Henry Livermore Abbott

Henry Livermore Abbott (January 21, 1842 – May 6, 1864) was a Major in the Union Army during the American Civil War (Civil War). Abbott was posthumously awarded the grade of brevet brigadier general, United States Volunteers, to rank from August 1, 1864, and the grades of brevet lieutenant colonel, brevet colonel and brevet brigadier general, United States Army, all to rank from March 13, 1865 for gallant and meritorious services at the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was killed in action. Abbott was engaged at the center of several key Civil War battles and was widely known and admired for his leadership, courage and composure under fire. Early life Henry Livermore Abbott, the third of eleven children, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on January 21, 1842, the son of Josiah Gardner Abbott, a successful lawyer and judge. In 1876, Josiah Gardner Abbott was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was a prominent member of the Democratic Party. 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" and was frequently admonished for "indecorum at prayers," "neglect of mathematics," and "tardiness at recitation." Nonetheless, Henry graduated from Harvard in the middle of the class in 1860. He was reading law in his father's law office when the Civil War broke out. Initial reluctance to volunteer and enrollment in Union Army Henry's father obtained an appointment for Henry as a captain in the 2d Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment after the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter. Henry declined this appointment and, in May 1861, he joined the Fourth Battalion Massachusetts Volunteer Militia along with several of his friends, including his best friend, future United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. After Holmes and several other friends left to join the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Abbott joined that regiment on July 10, 1861.