Chapter I: Part 1

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS

See facsimile of A. H. Cushing's letter, facing p. 40. From left
to right; Capt A. H. Cushing, Capt. L. Kipp, Major Clarke,
Lieut.-Col. Joseph Taylor, General Sumner, Capt. Sam Sumner,
Surgeon Hammond, and Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence]

WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION: ORIGINAL PAPERS, NO. 3

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS

A sketch of the lives of Howard B., Alonzo H.
and William B. Cushing, children of a pioneer
family of Waukesha County

BY THERON WILBER HAIGHT

PRIVATE, CORPORAL, FIRST SERGEANT, SECOND AND FIRST LIEUTENANT
U. S. V., IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES

WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION

APRIL, 1910

TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED

Copyright, 1910

THE WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION

(in behalf of the State of Wisconsin)

Opinions or errors of fact on the part of the respective authors of the Commission's publications (whether Reprints or Original Narratives) have not been modified or corrected by the Commission. For all statements, of whatever character, the Author is alone responsible.

DEMOCRAT PRINTING CO., STATE PRINTER

CONTENTS

PAGE

WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION ix

RECORDS AND APPRECIATIONS xi

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS:

A great New England exodus 1

The Cushing Family in Western New York 5

The father of three Wisconsin heroes 8

From Milwaukee to the Nemahbins 13

Removal to Chicago 18

The mother in charge of the family 21

All the boys established 26

The beginning of the War 31

The last year of Alonzo's life 39

Later naval services of William B. Cushing 58

William's letter to his mother 62

After Gettysburg 66

The destruction of the "Albemarle" 67

At Fort Fisher and afterwards 81

Howard Cushing with the Artillery 88

Transferred to the Cavalry 94

Death of the young cavalryman 98

INDEX 105

Erratum

The portrait at p. 56, entitled "Alonzo Hersford Cushing," is that of Howard B. Cushing.

The portrait at p. 94, entitled "Howard B. Cushing," is that of Alonzo Hersford Cushing.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

MAJOR-GENERAL E. V. SUMNER AND STAFF,
1862 _Frontispiece_

FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY ALONZO H.
CUSHING, 1862 40

PORTRAIT OF HOWARD B. CUSHING 56

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM BARKER CUSHING 86

FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY HOWARD B.
CUSHING, August 6, 1863 88

PORTRAIT OF ALONZO HERSFORD CUSHING 94

FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY WILLIAM B.
CUSHING, May 15, 1871 102

WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION

(Organized under the provisions of Chapter 298, Laws of 1905, as
amended by Chapter 378, Laws of 1907 and Chapter 445, Laws of
1909)

JAMES O. DAVIDSON

_Governor of Wisconsin_

FREDERICK J. TURNER

_Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin_

REUBEN G. THWAITES

_Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin_

MATTHEW S. DUDGEON

_Secretary of the Wisconsin Library Commission_

CHARLES E. ESTABROOK

_Representing Department of Wisconsin, Grand Army of the Republic_

* * * * *

_Chairman_, COMMISSIONER ESTABROOK

_Secretary and Editor_, COMMISSIONER THWAITES

_Committee on Publications_, COMMISSIONERS THWAITES
AND TURNER

RECORDS AND APPRECIATIONS

_Howard B. Cushing_

_Record_--Wisconsin. Private Co. B., 1st Illinois artillery, March 24, 1862 to November 30, 1863; private in B artillery (regular) November 30, 1863; second lieutenant, 4th artillery, November 30, 1863; transferred to 3rd cavalry, September 7, 1867; first lieutenant, December 16, 1867; killed May 5, 1871, in action with Apache Indians in Whetstone Mountains, Arizona.

_Appreciation_--"Of the distinguished services rendered to Arizona by Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, a book might well be written. It is not intended to disparage anybody when I say that he performed herculean and more notable work, perhaps, than had been performed by any other officer of corresponding rank either before or since. Southern Arizona owed much to the gallant officers who wore out strength and freely risked life and limb in her defence; * * * but if there were any choice among them I am sure that the verdict, if left to those officers themselves, would be in favor of Cushing."--JOHN G. BOURKE, _On the Border with Crook_ (N. Y., 1891), pp. 106, 107.

_Alonzo Hersford Cushing_

_Record_--Wisconsin and New York. Cadet at Military Academy, July 1, 1857 (12); second lieutenant and first lieutenant of the 4th artillery, June 24, 1861; brevet captain, December 13, 1862, for gallant and meritorious service at the battle of Fredericksburg, Va.; major, May 2, 1862, for gallant and meritorious service at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Va.; and lieutenant colonel, July 1, 1863, for conspicuous gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., where he was killed July 3, 1863.

_Appreciation_--"On the field of Gettysburg, more than once I stood where the brave Cushing gave up his life, right at the peak of Pickett's daring charge. Oh that day and that hour! History will not let that smiling, splendid boy die in vain; her dew will glisten forever over his record as the earthly morning dew glistens in the fields. Fame loves the gentleman and the true-hearted, but her sweetheart is gallant youth."--MORRIS SCHAFF, "Spirit of Old West Point," in _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1907.

