The Court Street Mutiny (episode 271)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is episode 2 71. The Court street mutiny. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m talking about a shooting that was carried out in a basement just off of Court Street behind Boston’s old City Hall on April 9th, 18 63, the gunman was a Union cavalry officer who belonged to one of Brahmin Boston’s most wealthy families.
The victim was a new Irish American recruit in his brigade.
This shooting would result in accusations of cowardice and an execution but was either justified.

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[2:05] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic on the morning of April 9th, 18 63 Charles Russell Lowell shot a man in a basement in Boston.
Most accounts say that this took place at two City Hall Ave, which is tough to track down because there’s no number two on City Hall Ave today.
And I couldn’t find City Hall Ave on any Boston map from the 18 sixties today.
City Hall Ave is the pedestrian alley connecting school street to Court Street and running behind the old City Hall building.
The numbers descend as you walk from school street to the corner of Pi Alley.
Another pedestrian path In 1863 P.
Alley was Williams Court and City Hall Ave was as far as I can tell an unnamed extension of court square, On the corner of the two an 1861 insurance map of Boston shows a city owned building which is where I think the shooting went down.

[3:07] Having put a 45 caliber bullet into a man’s chest in a basement. What did Lowell do?
Did he throw his colt revolver into a storm drain and go on the run or maybe go to the closest bar to drink away his sorrows until the police could catch up to him.
No, Colonel Charles Russell Lowell marched straight to the statehouse, showed himself into the private office of Governor John A Andrew and announced what he had done.
The Harvard Memorial biographies, a book compiled by Thomas Wentworth Higginson takes this description of the exchange from one of Governor Andrews aides entering his excellency room.
He made a military salute and said, I have to report to you, sir that in the discharge of my duty, I have shot a man been saluted again and immediately withdrew.
I need nothing more said the governor to a bystander. Colonel Lowell is as humane as he is brave.
His action was approved by the United States authorities and by those of Massachusetts and it exerted a wholesome influence throughout the service.

[4:11] Well, it sure must be nice to have friends in high places.
Things did always seem to go a little bit easier for Charles Russell Lowell than the rest of us.
He was born in Boston in 1835 as part of that Lowell family.

[4:27] His great uncle was Francis Cabot Lowell who started a manufacturing center in what used to be East Chelmsford, along with charles’ grandfather, Patrick Tracy Jackson.
Soon the town of Lowell was named after Francis and the many textile mills there made the Lowell family almost unimaginably rich.

[4:47] Charles had every advantage in life, but he was also a bright child who excelled in school.
His entry in the Harvard memorial biographies describes an active and outdoorsy preteen from infancy.
He showed a rich variety in freedom of nature.
He entered with eager relish into the games of boyhood and surpassed all his companions and invention and daring in study.
He displayed an equal alertness of faculty.
Those who knew him in his 1st 10 years can recall a sturdy little figure, active but not restless.
A pair of bright, soft, dark eyes and rosy cheeks curling all over with enjoyment.
He finds everything good, but the eyes are often withdrawn from the charms of life and nature and rest with a far away upward.
Look on something unseen beyond along with his rosy cheeks and bright eyes.
He was also a gifted and driven student.
By the time he was 13 years old, he had completed his studies at Boston’s first and most academically challenging high school with a 1920 biographical sketch compiled by Elizabeth Cabot Putnam explaining, When only 13 years of age, he went from the Boston Latin school into the English High School.
In 1850, entered Harvard College, took first rank in scholarship and maintained it until he graduated in 1854.

[6:12] In the Harvard memorial biographies, a friend and classmate from his Harvard days was quoted as saying when he entered college, he was unusually boyish in appearance with a ruddy countenance, overflowing with health and animal spirits and a manner somewhat brusque.
He did not win popularity at once. But as his powers and character developed and toned down the rather boisterous life and manner of the body, he came to be proudly acknowledged without a dissenting voice as the foremost man of the class, as that description hints at Lowell had a bit of a rowdy reputation when he was in school.
He was a member of the hasty pudding and participated in some pretty rough sounding hazing at the freshman.
But along with sports and pranks and rough housing, he picked up some pretty useful skills along the way as he described in a letter to Senator Charles Sumner years later when the war had just broken out and he was looking for an officer’s appointment in the army.
I speak and write English French and Italian and read German and Spanish new ones enough of mathematics to put me at the head of my class in Harvard though.
Now, I may need a little rubbing up.
I tolerable proficient with the small sword and the single stick and can ride a horse as far and bring him in as fresh as any other man.

