



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
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PEGGY O'NEAL

By Alfred Henry Lewis

Illustrated By Henry Hutt

A. J. Drexel Biddle

1902


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TO

MRS. A. J. DREXEL BIDDLE

THIS VOLUME

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED




PREFACE

Doubtless I shall tell this tale but poorly, since I have no skill
of writing or rhetoric and must, for the most part, proceed by blunt
sentences and short one-syllable words to the end that I be understood.
This record is worth while, I think, for it exhibits the growth of
favor for the Union within the General's breast; and to be corollary
thereunto, his wrath against States Rights as a doctrine, together with
a hatred of Calhoun, its champion, and what other folk were found to
uphold the Vice-President's hands in those ill courses of nullification
and separation and secession he laid down for national misguidance. I
myself had been with the General, war and peace, for thirty years
on end. He was like an elder brother to me, and I apprehended no man
better. And knowing him thus well--having his thought and feeling and
emotion of politics at my mental finger-ends--it is in my strong belief
that not until he came and made oath as chief magistrate, did he
conclude his position touching this claim of right on a state's part
to nullify general law and strike her name from the roll of our common
sisterhood. I was with him, I say, when the seed of the General's
determination to stand for a union, one and indivisible, was planted;
and I witnessed its quick upgrowing and broadening until it sheltered
and shadowed with wide safety the very integrity of the country. We
had arrived at a fork in the road; the ways were about to part. Calhoun
would have led us to the left where no man could be sure of national
continuance over night. But the General ruled; he was for the right
hand. By his iron courage, and the brisk, white clearness of his mental
lights, the General was to triumph. As descendant of such victory the
States were to be unified and secession beaten down. Nor shall that
hour find its morning in all time when the mighty excellences of the
General's labors are not to have their evidence, and the tree he
planted bear into the hands of men its fruits upon the earth. He was a
tremendous mechanic of state, was General Jackson; and the world in
its construction will wear his hammer-marks with those of Cromwell and
Napoleon while the ages keep to their procession.

And yet, as may the Amazon have ultimate well-head in some rivulet as
thin as a thread, or a spring so little that a gourd might serve for its
exhaustion, so did the General come to select his place in this business
of upholding the Union against those who would pull it down, as
incident to bucklering a woman--poor and slight and feeble, she was;
the beautiful Peg O'Neal!--who for her loveliness was envied and for her
goodness was hated and for her origin as a tavern-keeper's daughter was
contemned by those proud folk who named themselves the nation's court of
fashion.

The General was a sentimentalist; justice and to do right were with
him instincts, and came not as grist ground coldly in the mills of
calculated selfishness and reason. Scotch-Irish he was in his strain;
but more Irish than the Irish and more Scotch than the Scotch, he in a
manner wonderful could in the same moment be cool and warm, and cautious
and