The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-12-27
"a MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY"
Strange History of a United States Army
oficer-Fifty-Six Years on the Ocean.

On the 18th of August, 1863, the New York
Herald contained the following announcement:
= "NoLAN-Died on board u. S. corvette Levant.
PHILIP NOLAN"
This Of itself would attract no special atten-
tion.
81 happened to observe it," says Edward Ev-
erette Hale, "as my memory for names and
people are good, and the reader will see, as he
goes on. that / had reason enough to remember
Philip Nolan.
philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as
there was in tho Legion of the West as the
Western division OF the army WIS called, during
Jefferson's administration When Aaron Burr
made his first dashing expedition down to New
Orleans in 1906. at Fort Massac, or somewhere
above on the river he met, as the devil would
have it, this gay, dashing. bright young fellow
at some party l think. Burr marked him, talked
TO him, walked with him, took him a day or
rwo's voyage in his hatboat, and in short fascina-
ted him. For the next year barrack 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, h~igh-word-
cd, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote
and copied. But never a line did he have in re-
ply from the gay deceiver.
The next time Burr came down the river not
as an attorney seeking a place for his offlce. but
do 81 O1SkuIStu COHuucFtE. A. IL OClC0tSo l.
know not how many district attorneys; he had
dined st | know not how many public dinners;
he had been heralded in l know not how many
Weekly Arguses, and it was rumored he had an
army behind him and an empire before him. 1t
was a great day for poor Nolan. Burr had not
been at the fort an hour before he sent for him.
That evening Nolan took him out in his skiff;
before the sail was over Nolan was enlisted,
body and soul.
"What Burr meant to do I know no more than
You, dear reader. It 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 FORK,
by the great treason-trial at Richmond, some of
the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi valley.
which was further from US than Pugets sound
Is to-day, introduced the like novelty on their
provincial stage, and. to while away the monot-
ony Of the summer at Fort Adams, got up for
Spectacles a string of court martlals On the Off
GERS there. One and another of the colonies and
majors were tried, and to fill out the list little
Nolan, against whom. Heaven knows, there was
evidence enough. Nolan was proved guilty
enough, as | say; yet you aud l would never
have heard of him 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 a fit of frenzy:
"'D-n the United States! / wish l may never
hear of the United States again
II suppose he did not know how the words
shocked old Colonel Morgan. who was holding
the court. He had been led by the United
States for all the years since he had been in the
army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian
to be true to the United States which gave him
,the uniform he wore and the sword by his side.
Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because the
limited States had picked you out first. as one
of her own confidential men of honor, that
Aaron Burr cared for you q straw moro than
for the Hatboatmen that sailed his ark for him.
He damned his country, and wished he might
never hear her name again.
eHe never did hear her name but oEce again.
From that moment, Sept. %, 1907, till the
day he died, May IL, 1865, he never heard her
name again. For that half century or more, he
was "a man without a country
"Old Morgan, as | said. was terribly shocked.
IF Nolan had compared George Washington to
Benedict Arnold, or cried God save King
sGeorge,' Morgan would not have felt worse. He
called the court into his private room and re-
turned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a
rEheet, to say:
The court decides, subject TO the approval of
the President, that you never hear the name of
the United States again
Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed.
Then Morgan added:
"tMr. Marshal. take the prisoner to New Or
Jeans in an armed boat and deliver him to the
naval commander there
"Nolan was taken to New Orleans. Colonel
Morgan took the proceedings OF the court to
Washington and explained them to Mr.. Jeffer-
son. They were approved by the President.
Before the Nautilus got round from New Or
Jeans to the northern Atlantic coast with the
prisoner on board the sentence had been ap-
proved, and Nolan was a man without a coun-
try"
Mr.. Hale here writes as follows: "When I was
second officer of the Intrepid, some thirty years
after, I saw the original paper of Instructions
and he then gives it as closely as his memory
will permit. 1t is as follows:
WASHINGTON -, 1907.
"Sir-You will receive from Lieutenant Neale
fhe person of Philip Nolan. late a lieutenant in
the United States army.
'This person, on his trial by court-martial,
expressed with an oath the wish that he might
Tnever hear of the United States again
"The court sentenced him to have his wish
fulfilled.
'For the present the execution of the order is
Entrusted by the President to this department.
You will take the prisoner on board your
ship and keep him there with such precautions
,as shall prevent his escape.
'You will provide him with such quarters, ra-
tions and clothing as would be proper for an off
Ger of his late rank if he were a passenger
on your vessel on the business of his govern
meut.
"The gentlemen on board will make any ar
engagements agreeable to themselves regarding
his society. He is to be exposed to no indig-
nifty of any kind. nor is he ever unnecessarily to
be reminded that he is a prisoner.
"But under no circumstances is he ever to hear
OF his country or to see any information regard
ing it; and You win specially caution all the
officers under your command to take care that
in the various indulgences which may be granted
this rule, in which his punishment is involved,
shall not be broken.
'It is the intention of the government that he
shall never again see the country he has dis
owned.
Before the end of your cruise you will receive
orders which will give effect to this intention.
Respectfully yours, w. SoUTHARD,
For the Secretary of the Navy
The author of this sketch thinks Captain Shaw
was the commander of the ship, and that these
instructions passed from one commander to an
other, as from time to time he was changed from
one ship to another, each holding this paper as
authority for keeping Nolan in custody. If it
was Captain Shaw, he then regulated the ETH
!quette and the precautions of the affair, and ac-
cording to his scheme they were carried out till