Gould, Samuel Shelton

SAMUEL SHELTON GOULD. Private 13th Mass. Vols. (Infantry), September, 1862; killed at Antietam, Md., September. I7, 1862. SAMUEL SHELTON GOULD was born in Boston, January 1, 1843. His parents were Samuel L. Gould, at that time master of the Winthrop School, Boston, and Frances A. (Shelton) Gould. He was educated in the Boston schools till the twelfth year of his age, passing two years in the Latin School. His parents then removed to Dorchester, and he finished his preparatory course at the Roxbury Latin School. He entered College when he was fifteen years old, in 1858, and remained there one year, after which, for reasons of his own, but with the consent of his parents, he left College and went to sea as a common sailor in the Peabody, a vessel engaged at that time in the Australian trade. His journal, which he kept regularly and minutely during all his voyages, records a growing dissatisfaction with the hard work and poor fare which he then supposed to be unusual, especially as the old sailors kept even pace with his grumbling, and he had not yet learned that that was their trade. He was dissatisfied, too, with the drudgery that was imposed on him there, and the slight opportunity that he had of learning anything of the more difficult parts of the work; and these things, together with his desire to lengthen this episode, and see more of the world, which he would not probably do if he made the return voyage, led him to leave the Peabody; and within a few days he shipped again, in the Commonwealth, an American vessel bound for Callao. He carried out with him from Boston several Latin and Greek text-books, and other books for reading and study, intending to use them in his spare hours, so as to reenter College on his return with as little delay as possible. And during the passage to Melbourne, strange as it may seem in view of all his disadvantages, he really did devote his spare time to this occupation. On the Commonwealth he found the work harder and the fare worse. In sailor phrase, it was an " all-hands ship," instead of "watch and watch"; that is, all hands were required to be on deck during the day. This left him only a half-hour out of the hour allowed for dinner, and a half-hour in the dogwatch; and of this short time a good part had to be given to the care of his clothes, etc. But even then he found time to keep up his familiarity with the languages and begin the study of natural philosophy. In spite of the hard and continued work on this vessel, it was pleasanter to him than the mean tasks imposed upon him on the Peabody, since he had shipped as ordinary seaman, and had thus more opportunity to learn and do the more intricate parts of the work. On arriving at Callao, he found that the crew had been shipped under false pretences, and that the ship was bound for the Chincha Island for guano, -a place to which sailors will never go if it can be avoided, as the work is of the most repulsive kind. He therefore went aft with a shipmate to procure his discharge from the captain. Failing in this, he demanded to see the American consul at the port. This, too, was refused with an oath, and high words passed between the captain and him. The captain finally struck him, and with the assistance of the second mate beat him badly. This determined him to leave the ship at all hazards, which he did that night. After a stay of a few days at Callao, he shipped again as ordinary seaman on the Rival, a Boston vessel, bound for Cork. The first twenty-five days of this passage were pleasant. But by that time they had arrived in the vicinity of Cape Horn, and the rough weather began for which that region is proverbial. This lasted about twenty days, and as its commencement found him without proper clothing, he suffered unusually. The work, too, was incessant and severe; but he had the satisfaction of knowing that it was none of it unnecessary, and he had pleasant relations with the officers, in remarkable contrast with his experience on the Commonwealth. When fairly in pleasant weather again, he took up his studies and reading, necessarily intermitted during the passage round the Cape. A leaf from his journal will show what he was doing in that respect. " Tuesday, June 26th. - Forenoon below; finished the first volume of Macaulay's England. I am glad to say that, in spite of the contrary predictions of my friends before I left home, I have not as yet neglected my reading and study, though my time has been much more limited than I expected, and consequently I have not accomplished nearly all that I could wish. Greek and Latin I have kept at with a constancy of which, under all the circumstances, - hard work and scarcity of rest, - I think I may be justly proud. I find that I have lost none of my ability to read them easily, but from the want of grammars I feel that my knowledge of them is not nearly so exact as it once was. The Holy Bible, - the reading of which has been a daily duty and pleasure to me, - John Foster, De Quincey, Macaulay, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Dickens have formed my leisure reading, if that time which I have stolen from my sleep can be called leisure. I can fairly say that' they have been my greatest pleasure ever since I left home. I hope that a year's time, and possibly less, will see me again so situated that the bulk of my time, and not the spare minutes only, may be given up to them. I have been like the mother in Tom Hood's 'Lost Child,' who did not know the love she felt for her child till she lost it. I only hope that I may not, like her, forget it as soon as I find it." " July 7, 1860. - Relaxed my rule to-day, and neither studied nor did any other useful thing, but enjoyed my pipe and dolce far niente, reading 'Verdant Green,' &c., the first instance of the kind aboard the Rival; I thought that I was entitled to a single holiday." "July Io. - Did not continue my Latin this P. M., having finished Cicero de Amicitid yesterday, but spent the afternoon in my bunk reading Herschel's Astronomy." "July II.