Thus by the incompetency of those in command, a terrible disaster was brought about. General McClellan and General Stone were both severely censured by the people for this needless, inexcusable sacrifice. Grave doubts were entertained in regard to the loyalty of General Stone, for he permitted the wives of officers in the Rebel service to pass into Maryland and return to Virginia, with packages and bundles, whenever they pleased, and he ordered his pickets to heed any signals they might see from the Rebels, and to receive any packages they might send, and forward them to his quarters.[3]
When these facts became known to the War Department, General Stone was arrested and confined in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, but he was subsequently released, having no charges preferred against him.
Lieutenant Putnam of the Twentieth Massachusetts, who was so young that he was called the "boy soldier," was mortally wounded in the battle, was carried to Poolesville, where he died the next day. He came of noble blood. His father was descended from the ancestor of old General Putnam, who fought the French and Indians on the shores of Lake Champlain, who did not stop to unyoke his oxen in the field, when he heard of the affair at Lexington, and hastened to meet the enemy.
Rev. James Freeman Clarke, at his funeral said:—
"His mother's family has given to us
statesmen, sages, patriots, poets, scholars, orators, economists, philanthropists, and now gives us also a hero and a martyr. His great grandfather, Judge Lowell, inserted in the Bill of Rights, prefixed to the Constitution of this State, the clause declaring that 'all men are born free and equal,' for the purpose, as he avowed at the time, of abolishing slavery in Massachusetts, and he was appointed by Washington, federal judge of the district.
"His grandfather was minister of this church, [West Church, Boston,] honored and loved as few men have been, for more than half a century.
"Born in Boston in 1840, he was educated in Europe, where he went when eleven years old, and where in France, Germany, and Italy he showed that he possessed the ancestral faculty of mastering easily all languages, and where he faithfully studied classic and Christian antiquity and art. Under the best and most loving guidance, he read with joy the vivid descriptions of Virgil, while looking down from the hill of Posilippo, on the headland of Misenum, and the ruins of Cumæ. He studied with diligence the remains of Etruscan art, of which, perhaps, no American scholar, though he was so young, knew more.
"Thus accomplished, he returned to his native land, but, modest and earnest, he made no display of his acquisitions, and very few knew that he had acquired anything. When the war broke out, his conscience and heart urged him to go to the service of his country. His strong sense of duty overcame the reluctance of his parents, and they consented. A presentiment that he should not return alive was very strong in his mind and theirs, but he gave himself cheerfully, and said, in entire strength of his purpose, that 'to die would be easy in such a cause.' In the full conviction of immortality he added, 'What is death, mother? it is nothing but a step in our life.'
"His fidelity to every duty gained him the respect of his superior officers, and his generous, constant interest in his companions and soldiers brought to him an unexampled affection. He realized fully that this war must enlarge the area of freedom, if it was to attain its true end,—and in one of his last letters he expressed the earnest prayer that it might not cease till it opened the way for universal liberty. These earnest opinions were connected with a feeling of the wrong done to the African race and an interest in its improvement. He took with him to the war as a body servant a colored lad named George Brown, who repaid the kindness of Lieutenant Lowell by gratitude and faithful service. George Brown followed his master across the Potomac into the battle, nursed him in his tent, and tended his remains back to Boston. Nor let the devoted courage of Lieutenant Henry Sturgis be forgotten, who lifted his wounded friend and comrade from the ground, and carried him on his back a long distance to the boat, and returned again into the fight.