_William Barker Cushing_

_Record_--September 25, 1857, appointed acting midshipman, from 33rd N. Y. district; March 23, 1861, resignation accepted; April 1, appointed master's mate in volunteer navy--served on board the U. S. S. "Minnesota;" Sept. 13, resignation accepted; Oct. 19, warranted as a midshipman in the navy from the 1st day of June, 1861; Oct. 25, to duty in North Atlantic blockading squadron; March 27, 1862, detached from U. S. S. "Cambridge" (sick) and leave of one month; May 14, to the U. S. S. "Minnesota;" July 16, promoted to lieutenant; April 27, 1863, commissioned; Sept. 5, detached from the "Shockokon" and to command the "Monticello;" Oct. 19, 1864, detached and to the North Atlantic blockading squadron; Nov. 22, again ordered to North Atlantic blockading squadron; Oct. 27, promoted to lieutenant-commander from this date; Feb. 20, 1865, commissioned; Feb. 24, detached from command of the "Monticello" and wait orders; May 17, to the navy yard, New York, N. Y.; June 13, detached and to the U. S. S. "Hartford;" June 24, detached and to the U. S. S. "Lancaster," Pacific station; March 11, 1867, detached and wait orders; July 5, to the U. S. S. "Quinnebaug," 15th instant; July 25, previous order revoked and to command the U. S. S. "Penobscot" when found; Oct. 7, detached and to command the U. S. S. "Maumee;" Jan. 19, 1870, detached November 12th last, and leave three months from 13th instant; March 30, to ordnance duty, Navy Yard, Boston, Mass., April 30th; Jan. 31, 1872, promoted to commander from this date; Feb. 2, to examination; Feb. 9, detached and wait orders; May 16, commissioned; June 17, 1873, to command the U. S. S. "Wyoming" per steamer 28th instant; June 21, previous order suspended; July 11, to command the U. S. S. "Wyoming;" April 24, 1874, detached and wait orders; April 27, to duty as assistant to executive officer, Navy Yard, Washington, D. C.; Aug. 25, detached and to duty as senior aid to commandant of the Navy Yard, Washington, D. C.; Dec. 17, died this day at the Government Hospital for the Insane, Washington, D. C.

_Appreciation_--"_To the Senate and House of Representatives_: In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend that Lieutenant William B. Cushing, United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks from Congress for his important, gallant, and perilous achievement in destroying the rebel ironclad steamer, Albemarle, on the night of the 27th of October, 1864, at Plymouth, North Carolina. * * * This recommendation is specially made in order to comply with the requirements of the aforesaid act which is in the following words, viz.: That any line officer of the Navy or Marine Corps may be advanced one grade if upon recommendation of the President by name he receives the thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict with the enemy, or for extraordinary heroism in the lines of his profession. (Signed)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN."

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS

_A Great New England Exodus_

Beginning with the last decade of the eighteenth century, and continuing through the first decade of the nineteenth, the northern and western borders of the state of New York were punctuated with settlements of a peculiar people along the entire distance, and reaching inland from the edges of the lakes and rivers along the line, for a number of miles. These settlements were from New England; but their population differed somewhat from the aggregate of those who were left behind. Sires and sons of the great emigration were, in all their movements, much influenced, no doubt, by the views of their wives, mothers, and sisters, but the partiality of history takes notice only of the former.

They were the men, and the offspring of the men, whose sturdy strokes, supplemented by their more delicate and elaborate strokes, had turned New England from a wilderness into fertile fields and flourishing towns, but who were not permitted to reap the fruits of their past endeavors in their old homes. Debts had accrued against them while they had been helping fight the battles of their country in the War for Independence, and their creditors would not accept in settlement the worthless Continental currency with which their country had paid them for their services and sacrifices. In many instances they found their homesteads taken from them and turned over to lawyers and other professional men who had abstained from encouragement of bloodshed by staying out of the army in the "times that tried men's souls." The returning soldiers were disgusted and amazed by what looked to them like a less tolerable condition than that which they had opposed of late with powder and ball. Within a very few years all this feeling culminated in a rebellion against the government--and particularly the judicial branch of the government--of the state of Massachusetts, led by one Daniel Shays, who had attained the rank of captain in the Continental forces in active service.

When this uprising was suppressed, as in less than a year it was, an exodus of the dissatisfied classes began and continued as people could get ready for their passage over the Hudson and into the wilderness of what was then the Far West, reaching by way of the Mohawk Valley even to Lake Erie itself, and up the eastern shore of Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence. Washington Irving was evidently familiar with the appearance of such migrations from early boyhood, and gives a lively picture in his _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ (though somewhat distorted for purposes of burlesque entertainment), of the way in which the Yankees moved westward, accompanied by their families, and with all their belongings packed away in covered wagons drawn by jaded horses or toiling oxen.

The _History_ was published in 1809, when Irving was twenty-six years old; but it is not probable that he had observed among the immigrant wagons passing his father's house, the young ship-carpenter, Zattu Cushing, who attained his majority in 1791, and soon after left his native home at Plymouth, Mass., reaching the neighborhood of Ballston Spa, New York, before 1795, the year of his marriage there to Miss Rachel Buckingham.

