The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1863-12-17
. Man WITHOUT A COUNTRY,
A Thrilling Tale of Poor Nolan.
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
From the Atlantic Monthly. d.
l suppose that very few casual readers of
the New York Herald of August 18th observ-
ed, in an obscure corner, among the 'Deaths,"
the announcement,
"EoLAN. Died, on board U S Corvette Le>
want, Lat. 2 deg. ii minutes g., Long. l3l deg,
w, on the 18th day of May, Philip Nolan"
1 happened to observe it, because | was
stranded at the old Mission House in Mack,
nae, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer
which did not choose to come, and l was de-
vouring, to the very stubble, all the current
literature IcouId get hold of, even down to
the deaths and marriages in the Herald. 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 Of
ficer of the Leyant who reported it had chos-
Ell to make it thus:-'Died, May 18th, The
Man without a Country For it was as
'''The Man without a Country that poor Phil
ip Nolan 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
a man who had taken wine with him once a
fortnight, in a three years cruise, who never
knew that his name was 'Nolan," or Wheth-
er the poor wretch lac any name at all.
There can be no possible harm in telling
this poor creatures story. Reason enough
there has been till now, ever since Madison's
Administration went out in 1917, for very
strict secresy, the secresy of honor itself, among
the gentlemen of the navy who lave had No
Ian in successive charge. And certainly it
speaks well for the esprit de corps of the pro-
~fession and the personal honor of its members,
that to the press this mans story has been
wholly unknown-and | think to the country
at large also. | have reason to think from
some Investigations | made in the Naval
Archives when | was attached to the Bureau
of Construction, that every official report re-
lating to him was burned when Ross burned
the public buildings at Washington. Cne of
the fuckers, Or possibly one of the5Watson's
had Nolan in cherge at the end of the war
and when on returning from his cruise, he
reported at Washington to one Of the Crown
inshields-who was in the Navy Department
when he came home-he found that the De-
partment ignored the whole business. Wheth-
er they really knew nothing about it, or wheth-
er it was a "No@ nj 2dc0rd0," determined Oh
as q piece of policy, | do not know. But
this l do know, that since 1917, and possibly
before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan
in his report Of a cruise.
But, as | say, there is no need for secresy
any longer. And now the poor creature is
dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a lit
tie of his story, by the way of showing young
Americans Of to-day what it is to be
A MAN WITHOUT COUNTRY.
Philip Nolan was as sine 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, in 1905, at
Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the riv-
Ell, he met, as the devil would have it, this
gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at the same
dinner party, | think. Burr marked him,
talked to him, walked with him, took him a
day or two's voyage in his hatboat, and, in
short fascinated him. For the next year, bar
rack life was very tame to poor Nolan. He
occasionally awaited himself of the permission
the great man had given him to write to him.
Long, highworded, stilted letters, the poor
boy wrote and re-wroteaan copied. But new
er a line did he have in reply from the gay
deceiver. The other boys in the garrison
sneered at him, because he sacrificed in this
unrequited affection for a politician the time
which they devoted to Monongahela, old-sledge
and high-low-iack. Bourbon, euchre, and
polka were still unknown. But one day No
Ian had his revenge. This time Burr came
down the river, not as an attorney seeking q
place for his Office, but as a disguised conquer
for. He had defeated | know not how many
district attorneys; he had dIned at | know
not how many public dinners he had been
heralded in l know not how many Weekly
ArguSeS =; and it was rumored that he had an
army behind him, and an empire before him.
1t was a great day-his arrival-to poor No
Ian. Burr had not been at the fort an hour
before he sent for him. That evening he ask
ed Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show
him q canebreak or a cottonwood tree as be
said,-really to seduce him; and by the time
the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body
and soul. From that time, though he did not
yet know it, he lived A NAN WITHOUT A CoUN-
TRY.
What Burr meant to do, I know no more
than you, dear reader. It's none of our bus
mess just now. Only, when the grand ca
tastrophe 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 tri-
~ a 1ttOLlllASlll, 6OLAC VI OllO lCSSCI LILY III LllGtJ
distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther
from us than Puget's sound is to-day, intro
duced the like novelty on their provincial
stage, and, to while away the monotony of the
simmer at Fort Adams, got up, for specta-
cles, a string of court msrshals on the officers
there. One and another of the Colonies, and
Majors were tried, and to fill out the list, lit
tie Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there
was evidence enough-that he was sick of the
service, had been willing to be false to If, and
would have obeyed any order to march any
where with any one who would follow him,
had the order only been signed, 'EBy com
mand of his excellency A. Burr" The courts
dragged on. The big flies escaped-rightly
forallIknow, Nolan was proved guilty enough,
as l say; yet you and l would never have
heard of him, reader, but that, when the Pres
ident of the court asked him at the close,
whether he wished to say anything to show
that he had always been faithful to the Uni
ted States, he cried cut, in a fit offrenzy
Oh the United States! [ wish l may
never hear of the United States again"
l suppose be did not know hew 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. snot to say their necks, had been risked
for the very idea, which he SO cavalierly ours
ed in his madness. He, on his part, had grown
up in the Weat of those days, in the midst of
Spanish plot" "Orleans plot" and all the
rest. He had been educated on a plantation,
where the finest comDany was q Spanish off