-
Notes
- Ohio University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Notes “Lemuel Shaw’s Meditation”: Lemuel Shaw (–) was born and died in Massachusetts. He was chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from until his death. His daughter, Elizabeth, married Herman Melville in in New York City. Shaw gave Melville a copy of Owen Chase’s Narrative of the Whale Ship “Essex,” which became a source for Moby-Dick (). From the s through the s Shaw was involved in notable fugitive slave cases. “Melville’s Letter to William Clark Russell”: Herman Melville (– ) was born and died in New York City. He lived in Pittsfield, Massachusetts , from to , during which time he published MobyDick , The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, and other fictions. He followed the Civil War closely through relatives, friends, newspapers, magazines, and The Rebellion Record. In April , while visiting his cousin Henry Gansevoort’s cavalry camp in northern Virginia, he rode out on a scout, led by Col. Charles Russell Lowell, from Vienna to Aldie in search of Col. John Singleton Mosby’s rd Virginia Partisan Rangers. In he published Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, a collection of seventy-two poems. It includes poems on Massachusetts heroes Colonel Lowell and Col. (later Brig. Gen.) William Francis Bartlett, as well as on Confederate heroes Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, and on major and minor battles on land and sea. In his prose “Supplement” to Battle-Pieces, he states his postwar views. “Young Shaw” is Col. Robert Gould Shaw, th Massachusetts Infantry, killed at Battery Wagner, July , . William Clark Russell (– ), British novelist and historian, corresponded with Melville late in his life. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. “Alike and Yet Unlike: General Richard Taylor Writes to Henry Adams”: Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard (Dick) Taylor (–), Yale ’, was the only son of Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War and U.S. president –. He was the brother-in-law of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Henry Adams (–), Harvard ’, was the great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, U.S. presidents – and –. At the outbreak of the Civil War in , Taylor, a Louisiana sugar planter on lands inherited from his father, was elected colonel of the th Louisiana Infantry. Commissioned brigadier general in October, he led the Louisiana Brigade in Virginia in the Valley Campaign of Stonewall Jackson. Later, in and , as major general, he commanded the District of Western Louisiana, and, as lieutenant general, soundly defeated Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks at Mansfield (Sabine Crossroads) April , in the Red River Campaign. After briefly commanding the Army of Tennessee, one of the two great Southern armies, he ended the war as commander of the District of Alabama, Mississippi, and Eastern Louisiana. Adams, already a journalist, spent the war in London as private secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, minister to Great Britain. After the war, Taylor and Adams became close literary friends in Washington, D.C., where Taylor was working as a lobbyist for Louisiana interests and Adams was beginning his History of the United States in the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (–). They read one another’s work in manuscript. Taylor published an essay on George Mason, “A Statesman of the Colonial Era,” in North American Review (February ). A lifelong sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis, he died of heart disease April , , one week after publication of his memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction. Adams’s biography of Albert Gallatin was published in and his novel on Washington politics, Democracy, in . Adams’s Harvard friends mentioned are as follows: Lt. Col. Nicholas Longworth Anderson, th Ohio Infantry; Maj. Benjamin You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. [54.87.90.21] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:46 GMT) Crowninshield, st Massachusetts Cavalry; Capt. James May, th Virginia Infantry; Lt. John Julius Pringle Alston, st South Carolina Artillery; and William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee, who rose from captain, th Virginia Cavalry, to major general of cavalry. Adams’s brother Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was colonel of the th Massachusetts Cavalry. Capt. James Smith was aide-de-camp to Stonewall Jackson. Jackson’s famous flank march around the Union XI Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Oliver...