AS HIS FRIEND SAW SHAW MONG the fellow-officers and friends of Col. Robert Gould A Shaw, whose hitherto unpublished letters during the Civil War were lately printed in the MAGAZINE, was Col. Charles F. Morse, who served as an officer in the Second Massachusetts the entire four years of the war. This was the regiment in which Col. Shaw served as first lieutenant and captain from May 28, 1861, to April 17, 1863. Col. Morse, who is still living in Kansas City, wrote home constantly all through the war, and his letters, extracts from which were privately printed in 1898, contain many references to Col. Shaw during the time that they served in the "Second" together. In these first two years of the war, Col. Morse's letters are full of brief references to "Bob Shaw"; they ate in the same mess, they took many rides through the country together when not engaged in active service; occasionally they slept under the same blanket. The first mention of him of any length occurs in a letter written from Williamsport, Md., on June 5, 1862, after the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He writes: "I will mention some of the narrow escapes that came under my notice. Bob Shaw was struck by a Minie ball, which passed through his coat and vest and dented into his watch, shattering the works all to pieces, doing him no damage with the exception of a slight bruise; the watch saved his life; he has sent it home." After the battle of Cedar Mountain, the next August, he mentions riding to the rebel lines with Bob Shaw, under a flag of truce, to get news of some of the missing officers of the Second. The Second Massachusetts was in the thick of the battle of Antietam, forming a part of Slocum's corps, which fought in the cornfield. Morse describes the scenes during and after that engagement: "Capt. Shaw was struck by a spent ball in the neck; I was struck by a spent ball in the temple, which laid me on my back for a moment and raised a pretty black and blue spot.... We carried into action less than 240 men and lost about eighty killed and wounded.... We lay down that night about ten o'clock, glad enough to get a little rest. The dead and dying were all around us and in our very midst.... I found that Bob Shaw and I had slept within fifty feet of a pile of fourteen dead rebels, and in every direction about us they were lying thick." For some time after the battle the regiment was encamped on Maryland Heights, across the river from Harper's Ferry, and Morse and Shaw made several visits to the battlefield of Antietam. "You don't know what an interesting thing it is to ride over the hard-fought ground of Antietam,"writes Morse. "Yesterday Bob Shaw and I visited all the places where we were engaged, saw where our men were killed, etc. We could follow our first line along by the graves; next to ours came the Third Wisconsin's, which lost terribly in this place; next to that was a battery which was splendidly fought. Where it stood, in one place are the remains of fifteen dead horses lying so close that they touch each other." "What do you think of the First Massachusetts Black Infantry?" writes Morse on February 8, 1863. "I suppose that there is no doubt but that the regiment will be raised; one of our captains has had the offer of the colonelcy, and he has accepted it. (The captain referred to is Shaw.) As a military measure, I entirely believe in it, and I hope it will be entirely successful. It is ridiculous for persons to try and laugh this thing down; there is no reason in the world why black troops raised in this country shouldn't be as good as those used by the English and French.... If I had anything to do with such a regiment, I should not want to raise much of it in the North, but get enough men there to form a skeleton, and then go South and fill up with contrabands. "You will probably hear before long who the captain is that I have referred to; he doesn't want it mentioned at present. In his next letter he writes again; "Capt. Shaw went off to go to work on his new command, the First Massachusetts Blacks. He has a hard piece of work ahead of him, but I hope he will be entirely successful. The greatest doubts in my mind are whether the Northern negroes will enlist; I don't put much faith in them myself.” From that time on the two saw little of each other, being in different regiments and engaged, for the most part, in different parts of the country, but they corresponded up to within a few days of Shaw's death. Morse writes from Tullahoma, Tenn., November, 1863: In looking over his trunks for a photograph, Col. Coggswell found a letter that had come for me while I was in Massachusetts; he gave it to me, and I found the address was in Bob Shaw's writing. You can imagine how glad I was to get it. I always thought it a little strange that he had not answered my last letter. I opened it the first chance I got. It was mostly a description of his movements to Darien and other places; but at the close he spoke in a very feeling way of our friendship and intimacy, and of his