[389] had come. He at once enlisted in the Thirteenth Massachusetts; and during the time before he was sent into the field, he attended and addressed several of the war-meetings in Cambridge and Boston, where the force of his example and the fire of his words were inspiring. He did not seek glory, for he enlisted in the ranks; his object was work, for he joined a regiment already stationed in the hardest part of the field,—the great battle-ground of the war. And he refused all entreaties to enter other regiments, saying repeatedly that he must be where the most work was to be done.
Within a fortnight of the time that he joined his regiment, it went into the battle of Antietam. He had no musket and was consequently detailed with the stretcher-bearers. Before many minutes, however, he picked up a musket and joined his company at the front, and very soon fell, shot through the heart. His remains were brought home and buried from his father's house in Cambridge. At prayers, on the day of his funeral, the President announced that the Senior Class would be excused for the day to attend the funeral of their classmate; and the entire Class, without exception, walked in mournful procession behind his remains. Dr. . Peabody assisted in the funeral ceremonies.
The Gazette of Sunday morning, September 28, 1862, says:—
Among the fallen at the battle of Antietam was Samuel Shelton Gould, of the Senior Class, Harvard College, a young man of fine promise. Some three weeks since we heard him address a meeting at the Meionaon, and a more earnest appeal we never listened to. He addressed himself particularly to the more respectable young men, who were holding back from enlistment, he feared, on the ground of not wanting to mingle with the common classes, saying, that if such were their motives, “they were not fit to have their names borne on that immortal roll of honor, the list of killed and wounded.” Impatient for service, he would not wait to join a new regiment, and in two weeks after joining the Thirteenth, his name took its place in the situation he coveted.
In an oration before the Cambridge High School Association by Mr. George H. Whittemore, he said:—
