In the Confucian cemetery at Ningpo his body was laid at rest with all possible honours and with military ceremony becoming his rank. Over his grave, and that of his young wife, who survived him only a few months, a mausoleum was erected, and monuments were placed on the scenes of his victories. The mausoleum soon became a shrine invested with miraculous power, and a number of years after his death General Ward was solemnly declared to be a joss or god. The manuscript of the imperial edict to this effect is now preserved in the Essex Institute.
The command of the Ever-Victorious army reverted to Burgevine, but later, through British intrigue, to General Gordon. It was Ward, however, the Salem lad, who organised the army by which Chinese Gordon gained his fame. The British made a saint and martyr of Gordon, and called Ward an adventurer and a common sailor, but the Chinese rated him more nearly as he deserved.
In a little red-bound volume printed in Shanghai in 1863, and translated from the Chinese for the benefit of a few of General Ward's relatives in this country--a work which I have been permitted to examine--the native chronicler says of our hero:
"What General Ward has done to and for China is as yet but imperfectly known, for those whose duty it is to transfer to posterity a record of this great man are either so wrapped in speculation as to how to build themselves up on his deeds of the past time, or are so fearful that any comment on any subject regarding him may detract from their ability, that with his last breath they allow all that appertains to him to be buried in the tomb. Not one in ten thousand of them could at all approach him in military genius, in courage, and in resource, or do anything like what he did."
In his native land Ward has never been honoured as he deserves to be. On the contrary, severe criticism has been accorded him because he was fighting in China for money during our civil war, "when," said his detractors, "he might have been using his talents for the protection of the flag under which he was born."
But this was the fault of circumstances rather than of intention. Ward wished, above everything, to be a soldier, and when he found fighting waiting for him in China, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to accept the opportunity the gods provided. But he did what he could under the circumstances for his country. He offered ten thousand dollars to the national cause--and was killed in the Chinese war before the answer to his proffer of financial aid came from Minister Anson Burlingame.