James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

These “three likely lads” were General Charles Russell Lowell, his brother James Jackson Lowell, and William Lowell Putnam, their cousin and the poet’s nephew.

In the autumn of 1860 Charles Lowell took charge of the Mount Savage Iron Works at Cumberland, Maryland. On the 20th of April, 1861, hearing of the attack made the preceding day in Baltimore on the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, Lowell instantly abandoned his position and set out for Washington. He put himself at once at the disposal of the government, and about the middle of June received his commission as captain in the Third Regiment of United States Cavalry. For distinguished services at Williamsburg and Slatersville he was nominated for the brevet of Major. At South Mountain, in bearing orders to General Reno, he showed a bravery which excited universal admiration. In recognition of his gallantry in this battle, General McClellan assigned to Lowell the duty of presenting to the President the trophies of the campaign. In November, 1862, he was ordered to report to Governor Andrew for the purpose of organizing the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, of which he was appointed Colonel. In the May following he left Boston with his regiment, and was soon placed in command of the cavalry of the Department of Washington. For many months he was occupied in resisting the incursions of Mosby. “I have often said,” writes Colonel Mosby, “that of all the Federal commanders opposed to me, I had the highest respect for Colonel Lowell, both as an officer and as a gentleman.” It was at Cedar Creek, while leading his command, that he received his mortal wound. His commission as Brigadier-General of Volunteers, “determined on days before,” was signed on the 19th of October, too late for him to wear the honor he had earned so well. “We all shed tears,” said Custer, “when we knew we had lost him.”

General Lowell’s brother, James Jackson Lowell, was but twenty-three years old when the war began. He was born in the very Elmwood where, as this writer hopes, this reader feels at home. His early youth was spent in Boston, where he was a student in the public Latin School. Before he entered college, the family had removed to Cambridge again.

ELMWOOD
From a photograph by Miss C.E. Peabody, Cambridge, Mass.

He spent the four years from 1854 as an undergraduate in Cambridge, taking his bachelor’s degree in 1858, at the second Commencement after his uncle entered on his duties there. He took the highest place in his class when he graduated; a favorite with his class, “liked as much as he was admired.” “While he would walk a dozen miles for wild flowers, skate all day, and dance as long as the music would play, he found no study too dry, and would have liked to embrace all science and all literature.”

He showed the interest in public affairs which such a young man ought to show, and such as was suggested to him by his ancestry on his father’s side and his mother’s alike. He was at the Dane Law School,—the school connected with the University at Cambridge,—when the war broke out. James Lowell and his cousin, William Putnam, also at the Law School, undertook to raise recruits for a Massachusetts regiment. After some delay they and their recruits were assigned to the Twentieth Regiment, Lowell taking a commission as First Lieutenant, and Putnam that of Second. They received their commissions on the 10th of July. They were sent to the front in September.

After a few days in Washington they were ordered to Poolesville in Maryland, and they were encamped there until October 20. On the 21st of October they were led across the Potomac by General Lane, who atoned for this mistake by his life. The wretched and useless battle of Ball’s Bluff was fought, Putnam was so severely wounded that he died in a few days, Schmitt, their captain, was wounded, and Lowell shot in his thigh. He returned home until his wound was healed, and joined his regiment on the Potomac as the movement of McClellan against Richmond went forward. He saw rather than joined in the fighting at Fair Oaks, and on the 26th of June writes, in good spirits, that he has hopes of seeing Richmond before the month is over. But, alas! on the 29th the regiment was ordered to join McClellan’s retreat to the Potomac, and on the 30th he received a mortal wound at Glendale.

His cousin, William Lowell Putnam, was an only son. The friend and teacher of the two, Professor Child, says: “A nobler pair never took the field. Putnam, with his fair hair, deep eyes, and uncontaminated countenance, was the impersonation of knightly youth. He was our Euryalus, quo pulchrior alter non fuit Æneadum. The cousins were beautifully matched in person, mental accomplishments, and pure heroism of character.”

I copy Professor Child’s words with a certain special tenderness for a personal remembrance of “Willie Putnam,” as most of his friends called him. I was in Salignac’s drill corps, before the war began, at a time when the drill was carried on in a large hall, at the corner of Summer Street and Washington Street in Boston. The hall was not long enough for the battalion to form in line, and two right angles were necessary, so that we stood at parade with our backs to three sides of the wall. Day by day, for I know not how many weeks, in presenting arms at parade, I “presented arms,” not so much to the commanding officer, as to this beautiful boy, who at the distance of thirty or forty yards presented arms to me. Among three or four hundred young men, most of them younger than I, I did not know his name. In June he was enlisting men, and Salignac and the drill corps, and I among the rest, saw him no longer. In October he was killed; and then for the first time, when I saw his picture, did I know that the noble, cheerful face I had so often saluted was that of this fine young man, in whose career, for many reasons, I was interested so deeply.