Friday, December 5, 2014

Diary of Josephine Shaw Lowell: July 4, 1862

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.
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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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