A Chautauqua Boy in the Civil War and Afterward (Annotated)

No less authority than Albert Bushnell Hart, the "Grand Old Man" of American historians, wrote the introduction to this marvelous 1912 classic. Not only was David Parker's life exciting and eventful, the man could write a memoir that holds the reader through every page.David B. Parker was only 18 years old when he enlisted in the Union cause during the American Civil War. Yet he rose quickly and found himself in the company of the greatest men of his day.Parker knew "Fighting Joe" Hooker well, General George Gordon Meade--whom he thought cold and unlikable--a little, and was fortunate as to command the high regard of General Ulysses S. Grant.This book is unique. Young Parker did his share of fighting in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, and has recorded some striking and entertaining things about the soldiers in the trenches, but it was as a courier, marshal, and later mail postmaster that he rose to prominence.Throughout the war he developed a talent for cutting red tape.He took dispatches between Grant and Abraham Lincoln and was briefed by Grant about the Overland Campaign so that Parker could organize the smooth running of the mails during that important end-of-war campaign. In 1868, Grant appointed Parker U.S. Marshal for Virginia. He ensured seating the first African-American on a jury.He dealt with moonshiners who from 1865 to 1869 had had their own way and were sometimes defended by ex-soldiers. The tales of Parker's experience with counterfeiters and other desperate characters would easily suit a writer of detective novels. He also relates some interesting details about his acquaintance with Frederick Douglass.Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever.