The Man Without a Country and Other Tales by Edward E. Hale


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Page 2

If I had forgotten him and his name, I can only say that Mr. Jefferson,
who did not forget him, abandoned him and his,--when the Spanish
Government murdered him and imprisoned his associates for life. I have
done my best to repair my fault, and to recall to memory a brave man, by
telling the story of his fate, in a book called "Philip Nolan's
Friends." To the historical statements in that book the reader is
referred. That the Texan Philip Nolan played an important, though
forgotten, part in our national history, the reader will
understand,--when I say that the terror of the Spanish Government,
excited by his adventures, governed all their policy regarding Texas and
Louisiana also, till the last territory was no longer their own.

If any reader considers the invention of a cousin too great a liberty to
take in fiction, I venture to remind him that "'Tis sixty years since";
and that I should have the highest authority in literature even for much
greater liberties taken with annals so far removed from our time.

A Boston paper, in noticing the story of "My Double," contained in
another part of this collection, said it was highly _improbable_. I have
always agreed with that critic. I confess I have the same opinion of
this story of Philip Nolan. It passes on ships which had no existence,
is vouched for by officers who never lived. Its hero is in two or three
places at the same time, under a process wholly impossible under any
conceivable administration of affairs. When my friend, Mr. W.H. Reed,
sent me from City Point, in Virginia, the record of the death of PHILIP
NOLAN, a negro from Louisiana, who died in the cause of his country in
service in a colored regiment, I felt that he had done something to
atone for the imagined guilt of the imagined namesake of his unfortunate
god-father.

E.E.H.

ROXBURY, MASS., March 20, 1886.

* * * * *

I supposed that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August
18th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
announcement,--

"NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2� 11' S., Long.
131� W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."

I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
Mission-House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did
not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the
current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
marriages in the Herald. My memory for names and people is good, and the
reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember
Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at
that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had
chosen to make it thus:--"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip 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. I dare
say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in
a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or
whether the poor wretch had any name at all.

There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
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.

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