It seems most likely that the trip from Plymouth to the headwaters of the Hudson was entirely by water; the young man's relations with seafaring, together with the frequency of coastwise voyages from the eastern ports of the old Bay State, would naturally have led him to prefer that route. From the time of his marriage until 1799 neither tradition nor record points out the character or direction of his movements. In the last-mentioned year he is said to have been superintending the construction of a ship, the "Good Intent," at the island opposite Erie, Pennsylvania, although his residence at the same time was in the town of Paris, a few miles south of Utica, New York. On his return home from Erie he took back a team of horses, perhaps the fruit of his ship-building on the lake. The horses claim a a place in history on account of the escape of one of them in the neighborhood of Dunkirk, and the camping-out of the owner, while searching for it, on the site of the village of Fredonia, his home in subsequent years.

_The Cushing Family in Western New York_

It was not until 1805 that the young man finally settled at Fredonia, bringing with him his wife and five children, of whom Milton Buckingham, born in 1800, was to become the father of perhaps the most conspicuously daring trio of sons of one mother of any--not excepting the Roman Horatii or Judean Maccabees--whose exploits have been noted in the pages of history. For, in the days of early champions, personal strength and dexterity counted for so much in battle that it did not appear very extraordinary for Walter Scott's "Fitz-James" to set his back against a rock and defy a whole tribe of armed Highlanders to a close contest. The more modern fighting man can not see the death that he hears whistling and humming about his head in the vicious flight of bullets; or, tearing the atmosphere apart by means of shell that burst into whirring fragments of cast-iron, destroying everything they touch, whether animate or inanimate. He has to be ready for his fate, which may be handed out to him at any instant without the possibility of resistance or escape.

The journey from Oneida County was made in the early winter by ox-sleighs, and must have taken several days, perhaps running into weeks, as the route led the emigrants to Dunkirk by way of Buffalo and the frozen waters along the Erie shore. While spending one night on the ice, a little way off shore, a thaw came on, in company with a strong east wind, and the party had some difficulty in reaching land. Fredonia is only three or four miles inland from the port of Dunkirk, and the family soon found themselves domiciled in the log hut which in those days almost always served as the temporary shelter, at least, of the first occupant of a tract of land in the backwoods of New York.

The Cushings were evidently well-thought-of by their neighbors, so the former ship-carpenter soon received the appointment of associate judge of the Niagara County court. It may seem rather odd at present that this position should have been conferred upon a layman; but the experience at their old homes of the emigrating New Englanders had been such that they retained strong prejudices against regularly-trained members of the learned professions. They were quite generally inclined to prefer the illiterate exhortations of revivalist ministers to the teachings of such clergymen as were accounted orthodox in the Eastern states; to consider home-bred lawyers as more likely to strive for the triumph of justice than those who had devoted their lives to the study of technicalities; and even in respect to medical practitioners, the self-taught empiric was as likely to achieve a financial success among them as would be the graduate of a long-established medical school.

That the choice of Mr. Cushing as a judge was approved by the people, became evident when Chautauqua County was set off from Niagara. In 1811, Judge Cushing took the place of presiding judge in the new organization, and held it for fourteen years. In 1826, after the opening of the Erie Canal, the judge, in company with other citizens of Fredonia, built a boat for traffic on the new waterway, and had it hauled over the three miles between Fredonia and the lake, by ox-teams; there were said to have been about a hundred in the string. The jurist therefore did not retire from the activities of life on retiring from the bench; he found somewhat with which to occupy himself until his death in 1839, respected and honored by the community where he lived.

_The Father of Three Wisconsin Heroes_

In the meantime his son Milton had grown to maturity, had taken the degree of doctor of medicine after a classical course of study at Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute, not far from the early boyhood home of the student--a school founded in 1820, and now become Colgate University. The duties of a physician were too exacting for his own health, however. After a few years of practice at Zanesville, Ohio, where he married his first wife, he became a local merchant, and in 1833, when the wife died, was the father of four children, none of whom long survived their early manhood or womanhood.

Not long after the death of Mrs. Cushing, Dr. Cushing removed his business and home to Columbus, where in 1836 he married Miss Mary Barker Smith of Boston, who was visiting in the West at the time. She was then 29 years old, of splendid physical and mental constitution, and fortunately endowed with a passionate love for life in an open, free atmosphere, as near as practicable to nature itself.

After the birth of their eldest son, named for his father, in 1837, the young couple prepared for their removal into the far west of Wisconsin, where the Potawatomi still fished and hunted, and whence the Sauk leader, Black Hawk, had recently been driven. Neither documentary evidence nor tradition show the manner of travel of the young couple--whether through the prairies of Indiana and Illinois, and down the east shore of Lake Michigan, or by sailing vessel around through the straits of Mackinac. Either of the two routes was then available, and neither was especially dangerous.

What seems certain is, that on the 22nd of August, 1838, Howard B. Cushing, the eldest of the three Wisconsin-born members of that family, first saw the light at Milwaukee. Nine days previous to the event, Mrs. Cushing was impressed with the presentiment of death, and wrote in her Bible the verses following, under the heading, "To Milton, with the Legacy of his Mother's Bible."[1]

[1] E. M. H. Edwards, _Commander William Barker Cushing_ (N. Y., 1898), pp. 22, 23.

I have no gold, my darling son,
No wealth to leave to thee--
Yet never light hath shone upon
A richer, costlier, holier one
Than this my legacy;
"Bought with a price," this guide of youth--
And gemmed with wisdom, light, and truth.

