Drum Taps in Dixie: Memories of a Drummer Boy, 1861-1865

by Delavan S. Miller

How little I thought in those early days of the war that Corey and I would be soldiering in the same company and regiment a few months later.

I recall the thrilling war meetings that were held in the churches and school houses. There was scarcely a place in the county where there was a store and postoffice that did not have its war meeting each week. It is worthy of mention that the most enthusiastic speakers on such occasions were eager to enlist—others. There comes to my mind the names of several who were always urging others to enlist, but who stayed at home and coined money while others fought, and after the war labored to have refunded to them by the taxpayers the money that they had expended for a substitute.

Carthage sent volunteers promptly in response to Lincoln’s call, and a few days after the fall of Sumter about two dozen young men left to join the old 35th New York infantry.

There was no railroad to Carthage in those days, and they rode away in wagons drawn by four horses. The scene comes before me as I write. The sad partings, the waving banners, the cheers of the multitude who had gathered to see them off to the war. Those were anxious, exciting days that the present generation know but little about.

Among that party of first volunteers was a favorite cousin of the writer who was scarcely seventeen years old. The one thing above all others that I wished as I saw him ride away was that I was old enough to go, too.

Patriotism ran high in Carthage, and the town sent more than its share of volunteers in the early days of the war before there were any big bounties and when the pay was $11 per month.

One bright morning in the fall of 1861 a motherless lad of less than thirteen saw his father go away with a company of men that had been recruited for the Morgan Flying Artillery, then being organized at Staten Island, in New York harbor. He wanted to go with his father, but the suggestion was not listened to.

After the regiment was sent to Virginia Capt. Smith of the Carthage company returned home after more men. He brought a letter to the little lad from his father and, patting the boy on his head, asked him in a joking way how he would like to be a soldier. This gave the boy an opportunity that he was wanting, and he pleaded with the officer to take him back with him. The mother was dead, the home was broken up; the little fellow argued that he would be better off with his father.

The tender hearted captain sympathized with the boy, but said he did not know what he could do with such a little fellow. The boy would not be put off, however. He had inherited persistency from his Scottish ancestors, and after much importuning the captain said that he did not know how it could be managed, but he would try to take the boy back with him.

In March, 1862, when two months past thirteen years old, the one of whom I write started for the war with a squad of recruits in charge of Sergt. Wesley Powell. Strange to relate, this same Powell, two years and a half later, had charge of a detachment of soldiers carrying rations to their comrades on the firing line in front of Petersburg, when a shell burst so close to them that several were stunned, although not seriously injured, and among them was the boy who went to the war with the sergeant so long before.