Sunday, November 23, 2014

Captain Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Jackson Lowell, September 19, 1862

Headquarters, Army Of The Potomac,
Sept. 19, 1862.

We had a severe fight day before yesterday — a good many officers on our side wounded because the men in some brigades behaved badly. Frank Palfrey is wounded, not seriously, — Paul Revere, slightly wounded, — Wendell Holmes shot through the neck, a narrow escape, but not dangerous now, — Hallowell badly hit in the arm, but he will save the limb, — Dr. Revere is killed, — also poor Wilder Dwight, — little Crowninshield (Frank's son) shot in the thigh, not serious, — Bob Shaw was struck in the neck by a spent ball, not hurt at all, — Bill Sedgwick very badly wounded.1 A good many others of my friends besides are wounded, but none I believe in whom you take an interest. None of General McClellan's aides were hit.2

This is not a pleasant letter, Mother: we have gained a victory — a complete one, but not so decisive as could have been wished.
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1 This was the great battle of the Antietam, at Sharpsburg, Maryland. The friends here mentioned were officers of the Twentieth and Second Infantry, two of the best regiments that Massachusetts sent to the war. Colonel Palfrey of the Twentieth has already been mentioned. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (now Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States), was captain in the same regiment. His father, the Doctor, has told the story (“My Hunt after the [wounded] Captain”) in his works. Norwood P. Hallowell became colonel of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts (coloured) regiment. Dr. Edward Revere (a grandson of Paul Revere), a noble man and devoted surgeon in the Twentieth, after arduous work among the wounded under fire, was shot dead as he rose from operating on a hurt soldier. Lieutenant-Colonel Dwight, early in the war, wrote, after hearing of a military success elsewhere, “I had rather lose my life to-morrow in a victory than save it for fifty years without one. When I speak of myself as not there, I mean the Massachusetts Second in whose fortunes and hopes I merge my own.” He had been largely instrumental in raising that, the first three-years regiment from his State. His wish was granted.

Lieutenant Francis Welch Crowninshield was a youth of delicate constitution, whose great spirit carried him through the whole period of the war, although he was struck by bullets at Winchester, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and elsewhere. Yet he steadily returned to his regiment, the Second Massachusetts Infantry, which he encouraged to reenlist. He became a captain, shared in the actions of the Atlanta Campaign, and, in spite of his frequent injuries, marched through to the sea with Sherman. The year after the war ended, his constitution succumbed to the effects of wounds and exposure, and he died in Italy. Of Robert Shaw much has been already, and will be, said in this volume.

William Dwight Sedgwick, of Lenox, Massachusetts, a good and strong man, well born, and of excellent attainments, was practising law in St. Louis when the war broke out. Eager in his patriotism, he at once joined the Second Massachusetts Infantry as a first lieutenant. The next year he was placed on the staff of his uncle, the gallant and loved General Sedgwick, with the rank of Major and Assistant Adjutant-General. While carrying orders at Antietam he was shot in the spine, and died in the hospital ten days later.

The stories of all these officers are told in the Harvard Memorial Biographies.


2  Lowell said no word of his important service, as one of the aides of the general in command, in helping to rally General Sedgwick's division, of the Second Corps, broken and retreating before the terrible fire. An officer who recognized him said, I shall never forget the effect of his appearance. He seemed a part of his horse, and instinct with a perfect animal life. At the same time his eyes glistened and his face literally shone with the spirit and intelligence of which he was the embodiment. He was the ideal of the preux chevalier. After I was wounded, one of my first anxieties was to know what had become of him; for it seemed to me that no mounted man could have lived through the storm of bullets that swept the wood just after I saw him enter it.” (See Professor Peirce's Life of Lowell in the Harvard Memorial Biographies.)

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 224-5, 409-10

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