Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[301] having exploded a caisson and done other damage. The Rebel battery drew off. At dusk the Rebels were evidently preparing to attack, and our skirmishers retreated. When Companies I and D were within about twenty-five rods of our lines, a column appeared in our rear to our right, immediately behind us. We quickened our pace, you will believe, and succeeded in getting in without loss, and forming a line with the rest of the regiment behind the stone wall to the right of the battery. Here we maintained our position with a number of other regiments in the division, and in about fifteen minutes, after a tempest of cannonading and musketry, the Johnnies fled, leaving their dead and many of their wounded on the field. The regiment lost here about fifteen killed and wounded. Only the right wing was engaged in this place. Our men behaved perfectly.

Soon after this Arthur was appointed an Aid on the staff of General Meade, and came home on a short leave of absence early in August. He rejoined the staff near Warrenton, and found the duties very pleasant. He writes: ‘Tell G—— not to feel any anxiety for my happiness, for I am far happier here than I could possibly be anywhere else. I am more in my element and more at rest than I ever was before in my life. I pray God I may always be as happy.’

On the 24th of August he visited his regiment, which was then lying about nine miles from Headquarters. He was last seen by a picket as he was returning, and for a long time he was supposed to have been captured by guerillas; but all inquiries were unavailing. After fifteen months his friends received certain information of his fate. Captain Rennie of the Seventy-third Ohio reported that on the 11th of September, 1863, he was going with an orderly on horseback from Bristow Station, where Lieutenant Parker's regiment was, to Catlett's Station, to join General Howard as an Aid. The road runs close to a railroad, here and there crossing and recrossing till it reaches a stream called Kettle Run. There the road is on the right of the railroad. The crossing was bad, so that Captain Rennie took another road leading off into higher land. This route returns the traveller soon to the main road, but takes a circuit of half a mile