Children of Civil War Veterans Still Walk Among Us, 150 Years After the War
To their living sons and daughters, the soldiers in blue and gray are flesh and blood, not distant figures in history books.
How many people alive today can say that their father was a Civil War soldier who shook hands with Abraham Lincoln in the White House? Fred Upham can.
Despite sounding like a tall tale and a mathematical impossibility, it's documented truth. Fred's father, William, was a private in the Union Army's Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was severely wounded at the First Battle of Bull Run, in 1861, and later personally appointed by President Lincoln to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Fred's in exclusive company—the dwindling group of children of soldiers who fought, North against South, 150 years ago.
All are very old "children" (Fred, 93, is not the oldest among them), born mostly in the 1910s and 1920s
