Showing posts with label Joseph Bridgham Curtis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joseph Bridgham Curtis. Show all posts

Saturday, December 13, 2014

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, December 15, 1862

New York, December 15, '62.

I am at my mother's, — a house of mourning. On Saturday afternoon my brother Joe fell dead at the head of his regiment, ending at twenty-six years a stainless life in the holiest cause and in the most heroic manner. God rest his noble soul, and grant us all the same fidelity! My mother, who has felt the extreme probability of the event from the beginning, is as brave as she can be; but it is a fearful blow. She does not regret his going, and she knew the risk, but who can know the pang until it comes?1
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1 Joseph Bridgham Curtis was born in Providence, R. I., October 25, 1836. Educated as a civil engineer at the Lawrence Scientific School, Cambridge, Mass., he entered the Union service at the outbreak of the war in 1861 as engineer on the staff of the Ninth Regiment of the New York State National Guard. On the organization of the Fourth Rhode Island Regiment, he was appointed Adjutant. He served with Burnside at Roanoke and in the Army of the Potomac. The regiment was cut to pieces at Antietam, and fell back in disorder. Lieutenant Curtis seized the colors, shouting, “I go back no further! What is left of the Fourth Rhode Island, form here!” But there was not enough left to form, and Curtis, for the rest of the day, fought as a private in an adjoining command. He was made Lieutenant-Colonel on the reorganization of the regiment, and was in command at Fredericksburg. He was instantly killed at the head of his men on the evening of the battle of December 13,1862.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 160-1