COL. GEORGE WASHINGTON FLOWERS 
 MEMORIAL COLLECTION 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 W. W. FLOWERS 
 
7 
 
 The Morte d' Arthur; 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 4 
 
 SPIRIT AND MANNERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 BALTIMORE : 
 
 TUKNBULL BROTHERS. 
 1872. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 
 Br TURNBULL BROTHERS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
ROWERS COLLECTION 
 
 dedication. 
 
 TO MRS. POL K j 
 
 TVIDOW OP THE RIGHT BKV. LEONIDAS POLK, 
 
 •WHO, WHETHER AS A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS WHEN BISHOP OF LOUISIANA, OR 
 AS A SOLDIER OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY WHEN LIEUT. GEN. POLK, 
 O. S. A., EXEMPLIFIKD IN HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER THE SPIRIT 
 OF ANCIENT CHIVALRY AS HANDED DOWN TO US IN THE 
 MORTE D'ARTHUR, THIS TREATISE ON MODERN CHIV- 
 ALRY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY ONE 
 WHO HAS KNOWN AND REVERED HER 
 FROM YOUTH, IN ADMIRATION OF 
 HER MANY VIRTUES. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/mortedarthuritsiOObalt 
 
THE MORTE D 'ARTHUR. 
 
 Sir Thomas Mallory's Book of King Arthur and his noble Knights 
 of the Bound Table. Original edition of Caxton, with an Intro- 
 duction by Sir Edward Strachy, Bart. Philadelphia: J. B. 
 Lippincott & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1868. 
 
 "iBpesy is a part of learning: in measure of words for the 
 most part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and 
 
 doth truly refer to the imagination The use of this feigned 
 
 history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind 
 of man in those points wherein the nature of things cloth deny it, 
 the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason 
 whereof there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample great- 
 ness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can 
 be found in the nature of things. Therefore because the acts or 
 events of true history hath not that magnitude which satisfieth 
 the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and 
 more heroical; because true history propoundeth the successes- 
 and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue 
 and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, 
 and more according to revealed providence ; because true history 
 representeth actions and events more ordinary and less inter- 
 changed, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness and 
 more unexpected and alternate variations : so as it appeareth 
 that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and 
 to delectation. 
 
6 
 
 THE MOETB d' ARTHUR. 
 
 " And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation 
 of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by sub- 
 mitting the shows of things to the desire of the mind ; whereas 
 reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things." 
 
 This analysis of Heroic Poetry which we owe to the acumen 
 of Lord Bacon, gives us the key to the enthusiasm excited by it 
 in the breasts of the most cultivated of nations in all ages and in 
 all stages of development. Our own half-civilised or well-nigh 
 barbarous ancestors forgot for the time their wonted ferocity in 
 listening to the runes and sagas recited to them by their frantic 
 bards and priests ; and under their inspiriting influences, fired by 
 the hope of earning the smile of Odin by deeds emulating his valor, 
 they rushed to battle, to victory or death, and died exulting in the 
 right to claim from him an immediate translation to the halls of 
 Walhalla, there to quaff through eternity mead, metheglin, and 
 even blood, from their to us ghastly drinking-cups — the skulls of 
 their enemies. 
 
 In Greece, cultivated Greece, the spell cast by Homer upon his 
 own age still rests upon ours ; for through the mists of antiquity 
 his gigantic shape looms through space, and throws its heroic 
 shadow upon the poetry of modern times : for — 
 
 "Thy laurels, Pelides, had faded in gloom 
 Had the bard not preserved them immortal in bloom." 
 
 At this very day the deeds of the Trojan heroes are chanted by 
 the Venetian gondolier alternately with those of the deliverers of 
 Jerusalem, and by a harmless anachronism Achilles and Hector 
 mingle with Tancred and Rinaldo in doughty deeds of arms : thus 
 do the united geniuses of Homer and of Tasso stamp themselves 
 upon Time itself. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, when the " Gai Science" was the only 
 literary recreation, or rather attainment, of those whose " orna- 
 
THE MORTE b'aRTHUE. 
 
 7 
 
 merits" were "arms," whose "pastime" war, the troubadours, 
 trouveres, and minnesingers filled a large space in the life of the 
 times; for the divine afflatus, never wholly quenched in the 
 rudest bosoms, fed itself by the recital of those acts of chivalric 
 unselfishness, that devotion to woman, that sacrifice of the strong 
 to the weak, that ardent aspiration for glory, and honor for honor's 
 sake, which constitute the very essence of true heroic poetry. 
 Looking to something better, something beyond themselves, of 
 which they deemed themselves capable, and to which their aspira- 
 tions all tended, the knights of Richard Cceur-de-Lion, of the 
 Black Prince, of Charlemagne, and of Philip Augustus, turned 
 from their own deeds of to them modern arms — sullied in their 
 eyes by the consciousness of unworthy motives, and actuated by 
 a desire for personal aggrandisement — to a time when in the 
 dim obscurity of the Past knightly fame had lost the blots and 
 blurs, the remembrance even of personality, and stood amidst 
 the myths of antiquity a glorious type of purity and unselfish- 
 ness : to the time when King Arthur gathered his knights about 
 his " Table Round," and discussed with them in reverential awe 
 "the Quest for the San Graile," in itself the then highest and 
 holiest object of knightly devotion — and if we may be pardoned 
 the seeming anachronism, the noblest, the most unselfish, as it 
 was the first of crusades. For the expeditions undertaken in more 
 modern times, and which were truly crusades, had for their object 
 a tangible earthly reward. Godfrey of Bouillon, and after him 
 Baldwin, Count of Flanders, were not to be spiritual lords alone ; 
 they were also to have the temporal ability to reward their suc- 
 cessful followers. The dominion of the Holy Land, the earthly 
 power of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, were no mean adjuncts to 
 the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. " The Quest for the San 
 Graile," on the contrary, offered rewards wholly spiritual in their 
 nature : no earthly recompense awaited him who " achieved it." 
 
8 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 A scapulaire, a monk's cowl and a rosary, were to be his only 
 visible titles to bonor ; bis sole recompense lay in a sbadowy 
 promise of future happiness beyond tbe grave and a present 
 absolution from all sin. 
 
 In itself tbe San Grail was but a simple disb, according to some 
 a cbalice ; but into tbe etymology or tbe orthography of the word 
 it is useless now to enter, for all agree that it was a golden vessel 
 sanctified by having been blessed by our Saviour at the Last Sup- 
 per. Whether it held the Paschal lamb, tbe emblem of His body, 
 or the juice of the vine, the emblem of His blood, it was alike 
 holy. Brought by the piety of Joseph of Arimathea into Britain 
 whilst still containing a portion of his Redeemer's blood, it long 
 miraculously continued a visible token to the faithful of the death 
 and sacrifice of Christ their Lord ; but (so the legend runs) in con- 
 sequence of the sinfulness of mankind, in the lapse of years it 
 disappeared from mortal sight, never again to appear to human 
 vision until it should "be achieved" by a knight "clean of his 
 sins," to whom it should bring all heavenly blessings. This 
 spiritual reward, this " Quest of the San Graile," is the earliest re- 
 corded type of knightly unselfishness. It was a search after 
 holiness, for the reward which it alone had to offer, in which 
 purity and unselfishness alone could win the prize. Can the im- 
 agination of man conceive of anything more ennobling ? Can 
 there be a more exalted object of human ambition than this? 
 
 Too Utopian perhaps for modern views, it is however the first 
 written evidence of the existence of what we now in our day 
 term Chivalry. What then is this much vexed, this much de- 
 rided question — this Chivalry? We cannot answer better than 
 in the words of Sir Edward Strachy, and say " that chivalry 
 exists for us in spirit rather than in outward visible forms ; that 
 it no longer comes to us with the outward symbols of war-horse 
 and armor, and noble birth, and strength of arm and high-flown 
 
THE MOETE D ARTHUR. 
 
 9 
 
 protestations of love and gallantry ; yet we never fail to know and 
 feel its presence, silent and unobtrusive as it now is. We recog- 
 nise the lady and gentleman not less surely now than they did in 
 old times, and we acknowledge their rights and power over us 
 now no less than then." 
 
