Abstract

In the Driftway

The columnist Drifter nominates for the next Pulitzer Prize the Unknown Author of the newspaper "Baltimore Sun's" story of rider Jacob Grant Eckert's ride to Gettysburg. Eckert was only six months old when his father, John Eckert, was the conductor of the train on the Hanover Branch Railway which took a President to Gettysburg to deliver a memorial address. The U.S. President was Abraham Lincoln. Threescore and five years later Jacob Eckert, forty-seven years in the employ of the successor to the Hanover Branch Railway, was celebrating his birthday at the circus in Hanover when he was called to the telephone. Another U.S. President was to deliver another Gettysburg address, and the railroad wanted Jacob Eckert's son to act as conductor on the special train.