PROLOGUE

My grandfather was a drummer boy during the Civil War. You may wonder how that’s possible when that war took place 150 years ago. Do the math. My father was born in 1884, when his father (the drummer boy) was 37 years old. I was born in 1926, when my father was 42 years old. My grandfather died the year I was born. Easy to figure out how ancient I am now.

Are you wondering why I’ve waited so long?

The answer is simple. Some information was missing. I’ve been gathering bits and pieces of information for over 50 years. I tried some years ago, before computers were invented, to find my grandfather on microfilms of the 1860 census, without success. I was looking in Indiana, based on what my father knew, but Almon wasn’t in Indiana in 1860. The National Archives now has the censuses on-line, supplying the needed information at the click of a mouse, telling me where he was in both 1850 and 1860. A lot of other fascinating information is online as well. Now his story can be told.

I want to tell you about a 14-year-old run-away, using mostly primary sources: my father’s recollections, census records, the published history of Al’s regiment, a diary written by a member of his regiment, a memoir by another prisoner of war, my grandfather’s obituary, records in the National Archives, and related publications about the Civil War.

Almon was born in 1847. According to my father, Almon’s father Egbert died in 1852. His mother then married a man named Bacon, who had a ranch in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She took Almon and his sister Josephine there. Another son, named Robert Emile Bacon, was born while she lived with Mr. Bacon.

My father said that Emily’s second husband Bacon was so cruel that she left him eventually. What would you do if you had a stepfather who beat up on your mother and treated you and your sister like hired help?

Almon ran away.

In 1861, when Almon was 14, the Civil War had begun. Recruiting parties, led by men who had already seen service in the war, came to major towns, flags flying, drums beating, with smartly uniformed officers beckoning to young men in the gathering crowd. Almon surely encountered one such spectacle. He saw the eager recruits signing the paper lying on the big drum. He noted that the drummer and the bugler were boys no older than himself. He listened to their stirring rhythms. He sensed them rousing the excitement of the onlookers. He thought, I could do that.

When that same 19th Regiment left Camp Morton for the front, Almon eluded his mother, changed his name to Albert Walton, and followed the regiment.

Somehow he acquired a uniform, much too big for him, of course. I wonder how he got enough to eat, since he had not been mustered into the army. Did the men dishing out daily rations simply distribute food to everyone in uniform? Or did Al go out foraging in the countryside, lifting a chicken from a dooryard, finding a nest of eggs? Soldiers were not supposed to do this, but no one paid much attention to what a camp follower did. If Al brought fresh food to camp, he would have been welcomed by the enlisted men.

Traveling vendors called sutlers offered food like sausages or sardines for sale at very high prices. But Al had no money. Nor could he have bought food on credit because the sutlers required pay vouchers, which Al did not have.

The 19^th Regiment was three months in Virginia when Al was taken sick with typhoid fever. Little wonder, for they drank water wherever they could find it. He was put in a hospital in Washington, DC. Recovered from the fever, he was sent back to Indianapolis. The 60th Indiana Volunteers were then guarding prisoners at the Capitol of the State. Al lied about his age and tried to enlist in that regiment, but his small size disqualified him. In June, however, when the 60th Indiana left the state for Louisville, Kentucky, Al, without being mustered, followed it as a cymbal player in the regimental band.

The 60^th Indiana was sent to Munfordsville at about the same time that the War Department ended support for regimental bands, so Al’s band was left behind. Al lingered along the fringes of activity in Louisville, looking for an opportunity to attach himself to some other army unit.

Some three million Americans served in the military during the four years of the Civil War. I need to tell you about the 75^th Indiana Infantry Volunteers because Al would find his place eventually in that regiment. According to the History of the Seventy-fifth Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers, the nine companies composing that regiment were raised in

the Eleventh Congressional District of Indiana, the camp of rendez-vous being at Wabash, Indiana. The camp, a half mile south of Wabash, was on the south bank of the Wabash River—four or five acres of timbered ground on the side of a hill, which gradually descended to beautiful springs at the bottom.

Each soldier was issued an ill-fitting uniform coat that reached to his ankles, one blanket, a water canteen, and a knapsack that would hold

thirty to fifty pounds of surplus baggage—extra clothing, blankets, family keepsakes, and a variety of personal treasures. Each soldier had a tin plate, tin cup, a knife, fork, and spoon, and a haversack.

On the 19^th of August 1862, the regiment—a thousand men all told—was mustered into service under the command of Colonel John U. Petit. The regiment had nine companies—A through J—of around a hundred men each. Officers of each company—two captains, five first lieutenants, two second lieutenants, several sergeants and corporals— were elected from among its recruits by the company casting ballots. Because they were known to each other, little formality existed between these raw farm boys and the men they chose to lead them. In fact, they didn’t hesitate to talk back to them.

