~ Europe ~
In 1861 he
applied to teach the Pigeon Roost, but was refused on the ground
of youth and inexperience. He took this to heart and left Pigeon
roost as a home forever, and went to Huntington, Indiana.
There he got a school and taught with very great success two
winters, astonishing his patrons by using the word and object
methods. Then he sent for his mother and the rest of the family.
In the winter of 1863-64 he removed to St. Louis, where he
remained four years, studying and writing for the press and
finding employment as book-keeper in the house of John J. Daly
& Co. while there, he met for the first time Gen. Sheridan,
and gave a brilliant description to the Huntington Democrat
of a grand ovation to that officer; later he met Sheridan in
Europe.
In December, 1868, he sailed for Europe, to study the
languages -- Latin, German and French -- and with the ultimate
design of returning to his native country and practicing the law.
Just at the juncture when he had his trunk packed to return
home, his funds being about exhausted, the Franco-Prussian war
broke out, when he was engaged by the New York Herald to
go with the French army as its war correspondent. He speedily
procured a rough suit, rode hastily to the front, and soon after
the wing of the army which he was with was driven back with
considerable haste and disorder. His graphic letter describing
the retreat immediately placed its author among the foremost war
correspondents of the world. He then made a similar engagement
with the London News. As a correspondent of these journals
MacGahan was in all the wars of Europe for eight or ten years
previous to his death. He was an unparalleled correspondent, for
he seemed destitute of fear; would ride into the midst of a
battle with the commanding officers that he might truthfully
describe the thick of the fight - then, perchance, at times sit
down under the shade of a tree with bullets whistling all around,
and coolly spread out a lunch and partake thereof, or make notes
of tragic events as they were transpiring around him.
His experiences, in variety, during the few years of his
foreign life, were not probably ever equalled by any journalist,
and never did one accomplish so much, excepting Stanley. These
included his experience with the Commune in Paris, when he was
arrested and condemned to death, and his life only saved through
the influence of United States Minister Washburne; his travels
through Europe with Gen. Sherman and party in 1871-72; his long
and lonesome journey across the Asiatic country to Khiva in the
early part of 1873; his cruise on board of a war ship on the
Mediterranean, an his accidental and unexpected visit with the
same to Cuba, Key West, New York and elsewhere in the United
States in the latter part or 1873; his ten months with don
Carlos' army in 1874; his capture by the Republicans, who took
him for a Carlist, and he undoubtedly would have suffered death
but for the intervention of a United States representative; his
voyage to the Arctic seas with the Pandora expedition in 1875;
his memorable trip through Bulgaria in 1876; his visit to St.
Petersburg and subsequent accompaniment, of the Russian army to
Bulgaria in 1877, where he was everywhere hailed as a liberator
and deliverer; for the grateful people ran after him as he rode
through the streets of the towns and villages of that country,
kissing his boots, saddle, bridle, and even the little pet horse
that he rode. Archibald Forbes, the great English writer and
correspondent, who rode by his side, says the grateful and
affectionate demonstrations of the people of Bulgaria towards
MacGahan, surpassed anything of the kind he ever saw or imagined.
Forbes, who loved him as a brother, in an article on MacGahan,
pay this tribute to his great services:
"MacGahan's work in the exposures of the Turkish
atrocities in Bulgaria, which he carried out so thoroughly
and effectively in 1876, produced very remarkable results.
Regarded simply on its literary merits, there is nothing I
know of to excel it in vividness, in pathos, in a burning
earnestness, in a glow of conviction that fires from the
heart to the heart. His letters stirred Mr. Gladstone into a
convulsive paroxysm of burning revolt against the barbarities
they described. They moved England to its very depths, and
men travelling in railway carriages were to be noticed with
flushed faces and moistened eyes as they read them. Lord
Beaconsfield tried to whistle down the wind the awful
significance of the disclosures made in those wonderful
letters. The master of jeers jibed at as 'coffee-house
babble,' the revelations that were making the nations to
throb with indignant passion.
"A British official, Mr. Walter Baring, was sent into
Bulgaria on the track of the two Americans, MacGahan and
Schuyler, with the intent to disparage their testimony by the
results of cold official investigation. But lo! Baring,
official as he was, nevertheless was an honest man with eyes
and a heart; and he who had been sent out on the mission to
curse MacGahan, blessed him instead altogether, for he more
than confirmed the latter's figures and pictures of murder,
brutality and atrocity. It is not too much to say that this
Ohio boy, who worked on a farm in his youth and picked up his
education anyhow, changed the face of Eastern Europe. when he
began to write of the Bulgarian atrocities, the Turk swayed
direct rule to the bank of the Danube, and his suzerainty
stretched to the Carpathians. Now Roumania owns no more the
suzerainty, Servia is an independent kingdom, Bulgaria is
tributary but in name, and Roumelia is governed, not for the
Turks, but for the Roumelians. All this reform is the direct
and immediate outcome of the Russo-Turkish war.
"But what brought about the Russo-Turkish war? What
forced the Czar, reluctant as he was and inadequately
prepared to cross the Danube and wage with varying fortune
the war that brought his legions finally to the very gates of
Stamboul? The passionate, irresistible pressure of the
Pan-Slavist section of his subjects, burning with
ungovernable fury against the ruthless Turk, because of his
cruelties on those brother Slavs of Bulgaria and Roumelia;
and the man who told the world of those horrors-- the man
whose voice rang out clear through the nations with its
burden of wrongs and shame and deviltry, was no illustrious
statesman, no famed litterateur, but just this young American
from off the little farm in Perry county, Ohio."
MacGahan was preparing to attend and write up the
International Congress at Berlin, when, declining to abandon a
sick friend at Constantinople, he was himself attacked with the
malignant fever that had prostrated his friend, and died after a
few days' illness, June 9, 1878. Had he lived three days longer
he would have exactly completed his 34th year.
MacGahan's meeting with the lady who subsequently became his
wife, is full of romance. He was travelling through the provinces
of Russia, along with Gen. Sherman and party, when his horse
stumbled and threw him, spraining his ankle so severely that he
was taken to the nearest house, where he was compelled to remain
quiet for several days. News of the accident, and the further
fact that the sufferer was a young stranger, from a far-off
country, brought many to see him; among others a company of young
girls of whom one was Miss Barbara D'Elaguine. MacGahan could not
speak Russian at that time, and the lady could not speak English.
Both could speak French, however, and that was the language of
their courtship. There is one child of this marriage, a boy born
in Spain in 1874, during the Carlist war. The United States has
been the home of widow and son for several years.