 Chivalry then exists for us now in our manners. That is the 
 heritage left us by our forefathers : our manners, and through 
 them our laws. For to quote a no less able than graceful writer 
 — now, alas! no longer in life to exemplify by his manners what 
 he taught with his pen — Prof. Wilson : " Good manners give a 
 vital efficacy to good laws. These few words comprise the need- 
 ful constituents of national happiness and prosperity Good 
 
 laws without good manners are empty breath." And to what, 
 tell us ye who laugh at and deride modern chivalry — to what 
 one thing do we owe our manners more than to that knightly 
 element of chivalric courtesy implanted in our ancestors by their 
 early legends of King Arthur — that 
 
 "Darling of all poesy, 
 Through whose raised visor beamed the fearless eye — 
 The limpid mirror of a stately soul, 
 
 Bright with young hope, but grave with purpose high, 
 Sweet to encourage, steadfast to control : 
 An eye from whence subjected hosts might draw, 
 As from a double fountain, love and awe "? 
 
 Divest the world of chivalry, and what would woman have 
 been without it in the Middle Ages ? nay, say what would she now 
 be without that daughter of chivalry — good manners ? For to 
 refer again to Prof. Wilson : " Good manners consist in a con- 
 stant maintenance of self-respect, accompanied by attention and 
 deference to others ; in correct language and gentle tones of 
 voice, ease and quietness of movement and action. They repress 
 no gaiety nor animation which keeps free of offence ; they divest 
 serious men of an air of severitj" or pride. In conversation, good 
 manners restrain the vehemence of personal or party feeling ; and 
 that versatility winch enables people to converse readily with 
 2 
 
10 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 strangers, and take a passing interest in any subject which may 
 be presented to them" — is, in short, good manners. So that in 
 point of fact that unselfishness practised by the knights of the 
 Round Table in their quest for the San Grail finds its full devel- 
 opment in the highest phase of the manners of the nineteenth 
 century. Tracing our modern refinement step by step back to its 
 source, looking from the stream to the fountain-head, we find its 
 first spring in the Morte cF Arthur. That exalted legend it was 
 which first fired and then fed the heroic spirit which shone in 
 Charlemagne, in Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the Black Prince, in 
 Du Guesclin, in Henry the Fifth, and in Philip Augustus, and 
 which they exemplified not only on the battle-fields of Spain' 
 Palestine, France, and England — at Roncesvalles, before Jerusa- 
 lem, at Cressy, and at Poitiers, but also in their daily lives and 
 conversation — in their manners. That same spirit it is which, 
 blazing in the pages of Froissart, has made that delightful chron- 
 icle the chosen companion of readers of all ages and all times — 
 from the school-bo}' who as he reads sighs that those stirring times 
 are forever past, and regrets that he cannot now wield his resist- 
 less sword and crash through iron helmets as though they were 
 paper, nor like Gaston de Foix rescue by his own prowess high- 
 born dames from the clutch of the savage Jacquerie — to the old 
 man who as he pores over its half-remembered pages forgets his 
 age in the visions of his youth to which it recalls him, and 
 awakens within him memories which he thought already and for- 
 ever dead. Good manners ! Sneer who will at Chivalry their pa- 
 rent, he would be a rash man who in this day would dare to under- 
 value the descendant. In the words of Selden, the acute lawyer, the 
 profound thinker of King Charles the Second's da}^ : " Ceremony " 
 (then a synonym for good manners) " keeps up all things. 'Tis 
 like a penny glass to a rich spirit or some excellent water : with- 
 out it the water w T ere spilt, the spirit lost." 
 
THE MOKTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 11 
 
 But it is not in the courtesies of the drawing-room, "with com- 
 pliments and addresses, with legs and kissing of hands," nor 
 even in the amenities of daily life, important as they are, that 
 Chivalry stands forth in her brightest garb. It has Sashed through 
 the "ranks of war" from Arthur to Lee, softening the asperities 
 of bloodshed, and depriving even carnage of some of its horrors ; 
 and that General has ever written his name highest on the roll of 
 honor who most regarded its benign influence. Let the thought- 
 less jest as they will at what they sneeringly term the " Chivalry 
 of the South," let the records of the war which so recently con- 
 vulsed this country speak and say whose record will stand 
 highest in the eyes of future generations, that of the Northern or 
 that of the Southern Generals? Where was the spirit of ancient 
 chivalry best shown : in the march of Lee through Pennsylvania, 
 or in that of Sherman through Georgia and the Carolinas? 
 Whose track was watered by fewest tears? Whose manhood 
 was oftenest interposed to protect woman, to shield her from the 
 horrors incident to war ? — and such a war ! Who bears the best 
 title to the " grand old name of gentleman," Robert E. Lee or 
 William Sherman? Let the civilised world, let the descendants 
 of those whose types were Arthur and his Knights, Charlemagne 
 and his Paladins, the gentlemen of England and France, decide. 
 Whom would they readiest welcome to their ranks? to whom 
 would they accord the heartiest friendship? To General Grant 
 and General Sherman, or to General Lee and General Johnston ? 
 Henry the Fourth at Ivry exhorting his troops to — 
 
 "Press where ye see my white plume wave amidst the ranks 
 of war, 
 
 And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Narvarre" — 
 
 showed the same spirit which animated General Lee at the 
 battle of the Wilderness, when, seeing the enemy come sweeping 
 down in a triumphant line over the remains of two divisions of 
 
12 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 his army, he suddenly placed himself at the head of a single regi- 
 ment, a Texan one, and ordered it to "Follow me! Charge!" 
 seemingly into the very jaws of death ! Nor were those sun- 
 burned and war-worn veterans one step behind either leader in 
 the race of honor, when, seeing their General deaf alike to the 
 remonstrances of Longstreet and of his staff, they came to a sud- 
 den halt, and said with a calm determination whose power even 
 General Lee himself was forced to acknowledge : " Retire ! Do 
 you go back, and let us go forward ! This is no place for you. 
 Retire, or we remain where we are ! " Think you that the sol- 
 dier's heart throughout the world does not beat in unison with 
 both commander and men, as the one, yielding in part to their 
 touching solicitude, checked his bridle-rein and stood, whilst the 
 other, tired by the thought that the eye of their leader was upon 
 them, rushed with triumphant shouts through a tempest of bul- 
 lets, and with a fury which nothing could withstand, snatched 
 the wavering victory from the grasp of their too confident antag" 
 onists ! 
 
 This is chivalry in action. Hackneyed as the word may be, its 
 reality strikes a chord in the heart of a gentleman which thrills 
 to no other influence, touch it what may. " NobUtite oblige" — that 
 obligation, subjection rather, which a gentleman acknowledges to 
 his own innate nobility, is the strongest which can sway him. 
 " Sir Galahalt the haut Prince " recognised that knightly principle 
 when, after having had the " misfortune " to strike off the head of 
 the horse of his opponent Sir Palamides "by a foul blow, he 
 alighted down from off his own horse, and prayed the good 
 knight Sir Palamides to take that horse of his gift and to forgive 
 him that deed" ; and in accepting the atonement and apology Sir 
 Palamides showed himself no whit behind his princely antagonist. 
 " ' Sir,' said he, ' I thank you of your great goodness ; for ever of 
 a man of worship a knight shall never have dis-worship.' And so 
 
THE MORTE L>'ARTHUR. 13 
 
 he mounted upon that horse, and the haut Prince had another 
 anon." 
 
 "For ever of a man of worship a knight shall never have 
 dis-worship ! " Can one who carries that motto into his daily 
 life and lives up to its spirit, ever forget the courtesies, the refine- 
 ments of manner due others from himself, especially towards 
 those weaker — to a woman, a child, or to a wounded or con- 
 quered adversary ? That tyranny exercised by the weak over the 
 strong is to the noble mind a tyranny more oppressive than that 
 of power or of place ; sterner and more abiding, because its 
 spring exists in himself, and in himself he finds his strictest 
 judge, his severest tribunal. He can never shake it off; never 
 even forget it. Can a Rohan worthy of his name and lineage 
 forget his proud motto : " Rois ne puis, Prince ne daigne, Rohan je 
 suis"? "Rohan je sais!' n — and being "Rohan," nothing un- 
 worthy of Rohan shall ever sully the inward consciousness, 
 innate and born with me, that I am " Rohan " — a man of honor ! 
 Personal honor ! — it is a golden thread which can be traced 
 through the woof of Time, back, back to King Arthur's days. 
 It is a heritage left us by the Knights of the Round Tabic. 
 Cherish we then the memory of those who, dying, left behind 
 them so glorious a legacy — the heritage of Honor. 
 
