Our loss this morning is reported at 15,000 and that of the
Rebels at 40,000. Jimmy Lowell was killed,1 and his mother sees it
for the first time this morning. I didn't know him before last winter, when he
was introduced to me at the Agassiz's and much to my gratification asked me to
dance. What rendered it pleasanter was that, being lame from his wound, he
hadn't danced at all that evening. Poor Mother! I won't say poor Son, for he
died for his country and such martyrs are not to be pitied.
11:30 P.M. Just come home from Col. Howe's (Agent of N. E.
Regs.) where, in spite of troublous times, we went to see the fireworks. There
was a soldier there spending the night who had been wounded and Col. Howe brought
him down because he'd heard him say: “Oh! How I wish I could be in the country
today.” I talked to him all the firework time and he told me about his wound,
the battle, etc. He was only 17 years old when he enlisted last August in the
Third New York Reg. and had been at Edisto Island all winter until the attack
on James Island in which he was wounded in the jaw, or rather the front part of
the lower jaw. Teeth and all were knocked right out by a bullet passing in
behind under the tongue. All his upper front teeth were gone, too, and one
would have supposed that he couldn't talk, but he managed very well with his
face plastered up. After he was hit he walked by himself half way to the
hospital and two drummer boys helped him the rest of the way. When he got there
the pieces of bone hanging out were cut off. The fireworks and our brightness
seemed so incongruous in his sight and in the thought of thousands suffering
tonight.
_______________
1 At the battle of Glendale, Virginia, June 30,
1862.
SOURCE: William Rhinelander Stewart, The
Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell, p. 30-1
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