The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Acorn, by John McElroy

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Title: The Red Acorn

Author: John McElroy

Release Date: August, 2001 [Etext #2766]
Posting Date: March 14, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED ACORN ***

Produced by Brett Fishburne

THE RED ACORN

By John McElroy

Preface

The name given this story is that made glorious by the valor and
achievements of the splendid First Division of the Fourteenth Army
Corps, the cognizance of which was a crimson acorn, worn on the breasts
of its gallant soldiers, and borne upon their battle flags. There are
few gatherings of men into which one can go to-day without finding some
one wearing, as his most cherished ornament, a red acorn, frequently
wrought in gold and studded with precious stones, and which tells that
its wearer is a veteran of Mill Springs, Perryville, Shiloh, Corinth,
Stone River, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Jonesville, March to
the Sea, and Bentonville.

The Fourteenth Corps was the heart of the grand old Army of the
Cumberland--an army that never knew defeat. Its nucleus was a few
scattered regiments in Eastern Kentucky, in 1861, which had the good
fortune to be commanded by Gen. George H. Thomas. With them he won the
first real victory that blessed our arms. It grew as he grew, and under
his superb leadership it was shaped and welded and tempered into one of
the mightiest military weapons the world ever saw. With it Thomas wrung
victory from defeat on the bloody fields of Stone River and Chickamauga;
with it he dealt the final crushing blow of the Atlanta campaign, and
with it defeat was again turned to victory at Bentonville.

The characters introduced into the story all belonged to or co-operated
with the First Division of the Fourteenth Corps. The Corps' badge was
the Acorn. As was the custom in the army, the divisions in each Corps
were distinguished by the color of the badges--the First's being red,
the Second's white, and the Third's blue. There was a time when this
explanation was hardly necessary, but now eighteen years have elapsed
since the Acorn flags fluttered victoriously o