Centreville, Sunday, July 26.
Cousin John has just sent me the report about dear Rob. It
does not seem to me possible this should be true about Rob. Was not he
preeminently what “Every man in arms should wish to be?”1
The manliness and patriotism and high courage of such a
soldier never die with him; they live in his comrades, — it should be the same
with the gentleness and thoughtfulness which made him so loveable a son and
brother and friend. As you once wrote, he never let the sun go down upon an
unkind or thoughtless word.2
_______________
1 From Wordsworth's “Character
of the Happy Warrior,” a poem that Lowell in his youth had greatly
cared for, and which was strangely descriptive of his later career.
2 The story, in brief, of the gallant
but unsuccessful assault upon Battery Wagner in Charleston harbour is this: The
Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment (coloured), after some six weeks’ service
in Georgia and South Carolina, where it won respect and praise, even from
original scoffers, had, at Colonel Shaw's request, been transferred to General
Strong's brigade. The colonel asked “that they might fight alongside of white
soldiers, and show to somebody else than their officers what stuff they were
made of.” Therefore, at six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, July 18, the
regiment reported at General Strong's headquarters on Morris Island, after
forty-eight hours of marching, or waiting, without shelter in rain and thunder,
for boat transportation, or stewing in tropical heat, with little to eat or
drink. They were worn and weary. General Strong told Colonel Shaw that he
believed in his regiment, and wished to assign them, in an immediate assault on
the enemy's strong works, the post where the most severe work was to be done
and the highest honour won. “They were at once marched to within 600 yards of
Fort Wagner and formed in line of battle, the Colonel heading the first, and
the Major the second battalion.
“At this
point, the regiment, together with the next supporting regiment, the Sixth
Maine, the Ninth Connecticut, and others, remained half an hour. Then, at half-past
seven, the order for the charge was given. The regiment advanced at quick time,
changing to double-quick at some distance on. When about one hundred yards from
the fort, the Rebel musketry opened with such terrible effect that for an
instant the first battalion hesitated; but only for an instant, for Colonel Shaw,
springing to the front and waving his sword, shouted, ‘Forward, Fifty-Fourth!’ and with another cheer and a shout they
rushed through the ditch, and gained the parapet on the right. Colonel Shaw was
one of the first to scale the walls. He stood erect to urge forward his men,
and while shouting for them to press on was shot dead, and fell into the fort.”
The attempt to take the fort was a desperate one, and
failed. The Fifty-Fourth did nobly, and suffered terribly. Little quarter was
given. In that furious fight in the last twilight, lit only by gun-flashes, it
is said that the firing from our own ships was, for a time, disastrous to the
regiment.
Emerson, in his poem called "Voluntaries,"
commemorates the sacrifice of Robert Shaw and his men : —
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I
can.
* * * * * * *
Best befriended
of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet Heaven his deed secures.
Peril around, all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain,
Him Duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.
Stainless soldier
on the walls,
Knowing this, — and knows no more, —
Whoever rights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before, —
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 285-6, 431-3