[7:30] At just 19 years old Charles Russell Lowe was the valedictorian of the class of 1854.
After his studies were complete, he spent a year working as a laborer in an iron mill in Chicopee, then worked briefly in an iron foundry in New Jersey.
At just 21 years old, he suffered from what Putnam called a growing shadow of disease.
He had another profile named as a serious hemorrhage from the lungs.
I’m not sure what this ailment was, but the young man’s doctors sent him on a tour of warmer climbs first in the American South and then around the Mediterranean while he was abroad.
The Harvard memorial biography says that he studied fencing and horsemanship Wearing home.
He was made the treasurer of a major railroad at the ripe old age of 23.
Finally, in 1860, he took over managing an ironworks in Cumberland in western Maryland.
And that’s where he was when South Carolina’s state militia opened fire on the federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter.

[8:32] Three days later, President Lincoln issued a call to the loyal states for 75,000 troops to defend the capital from the secessionists just across the Potomac River in Boston.
Governor Andrew organized existing companies of the state Militia into a new sixth Massachusetts regiment.
One week after Fort Sumpter on the anniversary of the Lexington fight.
The sixth stepped off a train in Baltimore and walked directly into a hostile pro slavery mob.
In the resulting riot. They were pelted with cobblestones and bricks and eventually fired on by members of the crowd.
Four men were killed and three dozen were wounded.
These first volunteers will be known later as the Minutemen of 61 who dropped everything to answer the country’s call.

[9:21] News of the attack on Fort Sumpter. And even more so the violence the sixth faced in Baltimore drove young loll nearly into a frenzy.
Lowe was perhaps an unlikely abolitionist. Now, at the start of the war, he was working in a slave state and his family’s fortune came from spinning and weaving the cotton that was picked by enslaved hands.
However, like many Bostonians of his generation, he went to bed one night in 1854, an old fashioned conservative compromise union wig and waked up a stark mad abolitionist.
That’s how Amos Adams Lawrence described the city’s reaction to a federal judge’s decision to return Anthony Burns to his slaver in the south after he had escaped as far as Boston.
You could hear more about that incident in episode 67.

[10:12] The definitive biography of Charles Russell. Lowell is the life and letters by Edward Waldo Emerson, a nephew of Ralph in it, he describes the strong reaction young Charles had to this return.
Young Lowell with another spirited boy vainly tried to get speech with the United States judge who was to give the doom to plead with him against the shame.
And when the man guarded by soldiers reinforced by Boston merchants against rescue wasn’t led down State street to the vessel which carried him back to bondage.
These boys looked on with burning cheeks and one said Charlie, it will come to us to set this, right?

[10:54] Seven years later, it seemed like the opportunity had finally come to do his part in setting the injustice, right?
The first thing he had to do was get to DC. And none of the biographies I read have much detail about how he got there.
But his letters upon arriving say that he was gonna have to borrow money to buy a horse.
So he got there without either a horse or much cash in his pockets from Cumberland.
He could have taken the C and O canal right to Washington or the B and O railroad to Baltimore.
Emerson’s life and letters describes that while Lowe was in Cumberland, he heard that the soldiers of Massachusetts had been fired on in Baltimore instantly resigned his place and went to Washington, arriving on foot after communication with the North had been cut off By April 22.
He was in Washington Writing letters to generals and senators asking for an appointment as an officer.
In the letter I mentioned to Massachusetts, Senator Charles Sumner, you requested an appointment as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment.

[11:58] At the time, artillery was the most academic discipline in the army except possibly engineering and Lowe thought his Harvard education would come in handy In a May 13, letter to his mother, Lowell wrote, of course, I’m too old to be tickled with a uniform and too apathetic to get up such a feeling against the worst traitor among them as to desire personally to slay him.
But like every young soldier, I’m anxious for one battle. As an experience.
After that, I shall be content to bide my time working where I can do most service and learning all I can from observation and from books instead of a second lieutenancy in the academic artillery.
Lowell ended up instead as a captain in the more athletic third US cavalry.
His first job in the summer of 18 61 was to travel around the part of Ohio known as the Western Reserve trying to recruit enough enlisted cavalrymen to fill out the regiment.
Despite his enthusiasm to join the army, Lowell still seemed reluctant to fight writing to his brother James.
I am not in the least bloodthirsty and not nearly so hopeful about the good results of this war as our Massachusetts volunteers.
But I believe that will do us all much real good in the end.

[13:21] After this tour, as a recruiter was done, he rejoined mcclellan’s Army of the Potomac just in time to engage in the Peninsula campaign in the summer of 18 62 where federal troops fought their way up the spit of land from Yorktown to Jamestown to Williamsburg, Virginia before being turned back from the Richmond suburbs.
During this fighting, Charles was recognized with the rank of major but his brother James was killed On September 17.
He fought in the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Not far from Cumberland today, it’s remembered as the bloodiest day in American history.
In this battle, many of his former classmates in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, which was nicknamed the Harvard Regiment were wounded or killed.
Lowell didn’t write much about his own experience of anti as most of his letters contained accounts of friends who had fallen in battle.
However, his courage in rallying General Sedgwick’s retreating division kept the Union’s right flank from collapsing and may have prevented a general defeat, in recognition of his daring general mcclelland gave him the honor of delivering all the Confederate battle flags that were captured at Antium to President Lincoln.

[14:36] In early 1863, Lowell was sent home to Massachusetts to recruit a new regiment.
He had plenty of experience recruiting union soldiers back in Ohio early in the war.
But this was a different beast, loyal California unionists wanted to send a company of 100 cavalrymen back east to fight for the Federals, but they had to have a regiment to join, Massachusetts agreed to adopt this 1000.
But the Commonwealth sent Charles Russell Lowell to recruit another five companies to join them in a new second Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry Regiment.
The job was harder than it had been before two grueling years of war.
The most enthusiastic recruits had signed up in the spring of 1861 and by now, many had returned home with disfiguring wounds while many more had been killed or gone missing on battlefields far from home, as the federal government struggled with enlistment.
President Lincoln would sign off on the nation’s first draft a few months later.
While Secretary of War Edwin Stanton would authorize Massachusetts.
Governor Andrew to start enlisting three black men in the 54th Massachusetts volunteers under the command of Charles Russell Lowell’s future brother-in-law Robert Gould Shaw.

[15:54] That spring though Loll didn’t have either of those tools at his disposal.
Instead, he had to offer enlistment bounties cash rewards for new recruits.
The problem with enlistment bounties was that they attracted bounty jumpers men who had enlists in a military unit, take the cash bounty and then desert and enlist in another unit.
A few towns over many researchers blame bounty jumpers for the unrest in the basement recruiting station in the alley behind Boston City Hall on April 9th, 18 63 with one or more of the new recruits into Lowell’s second Massachusetts cavalry attempting to sneak out and the noncommissioned officers moving to stop the deserters.
An uncredited article on a website devoted to researching the second mass cavalry includes a description of what unfolded in that basement just off of Court Street assembled from contemporaneous news reports.

[16:50] Early in the morning of April nine, Massachusetts recruits bound for company G of the new second Massachusetts Cavalry were gathered to muster into the service.
Only a few paces from the state Capitol. The downstairs drilling room of the recruiting office on city hall.
Ave was crowded with men now numbering 68 in all.
But before the process could begin, something went badly wrong, several of the men were drunk and became uncontrollable.
The sergeant in charge and some Burlingham tried to put one of the offenders in irons or handcuffs.
Another recruit named William Lynch accosted the sergeant and after punching him in the face angrily threatened him.
Tempers rose and shouts of kill the son of a kill.
The sergeant filled the room according to a brief story in that day’s New York Times, his comrades resisted.
The order drew their sabers and knocked down the sergeant who’s endeavoring to apply the handcuffs.
The assistance of the police was called but the threatening demonstrations of the soldiers deterred their interference.

