on the desk, put on his spectacles, took up his quill pen, and wrote at the foot of it ^/^/y^^/i>> A week ago, sir. " Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the army: They would like to be, sir." Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, " per- haps a little experience at the front may make up for the years you lack. Send him to General ^litchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce aide who rose from his packing-box seat to acknowledge the command. " Pray come with me, ^Ir. Strong," said the captain. Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide. A backward glance showed him the general, his eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his stafiP eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures. And that was all that Tom saw, at that time, of the greatest general of our Civil War. CHAPTER V Inside the Confederate Lines — " Sairey " Warns Tom — Old Man Tomblin's " Settle- mint " — Stealing a Locomotive — Wilkes Booth Gives the Alarm — A Wild Dash for THE Union Lines. ^~r^ HREE days afterwards, Tom found him- self '* on special service," on the staff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towards Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town, the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom was not then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission, he had vol- unteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He had taken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now. 90 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 91 Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April 7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who had persuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines with a handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal a locomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroad bridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ran from the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East through Chat- tanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrews gave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groups of two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty, Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12. Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills by day and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Then their scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to the open. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow 92 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout with the oil of the butternut, the chief dye- stuff the South then had, their belts with " C.S.A." — " Confederate States of America " — upon them, their Confederate rifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouched hats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend to be. Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their best to talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in the hills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongue to master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girl started with suspicion at the strange accents of these " furriners." The men of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourth day they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with a floored and roofed space between them, a sort of open- air room where all the household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, old woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 93 a rag quilt, her toothless gums busy with hold- ing her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat her granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women with their home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture. '* Howdy," said Andrews. The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. She took her pipe from her mouth. " Howdy," said she. The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech. *' Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk? " asked Tom. " Sairey," called the old dame, " you git sum milk." Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, try- ing to hide her bare feet with her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house to the *' spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring. It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill- 94 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout folk knew. While she was away, her grand- mother began to talk. The man and boy would much rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, and said: '' How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smart heap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts." At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brown hand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim with a foaming mixture that looked like deli- cious milk. Alas! Tom, who loathed butter- milk, was now to learn that in the hills *' milk " meant '' buttermilk." He should have asked for " sweet milk." Sairey handed him the goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touched hers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, and sputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl had gone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was a boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuf¥ to the last drop, and made his Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 95 best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old woman said to him : "Where wuz you born, bub?" '' New — New " stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young- to understand what the words meant, his mother had told him : '' A lie soils a boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him. " New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly. " He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam. " He was raised up No'th," Andrews ex- plained, '' but soon as this yer onpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns." Andrews had overdone his dialect. " Sairey," commanded the old woman, " put up the flag." 96 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind her grandmother's chair, ''what's the use?" " Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag." From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, and then, before she en- tered one of the log-houses, she pointed to a cart- track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with a Confederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with white stripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put the staff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom in order to do this, she whispered to him : " You- uns run ! " "What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar? " her grandmother asked in anger. '' I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied. But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, had caught the words. " We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. '' You- Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 97 uns haz bin right down good to us. Thanky, ma'am." a Jes' wait a minute," the old woman an- swered. " I'll give you somethin' fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long." She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Sairey wrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantly the grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, a double- barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover both man and boy, as she screamed at them : *' You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do with you-uns." Their guns were at her feet. There w^as no way to get them, even if they would have used them against a woman. " Run ! " shouted Andrews and bounded to- wards the cart-track. Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which the old woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of 98 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout them redoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. They had run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozen armed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scared fugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal for their coming. Sairey's father and sev- eral other men had taken to the nearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, but they adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, and they v^ould have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman's eyes and ears had pierced the thin dis- guise of the raiders. So she had forced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobey her fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked at first sight cap- tured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out of gunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house, yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-track like hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to the hilltop, they \ Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 99 saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart- track. At the summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through a pine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered with pine- needles, the deposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left no marks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vast laurel-brake in which a regi- ment could have hidden, screened from discov- ery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Once they heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many hours they had the added security of the night. When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at the roots of the laurel- bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in the fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His left shoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was a little care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin, but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears of red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They 100 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout were picked out with the point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the blood and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt, soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a good iirst-aid- to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except for the loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because both knives and pistols were still in their belts. They slept that night in the laurel-brake, for- getting their hunger in the soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It kept calling aloud '' Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it said in lower tones: ''Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At first they thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey who was calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while the cows she had collected from their pas- ture stared with dull amazement. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout loi "Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety. Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she had taken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for her daily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down the food. " You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom. " Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly out of her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, " but I dun it, kase — kase — I jes' had to. Kin you get away today? " We'll try." Whar be you goin'? '* Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they took it. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help them on their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been at Big Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by which they would pass only one " settle- (< f( 102 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout mint," as the infrequent clearings in the hills were called. " When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin*s settle;;^/H^" said Sairey, " I 'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when Jurriners don't do no hollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old ^lan Gernt's Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'X you kin tell Bud Tomblin — no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by." The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled as she shook hands. She looked down at Tom — she was half a head taller than he — and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped and kissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which she had come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behind her. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brown feet, she vanished from their sight. Thanks to her directions, they found Old ]Man Tomblin's settle;;//;2f without difiiculty. They Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 103 duly stood at the corner of the sagging rail fence and there duly *' hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin came out of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the *' furriners " before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what Old Man Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome. Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything Sairey Gernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting near General Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lost themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. Old ^Irs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill- folk, whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable at fifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fire- place where she sat " dipping " snuff. *' Lidy " Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and hin- dered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort. They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They slept 104 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout soundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr, and Mrs. Tomblin and Lidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a boun- tiful breakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends. " I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when they were out of earshot. " Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews. But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made up his mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, in some other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him. The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, which the war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day, Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty- two men who had started with Andrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train for Chattanooga stopped there for break- fast on those infrequent days when it did not Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 105 arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what is called a '* mixed " train, both freight and passenger, with many freight cars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passenger cars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including its own train- crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in to breakfast. The train was de- serted. The time for the great adventure had come. Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wire between Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were left intact, their flight, sure to be discov- ered as soon as the train-crew finished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put on guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of the party, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already at the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards from the station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. As soon as the train came in, Tom started to io6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout climb the telegraph-pole. He had just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound. " Hey, thar! What's you doin'? " He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. He recognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around a camp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit stood by him. "Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire. The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?" The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thought of his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the rickety pole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so that from the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Bill urged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards the station. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw him return- ing, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 107 One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars from the rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender or swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wide open. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars bounding after it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train, without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses. A boy came running like an ante- lope from the end of the platform. He jumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozen hands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason to remember call out: " They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee ! Stop 'em ! Shoot 'em ! " Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming in the wind as he ran after them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motley crowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train. Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun. io8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of the departing train, came running from the station. They actually started to run along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-car off a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not far off, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that and thundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. The hunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted had left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires, to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be used to start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasional rail. This last expedient de- layed their pursuers but little. When a missing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a rail behind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again. Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, so he could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however, Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 109 where the only other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road and plenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regular train at Kingston, but alas! it car- ried on its engine a red flag. That meant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it. There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. The railroad was single- track, so trains could pass only where there was a siding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger of detection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the loco- motive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack, puffing away precious steam and pre- cious time. '' Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. " I cum hyar to meet up with Cunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em? " " We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews, ** except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on General Beauregard's staf¥ and am taking the stufiF to him at Corinth. Jove, there's the no Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout whistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it." He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his men into the freight cars. The cars were battered old things with- out any locks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doors and reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would pay the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, who had been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace on every mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of the unac- customed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose that threatened them all. '' Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the other train pulls in," said Andrews. '' We mustn't keep General Beaure- gard waiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it to blow the Yan- kees to smithereens." So Tom ran ahead, stood by. the switch as the second section came in, and promptly threw Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout iii the switch as it passed. But his train did not move and a brakeman jumped off the rear plat- form of the caboose of the second section, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushed him out of the way and reset the switch. " You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions, *' didn't ye see the flag" fur section three?" Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that the engine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that sec- tion three was coming behind it. Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in upon them, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity of playing their parts with laughter and good- natured chaff amid the foes who thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. At last the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune, it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch un- checked and then jumped on the pufling engine 112 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout as she reached the main-track and sped on- wards. *' Free, by Jove! " said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep reUef. '' Now we can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!" Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so long delayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that put Kingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston so speedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood. They saved precious minutes by changing engines. Five seconds after their arrival, the station- agent had been at the telegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyond An- drews's fleeing train. There was no reply. ''Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that had been done by the Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 113 fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. '' Wire cut! I kain't git no message through." ''We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from the cab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as she darted ahead. They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston. Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped and were pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avenging pursuer. '' Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. " They're closer'n I like to have 'em." Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the fugi- tives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not one second. Whether the cow- catcher of the engine thrust it aside or broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, no- body knew then in the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing certain is that there was no delay. Very likely 114 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout the rail broke. Rails of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the chief Southern railroads was said to consist of *' a right-of-way and two streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on. On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the rolling, jumping car- roofs,- with orders to set it on fire and stand ready to cut it ofif. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Half- way across it, Andrews stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few minutes the bridge would have been a burn- ing mass, but the few minutes were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them. It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge before Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 115 it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were de- tached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up. " Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching sooty vapor within a mile of them. *' By this time, they've got a telegram ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star. Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best." The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped. " Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. " We'll meet agam >> Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaiTold, where he and they ii6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout were hung. The other six of the fourteen who were captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the Union Hnes within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong? CHAPTER VI Tom up a Tree — Dm the Confederate Officer See Him? — A Fugitive Slave Guides Him — Buying a Boat in the Dark — Adrift in the Enemy's Country. A T first, Tom was up a tree. When he jumped from the abandoned locomotive, his mind was working as quickly as his body. He reasoned that the Confederates would ex- pect them all to run as fast and as far away as they could; that they would run after them; that they would very probably catch him, utterly tired out as he was, so tired that even fear could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the pursuit, however, would not last long, because the Confederates would wish to reach a station soon, in order both to report their success and to send out a general alarm and so start a gen- ii? ii8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout eral search for the fugitives; and that he would ] best hide as near at hand as might be. In other words, he thought, quite correctly, that the best thing to do is exactly what your enemy does not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak tree quite close to the track, its top a mass of thick-set leaves such as a Southern April brings to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into a sheltered crotch high above the ground, and waited. He did not have to wait long. He could still hear the noise of his comrades plung- ing through the woods when the Confederate engine drew up beneath his feet. Before it stopped, the armed men who clustered thick upon locomotive and tender were on the ground and running into the woods. A gallant figure in Confederate gray led them. He heard the rush of them, then a shot or two, exultant yells, and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They came back in half a dozen groups, bringing with them three of his comrades in flight, less for- tunate than he, at least less fortunate up to that time. Andrews was one of the prisoners. He « Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 119 had slipped and fallen, had strained a sinew, and had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him. Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy shelter, saw that his late leader was limping and was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who had passed his arm about him. " 'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily, " hyar's the injine." " The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of another kind, " he's goin' to Kingdom Cum, blast him ! " He lifted his fist to strike the help- less man, but the young officer in command caught the upraised arm. " None of that," he said, sternly. '' Ameri- cans don't treat prisoners that way. You're under arrest. Put down your gun and climb into the tender. Do it now and do it quick." Sulkily the brute obeyed. " Lift him in," went on the officer to the man who was supporting Andrews. This was gently done. The othfer two captives climbed in. So did the Confeder- ates. Their officer turned to them. " You've done your duty well," he said. 120 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " You've been chasing brave men. They've done their duty w^ell too. " * For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before.' " Tom started with surprise. The young officer w^as quoting from Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's knee when she read him the " Lays " and had often since read them himself. That start of surprise had almost been Tom's undoing. He had rustled the leaves about him. A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the ground. " Captain, there's somebody up that tree," said a soldier, pointing straight at the point where Tom sat. " I heard him rustle." The captain looked up. The boy always thought the officer saw him and spared him, partly because of his youth — he knew the fate the prisoners faced — and partly because of his admiration for " the gallant feat of arms." Be that as it may, he certainly took no step just then to make another prisoner. Instead he laughed and answered: Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 121 '' That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a coon-hunt just now. Get ahead. We'll send an alarm from the next station and so bag all the Yankees." The engine, pushing the recaptured one be- fore it, started and disappeared around the end of the short curve upon which Andrews had made his final stop. For the moment at least, Tom was safe. But he knew the hue-and-cry would sweep the country. Everybody would be on the lookout for stray Yankees. And as everybody would think the estrays were all going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid down the tree, looked at his watch, studied the sunlight to learn the points of the compass, drew his belt tighter to master the hunger that now assailed him, and so began his southward tramp, a boy, alone, in the enemy's country. That part of Georgia is a beautiful country and Tom loved beauty, but it did not appeal to him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was tired; the excitement that had upheld him through the hours of flight on the captured 122 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout engine was over. He plodded through a Httle belt of forest and found himself in a broad val- ley, with a ribbon of water flowing through it. He stumbled across plowed fields to the little river. A dusty road, with few marks of travel, meandered beside the stream. He was evi- dently near no main highway. Not far away a planter's home, with a stately portico, gleamed in the sunlight through its screen of trees. In the distance lay a little village. There was food in both places and he must have food. To which should he go? It was decided for him that he was to go to neither. As he slipped down the river bank, to quench his burning thirst and to wash his dusty face and hands, he almost stepped upon a negro who lay full length at the foot of the bank, hidden behind a tree that had been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded there. The boy was scared by the unex- pected meeting, but not half as much as the negro. " Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees with outstretched hands, *' don' tell on me. