Twenty Years in Europe. Samuel H. M. Byers
have a full month to see your folks and come to us. Of course, I don’t like to hurry you, but this programme seems so fair I trust it will suit your convenience.
“My best regards to your father.
“Dear Byers: I now have a letter from Mr. Sparks, agent of the White Star Line, saying he has all ready for your and Minnie’s most comfortable passage in the ‘Celtic.’ Dec. 14, next. So I shall expect you here by the 10th of December, and will accompany you to New York and see you off.
“He also reports that the ‘Celtic’ has just made the run from New York to Queenstown in 8 days and 12 hours, with bad coal. So you may safely count on reaching Paris inside of ten days. Truly yours,
Shortly, I went back to the General’s home at Washington. He took me to see President Grant. He seemed to have free access wherever he pleased to go, for, although others were waiting in the reception-room, he passed them with a bow, and conducted me into the cabinet-room. General Grant sat quite alone at the end of the historic table. The warmth of his reception showed very quickly how intimate the two great leaders were.
The President asked me some questions about the service abroad, and my replies seemed to gratify him. Then there was a hint that Mr. Horace Rublee, the American Minister at Bern, was about to resign and come home. I had known that from Mr. Rublee direct, and I had quite an ambition to secure the place. Why not? I had performed the duties more than once in the Minister’s absence, and the proposed promotion seemed perfectly natural. General Grant gave me every encouragement to believe that I should shortly have the post.
Shortly the President arose and asked General Sherman to let him know at once when the resignation of Rublee should be sent in. He saw no reason why I should not be promoted to the post.
“It looks like a very sure thing,” said the General to me as we left the White House.
Alas, and alack! Mr. Rublee went home on a leave, found his affairs different from what he had anticipated, and did not resign at all. He simply got his leave extended and extended, and drew the pay, nearly to the end of Grant’s term. My best good chance was gone.
December 9, 1872.-Went with the General and Mrs. Sherman to hear McDonald, the Scotch novelist, lecture on Burns. General Sherman introduced the speaker, and, in a little speech, showed his own familiarity with the Scotch bard. I knew this well enough, for I had seen him reading Burns by the hour. McDonald commenced with great feeling and enthusiasm. Once I had heard Charles Dickens read, but it seemed to me here, to-night, was a man more sincere with his subject. There was no effort at effect. I recall Dickens in his dress suit, his enormous white shirt front, his big, red rose on his lapel, his dainty, foppish movements on the stage, his undisguised pauses and signals for applause, as much as to say: “That is good; now clap your hands.” With McDonald, all was different, all sincere. Burns seemed to be there in person that night.
After the lecture we sat up till midnight, telling reminiscences of the war. The year before, in our home at Zurich, we had spoken of an escape I had once made from the prison pen at Macon, and of how near I had come to changing the whole siege of Atlanta. He asked me for some more of the details. I had been captured from his army in the assault on Missionary Ridge, and had endured many months of imprisonment at Libby. When they put us in the stockade at Macon, I resolved on getting away. The first time I tried it, the guards fired and killed another officer, who happened to be near me, in the dark. Then, by hook and crook, I got hold of a gray rebel uniform, and in this disguise, one bright July morning, walked over the dead line, past the guards, and, eventually, got off into the rebel army at Atlanta, a hundred miles away. For ten days I walked up and down among the troops, the forts, observing the position of the besieged army. I dared not stop, or rest, or sleep. If spoken to, or stopped, I was forever just going to the Ninth Alabama, where I claimed to belong. Naturally, I never went near that regiment. My intent was to collect all information possible concerning the rebel troops and forts, and then, in the excitement of the first battle, escape through the lines. I well knew the value my knowledge now could be to Sherman. I had dozens of incidents every day that for a moment put my life in peril. Once I saw the lines of the enemy so thinned, Sherman’s army could have entered almost without a shot. Then came the terrible battle of the 22d of July. I followed the Rebel troops in the attack on Sherman’s rear, but failed to make my escape. The next morning I changed my course, and, passing their left flank, and down close by the Chattahoochie river, there in the woods, within sight of the Union banners, was captured as a spy. Every stitch of my clothing was searched. I was brutally treated and sent to Hood’s headquarters for trial. Unfortunately for me, some of the very officers who captured me had seen me in one of the forts the preceding Sunday. Army headquarters were fixed on the green lawn of a city mansion. The officers’ desks were out on the grass, and the papers describing me as a dangerous spy were put into one of the pigeonholes. These had been shown to me on my way to headquarters by a foolish guard. All was excitement, for fighting was still going on. As for me, I was put into a little tent, with two deserters, who were to be shot the next morning. During the night, one of these condemned boys got out of the tent on some pretext, and, when morning came, and I was brought out for a hearing, all the incriminating papers were gone. There was not a particle of proof as to who I was. I instantly acknowledged myself to be a Union soldier, and claimed the rights of a prisoner of war. The astonished officials reminded me that they had a right to shoot me, I being discovered inside their lines in their uniform; that only a few months previous our General Rosecrans had shot two Southern officers for doing what I was now doing. I was in great peril, when a Colonel Hill, Chief Provost Marshal of their army, said, for the present, anyway, I should be put back among the prisoners at Macon. Almost the same night, I was selected, with some two hundred others, to be taken to Charleston, to be put under the fire of the Yankee fleet, then bombarding the city. The barbarism of the act, the excitement and confusion soon following, led to a complete forgetfulness of me. I never heard again of the charges against me.
General Sherman had listened to the story in perfect silence. Then rising and giving the coals in the fire a violent stir with the poker, he exclaimed: “By God! that was an experience. Had you gotten through the lines that day, it might have changed everything. It might have saved ten thousand lives.”2
Christmas Eve.-The voyage on the “Celtic” is over, and to-night finds Miss Sherman and myself in Merry England.
I soon left Miss Sherman with friends in Paris, and hurried home to Switzerland. Later, after some rambling in Italy, she came and spent a month with us in our home by the lake. Two or three letters from her father at this time, though purely personal, are not without interest:
“Dear Byers: We have all written to Minnie several times, but, I fear, we have overlooked the fact that you must have separated in Paris soon after Christmas, but I hope she was thoughtful enough to write you our several general messages of respect and fond wishes. I was in New York last Monday, Dec. 23d; called at the office of the White Line, and got the agent, Mr. Sparks, to promise to give me the first possible news of the ‘Celtic.’ That night I was at the New England dinner at Delmonico’s, and received a note from Sparks saying the ‘Celtic’ was reported off Queenstown that night at 10:30, and that is all I know of her, and of the details of your passage, up to the present moment. The next morning I telegraphed to Mrs. Sherman here, and to your father at Oskaloosa. All the ships that came over at the same time report heavy westerly weather, so I suspect you had a rough passage after passing the banks of Newfoundland, though the westerly wind rather favored your speed. My supposition is that you did not enter Queenstown, but put the mails on some tug that went outside, and that you put into Liverpool the 24th, too late for London or Paris for Christmas Day, and I hope you found out General Fairchild and spent the day with him and Mrs. Fairchild. We will begin to look for letters from Minnie about Monday next-this is Thursday. The weather in all North America has been severe since you left us, except for two or three days after you sailed. The ground is covered with heavy snow. Yesterday (New Year’s) was, however, strictly
A detailed description of the incidents of the adventure within the lines of the enemy appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, May, 1880, and is repeated in Mr. Byers’ “Last Man of the Regiment.”