Here is the conclusion of the story. (For the rest, go here: one, two, three, four.)

Americans understood the significance of the Civil War even as it was unfolding and were anxious to record it for posterity.  This was the most literate generation of Americans up until this time; during the war they had read newspapers such as the New York Herald and periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News voraciously.  They also had written reams of letters to and from the front.  Now they turned their attention to the second draft of history.  Seemingly every regiment had to publish its official history of where it was and what it did during the War of the Rebellion.  McKenzie’s 13th New York published two monographs, its official history and an account of its 1879 trip to Canada in honor of Queen Victoria’s 60th birthday.  In the 1880s The Century Magazine published nearly one hundred battlefield accounts written by Union and Confederate officers that proved wildly popular with Northerners and Southerners alike.  Inevitably the magazine published a multi volume hardcover edition with expanded content which sold over 75,000 copies.  The most successful publishing endeavor was Grant’s Memoirs, published in 1885 by Mark Twain.  Justifiably considered a masterpiece of American letters, Grant’s biography captivated Americans and restored the general’s family fortune.

At the time of Grant’s death in 1885 interest in the Civil War was never higher.  Tensions between the sections were starting to cool.  The war had been over twenty years and the veterans, now in full middle age, were increasingly aware of their own mortality and their place in history.  Civil War veterans, especially Union veterans, were an exceptionally powerful block.  Organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) were part fraternal club, part political action group protecting veterans’ interests, especially pension benefits.  The GAR, however, was not just about camaraderie and securing privileges; its members took their role as defenders of the Union seriously.  They were equally serious about preserving that memory for future generations  The men of the 13th New York were part of this phenomenon.  When the GAR formed in 1866 the men named Camp 399 named themselves the Clarence D. McKenzie Post.

A nondescript  grave in a common field, even a common field in one of the country’s most prestigious garden cemeteries, was no place for the individual who had become the human face of the regiment and its sacrifices.  Memorialization was an increasing phenomenon.  The monuments and memorials that veterans literally built to themselves were quite consciously an attempt to stand in their place after they were gone.  Almost immediately after its founding in 1879, the 13th Regiment Veteran Association began raising funds for an appropriate memorial.  Commemorating individual soldiers was increasingly common in the late Victorian America.  Advertisements for the construction and maintenance of statuary were ubiquitous in regimental histories (including the 13th’s) and in the magazines geared toward veterans and their families.  The Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut advertised a generic soldier for $450 in 1880s dollars; for an additional $150 the likeness of the specific individual could be had.  The 13th chose the latter option.

On November 25, 1886, a quarter century after Clarence McKenzie was senselessly killed in an Annapolis encampment, a contingent of veterans paraded from the Thirteenth Armory down Flatbush to Green-Wood.  As the rain fell heavily John B. Woodward, once an officer in the 13th and now a prominent Brooklynite, gave the oration.  Speechmaking was considered a show in the years before electronic entertainment, with audience expecting a combination of entertainment, humor, and moral uplift.  Woodward did not disappoint.  After, the drape was pulled and the monument to the Little Drummer Boy unveiled.

Here is the penultimate chapter in the Clarence McKenzie story. (One, two, and three here)

The hagiography was immediate.  First came the viewing in Annapolis.  After the body was returned to his parents home there were several additional weeks of observances by clergy, military and civil officials.  Then came the funeral attended by the children of Public School Number 8, Sunday Schoolers, friends, neighbors, and thousands of others.  Reverend Guion emphasized the justness of the Union cause, the traitors responsible for the war, and the importance of putting down the rebellion.  Next came Reverend McClelland.  In the finest Victorian oratory McClelland reminded the audience of how, “We loved the boy for his sweet and genial disposition, for the noble patriotism that fired even his young bosom.”  He mentioned the Bible, its Moroccan leather, gilt edges, and brass clasp.  It had been made in England and purchased, with another, in Manhattan years earlier.  It was almost providential, he averred, that he did not give the Bibles away after initially purchasing them, but had waited for a proper time, the moment coming two years later when the little drummer boy left with his regiment.  Finally, almost anti-climactically, the boy was taken to the cemetery and buried in a modest grave.

That was not all.  Almost immediately a small book entitled, The Little Drummer Boy, Clarence D. McKenzie, the Child of the Thirteenth Regiment, N.Y.S.M., and the Child of the Mission Sunday School appeared.  Something of an oral history of the young boy’s life the slim monograph, published by the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, recounts the boy’s life from the working class neighborhoods of Brooklyn to his salvation and eventual martyrdom.  In a representative passage Reverend Luther G. Bingham, the books compiler, the states that “Among the many heart stirring incidents of “the war” now waged between those, who ought to be friends, perhaps none has created more deep and wide spread sympathy in New York and Brooklyn, than the sudden and accidental death of the youngest drummer boy of the Thirteenth Regiment..”

The reason for such sympathy was the timing.  If McKenzie had died six weeks later no one would have noticed, and certainly the would not have turned out by the thousands for his funeral or written books in his honor.  Thee country no longer had the luxury.  Seven days after  the funeral the Battle of Bull Run took place in Virginia.

There had began some skirmishes, even minor battles, prior to First Manassas but nothing on the scale of what took place on the the shores of Bull Run creek on July 21st.  All told 5,000 men, North and South, were killed, missing, or wounded that day.  And the casualties continued from there.  The following spring came the even bloodier Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, soon to be eclipsed by the even the even more ghastly Seven Days’ Battles in Virginia.  Death was now so plentiful that massed, ritualized grieving for any one individual was not a luxury.  All officers could do was bury the dead on the battlefields where they fell or, perhaps, in a local cemetery.  Eventually even this proved insufficient.  On July 17, 1862 Lincoln signed legislation creating the national cemeteries.  By the end of the year there were fourteen facilities across the nation, including one in Brooklyn.  When the last army surrendered in May 1865 there were more cemeteries, and they would be needed.  Four full years after the accidental death of Clarence McKenzie 750,000 other Americans had also been killed.

Tomorrow: part five