Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863. Another is Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the beau ideal of an American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7, 1861.
Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions. Still, it may be mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest officer in rank, whose grave is known here. Other gallant officers, killed at Olustee, are buried near him. Among these, probably, is Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops; though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.
As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said: "Wherever they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison, officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions of rank in the august equality of death."
One section of the cemetery is devoted to the Confederates. There are more than a hundred of these, including several commissioned officers; and on Memorial Days the same ladies who decorate the graves of the Federals decorate also in the same manner the graves of the Confederates; recognizing that, though in life they were arrayed as mortal enemies, they are now reconciled in "the awful but kindly brotherhood of death." Sir Walter Scott enjoins:—
"Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb."
And One infinitely greater than Sir Walter has inculcated still loftier sentiments.
Among the graves to which the attention of the writer was particularly attracted was that of Charley ——, a boy of Colonel Putnam's regiment, who had now been dead more years than he had lived. His parents, living on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee, and walking daily over the paths which he had often trod, had plucked the earliest flower of their northern clime and sent it to the superintendent of the cemetery, to be planted at Charley's grave. The burning sun of South Carolina had not spared that flower; but something of it still remained. Its mute eloquence spoke to the heart of the tender recollections of a father and of a mother's undying love. How truly does Wordsworth say,—
"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."