For God, Family and Republic

In Harpers Ferry, the Town House was used for quartering soldiers during the late War between the States. There was story of a Confederate drummer boy that was particularly moving, and yet utterly sad.

A group of Union soldiers had captured a number of Confederate soldiers including a young Confederate drummer boy. Because he was so young, the Union soldiers decidely that sending him to an abysmmal Union prison would be a veritable death sentence. Instead they decided to keep the boy with them, and they made him into sort of a mascot.

Things went well for the little fellow for several weeks, but then the soldiers got bored and turned to riotous entertainment. They started to pick on the little drummer boy. They tasked him with menial tasks, and ordered him around, subjecting him to constant harrassment, goading and prodding. They made him labor for hours on end, and he had to wash their clothes, clean their guns and shine their boots. The boy became so utterly discouraged in time that he started to cry and beg for his mother. They had no pity, and it only infuriated the soldiers; they told him to 'grow up,' and they goaded him more and more. The poor boy cried off and on and continually begged all the more for his mother.

One night the Union soldiers were drinking heavily, and went into a riotus frenzy and they started goading and picking on the drummer boy. They started tossing him from one drunken soldier to another, and scared him. And something terrible happened to make his screams all the more omninous, as a soldier did not capture the little drummer boy when he was tossed his way. Terribly, the poor little boy went flying out of a window and landed on a rock below, killing him instantly.

Since that time, this story has fed ghost stories and old wise-tales in the Harper's Ferry town of a little boy being heard crying for his mother.

Acknowledgements
Story colloborated in Ghosts of Harpers Ferry by Stephen D. Brown

Photo copyright Mike Lynaugh Photography, and is reprinted with permission. Mike is proprietor of the Virtual Civil War web site, and author of a marvelous book entitled Ghosts of the Field.