1854.
Richard Chapman Goodwin.
Captain 2d Mass. Vols. (Infantry), May 24, 1861; killed at Cedar Mountain, Va., August 9, 1862.Richard Chapman, the eldest child of Ozias and Lucy (Chapman) Goodwin, was born in Boston, Oc tober 1, 1833. After the necessary preparation he entered the Latin School, whence, at the end of four years, he entered Harvard College, graduating in the Class of 1854. On leaving college, he was in a mercantile house in Boston for more than a year, when he left this country for India. Here he passed a few months, and afterwards travelled through the Holy Land, made an extensive tour through Europe, and returned to his home after an absence of nearly two years.
On the breaking out of the Rebellion, prompted wholly by the movings of his own mind, he decided to unite himself with the Second Massachusetts Regiment, under Colonel George H. Gordon, with several of his personal friends. The Second Regiment left Boston in July, 1861, and its career is well known. The connection of Captain Goodwin with it is described so truthfully by Dr. Bartol, his friend as well as pastor, in a sermon preached in the West Church the Sunday after the funeral, that an extract from it is given, rather than the words of his friends.
The Captain of Company K, in that Second Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers which will fill a shining page in our history, at the motion of his own will, obedient to the pleading within him of his country's call, gathered his men, and from his situation of independence and comfort went into all the labor and hazard of the war, with the simple purpose of doing his part—as he has with unspotted honor—to solve our awful problem. The Colonel of the regiment testifies to what we learn on all hands, of the respect he won from his [274] brother officers, and the devoted regard of those whom he led. His personal behavior rose uniformly to the highest tide-mark of noble sentiment and actual fidelity. In the unavoidable and admirably planned retreat of General Banks, before overwhelming numbers, near the Shenandoah, though so exhausted that had he fallen by the way he could not have risen again, he was faithfully in his place. All the hardships and privations of a soldier's life he bore with signal fortitude; while absence weakened no familiar tie, but only drew him more strongly in all affectionate bonds; the tenderness of his heart overflowing on occasion of a Christmas visit he was able to make to his home.
‘When unusual perils had been around him, and he came out safe, he gratefully recognized the providence of God in his preservation. In one of his letters, he speaks of the brief and solemn communion he had with a comrade in the terrific perils and threats of the Rebel pursuit. Upon him, as upon so many, from the sober air of our great struggle a breath of sanctity seemed to pass. His health, not wholly strong when he left, had, by the great heat of the weather, become so much impaired that he asked for a furlough. This was not granted, on the ground that his was a case rather for resignation,—an idea he would not for a moment entertain, preferring, as he said, “rather to die there than think of it, as he must be a great deal sicker even to ask for it.” So, as the engagement came on, which, when he intimated his need of repose, he had not anticipated, he resolved, persisting against all remonstrance, weak as he was, to take his share in it and his chance with the rest. But so extreme was his bodily weakness, that it was necessary for his servant to assist him to the field which proved fatal to them both. He toiled on and up the hill in the neighborhood, fast as possible, to the point of hazard and decision, where, so far as can be known, he was instantly killed, and, without suffering, passed away.’
[275]
Charles Russell Lowell.
Captain 6th U. S. Cavalry, May 14, 1861; Colonel 2d Mass. Cavalry, April 15, 1863; Brigadier-General of Volunteers, October 19, 1864; died at Middletown, Va., October 20, 1864, of wounds received at Cedar Creek, October 19.Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., was born at Boston, January 2, 1835. He was the eldest son of Charles Russell and Anna Cabot (Jackson) Lowell, and was the grandson of the Rev. Charles Lowell, D. D., and of Patrick Tracy Jackson. From infancy he showed a rich variety and freedom of nature. He entered with eager relish into the games of boyhood, and surpassed all his companions in invention and daring; in study he displayed an equal alertness of faculty. ‘Those who knew him in his first ten years can recall a sturdy little figure, active but not restless, a pair of bright, soft, dark eyes, and rosy cheeks curling all over with enjoyment. He finds everything good; but the eyes are often withdrawn from the charms of life and nature, and rest with a far-away upward look on something unseen beyond.’
