Personal heroism.
By Rev. John Johnson, of Charleston, S. C.
Seeing in one of our late numbers the case of young Kirkland's ministering to the wounded, under fire, before the lines at Fredericksburg, so well chronicled by his commander, Major-General J. B. Kershaw, your present correspondent would ask a place in your valuable columns to verify, rather than to entirely vouch for, the incident to be related.In reading, not long since, a little book entitled “Golden deeds,” written by the distinguished author of “The Heir of Redclyffe,” Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, of England, I fell in with the passage given below. It occurs at the close of her spirited narrative of the heroism of the Burghers of Calais.
My object in sending it to you is to ask, Is it true? and what are the full names and particulars?
It is as follows:
In the summer of 1864 occurred an instance of self-devotion worthy to be recorded with that of Eustache de St. Pierre. The city of Palmyra, in Tennessee, one of the Southern States of America, had been occupied by a Federal army. An officer of this army was assassinated, and, on the cruel and mistaken system of taking reprisals, the general arrested ten of the principal inhabitants and condemned them to be shot, deeming the city responsible for the lives of his officers. One of [538] them was the highly respected father of a large family and could ill be spared. A young man, not related to him, upon this came forward and insisted on being taken in his stead, as a less valuable life. And great as was the distress of his friend this generous substitution was carried out, and not only spared a father to his children, but showed how the sharpest strokes of barbarity can still elicit light from the dark stone-light that but for these blows might have slept unseen.
