EXTRA ROUNDS Hired Hands
On December 11, 1861, Jacob Gall enlisted in the 19th Louisiana Infantry at Camp Moore, La., home of the Confederate Army’s largest training facility in the Pelican State. The 28-year-old Jewish immigrant from Meschisko, Poland, had ventured to Louisiana’s Claiborne Parish with his wife, Menia, in the late 1850s, opening a mercantile store in the town of Minden. Now, with the Civil War in its seventh month, he was ready to do his part as a soldier in furthering his adopted homeland’s cause. Along with a number of his neighbors from Minden, he joined Company D of the 19th Louisiana—known as the “Claiborne Grays.”
In early 1862, Gall and his unit were sent north by train to Corinth, Miss., near the Tennessee border. On April 6, the 19th joined General Albert S. Johnston’s early-morning surprise attack on Ulysses Grant’s army at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., starting the Battle of Shiloh.
The regiment saw action