When only thirteen, he had finished the studies of the Boston Latin School; and the next two years were spent at the English High School.
In 1850 he entered college. He was one of the youngest members of his Class; but he immediately took the first rank in scholarship, and maintained it to the end. During the four years of college life, he gradually unfolded to the vision of his friends the great and brilliant attributes—the deep, quick, and independent intellect, the vigor of will, the self-reliance, the power over men, the originality and force of moral faculty, the jubilance of spirit, itself in him amounting to a moral excellence, the earnest tenseness and life of the whole nature— which continued to distinguish him in all the phases of his career. [276]
‘When he entered college,’ says a classmate and near friend, ‘he was unusually boyish in appearance, with a ruddy countenance overflowing with health and animal spirits, and a manner somewhat brusque. He did not win popularity at once; but as his powers and character developed, and toned down the rather boisterous life and manner of the body, he came to be proudly acknowledged, without a dissenting voice, as the foremost man of the Class.’
His scholarship, which was equally distinguished in all branches of study, seemed in no sense as forced product, but the natural resultant of the action of a remarkable variety of powers. His thought was at once fluent, accurate, and transcendental. He learned with such rapidity that it was commonly believed he did not study. His memory, both lively and tenacious, needed to take only one impression of an object, and then it was daguerreotyped. But deeper than his gift of memory lay an extraordinary power of concentration, and a genius for detecting in .principles the key to facts. ‘He made as much mental effort in a minute as many people in an hour; perhaps as much of his life went to each effort.’
His intellectual sympathies were without limit. He read extensively and systematically; and he talked, out of a full understanding and a fresh, free spirit, on literature, science, and philosophy. He threw himself with glad and vigorous activity into the current of college life. He was a constant participant in its sports and exercises, and a leader in its public affairs; and with all his overflowing energy of motion, he had within a deep repose of nature, delighting in nothing more than in contemplation,—with him no aimless and luxurious revery, but a powerful action of the reason and the spirit, to which, in later as in earlier days, his mind constantly returned, as to its congenial employment and for the renewal and purifying of its strength.
His chief interest was in philosophy. Yet he cared little for ordinary disputation; because he regarded the principles of morality and truth as lying deeper than the questions which such disputation is wont to touch. In his higher speculation [277] he moved with a straightforward audacity which scorned conventionality of feeling or opinion. Sometimes, indeed, he would indulge himself in working off his superfluous activity by the defence of extravagant theses; but his sincere views were as profound as they were original. The full counsel of his mind he never opened probably to any one; but it can be said with certainty that his philosophy united elements which to a dry reasoner seem hardly capable of combination. Plato was his constant study and his most valued authority; he also often referred to Lucretius, whose writings he read carefully in college; and he was familiar with the thought of the English and American transcendentalists. He loved mysticism. His religious conceptions were far removed from those of the received theology; but they were the conceptions of one who, with personal insight, beholds the world of divine reality. The root of his life was in his spiritual consciousness; and in that consciousness he waited for the coming of a higher future with great-souled faith, which he was able to communicate to others by the contact of his mind.
Thrice in a life he flashed upon our sense.
Time disappeared; its griefs and cares were dumb;
Its joys mere bubbles on our sea of bliss.
His face, in its rapt moments, might have been taken for the type of intensity combined with depth of thought,—nay, rather of an ideal power exercising itself intensely and deeply.
