Yale University Library 39002002970508 e/ SIOG^AfrfffPoEK^ AND (omic War PAPER5. ONLY A PRIVATE it "private -^DaUell. PRIVATE DALZELL HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, POEMS AND COMIC WAR PAPERS SKETCH OF JOHN GRAY, WASHINGTON'S LAST SOLDIER, Etc Part I. MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY Part II. MY WAR SKETCHES, Etc Part III. JOHN GRAY A CENTENNIAL SOUVENIR CINCINNATI ROBERT CLARKE & CO 1888 COPYRIGHTED BY PRIVATE DALZELL, , For the benefit of his wife and children, to-wit: Mrs. Hettie M. Dalzell, Lena May Dalzell, Nellie Dalzell, Annie Dalzell, Howard Hayes Dalzell, and Beulah Dalzell, and as a memorial of his departed and gifted son, James Monroe Dalzell. 5Co the Solirfers of tiie WLnion arms, OFFICERS AND MEN, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THE PRIVATE SOLDIERS, MY DEAR COM RADES ONE AND ALL, FOE WHOM AND WITH WHOM THE POOREST OF GOD'S POOE, THE NOBLEST AND THE BEST, MY LIFE HAS BEEN SPENT, FAE TOWARD THE SHADOW THAT SHALL SOON ENVELOPE IT AND THEM, THIS BOOK AND VOLUME OF MY POOR HUMBLE LIFE IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, TO THEM AND THEIR SONS' DAUGHTERS AND SONS, AND THEIR DAUGHTERS' DAUGHTERS AND SONS, FOREVER AND A DAY. PRIVATE DALZELL. Caldwell, Ohio, April 4, 1888. CONTENTS. PART I. Mt Autobiography. Prefatory 5 PART II. Mt War Sketches, etc. 1. Dave Sheppard, the Forager 65 2. Not all Fun in the Army 77 3. The Stomachs of the Boys in Blue 82 4. The Forced March to Moorefield, W. Va 86 5. The First Death in the One Hundred and Sixteenth Ohio, 91 6. How the Private and Ben Tilden Enjoyed a Buggy Ride 98 7. A High Private at Rich Mountain '. 102 8. Another Story of the Old Flag 107 9. How the Valorous Private StampededoneArmy and Led Another 112 10. The Capture of Fort Gregg 118 11. Address of Welcome at Soldiers' National Reunion, Sept. 1, 1875 123 12. How the Private went after but didn't get a Christmas Turkey 136 13. Decoration Day Address in Wheeling, 1883 142 (3) i CONTENTS. 14. The Effeot of the Old Flag upon Young Patriots at En listment 151 15. Extract from Speech at Springfield, Ohio, August 20, 1879 159 16. Extract from Address of Private Dalzell, First Grand Army Day, Cincinnati, October 27, 1887 162 17. Private Dalzell's Soldier Circular 178 18. Poems 182 PART III. John Gray, of Mt. Vernon. 1. Introduction 192 2. How I Became Interested in John Gray 196 3. Early History as Gleaned from Himself. 199 4. John Gray Secures a Pension 202 5. My Last Visit to John Gray 214 6. Closing Scenes and Remarks 225 The Revolutionart Trio 234 PRIVATE DALZELL. PART I. MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. PEBFATORY. I promised the public my autobiography, and here it is. The book and volume of my life is too humble a part of history to be elaborated in any detail, and I have not the vanity or egotism to do so. I was born as others are born, and shall die as others have died, and that's about all there's of it. The proper time for a man's " auto biography " to be written is when he is safe in heaven. The gentle reader will not murmur nor complain, there fore, if I cut it short in righteeusness. It's all a mistake that I alone put down the rebellion. I had the able and valuable assistance of Generals Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and several other gentlemen whose names and rank are too tedious to mention, including — and, as history has neglected to refer to them in any manner whatever, I beg to refer to them in passing — sev eral privates ! This fact seems to have fallen into oblivion and sunk to the bottom. They all ably and equally rendered me — (5) 6 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. that is, the country — valuable assistance in crushing the hydra-head of treason and rebellion. I believe if it had not been for their presence with me in the field I might possibly have failed and seen the Union divided and the flag dishonored. This is a concession which no other memoir writer has yet ventured to make. But I want to close the history of the War. I shall close the history of the revolution in the Life of John Gray ; and, while I have my hand in the closing up business, I would be proud, indeed, to close out the whole war business ! It needs closing pretty badly just now, I vow ! It runs riot in all our papers and magazines of fiction, together with no end of " war histories," so-called, and is like to run on, like the ancient river, forever and forever. I think this book will close the business out, and per form for modern carpet-knighting somewhat of the serv ice which Cervantes' Don Quixote accomplished to bring into deserved contempt and ridicule the absurd romances of chivalry and knight-errantry of the Middle Ages. It is time to beat swords and all warlike weapons into plowshares and pruning-hooks, and usher the dawn of much-needed rest. If this humble volume shall accom plish this, or the half of it, I will hang up my pen and write no more " histories ;" but if another dose is needed I will administer it until this craze for war romancing under cover of history of the war is completely cured. With the pen I have stormed the redoubts of buncombe before and won laurels there. I am cautioned by judicious friends that this is a rash and foolish undertaking — a rush upon the thick bosses of the almighty memoir makers. This battle of the PRIVATE DALZELL S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 7 books must some time cease. Why not here, and now, and forever ? It was no easy thing, I assure you, to end the war. It took all I could do — sometimes I feared I was going to fail ; and, indeed, I should have been dis comfited had it not been for the assistance aforesaid of the several generals aforesaid; together with the said privates aforesaid ! Yet it took but four years to end the war. It's like to take a thousand to end its history ! It's so much easier to write than to fight battles ! ! Of late, especially from the comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic and the gentlemen of the daily newspaper press, with whom my life for a quarter of a century has been largely passed, I have had numerous requests for my autograph and photograph, neither of which is a thing of beauty. And they have even asked me if I really existed at all except in the imagination and the newspapers. To all these inquiries I have re plied according to the facts, and whenever I could afford it I have uniformly sent my picture to all who sought it. This has stimulated me to believe that public curiosity is sufficiently awakened to require the present effort. And here it is — my life — on paper, where all who run may read it, and from which all who do not like it may run as fast as they can ; but in the chase of life none can run so fast as to outstrip the heart of kindness and affection which shall follow all men every-where so long as it beats. James M. Dalzell. Caldwell, 0., Feb. 14, 1886. PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. My father, Robert Dalzell, of Huguenot descent, was born in County Down, Ireland, May 2, 1802; my mother in County Tyrone, May 9, 1799. Father left Ireland with his widowed mother in 1809, and removed to near Greenock, Scotland, where he lived until 1832, when he emigrated to Pittsburg, Penn. There he met and mar ried my mother, Anne McCormick, and there, in 1838, on the 3d day of September, I was born. I say Pitts burg, but I mean Allegheny City, just across the river from the old Smoky City. My father had been a dis tiller in Scotland, and for several years in Pittsburg, but, convinced that liquor-making was wrong, he aban doned it and started a new and untried business to him — carpet weaving. I spent my early years in the loom shop winding bobbins and cutting carpet rags. Thus I began life in rags, as I am likely soon to end it. In 1847 we left Pittsburg and settled on a farm near where I now live, in Ohio. In 1868 my father sold the farm and removed to Fayette Springs, Pa., but I re mained here. It is a most ungrateful and callous soul that does not turn reverently, and affectionately, and often to par ents and schoolmasters — for one has called the early teacher " the father of the mind." My father and mother were both cast in the same mold. I can not think of one without thinking of the other, so like were they in mental trait and habit, so har monious in affection, aspiration, and hope. I never heard a jar between them in opinion or counsel. Both PRIVATE DALZELL S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 9 Seceders, afterward members of the United Presbyterian Church, trained from childhood in the severe but logical discipline of the Calvinistic creed, their home was quiet, serene, and rainbowed over and lit up with a faith that no cloud of sorrow or poverty could dim or darken. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the Shorter Cat echism, and Dr. Pressly's church paper and a Bible were our entire library. The simple truths of Holy Scripture, the daily sacri fice at the family altar, reverence for all that is accounted holy and good, and aversion to all that is wrong or mean, were the atmosphere that I daily breathed from the dawn of my life until I crossed its sacred threshold in maturer years to pass out into an atmosphere not so full of airs from heaven as blasts from hell. I never saw a card or a dance, a novel or a fiddle, or heard an oath or a rude jest in that house. Struggling with poverty, a plain, homely, honest pair, Shey toiled on to old age, turning neither to the right nor left, unaffected and unabated in their pious devotion. It was all one whether the world outside behaved itself well or ill, the smooth current of their simple lives ran on without a ripple or a murmur. I was taught not so much to talk as to think, and feel, and act. Action was the supreme ideal there — not of words, for these my par ents knew but little. Their words were few and well chosen. I have sat in the awe of the solemn silence of our sitting-room for hours, while father quietly read the Bible in one corner of the room, and my mother read Rouse's version of the Psalms in the other, neither ut tering a word, except now and then, at long intervals, pausing to slowly and reverently read some passage that 10 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. had thrilled them through and through with its porten tous meaning. Neither of them was educated beyond reading and writing. Their lives had been spent in hard labor, and even now the picture of my mother reeling or sewing carpet rags in Allegheny City, forty years ago, rises up to my memory like the vision of an angel, as I know she is now. They taught me my A B C's. I had no brother — one sister only. There was no public school. At five years of age I was started to school in an abandoned store-room, north of the Diamond, in Allegheny City, then taught by a lame Englishman, named William Tur ner. He kept a select school for a pittance. It was our only school. With him I slowly learned to write and figure a little — for my parents had long before that taught me to read. I have no recollection of learn ing to spell and read, except by that sort of recollection spoken of by Goethe — such a mixture of memory with what my parents told me after, that I can not discrim inate recollection from tradition. Mr. Turner offered a prize for the boy in our spelling class who should be head the most times during the term. I won it. I re member with what pride I bounded into the loom shop — father on the loom, mother at the spinning-wheel, both pausing in their labor to look up and smile, the greater prize after all, as I almost screamed with delight, " I've got it ! " It was a beautiful white card with my name inscribed on it in copper-plate, as we called it then, and this card fastened to a blue ribbon and suspended from my neck. No champion ever returned crowned from the Olym- PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11 pian games with greater pride, and no one ever received more generous and heartfelt applause than I did there in that dingy old loom shop. It was the turning point of my life. I had to maintain the reputation of being the best speller in the school, and I did ; and from that day to this I have never allowed myself to misspell a word. One day — it was in 1845, on the 10th day of April — as I was returning home from school, the fire-bells sud denly began to ring, the engines were drawn out with ropes, and the whole town was in a state of alarm, as if it were the last day, and judgment coming on all. Pitts burg was on fire. I could see the smoke rising in dark volumes, hear the flames hiss and roar, and smell the fumes of the conflagration just across the river. I was terrified and ran home. My father was out with the old Washington engine all that day and night. It made an awful impression on my childish fancy and memory. But, as distinctly as I remember the great fire, quite as vividly, but with pleasure, instead of pain, do I remem ber seeing General William Henry Harrison, in 1841, when I was scarcely three years old. He was on his way to Washington. It happened that, in passing over to Pittsburg to the carriage in which he rode, he stopped in front of our door. It was an open carriage drawn by four white horses with plumes. There sat the white- haired old hero, whom my father worshiped, for he was a whig; and my father proudly held the boy up in his arms and gave him this his first lesson in hero worship. Not a railroad, not a lamp, not a telegraph, not a school- house in Allegheny City then. When I was about seven years old, along came the talk of the telegraph. I was 12 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. in the loom shop. Alderman Hayes, who often called in to chat with father, was descanting on the telegraph. He announced that it would soon be along in Pittsburg. " Why," said he, " they can send news along a string up on poles from Philadelphia here in less than no time." " Less than no time," thought I ; " that is pretty quick." I have thought about it, and how they could work such miracles with a string on poles, and I have thought a good deal about it since, and understand it now about as well as I did then, and so do you, if you will confess it ! One day — it was the 1st day of April, 1844 — our school was dismissed, every factory and mill closed, and the old schoolmaster took us little fellows down to the Mechanic street bridge, on the Allegheny side of the river, to see a miracle. All Pittsburg and Allegheny were there on either bank of the Allegheny river. I had never seen so many people. It had been announced that a man would fly from the Mechanic street bridge to, and under, and over the Federal street bridge and back at 1 o'clock. It was in all the papers. We all thought then that the newspapers could not lie, and some of the people who were not present that day may still think so, but it disenchanted me. I believe they can lie now, though they seldom do. Promptly at one o'clock, a man dressed in tights, but with a great cloak over his shoulders like wings, sud denly appeared on the bridge. A hush fell on the mighty concourse of people. In my childish credulity, I thought the hour and the man had come. You could have heard a pin drop. The simple-minded old Irish and Scotch, of which the Pittsburg of that day was PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13 composed, and their still more simple children, would have believed any thing. Yes, any thing that Mun chausen could have told them. They all — ten or twenty thousand men and women and children — with equal faith expected now to see the apparition on the bridge spread its wings and fly ; and it did — but it was a goose ! Pittsburg had the latent element in it which, three de cades of years after, made its railway riots possible — a curious community of people as you can find anywhere, with all that is good wrapped up by strange contradic tions with all that is evil, in the whimsical human nature that fills those twin cities — and a roar of rage like the shout of an army went up along those crowded banks, as a rush was made to kill the man who had duped two great old babies of cities, as they really then were. But the mountebank escaped, and the audience dispersed, some cursing and threatening vengeance, but the greater part laughing at the way they had been sold. Imagine the effect on my childish thoughts of the an nouncement of the war with Mexico. The young men around us were enlisting. I could hear the fife and drum day and night, and could see the recruiting office just across the street. It was my first glimpse of war, and, like the serpent that it is, charmed me even while it ter rified me. What is there in human nature that makes what is so repulsive and abhorrent as war, attractive to the childish fancy ? It must be the dregs of that old barbarism and brutality come down to us from that brother who slew his own brother in cold blood, in the beginning of time. It is more than an intimation that the instinct of strife and bloodshed is man's most natural, indeed his predom- 14 PRIVATE DALZELL' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. inating instinct. I saw the Irish Greens embark with Colonel Sam Black, who, nearly twenty years afterward, fell on one of the fields of the great civil war. I heard the children screaming, and saw the wives and mothers clinging to their husbands and sons, as they went on board of the steamer that was so soon to take them away forever. It was a sad sight — to a child, terrible. Soon, however, my father bought a farm in Ohio, and in 1847 we bade adieu to old Pittsburg, got aboard the Mingo Chief, and floated off down the Ohio with all our wordly possessions. It took us ten days then, to reach our destination in Ohio. It takes less than ten hours now. I shall never forget that steamboat ride down the Ohio, and up the Muskingum to McConnelsville, Ohio, before the days of railroads and telegraphs — in the old, old days. Times were slower ; men were slower ; the very planets seemed to move slower than they do now, for did the days not seem longer ? Travel was the slow est of all. Disembarking at the sleepy little country town of McConnelsville, my father found a couple of old