 The trust shown by "the faire Igraine" in the sense of 
 justice and in the gallantry of her age — in its public opinion, so 
 to speak — when "she spake and said: 'I am a woman and I 
 may not fight; but rather than I should be dishonored there 
 would be some good man take up my quarrel,' " is worthy of the 
 brightest days of later romance and chivalry, when the cham- 
 pion of female honor adventured his body in her behalf against 
 all comers, and stood ready at all times to prove her truth and 
 purity, on horse or on foot, with the lance or with the sword. 
 Think you that now in this nineteenth century a woman unjustly 
 
THE MOKTE d'aKTHUR. 
 
 aspersed as was the " faire Igraine " could in one of our great 
 cities so confidently rely as did Igraine upon the protection, the 
 justice, the chivalry of her countrymen? Could she command a 
 champion from the ranks of trade and commerce ? Would the 
 calculating nicety of modern civilisation start forth armed in her 
 behalf? Or should she not rather turn to an earlier time ? — to a 
 time ere the barbaric virtues of justice, magnanimity and gal- 
 lantry are extinguished by daily jousts in the Stock Exchange, 
 quenched by the fluctuation in the gold market ? 
 
 Courage, courtesy, mercy to a fallen foe, tenderness for the 
 weak, reverence for woman, and a high sense of personal honor, 
 run through every page of this grand old legend, so that at times 
 we can say of it as did Sir Philip Sydney of the ballad of Chevy 
 Chase: 44 It stirreth the blood like the sound of a trumpet." 
 They all speak in the address of the four knights to Sir Gawaine 
 after his discreditable encounter with the knight who owned the 
 White Hart, refusing him mercy when he was vanquished, and 
 by a 44 misadventure " 44 smiting off the head of his Ladye." 
 44 Thou new-made knight, thou hast shamed thy knighthood ! — 
 for a knight without mercy is dishonored. Also thou hast slain 
 a faire ladye, to thy great shame to the world's end." 
 
 The charge given by King Arthur himself to his Knights of 
 the Round Table when he 44 stablished them " : 44 Never to do 
 outrage nor murder, and always to fly treason : also by no means 
 to be cruel, bnt to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon 
 pain of their forfeiture of their worship and lordship from King 
 Arthur forevermore : and always to do ladies, damselles, and gen- 
 tlewomen succor, upon pain of death : also that no man take no 
 battles in a wrongful quarrel, for no law nor for world's goods" 
 — is one which in spite of the advancing civilisation of the pre- 
 sent century could have been given to advantage and practised 
 with credit by both officers and men of 44 the best army of the best 
 
THE MOKTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 15 
 
 Government under the sun" during the late war. Compare the 
 " Orders" issued by Generals Grant, Sherman, Hunter, or Butler, 
 to their troops, and see how far these exemplars of the age, these 
 heroes of enlightenment, these types of modern refinement, fall 
 below the standard of Christianity and knightly honor, nay of 
 "good manners," set up for themselves by these soldiers of what 
 they in their modern wisdom deem a rude if not a barbarous age. 
 What would King Arthur have said had one of his knights acted 
 in the spirit of the famous "Order No. 28" issued by Major- 
 General Butler, U. S. A., against the women of New Orleans? 
 "We will give it in extenso, as antithesis to that quoted above which 
 he gave to his knights as the basis of their conduct and action : — 
 
 " Head-Quarters, Department of the Gulf, ) 
 " New Orleans, May 15, 18G2. \ 
 
 " General Order No. 28. 
 
 "As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been 
 subjected to repeated insults from the women calling themselves 
 ladies of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-in- 
 terference and courtesy on our part — it is ordered that hereafter 
 when any female shall by word, gesture or movement, insult or 
 show r contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she 
 shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the 
 town plying her vocation. 
 
 " By command of Major- General Butler, U. S. A. 
 
 " George V. Strong, A. A. 67." 
 
 For daring to utter a protest against this infamous " Order" — 
 a protest made in his official character as '' Mayor of New Orleans," 
 and therefore the protector of these "females" against whom the 
 order was issued, and couched in terms at once respectful, manly, 
 and independent — John T. Munro, Mayor of New Orleans, was 
 arrested and imprisoned at Fort Jackson, and kept for months, 
 yes for more than a year, in a confinement so rigorous that when 
 at length released it was with health so much shattered that he 
 
16 
 
 THE MOKTE d'aETHUR. 
 
 never recovered from the effects of General Butler's malignity. 
 Remember that he was " a vanquished enemy." We quote the 
 closing paragraph only of his noble protest for which he was 
 visited with so unchivalric a treatment : — 
 
 " To give a license to the officers and soldiers of your command 
 to commit outrages such as are indicated in your Order, upon de- 
 fenceless women, is in my judgment a reproach to the civilisation, 
 not to say to the Christianity of the age, in whose name I make 
 this protest. 
 
 " I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 " John T. Monro, Mayor''' 
 
 It may be thought that some courage, something of what the 
 English call " pluck," was needed thus to attack the women of a 
 large city collectively, even though with Queen Igraine " being 
 women " " they may not fight," yet rather than the whole sex " be 
 dishonored " " some good man may be found to take up their 
 quarrel " ; and when one has the nerve thus to throw down the 
 gauntlet to the men of a whole city by insulting their mothers, 
 wives, daughters, sisters, and sweethearts, we might look for some- 
 thing generous beyond it. But we look in vain when we seek it 
 in Major-General Butler, U. S. A., for we shortly find him wreak- 
 ing in his public capacity as commander of the forces of the 
 United States, upon a single defenceless woman, Mrs. Phillips, 
 the fancied social slights given Mrs. Butler and himself years 
 before in the city of Washington in his private character when a 
 member of Congress. Against her did he issue perhaps the most 
 singular " Special Order," that of " No. 150," which ever disgraced 
 the annals of war. In it, for " laughing " on the " balcony " of 
 her own house as the funeral procession of Lieut. De Kay passed, 
 she is ordered not to be " treated as a common woman of whom 
 no officer or soldier is bound to takemotice, but as an uncommon 
 bad and dangerous woman, stirring up strife and inciting to riot" : 
 
THE MOETB d'aRTHUE. 
 
 17 
 
 she is " therefore " (for " laughing " on her own " balcony ") ordered 
 to be imprisoned on " Ship Island, in the State of Mississippi, till 
 further orders; and that she be allowed one female servant and no 
 more, if she so choose; that one of the houses for hospital pur- 
 poses be assigned her as quarters, and a soldier's ration each clay 
 be served out to her, with the means of cooking the same ; and 
 that no verbal or written communication, except through this 
 office, be allowed her ; and that she be kept in close confinement 
 until removed to Ship Island." 
 
 Finding, perhaps, that this special, this uncommon bad and 
 dangerous woman was not sufficiently subdued by this treatment 
 this representative man (for such we suppose we may consider 
 him) takes a further step in singularity and brutality ; for, having 
 for the offence of " exhibiting a human skeleton in his book-store 
 window," "labelled Chickahominy," condemned one Fidel 
 Kellar " to be confined to Ship Island for two years at hard labor," 
 he drags Mrs. Phillips again into court by ordering " that he be 
 allowed to communicate with no person on the Island except 
 Mrs. Phillips, who has been sent there for a like offence "; and 
 not to miss an additional insult, he magnanimously goes on: 
 " Upon this Order being read to him, the said Kellar requested 
 that so much of it as associated him with 'that woman' might 
 be recalled ; which request was therefore reduced to writing by 
 him as follows :— 
 
 " ' New Orleans, June 30, 1862. 
 " ' Mr. Kellar desires that that part of the sentence which refers 
 to the communication with Mrs. Phillips be stricken out, as he 
 does not wish to have any communication with the said Mrs. 
 Phillips. 
 
 (Signed) " 1 F. Kellar. 
 
 " ' Witness D. Waters.' 
 
 " Said request seeming to the Commanding General to be rea- 
 sonable, so much of said Order is revoked, and the remainder will 
 be executed. 
 
 " Maj.-Gen. Butler, U. 8. A. 
 " R. S. Davis, Capt. & A. A. A. 
 3 
 
18 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTIITJB. 
 
 And to this piece of infinitesimal pettiness and malice, Major- 
 General Butler, U. S. A., was not ashamed to put his hand and 
 official seal. What think we of thus invoking the whole power 
 of a nation to punish one defenceless woman for " laughiug on 
 her balcony," and then " answering the Commanding General on 
 being questioned if this fact were so, contemptuously, by reply- 
 ing 1 1 was in good spirits that day ' " ? 
 
