Defending his flag : or, A boy in blue and a boy in grey by Edward Stratemeyer
"Defending his flag" by Edward Stratemeyer is a historical adventure novel written in the early 20th century. It follows two close friends—Louis Rockford from Pennsylvania and Andy Arlington from Virginia—who choose opposite sides in the American Civil War, one in Union infantry and the other in Confederate cavalry, offering a balanced, youth-oriented view of duty, loyalty, and a nation divided. The opening of the story sets secession’s tensions along the Virginia–Pennsylvania border,
as Louis and Andy debate slavery and states’ rights before an angry crowd in Lee Run nearly assaults the Northern visitor. Louis flees homeward, stumbles on a secret rebel drill in a tobacco house, is later seized and robbed by local roughs led by Sam Jacks, and escapes only when a passing Black man frees him. Back in Pennsylvania, after Fort Sumter falls and Lincoln calls for volunteers, Louis’s injured father cannot serve, so Louis enlists with Captain Paulding’s Goreville Volunteers, drills hard, and marches through Maryland—facing a charging bull, skirmish scares, and a tense but peaceful roadside parley with Confederate cavalry—before reaching Washington. Meanwhile in Virginia, Andy embraces the Southern call to arms, wins his mother’s reluctant consent, joins the Montgomery Grays, and rides toward Manassas, the section closing as his troop stops at Parker’s Mills amid whispers of slave unrest and a midnight disturbance. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.html.images | 531 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.epub3.images | 2.1 MB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.epub.images | 2.1 MB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.epub.noimages | 475 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.kf8.images | 7.1 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.kindle.images | 7.1 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77848.txt.utf-8 | 471 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77848/pg77848-h.zip | 3.9 MB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Stratemeyer, Edward, 1862-1930 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Tyng, Griswold, 1883-1962 |
| Title | Defending his flag : or, A boy in blue and a boy in grey |
| Original Publication | Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1906, copyright 1907. |
| Credits | Aaron Adrignola, Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres |
| Subject | War stories |
| Subject | United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77848 |
| Release Date | Feb 3, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 197 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |