After the army reached the James River, the malarial poisons began again to develop their effects upon the systems of the men. Dr. Revere, though himself a sufferer from disease, would not yield to its debilitating effects, but continued with the army in the zealous and faithful discharge of his duties. He accompanied the Army of the Potomac when it moved north to join the forces in front of Washington, where the Twentieth Massachusetts, toward the last of August, was present at Chantilly, the closing combat of General Pope's disastrous campaign.

After the disasters under General Pope, the regiment fell back with the army across the Potomac to Tenallytown, in order to move upon the enemy, who had crossed the Upper Potomac into Maryland.

On the 17th of September, 1862, Dr. Revere accompanied his regiment in its advance under General Sumner, to follow up the charge of General Hooker upon the enemy's troops under General Lee. The latter general had taken position for the battle on the heights in front of Sharpsburg, between that place and the Antietam River. The Twentieth Massachusetts was in the hottest of the fight, and lost very heavily. Dr. Revere, as usual, followed close to the line, being of opinion that his duty to his men required him to be as near as possible, in case of any casualty, so that they should receive immediate attention. He had said that morning, as he was marching to the field, "I mean that to-day no man in our regiment shall fall behind, and that every man shall do his duty." He attended to his surgical work, aided the wounded, and urged and encouraged the men. He was last seen alive about noon, calmly and industriously occupied in the strict line of his duty, in a spot where, part of our soldiers being faced to the rear, the bullets of both armies were flying over his head. As he raised himself from performing an operation upon a wounded man, he was pierced by a bullet, and sank and died upon the field of battle, just one year from the day he joined his regiment. His body was left on the field, but was afterwards recovered, and buried at Mount Auburn.

Dr. Revere, in all his army practice, aimed to save both life and limb. He never permitted an amputation where he thought that there was a hope that skill, care, and patience could avert that necessity. More than once since his death have his friends been touched and comforted by a soldier's holding up an arm or foot, and saying, "Dr. Revere saved that for me. I should have lost it if I had not fallen into his care." He was led to perform his duties thus faithfully from the sense of a higher responsibility than his great reserve upon the subject permitted him to reveal.

Such is the memorial of one of the many sons whom Harvard University sent out to die upon the battle-field. Not one of them held his life more lightly in such a cause. Brave and courageous Nature made him. Gentle, honorable, and faithful he aimed to make himself, and he succeeded. Fame he did not ask for, and he knew it could hardly follow, however well he might discharge the arduous and perilous duties which he assumed. If this testimonial shall give to any one a juster appreciation of the debt the country owes to the medical staff of the army, it will be a service which he would have rejoiced to be the means of procuring.

1848.

JOHN FRANKLIN GOODRICH.

Private 21st Iowa Vols. (Infantry), August 28, 1862; died at Vicksburg, Miss., June 4, 1863, of disease contracted in the service.

J'

OHN FRANKLIN GOODRICH was the son of Allen and Mary (Emerson) Goodrich, and was born in Mount Vernon, New Hampshire, August 13, 1826. He was fitted for college by Mrs. Ripley of Waltham, Massachusetts. In college he was not prominent as a scholar, nor very well known among his classmates; but the respect in which he was held was manifested at a class dinner, a few years after graduating, when he had gone to California, by the wish, pithily expressed in a toast, "that he might become as rich as he was good."

After graduation he was employed for one year as clerk in one of the manufacturing companies at Waltham. At the beginning of the California gold excitement he visited that region, remaining there five years, and obtaining a respectable competence by labor in the mines. Returning, he purchased a farm in Epworth, Dubuque County, Iowa. He was there married, September 12, 1857, to Miss Marion Pratt, whose family had emigrated to Iowa from Connecticut. They had three children, two sons and a daughter, — and were living in prosperity on their farm when the war began.

