Free The Devil Soldier by Caleb Carr Page B

state were ultimately to hold for him a fatal attraction.
    Ward’s military ardor showed no signs of cooling after his return to Salem. Many accounts state that he attempted to gain admittance to West Point but was blocked when the appointment went to a relative of one of Salem’s congressmen. Whether or not this is so, 1848 found Ward enrolled at the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, a private institution in Vermont later known as Norwich University. His months at the academy—which offered courses in strategy, tactics, drill, and engineering—provided the only formal military training he would ever receive. Yet despite the great interest he had always shown in land warfare, and in spite of the fact that he was acknowledged to be something of a natural leader, his stay at the academy was a short one. Formal education had never been a strong suit with Ward, and his family’s circumstances apparently would not bear an extended course of study. Given these factors, as well as his father’s consistent hostility toward military pursuits, it is not surprising that December 16, 1849, found Ward putting once more to sea, this time on the Russell Glover , captained by his father and bound for San Francisco.
    The ship reached its destination in May 1850, and for the next twelve to eighteen months Ward’s movements cannot be traced with any certainty. He was forced for a time to remain aboard the Russell Glover as shipkeeper while she was in port, a duty he found frustrating. This frustration could only have been aggravated by the madness of the ongoing gold rush in California; indeed there were several reports that Ward tried his hand at prospecting.
    More important, Ward claimed in later life to have made the acquaintance during his youth of the great Sardinian revolutionary and Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, and if that story was more than fanciful boasting, the meeting almost certainly took place during this time. Garibaldi, who had aided nationalist struggles in Latin Americaduring the 1840s, once again journeyed from Europe to the Western Hemisphere in 1850. Spending almost a year in New York, he sailed in April 1851 for Nicaragua, Panama, and finally Peru, where he remained until the beginning of 1852. This was a dormant period in Garibaldi’s career, during which his personal finances, along with his plans for an Italian nation-state, were in disarray. He spent the sojourn trying to make money rather than inciting revolution. For both Garibaldi and Ward, then, these years were, asone Garibaldi biographer put it, “uneventful, unrecorded, unmemorable.” But did their paths ever cross?
    Ward’s future second-in-command in China, Edward Forester, wrote in 1896 that he first met Ward in South America, although he did not mention a date. However, since most of Ward’s remaining years are accounted for, and since none of them involved travels to points farther south than Mexico, it is possible that the meeting with Forester took place in late 1850 or 1851. This would tend to reinforce the suggestion that during this time Ward took ship from San Francisco south to Panama or even to the port of Callao in Peru. He could easily have found a post on one of the many ships that worked this commonly traveled route, and the trip would have placed him in close proximity to Garibaldi.
    The actual circumstances of the encounter, even whether it took place at all, are perhaps less important than Ward’s enthusiasm for Garibaldi and what he represented. The great liberator’s exploits in South America—where he had fought a brutal guerrilla war in Uruguay, married a courageous native woman, and finally emerged a renowned hero—were the stuff of high romance. Garibaldi’s politics may have been ultimately vague (the “liberator” was destined one day to be called dictator and to ride through the streets of Naples in a carriage with King Victor Emmanuel), but his courage, his stamina, and his talent for