Harvard memorial biographies ...

Warren Dutton Russell.

165

Rebellion, though he was not of sufficient age to be a voter,
his sympathies were most heartily with the party that took
its name from the Constitution and the Union, - and opposed
to the party which prevailed in the election. He attended
the meetings, joined enthusiastically in the public demonstrations of the side he espoused, read the newspapers, and
eagerly watched the contest. The agitation of the slavery
question imperilled, as he believed, the existence of the Union,
and he therefore opposed such agitation. Yet when the
armed attack upon the Union came, it mattered not to him
that it came from those whom in politics he had been regarding as friends, and that the government was in the hands of
those whom in politics he had opposed; he was promptly
ready to fight against all who sought to destroy it, and in
alliance with all who would fight to maintain it.
Immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, he
began to prepare for military service. He joined a drill-club,
practised the manual of arms, and acquainted himself with
the duties of an officer. He did this at first without any
defined purpose of going to the war, but because the times
called for military training, and he wished to be ready for
possible contingencies. The defeat of the national army in
the first battle at Bull Run was the event that decided him.
He applied at once for a commission, and obtained that of
Second Lieutenant in the only regiment in which he ever
served. The examples of others, doubtless, concurred with
the high promptings of his own heart to lead him to join
the army. He had, in so doing, the inspiring companionship
of his near kinsmen, -the brothers Lowell, James and Charles,
and William Lowell Putnam, - of college classmates, and
many an old comrade at school. His younger brother, Frank,
too, was at this time at home, recovering from his wounds
after three months of campaigning in Virginia, and impatiently
waiting to be well enough to go back and serve under the
commission of Second Lieutenant of Artillery in the Regular
Army, which he had just received from the Secretary of War.
It was bestowed in recognition of the extraordinary bravery