Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[408] any messages to leave with him. Stanley replied, “No.” Walcott continued, “Have you a father and mother living?” “Yes.” “Are they church-going people?” “ Yes.” “ Then,” said Walcott, “if your mother knew how you are, she would wish you to pray.” Stanley turned his face toward his comrade, very quietly, and then answered slowly, “ That point was settled with me long ago.” He did not talk much, but lay quite still. The officers who were there told me they never saw any one more quiet and free from agitation. His right arm was disabled, so that he probably could not write. He was among comparative strangers, and no word so transmitted would have been much for him to say or for us to receive. He knew it was too late to say he loved us, if we did not know that before. He rightly chose rather to trust to our understanding how he felt, without attempting to put his feelings into words, than to lay his heart bare before those who knew him so little, and whose own troubles were enough for them to endure. And so life slowly passed away. He lived long enough to understand that he died in victory, and that his blood was not lost. He spoke pleasantly to those about him, and to the last took a kindly interest in their welfare. On Wednesday morning, about eleven o'clock, when he was very near his end, and probably had lost distinct knowledge where he was, some of the other wounded officers were speaking of being carried to Baltimore by private conveyance, and, when Walcott proposed that they should all do so, Stanley spoke up clearly, and said,—they were his last words,— “Walcott, I'll go with you.” Soon after he died without a struggle, and his warfare was over.

The condition of things at Gettysburg after the battle beggars description. One fact alone is enough to indicate it. For five days after my arrival, I could not obtain, in any way, a coffin in which to bring his body home. At last I succeeded, by a happy chance; and hiring two men, a horse and a wagon, I started about two o'clock for the camp hospital. It was situated about five miles from the town, off the Baltimore pike, on the cross-road, at the white church. It was a dull, rainy, very warm afternoon, and on every side was the mark of dreadful devastation. Surgeon Billings, who was in charge of the field hospital, a mere collection of huts, sent a soldier to guide me to my brother's grave. It was on a hillside, just on the outskirts of the grove in which the camp was pitched. The brook rolled round its foot in the little valley, while in the distance was Round Top, and the swelling landscape peculiar to that portion of Pennsylvania,—a family of hills, stretching far