Should'st thou live on through many years,
Of pilgrimage below,
Full well I know that earthly fears
And human woe and human tears,
Attend the path thou'lt go,
And that thy soul may well endure--
Drink deeply of this fountain pure.

Farewell, my son! perchance through grace
We'll meet again above--
Thine infant memory may not trace
Thy mother's form, thy mother's face;
But O, that mother's love
Burns deep for thee, my first-born child!
_God keep thy spirit undefiled!_

If this is to be understood as an indication of despondent gloom, on the part of the writer, it is the only one left by this conspicuous exemplar of fine American womanhood. In later years, as will appear in these pages, she was obliged to undergo privations more difficult to encounter than those of a residence at the confluence of the Milwaukee and Menomonee rivers--then a forlorn waste of swamps and hills, that looked as though they would successfully defy the efforts of man for transformation into the fairest of the cities along the shores of the Great Lakes.

In 1838 the little village contained not more than about eight hundred inhabitants, and these were divided by Milwaukee River into two hostile camps, whose differences were always apparently on the point of breaking out into actual violence. The stream was still unbridged, and it seemed likely that this watery frontier would long remain a boundary line as fixed as that of the Rhine in Europe. Mrs. Cushing had been reared among the most highly-cultivated people of Boston, and was related to such distinguished families as the Adamses, Hancocks, and Phillipses. It was not at all strange, therefore, that with three or four children of her husband by a former wife to care for, besides her own baby of sixteen months, she should have been attacked by the nostalgia that has often dragged grown men to untimely graves.

It was an evidence of the strength of character of this city-bred lady that she so soon recovered her elasticity of spirit after the birth of Howard, and again faced the hardships of frontier life as fearlessly as her sons faced death in the campaigns of the great Civil War. It must have been soon after her convalescence that she paralleled the shout of Hannibal's soldiers, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy!" with the thought, at least, that beyond the Menomonee marshes lay a country resembling in aspect the most carefully tended English parks, but swarming with more delicious and satisfying game of earth, water, and air than could be found in any open hunting grounds of Europe. This was the country of the "oak openings," extending for scores of miles to the westward, and jeweled with lovely lakelets, from Pewaukee to beyond the "Four Lakes," between two of which latter was to rise the capital of the nascent state.

_From Milwaukee to the Nemahbins_

In 1838 there was no elaborate road between Milwaukee and Waukesha, but the intervening twenty miles presented no serious obstacles to travel. A pioneer woman who made the trip that year, Mrs. Talbot C. Dousman, wrote of it[2] that her pen was inadequate to a description of the beautiful scenes. The prairie grasses stood as high as the horses' knees, and thick with lovely flowers. Often, says she, "we found ourselves looking about for the house belonging to these beautiful grounds; but it was emphatically 'God's country,' without sight or sound of human habitation, from the house where we dined [in the present town of Brookfield] till we reached our home in the woods, thirty miles from Milwaukee."

[2] _History of Waukesha County, Wis._ (Chicago, 1880), pp. 473, 474.

The route taken by the Paddock family, and thus depicted by one of its daughters, passed the site of Waukesha rather more than a mile north, and ended not far from the subsequent home of the Cushings. Indeed, it was most probably followed by the Cushings early in 1839, and one may feel no hesitation in believing that the latter breathed in with delight the clear, sweet atmosphere of the "openings," as they passed from hill to hill, skirting the south shore of Pewaukee Lake and the southern point of Nagawicka, under the shadow of the magnificent semi-mountain of Wisconsin's Kettle Range, and then into the charming valley surrounded by lakelets and now occupied by the beautiful little village of Delafield.

At that time there was no obstruction to the free flowage of Bark River from Nagawicka to the upper Nemahbin, two miles to the westward. The site of the log cabin chosen by Dr. Cushing is about half way between those lakes, and only a few rods north of the river. It may still be recognized by travellers on the interurban trolley, by means of two beautiful elm trees across the river, from a point half a mile west of the trolley station at Delafield. Less than a mile farther north, are the buildings of the Nashotah Theological Seminary, some of which are also visible from the electric road. Then, however, oak openings extended north and south without visible termination. It was an ideal place for rest from the busy employments of the world, and Mrs. Cushing long afterwards said that her sojourn there was the happiest period of her life.

Almost immediately, Dr. Cushing took a prominent place in this community. Appointed justice of the peace, he made the first entries in his docket February 15, 1840, in a case tried before him, between G. S. Hosmer, plaintiff, and Russell Frisby, defendant. What is now the township of Delafield was then the south half of the town of Warren, but it was the next winter set off by an act of the legislature under the name of Nemahbin, and Dr. Cushing was placed at the head of the new municipal organization as chairman of its first board of supervisors. The town meeting at which he was elected was held January 5, 1842, at the schoolhouse; and over it presided George Paddock, whom we have already noted as guiding his daughter to this locality.

More than two years before, on December 28, 1839, a second son had been born to Mrs. Cushing and her husband, and named Walter. The date of the death of this child is not preserved, but he could not have outlived very early childhood, since the burial place was on the farm from which the parents removed within the next five years.

Alonzo was also born on the Delafield farm, as shown by a family Bible lately brought to light. Until this discovery his birth had been credited to Milwaukee, like that of his elder brother, Howard. He was born on January 19, 1841.

