Harvard memorial biographies ...

4

Harvard Memorial Biographies.

"This morning I received a package from Boston, which I found
contained a handsome sword and sword-belt from my classmates.
The note which accompanied it informed me that four of my Class
are already in active service. They will all receive the like present
to mine."
Just before the return of the regiment, at the close of the
three months' campaign, he says: " All our talk at present is
about going home..... There is not a man in our whole
regiment whose heart will not leap for joy when he sets foot in
Massachusetts." Yet when this great joy had come to him, he
lingered not long amidst home delights. Arriving in Salem
on the ist of August, he enlisted on the 3d of the same month
in the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment, under Colonel
Hinks, with whom he had already served, and LieutenantColonel Devereux, his former Captain, for whom he had the
warmest esteem. On joining his regiment at Lynnfield, he
enjoyed the pleasant surprise of finding a friend in another
superior officer, - Major How of the Class of 1859. He
spent but three weeks with his friends before leaving Massachusetts, and devoted much of that time to the enlistment
of recruits for Company C, of the Nineteenth Regiment, in
which he was commissioned First Lieutenant. Upon receiving his commission, he spoke of his connection with the
privates of his company, expressing his determination to attend
to their comfort and welfare. " I know that I shall be kind to
them," said he. "I used to pity the poor fellows sadly who
received punishment when we were out before. It seemed
hard enough that they should be obliged to leave their comfortable homes for the hard service, without the addition of
this discipline, and yet I knew that it was a necessary one."
His regiment left Lynnfield for the seat of war on the 28th
of August, and we must now gather from his letters, and from
the testimony of officers and soldiers, the history of his short
military career.
In a letter dated October 30, not long after arriving in
Maryland, he writes: -
"I don't know when I have come so near to feeling homesick as