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 FiTZHUGH BiRNEY 
 
 A MEMOIR. 
 
 ^/A^^y. i- ^^ 
 
 ^'U^ 
 
 C A M B R I ]J G E . 
 
 1866. 
 

 University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 Cambridge. 
 
 
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 THE flag is folded ; for the battlers d'ln^ 
 The cry of triunpet^ and the hla-ze of gun^ 
 The thunderous rush of squadrons closing in^ 
 The stifled groan, the triu/nph shout, are done. 
 And Peace is come, ivith passionless, mild eyes, 
 A rnofher s eyes, a mother s tenderness. 
 Cahned by her touch the iveary nation lies. 
 And feels her deiuy breath upon his face. 
 But Time cannot avail, with all his years. 
 Some chas?ns in our riven hearts to fill, 
 JVhence misty memories rise to break in tears. 
 And ghosts of buried hopes that haunt us still, 
 Tet bring a kind of joy, — the solemn trust 
 That form is more than unsubstantial dust. 
 
IF generous parentage or breeding h'lgh^ 
 
 Or that fine strain where love and ivit^ at one^ 
 
 Put sisterly each other' s jeiuels on^ 
 
 Or flawless truth^ or spotless purity^ 
 
 Or beauty^ were an ar?nor against Fate ; 
 
 Then thou^ bright blended grace of man and boy^ 
 
 Szveet jnemory ! zvouldst walk^ a present joy^ 
 
 With us^ the sunny slope of life^ elate ! 
 
 Dear^ blood-bought laruf how precious for the cost ! 
 
 Fair triionph^ perfected by private pain ! 
 
 Bright 7na?ihood tried and proved beyond compare I 
 
 War luins an au'ful glory fro?n that lost 
 
 Nobility^ which was not young in vain ; 
 
 But Peace tiuines cypress in her golden hair. 
 
FITZHUGH BIRNEY. 
 
 T^ITZHUGH BIRNEY was the 
 youngest son of James G. Birney, 
 the distinguished Kentuckian, who, 
 born and bred a slaveholder, emanci- 
 pated his slaves in 1835, and, in the 
 distribution of his father's estate, took 
 the negroes for his portion, that he 
 might set them also free. When a 
 young man he had been Attorney- 
 General of Alabama. His talents, 
 virtue, and sacrifices made him the 
 candidate of the Liberty Party for the 
 Presidency, in 1844. 
 
 By a first marriage with a relative of 
 
lO 
 
 General McDowell, Mr. Birney had 
 rive sons and one daughter. In 1841, 
 he married Elizabeth P. Fitzhugh, a 
 daughter of the New York branch of 
 an old Maryland family. Fitzhugh 
 Birney was born at Saginaw, Michigan, 
 January 9, 1842. The following April 
 his parents removed to Bay City, near 
 the mouth of the sluggish Saginaw 
 River. 
 
 In 1842, the site of the town had 
 been cleared of pine forests ; but the 
 only buildings yet erected were the 
 warehouse, the hotel, and the bank. 
 In the hotel Mr. Birney and his family 
 temporarily lodged. In the bank he 
 had an office and a Sunday school. 
 The settlement was much visited by 
 the Ojibway Indians, with whom the 
 boy became a favorite. The first words 
 
1 1 
 
 he learned to speak were in the Indian 
 tongue. 
 
 Fitzhugh was an athletic and adven- 
 turous child. He could not remember 
 when he began to swim. Once, before 
 he was five years old, having pushed 
 out on the river in a sail-boat with two 
 little companions, he was discovered at 
 the helm, assuring them that there was 
 no danger, and promising to take them 
 ashore if they w^ould " stop crying." 
 At seven, he skated alone by moonlight 
 from Saginaw to Bay City, a distance of 
 twelve miles. 
 
 At four he had learned to read well. 
 From five to eight he was taught by an 
 excellent New England teacher. Miss 
 Berry of Belfast, Maine. In September, 
 1 85 1, he was placed in Theodore D. 
 Weld's family school at Belleville, New 
 
12 
 
 Jersey, where he remained until, in 
 1854, Mr. Weld removed to Eagles- 
 wood, Perth Amboy. Hither Mr. 
 Birney came, and here he lived until 
 his death in the fall of 1857. During 
 these invalid years Fitzhugh was a 
 nurse to him, as tender and gentle as 
 a girl. 
 
 Fitzhugh Birney was a thorough and 
 ambitious student. He unconsciously 
 exerted over his mates a powerful per- 
 sonal influence, which they were glad 
 to feel and acknowledge. If others 
 rivalled him in some feats of the play- 
 ground and gymnasium, none excelled 
 in so many, none threw over all sports 
 such a fascination as he. In his seven- 
 teenth year he had the happiness to 
 save the life of a school-girl too ad- 
 venturous in learning to swim. She 
 
13 
 
 had sunk once ; the tide was running 
 rapidly to the sea. Without taking off 
 hat, coat, or shoes, Fitzhugh, who had 
 watched her from the pier, plunged 
 in, seized her as she rose, and sup- 
 ported her till help came. 
 
 Among his companions at this school 
 was one afterwards known as General 
 Llewellyn F. Haskell, whose rapid pro- 
 motion was the reward of equal tal- 
 ent, valor, and good fortune. Another 
 was that brave Quaker, Captain Hal- 
 lock Mann, whose gallant rescue of 
 General Kilpatrick at Aldie Gap, Vir- 
 ginia, was one of the memorable deeds 
 of the war. Kilpatrick was in the 
 hands of the enemy. Mann, seeing his 
 men hesitate, shouted, ** Are you heroes 
 or cowards ? Follow me ! Charge ! " 
 and, without looking back, dashed into 
 
the mellay. His troop, fired by the 
 example, ralUed, dispersed the Confed- 
 erates, and carried him, severely wound- 
 ed, with the General, from the field. 
 Captain Mann was killed in a subse- 
 quent battle. 
 
 In the spring of 1859, a wrestling- 
 match with his young friend Mann 
 brought on bleeding at the lungs, 
 which obliged Fitzhugh to abandon his 
 purpose of entering college that year. 
 The following July he sailed for Eu- 
 rope, arriving there shortly after the 
 peace of Villafranca, The Continent 
 was in a ferment ; and he was suffi- 
 ciently well informed to take an excit- 
 ed interest in the questions of the time. 
 From a balcony on the Boulevard, 
 looking down the Rue de la Paix, he 
 saw the triumphal entry into Paris of 
 
^5 
 
 the Emperor and the army of Italy, 
 " I suppose war is a great evil," he 
 said, " but it is so splendid that I am 
 half sorry we can never have one at 
 home." 
 
 A week later he was in Chamouni. 
 On the Mer de Glace, his party came 
 to a place where two large masses of 
 ice, sloping towards each other, left be- 
 tween them a dangerous crevasse. An 
 Englishman, named Haskin, went from 
 the upper edge of one of these inclined 
 planes, intending to cross it obliquely 
 and join his friends on an ice-mound 
 at the end of the opening. He was 
 beginning to slide helplessly towards 
 destruction, when Fitzhugh ran upon 
 him from the elevation with an impetus 
 sufficient to carry both along the edge 
 of the abyss to a place of safety beyond 
 
i6 
 
 it. Of course the story was told in 
 Chamouni. Prince Humbert of Italy, 
 a youth of about the same age, then 
 visiting the Valley, sent an aid with his 
 compliments ; and during his stay Fitz- 
 hugh was annoyed by the curiosity of 
 travellers. 
 
 He was in Berlin at the time of 
 John Brown's attack on Harper's Fer- 
 ry, He was fascinated by the gener- 
 osity of the deed, but shocked by the 
 fatal miscalculation which seemed al- 
 most to clothe it with the attributes 
 of crime. " You condemn, then, the 
 enterprise, my son," said the American 
 Minister to him, " while you justify 
 John Brown." In the third year of 
 the war he wrote, *' I have passed over 
 the scene of John Brown's adventurous 
 raid. He was our leader, after all. 
 
17 
 
 We shall finish his work, and that 
 ' perturbed spirit ' may rest in peace." 
 
 He remained at Berlin three months, 
 studying German and music. His 
 health seemed re-established ; he was 
 the best skater on the ponds of the 
 Thiergarten. Once, after he had per- 
 formed an evolution of peculiar grace 
 and dexterity, the crown-princess, Vic- 
 toria of Prussia, witnessing the sport 
 from her carriage, gave with her own 
 hands the signal of applause. He was 
 at Rome during the Carnival ; in Paris, 
 at Easter. He landed at Boston in 
 July, i860, and a few days afterwards 
 entered Harvard College without con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Few allusions to public affairs occur 
 in his letters from Cambridge during 
 the first term. Two days after the at- 
 3 
 
i8 
 
 tack on Fort Sumter, he wrote : *' If 
 the South is in earnest, I shall be in 
 the fight." But he was ill, — "tired 
 of being sick every spring with a cold." 
 His letters to his mother are now de- 
 voted, by almost alternate sentences, to 
 his health and the war. 
 
 " A very little study affects my head. 
 Boston is splendidly excited. What a 
 horrible war, — fathers against sons, 
 brothers against brothers ! Yet the 
 grass in the College yard is green, and 
 the buds are coming out." 
 
 April 20. " We have ninety signa- 
 tures to a petition to the Faculty for a 
 drill-club in our Class. If the Faculty 
 refuse, we shall appeal to the Gov- 
 ernor ! 
 
 April 26. " Thank you for the 
 Union badge and the violets. All the 
 
19 
 
 students may belong to the Club by 
 getting permission of their parents, and 
 signing an agreement to obey all the 
 rules. My cough hangs on as coughs 
 will." 
 
 April 28. " Last evening Governor 
 Andrew sent a message to President 
 Felton, that, having no company ready 
 to guard the Arsenal here, he wished 
 the students to take charge of it. The 
 boating fever has abated ; everything is 
 fight now. Yesterday was the anniver- 
 sary of the day when Washington first 
 drew his sword as commander of the 
 American Army. An immense war 
 meeting was held under the Wash- 
 ington elm. Governor Banks spoke ; 
 a band played ; a regiment which goes 
 off Tuesday paraded. I shall probably 
 pay you a short visit — till I am bet- 
 ter. 
 
20 
 
 He was quite feeble during the most 
 of the summer, but in August grew 
 rapidly stronger. On the 17th of Au- 
 gust, at the house of his uncle, Gerrit 
 Smith, in Peterborough, New York, he. 
 received a letter from his brother Da- 
 vid, who said, " I am now colonel of 
 the regiment called ' Birney's Zouaves.' 
 If you can get your mother's permis- 
 sion, you may go with me as lieuten- 
 ant." On the envelope is written in 
 pencil, " Would you give me leave to 
 go, if I were intent on it?" "Yes," 
 is the answer in his mother's hand, " it 
 you were well." 
 
 At the end of i\.ugust, Fitzhugh, 
 now a Sophomore, rejoined his Class. 
 October 27th, he wrote : " I have 
 the war-fever au:ain. That liQ-ht at 
 Edward's Ferry ! — in it six from Har- 
 
21 
 
 vard that I knew, or knew of, were 
 wounded or taken prisoners. And I 
 am not strong ! I might get along in a 
 cavalry regiment. The riding would 
 do me good. What if I did not get 
 along ? I should have done what I 
 could." 
 
 To another : " I must go to the 
 war. My father sacrificed all for free- 
 dom. My brothers are already in the 
 field. Am I not dishonoring my name 
 and the cause with which it is identi- 
 fied ? " 
 
 These reflections weighed on his 
 spirits. His physician shut up his 
 books, recommending some active out- 
 door employment. November 28th, 
 he wrote from Camp Graham, near 
 Washington : *' I am now First Lieu- 
 tenant, Company A, Twenty-third 
 
22 
 
 Pennsylvania Volunteers, Colonel Da- 
 vid B. Birney." 
 
 He was soon detached from the regi- 
 ment for signal duty. "On the battle- 
 field," he wrote, *'our position is dan- 
 gerous. But the greater the danger, the 
 better the service." He acted on the 
 signal corps seven months, and was 
 considered "one of its three most able 
 and accurate officers." 
 
 A friend once found him on the 
 Chickahominy, with two attendants, 
 far from any Union force. In this 
 position, very dangerous, but favorable 
 for watching the enemy's movements, 
 he had been several days. A hostile 
 scouting party might have come upon 
 him at any time ; but the advantages, 
 he thought, overbalanced the risk, and 
 he stayed. 
 
23 
 
 In February he had an attack of 
 cough and fever, during which he 
 wrote : "I do not like to think of the 
 country. Its situation saddens me. 
 The war is the price of slavery. I 
 hope it will prove to be the price of 
 liberty." 
 
 He returned to duty towards the 
 middle of March, but shortly fell sick 
 again, and was nursed by his mother 
 till near the end of April. On the 
 1 2th of May he was "on the steam- 
 er City of Richmond, at Yorktown, 
 bound for West Point" (Virginia) "and 
 General McClellan." On the 21st of 
 May he wrote : " Eight miles from 
 Richmond ! in shirt-sleeves, trying to 
 catch the breeze ; tanned quite brown ; 
 not now the pale, thin, sick boy you 
 nursed so tenderly. General Stoneman 
 
24 
 
 and I have seen Richmond from the 
 balloon." May 23d: "To-day, at the 
 crossing of the Chickahominy, at last 
 I was under lire, and do not think I 
 showed fear." 
 
 In the midst of the seven days' bat- 
 tle at Richmond, Lieutenant Birney 
 found time to write to his mother : 
 *' The nearest shot to me passed under 
 my arm, cutting the body and sleeve of 
 my coat and shirt. I was in the hot- 
 test of the lire at Mechanicsville. The 
 light is still going on. If anything 
 happens to me, let it console you that I 
 am doing my duty in a just cause. 
 You will not be the only sad one." 
 General William Birney gives a picture 
 of him in this battle : " In the after- 
 noon of the disastrous affair of Gaines's 
 Hill, as my regiment was marching 
 
25 
 
 into the fight, I met Fitzhugh. ' Ah, 
 brother Will,' he cried, * we have the 
 Rebels this time ! ' * What makes you 
 think so ? ' said I ; ' it looks the other 
 way to me.' ' They say so at head- 
 quarters,' he answered, ' and I know 
 they are in high spirits about it. They 
 say we shall bag at least ten thousand.' 
 In a few hours the Rebels had bagged 
 many of us, myself among the num- 
 ber." 
 
 Colonel David B. Birney having 
 become Brigadier-General, Lieutenant 
 Birney wrote, " I hope soon to be 
 brother's Aid." August i, 1862, he 
 was commissioned as '* Assistant Adju- 
 tant-General of the Second Brigade, of 
 Kearney's division, with the rank of 
 Captain." He added to the duties of 
 this position those of Aid in the field. 
 4 
 
26 
 
 ** His delivery of orders under lire was 
 clear, concise, and correct." 
 
 In the second battle of Bull Run, 
 Captain Birney's collar-bone was bro- 
 ken by the falling of his horse. This 
 was the only hurt he received in two 
 years and a half of dangerous service, 
 during which he participated in more 
 than twenty engagements. 
 
 After the battle of Fredericksburg 
 he wrote : " You at home must suffer 
 more from anxiety than we do from 
 cold, exposure, and battle. It was hard 
 for you to know that so fierce a fight 
 was raging, and that we three were in 
 the hottest of it. You ask me how I 
 felt. There is intense excitement as 
 the tide of battle ebbs and flows. If 
 one's own party are advancing, there is 
 a glow of exultation ; if retreating, a 
 
27 
 
 passion to turn the enemy back. 'T was 
 so the other day when Meade's Penn- 
 sylvania Reserves, to which we were 
 support, advanced in a long, magnifi- 
 cent line of battle, as if on parade. All 
 was quiet when they started, but in an 
 instant the roar ot cannon and the 
 rattle ot musketry were deafening. 
 Twenty minutes it lasted. Then from 
 the woods directly in front of us came 
 out a shattered mass of troops in per- 
 fect disorder. It seems to me that I 
 could have died a hundred deaths to 
 turn the scale One ot our colo- 
 nels well describes our position that 
 day, — ' The Rebels were in the boxes 
 and we in the pit.' It was a Roman 
 amphitheatre, and we were the poor 
 beasts exposed on the arena." 
 
 April 28, 1863. '' We expect a 
 
28 
 
 great battle all around Fredericksburg. 
 Should I fall, remember the cause I 
 am fighting for and forget your grief 
 in consoling others. God will protect 
 me. Your beautiful dowers will be in 
 my pocket." 
 
 May 5. " In the field, Chancellors- 
 ville. I am safe. My horse Prince was 
 shot in the leg. He threw me off, van- 
 ished in the war-cloud, and I have not 
 seen him since. 
 
 " So you wondered what the same 
 moon shone on that night by the Rap- 
 pahannock. On the Third Army Corps, 
 cut off from the rest of the army, 
 massed on the field, its lines of battle 
 facing both ways, to the front and to 
 the rear ; pickets all around us, for we 
 knew not whence the attack might 
 come; our brigade Iving behind the 
 
29 
 
 batteries as support in case ot attack ; 
 the other two brigades moving silently 
 forwards into the black woods. A 
 stillness like that of the grave ! Sud- 
 denly a crash of musketry all along the 
 line, and the iierce opening of can- 
 non ! This was half an hour before 
 midnight. In fifteen minutes all was 
 over, and the bright, beautiful moon 
 shone on the piles ot the dead and 
 dying." 
 
 May 14. " Although the General is 
 my brother, I must praise him. He 
 is cool, kind, and firm. Good soldiers 
 like him ; but the shirks complain. 
 You know what a splendid horseman 
 he is. I have tried to do my duty for 
 his sake. Saturday night, after we had 
 made the night attack in which Stone- 
 wall Jackson was killed and Kearney 
 
30 
 
 avenged, he had no blankets. I got 
 him one, and we lay down together 
 and slept. It was pleasant for us both 
 to be there unharmed. The next day 
 I was sitting by his side on horseback, 
 when a shell exploded close to us. A 
 piece passing under my arm struck him 
 a severe blow on the belt." 
 
 July 5th, he wrote from Gettys- 
 burg : " Yesterday our band played 
 the national airs amid the shouts of a 
 victorious army." 
 
 The promotion of his brother David 
 to the rank of Major-General was fol- 
 lowed by the promotion of Captain 
 Birney. His commission as Assistant 
 Adjutant-General, with the rank of 
 Major, is dated September 15, 1863. 
 
 November 30th, he sent a pencilled 
 note from Mine Run : " We assault the 
 
31 
 
 enemy's works at eight, a. m. We are 
 to charge up an open slope halt a mile 
 long." December 3d : " Back at 
 Brandy Station. No defeat, but dis- 
 graceful failure." 
 
 On Christmas-day, 1863, Major Bir- 
 ney married Laura, youngest daughter 
 of the late Jacob Strattan, of Philadel- 
 phia, — a lady with whom he became 
 acquainted when both were pupils at 
 Eagleswood. It is harder for him 
 " now to be away from home than it 
 ever has been before," but he will 
 " stay till the good work is done." 
 
 In April he says : — *' Since my 
 marriage life seems to me doubly pre- 
 cious and doubly uncertain. I need 
 more than ever true Christian resigna- 
 tion to bear with composure whatever 
 lot. I glory in being the soldier of a 
 
32 
 
 noble cause. If it is God's will that I 
 fall, — well, I do not complain." 
 
 From Chancellorsville, May 4th, he 
 writes : ** With what humiliation we 
 left this place a year ago to-day ! The 
 graves are very many. Violets do 
 what they can to cheer the desola- 
 tion. 
 
 Through the spring of 1864 he suf- 
 fered from cold and cough ; towards 
 the end of May it became evident that 
 he was breaking down. The Gener- 
 al's confidence in him invited constant 
 over-exertion ; and he was too sensitive 
 to accept the profi"ered assistance of his 
 friends. He positively refused to go on 
 the sick-list, " when so many able- 
 bodied men were shirking their duty." 
 He " determined to stay with the old 
 red diamond " (the division badge) 
 
33 
 
 *' till it reached Richmond, or die on 
 the road." The last two days of May 
 he suffered severely from want of sleep, 
 coughing violently whenever he lay 
 down. Unwillingly he allowed his 
 tent-mate to hold him in his arms that 
 he might rest. All this time, studi- 
 ously concealing his condition as far as 
 possible, he performed his official la- 
 bors. June 2d, he wrote to his wife : 
 ** I shall, perhaps, have to give up duty 
 for a day or two. Nothing but a spas- 
 modic cough." It was pneumonia, 
 yune 5th he wrote, on board the 
 steamer : " Here I am on my way to 
 you, — not wounded. I shall rest a day 
 in Washington, at Duddington." (Dud- 
 dington is the old Carroll mansion, 
 still inhabited by members of the Car- 
 roll family, cousins of Major Birney's 
 5 
 
 Lore, 
 
34 
 
 mother.) He reached Duddington on 
 the 6th of June. Though very sick 
 and travel-worn, he wrote with his 
 own hand the telegraphic messages that 
 summoned his wife and mother to his 
 side. He bore his physical sufferings 
 \vith cheerfulness and patience, and 
 looked forward with resignation to the 
 end ; but he showed a soldier's sensi- 
 tiveness at dying of disease. The day 
 he died, he said to a wounded cousin, 
 '* I wish I had that bullet through 
 my body." Once he asked, musingly, 
 '* Who will care for mother now '? " 
 An hour after his death came the invi- 
 tation to attend the exercises of his 
 Class-Day at Cambridge. It was the 
 17th of June, 1864, — the anniversary 
 of the battle of Bunker's Hill. 
 
