John McElroy

Born in Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1846, he grew up partly in the Midwest and entered the printing trade while still young. During the Civil War, he served in the 16th Illinois Cavalry for the Union, was captured in 1864, and spent many months in Confederate prisons, including Andersonville. That experience later became the foundation of his most famous work, Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons.

After the war, he returned to journalism and built a substantial career in newspapers. He worked with the Toledo Blade and later became a leading figure at the National Tribune, a widely read paper associated with Union veterans. His writing often drew on military life, veteran culture, and American politics, combining firsthand detail with a strong storyteller's pace.

Readers also know him for The Red Acorn and the popular Si Klegg books, which followed Civil War soldiers in a more humorous and episodic style. His books remain interesting not just as stories, but as windows into how one veteran remembered the war and wrote it for a mass audience decades later.