necessary for Admiral Farragut to send messengers to the mayor at the City Hall to demand the surrender of the city. It seemed to the men in the ships like going into a den of trapped wild beasts, yet instantly Captain Theodorus Bailey, the second in command, demanded from the admiral the right to undertake this dangerous mission. With a little guard of twenty men he was landed on the levee in front of a howling mob which crowded the river-front as far as the eye could reach. They offered an impenetrable line through which no man could pass. Captain Bailey drew his marines up in line and tried to reason with the mob, but could not even be heard. He then ordered his men to level their muskets and take aim. In an instant the mob had pushed forward to the front crowds of women and children and dared the Yanks to shoot. Captain Bailey realized that nothing could be done by force without a useless slaughter of men and women and children. In order to save this he decided to try what could be done by two unarmed men. If this plan failed, it would be time enough to try what could be done by grape and canister. Taking a flag of truce and choosing as his companion a young midshipman named Read, whom he knew to be a man of singular coolness, Captain Bailey started up the street to the City Hall. It was a desperate chance. The mob had already tasted blood and it was almost certain that some one would shoot or stab these two representatives of the hated Yanks as soon as they were out of sight of the ships. The slightest sign of fear or hesitation would mean the death of both of them. Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read, however, were men who would take just such a chance. Slowly, unconcernedly, they walked along the streets through a roar of shouts, and curses, and cheers for Jeff Davis. As they reached the middle of the city, the crowd became more and more threatening. They were pushed and jostled while men, many of them members of the dreaded Thugs, thrust cocked revolvers into their faces and waved bowie-knives close to their throats. Others rushed up with coils of rope which had already done dreadful service. Captain Bailey never even glanced at the men around him, but looking straight ahead walked on as unconcernedly as if he were treading his own quarter-deck. Young Read acted as if he were bored with the whole proceeding. He examined carefully the brandished revolvers and knives and smiled pleasantly into the distorted, scowling, gnashing faces which were thrust up against his. Occasionally he would half pause to examine some building which seemed to impress him as particularly interesting and would then saunter unconcernedly along after his captain.
Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read Facing the New Orleans Mob
Right on through the gauntlet of death passed the two men with never a quiver of the eye or a motion of the face to show that they even knew the mob was there. Little by little, men who had retained something of their self-control began to persuade the more lawless part of the rabble to fall back. It was whispered around that Farragut, that old man of iron and fire, had said that he would level the city as flat as the river if a hand were even laid on his envoys. Finally through the surging streets appeared the City Hall and the end of that desperate march was in sight. At the very steps of the City Hall the mob took a last stand. Half-a-dozen howling young ruffians, with cocked revolvers in either hand, stood on the lower step and dared the Union messengers to go an inch farther. Midshipman Read stepped smilingly ahead of his captain and gently pushed with either hand two of the cursing young desperadoes far enough to one side to allow for a passageway between them. Both of them actually placed the muzzles of their cocked revolvers against his neck as a last threat, but even the touch of cold steel did not drive away Read's amused smile. The mob gave up. Evidently these men had resources about which they knew nothing.
"They were so sure that we wouldn't kill them that we couldn't," said one of the Thugs afterward in explaining why the hated messengers had been allowed to march up the steps.
They sauntered into the mayor's room where they met a group of white-faced, trembling men who were the mayor and his council. Captain Bailey delivered the admiral's summons for the surrender of the city to the mayor. The mob, which at first had stayed back, at this point surged up to the windows and shouted curses and threats into the very mayor's room, threatening him and the council if they dared to surrender the city. Captain Bailey and his companion gave the trembling city officials a few minutes in which to make up their minds. Suddenly there was heard a roar outside louder than any which had come before. The mob had torn down the Union flag which had been hoisted over the custom house and rushing to the mayor's office, tore it to pieces outside the open windows and threw the fragments in at the seated envoys. This insult to their flag aroused Captain Bailey and young Read as no threats against them personally had been able to do. Turning to the mayor and the shrinking council, Bailey said, "As there is a God in heaven, the man who tore down that Union flag shall hang for it." Later on this promise was carried out by the inflexible General Butler when he took over the city from Admiral Farragut and hanged Mumford, the man who tore down the flag in the city square, before the very mob which had so violently applauded his action. This incident was the last straw for the mayor and his associates. They neither dared to refuse to surrender the city lest it should be bombarded by Farragut nor did they dare to surrender it for fear of the mob which had gathered around them with significant coils of rope over their arms. In a half-whisper they hurriedly notified Captain Bailey that they could not surrender the city, but that they would make no resistance if the Union forces occupied it. Looking at them contemptuously, Captain Bailey turned away, picked up the fragments of the torn flag and faced the mob outside threateningly. The man who had torn the flag slunk back and his example was contagious. One by one men commenced to sneak away and in a minute the City Hall was deserted and Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read were able to leave the building and drive back to the vessels in a carriage obtained for them by the mayor's secretary.
So ended what one of the mob, who afterward became a valued citizen of his state, described as the bravest deed he had ever seen—two unarmed men facing and defeating a mob of murderers and madmen.
CHAPTER IV
BOY HEROES
One doesn't have to be big, or old, or strong to be brave. But one does have to believe in something so much and so hard that nothing else counts, even death. An idea that is so big that everything else seems small is called an ideal. It is easy for a boy with an ideal to be brave. Cassabianca, the boy who stayed on the burning ship because he had been ordered to wait there by his dead father, had made obedience his ideal. The boy of Holland who found a leak in the dyke which could only be stopped by his hand, and who stayed through the long night and saved his village but lost his right hand had learned this great ideal of self-sacrifice. The shepherd boy who saved his sheep from a lion and a bear and who afterward was the only one who dared enter the fatal valley and meet the fierce giant-warrior had as his ideal faith. He believed so strongly that he was doing God's will that he shared God's strength.
In the great war between slavery and freedom which swept like fire over the country, boys learned the ideals for which their fathers fought. They learned to believe so entirely in freedom that there was no room left for fear. Many of them went to the war as drummer boys, the only way in which boys could enlist. One of these was Johnny McLaughlin of the Tenth Indiana. Johnny lived at a place called Lafayette and was not quite eleven years old. From the minute that the war broke out he thought of nothing but what he could do for his country and for freedom. Other boys played at drilling and marching, but this was not enough for him. He made inquiries and found that if he could learn to drum, there was a chance that he might be allowed to enlist. He said nothing at first to his father and mother about his plans, but saved all his spending-money and worked every holiday in order to get enough to buy a drum. Times were hard, however. There was little money for men, much less for boys, and after Johnny had worked for over two months, he had saved exactly two dollars. In the village was a drummer who had been sent home to recover from his wounds and to him Johnny went one day to ask how much more he would have to save before he could buy a drum. The man told him that a good drum would cost him at least ten dollars. Johnny sighed and turned away very much discouraged.
"Why don't you play something else?"