“‘Philip Nolan
“‘Lieutenant in the Army of the United States.
“‘He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.’”
Notes
[Note 1:] - Frederic Ingham, the “I” of the narrative, is supposed to be a retired officer of the United States Navy.
[Note 2:] - “Few readers... observed.” In truth, no one observed it, because there was no such announcement there. The author has, however, met more than one person who assured him that they had seen this notice. So fallible is the human memory!
[Note 3:] - The “Levant.” The “Levant” was a corvette in the American navy, which sailed on her last voyage, with despatches for an American officer in Central America, from the port of Honolulu in 1860. She has never been heard of since, but one of her spars drifted ashore on one of the Hawaiian islands. I took her name intentionally, knowing that she was lost. As it happened, when this story was published, only two American editors recollected that the “Levant” no longer existed. We learn from the last despatch of Captain Hunt that he intended to take a northern course heading eastward toward the coast of California rather than southward toward the Equator. At the instance of Mr. James D. Hague, who was on board the “Levant” to bid Captain Hunt good bye on the day when she sailed from Hilo, a search has been made in the summer of 1904 for any reef or islands in that undiscovered region upon which she may have been wrecked. But no satisfactory results have been obtained.
[Note 4:] - Madison. James Madison was President from March 4, 1809, to March 4, 1817. Personally he did not wish to make war with England, but the leaders of the younger men of the Democratic party—Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, and others—pressed him against his will to declare war in 1812. The war was ended by the Treaty of Peace at Ghent in the year 1814. It is generally called “The Short War.” There were many reasons for the war. The most exasperating was the impressment of American seamen to serve in the English navy. In the American State Department there were records of 6,257 such men, whose friends had protested to the American government. It is believed that more than twenty thousand Americans were held, at one time or another, in such service. For those who need to study this subject, I recommend Spears’s “History of our Navy,” in four volumes. It is dedicated “to those who would seek Peace and Pursue it.”
[Note 5:] - Aaron Burr had been an officer in the American Revolution. He was Vice-President from 1801 to 1805, in the first term of Jefferson’s administration. In July, 1804, in a duel, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, a celebrated leader of the Federal party. From this duel may be dated the indignation which followed him through the next years of his life. In 1805, after his Vice-Presidency, he made a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to study the new acquisition of Louisiana. That name was then given to all the country west of the Mississippi as far as the Rocky Mountains. The next year he organized a military expedition, probably with the plan, vaguely conceived, of taking Texas from Spain. He was, however, betrayed and arrested by General Wilkinson,—then in command of the United States army,—with whom Burr had had intimate relations. He was tried for treason at Richmond but acquitted.
[Note 6:] - Colonel Morgan is a fictitious character, like all the others in this book, except Aaron Burr.
The whole passage referred to in the text is this:—
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;
Land of the mountain and the flood.
[Note 8:] - “Frigate-duels with the English, in which the navy was really baptized.” Several great sea fights in this short war gave to the Navy of the United States its reputation. Indeed, they charged the navies of all the world. The first of these great battles is the fight of the “Constitution” and “Guerrière,” August 19, 1812.
[Note 9:] - The frigate “Essex,” under Porter, took the Marquesas Islands, in the Pacific, in 1813. Captain Porter was father of the more celebrated Admiral Porter, who commanded the United States naval forces in the Gulf of Mexico in 1863, when this story was written.
[Note 10:] - Beledeljereed. An Arab name. Beled el jerid means “The Land of Dates.” As a name it has disappeared from the books of geography. But one hundred years ago it was given to the southern part of the Algeria of to-day, and somewhat vaguely to other parts of the ancient Numidia. It will be found spelled Biledelgerid. To use this word now is somewhat like speaking of the Liliput of Gulliver.
[Note 11:] Page 40.-The English cruisers on the American coast, in the great war between England and Napoleon, claimed the right to search American merchantmen and men of war, to find, if they could, deserters from the English navy. This was their way of showing their contempt for the United States. In 1807 the “Chesapeake,” a frigate of the United States, was met by the “Leopard,” an English frigate. She was not prepared for fighting, and Barron, her commander, struck his flag. This is the unfortunate vessel which surrendered to the “Shannon” on June 3, 1813.
[Note 12:] - No one has erected this monument. Its proper place would be on the ruins of Fort Adams. That fort has been much worn away by the Mississippi River.