 Call the roll of the ranks of Chivalry ! What would King 
 Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Sir Tristram, Charlemagne, 
 Harold, Richard, Edward the Third, the Black Prince, Du Gues- 
 clin, nay what would the " brewers " of England say to such un- 
 knightly, such unchivalric conduct ? Ask General Hayuau of the 
 Austrian service for the lesson he received in the treatment of 
 woman at the hands of Barclay and Perkins' stalwart English 
 brewers. The sentiments of the Southern people in regard to 
 this treatment of their women were well expressed by their 
 exemplar, President Davis, in a proclamation dated at Richmond, 
 December 23d, 1862, wherein he enumerates it amongst the other 
 " hostilities w 7 aged against this Confederacy by the forces of the 
 United States under command of the said B. F. Butler," which 
 " have borne no resemblance to such warfare as is alone permis- 
 sible by the rules of international law or the usages of civilisa- 
 tion," and in consequence pronounces and declares " the said 
 B. F. Butler to be a felon, deserving of capital punishment," and 
 orders " that he be no longer treated simply as a public enemy of 
 the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw or common 
 enemy of mankind," and that " in the event of his capture, the 
 officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be im- 
 mediately executed by hanging," and winds up by declaring " that 
 all commissioned officers under his command" are " not entitled 
 to be considered as soldiers engaged in honorable warfare, but as 
 robbers and criminals, deserving death"; but in the spirit of 
 
THE MORTE DARTHUR. 
 
 19 
 
 true chivalry > the chivalry of Henri Quatre, excepting the "pri- 
 vate soldiers and non-commissioned officers," considering them 
 "as only the instruments used for the commission of the crimes 
 perpetrated by his orders, and not as free agents, and that they 
 therefore be treated when captured as prisoners of war, with 
 kindness and humanity," &c. The loat hing- frit by a magnanimous 
 nation for such an opponent as Major-General Butler was well 
 expressed in some lines addressed to him, and published, we be- 
 lieve, in one of the Charleston papers during the winter of 1863 : — 
 
 " To Maj.-Gen. Butler, U. S. A. 
 
 " Upon hearing that he had caused the coffin containing the remains of 
 Gknebal A. 8. Johnston, Q. ei. A., to be opened. 
 
 " Yes ! gaze upon the dead hero's face which, living, dastard-like ye 
 feared ! 
 
 Tear from that noble brow its cov'ring, and read, if thou canst, the 
 
 record written there! 
 Head if thou canst! Thy guilty frame, steeped to the lips in infamy, 
 Thy craven heart, thy grov'ling soul, nor reads, nor understands 
 A patriot's fai th, pure as unblemished crystal; a warrior's soul. 
 Firm as twice-hardened adamant — exalted, pure, untarnished ! 
 He died as heroes like to die, amidst victorious shouts. 
 This was his earthly fetter: calm and serene it lies in its stern 
 
 dignity. 
 
 To mock thy senseless rage, thou warrior on the dead ! 
 
 M Yet fear thee ! for the blood doth burst forth from the insensate 
 corpse. 
 
 Tremble! his body calls for vengeance! From Mumford's bloody 
 grave, 
 
 Hark, how the cry re-echoes ! List, how New Orleans, crushed by 
 
 thy despot heel. 
 In one long, lingering gasp sobs out her wrongs ! 
 From ev»-ry street, from every hearth the cry goes up against thee ! 
 Insulted womanhood raises her pure front, and unabashed calls on 
 
 the world for vengeance. 
 Eugenia's* tears fall on her country's heart; and for every one, 
 
 base lyrant, 
 
 Her countrymen demand of thee a stern revenge ! revenge ! ! 
 
 "And they shall have it! Pressed to their lips, to thee they drain 
 
 an overflowing cup. 
 Already does thy hated name urge on the fearful carnage. 
 Remember Butler! and New Orleans! Strike for our women! 
 
 strike ! Remember Butler ! 
 
 Is the cry that on Virginia's fields maddens the Southern bl^od. 
 Remember Butler! and at the shout down goes the Northern 
 ranks, thy countrymen, 
 
 *Mrs. Phillips. 
 
20 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHTJR. 
 
 Thou tyrant ! e'en as the ripened grain falls in the mower's vacant 
 
 swathe ! 
 
 Remember Butler ! Aye ! thou blot upon thy country's scutcheon ! 
 
 Aye! 
 
 Remember Butler! — it shall be a war-cry to humanity. 
 Remember Butler and New Orleans ! Aye! the world remembers 
 Him who wars on woman, and the dead!" 
 
 William of "Wickham's famous motto tells us that " manners 
 maketh man." How can we then, after this view of Major-Gen- 
 eral Butler, over-estimate chivalry, which, as we have seen, maketh 
 manners, and thus distinguishes a Christian gentleman from a 
 brutish beast ? 
 
 The comment of the French Marechal Pelissier on the celebra- 
 ted charge of the English at Balaclava, " C'est magnifique, mais 
 ce n'est pas la guerre," by its direct announcement that war is a 
 distinct thing from carnage, from mere wanton bloodshed, recog- 
 nises the chivalric element which pervades all Christian warfare. 
 Brave, courageous, " magnifique " though it was to see the 
 " gallant six hundred " ride open-e3 r ed into the " valley of death," 
 still it was not war, was not scientific, legitimate Christian warfare. 
 Differing from the immortal stand at Thermopylae, where Leon- 
 idas and his " gallant " three hundred confronted and drove back 
 the whole army of Persia, purchasing the freedom of their country 
 by the sacrifice of their lives, this disastrous charge was useless 
 butchery — butchery without the semblance of an object. Look- 
 ing at it as we now do in the calm light of reason, robbed by time 
 as>it now is of the glare of enthusiasm, freed from the smoke of 
 battle, we can but admire the courage, the perfect discipline of 
 the men, representatives of the best blood of England, riding as 
 they did to certain death because it was "orders." As to the 
 officer who issued the order, we can but exclaim with Oliver 
 Cromwell on a somewhat similar but far less disastrous occasion, 
 " Good lack ! good lack ! " 
 
 Chivalry prevents ennobling thoughts from taking their flight, 
 even though — 
 
THE MORTE D' ARTHUR. 
 
 21 
 
 " Men change swords for ledgers, 
 The student's bower for gold "— 
 
 and thus arrests degeneracy, that great bugbear of the modern 
 political economist. Cherish a chivalric spirit in an army, and 
 the brightness of its military glory will be preserved, and with 
 impunity you may adopt the suggestion of that apostle of Aboli- 
 tionism and of modern Free Thought — Channing — and "clothe 
 it in a hangman's garb instead of a uniform." Its chivalry will 
 speedily convert that garb into a robe of honor, will invest it in 
 an heroic element, and will end by glorying in what was weakly 
 meant to debase it. Witness how the Hollanders exulted in the 
 title of opprobrium, " Les Gueux," conferred on them in scorn by 
 their Spanish opponents. "The Beggars" have written their 
 name indelibly on the brightest page of modern history. 
 
 Chivalry would never confound military spoliation with 
 modern " bumming," would never boast with Major-General Hun- 
 ter, U. S. A., of having desolated a country so entirely " that a crow 
 flying over it would have to carry his own rations," which was his 
 facetious manner of announcing the ruin he had wrought and the 
 suffering he left behind him in the Valley of Virginia. Chivalry 
 could never have answered a woman as did he — Major-General 
 Hunter, U. S. A. — Mrs. Lewis of Greenbriar County, Va., when, 
 after having threatened to burn all the property, her own residence 
 included, within five miles of the Sweet Springs, where his army 
 had been resisted, or in his own elegant language " bushwhacked," 
 he replied to her query of " General Hunter, are you in earnest in 
 saying that you intend that women and children are to be made 
 to suffer such a calamity in addition to all besides that are the 
 natural consequences of war?" " Madam, I do intend thai the 
 women shall suffer ! I organised this raid for that especial pur- 
 pose. The women of the South are the fiends that have kept up 
 this war; they have thrust their fathers, husbands, and brothers 
 
22 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 into the Rebel army, and have endured everything that could in- 
 cite the men to go on with the war; and I intend to crush the 
 proud rebellious spirit of you Virginians. I am coming back to 
 burn your grain-fields, to make a desert of the ' Pride of the 
 Earth,' to desolate your country, and to starve — yes, to starve 
 women and children, but what they shall come back to their law- 
 ful Government, the best Government in the world." Had Major- 
 General Hunter, U. S. A., never been taught in his youth to admire 
 the Spartan mother who, on arming her son for battle, said as she 
 gave him his shield, " With this, or upon it"? Did Chivalry 
 speak through the mouth of Major-General Grant, U. S. A., when 
 on her application to him for a pass through his lines to Rich- 
 mond, where were her two sons, he advised another Virginia 
 woman, and she a widow, to remain w r here she was: "for, 
 Madam," he said, " when I get to Richmond, women's persons 
 will not be safe" ? 
 
