Publisher's Synopsis
"The Man Without a Country" is a short story by American writer Edward Everett Hale, first published in The Atlantic in December 1863.The protagonist may be a young us Army lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who develops a friendship with the visiting Burr . When Burr is tried for treason (historically this occurred in 1807), Nolan is tried as an accomplice. During his testimony, he bitterly renounces his nation, angrily shouting, "I wish i'll never hear of the us again!" The judge is totally shocked at this announcement, and on convicting him, icily grants him his wish: Nolan is to spend the remainder of his life aboard us Navy warships, in exile, with no right ever again to line foot on U.S. soil, and with explicit orders that nobody shall ever mention his country to him again.The sentence is administered to the letter. For the remainder of his life, Nolan is transported from ship to ship, living out his life as a prisoner on the high seas, never once allowed back during a port . Though he's treated consistent with his former rank, nothing of his country is ever mentioned to him. None of the sailors in whose custody Nolan remains is allowed to talk to him about the U.S., and his newspapers are censored. Nolan is unrepentant initially, but over the years becomes sadder and wiser, and desperate for news. One day, as he's being transferred to a different ship, he beseeches a young sailor never to form an equivalent mistake that he had: "Remember, boy, that behind of these men ... behind officers and government, and other people even, there's the Country Herself, your Country, which you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you'd stand by your mother ... !" On one such ship, he attends a celebration during which he dances with a girl he had formerly known. He then beseeches her to inform him something, anything, about the us, but she quickly withdraws and speaks not to him.Deprived of a homeland, Nolan slowly and painfully learns truth worth of his country. He misses it quite his friends or family, quite art or music or love or nature. Without it, he's nothing. Dying aboard the USS Levant, he shows his room to a politician named Danforth; it's "a little shrine" of patriotism. the celebs and Stripes are draped around an image of Washington . Over his bed, Nolan has painted a American eagle, with lightning "blazing from his beak" and claws grasping the world . At the foot of his bed is an outdated map of the us, showing many of its old territories that had, unbeknownst to him, been admitted to statehood. Nolan smiles, "Here, you see, I even have a country!"The dying man asks desperately to be told the news of yank history since 1807, and Danforth finally relates to him most of the main events that have happened to the U.S. since his sentence was imposed; the narrator confesses, however, that "I couldn't structure my mouth to inform him a word about this infernal rebellion." Nolan then asks him to bring his copy of the Presbyterian Book of Public Prayer, and skim the page where it'll automatically open. These are the words: "Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy prefer to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the us, and every one others in authority." Nolan says: "I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it's now fifty-five years." a day, he had read of the us, but only within the sort of a prayer to uphold its leaders; the U.S. Navy had neglected to stay this book from him. this is often the supreme irony of the story.Nolan asks him to possess them bury him within the sea and have a gravestone placed in memory of him at Fort Adams, Mississippi, or at New Orleans . When he dies later that day, he's found to possess drafted a suitably patriotic epitaph for himself: "In memory of PHILIP NOLAN, Lieutenant within the Army of the us . He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands."