Read Ebook: The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine Vol. IV No. 6 March 1907 by Various Moore John Trotwood Editor Taylor Robt L Robert Love Editor

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After her husband's death, Mrs. Tayloe retired from society, although she continued to make the Washington house her principal home until her death, nearly thirty years later. One of her granddaughters, yet living in the District, is authority for the fact that for more than fifty years the Octagon was lighted solely by candles. Although gas was introduced prior to Mrs. Tayloe's death, she would never permit its use in the Octagon, looking upon it as a "dangerous innovation," and clinging to her candles to the last. The granddaughter remembers as one of the distinct impressions of her childhood, the sockets over the doorways which held these wax illuminators.

The Tayloe occupancy of the Octagon ceased with Mrs. John Tayloe's death, in 1855, though its ownership did not pass from the family until its purchase by the American Institute of Architects, in 1903.

Between the dates 1855 and 1865, the Catholic Sisters of St. Matthew's Parish taught a girls' school in the Octagon, and from 1866 to 1879 it was leased by the government for the "Hydrographic Office," incorporated by Congress in 1866 as a branch of the Navy Department.

Then for nearly twenty years the Octagon was given over to silence, cobwebs, mice and ghosts, the last the inevitable tenants of all deserted dwellings which have been the scene of departed grandeur.

A Virginian of good birth--whose fortunes had fallen on evil days, and who was wont to seek solace in the flowing bowl and nepenthic drug--having been installed as custodian of the place, greatly assisted popular superstition by the recital of his own pipe-dream imaginations. As one of the present Tayloes remarked--"you had only to fee the caretaker, and get a ghost-story spun to your liking."

Indeed, what with a mythical Miss Tayloe flinging herself over the third story balustrade to escape the pangs of misplaced affection, and a British officer--"nameless here forevermore"--walling up an octoroon slave girl in the wine cellar; with bells ringing at all hours of the night through the empty rooms, and heart-rending sighs breathing from hidden nooks and passages, the Octagon is particularly rich in spooky traditions, which neither the incredulous smile of daylight, nor the disapproving frown of the family can wholly dispel. So often have they been repeated, and so closely interwoven with the history of the old house--whole works of fiction having been built on them--that when one goes from the warm sunlight across this colonial threshold, pushing back the heavy curved door with its iron bar and ponderous key, the sensation in one's spinal region is distinctly creepy. The eye wanders apprehensively up the thin, winding stairway to the third floor and back to the spot in the hall directly beneath, where the fatal plunge was made; and descending the narrow, worn stairs to the basement, one involuntarily listens in expectant dread for the smothered groan or sigh from behind those mouldy bricks.

Mr. Glenn Brown, the accommodating secretary of the American Institute of Architects, which now owns and occupies the Octagon, tells of a more objectionable class of tenantry than the ghosts, when the architects first took charge of the building in 1899. The faithless caretaker had rented out the rooms to irresponsible negroes, and the architects found several families of them domiciled in the erstwhile abode of Presidents. To remove the squalor and damage consequent upon such occupancy, and to restore and preserve the colonial architecture of the once splendid mansion, the Institute expended three thousand dollars, resulting in handsome and artistic headquarters, in all respects worthy of such an organization.

It may not be generally known that prior to 1850, the profession of architecture was not in good repute in America; that carpenters and contractors were much more highly esteemed than architects, the former, in contrast to the latter, being classified as "practical persons."

In 1857, in the city of New York, a dozen young architects met in the office of Richard Upjohn, for the purpose of considering the organization of a society of architects, whose object should be the promotion of schools for architecture, the publication of journals and raising the standard of public taste in regard to it. This was the genesis of the American Institute of Architects, which now numbers eight hundred members and ten past presidents, of whom Richard Upjohn was the first; another, Thomas U. Walter, designed the present wings of the Capitol, and another, Richard M. Hunt, designed the Administration Building, at the World's Fair, and the famous "Biltmore," at Asheville, North Carolina.

The circular room on the second floor of the Octagon, once President Madison's executive office, is now the business office of the Institute, and Dolly Madison's bedroom has been converted into an exhibit room for the American Academy in Rome.

Through the courtesy of the secretary, the writer was permitted to explore the back yard and peep into the stable lot, in which is located a large stone block--"whereby hangs a tale."

These stories indicate that other imaginations besides the inventors of ghostly legends, have been busy with the long-suffering Octagon; these encrustations of false over the true cannot, however, detract from the real interest of the history of this dignified old mansion.

FATE'S IRONY

He fought against his weakness; weary, Heartsick, he, amid his failures, died. Then one who knew him, knew how near he Came to conq'ring with the hurts he bore; Knew the reachings of his nature, And the sweetness of his heart at core; Knew the baffled will, the down-crushed pride; From his effort plucked up courage, Turned the failure into story, From it won renown and glory.