Neither store nor post office had yet been established in the little hamlet, nor was either of those conveniences to be found there for more than two years afterward. The original Hawks's tavern was built and opened to the public in 1840, and was deemed a great blessing by immigrants on their way westward along the lately-cleared Territorial Road; but there were no table supplies to be found on sale nearer than Prairieville (now Waukesha), a dozen miles back towards Milwaukee.

The year 1842 was an eventful one for the frontier township of Nemahbin, since in the early part of the summer, a milldam was built at the outlet of Nagawicka Lake, while not long after a gentleman named Delafield arrived there, purchased the water power and its improvements, and erected a flouring mill where the village mill has ever since been a conspicuous figure in the landscape. But of far greater importance was the birth, in the cabin north of the river of which we have already spoken, on November 4, of that later glory of the American navy, William Barker Cushing.

As Dr. Cushing's first wife died in 1833, it follows that the youngest of her children could not have been at this time less than nine years old. Although nothing is told of the date of the former marriage in any writings accessible to me, it seems likely that the eldest of the children of that connection may have been born as early as 1825, and therefore may have become fairly well qualified to take charge of the household during any temporary incapacity on the part of Mrs. Cushing herself.

Mrs. Edwards states in her life of the naval commander[3] that there were four children of Dr. Cushing's first marriage, but gives the names of only three of them, who were all members of the family in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee County records show the purchase, in 1844, by Mrs. Cushing from Dr. Castleman, to whom the farm had then been sold, of a burial lot, 6 feet by 4, including a grave, undoubtedly that of her third son, Walter; and William was the youngest of her sons and the youngest of the family except a daughter, born in Chicago and still living there--Mrs. Isabel Cushing Bouton. In Mrs. Edwards' volume, however, Mrs. Cushing is credited with being the mother of seven, though she names only five. The last conveyance by Dr. Cushing himself appearing in the register's office at Waukesha, is a deed to Dr. Castleman of part of his holdings, dated April 13, 1843. It may be pretty safely assumed that he became aware at about that time of the inroads of a disease in his own system which some four years later proved fatal.

[3] Edwards, _op. cit._, p. 15.

_Removal to Chicago_

In 1844, then, it is probable that the wife and mother left the little town that she had learned to love so well, and wended her way to Chicago with her own children and those of her husband's former marriage. It is said that she had suggested the name of Delafield for the township, because the Nemahbin lakes were not within its boundaries. The change in designation was made by the legislature in 1843. During all the time of the residence of the family here, they lived in Milwaukee County, in the Territory of Wisconsin. Waukesha County had not yet been accorded a separate civic organization, and Wisconsin did not become a state until 1848. Mrs. Cushing's choice for the name of the place was stated by her to have been influenced by what she considered the more euphonious sound of the name adopted, when compared with the family name that was to be immortalized and made resplendent by her three sons born in Wisconsin. It is a pity that the town had not been called Cushing, for Mr. Delafield died soon afterwards, and the mill property was sold with the rest of the estate of the deceased in 1846, since which date there has been nothing of an historical character to remind one of the origin of the local name.

There is no available information of the events of the three years ending with 1847 and relating to the Cushing family in Chicago--a town not then as satisfactory from an aesthetic view-point as the Milwaukee they had left in 1839. Perhaps an exception should be made to this statement of lack of information, in favor of an anecdote told by Mrs. Edwards of the young William walking off into Lake Michigan, and informing his rescuer that his name was "Bill Coon," so that he could not be immediately identified. He consequently was lost to his family for the succeeding thirty-six hours. It is also mentioned incidentally that Dr. Cushing resumed the practice of medicine at Chicago, but he could hardly have attained much success in it, on account of his declining health. Early in 1847 he returned to Ohio, perhaps arranging there for the future of the two sons by his first marriage, one of whom became a lawyer and partner of Salmon P. Chase, and the other a physician; but both died several years before the outbreak of the war.

_The Mother in Charge of the Family_

Dr. Cushing himself died at Gallipolis, Ohio, on April 22, 1847. He must have been a man of considerable force of character, and of great personal attractiveness, as well as of correct conceptions of right and wrong, with sympathies always for the right side of public questions. His physical constitution was not robust, however, and he therefore passed away without leaving any memory of important action of his own, and without provision for his widow and her children.

It is at this point that Mrs. Cushing's personality becomes more distinctly visible to the investigator of the family annals. Having to lay out a course of life with particular reference to the welfare of her little ones, she wisely decided, like Ruth in the ancient story, to go back to the home of her husband's relatives, and there to begin life anew. She loved her independence and had no intention of quartering herself upon the charity of those well-disposed people; but it was reasonable to hope that they, or some of them, would take sufficient interest in the boys, at any rate, to point out ways and means for their development into good citizens, and opportunities of which they might take advantage to win places of honor and usefulness among their fellow men.

She was very soon enabled to establish a school for children at Fredonia, by means of which, with the practice of strict economy, she maintained her family in a respectable manner. The indulgence of social vanities was of course not within the scope of her plans. Her boys were required to help in the support of the family by the performance of such slight tasks as the neighbors called upon them to accomplish--driving cows to pasture, and other "chores" of a similar character. All moneys earned by this work were handed over to the mother and employed to the common advantage of the family. Mrs. Bouton, of Chicago, the youngest of the children, and the only one now surviving, writes this, of her early life at home:

One trait, I think, was very remarkable in our family--the respect
and courtesy manifested toward each other. I never received a
reproof or heard an impatient word from either of my brothers.
They always displayed toward each other and my mother and myself,
the same courtesy they would show to a commanding officer. The
petting and love I received was enough to have spoiled me for life
for contact with the world.

In the case of William, at least, the spirit of courtesy would not appear to have been so overwhelming as to prevent an occasional exuberance of spirits, an instance of which is told of in a letter from Mrs. Julia G. Horton of Buffalo, cited by Mrs. Edwards as follows:[4]

[4] _Ibid_, p. 38.

Will was never happier than when playing some joke upon one of
his elder brothers. One summer evening I accompanied his brother
Alonzo (Allie, as we used to call him) "to the mill-pond," upon
his invitation to take a row in a forlorn old scow which was much
patronized by the young people for what they considered delightful
trips over the smooth pond. When we reached the bank we found that
some one had untied the boat and set it adrift. No other boat
was to be had and so we sat down on a log, wondering if some one
had tricked us out of our row. Soon we heard a wild whoop in the
distance and saw Master Will waving an oar and shouting to us:
"Next time you want to row, don't forget to ask your friends."

Mrs. Horton also tells an anecdote of how the future commander followed her and one of his brothers to a prayer-meeting, seating himself behind them and singing improvised personalities instead of the approved words of the hymns that were being sung by the worshippers, so that he was discovered by a church official and led out of the congregation in disgrace. There are other like narratives surviving among the relatives and acquaintances of the Cushings, but none of them throw additional light upon the young men in whom we are at this time most interested. With Milton, the eldest, tradition has not seemed to busy itself. He was not a native of Wisconsin; and it may be enough to say here that in due time he became a paymaster in the Union navy, receiving promotion, until he was retired for disability, as paymaster of the fleet then in the Mediterranean, and died January 1, 1886. He married, but left no issue.

Of the younger lads, Howard appears to have been endowed with an unusual aspiration for independence of action, so that at fourteen years of age he took the position of "devil" in the office of _The Censor_, in his home village of Fredonia. As soon as he had obtained enough of the technique of the trade to imagine himself able to hold his own among strangers, he went to Boston, where flourished the aristocratic relatives of his mother. Here he continued his labors at the press and in the composing room until affected with some illness that made him homesick as well, upon which he returned to Fredonia to recover under his mother's ministrations. When that result was attained he started for Chicago, memories of which progressive town doubtless had haunted him all through his sojourn in the East.

He had left Chicago before he was ten years old. The Cushing traits of character were shared by him in such measure, however, as to make it reasonably certain that he was remembered affectionately by former acquaintances, and the road towards independence was doubtless made as easy for him as it could be made with a youth whose dread of being under personal obligations to his friends was in any instance hard to overcome. A situation as typesetter was given him in the office of _The Farmer's Advocate_, and in that capacity and place he worked until his enlistment in 1862 as a private soldier in an Illinois volunteer artillery regiment.

_All the Boys Established_

In the meantime, Alonzo was bravely attending to such home duties as would be valuable in lightening his mother's work.

In 1855 her brother-in-law, Francis S. Edwards, took his seat as member of Congress from the Thirty-fourth New York district, and the next year procured the appointment of William as a page on the floor of the House.

Towards the end of the session he also secured the appointment of Alonzo as a cadet at West Point, where he entered in 1857, in the seventeenth year of his age, being described in the Academy records as 5 feet and 5 inches tall.

William was then fourteen, and a favorite among the congressmen with whom he came into touch. He also attracted the notice of a relative, Commodore Joseph Smith of the Navy, afterwards admiral, who took measures to have the boy entered as a cadet at the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Milton was employed in a pharmacy at Fitchburg, Mass., where he remained until the outbreak of the war.

Mrs. Cushing henceforth had only herself and her young daughter to provide for. She had fought a good fight, and had succeeded in the establishment of all her sons in positions in which they were tolerably well assured of a good equipment for life work, in which the ordinary young American of that era only needed a sound mind in a sound body and a fair field, with no favor, in order to accomplish something worth while, whether in war or in peace.

But it should be here noted, that the all-important feature of personal character was and is requisite in the making of an American whose existence is to be of advantage to his country. In such a republic as ours, the nation would surely fail of long endurance if a considerable proportion of its citizens did not hold the national welfare as something higher and more sacred than that of their own individual personality, and could not be found able and willing when the emergency should arise, to give their best efforts, even at the imminent peril of life and limb, to the advancement of the common welfare. It was the prevalence of such elements of character among great numbers of our citizens that carried us through the stress of the Civil War in a manner that left us afterwards stronger and more respected by the whole world than before its beginning, and which now bids fair to place us beyond dispute at the head of all the nations of the earth. In the building up of character of this kind, women were most potent, and among American women Mary Cushing stands in this respect in the very front rank. This was evidenced by her furnishing to the country in its day of need at least three youthful sons so equipped in intellect, nerve, and unflinching will as to be among the most serviceable of all the soldiers and sailors of the Union army and navy.