When Captain Francis M. Bryant told Company C that they were headed south, someone asked Why? The Captain probably responded, "That’s what the colonel ordered."

"Who tells the colonel?"

"The generals."

"Where are the generals?"

"In Washington."

"How do the generals tell the colonel"

"Telegraph." Which would have ended the discussion. How these things worked was far beyond the scope of their imaginations.

On the same evening of the muster, the soldiers formed a line and marched to the State Arsenal. As each enlisted man presented himself at a small window of the arsenal, he received a Springfield rifle and a cartridge box. The regiment was armed with this excellent gun throughout its term of service.

The regimental History offers a vivid description of their departure from Wabash: "The bustle of preparation was mingled with the farewell of loved ones. Long before the hour of departure, and men sang patriotic songs of joyfulness, About seven o’clock the Regiment marched to the depot, where box-cars were waiting to convey them to the place of muster.

"An immense crowd gathered to see them off. When they were ‘all aboard,’ passing out of the depot, they were greeted with shouts of good cheer by the assembled citizens.

"The eagerness on the part of the citizens along the route ‘to greet and welcome the boys’ who were on their way to war, was unprecedented. At every home—however humble—the windows and housetops were decorated with the flag of the nation. Relatives, friends, and acquaintances laid aside the duties of the day and resorted to the towns and depots along the way. They were determined to give the defenders of their homes and firesides a good send-off. Men, women, and children by the thousand congregated at Kokomo, Tipton, and Noblesville with baskets of provisions, with which they fed the soldiers. In some instances, mementoes were presented to the men, who carried them to the Southern camps and battle-fields, and a few of these mementos found their way into Southern prisons.

"There was a peculiar vein of sadness running through all this joy. Aged parents, with tearful eyes, bending over their young sons and bidding them, with a ‘God bless you,’ go into the tented field to expose their lives for their country, was a particularly sad expression of attachment for both the sons and the nation. Many of these ‘boys in blue’ for the last time looked cheerily into the eyes, grasped the hands, and impressed the kiss of affection upon the cheeks of parents, wives, sisters, and sweethearts. The scene, however, was a cloud in the midst of sunshine, which soon disappeared."²

By late August Confederate armies were threatening the cities of Covington, KY, Louisville, KY, and Cincinnati, OH, all the new Regiments raised in the northwest were sent south to Kentucky, the 75th among them. Al would have had no idea that their objective was to take control of the one section of the Memphis and Charleston railroad line that they did not yet control—between Nashville and Chattanooga, TN. This important railroad line gave the Mississippi Valley region a direct connection to Virginia and the Atlantic seaboard.

On August 21^st the Regiment—one thousand and thirty-six strong— boarded the railroad cars at Indianapolis for Louisville, Kentucky. They slept rolled in their blankets, lying in rows, heads and all covered.

"The journey was uneventful, except the ovations received from the citizens of the towns and villages through which they passed during the early part of the night. As they journeyed, women and children, through gratitude for the services expected from them, fed them on pies and cakes. They reached Louisville on the 23d, crossing the Ohio River at Jeffersonville about six o’clock in the morning, and marched to Camp Oakland, just outside the southern limits of the city. After their knapsacks and haversacks were issued to them, the regiment appeared, on the evening of the day of arrival, upon dress parade doe the first time."³

After the arrival of Major General Don Carlos Buell’s army at Louisville, the 75^th Regiment was one of three regiments making up the Twelfth Division, assigned to the Army of the Ohio, under the general supervision of General Buell.

General Braxton Bragg’s supply bases were at Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee, with his Confederate army heading for the Ohio River and reclaiming Kentucky as they went. From Louisville the 75^th Indiana Infantry Volunteers Regiment moved out of camp and formed its first line of battle with the expectation of an attack. They drilled often, performed daily guard and picket duty, and met frequent ‘scares.’

Al applied for admission into the 75th Indiana Infantry Volunteers as a drummer. Each company had a drummer boy or a bugler, but Captain Francis M. Bryant’s Company C at that time had no musician. The Captain requisitioned a drum and ordered Al to try his skill with it. He demonstrated very satisfactorily to the Captain that he knew how to beat a drum.

Almon was mustered into the service on September 1, 1862, under the name of Albert Walton, as the musician of Company C of the 75th Indiana Regiment. At the time of muster he was 15 years, 7 months, and 7 days old, and four feet seven inches tall—certainly the smallest member of the Regiment.