[17:59] The police fled back out of the basement in the face of the recruits, drawing swords and at almost that exact moment, the now Colonel Lowell arrived on the scene.
It was important to his mother, Anna, that the family side of the mutiny story be included in Emerson’s life and letters.
And she provided this account Stopping as usual at 8:00 AM at the recruiting station, he found the small squad of new recruits who were to be transferred that day to the camp at Reedville in a state of mutiny, hearing the noise on his arrival.
He descended at once to the basement and the sergeant in command explained that he had ordered a man to be handcuffed that the others had said it was unjust and should not be done and had resisted.
Colonel Lowell at once said the order must be obeyed. No, no shouted the men.
He continued after it is obeyed. I will hear what you have to say and will decide the case on its merits but it must be obeyed.
First, God knows my men. I do not want to kill any of you, but I shall shoot the first man who resists sergeant Iron your man.

[19:09] As the sergeant stepped forward with the Irons, the men made a rush and Colonel Lowell shot the leader who fell at once.
The men succumbed immediately, some bursting into tears. Such was their excitement.
Anna’s account continues this tragic incident affected Lowell deeply, but he acted from a well considered principle, put into practice with the quick decision of a fearless mind.
His conduct was universally applauded in the street crowd that gathered on the first rumor of the occurrence.
A young man was heard to say I was with Lowell at the high school and if he did it, I know it’s right.
Governor Andrews seemed to share that opinion, but not everyone in Boston felt the same way.
The anti-war Boston courier and the Catholic Boston pilot with its mostly Irish American readership, both called for Lowell to face trial for his actions.
But that would not come to be.

[20:09] The dead man’s name was William Pendergast. Pendergast body was taken to a regimental surgeon named James Oliver who performed an autopsy.
He dug the bullet out of Pinder guest’s chest and kept it in a small wooden vial.
The unnamed author of the second mass research site piece included a photograph of the note that he kept along with it.
Bullet recovered by me from the dead body of the ringleader of the revolting recruits of the second mass cavalry who was shot by the Col April nine, the bullet entered the left chest striking the lower edge of the collarbone by which it was deflected, cutting the main artery.
The impact of the bullet on the bone caused the flattening scene in the middle.

[20:56] While Pendergast body was on its way to the coroner, the regiment was sent on its way to the giant training camp in Reedville, my neighborhood.
Meanwhile, ringleader William Lynch and four other prisoners were taken to castle island according to the second mass research site at two PM.
On the afternoon of the shooting after muster was completed, four additional men from company G who were deemed the most vocal of the agitators were arrested and taken to Fort Independence.
A military bastion on Boston Harbor here they joined William Lynch who had been taken in irons earlier in the day, Lynch, a 26 year old Irish laborer was the drunken subject of the whole affair who had threatened Lowell after the shooting.
The 2nd and 3rd detainees were William Johnson and Daniel Riley Johnson was a 21 year old sailor, Riley, a 19 year old shoemaker.
They were found not guilty by a general court martial and released to their company where they served faithfully for the balance of the war and mustered out on July 20.

[22:04] The 4th trooper, among those arrested was Sylvester Riley, a 21 year old machinist.
He died at Fort Independence three days after the disturbance.
Mysteriously, the cause of his death was unknown while Pendergast was getting buried and the other four were being detained.
Charles Russell Lowe was being cleared of all wrongdoing by a military inquest.
Though he had gained some notoriety.
Abolitionist, Wendell Phillips used Lowell’s shooting as a punch line in his speeches that spring comparing his willingness to shoot a man for disobeying orders to the unwillingness of many white officers to serve alongside black enlisted men.
That was the end of the story, at least as far as the Los were concerned in her version as told to Emerson Anna Lowell concludes the circumstances however, turned out as fortunately as was possible.
In such a case, the man had no relatives so far as could be discovered.
And his record showed that he was a very bad man and had previously been in the regular army so that he knew very well what he was doing and resisting an order.