 Did Chivalry choose Gen. Warren, U. S. A., as her representa- 
 tive when he encamped near Bethesda Church, Hanover County, 
 Va., and answered an appeal from Mrs. William Currie, who, 
 driven from her house by his soldiers, robbed of every mouthful 
 of food and every article of clothing she had for herself and her 
 children, houseless, starving, and helplessly enclosed in his lines, 
 presented herself in person at his headquarters, and begged for 
 food for her suffering children on the sole ground that his soldiers 
 hal deprived her of everything she possessed? "Madam," said 
 the heroic commander of the Fifth Army Corps, " we read in 
 history that the women of Jerusalem ate their own babes during 
 the siege of that city : you may have to come to that yet." But 
 he magnanimously added, " I hope not." 
 
 Would Chivalry, or even her daughter " Good Manners," first 
 take forcible possession of a lady's residence, and then on leaving 
 it, pack with her own military hands, as did Maj.-Gen. Blair, 
 
THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 23 
 
 U. S. A., the exquisite china found in the closets of Mrs. Peter 
 Hale, of Fayetteville, North Carolina— she being, too, the daughter 
 of his own and of his father's political compeer, with whom he 
 had long associated In social equality — Senator Badger of North 
 Carolina ? 
 
 Did Chivalry ride side by side with Sherman in his famous 
 " march to the sea " ? and if so, what thought she of scenes such 
 as this ? We quote from the pen of one who accompanied him, 
 and who thus confides to the New York Express his " realisation 
 of the horrors of war " : — 
 
 " I strolled up a winding ravine between two ranges of hills, 
 when a considerable distance from camp I came upon about 
 twenty women, girls and children, huddled together, partakers of 
 each other's wretchedness, among the hills in a state of starvation. 
 Close by was a rude newly-made grave, where one of their num- 
 ber had been laid in the ground, who they said starved to death. 
 Such a group of misery I never saw before. No couch but the 
 ground, no shelter but the pitiless sky, and not a morsel of food. 
 I turned from the scene sick at heart that I could do nothing for 
 them, and to think that their lawful protectors were just across 
 the hills engaged in battle! Leaving the spot, I saw a woman 
 hurrying across the field wringing her hands in a state of despair 
 bordering on madness." 
 
 Did Chivalry light the torch which burned Columbia after its 
 surrender? Can her " line of march be traced" — to quote Gen. 
 Hampton's (0. S. A.) manly and soldierly letter to Gen. Sherman, 
 dated Feb. 27, 1805 — " by the lurid light of burning houses " ? and 
 does she leave " in more houses than one an agony far more bitter 
 than that of death " ? 
 
 Did Chivalry assist Maj -Gen. Sherman in packing the iron- 
 bound chests, six or eight in number, which citizens of Raleigh, 
 North Carolina, saw shipped on board the cars at that place for 
 
24 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 New York via Newbern, and which were openly spoken of by 
 his subordinates as containing the lion's share of plunder surren- 
 dered to him as head-bunmier by his bumming jackals ? Let it be 
 recorded here, however, as a bit of secret history, that the indig- 
 nant Genius of North Carolina snatched these precious chests as 
 they passed her storm- wrapt coast, and buried them deep in the 
 bosom of the sea oS' her gloomy Cape of Hatteras. This in a 
 measure explains the "singular" lack of Southern trophies 
 which is said by his political admirers to exist in the household 
 of the exemplary and honest Major-General. 
 
 Did Chivalry guide his pen when he wrote his infamous " Ex- 
 patriation Order No. 67," declaring that " the city of Atlanta, being 
 exclusively needed for warlike purposes, will be at once vacated 
 by all but the armies of the United States; " and then goes on to 
 order that "the Chief Quarter-Master, Col. Easter, will at once 
 take possession of buildings of all kinds, and of all staple articles, 
 cotton, tobacco, etc.," by which the whole population of a city 
 was without warning, " at once" in his own emphatic words, 
 turned out without shelter, and driven incontinently beyond his 
 lines? Does Chivalry, or even mere honesty, define "staple 
 articles, etc.," to mean property and household stuff of all des- 
 criptions ? 
 
 Did he invoke Chivalry to be the escort of those four hundred 
 helpless girls whom he found pursuing their vocation in a factory 
 in Roswell, Georgia, and whom he ordered in a body to be trans- 
 ported "north of the Ohio," and there left penniless aud unpro- 
 tected to starve amongst a strange and hostile people ? 
 
 Was Chivalry the aide-de-camp of Pope, of Steinwehr, of 
 Milroy, of Stnrgis, of Kautz, of Averill, of Sheridan, of Kilpatrick, 
 of Dahlgren, and of a host of others whose atrocities have stamped 
 their names in thousands of Southern households, where they will 
 live a memory of horror whilst the South is a people? 
 
THE MORTE D'ARTHUR. 
 
 25 
 
 Does Chivalry steal spoons, books, bonds, furs, and jewelry, 
 with Generals Custar and Wilson ? Does she with the latter 
 appropriate communion-chalices for drinking-cups? Ask the 
 congregation of St. John's Church, Cumberland Parish, Lunen- 
 burg County, Virginia, if they think such desecration chivalric. 
 
 Does Chivalry not only read but also publish to a curious 
 world the private letters and papers of families, stolen, captured, 
 or confiscated (we know not which word to use) from private 
 houses, as was done in numerous instances by numerous Northern 
 Generals during the late war ; and vide especially Gen. Lee's letters 
 to his son Custis Lee, taken from Arlington, and Gen. Polk's letters 
 to his daughter, Mrs. Huger, taken from Mrs. Polk's intercepted 
 and rifled baggage ? 
 
 Does Chivalry systematically refuse an exchange of prisoners? 
 Does she, in the expressed hope that they would perish by thou- 
 sands under the treatment, consign her prisoners of war to loath- 
 some barracks or unwholesome dungeons, feed them on insuffi- 
 cient food, and then glory in the success of her infamous con- 
 duct ? Does she wilfully close her eyes and ears to the sufferings 
 and complaints of her own unfortunate soldiers, left by the for- 
 tune of war in the hands of her opponents, knowing that on 
 them must perforce fall an equal portion of that want, nay, of 
 that starvation, with which it was her settled, determined, and 
 openly expressed policy to subdue her enemy, a brave and de- 
 termined people, whom she was confessedly unable otherwise to 
 conquer ? Does she in answer to their cries for help at her hands* 
 deliberately tell them that she can " afford " to sacrifice them ; 
 that they weaken her enemy by the necessity he is under of 
 guarding and maintaining them ? 
 
 Does she make medicines "contraband of war"? — and does 
 she then wink at the passage through her lines of poisoned drugs, 
 destined to spread death wholesale throughout a nation ? 
 4 
 
26 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 Does she employ such instruments as Colonel Miles ? Did the 
 Black Prince consign to the tender mercies of such as he, his cap- 
 tured foe, John of France ? Would Chivalry wring the heart of a 
 great nation by a futile effort to debase it, by treating with in- 
 dignity, nay, actually torturing its head, its exemplar, when in her 
 power, as the Federal Government did to President Davis? Did 
 the Yaukee Nation universally forget that "forever of a man of 
 worship a knight shall never have dis-worship " in the petty at- 
 tempt to cast ridicule upon President Davis, and through him 
 upon the Southern people, by deliberately and persistently mis- 
 representing the incidents and details of his capture? Would 
 Chivalry have been thus unmindful of what was due to 
 herself? 
 
 Again and again do we ask ourselves, in reading the record of 
 the past few }*ears : Has a sense of honor indeed left the earth ? 
 is chivalry indeed dead ? is this modern warfare ? And has 
 mankind, in the over-refinement, the civilisation of the present 
 day, entirely forgotten the rude virtues of their less polished an- 
 cestry ? Hard questions to put ; but thanks to the stern integrity 
 of the pure Anglo-Saxon blood, not difficult to answer. In this 
 very Southern country, years before Major-General Sherman 
 woke its people to a realisation of what war, war without chiv- 
 alry and without mercy, was, an invading army marched through 
 its very midst, almost in the very track afterwards followed by 
 him. This army was however commanded by a gentleman, who, 
 though loyal to the heart's core to a Government for whose 
 fancied rights he was contending, never for one instant forgot the 
 claims of humanity, of Christianity, of honor, and of chivalry — 
 Lord Cornwallis. Turn to the unstained pages of his " Order 
 Book," and ere closing it with a sigh at the mistakes of a past 
 generation, contrast it with that of his successor, General Sher- 
 man: 
 
THE MOKTE D'ARTHUE. 
 
 27 
 
 u Camp near Beattte's Ford, ) 
 "to. 28, 1781. \ 
 
 " It is needless to point out to the officers the necessity 
 
 of preserving the strictest discipline, and of preventing the op- 
 pressed people from suffering violence by the hands from whom 
 they are taught to look for protection." 
 
