Person’s Profile
Sergeant Amos Humiston (1830-1863)
Description
Union soldier killed at the battle of Gettysburg
Biography
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage 2008), 11, describes the currency of this story: 'A dead Yankee soldier at Gettysburg was found with an ambrotype of three children "tightly clasped in his hands." The ultimately successful effort to identify him created a sensation, with magazine and newspaper articles, poems, and songs celebrating the devoted father, who perished with his eyes and heart focused on eight-year-old Franklin, six-year-old Alice, and four-year-old Frederick.'
