Hopkinson, Francis Custis

FRANCIS CUSTIS HOPKINSON. Private 44th Mass. Vols. (Infantry), September 12, 1862; died at Newbern, N. C., February 13, 1863, of disease contracted in the service. FRANCIS CUSTIS, the oldest son of Thomas and Corinna (Prentiss) Hopkinson, was born at Keene, New Hampshire, June i1, 1838. His father was Judge of the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas, and resided in Lowell, Massachusetts, and there Frank passed his childhood. A playmate of his at that time says: — " We used always to look up to Frank as being of a different make from the rest of us. As children, we all freely acknowledged his intellectual superiority. His tastes were more mature than ours, and his habits certainly more scholarly. While we were just beginning to appreciate Sandford and Merton, and Barring Out, he was deep in the Iliad and Odyssey, and used to talk to us of men and women with strange names, to the utter confusion of our minds. He first introduced me to the wonders of the Arabian Nights, and with the roughly illustrated double-columned book he lent me my recollections of that marvellous [sic] treasure-house will always be associated. " Yet not only in his reading, but in his play also, he had methods of his own. He was always willing enough to join in our romping games, and would climb trees and run races with the best of us. But the play of which he was most fond was one which he had himself invented, and which for the most part he enjoyed in solitude. The game in question went by the name of ' Champions.' It was played with short sticks about as large as clothes-pins, which were named after the heroes of classical antiquity and medieval romance. Tournaments and hand-to-hand conflicts used to be conducted at great length. The favorites among the sticks were sometimes clothed in armor and even stained with blood. The method of conducting a fight was to plant tw6 champions in the ground a few inches apart, and then to strike them alternately with a large spike-nail. He who first fell was the conquered one, and usually the blows were graduated in such a way as to secure poetical justice to the combatants. I have told the story as illustrative of the quick imagination that distinguished Frank from his childhood. " Of his personal traits at this time I recall with pleasure a chivalrous generosity. He was far the most quick-tempered boy among us. But although he was quick as a flash to feel an injury, he was equally ready to forgive one." His was not a nature that sprang up quickly, because there was no earth. When the sun was up, it found him securely planted and safely grown. While fitting for college, in the Boston Latin School, he easily maintained that scholarly preeminence among his companions which was so marked in his childhood. One of his schoolmates says of him: - "His genius and scholarship dazzled me. I remember the awe with which I received the announcement that he could cap over twelve hundred lines of Latin verse. We both belonged to the 'Eagle Draughts Club,' in which he excelled the rest of us, and to the 'Franklin Literary Association,' in which his debating powers excited the admiration of all and the envy of not a few." One bright July morning, in the summer of 1855, the writer of this memoir was standing with lexicon and grammer under his arm, in Brattle Street, waiting for the Cambridge omnibus to come and take him out to the dreaded examination. Foremost in the group of confident Latin-School boys, who went out in the same coach, I remember one dressed in pure white, candidatus, talking and laughing with a freedom from care which amazed my anxious mind. It so happened that he sat on the form directly in front of me all through the first day's examination; and the ease and rapidity with which he disposed of his papers filled me with a kind of dismay. He never seemed at a loss. That dark head of wavy hair never once sank with a fear or vacillated with a doubt. Long before any other had finished his papers, he was leisurely scanning the young men about him, his own work all done. " That's Hopkinson," said one of his schoolmates to whom I gave the description soon afterwards. The more intimate acquaintance which ensued during our college course only deepened this first impression of his extraordinary gifts. The sub sequent discovery of his amiable traits of character, however, made companionship a pleasure. " He did not take that high rank in his Class of which his ability and acquirements gave promise. This was due, in part, to a weakness of the eyes, which prevented regular and continuous study, and in part to a lack of the power or habit of concentration. Either he wanted the faculty of patient, long continued effort in one direction, or he found in his college life no sufficient motive to put that power forth. His native ability could not have been more unquestioned among us, had he been nominally the first scholar of his Class, and still we never expected that he would rise to the first place. Yet he was a likely candidate for any prize that could tempt him. We expected him to take the Bowdoin and the Boylston prizes, if he desired them, and he took both. The first was for Latin versification. The subject proposed was a portion of Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters." He used to come to our room, while he was writing it, and I thought the poem never sounded so nobly as in his fluent Latin verses. He was strong in debate, taking front rank in the "Institute "; and his manly oratory always won for him admiration' in the "O. K." The versatility of his talents may be inferred from the fact that there was scarcely a department of college life, literary, social, or political, in which he did not shine by his ready wit and wisdom. " Take him all in all," I have heard more than one classmate say, "he was the most brilliant man we had." It is not to be supposed that one so lavishly endowed and so much admired could remain unconscious of his talents. He was not unconscious of them. He was "smart," and knew it, as he once said to me; laughingly adding, " Is that conceited?" If it was, it was a harmless conceit, so far as other men were concerned; for it never interfered with his appreciation of others. He was scrupulously just to all men. "There was a deep kindliness and charity about him, which speedily won my affection," writes a college friend. "He saw the faults and foibles of others with great clearness, and laughed at them, but never sneered. Never, in