The Sioux City Journal, September 5, 1901 (Photo of Civil War veteran)

The Sioux City Journal, September 5, 1901

THE BOYS IN BLUE OF ‘61

WILLIAM C. SANDERSON 

W. C. Sanderson, of 514 Bluff street, has a razor which is a relic of the Civil War.  Its blade is not bright, nor is its edge keen, but no barber in Sioux City has a steel which he prizes more highly than does Mr. Sanderson prize this souvenir of the ‘60s.  He did not but it at a hardware store, nor was it given to him by a comrade.  He picked it up in the outskirts of Vicksburg, and he subjected himself to considerable danger in getting it, too. 

Mr. Sanderson was a member of the Fifty-sixth Illinois volunteer infantry, and his command was stationed around Vicksburg during the campaign there, holding the confederate army, under Gen. Pemberton, prisoners inside the city.  At the rear of the city there was a series of ridges that ran with the river.  The confederates were stationed on the top of one of these ridges, and back of them a portion of the union army was stationed upon another ridge. 

It was necessary for the union men to go down into the ravine between the two ridges in order to pass to their outposts and to get to a spring to get water.

However, a man will make many sacrifices and take great risks to satisfy his thirst, and the boys in blue in this case took great chances of catching a ball of lead from the guns of the confederates on the ridge.  Invariably when they passed within shooting distance of the men in gray many shots would be fired. 

It was while he was running this dangerous pass, with bullets whizzing all around him, that the Sioux City veteran saw the razor on the ground.  In a spirit of recklessness he stopped long enough to pick it up, and then he hastened on his way.  He kept the shaving tool during the remainder of his service in the army, and ever since has treasured it as a reminder of the stirring scenes he witnessed while he was a soldier in the union army.