The Man Without a Country and Other Tales | Page 3

corps
of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to the
press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, to the
country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I
made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of
Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned
when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the

Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end
of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
Washington to one of the Crowninshields,--who was in the Navy
Department when he came home,--he found that the Department
ignored the whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it
or whether it was a "Non mi ricordo," determined on as a piece of
policy, I do not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly
before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his story,
by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be A MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
* * * * *
Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
1805, 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
dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated
him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan. He
occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man had given
him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy
wrote and rewrote and copied. But never 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, hazard, and high-low-jack.
Bourbon, euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had
his revenge. This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney
seeking a place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had
defeated I know not how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I
know not how many public dinners; he had been heralded in I know not
how many Weekly Arguses, and it was rumored that he had an army
behind him and an empire before him. It was a great day--his arrival--to
poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him.
That evening he asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show him a
canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as he 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 as A MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
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 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 provincial stage, and, to
while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
spectacles, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
another of the colonels 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 the service, had 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 been signed, "By command of
His Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies
escaped,--rightly for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I
say; yet you and I 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