There's an old brass key in the bowels of the Minnesota History Center, once used to unlock the Confederate arsenal in Milledgeville, Ga.
Billy Bircher, a teenage drummer, carried it home to St. Paul after the Civil War. It wasn't all he brought back. Bircher's diary, first published in 1889, unlocks both the horror and humor he experienced from 1861 to '65 — when his long, monotonous rat-a-tat roll led the Second Minnesota Regiment into battles from Mill Springs, Ky., to Chickamauga, Ga.
With today's teenagers back in school, fretting about their stress and angst, a few clicks on the keyboard — tinyurl.com/p92l6tl — will provide both an online glimpse at Bircher's memoir and a healthy dose of perspective.
Bircher actually opens his book with an apology, saying he was sorry to "add one more volume to the already overcrowded shelf" of Civil War books. Writing in 1888 in South St. Paul, 27 years after the Civil War started, Bircher said his aging fellow veterans "urgently pressed" him to share his "Drummer Boy's Diary" to remind them of the "stirring scenes" they endured.
Born in Indiana on July 4, 1845, and following his family to St. Paul as a 7-year-old, Bircher said military recruiters repeatedly turned him away after the war broke out in 1861 because he wasn't yet 16 and was small in stature.
Finally, Captain J.J. Noah of the Second Regiment's Company K realized he needed a drummer and tapped Bircher. His narrative, culled from his diary, starts off with upbeat accounts of hearty riverboat send-offs and stops in Chicago and other cities en route to the battlefields.
In Pittsburgh, "we found several tables loaded down with eatables of every description and were waited on by the most beautiful and patriotic young ladies."
Soon, his story shifts to memories of marching in torrential rain, eating sand and rice and suffering from dysentery. More than just a drummer, he served as a guard and tended to the wounded.