SAMUEL TOLBERT WAS THIRTEEN, SMALL FOR HIS AGE and “fleshy,” as one of his officers described him, when he enlisted in the 22nd Indiana Infantry in March 1864. Samuel was the last of the six Tolbert brothers to join, and his father was dead. The argument could be made that despite his age he had no real choice but to go. He had to contribute, to prove his worth before the war was over. At the time he was living with his sister’s family, and for whatever reason his mother acquiesced.
He mustered in at Indianapolis, as his brothers had, and followed the same route to the war, through Nashville. His troubles began along the way when he came down with measles. He was hospitalized in Nashville, got better, relapsed, and was sent to a convalescent camp—basically quarantine. He caught up with the 22nd near Atlanta in September 1864, about a week after his brother Daniel had been shot in the hand at Jonesboro and subsequently discharged, and a day before Romulus was captured near Campbellton.
Underaged boys were often allowed to join the army as drummers or fifers, but Samuel enlisted as a regular soldier and so had to lug the heavy and cumbersome accoutrement of war: A gun, forty rounds of ammunition, a haversack, a knapsack, and a canteen. By the time it became apparent that he was not up to the task, it was too late to turn back. Whether from general weakness as a result of the measles or the weight of his cartridge belt, or some combination, he developed a hernia in his left side and suffered what appears to have been a growth deformity in his still-developing ribs, also on his left side. Some of his ribs subsequently fused together, and he was unable to expand his chest cavity on that side and so had trouble breathing.
The problem would grow continually worse during Sherman’s March to the Sea. As he later wrote, his side became inflamed and “these pains and hurting grew worse day by day. After we traveled back from Savannah Ga.—Feb. 65—my hurting in side grew worse, so great was the paining that I could not stand to have my belt around my body, and my comrades, as also did my captain—A.C. Graves—carried my belt and other things for me.” His physical condition deteriorated as the 22nd marched north through the Carolinas toward Washington, D.C., where he was put on “light duty.”
“I remember that this boy gave out on march somewhere between Raleigh N.C. & Richmond Va. and my attention was called to him by finding him by the road side crying like a child,” Joseph Stillwell, a surgeon with the 22nd, recalled. “He then told me that he was given out, said he could not carry his things; that they hurt him, and that his feet were sore. He seemed to feel that he was disgraced by giving out and having to report to Surgeon. I remember that I, appreciating his feelings, did not put him in Ambulance but got down off my horse and let him ride.” In hindsight, Stillwell would conclude something that should have been obvious to others all along: “This soldier was too young, and should not have been put in service.” On the other hand, “He was very gritty and was ready to do his part.”
W.H. Snodgrass, who served with Samuel Tolbert in the 22nd, saw him as “a tenacious fellow, and disposed to do what he could and what was right.” In fact, according to Snodgrass, “All of said Tolbert boys were ready soldiers.” Another soldier called him “the baby of the company”—a description that could cut both ways.
Before joining, Samuel was “a stout healthy boy,” according to his friend and uncle, George Dickinson. “He was a heavy, square made fellow.” An acquaintance, a musician in the 22nd named Thomas Sample, said that Samuel first showed signs of serious physical distress during a forty-mile march immediately before the March to the Sea, when he struggled to keep up with the command and often straggled behind. He was “a mere boy,” Sample said, “not old enough to perform the duties and endure the hardships of soldiering at that time.”
Graves later remarked, “I had no idea when I saw Tolbert in the Comp’y that he was the mere child that he was.” But, Graves added, “I noticed that he looked as though he had just come from a sick bed; he was thin and emaciated, and I thought, at the time, that his place was at home; and I said so to him, when he first joined the Company: ‘You had better staid at home with your mammy.’” Graves said Samuel “was an ambitious boy and was proud of the privilege he enjoyed. He was always prompt in the performance of every duty imposed.” But he also observed that when loaded down with his gear, “the little fellow would sink under it.” Sometimes he would unbuckle his cartridge belt and let it swing from the end of his bayonet, to take the pressure off his side, “and march wearily, but pluckily, along with us.”
During the March to the Sea, Graves often carried Samuel’s gun and other equipment. “He would come to me, to the head of the line, and complain that his side and breast hurt him, that his cartridge box hurt him, and he would ask that I let him have them hauled in a wagon,” Graves remembered. “I used to say to him: ‘Sammie, I will carry your gun and accouterments, and you carry my sword. And I have carried the little fellow’s gun all day long. I used to pity Sammie, on account of his youth, and the claimant’s brothers—He had three brothers in my company—complained very much because the Recruiting Officer had accepted him.” That recruiting officer, James Benham, who later commanded the company, said he had known Samuel “since he was a babe.” A local resident recalled that after hearing that Samuel and another boy had joined, “it was remarked by someone that the recruiting officer ought to take a cow along to give these boys milk.”
Graves wrote, “I have seen and known him to have been exhausted from the fatigue of the march, and I often wondered what kept the boy up, and used to encourage him by telling him that he had more courage and grit than half of the big men of the company,” adding that Samuel “was generally very fond of being where I was; and, like a child would do, he usually confided to me his troubles.”
Samuel would make it to the end of the war, but would never get over the physical damage it caused.