Friday, July 24, 2015

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw Lowell, October 17, 1864

Oct. 17th, Same Camp.

Good-morning. Such a night's sleep as I had — ten hours strong — only interrupted a few minutes at reveille, waking up and reflecting cosily that it was not yet time to turn out!

I am very glad that George is nominated for Congress, and hope that, in the great revolution which has been going on, his chance of election may be better than you describe it.1
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1 Excepting the few words of farewell to his wife, written in the last hours of his life, the three following letters, written on the same day, with which this volume closes, were the last which Colonel Lowell ever wrote. Two days later, the bullets, among which for three months he had ridden unheeding, doing his duty to the uttermost, cut short his life. Had Lowell lived through that day, it seems probable that he would have survived the war. The victory of October 19 at Cedar Creek virtually ended the Valley Campaign, and put an end to the dangerous service for the cavalry, except for the short period in spring, ending in Lee's surrender. Moreover, Lowell's commission as Brigadier-General, signed the day of his death, Sheridan intended to follow by making him his Chief of Cavalry, a position in which he would have been less exposed.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 361-2, 475

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