Ripon, Va., Sept. 10, '64.
Take care of yourself, old fellow. Just get your mother to
take you to some quiet place and make much of you — don't think too much of
campaigns and of elections. This isn't the end of the world, though it is so
important for us. Don't mind Lincoln's shortcomings too much: we know that he
has not the first military spark in his composition, not a sense probably by
which he could get the notion of what makes or unmakes an Army, but he
is certainly much the best candidate for the permanency of our republican
institutions, and that is the main thing. I don't think even he can make
the people tire of the war. What you want is rest and care; don't be
foolish, my dear fellow, and neglect to take them. Unless you give yourself
some time now, you will never half complete your career. What the devil
difference does it make where a man passes the next six months, if the war is
to last six years? If it is to be ended in one year, you have done and suffered
your share in it.1
There are better things to be done in the Country, Barlow,
than fighting, and you must save yourself for them too. I remember we
said to each other six months ago, that the man who wasn't in the coming campaign
might as well count out. Bah! it hasn't proved. There are as many campaigns for
a fellow as there are half years to his life.
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1 The brilliant career of General Barlow was well
sketched by Mr. Forbes, in a letter to a friend, written May 30, 1862, just
after Barlow's wounding in the Wilderness Campaign: “You, out West, may not
know about Barlow. Graduating high at Harvard some four or five years since
[Mr. Forbes was mistaken; Barlow graduated in 1855], he entered one of the New
York regiments either as a private or in some subordinate capacity; rose to be
Colonel, led his regiment gallantly in the Peninsula and the great battle of Antietam.
While lying on the field, supposed mortally wounded, he received his commission
as Brigadier for his services on the Peninsula. Barely recovered from his
wounds, he served at Fredericksburg, and again fell at Gettysburg, shot in
several places, and pronounced by the Faculty fatally shot. He laughed at their
predictions; his strong will prevailed, even under the disadvantage of a feeble
frame, and he slowly recovered to be just able to head a Division in the late
battles, under Hancock. He led the attack on the ‘Salient’ [Spottsylvania],
when Johnston and his Brigade were captured. . . .
“From his
slight frame and youthful appearance, he is often called the ‘boy-General,’
though there is about as much man to him as to any one I know; and, moreover, he
is one of the few men who have achieved distinction without coming through the
portals of West Point, or of politics. It is said Hancock or Meade recommended
him for a Major-General’s commission the day after that assault, the credit for
which Hancock distinctly gives him.”
General Barlow survived the war some thirty years, and
practised law with distinction in New York. He married Mrs. Lowell's younger
sister.
General Francis A. Walker, in his History of the Second
Corps, tells the story of Colonel Barlow's masterly and successful tactics
with his brigade at a dark moment at Antietam, and also of his desperately
successful capture of the Salient at Spottsylvania. Another officer who served
with him on both these fields, Lieutenant-General Miles, said, “Under the most
depressing circumstances, he never was without hope and fortitude. He was
apparently utterly devoid of the sensation of fear, constantly aggressive, and
intensely earnest in the discharge of all duties. His integrity of purpose,
independence of character, and sterling honesty in the assertion of what he
believed to be right and just, made him a marked man among public men. He
abhorred a coward; had a perfect contempt for a demagogue, and despised a
hypocrite. He believed in the administration of public affairs with the most
rigid integrity, and did not hesitate to denounce wrong as he believed it to
exist, and maintain what he believed to be right under all circumstances.” The
same qualities shone out in time of peace. In his short term as United States
Marshal in New York he is said to have cleaned out a nest of corruption, and,
given special powers by President Grant, he broke up by force a large
filibustering expedition about to sail for Cuba, thus averting a war with
Spain. As Attorney-General of New York, he officially instituted most of the
legal proceedings ending in the impeachment of corrupt judges. Hon. Charles S.
Fairchild said of him, "The State owes General Barlow more than she does
any single man for results, without which the life of any honest man would have
been intolerable in this State.”2
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2 See an admirable sketch of Barlow's life, in
the Harvard Graduates' Magazine for June, 1896, by Edwin H. Abbot.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 343-4, 461-3
