Albert Woolson

Last Union Army Veteran Dies;
  Drummer at 17, He Lived to 109
 
Albert Woolson of Duluth
  Also Was Sole Survivor of
    Grand Army of Republic
 
  DULUTH, Minn., Aug. 2---Al-
bert Woolson, the last member
of the Civil War's Union Army,
died today at the age of 109.
  Mr. Woolson, who answered
President Lincoln's call to arms
and marched off to war as a
drummer boy when he was 17,
had been hospitalized for nine
weeks with a recurring lung con-
gestion condition. He lapsed into
a coma early Saturday and did
not regain consciousness. Since
then, he had been fed intrave-
nously and received oxygen
through a nasal tube.
  Members of his family were at
his bedside when he died in St.
Luke's Hospital.  
  Full-scale military funeral
services will be conducted at the
National Guard Armory here
Monday at 2 P.M. Burial will be
in the family lot at Park Hill
Cemetery here.
  Only three veterans of the
Civil War, all members of the
Confederate forces, survive. They
are Walter W. Williams, 113, of
Franklin, Tex.; John Salling,
110, of Slant, Va.; and William
A. Lundy, 108, of Laurel Hill,
Fla. Informed of Mr. Woolson's
death, Mr. Lundy said "I regret
very much the passing of Mr.
Woolson."
  Mr. Woolson's last comrade of
the Union Army, James A. Hard
of Rochester, N.Y., died in 1953
at the age of 111.
  In Washington, President Eis-
enhower said today the death of
Mr. Woolson "brings sorrow to
the hearts" of Americans. The
President said:
  "The American people have
lost the last personal link with
the Union Army.
  "His passing brings sorrow to
the hearts of all of us who cher-
ished the memory of the brave
men on both sides of the War
Between the States."
  With Mr. Woolson's death, only
the Confederate veterans will get
a medal being prepared for the
last survivors of the Civil War
unless the law is changed or
broadly interpreted. Last month
Congress passed a law directing
the Secretary of the Treasury to
prepare gold medals with suit-
able inscriptions honoring the re-
maining veterans of the North
and South.
  Representative John A. Blatnik,
Democrat of Minnesota, pushed
for a quick award of the decora-
tion to Mr. Woolson when the
old soldier became critically ill.
But Mr. Blatnik's office said to-
day the Treasury would be un-
able to get the medal finished
before Oct. 1. There is no definite
provision in the law for a post-
humous award.
  Mr. Woolson married Sarah
Jane Sloper in 1868. She died
in 1901. Three years later he
married Anna Haugen, who died
in 1948. Survivors include six
daughters, Mrs. John Kobus,
Mrs. Arthur Johnson and Mrs.
Robert Campbell, all of Duluth;
Mrs. Adelaid Wellcome, Mrs. F.
W. Rye and Mrs. J.C. Barrett,
all of Seattle, and two sons,
Dr. A.H. Woolson of Spokane,
Wash., and R.C. Woolson of
Dayton, Wash.
  The Kobus family had lived
with Mr. Woolson for several
years. Mrs. Kobus said late to-
day that instead of floral me-
morials the family preferred con-
tributions to the Albert Woolson
Scholarship Fund at the Duluth
Branch of the University of Min-
nesota.
        ------------
     Outlasted 2,200,000
  Mr. Woolson was the sole offi-
cially listed survivor of the
more than 2,200,000 men of the
Union armed forces.  He also was
the last survivor of the Grand
Army of the Republic, an organi-
zation of Union veterans that
exerted wide influence in Amer-
ican politics for many years
after the Civil War.
  Mr. Woolson's great age car-
ried him into what was virtually
another world of warfare as well
as of politics. As a boy, he could
have spoken with venerable men
who had fought in the Revolu-
tionary War. Veterans of the
War of 1812 were numerous in
his youth. When the war in
which he served began in 1861,
the commanding general of the 
Army was Winfield Scott, a
hero of the War of 1812.
  The War with Mexico started
in 1846, the year before Mr.
Woolson was born. Last year,
when he was 108, several de-
pendents of veterans of that con-
flict still were receiving Govern-
ment benefits.
  This year, Mr. Woolson could
include himself among the more
than 19,000,000 living persons
who had served in the United
States armed forces. Of these,
as of May 2, 2,715.896 were
receiving cash compensation or
pension payments from the Gov-
ernment. This included some but
not all of the 826,657 former
members of the armed forces
receiving education benefits.
  Mr. Woolson, who had been
a bugler-drummer rather than a
rifleman, might have been ex-
cused if, in his later years, he
had only a passing interest in
the progress made in the art of
war between the period of his
Civil War service and the middle
of the twentieth century. In 1865
the most expert rifleman could
kill no more than two or
three persons in a minute. In
1945, when Mr. Woolson was in
his noneties, an estimated total
of 100,000 persons were killed
by atomic bombs.

