Henry Livermore Abbott was a proud native of Lowell, Massachusetts...the son of Josiah Gardner Abbott, a successful lawyer and judge...who was elected to the United States House of Representatives...and a staunch Democrat...Henry's mother, Caroline, was the daughter of U.S. Congressman Edward St. Loe Livermore. Both of Henry's parents were descended from officers who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
Henry was a prodigy and in 1856 he enrolled in Harvard University at age 14 with his older brother Edward ("Ned"). The brothers roomed together at a fashionable private boarding house near campus. The young Henry found the rigid atmosphere at Harvard "irksome"...
Describing himself as “Constitutionally timid” when it came to the issue of Lincoln invading the southern states, he was not initially swept up in the patriotic fever of the times after the firing on Fort Sumter. He was not a supporter of the Lincoln administration...But he did not want to be left behind while his comrades were off to war, so he decided to volunteer. He was reading law in his father's law office when the Civil War broke out. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, which became known as the "Harvard Regiment"...
...
[In]... upper class New England... gentleman were to operate within an ideal of emotional control and sentimentality...how to properly grieve for his brother [Ned was killed Aug. 9, 1862]...while still presenting...“coolness” and manliness...[he] initially... suppress[ed] his grief for fear of being “unmanned” in front of his fellow soldiers. Eventually, Abbott...display[ed] emotion through mourning the deaths of fellow soldiers in his regiment as surrogates for his brother’s death.
...
There is one who on this day is always present on my mind...His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg [December 11, 1862]...If you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground...
...
Abbott survived unscathed, although a bullet did hit his scabbard. Sixty men and three officers were killed in a matter of minutes in the attack on Marye's Heights, bringing the losses of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry in the battle to 168 men and 8 officers of 335 men and officers engaged. Abbott in large part blamed Republican political leadership for the losses because they had removed Major General George McClellan, a fellow Democrat, from command of the Army of the Potomac.
...
...at the [Battle of the Wilderness, May 4, 1864]...Abbott was spotted by Colonel Theodore Lyman...“Abbot smiled and waved his sword towards me, as he rode by, and I called out to him wishing him good luck.” The sight of Abbott cheerfully leading his men into battle would remain with Lyman for the rest of his life, and he would forever remember him as “a man who could ride into the fight with a smile on his face.”
...
[Abbott] refused to lie down in an effort to inspire and steady his men. While encouraging his command from an exposed, standing position, after he ordered his men to fight while lying down Abbott was shot in the abdomen, with his men dragging him to the rear before they themselves retreated. He lived only a few minutes more before dying.
...
...For us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.
Dance on Henry, swing that sword like a cane, wave with it, smile! death is near, you elitist faux man.
...
Asquith...was considered a putative Liberal candidate for Derby. However, his rise was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He was initially commissioned...as a second lieutenant.
...
Of two friends I must write more fully. The first is Raymond Asquith...As the son of an eminent statesman...to his cradle the good fairies brought every dower...great beauty of person...winning speech...a mind that mastered readily whatever it cared to master...he had always the complete detachment from the atmosphere...curiously self-possessed and urbane...there was always something...of a pleasant aloofness...He had the air of having seen enough of the outer world to judge it with detachment...
Of two friends I must write more fully. The first is Raymond Asquith...As the son of an eminent statesman...to his cradle the good fairies brought every dower...great beauty of person...winning speech...a mind that mastered readily whatever it cared to master...he had always the complete detachment from the atmosphere...curiously self-possessed and urbane...there was always something...of a pleasant aloofness...He had the air of having seen enough of the outer world to judge it with detachment...
His politics were hereditary, not, I think, the result of any personal enthusiasm(1)...Not greatly respecting many people, he had a profound respect for his father...
His courtesy was without warmth, he was intolerant of mediocrity. Also--let it be admitted--there were times when he was almost inhuman. He would destroy some piece of honest sentiment with a jest, and he had no respect for the sacred places of dull men. There was always a touch of scorn in him for...all the accumulated lumber of prosaic humanity. That was a defect of his great qualities.(2)
He settled down seriously to work at the Bar...He succeeded, of course, up to a point. His father was now Prime Minister.
Of course, too, he did his work well, for he was incapable of doing anything badly. But I question if he would ever have made [a] resounding success...For one thing, he did not care enough...For another...he had no gift for deference towards eminent solicitors or...reverence towards...judges.(3)
Austerely self-respecting he had been used to hide his devotions under a mask of indifference...(4)
In his letters he had often lamented the loss of others, but...had neither fear nor care for himself (5)
...
While leading the first half of 4 Company in an attack near Ginchy on 15 September 1916, at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, he was shot in the chest but famously lit a cigarette to hide the seriousness of his injuries so that his men would continue the attack. He died whilst being carried back to British lines...The grave's headstone is inscribed: 'Small time but in that small most greatly lived this star of England', a concluding line from Shakespeare's Henry V.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em Raymond! you elitist, indifferent faux star.
1. Pilgrim's Way, Lord Tweedsmuir, 1940 (49, 50, 51)
2. Ibid (52, 53)
3. Ibid (57)
4. Ibid (59)
5. Ibid (60)