road wagons, which started next morning over the hills to our new home, a log cabin in the woods. I re member that long April day's toiling through the mud. It was in 1847, and I was but eight years old — my edu cation finished ! I saw the first log cabin that day I had ever seen, and no other human habitation did I see, except log cabins at long distances apart, in all that trip of twenty miles. It was night when we reached our destination. We were soon installed in our new home — the log hut — a blazing fire on the hearth, and roaring up the stick chim- PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15 ney, which was almost the biggest, certainly the most conspicuous part of the dwelling. It was a new life to me. The men, strong, robust, cheery and communicative; the women, even more so, plain of speech, frank of manners, and all anxious to help the new comers all they could. The men crowded in to chop our wood, and show father how to perform farm work, of which he had no knowledge or experience. The women came to show mother how to pick wool, pull and spin flax, cut and dry apples and peaches, and make soft soap. It was a new world to us all, that life in the cabin. The transition from the cozy brick house in the city to the log house in the deadening, surrounded by the primeval forest. Think of it ! But we soon " got de hang of de barn," and the years rolled on with us much as they did with our neighbors. Still I look back to those days, and sigh when I think of the honest, true hearts, and the willing hands, that surrounded and helped us until we learned the ways of the farm. That genera tion is long since in the grave, and is one of which this might well be proud. Inviting as the theme is, I must not pause to moralize. The reader can do that at his leisure ; and contrasting the generous men and women of that day with the selfish ones of this, is a gloomy task which I freely delegate to any one who can endure it patiently, for I can not. There were frolics of all sorts, quilting parties, husk- ings, dances, wood choppings, raisings, merrymakings of all sorts, in which the whole country-side joined; plenty of whisky in every house, and out on all such oc casions; no drunkenness among the men, no scandals among the women, nothing to bring the blush of shame 16 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. to any cheek. Locks and keys were unknown. Prom issory notes were seldom required for any loan or other debt. For years and years I knew of but one or two arrests, and not half a dozen civil suits in all my child hood there. Men and women stood upon their honor, and it was a Rock of Gibraltar that required the sanc tion of no law to strengthen it. There was no caste. All were of one class. All were on visiting terms. No one ever went to the poor house from our settlement — not one, none to the penitentiary, none to jail, not one to the lunatic asylum. Money was out of the question. Exchanges were carried on mainly by barter. We traded our wheat and live stock mainly for sugar, coffee, whisky, and other necessaries. Nobody would help you raise a house, or clear a field, or roll logs, until you set out a gallon or two of whisky. I remember, once at a neighbor's I saw two big strong fellows walk into the harvest field with their scythes on their shoulders. The farmer told them he had no whisky. " Then," said they quietly, and as a matter of course, " we will cut no grass," and off they went. Had he told them he had no money, they would have laughed and cut his grass all the same, provided that he had whisky. The mercenary spirit had not yet appeared. There were no misers, no usurers, consequently no con tention or litigation, no pride and no envy, no idleness, drunkenness, or vagrancy. I have seen six months pass by in my father's house and not a cent of money in it, and he was about as well off as his neighbors. Even those who owned no land of their own were held to be on an equal footing with the best of the land-holders. You could see no difference between the boys and girls, PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 17 the young men and women, of the landlord and the free holder. They romped together, worked in the field to gether, sat on the same bench in the church and at the log school-house, courted each other, intermarried, and in all things were on an equality. I grew up as other farmer boys did — and I need not repeat the old story, now so familiar to all. In 1855, my good mother had got together $100, and sent me off to Pittsburg, where I entered Duff's College. There I learned somewhat of bookkeeping and penman ship. In the spring I went to Ohio University, at Athens, walking all the way, and carrying all my effects in a handkerchief. I worked for my boarding. At that time the gorgeous young men of the South were there in large numbers, affluent, proud, and generous. I confess I then acquired a prejudice in favor of these noble youth that even three years in war with them never shook off. Poor as I was, almost ragged, working night and morn ing for my boarding, I remember with gratitude their kindness and generosity to me. The next year I taught my first school and earned the first money near Allentown, Yinton county, Ohio. It was the year of the Banks' contest for the Speakership and of the election of Buchanan. It was to me a long winter — so anxious was I to earn the money to go back to college. I got $65 for seventy-two days' teach ing, and started home thrilled with joy and hope. I was in my eighteenth year. What joy realized in manhood can be compared with the dreams of youth indulged in such ecstatic moments ! I had never in my life owned an overcoat, overshoes, or underclothing of any kind. I 18 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. had no habit that cost me one cent. To-day I looked at my diary kept that winter, and it was a terrible winter, as you will remember, the winter of 1855-6, when the snow fell at Christmas and lay at great depth till April. I walked a mile, built my own fires, and never thought of an overcoat or a glove. My entire expenses for the winter were seventy-one cents. I was not different from the other young men of that day, who, like me, were pushing their own fortunes ; but what would the young men of to-day think of seventy-one cents allowance in money for the entire winter ? I thought more of Latin, Greek, and mathematics that winter than of money, and I do yet. There was a slight thaw as I started home on the first of March. It rained a little, and the ice began to break in Sunday Creek. It was swollen and dangerous looking, but it lay between me and my mother and col lege, and I could not brook delay. I got off the horse that had been sent me to ride home (nearly 100 miles), started him into the stream, swollen like a river, and full of broken ice. By dint of hallooing and pelting him with pieces of ice, I managed to get the poor brute over. I then ran up the creek to see if I could find a place where the ice was whole that I might cross myself. At length I found one where the ice seemed unbroken to the other shore. With the impetuosity of youth, not minding the adage, " Look before you leap," I sprang down the bank onto the ice, and through it, and almost under it. I got a thorough wetting in that chilly air, but scrambled out, still on the same side. Approaching it a little more cannily, I found a better place, got safely over, got my horse, and rode home, wet and shivering PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19 with cold, for I had not a change of clothing in the world. Nor did I take cold by it. In a few weeks I was back at the Ohio University, which I was soon forced to leave on account of fever and ague contracted there. I returned home sick and dis couraged ; spent a miserable summer, alternately burn ing and freezing, until at length in August youth and strength prevailed and threw off the disease, and I was myself again, but my money was all gone but ten dollars. The doctors had got the rest for doing what nature had kindly stepped in and was doing for nothing, as usual. Since that I have found that if the vigor of the constitu tion, pleasant and healthful surroundings, and a conformity to the simplest rules of living do not cure you, you need not call the doctor. Call the undertaker when this fails, but not the doctor ! For some years then I taught school of winters, worked with father on the farm in the spring, and attended col lege at Sharon, Ohio. It was a quiet, unpretentious school, but some of the best men and women I ever shall know here or hereafter were my classmates. The college seat was an inland village, forty miles from any railway, but to me as pleasant and beautiful in memory as Au burn was to the poet, Goldsmith. I remember the faculty : Rev. Randall Ross, president, and Rev. W. W. McMillan our only professor. Since leaving that little country col lege it has been my privilege to attend Washington Col lege, Pennsylvania, and Columbia College at Washington City, four long years, and there enjoy the ample means of education afforded by those two colleges, yet I never in