j 

 JOHN WESLEY POWELL DAVIS 



varied ; they were pursued at Illinois College, Jacksonville, 

 1855-1856; at Oberlin College, Ohio, 1858, where he studied 

 chiefly botany, Latin, and Greek, and at Wheaton College in 

 1858. Powell was a naturalist at that time, fond of roaming, 

 observing, and collecting. He had joined the State Society of 

 Natural History in 1854, and in making an extensive collection 

 of mollusca he crossed most of the prairie States. In 1856 he 

 traveled, a young fellow of twenty-two, alone in his boat on 

 the Mississippi ; the next year he descended the Ohio, and the 

 year after he followed the Illinois and Des Moines Rivers. His 

 collections brought him into relation with various colleges ; he 

 became secretary of the Illinois Society of Natural History, 

 and his friends of that time found him an entertaining nar- 

 rator, full of enthusiasm, humor, and philosophy. 



SERVICE IN THE CIVIL WAR. 



Powell's studies and travels were interrupted by the out- 

 break of the Civil War. A visit to the South on a lecturing 

 tour in 1860, where. he closely studied the sentiment of the 

 people regarding slavery, had persuaded him that nothing 

 short of war could settle the matter. When war came he 

 promptly enlisted as a private in the Twentieth Illinois Infan- 

 try on May 8, 1861, "with the avowed purpose of doing his 

 part in the extinction of slavery in this country ; and from the 

 first day after the call was made for troops he felt thoroughly 

 convinced that American slavery was doomed." He went to 

 the front as sergeant-major, but was soon commissioned sec- 

 ond lieutenant. His knowledge of engineering led him into 

 such work as building roads and bridges and planning camps 

 and entrenchments. In the winter of 1861-1862 he recruited 

 a company of artillery, of which he was commissioned captain. 

 A brief leave of absence in March, 1862, allowed him a hurried 

 visit to Detroit, where with only two hours' delay he married 

 his cousin, Miss Emma Dean, to whom he had been long en- 

 gaged. She returned with him at once to the field, and cared 

 for him not long afterward when he was wounded in the battle 

 of Shiloh, on April 6, 1862. At the moment when he gave a 

 signal to fire by raising his right arm a rifle ball struck his 

 wrist and glanced toward the elbow. The hasty care at first 



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