[23:16] For William Lynch, the last of the mutineers who was still in military custody.
However, this was not the end of the story.
His story comes to a grim conclusion about two months after the mutiny at Fort Independence at Castle Island.
In a 2017 masters thesis, Stephen F Reagan describes what an execution at Fort Independence would have looked like the soldiers from the regiment.
And the division of the accused were formed in a military formation called a hollow square.
It looks like a large U and the prisoner was executed at the open ended top and halfway across the formation, the soldier was escorted out to the execution site accompanied by a band playing the famous death march.

Music

Jake:
[24:11] The marching formation was headed by the Provost Marshal on horseback.
There were armed escorts for the condemned man, a chaplain, the firing squad and others in the formation.
It should be noted that the firing squad was composed of members of the doomed bands regiment.
The coffin to be used following the execution was also carried by four soldiers in this formation.
When they arrived at the point of execution, a fresh grave had been dug and the soldier was positioned in front of it facing the hollow square.
The execution order was read aloud to the prisoner and the troops last rights were given and the firing squad was brought up before the prisoner.
Two facts are important to note. First, there were usually two firing squads.
If the first squad did not kill the condemned man, then the second squad was brought up to fire. A second volley.
Second, a blank cartridge was in a gun in each squad which again followed military protocol following the execution.
All the troops were marched by the dead man as a lesson on the evils of desertion.

[25:25] I found a wire story in the Rutland Herald published Thursday, June 18, which reported on events in Boston two days before William Lynch, the ringleader and the mutiny that occurred at the recruiting station of the second mass cavalry in Niles block several weeks since suffered the death penalty.
Tuesday at Fort Independence, the execution took place at about two pm and the condemned man bore himself with remarkable firmness, smiling to all around as he walked to the spot assigned for his execution and touching his cap.
As he passed, Colonel Quincy, who was present after the order for his execution had been read, the prisoner requested to be permitted to address a few words to the soldiers which being promptly granted, he walked steadily to the center of the square and said in a calm, deliberate tone of voice.
Gentlemen, I’m glad to see you on parade today, but I’m sorry, it’s on such a melancholy occasion.
I suppose my sentence is just and hope it will be a warning to you all.
It is necessary to maintain strict discipline in the army without it.
We could not have an army.
Therefore, I sacrificed my life willingly.
That’s all I have to say on concluding these remarks.
He returned to his place and spoke a few words to the chaplain after which he turned to the firing party and addressed them as follows.

[26:54] You must have no personal feelings in regard to this matter. I have none.
It is your duty as soldiers and the only assistance you can render me now is by taking sure and deliberate aim.
It is your duty to do so and your business is pointing to the heart to aim right here.

[27:15] The prisoner now seated himself on the edge of his coffin and acting sergeant major baker 11th us infantry advanced and bowed his hands and eyes.
He slipped from the coffin and dropping his right hand upon the ground, calmly awaited his doom.
There was a moment of awful suspense. Not a sound could be heard along the entire line of troops except the sharp click of the muskets of the firing party.
At last, the word was given and Lynch fell forward on his face. A corpse.
His last words were shoot me in the breast. Don’t mark my face.
He was hit by seven balls, two of which passed through his heart killing him instantly.

[28:02] Lowell himself left Boston in May at the head of his new cavalry regiment.
And for most of the next year, the unit was a key component of the defense of Washington against the secessionists.
The second mass cavalry chased John Mosby’s gorilla cavalry around the Shenandoah Valley and they provided an effective counters strait capability against the much more formidable regular cavalry of Jubal early whose raid struck nearly into the nation’s capital itself.
That October, he married Josephine Shaw just a few months after her brother Bob, who we know better as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was killed along with many of the black troops, the 54th Massachusetts in a failed assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
After that loss, Lowell offered to lead a black regimen to keep Shaw’s sacrifice from being in vain writing, he died to prove the fact that blacks will fight and we owe it to him to show that that fact was worth proving better, worth proving at this moment than any other.
I do not want to see his proof drop useless for one of strong men and good officers to act upon it.