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 123 Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me with you. Please don't tell on me. You kin make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa. Please lemme go wid you." "What is your name?" asked Tom. "Morris, Massa." " Where did you come from? " " From dat house, Massa." He pointed to the big house nearby. "And what are you doing here?" Little by little, Morris (reassured when he found Tom was a Northern soldier and like him- self a fugitive) told his story. He had been born on this plantation. Reared as a house- servant, he could read a little. He had learned from the newspapers his master took that a Northern army was not far away. He made up his mind to try for freedom. His master kept dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track a scent in running water. It was not probable his flight would be discovered until after night- fall. So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the afternoon, intending to wade down the tiny 124 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout stream as soon as darkness came. Two miles below, the stream merged itself into a larger one. There he hoped to steal a boat, hide by day and paddle by night until he reached the Tennessee. " Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa Lincum's gunboats," he assured Tom. " How are you going to live on the journey? *' asked the boy. " I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Mor- ris wnth a chuckle, " and I'se got a-plenty to eat to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve none." ''Give me something to eat, quick!" Morris willingly produced cornpone and bacon from a sack beside him. Tom wanted to eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies must be kept as long as possible, so he did not eat more than half of them. The two agreed to keep together in their flight for freedom. As soon as it was dark, they began their wading. The two miles seemed an endless distance. The noises of the night kept their senses on the jump. Once a distant bloodhound's bay scared Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 125 Morris so much that his white teeth clattered Hke castanets. Once the " too-whit-too " of a nearby owl sent Tom into an ecstasy of terror. He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of him, was guiding his steps through the shallow water. When he found he had been scared by an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced him- self to be braver thereafter. At last they reached their first goal, the larger river. Here Morris's knowledge of the ground made him the temporary commander of the expedition. He knew of a little house nearby, the home of a " poor white," who earned part of his pre- carious livelihood by fishing. IMorris knew just where he kept his boat. There w^as no light in the little house and no sound from it as they crept stealthily along the bank to the tree where the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut the rope. " No, Massa," whispered IMorris. " Not dat- a-way. Ef it's cut, dey'll know it's bin tuck and dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll t'ink it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'll 126 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout not hurry after it. Dey'll t'ink dey kin fin' it in some cove any time tomorrer." Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot. Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound. Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging trees, per- mitted. Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked : "What is this boat worth, Morris?" '* Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest week." Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life in the enemy's country he ought not to take the " poor white's " boat without paying for it. He unbut- toned an inside pocket in his shirt and drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty of them, each wrapped in Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 127 tissue-paper and the whole then bound together in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside the stump to which the boat was tied. There the " cracker " — another name for the " poor white " — would be sure to see them in the morning. As a matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's plan of hav- ing the owner think the boat had floated away, but the " cracker " was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold. It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still. And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down the stream until the first 128 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store of food, and went to sleep. They slept until — but that is another story. CHAPTER VII TowsER Finds the Fugitives — Towser Brings Uncle Moses — Mr. Izzard and His Yankee Overseer, Jake Johnson — Tom is Pulled Down the Chimney — How Uncle Moses Choked the Overseer — The Flight of the Four. •' I *" HEY slept until late in the afternoon. Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's cold nose w^as thrusting itself against his cheek. He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon him and that the whipping-post was the least he had to fear. As Tom, startled from sound sleep by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his feet, he saw IMorris crouching upon the ground, babbling '' Sabe me, good Lord, sabe old Mor- ris ! " The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man. 129 130 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout . He was a most good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom, he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved by dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow mongrel, said '* Come here, old fellow," and in an instant had the great hound licking his hand and looking up to him with the brown-yellow eyes full of a dog's faith and a dog's fidelity. These are great qualities. A cynic once said: " The more I see of men the more I like dogs." That cynic probably got from men what he gave to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering faith of a dog and a child, once their confidence has been won, is a rare and a precious thing. Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail wagged with joy. The hound looked reproach- fully at Morris, as much as to say: ''See how you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but here " — he turned and looked at the boy who was smiling at him — '' here is my best friend." He stayed with them an hour, contented and Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 131 happy, humbly grateful for a tiny piece of meat they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he became uneasy. Two or three times he started as if to leave them, turned to see whether they were following him, looked beseechingly at them, barked gently, put his big paw on Tom's arm and pulled at him. Evidently he wanted them to come with him, but this they did not dare to do. " Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses here," Morris whispered. *' I suppose we must tie him up," Tom re- luctantly assented. " I hate to treat him that way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him tied and push off in the boat, he'll howl after a while and his master will find him. Take a bit of fishing-line and tie him." Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but the hound, as if aware of what they had said, suddenly started for his hidden home and van- ished into the underbrush before Tom could catch hold of him. When Tom called, he stopped once and looked back, but he did not 132 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout come back. He shouldered his way into the bushes and trotted off, with that amusing air of being in a hurry to keep a most important appointment which all dogs sometimes show. And as he started, Morris appeared again, with a shrill whisper: '' De boat's dun sunk his- self." Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news was too true. The boat had sunk. The rotten caulking had dropped from one of the rotten seams. The bow, tied to a tree in the cane- brake, was high in air. The stern was under five feet of water. The oars had floated away. The^fishing-pole was afloat, held to the old craft by the hook-and-line, which had caught in the sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt as a Western trapper used to feel, when he had lost his horse and saw himself compelled to make his perilous way on foot through a coun- try swarming with savage foes. What to do? " We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on shore, turn her over, caulk her with something, make some paddles somehow and get off." Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 133 They did, by great effort and with much more noise than they hked to make, drag the crazy old craft upon the bank of the creek. They turned her bottom-side up. The negro plucked down a long, waving mass of Spanish moss from a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Chil- dren in the South call this Spanish moss '* old men's gray beards." Each long drift of it looks as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged giant. They were pressing it into the gaping seam with feverish haste, listening the while for any sign of that dreaded coming of the big hound's '' folkses." The short twilight of South- ern skies ended. A deep curtain of darkness fell upon them. And through it they heard the nearby patter of the dog's paws and the shuffling footfalls of a man. And they saw the gleam of a lantern. " We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris whispered, *' we'se diskivered." As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the creek and lay in much his attitude when Tom had first '* diskivered " him, except that the 134 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout water covered all of him except mouth and nose and eyes. Tom bent down to him. '' Hush," he said, ** keep still. There's only one man coming. The dog's all right. I'll meet the man. You stay here." Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by the lantern upon a mass of underbrush and said, with a cheerful confidence he did not feel : " Howdy, neighbor? " The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet in a second. A quavering old voice came from behind the light of the lantern. " Howdy, Massa," it said. '' Is I intrudin' on you?" An old, old negro shambled up to him, the lantern in one hand, a ragged hat in another. He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respect- fully before the white boy. There was no enemy to be feared here. The boy's heart bounded with relief and he laughed as he an- swered : *' No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad to Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 135 see you. I'm sure you'll help us. Come here, Morris." Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest man in the world. His eyeballs shone as he neared them. They shone still more as he stood before the old negro, held out his hand, and said: *' Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up wid you." Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern in his surprise. "Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris! Howdy, Morris? How cum so as you-uns is here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser wuz a-actin' when he dun cum home dat dere wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I neber s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run away? " The situation was soon explained. Uncle Moses had already become familiar with it. Hunted men, both white and black, were no novelty to him by that time. He had helped many of them on their scared way. Too old to work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the out- 136 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout skirts of his owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny plot of vegetables when ** de rumatiz " per- mitted and w^ith these and some rations from " de big house " he eked out a scanty living. This owner's self-respect had not prevented his working Moses through all a long life, with no payment except food and lodging, and behind these always the shadow of the w^hip. But the slave's self-respect required him to work for the hand that fed him, so long as failing strength permitted. All he could do now was to scare crows from the cornfield, but that he could do well, for his one suit of the ragged remains of what had been several other people's clothes made him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his vegetables, he had some chickens, a sacred pos- session. " Old Unk' Mose " was known and re- spected through all the countryside. No chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind old patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind long life. He dwelt in peace. He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin and treated them there with a royal hospitality. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 137 Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take the one bed. Unk' Mose and IMorris slept upon the floor. First, they had a mighty dinner. Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything Moses had in the way of other food filled their starved stomachs. Then to sleep. The last thing Tom heard that night was the swish of Towser's mighty tail upon the earthen floor as the dog lay beside his cot. The last thing of which he was conscious was Towser's gently licking the hand that hung down from the cot. The next day they toiled with such feeble help as Moses could give them upon their leaky boat. They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most pre- cious possessions, they fashioned a couple of rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It was in vain. " I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses. " Dey wuz timeses when I dun thought all de days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd cum along or dat I cud go to freedum. It's too 138 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout late nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes' sot hyar, a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder folkses to find deir freedum, p'raps sum day, 'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de Lawd'U cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin' by de ban' ob a great big udder angel 'n de udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say: * Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.' Den I'll say: ' Thank de good Lawd,' and I'll be so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great White Throne, whar ebberybody's free." Late that afternoon when they had had to give up the hope of taking Uncle Mose with them, they were making a bundle of the food he had given them. It was a big bundle. He would have slaughtered his last chicken for them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there came the sound of a long, shrill whistle. Uncle Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees, forgot " de rumatiz " and almost sprang to his feet. '' Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun callin' de hands to de quarters." The quarters were the slave-quarters which always clustered Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 139 at a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's home. " Dat ar oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar. You folkses mus' hide." The whistle had sounded dangerously near. As they looked out of the one door that gave light to the slave's cabin, they saw^ three horse- men trotting towards it, two white men and a negro. They were Moses's master, the dreaded overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run across the small cleared space about the cabin and seek the woods without being seen. But where could they hide in a one-roomed hut? ** De chimbley, quick, de chim.bley," gasped Uncle Mose. A big chimney, full of the soot of many years of wood-fires on the broad hearth below, filled half one side of the room. Tom and Morris rushed to it, climbed up the rough stone sides, found a precarious footing just above the fire- place, and waited. Fortunately the fire upon which the food for the journey had been cooked had almost died down. A little smoke floated up the wide opening. The smoke and the soot 140 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout tickled the boy's nostrils until it seemed to him that he must sneeze. A sneeze might mean death. With a mighty effort he kept still for what seemed to him an hour. It was really about five minutes. Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of some hundreds of other black men, Jake John- son, his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a face that told of the cruel soul within him, trotted up to the door, the black groom a few yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the bundle of food far back under the bed. He stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to the ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser had felt more than once the sting of the long whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he hated the overseer. ''Howdy, Massa Izzard?" said Moses. "Howdy, Mista Johnsing? Will you-uns light down 'n cum in? " ''Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well- educated man, as kind a man as ever held his Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 141 fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a subject people by divine right. *' No, we won't light down. We just came to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come up to the big house and ask for it." He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked : " Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?" " No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has dat fool nigger runned away? " Johnson looked at him sharply. '' If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, " I'd " — he cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done. Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop frightening *' the best darkey on the place " and they rode away. 142 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout Mose dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and strode into the dusky hut. " I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the shrinking old negro. " You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded whip again. " I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista John- sing," Moses pleaded. Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back. His '' at-choo ! at-choo ! " sounded down the chimney like a chorus of bassoons. John- son was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had caught the fleeing Morris. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 143 At that terrible moment, when Johnson's throat was swelUng for a yell of triumph that would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to the hut, Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life of servile fear of the white man behind him. Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one of his owner's race, even in those long-ago days when stout thews and muscles made him fit to fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of the poet's saying, " Who would be free, himself must strike the blow," put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough. Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good 144 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot into a long bundle, had been ef- fectually gagged with his own whip, had been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which the food had been hur- riedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down. '' I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged him- self into it that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised, and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr. Izzard might return in search Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 145 of his overseer at any moment. The overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood — the mighty hound had been pried off his foe with difficulty — that the man lay in a faint until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now. Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered. When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again. Uncle Moses was no longer '* a-waitin' fer free- dum." He was going in search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his dark prison be- iik 146 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout neath the bed for forty-eight hours before he was found. One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself to the outer air. On the sec- ond day of his unexplained absence, ]\Ir. Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a reward for his finding. The dis- covery of his horse in a distant part of the plan- tation had concentrated the search there. The darkies who finally got the reward did not re- joice much in it, for in finding the overseer, they knew they were finding a cruel taskmaster and his cruel whip. But the story of his discom- fiture by three negroes, for he had never known that Tom's sooty face was really white, soon spread through the countryside. He became a neighborhood joke and in his wrath at being made a butt he resigned as Mr. Izzard's over- seer. Leaving this place deprived him of his immunity from conscription. He was promptly seized by the nearest Confederate officer and impressed into the army. The Izzard negroes Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 147 had the infinite joy of seeing their hated ex- overseer marched off under guard to a Confed- erate camp, to serve as a private soldier. Tom was destined to see Jake Johnson again. Two nights they rowed down the river, al- most without a word, afraid to speak lest some- one in the infrequent houses and still more in- frequent villages along the banks should hear them. Wise old Towser knew enough not to bark when men about him kept so still. He lay always where with nose or paw or tail he could touch Tom. The latter was the commander of the expedition and Towser felt it and became his abject slave accordingly. At the close of the second night they had reached the Tennessee River. By day they camped upon shore in some hidden place, first craftily secreting the boat amid rushes and reeds. From their second hiding-place, they saw about noon a Confeder- ate gunboat, a small stern-wheel steamboat, v/ith cotton-bales at her bow and stern screen- ing her two guns. Though she was making 148 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout all possible speed up the current, she moved but slowly. Her decks were thick with excited men. A babble of voices reached the fugitives, peering at her behind a mass of bushes. The few words that could be made out told them nothing. The sight of her, however, warned them that a new danger might await them on the traveled waters of the Tennessee. Their hearts would have beat higher, had they known that General Mitchell had pushed south from Huntsville and that Union forces were then en- camped in strength upon the river, not many miles below where they were cowering. The Confederate gunboat had been steaming up- stream to escape capture. When darkness came, they embarked again upon what proved to be the last chapter in the history of the old flat-boat. The next morning, caught in an eddy at the mouth of a small, swift tributary of the Tennessee, she whirled about, the Spanish moss dropped out of her rotten seams, she filled and sank. She dropped so swiftly beneath them that before they realized Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 149 their danger they were all floundering in water over their heads. Tom could swim like a fish. That is one of the first things a boy should learn to do. To his delight, he found Uncle Moses was also surprisingly at home in the water, con- sidering his years. Towser accepted the situa- tion as something he did not understand, but which was doubtless entirely all right, as his lord and master, Tom, was in the water too. Morris, however, could not swim a stroke and saw only certain death before him. He gave a yell of terror as he went under. That yell came near costing them dear. As he rose to the sur- face, Tom on one side and Uncle Mose on the other, acting under Tom's instructions, edged a shoulder under him, and started to swim to shore with him. Again he yelled. This time Moses lost patience. " Shet up, you fool nigger. You sho'ly needs to be 'mersed." With this whispered menace, he reached up one hand and ducked Morris's head quite under water. That stopped all further sound from 150 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout him. And by this time their feet had touched bottom. They waded ashore, with Towser wag- ging a triumphant tail, shaking himself and sending showers of spray over them. There they stood, wet as water-rats, with nothing in the world except the dripping clothes they wore. And there was no hiding-place near. For half a mile on either side of them a cleared field lay open to the day and the day was upon them. They had tempted Fate by rowing on too long after the first signs of dawn. Fate had turned the trump upon them. The sun rolled up above the eastern horizon at their back. It showed them, not half a mile away, a plantation house. It showed them a swarm of field-hands coming to the day's toil. It showed them a mounted overseer, only a few hundred feet away, riding up to the flat range of the field from a ravine that had hidden him. He had heard Morris's yells. He saw the three and rode furiously at them, calling out : "What are you niggers doin' here?'