IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 Amd &hlt Sal|lg0gti» 
 
 THE MIDNIGHT OF WEDNESDAY, 
 -^tfAY 2d, 1864. 
 
A SEKMON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 COLONEL ULRIC DAHLaREN, 
 
 DELIVERED JN THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 "WASHINGTON, D. C, 
 
 S^BBJ^TH: E"^rE3^IIsrC3-, .A.:PI^XXi 24, 1864, 
 
 BY THE PASTOR, 
 
 REV. E. SUNDERLAND, D. D. 
 
 ^he ^rave rn,Xbst he Iiemembered. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. : 
 
 M c G I L L & W I T II E R W, PRINTERS AND S T E R E T Y P E R S. 
 
 1864. 
 
--7t 
 
Washington, D. C, ^Ij^m-i^ 25, 1864. 
 Key. Byron Sunderland, D. D. 
 
 Dear Sir : We respectfully request that you will furnish for publica- 
 tion a copy of the eloquent and patriotic discourse on the life and death of 
 Colonel Dahlgren, delivered last evening. We wish to see the noble 
 daring and heroic devotion to the cause of his country, which characterized 
 the brief but brilliant career of this young soldier, held up before the 
 youth of our country that they may be stimulated to an honorable emula- 
 tion of his virtues and, if need be, to a similar sacrifice of their lives. We 
 wish to honor his memory, by publishing the story of his deeds and his 
 death, that it may go down to posterity with the record of many other 
 noble young men of our land, whose lives have honored and whose deaths 
 have rendered doubly sacred the cause in which they fell, and will add to 
 the reproach and shame of all our enemies and all who sympathize with 
 them. 
 
 In thus presenting this request, we believe that v/e express the general 
 sentiment of those who listened to your discourse, and the loyal people of 
 this community. 
 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servants, 
 
 SCHUYLER COLFAX, 
 J. K. MOEEHEAD, 
 D. MOEEIS, 
 Z. D. GILMAN, 
 WM. H. CAMPBELL, 
 WM. GUNTON, 
 O. C. WIGHT, 
 MAESHALL CONANT. 
 
 WAsniNOTON, A2}ril 2G, 18G1. 
 To Messrs. Schuyler Colfax, 
 
 J. Iv. MOREHEAD, D. MORRIS, AND OTHERS. 
 
 Gentlemen : Your request of the 25th instant, so kindly expressed, is 
 duly received, and' in submitting to your disposal a copy of the discourse 
 delivered by me, in memory "f the lute Colonel Dahlgren, permit me to 
 
add, that when our countrymen sliall retul the story of this noble young 
 soldier, and the nation's heart shall thrill again on every recollection of 
 his exploits, I pray them to remember it is not upon the ground of his 
 lofty patriotism, but upon the humble hope of his confidence in the 
 Redeemer of the world, that his Pastor cherishes the conviction of his 
 now beatified and exalted estate, in the presence of God and the h ily 
 angels. 
 
 Ever truly, &c., 
 
 B. SUNDERLAND. 
 
, , Identification of the Ijody op the 
 
 Late Colonel Ulfjc Daulgben.— By request 
 ; oi Admiral Dahlgrea, Mr. Samuel Kirby, an un- 
 dertaker, ou Thursday examined the body at 
 the Congressional Cemetery, which had been 
 buried there about two months since, and fully 
 identified it as the body of the late gallant 
 Colonel riric Dahlgren, son of the Admiral. 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 2 Sam., 3: 34. "Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into 
 fetters— as a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou. And all 
 the people wept again over him ! " 
 
 A brave man liad fallen by assassination. He had not died as 
 a felon or a coward. No earthly power could bind his hands or 
 put his feet in fetters. None had ever been able to take him cap- 
 tive, or confine him in chains and prisons. He was swift as the 
 roe of the mountain, with an eagle's eye, lion-hearted, strong in 
 battle. His valorous deeds had made his name a household word 
 in the nation. In an unsuspecting moment, he was ensnared. 
 Jealousy, fear, rage and revenge — the base quaternion of passion 
 under the guise of hypocrisy, set upon him and smote him down. 
 Such a death went home to the heart of the people; at every 
 thought of it they bewailed him aloud. The king with lamenta- 
 tion pronounced this eulogy over " a prince and a great man 
 fallen that day in Israel." 
 
 Time, ever fertile of humanity, rarely produces such heroes. 
 To-day it is given us to behold not only one of the latest, but also 
 one of the loftiest examples. As they did of old, we look upon it 
 through blinding tears, but tears whose thick and grievous mist 
 can never obscure its brightness. We see it through a storm of 
 such mingled emotions as seldom sweeps the throbbing chords of 
 human nature, or stirs the soul of a great people at once with pain 
 and pride, sadness and scorn, anguish and indignation. We may 
 
6 
 
 <iazo on till tliu heart is well-uigli burstiug, fur long may it be 
 before tlic like of it shall rise again ! 
 
 It is the memory of a young man who did not reach the end of 
 the first year of his majorit)/ that we now recall. The Sabbath 
 morning, April 3d, in 1842, beheld his birth. It was amid a scene 
 of domestic happiness, in a rural home, in a lovely spot near 
 Philadelphia, by the crystal Neshamony, in Bucks County, Penn- 
 sylvania. The midnight of Wednesday, March 2d, in 186-1, saw 
 him mangled and bloody, expiring on the damp sod, surrounded 
 by a cowardly, brutal, demon ized foe, springing from their ambush 
 to plunder and mutilate him, there, in the fatal thicket by the 
 turbid Mattapony, in King and <jueen's County, A'^irginia. How 
 tranquilly fair his advent upon the stage of life — how bitterly 
 tragic his exit ! Now as we look back over his single score of 
 years, prophetic signals start all around him, proclaiming his ca- 
 reer, and pointing him out as one anointed of God to teach a 
 lesson to Americans and to all mankind that can never be forgot- 
 ten. Alas ! we did not know this, neither could we interpret it, till 
 he himself flashed it upon the nation, in one glowing spectacle, 
 unfolding all. 
 
 His very name was a presage of his character, derived as it is 
 from the mighty Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and conijucror of 
 Rome. His paternal ancestry streteliing back through a long, 
 honorable and cultured lineage of Sweden, gave to him a noble 
 blood and high exanjples of the virtues which he revered and 
 emulated as a true and ftivored son of that great Scandinavian 
 race, which has so long stamped its resistless impress on the his- 
 toric fortunes of Europe. His maternal parentage springing from 
 a family of beautiful and accomplished women, endowed him with 
 whatever is delicate and refined, gentle and endearing, trustful 
 and true in the highest attributes of manhood. His baptism in 
 infancy at the hands of a Calvinistic Presbyter and Pastor, made 
 him a child of the Covenant, and was the fitting symbol of that 
 
old Puritan spirit which has fought so many battles for the su- 
 premacy of God and the liberty of men in the earth, and which, 
 as we now sec, animating him, has added in his name but another 
 glory to its imperishable scroll. His education in the family, the 
 academy, and the church, were alike felicitous in their influence. 
 His training, bodily and mentally, in the more practical and active 
 spheres of social and professional life, though continuing through 
 a brief period, and this rather in the preparatory stages, notwith- 
 standing contributed with no less effect to mould him for the part 
 he has acted, and for the record which he has made immortal. 
 
 We shall mark the proof of this more definitely as we trace his 
 course from the beginning, and observe his approaches to an early 
 and enviable renown. His first years were spent in the parish of 
 Hartsville, the place of his nativity, and in the city of Wilming- 
 ton, in the State of Delaware. His father, then a Lieutenant in 
 the Navy of the United States, was called from his retreat at 
 Hartsville to embark for a cruise in the since ill-fated Cumber- 
 land, and the family fixed their residence in Wilmington, where 
 wife and children awaited his return. Here, for a period of two 
 or three years, the child-hero, with his little brothers and sisters, 
 received the priceless tutelage of a Christian and now sainted 
 mother, amid the charming and glorious scenes of nature, adorned 
 with the art and elegance of man, which have rendered that re- 
 gion so attractive. Under such a mentor, and with such sur- 
 roundings, God was filling that infant mind with inspiration 
 against the time of need. His father, returning in the November 
 of 1845, awaited the pleasure of his Government, once more sur- 
 rounded by his household. Two years and more thus passed 
 away, when again, in the January of 1847, he was ordered to 
 ordnance duty in Washington, where, in the month of May of 
 1848, he established his present residence almost under the eaves 
 of the sanctuary, and gathered his family about him, one of whom 
 soon after became a member of this church, and all of whom hfve 
 
since worshipped, almost wholly with this congrcgatioa, the God 
 of our fathers. 
 
 We have seen by what providence the home of the lad had 
 been fixed in Washington. The new scenes and events now 
 transpiring around him began to awaken an interest seldom felt 
 in a soul so young. The Capital presented a thousand views that 
 told upon his character. Domestic, scholastic, and Christian in- 
 fluences were steadily developing and moulding the elements of 
 his nature. In addition to these, he was constantly moving in 
 the High Place of the land, and daily breathing that air of }le- 
 iropolitan society which, however tainted to the multitude, still 
 bears to an earnest and upright mind the greatness and glory of 
 a nation's life, filling it with the seeds of a pure patriotism and 
 an exalted faith. Always carefully nurtured and trained at home, 
 he was, from the age of six till he left the city in his seventeeJith 
 year, an exemplary and constant attendant in this church, upon 
 the instructions of the Sabbath School and the public services of 
 Divine Worship. Here he learned those lessons of God and the 
 great salvation, of Christ and the Atonement, of the blood of re- 
 mission and justification by faith, of repentance and the forgive- 
 ness of sin, of the Holy Ghost and the regeneration of the human 
 heart, of obedience and the acceptance of the Gospel, of Death, 
 Resurrection and Immortality, which can never be impressed upon 
 the soul without stirring it to the profoundest sense, as well of 
 the duties and responsibilities, as of the sublimities and grandeurs 
 of existence, and which we fain conceive he would have been led 
 in time openly to acknowledge among the children of God, 
 through the sealing ordinances of His House. Here, too, in the 
 sacred Analects he saw alike the wonder and the mystery of Prov- 
 idence, saw the theater of life thrown open, saw the persons 
 issuing upon the stage, saw the scheme of human fortune being 
 disclosed, saw the destiny of men and kingdoms rising and fiill- 
 ing, and how amid the marvel and change of the shifting scenes. 
 