[29:12] Now, longtime listeners may have heard our episode 252, which was released last July.
In that episode, we discussed the deadly riot that broke out on July 14th, 18 63 when the mostly Irish residents of the North end resisted the newly instituted draft that was meant to boost union enlistments through the first involuntary conscription in American history.
At the time, anyone who was conscripted could pay $300 to have an alternate serve in their place.
Leading to a very real charge that Lincoln and his allies had created a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.
After the first draft notices were served in the north end, an intense street battle ensued that was only broken when us soldiers fired artillery and small arms into a civilian crowd killing more men, women and Children than anyone has ever accounted for.

[30:08] At first glance, Colonel Lowell would seem to be a perfect poster child for Irish Americans who are dissatisfied with the new draft law.
He was from the uppermost cross to the Boston Brahmin elite with the Lowell family fortune.
Easily making him the equivalent of a billionaire. Today, he had every advantage in life with his Harvard degree and early jobs as a corporate officer for a railroad and a foundry executive, add to that the widely circulated accounts that he believed that his prerogative as an officer was to leave the killing to his troops.
And it doesn’t look good for Colonel Lowell remember those early letters saying that he was not a bloodthirsty man and that he had no desire to personally slay a sedition as confederate.
His mother, Anna Lowell was quoted in Emerson’s life and letters along these lines saying of the shooting at the recruiting station, the whole incident was very painful to Colonel Lowell, especially because he had always regarded it as one of the privileges of an officer that he did not have to kill with his own hand.

[31:10] Add to that, the editorials and the courier on the pilot calling him a yellow bellied coward.
And you might just assume that Colonel Lowell was the sort of officer who would lead from the rear and leave the danger to his men.
Those presuppositions are challenged by Lowell’s record in the war, especially with the second Mass Cavalry in late 18 63 and 18 64, having polished his skills as a horseman and as a leader in the conflict with Mosby and early around DC Lowell began to come into his own as a cavalryman.
As 1863 turned to 1864. The second mass cavalry took part in a series of offensives that pushed confederate lines back from the outskirts of Washington and began tightening the noose around Richmond.

[31:58] His own letters home during this time contained very few details of his personal experience of combat, focusing more on what he saw in camp life.
The news he could send home from family friends whom he met in his travels and his thoughts on politics and current events.
The closest he comes to describing combat is the anguish with which he describes the series of horses that he lost during this offensive.
First horses that he brought from home and his family would have been acquainted with and then a series of government horses provided by the cavalry as an animal lover.
These letters are hard to read, but at one point a dozen horses were killed out from under him in a dozen days, including a beloved gelding named Billy that he had brought from home and never meant to ride in combat.

[32:45] Maybe he didn’t want to seem full of himself or maybe he just didn’t want to worry his family at home.
But Charles Russell Lowell saw plenty of combat and any notion of leaving the killing to his men had been left behind long ago.
Emerson quotes a letter from a private news regiment written about four years after the war who says that somewhere between Williamsburg and York Town, General Stoneman ordered us to draw in line in charge.
But the Rebs cavalry charged us first.
We fell back and as we were crossing a swamp, the rebs overtook us.
Captain Lowell had charge of companies K and E the res charged company E first and the captain joined that company with our company K and fought them with the saber for about 10 minutes.
Then we retreated out of the swamp.
No man who’s fought for his life with a sword and a swamp can ever be called a coward.

[33:39] Putnam’s 1920 Biographical sketch contains a similar story.
From a few months later on August 26th, they led an attack on the advance of the enemy, charging up to a rail fence to hide a leap behind which was the enemy.
Lowell actually whacked their muskets aside with his saber tearing down the fence over. They went, nothing could resist them.
The second Massachusetts captured 74 men. A lieutenant colonel, three captains and several lieutenants.
This was the first time that Lowell’s men ever really measured him.
Such a noble scorn of death and danger they never saw before.
And it inspired them with a courage that quailed at nothing.

