Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1863-12-10
4 MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
A Thrilling Tale of Poor Nolan.
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
From the Atlantic Monthly

From the Atlantic MontnIy.I
suppose that very few casual readers of
the New York Herad of August 18th obsery-
Ell, IN an obscure corner, among the = Deaths"
the announcement,
q Nolan. Died, on board Z. :. Corvette Levant,
Lat. deg. IL minutes s.. Long. ISL deg. " =. on
the 18th OF May, Philip Nolan.'
! happened 80 observe it, because | was
stranded at the old Mission House in Macki-
nae, waiting for Il Lake Superior steamer
which dld not choose to come, and | was de-
vOurlng, to the very stubble all the current
literature / could get hold of, even down to
the deaths and marriages in the HetaM NV
memory for names and people is good, and
the reader will see, as he goes on, that | had
reason enough to remember Philip Nolan
There are hundreds of readers who would
have paused at that announcement if the
officer OF the Lcvant who reported it had
chosen to make it thus =" Died, May 1th,
The Man without Il Country" For it was as
" The Man without Country" that poor
Philip n olan had generally been known by
the officers who had him in charge during
some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men
who sailed under them. | dare say there is
many Il man who has taken wine with him
once a fortnight, i'll three years cruise, who
never knew chat his name was "Nolan," or
whether the poor wretch had any name at all
this poor creatures story. Reason enough
there has been till now, ever since Madison's
Administration went out in 1917, for very
strict secrcsy, the Sccrcsy of honor itself,
among the gentlemen Of the navy who have
had Nolan III successive charge. And GER
talnly 1t speaks well for the eSDt9t de corps of
the profession and the personal honor of its
members, that to the press this nuns story
has been wholly unknown--and think to the
country at large also. | have reason to think
from some Investigations | made III the Naval
Archives when | was attached to the Bureau
of Construction, that every official report re
lating to him burned when Ross burned
tn public buildings at Washington. One of
the fuckers, possibly one Of the Watson's
had Nolan in charge at the end OF the war
and when, on returning from his cruise, he
reported at w ashington to one OF the Crown
inshelds-who was in the Navy Department
when he came home--he found that the De
partmcnt ignored the whole business
Whether they really knew nothing about it,
or whether it was :" Non nj ricordo,' deter
mined on piece of policy, | do not know
But this ! do know, that since 1917, and pos
Sibly before, no naval officer has mentioned
Nolan in his report OF "a cruise
But, as ] say, there is no need for sccresy
any longer. And now the poor creature is
dead, it seems to me worth while to tell Il
little of his story, by way of showing young
Americans of to-day what it is to be
MAN WITHOUT 4 COUNTRY.
Philip Nolan was as inc a young officer as
there was in the Legion Of the West as the
Western Legion of our army was then called.
When Aaron Burr made his first dashing ex-
petition down to New Orleans, III 1905, at
Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the riv-
er, he met as the devil would have it, this
gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
dinner party, think Burr marked him.
talked to him. walked with him, took him n
day or two's voyage in his hatboat and, in
short, fascinated him. For the next year.
barrack life very tame to poor Nolan.
lie occasionally availed of the permission the
great man had given him to write to him.
Long, highwordcd, stilted letters the poor
boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But new
er line did he have i'll reply from the aiy
deceiver. The other boys in the garrison
sneered at him, because he sacrificed in this
unrequited affection for politician the time
which they devoted to Monongahela, old
sledge, and high-low jack. Bourbon, euchrc,
and poker, were still unknown. But one day
Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came
down the river, not attorney seeking
pace for his office, but as a disguised con
querer. He had defeated l know not how
many district attorneys; he had dined at |
know not how many public dinners; he he'd
been heralded in l know not how many
HeekIg -drq1tSeS and it was rumored that he
had an army behind him, and an empire be-
fore him. 1t was great day-hiS arrival
TO poor Nolan. Burr had lot been at the
fort an hour before he sent for him That
evening he asked Nolan to take him out in
his skitf, to show him a canebrake or a cot
ton wood tree, as he said,-really to seduce
him; and by the time the sail was over, No
lap was enlisted body and soul. From that
time, though he did not yet know IT, he lived
rs 4 MAN WITHOUT COUNTRY.
What Burr meant to do I know no more
than you, dear reader. 1t is none of our
business Just now Only, when the grand
catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the House
of Virginia of that day undertook to break
on the wheel all the possible Clarences Of
the then House of York, by the great treason
trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in
that distant Mississippi Valley, which was
farther from us than Puget's Sound is to-day,
introduced the like novelty on their provin-
cial stage, and, to while away the mOnotony
OF the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
spectacles, string of court martialS on the
officers there. One and another of the Col
onels and Majors were tried, and to fill out
the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven
knows, there was evidence enough-that he
was SICK OF Ine service, mad been willing to
be false to it, and would have obeyed any
order to march any-whither with any one who
would follow him, had the order only been
signed, BY command of His Excenency A
Burr" The courts dragged on. The big flies
escaped--rightly for all | know. Nolan was
proved guilty enough, as | say; yet you and
| would never have heard of him. reader but
that, when the President of the court asked
him at the close, whether he wished to say
anything to show that he had always been
faithful to the United States, he cried out, in
fit of frenzy:
OH the United States l wish
may never hear of the United States again y
l suppose he did not know how the words
shocked old Col. Morgan, who was holding
the court Half the officers who sat in it had
served through. the Revolution and their
lives, not to say their necks had been risked
for the very idea which he 80 cavalierly cursed
in his madness He, On his part, had grown
up In the West of those days, in the midst of