Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

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[156] of comparative freedom from pain, he sent to each a special message: ‘Tell mother I could not die in a holier cause, or more happy’; ‘It is all light ahead’; ‘I am only going to a different sphere of labor’; ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ He called his fellow-soldiers to his side, and giving them his dying charge to ‘meet him in heaven,’ gave also directions that no words of praise be placed upon his tombstone. Devising his property equally to the Societies for Home and Foreign Missions, selecting with prophetic faith as the text for his funeral sermon, ‘Until the day break, and the shadows flee away,’ at length, on the morning of December 20th, he died.

On that day week, appropriate funeral services were held at Park Street Church, attended by his Excellency Governor Andrew and suite, by Colonel Hinks and other wounded officers and soldiers of the Nineteenth and other regiments, as well as by a large number of classmates and friends. The sword and cap of the soldier, scarred and riddled with bullets, were laid among the flowers on his coffin, and the tattered flags of the Nineteenth were crossed behind it. An eloquent sermon was preached by Rev. J. O. Means of Roxbury, Massachusetts, from the text selected by the departed; words most inspiring and comforting to those who, in that dark night of national disaster, were anxiously watching for the dawn, as well as to those who must wait yet more wearily under the shadow of personal bereavement for the morning of a better day. The remains were deposited at Mount Auburn, ‘in whose sacred precincts he had delighted when at Cambridge to seclude himself for study and meditation.’

In person Lieutenant Newcomb was above the medium height, with well-proportioned figure, pleasing features, and a complexion of feminine fairness. Somewhat reserved and diffident, yet amiable, firm, and brave, he won the devoted love of his friends and the unhesitating respect of all who knew him. In the words of his colonel, ‘As an officer he was prompt, careful, and zealous, kind to his men, but a good disciplinarian.’