 Fitzhugh Birney was an uncommonly 
 
handsome man, tall, athletic, and ap- 
 parently robust, but unable to endure 
 long-continued hardship and exposure. 
 He was an excellent horseman and a 
 passionate hunter. He never got lost ; 
 his knowledge of place was instinctive 
 and unerring, like an Indian's. Cour- 
 age, truthfulness, and generosity, which 
 distinguished his boyhood, were yet 
 more conspicuous ornaments of his 
 brief manhood. He was always help- 
 ing others ; but others rarely found it 
 possible to help him. The gentleness 
 of his manners veiled from most observ- 
 ers the singular decision of his charac- 
 ter. He was little influenced by the 
 opinions of others ; but, having formed 
 his own, he adhered to them without 
 obtrusion or argument. Genial in 
 temper, fond ot society and mirth, he 
 
36 
 
 maintained strictly temperate habits. 
 When the circle of his friends was hi- 
 larious with wine and revel, this boy 
 with the beardless chin and the steady, 
 brown eyes, the gayest of the com- 
 pany, was never flushed. Genuine self- 
 respect and principles deeply implanted 
 kept him pure amid the extraordinary 
 temptations to which his beauty, kind- 
 ness, and universal popularity exposed 
 him. Of one thus richly endowed with 
 bright faculties and instinctive virtues, 
 which were still further recommended 
 by the charm of tine demeanor, the 
 impartial judgment becomes sponta- 
 neous praise. 
 
 He was buried by his father's side 
 at Hampton, the old homestead of the 
 Fitzhughs, near Geneseo, Livingston 
 County, New York. A posthumous 
 
37 
 
 daughter, born in November, bears his 
 name. 
 
 Of the five sons of James G. Birney 
 living at the outbreak of the war, four 
 entered the Union Army, of whom 
 three died in the service. Noblesse 
 oblige. 
 
 Major-General David B. Birney had 
 been Lieutenant-Colonel in the Phil- 
 adelphia volunteer militia before the 
 war, and in that capacity accompanied 
 his regiment into the held. In the fall 
 of 1 86 1, he raised the Twenty-third 
 Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 
 known as " Birney 's Zouaves." He 
 long commanded the famous Kearney's 
 division of the Third Corps. For dis- 
 tinguished services he was promoted to 
 the command of the Tenth Corps, won 
 an important battle on the 7th of Oc- 
 
38 
 
 tober, 1864, and died eleven days after, 
 in Philadelphia. 
 
 Brigadier-General William Birney, at 
 the beginning of the war, was residing 
 at Perth iVmboy, New Jersey. He 
 abandoned a prosperous law practice in 
 New York City, and entered the ser- 
 vice as Captain in a New Jersey regi- 
 ment. He was with the Army of the 
 Potomac in all its early battles, rose to 
 the rank of Colonel, and, as superin- 
 tendent of the organization of colored 
 troops in Maryland and at Washington, 
 sent seven thousand into the field. He 
 was made Brigadier-General in 1863, 
 commanded in Florida after the disas- 
 trous battle of Olustee, recovered all 
 the territory lost by that battle, and 
 was promoted to the command of the 
 Third Division, Tenth Corps, in Au- 
 
39 
 
 gust, 1864. This division, afterwards 
 known as the Third Division ot the 
 Twenty -fifth Corps, he commanded 
 until the surrender of Lee. 
 
 Lieutenant Dion Birney, a practising 
 physician in Bay County, Michigan, 
 was commissioned as First Lieutenant 
 in the Twenty-third Pennsylvania Vol- 
 unteers. He served during the winter 
 of 1 861, and through the most of the 
 Peninsular campaign of 1862. Owing 
 to impaired health, he was obliged to 
 leave the army ; and he died soon af- 
 terwards in Cincinnati. 
 
 Hon. James Birney, the eldest son of 
 James G. Birney, was, at the beginning 
 of the war, a Circuit Judge in Mich- 
 igan. His son, James G. Birney, en- 
 listed as private, and rose to the rank 
 of Captain. 
 
40 
 
 By his father, Major Fitzhugh Bir- 
 ney was first-cousin of the Confederate 
 General Humphrey Marshall ; by his 
 mother, a more distant relative of the 
 Confederate General Fitzhugh Lee. 
 
 Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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