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH

The more one studies Shiloh, the more contradictory it becomes. It will ever remain an incongruous battle. On the Union side it was a battle of unpreparedness--though not of dishonorable surprise--and on both sides a battle of blunders. And never in any battle of any war that I have ever read did Chance--old-fashioned, historic, blind Chance--play a more conspicuous part.

Some of the big chances, standing out in the light of to-day like gray ghosts above the battlefield, are:

First--The chance that cut Buell off one day too late for the Union cause.

Second--The chance that put him there one day too soon for the Confederates.

Third--The chance which Grant took--and which he says in his autobiography he would not have taken with the riper knowledge gained later in the war--of not entrenching.

Fourth--The chance of mud and rain, which delayed Johnston one day in bringing on the fight.

Fifth--The chance of one fateful bullet amid ten thousand harmless ones, striking an artery not hit once in ten thousand times in battle, and striking from the boards the only head on either side which had absolutely a clear conception of the entire battle to be, planned by himself with consummate skill and executed, till stricken to death, like a thunderbolt of Jove in the brain of Mars. He alone, I repeat, of all the host of generals, Federals and Confederates, who swarmed booted and bedecked around the contending hosts of that day, had definite plans, knew what was to be done, and held the doing of it in the hollow of his hand, and his name was Albert Sidney Johnston.

Sixth--The great chance Beauregard had for ending the fight on the first day, instead of calling off the troops until the fatal to-morrow.

Seventh--The chance--ay, the blunder--of Grant in recalling Lew Wallace from a position which a most gracious and generous fate had given him. A chance which gave to Wallace the opportunity for his own fame and the fame of Grant's army--the chance of falling upon the flank and rear of the eager, neglectful, front-fighting Confederates, of breaking their hearts as Johnston's death could never have done. This was a greater chance than Jackson had at Fredericksburg when he utterly defeated the Yankee army; it was as great as the chance Bl?cher had at Waterloo; greater than Bonaparte's at Austerlitz.

In thinking of Stonewall Jackson and Johnston, did God in His wisdom know it was best that the Confederacy should not be, as we all now know it, and take these two men from life that it might not come to pass?

And there we are at it again: For God's decision is man's destiny.

Now, are not these chances enough? Or is it Law, Cause and Effect, Adjustment, Nature--God?

To know--to see clearly--to understand that one paragraph, who would not be willing to go hence to-night? For if it is God and immortality, there would be no fears, doubts, pitiless days of self communion, ending in that pale despair which strikes into the soul of every man whose soul is his own and who thinks. And if it is all Chance , or even the Great Unchance of fixed, immutable, but unloving and uncaring Law--as many believe--then why suffer to this palsied, dust-turning end?

From the lips of babes, from the humble and the ignorant, what wisdom! Here is some of it:

On a morning after a cyclone where I once lived, amid the death of nearly threescore people, and the wreck of homes, a friend met an old negro, whose wife and children had been killed, and his home blown away. There was the usual compassion and condolence and trust from the learned man, who had lost nothing. But the old negro said: "Marster, the man that you calls God--yo' God--it 'pears to me that he do about as much harm as he do good!"

I have wondered since--often and often--if our God--the God our little minds have been able to grasp--to whom some people falsely attribute revenge and cruelty and murder--if he is not as the old negro said; and I have prayed that I might live to know the God Which Is, and that he would permit me to understand the things which do stagger me now!

Were these things really chances? Take each one of them and sift it to its very beginning--follow up the broad stream of each till you find the first drop of its water trickling over the blind bluff of the thing unknown which staggers and stops you, and even to that last tiny drop you will stand and find no answer to the question, and before that drop you will stop again, look up at the stars and ask the same question: "Is it Chance, is it Law, or is it God?"

Let us take the first one: Why was Buell a day late? A thousand little things--a march from Nashville to Savannah, planned with ample time, yet delayed. What delays? Hundreds of them--follow up any one of them and it will end in the drop.

Let me give you one which came under my personal recollection: Some ten years ago I stopped one night at a hotel in Chicago, known as the Kuhn House. After registering, the proprietor sought me out. He had been one of Buell's chief engineers, and upon seeing where I was from--Columbia, Tennessee--he wanted to know if the old bridge across Duck River at that point was still standing. "It was there," he said, "that we saved Grant's army and made him President instead of prisoner. I was given two days"--I think that is the time he stated--"to repair the bridge, the flooring of which had been torn up and the structure half burned before we reached it. But we had heard rumors of a great battle pending near Savannah and though we had received messages from General Grant saying there was no need for undue haste, we were marching for all we were worth. I felt, somehow, that great things were at stake, and I doubled my force and worked day and night completing the repairs so that the artillery might pass over in just half the time given me; and that time saved, put us in Savannah twelve hours to our good. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken my full time to repair that old bridge over Duck River at Columbia."

Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!

Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell's fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.

First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.

Second. That Grant's army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.

Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.

Fourth. That they were whipped.

Fifth. and that Buell saved them.

Here is Buell's very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:

"An army comprising seventy regiments of infantry, twenty batteries of artillery and a sufficiency of cavalry lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army, claimed to be superior in numbers, twenty miles distant in its front, while the commander made his headquarters and passed his nights nine miles away, on the opposite side of the river. It had no line or order of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, to give warning or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized head during the absence of the regular commander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle, without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the unguarded army, advanced upon it the next morning, penetrated its disconnected lines, assaulted its camps in front and flank, drove its disjointed members successively from position to position, capturing some and routing others, in spite of much heroic individual resistance, and steadily drew near the landing and depot of its supplies in the pocket between the river and an impassable creek. At the moment, near the close of the day, when the remnant of the retrograding army was driven to refuge in the midst of its magazines, with the triumphant enemy at half-gunshot distance, the advance division of a reinforcing army arrived on the opposite bank of the river, crossed and took position under fire at the point of attack; the attacking force was checked and the battle ceased for the day. The next morning at dawn the reinforcing army and a fresh division belonging to the defeated force advanced against the assailants, followed or accompanied by such of the broken columns of the previous day as had not lost all cohesion, and, after ten hours of conflict, drove the enemy from the captured camps and the field."

It will be seen from the statement in his article that one of the strongest points he made as to the unpreparedness of Grant's army is the repeated fateful turning of the flanks of the different divisions throughout the day, in one of which Prentiss was captured. He says:

"The outflanking so common in the Union report at Shiloh is not a mere excuse of the inferior commanders. It is the practical consequence of the absence of a common head and the judicious use of reserves to counteract partial reverses and preserve the front of battle."

From this alone he argues all the misfortunes of the different divisions acting independently and without a common head. Their flanks turned again and again as each fell back with no warning from the others. And this is his graphic statement of the critical ending of the first day's fight:

"Before the incumbrance of their success was entirely put out of their day, the Confederates pressed forward to complete a seemingly assured victory, but it was too late. John K. Jackson's brigade and the Ninth and Tenth Mississippi of Chalmer's brigade crossed Dill's ravine, and their artillery on the south side swept the bluff at the landing, the missiles falling into the river far beyond. Hulbert had hurriedly gotten into line in rear of the siege guns, as they are called in the official report, posted a half-mile from the river, but for five hundred yards from the landing there was not a soldier or any organized means of defense. Just as the danger was perceived Colonel Webster, Grant's Chief of Artillery, rapidly approached Colonel Fry and myself. The order of getting the battery which was standing in park into action was expressed simultaneously by the three of us, and was promptly executed by Colonel Webster's immediate exertion. General Grant came up a few minutes later, and a member of his escort was killed in that position. Chalmer's skirmishers approached within one hundred yards of the battery. The number in view was not large, but the gunners were already abandoning their pieces, when Ammen's brigade, accompanied by Nelson, came into action. The attack was repelled and the engagement ended for the day.... We know from the Confederate report that the attack was undertaken by Chalmer's and Jackson's brigade, as above stated; that the reserve artillery could effect nothing against the attacks from under the shelter of Dill's ravine; that the fire of the gunboats was equally harmless on account of the elevation which it was necessary to give the guns in order to clear the top of the bluff, and that the final assault, owing to the show of resistance, was delayed. Jackson's brigade made its advance without cartridges, and when they came to the crest of the hill and found the artillery supported by infantry, they shrank from the assault by bayonet alone. Jackson went in search of co-operation and support, and in the meantime the attack was superseded by the order of the Confederate commander calling off his troops for the day."

His description of how things looked when he landed at Pittsburg Landing, of the demoralized condition of Grant's army, is graphic in the extreme:

"On the shore I encountered a scene which has often been described. The face of the bluff was crowded with stragglers from the battle. The number that at different times has been estimated at five thousand in the morning to fifteen thousand in the evening. The number at nightfall would never have fallen short of fifteen thousand, including those who had passed down the river, and the less callous, but still broken and demoralized, fragments about the camps on the plateau near the landing. At the top of the bluff all was confusion. Men mounted and on foot and wagons with their teams and excited drivers, all struggling their way closest to the river, were mixed up in apparently inextricable confusion with a battery of artillery which was standing in park without men or horses to man or move it."

There lives near me in honor and good name, General Gates P. Thruston, one of the greatest scholars of the South, and perhaps the greatest living ethnologists of this country. He was with Buell, and corroborates his chief, and he refers me to General Lew Wallace's oration, delivered at Shiloh, April 6th, 1903, in which General Wallace uses the following language:

"Did any of you, my friends, ever hear of an army fighting a battle without a commander? No? Well, that was the case with the Army of the Tennessee at the beginning of the first day here. The five divisions on the field had each its chief, to be sure; but none of the five chiefs was in general command. Instead of one supreme governing will, nowhere so essential as in battle, there were five officers, each independent of the others. Between them things were done by request, not orders. No one of them was responsible for what the others did. I am sure you will see the enormity of the disadvantage. You will even wonder that there was any resistance made.

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