So died, in his thirty-seventh year, the man whose fame had filled two
continents, who had more than once imperilled the peace of the world
which remembers him only in the distorted and false character of a
monster and an outlaw. The country which gave him birth, and little
besides, save injustice, forgot amid the bloody conflict into which it
was soon plunged, the fame and fate of the filibusters. Into the vortex
of civil war were swept many of the restless spirits who had survived
the sanguinary fields of Central America, and in it perished some of
the bravest and ablest who had learned their first lesson in that stern
school.
As most of them were of Southern birth, so they generally joined the
ranks of the Confederacy. At the first call to arms, Henningsen offered
his services to the seceding states, and was given a regiment in Wise's
Legion of Northern Virginia. Frank Anderson went with him as
lieutenant-colonel, and did good service for the lost cause. He was one
of Walker's oldest veterans, having served in both the expeditions to
Nicaragua. At the first battle of Rivas he was wounded three times, and
left on the field for dead, but managed to drag himself into hiding
before his comrades were all massacred, and so escaped to rejoin his
command.
Henningsen served throughout the war; but, in spite of his experience
on many fields, and the marked ability with which he filled his
subordinate position, he never rose to distinction in the Confederacy.
He was a natural leader in irregular warfare, as might have been
expected of a pupil in the schools of Zumalacarregui, Schamyl, and
Walker; and the scientific campaigning of the Peninsula gave no scope
for his talents. But he had espoused the cause with honest convictions
of its justice, and he supported it faithfully to the end. When that
end and ruin came he returned to private life, a man without a career,
and lived quietly and unobtrusively until his death in June, 1877. In
his later years he was a devoted adherent of the patriots who were
waging a fruitless war for freedom in Cuba. Once he visited the island
in connection with a projected uprising, but saw no promise of success
in the attempt. His death was sudden. He had been ill but a few days; a
faithful friend, Colonel Gregg, a soldier who had fought against him in
the Civil War, watched by his bedside. The sick man slept, while the
tireless brain dreamed, what dreams who can say? of the chequered
career about to close forever. Suddenly his eyes opened, and in them
was something of the old fire, as he half sat up in his bed, and
pointing to a print on the wall of the arms of "Cuba Libre," said,
"Colonel, we'll free Cuba yet!" The ruling passion found voice in his
last words--the next instant he fell back dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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