 Civil War Still a Live Topic

  In 1956, ninety-one years after
Appomattox, popular interest in
the war in which Mr. Woolson
had fought showed few signs of
diminishing. Biographical studies
of Civil War figures from Lin-
coln down to generals such as
"Fighting Joe" Hooker were in
bookstores, and a dramatic read-
ing of Stephen Vincent Benet's
"John Brown's Body" had been
presented successfully on Broad-
way within a year or two.
  Mr. Woolson fought in no Civil
War battles, although he
drummed to their graves many
who had. When he was 106 he
remembered it all pretty well.
He recalled himself as a drum-
mer boy of 17 in a rakish blue
forage cap in the precise line of
drummers who beat out the res-
onant slow step on muffled
drums or, again, thudded the
quick step--most likely "The
Girl I Left Behind Me."
  "We went along with a bury-
ing detail," he said. "Going out
we played proper sad music, but
coming back we kinda hit it up.
Once a woman came onto the
road and asked what kind of
music that was to bury some-
body, I told her that we had
taken care of the dead and
that now we were cheering up the
living."
  Mr. Woolson was born in
the New York farm hamlet of
Antwerp, twenty-two miles
northeast of Watertown, on Feb.
11, 1847, the same day Thomas
Alva Edison, the inventor, was
born. James K. Polk, the dark
horse Democrat, was in the
White House and the issues that
were to bring about the Civil
War were being drawn into
focus.
  Willard Woolson, his fath-
er, was a carpenter in Water-
town and apprenticed his son to
this trade. The senior Woolson
had, however, a second vocation.
He was a musician in the band
of a traveling circus. When Pres-
ident Lincoln called for 75,000
volunteers in 1861, the father
and his fellow musicians enlisted
as a body.

   Traced Father to Minnesota

  When his family did not hear
from him for more than a year
they traced him through Army
records to a hospital in Minne-
sota. The younger Woolson and
his mother undertook the diffi-
cult journey by Great Lakes
boat and stage coach to Win-
dom, where they found the fath-
er suffering from a leg wound
received at the battle of Shiloh.
Shortly after the family was re-
united his leg had to be ampu-
tated and he died.
  Mr. Woolson and his mother re-
mained in Windom and the boy
went to work as a carpenter.
But it was wartime. The sound
of drum and bugle was in the
air and it was agony for a spir-
ited boy--mostly especially one in
the drummer-bugler tradition--
not to be in uniform.
  Minnesota's manpower was
stretched thin to furnish its
quota for the Union forces and
at the same time to hold back
the Sioux Indians, who went off
the reservation in 1863. Mr.
Woolson recalled the day he left
for the Army he had seen thirty-
eight Sioux hanged in Mankota.
  In the South, the war was 
dragging out its course. It had
been a war of maneuver and
field entrenchment, but by 1864
the Confederates were beginning
to dig in to save manpower and
the Union needed heavy artil-
lery. Col. William Colville or-
ganized a Minnesota heavy ar-
tillery regiment of 1,800 men.
Mr. Woolson got his mother's
consent and was accepted into
Company C, First Minnesota
Volunteer Heavy Artillery. His
military service dated from Oct.
10, 1864.
  Enlisted as a rifleman, he
wanted to be assigned as drum-
mer and bugler, but Company C
already had its quota of one field
musician.
  "I got the job by knocking
his block off," Mr. Woolson re-
called many years later.
  Late in 1864, the regiment
joined the Army of the Cumber-
land in Tennessee. It was com-
manded by Maj. Gen. George H.
Thomas, known to history as
"The Rock of Chickamauga,"
but more familiarly to his men
as "Pap."
 
