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Young Heroes 

of the 

Civil War. 



Thomas Hughes's Tribute to the Young Heroes in the 

American Civil War, published under the title 

OF "Peace on Earth" in "Macmillan's 

Magazine," London, January, 1866. 



The last time that the season of " peace on earth and good will to 
men" came round, the great struggle between the free and slave 
powers in America had not yet come to death-grips. Here, at 
least, many people still believed that the Southern States could not 
be subdued, and were sure, sooner or later, to establish their 
independence, and a new policy which would act for the rest of 
time as a healthy corrective to the dangerously popular institutions 
and ideas of New England. The year has passed, and the great 
revolutionary epic of our time has closed. Perhaps some of us 
may still stop short of Mr. Seward's triumphant summing up. 
"Death," he says, in his yearly address to his fellow-citizens at 
Auburn, "death has removed his victims; liberty has crowned 
her heroes; humanity has crowned her mart3Ts; the sick and 
the stricken are cured; the surviving combatants are fraternizing; 
and the country — the object of our just pride and lawful affection — 
once more stands collected and composed, firmer, stronger, and 
more majestic than ever before, without one cause of dangerous 
discontent at home, and without an enemy in the world." We 
may think him somewhat too hopeful in the breadth of his asser- 
tions, and may have our fears that it may take a generation yet to 
weld again into one brotherhood all the States of the Union. But, 
when he predicts so fearlessly that "under next October's sun he 
shall be able, with his fellow-townsmen in Auburn, to rejoice in 
the restoration of peace, harmony, and union throughout the 
land," we cannot but own that earlier prophecies of his, which 

89 



seemed at least as rash, have been fulfilled almost to the letter. 
In any case, we do all willingly now admit, and honor, the mar- 
vellous energy and constancy "with which the great game has been 
played out by the American people. As one of the many English- 
men whose faith in that people never faltered during the contest, I 
do most heartily rejoice to see that all classes of my countrymen 
are at last not only ready to appreciate, but hearty in their appre- 
ciation of, what has been done for freedom in America in this 
revolutionary war. I am sure that we now only want further 
knowledge of facts to honor our kith and kin across the Atlantic 
as they deserve to be honored for the glorious sacrifices which 
they made of all that w^as most precious and dearest to them in a 
struggle upon which not only their own life as a nation, but the 
future of at least one-third of the world, was at stake. 

In this belief, I think that Christmas is the right time for bring- 
ing out into somewhat clearer light a side of the drama which has 
not been as yet fairly presented to us here : I mean, first, the strain 
on the resources of the Northern States while the war lasted; and, 
secondly, the heroism of the men of gentle birth and nurture, who, 
so far from shrinking from the work, and fighting by substitute 
(as was asserted by some of our leading journals), took at least 
their fair share of all the dangers and miseries and toils of those 
dark years. 

First, then, as to the people's work; and, highly as we may 
value the men who have come to the front, and whose names as 
soldiers and statesmen are now known over the whole world, we 
must acknowledge that the true hero of the war is, after all, the 
American people. In pro'of of this I will take one or two of the 
Northern States, and look for a moment at what the call was 
which was made on them, and how they answered to it. Let us 
look, as a first instance, at the smallest in area of all the States 
and the smallest in population of all the free States. Little Rhode 
Island, at the census of i860, just before the breaking out of the 
war, contained a population of 174,620. As usual in the Eastern 
States, the females considerably exceeded the males, and of the 
latter there were 82,304 altogether. Up to December i, 1862, — 
that is to say, in less than two years from the first call of the Presi- 
dent for troops, — Rhode Island furnished 14,626 men to the army 
and 1,400 to the navy, or almost one in five of her total male popu- 
lation, and, of course, far more than that proportion of her men 
of fighting age, between 18 and 45. In the first enthusiasm, when 
the call for 500,000 men came in the summer of 1861, the quota of 
90 



Rhode Island was 4,057, and she furnished 5,124. I do not give 
the later returns, because there appears to have been a large num- 
ber of substitutes amongst her recruits after 1862, and I have no 
means of knowing whether these were or were not natives of the 
State. There is no need to overstate the case, and I should on 
every account shrink from doing so. Rhode Island, though the 
smallest, is tenth in rank of all the States as a producer, and her 
people are consequently rich and prosperous. If, in the later 
years of the war, they found substitutes in large numbers, it must 
be, at the same time, remembered that they contributed more 
largely than any other State, in proportion to numbers, to that 
noblest of all charities, — the Sanitary Commission. 

