The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale
Produced by Kurt A. T. Bodling, Pennsylvania, USA
[Frontispiece caption:] "He cried out, in a fit of frenzy, 'Damn theUnited States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!'"
The Man Without A CountrybyEdward E. HaleAuthor of "In His Name," "Ten Times One," "How to Live," etc.
BostonLittle, Brown, and Company
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863,By TICKNOR AND FIELDS,in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS,in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the your 1888,BY J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANYin the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
Copyright, 1891, 1897, 1900, 1904,BY EDWARD E. HALE.
Copyright, 1898, 1905,BY LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction
Love of country is a sentiment so universal that it is only on such rareoccasions as called this book into being that there is any need ofdiscussing it or justifying it. There is a perfectly absurd statement byCharles Kingsley, in the preface to one of his books, written fiftyyears ago, in which he says that, while there can be loyalty to a kingor a queen, there cannot be loyalty to one's country.
This story of Philip Nolan was written in the darkest period of theCivil War, to show what love of country is. There were persons then whothought that if their advice had been taken there need have been noCivil War. There were persons whose every-day pursuits were greatlyderanged by the Civil War. It proved that the lesson was a lesson gladlyreceived. I have had letters from seamen who read it as they were lyingin our blockade squadrons off the mouths of Southern harbors. I have hadletters from men who read it soon after the Vicksburg campaign. And inother ways I have had many illustrations of its having been of use inwhat I have a right to call the darkest period of the Republic.
To-day we are not in the darkest period of the Republic.
This nation never wishes to make war. Our whole policy is a policy ofpeace, and peace is the protection of the Christian civilization towhich we are pledged. It is always desirable to teach young men andyoung women, and old men and old women, and all sorts of people, tounderstand what the country is. It is a Being. The LORD, God of nations,has called it into existence, and has placed it here with certain dutiesin defence of the civilization of the world.
It was the intention of this parable, which describes the life of oneman who tried to separate himself from his country, to show how terriblewas his mistake.
It does not need now that a man should curse the United States, asPhilip Nolan did, or that he should say he hopes he may never hear hername again, to make it desirable for him to consider the lessons whichare involved in the parable of his life. Any man is "without a countrywho, by his sneers, or by looking backward, or by revealing hiscountry's secrets to her enemy, checks for one hour the movements whichlead to peace among the nations of the world, or weakens the arm of thenation in her determination to secure justice between man and man, andin general to secure the larger life of her people." He has not damnedthe United States in a spoken oath.
All the same he is a dastard child.
There is a definite, visible Progress in the affairs of this world.Jesus Christ at the end of his life prayed to God that all men mightbecome One, "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they alsomay be one in us."
The history of the world for eighteen hundred and seventy years since hespoke has shown the steady fulfilment of the hope expressed in thisprayer.
Men are nearer unity--they are nearer to being one--than they were then.
Thus, at that moment each tribe in unknown America was at war with eachother tribe. At this moment there is not one hostile weapon used by oneAmerican against another, from Cape Bathurst at the north to thesouthern point of Patagonia.
At that moment Asia, Africa, and Europe were scenes of similar discord.Europe herself knows so little of herself that no man would pretend tosay which Longbeards were cutting the throats of other Longbeards, orwhich Scots were lying in ambush for which Britons, in any year of thefirst century of our era.
Call it the "Philosophy of History," or call it the "Providence of God,"it is certain that the unity of the race of man has asserted itself asthe Saviour of mankind said it should.
In this growing unity of mankind it has come about that the Sultan ofTurkey cannot permit the massacre of Armenian Christians withoutanswering for such permission before the world.
It has come about that no viceroy, serving a woman, who is the guardianof a boy, can be permitted to starve at his pleasure two hundredthousand of God's children. The world is so closely united--that is tosay, unity is so real--that when such a viceroy does undertake to commitsuch an iniquity, somebody shall hold his hands.
The story of Philip Nolan was published in such a crisis that it met thepublic eye and interest. It met the taste of the patriotic public at themoment. It was copied everywhere without the slightest deference tocopyright. It was, by the way, printed much more extensively in Englandthan it was in America. Immediately there began to appear a series ofspeculations based on what you would have said was an unimportant errorof mine. My hero is a purely imaginary character. The critics are rightin saying that not only there never was such a man, but there nevercould have been such a man. But he had to have a name. And the choice ofa name in a novel is a matter of essential importance, as it proved tobe here.
Now I had a hero who was a young man in 1807. He knew nothing at thattime but the valley of the Mississippi River. "He had been educated on aplantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer, or a Frenchmerchant from Orleans." He must therefore have a name familiar toWestern people at that time. Well, I remembered that in the preposterousmemoirs of General James Wilkinson's, whenever he had a worse scrapethan usual to explain, he would say that the papers were lost when Mr.Nolan was imprisoned or was killed in Texas. This Mr. Nolan, asWilkinson generally calls him, had been engaged with Wilkinson in somespeculations mostly relating to horses. Remembering this, I took thename Nolan for my hero. I made my man the real man's brother. "He hadspent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas."And again:--"he was catching wild horses in Texas with his adventurouscousin." [Note: Young authors may observe that he is called a brother inone place and a cousin in another, because such slips would take placein a real narrative. Proofreaders do not like them, but they give aplausibility to the story.] I had the impression that Wilkinson'spartner was named Stephen, and as Philip and Stephen were bothevangelists in the Bible, I named my man Philip Nolan, on thesupposition that the mother who named one son Stephen would name anotherPhilip. It was not for a year after, that, in looking at Wilkinson's"Memoirs" again, I found to my amazement, not to say my dismay, thatWilkinson's partner was named Philip Nolan. We had, therefore, twoPhilip Nolans, one a real historical character, who was murdered by theSpaniards on the 21st of March, 1801, at Waco in Texas; the other apurely imaginary character invented by myself, who appears for the firsttime on the 23d of September, 1807, at a court-martial at Fort Adams.
I supposed nobody but myself in New England had ever heard of PhilipNolan. But in the Southwest, in Texas and Louisiana, it was butsixty-two yea
In the midst of the war the story was published in the "AtlanticMonthly," of December, 1863. In the Southwest the "Atlantic" at oncefound its way into regions where the real Phil Nolan was known. A writerin the "New Orleans Picayune," in a careful historical paper, explainedat length that I had been mistaken all the way through, that PhilipNolan never went to sea, but to Texas. I received a letter from a ladyin Baltimore who told me that two widowed sisters of his lived in thatneighborhood. Unfortunately for me, this letter, written in perfectlygood faith,