Coppee] 154 [March. 



For this brilliant achievement, he was made a Major-General of 

 Volunteers, to date from April 11th, the day of the capture of 

 Huntsville. 



On the 2d of July, General Mitchel was ordered to report himself 

 at Washington. He was there in person on the 5th. From that 

 time he was waiting for ordei-s until September 12th, when he started 

 for the important command of the Tenth Army Corps, the head- 

 quarters of which were at Hilton Head, South Carolina. He reached 

 there on the 16th. His coming infused new life into the depart* 

 ment, and he was maturing his plans for a grand movement, when 

 he was called away from earth. He sent an expedition to St. John's 

 River, which captured the fort, with many heavy guns ', and also a 

 force to Pocotaligo, for the purpose of destroying the Charleston and 

 Savannah Railroad and telegraph, in which it was successful. He 

 also drew Beauregard out of Savannah with twenty-five thousand 

 men. What he further intended cannot be told, but every day, had 

 be lived, would have disclosed the character of his projects, of which 

 these movements were but the initiation. 



While in the midst of his usefulness and rapidly maturing plans, 

 he was attacked by the yellow fever on Sunday, the 26th of Octo- 

 ber, and died on October 80th, 1862, in Beaufort, South Carolina. 



Such, briefly, is the record of his life. The meagre recital is full 

 of valuable lessons, and leads the scholar, the patriot, the soldier, and 

 the Christian to moralize upon the great loss the country has sus- 

 tained, while they eulogize his genius, his talents, his virtues, his 

 piety, and his lofty achievements. Few men of our age have ex- 

 hibited a more extended genius, and we know of no one who has 

 displayed so much energy in everything he has undertaken. His 

 character will bear minute analysis ; in every department of labor he 

 was successfuhj in many he was truly eminent. 



As a man of science, Professor Mitchel was an ardent investigator, 

 and an eminently practical inventor. Fully imbued with the poetry 

 of science, delighting in the lofty picturesques of astronomic thought, 

 abounding in the rarest imagery in his public teachings, his true 

 sphere was in the mechanism of the means for scientific observation 

 and labor. To prepare himself as director of the Observatory, he 

 had studied and mastered the higher astronomical mathematics, and 

 was thoroughly conversant with the history of the science. To 

 qualify himself as a public teacher, he had resolved the most diffi- 

 cult problems into such simple forms and such lucid language, as to 

 make them clear to many who had regarded it impossible to compre- 