But Englishmen will very likely say, " Give us an instance of 
any but a New England State: they are exceptional." Let us 
take Indiana, then, one of the mighty young Western sisters, a 
community scarce half a century old. A stronger contrast to 
Rhode Island could scarcely have been found. Indiana in i860 
possessed 8,161,717 acres of improved farming land, Rhode Island 
but 329,884. Indiana was fifth of all the States in agricultural 
production, and thirteenth in manufacturing, Rhode Island 
standing tenth, or three higher than her gigantic younger sister. 
Yet we find the same readiness of response to the President's call 
to arms amongst the Western farmers as amongst New England 
mechanics and merchants. The population of Indiana is returned 
in the census of i860 at 1,350,428, and her males at 693,469. On 
the 31st of December, 1862, she had furnished 102,698 soldiers, 
besides a militia home -guard when her frontiers were threatened. 
When Morgan made his raid into the State, 60,000 tendered their 
services within twenty-four hours, and nearly 20,000 were on his 
track within three days. I do not happen in this case to have the 
later returns, and so must turn back to New England, to the old 
Puritan Bay State, to give one perfect example of what the Ameri- 
can people did in the great struggle. 

Massachusetts, at the outbreak of the war, held a population of 
1,230,000, or thereabouts, out of which there were 257,833 males 
between the ages of fifteen and forty. The first blood shed in the 
war against the slave power, as in the Revolutionary War against 
England, was Massachusetts blood. The Sixth Massachusetts 
was fired on in the streets of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, and had 
to fight its way through the town, losing four killed and thirty 
wounded in the operation. Well, the number of men demanded 
of Massachusetts during the war was 117,624. The number 

91 



furnished by her (reducing all to the three years' standard) was 
125,437, being a surplus over all calls of 7,813. Besides these, 
6,670 were mustered in answer to a call for three months' men in 
1864, which were never credited to her by the government. Look 
at the meaning now of this other fact, that she has actually sent 
more men to the war than are now to be found in the State liable 
to do mihtary duty. How does this tell as to wear and tear of the 
human material in those Southern campaigns ? The last assessors' 
return gave these at 133,767; while the total number who served 
(including three and nine months' men, and not adhering to the 
three years' standard) was 153,486. Out of these, how many does 
the reader (who has probably heard more or less of " stopping the 
war by prohibiting emigration from Ireland," and of "New Eng- 
land hiring foreign mercenaries to do the fighting") think were 
foreign recruits? Just 907. This does not include men born 
out of the State, but resident or naturalized there before the war 
broke out. These latter, however, I suppose could not come 
within the definition of foreign mercenaries; and, of foreigners 
arriving in America during the war, Massachusetts enhsted, as I 
have said, 907 out of 150,000. While on this point, I may add 
that the most reliable statistics as to the whole forces of the North 
show that of native-born Americans there were nearly eighty per 
cent., of naturalized Americans fifteen, and of foreigners five per 
cent, only, in the ranks. 

I can honestly say that I have chosen these States at hazard, and 
that a scrutiny of the remaining free States would give a very 
similar result. And now let us consider what that result is. 
Rhode Island, Indiana, and Massachusetts may, perhaps, equal in 
population this metropolis with its immediate suburbs; while one 
of them alone actually sent to active service, in the four years of 
the war, an army equal in numbers to the total volunteer force now 
under arms in Great Britain. Rhode Island is not so populous as 
Sheffield; and in eighteen months she armed and sent South 
15,000 of her citizens. I know that England, in like need, would 
be equal to a like effort. Let us honor, then, as they deserve the 
people of our own Hneage, to whom the call has come, and who 
have met it. 

I need scarcely pause to note how the Northern people have 
paid in purse as well as in person. Let one instance suffice. In 
1864 the assessment of Massachusetts for taxes to support the 
general government amounted to fourteen milHons, every fraction 
of which was collected without impediment or delay. Add to 

92 



5 

this the State taxation and the amounts contributed to the Sani- 
tary Commission and other organizations for distributing volun- 
tary contributions in support of the war, and we should reach a 
figure almost exceeding belief. I have no means of stating it 
accurately, but am quite safe in putting it as high as twenty-five 
million dollars, actually raised and paid, by a State with a popula- 
tion less than half of that of our metropolis, in one twelvemonth. 