 " Lord Cornwallis is highly displeased that several houses have 
 been set on fire during the march — a disgrace to the army ! And 
 he will punish with the utmost severity any person or persons 
 who shall be found guilty of committing so disgraceful an out- 
 rage. His Lordship requests the commanding officers that they 
 will endeavor to find the persons who set fire to the houses this 
 
 " Lord Cornwallis is very sorry to be obliged to call the atten- 
 tion of the officers of the army to the repeated orders against 
 plundering; and he assures the officers that if their duty to their 
 King and country, and their feeling for humanity, are not suffi- 
 cient to enforce their obedience to them, he must, however reluc- 
 tantly, make use of such power as the military laws have placed 
 in his hands 
 
 "... Any officer who looks on with indifference and does not 
 do his utmost to prevent shameful marauding, will be considered 
 in a more criminal light than the persons who commit these scan- 
 dalous crimes, which must bring disgrace and ruin on his Majes- 
 ty's service. All foraging parties will give receipts for the sup- 
 plies taken by them." 
 
 Lord Cornwallis has given to the army to prevent the shameful 
 practice of plundering and distressing the country, and these 
 orders backed by every effort that can have been made by Brig.- 
 
 " Headquarters near Causler's Plantation, ) 
 "Feb. 2, 1781. f 
 
 day. : 
 
 " Headquarters, Dobbin's House, ) 
 ''Feb. 17, 1781. f 
 
28 
 
 THE MORTE d'aETHUE. 
 
 General O'Hara, he is shocked to find that this evil still prevails, 
 and ashamed to observe that the frequent complaints he receives 
 from Head-Quarters of the irregularity of the Guards particularly, 
 affect the credit of that corps. He therefore calls upon the offi- 
 cers, non-commissioned officers, and those men who are yet pos- 
 sessed of the feelings of humanity, and actuated by the principles 
 of true soldiers, the love of their country, the good of the service, 
 and the honor of their own corps, to assist with the same indefat- 
 igable diligence the General himself is determined to persevere in, 
 in order to detect and punish all men and women so offending 
 with the utmost severity of example." 
 
 Such was the conduct of the English commander during the 
 Revolutionary War towards those whom he deemed rebels to their 
 king and traitors to their country. Eager as he was " to crush 
 out the rebellion," — for success to him meant honor, distinction, 
 and happiness, domestic happiness* Lord Cornwallis remembered 
 that he was a gentleman as well as a soldier. "Noblesse oblige" 
 still governed him ; and even had he for one moment forgotten it, 
 the consciousness that he was amenable to a nation whose public 
 opinion was guided by gentlemen, would have been a stern re- 
 minder. His efforts to make this noble sentiment also the gov- 
 erning principle of his men were constant and unremitting. 
 When the head of an army is thus actuated, the rank and file 
 will not fall far behind him, and the effect of his example and 
 discipline will soon show itself in their conduct. 
 
 Float we now down the stream of time again to the present 
 day — yes, into the very camp of the so-called " Southern Rebels " 
 when in Pennsylvania ; and see what the London Times, which 
 should be an impartial witness, says of the manner in which they 
 " carry on war " : — 
 
 " The greatest surprise has been expressed to me by officers 
 from the Austrian, Prussian, and English armies, each of which 
 
 * Lady Cornwallis died of a broken heart in consequence of his Lordship's 
 prolonged absence in the Colonies, while in command of the British army. 
 
THE MOETE D'ARTHUR. 
 
 29 
 
 has now a representative here — one of them, the Prussian, quasi- 
 official; the other two private individuals travelling- for their own 
 pleasure — that volunteer troops, provoked by nearly twenty- 
 seven months of unparalleled ruthlessness and wantonness of 
 which their country has been the scene, should be under such 
 control, and willing to act in harmony with the long-suffering 
 and forbearance of President Davis and General Lee. Individual 
 cases of atrocity of course there have been, likely, if got hold of 
 by the Northern press, to point many an argument from singular 
 to universal, and to be represented as tb.e invariable rule of action 
 for the Rebel army. . . . But with these exceptions" (all of 
 which were severely punished by Gen. Lee, one with death to the 
 perpetrator) " the damage done to Pennsylvania consists in the 
 seizure of many horses, cattle, stores, wagons, and much forage, 
 in exchange for which Confederate money has been paid, or if 
 preferred, receipts have been given in the name of the Con- 
 federate Government. Not a barn has been burned, not a shed 
 destroyed. Upon each side of the execrable road which leads 
 from Chambersburg to Hagerstown, a broad track as wide as 
 Regent Street has been trodden clown by the onward liue of 
 horse and foot ; beyond this damage there has been none save 
 such as is comprised in the plucking of a few cherries from the 
 abundant cherry-trees which grow wild in this latitude, and the 
 occasional larceny of a few chickens. To-day a spectacle was 
 witnessed the like of which in my belief has never been exhibited 
 by any great captain during the last one hundred years. Gen. 
 Lee wandered away a few yards from his quarters, and observed 
 a rail-fence girding a field of which a few rails had been pulled 
 down and a gap into the field opened. With his own hands and 
 unassisted he commenced repairing the fence, until at last Dr. 
 Cullen of Longstreet's staff came to his assistance, and together 
 they made good the damage. I am told that whenever he has ob- 
 
30 
 
 THE MORTE D ARTHUR. 
 
 served them be has either personally or through his staff ordered 
 the Rebel blackbirds to desist from pilfering the cherry-trees." 
 
 Next read the official report of their enemy himself as to the 
 conduct of the Southern army when on his soil; he at least 
 cannot be suspected of viewing with favorable eyes those whom 
 he also arrogantly terms " Rebels," and who were then in actual 
 possession of and invading his territory. We quote from a New 
 York paper :— 
 
 " Col. McClure, the Federal officer commanding at Chambers- 
 burg, Pennsylvania, [miljtia, we suppose, and with his military 
 character in abeyance, for how could he otherwise have been able 
 to make an " official " report ?] in his official report to his Govern- 
 ment, says he was accosted by the officer commanding the advance 
 of the Southern troops, who ' assured me that he would scrupu- 
 lously protect citizens, and would allow no soldier to enter public 
 or private houses, unless under command of an officer upon 
 legitimate business. . . . A subordinate officer had begged of me a 
 little bread for himself and a few more, and he was supplied in the 
 kitchen. He was followed by others in turn until nearly a hun- 
 dred had been supplied with something to eat or drink. All, 
 however, politely asked permission to enter the house. . . . Com- 
 munication having been opened between us, squads followed 
 each other closely for water, but each called and asked permission 
 before getting it, and promptly left the yard. I was somewhat 
 surprised at this uniform courtesy. About one o'clock half-a- 
 dozen officers came to the door and asked to have some coffee 
 made for them, offering to pay liberally for it in Confederate 
 scrip. After concluding a treaty with them on behalf of the 
 colored servants, coffee was promised them, and they asked for a 
 little bread with it. They were wet and shivering, and seeing a 
 bright open wood-fire in the library, they asked permission to 
 enter and warm themselves until their coffee should be ready, 
 
THE MOKTE d'aKTHUR. 
 
 31 
 
 assuring me that under no circumstances should anything in the 
 house be touched by their men.' " 
 
 This certainly seems a rather singular " Official Report," but 
 "Colonel McClure commanding" must settle that point with the 
 Northern press generally, who most of them published it over his 
 official signature. The extract above was clipped from a New 
 York paper. 
 
 We now turn to the New York Herald — no friendly sheet to 
 the South certainly — and under the head of " The Rebel Levy at 
 Shiremanstown," read a dispatch dated " Shircmanstown, Penn., 
 July 1st, 1863," from which we learn that " the enemy did no par- 
 ticular damage here ; they only made a levy for something to eat " ; 
 and from another dated " Mechanicsburg, Pa., July 1st, 1863," 
 that " the enemy agreeably disappointed the people here by his 
 actions. General Jenkins preserved the best of order in town. 
 .... The Rebels did not carry off the large amount of stores in 
 warehouses here, and did no particular damage about town." 
 
 Go we next into Head-Quarters — into the head-quarters of 
 
 that soul of honor, that prince of gentlemen, General Robert E. 
 