9 
 
 it swept upou its course, bearing to vice its final punishment and 
 to virtue its everlasting reward. And amid the confusion and 
 uproar of mighty convulsions, he saw the procession of patriarchs 
 and prophets, apostles, martyrs and heroes, the worthies of every 
 age and of every name, holding on their triumphal way with 
 songs, and counting not their lives dear unto them for the testi- 
 mony of the faith once delivered to the saints. And as he saw 
 all this and felt its powerful action upon his mind and heart, his 
 whole being, though usually pensive and sedate, glowed as with 
 the flame of some grander revelation, and such germs were lodged 
 in a congenial soil, as have since, through him, put forth their 
 greatest fruit. 
 
 But while the culture of his moral faculties was maintained, 
 his intellectual powers were no less assiduously advanced in a 
 primary and academic course. His first experience as a pupil was 
 in the private but excellent school of the Misses Koones, where 
 he acquired those rudiments of knowledge which lay the founda- 
 tion for a higher education in the natural sciences, mathematics, 
 and the classics. In the year 1850, being the ninth of his age, 
 he entered the Rittenhouse Academy of Washington — an insti- 
 tution for the instruction of boys, of long established reputation 
 for its high moral tone and thorough intellectual training — for 
 many years under the superintendence of Mr. Otis C. Wight, its 
 present capable, efiicient, and honored Principal. Here he con- 
 tinued with no material intcrruptiou for a period of eight years, 
 going through in this time the prescribed curriculum of learning 
 and pushing his advances far beyond most of his associates into 
 several of the departments of Collegiate study. The testimony of 
 his Preceptor is as natural as it is faithful, a heart-felt tribute to 
 the memory of one whose connection with the Academy can only 
 add a luster to its name. Involved in the common grief by the 
 death of so noble an alumnus, he reports of him generously but 
 2 
 
10 
 
 tersely, that '' he was a good boy, an excellent scholar, highly 
 esteemed by his teachers and schoolmates, prompt to every duty, 
 earnest and self-reliant, making attainments rarely reached in an 
 academic course, and exciting high expectations of future success." 
 The traits of character which have recently burst forth like a 
 halo in his conduct were thus gaining depth and distinctness 
 during this passage of his school-boy days. Nothing mean or 
 narrow, nothing contentious or insubordinate in his relation with 
 his companions and instructors marred the growing strength and 
 beauty of his life. Sportive yet studious, affable yet spirited, 
 kind yet resolute, thoughtful at times even to sadness yet singu- 
 larly intrepid, he scorned an unworthy motive, disdained the com- 
 pany of the vicious, and held himself entirely aloof from those 
 frivolous habits of school-time annoyances to which so many 
 youths are unfortunately addicted. He set a striking example of 
 respect for order, submission to law, and fidelity to the claims of 
 duty. As he grew older among his fellows, he became at length 
 the favorite and confidant of them all. To him, as by one consent, 
 they deferred the trusts and honors with which school-boy life — 
 the miniature of after life — is charged. And he, faithful and 
 modest in all, wore on his way towards the hour of his graduation. 
 Meantime he was in full communion with his books. He conned 
 the lore of physical science, and saw outspread before him the 
 geography of the world and the manifold wonders of its varied 
 elements and living tribes. He diligently threaded the mazes of 
 history, and poured over the annals of the past to find that he 
 belonged to a country and a people than whom no other have 
 ever had a more stupendous and glorious mission to accomplish. 
 He strengthened his reason by grappling with the deep problems 
 of the mathematics, discovering with delight those great princi- 
 ples of exact and philosophical science which resolve to the mind 
 of man the mighty mechanism and measure of the Universe. He 
 plumed his imagination from those eagles of eloquence and song 
 
11 
 
 which the spirit of oratory and poetry has brooded into life. To 
 proficiency in his own mother-tongue, he added a substantial 
 acquaintance with the Latin language, perusing rather with the 
 fervor of the enthusiast than the stolid perseverance of the pupil, 
 the elegant chapters of Tacitus, the flowing cantos of Virgil, 
 the classic commentaries of Ca3sar, and the splendid orations of 
 Cicero. And so he drank at the Pierian spring, and was in- 
 vigorated and armed for the great sequel of his life. So he 
 came at last with a fair record and a solid scholarship to the 
 day of adieu to his ahna mater. It was the 17th of De- 
 cember, a wintry day in 1858, that he bade farewell to his 
 friends in the Academy, and never did there go forth from its 
 walls a truer heart or a nobler genius than when his shadow 
 faded from the threshold. 
 
 Two years and more prior, as well as subsequent, to his leaving 
 school, gave him comparative recreation from in-door study, while a 
 physical training in more active and varied engagements added 
 to his manly form a skilled and athletic vigor. In his intervals 
 of leisure he was often at the Navy-yard, where both on land and 
 water his exuberant spirits found healthy and profitable exercise. 
 In the November of 1857, his father was coming up the Potomac 
 in the Plymouth, on his return from England, and the lad, eager to 
 be the first to salute him, persuaded some old ordnance men of the 
 Yard to go out with him in a boat, and they pulled down the 
 river to Alexandria, where getting a tow from a schooner, he 
 come alongside the Plymouth opposite Mount Vernon. So, in 
 the following year, when his father was leaving in the same 
 vessel for the West Indies, the boy, desirous of being the last to 
 part with him, went out with the Plymouth till clear of the 
 Branch, where waving his last adieu from the skiffs, he pulled 
 back with the ordnance messenger to the Yard, in a glow of youth- 
 ful ardor. 
 
 In the January of 1859, he visited his relatives in the South 
 
12 
 
 and spent some time in the occupation of civil engineering in Lou- 
 isiana and Mississippi, having the base of operation at Natchez 
 where his uncle resided. It was here that the Mighty Disposer, 
 who prepares all things beforehand, had opened to him the ma- 
 jestic seminary of Nature and made the tangled forest and the 
 flowering plains of a region full of the great thoughts of God, in 
 the profusion of their beauty and grandeur, to yield him a senti- 
 ment and experience that afterward often stood him in stead, in 
 the exhausting ride, or in the dauntless charge. Here his sinews 
 were toughened to an almost incredible endurance of physical 
 hardship and fatigue, while his taste for the sturdy sports of the 
 field, and liis love of the art equestrian were fully gratified. So 
 splendidly did he sit his horse in the wildest and most perilous 
 passages, that he might almost he said to .-suggest the reality 
 of the fabled Centaurs of Thessaly. Little did he then think to 
 what use those acquirements should come, and little did his 
 friends foresee, in that Southern episode of his career, the de- 
 signs of that brilliant life-plan which Providence has since re- 
 vealed. 
 
 Meanwhile there was one other instructor that gave to his charac- 
 ter the finishing touches of its tenderness and gravity. Affliction 
 opens, indeed, a sad school for the human spirit and often we dearly 
 pay for the tuition of sorrow — but out of it, if sanctified, man takes 
 the golden attributes of his being. In the domestic bereavements 
 of the family, cutting down as they did none more fair or lovely, 
 the young lad exhibited a measure of mingled afi"eetion and 
 soberness amounting to positive precocity. In 1844, death 
 smote his brother John; in 1851, his brother Lawrence; in 
 1858, his sister Lizzie, whom we remember in the radiant 
 beauty and loveliness of her seventeen summers. To her he 
 Avas most fondly attached, and her death made a lasting im- 
 pression on his mind. But the great shadow that fell upon 
 the household deeper than all, till this deeper shadow that now 
 
13 
 
 lies upon them, was tlic death of his angelic mother ou the Gth 
 of June in 1855. What a light was thus quenched upon that 
 altar ! What a withering stroke fell upon the hearts of the deso- 
 late ! In the sanctity of that private grief sat the petrified hus- 
 band and his sobbing family. By the beautiful but silent form 
 that awaited a fitting sepulture, they lingered from morning till 
 night and from nigli^ till morning. Yet among them all there 
 was none that held his place so sadly resolute, in a frame so calm 
 towards the living, so reverent toward the dead, as this same word- 
 less boy that choked down the rising tumult of his memories, and 
 by some strange power of speechless fascination upheld the broken- 
 hearted and kept the weeping in countenance. No eapi'ice of 
 childhood, no weariness of the body, no slumber of the eyelids 
 could drive him for one moment from the duties of filial piety. 
 Yet, what must have been the process going on down deep in that 
 young huiuan heart, as he saw one after another of his fondest loves 
 removed away, and trod the noiseless chambers Avhere their voices 
 should be heard no more ? Oh, then did he not begin to divine that 
 Time itself is but a pilgrimage and Life but a battle, and man's 
 home and heritage are in Heaven ; that when our journey is ended 
 and our work accomplished here, it is then only that we shall enter 
 into everlasting felicity, then only that we shall regain the happy 
 throng of sainted kindred and the glorious company of martyrs 
 round about the Throne ! Thus purified in the furnace, his 
 aims were exalted and unified. Of all the qualities that dis- 
 closed themselves in him the most commanding and conspicaous 
 was purity and directness of purpose, that unselfish and unques- 
 tioning devotion to a great truth which stands in the divine 
 philosophy of Jesus — "if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall 
 be full of darkness, but if thine eye be single thy whole body 
 shall be full of liaht !" Such a testimony did he leave in after 
 days when he came to endure the personal suffering that fell upon 
 himself, and such a proof did he give of one absorbing end, so 
 
14 
 
 well contained in the counsel of the great but fallen Wolsey to 
 his last friend : 
 
 " Be just and fear not ; 
 Let all the ends thou aim'st at he thy country's, 
 Thy God's, and truth's ! Then, if thoufallcst, 0, Cromwell ! 
 Thou fallest a hlessed martyr ! " 
 
 To show the part which one has played in a great drama we 
 should of right consider the history of its times. Yet, we may not 
 now dwell on the progress of the fearful and unesampled events 
 which issued in the present struggle of the country. It must suffice 
 to say that while the nation was drifting towards inevitable war, this 
 young man, now approaching the close of his minority, had re- 
 turned from the South, and we find him settled in Philadelphia, 
 in the month of September of 1860, having finally determined 
 on the study of the law in the office of James W. Paul, Esq., 
 one of his uncles by affinity of marriage. Here, for a time, he 
 gave himself to the mastery of the great principles of juridical 
 learning which it is the care of that noble Profession to illustrate 
 and maintain, and without which society can have no security, 
 order no defense, and civilization no progress. In the pursuits 
 of such a science, he acquired a new knowledge of the funda- 
 mental doctrines of individual and public welfare; he derived a 
 new sense of the value to mankind of the institutions of free 
 Governnieut ; he was filled witli a stronger conviction of the im- 
 portance of preserving the Kepublic in its purity and integrity, 
 while he drew as it were from the fountains of Sacred, Roman, 
 Enolish and American jurisprudence, a fresh inspiration of the 
 proud fealty of patriotism and a soul-thrilling allegiance to all 
 rightful authority. But the occurrences that followed in swift 
 succession, throwing the whole country into the fiercest tempest of 
 excitement, could not fail to affect the neophyte of justice then 
 preparing to defend by his eloquence, what a Higher Power in- 
 tended should be henceforth maintained by the sword. The 
 
