Benjamin F. Vickers, 6th, Alabama Infantry.

Private Benjamin F. Vickers, 6th., Alabama Infantry, Company E., Killed at Sharpsburg Maryland, September 17, 1862.

The following comes from the Regimental History of the 6th., Alabama.

Page-66.  The first illustration was that of a soldier under my command Vickers of the Sixth Alabama Eegiment. There was no better soldier in either army than Vickers. He had passed unscathed through two previous wars, in Mexico, I believe, and in Nicaragua. He was in every battle with his regiment in our Civil War until his death, and always at the front. The greater the danger, the higher his spirits seemed to soar. The time came, how- ever, when his luck, or fate, in whose fickle favor he so implicitly trusted, deserted him. At Antietam Sharpsburg I called for some one who was willing to take the desperate chances of carrying a message from me to the commander on my right. Vickers promptly volunteered, with some characteristic remark which indicated his conviction that he was not born to be killed in battle. There was a cross-fire from two directions through which he had to pass and of which he had been advised ; but he bounded away with the message almost joyously. He had not gone many steps from my side when a ball through his head, the first and last that ever struck him, had placed this brave soldier beyond the possibility of realizing, in this world at least, the treachery of that fate on which he depended.

Page 89. Private Vickers, of Alabama, volunteered to carry any orders I might wish to send. I directed him to go quickly and remind the men of the pledge to General Lee, and to say to them that I was still on the field and intended to stay there. He bounded away like an Olympic racer ; but he had gone less than fifty yards when he fell, instantly killed by a ball through his head