Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Sturgis Russell, July 26, 1863

Centreville, July 26, '63.

I cannot help having a strong hope that Beauregard is mistaken in supposing Rob Shaw killed. If he is dead, they've killed one of the dearest fellows that ever was. Harry, I felt thankful that you and he were out of the Second at Gettysburg, — I thought of you both as surely safe, I had always felt of Rob too, that he was not going to be killed.

It was very noble of him ever to undertake the Fifty-Fourth, but he had great satisfaction in it afterwards, both of himself and from his friends' satisfaction, — I believe he would rather have died with it than with the old Second. Will it not comfort his Mother a little to feel that he was fighting for a cause greater than any National one?

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 285

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