The four years following the entrance of Alonzo and William to the military and naval academies respectively, were devoid of any incidents of absorbing interest in the lives of the young Cushings. At West Point, Alonzo was approved by his superiors and beloved by his fellows. Modest in demeanor, but always efficient in his work, and kindly towards under-classmen, General Morris Schaff's "Spirit of Old West Point"[5] shows the esteem in which he was held by all. He was graduated June 24, 1861, and on the same day commissioned second lieutenant in the Fourth Artillery, being promoted to first lieutenant before leaving the hall.

[5] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1907.

William's cadet experience was somewhat more eventful, for the reason that the spirit of mischief was more dominant with him at that time than with his brothers. The culmination of his pranks was reached towards the close of the winter of 1861, when he fixed a bucket of water at the top of the doorway through which his teacher of Spanish was to pass on his way to an evening party. The teacher was deluged, but the youngster was given permission to resign his cadetship, which he did on March 23. This release was necessary for the sake of discipline, but it was evidently not the intention of the officers to allow him to pass permanently out of the navy. In a month after his enforced resignation he was acting master's mate on board the frigate "Minnesota," from which he wrote a letter dated May 7, 1861, to his cousin, Miss Mary B. Edwards, at East Troy, Wisconsin, that may serve to indicate his feeling as to his chosen profession at the beginning of its really serious work. He says:

I can write but a few hasty lines. I am an officer on board of the
splendid steam frigate, Minnesota. We have just left our moorings,
and as I write, we are moving under steam and sail, out of Boston
harbor. I am going to fight under the old banner of freedom. I
may never return, but if I die it shall be under the folds of the
flag that sheltered my infancy, and while striking a blow for its
honor and my own. * * * Wherever there is fighting, there we will
be, and where there is danger in the battle, there will I be, for
I will gain a name in this war. I must now say, Good-by; God bless
you, Mary. I will write you from homeward bound vessels as often as
possible.

The young lady to whom this and many other letters were written by William B. Cushing, during his stay at Annapolis and subsequently, was a daughter of the congressman who took the boy to Washington in the first instance, and it is likely that the two young people were on terms of familiar acquaintance with each other while they were at the capital. He writes to her as though she were his confidential friend as well as his cousin. Seven weeks after sending the foregoing he wrote again from the "Colorado," that he had

been to the North twice in command of valuable prize ships captured
from the enemy. I am now on my return trip from one of these
expeditions. One of my prizes was worth seventy-five thousand
dollars, while the last was nearly double in value to that. I have
gained considerable honor by taking them safely to New York and
Philadelphia, and I expect promotion before long.

His expectation proved well grounded, although in a boy of eighteen it may have seemed rather extravagant. Before completing his twentieth year, as will appear later, he had the unique distinction (for one of his age) of being given absolute command of one of the Union gunboats. But that story will properly wait.

_The Beginning of the War_

From another account it seems that one of the prizes, "The Delaware Farmer," was taken in by Cushing himself, and was the first taken in the war by anybody. During most of July the young sailor was on duty with the blockading squadron off the coast of the Carolinas. In August he was once more on the waters of the Chesapeake, engaged in storming a land battery and destroying some small supporting vessels at the same place. In the meantime, Alonzo was just as rapidly obtaining distinction. From West Point he had proceeded without delay to Washington, and on reaching the capital had applied himself most assiduously to the work most necessary at that time to be performed. When the writer of this sketch arrived at Washington as a member of a volunteer regiment early in July, 1861, Alonzo's smooth, swarthy face and supple figure were to be seen wherever there was a volunteer battery in need of instruction and drill. Although he worked his pupils hard, they all loved him for his radiant smiles and frequent infectious laughter, which were potent factors in smoothing the grim front of grizzled war.

He was then only in his twenty-first year and looked still younger. Standing 5 ft. 9 in. in his stockings, his length of limb was such as to give him the appearance, when on horseback, of being under middle height. His good nature was so unusual on the part of young regular officers, that it captivated every volunteer with whom he came in contact. On July 18 he was at the front in the battle, or rather reconnaissance, at Blackburn's Ford, near the stone bridge over Bull Run, and three days later was in the thick of the disastrous fight on the farther side of that stream. His conduct on that occasion was said to have been admirable, but his position was not yet sufficiently advanced to secure him mention in the reports of general officers, such as became a mere matter of course as soon as he fought on his own responsibility, whether in command of his battery or detached for important staff duty at corps and grand division headquarters.

In no instance is there record of failure on his part to meet the utmost expectations of his superior officers, while generally he exceeded those expectations by a great margin. Although not at the very head of his class at the Military Academy, all who knew him concur in the opinion that he came as near realizing the ideal of a perfect soldier as any of the contestants of the Civil War. His assignment to duty as a first lieutenant of artillery on leaving the Academy, was strong proof that high expectations were already formed as to his future.

Within less than a month after he left West Point (July 22, 1861, to be specific), in company with some thousands of other infantry soldiers, I was floundering along the vile wagon way from the Long Bridge to Bailey's Cross Roads, where our regiment was to make its headquarters for several weeks afterwards, sending out scouting parties from time to time, and establishing picket outposts in what appeared to our uneducated eyes to be appropriate points of vantage. On the Monday just mentioned, a copious rain set in at a very early hour, and the roadsides were strewn with knapsacks, blankets, and other impedimenta of the returning soldiers who plodded along towards Washington from the battle of the day before. Many of them had marched all night, and very few of them had taken more than short intervals of rest during their night exit from the vicinity of Bull Run. One battery was distinguished for its fine appearance, however; and that was Battery A of the Fourth regular artillery. Cushing was in command of it when it met and passed us, and even the events of the preceding twenty-four hours had not been sufficient to take away his smile--although it might have shown a sarcastic side to a closer observer than I then was.