And now for my second point, — the example set by the men of 
birth, wealth, and high position. Here, too, I feel sure that a few 
simple facts, taken at hazard from the mass which I have under 
my hand, will be more than enough to satisfy every just and 
generous man amongst my countrymen; and I am proud to be- 
lieve that, whatever our prejudices may be, there are few indeed 
amongst us to whom such an appeal will be made in vain. 

I have said above that the mass of materials is large: I might 
have said unmanageable. It is, indeed, impossible to take more 
than an example here and there, and to bring these out as clearly 
as one can in the limits of an article. Let me take as mine a 
family or two, with some one or more of whose members I have 
the honor of friendship or acquaintance. And, first, that of J. 
Russell Lowell, the man to whose works I owe more, personally, 
than to those of any other American. It would be hard to find a 
nobler record. The young men of this stock seem to have been 
all of high mark, distinguished specially for intellectual power and 
attainments. Surely, the sickle of war has never been put more 
unsparingly into any field. First in order comes Willie Putnam, 
age twenty-one, the sole surviving son of Lowell's sister, a boy of 
the highest culture and promise, mortally wounded at Ball's Bluff 
in October, 1861, in the first months of the war, while in the act of 
going to the help of a wounded companion. At the same bitter 
fight his cousin, James Jackson Lowell, aged twenty-four, was 
badly hurt, but, after a short absence to recruit, joined his regi- 
ment again, and fell on June 30, 1862. "Tell my father I was 
dressing the line of my company when I was hit," was his last 
message home. He had been first in his year at Harvard, and was 
taking private pupils in the law school when the war broke out. 
Warren Russell fell at BuU's Run in August, 1862. Many of 
us here may remember the account, which was reprinted in the 
''Times" and other papers, of the presentation of colors to the 
Second Massachusetts Infantry by Mr. Motley, at Boston, in the 
summer of 1861. It attracted special notice from the fact that 
the author of the "History of the Dutch Republic" had been 

93 



so lately living amongst us, and was so well known and liked here. 
The group of ojB&cers who received these colors were the very 
jeunessedoreeoi Massachusetts, — Quincy, D wight, Abbot, Robeson, 
Russell, Shaw, Gordon, Savage, Perkins. Such a roll will speak 
volumes to all who have any acquaintance with New England 
history. Those colors have come home riddled, tattered, 
blackened; but five-sixths of the young officers have given their 
lives for them, and of the one thousand rank and file who then 
surrounded them, scarcely one hundred and fifty survive. This 
by the way. I refer to the muster because Robert Shaw was 
amongst those officers, — a name already honored in those pages, 
and another nephew of Lowell's. Shaw's sister married Charles 
Lowell, of whom more presently. We all know how Robert 
Shaw, after two years' gallant service, accepted the command of 
the first black regiment raised in Massachusetts (the Fifty-Fourth); 
how he led them in the operations before Charleston, and was 
buried with his "niggers" in the pit under Fort Wagner, — the 
grandest sepulture earned by any soldier of this century. By his 
side fought and died Cabot Russell, the third of Lowell's nephews, 
then a captain of a black company. Stephen George Perkins, 
another nephew, was killed at Cedar Creek; and Francis Button 
Russell at one of the innumerable Virginia battles. 

I pass to the last on the list, and the most remarkable. Charles 
Russell Lowell, the only brother of the James who died "dressing 
his line," was also the first scholar of his year (1854) at Harvard. 
He had visited Europe for health, and made long riding tours in 
Spain and Algeria, where he became a consummate horseman. 
On the day after the Sixth Massachusetts were fired on in Balti- 
more streets, Charles Lowell heard of it, and started by the next 
train to Washington, passing through Baltimore. AH communica- 
tion between the two cities was suspended, but he arrived on foot 
at Washington in forty-eight hours. In those first days of con- 
fusion he became agent for Massachusetts at Washington, and 
brought order out of chaos, for his own State, before joining the 
army. His powers «of command and organization gained him 
rapid promotion. He served with distinction in the Peninsula 
campaigns of McClellan, and, after Antietam, was selected to 
carry the captured standards to Washington. He raised a second 
cavalry regiment at home in the winter of 1862. He was placed 
in command of the cavalry force which protected Washington 
during the dark days of 1863. In Sheridan's brilliant campaign 
of 1864 he commanded the cavalry brigade, of four regular regi- 

