Mr. Seymour should have defeated General Wadsworth by a majority of more than ten thousand.

General Wadsworth's term of service in Washington lasted for nine months. A friend who saw him constantly at that time says that he felt more deeply and more painfully the disasters of the country than almost any one he met. He suggested certain movements to the President which were disapproved by more experienced military minds; but they showed, at any rate, his personal courage and his restless patriotism. He constantly applied for more active duty, and in December, 1862, the government ordered him to report to Major-General Reynolds, then in command of the First Corps. General Reynolds gave him his First Division, and this he led, with great galantry, at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

The experience of the last four years has proved the truth of the assertion of military men, that war is a science which must be studied like any other, and that civilians cannot be extemporized into generals. It must be confessed, however, that the genius of some civilians eminently fits them for command; and a campaign or two may supply the want of early professional study. As I have already stated, Wadsworth seems to have been one of these natural soldiers. He manifested decided ability in conducting the retreat of his troops at Chancellorsville. After effecting a difficult crossing of the river, he was ordered to recross. It was intended that this should have been done in the night, but the order did not reach him until after daylight. He got three or four regiments over without being observed, owing to the cover of earthworks; but the enemy soon after saw the movement, and opened upon him with shot and shell. One bridge had been taken up the day before. The remaining one was lost three times during the recrossing. General Reynolds ordered the movement to be suspended as impracticable, but Wadsworth convinced him it was not, and completed it with a loss of only about twenty killed and wounded, and the same number of artillery horses. He remained until the last regiment crossed, preceding only the skirmishers and pickets.

General Wadsworth was very successful in gaining the love of his men. His high sense of justice and true republican respect for manliness, wherever he found it, soon convinced them that, if they did their duty, they should be rewarded. They knew, too, that he made their comfort his constant study. These qualities endeared him greatly to his troops, and when, before the battle of Fredericksburg, he rode with his staff unexpectedly into the encampment of his old brigade, the soldiers of all the four regiments rushed tumultuously towards him and made the skies ring with their shouts of welcome. But there was another and a better reason why his soldiers loved him, and also why he was always a reliable officer: he was so cool and collected under fire. “He had a habit,” says an intelligent writer, who saw him at the front just before his death, "of riding about the foremost line, and even among his skirmishers, which somewhat unnecessarily exposed his life. He knew very well how to handle his division, and he knew how to hold a line of battle,—how to order and lead a charge, how to do the plain work which he liked best; and at Gettysburg he showed how much a plucky, tenacious leader can do with a handful of troops in keeping back and making cautious an overwhelming force of the enemy. He was pertinacious; did not like to give up or back out; and was not a man safely to be pressed, even by a force much superior to his own."

General Meade writes of him: "The moral effect of his example, his years, and high social position, his distinguished personal gallantry and daring bravery, all tended to place him in a most conspicuous position, and to give him an influence over the soldiers which few other men possess."

And General Humphreys, General Meade's chief of staff, in speaking of the qualities he showed on the field on which he lost his life, writes: "In the two days of desperate fighting that followed our crossing the Rapidan, he was conspicuous beyond all others for his gallantry, prompter than all others in leading his troops again and again into action. In all these combats he literally led his men, who, inspired by his heroic bearing, continually renewed the contest, which, but for him, they would have yielded."

This is high praise, and from the most competent sources, to be given to a man who had never been under fire until he had passed his fifty-third year, and whose life had been occupied in quiet agricultural pursuits. It was the blood of the old Puritan captain which tingled in his veins in those days of trial: better than that, it was the inextinguishable love of country,- the reverence for right and truth, - the inborn hatred of everything false, and mean, and treacherous, which made him content to exchange the delights of such a home as I have attempted to describe, for the unspeakable horrors of the battle-field.

