John McElroy

Author Code: AJME

McElroy joined Company L of the Illinois 16th Cavalry regiment in 1863 at the age of only sixteen. Six months later, he was taken prisoner and spent the remainder of the war in various Confederate prisons, most notably Andersonville. Naturally, his treatment during this period made him a fervent anti-Southerner and in 1879, he published Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons. His other published work includes lives of the generals Philip Sheridan (1896) and George Thomas (1896), The Struggle for Missouri (1909) and a series of Civil War escapades by the character Si Klegg beginning in 1910.