Hall, Henry Ware

HENRY WARE HALL. First Lieutenant 5Ist Illinois Vols. (Infantry), December 24, 1861; Adjutant, September 30, 1862; killed at Kenesaw Mountain, Ga., June 27, 1864. HENRY WARE HALL, son of Nathaniel and Sarah Elizabeth (Coffin) Hall, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, March 21, 1839. His childhood was rich in promise. Uncommonly attractive in person, he had a correspondent charm of bearing and disposition. He won all hearts by his gentle and confiding ways. Nor were these characteristics less prominent as he grew in years. The moral lineaments of the child were clearly traceable in the youth, in a natural and healthy unfolding; and a growing manliness of thought and character was combined with a retained childlikeness of temper and disposition. As a single illustration of this, it may be related that, his father being from home, during his boyhood, for a continuous space of eighteen months, and his mother left with himself and three younger children, so far from taking advantage of this larger liberty, he voluntarily abridged his pastimes that he might take his father's place in such cares and labors as he was competent to share; making himself, with no persuasives save those of his own heart, the most devoted of sons. "I can see him," says a visitor at his home during that period, " as, each noon, he came whistling from school, his books strapped together and slung over his shoulder, - in a few minutes to be out again, at work on the grounds, whistling still, a living picture of simple, healthy, hearty happiness," - a happiness drawn from deeper fountains than he knew. He obtained his preliminary education at the public schools of his native town; showing more and more clearly the possession of superior mental faculties. What he was in this respect, his teacher, the principal of the High School at that time, thus testifies: "He was the brightest and quickest of his class. He learned readily and rapidly, and retained what he learned better than most who acquire so easily. His recitations in Latin were the best I ever heard; and in all his recitations he had an easy, confident way, which I recall very vividly." From the journal of a school debating-club of which he was a member, it appears that the favorite themes for debate had relation to great national issues, upon which he and the rest would so soon be called to stake their lives; while it also appears that his name was invariably recorded as taking the side of universal freedom and abstract right. Not that this shows in him any truer regard for these than they had, who, for ends of debate, took the opposite side, some of whom nobly proved, in the final event, how dear to them was the cause of freedom and of right. "But," says his teacher, who was president of the club, "Hall, I well remember, always, in the debates, took the side of his convictions. He chose to do so, and we allowed him; though, it being an exercise for intellectual training mainly, sides were taken irrespective of convictions." He entered Harvard College in 1856, with an unconditioned acceptance, and took early and easily a highly respectable rank among his classmates, - a rank which, it is due to truth to say, he failed to keep permanently, through a temporary dominance of indifferent and careless ways, causing thereby the only disappointment he had ever brought upon a single heart that knew him. At the close of his Sophomore year it was thought best by his father, -a judgment which he himself cordially approved, - to transfer his academic relations to Antioch College in Ohio. Offering himself, with no loss of time, for admission to the Junior Class of that institution, he was readily accepted; and there, emerging from the shadow, in a noble reassertion of his better self, he honorably completed the collegiate course, graduating with distinction, and enjoying in eminent measure the good-will and affection of fellow-students and officers. A professor in the institution at that time writes: "He always interested me. He impressed me from the first as one having a prodigious amount of latent manhood and strength and worth." The ensuing fall and winter were spent at home, in an uncertainty as to the calling he should adopt. There was no such decided bent of taste or conscious aptitude as to make the choice an easy one. He leaned at first to a business calling; partly in distrust of his abilities for any good success in a professional career, and yet more, as was undesignedly indicated rather than expressed, that he might more surely thus become a pillar of pecuniary dependence to those who, he foresaw, might have need of such aid. Meanwhile he made the best possible use of this intermediate season, by a diligent application to such general studies as would be available for any calling. He determined at length upon the law; a decision entirely his own, and yet coincident with that of those who knew him best; his mind, as all saw, being eminently judicial in its cast and tone, - clear, broad, discriminating, just, - while the accompanying moral qualities were of a high order. In the same exercise of independent judgment which determined him in the choice of a profession, he made choice of the West as the sphere for its exercise; influenced in part by the impressions he had gained at Antioch College in intercourse with some of its representative minds, and especially by the hope of finding there a certain largeness and liberality of thought and action. And so, with a single letter of introduction, stating simply his name and connections, —the writer knew no more, - to a lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, he left home, March, 1861. Obtaining at once a position as a student with the gentleman to whom he bore his letter, he gave himself without reserve to the work before him. " I have kept in the office all summer," he writes, " a thing the like of which I never had to do before, my summers hitherto having been largely spent in recreation. But I don't know that this has been less pleasant for it, though one gets a little tired sometimes, this hot weather, and longs for sea-shore or country." He did not add, - what was true, - that almost the only recreation