 Lee, C. S. A., than whom 
 
 ** Warrior gentler, nobler, braver, 
 Never shall behold the light" — 
 
 and read what he issued in his official capacity as Commander-in- 
 Chief of the army of the Southern Confederacy, in his " General 
 Order No. 73," for the government of his troops when in an 
 enemy's country. We quote the order from the columns of the 
 same Northern journal, the New York Herald, which is thus ma*cle 
 to bear, we hope, a not unwilling testimony to the magnanimity, 
 the Christianity, the chivalry of the opponents of its country and 
 Government : — 
 
 " Head-Quarters Army of Northern Virginia, ) 
 " Chambersburg, Pa., June 27th, 1863. J" 
 
 " General Order No. 73. 
 " The Commanding General has observed with marked satisfac- 
 
32 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 tion the conduct of the troops on the march, and confidently an- 
 ticipates results commensurate with the high spirit they have 
 manifested. 
 
 " No troops could have displayed greater fortitude, or better 
 performed the arduous marches of the past ten days. 
 
 " Their conduct in other respects has with few exceptions been 
 in keeping with their character as soldiers, and entitles them to 
 approbation and praise. 
 
 " There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the 
 part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputa- 
 tion of this army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilisation 
 and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the 
 enemy than in our own. 
 
 " The Commanding General considers that no greater disgrace 
 could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the 
 perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and 
 defenceless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that 
 have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. 
 
 44 Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all 
 connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and 
 efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present 
 movement. 
 
 " It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed 
 men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our 
 people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all 
 whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our 
 enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, 
 without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in 
 vain. 
 
 " The Commanding General therefore earnestly exhorts the 
 trgops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or 
 wanton injury to private property, and enjoins upon all officers to 
 arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way 
 offend against the orders on this subject. 
 
 " R. E. Lee, General." 
 
 Has not that the ring of true Christian chivalry — the chivalry 
 of King Arthur's days ? Does not General Robert E. Lee's charge 
 
THK MORTK d'aRTHUE. 
 
 to his troops breathe the same spirit as that famous one given by 
 
 King Arthur to his Knights of the Round Table when he 
 
 " stablished them " V And can we not quote for him the poet's 
 
 exquisite farewell to the peerless Knights, and say with truth — 
 
 " Kind in manner, fair in favor, 
 Mild in temper, fierce in fight ; 
 Warrior gentler, nobler, braver, 
 Never shall behold tin; light." ? 
 
 Run we now the famous blockade, or should we prefer it, let us 
 "run the gauntlet" at Fortress Monroe — and by what is known 
 in bitter irony as the " Flag of Truce," let us penetrate into t he very 
 heart of the city of Richmond itself, into the Cabinet of President 
 Davis, the civil head of the Southern Confederacy. View him in 
 what light we may, he now appears " a vast Caryatides upholding 
 the age." His moderation, his humanity, his long-suffering, the 
 firmness with which he resisted the advice of his Cabinet, the 
 known wishes and even the appeals of a part of his nation to re- 
 taliate, cannot be too much dwelt upon. The San Grail of Chris- 
 tian magnanimity and moderation which he steadily set before 
 himself, and to which it was his constant endeavor to direct the 
 eyes both of his army and his nation, was in its nature and es- 
 sence that of ancient chivalry. His proclamations, whilst with a 
 clarion voice they incite his people to a brave resistance to their 
 o ppressors, to a steadfast endurance, an heroic fortitude under 
 their reverses and misfortunes, breathe also a noble forbearance, a 
 Christian kindliness, a chivalric courtesy towards their enemies 
 He felt that his was the hand to control rather than to excite 
 men's passions ; that to him was confided the name, the fame, the 
 honor of a great nation. And nobly, chivalrously, did he redeem 
 that confidence. To him as their exponent, their exemplar, their 
 head, is owing not only the stainless scutcheon brought by the 
 Southern army out of the late war, but also the deathless record 
 of courage and fortitude which as a nation the Southern people 
 5 
 
34 
 
 THE MORTE D'aRTHUR. 
 
 Lave earned for themselves. His soul contained the essence of 
 chivalry, and that essence he had the rare gift of imparting to 
 those around him. u Deo Vindice!" — that noble motto which 
 the Southern people gave to the world as their own, was his ruling 
 principle, and deeply did he succeed in stamping it on the hearts 
 of his countrymen. 
 
 We can go on with our proofs that Chivalry is not yet dead, 
 that reverence for woman has not entirely departed from the 
 breast of man, has not been entirely dethroned by a reverence for 
 that thing called Capital, money for money's sake, by a reference 
 to the conduct of numerous Southern Generals during the late 
 war, particularly that of Generals Jackson and Vau Dorn, and 
 recall how they passed through their lines at Winchester, Va., 
 and at Holly Springs, Miss., car-load after car-load of baggage un- 
 touched and unexamined, although they well knew that it con- 
 tained the plunder stolen, captured, taken or confiscated from 
 their unfortunate compatriots — dresses, jewelry, linen, books, 
 plate, furniture, and what not — because it bore the to them sacred 
 name of woman, was inscribed with the names of Mrs. Milroy 
 and Mrs. Grant, the wives of the commanding Generals to whom 
 they were opposed. And both, when urged by the victims of 
 female rapacit}" to retain and to return to the rightful owners the 
 ill-gotten spoil, refused, saying as by one voice that they " made 
 no war upon woman ; that the Confederate Government had 
 naught to do with Mrs. Milroy's and Mrs. Grant's baggage, acquire 
 it how they might." 
 
 Nor was the chivalric principle confined to individuals alone. 
 Contrast the conduct of the State of South Carolina when amidst 
 the jests and jeers of almost the whole civilised world she calmly 
 resumed her own sovereignty, and undaunted by its power, delib- 
 erately threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the General Gov- 
 ernment, and demanded from it the sovereignty of her own forts, 
 
THE MORTE d'ARTHUR. 
 
 35 
 
 with that of her arrogant antagonist. With an air of lofty superi- 
 ority humoring her, as it were, it condescended to treat with her. 
 and bound itself through its Commissioners to make no attempt 
 to reinforce or to aid in any way that misguided commander, 
 Major Anderson, without due notice having been given. And 
 yet on that very day (such is the truth of history) it was deter- 
 mined in Council to issue orders to fit out " The Star of the 
 West," and secretly and with all expedition to reinforce and 
 victual Fort Sumter. The gun that broke the stillness of that 
 peaceful January morning, and which drove back the ill-omened 
 vessel whence she came, baffled and disappointed in her treacher- 
 ous designs — that gun sounded the knell of the already broken 
 Union. Yet South Carolina's chivalry did not even then desert 
 her. Remembering that " forever of a man of worship a knight 
 shall never have dis- worship," she acted on that knightly principle. 
 With the ability to crush Major Anderson at any moment did she 
 so please, she calmly stood aloof, holding him as it were in the 
 palm of her hand. She gave him the freedom of her mails and of 
 her markets ; the one he received untampered with, and in the 
 other he had the same liberty to purvey as that enjoyed by her 
 own citizens. " He asked for water and she gave him milk ; she 
 brought forth butter in a lordly dish": but unlike the Hebrew 
 Amazon of old, she neither " put her hand to the nail nor her 
 right hand to the workman's hammer." She would rather 
 work on his magnanimity, his honor, his chivalry, by the spon- 
 taneous display of her own knightly virtues. Ask the " Swamp 
 Angel" — that gun upon which every appliance of modern en- 
 gineering skill was lavished in order to give it " a long range," 
 a range long, long past the batteries thrown up and defended by 
 men, into the very heart of the city of Charleston itself, where it 
 carried death and destruction into many an innocent and hereto- 
 fore happy household. Regardless alike of the midnight hour or 
 
36 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHTJR. 
 
 of the noonday sun, that " angel " worked its wicked will — oft- 
 times fired by the hands of women who, forgetful alike of age, in- 
 fancy, or the sisterhood of sex, deemed it a pleasant pastime to 
 "run clown to James Island," and to receive from the hands of 
 their obsequious attendants a lighted fusee with which " to fire one 
 gun into the heart of secession" — one gun, and with deadly aim 
 at their own womanhood. Ask the " Swamp Angel," we eay 1 
 how it answered South Carolina's mute appeal to chivalry. 
 