[34:20] With his personal fortune. Colonel Lowe could have paid 1000 alternates to fight in his place but he didn’t under General Phil Sheridan.
He led an entire brigade of cavalry into the Shenandoah Valley in the fall of 18 64 pushing the secessionists out of the eastern Panhandle of West Virginia down the valley through Winchester and Strasbourg to Staunton, On October 15, they camped along a Brook called Cedar Creek, on the 17th floor, wrote to Josephine and said that he’d had the best night’s sleep 10 full hours only briefly interrupted by the 4 30 revelle after which he could go back to bed again, to his mother.
He wrote on the same day that they were camped in a beautiful valley but that there was nothing else noteworthy to report.

[35:08] At dawn on the 19th, Lowell’s old Nemesis Jubal early tried to stage a surprise attack on the camp, but Lowell scouts had seen them coming the night before, His troops rode out at 4:30 AM to meet the secessionists at dawn and ended up in a running battle for the entire morning.

[35:25] With much of the Union camp in complete disarray. And on the brink of panic.
Emerson quotes a fellow officer who saw Lowell’s brigade crossing the entire length of the line to anchor the left side.
They moved past me that splendid cavalry. If they reached the pike, I felt secure, Lowell got by me before I could speak.
But I looked after him for a long distance, exquisitely mounted the picture of a soldier, a wrecked, confident defiant.
He moved at the head of the finest brigade of cavalry that at this day scorns the earth at treads, all morning, Lowell and his men held their ground and General Sheridan was able to stop the retreat and organize a new line of battle around and behind Lowell’s cavalry.
The colonel was under direct fire nearly all day with the Harvard Memorial biographies noting his last horse was shot under him early in the day.
And a charge at 1:00, he was himself struck in the right side of the breast by a spent ball which without breaking the skin embedded itself in the muscle and deprived him of voice and strength.
The force of the blow was sufficient to collapse the lung and cause internal hemorrhage and it probably would have been fatal if he had had no other hurt.

[36:41] Emerson’s life and letters says that he was laid out on the ground in a shallow depression, sheltered for the moment from incoming fire.
One of his subordinate officers covered him with a uniform gray coat while he rested At about three pm.
The order came down from General Sheridan to advance on the rebels and push them out of a nearby village called Middletown.
Lowell asked to borrow a horse and his orderlies had to help him up into the saddle, whispering orders to his officers.
He set a nearby Confederate battery as their first objective, took his place at the front of his men, then drew his saber and wheeled his horse to face the enemy one last time he was shot almost immediately.
And Emerson describes how Lowell’s aides picked him up and carried him forward in the hoof prints left by his charging cavalry and laid him out in the parlor of a farmhouse in the villages, men had just cleared.
The regimental surgeon later wrote There were four or 5 that night in the room, Lowell lay on the table shot through from shoulder to shoulder.
The ball had cut the spinal cord on the way.
Of course, below this, he was completely paralyzed.
Four others were lying, desperately wounded on the floor. One young officer was in great pain.
Lowe spent much of his ebbing strength helping him through the streets of death.
When he heard the groans of the rebel wounded that were brought into the yard.
He sent me away to look after them.

[38:08] That night, the 29 year old colonel dictated a few words of farewell to Josephine just a few days short of their first wedding anniversary.
He also dictated orders and detailed directions for how his command should be disposed of toward morning.
He fell silent and just after dawn, he breathed his last.

[38:30] His funeral was held at Harvard Memorial Chapel on October 28, He was interred at Mount Auburn where he lies alongside Josephine under a simple stone to learn more about Colonel Charles Russell Lowell on the court street mutiny.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 271.
I’ll have links to online copies of Edward Waldo Emerson’s life and letters of Charles Russell Lowell, the Harvard memorial biographies compiled by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Elizabeth Cabot Putnam’s biography as well as the second mass cavalry research site that has an excellent article on the mutiny.
I’ll also link to a page describing where to find his grave at Mount Auburn.
Should you decide to pay him a visit as well as Stephen Rain’s thesis about civil war executions in Massachusetts.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And I’m mostly active on Twitter.

[39:35] If you’re on Mastodon, you can find me as at hub history at better dot boston or go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
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Music

Jake:
[40:03] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.