“Οθεν δὴ ἐν πάσῃ ἐλευθερίᾳ τεθραμμένοι οἱ τῶνδε πατέρες καὶ οἱ ἡμέτεροι καὶ αὐτοὶ οὗτοι, καὶ καλῶς φύντες, πολλὰ δὴ καὶ καλὰ ἔργα ἀπεφήναντο εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ, οἰόμενοι δεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας καὶ Ἕλλησιν ὑπὲρ Ελλήνων μάχεσθαι.”

PLATO'S MENEXENUS, § 9.

"Hence it is that the fathers of these men, and ours also, and themselves too, being thus nurtured in all freedom and well-born, have shown before all men deeds many and glorious, in public and private, - deeming it their duty to fight for freedom and the Greeks, even against Greeks."

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,

CAMBRIDGE.

PREFACE.

HOSE of us whose fortunate lot it was to enlist in the

THOSE

army, during that magic epoch of adventure which has just passed by, will never again find in life a day of such strange excitement as that when they first put on uniform and went into camp. It was a day absolutely broken off from all that had gone before it. To say that it brought a sense of utter novelty, is nothing; the transformation seemed as perfect as if, by some suddenly revealed process, one had learned to swim in air, and were striking out for some new planet. The past was annihilated, the future. was all. Now that dimly-visioned future has itself become a portion of the past; that new cycle of existence is ended; already its memories grow dim; and, after all that seeming metamorphosis, the survivors still find themselves with their feet upon the familiar earth, and pursue once more the quiet paths they left. The auréole is vanished from their lives, but it still lingers round the heads of the fallen. No time, no change, can restore them to the old ways, or take them from the enchanted sphere in which they henceforth dwell.

This is a series of memoirs of those graduates and former undergraduates of Harvard University who fell in battle

during the recent war, or who died in consequence of services rendered in the contest. Former members of the Professional Schools of the University are not included. There are ninety-five of these memoirs, more than three quarters of which were prepared by Harvard graduates, and more than one quarter by graduates who have themselves served in the army. The work is, therefore, in a very thorough sense, a Harvard Memorial. Every memoir is here first published in its present form; and every memoir, with one exception, is the most elaborate yet printed upon the subject which it treats. Each was written, so far as practicable, by the person who seemed best adapted to that particular task, through personal intimacy or kinship; and if the results sometimes seem inadequate, they are like those unavoidable failures of a military campaign, which have often cost more labor than its successes.

The work not being a history, but a collection of biographies, historic interest has been kept subordinate to the exhibition of personal character. "The best thing we have from history," said Goethe, " is the enthusiasm which it excites"; and any light here thrown on military movements is only an indirect result, the main object being simply the delineation of the men. It was felt that if they could be truly pictured, and if vague superlatives could be rigidly excluded, then there would be no monotony in the book, since no two of these lives were in reality alike; and it would contain nothing superfluous, because the humblest of these lives was still given for our country at last.

If there is any one inference to be fairly drawn from these memoirs, as a whole, it is this: that there is no class of men in this republic from whom the response of patriot