15 
 
 argument was closed — the diseiissiou concluded. The light of 
 half a century had been shining on the question and now all that 
 remained was an appeal to aims. And as the eye of the 
 young loyalist looked out upon his country's quarrel and his ear 
 heard from afar the shouting of captains and the thunder of bat- 
 tle, the Pandects of the great lawgivers trembled in his hands. 
 From the September of 1860 to the April of 1862, an ardent soul 
 was wavering betwen the forum and the field. It was evident 
 that the ponderous tomes of legal philosophy had lost their hold 
 upon his attention. lie began to feel that another vocation 
 awaited him, and already heard in his inmost heart the secret sum- 
 mons to its solemn mission. Throughout this interval he appeared 
 restle.ss and ill at ease. His fervid nature awoke in all its energy. 
 He became a Lieutenant in a company of Home Guards in Phila- 
 delphia, styled the '' Dahlgren Howitzer Battery." Between that 
 city and the Capital he moved to and fro as one seeking to find his 
 place. Like the ruddy stripling in the valley of Elah, he seemed 
 too youthful to be recognized among bearded men in the confu- 
 sion and heat of the first great popular uprising. Now he was 
 here, and now he was there; coming to his father and returning 
 to his uncle. In April, 1861, at Philadelphia ; in May at the Cap- 
 ital and Fort Washington, and back again to his law-office in 
 Philadelphia ; in July again in Washington, proceeding to For- 
 tress Monroe and back again to the Capital. After the first 
 defeat at Bull Bun, going by mere sufferance with Parker to the 
 defense of our lines near Alexandria, where, by way of experi- 
 ment, he first trained a battery upon the enemy. In September, 
 with Parker's battery at Fort Dahlgren ; then in the Navy-yard 
 on the visit of Prince Napoleon, and back again to the law in 
 Philadelphia. In April, 1862, again in Washington ; going with 
 the President and his father to Aquia ; returning to Philadel- 
 phia, and back again to Washington. At last his decision 
 was taken, and on the 26th of that mouth he gave up the law and 
 
16 
 
 joined the Ordnance Department at the Washington Navy-yard 
 under his father, there commanding. 
 
 Thus, he drew nigh to the work which Providence had assigned 
 him. It needed but one turn more to bring him forth on his mis- 
 sion. McGIellan was now on the Peninsula, McDowell at Fred- 
 ericksburg, and Banks enfeebled in the Shenandoah valley, when 
 Jackson, the vulture of the rebellion, pouncing from his moun- 
 tain home upon our scattered regiments, and driving them back 
 upon Maryland, threatened Harper's Ferry and the northern 
 defenses of the Capital itself. The Government hastened to 
 strengthen the command at the Ferry, and cannon were ordered 
 from the Yard at Washington. But experienced officers were 
 wanting. Resignations had carried over to the enemies of the 
 country her most ungrateful sons. In this dilemma the guns 
 were put in charge of young master Daniel, and the youth, yearn- 
 ing for action, was sent along to aid him. On Sunday evening, 
 almost at an hour's notice, they left with the Naval battery. On 
 Thursday following he returned to procure additional supplies of 
 ammunition, and to bear back some report of the situation. His 
 clear statements and manly bearing so pleased the Secretary of 
 War that he offered him the appointment of a Captaincy on the 
 spot. This was between nine and ten o'clock at night. The next 
 morning, with his wonted celerity, he was on his way back uftder 
 his new commission, having passed, as in a moment, from the ci- 
 vilian to the soldier, and urging forward, he joined Saxton at 
 Harper's Ferry on the 31st of May, in 1862. A week after, he 
 was acting at Winchester on the staff of General Sigel. It was 
 at this stirring period, while on the road between the Ferry and 
 Winchester, that two young officers, once associates and pupils of 
 the Kittenhouse Academy, each ignorant of the other's connec- 
 tion with the Army, met in the middle of the night, one marching 
 with his regiment eastward, the other with a body of cavalry 
 rapidly riding to the west. As they were sweeping by, though 
 
 I 
 
17 
 
 under cover of the darkness, one hearing the other's voice giving 
 an order to his men, instantly recognized him, and the two former 
 school-fellows drew nigh for a short greeting and a swift good-bye, 
 and each strode on again. They were Major Morrison and Cap- 
 tain Dahlgren, both cut down in the flower and prime of their 
 young manhood, both sleeping in a soldier's sepulchre, and both 
 cherished in every loyal heart as the true sons of America, the 
 noble scions of her noblest race. The Captain passed on to the 
 front with Sigel, when Jackson, now in his turn, was compelled 
 to fall back and fly for safety down the mountain passes, toward 
 the valley of the James. At once taking his stand among the 
 foremost, he was recognized by all that observed him as a princely 
 spirit, and a true knight drawing his sword in a righteous cause, 
 and determined only to perform his duty in the most profound 
 oblivion of all peril, whether from the paucity of his own force, 
 or from the overwhelming numbers of the foe. From that hour 
 forward, he seems never to have paused or rested. He was ever 
 in the van, not rashly but piously daring and devoutly doing for 
 the love and fealty he bore to his native land. With a higher 
 inspiration than that of the bold Saxon, Fitz James of Scotland, 
 he could say : 
 
 "Or if a path be dangerous known, 
 The danger's self is lure alone." 
 
 Or rather, to him, in the path of duty, there was no danger. 
 Henceforth, it was one continued conflict, one stern and bloody 
 battle, he fighting ever where the fight grew thickest. And on 
 he sped, threading the wild mountain passes, spurring over plain 
 and ford, through field and forest, in heat and cold, in storm and 
 sunshine, often hungry, weary, needing rest, but never daunted, 
 never dismayed, bright and busy, with a keen eye and sturdy arm, 
 sweeping like the whirlwind on the war-path, falling like a 
 thunder-bolt upon the foe ! 
 3 
 
18 
 
 It is difficult to describe with satisfaction two years of such a 
 life, mingled as it is, with so many lofty characters, thrilling ac- 
 tions, shifting fortunes, and becoming a part of one of the most 
 stupendous representations ever recorded by the Muse of history. 
 Indeed, much of the interior experience of our armies, much of 
 that which forms the most powerful element of what men term 
 romance, will never probably be gathered up. The thoughts, 
 feelings, sensations of the individual soldier, moved by a thou- 
 sand strong and resistless currents of influence, that pour in 
 upon him from every quarter, the memories of home, the hopes of 
 the future, the sympathies of comrades, the camp, the hospital, 
 the drum-beat, the march, the bivouac, the foray, the quick alarm, 
 the rushing onset, the fearful concussion, the rattling musketry, 
 the roar of artillery, the neighing of horses, " the flame and 
 smoke, and shout, and groan, and sabre stroke, and death shots, 
 falling thick and fast as lightning from a mountain cloud," the 
 swift slaughter, " the garments rolled in blood," the equipage, 
 the heraldry, " the pomp and circumstance," the manoeuver and 
 agony of war, the desolation following, in dreadful havoc, be- 
 reavements, bleeding hearts, broken spirits, lonely dwellings, 
 weeds of mourning, woe and lamentation, filling the land with 
 sighs and tears above the innumerable graves, where lie 
 
 "Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent." 
 
 What tongue can express all this ? What being but the God 
 who made us, can fully comprehend it ? We must be content 
 with fragments, a few sketches, the meager outlines of the great 
 story which carries in it the very existence of a mighty nation. 
 
 The year that elapsed from* the month of June in 1862, to the 
 same month in 1863, was a dismal period in the department of 
 the Potomac. Reverses and disasters befell our arms in every di- 
 rection. But through all this year of intense activity and supreme 
 peril, serving successively on the stafi" of Saxton, Sigel, Burn- 
 
.19 
 
 side, Hooker and Meade, the young Captain passed unharmed. 
 While many a brave commander and gallant soldier fell beside 
 him, it seemed as though an invisible hand had covered him from 
 the iron hail through which he so often rode. He had done good 
 work in the Mountain department, and afterwards at Warrenton, 
 at Gainesville, at Manassas, at Centreville, at Fairfax, in the sec- 
 ond battle of Bull Run, and in truth, over the whole seat of war 
 in Virginia between the Potomac and the Rapidan. In the 
 autumn of 1862 this region was overrun by prowling companies 
 under the direction of guerrilla chiefs, prominent among whom 
 were White and Moseby, who, with a thorough knowledge of the 
 country, and aided by a perfidious population, in a thousand ways 
 did serious injury to the Union cause. To countervail these dep- 
 redations, Greneral Sigel summoned a number of resolute spirits, 
 among whom were Koening, the Congers, and Dahlgren, and 
 giving them orders to rid the region of these predatory bauds, sent 
 them forth with their lives in their hands to this dangerous work. 
 Yet nothing doubting, and fearing nothing, they scoured the coun- 
 try, scouting here and there, harassing the enemy, surprising his 
 detachments, obtaining valuable information, making important 
 captures, and driving before them the dastardly marauders who 
 played the part of farmers by day and felons by night. Foremost 
 of these dauntless young officers was Ulric Dahlgren — always cool, 
 always reliable, ready for the most hazardous attempt, yet prudent 
 and sagacious. He was often selected before all others to reconnoi- 
 tre the enemy and ascertain his numbers and position. He never 
 went forth on these occasions without accomplishing the object 
 designed, and returning crowned with a splendid success. Of the 
 many brilliant exploits he thus performed, we can refer to but 
 few in detail ; but they are such as will stand forever in our his- 
 tory, proving his valor and shedding a glory on the National arms. 
 The dash into Fredericksburg, with sixty men, near daylight 
 of the 9th of November, 1862, after a night's hard riding through 
 
20 
 
 a driving snow-storm, eucouutering on the way almost incredible 
 obstacles, tlie surprise and rout of the enemy, though in far supe- 
 rior numbers, the desperate fighting through the streets, which 
 wrung from a rebel officer commanding, a reluctant tribute of ad- 
 miration, as he declared that our youthful Captain was "the 
 bravest Union officer he had ever seen !" will be the theme of 
 adulation, as long as bold deeds are held in remembrance. The 
 curious hand of Art has already embalmed the scene, and given 
 to its daring an immortality that will never perish. The repre- 
 sentation of that heroic feat will hang upon many a wall through- 
 out the dwellings of the Republic, for the study and the pride of 
 coming generations. Several companies of Virginia cavalry were 
 thus scattered by three score Union troopers, who, with a loss of 
 one killed and four missing, brought off a number of prisoners 
 exceeding half their whole force. 
 
