![]() | America''s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace Subjects: Tanner James 1844–1927; United States. Army. New York Infantry Regiment 87th (1861–1862); Soldiers -- New York (State) -- Schoharie County -- Biography; Disabled veterans -- United States -- Biography; Amputees -- United States -- Biography; Veterans -; James Tanner may be the most famous person in nineteenth-century America that no one has heard of. During his service in the Union army, he lost the lower third of both his legs and afterward had to reinvent himself. After a brush with fame as the stenographer taking down testimony a few feet away from the dying President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Tanner eventually became one of the best-known men in Gilded Age America. He was a highly placed Republican operative, a popular Grand Army of the Republic speaker, an entrepreneur, and a celebrity. He earned fame and at least temporary fortune as "Corporal Tanner," but most Americans would simply have known him as "The Corporal." Yet virtually no one-not even historians of the Civil War and Gilded Age- knows him today. JAMES MARTEN is chair of the Department of History at Marquette University. He is the author of Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America , Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front , and The Children's Civil War . |
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