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[298] day. ‘It almost rained lead; and the men crouched behind rocks, trees, fences. It seemed as if they could not go on. The Colonel rode up among them and along the line; then they must advance. The enemy opened two guns at short range, shotted with grape and canister;—but on, still on. Our first line was half destroyed, and the reserve was ordered up; but the Colonel rode all the while in advance of every man in his command. Remembering Winchester, the enemy grew tremulous; and our bugles sounded the charge. The recall was not heard nor the pace abated till our men were seventeen miles away, beyond Edinburgh.’ In this battle, in the words of General Sheridan, ‘everything on wheels was captured.’ These are only shining points in a campaign which gave every day new proofs of Lowell's quality. ‘He was perfectly brave,’ says one who saw him constantly in the valley. Thirteen horses were shot under him in the course of as many weeks; and as he went ruddy and buoyant into the storm of death, he seemed to know that he was protected from its fury by some decree of fate. But he was not a soldier of dashing courage only. He was distinguished by self-devotion and sleepless vigilance, by coolness, sound judgment, and military knowledge, by rapidity and sureness of eye, and skill in turning peril into an opportunity of victory, by persistency undiscouraged, by absolute promptness, by self-reliance and self-possession, by a discipline, temperate and just, but unflinching, and by an inborn spirit of command. ‘In whatever position Lowell was placed,’ remarks one who knew him well through life, ‘it always seemed to those around him that he was made for just that work.’ His men, some of them dissatisfied at first to be led by a commander who appeared even more youthful than he was, never shrank from following him into any danger after they had seen him in one battle. ‘His officers loved him, and wished for nothing so much as to show him what they dared to do; and he would watch them with tears in his eyes.’ In the midst of this laborious campaign, he found time to read several books of serious thought,—a few such
Sever and Francis, 1866.
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