[275]
Charles Russell Lowell.
Captain 6th U. S. Cavalry, May 14, 1861; Colonel 2d Mass. Cavalry, April 15, 1863; Brigadier-General of Volunteers, October 19, 1864; died at Middletown, Va., October 20, 1864, of wounds received at Cedar Creek, October 19.Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., was born at Boston, January 2, 1835. He was the eldest son of Charles Russell and Anna Cabot (Jackson) Lowell, and was the grandson of the Rev. Charles Lowell, D. D., and of Patrick Tracy Jackson. From infancy he showed a rich variety and freedom of nature. He entered with eager relish into the games of boyhood, and surpassed all his companions in invention and daring; in study he displayed an equal alertness of faculty. ‘Those who knew him in his first ten years can recall a sturdy little figure, active but not restless, a pair of bright, soft, dark eyes, and rosy cheeks curling all over with enjoyment. He finds everything good; but the eyes are often withdrawn from the charms of life and nature, and rest with a far-away upward look on something unseen beyond.’ When only thirteen, he had finished the studies of the Boston Latin School; and the next two years were spent at the English High School. In 1850 he entered college. He was one of the youngest members of his Class; but he immediately took the first rank in scholarship, and maintained it to the end. During the four years of college life, he gradually unfolded to the vision of his friends the great and brilliant attributes—the deep, quick, and independent intellect, the vigor of will, the self-reliance, the power over men, the originality and force of moral faculty, the jubilance of spirit, itself in him amounting to a moral excellence, the earnest tenseness and life of the whole nature— which continued to distinguish him in all the phases of his career.
