Soldier’s Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers

                        He heard it all, Charley did; heard the drums and songs and slogans             and knew what everybody and his rooster was crowing.            There was going to be a shooting war. They were having town meetings             and nailing up posters all over Minnesota and the excitement was so             high Charley had seen girls faint at the meetings, just faint from             the noise and hullabaloo. It was better than a circus. Or what he             thought a circus must be like. He'd never seen one. He'd never seen             anything but Winona, Minnesota, and the river five miles each way             from town.             There would be a shooting war. There were rebels who had violated             the law and fired on Fort Sumter and the only thing they'd respect             was steel, it was said, and he knew they were right, and the Union             was right, and one other thing they said as well–if a man didn't             hurry he'd miss it. The only shooting war to come in a man's life             and if a man didn't step right along he'd miss the whole thing.            Charley didn't figure to miss it. The only problem was that Charley             wasn't rightly a man yet, at least not to the army. He was fifteen             and while he worked as a man worked, in the fields all of a day and             into night, and looked like a man standing tall and just a bit thin             with hands so big they covered a stove lid, he didn't make a beard             yet and his voice had only just dropped enough so he could talk with             men.            If they knew, he thought, if they knew he was but fifteen they wouldn't             take him at all.            But Charley watched and Charley listened and Charley learned.