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Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

"Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy"

Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlowe died
almost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. The
body was buried next day, but soon taken up and sent home, (Plymouth
county, Mass.) Harlowe was only 22 years of age--was a tall, slim,
dark-hair'd, blue-eyed young man--had come out originally with
the 29th; and that is the way he met his death, after four years'
campaign. He was in the Seven Days fight before Richmond, in second
Bull Run, Antietam, first Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson,
Wilderness, and the campaigns following--was as good a soldier as ever
wore the blue, and every old officer in the regiment will bear that
testimony. Though so young, and in a common rank, he had a spirit as
resolute and brave as any hero in the books, ancient or modern--It
was too great to say the words "I surrender"--and so he died. (When I
think of such things, knowing them well, all the vast and complicated
events of the war, on which history dwells and makes its volumes, fall
aside, and for the moment at any rate I see nothing but young Calvin
Harlowe's figure in the night, disdaining to surrender.)

WOUNDS AND DISEASES
The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than ever, from former
and current cases. A large' majority of the wounds are in the arms and
legs. But there is every kind of wound, in every part of the body.
I should say of the sick, from my observation, that the prevailing
maladies are typhoid fever and the camp fevers generally, diarrhoea,
catarrhal affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia.


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