In a recent posting (Subject Line: From the Arkansas Website), Jim Martin quoted the following from an account by a soldier of the 61st Illinois Volunteers:

“they [the Confederates] left their dead and severely wounded on the field, as it was impossible for them to do otherwise. I walked around among these unfortunates, and looked at them, and saw some things that made me feel sorrowful indeed. I look in the haversacks of some of the dead to see what they had to eat, and what do you suppose was found? Nothing but raw, shelled corn! And many of them were barefooted, and judging from appearances, had been so indefinitely. * * * These things inspired in me a respect for the Confederate soldiers that I had never felt before.”

Compare that to the following story from "The Drums of the 47th":

"We found a dead Confederate lying on his back, his outspread fingers stretched across the stock of the rifle lying at his side. He was one of Rogers' Texans. Fifty-seven of them we had found lying in the ditch of Battery Robinette. I covered his face with the slouch hat still on his head and took off the haversack slung to his neck that it might not swing as we carried him to his sleeping-chamber, so cool and quiet and dark after the savage tumult and dust and smoke of that day of horror.

"Empty, isn't it?" asked the soldier working with me. I put my hand in it and drew forth a handful of roasted acorns. I showed them to my comrade. "That's all," I said.

"And he's been fighting like a tiger for two days on that hog's forage," he commented. We gazed at the face of the dead soldier with new feelings. By and by my comrade said:

"I hate this war and the thing that caused it. I was taught to hate slavery before I was taught to hate sin. I love the Union as I love my mother - better. I think this is the wickedest war that was ever waged in the world. But this" - and he took some of the acorns from my hand - "this is what I call patriotism."

"Comrade," I said, "I'm going to send these home to the Peoria 'Transcript'. I want them to tell the editor this war won't be ended until there is a total failure of the acorn crop. I want the folks at home to know what manner of men we are fighting."

Both of these stories are from Illinois veterans, the first from a book published in 1920, the second from a book published in 1914. Both stories are basically the same story. And I believe I read a similar story in another regimental history I came across a few years ago.

This is an incredibly touching story. So, here's the question: Was this a case of plagiarism? Or was this an "Urban Legend" sort of thing that spread throughout the army and made its way into regimental histories around the turn of the century? Or was this just a commonly occurring incident, with a common Yankee response?

There can be, of course, no definitive answer after all these years. But I'd be interested in hearing opinions. And I'd especially like it if anyone could quote other similar/identical tales.