Headquarters, Army Of The Potomac,
Sept. 19, 1862.
We had a severe
fight day before yesterday — a good many officers on our side wounded because
the men in some brigades behaved badly. Frank Palfrey is wounded, not
seriously, — Paul Revere, slightly wounded, — Wendell Holmes shot through the
neck, a narrow escape, but not dangerous now, — Hallowell badly hit in the arm,
but he will save the limb, — Dr. Revere is killed, — also poor Wilder Dwight, —
little Crowninshield (Frank's son) shot in the thigh, not serious, — Bob Shaw
was struck in the neck by a spent ball, not hurt at all, — Bill Sedgwick
very badly wounded.1 A good many others of my friends besides are
wounded, but none I believe in whom you take an interest. None of General
McClellan's aides were hit.2
This is not a
pleasant letter, Mother: we have gained a victory — a complete one, but
not so decisive as could have been wished.
_______________
1 This was the great battle of the Antietam, at
Sharpsburg, Maryland. The friends here mentioned were officers of the Twentieth
and Second Infantry, two of the best regiments that Massachusetts sent to the
war. Colonel Palfrey of the Twentieth has already been mentioned. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr. (now Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States),
was captain in the same regiment. His father, the Doctor, has told the story (“My
Hunt after the [wounded] Captain”) in his works. Norwood P. Hallowell became
colonel of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts (coloured) regiment. Dr. Edward Revere
(a grandson of Paul Revere), a noble man and devoted surgeon in the Twentieth,
after arduous work among the wounded under fire, was shot dead as he rose from
operating on a hurt soldier. Lieutenant-Colonel Dwight, early in the war,
wrote, after hearing of a military success elsewhere, “I had rather lose my
life to-morrow in a victory than save it for fifty years without one.
When I speak of myself as not there, I mean the Massachusetts Second in whose
fortunes and hopes I merge my own.” He had been largely instrumental in raising
that, the first three-years regiment from his State. His wish was granted.
Lieutenant Francis Welch Crowninshield was a youth of
delicate constitution, whose great spirit carried him through the whole period
of the war, although he was struck by bullets at Winchester, Antietam,
Chancellorsville, and elsewhere. Yet he steadily returned to his regiment, the
Second Massachusetts Infantry, which he encouraged to reenlist. He became a
captain, shared in the actions of the Atlanta Campaign, and, in spite of his
frequent injuries, marched through to the sea with Sherman. The year after the
war ended, his constitution succumbed to the effects of wounds and exposure,
and he died in Italy. Of Robert Shaw much has been already, and will be, said
in this volume.
William Dwight Sedgwick, of Lenox, Massachusetts, a good and
strong man, well born, and of excellent attainments, was practising law in St. Louis
when the war broke out. Eager in his patriotism, he at once joined the Second
Massachusetts Infantry as a first lieutenant. The next year he was placed on
the staff of his uncle, the gallant and loved General Sedgwick, with the rank
of Major and Assistant Adjutant-General. While carrying orders at Antietam he
was shot in the spine, and died in the hospital ten days later.
The stories of all these officers are told in the Harvard
Memorial Biographies.
2 Lowell
said no word of his important service, as one of the aides of the general in
command, in helping to rally General Sedgwick's division, of the Second Corps,
broken and retreating before the terrible fire. An officer who recognized him
said, “I shall never forget the
effect of his appearance. He seemed a part of his horse, and instinct with a
perfect animal life. At the same time his eyes glistened and his face literally
shone with the spirit and intelligence of which he was the embodiment. He was
the ideal of the preux chevalier. After I was wounded, one of my first
anxieties was to know what had become of him; for it seemed to me that no
mounted man could have lived through the storm of bullets that swept the wood
just after I saw him enter it.” (See Professor Peirce's Life of Lowell in the Harvard
Memorial Biographies.)
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 224-5, 409-10
No comments:
Post a Comment