 On the 11th of December, when Burnsidc was preparing to 
 fight the first battle of Fredericksburg, Sigel, moving forward 
 from Fairfax with his own Division, sent Dahlgreu to the front to 
 communicate. The Captain, eager for action, obtained consent to 
 serve for the time on the staff of the commanding General. Re- 
 peated eflurts had been made to complete tlie pontoon bridge, but 
 in vain, owing to the deadly fire of the enemy's marksmen. One 
 of the regiments from Michigan volunteered to cross in boats and 
 drive the rebels from their cover, which was gallantly performed. 
 With the first of those that landed was Captain Dahlgren, and 
 near him fell the Reverend Chaplain Fuller. When it was found 
 that our men were unable to carry the works of the enemy. Burn- 
 side then dispatched him to Sigel, to hasten up with his Corps. 
 Delivering the orders to Sigel, he started back at 10 o'clock that 
 night, and the next morning, at 5 o'clock, gave his report at head- 
 quarters, but so exhausted from the great exertion that he came 
 well nigh falling from his horse. 
 
 During the second battle of Fredericksburg, or Chancellorsville, 
 
21 
 
 one of the most bloody of the war, on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of May, 
 in 18G3, he was on the staiF of General Hooker, and again sent to 
 run the gauntlet of rebel riflemen, for the distance of twenty-five 
 miles, to communicate with Stoueman, then returnino- from his 
 great cavalry expedition toward Richmond, in the rear of the 
 rebel army. This'most dangerous mission he performed, riding 
 . from Falmouth to Kelly's Ford, and back again, untouched of the 
 countless balls that whistled all around him. Such deeds of en- 
 durance and heroism could only be wrought by a soul on fire with 
 a sublime inspiration, for they seem in their reality to eclipse the 
 wildest legends of knighthood in the olden time ! 
 
 On the 8th of June, 1863, General Hooker, mistrusting the 
 preparations of Lee for a grand invasion of the North, and seek- 
 ing to check, if not wholly defeat, the movements of the enemy, 
 hurled his cavalry upon the famous rebel, General Stuart, at Bev- 
 erly Ford, where a scene of the most desperate and bloody fight- 
 ing occurred known in the annals of modern warftire. In that 
 fearful struggle the Captain, sent to act as aid to General Pleasan- 
 ton, at his own request, bore a splendid part. His subsequent 
 description of the battle there is not time to recite in full. But 
 the peerless charge of that great day was made by Major Morris, 
 by whose side he rode, leading the 6th Pennsylvania, " Hush's 
 Lancers," who cut their way through the brigade of General F. 
 II. D. Lee, up to Stuart's Headquarters, and within a hundred 
 yards of their artillery. I give the account in his own stirring 
 words : " Their brigade," he says, " was drawn up in mass, in a 
 beautiful field, one third of a mile across, woods on each side. 
 On their side was the ridge on which their artillery was posted, 
 and alongside of a house in which General Stuart had his Head- 
 quarters. We charged in column of companies. As we came out 
 of our woods, they rained shell into us; as we approached nearer, 
 driving them like sheep before us, they threw two rounds of grape 
 and canister, which killing as many of their men as of ours, they 
 
22 
 
 stopped firing, and advanced their carbiniers. All this time we 
 were dashing through them, killing and being killed. Some 
 were trampled to death in trying to jump the ditches which in- 
 tervened, and falling in, were fallen upon by others, who did not 
 get over. Major Morris commanded the regiment, and I was 
 riding very near him, when, just as he was jumping a ditch, a 
 dose of canister came along, and I saw his horse fall over him, 
 but could not tell whether he was killed or not, for at the same 
 moment my horse was shot in three places, and fell and threw me, 
 so that I could see nothing for a few moments. At this moment, 
 the column turned to go back, finding the enemy had surrounded 
 us. I saw the rear just passing, and about to leave me behind. 
 So I gave my horse a tremendous kick, and got him on his legs 
 again ; and, finding he could move, I mounted and rode off" after 
 the rest, just escaping being taken. I got a heavy stroke over the 
 arm with the back of a sabre, which bruised me somewhat, and 
 nearly unhorsed me. This was the most brilliant fight of the 
 day." 
 
 This indeed is bloody-handed war, and the very story of it 
 makes the vital current run cold in the veins. But if we must go 
 to battle ; if there could be, as there was, no longer any peace j if 
 the nation had been driven, as it was, to this dread alternative, 
 either to submit to its own disintegration without resistance, or to 
 take up the sword in self-preservation, then the bolder the daring, 
 and the hotter the strife, the sooner shall the mighty wager be de- 
 cided. The soul in such a scene, and for such a cause, becomes 
 doubly immortal, and men will remember with quickened pulses, 
 that fiery charge which rivals Balaklava and the great Six Hun- 
 dred. They will celebrate it in songs of admiration, like the 
 Covenanter's battle chaunt of Motherwell, or like Macaulay's 
 martial hymn of the Henry of Navarre. 
 
 When, in the months of July and June of 1863, the rebel army 
 had crossed into Maryland and Pennsylvania, and were advancing 
 
23 
 
 toward Harrisburg, Captain Dahlgren, who was on duty at the 
 Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, solicited and obtained 
 permission to harass, and as far as possible cut off the rebel com- 
 munications. This with a mere handful of men he accomplished in 
 a manner surpassing expectation — among many exploits of the ex- 
 pedition capturing the dispatches of the arch rebel, Davis to his 
 greatest General, and thus discovering to our Government the 
 most important information in regard to the condition and designs 
 of the enemy. After the decisive battle of Gettysburg, he joined 
 the advance of Kilpatrick's cavalry, and on Monday, July 6th, he 
 participated in a desperate charge into Hagerstown, then occupied 
 by numbers of rebel soldiery. While skirmishing with the wily 
 foe through the streets of that ancient borough, a ball struck the 
 ankle of his right foot. As he felt the sting, though then all 
 unconscious of the severity of the woun-d, he remarked to a friend 
 who rode at his side, in a style of quiet pleasantry peculiar to him- 
 self, "Paul, I have got it at last!" For a full half-hour he yet 
 remained in the saddle, until he fainted from loss of blood and was 
 lifted from his horse ! 
 
 And now a new chapter was opened in his life. His martial 
 course was arrested — the day of suffering had come ! God in mercy 
 had spared him indeed, from then going down into the dark valley, 
 and for a while had turned his feet from the war-path, albeit 
 maimed and marred, that He might show him greater things than 
 human strife^ while rocking in suspense before the open portals of 
 Eternity. After three days of exhausting torture, such as the 
 wounded patriot only suffers in the close of a great battle, where 
 the debris and confusion of the fight lie on all sides, like the 
 wrecks in the trail of the avalanche, on Thursday evening, the 
 night of the 9th of July, in 18G3, he was brought home to his 
 father's house in Washington. But neither brothers nor father 
 stood at the door to welcome him. All had gone forth in the 
 service of the country. A younger brother was pursuing his 
 
24 
 
 course at the Naval Academy at Newport ; an older brother had 
 been standing in the trenches before Vicksburg, and was proudly 
 sharing, at that very hour, in one of the most remarkable achieve- 
 ments of this unparalleled struggle ; while the Admiral himself 
 was absent in command of the fleet in the harbor of Charleston. 
 In allusion to this fact, and exhibiting as lie ever did the utmost 
 sensitiveness to all that could give that father pain, he said to a 
 member of the family, on reaching the chamber where he had been 
 carried, ''if my father had been here I could not have consented 
 to be brought home, because this bloody wound would have tor- 
 tured him, and that would have been more than I am able to bear I" 
 It was in mid-summer, and the heat intense, the sun burning like 
 an oven. During the month of agony that followed, which the 
 tenderest care of kindred affection and the utmost diligence of 
 medical skill could not alleviate, the sufi"ering warrior uttered no 
 complaint, made no sign of impatience, nor even spoke of hatred 
 and revenge toward those whose foul and unnatural crimes have 
 plunged the country into such distress. On hearing that a for- 
 mer acquaintance and school-mate, fighting on the rebel side, was 
 wounded and a prisoner in our hands, he, in the magnanimity of 
 his nature, forgetting the feud for a moment in their common 
 hurt, protested his sorrow for the affliction in terms of impassioned 
 pity. His spirit bore no malice. He was too great, too pure, too 
 powerful for that. He hated not the persons, only the characters 
 of conspirators, and when they were smitten down his sternness 
 relaxed, and with relentings of compassion he only sought to re- 
 turn good for evil, and blessing for cursing on their heads. It 
 was the hope of his friends and surgeons that his fair frame 
 might be preserved, and the member saved on which the wound 
 had fallen. For many days every means was used that could be 
 devised, but there was no relief The sunken eye, the hollow 
 cheek, the growing inflammation, the excrutiating pain, all told 
 how vain were the eff"orts to prevent his maiming. Terrible as 
 
25 
 
 was the alternative, and doubtful as was the issue, it came at last ; 
 and on Tuesday, the 21st of July, he suffered amputation, parting 
 with that which was dear to him almost as life itself, only in the 
 uncertain hope of saving life and serving once again the sacred 
 cause of country. The maiming of living men is so common a 
 consequence of war, that we finally come to look upon it with in- 
 difference; but the loss and the sacrifice are none the less agoniz- 
 ing to those who endure them. In one view, nothing can be more 
 repugnant to the instincts of our nature, than the sundering of 
 limbs from the bright beauty and flowering manhood of the soldier 
 who has devoted his living body to the havoc and waste of battle ; 
 but in another view, the scars men get in such a service become 
 their badges of honor and symbols of fame that shall live forever ! 
 The sacrifice, severe as it then seemed, was promptly made, but 
 the hope of recovery still trembled in the balance. For many 
 days he hung on the brink of life, uncertain if the Power that 
 made him, and still had him in keeping, would bid him return to 
 the tragedy of time, or beckon him onward through the portals 
 of Eternity, already ajar, to confront the vast solemnities that lie 
 beyond. There are hours when the sun withdraws his blinding 
 brightness from the face of the sky, more fully to reveal through 
 the shadows of the night, tha grandeur of the universe. There 
 are also hours in the darkness of adversity, when the soul of man 
 discovers a more profound and awful sense of its own existence, 
 and is filled with the mighty joy of those great thoughts of Grod 
 and immortality, which bring to the human spirit a swift maturity. 
 Such a time now came to him, once more at home, amid the scenes 
 of childhood, and by-gone associations. Alive, as never before, to 
 the gentle memories and cherished tokens of other dajs, he called 
 back from the sea of reminiscence every floating waif, and held 
 communion with familiar forms and visions, that came before him 
 in his prostration, and silently ministered a solace and a strength 
 4 
 
