JOHNNIE CLEM.
The Drummer Boy of Shiloh and the Boy Hero of Chickamauga, Chattanooga.
JOHNNIE CLEM, who lived at Newark, Ohio, was perhaps the youngest and smallest recruit in the Union Army. The army historian, Lossing, says that he was probably the youngest person who ever bore arms in battle.
He was born at Newark, Ohio, Aug. 13, 1851, and his full name was John Winton Clem. He was of German-French descent, and the family spell the name Klem, and not Clem. His sister Lizzie, who is now Mrs. Adams, and lives on the Granville road near Newark, gives the following statement to a visitor:—
It being Sunday, May 24, 1861, and the rebellion in progress, Johnnie said at dinner table,—
“Father, I’d like mighty well to be a drummer boy. Can’t I go into the Union army?”
“Tut! my boy, what nonsense! You are not ten years old,” was the father’s reply; and he thought no more about it. When he disappeared, he had no thought that he had gone into the service.That afternoon Johnnie took charge of his sister Lizzie, seven years old, and his little brother Lewis, five years old, and took them to the Sunday-school room, and left them there.
As Johnnie did not return, the father and step-mother were greatly distressed, fearing he had gone to the canal and gone in for a swim, for he was an expert swimmer, and had been drowned. They searched far and near to find him, and had the water drawn from the head of the canal that they might find his body, but all in vain. Several weeks past before they heard from him, and then they got word through a woman living at Mount Vernon, who had been a neighbor to them at Newark, that Johnnie had been there, and that she had sent him home in care of the conductor.
It seems that Johnnie moved on the sympathies of the conductor, who took him on to Columbus, where he joined the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment; but ascertaining that an uncle was in that regiment, he left it and joined the Twenty-second Michigan.
He was an expert drummer; and being a bright, cheerful little fellow, he soon won his way into the confidence and affection of officers and men.
He was in many battles; at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Nashville, and Kenesaw, and in other engagements in which the Army of the Cumberland took part.
When he entered the army, being too youngto be mustered in, he went with the regiment, the Twenty-second Michigan, as a volunteer, until the battle of Shiloh.
When he was beating the long roll at the battle of Shiloh, a piece of shell struck his drum and sent it flying in fragments. He was after that called “Johnnie Shiloh.”
He was afterwards mustered in, and served also as a marker, and with his little musket so served on the battle-field of Chattanooga. At the close of that bloody day, the brigade in which he was, being partly surrounded by rebels, was retreating, when he, being unable to fall back as fast as the rest of the line, was singled out by a rebel colonel who rode up to him with the summons, “Scoundrel, halt! Surrender, you —— little Yankee!”
Johnnie halted, and brought his gun into position as though he was about to surrender, thus throwing the colonel off his guard. In another moment the gun was cocked, fired, and the colonel fell dead from his horse.
His regiment was pursued, and a volley was fired at that moment, and Johnnie fell as though he had been killed, and lay there on the field until it was dark enough for him to slip away unnoticed. At Chickamauga he was struck with a fragment of a shell in the hip. He was taken prisoner with others while detailed to bring up a supply train from Bridgeport, Ala.
He fared hard as a prisoner. His sister, Mrs. Adams, says, “The rebels stripped him of everything—his clothes, his shoes, his little gun—an ordinary musket, I suppose, cut short—and his little cap. He said he did not care about anything but his cap; he did want to save that, and it hurt him sorely to part with it, for it had three bullet holes through it.” When exchanged he was given a furlough and sent home for a week. He was weak and emaciated from starvation, and his clothes were a bundle of rags. He had been absent about two years in the army, and was at that time in his twelfth year.
I did not meet him at Shiloh, but became acquainted with him at Chattanooga, when he was in the hospital there, and saw him frequently when he was on General Thomas’s staff.
He was a fair and beautiful child then, about twelve years old, but very small of his age. He was at that time only about thirty inches high and weighed about sixty pounds.
At Atlanta, while in the act of delivering a despatch from General Thomas to General Logan, a ball struck the head of his pony obliquely, killing him, and wounding his little rider in the right ear.
For his heroic conduct, he was made a sergeant, and his name placed on the Roll of Honor, and he was attached to Headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland.
Shortly afterwards he received from Nettie M.Chase, the daughter of Chief Justice Chase, a silver medal inscribed:—
Sergeant Johnnie Clem,TWENTY-SECOND MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER INFANTRY,FROM N. M. C.
which he worthily wears as a badge of honor on his left breast with other medals.
When the war was over, General Thomas advised him to study and make a man of himself. He studied at West Point, but on account of his size he could not enter as a cadet. In 1890 he weighed one hundred and five pounds and was only five feet high. His wife, Annita, the daughter of General Wm. H. French, U.S.A., is also small and delicate, weighing about seventy pounds. General Grant commissioned him as a lieutenant. He is now captain of the twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry, and is stationed at Columbus, Ohio, and holds the important office of depot quartermaster and commissary.
He has one son living, who is very like him, only he will be larger.
From recent correspondence he seems to be the same kindly, great-hearted Johnnie as when I first met him at Chattanooga, Tenn.