It may well be supposed that, with qualities like these, he was not allowed to remain inactive in the campaign which succeeded the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg he commanded the First Division of the First Corps until the fall of General Reynolds, when he assumed charge of the corps. Before that, however, his division had received the brunt of the enemy's attack. It went into action at nine in the morning, and continued under fire until four in the afternoon, suffering heavier loss than any other in the army. He had several horses shot under him, and he animated the fight everywhere by his noble presence. At the council of war held after the victory, Wadsworth, who, as the temporary commander of a corps, had a seat at the board, was one of three who, with decided earnestness, favored the pursuit of the enemy; but his advice was overruled, and Lee escaped. A competent military authority says: "No doubt now exists in the mind of any unprejudiced observer, that, had this course been adopted, the army of Lee would have been entirely captured or put to rout." The war has seen no better instance of good judgment in civilian officers than Wadsworth's on this occasion.

After General Grant was ordered to the Eastern Division, Wadsworth was constantly employed in assisting in the arrangements for the campaign. Before it was undertaken, however, and about the beginning of the year 1864, he was sent upon special service to the Mississippi Valley, and made an extensive tour through the Western and Southwestern States. It was on

the eve of his departure that he made to the paymaster from whom he had always drawn his pay the remarkable declaration, that he desired to have his accounts with government kept by one and the same officer, because it was his purpose, at the close of the war, to call for an accurate statement of all the money he should have received, and then to give it, whatever might be the amount, to some permanent institution founded for the relief of invalid soldiers. "This is the least invidious way," said he, "in which I can refuse pay for fighting for my country in her hour of danger."

When General Grant finally began his campaign, Wadsworth was placed in command of the Fourth Divison of the Fifth Corps, which was composed of his old division of the First Corps, with the addition of the Third Brigade. He crossed the Rapidan on Wednesday, the 4th of May. On the 5th and 6th the battle of the Wilderness was fought. It was here that the event occurred which his friends, knowing his impetuous valor, had feared from the first. Wadsworth was mortally wounded. This heroic termination of a noble career, and its attendant circumstances, are described in simple and touching language by his son, Captain Craig Wadsworth, in a letter which is published in Mr. Allen's Memorial. Captain Wadsworth was attached to the cavalry division, which was guarding the wagon-train; but, by permission of his commanding officer, he went to the front, and remained with his father for two or three hours on the morning of the memorable 6th, and while the fight was going on. There is also an interesting description of it by a Confederate officer, which has been communicated to the family, but never yet published.

It seems from these accounts that General Wadsworth's command had been engaged for several hours on the evening of the 5th, and had lost heavily. Early the next morning General Hancock ordered it again into action on the right of the Second Corps. The enemy's division opposed to it was at first Heth's and afterwards Anderson's, which were strongly posted in thick woods, and supported by artillery placed in a small open field about two hundred yards in the rear. The ground declined gently from this field to Heth's position.

Wadsworth charged repeatedly with his division, and drove the enemy back in disorder, but he was unable to retain his advantage. He was afterwards reinforced, and with six brigades made several other assaults. He fought with the most conspicuous bravery, and had two horses killed under him. At eleven o'clock General Hancock ordered him to withdraw, and there was a lull in the battle until about noon, when Longstreet, who had in the mean time come up, precipitated his. force upon Wadsworth's left, and drove back Ward's brigade at that point in some confusion. Wadsworth immediately threw forward his second line, and formed it on the Orange and Fredericksburg Plank-Road, at right angles with his original position. It was while he was trying to hold this line with his own division, then reduced to about sixteen hundred men, that his third horse was shot under him, and he was himself struck in the head by a bullet. The enemy were charging at the time, and took the ground before General Wadsworth could be removed.

The Confederate officer, to whose account allusion has been made, states that he found him in the woods about fifteen paces: to the left of the Plank-Road. None of the Federal dead or wounded were more than twenty or thirty yards nearer than he was to the open field toward which the attack had been di rected. He was lying upon his back under a shelter-tent,. which was extended over him at about three feet from the ground, the two upper corners being attached to boughs of trees, and the lower ones and the sides supported by muskets.. The officer recognized him by a paper with his name on it,. which had been pinned to his coat. His appearance was perfectly natural, and his left hand grasped the stock of one of the supporting muskets near the guard. His fingers played with the trigger, and he occasionally pushed the piece from him as far as he could reach, still grasping it in his hand. Supposing he might wish to send some message to his family, the officer addressed him. The General, however, paid no attention to the words, and it was soon evident that he was unconscious of what was passing around him, although the expression of his

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