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[93] at the beginning of the following month. He bore his full share of the fatigues and exposures of the siege of Yorktown, and always had his company in the best condition, and held it ready for duty at the shortest notice. On one occasion, when his regiment was engaged in supporting an engineer reconnoissance before the enemy's ‘One Gun Battery,’ he displayed a gallantry and a control of his men which will long live in the memory of those who were looking on.

He was present with his regiment at the battle of West Point, where the command was not actively engaged. On the 31st of May, when the lamented Sedgwick met and crushed, with ten regiments of his division, the left of the enemy, as it swung round the beaten left wing of our army at Fair Oaks, Lieutenant Abbott commanded and fought his company with the brilliant bravery which was always afterwards his acknowledged characteristic. He shared with his men the fatigues and anxieties, the hard marching and hard fighting, of the Seven Days; and at Glendale, on the 30th of June, while cheering and directing his men with voice and gesture, in a peculiarly exposed and trying position, he was shot through the arm which held his outstretched sword. But his wound did not dispose him to leave the field. He continued to command his company till the end of that sharp action, and commanded it again the next day at Malvern Hill. When our weary army reached the James River, he went home by direction of the surgeons, but he came back to his post before his wound was fairly healed. His absence was felt by officers and men in a way which showed their deep sense of his worth. The march across the Peninsula was a peculiar episode of the war. It brought officers and men very closely together. Fatigue and anxiety pressed heavily upon both body and mind, and the strain was such that those who bore it well, and as Lieutenant Abbott bore it, were recognized as of the truest temper.

A few days after his return he received the news of the death of his brother Edward, senior captain of the Second Massachusetts Infantry, who was killed at the sanguinary and

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