In 1863, following the Battle of Murfreesboro, sixteen-year-old Isaac Newton Giffen was plucked from a makeshift Confederate hospital in Georgia by a country doctor and his wife, who took him into their home and devoted the next six months to nursing him back to health. In addition to tending to his wounds, the doctor's wife taught this uneducated son of a Tennessee blacksmith to read and write. Giffen's recovery was progressing well when news came that his old commanding officer, General Joseph E. Johnston, was being pressed by Union forces near Atlanta, and the boy immediately donned his uniform and returned to the front. Issac Newton Giffen was killed a short time later during the Atlanta campaign.

This poem is dedicated to Tennesseans Allen Sullivant and James Turner.

"Little Giffen"

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Last modified 18-April-2001