Harvard memorial biographies ...

Francis Custis Hopkinson.

27

that case they soon find their true level and come out with neither
profit nor reputation."
He soon after entered the Law School at Cambridge, and
had just finished his course there, when the call came for
nine months' men. He enlisted as a private in Company F,
Forty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, -a company, in large part,
manned and officered by Cambridge graduates. To friends
who urged him to seek a commission he said, "No, I might
not make a good officer, and I know I can be a private."
That single sentence shows how great a change had been
wrought in Frank since his resolution to go to the war. It
was never before his wont to distrust himself. His abilities
fairly used would have made him master of any science or
position, and he had formerly seemed conscious of this. Now
he voluntarily enlisted in a company commanded by a young
man who was a Freshman in college when he was a Junior,
and chose to be where he must obey rather than where he
might command. I have on the same page of a photograph
album two pictures of Frank, —one taken before and the
other after his decision to enlist in the army. "Who is that
young gentleman?" one asks, seeing the first; and then
turning to the second, "But who is that man next him?"
And the questioner will scarcely believe that both are pictures
of the same person.
His regiment was ordered to Newbern, North Carolina, in
October, and his first letters home show a resolute, manly
cheerfulness. He has no complaint to make. Everything is
as good as they ought to expect. He wants the newspapers
regularly, and at once starts a plan for a reading-room in
the camp. No time was given, however, for the accomplishment of his plan. Four days after his arrival at Newbern,
his regiment, forming a part of Colonel Thomas G. Stevenson's brigade, set forth upon the Tarborough expedition.
This was a severe test of the new soldiers, and some fell
out by the way and "died of fatigue, or were caught by the
Rebel guerillas and so mangled as to be unrecognizable."
Frank stood the march, however, without breaking down.
He says: