Recollections of a Varied Life Part 10

But the proceedings of every court-martial must be reduced to writing and approved or disapproved by authorities "higher up." Sometimes those authorities higher up have some glimmering notion of law and justice, and it is in reliance upon that chance that lawyers chiefly depend in defending men before courts-martial.

But no man is ent.i.tled to counsel before a court-martial. It is only on sufferance that the counsel can appear at all, and he is liable to peremptory dismissal at any moment during the trial.

It was under these conditions that I undertook the defense of

TOM COLLINS

Tom was an old jailbird. He had been pardoned out of the Virginia penitentiary on condition that he would enlist--for his age was one year greater, according to his account of it, than that at which the conscription law lost its force. Tom had been a trifle less than two months in service when he was caught trying to desert to the enemy.

Conviction on such a charge at that period of the war meant death.

In response to a humble request I was permitted to appear before the court-martial as Tom Collins's counsel. My intrusion was somewhat resented as a thing that tended to delay in a perfectly clear case, when the court had a world of business before it, and my request was very grudgingly granted.

I managed, unluckily, to antagonize the court still further at the very outset. I found that Tom Collins's captain--who had preferred the charges against him--was a member of the court that was to try him.

Against that indecency I protested, and in doing so perhaps I used stronger language than was advisable. The officer concerned, flushed and angry, asked me if I meant to impugn his honor and integrity.

I answered, in hot blood:

"That depends upon whether you continue to sit as judge in a case in which you are the accuser, or whether you have the decency to retire from the court until the hearing in this case is ended."

"Are you a man responsible for his words?" he flashed back in reply.

"Entirely so," I answered. "When this thing is over I will afford you any opportunity you like, captain, to avenge your honor and to wreak satisfaction. At present I have a duty to do toward my client, and a part of that duty is to insist that you shall withdraw from the court during his trial and not sit as a judge in a case in which you are the accuser. After that my captain or any other officer of the battery to which I belong will act for me and receive any communication you may choose to send."

At this point the presiding officer of the court ordered the room cleared "while the court deliberates."

Half an hour later I was admitted again to the courtroom to hear the deliberate judgment of the court that it was entirely legitimate and proper for Tom's captain to sit in his case.

[Sidenote: Court Martial Evidence]

Then we proceeded with the trial. The proof was positive that Tom Collins had been caught ten miles in front, endeavoring to make his way into the enemy's lines.

In answer, I called the court's attention to the absence of any proof that Tom Collins was a soldier. There are only three ways in which a man can become a soldier, namely, by voluntary enlistment, by conscription, or by receiving pay. Tom Collins was above the conscription age and therefore not a conscript. He had not been two months in service, and by his captain's admission, had not received soldier's pay. There remained only voluntary enlistment, and, I pointed out, there was no proof of that before the court.

Thereupon the room was cleared again for consultation, and a little later the court adjourned till the next morning.

When it rea.s.sembled the judge advocate triumphantly presented a telegram from Governor Letcher, in answer to one sent to him. It read:

"Yes. I pardoned Collins out of penitentiary on condition of enlistment."

Instantly I objected to the reception of the despatch as evidence. There was no proof that it had in fact come from Governor Letcher; it was not made under oath; and finally, the accused man was not confronted by his accuser and permitted to cross-examine him. Clearly that piece of paper was utterly inadmissible as testimony.

The court made short work of these "lawyer's quibbles." It found Tom Collins guilty and condemned him to death.

I secured leave of the court to set forth my contentions in writing so that they might go to the reviewing officers as a part of the proceedings, but I had very little hope of the result. I frankly told Tom that he was to be shot on the next Sat.u.r.day but one, and that he must make up his mind to his fate.

The good clergyman who acted as chaplain to the military prison then took Tom in hand and endeavored to "prepare him to meet his G.o.d." After a while the reverend gentleman came to me with tears of joy in his eyes, to tell me that Tom Collins was "converted"; that never in the course of his ministry had he encountered "a case in which the repentance was completer or more sincere, or a case more clearly showing the acceptance of the sinner by his merciful Saviour."

My theological convictions were distinctly more hazy than those of the clerical gentleman, and my ability to think of Tom Collins as a person saturated with sanct.i.ty, was less than his. But I accepted the clergyman's expert opinion as unquestioningly as I could, and Tom Collins confirmed it. When I visited him in the guard-house I found him positively ecstatic in the sunlight of Divine acceptance which illuminated the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When I mentioned the possibility that my plea in his behalf might even yet prove effective, and that the sentence which condemned him to death the next morning might still be revoked, he replied, with apparent sincerity:

"Oh, I hope not! For then I must wait before entering into joy! But the Lord's will be done!"

