CHARLES APPLETON LONGFELLOW.

“Friend of my youth! when young we roved, Like striplings, mutually beloved, With friendship’s purest glow, The bliss which winged those rosy hours Was such as pleasure seldom showers On mortals here below.” “To Lord Clare”—Byron’s _Hours of Idleness_.

IN VIRGINIA. THREE YEARS PREVIOUS. THE PAIN OF BATTLE.

It was the movement of General George G. Meade called the Mine Run Expedition, Nov. 26, 1863. On the morning of the 27th the First Mass. Cavalry under command of General John I. Gregg, marched to Parker’s Store on the Orange Plank Road, where it met a column of Meade’s infantry, the Fifth Corps, under command of General George Sykes, passed them, and marched ahead of them on the Gordonsville road, leading the column through the Wilderness. At New Hope Church they met the enemy’s cavalry pickets, but the country was so densely wooded they could only fight dismounted.

Brevet Col. B. W. Crowninshield in his History of the First Mass. Cavalry, says:—“As the force advanced, the ground became rougher and well wooded at times, with occasional openings. Charges were made, and prisoners were taken from what proved to be Walker’s North Carolina Brigade of Infantry.

CHARLES APPLETON LONGFELLOW. ]

Lieutenant C. A. Longfellow of Company A, was badly wounded, at first supposed mortally....

When the 5th Corps infantry came up and relieved the cavalry the enemy had been pushed back nearly to his works on Mine Run.... In the fight the 1st Mass. Cavalry lost one officer and four men killed, and two officers and eleven men wounded.”

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE FIFTH MASS. BATTERY, LIGHT ARTILLERY. LETTER OF LIEUT. APPLETON P. 747. THE CROSSING OF THE RAPIDAN. NEW HOPE CHURCH.

“On the 27th (Nov. 1863.) off at daybreak, struck a dirt road, which soon led to another plank road parallel to the first, and also in the direction of Orange Court House. On, on, we trudged, and soon we heard heavy cannonading, which every minute grew nearer, mixed now and then with the sharp cracks of the carbine. We soon came to the little village of New Hope Church, where the Corps rushed on at ‘double quick’ to relieve the shattered squadrons of Gregg, and a splendid sight it was. The cavalry formed in squares by the road side, right glad to be relieved by the ‘Doughboys’ and our artillery rushing on to the front. Captain Martin (Capt. A. P. Martin commanding the Artillery Brigade) soon got the batteries in posish, and in fact the only fighting our Corps did was done by the artillery. I soon heard that Charlie Longfellow had been wounded, and stole the first minute I could get to run off to the hospital, New Hope Church, where I saw the dear boy, lying on the pulpit, and surrounded by the officers of the regiment. (First Mass. Cavalry.) He looked and talked well, but I did not have but a minute to stay with him, as my biz. then was on the field.... I went again to the hospital in the evening, but Charlie had gone, as they had taken off all except the worst cases. I assure you it was not a pleasant sight. Charlie and Bowditch (Captain Henry Pickering Bowditch shot in the right forearm) went off together. Charlie was wounded by a ball just under the shoulder blade, injuring the spine, but missing the vital parts.”

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Previous to his connection with the First Mass. Cavalry he joined the First Mass. Battery, Light Artillery, at the front, as a private, but was not mustered in, and at the age of 19 was commissioned in the Cavalry. His record in the Adjutant General’s office of the State of Massachusetts, is as follows:—

“Charles A. Longfellow, of Cambridge, was commissioned 2nd Lieut., Co. G., 1st Regt. Mass. Vol. Cavalry, March 27, 1863; mustered March 27, 1863, for 3 years. Commissioned 1st Lieut. to date January 24, 1864, not mustered; discharged February 15, 1864, as 2nd Lieutenant.

Charles A. Longfellow, of Cambridge, was commissioned 1st Lieut. in Co. G, 5th Regt. Mass. Vol. Cavalry, January 7, 1864. He declined the commission.”

The Fifth Cavalry was a Regiment composed of men of African descent.

In August, 1863, he was Acting Adjutant.

The wound affected him all his life, he was never in condition to rejoin the army, and it prevented him from going on the ill fated expedition of Captain George Washington De Long in the _Jeanette_, to the North Pole. He had begged his great friend James Gordon Bennett to go as a volunteer on the expedition, but the surgeon who examined all those who were to take part in it, did not consider him fit to stand the probable exposure, and so would not pass him, greatly to his own disappointment but to the relief of his family and friends. As he would doubtless have been in the boat with Captain De Long he was saved the suffering and terrible death of those brave men.

After much travelling and residence in many lands, shortly after his return from a trip to Tahiti with his friend T. Watson Merrill, in the spring of 1892, he had a sudden stroke of paralysis, from which he never recovered.

Passing the summer with his sister Miss Alice Longfellow, at the old Nahant Cottage, he returned with her in the autumn to the historic home at Cambridge, formerly Washington’s headquarters, and after living all the winter and appearing somewhat better, he died April 13, 1893, at the age of forty-nine. He was born June 9, 1844.