Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Jackson Lowell, July 26, 1863

Camp Near Centreville, July 26, '63.

You will write me, I know, all you learn about the Fifty-Fourth. I see that General Beauregard believes Bob Shaw was killed in a fight on the 18th, — I hope and trust he is mistaken. He will be a great loss to his regiment and to the service, — and you know what a loss he will be to his family and friends. He was to me one of the most attractive men I ever knew, — he had such a single and loyal and kindly heart: I don't believe he ever did an unkind or thoughtless act without trying to make up for it afterwards — Effie says he never did (I mean she has said so, of course I have not heard from her since this news) — in that, he was like Jimmy. It cannot be so hard for such a man to die — it is not so hard for his friends to lose him.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 284

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw, July 9, 1863

July 9th (?).

What glorious news about Vicksburg! — and I am particularly glad to have that and Gettysburg come so near the 4th of July — a year ago on that day Jimmy died in a farmhouse on the battlefield of Glendale. The little fellow was very happy, — he thought the war would soon be over, that everything was going right, and that everybody was as high-minded and courageous as himself. For Mother's sake, I wish you had known him, — he was a good son and a pure and wise lover of his Country, — with Father and Mother, I shall never fill his place, nor in the Commonwealth either, I fear.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 275

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

Captain Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Jackson Lowell, August 9, 1862

Aug. 9, 1862.

I was very glad to get your letters of Friday and Saturday, with photograph of Jimmy, all safe: it is a great thing to have so good a likeness. I was out on Monday with Hooker and Sedgwick's reconnaissance to Malvern Hill: early Tuesday morning we passed over the Nelson Farm and not very far from the house where Jim was carried; unfortunately the firing had already commenced in the front, and I could not stop even a moment, but I saw the place and the roads, and shall have much more chance of getting there again, if ever the opportunity offers.

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

Captain Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Jackson Lowell, July 27, 1862

Harrison's Landing, July 27, '62.

. . . It is painful to think that you were still in suspense about dear Jimmy. George will have told you, before this, all that he learned from the surgeon who was with him. Nelson's Farm is still far within the enemy's line, but I hope that we may move in that direction sometime. I am glad the little fellow was not moved to Richmond, merely to die and to be buried where we never could find him — he would have felt it. Palfrey told me about his taking Jimmy's sword — it was a sacred thing to him, and he carried it through some heavy marches — he was crying as he talked of it.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 223-4

Captain Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Jackson Lowell, July 18, 1862

Harrison's Bar, July 18, 1862.

Your two last letters have told me more about Jimmy than I had learned from his friends here — they seem to bring me very near to him and also to you and Father — nearer than I might ever have been, had the little fellow lived. It is very pleasant to have had him with you so entirely last winter. I wish I had seen more of him on the Peninsula.

I think that the officers of his regiment feel his loss very much, for besides being a gallant officer, they all tell me he was a good one, which is much rarer—his noble behaviour after he received his wound has impressed them very much. George will tell you about this; — even Palfrey cannot speak of him without tears.¹

Do, dear Mother, write to me a little oftener and try and help me to be a little more like what you saw me as a little child.

Your really loving Son.

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¹ Major Higginson, in giving the Soldiers' Field, said of James Lowell: —

“One of them was first scholar in his class — thoughtful, kind, affectionate, gentle, full of solicitude about his companions and about his duties. He was wounded in a very early fight in the war, and after his recovery and a hard campaign on the Peninsula, was killed at Glendale.  . . . Hear his own words: ‘When the Class meets, in years to come, and honours its statesmen and judges, its divines and doctors, let also the score who went to fight for their country be remembered, and let not those who never returned be forgotten.’ If you had known James Lowell, you would never have forgotten him.”

I add this account of James Lowell's parting from life, given by Professor Francis J. Child in the Harvard Memorial Biographies:

“When our troops moved on, and orders came for all who could to fall in, he insisted on Patten's (his 2d lieutenant) leaving him.  . . . ‘I have written them all. Tell them how it was, Pat.’ The officers of his regiment who went to bid him farewell tell us that the grasp of his hand was warm and firm and his countenance smiling and happy. He desired that his father might be told that he was struck while dressing the line of his men. Besides this he had no message but ‘Good-bye.’ He expressed a wish that his sword might not fall into the enemy's hands — a wish that was faithfully attended to by Colonel Palfrey,² through whose personal care it was preserved and sent home. . . .

“Two of our surgeons, who had been left with the wounded at the farm, were much impressed with his behaviour, and one of them told the Rebel officers to talk with him, if they wished to know how a Northern officer thought and felt. . . .

"While the soul of this noble young soldier was passing slowly away, his sister, who had for some time been serving as volunteer nurse on a hospital steamer, which was lying at Harrison's Bar on the James River, only a few miles off, heard of his dangerous wound, and tried every expedient to get to him, but without success.”

² Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Colonel of the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry, and later brevetted Brigadier-General U. S. V., a good soldier, and the author of the volume Antictam and Fredericksburg, No. V, in “Campaigns of the Civil War.”

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 221-2, 407-8

Charles Russell Lowell to James Lowell, April 29, 1861

Washington, April 29, '61.

I have just got the promise from Cameron of a 2d Lieutenancy — don't yet know in what branch. Hope to get into the Flying Artillery or Artillery of some sort.

I have had no letters from home for seventeen days and do not know how Mother feels. I am sure that she will agree with me that, come what may, the army must hereafter be a more important power in the State than hitherto —and if Southern gentlemen enlist, Northern gentlemen must also. I send her and Father my best love. Am living here in her two flannel shirts and six collars — and Grandmother's neck-cloth — no trunk, Mother's bag.

I need not tell her that I am not in the least bloodthirsty — and not nearly so hopeful about the good results of this war as our Massachusetts Volunteers — but I believe that it will do us all much real good in the end.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 204