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" I have seldom stood by a death-bed where there was so gratify- ing a manifestation of humble Christian faith. * * * I asked him if he would like to see some of the religious papers. He said: ' No, that they were so bitter in their tone, he preferred the Bible alone; that was enough for him.' He partook of the holy commu- nion, at his own request, in private, on the Sunday afternoon before his death. * That was very sudden to all here, but it was a
Christian's death, the death of the trustful, hopeful soul."
With a mother and two sisters in Hartford, and a brother in New York, no regret ever escaped his lips or sigh from his heart, that he had drawn his sword for the constitutional rights of the State in which he was born, the people among whom he had spent his life, and for distant North Carolina, whose Governor had confided her defences to him, and for whose honor and glory he was about to lay down his life, with the innumerable army of martyrs.
History tells us that the British, struck with the heroism of Law- rence, who cried, " Don't give up the ship! " as he was taken below with a mortal wound, gave to the remains of their enemy profound funeral honors at Halifax, in token of admiration and respect.
It is too much to expect that in the throes of the great war between the States, the guns of the fortress that had been his prison while alive, should have saluted his cold ashes as they were borne away; and yet, rarely, if ever, in all that struggle, was there such a demon- stration of sympathetic regard and profound respect at the burial of a prisoner of war.
The New York Daily News of March 13, 1865, has the following:
"One of the most prominent matters in which Christian civiliza- tion differs from that which obtained under the rule of Paganism, is the administration of the rights of sepulchre to the remains of a deceased enemy.
'The superiority of the former over the latter was very notice- able on the occasion of the obsequies, on Saturday, at Trinity Church, of the late Major-General W. H. C. Whiting, who was wounded at tin- taking of Fort Fisher, being in command of that garrison, trans- ferred, on his arrival here, to Governor's Island, as a prisoner of war, and who died of his wounds in the Military Hospital there on Friday
"A very large concourse of people was present, and the profound-
ct was paid to the deceased and his sorrowing relatives and
friends. General Beale (the agent in this city for supplying the Con-
