So many acts of heartlessness and cruelty during the great civil war
have been recorded that it is a real pleasure to have an opportunity to
record an act of manly kindness on the part of a gallant Confederate
soldier to a Yankee boy. In the town of Bennington, in the Green
Mountains of Vermont, in the spring of 1861, there lived a poor woman
with six children, five boys and one little girl, the youngest of the
former a stripling 14 years old. When the wires flashed the news from
Washington all over our land that the rebels had fired upon the old
flag at Fort Sumpter, the four older boys responded to the country’s
call and hurried to the seat of war. The younger lad, his heart fired
with genuine Green Mountain patriotism, ran away from home and, eluding
pursuit, made his way to the camp on the Potomac. But his ardor was
somewhat dampened by the discovery of the fact that he could not, in
consequence of his youth and diminutiveness, enlist as a soldier.
Determined to remain at the front; and having, as the saying is, to
scratch for a living, he went to selling newspapers to the soldiers.
Leaving the camp between New Baltimore and Warrenton about the 10th
of November, 1862, he went to Washington for a supply of papers.
Having accomplished his object, the young lad set out on horseback
for the camp, having to travel a distance of thirty miles. A change
of position by the army during his absence had occurred, and as a
consequence he ran into the rebel picket line and was taken to General
J. E. B. Stuart’s headquarters, at a hotel in Warrenton, and from there
sent to Libby Prison, in Richmond, arriving there November 13. Major
Turner was in command of the prison, and when the young prisoner was
brought into his presence, observing that he was a mere boy, the Major
spoke kindly to him, and, after his name had been enrolled, asked him
the customary question, if he had any money or valuables about his
person. The frightened boy had managed to conceal his money, $380, in
his boots, and in answer to the question, put his hand down, and while
a tear-drop glistened in his bright eye and his boyish lip quivered, he
brought it forth and handed it to the rebel major, and trying hard to
choke down the swelling in his throat, he told of his widowed mother at
home, his four brothers in the army, his having made his money selling
papers, and saving it to send with his brothers’ wages to his mother.
The Major folded the boy’s passes around the money and said to him:
“You shall have this again, my boy, when you are permitted to go from
here.” Six weeks afterward the lad was paroled, and, repairing to Major
Turner’s office, the kind officer, handing him the package of money and
the passes, just as he received them, said: “Here is your money, my
boy.” With trembling hands, but a joyous heart, the little fellow took
the package. He was sent to Washington, and a few weeks afterward was
going his old rounds selling newspapers. The boy was Doc Aubrey, the
newsboy of the Iron Brigade, who now resides in Milwaukee.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
p. 12: Another version of this story (George B. Herbert, _The Popular
History of the Civil War in America_, F. M. Lupton, Publisher, New
York, 1885, p. 476) includes the following additional paragraph
immediately after the paragraph that starts “Ward Lamon, when Lincoln
had appointed him ...”.
“I am astonished at you, Ward,” said Mr. Lincoln; “you ought to have
known better. Hereafter, when you have to hit a man, use a club and not
your fist.”