The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

DANA'S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN

265

They worked together on the Evening Sun, and they are
buried in the same cemetery at Irvington.
The trade once learned, young Amos left home and
wandered from State to State, making a living at the
case. In 1856, when he was only fourteen, he was
attracted by the glamour that surrounded William
Walker, the famous filibuster, and joined the forces of
that daring young adventurer, who then had control
of Nicaragua. The boy was one of a strange horde of
soldiers of fortune, which included British soldiers who
had been at Sebastopol, Italians who had followed Garibaldi, and Hungarians in whom Kossuth had aroused
the martial flame.
Like many of the others in Walker's army, Cummings believed that the Tennessean was a second Napoleon, with Central America, perhaps South America,
for his empire. But when this Napoleon came to his
Elba by his surrender to Commander Davis of the
United States navy, in the spring of 1857, Cummings
decided that there was no marshal's baton in his own
ragged knapsack and went back to be a wandering
printer.
Cummings was setting type in the Tribune office when
the Civil War began. He hurried out and enlisted as a
private in the Twenty-Sixth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry. He fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville, and
Fredericksburg. At Marye's Hill, in the battle of
Fredericksburg, his regiment was supporting a battery
against a Confederate charge. Their lines were broken
and they fell back from the guns. Cummings took the
regimental flag from the hands of the colour-sergeant
and ran alone, under the enemy's fire, back to the guns.
The Jerseymen rallied, the guns were recovered, and
Cummings got the Medal of Honor from Congress. He
left the service as sergeant-major of the regiment and