94 



ments, and the Second Massachusetts volunteer cavalry. He had 
thirteen horses shot under him before the battle of Cedar Creek 
on October 19; was badly wounded early in that day, and lifted 
on to his fourteenth horse to lead the final charge, so faint that he 
had to give his orders in a whisper. Urged by those round him to 
leave the field, he pressed on to the critical point of attack; and 
himself led the last charge, which ended one of the most obstinate 
battles of the war. It is the death of this nephew which wrung 
from his uncle the Hues which occur in one of the last "Biglow 
Papers " published in one of last winter's numbers of the Atlantic 
Magazine: — 

"Wut's words to them whose faith and truth 
On War's red techstone rang true metal, 
Who ventured life, an' love, an' youth, 
For the gret prize o' deth in battle ? 
To him who, deadly hurt, agen 

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, 
. Tippin' with fire the bolt of men 
That rived the rebel line asunder ? 

" 'Ta'n't right to hev the young go fust, 

All throbbin' full o' gifts and graces. 
Leaving life's paupers dry as dust 

To try and make b'lieve fill their places; 
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss: 

Ther's gaps our lives can't never bay in, 
An' thet world seems so fur from this, 

Lef for us loafers to grow gray in." 

He died next day of his wounds, leaving a widow of twenty, him- 
self not thirty. The gazette, in which his commission as general 
was published, did not reach the army till after his death. 
Sheridan, with the generosity which most of the great Northern 
captains have shown, declared that the country could better have 
spared himself, and that there was no one quality of a soldier 
which he could have wished added to Charles Lowell. 

My first example, then, gives us one family, in which there was 
no soldier in i860, losing eight young men under thirty in little 
more than three years' fighting. 

I have mentioned the name of Motley above. Let us see how it 
fared with his circle. He has assured me more than once that of 
his own immediate family there were fewer than the average in 
the ranks; but he had at least five near relatives^serving, — three 
Lothrops, one of whom was killed Jn Louisiana ;^^ Major Motley, 
badly wounded in Virginia early in 1864; and Major Stackpole, 

95 



8 

another highly distinguished graduate of Harvard, who served 
through the whole war, and has now resumed his practice as a 
barrister. Miss Motley married Captain Ives, a gentleman of 
fortune in Rhode Island, who was travelling in Europe when the 
war broke out. He volunteered into the navy, commanded the 
Potomac flotilla, and accompanied Burnside's expedition to North 
Carolina, where he contracted the illness of which he has since 
died. His cousin, Robert Ives, also a man of large fortune, 
volunteered into the army, and was killed at Antietam. I believe 
they were the two last men who bore the name of Ives in their 
State. 

The name of Wadsworth is better known here than most Ameri- 
can names in consequence of its English connection. The head 
of the family was a country gentleman living on his estates in 
Geneseo, in New York State, up to i860, with a family of three 
sons and three daughters. At the news of the attack on the Union 
troops in Baltimore he instantly chartered a steamer, loaded her 
with provisions, and sent her up the Potomac, — a most timely aid 
to the capital. He acted as aide-de-camp to McDowell, and was 
his right hand man in the Bull Run Campaign, "his youngest as 
well as his oldest aide"; was made a general soon afterwards; and 
after several campaigns was placed in command of Washington. 
His reputation as an ofhcer had now become such that at the 
beginning of the last campaign every corps commander of the 
Army of the Potomac applied to the War Department to have 
him with them as brigadier. He was killed in the Wilderness in 
the last advance on Richmond. His three sons have all served, 
the youngest having enlisted at sixteen. Thus every man in the 
family served; and the only married daughter is the widow of 
Colonel Montgomery Ritchie, one of two brothers, both of whom 
served with distinction, one to the sacrifice of his life by the same 
subtle disease that struck down Captain Ives. 

I could go to any length, for my acquaintance with Americans 
is large, and I scarcely know a man who has not lost some relative 
in the war. But apart from one's own acquaintance there is 
scarcely one of the famous colonial and Revolutionary names which 
has not been represented. The Jays, Adamses, Schuylers, Living- 
stons, Van Rensselaers, have not failed their country in her second 
great need, and have fought well and worked hard, though the 
present holders of these honored names, mostly quiet young men, 
have not had time to reach their ancestors' places. The bearers 
of great names, I take it, do not get such a start in the States as 
96 



with us at home. A descendant (grandson, I believe) of Alex- 
ander Hamilton, however, became a general, while several of his 
cousins remained in lower ranks. Colonel Fletcher Webster, 
only surviving son of Daniel Webster, was killed in Virginia. 

