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Arthur Dehon.

Second Lieutenant 12th Mass. Vols. (Infantry), January 16, 1862; first Lieutenant, May 13, 1862; killed at Fredericksburg, Va., December 13, 1862.


Arthur Dehon was born January 24, 1841, the son of William and Caroline (Inches) Dehon of Boston. He was prepared for college at Mr. Tower's school in Boston; at the boarding-school of Mr. T. P. Allen in Sterling, Mass. (afterwards removed to New Bedford); and finally at the Boston Latin School. When he was sixteen years old he entered college as a Freshman in the Class of 1861, and he continued with it for nearly two years. He then went to New York and entered the office of his uncle, Mr. Theodore Dehon, where he was doing excellently until his health, which was always delicate, gave way. He was accordingly led, in February, 1861, to try the rough medicine of a voyage around Cape Horn, and the beginning of the war found him in California. He soon returned, however, and at once showed his eagerness to join the troops already in the field. At first it seemed that he might be unable to follow out his wishes immediately, and in a letter to a friend dated October 13, 1861, he wrote, ‘I mean to be reconciled and do what I can to live sans peur et sans reproche.’ Later, after Ball's Bluff, in the same spirit he wrote again: ‘The more reverses the more I wish to go. But at present my duty keeps me here, and I mean to try to be cheerful and keep up my spirits.’ He had not long to wait before his wishes were fulfilled. On the 16th of January, 1862, he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Twelfth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, Colonel Webster.

His letters from the field began the same month, and in February he was already so pleased with his new profession as to write: ‘I wish to see one fight as a line officer, and I should not desire to change were it not that I wish to get into the ’

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