went forth, the dauntless champion and willing martyr of the Union.
Except that the death of a beloved daughter brought him back for a few
days to his family in the following summer, the people of Massachusetts
saw his living face no more.

On the thirtieth of August, 1862, the second day of the second battle of
Bull Run, late in the afternoon, while gallantly directing the movements
of his regiment, and giving his orders in those clear, firm, ringing
tones, which, in the tumult of battle, fall so gratefully on the
soldier's ear, Colonel Webster was shot through the body; and the
Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on
the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the
country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the
North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and
bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to "see him
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union,
on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with
internal feuds, and drenched [as then it was] with fraternal blood."

In the time-honored song of Roland, we are told, "Count Roland lay under
a pine-tree dying, and many things came to his remembrance." As it was
with Count Roland in Spain, so it was with Colonel Webster in Virginia.
In the multitude of memories which rushed upon him as he lay dying on
that ill-starred battle-field, we may be sure that Boston, Bunker Hill,
and the home and grave of Marshfield, were not forgotten.

The body of Colonel Webster was willingly given up by the Confederates,
and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall, and adding another to the
immortal recollections which ennoble "the cradle of liberty," it was