Perhaps the man who excited most the hopes and martial 
enthusiasm of Am.ericans in the first month of the war was Major 
Theodore Winthrop, a descendant of the famous Governor John 
Winthrop, scholar, traveller, poet, athlete, who was killed at the 
disastrous battle of Great Bethel, June lo, 1861. A son of 
General Porter, who was distinguished in the last war with us, fell 
as a colonel in the spring campaign of 1864. Even the families 
famous, as yet, for wealth only have not shrunk from the fighting, 
one Astor, at least, and Cuttings, Schermerhorns, Lydigs, and 
others, having held their own in the volunteer ranks. 

Or — let us come to names more famihar than any other trans- 
atlantic ones to us — the Boston group. Longfellow's young son 
(Charlie, as I hear all men call him) has managed to fight a cam- 
paign, and get badly hit in Louisiana, at an age when our boys 
are thinking of their Freshman's term at Oxford. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes (junior), poet, artist, Greek scholar, virtuoso, has been 
twice — I was going to say killed — well, shot through the body and 
neck and again in the heel; and, having fought through all to 
the end of the war, is again busy with brush and pen. Olmstead 
has fought with mightier weapons than rifled cannon, at the head 
of the Sanitary Commission. Of four brothers Dwight, two were 
killed and a third fought his way to General. Whittiers, Apple- 
tons, Lorings, Crowninshields, Dehons — but I will tax my readers' 
patience no longer with rolls of names which perhaps, to most of 
them, will be names and nothing more. Let this last summing 
up of the work of men of birth and position in one State sufiice 
(I choose Massachusetts again, because, thanks to Governor 
Andrew, we have more accurate returns as to her over here than 
as to any other State): Since the declaration of war, 434 officers 
from Massachusetts have been killed, — 9 Generals, 16 Colonels, 
17 Lieutenant-colonels, 20 Majors, 15 Surgeons, 2 Chaplains, 
no Captains, and 245 Lieutenants. Of the 35 General officers 
from that State, 10 only have escaped wounds. 

Of all the Kving graduates of Harvard (the university of highest 
repute in America), one -fifth, or, to be as accurate as possible, 
nineteen and some fraction per cent., have served with the army. 
At Yale College the percentage has been even higher. Con- 
ceive a struggle which should bring one in every five of men who 

97 



have taken degrees at Oxford and Cambridge under fire, and 
which should call on us, besides our regular army, to keep on foot 
and recruit for three years a volunteer army five times as large as 
our present one. 

Such plain facts and returns as these will, I am sure, convince 
the last skeptic — if there be one left amongst us at this Yule tide, 
1865 — thiit New England has not spared of her best blood in the 
great day of the Lord, under the burden and heat of which the 
whole North has reeled and staggered indeed, but without ever 
bating heart or hope, and always gaining fresh power, through 
three years of war, which have seemed — nay, which have been — a 
lifetime. In such crises time is not measured by years or days. 
The America which looked on paralyzed and doubtful when 
John Brown prophesied all these things on his way to the scaffold, 
kissing a negro child as he passed along, while Stonewall Jackson 
and his pupils guarded the gibbet, — the America of State 
sovereignty and Dred Scott law, in which the gospel news meant 
avowedly "good will to white men," and abolitionism was loathed 
as a vulgar and mischievous fanaticism, — is as far behind us to-day, 
for all practical purposes, as the England of the Stuarts or the 
France of the Regency. What this means, for the Old World as 
well as for the New, I will not pause to consider. My estimate 
might raise smiles or provoke criticism amongst us, both of which 
(good as they are in their right time and place) I am anxious here 
to avoid. 

I prefer, at parting, to endeavor to put my readers in sympathy 
with the spirit, the heart, and conscience of the North, in the 
presence of their astounding success. I cannot do this better 
than by a glance at the commemoration of the living and dead 
soldiers of the Harvard University. Commemoration Day at 
Harvard, in July, 1865, must indeed have stamped itself indelibly 
on the memories of all those sons of the first of American univer- 
sities who were present at the gathering. To me, I own, even the 
meagre reports one got over here in the American papers were 
unspeakably touching. The irrepressible joy of a people 
delivered, after years of stern work and patient waiting, from an 
awful burden, almost too heavy for mortal shoulders to bear, 
tempered, as it was, by the tenderest sympathy for the families 
of the fallen, and a solemn turning to give glory and thanks, with 
full heart, to that God who giveth victory, and healeth wounded 
spirits, and standeth above His people as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land, — the mingled cry of triumph and agony, 
98 



1 1 

and trust and love, which went up from the very heart of that 
meeting, — must ever, to my mind, rank amongst the most noble, 
the most sublime pieces of history of the century in which we are 
living. Let the reader consider the following as compared with 
the ordinary commemoration poetry. The fu-st is the hymn 
written for the commemoration service, by Robert Lowell: — 

"Thy work, O God, goes on in earth. 
With shouts of war, and harvest songs; 
A ready will is all our worth; 
To Thee our Maker all belongs. 