all my life, did I hear him say a bitter word." There were but few who did not think his constant gayely proved a lack of depth and strength of feeling. It was not so. Those who should know best know that, as there never throbbed a richer, nobler, more abundant nature, so there never was a heart of truer and tenderer sympathy, nor one in which all the ties of family love and social interest were more keenly felt and habitually recognized. But though Frank did not wear his heart upon his sleeve, not the less faithfully did it beat to the last for those who loved him. Indeed, his filial love was something more than affection. It was his inspiration in the noblest resolve of his life. In the last days, when all his native graces glowed with a diviner light, caught from self-sacrifice, this filial tenderness showed itself in a wonderful insight, which taught him how to comfort one parent with whispered reminiscences of the other. All his tastes, talents, and associations impelled him to the profession of law. Having graduated with honor in 1859, he became a student in the law offices of Horace Gray, Jr., and the late Wilder Dwight, Esq., of Boston. The story of his life at this time is well told in his letters. " January 6, i86o. "I write this seated in the office of Horace Gray, Jr., where I am engaged in studying law. As the statue is pre-existent in the block of marble, so in me may be discerned potential Kents and Storys, which is of course a gratifying reflection, 'besides vich,' as Sam Weller says, 'it 's wery affectin' to one's feelin's.' In a worldly point of view, I prosper. My Western pupil has withdrawn to his native wilds, and I don't expect to resume my charge of his intellect before March; so that one source of income is withdrawn. But I get two hundred dollars a year for writing book notices weekly for the Advertiser, and am engaged to write anything I choose, editorial or otherwise, for the New York Evening Post; and to write for the Atlantic every month at six dollars per page." One of his letters, written at this time, contains a remarkable narrative of a conversation which he had with a friend of his mother's, - a woman whose gentle wisdom and frank speech had made a deep impression upon him. The conversation is too long to be given in full. In discussing John Brown, he was tempted, by the enthusiasm of some anti-slavery ladies, into some rather decided criticisms upon his course of action. For this he was afterwards taken to task by his hostess, - though in a sweet, motherly way, - as showing a want of the sympathy and enthusiasm so desirable in a very young man. "I could hardly avoid laughing at my situation," he says, "obliged to defend myself from the charge of being cold-blooded, when I was striving daily to gain coolness and self-restraint; when the fact was, not that I had no feelings, but was practising [sic] their control." He then entered into an earnest vindication of himself, avowing that nothing was so near his heart as the triumph of freedom, which was to be attained, in his judgment, by the success of the Republican party in 186o. He conscientiously objected to the acts of "that hardy old hero, John Brown," as likely to endanger that peaceful triumph, besides being intrinsically rash and violent. " But," he added with deep feeling, "my real longing for the triumph of the right is not less earnest and true, I venture to say, than your own"; and he went on to state his intention of throwing himself " heart and soul" into the approaching political campaign. He fulfilled his resolution. "Really," he writes (February 16, 1860), "I am getting into the political circles in a style that surprises me. Did I tell you I should go on my ' stumping' tour with letters from Governor Banks and all the notables here to all the notables out West? I shall probably be engaged in speaking for two months. Not steadily. Meanwhile, I am reading up desperately, hearing and sifting arguments on both sides. I shall prepare myself on either five or six points which I think will tell well in the canvass." He went as delegate to the Republican State Convention at Worcester, in March, 186o. In the fall of the same year he went upon his electioneering tour through the West, and spoke in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. His last and most effective speeches were in Brooklyn and New York City, where his apt and witty stories and quiet self-possession gave him both popularity and influence as a speaker. Mounting the steps of the New York Hotel, where "the Southerners most do congregate," he writes:" I made the only Republican speech, in all probability, ever listened to from that intensely pro-slavery locality. " One man asked me if I approved of John Brown's raid into Virginia. 'No,' I said,' I joined in the disapprobation expressed by the Chicago Platform.' 'What did I think of John Brown himself?' 'I thought he was a splendid fellow, and I wished there were more men in the country who had the same daring, though I should wish it to be proved in a different way.'" He closes his letter with joyful prophecies of the success of the Republican party, and playfully quotes the threats of his opponents: - " We have about a month before 'disunion and anarchy,' and balls coming down from the cockloft, etc., etc. In short, I expect there will be bloodshed and carnage." How little he suspected the deadly purpose which underlay those threats, and which was so soon to display itself in the great Rebellion! He returned to his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts; resumed his legal studies, his literary labors, his social habits, as before. He wrote: "Do not fear that my head will be turned..... As a nearer approach to politics enables me more clearly to understand the dignity of the pursuit, I see plainly that the way to be good for anything there is to mind my own business first. No man has a right to embark in politics without the capital of knowledge and experience. We are apt, reading our newspaper reports, to forget that the principal part of an M. C.'s work is done in the committee-room. A very little study would enable me to talk glibly on the floor of Congress; but a representative is a working man of business, and the unhappy young men who enter Congress with the notion that fluency and even sense will carry them through with credit, soon find themselves sinking under the multifarious business intrusted [sic] to them. To be sure, they may choose to neglect that business, but