From the April 3, 2012, Examiner.
This Confederate private in the 6th Arkansas Infantry sure had one interesting Civil War career. Captured at the Battle of Shiloh, 150 years ago, he became a "Galvanized Yankee" at Camp Douglas in Chicago and was in the Union Army for 18 days until discharged with a severe case of dysentery.
After that, he stayed in the North serving on various merchant ships until joining the US Navy. His first stint was aboard the receiving ship USS North Carolina and then he was on the Moses S, Stuyvesant where he was "ship's wtiter."
Later, he became a record keeper on the USS Minnesota. It is in this job that he became interested in journalism. He wrote an eyewitness account of his ship's relentless bombardment of Fort Fisher for northern newspapers.
An account of it is on pages 220-221 in the "Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley" written by Dorothy Stanley. Unfortunately, I did not find the account.
After the war, he began writing for newspapers and six years later, he uttered those famous words and on into the history books.
I Didn't Previously Know This. --Old B-Runner
No comments:
Post a Comment