A child soldier took to the civil war fields
As the Confederates were sweeping the Yankees from the fields of
Chickamauga, Ga. in September 1863, a Southern colonel spotted a
diminutive figure hurrying off and galloped over brandishing his
sword.
A child soldier took to the civil war fields
As the Confederates were sweeping the Yankees from the fields of Chickamauga, Ga. in September 1863, a Southern colonel spotted a diminutive figure hurrying off and galloped over brandishing his sword.
“Surrender, you damned little Yankee,” he demanded. The small soldier whirled, aimed his rifle and shot him from the saddle. “Johnnie Shiloh” had made the news again. John Joseph Klem had tried to enlist in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry in May 1861 shortly after he ran away from home but was told, “Sorry, Bub, we’re not enlisting nine-year-olds today.” Undaunted, he tried next with the 22nd Michigan. He was rejected again but followed along until he was adopted as a mascot and taught to be a drummer boy. The officers chipped in and paid him the $13 monthly salary of a private.
Johnnie, who was born on Aug. 13, 1851, soon became a favorite with the men and rode into battle on an artillery caisson. At Shiloh in April 1862, newspapers reported that he was so close to the fighting that an enemy shell shattered his drum, and he became a minor celebrity
He was allowed to enlist in May 1863 at age 11 and given a uniform and rifle appropriate to his size. After Chickamauga, he was promoted to sergeant and at 12 became the youngest non-commissioned officer in the history of the U.S. Army. By then he had changed his name to John Lincoln Clem.
He was captured while guarding a train in Georgia. Confederate newspapers proclaimed that his age showed “what sore straits they are driven to when they have to send out babies to fight us” before he was exchanged.
Johnnie served in other battles and was wounded twice before his discharge in December 1864. He completed high school and applied to West Point but failed the entrance examination several times. An old comrade-in-arms, President Ulysses S. Grant, heard of his plight and commissioned him as a second lieutenant in 1871.
Clem married Anita French in 1875 and she bore him two children. She took up housekeeping as a matter of course in whatever post the Army sent him until she died in 1899.
Clem married Bessie Sullivan four years later and she, too, adjusted their lives to the Army’s demands. From time to time he attended the reunions of Civil War veterans where he was always warmly welcomed.
Clem followed the war in Europe that erupted in 1914 and sensed that the United States would be involved before it ended. He was anxious to go but President Woodrow Wilson wanted him to retire after a long, splendid career. When Clem did retire as a major general in 1916, he was the last Civil War veteran on the Army’s rolls. Upon his death on May 13, 1937, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
His tombstone bears his name, rank, and pertinent dates along with the title by which the nation knew him so many years earlier, “The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga.”
