1-149-651 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

John William Grout, American soldier, (1872). Lieutenant Grout (1843-1861), was a civil war soldier who served with the Union's 15th Massachusetts as a Second Lieutenant and was killed at the age of eighteen at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on 21 October 1861. He was possibly the youngest officer in the American Civil War to be killed. The Vacant Chair, a poem which was later set to music, was written to commemorate his sacrifice. Engraving from A Child's History of the United States by John Gilmary Shea, published by Hess and McDavitt, (New York, 1872).