The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was
about the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at
Washington, and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on
because there was nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession
of the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter,
his father, Essex Porter--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this
Essex. As an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West,
Nolan knew more about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades,
and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right
goodwill in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it
was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That
would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should
have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station
in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this
little watering-place, would have found it was preoccupied. But
Madison and the Virginians, of course, flung all that away.
All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards.
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