It came at last on the famous day of Cedar Creek, when Sheridan rode down from Winchester and saved the battle. Lowell had advanced early in the morning on the right, and his attack prevented the disaster on that wing which fell upon the surprised army. He then moved to cover the retreat, and around to the extreme left, where he held his position near Middletown against repeated assaults. Early in the day his last horse was shot under him, and a little later, in a charge at one o'clock, he was struck in the right breast by a spent ball, which embedded itself in the muscles of the chest. Voice and strength left him. "It is only my poor lung," he announced, as they urged him to go to the rear; "you would not have me leave the field without having shed blood." As a matter of fact, the "poor" lung had collapsed, and there was an internal hemorrhage. He lay thus, under a rude shelter, for an hour and a half, and then came the order to advance along the whole line, the victorious advance of Sheridan and the rallied army. Lowell was helped to his saddle. "I feel well now," he whispered, and, giving his orders through one of his staff, had his brigade ready first. Leading the great charge, he dashed forward, and, just when the fight was hottest, a sudden cry went up: "The colonel is hit!" He fell from the saddle, struck in the neck by a ball which severed the spine, and was borne by his officers to a house in the village, where, clear in mind and calm in spirit, he died a few hours afterward.
"I do not think there was a quality," said General Sheridan, "which I could have added to Lowell. He was the perfection of a man and a soldier." On October 19, the very day on which he fell, his commission was signed to be a brigadier-general.
This was a noble life and a noble death, worthy of much thought and admiration from all men. Yet this is not all. It is well for us to see how such a man looked upon what he was doing, and what it meant to him. Lowell was one of the silent heroes so much commended by Carlyle. He never wrote of himself or his own exploits. As some one well said, he had "the impersonality of genius." But in a few remarkable passages in his private letters, we can see how the meaning of life and of that great time unrolled itself before his inner eyes. In June, 1861, he wrote:
I cannot say I take any great pleasure in the contemplation of the future. I fancy you feel much as I do about the profitableness of a soldier's life, and would not think of trying it, were it not for a muddled and twisted idea that somehow or other this fight was going to be one in which decent men ought to engage for the sake of humanity,--I use the word in its ordinary sense. It seems to me that within a year the slavery question will again take a prominent place, and that many cases will arise in which we may get fearfully in the wrong if we put our cause wholly in the hands of fighting men and foreign legions.
In June, 1863, he wrote:
I wonder whether my theories about self-culture, etc., would ever have been modified so much, whether I should ever have seen what a necessary failure they lead to, had it not been for this war.
Now I feel every day, more and more, that a man has no right to himself at all; that, indeed, he can do nothing useful unless he recognizes this clearly. Here again, on July 3, is a sentence which it is well to take to heart, and for all men to remember when their ears are deafened with the cry that war, no matter what the cause, is the worst thing possible, because it interferes with comfort, trade, and money-making: "Wars are bad,"Lowell writes, "but there are many things far worse. Anything immediately comfortable in our affairs I don't see; but comfortable times are not the ones t hat make a nation great." On July 24, he says:
Many nations fail, that one may become great; ours will fail, unless we gird up our loins and do humble and honest days' work, without trying to do the thing by the job, or to get a great nation made by a patent process. It is not safe to say that we shall not have victories till we are ready for them. We shall have victories, and whether or no we are ready for them depends upon ourselves; if we are not ready, we shall fail,--voila tout.
If you ask, what if we do fail? I have nothing to say; Ishouldn't cry over a nation or two, more or less, gone under.
Finally, on September 10, a little more than a month before his death, he wrote to a disabled officer:
I hope that you are going to live like a plain republican, mindful of the beauty and of the duty of simplicity. Nothing fancy now, sir, if you please; it's disreputable to spend money when the government is so hard up, and when there are so many poor officers. I hope that you have outgrown all foolish ambitions, and are now content to become a "useful citizen."Don't grow rich; if you once begin, you will find it much more difficult to be a useful citizen. Don't seek office, but don't "disremember" that the "useful citizen" always holds his time, his trouble, his money, and his life ready at the hint of his country. The useful citizen is a mighty, unpretending hero; but we are not going to have any country very long, unless such heroism is developed. There, what a stale sermon I'm preaching.
But, being a soldier, it does seem to me that I should like nothing so well as being a useful citizen. Well, trying to be one, I mean. I shall stay in the service, of course, till the war is over, or till I'm disabled; but then I look forward to a pleasanter career.
I believe I have lost all my ambitions. I don't think I would turn my hand to be a distinguished chemist or a famous mathematician. All I now care about is to be a useful citizen, with money enough to buy bread and firewood, and to teach my children to ride on horseback, and look strangers in the face, especially Southern strangers.