happiness since his marriage. It was written on the 3d of July." Morse's letters are extremely interesting in themselves; they are written in a simple narrative style, and give a vivid picture of the actual business of warfare. He writes convincingly of things he knows, as the following passage will show: "I have talked with a number of the rebel prisoners. You have no idea what innocent, inoffensive men most of them seem to be; a great many are mere boys; there are some old men, too, with humped backs. Scarcely any of them seem to have any idea of what they are fighting for, and they were almost all forced into the army. I talked with one poor little fellow from Georgia who had received a severe wound; he could not have been more than sixteen years old. He said that all he wanted was to get into one of the hospitals at the North; that he had been abused and knocked around ever since he had been in the army, and that the first kind treatment he received and the first kind words he had heard were from our men. He expected to be bayoneted as soon as we came up. "The more I see of battle-fields convinces me that instances of cruelty to the wounded are extremely rare, and that they are treated, almost universally, with kindness by the men of both sides. When we crossed the field (of Antietam) we drove the rebels from where their wounded were lying everywhere; but our men took the greatest pains not to touch them or hurt them in any way, although sometimes it was almost impossible to avoid it. And when we halted the men gave almost every drop from their canteens to the poor rebels. The idea that a soldier could ever bring himself to bayoneting a wounded man strikes me now as almost absurd; it may have been done during this war, but I don't believe it." The following opinion on the Emancipation Proclamation is also interesting, coming as it does direct from the field of battle: "Have you made up your mind about the Emancipation Proclamation? At first, I was disposed to think that no change would be produced by it, but now, I believe its effect will be good. It is going to set us straight with foreign nations. It gives us a decided policy, and though the President carefully calls it nothing but a war measure, yet it is the beginning of a great reform and the first blow struck at the real, original cause of the war. No foreign nation can now support the South without openly countenancing slavery. The London Times, no doubt, will try to make out slavery a Divine Institution, but its influence does not extend everywhere. I think the course of that paper since the war began, has been more outrageous than anything I ever knew of.... It may have the effect to cause disturbances among the troops from the extreme Southern States, who will think, perhaps, that their presence is more needed up at home than up in Virginia... It is evident that Jeff Davis is frightened by it, to judge by the fearful threats of retaliation he is making." Incidents of camp life always strike Morse; the following will serve as a good example: "We have lately become acquainted with a new horror of war. The other night, we were all awakened about one o'clock by the most awful screams and groans, proceeding directly from behind our tent. We all rushed out and found Tom, Capt. Williams's servant, apparently trying to tie himself up in a knot, all the time holding onto his ear for dear life, exclaiming between his groans, ‘Oh! take him out! take him out of my ear! I shall go crazy!' and such like ejaculations. We found out at last that some kind of a bug had crawled into his ear while he was asleep, and was now working round near his tympanum. The doctor came at last and took him to the hospital, and by puring oil into his ear, killed the bug; he then gave Tom some morphine to make him sleep. In the morning, after a vigorous syringing into the afflicted ear, the animal hove in sight and was removed by a pair of pincers. It proved to be a hard, round, pointed black beetle, about three-quarters of an inch long. We all now stop our ears with cotton wool every night, not caring about having explorations made so near our brains." CHARLES F. MORSE Written previous to the Battle of the Okechubbee, Florida 1839, by Lieutenant G. W. Patten, U. S. A. R OLL out the banner on the air, And draw your sword of flame! With measured step your columns dun Close up along the glen, If we must die ere set of sun, Oh! let us die like men. We seek the foe from night till morn, A foe we do not see Go roll the drum, and wind the horn, In idle strength we watch a prey "Tis not to right a kinsman's wrongs We battle at our country's call If in the struggle we must fall, Remember, boys, that Mercy's dower Oh! let us die like men. (Lieutenant Patten, known as the "Poet Laureate of the Army" (1808-82) served in the Indian War in Florida, 1837-42, and wrote a number of poems, one of which "The Seminole's Reply," was familiar to all schoolboys fiifty years ago. He served also in the Mexican and Civil Wars and rose to Lieutenant-Colonel.) |