mv life met the professor in any college who holds the place in my estimation which my heart and judgment ac- 20 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. cord now while my eyes are flowing with tears of grati tude to Randall Ross and William McMillan. In my af fections they are without a rival among all my school masters. With the modesty always linked with great per sons, vast erudition and profound piety, if our school masters, Ross and McMillan, did not make a deep and lasting improvement in all the young men intrusted to their care, no man ever could. On the breaking out of the war, the president entered the army as a private soldier, the other students mostly following his example, and the professor removed to a western farm, and that was the end- of Sharon College. In 1861, I entered Washington College as a Freshman half advanced, and continued there till August, 1862, when I enlisted as a private soldier in defense of the American Union in Company H, One Hundred and Six teenth Ohio Infantry. I had just entered the Junior year, after a hard struggle of fitful and irregular at tendance at college from 1856 down to 1862. If my father had had the means to pay my way, I should have grad uated long before the war, but I had to manage that my self the best I could. Many a time, returning home from the school or the plow, as the case might be, with my air- castles all seemingly crushed by the rude hand of circumstances, I would have given up in despair but for the gentle voice of my mother, her sweet, sad smile irradiating the darkest passages of my life, and kindling a hope in the gloom of the future. She had carried me, her only son, in her arms into Dr. Press- ly's church, at Allegheny City, and at the baptismal font dedicated my life to God. She desired me to be a preacher in the Presbyterian Church, to which I had be- PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 21 longed since I was eighteen years of age. But for the war I certainly would have been some sort of a preacher, if for nothing else than to gratify her in whom my life was bound up. She followed me on with her deep and matchless love, until she had nearly reached her eightieth year, and had dandled my little ones lovingly on her knees, when her spirit took its flight, peacefully and still, to the world that her faith had long beheld shining in glory behind the stars. Her form rests under the shad ows of the Alleghenies — a sacred spot to me. If I had no other incentive to a pure and blameless life, and a faith that knows no hesitancy or fear, it would be that when life's fitful fever is over I may meet her with my son, James Monroe, over the river under the shadow of the tree of life. II. Transferred in a day from the peaceful shades of class ical learning to 'the camp of war, from the companionship of innocent, aspiring, hopeful young spirits, to that of soldiers, restless and noisy, eager to march to the front, and try the fate of battle, I found myself passing my first night in camp at Marietta, 0., August 22, 1862. It was Sunday night. The profane oath, the obscene jest, the questionable story, rang round the camp, and all was so unusual that, stretched on the hard boards of my quarters, I could not sleep. As I looked out into the night, and up at the stars, and in fancy still on toward the future, then vailed no less for my country than for me in gloom, a sadness came over me that I could not then understand, and now have not the power to describe. And was this the end of all that struggle to obtain an 22 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. education which a hard destiny had seemed to have de nied me ? What was to be my fate, and what was to be my future? And these noble young men around me, what was to become of them ? Ah, was it not kind in God to leave the answers to be unfolded in his own good time ? If, as the thunder follows the electric flash, re sponse had come in a moment then to all my question ings of the future, and I could have foreseen the fate of us all, the young, brave, and patriotic spirits about me that night, flesh and heart must have fainted and failed, and reason itself deserted its throne forever. " God is his own interpreter," and man must wait until his plans are unfolded. I was destined to live to see one after another, class mate, room-mate, friend, neighbor, old acquaintances and new, descend into the dark valley of death one after another — some on the red fields of war, and some in the loathsome hospital, some in camp, some by the roadside — but to me that night no voice spoke out of the future to reveal it. Whether fortunately or unfortunately to me, I can not -yet determine, two things seemed to be in my favor from the outset of my military life. First, I was conceded to be the best penman and accountant in our company. Second, when I was a schoolmaster, my present captain — as gallant a soldier as ever drew a sword — W. B. Teters, now at Boulder, Colorado, had been a student in my school years before, and we were intimate friends. As I was not as robust and strong as most of the other farmer lads in the company, Teters kept me at his quar ters to do his writing, keep his accounts, and make out PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23 his reports, until the following May, when I was pro moted to sergeant-major. I have no disposition or desire to repeat what has so often been better written than I can write it. I shall pass by the winter of 1862-3, when we entered West Virginia, marched to Clarksburg, across to Buchanan, Beverly, the Cheat Mountain region, returned to the' Baltimore road, and joining Mulligan at New Creek, made a forced march to Moorefield, and received our first baptism of battle. It was a complete victory. From there we went to Romney, and in the spring to Winchester. About two months after that, we had a three days' fight with Ewell's forces, and were completely routed and defeated, and forced to find safety — all of us who could — in the mountains. We brought up, after a long chase and a hard march, without provisions for three days, at Hancock, and went from there to Bloody Run. Though at hand and in sight of the field, we never fired a gun at Gettysburg, the Waterloo of the war. That winter we spent in winter quarters near Antie tam. Next spring we took the field with Siegel, and were badly drubbed at New Market, and forced to re treat to Cedar Creek. Hunter next took command, and the long retreat from Lynchburg followed. Then came Sheridan, and no more retreats. I had been disabled, and was no longer fit for field duty, when Colonel Washburn, my gallant commander — who was ever a father to me — was shot through the head in the fall of 1864, and recovering as if by a miracle, or dered me to Wheeling with him, where he assumed com mand of that important post. He and I remained there until the war was over. 3 24 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I had seen over two years of hard service at the front, with Avhich I could fill a book, but the last year of my enlistment I was destined to serve in the inglorious ca pacity of a military clerk, until May 26, 1865, when I was discharged, and once more a citizen. Where was Bier, the head man at my college in 1862 ? Where McCollum, who always sat beside me in the class room ? Where Mcintosh, with whom I used to spend the long winter evenings at home when we taught ad joining schools? Where a hundred other far better men than you or I? For the best men of the North and South, remember, died in that war, almost to a man. Where? Died on the field of battle, starved in the prison pens of the South, dying at home or in hospitals of disease. Alas! All, all gone. Not one of my old chums survived, not one. Others of my comrades, less dear to me, good men and true as they are, remain, but who shall ever fill the vacant chairs of those brilliant and promising young men who went with me to the war ? III. In the war I had met most of the men who were des tined to be the central figures of the future in this coun try — all officers, no privates. Then, as well as now, I knew that the American people despise private soldiers. They have never elevated one to any office and never will. The fact that a man was a private soldier is taken and held as final and conclusive evidence that he is a worthless, good-for-nothing. The most and best he can do is to keep it from being known — as if he were an es caped convict. The reasoning is this : a private soldier PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25 is a worthless man, a coarse, brutal, vicious man ; you were a private soldier ; ergo, you are coarse, brutal, and vicious. The logic is bad, I grant you, but it is univer sally accepted as good. I saw this before I was in the army a month. I have never had any reason to change my opinion and never will. If I had a score of sons, I should warn them against entering the ranks of the army as private soldiers. Thanks, they get none ; pay, little ; bounty and pension, grudgingly, and as if thrown to beggars ; and the people who stayed at home and made money out of their blood despise