in that case they soon find their true level and come out with neither profit nor reputation." He soon after entered the Law School at Cambridge, and had just finished his course there, when the call came for nine months' men. He enlisted as a private in Company F, Forty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, a company, in large part, manned and officered by Cambridge graduates. To friends who urged him to seek a commission he said, "No, I might not make a good officer, and I know I can be a private." That single sentence shows how great a change had been wrought in Frank since his resolution to go to the war. It was never before his wont to distrust himself. His abilities fairly used would have made him master of any science or position, and he had formerly seemed conscious of this. Now he voluntarily enlisted in a company commanded by a young man who was a Freshman in college when he was a Junior, and chose to be where he must obey rather than where he might command. I have on the same page of a photograph album two pictures of Frank, —one taken before and the other after his decision to enlist in the army. "Who is that young gentleman?" one asks, seeing the first; and then turning to the second, "But who is that man next him?" And the questioner will scarcely believe that both are pictures of the same person. His regiment was ordered to Newbern, North Carolina, in October, and his first letters home show a resolute, manly cheerfulness. He has no complaint to make. Everything is as good as they ought to expect. He wants the newspapers regularly, and at once starts a plan for a reading-room in the camp. No time was given, however, for the accomplishment of his plan. Four days after his arrival at Newbern, his regiment, forming a part of Colonel Thomas G. Stevenson's brigade, set forth upon the Tarborough expedition. This was a severe test of the new soldiers, and some fell out by the way and "died of fatigue, or were caught by the Rebel guerillas and so mangled as to be unrecognizable." Frank stood the march, however, without breaking down. He says: "I marched one hundred and eighteen miles over the worst ground, under a considerable weight, almost without sleep and with insufficient food. I have been so hungry that I seized eagerly on a sweet potato left in the mud and half covered with it, and ate it as I never ate anything before..... I suffered so from sleeplessness and hunger that it seems a dreadful dream, and my friends told me that my face was like an old man's, so that no one would have thought me young." A fortnight later a comrade wrote of him:" His sufferings on the late march to and from Goldsborough must have been intense, such as would have compelled many a man to class himself among the sick and wounded. Arid his conduct at Whitehall too, where he fought bravely with the right-flank company, with which he had been marching, instead of seeking his own company, which he must have known was much less exposed to the enemy's fire, show the bravery of a true soul." He plucked new confidence from the "nettle danger," and his letters at this time breathe a cheerful expectation of usefulness once more at home, as well as in the field. He would like to do a little political campaigning again. "Don't fancy," he writes to his brother, "from my anticipating work in the political field that I propose competing for any political prize. I acquired bitter experience at second hand out West, and shall keep my life clear of that. ' I had rather be a kitten and cry mew, than such a Roman.' But I am sure that, if I live till 1864, I shall grow furious at the old rascality, and shall want to do my part to cut it down, if I can spare a fortnight in New York." The next letter, dated January 20, 1863, is in a strange hand, though worded by the same tender and thoughtful heart, telling of sickness, following a chill he got, and which had brought him to the Stanley Hospital to, be treated. The surgeons pronounced his disease a mild form of typhoid fever. He was already better; so he wrote his mother, "You spoke once of coming to me if I were sick. I really do not need you; and you would not be allowed to come." He was carefully and kindly tended in his sickness by a Sister of Charity, and, when it was possible, by his attentive comrades. Until within two days of his death, he had been considered safe from danger by his physician. But the treacherous fever suddenly assumed a fatal form. He died February 13, 1863. His sorrowing comrades gave him a soldier's funeral on the 14th, and followed his remains on their voyage to his Massachusetts home with letters of tribute to his character and earnest sympathy with his friends. "We shall remember him as a leader among us, always recognized as such for his acknowledged talents, even though he was only a private. We shall delight to remember him as a true, fearless, resolute, patient soldier, setting an example of fidelity, bravery, and unyielding pluck. None will forget his generosity, and the many ways he devised to keep up the morale as well as amuse the company." He was himself always his own best biographer; and in one brief sentence, in which he pays a tribute to a friend broken down in war, he discloses the plan of his own life: " He has played a man's part and lived a man's life." The two phases of his own life and character are here exactly, though unconsciously, presented. Until the war, his life was hardly real. His " champions " were of wood, his heroes fabulous, his favorites fictitious; even his friends, a study for characterization; and he could hold off the deepest experiences of his own heart and view them with a dramatic purpose. He was eminently an artist. He played a man's part. But when the war came on it rolled over him like a terrible prairie fire, trampling out flowers and grass, and leaving only the hard, burnt earth behind. Yet already a brighter, better growth was greening above the sod, when last we looked his way. We picked the first snowdrop of the season the day Frank's body was laid away in Mount Auburn. He had "lived a man's life." "Believe me, dear friend," Frank wrote, "I am content with my work and cheerful at the thought of what lies before us as our share of the grand advance. I was never in better health; never, I hope, better prepared to die or to live, if my life is spared. I feel as if I had reached a halting-place in my life, as if it would close now with a roundness and completeness, not of achievement, but of being."