26 
 
 like the descending dew. Who can tell what angels of mercy in 
 mingled pity and admiration then hovered around liis bed, or if 
 the glorified spirit of liis departed mother were not present, watch- 
 inor over the son of her aflfection and kindlins; afresh in him the 
 flame of the early devotion ? Certain it is that he alone, of all 
 who came and went in that chamber, displayed the calmness of a 
 great serenity, himself unmoved, save when some finger pointed 
 to the cause of the afflicted country, and then he roused into a 
 startling energy. But otherwise he lay so quietly in his consum- 
 ing weakness, frequently seeking to lull the bodily pain he felt, in 
 the sound of sacred songs, hymning to himself the strains of 
 younger days, that had often borne up his mind to Heaven in the 
 worship of the family. Low upon his back, sometimes agonized 
 and always helpless, he looked hour by hour steadily upon death, 
 his nature rapidly ripening in a full measure of resignation to the 
 will of Heaven, and gathering an unshaken confidence in the 
 mercy of the Redeemer. Nobler and better thoughts filled him 
 with composure, and all the tenderness of his being came gushing 
 forth again like the fragrance of mangled flowers. He now 
 turned with strong desire and unaffected satisfaction to the Volume 
 of inspiration, as to a high tower of refuge. On its great and 
 loving promise he reposed his aching heart. The fourteenth 
 chapter of John became especially as a pillow to his weary mind. 
 In its assurance, he cast the whole substance of his destiny on the 
 fatherhood of God, and daily grew purer and greater in the new- 
 found fraternity of Jesus, on whose propitiation alone he began 
 to take reliance for the certainty of his present and final salva- 
 tion. So when the Sabbath came round, and through open win- 
 dows looking towards the church, he could hear the lofty melodies 
 of the sanctuary fioating out upon the stillness of the consecrated 
 air, he would often pause and call the family to listen, and there, 
 hushed into wrapt attention, he caught again the old refrains of 
 Zion so long resounding from her glorious hills, and on those 
 
27 
 
 snatches aud broken notes that drifted to his car in fragments, 
 his exulting spirit mse aloft toward the realms of the blessed and 
 immortal ! On one of these Sabbath days he sent for me, and 
 then, for the first time, I looked upon the wounded soldier. Oh, 
 how beautiful, and brave, and grand he seemed, as in his waste and 
 woe-worn plight of fleshly torture, at length I beheld him 
 stretched out, and saw the signals of that fearful maiming. In 
 spite of all, my tears ran down, as he lifted up to my salutation 
 one sweet smile of greeting from that couch of physical agonj. 
 That moment is one of the living junctures of duration that will 
 never perish till reason shall be dethroned, for I felt myself in 
 the presence of one far higher and holier than myself, on whom 
 the mystic unction of God had passed and made him a prince and 
 a king forever ! Nor can we doubt that there, in the hour of his 
 deepest trouble, he entered into the spiritual rest of Christ's 
 chosen people ; and there, in the gloom of his sorest darkness, the 
 Covenant of his eternal salvation was accomplished. 
 
 Just preceding the amputation, he had been commissioned as a 
 Colonel, but it was feared that the excitement of its announce- 
 ment would be too great for his shattered nerves. A day or two 
 after, however, the document was placed in his hand, when the 
 eye of the youthful warrior again gleamed with the former fire, 
 and his whole face glowed as with a light of transfiguration. And 
 there he, who had borne in his heart so great a fealty to his coun- 
 try, once more from his prostrate position, lifted up his right arm 
 and swore allegiance to the cause for which he had already freely 
 exposed his life. It was a scene for the highest e£fort of Art. Let 
 the painter limn, let the sculptor carve the young hero at that 
 instant, when the name of Jehovah sanctioned the devotion he 
 professed, and which has since been sealed by his most precious 
 blood ! 
 
 At last the peril of his condition began to disappear, and him- 
 self and friends were permitted to indulge sanguine hopes, not 
 
28 
 
 only of his spared life, but also of his ultimate restoration, so far 
 as one may be that has suffered sucli a calamity. On the 18th of 
 August he was carried to Newport, where he spent a short time 
 in the family of Mi . S. Abbot Lawrence, another uncle, whose 
 sudden and lamented death cast the only shadow on his sojourn 
 amid the delightful scenes of that famous place of resort. After 
 this, visiting Philadelphia and Harrisburg, and returning to 
 Washington, he sailed at length in the Massachusetts to join his 
 father, Admiral of the fleet in the harbor of Charleston, and 
 arrived off the bar on the 24th of the following November. 
 Durins: these months of convalescence his conversations with 
 friends around him, and his correspondence with those at a dis- 
 tance, showed, at every tuin, the proofs of a great soul far 
 advanced beyond the common spirit and temper of the times, and 
 gave, what we now see to have been, '^premonitions of his approach- 
 ing end. It is remarkable to contemplate the great qualities of 
 the patriot and believing Christian, that so grew in him to a degree 
 of perfection which is, in most cases only attained through long 
 years of assiduous and careful experience. It is impossible to 
 recite the numerous passages from his lips and his pen that evince 
 a magnaminity and earnestness quite beyond the measure of 
 his public activities, and quite incomprehensible to the sordid 
 and benighted judgment of a selfish and mercenary age. These 
 developments of his character, though manifold in form, are essen- 
 tially one in principle. "Writing from the flag-ship before Charles- 
 ton to a valued friend in a distant New England home, he says : 
 " I stay to take part in the great fight ; if I die, what death more 
 glorious than the death of men fighting for their country ? Life 
 is only the vestibule to real existence ; a state of preparation for 
 the future. Every one has something to fulfill in this world as in 
 a school. The duty must be falLhfnlhj performed here, or the 
 penalty be paid hereafter." To a suggestion that some might 
 esteem him only too reckless, in his eagerness for the fray, he 
 
29 
 
 replies : '' I never like any one to call me rash, for you must re- 
 member now I do none of those things which some call daring, 
 without thinking well over the object to be attained, and if it be 
 wortb the risk involved ; for I feel the responsibility of other lives 
 more than my own. There is no excuse for exposing these unne- 
 cessarily. But where a great object requires considerable risk, of 
 course, no one is to hold back then." Here we have the secret 
 of his action unfolded by himself. How simple, direct and 
 grand are the sentiments and mainsprings of such an cuergy. 
 Ou another occasion, being asked with what emotions he rode into 
 au engagement, knowing that every moment he was liable to be 
 hurled into Eternity, he replied with the utmost solemnity and 
 imprcssiveness : '-1 always feel a conviction that in going into bat- 
 tle I may never return alive. I think over my sins and pray God 
 to pardon them. I never go down to the fight without first oifer- 
 ing prayer to the Almighty for forgiveness and acceptance !" 
 And so, we now know, he proved his own confessor in the final 
 strife, and went out into the bloody peril from the closet of devo- 
 tion ! Such was the faith and prayer of this noble Christian 
 soldier — the full equal of those men who fought for conscience 
 sake, with stern old Cromwell, and the great Coligni, and with the 
 no less glorious fathers of our own Eevolution — a man who offered 
 his life upon the public altars, whenever God should be pleased 
 to accept the sacrifice ; who fought the enemies of his coun- 
 try and of humanity, not from hatred or revenge, nor for 
 the hope of earthly glory, or the desire of any temporal ambi- 
 tion or reward whatsoever, but from the pure and lofty sentiment 
 of duty, of justice, truth and honor, to defend this heritage of 
 liberty and make still more secure the welfare of coming countless 
 generations ! 
 
 We have followed him to the presence of that great field, where 
 secession and treason commenced their course of violence and 
 blood, and where the first thunders of the war-cloud began to roll. 
 
30 
 
 Here, for two months, lie shared his father's company, a witness 
 of the movements of the land and naval forces of the Union, in 
 one of the most protracted and desperate sieges known in mari- 
 time history. He came thither crippled and enfeebled in body, 
 and leaning upon his crutches ; but his soul was buoyant and 
 strong as ever, and laughed out of her shattered dwelling-place 
 on all that mighty spectacle ! Clear in his martial conceptions, 
 accurate in his military judgments, sagacious and far-seeing in all 
 his calculations and intrepid in the execution of whatever plans 
 had been adopted, his energy overcame all difficulties, and kept 
 him in constant motion. He carefully pondered every position, 
 and weighed the probabilities of every manoeuver. His eye swept 
 round the horizon with all the scrutiny of a veteran commander. 
 Along the low and dim shore-line of the waters, looking directly 
 up the harbor, and standing off to the right, rise the formidable 
 batteries of Sullivan's Island lining a distance of two or three 
 miles, with the guns of Moultrie, Beauregard, Battery Bee and 
 minor works beyond. Directly opposite appears the famous 
 Sumter, looming darkly from the waves, not as heretofore, a 
 regular, massive, splendid piece of masonry, floating the proud 
 ensign of the stars and stripes, but crumbled and battle-scarred, 
 a heap of ruins, though sheltering a strong garrison and flouting 
 a new white staudard of delusion, the ftilse symbol of the darkest 
 and most guilty cause for which men ever flew to arms. To the 
 left of Sumter runs a long stretch of sand-beach, whose low emi- 
 nences, scarcely to be noticed but by a practiced eye — once in the 
 possession of rebel forces, now recovered and resting under the 
 old banner of the Union — afford, in the fortifications of Gregg, 
 Wagner, and a number of others of only less dimcBsions, still 
 strongly manned and bristling with cannon, a powerful position 
 to the loyal troops, in their slow but sure advance upon the fated 
 town — a position won by peerless valor, and maintained with the 
 life-blood of many a Union hero who has fallen there ! Right 
 
31 
 
 up, between Moultrie aud Sumter, glitter afar the spires of the 
 scornfui city, mocking at her fiite, aud defying all the thunder- 
 bolts of war's red hand to hurl her from her impregnable founda- 
 tions. Before, and on either side the narrow channel, are faintly 
 discerned the batteries that command this seaward avenue of ap- 
 proach • on the right, Forts Ripley and Pinckney ; on the left. 
 Fort Johnson ; in the river, long lines of huge piles, that fill it 
 with obstructions ; the entire element fringed by the heavy muni- 
 ments of the wharves and docks, and filled beneath with hidden 
 mines and snares, that loaded with perils for the unwary and 
 charged with death to all hostile comers, make the whole harbor 
 one direful similitude of perdition ! At the mouth of this gate- 
 way of death he saw the squadron of his country proudly flying 
 the flag of Admiral Dahlgren, his father ; the noble Ironsides, 
 with her giant brood of Monitors, swimming the wave or riding 
 at anchor ; and saw the white tents of Gilmore on the beach ; :md 
 saw the coveted prize of so many varying fortunes in the distance 
 — the birth-place of the rebellion — whose parricidal deed first 
 plunged the nation into this long and bitter and bloody contest; 
 and saw the great guns of the Titan siege, and the stupendous 
 paraphernalia of the most terrific bombardment of ancient or 
 modern times. He saw the southern sun rise and set, and the 
 silver moon and quiet stars look down upon that mystery of mari- 
 time magnificence and of warlike array; and numbering the days 
 on those mighty chronometers of the world, he confidently awaited 
 the hour when Providence should bring forth the splendid success, 
 to winch all prior movements and events might be counted but 
 the stepping-stones of this grand ultimate fortune. Incited by 
 such enthusiasm, he ceased not to observe and study every detail 
 of the great scene before him with unabated interest — now riding 
 by day at speed along the strand to the most distant Union bat- 
 teries — now joining, at nightfall, the scoutiug-parties that scoured 
 in all directions through every channel of approach, and often 
 
32 
 
 passing under the shadow of Fort Sumter, as though no traitor- 
 foe were lurking there — and now tossing in the surf-boat, pulled 
 by brawny arms from point to point, in the midst of danger, never 
 shrinking, yet ever exposed. In all weathers, with health not 
 fully restored, and a maimed limb not thoroughly healed, his bold 
 and fearless spirit, still rising above these restraints, eagerly 
 watched for the first opportunity to strike a shivering blow at that 
 fatal nest of treason, and drive out forever from the soil they 
 have polluted, the guilty conspirators against the peace of the 
 world and the welfare of mankind. It was under such an impulse, 
 as we have already seen, that he wrote to his friends in the North 
 But the weeks wore on, and the siege was unavoidably delayed. 
 God had appointed him to the final sacrifice in a manner far more 
 startling, and on a mission if possible yet more sacred. Father 
 and son should separate again, and the day came for their parting. 
 Alas, could not the bitter casualties of fortune have been ordered 
 otherwise ! How little did they then realize that when they bade 
 "farewell," amid the roar of guns and the wild requiem of the 
 disordered waves, they should, living, look upon one another's 
 face no more on earth. On the morning of January 22d, in 1864, 
 he went out from his father's presence for the last time, sailing in 
 the Massachusetts for Philadelphia, and arriving in Washington 
 on the ensuing 2Gth. Hera he lingered for awhile, not yet by 
 any means restored to perfect soundness, but still waiting and 
 burning with eager desire for active service in the field. To every 
 suggestion that appeared designed to deter him from his purpose, 
 he kindly but resolutely refused his ear, deaf to all but that secret, 
 resistless, divine call of duty which from the first had controlled 
 him, and yearning only for an opportunity to break from his con- 
 finement, and be sweeping, though like an eagle wounded, yet 
 dauntlessly onward in his flight. During this time, he composed 
 an article detailing the operations before Charleston in a style at 
 once so calm, so clear, so comprehensive, as to silence all cavil and 
 
33 
 
 dispel the groundless complaints of the ignorant and impatient. 
 This article, which has been printed since his death, sounds to us 
 now like a voice from the mouth of the grave. It was published 
 over the signature of " Truth," which was ever more to him, by 
 far something more, than simply a nam de lylumc; it was the sub- 
 stance of his character, and the animating spirit of his whole life, 
 and never more conspicuously did it shine forth than in this last 
 complete vindication of the siege of Charleston — a paper freighted 
 in every line with a candor, a majesty, and self-evidencing power 
 which only belongs to the truth itself — and which, being at the 
 same time a work of filial aifection, as well as a patriotic and public 
 defense of the national prowess, might well stand for the crowning 
 work of all his intellectual efforts — for the last-written testimony 
 of his hand, which alas ! he was so soon to seal by the offering 
 up of life. 
 
 Having heard .that an expedition was fitting out for the express 
 purpose of attempting the release of our dying soldiers from the 
 prisons of Richmond, and well knowing that some of his old com- 
 panions in arms, especially some of the Pennsylvania Lancers, 
 with whom he had charged at Beverly Ford, were still pining and 
 suffering more than death in that foul Bastile of the rebellion, 
 and stirred by the tidings of their anguish, which, borne on every 
 breeze, were filling the heart of the whole nation with heaviness, 
 causing every cheek to tingle with shame, and every soul to heave 
 with the sighing of bitterness, he could no longer be restrained. 
 Applying to his superiors, he was urgent to convince them that 
 he could endure the work and hardship essentially as well as ever, 
 and though obliged to be assisted into the saddle, yet once up- 
 right, he gave ocular demonstrations of his wonderful skill and 
 endurance, and finally obtained consent to go on this last great 
 errand. On the 18th of February he left his father's house in 
 Washington and came to the camp in front for the last time. On 
 5 
 
34 
 
 Saturday, February 2Gth, lie -wrote his last letter to his father 
 from Steveusburg, requesting its delivery only in case he should 
 never return. Under General Kilpatrick, who coramauded the 
 expedition, he vras to have a separate detachment of five hundred 
 men, to proceed by a different route, but rejoin the main body 
 before Richmond, and participate in the hazardous but glorious 
 attempt to enter the rebel Capital and open the dungeons of tilth 
 and wretchedness that have been so long, to many a Union martyr, 
 a living sepulchre. All things being now prepared, he parted 
 with many a noble comrade, and emerged from camp at night- fall, 
 crossed the Rapidan at Ely's Ford about 10 o'clock on Sunday 
 evening, and proceeded on his way t9ward Spottsylvania Court 
 House. 
 
 To follow his movements from that time forward down to ihe 
 midnight of the Wednesday ensuing, is somewhat difiicult, no 
 reliable account having been furnished from any source. liebcl 
 mendacity is proverbial, and we have necessarily but friigmcntary 
 and imperfect reports from our friends. We only know that the 
 great object of the expedition was defeated, and one of the proud- 
 est and most promising soldiers of the Union was sacrificed amid 
 utter disasters and delays, the profound mystery of which is yet 
 as impenetrable as the fabled riddle of the Sphynx, and the pro- 
 founder meaning of which God only can unfold to us as the 
 leaves of the great volume of His providence shall be slowly 
 overturned. We only know they did not meet as arranged. Kil- 
 patrick, on arriving at the point of attack, finding the enemy 
 posted in superior numbers, and unable to account for the delay 
 of Dahlgren to come up in time, was obliged to withdraw his 
 troops, and passing down the Peninsula towards Williamsburg, 
 find a way of safety out to the Union lines. Meanwhile, it is 
 alleged that the advance column, under the noble young Colonel, 
 was betrayed and misled far out of his intended route, through 
 either the stupidity or treachery of a negro guide, and the misfor- 
 
85 
 
 tune, wliicli thus iucreased the distance, wasted their strength, 
 and prolonged the time, was not discovered till too late for an 
 eifeetual remedy. Passing through Spottsylvania in the twilight 
 of the Monday morning, they halted for rest and refreshment. 
 Then it was that the young commander rode along the line of the 
 column, on most of whom his appearance for the first time, made 
 the deepest impression ; for they saw in his quiet, pleasant bear- 
 ing, the man whose exploits in many a stern and bloody fight, had 
 made his name a watcliM'^ord in the army. Not yet in full 
 strength from the mutilation of a former contest, but looking on 
 his charger, as he always did, the gallant soldier, expressions of 
 satisfaction were heard in the ranks by the subordinate ofiicers. 
 On JMonday afternoon the command reached Frederickshall Sta- 
 tion, where breaking the communications of the rebel army and 
 capturing a number of ofiicers, it passed on rapidly southward, 
 halting under the cover of the night and in a heavy storm of 
 rain, for such fare as the bivouac hastily afi"ords. The Colonel 
 was observed by an ofiieer, who assisted him to alight, to be 
 drenched with rain, but unwearied in spirit, and cheerful as the 
 most sanguine among them. On Tuesday by day dawn, he was 
 again in saddle, and before mid-day reached the James river, 
 some distance below Goochland. Passing down several miles 
 with the current, an attempt was made to cross to the southern 
 bank, but there was not found a single vestige of a ford at the 
 spot which the special guide had pointed out. And here it was 
 that suspicion of foul play first flashed upon the misguided col- 
 umn, now far from any succor of friends, in an enemy's country, 
 filled with scouts and skirmishers, thoroughly roused, and track- 
 ing and seeking to waylay them at every step. Nothing now re- 
 mained but in disappointment to move on, and if possible, rejoin 
 Kilpatrick, or taking the hazard of the long gauntlet of sixty 
 miles, to cut his way out through snares and secret gins and the 
 fell ambush of cowardly but savage foes ! So keeping the north 
 
36 
 
 bauk, they rode toward lliclimond, and only halted about sunset, 
 when the bastions of the city were already in sight. During this 
 pause he was noticed to be surveying the horizon with gaze in- 
 tent, no doubt striving to descry from afar some signal of Kilpat- 
 rick. It was however in vain, and he now knew that he was 
 alone with his chosen five hundred, within rifle-shot of the rebel 
 Capital. When the pale night had spread her sheltering mantle 
 above them, he moved cautiously forward, and was soon brought 
 in contact with the sharpshooters of the rebel advance, who at 
 once began a heavy fire upon the sturdy column. The men were 
 promptly formed for the charge, and in that perilous moment the 
 spirit of their glorious commander shone forth in all its splendor. 
 So calmly, so cheerfully, amid the leaden hail, rode he along the 
 lines, dispensing counsel and courage to his troops, when at his 
 word, they dashed on like a bolt falling from the sky, scattering 
 the enemy on all sides and di'iviug them into their works. But 
 what were five hundred men so nigh to the rebel lair? Oh, that 
 an army could have followed these bold outriders of the Union 
 cause, and supported them at that hour in their superb attempt ! 
 But this was not to be, and so the swift five hundred, tarrying no 
 longer, at full speed coursed down the road in plain view of the 
 accursed city; then diverging northward, took their way to the 
 streams across whose fords they looked for safety from the pur- 
 suit of the infuriated foe. The lowering sky now again broke in 
 a cold and heavy rain, and the chill night stifi'ened the clothes of 
 the men ; yet on they rode, now strangely and sadly to be sepa- 
 rated, the Colonel with a small party taking one fork at the cross- 
 roads, and the main portion of his command another, unable to 
 distinguish in the thick darkness, each other's course or company. 
 At length the morning opened on that decimated and devoted 
 band of out-worn patriots, and the sun ascended then alas ! upon 
 eyes that should never behold him rise again. The rain had once 
 more ceased, and in the gra}- and misty twilight, the hunger- 
 