The next morning was the one appointed for Tom Collins's death. His coffin was ready and a shallow grave had been dug to receive his body.

The chaplain and I mounted with him to the cart, and rode with him to the place of execution, where three other men were to die that day.

Tom's mood was placidly exultant. And the chaplain alone shed tears in his behalf.

[Sidenote: "Death Bed Repentance"]

When the place of execution was reached, an adjutant came forward and read three death warrants. Then he held up another paper and read it.

It was a formal doc.u.ment from the War Department, sustaining the legal points submitted in Tom Collins's case, disapproving the finding and sentence, and ordering the man formally enlisted and returned to duty.

The chaplain fell into a collapse of uncontrollable weeping. Tom Collins came to his relief with the injunction: "Oh, come, now, old snuffy, cheer up! I'll bet you even money I beat you to h.e.l.l yet."

That clergyman afterward confided to me his doubts of "deathbed repentances," at least in the case of habitual criminals.

x.x.xI

In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied--in an entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of anything less ign.o.ble than provost duty.

Against this we revolted, respectfully and loyally. We sent in a protest and pet.i.tion asking that if horses could not be furnished for our guns, we should be armed with Enfield rifles and permitted to march with our battalion as a sharpshooting support.

The request was granted and from the Wilderness to Petersburg we marched and fought and starved right gallantly, usually managing to have a place between the guns at the points of hottest contest in every action of the campaign.

At Petersburg we found artillery work of a new kind to do. No sooner were the conditions of siege established than our battery, because of its irregularly armed condition, was chosen to work the mortars which then for the first time became a part of the offensive and defensive equipment of the Army of Northern Virginia.

All the fragments of batteries whose ranks had been broken up and whose officers had been killed, wounded, or captured during that campaign of tremendous fighting, were a.s.signed to us for mortar service, so that our numbers were swelled to 250 or 300 men. The number was fluctuating from day to day, as the monotonous murder of siege operations daily depleted our ranks on the one hand while almost daily there were additions made of men from disintegrated commands.

I have no purpose here to write a history of that eight months of siege, during which we were never for one moment out of fire by night or by day, but there is one story that arose out of it which I have a mind to tell.

I had been placed in command of an independent mortar fort, taking my orders directly from General E. P. Alexander--Longstreet's chief of artillery--and reporting to n.o.body else.

Infantry officers from the lines in front--colonels and such--used sometimes to come to my little row of gun-pits and give me orders in utter ignorance of the conditions and limitations of mortar firing.

The orders were not binding upon me and, under General Alexander's instructions, I paid no heed to them, wherefore I was often in a state of friction with the intermeddlers. After a little I discovered a short and easy method of dealing with them. There was a Federal fort known to us as the Railroad Iron Battery, whose commanding officer seemed a person very fond of using his guns in an offensive way. He had both mortars and rifled field guns, and with all of them he soon got my range so accurately that all his rifle sh.e.l.ls cut my parapet at the moment of exploding, and all his mortar sh.e.l.ls fell among my pits with extraordinary precision. In order to preserve the lives of my men I had to take my stand on top of the mound over my magazine whenever he began bombarding me. From that point I watched the course of his mortar sh.e.l.ls, and when one of them seemed destined to fall into one of my little gun-pits, I called out the number of the pit and the men in it ran into their bomb-proof till the explosion was over.

In dealing with the annoyance of intruding infantry officers, I took advantage of the Railroad Iron Battery's extraordinary readiness to respond to the smallest attention at my hands. A sh.e.l.l or two hurled in that direction always brought on a condition of things which prompted all visitors to my pits to retreat to a covered way and hasten to keep suddenly remembered engagements on their own lines.

[Sidenote: Gloaming Visitors]

Once my little ruse did not produce the intended effect. It was after sunset of a day late in August. Two officers came out of the gloaming and saluted me politely. They were in fatigue uniforms. That is to say, they wore the light blue trousers that were common to both armies, and white duck fatigue jackets that bore no insignia of rank upon their collars.

At the moment I was slowly bombarding something--I forget what or why--but I remember that I was getting no response. Presently one of my visitors said:

"You seem to be having the sh.e.l.ling all to yourself."

I resented the remark, thinking it a criticism.