"SOJER BOY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?"
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Maggie Campbell
1857-1945
Maggie Campbell scooted closer to her Aunt Bessie as the streetcar rattled through downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania one chilly December day in 1862. Even though she was only five years old, Maggie was already a seasoned streetcar passenger. She was used to the musty smell of the straw that covered the floor, the scratchy plush seats, and the jingle of the bells on the mule's collar. These things were too familiar to hold her interest for long, but the boy across the aisle was a different matter. The brass buttons on his blue uniform glinted in the sunlight. In the straw between his muddy boots sat a drum. Maggie couldn't take her eyes off him.
The streetcar bounced and bumped along Penn Avenue past the Allegheny Arsenal. For the past 18 months, the Arsenal had supplied the United States Army with gun carriages, armory, ammunition, and military equipment to use against the Confederate States of America. Every day, the Pittsburgh Gazette reported victories won and men lost in "The War."
About three months ago, on September 17, a series of explosions had occurred at the Arsenal. Nearly 80 employees had been killed in the blast, most of them women and children. (Small hands and slender fingers were highly suitable for assembling weapons and equipment.) That same day, Union soldiers had clashed with General Robert E. Lee's troops at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. Pittsburgh had lost dozens of its sons in the battle.
To Maggie, however, "The War" meant lively music and cheering. When she shouted "H'rah! H'rah!" at passing troops, grownups called her a "dear little patriotic girl." Gazing at the young man with his drum on the streetcar that December afternoon, Maggie thought of a way to garner even more praise. She leaned forward.
"Sojer boy," she said in a loud, eager voice. "Will you marry me?"
Many years later, at age seventy-eight, Margaret Campbell Deland described the incident in her autobiography, If This Be I, As I Suppose It Be. Referring to herself as "Maggie," she wrote:
" I even have a dim memory of faces turned towards Maggie; but what difference did that make? There was for her in the whole car, no one but the little drummer, who stared at her, his mouth falling open with astonishment."
Aunt Bessie, her face red with shame and disapproval, gripped Maggie's shoulder and whispered, "Be quiet!" She pulled the strap above the window and dragged her niece off the streetcar as soon as it stopped.
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excerpted from:
Beyond Their Years: Stories of Sixteen Civil War Children
by Scotti Cohn
TwoDot - An Imprint of the Globe Pequot Press
Copyright 2003, all rights reserved
ISBN 0-7627-1027-6
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