Fighting for the Right.
by Oliver Optic.
PREFACE
"FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT" is the fifth and last but one of "The Blue and the Gray Series." The character of the operations in connection with the war of the Rebellion, and the incidents in which the interest of the young reader will be concentrated, are somewhat different from most of those detailed in the preceding volumes of the series, though they all have the same patriotic tendency, and are carried out with the same devotion to the welfare of the nation as those which deal almost solely in deeds of arms.
Although the soldiers and sailors of the army and navy of the Union won all the honors gained in the field of battle or on the decks of the national ships, and deserved all the laurels they gathered by their skill and bravery in the trying days when the republic was in peril, they were not the only actors in the greatest strife of the nineteenth century. Not all the labor of "saving the Union" was done in the trenches, on the march, on the gun deck of a man-of-war, or in other military and naval operations, though without these the efforts of all others would have been in vain. Thousands of men and women who never "smelled gunpowder," who never heard the booming cannon, or the rattling musketry, who never witnessed a battle on sea or land, but who kept their minds and hearts in touch with the holy cause, labored diligently and faithfully to support and sustain the soldiers and sailors at the front.
If all those who fought no battles are not honored like the leaders and commanders in the loyal cause, if they wear no laurels on their brows, if no monuments are erected to transmit their memory to posterity, if their names and deeds are not recorded in the Valhalla of the redeemed nation, they ought not to be disregarded and ignored. It was not on the field of strife alone in the South that the battle was fought and won.
The army and the navy needed a moral, as well as a material support, which was cheerfully rendered by the great army of the people who never buckled on a sword, or shouldered a musket. Their work can not be summed up in deeds, for there was little or nothing that was brilliant and dazzling in their career. They need no monuments; but their work was necessary to the final and glorious result of the most terrible war of modern times.
No apology is necessary for placing the hero of the story and his skilful a.s.sociate in a position at a distance from the actual field of battle. They were working for the salvation of the Union as effectively as they could have done in the din of the strife. They were "Fighting for the Right," as they understood it, though it is not treason to say, thirty years later, that the people of the South were as sincere as those of the North; and they could hardly have fought and suffered to the extent they did if it had been otherwise.
The incidents of the volume are more various than in the preceding stories, which were so largely a repet.i.tion of battle scenes; but the hero is still as earnest as ever in the cause he loves. He attains a high position without any ambition to win it; for, like millions of others who gave the best years of their lives to sustain the Union, who suffered the most terrible hardships and privations, so many hundreds of thousands giving their lives to their country, Christy fought and labored for the cause, and not from any personal ambition. It is the young man"s high character, his devotion to duty, rather than the incidents and adventures in which he is engaged, that render him worthy of respect, and deserving of the honors that were bestowed upon him. The younger partic.i.p.ants in the war of the Rebellion, Christy Pa.s.sford among the number, are beginning to be grizzled with the snows of fifty winters; but they are still rejoicing in "A Victorious Union."
William T. Adams.
Dorchester, April 18, 1892.
CHAPTER I
A CONFERENCE AT BONNYDALE
"Well, Christy, how do you feel this morning?" asked Captain Pa.s.sford, one bright morning in April, at Bonnydale on the Hudson, the residence of the former owner of the Bellevite, which he had presented to the government.
"Quite well, father; I think I never felt any better in all my life,"
replied Lieutenant Pa.s.sford, of the United States Navy, recently commander of the little gunboat Bronx, on board of which he had been severely wounded in an action with a Confederate fort in Louisiana.
"Do you feel any soreness at the wound in your arm?" inquired the devoted parent with some anxiety.
"Not a particle, father."
"Or at the one in your thigh?"
"Not the slightest bit of soreness. In fact, I have been ready to return to my duty at any time within the last month," replied Christy very cheerfully. "It would be a shame for me to loiter around home any longer, when I am as able to plank the deck as I ever was. In truth, I think I am better and stronger than ever before, for I have had a long rest."
"Your vacation has been none too long, for you were considerably run down, the doctor said, in addition to your two wounds," added Captain Pa.s.sford, senior; for the young man had held a command, and was ent.i.tled to the same honorary t.i.tle as his father.
"These doctors sometimes make you think you are sicker than you really are," said Christy with a laugh.
"But your doctor did not do so, for your mother and I both thought you were rather run out by your labors in the Gulf."
"If I was, I am all right now. Do I look like a sick one? I weigh more than I ever did before in my life."
"Your mother has taken excellent care of you, and you certainly look larger and stronger than when you went to sea in the Bronx."
"But I am very tired of this inactive life. I have been a.s.signed to the Bellevite as second lieutenant, a position I prefer to a command, for the reasons I have several times given you, father."
"I am certainly very glad to have you returned to the Bellevite, though the honors will be easier with you than they were when you were the commander of the Bronx."
"But I shall escape the responsibility of the command, and avoid being pointed at as one who commands by official influence," said Christy, rather warmly; for he felt that he had done his duty with the utmost fidelity, and it was not pleasant to have his hard-earned honors discounted by flings at his father"s influence with the government.
"It is impossible to escape the sneers of the discontented, and there are always plenty of such in the navy and the army. But, Christy, you wrong yourself in taking any notice of such flings, for they have never been thrown directly at you, if at all. You are over-sensitive, and you have not correctly interpreted what your superiors have said to you,"
said Captain Pa.s.sford seriously.
His father recalled some of the conversations between the young officer and Captain Blowitt and others, reported to him before. He insisted that the remarks of his superiors were highly complimentary to him, and that he had no right to take offence at them.
"I dare say I am entirely wrong, father; but it will do me no harm to serve in a subordinate capacity," added Christy.
"I agree with you here; but I must tell you again, as I have half a dozen times before, that I never asked a position or promotion for you at the Navy Department. You have won your honors and your advancement yourself," continued the father.
"Well, it was all the same, father; you have used your time and your money very freely in the service of the government, as you could not help doing. I know that I did my duty, and the department promoted me because I was your son," said Christy, laughing.
"Not at all, my son; you deserved your promotion every time, and if you had been the son of a wood-chopper in the State of Maine, you would have been promoted just the same," argued Captain Pa.s.sford.
"Perhaps I should," answered the young officer rather doubtfully.
"After what you did in your last cruise with the Bronx, a larger and finer vessel would have been given to you in recognition of the brilliant service you had rendered," added the father. "I prevented this from being done simply because you wished to take the position of second lieutenant on board of the Bellevite."
"Then I thank you for it, father," replied Christy heartily.
"But the department thinks it has lost an able commander," continued the captain with a smile.
"I am willing to let the department think so, father. All I really ask of the officials now is to send me back to the Gulf, and to the Bellevite. I believe you said that I was to go as a pa.s.senger in the Chateaugay."
"I did; and she has been ready for over a week."
"Why don"t she go, then?" asked Christy impatiently.
"On her way to the Gulf she is to engage in some special service,"
replied Captain Pa.s.sford, as he took some letters from his pocket.
"Letters!" exclaimed the young lieutenant, laughing as he recalled some such missives on two former occasions. "Do you still keep your three agents in the island of Great Britain?"
"I don"t keep them, for they are now in the employ of the government, though they still report to me, and we use the system adopted some two years ago."
"What is it this time, father?" asked Christy, his curiosity as well as his patriotism excited by this time at the prospect of capturing a Confederate man-of-war, or even a blockade-runner.
"There are traitors in and about the city of New York," answered Captain Pa.s.sford, as he returned the letters to his pocket. "We had a rebel in the house here at one time, you remember, and it is not quite prudent just now to explain the contents of the letters."