Even at this period Lowell evinced his natural power of command by the influence he exercised throughout a large circle of friends. He drew their wills to him, as a loadstone attracts iron. He was highly valued as an adviser; for he had great soundness of judgment and unusual power of understanding matters from another's point of view. He was reserved in the expression of feeling, so that casual acquaintances sometimes supposed him wanting in it; and few of his friends fully knew (what his letters, if they could be completely published, would reveal) that it was an exquisite and manly tenderness that gave his character its tone. [278]
The spirit in which Lowell approached his entrance into practical life was expressed in his Valedictory Oration on ‘The Reverence due from Old Men to Young’; a subject peculiarly illustrative of his earnestness and originality, and not likely to appear unmeaning to the reader of this book.
When a young man is burning to do the world great service, it is a falsehood to tell him that faithful labor is the best gift the world expects from him. If young men bring mankind nothing but their strength and their spirit, the world may well spare them; but they do bring it something better,—they bring it a gift which they alone can bestow; they bring it their fresher and purer ideals. . . . . It is not true that good comes often of evil; good comes only of good, and of evil comes only evil. . . . . Each generation stands in a new position, it gets new views of past faults and failures, with new glimpses of future possibilities. . . . . This is not all, however. While mankind is constantly rising to higher ideals, there is always danger that the man may sink to lower ones. Labor has been blessed as the Lethe of the past and the present; it may well be cursed as the Lethe of the highest future. . . . . Therefore the old men, the men of the last generation, can not teach us of the present what should be, for that we know as well as they, or better; they should not teach us what can be, for the world always advances by impossibilities achieved; and if life has taught them what can not be, such knowledge in the world's march is only impedimenta; in short, though men are never too old to learn, they are often too young to be taught.
If beauty, then, which has been called the promise of function, causes youth to be loved, the function, which already brings the world its life and its growth, should cause it to be reverenced. A nation that feels this reverence has its golden age before it; it cannot be wholly undone by unprincipled governments or evil institutions. Where this is not felt, though the course may seem rapid and prosperous, a swift undercurrent is sweeping it surely to destruction. . . . . Mere action is no proof of progress; we make it our boast how much we do, and thus grow blind to what we do. Action here is the Minotaur which claims and devours our youths. Athens bewailed the seven who yearly left her shore; with us scarce seven remain, and we urge the victims to their fate.
Apollonius of Tyana tells us in his Travels that he saw “a youth, one of the blackest of the Indians, who had between his [279] eyebrows a shining moon. Another youth named Memnon, the pupil of Herodes the Sophist, had this moon when he was young; but as he approached to man's estate, its light grew fainter and fainter, and finally vanished.” The world should see with reverence on each youth's brow, as a shining moon, his fresh ideal. It should remember that he is already in the hands of a sophist more dangerous than Herodes, for that sophist is himself. It should watch, lest from too early and exclusive action, the moon on his brow, growing fainter and fainter, should finally vanish, and, sadder than all, should leave in vanishing no sense of loss.
This oration is not to be read as a mere literary exercise; it is a sincere expression of the spirit in which Lowell made his choice of a profession. ‘Nor was this spirit a youthful enthusiasm; it shaped his life up to its last fatal hour.’ On taking his degree, he was strongly urged to devote himself to letters or science. But in spite of his force of intellect and of his Platonism in philosophy, his energetic nature demanded, as a necessity, continual contact with men and things. Yet he was resolved to maintain in full vigor his life of thought and feeling; and, above all, both at this time and always, he heartily abhorred the apathy of an educated man who, after having gained a great power to benefit the world, makes his own enjoyment the purpose of his life.
He had already meditated plans for raising the condition and character of the working classes; and he now chose his course of life with reference to this object, being also determined in the same direction by the partial consciousness of that capacity of ruling men, which was perhaps, on the whole, the most remarkable of his gifts. He desired to select a profession which would afford him, not only a field of practical usefulness, but the opportunity of becoming a master in some department of science. His mind at last settled on the working of metals as the occupation best suited to his views; and he entered the iron-mill of the Ames Company at Chicopee, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1855. Here he remained half a year as a common workman. He interested himself in his fellow-workmen, and often met with them to talk on branches of science connected with their work. [280]
