Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/59

Rh works are "The Olive and the Pine" (Boston, 1859); "Love in Spain, and other Poems" (1807); "The Story of Chief Joseph " (1881) ; and "Memoir of Charles' Lowe" (1883).

LOWE, Thaddeus S. C., aëronaut, b. in Jefferson, N. H., 20 Aug., 1832. He made his earliest voyages about 1858, and during one of them rose to a height of 23,000 feet. On 20 April, 1861, he rose from Cincinnati, Ohio, at 4 A. M., in a balloon, and drifted first westward, but afterward to the southeast, attaining an altitude of 18,000 feet. He descended in Union county, S. C., after being in the air eight hours and traversing 350 miles in a straight line. He next announced his intention of crossing the Atlantic ocean by means of a balloon, and for this purpose constructed one of oiled cotton with a capacity of 725,000 cubic feet; but after several unsuccessful attempts to inflate it, he abandoned the attempt. Soon after the beginning of the civil war he visited Washington for the purpose of recommending to the government the desirability of using balloons for observing the movements of the enemy. He made several captive ascensions (those in which the balloon is held to the earth, and finally drawn down, by a long rope) from the grounds of the Smithsonian institution, and was then made chief aëronautic engineer of the army. Several balloons, in the hands of his assistant, made ascensions; but as they were independent of any branch of the service, their efficiency was greatly impaired. Mr. Lowe was the first to make experiments in sending messages by the electric telegraph from a balloon to the ground; but, although he was successful, his device does not appear to have been put to any satisfactory employment. He invented and put into practical use a portable apparatus for generating hydrogen gas for war balloons. These he had constructed from the closest woven and strongest pongee silk, varying in capacity from 15,000 to 20,000 cubic feet. During Mr. Lowe's connection with the Army of the Potomac, Gen. Fitz-John Porter, Gen. George Stoneman, and others made ascensions; but Mr. Lowe's relations with the military authorities became strained, on account of his independent appointments, and many of his bills remained unaudited, owing to the feeling between him and the engineer officers, so that he severed his connection with the army long before the close of the war. Subsequently he made captive ascensions from Philadelphia and New York; but these proving financially unsuccessful, he retired from aëronautic pursuits after disposing of his apparatus to the Brazilian government. Mr. Lowe then turned his attention to inventing, and obtained patents on various mechanical devices, one of the first of which was an ice-making machine. Later he invented a machine for making water-gas by the addition of crude petroleum, which has resulted in the production of an illuminant equal to that obtained from coal, and at a much less cost. One of his more recent inventions is light produced by means of a coil of wire heated to incandescence by a jet of non-luminous water-gas under heavy pressure. Mr. Lowe is now (1888) engaged in perfecting a system for the use of water-gas as a fuel for cities, and in the production of appliances for cooking and heating, adapted to the use of water-gas.

LOWE, William Warren, soldier, b. in Indiana, 12 Oct., 1831. He was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1853, commissioned as a lieu- tenant of dragoons on 22 Oct., 1854, and was engaged in scouting and on frontier duty till the beginning of the civil war. He was made a captain of cavalry on 9 May, 1861, served through the Manassas campaign, and during the following winter organized the 5th regiment of Iowa volunteer cavalry, of which he was made colonel on 1 Jan., 1862. In February he participated in the Tennessee campaign, and was engaged in the capture of Fort Donelson, of which he was commandant till March, 1863, repelling various attacks. He subsequently commanded a brigade or a division in cavalry operations in middle Tennessee, northern Alabama, and Georgia, receiving the bi'evet of major for gallantry in an engagement near Chickamauga, Ga., and that of lieutenant-colonel for a cavalry action near Huntsville, Ala. In the ad- vance from Chattanooga he commanded the 3d cavalry division until relieved by Gen. Judson Kilpatrick. and again after that officer was wounded. From July, 1864, till January, 1865, he was employed in remounting cavalry at Nashville, being mustered out of the volunteer service on 24 Jan., 1865. He subsequently served as chief mustering and disbursing officer for Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Colorado. He was brevetted colonel and brigadier-general for services in the war, and promoted major on 31 July, 1866. Pie left the army on 23 June, 1869. organized smelting and refining works in Omaha, Neb., engaged in mining in Utah, constructed a railroad, built on the Salmon river the first smelting- works in Idaho, and more recently prospected for petroleum in Wyoming territory, and discovered a well of lubricating-oil on the Little Popoagie river.

LOWELL, James Russell, poet and essayist, b. in Cambridge, Mass., 22 Feb., 1819; d. in Cambridge, Mass., 12 Aug., 1891. Lowell in genius and character is the hereditary representative of the heart and brains that founded New England. He was the youngest of five children. From both parents were transmitted high intelligence, sound principles, and right ideals, but the poetic and imaginative faculty came from the mother. His birthplace was the old Tory mansion now called &ldquo;Elmwood,&rdquo; a large, three-story, square, wooden house in the early colonial style, situated in spacious grounds, surrounded by magnificent elms and pines planted by his father, with an outlook on Charles river. (See view on page 40.) Lowell was fitted for college by William Wells (who was the senior of the firm to whom we owe the series of Wells and Lilly classics), entered Harvard in his sixteenth year, and was graduated in 1838. His first-published literary production, unless possibly some poems for &ldquo;Harvardiana,&rdquo; which he edited in 1837-'8, was his notable class poem, composed under peculiar circumstances. At the time of writing it the collegiate senior was undergoing a brief period of rustication at Concord, in consequence of inattention to his text-books. His forced sojourn in this Arcadia of scholarship and reform brought him into relationship with the transcendentalists, who at that day were in the habit of gathering at the home of Emerson, with whom then began that friendship which, despite the