General Ricketts

NOVEMBER 12, 1864.]

HARPER' S WEEKLY.

733

GENERAL JAMES B. RICKETTS.--[PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANTHONY.]

THE LATE BRIGADIER-GENERAL BIDWELL.

GENERAL JAMES B. RICKETTS.

GENERAL JAMES B. RICKETTS, wounded in the battle of Cedar Creek, is a native of New York, from which State he was appointed a cadet to West Point in 1835. He graduated in 1839, with the grade of Second Lieutenant of Artillery. In 1846 he was promoted to a First Lieutenancy, and in August, 1852, was appointed Captain, having since 1849 occupied the position of Regimental Quarter-master.

General RICKETTS was wounded in the first battle of Bull Run and taken prisoner. For distinguished service in that battle he was promoted to

the rank of Brigadier-General. In nearly all of the Virginia campaigns he has commanded a division. His division of tile Sixth Corps was, in July, detached from the Army of the Potomac and sent to Harper's Ferry, taking part in the battle of Monocacy and in all the subsequent operations in the Shenandoah Valley. In General SHERIDAN'S absence, WRIGHT assuming command of the Army of the Valley, his place at the head of the Corps was occupied by General RICKETTS, who was wounded in the early portion of the battle on the 19th, and was for some days supposed to be in a dying condition. If his wound should indeed prove a mortal one the country will have lost a very able officer.

GENERAL BIDWELL.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL BIDWELL, who was killed in the recent battle of Cedar Creek, was born at Black Rock, near Buffalo, in 1818 or 1819. He prepared at an early age for the legal profession, which he afterward abandoned for mercantile pursuits. He had considerable taste for military life, and was Captain of a uniform company in Buffalo. He entered the service September 21, 1861, as Colonel of the Forty-ninth New York Volunteers, known as the Buffalo Regiment, and participated in nearly all of the Virginia campaigns. The correspondent of the World, alluding to his death, says

" Than this noble General no officer was more beloved or more respected in the whole army. His was the form that, on that portentous evening in the Wilderness when the right of the Sixth Corps, being the right of the army, was surprised and broken, sat among the bullets upon his horse, in the language of General SEDGWICK, 'like a man of iron,' coolly directing the movements which repulsed the enemy, gave us back the field, and saved the whole Army of the Potomac from disaster. His was the brigade which, if I remember aright, silenced the first battery of the rebels at Winchester. His was the brigade which took the first five pieces of cannon at Fisher's Hill. His was the presence, (Next Page)

GENERAL CUVIER GROVER.—[PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANTHONY.]

THE LATE COLONEL CHARLES R. LOWELL, JUN.—[SEE PAGE 723.]