In the spring of 1862 Lanier was joined
by his young brother, Clifford; and throughout the war
each seemed to vie with the other in brotherly love;
for, while both were offered promotion, neither would accept it,
since to do so would have entailed separation from the other.
The leisure time of his first year's service Sidney spent
in the study of music and the modern languages. He was engaged
in several battles in Virginia, but afterward was transferred,
with Clifford, to the Signal Service, with head-quarters at Petersburg.
Here he had access to a small library, of which he made sedulous use.
In 1863 his company was mounted, and served in Virginia and North Carolina.
In the spring of 1864 both brothers were transferred to Wilmington,
the head-quarters of the Marine Signal Service, in which they remained
to the end of the war. Finally the two brothers were separated,
each becoming signal officer* of a blockade-runner. Sidney's vessel
was captured, and for five months he was a prisoner at Point Lookout, Md.,
with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison-life,
no doubt, that first led to decline of health by developing
the seeds of consumption, a disease that was to carry off his mother
and that he was to struggle with the last fifteen years of his life.
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