 But to leave war and bloodshed, and to come down to the " piping 
 times of" so-called "peace" — did not the Southern people as a 
 nation, wiien through their Generals Lee and Johnston they laid 
 themselves, their lives, everything but their sacred honor, uncon- 
 ditionally at the mercy of their conquerors (conquerors not by 
 force of arms, not by superior strategy, not by superior prowess, 
 but by force of numbers) — prove that to them at least the noble 
 sentiment of Sir Palamides (" forever of a man of worship a 
 knight shall never have dis-worship ") was to them a living and a 
 present one ? And are they not even now living and acting on 
 that principle? For in spite of sudden Emancipation, in spite of 
 that worst engine of tyranny which far-sighted malice ever im- 
 posed on a conquered people — the Freedman's Bureau — in spite 
 also of a thousand other exactions and oppressions heaped upon 
 them by their victors, the Southern people do not, and cannot to 
 this day realise the full measure of the indignities they have 
 suffered. What was their expectation after their famous and 
 ever-to-be-lamented surrender, but to receive from the hands of 
 their conquerors that treatment which a magnanimous foe freely 
 accords to a vanquished opponent whom he admits to be " worthy 
 of his steel " ? To be treated as equals — equals in rights, equals 
 in honor, equals in all but mere brute force, in short, as gentlemen. 
 Had President Johnson, as was confidently expected by the 
 Southern people, issued in the summer of 1865 his so long- 
 
THE MORTE d'aRTIIUR. 
 
 37 
 
 deferred and when issued utterly valueless " Amnesty Proclama- 
 tion," pardoning every one without exception in the nation, from 
 Mr. Davis down to the humblest civilian, from Gen. Lee to 
 the lowest subaltern in the army, he would have carried with him 
 the hearts of thousands of Southrons. But goaded as they have 
 been by the sting of numberless acts of petty tyranny ; by the 
 persecution of their head, their exemplar, President Davis ; by 
 the presence in their midst of an armed United States force, 
 which, like the constant chafing of a chain, continually reminded 
 them that they were doubted, that distrusting them, their con- 
 querors held them bound : what wonder that the estrangement 
 between the two nations, instead of lessening, has deepened day 
 by day, until the Southern heart has settled down to a bitterness 
 of hatred unknown to it on that fatal day at Appomattox Court- 
 House ? The best portion, the spirit, the gentlemen of the South, 
 have sunk into a sullen apathy ; powerless to assert themselves, 
 too proud to complain, they view from afar the pageant of gov- 
 vernment, and let the shifting scene slide before their dull gaze as 
 though it were a weary pantomime which compelled their reluc- 
 tant presence. Disintegrated as is their society, separated in 
 their daily lives as they are by the isolation which their large 
 estates entail upon them, individualised as they have been for 
 generations by their habits, their manners, their social system, in 
 one word, by slavery, which made of each master a head, a 
 governor of himself and of his dependants, they have never 
 acted nor felt as a unit. " UEtat c'est moi/" was their ruling 
 principle; this made them the sagacious statesmen, the able 
 politicians, which even their enemies confessed were fit to hold 
 the helm of state. They governed men as though it were their 
 birth-right. Individually they were strong, but as a nation they 
 were weak. They were a conglomeration of independent atoms» 
 each a law unto himself. That want of unity which in a political 
 
38 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 sense they undoubtedly lacked, it was which first subdued, and 
 now keeps them so. 
 
 But slavery has perished ; but from its ruins a new element has 
 sprung up. That sense of individuality which formerly pervaded 
 all ranks is slowly passing away, and in its place is gradually 
 arising a new one, that of cohesion. The unity which the South 
 has hitherto lacked is born of her present condition. It is yet in 
 its infancy ; but if we may venture to predict the future conduct 
 of a nation from the character of its people, ere long an injury, an 
 oppression, an insult offered to one member of that brotherhood 
 of suffering will thrill through the whole Southern Confederacy 
 as though a nerve in its quivering frame were suddenly laid bare. 
 Its Chivalry will quicken its sense of injustice and wrong: and 
 Chivalry ever demands a prompt redress. 
 
 It has been used as a reproach to both sides of the American 
 people engaged in the contest during the late war, that events so 
 stirring, through which both nations alike passed, had failed to 
 awaken the poetic as well as the chivalric element in their 
 breasts, and many have not scrupled to argue from thence that 
 both were alike dead. We have, we hope, proved to the satisfac- 
 tion of our readers the deathless immortality of Chivalry: it is for 
 Time to demonstrate that of Poetry. In the words of a Southern 
 woman, when reproached during the imminence of the war for 
 Southern independence with the fact that though she admitted 
 that " poetry was the natural language of excited feeling," and 
 that though as she well knew the hearts of her countrymen were 
 then stirred to their very depths, yet that in spite of their enthu- 
 siasm, in spite of their suffering even, no good poetry had found 
 utterance amongst them : 
 
 Say not we have no poetry ! 
 The nation's daily life struggling 'gainst adverse fate is in itself a 
 
 grand unwritten epic! 
 See yon long line of fresh-lipped boys! forth with their mothers' 
 
 prayers and blessings on their heads. 
 
THE MORTE d'aRTHUR. 
 
 39 
 
 Forth they go to meet in their green youth the stern o'erwhelming 
 
 shook of furious war ! 
 Hear their defiant shout as through their ranks crashes with deadly 
 
 force the hissing shell ! 
 They rush to death as to a carnival ; cheap their lives when laid upon 
 
 their country's altar. 
 
 See the scarred veteran drowning the thought of home, of wife, Of 
 child, of household joys, 
 
 In the stern sense of patriotic duty! What to him the camp's dis- 
 comforts? M id.st the pelting storm. 
 
 Beneath the burning sun, ay, pinched with cold and starved, un- 
 flinching he performs it. 
 
 Hark to the trumpet call to arms! See the long ranks of bristling 
 steel ! 
 
 Rank after rank, seeming in endless lines, the foemen furious come. 
 
 Calm he awaits them, 
 Till at the word sudden a lurid light breaks like the lightning's flash 
 
 along his serried lines; 
 Then like a hound unleashed, with yell and cheer whilst yet the 
 
 shifting smoke 
 
 Eddies upon the morning breeze, see, see him charge the unbroken 
 steel ! 
 
 Find ye no poem here? 
 
 Enter with gentle step the darkened hospital, bend o'er each couch 
 
 of pain: it holds a wounded hero. 
 Hearest thou one murmur, one regret for having thus in the full flush 
 
 of manhood given their all 
 To shield their country from the tyrant's sway? No! but from 
 
 fevered lips rises the wish 
 To be once more in the full front of battle. Eyeing his maimed limb, 
 
 the wounded veteran 
 Sighs that ne'er again in the stern crash of arms can he confront his 
 
 country's hated foe. 
 
 See that noble matron ! Smiling although her heartstrings burst the 
 while, 
 
 She bids her loved one go. Calmly she arms him for the fight, and 
 with a firm endurance 
 
 Bears the unwonted weight of wearing care brought on by his pro- 
 longed absence ; 
 
 And though at times faint, weary, heartsick, and almost crushed 
 
 beneath the unwelcome burden, 
 Not one murmur, one complaint, escapes her. Cheerily she writes 
 
 him, 
 
 Lest some sad thought of her or of his loved ones in his distant home 
 Weaken his arm when he confronts his country's hated foes. 
 
 See yon lone mourner! Of husband and of child bereft, she bears 
 
 her grief as though it were a robe of honor ; 
 Looking up from out the depths of her resigned woe, she buries in 
 
 daily care for others 
 That great sorrow which else would eat and gnaw into her very 
 
 being ! 
 
 She simply says : " I gave them to my country ! " and passing on 
 
 wears out her life 
 In minist'ring to those cast by the chance of war upon a bed of pain. 
 Call ye not that true poetry? 
 
 * 
 
40 
 
 THE MORTE d'aRTHTJR. 
 
 'Tis not in times like these, when what we hold most dear, our 
 hopes, our pagsions, and our joys. 
 
 Die in the lull vigor^F their manly strength, crushed hy the Jugger- 
 naut of war; 
 
 When e'en our daily lives, by suffering made sublime, rise by self- 
 sacrifice to sacramental power,— 
 
 'Tis not now that men write poetry. Our lives are poems, and in the 
 record of brave deeds. 
 
 Of calm endurance, of patieut fortitude, the legacy of blood we leave 
 behind us, 
 
 Our children yet shall find their noblest poem! 
 
 Such is the record of the Southern Confederacy ! ** Man's 
 noblest poem is man's bravest deed!" Its poetry of action — 
 its brave deeds — its Chivalry shall live so long as Time has a 
 page on w hich to inscribe them ! She has not lived, she has not 
 died in vain ! She has shown to the modern world leaders actu- 
 ated by the spirit of ancient Chivalry — leaders worthy of a seat 
 at Arthur's Round Table with Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristram, and Sir 
 Galahad : and the noblest epitaph which as a nation she can ask 
 at the hands of posterity is the admission that her people were 
 found worthy of their leaders. 
 
 Let her rest amongst the exemplars of futurity. 
 
975.2 Z99C 1830-79 v.l nos.l 
 14 P53301 
 
 Mar y 1 and- ? am phi e t s 
 
 975.2 Z99C 1650-79 v.l nos.1-14 
 
 P5J301