In August, 1862, at the age of thirty-six, he enlisted as a private in the Twenty-first Iowa Volunteers (Infantry), Colonel Samuel Merrill. In a subsequent letter, referring to this enlistment (October 17, 1862), he says:

"If there had been an abundance of young men in our State ready to enlist, I should undoubtedly have remained at home. But it was not so. The alternative remained for me to enlist and be removed far away from all the sweet amenities of home, incur all the risks of war in all its varied forms, and those on the battlefield are not the greatest,—or remain at home in peace, and have

my cheek mantle with eternal shame. It was a severe trial for my dear wife, but she endured it with Christian fortitude. It is the hardest trial I have to endure, to think that she may be constantly worrying about me."

In the same letter, in allusion to the death of a sister's child, he adds: :

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"O how hard it would be for me to part with my dear little ones. I did not know before how closely about my heart had been woven the silken threads of their bright and happy lives."

And his letters to his sisters at the same time speak of his wife and children as "the source of his greatest earthly happiness."

The regiment was at first sent to Missouri, where, although not engaged in any great battle, it had its full share of watching, marching, and skirmishing. It was once highly complimented for performing a night march of twenty-eight miles, and fording eight streams on the way, some of these being waist-deep, and at November temperature. At Hartsville, Missouri, January 1, 1863, a battalion of the regiment, including less that three hundred, after being overwhelmingly outnumbered and flanked, held its position, under LieutenantColonel Dunlap, although all other regiments had retired, until the enemy, numbering four thousand, had retreated under cover of the night. In all these duties, Goodrich is stated to have borne an honorable part, and seems to have been sustained through all by a strong, unaffected religious feeling. He expresses pleasure, in his letters, that even amid the vice and profanity of the camp he can enjoy the privilege of social worship; and after being brought face to face with danger, he learns that "the more we are called on to do and suffer, the better off we are.”

For more than two months after this battle, he remained at Hartsville with two others, on detail, to take charge of the wounded men, rejoining his regiment March 20, 1863. During this period he wrote as follows:

"I seem to realize more and more, as the danger increases, how sweet a thing it is to live for my family. I sometimes tremble at

the thought that I may in the lapse of time be brought to welcome a settlement of this great difficulty by some means other than those strictly honorable to our government, for the sake of peace. I have just finished reading the life of Washington by Weems, a contemporary of Washington. It was found on the field after the battle. Some Rebel had thrown it away, and I do not wonder; for he must be to the Rebels like a great avenging Nemesis, haunting their every footstep. I could wish for no greater punishment than for every Rebel to be obliged to read it; for if one spark of honor remained, his cheek would mantle with shame at his degeneracy and violation of all principles so inexpressibly dear to the heart of Washington.

"We hear no news here, and know nothing that is going on in the world. How we long to hear of glorious and decisive victories! O for a Washington to lead our armies, and march them on, in the name of the 'Lord of Hosts,' to a decisive issue! Have we not been sufficiently humbled as a nation before God? and will he not speedily avenge us of our adversary? Surely his anger endureth but for a moment.

"There are no social gatherings for religious purposes in this whole vicinity. It seems almost as though war and rebellion had obliterated the thought of God, the Bible, and an eternal state of existence from the heart of the community; but Christianity has to do with the individual rather than the community. It is as imperatively necessary for us to 'keep our hearts with all diligence' in the midst of a godless multitude as in the society of Christians. I pray God to keep me ever humble at the foot of the cross, that he will ever feed my soul with the bread of life, that it perish not in the wilderness of Sin. Although I have been separated during my stay here from the religious influences that ever attended our little Christian Association in camp, I have likewise escaped all contact with the wickedness and vice that prevail to such a fearful extent in an army. I tremble to think of the awful consequences that must necessarily result to thousands of the young men that are in the army 'drinking in iniquity as a flood.' I sometimes think that it is because iniquity doth so abound in our army, that God has no more prospered us in this war. I never allow myself for a moment to doubt the entire justice of our cause, nor that it must finally succeed, if we are true to the great work before us. 'God and the right' should be our motto. May we not constant

ly trust the Excellency of Heaven and Earth in this great affliction? If God be for us, who can be against us?' Then let us