Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

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[239] strong; and his mind, assured by the reading of Buckle, watches with tranquillity, though with deep interest, the march of fate. He sees that the negro must fight, and that the peace traitors of the North are the most dangerous foes of liberty.

In October he was obliged to abandon the thought of West Point, and Senator Sherman advised him to enter into active service. To this he was also urged by a vague sense of duty and the example of his mates, but reason and conscience forbade; and hence arose ‘the greatest struggle of his life.’

While the policy of the government appeared to him disgraceful and the war not yet wholly for the right, his heart could not participate in the conflict. He turned for advice to his father, who counselled (not bade) him to remain quiet for the present. He so decided, but with this reservation: ‘If ever the war becomes one of right and justice, I will engage in it, even as a private’; and he went back to law, French, German, and Latin, music, philosophy, and general science. The year elapsed while he was thus employed.

The contest, meanwhile, was never absent from Gholson's thoughts. In February, 1862, he wrote: ‘I confess I do not much like the law, and study it only because it seems for my advantage.’ In May, however, ‘I now find it very interesting.’ This spring, the first he had ever passed in the country, was highly enjoyed by him, and in place of his former walks he rode much on a horse which was the gift of his father. ‘I am happier than I have ever been,’ he writes. In July came the President's call for three hundred thousand volunteers, but the West showed no response. The hour had struck for Gholson. He obtained permission of the Governor of Ohio to raise a regiment of Germans, inasmuch as the religious views of that class were consonant with his own, and because he desired to learn their language better. He opened the first recruitingoffice in Cincinnati under the new call, and in the six weeks necessary to the completion of the regiment,—the One Hundred and Sixth Ohio,—he frequently visited the capital, Columbus, on business. To Gholson was promised the Adjutancy; but yielding it to a German, he was made Lieutenant, July 16th,