37 
 
 stricken party of less than one hundred men, crossed over the 
 lonely ferry of the sinister Pamunkey, and halted for a meager 
 breakfast from their all too scanty stores. This done, they rode 
 on rapidly, but without confusion, as if moving toward instead of 
 from an array of battle; no man more resolute or full of hope 
 than the untiring and gallant commander, on whose voice his men 
 now hung for the very breath of their inspiration, while he, en- 
 during more fatigue and hardship than any of his soldiers, was 
 still and ever riding at their head. It was past noon when they 
 reached the Mattapony, where finding the ferry-boat too small, 
 the horses were compelled to swim to the other side. Here, by 
 the sluggish stream, on that forest shore, a vision breaks before 
 us which we pause for a moment to survey with a feeling of min- 
 gled wonder and scorn. Quietly and in order the crossing pro- 
 ceeds, while over the steep and wooded bank behind them a few 
 pickets are posted to guard against surprise. At the water's edge 
 stands the fearless Dahlgren, calmly but attentively noting the 
 slow passage of the river by his weary men. In an instant more 
 the report of rifles is heard from the hill ; the rebels are firing 
 from their hiding places upon our picket-guard, who, sighting 
 their guns through the brambles, return the deadly salute. , Pres- 
 ently, though in total ignorance of the force that may rush down 
 upon him for his capture or his death, the clear, ringing voice of 
 the young chieftain calls away the last man from the ridges above, 
 to cross over the ferry before him, while he is left alone on the 
 hither side — alone with the enemy, a wounded ofilcer, a single sol- 
 dier, a solitary man, unhorsed, and standing upheld by his 
 crutches, but without one helping hand from any earthly quarter. 
 And now the rebel bullets begin to whistle around him! Yet 
 with a proud look of ineffable contempt, he coolly smiles at the 
 hidden dastards, and exclaiming aloud to draw them from their 
 concealment that he may face them openly, he then at a venture 
 discharges his revolver in defiance through the thicket! But not 
 
38 
 
 a man dare meet liim in the open day ! Plere again is a subject 
 for the poet's fancy, or the painter's pencil. Here is a contrast 
 of the long challenged Northern cowardice and the long vaunted 
 Southern chivalry, to make the loyal heart of the nation beat again 
 with unmitigated scorn for the craven soul of the one and with 
 unmingled admiration fur the dauntless spirit of the other. Not 
 one of the skulking savages might venture to a personal rencounter 
 with the marred hero of many an open, honorable ccmbat. And 
 if this thrilling scene shall be ever preserved in the breathing 
 visions of the canvas, or in the thrilling cadence of martial song, 
 it shall present a single figure, the brave young loyalist, exposed 
 upon the sh(jre of the turbid stream, away in the swamps of the 
 Peninsula, daring and defying the brutal demons of the jungle, 
 with an air of moral sublimity that makes us forget, for the mo- 
 ment, the perfidy and meanness which have furnished the occa- 
 sion of its superb exhibition ! 
 
 At length the friendly ferry-boat returned, and the Colonel 
 joined his command once more in safety. They were soon how- 
 ever upon a wooded road, thick w^ith rebel riflemen and liable to 
 be shot down at any moment. Coming late in the day to the 
 passage of a brick church, as if to render the sacrilege more com- 
 plete, this now exhausted company of less than seventy men were 
 heavily fired upon from the bushes in the vicinage of the temple 
 of God ! Returning the fire and spurring onward with some loss 
 of life, they rode out of present danger, but alas ! only for a little 
 space. In the gathering darkness of that ever to be lamented 
 night, they crossed a small bridge and halted by the road side, for 
 a little food and rest to the wearied men and jaded horses. For, 
 having been three days and nights almost in constant motion, 
 they were now constrained to yield to the claims of nature already 
 sorely overtaxed. In that brief pause, the gallant leader of this 
 noble band laid down for relief on the rude couch, which his at- 
 tendant had hastily extemporized, by drawing together a few rails 
 
39 
 
 on the groimd and casting over tliem a soldier's blanket. Here he 
 soon fell asleep, for body and mind both needed repose. Before the 
 next morning light should break the mother Earth should receive 
 his mortal part forever; yet this last sleep of weary natui'e was as plo,- 
 cid, and almost as profound, as that which knows no waking until 
 the Resurrection morn ! A short half hour speeds on and the young 
 warrior wakes to action for the last time among men. The 
 muffled note of preparation is all that greets the ear ; the men 
 are again in saddle, ready to follow their fearless, almost un- 
 tiring leader, now at his post in the front, where he never 
 failed to be. The little band are riding in the deep solitude of 
 the forest and under the gloom of the midnight. And now the 
 heart almost ceases to beat, as we think of the profound and awful 
 mystery of that last fatal movement. Is that dreary mile, through 
 which a brave young chieftain is carefully threading his way, 
 bringing on his followers with an earnest prayer for their safety — 
 Oh, merciful God! is that the closing distance of his own 
 earthly pilgrimage? Yes ! that is the terminus ; then and there 
 must drop the severed web, the strange, almost dream-like, tragic 
 end of a glorious life ! First, a low rustle on the wind, then the 
 quick challenge, and in an instant the flash, the rattle of volley- 
 ing guns that all too wo fully swept down the narrow pike, with 
 the first bitter breath of wasting and desolation that broke the 
 silence of the desert night. Among the bodies that rolled down 
 together in the dust and darkness, were Ulric Dahlgren and his 
 high-mettled horse, all pierced and shattered with the leaden hail 
 that made them both one heap of swift mortality. And so, ex- 
 piring from many bloody wounds, a spirit deathless in renown and 
 of existence immortal, passed out from its fle3hly tabernacle, 
 through those fatal rents, mounting on high and returning for- 
 ever to the Grod who gave it ! 
 
 The column, no longer in the darkness hearing the voice of 
 their commander, many being already unhorsed and wounded, fell 
 
40 
 
 back and waited only to find tlaemselves surrounded and captured, 
 a few barely escaping to tell the sorrowful tale of this great disas- 
 ter ! The warfare of the young hero was accomplished, and 
 there might his form have reposed in safety — 
 
 "Who leaving in battle no blot on liis name, 
 Looked proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame ! " — 
 
 had it not been for the foul miscreants, who make war alike 
 upon the living and the dead ! After this atrocious murder, then 
 the fiendish cruelty of the cowardly rufiians broke forth upon the 
 lifeless body, in such base and merciless indignities as curdle the 
 blood to think of. We shall not dwell upon the sickening details 
 of horror ! 
 
 And who were the men that conferred upon themselves this 
 diabolical distinction and pre-eminence of depravity ? When 
 the main body of the expedition under Kilpatrick passed through 
 the counties of Henrico and New Kent, Generals Hampden and 
 Bradley Johnson had fallen upon their rear at Atlee's and Tun- 
 stall's Stations with something like a show of genuine courage. 
 But it was reserved for Captain Magruder and Lieutenant Pollard, 
 with some of the 5th and 9th Virginia cavalry, the same that 
 were driven panic-stricken from the streets of Fredericksburg 
 the year before, now largely increased by the Home Guard, 
 under the command of the Rev. Captain Bagby — all like jackalls 
 seeking by night the graves of the dead — to distinguish their 
 military career, not by meeting the stern soldier in open day and 
 face to face in honorable strife, but by secreting themselves in a 
 road-side thicket, under cover of the night, and there awaiting the 
 coming of the troops they durst not fight on equal and open 
 terms ! This is the warfare of the assassin and the murderer — 
 a warfare whose barbarism is equalled only by its meanness, and 
 whose savage cruelties are sought to be concealed by its more 
 audacious calumnies ! Wc are told that having been stripped and 
 
41 
 
 mutilated, the body was thrown over iuto a field to prevent it from 
 being torn in pieces by the swine-herd ; then, that it was hastily 
 plunged into a pit dug for it at a cross-roads ; then, that it was 
 disinterred and taken to Richmond, and after lying some time at 
 the York river depot, in a pine bos covered with a confederate 
 blanket, exposed to the gaze of a maudlin multitude, it was spir- 
 ited away and hurried no one knows, or is to know where, save 
 those who covered it ! Such are the issues of the heathen oracles 
 of the Richmond press. Nor are the pretended pledges of the 
 Richmond Junto, for the safe delivery of the remains of the mur- 
 dered soldier, more adapted to inspire our confidence or regard. 
 With the agonized father, four times descending the Potomac that 
 he might gain the last poor privilege of giving to his gallant boy 
 the fitting rites of sepulture, have they kept a worse than Punic 
 faitli. This remorseless trifling with the holiest affections of hu- 
 man nature, is the common feature of barbarous and semi-civilized 
 communities. Yet they shall he taught, as they have been, that 
 no craven prayer, wrung from a sorrowing family, shall repeatedly 
 implore from those, whose hands are red with the blood of the 
 slain, one sweet exercise of compassion. It is not in such ?. spirit 
 that brave and loyal men shall meet the guilty and black-hearted 
 enemies of their country. They will stand on the plain instincts 
 of man's better nature, and when once deceived by the false and 
 lying promises of perjured traitors, they will turn with scorn from 
 the ineffable turpitude, and patiently await that hour of reparation 
 which will sooner or later inevitably come ! 
 
 The expedition ended as we have seen. But it was conceived 
 and undertaken with a purpose as pure and lofty as ever inspired 
 the heart of man to deeds of daring. In the comments of the 
 rebel journals upon this bold attempt to storm their wretched 
 Capital, we may perceive the reflection of the popular feeling and 
 opinion. The brutality of the assassin is only equalled by the 
 6 
 
42 
 
 Bcurrility of tlie censor ; the shameful murder is well-nigh trans- 
 cended by the unparalleled falsehoods by which they seek to 
 blacken the fair fame of as noble a soldier, as sweet a gentleman 
 as ever rode into battle. Having first, like thieves in the night, 
 most foully dispatched him, and vented their brutal instincts upon 
 his breathless corpse, they have sought to shield this more than 
 savage outrage from the execration of mankind, by the still greater 
 cruelty of stabbing his reputation and aspersing his fair name 
 with the imputations of lies and fabrications the most atrocious 
 and unreasonable that were ever brewed in a human brain, or pro- 
 claimed by beings in the form of men ! 
 