"Thanks for our great and dear, who knew 
To lavish life great needs to earn; 
Our dead, our living, brave and true, 
To each who served Thee in his turn. 

"Show us true life as in Thy Son; 
Breathe through our flesh the Holy Ghost ; 
Then earth's strongholds are stormed and won; 
Then man dies faithful at his post. 

"They crowd behind us to this shade. 
The youth who own the coming years ; 
Be never God, or land, betrayed, 
By any son our Harvard rears!" 

My second quotation shall be a stanza from the " Commemoration 
Ode," by the best known member of the family, James Russell 
Lowell, author of the "Biglow Papers": — 

'"'Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! 

Thy God, in these distempered days, 

Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, 
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace 1 

Bow down in prayer and praise ! 
O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 

And letting thy set lips. 

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse. 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 

What were our lives without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee; 

We will not dare to doubt thee; 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!" 

99 



12 

Was ever truer or braver ring struck out of the metal of which 
English-speaking men are made? If so, I for one have yet to 
learn when and where. And now, at this Christmas time, when 
their tremendous storm-cloud has broken up, and nothing but a 
light streak or two of vapor is to be seen in their heavens, let us 
seize this precious moment, never to recur again in their or our 
history, and by graceful and loyal word and deed show them 
that we honor, as it deserves, the work they have done for the 
world since the election of i860, and can sympathize with their 
high hopes for the future of their continent with no jealousy or 
distrust, as brethren of the same stock and children of the same 
Father. 



This noble tribute by Thomas Hughes to the young heroes of the American Civil War 
was felt at the time to be so noteworthy that it was reprinted in the report of the Adjutant- 
General of Massachusetts, January i, 1866, — which report altogether contains a mass of valu- 
able material relating to the part of Massachusetts in the Civil War, including an accoimt of 
the impressive military ceremony upon the return of the colors of the different regiments to the 
State on Forefathers' Day, 1865, with the address by Governor Andrew and poem by Gen- 
eral Sargent. Adjutant-General Schouler, in reprinting Mr. Hughes's memorable article, said: 
"It would be folly to discriminate between the various classes of citizens which have con- 
tributed of their members and stibstance to sustain the Union cause, with men and money, 
during the Rebellion, when all have done so nobly. No class held back. When the Presi- 
dent issued his calls for men, the men came. When the Sanitary and Christian Commissions 
required contributions, to supply the sufferers in the hospitals with clothing and other neces- 
sities, and to furnish good books and religious consolations to our soldiers in the field and 
elsewhere, the requirements were suppUed with unstinted benevolence. There is hardly a 
family in the Commonwealth that has not furnished a husband, a son, or brother to the ranks, 
or that has failed to contribute liberally of its substance to their support and comfort when in 
the field." 

Thomas Hughes, known to boys the world over as the author of "Tom Brown's School 
Days at Rugby," was born at Ufi&ngton in England, near Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred 
the Great, in 1822, and died in 1896. His life was largely passed in London, in the profes- 
sion of the law; and he was always active in social and poh'tical reform, being for a time 
member of Parhament. He was associated with Maurice and Kingsley in the Christian 
Socialist movement, and was the fovmder of the Workingraen's College in London. He was 
the author of various valuable works, including "Tom Brown at Oxford" and a Life of 
Alfred the Great. A complete list of his writings may be found in the careful article upon 
him in the Dictionary of National Biography. There is a fine statue of him in the school- 
grounds at Rugby. He had a great admiration for the poetry of Lowell, and in 1859, ^ col- 
laboration with J. M. Ludlow, wrote an introduction for an EngUsh edition of the "Biglow 
Papers." He was one of the most steadfast and outspoken English friends of the Union 
cause during our Civil War. In 1870 he first visited the United States, and gave two addresses, 
one in Boston on "John to Jonathan," and one in New York on the Labor Question. He 
was afterwards interested in establishing an English colony at Rugby, Tenn. 



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