Soldier Boy of Gettysburg, The

DESCRIPTION: "The cannon’s mouth had ceased to hurl its deadly missiles through the air Its firing was no longer heard through murking clouds of dark despair." The mortally wounded boy bids farewell to mother. They bury him beneath a tree
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1922 (Rickaby Collection)
KEYWORDS: soldier death burial war mother Civilwar
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Jul 1-3, 1863 - Battle of Gettysburg. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee invades Pennsylvania and is pursued by the Union Army of the Potomac under newly-appointed commander George Gordon Meade. The two armies meet at Gettysburg, Pennsyvania, with Lee's army attacking on the first day but eventually having its last offensive fail with the repulse of "Pickett's Charge"; the Confederates have to return to Virginia. Each side takes between 20,000 and 25,000 casualties, or between a quarter and a third of their strength
FOUND IN: US(NE)
ST SolBoyGe (Partial)
NOTES [483 words]: Franz Rickaby collected this in 1922 from Mrs. L. L. Taylor of Forbes, North Dakota. Taylor, the former Miss L. L. Rose, learned it from her mother, Mrs. Alice Gary Rose. Her father was a solder, but it is not clear from Rickaby's note if he served in the Civil War or in some other context.
The text and tune collected by Rickaby were never published but remained in his papers. When Dykstra and Leary republished Rickaby (the book cited as Rickaby/Dykstra/Leary-PineryBoys-SongsSongcatchingInLumberjackEra), they mentioned this song but did not publish it.
Minnie Aline had heard it from her own father (born 1888); the family came from Manitoba to Oregon in 1898. Aline's father reported learning it from his mother, who is thought to have had it from a neighbor. Aline had never found any other versions until she found a reference to Rickaby in something I wrote. She then managed to find Rickaby's version. The two texts are in the Supplemental Tradition.
It looks like a broadside, but I have never seen it, and no one I've asked has ever heard of it either. But many thanks are due to Ms. Aline for preserving it and for bringing it to my attention.
I note that the author of this piece had almost certainly never been near a Civil War battlefield. Ordinary soldiers did not carry swords; only officers and cavalrymen had bladed weapons. And cavalry losses at Gettysburg were slight, although infantry losses were extremely high. And while there were boy officers, there weren't many. So it is unlikely that it is about an actual person. (Though I am reminded of the "boy major," Joseph Latimer, who was mortally wounded at Gettysburg and died on August 1, 1863, about a month before he turned twenty. But he was a Confederate, serving in Ewell's Second Corps of Lee's army. And he was carried away from the field; he died, a month after the battle, of gangrene that set in in his amputated arm.)
The texts as preserved don't show any knowledge of the battlefield, either, except a mention of trees. The field at Gettysburg was not as heavily wooded as, say, the Wilderness or Chickamauga, but there were trees there: Culp's Hill, the anchor of the Union right flank, fought over on all three days, was heavily wooded. The assault on the Union left flank on the second day went through the Peach Orchard, and some Rebel troops went around heavily wooded Big Round Top to get at less-wooded Little Round Top. And Pickett's Charge was directed toward the "little clump of trees" on Cemetery Ridge.
Although the words are neutral as to which side the boy served on, the fact that the Battle of Antietam is called by that name, and not the "Battle of Sharpsburg," says it is a Union song. This is further supported by the fact that the boy was buried in the field; since the Union kept possession of the ground, it would have been easier for Union forces to bury a comrade in the field. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: SolBoyGe

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