The infantry regiment in which I was a private retired to Arlington, about the first of September, from the front line of the troops around Washington, and found that wonderful organization of volunteers west of the Potomac, plastic under McClellan's skillful hand, in the full bloom of its evolution. Cushing entered into the spirit of soldier-making and of earthwork construction, and his labors were of acknowledged value. But what McClellan was competent to do was soon done. The great review at Bailey's Cross Roads was a source of astonishment to the expert spectators from other nations who observed the accuracy of its military movements and the excellent bearing of the 70,000 men who might easily have marched to Centerville the next day and squelched the Virginia section of the rebellion with not a hundredth part of the effort that was required for that purpose in the years following. It must have been with a heavy heart that Alonzo Cushing, always longing for effective action, saw the splendid opportunities of the winter of 1861 squandered in useless delays.

Although he made no complaint, the experience of Howard during 1861 afforded ground for greater personal vexation. He had raised a company from among the newspaper men of Chicago. They had elected him captain, but for some reason their services were not accepted by the Illinois state authorities, and he reluctantly resumed his regular work, pursuing it until he could no longer resist the call of his country to the field. He therefore enlisted (March 24, 1862) as a private soldier in Battery B, First Illinois Artillery, in which he afterwards served faithfully and with as much credit as a private is usually thought entitled to, through several strenuous campaigns, including the operations about Vicksburg. There can be no reasonable doubt that his services as a private would furnish material for a story of interest and instruction; but no record of them is attainable, and the outline of his military life must here be postponed until after the earlier notable achievements of his younger brothers shall have been narrated.

With William, events were shaping themselves as he desired, except that the fighting was not quite as plentiful as he wished. On November 22, 1861, eighteen days after his eighteenth birthday anniversary, he wrote to his cousin Mary (at East Troy, Wisconsin, then recently married to Mr. C. W. Smith), from the "Cambridge," a lively account of an expedition into the Rappahannock River to cut out a vessel loaded with wheat, which was burned on being found hard and fast on shore. Returning, the boat was bombarded by cannon and musketry along the river bank. Of the concluding scenes of this expedition, he gives the following account:

The Southerners had stationed a company of their riflemen in a
house, and watching them I fired canister till I had for the
time silenced their great gun. I then threw a thirty-pound shell
which burst directly in the house, tearing it in pieces, and as
I afterwards learned, killing and wounding some twenty-five men.
This dis-heartened the rebels, and a few more rounds from the gun
and the rifles finished the work, and we quietly steamed down the
river to the ship. * * * Of course I was glad to learn that I had
been mentioned with credit in the official dispatch to the Navy
department.

There was nothing else that winter in the way of adventure of his own that he thought worth mention; but he was a spectator (March 9, 1862), of the battle in Hampton Roads between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac," wherein the destiny of wooden ships was settled for all time.

Alonzo was prone, with the anonymous poet, to,

Count that day lost whose low-descending sun
Saw at his hands no worthy action done.

The test of worthiness with him was usefulness to the Union cause. So when the defenses of the capital were completed, he took up the duties (January 21, 1862) of ordnance officer for the Second Corps, at General Sumner's headquarters--until the return, in March, of the Army of the Potomac from its fruitless promenade to Centerville, and to the vacant quarters of the Confederate army there. On March 21 he was commanded to act as an aid-de-camp to Sumner, in charge of topographical work, which was considered particularly important in the operations at Yorktown. This lasted from April 5 to May 4, when it was again discovered that the Confederates had declined to wait for the annihilation prepared for them if they would delay moving until McClellan should get all his parallels in shape according to Vauban, or whomever the authority on earthworks then in vogue may have been.

_The last year of Alonzo's Life_

In the "seven days" before Richmond, his conduct was such as to receive very high praise from Sumner. Before the end of July, an order of transfer was made for him to become an officer of the Topographical Engineers, the most intellectually elevated of all the branches of the army.

To foregather with the military high-brows was not an aspiration of this soldier, however, and he respectfully declined the honor. Notwithstanding his preference for artillery work, McClellan ordered him to perform the duties of assistant topographical engineer at his own headquarters when he set out on the Maryland campaign, and kept him at the work as long as he himself was in command of the Army of the Potomac. The general had a keen eye for unusual merit in young soldiers; one of the causes of the personal affection felt towards him by the great bulk of his officers and men was his promptness to acknowledge their merits.

On November 5, McClellan was superseded by General Burnside, and the Army of the Potomac was soon after re-organized by separation into three "grand divisions" under the respective commands of Generals Sumner, Franklin, and Hooker, for the right, the left, and the centre.

The right grand division was naturally to take the initiative in future movements, and Sumner wanted Cushing for topographical work at his headquarters. The required surveying and map-making were not objectionable to the young man, so long as no active operations were in sight, and his labors in this direction also received warm commendation from the commanding officers. Indeed, no task was ever placed upon the shoulders of Alonzo Hersford Cushing, whether in civil or in military life, so far as I have been able to ascertain, that was not well and cheerfully done.