KIA CDV of Arthur Buckminster Fuller with Silsbee Boston, Massachusetts Backmark
This carte de visite depicts Rev. Arthur Buckminster Fuller, a Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and Union Army chaplain whose life and death exemplified moral conviction and personal sacrifice during the American Civil War. The photograph bears the backmark of Silsbee of Boston, a prominent Massachusetts studio active during the war years.
Born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, on August 10, 1822, Arthur Buckminster Fuller was the son of U.S. Congressman Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane Fuller, and the younger brother of noted intellectual and writer Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Frail in health from childhood and blind in one eye due to an early accident, Fuller nevertheless received an exceptional education, studying Greek, Latin, literature, science, and mathematics. He attended Leicester Academy, the Ripley School in Waltham, graduated from Harvard College in 1843, and completed his theological studies at Harvard Divinity School in 1847.
Fuller served as a teacher, missionary, and Unitarian minister in Illinois, New Hampshire, Boston, and Watertown, Massachusetts. A committed reformer, he was active in the temperance movement, supported public education, and was a vocal abolitionist. Widowed in 1856 after the death of his first wife, Elizabeth Davenport, he later remarried and was the father of four children.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Fuller joined the 16th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as its chaplain, departing Boston with the regiment on August 17, 1861. He served through the Peninsula Campaign, enduring severe hardship that ultimately undermined his already fragile health. In December 1862, he was honorably discharged on a certificate of disability, deeply to the regret of the officers and men he had served.
The very next day, as the Battle of Fredericksburg began, Fuller volunteered to cross the Rappahannock River with Union troops to clear Confederate sharpshooters—despite being under no obligation to serve and fully aware that, if killed, his family would receive no pension. When warned of the danger, he replied simply:
“I must do something for my country.”
Wearing a borrowed officer’s coat and carrying a musket, Fuller crossed the river by pontoon boat. Moments after reaching the far bank and entering the town, he was shot three times and killed instantly on December 11, 1862, at the age of 40.
His body was returned to Boston and buried in the Fuller family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery, near the cenotaph of his sister Margaret. At his funeral, family friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson recalled the inscription on his coffin, which stands as his enduring epitaph:
“I must do something for my country.”
This CDV preserves the likeness of one of the Civil War’s most poignant figures—a man whose final act united word and deed in service to conscience and nation.