Confederatevets.com

T. L. Norman writes from West Point, Ga.:

"In the spring of 1862, when the one-year troops were being disbanded near Richmond, Va., the Irvin Artillery, from Washington, Ga., the battery to which I belonged, was in the park near Richmond. A young man came to us from one of the disbanded Louisiana regiments, a total stranger, and asked to be enrolled in our battery. He was a very bright young fellow, apparently about twenty-three years of age, and said he was a native of Michigan (Detroit, I think) and had been in New Orleans reading law in the office of a relative there when the war came on. He proved to be an ideal soldier, chock-full of enthusiasm, and well do I remember that when the artillery had ceased firing in the battle of Gettysburg and Pickett moved forward to make that famous charge he sprang upon a rock wall in our front, hat in hand, and cheered the men as they advanced into that fatal assault. I do not think a more loyal soldier fought in Lee's army than Henry Cummings.

"During the summer of 1863, when the religious revival spread through the army, Cummings was converted and developed into a model Christian and thus lived until his death, in July, 1864, when he was instantly killed by a mortar shell where our battery was in position on the north side of the Appomattox River, a few miles below Petersburg. He was buried near the same spot, together with two others of our dear boys, Gus Cleveland and Jesse Battle.

"I write this, more than fifty years after the death of my comrade, that his relations and friends may know that Henry Cummings lived and died a man, every inch a man.