Though it is said that the South "robbed the cradle and the grave" to
recruit the armies of the Confederacy, it is as true that young and old
in the North went forth in their zeal to "Stand by the Union," and that
many and many a young soldier and sailor who had not yet seen twenty
summers endured the hardships of the camp and the march, the broiling
suns, and the wasting maladies of semi-tropical seas, fought bravely and
nobly for the unity of the land they loved, and that thousands of them
sleep their last sleep in unmarked graves on the sea and the land. The
writer can remember whole companies, of which nearly half of the number
could be classed as mere boys. These boys of eighteen to twenty, who
survived the rain of bullets, shot, and shell, and the hardly less fatal
assaults of disease, are the middle-aged men of to-day, and every one
of them has a thrilling story to tell. The boys of to-day read with
interest the narratives of the boys of thirty years ago, and listen with
their blood deeply stirred to the recital of the veteran of forty-five
years, or even younger, who brought back to his home only one arm or
one leg.
In his youth the author used to listen to the stories of several aged
Revolutionary pensioners, one of whom had slept in the snows of Valley
Forge, another who had been confined on board of the Jersey prison-ship,
and a third who had been with Washington at the surrender of Cornwallis.
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