- Read my regular four pages of Demosthenes this A. M." ". July 27. - Have dropped Latin and Greek for a while, having got hold of Bowditch's Navigator." I have given prominence to this fact, because it well illustrates his perseverance and his real love for study, that he should pursue it so persistently under circumstances so unfavorable. It is needless to say that he did not "neglect other duties for this, because that would be impossible aboard ship. It was not mere reading that he performed, but hard study. Nor could this occupation have been always an absolute pleasure in such surroundings, but must frequently have been done for its future rewards alone. It will be noticed, too, that he speaks of his pleasure in reading the Bible; and he frequently but modestly alludes to his regard for religious observances and moral requirements, showing a firmness and solidity of character rare in one so young and so unfavorably situated. From Cork he sailed directly for New Orleans, and there took passage in a coasting schooner for home. He narrowly escaped shipwreck and death in one of the most violent storms ever experienced on our coast, off Hatteras in March, 1861, but reached home in safety in April, after an absence of nearly two years. It was now his desire to re-enter college in the Class next below that which he had left; and he had therefore the studies of the Sophomore year to make up. For the next three months he therefore gave himself up to that work, and in July, 1861, re-entered College in the Junior Class. During his absence his character seems to have gained much in manliness and stability, and there are very few who work harder than he did during the following year, with little thought of immediate honors and an earnest sense of duty. Meantime the war was in progress, with varying results, but constantly assuming such proportions, and bringing into view principles so important, as to press upon all our young men the question of personal duty in regard to it. Samuel Gould was one of the last to shirk such a question as this. He gradually arrived at the conviction that, if at any time the call for men should become particularly urgent, it was his duty to answer it and go. And once during the year that time seemed to have come, when Banks's retreat in the Valley seemed to expose Washington. The Fourth Battalion offered its services to the goverment [sic], and a college company was raised for it, which he joined. But its services were declined,, and he returned to his studies. But in a very short time came the call for additional men and the great war-meetings of 1862. Now, indeed, the time had come. He at once enlisted in the Thirteenth Massachusetts; and during the time before he was sent into the field, he attended and addressed several of the war-meetings in Cambridge and Boston, where the force of his example and the fire of his words were inspiring. He did not seek glory, for he enlisted in the ranks; his object was work, for he joined a regiment already stationed in the hardest part of the field, - the great battle-ground of the war. And he refused all entreaties to enter other regiments, saying repeatedly that he must be where the most work was to be done. Within a fortnight of the time that he joined his regiment, it went into the battle of Antietam. He had no musket and was consequently detailed with the stretcher-bearers. Before many minutes, however, he picked up a musket and joined his company at the front, and very soon fell, shot through the heart. His remains were brought home and buried from his father's house in Cambridge. At prayers, on the day of his funeral, the President announced that the Senior Class would be excused for the day to attend the funeral of their classmate; and the entire Class, without exception, walked in mournful procession behind his remains: Dr. Peabody assisted in the funeral ceremonies. The Gazette of Sunday morning, September 28, 1862, says: " Among the fallen at the battle of Antietam was Samuel Shelton Gould, of the Senior Class, Harvard College, a young man of fine promise. Some three weeks since we heard him address a meeting at the Meionaon, and a more earnest appeal we never listened to. He addressed himself particularly to the more respectable young men, who were holding back from enlistment, he feared, on the ground of not wanting to mingle with the common classes, saying, that if such were their motives, 'they were not fit to have their names borne on that immortal roll of honor, the list of killed and wounded.' Impatient for service, he would not wait to join a new regiment, and in two weeks after joining the Thirteenth, his name took its place in the situation he coveted." In an oration before the Cambridge High School Association by Mr. George H. Whittemore, he said -- "As I thought on the agony concentrated in the walls of Mount Auburn Chapel, that day we followed him to the grave, - a stricken father and mother, a wounded cousin slowly succeeding the body of his companion in the fight, the representatives of four related families, to a member of each of which that battle brought death or painful wounds, - as I regarded the whole scene (one of hundreds in the land), my heart cried out for a consummation worthy of the costliness of the struggle."