-' Tom stepped forward to meet him. His two i( (( Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 151 companions were useless in an emergency like this. They cowered back and were dumb. Towser strode ahead beside Tom and barked. The overseer pulled up short. He saw he was dealing with a white man, or rather with a white boy. The circumstances were suspicious. Who were these three dripping ragamuffins? But since one of them was white, the man's tone changed and he modified his question. Who are ye? And what are ye doin' here? " I am on my way to Vicksburg," Tom an- swered, " by the river. My boat sunk just off shore here and we swam ashore. Can you give me another boat?" I mout 'n I moutn't." I am carrying dispatches," said Tom, sternly. " You will delay me at your peril. I shall take one of those boats, whether you con- sent or not." With this he pointed at the most encouraging thing the sunrise had shown him. This was a line of three boats fastened to a wooden landing- place by the river. << it 152 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " I b'lieve you're a Yankee," said the horse- man, '' and these are runaway niggers. You and they must come up to the big house with me. If you're all right, we'll send you on your way. If you're not, well, we know what to do with Yanks and runaway niggers! March! " He slipped his hand behind him, as if to draw a pistol. Tom was already making the same gesture. Neither of them had a pistol. Tom's had gone to the bottom. It was pure blufif on both sides. And in a moment, seeing this and being Americans, both laughed. But none the less the overseer demanded that they should go to the big house. Tom, protesting, but ap- parently half-yielding, edged along until he was near the landing-platform. Then, shouting " Come on, boys! " he ran to it, the frightened negroes following at his heels and Towser run- ning ahead. He hustled them into the boat at the eastern end of the pier, jumped in himself, jerked the rope off the wooden peg that inse- curely held it, and pushed off. The overseer, angrily protesting, stood a moment watching his Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 153 prey escape and then galloped like mad for the big house, shouting ** Yanks ! spies!! thieves!!! Yanks!!!!" He was met halfway by half a dozen men in Confederate gray, roused by his yells. They were officers who had spent the night at the hospitable house, had breakfasted at daybreak, and were just about to mount for their day's march when the overseer gave the alarm. It was lucky for the fugitives that of- ficers do not carry anything bigger than pistols. A fusillade of revolver-bullets all fell short of the fleeing mark. Tom and Morris were pulling an oar apiece — they had found but two in the boat — with a desperate energy. But it was unlucky for the fugitives that they had not thought to steal or to scuttle the other two boats. This was Tom's fault, for he was captain. " I'll know better next time," said Tom to himself ruefully, as he saw three men spring into each boat for the pursuit. " I'll know bet- ter next time — if there ever is a next time." It did not seem likely that there would be a next time. One of the pursuing boats fell be- 154 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout hind, to be sure. In it, too, there were but two oars and the men who phed them could not match the black man and the white boy who rowed for freedom's sake and life's sake. But in the other boat, two strong men each pulled two oars, while the third man crouched in the bow, pistol in hand, calling out steering instruc- tions. This boat gained upon them, bit by bit. The fugitives could hear the lookout call " Port, hard-a-port ! " and could almost see the extra weight thrown into the sweep of the starboard oars to send the boat's head the right way. Once the man at the bow took a chance on a long shot. His bullet fell harmlessly two hun- dred feet astern of Towser who stood in the stern of the fleeing boat, barking savagely. Thrice they turned a sharp bend and were out of sight of their enemy for a moment, but each time there was a shorter interval before the enemy shot into sight behind them. A fourth point lay just ahead. Tom looked back over his shoulder and measured the distance with his eye. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 155 " We can just make that next point," he panted. " Soon as we do, we'll land and run. It's our only chance." '' I kain't run," said Uncle Moses, " but you'se right, Massa Tom. Dey'll catch us ef we keep a-rowin'." They had almost reached the bend. Another strong pull would have sent them around it. But the pursuers had now so gained upon them that the lookout chanced another shot. By chance or by skill, it was a very good shot. The bullet struck Tom's oar, just above the blade. The blade dropped off as Tom was putting every ounce of his failing strength into a pro- digious pull. The handle, released from^ all pressure, flew through the air and Tom rolled over backwards into Morris's lap. There was a shout of triumph from astern. The rowers bent to their work with a fierce vigor, feeling the vic- tory won. Morris gave one last pull with his one oar and it sent the boat around the bend. " And dere," as Uncle Moses with widespread arms used to tell the tale thereafter, " and dere 156 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout wuz Massa Lincum's gunboats, a-crowdin' ob de ribber — 'n de Stars-'n-Stripeses, dey jest kivered de sky ! " And so Unk' Mose and Morris came to their freedom and Tom came to his own. Towser became Tom's own. Uncle Moses insisted upon this and Towser highly approved of it. The giant hound worshiped the boy. Morris was speedily put to work driving a four-mule team for the commissary department of General Mitchell's force. He was accustomed to having food and lodging doled out to him, so it seemed quite natural to be given sleeping quarters (usually under the canvas cover of the wagon he drove) and rations, but it took him some months to recover from the shock of actually being paid wages for his work. When this too became natural, he felt that he was really free. Uncle Moses was too old for that sort of thing. He was bewildered by the rough and teeming life of an army-camp. He clung to Tom, was as devoted to him as Towser was, and much more helpless than the dog was. Towser made Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 157 friends and important friends at once. It hap- pened that food was rather short at head- quarters the day after the fugitives found safety. Tom, waiting for a chance to go North, had been TOWSER asked to share the tent of a staff-officer and to eat at headquarters' mess. An hour before din- ner, one of his hosts was bewaihng the scanty fare they were to have when Towser sidled around the corner of the tent with a fat chicken 158 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout in his mouth and laid it with respectful devotion at his master's feet. There was a shout of ap- plause and a roar from the assembled officers of ** Good dog, good dog, Towser, do it again!" Whereupon, after some majestic wags of his mighty tail, he disappeared for a few minutes and did do it again. When the second chicken was laid at Tom's feet, Towser's position was assured. He was named an orderly by acclama- tion and was given a collar made of an old army belt, with the magic letters " U. S. A." upon it, a collar which he wore proudly through his happy life. Tom, who felt quite rich when his arrears of pay were handed him, decided to give himself a treat by making Uncle Moses happy. That is the best kind of treat man or boy can give him- self. Make somebody else happy and you will be happy yourself. Try it and see. So, when he finally started back for Cairo and Washing- ton he took both Uncle Moses and Towser w^ith him. Neither of them had ever been on a rail- road train before. Equally bewildered and Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 159 equally happy, they sped by steam across the thousand miles between Cairo and Washington. In those days dogs could travel with their mas- ters, without being banished to the baggage-car. As the three neared the latter city, the great dome of the Capitol sprang into sight. Tom eagerly pointed it out. ** Look, Uncle Mose, look, Towser, there's the Capitol." '* Dat's Freedum's home," murmured Unk' Mose. And Towser, stirred by the others' emotion, barked joyfully. He felt at home, too, because he was with Tom. CHAPTER VIII Lincoln Saves Jim Jenkins's Life — Newspaper Abuse of Lincoln — The Emancipation Proc- lamation — Lincoln in His Night-shirt — James Russell Lowell — " Barbara Friet- CHiE " — Mr. Strong Comes Home — The Russian Fleet Comes to New York — A Backwoods Jupiter. 'T^OM neared the White House with a beat- ing heart. He had done what Lincoln had bade him do. The dispatches had been carried safely and had been put into General Grant's hands. But he had taken a rather large advantage of the President's smiling sugges- tion that he might occasionally slip into a fight if he wanted to do so. He had vol- unteered to go with Andrews on the rail- road raid, which was to take a week, and he had been away for many weeks, during which he had been carried on the army-rolls as " miss- i6o Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout i6i ing." Would the President think of him as a truant, who had run away and stayed away from duty? John Hay's welcome of him was frigid. The boy's heart went down into his boots. But it sprang up into his mouth when he was ushered into Lincoln's room, to be greeted with the winning smile he knew so w^ell and to be congratulated both on his bravery in going with Andrews and on his good fortune in finally get- ting back to the Union lines. The President was not alone when Tom entered the room. There sat beside the desk a middle-aged woman, worn and weary, her eyes red with weeping, her rusty black dress spotted with recent tears. Her thin hands were nerv- ously twisting the petition someone had pre- pared for her to present to the President. She looked at him with heartbroken pleading as he turned to her from Tom and resumed his talk with her which Tom's entrance had interrupted. " So Secretary Stanton wouldn't do anything for you, Mrs. Jenkins? " he asked. "No, sir; no, Mr. President," sobbed the i62 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout woman. ** He said — he said it was time to make an example and that my boy Jim ought to be shot and would be shot at — at — sunrise to- morrow." The sentence ended in a wail and the woman crumpled up into a heap and slid down to the floor at the President's feet. She had gained one moment of blessed oblivion, Jim, " the only son of his mother and she a widow," had overstayed his furlough, had been arrested, hur- ried before a court-martial of elderly officers who were tired of hearing the frivolous excuses of careless boys for not coming back promptly to the front, had been found guilty of desertion, and had been sentenced to be shot in a week. Six days the mother had haunted the crowded anteroom of the stern Secretary of War, bent beneath the burden of her woe. • Admitted at last to his presence, her plea for her boy's life had been ruthlessly refused. " The life of the nation is at stake, madam," Stanton had growled at her. *' We must keep the fighting ranks full. What is one boy's life Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 163 to that of our country? It is unfortunate," the grim Secretary's tones grew softer at the sight of the mother's utter anguish, *' it is unfortunate that the hfe happens to be that of your boy, but an example is needed and an example there shall be. I will do nothing. He dies at sunrise. Good-day." He rang the bell upon his desk. The sobbing mother was ushered out and the next person on the list was ushered in. An hour afterwards she was with Lincoln. There was no six days* wait at the White House for the mother of a Union soldier. When she fell to the floor in a faint, Tom sprang to help her, but the President was quicker than he. Lincoln's great arms lifted her like a child and laid her upon a sofa. He touched a bell and sent word to ^Mrs. Lincoln asking her to come to him. When she did so, she took charge of Mrs, Jenkins and speedily revived her. But it was the President, not his wife, who completed the cure and saved the weeping woman's reason from wreck and her «. 164 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout life from long anguish. He pointed to the peti- tion which had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor. " Hand me that paper, Tom." He put on his spectacles and started to read it. The glasses grew misty with the tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a red bandanna handkerchief, finished reading the paper, and wrote beneath it in bold letters: ''This man is pardoned. A. Lincoln, Prest." Then he held the petition close to the sofa so that the first thing Mrs. Jenkins saw as she came back to con- sciousness in Mrs. Lincoln's arms was Jim Jen- kins's pardon. It was that blessed news which made her herself again. She broke into a tor- rent of thanks, which Lincoln gently waved aside. " You see, ma'am," said the President, '' I don't believe the way to keep the fighting ranks full is to shoot one of the fighters, 'cause he's been a bit careless. There's a Chinese proverb : * Never drown a boy baby.' I guess that means that if a boy makes a mistake, it's better to give Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 165 him a chance not to make another. You tell Jim from me to do better after this. Tom, you take Mrs. Jenkins over to the Secretary and show him that little line of mine. He won't like it very much. Usually he has his own way, but sometimes I have mine and this happens to be one of those times. Glad you came to see me, Mrs. Jenkins. There's lots of things you can do to an American boy that are better than shooting him. Here's a little note you can read later, ma'am. Hope it'll help you a bit. Good-by — and God bless you." Tom took the widow Jenkins, dazed with her happiness, to the War Department, where the formal order was entered that sent Jim Jenkins back to the front, resolute to pay his country for the life the President had given him. Only when the order had been entered did the mother remember the envelope clutched in her hand which the President had given her. It contained no words, unless it be true that " money talks." It held a twenty-dollar bill. Mrs. Jenkins had spent her last cent on her journey to Washing- i66 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout ton and her six days' stay there. Abraham Lincoln's gift sent her safely back to home and happiness. When once again she had occasion to weep over her son, a year later, her tears were those of a hero's mother. For Jim Jenkins died a hero's death at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, that day of '' the high tide of the Confederacy," when Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate commander, saw the surge of his splendid soldiers break in vain upon the rocks of the Union line, in the heart of the North. The bullet that killed Jim Jenkins tore through the picture of Abraham Lincoln Jim always wore over his heart. And Lincoln found time in that great hour of the country's salvation to turn aside from the myriad duties of every day long enough to write Jim Jenkins' mother a let- ter about her dead son's gift of his life to his country, a letter of a marvelous sympathy and of a wondrous consolation, which was buried with the soldier's mother not long afterwards, when she rejoined in a world of peace her sol- dier son. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 167 Mrs. Jenkins's experience with Stanton was a typical one. Everybody hated to come in con- tact with the surly Secretary. One day, when Private Secretary Nicolay was away, Hay came into the offices with a letter in his hand and a cloud on his usually gay brow. " Nicolay wants me to take some people to see Stanton," he said. " I would rather make the tour of a smallpox hospital," Lincoln always shrank from studying the rec- ords of court-martials, but he often had to do so, that justice or injustice might be tempered by mercy. He caught at every chance of show- ing mercy. A man had been sentenced to be shot for cowardice. " Oh, I won't approve that," said the Presi- dent. ^' ' He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.' Besides, if this fellow is a coward, it would frighten him too terribly to shoot him." The next case was that of a deserter. After sentence, he had escaped and had reached Mexico. i68 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout " I guess that sentence is all right," Lincoln commented. " We can't catch him, you see. We'll condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana, ' as they run.' > >> At this time the fortunes of war were not favoring the North. There were days of doubt, days almost of despair. A shrill chorus of abuse of the President sounded from many Northern newspapers. Its keynote was struck by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune and the foremost man in a group of great edi- tors such as the country has never seen since. They were Horace Greeley of the Tribune, Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Mass.) Re- publican. Bowles wrote : " Lincoln is a Simple Su- san"; Raymond demanded that he be "super- seded" as President; and Greeley, in a letter that was published in England and that greatly harmed the Union cause, said Lincoln ruled " a bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country." In Tom's boyhood, the names of the three Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 169 were household words and names by which to conjure. The arrows the three shot at Lincoln pierced his heart, but his gentle patience never gave way. He bore with their well-meant but unjust criticism as he bore with so much else in those dark days, careless of hurt to himself, if he could but serve his country and do his duty as he saw it to do. A clear light shone upon one great duty and this he did. On September 22, 1862, he signed his famous Emancipation Proc- lamation, which with its sequence the Thir- teenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ended forever slavery wherever the Stars-and-Stripes waved. In the early days of that great September, even a boy could feel in the tense atmosphere of the White House that some great event was impending. Nobody knew upon just what the master mind was brooding, but the whole world was to know it soon. It was not until Lincoln had written with his own hand in the solitude of his own room the charter of freedom for the Southern slaves that he called together his Cabinet, not to ad- I70 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout vise him about it, but to hear from him what he had resolved to do. The messenger who summoned the Cabinet officials to that historic session was none other than Uncle Moses. Tom of course had long since told the story of his flight for freedom, including Unk' Mose's stout- hearted attack at the very nick of time upon the overseer. Lincoln was touched by the tale of the old negro's fine feat. He had Tom bring Moses to see him and Moses emerged from that interview the proudest darkey in the world, for he was made a messenger and general utility man at the White House. Part of his duty was to keep in order the room where the Cabinet met and to summon its members when a meet- ing of it was called. Uncle Moses, pacing slowly but majestically from the White House to the different Departments, bearing a message from the President to his Cabinet ministers, was a very different person from the Unk' Mose who had cared for Tom and Morris in the Alabama cane-brake. The scarecrow had become a man. On these little journeys, Tad Lincoln often Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 171 went with him, his small white hand clutching one of Mose's big gnarled, black fingers. Al- though Moses knew nothing of it at the time, the day he bore the summons to the meeting at which the Proclamation that freed his race was read was the great day of his life. It is well for any man or boy even to touch the fringe of a great event in the world's history. " I dun car'd de freedum Proc-a-mation," Uncle Moses used to say with ever-deepening pride as the years rolled by. In his extreme old age, he came to think he really had carried the Proclamation to the Cabinet, instead of simply summoning the Cabinet to the meeting at which the Proclamation was first read. Memory plays queer tricks with the old. So Unk' Mose's tale lost nothing in the telling, year after year. The next evening the Cabinet gathered at a small party at the residence of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. John Hay was there. He wrote that evening in his diary: " They all seemed to feel a sort of new and ex- 172 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout hilarated life; they breathed freer; the Presi- dent's Proclamation had freed them as well as the slaves. They gleefully and merrily called themselves Abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of appropriating that hor- rible name." The Proclamation made it re- spectable to be an Abolitionist. Every great reform is disreputable until it succeeds. The Proclamation seemed to have freed the President too. When a man has made a New- Year's gift of freedom to millions of men in bondage — emancipation was to take place wher- ever the Stars-and-Stripes flew on January i, 1863 — such a man must have a wonderful glow of reflected happiness. Always gentle, he grew gentler. Always with a keen eye for humorous absurdity, he grew still more fond of it. Tom was sent for one day and hurried to the President's offtce. Lincoln was stretched out at full length, his body in a swivel-chair, his long legs on the sill of the open window. He was holding a seven-foot telescope to his eyes, its Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 173 other end resting upon his toes. He was look- ing at two steamboats puffing hard up the Potomac. What news did they bring? As the boy knocked, the President, without turning his head, called out: "Come in. Tommy.** Tom opened the door and as he did so John Hay pushed excitedly by him, a telegram in his hand, saying: " Mr. President, what do you think Smith of Illinois has done? He is behaving very badly." " Smith," answered Lincoln, " is a miracle of meanness, but I'm too busy to quarrel with him. Don't tell me what he's done and probably I'll never hear of it." He knew how to disregard little men and their little deeds. That night Tom sat . p late. Nicolay and Hay had asked him to spend the evening, after the household had gone to bed, in their office. Crackers and cheese and a jug of milk were the refreshments and John Hay's talk was the de- light of the little gathering. Midnight had just struck when the door opened quietly and the 174 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout President slipped into the room. Never had Tom seen him in such guise. The only thing he had on was a short nightshirt and carpet- slippers. He was smiling as he entered. '' Hear this, boys," he said. " It's from the ' Biglow Papers.' That fellow Lowell knows how to put things. Just hear this. He puts these Yankee words into Jeff Davis's mouth: " * An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover. • • • • • • • An' wut Spartans wuz lef when the battle wuz done Wuz them that wuz too unambitious to run. An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day Consists in triumphantly gettin' away ! ' And here," continued the President, utterly un- aware of the oddity of his garb, " and here is a good touch on the Proclamation. I wish all the * cussed fools ' in America could read it. Hear this: " ' An' why should we kick up a muss About the Pres'dent's proclamation? It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us Ef we don't like emancipation. The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human. It's common (ez a gin'l rule) To every critter born o' woman.* " Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 175 Lincoln strode out again, " seemingly utterly- unconscious," says Hay's diary, *' that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs and setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at." " That fellow Lowell " was James Russell Lowell, an American critic, poet, and essayist, later our Minister to England. One day Tom had a welcome letter from his father, saying he was on his way home and would be in Washington almost as soon as his letter was. The letter was written from St. Petersburg and had upon its envelope Russian stamps. Tom had never seen a Russian stamp before. He showed the envelope as a curiosity to little Tad Lincoln and at that small boy's eager request gave it to him. Tom happened to lunch with the Lincoln family that day. Tad produced his new possession at the table, crying to his mother: " See what Tommy has given me." 176 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout "Who wrote you from Russia?" asked Mrs. Lincoln. '' My father," the boy answered. " He sent me good news. He's coming home right away." '' Your father sent me good news, too," said Mr. Lincoln from the head of the table. "What was that?" interjected the first lady of the land. " You shall know soon, my dear." Then the beautiful smile came to the President's firm lips and overflowed into his deep-set eyes as he said to Tom : " The highest honor the old Romans could give to a fellow-citizen was to decree that he had ' deserved well of the Republic' That can be said of your father now. He has de- served well of the Republic. Before long, the world will know what he has done. Until then," he turned as he spoke to his wife, " until then we'd better not talk about it." This talk was in early June of 1863. By Sep- tember the whole world, or at least all the gov- ernments of the world, did know what Mr. Strong had done after Lincoln sent him abroad. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 177 The whole world saw the symbol of his work, without in many cases knowing what the sym- bol signified. That symbol was the famous visit of the Russian fleet to New York City in Sep- tember of 1863. The governing classes of both England and France were in favor of the South during our Civil War. The English and French Empires were jealous of the growth of the Republic and wished to see it torn asunder. France hoped to establish a Mexican Empire, a vassal of France, if the Confederacy won. England needed Southern cotton and could not get it unless our blockade of Southerrl ports was broken. The people of both France and England had little to say as to what their governments would do. Many distinguished Frenchmen took our side and the mass of Englishmen were also on our side, but the latter were helpless in the grip of their aristocratic rulers. They testified to their belief, however, splendidly. In the height of what was called " the cotton famine," when the Lancashire mills were closed for lack of the lyS Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout fleecy staple and when the Lancashire mill-opera- tives were facing actual starvation, a tiny group of great Englishmen, John Bright and Thomas Bayley Potter among them, spoke throughout Lancashire on behalf of the Northern cause. There was to be a great meeting at Manchester, in the heart of the stricken district. The cost of hall, lights, advertising, etc., was consider- able. Someone suggested charging an admis- sion fee. It was objected that the unemployed poor could not afford to pay anything. Finally it was arranged to put baskets at the door, with placards saying that anyone who chose could give something towards the cost of the meeting. When it was over, the baskets w^ere found to hold over four bushels of pennies and ha'pen- nies. The starving poor of Lancashire had given them, not out of their abundance, but out of their grinding w^ant. This was the widow's mite, many times mul- tiplied. The crafty Napoleon the Third, '' Napoleon the Little," as the great French poet and nov- Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 179 elist, Victor Hugo, called him, asked England to have the English fleet join the French fleet in breaking our blockade and in making Slavery triumph. England hesitated before the pro- posed crime, but finally said it w^as inclined to follow the Napoleonic lead, if Russia would do likewise. Then the French Emperor wrote what is called a holographic letter, that is, a let- ter entirely in his own handwriting, to the then Czar of Russia, asking him to send part of his fleet on the unholy raid that was in contempla- tion. Russia was then a despotism, with one despot. It was not only a European and an Asiatic Power, but an American Power as well, for it did not sell Alaska to the United States until 1867. Despotism does not like to see Liberty flourish anywhere, least of all near itself. Lib- erty is a contagious thing. Might not the American example infect Alaska, spread through Siberia, even creep to the steps of the throne at St. Petersburg? But this time, thanks to the work of our Minister to Russia and of our extra- i8o Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout official representative there, the Hon. Thomas Strong, Despotism stood by Liberty. The Rus- sian Czar wrote the French Emperor that the Russian fleet would not be a party to the pro- posed attack upon the Northern navy, but that on the contrary it was about to sail for New York in order that its commander might place it at the disposal of the President of the United States in case any Franco-English squadron ap- peared with hostile intent at our ocean-gates. This was the beginning of the traditional friendship between America and Russia. It ex- plains why New York and Washington went mad in those September days of 1863 in wel- coming the Russian fleet and the Russian of- ficers. It explains why Lincoln told Tom that his father had '' deserved well of the Republic." It was at about this time that John Hay once asked Tom : " What do you think of the Tycoon by this time, my boy? " " Tycoon " and '' the Ancient " were names Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout i8i his rather irreverent secretaries had given Lin- coln. Nevertheless they both reverenced and loved him. Their nicknames for him were born of affection. '' Why, why," Tom began. He did not quite know how to put into fitting words all he felt about his chief. But John Hay, who was never much interested in the opinion on anything of anybody but himself, went on: '* I'll tell you what he is, Tom. He's a back- woods Jupiter. He sits here and wields both the machinery of government and the bolts of war. A backwoods Jupiter!" CHAPTER IX Tom Goes to Vicksburg — Morgan's Raid — Gen. Basil W. Duke Captures Tom — Gettysburg — Gen. Robert E. Lee Gives Tom His Breakfast — In Libby Prison — Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg. T ATE in June of 1863 Tom again left General Grant's headquarters. These were then in the outskirts of Vicksburg, IMississippi. The long siege of that town, held by a considerable Confederate force under General Pemberton, was nearing its end. Tom longed to be in at the death, but that could not be. He had been sent with dispatches to Grant and this time there had been no suggestion by the President that he might fight a bit if he felt like it. So he was now again on his way to Washington. He was a long time getting there, nearly a year; and this was the way of it. 182 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 183 July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the pro- posed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a " salt-lick " a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines. He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever getting home, he plaintively said: '* I swar ef I wouldn't give all the salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of Calfkills Creek." Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H. Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan 184 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout would dare do what he did do. The Confeder- ate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincin- nati. It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in sad need of new horses. The Union of- ficer who led the pursuit of Morgan said, in his official report: ''His system of horse-stealing was perfect." But so far as war can be a Chris- tian thing Morgan made it so. Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 185 taken came to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was furiously waved. *' Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the flag. Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses before them, vil- lagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons, in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody really knew anything. Tom ques- tioned each newcomer. Piecing together what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less : and that the quickest way for him to get to AVashington was to walk across the short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions were showered upon 1 86 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings to one direction. The railroad, how- ever, was his best guide-post. He started east- ward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the fugitives. The big bay brute stood over six- teen hands high, but the price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse. All went well at first. He soon reached the place w^here the Confederates had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the ties massed to- gether and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning ties and twisted by the heat into sinu- ous snakes of iron. Occasionally a hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely disap- peared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams which the burned bridges had Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 187 spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as if some highly intelligent hurricane and earth- quake had co-operated in its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as his system of horse-stealing. A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind, but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came, he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead. He was so 1 88 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the northward that he galloped gayly up to the house — and, perforce, presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire raid. The eleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him. Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned the corner, a group of dis- mounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the saddle and landed on his hands and knees be- fore the group. It was rather an abject position Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 189 in which to be captured. The Southerners roared with good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at the boy's plight. Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open offer of the pies. " They mout be pizened," one trooper sug- gested. ' At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom butted in upon them and was seized. '' Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the little scurry of the cap- ture was over. This met instant approval and Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed for- 190 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout ward to the table when the officer spoke, with a smiHng dignity that showed he was the friend as well as the commander of his rude soldiery. " I'll do the sampling," he said. " Give me a pie." He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him. " Son," he said, " I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?" He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth — altogether a vivid man. His mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 191 192 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout son of a Southern poor white, an elusive re- semblance. It may have been the innate noble- ness and kindliness of both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their com- mon portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there. Tom took one glance at the chief of his cap- tors and then saluted with real respect as he replied: *' I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A." " Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. If you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would have turned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us." Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound, in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead of it the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 193 He was Gen. Basil W. Duke, brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. He was a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one. A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost con- stant fighting, much of it with home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight him hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americans should, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety of West Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom. Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off from crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville, Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and out- numbered, he surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant band. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officers not as captured soldiers but 194 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout as arrested bandits. They were sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a dar- ing escape not long afterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tom had been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison, at the Confed- erate Capital, Richmond, Virginia. His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except for the gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and his money had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turned over to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongings disappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was plucked from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who meant to use it in get- ting inside the Union lines. When he was finally turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army, commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had nothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the ragged remains of what had Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 195 once been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, held about his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievably dirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given him at Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom always believed to be Barbara Frietchie. It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade had defeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun to dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from the great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond, trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general. Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escape after Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln was deeply grieved. " We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. " We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were our^ 196 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout And nothing I could say or do could make our armv move." Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter, one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too- prudent Meade into attacking, came to the White House. "Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him. " Because nobody stopped him." And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war would have ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: ''Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close it," he added at once: ''Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for the great service he did at Gettysburg." Lee was a son of " Light-Horse Harry " Lee, the daring cavalry commander of the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase about Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 197 Washington : '' First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Point and in the war with Mexico and was Lieu- tenant-Colonel of Engineers in the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut. -Col. Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made to keep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief com- mand of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offers made him, re- signed his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond. Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union sol- diers, crowns a hill on the Virginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet. The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of the old-fashioned house, 198 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout a portico upheld by many columns, one can look towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight by clustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in 1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858, directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee, his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave them passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedom to his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas, to his wife : " In this enlight- ened age there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country. . . . I think it is a greater evil to the white than the black race." Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks with George Washing- ton, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise could be greater. When " the Lost Arlingtun Copyright hy I'nderwood & Underwood. New York. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 199 Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their great fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisive defeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved him- self a great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the Southern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies of him was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at Wash- ington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best blood of Massachusetts hon- ored the best blood of Virginia. Our country was then again one country and all of it was free. Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northern officers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee's headquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye ranged over the long 20O Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout lines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions of the Confederacy. I"^. was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts were cooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, there came an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger the harder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent. Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in sound and shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand. Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; and every throat joined in the famous " rebel yell.'* Through the shouting thousands rode a half- dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head a gallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache, seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famous Traveler. It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his iron self-control almost Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 201 ;i:K'^' w < H z o w w CO o o 202 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which he was hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched in vain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost as red as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept into his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the Union prisoners were huddled to- gether. As his glance swept over them, he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks Lee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in those ranks. The Confed- eracy, by this time almost bled white, was said to have " robbed the cradle and the grave " to keep its armies at fighting strength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not been driven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of the Union. "Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group. " Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy. i{ a (( Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 203 *'Your rank?" Second-lieutenant, sir." Where were you captured?" In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan." Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism. As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col, Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstood the move- ment. His lip curled with disgust as he said: "Are you — a boy — drunk?" Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen others answered for him. Not drunk, but hungry. General. I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, " but at least you shall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our break- fast until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent. He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed, he had refused to leave " Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. He wore the remains of a Confederate uniform. n a 204 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout '' Pompey, give these gentlemen our breakfast. We will wait." '' But — but — Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'." *' Our involuntary guests," said Lee w^ith a gentle smile as he turned to the prisoners, ** will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee." And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with it were nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck upon the feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings were deeply hurt. When the Union of^cer hurled after him a word of foul abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, and said : " I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck de unicorn." After that the '' unicorn " and the fine old negro who wore it were both amply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners were ordered to fall in line. Their Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 205 guards stood in front of the little column, beside it, behind it. '' Forward, march ! " They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming, somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closed behind them with a clang. Cap- tivity in the open had been hard enough to bear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, was to be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison. It was while he was there that Abraham Lin- coln made his wonderful Gettysburg speech. The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there for Free- dom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train left Washington for Gettysburg. It carried 2o6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout President Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two pri- vate secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distin- guished Pennsylvanian, Wayne MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to Italy, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas Strong, w^ho had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kind thoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the mo- ment, but long since recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature. The little town of Gettysburg was in a fer- ment that November night, when the Presi- dent's train arrived. It was full of people and bands and whisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen and calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for talky-talk. " MacVeagh," says Hay, '' made a most beautiful and touching speech of five minutes," but another Pennsyl- vanian made a most disgusting and drunken Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 207 speech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of his party of course had no share in all this brawl- ing merriment. He and Seward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening. On the way up from Washington, the Presi- dent had sat in a sad abstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him. Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern magnates were mis- leading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. " You can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been Governor of INIassachusetts, Min- ister to England, Secretary of State, United States Senator. He was handsome, distin- 2o8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout guished, graceful. The ungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil to Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to come rolling in like " the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log- cabin. Both must face on the morrow the same audience. The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. From the aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper, thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in the opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out some words and added others, read his completed task and did not find it good. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into his pocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh. At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on the battlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of fervent speech, Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 209 fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bit- terness against the men he called " the South- ern rebels." His speech was literature and his voice was music. As the thunder of his perora- tion ended a thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting sharply and in every way dis- advantageously with Everett of the silver tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice to reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeaking falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lin- coln stopped speaking. There were a few sec- onds of painful silence. Then he came to his own. With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again and finished his Get- tysburg speech. Here it is: " Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propo- sition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 210 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have con- secrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the liv- ing, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfin- ished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devo- tion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 211 under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the peo- ple, for the people shall not perish from the earth." The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applause such as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods. There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things even he ever did. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has writ- ten in her short story " The Perfect Tribute " the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read " The Per- fect Tribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederate officer, says to Lin- coln without knowing to whom he was speak- 212 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout ing: ''The speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath — there was not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's prayer — it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it — down to the lowest. There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that great throng — it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator." The Gettysburg speech was not for the mo- ment. It is for all time. CHAPTER X Tom is Hungry — He Learns to " Spoon " by Squads — The Bullet at the Window — Working on the Tunnel — '' Rat Hell " — The Risk of the Roll-call — What Hap- pened TO Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy — - Tom in Libby Prison — Hans Rolf Attends Him — Hans Refuses to Escape — The Flight Through the Tunnel — Free, but How to Stay So? WT HEN the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm of mer- chants in Richmond. They owned a big ware- house, which fronted on Carey Street and ex- tended back over land that sloped down to another street, which occupied all the space be- tween the southern wall of the warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray praises in 213 214 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout '* The Virginians " and which the worn-out lands of the Old Dominion can no longer produce. The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was hungry. When Con- LIBBY PRISOX AFTER THE WAR federate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison was in- describably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 215 floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which cUmbed upstairs at night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when thev could. There was no furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at last sunk into uncom- fortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awak- ened by the sharp command of the captain of his group : "Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!" The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It seemed to the worn- out boy that he had just '' spooned," when again he waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample of many nights. On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life. He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at 2i6 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout the broad valley of the James, when he was sud- denly seized violently by the arm and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness. For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there. If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him. " You little fool, don't you know better than that?" When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names. So he swallowed his wrath — which is an excel- lent thing to do with wrath — and answered quite meekly: Tom Strong, Lincoln's wScout 217 " No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows? " " Hasn't anybody told you that? " "No, sir." *' Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in acceptance of the implied apology. ^' The sentries outside have orders to fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be killed. Shake." The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid. They strolled together up and down the big room now de- serted by most of its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an intelligent boy in his busi- ness. Just then Colonel Rose's business was to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred 2i8 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the plan a reality. One trou- ble about the former plans at Libby had been that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had found their first free breath their last, for they had stum- bled into a trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom. i\Iore often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past at- tempts. He planned along new lines. He de- cided upon absolute secrecy, except for the men Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 219 who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important the talk was. " Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him. " Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally." So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance. He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the way to freedom. 220 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a fact. That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from lo p.m. to 4 a.m., so it was selected as the field of operation. Be- low the kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full of squealing rats. It was called '' Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway to free- dom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell. To do this it was neces- sary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed " S," like this : The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen fireplace, the lower into Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 221 Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife. One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place. This was done by Major A. G. Ham- ilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant. He care- fully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them. He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them, and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That night, as soon 222 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again removed the bricks and attacked the stub- born stone behind the fireplace. Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of the loosened mortar. Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his stomach in the upper part of the reversed *' S " and plied the old knife as vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When he had widened the pas- sage, one of the men took his place in it and drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasp- ing for breath. Finally, after many nights, Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 223 Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept cau- tiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven. With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry whose steps they could hear on the side- walk outside. So they fled, taking their rope- ladder with them, and again, as ever, they re- placed the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot. The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay. Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and only a few 224 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to the sewer could be begun. Colonel FIGHTING THE RATS From " Famous Adventures of the Civil War.** The Century Co. Rose had long since decided, by forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to be. The measurement made Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 225 above was now made below, the straw against the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of digging dirt. Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet long, the air in it be- came so foul that candles went out in it. So would the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long. Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two nights' rest out of three. But the prog- ress made was pitifully slow. Man after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at his last gasp. Once, when Ham- ilton had been brought out and was being fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered: "Why not fan air into the tunnel?" Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it was simple — when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end of the tunnel fanning air into it with 226 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout their hats. But even so, many a candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and almost dead. The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hami- ilton was caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 227 poor old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended in failure. Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 p.m. How were the two absent men to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless, but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for its discov- ery would have made all future attempts to escape more dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back, crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of the line, slipped into 228 Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout place, and there answered for the missing men, without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught. Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double answering that '* Little Ross," the good- humored little clerk, lost his temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten td» be counted. By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees, he went on to explain why he gave it. ''Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't yere." This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. " Little Ross " himself caught the contagion and also began to laugh. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout 229 W H H < O 1—1 « Oh O CjJ < IS U w • * bo pi bo ^ '^ >- w C *^ E Ot in §0 V, bO ?1- On rt r; crt E a} Qj CC! C/1 P o o (Li - -^ c o 5.S ^- -«^ E - o E r^;i3 o u o c o u -