 With what unfeigned sorrow a loyal people^ from the eastern 
 to the western seas, have read those announcements of the fate of 
 one of the noblest characters that has adorned this or any other 
 country, let the abundant and almost overwhelming outburst of 
 grief and indignation, to this hour, and in all time as it will be, 
 bear witness. No form of expression has been withheld, that 
 could give utterance to the horror which men feel at the enormi- 
 ties committed on the person of this brave sou of the Republic, or 
 that could render more emphatic and universal the public sym- 
 pathy for his friends in their affliction, and the undying admira- 
 tion of his own great memory ! In the name then, of the country 
 whose cause he served, and of the Christianity whose spirit he 
 cherished, and of the history whose record he has rendered illus- 
 trious, we undertake to deny, and we do deny, in part and in 
 whole, every charge made upon Ulric Dahlgren, that can by 
 possibility disparage him, either as a soldier or a man. It is 
 morally incapable of belief that, in the expedition which cost 
 him his life, he should have entertained any purpose but such as 
 fully comports with the legitimate objects of civilized warfare and 
 of an open, honorable and intrepid foeman. Endowed as he was 
 by nature, trained as he had been by education, inspired as he 
 undoubtedly seemed by grace, his whole being would have re- 
 
43 
 
 voltcd at any act of uncocessary violence or severity. In tlie 
 performance of his duty he would have smitten down, to the ex- 
 tent of his power, whatever or whomever should have stood in a 
 position of resistance ; but his duty once performed, the stern 
 will, unbending in the struggle, would have relaxed into the gen- 
 tleness and the generosity of his native kindness. Justice and 
 not charity, constrains us to this conclusion. Providence, in one 
 of its deepest mysteries, has strangely as to us it seems permitted 
 him to fall at a time, in a place and under conditions which, 
 now that he may no longer speak or act in vindication of him- 
 self, give all the advantage of posthumous testimony into the 
 hands of his calumniators. Having put away and withheld 
 the proof of the mutilation of his person, they industriously 
 frame, impute, publish and imprint a series of abominable misrep- 
 resentations, which only men, frantic with affright and given over 
 to judicial blindness and infatuation, could summon the hardi- 
 hood to pretend. Now it is one of the prominent tokens of the 
 •beneficent design of the creation, that falsehood and delusion 
 shall never be consistent with, but evermore shall contradict 
 themselves. The Richmond authors say, these papers were found 
 on his person ; yet, not till after he was dead, does any one pretend 
 that they were ever seen or heard of, or known to be in existence. 
 Not till he has passed forever away from the theater of life's great 
 action, and been given over into the hands of the unscrupulous 
 and merciless representatives of the most diabolical and flagitious 
 conspiracy the world has ever seen, is it found out that such docu- 
 ments could be produced. While he was yet alive, neither friend 
 nor foe ever suspected that any improper purpose was entertained 
 by him. His whole military character and career belie it, and 
 more especially his treatment of prisoners captured in this very 
 expedition, themselves detailing in the ears of rebels his generous 
 bearing toward them. Besides this, the internal evidence of these 
 pretended papers, when judged in contrast with what he was 
 
44 
 
 known to have composed and written, shows that the same mind 
 could not have been the author of both. Yet what if it were all 
 true, as is so loudly asserted ? With what face can men whose 
 daily outrage on the world might put to shame a very demon's 
 cheek, stand up and mock the time with this hypocrisy of holy 
 horror ? 
 
 Suppose the question to be judged in the light of the stand- 
 ard of Southern ethics and of Southern chivalry ! what do 
 we behold among the rebels of the Southern States ? What 
 bloody story salutes our ears ? A people by nature, by custom 
 and by social institutions, violent, bloodthirsty, ferocious, relentless 
 in their hatred, and remorseless in their cruelty; a people whose 
 meanness is only equalled by their subtlety, whose mendacity only 
 matched by their barbarity ; a people whose prisons are filled with 
 the groans and sighings of their own incarcerated populatidn, whose 
 gibbets hang full of the victims of their terrible rancor, whose 
 soldiers dig up the bones of their adversaries and cai-ve them into 
 symbols of affection for lady-loves and friends at home, whose 
 generals issue bulletins for the sack and pillage of a nation's Capital 
 and for the murder or assassination of a nation's lawful rulers, 
 and whose horde of outlawed bandits whenever successful in their 
 assaults upon a weaker force, put them at once to an indiscriminate 
 and unsparing slaughter, rendered more hideous by the aggravation 
 and enormity of its execution; a people whose Capital city is be- 
 come but another Sodom and another Aceldama on the face of the 
 earth, where all sedition is promoted, all fraud and treachery de- 
 vised, all despotism and oppression projected, and where the cries 
 of the starving and lunatic captives of our own fellow countrymen 
 have for the time succeeded to the shrieks of the bondmen and 
 the clanking of chains long rusted by his tears — all going up 
 into the ears of the Lord of Hosts, from that doomed and dismal 
 spot — the most wicked, the most vivid exemplification of hell upon 
 earth, that was ever known among nations pretending to the light 
 
45 
 
 of a Christian civilization ; a people who propose to perpetuate 
 these depraved dispositions, these terrific wrongs in their very 
 organic and political existence — is it not well, is it not appropriate, 
 is it not exceedingly befitting for the ministers and mouth-pieces 
 of such a people to stand up before the open court of the whole 
 civilized and Christian world, to read lessons of virtue and of 
 humanity to mankind, and pretend to an astonishment they are 
 incapable of knowing, or profess a sensibility they are utterly in- 
 adequate to feel ! 
 
 Yet again, let us consider what was the object, and what the 
 inspiration of this expedition, that we may bear it forever in 
 mind ? To answer this, it must be recalled, even though it 
 be to our mortification and reproach, that for. three long years 
 of bloody and desolating war, the rebel nest has been made — 
 the rebel Capital has been fortified within the distance of one 
 hundred miles from the very seat of the supreme national Gov- 
 ernment ; that, between this point and that, vast armies have 
 been swallowed up, until the whole ground would seem to have 
 drunk of the bloodshed, and every acre to hold a soldier's grave ; 
 that our Government, with all its burdens and with all its 
 efforts, has been till now compelled to stand by and look help- 
 lessly on this brazen defiance and bloody resistance, scarcely in 
 appearance, nearer the reduction of Richmond to-day than when 
 the war began. We must remember how often we have been 
 disappointed and humiliated in our hopes, and how long our 
 hearts have ached and our faces flushed with shame, as we heard 
 the repeated tidings and saw the repeated proofs of the sufferings 
 of our brave men in those dens of Southern insult and outrage, 
 starvation, insanity and death ! We must remember how often 
 we have prayed that God would bestow some means for their 
 deliverance, would send some angel of mercy to open their 
 prison doors and to set the captive free ! Could then, an aim 
 like this, a motive so inspiring, though fraught with fearful 
 
46 
 
 hazards, be regarded by sucli a miud as his, with apathy aud 
 indifference ? Nay, but it was the bugle-note that rent from 
 him the last restrictions of convalescing prudence, aud filled 
 and fired his soul with one great sublimity of purpose. He 
 thou<Tht of the pining prisoners, once his brave comrades. He 
 thouo-ht " if we fail, we can die but once \ if we succeed, success 
 will be glorious; — I go, and God be with us in the hour of 
 need I" I suppose this only absorbed his soul; I suppose the 
 rebel Davis, with all his official train, was scarcely once enter- 
 tained in that magnificent mind, beside the images of the wan and 
 wasted heroes he would liberate from their protracted misery, and 
 restore with gladness to freedom, friends, and country ! 
 
 Oh then, let the traitors rail on, and seek to fire the Southern 
 heart a'^-ain by a legend of lying fiction connected with his name. 
 Yea, lot them hide from ttfe eyes of men the resting-place of the 
 noble dead ; but let us tell them, here and now, that by our faith 
 in the justice and firm covenant of God, we hold the spot where 
 he slumbers, if it be within the precincts of the rebel city, to be the 
 most sacred its polluted site has ever owned ; and in the day of 
 venfeance, when that impious town shall be plowed as a field, 
 as surely it shall be, if yet there remains one single agency of 
 Providence that ministers to the right — in that day of vengeance, 
 the bones of this noble young martyr may be there, alone to plead 
 for a clemency even toward the soil, which the wicked usurpers of 
 its o-overnment have so proudly and heartlessly refused to others ! 
 But let the loyalist who values probity and hates injustice, let 
 him who can prize the motive of a brave, true spirit, yearning 
 for noble deeds, and counting not even his own life dear, that he 
 may bring to others a longed for deliverance — let all such remem- 
 ber how the gallant soldier whose fate we here bewail, freely 
 f ave up his life, that he might rescue others from a worse than 
 sudden death. And let those especially for whom he suffered, 
 though in vain, and all their host of friends do honor to his mem- 
 
47 
 
 ory ! Let the nation clierish liim ; let his monument be reared, 
 and his example proclaimed; for indeed, if God permit, it shall live 
 in the air of the mountains, in the fragrance of our floral plains, 
 in the murmurs of our waters, in the songs of the woodland, in the 
 dirge of the ocean, yea in the light of every morning and the radi- 
 ance of every sunset. It shall live more deeply and forever in the 
 heart of the coming generations, in the heart of the great people 
 — the thrilling, glorious memory of Ulric Dahlgren, a boy and yet 
 a man, a child and yet a martyr, a ward and yet a hero, a patriot 
 and a soldier, an example of singular purity, though of the fallen 
 race ; teaching the value of obedience to law, teaching the beauty 
 of filial piety, teaching the grandeur of a great inspiration, teach- 
 ing the costliness of a great sacrifice, teaching the support of a 
 religious faith, conscious of right, regardless of opposing num- 
 bers ; giving a new sense of human valor, composing a purer ver- 
 sion of lofty fealty to Government, living a century before his age 
 — a trusty and brilliant type of the young manhood that Chris- 
 tian civilization is producing and shall produce in America, when 
 the flames of civil war shall have consumed the dross and refined 
 the gold of the human generations that are gathered and growing 
 here ! Oh thou brave, unselfish, sweet-tongued, lion-hearted, 
 splendid, immortal spirit ! How dost thou rise before us to re- 
 prove our baser passions, expose our apathy, and strip from us 
 every sinister design ! How dost thou project, before all the mil- 
 lions of America, thy radiant example of loyalty to country, and 
 unwavering trust in God and in His Christ, the only Saviour of 
 mankind. 
 
 Surely we must feel and we do feel the superiority and exaltation 
 of such a being. We shall cherish forever the memory of his 
 life, and we shall pray that his mantle, like that of the olden 
 prophet, may fall, but fall upon all the people of the land ; that 
 his spirit may live in the young men and maidens, and that we 
 may pay our tribute to his Father and ours, for such a vision of 
 
48 
 
 human nature as his life has been, while with pious and rev- 
 erential awe we gaze on the bright soul that, finding another 
 Jordan in the solemn scene of his departure, ascends forever into 
 Heaven in " the chariot of Israel and with the horsemen thereof!" 
 Amen !