Background
David Allen Russell, the son of David Abel and Alida (Lansing) Russell, was born in Salem, N. Y. His father was a congressman from New York from 1835 to 1841.
David Allen Russell, the son of David Abel and Alida (Lansing) Russell, was born in Salem, N. Y. His father was a congressman from New York from 1835 to 1841.
David was appointed a cadet to the United States Military Academy in 1841 and was graduated in 1845, number thirty-eight in a class of forty-one members.
Russell was commissioned brevet second lieutenant in the 16t Infantry and assigned to duty at Fort Scott, Kan. , being promoted to the rank of second lieutenant on September 21, 1846. During the Mexican War he served in General Scott's army, participated in the battle of Cerro Gordo and minor engagements, and was brevetted first lieutenant for meritorious conduct.
After the Mexican War he served in garrisons and on frontier duty in Oregon and Washington where he was engaged in hostilities with the Yakima Indians in 1855 and 1856. He was promoted to first lieutenant on January 1, 1848, and to the rank of captain on June 22, 1854.
At the beginning of the Civil War he served in the defenses of Washington, D. C. As colonel of the 7th Massachusetts Volunteers he commanded with distinction in the Peninsular and Maryland campaigns during the summer and autumn of 1862. He became a brigadier-general of volunteers in November 1862 and was assigned to the command of a brigade in the VI Corps in the Army of the Potomac, participating in the battle of Fredericksburg in December, and in the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.
At Rappahannock Station, Va. , on November 7, 1863, he led his brigade in a gallant charge against Confederate intrenchments which resulted in the capture of a large number of prisoners, some artillery, and eight battle flags. In recognition of his heroic services on this occasion, he was designated by General Meade to go to Washington and present the captured battle flags to the secretary of war. He had also to recover from a wound which he had received in the charge.
He resumed command of his brigade in January 1864 and continued in that capacity until May, when he was assigned to the command of a division. He fought in all the battles of Grant's Virginia campaign of 1864 from the Wilderness to Petersburg. Early in July 1864, his division accompanied the VI Corps in a hurried move to repel Early's raid on Washington and afterwards joined Sheridan's army in the Shenandoah Valley.
At Winchester on September 19, 1864, while leading one of his brigades at a critical moment of the battle, he received a wound in the breast. He concealed the wound from his men, and remained in the saddle, urging them forward, until, a little later in the day, he was killed by a fragment of shell which passed through his heart. For his gallant and meritorious conduct he was four times given brevet grades in the regular army, the last being that of major-general at Winchester.
Quotes from others about the person
General Wright, in command of the VI Corps, wrote in his official report that Russell was "an officer whose merits were not measured by his rank, whose zeal never outran his discretion, whose abilities were never unequal to the occasion, a man tenderly just to his friends and heartily generous to his foes" (War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Army, 1 ser. , XLIII, part I, 151).
