WITH SHERMAN TO THE SEA: A Drummer's Story of the Civil War [Hardcover] Corydon Edward Foote; Olive Deane Hormel and Elizabeth Yates

Product Overview

There has probably been nothing in all history quite like the drummers of the
American Civil War. The drum was still a commander's means of communicating
orders during battle, and it was the drum that kept up temp and spirits during
long marches. Loyal and intrepid lads by the thousands, most of them only in
their teens, drummed and marched through all those years of conflicts. So it
was with Cord Foote. To his mother's anguish and his father's pride, he
enlisted with the Tenth Michigan Infantry the day after his thirteenth
birthday. He put away his birds' eggs and baby rabbits and went off to war,
looking scarcely eleven years old, in a too large uniform and with his drum
almost scraping the ground. Cord and his mentor, a Mexican War veteran called
Old Lacey who was drum-major, fared forth with their regiment by wagon train,
railway, and river steamer into the heart of the rebel country. After the
first fumbling months, they drummed the regiment into such battles as
Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, serving as water carriers and stretcher
bearers during actual fighting. Then finally they foraged and fought with
General Sherman on this march from Atlanta to the sea. Cord Foote lived to be
ninety-five, but nothing ever mattered much to him except the Civil War. Not
long before his death, he was still able to pour out his reminiscences into
the willing ears of Olive Deane Hormel, who wrote them down. There they are,
in a uniaue record. Here are soldierly cameraderie at its best horseplay,
heartbreak, and heroism. Read more