them and their children's children to the third and fourth generations. As well kick against fate. It is destiny. It can not be helped. There is but one escape from "the odium of being a private, and that is death, with the certain pros pect that the grave itself will be desecrated with sneers. This discrimination invades every walk of life. Nothing can shield the private soldier from this storm of con tumely and scorn. Is he a lawyer ? It will keep away clients. Is he a doctor ? It will keep away patients. Is he a preacher ? It will divide his flock and empty his pews. Is he a mechanic or laborer ? He can never rise above it, and will be kept in poverty and held in con tempt all his days. So, of all other professions and call ings in which he may engage — Nemesis follows him still. He can not escape it. Ask any private soldier what his experience has been for the past twenty-five years, and he will corroborate every statement I make, and illus trate it by a hundred doleful examples. Out of this sprang the nom de plume, Private Dalzell. Seeing no escape from the reproach that must pursue me 26 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. for being a private, and not depraved enough to try to lie out of it, I boldly took the bull by the horns, announced the odious rank to the world, and asked them then and ask them now, what are you going to do about it? To be sure, too many of our poor fellows, by their profanity, drunkenness, and other vices, gross and notorious, give some excuse to the people for lumping us all together as a bad set, yet I must say that as good men, as good fathers, brothers, husbands, neighbors, and Christian gentlemen as walk this earth were only privates. It ought not to be so, but it is so ; and fool indeed is that private soldier who for one moment believes any professions or promises to the contrary made by any clique or class of politicians, in any party, church, or society in the United States. The die is cast. The evening draws nigh. Death is at hand. By patience in well-doing, by faith in Jesus Christ, you and I may earn the approval of Heaven and admission to its portals ; but, wherever it is known you were a private, expect the confidence and esteem of men, the entree of good society — never. IV. It was reflections like these with which the last dole ful chapter closed that caused me to assume the nom de plume of Private Dalzell, a quarter of a century ago, and endure it ever since. It was the leap of Horatius into the gulf; the acceptance of the inevitable; my bow to destiny. But I should not advise any one else to do so, for I always envied the good fortune of Private Miles O'Reilly, who died soon after assuming it. PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27 The war was over. What was I to do now to earn a living, was the question that troubled me most. The great question of the reconstruction of the dismembered Union was undergoing public discussion, but the recon struction of my finances and the shaping of my future was a question that pressed more closely upon me, and demanded immediate solution. Like half a million other young men, the war had torn me up, turned me inside out, and left me penniless, with broken health, gloomy forebodings, and without occupation. I sat down by my mother, and we talked it all over. Her faith in her son and his future had been undimmed by all the clouds of war, and she encouraged me to start out and begin again. I had three half dollars in silver — all the money I had on the earth; half a dollar a year for my mili tary service to the Great Republic — and these I punched and strung together with a wire. They are here in my desk now. I often show them to my children as an ob ject lesson in patriotism and a warning to keep out of the ranks of an army. I had taught school. I had written for the papers before the war and during the war. I have seen my war letters bound up in Frank Moore's Rebellion Record, copied from the Philadelphia Press, of June, 1863, and written while en route for Gettysburg. I thought this all over, but, as I had never received one cent of pay for my irregular and spasmodic contributions to the press, I saw no encouragement there. As Coleridge said of poetry, so I said of newspaper writing, from 1856, when I commenced, down to 1865, it had been to me "its own exceeding great reward" — nothing more. In an old sugar-tree camp, on my father's farm, on 28 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. February, 1856, I had sat down on a log and read aloud to my father, by the blazing fire and the boiling kettles of syrup, my first published contribution to the news paper press, printed in a local paper here in Noble county, Ohio. From that time on my leisure moments had been employed on this most unremunerative toil. Poetry, sketches, letters, and tidbits of all sorts were continually appearing over my name in all the leading daily papers of the United States, for which in ten years I had not asked or received one cent. But that would not do. I must find some sort of work that I could get an honest dollar out of to meet my crying needs. So I taught a country school that winter, at $30 a month, and in the spring had $120 of clear money, for my fa ther boarded me, and necessity had taught enforced economy. My old major was elected county clerk in 1865, and entered upon his new office in the spring of 1866, mak ing me his deputy at $2 a day, a princely income to me, and I took up my abode with him in Caldwell, Ohio, where I now reside. I remained with him until the August following, when my friend, Hon. John A. Bingham, our representative in Congress, procured my appointment to a clerkship in the Customs Bureau, Treasury, Washington City. My father then lived on the old farm. On receiving my designation to the clerkship I saw the avenue of es cape from the drudgery of the life I was leading in the little village, and the future seemed once more lit up with the radiance and beauty which I had long supposed to be eclipsed forever. I mounted my major's horse, the same that he had rode at Cedar Creek and at PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29 Lee's surrender, and, in such heroic companionship, in the cool of the morning, dashed off up the road and over the hills to bid my father and mother good-by. They lived eight miles from Caldwell. I had to pa,ss through the little village of Sharon. There resided two noble girls whom I had known before the war, the Misses Aikin; and, turning my horse off the road, up a lane to the house where they lived, I was at the door in a min ute. They met me like sisters, sang the songs of the war to me, chatted pleasantly, and, wishing me God speed, I remounted my horse, rode down the lane, out into the main road, and off for home once more. It was a pleasant incident of my life, and one that rests in my memory like a lovely picture yet. And there is rea son for it. Just before I reached the main road, I had to cross a bright stream of crystal water that ran across it. As I did so, I heard the steady tramp of a horse's hoofs on the road just ahead of me, and, turning my eyes in that direction, saw the closely vailed figure of a young girl on the horse. As my horse stopped to drink, the apparition passed the end of the lane, and on west, the road I had to travel. Something of the impu dence and curiosity that I had picked up in the war made me resolve to see who the strange young lady was, and, if possible, make her acquaintance and flirt with her a little to pass away the time. I reined up my old hero, touched him slightly with the spur, and he soon carried me out into the highway, west along the road, up to, and past the lady on horseback. As I passed in a gallop I lifted my hat and said, " Good morning." No reply came. My effrontery had over shot the mark — met its just rebuke. 