Civil War
Lowell entered the Union Army in June 1861, and was commissioned as a captain in the 3rd U.S. Cavalry, transferring to the 6th U.S. Cavalry in August. He served as an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan during the formation of the Army of the Potomac in the summer and fall of 1861 and continued at McClellan's side during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign and the Battle of Antietam.
In 1863 Lowell recruited and organized the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, and on May 10 was appointed its colonel. During the winter of 1863–64, he was in charge of the outer defenses of Washington, D.C., and was engaged in repelling the raid by Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early that reached the outskirts of the capital.
During the Valley Campaigns of 1864, Lowell commanded a brigade of cavalry in Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt's division of the Cavalry Corps of Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's army. He distinguished himself at Third Winchester and took a leading role in the Confederate rout at Tom's Brook. He was mortally wounded during the Union counterattack at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864. general Sheridan interceded to ensure that he was promoted to brigadier general on that day. He died on the next day at Middletown, Virginia, at the age of 29. He is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lowell was nominated as a brigadier general two days after his death. Since he was unable to sign his new commission after his death, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton authorized an exception allowing the posthumous promotion to become official. Upon hearing of his death, Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer wept and Sheridan remarked "I do not think there was a quality which I could have added to Lowell. He was the perfection of a man and a soldier."
In October 1863, Lowell had married Josephine Shaw (1843–1905), a sister of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, one of his close friends. Her home when she was married was on Staten Island, and she became deeply interested in the social problems of New York City. She was a member of the State Charities Aid Society, and from 1876 to 1889 was a member of the New York State Board of Charities, being the first woman appointed to that board. She founded the Charity Organization Society of New York City in 1882, and wrote Public Relief and Private Charity (1884) and Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation (1893).
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Famous quotes by civil war:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)