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Page 40
Many a Northern college is represented here. Among those to whom tablets
have been erected in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, who are
buried here, besides Colonel Shaw, are Captains Winthrop P. Boynton and
William D. Crane, who were killed at Honey Hill, November 30, 1864; and
Captain Cabot J. Russell, who fell with Shaw at Fort Wagner. Yet these
are but the beginning of the list of the sons of Massachusetts who rest
in this "garden of graves."
Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master
Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom
Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New
Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863. Another is
Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the _beau ideal_ of an
American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7,
1861.
Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions. Still, it may be
mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally
wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States
colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest
officer in rank, whose grave is known here. Other gallant officers,
killed at Olustee, are buried near him. Among these, probably, is
Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops;
though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.
As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the
seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to
Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said: "Wherever
they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the
exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison,
officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell
like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions
of rank in the august equality of death."
One section of the cemetery is devoted to the Confederates. There are
more than a hundred of these, including several commissioned officers;
and on Memorial Days the same ladies who decorate the graves of the
Federals decorate also in the same manner the graves of the
Confederates; recognizing that, though in life they were arrayed as
mortal enemies, they are now reconciled in "the awful but kindly
brotherhood of death." Sir Walter Scott enjoins:--
"Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb."
And One infinitely greater than Sir Walter has inculcated still loftier
sentiments.
Among the graves to which the attention of the writer was particularly
attracted was that of Charley ----, a boy of Colonel Putnam's regiment,
who had now been dead more years than he had lived. His parents, living
on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee, and walking daily over the paths
which he had often trod, had plucked the earliest flower of their
northern clime and sent it to the superintendent of the cemetery, to be
planted at Charley's grave. The burning sun of South Carolina had not
spared that flower; but something of it still remained. Its mute
eloquence spoke to the heart of the tender recollections of a father and
of a mother's undying love. How truly does Wordsworth say,--
"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
For us who have survived the perils of battle and the far more fatal
diseases that wasted our forces, and for all who cherish the memory of
these dead, it will always be a consoling thought that the Federal
government has done so much to provide honorable sepulture for those who
fell in defence of the Union. We can all appreciate Lord Byron's lament
for the great Florentine poet and patriot;--
"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore."
But we can have no such regret for our lost comrades, buried not upon a
foreign, nor upon an unfriendly shore, but in the bosom of the soil
which their blood redeemed. Sacred is the tear that is shed for the
unreturning brave.
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