30 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. She was so closely vailed I could not see her face, but there was such a mystery surrounding her that my determination was renewed, at" all hazards, to form or force her acquaintance. And this is how I succeeded, and it may serve as a hint to all bashful young men in the future who may be like situated. Two or three hundred yards further on a little creek crossed the road. There I stopped just a few rods in advance of the mys terious equestrienne. My horse was restive, and the old fellow didn't like the foolishness of standing there in the water when his thirst had been so lately fully quenched at the other stream. He seemed to divine my stratagem, and in his playfulness tried to defeat it. But I held him to it until the lady rode up beside me, and her horse eagerly stopped to drink. The situation was awkward. Coun try-girl, as she must be, she could not but see the game I was playing, for if I had succeeded in concealing it myself the major's horse was cavorting the secret ou< in his tramping and splashing and eagerness to get away. Not a moment was to be lost. 4tHow far are you going this way?" I ventured to ask, trying in vain to peer through the thick vail which hid her features from me. " Eighteen miles," she quietly answered, in a voice of such low, sweet melody as I had never heard before. " I am going six miles in the same direction," I replied, and, without giving her a chance to repulse me, impu dently rode beside her as her horse raised his head and rode up out of the water. I was fascinated by the voice, and I had at least seen her hand and her form, both of the most exquisite beauty. The tone of that voice had captivated me, and thrown me out of my senses. If I had had the world at that PRIVATE DALZELL' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 31 moment I would have freely thrown it away to see that face. I had set out to flirt with her in a kind of boyish, devilish way, but that voice had knocked all such nonsense out of me. I was dazed, bewildered, thrilled through and through with an emotion I had never felt be fore. I was madly in love with the strange, quiet little horsewoman, whom I had never seen, and whom I was destined to chat with for an hour thab day as we rode along, and whose face I was not to see for a year to come. But all things come to an end, and so did that morning's ride. When I bade her good-by at my mother's door, and she rode away through the green woods west, I had no knowledge of "her name or residence, and had not ob tained any clue to either, though by every device of which I was possessed I had endeavored to discover it. Every question was so delicately parried as to increase my curiosity and deepen the mystery into which she had taken refuge. She rode away from me, and had left me nothing but the music of her voice. By a chance I met a good woman, near my father's house, who told me that the young lady had been visit ing a sister near Sharon, and that she lived near Des Moines, in the State of Iowa. She was probably cross ing the country to see another sister who resided at Rix's Mills, Ohio. Her name was Hettie M. Kelley. I felt the hopelessness of ever seeing her again, and tried to banish her from my thoughts, but, do what I might, her form floated before me and the music of her voice thrilled me still. I had. ventured into the camp of the enemy and was made captive myself without an ef fort on her part. 32 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. But time was pressing. I must leave for the city of Magnificent Distances next morning, and there was no time to indulge day-dreams of love. I put it aside as a strange, inexplicable episode of my life, bade father, mother, and sister good-by, returned to Caldwell, and next morning left for Washington City with barely enough money to take me there. Arriving there, I stop ped at the Washington House, where Ben Wade, Judge Bingham, Henry Wilson, and other celebrities were then boarding. It was a new world to me. I had met all the men of the war who have now or had then any name in history, and formed an intimate acquaintance with General Sher man, General Logan, General Leggett, General Banks, and others almost equally distinguished, but of the poli ticians or statesmen I knew as little as they did of me — nothing. It was a new life to me now to live in their presence. I was dazzled with the splendors of the public buildings, parks, statues, and all the profuse and bewildering beau ties of art at the Capitol. But, charming as these were I realized what Emerson said, that what delighted me most was the men — Sumner, Stevens, Wade, Chandler, Bingham, Colfax, Wilson, Chase, Stanton, Raymond, and all the celebrated statesmen of the century ; the greatest men that time ever brought on the stage of action. Andy Johnson was President. He had not swung the circle yet; All the capital was then engaged in the wor ship of military achievement. Grant moved about like a god, worshiped by all. When Custer rode down the avenue every one ran to the door to see him pass. States men vied with each other to see who could do the most PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33 or say the most for the soldier. But I was not there a day until I saw that all this worship was meant for the generals, and by no means for the privates. I happened to look like General Custer. Arriving late in the even ing, an entire stranger, I noticed all the idlers about the hotel office staring at me. As I did not register, one or two belated musicians came in pretty well befuddled, with their big brass instruments under their arms. They stared at me a moment, then stepped aside and spoke to gether in a, drunken whisper, which is not far removed from a sober conversational tone of ordinary pitch; " S'r nade 'im ; s'r nade 'im, hie, at's it !" I heard one of them mumble, and the other fellow nodded assent pro fusely, and they started off down stairs. The gentlemanly clerk, who had noticed the affair, with a smile, stepped up to me, and, with the politest bow in the world, handed me a pen, and asked me to register. He knew Custer well enough, of course. I wrote my name. " See here," he said, with a smile that only a hotel clerk with a bold heart need ever try to copy, " those fellows think you are General Custer, and are going to serenade you." I laughed outright ; and if I had not been three years in the army, it would have gone hard with me, but that I had added a blush. Just then toot, toot went the horns below, on the pavement, and the confused noise of a dozen of oxfollicated youngsters, all talking at once. Toot, toot, preparing to play, the hotel clerk, alarmed at what might happen, rushed from me, down the steps, and while I stood back in the shadow of the stairway, I heard the following not very flattering colloquy : 34 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Clerk. — " What the are you fellows at, any how ? " One of the band. — " Hie ! goin' to blow up ole, hie ! Custer — 's all right." Clerk. — Custer, the . That fellow is not Custer. It is only Private Dalzell." I heard a few oaths muttered out in a maudlin fashion, and the rattling of instruments and drums, as they stag gered together and off down the avenue. The clerk came back wreathed in the smiles out of which, to say nothing of his big ring and false diamond breastpin, he made his salary, and with the ready wit and complete absence of a conscience characteristic of his class, explained that the band was about to serenade Colfax, but he had explained to them that he was not in, and they had gone off. I seemed not to notice the lie, and went to bed, thinking of the difference between my rank and Custer's. Custer was a glorious fellow, and I had seen his yellow locks flying on the field of battle more than once, and now was not displeased to have been mistaken for him. Nevertheless, I had not failed to observe the discrim ination of rank in Washington in this my initial lesson in that wonderful heterogeneous society — a lesson that was afterward repeated to me in a thousand ways. I passed the examination and was installed as clerk in the Treasury Department. My chief was Nathan Sar gent, known to our grandfathers by his newspaper nom de plume of Oliver Oldschool. He was thin and cadav erous, mettlesome and nervy, a typical officeholder, in deed. Always in office till he died, often holding two offices at a time; judge of the Levy Court, whatever PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 that was, for it was like Ben Butler's cript, no one knew, and Commissioner of the Customs as well, the blessed old soul was as happy as a clam at high tide, with his two salaries drawn at once. The drudgery of the desk there for two years took but little of my time or atten tion, and I managed to draw my $120 a month regu larly, until, at last, disgusted with the monotony, and helplessness, and hopelessness of an existence a little less endurable than a private soldier's, I resigned it, in September, 1868, and left the city, and came back to Ohio. I could write a book on what I saw of Washington life. But, as I said of army life, it has been written threadbare, and the subject is repulsive to me. My per sonal friends, Hayes and Garfield, respectively, while President, tendered me a clerkship there at $2,000 a year, but I declined both, with thanks. Reduced to the alternative of taking a clerkship again, or taking a mat tock and a spade in the fields, I should not hesitate to embrace the latter as a means of support. Washington said no man worth the powder and lead to kill him would be a soldier in time of peace. That is my estimate of a clerkship there. The most wretched, dissatisfied, depraved men I ever met outside of military life, I met in the corridors of the departments in Wash ington. Always poor, often drunk, always pressed for money, in debt, without hope, without a future, gen erally they were the most wretched set I ever knew. I never hated a man bad enough since to desire to see him become a Washington clerk. Of course, there were exceptions, but they were few. Andy Johnson was President. I saw him and his 36 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. drunken set of official rowdies start to swing the circle in 1866, and saw them return drunker still. I know it is the fashion to slur it all over, and lie about it, but I know a drunken