Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

Port Hudson was the last scene of his service in the field. He took as prominent a part as one in his position could take, in the siege of that stronghold. Always untiring, always undaunted, always ready to expose and to exhaust himself, he here won largely upon the esteem of his commander and his comrades. One exploit illustrates the judgment as well as the gallantry which rendered him an efficient officer. He had been sent to station a regiment in support of a battery, and returned to report that the Colonel had lost his presence of mind, while the men were falling so fast that the regiment might break at any moment. The general told him to take any troops he could find, and carry them to the threatened position; and off he rode, bringing up two fresh regiments just as the one he had distrusted broke and fled.

One day, after carrying a despatch over a peculiarly difficult part of the field, he was in the act of reporting to his commanding officer, when he fell by a sun-stroke, and lay insensible for nearly twenty-four hours. This time the surgeons carried the day against him, and he was sent to Baton Rouge, then to New Orleans, and then by sea to New York, where he arrived in the summer of 1863,—‘almost a skeleton,’ as he was described, in the body, but in the spirit rounded and matured, as those who saw him that summer, and observed the development which he had reached through duty and suffering, can now take sad comfort in remembering.

Slowly rising from weakness and disease, but not restored to the health he had lost forever, he rejoined General Augur in the autumn, at Washington. There he remained through the following winter, at one time much harassed by the settlement of his accounts as Commissary, some items of which, for want of the necessary formalities, were questioned by the ‘executioners,’ as he playfully called them, ‘who sit upon our official papers.’ The needed vouchers were soon obtained, chiefly through the ready assistance of Dr. J. B. Upham, of Boston, who had been in charge of the Beaufort Hospital, for which, and for the hospital at Newbern, the Commissary had incurred the expenses considered unaccounted for at Washington. But