   Recalled Firing Cannon

  Minnesota's ponderous cannon
and their north-country canno-
neers waited hopefully at Fort
Oglethorpe to be called into ac-
tion, but the call never came.
Mr. Woolson got to fire a
cannon, though. It was the out-
standing recollection of his Civil
War service.
  The bored gunners of the First
Minnesota Heavy Artillery pre-
pared to fire one of their pieces
just to hear the noise. Mr. Wool-
son recalled it thus:
  "The colonel handed me the
end of a rope and said: 'When I
yell you stand on your toes, open
your mouth wide, give a yell
yourself and pull the rope.' I
yanked the lanyard and the can-
non went off and scared me half
to death."
  The First Minnesota sat out
the spring and early summer of
1865 in the shadow of Lookout
Mountain, near Chattanooga, and
in August the regiment was or-
dered home. Mr. Woolson re-
ceived his discharge on Sept. 7,
1865. He again practiced car-
pentry.
  Veterans of both the Union and
Confederate armies were return-
ing to their homes or perhaps
seeking new homes in the West.
He was but one of thousands re-
turning to civilian life and, in
the case of Union veterans,
an organization was soon formed
that was to make the former
wearers of the blue the most po-
tent force in their country's pol-
itics for the next twenty years.
  This organization was the
Grand Army of the Republic, of
which Mr. Woolson became the
last member in 1953. He had
been named senior vice com-
mander in chief in 1950. The first
G.A.R. post was formed at
Decatur, Ill., in April, 1866.
  Mr. Woolson was still in his
'teens when the G.A.R. was
founded, and it is probable that,
in common with most of the
younger veterans, he did not join
it for many years. The G.A.R.
had a tinge of the secret society
popular in the day. There was
an oath and a ritual, and the or-
ganization was ostensibly free
from politics and dedicated to
good works. In a few years, how-
ever, it became one of the prin-
cipal instruments for keeping the
Republican party in power and
for obtaing pensions and Gov-
ernment job preferences for Union
veterans.
  The G.A.R., as Mr. Woolson
first knew it, was dominated by
such figures as Maj. Gen. John
A. Logan, a swarthy Illinois poli-
tician nicknamed "Black Jack."
A gallant and successful general
and a thundering orator with a
black mane, he never failed to re-
mind his hearers that while "not
all Democrats were rebels, all
rebels had been Democrats."
  Mr. Woolson was a member of
the G.A.R. in 1890, when it
reached its peak of membership of
408,489. Its political influence
had declined in the Eighties, al-
though it was a force to be
reckoned with until the turn of
the century.
  Mr. Woolson did not receive a 
pension until 1900. Immediately
after the Civil War, pensions
were limited to men who had
suffered physical disability, but
in time they were extended to
all with recognized Civil War
service with the Union forces.
Unsuccessful attempts were
made from time to time to ob-
tain Federal payments for Con-
federate veterans. In the South
the states paid small pensions
to their Civil War veterans.
  At his death, Mr. Woolson
was receiving a pension of $135
a month. He was then getting
no other benefits, but was
entitled to hospitalization and
out-patient care.
  In May, records showed
that 5,784 widows and children
of Union veterans were receiv-
ing pensions or payments under
special acts of Congress.

      Formed Drum Corps

  Mr. Woolson and Robert
Rhodes, an old friend who had
been bandmaster of the Second
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry,
formed a drum and bugle corps
in 1867. Mr. Woolson beat his old
Civil War drum.
 "We played fine lively music,"
he said. "Nothing sad."
  With the passing of years, the
G.A.R.'s, as they came to be
called, became older men and fi-
nally old men. Their fellow coun-
trymen seemed to recall them
only on Memorial Day, which
their organization had helped to
establish. The National Encamp-
ments of the G.A.R., lively and
often more or less rowdy affairs
in the early days, became quiet
get-togethers.
  Mr. Woolson and his comrades
wore the blue uniform coat and
slouch hat of the G.A.R. and
marched in the Memorial Day
parades as long as they could.
Finally they became very old
men sitting quietly in the sun.
There were other veterans of
later wars to tell of the deeds
they had done.
  Mr. Woolson was one of six
Union veterans attending the
last National Encampment of
the G.A.R. in Indianapolis in
August, 1949. Here these last
survivors of the organization
voted to disband it.
  With Mr. Woolson's death the
Grand Army of the Republic
passed out of existence. Its
records will be turned over to the
Congressional Library in Wash-
ington, and its flags, badges and
official seal to the Smithsonian
Institution.
  In the Nineties, Mr. Woolson
moved to Duluth and it was
there that he discovered he had
a knack for storytelling to sup-
plement his brisk bugle and
drum. He would drop into a near-
by school, tell a couple of fanci-
ful tales, give a little lecture on
thrift and pass out a few bright,
new pennies.
  In 1952 the children of Du-
luth's schools turned the tables
on him. They collected 27,652
pennies and commissioned an oil
portrait of Mr. Woolson that
was hung in the City Council
chamber.
  The aged veteran liked to say
that he was born a Republican.
He voted for President Lincoln
when he was 17 under a special
dispensation that gave the ballot
to soldiers. He admitted he
voted for the Democratic ticket
once. That was for Franklin D.
Roosevelt in his first bid for the
Presidency. Mr. Woolson did not
retire until 1930.
  In his later years, Mr. Wool-
son liked to recite poetry and his
favorite poem was "After the
Battle, Mother." And it is un-
likely that his school children
friends for several generations
let him forget that great senti-
mental poem of the post-Civil
War period, "The Blue and the
Gray," by Frances Niles Finch.
It ends:
"Under the sod and dew,
  waiting the judgment day,
 Love and tears for the Blue,
  Tears and love for the Gray."