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On July 21, 1865 Harvard University held a Commemoration Day as part of that year's Commencement Week, to celebrate the end of the American Civil War and honor the Harvard alumni who had served and died in it.
A "Commemoration Ode" delivered as part of the ceremonies by James Russell Lowell was widely reprinted.
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James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.
Daniel Coit Gilman was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University of California, Berkeley, as the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and as founding president of the Carnegie Institution. Eponymous halls at both Berkeley and Hopkins pay tribute to his service. He was also co-founder of the Russell Trust Association, which administers the business affairs of Yale's Skull and Bones society. Gilman served for twenty five years as president of Johns Hopkins; his inauguration in 1876 has been said to mark "the starting point of postgraduate education in the U.S."
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with Harvard University; Anglicanism; upper-class clubs such as the Somerset in Boston, the Knickerbocker in New York City, the Metropolitan in Washington, D.C., and the Pacific-Union Club in San Francisco; and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Abbott Lawrence Lowell was an American educator and legal scholar. He was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933.
John Lowell was a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation, a Judge of the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture under the Articles of Confederation, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Circuit Court for the First Circuit.
Charles Russell Lowell III was a railroad executive, foundryman, and General in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Cedar Creek and was mourned by a number of leading generals.
Elmwood, also known as the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House, is a historic house and centerpiece of a National Historic Landmark District in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is known for several prominent former residents, including: Thomas Oliver (1734–1815), royal Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814), signer of the US Declaration of Independence, Vice President of the United States and eponym of the term "gerrymandering"; and James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), noted American writer, poet, and foreign diplomat.
Henry Whitney Bellows was an American clergyman, and the planner and president of the United States Sanitary Commission, the leading soldiers' aid society, during the American Civil War. Under his leadership, the USSC became the largest and most effective organization dedicated to supporting the health and efficiency of the Union army.
The Dante Club is a mystery novel by Matthew Pearl and his debut work, set amidst a series of murders in the American Civil War era. It also concerns a club of poets, including such historical figures as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell, who are translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy from Italian into English and who notice parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dante's Inferno.
Charles Lowell was a Unitarian minister and a son of judge John Lowell, as well as the father of James Russell Lowell and Robert Traill Spence Lowell.
Frederic Thomas Greenhalge was a British-born lawyer and politician in the United States state of Massachusetts. He served in the United States House of Representatives and was the state's 38th governor. He was elected three consecutive times, but died early in his third term. He was the state's first foreign-born governor.
The 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was a regiment of cavalry troops in the Union army during the American Civil War. It consisted primarily of men from the states of California and Massachusetts, and served in the Eastern Theater, despite its western roots.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment is a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens opposite 24 Beacon Street, Boston. It depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw leading members of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as it marched down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863 to depart the city to fight in the South. The sculpture was unveiled on May 31, 1897. This is the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of African American soldiers.
Joseph J. O'Donnell Field is a baseball venue in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is home to the Harvard Crimson baseball team of Harvard University. Formerly known as Soldier's Field, the location has been home to Harvard baseball since 1898. The venue is named for Joseph J. O'Donnell, a Harvard alumnus who played baseball and football while attending the school. It has a capacity of 1,600 spectators.
Lionel de Jersey Harvard was a young Englishman who, discovered to be collaterally descended from Harvard College founder John Harvard, was consequently offered the opportunity to attend that university, from which he graduated in 1915. The first Harvard to attend Harvard, he died in the First World War less than three years later, leaving a wife and infant son.
The Dante Society of America was founded in 1881 through the leadership of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, who in turn served as the society's first three presidents. One of the oldest scholarly societies in North America, the DSA predates both the Modern Language Association, founded in 1883, and the American Historical Association, founded in 1884. The society's mission, first formulated at its founding and now renewed and reinvigorated for the twenty-first century, is to encourage the study and appreciation of the time, life, works, and cultural legacy of Dante Alighieri. After the Deutsche Dante-Gesellschaft it is the second-oldest scholarly organization devoted to the study of this medieval Italian poet. The Dante Society of America is also one of the first scholarly societies in the United States to welcome women among its founding members. The current president is Alison Cornish of New York University.
The American poet Walt Whitman greatly admired Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, and was deeply affected by his assassination, writing several poems as elegies and giving a series of lectures on Lincoln. The two never met. Shortly after Lincoln was killed in April 1865, Whitman hastily wrote the first of his Lincoln poems, "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day". In the following months, he wrote two more: "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". Both appeared in his collection Sequel to Drum-Taps later that year. The poems—particularly "My Captain!"—were well received and popular upon publication and, in the following years, Whitman styled himself as an interpreter of Lincoln. In 1871, his fourth poem on Lincoln, "This Dust Was Once the Man", was published, and the four were grouped together as the "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn" cluster in Passage to India. In 1881, the poems were republished in the "Memories of President Lincoln" cluster of Leaves of Grass.
The "Commemoration Ode" is an 1865 poem by James Russell Lowell. It was written for Harvard's Commemoration Day. Though the Ode received a lackluster reception when Lowell first delivered it on July 21, 1865, after it was republished later that year it grew in reputation. By the 1870s the poem was very highly thought of, an opinion which gradually shifted in the mid-20th century, and it has since been less popular or praised.