man when I see him, and a drunker set I never clapped eyes on. Whisky since sent most of them to their graves. I attended the impeachment trial, and reported it for a provincial paper, and received no pay. I did the same afterward at the trials of John H. Surratt and Guiteau. Somehow I always got admission to these great state trials — the only ones of note since the trial of Burr — even when thousands of other men were denied admis sion. At night I attended Columbia Law School, graduated, and in the summer of 1868 was admitted to the bar. I had seen all the great men of the Nation — for they all get to Washington, either to Congress, or to see it, and say they have been in Washington. I published my first book there, " The Life of John Gray, the Last Sol dier of the Revolution." It is in all the libraries of the world, but never brought me a cent. Its only effect was to deplete my purse of all my savings, and procure the passage of a bill which gave the old hero $500 a year his last two years, when he died, and with him the last man of the army of Washington. In the final audit of affairs, 1 hope to find this to have been the best act of my life, and now believe it was. But, as the spinners of yarns say, I am a little ahead of my story. In the summer of 1867 I got a leave of absence, went home, managed to find that vailed lady on horseback, and we were married. She returned with me to Washington, and we kept house there a year, as happy PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 as happy could be. She still survives, and the music of her voice, with the rhythm of her footstep, is to me still the divinest harmony of this life, and the sweetest prom ise of a life beyond. In sunshine and shadow, buoyant with hope, crushed with sorrow, standing by me at the cradle or at the open grave of our child, in prosperity and adversity, ever the same loving faithful wife — but for her, life would be one long hopeless agony to me. In all the dark labyrinths, hers is the only hand of affection left to lead me on to the light, and hold me back from stumbling into the gulf of despair. Once and long I loved the wine cup, drained it to the dregs, and when there seemed nothing left but utter ruin for me, after the world had turned its back on me, with our children in one hand, with the other she gently took hold of mine, and led me up and out of the darkness, until again my feet were firmly planted on the Rock Christ Jesus. V. It was a chill December evening— December, 1868 — my wife, infant daughter, and myself, arrived at the little inn at Caldwell, Ohio. Fifteen hundred dollars was all the money we had in the world, and that was hers. We immediately bought a house — the house we yet live in. It took all our money to pay for it, and we had a hard winter. I had no practice yet at the bar. I kept writing schools of nights in the country, and so earned a few dollars. We did not make ten dollars a month, but we managed to get along. An economical wife can make a little go a long way. The next fall (1869) I was elected prosecuting attor- 38 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. ney of my county, and from that on we had no more trouble, financially at least, for many years, until I en tered into politics. I determined, during the two years for which I was elected, to close every liquor shop in my county, and after a hard struggle I succeeded ; but it cost me a sec ond term, for the liquor men banded together, and spent money lavishly to defeat me in 1871, and they succeeded. I had now to depend on the practice of law alone, and applied myself closely to it. I pause a moment, here, to relate the pleasantest in cident in all my career as a lawyer these twenty years. I was called to Washington county to defend an old schoolmate of mine, Dr. Devine, in a case brought against him by a carpenter who had built his house. It involved all my old friend, Dr. Devine, had in the world. It was for less than $300, yet a judgment would ruin him, and turn him out on the streets with his devoted wife and eight small children. I stayed all night with Devine, and we never slept a wink — talked all night over his case. The next day we tried it before a jury in a jus tice's court in the woods. All the merits were on my side, and the trial was a bitter and protracted one. I was worked up to the highest pitch, and won the case. The bystanders gave me three cheers, and resolved to build a town there, which they have since done, and it is called Dalzell to this day — one of the handsomest vil lages in Ohio. Forming a partnership with Judge Knowles, of Marietta, my practice grew, and was soon worth $3,000 a year. I saved something, purchased a farm, and had nearly $4,000 in money, and owed no man in the world a dollar. And PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39 so life ran on smoothly and prosperously for four golden years — the flower of my life — until, in an evil hour, in the summer of 1875, 1 foolishly accepted a nomination to the legislature, was elected, and there ended my pros perity. After the election in October my name was in all the papers, congratulations poured in on me from every quarter, and I was invited to take the stump in Pennsylvania, which I did, at a great waste of time and money. I thought nothing of it then. It was only when, years after, I looked into an empty flour-barrel and hungry children's faces, and felt in my empty pockets, that I fully apprehended my folly. Four years I now spent in the maelstrom of politics, whirled and tossed about at the caprice of fortune, without any power to control it. I look back on it with pain. If a man can make a large figure like Blaine, Garfield, or Sumner, in politics, let him pursue that profession till he dies. He can work out his destiny there better than elsewhere. But for mediocrity, I know of no calling that offers a more certain ending in disappointment, remorse, pov erty, and despair, than American politics. It is a grand game, and none but grand men need try to play it. Let men of moderate abilities like myself keep out of it, if they would escape the chagrin and mortification of fail ure, accentuated with the pangs of poverty. Four years in the House of Representatives, though I was a member of the Judiciary Committee all the time, and Chairman of the Committee on Military Af fairs, on the stump every fall, not only in Ohio, but in Massachusetts, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and in the councils of the leaders of the Republican party, its Presidents, Senators, and Representatives in Congress, 4 40 PRIVATE DALZELL' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. on terms as familiar as I was with comrades in the army, yet all this was but a poor compensation for the loss of my law practice, my farm, and my money. Hayes was governor. I admired him then and I ad mire him yet. I determined he should be the next President, and so wrote him in the fall of 1875. His re ply I printed in all the newspapers in the United States, for at that time I had easy access to all of them. This started the ball rolling that finally landed him in the White House next year. I was one of nine members who were on his special train on that perilous journey to Washington, and there, amid the cries of the mob, I saw my prophecy and hope fulfilled on the 5th of March, 1877, and I re turned to the legislature determined that Garfield should succeed him. Garfield and I had often stumped together, and I so admired him that I began to write him up for the Presidency. As in the case of Hayes, the wise acres made merry over it, but I kept right on. There is nothing so advances the prospects of a politician as to keep his name constantly connected with some great office. At that time, besides having access to all the dailies as a contributor, I had the free use of the tele graph. I kept prophesying that Garfield would be President, until at length in 1880 I saw the prophecy fulfilled. Garfield and Hayes have often referred to all these matters in the presence of leading statesmen, and I have of their letters bundles that will confirm it. By the way, at sixteen, I began to write to prominent men, and have kept it up ever since. You can not name a statesman of the past quarter of a century who has not written to me, and whose letters I have not here PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41 in my desk. Their publication by my children, when the writers and I are dead, and their publication will wrong no man, will make plain many things that now seem very dark to the uninitiated. General Sherman's letter to me, in 1875, when I was exploiting Hayes for the Presidency, was published at the time in America and Europe, and produced a pro found sensation. It virtually made Hayes President, for before that the papers would not notice him at all as a Presidential possibility. General Hayes' letter to me on the same subject was extensively published, and Howard copied it into the campaign life of Hayes in the year after. General Garfield's letter before his nomination, the one written by him to me, also, the evening after his nomination, and the one inclosing his photograph the night before he was shot obtained an extensive publica tion at the time they were written. But the great bulk of my letters from celebrities have never ,seen the light. Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Horace Greeley, Sam uel Bowles, Governor Morton, and Zachariah Chandler, wrote me almost from their death-beds, as did also Gen eral Grant. They are especially valuable to me. Long fellow, Bryant, and Holland wrote to me up to nearly their last days. I have some of the last utterances of the greatest men that ever trod the planet. They will fill a large volume. There is no way to get at the interior secret and mys tery of events but in this way, early adopted by me, and pursued without cessation now for twenty-five years and more. These were not the days of senseless scrawls or 42 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. typewritten letters from nobodies who had mistaken their calling. One of the first signs of decay which I observed in our statesmanship was the substitution of the type writer and the clerk for the good old hand-written method universally employed by our men of note. A man who can not muster the courage to write a letter, and boldly sign it with his own hand, but tries to shield his imaginary rising greatness behind a typewriter, never was President or any thing great, nor in the nature of things can be. Nothing reveals character like an auto graph letter, and the celebrated man whose greatness is not purchased with money, and is not the caprice of ac cident, from Cicero to Sumner, always wrote his own let ters with his own hand, and so gave them a value beyond that of gold The paper that such a hand touches is transmuted into a possession forever, to be treasured and prized like the gifts of a king, while the wretched scrawls of clerks and the idiotic splutter and splash of machines have no more intrinsic value than rags, and my uniform custom has been to burn them the moment I received them, and that for two reasons : First. It was conclusive evidence that the writer was nobody, and, like all nobodies accidentally in power, anxious to conceal his nonentity. Second. Because I never wanted to correspond with any man but on equal terms, and I therefore abruptly discontinued all correspondence with a self-confessed fool. EXECUTIVE MA.NBION WASHINGTON. 0-9 \d-~~^£l *-{f i -3 n i i i i M 4 -5 ^ * ^ PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43 VI. I had observed that from most of the army societies the privates were left out, as if they were no part of the army which suppressed the Rebellion. So, in 1873, I determined to call a soldiers' reunion, to be held at Caldwell, Ohio, September 16, 17, 1874; and it was held here then, with 25,000 people present, and General Sher man and staff, in full uniform, on the platform. It was an immense success. The Associated Press spread its proceedings before the whole world every morning. It at once became National, and known and read of all men. Sectional strife was never more heated and bitter than then. The bloody shirt was waving in all its terror, North and South. It was the only stock in trade of both parties. In the name of the Lost Cause the South was kept solid. By the same sign, a solid North con fronted it with a fierceness little less intense than that which had characterized the war. I determined to try to see what could be done to soften the asperities growing out of this ugly state of feeling, and so, in issuing the call for the National Re union of 1875, at Caldwell, I added a strong appeal to the men of the Blue and Gray to meet there on a plat form of friendly and patriotic equality. At the roll-call in September, in the umbrageous for est which I had rented for the purpose, twenty-eight states responded, but three men in the Gray — one of these, General Cockrell, now the distinguished senator from Missouri. The press commented variously on all this. Not a 44 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. little ridicule was aimed at me by the clever gentlemen of the extreme partisan daily press, but, with the wiser and more patriotic editors of the leading daily papers, my novel experiment met with unbounded praise, and my idea was a success. A third reunion, of tremendous proportions, at Cald well, in 1876, crowned my work with success, General Kilpatrick himself making response to my address, and giving my idea unqualified approval. So my re union was National, and the idea which I had launched floated on over the Republic under the smile of popular indorsement. I was president of all these reunions. I paid nearly all the expenses, and it nearly ruined me financially. But I was young and ardent then, and stopped at nothing to make it go. The newspapers were very generous to me then, and gave me the free use of their columns to explain my project and purpose. Re unions in imitation of mine sprang up every-where after that, and now there is one at every cross-roads every fall. The first year I held my reunion in the woods near the little village where I live. Over twenty states -were represented ; and, while the crowd was largely made up of privates, General Sherman, and some of the leading men of the Nation, were present, and spoke. The pro ceedings would fill volumes. I have been at scores of reunions since these, which sprang out of this rural beginning, and no one rejoices more than I at the growth of the idea which I had the honor to originate and plant in American soil, even if it did cost me years of hard labor and all my little for tune. And it would be ungenerous of me to forget that PRIVATE DALZELL' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45 Congress passed bills to help me carry out my pro gramme ; and the War Department, under General Grant, freely gave me guns, ammunition, and other ma terials, without which I should have failed. The Legis lature of Ohio did the same thing. The two men who were so soon to be President — Hayes and Garfield — hon ored it with their presence, and were my guests. Not a man of any note, in war or peace, then living, but what sent me a generous Godspeed, and the letters containing these messages of good-will and encouragement I have laid away with my other epistolary treasures, and they will be the best if not the only inheritance that I shall leave my children. In 1877 and 1878 we removed the reunion to the city of Marietta, and President Hayes and cabinet were present in the former year. In 1879 it was located at Cambridge, and was one of surpassing interest, both in enthusiasm and numbers. It had no rival on the continent. Annually the great est statesmen in both sections vied with each other as to who should speak the loudest in its praise. Congress annually paid it the compliment of yielding it the ap proval of both Houses by the passage of bills in its favor, and the newspaper press indorsed it with great fervor. And then I dropped it, after six years of untiring and un ceasing labor, a labor of love, out of which I never received a penny, and never shall, though it cost me thousands of dollars and the flower of my life. My object was at tained. The rank and file, the poor, nameless private soldiers, had commanded public attention and asserted their individuality. The Nation had applauded the ef fort to compel the public to respect the rights of the 46 PRIVATE DALZELL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. rank and file, and at the same time recognize the feet that sectional hatred no longer existed between the men who did the fighting North and South. My idea had won its way to popular favor, and there I dropped it, knowing well then, what all know now, ten years later, that the little leaven of patriotism and peace which my hand had put in the first call for the first reunion, away back in 1873, was destined, ere long, to leaven the whole mass of our politics, and rebuke and put down forever the petty cry of placemen who kept fanning the dying embers of war in order that they might boil their little pots it its blaze ! VII. During these reunion years I had my duties in the legislature to perform every winter, several weeks every autumn I was on the stump for the Republican party, and I had my full share of practice at the bar. I sup pose from 1874 to 1882 I made a thousand speeches, such as they were, and scores of them were eagerly sought and printed in the papers. I never had any great opinion of them myself, but, such as they are, they are to be republished yet ere long. I saw my delegation, elected by an honest people, melt away under the talismanic touch of money freely given as bribes. I saw no private soldier ever could be elected to Congress. I saw no poor man had any business in politics. I saw that bribery was the power behind the throne, greater than the throne itself, and I then and there, growing old and poor and worn out in the service of my country, abandoned politics forever. In 1878, I was freely offered the nomination for Con- ( ,-' sv *"* I' ft A FIRST NATIONAL SOLDIERS' REUNION. CALDWELL, 0.. SEPT. 15, If,, 1874. „, . ,., „. t oi,.™,.,, ,,™l st»ffiiTc