Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier (Dunkelman AG)

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Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death & Celebrity of Amos Humiston

 

By Mark Dunkleman

  • Lying dead in Gettysburg in 1863, a solitary Union soldier lacked any standard means of identification. Only a single clue was clutched in his fingers: an ambrotype of his three young children.

    With this photograph, the single clue to his identity, a publicity campaign to locate the soldier's family swept the North. Within a month, his grieving widow and children would be located in Portville, New York. The soldier, a devoted husband, and father, was revealed as Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Volunteers. Using many previously untapped sources, noted historian Mark H. Dunkelman recreates the fascinating story of 19th-century war, sentiment, and popular culture in full detail.

    The Humiston story touched deep emotions in Civil War America, inspiring a wave of prose, poetry, and song. Amid the outpouring of public sympathy, a charitable drive grew to assist the bereft family. At the end of the war, the crusade was expanded to establish a home in Gettysburg for orphans of deceased soldiersThe Homestead. The first residents of the institution were Amos Humiston's widow Philinda and her three children: Franklin, Alice, and Frederick. In this extensive account, a full portrait emerges of Amos Humiston, the husband and father destined to be remembered for his death tableau, and of his family, the widow and orphans who struggled for the rest of their lives with celebrity born of tragedy.

    This paperback reprint edition is updated with a new introduction by the author, as well as a foreword by Academy award-winning film director Errol Morris.

    Table of Contents

    Foreword by Errol Morris
    Introduction to the Paperback Edition
    Introduction

    Chapter 1: Amos
    Chapter 2: A Green Hand Sails from New Bedford
    Chapter 3: Roving the Pacific
    Chapter 4: Philinda
    Chapter 5: To the Front
    Chapter 6: Camp Misery
    Chapter 7: A Close Call at Chancellorsville
    Chapter 8: Gettysburg
    Photo Essay
    Chapter 9: Whose Father Was He?
    Chapter 10: A Widow and Her Orphans
    Chapter 11: Celebrity
    Chapter 12: The Homestead
    Chapter 13: A Tarnished Legacy
    Chapter 14: The Family's Later Years
    Chapter 15: Amos Humiston Remembered

    Appendix: Songs Inspired by Amos Humiston
    Bibliographical Note
    Index

  • Paperback
  • 304 pages
  • S/L #34674