he allowed himself, through those heated months, was in the drill-room. For a call was sounding, at which, as he felt, all personal considerations and plans and prospects were to be subordinated and set at naught. His letters best tell his state of mind at this time. He writes to his father, August, 1861:" For some time I have been debating whether it was not my duty to offer my humble services in aid of a most righteous cause, which calls most imperatively, as it seems to me, on every man who has not others dependent on him, to fight in its defence [sic]. Illinois is greatly in need of troops. Recruiting goes on slowly. I feel that the call which the Governor made last week was to me, and have made up my mind, subject always to anything at home which shall seem to forbid, to join the army. I should have gone long ago, but I felt it as much a duty to go in the best manner as to go at all. So I have waited, and very impatiently sometimes, till at last I think I can go, and in a way to give you as little solicitude as may be. I go probably the last of this week to Camp Butler, near Springfield, with three others, all of whom I know very well, and who, I am sure, are all you could wish, and we shall constitute a fellowship of mutual aid and care." To another relative he writes, a few weeks later: — " I suppose you have heard already that I have made up my mind to go to the war. It was no immature decision; but from the first I have been thinking strongly of it, having belonged to a Home Guard ever since the war began. I feel that I am doing the right thing in this, and since I have heard from home I have felt so all the more..... When I signed my name to the muster-roll, I had a feeling that at last I had been able to do one thing which was of service to some one else than myself." An intimate associate, at this time, in Chicago, writes his recollections of him thus: - "He had that peculiarly quiet and unassuming manner which is impressive by its very retirement. Yet his high sense of honor, his thorough scholarship, and an inexhaustible supply of genial humor made him a most welcome guest in our circle. It was in those days, after the election of President Lincoln, when all men were taking sides on great vital issues; and in the frequent discussions among us, his mature judgment and irresistible wit often came in, with unanswerable power, in behalf of universal freedom..... On the first alarm of war he entered, as a private, a company organized in Chicago; and there, giving all his leisure to military tactics and drill, he acquired the information and skill by which he afterwards made his company one of the best that ever came from a Western prairie." In November, 1861, he himself writes: "I never thought of going otherwise than as a private, until the position was offered me without my seeking it. Now I hope to secure it; but if not, I shall fall back into the ranks, somewhat disappointed certainly, but ready to work and fight with just as true and firm a zeal as if I wore a sword and shoulder-straps.....It has been hard work, this recruiting, though full of useful experiences. I don't think I ever passed two more unpleasant months; caused by hopes and fears about the regiment, and by having my motives suspected. But I 'm glad I've been through it, distasteful as it is. It has strengthened my conviction in the ultimate best success of truth and honor, and made me more independent and self-reliant, I hope and believe." He left Chicago, February, 1862, proceeding with his regiment to Cairo, where it was assigned to the army of General Pope, then moving against New Madrid. The regiment saw its first field service before that place. Writing thence,/on the eve of an expected battle, he says: - " I am perfectly well, and all ready for anything that may turn up. That the issue of the battle here must be a bloody one, and fatal to many, we all know. Who will be taken and who left, none can tell. I shall try to do my duty, and leave the rest in the hands of God." Later, he says:" I should write more than I do about the politics of the war, so to speak, if mind and time were not so occupied by other things. Father may be sure that I sympathize with all he says and feels. I 'm fighting for the preservation of the Union, but I want to feel that I am fighting for the cause of freedom too, as opposed to slavery; and I think the cause of Union and freedom has come to be one." Passing down the Mississippi to Island No. 10, and returning to participate in the advance on Corinth, his regiment was afterwards stationed at Decatur, Alabama, as an outpost of Rosecrans's army. In the fall of 1862 he received the commission of Captain, which he declined in order to accept the adjutancy of the regiment, which had also been tendered him. From Decatur the regiment passed to Nashville, engaging, in the division under Sheridan, in the battle of Stone River, the advance to Chattanooga, and the battle of Chickamauga. "On the field of Stone River," writes a fellow-officer there present, "when a part of the command was exposed to a deadly rain of bullets while not actively engaged themselves, some one called out to take shelter behind a building near by. Hall instantly checked the impulse to do so, by crying out, ' Never! don't have it said we got behind a barn.' " In the battle of Chickamauga he was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He wrote, a day or two afterwards, while within the enemy's lines: — "DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER, - The fortunes of war have mixed me a new cup. I 'm wounded and a prisoner. I supposed I must lose a leg, but the surgeon says he shall try to save it.... Give my love to all, and don't be down-hearted about me, for, believe me, there's no reason for it." The following is the testimony of Surgeon Magee, of the Fifty-first Illinois, who was taken prisoner with him: - "On the 19th of September, after the regiment had participated in a gallant charge, driving back the Rebel lines, the third man brought before me was Adjutant Hall, with a severe gun-shot wound through the knee. After a consultation on his case, the conclusion was that amputation was the only safe practice to adopt, and I at once notified him to that effect. He pleasantly replied, I would like very well to keep my leg, but I suppose I can do duty in the Invalid Corps without it.' The next morning he was placed on the table for the operation; but after a more thorough examination, I decided to make an effort to save the limb.... Our supply of rations was only sufficient to last to the fourth day after our capture, when we had to resort to the use of boiled wheat, stored in the building we occupied; and this was the only thing between us and starvation for the succeeding time. I can see now the Adjutant eating his boiled wheat from a tin cup, with an iron spoon, interlarding the exercise with pertinent remarks, which would set the whole ward of wounded men in an uproar of laughter. During his imprisonment, though in almost hourly intercourse with him, I never heard from him a desponding word. He always expressed his firm conviction in the final success of our arms and the ultimate triumph of the cause of freedom. He seemed to have at that time but one source of trouble, and that was the thought of the anxiety his parents would suffer on his account." On receiving telegraphic intelligence of his state, his father went to him at Chattanooga: finding him, bravely happy, in his hospital quarters, and cheering all around him by the sunshine of his presence. As soon as sufficiently restored, he left for home; the journey, in its earlier stages a peculiarly trying one, applying new tests to his manhood, and bringing it into clearer relief. He remained at home five or six weeks, in the quiet enjoyment of its affectionate intercourse, impressing all who saw him by the manly grace and modest dignity of his bearing. The teacher of his youth, before referred to, who chanced to meet him at this time in Boston, writes: - "I could hardly realize at first that the noble and beautiful (no other word will do) man before me was the slender boy I had known at school. I do not know how to express the deep and singular impression his face made upon me; an expression pure and almost saintly was blended with that of the true knight and heroic soldier." He left home while yet lame, declining the offer of an extended furlough, and reported at the Paroled Camp at St. Louis. Waiting there, in patriotic impatience, he was at length exchanged, and hastened, with overflowing gladness, to rejoin his regiment, then advancing in the campaign through Georgia under Sherman. About a month afterwards, on the 27th of June, at Kenesaw Mountain, he was ordered to lead his regiment, at the head of an assaulting column, against the enemy's works; and while in front of his men, with waving sword, cheering them on, he fell by the showering bullets of the intrenched sharpshooters. The body, recovered under flag of truce the next day, was found within a few feet of the Rebel works, pierced by eleven balls. It was taken within the Union lines and buried there. Colonel Bradlee, of the Fifty-first, but on that occasion commanding the brigade, after relating, in a letter to his father, the circumstances of his death, says: - " His loss comes nearer to me and pains me more than any that has ever fallen on us. He was in many respects the foremost man among us, and in capacity and cultivation had few equals. He was a natural leader, and his courage was equal to any man's; and these qualities made him especially valuable as an officer and companion." In a letter to his Lieutenant-Colonel, then absent from injuries, Colonel Bradlee writes - "No death among -us has touched me like Hall's. He was the most gallant man I ever saw, and a splendid fellow in all respects. His conduct in this affair came as fully to the heroic as anything I can imagine. The Rebel officers whom we met under a flag of truce to recover our dead said,' He was a very gallant fellow.' They had noticed him before he fell, and promised to get his sword and return it to me, as a mark of respect for his bravery." The following testimony comes from the most intimate of his associates in arms: "During the three years and more of our intimacy, associated with him as I was in recruiting expeditions, in camp, in the march, on the field, I never knew him, however great the provocation, use a profane or passionate or hasty word towards a soldier, while at the same time he stood high as a disciplinarian. Though fresh from the retirement of the student, and accustomed to the refinements of social life, he at once, by his noble sincerity and disinterested honesty, won the admiration, and respect and love of those unpolished but brave men from the Western farms, who fought with him at New Madrid, Farmington, and Stone River, and wept at his supposed loss at Chickamauga. A rough, swearing teamster, of his regiment, in telling one of his capture and probable death, said, with tears,' I wouldn't have cared much if it had been any other man.' His good nature and original humor made his society universally desirable; and many a wet bivouac, dreary tent, and ill supplied table were made endurable by the sunshine of his disposition. He flinched from no duty, no hardship, no responsibility, no danger. From the time he entered the service till his death, he was never off duty a day, excepting when compelled by a severe sharing, by choice, the fatigues and exposures of the men, and with the endurance of an old campaigner..... He spoke of the chances of death with feeling, but with no superstitious forebodings. He had frequently said to me, that should he be killed in battle, he would rather be buried on the field, than that his body should be taken home for burial; and it is as he preferred. He sleeps where he fell." He sleeps where he fell. The hands of living comrades prepared for him a soldier's grave, and laid him there, as they found him, - save the ring from his finger and the lock of hair, for a mother's keeping. There in far-off Georgia, among the mountain solitudes, broken now but -by the voices of nature, which echoed the uproar of that deadly strife, away from the scenes of his childhood, away from the graves of his kindred, watched over but by the eye of Him who has received his martyr spirit to spheres of nobler endeavor, - there he sleeps.