The Red Acorn

The Red Acorn is written by John McElroy was an American printer, soldier, journalist and author, known mainly for writing the novel The Red Acorn and the four-volume Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, based upon his lengthy confinement in the Confederate Andersonville prison camp during the American Civil War.

The name given this story is that made glorious by the valor and achievements of the splendid First Division of the Fourteenth Army Corps, the cognizance of which was a crimson acorn, worn on the breasts of its gallant soldiers, and borne upon their battle flags.

There are few gatherings of men into which one can go to-day without finding some one wearing, as his most cherished ornament, a red acorn, frequently wrought in gold and studded with precious stones, and which tells that its wearer is a veteran of Mill Springs, Perryville, Shiloh, Corinth, Stone River, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Jonesville, March to the Sea, and Bentonville.