746 



SEDGWICK, JOIIX. 



SEWERS. 



the Second Corps, under General Sumner, 

 General Sedgwick assuming command of the 

 8d division of the corps. In this capacity lie 

 took part in the siege of Yorktown and the 

 subsequent pursuit of the enemy up the Penin- 

 sula, and greatly distinguished himself at the 

 battle of Fair Oaks, where the timely arrival 

 of Sumner's troops saved the day. In all the 

 seven days' fighting, and particularly at Sav- 

 age Station and Glendale, he bore an honorable 

 part, and at the battle of Antietam he exhibited 

 the most conspicuous gallantry, exposing his 

 person with a recklessness which greatly im- 

 perilled his life. On this occasion he was twice 

 wounded, but refused for two hours to be taken 

 from the field. On December 23d he was 

 nominated by the President a major-general 

 of volunteers, having previously been made a 

 brevet brigadier general of the regular army, 

 and in the succeeding February he assumed com- 

 mand of the Sixth Army Corps. At the head 

 of these troops he carried Marye's Heights in 

 the rear of Fredericksbnrg during the Chaneel- 

 lorsville campaign in May, 1803, and after the 

 retreat of General Hooker across the Eappa- 

 hannock, succeeded only by very hard fighting 

 in withdrawing his command in the face of a 

 superior force, against which he had contended 

 for a whole day, to the left bank of the river, 

 lie commanded the left wing of the Army of 

 the Potomac during the advance from the Eap- 

 pahannock into Maryland in June, and also at 

 the succeeding battle of Gettysburg, where he 

 arrived on the second day of the fighting, after 

 one of the most extraordinary forced marches 

 en record, and where his steady courage in- 

 spired confidence among his tried troops. 

 During the passage of the Pvapidan on Novem- 

 ber 7th, 18G3, he succeeded, by a well-executed 

 manoeuvre, in capturing a whole rebel division 

 with a number of guns and colors, for which 

 ho was thanked by General Meade in a general 

 order. In command of his corps he took part 

 iu the spring campaign of the "Wilderness, un- 

 der General Grant, and on the 5th and 6th of 

 May had position on the Federal right wing, 

 where the hardest fighting of those sangui- 

 nary engagements took place. Three days 

 later, while directing the placing of some 

 pieces of artillery in position in the intrench- 

 ments in front of Spottsylvania Court House, 

 lie was struck in the head by a bullet from a 

 sharpshooter and instantly killed. General 

 Sedgwick was one of the oldest, ablest, and 

 bravest soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, 

 inspiring both officers and men with the fullest 

 confidence in his military capacity. His sim- 

 plicity and honest manliness of character en- 

 deared him, notwithstanding he was a strict dis- 

 ciplinarian, to all with whom he came in contact, 

 and his corps was in consequence one of the best 

 in discipline and morale in the army. He sev- 

 eral times held temporary command of the Army 

 of the Potomac during the absence of General 

 Meade, but on more than one occasion declined 

 the supreme command. 



SEWERS. The plans for servers in the va- 

 rious cities of this country have been ibrraec 

 upon the general system adopted in London ; 

 England. But this system has been found to 

 be so defective that an entirely new intercepting 

 plan of main drainage has been adopted. Ita 

 importance, therefore, from the influence it ia 

 likely to have here, is too great to be overlooked. 

 The whole system, together with the advan- 

 tages to be derived from it, may be briefly and 

 summarily explained in the following words: 



Before the Board of Works arose as the 

 Times expresses it our efforts in the way 

 of drainage were confined to the extremely 

 simple expedient of running all drains into 

 the Thames; in fact, of making the river 

 our great main sewer, and how admirably 

 our efforts succeeded the smell of the Thames 

 in hot weather soon showed. Bad, how- 

 ever, as this system of drainage was, there 

 Avas one thing even worse, which was the 

 method of effecting it. The first drains and 

 sewers made were in the old districts of the 

 metropolis that is, those districts which lay 

 more or less close to the river on each side, and 

 therefore the lowest in point of elevation of 

 any in the city. It was hard to drain these 

 parts at all, and it had to be done by taking 

 the sewers so very much lower that it was only 

 at dead low water they could empty themselves. 

 As London grew, every year added enormously 

 to the extent and danger of the evil, till 

 scarcely any sewers could empty but at dead 

 low tide, when the, water in the river was at 

 its minimum, and when the returning flood 

 swept all the nauseous flotsam and jetsam back 

 into the heart of the metropolis, and kept it 

 churning backwards and forwards for another 

 six hours in the open air. What effect this at 

 last produced we all know, though what no 

 one knows is why it did not bring a pestilence 

 long ago. It is enough, however, to say that 

 the evil was so severely felt, and the danger so 

 pressing, that the intercepting scheme of main 

 drainage was at last adopted, is now nearly 

 half executed, and will before this time twelve- 

 month be entirely completed, with the excep- 

 tion of the small length to be laid in the 

 Thames Embankment. The intercepting plan, 

 as its name implies, consists in cutting three 

 great main drains on both sides of the river, 

 and which, instead of running due north and 

 south, like the present system, run .from west 

 to east. These great main lines intercept and 

 cut off all the existing lines of drains from the 

 river, carry their contents away down to be- 

 low Barking Creek and Erith Marshes, where 

 they are poured into gigantic reservoirs, and 

 afterwards, when deodorized, turned into tho 

 river at high tide, and swept away by tho ebb 

 almost to sea. Thus, the sewage is not only 

 turned out free from smell, but turned out into 

 a body of water nearly thirty times as great aa 

 that into which it used to be poured, and, in- 

 stead of sickening the air at our very door.s, 

 becomes lost in the volume of water which 



