Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

“ [323] add his weight and force to it.” Goodwin had about him such a noble faith that no one who knew him well could ever be an atheist.

At the outset of his college course he had joined a students' society for mutual religious improvement, and had been a constant member. A classmate told me that Goodwin's presence at any social meeting of the Class would save it from any wrong proceeding. Another said that he never heard Goodwin utter a word on any occasion which he would not have been as ready to utter in the most refined presence. Another said that his influence alone decidedly raised the moral tone of the Class.

After graduation he obtained the position of Principal of the High School in Concord, Massachusetts. The school was to open in August. In the mean time he was more and more persuaded that duty called him into the army. His brother Henry had, at the outset of the war, enlisted as a private, and had been rising gradually to well-earned position as an officer, and his example and letters had constantly stimulated Goodwin's patriotic ardor. While at home, before the opening of the Concord school, he, with Charles Tuttle, Esq., made a good deal of effort to raise a company in Newburyport. But August came, and he went to fulfil his engagement at Concord. His mind was still bent, however, upon the war, and against the entreaties of all his friends, and against his own tastes, his conscience still directed him to the ‘good fight for country, freedom, and for God.’ He told me soon after he went to Concord that he must go into the war, and if he could not get a commission, he should go as a private. I remonstrated on the ground that his father and mother would hardly be able to bear such a disappointment of their hopes in him, that they had suffered much anxiety for Henry, and that his constitution and habits had not fitted him for the hardships of a private. But he said, ‘My case is not a peculiar one and I feel like a coward to stay out. Say nothing to mother about it now, but I am decided to go.’

He wrote from Concord:—